He was finally edging in and out when a series of quick knocks on his door exploded across his brain. He swore and forced an eye open, and that hurt, but it didn’t hurt quite as much as it had—he did the math in his head—an hour and a half ago. Thank you, Maxalt.
Another sharp rapping sound rang out, and crap, he didn’t remember scheduling anything with Ronnie or any of the other guys tonight, but who knew? Burying his head in the pillow, he mumbled, “Go away, I’m dead.”
There was just a beat of hesitation, and then a voice that was not Ronnie’s saying, “Oh. Um. Sorry.”
Greg snapped his head up and then cursed out loud, because, fuck. He dropped his head and rubbed his temple. That was Marsh at the door. He didn’t want to be a dick to him.
His throat tore and his head ached as he called out, wincing, “Wait.”
And it didn’t make any sense. Greg had been working so hard to seem cool, and to keep himself together in front of Marsh. Marsh had kept coming back, again and again, so it must have been working. It would be sheer idiocy to let Marsh see him now, when he was ready to pass out or puke from the pain. But he…wanted Marsh. He was hurting, and he wouldn’t want any kind of human contact, normally, but the idea of Marsh coming in here was different, somehow.
Greg swallowed hard. The last time he’d had a regular boyfriend, two or three years ago, sometimes, when the migraines had come, the guy had let Greg lie there with his head in his lap in the dark. He’d rubbed Greg’s shoulders and combed his fingers through his hair and told him quietly about his day. He’d told Greg it would all be okay, and it had felt so good.
And Greg wanted that, so badly it competed with the throbbing in his skull and the squeezing of his heart, the fear there.
The door eased open, shining a line of light into the darkness, and Greg squinted. A shower of firecrackers went off in Greg’s skull, but he could make out Marsh’s face through the gap. Marsh’s gaze darted around the room before settling on Greg, and he frowned. “Sorry, were you asleep?”
“I wish.” Greg shaded his eyes with his hand against the brightness. Haloes still ringed his vision, but the auras weren’t dancing quite so sickeningly. He waved his other hand toward his head. “Just…migraine.”
“Ouch.” Marsh made a sympathetic face.
“Yeah.”
And there was a moment, awkward and stretching as Marsh hovered in the door. Greg’s stomach, already unsettled, sank a little. Except for that first time, Marsh had only ever come to Greg for sex. He hadn’t come here to watch Greg be a shivering mess or to rub warmth into his skin or comfort him with mumbled reassurances.
Marsh’s uncertainty was written into every line of him as he hovered. He jerked a thumb to point behind him. “I’ll come back later, I guess?”
“Do you wanna come in?” And it was stupid. So dumb.
“Um…”
“You don’t have to,” Greg backtracked, and he closed his eyes. “I mean, I’m not up for…what we usually do.” Sex was beyond off the table right now. “But you could hang out for a bit. If you wanted to.”
Marsh laughed, a little uncertainty clinging to the edges, but the sound was rich and warm. “Yeah, I can stay a little while.” Did he sound…relieved?
Marsh slipped inside and closed the door, leaving the room comfortingly dim again. The scuffing sounds of his feet on the carpet paused, and Greg could almost see Marsh looking between the chair and the bed. With a groan, Greg shoved himself over, leaving room.
Just take the invitation.
There was another moment’s hesitation when Greg scarcely breathed, then movement again, coming closer to the bed, and Greg melted into the mattress.
“Can I?”
“Yeah,” Greg said.
Please.
The mattress shifted as Marsh sat where Greg had been lying, his back against the headboard. It was probably pathetic to be so comforted just by having Marsh close. He wanted to shift even farther over and settle his head in Marsh’s lap. Reach out and place Marsh’s hand on the base of his neck. Instead, he slid his arm forward to rest his own hand on Marsh’s thigh. The muscle there was solid and warm through a layer of denim, and it was enough.
Except then Marsh brushed Greg’s hair from his face. A broad palm settled, light as can be, on the back of Greg’s head, thumb stroking gently at his temple, and Greg let out a little noise, it felt so good.
“Sorry—”
“No.” Greg grabbed at Marsh’s wrist when he made as if to pull away. No. Please. “Just—” He didn’t have words for what he wanted, but Marsh seemed to hear them all the same. The tension went out of his body, as fingers resumed massaging gently against Greg’s scalp, and it was soothing and perfect and made the pain simmer down just a little. Just enough to be okay.
“I’m not hurting you?”
“No.” Greg let go of Marsh’s wrist and put his hand on Marsh’s thigh again, relaxing into the simple pleasure of touching and being touched and not being alone.
For a few blissful minutes, he soaked it up in silence, but the motion of the fingers in his hair wasn’t as easy as he would have liked. The muscles beneath his hand weren’t lax and soft, and then all Greg could hear was the beating of his own heart, and it echoed, guilty and hollow. He looked up to find Marsh staring into space. Greg swallowed and closed his eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “This probably isn’t what you wanted.”
“It’s fine,” Marsh’s hand stuttered against Greg’s scalp. “Do you want—do you want to talk? Or is quiet better?”
It was actually a relief to have that warm, smooth voice to focus on. It pushed the pressure behind his eyes further into the background. “Talking is good.” He reconsidered. “Just not about math.”
Marsh chuckled, the sound darker than made any sense. “Definitely not something you have to worry about.” He shrugged, fingers drifting lower, toward the base of Greg’s skull, and Greg could have purred. “Guess that’s one of the benefits of hanging out with a dumb jock.”
What? Greg would have shaken his head, and only just stopped himself from furrowing his brow. “You’re not a dumb jock.”
“Sure, if you say so.”
“You
could
be into math.” Anybody could be, jock or no.
“Not my speed.” And Marsh’s voice got a little rougher. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Where was this coming from? Greg wanted to lift his head, to look into Marsh’s eyes and try to see if he really believed any of this stuff. As it was, all he could do was mumble, “Not a disappointment.” Because it wasn’t. He lifted his shoulder a fraction. “Everybody’s into something different. Besides, bet you’re good at baseball stats. Those are harder than some of the stuff I do.”
Marsh practically dripped with derision. “Those are easy.”
“Anything’s easy if you’re really into it.”
All he got for that was a quiet hum, like an agreement to disagree, and they were going to have to talk about this more, someday. Preferably when Greg’s brain wasn’t mush and everything didn’t ache. He stroked his thumb over Marsh’s knee, but the gesture didn’t say everything he wanted it to.
After a minute of uneasy silence, Marsh made a little clicking sound with his tongue as he skated his hand up the side of Greg’s face. “So…migraines?”
“Yeah.” Greg gestured in the general vicinity of his head. “Come on every now and then. More when I’m stressed.”
“Are you ever not stressed?”
“They didn’t start ’til I was five,” he said drily, then admitted, “They’ve been worse than usual recently. This is my third this month.”
“Ouch.”
Greg rolled over onto his back, and things felt better, now, more comfortable. When his head butted up against Marsh’s leg, he didn’t move it. Just stayed there and let the contact wash over him. With a little groan, he said, “Still not as bad as my senior year of high school.”
“I can imagine.” Marsh had both hands on Greg’s face now, rubbing so softly at his temples, and it was perfect. “Let me guess—you were that asshole who actually studied for his SATs. Oh hell, you didn’t take a class, did you?”
“No, but I may or may not have used up a highlighter on my prep book. Add four AP classes to that, and…” Looking up at the ceiling, he thought back on that year, and maybe it wasn’t really the time to bring it up. But maybe it was. “And driving myself crazy trying to get up the guts to come out.”
God, that had been a rough year. Studying and working and losing his virginity to the gorgeous tight end from the next town over. Then freaking out the next day when Mr. Tall, Dark and Closeted threatened to punch him in the face if he didn’t get out of his bed.
Marsh’s fingertips made a detour to ease around behind Greg’s ear. “You’re gay, right?”
“A Kinsey six,” Greg agreed.
A second of hesitation. “Out of six, right?”
“Yup.” Stupid. Not everyone read books about human sexuality in their spare time. Greg was such a nerd. He waved his hand to try to show it didn’t matter. “Girls do nothing for me.” He darted his gaze to Marsh. “You?”
“Bi-ish.”
“Ish?”
“Girls are fine. Guys are better?”
“Gotcha.” That was kind of a surprise, actually. Left to his own devices, Greg would have figured it was the other way around. Sure, Marsh seemed to be into it when Greg was going down on him, and he certainly hadn’t had any objections to bottoming. But Greg had seen him around campus with girls hanging off his arm enough times. Not so much with men.
“So…” Marsh swallowed and traced a line over Greg’s brow that had him closing his eyes again and tilting his head up into the touch. “Coming out?”
Greg shifted and turned his face farther into Marsh’s leg. Usually, scents made his headache even worse, but Marsh always smelled so good, and Greg breathed him in.
“It’s funny, to think about it now. I got myself so worked up about it, you know?” The whole thing was burned into Greg’s sense-memory, and he could taste the rain, could feel the soreness as he’d walked away from that house. He’d felt so good, had loved giving in and letting himself be taken like that. He’d woken up after having sex for the first time feeling like he was on top of the world, and then, ten minutes later, he’d been cringing against the pain in his ass and realizing he’d just gotten fucked, in every sense of the word.
“I went back and forth about it,” he continued. “Then I had, um, a bad date. A really bad date.” And wasn’t that the understatement of the century? The thing was, he should have known. A gorgeous guy, an athlete, and Greg this weedy little geek, and how could he have thought anyone would want him that way? “The guy was…not out. Really not out. And I got home after…” And his mother had been standing in the kitchen, and she’d taken one look at him, and said, “Oh, honey,” and he’d lost it.
“I told my mom as soon as I got home, and I was so scared.” Greg chanced a glance up, but Marsh’s gaze was shuttered, his expression unreadable in the dimness, and Greg closed his eyes. “I was ready for her to kick me out, but she gave me just about the biggest hug I think she ever had.”
“Your father and I love you,” she’d said. “No matter what.”
Greg’s breath shook as he let it out. “They were fine with it. They weren’t even surprised. I basically walked in there feeling more alone than I had in my entire life, and then…” He’d walked out knowing he had two people at his back. And because of that he could walk any road, even if it was on his own. “They were just
awesome
about it.”
Marsh’s fingers resumed their stroking through Greg’s hair—when had they stopped?—and Greg felt the knot in his chest easing.
Silence settled over them, and for a while Greg drifted, the migraine fading to something low and manageable in the back of his head so long as Marsh just stayed there, touching him and petting him.
Then Marsh scratched a little harder at the space behind Greg’s jawbone. “My dad saw me with a guy. This summer.”
Greg opened his eyes. This didn’t sound like a good story. “Oh?”
The bed shifted as Marsh redistributed his weight. “I always knew he’d be an asshole about it. Bastard was never exactly subtle. Until…”
Greg waited a beat before asking, “What?”
“Until then.” Marsh’s jaw made a grinding noise. “Until the night he saw me. Then, he…he didn’t say anything.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing at all.” There was a distance to Marsh’s voice, though. As if nothing at all might have been worse than anything.
Greg reached up to put his hand over Marsh’s, giving a gentle squeeze to his palm. Marsh settled his fingers at the nape of Greg’s neck.
“You okay?” Greg asked.
“Fine.”
Greg lay there, touching Marsh while Marsh touched him. He had no idea what Marsh had gone through, or what he was going through now. But for all that he’d been inside Marsh, he’d never felt as close to him as he did right then.
Somehow, the worst night so far of the semester had turned into one of the best.
Greg’s breathing had started to slow again when Marsh spoke, quiet and low. “Should I go?”
And Greg was too tired and wrung out from heavy conversation and the lingering echoes of pain. He didn’t have it in him to act distant and detached. “Stay? Just for a little while?” It sounded too needy, by far.
But Marsh just slid his thumb against Greg’s pulse. “Okay.”