 
# Off Campus

## Amy Jo Cousins

### Contents

About This Book

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Choose your next Bend or Break book!

Thank you!

Excerpt from Nothing Like Paris

Want More Books by Amy Jo?

About the Author
**_Everyone's got secrets. Some are just harder to hide._**

* * *

With his father's ponzi scheme assets frozen, Tom Worthington believes finishing college is impossible unless he can pay his own way. After months sleeping in his car and driving a pirate taxi for cash, he's ready to do just that.

But his new, older-student housing comes with an unapologetically gay roommate. Tom doesn't ask why Reese Anders has been separated from the rest of the student population. He's just happy to be sleeping in a bed.

Reese isn't about to share his brutal story with his gruff new roommate. You've seen one homophobic jock, you've seen 'em all. He plans to drag every twink on campus into his bed until Tom moves out. But soon it becomes clear Tom isn't budging.

Tom isn't going to let some late-night sex noise scare him off, especially when it's turning him on. But he doesn't want any drama either. He'll keep his hands, if not his eyes, to himself. Boundaries have a way of blurring when you start sharing truths, though. And if Tom and Reese cross too many lines, they may need to find out just how far they can bend...before they break.

_Warning: This book contains cranky roommates who vacillate between lashing out and licking, some male/male voyeurism, emotional baggage that neither guy wants to unpack, and the definitive proof that sound carries in college housing._
For Tamsen. Thanks for keeping my guys out of the Back End of Boston. Someday we will be crotchety old ladies with recalcitrant grandchildren who roll their eyes at their grannies' dirty books. It's gonna be great.

# 1

His bed was missing.

Exhaustion gnawed at Tom's bones and crawled up the back of his neck to settle in at the base of his skull, a tightening ache that radiated all the way through to his eye sockets. His eyes were scratchy and dry, his entire body felt grimy, and his arm might fall off if he couldn't put his duffle bag down.

He'd been driving for forty-eight hours straight and the only thing keeping him going in the last twelve hours had been the promise of a hot shower and a bed, a real, honest-to-God bed, at the end of the road.

But his bed was missing.

He opened the dorm room door again and double-checked the number on the plate above the bulletin board covered in quotes, comic strips and photos he was too tired to examine. The need to sleep was kicking in hard. Hallucinating the dorm room number was not out of the question.

23B.

Nope. That's what it said on the letter from Residential Life he'd been carrying around in his wallet since July. The words "You have been approved for off-campus housing at the Frances Perkins House for returning students,"— _returning_ being a polite way of saying "too old to tolerate the kids in the dorms"—had been a mantra for him the last two months of driving a pirate taxi in Boston this summer, knowing he still had to come up with another ten grand before September 1st.

He'd damn near gotten that room number tattooed on his ass, he was so fucking happy to have made this happen.

Turned out that losing everything _could_ turn you into an entirely new person overnight.

He dragged his brain back under control before he started obsessing again about everything that was different, all the shit he'd had to figure out how to do, or do without, and took three steps back into the room.

Fuck it.

He dropped the duffle bag.

This was home for the next nine months, with a bed or without one. Damned if he was going to worry about this tonight. The right half of the room was clearly taken by another student, a neatly made bed lengthwise against the wall and a wooden desk and bookcase in the corner by the window. The left half of the room, though, had been transformed into something like a living room, the desk buried under a mammoth TV/DVD/stereo set up and the bed— _there_ was his bed, damn it—transformed into a couch via a shitload of pillows.

Seriously. He didn't even know they made pillows in that shape, long narrow cylinders that lined the length of the bed against the wall, with another manic spread of throw pillows smothering the whole thing. The entire setup looked comfortable enough to have him knocked out and unconscious in seconds. But judging by the coordinated frigging color scheme, his new roomie might not be the kind of guy who appreciated an unwashed, smelly dude passing out on his designer blankets.

He thought of the one set of shitty sheets stuffed deep in his duffle bag and wondered whether he'd pass out first if he had to dig them out and make a bed before he could go to sleep.

He bent down and started tugging on the zipper. No sense bitching about it. Just get it done. He could leave a note on the door maybe, so his roommate knew not to wake him up. Assuming he wasn't stuck with some asshole who would take that as some kind of challenge.

If anyone woke him before dawn, he'd cut their arms off with his teeth.

Now, where the fuck were those sheets?

He heard the door open behind him, but his reaction times were so slow with the need for sleep he was still figuring out what that sound was when the light tenor voice smacked him from behind.

"Not that I don't appreciate the view, babe, but what the hell?"

Tom stood up and turned so fast that his head spun and he put out a hand to steady himself. The kid who'd moved up right behind him jerked back and pulled his hands up in front of his chest, his head leaning back even farther. Almost as if he thought Tom was coming at him.

The kid so clearly didn't want to be touched that Tom yanked his hand, about to grab the guy's arm for balance, back to his own shoulder and then had to catch himself before he stumbled and tripped over his own feet.

"Sorry," he muttered, not entirely sure what he was apologizing for. Probably for being here, which by the look on the kid's face, was not cause for a happy happy, joy joy party.

His roommate, he assumed, grimaced and waved a hand in the air as if to say, _Ignore please._

He looked at Tom for a minute, not saying a word. Finally he raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly from Tom to the half-opened duffle on the floor, wrinkled clothes spilling out like the stuffing from an old couch with a split in the seat.

Tom looked back at him. Caught himself leaning forward and drifting into an upright snooze after a moment and stood up again.

What were they talking about?

"Dude." The kid waved a hand in front of Tom's face. _Wake up, guy._ "What the hell are you doing in my room?"

Oh right. Introductions.

"I'm your roommate." He couldn't tell if it was shock or irritation on the kid's face. What the fuck was his name again? They'd put it on the sheet with the rest of the info, while apologizing that they didn't have a single for him like most of the Perkins students enjoyed, but all Tom could remember was 23B. Damn. Way to make a good impression. "Sorry. Tom." He stuck his hand out.

"Aww, hell no." The kid had the grace to look a little abashed when Tom took a step back at his vehement denial. But he didn't back down. "I do _not_ have a roommate. The dean promised me a single. I've been here for three days. Nobody told me anything about a roommate."

Tom would've felt bad for him if he weren't so fucking exhausted. Screw the pillows. He'd just lie down on the floor and wrap himself up in a sweatshirt if he had to.

"Sorry, man. The paper says 23B." He held up the crumpled letter he'd kept in his wallet for two months. Almost jerked it away when the kid reached for it. He had to remind himself that he was actually here, back at school after being gone for fifteen months, and he didn't need that letter any more to prove it to himself. He let go.

"Shit. Shit." The kid glared at the letter and started pacing back and forth between Tom and the door, as if he were thinking about busting out into the hall and calling for help to remove the intruder from his room. "But they _promised_."

When he looked up for one unguarded moment, Tom was shocked to see his eyes glitter with tears that weren't allowed to spill over carefully applied black liner around thickly lashed eyes. That struck Tom as unusual enough to inspire him to take an actual look at his new roommate.

The kid looked like some kind of skinny British rock star, tight black jeans slung low and held up with a studded metal belt. He wore a skintight T-shirt with a band name on it that Tom was sure he should recognize. Bright green Chuck Taylors and a wrist cuff that matched the belt. Straight jet black hair that spilled over his face, blocking most of one eye, giving an odd pirate effect to his glares, which he was shoveling in Tom's direction like a pile of shit that needed to be tossed out of a stable.

Tom felt irritation give an adrenaline jump-start to his system. Fuck. If he got into an argument with this kid, it'd rile him up and take him that much longer to settle down and get to sleep. He was too tired to hold up his end of a debate. He'd end up lying there, wherever _there_ turned out to be, and he was not kidding about the floor, coming up with all his good one-liners long after they'd stopped talking to each other and become the kind of roommates that had to draw a line with tape down the middle of the room and forbid each other to cross it.

The kid was still pushing back at him, now practically throwing the letter in his face.

"Listen, I don't know why they sent you that, that, piece of crap in epistolary form, but the dean promised me a single and I guarantee you this is a mistake." He crossed his arms over his slim chest and nodded.

"Great, kid. I'm thrilled for you. Even though I don't have the faintest fucking clue what you're talking about." New rule: People using big words when he was dead tired would be shot. "But it's nine p.m. on Sunday night. Nobody's gonna straighten this out until tomorrow morning. So, since I have a freaking piece of paper that says I should sleep here, maybe I can just—" a huge yawn ripped out of his mouth, catching him off guard mid-sentence, "—sorry, sleep here."

He saw the doubt creeping in halfway through his little speech. Really, there was nothing they could do about it tonight. Maybe in the morning he'd find out that the school had come up with a single for him after all. Good news all around, if so.

After the months where he couldn't set foot outside his front door without being swarmed by people, Tom was looking to fly low and solo under the radar. A nice anonymous single room, no matter how small and crappy, in an off-campus dorm where no one knew him would be a fucking slice of heaven.

But that was tomorrow. No chance for good news tonight. And he wanted to sleep, goddamn it.

"Please. If I don't get some sleep, I'm gonna die." Begging was not at all out of the question.

Maybe being too tired to argue was gonna work in his favor. His maybe temporary roommate sighed and directed the air up to blow his bangs out of his eyes. The kid looked at the bed with regret.

"I have my own sheets," Tom offered. "I won't mess up your things. If you tell me where I can put your pillows and stuff for tonight. Bet they can figure this out tomorrow."

He didn't know why he wasn't telling this kid to fuck off and leave him alone to sack out on the bed that by rights belonged to him. Maybe because of those suspiciously shiny eyes, clear now, in that moment when the kid had seen that Tom's letter was real, crumpled and faded with re-readings though it was. For whatever reason, he wasn't looking to pick a fight or try to muscle his way into making this kid back down.

He just wanted to stop moving for one night. One night under a roof that belonged to him, even temporarily.

In the end, the kid was too nice to make a big stink out of an unpleasant situation. Tom could see the moment his resistance gave up the ghost, at least for tonight. His shoulders dropped from where they'd been lodged up around his ears and his hands relaxed, hung loose and open at his sides.

"Ahh, fuck it." His voice, when he stopped bristling with anger, was lower. Smoother. "Just, let me do it. Okay? Go, get a snack or something. It'll be ready in fifteen minutes." He eyed the bed-cum-sofa again. "Make it twenty."

In the end, he told Tom about the bar across the street that served decent food and beer in glasses that weren't dirty.

"Not that I've been there. Ten more months to go," he said as he held the door open, silently pushing Tom out of it and pressing up against the wall as he squeezed by. And that was weird, because Perkins House was supposed to be for older returning students who didn't want to put up with the chaos and noise of the dorms. Or for scandal-ridden students like Tom, who the college would just as soon keep out of sight. The door was almost shut when Tom turned back for a second.

"Hey, kid!" The crack widened and the kid looked out, most of his body hidden behind the door. "What's your name again?"

"Reese. Reese Anders."

He didn't stick a hand out. Just shut the door.

Tom abandoned his duffle with a kid whose name he'd known for all of three seconds and headed across the street.

At the bar, he slid his ass onto the cracked red vinyl of a round stool and groaned at the sight of two dozen microbrews on tap. The bartender was old and grizzled around the jaw, chewing on a mangled stir stick. Tom ordered a pint of whatever was cheapest on tap, flushing a little but aware that whatever was left in his wallet had to last him until he could get back to the city for a couple of nights driving over the next weekend. When the bartender carded him, he didn't know whether or not to hope the man blamed his cheapness on his barely legal age or not. He'd be turning twenty-two this winter, but he felt about a hundred and three. If he could make enough cash on the weekends, legitimate cab driving or pirating it, he could focus on his classes during the week. But his budget wasn't going to allow for much more than ramen noodles and generic two-liters of soda this year, so he might as well get over feeling shitty about looking cheap right now.

He also hadn't eaten since that morning. When the bartender slapped a pint of something pale as straw on the coaster that was obviously going for a third or fourth use, Tom added a basket of cheese fries to his tab.

He'd grown used to eating crap in the last year. Amazing how expensive it was to eat good food. But junk was cheap wherever you went.

He started nodding off over his fries with a half a pint still sitting in front of him.

"Hey, kid." For a second, he thought he was listening to himself talk to Reese. The guy made him feel ancient. Probably the same for the bartender, watching him. "Go on home before you faceplant in that grease. G'wan."

He stood, streamed the rest of his beer down his open throat in one long swallow, and pushed the glass and two dollars for a tip toward the rail.

"Thanks, man."

Back at the room, Reese was nowhere in sight. Probably went to rustle up some friends and bitch about the asshole who'd showed up in his nice, put-together room. Which was only fair if he hadn't been expecting a roomie. But most of the pillows were gone from the bed and the countertop cleared off the second dresser in the room. Tom's shitty sheets must still be in his duffle, because the bed was made up with a matching set of some kind of semi-shiny bronze sheets and pillowcases on the two more obviously made for a bed pillows.

A folded piece of white notebook paper stood out on one of the pillows.

_T- Just sleep on these sheets. The bed was already made up. Plus, your sheets are really pathetic. Seriously. -R._

He stripped off his jeans, T-shirt and socks, leaving them on the floor where they fell at his feet. There was a moment of guilt when he slid between the sheets and wondered if he should have grabbed a quick shower first. But between the muttered curse at realizing he'd left the ceiling light on and the switch was all the way over by the door and the second jaw-breaking yawn of the hour, he fell asleep.

He never heard when Reese came in.

At some point, God knew how many hours of catch-up sleep later, but not enough, obscenely bright sunlight was streaming in the uncurtained window as the sounds of another person moving around the room, opening and closing drawers and a door or two, brought him far enough out of his coma to hear the kid getting dressed.

"Hey, kid." His voice scratched in his throat. He didn't bother trying to open his eyes, blinded even with them shut. "Reese."

"What?"

"Any chance you can get the blinds, man? I need another couple before I'm human again."

A huff of breath that sounded as if it wanted to be a laugh but was trying to pull off annoyed. Then the short whistle of cord running through a pully, followed by the bliss of dimming light.

"Thanks, kid." He shoved his head under one of these fucking softer than a baby's ass pillows he was not thinking about stealing. "I'll go to Res Life first thing, 'kay?"

Something that sounded like "you and me both" made its way through the down fluff wrapped around his head. And then the real darkness fell again.

* * *

Hours later, Tom found himself arguing with the woman behind the scarred wood counter in the Residential Life office until she snapped at him.

"It's up to you, Mr. Worthington. If you'd rather wait to see if you can get a single room next semester, we can change your re-enrollment date. But there aren't any open singles in Perkins House, no matter how much you tell me there has to be."

Tom blew out a breath and ran his hands through his hair.

"It's just..." He tried to figure out what was stopping him from letting this poor woman go back to her work. "This kid, Reese, he seemed pretty sure that there wasn't supposed to be anyone else in his room. And he looks at me like I'm a serial killer or something." He thought of something. "I don't even know if he slept there last night."

"I'm sure you'll work it out." She slapped the folder containing his file shut and threw him a bright smile. "If not, you can always check back in a couple weeks, see if anything's opened up."

He could take a hint.

Writing off his chances of making any progress here, he headed back to the dorm, still feeling hungover with fatigue and the sensation of having come to a sudden stop after an eternity of hustling at top speed. Everyone around him, the students crossing the quad or checking mail in the campus P.O. or hauling enormous white Target shopping bags into the dorms, seemed to be moving in fast forward while he trudged through some kind of temporal molasses. The disorientation was fierce.

It didn't help when your brain went off on labyrinthine tangents just to figure out how to say, _Damn, I'm still tired._

Since he didn't have anything until a four p.m. appointment with his advisor, another crack at sacking out seemed like a good plan.

It was only when he got back to his room, at least his room for now, and heard the music blaring from behind the closed door did he realize that his room might not be the most restful spot on campus today.

He braced himself and unlocked the door, feeling enough like a guest to give a half-hearted knock, one that certainly couldn't be heard over the techno crap, before he pushed in.

Either his roommate had ears like a bat or he was watching the door for Tom's return, because Reese was planted like an immovable object ready to meet an unstoppable force ten feet inside the room, hands on his hips, wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off black sweats, a yoga mat unrolled flat on the floor behind him.

"Well?"

It wasn't really a question. More of a demand.

Tom shrugged. "They told me no dice." He slung his backpack on the bed he'd apparently still be sleeping in tonight, talking loudly to be heard over the dance music. Techno with yoga? He blocked the curiosity that spiked in him. None of his business. "You?"

No answer other than the elegant yet impatient wave of one hand that Tom had already figured out meant Reese didn't care for the answer to the previous question and so was skipping it.

A dice shortage all around.

He raised his voice again and stared pointedly at the stereo.

"Listen, I need some more sleep before I meet my advisor at four. Any chance we can take a vacay from the techno for an hour or two?"

Reese swiped a remote control from his bed and pointed it at the receiver.

Blessed silence.

Until the kid went off on him again. Tom eased himself down onto the edge of the bed and did his best to look as if he were paying attention while he unlaced his shoes.

"Listen, what's your name again? Tom?" He nodded and kicked his running shoes off. "You can't stay here."

"Sorry, kid. But here's all they gave me. Trust me, if I could get out of your hair, I would."

"Did you even try to convince the Res Life lowlifes that they'd fucked up? Shit." The kid was pacing, three steps and turn, three steps and turn, across the small open floor space. "Those jerks couldn't find their own assholes with two hands and a flashlight."

Tom flinched. "Vivid. But there isn't anything they can do about it. There's nowhere for me to go. You can't blame them for not fixing it. We're just stuck."

Reese's laugh was short and bitter. "Yeah, well, they don't exactly have a brilliant track record with me and roommates."

Tom could tell there was something there, loaded and heavy behind the sarcastic words and the sharp head shake, but the pillow at his hip was calling to his head like a Siren to Odysseus and Reese didn't look as if he was really up for probing questions anyway.

He shrugged and stood up to slough off his jeans, planning to crash in his boxers and a T-shirt. It'd been a long time since he'd stripped in front of a stranger, at least in a situation that didn't involve enough alcohol to sink a battleship, and he was weirdly aware of Reese watching him.

Not like pervy watching him. More like someone plotting how to do away with him. Speculative. As if he were measuring Tom with his eyes and figuring out where he could hide his body.

He stripped the comforter way back, not wanting to sweat his ass off in the early September heat of a summer that wouldn't quit, and slid under the sheet to lie on his stomach. Kid could keep talking if he wanted. Tom was pretty sure he could sleep through an air raid alarm, much less a cranky twenty-year-old. He punched a pillow up and wedged it under his cheek.

"You can't stay here!" Agitation overload. And still with the pacing.

His eyes were getting tired of tracking the back and forth. Resting them for a moment was clearly the best option.

Just a moment.

"Don't worry. Hardly be here."

"I don't care if you check in once a quarter, dude. You having a key to this room is not an option."

"Sorry." He was really drifting now. "S'okay."

"No, it's not. I'm _gay,_ you idiot."

He could tell from the dramatic flounce to the words this was supposed to be a big deal, so he made a valiant effort and cracked an eye open.

"I noticed. So?"

Which was enough of an answer as far as Tom was concerned. It wasn't as if he could miss the rainbow flags on the door and the walls, or the black and white photography posters of naked people, all of them male.

Reese's sexuality was not exactly a state secret here.

No surprise to hear that Reese didn't consider that answer satisfactory.

"So? I suck cock and kiss guys and you're telling me you're okay with that?" His disbelief was raging as he took two steps closer to where Tom had perked up a bit at those last sentences, looming over the bed.

"In that order?"

"What?"

"You do it in that order? Suck cock and then kiss? Seems a little backwards." This conversation was enough to wake him up a little. Opening his eyes, he propped his head on one fist and watched Reese fling himself into the wooden desk chair.

"Seriously? That's where you're taking this conversation?" He grabbed a pen out of cup on the desk and started tapping on the edge of the seat between his widespread legs. "You wanna talk about blowjobs?"

Tom shrugged one shoulder. "Just saying. There's no way you'd get a girl to go for that."

"Yes, well, guys sometimes have a more pragmatic approach to sex. And can we not talk about vagina please? It ain't my thing."

"Well, shit. When you call it that, it ain't my thing either," Tom said and laughed. He dropped his head back down, but kept his eyes open. Reese reached for a strip of gunmetal gray fabric that turned out to be a stretchy headband and pulled it over his head and then pushed it back across his hairline, pulling all his chin-length ebony hair off his face. Tom realized he hadn't actually seen Reese's entire face before. He'd had half of it covered with that sweep of straight, dark hair until now.

He was a good-looking kid. Probably got plenty of cock-first, kissing-second action, Tom thought and kept the grin off his face. But seriously, with that dramatically pale skin and the cheekbones, plus the puffy lips and the skinny but muscled abs he was showing off with the stretched out waistband of those sweats, he could have been a model for one of those clothing companies whose catalogs looked more like high-class porn than sales books.

And now it was definitely time for that nap. That was more brain time devoted to how gay dudes probably wanted to fuck his young roommate than Tom was really comfortable spending.

"I'm out, kid. C'n we take this up tonight?" He rolled over to face the wall for emphasis.

"I do not, under any circumstances, hang out with homophobic jocks and their fuckhead buddies." The kid was like a terrier with a bone, worrying it to death with tiny teeth.

Tom told himself not to answer. To let the kid wind down. He couldn't keep ranting forever.

"Well, I'm not an athlete anymore."

It was too bad he couldn't be convinced to take his own advice.

"But you _were_ an athlete!" Reese practically pounced on him and said, _Ah ha!_ like a cartoon villain. With his face to the wall and his eyes shut, for all Tom knew he actually had made some kind of melodramatic one-finger pointing accusation.

"Jesus, kid, shut up. I was a virgin once too, but everything changes. And I don't have any fuckhead buddies here. Not anymore. So how about we keep it that way and you can ignore me and pretend I'm not here, okay?"

No answer. Praise God. A lot of barefoot stomping, which wasn't really a big deal since that was pretty quiet anyway, and some aggressive drawer opening and closing. If Reese thought that kind of nonverbal protest was going to drive him out then Tom would break it to him gently. Not a chance.

He was almost out cold when he heard their door open and shut as Reese left.

And Tom would have been a lot less relaxed if he'd understood what Reese said as he left.

"See if you can ignore this."

# 2

Tom forgot all about Reese's last throwaway challenge by the time he got back to their room late that night after a less than encouraging meeting with his advisor and a solid four hours in the library trying to catch up on the pre-reading for his senior seminar on Ethics in Business. Ha. As if he needed it.

The professor was notorious for the blinding white lights of interrogation he shone on the students in his class on the first day. Anyone who made it through without crying or telling him to fuck off got to stay in the class. After that first hideous day, the prof actually morphed into a rigorous but compassionate teacher. _Thinning the herd,_ he called it. Tom had thought he'd have plenty of time to check the texts out of the library in Boston, and that had actually been the easy part. But finding time to read about the social responsibilities of businesses to the communities in which they are located when he was spending every waking moment driving a cab to get his first semester paid up before the final September deadline for registration was harder than he'd thought.

Of course, it wasn't as if he were reading _Playboy_ or _Entertainment Weekly_. Even an Econ major like Tom had a hard time staying awake over seven hundred pages of the ethical and philosophical issues in product liability law. That shit was better than Xanax for chilling him right out into sleep mode.

In any case, he needed to knock out another fifty pages, which felt more like five hundred pages by the time he finished looking up all the words he didn't know in the textbook glossary. And he'd decided that studying in his room would be okay, if he could show up and say hi and not make this kid think he was an asshole, something he'd been reassuring the kid about since walking in the door.

When he saw the hot pink bandana tied around the doorknob of their room, he groaned out loud.

"Oh, fuck me."

Or rather...

In case that booty call flag wasn't clear, Reese had stuck a piece of notebook paper to the bulletin board with big block letters and an arrow pointing to the bandana scrawled on it in black marker.

_YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, RIGHT? COME BACK LATER._

_A LOT LATER._

Fucking fantastic.

Tom dropped his backpack on the linoleum floor and slid his butt down the wall until he joined it. Great. No way was he walking all the way back to the library now. He figured Reese would have mentioned a boyfriend during the whole cocksucking conversation earlier, so maybe this was a random hookup. A new twist on revenge sex. Call it drive-out-your-roommate sex.

He'd just have to hang out in the hall and hope that whatever dude his roommate had picked up was a quick and unsatisfying lay. Propping the text on his lap, Tom dug deep and tried to focus on tax laws for non-profits in the U.S.

It didn't take long for distraction to set in.

Once he'd settled in and the only sounds were the flicking of a page and the occasional "hey" of a passing resident who lived down the hall, the quiet took over.

Which made the noises emanating from behind the closed door to their room that much more impossible to ignore.

The first soft, low moans that slipped out under the bottom edge of the door, that tiny gap a window into the action behind the solid wood plank, eased their way into Tom's subconscious without him really being aware of it. It wasn't until he went to adjust his jeans, shifting on the floor and pulling the denim away from his crotch, that he realized his dick was waking up and noticing that something going on was making things a little tingly.

What the fuck? The Internal Revenue Code was never exciting enough to give him a semi.

A low groan vibrated through the door and he realized he'd been hearing the urgent sounds of sex for a few minutes now. Long enough for his dick to notice anyways. Although he was a little surprised that he was getting turned on by the sounds of two dudes going at it, it was clear his body thought eavesdropping on his own personal porn show was perfectly fine.

Equal opportunity voyeurism, or whatever the word for listening to someone else get it on was, was apparently his thing.

He laughed self-consciously, glad no one else was around to see him blushing at the idea, and looked back down at the page. Getting his head back into the paragraphs on taxation was even more of a challenge as the moans escalated in intensity and loudness until Tom started glancing down the hall every couple of seconds. He wasn't sure he wanted someone to come along and see him sitting here, listening to some dude getting his rocks off, which he or anyone else within twenty feet now couldn't possibly avoid doing.

The guy who was moaning was a little over the top too, with the _Oh God_ 's and the _Yes_ 's.

"You're not making a porno, buddy. Easy."

Great. Now he was talking to himself about two guys fucking.

And really, what did he know? He'd known Reese for all of twenty-four hours and almost the first thing the kid did was bring a guy back to their room and get busy. For all he knew, they _were_ making a porno. The kid could have klieg lights and a camera on a tripod in there. Filming himself, what? Fucking this guy or getting fucked? Tom shifted his weight from one hip to the other, his butt cheeks going numb from sitting on the hard floor. Thinking about how his roommate liked to have sex seemed like a major privacy violation, but it wasn't as if the guy was trying to hide it. In fact, Reese was pretty clearly trying to scare him off with gay sex cooties.

Tom was damned if he was going to flinch first.

"I can listen to two dudes fucking all day long, kid. Not going anywhere," he said to the empty hall, maybe a little more loudly than he'd planned.

Now that he had the thought in his head though, he couldn't let it go. Was Reese getting fucked or the one doing the fucking? The voice that kept asking now for "harder, don't stop!" didn't really sound like him, but Tom didn't exactly have a history of listening to the kid's sex noises for comparison. If he had to guess, and his inability to stop thinking about it meant he was going to, he'd say the kid was into getting fucked. Maybe it was because he was kind of slim and little and had the chin-length hair and the pretty mouth...

What the fuck? Pretty mouth?

Where the hell had that thought come from?

Jesus. He needed to stop thinking about this shit. He dug through his backpack and found his old iPod, jamming the buds in his ears and hitting Play in a hurry. Picked the textbook in his lap up and settled it more firmly against his knees.

Focus. Tax havens. Not gay sex.

He made it about three sentences in before his hand crept down to the iPod and snuck a finger out to tap Pause, almost as though he was afraid someone would see him turn off the music that for a moment had blocked the low groans and loud shouts of pleasure from his room. He knew he was ridiculous, leaving the buds in so it would look like he was trying to shut out the sounds emanating from his room. He put a semi-disgusted expression on his face so no one would think he was anything except bored or totally turned off, as any straight guy would be.

But still he listened and couldn't stop himself from trying to picture exactly what was happening.

"Yeah, suck me, Reese. Suck—ahhh."

Shit.

Only a couple of words, but that was all he needed. So, not fucking at all. Although maybe if you were a gay guy, getting a blowjob counted as sex. Or giving one. Which was what Reese was doing right now. Sucking some other guy's dick and doing it like a boss too, if the guy's nonstop stream of begging and praise was any indication.

Tom couldn't get the picture out of his mind. Reese's lips stretched wide around a dick, eyes closed, lashes resting on his cheeks, that sweep of dark hair falling over his face as he bobbed his head up and down, up and down, sucking so hard you could feel it in your fucking balls...

What. The. Fuck.

Tom punched the music back on, yanked his knees up and crossed his arms on them, and dropped his head to hide his face.

Because he wasn't picturing some other guy when he couldn't stop himself from freaking imagining a gay dude __ getting a blowjob from _his roommate_. Tom was good at a boatload of things, but self-bullshit wasn't one of them.

When he pictured what it was like to get a blowjob from Reese, the dick the kid was sucking was Tom's. And he was hard as a rock from imagining it, his dick fucking begging for a little attention, making him wonder if he could get away with a quick jerkoff session in the bathroom without getting interrupted.

"Fuck, no."

He didn't say the next part out loud.

_I'm not gonna go jerk off and think about Reese sucking my dick. No fucking way._ _Because that's what a gay guy would do and I'm not even thinking about that shit right now._

He recognized that not thinking about shit right now wasn't exactly the same thing as denying the thought entirely. He dropped one hand to his lap and squeezed his dick through his jeans, shivering with the splash of pleasure that shot through him. Fuck. This was _not_ the time. He hadn't busted his ass for the past fifteen months to find a way to make it back here only to blow his focus by spending his time thinking about cocksucking. The shit that had gone down in the middle of his last semester at Carlisle meant the school was allowing him to retake those classes without penalty and Tom was determined to ace his classes. Graduating after three more semesters with an academic record that shone was the only thing standing between him and a job making ten bucks an hour after graduation.

He'd had plenty of alone time in the past year to realize how much nicer his life was when he hadn't had to fucking scrape and suffer because of money, and he was going to walk off this campus and straight into the ranks of the gainfully employed in a job he earned all on his own.

Sex could wait. It wasn't that hard to find anyway, if he needed to blow off a little steam. But all this deep fucking thinking that he just _knew_ would be required for him to address the fact that imagining his male roommate sucking his dick gave him a hard-on faster than any porno with chicks he'd ever watched? Yeah, that shit would have to wait.

He'd managed to ignore it most of his entire fucking life up until now, hadn't he? No sense changing speeds simply because his dick finally woke up after a year of sex drive-killing stress and pretty much constant homelessness. Crashing on someone's couch or sleeping in a car were surefire lust dampeners. He could vouch for that.

Besides, it was clear his pretty roommate loathed him. And since he wasn't about to give up his spot in Perkins House and go back to the surefire chaos of being in the dorms on campus where he could run into a hundred people who knew all about him and would be ready to spark a wildfire of gossip the moment he showed up, it seemed likely that Reese was going to go on hating him.

He inhaled deeply and then let it out in a long, slow _shhhhh_ through his teeth.

Focus. Focus on class and scoring straight A's. There wouldn't be time for anything else. He'd still have to head into the city every weekend and put in round-the-clock hours driving the cab if he wanted to be able to pay for the second semester by the time the bill came due. Solo sessions in the shower would do, if his dick insisted on staying awake after all, or he could always hit a bar and pick up some girl with an apartment or room of her own. He'd never had a hard time doing that and was perfectly aware it wasn't because he was so smooth with the ladies. He knew he looked good, tall and blond and built from the middling amount of weightlifting he did in addition to the running. He'd had more than one chick hit on _him_ before he even thought of hitting on her.

"You have sad eyes," a girl had told him this past summer, before pushing him down on her bed and climbing on top of him.

Sad eyes. No shit. If exhaustion and a constant fear that he wasn't going to quite be able to pull this shit off gave him happy eyes, he'd have signed himself up for the psych ward.

Sitting long enough with his eyes closed and his head down had made him sleepy. He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he finally lifted his head, hard-on mostly gone, and paused the music cautiously to check on the porn scene.

Silence. Thank God.

He turned the music back on, able to enjoy it now that he wasn't wondering if he could hear anything beneath the sounds of his favorite bands. If Reese's fuckbuddy didn't head out in a little while, he'd be giving a courtesy knock before going in. This little "my gay testosterone is tougher than your straight ('ish' he thought, but pushed that firmly to the side) testosterone" throwdown Reese was determined to have with him was not going to make the kid happy.

After the battle scars he'd earned in the past year, a little guy-on-guy action wasn't going to make him run screaming. Nothing short of a crowbar and a pile of dynamite under his ass was gonna pry him out of this room.

The "heads up, I'm coming in" knock turned out to be unnecessary. A surprisingly short time later, the door at his left shoulder opened and an even slighter, shorter guy stepped out, before leaning back in for what Tom assumed without looking was some kind of goodbye kiss. The kid looked even younger than Reese and had a short shock of bright pink hair that was clearly messed up bedhair, parts of it standing straight up in the original style.

The guy was startled to see Tom camped out on the floor outside the room, if his backward hop after almost stepping on him was any indication. He grinned down at Tom, eyelids at half-mast with what Tom recognized as "I've just had my brains fucked out and if I could, I'd be out cold right now" sleepiness. He was a walking ad for sexual satisfaction and he'd probably crash as soon as he made it back to his own bed.

Shoving his book in his pack and putting the iPod carefully away—if that thing broke, he'd be hard pressed to replace it—he felt Reese standing over him, watching him with what were no doubt laser eyes of fuck you.

"You sure you wanna come in? Probably smells like come in here." The attempt to gross him out, to scare him off, wasn't even subtle now. Tom sighed and braced a hand against the dusty floor and stood.

He didn't enjoy using his size to push a smaller guy around, but he stepped in close to Reese, who didn't back down, and leaned in to loom over him. The kid was right. He could smell sex on him and he told his dick to settle down when it showed tingly signs of waking up again. Reese's lips were puffy and red, his eyes narrowed and unblinking as he stared up at Tom.

"Listen, kid. You have no idea the shit I've dealt with lately." He pushed his face down even closer until he saw Reese's nostrils flare and his skin pale. Shit. He was actually scaring the kid. He took a step back and shook his head. "A room smelling like sex doesn't even make the list of crap that bothers me, so don't go getting hopeful that I'm gonna run screaming down the hall at the idea that you blew some dude in our room."

" _My_ room." Still battling.

"If it makes you feel good, call it whatever you want." He entered the room and slung his backpack over the back of what he was now calling his desk chair. "But I'll be sleeping here every night. And if I get tired of sitting in the hall, I'll _probably_ remember to knock before I come in."

Reese scoffed and slammed the door shut as he followed Tom in.

"Maybe I'll keep going. What are you gonna do? Sit there and watch me suck off some guy?"

He was running out of energy to laugh. Tom scrubbed his hands over his face and yawned. The sight of his bed was shutting his brain down.

"Jesus, kid. Don't flatter yourself. Most days I'm so tired you could be gagging on the cocks of half the school and I'm not even gonna notice the line out the door before I crash."

He caught a glimpse of Reese as he stripped his T-shirt off over his head, a little self-conscious, yes. Two guys had just been full-on naked in their room and taking his clothes off felt...awkward. The kid was chewing gently on his lower lip and frowning, looking unsure about what to do next. Clearly his big plan fizzling out like a dud firework wasn't something he'd anticipated.

He kicked off jeans, socks, shoes all in one go to a pile on the floor, feeling like Groundhog Day for repeating the exact same move as last night with a still-pissed off roommate watching him undress. Good to know he'd made exactly no progress in twenty-four hours.

"Also, you're a slob. Can't you put your clothes in a laundry basket?"

Tom kept his back to Reese as he climbed into bed. It felt like progress, having the kid bitch at him about who was the bigger slob, a regular roommate issue. Maybe the fact that he hadn't backed down at Reese's sex challenge had convinced the kid that he wasn't going anywhere. They were never going to be BFF's obviously, but maybe they could settle into a regularly acrimonious roommate relationship, where neither of them really liked the other but they mostly ignored each other's presence. "Don't have one. But I'll get a box or something, okay? I'm hitting the sack, kid. Have a good night."

He didn't even care that the overhead light was still shining bright, lighting up the whole room. A pillow over his head was darkness enough and even if Reese kept up the put-upon heavy sighs and general sounds of stomping around their room, Tom knew he'd be out in minutes.

Before he could slow his brain down enough to let sleep in, he heard a faint click and the light seeping in under the edges of the pillow vanished.

Ahhh, sweet. He slid the pillow back under his head and stayed curled up on his side, facing the wall. He could hear Reese moving through the dark room, the sounds of clothes being removed loud in the darkness. Tom refused to picture it. The rustle of skin sliding on fabric was an audible _shush_ as Reese got into his own bed. Tom told himself he was imagining being able to hear their slow breaths mingle in a counterpoint that gradually drifted into synchronized easy inhales and exhales.

And, listening to his roommate breathing in the dark, he fell asleep.

# 3

After three more days of sharing the room with Reese, Tom was fucking hanging by a thread, and he hit the road in his carefully maintained BMW early Friday morning with a deep sigh of relief and guilt.

Reese hadn't given up on his plan to get Tom to move out by battering him with his gayness, but he'd only brought a guy back to their room on one of the past few nights. No notebook paper sign on the bulletin board, but the pink bandana still tied defiantly on the doorknob. Guess the kid didn't really want to give him the shock of walking in on a full-on gay sex, naked dude extravaganza, no matter what he might threaten. Tom had sighed and settled down again in the hall, determined not to be run off. He'd gone through the book on lap, buds in ears routine but had found himself hesitating with a finger over the iPod on switch before leaving it off.

He felt kind of pervy, eavesdropping on his roommate's sex life, but wasn't this what Reese wanted? To force him to listen in? And Tom couldn't deny the irresistible nagging curiosity that had its claws in him.

Once again, the only voice he heard was not his roommate's. A different male voice this time, not as wordy as the last guy, but into almost nonstop moaning and groaning and this guy definitely didn't care who heard him. His shout at the end was loud enough to be heard on the floors below them and Tom had found himself again with a hard-on that wouldn't quit until he pinched the tip of his dick through his jeans and squeezed hard enough for the pain to block out some of the thick, sticky pulses of heat that had him thinking he could feel his heartbeat in his cock.

Reese had only looked at him for a second while hustling his latest pick-up out the door just minutes after that final orgasm yell to wake the dead, as if he already knew what he'd find. They'd locked eyes for a moment, neither of them blinking. The skin under Reese's dark eyes was shadowed a deep purple and his face was paler than usual. Whatever thrill he got out of trying to fuck with Tom's head with this game, it clearly wasn't giving _him_ much joy. Either that, or he was lying awake all night, plotting Tom's ultimate demise, instead of sleeping.

Not Tom's problem. Sooner or later the kid would settle down and they could get on with their lives. Or at least Tom would. If Reese wanted to simmer and seethe with resentment for the rest of the year, he could knock himself out. Tom had work to do and all he needed was a safe place to crash in the hours when he wasn't busting his ass to catch up on his thesis work.

Not his problem.

Right.

That's what he told himself as he finally gave up on sleep and grabbed his towel on the way out of their room, heading to the showers at two a.m.

He left the lights off, not wanting to draw any attention. Or maybe it was that he didn't want to look at himself in the mirror and see his own face as he hung his shorts and his towel on the hook outside the shower stall and stepped naked into the dark cubicle. He cranked on the water until it was so hot it scalded him and suffered under the hard stinging spray for minutes. But in the end, he gave in. He'd known he would. Turning the water to warm and leaning against the wall with his head braced against his forearm, he grabbed his dick and stroked it slowly, almost painfully, with the drag of his hand up and down until he shuddered hard and came so fast it hurt, his mind full of Reese. Reese's slim hips in those low-slung sweats, the bones of his pelvis visible because he didn't weigh enough, even for a skinny guy. Reese's hair, always falling in his face, his way of blocking out the people around him, Tom thought, and pictured pushing it back with fingers plunged deep and curving around Reese's skull.

Reese's mouth. Those lips he'd seen twice now, puffy from sucking cock and bruised reddish-purple with the force of wrapping his lips around his teeth. He knew that mouth would be full of heat, wet, and the strong muscle of a tongue that would stroke his dick while Reese sucked him until he came.

He was so fucked.

The warm water was raining down on him, sluicing the sweat from his body as he shook a little in the aftermath of the hardest orgasm he'd had in years, just from a two-minute jerk session and thoughts of his roommate's mouth.

He kept his thoughts to himself about this little late night fantasy session. Or rather, put to the side the admission that he'd given in to the urge at all. He hadn't had sex worth fantasizing about in months. He'd been too worn out to get excited about much of anything, but a bed and a roof were apparently rejuvenating to the sex drive.

Then, if someone was gonna shove their own private sex show in his face, of course he was gonna get hung up on the idea of getting a blowjob. And if there was someone in the room who, although it didn't sound as though he did much getting off of his own, clearly had a thing for sucking guys off, then it shouldn't surprise Tom to find that person pushing his way into Tom's masturbation fantasy.

Only to be expected really.

He snorted and called bullshit on himself as he angled the showerhead to rinse his come off the tiled wall and down the drain. Even if he wanted to, there was no fucking point denying that he'd jacked off to a gay sex fantasy. Who the fuck cared? What a guy did in the privacy of his own head didn't have anything to do with what he did in real life. Every guy he knew had fantasies of hot threesomes with chicks stacked like Playboy bunnies and the only guy he knew who'd actually had a threesome had ended up spending most of the night holding one girl's hair back as she puked in a toilet, because everyone had been so drunk no one really knew what they were doing.

Real life was way less fucking hot than fantasies. Which was why people had them.

It didn't mean your real life was ever going to match the things you got up to in your head.

Still, when he made it back to their room, he'd turned the handle with all the care he could muster to make the sound soft and unlikely to wake anyone. He'd dressed and thrown clothes in his bag with the same hush and snuck out of the room without looking more than once at the sleeping sprawl that was Reese in his twin bed on the opposite side of the room, his sheet pulled up barely far enough to cover his ass, his shoulder blades outlined delicately by the faint light that spilled in the window from the street lights.

Tom would drive a cab all weekend and catnap in his car when necessary to save money on a motel. He'd drive until he was too tired to think of anything at all before he sacked out on the backseat and then wake up to an alarm after a few hours, still tired and disoriented with a need for sleep. He wouldn't have the energy to think about anything except socking enough cash away in his checking account to be able to write that next tuition check. And maybe almost seventy-two hours of privacy would let Reese adjust to the idea that Tom was going to be there during the week, and not frequently even then. Surely he'd noticed Tom only came back to the room to sleep, trying to give the kid as much space as he could.

The sun was sliding up over the horizon as he cruised east on the Mass Pike to Boston, the gentle rise of the hills undulating like waves to either side of the highway as traffic slowly built the closer he got to the city.

He had seven hundred plus pages of reading to do over breaks the next three days. Between that and trying to make sure none of the late night fares he picked up were going to puke in his cab, he wouldn't have any trouble keeping himself busy.

That was the plan.

Sunday night he'd have to get back in the pool again, head back to his room and hope things were smoothed over with Reese. Until then, he had nothing but work, for school or for cash. His focus was clear.

Easier said than done. But by the time he was heading back to Western Mass on Sunday night, Tom felt settled in resignation to the fact that he was going to wake up from hazy dreams of hard, slim bodies and a male mouth, sporting the kind of erection that didn't go back down until he did something about it. It hadn't really even taken the second night to make it clear that this was his burden for the foreseeable future. And if he were honest, it wasn't exactly the first time he'd had a dream about another guy. He'd known for a while now that his dick was an equal opportunity pervhouse, something years at prep school had made clear.

Hey, even sharing a room with another boy wasn't going to keep a teenage kid from jerking off in the middle of the night.

The first time he'd heard the smothered gasps of his roommate and felt himself get hard right along with him—finally reaching down to tug on himself until he came in his boxers, hoping the other boy was too caught up in his own self-induced orgasm to hear him join in—the light had gone on that maybe it wasn't only girls that got to him.

He ignored the voice in his brain that reminded him that jacking off in the dark wasn't exactly as far as he'd gone and cranked the stereo high, blasting some old school Run DMC and letting the fast pitch word play blow all other thoughts out of his head like the wind roaring in the windows as he headed back to Perkins House. He didn't let himself wonder for a moment if his doorknob would have a pink bandana looped over the knob when he got there.

# 4

Tom figured the cardboard box could be seen as a peace offering.

Right?

He spotted the flattened box where it sat behind the sixty-five gallon trash bin at the end of the hall in the kitchenette when he went to refill an empty water bottle to keep by his bed. His head ached from too little sleep this weekend and he knew he was probably dehydrated too. He couldn't always find a water fountain to refill his bottle when he was driving and he sure as shit wasn't about to use a gas station bathroom sink. Or buy a new frigging bottle of what was probably tap water anyway every time he got thirsty. So he knew he should drink up if he didn't want to slip into migraine territory just in time for class on Monday morning. When he spotted the box, he grabbed at it as another gesture he could make to Reese in the hopes of waving the "Hey, look at me! Not a bad guy!" flag.

Back in their room, he set up the box, reconstructing its four sides and tucking opposite flaps under one another to lock in the bottom until he got some duct tape. He cut the top flaps off and when he stripped down, dropped all of his dirty clothes in his new laundry basket at the foot of his bed.

Might not be pretty, but it was functional.

He knew the minute Reese spotted it when he finally showed up in the room at about eleven o'clock, no trick in tow for once. The kid was stripping off a black hoodie, in full-on goth mode with a black T-shirt, pants and eyeliner that made you look at his eyes more, when his motions slowed until he stopped, hoodie dangling from one hand as he narrowed his eyes at the foot of Tom's bed.

"What's that?"

Tom looked up from the book in his lap. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed in his boxers, since it was hot as balls in their room and he still didn't have a desk, what with the giant entertainment center that squatted there. He'd opened the window all the way, but with no through-draft, the Indian summer heat was sitting in their third floor room, camped out for the night. His skin felt sticky wherever his limbs touched, elbow on his thigh or fist against his cheek. And being hot and sticky didn't exactly bring out the Ms. Manners in his personality.

"Never seen one of those before, huh?"

Reese rolled his eyes and hung up his hoodie in his closet. On a frigging hanger. Must be cooler out now that the sun had been down for a while if he'd worn it, but Tom sure couldn't feel the temperature change in his shorts.

And that was the last thought about anything in his shorts that was going to be allowed.

"What's it for? Packing up your stuff?" Reese fluttered his eyelashes and patted his chest. "Be still, my eager heart."

"You aren't that lucky." All of a sudden, he felt kind of stupid at admitting it. He'd been trying to do something nice, but somehow saying that out loud felt almost like, well, _flirting_. Like when you offered to take a girl to the chick flick you knew she wanted to see instead of the one about MMA fighters getting into street races with other gangs. And he sure as shit didn't see Reese as a girl. There was no mistaking the wiry muscle and hard bones of his body for the cushiony softness that he looked for in a girl. "It's a laundry basket. Duh."

Jesus. He was turning into a twelve-year-old. _Duh?_

He didn't look up again, but he heard the _harrumph_ Reese let escape and hid a grin behind pressed lips.

"I didn't want to be Oscar," he offered after a moment, not sure if the reference would mean anything. He'd played the part back in high school, when trying out for a school play and getting one of the leads was still important to him. Because he'd been kind of a show-off and little bit of a prick about rubbing it in to his friends that he could do anything he put his mind to.

"Because I'm the uptight, OCD gay roommate who doesn't know how to have any fun?"

"Hey, man. Sounds to me like you get up to all kinds of fun in here." Okay. So maybe he'd planned on going more than three minutes before bringing up the blowjob party in their room that Reese had been intent on holding the last time he'd seen him.

"Yeah, well, it's not...what it looks like." Reese didn't look at him as he pulled books from his backpack and stacked them on his desk.

"It's not you sucking dick in the hopes that making me listen to guys coming their brains out is gonna make me move out?"

"Okay. That part's what it looks like."

"Thought so." He snapped shut his book. "Look, kid—"

"Stop calling me kid. How much older than me can you be anyway? What are you, twenty-five?"

He felt ancient some days.

"Twenty-two."

The look of shock on Reese's face was almost comical.

"Twenty-two?" His voice hit the ceiling in a screech. "How the hell did you get in Perkins then? It's supposed to be for _older_ students."

"And what are you? Benjamin Button? You can't be a day over nineteen."

"I'm twenty and—" Reese paled and started putting the books he'd removed from his messenger bag back in it like an automaton, "—the school wasn't, um, sure where to put me, so I, um, ended up here."

My Aunt Fanny, Tom thought, and laughed at how the voice in his head that said the words sounded like his mother when he was a kid. That was the crappiest non-explanation he'd ever heard, but he thought he could see Reese's hands actually shaking as he moved books around and didn't look at Tom. If the kid wanted to keep secrets, that was totally fine with Tom.

He had plenty of things he didn't want to share with everybody and their neighbor too.

"Yeah, me too," he finally answered. "The school wanted me here. Keep me away from the riff raff." He tried to crack a joke about it.

"What? Some kind of celebrity? I mean, you did go here last year, right?" Changing the subject back to Tom seemed to bring Reese back to life a little. He didn't really look at Tom, instead glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes, as if Tom were a grizzly bear whose attention he wasn't sure he wanted to draw to himself. Giving a little hop, he got his ass up on the edge of his desk, bracing his Chucks on the seat of his chair. Apparently he was settling in for some good ole roomie get to know you conversation.

Great.

Just when Tom really wanted to drop the subject. Now the kid wanted to talk.

"Not last year, no. I took some time off."

"But before that?"

"Yeah."

He didn't know why he was dragging it out. It was probably only a matter of luck and stubborn refusal to accept even the idea of him that had kept Reese from doing at least an idle Internet search on him. And Tom's father's arrest by the Feds made up results one through infinity when you dropped Worthington into a search engine.

That's what happened when you were the subject of the largest price-fixing takedown in the history of white-collar-crime, undercover FBI stings. Your name was on the front page of every newspaper in the country for months, especially after you tried to kill yourself while on house arrest and your kid, home from college at the school's request after reporters swarmed his every move on campus, had to call 911 when he found you unconscious with an empty bottle of pills and a mostly empty glass of Scotch on the bedside table.

It was the kind of story that made reporters drool.

This wasn't a secret that could be kept under wraps for very long.

And making himself sound mysterious, as if he had a secret backstory that no one knew, was only going to speed up the process of destroying what little privacy he'd managed to enjoy in the last week on campus with a roommate who didn't know him, keeping his head down and flying under the radar everywhere he went.

He'd known it wouldn't last, but he'd hoped to go a little longer with Reese at least treating him like a regular douchebag and not a semi-celebrity douchebag with a criminal father.

"So what's the deal? Why don't they want you in the dorms?"

"Listen, kid." He grimaced. "Sorry. Just drop it, okay?"

"Why?"

"Seriously? Because I don't want to fucking talk about it, okay?" But he could already see where this was going. He only wondered if Reese would wait until he left the room to do it.

His roommate stared at him speculatively for a moment, tapping his bottom lip with one index finger before shrugging and grabbing his phone off the desk.

Nope. Guess not.

Reese looked up after a second.

"What's your last name again?"

It figured. The kid didn't even know his last name. Shit. Who knew how long he could have flown under the radar here, with this guy having no idea who his last-minute roommate was. Tom flashed back to the rugby chant a Pakistani dishwasher had taught him in the month last year he'd spent working under the table in the kitchen at a local chop house, knowing if he used his social security number for a legit job, some reporter would track him down faster than he could say breaking news.

"Shit-damn, fuck-a-damn, fuck-a-damn-damn,

Some motherfucker just fucked my man,

I'll fuck another fucker better than the other fucker,

Shit-damn, fuck-a-damn, fuck-a-damn-damn!"

Strange, the crap that got stuck in your head and insisted on popping up at the oddest moments. But as he sat there, staring at Reese, this kid with the soft mouth and the tired eyes who'd perked up for all of two minutes at the idea of figuring out what he probably thought was a fun bit of gossip, Tom couldn't think of anything else but that foul-mouthed rhyme, sung in a British accent. Tell the kid or not? If he didn't, it wouldn't get him more than ten hours of grace, since all Reese had to do was dial up Res Life in the a.m. and ask "Who the hell is this guy in my room again?"

For a minute, those ten hours seemed as if they might be worth it. The last little bit of peace he could hold on to. One more night. Who knew what would happen then. Worst case scenario had the kid taking naked pictures of him and selling them to some gossip mag. He could see the made-up headlines now. _Price-Fixing Jailbird's Son Does Porn._ He remembered the days, and then weeks, months, of having flashes blow up in his face every time he tried to set foot out the door of their Beacon Hill home. Of trying to sneak out in the middle of the night, only to realize that the paparazzi never left. That there was always someone watching them, watching him. He started referring to the pack of them as the Evil Nemesis. He remembered the first time he'd tried to argue with a reporter who shouted out lies about his father as Tom pushed his way through the crowd blocking the gate to their front walk, wanting to get inside and hide.

_"Did you know your father was embezzling money too, Tom?"_

He'd been told later that it was a trick question, designed to draw him out. The PR company that had been working on his father's press, until the corporate board decided that working to repair the image of a man who was absolutely, positively going to jail was a waste of money, sent an agent around to coach him after that disaster.

Losing his cool sure had made for good television. Tom had watched himself on television that night and even _he_ didn't believe himself. All of his sputtering furious protests about his father's innocence looked like a fucking cover-up. With their enormous red brick Georgian townhouse visible behind the eight-foot-high wrought iron fence that surrounded their property, he looked like a spoiled little rich kid who was throwing a temper tantrum because someone wanted to take his toys away.

A pretty accurate picture at the time.

The PR guy had shown him how anything he said could be twisted around to mean the opposite by the time reporters were done with it. The guy had advised him to keep his fucking mouth shut and tattoo the words _No Comment_ across his forehead.

"Also, don't fuck any under eighteens and please God, don't let someone take a picture with their fucking cell phone of you with your lips wrapped around a bong. Or some guy's dick, all right?"

He'd thought that was a funny one right there, hadn't he? Had elbowed Tom and rolled his eyes. A little dick-sucking joke between two straight dudes, right, buddy? Ha, ha. Tom had never been sure if there'd been a kernel of true warning in the kidding around, though. Something about that guy screamed that he'd seen it all and wouldn't be surprised to see it again.

Reese was waiting across the room, perched on the edge of the desk like a dark little bird with claws, thumbs ready to go on his phone. If he was tempted to smile because he knew he had Tom, in the end, even if not right this moment, he kept it to himself. But his eyes and the press of his lips together said he wasn't going anywhere until Tom coughed up his name. If he'd said anything, one word, made one crack about cyberstalking or celebrity disguises, Tom would have told him to fuck off and gone to bed. But the kid just sat there and waited.

Like he wasn't going anywhere, ever. Which should have felt stalkerish and creepy but instead felt...inevitable.

Tom looked Reese in the eye, letting him see that this was the last thing he wanted. The kid would learn why in about point eight seconds.

"Worthington. Need me to spell it?"

He waited for the light to spark in Reese's eyes, the way it always did when someone found out who he was. Everyone wanted something, even if it was just to gossip about how awful he must feel and how terrible it must be for his family to lose everything. But even those pain vultures, who got off on asking "Aren't you too embarrassed to show your face anywhere? You must be so miserable," didn't really believe it. Everyone assumed there were hidden assets. Extended family to fall back on. Foreign bank accounts. What the fuck ever. And he'd let them go on believing it, shrugging off all concern, real or fake, because after a while he couldn't tell the difference. He nodded or shook his head and stopped saying anything at all because he never knew what someone would turn his words into. And now he waited for Reese.

The kid laughed at first, actually looked up after a split second of staring at the screen and laughed. Tom almost shot up off the bed and put him on the floor, hard.

"The Third? Thomas Worthington the Third?" He actually snorted with laughter for a second and the grin he flashed at Tom was so full of play and lightheartedness that Tom leaned back for a moment, forgetting that he was in danger and smiled back at the kid ruefully. "You know that's pretentious as shit, right? Please tell me you know that."

"I told my dad that nobody does that anymore, but he said it was a little late to go making changes to my birth certificate when I was about to graduate high school."

"Man, that sucks. Sorry, dude." His eyes glanced down again, scanning the first lines of what was probably a page of Google links. Sure enough, Tom could've clocked it with an egg timer.

Point eight seconds.

"Whoa." The word slipped out under Reese's breath, his lips pursed a little on the soft exhale.

There it was.

Reese's eyes flicked from his phone to Tom and back again. Tom pretended to read but waited for it.

"Oookay." Reese sounded as if he were feeling his way through a dark room with a hand out to keep from walking into something hard. "That...wasn't what I expected."

"No?"

"Not really."

"Rings a bell now? The name, I mean."

"Not really." He flushed and looked around the room, anywhere but at Tom. "I was, um, sort of a club kid in high school. I partied. A lot. The news wasn't really my thing."

"Guess you would've been a senior when all that went down, huh? If you're a sophomore now."

"Yeah." Reese's laugh was short and sharp. "There's a lot of things that are hazy from senior year. And after."

"Well, if you didn't have a 401k invested in a mutual fund anchored by my dad's company, then you probably weren't too worried about it." He tried to joke, feeling grateful. Grateful that Reese wasn't battering him with questions or looking at him as if he was a two-headed whoremonster who ate babies for breakfast.

He heard another gasp, this one barely audible as the kid swallowed it before letting it halfway out of his mouth. No need to ask what sparked that sudden air suck.

Everyone always gasped when they hit the suicide story.

"I don't want to talk about that part."

"Do you hear me asking?"

No. He didn't. He glanced up out of the corner of his eye, carefully keeping his head down while he snuck a peek. If anything, the kid looked even paler than he normally did and his hands were shaking as he carefully laid his phone down in the center of the desk and didn't look at it again.

"You travel light for a rich guy."

Which was far enough for Tom right fucking there. There was no way around admitting he was the son of a convicted felon whose trial had kept courtroom reporters in shits and giggles for three months. But what had happened to him after that was his own fucking personal business and since he'd managed to drop off the paparazzi radar, there was nothing to read on the subject, even for the morbidly curious.

"That's how I roll. Spent a lot of time ducking the press. Learned to travel light."

"Well, when you find a place to settle in, you oughta invest in some more stuff. Maybe an actual laundry basket."

He wasn't sure, but he thought Reese was teasing him. Which was definitely a change from outright hostility.

But he wasn't about to get into a discussion of what he was or was not going to be buying. If the kid hadn't noticed yet that Tom wore the hell out of an extremely limited wardrobe and had exactly one pair of running shoes, which were way past the five-hundred-mile marker that would normally mean it was time to replace them, then he wasn't about to point it out.

That was his own personal stuff. He'd planted a giant _Keep Out_ sign in front of his life that even a kid could read.

Stress at the idea that Reese might start trying to figure out where Tom went on the weekends, or why he had hardly any personal belongings, built suddenly. The gruff, angry words that burst out of his mouth were way over the top for the bantam-weight teasing the kid had been doing.

"Yeah, well, you want to tell me how you got in here?" He saw the kid flinch at the slap of his angry tone. "Or is this just a _let's rummage around in Tom's bag o' shame_ party trick?"

Reese turned his back on him and sat at his desk, dragging a textbook to the center and flipping it open. He didn't answer, didn't even look at Tom again.

Tom knew he was being an asshole but couldn't stop. He'd had his dirty dark knot of shame dragged into the open after months of being anonymous and sharing nothing more than a word or two with strangers, and his skin crawled with the exposure. The words kept coming out of his mouth, though he knew that the kid didn't deserve it. That he had something bad, something worse maybe even than Tom did, wrapped deep and tight inside, and Tom picking at his layers, digging his dirty fingers into old scabs was about the shittiest thing he could do to this kid who he actually liked.

"What is it? Do I have to Google you too?"

He saw Reese's shoulders pull up and lock, high and protective, as if he were braced for a blow.

Tom held his breath, waiting. He'd had to give it up at the threat of a search engine. Would Reese tell him what had happened to get him a spot in the highly limited space of Perkins House? Or would he leave Tom to find out on his own? Because there wasn't much that could be kept secret with a data plan and a smart phone.

The screech of Reese's chair being shoved violently away from the desk as he pushed back and stood up, all in one motion, was shockingly loud in the silence between them.

Reese slammed his textbook in his backpack, zipped up and headed for the door.

He stopped for one second in front of the open door with his hand on the knob and looked back over his shoulder, all color drained from his face and the dark shadows under his eyes starker than ever against his white pale skin.

"Go ahead. Dig all you want, asshole. You won't find a goddamn thing."

His voice was flat, his eyes vacant, before he turned and left the room, shutting the door with a soft click behind him.

"Fuck."

Tom rubbed his hands across dry, scratchy eyes.

"Nice going, jackass."

This was _not_ progress.

# 5

By the time Tom crawled out of bed the next morning, fifteen minutes before his class with Quillian, which meant no shower and a granola bar for breakfast again, he was pretty sure that whole late night conversation was a step backwards for the roommate reconciliation plan.

Tom wasn't sure why he gave a damn. He wasn't going anywhere and he didn't _need_ Reese to like him. Shit. He was barely in the room except to sleep on weeknights, and he had about five minutes of awake time before crashing most nights.

So, fine.

Reese didn't like him. He didn't dislike Reese, but he sure as shit wasn't going to leave school to make the kid happy, so he guessed that fell under the heading of not liking your roommate enough to do what they asked you. Roommates didn't have to enjoy each other's company. The room would be a crash pad, the place he slept and showered. It was a hell of a lot nicer than living out of his car had been, so fuck it.

Reese could bitch and moan or fuck every short, skinny, gay guy on campus in their room and they would both have to deal.

It was what it was.

He just had to get through these last three semesters.

* * *

Three weeks into the semester, Tom abandoned any pretense that sharing a room with Reese wasn't messing with his head and headed back to the Res Life office. The woman he'd spoken to his first day on campus hadn't been optimistic that any rooms would open up, certainly not in Perkins House, but Tom was willing to consider anything, even if it meant moving into a dorm on campus and dealing with the gossip that would surround him there.

As long as it got him away from Reese's nightly adventures in sucking guys off before Tom was busted covering up a hard-on in the hallway. And the woman at Res Life on his earlier visit had been kind of a bitch, but in that generic "you're the eighty-third person who's asked me that question today" way that actually made Tom feel good, because it had nothing to do with him personally. Like when Reese complained about Tom's mess in their room. It was almost nice to have ordinary roommate complaints slung his way by a whiny voice and an attitude.

At the scarred wood counter that barred the way into the depths of the Res Life office, there was an engraved metal sign saying _Please Ring For Help_ and a shiny metal dome of a bell that Tom smacked with his palm, feeling as if he was pulling a velvet rope for a butler in a British manor house. He hated those bells.

The tall, skinny, dark-haired student who came to answer his ringing clearly didn't care for them either.

"Can I help you?" was snapped out like Tom had been banging on the bell nonstop for an hour, as opposed to tapping it once and waiting.

"I was in a few weeks ago and the woman said I should come back and check—"

"Are you on the wait list?"

"Wait list?"

"Yes. The. Wait. List." Each word was enunciated with a drawl. The student pulled a pencil from behind his ear and started rattling the ends against the counter. Tom ignored the irritating sound. "Everyone hates their roommate. So if a room opens up, it goes to someone on the wait list."

"I don't _hate_ him. And I don't know if I'm—"

"Then you probably aren't."

"She didn't mention it. But maybe she put—"

"I wouldn't have done that unless you asked." This guy obviously wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire. "If you don't care enough to ask, then why bother?"

"Maybe you could check."

"Maybe I could."

Maybe Tom could fit his size thirteen Adidas up this kid's rectum.

He kept his hands loose on the worn edge of the wood counter, even though they wanted to grip tightly enough to make his fingertips turn white, and waited the asshole out.

With an overblown sigh, the guy shoved up the cuffed sleeves of his starched white button down, pulled a clipboard from a drawer under the counter and started scanning down the first page.

"Your name?"

Fifteen months of practice had taught him how to say it so it sounded like any other student's name. Nothing special.

"Worthington. Tom."

Practice didn't mean jack when you were talking to a professional gossip. The guy's hand jerked to a halt halfway down the list and he looked up at Tom without lifting his head. The glare from his eyes wanted to melt glass.

"Surprised you came back."

Tom's shoulders tensed up as he braced himself for the blow.

"Surprised you weren't too embarrassed to show your face. I can't believe your dad tried to kill himself rather than go to jail. Obviously _he_ was embarrassed."

An icy cold swept over Tom, leaving his muscles trembling as he tucked his head down and stared at the floor. With people like this, he'd learned not to react, to let them vent their dislike of him like breaking a bottle over his head, the words running off his hair and skin and dripping to the ground around him.

"I saw the dean's letter to you." The kid tapped the tip of the pencil against his teeth. Tom wished for the days when pencils were still made with lead and this guy would be poisoning himself with his tics, but he kept his mouth shut. He wanted his name on that list. The kid kept talking, poking at him with sharp words, like poking a wounded animal he knew wouldn't fight back.

"You know, when she said 'I suggest you keep a low-profile on campus this year,' it's not really a—" the guy made sarcastic air quotes, "—'suggestion'."

No shit, Sherlock. Tom was under no illusions as to the tenuous nature of his stay on campus. Without saying it in so many words, the dean had made it clear that if his presence on campus was a disruption to the other students, he would be asked to leave.

"Yeah, I got that. Any luck?"

It was a pointless effort but he couldn't stop himself from hoping. Maybe that woman _had_ put him on the list and his name would come up if someone dropped out during the semester.

Battle flags were waved with less triumph over fields of bloody corpses than he heard in this guy's voice.

"Nope! Don't see you. I can put you on the list, but you're so late asking you're never gonna be called. I'm just saying." The kid held his pencil above the page and raised his eyebrows. Tom wanted to punch him in his shit-eating face.

"Yes. Please." He bit the words out with his last strings of patience wrapped tightly around his need to scream. To shout. To complain about the unfairness of every goddamn thing in his life right now. He was sure this kid would take pleasure in _accidentally_ forgetting to add his name to the list at all. Tom lectured himself, again, about not making waves.

A frosted glass door swung open from the office immediately to the left of the desk. The woman who walked out was petite, with spiky graying dark hair and chunky black eyeglasses. Her nose was sharp like a hawk's beak and her mouth was a flat line as she barked into her cell phone and plonked a stack of manila file folders into a wire tray on the counter. The Dean of Residential Life resembled nothing so much as a small bird of prey: tiny, deadly, willing to crap on your head if a better alternative didn't present itself.

"Jack, I'm done with these." She tucked her phone under her chin a little as she ignored whoever was on the other end of the call. Her eyes focused on Tom and he flinched as he saw recognition light them up. "Mr. Worthington. Is there a problem?"

He knew better than to complain. About anything. What he needed was for this woman to forget that he existed. Bringing himself to her attention was a bad, bad move.

"No, ma'am. I was just leaving."

He felt her narrowly focused eyes on his back his entire walk to the door across scuffed hardwood planks that suddenly stretched for miles between the desk and his escape. He closed the door softly behind him as the dean started barking out instructions to his latest Evil Nemesis, Jack.

"Get on this filing right away. What have you been doing so far this morning? I fail to see any progress here—"

The latch clicked.

Tom almost smiled. If reaming that jerk a new asshole took the dean's mind off him for the rest of the day, he was more than happy to wish the kid a terrible morning on the job.

Outside the ivy-covered walls of the building, though, Tom slumped against the stair railing and stared out over the sparkling green lawn, the dew fainter in the sun as it burned off, still sparkling in the puddles of shade spread out under trees that had probably been planted before the Revolutionary War.

Before this past year he wouldn't have hesitated to raise a stink about that little prick playing lord of the manor at the fucking _help desk_ of Res Life. In the days before he acquired evil nemeses like flies on shit and was as vulnerable to them as an unwary strolling tourists at a horse farm. He was sure there was supposed to be some other office on campus where he could go for help. Colleges paraded their willingness to help students like a battle flag to parents. _We will always take care of your baby!_ But a year and a half of getting a fist in the face instead of a helping hand left him under no illusions as to the nature of that help.

Help was for kids who didn't come with a backpack, a carry-on and a traveling trunk of disgrace and the kind of notoriety that brought paparazzi like crows to carrion.

He heaved his actual backpack onto both shoulders and shuffled down the worn stone steps. Three hours in the library before class and a granola bar and an apple for lunch. He felt kind of guilty about swiping the apple off of Reese's desk, but the kid kept bringing them back from one of the dining halls and leaving them to wrinkle up on his desk, so he'd figured it wouldn't be missed. After class, more library time and then maybe he could crash before ten and get a decent night's sleep for once. If he got back to their room early enough, maybe Reese wouldn't be there yet with one of his tricks and Tom could lay claim to the room for sleeping instead of fucking.

A somewhat pathetic plan for the day, but a plan nonetheless.

It felt like the first good thing that had happened to him in days when Tom returned to their room even earlier than planned at nine o'clock and found it empty. He stripped off, dropping his clothes neatly in his box, and crawled into bed.

A muffled thud, something his brain immediately interpreted as a body slamming against the door to their room, tugged him halfway out of sleep some time later. The metal-on-metal scrape of a key fumbling into a lock brought him all the way awake. He stayed curled up on his side, hoping the kid would keep the noise and lights low and he could drift off again quickly.

Yellow light from the hall angled into their room as the door opened, followed by giggling that was quickly shushed.

Every time Reese had brought home a guy, Tom had been out at the library, only showing up partway through the action to sit in the hall and eavesdrop on the scenes that had been fueling his fantasies for the past month. He'd threatened that one time to walk in on Reese, but there was no way he'd ever do it.

Only his headache tonight, so intense he'd felt dizzy, had persuaded him to give up precious study time at the library, hiding in the stacks on the seventh floor, for an early night's sleep. He was curled up on his side, facing the room, a pillow punched up under his cheek. He kept his eyes shut and listened to Reese stop halfway in the room, knowing he'd been spotted.

"Hey, your roommate—"

That night's "first prize is a blowjob" winner wasn't as drunk as he sounded.

It took Reese about two seconds to make the decision to cross the line. Tom could have sworn he could hear the thoughts themselves running through his brain.

_It was my room before it was his._

_What's he doing back so early anyway?_

_If he wakes up, who cares? Maybe he'll leave._

"Sleeps like the dead," Reese announced, voice barely low enough to qualify as a whisper. He tugged his guest for the night, smaller and slimmer than him, as always, farther into the room, the other guy leaning back a little, pulling with his body weight against the hands Reese had wrapped around his wrists.

Tom kept his eyes open, bare slits that allowed him to watch as Reese pushed the smaller boy with the long straight hair past his shoulders up against his closet door, the boy's hair a dark colorless curtain in the shadows of their entryway, half-lit by the shine from the hall. Reese pulled a wrist to each side and pinned them against the closet door, and Tom felt himself grow hard under his sheet. He slid a hand down to grab himself, simply holding on for now. He squeezed once and a hot jolt of pleasure shot up his spine and down to his toes, flexing them with a quick spasm of sweet nerves.

Reese was grinding his crotch against that of the strange boy who tore his mouth away from Reese to pant out a protest.

"Wait. My room. We can go—"

"No." Reese captured his mouth again, almost gently, still pinning him to the door with hands spread wide and the pressure of his hips. Tom tried to imagine it, the press of Reese's hard cock through his jeans and felt his own penis thicken in his hands. He dragged his thumb across the head of his dick and shivered. Reese whispered loud enough for him to hear, "Too far away. Come on. All you have to do is be quiet. You can do that, right?"

The strange boy proved almost immediately that he wasn't a good bet for silence when he moaned as Reese tucked his mouth against the side of his neck. The kid's head fell back against the door, eyes shut tight, his lower lip clamped between his teeth as he tried to keep his mouth shut while Reese did whatever it was that made the kid push his hips hard against Tom's roommate and curl one ankle around Reese's calf, locking them tight together.

The kid held out for about two minutes.

"Okay," he gasped, as soon as Reese transferred both of his wrists to one hand pinned above his head and dove straight for his zipper with his free hand, sliding his hand in the kid's pants. "But what if he wakes up?"

Reese's voice was low and dirty.

"Do you really care?"

His arm pumped, hand deep in the kid's pants.

Tom dragged his hand up and down his own dick, imagining how different it would feel to have another man's hand on him instead of his own.

_You don't have to imagine it. Just remember._

Because he did remember. He remembered the boy at boarding school who'd followed him into the showers late one night after casting looks up through his eyelashes from across the dining room table for weeks. And don't think Tom hadn't been aware of what was going to happen when he announced to the group of boys in his room at midnight that he was kicking them out because he needed to shower the stink of practice off himself before bed.

That boy, the one who hung out with his crowd, an automatic ticket to join bought by his father's billions that commanded respect even if the boy hardly opened his mouth, didn't try to one up the other boys with their increasingly wild and no doubt mostly invented stories of their sexual escapades. That boy followed him a minute later into the bathroom and didn't say a word when Tom eyed him in the mirror as he hung his towel outside the shower stall and stepped naked inside, somehow managing not to close the off-white plastic curtain all the way.

That boy slipped in through the open curtain a moment later as Tom tilted his head back under the warm spray, eyes locked on the gap in the curtain. They didn't speak, only watched each other, the boy's nakedness a slim white flame collecting a wet shine as the spray bounced off the shower walls, off Tom, and slowly gathered in drips on his skin. Tom was hard, had been hard since he'd decided back in his room to clear the way for this very moment to happen, by announcing himself casually to a room full of boys that included the one boy who always watched him, eyes drifting over him but never a word said out loud. He dropped a hand to his dick and stroked himself almost roughly, feeling the muscles in his legs, in his ass, twitch with the sudden surge of pleasure as the boy's eyes dropped to his hand. His cock.

As if that were the signal, the green light, the kid dropped to his knees in front of Tom, floppy blond hair immediately darkening with wet as the shower splashed against him where he knelt, one hand braced lightly against Tom's thigh, the other sliding under Tom's hand on an upstroke to take over the pulling stroke on his cock, so hard now he felt like he'd burst right through his own skin. Tom braced himself, suddenly unsure of his legs, one hand on each shower wall at his sides, and hung his head forward, eyes closed to focus on the soft small hand stroking him. The movements were more tentative than his own hand would be, which somehow made him burn with the hotness, the strangeness of having this boy's hand on him. This boy who was pulling him forward to his mouth.

"Ahh! Okay. I don't care. Stay here."

Tom's mind snapped back to the present with a crack that had to have been damn near audible. He opened his eyes and saw a different boy, mouth hanging open as he panted, Reese's hand deep in his pants and pumping him hard. The boy's back arched away from the closet door suddenly.

"Stop," he hissed, eyes screwed shut tight. "I'm gonna come in my fucking pants. Stop. We can stay. Just fucking wait. You said you'd suck me off."

Reese froze, one hand still high, pinning the boy's wrists, his head tucked in the curve of the boy's neck. After a moment, he pulled himself away with a sudden step back and jerked his head toward his bed. His face was blank, his voice low.

"Get on the bed."

The kid stripped his pants off as Reese shut the door, cutting the light from dim to near darkness. Tom closed his eyes, knowing they'd adjust quickly to the thin light that spilled in the window from the street. The sounds of one boy getting naked—he realized suddenly that Reese was always dressed, or at least mostly dressed, when he kicked his nightly visitors out of their room and wondered if his roommate ever got undressed at all—rustled loudly in the quiet room. Tom concentrated on keeping his breathing slow and even, and the movements of his hand under the sheet, sliding up and down his dick with barely enough pressure to tingle, not enough to bring him close to the edge.

"Spread your legs."

His eyes flew open.

The short sharp catch of a breath in a throat followed by the creaking springs as Reese climbed over the boy's leg to kneel between his spread knees. Tom watched Reese press down on the boy's hip with one hand and wrap the other around the base of his cock, which was standing up and begging for a touch as the kid wriggled and squirmed, panting.

"You touch my head and I'll bite your dick off. Got it?"

"Jesus. Yes. God. I hope he doesn't wake up."

Reese ignored him.

"Hold on to the rail if you need to."

The kid grabbed the rail above his head and held on for dear life. Reese curled over and opened his mouth, swallowing half the kid's dick in one swift motion.

"Fuuuuck."

Tom had already been forgotten, if that loud groan was anything to go by. The boy arched up, trying to push more of his dick into Reese's mouth, who shoved his stomach back flat against the mattress with one hand and pulled off with a sucking pop.

"Stay still. If you don't move, I'll suck your balls inside out through your dick. You'll come so hard you can't walk. But stay. Fucking. Still."

"Okay. Shit. I knew you were weird."

"Shut up."

Reese cut off the rest of the kid's bullshit by sucking his dick into his mouth again. And someone was paying attention, because the guy stayed still, skinny arm muscles and abdominals clenching against the pressure to move, move, just fucking move as Reese held true to his word and hollowed his cheeks while sinking deep over the kid's cock. Tom could see the moment when the boy's dick must have pushed into Reese's throat because the muscles in his neck jumped as he gagged himself on it but didn't pull back for a second. He curved the palm of his own hand around the tip of his dick and pushed against it, squeezing and imagining it, the hot wet press of Reese's throat against him and felt his own spine arch as pleasure shot through him and out his mouth with a small, soft, "Ahh."

Reese's bobbing motion faltered and his eyes stared hard across the room as he slowed his motions, pulling back with one long, slow suck, his tongue visible for a moment at the end, swiping a fast circle around the head of the kid's dick. Reese kneeled up for a second and turned his head to look straight at Tom, his hand still moving up and down absently as he narrowed his eyes.

Tom knew his eyes were barely open, the crack in them invisible in the dark room as he lay feigning sleep, his arm still, his hand beneath the sheet. If he held still, breathed evenly, Reese would never know for sure whether or not he'd been awake and watching them.

He opened his eyes.

Reese dropped his shoulders back, pushing his chest out, his hands moving sharply to brace themselves on the mattress behind his own hips. He looked ready to shove himself off the bed and to his feet in an instant. His gaze was locked on Tom.

Tom held his breath. And didn't blink.

After what felt like an hour but couldn't have been more than a minute, the spell between them was broken by the demanding whimper of an ignored boy with a rock hard penis. The kid whose legs were spread and arms were stretched over his head gave a short whine and a buck of his hips.

Reese's look veered from Tom back to the boy sprawled out in front of him and then back to Tom. He bit his lip. Leaned forward. Sat back on his heels again. Tom could hear his thoughts again, a dark swirl of lust and control and the pure hot exhibitionism that led him to blow boys until they screamed while his roommate sat in the hall, now ramped up a thousand-fold by that roommate opening his eyes and watching from the bed ten feet away.

Tom held his gaze for a moment and then looked deliberately down, staring at the kid's dick where it quivered hard with his no doubt racing heartbeat, before looking back up at Reese. He didn't flinch as Reese returned the wandering gaze to Tom's own body, wishing for a moment that he were spread out on his back so Reese could see him, see his cock tenting the sheet over his lap, and know that _he'd_ done this to Tom. But he was curled up on his side, the wall of his body draping the sheet discreetly over him and rolling over might draw the one-night stand's attention and bring this entire strange adventure to an end. So he lay there, eyes locked on Reese, willing him to understand.

"Don't stop."

The boy's words could have flown directly out of Tom's mouth.

He saw the moment Reese made up his mind. The last long look he shot across the open space between them before running his hands down the outside of the boy's thighs to curl them around his knees and lift.

"Pull your knees back."

The boy reacted without thinking, curling his legs up, which hid his dick from view as Reese leaned down again and sucked hard and audibly, once.

"What?" His muscles loosened and his legs started to drop. "But you said—"

"Do it. Now. I'm not going to fuck you." He sank his mouth deep over the boy's dick and moved a hand between his legs, cupping the kid's balls in a gentle grip. "Do it or I'll stop. Grab 'em."

"No," the boy's whine was faint, barely audible over his harsh breathing. "Don't stop." He pried his hands off the rail and clasped his own knees, pulling them back to his shoulders until his dick was visible again, harder than ever, practically twitching with need.

Tom watched Reese's hand slide out of view, moving down from the boy's balls to the pulled-wide crack of his ass, only guessing at what his fingers were doing by the kid's sudden strangled gasp. "Fuck. Hurry up. You're gonna make me come."

_Fuck, yeah._

Ghost fingers trailed over Tom's balls and slid back between his cheeks until his asshole clenched because he'd swear he could feel a single finger rubbing him there. Holy shit. He closed his eyes for a second and squeezed his dick hard in his fist, not sure if he wanted to come while imagining Reese's finger playing with his ass or not.

"Yes, that's the general plan."

The sudden rich tones of laughter that swelled Reese's voice made Tom grin and he clamped his lips between his teeth to keep from laughing out loud with his roommate, while the pleasure surged from his dick to his ass before sweeping his entire body with a wave of heat so intense he felt the sheen of sweat break out on his skin.

"Well, fucking do it already."

Look who was dishing out commands now. Bending himself in half brought out the bossy in that guy apparently. Tom could hardly blame him, since he was about ten seconds from shooting all over his sheets himself.

Reese tucked a grin away at the corner of his mouth, pulled his hand back a bit and then slid it forward again. The boy gasped and Tom felt it in his own hole, the burn of two fingers stretching him, and then the wet heat of Reese's mouth sliding down his dick, sucking so hard it turned him inside out as those fingers got moving and stroking in his ass. Heat pooled in his belly and a rushing sound whistled in his ears. He opened his mouth wide enough to keep his heaving breaths quiet as his dick grew rigid and his fucking toes curled, pleasure lighting him up from head to toe. Wet heat spilled over his hands and soaked into his sheets as his orgasm ripped through him in total silence, the muscles in his throat turned to steel with his need not to shout.

He didn't even hear the guy come. Eventually, the roaring in his ears settled to a dull thumping pulse while he lay in the puddle of melted wax that used to be his bones and muscles. Maybe they'd find his teeth someday, the only thing not blasted to jelly by that orgasm. He heard it when Reese shuffled his latest willing victim out the door minutes later, too tired to open his eyes and watch what he was sure would be a fucked-out stumble by the smaller boy.

A soft _whap_ on the edge of the bed in front of his face and the faint puff of air against his skin had him prying one eye open.

A tossed hand towel was sliding off the edge of his bed.

The crawl of heat over his face felt like it ought to be visible even in the dark room as he slid his wet hand out from under the sheet and caught the towel before it fell off his bed. Jesus. How twisted was this?

Reese didn't say a word. Just crawled on top of the covers of his own bed and curled up, fully dressed, his back to Tom. After a moment, he twitched, as if he could feel Tom's eyes on him. Or maybe he was aware of how vulnerable sleeping with his back to the room made him. He rolled all the way over onto his other side. Tom snapped his eyes shut, not ready to look at his roommate. Not now that the kid had tossed him a towel to clean up the come that still coated his fingers and his dick and Reese's sheets.

Apparently Reese didn't want to trade longing glances either, because after a moment he flopped over again. Tom cracked an eye open and saw him, head uncomfortably tilted up on his thick pillow as Reese tried to lie on his back, still moving restlessly. He looked about as comfortable as a guy asked to stretch out on a bed of upside-down thumbtacks.

Tom pulled the towel under his sheet and scrubbed himself down roughly, trying to be silent about the dirty cleanup job but knowing Reese could hear him. Finished, he didn't know what to do with the towel. Sitting up to toss it in his laundry box was way too public a statement about what had just happened, but he couldn't see himself dropping it on the floor either, a sort of smack in the face for the ever-neat blowjob king across the room.

In the end, he tucked it between his knees and curled his hand under his cheek as he tried to fall asleep, listening to Reese's breathing slow.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to predict what was going to happen next. They wouldn't speak a word to each other, post-voyeurism jack-off session. Reese would disappear for a day or two and then show up out of the blue, both of them pretending that nothing had taken place in the dark shadows of their room. Maybe they would find their way to one of those nights when scattered sentences could almost make up a normal conversation, or maybe they wouldn't speak for weeks.

Every time they crossed a line, they jumped back over it to safety even further away from normal than before.

But there was no denying that the lines pushed further and further into the wilderness each time.

Tom fell asleep, not knowing if Reese ever did, a little afraid of what line was next.

# 6

In the end, it took a month for one of his old teammates to figure out he was back on campus and track him down.

He didn't know who had told them. He hadn't called anyone, not even Coach. But the fact was, there was only so much hiding out you could do when you had to show up for class and collect the occasional piece of mail in the P.O. Plus, in the senior econ seminars, he was going to run into the same students he'd had classes with for three years and some of them were going to know the guys he used to hang out with. Gossip traveled like wildfire through a dry ocean of prairie grass, so he wasn't surprised when someone found him, only that it had taken so long.

He _was_ surprised that it was at his room and that the banging on his door came with no warning.

Tom was reading on his bed, a pillow bunched under his chest as he lay on his stomach and stared at the driest text about the effects of tax law on non-profits in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His brain felt like a bowl of oatmeal and was probably taking in about as much information as a pile of mushy grains would too. The early morning light was shining in his eyes. He'd have to move soon or get irritated at the squinting, but he hadn't been motivated yet to get up. Had simply dragged the textbook onto the bed when he woke and started studying. Reese was up, pulling on a pair of skinny jeans, shirtless yet, and Tom was deliberately not watching him get dressed.

Which didn't mean he missed the way Reese spooked at the sudden pounding, pulling the desk chair between himself and the door.

"Hey, Worthy! I know you're in there. Open up!"

Reese looked at him, hands white-knuckled on the back of the chair.

Fuck.

Tom sat up and ran his hands through his short hair, tugging on it. There wasn't much of a chance Cash would go away. The guy had followed him around like a puppy, a freshman trying to make the team when Tom was a sophomore. Running together his junior year as teammates, they'd become the kind of casual friends that gave each other shit about girls and challenged each other to drinking contests at frat parties.

Not a goddamn bit of which interested Tom these days. Cash had been one of the few people who'd bothered to call him up or come see him more than once after the news about his father broke. The guy didn't know the meaning of give up, the reason he'd made it on the team in the first place. He'd kept coming around until Tom had flat out told him to go away, back in days when he couldn't tell the difference between those who were flocking around to gloat and anyone who was actually still a friend.

Having tracked him down to off-campus housing, he wasn't going to go away without seeing Tom, even if it _was_ seven o'clock on a Monday morning.

"Fuck," he repeated out loud and stood, heading for the door. "Sorry, kid."

Cash was almost too much to handle at the best of times. Inflicting him on his roommate before breakfast was a punishable offense for which he'd have to make amends.

"Dude!" Cash yanked him into a one-arm bro hug as soon as he opened the door, pounding on his back and then pushing back to look him up and down. "You look like shit. What, you couldn't run a lap or two in bumfuck wherever you were?"

He pushed past Tom and walked into the room backwards, still talking with the motormouth that never quit.

"Coach is gonna shit when he hears you're back. Last year sucked, man. We got our asses handed to us on a fucking platter without you. But we got this new kid on anchor now who can suck my dick, he's so good. You'll have to sack up and fight for your job, man. Whoa!"

Cash's eyes flew open and Tom knew what was coming as his buddy stared at the wall he'd backed past. If Tom remembered correctly, there was a poster of a naked male model hung there, stretched across a bed, sheet barely draped over his crotch, pubes peeking out as he stared with heavy-lidded eyes at the photographer.

"What the fuck, dude?"

He spun around to take in the other posters of mostly naked men that covered the walls. Tom didn't notice them anymore and didn't have anything of his own to hang up, so he'd never bothered to ask Reese to take them down on his side of the room. But seeing it with Cash's eyes, it looked like an all-gay, all-the-time revue in here.

And that was _before_ Cash spotted the half-naked boy with the slim hips, pink lips, and leather cuffs on his wrists, standing with the chair between him and Tom and Cash.

"Seriously!" Cash threw his hands up in the air. "What. The. Fuck."

"This is my roommate, Reese. The guy with no filter is Cash. We used to run together."

Nostalgia momentarily evoked, Cash turned back to him for a high five.

"Run strong, bro." Tom gave a half-hearted smack at his hand. Reese was still staring at them without saying a word, eyes flicking madly back and forth between the two tall, lean, muscled men now crowding the small room.

Cash, of course, wasn't done.

"Reese, cool. Thought this old folks home was singles only, dude. How'd you get stuck with a roommate and please fucking tell me that he's the one hanging pics of naked dudes all over the walls, because that'll give a guy a limp dick all day, you feel me?"

No, and thank God he never would. Cash was the last person on the fucking planet he'd let know exactly how not limp Reese and the idea of naked dudes made his dick. He didn't look at his roommate as he scooped a pair of jeans out of a dresser drawer and pulled them on.

"He got stuck with me. Why are you here, man? Did Coach send you?"

The hurt look that flashed across his friend's face reminded him that foul mouth and dirty mind aside, Cash was a stand-up guy who hadn't flinched for a second when the shit hit the fan.

"No, dude. I heard you were back but you didn't show up anywhere, so I called that chick I used to bang from Gamma. She's got a part-time gig in Res Life now, had her track you down. Had to put out too." He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes, making Tom laugh, actually laugh, at his over-the-top antics. "The things I do for you, dude."

"Yeah, I haven't been around campus much. I'm busting my ass pretty much around the clock, trying to catch up."

"Well, come fucking bust it with me." He pointed a finger at Reese, almost touching him, and Tom had to stop himself from telling him to knock it off when Reese flinched. Cash wasn't doing anything but being his usual goofball self. If Reese didn't like his friends, and Cash was the only one he had left, it wasn't likely to make their relationship much worse. "Don't get any ideas, dude. I don't take it up the ass. But I'm in the library fucking twenty-four seven this semester." He'd turned back to Tom. "If I don't bring my GPA up, I'm fucked. And you know how long it takes me to drill this shit into my thick skull. It fucking sucks. Be better with company. You can bring the beer."

"Dude." Shit. Five minutes around Cash and he sounded like a frat boy again. "You are not sneaking beer into the library."

Cash shrugged. "I gotta do something, man. I can't just sit there and _read_ , for _hours_. I'm not like you."

Tom rolled his eyes and pulled a T-shirt on. "Yeah, I hate to break it to you, buddy. The beer is not helping you."

Already distracted, Cash didn't reply. He was spinning slowly in place, eyes crawling over all the posters for a second time. When he'd made a complete rotation, he stood with his hands braced on his hips and stared at Reese.

"So, Reese. You're, like, a total fag, huh?" It was insane how chipper and non-threatening Cash could make a question like that sound. Because he was an idiot with no filter between his brain and his mouth, and a total lack of comprehension of how awful his no doubt genuine curiosity sounded. "Like, have you ever fucked a chick? Ever? Because maybe you'd like it."

Reese hadn't moved an inch since Cash had come in the room and Tom was pretty sure he was shaking. Something was off when his smart-mouth roommate didn't have a word to say. He sure as shit felt fine calling Tom out at the drop of a hat. But this was obviously different.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Cash. If you can't keep that shit in your tiny little brain and stop it from pouring out of your mouth like fucking diarrhea, you can wait in the hall, you asshole."

He put his hands on his buddy and steered him to the door, opening it and shoving him out into the hall.

"Sorry, kid! I bet you get _all_ the boys." Cash poked his head back in the door and then grunted when Tom pushed him back and shut the door in his face. "Dude!" His voice was muffled through the wood door, but not enough. "We gotta talk. Imma wait here until you come out, Tom."

He stopped near Reese, but not too close, without thinking about how he knew that would make it worse. Shoving his hands deep in his pockets felt like the right thing to do.

"Um, sorry. For Cash. He's not a bad guy, but that was totally not cool. I'll tell him not to come around here if he can't keep his mouth shut. And he'll apologize, if you want. I'll make sure of it."

Reese's fingers on the chair back loosened and he took what looked like his first breath in ten minutes with a slow, controlled inhale that lifted his slim chest. After a moment, he pushed back the hair that had fallen forward to cover his face as he'd stared at the floor through that whole disastrous encounter. Dropping his hands to his sides, he flexed and curled his fingers for a second, letting go.

"It's okay."

"No, it's not. I know that. You won't have to put up with him, I promise."

Reese looked up at him. Really looked at him, for once. As if he was trying to see inside Tom's skull and read whatever hieroglyphics he found there. And suddenly even a couple of feet away felt too close, because Tom wanted to put his hands on Reese's arms and rub them briskly, like warming up a date you were waiting outside with in the cold.

He was pretty sure Reese would jump through the ceiling if someone touched him right now. Plus, no.

Just no.

He was not going there. Not now.

That's what he told himself as Reese looked at him until Tom was about ready to crawl out of his skin and leave it behind, if it would get him out from under that steady, searching gaze. But he felt as if he owed Reese. So he stood there.

"You're...not like them. Are you?"

Reese laid his fingertips on Tom's wrist for a second before pulling his hand back. Like he was checking to see if it hurt.

Tom tried not to flinch or to show that he'd felt a crackle of energy shoot up his arm, down his spine, and straight to his dick at the hesitant touch.

"Like who?"

"Jocks."

He could guess how much fun an openly gay kid had had with athletes over the years.

"I don't know. There's a lot of different kinds of jocks." He didn't mention that for most of his life he'd been pretty much the kind of guy Reese was describing with that word. A walking stereotype.

"I haven't noticed much difference."

"Well, like I said, Cash won't bother you again. Okay?"

Reese didn't say anything, just looked down at his hands, which he rested again on the back of the chair, but lightly, loosely, this time.

Tom waited a moment to see if he'd say anything and then shrugged to himself and grabbed his backpack and shoes. He could finish getting dressed in the hall, where Cash was currently rocking out to a too loud for seven a.m. version of Jimmy Buffett's "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw". Maybe he could sit on him and get him to shut up.

He was about to open the door when he heard Reese's voice again.

"That? Right there?" Tom paused, hand on the doorknob, and looked over his shoulder. The desk chair was pushed to the side and Reese stood in the middle of the room. His eyes were intent on Tom. "Not one jock has ever done that. Ever."

"Done what?"

"Made someone stop when they were hurting me. _That's_ different."

He couldn't look away, although he wanted to. This was too intense. Too much was unsaid but so very clear in what Reese was telling him. Tom didn't know how to separate himself from this and couldn't shake the feeling that he was doing the opposite of separation with every conversation he had with this kid. But he still owed him, for crashing into his neatly ordered hideaway here in Perkins House, for his friend who couldn't open his mouth without insults falling out, so he stood there and held Reese's gaze and tried not to flinch.

After what felt like most of the rest of his life, Reese finally looked away for a second, breaking that tense connection between them.

"Thanks."

Tom didn't know what to say, and Cash's was making a radio DJ's smooth transition to "Like a Virgin", so in the end, he nodded at his roommate and left.

Strangely enough, Cash's tornado of offensiveness, or Tom's response to it, brokered some kind of détente between the roommates. Or maybe it was only a temporary cease fire before all-out war broke out again, like the Christmas Eve friendliness between the Germans and the British in the trenches of World War One before they settled back into shelling and gassing each other.

Reese disappeared for a day and a night, his standard response to having lowered his guard for a moment, but he showed up the night after without any drama or a trick in tow.

Tom had just returned from filling up his water bottle in the kitchenette at the end of the hall, grimacing at the lukewarm water and cursing the faucet that never ran ice cold. Even that mildly cool water was enough though to make the bottle drip with condensation onto the corner of the desk where he'd set it down.

He caught Reese eyeing the wet bottle and grunted in irritation, sure he was about to get scolded.

"Don't tell me you want me to use a coaster."

"It's not my furniture. But I have a paper towel if you want to stop dripping on yourself. Looks like you've, um, had an accident."

"Damn." He looked down at his shorts. Sure enough. "Nah. Forget it. It's barely cooler than room temperature anyway. It's not gonna drip long. That faucet in the kitchen sucks. I let it run for five minutes and the water never got cold."

Reese nodded. The kitchenette was a sore spot for everyone, barely functional and generally considered a waste of space. He kicked off his shoes and nudged them into his closet, his back to Tom.

"You could keep them in the fridge. Your water bottles. If you want."

Tom blinked. That sounded almost...friendly.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"That'd be great, thanks."

Reese grabbed an elastic off his dresser. He pulled most of his hair back into a ponytail, kinda high and off his neck, but left the chunk in front hanging over his face like always. He didn't look at Tom when he spoke.

"I hardly have anything in there, so, you know, feel free. If you want to keep a cold beer around or something."

Ahh. Tom saw where this was heading. He'd better cut this one off at the pass.

"Is that your subtle way of asking me to buy you beer?"

His roommate's shoulders twitched.

"No."

Reese's one word answer was flat and not followed up by any kind of leading statements about how he wasn't _asking_ , but if Tom wanted to _offer_...

"I'd rather not to do anything that could..." he paused, "...attract attention. And getting my twenty-year-old roommate bombed on cheap beer is...well, someone's gonna notice when I'm holding your hair back over the toilet while you puke."

"I don't drink."

"Okay."

Tom didn't mind being agreeable. His experience with college students who didn't drink was that they started puking their guts out even faster than most kids.

"Would you?"

"What? Hold your hair back while you puke?"

"Yeah."

Tom shrugged. "Sure. I've done it for enough girls. Why not?"

"You know I'm not a girl, right?"

His mind flashed to the image of Reese bent over another guy on his bed, hand buried between the guy's butt cheeks, lips wrapped tight around a dick, a whole other level of blowjob than anything Tom had ever experienced with a girl. His heart picked up the pace and his dick woke up.

"Yeah." The word was a gruff bark. "I got that."

He sat on the edge of the bed, ready to swing his feet up and lie down, hoping the book he'd hold over his lap would conceal his semi until it went away. The idea of having a cold beer in the mini fridge was stuck in his brain like a splinter, though. That would be pretty frigging awesome.

"Is it gonna bother you if I have beer in the room? Because I might take you up on that fridge thing."

"I wouldn't have offered if it was going to bother me."

"Okay then."

He settled in for some serious reading. Somehow he had to turn this into a twenty-page paper on corporate social responsibility. Reese's voice broke the silence.

"I'm not an alcoholic. It doesn't bother me to be around it."

"I didn't think you were."

"I just don't drink. Anymore. Ever."

Which was almost begging for him to follow up with a question. Tom sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. This was one of those moments. A chance for him to ask Reese a gently probing question or two, show some compassion, help them reach a new level in their roomie relationship. Didn't take John Keynes to figure that market trend out. And after the lines they'd crossed already, he owed it to Reese. Owed it to him to pick up on the conversational clues and let the kid talk about whatever it was that had drawn this Grand Canyon of a line in the sand about drinking. He didn't doubt it was tied to the other awful things he'd already guessed about jocks and roommates and why the school would have offered a junior a housing option reserved for a handful of more mature students.

He got it. He really did. And part of him wanted to do it. Wanted to know one person. Let that person know him. Have someone who might give a damn if he wanted to let a little air out of this high-pressure balloon of stress and money and figuring shit out that was constantly threatening to explode with eardrum-shattering force over his head.

Part of him wanted that.

But most of him remembered the time he'd called up a friend from high school to confess how he hadn't been outside in weeks, living like an agoraphobe on canned goods someone had stocked in his dad's pantry and pizza deliveries until the credit cards started getting shut down. He'd wanted some company, someone who would push past the news crews still camped outside their gates and come spend some time with him.

The friend hadn't showed, but a _Boston Globe_ gossip columnist got a great scoop about the eccentric rich shut-in kid who was scared to go outside. Tom had pictured his friend texting the article link to everyone they knew and had retreated to his room at the back of the house for another week of canned soup and dry cereal.

So, no. He'd go ahead and pass on the chance to get buddy-buddy with the roomie. Maybe if he hadn't passed the Evil Nemesis from Res Life in the campus post office that afternoon and caught his casually tossed off, "Still here, Worthy?". A nickname that was like calling an All-American center linebacker Tiny. He got it. He wasn't worth shit, per pretty much everyone. It didn't matter that he'd gotten as fucked as everyone else by his dad's corruption. Having the same name, the same blood, was enough to taint him.

So, no, thank you. In the grand scheme of things, he didn't feel like making any new friends just to have them fuck him over later.

"Don't worry about it, kid. It's cool."

He rolled over and kept reading and Reese didn't bring it up again. The twinge of guilt that pinged at him made Tom twitch with irritation, at himself, at Reese, at the whole fucking world for being one giant pain in his ass. All he wanted was to keep things simple. First Cash showing up—and that guy kept calling him, determined to drag him out of his room sooner or later—and now Reese acting sort of human and decent. All of that shit was complicated.

Simple. Keep it simple, stupid.

Which worked, sort of. Right up until Reese popped into their room one day with his BFF in tow.

Now that he and Reese had achieved a peace in the Middle East détente, Tom had started spending more time studying in their room instead of the library. He told himself it was because the bathrooms were closer and no one glared at him when he snacked on the dry and crunchy Nature's Valley granola bars, but he knew he was retreating into hermit levels of shut-in. Cash was threatening to show up with the entire track team if Tom didn't get it together—he'd refused to show up to practice, since it would only show how far he'd fallen—and Tom was avoiding the entire campus. On general principle.

So when Reese popped in with a blue-haired biker chick who talked like a psych major, Tom felt pretty fucking justified in his resentment as the two of them swept through the door, voices raised in a high-pitched battle over _something_ life-altering.

"I can't believe you threw blueberry soda on me. I can't believe you were drinking blueberry soda." Violet smears, like finger paints, trailed down from the purple starburst on Reese's white tee-covered chest.

"It was shakabuku."

"It was fucking cold, is what it was."

"It was a spiritual kick to the head." She grabbed Reese from behind and snuffled loudly into his neck before he threw her off and pushed her into the room. Tom was watching them, head still bent over his book, eyes flicking up every couple of seconds. Reese hadn't tensed up the way he did when anyone else got near him. But Tom felt the muscles in his arms tense up. "You need someone to get you out of this self-destructive cycle you're spiraling through."

"Ah, yes. Psych via soda. You should put that in your thesis."

She hopped up on Reese's desk, tucking long, faintly blue hair behind her ears. Loose, faded jeans hung low on her hips, held there by a thick, studded black belt. She wore a tight black racerback tank top that showed off surprisingly broad shoulders for such a small person and what Tom still appreciated as a stellar rack. She crossed one leg over the other, leaning back on her palms and bouncing one boot-clad foot with pent-up energy.

Without blinking, she stared right at him, talking to Reese but never taking her eyes off Tom for a second.

"My thesis is gonna be on why some people keep letting others walk all over them and put them in compromising positions, because they're chickenshits and want to avoid confrontation."

Yeah, that was a definite glare blazing in his direction.

No way did this girl qualify as simple. Whirlwind, maybe. Force of nature, sure.

Simple?

Not a chance.

Maybe she'd leave before Reese remembered to introduce them.

"Don't be a bitch, Steph." Reese leaned into the room, hanging on to the edge of his closet with one hand. "Tom, Steph. Steph, Tom. Be nice."

"I'm always nice."

"Ha!"

Steph's smile showed a whole lot of teeth.

"I can't believe you let me drink those three Red-Eyes. What were you thinking?" Reese called out with his head stuck in his closet.

Steph slid off the desk and flopped down on Reese's bed, snagging a book from his desk and paging through it, ignoring Tom. "I was thinking you told me, mind your own business, bitch, because you don't need a mother."

"Yeah, well now I gotta pee like a racehorse." Reese pulled a skinny, long-sleeve black T-shirt out of his closet and stripped off his stained white shirt, tossing it in his laundry basket before putting the clean shirt on. Steph kept her head down but Tom saw her eyes skitter back and forth between Reese and him, as if startled to see Reese change his shirt in front of him.

"So go."

Reese stopped in front of his mirror and ran his fingers through his hair, settling it back in place after the quick change. Without turning from the mirror, he pointed behind him, directly at Steph.

"Behave. He's not like..." he waved the hand in a vague circle, "...He Who Shall Not Be Named."

Steph flipped him off, pretending to read the book in her lap.

"Go pee, drama boy."

Reese left, stopping at the door to shoot one last glare at Steph, who acted as if she hadn't seen anything at all. He left the door open behind him, reluctant maybe to confine the two of them in one small enclosed space.

As soon as Reese was out of sight, Steph looked up at Tom.

"That's weird, you know. That he's trying to protect _you_."

Tom shrugged. He didn't know what was weird with Reese or not.

She clapped the cover of the book shut with a bang. Sat up straight.

"Okay, I'll be fast. You do anything to hurt him and I'll fuck you up. I can organize a protest rally faster than you can say Take Back the Night."

"Okay." He tried not to smile, certain it wouldn't do anything except piss her off.

"Okay?" She was out-and-out frowning at him now, looking as if she'd like nothing better than to beat the shit out of him, if only he'd give her an excuse.

Tom was just smart enough to avoid that.

"He's right. You _are_ weird. Different."

Tom shrugged again. It was his default response these days when he didn't know what to say next. He didn't think her hard-ass pose was much more than that, a pose put on by a girl who was scared to death he'd further wound her damaged friend.

Steph softened in the face of his lack of protest, her shoulders turning in and her back curving forward. "It's just, he was fucked up pretty badly, you know."

"Still looks pretty fucked up to me most of the time." He hadn't meant to say anything, but it suddenly seemed important this girl know that if Reese was convincing her everything was okay, then he was putting on a total fucking song-and-dance routine with no basis in reality.

But she was nodding. "I know, but this is total sanity compared to—listen, you know what happened, right?"

"No."

"His—"

He cut her off. "Wait. Are you sure he'd want you to tell me what you're about to tell me?" There was nothing, _nothing_ , he hated more than the idea of gossip going on behind someone's back. This girl meant well, but if Reese wanted him to know something—

"No, he would not," snapped out the man himself as he re-entered the room. "Damn it, Steph. I told you to leave him alone."

She stuck her tongue out at Reese and got off the bed to hang on him like a monkey, arms looped around his neck while she smacked kisses on his cheek. In between smooches, she turned back to Tom.

"Fine. So, you're over twenty-one, right? I'll give you twenty bucks to get me a six-pack of Rolling Rock from across the street."

The liquor store down the block still carded Tom every time he went in, which was admittedly not that frequently. He could imagine the tiny pixie of a girl with the blue hair and blue nails got the extra-special ID examination each time.

Reese snaked out from under her arms and gave her a push toward the door. "Leave him alone. Jesus. He's not gonna buy you beer."

Steph peered around him, hands on Reese's hips as he walked her backwards toward the door, pushing against each step.

"I'm not an alcoholic, you know. But four hundred pages of Proust on a Thursday night instead of the Living Dead concert? Deserves a beer."

"Let's go. I'll come study with you. I'm better than beer."

"Okay. You can crash on my couch again if you want. But don't text anyone to come over. And no fucking!"

"What? I never—"

"Oh, please. Don't lie to me, you slut. I totally saw you give that guy a hand job under the blanket when you were 'snuggling'." She made air quotes and Reese stuck his tongue out at her as she laughed.

Tom spoke without thinking. "So it's not just me who gets to watch."

Two heads turned slowly and stared at him, both with eyebrows lifted.

He flushed, face running hot with the sudden awareness of what he'd let slip. Holy shit. What the fuck should he do now?

Steph's mouth opened, which seemed to wake Reese out of his paralysis. He clapped a hand over her mouth and shoved her out the door, leaning into it with his shoulder to close it behind her.

"I'll be out in a sec."

"You're watching him fuck—?" Her shriek echoed down the hall.

Tom winced. His neighbors heard that.

Reese shuffled back into the room, ending up next to his desk, staring at the floor. The long sleeves of his black tee hung over the first knuckles of his hands, like a little boy in his older brother's clothes. Tom didn't get it, the shy thing, since the blush on his own face made it clear who was the asshole in the room.

"Sorry." Reese glanced up through his hair.

"No way. Your friend is nice." Tom was at a loss. That was a lie. He could do better. "Sort of. She's looking out for you, you know? Not like Cash."

That got a snort and an eye roll.

"Nah, it's the same thing. But still."

"Yeah."

He knew what Reese meant. They'd both taken to hiding away in their room even more now that the semester was truly upon them. Somehow Reese's late night boys didn't count, but the loud, room-filling personalities of Cash and Steph crowded them in their space.

"Kinda nice when it feels like no one knows how to find you."

Tom nodded. True that.

"So maybe she can meet me next time. You know, at the library or something."

"If you want, man. But not because of me, okay?"

"No worries. I just, you know, like it. When it's just us."

Reese was pulling at a frayed edge on his cuff, splitting it further, but his eyes darted to Tom on his last words.

What the hell. He'd already admitted in front of a near-total stranger, and to Reese's face, that he'd been indulging in a little voyeurism, watching his roommate fuck random guys. Reese had brought three more people back to their room in the past weeks, with Tom either listening or watching bodies move in the dark each time. His sense of being complicit in Reese's weird sex habits was both a turn-on and hugely uncomfortable. The entire thing felt like a surreal dream in his waking hours. Admitting he actually liked Reese's company when awake couldn't be any more embarrassing than _that_.

"Me too."

The kid's face flushed pink and he looked down again. Tom could see his cheeks curve from smiling, just a little.

The blast of noise from the hall when Reese left, Steph having transferred the blazing focus of her attention to whomever had stumbled upon her in the hall, was enough to make him wince. But Reese's last look back at Tom, still stretched out on the bed with a book he wasn't even pretending to read anymore, was like the slow, sensual drag of a feather across his skin. Reese waved, a hand opening and closing one time on his way out the door. Tom nodded back.

The door closed.

# 7

The first time the landline rang in their room, Tom almost jumped out of his skin. The ring was shrill and loud and an actual telephone ring. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard a phone ring, as opposed to sing out some pop song or robotic beep sequence. His own phone played the Dropkick Murphys' "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" when he got a call, which was never.

He'd heard the song while watching _The Departed_ at a movie theater on the Common that he'd snuck into, feeling like a teenager, but not willing to blow fifteen dollars on a movie ticket. He'd just wanted to check out for a few hours. Sit in the dark and be taken out of himself by a story that might not have a _happy_ ending, but at least had an ending period, which had all kinds of appeal to him with this brutal slog to the finish of his degree. The song had vibrated as angry background noise while Leonardo DiCaprio was processed into prison and Tom had walked out of the theater with that angry punk sound ringing in his bones, twitchy and ready to start a fight.

He'd spent the wasteful buck it had cost him to download the ringtone, only to realize days later he'd never hear it. After everything had gone to shit with his dad, after the arrest but before his suicide attempt, Tom had changed his phone number, making himself essentially invisible to his friends, if you could call them that. Most had vanished along with his pride and his money.

After he cut his electronic tether to that whole crowd, his phone had stopped ringing. Most of his calls were from dispatch at the taxi service or one of the bouncers he'd befriended in his pirate taxi hours. The only other person who called him was his father's lawyer, who kept him updated on the appeals process. But he'd told that gray, lipless man that if the attorney gave Tom's new telephone number to his dad, Tom would change it again and forget to share it with anyone. He didn't want to talk to his dad. Ever. He'd keep up to date on the details of the trials, but he was done with conversation.

If Tom could find a way to get through this last year and a half at school without talking, that would rank right up there with carving _The Thinker_ as far as great ideas were concerned.

So when the phone rang, actually rang, in their room as Tom was stretched out on his bed, the loud peal jerked him right out of his doze. He was theoretically reading a text on whether microfinance effectively improved the living standards of the poor or whether it was simply another predatory lending practice that made donors feel good about their charity. Mostly, though, he was resting his eyes and wondering if he could afford to squeeze in a nap before getting to work on the paper he had to finish by Friday. That way he could revise it in his cab over the weekend and turn it in on Monday by nine a.m.

For a moment, he picked up his phone and looked at it. Reese was out, as usual, and in Tom's sleepy brain, if something was ringing, it had to be his phone. But the screen was black and the shrill ring still echoed in their small room.

Once he spotted the handset on Reese's desk, he didn't know how he'd missed it before now. It stood right on the corner by the end of Reese's bed, within easy grabbing distance.

The phone rang again. And again.

He waited for it to click over to voicemail.

Still ringing.

After two minutes, it was answer the phone or throw the damn thing across the room. Whoever was calling wasn't hanging up anytime soon.

"Fuck," he muttered under his breath as he got off his bed. With his luck, Reese would stroll in as soon as he picked up the phone and he'd be caught standing there with his roommate's property in his hands, trying to explain why he hadn't left it alone.

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Technically, this is my phone line too._

He hovered over the phone for a moment, thinking maybe it would magically stop ringing as he reached for it. The call couldn't be for him. He didn't even know their extension. Certainly hadn't given it out to anyone. He held his hand an inch over the black plastic handset standing upright in its base.

_Ring._

No such luck.

He picked up the phone and hit Talk.

"Hello?"

"Hello? Who's this?"

"Tom."

"Tom." A man's voice, repeating his name as if testing to see if he liked the taste of it but didn't expect to. "You'd be Reese's last-minute roommate, then?"

Obviously someone who knew Reese well, since the kid didn't seem any more likely to share details of his private life than Tom was.

"That's right."

"This is Mr. Anders, Tom. Reese's dad."

Tom had grown up talking to adults, friends' parents, his father's business contacts. It took some effort, but he could dredge up a memory of how to charm strangers into liking him. This was a good time to dig deep.

"Hello, sir. It's nice to meet you."

Reese's dad harrumphed. "We'll see. Reese is at class now, isn't he?"

"Yes, sir."

If his dad knew Reese's schedule down to the hour, then why was he calling when his son was sure to be out?

"I wanted to talk to you, son. Introduce myself."

Ah ha.

"I'll be coming up to campus one of these weekends. I'm looking forward to meeting you. Happy to take you boys out to dinner when I'm there, get to know you. I check in on Reese pretty regularly."

_If you get my meaning, punk._

The purpose of the call wasn't hard to figure out. Reese's dad kept his voice light and friendly, but he was warning Tom in words about as subtle as a javelin to the skull that he'd be keeping an eye on Tom and his boy and any irregularities would be dealt with immediately.

Tom sighed and rubbed his free hand over his scratchy, dry eyes.

This was nothing new. Another person who'd made his mind up about Tom without ever speaking to him. He was months and miles past giving a rat's ass about being disliked.

"Sounds great, sir. I'm not here most weekends, though."

Mr. Anders was ever cheerful. And vaguely threatening.

"Then I'll have to come up on a Thursday. Know that's like a Friday night for you party kids."

"Sure." He couldn't remember the last time he went to a party, never mind what day of the week it had been. The idea of standing in a room full of people whose barely there verbal filters had been washed away by a river of cheap beer made him want to vomit. "I hope I get a chance to meet you. Did you want me to leave a message for Reese?"

_Since you and I both know there's apparently no voicemail on this phone. And if you actually wanted to reach him, you'd have called his cell._

"Nope. I'll call him later tonight." _When I'll tell him that if his new roommate so much as farts in his general direction, he should call me and I'll come up to campus and kick your ass._ Subtext, not a mystery. "Nice talking to you, Tom."

"You too, sir. Bye."

He hung up and stood at Reese's desk with the phone dangling in his hand. Angled tightly into the edge of Reese's monitor was a framed photo, wedged in behind a stack of library books in their indestructible cellophane covers. He snagged the edge of the frame with two fingers and lifted it up into sight.

Good guess.

Reese and what could only be his dad, leaning shoulder to shoulder, sitting cross-legged on a scatter of dead leaves in dark woods, the glare of a campfire whiting out the lower right corner of the photo. A younger Reese, with shorter hair and startlingly non-black jeans and a fleece, was angling a crooked branch at his dad, offering him a blackened blob that might have been a marshmallow at some point. Mr. Anders, short and wiry with a small round potbelly barely visible under his windbreaker, was warding him off with two crossed index fingers and grinning brightly at his boy. They'd obviously been tight at some point. Still were apparently, despite Reese dressing like the kind of kid who refused to acknowledge his parents due to their lack of coolness.

Tom tightened his grip on the frame for a moment. Mrs. Anders wasn't in the picture, had not been mentioned by Reese's dad. But Reese didn't have that angry edge Tom associated with kids who'd grown up without their moms. He knew plenty of those—he was one of those kids—and it was like they were missing a limb or something, always hobbled and a little unsteady without that bedrock that came from growing up with the mythical mom love that anchored most people. He'd spent countless hours when he was little imagining what it would have been like to grow up with a mom, if his own hadn't died so long ago he didn't even remember her. Maybe she would have smoothed over the rough edges between his dad and him. Made their house more like the homes Tom had been in when visiting friends sometimes, as opposed to his own house. Large enough for him and his father to avoid each other for days if they felt like it and operated more as a training ground for Tom's future than a home base where you could feel safe.

The rattle of a key in the door lock shook him out of his daydreams. He shoved the picture behind the monitor and dropped back onto his bed, sprawled out across the wrinkled sheets by the time Reese made his way into the room.

"Hey."

He nodded, eyes locked on his library book.

"You gonna be here all night?"

"Yup."

He'd have to leave eventually to get food, but he didn't see the need to mention that now. Maybe if Reese thought he wasn't going anywhere for the rest of the evening, he'd stay in too, as opposed to going out fishing for another late night hook-up.

Not that Tom cared what the kid did with his free time.

Reese heaved a sigh and flopped back onto his own bed.

"That sucks. No offense." Tom could see him out of the corner of his eye, staring up at the ceiling, head pillowed in crossed hands behind his skull. "I'm bored. And hungry." He popped up like a marionette on strings, or a twenty-year-old with enough energy to go for days. Tiredness wrapped itself around Tom's bones simply being near this kid. "I'm gonna order a pizza. Want in on it?"

He chewed on his lip. Shit. The last thing he wanted to do was shut down this wilted olive branch offering from his roommate, but he knew the town pizzeria scalped the student crowd, a captive and frequently intoxicated audience. He didn't want to blow fifteen bucks on half a pizza when he could get an Italian grinder at the deli in the dodgy neighborhood six blocks away for half that.

"Forget it. If you're not interested—"

"Keep your panties on, kid. I'm in." He'd stick to ramen and mac and cheese on the hot plate in the kitchenette for a couple of days. "No mushrooms, 'kay?"

"Ugh. Mushrooms are gross. Meat special, okay?"

"Yeah, I like meat."

"You and me both, sailor." The kid actually winked at him and the heat of a blush raced over Tom's face. He shook his head as Reese pulled his phone from his front jeans pocket. It'd be worth it, sharing a pie with his roommate like ordinary college students. Instead of their fucked up back and forth, with sex and resentment and a hint of fear that bothered Tom every time he picked up on it.

Maybe for tonight they could manage to eat and study and be normal together. Or at least as close to normal as Tom got these days.

It wouldn't last, but for one night, he'd take it.

* * *

The rhythm of Tom's days had settled into a steady heartbeat that steadied him. After two more weeks of cohabiting with Reese, he knew when to expect company in their room and when he would find himself alone. Sunday nights meant quiet study and easy conversation, as easy as it got with his touchy roommate, for both of them.

Tom's eyes were gritty with the need for sleep. His bones ached with exhaustion. The two hours of sleep he'd grabbed, catnapping behind the wheel while waiting at Logan airport for a fare, were a single row of sandbags trying to hold back the surging flood of sleep that wanted to overtake him. The door to their room was open an inch, light spilling into the hall. It was so unlike them that he stopped and looked up at the number on the plate above the bulletin board, flashing back to the first day he'd arrived on campus, tired enough to cry and wondering if he was in the right place.

Funny how that feeling never really went away.

23B.

Yup. Right place.

Even those words in his head made the warmth spill over in his chest.

He hadn't had a right place in a very long time.

He laid his palm flat against the ribbons and papers on the bulletin board, spreading his fingers around the bright pink, blue and green pushpins, and swept the door open in front of him as he strode into his right place.

Reese whirled around so suddenly his loose hair flew out in an arc like a raven's wing. The legs of his desk chair screeched across the floor as Reese yanked it between him and the door. His bare chest rising and falling above yoga pants, Reese inhaled harshly as if he'd sprinted a hundred yard dash and couldn't get enough oxygen in his lungs. He gripped the seat back with white fingers, eyes wide and blank. Tom froze, afraid Reese was going to lift the chair right up into the air and shove it at him.

Like a lion tamer, but way less fun than that kind of make-believe implied.

Because Tom didn't think Reese was playing.

Raising both hands, Tom hunched in on himself, taking up as little space as he could. He ducked his head and bent his knees reflexively.

"Easy." He kept his voice low and quiet. "Friendly forces here."

The shudder that wracked Reese swept from the top of his head to his arms and his legs, until the toes of Reese's bare feet tightened against the floor, his hands spasming on the chair. The sharp smell of sweat and fear flooded the room. Tom twitched his nose but left his hands in the air.

"I didn't hear you open the door." Reese's voice was ragged, heavy cardboard ripping wetly.

He nodded slowly.

"It wasn't shut all the way. I just pushed it open."

His roommate's eyes darted to the door, still open at Tom's shoulder, as if he could see into the past to check if Tom was lying or not.

"I'm sorry I startled you." He moved his hands slowly, stuffing them in his front jeans pockets, wanting to put them away like suddenly unnecessary weapons that now looked out of place at a tea party.

Reese's nose turned pink and he blinked his eyes like they stuttered, caught on a sound. He pulled his hands off the chair with a wrenching twist of his shoulders, as if he couldn't get them to let go of their own accord. He turned his back on Tom and sniffed, hands flying up to drag across his face. The severed wing jut of his shoulder blades framed the delicate line of his spine, curving forward as he hunched over, arms wrapping around his own waist, holding himself together.

"Sorry."

Tom pushed the door shut behind him with a soft click. He walked close to his own closet and dresser, moving slowly until his knees brushed his bed and he could sit, not having stepped an inch farther into the open space in the middle of their room than he had to.

"Don't be. I should have made more noise. Or said something." His hands were in his lap, like naked baby birds, useless.

Reese turned around. His skin was blotchy with pink on white, his lashes dark, hair hanging in his face. He bit his lip and looked at the chair, abandoned in the middle of the room. Looked at Tom. He put his hands on the chair, gingerly, as if he didn't really want to touch it, and pushed it neatly into the well of his desk.

He perched on the edge of his own bed, facing Tom.

"Listen, I know that sometimes my reactions aren't quite...normal."

"Anybody who says they're normal is probably fucking crazy." Fuck. He was so not the right guy for this. He didn't have a fucking clue what the right thing to say was. "You seem mostly okay to me, even if you _are_ a little jumpy."

Understatement of the century.

"You asked before why I was here? In Perkins, I mean. It's what the school had to promise my dad before he'd let me come back here. And so he wouldn't go to the press."

Reese scooted back as far as he could on his bed, digging his heels into the mattress until his back was wedged in the corner of the wall and his desk. He wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his mouth behind them, his restless eyes barely visible above the sharp bend of his tucked legs.

Tom didn't say anything. Asking the wrong question felt like sneaking up on Reese all over again, only this time Tom could see it coming. So he kept his mouth shut and listened.

"My, um..." Reese coughed and his eyes were bright, "...roommate last year was an athlete. We obviously weren't a good match, but he mostly ignored me, except when his friends came around. He was on a team and those other guys were real assholes. Fuckers. When they were around he'd call me a fag and laugh when they asked me if I liked taking it up the ass."

Tom had a bad feeling he knew where this was going. The ache in his stomach was nothing compared to what he was now sure Reese dealt with on a daily basis. Living and breathing the air at the same place where this bad thing, the thing he'd seen shadowing Reese's eyes and making him twitchy, had happened.

"One night they, um, came in while I was sleeping and held me down. Did things to me." For a moment, Reese's eyes locked on his, willing him to understand, to get it without Reese having to go into detail after humiliating fucking detail. He'd no doubt done that than once already. "I was pretty drunk. Had been at a party all night with some friends. I don't even remember who walked me back to my dorm. I was pretty out of it. So I couldn't even say for sure who was there. Except for my roommate."

"What did the school do? When you told them, I mean."

"There wasn't much they could do. I didn't tell anyone right away."

"But—"

"But nothing. There was no evidence."

"None?"

"Not all jocks are stupid." You couldn't even call that shattered scrape of sound a laugh. Heat flared in Reese's eyes and he reared his head back like Tom was gonna argue with him. His voice got loud, sharp staccato shots across the room. "When a bunch of guys hold you down with a pillow over your head and someone sitting on your back, while one guy lubes up his finger before sticking it up your asshole and asking if you like that better than the last fag who fucked you, it doesn't leave a mark."

Tom held himself still. Reese wasn't in the room with him, mentally that is, and Tom didn't want to frighten him with any unexpected motion. His hands were shaking, though, and he grabbed his own elbows because he needed to grab something. Hard. To squeeze the life out of something and make it hurt for the tears sliding down Reese's face while his voice didn't waver once.

"My dad finally found out something was wrong, and when I told him, he was fucking awesome. I mean, you wanna see a Swede on a revenge mission, just tell my dad you messed with his kid and watch the fireworks."

"Good." A small tight spot in his chest eased at knowing that Reese had had someone on his side. Had had backup. Even if it wasn't enough to protect him from the bad shit in the first place. "How'd he figure it out?"

Reese stared intently at his toes digging into the bedspread.

"I was reported for having sleeping pills without a prescription."

"Had a hard time sleeping?"

"Ya think?" But then, "That wasn't why I had them, though."

Tom didn't have to ask. He knew. Could see it in Reese's face that this was a battle he was still fighting, maybe not every day, but enough. He felt like he was two seconds away from puking in his own lap. No wonder Reese had been shaken by reading about Tom's dad.

"It's kind of weird, though. Because I couldn't really get mad at my roommate. I mean, he wasn't really a bad guy, deep down."

The words ripped out before he could stop them.

"Jesus, kid, how fucked in the head are you?"

Reese flew to his feet, hands balled in fists at his hips. But his head was turned to the side, as if he was bracing himself for Tom to haul off and punch him, and he wanted to ease the blow.

"Stop calling me kid."

Like _that_ was the awful thing he'd said. He shouldn't call Reese crazy or yell at him. He knew that. It was so fucking mean and awful he hated himself in that moment. But there wasn't anyone else in the goddamn room to yell at and _someone_ had to take it.

"Then be a fucking grown up. That asshole is a bad fucking guy."

"He didn't do anything really. I mean, that night. I could see him, for a moment, and he wasn't anywhere near me."

"Did he stop it? Did he say fucking stop?" Tom beat at Reese with his questions, knowing he was fucking up, but so full of anger his skin was tight and his temples throbbed. What had happened to Reese was bad, so bad, but hearing him defend this guy was somehow worst of all.

"No."

"Then he's a bad fucking guy, Reese." Something felt strange in his mouth. It took him a moment to realize that it was Reese's name. Was it possible he'd never said it out loud before?

"Reese." Simply saying it felt like dropping a hand on his shoulder and holding on, steadying this almost broken guy in front of him. Tom didn't move from his bed, though.

The pull of his name drew Reese's gaze to his at last.

"What's his name." It wasn't a question so he didn't say it like one. He needed to know.

The corner of Reese's mouth quirked up, a barely visible twitch.

"You sound like my dad."

Tom shuddered and hoped he masked his reaction. "Don't say that." His voice was gruff, deep. "I'm not your dad."

"I know." Reese's eyes flicked up and down his body and he looked wary. Whether because Tom was too big, or too much like the last roommate—although please God let Reese not think of that guy when he saw Tom—he wasn't sure.

Tom only knew one thing.

"If I see that guy, I'm going to put him on the ground."

He didn't say it to brag. It was a fact.

"He didn't come back this year. The dean called me up over the summer. He, uh, had some issues with depression, tried to cut his wrists."

"Holy fuck."

"Yeah, lotta depressed people these days, huh?"

"Jesus."

"I feel kind of bad about that too." Reese put up a hand immediately. _Stop._ "Don't yell at me, okay? I'm not up for a lot of yelling."

"Sorry. It's just—" he trailed off. No need to say that the whole situation was fucked up. That wasn't exactly news to Reese.

"I know." Maybe the kid could read his mind. It was kind of weird how they usually knew what the other one was thinking. Tom couldn't remember the last time he'd been around someone who didn't want explanations from him or to grill him with questions about what he knew. The relief that came with being understood was intense. Like every muscle letting go and your brain unkinking from the knots it tied in itself after you sucked on a hash pipe.

Not that he was going to talk about the time he got high during a high school trip to Paris with the kid whose most recent drug contact was an attempt to stockpile enough sleeping pills to kill himself.

"It's fucked up."

The words, yanked right out of his head.

"I know it's fucked up," Reese repeated himself. "But I'm...pretty fucked up."

Tom had noticed. Reese didn't drink. Didn't stay out late at parties. Didn't seem to hang around with friends, really, at all. Except for Steph. He studied hard, if hours spent at the books counted. And he brought home strange guys and sucked them off and then ushered them out the door five minutes later. And that combo didn't fly in the "Mental Health Manual" Tom had cobbled together by a close look at his own neuroses.

If the kid, the guy, partied, or had a boyfriend instead of a bunch of nameless hookups, or even spent time with friends, Tom wouldn't worry. But the total social isolation combined with the reckless sex adventures, while an excellent script for a porno, did not sound like the sanest way to handle your PTSD.

Reese was still talking about his last roommate. The fucker.

Tom realized he hated that guy even more for making Reese afraid of him, which he was now abso-fucking-lutely certain had been the case from the moment he'd come home to find Tom standing in the middle of his room that first week of school.

"I just...don't want to think about anyone else feeling like this."

"He _should_ feel it. Feel like killing himself." He bit the words out, certain he stood on solid ground.

"No, he—"

"Because he's an asshole scumbag who has something to feel guilty for. And I hope he feels like a bag of shit for the rest of his life. Asshole. You, on the other hand, might be, well, a mess now—"

Reese raised an eyebrow and delicately pressed the fingers of one hand against his chest.

"Yeah, I said it." He almost grinned at the kid. Damn. At the guy. Who could make fun of himself in the middle of the heaviest conversation of Tom's life.

And that was saying something.

" _You're_ going to get past this. Maybe it's gonna take a hundred or a thousand hours with your therapist or whatever, but you'll be okay. For real."

"I don't have a therapist." Reese was picking at a loose thread hanging from the side seam of his stretchy pants, head down, not looking at Tom. Again.

"What? The school didn't set you up with anyone?"

That thread was seriously fascinating. And important. "Nah, they did. But I just haven't...gone, I guess."

"Well, shit, ki—man. Even I know you need therapy. Dude. That's, like, a no-brainer. And you're a smart guy, so I know you know it too."

"Yeah." Reese sank back onto his bed. He pulled a pillow onto his lap and hugged it to his chest. "But I don't think they wave some kind of magic wand, you know, and make it all better." He flopped back and rolled onto his side, hanging onto the pillow and pulling his knees up in a tight tuck. "Pretty sure the getting there sucks ass."

"But _there_ probably feels better than _here_ , you know?" The vibration of energy in the air that he felt on his skin, the tiny hairs on his wrist, subsided to a low hum. He got up long enough to snap off the overhead light and kick off his shoes, but lay back down on his bed fully dressed. Taking his clothes off felt like an act of aggression now.

"Wouldn't be hard."

"So maybe it's worth a try," he said, speaking into the shadowed room.

"Been to practice lately?" When Reese's words landed, a knife thrown at Tom's heart, he knew exactly how his roommate's eyes had narrowed and his lips thinned.

Hit and score. The downside of letting someone get to know you. They knew exactly where your soft spots were.

"Not the same."

"That what you tell yourself?"

"Listen, kid—"

"Don't. We're the same age pretty much. You don't want to do something 'cause you know it's gonna suck, the same as me. Don't try to make it like you're older and wiser and know what you're doing, but I don't."

Tom sighed heavy as if a weight on his chest were squeezing the air out of him.

"It's _not_ the same." When Reese started to interrupt, he talked right over him, certain at least of this one thing. "It's not. Maybe my reasons for not going to practice are the same as yours for skipping therapy. And I don't know what the fuck I'm doing half the time. I'm not trying to say that I do. Difference is, my life isn't fucked up for good if I never run track again. It's just something I used to do."

"Something you used to love." Reese's whisper was so low in the dark Tom could barely hear him. But barely wasn't the same as not at all and Reese's words dug into his skin and burned like acid.

"Maybe." He said the word even more quietly than Reese had spoken, pretty sure the only one who could hear the pain and the lie in the word was himself.

But either Reese had better hearing than most or his roommate already knew him dangerously well, because a split second after his own voice died away Reese spoke again.

"Well, I'll go to therapy when you go to practice."

There wasn't anything to say to that. He rolled over onto his back and laced his hands over his chest, concentrating on the slow rise and fall of his ribcage instead of the rustling noises of Reese trying to get comfortable in his own bed, the two of them both fully dressed on top of the covers, wide awake and listening to each other breathe.

Only as Tom was nodding off, the warm dark blanket of sleep drifting over him, did he wonder what kind of line they had crossed this time.

Reese snuck out pre-dawn and returned so late the next night, if he returned at all, that Tom didn't hear him come in. For two days, Tom studied by himself in their room and it was just how he liked it.

If he felt for a moment that the room was too quiet, or empty, that was ridiculous.

He liked it best this way.

He did.

When Reese did show up again, he was awkward in his skin, all elbows and knees, rushing in and out of the room in short bursts of brittle chit-chat, words rushing out of his mouth like popcorn popping. Tiny explosions of sound that melted away to nothing.

Which meant Tom was lingering on a Friday morning, hours past his normal dawn takeoff time, waiting for his freaking roommate to come back so he could say one last thing before heading off to Boston for another marathon driving shift.

When Reese entered the room at less than light speed for the first time in days, Tom was prepared to see the flinch when he was spotted, still there long after he normally left.

"I want you to call me if you're gonna do that," he said before Reese could get a word out.

"What?"

"You know what." He wasn't going to say it.

Reese blushed and looked down at the floor.

"I don't know if you only do it when I'm here," Tom started again. "I think you know I'm not going anywhere. So if that's why you're doing it..." He let the half-finished sentence hang in the air until Reese grabbed its trailing end.

"No." He looked at Tom for a moment and then away, staring at one of his posters of sculpted male nudes or maybe at nothing at all. "I was doing it before you got here. Trying to make you go away was a bonus, really."

He wouldn't ask questions, invite more intimacy, but he could be silent at the right times. He could give Reese space in which to find his way closer to Tom, this strange dance they were doing—waltzing in the dark without a partner, wondering if each was ever going to bump into another lonely dancer.

"It's because," he struggled, mouth twisting with the wrong words. "They don't get to take that too. It's not the way I want it to be, the way it used to be, but it's what I can do."

"It's not safe," was all Tom said, trying to keep the parental overtones out of his voice. He was in no position to be giving anyone else advice, but he had to say something.

"But it is. That's why I pick them."

Reese's words hung in the air between them. Tom didn't let himself get distracted by memories. He shouldn't give a damn, but now that he'd had an up close and personal experience with what Reese did with his hookups, all he could picture was how easily things could go very, very wrong. His roommate had some clear limits on what he was willing to do and it didn't take an imagination of Shakespearean proportions to see what the damage would be if Reese picked up a guy who didn't respect the lines he drew around these encounters.

He _didn't_ think of Reese as a girl, really. But his hands and his cheekbones were delicate, even though the rest of him was strong and wiry. Tom had seen enough girls make dubious decisions about who they chose to leave a party with, and heard enough stories about casual date rape, to be under any illusions that this kind of thing was safe.

Reese might steer clear of alcohol—and now that Tom knew why, he was pretty sure that rule wasn't in danger of being broken any time soon—but the danger inherent in Reese's hookups vibrated in his bones when he thought of it, which was all the time now. This morning, when he'd been shoving clean T-shirts and shorts into his duffel for the weekend, that low hum had crept up in volume until he'd been jittery with it, pacing the room with a barely contained restlessness, unable to leave until he saw Reese.

"I want you to call me first," he insisted.

"Why? So you can talk me out of it?"

He shook his head. He couldn't really explain it. "Someone should know. Like, I don't know, backup."

"But you'll be...where do you go anyway?"

Strange to realize they'd crossed all these lines and figured out some pretty intimate things about each other, but Reese had been holding him at enough of a distance not to wonder, or at least not to ask, where he went every weekend.

No way was he going into detail, but making a mystery of it would only make Reese want to dig deeper.

"Boston."

"Home?"

"Sure."

That was only sort of a lie, he told himself. The city itself felt like home to him now, or at least home turf, even if his actual family residence was long sold under the auctioneer's hammer to repay a tiny fraction of his father's debts.

Home was the back seat of his car most weekend nights, but that fact sure as shit wasn't gonna be part of the roommate togetherness program.

"So, long-distance backup, I guess."

"Whatever. Someone should know. And you call me in front of them, so they know you're not by yourself."

Reese's color rose and he shaded his eyes from a non-existent indoor sun with one hand, tilting his head back and staring up at the ceiling.

"You want me to call you when I'm, what, about to, you know..."

"Fuck some dude? Yes. Exactly that."

"I don't know if I can do that."

"You know what the campus sex counselors say. If you can't say it, you shouldn't be doing it."

"Ha ha. I can say it to _them_. I say all _kinds_ of things to them." Reese's voice, suddenly gritty and low, hummed through his bones in an entirely different way.

Tom cleared his throat, too loud in the small room. Reese's grin showed teeth and looked like it would come with a bite if he got too close.

"Then you can call me up and say 'Hey roomie, I met this guy named John Big-Dick Doe and I'm bringing him back to our room to blow him', 'kay?"

He felt a little ridiculous, insisting on this, but whatever. Even if it made Reese narrow his eyes at him, running his gaze up and down Tom's body in a blatant stroke Tom felt like a hand on his cock. He'd already figured out that Reese, when feeling threatened, got mouthy and bold, but he wasn't expecting his roommate to let a hand drift down his chest to his own crotch, palming the length of his dick through his jeans as he stared at Tom.

"You gonna be picturing it? Me sucking off some guy, while you're in your old bed back home, high school trophies on the shelves? Is that why you want me to call?"

_Yes._

_No._

"Give it a rest, _kid_." He trod hard on the last word. "Just do it."

"Or what?"

He tried to think of something that would work as a threat to a guy who was strung out enough that almost anything could be taken as a dare.

Jackpot.

"Or I'll call your dad."

Reese's all-over flinch was a visible shiver on his skin. Direct hit. Tom slung his bag over his shoulder and turned toward the door. _Now_ he could leave.

"My number's on your desk. Okay?"

Lips pressed together, shaking his head, Reese threw himself on his bed and kicked his shoes off, pouting all the way.

Whatever. He'd be saf _er_ at least.

"Fine. Goodbye. Weirdo."

"See you Sunday."

Reese's heaved sigh followed him down the hall and out to his car where he tossed his duffel into the back seat and slid behind the wheel, not exactly grinning, but happier than he'd been in days.

Now he could relax.

# 8

Relaxed wasn't exactly the right word for the heat that swept over him when his phone rang on Saturday night at midnight while Tom flew through Callahan tunnel, hauling a late-night fare from the airport to the big Marriott downtown.

He'd downloaded a ringtone for Reese's cell number, which he'd pulled in totally underhanded fashion by calling himself from his roommate's phone while Reese was in the shower. After wavering between the Stones' "No Satisfaction" and "Sympathy for the Devil", he decided to go with something a little less revealing and picked Big & Rich's "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy", because he thought it'd make Reese laugh if he ever heard it.

He'd shot Reese a snarky text Saturday afternoon, another reminder to call Tom before engaging in any...escapades. The idea that Reese might skip the hookup rather than call him might have crossed his mind too.

When the twanging country tones echoed in the front seat of his cab, he flushed as soon as he recognized the song and fumbled for his earbud. He didn't normally answer the phone while driving, couldn't afford the risk to his license, but he wasn't about to miss this call. Sweat sprang out along his hairline as he slid the rubber bud into his ear and swiped Answer.

"This is Tom."

"This is the dumbest idea ever."

His mouth lifted in a grin, a reflex he wasn't going to examine. Neither was the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realized why his phone would've rung at this hour.

"Hey roomie. Got a hot date?"

"No, you asshole. I don't."

The flutter in his stomach still made him queasy, but now he wanted to giggle too. Jesus. Giggling. Like a freaking girl.

"No cute boys out on the town tonight?"

"Oh, shut up. I picked up a boy who practically came in his pants when I offered to blow him, but I started talking to myself on the walk back here, muttering and ranting about whether or not I was going to call you first, and he took off. Think he thought I was a nutjob. Clearly true."

The sour twist to Reese's voice made Tom laugh out loud even as he expressed his sympathies, which Reese declined to accept in words that included an anatomically impossible act. To his surprise, Reese didn't hang up after berating him. Bored maybe? Or just lonely. Either way, Tom found himself hitting downtown, dropping off his fare and heading out for a pick-up in Somerville, listening to Reese and laughing at his sharp scolding and catty relay of campus gossip. When they finally got off the phone, the sun was peaking up over the bay and Tom was bleary-eyed with the need for sleep.

"Night, weirdo."

"See you Sunday, shit, tonight, kid."

"Don't call me kid."

He was smiling when he cranked his seat back while he waited in line at the cabstand at Logan again and curled up on his shoulder. Sundays were normally a day of dread for him, knowing he was heading back to campus at the end of the day, but for once he was almost looking forward to getting back to school.

Having a place, even one he shared with a prickly, argumentative guy who made his dick hard, had him breathing deep and easy as he fell asleep while the sun rose.

* * *

By the time Tom made it back to his room at Perkins, his breathing was harsh with smothered pain and he was regretting deeply not taking the MDOT worker who'd stopped to help him up on his offer to drive him to an ER.

He shook his head to clear it and tried to figure out what to do next. The pain from the burn on his arm was intense, sucking every bit of his focus to the throbbing stripe on the outside of his hand and wrist where it felt as if flames were still crisping his skin, even though he could see with his own eyes that there was nothing touching him but air. Air made out of fire maybe.

When he unlocked the door and stepped into their empty room, he groaned. It was fucking hot as hell inside, the air having baked with the window closed all day. He wondered where Reese was. If he'd been here at all in the past two days. The stuffiness of the room said maybe not.

He wrestled with the window one-handed and got it partway open. It must have rained out here as much as it had in Boston for Reese to have shut the window all the way.

"Shit." He pounded his good hand gently against the window frame. With the window only open a few inches, the box fan wouldn't be very effective at sucking the warm air out of the room and getting some cooler circulation going. But that was as good as he could get it with his left hand and the awkward angle of the window crank in the corner over the desk. It occurred to him that if he had bothered to get to know any of his neighbors in the dorm he could go and knock on someone's door and ask for help. Fuck. He could probably go do that right now and get a total stranger to help him. But it was going to become obvious to anyone who saw him try to do anything that he needed help with the simplest of tasks and he wasn't up to having some guy or woman he didn't know offer to help him with his pants or whatever.

He'd bought burn cream and a roll of gauze bandages. Getting any of it on his right wrist and hand using his left was a lesson in lack of coordination. Also, it turned out you were supposed to buy some kind of tape to hold the gauze. After shredding it with the scissors he'd borrowed from Reese's desk while trying to cut with his left hand, he threw what remained of the tangled mess on the floor and managed to get his clothes off. He left them where they fell on the floor for the first time in weeks.

His arm was throbbing and burned so hard, his nerves still firing like a hot iron was pressed against his skin, no matter that he told himself it wasn't. He sat on the edge of his mattress, unable to figure out what he was supposed to do next because he couldn't hear himself think over the pain in his arm, miserable and beyond uncomfortable. Then the door opened.

"Holy shit, what happened?"

He waved at the disaster he'd made of the room, curtains askew, his crap everywhere, trying to explain.

"Sorry. Can't use my right hand. Sorry about the mess."

Reese's steps over to him were swift. His hands reached out for Tom's bandage and then pulled back.

"Not that, you dumbass. What happened to you?"

He looked at the floor between his feet. Sweat was running down his back as he tensed his entire body to avoid whimpering out loud with the pain.

"Burned the shit out of my hand."

"Yeah? And how'd you do that?"

Reese stepped away from him and moved around the room, cleaning up after him. Scooped his clothes up and dropped them in the box at the foot of his bed. Untangled the mess of gauze and rerolled it into a neat coil that he left on Tom's desk. Then he moved to the window and opened it wide while Tom sat with his elbows on his knees and tried some slow breathing.

"It's crazy hot in here. No wonder you're sweating. I'm gonna open the door for a little bit, get some circulation in here."

"Not hot." He shook his head. Still couldn't think straight. "Not just hot. It hurts. A lot."

"I notice you still haven't told me how you got hurt."

"There was a lady, couple of kids. Car broke down on the highway. Was trying to give her a hand when a hose tore. Steam burn."

Reese hissed in sympathetic pain. Cooler air was sucked in from the hallway as soon as he opened the door, the hot stuffy air getting blown out the window by the box fan. The change in temperature was immediately noticeable, though Tom still felt hotter than shit, sitting beneath the bright bare bulbs of the ceiling light. Maybe he was getting sick too. Fuck.

"Crappy payback for being their knight in shining armor." The overhead light snapped off leaving the room in darkness for a moment until Reese turned on his desk light, angling it so no direct light shone into the room, only a glow from that corner.

The relief was intense. The removal of the light made him feel less like he was dying and more like he was simply going to have suffer through a shitload of pain until this burn got better.

"Let's see what you've got here. Did you put something on it?"

Reese picked up his hand now, careful where he touched Tom, and started unwinding the twisted mess of gauze.

"Burn cream. Doesn't feel like it did shit, though."

"Yeah, I don't think it works that way. Helps the healing, not so much with the pain." He pulled the final sticky length off of Tom's skin with delicacy and hissed again at the blisters. They were tiny and not everywhere, but there were enough of them to make it clear this was at least a second-degree burn. "Shit, man. I think you need to go to the ER."

"No."

"The campus health center then. Security will drive us, if you don't trust me with your precious car."

Ha. Tom didn't, that was true. But more because he needed that car, it was the one thing that kept him mobile and earning money. If anything happened to it, he was totally fucked.

Which was exactly what would happen to his bank account if he went to the health center too. They might be cheaper than the ER, but it'd be a couple hundred bucks to see a doctor with no health insurance. He had it, more than enough, but every penny he spent had to be re-earned plus more if he wanted to be able to pay the second semester tuition bill in a couple of months. Unless his fucking arm was going to fall off, he wasn't going to the health center either. He already resented the shit out of having to buy the burn cream, which didn't feel as if it was doing a goddamn thing.

"No." He tried to soften his voice when he saw Reese jerk at his snapped out word. "I'll be fine. Got burned before. You just have to get through it."

The kid turned toward his dresser and then back toward Tom, as if uncertain about something.

"Well, I've got some numbing cream, but I don't have any idea if that would be a good idea on burned skin. Maybe something else instead. Here, lie down for a minute."

His hand against Tom's shoulder felt cool and dry as he pushed until Tom sagged back and lay on the bed, swinging his legs heavily up onto the mattress. He barely noticed when Reese slid a towel under his arm. He wouldn't have cared that he was smearing the cream all over his sheets. Shit. How was he going to sleep? He'd be up all night with his arm on fire like this.

"Hang on, okay? I'm gonna be right back."

Reese left the room, the door standing wide open behind him. Tom felt weirdly exposed, although he'd seen people walking around in their underwear often enough at college. No one gave a damn. And with all the lights off except Reese's little desk lamp, no one walking past would be able to see much of him. But still, it was strange and made him realize how odd he and Reese were, shutting the door on the rest of the world, cutting themselves off from the rest of the house, whether by not being around much to start with and keeping their door shut when they were. Half the people in the house, even though they were older than the typical college student, studied or hung out with their doors open, an invitation to friends and neighbors to stick their heads in and say hi. He and Reese never did. Ever.

Tom was trying to distract himself, unsuccessfully, by mentally writing the opening paragraphs of his next econ paper when Reese staggered back into their room hauling what looked like a ten-gallon bucket that obviously weighed a ton, a bulging plastic CVS bag slung over his wrist.

He dropped the bucket to the floor by Tom's bed with a sloshing splash.

What the fuck?

Reese dumped whatever was in the bag into the bucket, dozens of small splashes tumbling one over the other and then grabbed Tom's burned hand by the fingers.

"Scoot over to the edge." Tom followed instructions well when too tired to think for himself. He slid over. Reese plunged his hand into a bobbing sea of ice cubes in cold water.

"Ahh!" He couldn't keep the shock out of his voice.

"Shit. Does that make it worse? It's just, I burned myself on a curling iron once, bad hair stage in high school that was, and I remember I couldn't sleep all night because it hurt so bad and it wasn't half as bad as this. I had a bowl of ice water, but I couldn't keep my hand in it, kept knocking it over. I thought this might work."

The guy was babbling with nerves or something, worried he'd done the wrong thing.

Tom flexed his hand underwater, his skin absorbing the icy cold shock and gradually going numb. For the first time in hours he wasn't in pain and he could figure out how to string an entire sentence together without getting lost halfway through.

"Slow down, kid. Reese." He nodded an apology. Reese shrugged, over it. "It feels fucking awesome. First time my arm hasn't felt like it's on fire for hours. Thanks."

Reese's smile was tentative, small. As if he weren't sure what to do with praise. Or maybe thanks.

"Did you take anything? You know, for the pain."

"Not yet."

"I've got something that'll probably help, if you want it."

Tom opened his eyes, which was the first time he noticed that he'd closed them. He looked at Reese, wondering what was on offer, not sure how to turn down illegal drugs without offending his roommate. He wasn't getting anywhere near high, no matter how much better it might be than the pain.

Reese read his mind again and huffed, smacking his hands on his hips.

"I told you. I don't do that shit anymore. I'm talking about a Tylenol 3. It's acetaminophen and codeine. The health center passes them out like they're candy at finals." He threw his hands up in the air at Tom's direct look. "And I'd need to take about a hundred of them to OD. Jesus. They're for headaches. Do you want one or not?"

"Yes, please. Sorry."

"Whatever. I spilled my sob story all over you. Can't blame you for thinking it."

"I don't. Really. I...worry."

"I've noticed."

Reese brought him a water bottle from the fridge and a single pill, steadying Tom with a hand on the bottle as Tom leaned up onto one elbow to swig a mouthful of cold water and painkiller. He flopped back down after and waited for the pill to kick in.

"Still hurt?"

He thought about it for a moment, flexing his hand under water.

"Not much. But I can feel it, like it's waiting, you know? If I take my hand out of the cold water, it's gonna burn. Hard to fall asleep tonight, I think."

He shut up, feeling like a whiny brat.

He heard Reese come over to his bed and looked up to see the kid standing over him, arms crossed over his chest, black hair falling in his face as he stared down at Tom, a frown on his face.

"Well, shit. If you were gay, I'd offer to suck you off. You know, distract you from the pain."

Tom froze.

Reese laughed and then paused, clearly expecting something from Tom.

Silence.

"This is where you're supposed to chime in with a screaming chorus of 'Dude, I'm So Straight I Can Barely Fuck Flat-Chested Girls.'" His eyes narrowed. Tom turned his head and stared at the wall at his shoulder. "But you're not saying that. Do you actually want me to blow you?"

Tom winced. He didn't know what to say. Reese was only speaking to him again without bitching about his overbearing ways because Tom was hurt, not because he wanted anything to do with him. And he didn't want to say it out loud. That listening to Reese, and then watching him, had made him hornier than shit, until even the thought of Reese's mouth on him was enough that the front of his shorts were tenting over his dick.

Of course, Reese wasn't going to miss that either.

"Holy shit. You _do_ want me to suck you off. Your dick's getting hard just thinking about it."

Tom heard the exact moment when Reese got really into the idea. Maybe it was the danger factor times a million that was running riot in his brain, putting himself in a position where he was involved in a sex act with a roommate who was an athlete and not, as far as Reese knew, gay. Or bi. Which was a word Tom figured he better start saying in his head two or three hundred thousand times so that when he wanted to say it out loud he wouldn't stutter. Or maybe he looked helpless enough, his arm hanging off the bed in the bucket of ice water, his other hand wrapped around the metal tubing that made a sort of headboard for the bed that was only a couple of inches higher than the mattress.

Or who knows what it was. This kid was a mess and Tom knew he shouldn't let this happen, shouldn't let anything like this happen.

No matter how desperately he wanted it to.

He turned back to look at Reese and opened his mouth to say so, but nothing came out. Maybe Reese could see the agony of indecision, the battle between desire and caution, roiling in his eyes as they stared at each other. He took another step closer until his thighs nudged the edge of the mattress and he stroked the palm of one hand down Tom's face, closing his eyes for him as he said, "Shhh. Close your eyes. It's okay."

Tom lay there in the dark, listening as Reese moved around the room. Shut their door. Opened a drawer and closed it. Something rustled. Then silence, broken only by Reese's barely there footsteps returning to Tom's side. Something thumped on the mattress next to him, something small. He swore he could feel the heat of Reese's body, radiating next to him, and wondered if he was imagining that. Strawberries. Did Reese wash his hair with strawberry shampoo? Tom tried to smile at the idea, but couldn't.

He was barely breathing, wondering what was going to happen. He was so hard already from the anticipation alone that it made him dizzy, every molecule in his body focused on his dick, pressing hard against the fabric of his shorts.

A hand at the waistband, fingers sliding under, made him gasp and the sudden inhale jerked his stomach away from the fingers.

No. Not _a_ hand. Reese's hand. Reese's fingers. If he was going to take advantage of how fucked up this kid was, he could at least admit it in the silence of his own head. Reese. Reese was the one touching him. The owner of the hand that had frozen at his gasp and pulled back a moment later.

_Please. Please don't stop._

The part of him that was still a decent human being bit the words back behind his teeth. If Reese changed his mind...

"You're right. That's a bit much to start with." Tom heard him move away again and then come back, dragging what sounded like his desk chair to the side of Tom's bed.

_He came back. Thank God._

"Let's try this instead. Ease into things a little."

Tom heard the liquid spurt of something being pumped from a bottle. Holy shit. Where was that going and how exactly was _that_ easing into things?

Reese's hands on his feet almost made him scream like a girl.

His roommate laughed and grabbed the toes of his feet and wiggled them.

"Relax, dummy. Haven't you ever had a foot massage?"

No. No, he hadn't. No one had ever picked up his feet and held them in strong hands, pushing thumbs up against the arches, cupping his heels in their hands and forcing the tension from his soles with the sheer power of touch.

He groaned and the noise was so loud in the quiet room that he closed his mouth halfway through and let the moan of pleasure rattle in his chest.

"That's it. Feels nice, right?"

Tom nodded. His voice seemed to have fled somewhere far, far away from this dark, warm room and the kid, the man, with the strong hands who paid attention to every square inch of his feet. Reese stroked and pulled, wiggling each toe and tugging on it until it loosened and relaxed, pressing his thumbs hard into the balls of Tom's feet, digging in until Tom groaned again in pleasure and this time forgot to stop himself from letting it out.

Reese's voice was lower than its usual tenor when he spoke, something about the dark and the quiet and the fact that they were touching for the first time. Though Tom wasn't touching anything except ice water and steel. But Reese was touching him, which felt like the one thing he'd waited his entire life for.

"Relax, okay? A massage is almost as good as a blowjob for relaxation, right?"

Tom wasn't so far gone that he didn't huff a little laugh.

Reese's hand smacked the side of his foot in reprimand and Tom could almost see the smile scolding him.

"I said _almost_ as good as a blowjob. Don't worry. We'll get there."

Reassured, Tom relaxed the muscles he hadn't even felt tense. His neck hurt and he realized that, even with his eyes closed, he was lifting his head a little as if to look down to Reese at the foot of his bed. With a conscious effort, he loosened the muscles in his neck and let his head drop back all the way. Even if he opened his eyes, he wouldn't see anything except the ceiling. He kept his eyes closed.

Reese took turns holding each of his feet in his hands, balanced between a hand at his heel and one at his toes, rotating and stretching his ankles. When he set Tom's right foot on the bed, the splashing pump of what Tom now knew was massage oil sounded again. Reese's hands returned and wrapped around one calf, squeezing the muscles tight as they slid down to his ankle and back up again. In between long sweeping strokes with his hands, Reese pressed and pushed into small places, around the bones of Tom's ankles, all around the joint of his knee, pushing Tom's legs a couple inches apart so he had room to work.

Tom wondered if he wasn't supposed to notice that. His arm was going numb in the ice water, though he could still feel the scraping heat of the burn hovering under his skin, ready to roar back at the slightest crack in the cold. Reese's hands on his feet and lower legs were so strong, so soothing, that for a few minutes he'd actually relaxed, pulling his awareness back from where it had been claustrophobically wrapped around his dick. But that slight push on the inside of his knee, _move over_ , nudging his legs apart had definitely caught his attention.

If he didn't know better, he'd think he could feel Reese's grin in his hands as they gripped his legs above the knees and gave Tom another nudge to spread his legs farther. He had to participate this time, move his legs apart and let the picture sink into his mind of what he looked like, spread out on this narrow bed, one hand in a bucket, one gripping the rail, while his roommate sat at the side of the bed and ran his hands up and down Tom's legs.

Pump. Splash. Newly slick hands on his thighs now. Pushing up to his groin from his knees, pressing hard against his quads.

"Too bad I can't have you roll over, but there'd be no way to keep your arm in the ice water. Next time."

Even Tom could hear that Reese was the one biting off his words that time.

_Next time._

Tom didn't know how they'd make it through the first daylight hours after this, if _this_ ended up where they both thought it was going. He couldn't imagine how he was going to look Reese in the eye, and God, what if he couldn't take his eyes off of Reese's mouth?

It occurred to him for the first time that this might be the blow that would wreck it all. That maybe they wouldn't be able to go on from here. That everything would be too awful and too awkward between them and that he would, at last, just leave.

For one moment, he wondered if that was why Reese was doing it.

He forced himself to remember Reese setting up the ice water bucket and doing all the things Tom didn't know would make him feel better, turning off the lights, putting on the music. Reducing one sensation and adding the other, working to distract him from the pain. Those weren't the actions of a guy who was calculating how to drive him away. They couldn't be.

So, no. He didn't think there'd be a next time. But he didn't think this was a game of gay chicken either. It felt strangely like Reese, well, taking care of him.

Tom put the weirdness of _that_ to the side, because Reese's hands were pushing higher and higher up his thighs, fingertips sliding under the loose hems of his boxers as Reese pushed with the heels of his hands against Tom's quads.

"Jesus. Your thighs are huge. I can't—"

The edge of the mattress at Tom's knees sank under a heavy weight.

"Scoot over a bit. Diagonally. Yeah, like that."

Reese was sitting next to him now, his hip pressed against the side of Tom's leg, the denim rough against Tom's sensitized skin. Skin which felt as if it were glowing everywhere Reese had touched him. Had stroked and kneaded and even scraped fingernails against his skin. He moved his arm in the ice water a bit to get more comfortable and felt it in his bones when Reese leaned into him, putting more of his weight on the hands that were digging into his thigh muscles.

Tom wanted to tell him that he'd lost a lot of muscle in the past year actually. When he'd been sprinting competitively with the team, the rock solid anchor to a streak of lighting that circled the track in the bodies of four fast young men, his thighs had been huge, powerful driving pistons that could shoot him out of the blocks and up to top speed in seconds as he trailed a hand behind him and trusted the exquisite timing of his teammate to land the baton in his hand at precisely the right second for him to go, go, go, flying down the track to the finish line in a burst of speed and glory that burned with a clean white heat in his memory.

"Hey."

With a struggle, Tom came back to the present moment, letting go of the hot white light for the darkness and the feel of hard hands on his legs, not moving, the heat pouring from warm palms into his thighs as Reese paused with his hands centered on Tom's quads. He squeezed, gently, his voice a low murmur.

"You okay?"

Tom's face was hot. And wet.

What?

The pillow beneath his head was wet too at his temples and he was breathing through his mouth, thickly, but not for the same reason as he'd been before. His nose was stuffed up. He was crying. Jesus, he was a wreck.

"It's okay. This is gonna feel better, promise."

Reese's hands slid under his hips to curl around the waistband of his boxers and dragged them down over his ass. Tom was too fucked up, suddenly aware that this would make him all the way naked, which was somehow so much more intense than having been _almost_ all the way naked with his gay roommate running his hands all over his legs, to tell Reese he wasn't crying because it hurt, but because he missed it all so bad. Everything he'd had before his dad blew it all to hell.

Even if what he'd had hadn't been all that great in retrospect, seeing as how everyone and everything had disappeared so swiftly, slipping through his grasping hands like smoke. It hadn't been real, any of it, his friends, his towering feeling of walking the world as if a golden light shone down on him and there was nothing he couldn't do. None of it had been real. Not like the way Reese's hands on him were real. But the hollow ache in him, for how _easy_ everything had been, when now it was all so fucking hard, all the time, made the tears run hot again from the corners of his eyes.

"Easy now. I've got you."

And he did, hands skimming up the front of Tom's thighs straight to his cock to wrap around him and hold on.

Desire exploded in Tom.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. His blood was pounding in his veins, the muscles of his arms bunching as he gripped the railing above his head with one hand and held on for his life. His hand in the ice water clenched into a fist and his back arched as he held himself still and did nothing, nothing that might scare Reese off, might make him stop the slow slide of his fist up and down the hard length of Tom's cock.

Reese was talking to him, a slow stream of reassuring words that Tom heard but couldn't make any sense of as he lay there, struggling not to open his eyes and look down his body. He didn't think he could handle the sight of Reese sitting next to him, bare hands on his naked cock, watching him move. Watching him try not to thrust his hips into that tight grip. Not without losing it and coming all over his stomach like a fourteen-year-old with a hair-trigger dick. And Tom didn't want Reese to stop. Ever.

"Relax. Keep your eyes closed and tell yourself it's a girl."

Tom almost spoke, because he didn't _want_ to imagine some random chick stroking him. The only person inside his head was Reese and he knew that was important. But somehow the weight of all of these minutes of silence on his part was too heavy on his mouth for him to open it now and say anything. He let his body sink deeper into the slick smooth sensation of Reese's hand on him, sliding, still sliding, his hand sliding over the tip of Tom's dick to cup it in his palm and twist every few strokes. Tom rocked his hips in rhythm with Reese's hand and let the sounds pour out of him now, groans and shaky breaths and short, sharp grunts as Reese sped his hand up.

When he took his hand away, Tom almost cried, although not for feeling sad this time. The snick of a plastic cap opening and closing was followed by Reese's hand back on him, newly slick, and the smell of strawberries floated up to him.

"This may seem like overkill, but trust me. The sloppier we make it, the better."

_That'_ s what he'd smelled before? Flavored lube? He almost laughed, snorting a little instead before groaning out something that almost sounded like an _Oh God_ as Reese slicked the lube all over him, not trying to stroke him as much as spread it all around, which had the same effect.

"Not that I doubt that you're yummy all by yourself, but I know from experience that my massage oil is not. And those edible oils? Not unless you want to smell like fruit salad for days. They do _not_ come off."

The room was suddenly hotter than hell, the fan not helping cool him down now that sweat was pouring off him as all of his muscles tensed with the pounding urgency of his need to come, to come soon. He didn't know how to ask for what he wanted first, though, so he dug in and tried to hang on, hoping it would happen without him having to say it out loud.

In the end, of course, because Reese somehow knew him better than anyone these days, he didn't have to say or ask for anything at all.

A hot wet mouth closed over him and sucked him down with shocking ease until Tom could feel the press of his dick against the back of Reese's throat, where the younger man swallowed against the tip, taking him in farther until Tom was chanting, _fuck, fuck, fuck_ , under his breath and praying he didn't stop.

Reese didn't.

He wasn't going to last more than a minute or two and Tom wanted to feel everything, Reese's hand at the base of his dick, holding him steady as he sucked and bobbed, pulling hard on Tom's cock until the tingling pressure built to the breaking point, his other hand braced hard against Tom's hip, holding him flat to the bed as Tom dug in with his heels and tried not to push into Reese's mouth. Reese's hair drifted against the skin of his stomach with every plunge down, a faint tickling that brushed a relentless counterpoint to the heat that built like a ball of fire in his belly before shooting up his spine and arching his back as Reese pulled his mouth away as he came, came, came all over his own stomach, shouting into the dark.

His chest heaved with deep, dragging breaths. Tom unkinked his fingers from where they'd locked around the bar above his head and dropped his hand on his chest. Reese was gone. He hadn't even felt him let go and walk away. Couldn't move to look for him. Knew he needed to. His numb hand dripped cold water on his belly. He didn't even remember pulling it out of the bucket.

Light spilled into their room from the hallway for a moment as Reese came back in the room.

Without saying a word, he poured more ice into the now only cool bucket and moved Tom's hand back down to the water with a loose grasp on his wrist. Then he wiped a warmly damp towel against Tom's belly, moving his soft dick out of the way and cleaning him, still taking care of him. Dipped another corner of the towel in the bucket and used it to wipe the sweat off Tom's face, a cold clean feeling.

His arm had started to throb again, but Tom felt sleep sucking him down into the dark and didn't care enough about the pain to let it keep him awake. All he needed was to keep his eyes closed and slide a little deeper under the exhaustion he'd held at bay all day.

A hand brushed the top of his head. One last swipe of the cool damp cloth over his forehead and cheeks, and the barely there press of soft lips against his own. Reese.

Reese had him.

He could let go for a while.

When he woke, in a room shining bright with sun pouring in the uncurtained windows, Reese was gone. Before Tom left for class, he'd already decided that a major conversation was in order and that a break from the weekly parade of blowjob boys was going to be a roommate requirement. It wouldn't keep Reese from blowing some guy in the bathroom, but maybe it would slow him down.

Either way, as soon as he saw his roommate, he was sitting him down for a conversation that was already making his stomach roil, just thinking about it.

It was a good plan. Only one small problem with the execution.

Reese didn't come back for five days.

# 9

Every Friday since he'd arrived back on campus, Tom had hit the road early in the morning, heading in to Boston to drive a legitimate cab during the day and pirate taxi it for the couple of bars where he knew the bouncers. They referred him to bar patrons, usually girls or groups of girls who were hammered and needed to get home safely when the wait time on a regular taxi was over an hour.

He split on Friday mornings and came back on Sunday nights and, although he'd never discussed it with Reese, he knew his roommate had fallen into the rhythm of his weekends away. Tom came home on Sundays to find that the sheets on both beds had been washed and replaced, the various little messes, dirty coffee mugs or leftover dessert plates, that accumulated during the course of the week were straightened up or disposed of. Clearly some kind major cleaning routine was executed during the seventy-two hours he was gone. He kept meaning to say something about helping out, and he did try to keep his side of the room as neat as possible, a pretty pathetic gesture, he knew, but it was a habit they'd fallen into.

So when Tom left the room early Friday morning, he caught himself looking over his shoulder as he walked away from Perkins House. Wondering if he'd catch a glimpse of Reese heading back into the house now that Tom was gone, ending his self-imposed exile from their room now that the guy who'd taken advantage of him was _finally_ going away for a few days.

Six hours into his twelve-hour shift driving business people from the Prudential to Logan and back again, Tom gave it up for a lost cause. He couldn't stop thinking about Reese, about who Reese might be bringing back to their room now that Tom wasn't there. When he got stuck for the third time in a traffic jam around Faneuil Hall because he kept forgetting about the construction on Congress Street, he called in to dispatch and told them he had an emergency and was bringing the cab back.

An emergency.

It sure as shit _felt_ like an emergency and he couldn't. Stop. Thinking. About. It.

It? Him.

Reese.

Tom didn't know exactly what he wanted, but he knew it was back in Western Mass, in a quiet room behind a door that was always closed, and he wouldn't find it unless he went back home and asked for it.

He held his breath when he unlocked the door to their room, hearing nothing but knowing that didn't mean a thing. For the first time in a couple of weeks, he felt like an intruder, as if he should call out before he entered, "Hello? Anyone home?"

In the end, Reese wasn't there. But the room had a different kind of emptiness than the times when Reese didn't come home at all. There was a pair of dark wash jeans draped over the back of Reese's desk chair that hadn't been there in the morning and, yes, he was now apparently memorizing the placement of every single item on Reese's half of the room to see if it had been touched. God, he was pathetic.

The temptation to head out again, to stroll the campus casually, wondering if he could manage to bump into Reese somewhere, was strong. Except for that part where Tom had avoided going anywhere except to or from class and so had no idea any more where the cool places to hang out were located. Coffee shops that didn't serve sludge came and went like the Red Sox on a winning streak. You knew they wouldn't last. Even if he could remember where Reese's friend had said she'd meet him, there was no guarantee they were still going there to study.

After a couple minutes of indecisive back and forthing, he cursed himself for a dumbass and sat on his bed with his econ textbook and tried to get some work done, startling every time he heard loud voices or footsteps near their door.

The sound of a key in the lock had his breath catching in his throat.

Reese's rubber-soled Chuck Taylors stuttered on the floor and his eyes flew open wide as he spotted Tom sitting on his bed. He kept his eyes locked on Tom's as he felt for his desk chair, finally getting a hand on it and slinging his backpack over the back.

"Hi. You're here."

"Yeah." Tom nodded. He wasn't sure what to say next. Jumping into the "hey, remember that night when you sucked my dick" conversation required a little more strategic thought than he'd put into it, clearly.

Reese didn't even give him a chance to open his mouth.

"Well, see ya. They're having a party in the living room. Told them I'd come hang out."

What the fuck. The one thing neither of them did, ever, was fucking socialize with their neighbors. He didn't think it was the same for Reese as it was for himself, a desperate desire to avoid speaking with anyone who might have read one of the twenty-seven million articles about his dad or might want to make a quick buck selling cell phone photos of the convict's kid in a towel post-shower, but whatever the reason, Reese did _not_ "come hang out" with anyone. Ever. Except maybe Steph. And even then Tom sometimes thought Reese was spending time with Steph to avoid being around Tom.

The door closed lightly behind his roommate as he left.

Well, shit.

Fine. He would study. Quillian's seminar could suck up as many hours of reading as he could afford to throw at it. He was already aware that his arguments in class, much less in his papers, were pretty fucking thin compared to the other students' because he wasn't getting around to most of the suggested supplementary reading. He wasn't going to fail, but at this rate he wouldn't have much of a shot at an A either.

The faint throb of music seeped in from the hallway, or maybe up through the floor. Shit. He punched up the pillow behind his head and propped the book on his belly. He'd never stuck around on the weekend, so he'd assumed Perkins was as grave quiet on Friday and Saturday nights as it was during the week, full of older students who were intent on studying for the degrees that they, and not Mommy and Daddy, were paying for. But it looked like the twenty-five to forty crowd chose to rock it out on a Friday as much as the kids did.

How the hell was he supposed to get any work done?

Between the music and the occasional shouts of his neighbors, dragging the few remaining holdouts away from their books and downstairs to the party, his concentration was for shit for the whole half hour he tried to focus on the nature of data use in business. Lying on his back pressed his chin into his chest and was awkward. Lying on his stomach made his neck hurt. Sitting up with his back against the wall made the bumps of his spine ache.

This sucked.

And the music vibrated through the walls, loud enough to hear the bass beat and get a hint of the song, but not enough to figure it out. He kept catching himself humming some made-up bullshit tune and sort of singing along, without ever knowing what the actual song was.

The last noise from the hall had been a door slamming and a shouted "Fuck off, I'm coming!" ten minutes ago. Why the emptiness of a hallway of vacant dorm rooms felt any different than all the nights he shut himself in the room and ignored the world outside their door, he didn't know.

But for the first time in a long time, Tom was restless. Antsy. Wondering if he was missing out on something...fun.

In the past year, his definition of fun had changed severely to something along the lines of _no one talks to me or follows me with a camera or asks me questions about any-fucking-thing._ Which was a pretty pathetic definition of the word.

But all of the things that he used to consider fun, the parties, the crazy stunts, the drinking and fucking and even the running—the running, which used to be the most fun, the purest joy he knew—all of it was tarnished by the whispers and the constant knowledge that as soon as he left the room, the conversation would get sucked into a vortex of gossip about Tom and his dad and prison and, most fascinating of all, no matter how well-off they themselves were, _where do you think he hid all the money?_

And Tom wanted to shout, wanted to throw open a window and stick his whole body out over the street and scream at the top of his lungs, "Nowhere! No-where! He didn't hide any money anywhere, because that's what you do if you're afraid you're going to get caught or if you're worried about what might happen to your _kid_ if you're not around anymore. But if you're a fucking criminal with an ego the size of Texas, then you don't do any of those things, because _what could possibly go wrong, son?_ "

Tom's legs were sore. He looked down and cursed, unlocking his hands from where they gripped his thighs until his fingertips turned white. He shook out his wrists and rolled his head in circles to the left and then the right. All of the muscles in his body had frozen up while he daydreamed about raging at his father, at the school, at the world in general that had left him behind to figure it all out for himself.

Even thinking such self-pitying crap in the privacy of his own head was embarrassing. Jesus, he was a whiny little bitch. He'd figured it out, hadn't he? At least enough to get himself back here for a semester, and with any luck whatsoever, for another full year and a hallelujah fucking graduation, after which he would be out of here so fast they'd be lucky to catch the blur of his ass speeding away.

Tom Worthington says goodbye to Carlisle College, the place that offered help for all of the wrong reasons.

Which was a lesson he'd learned easily enough in those first few months.

Don't ask for help. Because help only came at someone else's expense.

Suck it up and figure out a way. He laughed sometimes, remembering his one sociology class and thinking that this was a pretty effective transition into adulthood rite of passage. But you probably couldn't arrange for most kids to have their parents go to prison just in time to leave them stranded with their senior year of college tuition tab still owing and no financial aid because their dad's last official W-2 showed an annual income of seven million dollars.

Not that it wasn't a jumpstart into being a grown up and figuring your own shit out. Slightly impractical maybe, for the prison system alone, if not the parents themselves.

Declaring himself financially independent was harder than it sounded, but not impossible. And he knew that exceptions could be made. When he'd finally worked up the nerve to consider returning to Carlisle—when it had sunk in at last that there would be no last-minute rescue from his dad, just the long, slow dismantling of Tom's life via bank foreclosure and the sale of everything Tom thought of as his stuff, but was now _estate assets_ —his first call had been to the financial aid office.

The humiliation of explaining his situation to the financial aid officer had burned so hot his T-shirt stuck to his back with sweat and his hand slipped on the phone as he held it while speaking. The woman had recognized his name immediately and interrupted him halfway through his tangled explanation.

"Tom, Tom, this is going to be _easy_. I can help you."

Relief swept over him so quickly that he blinked, light-headed and shaky.

She went on to explain that dependency overrides were allowed only in the most extreme of cases, but that " _fortunately for you, Tom,_ " parental imprisonment was one of the circumstances.

Because his dad was in prison, he could get help.

"Can't I get help because...there isn't any money?"

He could have accepted financial aid for himself. Hell, he _wanted_ it, desperately. But he wanted it for himself. He wanted help because—as much as he hated to admit it—he, Tom, had asked for it.

Apparently that was the "harder than it sounded" part. Rules were rules and there were processes and forms and documentation required. And in the end, he would probably be rejected if he attempted to declare himself financially independent on the FAFSA because he'd still been claimed on his father's taxes, even if that filing was probably fraudulent too. The untangling of that web would take years.

The buzz of the woman's voice in his ear faded to a dull drone as she reiterated the parental imprisonment exception. She sounded genuinely excited to be able to help him, and more than a little bit confused by his questions about what _regular_ students needing to declare financial independence in order to be eligible for aid would do.

_"Fortunately for you, Tom..."_

Because his dad was in one, Tom could get a _Get Out Of Jail Free_ card.

He still got dizzy when he thought about it. How close help had been. All he had to do was use his dad, what his dad had done to all of those people whose lives were in ruins, to get one last advantage for himself.

Other kids whose parents had blown their college funds on gambling addictions or blow, or who threatened to yank their tuition checks because they didn't like who their kid was dating or what major they wanted to declare... Those kids were out of luck. They wouldn't get any help.

But Tom, who had never lacked for anything before the past year. Whose father had done so much damage it could never be repaired. Tom could get help, could jump to the front of the financial aid line, as if the terrible things his father had done made Tom most deserving of all.

He couldn't.

It was stupid, he knew it. Could hear his dad's voice in his head, scorning Tom for not being smart enough to take advantage of the system.

Oddly enough, that helped.

If he'd learned anything in the past year and a half, it was that pretty much every word that came out of his dad's mouth had been bullshit.

When the papers had come in the mail, the forms that he needed to fill out and the lists of documentation for his dad's prison sentence ( _"Buy a fucking newspaper,"_ he'd wanted to scrawl on that one), he'd thrown them in the trash, registered for class in the fall, and had gone to work.

He couldn't explain it clearly, but he knew, he was absolutely certain that the only way he could set foot out of his home, the one he was about to lose, was if he made _not taking advantage_ his guiding principle. He was his father's namesake and he'd carry that shame forever. But he could make his own decision to be nothing like that man.

The pride in himself, in his own hard work, that he'd managed to scrabble together had been enough to get him back on campus for three more semesters of classes. But it wasn't enough to allow him to walk into that party downstairs with his head held high. He couldn't ignore the whispers.

Deep down, he wasn't sure that he deserved to ignore them.

He looked at the time on his phone.

Fabulous. He'd managed to kill another fifteen minutes sitting around not studying and moping about his life. This was why he kept himself too busy to think. This, and the need to bank as much cash as possible, of course. Because sitting around wishing things were different didn't do a goddamn thing except get him irritated at himself.

He drummed his fingers on the cover of the book in his lap. What a fucking waste of time. And money. Maybe he could pick up some extra time from dispatch, assuming they'd have a car for him at all now that he'd blown them off mid-shift, stay in Boston through Monday and skip class. Not ideal, since he didn't talk to anyone in his seminar enough to be in a position to call them up and ask for notes from class, but maybe he could arrange it with the professor. Who would be thrilled to hear from him after weeks of mute observation in class. Not.

"Shit," he muttered. Time to go. He could be back in the city by midnight, in time to grab a coupe pirate taxi hours before Boston's two a.m. closing time. If he got lucky, maybe he'd end up with a group of girls from Gloucester or Worcester who'd come into the big city for a night on the town and lost their ride home. Twenty, thirty bucks a head for four or five chicks squeezed into his car and his night wouldn't be a total loss.

He slung his bag over his shoulder and headed for the door.

He stopped halfway there and held his bag out for a moment, hating to waste this time, and thinking maybe he should study after all, before shaking his head, again, and striding to the door. The music grew louder the closer he got to the hall.

Hand on the knob, he stopped. Almost laughed.

He was about two seconds away from acting out some kind of cartoon display of indecision. Maybe he should give it up and pace back and forth across the eight feet of open space between their beds while pulling at his hair and tearing at his clothes.

"Drama much?"

And now he was talking to himself. Great.

By the time he was stomping his way downstairs, bag left behind in their room, Tom had almost convinced himself that he was going to check on this party for Reese's benefit. Because he was worried. Because Reese couldn't be trusted to act in his own best interest. Shit, even just because he wanted to tell the kid he was leaving so Reese could go back to their room without worrying about finding him there.

That he'd kinda hoped the kid would _want_ to find him there was totally beside the fucking point. A week's worth of couch surfing by Reese to avoid him made it clear that _that_ was never gonna happen.

The music in the hall had been audible, but by the time he hit the stairs and then the ground floor it was thumping, pounding in his chest with a heavy bass beat and a tenor male voice singing about the confusion between girls and boys who looked like boys or girls and did boys like they're girls and girls like they're boys. The whole thing made his balls tighten with some weird mix of nerves, desire and frustration.

He'd spent no time in the public spaces in Perkins house, always heading straight to his room with a vague wave at whichever lucky financial aid student was manning the desk at the front door and getting paid minimum wage to buzz people in while studying or doing the _New York Times_ crossword puzzle. Because the sliding doors to the living room space were made of large windowpane glass and wood lathes, he'd seen that there were plump sofas and large armchairs scattered around a room that was anchored by a massive fireplace, but he'd never set foot in the room.

Group studying as a social activity was definitely not his thing. Hiding at a carrel in the back of the dustiest stacks at the library, that was his thing. Shutting himself up in their room to study with his equally hermit-like roommate, clearly his thing.

Sitting in a big room with other people who would want to take a break every hour for coffee and freaking chit-chat about what you were studying or how late your paper was or where you were spending the holidays— _sleeping in my car most likely, unless they keep Perkins open over the break, thanks for reminding me to find out about that?_

Not. His. Thing.

He caught himself hanging back at the entrance to the living room. Some of the women had draped sheer scarves over the few lamps that were lit, casting oddly colored blue and gold and red lights on the walls. People he'd seen in the halls or on the stairs, but to whom he'd never spoken, sat on the furniture or on the floor, leaning in close for those conversations where you had to shout in someone's ear but still had total privacy because the music was so loud no one could hear anything said more than six inches from their ear.

The use of wine glasses and actual wine in bottles as opposed to boxes made it clear that this was not the typical undergrad party. Hell, there were even some partygoers drinking soda from cans, and without a hint of having filled half the can with cheap rum first. No one was playing quarters or daring someone else to drink inhumanly large amounts of alcohol in one go. Except for the blazingly loud music, the whole thing was a pretty low-key affair. More of an excuse to unwind than the lead-in to a raging kegger.

A shorter, balding guy brushed past him on his way in the room and then stopped with a double-take at the sight of him. Tom had a vague recollection of seeing the guy in the bathroom once or twice maybe.

"Hey, neighbor." Check. Definitely a bathroom memory. The man grinned at him through a scruff of something that might eventually be a beard. "Both of you coming out of the bat cave tonight?"

"What?"

The guy jerked his head toward the sofa closest to the fireplace, although no one was crazy enough to light a fire when the daytime highs were still up over eighty degrees, despite being mid-October. Frigging Indian Summer.

"Your roommate." He waved a hand in the direction of a bottle-laden table shoved up against the wall to Tom's right. "Help yourself. It's a potluck bar."

"I didn't—" Shit. Now he felt like a jerk, showing up without anything in his hands. "I'm not staying—"

"Don't worry about it! Jan's dad is in wine so we're pretty much all riding her coattails tonight." He lifted a plastic cup in a toast in Tom's general direction. "I can't be trusted with a real wine glass, but if you're not a clumsy asshole like me, there's even grown-up drinking vessels. Help yourself."

Tom thanked the guy and wandered over to the bar table, mostly so he could have something to do with his hands while he stared across the room at Reese. He opened one bottle of wine for a woman in her pajamas who'd had a couple of glasses already and didn't seem to know what to do with a bottle that wasn't a screw top. Tom had been uncorking wine bottles since he was a teenager, a skill his father had made him learn in eighth grade because, "there'll always be a sommelier in a restaurant to do it for you, but even at a picnic on a beach, a man should know how to open a wine bottle without looking like a fool." And there hadn't been any shortage of wine bottles to practice on, what with nightly dinner parties for business competitors and sometimes friends, those clever and calculated meals full of conversation that would later be analyzed for any suggested weaknesses or potential partnerships. Partnerships that would last as long as it was advantageous for them to pull in the same direction, only to be abandoned the moment something more attractive, a better deal, came along.

But no one at this party cared how elegantly and with what minimum of wasted motion Tom could open an eighty-year-old bottle of French Bordeaux. Plus, everything on this table was from the twenty-first century. His father would have scoffed, although not until he was alone with Tom, because you never knew who you might want to bring in on the next deal.

_Stop thinking about him._

This was what happened whenever he let himself slow down. He thought about his dad, and thinking about the man was like invoking his spirit. It was hard to get his dad out of his head again.

Tom popped a couple of corks and left the bottles on the table, staring across the room, trying to be casual about it, guessing that he was failing miserably.

Because Reese.

Reese.

His roommate sat on the floor in front of a dusty pink sofa with a curved back like a camel, his knees up and his arms crossed on them, resting his temple on his arms as the woman who sat behind him on the sofa talked, shouted, at the man to her right and ran her fingers through Reese's hair while he smiled.

There wasn't a chance in hell he could hear or understand the shouted conversation going on over his head, but Tom didn't think Reese had come down here for the conversation. Was pretty sure that he'd only been escaping their room.

But he'd been welcomed down here and made a pet of by the older woman with the gray streaks in her long frizzy dark hair, her legs crossed Indian-style on the sofa in some kind of horrendously loud printed pants and a loose tank top in matching gold tones. The blissed-out expression on Reese's face, his eyes mostly closed and a small smile on his mouth, told him that the strong, blunt fingers running through his chin-length hair, pulling it back from his hairline and letting it trail away, felt like heaven to Reese. When the woman paused to make an emphatic gesture in the air with her hands and then dropped them back to his head, changing her motions to push her fingers up into his hair from the nape of his neck to the crown of his head, Reese curved his back like a cat and practically purred, scooting back even closer to the sofa to press up against it.

Reese looked as if he could happily fall asleep with that woman's hands playing in his hair while she argued with Scruffy Beard who'd welcomed Tom to the party, and Tom gripped the edge of the bar table with its paper tablecloth crumpling under his fingers, rocked back on his heels by how badly he wanted to be a part of that group. Maybe paying attention with half of his mind, listening to whatever argument was being made about Joyce and the transgressive nature of narrative or whether anyone had really done groundbreaking work in psychology since Jung. Or, even more likely, whether or not Scorsese would ever be recognized as the great American filmmaker he was. Half his attention would be on those bantered words, with casual friends he knew well enough to tease about their bad dates from last weekend or how far behind on their thesis they were.

But the rest of him would be focused on the feel of those straight dark strands sliding through his fingers, because if Tom were a part of that group, Reese would be sitting in front of _his_ lap. His head resting on his knees while Tom stroked him and petted him and smoothed every last bit of tension from his bones until he was half-asleep with the pleasure and the total trust of it. And Tom would be the one who brought him there, to that place where he could be calm and relaxed and completely at home in the moment.

Instead, he watched from across the room.

Watched long enough that eventually Reese opened his eyes at some particularly loud laugh that erupted from the woman who played with his hair, and, with an amused expression on his face that was only half-awake, scanned the room.

Until he saw Tom.

Who cursed under his breath when he saw the tension hit Reese's shoulders. The smooth curve of his spine straightened and Reese's arms tightened around his knees until he hugged them to his chest. But he didn't look away.

His eyes said, _This is my space. Go away._ And Tom was pleased at least that his boy was still willing to fight for his own ground, his own space in the world.

_His boy._ But not just that. Because no mere boy could stay standing against the storms that had battered this guy, stay standing and fight the good fight day after goddamn day, when simply showing up was winning a battle to say that this space belonged to him too.

Tom kept his eyes on Reese, music rattling the windows and swirling around him as people reached past him for more cups or glasses, more wine, more of whatever it was they wanted while he stared and stared at the one thing he wanted most of all.

_Mine._

_My boy._

_My guy._

_Mine._

He felt his lips shape the word, no sound loud enough to be heard by anyone at all. Not even himself.

But he saw Reese's eyes widen and his head lift an inch off of his knees and knew that he'd been heard all the way across the crowd and the noise and the social hum of people who claimed their place in the world with a rock-solid belief in their right to be there. There were only two dozen people or so in the room, but they might as well have been two thousand for the weight of their eyes that Tom could already feel would fall upon him if he were to set foot in their midst instead of standing on the edge of the room. Tom took a step back, one small move closer to the door that would get him the hell out of here before someone called him out for not belonging or the whispers started, with looks darting his way over shoulders or from behind, hands raised to cover mouths that quoted trashy news stories or gossip rags.

Another step toward the door while Reese watched him back away.

Tom shoved his hands deep in his pockets and tucked his head down, tracing the worn edge of the faded Oriental rug that covered half the room with his gaze, before looking up at his roommate again.

The shadows under Reese's eyes, shadows he hadn't seen when he'd first walked in the room and seen his roommate content at that woman's feet, darkened like purple bruises when Reese closed his eyes and turned his head away, staring at the wall opposite the door. His semi-maternal petting friend was caught up in her argument, hands waving wildly in the air like the guy at the airport directing 747's with flags, the boy at her feet forgotten for the moment. Which left Reese sitting on the floor in the middle of a party, separate from everyone else in the room again.

Fuck.

_Jesus Christ. Fucking sack up and be a man. Asshole._

He headed across the room in a straight line for his roommate, before dodging a tiny blonde who was dragging a bearded giant of a man into a corner and shouting for a dance party to start and then catching the swinging hand of another party guest right before the man nailed him in the chest with a glass of red wine, eyes locked all the time on the huddled form of Reese, green Chucks tucked against his butt, hugging his knees, noise and people swirling around him but separate from the crowd. Separate and alone.

Tom dropped to his heels, squatting like a baseball catcher, at Reese's side. He dropped one hand on top of Reese's shoes and gave his feet a shake.

"Hey."

Reese lifted his head with a jerk and turned to stare at him, eyes wide.

Tom spotted the red plastic cup next to the couch at Reese's hip and cursed, grabbing it and taking a swig.

Straight up Coca-Cola.

Thank God.

Reese lifted his eyebrows at his and shook his head, one corner of his mouth tucked back in half a frown.

_Anything else you want to check on, Dad?_

Tom put the cup back down on the floor and steepled his hands between his knees.

"Sorry."

He wasn't leaning close enough or speaking loud enough for Reese to hear him, but that was one word everyone who'd ever spent time in a club or a rave could read on someone else's lips.

Reese shrugged and sat up further, elbows tucked together at the top of his knees, his hands falling forward toward Tom, until he jerked them back and grabbed his own shoulders with crossed palms. He kept his eyes on Tom.

What the fuck was he supposed to do now? He felt like an idiot. The only way for Reese to hear a word he said would be to lean in and shout it right up against his ear. Tom let his gaze flicker back and forth from Reese's face to the curve of his neck leading under the swing of dark hair that hid his ears. Was he supposed to push Reese's hair back?

If his roommate were a girl, that's what he'd do. He'd make sure the gesture turned into a long slow touch that was explicitly sexual in its invitation to lean close while he spoke. He'd make sure to brush his lips against the edge of her ear as he spoke and to rest one hand lightly on her shoulder, as if for balance, until he leaned back and smiled at her.

None of which was fucking happening in the middle of a crowd with a fucking guy, not even the one six inches from his knees right now, with the magnetic pull that had dragged Tom all the way into this room full of people he didn't want to know and would avoid for the rest of the year if he possibly could.

Fuck this. It was too hard.

When he shouted, he knew it was too loud, even for this party, and only because he didn't want to lean in close.

"I'm heading out."

Reese didn't react at all. Just watched him.

"You can go upstairs anytime you want."

The woman on the couch was staring at him and reaching out with her hands as if she were going to put them on Reese again.

Tom glared at her. She raised an eyebrow and sat back, draping her arms over the back of the couch but otherwise not giving an inch as she focused on his shouted conversation with Reese, if you could call it that when only one person was talking.

Reese, who had clearly caught sight of the glare and was frowning at him.

Tom waited.

Reese shrugged, eyes flicking toward the open door across the room.

"Okay. So go."

Tom gritted his teeth. Would it fucking kill the kid to show some kind of emotion at the idea of getting rid of him for the weekend? Gleeful or wistful, some kind of sign that he noticed at all whether or not Tom was around? At least an acknowledgement that he existed?

Instead of ghosting his way through the campus and the classes and the days, untethered to anything or anyone.

Man, he was morbid tonight.

Feeling like a bug pinned between the stares of Reese and the hippie couch woman, and now the scruffy bearded welcome man, Tom gave in and did what he'd wanted to do since he dropped his bag on the floor and followed Reese downstairs.

He stood up in one smooth motion that ignored the ache in his knees from squatting and held his hand out, palm down, fingers together.

"Ah, fuck it. I want to talk to you. C'mon."

When Reese stared at his hand and it felt as if the never-ending club song finally ended and the gap in the wall of sound before the next song started stretched for miles and hours of silence and everyone in the room had nothing better to do than turn and stare at him with his hand hanging in the air, waiting, for a moment Tom thought Reese was going to ignore him. Turn away until the music started again and he'd be left humiliated to head out of the room and maybe even off campus for good.

Reese reached up and grabbed his hand.

He was so relieved he almost pulled the kid up and straight into his chest with the surge of satisfaction that exploded through him, barely stopping Reese when he hit upright before toppling him over.

He imagined it, catching the slim torso against his chest and steadying Reese with an arm low around his waist, feeling small, strong hands clasp his hips, and his dick got hard at the idea.

_Easy there._

Holding on to Reese's hand and leading him from the room, feeling eyes on their backs as they headed out the door and turned at the stairs felt like the scariest thing he'd ever done.

Everything he did, absolutely everything, was done with an eye to staying under the radar, making himself as small and unnoticeable as possible. And with one frigging show-off gesture, he knew he'd sparked a half dozen shouted conversations behind him in the living room. He knew it.

Reese's palm was hot against his own, the weight of his arm pulling on Tom's as he trailed behind Tom up the stairs.

The sound, muffled immediately when the fire door at the foot of the staircase swung shut, was a third presence in the stairwell, drawing attention to how loud it wasn't now that they'd left the party. Tom pressed his lips together and kept his mouth shut, despite the almost unbearable temptation to start talking, start babbling as he walked up the stairs with Reese's hand in his, way, way past the time when he had any legitimate reason to hold on to that hand. Any legitimate reason that wasn't tied to him being unable to stop thinking about Reese's hand, his mouth, on Tom's naked skin five nights ago.

Keeping his mouth shut as long as possible sounded like an excellent plan.

He didn't let go of Reese as he tugged him down the hall to their door and dug for his keys in his pants pocket before wrestling to unlock the door. Giving up on doing it one-handed, he let go to use both on the tricky lock, which was Reese's signal to regain the power of speech.

"What do you want?" His voice was sullen, but at least he wasn't bolting down the hall back to that fucking crowd.

"To talk to you."

Which was going to be a nightmare and that was assuming he could figure out what the fuck he was going to say.

"I was having a good time back there."

Ahh. The doorknob gave in and turned in his hand. Tom pushed into their room and Reese followed, stopping right next to him when he stopped to shut the door behind them.

"Bullshit. You don't like parties." He turned and leaned back against his closet door in the little entryway, hands clasped behind his back, keys digging into his palm.

"Sure I do. Where do you think I pick up the guys I'm fucking in our room while you listen?" Reese crossed his arms.

"I don't know, the fucking street corner for all I know."

"Oh, is that where you do your down-low tricking, straight boy?" The single raised eyebrow was a nice trick. "Don't worry. I'm not gonna tell anyone what you did when you were delirious with pain. You can stop stalking me in a panic."

The keys jangled loudly as Tom swung his hands up and grabbed the back of his own neck. Ouch. Fuck.

"Can you shut up? For, like, a minute? I wasn't delirious. I'm not that straight. And I..." His voice wavered. He cleared his throat. "Liked it."

"Getting sucked off? Big surprise. What is this, some kind of plea for an encore? No thanks. I don't do seconds."

"Jesus. Why is this so hard with you?"

Actions spoke louder than words. Okay. Tom hooked a finger through the belt loop at the front of Reese's jeans, hyperaware that his hand was mere inches from Reese's dick. He tugged the slighter man closer, giving him every chance to push away or draw back. But Reese stepped closer. Tom lifted his other hand and rested it lightly on Reese's slim hip, barely holding on.

"I want to kiss you."

"Oh." Reese's eyes were huge, dark and unblinking as he stared up, frozen with his hands resting on Tom's forearms. "Okay."

Tom wanted to yank him close, wrap his arm like an iron bar around his waist and kiss him until Reese made those little soft noises that the other boys made when they were in his bed. And if he could find the shits who made that impossible, because he knew without asking that Reese was barely holding still under this light touch, almost trembling with a fucking awful mix of desire and nerves, Tom would rip their fucking arms off and beat them to death with their own limbs. He braced his back against his closet door and slid his butt down a few inches, trying not to loom over Reese.

He wondered when the last time was that Reese let someone else approach him. Ask him to touch or be touched. He had a feeling that his roommate operated on a total control agenda and someone else making the moves had become foreign territory.

Which was almost half as scary as the fact that Tom was making the moves with a _guy_. Because while, let's face it, he wasn't exactly unacquainted with sexual contact with someone who was emphatically not a girl—you couldn't have your dick sucked more than once, by more than one guy, and keep fooling yourself about that one—this was the first time he'd ever laid his hands or any other body part on a guy who hadn't touched him first.

And this guy wasn't just someone Tom wanted. Reese was someone he worried about, someone he thought about when he wasn't around, that he hoped would get through each day relatively unscathed.

Now here he was with his hands on his roommate, six weeks into a school year that he'd hoped would be as boring as a two hundred page dissertation on the nature of non-profit taxation in the twenty-first century, trying to figure out how to kiss him without scaring the fuck out of him.

He was totally unqualified to deal with this level of damage. What if he fucked things up worse? Triggered something in Reese that scared the shit out of him? He was afraid to touch him, not knowing where the landmines were.

Reese waited.

He took a deep breath and leaned forward.

Reese's mouth under his was soft, relaxed. He didn't move for a second, waiting, until he felt Reese's breath against the skin of his upper lip and knew he wasn't frozen in fear. Then he moved, dragging his lips across Reese's mouth, kissing along the line of his jaw before tucking his face against his neck and inhaling, the spicy sweet scent of Reese's skin and body heat rising to his mouth and his nose until he felt surrounded by it and pulled back to kiss him again.

Mouth open this time, he licked his way into Reese's mouth, lips opening against his on an inhale that spoke of desire and need, followed up by the press of skinny hips against his own. The length of a semi-hard cock rubbing against him as Reese pushed his way into this kiss. An equal partner.

Want surged in Tom's belly and he pulled Reese hard against him, diving in with his mouth open and stroking his tongue hard against Reese's, teeth scraping, the sharp pinch against his lip of a near bite as they wrestled for control of the kiss, pushing his thigh between Reese's legs and yanking him up on it.

His hand slid up Reese's back to grab his neck.

And everything froze.

"Wait." Reese's hands were flat against his chest. Not quite pushing him away.

Tom let go, his fingers cramping for a moment in their grip which felt loose but had required all of his control not to tighten. His chest rose and fell with hard, sharp breaths.

Breaths matched by his roommate whose dark eyes were staring at his with worry.

"You're just." Reese bit his lip and looked up at him for a second. "You're, um, big. You know?"

Tom shut his mouth on the wisecrack about how Reese was gonna find out exactly how big he was and blew out a breath in frustration. Shit. He was already practically doing wall squats to bring himself down to Reese's level and even _his_ quads were gonna give out sooner or later if he kept that up. Not to mention, that wasn't cutting it. Reese still felt nervous around him, because he was too damn big.

"Sorry." The word from Reese was a whisper and made Tom feel like shit for hesitating to reassure him.

"Don't." He squeezed the hand that still held on to Reese's hip and let go. "Not your fault. Just, gimme a sec."

Maybe he had an idea.

He left Reese standing between their two closets and pulled the chair out from his desk, dragging it into the middle of their open floor space. He sat in it, facing Reese.

"What?"

Tom held out his hand.

Reese walked slowly up and took it, standing next to him, taller for once and looking down at Tom as if he wasn't sure what to do next. Tom looked up at him, his neck already starting to ache at the unfamiliar angle, but willing to put up with anything if it would help Reese relax. Feel safe.

After a moment, Reese leaned down and kissed him. A dry, close-mouthed press of lips to lips, hands steadying himself on Tom's shoulders. A step backwards maybe, but if that's what it took to get there, Tom could be fucking patient as a Buddhist monk. Reese's hand pressed against his jaw and he ducked his head in its direction, rubbing against his palm.

Reese stood at his side and kissed him again, harder this time, sucking Tom's lower lip between his own, but the angle was awkward and after a moment, he moved, coming around to the front of the chair and pressing his knees in between Tom's.

Tom spread his legs and let Reese move in closer, keeping his own hands on his thighs. He'd wait until some kind of clear signal. A loud "Put your hands on my ass, please" would be nice, before he reached for him. In the meantime, simply getting kissed by Reese was the hottest thing that had ever happened to him. The scrape of his jaw, Reese's barely there stubble from days of not shaving, was different from a girl's. The strength of his hands on Tom's arms, his grip harder than a girl's, his grasp wider. Reese might be slimmer and smaller than him, but there was no doubt that this was a man standing between his legs, opening his mouth with a wet tongue and the sucking pressure of his lips. A man whose hands slid up the short sleeves of his T-shirt and whose fingernails dug into the muscle of his shoulders.

A man. His.

Reese.

He opened his mouth and let it pour out of him, the want, the desire, let his mouth open to the soft needy noises he'd wanted to pull out of Reese and felt the grin against his face when Reese heard him give in.

The vulnerability rocked him, made him hesitate for a moment and think about pulling back. What if Reese laughed at him? Jesus, he could hardly believe he'd gotten this far, kissing this guy standing between his legs behind the locked door of their dorm room. If Reese found this entertaining, enjoyed manipulating him the same way he played all of those guys he'd dragged into his bed since the start of the school year, Tom didn't think he could stand it.

"You're not touching me."

So wrapped up in the swirling uncertainty of his own thoughts, it took Tom a moment to figure out that the words weren't his own, but rather Reese talking to him.

"What?"

"You're not touching me," his roommate repeated, lifting his head and looking down at him, two little wrinkles between his dark eyebrows, bottom lip pinched between his teeth.

Tom's hands gripped his own thighs, waiting for something. He wasn't sure what anymore.

"I don't... What's okay? To touch?" He felt stupid asking.

"What?"

"What's okay to touch? You don't let them, do you? Touch you, I mean. Those other guys."

A shadow slid over Reese's face for a moment. Tom could see the moment when he willed the bad thoughts away.

"This is different."

"Why? Because I don't know what I'm doing?" he asked, feeling dumber than a pile of bricks.

Feeling stupid was apparently the right move with Reese, because he grinned and straddled Tom's lap, dropping his weight hard against Tom's thighs, where he'd barely pulled his hands clear in time. He left them hovering in the air over Reese's hips, still unsure.

Reese looped his arms around Tom's neck and rocked his hips a little.

"Because this is different. So, anything. You can touch anything." He waited, sitting on Tom's lap and looking at his face, open. Trusting. Tom put one hand on his hip and slipped it up to skate under the edge of his shirt, fingertips brushing the bare skin of Reese's waist. A single, concentrated touch that he felt in his own hand and in the narrowed heat of Reese's gaze. He laid his other hand flat on Reese's chest and felt the bump of a hard nipple under cotton against the edge of his hand. Reese's chest rose and fell beneath his palm. "Um, don't hold me down, okay? Or move me. You know, push my body around."

"No. I won't." He slid the hand under the T-shirt up higher, skimming across the flat plane and gentle ridges of Reese's stomach before pushing up, taking the shirt with him, grabbing the hem and lifting it with both hands, until Reese raised his arms and let Tom slide the shirt up and off him. The limp cotton fluttered to the floor. He brought his hands back to Reese's chest, roaming now with permission.

"But touching, ah God, yes, touching is fine. Better than fine. Fuck." He hissed as Tom found his nipples and pinched. "Yes, do that as much as you want." He dropped a hand to his own crotch and grabbed his dick, squeezing it hard, hips bucking against Tom's lap.

Tom pushed his hand away and slid his own palm along the hard length of him. Reese's arms were around his neck, fingers curved around the back of his skull, Reese's mouth attacking his own as they sucked and kissed and pushed against each other, stopping to wrestle Tom's shirt off. The sigh that escaped him when they were skin to skin, getting sweaty with the flush of pleasure, was a moment's pause, their skin sticking together as Reese wrapped his arms around him and ground hard into Tom's cock, panting with need.

He was awake, more awake than he'd been in ages, and this wasn't a dream, wasn't a late night fantasy in the shower. The hand on his jeans, unbuttoning and pulling on the zipper, wasn't his own. But he closed his eyes and let it be like it was in his imagination, for a moment, when Reese reached into his pants and wrapped fingers around his penis.

Fuck.

He let his head fall forward, his forehead pressing against Reese's as he sat there and let the waves of heat and lust rush over him. Trying not to move, not to do anything that might make this stop.

Then he opened his eyes.

He was staring down at his own lap, at the diamond of Reese's crotch spread wide over and against his own, and the sight of those narrow white hands, fingers wrapped around his dick, pulling and stroking, damn near brought him to the point of coming in his pants in one hot instant.

"Oh God," he rushed out, pushing a hand down between them to stop everything. "Wait."

"Wait?" Reese's fingers kept moving under his. He could feel them on the skin of his dick, micro movements that set off bursts of pleasure that shot through him like fireworks. His pelvis rocked forward, trying to pull away, but only succeeding in crushing his balls further beneath him. "Why?"

"Because," he managed to grunt out while twisting his hands to attack Reese's studded leather belt and the zipper that fought his efforts to wrestle it down. He looked up. So close, their faces were, that he could hardly focus on Reese's eyes. "I don't want it to be just me again."

He reached into Reese's underwear and pulled him out, the first time the dick in his hands wasn't his own, and it felt peculiar and ordinary at the same time. Like the wildest drug high he'd ever experienced, rushing through his veins and blowing the top of his head off at the same time as his brain said, _Ah ha, a dick, yes, rub it like that, no problem, we got this_ , and shrugged it off as the most ordinary thing in the world.

The entire moment was so hot he was pretty sure it'd be less than two minutes before he shot on his own stomach. He tried to block out the sensation of Reese's hand on him, slipperier with the pre-come he'd gathered with his thumb and spread down the length of Tom's dick. He mimicked the movement, feeling a strange surge of pride when Reese groaned at the drag of his thumb across the slit.

_I did that. I made him so hard and wet. Made him moan out loud for me. He doesn't let those other guys do this. He never lets them._

Those thoughts were heading down a road that led to trouble and him giving a shit about whether or not Reese was going to keep messing around with other guys, so it seemed like a good idea to cut that off. Tom focused on the dick in his hand and the tense thighs straddling his own and tried to make this good for Reese, this touching he was allowing when he never allowed the guys he brought home to do anything to him. So Tom held him in his hands and tried to show him that he knew how to take care, how to touch him with lust and passion and caution and awareness at the same time as he tried to do everything he could think of that made a guy's dick wanna go off like a rocket.

Reese dragged one of Tom's hands free from their laps and pulled it behind him, pressing the palm of Tom's hand to Reese's ass and holding it there. There wasn't enough brain power left in Tom's entire body to operate a mechanical pencil, but he could figure that one out. Without making any move to pull Reese closer to him or push him onto Tom's dick, he grabbed his butt cheek hard, squeezing and stripping a grunt out of Reese with his fingers pressing into the tight denim-covered crack of his ass. He wanted to slide his hand down the back of Reese's pants and palm the bare skin of his ass, slide his fingers deeper into his crack and press against his hole, but he didn't want to make any mistakes now. Not when Reese was rocking and rasping breaths and biting back moans as his dick hardened one last unbelievable bit before he threw his head back and gasped.

"Ahhh, God! Fuck. Fuck."

The sight of Reese coming, one hand clenched on Tom's shoulder, the other still grasping his cock was enough to send him over the edge, stomach muscles tightening to the point of pain as he held himself in place, pleasure racing from his stomach to his ass to his balls, bursting in a sudden explosion of heat and pleasure that had him dropping his head back and locking all of his muscles as he came, trying not to thrust up and dump Reese off of his lap.

When the rushing in his ears, his pulse thundering, slowed to a rumble, he dropped his head forward and rested his forehead against Reese's sweaty shoulder.

"Shit."

He felt it, the second Reese stiffened on his lap, his spine shooting straight, his shoulders pulling back as he scrambled off Tom, wiping his hands on his thighs because they were both still half-dressed in jeans.

"Let me guess." His words were so bitter Tom bet they curdled in his mouth. "You didn't mean for it to go that far. You still want us to be _friends_." Even his air quotes were sarcastic. "Well, fuck you, _roomie_."

Tom shook his head and stayed on the chair, hands on his thighs, zipper open and his soft dick still hanging out of his pants.

"Pick a fight all you want, kid. Reese." That wasn't how they were going to do this. "But you're doing it by yourself."

"I heard you. You were still breathing hard when you started regretting this."

"You hearing it doesn't mean I said it." He might have been unsure of himself the whole way through this mess of sex and friendship and freaking public declarations to the rest of the freaking house, but he wasn't trying to bullshit his way out of it now. It was what it was. "I came after you, Reese. Came after you and brought you back here and I'm not the one standing halfway across the room."

"So what, you're gay now?"

He sighed. "I'm not gay." He held a hand up before Reese could get rolling again. "I'm just, equal opportunity, I guess. And it's not a new thing, okay? But it _has_ been a long time. So if anyone's gonna freak out about this, maybe it could be me and not you, all right?" He tried a smile.

Reese wasn't ready to give up on fighting quite yet. He crossed his arms over his bare chest and shifted his weight to his heels.

"Are you freaking out?"

"I wasn't, but if it'll make you feel better, I can." Reese turned his head, but not before Tom heard the breath huff out of him in a laugh he tried to cover up by stomping over to his closet for a towel. He lofted a second towel through the air to _thwap_ against Tom's chest, a sound that immediately brought him back to the night he'd cleaned himself up under a sheet after watching Reese blow that last kid in the bed barely ten feet from his. One of the hottest experiences of his life, before last weekend's blowjob and tonight's mutual rub off. He felt his dick try to stir but knew that was a no-go even as he brushed the towel roughly over himself. He judged it safe to move and stood, stretching his arms high over his head until his back cracked as he arched to one side.

Reese's eyes were locked on his chest, so he dragged the stretching out a little, twisting to the right and the left in smooth turns that showed off his abs and his chest, still cut enough to catch the eye. When he caught Reese staring after one blatantly show-offy stretch, he couldn't hide his grin, running a hand over his own chest and giving himself a tiny shiver of response to the slow stroke.

"If I lie down, any chance you wanna lie down with me?" Two steps over to Reese's bed, where he'd never once sat or lain before. But he figured that pushing that boundary now was probably a good thing.

Reese moved until he stood over Tom, staring down at him.

"You're not freaking out."

"No, I'm not." Easier to show than tell he supposed. He shucked off his jeans and his shorts, kicking them off the end of the mattress.

Reese's eyes widened at his suddenly naked state.

"You wanted that."

"I came to get you for that." He scratched his belly idly with one hand, listening to himself, and decided to rephrase that. "Actually, I didn't think it'd get anything like that far, but yeah, I wanted that." He scooched over until his shoulder was pressed against the wall. "I wanted that like I couldn't breathe without it. That's why I came back."

His roommate, now maybe lover, sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress, ready to bolt.

"But you'll leave again." A statement, not a question.

"Yeah." He wasn't sugarcoating the desire, he wouldn't do that to the conflict. "Not tonight, but probably tomorrow, yeah. I'll have to go."

"To Boston."

Reese's hand on his chest, so light it was hardly more pressure than a small bird fluttering there. But touching him. Still.

"That's right."

"And you'll come back Sunday night."

"Yes."

"Okay."

Reese left his jeans on and Tom didn't make a move toward them. Toward Reese at all. He let the smaller man swing his legs up on the skinny bed and find a spot next to him, hoping Reese would end up touching him but not pushing for anything other than this, lying here with a half-naked boy he wanted lying next to him.

Holding himself still was tiring, though, as Reese twisted and turned and tried to find a way to share the twin bed with Tom without feeling trapped by his larger body. Eventually Tom closed his eyes and waited it out, every muscle in his body twitching each time Reese pressed up against his naked skin. He'd have sworn he was awake for every torturous moment, but when he jerked away with a start, it was obvious he'd been napping for a while. Long enough for his roommate to get comfortable with the situation.

Reese was sprawled on his chest, sweaty skin sticking to Tom's where he pressed against the length of Tom's left side, his head resting on Tom's biceps.

He must have felt Tom twitch because his eyes were locked on Tom's when Tom pried his own lids open to suss out their respective positions.

"God, you're hot." Reese was half-teasing, half not. He could tell by the grin overpowered by the stare. "Your muscles are so fucking hard. I wish—"

"What?"

The pause while he waited for Reese to finish his sentence lasted long enough for Tom to worry that he'd managed to remind Reese of He Who Shall Not Be Named after all. Fuck.

"It's just, there are things I miss, you know? Things I can't do anymore."

"Can't, because..."

Reese's voice was matter of fact.

"Because having a weeping panic attack is generally considered a turn-off in bed."

Tom turned his head and pressed his lips to the top of Reese's sweaty head, wanting to wrap his arms around him and hang on but knowing that wouldn't help.

After a minute, Reese started talking again, tracing a finger along the muscles of Tom's chest, which would have gotten things going again if Tom hadn't just come his brains out all over Reese's stomach.

"I used to like _different_ things, you know? Than the stuff I do now." Tom felt Reese's head move against his arm as he looked up, checking Tom's reaction. He took a slow breath and kept his eyes on the ceiling. Not the best time for a safety lecture, no doubt. "I told you, that night. But it wasn't just...getting fucked. It was feeling wrapped up in someone, surrounded by them. It used to make me feel, I don't know. Safe."

"And now it—"

"Makes me pretty sure I'm having a heart attack and I'm going to die." Reese's laugh was short and soft. "Not really fun for the person next to me."

"Roll over."

Tom wanted to try something.

"What?"

"Roll over. On your side."

"Why?"

"Just try it."

Reese slid off him and curled up on his side, head resting on Tom's arm. His shoulders were hunched in as he pulled his knees up and huddled next to Tom. The bumps of his vertebrae were highlighted by the street light spilling in the window, a delicate chain curving down to his butt.

Tom kept his hands back as he curled onto his side, right behind Reese. The heat radiating off Reese's body warmed his stomach, his thighs, his shins. He tucked himself in like...

"Pretend you're sitting on me. Like a chair."

The goofiness of the image actually made Reese huff a short laugh. His spine lost a little of its intense hunch toward his knees. After a moment, he scooched back an inch until they were pressed together from shoulder to ankle, exactly as if Tom were his own personal armchair.

Tom rested his arm along his own hip and held still. He'd hoped that by having nothing on him or around him, with the open space of their room in front of him, Reese might be able to tolerate the feel of him, might let him recreate that feeling of safety and being surrounded in a way that didn't cause fear.

When Reese reached back and grabbed his hand, Tom stopped breathing.

He pulled Tom's hand forward and put it on his hip. Then let go and curled his own hands together in front of his chest again.

"Don't move, okay?"

The pillow was wet under his temples. He didn't move his hand to wipe his eyes. Tom stared at the dark head in front of him, wondering how this kid was so much braver than he would ever be.

"Okay," he said. And held still until he fell asleep again.

# 10

Crawling out of bed before dawn to hit the road was way harder when there was a warm body next to his, even if that warm body was kneeing him in the kidneys and burrowing a forehead into his spine. But he got up because even the possibility of morning sex couldn't drown out the voice shouting in the back of his head that said he'd already lost almost eighteen hours on the clock. And there was no guarantee he'd get another cab this weekend after pissing off dispatch by dropping his car off halfway into the shift. So, warm body sharing the bed or no, it was time to head out.

Tom ruffled his fingers through Reese's hair and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his bare shoulder as Reese reached out in his sleep and claimed the freed up space in the twin bed.

At least he wouldn't have any problem staying awake tonight. There was absolutely no chance he'd be able to stop himself from obsessively replaying every moment of their half-naked grinding chair sex over and over every moment he wasn't actually driving the cab.

Shit. He'd be lucky if he could stop himself doing it long enough to get his fares safely from Point A to Point B. For once, he'd probably find himself hoping for dead time between trips, minutes to let his mind wander.

But his late night waits for fares outside of hotels and bars were transformed from dead time into playtime when his phone rang with the twanging strains of country and he swiped it on to hear Reese's voice drilling right into his head via his earpiece.

"Hey roomie. Anyone with you?"

"Nah. I'm waiting for a...friend who needed a ride to Logan at midnight." It was eleven forty-five and Tom was scheduled to pick up a fare at the Ritz Carlton who was heading to the airport. Not yet time for the bar crowd to start heading home, so he was gonna squeeze in this one last fare to Logan and hope to get lucky so he wasn't deadheading it back into the city with an empty back seat.

"So you got fifteen minutes before he comes down, right?"

"Probably." He wiggled his butt deeper into the seat and leaned his head back, willing to let fifteen minutes of chatter with Reese distract him from the irritating idleness of waiting. And the obsessive sex replays.

"If I tell you how much I wanna suck your dick again, in extreme detail, think I can get you off before he gets there?"

Tom sat up straight, jeans instantly tight in the crotch as his penis swelled, half-hard in an instant at Reese's cheerful question.

"Holy shit." He dropped his hand to his lap reflexively and squeezed the rough fabric over his dick. The newly healing skin on his hand stretched tight as his grip flexed.

"Let's give it the old college try, shall we?"

It was like talking to an Oxford don on crack. Porn crack.

"Because last night was hot, no question, but the next time I pull your zipper down? It's going to be with my teeth. You're gonna feel my breath, all nice and hot on your dick, because I'm gonna lick you through your shorts for a while, and smell you, get my nose right in there, until everything is all wet and I can practically see the head of your dick outlined against the fabric."

And because Reese was a genius, a genuine mad scientist genius, at torture sex, he dragged his description of sucking Tom's cock out so long that he'd just sucked the head into his mouth, verbally speaking, when Tom's fare jiggled the handle and rapped on the rear window to get him to unlock the door.

Reese's chipper "Call me later!" had Tom groaning in frustration and actual pain, his dick an iron bar in his pants as he cranked the key in the ignition and tried to remember how to drive.

For once he cursed the taxi karma gods that rained down fares on him one after the other that night. Every time a fare swiped a credit card or passed him cash, his hand was already stroking his phone, calling Reese. And every time, before he could cruise down the block or around a corner, one hand on the wheel, one hand in his lap, squeezing his dick, he'd spot another fare. He was tempted to flip his roof light off every damn time and slide by until he could park deep in the shadows of a residential side street somewhere and fucking _get off_ with Reese's voice slicking its way through the ether into his ear. But the thought of his looming second semester tuition bill, like a giant boulder braced from tumbling downhill and crushing all in its path by one small protrusion, a tiny little bump he built one fare at a time. But it always needed shoring up, the danger forever rocking just over his head.

So he picked up every fare and even pissed off another cabbie, slicing across two lanes and catching the tail end of a yellow light to scoop a rare late night fare in Dorchester. And every time the back door chunked closed after he got paid, his hands grabbed the phone and called Reese, who talked him hard again in seconds.

Until it was practically dawn and the phone rang and rang and he knew that Reese had finally fallen asleep, leaving him riding the edge of this curling wave of desire that threatened to suck him under and never let him go.

Even jerking off in his backseat, wrapped up in a blanket and spilling hard into yesterday's T-shirt didn't do more than take the edge off the need that had ripped through him every time the phone buzzed and Reese's voice had whispered low in his ear.

By the time Sunday night came around, Tom was grateful he didn't get pulled over for doing a hundred on the Mass Pike all the way back to campus.

He'd refused to get on the phone with Reese during the drive back.

"Me ending up a giant smear of blood and come on the highway is not the way this weekend is gonna end. I'm hanging up now. See you in an hour."

He bounced through the radio spectrum, taking out his excess energy and sexual tension with ADHD hopping about, from alt country to some heavy electronica, to the 50s and 60s classics his dad had loved. Until that last made him blink and soften up and he cranked it back to the heavy bass of dubstep, whose mechanical shuffling, thumping beat kept his edge until he slid off the highway, through the side streets and into the perfect karma of a parking spot around the corner from Perkins House.

Legs pumping, he bounded up the stairs two and three at a time and his heart was racing when he hit their room, shutting the door with a click behind him and leaning back against it with his hands on the knob behind him.

"Hey."

Reese was seated at his desk, head propped on one fist, elbow on the desk, as he angled back and watched Tom come through the door.

"Hey."

Books sprawled across the desk, battling for space with scribbled-upon notebook paper and an aggressive number of pens, but Tom would have bet a hundred bucks that his roommate couldn't have described the last page he'd read.

He was getting good at picking up on a nervous Reese via nonverbal cues.

The lip biting. The staring up at him through the eyelashes. The digging of one hand into a back jeans pocket, pushing down a little so the waistband gaped at the small of his back, just calling for a hand to be snuck down there until fingers grabbed the top of his ass...

Okay, maybe that part was his imagination.

"I should mention that, although I talk a really good game, I maybe crossed some lines last night." Yup. There was no denying Reese's nerves. He wasn't quite lion tamer behind the chair again, but that might have been strictly a willpower triumph. Tom forced his hands to release the doorknob and hang casually at his sides, instead of ripping his own T-shirt off over his head and stripping his pants off immediately thereafter.

"Reese, I can't even count the number of lines we've crossed. Think you can be more specific?"

"Umm, about the whole sex thing?"

Yeeeah, that didn't bode well for his evening.

Focus.

_Listen to Reese, not your dick, asshole._

"If sex is off the table, I'm gonna cry. Just saying." He winked at Reese and immediately felt like a total creep. "I'm kidding, of course. I mean, really, just kidding. God, that sounded like I wanted to pressure you into sex or a blowjob or something. It's totally okay if you want a break. Or you know, to not do it. Ever. Again."

Seriously with the crying, though.

Reese flushed.

"Don't be stupid. If I could've sucked your dick through the phone last night, I would've. I just can't, you know, throw down. Like, I don't know, some kind of sex fiend or something."

"Dude, you are totally a sex fiend."

The compliment distracted Reese for a moment. He planted a hand on his hip and cocked his head to the side, eyebrows flying up.

"I know, right? But you know what I mean. I still need to..." He trailed off, biting his lip and tilting his chin down while looking up at Tom in a way that he already read as tentative flirtation. The contrast with the gritty, filthy words that had streamed through his phone like a heroin hit to his brain made his skin hum and tighten. He held himself in place, the door hard and cold beneath his shoulders.

"Do things your way. I got it. No worries." He nodded, gripping his own wrists behind his back so hard that he wondered if he'd leave bruises. "Whatever works for you. I'm down." He cleared his throat after another moment of silent staring from Reese, sitting at the desk and wide-eyeing him. "What, um, works for you?"

"Not looming over me from across the room would be good." Reese frowned at him as he stood up and took a step forward.

Tom's knees shook a little, catching him off guard. He put a hand up to the corner edge of the wall just past their closets, almost all the way in their room, but still holding back.

"Tell me what to do and I'll do it." His laugh was short. "Shit. There isn't a goddamn thing you couldn't tell me to do right now that I wouldn't do."

He didn't think Reese's eyes could get any bigger. He was wrong. When they narrowed, Tom's heart started racing so fast he could barely hear Reese over the rushing sound in his ears.

"Lie down on your bed."

He jumped to obey, kicking off his shoes on the way. Once on his back, though, he didn't know what to do with his hands, lacing them awkwardly on his stomach, like a school kid in church.

Not the image he wanted in his mind right now.

"Take your pants off."

It was harder than it sounded. His hands fumbled with his zipper and he struggled to get his jeans past his hips. Struggled until they were finally at his thighs and he could push them off, tucking his knees up to his chest to do it, aware the entire time of Reese watching him, eyes on his stiffening dick or his ass.

Reese didn't tell him to take his shirt off and lying there partially dressed heightened the feeling of exposure until his hands started to tremble. Flipping their dynamic, being the one who was watched after all this time of being the one who did the watching, made him shiver. He didn't know how Reese could stand it. The tension, the suspense, feeling someone's eyes on you and not knowing what was going through their head.

Being able to do this either made Reese the bravest or the most fucked up guy he knew. Maybe both.

The overhead light was shining in his eyes until Reese's shadow fell across him as he moved to the side of the bed, looking down at Tom with a calm face. He'd slipped into that place he went to with the boys he picked up and brought back to their room and for a moment Tom almost said something. Almost sat up and tried to change the mood until it felt more like Friday night had, when the two of them had tipped over the edge together.

But he'd meant it when he'd told Reese that there wasn't anything Reese couldn't tell him to do right now and a part of him _wanted_ to experience it again, that total surrender of control he'd handed to Reese the night he'd burned his arm. He knew that the control was a way for Reese to handle his own fears, to keep himself in the now instead of sliding back to memories of a night that paralyzed him when he couldn't block it out, but Tom also had his own reasons for giving up control. For loosening, if only for a little while, that tight grip he had on his every hour, thought and deed, everything so precisely organized to allow him this chance at clawing a little bit of normalcy back into his life by finishing school. Normalcy and the lock on his future, that thing that had always been vaguely golden and sturdy, until the day he'd watched it shimmer and disappear like a mirage. When he'd finally woken up and realized that there was no one, no one who would help him, no one to provide that safety net, he'd gone on lockdown. Every dollar, every hour, of vital importance, no time allowed to be wasted on fear, frustration, loneliness, any of the things he felt in the months of high-end homelessness he'd made it through on his way back here. Here, to this room, where he'd planned on holing up and shutting out the world until he graduated.

This room, where he'd found his wreck of a boy, battling his way out from under his own demon and watching him now with eyes that narrowed and gleamed.

"Touch yourself."

He dropped his hands immediately to his dick, only to have Reese swat them away with a glancing blow that made his dick bounce and harden further. He gasped in surprise.

"Not your dick. Not yet. Just touch yourself. Show me what feels good."

Awkwardness swirled in his belly as he flushed, feeling like an idiot. What _felt_ good? Shit. He didn't even know any more what felt good, other than Reese touching him, which wasn't happening yet, but he hoped would soon.

He closed his eyes, because he wasn't brave enough to do this with them open. Dropped his hands to his chest and tried to remember if he liked to be touched there. His hands were jerking across his stomach, the least sexy caress ever, when the light still glowing through his eyelids dimmed further and lips brushed against his forehead.

"Hey, relax."

It was easier to talk with his eyes shut. Easier to be honest in the little bit of dark he made for himself.

"I feel like an idiot."

Reese's breath ghosted over his face as he huffed a laugh. "You look fucking hot. And watching your dick get hard without you touching it is going to be even hotter." Tom felt those words like a hot lick from his base to his crown, and his dick was definitely on board with this game. "Go with it."

Inhaling slowly, he filled his lungs and held that breath for one long moment before blowing the air out, the rise and fall of his stomach under his hands becoming self-soothing. Reese's fingers were tracing the lines of his face, skimming over his eyebrows and down the side of his face until Tom turned his head and caught at a finger with his teeth, nipping gently and slicking his tongue over the tip until Reese tugged it free.

Reese rubbed the damp finger against Tom's bottom lip, dragging it open and pressing his mouth against Tom's briefly, his breath hot and damp, their tongues tangling for a minute as Reese kissed him right out of self-consciousness. Tom didn't even realize he'd snaked a hand up behind Reese's neck until Reese tugged that hand back down to Tom's chest and then bumped his own fingers down the ladder of Tom's ribs to skim along his hip, leaving a sensitized streak down Tom's body.

"Go on. Show me."

Nothing had ever been so sure of itself as that voice. Tom scraped his fingernails across the front of his shirt, dragging them back and forth across the tips of his nipples until the nubs hardened and he was almost plucking them as they caught against his fingernails. Pleasure shot from his nipples to his crotch, tickling his balls until they pulled up and tightened. He felt himself growing hard and heavy, the throb of his pulse beating in his palms, the soles of his feet, the still tingling skin of his hip.

Suddenly he needed to see Reese. To know that this wasn't some manipulative game. A trick to make him look foolish. He didn't believe it, but he couldn't shake the nerves, the fear that once again he was being watched by someone hoping to see him fail.

He opened his eyes.

Reese didn't even notice, his gaze focused like a laser on Tom's body, roving hungrily from Tom's dick to his hands to his face again at last. Reese's own hand rested in his lap, cupped over his groin, holding himself. He didn't smile, but his eyes were steady and open, his want shining out of him. He was burning up with it, eyes dilated until they were black, a flush on his cheeks, biting at his own lip. His breathing was shallow.

"Show me."

Tom left one hand on his chest and dragged the other down, down. He felt the edge of his pubes, rough and lighting up nerves as he ruffled his fingers through them, skating close enough to his dick to make it twitch.

A drop of pre-come hit his stomach. He smelled the scent of his own sex rising. The need to grab himself and stroke was building in pressure, sparking from his hands to his hips until he jerked and thrust up into the air. He slid his hand lower, curving his fingers but not touching his balls, waiting for something. For permission.

"Can I?" His voice was harsh.

Reese's breath caught, a hitch Tom heard like a mouth on his skin. His dick lifted off his stomach, twitching with another throb of pleasure.

"Yes."

He moved his fingers a fraction of an inch, so deep into the moment now that he barely allowed himself to do more than tease. He brushed his balls, feeling them tighten up further, the thin skin wrinkling and tingling under his hand until he shivered. His hips were rocking, his asshole clenching and releasing on nothing, pulsing in time with the heartbeat that pulsed in his dick. He pinched one stiff nipple hard enough to make himself gasp. Moaned out loud and let the shame of that sound drive his need higher.

His cock was drooling on his stomach now, a stiff length of wanting, wanting, wanting Reese to touch him so badly.

"Now. Do it, Tom."

The sob that almost ripped out of him as he _finally_ slicked his hand over the head of his dick and down, gripping so hard it hurt, burned in his chest.

"Fuck." Reese spoke over his panting breath, the slick crackle of pre-come greasing his hand as it slid up and back down again. "You're so fucking hot. So hard it looks like it hurts."

"Unh." Tom flung his free hand up, hung on to the railing at his head until his arm muscles bulged and ached, while he jerked himself as hard as he could. The heat boiled in his balls.

The dip of the mattress as weight shifted was his only warning before Reese's hands wrapped around his own on his dick, holding him hard and in place at the base. And even knowing it was coming, the hot, wet slide of Reese's mouth over his dick had him crying out so loudly he knew people could hear, but he couldn't stop, couldn't lock down the stream of pleases.

"God, Reese, please. Please. Don't..." Anything. He would say anything. Do anything. Just don't let it stop.

He could map the inside of Reese's mouth with the tip of his dick. The hard, bumpy roof of his mouth. The sleek muscled curl of his tongue. The yielding cushion of his soft palate and the tight, squeezing hollow of his throat. Reese leaned his full weight against Tom's stomach and thighs, an arm braced on each to hold him still as he struggled to snap his hips, the white hot heat of a magnesium flare shooting up his spine to arch his back and tense every muscle in his chest until he couldn't breathe. Could only throw his head back and cry out as he came, pouring himself into Reese's mouth and gasping, at last, for air to fill his battered lungs.

The creak of the mattress as Reese moved, the shuffle of his feet in socks on the floor, barely registered as sounds while Tom's bones melted into the mattress. He could feel the slow throb of his pulse in his toes and in lingering twitches of his dick. Consciousness swirled in dizzy spirals until it sank back into his brain via the blown off top of his skull. The light disappeared with a snap as Reese flipped the switch by the closets. Tom could see him hesitate in the middle of the room as he returned, halfway between their two beds, his head turned toward his own bed, his body angled toward Tom, who struggled to pull words together in something resembling a coherent sentence.

"Shit. Wait."

Not exactly coherent.

"What?" Reese's voice was snappish, but Tom heard it for what it was. The uncertainty, intolerable for this boy who never for a moment let loose the reins of control in his sexual encounters, of not knowing what came next.

This was the difference between him and the boys Reese dominated. Tom wasn't heading out the door thirty seconds after coming his brains out, although he had no doubt that Reese was thinking that might be easier.

Tough. Tom had no intention of this being the end of the dick-sucking either.

He might need a moment to reassemble his skull first, though.

"C'mere." He struggled to sit up, dragging the pillow from under his head to the edge of the bed. He'd planned this for hours in his cab, imagining how it would happen and trying to figure out a way that he could be sure he wouldn't do anything—on accident but that wouldn't matter—to bring the bad feelings to the surface. All he knew was that he was going to be fucking nervous enough doing this for the first time without worrying that he was gonna trigger some flashback that would leave Reese trembling and scared.

On his knees had seemed like the best choice.

The soft _thwap_ of the pillow hitting the floor hit Reese like a gunshot, jerking him back a step and bringing his arms up to cross over his chest.

"Why?"

Tom wished there was enough light in the room for Reese to see the raised eyebrows look on Tom's face. He thought maybe he could have sparked a giggle in the slender shadow facing him but still too far away.

"You're kind of regretting that now, huh?" He hadn't meant to bring that into the light of actual words, but if he was having a hard time with the whiplash of their sexual tension, he could only imagine the roiling chaos going on in Reese's brain right now.

For a moment, a moment that sank like a cold stone in his stomach, he knew Reese was going to agree with him. Then he heard Reese sigh, a slow exhale that dropped his shoulders and sapped the tension from his crossed arms, one hand drifting down to rest a palm against the side of Tom's face. He leaned into that hand a little.

"No."

"But it's weird that I don't go away after."

"Yes."

"Think you can come here?" He held out a hand, the motion, at least, visible in the dark room. "Just to hang on. For a moment."

The hand Reese placed in his trembled. Tom pressed it lightly between his own palms until it stilled, then braced his own elbows on his thighs and dropped his head to rest against their linked hands.

"What we just did? That was the single hottest fucking thing I've ever done." Reese's hand turned until his fingers flexed against Tom's skull, who shook his head a little, back and forth, rubbing his forehead against Reese's palm. "But that can't be _all_ we do. You know that, right?"

Their breathing synchronized in the silence.

"You're a hot mess. And fuck me if that doesn't turn my crank, the things you do to keep a grip." His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, until he could make out the shape of their feet as he stared down at the floor. Thank God for the dark. No way could he have had this conversation in the light. "But I'm trying not to be an asshole here, Reese. And you've gotta let me—" He fumbled for the right words. Came up empty. "You've gotta _let_ me. Okay?"

He tried to picture himself, golden Tom of two years ago, holding hands with a guy in the dark and asking—no, _begging_ —the guy to let Tom blow him and almost sent himself into a panic. How the fuck handling his own shit and trying to operate at a base level of not being a total asshole had led here, he didn't know. His hands clenched on Reese's until he knew he was crushing bones painfully tight, but he couldn't let go. Reese had his own need for control, but so did Tom. He'd been broken, broken and shattered in a million pieces, and the man he'd managed to reassemble out of the wreck of his past life didn't know much, but he knew this one thing.

"I can't be that guy. Don't make me be that guy."

Tom waited.

It felt like meditating, breathing in and out in time with the man who stood in front of him, waiting to know what would happen next. To find out which scary alternative would be offered to him. Never doing this again, because he couldn't, he just _couldn't_ be the guy who took advantage, not anymore. Or, almost more scary and the thing that might leave Tom the one trembling with nerves...in another minute or an hour or the next day, Tom would be on his knees, unsure of himself and so, so vulnerable.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The shift in Reese's body that let him know they were going to be okay, at least for this, was invisible in the dark, but he felt it with his hands as the tension in Reese's wrist slipped away. A tiny thing, but enough to let him know it was okay to reach a hand out and feel for the buckle of Reese's belt and tug him closer with it.

His hands _were_ shaking, the clatter of the belt buckle as it slipped out of his fingers and hit the floor loud enough to make them jerk. He'd felt less spotlit when the lights were on and Reese was watching him stroke himself. It didn't help that he knew Reese's eyes had to have adjusted to the dark too, that he knew Reese could see him clearly enough, head bowed before him.

But maybe Reese could tell how freaked out he was, because a moment later his hands were bracketing Tom's face and lifting it up while he bent down and laid his mouth against Tom's, who opened to him like coming home. Reese's lips were soft and shifting against his, pressing and letting go, his tongue a slow stroke for a moment that slid back to shared breathing and then drifting kisses that landed all over Tom's face until he closed his eyes as they fell on his eyelids. The tension he didn't know he'd been holding in his shoulders and chest melted away.

Reese lifted his mouth to speak.

"It's kind of weird for both of us, okay? Don't stress."

He nodded, eyes stinging a little, and held still for one last kiss. His breathing steadied as he pulled his face away from Reese's and tugged again on the waistband he held in curled fingers. Reese shifted forward a step until he stood between Tom's knees and sucked in his stomach as Tom opened his jeans and pushed them down his thighs, taking his briefs with them because he didn't think he could do this in slow steps.

"Tickles."

Reese's whisper made him smile and press a kiss to the newly bared skin of his stomach. While he was there, he stopped to lick a line from the bump of one hip bone to the other. Too skinny, his boy was. Needed to eat more. But the taste of him, clean and warm under Tom's tongue kicked off a slow burn in his gut that he'd thought was done for the night. He rested his teeth against the edge of Reese's hip and resisted giving him a bite. Warm skin under his mouth quivered and he smiled, hyperaware of the cock inches from his face. From his mouth.

"Don't you dare." Reese tried to sound stern but failed as the giggles broke out when Tom let his teeth close a microscopic amount, the gentlest of nips. The skin of Reese's flat stomach quaked with silent laughter as Tom sucked on it.

The lightness saved him, made it okay to push his face forward and down, pressing his nose into the scruff of pubes and inhale, the rich earthy smell of Reese clicking with something deep in his belly. He felt the muscles of Reese's stomach move before he heard the words.

"Sorry. I'm normally pretty well-groomed, but I haven't been, you know..." Reese's voice was tight, "...using the equipment, so maintenance has fallen way off plan." His laugh sounded brittle.

Tom stroked a hand down Reese's flank, steadying them both. When he nudged Reese a step back and slid off the bed to land his knees on the pillow, he felt the tension ratchet up in the sudden tensing of Reese's quad. But the more nervous Reese got, the further Tom's calm took hold.

"Just saying, if you end up picking pubes out of your teeth, sorry 'bout that."

He gave Reese's hip a squeeze with one hand, slipping the other between his thighs and sliding it up until he cupped Reese's balls in his hand, holding still.

"Shh. Only one of us gets to be nervous about giving a first blowjob," he teased, stroking a finger along the skin farther back but careful not to approach anything near ass territory, until Reese had to put a hand on his shoulder as he inhaled on a hiss.

He was only joking now, nerves evaporating in the thrill of hearing the noises escape from Reese with his every touch. To make him gasp was as easy as leaning forward and taking the tip of his dick in Tom's mouth, curling his tongue around the head and sucking softly until the tang of pre-come leaked into his mouth. To make him moan, a hand slicking that mix of spit and come down the length of Reese's dick with a tight grip.

The pillow under his knees was cheap as shit and the linoleum floor made his bones ache, but he didn't give a damn. The heady surge of giving pleasure to this man rose in him like a cresting wave and he felt himself getting hard again. He would play his boy like a fucking instrument and let the music wash him clean.

But Reese was hung up on his joke maybe, because he pushed a hand down between Tom's face, blocking him, and spoke in between panting breaths.

"Wait. You don't have to."

"Yeah, I do." Tom licked at the hand in his way, wriggling his tongue in between the vee of two fingers and glancing the tip against the hot smooth skin of Reese's dick.

Reese's hand in his hair jerked him back. "No. Don't. If you aren't into it—"

"Will you shut up?" Tom lifted his head and hoped Reese's night vision was good enough to see that his eyes were wide open. "I'm so fucking into this you're gonna have to blow me all over again when I'm done, okay? Now get your hands out of the fucking way and let me suck your dick."

Reese snorted with laughter but his fingers trembled when he rested them on Tom's shoulders.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss into Reese's knuckles until Reese's other hand landed on his head, feathering lightly against his hair. But after a moment, he pulled himself away until Reese let go. Then he leaned in again.

Enough fucking around. Time to get serious.

Reese's dick had only been half-committed to the event at hand, but Tom wrapped his lips around his teeth, his hand around the base, and focused on getting its full attention. The feeling of Reese's dick, swelling, hardening, against his tongue was like a reward for good behavior. He discovered that Reese had told the truth. Everything was easier when he let some more spit leak out of his mouth and the entire endeavor got sloppy and wet. The sudden uptick in volume of Reese's moans and occasional muttered curses was clear feedback that he approved.

Tom's jaw was aching and his respect for everyone, male or female, who'd ever blown him was going through the roof, but he ignored the dull pain radiating in his face and concentrated on experimenting, determined to figure out all of the things that made Reese catch his breath and groan _fuuuck_ while his hands flexed in Tom's hair. Once, he skimmed a hand up Reese's chest to find his nipple, pinching hard right as he sucked tightly up his length, only to gag as Reese's hips snapped and his dick pressed in on Tom's throat.

"Sorry," Reese gasped, pulling back.

Tom shook his head and pressed forward, hands pulling Reese's hips in smooth pulses as he swallowed and tried not to gag. He trusted Reese not to go too far and concentrated on the press of dick against the roof of his mouth, applying the flat of his tongue as a lever, with satisfying results.

Soon enough, Reese was pushing him back, gasping out a warning.

"Tom. I'm gonna come."

He knew there was risk. God, with Reese's behavior, the risk might even be real. But this thing he was doing, this blowjob—something Reese used for control, for revenge almost, against the past—felt to Tom like a gift that he could give. When he'd had nothing for so long to give to anyone at all. So he ignored the push and the warning and continued sucking.

He _needed_ to give something. He could give this.

He hadn't thought Reese's dick could get any harder, but it did, the thin skin stretched so tight it felt like marble right as Reese's breath caught, held, his entire body locked in place as he came silently, his dick spilling hot and slippery in Tom's mouth, come slipping past his lips.

Shit. Swallowing was harder than it looked.

He knew what he liked, so Tom sucked on Reese until he stopped coming and softened. He let his roommate's penis slip free of his mouth and coughed a little. He was out of breath and his own dick hung heavy and hard, needing only a moment's attention to have him coming again, but Tom ignored it to wallow in the moment, pretty sure he'd given the best first blowjob ever.

He rested his head against Reese's thigh, grinning to himself, feeling Reese's weight pushing back on him as his boy slumped against him. After a minute, Reese tugged him up and pulled him across the room to his own bed, pushing Tom down onto it before straddling his thighs. Looked like he hadn't forgotten what Tom had told him pre-blowjob. His hand on Tom's aching dick was strong and sure and in less than thirty seconds Tom was arching his back and shooting come across his own belly again.

Reese wiped them both off with a sheet before kicking it to the foot of the bed and pushing Tom onto his side, facing the room. He snuggled up behind Tom and wrapped his arm around him. Tom let go of his worry and trusted Reese to know that he was okay with them together in his bed.

"Holy shit," Reese whispered and stroked Tom's chest, making him shiver when he skimmed over one hypersensitive nipple.

"Totally." His front was cool with evaporating sweat but Reese radiated heat at his back and he was too fucking tired to move an arm in search of a blanket. He felt flattened, as if a steamroller had smashed him to a pulp and laid him out in a stripe on a road. There was probably some more articulate thing he should say to Reese, but Tom couldn't figure it out as a wave of sleep swept over him.

Holy shit indeed.

* * *

Every muscle in his body ached.

He woke up slowly, becoming aware of each body part as it complained, hands gripping tight to the edge of the mattress, curled up on his side with his top leg flung back over Reese's legs in a tangle that helped him balance on the bed instead of landing in a painful heap on the floor. Reese might not hog the covers, not that it was cool enough for them to need much, but he sure didn't give up more than about six inches of mattress.

Tom rolled off the bed and dug a pair of track pants out of his dresser. The need to brush his teeth before Reese woke up prodded at him. Spending the night with someone was weird.

By the time he got back, Reese was awake. Not up. Lying there on the bed with a little smile as if he knew a fantastic secret, watching him walk in the door.

"Scoot over."

Reese backed up until his spine was pressed against the wall. Tom climbed on the bed and laid down, both of them on their sides, facing each other, which on the skinny ass twin bed left about ten inches of space between their faces.

"Morning." He was still working out if and when and how the whole touching thing worked with Reese. Definitely a different set of rules than the hookups, but the idea of getting it wrong gave him a chill that was _not_ the good kind of shivery. Letting Reese make the first move seemed like a permanently good idea.

"Morning."

Tom knew the grin on his face was goofy, more fit for a teenager playing Ding Dong Ditch maybe, but he let his freak flag fly. Fuck it.

Reese shifted forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Tom closed his eyes for a second then opened them again to find his roommate watching him, no matching grin in sight.

"I need to talk to you about something."

"Holy shit. Already? It's been two nights?"

"Ha ha. Seriously."

"Okay. I can do serious. Sorry. Ignore the grinning."

"You're such a dork."

He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue until Reese laughed at him.

But he settled down quickly enough when the laughter faded off Reese's lips. Energy was zinging through his veins until he felt as if he could shoot lightning bolts out of his fingertips, but he could lock it down to listen.

"I'm out."

Zap.

Two words that sucked the zippiness right out of him. He wasn't an idiot. He knew this conversation was coming. Just hadn't thought it would be _now_.

Reese looked at him.

"Yeah, I know."

"Even if I wanted to, which I don't, the closet is no longer an option for me."

Tom nodded. He understood.

Understanding didn't make it easier, though.

"I'm not in the same place."

"Not out obviously. And not planning on it?"

"It's not like that. I don't want people to know this, 'cause I don't want them to know jack shit about me. Everything that gets out there about me is gonna end up in a fucking gossip column. No question."

Reese nodded. Maybe the giant neon sign reading " _Okay, but..._ " was only visible to Tom.

The pause dragged on. He saw Reese lining up the words in his head, getting everything in proper order. Trying to find the right words that would tell Tom he was full of shit and could go play in traffic. With a blindfold.

Reese didn't blink when he spoke.

"I understand. I really do."

"But."

A sad smile on a face he only wanted to make happy.

"But, I already have one secret thing I don't talk about with hardly anyone. I can't have another secret thing, you know? I just can't."

"I get it. I...don't know what to say." He stared at the wrinkled sheet between them. "I'm doing my best this year to stay off everyone's radar. The dean basically told me that I'm gone if my being here causes a fucking press circus."

"Are you sure? I heard she was pretty great."

"There's a shitload of deans. Maybe that was one of the other ones. I'm sure. I got it in writing." The urge to touch was overwhelming. He traced the edge of Reese's eyebrow with one finger. Such an elegant curve. "Imagine the headlines. Jailbird's Son Turns Gay in Despair. Criminal or Cocksucker, News at Nine. Pretty sure a shot of me with my new boyfriend would bring the paparazzi running."

Reese rolled his eyes and laughed out loud.

"You know they can't say cocksucker on television, right?"

"They'll make an exception for me."

"Not even for you, hot stuff."

Reese had a smile on his face but it looked like a battered postcard pinned to a dorm door with one bent thumbtack, perilously close to falling to the floor.

"So what do we do?" He didn't have a solution. Hoped Reese was chock full of good ideas about how to make this not suck. He smoothed a hand over the wrinkled sheet, pressing it flat and smooth, only to watch the creases pop back up after his hand passed over them.

"Not sure. This can't be a thing where we hide in our room—"

"Like we've been doing all semester."

"—like we've been doing all semester—"

"Except with more fucking."

"—and avoiding the world. I don't need a frigging therapist to know that's a bad idea. Neither of us need another reason to do that."

"Yeah, that's kind of my entire plan for this year, you know?"

"I know. But I think that's a sucky plan, Tom. You're not a criminal. You don't have to shut yourself up in a prison."

"I know."

"Do you? Because it feels like you think you deserve to be punished."

He stared at the sharp line of Reese's collarbone, avoiding his gaze.

"Maybe I do."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because I was kind of an asshole, Reese." He struggled to articulate the thing that had been a driving need in him the night before. "I thought I walked on fucking water and everybody worshipped me and that they _should_ because there wasn't anything I couldn't do, you know?" His voice sank like a pebble in an inky black well until it was a whisper that wouldn't even echo in the depths. "You wouldn't have liked me very much then."

"Were you an asshole like...you know, those guys?"

"Fuck, no. I was a jerk. Not a fucking rapist."

"Okay. So you were a jerk. Don't be a jerk anymore, right?"

"It's not that easy. It's like, everyone knows all of this stuff about me, but—"

"But none of it's true about you now."

"Jesus, this is fucking torture. Talking about all this."

"And you want _me_ to go to therapy?"

"Ha ha. Very funny. Fuck. Yes, okay? None of it's true anymore. Or at least, most of it isn't, but I can see it in their eyes when people look at me and I can't walk around with a fucking sign. _Tom Worthington, changed man. Promise._ " He flashed two thumbs up and a politician's shit-eating grin at Reese for a second before letting it all fade.

"You know what'd help people figure out that you're different now? If you left our fucking room and went out and talked to them."

"I told you—"

"Yeah, low profile. I got it." Reese's sigh was huge, gusting out of him, his breath blowing in Tom's face. A shot of adrenaline hit his veins, his heart jumpstarted and every muscle down to his fucking toes clenched in a moment of panic that the words about to come out of Reese's mouth would be some version of, _Sorry, buddy, no can do._

"Okay." Reese threw a leg over Tom's hip. "Two things. One, if you feel like you need to be punished for having been a jerk, how about you let me do the punishing, 'kay? 'Cause I'll take it out on your ass, no problem." He pushed his hips forward until his dick pressed up against the front of Tom's track pants, rubbing himself against the silky stuff. Tom arched his lower back, pushing against Reese, and shivered. Images from porn he'd only ever dared to watch after learning how to clear cached memory on his laptop flashed through his brain. What did Reese mean, _take it out on his ass?_

The possibilities made his head spin. He didn't know if he was thrilled or terrified, but either way his heart was racing.

"What's the second thing?" His voice was thready. He hoped Reese didn't notice.

Fat chance. Reese grabbed his hip and squeezed, a small smile on his face, before pushing Tom to roll over on his back. Tom scooted a little bit in from the bed's edge as Reese settled onto his stomach.

"Second, I'm not giving you an ultimatum." The air in his lungs gusted out of him, his belly sinking under Reese's ass until it felt as if Reese was sitting on his spine.

_Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you._

"Not yet."

Tom nodded, willing to agree to anything right now, knowing he wasn't fighting for the good guys in this one. But he kept his eyes lowered, because he didn't want Reese to see in them that he couldn't find a way out of this tangled knot. He wanted to keep on being the good guy in Reese's eyes, as long as he could.

Hard fingers under his chin pushed up until he couldn't hide. He focused on the skinny muscles of Reese's arms, the delicate slash of his collarbone, but Reese's thumb pressing on his lip and shaking his chin made it clear that paying attention was not an option. "Not yet. But we don't have forever to figure this out either."

He looked up at Reese, who was serious but somehow not mad, eyes crinkling at their outer edges as he rocked his butt on Tom's stomach. Tom slid his hands up Reese's thighs, feeling the drag of hair against his palms until he hit the smooth skin of Reese's hips.

"I know we don't." Saying the word, _we_ , made it easier. He wasn't alone in this one, trying to figure out where the fuck he was going. Someone was down here in the shit with him, trying to figure it out too. "Got it."

He let his thumbs drift in and lower until they brushed against rough hairs. Reese leaned forward, slinking over him until he planted his hands above Tom's shoulders and held himself in pushup position over him.

"So. I'm your new boyfriend, huh?"

Tom fought back a smile.

"Was wondering if you missed that." He dug his fingers in until Reese yelped and laughed and grabbed for his hands, wrestling with him until they were both breathing hard and Tom let him pin his hands above his head. The heat of Reese's body lay flush against him from shoulders to hips.

He closed his eyes as Reese trailed the tips of his hair over Tom's face, sliding his mouth around to bite at the edge of Tom's ear. His words vibrated against Tom's skin.

"Not likely."

He tilted his head back, opening his neck to Reese's mouth, tugging lightly against the hands braceleting his wrists from time to time, to feel the restraint. He opened his mouth, tried to slow his breathing.

"You're stuck with me, boyfriend."

And though he knew that the _real_ sentence should have finish with _for now_ , Tom ignored it, rolling his hips under Reese's assault on his skin and gasping with the desire to stay under Reese's control for as long as he could.

He'd take it. For now. For as long as Reese let him.

# 11

In the end, they pushed and pulled and argued (politely, because they were still at the stage where they mostly wanted to get naked and get off every night and it was really hard to get mad at or disagree with the guy who had your dick in his mouth) their way to a compromise.

Tom refused to budge on increasing his exposure on campus and Reese was on lockdown on the need to be open about the two of them being together. But half an hour into the tenth rehash of the same argument in one week, on a library break between blowjobs and other naked playtime fun stuff, one of them, they couldn't remember who later, said the one thing that unlocked the door to a different option.

Whoever it was who said it had just tossed his bag, heavy with books, onto the end of one of their beds before following it with a full-body flop and a loud groan.

"Thank God we live off campus and don't have to deal with those assholes all the time."

At which point someone had pulled the other person's pants off and helped him forget the outside world with a blowjob. Now, sweat cooling on flushed skin, heartbeats returning to a slow and steady thump, the threat of losing the hottest fucking sex of his life because he wouldn't walk across campus holding Reese's hand hanging over his head...

He couldn't do it. Wouldn't walk on campus with...

Wait.

"We live off campus."

Reese looked up from playing with the fine blond hairs on Tom's fingers. His hair was a tangled mess, matted between his head and the pillow. He raised his eyebrows.

"Off campus."

"And?"

"What if." The butterflies in his stomach became kickboxers. "What if I was out, but only here?"

"Tell me more." Reese squeezed Tom's fingers between his own, their knuckles rubbing sharply against each other.

He was still figuring this out himself.

"Here. At Perkins. We could be more, I don't know, like everyone else. Leave our door open when we study. Talk to our neighbors."

"Hang out in the living room." Reese got where he was heading with this.

Jesus. The idea of heading back to that room where everyone in the house had last watched him walk out hand-in-hand with Reese.

Fuck.

"Right. The living room. And we could be, you know."

"Together."

"Yeah. I could be out, _here_ , and keep my head down on campus."

"You know there's no guarantee that someone here at Perkins wouldn't take your picture, right? Sell it to a tabloid. You, hand-in-hand with your boyfriend."

He knew that Reese said the word boyfriend with a curl of his lip and a lick of his tongue, like he wanted to make out with that word, every time. That's what Tom knew.

"Yeah. But that's already a risk. And nobody's taken any naked pictures of me in the shower yet, so maybe I can try not to worry about that."

"Except me."

"What?"

"Nobody's taken any naked pictures of you in the shower but me."

"What?"

"I'm just saying." The Groucho Marx eyebrow wiggle was a nice touch. "Don't think you're safe here."

Tom groaned and smacked a hand over his eyes. Told himself Reese was almost surely kidding.

"Jesus, shut up." He was heading out in the morning for another weekend of nonstop driving and he didn't think he could do it if he was afraid the whole time that he was running out of days where Reese would be patient with him and his fucking hiding. "What do you think?"

"What do I think about everyone here at Perkins knowing that I'm your boyfriend and seeing us, I don't know, snuggling on the couch in the living room on movie night?"

Shit. He'd never gone to one of the house movie nights.

Yeah, like _that_ was the part making him nervous.

"Yeah."

Reese tugged at Tom's fingers, peeling them off his face and then framing his eye sockets with fingers and thumbs that pried his lids open until he had no choice but to look at his freaking boyfriend.

Who was grinning at him.

"I think we have a winner."

The wash of relief was so intense he thought he'd choke on it.

"Oh thank God."

His voice broke on the muttered words and he closed his eyes again because it felt as if Reese could see right into his brain when they looked at each other. And the inside of Tom's brain was a funky mess of little boy crying after a big scare and grown up boy shaking at the knees because he could see the scares coming. Nobody should see that mess.

It didn't exactly inspire confidence.

"Hey. What? What's that?"

"I figured—" He cleared his throat with a rough cough. "You were probably getting pretty tired of my bullshit." Reese pushed his fingers through Tom's short blond hair and scraped his fingernails gently against his scalp. Tom shuddered with relief and pleasure. "I'm, uh, happy. You know. That you can be happy. With me."

He pulled Reese's hand down over his face and opened his mouth against Reese's fingers, breathing on them, inhaling the sharp clean smell of this guy. This guy who he hated the idea of disappointing. Even as he knew he would, over and over again.

But for a little while, he could be the right guy. The good guy.

He'd try.

For as long as he could.

* * *

Which didn't mean that things weren't fucking weird and awkward as hell for the next week or two. First, Tom had to stomp on bouts of hyperventilation that hit him every five minutes, all weekend long, as he cruised the twisty farm trails that had been paved over into Boston streets. He'd stayed on campus again Friday night, putting off his departure until the following morning and blocking thoughts of how much income he was losing. Now, instead of freaking out about money, he couldn't stop thinking about what it would mean to be out, even the little bit he'd offered Reese as a compromise and his sense of self-preservation was trying to crawl out of his body via the back of his throat and a puddle of vomit.

After tying his brain up in knots for most of twenty-four hours, he caved and called Reese.

"What is my fucking problem?" His cab was empty. The pre-dawn hours were deader than shit and he should be catnapping at the airport instead of stalking Comm Ave and Faneuil Hall for non-existent tourists on a post-bar drunken search for Paul Revere's grave. "I swear to God, I don't give a shit if people at Perkins know I'm gay. Or bi. Or what the fuck ever. I'm not ashamed, I swear. So why am I fucking freaking out about this?"

Sleep hung heavy on Reese's voice, barely awake but keeping a one-finger grip on consciousness for Tom's sake.

"I think, ahh..." Tom heard the yawn that interrupted him, "...I think you can be okay with something in your head, you know? And still not be easy with it in your gut."

"Hunh." He grunted. Maybe.

"Your brain knows there's not a damn thing wrong with you. With us. But that doesn't mean the rest of your body is a hundred percent on board. And don't you even tell me that your dick is," Reese shot out before Tom could open his mouth.

He grunted again. Kid knew him too well already.

"Maybe."

The pause before Reese spoke again was long enough that Tom thought he might have fallen asleep on the phone. They'd already done that once tonight.

"What would your dad say?"

"I don't give a shit."

"He wouldn't care?"

"No. I don't give a shit what he would say."

But he knew. Even as he was answering Reese, Tom could hear his father's voice, so reasonable, a whisper in the back of his brain.

_There isn't anything wrong with it, son, but it makes people uncomfortable. No one wants to do business with the guy who makes them uncomfortable. It's like having a woman in your foursome for golf. Nothing wrong with it, she's probably a fine golfer, but no one's going to smoke cigars and talk about the girl they're seeing on the side when she's there. No one can relax. I don't care what a man does in his private life, but I wouldn't hire an out gay man for a million dollars._

The sound of a complicit chuckle and the sweet stench of a Cuban cigar rolled over him like a wave crashing on shore. He could see his father's wink.

_Well, maybe for a million. Greases a lot of wheels, kiddo._

"He'd say, 'Keep it on the down-low, kid.'"

Reese sounded skeptical.

"Your _dad_ knows what down-low is?"

Tom pictured his patrician, ever-charming father.

"Maybe he wouldn't use those words exactly."

"Yeah, I bet. So, if that's what you grew up with..."

"Seriously. I don't give a shit what he'd think."

"Brain. Gut. Not the same thing."

"I'm not 'torn in two by my homosexual urges', Reese." Tom knew Reese could hear the air quotes in his voice. He was aware that he was coming close to snapping at the one person who absolutely was not going to give him shit about this, well, shit. "I'm not that deep and this ain't _General Hospital_."

"God, you're totally gay. You used a soap opera as a pop culture reference."

Tom wondered if Reese could hear him rolling his eyes too.

"Oh, for crying out loud. Everyone knows _General Hospital_."

"Your mom watch it?"

Even before he got the words out, a hot flush raced up his neck and blew off the top of his head.

"My nanny."

"Your _nanny_?"

He held the phone away from his ear, hoping he had an ear drum left to save after Reese's piercing shriek.

"What? My mom died when I was little and my dad worked a lot. Of course I had a nanny."

" _Of course I had a nanny._ Ow." __ He heard a thump and a thunk and knew Reese had flung himself onto his bed and missed the pillow again, smacking his head against the wall. "You know how weird that is, right?"

"It's not weird. Tons of people have nannies."

"Yeah, tons of rich people happy to pawn their kids off on total strangers. God, didn't you have grandparents or something who could've watched you?"

He wished they were still talking about how uncomfortable it made him to be out and proud.

"No."

After a silent moment, Reese didn't hesitate to show how far he'd open up his world for Tom.

"Wanna borrow mine? Fair warning. They've got a thing for smoked fish. And ice fishing. Haven't been to Sweden in four generations, still think we're Vikings."

God, he really liked this kid.

He barked a laugh and sped past another highway sign ticking the exits off between Boston and home. He didn't remember it happening, but the locus of his awareness, the magnet to which his heart would drift and turn like a compass, had moved west from Boston and lodged itself in the Connecticut River Valley, at the edge of campus. Perkins House was home and every mile he counted down on the Mass Pike brought him closer to the one place in the world he could relax and feel safe.

Or as close to safe as he got these days.

At the door to their room, Reese met him with a stack of library books and his laptop. Which, face it, was way less likely to be an invitation to get naked than a bottle of lube would have been.

"Study in the living room tonight?"

Tom had read a science fiction book once where a decontamination chamber was used to make sure scientists who had visited a dangerous planet didn't bring anything back with them. One step of the decontamination involved closing your eyes while a millisecond of intense heat incinerated the surface layer of skin, leaving everyone hairless—which had seemed weird once he thought about it...no eyebrows, no eyelashes? Geeks were strange—and dusted with dead skin cells.

Peculiar how he could have a detailed memory of that entire story in the time it took for heat to flash over his body and leave him dizzy.

"Right." He laid a hand flat for the books and held them as Reese pulled the door shut, a little breathless. "Wait!"

He pushed past Reese and tossed his bag on the end of his bed. Ran his hands through his hair and tried to figure out what he wanted.

"Tom."

He didn't turn around. "Give me a second. Fuck. It's not a race, is it? They running out of couch space downstairs?"

No answer.

He let a deep breath fill his chest, lift his ribs, and hissed it out slowly.

"I want to get out of these clothes, okay? I'm not _not_ going with you. Just let me get my shit together."

The huff of laughter that floated to him from the doorway released some more tension.

"I don't think we have that kind of time."

He looked over his shoulder to make sure that the bird he flipped was aimed with precision.

"Ha ha." He stripped off his jeans and button down shirt. He didn't know why he kept on dressing up for his driving hours. Some sort of fucked up pride, no doubt, totally unobserved by anyone who sat in the back of his vehicle for twenty fucking minutes.

But doing this—whatever _this_ was and it occurred to him that they hadn't exactly discussed the details...did Reese expected them to make out?—called for a different uniform. Comfy clothes, nothing that had ever had an ounce of starch sprayed in its general direction.

His oldest, softest T-shirt. The one from high school track with the holes along the neckline. And a pair of plaid flannel pajama pants washed so many times the hems were falling out.

"You bringing your pillow too?"

"What?" He looked over at Reese.

"Are we studying or having a nap?"

"I'm in college. I'm supposed to go to class in my pajamas," he retorted and grabbed his own reading. "It's a law."

Reese looked up and shook his head.

"Whatever. Ready, you fashion plate, you?"

He slid his feet into the LL Bean slippers Reese had given him a week ago, claiming he'd have to give up his New England citizenship if he didn't own a pair.

"Ready."

Reese pulled the door open and swept Tom through with a half-bow.

"I'll try to keep my hands off you. But you're not making it easy for me, dude."

Fuck it. How bad could it be? In the grand scheme of things, this was the least invasive exposed moment he'd had in two years. This was like stepping onto the track in the minutes before the start of the race. A whole lot on the line, but the worst that could happen was a bunch of people seeing him make an ass out of himself. And he never did. Not then. Not now.

He had this.

Feeling cocky, a flash of old Tom, without the asshole qualities, he smacked his own ass and gave it a little shake as he headed for the stairs.

"No lie. You know you want it."

Reese snorted.

They clattered down the worn, sloping steps to the ground floor. He lifted his chin at Scruffy Beard at the front desk. Minimum wage to sit there and do the homework you were gonna do anyway was a win even for the over-thirty crowd at Perkins apparently. And fin aid was fin aid.

He thought for a minute about what that would be like, being able to work for nothing more than enough money to keep yourself in beer and cell phone service. Shook that thought off with an actual shrug, because going down that what-if road would fuck him up. He'd learned that one already. Too many times.

The living room with the fireplace was unoccupied. A lot of shouting echoed down the hall from the living room with the television on the flip side of the lobby.

Reese caught his glance at the opposite end of the hall.

"So you think you can dance."

"What?"

" _So You Think You Can Dance_. It's a TV show, with—"

"I got this one. Dancers."

Reese's middle finger was far more elegant than his own. "It's really good."

"I don't think I'm gay enough for that one yet."

The throw pillow that smacked him in the face was only to be expected.

He snagged it as a bonus and stuffed it behind his back as he sank into the corner of a worn blue canvas couch that sagged in the middle. Then the second-guessing started.

Should he have sat in the middle? Were they supposed to _snuggle_? All at once he wished there were other people in the room, although those first moments of realizing it was vacant had been a relief. If there were other couples here, he could have gotten an idea of how this was going to work. Was it possible he'd never done this with a girl? Fuck. He hated looking like an idiot.

Reese's sigh filled the room.

"Seriously. Dude. Relax."

Reese dragged the coffee table closer to the couch, planted his stack of library books on it and sat at the opposite end. With slow and exaggerated motions, he kicked off his Chucks, swung his feet up onto the couch and dropped them into Tom's lap.

He grabbed a book off the top of the stack and started reading.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Okay. Cool."

It wasn't that simple, of course. The first couple of times other students walked by the entryway to the room and glanced inside, Tom flinched and knew Reese felt it. The first time it happened, Reese waited until the laughing women moved down the hall then rubbed his foot over Tom's crotch until Tom glared at him and grabbed his ankle.

"Stop that."

"I'm just saying. You'll get your reward, sailor."

The fight to keep the grin off his face was compromised by his attempts to look stern and keep Reese's wandering feet under control. He was so caught up in his efforts not to start sporting wood in a communal study room he barely noticed when a woman who looked familiar, as most residents did, came in and spread her work over half the round table in the corner. She nodded at them.

"Hey." Reese was always going to be the friendly one.

"Hi." She flipped open her laptop, smiling. "I always fall asleep on the couches."

"Totally. Which reminds me," Reese said and tossed his book back on the coffee table stack. He stood up and stretched, distractingly. "Caffeine will be required."

Tom tore his gaze away from the gap between the hem of Reese's T-shirt and the waistband of his jeans. "Coffee?"

Reese scoffed. "Not unless you're hiding a Keurig in your closet. Our caffeine will be cold and bubbly. Coke?"

"Sure."

Reese stopped at the end of the couch, on his way to the second floor vending machines. Tom glanced up in time to catch a hesitant smile and the pinch of his lip between incisors. Reese braced himself with a hand on the couch arm, brushing against Tom's shoulder, and leaned down.

A split second to decide. Turn his face as if he didn't notice Reese about to kiss him? Was that chick looking at them? Did he care? Maybe? Fuck it.

Before his brain had time to implode, he felt a puff of air hit his cheek as Reese laughed.

"Don't kill yourself trying to figure out what to do," he said in Tom's ear, voice pitched low. He pressed a swift kiss to Tom's cheek. "Just relax."

Tom kept his eyes on the book in his lap. "I'm trying to."

A ruffling hand in his hair.

"I know, baby."

He couldn't help watching Reese walk away from him, hips swinging loosely with long strides, and then couldn't help checking if the woman at the table had noticed. When he got a grin as she finagled a twisty knot with her long hair and a pen, he blushed hot enough to see across the room.

"I need to get me one of those."

What did that mean? She wanted a gay boyfriend?

"I have to suck it up and get my own Diet Cokes."

He laughed shortly. "Yeah. Carbonated beverages. Perk number one." He slid his phone out of his pocket and tried to text surreptitiously.

His dad may have been an asshole, but he'd been brilliant at making people like him. Tom had used that skill once upon a time for pathetically unimportant crap like being the center of the groups of hard-partying rich kids in high school and the first years of college. He could sure as shit use it to grease the wheels of this grand coming out experiment.

If that was manipulative, he could feel bad about it later. After he bribed the nice lady to like him and not sell photos of him to the fucking tabloids.

When Reese swung back in the room and delivered a can of Diet Coke glistening with condensation to the Study Lady, she squealed with happiness.

"I got a text that you might want one of these?" Reese grinned at her.

"Aww, you guys are the best!" She blew them a kiss as Reese flopped back on the couch, delivering his feet to Tom's lap.

"You cheating on me now, Theresa?" Scruffy Beard dude leaned in the doorway and helped himself to the conversation. Tom hunched his shoulders and sank lower into the couch.

"If you had a boyfriend who brought me drinks, maybe I'd be faithful."

Holy shit. Maybe he could fit _under_ the cushions of this couch.

"Soda whore."

"You wish it was that easy."

Their words could've been tiny daggers, but Tom's social radar wasn't so rusty he couldn't tell there was a heavy dose of flirting going on there. In the meantime, he reined in the urge to slither off the sofa and belly crawl out the door like a Navy SEAL sneaking up on the bad guys.

Too late.

"Hey! It's the cavemen!"

He was saved from having to figure out the response to _that_ by Study Lady's eye rolling and snapped out retort.

"Jesus, Dave. That's nice."

"What?" The guy tugged on his beard and glanced at them as if Tom would clear it up for him before the light bulb finally went on upstairs. "Aw, I don't mean, like, stupid, ugly dudes. I mean men. Who hide out in their cave. You know what I mean. Right?" His eyes were pleading with them to get him off the hook for looking like an asshole.

It felt kind of slimy, being so aware of every interaction with these people and how he could manipulate it for his own benefit. This was why he avoided people, so he didn't have to do this anymore.

But he was damn good at it.

"No worries, dude. Even us cavemen gotta venture out now and then to make sure we don't start thinking the shadows on the walls are the real thing."

His mental bet that Scruffy Beard Guy would take a Plato reference and run with it in an effort to impress the girl would have won big in Vegas. SBG perched on the arm of the couch across from them and kept the chat going even as it devolved into gossip about a campus rumor that one of the philosophy profs was shacking up with a student. Again.

By the time Study Lady and SBG decided to organize another Friday drinks party, Reese and Tom had already been co-opted to coordinate cups and ice procurement with the other three floors of the house. When Tom flinched at the thought, Reese pressed squirmy toes against his dick and Tom took that as a promise of a blowjob if he didn't run out of the room screaming.

He ground his molars and smiled.

Reese took pity on him an hour later and scooped his books up as he stood.

"Later, gators. We'll see you on Friday?"

"You bet. Don't forget, no Styrofoam. Parry flips out when he sees that stuff. Save us the drama," Study Lady advised.

Scruffy Beard Guy waved and mouthed _thank you_ at Tom as they headed out.

Back in their room, he faceplanted on his bed and groaned. Reese laughed, the hiss of a zipper and the smack of books on his desk background noise as he unpacked. But after a moment Tom felt blunt fingernails scratching through his short hair. He tilted his head up to maximize Reese's reach. Fuck, he loved having his head scratched.

"That sucked." A pinch on his ear yanked a correction out of him. "Not being with you. Talking to people I don't know. Hate it."

"Aww, baby, they loved you."

He rolled onto his side and tucked his hands under the pillow at his cheek. Reese trailed a fingertip over his eyebrow and down to his jaw.

"I know. I feel kinda bad about that."

"That they liked you? Why?"

"Because I made them." At Reese's quizzical look, he explained, knowing it would make him sound like an arrogant jackass. "Like me, I mean. I made you bring her a Diet Coke and cracked jokes with Dave—"

"Tom."

"I know, I just—"

Reese sat on the edge of his mattress, scooching Tom's hip over to make room for himself before planting a hand behind Tom's butt and leaning over him casually.

"I made that stupid philosophy joke 'cause I know that's his major—" and it was weird how he'd picked that up, through osmosis maybe, since he'd hardly exchanged more than five minutes of conversation with the guy before tonight, "—so he could show off in front of his girl—"

"Theresa."

"Right." He exhaled hard and twisted his face back into the pillow mashed into a ball beneath his head. His voice was muffled. He almost hoped Reese couldn't hear him. "I manipulated the whole thing, so they'd like me. Maybe not talk about me."

"Because you don't want people to know we're sleeping together?"

He rolled over in a hurry. Fuck. Everything he said came out wrong.

Reese was staring at him, a neutral expression on his face, and Tom hoped that wasn't cover for a look of disgust.

"No. Swear to God. I wasn't even thinking about that. I mean, I was. At first, because your feet were in my crotch and my dick was kinda hard and walking around with a hard-on was not really part of the coming out deal. But no one gave a shit, so I forgot about that. I just wanted them to like me so they won't, you know—"

"Fuck you over."

"Yeah." He sighed. Maybe Reese did get it. And he didn't seem too horrified. Maybe he already knew that Tom was still an asshole, deep down, and didn't mind. Or maybe he didn't care, because Tom was simply one more guy he was fucking instead of figuring out how to deal with the shit that had happened to him.

He closed his eyes when the hand stroked his cheek, fingertips curving behind his ear and down the back of his neck until Reese's hand clamped down and gave him a shake.

"Jesus, baby, you're so fucked up."

"I know. I'm an asshole."

This shake was hard enough that his eyes flew open.

"No, you're an idiot. That's not manipulating people, you dork." Reese leaned down into his face, moving his mouth in exaggerated slow motion. "That's making friends."

"Shut up."

"You did something nice for someone. You held up your end of a conversation. If they like you and don't screw you over, that's just a side bennie of having friends."

Tom huffed and rolled over onto his back.

"Not in my experience."

Reese draped himself along Tom's body, his left leg squirming down between Tom's thighs and pressing up against his dick. His arm rested on Tom from shoulder to hip, fingers playing with his waistband, scraping over the ticklish skin at his waist. He spoke into Tom's neck, his breath warm and damp against Tom's skin, his tongue sneaking out to lick a delicate stripe up to Tom's jaw.

"Well, your friends before were assholes. Obviously."

"Obviously."

Reese's hand drifted over to the front of Tom's pajama pants, where his dick was calling out for attention, what with all the stroking and tickling.

"Can't we just stay in here all the time?" He pushed his hips into Reese's palm, feeling the squeeze on his dick like a shot of adrenaline that pooled in his belly before racing down his legs and up his spine until his asshole clenched and he pushed his head back into his pillow, closing his eyes again.

"No."

"But why?" he whined, letting his inner five-year-old run wild.

"Because we're functional human beings." Reese followed a rough stroke to his dick with an easy reach between Tom's legs to cups his balls and squeeze. He scraped his fingernails over them.

Tom held on to the fabric of the conversation by a thread.

"We're really not."

"Yeah, I know. But we're working on it." Reese slid down his torso, dragging his lips over Tom's T-shirt until he found a nipple and pinched it gently between his teeth.

"Fine. Okay. But tonight..."

"Yeah, we're done for the night." He kept jacking Tom's dick and the cotton under his mouth grew wet and molded to Tom's chest, Reese's teeth worrying at his nipple until Tom groaned under a slow, lazy flood of pleasure and heat.

"Oh thank God." He slid his palms down the skinny ladder of Reese's ribcage, asking with his hands for a shift until Reese sat on his belly, grinning down at him through loose dark hair. "I know you promised to blow me, but I really want your dick in my mouth."

Reese laughed, swinging a leg off him and standing up to strip off his jeans and T-shirt in a hurry. "I promised to blow you?"

"Your feet did. When you rubbed them all over my dick downstairs."

"Ah, the language of love. Or toes, I guess. Didn't know you were fluent."

"I've got dick down in ten languages, dude." He shucked his own clothes and kicked them to the floor, where Reese glared at him and scooped them into his laundry basket. "Sorry."

"Ten languages."

"At least eight."

"Bullshit." Reese's bony knee dug into his side as he climbed back on and sat high on Tom's belly, his balls resting warm and soft on Tom's skin. He grabbed the edge of the desk-cum-TV stand that pressed up against the head of the bed and leaned over Tom, cock teasing him as he hardened under Tom's hot gaze.

"I'll bet you the first blowjob you can't do eight."

"You're on. Dick. French, _bite_. Italian, _cazzo_. Spanish, _verga_. That's four."

"That's three! _Dick_ doesn't count."

"Does too. English is a language."

"Cheater. You still can't do it."

But Reese must have experienced a surge of competitiveness, because he upped the ante on their game, lifting himself high enough off Tom's chest to put his dick in front of Tom's face as Reese started to drag his hand up and down in a mesmerizing tease. Tom tore his eyes away. _Focus._

" _Titi_."

"What?"

"Tagalog." Reese's wrinkled forehead said that hadn't cleared up anything for him. He'd stopped mid-stroke, frozen in place like a screenshot from Tom's own personal porn flick. Tom blushed as he clarified. "Filipino. Our housekeeper was from there."

"Your...? Of course. More servants. Sometime I forget how rich you are. Usually it seems like you don't have any more money than me. And I'm not exactly poor, but still."

Tom couldn't lie to his face, so distraction was in order. " _Hui_. _Chinko_."

"Now you're making shit up."

Reese narrowed his eyes, hair hanging in his face as he brought his hand up to his mouth, licked his palm until it glistened with spit and gripped himself again, groaning as he squeezed his fist hard around his cock, the dark red head sliding out of sight in his hand before popping out again. So close Tom could see the pre-come welling out of his slit, each clear drop sliding down to be caught by Reese's palm until Tom could hear it, the slick wet crackle the only sound in the room as he forgot the words he was searching for. Forgot the point of this game. Forgot his fucking name.

" _Schwa...shwa—_ "

He could smell Reese's come, the salty scent of him like the ocean washing him clean, sucking him down, until he went under. He slid a hand up Reese's thigh to his hip and yanked him forward, knocking Reese's arm free with his other hand and aiming that flushed cock at his mouth until it slid home, hot and hard against the back of his throat. He groaned because it would feel good on Reese's skin and pulled his head back a little because he still hadn't figured out how to deep throat and when Reese's cock went too deep it made him gag. But he could lick and play to his heart's content and he did, losing himself in the suck and hum and the sounds that were pouring out of Reese. Until Reese's hands landed on his chest, pinching at his nipples, nails scraping against his skin and he bucked up hard. His dick was a hammer looking for a nail and finding nothing but air above him.

The urge to roll onto his side and squirm around until his head was at Reese's crotch, take him in his mouth again and feel him swell and harden even more on his tongue, swept over him like a wave scraping the shore clean. Reese could pillow an arm under his own head and play with him as he liked, running those fine long fingers up his thighs and wrapping them around Tom's hips as he licked his way from the start to the finish line.

He pictured it in his head and growled, which made Reese shiver and jerk against his mouth. It would never work. Tom only barely fit on the bed as it was. No fucking way could they lie down together on these stupid twin mattresses unless they were face to face. The only other option was face to feet. Face to cock wasn't an option. He pulled his mouth off Reese to complain. The injustice of that was worth interrupting a blowjob.

"Stupid fucking twin beds," he grumbled. "I wanna sixty-nine, but there isn't enough room."

Reese was panting as he wrinkled his brow. He looked fucking hot, hard dick shiny with spit and bobbing in front of Tom's face. Confused, but hot. "Sure there is."

He swung himself around on one knee until his ass was in the air over Tom's face, his junk hanging low and heavy.

"Ask and you shall receive," Reese said, the words hitting Tom's dick on a warm exhale.

_I'm an asshole._ Tom was glad Reese couldn't see his face as he groaned. "I think your dick makes me stupid."

"I'm not sure you can blame that on my dick, baby."

He bit at the thigh closest to him and laughed when Reese yelped.

"Dude, you totally don't want to bite me when my mouth is near your dick." Reese dragged the flat of his tongue down the crease of Tom's thigh. "I'm just saying—gay boy lesson number twenty-seven."

Tom laughed and then sighed as Reese's mouth slid over him, taking him deep. God, if only they could stay in this room forever. Fuck Dave and Theresa and getting to know people. Fuck the _So You Think You Can Dance_ viewers and the guy who flipped his shit if a lone Styrofoam cup escaped into the wild. Fuck 'em all, because the only one he gave a damn about was Reese.

If only Reese could be persuaded not to give a damn about the rest of them. He rubbed his palms up the back of Reese's thighs and scraped his fingernails across the curve of his ass until Reese's muscles quivered under his hands, sensitized and shivering. He concentrated on pulling Reese into his mouth, losing himself in the push and pull between them until they took their turns coming and collapsed into a sticky pile of tangled limbs.

He waited for his breathing to slow and dragged his fingertips over sweaty skin, drifting back to his earlier thoughts.

Tom knew if it were up to him, they really would hide away from the rest of the world. He'd fallen into sex and openness with Reese like coming home, the most natural thing in the world (except for swallowing, which was really a sonuvabitch to master, timing-wise), but his connection with Reese didn't mean he was throwing open the gates to the rest of the jerkoffs out there.

He didn't know much, but he knew people couldn't be trusted not to fuck you over when given the chance. To gloat in your humiliation.

Except Reese. Somehow, despite everything, he trusted Reese.

And for Reese, he would crack the door open a little and see if the light hurt when it shone in on them both.

# 12

They took to leaving the door to their room open at all hours, which went unremarked by their neighbors for long enough that Tom wondered if they'd missed some window of bonding with everyone. Maybe they'd end up ignored by all as antisocial bastards.

But eventually, Scruffy Beard Guy—Dave, damn it, Reese would kill him if he forgot it again—wandered in one night to shoot the shit. And Theresa took to poking her head in on Friday evenings to ask for help setting up the living room bar and evacuating any stray Styrofoam from the vicinity.

When Alice, the ex-cop from Boston turned Islamic Studies major shooting for a job with the State Department, boomed a complaint down the hall at top volume, Tom knew they were in.

"Goddamn it, Worthy! If you two leave your lube in the shower one more time, I'm gonna squeeze it into your toothpaste tube."

After weeks of flinching and bracing himself not to react whenever someone strolled past their door or entered unannounced, Tom found a Zen state about the entire thing. He didn't know if everyone had already assumed he and Reese were fucking, if they didn't notice Reese's hands or feet or ass constantly draped somewhere on Tom's person, or if no one gave a shit. In any case, though he still avoided being on campus and participating in conversations in general—thank God Reese did enough talking for the both of them—he'd relaxed into a comfort zone at Perkins that had felt as awkward at first as a poorly fitted jock strap, but was now more like a warm bath. Reese had cajoled him into trying one of those too.

As a rule, the bathtubs in the house were avoided, under the belief that the porcelain may or may not have been touched by a chemical cleanser at any point since the Kennedy administration. Reese swore up and down the very grout itself had squealed and begged for mercy when he'd scrubbed it to within an inch of its life. He notified the entire floor the bathroom would be off limits for an hour at ten o'clock on Sunday night.

"You know I'm not a girl, right?" Tom asked as soon as he opened the bathroom stall door that hid the tub instead of a toilet and spotted the candles flickering on the window sill high in the wall above the old claw-foot tub.

"Get in the tub, stud." Reese flipped off the overhead light switch by the door and shed his clothes on the way over. By the time he reached the tub, he was naked to the waist and Tom was frozen with his jeans halfway down his thighs, arrested by the sight of his boy in the dancing golden light, hair pulled up off his neck in a topknot.

He got in the tub.

When Reese slid over him, slippery and wet in the hot water, he didn't care if the gasp that escaped him was girly or not. Reese's hands drifted lazily through the water, pinching one of Tom's nipples before skimming down his hip with a touch so light it almost tickled. Sweat misted Tom's face as he leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and luxuriated in the slick rub of skin-on-skin. He let his own hands drift over Reese's ass to stroke the back of his legs, feeling the transition from smooth skin to the scattered hairs of Reese's upper thighs under his fingertips.

They laid in the tub, rubbing torsos and tangling legs without any race to the finish, cocks hard and bumping up against each other while they touched each other everywhere else. When the water cooled and they got out, Tom felt half asleep and as if he'd been walking the edge of coming for so long that he didn't remember any other way to be. The bright light of the hall was harsh in his eyes, but their room was dark and he let Reese push him down on the bed, dropping the towel he'd wrapped around his hips to the floor. Reese's mouth sliding down him felt as easy and smooth as the hot water of the bath. He tried to tug him back up.

Reese raised his mouth from sucking a circle of heat on Tom's hip with a pop.

"Just let me."

And he did, the slick wetness of Reese's mouth sliding over his dick slow and easy, Reese pushing on the back of his thighs until Tom raised his knees, remembering watching this with a cramp of wanting that almost bent him in half.

"Easy. Relax."

But nothing had ever felt so good, so intense, as the circling rub of Reese's fingertip against his hole as his mouth kept up the slow, hard suck on Tom's cock. Every muscle in his body clenched until he ached from the back of his neck to the arch of his feet. His entire groin was wet and slick with spit and lube that had appeared out of nowhere and when Reese finally pushed the tips of two fingers into Tom's ass, the sting and burn of the stretch hit his nerves like a gong that reverberated a shimmering bell of a climax throughout his whole body.

When his ears stopped ringing with the force of his orgasm, he grabbed Reese and pulled until he knee-walked up Tom's torso, naked body barely visible in the dark. Tom opened his mouth and sucked in Reese's cock like he could tell him with his lips and his tongue how badly he wanted him. After a moment, he didn't try to bob his head forward and back but held his head still, pushing on Reese's hips until Reese fucked him, one hand braced on the wall, the other on the bookcase at the end of the bed.

When Reese spilled in his mouth, salty and slippery, he swallowed it down and tongued his softening cock until Reese pulled away and slid boneless onto Tom's chest. His heart was pounding, his chest rising and falling with the heaving breaths of his climax. He rested one hand on Reese's hip and beat back the impulse to wrap his arms around this man and hold him tight against his body. The air cooled on their sweaty skin, smelling of lust and come.

He wondered if at some point it would ease, this burning need to touch and suck and stroke the man in the bed with him.

Letting sleep press him down into the darkness, he wondered too how long this could last. Because he knew letting himself feel happy was a sucker's game. It would all go to shit soon enough.

It always did.

Not a word about Tom surfaced in the gossip columns, though. No pictures of his naked ass in the tiny tiled box of the shower or of him sucking face with his boyfriend. Not that he'd worked up the nerve to give Reese more than a peck on the cheek in front of other people, but still. With a zoom lens and the right angle, they could make a kiss from the Pope look like a porn flick.

He assumed this state of affairs was destined to crash and burn in fiery fashion.

* * *

Bruce Willis was yippee-ki-yaying all over the place, which was Tom's reward for sitting through some British period piece about gay dudes without enough sex scenes in it to make up for how fucking depressing it was. Tom lay between Reese's legs, arms draped on his boyfriend's raised thighs, head on his chest. Reese was complaining about every scene that didn't include Alan Rickman.

"I'm just saying, with that voice? I'd be all, hostage here! Please, take me."

Reese's chin rested on top of Tom's head and he'd wrapped an arm across Tom's chest. Regretting this movie choice that had genuinely caught his boyfriend's focus, Tom debated nibbling at Reese's inseam, to see if he could be more distracting than Alan Rickman. In all honesty, _Die Hard_ didn't rank much higher than _Maurice_ , in the grand scheme of sex with Reese vs. every other thing out there.

If he was gonna start something, getting up to shut and lock the door was a definite must. Their open door policy had been accepted enough that the odds were good a neighbor would poke a head in at some point.

No need to put on a show.

_"Mama told me not to come..."_ An off-key male voice blasted down the hall, getting louder. _"That ain't the way to have fun, no."_

Speak of the devil. Although not a neighbor, per se.

He knew that voice.

He tightened his hands reflexively. Hard enough to interrupt Reese's stream of commentary on how John McClane's feet were going to be infected after his bloody barefoot sprint across the broken glass.

All the warning he had time to give.

Although, really, he was the one who needed the warning. The moment to brace himself for one more step into the open, unless he planned on leaping off Reese and sprinting for his own bed.

He only considered it for a moment.

" _This is the craziest party I ever did see..._ Hoooooly shit."

Cash jerked to a halt in between their closets, two steps into the room.

Reese's stomach muscles tightened under Tom's back. Pushing back with his shoulders kept him in Reese's lap. Every muscle in Reese's body tensed for a second, as if he were going to fight to break loose, before relaxing behind him. Reese didn't say a word but raised one hand to cover the tight grip of Tom's fingers on his thigh.

Apparently he was going to let Tom do the talking. Great. Fantastic. Or it would be, if he had one fucking clue what to say.

Tom should've known Cash wasn't going to wait for him to figure it out.

"Dude." The big guy crossed his arms and dropped his chin until it hit his chest. His eyebrows had climbed into his hairline. " _Dude._ "

"What?" Shit. Maybe he meant to sound more friendly and less lion defending his pride blustery roar.

Also, Reese would be pissed if he knew Tom was casting him in the role of the female lion. Although Tom could probably make a legit argument that the females were smarter and more talented than the males, if needed—

_Focus._

If disbelief were water, Tom could have built a boat and launched it from shore on Cash's ocean. Cash being who he was, everything actually ratcheted _down_ a notch, until he sounded as if he were drawling. "Something you've been meaning to tell me, Worthy?"

"If there were a universe in which it was any of your business, then you'd know."

"Oh my God, please tell this isn't gonna be some kind of testosterone frat boy pissing contest. Speaking of which, I've gotta take a leak." Tom could hear Reese's eyeballs rolling in their sockets as he pushed Tom to sit up and got off the bed. He stopped in front of Cash in the doorway, crowding the bigger man. Cash didn't move. "Obviously we're fucking. Try not to kill each other or vomit on anything while I'm gone."

He pulled the door shut behind him. It had barely clicked before Cash opened the floodgates on the dam.

"Dude! Seriously. You're gay?"

Tom raised his eyebrows and tried not to make the _duh_ look on his face too insulting. Theoretically he was good at winning people over.

"Since _when_?"

"Since forever." Cash simply stood there staring at him. Clearly he wasn't going to escape with laconic two word answers. Especially not with the long list of chicks Cash was probably remembering. "I'm just, I don't know, equal opportunity. And girls are easy."

There was a moment of silence before they both busted out laughing.

"Yeah, they are."

"You know what I mean." He tried to explain it, although it was tough to get serious when he couldn't pry the grin off his face. "They're _there_. And it's...simpler."

"Dude. Ain't nothing about _this_..." he drew a circle with his index finger pointed at Reese's bed, "...that's simple."

"You think I don't know that?" Tension crept over him with tiny tight claws, pulling on his skin until the back of his neck ached from holding himself still. His face radiated heat.

"So what? A couple of months sharing morning breath and arguing over who farted and all of a sudden you're all about the penis?"

He couldn't stop himself from slapping back.

"Yeah, jerkoff, it was just like that. Fuck."

"So? What'd he do? Put the moves on you?" Cash crossed his arms and frowned. "Because I heard your roommate's a big slut."

Tom flew off the bed so fast his feet hurt when they hit the floor.

"Watch your fucking mouth. You don't know shit about him."

"I know he's passing out blowjobs like candy at Halloween."

"Shut up."

He didn't trust himself chest-to-chest with Cash, blood pumping in his fingertips, pushing them to curl into fists.

"I'm just saying—"

"You don't have any fucking idea what you're talking about, dude."

"So tell me."

Tom struggled for the words. He thought of Reese telling him things, finding words that had to slice at his tongue and teeth and lips like razors, but pushing them out through the blood and the pain. "You've had my back, right? All this totally shit time."

Cash's cheeks turned pink but he kept looking straight at Tom.

"Yeah."

"It took me a long time figure that out, you know. Because I didn't know what it was. I figured it was maybe gonna take you longer than most before you got around to fucking me over."

"I wouldn't—"

"I know. Now. 'Cause you got my back."

"Yeah."

"Well, consider yourself my sensei." He managed to drag up something that almost qualified as a grin. "'Cause now I got his."

"Jesus. What a fucking mess." Cash scrubbed his hands over his face and rubbed his own head. He looked around the room, looking for a signal about what to do next. Which turned out to be dropping onto Tom's bed and shoving a pillow over his face. "I can't even."

Seemed a fair response. Tom stretched out on Reese's bed and waited.

They were still lying there five minutes later when Reese came back and stopped in the doorway at the sight of them.

"Oh my God." Reese shook his head and curled his lip. "Straight guys suck at talking, don't you?"

Cash lifted the pillow off his head, while Tom was sputtering after hearing his boyfriend refer to him as straight.

"Well, he ain't that fucking straight. Not if he's, you know—" Cash stumbled over his words.

"Fucking me?" Reese hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, dragging the waistband of his jeans down low enough to reveal a slice of smooth stomach. "You can't even say the words, can you?"

The challenge was a red flag to a born competitor like Cash. He frowned and sat up. No skinny gay punk was going to make him stutter.

"Yeah I can. He's fucking your ass. Like a boss, I bet."

Tom snorted. Talk about always having his back. Looked as if Cash still took his role as defender number one seriously.

"Actually..."

Reese didn't say another word, but Tom knew damn well what was coming. Although technically it was true he wasn't fucking Reese's ass, Tom wasn't about to get into a conversation with Cash about the variety of non-anal ways two guys could get off.

Which meant Cash would assume Reese meant one thing.

The gradual roll of blank confusion to bug-eyed shock played out on Cash's face like the slow-motion flipping pages of old animation. He jumped off the bed.

"No. No." His hands slashed through the air. "I don't fucking believe it. Tom Worthington is not giving his ass up."

"Dude, I'm in the room."

"You shut up." He pointed at Tom before spinning back to Reese. "No way. I can maybe, _maybe_ , believe he's fucking some cute boy, although why he'd want to when the chicks that crawl in his lap look like porn stars, I don't know—"

"You think I'm cute?"

"Ha. Like I can't tell a cute dude from an ugly one." He narrowed his eyes at Reese. "I'm not afraid of you, gay boy."

Whoa. Lines getting too close to being crossed.

"Hey, be nice. Understand?" Tom didn't need to move a muscle to make it clear to Cash how serious he was.

Buried beneath the look they shared was a history of letting bros know when the chick you were banging became something more and no further wisecracks were allowed.

Fuck. Every time he turned around, he was comparing Reese to a girl. And that shit was too dangerous, even if it was only in his head, because sooner or later he was going to slip up and say something out loud and Reese would have his balls on a platter.

Or he'd have Tom's ass for real.

The shiver that leapt up his spine at the thought surprised him.

Jesus. Thinking about anal and whether or not he was ready to give it a try with Reese was _not_ the topic he wanted on his brain when Cash was in the room, if only to avoid scarring his friend for life on the off chance that a freak gamma ray blasted the planet and gave everyone psychic powers in the next thirty seconds.

Cash, who was still a little offended.

"I'm always nice. I told your boyfriend he was cute, for crying out loud," he protested, hands thrown up in the air. "I'm down with the gays."

Tom thought Reese might have sprained an eyeball, trying not to roll them at that pronouncement.

"Sure you are. You're, like, ally number one."

They didn't look as if they were going to kill each other. He might as well get dressed. He rolled off the bed and onto his feet, heading for his closet.

Reese smacked his ass with the flat of his palm as he passed, and Tom ignored Cash's staring back and forth between the two of them.

The struggle to wrap his brain around the sex thing was occupying most of Cash's working brain cells.

"Just, why?" He needed to talk it out. Great. "Okay, cute dude, not my thing, but whatever floats your boat. And I guess it makes sense that a dude knows his way around a dick, so okay, I can see how that works. But your ass, man. Why you wanna go sticking something up there?"

"Does my sex life have to make sense to you? Because I am not having this conversation!" His words were muffled by the sweatshirt he dragged over his head, but he was pretty sure everyone on the hall heard that one.

"Baby, I got this one," Reese called to him and Tom hated himself a little for wishing Reese hadn't called him baby in front of Cash. Fuck. This was hard.

"You never heard of the prostate?"

Jesus. The shit you had to talk about when you were gay. That alone would kill him. He threw up his mental hands and let Reese take over.

"Sure I have. My dad had to get his checked out. He was pissing ten times a night. Yet another up-the-ass experience I'm not looking forward to."

Reese sat on his bed, leaning back on his hands, crossing one leg over the other and kicking his foot lazily while Cash rambled.

"Yeah, well, if you're not fifty, just think of the prostate as your magic button."

"Magic button." Cash sounded doubtful.

Seriously. Tom was having a hard time believing that his boyfriend and his one remaining friend were having an in-depth conversation about gay sex.

"Yup. Press the magic button and you'll come harder than you ever have in your life."

He turned around, pulling on clean track pants. This, he had to see.

For a moment, Tom thought Cash was going to wander further down this off-fucking-road conversational path. Cash opened his mouth, froze, and then shut it. Then did it again.

The magic button concept had obviously caused some kind of meltdown.

"Right." Cash cleared his throat, crossed his arms, and nodded. "I'll, uh, keep that in mind."

"Best. Orgasm. Ever." Reese's enunciation was as precise as an Oxford don's.

"Can we please not talk about this anymore?" On the other hand, Tom was pretty sure his voice squeaked.

Cash nodded and stared at the two of them. "So, this is weird. But I can do it. I can. Just, you know, do it, man."

Tom stared at him. What the fuck?

Cash blushed but rose to the challenge. He flapped a hand back and forth between the two roommates. "Go on. Kiss. We gotta get it over with."

Tom raised an eyebrow at Reese who grinned and shrugged at him from his recline on the bed, then beckoned with one finger.

They could take it easy on Cash, who was standing like a first baseman expecting a fast throw from the pitcher to keep the runner on base, knees bent for balance, hands up in front of his chest as if he were ready to catch anything that came his way. Tom thought simple was probably a great idea. Mouths closed, a brief touch.

Looking down at Reese, who grinned up at him, love hit him like a punch in the gut.

Exactly like. He felt queasy and couldn't breathe.

No way.

He had to block that thought out because love and every other emotional train wreck was not on the agenda. Not love. So, _want_ , and something that edged too close to _need_ for comfort, pulsed low and smooth in this belly as he stood over Reese, a position Tom almost never allowed himself to hold, too aware of his own potential to intimidate. He pushed his fingers into the thick shock of Reese's hair.

Not love.

But he sure did like this guy.

He bent down and laid his mouth on Reese's, never letting his hand tighten around his boy's skull, knowing how much trust it took Reese to manage being even this far beneath him. Reese's breath was warm against his mouth.

"Ack! Gross! Nope, nope, can't do it. That's cool. Have fun. I'm closing my eyes."

Tom caught Cash sneaking a look between spread fingers clapped over his face. This was getting ridiculous. But if the alternative was Cash being so uncomfortable around them he stopped coming by, Tom was reluctant to give that up. Feeling spotlit wasn't his idea of a good time, but Cash would get bored of watching this peck on the lips any time now, right?

Right?

"I need to do, like, that thing where you're afraid of spiders so they make you touch a tarantula."

Tom pulled his mouth away from Reese's to grimace at Cash.

"Aversion therapy?" His voice shot high.

Oh, fuck it.

"I'm not giving myself a crick in my neck for this asshole. Scoot over." He bumped his knee against Reese's leg until there was enough room for him to squeeze on the mattress next to Reese. Without the awkwardness of bending over it was easier to get distracted by the taste of Reese's mouth, minty and hot, and the warm length of his thigh pressing against Tom's own. He slid fingertips down the side of Reese's neck to rest lightly on his collarbone, the edge of his nails testing the skin, and felt Reese's breath catch in his chest. He opened his mouth and dragged the tip of his tongue against the full curve Reese's bottom lip. His cock swelled in his jeans.

"Yeah. I can force myself to look—nope! Not yet!—until I get used to it."

He was rapidly forgetting why Cash was there as Reese snaked a hand across his lap and braced it on the bend of Tom's hip, fingers slipping under the hem of his T-shirt to brush against bare skin with slow strokes.

"Hey. Guys. I'm still here."

He didn't look. Reese was sucking Tom's bottom lip into his mouth in gentle pulses, releasing and sucking over and over again in a rhythm that made Tom want to throw himself down on the bed and pull his boy on top of his chest. He would push up with his cock against Reese's hard, slim hips.

"Dudes."

Reese flexed the hand on Tom's hip, fingers spreading wide until his thumb crept closer to Tom's crotch and his pinkie wrapped around to his ass. His fingers were like steel bands on Tom's body, no sign he'd be letting go soon. Heat radiated off him and Tom's skin sucked it in, warming until he must be glowing.

"Oh, what-the-fuck-ever." The creaking thump of a big body hitting a cheap mattress pulled Tom's head up. Cash was stretched out on Tom's bed, arms crossed behind his head. "Don't you guys have any video games or anything?"

Ha. Boredom.

Mission accomplished.

He grinned at Reese, whose hand clutched his hip. Reese's gaze flickered to his lap and Tom knew Reese saw the semi he was sporting.

Reese licked his lips.

Desire jolted his cock, shot up his back and blew most of his brain cells out the back of his head.

"No." His voice was ragged. He cleared his throat. "No video games. Sorry."

"S'okay. But I need something to do, you know? While you guys are all make out city over there." Cash started humming and playing the drums on his thighs.

A totally unironic, no doubt, version of "Paradise City".

"You could read a book," Reese said sweetly and waved at the shelves.

Cash's one finger salute was exactly what he'd have done to Tom, who almost laughed at how good it felt to watch his friend flip the bird at his roommate.

"Ha ha. Your boyfriend is funny."

And wasn't _that_ a little moment of weirdness. But he still needed to get things right with Cash. He shot Reese a pleading look.

"Right. I have to go to the bathroom. Again." He managed to drag his fingers across Tom's lap as he stood up, scraping his fingernails over Tom's dick in a long, shivery scratch that tore a grunt out of Tom's throat. No chance Cash had missed that.

He left the room. Tom watched him go.

Cash rolled over on his side and propped his head on one fist. Waited for him to start.

"He's not convenient. Or easy." Finding the words was like digging through rock with his fingernails, painful and bloody. "But things have been pretty fucking horrible for him too and...he gets it."

" _I_ get it." His friend sat up, his eyebrows pinched together, thighs open, sitting cross-legged and innocent, like a child.

He shook his head. He wasn't trying to make Cash feel bad but he couldn't lie.

"Not like him."

Silence stretched between them like taffy until Cash broke and blew a sharp breath out of puffed cheeks.

"Okay."

"Yeah?" Tom pinned him with a look. This was it. The make-or-break point.

"Fuck. Yeah. All right. I get it." His friend broke out the air quotes. "He _completes_ you _._ "

Tom covered his relief by whipping a pillow at Cash's head.

"Asshole."

"Cocksucker." Cash threw his hands up and grimaced. "Don't! Don't fucking tell me."

Tom laughed, relief leaking out of him all over, like a sieve. "Don't worry. I won't."

"Good. So. Your roommate, huh?"

Tom shrugged. He was never gonna scrabble up the right words. "He gets it. Needing a break from—" he opened and closed his hands, trying to grab hold of something he could describe, "—everything."

* * *

"Ooookay. If you say so. You could get a nice break with some girl's lips on your dick, no problem, and—"

"I heard that!" Reese's shout was clear through the closed door.

So, not all the way to the bathroom.

"Then stop listening at the door!" Cash barked. He ran a hand over his hair. "And, as I was gonna say—" he raised his voice and twisted his torso to aim his words at the door, "—you'd get to avoid the fucking _circus_ that'll pull into town when this gets out, but that's your deal. You know I got your back."

The party in the hall kept his mouth shut.

"I like him." It was that simple.

"Okay then." Cash scrubbed his hands over his face and shook his head like a dog. "Holy fuck. What a night. I came here to drag you out of your little mancave. You coming?"

"Coming where?"

"There's a party at Phi Psi." The words weren't all the way out of Cash's mouth before Tom was shaking his head.

"No fucking way. 'Sides, can you picture?" He pointed one finger at the door without saying a word. Openly gay Reese and a Phi Psi party were not a match made in heaven.

"What? He can come."

"Dude."

The door opened.

"Just so you know, we might as well be fucking right out in the hall. These doors are made of paper or something. You can hear every word," Reese announced.

Tom grimaced at the idea. Although if anyone should have known how much you could hear from the hall...

"Cash was asking," he started.

Reese interrupted him, but quietly.

"I heard." He shook his head, his eyes steady on Tom's, as if Cash wasn't even in the room. A message there. "Not for me, Tom."

Oh shit.

Guilt battered his head down. He braced his elbows on his knees and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. God, this was why Reese shouldn't be anywhere near him. How could he have worried Reese's biggest problem with going to a frat party would be not fitting in?

He didn't look up, not even when Reese walked over to him and rubbed his shoulders.

"You can go out without me. You should have some fun."

"Yeah, a frat party isn't exactly my idea of fun these days either. No way." He pushed the top of his head against Reese's hip. All he wanted was to stay here in their room, never leave it. And fuck the rest of the world if they didn't understand.

"Well, fuck. We don't have to party." Cash kept pushing. He'd obviously set himself a mission and Tom knew he could dig his heels in and out-stubborn a toddler. "Come back to my room. I can kick your ass in GTA."

Suddenly the simplicity of Grand Theft Auto, of stealing cars and smashing shit up, was incredibly appealing. He lifted his head.

Cash grinned at him.

"Chicken. _Bawk bawk bawk._ "

"God, you _are_ a toddler."

He looked up at Reese, who didn't seem to be mad and was stroking his shoulder.

"Come with."

_That_ got a reaction.

Reese jerked his head back and frowned. He shifted his weight and looked over his shoulder at Cash, who shrugged.

"Do you play?"

"I'm a guy, aren't I?"

"What do I know? Maybe you been too busy looking for magic fucking buttons to play video games," Cash snapped out, the exact same way he'd have given Tom shit for saying something stupid.

Reese cracked up, blowing any remaining tension out of the room with gusts of laughter as his eyes streamed tears and his face turned pink. Tom watched, lips twisting at the edge of a smile, fascinated.

"Magic," Reese tried to gasp the words out between laughs, hair falling in his eyes, "Fucking. Button."

Which set him off again.

Eventually the giggles trailed off into hiccups and Reese could breathe again. He sighed.

"Ah, shit. That was the funniest fucking thing I've ever heard come out of a straight guy's mouth."

Everyone in the room froze, waiting to see who was gonna jump on that one.

Cash broke first.

"I'm not saying nothing. You coming or what?" He winced and raised a hand. "I know."

Reese bit the edge of his lip between his teeth, considering.

"Okay." The smile that broke out over Tom's face was pretty goofy but he didn't stop himself. Reese winked at him. "I can always watch porn on my phone if you guys are boring."

"Porn! We can watch that." Cash bounced on the edge of the mattress.

Reese raised an eyebrow.

"Ahhh, right." He wrinkled up his nose. "No chicks in yours, huh?"

Reese reached down to snag Tom's hands and pull him off the bed.

"Not a one. Plenty of magic fucking buttons, though," he tossed over his shoulder as he grabbed his bag and headed out the door, leaving Cash standing in the middle of their room.

"Dude. That's kinda gross."

He bumped Cash with his shoulder. Jerked his head toward the open door.

Cash waited a moment, shrugged and followed Reese down the hall.

This was going to be interesting.

# 13

Cash's crush on Reese was complete within two weeks.

Tom figured it was a combination of Xbox and the time they'd bumped into a girl from Reese's Philosophy of Religion class in the mailroom. She'd begged Reese to help her hit on some guy at the other end of the crowded room. Tom had been antsy in the crowd, head down and eager to get out of there, but Reese had taken one look at her Tuesday morning T-shirt and ponytail and said, "Shit, girl, you _know_ you're gonna bump into him if you leave the dorm looking like a nun. You need some tits."

He had his hand down her shirt two seconds later, doing something twisty with her bra that magically transformed it into a push-up while she held her hands up and giggled. Then, while Tom and Cash watched in awe, he actually reached into her bra cups and plumped up her boobs until she looked like Anna Nicole Smith from the neck down. He pulled her ponytail holder out, finger combed her hair, rimmed her eyelashes with a stick of black eyeliner he snagged from his bag, and gave her a shove toward her prey.

"Go get him."

"Thanks, baby!" she called out over her shoulder, a new sway in her hips.

"I love you, man," Cash said and yanked Reese into a tight squeeze, his face smashed up against Cash's massive chest. "That was _awesome_. I want to hang with you all the time."

Tom flinched and stepped forward, sure Reese was two seconds from struggling to get away, when his friend jumped back from his boyfriend as if jolted by a cattle prod.

Cash spun toward Tom, jaw dropped, eyebrows wrinkled up.

"He grabbed my ass!"

Tom laughed out loud, forgetting for a moment that the streams of students breaking and splitting around them, intent on their mailboxes, might swirl into a circle of whispering, staring strangers. Most of these kids were probably freshmen hoping for the slip of paper in their mailbox that meant a care package from home was waiting at the pick-up window. He hadn't gotten anything but bills and ironic credit card offers in his mailbox yet this year.

"Can you blame him?" His smile stretched his face in ways that felt broken in a public space.

Cash cocked his head to one side. Nodded.

"Good point. Dude, my ass is _fine_."

They became a twisted Three Musketeers of video games (it turned out that Reese was a fucking master of Call of Duty, saving both their asses on multiple occasions when they were pinned down and about to be shredded) and bad porn jokes. Cash had an affectionately touchy-feely thing going on with Reese, always giving him hugs and noogies, as if he'd adopted him as a mascot or little brother who killed it on the Xbox and had a secret password to the inner realms of girlworld. Tom had finally confessed to Reese that he wasn't going to visit friends on the weekends, but rather to work. In the meantime, he was startled to hear that Cash and Reese had gone on a major twelve-hour campaign while he was making his thousandth trip through the tunnel to Logan. His boy and his best friend had clicked.

It was strange, but it worked.

* * *

After Thanksgiving, Reese showed up back on campus with the latest first-person shooter, still pissed at Tom even as he showed him their new toy.

Tom knew it would take more than an enthusiastic response to a video game to smooth things over between them. Reese had been livid when Tom refused to come home with him for the holiday, or even show up for the meal. He knew Tom wasn't celebrating with family and didn't understand why he'd choose to spend four days driving a cab instead of spending time at the Anders' house.

Tom flinched at the memory, knowing he was jumping up and down on thin ice when it came to the things he hadn't told Reese yet. Reese thought he was driving a cab for spending money or maybe to cover some room and board. Despite knowing the risks and what he needed to do, Tom had shaved hours off his driving time lately, telling himself he could make up the hours over the weeks of January term. Leaving on Saturday morning or returning to campus earlier, pulled like a magnet to Reese's true north, the consequences were visible in the balance of his savings account.

His chance of earning enough to pay for second semester was always going to be slim, but the skin was hanging off the bones. He was ten grand short and between Thanksgiving, Christmas, January term, and pushing the boundaries of good sense with pirate taxi hours, he might be able to cut a check that wouldn't bounce by the end of January.

If Reese found out he'd "forgotten" to mention he might not be returning to school for the second half of the year, Tom was certain he'd be laid flat by a guy he outweighed by fifty pounds.

So he asked for every detail about Reese's family meal and then hit his knees for a marathon blowjob session during which he tried to torment Reese into accepting his apologies by sucking his brains out through his dick. When those efforts crashed and broke on the rocks of Reese's raised eyebrow and _I'm still pissed_ pursed lips, he brought out the serious weaponry.

"Let's go out."

It took twenty minutes and Tom reading out a complete list of campus activities for that night from the school's app on his phone before Reese believed he was serious.

"So you'll come watch _Rashomon_ with me in Chapin?" he asked, referring to the campus auditorium, arms crossed as he stared at Tom.

Shit. At least the lights would be off. Maybe they could get there right as it started and sneak in the back.

"And I don't mean sneaking in the back and making out for the whole movie. I want good seats, so we need to get there early, and you have to pay attention."

Jesus, it hadn't even occurred to him that making out would be on the table. Tom stiffened his spine, embarrassment at his own thoughts making him defensive. "Why? Is there gonna be a quiz?"

"How about, if you can't give me a plot summary afterwards, I don't blow you until next year?"

Next year was top of the list of things Tom _didn't_ want to talk about. He gripped his own nape tight and squeezed, unsure if he was trying to punish or show himself who was boss.

"Fine. But I'm texting Cash. He'll be pissed if we go without him." And yeah, that was yet another chickenshit move, but if he was doing this, especially if there was going to be making out in public for crying out loud, then he wanted some fucking backup.

Reese narrowed his eyes. "Then I'm calling Steph. It'll be like a double date." His smile had plenty of teeth.

"Holy shit."

Introducing those two was deemed safer done in the privacy of their room before the movie. Tom was trying to convince himself that this wasn't the worst idea ever and even Reese looked green around the edges at the idea of what they'd set in motion.

Good call.

Having shown up early—he was staking his claim—Cash winged the first pitch right at Steph the second she walked in the door.

"Are you the dyke?"

He was taking up as much space as humanly possible, his backpack on Reese's bed, straddling Reese's desk chair backwards in the middle of their room, shouting his primacy as amigo numero uno as if he'd peed around them in a circle.

"Jesus, Cash! Shut up, will ya?" Tom shot off his own bed. This was going to be a blood bath and Res Life was not going to appreciate the town police being given a reason to lock up another student.

The leather of Steph's motorcycle jacket creaked as she stopped Tom in his tracks with an open palm and then crossed her arms, one eyebrow raised.

"I got this. No, asshole, I'm bi."

Was Cash actually cracking gum as he spread his legs wider, practically humping the rails of the chair back?

"Oh yeah? Like bi, or bi-curious because you think it's hot to talk about making out with chicks but mostly you like dick?" Now Cash was the one raising his eyebrows, throwing down in what had somehow become a kind of gay-off between the two of them. "Because _I'_ m bi- _curious_ maybe, but I ain't never gonna go there."

"What? You're bi-curious?" Reese's mouth fell open.

"Sort of." Cash shrugged and wrinkled his forehead. "I mean, you tell me I got a magic button up my ass that'll make me come my brains out, of course I'm _curious_. But I'm never gonna go there, because gross." He gave an all-over shiver, like a dog shaking off water after a plunge in a pool.

Steph tapped her lower lip with one blunt sparkly blue fingernail. "You know, you don't need to fuck a guy to get your prostate stimulated."

"See, that's what's wrong with chicks," Cash scoffed. "They take all the romance out of it. Prostate stimulated. Jeez, that does _not_ sound hot."

"Oh my God." Tom covered his eyes with his palms. "Can we go now? Please?"

"I'm just saying—" She eyed the big man speculatively as he stood up and shoved the chair back into place at Reese's desk.

"Aw, hell no, bi-girl. You're not getting anywhere near my ass. I can tell you'd be at the dildo store, saying 'gimme the one that looks like a thermos.'" But he held the door open for her as she ducked under his arm and left their room, arguing about whether Cash should give pegging a try.

"Fine, a couple of fingers."

"Shut up! Leave my ass alone."

"I think we've started something, introducing those two," Reese said and giggled as Tom picked up his backpack.

"Yeah, the grounds for a major sexual harassment lawsuit, probably." He snapped the light off and grabbed Reese's shirt as he squeezed past. Reese's eyes were huge, glittering with light caught from the fluorescent tubes in the hall. Tom tugged him closer and kissed him, right there in the open doorway, Cash and Steph shouting at them to move their asses or they were gonna be late.

Reese grinned. Forgiveness had been purchased with a heavy dose of potential humiliation, although Tom was now more worried about their friends embarrassing them than being out on campus with his boyfriend. So, that was something.

Reese pulled the door shut.

"Who's suing who? Steph was pretty gung ho. That's my girl." He bumped his shoulder against Tom and looked up at him through sly, lowered lashes. He winked and the warmth hit Tom right in the chest, a bruise spreading under the skin until the ache throbbed over his sternum.

His chest still ached as they lined up at the student-run concession table, all funds going to support the campus film club. Cash was giving Steph shit about the girliness of her Cherry Coke, which she flipped back on him the instant she heard his order.

"Diet? You got a _Diet_? Counting calories, big guy?"

"Hey, I watch my carbs. Gotta race next week. I shouldn't even be drinking this stuff, it's so bad for you. But it's a movie. I'm allowed a freebie in the nutrition lottery at the movies. But only one, so don't even _think_ about putting butter on that popcorn."

Steph reached up and patted him on the cheek, blue fingernails sparkling, and reassured him that yes, all children got special treats at the movies. Reese leaned against his shoulder hard, smiling down at the floor to hear the two people they allowed into their hermetically sealed bubble negotiate their way to a new friendship too.

The ache mellowed as he hung back, keeping out of the way as Steph and Cash ran into people they knew and were drawn into gossip and complaints about professors who expected students to spend the holiday writing twenty-page papers. Between the two of them they seemed to know the entire campus and Tom wondered what made them both stick so determinedly to him and Reese, the ones who tried so hard to shut everyone else out.

He nodded at another guy he knew from track and kept his head down, hovering near Reese, who was way closer to rejoining the human race than him, and realized how very wrong he was to think his roommate was anywhere near as fucked up as he was. Reese might _act_ as if he wanted to hide away from the world, but when it came right down to it, he liked people. He trusted them, at least far enough to speak to them, arguing with Steph and another girl about whether or not their art instructor was hot or kind of weird-looking.

The clock was ticking off the moments until he fucked this up so badly that these last three people who he could count on—because Steph was on his side now, he knew—threw up their hands and just gave up.

The auditorium was crowded with students needing a break from Strunk & White footnoting rules and waiting for interlibrary loans to come through. After a marathon bicker session between Cash and Steph over whether it was worse to sit up close and get a crick in your neck—Cash—or in the back and be unable to see over the tall doofus in front of you—Steph—they compromised by forcing a row of already settled moviegoers to shift seats until four were open in the middle of the auditorium. Tom slunk along the row and flipped the thin wooden seat down, sure every eye in the room was on him. He pulled his ball cap low and slumped in his seat.

Reese sat up straight next to him and put his hand on Tom's knee, giving it a shake. "Remember. Plot summary or no special treats for you."

Tom groaned and sank farther, wondering if he could slide to the floor and down the slope to the front of the room. He'd end up closer to the exits at least. He should be grateful Reese hadn't said _or no BLOWJOBS for you!_ out loud. It was hard to be grateful when you could hear whispering behind you, even though he knew it probably had nothing to do with them.

"Oh look. It's the freaks on a special outing together." A foot kicked the back of his seat. Hard.

So much for persuading himself not to be paranoid.

Reese hunched his shoulders up to his ears, so Tom knew he'd heard, but their friends were oblivious, arguing about whether samurai were noble warriors or renegade bandit motherfuckers.

"Ignore the asshole," he muttered under his breath to Reese, who grimaced and nodded.

Tom recognized that voice. He didn't need to turn around to know that the foot kicking his chair belonged to the jerk from Res Life, the one who'd gotten reamed out by the dean. Jack's was a face Tom couldn't seem to avoid on campus, spotting him everywhere he went and always with a poisonous death stare or a whispered aside to his friends that had them turning and staring. Tom had limited his already minimal exposure on campus to avoid this guy.

Now they were sitting in front of him and his friends in a room full of hundreds of other students, because Tom's boyfriend was pissed that Tom didn't come home with him for the holidays.

He settled deeper in his seat and hoped that refusing to engage would limit the damage.

"What do you think? Do we have three fags and a dyke? Or maybe somebody goes both ways." The foot kicked his chair again. "That you, Worthy?"

Reese's knuckles turned white where he was gripping the arms of his seat.

Cash didn't turn his head, but he never had a hard time making his booming voice heard. "Don't make me come back there and kick your ass, dude. I don't even know you."

Not so oblivious after all.

A sudden hush spread like concentric rings from a stone dropped in a still pond, their foursome the focus of a new silence and curious listeners.

On the other side of Cash, Steph was shaking her head. In the quieter crowd, she didn't have to raise her voice. "Don't bother. I can tell a little-dicked wonder when I hear one. He'll fall over when you breathe on him."

Tom dug deep, remembering that he'd once been good at this. Not in a way he was proud of, because he'd made sarcastic comments to get a laugh at someone else's expense, but he could do it now for his boyfriend, couldn't he? Even if what he really wanted to do was pretend he wasn't with them, didn't know Cash and Steph and, cruelly, especially Reese. He didn't have to let his shitty, cowardly side win. He could change the subject, draw everyone's focus, because right now they were wondering, even if they too thought Jack was an asshole, if what he said might be true.

He used to be good at making people like him. At drawing their attention where he wanted it.

"People fall over when Cash breathes on them because, dude? There really _is_ such a thing as too much garlic." He wrestled a scarecrow-like grin to the surface and threw a casual elbow at Cash.

When the two girls in front of them giggled and turned to stare at Cash, Tom knew he'd won. Because Cash never dropped a baton when one was passed to him, not once, he waggled his eyebrows at the girls and asked if they wanted to taste the garlic on him. Steph _thwapped_ him on the other side and told him not to be a sexist pig and shortly there was a six-person debate about whether or not making out in public with strangers could be a revolutionary act or was something drunk members of the Greek system did to embarrass their peers. No one paid attention to Reese _or_ Tom, who pressed the side of his leg against Reese in lieu of holding his hand, which was not on the These Things Are Possible list at the moment. Reese pressed back but didn't look at him, and Tom knew, like he knew his father was a selfish asshole and he himself was still a chickenshit coward compared to Reese, he knew that Reese was wishing his boyfriend was someone who would hold his hand in public, and regretting that instead, he had Tom.

When Jack made another faggot comment, no one was listening anymore. Even his own friends were getting tired of him.

"Jesus, who crawled up your ass about the gay thing?" Laughter now behind them. "Get it? Up _your_ ass? Of all people—"

"Fuck you, Thompson. I'm not going to sit here and listen to elitist assholes talk shit about me."

"Dude, you started it. And it's _Rashomon_. You can take off. We'll catch up with you later."

Tom cursed his stupid moment of empathy when Jack didn't answer as his friends blew him off. Why should he care that the guy was being embarrassed? Served him right for being an asshole.

Still, he couldn't help craning his neck and looking behind him.

Jack was standing awkwardly between two seated guys who leaned forward to talk around his knees as if he'd already left, ignoring him as he flushed and looked around. When he caught Tom staring at him, his face burned a darker red, his eyes bright while the lights in the auditorium blinked three times.

"Fuck you, Worthy." He flung the words at Tom and spun around to leave, shoving past knees to shouts of _Hey!_ Tom felt a weird urge to yell an apology but wrestled that fucking insane idea under control and turned back to the screen.

He had an actual apology that needed addressing more than some guilty feeling toward a guy who'd never been anything but a jerk to him.

Darkness fell like a curtain over the entire room, the only lights all the way in the back as the film cued up and the Turner Classic Movies logo appeared on the large screen.

Though he knew it was too little, too late, Tom reached over and took Reese's hand in the dark.

"I'm sorry." His whisper slid under the classical Japanese music of the opening credits as the rain poured off the eaves and streamed down the steps and streets of the medieval village. "I'm trying."

Reese's fingers gripped his and Tom tried to fit every apology in the world into his answering squeeze.

"I know." Reese didn't turn his head. "Me too."

Afterward, Tom suggested the four of them head over to the campus center, where he and Cash could smuggle beers to a table in the back of the second story balcony. Reese shook his head and claimed to be too tired for a late night. Back in their room, he smiled at Tom wearily and let himself be pulled into a kiss for a long, quiet moment before pushing away and getting ready for bed. He needed to get some sleep for once, Reese claimed, as he traded his jeans for a pair of sleep pants and crawled into bed, laying claim to the middle of the mattress in a way that made it clear he didn't have room for anyone else.

Tom, who couldn't argue that it wasn't uncomfortable to share a skinny twin bed, knew he was still fucking things up with Reese.

* * *

He waited three days to ask Reese what he would have done if Tom and Cash and Steph hadn't been there and some dude started harassing him about being gay.

He'd meant to leave it alone. But Tom couldn't get the image out of his head. The way Reese's shoulders had pulled up to his ears as he hunched over, back braced against a blow that never came.

It wasn't his job to push Reese. He knew that. Tom was perfectly cognizant of the level of hypocrisy involved in him questioning _anyone_ on why they didn't engage with a bully. You didn't have to own a bullshit meter to smell the stench coming off that one.

But he couldn't stop thinking about it. Couldn't stop poking at the picture in his head like a sore tooth. He waited until they were studying one night in the house living room, hoping that might give him some cover.

"You're fucking kidding me, right?" Reese yanked his feet off Tom's lap and pulled them back to his butt, outrage shooting over his knees to the far end of the couch.

Tom flushed. Yeah, this was how he'd thought it was going to go. The location wasn't doing him any favors.

"You wait until they turn off the lights to hold my fucking hand and you're going to give me shit about not confronting that asshole?" Reese flung his pen down on the coffee table and shoved his notebook off his lap.

Theresa was camped out at the round table again and Tom caught her sympathetic grimace before she slipped earbuds in and turned the volume up on her iPod. He doubted the sympathy was directed at him.

"You know I can't be out on campus. And it's got nothing to do with _us_. You know it and you told me it was okay." This shitty leg to stand on was immediately yanked out from under him.

"Yeah, well that was before I actually experienced you ignoring me in public." Reese scraped his hair back with both hands, giving it a tight yank. "Which, by the way, sucked."

"I know." He couldn't help himself, though. "Although I wasn't _ignoring_ you. I talked to you more than I talked to Cash."

"Now is not the time to argue semantics with me, Tom." The set of Reese's mouth was uncompromising.

"I know. I'm just fucking saying—" Tom took a deep breath and ratcheted the volume down several notches. Poor Theresa. He hoped she had a loud playlist. "I'm _just_ saying, if you were talking to someone professionally, maybe you wouldn't, you know, freeze up in different situations."

Reese narrowed his eyes and turned without a word, shoving books and notebooks and scattered pens into his messenger bag.

Well, fuck. Guess they were done studying.

Tom packed up and followed Reese in silence. Reese nodded at their hallmate who manned the front desk and stomped up the stairs, the hiss of his voice carrying far enough for Tom to know he was about three seconds from losing his shit.

"If you're talking about what I do in bed, or don't do, then I'm sorry if my inconvenient PTSD keeps you from getting off in whatever way you've decided is important to your down-low sex life."

Aw, hell no. He was _not_ having this conversation in an open staircase. Tom waited until the door to their room shut behind them. Reese flung his book bag on his bed and started ransacking his dresser drawers.

"I'm not talking about sex." He stood in the middle of the room and made Reese maneuver around him while he searched for whatever article of clothing he absolutely needed in the middle of this argument. "I'm talking about being fucking terrified I'm going to trigger some kind of flashback if I move the wrong way and thinking it might not be a bad idea for you to talk to somebody about that! In the interest of, say, not spending the rest of your life being scared."

Reese shoved his head through the neckhole of a skintight black microfiber T-shirt. "I talk to you all the time and that doesn't seem to be solving any of my problems."

"Yeah, well, that's the blind leading the fucking blind and you know it. I'm talking about therapy." Reese shoved his feet into skinny jeans and ignored Tom while stabbing words into the screen of his cell phone before tossing it on his bed.

"Not being an idiot, I got that." He shot an expanding blast of mousse into the palm of his hand and then worked it swiftly through his hair, piecing it out until it fell in sexy chunks across his face. Grabbed the eyeliner and smeared a thick rim of black around his lash line. The accumulated effect said _boy on the prowl_ , a look Tom hadn't seen in weeks. He yanked the bright green Chucks on his feet and grabbed a tailored jacket that was half blazer, half zip-up, and more stylish than anything Tom owned these days. "I told you before. You start going to practice, I'll start going to therapy. Been for a jog lately, Worthy?"

That was the low blow. Reese knew he hated that nickname and Tom could see by the flush creeping over him that Reese felt he'd been a jerk by his own standards. Tom felt guilt for that too. For being such a crap boyfriend he provoked his lover into losing his temper and saying something spiteful. He knew this wasn't how Reese talked to people who didn't disappoint him.

Tom sat on his bed and dropped his head into his hands. "Where are you going?"

"Out. To a _gay_ bar, with Steph." Reese stood in the middle of their room and flipped his hair back like throwing down a gauntlet. "Wanna come?"

He didn't wait more than a heartbeat before turning for the door. Reese knew the answer to that question.

"Right. Didn't think so. Don't wait up."

"Reese." Tom's voice was low. Urgent. Reese paused with his hand on the doorknob, though he didn't look back. Tom knew there were a hundred things he shouldn't say, unless he wanted to drive Reese into doing something they both might not be able to forgive. _Don't do anything stupid. Please._ He settled for the one thing he could say and mean. "Be careful."

A sharp nod was his only answer before the door clicked shut.

Somewhere in the deep dark of the night, soft noises and the curve of a warm body snuggling up behind him on the bed woke Tom. An arm landed tentatively on his hip and he reached down to grab it and wrap it more securely around him.

"Everything okay?" he asked, voice thick with sleep. He braced himself to hear the worst.

A forehead pressed between his shoulder blades. Words vibrated against his spine. "Nothing happened."

He hadn't known how tightly every muscle in his body had been held until they all relaxed at once. Reese squeezed his arm. Tom tucked his chin to his chest and spoke to the wall.

"I know." He hadn't, really. Hadn't been able to figure out how close to the edge Reese was. How much it would take to push him into a night of blowing some strange guy in order to prove that he controlled the situation. Hadn't known if he, Tom, had already crossed that line.

He'd had to trust.

Not his strong suit.

"Are you mad?" Reese's words were muffled against Tom's T-shirt.

"No." He paused. Funny how so many of these conversations happened in the dark. Maybe if you weren't totally fucked up you could talk about stuff in the daylight. "Are you?"

The answer didn't come right away, so Tom knew what it was before Reese spoke.

"Trying not to be." Honesty was a good sign. Or, at least, a better one than flat out lying. Reese's breath collected in his T-shirt, a warm spot at the base of his neck. "I know you think all these terrible things are going to happen to you if word gets around on campus that you're gay."

"Bi," Tom interrupted as if it were crucial he retain some kind of toehold on heterosexuality, then flinched. Jesus. Couldn't he go two minutes without denying Reese in some way? "Fuck. Sorry."

"S'okay. It's what you are." But Tom could hear it in Reese's voice and feel it in the tension in his body pressed up behind him. He'd managed to draw one more line in the sand and place himself on the opposite side of it from Reese. "I just wish you could believe the world wouldn't end if you kissed me in the campus center."

Tom rolled over, squirming in place and trying not to shove Reese off the mattress and to the floor, until they faced each other, knees and foreheads touching as they curled up on the bed like a pair of ampersands.

"It's not just people finding out, Reese." He tried to find the words. Strange, how hard it was to describe something for the first time. "I held it together this past year. But barely. You don't know—" Tom trailed off. There were too many things that Reese didn't know. Time was running out for explaining those things without his having hid them from Reese being a real problem. Truth was, that time might already be past. "If something goes wrong now? If I have to leave school again? I don't know that I'll ever make it back."

Reese smelled like dance sweat and his hair was damp against his forehead. Tom wanted to stick his face in the curve of Reese's neck and lick his skin, taste the salt on his tongue and breathe deep.

"It feels like the end of the world waiting for me. Know it sounds over the top, but that's what it feels like. The shit that's just waiting for me to fuck up." He felt like Peter, crying wolf, only he could _see_ the wolf, lurking around the corner, hot drool leaking from the corner of black lips, but all anyone else saw was a clear, empty road in front of him.

He wanted to touch Reese but didn't know if he had regained the right to do that yet. So he settled for trying to make out the line of his cheekbone in the inky dark. The sharp slash of his eyebrow. And he waited.

"I get it. Or, at least, I get that you see it like that. But Tom—" Reese touched him, one hand on his face, but it made touching okay and Tom reached out like a blind man in the dark until he found Reese's thigh. Slid a hand down it and pulled Reese's knee forward until his leg hooked over Tom's hip. He brought that hand back to Reese's bare chest and laid it flat against his sternum. Everything was better with touching. He heard Reese sigh and felt the breath roll over his face. "Being with you tonight made me feel shitty."

Pressure was building in his eyes and nose, a hot tightness that squeezed his voice down to microscopic proportions. "I know."

"And my plate of things that make me feel shitty is kinda full already, you know?"

"I know."

Reese was stroking his face. Not as if he was trying to turn Tom on. Just touching. Reminding himself, hopefully, that this was a guy who didn't mean to hurt him. Even if he was.

Reese's heartbeat under his fingertips was slow and heavy. He wished they could be silent and still in the dark, feeling that strong thud under his hand. His face was tight and hot and he let each breath an inch into his lungs before freezing and pushing it out again. Dizziness was creeping in.

"I'm trying, Tom." Reese's hand slid to the back of his head and held him still as Tom shook his head. _Not yet. Please, not yet._ "I'm a little too good at this already, though. Making myself feel this bad."

He could hear the words that Reese didn't say, as clear as if they rang out like a bell. _I don't know how much longer..._ And there wasn't much he wouldn't do to stop those words from coming out.

Except the one thing that would make them unnecessary.

Tom fell asleep with Reese's hand holding him and no good answers on his tongue.

* * *

Reese flung an arm over his face to block the morning light, sheets tangled around his waist in Tom's bed.

"What are you doing?"

Tom bent over in his desk chair and tightened the laces on his Adidas.

"Going for a run. I'm not in good enough shape to compete, but if I don't wanna look like an asshole at practice, I need to get some runs in."

Reese's arm dropped. He pushed himself up on his elbows.

"Why?"

He double-knotted the laces and yanked on them hard. Admitting that he wasn't going to do the thing that he knew would stop hurting Reese was hard.

"I'm gonna make you feel bad. And that plate is full." He looked up and met Reese's eyes. Wished he could smile. But he didn't know if this was going to be enough. The cold knot in his gut kept twisting. "So I gotta help you get something else off that plate. Or there won't be room for me, right?"

Reese watched him, saying nothing.

"I did a crappy job asking you about it last night, Reese, but that doesn't mean it's not important. So if I have to go to practice to guilt you into trying therapy, then I better run." He stood up and ran damp palms down his thighs. He'd hoped he could get this one run in under the radar. In case it turned out to be a terrible idea and he chickened out and didn't go again. But if he had to make the call right now, then fuck it. He was committed. It was the least, really the absolutely fucking least, he could do. "If I run far enough, and you talk long enough, maybe that makes room for me around the edges."

Reese flopped back down onto the mattress with a huff, smacking both of his hands over his eyes and groaning out loud.

"Ah, fuck. What do you have, some kind of script of awesome things to say that make me want to be nice to you? Shit."

The knot in his gut melted a little.

* * *

Tom's running shoes were soaked with the heavy layer of dew from the grass on the infield by the time they crossed to the far side of the track where the staggered lane starts were painted. He dropped his backpack at the grass's edge next to lane one.

Reese was already on the track, bouncing on the balls of his feet, throwing fake punches in the clear air of the early morning light.

"You know we're not here for a boxing match, right?"

The smile Reese threw him was brilliant, making him stagger with its pure shine of happiness. If he'd had moments of questioning the wisdom of this plan, that smile alone made it worthwhile.

"I don't know what it is. Something about being up this early and outside, makes me feel uber sporty. Maybe it's the shorts." He winked at Tom. As soon as he'd understood that Tom was serious about running, he'd insisted on coming along.

They'd had to use a half dozen safety pins to take in the sides of one of Tom's pairs of loose silky basketball shorts. Reese had been ready to go in jeans or cut-off cargo pants—"Shorts are not my thing, dude"—but there was only so much ridiculousness Tom could stand. He'd pulled out an old pair of shorts that had promptly fallen off Reese's hips and then sat there, breathing deep and trying not to pay attention to his face being inches from that bare waist, pale skin glowing with its lack of sun. He wanted to put his mouth on the sharp bone of Reese's pelvis and bite, but he resisted valiantly and pinned a section of the shorts together as Reese held them in place.

He'd looked up once, when Reese had swayed forward as if on accident and brushed his silk-covered dick against Tom's forearm while he pinned. A suspicious gleam shone in his eyes as he looked down at Tom, trying not to smile.

"Knock it off, unless you wanna get thrown down on this bed and not let up until tomorrow," he growled and tried to keep his hands away from the soft skin of Reese's hip. Fucking pins.

When Reese nudged him again with his dick, the length of him starting to swell under the navy blue nylon, his control snapped. He fisted his hand in the loose fabric below the neat column of pins he'd already set and yanked Reese bodily forward. Laid his mouth on the hot, smooth skin of Reese's waist and sucked, scraping the flat of his tongue over the skin. Captured Reese between his teeth and let him know how hard he was _thinking_ about biting him by the nip of his teeth on Reese's skin. Delicate fingertips rested on the back of his neck, scraping through the short shaved hairs there, touching him so lightly he could barely feel it and yet every ounce of his focus zoomed in on those fingertips. His arm was pressed like a bar behind Reese's thighs, locking him in place so he couldn't get away, Reese's back arching him away from Tom's mouth.

He let go and dropped his forehead against Reese's hip. The hands in his hair stayed.

"Sorry." He kept his head down for a moment and felt like an asshole for hiding. He looked up, fearing to see that white, drawn look on Reese's face that meant he was trying hard not to react to something that terrified him.

Reese had pulled half of his hair into a samurai top knot and anchored it with a bright green elastic, so for once his whole face was visible.

It was flushed pink.

Not white. Not pale and looking shaky around the edges. Pinking up with the glow of a guy whose dick was getting hard because he was turned on by their play.

Tom didn't realize how hard he'd braced himself to see fear until all the adrenaline flushed from his muscles, leaving him weak and a little shaky himself.

Holy shit.

He was so not the right guy to be doing this.

He didn't realize he'd let go of Reese entirely, his own hands cradling his head as he braced his elbows on his knees. Reese's fingertips danced again on his nape, the tiniest connection between them.

"You gotta find some other guy for this, Reese." The hand on his neck stilled. "I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing and one of these times I'm gonna get it wrong." He tilted his head back to look Reese in the eyes, trying not to flinch at how vulnerable it felt. "I'm so fucking terrified that one of these times I'm going to touch you in the wrong way. I don't know if I can do this."

"Hey." Reese pulled his hands away from his face and brushed over his hair, smoothing it down. "It's okay."

"Yeah, but it won't be if—"

"Then I'll deal. We'll deal," he promised at the look Tom shot him. "I'm not a child. And I'm _not_ broken. This is hard sometimes. Don't you think I wish you could throw me down on the bed and fuck me 'til I see stars?" Tom's dick went from half asleep to all the way awake in an instant, the zing of _hell, yes_ shooting up his spine. A matching heat lit in Reese's eyes as he kept talking. "Not yet, big boy. Someday. Maybe. But I'm a fully grown human being. You are not responsible for making sure nothing bad ever happens to me, especially when the bad things are only in my fucked up brain. One, good luck with that." He smiled down at Tom. Always over him. Tom never forgot to make himself smaller, pull himself in so as not to threaten. He wondered if Reese understood how Tom measured his actions, his posture, his very location in a room, in order to make sure Reese felt in control. "Two, _I'm_ the only one who can fix me. Though I appreciate that you're willing to try."

That was the coin on the scale tipping the balance into guilt all over again. He'd already lost count of the number of times Reese had given him another chance, had kept his heart open out of generosity and a bravery that Tom knew he fell short on matching. He dropped his gaze again and shook his head.

"You should kick me to the curb now, before you get attached. I am not what you need." He knew he was talking about so much more than just his fear of making a wrong move and triggering bad memories.

"I'm not worried." Reese's voice was low, his fingers more sure than ever as he ran his hand down Tom's neck. "Besides, it's too late anyways."

Tom looked up at Reese's lopsided grin.

"Already attached. Sorry."

He shouldn't get a rush of warmth from that grin, those words. This was a man who was working his way back to whole and who was going to get there. Who'd be happy and healthy and a part of the world in a way Tom was afraid he might never be again.

He grabbed Reese's hand from the back of his head and pulled it down to his mouth. Pressed his lips to the back of Reese's wrist, then held his hand in two fists while he laid his forehead against their clasp.

"Okay. Yeah. Too late."

So he ran, legs pumping beneath him, the ache of lactic acid building faster than it used to as he leaned into the curve and flew back onto the straightaway, Reese whooping and hollering from the far side of the track. He ran until the sweat poured off him and his muscles burned and he hoped it would be enough.

Because he wasn't going to do that thing, the one thing that would stop hurting Reese. And that was going to break them, sooner or later.

If he could run fast enough and far enough, maybe later wouldn't come.

He locked his eyes on the finish line and tried to outrun the knowing that it would.

# 14

When Reese told Tom he better plan on spending part of his Christmas holiday at the Anders' house, he knew better than to argue. He was stressed out enough about the holiday, though Reese had been the one to suggest that they skip gifts. Tom's laptop froze and couldn't be brought back to the land of the living during the mad, no-sleep rush to finish research papers and projects in the last week of the semester. He knew Reese assumed it was more a matter of not having time to go buy a new one than a money problem, because he _still_ hadn't gotten around the explaining exactly how bad things were. Reese thought he was charmingly anti-materialistic for someone who'd grown up with obscene wealth. He thought Tom hadn't noticed the sole of his running shoes separating from the body of the shoe, peeling dangerously farther with every early morning run he logged on the track or on the trails, avoiding the rest of the team.

He knew his shoes were in dire need of replacement. Could feel the cushion in his insole had worn out completely by the ache of tendonitis in his knees. He took to timing his runs so he could ice his knees afterward while Reese was gone, wanting to avoid questions about that too.

He'd told Reese he'd rejoin practice in the spring, when training officially began for the outdoor track and field season. He would train by himself through the winter, trying to pick up some of the ground he'd lost. They argued over whether this meant Reese got to postpone asking the campus health center about a therapist or if he should have faith in Tom's intentions and start now.

Tom had a hard time vouching for his own side on that one.

In the meantime, arguing politely about therapy kept everyone off the subject of why Tom hadn't pried away an hour or two to go buy a new laptop as he moved into one of the many campus computer centers on a semi-permanent basis. He kept his earbuds screwed in tight and his eyes on the screen, ignoring anyone else in the room unless it was Reese, bringing him another travel mug of coffee with three shots of espresso and urging Tom to come back to the room and share Reese's laptop.

No way. He took enough from Reese already without leaching computer time from him in the busiest week of the semester.

But logging round-the-clock hours on the opposite end of campus, where he'd discovered the least populated computer center was on the top floor of the science building—yellowing lights, limited heat, and no vending machine in the building kept all but the most desperate or delirious of souls away—meant he'd run out of markers to call in when it came to resisting Reese's demands for the holiday.

"Tell you what I want, okay? I want a meal with you and my dad and me all at the same table. I want you to sleep over when you can, even if it's only for a few hours. I want to fall asleep on the couch watching old movies and let my dad make us _pannkaker_ for breakfast."

At Tom's blank look, he explained. "It's Swedish for pancakes."

Tom tried to picture it and felt the kneejerk denial rising up in him. He wanted to get his own shit done during the break. Christmas was over for him as a holiday, its nostalgic pull gone. Pretty much the opposite. He'd prefer to never think again of the excess and careless waste of years past. Thinking of everything he'd had and trashed or tossed away made him sick to his stomach. How poorly his father had prepared him for anything other than inheriting wealth.

Reese looked him in the eye. "We make a lot of compromises for each other, you and I. This one isn't mine."

He had a moment of shouting _Fuck you!_ inside his head, raging at this man giving him ultimatums and drawing another fucking line in the sand and telling him to jump. His hands tightened on the back of the chair and the spasm shot up his arms until his shoulders locked and he glared at Reese.

Who didn't flinch.

"Fine." He could taste the blood in the word as he bit it off. He didn't even know why he was so angry. The dread had been building in his gut at the idea of going weeks without sleeping next to Reese or sitting next to him, wracking his brains over tax law or watching _The Bourne Identity_ for the twentieth time. He'd grown used to being tethered to the world again, of having someone who would notice his absence if he didn't show up. Returning to the way he'd lived for the year before re-enrolling at Carlisle this past September seemed impossibly hard.

He didn't know if he had it in him any more to hold the walls up that allowed him to function in his own isolated bubble, impervious to any arrows slung his way by the world. The thought that he might not be able to hold it together terrified him.

Tom withdrew their last week on campus and didn't know how to stop it. The battles raging inside his head were making him crazy. Between his need to never do anything to hurt Reese and the only way he knew to keep himself functioning—total and stoic isolation—he was wracked with worry that he'd fuck up on both ends.

Because he was okay with everything that had happened to him. Okay with what he would do in order to survive, to hold it together, to stay at his top-tier college long enough to get a degree that would open doors for him. He might even admit to some pride at how well he'd managed to take control, to nail down each and every detail and master every rule and regulation. For someone who hadn't known where to find his own Social Security card, much less how to fill out W-4 for a job, he'd done good. He knew that.

But in public it still burned. The first time he'd told a friend he was going to have to get a job, flushing as he'd asked for a place to stay while he looked for one, the friend had eyed him strangely.

"Stay in the pool house. We'll go to Mallorca for the summer and by the time we get back, I'm sure your lawyers will have it all cleared up, okay?"

Tom, who knew this mess was his life now, had nodded and stopped calling that friend. Or any friend. They didn't understand and the humiliation of trying to explain it was a blow to the face that he couldn't put himself through again. Not after the first half dozen times at least.

Thinking back, he knew that if he'd called Cash, his friend would have tried, although no doubt he too would have been unable to believe, deep down, that it was all gone. All of the money, the properties, the casual ease with which Tom moved through the world. Gone. Tom could hardly believe it himself for months at first. How could anyone else understand?

He'd stopped expecting them to. He didn't ask for help anymore. For a while, he'd hung around occasionally with his old crowd, desperate for some human connection with people who knew him, pretending that nothing had changed. But it was too hard to spend time around people who didn't understand why he couldn't join a last-minute trip to the slopes in Vermont for the weekend or head to Manhattan for some clubbing. His friends thought him melodramatic and showed their irritation when he backed out of every jaunt.

He hadn't spoken the words out loud, "I have nothing," to anyone other than his father's lawyer and the bankers who'd explained to him that everything, _everything_ , was frozen and would most likely be lost when the final judgment was made and the civil suits started rolling in.

Which meant Reese had no way to understand why Tom froze and all of the color drained from his face when Reese handed him a battered laptop with a red bow stuck off-center on the lid on Christmas morning.

He'd shown up before midnight on Christmas Eve, parking on the street outside the Anders' house and sending Reese a text message to come and wake him in the morning. He felt awkward waking up Reese's dad in the middle of the night and knew from experience that it wasn't cold enough yet to make sleeping in his car unsafe. But it hadn't been sixty seconds later that Reese was banging on his window, his smile fierce in the cold as he hopped with bare feet on the frozen ground. Tom had already fallen asleep, exhausted after three days straight of driving.

"Tom! What the hell? Get inside, you lunatic."

He'd stopped first to wrap his arms around Reese's slender torso, burying his face in his neck and holding on tight for what felt like ages, until he jerked back in alarm. Shit. He'd practically been smothering Reese.

"Sorry," was all he got out before Reese tugged him back in close and wrapped his hands around Tom's waist.

"S'okay. Really." Reese pressed his forehead against Tom's sternum before pulling back to look up at him and smile. "It's okay."

Tom kept his arms around Reese loose and easy. Holding him but easing up on the death grip.

Inside, he'd insisted on sleeping on the couch in the living room, since there wasn't a guest room. Only the master bedroom and Reese's old room, which Reese swore his dad would be fine with Tom sharing. Tom refused.

Reese had narrowed his eyes at that and handed him a pile of bedding. Tom, who couldn't have said if it was manners or another public declaration of gayness that he ducked out of fear, kissed him goodnight at the bottom of a darkened staircase and stumbled his way through the living room to collapse on the couch. He punched up the pillow under his head, wrapped the scratchy homemade afghan Reese had given him around his shoulders, and decided he'd figure it out when he could think straight.

In the morning, Reese knocked him flat again with the laptop.

"It's not a gift! I know we said we weren't doing that." Words spilled out of Reese as Tom sat there, in his boxers with a blanket wrapped around his lap, for Christ's sake. The sunrise had barely started graying the sky outside the big plate glass window when Reese had snuck down the stairs and squeezed in next to him on the couch. They'd settled in to some serious making out, Tom rolling under Reese until his boy stretched out and covered the length of him, when Reese had jumped up and run over to the Christmas tree looming in the corner. He came bouncing back gleefully, laptop in hand, to a shell-shocked Tom. "I stuck a bow on it because, you know, festive. But it's nothing. Just a loan, my old laptop from high school. And it'll probably make you nuts because the S key gets stuck and you have to bang at it. But it's better than my running coffee across campus to that horrible science building with all the fetuses in formaldehyde because, seriously? Those jars creep me out."

Reese ran out of words, but Tom's hadn't come back to him yet. He stared at the scratched gray plastic and swallowed hard. Reese's fingers crept over his.

"It's no big deal, okay, Tom?"

He cleared his throat. Blinked several times. "No, I know."

"It's really not. Don't be upset."

"I'm not."

Reese scoffed politely and grabbed his face. He rubbed a thumb under Tom's eye and then popped his thumb in his mouth. Tom knew he tasted salt.

"I'm not upset. This is a really nice loan." Damn. He had to clear his throat again. "I feel kinda bad that I didn't get you anything." Trying hard, he dug deep for a wobbly smile. "Could have given you my old high school track shorts. They might even have fit you."

"Yeah? You were a skinny ass punk back then?" Reese's eyes were soft as he leaned forward and wrapped a hand around Tom's neck, pulling him in for a kiss. "Like me?"

"You're not skinny. You're...slim. Strong." He sighed and set the laptop on the floor next to the couch, sinking back on the deep cushions and tangling his fingers with Reese. Maybe Reese would lie down too so Tom wouldn't have to look in his eyes for this part. He got his wish when Reese scooched down and stretched out next to him, head on Tom's chest.

Tom kept one hand curled behind his head and played with the waistband of Reese's sweatpants with the other.

"So how much have you figured out then?" At Reese's demurral, he groaned and pulled the arm behind his head to cover his eyes. "You can say it."

A short sigh warmed the cotton of his T-shirt on his chest.

"You're not working for money for books, are you?" Reese picked his words carefully. "Or, not just for books."

"No." He waited, eyes closed.

"You don't have anyplace to go when we're not at Perkins. You'll be glad to shower here today."

He blushed and didn't say anything, figuring silence was as good as a confirmation. He knew he didn't smell so great, although he'd done a handful of bathroom pit stop washes with wet paper towels.

"There isn't enough money to pay for school, is there?"

"There isn't any."

"Any...money?"

He shook his head and hoped Reese could feel it.

"Nothing at all?"

"Nope."

"It's fifty grand for a year at Carlisle. How much financial aid are you getting?"

"None."

Reese sprang up like a jack in the box. "What? Why not? It's based on need. I should know. We're hardly paying anything." He pried Tom's arm off his face and shook his chin until he opened his eyes.

Open eyes didn't mean he had to look at anyone. There was a nice big window over Reese's shoulder and he could almost make out the hulking curves of ornamental bushes in the front yard now that the sun was up.

"You file the FAFSA form in the spring and it covers—"

"The previous year. Fuck. When your dad—"

"Wasn't short on cash, no."

"But they have to make exceptions..."

"Getting myself declared financially independent is actually harder than it sounds. And I waited until too late."

He didn't mention the override exception for parental imprisonment. He could barely explain his reasoning for refusing to accept that advantage to himself. The idea of trying to explain it to Reese, of Reese not understanding why Tom couldn't do it, made him shudder with anxiety and nausea.

Reese slumped against his hip. "Shit. I knew something was wrong. I kept leaving those apples on my desk because you always eat like you aren't getting enough food. How are you managing?"

"Truth?" It seemed to be the time for it. But Jesus, this was humiliating. Reese had been sneaking him _food_ , like a stray cat you'd feed out of pity. He braced himself and focused hard on the gray squirrel scampering across the lawn in the yellowing light. "I'm not. You don't have an official roommate for next semester yet."

He heard the sharp intake of breath and clenched his teeth together.

"What do you mean?"

Yeah, that was a different tone. Less sympathy, more sharp.

"I missed the deadline for second semester tuition payments. The dean said she'd take my check if I could give it to her before class starts at the end of January. And she'll hold my spot in the classes I registered for. But I'm short. Right now that check'd bounce. By a lot."

"Because of me. Because I asked you not to leave so much." Reese's voice was flat, small.

"No." This staring into space thing was bullshit. He pulled his knees up and tucked his feet against his butt, hugging his legs against his chest, which felt protected enough to look Reese in the face. "No, because of me. I got careless with my hours, yeah, but it was because I didn't want to go."

Reese took advantage of the open couch space to sit back and hug his legs to his chest too. He rested his forehead on his own knees for a moment, before turning his head to look at Tom, cheek on his knees. Tom smooshed his toes forward until they were wedged under Reese's butt and feet.

"You're not pissed?" he asked and held his breath.

"At you? For not telling me? I'm totally pissed. Fuck, Tom. You're barely with me as it is. Finding out that you're not telling me shit like this just makes it worse." Reese's lack of smile told Tom he wasn't kidding. He saw Reese take a deep breath. "But we'll save that for later. We have to figure out how to keep you at school first. Then I can be pissed for as long as I want."

There it was again. That _we_ , the word that slayed him every time because it snuck right under those walls he needed so badly and refused to let him huddle in, what? Not solitary splendor. Hardly. More like solitary ruin. Solitary gloom. Solitary pile of shit in the middle of Crap City.

Tom got off the couch.

"I gotta go shower." He needed to get out of this room was what he needed.

A fist in the back of his T-shirt stopped him. Reese's arms circled his waist from behind, the bump of his nose poking him in between his shoulder blades.

"We'll figure it out. Okay?"

He rested his hand on the arms that gripped each other around him and nodded. He didn't believe it, but it fucking meant everything to him that Reese would say it.

If he waited until he was in the shower, hot water streaming over his shoulders, almost burning him, to let the tears come, he didn't think Reese would blame him. He cried until the snot stuffed up his nose and he was hiccupping and coughing on the water he inhaled. Toweling off, he tried to calm down, breathing slow and deep and staying in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and glorying in the warmth until his face wasn't pink with anything except the heat of the steam.

When he finally emerged, the smell of pancakes cooking in the kitchen and voices in conversation told him Reese's dad was up.

Time to brace the lion in his den. Or, at his stove. Tom told himself a dad who made Christmas pancakes for his grown son couldn't be all that intimidating, but he still shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders as he entered the sunny room.

Reese's dad lit up at the sight of him as if he were a long-lost friend who'd returned from circumnavigating the globe via dogsled. Mr. Anders wiped his hands on the Rudolph towel tucked into the front of his khaki trousers and grasped Tom by the arm with both hands, pulling him into the kitchen and steering him to a seat at the small butcher block table opposite the stove.

"Have a seat, have a seat. Have a pannkaker. You can call it a pancake. We're fooling ourselves with the Swedish thing. No one really knows how to pronounce it." Every couple of sentences, Mr. Anders squeezed Tom on the shoulder or the arm, as if reassuring himself that Tom hadn't left the room. "I'm about as Swedish as the president. Reese, get him some milk. Or some orange juice. Do you like OJ, Tom?"

Tom picked himself up from where he'd collapsed under the weight of the conversational freight train that flattened him. "Um, maybe some coffee?"

"Reese! Get him coffee."

"I'm on it, Dad." Reese was at the stove, where the coffee brewed in a glass pot contraption that bubbled and dripped like a mad scientist's laboratory. Mr. Anders wiped down the table near Tom again and nudged the butter dish and syrup pitcher another inch closer to him.

Reese brought him a steaming mug. "Quick, take some pancakes before my dad has a nervous breakdown."

Mr. Anders whapped his son on the arm with his towel, before tucking it back in his pants.

"Hush, you. Let your guest eat. Tom, eat."

Reese slipped into the chair opposite Tom and rolled his eyes behind his dad's back while grinning, which let Tom know that he wasn't really irritated. Beneath the table, Reese's feet bumped up against his own. He pulled his ankles back toward his chair and grimaced an apology at Reese, only to realize a moment later when Reese's toes brushed his again that it hadn't been an accident.

Tom's face burned. There wasn't even a tablecloth. Jesus. Did Reese really not care that his dad could see them playing footsie under the table?

Thank God Mr. Anders had turned back to the stove, where he had set a blackened roasting pan full of what looked like _snakes_?

"We're having a turkey breast, Tom, since it's only the three of us. Nothing too fancy and I didn't have to get up at four a.m."

"Don't be shy, Dad. You've got ten pounds of neckbones there for your three-day gravy. It's going to be awesome."

Mr. Anders turned a faint pink and began scraping the bottom of the pan. "I only had two days, so it's a bit of a rush job. But that moron at the butcher shop didn't order my neckbones." He dipped his head over the pan, muttering to himself. Tom only caught a few words, _how am I, holiday meal, no neckbones, cocksucker..._

"Dad!"

Mr. Anders looked over his shoulder. "What?"

"We've talked about this." Now Reese was the one flushing and staring at his dad, obviously willing him to remember an earlier conversation. Nothing but a blank look from Mr. Anders. "You have a gay son. You can _not_ go around calling people cocksucker as an insult. Also, guest here?"

"Oh, shoot. Sorry." Mr. Anders looked mortified, holding a dripping spatula up across his mouth. "It's so hard to remember sometimes. Jeannie would've killed me."

"My mom," Reese explained for Tom's benefit. He jumped up with a napkin to wipe the drips off the floor while pushing his dad's hand back over the roasting pan. Standing up, he pecked his dad on the cheek. "You can call the butcher an asshole. Everyone's got one of those."

His dad snorted and nodded, bending back to the gravy that Tom hoped could spin turkey feathers into gold. _Days to make?_

All of breakfast was like that. Tom watched father and son banter and argue, his head turning from one to the other like a spectator at Wimbledon. He helped Reese clear the table and load the dishwasher after breakfast, but then they poured more coffee and sat back down in their seats. And stayed there.

He'd never seen anyone simply sit in a kitchen and talk with their dad while he cooked. Okay, he'd never known a dad who cooked, other than friends' dads who were into things like molecular gastronomy or would spend thirty-six hours cooking grass-fed duck in a sous vide contraption they'd bought for two thousands dollars. Rich people who relieved stress by pretending they were restaurant chefs. But they didn't cook like this, with pots and pans from the seventies and a spatula with the stub of a broken handle Mr. Anders claimed to like better this way when Reese teased him.

No one Tom knew _ever_ talked like Reese and his dad. About whether or not the neighborhood garden association elections were rigged (yes, because the President was bribing people with homemade mulch) and if Reese wanted an old beater to drive to and from school this year (no, parking on or off campus was a pain). About politics and family gossip and stories of holidays past.

Most of Tom's friends went out of their way to make sure their parents knew as little as possible about their lives, dribbling out information in exchange for bribes or threats not to deliver the latest model sports car. He'd been proud that he and his dad had seemed close in comparison, his dad always taking the time to tell his son secrets to the insider world of adults. Of winners.

Watching the Anders talk to each other, though, he felt ashamed, aware that everything his father had told him was bullshit. Every piece of advice, every joshing warning, every time Tom had sat at his metaphorical feet and soaked up every word, was crap. All of it. Because you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to see that this was family. Not lectures handed down from on high. Ten warning signs that the guy you were doing business with was running out of money. That wasn't real. That was bullshit. _This_ was real. A little bitching, a lot of laughter, a willingness to cheerlead for the other person no matter how silly their triumph. The connection he'd had with his father looked like a shitty plastic imitation. The fake crap you bought when you were too cheap to get the real thing.

Or maybe when you didn't know any better you thought it _was_ the real thing.

Bruce Springsteen belted out "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" on the radio, scolding his saxophonist for not being well-behaved enough to have Santa bring him a new instrument. The kitchen was warm and sunny, windows fogging up with the steam of dishes being prepped on the stovetop, the smell of strong coffee running under a complicated chorus of roasting meats, baking breads, the sharp, sweet smell of cut apples. Tom huddled over his mug.

It wasn't a pain in Tom's chest. More a burning pressure, like too much of _something_ squeezed into one tiny spot behind his ribs, until he couldn't sit still at the table for another second. He shoved his chair back with a shriek of casters on tile that pulled father and son's attention to him.

"I gotta...run." He stood up. "I'll be back. Soon." He sprinted for his bag in the living room.

He was on his knees, digging through his duffle to see if he'd packed running clothes, or something that could pass for running clothes so he could get out of this house, when Reese walked in on bare feet, dropped into a squat next to him, and bumped his shoulder.

"Hey. Maybe, instead of running, you could take a nap."

Tom shook his head and kept digging. "I've only been awake for three hours."

Reese bumped him again. "Yeah, but you probably didn't sleep for three days, right?"

"I slept some."

"In your car?" Reese didn't wait for him to answer. He stood and grabbed Tom's hands, tugging him toward the couch. "I bet you're still running a deficit. C'mon, there's gotta be football on TV, right? You can take the couch, stretch out. In case you get tired."

"The game doesn't start until the afternoon." His brain turned sluggish at the thought of sleep. Maybe he'd lost the ability to argue with Reese after telling him the worst of his secrets, the last shameful truths he'd hoarded. Maybe it was nothing but giving in from here on out.

"Fine. The Christmas parade. You can watch for Santa."

He pushed Tom down on the couch, tossed him the afghan again and grabbed the remote. Within ten seconds, there were marching bands and a giant Snoopy on the TV. Reese tucked the blanket around his feet and smacked him on the ass before heading back to the kitchen and somehow Tom wasn't running after all.

He slept through until the late afternoon. Maybe he'd been halfway awake at one point when a football game had started, because he remembered hearing Mr. Anders' voice shouting curses at Green Bay and Reese sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch in front of him. But he'd sunk back into sleep before he could apologize for being a terrible guest.

Dinner was the same, the two Anders keeping up a nonstop commentary, full of smart ass remarks and long stories, while Tom sat silent and awkward, wondering what had happened to him, why he couldn't remember how to talk to people anymore. He used to be able to talk to anyone. Reese and his dad included him as if he were more than a mute lump at the end of the dining room table, and he helped with the serving and cleaning in apology.

Reese set up snacks in the living room for movie night while Tom cleared the last of the dishes. How Reese thought they could possibly eat anything else, Tom didn't know.

In the kitchen, Reese's dad was elbow deep in soapy water, scrubbing the roasting pan that was too large to fit in the dishwasher. Tom excused himself as he opened the dishwasher door next to Mr. Anders and upended the last of the glasses into the upper rack. Reese's dad spoke as Tom closed the door.

"You slept on the couch last night?"

Tom froze, hand on the cycle button.

"Um, yeah."

"You don't have to do that." Mr. Anders didn't look up from pot-scrubbing. "I know that you're Reese's...boyfriend. You can stay with him. You know. In his room."

"I'm not always," he said the words slowly, trying to figure out what he meant as he spoke, thankfully to Reese's dad's back. "Comfortable. With people knowing things about me. Like that."

Reese's dad turned his head, glancing at him for a moment before returning to the blackened pan in the sink.

"Reese told me a little about it. Can't say I blame you. But fact is, I do know. And it's okay, kid. We don't have to talk about it, but you don't have to pretend either. All right?"

He could try, at least. He wasn't used to talking to a parent like Mr. Anders, without a hidden agenda. But he could try. "It's hard."

"Lots of things are hard. But if my Jeannie, Reese's mom, were here right now, the one thing that would make me feel better would be curling up with her at the end of the day and holding on tight."

Tom didn't answer for a moment, but the temptation of having someone to talk to, even in the most general way, was irresistible.

"We can't, really, do that. The holding on tight thing. You know. He can't really have things wrapped around him. Holding him. It reminds him too much of...stuff."

Reese's dad folded in on himself, shoulders turning in, elbows bent as he rested his forearms on the edge of the sink and dropped his head. He didn't look at Tom.

When he spoke, his voice was thick, sounding like he'd swallowed a mouthful of gravel. The words scraped out.

"Can you hold his hand?"

Tom remembered the first time he'd held Reese's hand, after finding him in the Perkins's living room during the party and leading him back to their room, painfully conscious of the eyes on them as he held his roommate's hand.

"Yeah. I can do that."

"Because the things that have happened to you are bad, kid. I know you've had it hard. But what happened to my boy shouldn't happen to anyone. Ever." Reese's dad straightened up in front of the sink and turned to face him. Tears ran down his cheeks behind the black plastic frames of his glasses and gathered on the soft edges of his jaw before dropping onto the collar of his short-sleeve button down. "So you can hold my boy's hand, okay?"

Tom swallowed, pinned to the floor by those tears. By his own too, as he felt something tickle his cheek and wiped wetness across his face with the back of his hand. Was this going to happen all the time now? He sniffed and straightened up like a man, hearing his own dad's voice in his head, scolding him for making a scene.

"Okay." He nodded. "I can do that."

He didn't imagine the look of surprise on Reese's face that night when he sat next to him on the couch instead of in the opposite corner. Mr. Anders knelt in front of the TV, putting a disc in the DVD player. They'd settled on _The French Connection_ , which Tom had never seen. Apparently it had the best car chase scene of all time and both Anders were adamant that he needed to repair this shocking gap immediately.

He wasn't quite pressing his thigh against Reese's leg, but it was close, and Tom's heartbeat had kicked up a notch at the idea that sooner or later Mr. Anders was going to stand up and see him sitting this close, closer than anyone who was only a friend would sit. Which was crazy to worry about. Reese's dad knew they were together and didn't care. He was happy Tom was here with Reese, who had a deer-in-headlights stare now, as if startled beyond words to have Tom next to him.

Reese's dad braced a hand on his knee and pushed himself up. He grabbed his beer off the coffee table and dropped into his recliner with a sigh.

"Okay. Hit Play, kid. Let's show this guy what he's missing."

He didn't look at them at all, ignoring Tom's shoulder-to-shoulder seat with Reese as if he'd seen it a million times. It wasn't the real world, because Mr. Anders was a great dad who had listened when Tom talked about how this was hard, but for one moment Tom had a vision of how life could be. How he could sit with his boyfriend and watch a movie and hold his hand and no one would stare at him or give a damn.

Not the real world, but maybe the small, private space in which the two of them existed had opened up a little.

He slid his right hand off his lap and onto Reese's, grabbing his hand and lacing their fingers together. Thank God the DVD had "Coming Attractions" for other loud action films, because the three of them were carefully not looking at each other or talking. But he saw Mr. Anders wrap both of his hands around his beer bottle and squeeze, looking steadily at the TV, and knew he saw.

He leaned his head down until Reese's hair brushed his cheek and he could talk into Reese's ear.

"I really like your dad."

Reese squeezed his hand and nodded.

"Yeah, he's pretty great."

By the end of the film, Reese had slid down next to him, half asleep and leaning against Tom's shoulder, his arm wrapped around Tom's from elbow to wrist. Mr. Anders was out cold in the recliner, snoring. Tom pressed Stop on the remote and shook Reese with his shoulder.

"Hey. Should we wake your dad up?"

Reese blinked up at him and sat up. Tom went to the DVD player and crouched, removing the DVD & putting it back in its case. He brought it back to the coffee table & set it down.

"Yeah, I can do it. Clear him out so you can get some sleep without the Snore Master over there keeping you up."

He shoved his hands deep in his jeans pockets and kicked a table leg. It was the kind of sturdy piece you were allowed to put your feet on. The kind of table two guys living together would have that never would have got past Reese's mom if she'd still been alive.

"I thought maybe I'd, um, come with you." Reese was still on the couch, staring at him. "To sleep. If that's okay."

"Yeah. Sure." He stood, his stance mimicking Tom unconsciously, hands in pockets, feet shuffling. "I mean, yes, that'd be good."

He crossed to his dad and shook him by the shoulder.

"Hey, Pop, movie's over. Go to bed, okay?"

Mr. Anders scrubbed his face with his hands and sat up.

"Right. Right. Okay." He got up and shuffled out of the room, waving over his shoulder. "'Night, boys."

Reese stopped at the door on his way out of the room and snapped off the overhead light, plunging the room into darkness lit only by the Christmas lights circling the windows. He held a hand out to Tom.

"Coming?"

Holding hands was nothing compared to this. He wasn't fucked up enough to go upstairs with Reese and then wake up early to come back down here and let Mr. Anders find him on the couch when he came down for his coffee.

Okay, strike that. He was fucked up enough to think about it. But he wasn't going to do it. So this was it. He was going upstairs to sleep in the same bed with his boyfriend at his dad's house, or he was staying on the couch in the living room.

Reese was silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by the light in the hall that his dad had left on.

Tom shook his head. There wasn't any question at all, was there?

He grabbed Reese's hand and held on tight.

"Yeah. I'm here. Show me the way."

* * *

The entire January term vacation unrolled like some kind of strange, down-the-rabbit-hole fairytale for Tom. He drove a cab or pirate taxied it in his own car twenty hours a day the first week, but he caught a few hours sleep with Reese after the bars closed almost every night.

After seven days though, his vision blurred and reflexes shot, Reese refused to let him out of the house until he got eight solid hours of sleep. He also sat Tom down at the dining room table with his dad and they tried to talk him into accepting a loan instead of killing himself.

Tom refused. No fucking way he was taking money from his boyfriend or his boyfriend's dad. Not when he could see that the Anders weren't exactly rolling in it. Whatever loan they offered him was coming out of funds they'd clearly need for Reese's own education. He did let them browbeat him into emailing the dean, the econ department head, and his favorite econ prof, to explain how difficult his situation had become—and if he'd thought laying out all of the details of his personal life had been humiliating the first time around, that was nothing compared to his new open book policy—and Reese refrained from saying _I told you so_ when emails came back offering help.

It turned out that the dean couldn't extend the deadline to pay his tuition, but she could arrange for a work-study job on campus, which would cover money for meals. Plus, she made Tom talk to the fin aid officer again. This time around he managed to explain himself and she managed to listen. The documentation was going to be way more complicated, and would involve regular check-ins with a social worker, but she could get him an exemption for homelessness. It wouldn't help with federal aid until next year, but would allow the school to offer him some minimal aid, plus would allow him to access resources for students who were homeless. Even knowing that this was exactly what he'd hoped for all along, accepting the help was hard. Naming his vulnerability out loud was humiliating. He wanted to protest that he was nothing like _those people_ , but Reese sat him down and made him see that he _was_ , even if he had a place to stay right now and a fifty thousand dollar car to drive. He also forced Tom to repeat, over and over, that there wasn't anything wrong with asking for this help. Tom was not _taking advantage_ of anyone. It sucked and Tom hated him for it for two days, but in the end he talked to a social worker who discovered a program that would cover all of his books for the semester.

Next, the department head offered him hours TAing a 100-level survey course, which paid a little better than the work-study hours. Best of all was Quillian, who knew of an unclaimed grant which the sponsoring foundation had decided not to award to any of the lackluster applicants that year. It took a solid twenty-four hours of essay writing and polishing, and Quillian pulling several of Tom's professors away from their families and to their computers to write letters of recommendation, but with less than seven days to go, Tom was awarded a grant for full tuition, conditional upon his agreeing to commit to working for a non-profit for two years post-graduation.

The foundation was sorry that they could only offer Tom a half a year of sponsorship at this time, but encouraged him to apply again next year.

With the prospect of room fees at Perkins being his only expenses, and a schedule of only classes and on campus work, Tom retreated into a dazed silence. The money he had in the bank would more than cover his room fees, leaving him enough to pay for an apartment over the summer months. He would be eligible for financial aid to wrap up his final semester the following year, or for a full year's worth at Carlisle if he wanted to take an extra semester and finish a double major before graduating. He didn't even have to work for the rest of J-term.

He sat on the Anders' couch for an entire day, wrapped in the afghan while Mr. Anders worked and Reese met Steph at Faneuil Hall for a day touring cheesy tourist sights all around the city in honor of her twenty-first birthday. Tom turned on the TV but couldn't keep track of any program for more than a few minutes.

He didn't understand what had happened to him, but he wasn't dumb enough to miss the fucking lesson. For a year and a half, he'd talked to no one, relied on no one and made it through with sheer willpower. Now, in less than four weeks, he'd vomited the worst of his secrets all over, had embarrassed himself in front of more people than he could count, and he'd ended up with so much help he couldn't wrap his brain around it.

And it felt like real help. Not help he'd conned out of someone or finagled his way into, but help that was being given to him the same way it would be given to anyone else. He'd managed, somehow, to make it back into the world where decent people lived.

He left a note for Reese, went to an old timer's bar three blocks down, next door to the VFW, and got drunk.

New habits died hard. There was Keystone Lager on tap for two dollars a pint. After a half a dozen pints, he'd tested his balance—as long as he could stagger he could make it three blocks to the Anders—when Reese and Steph showed up.

The grizzled bartender ignored them and they didn't try to order drinks, claiming to have drunk their weight in hot chocolate, spiked for Steph, already. They tugged at Tom's arm until he slid off his stool, letting them drag him out the door and onto the T. He was swaying in his seat, trying not to lean against Reese, when he realized that no one he knew took the T.

He squinted at Reese, who squinted back and grinned, making fun of the drunk guy.

"What, baby? Things a little blurry?"

It didn't even bother him that Reese called him baby. He was so not bothered by anything, T car rattling under his ass, that he leaned over and kissed Reese.

Who stared at him wide-eyed the entire time, lips frozen as Tom corrected his aim and dragged his mouth over from his jaw.

Fucking wobbly train threw him off.

"Holy shit." Steph's whisper was as quiet as a shout. She turned all the way around in her seat to stare. "A public display of affection. Whatcha doing, Worthy?"

He glared at her. Or tried to.

"Don' call me that."

Someone was pushing his face away from Steph but it was really important that he yell at her.

"Hey. Baby."

Tom blinked.

"Reese."

"That's right."

"My Reese."

"I sure am." Reese's cheeks were pink and round. "You think you might do that again?"

He could spend all night kissing Reese, whose mouth opened under his, so soft and tasting like chocolate. When Reese broke away and dragged him to the exit, laughing as the car doors slid closed, he protested.

Steph got behind him and pushed. "C'mon, suddenly gay boy. You need to dance some of this booze off."

"Don't dance."

"You will."

Even when he realized they'd dragged him to a gay club, bass pounding so loud his heart stuttered and realigned to the beat, he didn't care. Fuck it. There wasn't a goddamn thing the world didn't know about him already. He'd spent two weeks flayed open and spread on a slide for school administrators and social workers to examine under a microscope. Why care if anyone saw him dance with his boyfriend? He was pretty drunk, but it was _his_ idea to pull Reese into a dark corner behind the pile of speakers edging the stage. Reese held his hands while Tom backed up until his ass hit the wall. Moving with exaggerated care, he raised his arms until Reese pinned his hands to either side of his head.

Reese's eyes lit, catching flashes of light from the dance floor as he surged in close, grinding up against Tom and kissing him so hard his lips hurt. Tom held still under Reese's hands and hips and rocked his own hard dick against the answering bulge in Reese's jeans.

"Want you to suck me." He didn't care that he was shouting over the music.

"Mm-hmm. But not here, cowboy." The scrape of teeth on his neck made him shiver.

"Home."

Reese's shoulders shook as he licked a stripe up the side of Tom's neck. "Not while my dad's down the hall."

"Tomorrow. Wanna suck you too."

"Tomorrow you're gonna want to die and you won't even remember this conversation."

"Will." Because it felt like he could prove it with his dick, he pushed his hips forward again. When Reese let one of his wrists go to wrap a hand around Tom's dick, he held his own wrist in a tight grip so he didn't reach for Reese. Instead, he let Reese tease him and torture him and drag him back on the dance floor to rub up against him until Tom was sure he was going to end up coming in his pants anyway, long before they made it home.

Reese was right about one thing, though. Tom didn't forget a word of their conversation, but it was almost forty-eight hours before he wasn't wishing for death and could deliver that blowjob while Mr. Anders was at work. The porcelain of the old claw-foot tub was hard on his knees and there was barely enough room for the two of them, the shower curtain smacking him in the face and threatening to suffocate him. He braced a hand under Reese's ass and one against the wall, careful in the slippery tub that Reese didn't lose his balance, and sucked him down until he gagged, forcing more than he could handle. He might be the one with his mouth open, but _Reese_ was the open well down which Tom poured all of his confusion and gratitude and all the other crazy emotions that pushed and pulled him through each day.

Four more days after that they headed back to school. Four days of food and laughter and Mr. Anders ruffling his hair when he passed. Of walking all over Boston, not hand-in-hand at all times but giving Reese a squeeze to say thank you or pressing a kiss to his cheek and acting as if he didn't care if anyone saw them, because he was almost positive they wouldn't or that it wouldn't matter if they did.

But those weren't quite the same thing, and four days wasn't forever.

# 15

Back on campus for the start of the spring semester, Reese silently gave up arguing about whether Tom had fulfilled his end of the bargain and made an appointment at the Health Center with a therapist.

Tom kept running in the early mornings, just in case. When the ground on the trail was clear of snow and ice, he ran outside. If not, he suffered through the mind-numbing boredom of the treadmill, trying to hit the gym at hours when he wouldn't run into anyone. He'd talked to Coach and was back on a conditioning program, although it was clear to both of them he'd be working with the team as a trainer rather than competing. Indoor Track and Field season had already started, but by the time the outdoor season began in the spring Tom wouldn't embarrass himself.

So he kept running. For himself, and for the promise he'd made.

If Tom thought Reese had been cranky at the _idea_ of getting professional help, that was nothing compared to how hard he bitched after every therapy appointment.

Tom was not helping matters. As soon as they hit campus, Tom curled up like a dry, dead leaf, all the life sucked out of him by the five thousand pairs of eyes he felt following him every time he left Perkins House. The first time Reese grabbed his hand as they left Perkins to head onto campus for class, Tom flinched and pulled away. He couldn't explain it when Reese demanded to know what had changed overnight. Or rather, he _didn't_ explain it. Because he knew perfectly well what had changed.

Reese didn't speak to him for the rest of that day.

Being out in Reese's neighborhood in Boston, surrounded by solidly middle class families, not traditionally a hotbed of liberalism, was easier for Tom than being out on campus, where Carlisle Pride had voter registration drives and workshops every weekend, but the Greek system still ruled over the social universe. The average student had better odds of passing a calc final without studying than getting away with holding hands with his boyfriend in public without harassment.

But Tom wasn't the average student. The landline in their room had started ringing off the hook with hang-up phone calls that Tom was convinced were journalists who disconnected when Reese answered the phone. His father's first parole hearing was coming up and articles rehashing the sting operation and trial were popping up in the _Globe_ and _USA Today_. He flinched whenever a cell phone near him clicked as someone took a snapshot, though he knew any pictures taken of him would be silent and from a distance.

Reese thought he was a paranoid asshole who vastly over-estimated how much the world gave a damn about the son of a white-collar criminal, no matter how record-breaking the bust.

He voted for Evil Nemesis as the hang-up caller. In the end, they turned the ringer off and ignored the problem, because it was too far down on their list of shit to deal with.

Tom didn't drive any more on the weekends, but being on campus from Friday through Sunday was almost worse than exhausting himself behind the wheel of a cab. Reese might never be a social butterfly, even after therapy, but he was far more social than Tom. The trio of friends now, Cash, Steph and Reese, were relentless in bids to get Tom to join them in more than playing video games in Cash's room or studying as a group in the library. Especially after Cash was busted with beer in the stacks and almost got himself kicked off the team. Partying was restricted to actual parties from that day forward, and nothing would do but that Tom joined them. Coming up with excuses to stay in was harder than cleaning a drunk's vomit out of back seat floor mats.

Four weeks into the semester, Reese's mood post-therapy didn't show any signs of improving. Twice a week he was a total shit to be around, silent and pale before heading out to his appointment, full of piss and vinegar afterward.

Tom had tried comforting him, leaving him alone, and asking Reese what he wanted Tom to do. He'd gotten, respectively, a cold shoulder, a guilt trip about ignoring Reese, and a snapped out, "Nothing!"

He'd taken to being there in their room, waiting for Reese. If nothing else, he could be a witness. And a verbal punching bag, if that was what Reese needed. Since he was failing on every other front as a boyfriend.

Reese was stripping off his scarf and hat, whipping them in the open door of his closet before slamming it shut with a bang. His hair stuck up every which way and his eyes bounced around the room, skipping over Tom and looking for a safe place to land. He tracked melting snow and muck off his shoes as he came in the room.

"It sucks." The slam of his messenger bag on the floor. "I have to talk about it, again and again. He wants me to tell him every goddamn detail about what happened. And I get it. I'm not an idiot. I know what talk therapy is." Coat unzipped, balled up and pitched to the corner of the bed where it slid to the floor. "I know that this will help me get a handle on it and let it stop controlling my life and be able to think or talk about it without fucking freezing up or having a panic attack, but it's fucking hard and I don't want to do it anymore!"

Tom stayed on his bed, pretty sure that approaching Reese was a bad idea right now. His boy was seething with unhappiness, but both of them were smart enough to know there wasn't anything to do about shitty situations like this but get through them.

Until Reese dropped his bombshell.

"I talked about you."

Tom braced an arm against the mattress, the fight-or-flight instinct automatic. Reese threw himself on his mattress and shot Tom a dark look. "Don't panic. It's doctor-patient confidentiality. He's not going to out you to everyone on campus, who, hello? Wouldn't care anyways, but that's not the point. I talked about you and the doc said I should ask you to come with me." Reese rolled over and buried his face in his pillow.

"No."

Reese sat up.

"Seriously? No?" His hair hung in his face and shadows like bruises cupped his eyes. "That's all you have to say?"

"I can't." He pushed his book off his lap and pulled his knees to his chest. Wrapped his arms around them. Jesus, he spent a lot of time in the fetal position these days. "I get it. I'm a mess too and my mess is part of your mess now, but I just can't." He knew he should stop. There wasn't anything pretty about the shit in his head and he _knew_ he was better off keeping it locked up there.

"I'm not asking you—"

"I know you think everything's great now that school is paid for but I'm _barely keeping it together_ and I can't go diving in that pool, okay? I don't _want_ to bring anything out into the light or what the fuck ever. I was bawling in the kitchen with your dad already, for Christ's sake. I've taken the emotional gay thing pretty far already, okay?"

So much for keeping it locked up.

This was too much bullshit for Reese to tolerate sitting.

"Oh, fuck you for being an asshole." He stood, taking abortive steps in different directions and then turning back. Maybe Reese wasn't sure if he wanted to look at him. "You weren't crying because you let yourself have some kind of freakish gay feelings for me, dumbass. You're crying because you let yourself feel anything at all. And your life is _still_ as much of a wreck as mine is. Was. Of course you're fucking crying." He stopped in the middle of the room and stared down at Tom, who felt pretty small. "But don't you dare blame it on me and some kind of gay cooties."

Tom pressed his forehead to his knees until it hurt, because something should, and tried to take it back.

"I know. I'm sorry. I know. But, baby—" He heard himself say the endearment like he was floating above himself, watching this big, dumb guy trying to say the right thing to his incredibly pissed off boyfriend, and knew he'd never let the word slip out again after this one time. "I can't. It's too much and I just can't."

Silence. And, eventually, a sigh.

Soft shuffling steps and the smell of stale sweat, a lingering aftereffect of the intense sessions Reese normally showered off immediately upon his return. He didn't look to see Reese at the edge of the bed next to him.

"Maybe it feels like I keep on moving the goal posts on you, huh?" Reese said at last, knuckles bumping against Tom's shoulder.

He turned his head to rest his temple on his knees.

"Shifting the finish line?" Tom smiled but it was a tired, worn out thing and they both knew it. "I'm just afraid we're not running the same race. I'm second string all the way, Reese, and you're not. You're the anchor."

Reese stood over him and scraped his fingernails through Tom's short hair. Pinched the inch of it between his fingers and tugged. "C'mere." Tom scooched to the edge of the mattress. Reese's hands curved around his head and gripped his neck. "If you get to hide away here in our little cave and avoid everything, then why do I have to go out there and do all the hard stuff?"

He pressed his head against Reese's stomach and wrapped his hands around skinny thighs. Staring down at the floor, he sighed and told the truth.

"Because you're stronger than I am. I told you that all along."

# 16

Eventually, he gave in and agreed to go out for the night with his friends, if only to avoid having his refusal be a last straw for Reese, who was looking pretty thin around the edges. Tom said okay on a Wednesday, figuring the number of broke students willing to cough up twenty bucks to drink cheap beer on a weeknight might keep the size of the crowd down. He wouldn't agree to the frat party Cash suggested. Cash still didn't know about Reese but assumed Tom was the driving force behind their avoidance of fraternity row when they walked on the edge of campus that bordered the town's main drag. Tom hadn't explained, but no way was he going to let a bunch of drunk frat guys hassle Reese. Or worse, haul up numbers and rank him like a girl, catcalling. Because, face it. Even with his head down and his hood up, Reese _moved_ like a gay boy, somehow a little more slinky than everyone else, and Tom didn't think he was the only one who saw it.

So they went to a semi-random house party in a battered A-frame with sticky floors and a bathroom too gross for Steph. The furniture was strictly of the "pulled off the curb on trash day" variety and several of the bedroom doors were padlocked to keep out wandering partygoers.

Cash and Steph had claimed an old leather love seat in the front room, stuffing leaking out of the seat cushions where they'd split and been repaired with duct tape. Tom pushed a burgundy metal folding chair at Reese. When Cash patted his knee and Reese sat on it, you could have knocked Tom over with a feather.

He left the room to get a beer to stop himself from staring, but five minutes must not have been long enough for him to get his shit together, because when he came back and spotted a recognizably drunk Jack standing in front of the loveseat, Tom stopped in the open doorway and didn't go in.

"You got a twink on your knees now? You know what that means." Looked like his Evil Nemesis was flying solo tonight, no friends to rein him in. And he was flying pretty high if the flask in his hand and the slurred voice were any indication.

"What, like he's gonna get his gay cooties on me? Are you trying to turn me gay, Reese?" Cash was mostly ignoring Jack, reaching over with one finger to flick the end of Steph's blue pigtail until she swatted at him.

Reese rolled his eyes but pulled his shoulders back and didn't turn away from Jack. "Totally."

"Better watch out. I'll get straight cooties all over you and before you know it, you'll be eyeing Steph here and thinking about boobs."

Steph braced her foot against Cash's hip and pushed hard enough that Reese wobbled on his knees. "Seriously, Statham. Do you ever think about anything other than tits?"

"Sure. I think about dick too. But only my own. Don't get any ideas, goth boy."

All this casual banter was too much for Jack, who wobbled on his feet and swept his arm through the air.

"You guys are fucking queer. All of you."

"Oh my God! He called me queer!" Cash shrieked, clapping his hands to his face and doing his best girl imitation, which had Steph punching him in the shoulder. "I'm gonna cry. My secret life is ruined. Forever!" He sniffled and fake sobbed and draped an arm around Steph's shoulders until she shrugged him off and whacked him on the head with a throw pillow.

"Get off me, goofball."

Cash switched targets, wrapping his arms around Reese's waist and weeping into the back of his shirt.

"Reese, save me from that boy. He called me _queer_. What am I gonna do now?"

Jack pushed past Tom, too drunk to recognize his favorite target.

Sliding into the room, Tom froze at the sight of his friends, beer halfway to his mouth. He waited for Reese to tense up and wondered how he was going to get him away from Cash who wouldn't know that he'd crossed a line.

When Reese reached behind him and dug his fingers into Cash's armpits, tickling him until the big guy squirmed hard enough to let go and start sliding off the couch in his efforts to get away, Tom let his arm move again and swallowed warm tasteless beer.

"Uncle! Uncle! Jeez, for a little guy, you are fucking strong."

Stuck halfway to the floor, Cash grabbed Reese's outstretched hand and pulled himself up. When he got to his feet he stopped to ruffle Reese's hair with one hand before stretching his arms over his head and looking around. Steph was curled up in the corner of the couch, shaking her head but eyeing the tan skin Cash exposed when his shirt rode up as he twisted his arms to each side.

"Oh good. He's gone. What a loser. C'mon, gay boy. Let's get a beer, since your boyfriend didn't bring anyone a drink." Tom flinched. No one else was close enough to hear, thank God. Cash bent his arm and pointed his elbow at Reese.

Jesus. Tom sat straddling the backwards folding chair and called himself a thousand kinds of asshole, watching his friend fool around in public with the boyfriend no one knew he had. He should be the one standing with Reese. But he'd barely breathed when Jack had started spewing his bullshit. He hadn't said a word, too freaked out at the idea of drawing attention. Just sat there and watched his friend shame the asshole until the guy left.

Reese shook his head but smiled at Cash too. He didn't look at Tom.

"No thanks, straight boy. I don't drink. But you can bring me a Coke if they've got one."

"A Coke?" Cash mimed shock. "That shit leaches the calcium from your bones. Don't you read your _Ladies Home Journal_? Have a crappy flat beer instead. C'mon."

That was enough to make Tom sit up straight. With a jerk of his chin he caught Cash's eye and shook his head.

Cash got the message and dropped the subject.

"Or we can bring one back for Her Highness here, Princess Stephanie." He nodded in Steph's direction and pointed at her cup. "Light beer? White wine spritzer? What girlie shit are you drinking?"

Steph threw her empty plastic cup at him. Cash ducked and grinned.

"Like I'd drink anything you poured outside of my eyesight. I can only imagine what kind of nasty shit you think is palatable." She got up and stuck her own elbow out to Reese who took it while Cash scowled. "But I'll come with. There was a hot girl in the kitchen last time I was in there."

"Oh sure. You'll take _her_ arm. What am I? Chopped liver?" Cash complained as he followed them out of the room. "We could scare the frat boys!"

Tom watched his friends, and apparently they were his friends now, head off together, staying in his corner as another group of loud, laughing students wandered through the room and immediately claimed the vacant couch. Prime seating was hard to find and he wasn't up to protecting anything if it meant talking. He knew he was being stupid, his usual M.O. these days, hanging back and being the guy who pissed on everyone's parade.

Then one of the girls on the couch lifted her hand in front of her mouth and whispered into the ear of the guy sitting next to her, her eyes bouncing off Tom for a moment. The guy looked up, taking in the room, including Tom on his chair alone in the corner, and laughed.

He _knew_ that they could be talking about any of a million things. That his paranoia about this was borderline pathological and made him less than fun to be around. He was lucky his friends were still speaking to him. Not to mention Reese, who had probably never hidden a goddamn thing about himself from the world until Tom.

He drained the last of the crappy beer from his cup and stood. He had to get out of here. He shot a text to Reese on his way out.

_Going outside for some air._

The front yard was full of people sitting on more living room furniture set up in a circle on the lawn, but there was a shadowed strip of grass along the side of the house that was empty of partygoers.

Reese found him there fifteen minutes later, sitting on the ground with his back against the siding. He strolled up and kicked the toe of his shoe against Tom's sole.

"Hey. You wanna get out of here?"

Tom shook his head.

"Nah. Just needed a break. You're having fun. We should stay."

Reese squatted down and put a hand on his knee, shaking it gently. Tom didn't look to see if anyone was watching.

"Much as I like them, I didn't come out to spend time with Steph and Cash." He slid his hand up Tom's thigh, grazing his dick before skimming his hand up to wrap around the back of Tom's neck. Holding him still, Reese pressed a kiss to his forehead and then backed off immediately when Tom flinched despite himself.

"Sorry," he said under his breath.

"S'okay," Reese said and smiled. Even though they both knew it wasn't. "C'mon. Let's go."

Tom scrambled to his feet and followed Reese to the front yard, past a kid who stumbled with one hand outstretched against the side of the house, clearly about to toss his cookies.

"What about them?" He jerked his head at the house where the party still roared, Steph and Cash inside. Reese turned and grinned while walking backward to the sidewalk.

"Last I saw, Cash was helping Steph hit on a girl wearing a Give Blood, Play Rugby T-shirt in the kitchen. We can text 'em. They're fine." He held a hand out for a second before dropping it with a grimace.

"Let's get a pizza. My treat. We can watch a movie."

Tom shook his head. All his determination not to take advantage was bullshit, when it was perfectly clear that he was still doing just that. He looked straight at his boyfriend. "You deserve better than this. You know that, right?"

Reese drifted to a halt at the edge of the sidewalk. His pause spoke volumes as he let out a slow sigh. "Yup, I know." He tilted his head to one side and shrugged, working on a smile. "But I'm attached."

Tom's inhale rattled in his chest. The ache under his sternum was back. "So, something with explosions? And car chases?"

"Duh. I'm not going to torture you with another indie flick. Not unless you beg me." Reese wiggled his eyebrows at him.

Tom laughed. God. They were both trying so hard, and it was almost working.

Almost.

"Sounds like a plan. Lead the way."

An hour later, he was trying to concentrate on the movie because holy shit, Ed Norton could act his ass off and if he didn't know for sure the guy wasn't mentally challenged, he wouldn't question his stuttering janitor routine for a second. Heist movies were a close second to car chases with explosions in terms of movie magic for Tom. But no movie could compete with the distraction of Reese, propped up on his pillows at the opposite end of the bed, sliding his foot up and down Tom's thigh, brushing ever closer to his crotch as Reese chewed on a fingernail and stared innocently at the television.

"Stop that."

"What?"

"You know what."

"This?" Reese pushed his foot all the way to the crux of Tom's thighs and pressed against the seam of his jeans. Jesus. Simply being in the same room as Reese put his dick on high alert, but the curving pressure and release of his surprisingly agile toes left Tom light-headed and struggling to follow the convoluted plot as his dick turned to iron in his pants.

"Yes, that. Brat."

Reese might protest words like kid or brat, but Tom thought he secretly liked the role. The pushy younger guy, knowing exactly how to get Tom's attention.

Like now.

Reese pulled his foot back and tucked it underneath his butt, leaning forward onto his knees and hands in a moment, crawling up between Tom's legs with a wicked grin.

"Brat, hmm?" He settled between Tom's thighs, chest on the bed. His lips touched Tom's zipper, exhaling hard to push his hot breath into the denim, until Tom felt his dick warming. "You keep watching the movie."

"Hey now. You picked this one."

"Mmm hmm." Reese braced his elbows tight up against Tom's balls and started tugging at his zipper. "Seen it before."

He might tease Reese with nicknames, but they both knew who was in charge when the clothes came off.

Tom sucked in a hard breath as Reese's fingers dug under his waistband and wrestled with the button. The tips of Reese's fingers were brushing the fabric of his shorts against the head of his dick, sending tingling bolts of pleasure and heat up his tailbone. He exhaled slowly and tried not to push his hips up, searching for a way to make that happen again.

"Planning ahead, huh?" he managed to get out before Reese wrapped long, slender fingers around him and slid his hand up and down. Tom dropped his head back and missed the edge of the pillow, cracking his head against the desk.

"Ow!"

Reese didn't let up. He rubbed his thumb over the head before pressing his mouth again against fabric, one thin layer this time, and Tom felt the heat immediately, seeping into his skin and making him harder. He sank his hips deeper into the mattress and drew his knees up, feet braced on either side of Reese's torso as the younger man dragged his briefs down far enough to release his dick, which bounced out as if it were making a beeline for Reese's mouth.

God, he shouldn't just lie here. This was Reese all over again, taking control of the situation and turning it into yet another night of him sucking some guy's brains out through his dick.

But Tom wasn't some guy. He was Reese's guy.

The punch to his gut stripped him of breath for a moment, until he gasped out a sharp moan as Reese's mouth closed over him, sinking low and rising high enough to suck at the head and poke his tongue hard into Tom's slit, mouth extra wet, spit dripping down his dick as Reese's hand started sliding hard from his base to Reese's mouth. He was slipping under the curling wave of pleasure, sucked deep by an undertow that blocked out the movie, the flickering lights on the ceiling, the sound of Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman arguing over the split of the take, Tom's whole consciousness focused on the feeling of Reese's mouth and throat swallowing against him, sending him deeper with each wet spasm.

"Wait."

Reese pulled off only long enough to ask, "Why?"

"I want...something."

The flash of hurt that swept over Reese's face before he wiped his expression blank was something Tom would work hard to erase. They didn't have it yet, that trust between two people that meant never questioning each other's good intentions. Or rather, Tom had it for Reese. But Reese was still wary of him, deep down, in a way that had nothing to do with being alone together and everything to do with what happened in the world outside their door.

Tom was determined to convince Reese that nothing that happened in this room would ever be anything but good.

He knew where Reese kept his lube by now, the high tech stuff tucked between the mattress and the wall. Probing blindly, he tugged the tube out and smacked it on the mattress next to them. Then he kicked his shorts and pants to the foot of the bed and sat up to strip his shirt off too.

Reese eyed the tube warily.

"Condom?" Tom asked.

Wary shifted to completely closed off in a split second.

"I don't do that anymore."

He stared at his boyfriend and resisted the temptation to smack him in the head with the lube.

"No shit."

"Then why the condom?"

All the nerves in his skin fired as he spoke, a giant shiver that started at the top of his skull and raced down to his toes.

"For you."

He waited, braced on his elbows, feeling pretty fucking naked right now, even though he'd spent most of the past couple of months wearing as little as possible in this room.

Reese shut his mouth with a click of teeth snapping against each other and kept staring at him.

"For me."

Tom almost laughed, but his balls were too close to danger for making jokes. Instead, he shifted his weight to one elbow and reached out with his other hand to push Reese's hair back from his face. He traced his fingers over one eyebrow, down Reese's nose, across his cheek, and over the delicate curve of his ear. He didn't think about Reese's looks much, his personality too vibrant for his face to pull Tom's focus. But at moments like these, with his hands on Reese's face, he was struck by how beautiful he was. Not like a girl. His lips were curved and pink and his eyelashes were long and swept against his cheekbones when he looked down, but Reese's features were too clean, too strong, to look feminine. A close-up portrait might show him as gender-neutral, the proportions of eye, mouth, nose so perfect as to represent beauty without reference to male or female. Pushing his hair back to bare his face felt like bringing him into the light, a space where Tom alone could see him.

His boy.

Who was nervous enough to be quivering between his legs right now. Time to fix that.

"For you," he said decisively and cupped Reese's chin in his hand, keeping him from ducking his head. "So you can fuck me."

He had to hang on to that chin as Reese tugged and reared back.

"Holy shit." His eyes skittered wildly over Tom's body, from his semi-hard dick to deeper between his legs and back up to his face. Reese rolled his hips and Tom knew it was because his pants were suddenly tight around his swelling penis. His boy might not be sure of himself, but his dick was clearly on board.

"I don't know." Definitely not sure of himself. One hand was braced on Tom's thigh, ready to push off and run away.

Time to step back. He let go of Reese's chin and leaned back again. Just two dudes, talking about one sticking his dick up the other's virgin ass.

No biggie.

"When you did it, did you like it?"

Reese's eyelids fell and a slow smile blurred across his mouth.

"Fuck, yeah. I loved it. There wasn't anything I liked better."

"I want to try. Maybe you'll like it this way just as much."

Reese winced. "I'm not sure it's really my thing. I haven't actually ever, you know, done that before."

Tom raised his eyebrows and waited. It wasn't like Reese to have a hard time saying the words. He must be more freaked out than he was letting on.

"Fucked someone," he said at last, looking down at Tom's dick, which had lost a little of its interest in the proceedings, now that the focus seemed to be on conversation rather than dick-sucking. Tom lay back on the bed, dropping his hand to his crotch and curling it around himself, protective and keeping his dick's mind in the game where it belonged. He pulled his knees up and rested his feet flat on the bed, feeling safe and exposed at the same time.

Reese was still making confessions. "Makes me nervous."

"Because you don't want to?"

"No. I want to." His gaze flickered like heat lightning over Tom's body. Tom's dick was getting hard again under the slow strokes of his own hand. The air was cool on his exposed hole and he felt himself clench there when he imagined Reese's dick, slicked up and stiff, pressing up against him, pushing in with a slow, relentless thrust. His nipples tightened under Reese's watchful eyes and he knew a flush was creeping down from his face to his chest as his breathing tightened.

"But it's not always good for everyone." Two small vertical wrinkles appeared between Reese's eyebrows and he bit his lip. Tom didn't think Reese was aware of his hand slipping down to rest on Tom's inner thigh, his thumb deep enough between Tom's legs to push the tip between his cheeks. "I'd want it to be good for you. I don't want to hurt you."

Tom, who was pretty sure Reese had been close to having his whole hand up Tom's ass on more than one occasion, which had made him come so hard he shuddered at the memory, was totally willing to take that chance.

"I trust you." He handed Reese the bottle of lube and hooked his hands behind his knees, pulling his legs back to his chest and then waiting.

In the months they'd been enthusiastically fucking each other at every opportunity, there wasn't much Tom hadn't tried in his ongoing quest to keep Reese unchallenged by his own larger, stronger body. He'd gotten on his knees, had encouraged Reese to climb all over him physically while Tom lay or sat or crouched on hands and knees below him, had done everything he could think of to make it clear that _he_ was the vulnerable one. He should be used to it by now.

But as Reese pressed the back of a finger against his taint, knuckles brushing his balls, and Tom felt the mattress shifting under his back as Reese scooted closer, Tom's entire body shivered, and he closed his eyes.

He concentrated on holding still as Reese lubed them both up, coating his fingers and pouring more lube between Tom's butt cheeks than Tom thought they could possibly need. But he knew that the sloppier things got, the better his ass felt, so he didn't say a word. And soon enough Reese had three fingers in him, screwing them in and out, stroking Tom on the inside until Reese hit that spot that arched his back and kicked his heels deep into the mattress. He wasn't even touching himself, hands wrapped around the bar at the head of the bed, his dick bouncing on his stomach as he jerked up.

"Ahh! Reese. Now. Now. Now would be a good time to fuck me please." He panted the words out.

"Wait." Reese's hand on his hip encouraged him to roll over onto all fours, though Tom protested as he went. "Like this. It's supposed to be easier for you."

"But—"

A hand, stroking down his spine from his nape to his tailbone. Another hand, thumb pressing against his loosened hole, palm separating his cheeks as Reese kneed his legs farther apart. "Trust me. I'm trying to remember all the shit I wish I knew the first time I did this."

He nodded and let his head hang down. He watched his dick, pulled up tight against his stomach, hard and leaking from Reese fucking him with his hand. He could see Reese's bare legs lightly brushed with hair, knee-walking up between his spread legs until they brushed the back of Tom's thighs and sparked a zing up his spine.

The crinkle of the condom wrapper was louder than his rough breathing, the slick roll of a hand smoothing the sheath over a hard cock unmistakable. He felt himself clench up, fear and excitement hitting his bloodstream in a chemical cocktail that lit up every nerve in his system.

"Try not to tense up. Bear down, okay? You know how."

And he did, after all this time. But it was different. Intense in a way that getting fingered wasn't quite anymore, was something that turned him on faster than flipping a light switch. But this. He wondered if this was what it felt like when you threw yourself out of a plane with a parachute and knew that you might die at the end of the fall.

Reese's hand on his hip steadied him.

The press of his dick was nothing but slick pleasure at first and Tom pushed back, wanting Reese to go deeper, faster. A sharp stab of pain had him jerking back away.

Fuck. That hurt.

His elbows wobbled beneath him and his eyes stung.

"Okay?"

Tom nodded, not trusting his voice. But it hurt when Reese pushed in again and he didn't think he had the nerve to do this the slow way. He gritted his teeth, bore down and shoved himself _hard_ backward until Reese grunted and his dick slid part of the way home.

Sweat made his skin slick and salty as Tom pressed his lips to his own arm and tried not to whimper. His dick had stopped jumping up and down and begging for the ass-fucking that it had wanted so surely a minute ago.

"Fuck, you're so tight. God. Tom." Reese shifted on his knees behind Tom and he could _feel_ it, Reese's dick swelling inside him, getting even harder as they held still and let Tom adjust. Reese petted him, hands stroking his back, his sides, reaching to touch him everywhere, pressing approval into his skin. "Oh my God, tell me you're okay, Tom. Tell me."

Tom didn't hesitate to lie as Reese begged him.

"I'm okay." He wasn't, not yet. But he could feel it, the faint hint of a squirmy spark deep inside that he thought might turn into something good. He pushed himself back again until he bumped Reese's hip bones and hid the flinch. "Go."

Reese pulled out an inch and pushed forward again, slow and filthy, until Tom felt the pressure of it so deep inside it made him dizzy. Reese dragged his fingernails down Tom's back and the scraping pain hit his nerves like a fire of pure pleasure. The sting of his hole stretching burned and the sharp pinch of Reese's nails when they dug into his hip splintered his awareness until all the bits and pieces scrambled and lost themselves in a bright flashing fog of pain and pleasure that knocked him to the mattress. He curved one arm under his forehead and reached for himself.

"Yes," Reese hissed at him and pulled out until the bulge of his head burned at Tom's rim and fuck, that still hurt, but it swirled up his spine like fire. "Jerk yourself."

He was aware of his asshole in a way he'd never felt before. Felt it light up like a Christmas tree every time his hand on his dick slid over the tip and his hole spasmed, trying to shut tight on the bolt of pleasure that shot from his dick to his ass then ricocheted back when he stayed stretched open by Reese's dick. Reese's fingers traced the edge of that muscle pulled in a taut ring, touching the circle around his own dick in Tom's ass. Tom imagined what Reese saw and thought his heart would stop at the dirtiness of it.

His dick was iron in his hand again and he was chanting under his breath, "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, Reese, God, just _fuck_ me."

And Reese was, one hand braced on his neck, holding him still with the side of his face pressed into the pillow, as Tom stripped his dick as hard as he could, the fire building up behind a high wall that shook with the pounding slaps that echoed as Reese's hips slammed into him again and again. Tom's entire body trembled and froze, waiting, burning, until the spark lit somewhere beneath his tailbone and shot through his ass and out his dick, smashing the wall flat. The orgasm slammed into him, come and heat exploding out of him as the groans ripped from his throat and his cries filled the room. The drag of Reese's cock in his ass, still pistoning back and forth with slick, wet noises and the slap of skin against skin stretched his orgasm like hot taffy until he felt Reese slam against him one last time, pressing so hard it felt as if he shared Tom's ass with his own body as he jerked, muscles locked, and pulled Tom onto his dick before collapsing on top of him in a hot, slick mess of skin and sweat.

Tom pushed himself back into a bastardized sort of yoga pose, face in the mattress as he caught his breath, trying and not succeeding to keep his belly out of the stripes of come on the sheet underneath him. His ass was pulsing reflexively around Reese's softening cock as his boyfriend pressed kisses to the back of his neck and sucked at his skin. He patted behind his head until his hand landed on Reese's hair and gave it a weak stroke. After a moment, Reese pushed himself upright with a hand on Tom's back and eased out, eliciting a wince and a curse that he soothed with circles rubbed on Tom's lower back.

He felt Reese lean far enough over to drop the condom in the trash before collapsing back on the bed behind Tom, who gave up and lay on his side in the wet spot.

Wet lake, really. He'd never come that hard in his life.

He hoped Reese could hear him through his face in the pillow. "Holy shit. That's gonna be hell on our laundry. 'Cause we are definitely doing that again."

Reese laughed tiredly behind him.

Tom froze. Fuck. Turned his head to speak clearly. "Unless you don't want to. Was it bad? I didn't even think."

Reese tucked his knees closer behind Tom's and ran his palm up and down Tom's arm. "No, it was good. Incredible, actually. It just, you know..."

"Reminds you. Shit. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked—" His words were cut off as Reese reached over him to press a hand against his mouth.

"Shh. It doesn't remind me of bad things. The opposite, actually. Reminded me of how much I miss...being normal, that's all."

Tom sighed with relief. Another emotional landmine navigated.

"Fuck normal. I like this."

He was super aware of his anus. It felt as if he had the ghost of a cock wedged in there, his tender skin hot and tingly, the slippery mess of lube making him feel every square millimeter of skin pressed to skin as Reese draped a leg over his hip and held him close. He kind of wanted to get up and go to the bathroom to clean himself off, but he was too tired to move. Maybe in a minute, after he stopped feeling echoes of Reese's body inside his. Tom shivered, a twitch in his dick and his ass as he remembered himself, face down in the mattress as Reese fucked him, begging for it over and over again. His face flamed at the picture, imagining Reese's eyes hot on where they joined, watching his dick press in and out of Tom's hole. He shivered again.

Every time he thought sex couldn't possibly get any hotter between them, they took it deeper. He had laid himself open, baring even more. Tom wasn't sure that trend should be encouraged, but he couldn't deny that it made him want to roll over and expose his belly for a rub like a puppy. He'd dared something big and gotten his reward. In spades.

Phenomenal sex wasn't enough in the long run to balance out all the other compromises Reese made in order to be with him. But at least it was something, right? It was one thing he could give. He'd offer his ass up a thousand nights in a row if it would keep Reese from deciding he wasn't worth it after all.

Because he knew that moment was coming. Could feel it barreling down on them like a low vibration humming through the track rails when the train was still a mile away. As a kid, he'd timed it close with the suburban train lines, waiting until he felt the vibrations under his hands before setting pennies on the rails, hoping no one in the station house would see him crouched by the tracks.

He was after a lot more than shiny copper discs these days. But he could still feel that train coming, the long, low moan of its horn rolling ahead of it, warning, warning, that it couldn't slow down. Not for anything.

# 17

"You know, it doesn't make you any more gay than you were before."

He'd stopped reacting when Reese used the word _gay_ to describe him, although his first instinct was to correct him with "I'm bi _._ " But he could see how that was a pretty shitty denial to shove in your boyfriend's face, so he kept his mouth shut.

It still felt like an attack sometimes when Reese said it.

"What are you talking about?"

"Taking it up the ass."

"Jesus Christ, Reese. Here? Now?"

Sometimes it felt like Reese was pushing him, tired of waiting for Tom to relax and turn into some kind of poster boy for Gay Pride. He reminded himself over and over again that it must suck, being an out gay guy and dating someone who flinched every time you bumped shoulders with him in public.

But, fuck, was it absolutely necessary that they have a conversation in the middle of the Campus Center about why they hadn't had anal sex again since the one night where Reese had melted him into a puddle, ass first? Steph and Cash would be back in a minute with drinks and snacks.

This couldn't be a conversation that happened behind closed doors?

He wondered if Reese was disappointed there hadn't been some kind of magical transformation of their relationship after he'd fucked Tom. As if anal were some kind of Holy Grail of gay relationships that would wipe out all of their other problems, not a goddamn one of which had been magically erased by Tom taking it up the ass, he was sorry to say. Reese had already admitted that being the one doing the fucking was both not his favorite thing and made him wish for better days. So what was the big deal about not doing it again?

Tom wasn't about to mention that opening himself up like that had felt more than simply physically vulnerable. It took a level of trust and affection he couldn't muster for someone who barely looked at him without irritation bubbling over. The magic of that night hadn't lasted past the next morning's descent into the tension that always filled the space between them now. If they did it again, he was afraid he'd look up and find Reese staring down at him like he'd stared at the boys he used to fuck. Cold and manipulative. Tom wasn't sure he'd ever get past that.

Maybe he could say all that in the dark but not in the fucking Campus Center. And they were sleeping in separate beds most nights lately. A twin mattress was too hard to share when two people were rigid boards trying not to touch each other.

He and Reese had scored an L-shaped sofa in the far corner of the balcony and Reese sat next to him on the short end of the L. Carrying trays full of cups and junk food, Cash and Steph had returned and sprawled out on the long end. He ignored them as they pretended they weren't playing footsie. Tom wasn't conscious of how close he was sitting to Reese until the voice cracked out from behind him and he froze.

"So we put you in a room with a twink and he turned you gay? Or were you already a cocksucker keeping it a secret?"

He didn't need to turn around to know it was Jack. _Fuck._ The Evil Nemesis nickname had been a joke. Something to transform the stress of having a kid who clearly hated him into comic relief. But lately it felt like he was being stalked. And as much as he'd seen the dean bark at the guy that one time, he didn't doubt Jack had the inside track if he wanted to complain about Tom.

"That's it." Cash grabbed Steph's feet from his lap and set them carefully to the side. Tom didn't know which felt worse: wishing his friend would ignore Jack until he went away or realizing he was the kind of guy who did nothing when confronted with a bully.

"Just ignore him," he urged. But it wasn't Cash who got up.

Reese levered himself to his feet, a hand on Tom's chest holding him back as Tom surged instinctively to stand with him. For a moment, he'd almost done the right thing.

Jack took a step forward, shoulders back, doing his best to loom over Reese.

"Oh hell no. I might be scared of guys like him..." he jerked a thumb at Cash, "...but you? You don't fucking fool me at all." He scraped a glance over Jack from head to toe. "With your highlights and your little porn mustache. You're so gay you're probably pissed you didn't get a chance to suck his dick."

Clearly unwanted, Tom slumped in the corner of the couch and shaded his eyes with one hand. Excellent. He was proud of Reese for standing up, of course he was. He wasn't a total asshole. But did it have to be this guy he found his balls for?

Cash leaned forward, bracing thick forearms on his knees and cracking his knuckles in a totally non-threatening way.

Holy fuck. This was such a disaster.

"What are you? Boyfriend number two?" Once again, Jack didn't have any friends with him. If anything, he looked the worse for wear, hair lanky with oil and hipster mustache sagging at the corners. His bravado frayed under their collective resistance. "You gonna kick my ass?"

"Just enjoying the show." Cash leaned back again, arms stretched out to either side of him the length of couch. Steph leaned her head toward his hand and he ruffled her hair. "Kid's got you pegged and played, far as I can see. He doesn't need any help from me."

Reese squared off against Jack until the taller man backed up a step. And then another.

"I'm tired of self-loathing queers like you giving me crap for stuff you're too chicken shit to do." He was fierce, Tom's boy. And he wished Reese would shut up and sit down. "Go away. Or I will fuck. You. Up." Each word a step forward for Reese. A retreat for Jack. "And then I'll get you fired."

Jack hung on for one last moment, swiveling his head to stare at Tom, who refused to meet his eyes.

_This has got nothing to do with me, asshole,_ he thought hard in Jack's direction until he finally turned his back on them and left.

The Evil Nemesis was halfway across the room when Reese dug deep for one last ounce of ass-kicking, his shout turning heads.

"And stop stalking my boyfriend, asshole."

Tom reached under the table for the strap of his backpack.

Cash was playing hurt puppy dog on the other end of the couch. Though it was Cash, so he probably wasn't entirely playing.

"Jump back, kid. Are you really scared of me?" He frowned at Reese who was standing triumphant over their coffee table.

Reese paused, giving the question serious thought.

"I was. A little." Reese picked through the red Solo cups on the table to find the one with Diet Coke instead of beer. "Then I realized you're just a giant puppy. Like, this monstrous poodle or something."

"A poodle?" Nobody played fake outrage like Cash, who started digging into a bowl of green Jell-O and Cool Whip with undisguised joy. The man had a ridiculous addiction to crap food for a health nut. "Jesus, kid. Can't I be a pit bull or something?"

Reese wrinkled his nose and kept up the teasing.

"A Bichon Frisé, maybe."

"A bitch what? That's not even English!"

Tom would have been proud, if he wasn't battling the roiling, greasy waves in his stomach, _knowing_ that the first thing that asshole was going to do was head straight to the dean. He stood up abruptly, drawing everyone's attention.

"I gotta jet. I owe Quillian a stack of quizzes."

Tom carried the frozen looks of his friends and his boyfriend with him as he headed to Quillian's office, determined not to make himself a bigger liar than he already was. He stayed away past midnight and gritted his teeth when he saw Reese had waited up for him. Muttering about needing a shower, he escaped to the bathroom and wondered if there was any chance Reese would fall asleep before he finished.

Sixty seconds later, the opaque white shower curtain rattled on its metal rings as Reese slid in with him.

He hung his bathrobe, black silk, on the empty hook across from Tom's navy terry and held out his hand for the shower gel. He lathered up, then turned Tom to face the wall and started washing his back, waiting until his hands were sweeping up and down Tom's spine before saying anything.

"You know leaving like that was not cool, right?" His voice was calm and his hands didn't skip a beat.

Anger surged like a fever in him. He turned, soap lather tickling as it slipped down his legs. "Neither was what you did, Reese."

"What _I_ did?"

"I have to ignore that guy. You know that the dean is on my ass—" But Reese had had enough. He snapped like breaking a pool cue over your knee for a fight.

"No, Tom. I _know_ the dean did everything she could, within the rules, to help you get back on campus this semester. I _know_ you have the same right not to be harassed as any other student on this campus."

"It's not the same." He was being stubborn and he knew it. Maybe Reese was right. God knows, he usually was. Maybe Tom could run naked hand-in-hand with his boyfriend across the Green and no one would bat an eye.

"It is. If you'd just show me that letter..."

Tom had told Reese he couldn't find the letter from the dean warning him about the need to keep a low profile if he wanted to stay enrolled at Carlisle. He hadn't looked. It was an argument he didn't want to have with Reese. Or maybe he was worried that if he looked at the letter again, he'd see Reese was right. There was nothing holding him back from telling Jack to fuck off and making out with Reese at a campus movie night like any other horny college student.

That was a shitload of maybes for something that would save or damn the rest of his life. This was it. His last chance to keep a toehold on something like the life he'd grown up in. He knew he'd never hit his father's level of success, had trained himself not to see that as an automatic failure. But he didn't want to spend the rest of his life scrabbling to pay his bills. He needed this, needed to finish school with a good record and move the fuck on from these past two years. Start living his own damn life.

Even if he didn't need to worry about getting kicked out of school, there were still journalists, to elevate them higher than they deserved, to duck on sight and principle. Reese might not understand what it had been like, but Tom would never forget weeks of being a prisoner in his own home, afraid to leave because men and women with cameras were stationed at every exit, ready to pounce. He'd never eat a red kidney bean again, after opening can after can, once the rest of the pantry was empty. The local grocery refused to deliver after someone keyed their car when they tried to push past the press.

Too many factors. Too many risks. He wasn't proud of himself. He'd learned two years ago that pride wasn't something he could afford, only to find out that when it came to sharing his difficulties, he still had too much of that useless emotion.

Reese rinsed lather off his hands until it spun around the drain in the center of the floor. The smaller man didn't bother to towel off before shoving his arms in the sleeves of his robe, which promptly stuck to his wet skin in patches.

Tom wasn't proud of himself, but he knew there was one thing he needed to say.

"I was proud of you."

Reese yanked the knot at his waist tight and pushed past the curtain.

"You've got a funny way of showing it."

* * *

"It's just a formality. We outed someone to their parents once, which sucked for that kid, so now we always get an okay first. So, are we good to go?"

Tom's hand on his phone ached with holding it so tight. This was it. The thing he'd known was going to come sooner or later, that would spell the end of him and Reese. Because Reese would never forgive this.

The editor of the campus LGBTQ newspaper had caught him as he was heading out, the ring of the landline halting him at the door.

He'd known that Reese had started working with the paper as part of his therapy, reintegrating himself into a social group that offered him support and a way to acknowledge his own trauma. Tom had known this but hadn't really absorbed what it might mean. He wasn't getting much of an update from Reese on things like this, since they barely spoke.

The editor was wrapping up the layout for the spring issue. Reese had referenced Tom in the interview he'd given, talking about hate crimes and how there was still work to be done on awareness. Talking how his boyfriend's support and encouragement was what allowed him to get help.

"No." He could practically hear the clang of the cell door closing on him. Solitary confinement. "Don't run it. Or cut me out of it."

"Uh, okay." He could hear the confusion in the guy's voice. "We'll, uh, do an edit. Right. Sorry. I'll, uh, tell...are you gonna tell him or should I?"

"I'll tell him."

He hit End Call with a stiff finger and threw the phone as hard as he could at the wall.

The cordless handset cracked in half, guts and wires falling out, and Tom calmly did the math in his head, deducting the money from his bank account to replace it. "Fuck."

He dropped to his knees and felt under his bed for the pieces.

Maybe it wasn't completely broken.

Maybe it could still be fixed.

* * *

He'd paced their room long enough to start talking to the walls, arguing the inarguable and losing to himself. Badly. There was no possibility Reese would see this as anything other than a betrayal. Which wasn't fucking fair, because they had _agreed_ that Tom wouldn't have to do this.

Even as he argued with himself, he knew his position was a shitty one. Reese had made it clear from day one that he couldn't wait forever for Tom to figure it out.

He shoved his books and another stack of the endless ungraded papers into his backpack, determined to leave before Reese returned and Tom took the last step on the road to Assholeville by accusing his boyfriend of betrayal for sharing his own hard story.

A few hours weren't going to change anything and he was fucked up the ass, metaphorically speaking, either way. But if he could get his own emotions on lockdown, approach this in a calm and rational manner, he might be able to talk to Reese. To make him see what _Tom_ needed, to get through these last two semesters. That's all.

He didn't expect it. Was pretty sure he'd be better off with the naked Green sprinting. His fingers were still buzzing with anger from hearing his name tied to the exact kind of public attention he'd been ducking for almost two years. And it hurt, to know that Reese didn't take him seriously.

He hadn't told anyone about the days before and during the trial when he was home, alone in that big empty house because his dad was on suicide watch at the jail. Except he was never really alone, not with news crews camped out on the sidewalk twenty-four seven. They weren't supposed to come on the property or block access, but Boston cops weren't hugely sympathetic to a guy who'd ripped off middle class workers.

When he drank himself stupid the day he read about an investor who'd shot himself rather than admit to his wife and family that he'd lost everything, Tom found out that they were going through his trash too.

Sure, the photo of a ripped open trash bag full of empty beer bottles that hit the local news the next day under the headline "Worthington Home Full of Booze, Drugs?" __ could have been staged. But it _looked_ like the trash he'd taken out early the next morning to catch the curbside pick-up, skull pounding under the hoodie he'd pulled down low.

He'd been isolated and humiliated and nothing had felt like more of a relief than the first time he realized that a month had gone by without a new item about him or his dad hitting the websites.

Not explaining all this to Reese had been a mistake. But he'd hoped for once to have something taken on faith. To have earned that kind of trust for himself that would mean Reese would stop pushing on this one last thing.

That he hadn't earned it, that Tom knew he didn't deserve it, pushed all the wrong buttons.

If he could go, hide and study or hit the trail and run, maybe he could drain some of this frustration and betrayal and pure pissed-offness, mostly at himself, that had his teeth chattering.

Exiting the building, he almost ran down Reese on the wide front steps of Perkins, losing his balance on that one loose step that wobbled under your ankle. Enough so that Reese grabbed his arm in support, even though the emotionless mask on his face spoke clearly of a newspaper editor who'd been unable, or unwilling, to let Tom break the news.

It was nothing but bad luck and poor balance. The two combining as Tom yanked free of Reese's grasp with an angry arm sweep that knocked his boyfriend back a step.

Just in time for a student with a camera the size of a small dog to snap the first of a dozen pictures of Tom as the angry young man backhanding his boyfriend on the front porch of their residence hall.

Even knowing that this had to be a coincidence—that as much as Reese might want to show him that the sky wouldn't fall if the worst happened, he would never _invite_ a reporter or photographer into their life—Tom couldn't listen.

He didn't even hear what Reese said.

The roaring in his ears that drowned out everything else.

"Couldn't wait, could you?" The words were bitter on his tongue.

It was the first time he realized he'd hoped Reese would.

Wait for him.

He didn't even know he was hoping for Reese to deny it, to reassure him that he hadn't talked about Tom in an interview, until he saw guilt on his face.

"Fuck." So. That was that.

"Tom. I'm sorry—"

He couldn't believe it. Didn't believe it. But Reese's hands raised in surrender and his stuttering apology were pretty fucking hard to misunderstand. Tom pushed past him, ignoring the photographer still clicking away. He had to get out of here. "Don't wait up."

"Tom. It isn't about you."

"Save it."

It was about him.

It was always about him.

He might have forgotten for a while, let himself be tempted by Reese's belief that he deserved a normal life, but the subterranean river whispered the truth. _Not yet._ He knew it wouldn't last forever. Had hoped, apparently, that he and Reese could stick it out long enough to get him across to the other side.

Looked like they weren't going to make it.

Without thought, his weight shifted forward, pounding steps switching smoothly to a fast jog that carried him away, feet searching out the patches of bare pavement in the dirty slush to keep his feet securely under him.

All that running was good for something after all.

* * *

Cash didn't ask questions when Tom showed up at his room and asked to crash. The big man was on his way out for a "study date" with a girl he'd met in the kitchen during the party they'd hit the previous week. Steph had been giving him crap about his crush on this girl, claiming it was doomed to failure since it was driven almost entirely by Cash's appreciation of the girl's enormous rack. Tom was pretty sure Cash was only going out with this girl because it got on Steph's nerves, but his run across campus must have taken it out of him, because he was too exhausted to give Cash shit. He waved him out the door and collapsed on top of the comforter on Cash's bed.

In the quiet of the room, the buzz of his phone on vibrate was easy to hear. He fumbled for his coat pocket.

Eight missed calls. Six texts.

When the screen lit up in his hand, he didn't have to look to see who it was before he answered.

"My interview wasn't about you, Tom."

"I know. I figured out that that guy was there to take your picture, not mine." He was so tired his eyes ached. He pressed his head into a crumpled pillow and the heel of one hand into his left eye, then his right. "Your editor emailed me the article and I read it. He told me his guy only took my picture out of habit. They deleted it already."

"Good. You were one sentence. Two. In a much bigger picture. And I've asked them not to use your name."

"I figured." He was cold now that the running had stopped. He yanked the edge of the comforter out from the crack between the bed and the wall and tried to pull it over him, managing to cover one leg. "There were a dozen calls from reporters today. Probably because my dad's hearing is Monday."

"No wonder you've been tense. Have you talked to him?"

"Yeah, no. Not happening. But I should've known they'd be sniffing around."

"I would never talk to one of those people."

"I know. It felt the same to me. Even though I knew it wasn't. It was shitty timing." He left the rest of the words unsaid. Their timing had been shitty all along.

"So what now?"

He'd been asking himself that since ending the phone call he'd made in the empty back stairwell at Cash's dorm. "That kid complained about me. I have an appointment with the dean on Monday."

"She's not going to ask you to leave school because of that douchebag. She can't do that." Reese's voice was firm, demanding that reality conform to his belief in its core fairness.

For someone who hadn't experienced much fairness, Tom was always surprised to be reminded how powerfully Reese believed in it. He thought it must have something to do with Reese's dad and his home, with rock solid support and a determination to do the right thing, always. He wondered if his own tendency to wobble under pressure could be put down to crappy parenting or if it was a defect in him.

"I'm trying to have faith, Reese."

"But it's hard."

"Yeah."

Reese paused for a moment, like he was waiting for something more from Tom, and then sighed. "It'll work out." He didn't sound like he believed it.

"Thanks."

The next pause was longer.

"Are you coming back?"

His throat was tight. He needed to clear it to speak. "I don't think so."

"Tonight?"

He couldn't answer that. And not simply because he didn't know if he'd be staying at school past ten a.m. on Monday morning.

Tom struggled to put it into words. "It's like we get to take turns, isn't it? Being angry."

"What do you mean?"

"You're being patient with me right now, because you know I had a fucking horrible day. Because I lost my shit about the Pride article. So you need to be the one who keeps it together right now."

Silence from Reese let him know that he was right. And this was a much bigger problem than a few paragraphs in a campus newspaper.

This was the thing that maybe couldn't be fixed.

"How mad are _you_? If it's your turn."

"I'm not mad at you, baby."

"Bullshit." So tired. He rolled over on his side and curled up, phone squeezed between his head and the pillow. He closed his eyes and let Reese's voice, so calm, roll over him. Sunlight was streaming weakly in the window in Cash's room, but something about the phone and being alone made it enough like talking in the dark that he could say the scary things out loud. "You're mad at me. And you should be. All you've ever asked is for me to not be a chickenshit. To push back, even a little. And I keep letting you down."

Reese's voice was fierce. "You think I think you're not brave? Jesus, never, Tom. Do you hear me? Never."

"Don't believe you."

"I'm not bullshitting you. Yes, I get mad at you. All the time. Because it's hard to be with you and I never pretended it wasn't. Being with you makes me feel like shit sometimes. But this is what grown ups do. We figure out how to get through the hard shit, even when we're mad. So if it needs to be your turn right now, then I'll deal."

"Yeah, but what if it never gets to be your turn? It can't be my turn forever."

"It won't be." Reese laughed but it felt pretty hollow. "It can't be."

"Because no one would want to stay with someone like that."

"It's not gonna be like this forever, Tom."

He shook his head. That was a level of faith he couldn't find, no matter how deep he dug. "I told you. I told you that I wasn't the right guy, Reese. You should have listened to me," he said, tiredness slurring his words. God, he needed to rest. Sleep was pulling him under. "I gotta go."

"Tom, don't you hang up on me. Tom!"

He shoved the phone under the pillow so he'd feel it when it vibrated with the calls and texts he knew Reese would send him.

He fell asleep on a buzzing pillow and counted it a comfort.

The door to Cash's room banging open what felt like thirty seconds later was barely enough to drag him into consciousness.

Cash's gasping collapse into his desk chair and the lodging of his feet six inches from Tom's face did the job, though.

"Oh yay. You're still breathing." The big man dropped his head back and hauled air in and out of a wide open mouth.

"I'm not suicidal, for Christ's sake." Tom tugged the comforter tighter around his shoulders.

"Well, then don't be all _I love you but I can't be with you, goodbye_ on the fucking phone, Romeo. That shit'll make people worry." He sat up straight and stared at Tom, eyes narrowing. "Not me, of course. I was like, _whatevs_ , when your boy called me and told me I maybe wanna keep an eye on you. Jesus, can you get me a water or something? I'm dying."

Tom kicked the covers off and got up to dig through his friend's mini fridge for a bottle of water. He found it behind the beer and tossed it to Cash from a crouch.

Cash caught it one-handed and cracked the seal, chugging half the bottle in one long swallow. "Ah, that's good."

"Run all the way here?"

"Like a motherfucker."

Tom shook his head and got back on the bed, sitting up against the wall. "I'm fine."

Cash eyed him over the clear plastic bottle as he chugged it. When he came up for air, he said, "Dude, you are so far from fine you can't even see it anymore."

Not arguing that one seemed the better part of valor. Tom's stomach could only tolerate so much bullshit. "I'll _be_ fine. And I didn't say that stuff."

"Which part? The _I love you_ or _I can't be with you_?"

"The first one."

Cash's eyes opened wide. "Well, why the fuck not? You guys are, like, the disgustingly perfect couple everyone hates." At Tom's snort, Cash stuck his chin out and doubled down. "Okay, maybe not lately. But usually Steph and I can barely stand to be in the same room as you two."

"That why you keep ending up going off alone with her?" Tom went for distraction as a defense.

"Fuck you. We're talking about your mess. Not mine."

A less than successful strategy. It was pathetic when _Cash_ could out argue him.

"My mess is over. I just need a place to crash while I figure out what's next. He doesn't need to deal with me around all the time."

Cash shook his head and stood up to stretch. He swiped the two Xbox controllers off his dresser top and tossed one to Tom, then grabbed two beers from the fridge and passed one over. He dragged his desk chair around to face the TV and sat in it, propping his feet back on his bed. They waited through the opening credits for their saved game to load.

"You want me to give you the heads up when your boyfriend is coming over for Call of Duty?" Cash asked after a moment.

"Dude."

"What? Have you _seen_ my numbers since we started playing with him? I'm not giving that up." He called up their saved game and settled back in his chair, glancing over at Tom. "I'm kidding. Reese is your boy, but you're _my_ boy."

Tom exhaled on a huff.

"Not like that. Don't get any ideas."

But he could see Cash grinning out of the corner of his eye as he pulled up his player character and reviewed his weapons options. "I love you, man."

With a quick glance at Tom and a nod, Cash started the game. They logged in to the network and waited to see if any of their regular competitors were online.

"Yeah, yeah. I love you too. Can we not be totally gay right now, though? I need to keep my manhood for tonight."

"Hot date?"

"Don't tell Steph. This chick thinks I'm a genius 'cause I'm gonna graduate in four years. She's been here six. Steph'd kill me."

* * *

He didn't figure out the last piece of the puzzle until he pulled on the heavy external door of the hall of the administrative building and almost fell on his ass when it flew open as someone inside pushed the release bar.

Jack jerked back, holding on to the door for a second like he wanted to shut it in Tom's face. When Tom held on and pulled it open wider, Jack let go. He flinched back a step.

"Jesus. You _asshole_. What kind of fairytale are you spinning for the dean?"

Jack shook his head and held his hands up, but the tips of his ears were pink and he didn't look Tom in the eyes.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The fuck you don't. You've been trying to make my life miserable since I got back here. God, don't bother denying it. For a total douchebag, you suck at lying." He stepped into the building and Jack scrambled backward, tripping over the edge of the runner on the hall floor. "Relax. I'm not gonna—" He pinched his nose and mouth between his gloved palms and breathed into them. Jack still had his hands up like he'd taken tae kwon do in third grade. "I'm not going to fucking punch you, you moron."

"I told you. I don't know what you're talking about."

"What the fuck, man? Did I bang your girlfriend or something?" he demanded. Fuck this dude. He was pissed and for the first time in days he had a target he didn't feel guilty about attacking.

"Don't you mean my boyfriend?"

Ahh. Jack wasn't quite down for the count.

Neither was Tom.

"Listen, you homophobic jackass—"

Jack's laugh was short and harsh. "God, you're an idiot. I'm not a homophobe. I'm _gay_."

"What?" Tom pulled his head back. "But then why...?"

"Because I could tell it bothered you so much. God forbid anyone should think the great Tom Worthington the third might be a faggot, right?"

Tom flinched, wondering for a split second if anyone else had heard that, before he tamped his self-consciousness down and let his anger take the wheel.

"Seriously, dude. What did I ever do to you?" He cornered Jack between an overstuffed leather armchair and a credenza in the long hall. For the first time in months he let himself feel his own size, looming over the smaller man, broadening his shoulders and standing with his feet wide apart. Jack ducked his head and looked down at his feet. God, he felt like a bully and it felt _good_. Let this fucker know what it was like for once. "Did I take your spot on a team? Interrupt your first bathroom blowjob at a party?"

He was spitting in Jack's face.

"You and your dad. You really don't give a shit about anything, do you?" Jack's eyes were bright when he tipped his chin up and looked at Tom, his body curved away protectively. "You fucking suck."

In an instant, Tom deflated. Every hot flush of rage and superiority swirled out of him like piss down a drain. He backed up until he felt the opposite wall of the hall behind him and tipped his head back until he banged it.

"Shit."

"The least you could've done was have the decency not to come back." Jack dragged the back of one hand across his eyes and spat the words at Tom.

"What happened?" His voice was dead, no threat now.

"Don't act like you give a shit." Jack straightened up and hitched the strap of his backpack more securely against his shoulder. He wiped his nose. "This is my last semester here because of you."

He didn't even try to argue that it wasn't him. That he'd been fucked just as hard as Jack—or more likely Jack's parents—had been, watching their son's college fund disappear in the smoke of a Ponzi scheme. It didn't really matter. Certainly not to Jack. All that kid could see was the living, breathing representation of the guy who'd wrecked everything, back on campus to rub it in his face that _he_ 'd be here when Jack was finishing out his degree at a community college.

He might be wrong in the details, but Tom was sure enough of the big picture to know there wasn't a damn thing he could say that would make any of this right.

Didn't mean he was off the hook. He stood up straight.

"Man, I'm sorry."

Jack lowered his head and turned for the door. His muttered _Fuck you_ hung in the air for a minute after he'd left, while Tom stared blankly at the beige wall, barely breathing.

There was no end to the damage he caused.

* * *

"Dude. Get your shoes on. We're gonna run."

He was trying to sleep, the only activity he enjoyed at the moment. Being asleep meant a break from the voices in his head, berating him, rubbing it in over and over again, how much he'd fucked up.

They came in a lot of pitches, those voices. One of them sounded exactly like the dean, who had managed to loom over him despite being five foot nothing, as he slumped in the chair in front of her desk.

"I seriously question the appropriateness of your being a student at Carlisle, Mr. Worthington, if only because you are obviously an utter wreck due, I assume, to your difficult experience with your father and _his_ criminal activities. I would _never_ threaten a student with expulsion because of circumstances beyond his or her control and I am mildly offended that you would think so."

The dean had proceeded to pull up a copy of her letter on her laptop, the letter that he had refused to reread, and walked him through it point by point. With her sitting next to him, scary as shit but on his side, all of the words meant something different. Instead of threatening, it was clear she'd written a letter explaining to him exactly what she thought he needed to do in order to be able to enjoy his year at school. She was advising him on what to do to protect _himself_ , not making him responsible for protecting the school from unwanted disruptions.

He hadn't known whether he should straighten up or slump so far he fell over as she continued to lecture him on not projecting his own fears onto the actions of other people and perhaps _asking_ someone if he understood them correctly when their words or actions seemed egregiously unfair.

This entire time, the whole academic year he'd been at school, he'd been operating under assumptions that weren't just a little bit off base, but wildly, insanely, wrong. He'd fucked up his relationship, his friendships, his entire ability to participate in life on campus, for no good reason at all.

God, he was more screwed up than he'd thought.

He stuck his head under his pillow. "Leave it alone, Cash."

His temporary roommate, although after six weeks of sleeping on the guy's floor he didn't know how temporary the arrangement was, kicked the corner of his air mattress, jostling him.

"Seriously. I'm not kidding. Get the fuck up and get dressed and come run with me or I'm kicking your ass out." Tom narrowed his eyes at Cash, who wasn't cowed for a second. "I'm so not kidding."

"What the fuck?" The hoodie Cash threw his way smacked Tom in the face.

"I can't take it anymore. Your misery is sucking the brain cells right outta me. And I am not what they call a genius." Microfiber shirt. Running shorts. Sweats. _Thwap, thwap, thwap._ Tom didn't flinch. Let the clothes smack into him and slide down his chest. "You look bad. You smell worse. Get up off that stanky ass air mattress and come run or find someone else's floor to crash on."

"You suck." But he was kicking off his sleep pants and pulling on shorts and sweats.

"That's your job, lover boy. Put a hat on. It feels cold."

"Thanks, Mom."

"I just got off your mom." Cash spun around and winced at Tom's horrified look. He waved his hands in the air frantically. "Sorry. I forgot. That was gross."

"Little bit."

"Sorry." Tom relaxed back against the wall. A balled up pair of socks hit him in the chin. "But you still gotta get the fuck up."

Cash wouldn't be argued out of his annoying idea. Not even the threat of replacing all the porn on his laptop with Cockyboys double penetration videos was enough to shake his determination to get Tom out on the track, on the grass, on whatever fucking flat surface he chose, but they had to run.

The sun was insanely bright in his eyes outside and Tom winced at the idea that he hadn't even noticed that spring—or hell, even summer, it was practically eighty, not cold at all—had come early to the Connecticut River Valley. He wasn't speaking to Cash, who hung back at his shoulder and followed silently when Tom headed for the back roads that paralleled the country highway up to and over the notch in the mountains between their campus and the next big town.

He'd run. He'd run until the voices in his head shut up and if that didn't work, he'd sleep until graduation.

When they made it back to campus and collapsed on the edge of the Green, Tom paused on his hands and knees for a minute, absolutely positive that he was going to puke. Cash broke out his phone and called for help.

Steph materialized like magic five minutes later. She was the lucky one, with a room in one of the smaller, old-fashioned dorms on the Green, crowing over the big bay window and hardwood floors in her room. She stood over them, a pitiless look in her eyes, and a white plastic CVS bag looped over her wrist.

"So are you guys, like, bananas and granola bars hungry, or turkey sandwich hungry?" Her eyes said they'd better pick the bananas.

"For the love of God, woman, give us the sandwich." Cash spoke from his sprawl flat-out on his back in the sun.

"Okay, but that's my lunch, and dinner for tomorrow too. I'm down to my last ten bucks until payday." She kicked Cash's feet to the side and sat in between the two of them.

Cash sat up and grabbed the sandwich, unwrapping it and pushing half toward Tom on the open wrapper. "I will buy you ten more sandwiches tomorrow. Sweartagod." He shoved most of his half of the sandwich in his mouth with one giant bite.

Tom didn't move from where he lay on his belly, head pillowed on crossed arms. When Steph pointed out the half sandwich in front of his face, he grunted.

"Why's he such a wreck?"

He kept his eyes shut and let his friends talk about him as if he weren't there.

"Mostly because he's an out of shape motherfucker. And he's a sprinter."

"Ha." That was about as good a retort as he could come up with, since he'd left his brain somewhere back on the other side of the Notch.

"How far'd you go?"

"I dunno. Maybe twelve? Fourteen?"

"Miles?" The weirdly soft ripping sound turned out to be Steph peeling a banana, he saw when he cracked a lid open. "How do you _do_ that? I'd be dead."

Cash shrugged, too busy stuffing a turkey grinder into his maw to bother to answer. Some vestige of polite social behavior refused to allow Tom to lie there in silence also. His voice felt rusty when he spoke.

"Mostly it's mental." Steph turned her head toward him and scoffed out loud, mouth full of banana. He shook his head. "When you train, you learn that the messages you get from your body and your brain are only that. Messages." He tried to think of examples. Thinking, period, was moving pretty slow in his brain. At least the run had killed his hangover, or he'd be dead now. "Like, _I'm tired._ Or, _I need to stop. I can't go any farther._ They're loud, but you don't have to listen. You can just...keep going."

Steph bit off another chuck of banana, spring sun shining weakly on the faded blue wash in her hair.

"Huh."

"What?"

"What what?" She was playing dumb.

He pushed himself up on his hands. If he could sit up without vomiting, then he'd eat. "Don't gimme that. You're thinking something."

"Well, I thought that maybe...maybe you should try to do that. You know. Ignore the messages you're getting from your brain about how you can't do _some_ thing." She lifted innocent eyebrows. "And just...keep going."

"It's not the same thing." He bit into the sandwich. His turn to use a full mouth as an excuse not to talk.

"No?"

"No." He chewed what turned out to be maybe the greatest turkey grinder ever built by a deli sandwich maker. She stared at him, clearly prepared to wait until grass grew over him if that's what it took. "Maybe."

Cash watched from behind Steph, propped up on his elbows, as she drove the message home with all the subtlety of a steamroller.

"I think it's exactly like that. When you think you can't do it anymore. You have to ignore it and keep going. Trust in your training."

"I'm out of practice with that."

"What?"

"Trust."

* * *

But he tried.

He spent another week trying to figure out how to trust Reese. Or rather, how to show Reese that Tom _did_ trust him, because as he thought about it, crossing the campus in the yellow-green light of new leaves and spring sun, Reese was about the only person in the world that he believed in. It was his absolute conviction that the rest of the world was out to get him, which to be fair had been accurate when barricaded in his old home with lingering paparazzi at the gates, that needed to be challenged. As a worldview, it was maybe the slightest bit _off_.

He started trying.

It turned out that trusting people wasn't exactly like riding a bike, but it hadn't broken any of his bones yet.

He stopped restricting himself to behind the scenes work with the coach and one-on-one training sessions and started showing up for all-team practices and even the meets. Outdoor season was in full swing and Tom found himself more than once in the middle of hundreds of runners, refs, coaches and fans, his heart racing, convinced that every conversation he could only barely hear was a whispered gossipfest about him. Wondering if every flash that pulsed in the corner of his vision was someone pointing a camera at him.

He learned to force himself to stand still, muscles twitching, eyes damn near rolling in his head like a wild pony, until the whistling roar in his ears muted to normal levels and he could breathe again without panting. He reminded himself that bracing himself for the worst was fine, as long as he didn't let it stop him from having an actual life.

But other than wondering if he should take his old competitors' general fondness for giving him welcome back smacks on the ass personally, nothing much at all happened.

Expanding the trust thing beyond the insular bubble of his running world was a little bit harder. He'd started with people who already considered him family, the equivalent of setting up a puppet show in your basement for your grandparents and calling it Broadway. The first time he spoke up in his advanced Ethics in Business seminar, he'd wanted to puke, waiting for someone to question his right to have any opinion at all about the subject. But all that happened was a girl with long, dark hair and serious eyes challenged his original premise, forcing him to articulate his thoughts more clearly in an extended debate with her over the nature of private and public information.

He lingered in the back of the classroom until everyone else had left, reluctant to merge into the chattering group of students in case he'd pushed his luck far enough for one day. He was aware of being a bit of a pussy, but cut himself some slack for having made a move at all.

"Back in the saddle, Tom?" Quillian asked with a raised eyebrow.

He shrugged then flushed, knowing his professor deserved more than mute gestures. "Trying not to end up with a tinfoil hat, I think."

"Glad to have you back. We've missed your insight."

And it mostly went that way everywhere. In the dining rooms of Cash and Steph's dorms—because somehow he hadn't lost her friendship, although he was aware that she and Cash manipulated schedules to avoid bringing Reese and Tom together—he let the waves of lunchtime conversation wash over him and worked on not feeling like he was drowning. Participating in conversations turned out to help, as opposed to hunching over his plate silently and letting the voices in his head shout louder than the real voices across the table.

It was hard to worry about outside attention when his taste in music was being crapped on from all sides.

"Okay, Grandpa. Tell us again how nobody's made anything good since the Stones."

"I didn't say that! I said no one else comes close to their catalog and—"

" _I can't get noooo satisfaction_ ," Cash yodeled out loud.

Heads swiveled at nearby tables. Tom clenched his molars together and ignored the stares. Better to distract himself. "Hear that's what the girl you went out with last weekend is still saying."

"Dayum." Steph's eyes were round for a moment, before narrowing as Cash made frantic slashing pantomimes across his throat. "Wait. What girl?"

"A girl I met."

"Not that _brick_ from the party last week." When Cash didn't answer, Steph spun in her seat and glared at Tom. "Tell me he's not hooking up with that girl who believed him when he said he invented Velcro."

"Shee-it. Now you've done it, Worthy."

"Jesus, do you ever not think with your dick?"

Tom could answer that. "No."

A balled up paper napkin bounced off his forehead. "Thanks."

Tom grinned at him, feeling his cheeks move stiffly. "Anytime."

Cash leaned back in his chair until it balanced on the two back legs. "Besides my dick is wicked smart."

"And modest."

"Your dick needs someone else to be in charge of its decisions for a while." Tom couldn't read the look in Steph's eyes that she turned on Cash, but it made the big man blush and wobble on his chair until he had to grab the edge of the table for balance.

"Get in line," was the closest he got to a comeback.

Steph sucked on the straw in her soda until the last of the liquid rattled loudly in the bottom of the glass as she chased it. "You should be so lucky."

Tom felt the ache in his cheeks as he lifted his head to take a bite of his roast beef sandwich, still grinning. There might never come a day when he wouldn't rather heat up a can of SpaghettiOs on an illegal hot plate in Cash's room than eat in a dining room full of people, but being here with friends made it easier.

Still, he was paddling around in the baby pool, all these maneuvers about as challenging as swimming in your own pee. Trusting in his friends and his teammates not to treat him like shit wasn't exactly putting himself out there and having some frigging faith in humanity. So although the baby steps were nice, he didn't want to pat himself on the back for them.

He finished his sandwich and tossed his napkin on the plate, grabbing his backpack while he stood to clear his tray.

"Gotta go. I've got my, um, thing."

Both sets of eyes on him were soft, sympathetic, which kind of freaked him out more than helped him. They knew where he was going, had listened to him talk about it since the previous week, when he'd first had the idea and then chickened out at the last minute. It'd be easier if they didn't stare at him as if this was a big fucking deal.

In a completely strange moment, he almost wished for his dad's brisk, _Suck it up, kiddo_ , attitude. Sometimes a lack of sympathy made things easier, he thought.

"You could call him." Steph, with her constant refrain.

He shook his head. "And say what?"

"How about, will you please come with me while I do this thing that's really fucking scary to me?" She was snapping at him now, having made the same argument already to no avail.

"I think he babysat me enough already."

"You know that's what people who love each other do, right? Stick around and support you through the tough shit?" She circled a hand in the air to indicate the three of them in a less than subtle reminder.

"Yeah, but it can't always be my turn. Okay?" He stuttered to a halt when he realized that Cash was still ignorant of the details of Reese's past. He turned to Steph. "Listen, you know that he's had some serious... _shit_ of his own to deal with, and he is." He wondered when he'd started avoiding saying Reese's name aloud. As if not hearing the word come out of his own mouth made it less painful.

"I know too." Tom looked at Cash blankly. His friend challenged him right back with a full-on stare. "What? We talk. You think I wasn't gonna ask him why he said he was scared of me?"

"Jesus. You asked. And he told you. Of course he did." Tom shook his head, pressure building in his sinuses. He pushed his chair in, ready to leave. Or, not exactly ready, but leaving anyway. "You guys all just fucking _share_ stuff like that. Like it's no big deal."

"Hey." Cash was the one whose voice was sharp now. "Not like it's no big deal. It _is_ a big deal."

"But you do it anyway." He grabbed the back of his own neck with one hand and squeezed until it hurt. "It's like you're all twenty-seven miles down this highway that I've barely figured out how find the on-ramp to. He shouldn't have to wait for me to catch up."

"He deserves to make that call for himself, don't you think?"

Tom pressed his lips together and shook his head.

He hadn't told them.

Despite his inarticulate avowal not to burden Reese with his shit anymore, he'd caved quickly enough that first week. It had taken all of three days for him to give in and call Reese in the middle of the night, sitting in a corner of the back stairwell under flickering fluorescent lights so as not to wake Cash up.

Three days had been long enough for Reese to decide that Tom was right after all.

It probably didn't help that Tom had had to drink most of the six-pack in Cash's minifridge before he worked up the nerve to call Reese at two o'clock in the morning.

He hadn't managed to get much more than a pathetically slurred _I miss you_ out before Reese interrupted him.

"You know what? You were right. It _is_ my turn to be pissed. I would have waited, Tom. I _was_ waiting. But you don't have any faith at all, do you? Not in me. Not in yourself. And we know you don't have faith in the rest of humanity, miserable lot of privacy-invading shitheads that they are. God, you can't even call me to say you miss me without getting hammered first. It's not enough. I deserve better."

Tom had been saying that all along.

So he didn't answer Steph when she suggested that Reese deserved to make up his own mind, because Reese already had. All he could do was work on catching up and hope that Reese might still listen to him when he got within shouting distance.

He was pretty sure that he was fooling himself that this was even possible, but it seemed as if that was an inextricable part of the having faith thing. Doing something when you had no idea if it was going to pay off, because you _hoped_ , you _trusted_ that it might.

* * *

"God, are we really going to go with that? Isn't everybody tired of the traumatic coming out story being the only story we tell? This isn't the eighties, you know."

Tom felt Paul's eyes on him. The president of the biggest organization on campus for gay students—a tall, skinny guy with dark hair and a confident smile whose picture Tom had tracked down after finding out that he was also the editor of the Carlisle Pride newspaper—had stopped in the middle of a conversation when Tom had pushed open the classroom door with numb fingers and forced himself to enter the room. The question of whether or not anyone in this bi-monthly meeting would recognize him had been answered in the first two seconds. But Paul hadn't done any more than nod at him, not questioning Tom's presence in the room as Paul shepherded the group through a debate about their next big project.

Now they were discussing whether or not they could really call themselves representative in any way, considering that they were all upper or upper middle class white kids with liberal New England parents.

Tom could hardly keep track of the arguments.

"Hey, we are who we are. If this is who is interested in participating in the group, then that's life."

"There's nothing stopping us from going out and finding other students who represent a different experience. In fact, I'd argue that we're obligated to do that."

"My story as an out gay man whose parents didn't blink twice isn't less valid than someone who was kicked out of their house at fourteen, Bianca."

"I never said it was. But you have to admit it doesn't exactly challenge anyone."

Paul took advantage of a gap in voices to refocus the conversation. Tom had perched on the edge of a chair at the far end of the conference table. He twitched in his seat when Paul asked if anyone had additional opinions to share on whether or not the idea of coming out was still relevant today and then froze in horror as several sets of eyes turned his way.

"Tom?" Paul's invitation was clearly a command for the rest of the people in the room to stay quiet for a moment to see if the new guy had anything to say.

Fuck, no. He didn't have anything to say. Wasn't showing up and listening enough, for Christ's sake?

No one was more shocked than Tom when he opened his mouth and started speaking.

"I think it's not so much the coming out, but the volume, the projection, that's so easy to get with your private life now. I didn't care that any one person knew when I was with my boyfriend..." though his voice wobbled and he knew the people in this room could hear it, "...but the thought of so many people knowing and talking about my private life made me, um, afraid." Might as well come out and admit that. It wasn't like admitting to the _fear_ was the hard part.

Although the more he thought about it, he might be wrong about that.

The more steps he took out onto what had felt like the skinny, swaying branch of a sapling, but turned out to be the broad wide branch of a hundred-year-old oak tree—this dare he was challenging himself to accept, to live his life as if he weren't afraid of the world—the more he wondered if he'd welcomed the invasive spotlight of the public eye during his father's arrest and trial. It had given him the perfect excuse to withdraw, to narrow his world down so much there wasn't room for anyone else in it, right when he was supposed to be getting ready to widen it. He hadn't had to admit to being afraid of anything else—of figuring out what he wanted to do with his life after graduation, of becoming more aware that there wasn't a convenient, societally approved gender restriction on who he might want to spend that life with—because he'd been able to point at a real bogeyman right outside the front door to blame for his fears.

Awfully convenient, that there paranoia.

"Yeah, but, no offense, newbie?" It was the girl with long, dark hair from his ethics seminar, he was surprised to see. He judged himself for assuming a girl with long hair was straight. "You're a special case. Most of us don't have reporters following us around for months on end, putting our picture in the paper."

"I think the ubiquity of social media means we're all potentially exposed to the public eye on a previously unimaginable scale, whether or not we want to be, and that's something that still affects people when they come out, even if their personal revelations are maybe less negative today." Using the twenty-five-dollar word distanced him from this argument, made it feel more academic than a bunch of strangers sitting around discussing his personal life. He'd take it.

"But it can be a good thing too, right?" The little guy with pink hair looked familiar as he bounced in his seat, tossing a wink Tom's way that made him blush. The blush turned into a raging inferno when he realized that the kid was one of Reese's old pick-ups from a million years ago. Or rather, eight months. His room had reeked of this kid's come while Tom fell asleep on his bed. "Like that guy who came out to his parents with a YouTube video. That got, like, a million views and there was a ton of positive impact."

Holy shit. He hadn't thought this through at all. Maybe _that_ was why Reese wasn't involved in the official gay student organizations on campus. Because he knew he'd constantly be running into his pick-ups? Seriously. Holy shit. This was not a part of the difficulties he had anticipated.

Thank God someone else had jumped in.

"Does anyone know what his parents did, though? Positive response from strangers is great, but what about his family? Were _they_ ready to be in the spotlight?" Tom couldn't even see who was commenting now as the discussion leapt to life with several people all talking at once.

The debate went on for a long, long time, to the point where Tom started to question the need for consensus on _everything_.

In the end, they decided to combine the two subjects and do a multimedia installation on the power of social media for both good and ill and the changing nature of privacy and coming out in a digital age. A couple of film students were eager to interview people at the next QUILTBAG party, an acronym that Tom was embarrassed to have to have explained to him. The asexuals and the queer additions were new to him and although a couple of students laughed at his ignorance, they did it in a way that didn't feel like they were making fun of him.

Paul interrupted the detailed explanation of gender identity versus sexual identity that the little guy with the pink hair had cornered Tom with while the other students broke up and headed out. His name was Eli and he had the friendly, frenetic energy of a younger brother on a Twinkie high. When he ran off to catch up with some of the film students, demanding to be the first to be interviewed on camera, Paul grinned at Tom.

"Eli can be a little overwhelming."

"No, he's cool. I sort of...met him. Once. Under weird circumstances." Tom blushed, like Paul could look at him and know that he'd listened to Eli orgasm with Reese's mouth on his dick. Paul either didn't pick up on the awkwardness or decided to ignore it.

"I feel like I met _you_ under weird circumstances. Wasn't sure if you were here to kick my ass for breaking you up with your boyfriend or not." Tom stared at his shoes. Paul ducked his head to get back into Tom's line of sight. "Sorry. I heard from Reese later. Haven't talked to him in a couple of months, though."

"Yeah, well, that wasn't your fault," Tom said. Paul quirked an eyebrow at him and Tom laughed. "Okay, maybe for one day it was your fault. But that was coming whether or not he ever talked to you."

He must have looked as if he were eager for any word of Reese, because Paul twisted his mouth and said, "Last I heard, he was doing fine."

Tom knew that. He'd seen Reese across the Green recently, standing with a group of people, none of whom he recognized. But he'd braced himself when he saw a tall guy come up behind Reese and wrap an arm around his chest in a hug. He thought he saw Reese tense, but it was hard to tell from a distance. That could have been wishful thinking. In the end, Reese turned his head and grinned up at the guy, who tousled his hair with his free hand. Obviously, his therapy was helping with some things.

Tom cleared his throat, his voice cracking a little. "I'm glad. But like I said, not your fault."

"I'm sorry anyway." But his grin was less than repentant and his eyes skated down Tom's body with a frank appraisal that made it clear he'd bounce back fine. "Can I buy you a drink to make up for the one day?"

If he'd ever wondered whether it was only Reese, or some lingering remnant of boyhood from single sex boarding school, the zing of pleasure that sparked in his dick at the idea of this good-looking, confident guy being interested in him put that question to rest. But although he'd probably spend a day or two wondering what it would have been like to hook up with the King of the Gays on campus, a guy who probably knew ten times what Tom did about gay sex, there wasn't any real heat behind the fantasy. "Sorry. But thanks."

"You are gay, right?" Paul raised his hands, palm out, in the air. "Just checking."

"Bi, actually." He sighed, wondering if saying that would ever not make him feel like a fraud. "Though that makes people think I'm afraid to say I'm gay, I guess."

"Hey, no one gets to define your sexual identity but you. Rule number one." Paul had packed up his notes and papers and flipped off the overhead light. He held the door to the room open, but not all the way, so that Tom had to turn his shoulders and slide past him to exit. The hallway wasn't that much dimmer than the cloudy day outside, but it was empty and felt strangely intimate. Paul closed the door behind them. "Besides, I'm not afraid of bi guys. I'm confident I could hold your attention."

That grin packed quite a punch.

"Thanks. But, um, even though it's probably over for good..."

"He's still your guy."

Tom shook his head. "I'm his."

Paul clapped him on the shoulder and tugged him down the hall. "Damn. Then I definitely owe you that drink. C'mon."

He tried to remember the last time he had made a new friend, aside from Reese. He thought that maybe it felt like this.

Maybe it felt like catching up.

* * *

A week later, Tom called Reese and left a message asking if they could meet up on the Green. Summer seemed to have skipped right over spring that year and the Green was carpeted with students on blankets or towels or Indian print bedspreads that had last been hip back in the seventies but could still be had for $9.99 at the head shop in the next town over. No studying was happening indoor that afternoon, anywhere, as far as Tom could tell.

He sat in the sun and closed his eyes, letting it glow red through his eyelids and warm his skin until he could almost imagine that he was waiting here for nothing more important than a tan.

Almost.

When a shadow blocked the light on his face, he knew who cast it.

"Got your message."

He opened his eyes and inhaled slow and deep. This felt like coming home and the scariest thing he'd ever done all at once. "I didn't know if you'd come."

Reese sighed and dropped to sit across from him, hugging his knees to his chest. He watched the Ultimate Frisbee game that a couple of guys were trying to get going, despite everyone else yelling at them for getting stepped on.

"I don't hate you, you know. I miss you. It just..."

Tom twisted his hands in the grass at his feet and ripped it from its roots, throwing it like confetti that floated for a moment in the breeze before falling to the ground.

"Wasn't enough. I know."

Reese's sigh was audible.

"No. Not enough."

"I get that. And I'm working on it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He'd known that simply saying that wouldn't be enough. Had taken the time to prepare a list of the things he was changing, starting with having called Paul last month to tell him that he should run Reese's article, without editing Tom out.

But all he could think about with Reese sitting across from him, sun shining on his black hair, leather cuffs still wrapped around his wrists, green Chucks on his feet, was that he'd never wanted to touch someone so much in his life. Wanted to feel his skin, the hard muscle wrapped around skinny bones, the tightly wound energy easing under his hands until Reese was loose and relaxed and in the moment the way Tom always wanted him to be.

"I've been working on a lot of things, actually. And I know you have too, so I was thinking that maybe you could come and sit here and I could tell you about it." He uncrossed his legs and planted his feet on the ground, knees up and shoulder-width apart. He reached under one knee and laid his hand on the grass where his lap had been.

Reese raised an eyebrow at him.

"People can see you, you know."

He flushed but refused to look around him.

"I know. That's one of the things I'm working on."

He held his breath.

And let it out in a silent sigh when Reese walked on his knees over to him and then turned his back, scooting back on his butt until he was pressed up against Tom's chest, resting his hands on Tom's knees as he leaned back.

Tom closed his eyes for a moment and held his breath. Then he cleared his throat—it was tight—and began.

"So, I'm going to be staying for the full year next year. Quillian suggested I stick around for a double major in Non-Profit Studies and Econ. Said it would help get me into a grad program. And he offered me more hours TAing for him too. Plus, since I wasn't claimed on anyone's tax return last year, the dean confirmed I'll be eligible for full financial aid. Especially because a bunch of my income was, um, unofficial."

A nice way to put it. He'd been honest with the dean but she told him she had no memory of that conversation whatsoever.

Reese twisted his head to stare up at him.

"You talked to the dean?"

"Yeah, she's, um, not so bad. Plus she fired that guy who was working the desk."

"The Evil Nemesis?"

Tom nodded and liked the way Reese's hair felt against his face, soft and silky, so he did it again, turning the nod into a caress with his cheek. Reese's eyes drifted closed but he kept talking.

"I feel kind of bad about that actually. He was a jerk, but I guess I'd've been one to me too." It turned out that the dean had heard them arguing in the hall outside her office and she'd demanded the details of the confrontation from Tom. For such a tiny woman, she was surprisingly scary and Tom found himself confessing far more than he meant to. Once she heard his description, she'd cut him off before he could explain that everything Jack had done was totally justified. She told him she'd investigate for herself, thank you, but if Jack had harassed Tom, then he was fired and probably on academic probation too, no matter how much Tom argued against it. Students were entitled to go to school without being harassed. He didn't bother to tell the dean it wouldn't matter what she did to Jack either.

But he'd almost laughed while she spoke. Or cried. Told himself it wasn't that funny but heard Reese's voice in every word.

"What do you mean?"

He remembered the look in Jack's eyes. The fear, so familiar to Tom, of slipping loose from everything he knew. He'd wanted to reassure him, share out a portion of his hard-won wisdom about asking for and accepting help, but he couldn't imagine Jack being able to hear anything Tom said right now. Not even _sorry_ and he'd said that and meant it.

"I'll tell you later. Let's just say he's part of the fallout from my dad, but I know there isn't much I can do about that."

Reese nodded, his hair brushing against Tom's chin. He wished he could shut up and sit here in the sun with Reese, letting it soak into his bones. But learning to talk in the daylight was one of the things he was most proud of, even if it felt like peeling his skin off every single time.

"I've been working with the team. My wind is still for shit compared to them, but we're sweeping our conference, which is fun. I'm glad I'm running again."

Reese rubbed his hands up and down Tom's shins. "I knew you would be."

"That's why you're the one in charge, baby." He didn't flinch at _baby_ anymore, but the sentiment had always meant more than one thing to them and his dick woke up at the memories, thickening as Reese's ass flexed against his crotch. This conversation was more important than his dick, though, so he ignored it. "I've been hanging out with Cash and Steph a lot too, which I know you know because I think they stagger our meals so we don't run into each other."

"Yeah, I noticed that."

"It's not the same without you. I miss you." Speaking simply was hard, but worth it. His chest was tight and he held his breath until Reese found his hands and laced their fingers together. He squeezed until Tom's knuckles ached, which helped him breathe again. "I also went to this meeting."

"I heard."

"You did?" Well, shit. That was the biggest weight he had to slide on the apology plate of the balancing scales between them. That and sitting here wrapped around his boy in front of anyone who cared to look. He was pissed to have his thunder stolen.

"Five thousand students. Takes about fifteen minutes for gossip to get across town. Also, you're hot. You show up at a Pride meeting and it's less time than that before they're laying bets on who you'll hook up with first."

Tom reared his head back. "But I didn't—"

Holy crap. If he'd fucked it up already...

Reese twisted until his shoulders pressed against Tom's arm so he could look at him. His smile was rueful. "Relax. You're, like, the least unfaithful guy ever." He sat up with a jerk before sinking back against Tom, facing forward again. "Not that you had to be, because we weren't—"

He wasn't going to risk it by wrapping his arms around Reese and holding tight, even if he wanted to more than anything. But he buried his face against the side of Reese's neck and breathed him in, warm skin under his mouth as he whispered.

"We still were. At least for me."

He wouldn't ask. Jealousy had burned like banked coals in his gut when he saw Reese with that other guy who hadn't hesitated to touch him in affectionate ways. He knew he didn't have the right to ask and had told himself to shut his fucking mouth and suck it up.

His boy had never had any trouble reading him, though.

"I wasn't waiting for you, Tom. But I wasn't ready either."

Tom tipped his head back and stared up at the clear blue sky and it felt like a prayer. He blinked until it was safe to look forward again. Reese didn't say anything for a little while.

"I'm really happy for you. I hope you know that." Safety vanished in an instant. Tom's stomach roiled. "But it's hard for me, you know? Because I wanted to be a part of all this."

The crux of it all. He'd had to shut Reese out to get to the place where he could let him in.

"I know. But I think...I needed validation. And it couldn't come from you, because I already knew that you, um, loved me." They had never actually said the words. "So your opinion didn't count as much." He bit his lip. That sounded worse out loud than it had in his head. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I get it." His voice was tight though and he picked at the bunched up seam of his jeans where his knee bent. "Although I'd love to know where all this validation talk comes from."

"Don't laugh. I'm seeing someone." Reese's back shot stiff as a board and Tom shook his head. He blew a hard puff of air at Reese's hair, pushing it forward to fall in his face. Dork. "Not a date. Jeez. A therapist. Fuck."

"Of course." Of course, my ass. Hadn't Reese just said he was faithful? Not quite as sure of that as he'd appeared, maybe. "I'm glad."

"Yeah, I think I'm some Psych grad student from UMASS's senior project, but she's pretty cool. Seems to know what she's talking about anyway, or at least acts like she does. Like I'd know." Tom shrugged. Another thing to take on faith.

"Still. That's great. I'm proud of you."

Tom could live forever on the small golden spark that lit in his belly. He hummed with satisfaction, the vibration low in his chest. Reese shivered.

They soaked in the sun while students argued and necked and dozed all around them, one more tangle of two bodies on a sprawling lawn that shone with sunshine and potential and held them in the light without fear.

After a while, Reese roused himself to ask.

"So if you stay on for another year?"

The smile tucked Tom's cheeks into balls of goofy happiness.

"I'd be eligible for housing in Perkins again, if I want. I'm officially old enough to qualify, without ulterior motives. But even if I get a shitty lottery number, almost all seniors go for singles. If I wanted a double on campus, I could probably get a really kick ass room." He held his breath, waiting, having faith that asking if he was still too far behind would deliver the answer, _I was waiting for you._

Reese leaned his head back against Tom's shoulder and let the sun shine down on his face. The shadows under his eyes were still there but fainter than they'd ever been. Tom knew at some point they'd be gone completely.

It felt as if hours had passed before Reese spoke, still sunbathing in his arms.

"I hear the doubles in that new dorm by the Science building have bay windows and their own bathrooms."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. They sound pretty cool."

A long pause allowed his throat to loosen again.

"Are you saying that because you want to have sex in the shower?"

"No. Sort of. No." Reese pushed his butt back against Tom's crotch and Tom buried his face in his boyfriend's neck with a grin, because he could feel it in Reese's skin, in his bones, in the way his spine curved against Tom's belly that it wasn't too late.

He could still catch up.

# Epilogue

_Four months later_

* * *

The corner of a cardboard box jammed him hard between the shoulder blades.

"Move it, big boy."

Tom stepped to the side and let Reese squeeze past, skinny arms wrapped around the box he could barely see over. His boyfriend walked into the middle of their suite's common room and spun around in a slow circle, taking in the hardwood floors, high ceilings, and a bay window with a navy blue-cushioned bench seat that overlooked the campus green. Doors to two small bedrooms faced each other on opposite walls, with their ensuite bathroom carving out a chunk of the main room to his right.

And in the middle of it all was Reese.

Damn, his boy looked good. Hair a little shorter and rarely in his face these days. Skinny dark blue jeans and the tight Rolling Stones T-shirt with Mick Jagger's Union Jack'd tongue. Reese swore he only wore it because it made Tom think of blowjobs.

This was true.

The smile that slid over Reese's mouth when he stood facing Tom could only be called wicked. "Oh, we are so gonna do it on that window seat."

All the blood in Tom's body rushed to his crotch as he pictured that. He didn't know how they'd manage it, but was pretty sure it was going to involve him bent over something and he was so, so on board with that idea. He imagined looking out over the green from their fourth floor suite and wondering if anyone could see them while Reese slid hand up his naked back until his fingers were buried in Tom's hair. Heat balled in his stomach. He was letting it grow, because Reese played with his hair more when it was longer and Reese's hands in his hair made Tom shiver.

He still had a hard time believing they were here, together, in this luxurious new dorm on the Green. The one the school put on the front of brochures to lure potential students and their parents into dropping the equivalent of an entire mortgage on a bachelor's degree.

The honeymoon period after their snuggle on the Green had lasted all of five days.

Tom's announcement that he'd found a studio apartment in Dorchester to sublet for the summer had not been received well. Getting back together with your boyfriend apparently meant that decisions about where you were going to live for three months weren't to be made without any discussion. Especially decisions that meant camping out in grotty, un-air conditioned attics instead of staying with the Anders. That argument had lasted a week and only ended when Tom realized Reese wasn't going to back down.

"Even that shitty studio will cost you thousands over the summer, between rent and utilities." Reese's jaw had flexed and Tom had seen it, because they had these conversations in the daylight now. "You stay with us. Save your money and drive a reasonable number of hours. If you stay there, I never see you and at the end of the summer you have no cushion."

"I can't have sex with you with your dad in the house. Seriously." It wasn't the best reason for renting an apartment of his own, but accepting help was still awkward and weird and made his skin crawl with unease and the weight of obligation.

"I can wait." He'd glared at Tom's bark of disbelieving laughter. "And we can send my dad to the movies."

They'd managed. Tom still sometimes drove for too many hours, when he felt himself needing to exert some kind of control over his world. He'd drive all night and show up at dawn, crawling into bed just as Reese left it for his summer internship. There were daytime arguments and lots of snuggling on the couch and very little sex. But they'd managed to make it through the entire summer until it was time to pack up his car and head west on the Mass Pike to their new home.

On campus.

The light lit up Reese like a halo as they smiled at each other.

"I love you." It was easy to say. Now.

Tom had learned that it mattered. Saying the words. The words weren't enough, in and of themselves, and actions mattered too, but after Reese had sat him down and explained a few things, he got it better about it. And, learning how the words lit Reese up like a candle, he'd started to look for it. That bright shiny glow, the curve of a lip, how Reese blinked slowly just once, the dozen ways he practically shivered with happiness when Tom said it.

"Love you too." His boyfriend's eyes narrowed and Tom dropped his box to the side with a thud just in time to brace himself as Reese walked right into him and backed him up against the wall. For a little guy, he could growl like a bear. "God. I'll love you right up against this wall."

Reese pulled Tom's head down until their mouths pressed together in a kiss that shifted from _Hello there, sailor_ to _Fuck me now_ in seconds. He dug his hands deep into Reese's back pockets and pulled his boy close, reveling in how far they'd come.

He tore his mouth away from Reese's long enough to groan out, "They're right behind us."

Cash and Steph, who they had left near the ground floor elevator, snapping at each other about the easiest way to get their new and surprisingly lightweight couch up four flights.

"I can be fast. You?" Reese pushed him around the corner.

"So fast."

Their bathroom was tiny, barely enough room for the two of them to stand inside and close the door. Reese dropped the lid on the toilet seat and sat, pushing Tom against the wall with two hands on his waistband, thumbs rubbing against the ridge of Tom's dick in his pants. The wall-mounted towel bar was jammed into Tom's kidneys and he totally didn't care.

Reese leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the tight-stretched denim over his dick, and for a second Tom felt like he was on fire as heat from Reese's breath soaked through his jeans.

"God." He smacked a hand against the wall to his left for balance, catching the doorframe with the side of his hand on his right. Reese dipped his fingers into Tom's jeans, searching, until one of his fingertips grazed the head of Tom's dick. Pleasure jolted up his spine and he looked down. Reese grinned up at him, popping the button on Tom's jeans right before he pulled the placket open and grabbed the zipper tab with his teeth.

"Yo! Where is everybody?"

He was going to punch his best friend in the face.

"Just one minute!" His voice cracked. Goddamn it. They'd be able to hear that for sure.

"Dudes! Tell me you are not doing it in the bathroom while I'm hauling your piece of shit couch up four flights of stairs. Thing's made of balsawood. Steph, kick their asses."

"I'm not going in there. No way."

Reese buried his face in Tom's stomach, smothering laughter, while Tom groaned and bumped his hips against his boyfriend one last, useless time. A whole summer of being a guest in someone else's home—although being treated like a second son by Mr. Anders never made him feel anything other than loved—meant that all he wanted to do was strip all his clothes off and get naked with Reese on every flat surface in their suite.

Fuck it. He'd take a non-flat surface at this point.

He dropped his hands to Reese's head and stroked his hair. Slid his hands under Reese's arms and dragged him up his own body until Reese pressed against him full length, a bright sparkle in his eyes.

Tom dropped a kiss on his lips. "Later."

"Not too much later."

"No way. We use them for heavy labor then send 'em out for pizza. We'll get thirty minutes alone, at least."

Reese blew a breath up that rearranged his bangs. "This is so not going to take me thirty minutes. Sorry."

Tom rolled his eyes. They'd both been counting the hours until they were back on campus, which felt like a win in its own right. "Imma need about five. C'mon."

"Wait." Reese stopped him when he would have pulled the door wide open. "It's suspiciously quiet. What are they doing?"

They cracked the bathroom door and plastered their faces to the inch gap, Tom on tiptoe to see over Reese. Steph and Cash had made it to the middle of the room before dropping their load so that the couch faced the suite door, Cash opting to collapse on the couch in melodramatic fashion. Steph stood over him for a moment, saying something they couldn't quite hear, before she stepped away.

Cash grabbed her by the hand and tugged her back.

Tom stood up straighter. "Wait, are they...?"

"She swears not." Reese shook his head, hair tickling Tom's chin. "But I wonder."

"Yeah." From their hideout in the bathroom, it looked distinctly like Cash was playing with Steph's hand, their fingers tangled up together.

"Let's get 'em." Reese's whisper was a sly giggle under the skin.

Tom didn't even really know what he meant, but he laughed under his breath and committed without hesitation. "Okay."

Their exit from the bathroom was only subtle enough to be missed by people who weren't paying any attention at all. Tom's running shoes, shiny new ones, squeaked on the hardwood and Steph, her back to them, tilted her head.

"Dog pile!"

Reese rushed Steph and tackled her onto Cash's lanky form. Tom followed more slowly, still conscious of his body in relation to Reese's, but joined the puppy pile on the couch. He braced himself on one knee, his hand on the back of the couch and an arm wrapped around Reese's waist as he crowned the tackle hug. He grinned down at Steph's outraged face and Cash's wince.

"Dude! Get off my nuts."

"That's me." Steph's drawl was dry. Cash's face turned pink as she squirmed, trapped between Reese and the tall runner with the big mouth. Tom laughed out loud and let himself fall backwards.

He managed to wedge his ass in the corner of the couch while Reese sprawled on top of him, kicking in desultory fashion now at Steph, who didn't seem to mind that she was half on top of Cash.

Buttery yellow sunlight spilled through their tall windows. Tom draped an arm over his eyes, blocking the glare. They were going to need to do something about that. Another trip to IKEA maybe. Curtains. A bunch of shit for the bathroom he hadn't thought about before since they'd have to clean it themselves.

They'd have to get the rest of their crap out of his car first.

And then naked time.

He stood up and dumped Reese to the floor. "Right. Time's awastin'. Let's get moving." He hustled everyone out of the suite and into the hall, checking to make sure that his keys were tucked in his pocket.

His friends' voices echoed in the empty corridor, Cash and Steph arguing, as always, over what toppings they wanted on their promised reward. He'd asked the dean for permission to show up on campus a day early, to give them twenty-four hours to settle in before the hordes of students descended. She'd understood.

He closed the door.

412.

A new room number.

He brushed a fingertip over the brass number plate, following the grooves. His heart raced for a moment at the thought of the hundreds of students who would flood the building tomorrow morning. Tom was under no illusions about the gossip that still followed him around. Maybe it always would.

"You ready, babe?"

Reese waited for him at the top of the stairs.

His rocketing pulse slowed at the sound of his boyfriend's voice. It always did. He pushed off the door with a smack of his palm and loped down the hall.

"Absolutely."

# Choose your next Bend or Break book!

All of the stories in the Bend or Break universe can stand alone, so pick which book you'll try next!

  * Love a redeemed antagonist? Watch Jack hit rock bottom and find a way to make amends when he reconnects with his high school boyfriend in _Nothing Like Paris_.

  * Dying to find out if Cash and Steph ever do more than flirt? Grab _The Girl Next Door_ to get some seriously dirty details!

  * Want more Carlisle College guys flirting and falling in love? Pick up _Level Hands_ and see if the heat between a scholarship student and a rich kid can survive their differences.

  * Ready to jump ahead a few years and see what Tom and Reese are up to as graduates? Check out _Real World_!

# Thank you!

Thank you for reading _Off Campus_. I hope you enjoyed it!

To keep up to date on my new releases, sign up for my occasional newsletter.

Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative, and thank you for your time.

This book is lendable! Please share it with a friend.

I'm always excited to hear from readers. Please find me on my website at http://amyjocousins.com/, on Twitter, and on Facebook. Or email me at amyjocousins@gmail.com.

* * *

Next up, the first chapter of Nothing Like Paris...
_Humble pie wasn't supposed to taste this sweet._

* * *

Nothing Like Paris

_© 2015 Amy Jo Cousins_

Jack Tarkington's life is in the toilet. He was supposed to be spending his junior year studying someplace cool like Paris or Rome. Instead, after taking out his anger on the campus "golden boy", whose dad ripped off his parents, Jack is facing possible expulsion.

Sure, it's all his own fault, but coming back to the small Iowa town he thought he'd escaped, after crowing about his admission to a prestigious school, has been a humbling experience.

When he runs into Miguel, Jack braces for backlash over the way he lorded it over his old friend and flame. Instead, Miguel offers him friendship—and a job at his growing farm-to-table store and café.

Against the odds, both guys bond over broken dreams and find common ground in music. But when Jack's college gives him a second chance, he's torn between achieving a dream that will take him far from home, and a love that strikes a chord he'll never find anywhere else.

_Warning: This book contains a humbled guy who's on the brink of losing it all, a determined entrepreneur who seems to have it all together, apologies issued through banjo-picking duets, and two lovers who can play each other's bodies like virtuosos._

* * *

_Enjoy the first chapter of_ Nothing Like Paris:

* * *

The girl whose nonstop monologue about intersectionality and film had kept him company for eleven hundred miles—from the East Coast all the way to the cornfields of Iowa—kicked him to the curb in the pre-dawn hours, duffel bag at his feet, banjo case strapped across his back.

Jack Tarkington was home again.

Yellow light puddled on the sidewalks under the old-fashioned street lamps designed to look like wrought iron and gas. His dad had bitched about the cost and campaigned against the referendum for a one-time tax levy to pay for them that ended up passing with most of the town's support. The sheet his dad had hung from Jack's bedroom window—because it was on the second floor and more humiliatingly visible to passing motorists he assumed—had proclaimed _Town Council Fascists: Go Home!_

Jack thought the street lamps looked kind of nice. Old timey and as if Colchester Falls was trying too hard to imitate an East Coast town like the one he'd just left, but sweet. And on the deserted Main Street, the easy hump of the road over the train tracks at the center of town the only disruption to a straight line that shot through Colchester Falls like an arrow, the lights smudged his view until it could almost be a hundred and fifty years ago, back when the town was founded.

The shop fronts were dark. Not shuttered, a safety precaution that wouldn't occur to anyone in this sleepy town. Locked up with a key in the deadbolt, lights off until the shops opened around ten o'clock. Or not at all, if it was a Sunday. Jack scrubbed a hand across his face and tried to remember what day it was.

Shit had snowballed so quickly this past week, barreling out of control until he'd been forced to realize how badly he'd fucked up.

He stared down the empty street and tried to figure out where he could kill the hours until it would be okay to show up at home. Definitely not before the first pot of coffee was sucked down.

No one was expecting him. Not for another month at least. He hadn't been able to find a way to tell his parents what had happened, so they didn't know he was coming.

_No good way to say you've been kicked out of school for harassing someone. Can't spin that one any way you look at it._

The rage swelled in his belly again, the fucking _unfairness_ of it all, but he tamped it down hard. No sense howling at the street lamps. He'd always preferred to howl where someone could hear him anyway.

Past the train tracks and another block down, a steady glow shone from one of the shops. Maybe an early-morning coffee shop had opened up since he'd left town last fall. He never came back during the year if he could help it, staying in the empty dorm if he was allowed or finagling his way into an invitation to couch-surf at a friend's house over breaks. Maybe something cool had actually happened in this frigging town while he'd been gone for almost three years.

Dragging his duffel over the recessed rails of the train tracks made the awkward bulk of his bag tug at his sore wrists and blistered fingertips. He'd played nonstop for the past week, blocking out the noise and shouting voices in his head with the plucking of his banjo strings. It was the only time he got a break from the panic.

_You've fucked it up so bad you'll never be able to fix it, boyo. And you'd escaped, you dumb shit. Can't believe you're back here again._

He'd planned on spending the summer in Boston, working his internship at Partners in Health and enjoying the glow that came from being poor for the _right_ reasons. For sacrificing and working to make the world a better place, whatever that meant. Not from missing shifts at the machine shop, which was as close to a decent job as a line mechanic could get after the plant closed down.

Jack shook his head sharply enough to rattle his brain and interrupt that death spiral of bitchiness. He'd learned quickly no one wanted to spend time around a poor kid who whined about being poor because his parents were fuckups.

Shove it down deep and hum a Bela Fleck solo.

He concentrated on the tricky bits and ignored the aches in his hands. Playing a banjo in the cramped front seat of a Mini was harder than it looked, but as long as he was plucking softly, he'd been able to avoid most conversation or at least had an excuse to keep his answers to grunts and nods while staring at his fingertips, swiftly pressing and releasing the strings.

At least the sidewalks were flat here on the plains. He remembered his first months on campus at Carlisle, when he'd arrived early for a summer session for freshmen. He'd borrowed a bike from a guy in his hall, determined to check out the town and the surrounding area, only to find himself unable to get off campus, situated as the school was in a valley in the hills. Every road leaving the school led uphill somehow and his prairie-trained bike skills were no match for even the minor mountain slopes of the East Coast.

He'd ended up pedaling in circles around the leafy green acres, still dazed with having actually done it. Having escaped his small farm town and made it all the way to the land of old money and Kennebunkport yuppies, he'd been surprised to find most of the kids in his first-year classes wearing the same Vampire Weekend and LMFAO T-shirts as the hicks he'd left back home.

Okay, so most of the kids at college had bought their shirts at an actual concert, as opposed to off the Internet. Still. He'd expected something... _more_. He'd expected drama and a whole new life. A whole new him, maybe. But it was mostly the same shit, different day. Different town.

Until the bottom fell out because of that asshole, Tom Worthington, and his fucking crooked-as-shit dad. They were both total shits. Like father, like son. The one costing him his college fund, the other costing him his place at Carlisle.

His right eyelid twitched, a sure sign he was ignoring something— _like maybe your own asshole moves_ —but he hummed louder as the scrape of the duffel wheels followed behind him. The cheap piece of luggage always had at least one wheel jammed up, meaning he dragged the large, heavy bag more than rolled it. The ache in his hand and wrist radiated up to his shoulder.

At the edge of the warm light melting over the sidewalk from the plate glass windows of the only lit-up shop on Main Street, he paused, hesitating for a moment to step closer. There was no movement inside, behind the fancy lettering that filled the scrolled box in the middle of the glass.

_Vargas Farm Table & Kitchen._

He moved into the light and lifted a hand to the glass. Traced the curlicue at the beginning of the V and cocked his head.

Nah. Couldn't be.

Even in rural Iowa, there was more than one Vargas family in town. And the one he'd known, the youngest son of the family he'd known, had never mentioned opening a local shop to him.

Not that he'd actually seen any of the Vargases on his rare visits home. Easier to hide in his room and avoid anyone he'd already disappointed. Chalk that up to another item on the long list of dumb decisions he'd made.

He could see inside the store to the rough wood shelves and tables spilling over with boxes and jars and canisters he didn't recognize. Walking down the aisle of any grocery store in the country, he could identify most brands from twenty yards away. But nothing on these shelves looked familiar. The illuminated deli cases at the back of the store were filled with wheels and blocks of cheese, but nothing that looked like the orange of a cheddar or the tangerine-stained edges of a white Muenster cheese. No orange cheeses at all, which made it all look bleached out and faded.

He knew what it was. They had gourmet food shops on the East Coast too, although Jack never had enough ready cash to shop there. But he'd spent plenty of time nursing a single black coffee with one of his wealthier study buddies, pretending not to be hungry while Rusty dropped twenty bucks on lunch without blinking. It was weird seeing one of those places in his hometown, the ass end of nowhere.

Kinda upscale for Colchester Falls, a town with no Colchesters and no waterfalls. Just a name made up by a bunch of farmers who wanted to pretend they were fancier than they were.

He tugged his bag to the door, even though he could see the _Closed_ sign hanging on the push bar right at waist-height, and gave the handle a yank.

Locked.

Of course.

He dropped his head forward until it thunked against the cool glass and let the waves of exhaustion sweep over him. Then he lifted his head again, pulled a sleeve over the heel of his palm and swiped at the glass, afraid he'd left a giant greasy imprint of his forehead on the sparkling clean door.

Thirty unwashed hours in a tiny car on a cross-country drive didn't leave anyone smelling like fresh daisies.

So there he was, greasy, reeking of cigarettes from smoking in the car, hauling everything he owned behind him in the duffel bag that ate Tokyo, when Miguel Vargas—the first guy he'd ever kissed, the guy he'd fought with and sung with and left behind to head out East, far from the podunk town they'd grown up in—stepped out of a side room Jack hadn't noticed yet and unlocked the door.

* * *

Jack Tarkington.

No shit.

Mike Vargas stopped in the doorway to the farm table annex, watching the slim guy with the dark hair and skinny hipster mustache lean on his front door. He was used to the occasional early-morning farmer or truck driver banging on his door. The locals knew to come around the back, though, where Mike was up to his elbows in baked goods and prepared deli foods, getting the shop set up for the day's sales. He sold more than a few cups of joe out the back bay doors before opening.

There was never any noise from the front of the store. Even when he opened the store at seven a.m., there were few customers that early in the morning. He'd had to argue for a special permit from the town council to open up shop that early in the day at all. But he'd reminded them of the staffs of the other two dozen shops and businesses downtown and convinced them he wouldn't be running a pre-dawn crackhouse, but rather a farm-to-table showcase of the goods from his family's farm.

The council members had lifted more than one eyebrow—matching the expression on his own father's face when he'd presented his plan, if the truth be told—but they'd given him a conditional permit to open early.

With a review at his one-year anniversary, in case he _was_ running a crackhouse after all.

The early-morning business hadn't built yet, but Mike was confident it would come. Everyone got tired of their own coffee and cereal sooner or later. And once he got them in the habit of heading to his shop before they opened their own, a visit to the Vargas Kitchen would be a habitual stop for anyone working in the downtown business district.

Made it sound a lot fancier than it was. Twelve square blocks parked flat on top of the intersection of the railroad tracks and Main Street. He'd been running wild on these small-town streets since he was a kid and now, like any other business owner, Mike cursed the teens who annually TP'd the entire downtown on Homecoming weekend, which was especially fun to clean up in the years where it rained.

Sometimes he missed the running wild part.

The kid he'd run with most once he hit junior high was on the other side of his shop's front door, staring at Mike with big eyes and some seriously disheveled hair. For a moment, he wondered how it could possibly be June already, before remembering he'd definitely paid his taxes recently.

The pain of that bite still stung. It was definitely still April. Too early for summer vacation, awful late for spring break. And Jack had sworn he wouldn't set foot back in Colchester Falls ever again, even if it meant taking unpaid internships and couch-surfing when his college wasn't in session. He'd left two months early as a freshman, taking advantage of some summer program for advanced high school kids and cutting short what Mike had believed would at least be one last summer together. Of course, that was back when he'd thought they would stay in touch, would be friends, or more than that, forever. Who the hell knew _what_ Jack did with himself now? Jack hadn't even bothered to see Mike the last time he'd come home. If Mr. Tarkington hadn't mentioned it when he'd stopped in for coffee once, Jack's last trip home would have been totally under the radar. Mike shook his head and unlocked the door.

"I thought you weren't coming back until we were ready to throw you a goddamn parade," he said, feeling kind of stupid holding the door open when Jack stood there staring at him.

Jack was hauling a duffel bag the size of a small cow behind him and looked strung out with the effort. He swayed on his feet. "You work here?"

That stung more than a bit.

"This is _my_ place." He tried to smile while he said it, but felt that old, comfortable urge nudging at the back of his brain, the need to compete with the only guy who could keep up with him.

"You _own_ it?"

"The family does," Mike admitted, but told himself that didn't take away from his accomplishments. "But it was my idea and I run this end of the business."

"You _did_ want to get off the farm." Jack's spine straightened and his eyes lit up. Mike knew he was two seconds away from an _I told you so_ that would make it really fucking hard for them to be friends again. Not that he wanted to be friends with the guy who had left him behind without a backward glance.

Mike shook his head and held up a hand. "No, man. I really didn't." Jack had never understood that part. Wanting to take his family's business in a new direction didn't have anything to do with getting away from them. Or this town. It was all about making things bigger, better. And he was damn proud of what he was making here. "Are you coming in or am I gonna stand here holding the door all day for you, asshole?"

Like someone had cut his strings, Jack sagged, shoulders drooping as he wiped a hand over his face. "Yeah, thanks. You got a cup of coffee?"

"Now you're thirsty, so you remember to say hi?"

The dig made Jack flinch. He reached for his pocket. "I can buy—"

Mike cut him off with a snort, waving for Jack to follow him to the back, rolling his eyes as he threaded his way through the shoulder-high cases of stock lining the short hallway to the kitchen. "Jesus Christ. You were the first guy I blew in the back of a car down at the lake. You don't have to pay for your goddamn coffee."

"The first guy?" He could hear the arch of Jack's thin eyebrows in his voice. Didn't need to look at his face for that.

"You been gone almost three years." It felt strange, like what he thought it might feel like to be seasick, saying those words out loud. How could it be three years? He focused on the coffee station where he brewed up the Mexican coffee with its cinnamon and dark brown sugar, along with basic regular and decaf, for hotpots he'd set up for speedy service at the register. "You're not telling me you've lived like a monk out East."

"No."

Mike didn't look at him, so he got to imagine Jack looked at least a little guilty for having suggested, if only with his voice, that Mike getting laid in the thirty-four months since they'd last had sex was a surprise.

"Didn't think so."

Mike glanced at the shelf of colorful mugs for staff use, a mismatch of Hawkeyes memorabilia and _Lord of the Rings_ mugs friends kept giving him. He lifted his hand but dropped it mid-grab to tug a paper cup from the open sleeve on the shelf below the counter.

"I don't get a mug?" Jack was always quick. The only surprise when they were finally partnered up by a science teacher in seventh was that no one had put the two of them—both too clever for their own good or their teachers' comfort—together before then. There hadn't been much more than twenty-four hours that had passed since that September without Mike spending time with Jack.

Until Jack left.

"Last time I saw you, you were heading out of town so fast it blew your hair back. I figured you'd probably want a to-go cup." He finished pouring regular into the cup, capped it, slid a sleeve on and handed it over.

At least Jack had the grace to look away at the memory. The shouting fights had gotten out of hand on both their parts that week after graduation, when Mike had found out Jack was leaving in days, not months, and didn't plan on coming back.

"Miguel—"

He'd forgotten how much it irritated him that Jack still called him Miguel, an annoying leftover from junior high Spanish class. "You look like shit, by the way."

"They don't know I'm coming."

Mike's hands clenched around the cardboard box flats of baked goods he had delivered every morning from a local bakery. Jack's parents were less than stellar at handling the unexpected. Not to mention, early morning hours fell in the hangover zone. He looked over his shoulder at Jack, who had wrapped his hands around his cup like he wanted to absorb its heat directly into his bloodstream via his palms. "Semester's not over yet, right? Why are you here?"

Jack flinched and didn't meet his eyes, staring at the floor. That was _bad_. There were plenty of things Jack had a hard time handling—shit, between being gay, from a small town, and the kid of an alcoholic, Jack's laundry list of crap he tried to cover up was plenty long—but his kneejerk reaction was always, _always_ , to tough it out. To act as if he were too good for whatever bullshit he'd stepped in.

Jack awkward and not looking him in the eye meant...well, hell. Mike didn't know what it meant, because he'd never seen it before, but it sure wasn't good.

"School's not out and I'm in this fucking place, so let's assume it's bad, okay?" _You couldn't get this out of me with a crowbar and a stick of dynamite._ Jack picked at the insulating sleeve on his cup with the intensity of a meth head on a binge. But his skin was clear and his fingers were marked with the calluses of a banjo player still, not the burns of a tweaker whose hands shook on a pipe.

"Okay." Mike lined a display tray with waxed paper and began filling it with muffins and scones. He told himself to let it go. That nothing Jack did could ever be of anything other than casual interest to him again, but he knew he was a liar when he asked, "How long you sticking around for?"

And now Jack looked at him, with eyes like black pits that yawned open and swallowed the world with their pain. Mike took a step back like he'd been punched in the chest. Holy...

"Jesus, Miguel, I fucked up so bad." For a moment, Mike thought Jack was going to cry and he almost took a step forward, not even bothering to sigh at Jack calling him by a name no one else used. Every muscle in Jack's body froze, the thin tendons on the back of his hands standing out as he clutched his cup hard enough to pop the white plastic top off. Hot coffee splashed over the side, surely stinging his hand, but he didn't flinch. Just stared at Mike, coffee dripping off his wrist onto the clean tile floor, trembling like a rabbit. "I...I gotta go."

Before Mike could blink, Jack was out the back doors, the push bar giving under his shove as he sprinted off down the alley, banjo case bouncing against his back. The slap of pounding footsteps faded in seconds, silence wiping out the sound of his one-time best friend as if Mike had hallucinated him entirely.

The door to the alley swung open until Mike roused himself to shut it. Not until he turned back to his now-empty kitchen, the room echoing like a canyon with the ghost of whatever pain had driven Jack into the still dark streets of their hometown, did he notice Jack's duffel bag sitting like an accusation in the middle of the floor.

"Well, hell."

Almost three years didn't seem to have mellowed Jack much. There was a good chance he'd walk naked through downtown Colchester Falls before he'd come back to get his things from Mike after showing that much vulnerability to another human being.

"I oughta let him do it, the dumb bastard."

The tinkle of the bell wired to his front door rang from the front. Fuck. Customers. He grabbed the tray he'd half filled and the hot pot of regular. Behind schedule already and damned if he wasn't going to have to find time to squeeze in a delivery now too to Jack's parents' house.

Goddamn Jack Tarkington. Back in town fifteen minutes and already causing Mike trouble.

Nothing ever changed.

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_BuyNothing Like Paris now. Want to find out when new books come out? Sign up for my occasional newsletter on my website._

# Want More Books by Amy Jo?

If you're a fan of steamy LGBTQ romance...

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**Bend or Break**

_Off Campus_

_Nothing Like Paris_

_The Girl Next Door_

_Level Hands_

_Real World_

_Between a Rock and a Hard Place_

_The Belle vs the BDOC_

* * *

**Full Hearts**

_HeartShip_

_HeartOn_

_HeartUp (coming soon)_

* * *

_Glass Tidings_

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If you like your erotica straight up, with a chaser of romance at the end...

* * *

**Play It Again**

_Callie, Unwrapped_

_Callie, Unleashed_

_Gabe, Undone (coming soon)_

_No Reservations (coming soon)_

For fans of classic category romance...

**The Tylers**

_At Your Service_

_Sleeping Arrangements_

_Calling His Bluff_

_When the Lights Go Down_

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If you like your romance in bite-size morsels...

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**Anthologies:**

_How We Began (A Charity Anthology for the Trevor Project)_

_All in a Day's Work ("Dance Hall Days")_

_Rogue Desire_

_Rogue Affair_

_Exposed_

* * *

**Novellas & Short Stories**

_Five Dates_

_Full Exposure_

_The Rain in Spain_

# About the Author

Amy Jo Cousins writes contemporary romance and erotica, both straight and LGBTQ, about smart people finding their own best kind of smexy. She lives in Chicago with her son, where she tweets too much, sometimes runs really far, and waits for the Cubs to win the World Series again.

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She is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan of Handspun Literary Agency.

_Find Amy Jo online:_

amyjocousins.com/

amyjocousins@gmail.com

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Off Campus: © 2014 by Amy Jo Albinak

Excerpt from _Nothing Like Paris_ © 2015 by Amy Jo Albinak

Cover Design by Romanced by the Cover

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All rights reserved. Where such permission is sufficient, the author grants the right to strip any DRM which may be applied to this work.

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For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact Amy Jo Cousins at http://amyjocousins.com/.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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First Edition December 2014

Second Edition March 2017

  Created with Vellum
