Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (19 page)

Valentine tucks his head under Lindsay's chin, resting against his chest.

He's cuddling the monkey between his body and pulled-up legs, running his 151

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thumb over his lips but not sucking on it properly because he knows it'll make Lindsay smack his hand. There's a massive antique gilt mirror on the wall opposite, stretching almost from floor to ceiling. Lindsay can't stop looking at their reflection, how flushed they both are in the face and the way the kid's toying with his thumb and lips. "We're just playing, though," he says quietly, holding Lindsay's eyes in the mirror. "Remember when we pretended like you kidnapped me for real? It's like that, it's just playing."

"It's...
weird
. Don't you think it's weird?"

Valentine laughs a bit and puts his thumb in his mouth all the way, so his next words are slurry. "We keep going round in circles. Me going 'ooh, this is wrong, innit?' and then you go 'no, no, it's alright!' and then
you
get cold feet and you go 'errr, this is well weird' and I have to tell you it ain't."

"It is a
bit
," Lindsay mumbles. He starts stroking the kid's hair gently, and Valentine makes a happy little noise around his thumb and relaxes against him.

"So? I like it. You like it. What's wrong about that?"

"If someone ever finds out-"

"Fuck 'em. Who's gonna find out? It's nobody's business, is it?" He shifts around a little, until the back of his thigh is putting just a bit of gentle pressure on Lindsay's cock. "Makes you hard when I suck my thumb."

There's no point denying it when the evidence is there jabbing Valentine in the leg, so he doesn't bother trying. He just begins tugging at the waistband on the kid's pyjamas. They're Lindsay's, really, because the kid says he likes how they always smell of him even when they're fresh out the wash, so they're too big for him, cuffs rolled up at his wrists and ankles, and the trousers slip down easily when Lindsay pulls on the drawstring to loosen the bow.

"Makes you hard, too." Lindsay curls his fingers around him, stroking gently over the wetness at the tip with his thumb. Valentine squirms, catching his breath like there's barbed wire in his throat.

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"Makes me hard when
you're
hard. I'm easy."

"Slut." There's no harshness in it, though, and he puts a kiss on the kid's black hair after he's said it. He can see Valentine smiling in the mirror, around his thumb.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm daddy's dirty little slut."

"Oh, don't."

Valentine starts to move now, awkwardly in the armchair made for one, until he's managed to get his pyjama trousers pushed a little way down his thighs and he's sitting on Lindsay's lap differently, facing the mirror more now instead of being curled up sideways. He's still got his knees pulled up, one bare foot resting on Lindsay's knee and the other tucked between his leg and the chair arm.

He finds Lindsay's hand and brings it back around his body, closing the hot fingers around his cock and leaving his own there on top of them, as if he's scared Lindsay's going to get all self-conscious again and stop. "If you like it and I don't, then it's wrong. And if I like it and you don't, then it's wrong. But if I like you giving me warm milk and cuddles and you get hard like that when I call you daddy, ain't it right?"

"No," Lindsay says shortly, but he starts stroking him properly anyway, and slips the collar of the oversized pyjama shirt down over Valentine's shoulder so he can kiss the bare skin there, watching him in the mirror. The kid's breathing hard, open-mouthed so he loses his thumb. He whimpers when Lindsay stops touching him, and starts running the toy monkey's foot over his mouth like he's trying to soothe himself, but Lindsay only stopped so he could slide the trousers all the way off and drop them to the floor, and Valentine moves the monkey away from his face again when he resumes the stroking. The kid's gone very pink, flushed lips and flushed cheeks.

"Daddy," he says again, like he's testing how far he can push things.

He's stammering a bit, hard as he's ever been and still directing Lindsay's hand with his own, but he's kind of smirking too, as if he likes that they've got an audience, even if it's only their own reflections. "Is this what I get for being a 153

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good little boy for you all day?"

"I'm telling you,
don't
." He doesn't stop, though. Valentine's laughing breathlessly, like he knows he's won, and babbles on with hardly a pause as Lindsay strokes him closer and closer.

"You're the best daddy in the world, you feed me my milk and keep my monkey for me cos I'd lose him otherwise, and you smack me when I'm naughty cos you love me, ain't that right? If you didn't love me you wouldn't care and you wouldn't do it, but you do. And, and I love it best when you're a little bit angry with me, I like it after I've been a naughty brat and you're showing me you're in charge, I love it best when you hold me down and
fuck
me, Daddy, I like it when you fuck me really really hard cos then when it hurts later on I can remember how I'm supposed to be good for you. I promise I'll be good for you, I promise I try all the time only sometimes I forget but that's okay, ain't it? Cos then all you have to do is hold me down and fuck me and I'll remember again, and-" He shuts up, suddenly, just squeezing his eyes shut and breathing hard. Lindsay doesn't stop, doesn't get faster or harder or anything, he just stays at the same steady pace until ten seconds later Valentine's whimpering something incomprehensible and spilling in spurts over Lindsay's fist.

He wipes his hand off on the kid's pyjama shirt, and Valentine slumps against him like all his bones have disappeared from his body. He opens his eyes eventually, and tips his head back against Lindsay's shoulder to smile at him.

"Hi."

"Hello."

"What about you?"

"I'm okay." He doesn't feel like it yet, not really, even though he's kind of hard. It takes him longer to be ready again and he feels
ancient
every time the kid's recovered and raring to go again ten minutes after he's come.

"You're better than okay, you're fucking brilliant." He squirms in Lindsay's lap, suddenly looking really sleepy again and cuddling against him like he was before, resting his cheek on Lindsay's chest. "Daddy," he adds, peering

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up mischievously through his fringe. Lindsay sighs and somewhere inside himself admits defeat, although he'll never say it out loud. He takes the kid's hand and plugs his thumb back into his mouth to shut him up.

"It's... weird," he says, awkward and stilted. "Not because of... I don't know, whatever it is, all this, it's not that. It's..."

"What?"

"You hate your dad. You're calling me after the person you hate most in the world."

"Oh." He's quiet for a minute, thinking, then suddenly he's moving, dropping his monkey onto the carpet and twisting around in the chair so they're face to face and he can wind his arms around Lindsay's neck and hug him fiercely and put kisses all in his hair. "I never meant it like that. You know I never."

"No, but..." He trails off because he doesn't really know where the thought is going, and puts his arms around the kid's waist, rubbing one hand over his back because he's trembling.

"I love you more than I hate him. That's a
lot
. You know that, yeah?"

He wants to say
I do know, but I'll never get used to it
, but the kid finds his mouth and starts kissing him, and then nothing else really matters.

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"Bought you a present off the internet," Valentine says one night, and produces a cardboard box. "Lots of presents, really, cos I didn't know what you'd like." He starts laying them out on the bed, making comments here and there like, "Look, this one's wicked, you put it on, right, and it
vibrates
," and, "Oh, haha, that one's a joke, ain't it gross? It's called a fleshlight, thought we could give it Danny for Christmas," and, "Looks a bit like a sea monster, that one, don't it? It's alright, when it's in you won't see," and, "Christy, listen to this: 'A patented anal sphincter-driven, prostate-perineum massager.' It's like Star Trek, it's all technical."

Lindsay stares at him.

"What!"

"Did you use my credit card?"

"Might've done," he admits, twirling the vibrating cock ring around his finger.

"Stealing my card's bad enough, but... did you have to get one with a
smiley face
on it?"

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Valentine just grins like an imbecile, watching him pick the most obnoxious-looking one up between his thumb and finger and inspect it in disgust.

"You said you wanted a gag, thought you might want the rest of it to go with. I'd have a smiley face too if I was disappearing up your arse."

"I did
not
say I wanted a gag, or anything else. That thing is coming nowhere
near
my arse, thank you. It's glittery. It's
pink
."

"What colour's my cock, lime green?"

"But it's not
neon pink
. And your cock's not going up me, either.

Nothing is. Especially the sea monster."

"Alright." He must have unpackaged everything earlier and sorted out all the batteries because he gets right into pressing buttons and turning things on and off until he's found one he likes and starts running it gently across the front of his pyjama trousers. "I'll play on my own, then," he says, red-cheeked and smirking, "and we'll see who cracks first."

"Fine," Lindsay snaps through clenched teeth. He spends a minute knocking his pillows into a comfortable shape, then sits up against them and opens his book at the marker. All this time he can feel Valentine's eyes on him like stroking fingers, and hear his steady breathing and the aggravating buzzing of the thing he's holding, like a fly banging its head against a window. He won't look up. He won't. "Get over your own side of the bed," he says, when the kid tries to shuffle closer and poke at his leg with the sparkly pink thing. Valentine huffs and shifts back over, then braces his feet against the mattress and lifts his hips so he can slide Lindsay's stolen pyjamas down and off.

"Spoilsport," he says. The word cracks in half when the vibrator touches his bare cock. Lindsay reads the same sentence four times then turns the page like he's actually taken it in. He keeps sneaking glances and trying to make them look like sneers.

"Tosser."

"Well, yeah. What are you reading? Is it interesting? Is there sex in it?

Has it got really dirty pictures in? Cos that's the only thing I can think of that'd 157

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make it worth reading the book over watching me."

"It's called The End of the Affair and it's giving me some ideas."

Valentine's silent for a minute. "
You're
the tosser," he mutters. Lindsay turns his back on him, trying to get comfortable on his side with the paperback, although the pillow's pushing his glasses to a funny angle, but that was stupid because the kid's on him almost immediately, pressing the stupid buzzing pink thing against his backside.

"That was an invitation, right?"

"Wrong." He marks his place in the book again, and grabs the vibrator, fiddles with it for a second until he's worked out how to turn it off, then throws it across the room. "Touch me again and I'm going to break all your fingers off, one by one."

Valentine makes an anguished, aggravated sort of noise and flops onto his back again. "Why d'you
read
in bed, anyway? Bed ain't for
books
."

"Because. It's relaxing."

"So's a really long, slow blowjob."

"Snap off a couple of ribs and bend over and do yourself if you're so desperate to have something in your mouth. Just,
please
let me read, okay? I'm not interested in your stupid toys." Annoyingly, his cock seems
very
interested.

He stays there on his side to hide it and tries to get back into the book, but it's very difficult when the silence keeps getting broken by different levels of buzzing and the little noises Valentine makes as he switches things on and off and presses them god knows where to test them out.

"Haha, wow, you wanna see this, you wanna see how big it gets. You put it in, yeah, and you
inflate
it like a bike pump. Saving that one for later, it's a bit scary. Um... okay, let's see this one... oh. Oh yeah, this one's gonna be good.

Time for the sea monster. You sure you don't wanna watch? Or help?"

"Quite sure, yes."

"Oh, Lindsay, come on." Lindsay does his best to ignore him, but things

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are never that easy. "Lindsay. Lindsay.
Lindsay
. Lindsay. Lindsay! Lindsay.

Lindsay?"

"OH GOOD LORD,
WHAT
?"

Lindsay tries to keep his cool as Valentine inches closer, dancing gentle fingers up and down his bare side and licking the back of his neck, just where his hair ends.

"Is your book good?"

"It's one of my favourites."

"What, you've read it
before
? Jesus." He sounds disgusted. "Okay, but is it better than me writhing round on the bed with a sea monster up my arse begging you to stick your cock in my throat? Cos that's what's gonna happen in a minute."

"Have you no shame?"

"...No." He can hear Valentine breathing behind him, far too close, and it's impossible to ignore him, even worse when he leans in again and puts the tip of his tongue back on Lindsay's neck, licking in gentle little flicks right up to his ear and whispering, "Okay, then. Read me a bedtime story, Daddy."

Lindsay turns round and hits him with the paperback. "Out!"

"Aww, Lindsay, come on."

"I can't stand you. You're sleeping in the other room."

Turning round was a stupid idea though, because now Valentine's seen how hard he is and he's laughing and putting his hand out quick as lightning to touch him and then it's too late.