Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (2 page)

"Ah, stop it. I told you already, I was gonna call it off anyway." "You and your addiction to spraying things up fallopian tubes."

"Yeah. If you'd just been born a girl me and you would've been the happiest couple alive and you never would've met Lindsay cos we'd be in our scummy little council flat making mongrelly brown babies."

"Urgh, Jesus, don't."
"Which bit, not meeting Lindsay or you having a vag?"

"Living in a council flat." He sits up a little bit, propping himself on his elbows and squinting down the length of his body and past his cowboy boots to where the three girls are ganging up on Sam and Joseph and pelting them with footballs. "Gives me panic-rash just
thinking
about them growing up like me and you had to."

"We turned out alright."
"Yeah, but it was a fucking ballache getting there."

Pip's phone is in his front pocket, digging uncomfortably into his hipbone now he's sitting like this, and he brings it out and just holds it in his palm. He had a message when he turned it on to phone Olly but he made himself leave it alone. He's regretting it now. It feels like it's burning a hole through his jeans. Maybe Olly knows. He sounds casual enough when he gets up and brushes himself off and says he's going to rescue the boys, but maybe he knows. Pip turns the phone on quickly as soon as Olly's gone and tries to wipe that ridiculous smile off again. Four new texts.

You lazy bastard, it's half past eight. Wake up and tell me you love me.

 

I know you can't go more than seventeen seconds without looking at your stupid phone. Answer me.

 

Are you waiting for me to say I love you first? You're a rose, you're a pearl, you're the spin on my world. Now ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE.

 

He can't leave it any longer, what's the point? Shoving the last few jelly babies into his mouth, he returns:

 

aint u got nuthin better 2 do than sexualy harass me by txt

Then he counts off the seconds. Twenty-three before the phone comes to life, flashing red and singing My Heart Belongs To Daddy at him. He's giggling like a schoolgirl when he answers: "Hello?"

"Don't say hello like you don't know who it is."
"Hello, Lindsay."
"Hey. What's funny?"

"I set my ringtone for you to Marilyn Monroe. I'm Arthur Miller."

"Get lost.
I'm
Arthur Miller." "What do you want?" "Shall I give you a list?" "You're a dirty old man." "Only when you're not here." "When I'm there as well, I hope." "Mmmaybe. What are you doing?" "Cruising round the Heath picking up fit young men." "I see."

"No, me and Dory come out here, we're skiving off her ballet cos she don't like it. She's playing footie with Olly and the clan." There's a very slight pause. "Olly's there?"

 

"Yeah, me and him just had a nice roll in the grass, jizz stains
everywhere
."

 

"Shut up."

 

"Well, stop being an arsehole, then. I can actually be mates with someone without sucking them off, you know."

"Even him?"
"Yeah."

"You fell out of love with him very quickly, you... fickle young tart."

 

"Yeah, well, I was never
in
love with him or anybody else in my whole life except you, is that what you wanna hear?"

"More or less."
"There you go, then."

Another little pause. "Say it properly," Lindsay says, quiet and kind of hesitant as if he thinks it's stupid.

"Say what?"
"You know what."
"Why?"
"Because I like hearing it."
"
Now
who's the barnacle?"

"I'm scared to death you're only going along with all this because it's new and you're surprised and knocked off guard or something and you don't really mean it because why
should
you mean it?" Lindsay says, rushed like he's trying to get all the words out before he can change his mind. He sounds strange and unsure of himself and he's never normally like that. Pip feels a bit sick and wrong that he's enjoying it so much, getting a weird thrill of pleasure like tingly fingers dancing up his back and playing cat's cradle with his spinal cord.

"When did I ever ever ever give you any reason to be jealous? Or, like, think I'm making it up or something when I say I love you? I won't lie about that."

"I know, but..."

"I ain't even that young and pretty no more, there's a million little girly boys you might pick over me once you work out the places to go.
I
should be getting all scared and emo, not you."

"I don't want a million little girly boys, I'm not a paedophile." "You ain't a paedophile
no more
, you mean."
"Shut up. Graverobber."

"So we're agreed, then? I love you and you love me and fuck the world cos they don't matter?"

"You make my brain hurt sometimes."
"Do you feel better, though?"
"Not really. I don't know. Yes. I think."

"How did I ever think you're sooooo brilliant and self-assured and you always know what you're doing?"

 

"I do, most of the time. It's just... you. Ripping my axis out and sticking it somewhere it doesn't belong so I spin all off-kilter."

"Are you saying you wanna be the taker for a bit?" "I'm hanging up now."

"Don't go." He's flat on his back on the grass again with his eyes closed against the harsh summer morning. It should be dark when you close your eyes but the sun's making it bright pink. It always grossed him out when he was little, closing his eyes and facing the sun and thinking
ewww I'm looking at the inside of my eyelids!

"I have to go, I've got things to do, I need to go to the library." "You're so rock and roll, I love it." "That helps." "Yeah." "What are you doing today? Are you busy later?" "Are you asking me out?" "Might."

So so so stupid how happy that makes him, like a giddy 1940s bobbysoxer. "Do it properly, then. I ain't just going out with the first rich old git who clicks his fingers at me."

"Will you come out for dinner with me later?"
"In public?"
"Yes."
"Will you hold my hand where people can see?"
"If you behave yourself."
"Are you gonna bring me flowers?"
"No."
"Chocolates?"
"I might bring you some Haribo."

"Sold. I'm working late, come and meet me at the studio, yeah? I'll text you the address."

"Alright. See you later, then."
"Lindsay?"
"What?"
"I love you."
He turns his phone off again and goes to hijack the football. ***

Lindsay's never been in a tattoo studio before. Even when he got his own stupid little thing one night when he was young and dumb and off his face enough to think it was a good idea, that was a friend of a friend who was learning and using anybody he could get his hands on as guinea pigs in his dirty kitchen. It's a little place in Islington, or it
looks
little from the outside, window crammed full of glass stencils and photographs under a big black and white sign saying 'Inkubus'. It's much bigger when he's inside, the room carries on behind the counter much farther than he expected. He can see Valentine's back and hear the hum of the machine he's using on the man in his chair.

There's a girl sitting at the counter doodling stars on a notepad but she stops when she sees him and smiles, bright and cheerful. "Alright? We're just closing in like twenty minutes, you wanna make an appointment for tomorrow?"

NO. "Oh. Er, no thanks," he manages, a bit more politely than it sounded in his head. "I'm just meeting Valentine, I'll wait."

"
You're
his boyfriend?" she says, wide-eyed in surprise as if he's got three heads. Get used to it, he tells himself grimly. She looks a bit embarrassed then, and tries to smooth it over with, "I mean... sorry, I ain't being rude, I just seen his normal type and..." She trails off again. Not much better, but at least now she looks
really
uncomfortable. Ha. "Go through if you want, he don't mind an audience."

She goes back to her notepad, more like she doesn't want to look at him any more than because she's got the urge to draw, and Lindsay goes round the side of the counter and through the back room to where Valentine and the other man are. Valentine sees him before he gets there, hears his footsteps and looks round, and he smiles so wide it's almost impossible to be jealous any more or think horrible black depressing thoughts about who he might really want to be with once all this novelty has worn off.

"We was just talking about you."
"Good things?"
"Rob and his girlfriend are getting married too."

"Ah." Maybe if he ignores it then it'll go away. "Am I going to put you off?"

 

"Nah, it's cool, pull up a chair, we're nearly finished."

He chatters on as he works, making introductions, talking about the first tattoo Rob ever did for him when he was sixteen, telling Lindsay about Rob, telling Rob about Lindsay, all the time scratching the inky needle across the snake tattoo curling up Rob's arm and shoulder, filling the last of the plain black bit with red. It looks a right mess, there's colour smeared all over his skin and every time Valentine gets new ink on the needle it seems way too much and it bubbles up around the point of contact so it's impossible to see what he's doing – even so, every time he wipes the excess off with a tissue it's always perfect and nothing at all like a fiveyear-old who can't quite colour in the lines yet. Lindsay realises he's not actually listening to what Valentine's saying at all, he's fascinated by his hands and the colour of the ink, how blood-bright it looks on the needle and how it gets muted a bit when it's injected, the careful shading of red to skin tone. He knew that was possible, shading ink on skin like you're taught to shade a pencil on paper when you're at school, dark to light to make things look three-dimensional, but he's never really thought about it until now.

"Think we're done here," Valentine says, and his voice is like the trigger that breaks Lindsay out of hypnosis. He stops staring while Valentine's cleaning the image off and sticking a dressing over it, he starts looking around the room instead at all the equipment and the paintings hung on the walls. He recognises at least half of them as Valentine's – he's never seen them before, but the style is unmistakable – and wonders how long he's been here. Long enough to have put his mark on the place, anyway. The few times Lindsay went into the salon in St. Lizier and saw Valentine there brandishing his silver scissors or giggling about something with a customer who had tinfoil in her hair, he always got an odd little pang of some strange feeling he could never quite place – something like exasperation and annoyance and vague embarrassment that he was living with a
hairdresser
, but something else as well that made him feel a bit sick with fear. Knowing that Valentine belonged somewhere he himself would never fit in. It's the same again here, watching him and his boss clear away their equipment and wipe some spilled ink off the chair; it's like a different
world
, where some men have carefully-cultivated muscles and wear tight sleeveless vests to show off the intricate tattoos right up and down their arms, and some men wear eyeliner and nailpaint and cowboy boots with sequins on. The alien from the next planet wears slouchy woollen cardigans and can't even draw a stickman, never mind permanently scar a lifelike portrait of somebody's face into somebody else's arm.

"So where are you off to?" he hears Rob ask. Valentine shrugs his shoulders and looks at Lindsay.

"Where we going?"
"I don't know, I've not booked anything."

"Oh, that's nice, you ask me out then don't bother booking nothing nice."

 

"You always whinge when I choose. 'Aahh no, that's posh twats' food, I don't like posh twats' food, it sits on my hips...'"

"As if I even sound like that!"
"That's a direct quote."

"Yeah, I can believe it as well," Rob says, and Valentine throws a scrunched-up handful of damp paper towels at him. He ducks away, laughing. "I'm going, you're alright locking up?"

"Yeah, see you tomorrow."

Rob leaves with his arm slung over the shoulders of that awkward girl from the front desk, and Valentine disappears through the back door with some black binbags; when he comes back in, instead of tidying up any more he comes right over to where Lindsay's still sitting and settles sideways in his lap, slipping his fingers up through Lindsay's hair and kissing him. It starts off innocently enough but rapidly morphs into something a bit more pervy, duelling tongues and hairpulling and Valentine keeps making pathetic little gaspy giggly whining noises. He changed position somewhere so now they're face to face; it's not a very good chair for this particular activity so Lindsay's got his hands spread over Valentine's arse to hold him there with his feet dangling a couple of inches off the floor, but it's not helping very much at all, it's just making Valentine
wriggle
.

"Stop that," Lindsay says, more like gasps, but Valentine just bites him gently on the lower lip and keeps on kissing. "I mean it. Stop it or you'll have even more mess to clean up."

That makes him laugh, bright girly bursts of giggles so he
can't
kiss any more. He puts his arms round Lindsay's neck instead and settles in against his shoulder, kissing him gently on the pulse. "Do you feel better now?" he murmurs. He wriggles again when Lindsay brings a hand up his back to start stroking his hair, but it's a lazy, pleased sort of wriggle this time, not the sort with serious intent.

"About what?"

 

"Me wanting to be with you, not Olly."

No. He feels like he's never going to get used to it, like he couldn't get used to it before every time Valentine made some sly dig at his dress sense or the music he liked or how he was just so fucking unbelievably
old
. It's different now. It shouldn't be, they're still the same number of years apart, but being with someone who's twenty-six when you're forty-one is a bit more socially acceptable than a man in the middle of his thirties shagging a teenager. It still
feels
strange, but it's more who they are and not their ages, he realised a long time ago. Valentine's still going to be a giddy foolish vain cross-dresser when he's ninety.

"Not sure. Show me again."

Valentine laughs and kisses him again, slow and intense and wonderful. It's something Lindsay never realised he missed until now – nobody else he's been with through all these years apart has wanted to
kiss
like this. He never even wanted it himself until Valentine; it was like some unwritten rule that you grow out of wanting it as soon as you're past nineteen because you're supposed to be having lots of serious grown-up sex by then and not wasting your time on something as juvenile as gropey snogging. Not that he would turn down the sex, of course, as wonderful as the kissing is...