by Anna Martin
“Nineteen.”
Before he could say “Twenty,” Ben grabbed him around the waist and dipped him into a Hollywood movie-musical kiss, supporting his back perfectly so Stan could play the damsel in distress and be kissed like his man wanted to kiss him.
It was only slightly spoiled by the fact Ben was still kicking something under the bed when Stan opened his eyes.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Ben grinned. “Take a seat.”
Ben didn’t really anywhere to sit, not a desk or anything, so Stan sat on the bed. It was low, and Ben had obviously made a hasty attempt at making it by throwing a duvet over the rumpled sheets.
“This is nice,” Stan said.
“Oh, it’s not. Well, it’s alright. It’s mine, so that’s something, but it’s not… you know… I wouldn’t choose to live here, if I had any other options.” Ben took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay. I just need to get changed, and then we can go.”
“You said you need to put some washing on.”
“Yeah, I can do that later.”
“If you do it now, then you won’t have to wait for it later,” Stan said with a grin.
“Fine, I’ll put some washing on!” Ben said, laughing. “I’ll have to sort it out, mind.”
“That’s okay. I don’t think we’re in a rush.”
While Ben changed, Stan looked around. The room was on the small side; the bed took up most of the available space because it was a double, and it was pushed into a corner. Even so, the edge of the bed at the head end was right under the windowsill.
Ben had a small chest of drawers with a TV on top and a game station—Stan didn’t know what type—with long controllers attached that hung down like tentacles. A built-in wardrobe made the entrance into the room was extremely narrow but the wardrobe meant Ben had more storage space with two sliding mirrors on the front.
The walls were painted a strange bluish-grey, but Ben had pinned posters to most available space—posters for bands and films and one of a girl with very large breasts in a very small bikini, standing in front of a sports car. She was squeezing a wet, soapy sponge down her front.
“Please don’t look at that,” Ben said, sounding embarrassed. “Tone got it for me as a birthday present, and he gets offended every time I try to take it down.”
“Does Tone live here too?”
“Yeah. But downstairs out the back. It’s a converted garage, which is great ’cos he can practice his drums and we can barely hear him in the rest of the house.”
“Tone, then, and who else?”
“Jez,” Ben said, dragging clothes out of the bottom of his closet to stuff into his already-overflowing laundry bag. “Laurence, and this Polish bloke called Jarek who lives upstairs. He’s alright, but he’s a nurse, so we hardly ever see him. He works really weird shifts, so he never seems to be about when the rest of us are.”
“All men,” Stan said offhand. While Ben was bent over to get to the dark corners of his closet, his butt was thrust right up in the air, and Stan couldn’t help but admire it.
“Oh, it’s fucking horrible,” Ben said, straightening up. “They smell, and they don’t clean up, and they sit around and smoke pot all the fucking time. I’ve probably got enough for two loads here, but I’ll shove it all in. It’ll be fine. It’s a washer-dryer, so I can set it to dry too. Then I’ll have clean clothes when I get home.”
“Aren’t you pleased I’m here, now?”
“Yeah, actually,” Ben said. “I’m a bit scared to take you downstairs, though.”
“Why?”
“Well, compared to the rest of the house, this room is Buckingham fucking Palace. I never bring food up here, but I swear the others have plates and mugs that are growing new species of mould in their rooms.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“And annoying,” Ben agreed. “Especially when you cook something and there’s nothing to eat it off because these fuckers can’t clean up after themselves. I end up having to go through all their rooms, grabbing the dirty stuff and washing it up. I’m not their bloody mother.”
“So it’s not some kind of gay utopia, then, living in a house with four other men?” Stan teased.
“Four straight men,” Ben corrected. “Four gay men would be great. We’d have an orgy every night. You couldn’t pay me to touch these guys, though. I don’t know where they’ve been. Or I do, in some instances, and that’s even worse.”
Ben looked around the room again, nodded, and threw the laundry bag over his shoulder. He’d changed into clean jeans and another ripped-up band T-shirt that looked strikingly similar to the first. These jeans had rips in the thighs as well as the knees. Stan wondered if they were like that when Ben bought them.
“Come on, then,” Ben said. “I feel like I should get you one of those hospital masks.” He held his hand over his nose and mouth. “Just in case you catch something.”
“I doubt there’s any airborne viruses hanging around here.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Ben said darkly.
The kitchen was as disgusting as promised. Ben led them through it quickly, wincing at the pile of dirty plates in the sink, and to a small room off the kitchen that housed a washing machine and shelves of DIY equipment.
Stan leaned against the doorframe as Ben shoved the dirty clothes into the washer—at least it looked like a large one, able to take the amount of stuff Ben was putting in there—and added washing powder and fabric softener before setting the dial, kicking the door closed, and pushing the button to start it.
“Done,” he said, looking back at Stan with a proud smile.
“Good boy.”
Ben laughed. “Come on. Let’s get out of here—I don’t want to hang around with the others. They’ll only be getting high, and it’s too nice to stay in and do that.”
“Okay.”
They walked back through the house, and Ben once again shouted into the smoke-filled front room and got a muffled shout back. He rolled his eyes and slammed the door shut behind them. Stan took a deep breath of clean air. It was saying something, that he considered the London smog “clean.”
“I want to move out,” Ben said as they walked back up the road. “I’ve been saving for ages. It’s just so expensive to live around here. If I got a place of my own it would have to be further out, then I’d pay more to get around London.”
“A catch-22,” Stan said.
“Yeah. Exactly.” Ben squeezed his hand. “So, what do you want to do? I was thinking we could go down to the South Bank, walk up along the Thames. It’s touristy, but you get to see so much of London, all the big landmarks and things.”
“Sounds perfect. I keep promising my mother I’ll send her some pictures of London. She wants a photo of me by the palace.”
“We can do that,” Ben said with a nod. “Have you practiced your bored Londoner face?”
Stan gave him his best disaffected eye-roll.
“Perfect. Come on, let’s brave central.”
They took the Tube down to London Bridge and walked over the famous bridge itself before starting the long walk along the Thames that would take them all the way to the palace. Even though the pavements were wide here, the assembled mix of joggers, dog walkers, and tourists made it a slow journey.
That didn’t matter.
“Tell me about before you moved here,” Ben said, and Stan sighed.
“Which bit?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
It was an easy question. It should have been, but Stan knew there was a questioning curiosity underneath. Ben knew Stan was hiding stuff from him, or holding back at least. He deserved to know.
Stan took a deep breath and looked over at the Thames, the boats with their loads of people ambling downriver, the huge wheel they called an eye watching peacefully over the capital.
“I’m anorexic,” he said. Ben said nothing. “I used to be anorexic,” he corrected, using the language he’d been encouraged t
o use since his recovery.
“Yeah?” Ben’s voice was almost airily light, a clear invitation for Stan to keep talking, or not, depending on how he felt.
“Yes. I… when I was younger, I didn’t know how to express this. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. No one had given me the resources or the words to describe how I was feeling. I thought the way to fix it was to fix my body.
“It wasn’t.”
A group of children ran in front of them, causing Ben to rise up onto his toes to avoid trampling them. Parents shot apologetic looks, and Ben nodded and took hold of Stan’s hand again.
“I could have died,” Stan continued. “I almost did. My mother knew what was going on. I know that now but didn’t at the time. She never tried to stop me, and I thought that meant I wasn’t skinny enough yet. I thought as soon as I got to the point where I was a skeleton covered in skin, she would notice and stop me. It took me realising that she wasn’t going to stop me, not ever, to go and ask someone else for help.”
“How old were you?”
Stan shrugged. “Young. Thirteen, fourteen. My mother isn’t a heartless person, you should know that. She just didn’t see the illness underneath it all.”
“Who did you ask for help?”
“It doesn’t matter now. A friend. I got help, and I put some weight back on, and when I moved to New York with Ava, she got me a proper therapist. By then the damage was sort of already done. My bones didn’t form properly because I deprived my body of so many nutrients when I was going through puberty. I don’t think my body ever went through puberty properly, actually. Every time I thought about those pictures in the biology textbooks—those men with broad shoulders and hair all over the place—I freaked out. I didn’t want to look like that, which only drove me to eat less. And all of those neuroses—I still have them, Ben. I’m still hung up on what I eat and when, what’s clean enough for me to put in my mouth and what isn’t.”
“That’s where the vegan thing comes from?”
“The vegan thing is sort of incidental,” Stan said. “It was raw food—that was all I’d eat, raw, unprocessed food. I couldn’t even eat anything that was cooked or baked, so as soon as someone boiled a carrot, I couldn’t touch it. I know I’m still sick, in a way, because there’s things I can’t eat even if I tried. It’s better now, though. I can eat in restaurants and order in and stuff, and I can drink alcohol if I’m careful and I keep track of my blood sugars and things like that. I even had some chocolate a little while back. Just a tiny piece, but you have no idea how much of a big deal that was to me.”
“Do you have anyone here?” Ben asked, looking up at the endless blue sky. The gentle, soothing movement of his thumb on Stan’s wrist was comfort enough. “I mean, do you need to see someone here to help you keep getting better?”
“I could,” Stan said. “I suppose. I haven’t been in therapy since I left the US—I sort of just get there by myself. Being around you helps.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure why. You make me want to be… daring.”
Ben smiled and he pulled them both over to the edge of the pavement where the wall was waist height, perfect for Stan to lean against while Ben kissed him carefully, then thoroughly.
“Daring enough for you?” Ben whispered, kissed Stan’s neck, and took them back into the flow of people.
“You’re…,” Stan said with a laugh.
“Go on, finish that sentence.”
“Wild! You’re wild.”
Ben laughed too, delighted, and pressed another kiss to Stan’s cheek. “You make me this way. I’m usually very reserved.”
“Of course you are,” Stan said with a sarcastic eye-roll. He could feel the tops of his shoulders starting to burn and lamented his lack of sunscreen.
“No, really. It takes me ages to warm up to people. You’re a notable exception. I think I’d like it if you had someone to talk to,” he said, switching back to their earlier conversation.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Just because… I know I can’t be there for everything for you. Even if I wanted to be. You’re so brave.”
“For not being anorexic anymore? That’s not brave, Ben. That’s basic human survival instinct.”
“For lots of things,” Ben said.
“It’s why I don’t model,” Stan offered, wondering why he felt like he could open up like this when he was with Ben. Normally people had to drag information out of him, especially when it came to food and his eating disorder. “I don’t want people to look at this body and idealise it. I don’t have a healthy person’s body. I’m sick.”
“Have people asked you to model?”
“Only, like, twice a day,” Stan said. “More if I go on a shoot. They always think I’m one of the models, and I get treated like shit until someone realises I’m actually in charge.”
“Charming.”
“Exactly. I know what happens to models in this industry, though—you can never be too thin or too pretty. If just one person told me I needed to lose weight, I know that could send me back on that downward spiral, and fuck no, I’m not going there again.”
“You won’t, because I won’t let you,” Ben said.
“Thank you.”
“Does being able to be yourself help?”
“Sometimes,” Stan said with a nod. He brushed his hair back with one hand and held it away from his neck, trying to encourage a breeze across his sweaty skin. “Being a girl brings its own set of problems. I was going to try hormone therapy once.”
“Go on,” Ben said, encouraging.
“I was seeing the therapist in New York, and she said she was happy to give me a referral to go and get female hormones so I could start transitioning. Being like this was enough to go there. We were talking about the side effects, and I couldn’t do it.”
“Which side effects?”
“The putting-on-weight ones,” Stan said. He grinned up at Ben ruefully and led them to an empty bench under the shade of a tree. “She told me I’d start gaining weight on my hips and ass and chest and that just freaked me out. I got the prescription and everything, sat there with the box on my lap, wondering what the fuck was going to happen to me.”
“Are breasts that scary?” Ben teased.
“Yes! Especially when they were going to be attached to me. It was the fat aspect of it. I’d spent years trying to control the shape of my body, and I’d been so successful at it. Those drugs were going to change me, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. All my wishing for a more feminine shape was right there in a white box and my fears stopped me from taking that step.”
“Would you do it now? If you had the chance?”
“No,” Stan said softly. “I’m in a different place now. It was only a couple of years ago, but I’ve kind of learned to accept what I’ve got.”
“I like the way you are,” Ben said. Stan shuffled over, and Ben wrapped an arm around his shoulders, the perfect position for Stan to drop his head to Ben’s chest.
“I don’t want to be a girl anymore.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to be.”
“I might like being your girl, though.”
Ben huffed a laugh and kissed his forehead. “Sweetheart, you can be my whatever you like.”
“Okay. I can work with that.”
“Come on,” Ben said, and dragged Stan to his feet again. “We need to go and see if we can see the Queen.”
Stan sighed dramatically. “There’s a joke in there somewhere. I just can’t be bothered to make it.”
Chapter Eight
When a sharp knock sounded at his door, Stan nearly jumped out of his skin. He had to buzz in anyone who wanted to visit, or so he thought, so he rarely had any unannounced visitors.
He kept the security chain on when opening the door at first, then frowned and opened it all the way to let Ben in.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
Ben nodded, his face set in a s
tony grimace. He leaned in and kissed Stan on the corner of his mouth, the action surprisingly tender for the bad mood that was clearly simmering.
“Tea?” Stan offered. “It comes with free sympathy.”
“I’ll just take the sympathy, please. We’re all being kicked out of the house.”
“What?” Stan said, shutting and securing the door once more. “Here, come and sit down.”
He took Ben’s hand and squeezed once in what he hoped was reassurance while Ben toed off his boots, then led them both to the sofa, Stan in his corner and Ben in the other. Ben rubbed his hands over his face, looking tired or angry, or both, and sighed.
“The house has asbestos in the ceilings that no one knew about, and there’s a black mould infestation in the kitchen and through most of the back of the house. We think that’s why Tone got sick. He’s moved in with Geordie for the time being, because Sherrie insisted on it. The letting agency says we all have to get out, and they don’t have anywhere else to put us right away.”
“Fuck,” Stan said.
“Yeah. It’s shit. Apparently the bastard landlord says he’ll put us up in a B&B, but that’s only because he has to give us notice by law. If not, we could sue him.”
“Stay with me,” Stan said immediately. “You can move in here.”
“Stan….”
“No,” Stan insisted. “Please. I want you here.” He reached for Ben’s hand again and squeezed. Ben linked their fingers together and turned their hands over, then brushed his lips over Stan’s knuckles.
“It’s nice of you to offer. But we haven’t been together that long. I don’t want to push things too fast too soon.”
Stan crawled into Ben’s lap and gently cupped Ben’s cheeks to draw him down into a kiss. “Think about it,” he murmured. “You come home here every night. We can make dinner together, watch some TV. You can play on your game-station thing, and I can go on my laptop. We hang out together and then go to bed and make love. Every night.”
“Make love every night?”
“Trust you to just listen to that bit,” Stan said with a laugh. He pushed his hand through Ben’s floppy mop of hair. “Yes. We can make love for hours, and you don’t have to ever go home for clean clothes, because this would be your home. Here with me.”
