Free The Devil's Trill Sonata by Matthew J. Metzger Page A

your other arm?”
    “No. I’m not moving, and you aren’t moving me, and…”
    The phone rang, and Darren groaned, dropping his head back. “It’ll be work,” he predicted. “Leave it!” he added hastily as Rachel bounced up, but she answered it anyway.
    “Rachel speaking!” she trilled. “Darren’s kind of tied up at the minute, can I—oh, hi Jayden!”
    “Oh, you’re kidding me,” Darren muttered. Jayden hadn’t called in a week, and now he decided to? Awesome. “Rachel, give it here! Rachel !”
    “Jesus, grumpy,” she muttered, putting it on speakerphone and dropping the handset in his lap. “Jayden, your boyfriend is a grumpy bitch!”
    “What’s new?” Jayden asked. “Hi, Darren.”
    “Hey. Rachel, get out. Scream when dinner explodes.”
    “Gotcha,” she said, noisily kissed the top of his head, and slammed her way out.
    “Sorry,” Darren said.
    “S’okay,” Jayden replied, his voice low. It sounded very quiet. “Um, what’s going on?”
    “What d’you mean?”
    “You got tagged on Facebook.”
    “Stalker. What’s it say?”
    “Someone called Amy Chang? Um, ‘ training was …’—I think she means wicked? ‘ Training was wicked, except for Trevor trying to rip Darren’s arm off. Oops !’ What does she mean, Trevor tried to rip your arm off?”
    “We were doing takedowns and Trev got a bit enthusiastic with the whole smack-my-face-into-the-floor thing,” Darren said.
    “…But you’re okay, right?”
    “Yeah,” Darren lied promptly. There was no point in telling Jayden about this, not really. He couldn’t come down anyway, and it was just a dislocated shoulder. It wasn’t like Trev had actually torn his arm off. “Bruised my face a bit, mind. I’m not pretty.”
    “You weren’t pretty to start with,” Jayden retorted tartly, then softened. “I got worried.”
    Darren curled his toes where he had his feet propped up on the coffee table. “Don’t,” he said simply.
    “Couldn’t help it,” Jayden said. “Why couldn’t you have picked a nice desk job? Or a degree, you know, where people don’t try and throw you around?”
    Darren rolled his eyes. “Boring.”
    “Mm,” Jayden said, and there was a rustling sound. “You’re sure you’re okay, though? Your, um, your colleagues seem to find it quite entertaining.”
    “Well, yeah. He nearly broke my nose. That’s pretty funny if it doesn’t happen to you.”
    “He didn’t, though?”
    “Nah. My gorgeous face is just the same,” Darren said. Or at least it would be by the time he got to Cambridge for Christmas next Thursday.
    “Good,” Jayden said, and his voice dropped even further. “I’m going to attack you and your face when you get here, you know. I miss you.”
    “Sounds more like your di-”
    “Darren!”
    Darren sniggered. Some things didn’t change, and Jayden’s blushing virgin routine was one of them. He’d never quite stopped being flustered by innuendo, even if he was a lot more direct about actually doing anything than he had been at sixteen. “It’s too easy,” he protested mildly.
    “Oh, shut up,” Jayden muttered. “God, I don’t know why I miss you. You’re clumsy and nearly break your face and you ruin a nice moment with dirty thoughts, and…”
    “Those are exactly the reasons you miss me.”
    “Darren. I said shut up, and I mean shut up, because I’m not done with my list.”
    “Shut up yourself,” Darren said. “And do my ears deceive me? You’re actually talking time out of your busy schedule to call me?”
    “I know , I know I’ve been busy…”
    “It sounds quiet , dear Lord.”
    “It is,” Jayden said softly. “I locked myself in my room and I’m in bed and it’s warm. I might go to sleep for a bit later, but I still have work to do this evening, and it needs doing this evening, but when I saw you’d been tagged…”
    “Yeah, yeah. Fusspot.”
    “You sound like my mother.”
    “Someone has to.”
    “Shut up ,” Jayden repeated in