Rhapsody on a Theme (8 page)

“Stop what?”

“Thinking bad things,” Jayden said vaguely and shook his head. “You get this…this expression when you’re self-recriminating, you know. I know when you do it. So
stop
it.”

Darren shook off the angry retort—the counselling was good for
some
things, he supposed—and took the scolding for what it was. Someone who fucking well
cared
, and there were precious few of those people in his life to start with. “Love you,” he said, sounding more like Jayden than himself for a moment, and Jayden curled a hand into the strap of his backpack and kissed him gently.

“I know,” Jayden said softly, his breath warm on Darren’s face, and he stepped back with a funny look in his eye. Something dubious. “How about this?” he offered. “Tell Ethan you’ll
think
about playing for his wedding, and…and try it out at home on Rachel’s? I mean, I got the idea from those texts he wants you to compose something too, so just…play at home, when me and Rachel are there, and maybe it’ll be fine. We can look out for you. You don’t have to play Vivaldi or…”

“Vivaldi’s not for the piano,” Darren interrupted.

“Oh shut up, you music nerd,” Jayden sniped. “I’m just saying, that way, if you get set off, then you’re…home. With us. With me.”

Darren heard the unspoken
safe
, and the implication that he wasn’t to be trusted on his own, and sometimes it pissed him off because he wasn’t a fucking
child
, but…at that moment, it didn’t. Right then, it seemed like the right thing. The right decision. Like the support he knew Jayden was trying to offer.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll…I’ll try that.”

Jayden smiled, dark eyes flickering over Darren’s face, as though reading a book he half-remembered and piecing together the things he’d let slip by before.

“What?” Darren asked when he made no move towards the road and the chippie, the smell of greasy food drifting down the slope towards them.

“Just…” Jayden took a deep breath. “Promise me you’ll let me in,” he said in a rush of words and misty breath in the cold night. “Promise you won’t lock me out of how you feel about the whole thing?”

Darren squeezed his hand. “Promise,” he said.

Darren had seemed a little quiet—not
off
, exactly, but definitely quiet—that evening, and Jayden kept watch, but he seemed to ignore the piano for the rest of the week. He did start playing piano music on his laptop in the evenings a little, but four or five minute stuff, not huge movements, and it was interspersed with other instrumentals from bands Darren liked anyway.

So Jayden kept watch, but nothing seemed to happen. The week rolled by in its usual way—evenings with Rachel, one evening with the drama society, waking up now and then to Darren creeping into bed (he was on late shifts) and waking up half an hour early so he could lie there and toy with Darren’s insane hair while he slept and just appreciate the weight and warmth of him for a little bit before having to leave him and go in to the office.

On Saturday morning, though, he woke up to piano music.
Live
piano music, only something was badly wrong with it, and upon ungluing one eye, Jayden worked out why. Namely, Darren was still in bed, sprawled face-down in a fairly good imitation of a corpse, and the piano music was absolutely
terrible
.

Rachel
, the voice in his head supplied, and Jayden groaned, putting the pillow briefly over his face before sitting up, leaning over Darren to switch off his alarm, and kissing the exposed ear. “Darren,” he murmured. “It’s half nine.”

Darren grumbled and turned his face into the sheets.

“Come on,” Jayden coaxed, stroking his curls aside and kissing him again. He was fiercely hot—always was when he slept, it was like hugging a freshly made hot-water-bottle at night—and Jayden wriggled until they were pressed chest-to-back and he could leech off some of the heat. “
Darren
. Rachel’s abusing the piano.”

Darren mumbled something that might have been, “So?”

“I’ll make breakfast,” Jayden wheedled. “Porridge and honey.”

Darren groaned, long and loud, and turned entirely on his front. Jayden followed, resting his cheek against Darren’s shoulder blade and stroking his spine with light fingers, not sure whether to entice him into something, or leave it for later when he was properly awake and would actually contribute.

“With
extra
honey,” he bargained.

Darren dislodged him. The movement was sudden as he pushed himself up off the mattress, shaking Jayden off, and the moment that Jayden was on his back, Darren settled over him and
bit
him. Sharply. On the neck.

“
Jesus
!” Jayden hissed, half-aroused and half-annoyed, an explosion of lust in his blood so sudden that it died almost instantly afterwards as well. “What was that for?”

“Leave me
alone
,” Darren insisted, green eyes bleary, and dropped himself on Jayden’s chest, tucking his nose against the fresh bite and settling. He breathed deep, one long inhale, and then a wash of warm air flooded over Jayden’s skin.

“But Rachel’s murdering the piano,” Jayden whined, stroking his fingers up the arm now draped over his chest.

“That’s not my problem,” Darren muttered. Jayden pulled a curl around his fingers and twisted his head to kiss the hair. “Leave me
alone
. I got in at two o’clock this morning!”

“I know,” Jayden murmured lowly, almost whispering. “But I want some time with you. It’s New Year’s Day.”

“Watch me give not a single flying
fuck
,” Darren growled.

“You could give me a fuck,” Jayden suggested, and Darren snorted.
Victory
, Jayden thought, as he felt the smile against his neck. Genuinely sleepy Darren was grumpy. He didn’t
smile
.

“Maybe later. Right now, sleep.”

“You’ve had seven hours. And a half.”

“And I could happily do with three more. The half too.”

“
Darren
,” Jayden wheedled hopefully.

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t. Especially not after I make porridge and honey.”

“I am actually capable of doing that myself, at noon, when I wake up.”

“You
are
awake.”

“Fuck
off
,” Darren groaned, and put a pillow over his head. Jayden pushed it away and laughed when he pulled it right back. He prodded a finger into Darren’s ribs, and received a disgruntled squirm. “And tell Rachel to shut the fuck up as well. How the
hell
can we hear it up here?”

Jayden shrugged. Darren shifted unhappily against his shoulder.

“Fuck you,” Darren said decidedly and threw the pillow across their room. He winced halfway through the motion, his shoulder giving, and Jayden caught the arm before it fell and began to massage the scar tissue and tattoo.

“Idiot,” he said fondly.

“Fuck off,” Darren mumbled. “I’m bloody awake now. Arsehole.”

“So…about that fuck?”

“When did you get vulgar?” Darren demanded, wrestling his way out of the sheets and standing. He was wearing his boxers and nothing else; Jayden admired the view, but really, in spite of the teasing, didn’t feel like it. He’d never been one for morning sex himself. There was just…bad breath and uncleanliness and everything. Sometimes he pounced Darren in the morning, but usually after Jayden himself was up and moving anyway.

“Want breakfast?”

“Duh.”

Jayden stood on the mattress to catch Darren’s head and kiss him soundly before jumping down and heading downstairs.
He
slept in pyjamas, unlike some hedonists, but then Darren was also okay with wandering around naked in their house, so maybe it worked out the same.

Darren disappeared into the bathroom, judging by where the footsteps went; Jayden followed the awful noise downstairs, and found Rachel in her baggiest jumper and oldest jeans at the piano bench, banging on the keys with her right hand, and holding a beginner’s instruction book in the other. Whatever she was trying to play was lost in the incompetence.

“You woke us up,” Jayden scolded, wandering into the kitchen to rummage up the promised porridge and honey. (Darren was
vile
if he wasn’t fed pretty promptly after getting up.)

“You mean I woke
you
up, and
you
woke your boyfriend up,” she called after him, pausing in the key-smashing long enough to speak. “Don’t blame me for him!”

Jayden rolled his eyes, setting the honey jar on the counter, along with Darren’s blister pack of painkillers. His shoulder had felt very knotted and tight, and he’d been grumpy even for him. Jayden knew pain when he saw it, and when it got that bad, there was no massage in the world that was going to cure it.

“What are you doing anyway?” he asked when Rachel abandoned the piano and wandered into the kitchen. It wasn’t really big enough for much wandering, but she sat on top of the washing machine. Her cat was face-down in a food bowl on the floor, and ignored the pair of them.

“D’you think Darren would teach me the piano?” she asked instead of answering his question.

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Kids like a teacher who can play. Like, their favourite songs and stuff. And loads of the other teachers play instruments. I just want to know how to do stuff like, you know, lullabies and hymns and stuff. And Tony plays but I don’t want to ask him, I’ll look stupid.”

“He’s your boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but I’ll look stupid, so would Darren do it instead?”

“You’d have to ask him,” Jayden said awkwardly, feeling cautious. He didn’t know. He’d never seen Darren teach anyone anything. He’d never had an interest in learning himself, and Darren had never had an interest in showing him. Jayden didn’t even
understand
him when he talked music, and there was something ever so slightly sexy about that, so Jayden had never
tried
to understand.

“I dunno,” Rachel said, kicking her heels. “You don’t think it would, you know. Upset him?”

Jayden blinked. “Um.”

“He just gets weird when he hears violins,” Rachel clarified, and Jayden was a little startled she’d noticed. He supposed she would have done, but he just
forgot
sometimes how perceptive Rachel was under her general flakiness. “You think he’d be okay to teach me?”

“Well, he’s not going to teach you Chopin and stuff, so maybe,” Jayden hedged. “I really don’t know, Rach. I mean, Ethan asked him to play at the wedding so he’s going to start having a go again, you know, here where we can look out for him, so maybe if you combined your lessons into that, maybe…I don’t know. It might even help. Keep his mind off the classical stuff.”

She chewed on her sleeve thoughtfully and nodded.

“I’ll ask,” she said and brightened up. “Make some porridge for me too?”

“Fine, Jesus,” Jayden grumbled, topping up the pan as the shower shut off. A moment later, the bathroom door opened and Darren padded back up into the attic. “Let him wake up a bit first,” he advised. “He was grumpy, and I think his shoulder’s acting up.”

Rachel rolled her eyes and retreated out of the kitchen again. She bounded away up the stairs—Jayden
hoped
just to get changed—and left him to make breakfast. The porridge was beginning to bubble lightly, and he rummaged for bowls and spoons. The cat meowed, decided porridge didn’t smell like bacon after all, and whined to be let out. Jayden locked the door just in time to hear the footsteps on the stairs, and then Darren appeared—in jeans and his glasses and nothing else, because the man seemed to not
believe
in clothes sometimes—just as Jayden emptied out the pan. Wordlessly, he popped out a painkiller and knocked it back with a glass of orange juice like a pro.

“Feeling okay?” Jayden asked, adding a generous amount of honey to Darren’s bowl and pushing it along the counter towards him.

“Mm,” Darren said. “Had to heft a
lot
of evidence out of the scene last night. Went into overtime, though, so this month’s pay slip is going to be good.”

“What happened?”

“Bloody murder,” he said shortly and yawned widely. Jayden kissed his cheek and pressed the hot bowl into his hands. “Thanks.”

“Go sit down.” Jayden shooed him out to the living room, and followed a moment later with his own bowl, tucking his toes under Darren’s thigh comfortably on the sofa. “Who got murdered?” he asked, mostly for something to ask at all.

“A woman,” Darren said. “Blatant domestic abuse case, but he’d made a right mess of the house and apparently coughed to the arresting bobby to having extreme porn, so we were told to seize his computers too.”

“So you carried them.”

“Some of them,” Darren admitted, practically inhaling his porridge. Jayden made a mental note to make extra lunch. The biggest downside to Darren’s job—okay, maybe second biggest, because having to go to bed alone when Darren worked late shifts
sucked—
was that his appetite became unpredictable. A busy shift meant he’d eat his own arm by the end of it; a dull one with nothing to do meant he wasn’t so much as interested in a slice of toast the next morning.

“No wonder it hurts, then,” Jayden sniped. “Is the painkiller helping?”

“Give it ten minutes,” Darren protested mildly, and eyed Jayden’s half-empty bowl.

“Go on, then,” Jayden passed it over. “You
are
off this evening, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Jayden shrugged. “Figured maybe we could go out or something.”

Darren pointedly looked to the living room window. It was
slating
it down, the glass on the outside as wet as the English Channel.

“We could see a film.”

“It’s New Year’s Day; nowhere’s going to be open.”

“Go to the pub then, they’ll be open. Or just go somewhere. I’ve missed you, that’s all, and I kind of want to kidnap you a bit today. Get you to myself.”