EVERGLOW | Freddie Mercury (Vol 2) | Freddie Mercury Fanfiction

33. On Love,

note: "saké" is an alcoholic beverage 🍸

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Lucy raced against her thoughts on the last train across town to the new base. Her fight with Freddie replayed in her mind as she tried to outrun his bond with Mary that he felt only they could understand.

Freddie's feelings toward her clearly weren't going away. And according to Freddie, neither was she.

The premonition of a storm from a gray cloudy blanket covering the sky let Lucy know she'd made it to London HQ just in the nick of time. She knocked on the grand white front door, awaiting Daisuke to answer.

To her surprise, Lucy wasn't sure who answered the door first: Violet, or her cleavage giving a big warm hello from her low cut black v-neck.

"Hi Vi..." Lucy raised her brows "Are you wearing lip gloss?"

"Did you just call me Vi?" Although no amount of stonewalling disguised Violet's bubbling giddiness quite as much as she thought it did.

"Just because you hate me doesn't mean I hate you." Lucy joked, hoping to break some ice. "What are you guys doing here already?"

"You're late." Stepping aside, Violet let her in. "We didn't think you'd come. We thought you'd be with Freddie."

"Uggh... Freddie."

Such a scoff brought Phoenix to Lucy's side, swooping her into a huddle with a secret burning a hole right through her.

"I told Daisuke to do something..."

"So I heard."

'You should have heard the things he was saying..." she whined for forgiveness. "Did you read the letter?? All it took was us was a few too many saké... It was breaking my heart!" She huddled closer, her hash whispering doing no good. "You know he needed to tell you." 

"So.. you could tell Daisuke to tell me... but you couldn't tell Roger?"

Phoenix seemed speechless on that subject.

When Lucy caught an almost unrecognizable Violet powdering her nose in the mirror, she couldn't postpone the question any longer. "What's going on with you and Roger anyway?"

She blotted her lips and blushed. "Nothing."

"Bullshit. You knew Phoenix liked him..."

"Nothing's going on between us. Why doesn't she talk to him?" From defense to offense. "What's going on with you?" I saw you all close with that boy at the race. And it wasn't Freddie."

"Girls. Play nicely." Before another fight unfolded for the day, Daisuke stole their attention with the blue tape they'd all been waiting for. "Lucy, do you remember your little 'Project Cosmea' as you called it? With Dazai?"

"Yeah!!!!" Her uncontrollable laughter couldn't contain the story. "I used to build these little mini planes and rockets and shit when Dazai was working on his lawyer stuff—and you know one day when I was waiting for Daisuke to finish service... I flew one of those little suckers into the elders tea time and it snatched the Monogashira's wig right off!!!" Close to tears, clapping, and accomplished, she wheezed with laughter.

They gathered around the television on the floor. When he slid the tape into the VCR, a strong yet weary mother-to-be with a soothing southern accent struggling to set her camera in place appeared on the screen.

"This the only thing that would fit me?? I've gotten so big.. Oh Jesus..." she smoothed her white dress over her belly and fluffed her hair for the camera. "Hi Alpha Team, I'm Rebecca, and this is my husband, Jeff," she showed her prized wedding photo from around this time last year at home on their farm. "That's me right there, I like the simple life you see.. But he's a 'Pioneer of The Space Race' he calls it. And he is..." she laughed. "But he's also my husband. And he's gonna be a daddy real soon.. lot sooner than we think, way he's pushin.." She rubbed her expecting belly. "It's gonna be our first anniversary soon too and... I just want him to come home. We've been apart so long, and I just can't stop worrying about him. I just want him to come home. I hope you can help.. The police say there's nothing they can do..and the space station's got no idea where to start..I just heard that if—you know... If I don't know what else to do, when I've tried absolutely everything.. To call you. So I'm calling for you, I'm begging. Our world only exists because of people like you. We wouldn't have nothing if you didn't keep us safe. Thank you.."

Daisuke stopped the tape before explaining.

"They spotted a problem aboard Skylab around late 1978. NASA engineers discovered that the fuel centers of the ship were decaying rapidly. If Skylab runs out of fuel, the entire crew is lost and can never return home. That's where we come in to retrieve them."

Lucy almost choked. "From space?!"

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Rain fell heavily, straight down, blurry sheets of it cascading off the roof gutters. Daisuke sat comfortably dry and deep in thought on the porch when Lucy approached him from behind, holding his letter.

"I don't know how to explain it. But I do love you too."

When he heard this, he looked back at her over his shoulder.

She continued. "We have a strong bond. A special one. An unbreakable one even. Of course no one else would understand." She sighed. "Freddie feels that too. About someone else.."

Daisuke nodded, silently giving her space to speak.

"Why did you want me? That day?" She asked softly, vulnerably, reaching for escapism from the turmoil she so desperately tried to avoid.

Without haste, he took several moments before speaking. "Your eyes were the first thing I noticed about you. You had the same eyes as I did... I could see their sadness. They were filled with pain, loss, loneliness...You were so afraid." he recalled. "I was too. But underneath, yours still held hope and life. Before the elders took it away with talks of sending you away from the village out on your own without citizenship, I didn't ever want you to be sad and alone without anyone to protect you."

She hugged him from behind, resting her head comfortably atop his and sweeping his long dark hair out of his face. "Look at you.. learning how to express your feelings."

He shut his eyes and shook his head. "Tell Phoenix I'm never drinking with her again."

Her laugh didn't last long. "Freddie's not gonna be happy about this mission. At all. I don't know if it makes sense for him to date someone like me."

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"I can't believe you had to see that whole fucking thing..." Still overheated, Freddie paced about his flat. A part of him knew they both wanted the same thing, but were lost in how to get there, blind to the paths yet trying to see.

The way her words triggered his temper. So here they were. In opposite camps. Blind to each other's hearts. Building barricades instead of bridges.

"I didn't want you to have to be alone after all that.." Mary interrupted his train of thought with a refill of wine to console him.

He couldn't help but compare tonight's thunderstorm with his own state of mind. Just like those clouds, his insides were in chaos. A mess. Churning. Hurting. Aching inside him.

"This is just what she does.." Freddie shook his head and watched her take the now cold plates away to be disposed of.

"When is she coming back?"

"I don't give two shits right about now—we're behind on nearly every deadline for the next leg—Doesn't she get that??? I need to make music into some kind of reality for others... and for me too. But her dreams are so different than mine and together everything becomes muted and confused. And now we've morphed into some terrible compromise. I don't know what we're even doing anymore."