Vivaldi in the Dark

by Matthew J. Metzger

  At the foot of the bed, the new status gleamed proudly out of the smudged screen. Jayden Phillips is in a relationship with Darren Peace.

  Chapter 24

  “All right.” Mum put her hands on her hips. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay, darling?”

  “Mum!” Jayden rolled his eyes. “I’m sure! I’ll be fine. Go and enjoy yourself.”

  Mum’s birthday was on Sunday, and Dad had splashed out, booking them in to a spa in Bath for the whole weekend. Jayden was privately doubtful that Dad was going to last the whole weekend in a fancy spa, but it got them away from the house from Friday evening until Monday morning, and he was all for it.

  Mostly because he was going to do it. He’d already invited Darren to spend the weekend, and they were finally going to do it. Not that he’d told Darren that, but…well, it wasn’t like he was going to argue, right?

  “All right,” Mum said, hugging him and smoothing his hair out of his eyes. Jayden smoothed it back the moment she let go. “Call us if you need anything, okay? And remember to lock up before you go to bed, and…”

  “Livvy, stop petting him and let’s go,” Dad grumbled. He had packed up the car twenty minutes ago, and had been muttering darkly ever since.

  “I just want to be sure…”

  “He’s sixteen years old, and he’s not nearly as retarded as we were as sixteen-year-olds. He’ll be fine,” Dad said, and clapped Jayden on the shoulder as Mum finally stopped fluttering and fetched her coat. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kiddo.”

  “Damn,” Jayden quipped lightly, but he was too nervous to carry on, convinced that Dad could see right through him. Dad, after all, knew about Darren. In vague terms.

  “And if you get into anything, check the bathroom cabinet,” Dad muttered lowly, then they were gone, his key scraping in the lock from the outside and, shortly afterwards, his car complaining that it had to actually go somewhere.

  The silence swooped in, and Jayden wiped his sweaty hands off on his jeans before drawing his phone out of his pocket and sending a literal all clear to Darren. On a whim, he headed upstairs and opened the bathroom cabinet, scanning the rows of Tesco-brand medicine boxes and extra tubes of toothpaste expectantly.

  Then flushed purple when he saw the Durex logo: one on a blue bottle that definitely had never been there, and several on a pile of at least ten condoms.

  He made a mental note to kill his father.

  * * * *

  All clear.

  “All right,” Darren drained his coffee. “I’m off.”

  “Another for the road?” Paul asked.

  “Yeah, go on.”

  Darren had left the house at nine; Mother would ask questions if he left without a designated time to do so, and Scott had been on full eavesdropping mode for the last four days. Especially after Darren had blown him off about going to the football this Sunday.

  “But it’s the derby!” Scott had argued passionately. Then he’d gotten suspicious, and Darren was well-versed in the dangers of a suspicious Scott. So he’d escaped to Roastie’s to hang out with Paul during his shift, and scam cheap coffee. Not that Paul knew what was going on either.

  “Now get out,” Paul said, handing over a cup that was closer to being a bucket in size. “You’re cluttering up my counter.”

  “With what?”

  “With skinny half-white Iranian nerd, if that exists,” Paul said. “You’re like mixed race, right?”

  “Better than Barbados.”

  “Trinidad!”

  Darren shut the door on the indignant yell and smirked until the coffee shop was out of sight. No more racism until at least Sunday night. On the plus, Jayden and an empty house until Sunday night. Darren wasn’t an idiot, and Jayden wasn’t a good liar. He knew what Jayden had planned, and everything from his higher cognitive functions right down to his basic instincts was in full agreement.

  He had every intention of getting laid.

  For the most part, it was sheer sexual frustration. He had said all the right things, and he did mean them, but Darren was itching for Jayden to be ready for this. He hadn’t wanked so much since he first discovered it.

  But there was also an element of emotion behind it, loathe as Darren was to admit it. He had been…scared. Scared Jayden would take one look at his bad days and run. Scared that despite what he said, Jayden just wasn’t prepared to handle that. Scared, most of all, that Jayden would pity him. Scared that the attraction would sputter out, crushed under the weight of Darren’s messed-up psyche.

  And then Jayden had fumbled out an invite to stay the weekend, in the middle of Costa on Tuesday, and Darren knew it hadn’t happened. And if it hadn’t happened the last time, then maybe…maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe this—they—had a chance.

  And Jayden was not the kind of guy who randomly had sex with people.

  In short, Darren was in a good mood, the depression for once leaving him alone and the anticipation of the weekend ahead only raising the bar as he passed out of the town centre and down London Road towards Woodbourne Comprehensive. The road was silent; Woodbourne, as far as Darren could tell, didn’t do anything at all at the weekends, not like St. John’s. He didn’t see a single soul, not from crossing the lights onto London Road to opening the gate at 14 Attlee Road and ringing the bell.

  The door opened before he even had time to pull back his hand, and Jayden caught the raised wrist to drag him inside.

  “Hello to you too,” Darren said and watched Jayden go pink.

  “Hi,” Jayden said, then slid his hands up to Darren’s neck and kissed him. It was short and sweet and brief—and full of promise. Darren smiled, and dropped his bag to the hall floor. “So, um…what do you, um…”

  He was going red. Darren secretly hated and loved this, the way Jayden floundered when he was anxious. It was kind of hilarious. It was also kind of irritating when there was nothing to be nervous about. It was just him.

  “Feed me,” Darren said flatly and held up the near-empty coffee cup. “Paul watered me. Now you need to feed me.”

  Jayden laughed. Darren could hear the tinge to it, and allowed Jayden to pull him towards the kitchen by the hand, draining the cup and dropping it into the bin. Once Jayden dug out a packet of those ridiculously nice shortbread pieces, Darren put them on the counter and crowded Jayden up against it in a hug.

  “I am loving the shirt,” he said, and Jayden huffed, dropping his head onto Darren’s shoulder. ‘The shirt’ was a T-shirt about four sizes too big and a pale, pastel pink colour.

  “I didn’t expect you to get here so fast,” he complained. “I was going to change.”

  “Don’t. I like it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can bunch it up to find you,” Darren said and demonstrated, getting a fistful of the worn cotton and sliding his other hand over the slip of skin that appeared in the newly-made gap between the shirt and the skinny jeans. Jayden hummed, pulling back just enough to kiss his bottom lip, tantalisingly light.

  “You’re weird.”

  “Yeah,” Darren admitted freely, pushing his hands up under the shirt and stroking them up Jayden’s back lightly. He was flushed almost hot. The shirt, falling loosely over the backs of Darren’s hands and forearms, pulling at the hairs, felt strangely nice. “So what’s the plan for tonight?”

  “I was…” Jayden’s fingers were resting on Darren’s elbows; they were close enough to kiss, but their faces not quite touching. “Um. I was thinking…put dinner on, watch a film, just…be us for the evening, and then…go to bed. Together.”

  “Mm,” Darren hummed, nudging his nose against Jayden’s cheek and feeling rather than seeing the smile. “Or we could do it in reverse.”

  Jayden sounded breathless; it was only when that thought registered that Darren realised he’d closed his eyes. “You wanted feeding.”

  “I can eat later.” After.

  Jayden’s answer was to remove Darren’s hands from under the shirt and use them as a
lead, pulling him up the stairs and not letting Darren so much as try for another hug until they were two feet from Jayden’s bed and Darren managed to worm one hand free and slip it back around one bony hip.

  “I want…” Jayden began, but stopped and looped his arms around Darren’s neck to kiss him again—deeper, hungrier, that promise bubbling up into more of a threat. “We have the whole weekend and I wanted to, you know, build up to it and take it all slow and romantic and everything but…I just…I want to now.”

  Darren grinned, sliding both hands to cup the very top of Jayden’s thighs through his jeans, not quite bringing them high enough to push their hips together. “You’re not going to find me arguing.”

  “I think you’re a tease,” Jayden said seriously, and Darren sniggered.

  “You’ll have to find out, won’t you?”

  “Actually,” Jayden said, and twisting them, pushing Darren down onto the edge of the bed. Jayden remained standing; Darren slid his hands around Jayden’s knees and waited. “I was…last time, when we…”

  “Ruined my underwear,” Darren supplied.

  “That,” Jayden allowed. “I kind of…”

  “You want to pitch?”

  Jayden frowned. “What?” he asked, playing with one of Darren’s curls. It was becoming a nervous tic, Darren had noticed, but he didn’t mind so much.

  “You want to pitch. As in, be on top, take charge, whatever you want to call it.”

  Jayden reddened; Darren squeezed his knees lightly and waited. “Um. Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  Jayden looked genuinely surprised for a moment, and Darren had to laugh.

  “I don’t mind,” he clarified. “Can’t say I ever gave much thought to who’d be doing what here. Too busy thinking about the act itself,” he added lowly, standing to try and steal another kiss. Jayden unceremoniously shoved him back down, hard enough that he bounced once on the mattress.

  “I just…you know, I don’t want to freak out again, so maybe if I…”

  “You could always try getting on with it,” Darren suggested, and Jayden finally—finally—sat down to kiss him. On his lap. Which Darren was more than all right with, sliding his hands into the back pockets of Jayden’s jeans and catching his tongue.

  For a while, Darren forgot about the intention of being upstairs in the first place. Jayden straddling his thighs and trying to take his tongue out of his jaw wasn’t new, and before Darren really registered it, he’d managed to tumble them flat onto the mattress and peel Jayden out of those ridiculous, painted-on jeans. For a while, Jayden let them do as they’d done for a while now, let Darren take advantage of that long neck and biteable shoulders, let him explore those lean sides and the swerves and cuts of bone and muscle that Jayden kept hidden under his (usually) fabulously gay wardrobe.

  And then at some point, they had turned over, and Darren had lost his own clothes, and Jayden had murmured endearments that Darren had never heard before—and everything changed.

  * * * *

  Jayden was buzzing. He felt like his skin was on fire, like he’d licked his finger and jammed it in a plug socket, like he was about two steps from having a stroke and dying. And it would be fine, because…because…

  It had been awkward and messy and short and he was pretty sure it had been kind of painful for Darren, but it had also been amazing and toe-curling and life-affirming and every kind of wonderful. And to feel like that with Darren, to be able to kiss him through the euphoria, to be able to listen and catalogue the little noises he made, to be trusted to be there when Darren was definitely way below the rank of dignified…

  Jayden was buzzing, almost ready to sing. The house could have collapsed, the oven could have exploded, the world could have ended, and he wouldn’t have cared. And to dance out of the kitchen into the living room with the plates and be able to put them on the coffee table and put his hands right into that curly hair and kiss him…

  “If you don’t feed me soon,” Darren warned lowly against his mouth, but making no move to push Jayden off, “I’ll die.”

  “Really?” Jayden asked, kissing his neck for good measure. He couldn’t stop touching him.

  “Yep,” Darren said. “I’ll waste away into a shadow of my former self. And then I’ll haunt the shit out of you for killing me.”

  Jayden pushed the plate into his hands, shaking his head, before settling into the cushions beside him and picking over his own food. He didn’t want to watch the film they’d put on. He didn’t even want to eat, although he was hungry. He just wanted to curl up with Darren and…well. Cuddle, he supposed. Darren would probably have heart failure at all the mushy feelings that implied, but…but Jayden felt mushy, so once Darren had been fed and stopped complaining that he was going to die, Jayden was going to cuddle him. Maybe to that death they’d avoid with the food. And then he’d cuddle the ghost too.

  “You’re staring.”

  “Can’t help it,” Jayden said. He felt flushed, energetic, tired, lonely, and alive, all at once. He felt too far away from Darren, even though they were sitting so close he could feel him breathing. “I didn’t think…I didn’t think my first time would be so…perfect.”

  “I didn’t think mine would be with a blond in a pink T-shirt either, but…”

  Jayden pushed him, flushing. Darren had refused to let him take off the T-shirt until afterwards, and had rumpled it up beyond recognition. Probably beyond salvation. He shoved him again for good measure, but Darren only laughed and batted his eyelashes at him. “You’re horrible.”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t know if I want to hit you, hug you, or…or just do that all over again,” Jayden admitted.

  Darren winced. “Give me a few days first.”

  “But I can still touch, right?” Jayden coaxed, kissing Darren’s cheek. After a moment, Darren twisted enough so they could kiss properly, and a moment after that, Jayden pushed the still-full plates aside and climbed back into Darren’s lap, burying his hands to the wrist in the bed-wild hair and starting a slow massage. When Darren groaned and dropped his head back, Jayden turned his attention to his neck.

  “I’ve created a monster,” Darren murmured, his voice a throaty rumble under Jayden’s mouth, gorgeous and enticing and sexy. Jayden kissed the sound, smiled against the skin, and thanked Dad for Mum’s birthday surprise.

  Chapter 25

  It was the first Tuesday in April, and Jayden couldn’t have been happier if he’d tried.

  It wasn’t just that they’d broken through the sex barrier. Okay, that was huge part of it, and on Sunday night he’d discovered just what Darren’s mouth could do, and it was probably just as well he’d given up the trombone because there was no way Jayden was ever going to be able to watch him blowing into anything without problems, but…

  Whatever. Life—sex and otherwise—was good. They had regular Saturday evenings together, and most Tuesdays. Thursdays were slowly being sacrificed to revision and the upcoming scholarship exam for St. John’s, and maybe Charley was still sulky with him most days, but…

  Jayden was happy.

  Darren wasn’t, not all the time. His bad days were getting more frequent, and there’d been several cancelled plans in favour of going to his room or Jayden’s and just lying there together. And Jayden had never really imagined he’d be able to say that he had a boyfriend and sometimes they lay in bed together and did nothing, but…it also felt nice, in a weird twisted sort of way. Nice that Darren would come to him; nice that it wasn’t all about the sex, odd as it felt to admit it.

  Though the sex was nice. More than nice. Amazing.

  Jayden still couldn’t believe it was real, sometimes—and that was what caused their first fight that Tuesday in April. The sense that just maybe he’d gotten far too lucky this time. That sense that it wasn’t going to last.

  He was sitting in the one-man audience of the orchestra as they wound down, Mr. Weber having gotten sick of his lurking in the doorway, and texting Ethan on
Darren’s phone. He liked them both better by text: they were less overwhelming, and in Ethan’s case, less posh. If anything, Ethan’s command of English was even worse than Darren’s—and in any case the dirty look Darren was giving him was worth tolerating the shitty English.

  And it was a dirty look.

  He was giving Jayden a look that could kill over his violin as the piece wound down, and Jayden could barely keep from laughing aloud as he sent a final, I have to stop now, Darren’s going to garrotte me with a violin string in a minute! to Ethan. He backed out of the message menu and scrolled through the rest, pausing to flick through Darren’s pictures as Mr. Weber’s scathing assessment began to make itself known. He didn’t have many. Most of them were of Darren, which led Jayden to suspect that he wasn’t the only one who stole Darren’s phone on a semi-regular basis.

  “…all the passion of the dead! If I…”

  He opened up the contacts menu and scrolled. Darren’s lack of correct English in texting extended to his contacts list, along with his sense of compassion for everyone around him. The first five people were Aaron, Bastard, Bastard2, Chris l, Chris n. Jayden vaguely wondered why Darren had the numbers for people he apparently considered bastards.

  His call log was littered with the same fails. Jayden came high on the list, topped only by Scott mob (18), Ethan S (18), an unnamed number that, judging by the starting digits, was probably Darren’s network provider, and Sam (33).

  Jayden blinked.

  Thirty-three? Darren had called Sam thirty-three times since he’d last cleared his phone? Who the hell was Sam? At least a takeaway was explainable, especially having seen the way Darren took advantage of his parents not being home. And he knew who Ethan and Scott were. Paul seemed to be more of a text guy, but…

  Who in the hell was Sam?

  He’d never mentioned a Sam. Was Sam a guy or a girl? And if he was a guy…Jayden felt a twinge of anger, and it surprised him. He’d never been…well, jealous before. He wasn’t jealous of Paul and Ethan. But then…he knew about Paul and Ethan. He’d met them. He’d never even heard of this Sam.