The Flesh Cartel #9: Trials and Errors

the knob had actually turned beneath his fingers.
    Nikolai must have kept Mat’s door locked all the time. No wonder, he supposed. Couldn’t exactly have a wild animal wandering free in his own house, could he.
    Dougie figured Mat would make a break for it now, abandon him like he had before, but he didn’t. He just stood there another moment, blinking stupidly, then peeked out into the hallway, then pulled back inside, and very, very quietly shut the door again.
    Dougie buried himself back under the covers after that, but he couldn’t help but hear Mat, whose activities around the room had turned downright frantic. Opening and closing drawers, rummaging around, tearing through the closet, the bathroom, every cabinet and nook. What was he looking for? Why wouldn’t he just sit down and wait for Nikolai to come back?
    When Mat finally, finally stopped poking around, he sat himself down on the edge of the bed by Dougie’s hip and rubbed his back and shoulder through the blanket. The gesture was so familiar, so very Nikolai, that Dougie let himself be soothed by it, let himself be coaxed from his cocoon to meet Mat’s questing gaze. His heart both thrilled and sank at what he saw there: that old familiar calm competence, steady and loving, that had seen him through so many trials in his past. That openness— Do you trust me? —that had fooled him so often before into believing Mat had offered him real, selfless love.
    He did. He does. He will again if you let him. Even if you don’t let him.
    Dougie covered his ears again.
    A little furrow formed between Mat’s brow, and God he looked so frustrated at his inability to speak, even as Dougie was grateful for it, so grateful he wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak himself if the need arose. He couldn’t hear what Mat had to say. He’d lost enough for one night already.
    Mat just sighed through his nose and held up his index finger: wait. Stood, extended all five fingers flat, palm down, and gestured once, then a second time: stay here.
    As much as Dougie hadn’t wanted to look at him before—still didn’t want to look at him now—he couldn’t help following Mat with his eyes as his brother walked back to the other side of the bed and pointed at a pile of stuff he’d accumulated there. The first things Dougie saw were two fairly long, jagged pieces of broken chair, and he understood, even before his eyes next landed on the clothes and shoes and jacket Nikolai had bought him for their winter-weather hikes, that Mat planned to escape.
    Escape. Escape.
    But I live here. I can’t run away from my life .
    Except he had left his life behind before, hadn’t he? And that small part of him that’d gotten louder and bigger throughout this disastrous clusterfuck of an evening, the “before” part, was screaming at him to do it again. To go, now, before it was too late. Before that part of him was dead forever, before Nikolai drowned it in the tub like a fucking unwanted baby and all that was left was here , this , whatever this was.
    Because whatever this was, it wasn’t Mat. It wasn’t the real world. And as much as he didn’t want to leave Nikolai, as much as he knew Mat didn’t really love him, as much as the “real” world terrified him, as full of wild animals as it was, that little part of him, “before” him, was still alive and kicking and strong enough to recognize this for the chance that it was. Maybe his only chance. His last chance. And if he’d really blown it with Nikolai for good, then what was left for him here anyway? Why stay at all?
    His eyes went back to those two bits of broken chair. Mat had let him down before, let him down a lot , pushed him away and hated him and let people hurt him, but Dougie had seen him with yantok sticks in his hands before, fluid and elegant and deadly , and knew, knew , that Mat wouldn’t let him down tonight if he chose to go with him.
    He looked at the clothes again. Then at the door—the unlocked door because Nikolai trusted him . Then at the clock.
    Ten p.m. already, really? Wow. The household would be in bed by now. Yesterday at this time, he’d been curled up in bed with Nikolai and Roger, listening to the two men breathing softly in sleep before nodding off himself.
    Now he was downstairs with Mat, and Nikolai was angry with him, and every scrap of stability he’d found for himself was fucking gone and there was no right answer here, no way to fix this, any of this, he couldn’t stay and he