“Paul?” Jayden prompted. “I mean, is it about the wedding or just a social call or what?”
“…Ah,” Paul said eventually.
“Ah?”
“Er.” Paul sounded hesitant. “How, um, how is when he’s not panicking? Crazy like usual, or crazy not like usual?”
“Um…not like usual,” Jayden said gingerly, twisting a curl around his fingers. Darren sighed and shifted marginally. “Why?”
“Well, Ethan’s looking at setting the stag do, and you know, you and Daz have gotta be here…”
“Oh,” Jayden said and winced. “Um…”
“I’m gonna guess that isn’t happening any time soon?”
“No,” Jayden admitted lowly. “He is doing a bit better now. He’s on the sofa with me instead of in bed and everything but he’s not right yet, and the doctor’s going to try something else once he’s come off the fluoxetine fully and…”
“All right,” Paul interrupted. “So he’s not going to be levelled off by the twenty-second?”
Jayden’s stomach lurched. “I…I don’t think so,” he whispered. That was only two weeks away. “When’s the wedding?”
“Oh, not for a bit yet,” Paul said hastily. “Just getting it out the way, you know, especially given it’s a bunch of city types wanting to get arsed, and office blokes are weirdly good at that shit. Time off work needs booking and all that. Look, I’ll get him to push it back. We can’t have the stag do without Daz.”
Jayden turned his face to press his cheek to the top of Darren’s head. He was definitely asleep if he hadn’t grumbled yet. “I don’t know when he’ll be…you know. Better. Fit for it. I don’t know what we’re going to do after this. That’s citalopram and fluoxetine, and we can’t just drop it because the episodes have been worse ever since…since Cambridge, and…”
“Hey,” Paul interrupted again. “Chill out. Don’t worry about this wedding, ‘cause if Daz can’t come, then you know as well I do Ethan will put it off until he can come. And it’s going to be a right laugh watching that twat get married, and Darren’s going to be there. So just get him sorted out best you can and don’t worry about a deadline. I’ll sort that.”
Jayden felt a lump forming in his throat. “Thanks, Paul,” he croaked.
“No worries, mate. Get him straightened out and give us a ring if you need anything. Especially if he does need a pick-me-up visit, ‘cause you know we’ll be down there instant like.”
Jayden swallowed. “I know, Paul. I’m glad he has you guys too.”
“Don’t go mushy on me,” Paul warned, and Jayden laughed.
“Okay, fine. I’ll let you know.”
“Sweet. Cheers, Jade!”
Jayden said his goodbyes, and when Paul hung up, dropped the phone to wrap his arm around Darren’s back and hug him tightly for a minute, momentarily disregarding the risk of disturbing him. “They love you too,” he murmured into that warm scalp, and inhaled, long and deep, the heat and smell of him.
Chapter 17
It took another four weeks, and when Darren seemed to even out—after another, milder version of his kitchen rampage and another retreat to the boxing gym—the doctor cut out the fluoxetine entirely. From there, Jayden couldn’t really see any difference: Darren was quiet, moody, quick to offend, and still suffered from the erectile dysfunction and the violent veering between insomnia and near-narcolepsy. He wasn’t Darren, not really, and Jayden sorely missed him.
As spring bloomed properly, and the bitter cold of winter eased its grip, Dr. Zielinski called them back into his little office to prescribe a new pill—for anxiety. “I suspect,” he said at that appointment, “that judging by Darren’s reactions to SSRIs in general, prescribing him another medication from that group isn’t going to be any more successful, particularly as he’s having problems with persistent side effects as well as increasing anxiety.”
“So what do we do?” Jayden asked.
“I don’t want to put him on tricyclic antidepressants,” the doctor said flatly. “The side effects are usually much worse, the medication less effective, and the risk if an overdose is taken much higher. I’m not prepared to subject Darren or yourself to that danger, so I think we’re going to try treating the anxiety rather than the depression itself. I’ll start you on a low dose of pregabalin, Darren.”
“What?”
“Pregabalin,” Dr. Zielinski repeated calmly. “It’s typically an epilepsy medication, but it also has a good track record as a treatment for anxiety.” The printer hummed to life, and one of those awful sheets of side effects was run off. When he passed it over, however, Jayden was relieved to note it was a lot shorter than the fluoxetine sheet. And not so…they were milder. Maybe. “We’ll start at twenty-five milligrams for a six month course. As before, I’d like you back in here every couple of weeks. Be warned, pregabalin should make itself known much faster than fluoxetine. Jayden, I also want you to keep a very careful eye on Darren the first few times he takes his painkillers on pregabalin. The two shouldn’t interact, but the odd case has been recorded.”
“Okay,” Jayden whispered.
“Now the side effects for pregabalin shouldn’t be too much of a problem, though it may make him quite drowsy at first,” Dr. Zielinski explained calmly. “Whether or not it will work remains to be seen, as it does rely on Darren’s anxiety feeding into his depressive episodes. But the human mind is a vastly complicated thing, and what works for one patient may not for another.”
Darren said nothing to that—it was a seven o’clock appointment, and he was groggy—but when Jayden had started him on the pregabalin the next morning, he’d frowned at the pills and mumbled something about being a guinea pig.
“Well, if it helps, I’m all for it,” Jayden murmured, and Darren downed the drug without further argument.
* * * *
He slept.
That the first thing. Between the blonde doctor (Darren couldn’t remember her name, just her face that awful night) and the new pill, Darren mostly slept. The weight on his chest was refusing to move, and the shadows were not so much shadows as walls, but…but he could breathe.
He could finally just breathe.
And then came the new pill. It was a little smaller, and for the first day, nothing happened, and Darren slept some more.
And then things started to…shift. Slip, even. Like before, but instead of Darren slipping, it was the shadows slipping. They became riddled with holes, and hard to grasp instead of hard to elude. They became fluid and shy. Slowly, the weight on his chest at night began to ease; a week after starting with the new pills, Darren returned to work starting at four days a week, and when he came home from his first day shift, managed to stave off the dogged exhaustion long enough to make a sandwich before going to bed. He slept nearly twelve hours. When the darkness tried to build, it simply failed. When the apathy tried to tighten its grip, something else to do slithered between the cracks and it was broken off.
Darren was anchored, but the depression was slipping.
He stopped complaining about taking the pills.
The headaches followed the fluidity, dull and aching ones in the sides of his skull, but Darren didn’t mind those. Headaches were fine. The insomnia ebbed, although the drowsiness stuck, and yet every time he felt pathetic, every time he felt as though the force were trying to sack him and Jayden was sick of him and both had every right to be, it just…
Slipped away.
Something was changing.
Three weeks to the day after Jayden had put a new pill by his morning drink, Darren lifted the piano lid, and the buzzing around the back of his mind flowed out onto the middle C in a single, short note. Something unknotted in his gut. He sank onto the leather piano stool as though he’d never left, and a memory bubbled up out of his childhood and his life here, mirrored in a sarcastic remark made months ago. Made when he had been…not well, but better.
Darren played Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, once, smoothly from start to
finish, then closed the lid and cried.
And when he stopped crying, for the first time in months, he felt better for it.
* * * *
The pregabalin did indeed make Darren drowsy. He went back to work, but had to use public transport instead of his own car. But that—for the first couple of weeks—was all there was to it. He occasionally rubbed at his temples or scalp like he had a headache, but never complained about it, and the insomnia was knocked on its arse and he slept like the dead for at least ten hours a night, but…
But Jayden waited for the mood swings, for the episodes, for the bleak emptiness around the eyes…and they didn’t come. Darren was tired, but normal-tired; he was quiet, but not so deeply withdrawn. By the third week, his appetite had returned with a vengeance, and Jayden felt less jittery about letting him go boxing without eating properly.
And slowly—very slowly—the solemnity began to lift.
It began with the piano, of all things. Jayden came home several afternoons in a row to find Darren home and the lid up, or at breakfast watching Rachel practice new sheets she hadn’t had a few weeks ago, and written in handwriting that was definitely not hers, although she denied actually having any lessons. It wasn't until a Saturday that Jayden caught him at it, waking late in the morning to find the bed empty and the house quiet, but for the odd, sporadic string of notes that died away as abruptly as they started.
He padded downstairs, yawning, to find Darren alone at the piano stool, a notepad covered in scratchy scribbles on his knee. Struck with a fierce sense of love and pride, Jayden hugged him tightly from behind, reducing the practiced dozen notes down to a jangle of surprised keys, and then Darren folded up his arm to grip Jayden’s around his shoulders.
“Morning.”
“Hello.” Jayden kissed his cheek, nose nudging the edge of those wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing them properly, instead of constantly taking them off or fidgeting. He was finally focusing on something, and Jayden could have cried. “What are you doing?”
Darren squeezed his wrist and returned his fingers to the keys, tapping the minor keys very lightly as he seemed to think something over. “Trying to come up with something for the wedding.”
“You’re going to play?”
“Well, I’ve been giving it a go since we started the new pills, and I feel okay so far, so…yeah.”
Jayden tightened his grip, resting his cheek briefly on Darren’s shoulder. “Are you really feeling all right?”
“I think so,” Darren said, and when Jayden straightened, dropped his head back against Jayden’s chest to blink up at him over the top of the glasses. His eyes were clear. Jayden swallowed against the suspicious lump in his throat. “Er. Well.”
“What?”
“…Kind of hungry, actually.”
Jayden laughed, sounding too high and delighted, and kissed the bridge of his nose. “Oh my God. Okay. I could stretch to a fry-up if you keep the cat out of the kitchen?”
“Okay,” Darren said and pulled a face. “And, uh. Scott’s visiting.”
“Sorry?” Jayden blinked.
“Scott’s visiting. He should get here before you get back from auditions.”
Jayden chewed on his lip. He had actually been considering not going to the auditions—he had co-written a new play with a girl from the drama group, and it was going to be performed at the end of the summer. The auditions for parts were this weekend, and he was supposed to go, but…
Darren read his mind. “You should go.”
“I was playing it by ear.”
“Well, here’s the sound,” Darren said, pressing a chord into the keys firmly. “Go to your auditions, and bring back a couple of massive pizzas when you’re done?”
Jayden stared.
“I really do feel okay,” Darren said quietly, and Jayden’s mouth twitched.
“Oh God,” he whispered, then sank down to hug him again, bundling up Darren’s arms into his grip too, still chest-to-back. Jayden felt like he was spilling over, too happy for his own skin, and he squeezed tightly to hold them both in. “God, I love you. I love you so fucking much.”
Darren hummed. “I think…think I’m getting there.”
Jayden smiled, a warm hum of relief and contentment bubbling up in the pit of his stomach. Suddenly, the house felt like home again, though the house itself hadn’t changed a bit. He perched on the piano stool beside Darren, back to the keys, and slid both arms around that lean waist for a proper hug this time. After a moment, Darren abandoned his music and returned the grip.
“Want breakfast, then?” Jayden asked contentedly, pressing his head onto Darren’s shoulder and sighing deeply when a hand pressed against his back. “After a hug.”
“Yeah, you’re not getting one when Scott gets here,” Darren agreed. His tone was amused, for the first time in weeks. Maybe even months. Maybe since…Jayden cast his mind back, and realised that levity, of any kind, had been missing for…
“God, I’ve missed you.”
“Mm,” Darren hummed. “Hey. Any plans next weekend?”
“Uh, no.” The of course not, my plans involve looking after you went unsaid.
“Well, don’t make any,” Darren said and let go. “But if you could make some breakfast…”
“We have no eggs,” Jayden said hoarsely, still feeling close to tears of sheer relief. “Um, Rachel used the last ones last night.”
“Bacon butty?”
“Okay.” Jayden clamped that head between his hands and kissed Darren soundly before bouncing up off the stool and meandering into the kitchen. “Orange juice with your pill?” he called over his shoulder, and received a vague affirmative before the piano playing—a light and tinkling melody that broke off in the middle to the scratch of graphite on paper—started up again. Jayden smiled into the fridge and curled his bare toes on the cold tiles. Darren was finally coming back. His face was pinched and his voice was rough with disuse and he was too thin and his libido was still apparently absent and he couldn’t quite drive yet and he was only back at work part time and he kept stopping and starting too much on the piano, whereas before he would have ploughed through and worked out what he’d played later, but…
But he was coming back.
For the first time in weeks, Jayden felt happy.
* * * *
When Jayden returned to the house at around six o’clock that evening, there was a hideous sports car in violent yellow parked on the pavement outside. Rachel’s car was gone—Jayden vaguely remembered something about spending the weekend at her sister’s, but in the wake of Darren’s improvement this morning, he hadn’t paid too much attention.
The TV was on pretty loud when he let himself in, and Scott cheered a greeting at him, raising a can of lager in his direction. “There you are!” he said. “And there’s the food!”
Jayden dropped off a pizza box in Scott’s lap. He was stretching out across the sofa, lankier than ever and with his head, as it had apparently been at Christmas, shaved bald. It looked…kind of really totally weird, actually, but Jayden decided to hold his tongue. Darren was crushed into the armchair with the duvet from the spare room and Rachel’s cat curled up on his lap. Jayden shooed her off and offered the other box. “All right?”
“He’s fallen asleep four times already,” Scott called.
“That’s not bad,” Darren defended himself, and Jayden laughed.
“It really isn’t,” he confirmed.
“I got another side effect,” Darren added, and Jayden felt his smile falter. “Nah, chill. It’s just dry mouth.”
“Oh,” Jayden said and let out the caught breath. “You want a massive glass of lemonade then?”
Darren gave him the please face, and Jayden kissed the top of his head before disappearing into the kitchen. After a minute, he heard Scott heave himself off the cushions and follow, and then Darren’s older brother was taking up space by the oven. Scott wasn’t any taller than Darren, but he was broader—especially after Darren’s
weight loss—and his head, without all the hair, was kind of a funny shape that Jayden knew from seven years of handling Darren’s was not quite the same. But they were still, for half-brothers, shockingly similar in appearance. And in the art of the blunt approach.
“How’s he doing?” Scott asked without preamble, and Jayden was reminded vaguely of Paul.
“Better than he was,” Jayden said, getting cans of Sprite out of the fridge and offering one to Scott. “The doctor had him on fluoxetine but that didn’t go any better than the citalopram last year, so we’re trying pregabalin now, and that’s going better.”
“Uh,” Scott said. “What?”
“He’s been on it nearly three weeks now and the drowsiness is beginning to wear off a bit,” Jayden continued, then blinked. “Um. The happy pills didn’t work, so he’s on an anti-anxiety pill now, and he seems to be getting a bit better.”
Scott nodded, cracking open the can. Jayden eyed him for a moment, then returned to fishing some ice cubes out of the freezer for Darren’s glass. There’d been a distance between them ever since Darren’s last suicide attempt. Simply put: Scott had blamed Jayden, and Jayden knew it. Scott had thought Jayden should have been there (right), had let Darren down (right) and wasn’t doing enough to rectify the mistake (definitely wrong). Secretly, Jayden sometimes thought Scott wanted rid of him, but Jayden would be damned if he was going to let Scott being a prick change anything.
So he left him in the kitchen, wandering back to Darren bundled up in the duvet, and perching on the arm of the chair to hand over the lemonade glass and kiss the top of those wild curls again, dropping his arm around Darren’s shoulders loosely. “Cold?” he asked.
“Mm,” Darren said, draining half the glass and putting it on the floor. He whistled to the cat, who regarded him disdainfully, but nevertheless jumped back up into his lap and cuddled into his chest, purring. Jayden smiled, resting his cheek on the top of Darren’s head as Scott flopped back onto the sofa.
“You two are nauseating,” Scott opined.
“Eh, go fuck yourself,” Darren grumbled, dropping his head back into the crook of Jayden’s elbow and closing his eyes. “Just because you’re a miserable sack of shit who can’t keep a girl for more than ten minutes…”
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