Rhapsody on a Theme

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Tell me,” he whispered.

  “Fine, Jesus,” Darren caved; Jayden shifted off his lap, ‘accidentally’ brushing his hand over the front of Darren’s jeans. Darren’s much-tighter-than-they-were-at-the-station jeans. Darren scowled at him, the effect kind of lost between the swollen mouth and the ruffled hair, and swung his legs gingerly off the bed. He’d dropped his bag by the door, and Jayden watched from the bed as he rummaged through it before producing an envelope and returning, handing it to Jayden and toeing off his shoes to sit cross-legged by the pillow, looking laughably lanky on the narrow single bed.

  “A card? That’s it?”

  “Open it,” Darren said, extending a leg to prod Jayden with his foot.

  Jayden tore into the envelope, finding the usual poor-sense-of-humour card that Darren got him (this one, appropriately, involved a sulky-looking little girl in a party hat on the front) and a piece of paper folded up inside.

  “What are you doing?” Jayden asked suspiciously.

  “Just open it.”

  Jayden dropped the card into his lap and unfolded the piece of paper. Darren’s small, spidery handwriting covered it in wonky lines, and Jayden smoothed it out over his knees to read properly.

  Jayden:

  So I’m guessing we don’t have long before the new doctor and the next round of Medicating The Madman…

  “You’re not mad, Darren, stop it.”

  “Read, don’t give a running commentary. I know what it says.”

  …and we both know apparently my dick isn’t too keen on the anti-ds. So this is a double present. 1) It is a voucher, for sex, redeemable for wherever and however you want it. And by however I mean who takes it, not some weird kinky fantasy! And 2) the proper present part. It can also be redeemed (at the same time or again) for sex without a condom. I know you’ve wanted to try it without for ages, so, merry crimbo and whathaveyou.

  Love you,

  Darren.

  Jayden stared, smoothed it, re-read it, stared some more, then dropped it to push Darren back into the mattress and settle over him, staring at that calm, open face. He looked sincere, and it was bizarre because…because it was this. “Really?” he said.

  “Mhmm.”

  “You’d really…you’d be okay with it? Without protection?”

  “Well, it’s you,” Darren said simply, draping his huge hands around Jayden’s waist and tracing patterns into his jumper with his thumbs. Idle and relaxed. Trusting. “I figure I can trust you. It’s been a while.”

  Jayden laughed. “Yes, but that’s not why you don’t want to.”

  Darren shrugged. “Maybe I need to get over myself.”

  Jayden smiled again almost nervously and kissed him gently. Technically, he supposed, they’d done it once without, but he had taken it, and he’d kind of liked it. It was messy, but he’d liked the closeness of it. But Darren’s one and only experience with it had been when the condom broke that one time, and he’d hated the feel of that, he’d been really grossed out and for ages, Jayden hadn’t had the nerve to ask him to try it bareback. Darren wouldn’t have wanted to, he figured, and maybe it was better to give him the time.

  But the time hadn’t worked. When he’d finally gotten curious enough to ask, Darren hadn’t wanted to. It felt wrong, he had decided, and he would do it to Jayden if Jayden really wanted him to, but no way otherwise. Jayden hadn’t been able to change his mind, not with all his arsenal of wheedling and begging and bribery, and in the face of Darren’s disgusted vehemence, he hadn’t had the heart to try too hard anyway. So this…

  This was…

  “You’d…really, though?”

  “Really. You might not ever get another one of those vouchers, so look after it.”

  Jayden kissed him again, mouthing gently around the edges of his lips, before pulling back just a little and saying, “I love you, you know. I really, really love you.”

  “I know, right? No condoms and everything.”

  Jayden laughed, pressing his nose into Darren’s cheek and kissing the faint traces of stubble coming through after a long day. “I’ll redeem my voucher later. Right now, I want you and me and no vouchers, just…you know, us, like we always are, and always should be, and…”

  Darren’s arms locked around his back and he was twisted to the side—and there they lay, in a pool of dying December light, joined at the mouth and exploring in a slow and idle way that was not really going anywhere, and for a brief moment, perfectly content with their own tiny corner of the world, until Mum called for dinner and the spell quietly died away.

  Chapter 2

  “Mum!” Jayden called from the hall as Darren shrugged into his leather jacket. “We’re off!”

  “Stay safe, darling!” she yelled back. She was upstairs putting Rosie to bed; Jayden shut the door behind them before Rosie could kick off that they were going out without her, and slid his gloved hand through Darren’s at the gate.

  “So how was the secondment?” he asked.

  Darren swung their joined hands lightly. “Pretty good,” he decided eventually. “The work was heavy, but it was pretty good, all things considered. And I’m not going to complain about free room and board in London. Missed you, though.”

  Jayden smiled at the icy pavement and squeezed the caught hand. “But you were good,” he said gently. “I mean, you were doing really well, when you think about it.” The secondment had been offered to only a few of the crime scene officers, and Darren had been eager to go, even as Jayden had been afraid to let him. The force had offered it in the dreary summer; at the same time, Darren had been taken off his antidepressants, and Jayden had been worried sick about the upheaval in case it triggered one of his episodes. A bad one. A really bad one.

  But they’d been lucky.

  “Not looking forward to the new doctor,” Darren admitted quietly.

  “We’ll be fine,” Jayden reassured him and let go of his hand as they reached the main road, putting his own back in his coat pocket. “Especially now you’ll be back in the house and I can keep an eye on you.”

  “That sounded distinctly like a threat.”

  “It is,” Jayden confirmed, and Darren groaned. “Oh, shut up. You’ll love it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You will. And,” Jayden bumped their shoulders, “you never know when I might redeem those sex vouchers.”

  Darren snorted as they crossed the road towards the bus stops that marked the edge of the town centre. There were a few people about, but not too many. It was a Friday night, but still early: Jayden had voted for having a few drinks in The Queen’s Head, maybe a game of pool if Darren’s shoulder was up to it, maybe the quiz machine if not, and then wandering home with food from the chippie in Market Square afterwards. Mum had fed them (apparently she agreed with Jayden that Darren had obviously lost a bit of weight in London) but there was always room for chippie food. (Darren was a dustbin anyway, so if Jayden couldn’t finish the chippie food, he could pass it off. Waste not, want not.) More than anything, Jayden just wanted a little time to be them, alone, before settling in for Christmas with his family, and then New Year with Rachel.

  “Knowing you, at the most inconvenient time possible,” Darren opined; Jayden laughed.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe next time you decide drip-drying around the house with nothing on is a good idea. I mean, come on, you do know Rachel is this close to guessing your measurements, right?”

  “Depends what she’s measuring.”

  “Darren!”

  “Anyway, it changes when it’s…”

  “Darren!”

  Darren chuckled as they reached the pub door. Jayden pulled his ID from his back pocket as they approached the bar—he always got checked, and it was getting embarrassing—but Darren waved it away. “My round,” he said simply. Jayden squeezed his elbow lightly and smiled.

  “You might be earning points here,” he said. “Maybe. I mean, maybe not, depends if you let me win at pool or not, b
ut you might be.”

  “What if I buy the takeaway too?”

  “Oh, that’s worth, like, a hundred points. Maybe even two hundred.”

  “What are these points worth, exactly?”

  “We can work out a conversion rate on the way home,” Jayden said loftily as Darren passed him a bottle of pear cider and handed off a tenner to the barman. “And what I’m supposed to do with you when we get back on Sunday, because Rachel said she’ll probably still be out when we get back, so…”

  “I can think of a few things,” Darren said with a smirk and held out his pint of lager. “Merry Christmas.”

  “And you, I suppose,” Jayden said, clinking their drinks together. He had a sip, then frowned at Darren’s glass. “How many are you going to have?”

  “Only two.” Jayden was wary of Darren drinking too much. Alcohol was a depressant, and he couldn’t imagine it would do Darren’s mental health any favours. But getting him to give up entirely would probably be overkill, especially as Darren didn’t actually go weird on alcohol as a general rule, so they’d settled on a kind of low-level compromise—that Darren was only to drink socially, and not much when he did. Darren had pulled a lot of faces and complained when Jayden had issued the orders, but hadn’t been too bad. In general, he was reasonable.

  More importantly, he hadn’t been too ill since then either. That had been in June, right after he’d come off the antidepressants that had messed him around so badly, and Jayden was hoping that the good streak was going to last. But then, it might just have been that the last three months in London had had him too busy, or busy enough that he could hide it easier. Maybe. He was good at hiding it, when he really wanted to. Worryingly good.

  But it wasn’t worth thinking about now. Now was Christmas and tacky decorations and Rosie and having a headache by two in the afternoon and maybe sneaking Darren off upstairs again for ‘a game’ in Jayden’s room. Jayden might try and tell Rosie that ‘necking’ was a vampire game too, it had worked on Misha when they were teenagers. Or maybe Darren would invent some other excuse for her, and Jayden would try not to laugh, and Dad would make a snide comment when he heard about it and Mum would hit him for being scandalous…

  Now was for family and celebration and being happy and sleeping wound around each other as tightly as possible in Jayden’s tiny bed.

  Now wasn’t for depression.

  “Game of pool?” he asked, nodding towards the tables, and Darren shrugged, one shoulder higher than the other.

  “Go on, then,” he said, and Jayden watched him set up, left arm still slightly awkward, hair burning almost copper in the warm pub light. Jayden felt like he was in a more-than-good place, eyeing Darren’s long legs and narrow hips in baggy jeans, his broad shoulders and leather jacket, his wild hair and the glasses that had become permanent last Christmas instead of fleeting.

  Jayden felt lucky.

  * * * *

  It was half past midnight when they turned into Attlee Road: dark, icy cold, and spinning loosely underneath their shoes. Darren’s arm was warm around Jayden’s waist, the leather too cool, and two drinks had turned into five each (Jayden suspected Darren had snuck in a sixth when he wasn’t paying attention) and a pool tournament with a couple of guys who had turned up at around eight that had gone to St. John’s as well. Jayden couldn’t remember the names, but the faces had been familiar, and Darren had recalled some inside jokes with them, and it had been nice to be able to remember school without the bad bits attached. To remember school after Darren had come along, after Jayden had left Woodbourne, after everything.

  But before going to Cambridge.

  “You weren’t as heavy at school,” Jayden accused as he unlatched the gate; Darren simply smiled and pushed him up against the front door for a messy kiss, open-mouthed and lax, barely missing the knocker. “Oh my God, you’re unbelievable,” Jayden whispered into his mouth, fizzy and tart from the mixture of cider and lager, and laughed lightly when Darren pinched him through his coat. “That’s not going to work.”

  “Shame, might shut you up,” Darren muttered, and Jayden pulled his hair.

  “God, you’re a mess.”

  “You love me anyway.”

  “I do,” Jayden agreed, kissing the side of his mouth. Darren hummed, his eyes closing. They had looked cat-like under the orange streetlights of the main road, and Jayden kissed an eyelid hoping they would open again. They didn’t. He kissed the bridge of his nose instead. “Always love you, you know that, even when you’re being a drunk tosser.”

  “Mm, maybe I do.”

  “You do.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Darren said and worked cold hands under Jayden’s coat.

  “Shit!”

  “Chilly?”

  “Yes. And ssh. We can’t wake Rosie up.”

  “You’re being noisy, not me,” Darren murmured, kissing him again, loose and messy and gorgeous and half-hard in his cold jeans, and Jayden wanted so badly to be able to say to hell with it and break into the garage and just…just fuck, right there.

  Only he didn’t have garage keys, and it was really cold, and Dad would go mental if they got anything on his car, and Darren was always ready because he was a bit of a clean freak when it came to personal hygiene but Jayden was pretty sure he hadn’t taken lubricant to the pub, for God’s sake, and Jayden definitely didn’t have a condom, so…

  “Ssh,” he whispered again and smiled, peeling Darren’s mouth away from his neck.

  Darren exaggeratedly placed a finger on his lips, and Jayden chuckled as he was finally allowed to unlock the front door and let them in. He wasn’t allowed very far inside before a hand was in the back of his jeans, though, and he hooked the chain over blindly as Darren pushed him back into the door and shifted close enough that no air could get between them, mouth over Jayden’s and a thigh sliding between his knees.

  “Oh, is that what you’re after?” Jayden whispered sarcastically into that fizzy mouth, and Darren pushed large, insistent hands into his coat and under his shirt, reaching his nipple and pinching it expertly between finger and thumb, a spark of pure, hot pleasure bolting from chest to spine to dick. Jayden groaned, muted it, and hissed into Darren’s mouth. “Promises. Mm, maybe. Upstairs, come on, ssh.”

  He had to lead Darren by the hand, to stop him from trying for the living room sofa (a favourite of his at Jayden’s student flat in Bristol, or the old flat in Southampton, mostly because in Southampton it had horrified Rachel, and in Bristol it had been the comfiest surface in the whole flat). The lights were all out upstairs, but Rosie’s bedroom door was propped ajar, so Jayden shut his entirely, crowding Darren towards the bed and persuading him, through kisses and interrupted touches, to take his coat and shoes off before letting anything develop further.

  “You’re impossible,” he whispered; Darren smiled into his neck and twisted Jayden down onto the bed in reply. “And stubborn, oh my God.”

  “I want to show you something,” came the quiet reply.

  “Already seen it.”

  “Something else,” Darren murmured, wriggling out of his jeans and popping the button on Jayden’s. Jayden held his hand in place for a moment, rubbing up into his fingers enticingly and enjoying the sparks of pure want that Darren’s touch always elicited, before letting Darren finish the job and pull the denim off.

  “What, then?”

  “This, see,” Darren whispered, slurring a little from the alcohol, and he reached clumsily to switch on the bedside lamp, teetering dangerously at the edge of the bed before sitting back on Jayden’s hips, the pressure over his crotch enticing, and taking off his shirt, stretching like a professional porn star in the process. The flex of his abs and chest was distracting, and Jayden slid open palms up that hard stomach before his eyes found the change and he stilled.

  “What’s…?”

  The scar tissue from the stabbing had gone—or rather, it had been painted over. Inked over. Black ink was stark on Darren’s white skin and in the gentl
e glow of the lamp. More specifically, black notes. A short reel of sheet music, rolling from the treble clef tattooed on the very top of his left arm, over the top of his shoulder and down towards his pectoral muscle, the staff lines looping and whirling but perfectly parallel, the dark notes themselves shimmying over his skin almost delicately. It was pretty in its simplicity, and strange in its choice. Even through the alcohol, Jayden knew this was…special. Somehow.

  “You…” Jayden blinked and lightly touched a finger to them. He could feel the harsh edges of the staff lines, narrow and almost knifed in, and the soft blur of ink on the notes, like polish or a wax crayon, distinctly different to the feel of Darren’s skin. “When did you…?”

  “Two weeks ago,” Darren murmured, folding a hand over Jayden’s on his bare shoulder. Jayden could still feel the rough scar tissue, the thickened stretch of it, but it was completely dominated by the music. The tattoo felt almost alive, in the feel of it under his fingers and the heat of it from Darren’s skin, somehow more intense along the lines.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a piece from the Devil’s Trill Sonata,” Darren said quietly. Jayden pushed his hand aside to sit up a little and peer at the tattoo closer, almost plucking at the notes, trying to read them when he’d never learned how to. “A few of the trills themselves.”

  “…Why?” Jayden whispered eventually.

  “To remind me I’m not dreaming anymore.”

  Something in his tone made Jayden glance up into his face, and when he did, those green eyes were intense and sharply focused, the alcohol barely there. Jayden’s breath caught; he heard Darren’s message, heard the weight in his words, and reached, sliding his hand back over the tattoo and around Darren’s neck to pull him down into a kiss as pure as it was hungry, as if something inside him was reaching for something inside Darren, yearning for him in some way more intense than just sex, more desperate than just the physical.