Rhapsody on a Theme

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

“Mum!” Jayden called from the hall as Darren shrugged into his leather jacket. “We’re off!”

“Stay safe, darling!” she yelled back. She was upstairs putting Rosie to bed; Jayden shut the door behind them before Rosie could kick off that they were going out without her, and slid his gloved hand through Darren’s at the gate.

“So how was the secondment?” he asked.

Darren swung their joined hands lightly. “Pretty good,” he decided eventually. “The work was heavy, but it was pretty good, all things considered. And I’m not going to complain about free room and board in London. Missed you, though.”

Jayden smiled at the icy pavement and squeezed the caught hand. “But you were good,” he said gently. “I mean, you were doing really well, when you think about it.” The secondment had been offered to only a few of the crime scene officers, and Darren had been eager to go, even as Jayden had been afraid to let him. The force had offered it in the dreary summer; at the same time, Darren had been taken off his antidepressants, and Jayden had been worried sick about the upheaval in case it triggered one of his episodes. A bad one. A really bad one.

But they’d been lucky.

“Not looking forward to the new doctor,” Darren admitted quietly.

“We’ll be fine,” Jayden reassured him and let go of his hand as they reached the main road, putting his own back in his coat pocket. “Especially now you’ll be back in the house and I can keep an eye on you.”

“That sounded distinctly like a threat.”

“It is,” Jayden confirmed, and Darren groaned. “Oh, shut up. You’ll love it.”

“I won’t.”

“You will. And,” Jayden bumped their shoulders, “you never know when I might redeem those s*x vouchers.”

Darren snorted as they crossed the road towards the bus stops that marked the edge of the town centre. There were a few people about, but not too many. It was a Friday night, but still early: Jayden had voted for having a few drinks in The Queen’s Head, maybe a game of pool if Darren’s shoulder was up to it, maybe the quiz machine if not, and then wandering home with food from the chippie in Market Square afterwards. Mum had fed them (apparently she agreed with Jayden that Darren had obviously lost a bit of weight in London) but there was always room for chippie food. (Darren was a dustbin anyway, so if Jayden couldn’t finish the chippie food, he could pass it off. Waste not, want not.) More than anything, Jayden just wanted a little time to be them, alone, before settling in for Christmas with his family, and then New Year with Rachel.

“Knowing you, at the most inconvenient time possible,” Darren opined; Jayden laughed.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe next time you decide drip-drying around the house with nothing on is a good idea. I mean, come on, you do know Rachel is this close to guessing your measurements, right?”

“Depends what she’s measuring.”

“Darren!”

“Anyway, it changes when it’s…”

“Darren!”

Darren chuckled as they reached the pub door. Jayden pulled his ID from his back pocket as they approached the bar—he always got checked, and it was getting embarrassing—but Darren waved it away. “My round,” he said simply. Jayden squeezed his elbow lightly and smiled.

“You might be earning points here,” he said. “Maybe. I mean, maybe not, depends if you let me win at pool or not, but you might be.”

“What if I buy the takeaway too?”

“Oh, that’s worth, like, a hundred points. Maybe even two hundred.”

“What are these points worth, exactly?”

“We can work out a conversion rate on the way home,” Jayden said loftily as Darren passed him a bottle of pear cider and handed off a tenner to the barman. “And what I’m supposed to do with you when we get back on Sunday, because Rachel said she’ll probably still be out when we get back, so…”

“I can think of a few things,” Darren said with a smirk and held out his pint of lager. “Merry Christmas.”

“And you, I suppose,” Jayden said, clinking their drinks together. He had a sip, then frowned at Darren’s glass. “How many are you going to have?”

“Only two.” Jayden was wary of Darren drinking too much. Alcohol was a depressant, and he couldn’t imagine it would do Darren’s mental health any favours. But getting him to give up entirely would probably be overkill, especially as Darren didn’t actually go weird on alcohol as a general rule, so they’d settled on a kind of low-level compromise—that Darren was only to drink socially, and not much when he did. Darren had pulled a lot of faces and complained when Jayden had issued the orders, but hadn’t been too bad. In general, he was reasonable.

More importantly, he hadn’t been too ill since then either. That had been in June, right after he’d come off the antidepressants that had messed him around so badly, and Jayden was hoping that the good streak was going to last. But then, it might just have been that the last three months in London had had him too busy, or busy enough that he could hide it easier. Maybe. He was good at hiding it, when he really wanted to. Worryingly good.

But it wasn’t worth thinking about now. Now was Christmas and tacky decorations and Rosie and having a headache by two in the afternoon and maybe sneaking Darren off upstairs again for ‘a game’ in Jayden’s room. Jayden might try and tell Rosie that ‘necking’ was a vampire game too, it had worked on Misha when they were teenagers. Or maybe Darren would invent some other excuse for her, and Jayden would try not to laugh, and Dad would make a snide comment when he heard about it and Mum would hit him for being scandalous…

Now was for family and celebration and being happy and sleeping wound around each other as tightly as possible in Jayden’s tiny bed.

Now wasn’t for depression.

“Game of pool?” he asked, nodding towards the tables, and Darren shrugged, one shoulder higher than the other.

“Go on, then,” he said, and Jayden watched him set up, left arm still slightly awkward, hair burning almost copper in the warm pub light. Jayden felt like he was in a more-than-good place, eyeing Darren’s long legs and narrow hips in baggy jeans, his broad shoulders and leather jacket, his wild hair and the glasses that had become permanent last Christmas instead of fleeting.

Jayden felt lucky.