#fem!queen

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"Right, okay, yeah I see your problem. You've done a nice running stitch here – really very nice, these stitches are tiny..." Rose squinted, nose twitching as she held the fabric almost comically close to her face.

Brian sighed. "But...? What's the problem then?"

"What you want is a backstitch – much stronger." She plonked the jacket back in its owner's lap.

"Grand. Marvellous. I'll just stitch backwards next time then, shall I?" Brian grumbled.

"Er, no actually, you'll backstitch it forwards – and you'll do it this time," said Rose, reaching for her sewing basket.

Brian pulled a face at his bandmate's back. 'Do it this time,' he mimed silently, indulging in a bit of childishness to offset his annoyance.

There was quiet but wicked cackle from across the room and Brian jumped, whipping his head towards the sound.

"When did-? Where the hell did you come from?! Bloody hell, Jane don't do that to me. Lord. I didn't know you were here!"

Jane – who it seems had been leaning against the doorframe for goodness-knows how long – had the courtesy to at least look a little sheepish, ducking her head and pressing a hand to her lips. It did nothing to hide her grin, but she did try to apologise all the same. "Sorry, Brian. Sorry," she said. "I was... around, you know, just..." she waved in the direction of another doorway, "in the bathroom."

Brian nodded, still a little bewildered.

He was not, however, too shaken to notice that the doorway Jane had been gesticulating towards was certainly not the bathroom.

There were three doors at the top of the staircase on the tiny landing which comprised Rose's bedsit. One led to the shared not-quite-kitchen, where he was currently seated, increasingly uncomfortable and about to receive a sewing lesson, apparently. Another door did lead to the toilet – he had staggered in there many a time after a night out, taking the opportunity for a comfort break before continuing his journey home. This left the third door, the one to which Jane had waved, the one he hadn't ventured through himself since helping Rose to move in last year. 

So, unless there had been a swift, radical and completely inexplicable change of layout in the flat, Brian could be fairly certain that the third and final door led to Rose's bedroom. He could assume, then, that from some point prior to his arrival with a poorly-patched jacket bundled into his satchel, all the way up until a few moments before he'd had his life expectancy shortened for him by such a sudden appearance, Jane had been in the small bedroom – Rose's room. Combining this information with the fact that these two bandmates had each said they didn't feel like a trip to the pub that evening, Brian felt his cheeks begin to heat up as he considered the very real possibility that Freddie had been right after all and that it might actually be the case that Rose and Jane really had in fact been f–

"Ow!"

Rose had prodded him in the leg with the blunt end of a sewing needle. "Brian, mate, I haven't got all day. You recovered yet? We okay to continue?" 

"Hm?"

Jane giggled again. "Oh dear, I have given him a fright haven't I? Here, I think you'd better have some water."

She moved to the sink. Rose watched her. Brian watched Rose watch her.

"Have you finished distracting my pupil?" Asked Rose as Jane placed two glasses atop a stack of magazines.

Jane nodded, still smiling widely. Very widely. "I'll go to the shop – you're out of milk."

"Thank you Jenny," Rose sang after her.

Very domestic.

Brian pouted in thought. He'd always been pleased with the bashful, contented smiles he received when a woman left his bedroom, but the way Jane had been beaming? He felt somewhat put to shame.

Soon, Rose shoved his leg.

Brian tried desperately to close the door on the line of thinking he'd started going down, and forced himself to make eye contact with his friend. "Hm?"

"Do you want to know how it works or not?"

"How it... works?"

Rose gave him a hard stare. He was really testing her. She picked up the scrap of fabric and sighed. "Look, backstitch is quite simple, really..."

--

"So," Jane began, "Brian was weird today."

"Yeah," Rose pulled her close. "I think it was mostly– well, I reckon he knows."

"What, really?"

"Well, I think so. He kept using backstitch as an analogy for–"

"Stop! I don't want to know."

"No, no, I mean, 'doing things differently from what he'd assumed'? Or something... and about there being a garment you think you know, then finding there's other layers to it..."

"...But I thought he already knew you're into women?"

"Yeah he knew about me – you're the garment, silly."

Jane laughed. "Oh I'm the garment, okay I'm with you."

...

...

"His face when he saw you though..."

"I know, I thought I'd short-circuited him!"

"Well you do have that effect on me, so it's not hard to imagine the same happening to him."

"Please, we do not need to imagine that happening–"

"No," Rose snorted, "no you're right... because we know you'd blow his mind."

"You've got a funny way of flirting with me, Ms Taylor. You know that?"

"Oh, like I ever need to flirt with you anymore. I bet you didn't even bother putting your knickers back on earlier."

"...Yeah okay you're right," Jane grinned, radiant. She flopped back onto Rose's bed once again. "Come on!" She said, "get your kit off and let's finish what you started."

-- 💫 --

Thanks for reading! Comments welcome, but no pressure. I know my pacing is a bit off, but I hope it still hangs together!

The main story/'part one' is here: