Rhapsody on a Theme (30 page)

“I love you,” he repeated, and Darren shifted just enough to kiss the top of his head and stroke his little finger over the shell of Jayden’s ear, a tiny and comforting motion.

“Love you too,” he murmured.

Jayden was lulled under by the slow reality of Darren’s heart, contracting and easing steadily and carelessly inside that powerful chest, ignorant of everything else around it.

Alive.

* * * *

Jayden came home from work the next day feeling like he’d never gone. The girls had fussed over him and his sling (though he’d abandoned it at lunchtime to make them stop) especially when he admitted to having woken up early because Darren had sneaked out to go to his early shift at work and the
absence
of him, in the aftermath of last night, had been…jarring. Not upsetting, exactly, but not…nice either.

Still, he came home in good spirits. Darren had been sarcastic by text, and then had left work at two o’clock and had gone quiet, which meant he’d probably gone out for a while to the gym and so would be home all evening for Jayden to…

Well. For Jayden.

Darren’s car was in front of the garage when Jayden opened the gate, and when he opened the door, that low voice was singing gently somewhere at the back of the house, accompanied by soft piano music. Some floaty thing. But Jayden’s fingers felt grimy from a day of handling fresh print-outs and he dropped his bag in the hall and headed upstairs to the bathroom. Darren carried on singing, apparently oblivious, and as Jayden reached the top of the stairs, the piano stopped and the singing continued. He was puttering about doing chores, then, Jayden surmised.

He shouldered open the bathroom door (carefully avoiding the still-sore injury from the day before) with his sleeves already rolled to the elbow, and reached for the tap before the lump in the sink caught his eye and he paused. Slowly, he picked it up between finger and thumb, and the smell of blood drifted free. It was bloody clingfilm and gauze and kitchen towel, all screwed up in a dark, bloody ball. He dropped it again, his stomach churning, and there
was blood on his fingers
.

“Darren!” he tried to shout, but his voice came out strangled. There was no answer from downstairs. “
DARREN
!” he tried again, picking up the filthy bundle in a handful of toilet paper and turning back into the hall with it. In the better light, he wasn’t sure
what
the other gunk was: blood mixed with something dark and gleaming, slightly lumpy. Clotted blood? Oh dear Jesus,
what had he done
?

“What?” Darren yelled back, obviously in the kitchen, and Jayden took the stairs two at a time, rushing around into the tiny room and nearly throwing the lump of bloody
mess
onto the counter. Darren, standing at the oven with a wooden spoon in one hand and a pot of stew on the go, stared at him like he’d gone mad. Jayden wanted to shake him.

“What is it?” he demanded, pointing at the mess. There was blood on his hands, and he swallowed against a dangerous lurch in his stomach. “Darren, seriously, what is that, what’ve you
done
…?”

“Shit, forgot I’d left it to drain,” Darren said, putting the pan aside—and he
looked
fine, thank God, but he was wearing long sleeves, what’d he
done
?—and picking up the bundle in one massive hand, toilet paper and all, and tossing it into the pedal bin.

“Darren, I’m serious, if you don’t…”

“Hey,” Darren took him by the shoulders, and Jayden clutched at his wrists, trying to inch up the fabric without being noticed, scanning the sleeves for spots and stains. “C’mon, Jayden, relax.”

“Relax?!”

“Yes, relax. It’s fine. It’s not what you’re obviously thinking.”

Jayden swallowed. “Then what it is?” he asked shakily. “Darren,
please
…”

“I got another tattoo,” Darren said bluntly, letting go and rolling one sleeve up to the elbow to expose his left wrist, the one with the ugly self-harm hitch in the middle that Jayden didn’t like, the remnants of his teenage years and the citalopram. Only the evidence was gone now, thin black lines obscuring the old wounds, and Jayden’s breath left him in a rush.

“You…” He licked his lips and took another breath. “Show me the other arm too.”

Darren wordlessly pulled back the other sleeve, exposing both forearms. Both forearms, clean and whole and…and no blood, no blood anywhere, nothing. Just this new ink, black as the night, spreading over the underside of Darren’s left wrist like a spread hand. Music. Just like the one on his shoulder, a short piece of music. It spiralled away up his forearm, passing around the bone like a helix, ending at the elbow. Or rather, beginning there: the treble clef looped over the back of his elbow joint, perfect and shifting with his movements, and the music spiralled down from there to the wrist.

Jayden touched one of the staff lines gently, and Darren flinched. “Sorry,” he whispered.

“Still a bit sore,” Darren admitted. “I got it done right after work today.”

Jayden took the hand and massaged it lightly, still examining the tattoo. “What is it?”

“My favourite part of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”

“…Why?” Jayden couldn’t remember Darren ever playing it, or if he had, he’d never mentioned it. Not that, Jayden supposed, he would recognise it even if Darren
did
play it all the time.

“It’s…it’s a piece that…changes up some of Paganini’s compositions. Rachmaninov did it. It’s a set of twenty-four, all variations on things Paganini composed for a solo violin, but obviously the Rachmaninov rhapsody was for a solo pianist…”

“Darren,” Jayden interrupted gently, and Darren half-smiled.

“Sorry. I played a lot of Paganini in school, in my private violin lessons, and Rachmaninov in my piano lessons. I got to know the rhapsody really well, actually, because it’s such a good example of contrast between the sounds of the instruments. And I picked it out because of what it means to me.”

Jayden gave him a prompting expression, and Darren sighed.

“A rhapsody in music, it’s…it’s like a composition or a change-up, hence the name of the work. But also…because rhapsody means ecstasy, happiness…good things. Which is a change for me. So I can look at this, and…things have changed. My own private rhapsody on a theme.”

Jayden looked up into sharply focused green eyes and felt something catch in his chest. “…Why?” he repeated, not quite sure what he was asking. Not quite sure what Darren was
implying
, and wanting suddenly to confirm his suspicions.

“Because of you,” Darren said simply.

Jayden wanted to moan at him for getting another tattoo, especially one so blatant. He wanted to yell at him for the scare in the bathroom. He wanted to make him take off his shirt to check he hadn’t hurt himself anywhere else either, just in case. He wanted to demand why Darren wanted more tattoos anyway, and what work would think.

And then he didn’t, because Darren’s halting explanation tore the rug from under him, and Jayden did the only thing he could do: he dropped the hand, slid his arms around Darren’s shoulders, and pulled him into a tight hug that couldn’t possibly convey the pure, raw emotion that exploded in his chest.

“I
love
you,” he whispered fiercely. “I love you so, so much.” Darren’s arms slid around him, one firm and one barely touching, and Jayden buried his face in Darren’s neck to simply cling. “I love you,” he repeated. “I really, really love you, and…and…”

Darren kissed his hair, stroking gentle fingers at the nape of his neck, and Jayden gave up on words.

There was nothing more to be said.

The ambulance siren was wailing, and so was the heart monitor, and Darren was
gone
, his arm trailing to the floor off the edge of the sofa. The blood was everywhere, just
blood
, seeping out of his shoulder, and blackened by the tattoo, pooling on the carpet and running down his arm in rivulets and…

Jayden woke with a sharp gasp, and it turned into a sob in an instant.
Darren, Darren, Darren…
he was gone. He was
gone
, and Jayden hadn’t saved him, hadn’t stopped him, hadn’t…he’d killed himself, he’d done it, he’d finally done it and Jayden hadn’t done a thing, Jayden had stood by and let him, Jayden had…

He covered his face in both hands and burst into tears.

It took a good minute—maybe more—of the explosive crying before his brain caught up on itself, and Jayden became fully aware. “A dream,” he croaked hoarsely to the room at large, then twisted. There was no Darren, and no thrown-back duvet that meant he’d gone to the bathroom, and no warmth lingering where he should have been. “A dream,” Jayden whispered again, but it was a begging sort of statement now, and he threw back the sheets and stumbled for the stairs.

There was a light on in the living room.

As Jayden rushed down into the living room, his mind began to finally push back the panic—because Darren had been on the late shift, hadn’t he? And there were his work boots on the mat. And there was someone in the kitchen and…and when he reached the bottom of the stairs, there was no bloodied body on the sofa. No pool on the carpet, no upended pill bottle on the coffee table, no sombre-looking paramedic and no crying Rachel and…

He stopped dead in the kitchen doorway. The tap was running, and Darren—alive and fine and with his sleeves rolled up and no blood, no gash, nothing off at all but that brand new tattoo and the fading black eye marring his face—was filling the kettle.

“Hey Jayd—what happened?” Darren interrupted himself, the moment he turned and glanced at Jayden’s face, the genial smile dropping into a serious expression. Jayden knew he had to look a sight, in his pyjamas and with his hair sticking up all over the place and in tears, but he didn’t care, and lurched forward to throw his arms around Darren’s shoulders and just…just
cling
.

“Oh God,” he croaked and buried his damp face in Darren’s shoulder. He was wearing his uniform polo. It was black, and smelled funny, and itchy, and almost hot
because
Darren
wore it. Darren was solid under it, real and alive and…and…not bleeding. “Oh
God
,” Jayden repeated, and squeezed tightly, another sob working its way up and out of his chest.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Jayden heard the
thunk
of the kettle being put down, and then Darren’s enormous hands were firm on his back. “What’s up? What’s happened?”

Jayden shook his head and clung tighter.

“Hey,” Darren prompted again, twisting his head to kiss the top of Jayden’s ear and whisper to him. “You gonna come out and tell me what’s up?” But despite his words, he was clinging back, his grip hard and warm and reassuring.

Alive. Bloody
alive
.

“Bad dream,” Jayden croaked and took a hitching breath. “Just a fucking bad dream, it was just a dream…”

“Okay.” Darren smoothed his hair in soft little prods and swipes, almost plucking at it and tucking the tufts back into place in a series of soothing little actions. “I’m going to guess it involved me?”

“You…you…I dreamed I came home, and you were…”

Jayden couldn’t say it. He couldn’t. Saying it would be…would make it…

“I’m going to guess I’d done something?”

“…Your pills, and…and your shoulder and…your wrist, too…” Where the scars were, and had been. Where the tattoo was now. The shoulder had been someone else, at least, but the wrist had been Darren. Years ago, most of them before Jayden really, and self-harm, not…not an actual, you know,
attempt
, but…scars. All the same.

“Okay, I get the idea,” Darren said soothingly and rubbed a hand firmly up and down Jayden’s back in heavy swipes. “I get it. You snapped out of it and realised I haven’t now?”

“I think so,” Jayden mumbled, but squeezed tightly all the same. “I just…for a moment, when I woke up, I thought it was real. I was
convinced
it was real.”

Darren kissed the side of his head, and Jayden inhaled the smell of him, wrapping his still-edgy mind around it. He was okay. He
was
. He’d come back from work, and he smelled like a police van, and he wasn’t hurt or sick, and he’d been taking his pills all week, because Jayden had seen him do it every day but today.

But today?

“You’re okay,” Darren murmured, and Jayden took a deep breath against his shoulder.

“So’re you,” he mumbled.

“You’re getting stupidly stressed, you know. Maybe you need to take some time off and chill out a bit?” Darren suggested gently.

“I’ll…it’s just…you know, the crash and everything.”

“Mm, no,” Darren disagreed gently. “It’s been building for a while. I think the wedding will be good for you. Little holiday, like.”

Jayden squeezed tightly for a minute, then let go and stepped back fractionally, scrubbing at his eyes. Darren watched him patiently, a hand still on his waist, warm and secure. Safe. He was calm and okay and alive and…and fine. Just fine.

“You took your pill this morning, right?” Jayden said hoarsely. He’d gone to work before Darren was up, and had put it on the stand with a glass of juice for him.

“’Course I did,” Darren said, sliding a hand through Jayden’s hair and using it like a guidance system to pull him in and kiss his cheek, high on the cheekbone and just under the eye. “I’m fine. Calm down.”

Jayden took a shuddering breath and wrapped his arms around himself. “It was a bad nightmare,” he insisted.

“Yeah, but you’re rattled because you’re so stressed and worried and I get it, I really do, but there’s no need right now,” Darren said. “You can’t live constantly worrying about me and right now, Jayden, I promise, there’s nothing to worry
about
. I’m fine.”