Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (54 page)

The shock of it, and the sick thrill of humiliation in his stomach when he's walked upstairs and
watched
until he's done the job, almost makes him cry – but he wants to laugh, as well, he wants to put his arms around Lindsay and hug him forever when he's finished, because this feels like a turning-point. He doesn't, though, just to be sure, and then he's glad he didn't because it's nothing like a turning-point at all. It's just a sort of temporary blip. Lindsay lapses back into his thoughts, wandering around the house like a ghost and sitting on his own out in the garden, looking at the distant Pyrénées or pretending to read or tend to the flowers and vegetables. He still talks to Pip like nothing's wrong – almost. It's quiet, meaningless smalltalk about what's on telly and who's cooking tea and which is a nicer colour wool. He still touches him like there's nothing wrong –

almost.

("Am I hurting you?" Lindsay said one night, in bed.

"No."

"So stop crying."

"I'm not." He pressed his face into the wet pillow, and Lindsay kissed the back of his neck, very softly.)

"Please come back," Pip says one evening when Lindsay's given up on his book and he's given up on his knitting because it's getting too dim and neither of them can be bothered to get up and turn on the light. It's not too dark to see how Lindsay's looking down at him, where Pip's resting his head against his leg, eyebrow raised and not quite smiling.

"What?"

"Where are you? Is it nice?"

"I'm here, sweetheart." It's like a parody of the word, now. He sounds miserable. An unasked-for thought crawls into Pip's head and digs in its claws –

I don't want it if he doesn't.

"You've gone somewhere. It's okay if you want to stay."
It's not okay,

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it's not it's not it's NOT.
"I mean-" He stops again and closes his eyes, because it's easier like that, and swallows hard before he chokes. "I mean, no it ain't okay, but if it's nice and you like it there, you should stay."

"You're talking in riddles."

"Why's a raven like a writing-desk?"

"Something like that." Pip feels a shifting movement, and then Lindsay's fingers touching his hair, but they're gone again too quick like he's changed his mind about how much contact they're allowed to have these days. "I'm here."

It only feels like half a sentence, so Pip prompts him. "But...?"

Nothing for ages, and then only a wobbly sigh so Pip opens his eyes and gets up onto his knees on the middle cushion, trying to make Lindsay look at him and stop chewing on his ragged thumbnail. His hand is shaking. Pip reaches to hold it and take it out of his mouth, and realises his own is unsteady too.

"Lindsay. What?
Please
."

"I slept with Ellie," he says suddenly, spilling the words out like they're burning his mouth.

When Pip replies it sounds and feels far away like he's listening to somebody else's conversation from the next room. "I know. I already had a stupid tantrum about it, remember?"

"No, you... I slept with Ellie, okay? The day of the funeral."

"You stayed with her cos she was upset."

"
I fucked my best friend's wife in his bed an hour after we finished
cremating him
," he snarls, and Pip punches him so hard he feels his finger crack.

Pain flares through his hand, immense and blazing like a supernova, and he's glad of it because it's something to focus on to keep himself anchored just on the very edge of sanity.

"Where's my car keys?" He vaults over the back of the sofa and starts throwing things around the kitchen, half-looking and half because he just wants 433

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to break shit. He rips the kettle out the wall plug, he pelts mugs across the room and yanks drawers right out onto the slate tiles – and then he remembers Lindsay's identical fit after Ty and Danny died and bends over the kitchen sink because he thinks he's going to retch, but he doesn't. He just leans there with his hair all hanging in his face and shouts useless swears until his throat is raw, because what else is there to do?

"Where's my fucking car keys?" he says again when he's all screamed out. He pulls another drawer but he's too distracted by this loathing rage to bother looking what he's doing so he gets the cutlery drawer by accident and spills knives and forks everywhere, and stupid useless fucking little middle-class things that only Lindsay ever uses like the garlic press and lemon zester – and knives, too. Small ones with very sharp points and a huge heavy cleaver and a serrated bread knife and everything in between. Pip suddenly remembers the time he ripped a drawer out almost exactly this same way at home in the flat when he was fourteen, and lined the knives up in size order and drank half a bottle of stolen vodka and tried to get up the nerve to choose one and get it over with before his mum and dad rolled in from the pub. He'd already googled it and everything. He knew exactly where to cut, the artery high up on his leg, but he never did it because Olly texted to ask if he wanted to come over and play some Nintendo and he couldn't think up a good enough reason to say no that'd keep him from coming round to see why and finding the mess.

"Where are you going?" Lindsay says, quietly.

Pip throws the garlic press hard through the open doorway, and one of the knives, and hopes they both hit him square in the face. "I'm just
going
, I wanna go home, I'm going." He's not going anywhere. Fight and flight both evaporate out of him at once and he curls in on himself in the corner, leaning against two cupboard doors, exhausted and crying and cradling his knackered hand. He wants Lindsay to come in and see if he's alright. He's going to stab Lindsay in the chest if he comes anywhere near. Both thoughts at once, chasing each other in circles round his head for ages.

And then he stops snivelling, and sits up. There's only so long you can

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carry on like a whingey little girl with a skinned knee. It's all very calm now, methodical like he's following a recipe: getting trays of ice from the freezer, popping the cubes out into a pair of tea towels, gathering the edges up, taking them back into the living room, giving one to Lindsay to hold against his swelling cheekbone, pressing the other against his throbbing hand. Silence.

Thinking. He's too tired for this. Fighting's okay when it doesn't matter, when all they need to do to get over it is slap and fuck. He's tired.

"Now we're even," he says, calm and honestly meaning it. It's not fixed anything, it's fucked it all over even more, but at least it's balancing now. He's still not looking at Lindsay and Lindsay still isn't looking back when he speaks.

Pip can tell from where his voice is pointing, a hollow sort of murmur getting lost across the room.

"We're
even
? I never got anybody killed."

"It's worse."

"How is it worse?"

"If you don't get it by now you're never gonna get it."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time." Now the words are pointing down, tumbling into his lap. "I hated you. I don't know who started it, but I didn't try to stop it. She cried the whole way through."

"I don't wanna
hear
about it!"

"Then we went back downstairs. People just thought she'd been not much in the mood for company and I was looking after her."

"
Lindsay
."

"Sorry."

Very quietly: "Seriously. My car keys. Shall I go?"

"Do you want to get married? Or whatever the fuck you call it."

"What?
No
." Pip's laughing, suddenly – not because it's funny, but because it's out of the blue and the worst timing ever and he can't help it. "What 435

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are you on?"

"Don't know. You said it first. You kept saying it. If that's what you want. Go if you want, but if
that's
what you want..."

"This maybe ain't the best time to propose, five seconds after you tell me you've got a girlfriend."

"No. Maybe. She's not my girlfriend."

"The same way I ain't your boyfriend?"

"Different."

"Different how?"

"Because it's true?"

"Right."

There's no more words then. Pip just sinks down to rest his head in Lindsay's lap again, and all that's different from before are the two handfuls of melting ice and the feeling that –
finally
– something's turning.

But morning comes and Lindsay's got his guard up again. He was awake first; Pip was barely conscious but couldn't get up the energy to open his eyes or speak, so he just let him go then rolled over to the other side of the bed and pressed his nose into the pillow, breathing the smell of Lindsay's hair and willing himself awake. He finally drags himself up, and finds a t-shirt to pull on with a pair of Lindsay's pyjama trousers. His hand aches like hell.

Lindsay's in the kitchen when he goes downstairs, sitting at the table with one of the empty drawers Pip dragged out and threw yesterday and a pile of junk he's collected from the floor. He's putting it all away again, very slowly, very neatly.

"Morning," Pip says. He suddenly feels weird – like he's not allowed in the room. He stands there in the doorway and rubs at his sleepy eyes. "Lindsay?"

"Mmm."

"You alright?"

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"Were you looking for this?" He holds up the lighter he got Pip for a joke Christmas present, a small silver revolver you spark with the trigger so the flame comes out the barrel. Seeing it makes him wince a bit, but he comes over and takes it.

"Yeah, thought I lost that."

"Must've been under all the rubbish in the drawer."

"Yeah." He hesitates again, standing there close enough that he can hear Lindsay breathing, but Lindsay doesn't look up or say anything else so he just sits down in the opposite chair. If it's going to be like this again, if he's going to have to fill up all the silences with babble and fidgeting and asking too many questions just so Lindsay
has
to speak...

"Is your eye okay?" He can just about see the dark smudge of a bruise on Lindsay's cheekbone and spilling up into his eye socket, but until he lifts his head properly the real damage won't be obvious.

"Yeah." Nothing else.

"My finger's broke, if it makes you feel any better."

"You didn't hit me
that
hard. It's probably just bruised."

"Lindsay. I know what broken bones feel like."

"...Right," he says quietly, after a moment. Nothing else. He just keeps on putting things back in the drawer, letters into neat piles and biros bundled together in elastic bands, grouped by colour.

"I don't need a doctor or nothing, they can't do nothing anyway, it just wants bandaging with a lollystick or something, so can you help me?"

"Mmm."

That's what breaks everything. After all the fighting and all the nasty words, it's that hedging little sound that could mean anything at all but doesn't.

He goes back upstairs and gets in the shower as quick as he can because that'll mean Lindsay won't hear him having a stupid hysterical breakdown – but 437

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he doesn't, when it comes to it. He leans his head against the cool tiles, feeling them slowly warm up from the heat of the water. He wants a time machine, or a proper talk, or a proper
fight
that actually clears the air, but it's obvious now that Lindsay's too stubborn to click himself back together like Lego bricks no matter what Pip does to try and make things right again.

It's a couple of hours before he's back downstairs, putting his bags down quietly by the front door and wandering through the house to find Lindsay. He's not in the kitchen any more, he's finished tidying up and Pip finds him in the living room with an unopened newspaper and an untouched cup of coffee. He's feeling his bruised face carefully, but he stops when he sees he's not alone. Still no words, but he looks up properly this time so Pip can see his swollen eye.

Last chance. "I want you to hit me again."

Lindsay raises his eyebrows, then he frowns. "What?"

"Like before. Like we used to." He comes over and goes down on his knees in front of the chair, crossing his wrists behind his back, and looks up at Lindsay's bruised face to see if he can get
any
trace of a reaction. "I want you to make rules and make me do what I'm told." Lindsay fumbles for words, then seems to give it up and just looks at him, and Pip feels sick because he thought this is what would happen, more of this
nothing
, but he had to try. "Like before.

If you hit me, I'll take it. You can do anything you want. If you make rules and make me do what you tell me then you can sleep with anyone you like and I won't say nothing, cos that'll be the rules. It's alright if you like girls. You can sleep with girls. Sleep with boys if you want, anything, if that's the rules and I have to follow."

"Pip-"

"Please don't."

Lindsay nearly touches him then. His hand reaches out and everything, but he stops and twists his face up and pulls back before his fingers actually get to Pip's cheek. He just sighs, long and shaking.

"Just give me time."

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"You've had time."

"Give me more."

"I can't live like that no more."

"Unless I tell you to."

"Well." He looks down at the carpet and bites his lip, suddenly feeling stupid. "Yeah."

"Why?"

It all sounds wank.
Because I love you. Because I'm sorry. Because you
being horrible to me is still better than anybody else in the world being nice to
me. Because if I'm making you miserable and other people make it better than I
don't care who you touch, so long as you still hug me sometimes and mean it.

Because maybe if you tell me how to be then you'll like me again
. All stupid whiney childish things he can't say. In the end, he just shrugs his shoulders.