Rhapsody on a Theme (10 page)

“In the prolonged sense,” she said patiently.

“Guess so,” he said flatly.

“How did you find that?”

Darren shrugged. “Missed him.”

“Did you suffer any relapse?”

“No, I was sleeping or working. Sometimes I ate.”

“Which is not a good sign, you must know that?”

“It wasn’t by
choice
. The secondment happened because the Met were under severe pressure and we weren’t. A few of us agreed to a temporary transfer to help out and boost our CVs. It was busy. By default, it was busy.” And then he clenched his jaw, keeping any further commentary behind his lips. He couldn’t lose his temper. She got worse if he did.

“That does demonstrate that taking your mind off things helps,” she said, and Darren raised his eyebrows.

“If you say so.”

“Darren, we’ve discussed this before. A lot of your emotional problems are rooted in your upbringing. It is
difficult
to alter the way we think and feel and react as a result of our childhoods, but it is wholly
possible
, and shedding the things that remind us of those histories is an excellent first step. I truly believe when you ceased to play the violin, you took a valuable first step.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think the more steps you can take to separate your current life from your childhood, the easier you are going to make things on yourself.”

Darren narrowed his eyes. “So, what, change my name? Father had this way of saying it so it was like a whole sentence on its own.
Darren
. Just like that.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “Perhaps not that extreme.”

“My best friend has asked me to play the piano at his wedding.”

“Now that I suspect might be a bad idea, don’t you?”

“I don’t know, you’re the psychiatrist.”

“Counsellor, Darren. I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“And yet we’re in the psychiatry clinic.”

“Not every medic in the hospital is a doctor either,” she said gently. “My point is, Darren, that your secondment has demonstrated that you are in a different place—a better place—than you were four years ago when you and Jayden separated to begin working.”

Darren sat back in his chair, waiting. He felt suspicious, suddenly, and felt his guard rising. He made no attempt to stop it.

“I truly believe a fresh start will help you, Darren. You have never separated enough from your upbringing to begin to discover who you really are, and I believe that is contributing heavily to your depression and anxiety issues.”

“
Anxiety
issues?”

“And I think that some time apart will…”

“You want me to break up with my boyfriend.”

“You have been with the same man for seven years, and you’re only twenty-two yourself. I think that says something.”

“Yeah, it says there’s this weird part of me that actually loves him and doesn’t want to break up with him,” Darren said sarcastically.

“I think some time apart could help you build up the self-resilience that you need to…”

“Dumping my boyfriend is going to help me?”

“I think by holding on to Jayden, you are…”

“I’m in love, I’m not
holding on
,” Darren remarked and rubbed his fingers at his temple to ease the growing irritation. “Okay, I’m done.”

“We have another twenty minutes.”

“I’m done,” Darren snapped. “Get bent. I won’t be seeing you next Sunday.”

“Darren…”

“I’m out,” he said and stood up. He was a lot taller than her standing, and with Elaine still seated, she looked dwarfish. “Thanks for the advice, but you suck, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re asking me to dump the reason I’m even still alive. So: no, goodbye, I won’t be staying in touch.”

He stormed out. The office broke off from the main psychiatry waiting room, and the look on his face frightened a small child in the waiting area enough that she started crying in his wake. A nurse glowered, and he ignored her, stalking out into the car park. He didn’t care what they thought. He felt angry, hot and twitchy, and stalked around his car for a good five minutes pulling his hands through his hair before getting in and starting the engine.

He reversed out too fast, and an angry cabbie hit the horn, but Darren just swore at him and drove off. He needed some air, some space, and some kind of really fucking good excuse.

Because Jayden was going to
kill
him.

The door to the bag room clanged, and a voice filtered over the rhythmic
thu-dump, thu-dump
of Darren’s gloves against the bag.

“Are you actually planning on coming home tonight?”

Darren stepped back from the bag, chest heaving. He’d taken off his shirt some time ago and was still sweat-soaked. His hair felt damp, and he had to keep blinking the salt out of his eyes just to see. His knuckles hurt even under the thick leather, and his legs were going to kill him on shift tomorrow. Even his head felt kind of…weird. Spinning a bit, maybe.

But he felt a little less angry. A little less like he was suffocating, or being crushed into a box again by the same old psychoanalytical bullshit being spouted by a dull, fat
bint
who just didn’t fucking
understand
. He felt…better. Kind of.

Jayden stood in the doorway in his heavy winter coat and scarf, flushed from the cold outside or the heat inside, blond hair ruffled from the wind on his walk down, and frowned slightly.

“Daryl called me to come and get you,” he said. “It’s half past seven.”

Darren sighed heavily and caught the swinging bag, resting his forehead against it wearily. His chest was burning, and for a long minute, he just focused on breathing. His head felt clearer, at least, even if he did feel a bit…sick.

“What happened?” Jayden said lowly.

“I’m not going back.”

“Home?”

“Elaine.”

“…Oh, Darren, you
didn’t
,” Jayden’s voice rose shrilly. “You can’t keep just walking out on every counsellor who’s willing to see you! You’ll have done the whole of Hampshire at this rate, and how is that supposed to help? How are you going to get better if you just keep running away from everyone who tries to…”

“She wasn’t going to fucking help me, Jayden. She was going to fucking kill me if I went along with her suggestions.”

“Darren, don’t be so melo…”

“I’m not being
fucking
melodramatic!” he exploded and swung another punch. Pain burst in one knuckle, and the glove made a wet sound against the bag. “She wants me to
fucking
ditch every single last
fucking
thing about my life since I was a
fucking
kid,
everything
, and dress it up as some fresh start where the violin and Father and all of that
fucking
shit doesn’t exist and…”

“Darren, a fresh start isn’t…”

“Including
you
!” Darren bellowed, and Jayden flinched back.

“What?”

“Including you,” Darren repeated hoarsely, catching the bag and just staring blindly at the battered leather for a minute. “She doesn’t get that, yeah, okay, you’re kind of massively attached to my teenage years, and you’ve been there when it’s gone wrong sometimes, so yeah, you come with this territory a little bit and I can’t put distance between what I am now and what I used to be with you still here, but she
doesn’t understand
that you’re the reason I’m even here to get pissed off at her.”

“Oh Darren,” Jayden whispered, his voice very low and soft, and he picked his way around the mats carefully.

“I’m not going back,” Darren repeated. His throat ached and his vision blurred. “I’m sick of this, Jayden. I’m sick of them not understanding that you’re not some fucking fling, that you’re the
only fucking reason
that I’m here in the first place. And you know, yeah, it is a good thing I can go on secondment and not have a fucking breakdown because you’re not there but it doesn’t mean we should have a fucking separation so I can find myself or whatever shit she wants.”

Jayden’s arms slid around him carefully, for once ignoring the layer of sweat. Jayden usually refused to touch him after a heavy workout unless he was already in the shower. Usually, Darren didn’t
want
to be touched, come to think of it, but right now…He sagged into the tentative hold, and something was soothed lightly, petted down, when Jayden tightened his grip.

“Nobody fucking gets that. I tell them again and again, but they just hear a fucking kid in fucking lust, that’s all. Nobody gets what you are. And I
need
you. I’m not ever going to get through this without you.”

Jayden murmured lowly, kissing the side of Darren’s head, and whispered, “
I
get it. And I’m the one who really needs to get it, aren’t I?”

Darren choked out a laugh, feeling dangerously close to tears, and Jayden squeezed him tightly.

“Come home,” he said quietly. “We’ll get you washed and sort your hands out, you stupid berk, and then I’ll call the doctor in the morning and get another appointment and we’ll talk to him about what now. If counselling’s only going to upset you that much, then it’s not
going
to help, I suppose.”

Darren snorted, and gave in to the pressure, pushing his face into the top of Jayden’s shoulder and sighing heavily.

“Darren?”

“Mm.”

“You…you remember when we met, you used to call
Samaritans
all the time?”

“Yeah.”

“Did that help?”

“…Sometimes,” Darren mumbled.

“Do you still do it?”

“No.”

“Well…maybe you could try it again. When you need someone to talk to who isn’t, you know, completely on top of this situation like we are. Someone impartial.”

“Maybe,” Darren agreed. He felt shattered, suddenly, almost wobbly. Jayden kissed his ear and sighed gustily, pushing him back and reaching for his gloves.

“You’re an idiot,” Jayden told him, unlacing the gloves and peeling them off gingerly. His knuckles were bloody, and one was going to blister, but they weren’t broken or dislocated. Darren flexed them experimentally. They’d be fine. “And if I say those look bad in the morning, you
will
call in sick.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Go get showered and changed,” Jayden ordered, pushing him towards the door. “We’ll walk home; your car’ll be fine here for the night.”

Darren rubbed both hands over his face and nodded, gathering himself back in. He felt exhausted and torn open, but somehow a little better for it. Jayden rubbed a hand over his bicep and made a low sound. “What?”

“Love you,” Jayden repeated softly and pushed. “Go on. I’ll be in the lobby when you’re ready to go.”

He turned; Darren caught his elbow.

“What?”

“Just…thanks,” Darren said finally, scanning Jayden’s dark eyes. “For…you. Being you. With me.”

Jayden smiled, kissed him briefly, and slid free.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said, and it wasn’t a request.

* * * *

Darren did drive them home, but Jayden had it put on the record that he seriously protested. Darren’s knuckles were swollen and bloodied, and once they were home, Jayden had them straight in the kitchen sink.

“Don’t bitch,” he bitched when Darren grimaced. “It’s your own fault, you know.”

“Yeah, well, it made me feel better.”

Jayden had nothing to say to that, really. Darren did tend to stabilise after he’d lashed out, which was kind of his whole problem in that he
didn’t
lash out very much, he pushed it all down and hid it away, but the consequences…

He’d come back several times from boxing with scraped knuckles, or a bruised face where he’d stuck out a sparring session too long, and Jayden worried sometimes. Worried maybe…maybe boxing was a replacement for the cutting.

“I just wish you could feel better without mashing up your hands,” he settled on eventually, and Darren paused.

“Jayden.”

“I mean, I’m glad you’re letting it out because you never do and I think maybe that’s what makes your bad days so
bad
, because you bottle everything up and they’re all the build-up spilling over, and…”

“Jayden.” Darren turned his hand over to catch Jayden’s fingers. “I’m not doing it deliberately.”

Jayden hesitated. He didn’t want to ask—maybe didn’t want to know, in a tiny part of his brain, but…

“Aren’t you?”

“No,” Darren said flatly. “When I do sport—really rigorous sport—I can’t think and perform at the same time. I just can’t. I stop thinking, but in a good way. So for a while, nothing else matters. It’s just me and my body and that’s it. It’s very focused, very sharp, and I can forget about everything else. It lets me get a bit of distance and work off the temper. It gets through, most times. Gets through the haze.”

Jayden watched his face carefully.

“So yeah, when there’s a lot to work off, I don’t notice,” Darren shrugged. “But I’m not doing it on purpose. Not like the knife.”

He still had the knife, Jayden knew. It was in the bottom drawer in the side table in their bedroom. Jayden checked it every night, knew the shape of the blade and wearing of age by heart. Knew exactly what he was looking for.

“I’m after the workout, not this,” Darren curled his knuckles in the sink of warm water, and Jayden returned to cleaning them tentatively.

“Okay,” Jayden settled on eventually and drained the sink. Gritty pink water whirled away down the plughole. “Go sit in the living room and I’ll get some antiseptic cream.” Which was in the locked cupboard that Darren wasn’t allowed access to.

“For the record,” Darren said, “I’m pretty sure you can’t top yourself with antiseptic cream.”

Jayden rolled his eyes, not in the mood to argue the point, and Darren disappeared into the next room. Jayden wasn’t sure how he felt. On the one hand, the counsellor had obviously said something really stupid to get Darren staying in the gym for nearly five hours, and he seemed okay now but he’d been really upset earlier…