Whiskey and Wry

by Rhys Ford

  EVEN though Kane warned him, nothing could prepare Damien for the sea of cameras and faces behind the Hummer’s darkened glass. The media took pictures of everything and everyone who came and went from the station, even the massive, rumbling vehicle forced to inch past them through the stream of people crossing the street to get a glimpse inside.

  “They don’t know you’re in here.” Damien didn’t think he’d met Connor back at the Morgans’, but it was hard to be sure. They all seemed to be large, muscular men with cop-wary eyes. This one was huge, even deeper-voiced than Kane, and his broad hands flexed over the steering wheel, impatient with the reporters clinging to the side of his car. “Fucking leeches.”

  “Can’t hit them, Con. The courts will still call it murder.” Sionn leaned forward and patted his cousin on the shoulder. “Just get us through it, okay?”

  The Hummer was wide enough for Miki and Sionn to sit on either side of him on the backseat, although Connor made a small crack about being a chauffeur when he’d come out of the station and found them all squished in together.

  They were silent on the drive, but Damien’s hands were held tight on either side of him, Sionn’s wide thumb stroking the pulse at his wrist. He didn’t see any of the city they drove through, and blinked in surprise when they pulled in front of an iron gate blocking off the L of a side street. More people loitered there, cameras flashing bright starbursts, and Connor dialed an access number from his phone, triggering the gate to open.

  “Won’t they just follow us in?” Damien twisted around to see if any of the reporters ducked in behind the gate.

  “Nah, Kane pretty much arrests them for trespassing. Sometimes it takes a while for them to get out.” Miki snorted. “We put the gate up after he punched one of them out. Dude bit a guy. Tried to sue, but he was on my property. Judge told him he was lucky Kane didn’t shoot him.”

  Connor guided the Hummer into one of the open bays, then got out to close the door behind them. Opening the back door, he nodded at Sionn. “You’re clear. Let me check the house. Don’t want any surprises.”

  “I don’t know if I can live like this.” Damie crawled out of the vehicle. “I feel like…. I dunno. Shit. I don’t know what I’m saying. This is too crazy.”

  “It’s not always going to be like this,” Miki reassured him. “Things will get back to normal.”

  “Whatever the fuck normal is.” Damien gave his brother a weak smile. Sionn came up behind him and wrapped strong arms around Damien’s chest. He leaned into the man, grateful to have Sionn there. “Fucking hell, I’m so damned tired.”

  “It’s been a shit long day,” Sionn agreed. He kissed the slope of Damien’s neck, nuzzling the spot. “Let’s see about feeding you guys. Then maybe you can crash.”

  “There’s a bathroom upstairs.” Miki was about to say more when a blond terrier shot out of the house, wiggling with excitement. He bent over and ran his hands through the dog’s fur, chucking it under its chin as it crooned Wookiee noises at him. “Damie, meet Dude. Dude, this is Damie. Try not to chew on his toes.”

  “Fuck, a dog. A boyfriend. You’ve gotten all tame and domesticated while I was dead.” He’d meant it to tease, but his voice ran flat, cutting an edge through his words. He saw the spark of hurt in Miki’s eyes, and he stepped away from Sionn, reaching for his friend. “Sinjun, fuck… I didn’t mean….”

  “Yeah, I know.” Miki hugged him, nearly cracking his ribs with a tight embrace. “Your mom’s gone, and we just found each other again. A lot of ups and downs today. I know, man. No need to say anything else. It’s all good. Come on in. I’ve got to take Dude outside to pee, and Connor’s probably checking the bathroom drains for shower monsters. He’s kind of anal.”

  “Fuck,” Damie spat after Miki went through the door to the warehouse, the dog close on his heels. Pacing in a small circle, he gritted his teeth and wrapped his arms around his waist. “Fucking stupid. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

  “He said it’s okay,” Sionn reassured him, pulling his arms away from his body. “Let it go, Damie boy. Let’s go inside.”

  “I hurt him. Not even back for a day and I’m already making him bleed.” Damien stepped back from Sionn, refusing to be mollified. “What the fuck am I doing?”

  “You’re hurting.” The man refused to be shoved out. Sionn grabbed at Damie’s waistband and pulled him back in. “He knows that. Miki loves you. We both do. Don’t worry about it right now.”

  “You don’t even know me. And hell, he hasn’t seen me in how long? Neither one of you can love me. Shit, you didn’t even know my fucking name.” He pushed slightly against Sionn, but the man held on tight. “He’s happy, Sionn. I don’t want to fuck that up.”

  “It’s not going to be fucked up,” Sionn murmured. “And yeah, I’m right fond of you, Damie boy. So for right now, we’re going to go inside, get some food, then maybe find a bed to fall into. And I’m going to spend the night holding you while you sleep, because I can’t think of anything else you need more.”

  There in the silence of the warehouse’s garage, Damien felt the wall break, and he choked, first on the sorrow filling him, then on the tide of pain pouring up from his chest. It hit him without warning, anguish tearing through him. Sobbing, he stumbled, blind and numb, but Sionn was there, a wall of warmth and strength he could cling to.

  He cried, more tears that he didn’t think he had in him. Through the murmur of white noise, he heard a whisper of Miki asking if he was okay, then Sionn saying they’d be right in. He wanted to tell Miki he was fine, but he couldn’t find the words inside of him.

  The silence returned, punctuated only by his crying and Sionn’s murmurs of raw, river-stone Gaelic. Eventually, he felt the hard rub of his lover’s hands on his back and the brush of his mouth on his cheek and forehead, small caresses meant to soothe away the pain crackling through Damie’s soul.

  Finally, he found something to say, a small whisper of anguish hiding deep inside of him.

  “He killed my mother, Irish. My mother.” Clutching at Sionn, he breathed in the man’s masculine scent, needing the familiar to drive out the cold lodged in him. “And I’m scared to death he’s going to kill you too.”

  Chapter 13

  Aw, Sinjun, you wrote your first love song.

  Fuck you, Damie.

  No, come on. I like it. It’s sweet. In a sucking on a razor blade and I’m bleeding in your mouth kind of way.

  Yeah, but do you like it?

  I do. It kicks ass. Does Kane know you wrote something sticky sweet for him?

  Um, D, I wrote this for Dude.

  —Test Session 52, Take 1

  “AND the doctor said you’re all right?” Edie peered out at Damien through the tablet screen, her eyes boggled by her large eyeglass frames. “The headaches really are normal? Because if you are lying to me, Damien….”

  “Doc said the headaches are normal. Nosebleeds are because I’m not drinking enough water, and when I get a headache, it just adds to the pressure.” He’d missed her bossiness. Combined with the owlish disapproval and her quirky, pursed lips, Edie’s long face was a familiar comfort in the whirl of doctors, lawyers, and cops he’d spoken to over the past twenty-four hours. “Promise. I’m good. Just a bit disconnected, but he said he hopes all of my memory will come back to me. I didn’t lose any motor functions, and hey, I can still play.”

  “Because that’s what’s important.” Her sneer was epic, not a whit diminished by the thousands of miles between them. The harsh lines of her face softened, and the screen blurred for a moment as she pressed her fingertips to the tablet face. “I know it is to you, baby, but what’s most important to us is that we have you back.”

  They talked for a few more minutes before the eight-hour difference between them tugged sleep over Edie’s weary face. Promising to speak to her soon, Damien logged off and collapsed against the couch.

  It was odd having his life back, or at least the bits and pieces he’d left behind. Miki’d saved everyth
ing, refusing to throw out any part of Damien’s existence, and while he appreciated having clothes to wear and familiar guitars to pick at, he questioned his best friend’s sanity.

  “I was dead, Sinjun,” Damien muttered as they went through the boxes, unearthing things Damien didn’t remember owning. “You should have tossed all this shit out.”

  “I wasn’t ready for you to be dead, D,” Miki replied softly. “I guess I figured as long as I was alive, you were too.”

  They’d gone through the boxes in the afternoon, after he’d woken up. The last thing he remembered of the night he’d come home was being sprawled around Miki on the couch they used to have in their apartment, its frame reupholstered and fluffed with new stuffing. There’d been some rocking motion and Sionn’s deep voice telling someone they’d sleep in. Drugged from lack of sleep, he’d woken up briefly when Sionn stripped his jeans from his legs and tugged a warm duvet over him, but the next thing he knew, he was blinking away at the watery light coming through the warehouse’s high windows and wrapped up tight in the Irishman’s arms.

  Neither said anything, but Damien knew Sionn was awake. Instead, he turned around and forced the man onto his back, straddled Sionn’s thighs, and pressed his hands on the man’s broad shoulders. Working his way down the length of Sionn’s body, Damien laved at every curve of muscle he found until he could wrap his mouth around the base of Sionn’s cock. The man protested, making noises about Damien needing to take care, but he shook off Sionn’s hands.

  “Shut up and listen to me, Irish,” Damie whispered, licking at the spongy head hidden beneath Sionn’s hood. “You say you’re safe. I know I’m safe. So unless you’re somehow going to get me pregnant, I’m going to suck you clean and fill my belly with your taste. Because I need that. I need you. Right. Now. Because the only thing that’s going to make me feel better right now is you.”

  He then spent more than half an hour showing Sionn the way to heaven.

  What followed was a slog through a queue of medical professionals, each shoving things into him or taking things out. He was bled and poked, then questioned until Damie thought he’d run screaming from the entire pincushion existence his life’d become. Once he’d turned to Sionn and asked if it would be okay if he went back to playing in front of Finnegan’s and forgot he’d ever been Damien Mitchell.

  “Anytime, boyo,” Sionn answered after kissing the corner of his mouth. “There’ll always be a place for you there. As long as I’m alive. Now why don’t you be letting the nice doctor scrape at your brain so we can go get something to eat.”

  He’d been spared having to view his mother’s mangled body. A quick trip down to the morgue was enough of a descent into Dante’s mind for him. Seeing her lifeless, flat face on a viewing screen was difficult, but there’d been no other choice. His father seemed to have disappeared into the wind without a trace. Calls to his assistant were met with reassurances the messages were communicated, and a nasally voiced lawyer descended on the police to answer any questions they might have had, but the man might as well have been a ghost.

  “Had a good talk with Edie?” Miki slid over the back of the couch, jostling Damien into the cushions.

  “Yeah, had to convince her I’d still be here when she got back from Europe.” He shut down the tablet and put it on a side table next to the couch. “Shitty for us to steal her from the band she’s working with just because I pulled a Jesus.”

  “I dunno.” Miki’s hazel eyes glinted mischievously. “She really likes her wine. She probably wants to test out your new superpowers.”

  “I’d probably turn shit into Blue Raspberry Slurpees.” He laughed. “You still haven’t told me about the GTO.”

  “Yeah, it’s… um… in the shop.” Miki winced. “I’d been letting Kane drive it….”

  “You let Kane drive it, huh?” He sniffed indignantly, laughing when Miki opened his mouth to apologize. “Dude, it’s okay. It’s your car. Did he fuck it up?”

  “No, I kind of did.” The singer wrinkled his nose, pursing his lips in mock disgust. “I was trying to back it into the garage and kind of missed.”

  “How bad missed?”

  “Like slammed into the dividing wall and wiped out the brick face bad,” Miki confessed. “D, I was so ready to back it in. I’d driven it around the block for a month. I even solo drove it down the cul-de-sac a few times. Fucking wall was out to get me. I broke the axle, and, well, the paint job’s pretty fucked up. Maybe the transmission too, but Kane said the shop guys can fix it. Good as new.”

  “Fucking walls. They’re mean, you know. Evil fucking things.” Trying not to laugh, Damien plucked one of the worn-edged notebooks Miki left lying on the packing crate turned coffee table. “You kept writing. I read through some of these.”

  “Yeah.” The blush across Miki’s cheek was cute, and when Damien poked at his friend’s blood-warmed face, he got slapped across the fingers. “Fuck off. No one’s read my shit in a long time. I don’t know if it’s any good… or even what I was writing for.”

  “You were writing for our band,” Damien said softly. “We can’t not make music, Sinjun. It’ll kill us if we don’t.”

  “But without Dave and Johnny….” Stretching out over Damien’s legs, Miki rested his chin on the other man’s hip. “We aren’t Sinner’s Gin without them.”

  “No. We aren’t,” he agreed, carding his fingers through Miki’s long hair. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t become something else. You and I… music’s all we know. We live, eat, and breathe it. Hell, Sionn says I hum in my sleep.”

  “Kane told me he worries when he can’t hear me singing something.” Miki sighed. “You’ve just gotten back—”

  “If I don’t do something, I’m going to go nuts, Sin,” Damie confessed. “All of this is hanging over me. I feel helpless. There’s shit I can do, and my mom…. I’m not sure what I’m feeling there. It’s like she’s been dead to me for years now, but now she’s really gone. It’s fucking with my head.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Miki nodded, his fingers finding Damie’s in a tight squeeze.

  “I just want to go forward in something. I need to create something. There’s been so much taken away from me… from both of us,” he murmured. “Sionn’s…. God, what the fuck do I do there?”

  Miki cocked his head, his face serious with an innate wild wisdom Damien had missed. “Do you love him? Shit, I know you love him.”

  “Do either of us know what the fuck love feels like?” He smirked at his friend. “He’s known me for what? A month?”

  “Long enough,” Miki replied softly. “I knew. About Kane. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I didn’t want him to leave me. Everything was better when he was around. Kind of like with you, but in a different piece of my heart. Now you’re here the world’s tight again. Not so much black anymore. It’s like I can breathe in the colors again.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of it.” Damien thought on the golden Sionn brought with him, gilding the moments they’d spent together. “Fucking hell, Sin. What the hell am I doing falling in love?”

  THE man sitting behind the desk oozed greasy arrogance, tapping at the cherrywood top with heavily ringed fingers. Parker hadn’t seen his boss in several months, not since he’d taken the job, and the passing weeks had not been good for the man. Excess ran his pallor to a sickly pale, and a hint of yellow flushed under his skin where the morning sun fell on his face. The buttons on his shirt strained to hold back his barrel chest, wiry graying chest hairs poking out through the gaps, and his chair creaked under his weight when he shifted forward to rest his hands on the desk.

  No, Parker thought, the man in front of him was a far cry from the actor hired to play Damien Mitchell’s father.

  Surprisingly, he looked like a perfect match for the woman Parker’d slaughtered a few days ago and more than a mirror image of the man he’d been hired to kill after Damien. But it was the woman’s murder he was being called up on the carpet for, because his employer tho
ught it’d been over the top.

  Parker would take a great delight in showing the man just how far over the top he could be.

  “Do you have a problem with how I do my job?” Parker helped himself to the brandy decanter off of the study’s wet bar. After popping off the crystal stopper, he paused to sniff at the liquor. It wasn’t as cheap a brand as Parker expected, but still, the man could have purchased better. He certainly wasn’t hurting for cash. He poured himself a double shot and swirled the brandy around the glass as he walked to one of the wing chairs in front of the desk.

  The chairs were shorter than the one his employer sat in, a psychological domination as cheap as the brandy stocked in his bar, but they were more comfortable than sitting on the edge of the desk, a move Parker’s employer would probably lose his shit over. If anything, the man was consistent. He liked his people to remember they were his subordinates and worked hard to turn the thumbscrews every chance he got.

  Just the thought of popping the man’s buttons made him smile, and Parker hid his grin behind his glass.

  The large man cleared his throat and trifled with the fringe he’d combed over to hide his bald dome. “Did she suffer?”

  That was a question Parker never thought he’d hear the man ask. It was common enough from other people… more ordinary people who’d wanted an annoyance removed from their lives, but his employer wasn’t what Parker would consider ordinary. And coming from his viewpoint, Parker thought that was saying something.

  He leaned back in the chair, knocking back another mouthful of brandy as he contemplated how to answer the man. Small beads of sweat were starting to pool over his glistening forehead, the drops grouping together until they were almost heavy enough to trickle down his milk-spotted cheeks. Parker debated lying to draw out the man’s discomfort, but the woman he’d killed deserved better… no matter how much her death stink clung to him after he was done.