Author: Anna Martin
Category: LGBT
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/anna-martin/page,5,529683-the_lost_boy.html
He closed his eyes and forced himself to relax as Dominic picked his way through Ben’s hair. Ben thought back to when it had been last cut—almost eight months ago, by his reckoning. It was long.
“This side is the worst,” Dominic said casually. Somehow Ben didn’t feel bad about himself with the way Dominic said it. “I reckon we can go short on the sides, then whatever you want on the top.”
“I used to wear it in a Mohawk,” Ben muttered.
“Yeah?” Dominic sounded both amused and pleased with that. “I can work with something like that, if you want.”
“I just don’t want to look like a homeless drug addict anymore. Only one of those things is true.”
“Leave it with me. You’re alright facing that way?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Dominic worked quickly, the snipping of his scissors loud in the silent room. Ben kept his eyes closed and focused on breathing slowly. Even so, it didn’t take long for the tremors to come back.
“You need a break?” Dominic asked.
Ben put his face in his hands and folded himself in half. “I’m such a fucking wreck.”
“I don’t see a wreck,” Dominic said. He came around and took a seat in the chair next to Ben again. “I see a guy who’s clearly going through some shit, who decided to get a healthy lunch today, then come in to get his hair cut. That’s who you are right now. A guy who’s making decent choices.”
“You sound like a therapist,” Ben muttered. His chest felt so tight, and he was, once again, ridiculously humiliated.
“You’d be surprised at how often the worlds of hairdressing and therapy overlap. Therapists just charge a lot more than I do.”
They were both quiet for a few moments. Then Dominic spoke again.
“You want a cup of tea?”
Ben really, really did.
“Yes, please. Milk and one sugar. Please.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He stayed where he was, head almost between his knees, and listened to the familiar routine of tea-making. By the time Dominic got back, Ben almost felt okay again.
Except the embarrassment. That had gotten worse.
“Here you go. You want to keep going?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Sit up, then.”
Ben did as he was told, and reached over for his tea.
Dominic had made one for himself, too, and took sips in between working on Ben’s hair. The haircut took longer than Ben had expected, probably because his hair was in such a fucking state. He didn’t flinch when Dominic got the clippers out, though, and was proud of that.
By the time he was done with his tea, Dominic was about finished with Ben’s hair.
“You want to look?” Dominic asked.
“Not really,” Ben said wryly.
“No problem.”
Ben was taken aback again. He thought having to look was part of the transaction.
Instead Dominic brushed the hair off his shoulders and quickly fiddled some wax through the ends of what was left of Ben’s hair, almost like he couldn’t help himself.
Ben stood up, so grateful it hurt, and turned around to say thank you.
He watched the moment of startled recognition dawn in Dominic’s eyes.
“Oh,” he said softly.
Ben gave him a wry smile and a shrug. “Thanks.”
Dominic didn’t say anything else, just walked over to the counter.
“That’s twenty-five quid.”
Ben shook his head. “I made you close up.”
“Do you see anyone else in here?” Dominic said, opening his arms wide. “We’re not busy.”
“I can pay you. For your time. And for….”
“That was free,” Dominic said with a small smile. “As was the tea.”
He set up the card machine for the transaction, and Ben tapped his card again. He wanted to leave, to rush away and hide himself in the relative safety of his flat. But Dominic stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm.
“Look, mate. I’m really not a therapist. I’m just a guy who cuts hair for a living. I meant what I said, though. You get to say who you are, not anyone else. It’s all bullshit anyway, right?”
That was a line from one of Ben’s songs. From the first album.
For the first time in a long time, Ben laughed. “Yeah.”
“Someone wise said that.”
“Nah. Last I heard, he was a total arsehole.”
When Dominic pulled him into a hug, Ben went with it.
“Come back whenever you want.”
“I will,” Ben said, and in that moment, he meant it.
When he left the barbers, he had every intention of going straight back to the flat. The past hour had exhausted him beyond belief, and he was still unsure of what was happening to the food in his stomach. Chances were, it would explode out of his body one way or the other. He’d wait and see.
The problem was, right on the corner was an estate agent. Ben was almost certain they were the people who had sold him the flat in the first place. And he needed it gone. Just… gone. Behind him.
The haircut made him walk a little taller as he pushed the door open into the cold, passionless space. He’d definitely been in here before. Someone looked over and did a double take.
Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten his hair cut. Now every dickhead in the West End was recognising him.
“Can I help?” a young girl asked.
“Yeah. I need you to sell my flat.”
Another thirty minutes, and Ben was finally back in the safety of a fancy apartment that soon wouldn’t belong to him anymore. For some reason, it felt like an enormous weight off his shoulders.
At one point he’d almost gotten into a shouting match with the girl in the estate agents, who was so fucking insistent that someone come over to take professional photos of the apartment. Literally nothing had been done to it in the years Ben had owned it—no new furniture, no new fixtures or fittings, no decorating… nothing. So the pictures that were used last time would be fine. And he didn’t want people traipsing in and out while he was still figuring out the whole drug addict situation.
It didn’t help that he still didn’t have a full set of keys. To the flat. That was another fucking thing he needed to fix.
Ben stuffed the leftover vegan food in the fridge, then lay down on the bed to sleep for an hour. Just an hour. Because the past couple of hours had left him physically and mentally exhausted.
One hour turned into four without him noticing, and Ben woke with a start.
Dusk was falling, and with the window slightly open, the rush of noise from the street outside seeped into the room. Ben rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and wondered what happened next.
He wanted to go back to Stan’s flat. He wasn’t sure if he’d be welcome.
Ben looked around the room, forcing him to accept the truth that circled him.
Tone had taken the phone—Stan’s phone—so Ben didn’t have any way of contacting them, of scoping out whether or not him going back was even a possibility. If that’s what he wanted, he was going to have to ask. In person.
Sometimes it was the little things that forced Ben to remember how sheltered he’d become from real life. The band’s management team had been really good at keeping them at arm’s length from the real world, and Ben was grateful for that. But in the process of keeping them away from the ugly side of their career—the bad reviews and the stalkers and the people who set up Twitter accounts with the sole purpose of tweeting them several times a day telling them how shit they were—Ben had turned into someone who couldn’t do anything for himself.
He wanted a phone, and his instinct was to contact Melissa and ask her to get someone to go and buy one for him.
He wanted drugs, and normally there was someone from his “team” who would go and get that for him too.
If Ben wanted to go home, someone booked the flights. He wanted to see
a movie, and someone arranged for it to be sent to his laptop so he didn’t have to go to a movie theatre and interact with the public. He sneezed, and someone handed him a damn handkerchief, for fuck’s sake.
He was a thirty-one-year-old man who had almost had a breakdown over buying lunch for himself, going to get his hair cut, and asking an estate agent to sell his flat.
Ben hauled himself out of bed and stumbled for the wardrobe. A day—or was it two?—before he’d rummaged through the backpack he’d found in there, checking it for cash or pills and finding neither. Now he stuffed it with anything in the flat that definitely belonged to him. It all fit in the backpack, which said something.
He almost left the food in the fridge, willing to let it go, but at the last moment thought maybe Stan would like it. So he turned back, packed it back into the paper bag he’d brought it home in, and walked out of his drug den for the last time.
The absolute last time.
Chapter Seven
Stan was watching TV when he heard a knock at the door.
He almost didn’t answer—first assuming it was for the neighbour next door, then deciding it could be someone in the building wanting something. Tone was out, but he had a key.
He was almost ashamed to hope it was Ben.
Stan opened the door to find the last person he expected to see.
“Oh.”
Ben was slumped over, his shoulders hunched, with a bright red backpack hanging off one shoulder.
“I fucked up,” he said in a hoarse voice.
Stan nodded and stepped aside, leaving space for Ben to come in. But he didn’t move.
“Am….” Ben took a deep breath, then looked up, facing Stan like Stan was judge, jury, and executioner. “Can I come back?”
Stan’s heart jumped in his throat. “Of course you can,” he said. “Always, Ben.”
“Thank you.”
He shuffled into the flat, looking embarrassed and so small. Stan felt another pang in his chest and pressed the heel of his hand to his breastbone to rub it away. Ben had never been small. He was tall and strong and held his head up with his chin jutted out, his whole stance welcoming challenge. He didn’t crumple like this. Not the Ben that Stan had known.
“I, uh, I bought some food earlier. But I didn’t finish it, and I didn’t want to throw it away, and I thought you might want it.” He spoke in a mumbling rush, the New Zealand twang threading through his words. Like when he was tired. Stan remembered.
“That sounds good. What did you get? Maybe we could share it.”
Ben seemed surprised by that suggestion. He set the paper bag down on the kitchen counter and dropped the backpack on the floor.
“I went to Itsu,” he said. “Got vegan food. My stomach has been messed up, and I remembered that’s what you used to….”
Stan nodded. “I don’t eat just vegan food anymore, but I like Itsu.”
“Can I use your loo?”
“You live here, Ben,” Stan reminded him. “You don’t need to ask.”
“Okay. I’m not going to take drugs,” he said in a rush, suddenly looking up at Stan with wide, begging eyes. “I just need to piss.”
“Okay.”
Ben exhaled heavily. “Okay.”
Stan didn’t want to poke around in Ben’s food, even if he’d been invited to share it. Instead he cleared off the dining table with his work stuff and put it away in one of the living room cabinets, then poured two glasses of iced water from the dispenser in the fridge.
“Do you want to choose something?” Ben said when he came back. He’d taken off his hoodie, and was wearing a very crumpled T-shirt and his loose skinny jeans.
“Or we could just grab some plates and share it?”
Ben nodded. “That works.”
Stan got plates and cutlery from the kitchen and took a seat opposite Ben. He’d had his hair cut, and Stan wanted to mention it. Then decided against it. When he’d been feeling bad about himself, people mentioning his appearance was never a good thing, even if it was a compliment.
“I think this is supposed to be hot,” Ben said, poking at a container of dumplings.
“I don’t mind,” Stan said with a shrug.
“It’s been in the fridge since lunchtime, so it should be okay to eat.”
Stan lightly touched the back of Ben’s hand. “This is good,” he said gently. “Thank you.”
Ben nodded and ducked his head as he carefully pulled his hand away. “S’alright.”
They ate in silence for a while, but it wasn’t as awkward as Stan had expected. Ben looked wrung out, possibly even more so than when Stan had picked him up in LA. He decided not to comment on that either.
Ben picked through the food, and Stan wondered if he had any interest in it at all, or if he was just eating as a performance. Stan had done it plenty of times himself. Eating a meal was a kind of social nicety, one of those things that made you feel like you were normal, even if it only lasted a few minutes.
When Ben set his fork down, apparently done working through the dishes, Stan did the same.
“I’m sick of feeling like shit,” Ben said, rubbing his hands over his face.
“Are you going to do something about that?”
“I’m fucking trying.”
“Ben, going cold-turkey is probably going to cause you more issues, rather than resolving them,” Stan said. “If you really want to get better, then we can get you some help.”
“I don’t want to be locked in a room with any more fucking therapists who just want me to spill all my most traumatic memories for them to wank over later,” Ben snarled. “Trust me when I say I’ve been there and done that. I’ve been to rehab, Stan, twice. I’ve been on monitored coming-clean programmes. I’ve done this shit before.”
“And yet here you are,” Stan snapped back. “Maybe you’re used to people treating you with kid gloves, Ben, but I’m not going to. You told me once you weren’t going to watch me die. Well, guess what, I’m not going to watch you die either. So fucking… sort yourself out.”
He pushed himself back from the table and wanted to storm off, but there was only two bedrooms in the flat, and he wasn’t sleeping in either of them. Feeling stupid, he went and locked himself in the bathroom to calm down.
Stan put the toilet seat down and sat on it, folding himself in half and burying his face in his hands. He was furious at himself for snapping at Ben, especially after Ben had only just come home after his drug binge. If Stan had pushed him away again, he’d hate himself even more.
He was surprised when there was a light knock on the bathroom door.
Stan splashed water on his face before opening it.
“I’m trying,” Ben said quickly, before Stan could interrupt him. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and his lips were dry and cracked. He licked them, apparently a habit. “I know I’m fucking up, and I’m sorry. This is so fucking hard.”
On instinct, Stan pulled him into a hug. “I’m sorry for shouting at you.”
Ben pressed his face to Stan’s shoulder and didn’t hug Stan back and didn’t cry. Stan thought he might break with the effort of not crying, and desperately wanted to tell Ben that he could. But it wasn’t his place.
Instead he wrapped his arms around Ben’s too-skinny shoulders and held him, and smoothed his hand over Ben’s clean hair, and gently rocked them from side to side.
He held Ben for far longer than he had intended, until Ben’s tight, shuddery breaths calmed down, and he started to relax into Stan’s hug.
Only then did Stan let go.
They didn’t talk about it again. It felt like too much, like Stan had crossed a line in both shouting at Ben, which was what everyone else had done and it hadn’t worked then, so why did Stan think it would work now? And in offering him comfort. As much as he didn’t want that to be his responsibility any more, it wasn’t like anyone else was coming forward to let Ben know he was still loved.
Stan was embarrassed, and it seemed like Ben
was too. They danced carefully around each other for days, not quite interacting, eyes not quite meeting. Ben went back to his room, and Stan went back to his laptop. It was a strange, new kind of status quo.
“Do you want to go out?”
Stan looked up from his laptop and frowned at Tone. “Out?”
“Yeah, out.” Tone looked amused. “There’s a gig tonight at the Electric Ballroom. I chatted up the girl on the box office and got us tickets. It’s sold out officially.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Tone shrugged. “Ben’s not going anywhere.”
That was true. Ben had holed himself up even more than he had before, resolutely not taking Stan’s advice and getting professional help, preferring to sweat his comedown out on his own. Stan had resolved to let Ben make his own decisions about his body, however much he hated to see Ben in pain.
It was taking a toll on them all, emotionally and the rest.
“I guess I could,” Stan said, still unsure.
“There’s a wardrobe full of your nice frocks in there.”
Stan gave him a wry smile. “I haven’t worn any of those in a long time. Years.”
“Well, you should. Your legs are too nice to hide in jeans.”
That made him laugh. “Okay. I’ll go and have a look, see what’s in there.”
“We don’t need to go out until nine. Ish.”
Stan glanced at his watch. It was only just seven. “I can be ready to go at nine.”
“Great. I’m going to the pub. Will meet you there?”
“Sounds good.”
Tone winked, and left him alone.
Stan wanted to get his article finished—or almost finished, ready for proof-reading at least—before he started getting ready.
When he was done, his laptop switched over from work to play mode with some quiet music playing, he went to dig through the wardrobe in what had become Tone’s room.
He knew, vaguely, that there were still a few things here. Everything was packed in either suit bags or dry cleaner’s bags, so even when he’d been home, there hadn’t been any need to go through them.
Carefully, Stan started unpacking.
The first bag was mostly sheer shirts, the style he’d favoured when he’d first moved to London. He’d worn them to work at the time. The next few bags were his dresses.