Marsh flopped over onto his back, one arm draped over his face. “Damn, I needed that.”
“Yeah,” Greg gritted out. Because he had. So badly. He
needed
this.
He didn’t know what he was going to do.
Greg squinted and shoved his glasses higher on his nose, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of this proof. Or the chicken-scratch handwriting it was written in. He rubbed his eyes and focused again. Just another dozen papers to get through and he could try to get some more work done on his simulations, and then—
A voice rang out from the vicinity of the hallway. “There you are!”
In his mind, Greg went back in time, turned off all the lights in his room and closed the door. Lacking a time-turner, he opened his eyes and looked up at Ronnie standing in his doorway.
“Here to steal my clothes again?” he asked hopefully, cursing all the while. No way it was going to be that simple.
“Actually, that’s not a bad idea.” Ronnie strode in and ambled to the closet where he started poking around. “But, no.”
“What can I do for you, then?”
Nothing. I can’t do anything for you. Not tonight.
“Please,” Ronnie said, dripping derision. He flipped a few hangers to the side, but really all of his attention was on Greg. “You know damn well I’ve been trying to pin you down for a week now to help me figure out why that damn high-vac experiment is giving wonky data.”
Greg wanted to cry. He hit
save
on each of the seven different windows he had open and shoved the stack of quizzes he’d been grading to the side. Desk now clear, he dropped his head onto it and ground his brow into the wood. “And I suppose there’s no putting you off?”
“Nope. Armed guards at every exit.”
Armed? Probably not. But Greg could totally see a couple of the other guys from the department assembled to keep Greg from making a run for it. Ronnie could put Jason up to it, for sure. Greg eyed his window. If he survived the fall, he could be in his car and all the way to the Canadian border by dawn. Hell, Marsh had been acting run-down, too, of late. Maybe he’d be interested in a life on the lam from professors and doctoral candidates alike.
Ronnie stopped fiddling with Greg’s wardrobe and wandered back over, settling in to lean his hip on the corner of Greg’s desk. Greg’s resolve cracked. He really liked Ronnie, was the problem. All his dreams of taking his gay lover and absconding for the border evaporated in a regretful haze.
“Fine,” Greg mumbled, turning his head to the side. “Your place or mine?”
“All my stuff’s downstairs. I may have commandeered the dining room.”
“We have a dining room?”
“Sure.” Ronnie grinned. “That space next to the kitchen with the giant table that’s always covered in papers and bits of dead computers?”
“Oh right. That dining room.” With a groan, Greg rolled his chair away from his desk and stood. “Let’s do it, then.” As he followed Ronnie out, he cast one doleful look at his own paper-and-electronics-strewn workspace. His gut churned. He’d give Ronnie an hour, and then he’d have to beg off. Even at that, he’d be up until one in the morning if he was going to get everything prepped for his class tomorrow. Maybe he could work on his presentation while he was doing his shift at the helpdesk in the morning.
Juggling his to-do list in his head, he ambled down the steps, pausing for a second in the hallway. He cast his gaze longingly toward Marsh’s door. What he wouldn’t give to blow Ronnie off and, well, blow Marsh instead. He quashed that train of thought with a vengeance. Not tonight—hell, probably not this week. Just the thought of going so long without touching all that skin made a little note of distress work its way across his ribs, though. He sucked the inside of his cheek between his teeth.
Hoping Ronnie hadn’t noticed the way his gait had faltered, he turned away from the siren song of Marsh’s door. Ronnie was already in the dining room, paging through one of a half-dozen marble notebooks. “So,” he said, not missing a beat even though Greg had missed quite a few, “here’s where we are so far.”
Greg forced himself to focus as he slipped into one of the hard-backed chairs. Fortunately, once Ronnie got into the specifics of the issues he was having, it wasn’t that hard to get immersed. Greg pored over the sheets of data, comparing one set of graphs with another.
“Have you thought about…”
They talked through a bunch of ideas, and as usual, Greg’s mind latched on to a train of thought and refused to let it go until he had the problem figured out. Finally, after Greg didn’t even know how long, Ronnie slapped a hand down on the table. “I think that might be it.”
“Yeah?” Greg sagged with relief. He leaned back in his chair to peer around the corner into the kitchen, and— “Shit. Is it really midnight already?”
“Maybe?”
Shit, it was. Forget giving Ronnie an hour; he’d given him three. Greg was so screwed.
“Hey. You okay, man?”
“Yeah,” Greg lied. So he’d just get the problem sets ready for class tomorrow. Grade the quizzes while he was at work and sneak in the presentation-tweaking during his nonexistent lunch break.
Or there was the whole running-away-to-Canada plan. That was a sound plan.
Ronnie frowned. “You don’t look all right.”
“Sorry.” Making his eyes focus, he looked at Ronnie. “Just got a lot left to do tonight.”
Ronnie shook his head and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You work too hard.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Anything I can do to help? You saved my ass tonight. I totally owe you one.”
Greg wished. He scooted his chair away from the table. Nothing he was doing was the kind of stuff he could delegate. “Nah, I got it.”
“Is it stuff for the symposium, or…?”
Ronnie’d had a paper accepted for the conference coming up in a couple of weeks, too, so at least he could relate. “It certainly isn’t helping. I mean, it’s great and all. It’ll look nice on the CV. But…”
“But none of us needed one more thing to worry about this close to the end of the semester?”
“Pretty much,” Greg agreed, chuckling darkly. “Plus, I made the mistake of telling my mom about it.”
“Dude, you found time to talk to your parents?”
Shrugging, Greg answered drily, “If I don’t call back after four tries, she calls the police.” At Ronnie’s snort, he soldiered on. “Anyway, she wants to come in for it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I told her she and Dad would be bored out of their minds, but she’s insisting.” Greg pulled his mouth to the side. She’d been really excited, actually. It had been nice. Inconvenient, but nice. “My little sister is really into sports, so they go to a bunch of her games and stuff and get to meet her friends that way. Apparently they feel bad that they never come to anything of mine.”
Ronnie rolled his eyes. “You poor baby with your supportive parents.”
“I know, right? Totally oppressive.”
As their small talk wound down, he stretched his arms overhead. He was about to stand and head back to…a bedroom—he hadn’t completely decided which one yet, when Ronnie tossed his pen down and clasped his hands behind his neck. “You hungry? Wanna order some food or something?”
Greg didn’t even really think before saying, “Nah. Marsh brought me something earlier.”
It took a beat too long for Greg to recognize Ronnie’s silence, to take in his raised eyebrow. “Did he now?”
“Yeah.” No big deal. Just something housemates did for each other sometimes.
Ronnie’s look was appraising. “So that’s getting pretty serious, huh?”
Honestly, it wasn’t as if Greg had ever really seen it as a secret. He’d gone knocking on Marsh’s door enough times. Hell, he’d ditched Ronnie explicitly to go knock on Marsh’s door. But he didn’t want anybody getting the wrong idea—least of all himself.
“It’s just a thing.” Greg didn’t mean to act defensive about it, but his guards went up.
“Just a thing.”
Greg lifted one shoulder and lowered his gaze. “What else would it be?”
For a long moment, Ronnie sat there in silence, and Greg’s face felt hot. Finally, Ronnie shook his head. “Whatever you say.”
Greg swallowed and stood. It was just a thing, that’s what they’d agreed to that second night, when he’d gone to Marsh and licked him out and come inside his mouth. He glanced toward Marsh’s room, though, and it wasn’t just his sex drive that engaged. It was more. It was always more.
His chest hurt, and he was too young for a heart attack, no matter how hard he pushed himself. Who was he kidding? He knew what he felt, and he knew what he needed, and it was…pointless. Marsh was his refuge and his relief and he was the man Greg turned to when he was tired and alone and wanting someone to touch him. Someone to make him smile and forget whatever was troubling him.
Because Marsh could do that. Marsh with his body and his hands and his quiet. His self-deprecation and his eyes, the ones that lit up whenever Greg came knocking, even when everything else about Marsh seemed to be trying so hard to play it cool.
Marsh, who was probably lying in his bed right now, dressed in only his boxers, the sheets pulled up to his stomach.
“All right,” Greg said, throat dry. He took one step toward the hallway. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Sure.” Ronnie didn’t sound convinced. He smirked down at the paper in front of him. “Tell Marsh hi for me.”
And Greg stopped cold. He had been edging that way. He had so much to do, but all he wanted was to lose himself for an hour. To kiss Marsh and get him naked and spread out on his sheets. To let go.
Something sank inside him. That’s what he’d done the past three nights. Four. Had it been every night this week? So often, when he should be working, he found himself in Marsh’s bed, and it made him feel better, and then every time after they were done, Marsh would roll over or Greg would make himself get up.
And he might have needed the comfort and the sex and the companionship, but he didn’t need
that
. Not tonight. Just like he didn’t need Ronnie suggesting he and Marsh were getting serious, when he could only wish.
He closed his eyes and curled his fingers tight against his palm. He had things to do.
Looking up again, he turned himself away from where he’d already subconsciously moved to face Marsh’s door. He started up the stairs and at the top, forced himself to keep trudging on. He shut himself in his own room, where he dropped into the chair before his desk.
He had things to do.
And no time to worry about anything else.
Chapter Ten
You call your mom yet?
Ugh. Marsh blinked a couple of times at the message that had popped up in the corner of his screen. He’d just been getting into a groove on this paper, too. Running a hand over his face, he hit save and clicked over to the chat window he and Yulia kept going in the background pretty much all the time. She must have just gotten home. Otherwise, she would have been bugging him hours ago.
Hi, honey,
he typed
, nice to see you, too.
She didn’t skip a beat.
So have you?
Fuck off.
Eloquent. He closed the window and closed the top of his laptop, because, seriously? Why the hell had he opened his mail in front of her that morning?
He shoved off the bed and started pacing around his room, stretching one arm over his head and then the other. The walls were feeling a little too close. He chewed on one of his nails. Maybe he should go for a run. He cast a glance at his door, open just a crack in case anyone came looking for him. Not that that had happened in the past couple of days. Maybe he should go to Greg’s room. See if he was home and if he wanted to…
No. No.
Greg was busy, and Marsh wasn’t that pathetic. He could handle this shit on his own, and he could wait until Greg came to him. Or at least until tonight.
He hit the corner of his room again and stopped, doing an about-face. Pushing down the bile that wanted to rise up, he strode straight over to his bag and yanked it open, then dumped it out onto his bed. Books and notebooks, and there, wadded up near the bottom. He pulled open the folded yellow paper.
Third notice. How many more notices was he going to get? The page crinkled in his hand as he tightened his grip.
Yulia’s prompting floated back to him. He’d been putting her—and the bursar’s office, and his coach, and everyone—off for a while now. With his free hand, he touched the rectangle of his phone tucked away in the pocket of his jeans. He’d been telling her he’d call his mom, that this was all a big misunderstanding, but he kept not doing it.
What would Mom say, anyway? Would she tell him the truth? That Dad wasn’t going to flip the bill anymore for his meathead of a son who also happened to be a queer?
Shit. He dropped his head into his hand. He’d been putting the call off for a reason. She wouldn’t put it in quite those terms, but it was going to be something like that. Hearing it from her lips, though… It’d be too real.
He balled the bill up in his fist and crammed it into the bottom of his bag, tossing all the books in on top of it again. Damn, it was hot in here. The walls felt even closer now, and he tugged on the collar of his shirt, just trying to get some air on his skin, but it didn’t help.