Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (18 page)

"No, Lindsay."

He goes through to the little en-suite bathroom without another word, and leaves the door open so Valentine can hear the splashing and scritching. He takes his time over this, too – partly to see whether the kid
can
behave and do as he's told and not move, but mostly just to make him sweat. Anticipation really affects him, whether it's fear when he's been naughty and knows he's going to get a smacked bottom later, or something like this when he's achingly, desperately hard and forced to be patient.

"Good boy," Lindsay says, standing in the bathroom doorway drying his face on a fresh fluffy towel.

"I am, I told you I would be, I never moved an inch."

"No, I can see that. I'm impressed."

"Please." His hands are exactly where Lindsay placed them, but he turns his head to follow Lindsay's footsteps as he crosses the room from the doorway to the bed.

"Please what?"

"Anything. I'm losing my mind."

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"Well. We can't have that, can we? Come here. Sit up for me, sweetheart." He doesn't sit on the bed again, but sinks to his knees on the thick carpet and puts his big hands on Valentine's skinny legs to push them apart, pressing scatters of kisses on the inside of the kid's thighs. Valentine's swearing again, very quietly under his breath, then louder and squeaky when he feels Lindsay's tongue sliding up the length of his cock.

It's only the second time Lindsay's gone on his knees for the kid. He's sucked him off plenty of times before, but always sprawled on his front in bed, or bent over awkwardly on the sofa, or with Valentine standing between Lindsay's knees where he's sitting in his armchair and there's nothing on the telly. It feels too intimate, somehow kind of wrong and alien, sort of
backwards
to everything they are, but it seems like the right time again now. The first time was a while after the agreement they wordlessly reached when Valentine ran away from his parents again and they tried to slot themselves like mismatched jigsaw pieces into some kind of hesitantly official relationship. He remembers how bizarrely
normal
it felt, the morning after when Valentine brought him a clumsy but well-meant tray of breakfast and then lay there in bed beside him, licking jammy toast-crumbs off Lindsay's fingers while Lindsay explained the way things were going to be from now on if he wanted to stay.

"You're gonna keep on... slapping me around, when I play up?" he'd asked. He hadn't sounded frightened or outraged or disgusted, just curious.

"Yeah. You never listen when I just tell you. I don't know how else to make you learn. And you
have
to learn, you know, if you're staying now."

"I want to." He'd lifted the breakfast tray carefully off onto the floor, and climbed in its place to give Lindsay a sticky raspberry-flavoured kiss. "I wanna learn. I wanna stay. I don't care, anything, I just wanna stay with you forever and ever amen."

Their routine – because
naughty little boys need a routine otherwise
they'll never learn how to behave
Lindsay murmured in the kid's ear one night, draped over his back and fucking him slowly, and Valentine shuddered all over and went off in his hand like an explosion, and Lindsay felt sick knowing things 145

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like that got the kid off, and even sicker that he kept feeding it – was that every night, an hour before bedtime, Lindsay would tot up all of his bad behaviour throughout the day and take him to the spare room to deal with him. After that, he'd leave Valentine in bed there and go about his business until he was ready for bed himself, then go and collect him if he thought he was sorry enough. It took almost two weeks for Valentine to have a full day of behaving himself completely. This time when Lindsay led him down the hall and sat on the bed and told him to close the door and pull down his trousers, he sighed in resignation but then went very wide-eyed when Lindsay slipped off the bed, down on his knees to stroke the kid hard and take him in his mouth. Valentine kept saying
oh god, oh god
very quietly, like he'd forgotten how to make any other words, and he stood there twisting his hands together anxiously like he didn't know what he was allowed to do with them, until the end when his breathing got ragged and he held the back of Lindsay's head and thrust hard into his mouth to come. He apologised quickly after, said he couldn't help himself, and Lindsay laughed, leaning against his leg, and said it was okay, and was it a good enough incentive to be good
every
day?

He's sucking him hard and fast now, not using his hands at all, just relaxing his throat and taking him in deep, pulling off to slide his lips and tongue hot and wet around the head, and then back down again, drawing him in until his nose is touching the kid's skin. Valentine's saying
oh god
again, cracking the words in half in his desperation. He's holding his hands awkwardly, like before, so Lindsay reaches up to take one and Valentine twists their fingers together and squeezes so hard it nearly hurts. His hair is standing up crazily from the knotted scarf and where it's been pressed on the pillows and his taste is strong in Lindsay's throat, even when he replaces his mouth with his hand and strokes him like that instead.

"Why've you stopped?"

"I want to see your face when you come."

"Ohgod."

"Close?"

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"Yeah. Talk to me."

"And say what?"

"Anything. I don't care,
anything
, just talk to me, I wanna hear your voice, if I can't see you."

"I don't know what to say." He puts gentle little kisses on the kid's thighs again, to waste time, and Valentine shivers. "You look amazing. You're..." He fumbles for words, and blunders on. "When you've got your mouth open like that and your cheeks go all pink. You're flushing all down your chest. I don't know what's sweat and what's spit but I can see everywhere I kissed, I want to do it all again."

"Anytime you want," the kid says breathlessly. Lindsay laughs quietly, kissing his freckled hipbone.

"Shut up and come, will you?" He's still stroking fast and steady. He can always tell when the kid's nearly there because he goes very quiet; if he's yapping on, he shuts up, and if he's silent already he stops breathing for a second, he holds his breath then lets it out in a choking sort of gasp when he starts to come. That's what he's doing now – his chest's stopped heaving and the thrumming tension is tight between them until he lets his breath out in a strangled sort of moan and Lindsay moves quickly to catch some on his tongue.

"Good boy," he tells him, murmuring quietly and still stroking him, drawing out his pleasure as the kid just sits there trembling and whimpering. "Such a good boy for me today, weren't you?"

Valentine untangles their fingers so he can stroke Lindsay's hair. "I like it when you say that stuff to me."

"Yeah, I had noticed..."

"Can you take the scarf off me now?"

"Move up, then." He waits for the kid to shuffle his bottom back on the bed, then climbs up next to him and works the knot at the back of his head free.

Valentine shakes his hair out like a girl in a shampoo advert, then gives a 147

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brilliant smile and pounces on Lindsay for a kiss.

"I love you."

"I know you do. You don't have to tell me sixty times a day."

"Aw, come on. You'd miss it if I didn't."

"I think I'll gag you next time. I like you best when you're not talking."

"Okay, okay." He tangles their limbs together and snuggles down in Lindsay's arms, resting his dark head against his shoulder and just breathing, not speaking. Lindsay strokes the kid's hair and manages to ignore how hard he still is so he can just enjoy the silence; it's so rare, he almost forgets what it's like for the house to be completely still. He only breaks it when he realises they're both drifting off to sleep.

"Hey. Open your eyes, don't go to sleep. It's only just past eight. If you sleep now you'll wake up in the night and fidget, I can't stand you when you do that."

"I won't, I'll sleep through. Or if I wake up I'll be dead still, I won't bother you, you won't even know."

"No. Come on, up."

"More cuddling first. Just a little bit, yeah? I won't fall asleep, I swear."

He's bright-eyed with sleepiness and even clingier than he usually is. He always gets tired after sex, and he always gets clingy when he's tired.

"No," Lindsay says again, but gently, trying to disentangle his limbs from the kid's. "Let's get up and go downstairs. Watch telly or something, put a film on. I don't want you sleeping yet, you know it's not a good idea."

"Can I have a cuddle downstairs?"

"If you want."

"Okay." He's sucking his thumb, just the very tip, not even enough to hide the whole nail. He still seems embarrassed about it, like sucking his thumb is worse or more shameful than all the other silly babyish habits he's slipped into.

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"Can you make me hot chocolate?"

"If you want."

"With them little marshmallows in. I mean, at
least
fifty. You never put enough in."

"Right. Any more demands, little prince?"

"Dunno." He seems to realise where his thumb is, and removes it to start twisting bits of hair around his fingers instead. "I'm just sleepy, I don't wanna think. You can think for me. You're good at that, thinking. Dinnertimes and bedtimes and stuff." He yawns, wide and adorable like a kitten. "I'd be well up the creek without you."

"Likewise," Lindsay says, and he's only half-joking. "I'd have to get a dog or something if I didn't have you to look after. I hate dogs."

"You should
definitely
get me a puppy for Christmas."

He grabs the kid's hand then and pulls it to his cock, to distract him.

"Have you forgotten this isn't a one-way street?" he says, and Valentine laughs and slides down the bed to put little sleepy kisses all over him.

"Better than sucking my
thumb
, anyway."

Lindsay slips his fingers through the kid's hair, and closes his eyes. It's a long time before they make it back downstairs.

***

Later, the kid curls up at one end of the sofa, holding his monkey so they're nose-to-nose and he's looking at Lindsay over its faded woollen head.

"I need to clean up from dinner," Lindsay says. He's not sat down, and Valentine has to tip his head right back against the sofa arm to look up at him.

"I'll only be a minute. You won't fall asleep, will you?"

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"No."

"I'll be cross if you fall asleep."

"I said I
won't
, Lindsay." He sounds tired and petulant. Lindsay doesn't push it, he can't face a tantrum tonight. He just touches Valentine's face gently and smiles a bit, and goes into the kitchen to stack the dishwasher and put a little pan of milk on the hob to heat and search for the chocolate powder and the right mug. The kid won't drink out of just anything, it
has
to be the one with his football team's logo, or the one with a handle shaped like Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout.

Of course Valentine's asleep when Lindsay goes back into the living room, with the monkey sprawled half over his face in his slack grip. Lindsay's annoyed for a second, but it slowly seeps away and he's left standing there like an idiot holding a cartoon mug of warm milk, feeling like he's bursting at the seams with some ridiculous emotion he doesn't want to acknowledge, gazing down at this sleeping teenager like he's bloody Jesus.

"Wake up," he says loudly, to snap himself out of it, and the kid opens his eyes with a start.

"I weren't sleeping," he says quickly. "I was just resting my eyelids."

"I wish you wouldn't lie to me. It's still not too late to get in big trouble today, you know." Valentine brings the monkey up to cover more of his face, peeking anxiously at Lindsay over its shoulder as if the stupid thing is going to be any good for protection if Lindsay decides to follow through on his threat. He doesn't, he just looks back and eventually sighs, letting it go. "Come on. Come and sit with me, I've made you a drink."

He smiles at that, and hooks a finger through a ragged hole in the monkey's t-shirt so he can bring it with him when he follows Lindsay to his armchair and curls up in his lap, snuggled close with Lindsay's arm around his back, smiling sleepily and looking somehow as if he's nothing but wide innocent green eyes. Lindsay feels like he's overheating, but nothing in the world could make him look away now.

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"Ain't we got no hot chocolate powder left?" There's a smear of milk on his bottom lip when he speaks. It's vaguely disgusting.

"You've had it all. You have too much chocolate, anyway, it's not good for you."

"But-"

"I said no."

"Alright." His fingers creep into Lindsay's hair, stroking and playing gently. Lindsay watches the kid drink, and the kid watches Lindsay watch him.

"I don't even like you having this, really, not this close to bedtime. I'll put a bullet in your face if you wet the bed, do you hear me?"

Valentine doesn't stop drinking to answer, he just nods his head, and when he's had enough he leans over to put the cup on the table beside them and smiles up at Lindsay. "I like it, though. This, I mean, not pissing the bed, that's sick. But I like chocolate. You have to let me have it. I'm daddy's spoiled little prince, you have to give me what I want."

"I do not and
will
not." He shifts a bit, uncomfortable from the kid's warm weight on him and how hard he's starting to get, never mind how it's only been half an hour since he had his fingers cramped in Valentine's long hair to hold him in place as he writhed and swore and came and came and came down his throat. "Don't call me that."

"What?"

"You know what."

"Daddy?"

"
Don't
."

"Why not?"

"Because I said so."