“Get away with you,” she scolded and made a shooing motion until he was halfway up the stairs. “And I’ll forgo making up the camp bed just this once, Jayden. Don’t get used to it.”
“No, Mum,” he called obediently, scrubbing his sleeve against his eyes to dry his face properly before turning into his room. Darren was still in the shower, the borrowed clothes folded neatly on the end of Jayden’s bed, which was a good-ish sign. Darren usually folded things up in Jayden’s Mum’s house, and Jayden desperately wanted the usually stuff right now.
He wished he’d never gone to university, or that Darren had come with him. He wished they’d chosen to go to the same place. He wished they’d been together this past year, properly together and not kind-of-together-but-hundreds-of-miles-apart. No matter what Mum said, he knew this wouldn’t have happened if they had been, because Darren would have come to him, and Jayden would have noticed, and…
The shower shut off across the landing. Jayden fidgeted, then got up and rummaged through his chest of drawers for spare pyjamas. He’d not nearly taken everything to Cambridge with him, and he was grateful for it now, finding a pair of pyjama bottoms that he’d never worn because they were far too long, and an oversized T-shirt he’d stolen from Dad years ago as a ‘slobbing around the house’ shirt that would accommodate Darren’s wide shoulders. By the time Darren appeared in the bedroom doorway, towel around his waist and another on his head, Jayden had laid out the spare clothes and was changing himself.
“Thanks,” Darren murmured hoarsely, but said nothing else. Jayden left him to change, ducking into the bathroom only briefly to brush his teeth, before returning and creeping into bed.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his arms as Darren eyed him, drying his hair. His expression was unreadable, and Jayden bit his lip.
Eventually, though, Darren folded up the towels too and crawled into bed, letting Jayden throw the duvet over him and settling onto his shoulder. His hair was damp and heavy, and Jayden pressed his cheek into it, smelling the borrowed shampoo. Dad’s.
“Darren?” he whispered.
“Mm?” The hum shuddered through Jayden’s shoulder and neck as Darren tucked his bad arm between them, fingers curling loosely in that semi-controlled way they had.
“I love you,” Jayden whispered fiercely, and Darren’s other arm settled over his waist. He squeezed, and Darren squeezed back for a brief moment.
He didn’t say anything back, though, and not twenty minutes later, the slow drop of weight told Jayden that the exhaustion had taken Darren under again. But not him: he lay awake, toying with a stray curl and staring at the ceiling, and wondering just what he was supposed to do now.
* * * *
Jayden woke up, for the first time in months, warm.
His room in Cambridge was chilly, and Darren was a living, breathing hot water bottle. He oozed heat, luxuriously hot heat, and Jayden curled closer under the duvet, wrapping his other arm around Darren’s chest and cuddling up to his back. It was light outside, but a deep and murky light around the curtains that suggested it was threatening to rain. Jayden could faintly hear his parents’ voices downstairs, and then the front door slammed and Dad’s disappeared.
Eight-thirty, then. Dad was off to work.
Darren was deeply asleep, but that wasn’t new. He slept like the de-…like a log. Jayden had once pushed him right out of bed to see if he’d wake up, and he’d barely grumbled before curling up on the carpet and going right back to sleep. So Jayden wasn’t afraid to wriggle close and press a kiss to the back of his neck, tracing a hand up the inside of his forearms. He was familiar with the patterns near his wrists and elbows, and traced them carefully, searching blindly for new scars and scabs. For new evidence.
But there wasn’t any, thank God, and he rubbed his palm up each forearm lightly before returning it to Darren’s breastbone and curling his fingers in the loose fabric of the T-shirt.
Right here and right now, he could pretend nothing was wrong. Pretend it was Christmas morning and he could grumble while Darren exploited Mum’s rules on guests not helping out around the house. Pretend it was sixth form and Mum was going to shout at him when she discovered Darren had stayed over Saturday night. Pretend, even, that it was Year Eleven and he was only just discovering this. He could—but it was just pretend, and when Darren woke up, they’d have to deal with it.
Normally, Jayden left Darren to his own devices regarding waking up, because it took Darren forever and he was really grumpy if he was woken up, and that was only funny for so long. But this morning, he couldn’t even bring himself to think seriously about it, and instead lay soaking up the heat and stroking patterns into his chest through the shirt.
His phone buzzed on the side table; with a little stretching, Jayden could reach over Darren to get it, and settled back into the cocoon with it, cancelling the morning alarm before it could even ring and opening the text message that had woken it up. Paul. Me and Eth r coming down 2day. U still live @ Attlee?
Yes. Wait until eleven, we’re not yet up yet, Jayden advised. He was glad they were coming, really, even if Paul was bound to turn on him just like Scott had. Darren needed them: he needed people who loved him, all of them, and it was why Jayden had brought him home, because he loved him and Mum loved him and Paul and Ethan would come, and Darren needed this.
OK c u both laters.
Jayden flicked through his inbox. He had a few text messages that had come in the night: one from Leah, simply saying hope u both got home safe x and two from Ella, saying where are you?! with no difference between the two but the number of question marks. He sent back a quick, I had to go home suddenly, just in case she decided to report him missing or something like that, and paused on Tim’s.
Leah told me what happened. Real sorry, man. I’ll start telling the profs today and sort stuff out for you this end, you and the bf take care, ayite? Lemme know if I can help at all.
Jayden swallowed. Why hadn’t he realised just how different Leah and Tim were to Ella? And Jonathon? Noticeably, he didn’t have anything from Jonathon, even though the rumour mill had obviously started up. And Leah and Tim wouldn’t be gossiping. Why hadn’t he just stuck with them? Maybe none of this would have happened if he hadn’t been so intent on impressing Ella and Jonathon and their circle of friends, and he’d failed in the end anyway, because Ella was bound to turn her nose up at Darren even more once she got wind of this, and…
Jayden clenched a fist into Darren’s shirt; he stirred a little, but stayed asleep, and Jayden kissed the nape of his neck again. If Ella said anything, he was going to punch her. She didn’t understand. Darren wasn’t a waste of space, he wasn’t antisocial, he wasn’t just someone Jayden was hanging on to. He was everything, and Jayden was going to prove it, and…
He loosened his grip a little when Darren stirred again, grumbling and pushing vaguely at his arm. The phone slid off the pillow with the movement, and then the stirring turning into proper motion, Darren twisting onto his back and dislodging Jayden entirely, one leg arching up until his foot met his own hip. Any other day, Jayden would have pounced on him for the luxurious stretch; now, he lay in waiting, petting a spray of curls that had made a desperate bid for freedom.
“Morning,” he whispered.
Darren grumbled something incoherent, then healed over a couple of the cracks in Jayden’s heart by turning and planting himself solidly on Jayden’s chest, burrowing into him and settling again.
“We need to get up soon,” Jayden murmured, carding his fingers through Darren’s hair and matching his breathing unconsciously. “You’ve got visitors.”
“Who?”
“Paul and Ethan.”
“Meh,” Darren mumbled and burrowed harder until Jayden scratched lightly at his scalp and stopped talking. The message was clear: Darren wasn’t moving yet, for love or money or the terrible twosome, and Jayden didn’t have the heart or guts to make him go. To get his affection, especially when the lines around his e
yes and mouth said that the dark mood hadn’t yet shifted, and the drugs were probably still tiring him out…
That meant the world to Jayden right then, and he stayed right where he was.
Chapter 30
Darren felt…cocooned, by the time the doorbell rang.
He had underestimated Jayden’s mother, he thought absently. The house was positively hostile every previous time he’d been here; now, bundled up on the sofa in the tiny living room wearing a jumper of his Jayden had found in the back of his wardrobe, an ugly throw wrapped around his legs, and the remote control for the TV under his power, he reflected that Mrs. Phillips could probably make Sylvia Plath feel comforted.
The housewife herself wasn’t around much: she had apparently gone on maternity leave last week, and so was flitting about the house cleaning and tidying and doing something with a squeezy-bottle of fluid that was masquerading as ‘lemon scented.’ Jayden was his attendant instead, fetching mugs of foaming hot chocolate that Darren swore you couldn’t buy in the shops, and generally curling up against Darren’s side until the mug was emptied again. He was…clingy. Which Darren might have found odd any other day, but today, not so much.
He still felt off. The crippling weight of the mood had eased a little, but he still felt off-kilter and out of touch with his own body. It was as though his brain had decided it had had enough and gone off for a holiday, and here was Darren with a clumsy shell, muffled by cotton wrapping. The toast Jayden had offered him had tasted like sawdust mixed with a generous helping of cardboard, and there’d been no tart tang to the pineapple juice. He felt strange, and was happy to be wrapped up and hugged on a sofa. It wasn’t like he was good for anything else right now.
They didn’t speak much—Darren too apathetic, Jayden too wary—and so when the doorbell rang, Jayden simply kissed his cheek and got up to answer it without a word. He was wearing the hoodie Darren had bought him for Christmas, toying with the end of the sleeve like a talisman, and he looked anxious and young. Darren bitterly regretted letting Jayden get involved. He should have gone back to the flat, instead of upsetting Jayden further.
And then…
“Jeeeerrrrrrk!” a familiar deep voice crooned, and Paul was leaning over the back of the sofa to seize Darren from behind in a hug, pressing his face gleefully to Darren’s cheek. “Long time no see, man, and then I get a call from your girlfriend there!”
“Hey!” Jayden protested in the background, but Paul ignored him. Ethan did too, bouncing around to jump onto the cushions on Darren’s left and hug him, crushing him between the pair of them.
“Glad you’re a failure, for once, loser,” Ethan said, squeezing him before letting go. Paul hung on, unperturbed by such unmanly displays. “What happened, your girlfriend knocked up some Oxbridge tart?”
“Oh, shove off,” Darren muttered, and Paul dragged himself around to sit down, leaving an arm slung around his shoulders.
“You’re a whiny bitch, I’ll give you, but we weren’t expecting that,” he said with inappropriate, irrepressible humour, and Darren was grateful for it. He wanted to be able to return to normalcy, not have everyone tiptoeing around him. He wanted everyone to forget.
“Yeah, well, got to get your attention somehow,” he returned, and Ethan snickered.
“Try banging a girl next time, I’d be impressed,” he sniped. “You’ve got a girl in your house, right?”
“She’d kill me,” Darren said. Ethan’s face stiffened for a brief moment, but Paul guffawed, and Jayden called from his new spot in the armchair:
“I’d kill him too.”
“Oh, yeah,” Paul said and scowled. “Let him off the leash just long enough to knock her up, then! Be reasonable, the world needs more curls!”
“You shag her, then,” Jayden insisted, unusually coarsely, and Darren gave him a small smile from the relative safety (or danger, dependent on your point of view) of Ethan and Paul’s lock-in. Hug-in. Whatever.
It transpired that Jayden had called Paul yesterday morning, who had called Ethan, who had called his mother, and they had arrived last night to crash at Ethan’s house on the other side of town before setting out this morning. “Mum’s on at me to get married,” Ethan moaned, and he was apparently still convinced it was because he was an only child. Darren and Paul had been long of the opinion that she was worried he was gay.
Darren was grateful for them, though he wouldn’t admit it. Their chatter and banter was easy and familiar, and he’d missed it in Southampton. He’d felt adrift without them, without Jayden, and to be able to sit back and listen to their ceaseless name-calling was a balm on his shattered reserves. To not have to talk or answer, to not really have to listen, but to know that he was included and wanted, however vaguely, soothed a little of the turmoil that yesterday had stirred up. No shouting, no anger, no betrayed expression and worried half-sentences. Nothing but PaulandEthan, the way they’d always been.
They’d changed since school, of course they had. Paul had gotten serious about his ambitions; Ethan had learned to talk to girls without sounding like he had brain damage. There was talk of an internship in Brussels (Paul) and rumour of a girlfriend in the wings (Ethan). They were taller, older, wiser; their childish manners had been checked a little. But they were also the same, arguing about whether he was a basket-case or a nut-job like it actually mattered, and coming on one call to seek him out and pull faces at him for ‘being a thicko.’
“You,” Paul said, jabbing a forefinger into Darren’s arm, “are a fucking ‘tard. You leave your brains at your mother’s house, boy?”
“He left them in the basket,” Ethan chipped in. “Hence basket case, Paul. Duh.”
Darren caught Jayden’s eye across the room and smiled again. This time, it felt a little easier and a little more like it might be real; Jayden’s answering one was real, without the pinching anxiety either side, and he even managed a little laugh when Darren held out the empty mug and slowly turned it upside-down.
* * * *
Jayden left them to it. He suspected he’d never quite grasp the dynamic of Paul-and-Darren-and-Ethan, the weird ease and friction between the three of them, and he left them to work their magic. They’d always managed to make Darren feel stabilised, if not better, so Jayden took the empty mug, kissed the top of Darren’s head as he passed behind the sofa, and disappeared into the kitchen to leave them alone.
Mum was washing up, barely able to reach the sink over the bump, and Jayden stared while the kettle boiled. “It’s perfectly natural, darling,” she said tartly, and he shrugged.
“It’s not…it’s just, you know, I figured…you know, you’ve been married years. Why now?”
“We couldn’t really afford another baby until now,” Mum said simply. “Dad’s always wanted one. Of his own, I mean—not that you’re not important to him, darling, and you know how much he…”
“Mum, I get it, it’s fine,” Jayden said, and it was. He wasn’t Dad’s kid, it was obvious just to look at them. It was fair enough if Dad wanted one of his own, really, it was just…Jayden hadn’t ever figured he did. “Is it…um…?”
“A baby, darling,” Mum said and laughed. “We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet. We didn’t want to. It’ll be a lovely surprise.”
“What do you want?” Jayden asked, thumbing through his contacts absently. He should call someone at university, to collect his assignment scores from the professors, and box up his room.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Mum said. “But between you and me,” she smiled, “I think maybe I’d just about prefer a girl. I’ve already got a boy, haven’t I?”
A nineteen-year-old ‘boy’, Jayden wanted to point out, but he didn’t. She seemed stupidly happy about the whole thing, more than he’d ever seen her, and if Mum and Dad wanted to have another baby then Jayden didn’t really care, it was just…a bit odd, to think of Dad as being broody, and Mum as being…
Well, she was acting a little bit like a newly-wed.
“How
’s he doing?” she asked, nodding her head towards the hall.
“He’s okay, I think,” Jayden said honestly. “They…help, Paul and Ethan. I mean, you know, they know he’s ill, and they were there even before me, so…you know, they don’t actively help, he doesn’t really talk to them about it, but, you know, he feels better when they’re around doing their thing.”
“Good,” she said and squeezed his arm with one soapy hand. “He’ll be all right, sweetheart. I know it’s hard, but he does love you, and I think being around you a little more will help him out of this.”
Jayden bit his lip. “I…” He should tell her now that he was thinking about dropping out of Cambridge. Because he knew Darren was better with him, and he was better with Darren too, and they didn’t do well apart but together they were amazing, and…
“Everything will work out,” Mum promised and flicked a tea towel at him. “Make yourself useful and dry up, darling. I’m going upstairs for a lie down. Boy or girl, your little sibling here is wearing me out before he or she even arrives!”
Jayden fingered the tea towel as she shuffled out and put it down before hitting dial on his phone. It was half twelve; she’d be at lunch, or just out of it, because she had a religious routine, and…
“Jayden!” Ella’s voice rang loud and clear down the line. “Jayden, where are you? You just wandered out of breakfast and didn’t come back, and Becky in my criminal justice study group says she saw you leave with a bag in Ophelia’s car, and…”
“Leah,” Jayden corrected automatically and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Um, something came up and I had to go, Ella. I’m actually calling to…”
“What kind of a something? Is it your family?”
“Um, it’s, it’s Darren, actually, he, um…”
“Oh.” And her tone abruptly changed. “Really, Jayden? We have exams in like four weeks, and I know you haven’t finished your paper for that American literature class you were taking with Sophia, and…”
The Devil's Trill Sonata Page 24