Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (25 page)

joyless and unsatisfying in a way, but the sight of his come streaked in lines and 199

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splatters across the kid's upturned face makes it worthwhile.

Valentine breathes out shakily, and opens his eyes. There's a tiny bit clinging to his eyelashes, like dandruff, and he starts to raise his hand to wipe it away but Lindsay grabs his wrist out of the air, squeezing cruelly until he can feel the bones grinding. "Leave it," he says. Orders. "If you're going to act on like a dirty little fucking whore, you can stay right there on your knees and leave it."

If the grip on his wrist is hurting him, the kid doesn't let it show. "If I'm a whore, you're pimp and john in one." Lindsay drops the wrist and slaps him then. He does react to that, flinching back and gasping.

"Shut your mouth. You're not to move until I say, not unless you
want
to be in big trouble."

Valentine bites his lip and says nothing. Lindsay smiles, zips himself back into his trousers, washes his hands in the kitchen sink, and starts unpacking the shopping. He keeps finding things the kid slipped into the trolley when he wasn't looking. Most of them he noticed and put back before they reached the checkout, but he must have shoved some things deep down between the pasta and the string bags of fruit – packets of jelly babies, a box of disgusting pop tarts. More hair dye, as if the bathroom isn't in a bad enough state already. He puts these away with everything else, like a tiny little admission of defeat. No point making a fuss now they're in the house.

When everything's away and the bags are stowed under the sink for next time, Lindsay goes into the living room without a word to watch the news.

Half an hour later he wanders back into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

Valentine's exactly where he left him.

"Good boy," he says, stroking the kid's hair briefly as he passes him on the way to the kettle. "Go to bed." He fusses around finding his cup and a spoon and the right box of teabags so he doesn't have to watch the kid stand and acknowledge the pins and needles making his legs heavy and uncooperative, because then he'll want to help.

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"Am I allowed to wash my face?" he asks, very quietly.

Lindsay still doesn't look around, just answers, "Yes."

"Thank you."

He waits for the footsteps leaving the room and going upstairs, but they don't come. The kettle seems to be taking far too long to boil. That'll be because he's watching it, he thinks. "Did I or did I not just tell you to go and do something?"

"Yeah, I'm going, I'm sorry." He still lingers on a bit, and adds in a tiny voice, "Lindsay?"

"What?"

"Where's my..."

"What?"

Even tinier: "Monkey."

Lindsay remembers his behaviour in the supermarket, whingeing about how fucking boring it was, and taking every opportunity to slip his hands under Lindsay's coat or slyly pinch his bottom as he leant over to get something off a low shelf, and the way he went up on tiptoe at the checkout and whispered into Lindsay's ear in such graphic detail about the things they could be doing instead of rubbish boring food-shopping that he dropped his wallet and sprayed loose change and credit cards all over the chute, coins all dropping between and into the carrier bags and making a noise like heavy metallic hail. It wasn't the words that made him do it so much as the half-hard cock pressed against his backside in the middle of Sainsbury's.

He sort of laughs, but not because anything's funny. "Oh no," he says, and finally looks over at where the kid's lurking in the doorway. "You're grown up enough to use language like earlier, you're grown up enough not to need a cuddly toy. I'm taking it to Oxfam."

His eyes are wide and shocked. "But-"

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"Go to bed. If I have to repeat myself again..."

He turns his eyes down and goes. Lindsay finishes making his tea, very calmly, and goes back to watch the telly.

The bed's empty when he finally goes upstairs, and untouched since he made it this morning. He's taken aback for a second. Obviously Valentine's gone straight into the spare room. He's never done that before, not without being specifically told. Lindsay gets an odd thrill of pleasure from it, he's weirdly amused and pleased by it. He was planning to wake the kid up and send him into the other room anyway, but now he's changed his mind and wants him back in here.

Valentine sits up in bed when Lindsay opens the door. He doesn't turn on the light, but there's a lamp on in the hall and that throws a slanted triangle of illumination across the room, and across the kid's face, enough to show how frightened he looks. Lindsay goes to sit next to him.

"Do you want to say something?"

"Sorry."

"For?"

"Being a brat."

"And?"

"Um. Acting on like a whore?"

"Alright, then. We'll leave it there, shall we?" Valentine doesn't answer in words, just a relieved sort of half-smile, and Lindsay leans over to put his hand on the back of the kid's neck and kiss him like it's the finishing touch on his absolution, slipping his tongue between his lips and tasting toothpaste – and suddenly seeing, just poking out from under the pillow where it's been hurriedly shoved, one of the woollen monkey's feet.

He wants to lose it, throw the kid face-down over his knee and smack his bare little bottom until he's hysterical with pleas, or snatch that ridiculous monkey in front of his face and rip it limb from limb to drive it home that bad

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things happen when he doesn't do as he's told – but it's very late, and he's very tired, and it doesn't count as defeat if he knows about it, right? If he just
pretends
to let the kid win?

He sits back again, wiping his wet bottom lip with his thumb and watching Valentine for a while, to see if there's any reaction, whether he knows that Lindsay knows. "I'm just going to brush my teeth," he says eventually. "You can come back in the other room. The monkey's in my bedside table drawer if you still want it –
only
if you're going to promise to be good, mind."

"I will, I do, I promise," he says fervently, nodding his head like one of those stupid car ornaments. Lindsay touches the kid's face gently and goes to brush his teeth, and he makes sure he takes just long enough for Valentine to fumble around in the bedroom slamming the drawer loudly and pretending to take out the stolen toy.

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There's all sorts of shite on Lindsay's credit card bill, when it comes a few days after Christmas. He wants to go and confront Valentine, maybe shove him up against the wall a bit and act mean, throw him around and hit him and tell him off for stealing, because it makes the kid's breath go all funny and hitchy when they play like that, but... he's barely even
seen
the little bastard in days. It's hard getting your hands on a person who's locked himself in his room and won't even be lured out by suggested trips to the pier to play crappy arcade games.

He'd worry the kid was ill, if only he couldn't hear that constant whirring hum every time there's a break between the stupid songs on the glam rock mix he's playing too loud up there.

Lindsay hammers on the door with his fist. "Hey, Lady Stardust. You want a cup of coffee?"

The whirring stops briefly, and starts up again. "I got like sixteen cans of Red Bull in here, I'm alright."

"Pace it, okay?"

"Too late. Sixteen in all, only nine with stuff left in."

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"You'll never sleep tonight."

"Oh well. I ain't no fun when I'm sleeping, anyway." Another little pause, and the music's suddenly down a few notches. "Do you miss me?" he asks. There's something teasing in his voice, and something kind of hopeful.

Lindsay sighs and leans against the doorframe, feeling grumpy and lonely and pathetic and absolutely determined never to let it show.

"Please. If I knew all it took to get you out of my way was a spree with my credit card I would have thrown it at your head months ago." Then, because he's weak and he can't resist: "What are you
doing
?"

"That's missing the point of a surprise, you bellend."

"I hate surprises. Don't call me a bellend."

"Don't act like one, then."

"Are they good actors, bellends?"

"Oh yeah. Jack Nicholson's one. Can you fuck off now? I'm busy. I'll be finished soon, I promise."

"How soon?"

"Soon."

"
How
soon?"

"I dunno! In a bit."

"Two hours?"

"Maybe."

"Three hours and I'm breaking the door down."

Very quietly, very pleased: "You
do
miss me."

Lindsay stomps off in a mood. Three hours later, as promised, he goes to kick the door in; he's immensely relieved that Valentine's already out on his own and waiting on the landing for him, draped over the top banister and just about to call downstairs when Lindsay starts up. Surely there's nothing more 205

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embarrassing than threatening to smash a door in and not being able to. He grabs the kid's hair instead and drags him to bed without a word, rough and determined, not that he's meeting any
real
resistance – Valentine's laughing and whingeing at the same time, complaining about his hair being messed up even as he scrabbles at Lindsay's shirt buttons and gets their limbs all in a tangle trying to strip off in lightning-quick time so they end up falling awkwardly onto the bed and knocking their faces together hard, Valentine's forehead against Lindsay's jaw.

"You're always beating me up, you wanker," Valentine whines, but he clearly can't mind
that
much because he slips his hands into Lindsay's hair and down over the tender bit on his jaw that feels like it's bruising to hold him right where he wants him, and starts up some enthusiastic teenage tonguing. "I wanna play," he keeps saying, sighing, whispering, shoving the words into Lindsay's mouth with his hungry tongue and losing them there, kissing him so frantically it's making all kinds of disgusting indecent noises. "Lindsaaay, come on, I wanna
play
."

"What the hell do you think we're doing, tax returns?"

Valentine struggles into a sitting position to peel his t-shirt off, straddling Lindsay's hips and wriggling delicately against him. It's not fair, he's only got little blue pants on now and Lindsay's still wearing jeans and one inside-out arm of his shirt trapped around his wrist. If that's the kind of game he's after, unlucky. "Shut up, you know what I mean, I wanna
play
, with my toys."

"No."

"
Yes
," he insists, all petulance and pouty bottom lip – and that's how he ends up handcuffed to the bedstead, whimpering around a spit-soaked gag.

Lindsay's fucking him harder than he needs to, as if taking charge is going to make the whole sordid thing feel like
his
choice, hard enough that the bed keeps cracking against the wall, against the raw patches where it's already chipped the paint away.

Lindsay unties the scarf-gag when they're done but keeps Valentine

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cuffed there, bound to the bars and only able to wriggle and gasp little laughs when Lindsay starts cleaning the kid's own mess off his taut stomach with his tongue. "Let me out," he says, all breathless and happy, but Lindsay pinches his hip sharply and he makes a shocked little pain-noise.

"Why should I let you out?"

"I wanna cuddle."

"Want want want, do you even
know
any other words?"

"I..."

"Yes?"

"Love..."

"Okay, shut up now." He licks up, a long straight line between Valentine's ribs, up his breastbone, up his neck and over his chin to kiss his mouth. He's laughing again so it's clumsy and messy, even worse when Lindsay starts tickling him. He's just too tempting spread out there like that with his arms above his head, helpless and trapped. Swears and yelping, pleas and threats and promises and melodramatic screams for help like a teenage victim in a slasher film, all of that, but Lindsay's relentless until the kid's streaming with tears and laughing like a madman. "Let that be a lesson to you," he says, mock-stern and trying really hard not to laugh himself as he works the buckles on the leather cuffs loose and pulls Valentine into his arms, cuddling so tightly it was hardly worth freeing him at all.

"
I'm
the clingy attention-grabby one?" he says, muffled against Lindsay's collarbone and kissing him there, but he sounds pleased. In the hall downstairs, the big old clock chimes midnight, and Valentine laughs again.

"Hey, it's New Year's Eve now. Finished just in time." Lindsay's not sure what he means for a moment (finished fucking just in time? What?) then remembers what he's been up to and feels a lurch of something like terror, because he's sure it's going to be awful. He hates fancy-dress parties anyway even
without
having to wander round the place in some shoddy handmade David Bowie costume or whatever it is the kid's come up with.

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"I don't want to dress up. I'll wear a suit and go as a businessman."

"As if. That's the rule when couples go fancy-dress parties, you have to do wicked matching costumes else it's a waste."

"Where exactly is that written down?"

"Shut up." He props himself up on his elbow, looking down at Lindsay and putting fingers through his sweaty hair, stroking and pulling gently. "Who'd we go as, then? If you could pick anyone?"

"Mmm... Newman and Redford."

"Butch and Sundance?"

"Gondorff and Hooker."

"
Fuuuck
," Valentine says, dragging the word out long and laughing through it, flopping backwards onto the bed and sweeping the back of his hand onto his forehead like a swooning damsel. "Paul Newman, fucking love of my life, I ain't even kidding. First time I knew... I mean, I
always
knew, but first time I really
knew
, that was his fault. You know where he's doing the cards, he's flipping that ace of spades around, and he winks at Redford after? Fucking hell.