What followed was a slog through a queue of medical professionals, each shoving things into him or taking things out. He was bled and poked, then questioned until Damie thought he’d run screaming from the entire pincushion existence his life’d become. Once he’d turned to Sionn and asked if it would be okay if he went back to playing in front of Finnegan’s and forgot he’d ever been Damien Mitchell.
“Anytime, boyo,” Sionn answered after kissing the corner of his mouth. “There’ll always be a place for you there. As long as I’m alive. Now why don’t you be letting the nice doctor scrape at your brain so we can go get something to eat.”
He’d been spared having to view his mother’s mangled body. A quick trip down to the morgue was enough of a descent into Dante’s mind for him. Seeing her lifeless, flat face on a viewing screen was difficult, but there’d been no other choice. His father seemed to have disappeared into the wind without a trace. Calls to his assistant were met with reassurances the messages were communicated, and a nasally voiced lawyer descended on the police to answer any questions they might have had, but the man might as well have been a ghost.
“Had a good talk with Edie?” Miki slid over the back of the couch, jostling Damien into the cushions.
“Yeah, had to convince her I’d still be here when she got back from Europe.” He shut down the tablet and put it on a side table next to the couch. “Shitty for us to steal her from the band she’s working with just because I pulled a Jesus.”
“I dunno.” Miki’s hazel eyes glinted mischievously. “She really likes her wine. She probably wants to test out your new superpowers.”
“I’d probably turn shit into Blue Raspberry Slurpees.” He laughed. “You still haven’t told me about the GTO.”
“Yeah, it’s… um… in the shop.” Miki winced. “I’d been letting Kane drive it….”
“You let Kane drive it, huh?” He sniffed indignantly, laughing when Miki opened his mouth to apologize. “Dude, it’s okay. It’s your car. Did he fuck it up?”
“No, I kind of did.” The singer wrinkled his nose, pursing his lips in mock disgust. “I was trying to back it into the garage and kind of missed.”
“How bad missed?”
“Like slammed into the dividing wall and wiped out the brick face bad,” Miki confessed. “D, I was so ready to back it in. I’d driven it around the block for a month. I even solo drove it down the cul-de-sac a few times. Fucking wall was out to get me. I broke the axle, and, well, the paint job’s pretty fucked up. Maybe the transmission too, but Kane said the shop guys can fix it. Good as new.”
“Fucking walls. They’re mean, you know. Evil fucking things.” Trying not to laugh, Damien plucked one of the worn-edged notebooks Miki left lying on the packing crate turned coffee table. “You kept writing. I read through some of these.”
“Yeah.” The blush across Miki’s cheek was cute, and when Damien poked at his friend’s blood-warmed face, he got slapped across the fingers. “Fuck off. No one’s read my shit in a long time. I don’t know if it’s any good… or even what I was writing for.”
“You were writing for our band,” Damien said softly. “We can’t not make music, Sinjun. It’ll kill us if we don’t.”
“But without Dave and Johnny….” Stretching out over Damien’s legs, Miki rested his chin on the other man’s hip. “We aren’t Sinner’s Gin without them.”
“No. We aren’t,” he agreed, carding his fingers through Miki’s long hair. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t become something else. You and I… music’s all we know. We live, eat, and breathe it. Hell, Sionn says I hum in my sleep.”
“Kane told me he worries when he can’t hear me singing something.” Miki sighed. “You’ve just gotten back—”
“If I don’t do something, I’m going to go nuts, Sin,” Damie confessed. “All of this is hanging over me. I feel helpless. There’s shit I can do, and my mom…. I’m not sure what I’m feeling there. It’s like she’s been dead to me for years now, but now she’s really gone. It’s fucking with my head.”
“Yeah, I know.” Miki nodded, his fingers finding Damie’s in a tight squeeze.
“I just want to go forward in something. I need to create something. There’s been so much taken away from me… from both of us,” he murmured. “Sionn’s…. God, what the fuck do I do there?”
Miki cocked his head, his face serious with an innate wild wisdom Damien had missed. “Do you love him? Shit, I know you love him.”
“Do either of us know what the fuck love feels like?” He smirked at his friend. “He’s known me for what? A month?”
“Long enough,” Miki replied softly. “I knew. About Kane. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I didn’t want him to leave me. Everything was better when he was around. Kind of like with you, but in a different piece of my heart. Now you’re here the world’s tight again. Not so much black anymore. It’s like I can breathe in the colors again.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of it.” Damien thought on the golden Sionn brought with him, gilding the moments they’d spent together. “Fucking hell, Sin. What the hell am I doing falling in love?”