Vivaldi in the Dark

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Yeah. Going to die of embarrassment, then do my homework.”

  “Well, don’t die in the kitchen, we prepare food in here,” Dad said, ruffling his hair and wandering out to find his shoes.

  Jayden sent a quick text to Darren. Dad just gave me the most embarrassing sex talk ever.

  The reply, a simple suckerrrrr! was not helpful.

  You’re an arse, he replied, and a moment later his phone rang. “You’re an arse,” he repeated obligingly, and Darren laughed.

  “Yeah, well,” he said. “So do I get the ninth degree next time I come to your house?”

  “Well,” Jayden hedged. “I didn’t tell Mum about you, but…Dad worked out I had a boyfriend. Not that it’s you, but…I mean, probably because he’s forgotten about you more than…he’ll figure it out if you keep coming over, so…but he said I have to tell Mum by the end of the week.”

  “Or?”

  “Or he will.”

  “Yeah, I can’t see your mum being too big on secrets,” Darren admitted.

  “No,” Jayden agreed, then paused. “Did you…?”

  “Did I what?”

  Jayden coloured. “You know,” he lowered his voice, even though Dad had already gone. He’d heard the door slam. “Did you masturbate?”

  “Wank, Jayden, it’s a much shorter word,” Darren said briskly. “And yes, I did, actually. Sure I could manage another one if you want to listen in.”

  Jayden went scarlet. “No!”

  “Mhmm, sure,” Darren drawled, and Jayden completed the full colour cycle and went purple. “Do you know you even sound embarrassed right now?”

  “Well, I am,” Jayden said hotly.

  “Why?” Jayden could similarly hear Darren’s smirk. “You were pretty keen for me to shove you up against your bedroom door, last time I remember. Next time, I could get my hands down your jeans. Just think on it for a second. One hand down the front, one down the back. Wouldn’t have to take the jeans off, either, not unless you wear your scarily skinny ones. A quick one off the wrist—off my wrist, not yours…”

  Jayden shifted uncomfortably, pinking at the thought and the sudden pressure in his jeans. “You’re disgusting,” he said lowly.

  “And you’re at least half-hard by now,” Darren murmured, and the bastard was right, too. “I know I am.”

  “You’re insatiable,” Jayden corrected himself, and Darren laughed.

  “Mm, that too,” he said agreeably. “Unless you want phone sex, I’d better hang up.”

  Jayden took a shaky breath. Part of his brain wanted to keep Darren on the line and just…be dirty for a bit. Show him that he wasn’t totally, stupidly virginal. He’d felt so bold last time, pulling Darren up against the door with him, and he wanted to go further, but…but…

  “Okay,” he said, the uncertainty winning out. “Will I see you Tuesday?”

  “No, actually. Weber’s in Dresden doing some conference thing, and I have an exam coming up I need to study for. Thursday, though.”

  “Okay,” Jayden said agreeably. “See you Thursday, then.”

  “Have a nice wank,” Darren said cheerfully and hung up.

  Bastard, Jayden thought. The voice in his head, quiet and satisfied for so long, piped up in agreement.

  Chapter 22

  Sry, cant. i got mish x

  It took a moment for Jayden’s brain to translate ‘mish’ into Misha, rather than trying to find the text-speak translation for it.

  You’re babysitting? he asked.

  Yep. u can come over if u want bt cant just drop her in playpen nemore x

  Jayden had very little doubt that Darren did do that when Misha was a baby. Still, Sundays were boring at his house, and Mum had gone to see one of her old school friends for a gossip, and Dad was, judging by the racket, fixing the car. He had intended to let Darren be—he’d been a little off on Thursday—and see if he wanted to get together on Monday after school instead, but the boredom had driven him to ask anyway.

  I’m bored. You can’t tell me babysitting is more boring than this.

  Dno wat ur doin so no :P x

  Jayden winced. He really, really had to talk Darren into texting properly.

  Meet u in town? she wants sweets, i need cofe x

  Jayden supposed that meant coffee, agreed, and headed out. It was late February, and spring was threatening (with a few lopsided daffodils and some sick-looking crocuses on the verges) but it was still cold enough to catch the bus.

  The bus meant he reached town before Darren and his mysterious little sister, and so Jayden took up their usual table by the window with his own drink, waiting and watching. Town was nearly empty, the combination of Sunday hours and shitty weather driving everyone indoors, and the coffee shop was as quiet as it ever got, the barista singing to herself in French as she dismantled and scrubbed out the hot chocolate machine. It was peaceful. It was a refuge from revision and worrying about the future and…and worrying about Darren, truth be told. He had sounded all right by text, but anyone could do that, and Thursday’s practice had left Jayden with a shaky, sick feeling in his chest. What if he still wasn’t okay?

  The high street was lonely enough that the bundled-up, three-and-a-half-foot tall figure in pink Wellingtons bouncing out of the newsagents across the road caught Jayden’s attention, and sure enough, Darren’s lean, windswept figure caught her by the hood and handed down what looked like a packet of the mentioned sweets. He used the hood to walk her across the empty road, and then they were inside the shop, and Michelle Peace was staring up at Jayden with wide, wide blue eyes.

  “Um,” he said.

  “Say hello, Misha.” Darren nudged her with his knee as he unwound a scarf from around his neck and draped it over the back of the chair.

  She chose, instead, to hide behind Darren’s legs.

  “Fine, be shy. Shy people don’t get any hot chocolate,” Darren said loftily, and Jayden grinned—not just at the threat, but the ease in his tone. Whatever dark cloud had been there on Thursday had passed, and he felt the coil of anxiety loosening. “You want another?” he asked, dropping his coat to join his scarf and unlatching Misha from his jeans. Tight jeans, Jayden noticed distractedly. “Hello?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You want another?”

  “Um, okay.”

  Misha bounced across to the counter before Darren had even finished speaking, stretching up to inform the barista that, despite her caretaker’s decision, she was going to have a hot chocolate, and it was going to have extra chocolate sprinkles on it as well. Jayden took the opportunity to catch Darren’s sleeve and pull him down for a quick, fleeting kiss.

  “What was that for?” Darren asked, surprised.

  Jayden shrugged. “You seem okay today. Call it a reward?”

  “If only therapy was that simple.” Darren quirked a smile. “One sec. Mish, try breathing when you talk, she might understand what you want then.”

  From the odd Facebook picture, Jayden had known what Misha looked like, but the sheer lack of resemblance was even more startling in the flesh. Her hair was wispy and blonde, not curly and dark; he supposed that her blue eyes might go the same odd shade of pale green as she grew up, but they weren’t right now, and all the facial features were wrong in a way that couldn’t quite be put down to just age and gender. She didn’t look like her brother at all.

  She didn’t have the same ease in public, either. When they returned, she took over Darren’s chair, complaining that she didn’t want to sit next to ‘him’ (Jayden, apparently, was not deserving of a name) and only stopped scowling at him when Darren produced a colouring book and a set of crayons from his backpack and left her to it. Jayden had to presume she’d met the barista before—either that, or she didn’t like strange men.

  “She’s a brat,” Darren said cheerfully. “Cheers.”

  Jayden tapped their coffees together lightly. “Is she…your stepsister?”

  Darren grinned. “No. She looks like Father. I look like M
other. That’s all.”

  “Really?” Jayden said doubtfully.

  “Really,” Darren said, still grinning. “Everyone says that. Actually, she might look more like me when she gets older. The whole round face thing drops off in puberty. Scott and me were both…”

  “Scott and I,” Jayden corrected, then frowned. “But Scott looks like you.” There had been a lot of pictures of Darren and Scott, and as Darren got taller, they looked kind of like twins. They had exactly the same shaped face, the same hair, the same skin tone. They even looked like they had the same hands.

  “Coincidence. We’re half-brothers, actually,” Darren rolled his eyes. “You’d never guess. Misha does have the same bone structure in the face, so time might smooth her out. Nothing can be done about the hair though.”

  “I like your hair.”

  “I gathered that from the amount of times you mess it up,” Darren grumbled. Jayden grinned. “Mother’s Irish-Iranian, hence Scott and I take so strongly after her. Misha’s picked up the Irish in Mother and the dull English in Father.”

  “Genetics nerd,” Jayden said. Misha ignored them both.

  “Yep,” Darren said and tapped their cups together. “Did you have plans today?”

  Jayden pinked. “Maybe…shut her in another room and…try out your jeans theory?”

  Darren grinned. “Oh, I like that plan. Unfortunately, Potato here…”

  “DAZ!”

  “…doesn’t know how to knock. But a bit of necking on the sofa do you?”

  “For now.” Jayden traced the rim of his cup. He felt daring again, faced with Darren’s beauty and smile. He’d felt more confident lately. Maybe if Darren came over this evening, or after rehearsal on Tuesday, they could…

  “What’s necking?” Misha asked.

  “Playing at vampires,” Darren said, and she scowled.

  “Vampires are nasty.”

  “That’s why horrible boys play at vampires, and nice little girls play at colouring instead.”

  She eyed her brother sceptically—maybe there was some resemblance after all—before returning slowly to destroying a Disney princess with a fat black crayon.

  “Do you play music too, Misha?” Jayden tried, and she scowled at him.

  “Mother says I can’t talk to strangers.”

  “He’s not a stranger, he’s Jayden,” Darren said.

  “Strangers have names too,” she said flatly and deleted the princess’s eyes with her crayon. Darren shrugged.

  “No dice,” he said. “She’s not a people person.”

  “I can tell,” Jayden said, biting his lip. “Why are you…I mean…I would have thought your parents were the kind to sign her up to fancy dance lessons or something all day.”

  “They do,” Darren said. “She’s usually at ballet and horse riding on Sundays, but her riding instructor had to go to hospital this morning so I have her until four o’clock. Then Scott’ll pick her up for ballet.”

  “So…you’re free after four?”

  “I see how your mind is working.” Darren grinned. “And yes, but not alone for long. We could play vampires for a bit in my room.”

  Jayden flushed, glancing at Misha (who continued to ignore them) before sliding a foot across the floor to tuck between Darren’s trainers. “Maybe,” he said, and the look Darren gave him was nothing short of lecherous.

  * * * *

  Darren lived in the middle of the wealthy Beauchamp estate, on a tiny cul-de-sac with unlikely name of Hayley Lane. It was on the other side of the much dodgier Carlton estate (the sort of place where people got murdered on a semi-regular basis) from where Jayden lived, separated from it by the wide main road north and a church that hadn’t actually given any services in Jayden’s whole life.

  Beauchamp was a weird place, in Jayden’s opinion. It was entirely constructed out of detached six-bedroom houses with big gardens and gates at the end of the drive. Attlee Road was all terraced houses and box gardens, bits of bicycle on clumps of stray grass, and a notice about dog fouling right above a patch of pavement covered in shit. Hayley Lane, when Darren led him into it, was nothing of the sort. It was a cluster of maybe twelve houses, all with identical trimmed lawns and freshly washed cars in the driveways. Driveways with gates. Who did that? It wasn’t like it was going to stop anyone nicking the car or ringing the bell or whatever, right?

  A cat shot out from under the rhododendron bushes that braced the garden wall of Darren’s house as they approached. The garden itself was a perfectly trimmed lawn surrounded by perfectly trimmed bushes and bunches of military-precision flowers. Not even a leaf was out of place, and the gate didn’t squeak when Jayden closed it behind him. There was no car in the driveway, but there were ornamental flowerpots with delicate pink things bobbing in the breeze on either side of the doorstep. A brass knocker and a doorbell on a heavy (and weirdly clean) front door, and a fancy plaque to tell him what number the house was.

  “What do your parents do?” Jayden demanded as Darren fumbled with some keys. Even the way Misha stood patiently waiting to be let in was wrong. She was six.

  “Father’s a partner in a law firm,” Darren said. “Harrison, Warr, and Peace, ironically enough.” Jayden had never heard of it. “Mother’s the CEO of an advertising firm.”

  “Yeah, but what does she do?” Jayden quipped, feeling rather vastly inferior. His parents were a butcher and a shop girl. No wonder Darren went skiing every Christmas.

  “Fuck knows,” Darren said, ushering Misha inside.

  The hall was the width of Jayden’s living room, and three times as long. The stairs were dark wood with a red carpet runner that looked brand new; they seemed to have a special mat for shoes. And apart from the shoes, there wasn’t a thing out of place. It looked like nobody lived there.

  “Leave your shoes wherever,” Darren said, shutting the door. “Father’s gone to Paris for a meeting on Monday morning, and Mother’s gone shopping with some of her friends.”

  “Where’s Scott?”

  “Work. I think,” Darren added dubiously, following Misha through a heavy wooden door into a living room that was probably the size of the entire ground floor at home. A black leather sofa dominated the otherwise white-and-cream decor, the only exception being a black piano wedged into the far corner, with a large Persian cat curled up on the lid.

  “You have a fucking piano,” Jayden blurted out.

  “Yeah.” Darren pulled a face. “First thing I learned to play.”

  “How many things do you play?”

  “Piano, violin, and used to play the trombone but Father put a stop to that. Said it was too crude an instrument. Guess he never appreciated the marching band.” Darren shrugged. He waved a hand at the cat. “Get down, Mop, you’re not meant to be up there.”

  The cat slouched down like she’d meant to move anyway, and Jayden couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “Mop?”

  “Champagne, actually, but she looks more like a mop than a wine so I call her Mop,” Darren shrugged. “You happy with your colouring, Mish?”

  “Mm,” she hummed from the floor.

  “You want a drink?”

  “‘Kay.”

  “C’mon.”

  The living room was too clean; Jayden couldn’t imagine anyone actually lived here. Even the vase of flowers on the windowsill were arranged in a militarily perfect formation, and there were no family pictures anywhere. It looked like one of those showroom houses they had on new housing estates. But the kitchen wasn’t quite so bad. It was warmer, with brown tiles and gleaming countertops, the latest white goods and a biscuit tin left out on the oak dining table that claimed the centre in a defiant island.

  “Nice house,” Jayden offered lamely.

  “Eh.” Darren shrugged, rummaging in the fridge. It was a good foot taller than either of them, and probably a couple of feet wider too. “It’s okay. I prefer yours, honestly. This place is a house, but it’s empty. Yours is all crammed and you can tell people are living their liv
es there, you know?”

  Jayden did know. He slipped closer and slid his arms around Darren’s waist, hugging him from behind until Darren wriggled and turned into it, clutching back with a kind of odd desperation.

  “It’s soulless,” Jayden said.

  “No such thing as a soul.”

  “You know what I mean.” Jayden huffed, and let him go. Darren grinned, pecked him lightly on the cheek (because he was a horrible tease, and Jayden was finally, finally beginning to work that out properly) and drew him back into the living room by the hand to give Misha a can of lemonade and switch on the ridiculously wide widescreen telly.

  They ended up half-cuddling on the sofa, Darren’s arm over the back to let Jayden rest his head on his chest and pay half of his attention to the film, and half to the patterns he was stroking into the denim of Darren’s jeans, above the knee but not quite high enough to be considered the risky thigh territory. Just.

  He knew—sort of—what they’d be doing if Misha wasn’t there. They’d be spread out on the leather of the sofa cushions by now. Maybe he’d be on top, maybe Darren would be, but they’d be ‘playing at vampires’ pretty intensely. But he also didn’t know, because they’d never gone further than some admittedly intense kissing. He’d never actually had Darren’s hands down his jeans, and the thought of putting his own hands down Darren’s was both amazing and terrifying.

  But he was coming around to the idea of doing it at all.

  Slowly, he squeezed Darren’s thigh, and decided that he had to set plans in motion.

  Chapter 23

  “So,” Charley was waiting at his locker, “any plans tonight? I was thinking we could skip out on revision and go to the Odeon.”

  “Oh,” Jayden said, stuffing his books inside and grabbing his jacket. “Um. Darren’s coming over, actually. He was going to help me with my science revision.”