Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (4 page)

"He's got a bigger brain and a smaller arse." Good, things really are back to normal.

It should feel so much more awkward than this. He's been waiting since Starbucks for the clicked pieces to come apart, but they seem to be holding fast and the awkward silences Pip was dreading just don't come. Chat flows as easily as it ever did, as if more than four years without a word never happened at all.

"What I wanna know," he says, prodding his first plate carefully with his fork as if he thinks it might all be a joke, "is why would you take some perfectly good fish and make it into
mousse
when you could just dip it in beer batter and throw it in the fryer?"

"You really are just a sad, common little man."

"Shut your face, Enry Iggins. Some little Cockneys don't mind being common, not if the alternative's a fucking pike mousse or artichoke with bird livers in it."

"It's good. This one's got mousse, too."
"Christy."
"Chicken mousse."
"
Chicken
mousse?
With
mashed up livers? In an
artichoke
?" "And truffles."

"Lindsay, that's vile. Mousse is meant to come frozen in little plastic tubs with 'Iceland' wrote on top and chemicals so it's all different colours you can't find in nature. It's pudding food, it comes after your potato waffles and Findus Crispy Pancakes."

"You make me sad." That's such a lie, he's trying to hide a smile behind his wine glass.

Talk moves on to horror stories from work, funny things Dory's said recently, films they've seen and want to see; they go through every single possible smalltalk subject except for the weather as they circle around the giant dancing point that is the past. Pip's finally had enough wine to go for it by the time the dessert plates come out.

"Sooo," he says slowly, and maybe Lindsay knows where this is going because his eyes waver off to look at the tablecloth.

"So?"
"Are you gonna tell me what you been up to, then?" "No. It's not very interesting."

"I still wanna know. Why Canada?" Lindsay just drinks more wine and starts spooning pear tart into his mouth, until Pip reaches over the table to hold his free hand; then he stops, and finally looks back. "Lindsay," Pip says quietly, loading the words with as much innuendo as he can manage. "You wanna break my crème brûlée?" It makes him laugh, and some of the tension goes away.

"Break your own crème brûlée."
"I like the way you break it better."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah."

Which is how they end up snogging like teenagers on the front doorstep of Pip's parents' house, trying to ignore the embarrassed cab driver who's impatiently waiting for Lindsay to get back in the car. "You shouldn't say things like that to me in public," Lindsay murmurs, pressing the words as kisses down Pip's neck to bite him low down near his shoulder, the spot that always makes his knees go weak. "Not if you won't come home with me."

"We're meant to be taking it slow, remember?"

"And whose stupid idea was that?" He slides both hands down to Pip's backside, dragging him sharply forward. They're both getting hard. Lindsay's right, it was a stupid idea. Maybe they should tell the driver to go on, and Lindsay can sleep over here like Olly used to. His parents can't complain, they never said anything about Olly even though they knew they were boyfriends, it's no different...

He slips his fingers through Lindsay's hair, bringing his face down and kissing him desperately, sliding his tongue wet and warm over Lindsay's bottom lip and gently into his mouth, feeling out the familiar shape of his front teeth and the way he moves. "Stay over," he says, moving back just enough to look at him then crashing back when Lindsay yanks on his hips again and kisses him furiously like he's trying to prove a point. "Nobody's gonna mind," he manages when Lindsay lets him breathe. "We're all adults, it's okay, nobody goes in my room anyway, we can be quiet, will you stay?"

He wonders afterwards what Lindsay was about to say when the door opened and interrupted. "Your sister's asleep, would you mind telling that arsehole to turn his engine off right under her window if you're just gonna stand there all night?"

There's no point trying to spring apart and make it look like nothing was happening so neither of them bothers, they just stand there together, Pip's fingers clutched in Lindsay's hair and Lindsay's hands spread over the back of Pip's trousers again. Phil looks them up and down and curls his lip but doesn't say anything else, just goes back in and slams the front door with a sound much louder than anything the car is producing. Lindsay bends to put his forehead on Pip's shoulder, breathing slowly and moving his hands up his back to hold him close.

"I should go home. Work tomorrow."
"Fuck work, you're a billionaire."
"I got bored."
"Only you."

Lindsay smiles, Pip can feel the movement, then he lets go suddenly and he's halfway down the garden path before he speaks again, throwing it carelessly back over his shoulder like it means nothing. "I'll phone you."

"Thank you for taking me out."
"You're welcome." "I had a nice time." "Me too." "I'll phone
you
. It's my turn next."

3.

Standing against the bar at the back of a sweaty crush of strangers, Lindsay's feeling impossibly out of place and wishing he'd never agreed to this. Valentine's been acting magnanimous all night, like he thinks he's doing Lindsay a great favour by picking this club over his usual haunts, but Lindsay's not sure what the difference is supposed to be. Maybe it's that there aren't any drag queens, thank Christ, and so far there's been no McFly or S Club 7. Small mercies. It's all the Smiths, Joy Division, the Cure, Siouxsie, the Clash, squeezed in around all this Britpop and indie that makes him feel ancient. It's not so bad them all thinking of 1982 as retro, but thinking of 1995 as retro is ridiculous and depressing.

"You have to dance," Valentine yells in his ear, only just audible above the music. He's drinking some foul electric blue alcopop through a red and white stripy straw, chewing disgustingly on the plastic end of it like he always used to. "My date, my rules."

"I said I'd come here, I never said there'd be dancing." "You're such a spoilsport." Elvis Costello fades into the Arctic Monkeys and Valentine whoops and thrusts his bottle at Lindsay to hold, launching himself back into the crowd of idiots who don't look good on the dancefloor at all. He's wearing strings of neon glow in the dark beads tied around his wrists so it's easy to keep an eye on him throwing himself around as long as he keeps his hands in the air, which he does. Lindsay steals a sip of the drink because his mouth's feeling dry but the chemical taste almost makes him gag and he turns round to order a beer. When he looks back at the dancefloor Valentine's been swallowed up by the crowd.

This is all so stupid. He feels like walking out, only he swore he'd try. It might even be worse that there are plenty of people his own age here, it feels like a convention for ageing hipsters. Fat middle-aged women in black and white striped stockings and neon dreadlocks, men eyeing up each other's 1970s tour t-shirts to see whose is the rarest. He had no idea what to wear, he even thought about phoning Jones or someone to ask for advice but couldn't swallow his pride long enough to scroll through his numbers. It seemed safe enough to put on jeans and a faded soft old Joe Strummer t-shirt he never wears any more but couldn't bring himself to throw out, and Valentine gave him a wobbly wolf-whistle and didn't seem to want to look away, but he feels ridiculous now. Just another identical pawn. He wonders how many of these wankers are looking at him the same way he's looking at them. It doesn't help that he's still holding a bottle of WKD, he suddenly realises, and sets it down on the bar behind his shoulder.

There, a flash of pink and yellow plastic. Without allowing himself the cushy luxury of thinking too much, he swallows down the last of his beer and starts pushing through idiots to find Valentine.

"Hello," he says in surprise when Lindsay taps his shoulder. He's pale as ever except on his flushed cheeks, his eyes are bright, his damp hair is sticking to his forehead in limp sweaty strings. He should be repulsive but he's not, he looks beautiful because he looks happy. "Are you dancing?"

"Not sure I know how." "Just jump around or nod your head, it ain't Strictly, there's a ton of old people here who don't know how to dance neither."

"Cheeky bitch." He pinches Valentine's arse hard so he makes a little noise of outrage and then bursts out into frothy girlish giggles before slapping Lindsay's hand away and starting to dance again. It comes to him as naturally as breathing, there seems to be no transition at all between him standing still and him moving with the music like before, like the beat of the song is flowing right through him. He's mouthing along with the words,
so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully pretty
, and he is.

There are things Lindsay can't forget, all the clubs and beach parties and raves in airfields and pills and long-dead friendships and youth that sometimes feels a million years away. You do things when you're young, and when you look back on them decades later you're not sure if you were really having a good time or it was just the drugs and company that made it so. Valentine said once how jealous he was,
you got to live through a massive revolution like that when I weren't even walking and talking yet
, then Lindsay got in a mood and sent him to his room where he could be as mouthy as he wanted about what a useless old fossil Lindsay was. He remembers it all in a flash and feels pointlessly guilty six years too late, and maybe that's what sets it all off. He doesn't pull his hand away this time when Valentine tries to take it, just nudges into the tiny gap behind him and lets him lead, glancing furtively around to see if anybody's watching but they all seem wrapped up in their own business. Valentine's pressing back into him on purpose, the bastard, moving his hips in a way that can't be innocent and lifting his arms in the air, all dark sweat patches and curls of dank hair under the little pink cap sleeves of his t-shirt. It's not exactly dancing, not on Lindsay's part, more like vague awkward shuffling, but Valentine must be having a good enough time because when he turns round he looks so happy Lindsay actually feels a tiny twinge of that old helpless emotion – not love, he's come to terms with how much he loves him whether it makes sense or not, but that strange old feeling of needing him happy above everything in the world. It never mattered how subservient Valentine acted, they both always knew he'd get his way in the end and Lindsay could never make himself care as much as he felt he should because every car or holiday or surprise shopping trip made him look like this, bright and exhilarated, and that was worth everything. It still is.

"I love you," he murmurs right against Valentine's ear, so he laughs breathlessly and turns around again to slip his arms up around Lindsay's neck.

"I won't ever get sick of you telling me that."
"Come home with me."

"Lindsay, you wanker, you're just saying I love you to get me in your bed." He's not really annoyed, he's still giddy and laughing. Lindsay slides both hands down Valentine's back to gently squeeze his arse, no longer caring if people see.

"
This
is a bonus."

"I ain't shagging you on our second date, I ain't just some easy tramp you can click your fingers for." But he pulls Lindsay's head down and kisses him, right there in the middle of a packed club full of people Lindsay hates on principle, so long and sweetly and slowly that the song's changed by the time he stops for breath. It's the first time he's been off-beat all night.

4.

Valentine phones him the next evening and doesn't even bother saying hello, he just launches straight in. "I know I'm probably meant to play it cool and make you wait and all that shit but fuck the rules, are you busy tomorrow? Cos there's this thing I'm doing for my mate's birthday, you don't have to come cos it ain't really your scene but if you want you can, I'd love it if you did."

"What thing?" Lindsay says, instantly suspicious of how carefully nonchalant he's being.

 

"Oh, just this thing. So you'll come, yeah? Get a cab to mine by like seven or something, we can share."

"Alright?"
"Cool. Okay, wicked, see you tomorrow then, yeah?" "Suppose so."
"Oh, Lindsay?"
"What?"

"
Dress nice
," Valentine says in a voice full of smirks, and hangs up. Dress nice. What the hell is 'dress nice' supposed to mean?

He realises as soon as he sees Valentine tripping down the garden path in his heels the next evening, and feels stupid for not realising sooner. "Princess Bar in Soho, mate," he says, then settles back in the seat and presses a lipsticky kiss on Lindsay's cheek. "You look good enough to eat. I just might turn out to be a slag after all."

"You certainly look like one," Lindsay says back, but only because he feels like it's expected of him. Valentine's wearing a dark red tartan dress with a corset bodice and massive fluffy petticoats holding the skirt out, thick black tights, chunky biker boots, a gunmetal-grey steel necklace dripping with strings of jade beads. He looks a disgusting, grotesque mess. Lindsay's hard in an instant.

Valentine just laughs, pulling Lindsay's arm around him. "Yeah, you wanna see my costume change."

"Not sure I do, thanks."
"You do."

He wants to see it much more after Valentine's spent a couple of hours pouring booze into him. The place seems less of a freakshow when he's a bit drunk – not drunk enough that he doesn't know what's going on, just drunk enough that it doesn't seem to matter. The flashing lights and horrible music start blending and making sense, the men wandering round in wigs and stilettos start looking normal instead of like clowns, he's actually almost enjoying himself. Mainly because every time Valentine returns to the table after running off to talk to someone or fetch another drink, he sits delicately on Lindsay's knee and slinks his bare arms around his neck.

"Am I the prettiest girl here?" he whispers in a breathy little tickle right in Lindsay's ear.

 

"You're the