The Devil's Trill Sonata

by Matthew J. Metzger

  Mrs. Phillips puffed up like a bullfrog, and Darren wisely stayed out of it. He knew better. He had adjusted a little from the previous evening and let the minor argument wash over him without really listening. It was nice to be able to switch off a little, and when the argument settled, Jayden took his mostly-empty plate away and hauled him out of the kitchen again by the wrist, muttering darkly to himself about his age and his mother and it’s like she thinks I’m a kid, oh my God…

  “You promised coffee,” Darren reminded him, once Jayden was in the middle of brushing his teeth and couldn’t argue. “You promised serious caffeine. Of overdose proportions. And,” he waved his phone in front of Jayden’s narrowed eyes, “we’ve already been summoned. Paul says he has presents.”

  Jayden spat into the sink. “That’s probably alcohol.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “Alcohol and caffeine, Darren? Really?”

  “Any cheap cocktail ever has both,” Darren countered.

  Jayden grimaced. “Honestly, Darren. The Carlsberg is bad enough.”

  Darren raised his eyebrows, pausing in texting Paul back. “What’s Cambridge got you drinking, then?” he asked pointedly.

  Jayden blinked. “It’s always wine at dinner,” he said blankly.

  “Right,” Darren said slowly. Point proven, he thought, and then Jayden caught on and scowled.

  “I’m not saying you can’t drink Carlsberg if you want, Darren, Jesus,” he sniped.

  “All right,” Darren said evenly, picking up his texting again. He was learning, he reflected bitterly: don’t, for the love of Christ, argue. It just led to more arguing and awkwardness. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Jayden purse his lips in the mirror before slowly returning to applying his moisturiser.

  “So…” Jayden started after a moment; Darren didn’t pause in the exchange of verbal abuse he’d started with Paul. “So, are we meeting them for lunch, or this evening?”

  “Lunchtime,” Darren said, trying to pretend there wasn’t a space between them. “I’ve been summoned for the evening.”

  Jayden frowned at him in the bathroom mirror. “Summoned where?”

  “Home,” Darren said. “Scott’s spamming me demanding I go over for the evening.”

  “You’re staying here for tomorrow though,” Jayden said instantly, the irritation washing out of his features and leaving him looking oddly anxious instead.

  Darren shrugged. “I still should go tonight. See Misha. Scott’s coming down tonight as well, and I told him I’d be there.” He didn’t want to go, but he had to. You had to visit family on Christmas, even if you didn’t like them. Even if…

  “Darren,” Jayden abandoned his routine and turned to stare at him beseechingly. “I don’t want you to go. Your parents…”

  “I have to.”

  “But you always come back…” Jayden began, then hesitated. “Ill,” he finished lamely.

  “Yeah, well.” Darren shrugged, staring at his phone. “S’what tomorrow with you is for, right?”

  Jayden stared a little longer, then sighed and muttered, “I suppose at least that means I win about Christmas Day…”

  “Yes, it does,” Darren conceded and opened his hands invitingly. Jayden stepped forward into the hug and moulded himself up against Darren’s side with a sigh that was half-anxious, half-defeated. Maybe a third defeated, though, because there was a trace of contentment in there too. “What if I just go for dinner, see Potato, and then come right back here for the evening? What about that?”

  “I suppose,” Jayden murmured and squeezed. “Just don’t come back ill? I…” he paused; Darren waited, stroking patterns into the back of Jayden’s T-shirt. “I worry,” Jayden finished eventually. “I worry about…about how much you can hide from me over the phone and everything.”

  Darren raised his eyebrows, and Jayden pushed back to look him in the eye.

  “You have been okay, right?” he asked imploringly.

  Yes? Sort of? Maybe? Darren flicked through the honest answers and discarded them instantly. “Yes,” he half-lied. He had been okay, kind of. He hadn’t had…well, a proper bad day. He hadn’t been harming or suicidal or anything, so…yeah. He’d been okay.

  Jayden hummed and dragged his hands down Darren’s arms to twist their fingers together. “Just dinner,” he said. “And then come back here.”

  “For second dinner.”

  It worked. Jayden laughed, pushed him away, and went back to his primping routine with an exasperated, amused shake of the head. And, for the moment, Darren won.

  * * * *

  “BEEF!”

  It was Paul who hollered, the moment that Darren stepped foot inside the Wetherspoons pub on Queen Street, and half a second later, Jayden laughed and shoved him forward into a two-way hug.

  He’d never admit it to anyone, ever, on pain of death, not even Jayden’s mum armed with a wooden spoon and a biscuit tin, but Darren…kind of liked Paul and Ethan’s dual-sided attack hugs. They were less awkward than actual hugging, and he got to stand in the middle while the two of them attempted to crush the life out of him.

  And they could. Paul had hit six-foot-five in the last year of school, and had taken up rugby the minute he went to UCL. Ethan wasn’t any taller than Darren, but had maintained his love of ridiculous sports at LSE, building up a powerful grip from hours and hours prancing around on a horse trying to hit a ball with a stick, or waving a wobbly sword at someone. Which meant that a dual-sided attack hug now? Now it was lethal. He screwed up his face, patted arms that were within patting distance, and bore it out.

  “Don’t listen to the retard,” Ethan advised when they let him go. “You’re chicken.”

  Some things—some people—just never changed. “Right,” Darren said.

  “My round!” Paul said cheerfully and bounced off. Or barrelled off. A six-foot-five man with shoulders like a front-row forward didn’t so much bounce as bulldoze. Darren took the opportunity to pull Jayden down by the hand and kick Ethan.

  “Why’s he chicken?” Jayden asked. Darren groaned.

  “Don’t encourage him.”

  “Because,” Ethan said, shoving Darren’s face out of the way to lean across him and talk to Jayden conspiratorially, “he’s white meat. Paul maintains he’s dark meat so he’s beef, but I reckon there’s not enough darkie there to…”

  “You’d have thought going to a London university, you’d get less racist,” Darren pointed out.

  “You’ve never even met that granddad!”

  “I’ve never met either of my granddads,” Darren retorted. He’d met his step-granddad, Father’s stepfather, but even he’d died years ago now, and anyway, he didn’t count. And he’d been a grumpy old sod.

  “Here.” Paul slammed down two pints of Stella and pulled a face at Jayden. “Bet you drink champagne every night at your posh uni, mate.”

  “Not champagne,” Jayden said delicately, and Paul laughed. Darren shrugged off the snide wine comment earlier in the day, and tried to shake off the lingering awkwardness. “But not Stella either.”

  “Gay guys can’t drink Stella,” Ethan opined.

  “Speaking of gay guys.” Paul grinned from ear to ear, and Ethan thumped him, going cherry-red under his floppy mop of blond hair. “Guess who had a gay experience!”

  “Oh, Jeeeeesus,” Darren said.

  He’d forgotten how exuberant Paul and Ethan were together. Paul had stayed pretty well in touch; Ethan was more prone to disappearing for weeks on end then dropping back into a slanging match without giving any indication of ever having been gone. They were renting together between their respective universities, and lounging in his chair and listening to their easy banter, Darren was half-jealous of how easy it was for them. Their respective girlfriends (and apparently a near-miss at a boyfriend) had gone after school, and life had carried on in London like it had always been here. It was easy for them.

  It was easy being with them, too. They hadn’t changed, with Paul’s
casual racism and Ethan’s casual sexism, and the joint, casual homophobia that only ever saw the light when they had Darren to bully. He’d missed the banter and the lack of expectations. He’d missed the lack of effort you had to put in to be with them. And he’d missed the way Jayden relaxed too, sitting back with his pint of Stella and not saying a word about the cheap drink, the cheap pub, the cheap company. The way he laughed. The way it felt like they were seventeen again and in The Royal Oak around the corner, because the manager Bill never asked for ID.

  So Darren relaxed and let the faint darkness in the back of his mind recede. He let Paul call him various names and insist that he was mixed-race (Darren supposed an intense awareness of the ethnicity categories was what you got for going to university), and Ethan insist that he wasn’t because if you looked white, you were white, and then both of them argued over Jayden’s ethnic category given that nobody had a clue who Jayden’s father was or what he looked like.

  “Given his mother’s ginger, I’m going to guess his dad looks like Jayden,” Darren pointed out at one point; Jayden, texting someone furiously, rolled his eyes.

  “Could be Russian. Or Swedish. You might be Swedish!”

  Jayden rolled his eyes again and Darren leaned over to peer at the phone. “Texting Ella?”

  “Mm. She says Merry Christmas.” Darren privately doubted that. “I have an essay to write after the break and she said she’d get a couple of books I need and put them under my door and she just has, so…”

  “Okay.” It wasn’t. Darren knew he was being jealous and irrational—maybe Ella was a nice person, he’d only met her the once—but he still didn’t like it. He leaned over to steal the phone, and Jayden gave him a dirty look. “What? Stop hiding behind your phone.”

  “I’m not hiding,” Jayden grumped, and Darren pulled a face. He was. He hadn’t stopped texting either Ella or Jonathon since they’d left Cambridge.

  “Busy at Cambridge, then?” Paul asked and suddenly the conversation veered to one side, and Darren felt oddly outside of it. He supposed this was only natural: they were all at university except him, and there’d be things they were doing in common that he wasn’t, but…

  Darren sipped at his lager and wondered why growing up had to mean everything changed.

  Chapter 12

  “Darling, sit down.”

  Jayden dropped the curtain and flopped onto the sofa dramatically. “He’s late,” he told Mum, and she shook her head at him.

  “He’ll be fine, sweetheart. Try texting him if you’re worried,” she advised, one eye on Coronation Street reruns and one on him.

  Jayden sighed. He had texted him. Four times in the last half hour. The last answer Darren had given him was 4 the last time im jst runin l8 LEVE ME ALON clingy bitch x and that didn’t dignify trying again. Jayden would be sulking if he wasn’t worried.

  Darren had gone straight from drinks with Paul and Ethan to his house. (Jayden couldn’t think home, because it hadn’t been a home to Darren for years, if ever, because his parents sucked.) He had initially sent Jayden multiple texts regarding his brother and sister (Scott apparently was engaged to someone called Megan, as of this morning, but Darren estimated three weeks before the fiancée dumped him, and Misha was turning into a bigger melodramatic brat than Darren had ever been) but they had died out after fathers bk :(

  And they hadn’t picked up again. And Jayden was worried, because Darren had spent most of sixth form and the school holidays at Jayden’s house, and he was always worse at his own house, and…

  “Jayden, sit,” Mum said over his shoulder, and Jayden realised he’d paced back to the window. When his phone buzzed, he jumped and scrambled for it, but it was only Ella. Call you? :-) she asked, and Jayden bit his lip.

  Not right now, sorry. Waiting for Darren to come back from his parents and he’s running late.

  He went to see his parents on Xmas Eve without you? :-/ You’ve been together for like two years!

  Three and a bit, Jayden corrected and shrugged it off. She didn’t get it, and he wasn’t going to explain Darren’s family situation by text. Darren wouldn’t like it for a start, and Ella would ask loads of questions, and it was easier to explain things to her in person anyway.

  “Jayden,” Mum said when he stood up again.

  “He’s late.” An hour late. He’d said he’d get Scott to drive him home at eight, and it was almost nine, and…

  “It’s only nine.”

  “Yeah, but…” Jayden cut himself off when he lifted the curtain in time to see a dark form turn into the street, and then he abandoned the window and rushed to open the door, walking straight out to the gate in bare feet to lean over it and call, “Darren!” up the road.

  Darren waved and didn’t change his pace, loping up to the gate and kissing Jayden’s cheek over it before pushing at the metal experimentally. Jayden let him in, but refused to be mollified. “Why’re you so late?” he pushed. “And why didn’t Sco…” Wait a minute. “Did you walk home?!”

  “Yeah,” Darren said, and Jayden’s suspicions edged up another notch.

  “Did you walk through the park?!”

  “…Yeah…” Darren said slowly, and Jayden clenched his hands into Darren’s jacket.

  “Darren!”

  “It’s just a park, Jayden. There was nobody around.” Darren shrugged. “Can we go inside? It’s freezing.”

  Jayden scowled. Fine, his feet were cold, and the hall light let him see that Darren was flushed from the wind and pale-lipped from the temperature, and they could just as easily talk inside, but…but…he was mad, damn it, and Darren had to be yelled at for being so stupid, and…

  “C’mon,” Darren said, pushing him back into the house and closing the door. “Hi, Mrs. Phillips!” he yelled on reflex, and Mum shouted at him for not calling her Livvy. Jayden deflated a little, and helped Darren out of his hat and coat, using his scarf as a reel to kiss him.

  “I don’t like you walking through that park,” he confessed lowly against his mouth.

  “It’s fine,” Darren said.

  “How was it?”

  “The park? Uh, leafy?”

  “Your parents. Jerk.”

  Darren pulled a face, but he seemed…not relaxed, exactly, but okay. He seemed fine, and the knot in Jayden’s stomach began to unpick itself. He was okay. “Well,” Darren said. “Some news.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mother and Father are getting a divorce.”

  Jayden opened his mouth, closed it, bit his lip, and said, “Um…look, I…no offence or anything and if you’re, you know…”

  Darren shrugged. “It’s a good thing.”

  Jayden heaved a sigh of relief and hugged him. “It is, you know,” he decided. “You won’t have to see them being…being…less.”

  “Less?” Darren gave him a funny look.

  “They don’t have a proper marriage,” Jayden clarified hopefully, but the funny look didn’t go away. “I mean, they’re just…they tolerate each other. It’s like a business arrangement. I mean, Mum and Dad still date, for God’s sake, and that’s what I want to be like when I’m old, and…I can’t see your parents dating.” Darren smirked. “So…I mean, why? Did they just decide to quit, or…”

  “Mother’s having an affair with the vice-president of her company,” Darren said flatly.

  Jayden blinked. “Um…!”

  “Eh.” Darren shrugged, and Jayden pulled him up the stairs by the hand as he talked. “That’s how she met Father.”

  “I still find it weird you call them Mother and Father,” Jayden admitted, shutting the door behind them and ignoring the fact Mum would be up in like ten minutes to make him open it again. Dad didn’t care, but Dad was at the pub with his mates. “Didn’t you ever call them Mum and Dad?”

  “Probably couldn’t pronounce Mother when I was two,” Darren said dryly.

  “Bastard,” Jayden said affectionately, flopping onto the bed and pulling Darren after him. He waited just long enough
for Darren to settle before turning over and trapping him, rubbing a thumb into the dip of his shoulder and feeling the rough scarring under the cotton. “You shouldn’t have gone through the park, you know,” he murmured.

  Darren shrugged. “No use being afraid of the place.”

  Jayden opened his mouth, then swallowed. “They never caught…”

  “It was years ago, Jayden, let it go,” Darren said and started rubbing his fingers into Jayden’s scalp. Jayden wriggled, little sparks of pleasure radiating down his neck and back from the attention. “I’m all right.”

  “Good,” Jayden said, settling on top of him and dropping his head to Darren’s shoulder. “Keep doing that,” he added when Darren paused.

  “Can’t I even switch the telly on?”

  “No.”

  Darren huffed and laughed; Jayden felt the jerky motion of his chest, and pressed his ear to the hidden scars. He could feel Darren’s heart beating steadily under his cheek, slow and lazy, and soon Mum would disturb them and Darren would shoot for his second dinner and they’d have to move, but…

  But right now, Jayden was perfectly happy.

  * * * *

  Jayden didn’t actually like Christmas very much.

  Christmas was meant to be for big parties and lots of family members and a ridiculous amount of presents and food, and snow that never came because they didn’t exactly live in Scotland, you know? If they ever got snow, it’d be at least mid-January. And Uncle Andy coming didn’t exactly mean a big family. And Dad always wanted to watch the Christmas film (and it was always crap) and ever since Nana died, Christmas had seemed too quiet without her sniping at Mum for not doing things the way Nana would have done them.

  It just seemed a bit sad. Five people wasn’t a Christmas. Maybe next year he’d stay at Cambridge: they had a Christmas dinner in the dining hall, and the entire college had been lavishly decorated, and Mum’s decorations didn’t even match because she’d collected them over about fifteen years from various sales and flea markets, and…

  But this Christmas, he woke up with Darren’s arm slung over his waist, and he got to spent the first hour of Christmas morning poking him with a twisted-up sweet wrapper and watching him grumble and scowl in his sleep. (When he finally did shove Jayden’s hand away and snarl at him, Jayden offered a hug in compensation.) It was ridiculously cold outside, even if it hadn’t snowed, and he wriggled as close to Darren as possible, soaking up the heat from the living radiator.