This is not something it would ever have occurred to him to ask for, but he realizes now how badly he needed it.

Telling someone about the Wild Fire virus, and that he has it, is difficult enough. Telling it to someone who had nearly become a Romero had, he'd been sure, been a nail in the friendship's coffin.

When Drake instead kisses him like that, he deepens it further, hand in Drake's hair at the nape of his neck to pull him closer.