Vivaldi in the Dark

by Matthew J. Metzger

  Darren knew the bloody feeling.

  “Oh, my God,” Jayden said, catching Darren’s attention away from tuning the violin. He’d broken a string earlier that morning (and creating a squeal like a cat being buggered by an elephant) and the new one was proving a little elusive.

  “What?”

  “You look…” Jayden began, then cut himself off with a laugh. “You look amazing,” he finished, stepping into Darren’s space, neatly avoiding the raised violin and ducking under his bow arm until they were in an odd half-hug, half-entanglement. “I kind of want to just…steal you and ruffle up your hair again.”

  Some ginger woman called Grace had gelled down his hair. Darren hated it, but apparently pristine neatness was called for. Hence he was wearing a tuxedo. It only just fit; any violent shoulder movements, and the jacket would tear. He’d last worn this when he was thirteen.

  “Kiss for luck?” Darren tried.

  “You don’t need luck,” Jayden said, but kissed him anyway. The sharp tang of fresh toothpaste was all over his lips. “You’ll be amazing.”

  “I’m following a guy around for the better part of two hours and being increasingly annoying while I do it.”

  “Like I said, you’ll be amazing.”

  Darren shoved him off; Jayden laughed, apparently too caught-up in the pre-performance excitement (or nerves) to get flustered. He bounced back in for another kiss—slightly longer, slightly sweeter, and there was a hint of raspberry flavouring over the toothpaste now that Darren thought about it.

  “I knew it,” he said. “You wear lip gloss.”

  Jayden pinked a little, but managed to adopt a haughty expression that made Darren want to kiss it off his face again and said, “Maybe.”

  Darren snorted. “Gay.”

  “Obviously,” Jayden returned coolly and took a sudden step back, hands dropping to his sides. Before Darren could ask, however, heels sounded on the tiled floor, and Mrs. Phillips appeared at the end of the corridor.

  Darren liked Mrs. Phillips. She was the small and fuzzy kind of mother. She didn’t look much like Jayden—she was all flyaway red hair and freckles and always looked completely haphazard and rushed off her feet, whereas her son was haphazard and flyaway, but looked perfectly put-together pretty much all of the time. But he liked her mostly because she was apparently on some sort of diet (not that she needed it) and one of the other actresses kept bringing cake. Jayden didn’t like cake, so Darren stole it.

  It was good cake, too.

  “There you are!” She clapped her hands. “Darren, darling, you look wonderful.”

  Darren shrugged. “I clean up nice.”

  “Ish,” Jayden said.

  Darren shoved him; Mrs. Phillips tutted and scolded her son. “Just because you think a tie is a crime against humanity, Jayden, it doesn’t mean everyone agrees with you!”

  “Oh, I agree with him,” Darren said, “but some of us have to wear one for school.”

  “More fool you,” Jayden said snidely, distant and collected in front of his mother like always, and he offered her a hug. “Good luck. Both of you,” he added over his shoulder to Darren. “I’ll be watching.”

  “Ominous,” Darren said, and Mrs. Phillips laughed. She lingered after her son disappeared, and Darren avoided an awkward silence by tweaking the problematic string again. He was getting there.

  “Have your family come to watch, darling?”

  “Nope.”

  There was another silence. After perfecting the string, Darren turned to look at her, drawing out a long, wavering note experimentally in the corridor. It had awful acoustics.

  “A girlfriend, then?” she tried and then showed her hand. “Or a boyfriend?”

  Apparently, a lack of subtlety ran in the family. Darren kept his face still until the urge to smirk passed, then simply said, “Nope,” again and lowered the violin. “Well, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Lead on.”

  * * * *

  Jayden never sat in the audience to watch his plays.

  Dad was down there somewhere, and Uncle Andy. (Secretly, Jayden thought Uncle Andy had a thing for Joy, one of the regulars at Stars, but he never did anything about it.) But Jayden never watched his own plays from the audience. He watched from the stairs to the lighting box, hidden in the dark, and mouthed the words along with the actors, noting every slip, every ad-lib, every deviance. Sometimes, Mum could distract him, because she was an amazing actress and she always drew focus in scenes, but even that didn’t last for long.

  This time, he watched none of that.

  Darren had every right to be nervous, because he was on the stage for the entire time. Cooper was the protagonist: there wasn’t a single scene when he was off the stage, and where he went, Darren had to follow, providing a live soundtrack to his experiences. And being only visible—and audible—to Cooper.

  But the moment the curtain went up, Jayden was captivated.

  He hadn’t really talked to Darren about this. The first minute of the play was Cooper writing letters while Darren played. Nothing else. Just a man at a desk, and a violinist. And Jayden hadn’t known what to tell Darren to play. So the first haunting notes that drifted away from the boards and fluttered in the air were new, and beautiful, and fitting.

  And then they screeched into a violent clatter of fury when Cooper threw himself up and began pacing, mumbling to himself. Inaudible at first, and then growing louder, but Jayden heard nothing.

  He tracked Darren’s smooth glide across the floor, the blank expression on his face visible even from here, and heard absolutely nothing that Cooper said. The dialogue that he’d spent hours slaving over just disappeared in the wake of the furious crescendo from Darren’s violin.

  There was a beauty in the music—it was unique. Darren had spent several weeks just rehearsing with Pete, following him around in readings and playing anything that fit what he said and did at any time. It had changed subtly every time. And now, Jayden knew he’d never heard quite that combination before, and he never would again. Tomorrow, it would be different—only the odd note, here and there, but different.

  For the first time, Jayden followed the music and the musician, not the actors. Pete’s Cooper was brilliant as always; Mum’s Jayne fretted and worried in all the right places, but Jayden hardly noticed. He followed Darren, from the smooth way he could walk and play like it was the most natural thing in the world, to the raised eyebrow and curled lip when Cooper begged him to stop at the end of the first act. The way he stuck out his chin, turned his head so deliberately, and drew out the final C.

  He wasn’t acting, Jayden knew it. It was all Darren, and he knew it, and he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face, because he did it all so beautifully. Halfway through the second act, he drove Cooper to distraction by following one of the other actors around the stage so closely, they almost collided with the violin twice. He met every challenge with an eye roll, a turn of the head, a twist in his body that screamed insolence, and when he deviated from the plan just enough to pause, bow, and make way for Jayne—who ignored him, of course, as she couldn’t see him—Jayden almost laughed out loud in surprised delight.

  He should have known.

  He should have realised sooner, but he didn’t.

  The climax of the play—the hospital room, Cooper finally driven to madness pleading for the imaginary soloist to be gone—was cut out by the lights, the spotlight booming as it was switched off, and the roving lights around the stage formed a ring of tiny lights around the patient and the source of his insanity.

  And Jayden’s breath caught in his chest.

  Even from the stairs, he could see the faintest glimmers of copper in Darren’s hair. The music wrapped itself around that white face, tracing the straight nose and cupping the set of his jaw. He was bolt-straight, swaying only in the upper body with the movement of playing, and entirely monochromatic. Dark hair, dark clothes, bleached-white skin, the glint of light off the polished wood of the violin, flashing off the bow
with every high note, flickering along it with every long one…

  Cooper screamed for the final time, but Jayden heard only the music, Darren unwinding with a fluid ripple and crossing the stage, the notes bowling along in the air like moths in a frenzy, the lights catching his face and his shoes and his hair in short sputters and false starts as the lights followed him like a mobbing crowd.

  Darren stopped, at the far right and downstage, and turned bodily towards the stairs. When he looked slowly and deliberately up, still playing, one of the roving lights flirting with the line of his arm and the sharp cut of his elbow as he sliced a long rattle of high, tight notes off the strings…Jayden’s heart stopped. He was too far away for it to be real, but when Darren’s eyes came up, Jayden could imagine that shimmer of pale green swimming in his gaze.

  It punched him in the chest like a heart attack, and his vision tunnelled on the impossibly beautiful, ridiculously perfect, ethereal shadow tracing the boards of the stage—and right there, right there, Jayden Phillips fell in love.

  The music stopped.

  * * * *

  Darren managed to pack up his violin, change back into comfortable clothes, and had his head in the sink to wash out that bloody gel, before Jayden caught up to him.

  “Gimme a minute,” he said, squeezing the icy water out of his hair, but then Jayden’s hands were on his shoulders and pulling him away from the sink, and Darren’s irritation subsided when he found himself against the bathroom door and being kissed as if there was no oxygen in the room and he had the only lungful.

  When Jayden finally let him breathe, there was an odd expression on that pale face.

  “You okay?” Darren asked warily.

  There was something…off. Like Jayden had learned some awful secret. Like he was trying to tell Darren something without actually saying anything. Like he’d found fucking God. His eyes were too bright, his hands were too tight on Darren’s biceps, his behaviour too forward. Something had happened, but Darren couldn’t think between sink-induced brain freeze and Jayden-induced kiss-freeze. Or something.

  “I told you you’d be amazing,” Jayden said breathlessly.

  “Thanks?”

  “I couldn’t stop watching you,” Jayden blurted out, and he didn’t even change colour. He was flushed already, though, so maybe that was why. “I mean, you were just…this is going to sound really quite creepy and lame, but, I mean, I thought you were gorgeous the minute I saw you, even if you did try to cut off my head with a violin bow, but you on that stage being so cocky about it…I just…”

  Darren thought about interrupting, or trying to actually work out what Jayden was trying to say, but Jayden cut himself off and kissed him again, holding Darren’s face in both hands so he couldn’t escape, and pushing him against the door again. Darren promptly forgot about his confusion (though not quite his wet hair, which was dripping down his neck and being quite gross about it thanks to the remnants of gel) and wrapped both arms around Jayden’s back, locking him in.

  It took another twenty minutes of slow brain death via oxygen deprivation against the door before Darren was able to persuade Jayden to let him finish washing his hair, and then Scott was calling, asking where he wanted picking up from, and Jayden’s Mum was knocking on the bathroom door and calling for him…

  But before he disappeared, Jayden kissed him, short and sweet and fleeting at the corner of his mouth, and whispered, “If I ever catch you with that violin again, I don’t know what I’ll do,” and it made the whole thing completely fucking worth it.

  Chapter 14

  It had been the longest five days of Jayden’s life.

  He had lucked out: Darren and Charley both always went away over the Christmas holidays, but they only overlapped by five days. For five days, including New Year, Darren was still in Switzerland, and Charley was in the cheaper Blackpool visiting her Nana. For five days, Jayden was restless, bored, and desperate for Darren to come back. And he didn’t even have Charley to distract him.

  But it was only five days.

  Which meant on Saturday morning, he was out of bed before Mum could summon him, and waiting patiently on Facebook for Darren’s poor English to finally, at ten past ten, tell the world that he was back in England, and still no snow. WTH, England?!

  He liked it. By the time he’d texted Darren his marching orders, fetched his coat and gloves, and found his boots, someone called Ethan Summerskill (and what a last name) had remarked that there’d be no skiing down the high street for you, Didier Défago! and Paul Smith had liked both the comment and the original status.

  Jayden seriously had to meet these people.

  It might not have been snowing over Christmas (which it never did) but it was freezing outside. Jayden didn’t even entertain thoughts of walking, heading straight for the bus stop, and huddling inside his coat, trying to escape. Why Darren claimed to enjoy skiing was beyond him. Why would anyone subject themselves to more cold than was absolutely necessary?

  Everyone else had the same idea; it was two days after New Year, and the bus was packed to the point where Jayden jumped off a stop early and walked to Milzani’s from the high street in the cold, gloved hands buried in his pockets and telling himself to remain in cool control and not jump Darren the minute he saw him.

  He had never imagined that he’d have the urge to just kiss someone so badly.

  As it happened, he hadn’t sent Darren his summons early enough, and Milzani’s was devoid of sarcastic, Alpine-skiing life. The weekend barista twinkled at him cheerfully, though they weren’t quite on first-name (or any name) terms yet, and asked if he’d like to pay for ‘the other half’s’ now.

  “Okay, sure, great,” Jayden fumbled, and she beamed so hard it looked like her face would burst.

  It was only a ten-minute wait for Darren, and Jayden spent most of it on Facebook, tracking an argument on his phone that had spawned from Darren’s status. Paul and Ethan were apparently arguing about which skiing event in the Winter Olympics Darren would be best at. Darren himself had left only a single comment—ur both r-tards, holy shit!—not long after his first status, and Jayden contented himself until the door chimed by following the growing list of events—and names—that he’d never heard of. It kind of explained the Didier Défago comment, though.

  Then the door did chime and he forgot all about skiing.

  Maybe it was the fortnight apart, or maybe it was the change from the leather jacket and the school uniform—or maybe it was the hat and the glasses, but Darren was stunning.

  He was wearing the same old jeans, and a pair of clunky winter boots that were frankly horribly unfashionable, and a red overcoat that reached his knees in that slightly-too-big, stole-this-from-Scott way rather than the genuine cut being that long, but…he also wore a matching red beanie and his hair was peeking out from around the bottom in timid little curls that were gorgeous, and the beanie just cupped that amazing, angular face kind of like how Jayden wanted to with his hands, and then there was a pair of glasses on the end of that perfectly straight nose. Glasses. Little rectangular, wire-framed glasses, half-steamed with the heat, and when Darren smiled at the barista under them, Jayden’s heart hiccupped uncomfortably.

  “Hey.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Darren’s eyebrows twitched. Between the hat and the glasses. The glasses.

  “You look…um, hi, hello, sorry,” Jayden fumbled, but then decided to hell with it, and surged up out of his chair to kiss him instead of speaking, curling his fingers into the edges of the hat.

  “Oh, wow,” Darren said once Jayden released him. “Hello to you too. Damn.”

  “Sorry,” Jayden mumbled, flushing, but he wasn’t. He really wasn’t. “You just look…very kissable.”

  “Always something I like to hear,” Darren grinned, shedding his coat and hat, his curls exploding out in a static-charged mess, and sinking into his seat. Jayden promptly captured a hand across the wooden table and began to rub the cold out of it. “How
was your break?”

  “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” Jayden interrupted.

  Darren grimaced, pushing them up his nose. They slid arrogantly back down. “I’m long-sighted. And I don’t, I wear contacts,” he added, “but we only got home an hour ago and I haven’t unpacked because you decided you had to meet right now.”

  “You can unpack tomorrow.”

  “Apparently.”

  “And you can wear those whenever you want because they really suit you,” Jayden pushed. “I mean…I just…no, really, they make you look even more amazing than usual. I don’t know, they really…”

  “If you say something girly like they bring out my eyes or some such, I’m leaving,” Darren threatened.

  “Fine,” Jayden huffed. “How was skiing?”

  “Pretty good. Mother in the spa, Father in the bar, and just me and Scott out on the slopes. And I didn’t break anything this time.”

  Jayden narrowed his eyes. Darren sounded too proud of that. “You usually do?”

  “Four winters in a row.”

  Jayden winced.

  “I bounce.” Darren shrugged. “How was yours? You visit your Nan?”

  “Yeah.” Jayden went red. “Oh, my God, it was awful.”

  “Why?”

  “She thinks…you know.”

  “No, I don’t, I’ve never met your Nana.”

  “She thinks I’m gay!”

  “You’re not? Oops, sorry,” Darren said and began to draw back his hand. Jayden recaptured it and scowled.

  “I’m serious!”

  “So am I.”

  “Darren.”

  “What’s the problem? You’re always saying how you don’t believe in being closeted.”

  “Okay, look, Nan and Granddad are divorced and I never see my grandfather because he’s always going on about…” Jayden lowered his voice, “…you know, black people and Muslims and everything—and gays, too, he hates gays, and he told Dad once he needs to start hitting me more or I’ll turn out gay, and…”