Somewhere They Can't Find Us [Roger/Brian]

Somewhere They Can't Find Us: Part 4

Never before had seconds seemed to last like minutes or hours of even days to Roger. Not that time he had broken his arm as a child and when he had needed to wait for the doctor to treat him (without anaesthesia back in those days, mind you); not when he had been waiting to hear the results of his finals, or whether he was approved to enrol in the university's biology programme; not when he had first given his phone number to Brian and had to wait for him to call him; not when he had first told Brian he loved him and had to wait for a number of seconds in which Brian seemed to be too shocked to reciprocate the answer; not even last weekend, when he had been locked up in a prison cell at the local police station to wait for his interrogation without knowing where Brian was or how he was doing. Never, ever had mere seconds seemed to pass as slowly as they did the moment between when Roger had pressed the bell and the moment the sound seemed to elicit a reaction from someone inside the house. He knew that the real time lapse could not have been more than five seconds, maybe six or seven at maximum, but it surely felt like an eternity when one was standing in front of a practically unknown house to talk to - yell at, more like - at a practically unknown person who was most likely to hate him with a burning passion for having ruined his son's education and reputation, as Harold probably saw it.

Roger waited with an ever-faster beating heart for the agonising silence and stillness in the house to turn into some sign of life, but when this finally happened after some moments, he only felt himself breaking out into sweat even more than before. There was little to be seen or heard; there was some unintelligible talking between people (which indicated that there were at least two people inside the house, which Roger realised could be either a blessing or a curse to him) and some footsteps appearing from the otherwise quiet house, which meant someone had stood up to probably open the door.

Roger swallowed thickly when he heard a door (most likely that of the hallway) opening and being shut again, followed by footsteps nearing the front door. He took a deep breath, straightened his back, curled his hands up into fists, and tried to look as confident as possible when he heard a key turning in the lock and when the door was opened. Whether all of this was preparation from his side was necessary was a completely different topic, considering that it was not the tall and broad figured master of the house that he was expecting to open the door, but a petite, middle aged woman with a light brown perm, wearing a pair of round glasses, and dressed in a modest mid-calf length floral dress was standing across from him at the other side of the doorpost instead.

Roger and the woman he assumed had to be his boyfriend's mother stood looking at each other for a few awkward second that almost (but not completely) seemed to take as long as those that he had been waiting for her to open the door. He once again didn't know if he had to be relieved or not when this woman was standing in front of him instead of the person he had come for; on one side, she certainly seemed a lot less frightening than her husband, if the thing Brian had confessed about his father were all factually correct (which Roger assumed they were; Brian was not one to lie or exaggerate - one to play things down, rather). On the other hand, she already seemed displeased about his arrival, and he feared that Brian's father was only going to be even more negative towards his sudden appearance.

Or maybe 'displeased' wasn't the word to describe her reaction to seeing him with; it was something closer to uneasiness or even total discomfort when she glanced over her shoulder as to check if no one had been following her to the hallways before she spoke to him.

'You... you must be Roger,' Brian's mother said in a soft and shaky voice, eyes wide in a kind of surprise that was not so much positive but negative, something closer to fear.

'And you must be Ruth, Brian's mother,' Roger said calmly, both to comfort himself with the thought that this was not 'the real thing' yet, and to comfort his boyfriend's mother at least to the extent to not run away at just the sight of him, which, looking at her eyes, seemed to be an option she was considering to resort to.