A Man For All Seasons (Queen or Freddie Mercury Fanfic)

How the Other Half Lives: Missing Pieces

Two lamps lit the hotel room that evening.  One for Brian, who sat squinting hard at the scribbling he had made in one of his well-traveled notebooks, and the other for Roger as he lounged on his bed, alternately channel-surfing the TV and texting Rami Malek.

Ever since the production of Bohemian Rhapsody ten years ago, Queen and the aforementioned actor had remained in relatively close contact- a natural turn of events, seeing as he was now forever connected to the band after having portrayed their late frontman to great critical acclaim.  And starting that afternoon, Rami had been making noises about potentially coming to New York to join them in their quest to find the elusive Freddie Mercury doppelganger. 

Nothing was set in stone, of course, as it was after all well into the holiday season and family plans came first this close to Christmas. Not even Adam could break his own previous engagements- and he had tried.  So thus far, it still seemed to be a strictly Smile situation- which, as much as the drummer loved both those younger chaps, was fine by him. 

Brian tapped the end of his pen against the table a couple of times, then coughed. "Right. I think I've got it now."

Roger hummed, grimacing through a swig of whiskey. Fitting his reading glasses over his eyes, he muted the TV, ambled across the room, and peered over Brian's shoulder.  The astrophysicist pushed the notebook closer to the edge so that the hopelessly near-sighted Roger could see better.

But even the glasses did nothing to make sense of the mumbo-jumbo before him.  "So, uh- what am I looking at?"

"This," Brian paused a moment to cross one t he had previously neglected, "this is kind of a rudimentary visual representation of what we know, concerning who is acquainted with who, and how, in relation to-" he tapped the pen tip against the name in the center of the page- "one Richard Dubroc."

Roger blinked at the anything-but-rudimentary diagram, resplendent in arrows, boxes, bullet points, and Dr. May's meticulous, uniform, cursive hand.  "Okay."

"Now, here, on this side, is the timeline," Brian continued, "starting with the precise moment where that first photo of him was posted on Facebook, up to this evening.  All round here, below that, are all the people we've spoken to, with key information they've given us and to other people that relate to our current situation.  And down here, in this series of-"

"For fuck's sake, Brian, do you always have to complicate things?" Roger groaned.

"If I do, I certainly don't mean to; it's not my fault you can't understand."

"It's not that I can't understand, I'm not stupid. Just tell me- give me the basic, simplified rundown of what you're getting at, okay?  I don't need a fucking space map or whatever that is-"

"What are you talking about? This is the simplified version."

Roger rubbed his eyes.  "Brian, look, I'm tired, we've been chasing our tails all fucking day, and I can't read this because you wrote so bloody small. Could you please just humor me tonight, drop the model, and tell me yourself what we do and don't have at the moment?"

With a little frustrated huff, Brian pushed his own specs back up to the bridge of his nose.  "Right, then, you take this and write as we go," he sighed, putting the notebook and pen in Roger's hands.

So for the next seven or so minutes, Brian put into verbal terms what he had spent an easy ten times as long developing in a mind-bending flow chart, while Roger scrawled down the key points.  Both men knew exactly whose method proved more efficient, but they had been friends long enough to know that if one uttered anything like an "I told you so", the other would immediately leap to the defensive, bring up a series of unrelated scenarios that would escalate as the exchange continued, and ultimately create an indefinite stalemate- something for which neither musician currently had the time.