“L’ve me alone,” Darren grumbled, but he was always grumpy when he was half-asleep, so Jayden ignored him and cuddled him tighter until the grumble turned into a growl and died away. He never resisted for long (because apparently it took too much energy and Darren was lazy) and Jayden got to start his morning off right in peace.
But eventually Mum called, and bullied them both into getting showered and dressed before Uncle Andy showed up, and put Jayden to work peeling potatoes in the kitchen. “You never make Darren do anything,” he sniped at her, and Darren leaned against the fridge with a can of Coke and grinned at him because, when you really got down to it, Jayden’s boyfriend was kind of a dick.
“I got you a present,” Darren said once Mum had flitted out to greet Uncle Andy.
“What kind of a present?” Jayden asked, dropping another spud into the sieve and eyeing Darren suspiciously. “It’s not going to be something that’ll make Mum flap, right, because…”
“Nope,” Darren said easily. “What’d you get me?”
Jayden rolled his eyes. “That’d ruin the point of wrapping it, Darren!” Not that he’d wrapped it, because he sucked at wrapping presents, but he’d taken it to a department store and got some woman to wrap it for a donation to her charity at a special Christmas stand.
“I’ll find out in an hour or so anyway,” Darren bargained.
“Yes, so you can wait!”
“Do I have to?” Darren wheedled, sliding along the counter and wrapping an arm around Jayden’s waist, nosing at his neck. Jayden flushed and hunched his shoulder, trying to throw him off.
“I’m cooking.”
“You’re peeling,” Darren corrected, his voice little more than a breath over Jayden’s collarbone. “Tell me and I’ll go away.”
“You’re…!”
“Off,” Dad grunted, stomping into the kitchen with two six-packs of beer from the garage, and shouldering Darren aside. “None of that in the kitchen.”
Darren raised his eyebrows. “Darren!” Jayden warned, flushing hotly. So what if Dad knew what they did and had given him the safe sex lecture and everything? He didn’t have to know-know!
“That better not be a hint, brat,” Dad grunted, pointing a finger in Darren’s face, and then ripped off a can of Stella and tossed it to him. “Make yourself useful. Jayden, you’re not having wine. Apparently if your mum can’t, no one can.”
Jayden wrinkled his nose and eyed Darren’s fresh can of Stella dubiously. He’d really lost the taste for anything but wine since starting at Cambridge. But then, Jonathon could hardly offer advice on the best wine in Mum’s cupboard, because it was all cheap stuff in boxes and plastic pouches from Asda, so…
“I’ll stick to Coke,” he decided, and Dad rolled his eyes.
“You’re a student, kid, you’re meant to be a pisshead,” he grunted and stomped back out to the living room, where Uncle Andy and Mum were chatting in low tones. Probably about the new baby, because they never really talked to Uncle Andy except at Christmas. He was nice, but he was a total workaholic and never in, so it just…didn’t happen.
“What’s my present?” Darren demanded the minute Dad left the kitchen, and Jayden rolled his eyes.
“Fine,” he said, rinsing his hands off under the tap. “But if I have to give you yours, you have to give me mine!”
“Kinky.”
“Oh, shut up,” he said, shoving Darren’s arm, before latching on to his wrist and towing him through the hall and back upstairs. His parents would be busy with Uncle Andy and lunch and everything for a good half hour. Maybe if the present was a good present, he could…you know, show appreciation. Or punish Darren for being a little bastard, actually, because that was way more likely.
“Here.” Darren kicked open his bag and removed a nondescript plastic package. A supermarket bag, because Jayden had learned that Darren seemed to have an allergy to wrapping things. He took it and sat on the edge of his bed, squeezing the soft package and turning it around before peering into the bag. Only Darren had put tissue paper around it to hide it, so Jayden tipped it out into his lap, and the tissue-paper-cocoon exploded and thick, warm fabric spilled out over his knees.
“Oh!”
And then he laughed, because it was so Darren. It was a university hoodie. An emerald-green university hoodie made of thick, reasonably good-quality material. It was one size too big, just the way Jayden liked to wear his coats and jumpers. And, because Darren was Darren and he was a complete troll and Jayden simultaneously hated him and loved him to bits, the front was emblazoned with UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
“Oh, you arse,” he said, grinning, and threw his arms around Darren’s neck. “I can’t wear this at my college!”
“You can wear it in your room when it’s just us on the phone or the net,” Darren bargained, squeezing back, and Jayden kissed him soundly. “Mm, you like it, then?”
“You’re still an arse, don’t get cocky,” Jayden warned and shrugged it on. It was stupidly warm, like Darren had been keeping a cat in there or something, and he turned the cuffs down over his hands and squeezed the fabric in his fists. “Oh, my God, this is insane. I’m going to go to sleep, right now, and I’m never waking up.”
“Welcome to my world,” Darren said.
“C’mere,” Jayden urged, and when Darren shifted properly into reach, he pulled them down onto the pillows to wrap them both up in warm green fabric and bedsheets, hugging Darren close until he could smell his aftershave. “You’re amazing. You’re amazing and idiotic and brilliant and stupid and funny and everything, ever, in the world. Ever.”
Darren did his octopus routine, wrapping himself around Jayden until they were inseparable and tucking his head into Jayden’s shoulder with a contented noise. “Can we sleep?”
“No, Mum’ll yell at us.”
“Your mum sucks.”
“No, she doesn’t.” Jayden kissed a nearby patch of skin.
“She does,” Darren insisted and shifted to peer up at Jayden plaintively. His eyes were huge from this angle. “Where’s my present?”
“You’re demanding.”
“You have yours, so where’s mine?”
“This cuddle is part of it.”
“Liar. You made me a deal!”
“Fine, fine.” Jayden wriggled free and reached under the bed for his bag. Darren toyed with his belt, and Jayden swatted his hand aside when he sat up again, wrapped box in hand. “Leave me alone, you perv,” he muttered, and Darren wriggled back into his shoulder as they settled down, taking the box in those huge hands and turning it over and examining the corners like a curious toddler. “Don’t shake it.”
“Now I’m curious,” Darren said. “Is it a puppy?”
“No way.”
“A dead puppy?”
“Darren!” Jayden groaned and tugged his hair. “Just open it, oh my God.”
Darren picked at the corners until the blue paper flaked off, then used the edge of a nail to slit one side and pluck the rest of the wrapping off, mostly intact. He turned over the black box inside, rubbing the felt with his thumbs, before popping the top open and peering inside as if he was expecting it to bite him.
“Oh,” he said.
Jayden had found it at the Christmas market when shopping with Jonathon: a glass paperweight, really, but the design and rainbow slices it cast over the stall canopy had caught his eye. It was a violin and bow, half-raised on a stand, the body of the violin being perhaps the length of Darren’s palm. But instead of being merely cut and polished and done, the glass had been cut to make the violin out of strands of DNA, curling and twisting around each other to form the shimmering instrument. Along the base read the simple inscription: art and science. It had been perfect.
“Wow,” Darren handled it gingerly, turning it over in his fingers, and Jayden hugged him and watched the play of light on the curtains. “That’s…”
“That’s you,” Jayden said simply. “You’re both.”
Darren carefully p
laced it on the side, and then folded them back down into the sheets, half-burying Jayden in the folds of the new hoodie. “I’m not everything,” he mumbled into Jayden’s neck, and Jayden pulled on a handful of curls.
“Yeah, you kind of are, I think,” he mumbled.
When Mum finally called, they still hadn’t moved.
Chapter 13
Christmas ended. Darren only had about five days off, and one of them was the bank holiday, but then Jayden thought it didn’t matter much because he only had a few days before the lack of work being done on his coursework would catch up with him. So they parted ways the day after Boxing Day, Darren having to peel Jayden’s hands off his coat to leave, and Jayden feeling a little hollow place in the middle of his chest as the train pulled away towards the south coast, just like when Darren’s car had disappeared away from the college window in September.
And now he was back in that college, the frost thick on the ground. One of the benefits of being at Cambridge was that the holidays were longer for Jayden than other students at other universities, but the downside was that he needed the holidays to do all his work. The extra time would be good for him and his studies, even if it meant not seeing Darren again for a while. He’d just have to get ahead and take some time out closer to Easter to visit Darren’s flat and meet his housemate and everything.
But for now, Cambridge beckoned, and when he let himself back into his room (cold from the winter and hollow from the lack of Darren or Darren’s things) Jayden fell backwards on the bed, found his phone in his back pocket, and texted Darren, Miss you already x. The essays could wait five minutes, right?
Ilu2 sugarplum ;) x
Bastard, he retorted and could picture Darren snickering at him.
“Knock-knock!”
It was Ella. In her pink pyjamas and fluffy slippers, funnily enough, but then there was nobody about and it was the holidays. She smiled, coming to sit cross-legged on the end of his bed and hugging one of his stray cushions to her stomach like a toy.
“Welcome back.” She smiled.
“How was your Christmas?” he asked.
She hummed and shrugged. “Short, I suppose. Daddy couldn’t spare the time from work so it was just my sisters and I, really. I can get some work done now I’m back, anyway. I got back last night. Yours?”
“It was good. Nice to see my family again and spend some time with Darren. And my mother’s having a baby,” he admitted, grimacing.
“Oh, babies aren’t so bad. I’ve got two little sisters,” she said and tilted her head. “You live in the same town as Darren, then? Well, your parents do? That’s why you met at school?”
“Yeah,” Jayden said, electing not to bother explaining about the theatre. Darren had been frosty about his music when she’d asked. His phone buzzed and he flipped it open to read the text. “But he spent Christmas with us anyway,” he added absently.
Darren <3 Mobile: ??? :’(
“I thought he went to his parents?”
“Only Christmas Eve,” Jayden said, sending back a, Cry, see if I care. LEARN TO TEXT x.
“Mm.” Ella rearranged the cushion and her hair, and said, “He’s a bit…”
“A bit what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. A bit…well, he’s…you know, where you’re from. I just…I suppose I don’t get it. I mean,” she laughed, “why would I? I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“What you mean, where I’m from?”
“Well.” She shrugged delicately again. “He’s not very…like you, is he? He wouldn’t fit in here, you know. He’s a bit…rough. Around the edges. He doesn’t…he’s not sociable. A little…working class.”
“He’s just coarse,” Jayden said, and the phone buzzed again. “Actually, he’s from a much richer background than me. His mother’s like a CEO and his father’s a barrister or something.” He grimaced internally when he realised he’d adopted Darren’s stilted way of referring to them.
“Is he rebelling?”
“Er, no, not really…” Jayden said slowly. Could it be considered rebelling when his older brother had gone off to become a shop manager? Scott hadn’t exactly followed the family line either, so…he flipped his phone open again, and smiled at the U DONT LOVE ME :( on it.
I love you plenty but you are such an arse sometimes, he replied, then added a bunch of kisses for good measure, just in case Darren forwarded it to Paul and started a campaign of insanity against him. He would still be travelling, or waiting for Rachel to pick him up, so it was more than likely.
“He’s a bit antisocial, isn’t he?”
“I guess,” Jayden admitted. “He’s, um…he’s not really into people very much,” he attempted. “He had his friends at school but he wasn’t interested in new people, you know?” Except him. Maybe if he’d known Darren better then, he would have recognised his interest earlier. Darren had been fine with him.
“I just…honestly, Jayden? As one friend to another?”
He eyed her.
“I feel like you’re hanging on to him,” she said in a rush. “You know, like…we all try, don’t we? You were together in school, and nobody wants something to be over, but you’re changing now you’re here, and he’s not…well, he’s not the kind of person who’d come here. It’s inevitable, isn’t it?”
Jayden bit his lip. “We might not…you know, be together forever,” he admitted. “But I still love him.” He did, but somehow the words sounded awkward.
She hummed. “I don’t know.”
“Well, you don’t know Darren. He’s not so prickly when he’s comfortable. He just wasn’t comfortable here.”
“Well, that’s my point,” she said. “You are. And, really, Jayden, a crime scene examiner? They don’t even need a science degree, do they?”
“Ella.”
“Sorry, sorry!” She held up her hands. “I don’t mean to intrude. Anyway. Did Jonathon text you over the break?”
Jayden opened his mouth to tell her to leave Darren alone, then decided better of it. He wouldn’t care anyway, and they’d only met once, and they probably wouldn’t again. And anyway, she was a little bit right, even if she wasn’t saying it very nicely. So he thought better and let the subject change go. “Not really. Said Merry Christmas on Facebook, but no, nothing else, you know. Wasn’t he in Austria?”
“Well, he came back yesterday,” she said. “Lucky. I wish I could ski. But he texted me from the airport when he landed and dropped this really cryptic clue about being promised a favour from his father over the break, but wouldn’t tell me anything else. Said he wanted to talk to you and me when he got back. I’d hoped he’d told you what he meant.”
“Why would he tell me?” Jayden asked, as Darren told him yeh but u love my arse ;) and thus proving Jayden’s assessment of him.
“Well, he said it was about you too. And anyway,” Ella grinned and squeezed the cushion, “he likes you. He told me.”
Jayden coloured. “No, he doesn’t, Ella, honestly, we’re just friends, and anyway, Jonathon knows I’ve got a boyfriend.”
“That’s why he hasn’t said anything; he told me that too,” Ella insisted and unfolded. “I have work to do. Want me to come in here and we can study and swear at our essays together?”
“Okay,” Jayden said and as she flitted out, texted Darren: Essay-writing now with…
He paused. Amended it. Sent it.
Essay-writing now :) Talk later, love you xxx
* * * *
Rachel was waiting when Darren got home from work. They’d missed each other the day before—he’d come back from Jayden’s too late to catch her before she went out with her sister—but she’d texted him halfway through his shift asking him to bring beer home. Well. ‘Asking.’ IT’S NEW YEAR PIZZA AND BEER NIGHT BIIIITCH :D she had informed him obnoxiously, and he’d narrowly avoided laughing in the middle of a speech by one of the brass about personal discipline and integrity. Still, he knew better than to argue with Rachel, and dutifully presented hims
elf at her door half an hour after getting off shift with a six-pack of Stella.
“Riiiiight on time,” she said, dragging him by the tie (he was banned from taking the time to change unless he was in a state. It had been her October diktat), and pushing him towards her battered sofa. “How was Christmas? Lots of food, presents, and alcohol?”
“Pretty good,” he admitted. Cambridge and wine and Carlsberg aside, it had been. Seeing Jayden again was always good. Getting his sex life back, albeit briefly, wasn’t something to complain about either. “And yeah, pretty much. Yours?”
Rachel flushed up to her hairline. “Well, um,” she fidgeted. “You know…what I told you before?”
“Specifically?”
“About me.”
“Specifically,” Darren prompted again. She talked a lot if he wasn’t feeling chatty. He knew a lot of things about Rachel, from her preferred brand of tights to her least favourite class at the school. To her bra size, for some reason. He grimaced. Bloody hell, he’d become someone’s gay best friend.
She huffed, cracking open a Stella. “The asexual thing.”
“Oh, that.”
“Mm. You remember?”
“Yeah.” Albeit vaguely. In all honesty, beyond the initial ‘that’s weird’ thought process, Darren hadn’t really cared. It wasn’t like he wanted to shag her.
“Well,” she pinked again, “Tony asked me out.”
“Who?” Darren asked blankly.
“The music teacher,” she reminded him, with a punch to the shoulder. Thankfully the good one. “Tall, dark, handsome, wicked beard thing going on?” Oh, him. Was Darren supposed to remember the guy? They’d met once. “I did go to the work Christmas do in the end. I thought I shouldn’t and it’d be boring, but anyway, I went. And I had a few glasses of wine and I was talking to Tony all night, and then he asked me out.”
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