joey lynch could hardly believe he had hit a point in his life where he was happy. where all the lynch children were happy. he had aoife and aj. shannon had johnny. tadhg, ollie and sean had edel, john and a happy home. darren was happy with alex.

and you had finn.

joey… supposed he liked him. the two of you seemed happy together. you were happy and he seemed to treat you right. you were older than shannon but younger than joey, born in the year in between them both.

but finn was a nice boy. two years older, already out of school, but with good prospects. the son of a guard — which rubbed joey the wrong way, but edel told him to give you a chance. he was nice and kind, and treated you right.

but joey saw cracks that nobody else did.

how you were quieter. how you stopped going out with the girls. how you seemed to spend a lot of your time solely with him.

but how could he bring it up to you? he didn’t want to be wrong and make a mess of everything, but he also doesn’t want history to repeat itself. he hopes that you’ll clearly remember growing up with their mam and dad, and how it effected everything and everyone, and how you can’t want that for yourself.

but on the other hand, their mam never left. she stayed.

and it killed her in the end.

and joey can’t let that happen to you. he mentions it to aoife, who tells him that he’s paranoid, which, yeah, he is. but he just wants someone else other than him to see it.

so he waits. bides his time.

and nothing happens. there’s no solid evidence he confront you with, and plus, you’re nearly eighteen, so joey can’t actually control or take you away from finn even if he wanted to. there’s no way he can slip it into a conversation. one, because there’s nothing he can say without spooking you, and two, finn is always there.

he’s perfect.

too perfect.

like now. you’re sitting beside finn, hand in hand on the couch as he talks to john about being the law. joey’s watching you. you’re smiling, and you look like a proud girlfriend.

but joey can’t be fooled. maybe he’s paranoid, maybe he’s just being an overprotective big brother because he doesn’t know finn as well as he knows johnny.

but a part of his brain, the part that vividly remembers everything that happened to his mam? he can’t let it go.

so he’s not letting this go.

not until he’s sure.