Free Rhapsody on a Theme by Matthew J. Metzger Page B

shooed him out to the living room, and followed a moment later with his own bowl, tucking his toes under Darren’s thigh comfortably on the sofa. “Who got murdered?” he asked, mostly for something to ask at all.
    “A woman,” Darren said. “Blatant domestic abuse case, but he’d made a right mess of the house and apparently coughed to the arresting bobby to having extreme porn, so we were told to seize his computers too.”
    “So you carried them.”
    “Some of them,” Darren admitted, practically inhaling his porridge. Jayden made a mental note to make extra lunch. The biggest downside to Darren’s job—okay, maybe second biggest, because having to go to bed alone when Darren worked late shifts sucked— was that his appetite became unpredictable. A busy shift meant he’d eat his own arm by the end of it; a dull one with nothing to do meant he wasn’t so much as interested in a slice of toast the next morning.
    “No wonder it hurts, then,” Jayden sniped. “Is the painkiller helping?”
    “Give it ten minutes,” Darren protested mildly, and eyed Jayden’s half-empty bowl.
    “Go on, then,” Jayden passed it over. “You are off this evening, right?”
    “Yeah. Why?”
    Jayden shrugged. “Figured maybe we could go out or something.”
    Darren pointedly looked to the living room window. It was slating it down, the glass on the outside as wet as the English Channel.
    “We could see a film.”
    “It’s New Year’s Day; nowhere’s going to be open.”
    “Go to the pub then, they’ll be open. Or just go somewhere. I’ve missed you, that’s all, and I kind of want to kidnap you a bit today. Get you to myself.”
    “That’s because you got spoiled over Christmas after my secondment,” Darren said and grinned.
    “Maybe,” Jayden allowed and wiggled his toes to push up into Darren’s thigh. “I’m still stealing you, though.”
    “We don’t have to go out for you to steal me.”
    “No, but I want to,” Jayden argued. “At least for lunch. Let’s go out for lunch and laugh at shoppers in the rain or something.”
    Rachel reappeared like a skinny ghost, planting an obnoxious and loud kiss on the top of Darren’s head before swanning into the kitchen and re-emerging with her bowl of porridge and curling up on the arm of the sofa on Darren’s other side. “You,” she prodded him with her foot. “You should teach me piano.”
    “Why?” Darren asked, without missing a beat.
    “Because then I can play hymns and lullabies and stuff at work.”
    “…And?”
    “And I’ll look stupid if I ask Tony.”
    “He’s your boyfriend.”
    “Yeah, and it’ll be embarrassing if I’m crap,” Rachel said and poked him again. “C’mon.”
    “And you are aware a lot of hymns are very hard to play?”
    “Fine, easy hymns. They’re seven-year-old kids, Darren, I just need to be passable.”
    Darren eyed her, then shrugged. “Only if you make curry tomorrow night.”
    “Deal.”
    “Fine,” Darren said and shrugged at Jayden. “Okay, how about a quick lunch out, then I spend the afternoon teaching the dipshit— ow !—Jesus, woman—teaching Rachel how to whack out Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star ?”
    “Good enough,” Jayden said and took back the empty bowls.
    * * * *
    Jayden stayed out to do bit of needless shopping—January sales were the best ¸ and he snapped up several new woolly hats for Darren, because being together seven years didn’t mean the effect of glasses and a hat had worn off yet—and so let himself back into the house at half past three to hear piano scales.
    Which was weird, because Jayden hadn’t heard scales in…in a long, long time.
    Darren was sitting on the sofa with a magazine whilst Rachel played scales. Painstaking, halting and slow scales, but scales. He grunted in Jayden’s general direction, ducked the bag of hats thrown at his head, and leaned into the offered hug once Jayden had shed his shoes and coat without much comment.
    “How’s it going?”