Chapter Text
There is a man sat on a stool set in front of a curtained backdrop. He’s wearing a tan jacket over a monochrome striped top. He looks into the camera and waves nervously.
“Hi! I’m Stede. I’m getting ready to enter the house for the first time and live with my ex! The thing that I’ll miss the most is regular internet access. Sorry, kids, but you’re not as addictive as sudoku and you’re a lot more resentful of the divorce!
No, I’m kidding, could we do that again and I’ll be serious? I’ll miss them, obviously, but I know they’re in good hands. My ex-wife has them most of the time, anyway, so there’s no disruption to their routine.”
He stops. Pauses. Pulls at his jacket a little.
“Hi! I’m Stede. I’m getting ready to enter the house for the first time and live with my ex! The thing that I’ll miss the most is my kids, obviously. But I couldn’t pass up the chance to experience this. What a social experiment!”
They use the second one. Of course they do. They want buzzwords. They only have ten seconds per contestant.
There are strobe lights and cheers from the live audience, and a cacophany of so much noise as Stede wheels his large suitcase behind him. It explodes between his eardrums like gunfire popping off in a newsreel of an urban warzone. The production team have allowed him his discreet mini-earplugs, but they don’t stem the noise enough to stop his teeth being on edge, and it doesn’t mean that he struggles any less to pick his path over the metal walkway as he leaves the frantically grinning host behind.
Wave, he remembers from the instructions he was given earlier. Wave and smile. Look pleased to be here, and pleased to see them. They’re the ones that will be voting for you.
He waves in the direction of the noise. He smiles – hopefully smiles, rather than grimaces – until his cheeks hurt.
And then he’s in the house, and the doors slide closed behind him, and the crowd noise stops.
For a moment, he hears only the absence of sound, as blinding to his ears as the unpredictable wall of sound had been. And then he takes his earplugs out, and his ears adjust, and he looks around. The sound of a refrigerator comes from the kitchen, because the main room is open plan. Just a kitchen with a breakfast bar, a small coffee table and a sofa with a TV, electrics humming quietly as it sits on standby. He’s seen previous seasons in preparation for this, knows that there’s a very limited amount of access to media. There’s also the sound of a dripping tap, and the quiet hum of the heating system working away. Just normal household sounds - what other people call silence - nothing from outside.
He makes his way to the sofa, leaves his suitcase next to the arm, and sits. And waits. It feels rude, somehow, to explore further. He knows there’s a garden. He knows there’s a bedroom. He knows there’s a bathroom. He’d not really seen this programme before applying — had only heard colleagues talking about it and seen the trailers — but he’s nothing if not a thorough researcher. He’s intensely studied what could happen, like an archaeologist sifting for clues through Skara Brae, trying to piece together how the whole thing works before the deadline, and he falls into the sea and drowns.
He’s not quite sure what he actually wants to happen. Still hasn’t really figured out what made him click the button that sent him on this path. He knows what he really wants, and he knows that he can’t have it. He thinks he knows, sort of, what he might hope for. Has no idea if it’s possible.
He’s interrupted by the blare from outside as the door whooshes open again. Looks up into the face of the man he’s not seen for eight months.
“Hello, Edward!” he says, forcing brightness. Remembers to look at his face - two seconds at a time is perfectly acceptable, look at the face, not directly into the eyes - tries to remember to turn his lips up into a friendly smile. Behind Ed, the door whooshes closed again and leaves them in silence.
Ed’s fully clad in leather, which is always a good look for him. Slight hint of eyeliner. One arm bare, showing off the winding snake tattooed into his skin. Beard trimmed short. Hair up, as well, properly styled. Small silver dagger earring dangling from one ear.
He looks unapproachably hot. The kind of guy that would skim over Stede without a second glance. The kind of guy that would sniff out Stede’s oddness in a second and push Stede down as a way to lift himself up. There are probably people watching on their televisions right now, wondering how the hell the two people in this room were ever together in the first place.
But Stede knows differently. Ed had never been anything but politely tolerant when Stede’s weirdness had slipped out. Had never mocked him. And yes, it hadn’t worked out, and no, Ed hadn’t wanted anything serious, but he’d never been cruel. Never said anything that had deliberately hurt Stede. Not until the end.
And it aches in all sorts of ways to see him. To think about everything they weren’t and could never be.
But that’s silly, because those things were as far out of his grasp as calculus is to a golden retriever.
“Hey,” Ed says. He stands, shuffles his weight between his feet a little. Hand still holding onto the suitcase that he has pulled in behind him. He glances at Stede and then looks away, around the house. Stede has no idea what he’s thinking.
“How’ve you been?” Stede asks. He can keep a conversation going. He can do small talk. He has a list of topics that he can pull out at a moment’s notice, keep an interaction going for approximately four minutes before faltering, unless the other person picks up the thread to continue it. And he’s never needed it for Ed before, but he’s willing to try anything.
“Oh yeah, good, mate, good,” Ed says. He’s still looking around and not at Stede, so Stede lets himself look at Ed’s knuckles on the suitcase, gripping tightly, as a respite.
“You?” Ed asks, suddenly, returning the nicety.
“Oh yes!” says Stede. “Carrying on, you know!”
Ed nods, like he doesn’t really know and isn’t really interested in pushing.
The voice of Jackie Delahaye, their host and the only point of contact they’ll have with the real world, booms through the house.
“Welcome to the house! We’re going to ask five questions, to see how well you know each other! You have ten seconds per question! If you get them right, you get to choose your dinner!”
The TV switches itself on, and a starting screen plays. This isn’t a normal part of the programme, but the production team have made concessions to Stede’s auditory processing issues. Stede shuffles over wordlessly, and Ed, after a moment of confused hesitation, joins him.
“Ed!” The screen text says and Jackie reads out, “How old is Stede?”
Ed says without hesitation, “Forty-nine.”
The screen explodes with fireworks to signify their victory. How kitsch. Stede wrinkles his nose slightly, but then has to concentrate for his own question.
“Stede, when is Ed’s birthday?”
“Er, tenth of March,” Stede says. He doesn’t look at Ed. He doesn’t want to revisit that topic again. He knows he’s right.
“Ed, how many children does Stede have?”
“Two,” Ed says, again without hesitation. He doesn’t look at Stede, clearly not eager to reopen that subject either.
“Stede, how long were you together?”
And that’s a much more difficult question, isn’t it? How do you count these things, off the apps? When you match? When you meet? When you fuck? If you make it official? Those are wildly different answers.
“Three seconds!” Jackie announces.
“Five months,” he blurts out, because that’s as good a guess as any. “As much as we were together.”
“What the fuck does that mea—”
“Ed,” the TV interrupts, “what does Stede do for a living?”
Ed stares at the screen for a long moment.
The clock ticks down. Four seconds left.
“He’s er… a consultant?”
The fireworks appear.
“Congratulations, boys, you’ve won a dinner of your choice! You get to pick in a half hour.”
They sit, side by side, and they don’t say anything. Sometimes, for Stede, a rolling list of options for conversation flick in front of him, and he just can’t choose which one is right. This time it’s not even that; the wave of disapproval from Ed rolls over him like the tide on a sandbar, smothering all oxygen to his brain. He’s said something wrong. He always says something wrong. Even when he’s just stating the truth, he says it in the wrong way, or in the wrong tone, or with the wrong nuance. Other people can say exactly the same thing and get applauded, where Stede is felled like a particularly unsightly tree.
Ed’s finger draws random patterns on the arm of the sofa, his gaze fixed on the imagined swirls. “Kinda guessed at your job,” he says eventually. It’s not really a surprise. It’s not Stede’s fondest topic.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Stede says, grasping at the proffered olive branch and clinging on. “So do I, most of the time.”
Ed huffs a laugh. “I know it’s fancy as shit.”
It’s not. It’s boring. It’s soulless. It’s slowly destroying Stede from the inside out like one of those parasites that Alma likes to watch on grisly documentaries about, and all he can do is silently take it. “One of the jobs that will be first up against the wall, come the revolution,” he says.
“Aw, no, man,” Ed replies. “Reckon that’s gonna be those recruiters that cold call you.”
“Maybe restructuring managers?” Stede offers.
“Head of Vibes,” Ed parries back.
Stede squints at him, tries not to crack a smile. “You’re joking,” he says suspiciously.
“Nah, man, let me show you—“ Ed goes to grab his phone out of his pocket, then sighs. “That’s gonna take some getting used to,” he says.
Stede tries not to think about his lack of access to Google whenever a random thought crosses his mind. To Maps whenever he wants to see where a place is. To the New York Times puzzle app. Then decides maybe it’s a preferable topic compared to thinking about how easy it is to chat with Ed, when it works.
“Should we, er?” Stede says, because one of them needs to say something. He makes a vague gesture in the direction of the bedroom, hopes that his meaning comes across.
Ed stares at the door for a second, jaw clenching. “Yeah,” he says. “Alright. Let’s get this over with.”
Yeah. That would do it. Ed all over, isn’t it? Just wants to get in, get to the shit he’s after, get out.
“Sure!” Stede says, ladening his voice with cheer, and follows him.
The bedroom is small. Cosy. There’s a single wardrobe, and Stede hadn’t realised quite how small it was when he’d packed, and then he catches himself, because no, they’re going to have to share it. Oh God. And isn’t that a metaphor for this whole thing, having to squeeze all of yourself into a space that can’t even contain half of you?
There is, of course, only one bed. He’d known this. Ed must have known this as well, even though he’s staring at it like he’s only just realised their situation.
“So, uh, left or right?” he asks. “Side,” he adds, to clarify. “Of the bed.” Now he’s rambling, shut up, shut up.
“Uh,” Ed says. Helpful. “I dunno, man, do you…?” He stops, runs a hand through his hair until it reaches the bun and he can’t go any further.
Stede has a side he prefers. Not prefers. He has a very specific side he needs to have, because he can only sleep on one side, and if he has the other side he has to sleep facing the centre of the bed, and that means he’s going to have to sleep facing Ed, and deal with the sleep noises of Ed. And Ed isn’t a weird sleeper, but Stede definitely will not be able to sleep if he has to face Ed all night; the knowledge of face staring at face will haunt the back of his eyelids and make that impossible.
“Oh, no preference!” he says. He can’t start this off by being weird and awkward.
Ed shrugs. “Guess I’ll take left, then,” he says.
Stede doesn’t panic. Because he contains it. Squashes it down. Ignores the way it itches behind his eyeballs and claws at the inside of his skin, desperate to get out.
“Great!” he says. It’s terrible.
He takes the right. He can try and sleep on his other side (he can’t) or ignore the way that he’s going to have to face Ed.
It’s fine. Ed doesn’t know. They hadn’t spent a lot of time in beds sleeping. And when they had postcoitally fallen into a snooze, Stede had either managed to shuffle his way to the left side, or just lain awake uncomfortably on the wrong side waiting, whiling away the minutes in his mind, for an appropriate time to get up.
It’ll be fine.
They set their things up in mainly silence. Stede lets his gaze wander around the bedroom - no window, just one wardrobe, enough space for them each to have their suitcase on their side of the room. There’s a weird patch in the ceiling that looks like a haunted butterfly.
Stede doesn’t mention it.
He dithers, when he comes to the suitcase. He could fill that wardrobe over twice. It had looked bigger on his television screen at home. He picks a few of his favourite outfits, shakes them out. Starts to hang them up. He can choose. It’s not going to be problem. He can cycle outfits around.
“Hey, uh,” Ed says, and Stede turns around to look at him. It’s the first time Ed’s said anything to him that isn’t a follow-up to something.
Ed’s still staring at the bed, not meeting Stede’s eyes. And look, normally it would be a relief, to not have someone’s eyes boring into his soul. To not have to figure out what is not enough and what is too much and to walk the tightrope between the two blindfolded. But this isn’t. This is just an impenetrable barrier.
“Take the whole wardrobe, man.”
Stede starts to demur, but Ed just shakes his head. “You’re the clotheshorse, not me. I don’t really wanna unpack that much. We might get voted out in two weeks.”
And that makes something twist in Stede’s stomach, to think that Ed is looking for a way out of this already. And, okay, it was Stede who made the application for this. But Ed had agreed to it, clearly, or neither of them would be here. Maybe he’s regretting his decision to get stuck with the clotheshorse already.
“If you’re sure?” Stede asks, a final protest. He shouldn’t want the whole wardrobe, he knows he should make a stand about this, but he’s agreeing, meek as a lamb, and sorting slightly more of his clothes into an order that pleases him.
It shouldn’t make him feel better, but it does.
He tries not to pay attention to whatever Ed is doing, ignores the sound of a suitcase being manhandled in the corner. He shouldn’t need to look over and check that what he’s doing is still okay.
He looks.
Ed catches him. Raises his eyebrows in a ‘yeah?’ gesture.
“Nothing, sorry,” Stede says, and concentrates on his own choices. The tension that lies in the air between them feels thick and heavy, leaden in its weight and toxicity, choking the air that Stede is breathing. He cycles through some breathing exercises unobtrusively, tries to keep himself from spiralling about this. They’ve been here five minutes, he can’t be struggling already.
And it’s fine. It’s fine. They don’t really say much as they sort their individual lives out for the next one to six weeks, and what they do say is practical - an apology for getting in the other’s way, a polite request to hand something over.
And attending to his clothes gives Stede a task, so that he doesn’t have to deal with the aimlessness of having nothing to do. It’s hard to know if Ed feels the same - he’s always doing something, all the time - but Stede thinks he hears a sigh of relief when they’re called out to the main room for their dinner choices.
And to start, they go through the dance again - excessively deferential, tripping over themselves to avoid getting in the other’s way. And nearly all couples start like that, Stede knows from his research. It’s not an indicator of how well they’re going to get on later. The only exceptions he’s seen have been the couples that are exes but had stayed friends, and, well. That’s not them, is it? They’ve not spoken since the argument. Ed hasn’t let him speak since the argument.
And maybe those couples are why Stede’s here, beyond the spirit of adventure and trying things. Their shared smiles, and jokes. Their camaraderie.
He thinks they could have that. In his heart of hearts, he doesn’t think that they’re through.
He lets Ed pick, in the end. Something mildly spicy, that Stede won’t like but will mercifully be able to tolerate without letting any clues slip past his face.
They’ll have to be more independent with their shopping lists in future weeks, but to start, meal ingredients are delivered through a hatch, with instructions. Like one of those food box services that are advertised on, it seems, every single online space known to man. There are already other provisions in the fridge - alcohol, of course, because god knows the show gets better when inhibitions drop. But also staples - milk, sugar, tea, coffee. Assorted store cupboard ingredients.
They split the tasks between them, and move around the kitchen. It’s tight - of course it’s tight, the producers want to amplify any sort of tension possible - but also, they’ve never really done this before. Routine and cosy had never been on the cards with Ed, and yet if Stede glances to one side, he can see the man diligently chopping vegetables. With a look of concentration on his face, yes, but also looking like it’s not the first time he’s done this. He sweeps what he’s done to the corner of his chopping board, then gets the next vegetable, as if he knows what he’s doing.
It’s domestic, and suddenly Stede feels like these next weeks might be harder than he’d ever imagined. It’s one thing to look at him and remember that he’s out of reach. It’s another to see him play out the fantasy of what Stede might have wanted him to be, at one point. And it’s going to happen every day. For weeks.
Fuck.
He turns back to his own task, fiddles with the hob unnecessarily.
“Didn’t know you could cook,” Ed says, and Stede looks up to find he’s being watched.
“I couldn’t, before the divorce,” he says. “But I learnt fast! Had to figure out how to look after myself.”
More to the point; had melted down completely at the thought of having to look after the children, without Mary. He’d done overnights without her, of course, when she’d had an art…gala?…but then there’d always been pre-prepared food left in the fridge with instructions taped to the cling film and what time he needed to start, to make sure that dinner rolled into bedtime - both their pyjamas laid out for him - in the right way. So he’d gone out, bought Delia’s How To Cook, had studied how to boil an egg and moved on up the levels.
Had realised, pretty quickly, that breaded dinosaur-shaped processed chicken was the choice that got him into their good graces, if not Mary’s. But he used what he’d learned for himself, had even learned to enjoy following a recipe with clear instructions that led to - more or less - predictable outcomes. Had found that putting a podcast on to soothe him meant that cooking was something he could enjoy with a mindlessness that seeped through his soul like a marinade.
Not that he’s doing much of that right now. He takes the chopped vegetables that Ed offers him, adds them to the pan as directed by the instructions. Ed goes to squeeze past him, and Stede pushes himself as far into the stove as he can. Ed must do the same with the counter behind him, because he passes by without touching at all. The scorching heat from the stove is more welcome, right now, than the heat of embarrassment from an accidental touch from Ed.
“Didn’t know you could cook, either,” he offers.
“Yeah, I, uh. Used to cook for me and mum.” And Stede doesn’t think Ed wants any more questions on that - he knows a little, from before. That it was just Ed and his mum, after his dad left. That she’d worked long hours. That teenage Ed had basically been left to his own devices. Knows that it upsets Ed, to think of those times, and that he’s only spoken about it with Stede once — after Stede tripped into the subject by accident — and then never mentioned it again.
“Oh,” he says, watching the hunch of Ed’s shoulders, and the way he’s turned away from Stede slightly. Definitely doesn’t want more questions. Because Stede doesn’t want to ask about Ed’s mum — not on live television — and he definitely doesn’t want to ask why they couldn’t have this. He might get an answer.
They make conversation over dinner. It’s stilted in a way that reminds Stede of first dates. Because Stede has dated a lot of people. More than someone who doesn’t struggle with people would. And he very much gets the impression that his ability to garner second dates is a side effect of him being not that bad rather than anyone being particularly enthusiastic about him. But it had been easy, with Ed. He didn’t make Stede feel like Stede was saying idiot things. They’d laughed. Stede couldn’t remember a first date where he’d been relaxed enough to give a real laugh.
But now Ed is telling that Jack story, and he’s twisting the fork around in his fingers and jigging his leg. And Stede is giving polite little laughs in the right pauses, even though Stede has heard it before and didn’t really think was funny the first time around, even though he thinks that Jack is an obnoxious arse who deserves everything the story gives to him and more.
And they have a glass of wine afterwards, perhaps both hoping that it will loosen their tongues towards the easy company they’d kept with each other before. And it hurts, because that’s what Stede misses more than anything. The way that Stede could say something, and Ed would just pick it up and run with it. The way that it had felt like friendship, even when it was convenience. And then suddenly that had been ripped away from him in one go, and it’s been eight months - longer than they’d known each other - and Stede is still reeling.
It doesn’t feel like that now. They both stare into the bottoms of their glasses, occasionally offering a line that the other doesn’t seem to know how to respond to.
Bedtime is no better. They both retire early - a long day, they say, although perhaps because unconsciousness will take them away from the other’s company. And it’s awkward. At some point they seem to have subconsciously agreed to share the bathroom, and it’s a terrible idea. They get in each other’s way. They knock elbows as they both try and brush their teeth at the same time.
He can feel Ed waiting for the sink and mirror as he starts his skincare regime, hovering behind him, then waiting some more. He can see him in the mirror. Stede’s trying to rush through it as fast as he can, but there are certain steps that just take the time they take.
“I’m sorry.”
“’S’fine. Just wasn’t expecting it.” Gruff. Not giving anything away.
And no, he wouldn’t. Because Stede had skipped it, when he was with Ed. And he’d love to say that it was because lustful indiscretion had made him forget it was necessary. And maybe sometimes it had been something like that. Or trying to grab hold of something that he’d been told was out of bounds, at least.
But mainly he tried to take up as little space as possible with his stupid idiosyncrasies. He’d wanted Ed to like him.
He still wants Ed to like him. More than anything.
But also, he’s not having bad skin on television.
He shuffles over to one side as much as humanly possible. “There’s enough room for two, if you like?”
Ed grunts in acknowledgement, then takes up the other half of the sink, keeping well to his side. Starts stripping his eye makeup off. He’s already in a faded band t-shirt and his underwear, tattooed legs and feet on the cool tiles of the floor. His hair has lost the styling he’s been sporting all day and is piled on top of his head in a loose bun. He looks soft. He looks like everything Stede wants and is not allowed to have.
He leaves, crawls into the side of the bed that he hates, tries to ignore the human sliding into the other side of the bed. Tries to ignore him shuffling around, breathing. Tries to ignore that it’s Ed. And if he dozes off fitfully at all during the night, he doesn’t notice.