Get What You Need by Jeanette Grey Page B

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?”