by Rhys Ford
“Stay here, boyo,” Sionn ordered gruffly. “I’ll be going to get you something hot to drink. See if you can get upright. I don’t want to be trying to pour coffee down your throat.”
It took him a few tries, but Damien inched his way up until he could rest against the bed’s wooden headboard. He grabbed a towel Sionn left for him and scrubbed at his damp hair. Shadows flitted on the ceiling, elongated silhouettes of Sionn moving through the loft. Then a grinder roared on, the sound of it chewing up beans drifting over the room’s open walls.
“God, how the hell could I forget about sex?”
He’d meant only to close his eyes for a second, long enough to send the pounding in his head to the back where it belonged. It seemed only a moment; then Damien felt the bed shift and heard Sionn through a haze of comfortable gray.
“Here you go, Cowboy.” Sionn waited until Damie scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes before handing him a cup. “Watch your hands. It’s hot.”
Even with the warning, his fingertips felt like they were being burned off when he took the mug. Tucking his elbows in, Damien took a moment to inhale the scent of the creamy coffee. Taking a sip was a deadly risk, but his tongue thanked him for it, even as he was mourning the loss of his taste buds from the scald. The heat trickled down his throat and spread out through his chest, easing some of the ache along his scar.
It was enough of a relief he dared another drink, nearly searing his uvula in his haste to warm up inside.
“Hey, take it easy there,” Sionn cautioned. “You’re going to burn your throat out.”
He almost threw out an invitation for Sionn to slide other things down his throat, but Damien stopped his tongue from rolling off the come-on. The worry on Sionn’s face was sweeter than the coffee he’d been given, and Damien lowered the cup into his lap. He didn’t know what to do with the sweet. Other than Miki, there’d never been anyone who’d actually given a complete shit about what happened to him. Even Johnny and Dave, as close as they’d all been, didn’t match the depth of feeling he shared with Miki. Now Sionn seemed to be creeping in, sliding under the walls Damien hadn’t even realized he had.
And unlike Miki, the man sitting next to him did not feel like a brother.
“Drink that, take the aspirin on the nightstand, and get some sleep,” Sionn murmured. “We don’t have to be at my uncle’s house for hours yet.”
“I’m not sleepy.” Sure, he sounded like a three-year-old arguing over a nap, but Damien didn’t want Sionn to leave.
“That’s why you were snoring when I came in? Only reason I woke you is to get something warm in you.” Sionn crooked a dusky eyebrow at him.
“Oh, the things I could have said to that,” Damien grumbled back at him. “Come on. Keep me company. My head’s buzzing. There’s so much fucking stuff going on in my brain. I can’t even sort some of it out.”
“What do you remember?” Sionn padded over to the other side of the bed and carefully slid in over the blankets. “Because you sure as hell didn’t remember the guy shooting at you.”
“Yeah, can I get a pass on that for a bit?” He winced. “I’m sorry, okay? Nothing happened.”
“I’d hate for something to happen.” The man’s eyes turned stormy, their gray darkening. “Mostly because Browne wants you for questioning, you know. For the shooting. You bailed before he could talk to you.”
“What was I going to tell him?” Damien picked up the aspirin, tossed them onto his tongue, then sipped at the coffee again. It was still too hot to take large gulps, but the small bits of warmth were enough for him. “Hello, Inspector. No, I don’t have ID, and oh, by the way, I think I’m some rock god, but I’m scared that if you run my prints, I’ll find out that I’m actually some runaway mental patient from Montana? Yeah, I wasn’t ready for that.”
“You could have told me that, boyo,” Sionn admonished. “I’d have helped you. Hell, I’m helping you now.”
“Yeah, and look what that got you. Your pub got shot up.”
“Most excitement that place has had since we hosted Drag Queen Strip Bingo.” The man’s off-kilter grin made Damien snort. “Talk to me, Damie. What is going on in that crazy mind of yours?”
He leaned back, trying to sort out the sheer glut of images and emotions rushing at him. There was too much grit piling up on him, choking out some of the softer memories. Stretching out his legs, Damien put his coffee on the nightstand and scrubbed his cheeks to get some feeling back into his skin.
“I remember my parents. Sort of. Mostly how they were. How they felt.” He would start there, at the most painful place in his memories. “I remember them… hurting me. I can see them hurting me, but it’s fuzzy a bit. Like, they were so angry… about everything… even me.”
“Are they the ones who put those scars on you? On your legs and back?” Sionn’s accusation against his parents was soft, but the words stung deep. “Because those are some nasty bits of work, Damie boy.”
He’d wondered about the lines across his thighs, too slender and old to be from the accident. Through the headache and pain, he now knew where they’d come from. How did he explain to Sionn about the years-long terror he’d grown up in? Or how he’d feared his father calling him over, even when the man’s voice was treacle and honey. Those times were the worst. With his father’s words often cloaked in false kindness, he’d never been sure if there would be praise or blood.
And mostly he hadn’t cared. He’d been willing to take the risk. Time and time again. Through the bright bursts of pain along his body when his father would strike out at him, the risk was worth it.
Just for those rare times when he’d gotten an arm around his shoulders and he’d been crushed against the man’s round belly in a tight hug.
God, he’d have done anything for a drop of his father’s approval.
Until the smell of his own blood finally became too much, and he’d been unable to crawl away from the beating.
“My father… my real father, not whoever showed up at Skywood… he….” The words were too hard to find, and Damien swallowed, his vision suddenly wavering from a sting of tears. “Those scars are from him. He had this… I don’t know what it’s called, but it was thin and metal. When he swung it, it would bend. Most of the time, it would just hurt, you know? But you couldn’t move away or try to block it because he’d grab you… grab me… and it wouldn’t stop.”
“Where was your mum in this? Didn’t she say something to him?” Sionn shifted closer, reaching for Damien, but he pulled away, not trusting himself to be touched. “I know we talked a bit last night, but… you never really spoke about her, D.”
“She’s—” Too many memories of his mother were flavored by the stink of gin or bourbon roiling off her skin. He couldn’t stand the taste of orange juice because he’d puked from draining a glass she’d poured for herself one morning. “She had me to keep my father, I think. It was more like playing dress-up. They only got married because she was pregnant. I was like a toy. A fucking toy she handed over to him to play with.”
“She didn’t have to stay with him, Damie. You’re her son. She could have taken you away. Like my da did with me. My mum’s… for all my gran tried, she’s just no good.”
“So we both had shitty parents.” Damien snorted. “Isn’t one of us supposed to come from the perfect kind of home so the other can learn about love?”
“I know about love, D.” Sionn’s voice was a soft whisper, but so heavy with promise it wept sweet nectar Damie wanted to catch on his tongue and swallow. “I can teach it to you.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, dude.” Damien swallowed at the lump in his throat. “People… leave. They get tired of my shit or I’m not… I’m too fucked-up to be with. At some point, you’re going to be looking for the door out. Everyone else has.”
“I’m not everybody else, boyo. And I’d be insulted by that if I didn’t think you’ve had a few hits to the head.” His fingers skimmed over the blankets, tracing the ri
se of Damien’s thigh. “And I’ve had my uncle’s family and my gran, but no one’s perfect. Look at my mum. Last thing I heard, she was doing time for stabbing a man who paid her for a good time. And my da couldn’t handle me liking other men. Sometimes, parents aren’t always the people they need to be for a kid.”
“Oh, I know that shit, for sure.”
“So tell me, why’d your mum stay with your dad? When she could have taken you out of there?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know why they stayed married. Maybe because they really liked making each other miserable. All they did… do… is fight and pull at me. She used to scream at me that her life would be perfect if I’d only behave. I fucking did everything I could until… I left.”
“Sounds like leaving was something you had to do.”
“It was too much, you know?” Damien risked looking at Sionn. The man’s hand hovered near, and Damien shook his head, warning him off. “Don’t… I can’t. I won’t be able to talk this out if you touch me. I’ll break, Irish. I know I will.”
“Let me hold you, Damie boy. Someone should have done it a long time ago, and damn those people for not treasuring you.” Sionn edged closer, sliding his arm around Damien.
He was stronger, a gentle force Damie couldn’t resist, especially when he slid under the covers and cradled Damien’s back against his chest. His thighs braced Damie’s hips, the curves of their bodies fitting into one another. Sionn’s arms came around Damien’s chest, holding him tight, and for a moment, he felt Sionn’s lips brush the back of his head.
He bit his lip to stop himself from crying, but the brief spark of pain didn’t help. Hot drops hit Sionn’s forearms, but the man said nothing about it, only urging Damien to continue.
“What made you leave, D?”
“He lost it one night.” Try as he might, Damien couldn’t recall what set his father off. “He was so fucking mad. My mom… I can’t remember where she was. Fuck, she might have been right there, but… I guess that doesn’t really matter. I came home from school, and he was waiting for me. With that switch. Just standing there in his den. Waiting for me.”
“We had a housekeeper. I remember her telling me she was going to the store and my dad wanted to see me. I passed her coming out.” He snorted. “She never went to the store. We had stuff delivered, but I didn’t think that it was weird. Figured out later she probably wanted to get the fuck out of there.”
“Did he do that when he was mad at you? Call you in?”
“Sometimes,” Damien admitted. “He’d laugh and pretend like everything was great, then grab me by the hair or arm. I’d never really know. This time, I could tell he was pissed off. Hell, you could almost see it coming off of him, but in I went. Like a fucking dog hoping for a treat, even though I knew there were alligators in there. Maybe I was hoping he was pissed off at my mom. She ticked him off all the time.
“Next thing I knew, I was on the floor.” He tried shrugging it off, but flashes of pain echoed through his limbs and back as if he were there again, lying on the study’s parquet floor and spitting out mouthfuls of blood. “I don’t know how many times he hit me. Fuck, I don’t think I even felt anything anymore after a while. I kept telling him I was sorry, but he wasn’t listening to me.”
“What were you sorry about?”
He tried to remember the words his father shouted at him, sifting through the derogatory slurs to find the substance of the man’s anger. “He found a magazine in my room. I’d gotten it at school from a guy who’d wanted to show me how disgusting it was. It was pretty hard core. Two guys doing… shit, practically everything. I took it away from the guy and told him I was going to tell the dean, but seriously, I just wanted to go home and jack off all over it. I never even really got to look at it. He found it that morning.
“He kept calling me a faggot and said he’d kill me before I….” He had to close his eyes again, pushing out as much of the pain as he could. Even the iron band of Sionn’s arms around him didn’t stave off some of the anguish leaking out from his heart. “I did everything right. Dude, I’d skipped entire fucking grades at school, learned piano because my mom wanted me to. Shit, I would have played sports if he didn’t think I’d get the shit kicked out of me. That was fucking funny. I couldn’t play soccer or baseball because I might get hurt, but he could fucking cut me apart with a steel rod whenever he wanted to because I belonged to him. He kept saying that… over and over. I fucking belonged to him, and he was going to fix me… or kill me. He wasn’t going to have a faggot for a son.”
Sionn’s embrace got tighter, and Damien relaxed into it, willing something of the man’s strength to reach the emptiness inside of him. He sat in silence, listening to Sionn breathe and feeling the man’s hands rubbing at his arms, then the length of his scar, soothing away the hurt pounding through his chest.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, love,” Sionn murmured into Damien’s hair. “Even if my da turned his back on me, he never tried to take me down. He just walked away. He didn’t leave me with the kind of pain you’re going through. No one should have to go through this.”
“It got better, you know?” He caught himself beginning to breathe again. “I know that sounds fucking stupid, but it did. I got out of there. I found… Miki. Fuck, I found myself. My dad might have left me with scars on my back, but fuck him, I own me now. Not him. Me.” He tugged up the back of his shirt, leaning forward to get some space between his back and Sionn. “You see that tat? Feel it. Feel what’s underneath it.”
Damien didn’t need to know when Sionn found the worst of the scars. Even though he lost the feeling under some of his skin, the light flutter of the man’s fingertips stuttered when they encountered the long, deep slashes hidden beneath his ink.
“God, he could have cut through your spine,” Sionn whispered in shock. “Damien, he could have killed you.”
“He tried. He did. But he couldn’t. And God knows, he fucking tried so damned hard.” He finally could laugh, bitter and sweet, but it was still a laugh. “Everyone thought we used my tattoo on the album cover because it was some ego trip of mine, but see, the guys… they were there when I broke through all this shit. We were flying so damned high, and I wanted something to show how far I’d come since… that night. Spent almost two months in Japan getting it done, and it fucking hurt like hell over some of the scars, but when it was over… when it was all healed, it was… me. It was us.”
“We’d all come from shit, Irish,” Damien pressed back into Sionn’s touch, and the man responded by sliding his hands around to Damien’s belly, stroking at his stomach under Damien’s shirt. “The kirin was our way of giving a big fuck-you to everyone who hurt us. It was our protection against the evil behind us. Every fucking scar, every damned broken bone didn’t matter anymore because we took the pain we got and spat it back. We were Sinner’s Gin, Sionn. Sinner’s fucking Gin.”
“That’s why you’re looking for your Miki? Because he’s that part of you?”
“Yeah, that’s why I need to find Miki. He is a part of me. He’s more than a brother. He’s… a piece of my pain. A part of my music.” Damien exhaled hard, unable to find the words he needed to use to tell Sionn how he felt about the young man he’d found one rainy night. “That’s why we need to pick our shit up off the floor and keep going. Not just because we owe it to Johnny and Dave, but because we owe it to ourselves. The accident? That shit’s nothing compared to what we’d already been through.”
He would have said more. Hell, he needed to say more, but the words on his tongue were trapped, caught in a kiss Sionn wrapped him into. Turning, Damien knew he needed to pull away, to push back the man he could lose himself in, if only to give Sionn the space to walk away. But when Damien felt the man tugging at his T-shirt, then felt the cool rush of air on his tattoo, everything changed, twisting his good intentions to the side.
Knowing he’d regret ever letting Sionn touch him, Damien still let himself be pushed back onto the bed and op
ened his mouth to take whatever Sionn wanted to give him.
INSPECTOR KANE MORGAN stepped over the apartment’s threshold and immediately regretted not taking a uniformed officer’s offer of VapoRub for under his nose. He knew it was going to be bad just by the looks of the outside of the building. It sat as a spot of decaying poverty in a vibrant city, a roach-infested shelter of people who wanted or needed to disappear in plain sight.
The stench of new decomposition hit him hard, nearly filtering out the musky stink of cigarettes and rotting garbage. A light buzzing of flies kept up a steady humming aria near a mound of gray and white froth on the edge of a plastic covered couch, and Kane blinked, suddenly realizing he was actually looking at a pile of burst intestines.
“Hey, Morgan.” The medical examiner on scene was someone he was familiar with, a pretty blond woman who had a stomach soldered together from cast iron and Teflon. “Are you here to poke at this mess with me?”
“I’ll be over there in a minute, Dr. Horan. Right after I get into a fight.” Kane waved as he walked by, gesturing he’d be right back.
For such a small apartment, the place seemed packed to the gills with law enforcement and forensics crews. He was looking for someone in particular and found the junior detective in the kitchen, painstakingly dusting the counter edges for prints. The man looked up when he heard Kane approach, and his handsome face soured into a grimace.
“Oh, fuck you, Kane,” Riley swore at him. “Get the hell off my case.”
“No can do, baby brother.” Kane rocked back on his heels. “Brownie called in half dead. Case’s been rolled over to us.”
He held up his hands to warn off his younger brother from blowing. Riley’s face was a study in Morgan anger, mingled with a healthy dose of his mother’s Finnegan wrath. Visibly counting to five, Riley closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then counted again for good measure.
