The Devil's Trill Sonata (9 page)

Scott was waiting by the ticket office when Darren’s train pulled in. He was wearing sunglasses inside, because it had been his birthday two days earlier, but his whoop was loud enough to say he was recovering nicely. As a present, Darren allowed a brief hug.

“Little
bro
,” Scott cheered, ruffling Darren’s hair when they broke apart. “Happened to your arm, cripple?”

“Training,” Darren said. “Trev decided my face looked way better on a crash mat.”

Scott grinned. “Who won?”

“He did.”

“Pussy.” Scott sniggered and waved towards the door. “I brought my baby, so we can take the scenic route home. Via the pub. If you’re crippled, I might actually
win
a game of pool.”

“You wish,” Darren sniped.

In a way, despite Scott being the same obnoxious idiot he always was, it was nice to get to see him without Mother and Father bringing down the atmosphere. Scott was annoying, but he was also genuinely
nice
, which was a rare thing in Darren’s family. Father and Mother had come from their own kind: distant, unapproachable, and not in favour of children of any age. Scott, by contrast, had always been willing to play when they were little, and had been the closest Darren had ever gotten to a normal familial relationship. The closest Darren had ever gotten to having a family like Jayden’s, and much as Scott was a pest, he was reluctant to let go of it so easily.

So they went to Scott’s new local, which had a basement with three unoccupied pool tables, and Darren unstrapped his stiff arm long enough to stretch and play a couple of games. The shoulder ached, but the sharp stabbing pain had gone, and Scott peeled aside the neck of his T-shirt to peer at the scarring between games.

“Huh. Healed up nice in the end,” he said, and Darren grimaced.

“Still feels shitty.”

“Yeah, but you’d need like massive surgery for that. That’s the scar tissue and shit inside, right?” Scott said knowledgeably. He had scarring on his hip, albeit from coming off his motorbike last year, not from being stabbed by a thief in a park.

“Mm,” Darren hummed and broke. A yellow ball soared off into the centre left pocket. “I’m getting the ten past train, not the half past. Cheaper fare.”

“Fair enough,” Scott said and grinned at his own joke. “Apart from wrestling with wankers, how’s work?”

“Getting orders from other wankers,” Darren quipped, and Scott laughed.

“Tell me about it!”

The conversation wasn’t quite
easy—
a habit of not really talking to his brother, and years since they had been quite comfortable together made it too hard to come naturally—but it was simple, in a way. Scott wasn’t looking for the tells and shifts of moods, and he wasn’t demanding in the way that Mother was. He was simply there, and while Darren could never say he was likely to talk to Scott about his problems, it was nice to be able to kick back and relax for a while.

A couple of games of pool turned into eight, and then a meal from the chippie next door, and sitting in Scott’s car on the side of a quiet road eating slightly undercooked chips and definitely-not-pork sausages. Darren’s shoulder was aching again, so he put the sling back on and endured Scott’s teasing for a decent five minutes before threatening to put chip grease on his precious car.

As a result of being idiots (it seemed to just
happen
around Scott, always had) they didn’t get back to the flat until gone ten, but even in the dark, Darren wasn’t impressed. ‘Flat’ was generous. Like his, it was really a bedsit with an oven and fridge hastily bolted into the living room, and a sink in a random corner masquerading as both for dishes and for faces. It was tiny, with a view of a brick wall out of the only window, and the bathroom appeared to be a converted airing cupboard.

“
Mi casa es su casa
,” Scott said generously, heaved a pile of books off the sofa, and collapsed onto it. It groaned. “So, how’s the boyfriend?”

Darren shrugged, toeing off his shoes. Scott prodded him with a foot. “He’s okay.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We haven’t been able to talk much lately.”

“Sucks,” Scott said genially. “You were joined at the hip back home.”

“Yeah, well.” Mostly his hip to Jayden’s, Darren reflected. He’d used Jayden’s parents’ house like a bolthole. They hadn’t minded.

“Everything all right?”

“Drop it,” Darren said, more harshly than he’d meant to. Scott snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Screw you too,” he said. “I got a girl now, you know.”

Darren raised his eyebrows. “Uh-huh.”

“I have! She’s called Megan.”

“That’s nice.”

“You could
act
interested.”

“She’ll be gone by March, just like every other girl,” Darren predicted flatly. Scott threw a book at him. “What’s your record? Three months?”

“Five,” Scott admitted grudgingly. “So?”

“So, Megan—
if
she exists, which I do not believe for a minute—will be gone by March. April at the
latest
, using your record.”

Scott snorted. “Better than commitment. What’s it like, shagging the same person again and again?”

Darren raised an eyebrow and put his feet up on a chair. There seemed to be a lot of random furniture scattered about the room. “Phenomenal,” he said dryly, “but sporadic.” Which he’d expected, with a hundred-plus mile gap between them. Wasn’t exactly a ten-minute bus ride to get your end away anymore.

“Ooh, vocabulary,” Scott teased.

“What are you, twelve?”

“Older than you, gimpy, so watch it. I have
two
functioning shoulders.”

Darren flipped him off casually.

“Seriously, though, you two all right?”

“Why do you care?”

“You’re more acidic than usual,” Scott retorted. “And you chilled out when Jayden was around.”

“Yes, around,” Darren deflected. “And he’s not. Cambridge is…”

“Not
around
around,” Scott scoffed. “I mean around generally. You know. In existence and something to do with you.”

Darren shrugged. “Getting used to him not being around-around then, aren’t I?”

Scott narrowed his eyes. “Uh-huh.” Great. “You’ve always been a moody sod, but since school let you little arseholes off the leash…”

“Like you can talk about being let off the leash,” Darren tried, but Scott was not for the deterring tonight, it seemed.

“I’m just asking, brat,” he said. “You two okay?”

“We’re fine,” Darren said—but he knew that, technically speaking, he was lying.

* * * *

Darren only spent one night at Scott’s before catching the train to London and back out to Cambridge. (Bloody engineering works. Who had engineering works in the week before Christmas?) Scott dropped him off in his orange monstrosity of a car, and then Darren boarded a train, put on his headphones, and blocked out the rest of the known universe.

At least the physical one. He couldn’t deny it: there was an anxiety churning in his gut. He hadn’t seen Jayden since he’d started university, and the change was obvious enough over the phone and the internet. He was drinking wine. Their last two Skype calls, he’d been wearing a proper shirt instead of a too-large T-shirt. He’d told Darren off for making a lewd remark on Facebook the other week. In his own
status
, it hadn’t even been on Jayden’s timeline.

Frankly, Darren was nervous.

He’d not admit it—because who would?—but it was true all the same. He was nervous of getting there and finding…someone else. To the point where he’d left the sling at Scott’s just to avoid any scene about getting hurt at work, because he couldn’t
predict
Jayden anymore. He knew what Jayden was like; he’d
seen
it, for God’s sake. He tried to fit in and go unnoticed and be liked. Maybe it was Woodbourne, maybe it was the way Jayden was naturally, but he hated to rock the boat. He was always watching everyone else and emulating them to fit in, and Darren could see it happening again. He’d done it at Woodbourne (and fine, maybe that had been a good thing, because the bullying would have been worse if he hadn’t, Darren was sure of it) and he’d done it needlessly at St. John’s, and now he was doing it at Cambridge.

And Darren couldn’t help but worry that this time, with the separation as well, he’d start to drift away.

Darren wasn’t blind. He knew Jayden didn’t expect them to last through the next few years while he did his degree. Darren had hung on, because he’d believed they
could
, but half the battle was getting
Jayden
to believe they could. And if Jayden was already changing to fit in at Cambridge, and it was only
Christmas
, of his
first
year, then…

Darren shook off the dogged thoughts and tried to focus on the frosty world outside the train window. It’d be fine. It was Christmas, and he was under no illusions he’d be spending at least Christmas Eve at Jayden’s parents’ house, and he liked Christmas there. Lots of food, telly, and free beer once Mr. Phillips had had a few and could be persuaded to share. Lots of Jayden hating the whole saga and trying to smuggle Darren up into his room without his mother noticing. Just generally…nice stuff. That would still happen, whether Jayden drank wine now or not. Whether…

His phone buzzed, startling Darren out of his reverie, and Jayden’s photo flashed up on the screen.
One new message: jayden, 9:32am. When’s your train getting in?

330ish,
Darren replied.
Conexion in lndn. already hungry so may stop 4 food.

Don’t you dare
, came the swift chastisement, and Darren smiled.
I’ll feed you when you get here, just don’t be late!

Kinky
, Darren opined.

God you’re disgusting.

Ur the 1 whos gonna ‘feed me’ ;)
Darren pointed out, and laughed at the string of exclamation marks Jayden replied with. Maybe he was overreacting. Or, more likely, maybe that Ella who kept dragging Jayden away from his room wasn’t around, and Jayden was allowed to be himself for five minutes.
R u alone?

Oh, no, I am not getting into any of that. I know what you’re like, Darren Peace!

Biblically.

Oh, shut up!

Darren shook his head and hit the call button. The phone rang for maybe half a minute before Jayden answered with, “No! No phone kinkiness or anything like that. I have to analyse this passage before you get here!”

“If it was that urgent, you wouldn’t have answered,” Darren said.

“Oh, shut up,” Jayden said. “You know what you’re like.”

“Yes, well, I’ve known me for about, oh, eighteen years. Something like that.”

“Shut
up
,” Jayden repeated and sighed. “I
miss
you. Why aren’t you getting here until half three? Isn’t there a faster train?”

“Engineering works.”

Jayden groaned. “This sucks. I can’t concentrate because I know you’re coming. Are you coming right now?”

“No. I’m in public.”

“
Darren
!” Jayden said, sounding scandalised, but then he laughed, quiet and breathless. “You’re awful.”

“So I’ve been told. By you. Multiple times.”

“And I’m right,” Jayden said imperiously.

“
Are
you alone?” Darren asked.

“Why?”

“Just asking.”

“Yes?” Jayden said hesitantly. “I’m in my room. I finished my essay, and my exam went okay, so I’m just shifting a couple of pieces more before you get here. I just have to email this analysis to the lecturer before coming to meet you and I’m done for Christmas. Well, for seeing you and going home and everything.”

“So what’re you wearing?” Darren said.

“Darren…”

“No kinky fun, promise.”

“Yeah, right,” Jayden muttered, then sighed and said, “My blue shirt and my black jeans. My socks don’t match because I haven’t really, you know, got out of bed proper yet. You know, showered and everything; I skipped breakfast so I could do this analysis, and I’m eating some cookies instead.”

“Don’t wear those,” Darren said. “Wear those baggy jeans you bought in London when we went to see UCL with Paul. Summer before last.”

“Okay…” Jayden said warily.

“And a baggy T-shirt.”

“Why?”

“I like you in baggy?”

“But why?”

“I get to bunch it up,” Darren said. It was true. He had a thing about it, and they’d worked that out fairly quickly, with Jayden’s (old) tendency to loaf around the house in massive T-shirts that could pass for short dresses, if he’d been a girl.

“…Okay, fine,” Jayden said, sounding vaguely amused. “Just this once. I’ll look like a slob…”

Darren checked the
never bothered you before
that lingered on his tongue and said, “Think of it as an investment.”

“In what?”

“In what I’m likely to do if you’re wearing those.”

Jayden laughed. “Darren!” Darren grinned, the phone shifting against his cheek. “Fine. God, you’re bloody awful and I don’t know why I put up with you and heaven help you if Ella sees me in my baggy T-shirts, but fine, I’ll do it. For you.”

“Why?” Darren pushed, still grinning.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Prick. See you at three-thirty, and
don’t
be late!” Jayden ordered and hung up.

Darren sniggered, dropping his head back against the rest and returning his headphones to his ears. Time to nap. One call and his worries had been assuaged, because okay, Jayden was different, but he was also kind of the same too, and the same enough. He was still…still him, really.

His phone beeped.
One new message:
j
ayden, 10:04am. Because I love you, that’s why xxx.

Darren smiled, closed his eyes, and began to drift.

The station was quiet. It was half three in the afternoon, and the roads had been busy with mums collecting kids from the two schools between the college and the railway station, but the actual station was still quiet, and Jayden had arrived early. He’d been kicking his heels against the wall for ten minutes before the announcement.