The Devil’s Trill Sonata
By Matthew J. Metzger
Published by JMS Books LLC
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2014 Matthew J. Metzger
ISBN 9781611525373
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
All rights reserved.
WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
The Devil’s Trill Sonata
By Matthew J. Metzger
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 1
As the motorway rolled them into Cambridgeshire, the radio flickered and switched channels. It had a dodgy connection, and neither driver nor passenger were particularly surprised when pop gave way to the fine, low boom of a double bass. It reverberated through the car, shivering along the upholstery and curling into their hair and skin.
It was a surreal experience: the hollow rumble pushed out the hiss and rush of cars passing as they peeled towards the motorway services for the last stop before their destination. Suddenly, the world felt a little farther away, as though the music was a barrier between them and life. A respite that neither needed, nor wanted.
Jayden switched it back to the pop channel. Darren pulled into the services and said nothing.
* * * *
“This is going to be my year,” Jayden said to himself and turned in a half-circle in the room.
It was a small room, tucked up under the college roof, with a narrow window that was probably as old as the rest of the college, and plug sockets that had been inexpertly added several hundred years after the glass. The bed was a narrow wrought-iron job with a sagging mattress; the desk was impressively large, and a wardrobe that could have held another bed dominated the north wall, looming ominously over the threadbare carpet.
But it was his room, for the next three years, and the enormity of it was just…just…daunting.
“You look terrified,” Darren said.
Jayden turned towards him. Over the pile of boxes and bags in the middle of the room, Darren lounged against the closed door in his baggy jeans and leather jacket. The jeans were ancient; the jacket was newer, Scott’s Christmas present last year. Jayden liked the new one better. It had buttoned-down lapels that he could use to pull Darren around—and he did, hooking his fingers into one and tugging him over the bags to wrap his arms around his neck and bury his face in that wild curly hair.
“I’m going to miss you,” he mumbled.
Darren’s hands slid around his waist, and Jayden clung tightly to the familiar smell (Tesco-brand aftershave, apples, and the air freshener in his car) and tried to commit it to memory. This was going to be their last hug until Christmas, and he struggled to wrap his mind around it, never mind his heart.
“You’ll throw yourself into your jolly good life, what, and forget all about me,” Darren mocked gently, and Jayden pinched his shoulder without letting go.
“I’m going to miss you,” he repeated obstinately, and Darren squeezed.
“Christmas is only, like, fourteen weeks or something,” he said. “Anyway, you’ll be having all the fun, and I’ll be working a nine-to-five and probably trying to drown my neighbour’s kids or something.”
Jayden huffed, and leaned back to cup Darren’s face and examine every inch of it. He felt scared of letting Darren go somehow, because, okay, fine, Christmas was only fourteen weeks away or whatever, but they’d never been apart for fourteen weeks and…and…
And they’d been sixteen (Darren hadn’t even been that) when they got together, and Jayden had turned nineteen two weeks ago, and this was different. He was going to university (Cambridge University, no less, which meant a workload like nothing he’d ever known) and Darren was starting a job a hundred and thirty miles away in Southampton, and…
And school couples didn’t make it.
They just didn’t. They never did; they broke up in the first year, if not before, and as much as Jayden didn’t want to break up with Darren, there was part of him asking if maybe…maybe it wouldn’t hurt less to do it now, before time and distance and experience did it for them. Maybe it would be like ripping off a plaster—brutal, but it was over faster and it hurt less in the long run, right?
But every time Jayden tried, or even thought seriously about it, he wanted to throw up, or hug him, or…just not. So he hadn’t. So maybe…maybe this was going to be the last hug. The last time. The last…
He leaned up (Darren had finally won the height battle, by about an inch and a half) and kissed him, soft and wistful and hoping that there’d be more kisses at Christmas, hoping that a hundred and thirty miles and university and work didn’t pull them apart, hoping he’d never have to let go for good, hoping they’d be the ones to prove the trend wrong. Fuck the bell curve, as Paul would say.
Fuck, fuck, fuck the bell curve.
“I’m going to miss you,” he whispered again, clinging to Darren’s lips and his hair, and Darren bumped their noses lightly.
“Miss you too,” he murmured in a low voice. “But you’ll be fine. You got everything you ever wanted. Your straight A's, your Cambridge—and hey, you got your boyfriend a few years earlier than your plan said, right? Don’t go too mushy on me.”
Jayden laughed breathlessly. He felt giddy with the nerves, and he couldn’t unglue his hands from Darren’s hair, but Darren didn’t seem to mind. He’d never seemed to mind being…being…cuddled. He might not openly admit to liking it, but…Jayden knew he did. He knew.
“I’m still going to miss you,” he repeated into Darren’s shoulder, clutching him tightly. He’d tried to persuade Darren to come too. He was brilliant; his grades had been as good as Jayden’s. Better, maybe, given that Darren was a scientist, really, and there was no way Jayden could have gotten an A in any kind of chemistry. Darren was clever. There was no way Cambridge wouldn’t want him too. But Darren had just laughed, said he wouldn’t be caught dead in any university that still liked a good old-fashioned qualification in Latin, and had stuck by that. He'd ditched the idea of university altoget
her, never mind Cambridge. No matter how much Jayden had wheedled and coaxed and bribed and bullied and outright threatened. He’d stuck to it, and now he wasn’t coming, and Jayden was going to have to get used to being without him, for the first time in three years, and Jayden almost didn’t remember life without Darren.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Darren murmured, nosing at Jayden’s cheek lightly, “but I might miss you too.”
“How much?”
“Oh, not that much.”
Jayden huffed and lifted his head to kiss him again, sharp and with a definite edge of a warning. “How much?” he repeated.
“A bit?”
“You’re being an arse.”
“And yet, here you are.” Darren shrugged and grinned unapologetically. After a moment, the smile softened and he bumped their noses again. “You’ll stop missing me after, like, an hour. And then you’ll completely lose yourself in this weird old world and forget all about me until Christmas.”
“Not likely,” Jayden murmured, stroking those angular cheekbones reverently. Three years, two inches to his height, and a sudden weight loss at seventeen had drawn out that gorgeous face even further, added a hungry hollowness and an ethereal beauty. Hadn’t done much for his hair, though. If anything, it had made it look even wilder as his face looked leaner. “Promise me you’ll call before you move to Southampton?”
“I already promised.”
“And promise you’ll call every week,” he added. “And,” Darren groaned, “promise you’ll stay away from any LGBT groups or gay bars, because I don’t want you finding someone else, and…”
“Jayden, I’m bisexual. What do you want me to do, become a hermit?”
“Hang out with lesbians,” Jayden replied promptly.
“…I suppose I asked for that.”
“And promise you’ll come and visit me, when I’m not drowning in work. And make time for me to visit you. And come back to Mum’s for Christmas with me, because I know you won’t visit your parents and you shouldn’t spend Christmas alone and…”
“I’ll think about that last one,” Darren bargained.
“Okay,” Jayden murmured and kissed him. He’d persuaded Mum to let Darren stay the night last night, and the sex had been more than a little desperate because they weren’t going to see each other again for months, and it might…
He crushed the hopeless thought, and pushed everything into the kiss, wishing they had the time and the privacy to just clear off the bed and do it all again, just one last time. Just once more.
“Hey,” Darren murmured, breaking the kiss to speak but barely moving. When Jayden peeked, those stunning green eyes were closed. “We’ll be okay, Jayden. We’re tougher than this.”
“Promise me you’ll still come to me if you feel ill,” Jayden whispered.
It hung in the tiny space between their lips, like the ghosts of the concerti Darren hadn’t played since the attack. The darkness that had lost its seasonal pattern, but not its strength when it did finally decided to strike. Its brutality.
“I promise,” Darren said, and Jayden kissed him until he couldn’t breathe.
“I suppose you have to go soon,” he murmured.
“Mm,” Darren said. “Motorway’s waiting. So’s my own packing. And your wildly successful degree.” He stroked his hands down Jayden’s arms to take his hands. “We’ll be fine, Jayden.”
“I’m still holding you to that promise.”
It took another ten minutes and maybe another ten kisses to let Darren go, because whatever Darren said, Jayden was scared of this. He was scared of letting go of them, because that was what was going to happen. Darren might think otherwise—they had rowed something awful, when he’d accepted his job offer and Jayden had suggested taking a break while he was at uni, and Darren hadn’t wanted to.
“Dump me or don’t, Jayden, but I won’t take a break from you unless you tell me it’s over. And there’s no coming back from over,” he’d shouted, and Jayden couldn’t do it. He couldn’t break up with Darren.
But this was uni. They weren’t going to see each other at all for months on end, and they would both meet all sorts of new people—Jayden here and Darren at work—and teenage relationships didn’t last. They never lasted. And it broke Jayden’s heart that they weren’t going to last, and it would hurt less to break it off now and save them both the pain of it all dying out slowly and lingering on, he knew it would, but…but…he couldn’t. Even if it wasn’t going to last, he loved Darren, and he just couldn’t do it.
So Jayden kept kissing him, kept holding on, and tried to commit it all to memory, just in case it really was the last time.
“I love you,” he whispered at the door, before finally letting Darren go, and Darren squeezed his hand as he stepped back.
“Tell me again at Christmas,” he said, and Jayden’s heart lurched with a warm flood of pure feeling. “Love you too, Jayden.”
And then he was gone, and his boots were loud on the ancient stairs, and when Jayden managed to unlatch the rusty window and ease it open, he was just in time to lean out and wave to the car, and he thought he saw Darren’s smile as it pulled away.
Jayden's chest hurt, and he missed him already.
* * * *
Darren believed in love.
He’d never admit it, not even to Jayden. It didn’t fit with what everyone thought about him, and it definitely wasn’t immune to his bad days, but he believed in it all the same. He just didn’t believe most people were in love when they said they were, and that was the problem with other people’s scepticism. They thought he was eighteen and in lust.
And yeah, he was; he’d seen what Jayden hid in those skinny jeans. The lust was definitely still kicking about, and quite healthily, thanks. But he was also in love. And Darren Peace believed in love.
His parents weren’t in love. They were in a business relationship, and it had begun to buckle in the last year. Mother had divorced Scott’s father when she’d learned that Jeffrey Peace had a bigger salary and a nicer car; she was bound to do the same the moment she found someone to replace him, too. Darren was only surprised it had taken eighteen years for the cracks to show.
Scott wasn’t in love. He went through girls like a hot poker through butter. Butter that hadn’t even been left in the fridge. If there was such a thing as being one hundred percent straight, Scott was it, but he never loved. He fucked, he fumbled, he fucked it up, and then he fled. In the morning, he’d start over. And so his ‘relationships’ lasted all of a week. He’d never loved.
Jayden’s parents were in love. It was kind of weird because they were like forty or something, but it was a fact. (A fact Darren liked, because it meant every Saturday night for three years, he and Jayden had had a house to themselves.) Mr. Phillips was like ten years older and a whole lot uglier than his wife, and with her red hair and heart-shaped face she could have anyone on the block, but they still went out on dates and put their savings in a jar in one of the kitchen cupboards towards a holiday in Majorca. It was a lot less glamorous than Mother and Father. It was a lot poorer and a lot more tacky furniture that you had to assemble yourself, but they were still there, and the atmosphere in Jayden’s house was just that much warmer for it. They were in love.
They’d been in love almost as long as Jayden—or Darren—had been alive, and that was the kind of love Darren believed in.
It was the kind of love he had.
He’d fallen in love at fifteen. He knew it sounded stupid, and he would probably scoff at the idea himself if someone else told him they’d done it—only he had. And it hadn’t been right away. Even after he’d gone and done it, he’d spent a long time convincing himself he was just then-sixteen and being stupid and once his shoulder recovered and Jayden switched schools, they’d begin to crack up and drift apart. Only they hadn’t. Jayden had gone to physio with him, watched him get rid of that bloody violin, been there the first time he’d played the piano, eight months after the park, and Jayden had hug
ged him without a word when he’d teared up in the middle of the music. He’d been there for the bad days, every one of them, and he hadn’t so much as twitched when the physiotherapist had turned around when Darren was seventeen and said that this was as good as it was going to get.
That phrase didn’t just apply to his shoulder.
Against all his doubts, they’d weathered the depression and the attack and the ongoing refusal of his parents to even entertain the idea of Jayden existing or Darren being ‘one of those homosexual types’ (Father did have some interesting turns of phrase), and the teasing at St. John’s that Jayden had been understandably twitchy about, just waiting for it to turn into the outright bullying that it had been at Woodbourne. But they’d weathered the storm.
It had been three years, and Darren believed in love. Believed in a love that had him driving nearly a hundred miles home on his own, pretending he was as cheerful as the music on the radio, pretending this separation wasn’t going to be just as difficult for him as it was for Jayden. If not worse. Darren had forgotten how to cope on his own, and part of him knew—just knew—that the next bad day was going to be more than bad, and weathering the next depression storm was going to be hard on his own, when they’d always weathered the storms together. And yet he did it anyway, because he loved Jayden, and he believed in that love.
Believed in them, in him and Jayden, no matter the distance.
They would weather this, too.
Chapter 2
Jayden spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking.
The room was impersonal and bare. The first thing he did was stick his poster of the Alps above his bed, the one Darren had brought him back last year from Austria, and the second thing was to rummage in his bags for the picture of him and Darren that Ethan had taken on a day trip to the coast the summer before last. It was Jayden’s favourite picture of the two of them, even if it had been windy and miserable, because they were standing by a roaring surf, chest-to-chest and arms around each other, and smiling. He’d persuaded Darren to actually smile, for more than two seconds, and the result was the best picture Jayden had, even if it was messy and wonky because Ethan sucked with a camera and the trip actually hadn’t been that great in the end. It was a picture of them, and he loved it even if they both looked kind of awful, and he set it on the side table in pride of place.
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