by Anna Martin
“What shall we start with, then?” Tone asked. “Shall I get me bongos out?”
Stan snorted with laughter.
“Don’t be filthy, Stan,” Tone said, winking at him.
“I’m not!”
“Let’s start acoustic,” Summer said. “Pick up where we left off on Wednesday?”
As they worked through the first song in their repertoire, Ben was acutely aware of Stan next to him, watching quietly. His voice felt a little rusty, probably from shouting at people over the noise in the bar last night, and he let Summer lead on the vocals for a few songs until Jez turned up. She had a nice voice, not quite as rough as most rock singers, but with a soulful growl that blended well with Ben’s smooth tenor.
Jez arrived after they’d finished the second song, his face flushed with annoyance as much as the heat. “Fucking Underground improvement works,” he muttered, grabbing his guitar and sitting down on Ben’s other side, so they could match their tuning to each other.
They played one more song before Ben stretched his arms over his head, letting his spine pop out. He chanced a look over at Stan, who was grinning at him.
“So?” he said.
“You’re good,” Stan said, nodding. “I like how you all start off doing your own thing, almost, then after a few minutes you start to blend. It’s like watching you all learn to share.”
Ben barked with laughter and leaned over to press a kiss to Stan’s temple. “I’m never going to get bored of your way of looking at the world,” he murmured, too quietly for the others to hear. Stan grinned and ruffled his hand through Ben’s hair, then leaned back in his seat to listen to the next song.
After about half an hour, Summer nudged Ben up to go and get them all snacks, claiming it wasn’t fair Geordie always did it.
“I’ll go,” Stan offered, unfolding his lean body from the beanbag.
“I don’t mind,” Ben grumbled.
Stan just grabbed Ben’s wrist and led him out of the basement room. As soon as they got halfway up the stairs, he backed Ben up against the wall with a firm palm pressed against Ben’s chest.
“Do you have any idea how sexy it is to watch you strumming on that guitar?” Stan asked in a low voice. He’d been focused on Ben’s bitten-down fingernails for far too long now and wanted to kiss each raggedy nail. That was probably disgusting. He didn’t care.
“What can I say,” Ben said, smirking, “I’m good with my hands.”
Stan laughed and leaned in to press their lips together, just softly at first, then taking things hot and fast with a slick tongue when Ben gripped his hips.
“Later,” Ben said, breaking first and gently pushing Stan away. He laughed ruefully. “You’re going to kill me one of these days.”
Stan felt something hot curl in his belly and smiled, reaching up to push Ben’s hair out of his face. “Okay,” he said, then slipped his hand into Ben’s to be led up to the kitchen.
Geordie’s mum sat at a tall island, a steaming mug of coffee at her elbow and a book unfolded in front of her. The room was deliciously air-conditioned, and Stan lifted his face to the cool breeze coming from the unit above the door.
“We drew the short straw, got sent up for drinks,” Ben said as Sherrie looked up.
“Help yourself,” she said lightly. “Didn’t mean to embarrass you earlier, Stan love,” she added. “Me and Ben take the piss, you know?”
“It’s fine,” Stan said with a laugh. “I’m getting used to that.”
“Where you from, love?” she asked, leaning her elbows on the island and closing the book. Stan glanced at Ben, who was pulling a selection of canned drinks out of the fridge and setting them on a tray. He clearly didn’t need help.
“Um, Russia,” Stan said, turning back to Sherrie. “My family live just outside St Petersburg.”
“Ooh, cold there, innit?”
“Yes, especially in the winters.”
“Little wisp of a thing like you, not surprised you left. Not that London’s much nicer, though. It gets awful cold here too.”
Stan nodded, then turned as a small person of unidentifiable gender toddled into the room.
“Emily!” Ben said and swept the child up into his arms, making her laugh. She babbled away, apparently pleased with this turn of events, only every third word intelligible to Stan’s ears. “This is Sherrie’s youngest,” Ben said, coming over to introduce the little girl. “And my favourite,” he added in a whisper.
“How old is she?” Stan asked. He liked kids. There were always plenty of them around when he was growing up. The very youngest ones were scary though. So breakable.
“Dunno. ’Bout a year and a half, Sher?”
“Yeah, twenty months now,” Sherrie said. She looked at Ben fondly as he sat Emily down on a counter and styled her hair up into a mohawk.
“Is that a…?” Stan asked.
“Wu-Tang Clan T-shirt?” Ben finished. “Yeah. I bought it for her.”
Emily started poking Ben in the face, so he handed her back to Sherrie and returned to his rummaging, grabbing a few sharing-size bags of crisps and adding them to the tray.
“Okay, we better get back before Tone starts eating people,” Ben said. “Thanks, Sher.”
“No problem, love,” she said. Her daughter had put her head down on Sherrie’s shoulder for a cuddle, and Stan’s heart clenched. He’d always loved watching mothers and their children interact.
“Stan,” Ben said softly, and he startled at being caught, and walked out of the kitchen too quickly.
They made their way back downstairs in silence, though Stan shot Ben a worried look when the sound of raised voices met them halfway down. Ben just sighed and nodded for him to keep going.
“Farage is a twat,” Tone said emphatically. “Protest vote, my arse. It’s a Tory vote, and you all know it. If you want to protest vote, go Green. At least they’re mostly harmless, unlike those Nazi wankers.”
“Tone,” Ben said sharply as he set the tray down. “No politics at rehearsals. You know that.”
“He started it,” Tone said, nodding at Jez, and pouted as he reached for a can of Irn-Bru.
“Well, I’m stopping it,” Ben said. He stood up sharply and shook his head. “Fuck me, I sounded just like my mum then. Never mind. Go back to whatever it was you were arguing about.”
“Protest votes,” Summer said.
“No,” Geordie groaned, pushing his hand through his curly mop of straw coloured hair. “Please, no politics.”
“That sounds like a great song title,” Stan said as he sat down and helped himself to a Diet Coke. He was joking, but Summer looked at him and smiled widely.
“It does,” she said. “Hang on, Jord, where’s that chord progression you wrote down the other night?”
“You mean, after we had that amazing sex?” he said as he rifled through a notebook.
“Oh, fuck off,” she muttered.
Stan watched quietly after that as Geordie demonstrated the chords on his bass and Ben switched over to his electric guitar and started to pick up a melody to go over the top. He’d wondered how the hell this band ever managed to achieve anything; they seemed to communicate in arguments and were eclectic as friends, let alone as people coming together to make music.
Watching the song develop, though, seemed to change his opinion. “No Politics, Please” was a song about their differences, and when Tone broke out a kazoo for the chorus, Summer started laughing so hard she fell off her beanbag. Ben choked and tears streamed down his cheeks. And that was Tone. Kazoo, bongos, and backwards trucker baseball hat, breaking down the song so it turned into “All About That Bass.”
“How do you even know that song?” Summer asked him, breathless.
“Hey, I too am super curvalicious,” Tone told her, completely straight-faced, causing Summer to collapse in giggles again.
It took about two hours for the group to polish up the new song, and then they played it slowly so Jez could write it all down, making sure
he had the beats, lyrics, and chords recorded in his notebook before they put the instruments down.
“So, that’s it, Stan love,” Tone said. “That’s how the magic happens.”
“I’m impressed,” Stan said seriously. “You’re all very talented.”
“Don’t, you’ll make me blush,” Tone told him and made “aw, shucks” gestures.
Stan watched as Ben carefully set his guitar back in its case and stretched his fingers, cracking the knuckles. When he turned to Stan, his smile was beaming—gut-meltingly handsome, the childish features stretched into an expression of pure joy.
“Come here,” he said quietly, and Stan couldn’t resist him; he allowed himself to be pulled onto Ben’s lap. “I really like that song,” he said when Stan was settled.
“It’s fun,” Summer agreed. “I think it’ll get people on our side. We should put it pretty early in the set.”
“Agreed!” Tone said loudly. “I’ll have to go and get more kazoos.”
“Why?” Jez asked as Summer started to giggle again.
“I’ll chuck ’em out into the audience, get people to play along with us,” Tone said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Ben dropped his head to Stan’s shoulder as he started to laugh, then kissed Stan’s neck. As Stan settled back into Ben’s arms, noticing that no one seemed to care at all that they were being affectionate in front of the others, he realised this was the happiest he’d been in a very long time.
Chapter Five
It had been one of those very long, very tiring days, that wasn’t anywhere near over yet. Stan had picked up takeout sushi on his way home and resumed work on his laptop as soon as he got there, a rapidly cooling green tea at one elbow, the half-eaten tray of sushi at the other. A quick glance at the clock told him he’d been working for close to twelve hours.
So when his phone rang, Stan seriously considered just letting it go to voicemail. Anything urgent would be emailed to him, he knew that much. The magazine had a huge photoshoot planned for the upcoming weekend, and somehow he’d been pulled onto the team in charge of running the day, even though his job was reporting the trend rather than creating it.
He glanced down at the phone, saw it was Ben, thought for a moment about how much he still had to do tonight, then answered it.
“Pronto?”
“Do you always answer the phone like that?”
“Old habits are hard to break.” Stan lifted the cup of tea to his lips and sipped. “It’s how everyone answers in Italy.”
“Oh. What are you up to?”
“Working, still.”
“Really? It’s late, Stan.”
“It’s seven thirty.”
“What time did you start this morning?”
“Six,” Stan admitted.
“Close your laptop and back slowly away,” Ben said in a dramatic voice. “Stop working. Now.”
“I have,” Stan said, laughing. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
“Good point. I was going to see if you wanted to come to the pub. But I’m guessing it’s not a good time for you.”
“Would you like to come over?” Stan asked, holding his phone between shoulder and ear as he flicked through a model spec. “I’m really too tired to come out tonight.”
“Are you really working?” Ben asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll leave you in peace.”
“What if I could use a distraction?”
Ben was quiet for a moment. “Okay. You’ll have to give me directions, though. I don’t know where you live.”
“Bow Quarter,” Stan said, then gave the name of the apartment complex and told Ben how to get there from the closest Tube station.
“Give me… half an hour?”
“Sure. I can get this finished by then.”
He hung up and looked around the flat. Fortunately, he kept it tidy most of the time, and it was clean, thanks to the cleaning service that came with the building. With his priorities now reshuffled, Stan pushed his laptop to one side and quickly gathered up the small pile of stuff that had accumulated around his preferred end of the sofa.
Precariously balancing everything in his arms, Stan took it all through to the kitchen and put things into various out-of-the-way places so the flat looked a little tidier.
He checked the bathroom, rifling through his plastic tub of grooming products to check the stash of condoms he’d left in there were still where he thought they were. He had four and decided that was plenty. Just in case, of course.
In his bedroom, Stan straightened the covers over the bed, then stood back and surveyed the room like an outsider might. It looked, in all honesty, like a teenage girl’s room. All he needed to do was tack some posters on the wall and the look would be completed.
Clothes spilled from his wardrobe, over the chaise he’d picked up at a street sale, and a few things—scarves, mostly—draped over the wardrobe doors. His dresser was covered with face products, hair products, make-up, and several different type of brushes for both make-up and hair. Hairbands, bobby pins, that thing that allowed him to twist his hair up and hold it in place. He didn’t know what the name was.
Stan had neither the time nor the inclination to start tidying that particular nuclear bomb site, so he turned, closed the door, and forced himself to forget about it.
He still had time before Ben was due, and the time constraint helped him focus for the next twenty minutes, selecting half a dozen models and sending the request through to the agency, copying in Kirsty so she could go through the finer details in the morning.
He was in the middle of typing another email when the buzzer for his phone-entry system broke the silence. The phone was mounted to the wall next to the door, and Stan smiled stupidly as he went to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Mr Novikov?”
“Yes.” Stan leaned back against the door and grinned into the phone. “This is he.”
“There is a strange, degenerate sort of man asking to see you,” Ben said in a silly, low voice. “Should I permit Mr Easton to enter?”
“Please do. That degenerate man is with me.”
“I’m shocked, Mr Novikov. You seemed like such an upstanding citizen.”
“Get up here, you dork,” Stan said, laughing. “Follow the path all the way round ’til you get to block three. I’m on the second floor. Number 3240.”
“Got it. I’ll be there in a sec.”
Stan replaced the phone on the hook, then paced his flat for the long minutes it took Ben to find his way through the complex. People got lost here all the time. The blocks weren’t laid out in a logical order, though it was still light outside, so not so much chance of him falling in the pond.
When Ben knocked on the door, Stan nearly jumped out of his skin, then tripped over his feet as he rushed to answer it. Ben was leaning seductively against the door frame, his black jeans ripped in several places, clunky boots on his feet, a grey T-shirt with the NASA logo stretched tight across his toned chest.
Hair that Stan always had to resist running his hands through fell in swoop across his forehead, and Ben grinned and smouldered at Stan until Stan grabbed his wrist, laughing, and pulled him inside.
“Hi,” he said, leaning around Ben’s slim frame to push the door closed. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“Should I take my boots off?”
Stan was barefoot, a pile of his own shoes next to the door.
“Do you mind? This place isn’t mine. It belongs to the magazine, so I feel like I have to take extra-good care of it.”
“No problem at all.” He toed off the boots easily—apparently the laces weren’t tied—then pulled his socks off too and shoved them into the boots. When he straightened again, Stan realised how close he was standing.
“Hi,” Ben said softly. “Can I kiss you now?”
“Yes.”
He took his tim
e about it, shuffling even closer to Stan, putting his hands on Stan’s hips and running his nose up and down the bridge of Stan’s own before lightly brushing their lips together. Since he’d been admiring Ben’s chest, Stan put his hands there, flattening his palms over the place where he knew Ben’s nipples hid and tilting his head to the side, letting the kiss soothe and tease his lips open. Their tongues met slowly, then danced together as their bodies swayed, learning how different this could be when no one else could see.
Ben broke away first and pressed their foreheads together.
“I… uh… I just realised how this must look. I didn’t come over here for sex.”
Stan laughed softly and kissed Ben again, if only briefly.
“Okay.”
“I mean, I do want to have sex with you. Eventually. But tonight I genuinely wanted to just spend time with you. I didn’t mean to come in here and start grinding on you like a horny—mmph!”
Stan pushed him back against the door, and their laughing mouths met again in a funny sort of kiss, one that ended too soon, and Stan’s head on Ben’s shoulder, Ben’s hands on Stan’s ass, a familiar, comforting hug.
“Would you like the grand tour?” Stan asked as Ben groped and kneaded his ass.
“Go for it.”
Showing Ben the bedroom seemed presumptuous, especially after Ben’s fumbling explanation that he didn’t come over for sex. Stan wouldn’t have minded if that was where the night was headed, but there was something sweet and almost chivalrous about Ben wanting to wait, so he took sex mentally off the table. For tonight, at least.
The living room connected to the kitchen, and Stan lingered there, knowing people felt more comfortable in kitchens than he did and wanting to make Ben a drink, anyway.
“Tea?” he offered. “I don’t have any beer in, I’m afraid.”
“Tea would be great. I’m giving my liver a rest after the other night.”
“What happened the other night?” Stan asked, fussing with the water and the kettle and finding two nice cups.
“Tone ordered gin online from some bloke who makes it in his shed in Somerset, or something along those lines. It’s good shit, but fuck me, that stuff is strong. I was drinking it with tonic, rather than straight like Tone was, and it still gave me the worst hangover I’ve had for a long time.”
