Chapter 11: 11. Friction Burns

Content warning:

 

2019 October 26
Saturday

“Up! Up! Up! No fucking dawdling! Mummy’s got a hangover and the sooner you little shits climb into your hamster wheels and start running, the soon I can go back to bed!”

Maria’s voice, hoarse and echoing in the concrete corridor, drags Stefan out of his nightmare, and he’s already halfway out of bed when the door opens and Pippa, looking very much the worse for wear, enters. Tactfully she looks away, gives him time to climb back under the covers before she settles against the wall and leans her head against the brick.

“Good morning,” she says. Sounds like an effort.

“Good morning.” Stefan keeps his voice low, mirroring her mood in the manner that’s become habit. He tightens the sheets around his chest, gathers his knees under his chin. “You have a hangover, too?”

“No,” Pippa says. Her denial is undercut by her wince. Aunt Bea’s birthday last night, Stefan remembers. Kidnappers getting together for a nice meal and a bit of a drink. Bizarre to imagine them having such normal things in their lives as birthday parties and hangovers. “I’m fine,” she insists, louder, and he looks away, realising his scepticism must have shown on his face.

Pippa’s hard to predict. Sometimes she seems like someone he can get on his side. Other times she’s as perfunctory as Maria usually is with Aaron. And occasionally she seems so angry she might ignite. Which is the real Pippa? No way to know.

He’s learning what to watch for. When she plays with her bracelet, she’s more emotional, more receptive, more apt to talk to him like a person. This morning, headache aside, she’s all business, hands folded over her chest.

“Medical examinations today, right?” he says. Keep it factual.

“Yes. Don’t bother dressing; you’ll be showering in twos this morning. Supervised. We’re re-examining some of our security procedures after Declan’s little episode. For now, your unmonitored shower privileges are revoked.”

Stefan nods. Locks his jaw so he doesn’t give away his reaction again. Just what he doesn’t need right now: more eyes on him. “Can you turn around, so I can put on my robe?”

“I’ll see it all in a minute, anyway,” Pippa says. She’s still inserting that sneer into her voice, but it’s even less convincing than usual today. “Why bother?”

“Please?”

“Fine. I’ll wait outside. If you’re not out in two minutes—” she yanks on the door, “—we’re coming in and dragging you out, whether you’re fully clothed or buck naked.”

She slams the door on her way out. He hopes it makes her headache worse.

Quickly he throws on his dressing gown and assembles his wash kit. He uses the rest of the time to buzz his chin with the electric razor. Being watched is one thing; being seen shaving, quite another. He’s never been able to put his finger on exactly why, but he doesn’t have the luxury of questioning his neuroses. His composure is fragile enough right now.

His shower buddy waits in the corridor, under guard. “Morning, Mother Theresa,” Aaron says. “How are the healing hands?” He’s got a plaster over the cut near his eye; Maria must have got it for him. Stefan tears it off — it’ll come off in the shower, anyway — and ignores Aaron’s whimper as he inspects the wound: almost healed.

“Looks good.”

“Hey!” Aaron squeals. “Personal space! Personal space!”

“Like that matters here,” Stefan says. Pippa glances his way; he pretends not to notice.

“I mean, yeah, okay, sure.” Aaron folds twitchy arms in on themselves and looks up at him. “You okay, Stefan? You seem kind of tense.”

When did Aaron ever ask him that before?

Stefan weighs the pros and cons of telling the truth, finds the whole exercise exhausting, and shrugs. He dreamed of Declan last night, attacking him and Aaron in the shower — and him and Christine at the party where they met, him and Melissa in Melissa and Russell’s childhood home, even Abby and Pippa, once or twice, in various iterations of the nightmare — and no matter how often he woke and forced himself to think of other things, Declan would be waiting for him when he fell asleep again. He even watched a movie, in pieces, between dreams. Didn’t help; just got Happy Working Song stuck in his head.

He’s probably had even less sleep than Pippa or Maria.

“Hey,” he asks Pippa, “what are we waiting for?” The question earns him a prod in the small of his back from one of the women standing guard behind him. The impertinence of asking questions.

Maria, leaning lazily against the wall by the open double doors, replies for Pippa, who has her eyes closed. “We’re waiting for that, ” she says, and nods at the door to the bathroom, which bursts open a few seconds later, heralded by some troublingly masculine shouting.

It’s Declan, and he looks like he’s fallen down a flight of stairs, been taken back up to the top and thrown down a couple more times, for fun. He’s naked, and barely a square centimetre of skin is unbruised. His hands, cuffed behind him, shake, and he drips water on the floor as he staggers past the end of the residential corridor, trailed by Monica and three other sponsors, all armed with tasers and batons.

“Hey!” he yells. “Aa-ron! Stef-an! Why don’t you fucking poofs fight? They wouldn’t be able to keep us here if we all—!”

Monica interrupts him with a baton strike to his chest, and for a second he looks like he might retaliate, start a brawl right there in the hallway, but he backs down when the other sponsors level their tasers at him. Slowly, reluctantly, he faces front and hobbles back down the main corridor to the cells, followed by his escort.

Aaron breaks the silence. “He has a point. We should definitely fight. What do you think, Maria?” He balls his fists, raises them like a newsreel pugilist. “You want to go a few rounds?”

Maria, massaging the bridge of her nose, says, “No.”

“You sure? Best two out of three?”

“Go. Shower. Now. Before I put you and your friend in the cell next to Declan just for annoying the piss out of me when I’ve got a hangover.”

Pippa and the others escort them in but Maria stays behind, to coordinate with the other sponsors or possibly just to indulge in her headache. Stefan’s always been perversely irritated that the guards don’t have any kind of uniform to distinguish them from the sponsors — because, according to Abby, they mostly are sponsors, but to second- and third-year women who don’t need constant supervision any more, filling out the numbers so not every first-year sponsor has to be on the job all the time; Stefan’s been waiting to see Christine’s sponsor, Indira, amongst them, but so far few have been South Asian and none have matched his hazy memory of the picture Abby showed him over Consensus — but today one of them is wearing particularly nice clothes, and it’s all he can do to keep his eyes away, to stop comparing himself to her. Pippa’s habitual dresses are bad enough; this girl’s outfit makes his chest hurt.

He needs a distraction, so he asks Pippa what happened to Declan.

“He got three strikes.”

“I heard. But what happened to him? He looks like he lost a fight with a brick wall.”

“What happened to him is what happens after three strikes. Privileges taken away. Supervision increased. Carrot removed; stick emplaced.” She nudges at Stefan with an elbow, and the contact makes him flinch. “Now go join your little friend in the shower before I push you back out the doors and let Maria use you for headache relief.”

Stefan nods. Stops halfway into the shower annexe. “Do you really have to watch us shower? Can’t you just leave the room? Or look away?”

“No,” one of the women he doesn’t know says. The other one, scrolling on her phone, rolls her eyes.

“Sorry,” Pippa says, sounding almost like she means it. “I’m just as unhappy about this as you.”

I really doubt that.

Aaron — his ‘little friend’; great, they’re inextricably linked! — is already washing, facing away from both of them, for once not taking advantage of the situation to waggle his dick around. Maybe he feels the gaze of all three women, too.

He takes the shower at the far end, putting as much distance between him and the sponsors as possible. Maybe they all need glasses and won’t be able to see him clearly? Wouldn’t that be a lovely thought?

His skin prickles anyway.

“You didn’t answer me before,” Aaron says. Stefan risks a glance: the boy’s facing the wall, angling himself away from Stefan and sponsors both. Shy, all of a sudden. “Are you okay? You really did seem tense out there. And then there’s Declan—”

“Why do you care?” Stefan asks. There’s no hostility in the question — he really, truly does not have the energy to spare — but he’s curious. He turns the tap to its hottest setting and ducks under.

Only lukewarm, but getting warmer.

“Why do I care? Because we’re buddies! Compadres! Fucking… friends, man. Aren’t we?”

Water’s getting hotter.

“Aren’t we?” Aaron repeats.

“You shouldn’t antagonise Maria like that.”

“What? Man, you’re really—”

“You want to end up like Declan? Back in a cell? Bruised and limping? Three strikes, Aaron. How many do you have?”

“One.” Aaron’s usually lively voice, already somewhat depleted out of apparent concern for Stefan — what a joke! — flattens completely. “You weren’t here yet when it happened.”

“Oh yeah?” Stefan starts rubbing in the shampoo, leaning away from the flow of water, which is starting to make his skin throb when it strikes. “What did you do?”

He leans against the tile to rinse his hair. Fingers are already pink.

“Uh,” Aaron says. “You don’t want to know that.”

There’s a feeling Stefan gets sometimes, when he’s being watched. It’s a heat in the back of his neck. More a rash than a blush, it stings like an insect bite, itches like a burn. At his job, about a week before he came here, the feeling hit him so powerfully he had to abandon his till and excuse himself to the staff toilets — obviously the men’s! — and lock himself in a cubicle so he could slam the back of his head (where the bruises don’t show) into the stall wall, over and over again, until pain overrode discomfort.

No such privacy here, but there are other ways to cause pain. How hot can the water here get? Time to find out.

Pippa and the other two women, standing at the other end of the annexe, watching him. Witnessing him. He can’t stop imagining how he looks in their eyes: pathetic; broken. Their nonchalance amplifying their contempt. Another man, brought here to be corrected. Another boy.

“If you don’t tell me what you did,” he says to Aaron, “I’ll assume the worst.”

“Yeah, well, you’d probably be right.”

Stefan laughs and water floods his mouth. He spits. “You showed her your dick, didn’t you?”

“Only a little.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Aaron.”

“That’s why she hates me. I mean, it’s not the only reason, but it’s, y’know, enough.”

Stefan threads conditioner through his hair, leaning his head against the wall. Hot water scalds his bare back.

“She probably should hate you, Aaron,” he says. Whatever filter he usually tries to apply to his thoughts is long gone. “Hell, I should hate you, too. Don’t know why I don’t. Don’t know why I’m even a little bit happy to see your stupid face every morning.”

“Aww. You’re happy to see me?”

“Don’t get too excited. Who else am I going to talk to? Fucking Declan? I hated you, Aaron. And now, for some reason, I don’t.”

“Well, I’m flattered, but—”

“I hated you,” Stefan continues, because the only way to stay in control is to keep talking, keep spitting out everything in his head, keep his mouth too full of bile to scream, the way he wants to, “because you’re a prick. A misogynist prick who harasses women.” Shower water flows into his mouth again, and little roots of pain burrow into his gums and teeth. Hands on the tile again. Steady. “You sent pictures of your dick to a woman who did not ask to see them. And not just one picture! Pictures fucking plural!” Water sears his back, burns through his skin, exposes muscle and fat and warped, fragile bones, all of them the wrong shape, too big, too clumsy. He can feel his body’s weight, pressing him down, holding him in place. “Did you find the best light, Aaron? Did you find the right angle? Did you trim your fucking pubes to make your cock look bigger?”

“What? No. That’d be weird, dude.”

“Oh! That would be weird, would it?”

Stefan can’t hold himself still. A body reacts to pain, tries to save itself, and he fights to stay under. Locks his limbs to keep from shaking. He needs this. Deserves it. He straightens, slicks back his hair, raises his face to the boiling water. Stretches up on his toes, elevates his whole body, feels it like acid rain on his shoulders, his neck, his cheeks, his chin—

“Stefan!” Aaron’s seen the colour of Stefan’s skin and he’s running over, almost strobed by the film of water obscuring Stefan’s vision, steadying himself on the taps of the showers in between. “Stef! You’re hurting yourself!”

“Fuck off, Aaron!” He tries to push Aaron away, but the boy is pulling at his arm, wincing as the hot water sprays over him, dragging them both away from the shower and into the clear space in the middle of the annexe. Stefan tries to get rid of him, but Aaron holds on. “What the fuck are you even doing here, anyway?”

“What do you mean? ” Aaron practically screams.

Finally Aaron has to let go, for the sake of his own balance. Stefan, relieved of the weight, slips on the wet floor and falls, lands on his rear. Barely even registers the pain. Fuck it; embrace it. He rearranges himself on the tile, legs crossed, leaning back. Exposed.

You all want to see this wreck? Want to witness it? Then here it is. Look at it. Fucking look at it.

“I mean, ” he says, “that you’re a fucking idiot, Aaron. Don’t you see how stupid all the shit you keep doing is? How unnecessary? It’s not a part of you. You’re just fucking around. It’s not in-trin-sic!” He strips the word apart, hits the floor with closed knuckles on every syllable. “You didn’t have to do any of it. You could have just been a regular guy. You didn’t need all that shit!” He looks up, fixes the confused Aaron with a sneer. “Why’d you do it? Were you bored? Lonely? Did you just fancy her that much?”

Aaron flails his arms as he replies. “I don’t know, all right? I just do things sometimes!”

Stefan laughs. The water, still running, pools around him. There’s a little red mixed in, and he inspects his knuckles. Bleeding.

“You’re a likeable enough guy, you know, Aaron?” he says. “You’re nice looking, you can be fun. You even have money! You could have just been you. Got along fine. You didn’t need to be a fucking prick. But you were, anyway, and it got you dragged down here, under all this… fucking concrete.”

Aaron crouches. His eyes quickly cover Stefan’s body. Looking for what? “I didn’t get along,” he says quietly. “Nobody liked me, okay? Nobody. For a million reasons. I know what I’m like, but what the fuck else am I going to do?”

“Oh, boo fucking hoo, Aaron. ‘Nobody likes me so I harass women.’ That’s sad. ”

“Fuck you, Stefan,” Aaron says, straightening up.

“No, fuck you, Aaron, you little perv.”

Aaron throws his wet towel on the floor of the shower room, wraps himself in his robe, and leaves the annexe as quickly as the slippery floor will allow. Stefan, uncaring, hangs his head back and stares at the concrete ceiling.

“What are you doing, Stefan?”

It’s Pippa, advancing on him, leather boots kicking up spray. Frowning. Great, he’s a puzzle again. She holds out a hand to help him up. He ignores it, pushes up from the floor on his own, returns to his shower. But it’s not helping any more. It’s just really fucking hot water. He closes the tap.

“You’re red,” Pippa says, with a gasp in her voice. “All over! Doesn’t it hurt?”

He smooths his hair up and out of his eyes and slips his robe back on. The rough fabric scratches as it drags over his scalded skin, and he bites the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out. As soon as he’s covered, as soon as he’s hidden again, he follows Aaron out of the bathroom.

Of course it hurts. That’s the point.

 

* * *

 

Christine’s managed to forget that Indira’s thumbprint is registered to her door lock, so her entry comes as something of a surprise. It shouldn’t: it was her habit for a long time, and Indira’s always been prone to nostalgia for the earlier days of their relationship; now that she’s reassigned, she’s probably feeling rather more sentimental than usual.

“Hi, Teenie,” she says. “Hi Vicky, hi Paige.” She’s dressed for a day out, in the light colours she prefers, sunglasses atop her head, knee-length skirt billowing in the breeze from the open window. “Remember when I used to wake you all the time? Well, I have a helper now.”

In the second year, it was a common occurrence for Indira to wake her with a tray of breakfast, some good cheer, and the details of whatever aspect of her feminine bearing she had to attend to that day; usually Dira would reminisce about how good Christine had it, because in her day they’d yet to phase out the archaic mannerism training — hours of learning such irrelevancies as how to stand gracefully from a chair while wearing a short skirt — whereas Christine and her cohort were lucky enough simply to be handed a pair of high heels each, given access to the dress-up box, and left more or less to their own devices. If it hadn’t been for Paige meticulously trying on every type of garment at least once, and Vicky enthusiastically putting together something beautiful or fun and encouraging the others to model something similar, Christine would probably still have trouble walking in heels. Even if it sometimes took a little encouragement from Paige to get her to stop playing with the new phones they gave them — smartphones changed a surprising amount in a single year — and start taking the whole business of being a woman at least slightly more seriously.

She raises two fingers to her lips in memory. They are, Vicky aside, different people now. And yet still always together.

“Beatrice said you might need fluids,” Hasan says, following Indira through the door with a tray laden with drinks and cereal bars.

“This is very nice of you, Indira, Hasan,” Christine says, pushing up in bed and making sure to take the sheets with her; there’s discarded underwear on the floor and she’s not about to take the slight pressure around her chest as evidence that it’s not hers without a visual inspection, “but we’re in kind of a compromised position, here.”

Indira refuses to be scolded. “Aunt Bea said you all ended up in here.” No need to ask how she knows: the corridor cams. A reminder to hop into the system later and make sure she and Faye weren’t caught on video using the back stairs; there’s no cameras around those doors that she knows of, but it’s possible they might show up in the corner of the conservatory camera, accessing an area they shouldn’t.

“And she suggested,” Hasan continues, “that at least one of you could use some hangover care.”

Paige, the guilty party, shuffles up onto her elbows, curling a section of sheet around her chest with one hand and fetching a glass of orange juice with the other. She smiles her gratitude at Hasan, passes the glass to Christine, and retrieves the other for herself.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Vicky says, not yet sitting up, “but could we have a little privacy now? We’re all rather, uh—”

“We’re naked,” Paige says, and takes a deep drink from her juice.

“And I’m pretty sure we all have headaches,” Christine adds.

“Say no more,” Hasan says, and takes Indira’s hand. After some minor negotiations — yes, Christine will come down to the kitchen within the next hour to see her off; yes, Vicky can give them a lift because she’s going that way, anyway — they leave the three girls alone.

Vicky rubs her face and groans. “Why do embarrassing things always happen around you, Tina?” Vicky says. “No-one’s boyfriend sees me in my underwear at home.”

“Because I’m cursed,” Christine says. “Do you even allow men in your house, anyway?”

“It’s not like a rule. It’s just coincidence.”

“‘No men except by appointment’.” Christine mimes nailing a plaque to a wall. “What do you do if a stray wanders in by accident? Do you even have a basement?”

“Bad taste, Tina,” Vicky says, throwing off the covers and revealing herself to be, out of all of them, possibly the most clothed — she must have dug through Christine’s drawers at some point and borrowed the cami she has on — and thus, by a process of elimination, which Christine participates in by rolling her chest and feeling her breasts move inside last night’s bra, establishing Paige as the least. “We have an actual trans girl in my house. No feminisation jokes allowed.”

Christine bites her lip against the temptation to retort that they have one here, too, and her throat tightens momentarily. Medical exams this morning, right? She’ll have to check on Stef later. “That’s literally my entire repertoire,” she says. “I run on gallows humour. And estradiol. Actually, Paige, can you pass me my pills? They’re in the drawer.”

Paige complies, popping one out for herself. “Exactly how much did I drink last night?” she says, mostly unimpeded by the pill; they’ve all had considerable practise at talking normally while estradiol dissolves under their tongues. “I feel worse than I did after the Christmas bash.”

“Too much,” Vicky says.

“There were sherries,” Christine says.

“And those little alcoholic chocolates.”

“And you had, I’m pretty sure, more wine than me and Vick combined.”

“I hate myself,” Paige mutters.

“Consider it a valuable life lesson,” Vicky says. “Tina, can I borrow some clothes?”

Christine waves her permission and Vicky starts digging, eventually pulling out a pair of white shorts and pairing them with a sky blue top, a combination that reliably makes Christine look like she’s off to play sandcastles at the beach and so, obviously, looks incredible on Vicky.

Wordlessly Christine drains her orange juice and then drops an estradiol into her mouth, trying not to think about how much work she still has ahead of her if she wants to be as effortlessly and consistently feminine as Vicky. Step one might be to become an entirely different person, but she’s done that once already and isn’t keen to repeat the experience.

“I,” she announces, “need a shower.”

She’s not all that surprised when Paige follows her into the bathroom and sits heavily on the toilet. As Christine finishes pulling off underwear, throwing bra and knickers at the small hamper in the corner and hanging the beautiful borrowed stockings carefully over the towel rack, she marvels once again that Paige, with her elegant figure and torrent of dark blonde hair — still at least half extensions — can make naked look like high fashion. As usual, Christine is the clumsy, unfeminine Hobbit amongst serene, pristine Elves.

The frosted shower door saves her from any further unflattering comparisons.

“When, exactly, did I take off all my underwear?” Paige asks eventually.

“I have no idea. You were still wearing your stockings when I fell asleep.” Christine doesn’t add that she knows this because Paige trapped her with her leg for at least half the night. “If you need clean stuff you can borrow some of mine. I’m dying to see how much better my bras look on you.”

“They’ll look worse,” Paige says. “You’re bigger than me, there.” She doesn’t sound quite like herself. The hangover?

“Sports bras, then.”

“Okay, thanks,” Paige says, and falls silent for a while. It’s not until Christine gets done shaving her legs that she says anything else. “Christine, what are you going to do when you leave the programme? Aunt Bea is very close to giving you your freedom, I think.”

Christine’s reply bubbles in her throat as she rinses out the conditioner, so she doesn’t answer until she steps out of the shower to see Paige still sitting on the toilet, knees together, uncharacteristically pensive.

“I don’t know,” Christine says, carefully. “I’ll probably keep living here until I graduate Saints; maybe longer. Paige, is something up?”

“I’m not sure,” she says. “After Nell… I’ve been thinking. About the last couple of years. About the way I’ve been. About who I’ve been. And about us. As friends, I mean. All of us. Remember what I said last night? About how our friends are actually just your friends?”

“I remember disagreeing,” Christine says, wrapping herself in a towel and wincing slightly. Her nipples are still a little sensitive.

“I feel like I’m about to lose everything,” Paige says. “Vicky’s already drifting away. She spends more time with Lorna and her other friends than with us. And now you’re not being actively sponsored any more, you’re a step closer to leaving, and then will I even see Indira or Abby again? I just— I don’t want to be alone, Christine.”

Christine holds out her hand and waits patiently until Paige takes it. She tugs gently, encouraging her to stand, to accept the hug. “You won’t be alone,” she says into Paige’s shoulder.

“I feel so pathetic,” Paige says. “Everyone else is moving on, and even though I have these plans and I can step through them, point by point, I can talk to brands and do photoshoots and put myself out there, but all I can think is, what’s the point? If I come back here to my room and I’m the only one here, what’s the point?”

“Hey! One, you have a plan and you’re actually executing it, which is… beyond amazing, Paige. I don’t have plans; I have vague intentions. And, two—” Christine pulls away a little so she can look up at her, “—you’re not the only one who doesn’t have anyone outside these walls, okay?”

“That’s not all I am, though, right? Not just someone you live with? Someone you know, someone you… went through some stuff with.” Paige hiccups. “Someone you experimented with.”

“No.” Christine keeps looking up, into beautiful amber eyes that don’t look back. “You’re one of my best friends, Paige. I never, ever thought, when I was— when I was how I was before, that I would have someone like you in my life. That I would ever be so lucky. You’re incredible, okay? I’ll always choose to have you in my life.”

Paige leans into the hug, drawing Christine back in, pressing whole-body against her. “Okay. It’s just… I realised that my plan, the one you’re so impressed by, it doesn’t have people in it. Just me. And I couldn’t stand it. And I can do it, I can go out there, be the cis girl I’m supposed to be, but I need a life, not just a career. And I need people in it who are real. Who belong to me, not to the persona. I want to stay close to them. I want to stay close to you.”

“Are you saying you want to be one of those women who leaves uni and moves straight into a flatshare with her dorm girlfriends?”

“More or less.”

“Let’s do it, then. Let’s add that to the plan. You and me. Abby if she wants to come. We’ll live near Vicky and Lorna.” Christine draws distracted circles on Paige’s back. “You know what?” she says. “I might be at least as scared of the future as you are. Making a life? As Christine? I want it, but it’s terrifying. I know how to be me, sure, but mainly I know how to be me in here. And I don’t want to be like Maria and Aunt Bea, never leaving Dorley Hall, calcifying in here. I want to get out there. And, Paige, if I can do that with you, with Abby, with Vicky, with Indira, that’s, like, half the terror factor gone, instantly.”

“Good,” Paige says, muffled; she’s buried her face in Christine’s wet hair.

“You know what I’ve never been scared of, though? Being alone. Not really. I’ve never doubted we’ll stay together, all of us, in some way. I’m fully expecting to be ninety and still have you in my life. You, Dira, Abby, Vicky. We’re family, Paige. We always will be.”

“You mean that?”

Christine stands on her toes and whispers into Paige’s ear, “Let’s be crotchety old ladies together.” She’s instantly hugged tighter, lifted almost off the floor and held there until Vicky bangs on the bathroom door, breaking the spell.

“I’m going downstairs!” Vicky yells. “I need medicinal amounts of coffee.”

Paige puts her down and steps back, smiling. “I’m incredibly naked, aren’t I?”

Christine lifts the hand she’s still holding, brings it to her lips, and kisses Paige gently on the knuckles. “Babe, you are so fucking naked.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re an idiot, Stefan. What are you? A fucking idiot. Why do you — schhh! — do these things to yourself? These people — gchhh! — are going to see every inch of you by the end of the day! So why — fuck! — can’t you just cope? ”

Taking off his robe dragged a layer of skin off with it, or felt like it did, and now Stefan sits gingerly on the chair in his room, dabbing carefully at himself with a towel, trying to dry himself without making anything worse. There’s a tube of moisturiser by the computer, and every time he gets a new patch halfway dry he rubs a handful into the pink, stinging flesh.

“Had to mouth off at Aaron, too, didn’t you? Idiot. You have one friend down here, and just because you’re too stupid to compartmentalise, you might have alienated him for good. Keep — fucking piece of shit! — your mouth shut! ”

He didn’t get a chance to collect himself. That’s what it was. Straight from bed to the shower, from alone to naked and surrounded by people, and faced with Pippa and Aaron and Maria and fucking Declan in quick succession. No time to prepare himself. No wonder he got caught in his worst attack yet of…

Stefan’s never known what to call it. He’s looked it up online but nothing’s ever felt adequate. It’s being witnessed, known, understood; reduced. As if he exists in a quantum state, balanced equally between the things he is and the things he is not, and the act of observation collapses him into only the things he is not. Unmakes him. Pulls him out of himself, leaving only grotesquerie behind.

Best prepare, then. Because diving into the shower on its hottest setting and waiting for his skin to sluice away from his body is not a coping strategy he can use long term.

By the time his door opens and three women file in — Pippa, Maria, and another, older woman he’s never seen before — Stefan’s dried, dressed, slightly less pink, and marginally more prepared for what’s about to happen. Abby described it: there’ll be a full-body examination, although she was light on the details — he would have pressed her on it, but something about her phrasing suggested she didn’t want to relive it — and then he’ll have some blood drawn and provide some sperm.

The sperm thing is a worry.

Pippa leans against the wall and Maria, the door. No getting out except through her. The nurse shoos him off the chair so she can sit down.

“Strip,” she says, as he perches on the end of the bed.

“Hi,” he says, running through his prepared script. “I’m Stefan. Would it be okay if it was just you and me in the room, please? I’m uncomfortable being naked around so many people, and I promise I won’t give you any trouble.”

“Ah-ha!” the nurse says, half-turning to grin at Maria. “This one’s polite, isn’t he?” She turns back. “They stay. Now strip. The third time I have to ask for anything, I do so with this.” She pulls a taser out of a pocket; it has the same touch-sensitive strip as the ones the sponsors have, although it’s a bulkier unit. A heavier charge? And still usable only by sponsors and, evidently, nurses.

Stefan nods, and turns away from them to undress. He’s not wearing much — less weight on his sore skin — and it takes only seconds to drop the t-shirt and trousers onto the bed.

“Underwear too,” the nurse says, waving her taser. As Stefan complies, she turns back to Maria. “Wow. What happened to him? Some new protocol I’m not briefed on? He looks like he’s got five sunburns.”

Stefan can’t help twitching at the question.

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“The shower water was too hot,” Pippa says.

“That’s it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Pippa shrug. “I think he was distracted, and didn’t notice until it was too late. One of the other boys was needling him. You know how it is.”

“Hmm. There’s scabs on his knuckles, too.”

“Y—yes,” Pippa says. Apparently she hadn’t seen those. “He fell.”

“He fell? You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. All right, boy. Turn around. All the way round. To face us.” The nurse sighs. “And move your hands!” She strikes the back of Stefan’s wrist with a biro.

Stefan complies, forcing stiff hands behind his back, exposing himself, keeping his mind as blank as he can. He’s a robot, following instructions. He’s a mannequin, a poseable doll. He’s not here. He finds a spot of wall near the door to look at, but can’t stop his gaze flickering every so often to Pippa. She looks… concerned? And either she really hadn’t understood what happened in the shower annexe, or she just lied for him. Why?

“Okay,” the nurse says. “Let’s go. Tasers up, please.”

Maria and, a second later, Pippa raise their weapons and keep them raised, pointing right at him, as if he might suddenly become dangerous, and Stefan understands why when the nurse leans down and cups his genitals in her hand.

He forces his teeth together. Balls his hands into fists behind his back.

“What’s this, Karen?” Pippa says.

“It’s just procedure,” the nurse, Karen, says, rolling Stefan’s testicles around in her fingers.

“You didn’t do this to m—”

“—to your last boy?” Karen finishes. Stefan’s almost too occupied keeping himself frozen to notice Pippa’s slip-up. “No, I imagine not. But I heard your Barb retired. So, now you have me.”

“This is too—”

“Maria, do we need to have this girl removed?”

Maria moves her steady, practised gaze to Pippa, although her taser remains focused on Stefan. “No,” she says. “Pippa’s fine.”

“Yeah,” Pippa says, and locks eyes with Stefan for a moment. He doesn’t know what he reads there, and she looks away quickly. “I’m fine.”

“Good!” the nurse says, and rummages in her bag for an iPhone and a measuring tape. Stefan manages not to react when she pulls his penis out to its maximum length and holds the cold tape up against it. “I must say, Pippa,” she adds, tapping a number into her phone, “he’s a credit to you. Very docile. Normally we’d have had to knock them down at least once by now. About half these exams are on boys who are unconscious. I’m sure you remember. Well done.”

“Thanks,” Pippa says.

Stefan closes his eyes. No-one comments on it, as far as he’s aware. He stops listening to the nurse, tries to listen to the sound of his own heart instead, and by feeling his pulse in his wrist he’s able to do so, or so he imagines. He lets his body be guided into whatever positions are required, he breathes slowly and carefully, and he concentrates on being nothing but a functional automaton.

A machine made of meat, he remembers.

Muffled, the nurse goes about her inspection, has him stand on a scale, notes down his height and weight with a comment that both are ‘very suitable’, and pushes him down into a sitting position on the edge of the bed so she can examine his head and neck.

The sharp rap of a biro on his forehead forces him back into the room.

“Boy! Hold out your arm and make a fist! If I have to ask again, I’ll shock you first!”

God, it’s bright in the room. Stefan, still naked, still being watched, takes a moment to pick something new to look at — the computer, fine — then unlinks his fingers and holds out his arm, fist still clenched. The nurse gives him a strange look, and starts pinching at his forearm until she finds a vein.

Five vials.

Another rap on the forehead. “Hey! Brain-dead boy! Put your clothes back on. None of us enjoy looking at all that.” He controls his flinch. At least this time he can turn away while he dresses. Puts on a clean hoodie this time, no matter the weight on his skin; the more armour, the better. When he’s done, the nurse drops a collection cup and an iPad onto his bed. “I imagine that’s his first porn in weeks,” she says. “Make sure he doesn’t blow his load before he can get it in the cup.”

He doesn’t look up as they leave, just sits down carefully on the bed again and slowly leans back, keeping his feet on the floor, resting his head against the duvet. He’s aware of a mild commotion outside, but occupies himself counting the cracks in the concrete ceiling.

At least he has some time while they talk. How long will it take to become properly human again? To reassemble his imitation of a functional person?

But then the lock cycles again and Pippa quietly re-enters, closing and locking the door behind her. Stefan, barely limber, finds himself locking up again.

Whatever. At least he’s dressed.

Pippa sits delicately on the end of the bed, moving the cup and the tablet onto the desk. “I’m sorry about her,” she says. “They didn’t do the… the crotch stuff before. That’s new. I would have warned you.”

“Why?” Stefan’s voice is dry, and difficult.

“Because!” Pippa says, indignant. She makes a fist, like he did, but releases it. Starts messing with her bracelet instead. “I know I haven’t given you much reason to trust me. And I feel like… this… might have put us back where we started. Worse, even.” Stefan snorts. “But I’m here to help you, Stefan. Here to make you better. This place works, if you let it. I’ve… I’ve seen it.”

He has nothing to say to that. He knows too much, and isn’t in a frame of mind to edit. And her suddenly earnest face reminds him of Christine. He’s surrounded by true believers, and all of them, even the nice ones, want to tell him the good news about Dorley fucking Hall.

“Why won’t you talk to me, Stefan?” Pippa says, kicking the bedframe.

“Because,” he croaks. He doesn’t mean to antagonise her, but he’s in no position to be the person — the man — he’s supposed to be right now. He needs time to get himself back; surely that’s obvious? How can she not see he’s been freaking out all morning? Is he that good at hiding it?

He knows he’s not.

Pippa looks at him. He feels it on his skin, like boiling water. “Breakfast time,” she says.

“I’m staying here.”

“You won’t eat?”

Eating means Aaron. It means Will and Adam and all the other fuckers out there. It means sponsors, looking at him the way Maria and the nurse look at him. “No.”

“I could count this as a strike.”

Stefan pulls the covers over his head, would keep pulling if he could, more and more layers. He’d bury himself; anything to be even more comprehensively hidden from the world than he already is, here in this concrete dungeon.

“Do what you have to do, Pippa,” he says.

He can only guess at her reaction. After a minute or so the mattress shifts as Pippa’s weight leaves it. The door opens and closes quietly and, finally, grants Stefan peace.

 

* * *

 

The mug tree’s been emptied of all the joke ones. For security purposes, obviously; when there are outsiders in Dorley Hall’s main kitchen and dining hall you don’t want them discovering anything that even hints at the place’s true purpose, like a mug that says, Don’t feminise me until I’ve had my coffee, or Maria when she’s had too much to drink. So Christine sips from something disappointingly plain, with koalas on it — “Smoothest brain of all mammals,” she was informed by a revitalised Paige when she picked it — and smiles indulgently at Indira and Hasan, who are failing horribly at their stated goal of leaving to visit some of Hasan’s extended family in the next county, because they’re perched on the end of the kitchen table, kissing again.

“You’re going to be late,” Christine says.

“You’re going to make me late,” says Vicky, who is driving them to the station.

“Fine,” Indira says, between kisses, “fine, fine. Look! We’re done.”

“She says that,” Hasan says, pecking Dira on the cheek, “but just wait until we’re in the car.”

“No!” Vicky says, wagging a finger. “No canoodling on my back seat.”

Canoodling? Christine mouths to Paige, who’s mostly been ignoring the commotion while she absorbs caffeine. She shrugs and smiles, with the little one-sided grin she used to throw Christine’s way all the time.

Dira tugs on the strap of Christine’s tank top — she couldn’t be bothered to dress femme, not before she’s finished waking up, and if Aunt Bea has any complaints then she knows where the appropriate retort is printed on the side of a mug — and drags her up and out of her seat, into a hug. Indira’s going away again, and when she comes back their relationship will have changed forever, so Christine squeezes her former sponsor as hard as she can, coaxing a surprised squeak out of her.

“Sorry.”

Indira draws back, and kisses the end of Christine’s nose. “I’ll be back in a few days,” she whispers.

“I know. It seems like you’re always away, though.”

“I know.”

“And when you get back… things will be different.”

“I’ll always make time for you, Teenie. You know that.”

“I know. Sorry for being clingy.”

“Shush. And welcome to your first day as a free woman.”

A final squeeze and Christine releases her. “Have a good trip,” she says, and kisses Indira on the cheek. Another change. Another inflection point. Too many of those in too short a time. She knows how Paige feels: everything’s suddenly moving fast. You’re not panicking about being girls any more, so get out and make room for the next lot!

Not actually how it works — the programme couldn’t function if dozens of programme graduates didn’t stay on, or come back to visit, and it would probably actually be healthier for some of them if they took a year away from Dorley and found themselves a new hobby — but it’s hard to remember sometimes. Christine rebuilt her whole life on a foundation that now feels unstable.

So when she cries, watching Indira step out of the front door, blowing kisses and waving, it’s entirely natural that Paige embraces her, rubs the back of her neck, sits her carefully back down, and refills her coffee. They share wordless smiles and keep fingers entwined on the table as they drink, listening to the sizzle of the coffee machine, the mechanical mutterings of the dishwasher, and birdsong from somewhere outside the barred windows.

Old ladies together.

A few minutes later, after a pair of haggard-looking sponsors pass through the kitchen on their way downstairs, Pippa barges her way through the doors, deposits herself at the table and buries her face in her folded arms.

Christine exchanges glances with Paige, who puts a tentative hand on Pippa’s shoulder.

“You okay, Pippa?” Christine says.

She breathes heavily through her teeth. “I’m not cut out for this,” she says.

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.” She sighs with her whole body, lifting her shoulders and letting the tension ripple down her spine. “But I should. It’s Stefan. I’m just completely lost.”

“Is he okay?”

“Right now? Absolutely not.”

“What happened?” Paige asks.

“He was just… different today. The whole time up to now he’s been no trouble. At all. The worst he’s ever given me is, I don’t know, flipping sarcasm.” She lifts her head, props it on her wrist, and accepts with her free hand a fresh cup of coffee from Christine, who sits back down on her other side and mimics the light touch Paige has been maintaining on Pippa’s shoulder. “And that should be exactly what I want, yeah? But he keeps, I don’t know, short-circuiting me, because I remember what I was like when I was in his position, and he’s just completely different. And I remember what everyone else in my intake was like, and he’s not like them, either. He’s not like anyone I’ve seen in the files, and I’ve read everyone’s files while I try to work him out. You two included; sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Paige says, and smiles at Christine over Pippa’s head. “We’re not those people any more.”

“He’s not even like Melissa! Even she was a little trouble, at the start. Not combative, not if you believe Abby, but she argued. Or at least sulked, I guess. I don’t know; Abby’s redacted a lot. But Stefan! He just sits there and takes it. We get them up early, and he just goes along with it. We send them to their rooms, and he just goes along with it.”

Christine relaxes a little. She’s been tense ever since Pippa mentioned Melissa: there are too many things that join her and Stef together, and only the routine redaction of biographical information from the daily files seems so far to have kept them from being obvious. But Pippa merely mentioned her as an example, and moved on instantly. There’s no indication that she knows anything. Paranoid, Christine, she scolds herself. “But that’s good, isn’t it?” she says. “His sister—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Pippa says. “His sister who he loves so much he’ll suffer any indignity for her. Feels a bit unlikely, but I get it.” Turning her bracelet around on her wrist again. “So it didn’t really feel like it matters that I’m always messing up with him, because he never actually makes trouble. But I’ve still been worrying about it because, when push comes to shove, I need to know how he works to help him through the steps; but I’ve not been too worried because, you know, I’ve got time. They only start on the estradiol tonight, and it’s going to take a while for that to bear fruit. And he’s so steady, you know? Just keeps going and going, watching his movies and reading his books. He’s even been a moderating force on the three boys he hangs out with. Kind of.” She laughs for a moment. “I think it’ll take a hundred-mile-an-hour wrench to the head to change Aaron. Just knock out the chunk of brain that compels him to— uh, never mind.” She coughs, and Christine rubs her shoulder: It’s okay. “So I’ve felt a little, in just the last day or two, like I’ve been establishing a rapport with him, but this morning, everything came crashing down.”

“How so?” Paige asks. Christine’s biting her lip, looking away to mask her concern for Stef.

“When he woke up this morning — when we woke him up, earlier than usual — it was like whatever gets him through the day just didn’t wake up with him. He yelled at Aaron, and it might have been bad enough to seriously screw up the fragile friendship they’ve been building. He scalded himself badly in the shower, deliberately, I’m sure, like it was some kind of self-harm thing, like he really, really just wanted to hurt himself—”

“Hey,” Christine says gently. “Slow down. Take your time.” Pippa’s been tensing, raising her voice, and rising out of her seat; especially with Aunt Bea in the next room, calm is preferable.

“Thanks. Sorry. He wouldn’t talk to me, after the shower thing, just marched back to his room. And for the physical, it was me and Maria, she’s helping me out, now, I don’t know if you remember her getting the assignment—” a pair of nods reassures her that they do, “—but the new nurse… She’s horrid. She gave him the physical and he completely shut down. It was like, you know how some people get after the, uh, after the, um, you know, down there—”

“Pippa,” Paige says, “neither of us are sensitive about our orchis any more. You can say the word.”

Christine wants to argue — she reserves the right still to be pissed off about it, even if she’d definitely get it done voluntarily if she happened to need one and was asked, say, today — but she keeps quiet.

“Well, the, uh, the orchi,” Pippa says, apparently at least as sensitive about hers as Christine is, “hits some of us like an invasion, right? Like, no matter all the changes that have happened up to that point, it’s the first big one, the first real, total disruption of bodily integrity, yes?”

“It’s mutilation,” Paige says. “If you don’t ask for it, it’s mutilation.”

“Right. Yes. Well, Stefan behaved just like that. Like he was being… invaded. And the only way he could get through it was just to switch off. To wait it out. Like he was being, um…”

Christine can guess what Pippa wants to say. She’s not going to say it. But Christine’s thinking it, and she’s wondering if there’s still a way she can get Stef out, because this is far from the last time someone is going to do something like that, and punish him if he makes even the slightest fuss about it.

“Who’s this new nurse?” she asks.

“Barbara retired. The new one, Karen, I don’t know her. I assume she’s, you know, one of us, but she’s old, older than Maria, I think, and I’ve never seen her before. And she talked about Stefan like he wasn’t even there, like, like she was a vet and he was a dog, and she—” she lowers her voice, “—handled his genitalia. Inspected it. Measured it.”

“Oh,” Christine says.

“That’s new,” Paige says.

“Afterwards, he barely said a word. Wouldn’t go to breakfast. I apologised to him for… how it was, and said I would have warned him if I knew, and he said, ‘Why?’ and I was really angry with him because why wouldn’t I be, and then I saw myself through his eyes and it just made me feel so flipping wrong. But it was like I couldn’t keep a lid on it. I even, and I don’t know why, threatened him with a strike if he didn’t go to breakfast, and he didn’t seem to care.”

“What did you do?” Christine asks.

“Left him in his room. Couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

“Did you give him a strike?”

“No!”

“You know what I think?” Paige says. “I think you need to forget about him for a while.”

“Paige!” Christine says.

“I’m serious! He’s not going anywhere, and if he’s in his room, he’s safe. Hungry, maybe, but you can ask one of the duty girls to send a couple of cereal bars down in the dumbwaiter. He might be miserable right now, but you know what always helped me when something happened that I just couldn’t deal with?”

“What?” Pippa says.

“Time. Give him time. Don’t bother him while he’s recovering. And come out to Almsworth with us instead of sitting around, worrying about him.”

No. Not this. Christine’s willing to go along with Paige’s assertions and not bother Stef for the moment, but this is beyond the pale. “I said I didn’t want to go shopping, Paige. I said I wanted a nice, sleepy day where absolutely nothing happens. Until tonight, when we’re going out, I guess.”

“That was before. Now we have two reasons to go: to get you some clothes, which you need, and to give Pippa a chance to de-stress, to get away from all this.” Paige catches Christine’s eye when Pippa looks away, and there’s a request there.

“Fine,” Christine says. “But I still don’t see why I need clothes; I have all yours.”

“First: presumptuous. Second: I’m two inches taller than you, Christine. You need clothes that fit, and your selection of nice things is pitiful. Besides, this is—” she makes quotes with her forefingers, “—a fun bonding activity for girls. It’s in the manual. Back me up, Pippa.”

Pippa blinks and takes a second to gather herself before answering, and Christine’s forced to agree with Paige: the girl really needs some relief. From the situation Christine put her in.

“Yes,” Pippa says. “Not exactly that wording, but yes. Group bonding while engaged in traditionally girly activities. Rerunning being a mid-teenager, but in your early twenties. And with more money.”

Christine holds up her hands. “I’m already beaten. We’re going shopping.”

“Good,” Paige says. “You don’t know how long I’ve been looking forward to putting you in something cute and taking you into town and buying you something nice, and this might be one of the last sunny days of the year. Go ask Aunt Bea for the card.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the one who’s been put on the accounts.”

Christine drains her coffee and pushes away from the table. The other two follow her into the dining hall, flanking her as she heads to the central table, where Aunt Bea is eating breakfast with the second years and some of their sponsors.

No Nell. An enforced break? Or is she downstairs, applying her signature brand of unpleasantness to the boys running around down there? Not including Stef, hopefully.

Faye and Rebecca beckon her over, so she joins them at their end of the table, an elbow on the back of each chair, leaning between them and accepting quick hugs from a pair of girls otherwise preoccupied with toast and coffee. Most of the second years are still wearing exercise clothes with hoodies and shirts thrown over the top, in order to be presentable for breakfast, and Christine grimaces; she doesn’t miss being rounded up with all the other second years, four times a week, at various times of day, to run on the treadmills and lift hilariously small, pink weights in the first floor exercise room. It might have been necessary — a year underground with no easily-weaponisable gym equipment leaves you quite out of shape — but it’s a chore she’s grateful to be free of, even if her own exercise regime has degraded to the occasional run around campus.

Paige quietly explains their plans to Aunt Bea, whose eyes flicker to Pippa and then to Christine, with a smile. “You’ll be well-behaved, I trust?” she says.

Christine straightens up and draws a cross on her chest. “Like saints, Aunt Bea.”

“And this evening? Your plans?”

“We’re meeting up with Vicky and Lorna,” Paige says, “and going out.”

“Exact destination TBD,” Christine adds.

Aunt Bea nods, reaches into her bag and, after a little rooting around, passes a credit card across the table. Six pairs of second-year eyes follow it into Christine’s hand. “Don’t go mad with it.”

Christine squeezes Faye’s shoulder and steps away from the table, linking back up with Pippa and Paige. “No promises!” she calls, and on her left, Pippa laughs.

 

* * *

 

There’s a selection of white noise files on the phones they hand out, and Stefan’s been plugged into one — rain_valley_3hrs.mp3 — since shortly after Pippa left. Eyes closed, lying on his back under the covers, clenching and unclenching his fists, calming himself down.

Despite the duvet he’d still felt exposed, so, after a little while, keeping his headphones in to the best of his ability, he added a long-sleeved top over the t-shirt and put the hoodie back on over it all. He lies there now, layers over layers, too warm but safe. Even if they spy on him through the cameras, there’s nothing to see but his face.

Stefan wants badly to berate himself, but there’s no reason and no point: there’s no version of him that could have borne the examination gracefully. So he tries instead to blank his mind and listen to the rain.

I’m not here.

Aaron knocks, ninety minutes of rain sounds later. Yells through the door that he just wants to see what’s up. Stefan struggles out of bed — he’d got more wrapped up in the duvet than he realised — and lets him in. Doesn’t cover up again when he sits back down, though. Aaron looking at him isn’t so bad; he doesn’t make judgements.

At least, he didn’t before.

Aaron kicks the door shut behind him and sits on the chair. Like Stefan, he’s wearing more layers than usual; maybe the examination got to him, too?

“Soooooo,” Aaron says. “How’re you doing? You wank yet? Ah—” Aaron spins on the chair and picks up the sample cup from the desk, “—evidently not. Me neither. Something about having an evil old hag digitally masticate my meat-and-two-veg, it just doesn’t put me in the mood, and no amount of heavily curated iPad porn is going to change that.” He balances the cup on his finger, spins it like a plate, and catches it when it threatens to escape. “I don’t know why they even need the cup. I have this patch on my wall I got pretty good at hitting. It’s like a sport, or making your own entertainment, the way our ancestors did. If I hit the spunk spot, it’s a good wank; if I don’t, I just have to keep going until I do, or until the blood from the friction burns gets too distracting. Anyway, they have whole gallons of my precious, precious baby juice soaking into the paint that they could have come for at any time.” He starts flipping through the iPad. “Huh. Yeah. They gave you the same shit they gave me. I was hoping you got better stuff, but this is just, like, swimsuit models, blowjobs, blah blah fucking blah. Would it kill them to have given us some sexy aunts or rubber maids or girls using toys on each other or trans girls sucking each other off? This is all so fucking vanilla; no wonder the women here all act like they’ve had no fun in years. And no wonder I couldn’t get it up. Look at this one! It’s just a chick, sitting on a rock, hair all billowy in the wind. Like a commercial for shampoo. I can feel myself getting softer just looking at it. Hell, I’m practically inverting.” He throws the iPad onto the bed next to Stefan. “So, quick question, not really very important at all, don’t worry about it if not, but have you been finding it hard to get hard, lately? Trickier than usual, I mean? Because I feel like I’ve got no petrol in my tank and nowhere around here is selling premium unleaded. Talk to me, Stefan. You dismissed my very real and valid concerns about my pecs getting flabby and I don’t want you to dismiss my incredibly tragic erectile dysfunction with the same nonchalance. Seriously: quality of wanks, getting better, getting worse, about the same…?”

“I, uh, haven’t tried yet,” Stefan says.

“Not at all? Not since you came here?” Stefan shakes his head and Aaron coughs nervously. “God, if I’d known I was masturbating for two I wouldn’t have wasted all that time sleeping. No wanks? Not even a quick toss after waking up with a boner? You really haven’t just lain here, put on one of those lame-ass movies they loaded us up with, found the part that’s most suggestive and just kept hitting the go-back-ten-seconds button with one hand while getting yourself off with the other? No dick flick to a chick flick? Shit, man, I know this place is hell on the libido but that’s something else. You know it’s not November for another week, yeah?”

“Um. What?”

Aaron launches into an explanation of No Nut November — of which Stefan was already aware; Aaron strongly disapproves, because suppressing the natural urges is how you get serial killers and electro swing bands, man — and Stefan just listens, inserting the occasional syllable where it seems to be required to keep the flow going but otherwise letting the stream of consciousness flow over him. It’s calming; way better than forest sounds.

“So,” Aaron says, mid-monologue, bouncing himself onto the mattress at the other end of the bed from Stefan, “that medical exam was weird, huh?”

Fuck it. Might as well come to terms with it: he’s friends with the little bastard. And talking to him is better than the alternative. “Right?” he says. “The nurse was even freaking Pippa out. And I don’t know why I had to be naked the whole time. You don’t need to be naked to have your blood drawn.”

“It’s a power play. Maria’s been giving me these books to read about, like, toxic masculinity and stuff, expanding my vocabulary, so now I can say with confidence that the whole thing was carefully planned to disempower us—” he says the word like he just learned it in junior school, with a grin, “—to make us feel vulnerable and completely at their mercy. And also kinda cold.”

“I’m amazed you read any books Maria gave you.”

“Yeah, well, she temporarily deleted all my movies and all the books on my phone. No choice. What’s Pippa been making you read?”

“Um. Nothing?”

“Really? What is she doing, then?”

“Literally nothing. I just watch movies and read books when I’m alone. I don’t have any homework or anything like that.”

“God. Swap?”

“Yeah, like they’d let us. Maybe the lesson I have to learn is about dealing with extreme boredom.”

“Yeah,” Aaron says, and shifts a little closer. “Missed you at breakfast, man. Weetabix and oat milk isn’t the same with just Will and Adam to stare at. And Raph is still lurking like a big fucking weirdo. He walks past, looking at me, and the music from Jaws plays. So, what do you think? Come to lunch?”

Stefan stretches, keeps the sleeves wrapped around his fingers, feels the fabric grow taut across his back and scratch at the sensitive skin. It’s energising; he’s still here, still alive, and here’s the pain to prove it.

He’ll be ready for the next thing. He won’t get caught out like that again.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Okay!” Aaron jumps up from the bed. “Good.”

“I’m sorry about this morning.”

“Hey,” Aaron says, standing by the door, waiting for Stefan to open it with his thumbprint, “it does me good to look my demons in the face sometimes, even if they are naked, damp and strangely earnest. Besides, this place gets to all of us, eventually. Some of us have a freakout in the privacy of our own rooms, others of us try and give ourselves second-degree burns in the shower. You still sore from that?”

Stefan prods the biometric reader and hauls on the door. “Little bit, yeah.”

“Here?” Aaron says, poking at Stefan’s shoulder as they head out into the corridor.

“Ow! Yes, I’m still sore there.”

“What about here?”

“Ow!”

“How about…?”

“Hah! Missed!”

“Hey! Come back! You were mean to me and I need to punish you! It’s the only way I can get personal satisfaction! It might be the only way I can cum in the cup!”

“Leave me alone, you psycho!”

Stefan evades him, dodging away from Aaron’s fingers and rounding the corner into the main corridor, almost tripping over Maria, and the perplexed look on her face only makes him laugh harder.

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