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Freddie first saw the crime in the newspaper. Blaring from the pale grey shades of the printed picture— there, on his stomach… ROLLS.
He let out a short sound of displeasure, upsetting Miko who was using his stomach to nap on. He patted her head with a gentleness he did not really feel.
The worst part of the article was that they hadn’t called him out on his hideousness. It was easier when the press did because Freddie had long ago transfigured the paparazzi and journalist scum nipping and licking at his heels into gnats. Annoying at worst, pitiable at best, and most of all, dead, dead wrong in their assumptions about what was going on in Queen.
This article wasn’t a smear. Instead, it was an insert explaining about the other concert dates that had opened due to demand and a small review of their latest shows. This was about triumph in all ways, leaving nothing for Freddie to defend himself against the rolls with.
He tilted the newspaper sideways as though a new angle might flatten the fat on his stomach, but it didn’t. He swallowed and tried very hard not to look down at his stomach—
Of course, reclining in bed, he knew, was the last time anyone should look at themselves and evaluate their weight. His stomach rose with his breath, as any trained singers should. It swelled so much as he breathed, glutted with all the horrible things he had eaten yesterday and the day before. Very traitorous of it, really.
“You’re not up yet, are you?” a voice called from his hall, footsteps echoing as they approached. “I said you wouldn’t be, didn’t I?”
Roger appeared in the doorway, smirk slanting warm over his face. “I really ought to take money out on it the next time you insist, ‘yes of course darling I’ll be up.’ You’re really the limit, Fred.”
Freddie remembered their brunch plans with a nauseous little roll to his fat stomach. Despite the fact that Roger had seen him in all manner of filthy dress and undress, Freddie pulled the blankets over his stomach.
“Now, darling, why should I agree to do that? You know the price of cocaine. I really can’t spare a penny.”
Roger grinned and sat on the end of the bed. Freddie’s heart gave that particular flutter it sometimes did when he saw the other man. They’d been increasingly intimate as of late, though it was casual, and Freddie had not discounted the possibility of a tactile breakfast in bed before their actual brunch. Roger didn’t know that Freddie was never late for anything more than he meant to be, and that finding him in bed was always on purpose…
However, that was before he’d seen the newspaper this morning.
“Go help yourself to some coffee, I’ll be along in a moment,” Freddie said.
“No, we’ve done that one before. Don’t think I’ve forgotten running along and open the stall while you got up only to come back and find you dozing into the afternoon like a spoilt cat.”
Freddie grinned reluctantly. Well, that certainly was true. “Don’t worry, I’m spoilt enough at the moment.” He looked down at Miko, trying to hide that he had said more than he meant. “Besides, it’s rude to peep at a woman while she undresses.”
His tactic backfired, because Roger made binoculars with his hands, mimicking the glasses he so badly needed. Through the fake finger-lenses, he gave Freddie a leer up and down, wetting his mouth as though he were any boyish peeper. Any other day, Freddie would have hammed it up, but today the focus felt entirely smothering, no, suffocating, really. He looked away, trying to focus on his even breathing and Miko’s comforting weight on his stomach.
“You feeling unwell?” Roger asked, switching tracks. “We can reschedule.”
Yes, an excuse at last.
“I am rather, it might be better if we do.”
Roger nodded his head. Freddie waited for the tell-tale sound of his footfalls and the closing of the door as he stroked Miko’s patterned fur.
Instead, the mattress depressed as Roger settled himself comfortably on the other side of the bed. Freddie was shocked. Roger absolutely refused to sit on Freddie’s bed unless there was sex involved. He said it made him feel dirty considering all the cats that made their home their quite regularly, despite all that Freddie said about cats’ cleanliness.
“You’re a regular Little Edie,” Roger had said, back then. He was eying the cat-hair covered bed with great mistrust.
Freddie had laughed, remembering their riotous time watching Grey Gardens, and said, “You know it is a great crime I don’t have any head scarves.”
Now, it just added the layers of surprise and discomfort as Roger crossed his legs over the comforter with ease. He was serious.
“Come now, you didn’t expect me to leave you looking this blue. What’s the matter?” Roger was all warm eyes and easy manner. He folded his hands on his stomach and Freddie’s eyes guiltily traced the curve of his supple stomach.
Roger was far larger than Freddie and had been for a couple years now. The weight, once it began collecting on his form, was reluctant to surrender itself as he settled into his forties. Freddie found the ripple and plush of his heft absolutely riveting. In fact, it was Roger’s own weight gain that had reignited this casual affair of theirs. Freddie couldn’t help himself but yearn for men heavy and warm with their weight. It was entrancing.
Even now, he had to stop his finger from tracing down the seam of Roger’s jeans to find out just how much his soft thighs were straining against the material. And his stomach… Oh he wore the big stylish jackets and layers to hide it, but his gut was properly fat, brimming with so much supple, pleasurable flesh that Freddie had gotten off many a time just rutting against it. It would settle onto his thighs if he sat up a little more, rub against his cock.
Freddie loved heavy men and fat-bottoms. He still remembered those months where he had watched Roger first put on the weight with such deep taboo pleasure.
Still, that didn’t mean Roger liked men at all the same way Freddie did. Roger had always preferred the terribly thin in his lovers. Furthermore, it also didn’t mean Freddie found his own gut’s flabbiness an eighth as charming as Roger’s.
Freddie had been silent too long, and Roger acted. He snagged the newspaper and immediately opened it to the page Freddie had been gripping.
“It’s not tripe in the paper, is it?” he asked, eyes scanning the page.
Freddie’s heart leapt in his throat. Miko screeched as his fingers dug a little too forcefully into her fur. She scampered off without a backwards glance, leaving Freddie alone to face Roger’s squinting gaze as he examined the paper.
Any moment now he would see the rolls and see Freddie just as he was. Fat, spoilt, and hideous.
Roger lowered the paper to look at him. “It’s the phrasing, isn’t it? I don’t like how they arrange the our names either. It’s rubbish when they do it alphabetically, don’t you think?”
Freddie laughed, an almost watery sound. “You wouldn’t, when you’re last!” Such a self-centered prat. Freddie adored him so.
“What?” Roger pressed.
“You don’t see it?”
“See what?”
His eyes were guileless, so frankly confused that Freddie threw his hands up in surrender for having to spell it out.
“My rolls!”
“What rolls?”
Freddie pointed with some force at his stomach. His hands then beat a hasty retreat to cover his stomach as casually as they could.
Roger did him the honor of squinting even harder before he exploded. “Oh, for fucks sake! That’s not much at all, Freddie!”
“You don’t have to flatter me,” Freddie sniffed, offended. “I know a sausage when I see one!” At Roger’s pointed disparaging remark, Freddie remembered times in the studio with Brian quipping “middle-age spread” as he patted his utterly concave stomach and bony thighs. John saying it weight gain later in life was natural as he flexed a strong bicep. God, but Roger wasn’t getting it.
“It’s true though! I’ve been avoiding thinking about it, but Roger, I’m really… spreading now.” It was the best way he could put it. He wasn’t imagining it, because the scale certainly didn’t lie. He’s just been avoiding it.
Roger seemed dumbfounded still. “I guess I’ve noticed a certain spread myself,” he said with no small sarcasm.
“It isn’t the same,” Freddie replied.
Roger had enough of running in circles though because he reaches for the edges of the blanket.
Freddie flinched away, hands knit so tightly over his stomach that the bones were white through the skin.
Roger stopped. “Look, when I was all… perturbed by my weight, you helped set me to rights. I think you need someone to remind you.”
“That was different.” Freddie has always been chased by this obsession with heavy men, pulled into their weighty gravity. “Are you really going to pretend that your type hasn’t always been waspish brunets?”
“No, I’m saying that whether you’re fat or thin, you’re all Freddie. And that includes all the maddening sultry shite you do, to boot.”
Still himself…? The last thing he had been feeling was himself, especially with how worried he had been about how others would see him. His hands pulled away from the covers and Roger gently peeled them back.
Under Roger’s eyes, gentle, heated, and mischievous, he felt as decadent as he always had, even though his stomach poked out against the bottom of his shirt.
He fell silent when Roger’s hand fell on his stomach, to the rolls that were there and lingered.
He’d done this to Roger, back when Roger was trying to hide himself and his weight gain away from the world. He hadn’t realized how vulnerable it really was, like Roger was poking into the middle of his most fragile self.
Roger’s hand moved down, feeling the flesh. His grip settled at the lip of fat gently glossing down over the loose band of his pajama pants.
Suddenly, Roger pinched him and Freddie yelped.
Roger’s laughter was like brusque bells. “Yep, still Fred!”
Freddie retaliated by digging his hands into Roger’s sensitive stomach, watching the dome of it shake and jiggle as he tried to jerk away. Roger’s face, just that bit wider in the cheeks, accommodated his smile beautifully. Freddie realized Roger’s hands were still tracing up his sides, the spread at his hips, a little more on his back, and he… he didn’t feel bad about it.
Actually, with the thickening weight he felt chubbing the front of Roger’s jeans, he began to feel spectacular.
He hadn’t realised how he’d taught Roger loving his own body lent itself to loving Freddie’s unconditionally.
“Are you hungry for brunch?” Roger asked.
Freddie let himself breathe in Roger’s grip, his stomach swelling with air. His natural self, only less shamed.
“You know, I think I am.” He kissed Roger, sloppy and grateful. “But I think it can wait just a little longer.”