Rhapsody on a Theme

by Matthew J. Metzger

  Jayden covered his ears and groaned again when Darren swallowed—because he didn’t, he pulled off before or spat, he never swallowed it—and knew they were both in for a rough night when his dick twitched at the sound anyway. “That’s so stupidly hot,” he whispered hoarsely at the ceiling.

  “You are, yeah,” Darren agreed, standing again. “But now you have eight minutes, and the door isn’t locked.”

  Jayden flushed brilliantly at the idea someone might have walked in—or heard him, Jesus!—and scrambled to pull up his boxers and find his trousers.

  “And for the record,” Darren continued, “this house has no sound insulation.”

  Jayden went magenta, and Darren chuckled darkly. “You’re a bastard,” Jayden accused, and Darren shrugged.

  “It’ll take the edge off for you. You might last until the ceremony now.”

  “Yeah, well, I hope you brought supplies and you’re ready,” Jayden mumbled, and the moment he had tucked his shirt in, he reeled Darren in by that collar and kissed him, open-mouthed and messy, tasting himself on Darren’s tongue.

  “Oh, trust me, I’m ready,” Darren said and freed himself. “Now come on, before Paul has an aneurysm. I swear he’s more stressed than Ethan.”

  “I don’t know, Ethan looked kind of sick,” Jayden admitted and shrugged on his suit jacket. “Okay. How do I look?”

  “Presentable.”

  “Good. Shit, you look stupidly good,” Jayden breathed, eyeing Darren from head to toe. He could feel the lust beginning to bubble up again in his veins. “That’s…Lillian made these changes?”

  “Yep.”

  “She’s definitely a designer,” Jayden mumbled and blew upwards into his hair. “Right. Okay. Yes. You look…perfect.”

  “No cum on my face?”

  Jayden rolled his eyes. “No. God.”

  Darren opened the bedroom door, bag in hand, and gestured for Jayden to precede him. “Can you take my overnight bag up to the hotel room? You’ll get there before us.”

  “How? Taxi?”

  “Nah, Lillian’s stepmother organised buses, couple of those ancient ones from the forties. All the guests go that way, but apparently I’m part of the groom’s entourage.”

  “So…instead of ushers, Ethan has a pianist?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Not bad,” Jayden said as they reached the bottom of the stairs, and took Darren’s bag. “Okay, I’ll look after that. Give me the key too. I’ll come and find you after at the reception, then.”

  “There you are!” Paul shouted for the second time and seized Darren by the elbow. “Right, come on, Ethan’s dad is taking pictures. You too,” he snapped at Jayden.

  The back garden had been given over to photographs, taken by the enthusiastic father-of-the-groom, and Darren was promptly hauled into a collection of surprisingly formal photos with the groom and the best man. Jayden felt the odd echo of history as he watched the three of them line up in their almost-matching suits, men where he’d met them all as boys, and all simultaneously carrying both a gravity and a freedom that they had lacked all those years ago. They weren’t just lads anymore, and Jayden bit on the edge of his thumb until Darren was freed again, and Jayden could reach for him.

  “You look gorgeous,” he said lowly, and kissed him chastely, one hand on his collar and the other on his jaw. Darren’s large hands came around to brace Jayden’s back, warm through the shirt fabric and half-hidden under his suit jacket. The kiss was long and gentle and affirming, somehow, Jayden drawing some silent promise out of it in the press of Darren’s nose by his own, in the smoothness of his lips, and in the steady surety of those huge and capable hands, pushing one of his own hands up into Darren’s hair and feeling the soft twist of those familiar curls around his fingers.

  A camera flashed. Jayden didn’t mind.

  * * * *

  The ceremony was to be held in a grand church in central London, packed into a busy street, but cavernous and quietly peaceful inside. Jayden hitched a lift from Paul’s eldest sister Ruby, a beautiful woman with very long braided hair and a very imminent child, judging by the baby bump, but whom Jayden had never actually met. He rejoined Darren on the church steps briefly, was shooed away again when the official photographer showed up, and returned once he was done taking a hundred and five pictures of the groom’s family and friends.

  Darren took him inside to show him the piano. It had been brought in, clearly, sitting in front of the church organ, but it was an impressive black grand piano, gleaming in the sunlight pouring through the stained glass windows. Darren’s sheet music, still handwritten and looking so sketchy, was already set up. “You’re going to look amazing playing this,” Jayden murmured reverently, pressing a single key. A low C rumbled gently through the building.

  “It’ll sound good, which is the important bit,” Darren said.

  “Are you going to stay here for the entire wedding?”

  “Yeah,” Darren said. “I play at the beginning, one song in the middle, and then the end.”

  “The song in the middle…?”

  “Just a hymn, boring,” Darren waved a hand. “The opening and ending music is what I had to compose. The ending is just the opening at a different tempo, though, with a bit of the wedding march chucked in for them actually walking out together.”

  “You never played it all the way through for me,” Jayden said.

  “Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

  Jayden smiled. “Okay, I get it. Still,” he squeezed Darren’s elbow, “I’m glad you could do this. You’ve liked it, haven’t you? Being able to play something again?”

  Darren shrugged. “Yeah, guess so.”

  The church door boomed open, and Paul appeared. “Oi!” he called up. “You ready? We’ve said people can go in and get seated to the music.”

  Darren gave him a thumbs-up and seated himself. Jayden stooped to kiss him once more, at the very corner of his mouth, before darting away to the main door and back out into the sunlight.

  “He ready?” Paul asked as a couple of testing, tentative notes started up inside. They faded away again quickly.

  “Yeah,” Jayden said, and Paul cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” he bellowed, and half of London heard him. Jayden grimaced. “If you could please go in and take your seats, the soon-to-be Mrs. Summerskill will be arriving soon and we want everyone INSIDE before she gets here! Move, people!”

  A few laughed; an elderly lady, possibly a grandmother of someone, looked sour, and Paul beamed cheerfully at her. The piano started up in earnest as the doors opened, but it was nothing Darren had composed: Jayden vaguely recognised it as the piano version of Clocks. It bounced cheerily around the eaves and exposed rafters, rattled off the glass saints and wooden Jesus, and weaved between the pews as the guests picked their sides and seats and the noise began to quiet under the airy, casual might of the piano.

  Jayden was shown to a seat only two rows behind Ethan’s family, and with a perfect view of that piano and its player. Darren ignored them all, his focus on the keys and the music, his beauty tempered by the ease and grace in his huge hands and the gentle sway of his upper body with the music.

  Jayden had simply forgotten what it was like to watch him play.

  When the piano died away, Darren left it briefly to approach Ethan, in place at the front of the church as the vicar arranged his books and notes, and clasped his hand, whispering some luck or congratulations in low tones. Ethan looked sick with fear, but gripped Darren’s hand back, and even gave in to a brief hug. Jayden simply smiled, and waved Darren back to the piano when he received a glance.

  “Good luck,” he mouthed, and Darren grinned. The grin that Jayden remembered from The Brightside, all those years ago with that long-lost violin. The self-assured, cocky, confident grin. The mime on the stage for a mad character; the living prop. Darren at his best and brightest.

  And most beautiful. He, and that play, had been the be
st idea that Jayden had ever had in his life.

  The church quieted as a car pulled up outside, and the flash of photography punched sporadically through the doors. The vicar raised a hand to someone just beyond the doors and nodded to Darren. Ethan looked like he was going to hurl.

  And Darren began to play.

  Jayden caught his breath as the first strains of a light and beautiful composition, entirely original he was sure, floated from the piano as softly and gracefully as a breath of summer. It curled around the flowers and the vicar’s ankles like a friendly cat; it drifted into the air like smoke from a wood-burner, gentle and near-invisible. It was the slow burn of a lively spring into a heady summer; it was the wash and ebb of a still sea on a lonely shore. It was the stars coming out, one by one, and the silent reminder that they were there at all, unobtrusive and patient. It swelled in the middle, and thinned at the edges, like a universe of its own, and as the hushed murmurs and brilliant smiles followed the bride down the aisle, the music rose up to meet her, the edges of power curling around the sides of the beauty and shoring them up, like a ship sailing out for the horizon, or a shuttle coming in to land: unstoppable and enormous in itself, and yet silent and beautiful to the observer.

  Lillian reached the altar, and the music died away in the faint shimmers and twinkles, like the dying sun after a long and brilliant dusk. It is said that every bride looks beautiful on her wedding day, but Jayden didn’t even see her in the church that day.

  He watched Darren, for the entire ceremony, and was aware of nothing else. As though it had never happened before, and even more strongly than the first time, Jayden Phillips fell in love. All over again.

  Chapter 29

  Paul’s best man speech brought the house down.

  Lillian, looking surprisingly beautiful in a stunning white dress and hair perfectly styled, hung on to Ethan’s arm through the speeches, toasts and sit-down, three-course meal, looking so happy it was almost indecent. Ethan simply looked floored, drunk on ecstasy, and Paul completed the happiness by spending the entire speech obeying tradition, and ripping the piss out of the obliviously cheerful groom, much to the glee of his new in-laws. (Lillian’s sister appeared to be taking notes.)

  Darren had been taken up to the high table with the wedding party for the speeches and toasts and glanced Jayden’s way for the first one. When Jayden bit his lip and then nodded, Darren smiled and downed the flute of champagne before putting it aside and very clearly filling a glass with water for the next one. Jayden’s heart swelled and felt overly large and achy.

  He came down for the meal itself, though, sliding into the seat beside Jayden and exchanging dull, upper-middle-class pleasantries with assorted relatives of Lillian’s before helping himself to another (small) glass of wine and sliding his fingers into Jayden’s.

  “You didn’t stop staring at me for the entire time,” he said lowly.

  “Because you were so utterly amazing, it hurt,” Jayden replied, equally lowly, and smiled at the waitress who brought their starters. Tiny starters. Jayden rolled his eyes at the posh food, and decided that he might have to sneak out of the hotel later and find a chippie or something.

  Darren hummed, squeezing Jayden’s fingers again, before letting go and picking up his salad fork.

  “Are you friend of Ethan’s, then?” one woman at their table asked.

  “Yes,” Darren said.

  “We went to school with him,” Jayden clarified helpfully.

  “And you’re, ah…” she indicated their hands delicately, even though they had separated.

  “Darren’s my partner, yes,” Jayden said, politely but shortly, and Darren gave him a sideways glance.

  “I see,” said the woman, and then Darren seemed to brush her off, turning back to Jayden.

  “So what did you think?” he asked.

  “I told you.”

  “About the music,” Darren said tartly and flicked him on the forehead. “Flirt.”

  “Oh, that was pretty good too.”

  Darren snorted; Jayden laughed, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek, and fighting to contain himself from doing more, right there. “You were amazing and you know it,” he murmured and curled his fingers into Darren’s sleeve. “And I’ll prove it later. Do some, um. Appreciation.”

  Darren grinned, looking supremely pleased with himself, and Jayden let go to focus on the small-portioned food. It wasn’t a particularly long meal, and felt shorter thanks to the space between courses being filled with more speeches—one from the bride’s brother, another from her father, and one from Ethan’s father, surprisingly, who told the entire room about how convinced ‘Kathleen and I’ were that ‘our Ether’ (at which Darren and Paul simultaneously snorted, and Ethan went a very strange shade of purple) was ‘one of them gay types’ (at which Jayden snorted and went purple) and so ‘young Lilly here’ had come as a ‘comp-er-lete surprise, my dear friends!’

  “So that’s where Ethan gets it,” Darren murmured lowly in Jayden’s ear, and Jayden stifled a laugh.

  By the time dessert was served, Jayden was tempted just to put the ice cream in his lap to ward off the inevitable. Darren was just too stunning in that suit, and had been too world-shatteringly beautiful and talented at that piano, and Jayden was beginning to physically hurt with the need. Darren kept giving him—and his lap—sideways looks and smirking, and Jayden wanted to hit him, right before dragging him off and just…just…just fucking him in a corner somewhere. Maybe not even an actual room, just…behind an oversized plastic plant or something.

  And then Paul doomed him, by at the end of the meal, standing up with a final glass of champagne. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed. “We would like to take you into the knees-up part of the party now, and please raise a glass to our pianist, Darren Peace. Oi, stand up,” he ordered, and Darren rose grudgingly from his seat, nodding awkwardly at the crowd who raised glasses to him, looking somehow young and awkward and putting his hands in his pockets for lack of something better to do with them. “Darren has had the pleasure of our company for probably a decade now, or somewhere around it, and the minute Ethan said he was getting hitched, Daz and I got plotting, didn’t we, Daz?”

  Ethan looked alarmed. Lillian, by contrast, looked delighted. Darren just smirked knowingly.

  “When Lillian learned her loving but daft then-boyfriend had a trained pianist for a best friend, she wanted some stuff playing. Some of it you heard. But she also wanted a live performance for her first dance as a married woman and sadly, Lillian did have a stipulation. Something a little bit unusual.”

  Ethan looked very alarmed. Lillian, by contrast, looked delighted and puzzled at the same time. Darren’s smirk grew wider, and Jayden found himself starting to smile, all without knowing the joke.

  “I spent Boxing Day with our newly-weds,” Paul told the assembled audience. “And I had the, er, pleasure of watching Lillian trying to teach Ethan to dance. And ladies and gents, this man cannot dance. Slow romantic wedding dances are well beyond his, er, skills.” Ethan hit him, but Paul carried on obliviously. “He could, however, do a very lively dance with his new bride, both in their pyjamas admittedly, to a particular song that came on the radio that gluttonous and hilarious afternoon.”

  Lillian suddenly started giggling. “Oh, you didn’t!” she cried, looking delightedly to Darren, whose expression didn’t change.

  “So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please proceed to the ballroom for the first dance of this wedding: Ethan and Lillian Summerskill, with Ethan’s only danceable song, performed by Darren Peace and Ruby de Souza.”

  Ruby, Paul’s heavily pregnant sister, heaved herself out of her chair and led the charge into the ballroom, a cavernous space beautifully decorated in blue and white, and a dance floor the size of the entire ground floor of Jayden’s house. Another piano—not a grand one, but still a piano—was set up by the as-yet silent DJ’s booth. Darren seated himself without any fanfare, spreading his hands over the keys and w
aiting, looking over his shoulder.

  “Go for it, then, you fucking wanker,” Ethan told him, dragged onto the floor by his new wife, who looked thrilled and wound her arms around his neck, beaming.

  Within the first chord, Jayden began to laugh, as did most of the assembled crowd.

  A harmonious duet and a hotel piano performed the controversial Christmas classic Fairytale of New York at a summer wedding, and Ethan’s dancing skills were lambasted as passable, but still somewhat poor.

  * * * *

  Jayden felt itchy, hot with arousal and barely able to keep himself distracted enough to not just get a hard-on in his suit trousers. He was semi-hard already, and as Darren’s playing wound down and the DJ took over, the first ‘dance’ dissolving into a kind of hug-and-sway between the married couple, Jayden leaned against the ballroom door and stared unabashedly at Darren’s lean form as he rose from the piano and straightened his waistcoat. He was utterly beautiful, and Jayden burned with the need to touch him.

  He watched, waiting impatiently as Paul clapped hands with Darren and pulled him into a half-hug briefly, offering a glass of wine that was waved away. Darren turned towards the bar, and one of the bridesmaids—a beautiful girl Jayden vaguely remembered to be Lillian’s sister—caught his arm, smiling up at him and raising another glass towards him. Darren smiled down at her, and Jayden’s blood was suddenly too far up to wait any longer.

  He pulled himself away from the door, weaving through the abandoned tables towards the dance floor with fierce purpose. Darren glanced up and smiled at him, and Jayden didn’t pause, shouldering the bridesmaid out of the way and seizing Darren’s face in both hands, plundering his mouth in a deep, demanding kiss.

  Darren tried to smile against his lips, but Jayden didn’t give him the freedom, pushing into his mouth and only breaking off to breathe, pressing his forehead to Darren’s with his eyes closed and whispering, “Come upstairs.”