Rhapsody on a Theme

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Everyone needs someone to put up with them.”

  “And to…to know what I need, because you do,” Jayden finished, biting his lip. Darren tilted his head. “I mean, when I need you—really need you, when I’m upset or I’m angry or even when I can’t contain all the happy bits too, actually, you know exactly what’s going on, with me anyway even if you don’t know the whole context and stuff, and you know just what to say or do and I need that. And you.”

  Darren squeezed his fingers, smiled, and said nothing to that at all.

  * * * *

  Jayden was reading when Darren came back up into their room, and started when Darren, rather than sliding into his half of the bed, ripped back the sheets, straddled Jayden’s hips, and took the book away.

  “Mark the page,” Jayden instructed automatically, before dropping his hands onto Darren’s knees and rubbing at the hair there. “What’s this?”

  Instead of answering, Darren kissed him. He leaned down and kissed him, slow and tender and open, and Jayden sighed breathily into his mouth, shifting until Darren settled down over him like a living blanket and wrapping his fingers around the back of that neck, wrist brushing the tattoo on his shoulder. He massaged the tight muscles there, rocked up into the hot smoothness of Darren’s bare skin, and felt the sweep of those hands like branding irons without the pain. Felt as though, vaguely, Darren were laying a claim. It felt as though he had come back, and something primal had been stirred in doing so.

  Jayden stole his breath in a hungry kiss and locked his knee over the back of Darren’s leg.

  Whatever had shifted—either in Darren or in the drugs—had shifted firmly, and it was almost like their first time, albeit reversed. Darren’s hands were sure, but slow; he murmured low endearments that Jayden could barely hear, and built up to the first climax with a deliberate stillness that was as maddening as it was erotic, his hands somehow rough and soft at the same time. Only after Jayden came did Darren strip them both of their boxers, and murmured the first—and only—question of the night.

  “No, you,” Jayden whispered. “You. No,” he insisted, when Darren paused. “I’m using that voucher. I want you this time. So you have to let me.”

  Darren laughed, barely more than a huff of breath, and let Jayden roll them over, using his mouth like an anchor and pulling them back together instantly. He was flushed hot and aroused again already, heavy in Jayden’s palm when he cupped him, and Jayden felt infected by the slow and heady heat, the achingly slow rise and the intense closeness.

  “You’re…” he tried, but couldn’t say anything, and although it was a little too slow for Jayden’s liking, and probably a little too painful for Darren’s, after so much time, it was also everything they needed, everything, like sealing them back together after the fracturing that the entire sorry mess had created.

  Jayden came again when Darren rolled his spine from hips to neck, ribs and back flexing in a way that couldn’t be anything but erotic, and he kissed that shifting chest through the white-out and the haze, kissed until Darren followed him, kissed until the wordless breathing dropped, slowed and evened.

  He didn’t let go, and maybe they would regret it in the morning, but at that instant, Jayden felt so wholly reconnected that letting go was unthinkable.

  It felt like coming home. It felt like…

  Like being them.

  * * * *

  Darren woke up feeling strange. He felt lethargic, a little bit, and uninterested in their plans for the day before he had to go on the evening shift, but not…

  Not heavy. Not suffocated. Not numb.

  Jayden seemed to notice, asking repeatedly if he was all right, and making a second breakfast and being gentler than usual when Darren felt unpleasantly full and couldn’t finish it. And Darren wanted to reassure him, but…it would be a lie.

  Because he did feel strange. There was something not quite right.

  It was slightly disjointed, as though he had been inverted and his mind was fine and the body was sluggish. He felt a little tired, but not unusually so; he wasn’t interested in going to the cinema for the morning showing, but he didn’t have the familiar demand to stay in bed and try to block out the universe. He felt groggy, but not numb.

  The blur of work on the late shift was the giveaway, when an emergency call-out within twenty minutes of arriving at the station failed to generate any sense of excitement or purpose or danger. When the radio blaring out reports of a double stabbing at a residential address and could the crime scene guys attend please didn’t drum up any kind of enthusiasm. And for all he moaned, Darren loved this job. He was enthusiastic about it.

  So it gave it away.

  This, without the pregabalin, would have been a bad day.

  And yet.

  And yet nothing was happening. It wasn’t building properly. He had woken up with it, but didn’t feel heavy and weighed down. It wasn’t bubbling up into an episode, and although habit drifted his thoughts occasionally towards his usual solutions—the gym, the knife, worse—they drifted away again just as quickly, like leaves in an autumn breeze. Nothing was sticking.

  When he got home from work, he went straight to bed without pausing to eat or shower or even relax. He couldn’t. Jayden was fast asleep, and Darren curled around his back, seeking out his warmth, and waited for the lethargy to react to the quiet and the dark and build into something worse.

  Then his brain decided it was, of all things, bored.

  He was bored, lying and waiting for something to happen, and he wasn’t exhausted enough to sleep. He was always exhausted enough to sleep on days like today, and yet he was bored and awake.

  So he went back downstairs to watch some TV, unsure of what was happening. The cat joined him, pushing through the cat flap in the kitchen door noisily and pressing her cold paws into his pyjama bottoms. He petted her, and she purred, and he felt oddly soothed in a way that would have been impossible in a proper episode.

  He stayed downstairs until about four, then snuck back up to bed. This time, Jayden burrowed into him, mumbling something, still asleep, and Darren traced patterns into fair hair and waited again for the build-up. And once again, it didn’t come.

  For a day and a half, he waited, and then the odd feeling simply faded away as though it had never been, and Jayden’s anxious looks eased. “So it didn’t get worse?” he asked over breakfast two days later, and Darren frowned.

  “I guess not,” he said.

  Before going to work that night, he looked at himself in the mirror, examining his own face and looking into the back of his own eyes. Something had changed there, and maybe it was drug-induced and maybe it was impermanent, but…

  “You’re going to be all right,” he told himself.

  For the first time in his entire life, Darren believed it was true.

  Chapter 23

  Darren changed at the station, endured the teasing from Lizzie and Trev about the ‘other half’ and his ‘marching orders, eh?’ and texted Jayden when he left. He did have marching orders, to meet Jayden in town and go shopping with him. Darren hated shopping, but Jayden was insisting, and Darren had to fill his prescription anyway. The doctor had just bumped him up to getting three months’ worth of these anxiety pills at a time instead of one.

  He met Jayden outside the supermarket, packing the boot with the food shopping before allowing himself to be dragged into the town centre. “We could have gotten most of this at Tesco,” he protested, when Jayden beelined for a Lloyd’s Pharmacy, and was snorted at in return.

  “You have to get medication from a proper pharmacy.”

  “There’s a pharmacy in Tesco.”

  “That’s not a proper one!”

  It was beyond Darren how Jayden thought in such a…a…well, hell, a middle-class way, when he’d been raised in a terraced council house next to the hole that was Woodbourne Comprehensive. “You’re weird,” he said seriously, and Jayden rolled his eyes.

  Jayden was in fluttery mode, which D
arren had always found strangely attractive. He’d been fluttery ever since the wedding invitations had arrived, fussing about his suit and his hair and Darren’s hair (like getting the split ends trimmed was going to help) and whether or not they were supposed to take a present.

  “I think my supplying a free pianist is the present,” Darren had said to that one and been smacked on the thigh as a result.

  Still, Jayden was weirdly hot, and Darren’s recovering libido (and dick) was definitely pleased with that. He slid a hand into Jayden’s back pocket as they entered the pharmacy, and kissed the back of his neck before he could be pushed away and scolded.

  “You’re awful,” Jayden snapped, predictably, but he flushed and smiled fractionally before fishing Darren’s pregabalin prescription out of his inside jacket pocket and holding it out. “Go on, sort that out while I get what we need.”

  Darren rolled his eyes, and rummaged in his pockets too. The other script needed filling as well; he’d been meaning to do it for a couple of weeks now.

  “It’s going to be weird without you for two days,” Jayden grumbled, tossing a fresh tube of toothpaste into the basket as Darren rifled through his coat. They were almost out of his painkillers now, which was pretty good. It had been nine months since he’d had to get any. Darren blamed the semi-regular massages; Jayden simply looked smug when he did.

  “You’ll live,” he said briskly, handing the sheets to the pharmacist and wandering back aimlessly to Jayden’s elbow. “And then next Saturday you get to see me all dressed up and shit.” A week today.

  “Mm,” Jayden said and smiled. That’d be nice. More than nice. “Are you taking anything with you?”

  “Uh, me, my good shoes, toiletries…” Darren listed obliviously, not entirely sure what Jayden meant. What was he supposed to take, the kitchen sink?

  “I meant like supplies,” Jayden whispered, glancing quickly at the pharmacist, who ignored them blissfully.

  “Planning something, are you?” Darren raised his eyebrows.

  “You in a suit playing a piano? I might be,” Jayden said innocently, plucking a box of condoms off the shelf and tossing them in the basket. “Especially as we have a hotel room, it’d be crap not to make use of it.”

  “Yep,” Darren asked, eyeing the lubes. A new row caught his eye, and he grinned. Oh hell yes. “Check this out.”

  “What?”

  Darren turned one of the lube bottles towards him, and Jayden raised his eyebrows. Passionfruit flavour. “They have a whole bunch of weird ones,” he said. “Passionfruit, mango, grape…seriously, grape? That’s rank.”

  “I can’t believe you just said something edible is rank,” Jayden laughed and put the bottle back. “Go with tried-and-true? I have serious plans on that hotel bed.”

  Darren plucked a strawberry-flavoured bottle off the shelf and threw it into the basket along with a mango-flavoured one. “Might as well try it,” he said as the pharmacist called his name and Jayden took the basket up to her.

  “Yeah? When?” Jayden asked sceptically. “You’re still barely recovered, and we both have work, and I have to finish cleaning today, and…”

  “We’ll make a bit of time.” Darren grinned lecherously, and the pharmacist giggled as she scanned through the basket contents and handed over the paper bag of painkillers. Darren winked at her, and Jayden groaned.

  “Have a good day,” she said, a little too knowingly, and Jayden flushed as they headed out the door.

  “You’re awful,” he accused again, sliding an arm into Darren’s outside the shop, and Darren smiled faintly.

  “I feel like celebrating,” he said simply.

  “Celebrating what?”

  He shrugged. “Feeling like myself again. Feeling like I’m not shaking apart. Feeling like I can cope with this. Better than cope, even.”

  Jayden paused, staring at him.

  “I’m…happy,” Darren said finally and felt his face burn suddenly hot.

  Jayden stopped him in the street to hug him, sliding his arms around Darren's shoulders and sighing lowly when Darren rested his hands in the small of Jayden’s back. “M’glad you’re back,” he said lowly, and Darren hummed. “It was fucking scary, you know, when you were…I got scared sometimes, and how you were going to react to coming off the pills too, and…”

  Darren kissed him, sharp and perfunctory. “Stop running off at the mouth,” he said lightly and smiled. “It’s not over, and we both know it, but I don’t know. The anxiety pills are helping a bit.”

  “They’re helping a lot,” Jayden agreed, stepping back a little and rubbing a hand over Darren’s elbow and forearm. “You’re you, and…I mean, it’s not going to stop the bad days, but…you’re more okay. It’s more like unless…unless you’re actually having an episode, it’s like it’s not really there, so…”

  He swallowed. Darren watched him patiently, waiting for Jayden to do his thing of rambling and sorting it out in his head at the same time, and Jayden squeezed his elbows after a short pause.

  “You just seem better,” he said finally. “I know it’s not gone and maybe it won’t ever be, but…I feel like I can maybe…trust you not to…”

  “Do something…?”

  “Don’t you dare say it,” Jayden said sharply, and Darren smirked.

  “Do something I shouldn’t,” he amended, semi-apologetically, and Jayden rolled his eyes.

  “Yes,” he said finally and leaned forward on his toes to kiss him briefly. Some passer-by muttered something in a dark tone, brushing past his side, and Darren curled his left hand into an offensive signal against Jayden’s waist. “Darren,” Jayden murmured lowly against his mouth and stepped back. “You’re still bloody awful, you know.”

  “Ah, you love it.” Darren grinned and shook off Jayden’s hands to offer his elbow. “Back to the hand-me-down chariot and home? We’re going to have to get busy to experiment with that mango around all your cleaning.”

  “Oh, not yet,” Jayden said tartly. “Later. We need all of this,” he added and presented Darren with a list. A stupid list. It included new underwear, for God’s sake.

  “Can’t this wait?” Darren whined.

  “No, it can’t. You’ll never buy this stuff on your own.”

  “Yeah, because I don’t need…” Darren squinted at the scribble, “…four new pairs of socks.”

  “Yes you do, none of them match anymore.”

  “Who’s even looking?”

  Darren knew his job, and dutifully bitched throughout the entire shopping trip, until Jayden was laughing every third sentence and they could head back to the car with a lot of bags of useless, boyfriend-induced stuff. (And no matter how much Jayden bribed him, Darren was not wearing that Godawful red jumper in a million years. Even if he was dead.) Darren supposed the guys at work had a point about him having a wife, in terms of his suffering everything a guy with a real wife suffered, and said as much. He got slapped with a packet of boxers for his effort.

  “I’m just saying,” he said.

  “And you’re wrong, so shut up,” Jayden said huffily, buckling himself into the passenger seat. “Home, Jeeves,” he said imperiously. “Oh, and Paul called this morning. Wanted to know if you’re going Thursday morning or Thursday night.”

  “Morning, I swapped my day shift off to Lizzie. I’m working tomorrow for that, by the way.”

  Jayden grumbled, but it was only semi-serious. Darren was lucky in this respect, and he knew it: loads of the others in CID had significant others who were constantly annoyed at the random shift patterns and the call-outs at antisocial hours. Jayden had never really complained. He rolled his eyes occasionally, and Darren knew he hated going to bed on his own, but they’d never fought about it, and he was grateful for it. He’d have to arrange a thank-you date for that too, come to think of it.

  “He also said,” Jayden continued as Darren pulled out of the car park and turned towards home, “that he’s going to match your drinking?”

  “Mm.”r />
  “He said that last time too. What does he mean?”

  “He’s only going to drink as much booze as I do,” Darren translated. “So, you know, I’m not the only one not hammered and we can watch out for weird drug interactions or whatever.”

  Jayden frowned and the other side of the car went quiet. Darren felt his guard going up and tried to keep calm and not…jump the gun or provoke a row.

  “I don’t want you drinking,” Jayden said eventually, and Darren groaned.

  “Seriously, Jayden? It’s a stag do.”

  “It doesn’t mean you have to get wasted!”

  “Uh, yeah, it kind of does. And it’s Ethan’s stag do to top it off. He’ll be blind by the morning.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to!” Jayden insisted hotly, and Darren sighed.

  Back up, he told himself. Placate him, or he’ll dig his heels in. “I’m not going to get smashed,” he said, indicating to come off the main road and into the housing estate. “I’m not going to be stupid, Jayden.”

  “I don’t want you drinking at all.”

  “I had a pint with my old man when he came. I had a pint with Rachel last week when she made curry.”

  “That’s different,” Jayden snapped. “That’s not in bars and clubs with a bunch of drunks. The atmosphere’s different, and anyway I know you, you’ll drink to keep up, and then you’ll be…”

  “Be what? I’m not going to be stupid,” Darren snapped. He was beginning to get angry now. He was on medication, sure, but he’d read the stupid leaflet of shit-not-to-do that came in the box and he’d asked the doctor and as long as he wasn’t an idiot about it, he could drink. And he wasn’t going to be the only one sober at a stag do, that would be more depressing than anything the bloody prega-thing could come up with. “Jayden, for God’s sake, drop it.”

  “No, I will not bloody drop it!” Jayden exclaimed hotly as they parked up outside the house. Rachel’s cat was sunbathing in the middle of the drive, so Darren remained on the road, but Jayden made no move to get out. “You’re not drinking, Darren, I won’t…”