“Yeah, well, we don’t want to get married,” Jayden said and grinned. “But Darren’s best friend from school—well, one of them—is getting married to some girl he met last summer, and I can’t wait to watch this car crash of a wedding.” Maybe it was uncharitable but…but who cared? It would be, because Ethan was the last person who should be marrying anyone, and Jayden couldn’t wait to see what the fabled ugly Lillian was like.
“That’s brilliant,” Gina said, snapping her fingers and retreating to her desk again. “Are you going to have kids, once you get married in like one year?”
“No, and we won’t!” Jayden said, not sure which part applied to which implication.
“You will!” she sang. “I’ve seen you snogging in the car park! You don’t want to let a man like that get away, Jayden; get him married!”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Jayden said loftily.
“Mm,” Gina said and winked. “Just saying. If you don’t want him, I’ll have him for when mine’s got his business trips to London.”
“Hands off,” Jayden said tartly, throwing a crumpled-up Post-It note at her, and she dodged it, giggling. “And anyway, I don’t want kids, with Darren or anybody else. I don’t even like kids.” Neither did Darren, albeit he was at least comfortable with them. Jayden was barely used to his own sister. He just felt awkward and nervous around kids; Darren was just generally bored by them.
“Missing out,” Gina said. “I want a football team of kids. Beth is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Jayden’s phone buzzed. “I don’t even like spending a week at my mum’s anymore in case my little sister decides she likes me again,” he said, flipping it open.
“Boyfriend?”
“You’re scary,” he said, opening Darren’s text.
“It’s the way your face softens when he texts you,” she said, then added harshly: “Plus, he’s like the only person who does.” That was a lie—Jayden was still in contact with Leah and Tim, they were just both abroad at the minute, and there were a couple of people from Bristol he still talked to. Rachel just didn’t text much. And Paul and Ethan tended to bother Darren, not him.
…Okay, so maybe she had a point.
“What’s he say?”
Jayden shrugged. “Not much.” Meet me @ gym @ 9.30? my round @ chippie :) x. A fairly average invite on Darren’s boxing days. “Anyway, he’s not the only person who texts me.”
“No, but…”
He opened the blog site and reviewed the comments from the last post, letting the debate wash around his work. It was such low-level, unimportant, never-going-to-change-the-world-or-make-him-famous stuff, but…
But he kind of liked it here.
* * * *
Jayden was sitting on the wall when Darren left the gym.
Grangefields Boxing Gym was in a converted warehouse in the industrial estate maybe a mile west of where they lived. Unless he got out of work especially late, Darren tended to drive home, change, and jog to the classes. Sometimes Jayden met him after class and they went home via their favourite chippie, and sometimes Darren jogged home too, or caught a lift off Mike, one of the other regulars. Sometimes he did none of that, and drove.
It was a chilly night, and Jayden was banging the heels of his trainers off the wall. He didn’t climb down when Darren came out, instead giving him a dirty look and prodding him in the chest with a toe, probably silently protesting the cold. Not Darren’s fault. So Darren grinned, catching the ankle and squeezing it.
“Fish and chips?” he offered.
“It had better be a damn big portion,” Jayden threatened.
“I promised, didn’t I?” Darren said, and Jayden jumped down. The absence of anyone else in the little yard used as a car park let Jayden press a cold kiss to his mouth briefly before stepping away and offering a gloved hand to hold.
“Why, though?”
Darren rolled his eyes. “You’re so suspicious.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well,” Darren fumbled his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and handed it over, “the IM with Ethan.” It had been conducted while he’d been writing up a scene report at work, and outed him as a (rusty) pianist to Archie, his immediate boss, who’d just about laughed himself sick at the idea of Darren ‘poncing about in one o’ them concerts, like!’ The whole team seemed to find it either funny, or outright ridiculous. Darren supposed it didn’t quite fit with his image anymore.
Jayden quieted while he scrolled through it, and Darren fought the urge to hunch in on himself. Don’t get defensive, he told himself. It’s not a bad thing, and you can always say no. There’s no shame in saying no.
“Oh,” Jayden said. “He wants you to play at the wedding?”
“Ceremony and reception,” Darren agreed.
“Oh,” Jayden repeated. “Um. Can you?”
“You don’t lose music, Jayden, it just gets a bit crappier,” Darren said, and Jayden laughed a little. When Darren glanced aside, there was an anxious pinch around the corners of Jayden’s eyes.
“I suppose what I meant is, should you?”
Darren exhaled. A mist formed briefly, and he frowned at the blips of orange the streetlights made against the late December sky. “It’s piano,” he said, which was first and foremost the biggest consideration. Piano had never…never fucked him up the way the violin could. But then, he hadn’t played—properly played—either instrument since the stabbing. He’d never returned to classical music, or performing. And the depression had not been at its worst when he’d been a teenager, when he’d last tried piano.
But then, the worst had been three, four years ago now too.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.
Jayden squeezed his hand.
After a pause, Darren decided upon, “Piano didn’t used to trigger me, but then the violin didn’t always trigger me either. But now…”
“Now you can’t even listen to a string orchestra on the car radio,” Jayden murmured softly, and his face was soft and worried in the gloom.
“Yeah,” Darren said and ruthlessly crushed the swell of bitterness at how pathetic it had all become.
“Stop it,” Jayden whispered gently, pulling them to a halt under one of the streetlamps on the approach to the main road and the run of shops that included the chippie. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Thinking bad things,” Jayden said vaguely and shook his head. “You get this…this expression when you’re self-recriminating, you know. I know when you do it. So stop it.”
Darren shook off the angry retort—the counselling was good for some things, he supposed—and took the scolding for what it was. Someone who fucking well cared, and there were precious few of those people in his life to start with. “Love you,” he said, sounding more like Jayden than himself for a moment, and Jayden curled a hand into the strap of his backpack and kissed him gently.
“I know,” Jayden said softly, his breath warm on Darren’s face, and he stepped back with a funny look in his eye. Something dubious. “How about this?” he offered. “Tell Ethan you’ll think about playing for his wedding, and…and try it out at home on Rachel’s? I mean, I got the idea from those texts he wants you to compose something too, so just…play at home, when me and Rachel are there, and maybe it’ll be fine. We can look out for you. You don’t have to play Vivaldi or…”
“Vivaldi’s not for the piano,” Darren interrupted.
“Oh shut up, you music nerd,” Jayden sniped. “I’m just saying, that way, if you get set off, then you’re…home. With us. With me.”
Darren heard the unspoken safe, and the implication that he wasn’t to be trusted on his own, and sometimes it pissed him off because he wasn’t a fucking child, but…at that moment, it didn’t. Right then, it seemed like the right thing. The right decision. Like the support he knew Jayden was trying to offer.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll…I’ll try that.”
Jayden smiled, dark eyes flicker
ing over Darren’s face, as though reading a book he half-remembered and piecing together the things he’d let slip by before.
“What?” Darren asked when he made no move towards the road and the chippie, the smell of greasy food drifting down the slope towards them.
“Just…” Jayden took a deep breath. “Promise me you’ll let me in,” he said in a rush of words and misty breath in the cold night. “Promise you won’t lock me out of how you feel about the whole thing?”
Darren squeezed his hand. “Promise,” he said.
Chapter 7
Darren had seemed a little quiet—not off, exactly, but definitely quiet—that evening, and Jayden kept watch, but he seemed to ignore the piano for the rest of the week. He did start playing piano music on his laptop in the evenings a little, but four or five minute stuff, not huge movements, and it was interspersed with other instrumentals from bands Darren liked anyway.
So Jayden kept watch, but nothing seemed to happen. The week rolled by in its usual way—evenings with Rachel, one evening with the drama society, waking up now and then to Darren creeping into bed (he was on late shifts) and waking up half an hour early so he could lie there and toy with Darren’s insane hair while he slept and just appreciate the weight and warmth of him for a little bit before having to leave him and go in to the office.
On Saturday morning, though, he woke up to piano music. Live piano music, only something was badly wrong with it, and upon ungluing one eye, Jayden worked out why. Namely, Darren was still in bed, sprawled face-down in a fairly good imitation of a corpse, and the piano music was absolutely terrible.
Rachel, the voice in his head supplied, and Jayden groaned, putting the pillow briefly over his face before sitting up, leaning over Darren to switch off his alarm, and kissing the exposed ear. “Darren,” he murmured. “It’s half nine.”
Darren grumbled and turned his face into the sheets.
“Come on,” Jayden coaxed, stroking his curls aside and kissing him again. He was fiercely hot—always was when he slept, it was like hugging a freshly made hot-water-bottle at night—and Jayden wriggled until they were pressed chest-to-back and he could leech off some of the heat. “Darren. Rachel’s abusing the piano.”
Darren mumbled something that might have been, “So?”
“I’ll make breakfast,” Jayden wheedled. “Porridge and honey.”
Darren groaned, long and loud, and turned entirely on his front. Jayden followed, resting his cheek against Darren’s shoulder blade and stroking his spine with light fingers, not sure whether to entice him into something, or leave it for later when he was properly awake and would actually contribute.
“With extra honey,” he bargained.
Darren dislodged him. The movement was sudden as he pushed himself up off the mattress, shaking Jayden off, and the moment that Jayden was on his back, Darren settled over him and bit him. Sharply. On the neck.
“Jesus!” Jayden hissed, half-aroused and half-annoyed, an explosion of lust in his blood so sudden that it died almost instantly afterwards as well. “What was that for?”
“Leave me alone,” Darren insisted, green eyes bleary, and dropped himself on Jayden’s chest, tucking his nose against the fresh bite and settling. He breathed deep, one long inhale, and then a wash of warm air flooded over Jayden’s skin.
“But Rachel’s murdering the piano,” Jayden whined, stroking his fingers up the arm now draped over his chest.
“That’s not my problem,” Darren muttered. Jayden pulled a curl around his fingers and twisted his head to kiss the hair. “Leave me alone. I got in at two o’clock this morning!”
“I know,” Jayden murmured lowly, almost whispering. “But I want some time with you. It’s New Year’s Day.”
“Watch me give not a single flying fuck,” Darren growled.
“You could give me a fuck,” Jayden suggested, and Darren snorted. Victory, Jayden thought, as he felt the smile against his neck. Genuinely sleepy Darren was grumpy. He didn’t smile.
“Maybe later. Right now, sleep.”
“You’ve had seven hours. And a half.”
“And I could happily do with three more. The half too.”
“Darren,” Jayden wheedled hopefully.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. Especially not after I make porridge and honey.”
“I am actually capable of doing that myself, at noon, when I wake up.”
“You are awake.”
“Fuck off,” Darren groaned, and put a pillow over his head. Jayden pushed it away and laughed when he pulled it right back. He prodded a finger into Darren’s ribs, and received a disgruntled squirm. “And tell Rachel to shut the fuck up as well. How the hell can we hear it up here?”
Jayden shrugged. Darren shifted unhappily against his shoulder.
“Fuck you,” Darren said decidedly and threw the pillow across their room. He winced halfway through the motion, his shoulder giving, and Jayden caught the arm before it fell and began to massage the scar tissue and tattoo.
“Idiot,” he said fondly.
“Fuck off,” Darren mumbled. “I’m bloody awake now. Arsehole.”
“So…about that fuck?”
“When did you get vulgar?” Darren demanded, wrestling his way out of the sheets and standing. He was wearing his boxers and nothing else; Jayden admired the view, but really, in spite of the teasing, didn’t feel like it. He’d never been one for morning sex himself. There was just…bad breath and uncleanliness and everything. Sometimes he pounced Darren in the morning, but usually after Jayden himself was up and moving anyway.
“Want breakfast?”
“Duh.”
Jayden stood on the mattress to catch Darren’s head and kiss him soundly before jumping down and heading downstairs. He slept in pyjamas, unlike some hedonists, but then Darren was also okay with wandering around naked in their house, so maybe it worked out the same.
Darren disappeared into the bathroom, judging by where the footsteps went; Jayden followed the awful noise downstairs, and found Rachel in her baggiest jumper and oldest jeans at the piano bench, banging on the keys with her right hand, and holding a beginner’s instruction book in the other. Whatever she was trying to play was lost in the incompetence.
“You woke us up,” Jayden scolded, wandering into the kitchen to rummage up the promised porridge and honey. (Darren was vile if he wasn’t fed pretty promptly after getting up.)
“You mean I woke you up, and you woke your boyfriend up,” she called after him, pausing in the key-smashing long enough to speak. “Don’t blame me for him!”
Jayden rolled his eyes, setting the honey jar on the counter, along with Darren’s blister pack of painkillers. His shoulder had felt very knotted and tight, and he’d been grumpy even for him. Jayden knew pain when he saw it, and when it got that bad, there was no massage in the world that was going to cure it.
“What are you doing anyway?” he asked when Rachel abandoned the piano and wandered into the kitchen. It wasn’t really big enough for much wandering, but she sat on top of the washing machine. Her cat was face-down in a food bowl on the floor, and ignored the pair of them.
“D’you think Darren would teach me the piano?” she asked instead of answering his question.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Kids like a teacher who can play. Like, their favourite songs and stuff. And loads of the other teachers play instruments. I just want to know how to do stuff like, you know, lullabies and hymns and stuff. And Tony plays but I don’t want to ask him, I’ll look stupid.”
“He’s your boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but I’ll look stupid, so would Darren do it instead?”
“You’d have to ask him,” Jayden said awkwardly, feeling cautious. He didn’t know. He’d never seen Darren teach anyone anything. He’d never had an interest in learning himself, and Darren had never had an interest in showing him. Jayden didn’t even understand him when he talked music, and there was something ev
er so slightly sexy about that, so Jayden had never tried to understand.
“I dunno,” Rachel said, kicking her heels. “You don’t think it would, you know. Upset him?”
Jayden blinked. “Um.”
“He just gets weird when he hears violins,” Rachel clarified, and Jayden was a little startled she’d noticed. He supposed she would have done, but he just forgot sometimes how perceptive Rachel was under her general flakiness. “You think he’d be okay to teach me?”
“Well, he’s not going to teach you Chopin and stuff, so maybe,” Jayden hedged. “I really don’t know, Rach. I mean, Ethan asked him to play at the wedding so he’s going to start having a go again, you know, here where we can look out for him, so maybe if you combined your lessons into that, maybe…I don’t know. It might even help. Keep his mind off the classical stuff.”
She chewed on her sleeve thoughtfully and nodded.
“I’ll ask,” she said and brightened up. “Make some porridge for me too?”
“Fine, Jesus,” Jayden grumbled, topping up the pan as the shower shut off. A moment later, the bathroom door opened and Darren padded back up into the attic. “Let him wake up a bit first,” he advised. “He was grumpy, and I think his shoulder’s acting up.”
Rachel rolled her eyes and retreated out of the kitchen again. She bounded away up the stairs—Jayden hoped just to get changed—and left him to make breakfast. The porridge was beginning to bubble lightly, and he rummaged for bowls and spoons. The cat meowed, decided porridge didn’t smell like bacon after all, and whined to be let out. Jayden locked the door just in time to hear the footsteps on the stairs, and then Darren appeared—in jeans and his glasses and nothing else, because the man seemed to not believe in clothes sometimes—just as Jayden emptied out the pan. Wordlessly, he popped out a painkiller and knocked it back with a glass of orange juice like a pro.
“Feeling okay?” Jayden asked, adding a generous amount of honey to Darren’s bowl and pushing it along the counter towards him.
“Mm,” Darren said. “Had to heft a lot of evidence out of the scene last night. Went into overtime, though, so this month’s pay slip is going to be good.”
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