9th August, no rush

So, Wednesday’s episode then! I thought Ballum’s scenes were beautiful, Ben opening up, Callum opening up a little in return, Ben telling him he’s going to get help and Callum being so proud of him. I’m also proud of him, of both of them. Warning of discussions of eating disorders and sexual assault in this post.

Before we get to Ballum, Ben has to get to a place where he feels strong enough to recover from this setback and go back home to continue telling Callum about everything, like he had been trying to do before the Lewis mention triggered him massively. The episode opens with him launching an attack on the punchbag at the gym, relentless as the noise of a passing train blocks out everything, and distorts Kat’s voice as she tries to speak to Ben, commenting on how it’s a bit late for the gym, joking about what the punchbag has ever done to Ben (and considering that it’s not hard to guess who Ben might be thinking of as the punchbag, quite a lot actually), and then growing worried when Ben doesn’t seem to hear her and continues punching manically, obsessively. He’s got so much pain that he’s trying to expel. She starts shouting for him to stop, but Ben’s still so far away, and his own tiredness makes him stop. He turns to Kat and she’s alarmed to see how upset he is.

Meanwhile, Callum’s ended up at the Vic with a beer, looking so very sad and lost. Yolande, who’s only just returned to the Square, sees him from where she’s sitting and comments to Patrick with certainty that somebody’s hurt him. It’s one of those common soap cliches where a character seems to know exactly what’s going on with another character despite not being told a thing. Yolande has never even met Callum before tonight, but she’s compelled to go over and speak to him about two people putting their hearts on the line, and to make sure it’s worth it. Funny thing is she probably doesn’t know that the other person is Ben, who she knew as a child from when she was last living in the Square.
As contrived as it was, I did like that moment. It almost felt like two different eras of the show meeting, and also the fact that as soon as Yolande mentions making sure it’s worth it, Callum gives a little smile because he knows it is. He loves Ben wholly and unconditionally. He’s not just in pain because of what Ben said to him, but because he knows it came from a place of deep pain on Ben’s part and that hurts him too. Like he said before, he carries that weight regardless of whether Ben lets him in.

At the gym, Kat’s got Ben sat in the office and tries to coax Ben into talking by commenting on the state she found him in. Ben says he’s fine but there’s no way Kat’s buying that, everything about him is screaming that he is in fact not fine. Ben knows it too, he can’t even pretend. He’s quick to say no when Kat suggests she call Callum, and she assumes they’ve had a fight and reckons all Ben needs to do is just go home, kiss and make up, and that if he’s worried Callum won’t reciprocate, Kat assures him that no matter what the Mitchells do, the people in their orbit always come running back.
But Ben can’t do this anymore. What, exactly, is unclear but I feel like it’s just.. everything. Feeling the way he does, reacting the way he does, fighting so hard to keep control but then abruptly losing it and lashing out as a result. I think the point is because he bottles things up, it explodes out of him when someone tries to open the lid. And the more pressure that’s inside, the less that’s needed to cause an outburst. Callum only had to mention Lewis and Ben was so unprepared that those dark thoughts came tumbling out. Ben’s come to use purging as a way to try and relieve that pressure but it doesn’t address the source, and as Honey said, the relief is only fleeting.
Kat asks him what’s wrong, the jokiness dropped as she can see how distressed he is. She guesses it’s about Lola, and Ben huffs out a humourless laugh because that’s what he was trying to pretend it was about. And obviously her loss affected him deeply, but how he dealt with her diagnosis and death was due to what happened to him, and the fact he couldn’t do anything about it was a trigger for him.
He tells Kat what Callum thinks, that he’s been struggling since something happened to him. He’s careful not to say whether or not he himself agrees with that, but I think it’s apparent to Kat that Callum was spot on, and Ben knows it too.
Ben obviously can’t bring himself to actually say the words – but turns out he doesn’t have to as Kat already knows about Lewis. Ben’s reaction shows he didn’t realise she knew, and Kat doesn’t say how she knew, so it’s up for interpretation I guess as to how that came about. The obvious one is that Phil told her at some point, possibly recently in the context of being proud of him for seemingly holding it together. Or maybe she worked it out somehow herself, which may explain the way she wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation as to how she knew. But really, the important thing is she knows and Ben doesn’t have to say anything, explain anything; he just nods his head.
You can tell it takes a lot for Kat to speak about her own experience, but in the interest of connecting with Ben she does – she describes how no matter where she went, it was always there. Ben tears up because he identifies with that; even though he’s been trying to pretend it hasn’t always been there, it is, and it makes him angry.
Kat asks if he’s spoken to Callum about it, and there’s another laugh from Ben, which pretty much tells Kat that either he hasn’t, or he’s tried and it’s gone wrong. She concedes that it’s hard talking to the people closest to you, but mentions how much better it would have been for her if she’d had someone to talk to; basically telling Ben that even if he can’t talk to Callum he should talk to someone. She also tells him he doesn’t have to live like this, that there’s help. Counselling, support groups. Kat seems to think that a support group would be a good thing for Ben, with people around him that get it. Ben can’t see himself talking to a group of strangers, but Kat insists he doesn’t have to talk about it; he can just go. If the first step is just merely listening to other experiences, then it’s still a first step. And considering that this week we’ve had Ben listening to Honey’s experience and relating to it, then Kat’s experience and relating to it; maybe it could be good for Ben to feel like he’s not alone or that he’s weak and stupid for struggling. And that could encourage him to start talking. That’s obviously Kat’s logic, and she offers to come with him if he goes, so he’s not feeling like the only one not talking, and they can just listen instead. He doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no either.
She guesses that this is affecting his relationship with Callum; she’s been there, after all. She urges him not to let it, because it will destroy him and everyone he loves. They then sit with that as the scene ends.
Ben’s just been so afraid to ask for help, afraid to be vulnerable. It’s felt like he’s had no time to, with the timing of Lola’s diagnosis and then her death. He found a coping method that felt like it was successfully keeping his trauma under control, but it’s now a problem in itself because it’s causing damage too, and as it turns out, wasn’t actually helping deal with that trauma.

This episode was largely focused on four different couples having night time conversations; I appreciated that they still included Kat in the set up of Ballum’s conversation, even though it was quite short in order to make room for the rest of the episode.
So we finally come back to the flat, which is mostly in darkness, to see Callum waiting for Ben. Ben approaches and says his name, but it takes a second time for Callum to turn to look at him. Ben hugs himself, still in his boxing clothes which I think is to visualise his vulnerability – it takes me back to the first time he told Callum he loved him, which had them both in their shorts and t-shirts, bare skin exposed to reflect their feelings doing the same. He didn’t get changed at the gym before coming home – he’s just arrived as he is and hoping it’s enough. He waits for Callum to speak first, to gauge his mood I suppose – and Callum looks at him for a moment, taking him in. He tells Ben about what Yolande had said to him in the Vic about putting your heart on the line and making sure it’s worth it. Ben’s words hurt him because feels like he puts his heart on the line for Ben every day, and has always felt like it’s worth it, but feels like that was thrown back in his face, twisted thoughts that are not just untrue, they hurt to think about. It hurts to think of Ben thinking them and it hurts to be compared to a man who’s caused his husband immeasurable pain.
Ben starts to approach, telling Callum he didn’t mean it and that Callum was right – Ben was being ridiculous, and he’s sorry. Callum tells him he sees what he’s going through, so even if he doesn’t understand; he sees the pain and it causes him pain too. It’s like what he said back in April; even if he doesn’t know what’s wrong, he still carries the burden of seeing Ben struggle. We’ve seen him notice Ben’s behaviour and has probably been hoping that Ben will come to him because he doesn’t want to push him, and Ben had promised not to shut him out. But he points out that Ben’s been pushing him further away instead. Ben has been trying, and he tells Callum he was going to tell him everything, but the mention of Lewis set him off. He lost it because Callum had been right and Ben had so badly wanted that to not be the truth that he fought hard against it. He admits that he hates that Lewis has that over him – the long term damage, the fear of not being in control and the way he reacts when he isn’t.
But Callum reaches out this time and finds points of contact as he makes sure Ben hears what he’s saying – which is that Lewis doesn’t define him. He’s Ben Mitchell, Callum’s husband, and Lewis doesn’t get to ruin them. And Ben can’t keep his eyes off of Callum while he says this because he so badly wants that to be the truth.

With Ben’s acknowledgement that Lewis has caused the feeling of not being able to control anything, it paves the way for him to continue where he left off earlier, when Callum knew Ben had something to tell him. Callum tries to make it as safe as possible for Ben to open up, a grounding hand on his knee and the promise that he’s here.
It takes a while for Ben to try and formulate words, but Callum waits, not rushing him or pushing him. Ben finally admits he hasn’t been eating; but it doesn’t feel like enough of an explanation, because it’s not that he doesn’t have an appetite, he is deliberately avoiding food. The instinct to put on a bravado is still there in the little twitches of his mouth, like he’s trying to play it off – a bit like his scene with Callum in the police interview room. He waits for Callum to react, and Callum doesn’t really know how to. He offers what he’d seen, which is that Ben wasn’t eating as much as normal but he put it down to a strict regime – and that’s what Ben had told him. He’d noticed Ben not eating before that too, but clearly interpreted it in hindsight as Ben wanting to get in shape. But Ben’s shaking his head, still hugging himself tightly as he interrupts to tell Callum he doesn’t eat. He expands on it by then describing how sometimes he can’t eat fast enough, but when that happens he feels an urge to get rid of it all. That tells Callum that even the times he’s seen Ben eat, Ben’s been struggling because the feeling of having the food inside him makes Ben want to bring it all up again and reset back to no intake.
Ben admits he thinks he has a problem, with that sad smile that falters as he takes in the enormity of what he’s just said. It’s a huge step, and this time there are no interruptions or triggers. Callum’s still got a hand on Ben’s knee, and he tentatively asks Ben how it started. Ben recalls not eating one day and his head telling him that he didn’t need to – or more crucially, that he could if he wanted to, but he was making a choice not to. And by the end of the day he felt like he’d achieved something, which for him felt like a way of proving he wasn’t useless. He was trying to convince himself it was because he was training and getting into shape, doing it for himself; but those were covers. It had started before then (or at least we first saw it onscreen before then, when he was refusing to line his stomach at Callum’s promotion drinks), but with the boxing he was able to hide it better.
Callum looks so devastated at what he’s hearing. Ben was suffering and it was right under his nose. That little tear track hurts to see, but he’s holding it together because Ben needs to talk and be heard. His devotion to Ben truly is incredible.
Ben then talks about how the bulimia developed; that Kathy brought him food in the cafe one day and he couldn’t avoid eating it so he did. It’s not specified when this is (the one time we saw Kathy bring him food, he did manage to get out of it) but it’s enough to confirm to us that it was going on before the first time we saw him purge in the Vic toilets. I don’t think Ben really knows for sure when it was either, and I think it makes sense that his timeline is muddled because he’s just been focusing on ways to regain a sense of control and grabbing onto things that give him that, such as not eating, or running into debt trying to find a cure for Lola.
He tells Callum that after eating that breakfast, he bought loads of food from the Minute Mart and ate it all back at the flat – a binge. And that made him feel disgusting, so he made himself sick to get rid of it all. The key thing about how he’s opening up to Callum like this is not only is he describing what he’s been doing, he’s explaining how it’s all made him feel as well. He’s really trying, not talking for the sake of it but wanting Callum to understand. He brought the food up and it made him feel good. Like when you have a stomach bug and throw up and then feel better afterwards. People talk about eating your feelings, but when your feelings are like Ben’s, it would feel good to expel them. He tells Callum it felt like a release of pain when he did it, and that’s why he keeps doing it.
It’s clear Callum is overcome with the knowledge that this has been happening, the extent of Ben’s pain, and is upset with himself for not noticing. Ben points out that he was making excuses, and it was easy to lie about it; he had the boxing excuse for the most part, and other times it was easy to hide behind grief for Lola. Callum noticed as much as it was possible to notice really – he tried to broach the topic a few times but Ben had always managed to smooth it over.
Callum wants to know if he’s still doing that, making himself sick – obviously unaware that Ben had done it earlier that day, or possibly suspecting it while thinking back to the fish and chip wrappers but wanting to know for sure. Here Ben doesn’t confirm it exactly, but he explains how he’s come to rely on the control around food, because Lola getting diagnosed made him feel so helpless, just like Lewis had done. He doesn’t mention the PR but it’s not like he felt like he had any agency over that either, and that has contributed to his condition massively. Food has become the only thing he’s had a choice over in his mind, and he tells Callum he wants to stop, but isn’t sure if he can, with that little self deprecating shrug. His eating disorder has created a sense of control and for him, the thought of giving that up is bound to be incredibly scary. He has to learn to reframe that and that’s what he needs help with.
Callum’s listened to everything intently, being there for Ben even though it much be so painful to hear. You can see him holding himself back for Ben’s sake, and the space to articulate his feelings was so important to give to Ben. They both did so great here. Ben admitting how he’s been feeling and that he has a problem he’s not sure he can deal with alone; Callum listening and being there. Chef’s kiss.

I don’t know about you, but this next scene is one I haven’t been able to stop watching since Wednesday. Ballum are now watching TV, with Ben snuggled right up to Callum, head on his chest. It’s incredibly domestic, and clear that after Ben’s been so open and vulnerable, they’ve decided to watch some telly to unwind and give Ben some room to recover. What makes it even nicer is that we can hear from the snatches of audio that they’re watching a nature documentary – and that’s been established in canon that Ben likes to watch them and they comfort him (ranging from last year when Ben was watching an elephant documentary at Kathy’s house; to all the way back in 2006.)
With both of them feeling comfortable, Callum gets that instinct to help Ben, assuring him he won’t feel like this forever and suggesting they could look into talking to someone. He’s unaware that Kat’s already suggested that and that Ben’s been thinking it over; but one long look from Ben has Callum backing away, apologising with a little forehead kiss and agreeing when Ben asks if they can just sit for a minute. That really felt like a self aware moment for Callum, hearing himself trying to fix things and realising that Ben didn’t need that in this moment; learning from his mistakes, we love to see it.
That said, he only lets Ben sit for about three seconds before he starts talking again, bless him. But this time he just feels so close to Ben right now that he can’t help but admit that he’d missed him. He’d missed Ben letting him in, trusting Callum with his thoughts and feelings. Missed this emotional closeness that he was able to sense wasn’t there throughout Lola’s illness, but just wasn’t sure how to approach it. Their physical closeness right now on the sofa demonstrates how things have shifted now that Ben’s been honest with how he’s been feeling since Lewis, since Lola. Ben’s own little soft smile when Callum says he’d missed him seems to confirm that he feels the same.
And it’s that that makes Callum broach the topic of their intimacy, very tentatively. Ben looks up at him as Callum talks about how they’ve never spoken about it but that since the attack (not mentioning Lewis before Ben does, another lesson he’s learnt) they haven’t… you know. Had sex. It’s a topic I wasn’t sure would ever be addressed, but I’m really grateful they’re doing it now. It’s easy to see how they didn’t before – aside from the reasons Ballum give in this scene, they reunited the very same day that Lola was diagnosed with a brain tumour, so they’ve not really had the headspace to discuss it.
Callum’s not asking for anything here though, he’s just really pointing it out and maybe hoping Ben will volunteer his thoughts on it. He makes it really clear that he’s not expecting anything by insisting he gets why and softening it with another little kiss and allowing the chance for the subject to drop if Ben doesn’t want to discuss it. At the mention of it, Ben burrows his head a bit closer to Callum like he’s trying to hide, but with Callum leaving it open ended, it makes him admit that he thought Callum might not want him in that way anymore. Suddenly the words he threw at Callum in the previous episode have another layer to them, because he was talking about Callum being turned on at the thought of Ben not having any control – as if his intrusive thoughts were twisting his fears about Callum not wanting him and wondering how Callum was managing without and adding them to the trauma of the rape. The things he said were so telling about how he thinks of himself.
Callum for his part is genuinely surprised and confused about how Ben could possibly think Callum doesn’t want him, because it’s unfathomable to him. Ben does a little shrug in response, and Callum clarifies that he was waiting for Ben to come to him when he was ready. And so it becomes apparent why they’ve never spoken about it – Callum was afraid of pushing Ben or taking the lead in any way, and Ben was afraid of having it confirmed that Callum didn’t fancy him anymore. The public flirting was also probably seen by Callum as bravado and maybe reinforced his assumption – that Ben would come to him when he’s ready. And when it was Callum, Ben was probably assuming it was bravado because it’s something he’d do.
In ordinary circumstances it might be a very odd lack of communication, but as I said before, they’ve had a lot going on occupying their headspace. They were both trying to take a step back – Callum not wanting to look like he was trying to force anything, Ben not wanting to talk about anything anyway and looking for ways to cope so he didn’t have to. It seems Callum could sense it the whole time, and Ben coming to him with everything now has given him the indication that it’s finally the right time to bring it up.
After he assures Ben in no uncertain terms that he could never not fancy him (apparently knowing, despite Ben’s attempts to be jokey, that he really did need that reassurance), he also makes it clear that there’s no rush and they can discuss it – and eventually have it – whenever Ben’s ready. And Ben feels so safe because of that. He puts an arm across Callum to hug him, getting even closer, as close as he physically can, while Callum kisses him again and hugs his head protectively before moving his hands to rub his shoulder and side, taking over from the job Ben was doing himself of self soothing – Ben’s now allowing Callum to do that for him.
This scene is just so quintessentially Ballum for me, how they each approach the topic of intimacy, the way Callum took cues from Ben, the way Ben still held onto a bit of self preservation and Callum seeing through it; and it was a sofa cuddle, which historically tends to lead to good content. Love.

In our last scene of this episode, they’ve moved to the kitchen and Ben explains how difficult talking actually is for him. He was literally raised to think it was weak to talk about stuff, particularly your feelings. Ben knows it’s wrong, but he’s trying to unlearn something he was taught in his formative years and he still finds it so difficult. He did so well tonight though, and Callum’s looking at him adoringly because he knows how hard it was, but Ben did it. Ben’s not even stopping there, as he says he’s going to keep trying, and get some counselling, speak to a professional. And Callum is so pleased, he’s glowing and he tells Ben how brilliant that is. He reaches out for contact, holding onto Ben’s hand as he tells him how proud he is of him. Ben lifts his hand and kisses it, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who was reminded of the scene on the bench in August when he did the same thing. Both times Ben was showing appreciation for Callum and his perseverance, but they’re in a very different stage of their relationship and Ben’s now starting to accept that he deserves to have what he wants, deserves to be happy and accept help. Deserves not to be punished or be in pain.
Talking isn’t the only scary thing – Ben isn’t sure how the process works, but he admits he’s spoken to Kat and that she’s coming with him. Callum is grateful for that too; I think he must know about her past and knows she’d be a good person to accompany Ben. He declares that they’re going to be okay, because he’s sure of it. Not okay right now, but going to be. Ben’s taking his first steps towards recovery and Callum is right there to support him as always. He pulls Ben in, telling him he loves him, and they hold each other in the kitchen. The train noise we heard at the start of the episode (and indeed, during the rape) returns, unmistakable – and then Ben breathes out, and it stops. The noise in his head has quietened, and he shifts his head to get closer to Callum, clinging to him – they’re going to be okay. He’s going to be okay.

They didn’t cover everything that Ben’s been worried about, but it’s certainly a start. I like to think his strength and bravery will grow and he’ll open up more eventually. I also don’t think things will be smooth sailing, but I do think, like Callum, that they’re going to be okay.