The Devil's Trill Sonata (33 page)

“I’m so fucked up, Jayden,” came the first scratchy attempts at words, and Jayden’s heart stopped entirely, beaten into submission by the pain. “I’m so fucked up, I’m fucking crazy, I…”

“You’re
not
,” Jayden whispered fiercely, pressing his face into the top of Darren’s shoulder and holding on like they were drowning in a rip tide. “You’re not, you’re not, you’re not…”

He drowned it all out, pushed away Darren’s panicked litany of self-reproachful with simple denial, because what else could he do? How did you talk someone down who wasn’t rational? How did you hold on when there nothing you could
do
? How could you…

Jayden swallowed hard and clung until he was sure he was leaving bruises. When Darren’s hands finally came to rest on his own back, he clung even harder and stopped caring. How could you help when you’d
caused
it all?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, changing tune and pressing the words into Darren’s ear desperately. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m
sorry
…”

Darren’s words seemed to dry up, and for the first time in three and a half years, he simply let everything go, and
cried
.

* * * *

They ended up, of all things, going back to sleep.

Jayden woke up still wrapped around Darren. Darren’s face was blotchy and pale, but dry, his closed eyes rimmed in sore-looking red. Jayden curled a little closer for a minute, rubbing his hand along the inside of Darren’s closest arm. The skin was smooth—or, at least, there weren’t any
new
catches there. He hadn’t…

Jayden kissed his exposed neck and slid out of bed. It was just after eleven, and he rubbed a hand into Darren’s hair, perching on the edge of the mattress, and coaxed him awake. “Lunch?” he whispered when Darren stirred and blinked hazy green eyes up at him.

“S’on offer?” Darren mumbled, sounding almost like himself in that half-asleep state, and Jayden’s heart clenched.

“Whatever you want,” he tried, but when that failed to get even a spark of interest (from
Darren
, the human dustbin, the waste disposal unit! That was just
wrong
, and it
hurt
, and…he shook it off and tried to forget it) he offered beans on toast, and received a weary nod.

“I’m going to shower,” Darren mumbled and untangled himself without any of his usual grace. Jayden watched him go and hated himself for mentally cataloguing what was in the bathroom cabinet.

“Fifteen minutes?” he called warily. He got no answer, but figured it was enough of a warning, and laid out some of his looser, larger clothes for when Darren was done. Scott hadn’t brought much; he’d been intent on persuading Darren to go to Northampton with him instead.

Jayden took himself downstairs. His phone had been left in to charge on the kitchen counter, and had a message from Dad saying they weren’t likely to be home until tomorrow as ‘bloody baby’s as slow as your bloody mother getting ready’ so they could use his debit card and get pizza for dinner tonight instead of a takeaway from Habib’s.
BUT ONLY PIZZA
, he finished in dire warning, and then followed it with his PIN. Which Jayden already knew, but had the wisdom not to tell him.

Darren materialised, damp-haired and dressed in Jayden’s clothes, about twenty minutes later. He looked awake, but empty; Jayden kissed the wet curls as he sat down and presented him with food, and watched biting his lip as Darren merely picked at it instead of inhaling it.

“Are you not hungry?” he tried, but Darren only shrugged.

He looked physically better after his shower. His hair didn’t share the depression with its owner, and was exploding in all directions with joyful ignorance, and the pinched, red-eyed look had faded in the shower. He didn’t flinch away when Jayden sat next to him either, and offered a small, tremulous smile when Jayden pressed his fingers into the crook of Darren’s elbow and ate in silence next to him, trying to ignore how painful it was to watch Darren chase food around his plate.

He just didn’t know what to
say
.

And then Darren broke the silence, in strangely characteristic format, by muttering, “What about work?”

Jayden blinked. “Sorry?”

“Work,” Darren repeated. “I haven’t…called in sick, or…”

“Rachel did,” Jayden said. “Rachel called and told them that you’d had an accident.”

“What?” Darren looked startled.

Jayden bit his lip. “She said…she said they might not be…happy if she told them it was a…well, anyway, she told them you took the overdose accidentally and you’re still, you know, tired and, um, throwing up and stuff.”

Darren heaved a deep sigh and nodded. “So I’m due back in a week or so.”

“Something like that,” Jayden agreed, stroking Darren’s arm lightly. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, we can sort it out when it comes to it, and it’s not like they can
make
you go back when you’re ill, and…”

Darren nodded and stared blankly down at the half-eaten toast. Jayden shut up, and chewed on his lip some more.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered eventually, and Darren glanced at him. “I’m sorry for not answering your call.”

Darren’s eyes closed as if he were in pain, and he shook his head. “Not now,” he murmured. “I can’t…not now.”

Jayden flinched and squeezed his elbow. For a moment, that deadly silence rolled in again, and then Jayden gathered himself. There was no use trying to talk about it now; Darren wasn’t capable of it, and Jayden couldn’t do it yet. He was still on the verge of crying every time Darren gave him that tired, blank look, and too tangled up to say what he needed to say, and…and how? How was he supposed to say it? How could…

“Want to just…laze around today, watch films? We could work our way through Dad’s action collection while he’s not here?”

Finally, a spark lit behind Darren’s eyes, and Jayden curled both hands into his elbow and pulled him up from the table.

“Any film you want,” he said. “Even the boring ones.”

* * * *

The car rumbling onto the drive at half past ten at night interrupted the fourth boring film, and Jayden suddenly hated the new baby with an irrational force. The film was the first real spark of interest Darren had shown in anything, and if the baby coming home meant he was going to retreat…

“Darling! We’re home!”

…then they could take it right back.

To his surprise, Darren swung his feet off the bed and went to the door of his own accord. Hardly daring to hope that the darkness had passed, or even eased, Jayden went after him, following the sound of Dad tossing Mum’s overnight bag at the stairs, and Mum’s kind of disturbing cooing.

She had a bundle. Looked like Dad didn’t know fast labour from slow. It whimpered, and Jayden stopped on the fifth step and stared at it.

“Um, so?” he tried.

“Well?” Mum prompted. “Come down here and say hello to your little sister!”

Jayden took one step before Darren said, quite suddenly, “Pay up.”

For a brief second, Jayden had no idea what that was supposed to mean. And then his memory caught up with him: Darren’s decision at Christmas that Mum was going to have a girl because…well, never mind the because.

Jayden smiled so wide his face hurt, and Darren glanced up at him before looking away and back to the bundle, shifting as if embarrassed. Jayden didn’t care if he was embarrassed. He’d made a
joke
, and that was…that was…

He instantly forgave the baby everything.

“Does it have a name?”

“She, Jayden!
She
is your sister!”

Half-sister, anyway. And with a nineteen year age gap, he hoped Mum didn’t expect him to actually do any brothering duties. He peered over the edge of the pink blanket and wrinkled his nose at the equally pink-faced baby. She looked squashed. And…kind of like Dad. Which was unfortunate.

Darren grimaced at his shoulder, and Jayden maybe wasn’t telepathic, but he just
knew
that Darren was thinking the same thing.

“Here.”

Both of them started; Mum was staring intently at Darren, and Darren looked suddenly panicked.

“Here, darling. Hold her.”

“I…”

“Go on, dear, you won’t drop her.”

Jayden knew very well Darren wouldn’t drop her, but the look on Darren’s face said that for whatever reason, he wasn’t keen on the idea. Still, he’d never been able to refuse Mum anything, and she pressed the bundle into his hands, and the baby sort of wriggled, and Darren’s hands and forearms just curled around her, and…and Jayden’s stomach clenched.

His boyfriend holding his baby sister was somehow ridiculously…perfect.

And Darren
was
used to it, despite the wary look he was giving the baby. Maybe it was Misha, maybe it was natural, but he was in his element with the weight of her along his arms, his massive hands dwarfing her tiny body. Jayden slowly slid his arms around Darren’s waist and pressed into his side, pretending to be doing it to peer down at the baby again, nestling comfortably at Darren’s chest and curling a stupidly small hand into his T-shirt, but really doing it just to hold him.

“What’s she called?” Darren asked, and his voice had dropped into a low rumble that Jayden usually called his sleepy voice. The baby pushed her face against his chest at the sound, and if newborn babies could look contented, she was. (But then, Jayden knew how much
heat
Darren radiated and figured that probably felt pretty good to a new baby.)

“Juliet-Rosaline,” Mum said proudly. “Very quick, weren’t you, darling?” she cooed at the bundle, but Jayden’s brain stalled and backtracked. The moment had burst; Jayden jerked his head up in horror to stare at Mum, and Dad turned a violent shade of red behind her.

“
Seriously
?” he squawked.

“Quick?” Dad demanded in the same moment.

“Yes,” Mum said and folded her arms. “It’s a lovely name! And
you
,” she turned on her husband, “eight hours is
very
quick, I’ll have you know! Now come on, let’s sit down, and Colin, get the kettle on. Darren, darling, are you all right with her for a moment more?”

“Um, yeah,” Darren said hesitantly, eyeing Julie…no, God no, eyeing
the baby
like she was a bomb. He passed into the living room anyway and sat down without thinking twice about it, and Jayden at once envied his ease with carrying her, and loathed the fact that his boyfriend was carrying something with such a ridiculous name.

“For the record,” Dad grunted, helping Mum into the armchair, “I’m calling her Rosie.”

“No you will
not
, Colin, she’s…”

“Jelly,” Darren pronounced suddenly.

“
What
?!” Mum demanded.

“Jelly,” Darren repeated obligingly, peering down at the baby and bouncing her a little in the crook of his arm. “Aren’t you? You’re Jelly.”

She blinked up at him, prising open big eyes to stare, and then yawned and closed them again. They were a bright, pale blue, just like Dad’s, and she fisted that pink starfish of a hand into his chest again.

“I think she likes it,” Jayden opined.

“Course she does,” Darren said, and he sounded so much like his old self, Jayden resisted the urge to hug him again.

“No,” Mum said and held out her arms. “Give me back my baby, before you corrupt her.”

Darren didn’t laugh, but he
did
smile, and Jayden’s heart swelled at its return as he rose and crossed the rug to hand the new baby back. He looked okay, for the first time since Christmas, and Jayden could even forgive Mum for giving the new baby such an awful name for returning even a little bit of
Darren
to him.

When Darren sat back down, Jayden slid his arms around his waist again and hugged him tightly, but refused to give an explanation.

A sharp shrieking pierced the darkness, and Jayden groaned, turning his face further into the pillow. The baby was crying again. After a pause, he heard Dad’s heavy tread in the hall and the screaming died to a plaintive whimpering.

And then Jayden realised the bed was cold.

He sat up, blinking in the dim light. The alarm clock on the side table said one fifty-eight, but it was an hour out, so it was actually almost two in the morning. The moon was high and clear in an icy sky, and Darren’s silhouette was outlined by the critical glare. He was sitting on the windowsill, feet almost wholly obscured by the borrowed pyjama bottoms, arms wrapped loosely around his knees, and staring blankly down into the empty street.

“Darren?”

He didn’t move, didn’t even twitch. Jayden gingerly slid out of the bed and padded across to perch on the sill opposite him, back to the glass. It was cold, and he pulled his feet up on top of the radiator.

“You okay?” he prodded gently.

Darren shrugged. Jayden bit his lip and rubbed a hand over his chilly toes. It was all so
awkward
. What did he say? What did
Darren
need to say? What did he need to hear? What could Jayden possibly say when…

“I’m…” he began, but couldn’t think of how to continue. Couldn’t even think of what he
wanted
to say, really, because…what
was
there to say? What was Darren thinking—then and now?

“Do you remember,” Darren interrupted suddenly, his voice almost a whisper, “the day we got our exam results?”

A-level results day. God, did Jayden remember. He’d been terrified. They’d had to go into the school hall to collect a sealed envelope with their names on them and open them, then and there, in front of everyone. There’d been every kind of reaction imaginable, from cheers to tears, and Jayden had held Darren’s hand so hard he’d left bruises. He’d made Darren open the envelope for him too,
and
read the letters out to him, and then he’d nearly strangled him in a hug.

“Yes…” he said slowly.

“Do you remember the row that evening?”

Jayden flinched. Yes, he remembered that too, in Darren’s room at Hayley Lane because his parents had been away at a horse-jumping show with his little sister, and they’d chased Scott out and kept the house for themselves. And asking Darren one last time if he was taking the job offer in Southampton, and when Darren had said yes, asking if maybe they wouldn’t be better off calling it quits.