by Anna Martin
“What happened?” Stan asked, sure, for reasons he couldn’t name, that something terrible had occurred.
“She was hit by a drunk driver,” Tone said slowly. “One Friday night in town. She wasn’t drunk—just on her way out with friends for a few in the pub where I worked at the time. The guy didn’t stop, but he didn’t get much further either. He ran off the road and hit a wall. The doctors told me after that, the force of the impact would have snapped her neck. The chances were, she didn’t know anything, was probably dead before she knew she’d been hit.”
“Oh, Tone,” Stan sighed.
“Kat was the love of my life,” he said. “I adored that girl. We were only kids—twenty-two—but I knew I wanted to marry her and have a whole bunch of sprogs. That was our plan. I was just waiting ’til I earned enough money to be able to look after her properly. Whenever people would ask when we were getting married, she’d tell them I couldn’t afford her. She was teasing, but she was right. I was going to do right by her. Buy a house, get her a sparkly ring, spend our lives together.
“She,” Tone started, then rubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “Kat was a beautiful person. On the outside and inside. Someone took her from me, and it broke me, Stan. I broke.”
When Stan reached out, Tone let him take his hand.
“I thought, for a very long time, I was going to go after her. Chase her into whatever world she’s in now, be with her there.”
“You were going to kill yourself.”
“Yes,” Tone said simply. “As far as I was concerned, a life without Kat in it wasn’t worth living. It took someone dragging me to London to sort myself out.”
“And now?” Stan asked.
Tone smiled and started to unbutton the flannel shirt he was wearing, revealing pale skin and dark hairs on his chest. On his collarbone was a tattoo of a grey cat, curled up asleep.
“I keep her with me,” he said simply.
“Why do you tell me these things?” Stan asked wearily.
“Because I know what it’s like to be at rock-bottom,” Tone said. “I know what it’s like to feel you can’t get out of bed, you can’t wash yourself or feed yourself or even breathe without effort. I also know the only way you can get out of that absolute pit of depression is with the love of your friends. I had someone take me out of Bristol and get me to somewhere I could start again. Not forgetting Kat—never forgetting her—but finding my place in a world where she doesn’t exist. There isn’t going to be anyone who comes and asks if you want help, Stan. I’m going to barge right in and be here whether you want me or not.”
“I want you,” Stan said softly. “Well—not in that way.”
Tone laughed, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet room. “Good. I think Ben might rip my balls off if I come on to you like that.”
“You’re bigger than him,” Stan pointed out.
“True. He could likely still kick my arse, though.”
“Was it Ben who brought you here? To London?” Stan asked.
“No. I met him after I arrived. It was someone else.”
Stan decided not to push, and let his head drop back against the pillow. The conversation had exhausted him, and he felt sleep taking over.
“Tone?” he said softly.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“Any time, mate. Any time.”
The next time he woke, Tone had gone and Ben had taken his place at the vigil point at Stan’s side. Stan stretched, feeling his muscles protest at the movement, then sighed as he relaxed back against the pillows.
“Hey,” Ben said softly.
“There is no need to speak to me like I am dying,” Stan snapped. “I am still very much alive.”
“Sorry.”
Ben looked like shit. His hair needed to be cut or styled or something; it looked like a bird’s nest. He had dark circles under his eyes, which were bloodshot.
Stan reached for him and watched as their fingers slowly twined together. Ben brushed his lips over the back of Stan’s knuckles, then laid his cheek down on them.
“Are you sleeping?” Stan asked, extracting his hand to smooth it through Ben’s hair.
“Not really. I miss you.”
His eyes flickered at the sweet attention, dark lashes landing on his cheeks, revealing his blue-veined eyelids. Stan felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips, and he dug his fingernails into Ben’s hair, scratching it, making Ben hum with pleasure.
For a long time, all they needed was this. Stan wasn’t tired, not really, not even exhausted like he had been for so long. This was so familiar; being quiet together, just existing alongside another person.
When Stan thought Ben might have fallen asleep, he managed to tear his eyes away from Ben’s relaxed face and looked around the room. Tone had brought flowers, not ones that smelled too strong, an explosion of bright yellow, pink, and white roses. They sat in a vase to the left of his bed, and Stan smiled at the sight as he brushed his fingers through Ben’s hair again.
There was a small table under the window on the far side of the room where someone—Stan guessed Tone, again—had left a bunch of fat green grapes, some San Pellegrino bottled water, and a massive box of chocolates from Hotel Chocolat. For some reason, this made him smile again. Tone didn’t care what anyone else thought and probably didn’t see anything wrong with taking chocolates to a guy who had been hospitalised for an eating disorder. He’d probably smuggled them in so the nurses didn’t know.
Under his hand, Ben stirred, and he twisted until his lips were resting against the pulse point on Stan’s wrist. Stan stroked his cheek with his thumb and sighed.
“Tell me about the band,” he said softly. “What happened after the tour?”
Ben kissed his wrist again and leaned back in the chair, bringing his feet up until his Converse were caught on the edge of the seat.
“We recorded an EP when we were moving around,” he said. “I told you about that, right?”
“Bits of it, yeah.”
“Well, it’s all done now. The whole thing needs to be mixed, but we can’t really afford to pay someone to do it for us, so Jez is messing about with it. There’s two songs on the website now, and we’re hoping to launch ‘Out of Here’ as a single next month.”
“That would be amazing. My boyfriend, the rock star.”
Ben grinned then, as Stan had hoped he would. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would. That’s what I’m going to tell everyone around here.”
“I don’t mind everyone knowing you have a boyfriend,” Ben said. He was smiling properly now, not the half-arsed, concerned “how are you” smiles Stan had been seeing from him the past few days.
“I heard you had a pretty good gig at the Academy too. I wish I could have been there.”
Ben nodded. “You’ve been talking to Tone.”
“Oh yes. He tells me a lot.”
“It’s weird how close you are.”
“Really?”
Shrugging, Ben blushed and smiled. “He’s my best mate, you know? My best mate and my boyfriend.” He played with a rip across the knee of his jeans. “Will you tell me what happened?”
Stan sighed and tipped his head back against the huge white pillow. Even though Ben had been visiting for a while, he hadn’t asked this. Stan had been waiting for the questioning; it was almost a relief for Ben to have finally caved.
“I wish I knew myself.”
“Just talk to me. Everything was so amazing in Manchester.”
“It was.” Stan smiled at the memory of that night, of feeling so alive, so in love with life and this man. “I got back, and it was just all so… I missed you so much, but I couldn’t dwell on that. There was so much to do, at work, and it was all so busy.”
The hospital room was always too warm, so Stan kept the window cranked open, knowing he was lucky to be in a room where this was possible. He was always uncomfortable here; stripped of his clothes and his make-up and all the t
hings that made him feel like himself, the rounder, softer person that he’d created. The Stan who had thousands of followers on Instagram and thousands more on his blog, the person with the carefully crafted public persona wasn’t allowed to exist in here.
Stan lifted his head and gathered his long hair into a ponytail, wrapping it around on itself to keep it off his sticky neck.
“I wouldn’t have thought about it if the doctors here hadn’t forced me to,” he admitted. “It was how I used to be, all the time, and I suppose I never saw anything wrong with it.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Wasn’t that just it, though? Ben would always be there, he’d always understand, even when it was hard, even when Stan didn’t want to talk because letting this out made him feel more vulnerable than he had ever allowed himself to feel before.
“My routine, if you want to call it that, when things were really bad, was to drink a black tea for breakfast,” Stan said with a heavy, weary sigh, “then have some sushi around three or four. Just a few pieces, you know, because the other girls in the office would nag if I didn’t eat anything. Then I’d get home around eight, sometimes later, and work on the blog for a few hours. It’s going really well—or it was, anyway. Blogging is so fickle. They’ve probably all abandoned me now. Anyway,” he sighed again. “I had a green tea before bed, and that was it. Sometimes a handful of nuts in the evening, if I remembered to eat them.”
“Fuck,” Ben said.
“It wasn’t a conscious thing. I didn’t get up in the morning and actively decide not to eat anything. And it wasn’t like that this time, either. It just happened. I got back into old habits. The way things are when….”
“Finish that sentence.”
“When someone isn’t there to watch out for me.”
Ben was silent for a few moments. “Is this my fault?”
“No! Not at all. Please don’t think that. Ben, I… I… I lie here at night and I can’t sleep because all I do all fucking day is sleep, and I think about how you hold me when we’re in bed together and how you make love to me like I matter. I hate that I’m stuck here, and I hate that it’s my fault, and I don’t want to be one of those people who is so dependent on their partner that they cannot function on their own. But I need you, Ben, and that scares me even more than the thought of not being healthy.” He pushed angry tears away from his cheeks and refused to look over at Ben. Stan sniffed, blinked, and more tears fell. “I love you, but I know I don’t want our relationship to be you looking after me for the next fifty or sixty or seventy years. I want to be your partner.”
“You are,” Ben said. “I… fuck this shit. Come here.”
“What?”
Ben pushed himself out of the chair and pulled the heart monitor from Stan’s finger. The feeding tube and his IV drip both snaked off to the left of his body, meaning with the heart monitor gone, Ben could get into the bed next to Stan and pull him awkwardly into his arms.
It took a few minutes of shifting and gently moving the tubes and drip out of the way, then Stan was cradled in the safest place he knew; head on Ben’s chest, sat sideways on Ben’s lap with his arms wrapped solidly around Stan’s waist.
“Better?” Ben murmured.
“Yeah.”
“Stan?”
“Hmm?”
“Who the fuck brought you chocolates?”
“Oh.” Stan giggled and spread his palm over Ben’s chest, stretching his fingers so he could touch as much of his boyfriend as possible. “Tone, I think.”
“When I see him, I’m going to kick his head in.”
“Please don’t. I don’t mind. He came to see me earlier. He’s very sweet.”
Ben brushed his lips back and forth over Stan’s hair, back and forth, back and forth. “Better now?” he asked.
“Yes. So much better.”
It was. Ben’s chest was strong and solid under Stan’s cheek, his skin warm, smelling of sweat and smoke and fabric softener. His arms held Stan securely, not too tight, but certainly not letting him go anywhere. It was nothing more, nothing less, than absolute security.
Chapter Fourteen
Over the next few days, Stan and Ben proceeded to piss each other the hell off. Ben was bone-tired, unable to sleep without his stupid bunny rabbit or Stan to hold, forcing himself to eat because it seemed grossly hypocritical if he didn’t. He went from band practice to the hospital, picking up shifts at the bar when they needed him, then back to an empty flat, and felt hollow and exhausted.
Stan was pissed off about being kept in the hospital when he felt ready to go home. The collapse that had taken him to the Accident and Emergency Department in the first place had been attributed to a urinary tract infection, something that had been cleared up with a course of antibiotics. He wasn’t being discharged yet though. The doctors wanted to keep a closer eye both on his weight and attitude to eating, and monitor his kidney and liver function.
Ben’s weariness and Stan’s acidic attitude clashed, the resulting friction only smoothed by Tone’s creamy baritone and Kirsty’s gentle motherly fussing. Tone and Kirsty had jobs, though, and couldn’t commit the same time to Stan’s bedside that Ben could.
Stan was still too thin. Ben brushed his fingertips over Stan’s wrist, knowing his partner would likely always be somewhere on the scale of “too thin,” and that it would be his job to monitor that scale for the rest of their lives. It was a responsibility he was going to take seriously but keep to the back of his mind. Watching Stan like a hawk wasn’t going to do either of their mental states any good.
“You don’t look at me like you used to,” Stan said plaintively, looking down at Ben with big, sorrowful eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“You used to touch me different too. You look at me and touch me like I’m about to break.”
“Well, what do you want?” Ben snapped.
“I want you to grab my ass. You used to grab my ass all the time.”
Ben sighed heavily and looked away. “It’s difficult when you’re in a hospital bed, Stan. For fuck’s sake.”
“You don’t want to fuck me anymore.”
“No,” Ben said, hating the sharpness in his voice. “Not right now I don’t, Stan.”
“Go away,” Stan mumbled, and turned his head to the window.
“No,” Ben repeated. “You know what? No. We’re going to do this, and I’m going to sound like an utter bastard, but fuck you, Stan. Fuck you. When we’re together, it’s incredible. I’ve never in my life felt the way I do when we have sex, because you matter to me. That’s why there’s a ring on your finger, and that’s why I made a promise to you. Because when we make love, it’s not about me or you or bodies or getting off, it’s about what we are as people, and what we mean to each other.
“Right now I don’t feel like your lover,” Ben said, slapping his hand on the edge of the mattress. “And I don’t feel like fucking you, because even though I love you to the stars and back, and I will do anything for you, this body and this version of you isn’t one that turns me on. I don’t get hard thinking about you like this. I don’t think about bending you over a fucking hospital bed and pounding your ass. I want you to get healthy, come home, and we can make love again. That’s what I want.”
“What if—”
“There is no ‘what if,’” Ben said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “I love you. That’s it. That has to be enough to make you want those things, Stan. I can’t give you any more than that. I love you. Please. If you love me too, the only thing I want you to promise me is to never take the man I love away from me. Never take the man who made my life complete away. I would never be able to forgive you if you did that.”
“Ben,” Stan said, and when Ben looked up, tears were rolling down his cheeks. Ben pushed his palms over his own wet cheeks, sniffing. “Take me home. Please.”
“I’ll get you there,” Ben said, the tension collapsing out of his body. “I promi
se.”
Stan’s nurse was all in favour of the feeding tube coming out, which was the first step in the process to getting Stan out of the ward and back to the flat. It was uncomfortable, worse than it going in, somehow, as they gently extracted the long, flexible tube from his nose. Ben held his hand and scowled at Leslie while she spoke soothingly to Stan as she completed the procedure.
Almost as soon as it was out, Stan started to feel better. He’d be kept in the hospital for a while longer, for observation on the eating disorders ward, but Leslie was confident they were working towards letting him go home.
“Soon?” he pressed as she passed him a meal-replacement shake for his dinner. It was too soon for him to go back to solid foods, not after he’d been tube fed since he’d been admitted to hospital, and the shakes meant high-calorie, high-nutrition meals.
“It’s up to you, love,” she said. “Find your reason to get out of here, and you’ll get there quicker.”
“I’m going home to live with my partner,” Stan said decisively. “To be with Ben.”
“There you go, then. Drink it.”
He did, sipping at wrinkling his nose at the artificial sweetness.
Ben had brought Stan’s laptop and some clothes—real clothes, that he was allowed to wear now he’d been upgraded and taken off high-level observation. Stan was encouraged to interact with other patients on the ward, though he often found himself depressed by their stories and preferred to sit in his room and work.
The blog he’d been running for years had continued without him, with only a very small blip in his posting schedule. Stan had warred with himself for a few days on whether or not he was going to come clean and admit why he hadn’t been responding to messages, comments, or tweets for a few weeks. In the end, he gave an edited version of the truth and wrote an article that danced around his personal experiences while discussing eating disorders in the fashion industry as a whole.
