Some Day One Day (Maylor AU)

Chapter 31

Brian never showed up to Freddie's that night, taking a slight detour and ending up at the university. The deserted halls illuminated by every third light hanging from the ceiling guided the professor down to the basement—the long, lonely corridor almost foreign to him, for he hadn't been down there since Roger's last day. He adjusted his grip on the strap of the bag that hung by his hip, the room down the hall to his right calling for him.

The professor took in a deep breath and pushed forward, his footsteps echoing off the blank, undecorated walls; accompanied by the jingle of keys. Stopping in front of the makeshift classroom that held so many memories for him, Brian couldn't suppress the memory that surfaced.

"Look, there's only one way to know for sure if these feelings you're having are real."

"Kiss me," Brian immediately suggested, flushing Roger's cheeks a deep shade of pink.

"That...That wasn't what I was going to say, but—"

"Roger, I need to know," the quickly unraveling professor explained, shaking his head and swiping at the stray tears rolling down his cheeks, "If we don't do this now, I'll never know, and I'll be stuck feeling this way forever. Please, just kiss me."

He swallowed the lump in his throat and inserted the correct key into the lock, turning it and entering the room that had been filled with instruments the university finally provided. After Roger left, the impromptu music program threatened dissolvement. Brian—desperate to hold onto whatever he could of the blonde—fought hard to keep it, saying that one semester wasn't enough to show the benefits of instituting it. Thanks to his connection with Chrissie, and John's adamancy that his lessons helped him with his studies, the corrupt headmistress allowed it—making Brian the new music instructor, though he'd still have to teach his astrophysics classes.

It was a fair trade, but some days were harder than others for Brian, the room reminding him of Roger in both good and bad ways—like when they first kissed.

The two stumbled back into the piano, the blonde landing on the keys and sending an erroneous chord into the air as his legs found their way around the professor's waist, locking him in place. The cramped room began to feel even smaller as the moment progressed, the pair eager to explore this new and exhilarating feeling that had washed over the both of them.

And when he found the blonde after his weekend with Sid.

"Roger?" Brian whispered, reaching into the shadows and flicking on the light switch to illuminate the music instructor's classroom. The blonde scrambled to his feet, crawling across the floor as if he was a soldier in boot camp and pulling himself up onto the piano bench, grunting in pain as he plopped down on it and casually leaned back against the instrument. "My god, what happened to you?" the professor couldn't help but ask, slipping into the room and closing the door behind him.

Pushing past the recollections, the professor plopped himself down at the desk Roger once sat at and let out a deep breath. He dug into his bag and pulled out a notebook, torn and tattered but bound together at the spine with a wiry spiral. He flipped through the pages until he reached the one splattered with scratched out lines, the only legible words reading: Song for Roger and some day one day. He'd tried several different lyrics to fill the empty space, but none of them seemed good enough; none of them truly expressed how he felt.

Brian snatched up one of the stray pens from the desk and sat forward, staring at the paper and hoping he could channel some of his emotions into lyrics. He sat there for hours, repeating the same failed process with nothing coming to mind except repressed memories that only succeeded in intensifying the pain spreading from his heart. When the hurt became too much to bear—his mistakes and regrets consuming him whole—he slammed the pen down and shot up out of the chair, going over to grab a guitar from its stand. However, as soon as his hand made contact with the neck of the instrument—the same instrument that he and his dad had built together, when his father wasn't ashamed of him—something, or rather, someone out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

"So, this is the music program, huh?" his visitor asked, leaning against the threshold with hands balled in their pockets. They peered into the small room and surveyed the small collection of instruments. "Kinda pathetic, don't you think?"

"It's new," Brian defended his profession, "We're just getting started."

"Is that why they make you come in six hours before your shift starts?"

The professor heaved a frustrated sigh and crossed his arms. "I could ask you the same question, Gordon."

"Call me Sting, please," the replacement insisted as he ventured into the room and drew his hands out of their hiding places to clasp them behind his back, "All my friends call me that, and besides, Gordon's too formal, don't you think?"

Brian clenched his jaw. "Fine, Sting." Venom dripped from his voice, the preferred name stirring a new unpleasantness within the curly-haired professor. "You still haven't told me what you're doing here."

"Oh, I was getting myself familiar with Ray's curriculum," he answered nonchalantly, taking slow, careful steps as he walked over to Brian's desk, lowering the glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose to get a better look at the notebook on display. The professor's face flushed a bright shade of red, too nervous to take action and stop his new colleague from getting a glimpse into his troubling thoughts. Much to his surprise, though, Sting only hummed, his next remark linked to the previous one and not daring to address the name standing out on the messy page. "Would you believe that his only notes for his lessons were written down on a napkin?" He chuckled, turning to face Brian and leaning against the desk as if it was his own. "A used one at that. 'Makes me wonder what material he even covered during his lectures."

Although Brian wanted to comment, divulging the entire faculty's shared skepticism about what Ray taught his students, the professor refrained from doing so. Instead, he asked, "No, I meant, what are you doing here?"