“Please don’t,” I begged. “Please? You’re allowed to have bad days, Kieran. Whatever it is, it’s fine. Just…Please don’t go.”
He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head as if to try to clear it out before looking back at me, eyes glistening with something indecipherable.
“I don’t deserve you,” he murmured. “Fuck, I really don’t. But if you want me to stay, yeah. Of course, I’ll stay. It’s going to take me a little bit of time to unfuck myself, I think, but I can stay if you really want me to.”
Please.
“Of course,” I said gently, taking his hand and tugging him toward the kitchen. I needed water, or tea, or something to ease the aching dryness in my mouth and throat. “Take all the time you need.”
As I poured myself a glass of iced water from the carafe on the counter, Kieran pulled up a chair at the breakfast nook. After a quick quenching gulp, I followed him like a hesitant shadow—a satellite moon adrift in his tides, forever tugged toward his center of gravity.
I still felt somewhat skittish, but the urge to soothe him was so much stronger, and so I ran my hands over his shoulder blades, kneading at the tension. A layer of anxiety was immediately assuaged by the soft groan of pleasure that escaped his mouth and the way he leaned back into my touch.
Thank fuck.
If this really wasn’t about me—about us—that was both a welcome relief and a fresh concern. Because he’d said it was a bad day atwork,so this was something related to his job. And what, exactly, that meant for the tiny spatter of dried blood I noticed on the cuff of his coat before he’d taken it off…
Of that, I could not be certain. But I had some semblance of an idea.
Oh, Kier.
“Can I get you anything?”
“Honestly? Liquor. I’ll take whatever you have.”
I blinked in surprise.
Kieran never drank. If he had some wine or ale with a meal at the taverns, he’d rarely even finish it. He didn’t like getting drunk, he’d once explained. He hated the way it slowed him down and dulled his senses, especially after having lost vision in his right eye.
I was shocked by his request, but I understood. I understood all too well what it felt like to have fractured edges in your mind that were far too sharp to exist without being blunted, somehow.
“Yeah, of course. I’ve got honey whiskey and gin.”
“Gin’s fine.”
“Okay,” I murmured, kissing his temple before stepping back around the counter to go hunt down a pair of tumblers, ice, and both bottles I kept stashed in the cupboards above the sink.
I wasn’t about to let him drink alone, but whiskey was my drink of choice when I chose to indulge—which, I supposed, was often enough these days.
I wasn’t a lush, but I wasn’t like Kieran. I enjoyed the slow and lazy buzz that alcohol provided. It was my buffer, my balm against social anxiety that allowed me to actually enjoy time out with friends—letting Laurel and Sia dress me up and drag me out with them to various gatherings and soirées when the mood struck.
Before coming to Sophrosyne, I had largely avoided alcohol for fear of accidentally revealing my hidden Resonances while inebriated, but over the last year or so, I had learned my limits well enough.
“This one’s pretty heavy on the botanical side, apologies in advance,” I said, pouring several knuckles of clear liquor into his glass. “It’s some fancy infusion I got suckered into buying by an overly charismatic vendor in the Arts District. I had only stopped because he had all these interesting plants and rare herbs at his stall, but I guess that’s how they getcha.”
I was doing thatthingagain. The unprompted over-explanation that seemed to irritate or bore most people. But Kier never seemed to mind.
“You and your plants,” he murmured now, dipping his head graciously as he accepted the glass I offered from across the counter, and then proceeded to pour myself a glass of whiskey.
I smiled at him behind my first sip, savoring the sweetness and warmth as it covered my tongue. Meanwhile, Kieran knocked half of his glass back with one swallow.
“Fucking Hel, alright,” I said, stunned when he didn’t even flinch.
When Kieran shrugged, I laughed awkwardly before sliding the bottle across the countertop—which he caught in one hand with ease.
“Thanks,” he replied, finishing the glass in another quick gulp before uncorking the blue-green bottle and pouring himself another.
“Am I about to see youdrunkfor the first time, Captain?”