by Anna Martin
By the time the venue started to empty out, it was creeping up to eleven o’ clock, and Stan, who had been awake since five that morning, was yawning.
“Let me walk you back to the Tube station,” Ben said.
“Okay.” It was easy to agree. Stan led the way this time, out onto the main road, where cars whizzed past at breakneck speed. A light rain had just started to fall over the city, and they ducked into the cover of the Tube station.
“Thank you so much for bringing me out tonight. I think I needed it.”
“Anytime.” Ben hesitated, and Stan wondered if he was going to be invited somewhere else again, so quickly after their date. “I’ll give you a call soon, yeah?”
“I’d like that.”
He let Ben kiss him goodbye, a sweet, lingering kiss with fingertips that gently clutched his hip bones. Stan forced himself to leave before Ben offered something more… something Stan wasn’t sure he would be able to refuse.
The Tube journeys had become meditative already, even after such a short time in the city. Stan tuned out and got lost either in his imagination or in the echoes of music that filled his head while he reclined on one of the narrow seats, long legs stretched out in front of him.
Thoughts of the evening lingered in his head—the thick, cloggy air in the music venue, the thumping bassline he could feel through his feet, the warm reassurance of Ben leading him through the very new experience. This was so different to anything he’d had before. Not even in New York, where he’d discovered his independence and lost his virginity, had he felt so alive.
It took a little over half an hour to complete the journey, forty-five minutes by the time he walked past Bow Church to his apartment complex. Heavy-lidded and with aching limbs, Stan forced himself to take the stairs instead of the elevator and slipped inside his precious flat.
In here, things were just the way he liked them, his little cocoon safe from the world. Stan kicked off his heels, leaving them by the door, and walked barefoot through to the kitchen to make his habitual last cup of tea before bed.
It was much later than he would normally stay out, especially since he had work in the morning. Something about this kind of spontaneous night out felt very London—throwing caution to the wind and doing whatever he liked.
With the radio providing background noise, Stan took his tea through to the bathroom and showered with the cup balanced on the edge of the bath. Eyes closed, Stan let his hands trace the contours of his body, mapping out what each bone felt like under its thin covering of skin. This was how he measured himself; not with a tape or clothes or on a scale, but what his body felt like. He was putting on a little weight, around his middle and on his hips. He tried not to care and sipped some more of his tea before thoroughly washing his hair.
Without any encouragement, Stan’s dick rose and filled until it was pressing against his hip bone, hard and insistent. He was good at ignoring it though and turned the temperature down to give his hair a nice shine as he rinsed the shampoo from it, letting the water do a secondary job of quelling his erection. Growing up in a strictly Russian Orthodox Christian family, he was used to suppressing his sexual urges, and even though he’d learned to express his gender in a way that felt natural and beautiful and right, finding a way to exert control over his sexuality was still lagging a way behind.
Stan stepped out of the shower and roughly towel-dried his body, then went, still naked, through to his bedroom with his tea. He turned the radio off, pulled on a pair of boxers, then crawled between the cool sheets on his bed.
Before settling down for the night he set the alarm for the morning, then felt his stomach flutter when the phone vibrated in his hand with a message. From Ben.
Good night. Sweet dreams. x
Feeling giddy, Stan put the phone on his nightstand and turned out the light. When he rolled over and pulled a pillow to his chest, he couldn’t help but bury his face in it and grin like a schoolgirl with her very first crush.
Chapter Four
Ben woke to the sound of someone thundering down the stairs and groaned. He was always bitching at the others about making noise on the rickety old stairs. His room was next to them, and any noise woke him straight up. Especially since his curtains were paper-thin and let in all the light.
He rolled over and checked his phone—it was a little after nine in the morning. He’d got to bed around four, after working until two, closing up, staying for a drink with the others on shift, then sitting on a night bus for far too long to get him home.
Because he, unlike the others, was a considerate bastard, Ben hadn’t had a shower when he got in, not wanting to wake Jez, whose room was next to the bathroom. The shower too made plenty of noise while it gurgled to life. This meant Ben hadn’t scrubbed the cloyingly sweet smell of alcohol from his skin, and in the early morning, combined with sleep and sweat, it made him feel sick.
There was no way he was going back to sleep now.
Ben threw off the covers onto the floor and sprawled on the pale blue sheet, feet hanging off the end of the bed. A long crack ran along the length of his textured ceiling. No point in reporting it to the landlord. He’d only be ignored again.
With a heaving sigh, Ben dragged himself out of bed and grabbed his towel from over the wardrobe door. He walked bare-arse naked down the hallway to the bathroom and prodded the old, rusting shower to life.
The water was freezing, which was a strange blessing—it shocked his body into wakefulness when that process usually took time. Ben had no idea whose shower gel he grabbed—it didn’t matter really—and scrubbed it over his body, then used the same stuff on his hair. The Mohawk had been up last night, but he wasn’t going to bother with it again today, so he needed to get all of the sticky hairspray out.
After a few minutes, during which his balls retreated all the way inside his body, Ben shut off the water, rubbed the worst of it out of his hair, then wrapped the towel around his waist to go back to his bedroom.
The light coming in from the window was tinged a sickly pink from the curtains, so he threw them wide open to let the bright sunshine inside. It was going to be a hot, early summer day in the city, one of those that left him sweaty and gross after a short time outside, and made the Underground pure hell.
With the faintest of breezes coming in through the open window, Ben sat back down on the edge of his bed and grabbed his phone. In the time he had taken to shower, a text message had come through from Stan.
Good morning x.
Ben grinned and his thumbs hovered over the keypad, not really knowing how to respond to that. It was an opening, for sure, but Stan was so hard to read.
Morning. What r u up to today?
The response was almost instantaneous.
Not much. It’s a beautiful day, I don’t want to stay inside.
So he was definitely angling for a date. Ben scratched at his chest and checked the diary on his phone. It was the only way he could keep track of his shifts at the bar, his tutoring appointments, and band rehearsals.
I’m rehearsing two til six this afternoon. Do you want to come with? It’s really chilled.
Okay.
Ben arranged to meet him at Monument Underground Station, where they could both switch lines to go around to Notting Hill Gate, where Geordie lived. That still gave Ben a few hours to mess about, so he pulled on a pair of boxers and gathered up an armful of dirty clothes to stuff into the washing machine downstairs.
The ground floor of the house was quiet at this time in the morning. Ben set his washing on, then found a tin of tobacco on the kitchen table and swiped it.
It wasn’t yet really hot outside, and to be fair, Ben wasn’t wearing any clothes. They had more of a tiny courtyard than a garden, but it was an outdoor space where they could smoke without sitting on the side of the road, so it was considered a bonus.
Many, many years ago, someone had planted a few bushes around the edge of the courtyard, but these had long since died and all that was left wer
e skinny, bare branches. The remaining cracked plant pot was used as an ashtray, filled with dirty, cigarette-butt-strewn water. It was rank.
Ben sat on the edge of a raised plant bed and quickly rolled a cigarette. When it was lit, he tipped his head all the way back to try to tempt some of the rays of sun onto his face. The hum of traffic from the other side of the house wasn’t quite so loud here, and a few birds were cheeping from the other side of the fence. The family who lived behind them kept their garden slightly tidier, so actual life was sometimes tempted in there.
“Mornin’,” a voice drawled from the kitchen door. Ben grunted in response and shielded his eyes to look up at Tone. “I wondered where me baccy had gone.”
Ben threw him the tin. Tone caught it deftly and started rolling his own cigarette. He was wearing saggy boxers and a loose, holey T-shirt. A lot of people made the assumption Tone was fat, when he wasn’t, not really. He just had absolutely no idea how to dress himself beyond jeans and a T-shirt, and had been known to cry when one of his favourite items of clothing literally disintegrated. Most of his shopping for clothes was done at the supermarket or at the merch stand at gigs.
This meant his T-shirts were either too big or too tight, stretched over his belly, which was, to be fair, slightly round. The rest of his upper body was toned, though, his arms and shoulders muscled from years of drumming. If he laid off the cider for a while, he might actually drop a few pounds, but that wasn’t likely.
Tone lit his rollie, adjusted his genitals, and offered the tin back to Ben.
“Nah, I’m done, thanks, mate.”
“You’re up early.”
“Jarek woke me up when he decided to prance down the stairs like a herd of fucking elephants on parade.”
“Wanker,” Tone said sympathetically. “What are you up to today?”
“Rehearsal,” Ben said, reminding him. “Stan’s going to come along”
“Oh, is he now. You seem to be spending an awful lot of time with young Stanislav.”
Ben laughed. “How do you know his name?”
“Facebook-stalked him, din’t I?”
“You’re such a creep, Tone.”
Tone shrugged, unaffected by the insult. “He’s, like, famous and stuff, Ben.”
“Is he?”
“Yeah. He’s got a blog, about fashion, and about fifty thousand followers on Instagram.”
“Bloody hell.” Ben stubbed out his cigarette and tossed it into the plant pot.
“It didn’t say how many followers his blog has, though.”
Tone contemplated the lit end of his cigarette, then turned to Ben, as if he expected a response.
“What?” Ben asked.
“Nothin’.”
“I knew he worked in fashion,” Ben said, feeling like he needed to fill the gap. “I guess that sort of thing matters in the industry he’s in.”
“Yeah.”
“Have we got a Twitter account for the band?”
“I think Summer was sorting something out.”
Ben shook his head. “It’s a bloody miracle we get anything done half the time. We couldn’t be more disorganised if we tried.”
“Ah, it’s only a bit of fun, right?”
“I guess. I’m going to go… get dressed.” Ben stood, and Tone slapped his arse. “Wanker,” Ben muttered as he walked away.
For the rest of the morning, Ben did the things he hated having to do on the weekend—cleaning his room, washing his clothes, tidying the fuck up. Then he played two hours of ArcheAge and took a power nap before getting up again and getting dressed, ready to head over and meet Stan.
It took another ten minutes to get Tone out of the house—he couldn’t find his drumsticks—and Ben made him carry his second guitar. He wasn’t normally such a poser. Most of the time he only took his battered old Samick electric to rehearsals, but he wanted to take the acoustic today as well. It was nicer for jamming sessions, more mellow.
The Underground was, as expected, hotter than the ninth circle of hell, and Tone grumbled all the way to Monument, where they met Stan on the platform. He was wearing a loose cut-off T-shirt—which exposed his smooth, pale stomach—skinny jeans, and flip-flops. Ben couldn’t help but stare, transfixed, at the tiny, fine line of hair that danced from Stan’s bellybutton down under the waistband of his low-slung jeans.
The train wasn’t due for two more minutes, so Ben leaned in to steal a kiss.
“No,” Stan said, placing his palms on Ben’s chest to keep him at a distance, then leaning in and pressing their lips together in the briefest peck. “I am truly disgusting. It’s so hot down here.”
“I know,” Ben said. “Tone has been telling me. Repeatedly.”
“I’m going to go buy some of those short-shorts,” Tone said. “You know, the ones where your bum cheeks fall out of the bottom of them.”
“Tone, I am regarded as an expert in the field of fashion,” Stan said, mock serious. “And I speak for all of us when I say, please don’t.”
Ben laughed and grabbed Stan’s hand, squeezing it once before letting go.
They waited for a Circle Line train, because those had been recently refurbished and were now, blessedly, air-conditioned, making for a much more comfortable last leg of their journey. The train pulled into the station and conversation was temporarily abandoned as they moved through the crowds to the exit. Ben tucked his Oyster card safely back into his bag once he got to the other side of the barriers and stretched his neck, looking for Tone and Stan, who had fallen behind.
“Fucking tourists,” Ben muttered as they emerged onto the bright street.
“I have no idea how you find your way around,” Stan said, finally letting Ben reach for his hand and thread their fingers together now they were outside.
Tone laughed. “You get used to it after a while. I figured out the Tubes first because that’s all colour-coded, so you pick it up quicker. The buses are a fucking nightmare. The numbers don’t make sense at all, so I kept getting lost.”
“And Tone refuses to walk anywhere,” Ben said, teasing.
“Fuck off,” Tone said lightly. “I walk everywhere. Used to when I was back home too.”
“Home is Bristol?” Stan asked.
“Yeah. Born and bred. Lived in Briz ’til I was twenty, then got dragged up here.”
“If you ever get lost in London, you can tell where you are by looking at the bins,” Ben said as they started down the road towards Geordie’s house.
“Apparently we are in ‘Litter’,” Stan said, teasing.
Tone made a choking noise, spluttered, then burst out laughing. “Fuckin’ hell,” he snorted. “Not that bit, mate—the other side.”
“I know. I was joking,” Stan said, sounding pleased he’d made Tone laugh.
It only took a few minutes to walk to Geordie’s house, along a street that was much brighter, and cleaner, than where they’d come from. The door to one of the houses was flung open as they approached.
“Who’s this, then? New recruit?”
Stan smiled at Sherrie, with her big hair and bright lipstick. “Hello,” he said.
“This is Stan,” Ben said. “The guy I was telling you about.”
“You weren’t telling me anything,” she said with a salacious grin. “You were mooning over the boy.”
“Shut up, Sherrie,” Ben muttered as Tone guffawed.
“Nice to meet you,” Stan said and Ben pulled him away, down the stairs, before Sherrie could say anything more embarrassing.
The rest of the band were already assembled in the basement, but it didn’t look like they’d made any attempt to set up. The drum kit was still stacked in one corner and a pile of guitar cases lay unopened in a corner.
Ben rolled his eyes, flopped into a beanbag, and tugged on Stan’s hand until Stan relented and sat down on his lap.
“So, what do these little social occasions involve?” Stan asked, his voice low as he murmured into Ben’s ear.
Ben grinned. “Smokin
g. Talking. Gossiping. Sometimes one of us will break out a guitar.”
Stan laughed at that and tried to wriggle away, but Ben held on tight around his waist. “I’m afraid I’m not very musical. I’m not sure what I can add to the conversation.”
The others settled down, and Stan leaned back against Ben’s chest, seemingly content to watch the small group of people.
The on-again, off-again relationship between Summer and Geordie seemed to be very much on, again, and Stan turned away as Summer straddled Geordie’s lap and started to slowly grind.
“Get a room,” Tone called as he finished rolling a thick spliff and twisted the end closed. “Or I’ll get Sherrie down here and ask her to give me a lap dance.”
“That’s my mum, you dick,” Geordie said over Summer’s shoulder. Tone just grinned.
“Are we just waiting for Jez?” Tone asked. “Or is Wiltshire turning up too?”
Jez had disappeared earlier that morning, braving central London in his hunt for something or another. He’d promised to be back in time for rehearsal and was now ten minutes late.
“Dan Wiltshire sometimes plays keyboard for us,” Ben said for Stan’s benefit. “He’s really good but totally fucking unreliable.”
Stan snorted. “Why do you keep him, then?”
“Because he’s good. He doesn’t like practicing, though. He just wants to turn up and play gigs.”
“Which means, when we get him on stage, he sucks,” Summer added. “Come on, let’s get started without them. Jez can pick up what he missed when he gets here.”
Stan shuffled off Ben’s lap and dragged one of the other beanbags closer, then sat back down on it with crossed legs. For a few minutes, Ben’s total attention turned to his battered old acoustic, one of the first things he’d bought after he’d moved to London. It had history, this guitar; he could feel it in the wood and the strings and the noise that came out of it.
His thumb gently caressed the strings, teasing chords out of them. Due to the age of the guitar—it was made some point in the sixties—it often needed retuning. Ben was familiar with it, though, and quickly adjusted the tuning keys.
