by Rhys Ford
“Git.”
“Arse.”
“Next to the last question, and then I’ll leave you two to your days. Where would you like to go—anywhere in the world?” Their answers are swift and simultaneous.
“Ireland,” both men say, then laugh.
“I’d want to take Miki home. To see my kin. I think he’d like it,” Kane begins.
“Damie would love the music,” Sionn remarks. “No pub would be safe from the two of them. They’d be into everything, but it would be fun.”
“Yeah, I’d have to say Ireland.” Kane nods. “And the last?”
“Where do you see yourselves over the next year? With your respective lovers?”
“Ah, I’m kind of hoping Miki will agree to see someone about his past,” Kane murmurs. “I think he needs to talk that out a bit, but it’s not up to me. That’ll be his choice. His decision.”
“Damie wants that too,” Sionn agrees. “I think I’d just like to get Damien settled in his own place. We’re all sharing Miki’s warehouse for right now, and there’s some talk about shifting things around. Privacy on both sides would be nice.”
“It’ll be hard,” the other man says softly. “They need to be with each other for a bit. I don’t want either of them to feel like they can’t wake up and find the other immediately. It’ll be a few months or so before it sinks in that they’ve found each other again. I don’t want to take that away from them. Not now. Maybe not ever. Love one….”
“And you’d better really like the other.” Sionn laughs. “They’re good. Really, nice guys. Even if we weren’t involved with them, they’d be friends.”
“I don’t know about that.” Kane chuckles. “I’m a cop. They’re none too fond of cops.”
“Criminals at heart.”
“Pirates at least.” Kane nudges the dog, disdainfully picking up the sopping wet rib bone. “Want this?”
“Oh no, you’re getting a doggy bag to take that home with you or he’ll be tearing up the place looking for it.” Sionn shook my hand and stood up when I reached for my bag. “Thank you for coming by. It’s was good to talk to you.”
“It was great having both of you sit down with me.” I take a step and my sneaker flops loosely around my foot. Looking down, I see the reason why and sigh. “Now, can either one of you find my shoelace? Or are we going to have to go to the vet’s and see if Dude actually ate it this time?”
Not All Knights Carry Swords
“I CAN’T believe you got us arrested,” Sionn complained at Damien from across the tiny cell they shared. His lover glanced over, blue eyes still and steady even though the right one was a bit swollen from an errant punch. “Worse yet, I can’t believe you got into a fight. In my uncle’s pub!”
“If he were really your uncle, he would have told the cops not to press charges.” Long-legged and amped up, Damie paced across the cramped space, going from one wall of bars to the next. “He’s what? Your aunt’s husband’s second cousin? Third cousin? Is he even Irish?”
“He’s mostly Irish,” Sionn shot back, indignant at being challenged; then he sat and thought about the family tree and how the large-nosed man one of his cousins claimed was a relative actually looked nothing like anyone he knew. “Okay, so he might not be, but that doesn’t mean he is not family. Married in counts. Donal’s not my kin, but I count him.”
“Yeah, that’s who we need right now. Donal.” Damie did another circuit, pausing long enough to attempt another peer down the corridor toward the main door. Just like the last five times, it didn’t look like anyone was coming to rescue them. “And we don’t get a free phone call, huh?”
“Wrong country, boyo,” Sionn reminded him. Damie’s growl made him chuckle. The guitarist hated being confined, and after a long stint in a psychiatric hospital, Sionn didn’t blame him, but there wasn’t going to be anything either one of them could do to get them out. “Sit down here with me and wait. Sooner or later, someone’ll come down to either let us out or charge us with something. Can’t believe you rounded up and punched that git. What were you thinking? He was twice your size.”
“He smacked the waitress across the face.” Flopping down next to Sionn, Damien stretched out his lanky form as far as he could, squaring his shoulders against the stone wall and elongating his legs until his feet were almost touching the bars. “Size doesn’t matter if someone weaker’s getting hit.”
“Could have at least waited until I came out of the bathroom,” he sighed, grabbing at Damie’s chin so he could examine the bruising beginning to spread across his cheek. “Of course you’d have to pick on a guy who had five mates with him on a crawl. You never do things the easy way, do you, Mitchell?”
He gently rubbed over the pinkening spot with his thumb, letting go only when Damie jerked his head away. Sionn ran a hand down Damie’s arm, reached for his lover’s hand, and gently grasped his wrist. For once, Damien didn’t struggle, allowing Sionn to drag his hand up to be examined. His knuckles were raw in places, bits of skin torn from his flesh, and a bead of blood welled along one deep gouge. He kissed the scraped flesh, blowing softly on the exposed raw edges, and Damie hissed but remained still, his mouth pressed into a thin, flat line of displeasure.
“Fucker hit her right across the mouth,” Damie finally whispered. “Then the son of a bitch laughed.”
“No choice to it, then,” Sionn agreed with a curt nod.
There would be no arguing with Damien, even if Sionn didn’t agree with the why of the situation. Lurking not too far beneath the brash, charismatic rock star persona Damie wore as his public face beat the lionheart of a rogue knight, someone willing to battle giants and topple mountains. He and Miki were a pair, strong-willed brothers suited to stand shoulder to shoulder, ready to take on the world if they needed to and often did. It hurt a bit—if Sionn was going to be truthful—that Damie didn’t wait for him to help. They were partners, for the most part, and sometimes there were times when he wished Damien would stop to reach for him instead of lunging headfirst into trouble.
Damien Mitchell was as complicated of a man as his blood brother, Sinjun. At first glance, both men appeared to be simple, basic in their needs and wants, but storms brewed beneath the surface. For all of Damie’s quick, easy grins and laughing blue eyes, he was often introspective, and more than once, Sionn was surprised by his ruthless, logical mind. Damien Mitchell was a force of nature wrapped up in a charming personality and a beautifully wrought face. He’d taken a few hits over the years, and his body showed its wear, especially the long scar running down his chest from being worked on after the accident, but his steel spine and hard focus never wavered. There were laws and rules in Damie’s world, unspoken yet accepted lines in the sand he would defend time and time again.
And while Sionn adored his long-legged, slightly British rock star, he fiercely loved the rogue knight of Damie’s soul.
“Should have waited for you, though.” Damie’s words shocked Sionn, nearly stealing the very thoughts from Sionn’s mind. “I just… saw red, you know? Didn’t even think about my hands. I could have broke something.”
“Other than that guy’s nose? Probably,” he murmured, patting at the broken skin across Damie’s knuckles. “We’re supposed to be in this together, right? Maybe sometimes waiting’s a good idea. Just a few seconds, but I get why. It’s in your nature. Worse than a Morgan, you are.”
“Oh, now you’re just getting mean,” Damie chortled. “Next you’ll say I should have been a cop.”
“Let’s not get crazy.” Sionn contemplated the matter, not being able to imagine Damien Mitchell doing anything other than strut across a stage under hot lights, his fingers working over guitar strings while his brother crooned into a microphone a few feet away. The man was made to be what he was, a musician who adored bringing a crowd to its feet and sometimes, stupidly rushing in where angels feared to tread. “Maybe a crossing guard. A lollipop man they’d call you here, dressed in a bright orange vest and getting sunburned
on the rare days the sun decides to show up.”
“Yeah, not one for kids.” D’s cocky grin was back, toothsome and curved, as sly as a fox’s while contemplating a hen house. “I already tried to raise Sinjun, and he’s barely housebroken.”
“At least he eats sitting down now. That’s good. Sometimes even uses a fork.” He teased another smile out of Damie. “You know we could be here all night. Maybe even until Monday if the Gardaí aren’t too keen on letting us go. Didn’t seem to be very impressed with us when they rolled us through those gates.”
“I’m more pissed off I didn’t get to finish my Guinness,” he grumbled back at Sionn. “Fuck, Miki’s going to lose his damned mind if I go missing.”
The stark truth of that hit Sionn, smashing into the back of his head as if a brick wall tumbled down on him. If they were lucky and someone outside of the cell was feeling kind, one of them might get a phone call to reach out to someone, but he wasn’t placing any bets on it. They were both out-of-towners, for all of Sionn’s tentative familial connections to the pub owner who cast aside all blood ties as soon as the Gardaí showed up to quell the fight. After losing Damien and presuming his brother was dead, Miki spiraled down into a dark hole none of them truly understood. Even as much as he loved Damien—and Sionn would hang the stars for the lanky, muscular guitarist who could make him laugh and growl in bed—he never shared a connection like the two Sinners boys had. Even Kane, a man with many brothers he loved with all of his soul, admitted Damien and Miki were intertwined, tied to one another as if woven together when planted in the rich soil of shared pain and determination.
Not being able to find Damien would test Kane’s ability to keep Miki calm, and Sionn hoped his cousin was strong enough to hold back the storm Miki would rage once he discovered his brother was missing.
“He’ll be fine, right?” Damie muttered. “Kane’s with him. And he knows I’m with you.”
“Yeah, he’s going to be okay. If anything, he’ll be pissed, and the cops will learn a few Cantonese swear words.” Sionn tried to see through the thin frosted glass window at the end of the hall. “It’s still dark outside. Or at least dark over there. ’Course, that could be leading to the back of a broom closet and we’d not know.”
“It’s just… we’ve not been together that long yet,” he grumbled. “He’s kind of… brittle. Okay, fuck, to be honest, I’m probably the fragile one. I hate being locked up. Especially after….”
Sionn knew of Damien’s nightmares. Infrequent but terrifying, they were violent excursions into an unknown darkness Damie couldn’t fight off. Plunged back into amnesia and the knowledge he had loved ones outside of the shadows binding him, Damien dreamed of trying to escape long halls with no end or roaming from one unremarkable room to another, people with hauntingly familiar faces swirling around him, mental driftwood on sea foam turned filthy from dried blood and tears. Waking Damie during those restless moments often helped, but it would take him a moment before he recognized Sionn, his mind searching through the imprints left on its surface for the man who held his heart.
At times, the dreams were too vividly lonely, too tight, and Damie stumbled downstairs, on the hunt for his brother after assuring himself Sionn was real. Miki never uttered a single complaint, drawn out of a deep sleep by Damie’s frantic murmuring. Sometimes just seeing Miki was enough. Other times, Damie needed Sionn and Miki to sit with him on the couch, bringing him back to the present with a few touches and mindless talk.
Demons chased Damie Mitchell, hooking their claws into his back while he ran, scatterbrained and memory-blind, desperate to find the people he’d lost in his own mind. Those night terrors were rising less and less, but they sometimes lingered, circling around the edges of Damie’s sleep, as if looking for a weakness in his growing ease while reclaiming his life.
“Best things that happened to me in my life was finding him and you finding me,” Damie whispered, turning his hands over as he flexed his fingers. “He made me who I am, and you brought me back to who I was. I was drifting. Before him. Before you. Without Sinjun, I wouldn’t have… knuckled down and been serious about the band. I mean, I wanted it, but not… not until I tripped over that half-wild kid with his pretty face and that fucking voice. He needed feeding and someplace safe. It was like I found some gorgeous feral cat someone tossed out because it bit them one too many times.”
“Well, that’s Miki.” Sionn grunted, smiling at Damie’s serious nod. “But you tamed him. Sort of.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” he snorted. “I wasn’t going to fail him, and that meant I couldn’t fail… me. Then all of that shit hit and I was lost again. Seriously fucking lost. Until I found you, and well, now I get to have seriously hard-core rock star sex with a hot Irish guy and play music with my best friend. Except I’m stuck in an Irish jail where no one’s talking to us or letting us make a phone call.”
“You don’t be needing a phone call.” Kane’s voice broke over Damien’s complaints. “We found you.”
Sionn’s cousin strolled around the short wall, then came to a stop in front of the painted-over bars. Both of them were on their feet before Kane had a chance to say anything else, Sionn beating Damie by a few quick steps. The cousins clasped hands, and Kane inspected both of them carefully, taking a long time studying Damie’s face.
“Well, that’s going to be a nice shiner,” Kane drawled. “Those hands look like they could use attention too. What were you thinking? Taking on the lot of them without the rest of us to help?”
“Yeah, you all keep saying that, but yet, none of you were there,” Damie shot back. “Where’s Sinjun?”
“He’s actually the one paying your toll. And writing a check for the damages to the pub.” Kane held up his hands when Damie protested about damages. “Look, your man said you broke a couple of chairs and a table. Whether or not that’s true, Miki’s past the point of caring. He’s already chewed through one of the cops, who said you might have caused brain damage when you broke the first one’s nose.”
“I’d have thought you’d be the one paying us out,” Sionn said. “Seeing as, well, you’re more diplomatic. Miki’s more likely to get tossed in here with us.”
“Someone from the Gardaí will be breaking you out soon,” his cousin said. “And there he is now. Step back so he can get the door open. Soon as that, we’ll get you out and maybe some food in you. Then you can tell me and Mick all about how you let Damie here fight off a mad pack of assholes without lifting a finger to help him.”
IF ANYONE’D asked Sionn what would have felt fantastic after a long night of pub-crawling followed by a brief stint in jail, he probably would have said a cold pint and possibly a long bit of time with Damie stretched out under him, both of them working up a sweat and some screaming.
Instead, he discovered it was actually a cool shower followed by collapsing onto a soft bed covered by an even softer duvet.
He got none of those things. Instead he found himself sitting at another pub, wondering why they were watching the sun fight its way out of a foggy Irish morning from the building’s mullioned windows.
During the walk over, a brisk cold nipped at Sionn’s nose and cheeks, slapping them pink with a touch of a breeze coming off the nearby water. It was early—a bit too early for the kitchen—but Kane always seemed to know someone who knew someone, and the burly landlord greeted Kane with a fierce hug, welcoming them to find a place to sit.
Tired and a bit smelly from having Guinness splashed over him during Damie’s brawl, Sionn leaned on the dark wood table, resting his elbows against its heavy grained top. Scrubbing at his face with a brisk pass of his hands only seemed to make his eyes water, and he was grateful when Kane appeared at his elbow bearing a tray of heavy stoneware mugs filled with steaming hot coffee.
“There’s some cream and sugar on the tray, but I don’t know if it’s enough. You know how D likes to pretty much make his into a damned ice cream cone some mornings.” Kane settled down into the c
hair next to Sionn, giving himself a good view of the pub’s wide main room. “I put an order in for four full Irish with the kitchen. And an extra bowl of mushrooms for the Mick. You’re okay with no beans, right?”
“Totally fine. Extra tomatoes?” The coffee was strong enough to sear off his nostril hairs, and despite the night hanging on him, Sionn felt his blood begin to stir. “God, that’s good.”
“Lots of tomatoes. And D will give you his.” Kane nodded to where the other two men were standing in front of a vintage jukebox taking up most of one corner at the far end of the pub. “I told them they weren’t allowed to play anything. It’s too damned early in the morning for our ears to start bleeding. Volume’s probably set to be heard over a crowd.”
“Thanks for coming to get us. Good thing that cop Damie asked to drop you a call did us a solid or we’d have probably been in there until Monday. The one who dragged us in was an asshole.” He shook his head as the murmured argument over which song had the best bass line drifted over from the corner. “Swear to God in Heaven, I was worried one of them was going to crack if you didn’t get word of us.”
“It’s better now. Not like it was a few months ago. They can let each other out of their sight for more than a day.” Kane murmured a quick thank-you to the bleary-eyed server who swung by to drop off a basket of potato bread wedges on their table. Plucking one of the hot slices out of its nest, he waved it back and forth to cool off. “Miki wasn’t too bad. How was D?”
“Okay. Stressed for a bit once they closed the gate behind us, but I don’t know how much of that was worry over being locked up again or not being able to get word to you guys.” Sionn kept his voice down, not wanting the others to overhear him. “Not a great way to spend the night, but honestly, it was okay. They’re working through things. Damie’s still talking about getting a new band together, and I know Miki’s dragging his feet because he doesn’t want to get attached to anyone else.”
