“HOLY fucking shit.” Damien sat up quickly, nearly kicking his guitar off the couch. His mind was racing, pulling up edible tidbits from the burned soup of his memories and shocking him with unexpected information. “I just fucking remembered Beaker’s not a chick. Holy crap! This fucking blows my mind. Again. Fucking hell. Miki dude… did you know Beaker’s a guy?”
The singer looked up from the music sheets Damien had dropped in his lap, his nose wrinkled in disgust at Damie’s feet shoving his knee. “Not only do I not give a fuck, I don’t even know who the hell Beaker is.”
“Fuck you. You’re broken. Why do I even talk to you?” he sniped back, kicking his friend again as he twisted around to sit sideways on the couch. Waving at his lover, Damien caught Sionn coming out of the kitchen, Kane tight on his heels with a cup of coffee. “Sionn… babe… did you know Beaker’s a dude?”
“Who the hell’s Beaker?” Sionn frowned, moving aside to let his cousin by. “You didn’t know he was a boy? Switching over or summat?”
“Fuck you too.” Damien sighed, lightly banging his forehead against a cushion. He was alone in his stew, searching for someone who’d share his delight. “Kane…?”
“Wait, Beaker’s a dude?” Kane stopped in midsip, his mug poised below his lips. “You sure? I thought she and Dr. Honeydew… wow. Well shit, that changes things.”
“Nah, it’s all Bert and Ernie again.” Damien grinned at the cop, suddenly quite overly fond of Miki’s lover. “Stealthy Muppet homoerotic overtones.”
“You are a sick fuck, D,” Miki scratched notes on the song he was working on. “You’re talking about puppets getting it on. Sionn not giving you enough?”
“This from the person who wanted to see two armadillos fuck?” The kick this time came from Miki, his rigid toes smacking Damien’s knee. “Dude, you made us stand in the damned cold and watch those two at the zoo. Then we find out they’re both girls.”
“Fuck you. I was curious.” He rattled a piece of sheet music under Damien’s nose. “Can we get back to this?”
“Actually, I’m going to have to be grabbing Damie from you,” Sionn apologized softly. “He’s got a doctor’s appointment this morning.”
“And Edie’s getting here in a couple of days.” Kane bent over to kiss Miki’s neck. “We’ve got to get the other guest room set up now that we’ve got these two squatters in the main room. So, you two, no running around naked on the second floor while she’s here.”
“Like she’s not seen everything I’ve got already.” Damien snorted.
“I don’t even want to know how that happens.” Sionn fished his keys out of his pocket. “Come on, boyo. Let’s get your head checked out, and maybe he’ll clear you to drive. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“What would be nice is if I could get my life back,” he complained loudly, but he climbed off the couch, tagging Miki on the side of his friend’s head with a snap of his fingers. “Get my money back. My own place… keep Miki’s boyfriend in my basement.”
“Bitch,” Miki grumbled at him, waving Damien away. “Go get your head checked. Maybe if they look hard enough, they can find your brain.”
A familiar anxiety kept Damien on edge through the car ride, and by the time they pulled into the hospital’s underground parking, he was about to go out of his mind. Slippery tangents swarmed about his head, buzzing and stinging like a nest of angry wasps suddenly woken up by a stupid bear. Rubbing at his forehead, Damien nearly fell out of the Jeep as he got out, and Sionn hurried around to pull him up.
“Damie, look at me. Are you doing okay?” Sionn wavered in Damien’s vision, then snapped back into focus. Two of Sionn’s fingers were thrust up under Damien’s nose, and he reeled back in surprise. “How many do you see?”
“One,” he sneered, slapping Sionn’s hand away. “One asshole. Dude, I’m fine. Just too much… crap coming up. Doc said it would happen, remember? I just got dizzy. Let’s go in so I can get the hell out of here. I’m kind of over hospitals right now.”
It was torture to walk through the brightly lit halls of the medical center. Flashbacks of heavy-handed orderlies and a phantom whiff of fire lingered in his mind. Someone dropped a metal pan on the floor, and the clatter sounded too much like a burst of gunfire going off in the cold darkness of a Montana winter night. Panic set in, and Damien clutched at Sionn’s arm, forbidding himself from diving behind a nearby potted plant for cover.
“We’ll take it slow, a rún.” Sionn soothed Damien’s nerves with a soft stroke of fingers along Damie’s nape. “When you get inside, you tell the doc you’re having some trouble—”