The Devil's Brew Read online

  “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. Jus
t 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”

  MIKI 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.

  He grabbed the armrest and seat to steady himself, cursing his mind for pulling up shit he didn’t want to deal with. As if in solidarity with his rebellious brain, his knee began to throb, a merry beat of almost-pain and twinge.

  “Really? You fucking thing.” He wanted to slam down on the joint with his fist, but he’d learned that particular act of stupidity only made things worse. Instead, he shifted in his seat, opened the door, and swung down from the Cherokee’s cab.

  And almost ended up on his ass in the middle of the cul-de-sac he called his driveway when his knee gave out from under him.

  “Sinjun!” Damie was there a second after Miki grabbed at the door.

  Damie was always there, and the black seep spreading through Miki edged away, probably muttering darkly as it was forced back to the rock it lived under.

  “Dude, you okay?” Damie hooked his hands under Miki’s arms and lifted, helping him steady himself. “Your knee?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay, D.” Miki blinked, startled to find Sionn a few inches away, reaching to help. Miki waved him off. The attention was too much, and it made him too aware of himself. Not something Miki wanted to deal with when Damien should have been spooging over the steel beast squatting in the driveway.

  The bow made it look pretty silly, but Miki kept his mouth shut. People liked shit like bows and wrapping paper. He’d learned that when he wrapped Brigid’s Christmas present and jacked it up something fierce, but she’d loved the wrapping job nearly as much as she liked the bracelet Kane picked out for her.

  “Shit, I should have asked her what to get Kane,” he muttered, then stopped himself. “What the hell am I saying? That’s nuts. She’d peel me apart like a chestnut. Or a banana.”

  “Hey, Miki—”

  “Start singing that damned song, and it’s going to be really fricking easy for you to give Sionn head ’cause you won’t have any teeth.”

  “I asked if you’re okay.” Damie examined Miki’s face, either looking for a lie or eye boogers, so Miki shoved him away. “I’m guessing yeah, because you’re grumpy as shit.”

  “I’m fine,” he grumbled, then seized on the one thing he knew could distract his friend. “Maybe Sionn got a new car. How do you know it’s for you?”

  “Ah, no.” Sionn’s face blushed a bright pink, and he rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. “That’s Damie’s present. You know, for the day. Valentine’s Day.”

  “Dude, you just—wow—rock. No words, babe. Just. No. Words.” Damien hooked his arms around Sionn’s waist, drawing the larger man into a long kiss. They finished sucking each other’s tongues, and Damie leaned back to give Miki a wide grin. “Did you see what Sionn got me?”

  “Yep, it’s a car.” He studied the gleaming hunk for any kind of clue to identify what type, but Miki came up empty. “A black one.”

  “It’s a seventy Plymouth Hemi ’Cuda!” Damien broke free of Sionn’s loose embrace and snagged Miki’s arm. “Come on, you’ve got to ride in it. Sionn got it off a car guy in Vegas. It’s tricked out like you wouldn’t imagine.”

  “I dunno. I can imagine quite a lot,” Miki muttered as he looked at the car. “Well, okay maybe not about that.”

  “Actually, love, we’ve got to get going,” Sionn said, checking his watch. Not the watch Damien bought him, so Miki guessed D was too wrapped up in the car to do an actual exchange. “We want to miss traffic.”

  “Where’re you guys going?” He tried to remember if Damie’d said something about leaving, but his brain rattled on without him, probably still pissed off about its whole accident flashback thing not working. “Did I know you were going?”

  “Over to SLO. Down to the Madonna Inn.” If Damie’s grin got any wider, he could play the Joker for Halloween. “We talked about it, Sinjun. Shit just sneaks up on you. Okay, to be fair, I think Kane had his tongue down your throat.”

  “Yeah, my ears stop working then.” Miki nodded. “Like if you cut off a frog’s legs it goes deaf.”

  “I worry about the two of you. And no, Mick, he probably didn’t tell you. I got us the Old World suite,” Sionn explained. “Thought we’d spend a couple to three days down that way. Maybe even get out of the room and get some crab up at Morro Bay. Or maybe down to Solvang.”

  “Dude, it’s got a waterfall in the bathroom. And it’s like a cave.” Damie was practically thrumming, and Miki laughed, caught in the web of his friend’s excitement. “We’re taking the ’Cuda. Wait, we are taking the ’Cuda, right?”

  “Yeah, D. Into the car now. We’ve got to go.” Sionn pushed Damien toward the steel beast. “We’ll see you in a couple of days, Mick. Have a good time of it. Just no—”

  “No sex on the counters or the couch,” Miki cut him off. “Yeah, yeah. Whatevers.”

  The car did make an impressive rumble. It also squealed when Damie punched the gas pedal, waving as the Barracuda shot past Miki. He waved back, holding the humongous red bow tightly when it began to flap in the wind. The sleek muscle car turned the corner, and Miki lost sight, but its growling engine could still be heard echoing around the block.

  “Almost forgot Kane’s other thingie.” He had Sionn’s car keys and turned to grab the package he’d left on the seat when he smashed the bow into the door. The thing was nearly as tall as he was, and he fought with one of its loops, trying to get it out from around his neck. “What the hell am I going to do with this?”

  Miki eyed the Cherokee. Grabbing the gift, he stuffed the insanely large bow into the car’s interior, then slammed the door quickly before it could pop out and run amok. “There. Fuck it. They can deal with all of that later.”

  THE HOUSE was quiet. A little bit too quiet. Toeing off his Converses and socks, Miki heard the scrape of Dude’s teeth on something hard—most likely a bone since it looked like Kane meant to keep the terrier occupied.

  Or so he guessed by the odd trail of red heart-shaped objects leading from the front door to the first-floor bedroom. Miki bent over and picked up a handful. Some pieces were guitar picks, deep red and engraved with his name, while most of the trail was made up of fragrant blood-hued rose petals. The path led to the bed. A bed surrounded by what looked like a million unlit white candles on nearly every table they owned.

  He flicked the petals from his hand but slid one of the guitar picks into his jeans pocket. His heart warmed at the idea of the small piece of bendy plastic tucked in near his skin. Miki felt its edge when he took a step, and he couldn’t stop the smile erupting to a full bloom on his face.

  Sounds from the kitch
en drew him there. A rattle of a spoon against a pan and then a not-so-quiet Irish lilted curse when something metal clanged against another hard something. Music was playing low on the stereo system, and it took Miki a bit before he realized Kane was listening to Sinner’s Gin.

  And singing right along with his lover’s words.

  “Hey.” Miki padded into the kitchen, and Kane nearly flung himself in front of the stove, as if blocking Miki from seeing what he was doing.

  “You’re home… early. Shit.” Kane blinked, his dark lashes fluttering nervously. “I’m not… fucking hell.”

  “You’ve been hanging out with musicians too much. You sound like me.” Miki snuck a peek behind Kane, but he couldn’t make heads or tails out of what was sizzling in the skillet. More than sizzling, really, because a thick plume of black smoke was beginning to wisp up from around the savory mass. “I’d want a kiss, but something’s burning, dude.”

  “Shit.” Kane spun about and grabbed a wooden spoon from the counter. Digging its edge into the charring mess, he turned the food over, breaking the heat seal. “Damn it. I think it’ll be okay. You really weren’t supposed to be home this early.”

  “Yeah, Damie found the perfect grandfather clock for Sionn’s brawny wrist. You should see that fucking thing. It’s huge.” Miki hitched himself up onto the kitchen counter, well out of the way of Kane’s cooking area. With his legs dangling over the edge, his toes stretched out and curled down as he tried to ease a small ache in his scarred knee. “The Queen of England’s going to lose her shit when she finds out someone sold Big Ben and she didn’t get a cut.”

  “Just… sit there and look pretty,” Kane muttered under his breath. “Fucking rock stars.”

  “I am not a rock star.” Miki swung his feet, striking the cabinet with his heels. “I just write the songs. And sing some.”

  “Stop hitting the door.”

  “My cabinet—well, our cabinet. We share, remember?” He made a face at Kane’s back. “I’m hitting my side. You’ve got the back.”