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