Rhapsody on a Theme (24 page)

“This is costing more than the show, trust me,” Darren muttered, and Jayden laughed. “What? You’re expensive. You’re an expensive habit.”

“I’m a
habit
?”

“That’s the polite term for an addiction these days, isn’t it? Coke habit, junk habit—Jayden habit.”

Jayden smirked, vaguely mollified, and started rubbing his thumb around the edge of his wine glass, and watched Darren’s eyes follow the motion. Erectile dysfunction or not,
some
part of Darren’s libido was just
fine
. “You’re addicted to me?”

“Well, I was trying to say it in a less cheesy way, but yeah. Kind of am. Seven-year habit, this.”

“Didn’t think the police hired addicts.”

“Addiction to a bloke is apparently some protected characteristic thing.” Darren waved the hand again. “Human rights or something, I don’t know. It’s discrimination if they sack me for
this
habit, so I’m told.”

“Mm, sounds dodgy.”

“Well…”

Jayden laughed as the waiter approached with their starters. “Love you,” he said quietly and let go of Darren’s caught hand to let the plates go in their correct places. The waiter gave them both a look that seemed to be somewhere between pleased and jealous, and he raked Darren with his eyes once before turning away. Jayden recaptured the hand, just in case, and Darren smirked.

“I saw it too,” he murmured.

“Yeah, well, sucks to be him,” Jayden retorted. “I’ve got you and whether you want to be or not, this is as good as married.”

“Good,” Darren said simply and picked up his fork. “And by the way, Ethan sent me a picture of the newly-amended suit I have to wear to his shindig.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Well.”

“
Oh
?”

“I’m not sure you’re going to
survive
this wedding.”

The phone started ringing halfway through the piano ‘lesson.’ (It had actually devolved into Rachel demanding to learn the opening to Vanessa Carlton’s
A Thousand Miles
, and Darren deciding instead to teach her some of the bawdier drinking songs he’d picked up over the years. Jayden didn’t want to know
where
he’d picked them up, but he blamed Scott in lieu of actual knowledge.)

“Can you get that?” Darren called from the piano bench as Rachel mangled a set of chords. Jayden winced and picked up the kitchen cordless.

“Jayden Phillips,” he sighed, tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder. He had some work to do (
for
work too, typically enough) before next week. The wedding was fast approaching—they’d gotten their invitations in the post on Friday—and he hadn’t been able to get more time off for it than the day itself and the day after, and only
then
if he could finish this posts going forward for Gina to just slap up onto the paper’s website for him…

“Hey, Jade!”

“Hi, Paul.”

“What’s that noise?”

“Piano.”

“…
Piano
?”

“Yeah, Darren’s trying to teach Rachel.”

“Thank fuck for that, I thought it was him having a seizure!”

“Um…well…she’s, um…improving.”

“Shit, that’s an improvement? Never mind,” Paul interrupted himself, and Jayden smiled faintly. “Is Daz doing better now?”

“Yeah,” Jayden said and smiled properly. He hadn’t quite gotten over that realisation yet—that Darren was
back
, and the new pills were
helping
, and…he’d even been a bit moody on Monday, a little bit darker than he should have been, but the episode never built up into anything. The shadow just…slipped away again, as quietly as it had arrived. Darren had even described it like that, when Jayden had worked up the nerve to ask.

It had been
fine
.

“Yeah?” Paul echoed doubtfully.

“Yeah,” Jayden confirmed. “The new drug is working properly. He’s still a bit prone to falling asleep if you let him lie down for more than ten minutes at a time, but he’s…he’s doing better. Much better,” he added and grimaced as Rachel jangled several notes that even to Jayden’s untrained ear should
not
have gone together. The slap of paper from the next room indicated Darren had hit her with a magazine. “He’s being…
Darren
again,” he finished hopefully. “He’s being normal.”

“Put him on then.”

“What?”

“If he’s normal, put him on.”

“Um,” Jayden said, then mentally shrugged. What harm could it do? Darren was fine today—a bit caustic, because Rachel had been teasing him and threatening to cut his hair, but that was fairly average—so he padded into the living room, tapped Darren on the shoulder, and held out the phone. “It’s Paul,” he said.

“Oh,” Darren said, getting up from the piano. Stiffly. “You,” he said to Rachel, jabbing finger at her, “scales.”

She pouted; Darren ignored her and took the phone back into the kitchen. Jayden followed, and Darren put it on speakerphone before sinking into a chair and letting Jayden massage his left shoulder. The knots were back—and
huge
—and Jayden scowled at the side of his head. Idiot. He
ought
to know better!

“What do you want, then?” Darren asked the phone.

“Fuck you too,” the phone replied, and Jayden shook his head at their way of greeting each other. Darren had a strange idea of friendship—and so did Paul, really. “Heard you’re not mad anymore.” Jayden rolled his eyes.

“Still mad, just suppressed,” Darren said and followed up with, “Ow!” when Jayden punched him in the shoulder.

“You’re not crazy, stop it both of you,” Jayden snapped. “That’s
not
on.”

“Don’t he sound like his mother, Daz?”

“Yes,” Darren agreed and got punched again. “Ow! Seriously, what are you doing—helping with that or not?”

“Helping correct your erroneous thought processes,” Jayden said snottily. Paul made a low
ooh
noise, and announced he would need popcorn if this escalated.

“It won’t, I’m not that stupid,” Darren said, and Jayden started massaging his shoulder again grudgingly. “So, why the call?”

“Stag do!” Paul announced. “Right before the wedding.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope,” Paul said. “Thursday night in Soho!”

“You’re
shitting
me,” Darren repeated emphatically, and Paul laughed.

“Nope!” he insisted. “So, Thursday after next, you got that Thursday off?”

“No, but I can swap a shift,” Darren mused. “Couple of the lads are after leave for the derby match next month, so I can probably talk Trev or Jamie into switching. And I’m off Friday. Wedding still on Saturday?”

“Yep. So. Do it,” Paul commanded. “Thursday night we’re going out on the lash. Bunch of posh boys and a whole lot of vodka.”

“
Jesus
,” Darren said.

“You okay to drink on your happy pills?”

“They’re not happy pills, they’re stoner pills,” Darren corrected.

“Whatever. Can you drink?”

“Er, technically,” Darren said slowly. “It makes them stronger, but the doctor said I can drink some.”

“
I
don’t, though,” Jayden said tartly.

“But I might not be allowed anyway,” Darren admitted, and Paul laughed.

“Well, tell you what. Whatever you can drink, I’ll do it too,” he bargained, and Jayden raised his eyebrows. “Can’t have one man sober at this thing, so we’ll tough it out together. Means we might get him home in time for his wedding too. Maybe.”

“Yeah right,” Darren said in a sour tone, but something in his face had softened, and Jayden kissed the top of his shoulder through the cotton T-shirt gently. “Cheers, mate. Hopefully I’ll talk this one round, but either way…I can’t get plastered.”

“Fair enough,” Paul said briskly. “I’ll match you then.”

“Which means you’ll be drunk, and I’ll be a bit tipsy.”

“Shut your face,” Paul commanded; Darren snorted. “Yeah, can tell you’re feeling better, you little bitch.”

“Do I need a hotel room?”

“Nah, crash at mine.”

“In which case, get off my fucking phone, and I’ll see you Thursday after next,” Darren sniped and hung up. Within ten seconds, his mobile informed him that they were both whores, and Jayden laughed.

“He’s been worried about you,” he confessed lowly, and Darren half-smiled.

“I know.”

Jayden paused, then decided that it needing saying, and said it. “They both love you, as much as I do. Not the same way, but just as much.”

Darren hummed, resting his cheek on his hand as Jayden continued working at the knotted left shoulder. After a moment, he said, “I know I’m lucky, Jayden.”

Jayden flicked his eyes up to watch Darren’s face silently.

“I know I don’t…have something to be depressed
about
, not with…”

“It’s chemical,” Jayden said softly. “It’s just chemical. It’s not you being stupid, it’s your brain not quite hitting all the targets. It’s nothing to do with…with everything else. With me and Paul and Rach and everyone.” He privately thought it
was
a bit to do with Darren’s parents and his upbringing, but kept that to himself. And anyway, that wouldn’t be stupid either, because Jayden was pretty sure
anyone
who had to put up with Darren’s parents for too long would be depressed. They hadn’t even sent a Christmas card. And the birthday card his mother sent last year had been in the wrong month entirely.

“Mm,” Darren hummed, still watching him. He looked…open. Thoughtful, maybe, and that wasn’t a look he wore much. Shrewd and calculating, or calm and faintly amused. Pensive wasn’t really his thing, and Jayden prodded his forehead.

“What’s going on in there?”

“Appreciating,” Darren said and shrugged. “Feel like I can actually see the bigger picture now. This stuff’s doing its thing.”

“The drugs?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Jayden kissed the place where Darren’s shoulder met his neck and squeezed the loosened shoulder. “Okay. Lunch?”

* * * *

That evening, Rachel went out with some of her girlfriends (another had been dumped too, and they decided to drown their sorrows and curse men together) and Jayden retreated to the bathroom for a hedonistic, two-hour soak in scented bubble bath and generally be a bit of a tart for the night.

Darren sat down at the piano.

The music had been twisting and turning in his head ever since Rachel’s first lesson, and he had missed it in a weird way. Stroking the smooth coolness of the keys, he could feel nearly twenty years of education flooding back, from the very first music sheets he’d learned to read over the top of a recorder with a private tutor before he’d even started school, through the first cool ivory touches of the family piano and the first high shriek of a violin, and right out the other side: to criticising poor songs on the radio, and shying away from string instrumentals, and
silence
.

Now it was bubbling up again, and whilst he was wary—the violin, after all, had been disastrous in the end and had left its mental scars—he also felt vaguely as though he were coming home, or fitting back into himself a little tighter than he had been before. He was a musician, through and through, and that had never quite faded away. He had never lost that. It, however, had briefly lost him.

In the quiet of the living room, the memory flooded back hard enough that Darren’s fingers fell into the opening arrangement without conscious effort, and he straightened as though performing to an audience. There was a hush, just like a stage. There was a twitch in his fingertips, just like the anxiety of the opening bars in a concert. There was a buzz in the back of his mind, just like…

Just like the pleasure he had once gotten from this.

Because he
had
enjoyed music, at first. Learning the piano—
Chopsticks
and
Clocks
, the opening pattern of
Für Elise
, and the first complex movements in classical compositions—had been fun. He had enjoyed it, obtaining that power to copy and create such moving work. To generate reaction and emotion. The
skill
of it, the easy grace with which he played and the way it all fitted so naturally in his mind. Instinctive, almost. It had been like a drug, and he had loved it.

He simply…had not loved the pressure that came with it. Brilliance was one thing, but the
need
to be brilliant…

Here, though, in the tiny living room shared (right now) with a cat and nothing else…there was no pressure. Jayden would hear, in the bathroom, but Jayden had no musical skill at all and wouldn’t know brilliance from barbarity. He didn’t know classical music either; he wouldn’t know if it were right or wrong, once Darren began. There was nobody to judge but Darren himself, and nobody to please but…but the anticipation in his own head, and the sudden
desire
to play, like something itching to get out.

He pressed into the first chord and took a breath as though it were the first. As though he had been drowning, and had been lifted free. The chord boomed around the tiny house, slapping the windows and demanding their attention. It wrapped itself into Darren’s hair and pulled, correcting his posture and his poise, insisting that he looked the part as well as played it. The air in his lungs felt crisp and cold, like waking from a long sleep.

The world sharpened around him.

From memory—and memory alone—he began to play. The notes were rusty and disjointed, pieced together rather than flowing, and he skipped over the parts he could not remember. Because it had been a long time since he had played this composition, and it was not a short piece. Twenty-four pieces, in truth, variations on Paganini.
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
. One of the best pieces he had ever been challenged with as a student. He had always liked Paganini, and the concentration and speed for much of Rachmaninov’s works was a welcome challenge and to mix the two…

Poor as it sounded, bouncing off the walls and sinking into the furniture like an welcome but lazy houseguest, it was also a demanding and beautiful song, hammer-blows and whispered steel, the strings inside the piano humming and bellowing in time with his hands and the groan of rusty pedals.