Stages Of Falling In Love [2/2]

Stages of Falling in Love [2/2]

▶ Summary: in which we follow the stages roger taylor took to fall completely and utterly in love; part 2 of 2

▶ A/N: the long-awaited conclusion! thanks for reading and feel free to let me know what you think, it would be much appreciated. or drop some borhap requests on me, they are open at the moment ilyyy

▶ Warnings: angst, alcohol, language, smoking, fluff, implied sex, and a cheeky big brother reference ;)

▶ Pairing: Hardy!Roger Taylor x Reader

▶ Word Count: 4.1k+

[part one]

Stage Four.

The night Roger came back from tour was not the greatest moment of your relationship as you had anticipated it would be. The long months apart had been taxing — a blur of emptiness, unfiltered yearning, and a few shattering press articles that were a direct assault on your heart.

In fact, upon hearing the whispers of Queen’s drummer’s undying hunger for all things sex and scandal, you had come back to your flat in a rage, throwing half of his clothes out the windows before you had settled back with a few drinks, remembering the longing that his voice had held during your last phone call. You had heard from numerous sources, including your own mother, that the only way a relationship would work was to have faith in one another. You had hung onto this feeling for as long as you could, but with so much time since you had physically been able to see Rog, doubts seemed to increase and strengthen with each passing day.

Over the landline, he had begun to notice the sulking and short tone you had started to take with him and he yearned for the day you were back in his arms, kissing away all the insecurities that swarmed between. However, he knew how it must have looked. Roger was a handsome man, who had a habit of bewitching woman and was commonly known on lonely nights to not turn away a chance for company. He’ll even admit that a few times he did take a woman back to his mingy rented room where they’d usually drink some alcohol and talk about his frustrations, including the difficult situation of leaving you back home in England. If a groupie were there to get to know the band and its members, he might as well have put them to some use, even if all that use was is a makeshift therapist. He was aware this did not translate well in the media or through the eyes of his bandmates who also had their doubts of what would happen behind closed doors.

“Christ, Roger,” they’d say to him the following morning, appalled. “I thought you said you had a girl at home? Or was that just your car you were squawking about again?”

He would steadily deny the implications, but rumours spread of these fantasy affairs anyway. Which is how you ended up with your bubble burst and muddled disarray splattered on the floors and walls.

It was loud outside as Friday’s were known to be on your street and usually, you kept your second-floor window closed, but when the air got cool at night after a particularly hot day, you liked to keep it open a bit. The noise caused by the groups of primarily university students was enough to awaken you this unusual evening, and you groaned, getting out of bed to shut the window. When you had locked and closed the blinds, you heard a rattle come from your bedroom door. You stilled, eyes fixed on the door’s handle, unsure if you should be unlocking your window again to make a quick escape or pick up your bedside table lamp to hold off whoever was there. Luckily, you had left the light on in the kitchen so when the wood swung open, it illuminated the person’s yellow hair causing it to pale.

Your heart came to a standstill, one chamber longing to greet him with open arms, open legs, and maybe an open mouth, while the other reared its head like a stubborn mare, demanding a full explanation before even a finger was placed on the man.

In the dim light, you couldn’t gauge his facial expression although you thought he was probably surprised to see you still up at such a late hour.

While your heart was fighting for control of your limbs, your mouth opened on its own accord. “I think I might hate you, Roger Taylor,” you spit with tumbling lips, regurgitating the almost exact words you two had shared those months back except for one blaring change.

Instead of immediately replying, Roger reached a hand out to switch the overhead fixture on, washing the both of you in a rather unpleasant light. “You know, that usually means the makeup sex is astounding, correct?” he smirked, setting his bag down near his feet.

“I said ‘I hate you,’” you sneered, taking a menacing step forward. “And that’s all you have to say to me?” The way that he had brushed your statement to the side fueled more anger in your soul than the initial feelings when seeing him for the first time in so long which had been the cause of your previous omission.

“Y/N, you can’t hate me,” he replied simply, moving towards the middle of the room with wide strides.

“Why’s that?” you mused, frustrated.

“Because…” he faltered. You waited, arms crossed, glaring up at him despite your heart racing a mile a minute. Again, just like the last time you had seen him, he seemed to swallow his words, stand straighter and shift gears. “You haven’t told me why. Or gave me a chance to clear up what this could all be about.”

You scoffed, pushing a finger into his sternum. “You know exactly what this is about.”

His gaze trailed from the digit that was pointed at him, up your arm, over your cotton tee — which he couldn’t help notice was one of his own — and up towards your pinched lips, flared nose, and furrowed brow. “Don’t tell me you believe them over me,” he finally said softly, his features slackening with the idea that the one person he hadn’t felt tied to when he called them his own, would reject him over rumours and disgruntled acquaintances.

Your own eyes searched his for any sign of falsehood, scared to imagine a heartache that was worse than this unknowing. He was referencing the countless phone calls the two of you had shared while he was overseas in which he had brought up the lies the media was telling about his love life. He had joked that if they knew of the relationship you two were in, they’d have a field day because he wouldn’t hide any of the intimate details on how he really treats his girl. Deep down, you had always figured that a relationship with Roger was something only fleeting, all things considered. You’d get a handful of moments with the successful musician; a passing memory in that beautiful mind of his. So far it had been fun to pretend this was something more, but you knew that idea was something that scared the man in front of you more than it did yourself. His hand reached out to caress your cheek which was unexpectedly wet with salty tears.

“I don’t,” you relented, letting your head fall in his hand. “If we’re being honest, I could never really hate you. But I do hate myself for letting this doubt get so bad.”

“Hey now,” he protested, pulling your shuddering body onto his, moving the both of you onto the bed. He lied you down, his arms wrapped securely around your entire torso, placing his head on top of yours. His last words were mumbled against your hair, his breath warm in the still, cold room. “Do not hate yourself. I know how it looked, love, I do. I’m sorry for letting it get so terrible between us.”

What felt like a lifetime passed in his arms, and your bodies sniffles were washed away, leaving swollen lips and clumpy eyelashes, but you still approached your lips gingerly towards Roger’s. You pressed a heartfelt kiss there, moving one hand to cup his head, fingers stuck in the long hair that you had missed so tremendously. He returned the gesture, cradling your body down into the sheets, hand sprawled along your knickers line and around your hips.

“Undress,” he muttered on your lips, breaking the kiss. “I’ll be right back.”

After the fluorescent light was out, door closed, and the curtains undrawn to let in the street’s light, he returned, slipping his own trousers and shirt off on the floor, following you into bed.

In the half-light, you run your fingers over his arms and spine as though the skin is scattered with text that glows from his soul, giving a new definition of reading someone’s inner secrets. His thoughts seemed to be sprawled in the open only for you to see, and you knew then that he loved you; he did. Although he had not uttered the saying aloud, you knew at that moment what you had been doubting for weeks on end was just that — doubts.

“Didn’t I say the makeup sex would be breathtaking, angel,” he said boastfully, causing a light slap from you and a cascade of giggles to fall from both your mouths.

Stage Five.

With Roger, there was always something pending on the music front. Despite the band returning home, he was still unbearably busy. After the success of Queen’s first album and the abiding publicity that followed the American tour, the drummer was needed everywhere it seemed. He would bounce from the recording studio to promotional meetings and get-togethers with his bandmates — which were the ones that you sometimes tagged along too. The band seemed to get along with you smoothly and although some of their uncertainty concerning Roger’s ‘infidelity’ had dwindled, they still put up a protective front around you when anything remotely suggestive would come up during conversation.

You, of course, still had your own work to attend to, having graduated from university and now focusing on your career, but coming home to an empty flat weeknights felt even more lonely than before knowing that Roger was so close yet so unattainable.

On some of the spare nights he had off, the two of you would stay in alone, drinking tea and lounging. There always seemed to be an endless amount of conversation that rattled on into the early morning hours, which often became a pain in the ass the next day when one or both of you needed to get up for work. Mostly, however, the both of you would explore the city after the sun had set. Despite living there a good chunk of your lives, it seemed that with Roger by your side a whole world was hidden on otherwise ordinary rooftops and abandoned rooms.

These were easily Roger’s favorite parts of the evening. Sure, socializing was an added bonus as he was always up for meeting new people and experiencing new things, but when he was finally able to drag you into an empty closet or up the stairs to gaze at starry skies, he felt as if his insides were on fire, as if things couldn’t get much better than when he was with you. However, the actual idea of confessing these feelings aloud to you gave him excruciating anxiety. The mere vulnerability that came with admitting your heart was in another’s hands was not something that could be disclosed on a whim. He knew that as soon as the words left his mouth, his last bit of control over the situation and his feelings would snap, leaving him tethered to nothing but you.

As the weeks dwindled until Queen was to go to the south of Wales to compose their next album excluding any formal and normal distractions, every second that was spared from your schedules was spent with one another.

Like most weekends previous, the two of you ended up on a glowing rooftop, the ground glistening with recent rain as the streets bumbled past at alarming rates. The party downstairs was still raging, felt in the bass that echoed through the ceiling and vibrated in your chest as the two of you lied on forgotten blankets Roger had snagged from a hallway closet. Before he had come and got you, you’d been mingling with John and Brian, who’d been talking about how tightly wound around your finger Rog was. This had caused you to glance away while a wide smile crossed your face, flattered that his bandmates had assessed that much from the way you acted around each other.

The sky was now clear above you, illuminating at least two thousand stars that you could see with your naked eye. Roger’s feet were twisted with yours, one arm laid behind his head and the other under and around you, your bodies molded together perfectly, as cliché as that sounded. You felt safe and warm in the dark, and for the first time that day, you felt content, here in his arms.

In the silence of the night, you could hear only Roger’s heartbeat in his chest pounding steadily in your ear. You listened, soothed and lulled into a drowsy state as the world seemed to carry on without the two of you. It was just as you were drifting off that you heard the low words of “I love you” escaping from Roger’s mouth. Instead of freaking the poor man out by responding and acknowledging that you were still conscious enough to pick up on his voice, you sighed, cuddling into his side more and slept.

▶▶▶

The following morning, sunlight shone directly through your closed eyelids, causing you to wince and stretch away from the pain. Your head felt clear despite the drinks you’d consumed the following evening, and it took you a moment to remember what Roger had said before you crashed. You grinned, turning to stare down at the boy below you, slightly startled to find him already awake and gazing at you.

“Mornin’,” he rasped, his voice waking up slower than his mind.

You returned the greeting, raising your arms toward the sky to work out the kinks in your shoulders from sleep. Roger’s hands raised, too, but only to tickle your sides where your blouse had ridden up, which caused you to inhale sharply with laughter, collapsing back on top of him in fits. As his hands ceased, you gathered yourself, wiping the excess tears that had squeezed out from the giggling fit you had just endured.

You bit your lip, staring at the man beneath you and suddenly you didn’t want to forget the words he had uttered when he thought you were sleeping. You wanted to recognize and let out exactly what your feelings were between the both of you.

“Roger,” you say steadily.

He grunted in reply, his fingers wrapped around one of your wrists you were leaning on.

“I love you, too.”

You watched as the man’s vibrant eyes widened in shock and a bit of panic. His mouth sputtered like a dying fish, and his face went red in what might have been embarrassment or bewilderment. His mind reeled, thinking back to how he had assumed that you had been either asleep or out of hearing range the handful of times he had dared speak the exposing phrase.

You placed a modest kiss on his nose, smiling. “You don’t have to say anything, Roger, because I know that you love me.”

Finally swallowing his self-consciousness, he inquired, “How?”

You reflected fondly, pulling from your memories the scenes that you could feel his love for you. “I know that you love me from how you always have a lingering touch on me while we’re at a restaurant or relaxing in your studio. I know from the way that you let me bum smokes from you all the time even though it’s a five-minute walk down to the corner store where I could buy my own. I can see it in the way that you support me and let your guard down when it’s just the two of us. I can feel it when you kiss me or you share the bits and pieces of your life that might not seem like anything particularly interesting, but mean the world to you, and therefore the world to me,” you cease for a moment, taking a breath before tenderly continuing. “And I know it now. The way you’re staring at me like the sun isn’t blinding you at the same time and how your hands been around my wrist since I woke up.”

You stop, gaining his realization that you have been listing unconscious instances that he had probably thought weren’t all that groundbreaking but had actually blared with a significant love behind them.

“You’ve never said it to me before, Roger, at least not a time that really counted,” you explained. “But you’ve shown it to me. Actions can speak much louder than words.”

Roger absorbed this newfound information quickly, his mind finally making the connection that his heart had already found it’s pristine new home in you, but he also came to realize that it had been an even trade. Your love was nested in him and he beamed, trying to fully fathom how he became as fortunate as to be existing in this moment of time with you.

“I love you,” he announced, pulling your head down for a kiss planted perfectly on your lips. You melted with the affection, allowing yourself to be brought closer, in bliss at hearing the words audibly despite what you had just said. Roger seemed to catch onto this as well, pulling back to breathe out, “Nice speech too, by the way. Could tell I really get you going,” on your lips.

You exclaimed, trying to pull yourself from the dream beneath you, but the man kept you from moving, hands wandering about your back. Eventually, you relented, your mock hurt turned a bit erotic as you whispered against his ear, “Sometimes, Rog, you really, really do.”

Stage Six.

In the first few years that followed Freddie Mercury’s confession of his life-threatening disease to his ever-so-faithful bandmates, Roger had been having a tough time accepting the slow demise of this fellow coworker and, quite frankly, best friend. Although Freddie himself never wanted to mention or address it again, the news settled over the heads of his friends with a sadness that lurked in their everyday lives.

After coming home late, totally wasted, following one of the band’s practices before their performance at Live Aid, Roger had relayed the devastating news to you, his now wife. The both of you had sat in silence as the clock on the wall logged the time that passed in soft ticks and occasional chimes of the new hour.

Years later, the news a mere speck in the horizon behind, Roger still fought off inner demons that fashioned themselves in countless ways. Insomnia, aggression, and a few bouts of depression hit the artist in spite of the happy arrival of a darling baby girl, a five year wedding anniversary, and the overwhelming response to Queen’s return to the stage. He was able to hide it fairly well, particularly around Freddie himself, but after a long day, Roger returned home with his heart in his feet, shoes dragging across the dark wood.

Although you had brought up the topic of seeking some type of counseling for the everlasting effects of his woe, the man refused, chalking it up to being normal and tiptoeing around the shadows of his old life.

The most recent manifestation of Roger’s terminals was insomnia. You started to notice that he had begun to take precautions when getting ready for bed. He stopped smoking in the bedroom, or anywhere in the house for that matter. He wouldn’t have wine with his dinner anymore, and often he’d want to have sex right before bedtime in a hope that it would quiet his mind to have his only focus be of you. However, this would usually end with you being too sleepy to stay awake alongside him for much longer after the both of you had finished, leaving Roger alone and sleepless again.

Why couldn’t he just go to sleep? That’s all he really wanted — some damn sleep. A break from the reality of this world that seemed to be crushing his windpipe with every mismatched breath. It seemed as though sleep was always just out of grasp, and his eyes began to hurt from squeezing them shut, willing, praying that he would drift off. He felt the slight heaviness of your hand on his chest and he subconsciously thought of the how his tossing and turning was bound to wake you up soon. With a sigh of defeat, he carefully removed himself from beneath your grasp and padded delicately down the hall towards the living room, halting only once to take a quick peek at his daughter resting peacefully in the room over from his own.

He sat on the couch facing an open window as a cool breeze wafted in. The moon was a waxing crescent against a muddled sky, the light reflecting on his pale face and waning mind. Physically, Roger was tired. He couldn’t remember the last time he was able to snatch more than a couple hours of sleep at a time. His brain, however, refused to turn itself off no matter what the rest of his body was telling it. His feet were cold on the hard floor, but he paid little mind to this inconvenience and leaned back on the sofa, an arm thrown over his eyes in an attempt to perhaps quiet the racing in his mind.

Across the house, you awoke to an empty bed, having felt the lack of warmth beside you. You stole a quick glance at the clock on the bedside table. 03:47 glowed in the twilight. You frowned, climbing out of the four-poster, following the path your husband had taken not thirty minutes prior, looking inside your child’s room to see if perhaps your daughter had awakened the blonde. However, he wasn’t there and the girl was still resting peacefully on her back, thumb in her small mouth.

You found Roger sprawled on the downstairs couch and you instinctively reached a hand out, but the man must have sensed your approach because he tentatively verbalized, “I’m up.”

“I thought so,” you mused, retracting your hand, and moving to crouch beside him. “Why are you out here and not in bed with me?” Roger chuckled humorlessly, his arm moving to reveal his slightly bloodshot eyes. “Did you miss me, love?”

You smiled softly at him, quietly agreeing. You placed a warm hand on his cold cheek. “Come back to bed, Rog.”

Roger opened his mouth to accept the suggestion, but instead, a soft whine escaped his lips. Alarmed, you straightened, crawling to sit in his lap when he arms opened with an invitation. As your head leaned on him, you listened to his breathing as he miserably clarified, “I can’t, Y/N. I can’t fall fucking asleep.” He was near tears in frustration as he expressed the words, baffled as to why his body was doing this to him.

You wince at the desperation in his voice, trying to wrack your brain with any way to help him. “I read once that weight can help with sleeping. We don’t have any heavy blankets in the house though,” you mull over thoughtfully, your chin moving to look up at him.

“If we lay down, would you be comfortable?” he questioned, as he leaned his head to look at you. You nodded. “Then I think you can act like my blanket, don’t you?”

“Are you calling me heavy?” you mocked hurt.

“No,” Roger protested immediately. “That’s not what I —” He stopped speaking as he felt your laugh on his chest. “You twit,” he exasperated as you continued to giggle. “You think you’re funny?”

You shrug, pleased with yourself, feeling him pull you closer to his chest, the world stilling as the two of you stayed in this loving moment.

There is a myth that when you die, your life’s greatest moments flash before you in a reel of film or like a roller coaster ride created just for you. Roger wasn’t sure if that was true and even if it were, he’d only want one image to present itself to him. This one. The one where Roger stayed put in pure rapture, the weight of your body so close to his, your hands placed delicately on his shoulder and the other in his hair, and finally, finally, the blissful callings of sleep at the edge of his overexerted mind.

Roger decided then that if loving you were to suddenly be considered a sin in the eyes of the deity in the clouds above, then he wanted no place in heaven because the way your body molded perfectly with his was the epitome of nirvana for him.

the signs as Greta Van Fleet songs

Aries: When The Curtain Falls

Taurus: Safari Song

Gemini: Brave New World

Cancer: Anthem

Leo: The New Day

Virgo: Talk On The Street

Libra: Highway Tune

Scorpio: The Cold Wind

Sagittarius: Flower Power

Capricorn: Edge Of Darkness

Aquarius: Age Of Man

Pisces: Mountain Of The Sun

Your writing in “stages of falling in love” is incredible and I can’t wait for the next half

this is so sweet, thank you! i’m glad you’re enjoying it

Steve Joester

Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, 1978

Black and White Type: Archival Digital Print