Get What You Need (20 page)

And he couldn’t bear to let those hopes grow for another minute. Not when he still felt so unsure of him.

They had to talk, and Marsh was going to ask all the questions he should have asked ages ago. Whatever happened, at least he’d know. He’d ask Greg what the hell they were doing together. If it really was just sex, then, shit, that would hurt. But it would be an answer, and one he could live with. It was all he had ever expected anyway. And if it was more, well… Marsh almost didn’t want to think about it, but if it
was
more, he’d ask why he couldn’t meet Greg’s parents. Why he couldn’t kiss him in the living room or listen to him practice his stupid talk for his stupid symposium—so what if he couldn’t understand a word of it? He just wanted to listen. To get to be part of Greg’s world.

Only, now Marsh was sitting on the floor by Greg’s door, and Greg was walking toward him, and his eyes were ringed with more than just fatigue. There was tension in his shoulders and in his bones, and he was pale as death. Marsh scrabbled at the floor to stand up. Something was
wrong
.
Every instinct told Marsh to go to him, to shake him and ask him what the hell was going on.

The instant Greg caught sight of him, though, everything in his face shifted and changed. For a fraction of a second, the lines around his eyes and mouth went soft. But then it was like he had some kind of mental argument with himself, and all that openness was hidden away.

He balled his hand up into a fist around something and hid it behind his back. Marsh didn’t really even have time to think about it. He was frozen in place, and Greg was striding past him, looking for all the world like he was on a pair of legs he’d borrowed after his last ones had given out on him, but his shoulders were square, his spine straight.

“Not a good time,” Greg said, jaw clenched tight.

“Are you okay?” Marsh let Greg slip by him and into his room, one hand out, fully expecting at this point to get the door slammed in his face. Greg hadn’t been this stiff and this defensive since before that first night. There was a space bubble around him a yard wide, his whole body radiating static and pushing off touch. Yet, for just a second, as he turned back around to face Marsh, his eyes were open and soft and imploring, practically begging for a kind of comfort Marsh didn’t even know if he could offer.

And just like that, it was gone. Greg’s gaze went hard again, his brows dropping. He met Marsh’s eyes for a second, then looked away. “I’m fine. It’s just not a good night.”

Marsh held his hands up in front of himself. “I only want to talk.”

But Greg was already shaking head and retreating farther into his room. “I’m so busy tonight. Can’t it wait?”

The thing was, sure. It could wait. Marsh had
been
waiting. He was tired of it, though. Tired of not being important enough for Greg to make a little time for him except when he was horny.

Hadn’t Yulia been telling him this entire time that he’d been selling himself short? Always assuming the worst about Greg’s intentions and never asking for an explanation.

Enough was enough.

The whole time he’d been going back and forth in his head about whether or not to press, Marsh had been hovering on the threshold to Greg’s room. Greg gave a withering sigh, and his shoulders drooped. “Close the door if you’re going to stay, or go if you’re going to go. The whole house doesn’t have to hear this.”

He’d been about to barge his way in anyway, but that made him pause. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

And that didn’t sound like Greg. Buying himself a second, Marsh did as Greg had asked and stepped into the room, turning his back to close the door and flip on the light. Facing Greg again, Marsh looked him over, searching for whatever he had missed. There had to be some kind of sign of what was going on in his head. “Did something happen? At school, or work, or…?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

Marsh was trying so hard to stay calm, but oh that got his hackles up. His voice rose in spite of himself. “Yeah, I’m not real sure about that.”

“Look, whatever. I’m not up for sex, and I’m not good company right now, and I don’t want to say anything I’m going to regret. If you want someone to hang out with, you’ve got your team, or Jason.” His chest rose and fell with his breath, like he was giving in to something he’d been fighting for so long now. “Or why don’t you just go over to Yulia’s place, like you usually do?”

Were they back to this?

“I told you, her and me, we’re friends. There’s nothing going on there.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Marsh wanted it to matter. “Hey.” He reached out, wanting to get a hand on Greg’s arm. To
touch
him and ground himself somehow. “I’m worried about you, okay? Is it the symposium? Or your parents? Or…?”

“What do you know about any of that?” Greg asked. He sidestepped Marsh’s effort to touch him, and that was a slap. Was a sharp sting that tasted like rejection and like bile and like so many other moments in Marsh’s life.

Something inside of Marsh snapped. He yanked his hand back, clenching it, digging his nails into the meat of his palm. His throat ached. “How would I know about anything? Since you never tell me about any of it.” He gestured widely toward the door, toward the hall, toward all of the world outside this one damn room. “I hear about the whole symposium thing from Ronnie, about your parents from fucking
Ronnie
. And I mean, sure—” his voice cracked, “—I get it, it’s boring, or too hard for me, or maybe you don’t want me involved with any of it—”
Maybe you don’t want your parents to have to know you’re sleeping with a broke fuck-up who’s probably not even going to graduate college.
He drew in a breath, all fire and ash, but the words couldn’t seem to make it past his tongue.

Not that they needed to. Greg’s expression was wretched, even worse than it had been that morning. “Don’t want you involved with it? Is that what you think?”

“What the hell else am I supposed to think?” Marsh was ready to tear his hair out. He didn’t understand this at all, and being in the dark was leaving him miserable. He threw his hands up.

But Greg was shaking his head for real this time, and it looked like an agony, and a bell started ringing in the distance. An awareness. Marsh raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth.

Before he could make a sound, though, Greg spat, “Christ, how stupid are you?”

Marsh reeled. Because that was a blow. That was a hand reaching into his ribs, and he’d figured Greg saw through his attempts to fit in with the brains he lived with, but he’d never been sure before. He caught his footing, but it was a narrow thing, and Greg was still talking.

“You never stay,” he said, “and you’re so cozy with— You think I don’t know? I try not to care, but that’s not— That’s not who I am.”

Marsh blinked as Greg cut himself off. The laugh rose up in his lungs. “Are you still talking about Yulia?” Then he really listened, and he boggled. “Are you
jealous
?” Because that was insane.

Didn’t Greg know Marsh was a sure thing?

Flinching, Greg jerked his gaze to the side. And his knees just about buckled underneath him.

“Shit,” Marsh hissed, stepping forward again. Greg caught himself, but his face wasn’t just pale anymore. It was positively grey, and his eyes were all wrong. “Greg?” He got a hand under Greg’s arm this time. Greg still batted at it, moving as if to push him away, but Marsh wasn’t about to be put off. He steered Greg to the side and got him sitting on the edge of the bed, and that seemed to help. The clench to Greg’s jaw went a little less rigid.

Marsh glanced down at what Greg’s hand was still folded around, and he furrowed his brow. A washcloth? He darted his gaze up, searching Greg’s face, suddenly seeing the sharpness of the lines there, and even Marsh could put some signs together. He swore again and swept a hand over Greg’s brow. “Migraine?”

“Yeah,” Greg finally sighed. “Bad one.” His skin was clammy beneath Marsh’s hand, and Christ, Marsh was such a tool, goading him into an argument when he was like this.

“How long has it been coming on?” Marsh asked, fussing, trying to get him down on his back.

“Since this morning. But it wasn’t bad until an hour or so ago.”

“An hour?” Marsh winced along with Greg at his own raised voice. “But you just got home.”

“Group meeting. Had to.”

“‘Had to’, my ass,” Marsh grumbled under his breath as he started working at Greg’s clothes. Get him comfortable. Get him into bed.

Greg’s hand settled over his, and Marsh looked up. “Told you sex wasn’t on the table tonight.” And there was humor there in Greg’s eyes, slitted as they were. There was a wryness there in his tone.

Marsh shuddered out a little sigh. If Greg could joke, that was good. That was something. “You asshole,” he groused as he helped Greg get his shoes and jeans off. The undershirt and briefs could stay. He’d be comfortable enough that way.

Then Greg was mumbling, “You don’t have to take care of me.”

Pausing, Marsh reached up and touched Greg’s face, because there was a question there. A self-sacrificing, self-denying kind of vulnerability that Marsh understood entirely too well. He ran his thumb across Greg’s cheekbone. “I want to. If you’ll let me.”

Greg pushed into the touch, and the lines around his eyes and mouth finally eased. It was all the answer Marsh needed.

Maybe not the answers he’d come here for in the first place, but the things Greg had said, in his irritation and his anger and his pain… This thing between them, what was happening right now, it was more than just a fuck. “Just a fuck” didn’t ever have the ability to hurt this much.

Marsh lingered for a minute, fingertips gentle against Greg’s skin as he stared at his face, for once letting the hope bloom in his chest. Finally, he drew back, moving to take the cloth from Greg’s hand. “Be right back.”

“’Kay.” Greg lay down, closing his eyes and curling in on himself in a way that made Marsh ache.

The closed eyes… Marsh could have smacked himself. Last time this had happened, Greg had lain in the darkness, swaddled in it. And Marsh, like an idiot, had turned on the light without even recognizing the damage it had done. Rag firmly in hand, he rose from the bed and walked over to Greg’s desk where he flipped on his desk lamp and angled it down so it would cast as little light as possible. Just enough for Marsh not to break his neck. On his way to the door, he killed the overhead, and could actually hear Greg’s little noise of relief.

Jesus.

Marsh let himself out, closing the door behind himself to block the brightness from the hallway. On his way to the bathroom, he passed Ronnie’s room. Ronnie was sitting at his desk, and he twisted around, one brow raised as he gazed at Marsh.

“He okay?” Ronnie asked.

Marsh lifted his shoulders marginally. “He will be. I think.”

“You done screaming at him?”

Marsh just chuckled. “You’ve met the guy. Think there was any other way to get him to calm down and let someone give him a hand for a second?”

Ronnie gave him an appraising stare, then shook his head. “You might just be all right, Sulkowski.”

That tiny bit of approval shouldn’t have made him feel so good. With a nod, Marsh gestured down the hall and Ronnie waved him away.

In the bathroom, Marsh got the hot tap going and re-soaked the washcloth, then wrung it out. Turning off the faucet, he caught his own reflection in the mirror. He ran a damp hand through his hair before he could stop himself. He shook his head. Didn’t matter what he looked like. Not now.

He crept into Greg’s room as quietly as he could. While he’d been gone, Greg had pulled the covers up to his waist and stretched out on his back, one arm draped over his eyes. Taking care not to jostle the bed too much, Marsh sat down beside him and swept light fingertips over his wrist before tugging it away. Greg caught his hand and gave it a little squeeze, then let him go.

“It’s hot,” Marsh warned. He folded the cloth into a thin strip and laid it out across Greg’s brow. Groaning, Greg patted the sheets until he found Marsh’s leg.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. Anything else you want? Did you take something?”

“Yeah.” Greg paused, seeming to think for a minute. “I can take another one, though.” He pointed toward his desk. “Do you mind?”

Marsh rolled his eyes and stood. At Greg’s desk, he wasn’t quite sure what to do, though. “Are they in a drawer, or…?”

“Yeah. Top one on the left. Little orange bottle.”

Marsh pulled the drawer open, flicking at the contents until he found the bottle. Squinting, he read the label. “Maxalt?”

“Yup.”

He trusted Greg well enough, but read the label to double-check the dosage. Sure enough, it allowed a second pill if the first proved ineffective. He pressed down before twisting to pop the lid and shook out a single capsule. “You took one already?”

“Yeah. Helped a little, but…”

“I can see how much it’s helping.”

“Believe it or not, it was worse.”

Not for the first time, Marsh thanked God he didn’t have to deal with this kind of thing. Only, if he could, he would. Right now, at least, if he could take this away from Greg, he would. The guy had enough on his plate, and seeing him laid out like this did things to Marsh.