The Devil's Trill Sonata by Matthew J. Metzger

The closest Darren had ever gotten to having a family like Jayden’s, and much as Scott was a pest, he was reluctant to let go of it so easily.
    So they went to Scott’s new local, which had a basement with three unoccupied pool tables, and Darren unstrapped his stiff arm long enough to stretch and play a couple of games. The shoulder ached, but the sharp stabbing pain had gone, and Scott peeled aside the neck of his T-shirt to peer at the scarring between games.
    “Huh. Healed up nice in the end,” he said, and Darren grimaced.
    “Still feels shitty.”
    “Yeah, but you’d need like massive surgery for that. That’s the scar tissue and shit inside, right?” Scott said knowledgeably. He had scarring on his hip, albeit from coming off his motorbike last year, not from being stabbed by a thief in a park.
    “Mm,” Darren hummed and broke. A yellow ball soared off into the centre left pocket. “I’m getting the ten past train, not the half past. Cheaper fare.”
    “Fair enough,” Scott said and grinned at his own joke. “Apart from wrestling with wankers, how’s work?”
    “Getting orders from other wankers,” Darren quipped, and Scott laughed.
    “Tell me about it!”
    The conversation wasn’t quite easy— a habit of not really talking to his brother, and years since they had been quite comfortable together made it too hard to come naturally—but it was simple, in a way. Scott wasn’t looking for the tells and shifts of moods, and he wasn’t demanding in the way that Mother was. He was simply there, and while Darren could never say he was likely to talk to Scott about his problems, it was nice to be able to kick back and relax for a while.
    A couple of games of pool turned into eight, and then a meal from the chippie next door, and sitting in Scott’s car on the side of a quiet road eating slightly undercooked chips and definitely-not-pork sausages. Darren’s shoulder was aching again, so he put the sling back on and endured Scott’s teasing for a decent five minutes before threatening to put chip grease on his precious car.
    As a result of being idiots (it seemed to just happen around Scott, always had) they didn’t get back to the flat until gone ten, but even in the dark, Darren wasn’t impressed. ‘Flat’ was generous. Like his, it was really a bedsit with an oven and fridge hastily bolted into the living room, and a sink in a random corner masquerading as both for dishes and for faces. It was tiny, with a view of a brick wall out of the only window, and the bathroom appeared to be a converted airing cupboard.
    “ Mi casa es su casa ,” Scott said generously, heaved a pile of books off the sofa, and collapsed onto it. It groaned. “So, how’s the boyfriend?”
    Darren shrugged, toeing off his shoes. Scott prodded him with a foot. “He’s okay.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “We haven’t been able to talk much lately.”
    “Sucks,” Scott said genially. “You were joined at the hip back home.”
    “Yeah, well.” Mostly his hip to Jayden’s, Darren reflected. He’d used Jayden’s parents’ house like a bolthole. They hadn’t minded.
    “Everything all right?”
    “Drop it,” Darren said, more harshly than he’d meant to. Scott snorted and rolled his eyes.
    “Screw you too,” he said. “I got a girl now, you know.”
    Darren raised his eyebrows. “Uh-huh.”
    “I have! She’s called Megan.”
    “That’s nice.”
    “You could act interested.”
    “She’ll be gone by March, just like every other girl,” Darren predicted flatly. Scott threw a book at him. “What’s your record? Three months?”
    “Five,” Scott admitted grudgingly. “So?”
    “So, Megan— if she exists, which I do not believe for a minute—will be gone by March. April at the latest , using your record.”
    Scott snorted. “Better than commitment. What’s it like, shagging the same person again and again?”
    Darren raised an eyebrow and put his feet up on a chair. There seemed to be a lot of random