Ethan had been funny, actually, because he’d spent half an hour shouting at Darren for ‘fucking up your fuck-ugly face a week before my big fucking day, you fuck!’ and hadn’t deviated from the theme much for the entire call, getting steadily more and more inventive as he went along. Darren had nearly laughed himself sick, and Jayden had curled up against him in the warm safety of their bed and let the banter and the heat of Darren’s skin soothe his jangled nerves.
But one thing had kept niggling away in the back of his mind, and once Darren had finally fended off a bizarre call from his mother, of all people (who had apparently also been contacted by the hospital, despite his other emergency contact being Scott) Jayden opted to find out the history to Darren’s odd reassurance that had been lingering in the back of his mind all evening.
“When did you dislocate your shoulder?” he asked in a quiet voice as Darren hung up on his mother.
“What?” Darren asked absently.
Jayden curled around the left arm he had caught and adopted for a hug. Darren’s fingers twitched lightly on his back. “You said…you said you knew what this felt like. But you never told me you dislocated your shoulder.”
Darren paused. “Oh,” he said. Then, after a moment, he added: “I guess I just forgot.”
“You forgot?” Jayden asked curiously.
“Don’t get mad.”
Jayden blinked, and got mad. “Why not? When was it? What did you do?”
“I, er. Well. I had a lapse of judgment and offered the wrong arm in self-defence training when I started this job,” Darren explained. He was staring at the ceiling, very carefully not looking Jayden’s way, but his fingers were still rubbing warm little circles into Jayden’s spine. He felt relaxed under Jayden’s weight, for the moment. “It was when you were at Cambridge.”
Jayden paused. “So…”
“So…things were…getting weird between us, and I didn’t want to tell you,” Darren admitted. Jayden felt a little sick at that. “I figured you’d only nag me about my job and why I hadn’t gone to university again and I…wasn’t in the mental place to deal with that.”
Jayden flinched and shifted his face to kiss the shoulder. The tattoo ink still felt strange under his lips, and he kissed it again absently, turning it over in his mind—which offered him the other question, the one Paul had raised months ago now, the one Jayden had wanted and not wanted to ask about. “Is this…is, um…don’t get mad?” he echoed, and Darren raised his eyebrows. “I mean…I don’t know, don’t get…defensive?”
“…Why?”
Jayden took a deep breath. “When we went for the suit fittings, Paul, um…Paul said…said he’d never tried to take his car off-road.”
Darren stiffened, and Jayden went from warily curious to outright alarmed.
“Darren?” he whispered fearfully.
“I…”
“Oh God, Darren, what did he mean?”
Darren took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “It was…it was that year you were at Cambridge,” he said. “And never since. Or before. That was the only time.”
“What did you do?” Jayden repeated in a hollow whisper.
“It’s history, and it’s dead and buried.”
“What did you do?”
“The training centre…just above it, there’s a bend with a tree by the road. A couple of times, going to work, I’d look at that tree and think it’d be so easy to just…not turn. Just keep going, wrap the car around the tree, and…bang. That’d be it. Couple of times, I turned at the very last second. Right before I overdosed…maybe a week earlier, I can’t quite remember, I was sent home sick. They thought I had flu. And I drove like a fucking idiot back home, intended to go up into the flat and…well, knife drawer, you know. But then you texted me. Can’t even remember what you said, but you texted me something and it stopped me. But I got…rattled, and after…after the overdose, Paul grilled me about what had been going on and I told him. He just about murdered me too, but…that’s what he was referring to.”
Jayden stared at that still, closed face for a moment, and then…just…he started crying.
Maybe it was the sore nerves from the crash, maybe the lingering shock, or maybe just the flat-out, stark reminder of how bad Darren had gotten that year and how he’d only just now started to really recover…but it struck home, like a knife in the heart, and suddenly Jayden just burst into tears.
“Oh Jesus. Hey, hey, no,” Darren murmured soothingly, and Jayden was being turned and pulled into a hug, firm but gentle in deference to his strapped shoulder and the lingering soreness in both of them. Darren smelled of shower gel and cooking now, and he was hot in that pulsating way he always was in bed, and Jayden clung to him and cried into his sleep shirt, great wracking sobs that tore through his chest until they were physically painful. “Ssh, come on, Jayden. It’s okay—I’m okay—and I never did it, did I? I’ve never had a crash before either, ‘cept if you count that silly cow who took my wing mirror off in the Asda car park last year. It’s all right. It was just a fleeting thing, I haven’t done it since, I swear to you.”
Jayden shook his head and just cried harder. It hurt. It hurt, that Darren had ever wanted to, that Jayden hadn’t been there then, that he’d let Darren get that bad, that…that he’d been so fucking stupid to think that Cambridge—or anything—was ever going to be more important than this, than this man talking to him and holding him and…
“It’s all right,” Darren said, a large hand briefly cupping the back of Jayden’s head before beginning to stroke his hair in a soothing, almost petting motion. “Come on, calm down. We’re okay, aren’t we? We’re here and we’re fine and we got through the bad spell, and if this stuff I’m popping every morning keeps working, we might be out the other side as much as we can be.”
“I was so fucking stupid,” Jayden croaked, and a sob hitched and turned into a choking cough. “I was so stupid.”
“You were like nineteen,” Darren said. “And you’ve easily been dumber before.”
“Like when?”
“Like the first time you made me bleed during sex and wanted to take me to hospital and wouldn’t so much as kiss me for like a week, even though I could barely feel it?”
“That’s different,” Jayden stammered and clung tighter. “I love you. I love you, I love you, and you…just…don’t leave me,” he begged. “Don’t…don’t ever. Ever.”
Darren made a soothing noise, and dropped both arms around Jayden’s waist, twisting them until Jayden was settled over his chest. Jayden dropped his head to listen to that steady, slow heartbeat—so slow, it had always been so slow, it had fascinated him when they were teenagers—and push his good arm up under the sleeping shirt to find the wash of heat and smooth expanses of Darren’s bare skin.
Slowly, he calmed, the tears gradually abating, and he wrapped his mind around where they were now. It was history. Darren was here, and Jayden could keep him okay here. The pregabalin was keeping him safe, for the minute. And it was working, because Darren was himself at the moment, even after a head injury and an accident, and…and he’d promised. Darren didn’t promise if he couldn’t keep it. He’d never promised not to kill himself, because they both knew when he was having an episode he was irrational. But he’d promised that he hadn’t done it since, hadn’t he? So he hadn’t.
“I love you,” he repeated, and Darren shifted just enough to kiss the top of his head and stroke his little finger over the shell of Jayden’s ear, a tiny and comforting motion.
“Love you too,” he murmured.
Jayden was lulled under by the slow reality of Darren’s heart, contracting and easing steadily and carelessly inside that powerful chest, ignorant of everything else around it.
Alive.
* * * *
Jayden came home from work the next day feeling like he’d never gone. The girls had fussed over him and his sling (though he’d abandoned it at lunchtime to make them stop) especially when he admitted to having woken
up early because Darren had sneaked out to go to his early shift at work and the absence of him, in the aftermath of last night, had been…jarring. Not upsetting, exactly, but not…nice either.
Still, he came home in good spirits. Darren had been sarcastic by text, and then had left work at two o’clock and had gone quiet, which meant he’d probably gone out for a while to the gym and so would be home all evening for Jayden to…
Well. For Jayden.
Darren’s car was in front of the garage when Jayden opened the gate, and when he opened the door, that low voice was singing gently somewhere at the back of the house, accompanied by soft piano music. Some floaty thing. But Jayden’s fingers felt grimy from a day of handling fresh print-outs and he dropped his bag in the hall and headed upstairs to the bathroom. Darren carried on singing, apparently oblivious, and as Jayden reached the top of the stairs, the piano stopped and the singing continued. He was puttering about doing chores, then, Jayden surmised.
He shouldered open the bathroom door (carefully avoiding the still-sore injury from the day before) with his sleeves already rolled to the elbow, and reached for the tap before the lump in the sink caught his eye and he paused. Slowly, he picked it up between finger and thumb, and the smell of blood drifted free. It was bloody clingfilm and gauze and kitchen towel, all screwed up in a dark, bloody ball. He dropped it again, his stomach churning, and there was blood on his fingers.
“Darren!” he tried to shout, but his voice came out strangled. There was no answer from downstairs. “DARREN!” he tried again, picking up the filthy bundle in a handful of toilet paper and turning back into the hall with it. In the better light, he wasn’t sure what the other gunk was: blood mixed with something dark and gleaming, slightly lumpy. Clotted blood? Oh dear Jesus, what had he done?
“What?” Darren yelled back, obviously in the kitchen, and Jayden took the stairs two at a time, rushing around into the tiny room and nearly throwing the lump of bloody mess onto the counter. Darren, standing at the oven with a wooden spoon in one hand and a pot of stew on the go, stared at him like he’d gone mad. Jayden wanted to shake him.
“What is it?” he demanded, pointing at the mess. There was blood on his hands, and he swallowed against a dangerous lurch in his stomach. “Darren, seriously, what is that, what’ve you done…?”
“Shit, forgot I’d left it to drain,” Darren said, putting the pan aside—and he looked fine, thank God, but he was wearing long sleeves, what’d he done?—and picking up the bundle in one massive hand, toilet paper and all, and tossing it into the pedal bin.
“Darren, I’m serious, if you don’t…”
“Hey,” Darren took him by the shoulders, and Jayden clutched at his wrists, trying to inch up the fabric without being noticed, scanning the sleeves for spots and stains. “C’mon, Jayden, relax.”
“Relax?!”
“Yes, relax. It’s fine. It’s not what you’re obviously thinking.”
Jayden swallowed. “Then what it is?” he asked shakily. “Darren, please…”
“I got another tattoo,” Darren said bluntly, letting go and rolling one sleeve up to the elbow to expose his left wrist, the one with the ugly self-harm hitch in the middle that Jayden didn’t like, the remnants of his teenage years and the citalopram. Only the evidence was gone now, thin black lines obscuring the old wounds, and Jayden’s breath left him in a rush.
“You…” He licked his lips and took another breath. “Show me the other arm too.”
Darren wordlessly pulled back the other sleeve, exposing both forearms. Both forearms, clean and whole and…and no blood, no blood anywhere, nothing. Just this new ink, black as the night, spreading over the underside of Darren’s left wrist like a spread hand. Music. Just like the one on his shoulder, a short piece of music. It spiralled away up his forearm, passing around the bone like a helix, ending at the elbow. Or rather, beginning there: the treble clef looped over the back of his elbow joint, perfect and shifting with his movements, and the music spiralled down from there to the wrist.
Jayden touched one of the staff lines gently, and Darren flinched. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“Still a bit sore,” Darren admitted. “I got it done right after work today.”
Jayden took the hand and massaged it lightly, still examining the tattoo. “What is it?”
“My favourite part of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
“…Why?” Jayden couldn’t remember Darren ever playing it, or if he had, he’d never mentioned it. Not that, Jayden supposed, he would recognise it even if Darren did play it all the time.
“It’s…it’s a piece that…changes up some of Paganini’s compositions. Rachmaninov did it. It’s a set of twenty-four, all variations on things Paganini composed for a solo violin, but obviously the Rachmaninov rhapsody was for a solo pianist…”
“Darren,” Jayden interrupted gently, and Darren half-smiled.
“Sorry. I played a lot of Paganini in school, in my private violin lessons, and Rachmaninov in my piano lessons. I got to know the rhapsody really well, actually, because it’s such a good example of contrast between the sounds of the instruments. And I picked it out because of what it means to me.”
Jayden gave him a prompting expression, and Darren sighed.
“A rhapsody in music, it’s…it’s like a composition or a change-up, hence the name of the work. But also…because rhapsody means ecstasy, happiness…good things. Which is a change for me. So I can look at this, and…things have changed. My own private rhapsody on a theme.”
Jayden looked up into sharply focused green eyes and felt something catch in his chest. “…Why?” he repeated, not quite sure what he was asking. Not quite sure what Darren was implying, and wanting suddenly to confirm his suspicions.
“Because of you,” Darren said simply.
Jayden wanted to moan at him for getting another tattoo, especially one so blatant. He wanted to yell at him for the scare in the bathroom. He wanted to make him take off his shirt to check he hadn’t hurt himself anywhere else either, just in case. He wanted to demand why Darren wanted more tattoos anyway, and what work would think.
And then he didn’t, because Darren’s halting explanation tore the rug from under him, and Jayden did the only thing he could do: he dropped the hand, slid his arms around Darren’s shoulders, and pulled him into a tight hug that couldn’t possibly convey the pure, raw emotion that exploded in his chest.
“I love you,” he whispered fiercely. “I love you so, so much.” Darren’s arms slid around him, one firm and one barely touching, and Jayden buried his face in Darren’s neck to simply cling. “I love you,” he repeated. “I really, really love you, and…and…”
Darren kissed his hair, stroking gentle fingers at the nape of his neck, and Jayden gave up on words.
There was nothing more to be said.
Chapter 26
The ambulance siren was wailing, and so was the heart monitor, and Darren was gone, his arm trailing to the floor off the edge of the sofa. The blood was everywhere, just blood, seeping out of his shoulder, and blackened by the tattoo, pooling on the carpet and running down his arm in rivulets and…
Jayden woke with a sharp gasp, and it turned into a sob in an instant. Darren, Darren, Darren…he was gone. He was gone, and Jayden hadn’t saved him, hadn’t stopped him, hadn’t…he’d killed himself, he’d done it, he’d finally done it and Jayden hadn’t done a thing, Jayden had stood by and let him, Jayden had…
He covered his face in both hands and burst into tears.
It took a good minute—maybe more—of the explosive crying before his brain caught up on itself, and Jayden became fully aware. “A dream,” he croaked hoarsely to the room at large, then twisted. There was no Darren, and no thrown-back duvet that meant he’d gone to the bathroom, and no warmth lingering where he should have been. “A dream,” Jayden whispered again, but it was a begging sort of statement now, and he threw back the sheets and stumbled for the stairs.
There w
as a light on in the living room.
As Jayden rushed down into the living room, his mind began to finally push back the panic—because Darren had been on the late shift, hadn’t he? And there were his work boots on the mat. And there was someone in the kitchen and…and when he reached the bottom of the stairs, there was no bloodied body on the sofa. No pool on the carpet, no upended pill bottle on the coffee table, no sombre-looking paramedic and no crying Rachel and…
He stopped dead in the kitchen doorway. The tap was running, and Darren—alive and fine and with his sleeves rolled up and no blood, no gash, nothing off at all but that brand new tattoo and the fading black eye marring his face—was filling the kettle.
“Hey Jayd—what happened?” Darren interrupted himself, the moment he turned and glanced at Jayden’s face, the genial smile dropping into a serious expression. Jayden knew he had to look a sight, in his pyjamas and with his hair sticking up all over the place and in tears, but he didn’t care, and lurched forward to throw his arms around Darren’s shoulders and just…just cling.
“Oh God,” he croaked and buried his damp face in Darren’s shoulder. He was wearing his uniform polo. It was black, and smelled funny, and itchy, and almost hot because Darren wore it. Darren was solid under it, real and alive and…and…not bleeding. “Oh God,” Jayden repeated, and squeezed tightly, another sob working its way up and out of his chest.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Jayden heard the thunk of the kettle being put down, and then Darren’s enormous hands were firm on his back. “What’s up? What’s happened?”
Jayden shook his head and clung tighter.
“Hey,” Darren prompted again, twisting his head to kiss the top of Jayden’s ear and whisper to him. “You gonna come out and tell me what’s up?” But despite his words, he was clinging back, his grip hard and warm and reassuring.
Alive. Bloody alive.
“Bad dream,” Jayden croaked and took a hitching breath. “Just a fucking bad dream, it was just a dream…”
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