The Devil's Brew (2 page)

Although sometimes gentle wasn’t exactly the word of the day and he’d found himself on the floor more than once, wondering if he’d ever walk again after Kane was done with him.

“Hey, Sinjun, it’ll be okay.” Damie set the food on the next bench and grabbed him, dragging Miki into a hug. “I’m here, dude.”

“Yeah, I know….” He sniffed and reached for a napkin to wipe his face with. “Just… fucking life, you know?”

“Yeah, it sucks,” Damie agreed. “You know what sucks too?”

“What?” Miki pulled away, scrubbing his face clean, but the wind coming off the water found the remains of his tears to freeze the damp to his skin.

“I miss playing. On stage. Fuck, I just miss playing,” Damie mumbled. “And I feel like I’m cheating on the guys, you know?”

Miki did know. Damie wasn’t the only one missing the feel of boards under his feet and the burn of amplifiers in his ears. But they were missing half of their body. Death amputated some of their limbs, and now they stumbled, unable to walk straight or grab at things properly because neither one of them could grasp the loss of their bandmates.

The music still whispered to him. Sometimes in snippets. Other times in full-blown nuclear blasts. But their drum and bass lines remained silent when he played out what came to his head. He knew the notes—heard the underlying throb of his melody—but the hands he’d come to count on—the ones who brought his brain vomit to life—were gone.

“I miss them,” Miki admitted. “Hard.”

“You know what I’m glad about—through all this shit?”

“What?” He cocked his head, then stole a fry from Damie’s hot-sauce spiked mound. It was instant regret, but the narrowing of his brother’s eyes was worth the pain on his tongue. “Do not judge me.”

“Fucker.” The curse was without any heat and tempered by Damie’s smile.

“So what gets you through all of this shit? Because, D, I need some help. I keep looking for them, man. I know they’re not coming back. Not like you.”

“No, not like me.” Damie’s smile edged toward bitter for a second, and Miki inched closer to give him a quick hug. Damie returned it, brief but hard, muttering into Miki’s ear. “Their families gave a shit about them. Mine just tried to murder me twice.”

He hugged tighter, drawing Damie in. “I didn’t.”

“Nah, you’re good.” Damien pulled back and cupped Miki’s face, staring with his bright, shiny blue eyes. He bent forward, touching his forehead to Miki’s, and whispered, “You are my best and only family.”

“There’s Sionn,” Miki teased and reached for another fry. Damie reached out to slap his fingers, but he was too quick. “And Kane. Sort of. They count. Right?”

“And Brigid.” Both of them made a face, and Damie laughed. “She’s not that bad. Just very—”

“Loud. Like, her personality is loud. You can hear her sleep.” Miki wrinkled his nose. “Dude, even her hair is loud.”

“Man, she’d shiv a bitch if anyone hurt you,” Damie reminded him, and Miki murmured in agreement. “She loves us. Even if she’s kind of scary.”

“Scary. Yeah, let’s go with that.” Miki snorted. “Families—I don’t know how to deal with them, man. Not all of that stuff. It’s like today. I don’t know what I’m doing here with this Valentine’s Day shit. Suppose I fuck it all up?”

“The only way you could fuck it all up is if you tell Kane to get the hell out of your life.” Damien’s laughter exploded out of him when Miki shot him a horrified look. “See? You’re not going to fuck it up. And that’s why I’m kind of glad I died there for a bit. It made you reach out to Kane. If I hadn’t been off fake pining for the fjords, you guys never would have hooked up.”

“So now you’re taking credit for me and Kane?” Miki shoved his friend on the shoulder, then retrieved his food from the bench. “Fuck, the fries are cold.”

“Here. Vinegar them up. It’ll be all good,” Damie said, tossing Miki a few malt vinegar packets. “And yeah, I love you. You know I do, but you weren’t exactly looking to enter into holy boyfriend land before all of that shit went down.”

“I wasn’t looking for it when Kane came around the first time,” he mumbled as he fought to open a packet with his teeth.

“Give me that. It looks like it’s been gnawed on by the world’s shittiest beaver.” Miki handed Damie the vinegar packets. As he tore them open one by one, Damie sprinkled the pungent liquid over the other man’s fries. “Here. And yeah, you might not have been looking, but there he was. It’s cute how you two love each other.”

“Says the guy who coos at Sionn in the kitchen?” Miki side-eyed his friend. “You guys are like a step away from passing each other notes in crayon.”

“More you. Less me,” Damien ordered. “Listen to me, dude. You and Kane. You’re solid. He loves the fuck out of you—don’t give me that look. You don’t think I can’t hear you guys sometimes. There’s only so much noise-dampening rubber strips you can use on a door. I’m going to put a fridge or something up in our room so I don’t have to come down to Fuck Fest 2000 in the middle of the night when I want some water.”

“Is there a point you’re getting to here, or is it just a ‘fuck with Miki’ kind of conversation?”

“The point is, Sinjun, you needed me to be dead for a little bit. So you could love the guy you found. Well, the one who found you. If I’d been around, you wouldn’t have crossed that line. Not because we’re fuck buddies or anything, but because we’re good together. We don’t need anyone else around. Being apart kind of showed both of us that there’s room in our lives for different kinds of love. Even the kind of love Donal gives you, because, shit, you wouldn’t have gone near anyone like him a couple of years ago.”

“I definitely don’t think about Donal the way I think about Kane.” Try as he might, Miki couldn’t shake the idea of sharing a bed with Donal. “Dude, I’m gonna have to bleach my brain. That’s kind of my… shit, Donal!”

“He’s cool, and he takes care of us. Probably because we’re with Sionn and Kane, but still, he’s fucking cool.” Damien matched Miki’s grin. “Thing is, without them, we wouldn’t have the Morgan family. Or each other, really. So you reaching out to love Kane—that kind of brought us back together.”

“I was a fucking mess without you, D,” Miki confessed in a soft whisper.

“Dude, you’re a fucking mess with me too.” Damien hooked his hand around the back of Miki’s head and shook him gently. “The question is, what are we going to do about all of it?”

“I want to play.” He hated saying it, but Miki burned with the need to make music. He missed it as much as he used to miss Damien. Nearly as much as he missed Johnny and Dave. “I love Kane, but—”

“Sinjun, you live, eat, and breathe music. Hell, maybe even more than me, and I can’t even wake up in the morning without thinking Sionn is snoring in an open A5.”

“Yeah, Kane’s more of a B5. And only if he’s really fucking dead tired.”

“I think we should start another band.”

Miki heard only a little bit of a buzzing noise as Damien continued to talk. The shock reverberating through his brain was too loud for him to do anything but shake his head, hoping Damie would give him a moment, but finally he had to hold up his hand to get his friend to stop talking.

“Hold up. Did you just say start a band? Really?” He leaned back, exhaling all of the dead air from his lungs. “Dude, how the fuck can we? Are you serious? I just—”

“If you were dead, would you want me to start another band?” Damien pushed his black hair out of his eyes. “And don’t give me that look. Think about it. What would you want from me?”

“I’d be fucking pissed off,” Miki blurted out. “But I’d be fucking pissier if you sat around and jerked off on your guitar while I was taking a dirt nap. You’re too good for that shit. You’re too good to wallow.”

“You wallowed,” Damien pointed out in a soft voice. “That’s what I’m saying here. Without Kane, you’d be drowning in it.”

“I was drowning, D.” He looked away. He had to look away. Sometimes the truth burned him, and staring directly at it was like dropping into hot lava. “I didn’t want to be around this crap anymore. I couldn’t take breathing anymore. If Dude hadn’t walked into the open door that day—”

“I’d have beaten your ass so fucking raw once I got home they’d be selling it for ground-up chicken.” Damie reached up, clenched Miki’s shoulders to give him a gentle shake. “Don’t ever do that to me. Don’t ever leave me like that, okay? Don’t do that to me. Don’t do that to Kane. I know shit gets dark sometimes, but dude, not that. Never that, Sinjun.”

“No, I get it. I do,” Miki murmured, unable to look Damien in the face. “Life just got too… big. Too heavy. I get it now.”

“There’s always someone to lift it up for you,” Damie whispered. “Kane, for instance. If I’m not around, of course.”

Miki picked at his fries, hunting for hard, overdone bits amid the vinegar-drenched potatoes. “You feel that way about Sionn? Like he can lift you out of the shit?”

“Lift me out?” Damien leaned back, tilting his face toward the watery San Francisco sun. “Sinjun, Sionn can wash it off of me. That’s how you should look at Kane. Like he’s got his hand on a fire hose and can blast off everything crappy clinging to you.”

“Heh, you said
hose
,” Miki snorted. This time, he let Damie’s playful punch land, knocking him slightly to the side.

“You’re a fucking dick sometimes, Sinjun.”

“Like you wouldn’t have said the same thing.”

“Yeah,” Damie laughed. “Probably.”

The fish-and-chip shop must have started a new batch of fries, because Miki caught the sound of crackling coming from the take-out window punched through the front of the building, and the starchy perfume of cooking potatoes momentarily masked the scent of seagull shit and baked concrete. Just beyond them, the bay crinkled and flashed, its gray-blue waters catching a silvery sheen from the sun. The day was a bit of a stew, his conflicting emotions fighting to rise to the surface while newer, happier times bobbed along merrily in Miki’s brain.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Damie said through a mouthful of fries. “Talk to me, Sinjun.”

Nothing much had changed. Here they were, sitting on the bay, and Damie was more interested in picking apart Miki’s brain than eating their lunch.

“Fish, dude. And chips,” Miki reminded him. “Eating.”

“You can eat and talk at the same time, dude.” Damien nodded. “I know. I’ve watched most of your meals go down your throat. No lies. Just talk. It’s only you and me here.”

“I was thinking I was really drowning before Kane.” He turned, focusing on the man. It was scary to say what he felt out loud—to talk about how he’d considered downing every single pain pill the doctors had given him because he hurt so damned much inside. “Dude broke that open—that crap inside of me spilled out—but Kane? He healed it. Healed me.

“Don’t get me wrong. There was a big fucking Damie-sized hole inside of me. It ached all the time. Every time I heard someone mention us or there was some stupid radio station playing one of our songs, I bled inside, man. Kane made it okay. Because I could bleed like that, and he’d wipe it away. He makes everything okay, D. You know? Like he can hold me, and I can—breathe. It made missing you a little less achy. And I hated that. I felt scared I was going to lose you again because there was Kane, and he made the hurting—less.”

“Loving Kane doesn’t mean you lose me, asshole,” Damie teased. “I’m always there. It’s not a hole. It’s like an imprint. A part of me. Like a snow angel I left on your heart. Doesn’t matter if I’m here in the flesh—”

“Let’s not test that one. I kinda like having you here,” Miki interrupted. “Die on me again, and I’m going to fucking piss on your grave. Shit no—I’m going to sell every single damned song we have to a children’s show with puppets.”

“Yeah, okay—it’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s all I’ve got. What I’m saying is, he gets you. Hell, he gets me. He’s not going to let you drown, Sinjun. Ever. You’ve got to believe that about him.”

“I do,” Miki whispered softly. “You were the first one I knew wouldn’t let me go. It’s kind of how I knew I wasn’t ever going to shake off Kane. He was just there—folding over me. Like you did. I knew I loved him when I realized he was going to be inside of me—no matter where he was, I’d always have him there.”

“Well, if you play your cards right, Sinjun”—Damie winked—“he’ll be inside of you tonight too.”

“Dude, I’m not worried about the sex.” He jabbed at Damie’s stomach with a soft fist. “I’m worried about fucking up Valentine’s Day for him. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“It’s not that hard, Miki. Wiggle your ass and toss the present at him. Chances are, anything you give him is going to be perfect. Kane’s just that kind of guy. It won’t really matter
what
you give him, just so long as it’s you giving it to him.”

“Right,” Miki said, rolling his eyes. “That’s ’cause you haven’t seen what I got him in the first place—before the jewelry place. He’s going to fricking hate it. Just wait and see.”

I was bleeding when I met you,

Blood running red over my skin.

You want me to love you,

I’m telling you I don’t know where to begin.

You’ve got your hooks in deep,

Pulling at parts of me I can’t see.

How can I believe I hate you,

When I don’t want to be free?

—“Cut Open To Heal”

M
IKI
DID
not
need Sionn adding to his Jenga game of anxiety.

No one told the Irish pub owner that, because Sionn was waiting for them outside when Damien drove Sionn’s Cherokee through the gates.

Leaning against a glossy chunk of American steel shaped like a car.

A big masculine growl of a vehicle with a big fucking red bow on its hood.

“Holy shit! Dude! Do you see that?” Damie barely threw the Cherokee into park before he hefted himself out of the open window and hit the black asphalt running. “That’s my damned Val-Day present! God, he rocks! Seriously, Sionn!”

Bouncing into Sionn’s arms, Damien crowed about something car related, and Miki shook his head, hoping to settle his teeth back into his skull after the rough, jerky stop that sent him nearly sliding under the dashboard. Miki closed his eyes, willing his brain not to jerk him back to
that
time, but his gray matter was a sullen beast, dredging up the scent of blood from its memories and the loud, endless crinkle of metal meeting metal.