Inside was worse.
There were ghosts of happy childhoods running about the place. They lurked everywhere, in pictures of smiling young men with their arms flung over the shoulders of two redheaded, freckled-faced girls with equally wide grins, and a handmade, lopsided vase painted a lurid red. The foyer’s wood floor gleamed, and a faint lemon-oil scent lingered, doing its best to fight off the smell of roasting meat coming from somewhere deeper in the house. Laughter hung in the air, deep, booming voices with a dash of Irish in them arguing about a rugby match they’d all seen.
It was painful to be in the house. It held too much… promise of things Damien never had, of Christmases and birthdays spent with a family who argued over small things but stood together to weather the storms. His chest filled with a familiar ache, one burrowed down deeper than the zipper scar he wore on his skin. He’d found that snippet of laughter with Miki once, and he’d clung to it, digging himself deep into that friendship until they’d grown together.
He reached for Sionn’s hand. Blind and needy.
Sionn’s fingers were there, wrapping around his and holding Damie tight.
“It’ll be okay, Cowboy.” Sionn snagged Damien’s hat and tossed it onto an oak sideboard against the foyer’s long wall. “We’ll talk to my uncle and then get some food in you. Maybe a beer or two.”
“Beer? Just hand me a fifth of Jack and I’ll go find a corner to crawl into,” he grumbled back, but he kept his hand firmly in Sionn’s.
“If it gets to be too much for you, then I’ll show you the widow’s walk on the roof and bring one,” Sionn whispered in his ear. “We can hide out there. I’ll find an umbrella or something.”
The foyer opened up to a large, open space the family used as a common area. The furniture was comfortable, enormous couches purchased for coziness. The room had a mixture of art and personal photos, a progression of children aging to adults dotting the walls and tables. French doors took up most of the far wall, looking out onto lawn and a covered pool. Several archways offered peeks into other rooms, a more formal living room and, to the right, a large, homey kitchen filled with very tall men with broad shoulders and teasing eyes.
All except one.
That man wasn’t as tall as the others. His face didn’t share their rugged Irish planes, square jaws, or ocean-hued eyes. Instead he was a pretty mélange of exotic cheekbones, hazel irises, and a full mouth Damien knew from experience could fling out the foulest string of profanities when its owner was pissed.
He couldn’t breathe. Something was choking him, closing his throat up from the inside out, but Damien still took a step forward, unable to believe he was staring at the one man he loved as a brother. The world must have moved around them, because the distance between them closed. Somehow, in the dim awareness of suffocation and his thundering heart, he found himself with an armful of warm Miki and a face full of tears.
Miki smelled of coffee and cloves, his chestnut hair tickling Damien’s nose. There was so much noise around them, a querulous buzz accented with craggy stones and emerald hills, but Damien pushed it all away, tightening his grip around his brother. Then his lungs began to work again, and he whispered through his tears, unable to find anything deeper to say but the one word he thought of as home.
“Sinjun.”
From somewhere in the noise, Damien heard his name. It was dipped in gold and warmth, a litany of tears and chanting mantras strung together into a song of sparkling white lights and shadowy blues. Miki’s arms were around him, stronger and firmer than he’d remembered. His friend… his brother… squeezed him hard, then cupped his face, and Damie’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the familiar, off-kilter cant of Miki’s ring finger, its first joint twisted slightly in from the man’s odd way of writing. Those arms were back around him before Damien could cry about their loss, and Miki’s shoulders shook as he cried with the shock dealt to him.
“Oh, Sionnie boy, what have you done?” A man’s fierce, peaty timbre cut through a crackling noise of softer accented male voices, and Damie nearly shoved Miki behind him so he could defend his lover, but in that instant, he found himself frozen in the amber of memories pouring over him. “Who the hell have you brought with you?”