This was not they way Matthew had wanted to this month to go. It was supposed to be romantic and full of moments they’d remember forever. Matthew was not supposed to be packing up his things from the cabin frantically and arranging for a Concorde flight to be charted for the Netherlands, something he had called in a few favours to accomplish. Glancing over at Lars’ stuff Matthew sighed. He had left in a hurry, and Matthew knew he should have pressed him harder to find out where he was going! But he had just assumed something urgent had come up. 

In under an hour he had  packed and sent things by the post office that he didn’t want to carry, which was mainly everything but his backpack.  As he locked the cabin he made a mental not to buy it later, the days they had spent there were great and some he wasn’t likely to forget soon even though they had been cut short. 

Less than three hours later, Matthew was stumbling across Amsterdam clutching his backpack and trying to forget just how sick traveling supersonic made him. Checking his phone to make sure he had the right address, Matthew set off at top speed to Lars’ house, too intent on figuring out what had happened to even bother with public transport. 

When he got to the door of Lars’ house, Matthew scratched his fingers on the bricks to get the spare key from in between the doorframe and the wall. Tucking the key in his pocket, Matthew threw his backpack down. “Lars!” Matthew shouted, pausing for a second to hear if there was an answer.

Not receiving an answer, Matthew set off through the house frantically checking for Lars until he found him, and he almost wished he hadn’t. It was worse than anything he could have imagined. “Oh my god,” he whispered, not that it would matter if he screamed it. Lars wouldn’t be able to hear him.  Clearing the table of pills with a sweep of his arm, Matthew knelt down and carefully took the syringe out of his arm and placed it on the table before cutting away the elastic. A normal human would have been long dead from the concoction on the table alone… God, it the fight must have been bad. Judging just by the way Lars had handled the aftermath. He probably almost killed Arthur to get to the point where he would do this to himself after. Biting his lip Matthew decided he would worry about that later, Arthur had people to take care of him. Right now Lars only had him. 

Taking a moment to press lips to the side of Lars’ head, Matthew got to his feet wearily and went to the kitchen to get a bowel of hot water and a rag and put several pots of water on the stove. Setting the bowl of warm water down on the table he got back on his knees and peeked under Lars’s shirt. Shit bandage job, probably tried to do it himself, so he had broken ribs. Ribs, probably his nose, although Matthew wasn’t sure, Lars’ eye, and bruises and such on his hands and various other places. 

Sighing deeply, Matthew set to work taking off Lars’ shirt with his knife, it was pretty much ruined anyway, and it made it easier for him to undo the bandages there and start cleaning him. If only Lars would have just gone to a hospital, this all could have been taken care of. In a few more minutes he cleaned and bandaged Lars’ ribs properly, and gotten a new bowl of steaming hot water from the kitchen. Working on Lars’ hands, Matthew cleaned the miscellaneous cuts there, not bothering to bandage them. It wouldn’t do any good. He worked his way up Lars’ arms, and then stopped to get yet another bowl of water to take care of the injuries to Lars’ face. 

Coming back Matthew opted to sit on the couch this time, dipping the cloth gently into the warm water before dabbing at Lars’ face. “What did you get yourself into this time?” Matthew mumbled with a sigh.