At first it's nothing but dark, and he's terrified.
There is a distinction to be made, between consciousness and this, whatever this was. Freddie isn't entirely certain where he is – purgatory, maybe, but there probably aren't couches in purgatory for sitting…
And he's pretty sure what he's sitting on is a couch. It's relatively comfortable. He squeezes the cushion and jiggles his leg nervously and looks around, and sees nothing. Nothing. Not even his own fingers, extended and wiggling experimentally before his face.
He's not sure if he even has hands, come to think of it.
He's not sure of anything, apparently.
The terror that had seized him at the sudden jerk in his gut and his head that had accompanied Roger's violent outburst subsides, eventually, and in it's place…
Freddie can't help but feel curious.
It's a growing, gnawing feeling deep inside of him (if he does have a form, if he is still alive, in some way or form…) and he can already feel the telltale heat of a future obsession on the horizon, gleaming. It's like a particularly good game of chess.
He will figure this out. He's Freddie fucking Trumper.
There isn't a puzzle in the world he couldn't solve, not today or any other day.
(There, a flash, a memory or maybe a glimpse of whatever is happening in the "real world", the one Roger had wrenched him from in order to take his place.)
Roger is an enigma in himself. He behaves nearly identically to Freddie, but his voice is different, his hands a different sort of delicate. He buys a plane ticket, and then a guitar. It's a beat up old acoustic; he could have afforded something better, with all Freddie's money, but apparently that's of no interest to him.
Time passes… Freddie isn't entirely aware of it. The inside world isn't actually that bad. At first it's just a couch, but that pulls out, as he discovers when he gets tired enough to really consider sleeping. Can he sleep, in here? Is this place even real? God only knows, but Roger seems to think it is, tells him that he can keep "the apartment" because he was going to go out and rent a real one, for the first time in his life.
He tells Freddie smugly that he's going to be a fucking star, a real one – and he can't stop him.
Freddie finds that he doesn't really care.
Being away from Florence – and away from the damn competition, which he'd always hated – is actually turning out to be rather… relaxing. And he feels horribly guilty at first, just thinking it, but it's true. It's true and he shouldn't have to feel guilty. She'd betrayed him! Seven years of friendship out the window, and for what?
The longer it goes on, the more comfortable the inside of his head starts to feel. There are blankets, and every book he's ever read. There's a whole network of hallways, large and small rooms, elaborate puzzles to keep him entertained. The outside world is dreary in comparison.
There is one thing he misses, though.
Chess.
No chessboards appear inside, no matter how hard he tries to conjure one. In quiet, angry despair, he pushes against the walls until his face is white with the effort.
At first, it seems like nothing is working. Roger is unbothered. He comes to Freddie, sometimes, before he falls asleep – he looks around his quarters with a strange pride and a certain degree of admiration, but he never stays more than an hour or two, and he never bothers to shut the door behind him.
Still frustrated, but considerably calmer, Freddie waits. He waits, and he watches.
Roger has friends. It comes as a mild shock to him that in the months that he'd happily abandoned the outside world altogether, Roger has brought them all the way back to the city – it must be New York, he's sure of that, but it's a part of New York he only vaguely remembers from his youth, and it's even dirtier than it used to be, full of homeless and poor that Freddie feels pangs of painful empathy for. He can use Roger's eyes, if nothing else, and he takes in all of the sights greedily, deprived as he's been while he's been feeling his way around the labyrinth of his mind.
They're pretty decent friends. Freddie meets, all in one day, April, Benny, Maureen, Collins, and Mark. Mark, he thinks, is his favorite. Mark looks like the only one who'd probably be interested in chess at all – perhaps Collins, but Freddie's already pegged him as the type to start a game and then distract himself with his joint until he could do nothing but ramble on about the philosophy and the history behind the moves rather than forming his own strategy. Mentally, he beats Collins about eight times before he gives up and tells himself that he can't possibly know how any of these people would be to play against – he doesn't even know them.
Roger knows them. Roger loves them. He can feel it, deep in their bones, deep in the vibrations of the walls of his inner world.
Slowly, though, the walls are beginning to grow subtle cracks.
Freddie is ready the moment they appear.
The first time he slips through it's a chilly Monday morning and the first thing he's aware of is a splitting hangover that doesn't belong to him. He groans and clutches his head – discovers, to his mild delight, that his hair is shaggy and long again as it had been before Florence had suggested his "professional look" in a tone that he hadn't dared to argue with, at the time. "What the fuck?"
His voice is the same. His hands, on close inspection, are also the same, although they've been roughened with guitar callouses. He's unsurprised. Roger has two guitars now, and he's usually attached to one or the other.
"You awake?" Mark smiles at him from across the room. He's sitting at the kitchen table, reading a copy of the Village Voice. He points at his mug. "Tea?"
"No," he groans, and rolls over, and that's that.
The second time he's prepared, or so he thinks. But the moment the cold slaps his face he remembers why he'd thought for so long that it might be nice to stay inside forever. To his alarm, he can't figure out how to get back, and spends several mildly terrifying hours wandering around a flea market he's never seen before, smiling nervously at strangers.
It's there, though, that he finds a battered old travel chess set with all of it's pieces intact. It's made of light wood and slips easily into the pocket of his leather jacket, which he has to admit looks cool to wear. He wonders why he'd never thought to own one before.
Before, you had no idea what you could be.
Roger, of course, isn't happy to discover that Freddie has found his control again – however scattered and limited it may be.
He calms down considerably when he realizes that Freddie has no intention of returning to Merano. Or to Florence.
Especially not to Florence.
December comes very suddenly, or so it seems to Freddie – he still can't, and sometimes doesn't want to, measure the passage of time from the corner of his mind he's usually holed up in. It's not like it matters. It's not his life anymore – he's just a visitor who occasionally gets up to play chess with himself at night, and on one memorable occasion with Mark, who also happened to be awake and was too comfortable with him to realize that Freddie was anything but his admittedly eccentric roommate.
He'd beaten him in under ten moves, of course, and scowled when Mark expressed his shock – that, he thinks solemnly to himself, was very in character of him.
All in all, he's rather impressed with his own acting skills.
The days slowly shave away, and the year is nearly over. Freddie finds himself strangely bubbly with anticipation – this new year is going to be a fresh start, and he's already forgotten about all the pressures of the chess world, all the harassment he'd faced, all of the lies he'd been told, all of this disgusting people he was forced to associate with for the sake of a good game.
Roger agrees without words. They're doing that more and more lately, just feeling each other out, and more and more Roger doesn't mind if he turns their head while they're walking, or demands Mark play another game of chess on his battered little board.
It still somehow comes as a surprise when Christmas rolls around and Roger is nowhere to be heard. Freddie wakes up groggy, reaching up to feel his face – stubble again. He tries not to grimace and cracks an eye open, disoriented.
There's sun streaming in through the skylight, watery and weak but nevertheless, light. He rubs his eyes and forces himself to sit up.
The loft, he'd observed, was really just a large room in an old industrial building, and therefore there were no real bedrooms. Instead, each of the roommates had partitioned off a section to call their own. Roger's was cramped and overflowing with probably-dirty laundry and notebooks and used pens, guitar picks and soda cans. Freddie forced himself to look past all of that and nearly rolled right on top of Mark as he started to stretch.
Blinking hard, he rolls away again in alarm. What the fuck? Why would Mark be in his bed? He feels bile climbing in his throat, the first assumption enough to make him violently ill –
He can't use my body that way, he can't, Roger please tell me you didn't –!
Mark gives a quiet yawn and shifts, drowsily trying to get comfortable. The blankets ride up – he's got a shirt on. A sweater, actually. Possibly two of them.
Thank fucking God.
When he's sleepy like this, Freddie has to admit that Mark is – kind of adorable. He's younger than him (them) by at least six years, but he's remarkably witty, mature even if he does have a rather naïve disposition at times. His hair is light strawberry, and incredibly messy right now. Despite himself, Freddie reaches down to smooth it away from his face, and Mark catches his wrist with a lethargic smile.
What can he want? What is he doing here? Shouldn't Roger be the one in bed with Mark, if there's something going on between them? Mark would probably hate him if he knew that he wasn't really Roger, and God, he's starting to panic –
But…
Well…
Mark was his chess partner. His willing chess partner.
He certainly liked Freddie's mind, his jokes, his banter…
Maybe he could like Freddie, as well.
Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, Roger vigorously nods his approval, a sly smile spreading across his face that Freddie can feel like some slippery wave of giddy emotion.
God, he's really not going back, is he?
He's – dare he say it – happy here. With Roger. With all of these people who aren't his friends, but could be.
He's happy with Mark.
"C'mere," Mark insists, voice heavy with sleep, pulling on him weakly. "Cuddle. Please."
That, Freddie thinks, he can probably do.