Flesh Cartel, #8: Loyalties

full to bursting with joy and pride he didn’t even care if the whole crowd saw him cry.
    Yeah, he’d had a good run. Right up until the end, almost, despite everything that’d happened. He could let go now. He wouldn’t be hurting anyone. Not anymore.
    “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
    Mat whirled around so quickly he almost fell off the chair. A moment of sheer panic as his hand shot out, found the chin-up bar to steady himself, chest heaving, heart thrashing. He blinked down at Roger’s open, wounded expression, at his half-outstretched arm nearly close enough to touch Mat, and felt a laugh crawl up his throat at the absurdity of it. He’d been preparing to step off the chair on purpose; why so much fear at falling accidentally?
    And how had he not heard Roger come in?
    “I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Roger repeated. He sounded like he meant it, too—not for Nikolai, but for himself , like he’d miss Mat, or maybe took it as a personal affront that Mat would choose to leave him.
    Or maybe as a failure. Maybe he thought he hadn’t taken enough care of Mat.
    Which was bullshit. The way he’d come in every day, morning, noon, and night, with fresh food and bandages and antibiotics and painkillers and soft hands and softer smiles and more patience than any one man had a right to. The way he’d picked up after Mat’s hurled trays and hurled insults without complaint, without so much as a squinty glare. The way his mere presence had shouted, day after day, I understand. I care. It’s all right.
    “Yeah,” Mat said, but it came out on a croak, like the leather jump rope was already strangling him, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Yeah. All right.”
    He didn’t know why he was saying that. Hadn’t meant to. Didn’t seem to have any control over his fingers, either, as they reached up to his throat, loosened the slipknot, pushed the rope up and off himself. Lost control of the rest of himself as his legs and feet took him off the chair. Something bloomed hot and tight in his chest, as thick and choking as he imagined the rope would’ve been. Pain, maybe. Definitely. But something else, too.
    And then he fell into Roger’s arms.
    He hadn’t meant to do that either, really. Maybe the shock or the adrenaline had weakened his knees, or maybe he was just feeling sappy from all the reminiscing, or maybe some part of him was happy to have survived and wanted to share that primitive joy with the only kind person left in an increasingly cruel world.
    Roger didn’t say anything. Didn’t back away and leave him cold. Just enfolded Mat against his big solid body and . . . held him. God, held him . Mat hadn’t realized how much he’d missed being touched by someone who wasn’t using that touch to hurt him. Or to lull him into a sense of false security just to hurt him more.
    None of that. This touch was comfort and understanding, and all the things Mat once used to seek in the arms of men.
    “You’re all right,” Roger said, gruff voice full of masculine tenderness, and that , after everything that had happened today, the last few weeks or months, was what finally broke Mat.
    He clutched at Roger’s shoulders, pressed his body to Roger’s, and slammed their mouths together in the most desperate kiss of his life. He wanted this. Wanted this connection, wanted to know there was something left to live for. Not Roger himself, but what Roger symbolized: the freedom to love and touch and need and be needed, and to do it of his own free will. Not that Roger wasn’t a good outlet for those urges—he was kind and handsome and kind and strong and kind and had a gentle smile and beautiful green eyes. Out in the real world, it wasn’t completely out of the question that Mat might have picked him up at a bar.
    He wondered what Roger had been like before he’d come to this place. Would there ever be any chance for them to meet outside these walls? Would it be real ? Or had this place tainted everything, ruined everything, twisted them both around so hard they couldn’t even tell what they were looking at anymore? He’d backed Roger all the way across the room, backed him into the wall, had his hands tangled in Roger’s soft blond hair and his tongue shoved halfway down his throat and his cock grinding hard into the line of Roger’s hip and thigh and this was a man who’d tied him down against his will once upon a time, I don’t have permission to feel sorry for you , stood by and