Rhapsody on a Theme

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Same day,” Darren corrected casually.

  “Yeah, don’t put coffee in Jayden’s hair, Daz gets dead defensive,” Paul advised wisely. Lillian’s eyes widened.

  “Someone poured coffee in your hair?!”

  Jayden flushed hotly. “That was a long time ago,” he said primly, kicking Paul under the table again. “A very long time ago, and it’s ancient history. Look, let’s not talk about us? What about you and Ethan?”

  She blushed prettily. “Um, on the London Underground, actually.” Her accent was somewhere closer to Cambridgeshire; Jayden remembered that particular way of saying actually. “I tripped and threw my portfolio all over the place and he stopped to help me and, well, I thought he was just lovely and just kind of handsome and offered to buy him a coffee and here we are.”

  Paul sniggered. “Kind of handsome?”

  Ethan hit him.

  “Haven’t you been together since June?” Darren pressed.

  “April,” Ethan said. He was grinning like he’d had a lobotomy, and Jayden reflected with horror that he’d probably looked the same at sixteen, watching Darren play. He shook himself. “But when you know, you know. Right Daz?”

  “If you say so,” Darren said, semi-diplomatically.

  “I know,” Ethan said firmly, and Lillian beamed at him. Paul made a gagging noise and suggested they order food.

  And Darren hadn’t been lying—Lillian went straight for the salads.

  * * * *

  “She’s nice,” Jayden said in the lift up to the hotel room.

  “Lillian?”

  “Mm.”

  “I guess so.”

  “They suit each other,” Jayden said decidedly. They did—Lillian had the same kind of fluffy cheerfulness as Ethan, the same slightly sweet naivety, but a slightly stronger undercoat of steel. Sweet and nervous, perhaps, but also bossy with her new fiancé. She ran him, it was quite obvious, and Jayden had always secretly thought that Ethan and Darren had that in common: they needed a bit of bossing about. They thrived that way.

  “Well, she’s not his usual type, so maybe there’s something in it.”

  “What’s his usual type?” Jayden asked curiously, swiping the key-card and opening the door. He’d never seen Ethan with a girlfriend before. There hadn’t been any when they’d been at school, and there’d only been the odd mention of a variety of names in university. Plus his gay experience…well, Jayden wouldn’t have been too surprised if Lillian had actually turned out to be a man.

  “Pretty,” Darren said. “Very, very pretty. He likes bimbos with big tits, so there must be something about Lillian to override his shallow gene.”

  “I don’t think there’s a shallow gene,” Jayden said, bouncing down onto the bed. It was the stupidly puffed-up type, and he sank a good half-foot.

  “If there is, he has it,” Darren said, kicking off his shoes and crawling up the bed to settle into the pillows on his side. Jayden watched, and when Darren relaxed and stilled, inched up to slide his glasses off carefully and sink into the sheets beside him.

  “You all right?” he murmured.

  “Mm.”

  “…Darren…”

  Darren sighed. “I don’t know. I feel tired.”

  “Bad tired?”

  “…Maybe.”

  Jayden’s gut clenched, and he stroked a finger lightly down Darren’s jaw. The stubble was beginning to show, dark and framing that narrow face. It made him look older, and usually Jayden kind of liked it, but suddenly it was making him look worn. “Room service snacks and a film?” he suggested. His early tactics in dealing with the depressive episodes had turned into a comfort thing. It made him feel better if they cuddled up and ignored a film, and he liked to think it made Darren feel better too.

  “Okay,” Darren said and rubbed a hand down Jayden’s raised arm. “It might be nothing.”

  “I fancy a film anyway,” Jayden said, and Darren smiled faintly. “You know…you do know, if it is an episode starting up, then…you know, that’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but it is. I mean, you know, it’s not your fault and I’m not, you know, I’m not going to get upset with you, and I know I’ve been a bit harsh about the counselling and the pills and getting you treated, but…”

  “I know,” Darren interrupted, sliding his arm over Jayden’s chest. It was his left, and the angle made the fingers loose and clumsy. Jayden caught the wrist and held it there. “Just stick something on.”

  He’d never say it, but Jayden heard the silent request to just put some background noise on and let Darren cling for a little bit, and he decided to forgo the snacks and skip straight ahead to the contact. Darren wouldn’t be interested in food if this was an episode, and they’d already eaten anyway, and…

  Jayden reached for the remote and swallowed against the heavy dread in his throat.

  Chapter 12

  Darren knew his optimism was unwarranted when they reached London Waterloo train station on Sunday morning, and the noisy chaos sounded as though it were coming from underwater. Thick, unwieldy, and not altogether there. He felt almost dizzy—or rather, detached to the point that he felt adrift enough to mistake it for dizzy. As though every step sent him reeling, his eyes fractionally out of focus and his feet slipping on a non-slip floor. Like watching the footage from a camera with which someone had been running, jerky and disjointed. He snapped his fingers absently and couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t hear it.

  This wasn’t a maybe.

  He took a deep breath, and let Jayden guide him through the station, almost as though he were blind or drunk. Darren hated this loss of functionality—hated the way he became so utterly useless—but he steered his focus away from the self-recrimination and back on to the tapping and snapping of his fingers and hands, trying to generate some kind of a response. He was trying to stop having a go at himself for this, but it was so fucking hard because it was pathetic, whatever the counsellors and the doctors and Jayden said. How could a fucking chemical imbalance reduce him to…to…

  “This is an episode, isn’t it?” Jayden asked lowly as the train pulled away from the station, and London began to bleed away behind them.

  “Yes,” Darren said. He felt exhausted, and the gentle rocking motion of the train was lulling. Tempting. Even though it really shouldn’t be, because he shouldn’t be so tired, not so soon after having slept so deeply. Why should he feel so shattered? He’d had nine hours already.

  Jayden bit his lip, that anxious pinch around his eyes again that Darren didn’t like, and slid an arm around his waist, coaxing Darren to use his shoulder as a pillow. “You can sleep if you want to,” he said quietly, and Darren settled into him. He felt as though he’d been encased in rubber and wanted to lash out. Simultaneously, he wanted to sleep and never wake up. It would be so much easier, so much less draining, and Jayden’s shoulder was warm and solid and comforting, in a painful sort of way.

  “I’m so fucking tired,” he whispered, and his voice cracked harshly in the middle. Jayden kissed the top of his head without a sound, and his other arm came up until Darren was encased in a tight hug. Darren clung back.

  “I’ll call the doctor when we get home, and get you sorted out,” he promised lowly, squeezing tightly. “Don’t worry, okay? It’ll be okay. We’ll sort it out somehow, I promise.”

  Darren fisted a hand in Jayden’s jacket, turned his face into his shoulder, and took a shuddery breath. Don’t fucking cry, he told himself angrily. Don’t you dare fucking cry, you stupid, useless, pathetic…

  “I can hear that,” Jayden murmured lowly, stroking his hair. “Stop the self-abuse, Darren, please? I hate that part of this, so stop it. You’re ill, it’s not your fault, and we’re going to get it sorted out.”

  What if we can’t, Darren wanted to ask, but didn’t dare. He didn’t want to hear the answer to that—or, rather, he didn’t want to hear the silence when Jayden couldn’t come up with one.

  Eventually, he slept, but when Jayden woke him five minutes befo
re they reached their destination, he didn’t feel rested.

  He just felt fucking tired.

  * * * *

  “Jayden, sweetie,” Gina called when she reappeared on their floor, not ten minutes after leaving in the first place. She had had to go down to reception to sign for a package, and she looked puzzled when she re-materialised, box in hand. “I think your boyfriend’s in the car park.”

  Jayden frowned at the clock. It was half past four, and okay, Darren was working lates so he wasn’t going to the police station until six, but he never just showed up like this. There was usually a text barrage first, or a plan made earlier in the week. He didn’t just…turn up without a word. “You sure?” he asked.

  “Yeah, crazy hair and everything,” Gina said. She paused. “Is, you know. Everything all right? He looked a bit…I don’t know. Morose.”

  Jayden bit his lip, already logging out. The whole floor knew about Darren, mostly because he’d talked to Stephanie the minute he’d started about their situation. No job was getting in the way of Jayden being there if Darren needed him, and maybe it was the whole arty-people thing in the office, or maybe they were just collectively nice, but most of the office actually seemed to grasp that this was kind of a big deal. That when Darren was ill, he was really ill. So they left Jayden to it, and didn’t complain about his taking extra leave, and a lot of them even asked how Darren was doing, despite never having formally met him.

  “He was having an episode yesterday,” he said, gathering his things hastily. “I don’t know about today. He hasn’t texted me or anything, and I left him to sleep this morning, and we have the doctor tomorrow, but…”

  “Go on, then,” Gina waved at him. “I’ll keep an eye on your phone, and when Stephanie comes out of her meeting I’ll tell her what’s up. You know she won’t mind.”

  “Thanks, Gina!” he called over his shoulder, already halfway to the door, and he jogged down the stairs with a nervous tattoo hammering in his chest. Why was Darren here? He didn’t just show up like this, and certainly not in silence. He would have called. And he’d come early, Jayden still technically had an hour to go, so…

  Sure enough, Darren was visible from the lobby, sitting on the car park wall in his baggiest jeans and a large, dark, fleece jacket that Jayden vaguely remembered having been pinched from Scott last winter. He was hunched against the cold, and not looking towards the offices, sitting entirely and eerily still; when the door banged behind Jayden, that dark head turned.

  “What’s up?” Jayden called, crossing the tarmac quickly. Darren looked…well, windswept and cold, his cheeks and ears flushed and his hair messier than usual, but also blank in the face. Horribly blank.

  Empty.

  “Are you okay?” Jayden whispered, placing his hands on Darren’s knees. They were roughly level with his waist, and he rubbed his thumbs into the cold denim. “I mean, not that this isn’t nice, but…what are you doing here?”

  Darren shrugged.

  “Darren?”

  Darren shifted, placing his hands on the wall and sliding down. He remained pinned between Jayden and the brickwork, and slid both arms around Jayden’s waist to hug him tightly.

  “What’s up?” Jayden repeated softly, dragging his hands through that mad hair as Darren burrowed into his neck. “Why are you here? You should be getting ready for work.”

  “Called in sick.”

  “…That bad?” Jayden whispered. They had an appointment with the doctor tomorrow morning. He had pushed for Darren to try and take a half-shift to guarantee he wouldn’t be kept late and be unable to attend, but if he’d actually called in sick already…

  “I got…I nearly…”

  Jayden’s gut clenched. Hard. “You nearly what?”

  “I was making toast and I opened the cutlery drawer and I just ended up…staring at the knives. I just stared at them, and I wanted to…you know. Just for a minute, but…” He shrugged. Jayden clung hard. “I didn’t.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t.”

  Jayden let out a shaky, relieved breath, but made a mental note to double-check when they got home anyway.

  “I just figured…if I came here and waited for you…I’ve never done something that stupid in public before.”

  Jayden squeezed tightly. “How long have you been here?”

  “Couple of hours.”

  “Okay.” Jayden took a deep breath, pushing the anxiety down. It was like trying to walk off a trampoline; his footing kept slipping and making him stumble and the fear rise up again. He wanted to say a lot of things, but Darren was almost fragile like this, and Jayden rummaged for what he could say over what he should say. “Okay. Do you…I mean, do you want to go home, then? Or stay away from the house? What do you want?”

  Darren shrugged.

  “Darren?”

  “I want to know I can’t do that,” he muttered. “I want to know you’d stop me.”

  He didn’t mean it the way it sounded, Jayden was sure of that, but it hurt anyway. “I’d always stop you,” he whispered, wounded, then forced that away too. There was no use in getting hurt when Darren came out with things like that when he was having an episode. He wasn’t rational, so Jayden had to be. “Let’s go home, then, and hole up in our room and laze around and stuff. Yeah? Does that sound okay?”

  “Yeah,” Darren mumbled, but it took another couple of minutes before he let go, and Jayden was silently thankful that Darren seemed to have walked. Walking meant he had less access to dangerous things—the car itself, or the short distance to the coast and cliffsides, or various bridges around the Southampton and Portsmouth area, or even—God forbid—the level crossings. People always killed themselves on the level crossings, and Jayden lived in fear of them.

  But he was less grateful when he considered that walking from their home to the newspaper office was a long way, and would have taken Darren over a railway bridge that was locally famous for suicides. Jumpers. Straight down, nearly forty feet, and if the fall didn’t kill them…

  He clutched Darren’s sleeve as they crossed it and decided to take tomorrow off himself.

  * * * *

  Dr. Zielinski sat back from his desk, steepled his fingers in front of his face, and sighed. “Right,” he said.

  Jayden fidgeted. Darren did nothing; he was a little better than yesterday, but only marginally. Getting him out of bed to come to the doctor had been a struggle, and they had only not argued because Jayden was so worried. Darren’s episodes were savage, worse now than they had been when they were teenagers, and Jayden was slowly losing the ability to stop them.

  “I am in a difficult position here,” the doctor said after a little while. “Given Darren’s medical history—and especially the suicidal history—I am not particularly happy about starting a course of anti-depressants without some kind of observation set in place…”

  “No,” Darren said flatly.

  The doctor nodded once and continued. “On the other hand, his depression has clearly worsened over the last few years, and I am equally unhappy leaving a patient with depression of this severity without a firm treatment plan.”

  “So…?” Jayden prompted.

  “I am going to start him on a low dose of fluoxetine,” Dr. Zielinski said eventually, sitting forward to type. “Prozac. It will be a very low dose, however. His reaction to the citalopram last time a course was attempted suggests this is not going to be particularly pleasant at first. I do think in the long run it will help stabilise his mental condition and give him back full functionality, but it may be that like the citalopram, getting past the short-term impact is the struggle. A lot of people experience some nasty side effects, but they do wear off over the first six weeks.”

  Darren’s face tightened, but he said nothing. Jayden squeezed his hand anxiously, but anything was better than nothing right now, he figured.

  “The citalopram…” He licked his lips. “That was bad. That was really bad, and he was ill for week
s and…”

  “I have seen several patients with similar symptoms to Darren’s, and fluoxetine—in my experience—is likely to be more suitable than citalopram. I would prefer to try our luck with the SSRIs for the moment, for two reasons: firstly, the side-effects are generally less severe than other types of anti-depressant, and secondly, an overdose is far less dangerous.”

  Jayden’s chest seized for a half second.

  “He’s not going to overdose,” he said sharply, instantly deciding to invest in a second lock for the kitchen cupboard. As if he was going to leave packets of anti-depressants lying around.

  “Fluoxetine is similar to citalopram in that it can cause a rise in suicidal behaviour,” the doctor warned, printing off a sheet of paper and handing it to Jayden. “These are the known side-effects, separated by commonality. I would suggest that generally Darren will experience similar side effects to those he had on citalopram, but hopefully with much less severity. I would certainly expect to see a similar mixture of drowsiness and insomnia, so be aware that he may move around at night or have low energy for a while.”

  Jayden clutched the sheet, various words jumping out at him as if mocking him. Drowsiness. Insomnia. Suicidal thoughts. Sexual dysfunction. Dry mouth. Self-harm. He felt vaguely sick all of a sudden.

  “I will be insisting on a check-up every two weeks, and I suggest you book those in at reception for the next ten weeks in advance,” the doctor continued gently. “It will take two to four weeks to see any effect, and three to six weeks generally to see an improvement.” The printer spat out a prescription sheet, and that, too, was handed to Jayden. “I’m going to start Darren on the lowest dose possible. If you are particularly concerned about his symptoms, do give me a call at any time, but also keep him taking the medication. He will get worse if the medication suddenly stops as opposed to being eased off, and that sharp cessation in taking the drugs is often a cause of suicide attempts.”

  Jayden rubbed at Darren’s hand again, hard, and Darren shifted. He should have been restless by now. He should have been angry, even, because he hated being talked about like he wasn’t there, but he simply stared at his boots and said nothing at all. Jayden clutched the prescription and side-effects sheet to his chest, and felt his heart beating anxiously.