by Anna Martin
“Ready,” he called out, spritzing on a light cologne before grabbing his phone and wallet as he rushed into the living room.
“You look hot,” Ben said with a grin, and Stan laughed.
“Thanks. Come on.”
As they walked down to the Tube station, Stan shot off a text to Kirsty, who he was sure had said she was out with her girlfriends somewhere around King’s Cross for the evening. Camden wasn’t so far from there, and she texted him back a few minutes later to say they’d meet him at the pub when they were done with their drinks.
“You can meet my work friends,” Stan said, smiling up at Ben.
Ben grinned and threw his arm around Stan’s shoulders.
For a Thursday night, the pub was fairly busy, a mixture of the after-work crowd that was yet to disperse and the others who looked like they were settling in for the evening. Ben kissed Stan full on the mouth, earning himself a hoot of appreciation from behind the bar, then ducked down into the cellar to lock away his wallet and grab his key fob that worked the till.
Since Tone was working, Stan hopped up onto one of the stools at his end of the bar and whistled at him between his teeth.
“Cheeky cunt,” Tone said with genuine affection. “What do you want?”
“Vodka, please,” Stan said, laughing. “With soda water and lime.”
“You got it.”
Tone fixed the drink quickly and slid it across the slightly sticky bar, waving away Stan’s money. “Nah, this one’s on me. How are you?”
Stan nodded his thanks and sipped the drink, which had been made with plenty of ice, just how he liked it. He could sit and talk with Tone for hours. He was an easy person to get along with, and they chatted amiably until Ben came up from the cellar, his arms full of a huge box.
“Thought I’d bring these up,” he said, dumping the box on the floor with a clatter of bottles. “Refill ready for tonight.”
“Thanks, mate,” Tone said.
Stan had packed his iPad in his backpack before they left—his designer, tan leather backpack, not the scrappy thing Ben often used—and pulled this out to entertain himself, not wanting to distract Ben while he was working. Coming out to the pub was one thing, being a pain in the arse was another.
It didn’t take long for Kirsty and her friends to arrive. They were slightly merry, and Kirsty was still wearing the same thing she’d had on at work, telling Stan she’d likely been out drinking since they left the office.
“Stan!” she exclaimed as she skipped into the bar. Two other girls followed—one tall and dark with a pixie haircut, the other shorter and plump with gorgeous, glossy curls pulled back from her face with an Alice band. Stan grinned and slid down from his barstool to pull Kirsty into a brief embrace.
“This is Lara and Becky,” she said, pointing to each girl in turn.
“Nice to meet you,” Stan said with a nod. “Drink?”
He waited patiently at the bar while the girls ordered shots and cocktails, internally wincing at their choices but ultimately deciding not to comment. He’d pack extra painkillers in his bag for tomorrow, in case Kirsty needed to soothe a headache.
A booth had freed up while they were waiting, and it was much more sociable to sit and drink around a table rather than standing at the bar. They ended up talking shop for a couple of hours—Lara worked for another magazine, and Becky was a pattern cutter, so they had plenty in common.
Stan stole glances at Ben working as often as he dared. Ben had a way of moving around the bar that was oddly similar to how he played music; he was fluid and graceful and smiled a lot, even when the customers weren’t particularly polite.
“Your boyfriend works here, doesn’t he?” Kirsty asked, when she caught Stan looking.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Which one is your boyfriend?” Lara looked over at the bar, where Tone was doing some fancy tricks with a bottle of vodka to impress a group of girls.
Stan smiled at her. “Close your eyes and find the most beautiful man in the room. That one’s mine.”
The other girls sighed in unison, and Stan laughed. “He’s the tall one behind the bar. With the dark hair.”
“The guy with the beard?” Kirsty asked, sounding confused.
“No! That’s Tone. He’s a friend. The one with the undercut.”
“Oh. He’s lovely.”
Stan nodded. “He is.”
The girls couldn’t stay long, only for a couple of drinks, and Stan air-kissed them goodbye before settling back into his booth. A moment later, Tone slid in next to him with another vodka and soda and a pint of something for himself.
“Hi,” Tone said. “Just finished, thought I’d keep you company. Your friend is fit.”
“I’ll make sure I tell her,” Stan said, amused.
Ben looked over from his place behind the bar, worry etched into the lines of his face. Stan smiled in what he hoped was reassurance. Ben turned away to serve another customer before Stan could figure out if he got the message or not.
“So, I wanted to ask you. Did you leave Russia because of all the gay stuff?” Tone asked.
“No, I left a long time before Putin brought in the law. But Russia has never been a particularly gay-friendly place. I wasn’t out when I was living at home.”
“And now?”
“You couldn’t pay me to go back,” Stan said honestly. He lifted his glass, slippery with condensation, to his lips and sipped the bitter liquid.
Tone snorted. “Don’t blame you. So….”
“You can ask me anything, Tone. I’m not easily offended,” Stan said with a grin.
“Alright,” Tone said, obviously summoning bravado. “Are you a girl or a boy? Not your body, I mean. Like, your mind.”
Stan couldn’t help the rush of affection for this man who was trying so hard. He wasn’t the big, offensive oaf the others seemed to think he was. Okay, so his phrasing wasn’t great, but he cared enough to ask, and that mattered.
“This is going to be a long answer,” Stan said with another laugh. “Are you ready for it?”
“Go for it, my love,” Tone said, leaning back in the booth with his cider.
“Okay,” Stan said, cricking his neck back and forth and wondering how the hell he was going to find the right words for this. And in English. He sighed, then continued. “So, for a long time we’ve accepted that sometimes things don’t go according to plan when humans are developing. Babies are born with physical disabilities and have been for pretty much all of history. About a hundred and fifty years ago, doctors started to understand that sometimes things go wrong inside the body too, genetic or congenital deformities.”
“Right.”
“For about forty or fifty years, we’ve accepted that sometimes people are born with differences to their minds—not their physical brains, but their psyche or sense of self. Freud was pretty good at unravelling that stuff.”
“Like someone being born with their body not matching who they feel they are, right?” Tone said. “Transsexuals.”
“Transgender,” Stan corrected with a small smile. Tone nodded. “It’s taking time, but a lot of places are starting to accept that these differences in the mind are not fetishes or psychoses, but a part of who a person is. Just like we accept that some people’s bodies develop differently and they look physically different to normal—whatever normal is—society is starting to accept that some people’s minds and gender identities don’t fit neatly into a simple binary.”
“We’re redefining ‘normal,’” Tone said.
“Yes. We’re trying. It’s not easy. In my motherland homosexuality isn’t accepted. To be myself there would mean opening myself up to all sorts of prejudices. And I don’t fit neatly into the label of ‘transgender,’” Stan said, reaching for his drink again. “I don’t have any issue with trans people, but a lot of discussion about transgender rights concentrates on that gender binary. A person might be born physically male and transition to be female. It’s a very masculine
view on the situation, if you’ll excuse the generalisation—‘oh look, she was born wrong, we can fix her.’ And they do.”
“Right,” Tone said. “Are you saying that’s wrong?”
“No, not at all. For some people that’s exactly the right thing. But if you accept that sometimes a person is born the wrong physical gender, it’s not such a huge leap to see that sometimes a person might be stuck between the two. Not male, not female, but a combination of both.”
“And that’s what you are?”
“Sort of,” Stan said with a grin. “I’m still working it out. I’m a boy, Tone. My body is a male body and that’s okay. It’s more than being femme, though. I’m a boy with a lot of feminine traits, both in how I feel from day to day and how I like to dress, to present myself. I’m a boy and a girl both, in different ways. Some people call it gender-fluid.”
“That’s not easy to get your head around,” Tone said.
“No. Because it doesn’t follow the transgender narrative that the media likes. That ‘wrong body, fix it, right body’ narrative—it becomes a success story. But that’s not me. I wasn’t born the wrong sex for my gender. There is no easy, fix-it success story for being stuck between two genders, so it’s not a story people hear very often. Gay men don’t like me because I look like a girl. Straight men don’t like me because I’m physically male.”
“But Ben….”
“Ben is an exceptional human being.”
“Nah, he’s a bit of a prick, really,” Tone said affectionately.
Stan grinned. “He sees the girl and likes her, and can touch the boy and like him too. He doesn’t try and make me ‘fit’ into any tick-box category. He just lets me be me.”
Stan trailed his finger up and down the condensation on the side of his glass and considered his next question carefully. Tone sipped his pint and waited.
“Tone, can I overshare?”
“Yeah, go on, then. I might make you buy me another pint afterwards to help me forget, though.”
Stan laughed. “I don’t have anyone to talk girl-talk with here.”
“There was loads of bloody girls here earlier!” Tone protested.
“I know, but I work with one of them, and the others I’ve only just met.”
“Oh, God,” Tone said. “Go on, then.”
“He’s just… the sex is so good,” Stan said on a rush, dropping his arms to the table and his forehead to his hands. “I’ve never had sex that good before.”
“Has he got a big cock?” Tone asked. “I’m just curious.”
“You can’t make fun of him, Tone.”
“I won’t.” Stan looked up to see Tone making a zipping gesture across his lips, then scratching at his beard.
“He’s perfect. I’ve been with other men before, but it’s all been a bit….”
“Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am?” Tone suggested.
“Yes,” Stan agreed with a laugh. “I used to just accept it. Most of my previous partners were older. And they liked to call me a ‘tranny’ or ‘she-male.’ or those sorts of things. I just accepted it, even if I didn’t like it.”
“Pardon the expression,” Tone said, “but that sucks.”
“Yes. Very much so. I never really understood how it can be like… like… two people together, you know? Not one man taking all the pleasure and the other lying there wondering what the fuss was about.”
“You could always go and be the man taking all the pleasure for himself. Just sayin’, you know.”
Stan gave Tone a horrified look. “Oh no. I couldn’t do that.”
“So you’re the girl in the relationship?”
Stan laughed loudly, and from the bar, Ben looked over with a questioning expression. Stan smiled at him in what he hoped was reassurance.
“If you like,” he said.
“Should I call you ‘she’?” Tone asked.
“No. ‘He’ is fine.”
“I don’t think I understand it all,” Tone said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table.
“That’s okay. You’re listening. Most people don’t even give me the chance to explain, so you’re doing something very amazing by that fact alone.”
“You’re a nice guy. And a mate. And a really hot girl, which is confusing, but I won’t make a pass at you ’cos Ben would knock my teeth out if I tried.”
“Yes. He probably would. He’s quite protective.”
Tone drained his pint and nodded to Stan’s now-empty glass. “Another? Vodka, right?”
“Yes, please,” Stan said. “Ben knows what I like.”
“I bet he does,” Tone said with a lascivious wink. Stan only laughed.
Stan never told Ben exactly what he’d been saying to Tone in the pub, and Ben decided he was okay with that. Mostly because Tone wouldn’t spill either, and if Tone was keeping someone’s confidence, it was for a reason.
So he put it behind himself and tried not to dwell.
When Stan shuffled into the living room Ben glanced up from his game, then did a double take and almost dropped the controller.
“Holy shit,” he murmured.
“Do you like it?” Stan asked, stretching one arm up the side of the doorframe and sticking his hip out.
“Holy shit,” Ben said emphatically. Stan laughed and walked over to the sofa, his long legs easily eating up the distance.
“Do you need to stop your game or anything?” Stan purred.
“No… no. It’s Assassin’s Creed. I’ve played it before.” Ben was captivated by the delicate lace covering Stan’s almost-naked body. It was red, a deep, dark red that contrasted with the creamy paleness of Stan’s skin, and fine enough to show plenty of that skin through the fabric. Ben reached out automatically, wanting to run his fingers along the line where the soft, scalloped edges of the lace rolled over Stan’s hip, then pulled his hand back. “Is it… I mean, can I…. Can I touch?”
Stan smiled, his whole face lighting up. “Yeah. Of course.”
Ben cupped those slim, angular hips in his hands and leaned in to nuzzle Stan’s belly. The action was almost painful—he was hard already, his dick straining against the seam of his jeans.
“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” Ben murmured.
Stan chuckled softly and ran his fingers through Ben’s hair, gently tugging at the roots. “I wanted to look pretty for you. To try to look pretty for you.”
With a gentle tug, Ben forced Stan off-balance and neatly caught him again, then dragged him down until he was straddling Ben’s thighs. They looked at each other for a long moment, lust burning between them, and then Stan leaned in and caught Ben’s tongue between his own, red-stained lips.
The kiss was as soft and sensual as Ben had come to expect from his lover—nothing was rushed, nothing was forced. Stan put it out there and Ben, well, he had no choice but to go with it. To ride whatever wonderful, exhilarating ride Stan was taking him on.
“Be with me again,” Stan murmured as he kissed down Ben’s neck. “I want you to fuck me.”
“Uh-uh. No.”
“No?”
“I’ll make love to you. Someone like you….” He pulled back to push Stan’s long hair out of his eyes, tucking it carefully behind his ear. “You don’t get fucked.”
“Okay. Then make love to me. Please.”
Ben ran his hand down Stan’s spine, feeling the bumps under the soft skin. He tugged his own T-shirt up, off, tossed it somewhere, and completely forgot it existed. Stan was smiling, a light in his grey eyes that Ben thought was possibly one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.
Stan pressed his hands to Ben’s chest and kissed him again, rolling their hips together in a sensuous grind. Ben had spent years priding himself on being a pretty damn good lover—he liked sex, liked making other people feel good with their bodies. But Stan… Stan was something else.
With an almighty surge of effort, Ben grabbed Stan’s ass and hauled them both up, grinning at Stan’s squeal of protest, then his laugh as Ben
carried them both through to the bedroom. He laid Stan down on the bed gently, then stood up and shucked off his jeans.
Stretched out on the bed like an offering, Stan threw one arm up over his head and trailed the fingers of the other lazily over his belly. Ben pressed his palm to his own erection and kicked out of his socks. He was a little ashamed he hadn’t bothered to ask this before now.
“Mmm,” Stan hummed.
“Okay. I wanna make you feel good.”
Ben knelt on the bed between Stan’s spread thighs and pulled at the edge of the lace underwear, tugging it down until Stan’s cock sprung free. Ben couldn’t help but smile and nuzzled his cheek into Stan’s belly, kissing and licking at the sensitive skin, then down over Stan’s hip bones. Each little gasp and whimper poked and prodded at Ben’s arousal, pushing him forward.
Instead of pushing the lace underwear all the way down, Ben carefully pulled Stan’s cock and balls out and left the panties around his thighs. The skin on Stan’s cock was as pale as the rest of his body, and he’d removed all of the hair from the area, so Ben knew this for certain. The only change in colour was the head of his cock, which was a deep, blushing pink. Ben studied it for a moment, then tugged the foreskin all the way back and licked the tip.
“Fuck,” Stan gasped. His fingers wound into Ben’s hair, tugging hard enough to make Ben gasp and get the picture.
Ben kissed one hip bone, then the other, then sucked as much of Stan’s cock into his mouth as he could manage. It only took a few bobs up and down the length for him to be able to take it all the way into the back of his throat, and Ben pressed his hands to Stan’s hips to keep him flat on the bed.
“Ben,” Stan gasped. “Ben. Ben! Stop, stop, stop….”
Ben pulled off with a gasp. “Okay?” he rasped.
“Yeah. I want… I was gonna….”
“You can come in my mouth if you want.”
“Fuck,” Stan groaned and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “No. I want you to fuck me.”
Ben huffed a laugh and reached for the lube on the nightstand. “I can do that.”
