Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (16 page)

It's better when he lets go. He stops trying to breathe slowly and just lets it burst out through his nose in a desperate, pleading moan, settling into a vague pattern of hums and whimpers when Valentine starts working his fingers in and out carefully, two at first and then the unexpected, delicious burn of three. His eyes fly open in horror when he feels the tip of Valentine's little finger brush against his arse where the other three are pressed, but Valentine laughs and tells him
shush, babe, I'm just kidding
and he settles back against the pillows trying to glare fiercely but really just sweating like hell and chewing on the knickers gag until his jaw hurts. The pressure's making his injured cheekbone throb again, making his eye feel watery. He's terrified it's going to spill over and Valentine's going to think he's
crying
, but it doesn't happen.

His cock feels so much thicker than his fingers. Lindsay makes more incomprehensible noises around the gag, clenching the fabric hard between his teeth and trying to move his hips, though he's not exactly sure whether he wants to move away or push himself down harder. It's so different to how he remembers it before. They were drunk before. This time they're stone cold sober, he's not feeling any kind of effect from that double whiskey earlier. He's not feeling anything at all that's not connected to what's going on between their bodies, the hot wet demanding thrust of it, the press of Valentine's fingers in his thighs, the soft leather boots, the ache of unused muscles holding his legs in unfamiliar positions, the soft brush of Valentine's backcombed hair against his shin, the glistening sheen of sweat all over their skin and how he can barely tell it apart from the slick of lube on his body making every touch of Valentine's belly against his cock almost unbearable. He winds the ivory satin pants around his hands, slipping and twisting his fingers through the leg holes so there's not even the slightest change he'll accidentally drop them. From years of thinking this kind of loss of control would send him mad, he's reduced to a whimpering sweating mess of need, and when Valentine grasps a frill on the pink knickers and pulls them out of Lindsay's mouth like a magician, the only thing Lindsay can do is gasp in lungfuls of hot sweaty air and let it out in a babbling string of frantic shamelessness:
please, ohgod, please, yesss, harder, there, there, fuck.

"Told you I'd make you beg," Valentine says. He's on fire with happiness, laughing and breathless. He manages to get a hand between them to wrap around Lindsay's straining cock and brings him off in just a couple of strokes, kissing him hard and biting his lip raw, swallowing down his gasps and swears like water while Lindsay jackknifes on the bed and doesn't even care if he dislocates his shoulders with his hands still in the cuffs. He barely even realises when Valentine comes a minute later. He's vaguely aware of the room going quiet – the only time Valentine ever shuts up in bed is when he's coming – but it's like a dream. It feels like his entire lower half is still twitching and spasming, damp with sweat and riddled with goosebumps.

"Please,
please god
let me do this again," Valentine says after a moment when they've both started to come down. His face is flushed dark, high up on his cheekbones. It makes him look very young, like it accentuates his angles and turns him back into that pointy-faced bewitching idiotic teenager Lindsay first knew.

"Maybe," he manages. He can still taste cotton in his mouth, and the sharp tang of blood where Valentine bit his lip, though it doesn't feel like it actually broke the skin.

"Maybe my arse, you fucking
loved
it!"

 

"Mm... it's like chocolate cake. Once in a while it's nice, but how sick would you get if you had it three times a day?"

 

"As if you'd get sick of it. I never seen you come so hard." "Shut it." He clings the chain between the leather cuffs against the bedstead. "Let me out."

"I see we're back to Bossyboots Brown," Valentine says, kneewalking up the bed with one leg on either side of Lindsay's body until he can reach the buckles and work them loose. Lindsay can't help wincing at the ache in his shoulders, but at the same time he's wondering how bad it's going to be in the morning and kind of relishing the thought of feeling it all day at work, every time he puts a book back on the shelf remembering how it happened...

"Christ, I'm turning into you," he murmurs, twisting the second half of the sentence into an unstoppable yawn. Valentine just laughs, throwing the cuffs onto the carpet and settling Lindsay's arm around his body.

"No more taking the piss cos I like getting tied up and molested." Now he's yawning too, wide and childishly sleepy against the back of his hand.

"Don't go to sleep in those stupid boots."
"You love my stupid boots."
"Take them off."

Lindsay helps, pulling Valentine's right leg into his lap and working on those buckles while Valentine does the rest. As soon as they're off, Valentine dives across the room to turn off the lamp in the corner then gets back under Lindsay's arm, sliding his fingers through the lube still pooled around his navel and smeared across his body. He'd almost forgotten all the madness of the night, until Valentine's voice suddenly cuts through the darkness in a searching, hopeful whisper: "Lindsay? Are me and you okay?"

"I think so."
"I know we're fucked up."
"Yeah."
"And there's things that won't ever go away."
"Mmhm."
"But there's more good than bad, ain't there?"

"You know pillowtalk makes me homicidal. Go to sleep." He hears Valentine laugh quietly, feels a gentle kiss on his shoulder, and responds by brushing his fingers against the place he can always find in the dark, the Hedwig tattoo on Valentine's hipbone.

10.
December 2014

It's hard to say whose idea it was to have a massive family Christmas in their house this year. They both swear blind it was the other one.

"I
hate
Christmas," Lindsay says, trying not to sulk like a teenager. "I would never suggest this
circus
."

 

"Well,
I'd
never suggest putting you and my dad in the same room with mistletoe, would I?"

 

Lindsay goes away to quietly remove every scrap of mistletoe from the house and put it in the bin outside, just in case.

It's not so bad, all things considered. The run-up to the end of the year is completely taken over by Valentine's favourite thing in the world – shopping – which means for the first time since Lindsay met him he seems genuinely, constantly happy without even the smallest blip. That's quite pathetic, really. He's late home from work every night, laden down with bags in every imaginable colour of paper and plastic, brimful with clothes and toys and wool and books and sometimes secrets; these he tries to smuggle into the house and up to the room he's taken over for his sewing machines and art junk, but since he clatters around accidentally making way more noise than usual every time he tries to be sneaky, it's completely obvious when he's bringing something back for Lindsay.

Lindsay actually braves it one time, wrapping his scarf round tightly against the winter chill and then nearly passing out from heat exhaustion on the loathsome Northern line, packed in so tightly with a gaggle of Christmas shoppers that he can't even get to the door on his stop and has to stand there fuming at them while the train takes him to the wrong side of the river. It's not claustrophobia that makes him like this, just a deep dislike for people in general. It's the same with cats and dogs and children; occasionally you'll get one that doesn't instantly make you want to kill it, but as a species people are as bad as cockroaches. You don't want to be trapped in an underground tunnel with cockroaches. He breathes deeply in the cold winter air as soon as he breaks free from the crowd, then decides there's not enough nicotine in it and lights a cigarette, plugs his earbuds in and turns Rattus Norvegicus up as loud as he can bear it so he doesn't have to reply to anybody who thinks wishing him a happy Christmas might actually give him one, and starts walking back across London Bridge.

It's so easy to see Valentine, even though the whole of London is like a page in a massive Where's Wally? book full of identikit people in hats and scarves; Valentine is the one being chased by three children in wide wobbly circles around the ice rink, screaming louder than any of them. Olly's oldest two are far too grown-up to play, of course. Lillian is skating round the rink with three of her friends, all of them posing nonchalantly every time they glide past a gang of boys as if they haven't even noticed them. Sam is far too cool to go on the ice at all. Lindsay recognises the slouchy dark grey hat he's wearing as one Valentine was knitting a few weeks ago. He's not sure whether going over to him is a good idea – everything they've talked about and fought about and Valentine's cried like a baby about has resolved
some
problems but the thought is still there, deep inside his brain like a tumour: They fucked each other while this kid was sleeping in the room above, and they did it for
years
.

It's stupid. It's not Sam's fault. Lindsay starts wrapping the cable of his earphones around his iPod and goes to stand with him.

"Nice hat."
"It's warm. What's up?"

"Nothing much. Walking on the beaches, looking at the peaches."

Sam smiles suddenly, looking down to the phone he's got cradled in the palm of his fingerless glove and pressing a button. The tinny sound of music is almost lost in the noise of the crowd, but just about audible. "Whatever happened to all the heroes, all the Shakespearoes?" he says, then turns it back off and shoves it in his pocket. "You got good taste for an old fart."

"Well, then. You've got good taste for someone who wasn't even born until this century."

"Are you coming shopping with us?"
"Might. Why, do you want me not to?"

"No, you should come cos it might not take like seven hours then. He's..." He makes a frustrated, vague sort of gesture and stops, thumbing his glasses back up to the top of his nose.

"What?"
"Nothing. I ain't badmouthing your boyfriend."
"I badmouth him all the time, don't worry about it."

"He's worse than my nans and aunties and mum and dad and sisters and
their
mum all put together. He needs... on a bloody lead like a dog. Him and my dad do my head in when they make me go shopping, I'd rather lie down in the road."

"I know that feeling. Not that I've ever had the pleasure of going shopping with your dad."

"Lucky," Sam mutters. He doesn't say anything for a while, just watching the skaters on the ice rink down at the bottom of the castle wall, then hesitantly he says, "You don't like my dad very much, do you?"

And then there's a problem. Do you lie to a twelve-year-old child and tell him you
don't
feel sick and murderous every time you see his father, or do you tell the truth and sound like the worst bastard alive for irrationally hating the man whose boyfriend ran off with you?

"I don't know him very well." That'll do.
"He don't like you."
"That's hardly a secret."
"He thinks you're bad for Pip."

Lindsay's starting to regret coming over. "Well-" he starts, but Sam interrupts.

 

"You don't have to get defensive or nothing, that's just what Dad thinks, it ain't what nobody else thinks. Me and Lilly was talking about it."

That feels weird, having his love life raked over by Valentine's ex's kids without realising they even really remembered that he existed. He's got no idea what he's meant to say now. It's not like he talks a lot anyway, but that's by choice; he's
always
got the perfect word to use at the right time to win an argument or make somebody feel really good or really bad. He's hardly ever genuinely lost for words.

"Oh," he manages vaguely. He goes in his pocket for another smoke but makes himself stop. Like Olly needs another reason to hate him, if he ever found out Lindsay was blowing smoke in his kid's face. Then: "Do you think he was happier before?" he says, quietly so nobody else hears and quickly so he won't wuss out of it.

"Pip?"

"Of course Pip. I don't care whether your dad is happy or not." That makes Sam smile. Pip always said he had an odd sense of humour, all straight talking and sharp wit. God knows where he got that from.

"He just frets. He's a pain in the arse, he acts on like we're all still Joe's age, he don't mean to be a bastard or nothing, he just worries. And yeah Pip was happy before but he's a bit simple, innit. Long as he gets fed and shagged he's alright."

It's so difficult not to laugh at the kid, how grown-up his scornful tone of voice sounds – difficult as well to keep thinking of him as a
kid
. Twelve or not, Olly's spawn or not, he's kind of alright.

"I think I can handle that much," Lindsay says, and Sam gives him a smirking sideways look.

 

"I bet you can."

When Valentine and the others finally tire of skating and come dashing over in a blur of rainbow scarves and pompom hats, they find the unlikeliest friends in the world swapping music and sneering at the world – and while the rest of them go shopping, Lindsay and Sam have coffee and talk about the Clash.

11.

Lindsay's mum drives herself down from Wales on Christmas Eve morning, and in her usual style she gets straight to business as soon as the hugs and hellos and how-are-yous are over with and Lindsay's nipped out to the shop because she's fussy and doesn't like his teabags.

"I want to ask you something," she says to Pip.
"Yeah?"
"Can I have a tattoo?"

When Pip's stopped hacking up his lungful of hot chocolate he shrieks, "
What
?" She doesn't say anything for a minute, just stays where she is with her legs curled up beneath her and the side of her face resting on her hand, smiling faintly.

"What's this, Mr. Valentine, ageism?"

"Not at all." He can't stop laughing, she's just
so much cooler
than Lindsay and it's amazing. "Do you know what you want? I'll do it now if you're ready, I got all my stuff here."
"Ready when you are. I've been thinking about it for years."