Rhapsody on a Theme

Chapter 2-2

It was half past midnight when they turned into Attlee Road: dark, icy cold, and spinning loosely underneath their shoes. Darren’s arm was warm around Jayden’s waist, the leather too cool, and two drinks had turned into five each (Jayden suspected Darren had snuck in a sixth when he wasn’t paying attention) and a pool tournament with a couple of guys who had turned up at around eight that had gone to St. John’s as well. Jayden couldn’t remember the names, but the faces had been familiar, and Darren had recalled some inside jokes with them, and it had been nice to be able to remember school without the bad bits attached. To remember school after Darren had come along, after Jayden had left Woodbourne, after everything.

But before going to Cambridge.

“You weren’t as heavy at school,” Jayden accused as he unlatched the gate; Darren simply smiled and pushed him up against the front door for a messy kiss, open-mouthed and lax, barely missing the knocker. “Oh my God, you’re unbelievable,” Jayden whispered into his mouth, fizzy and tart from the mixture of cider and lager, and laughed lightly when Darren pinched him through his coat. “That’s not going to work.”

“Shame, might shut you up,” Darren muttered, and Jayden pulled his hair.

“God, you’re a mess.”

“You love me anyway.”

“I do,” Jayden agreed, kissing the side of his mouth. Darren hummed, his eyes closing. They had looked cat-like under the orange streetlights of the main road, and Jayden kissed an eyelid hoping they would open again. They didn’t. He kissed the bridge of his nose instead. “Always love you, you know that, even when you’re being a drunk tosser.”

“Mm, maybe I do.”

“You do.”

“Yeah, okay,” Darren said and worked cold hands under Jayden’s coat.

“s**t!”

“Chilly?”

“Yes. And ssh. We can’t wake Rosie up.”

“You’re being noisy, not me,” Darren murmured, kissing him again, loose and messy and gorgeous and half-hard in his cold jeans, and Jayden wanted so badly to be able to say to hell with it and break into the garage and just…just f**k, right there.

Only he didn’t have garage keys, and it was really cold, and Dad would go mental if they got anything on his car, and Darren was always ready because he was a bit of a clean freak when it came to personal hygiene but Jayden was pretty sure he hadn’t taken lubricant to the pub, for God’s sake, and Jayden definitely didn’t have a condom, so…

“Ssh,” he whispered again and smiled, peeling Darren’s mouth away from his neck.

Darren exaggeratedly placed a finger on his lips, and Jayden chuckled as he was finally allowed to unlock the front door and let them in. He wasn’t allowed very far inside before a hand was in the back of his jeans, though, and he hooked the chain over blindly as Darren pushed him back into the door and shifted close enough that no air could get between them, mouth over Jayden’s and a thigh sliding between his knees.

“Oh, is that what you’re after?” Jayden whispered sarcastically into that fizzy mouth, and Darren pushed large, insistent hands into his coat and under his shirt, reaching his n****e and pinching it expertly between finger and thumb, a spark of pure, hot pleasure bolting from chest to spine to d**k. Jayden groaned, muted it, and hissed into Darren’s mouth. “Promises. Mm, maybe. Upstairs, come on, ssh.”

He had to lead Darren by the hand, to stop him from trying for the living room sofa (a favourite of his at Jayden’s student flat in Bristol, or the old flat in Southampton, mostly because in Southampton it had horrified Rachel, and in Bristol it had been the comfiest surface in the whole flat). The lights were all out upstairs, but Rosie’s bedroom door was propped ajar, so Jayden shut his entirely, crowding Darren towards the bed and persuading him, through kisses and interrupted touches, to take his coat and shoes off before letting anything develop further.

“You’re impossible,” he whispered; Darren smiled into his neck and twisted Jayden down onto the bed in reply. “And stubborn, oh my God.”

“I want to show you something,” came the quiet reply.

“Already seen it.”

“Something else,” Darren murmured, wriggling out of his jeans and popping the button on Jayden’s. Jayden held his hand in place for a moment, rubbing up into his fingers enticingly and enjoying the sparks of pure want that Darren’s touch always elicited, before letting Darren finish the job and pull the denim off.

“What, then?”

“This, see,” Darren whispered, slurring a little from the alcohol, and he reached clumsily to switch on the bedside lamp, teetering dangerously at the edge of the bed before sitting back on Jayden’s hips, the pressure over his crotch enticing, and taking off his shirt, stretching like a professional porn star in the process. The flex of his abs and chest was distracting, and Jayden slid open palms up that hard stomach before his eyes found the change and he stilled.

“What’s…?”

The scar tissue from the stabbing had gone—or rather, it had been painted over. Inked over. Black ink was stark on Darren’s white skin and in the gentle glow of the lamp. More specifically, black notes. A short reel of sheet music, rolling from the treble clef tattooed on the very top of his left arm, over the top of his shoulder and down towards his pectoral muscle, the staff lines looping and whirling but perfectly parallel, the dark notes themselves shimmying over his skin almost delicately. It was pretty in its simplicity, and strange in its choice. Even through the alcohol, Jayden knew this was…special. Somehow.

“You…” Jayden blinked and lightly touched a finger to them. He could feel the harsh edges of the staff lines, narrow and almost knifed in, and the soft blur of ink on the notes, like polish or a wax crayon, distinctly different to the feel of Darren’s skin. “When did you…?”

“Two weeks ago,” Darren murmured, folding a hand over Jayden’s on his bare shoulder. Jayden could still feel the rough scar tissue, the thickened stretch of it, but it was completely dominated by the music. The tattoo felt almost alive, in the feel of it under his fingers and the heat of it from Darren’s skin, somehow more intense along the lines.

“What is it?”

“It’s a piece from the Devil’s Trill Sonata,” Darren said quietly. Jayden pushed his hand aside to sit up a little and peer at the tattoo closer, almost plucking at the notes, trying to read them when he’d never learned how to. “A few of the trills themselves.”

“…Why?” Jayden whispered eventually.

“To remind me I’m not dreaming anymore.”

Something in his tone made Jayden glance up into his face, and when he did, those green eyes were intense and sharply focused, the alcohol barely there. Jayden’s breath caught; he heard Darren’s message, heard the weight in his words, and reached, sliding his hand back over the tattoo and around Darren’s neck to pull him down into a kiss as pure as it was hungry, as if something inside him was reaching for something inside Darren, yearning for him in some way more intense than just s*x, more desperate than just the physical.

“S’isn’t a dream,” he whispered into Darren’s lips, sinking back to the bed and rubbing his fingers over that tattoo as Darren followed, transferring his attention to Jayden’s neck and pulling at his T-shirt, coaxing it up. “It’s never been a dream, not you and me.”

Darren said nothing, focusing on Jayden’s neck and chest and pleasure; Jayden felt the tattoo through the rise and the peak and the fall until it must have ached, but Darren still said nothing.