Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (27 page)

"You still awake?"

Valentine tightens his grip on Lindsay's hand and shoves it down.

"Yeah."

"Jesus, you are." He starts stroking gently, rubbing his palm over Valentine's cock. "Can you even feel anything through all those skirts?"

"Fuck me."

"What, here?"

"Yeah."

"No lube."

"Use spit."

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"Is that enough?"

"You ain't
that
big."

"Cheeky swine." He goes to clip him round the ear but Valentine catches his hand out the air and begins to dot kisses all over it, little tiny feather-light touches on his fingers and palm.

"
Fuck me
," he says again. "Don't wind me up if you ain't gonna follow through."

"I wasn't winding you up, how was I to know you get off on robbery stories?"

"LINDSAY."

"Alright!" Fighting through the petticoats is a job and a half. He eventually finds a bare thigh – stockings, then, he realises with a sick wonderful little lurch in his stomach. They're the sort with elastic bits at the top so they stay up, only all the groping's made them roll and slide down around Valentine's knees and calves. He's wearing normal pants under all that girly stuff, thankfully, and Lindsay yanks them down, stretching one leg hole over one of his boots and leaving them hanging there off the other ankle like a sort of rubbish baggy garter.

It's frantic and messy and uncomfortable and Valentine keeps begging
please
so Lindsay clamps a hand over his mouth and fucks him like that, forcing him silent. It seems like no time's passed at all before the kid tenses all over and comes with his eyes wide open, staring at the painting and whimpering wetly into Lindsay's palm. He keeps his hand there and uses the other to hoist Valentine's leg more closely around his waist, thrusting in a rhythm that gets increasingly more erratic until it's a jumble of awkward jerky little movements and Valentine's whimpering again because the hand over his mouth is hurting.

"Sorry," Lindsay mutters, and braces both hands on the floor instead to push in
hard
.

"What for? I like it." Valentine slides his fingers through Lindsay's hair, pulling him down for a kiss and saying, "Come on, come on, come on," against his mouth and laughing at the strangled noise Lindsay makes and the thump of

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his fist on the floorboards when he comes, trying to be silent. "Be a gent and lend me your hanky." He doesn't wait to be given it, he just takes it from the inside pocket of Lindsay's coat, and shoves him away so he can start mopping himself up.

"That's silk."

"Yeah, and? It's like posh twats' Andrex, innit?"

"That's not going back in my pocket now."

"It's alright, I'll pin it on one of my petticoats out the way, I'm keeping it for a souvenir." He starts laughing then, and Lindsay assumes it's a delayed reaction of
oh shit we just had a quickie on the floor in your best friend's posh
house
so he sort of smiles too as he's refastening his trousers – but then he twigs on to the vague note of terror.

"...What?"

"Shit. Fucking hell. You do know there's a security camera up in that corner, right?"

He feels winded, suddenly, like he's not even got enough breath to curse.

Valentine can't stop laughing hysterically, struggling to pull his pants and stockings up and sort out his skirts.

"C'mon, we should go and talk to Ellie. I can charm her. She'll like me, I'll use her name. We've gotta stick together, us molls. Bet I can get her to nick us the tape so's Ty don't see, we can watch it later, I bet it's fucking hot as hell."

"I hate you. I'm going to kill you. Stop laughing. I'm not kidding around." He snatches at the kid's wrist, squeezing hard and grinding the little bones together as he drags him to the door, but it seems to have the opposite effect to the one he wanted:

"Speak roughly to your little boy and beat him when he sneezes,"

Valentine says, smirking gently and giving Lindsay a sideways look.

Somewhere below them a room full of people is counting down from ten.

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They don't talk, getting ready for bed. They're hazy from drink, although they didn't drink a lot, and tiredness, although they've done nothing all night but sit around talking. The others are probably asleep already. Ty lost the card game to determine which one of them got the guest room, but he just looked at Danny coldly until he shrugged and pretended he didn't care and asked Lindsay for a blanket for the sofa. You could share, the kid said, it don't make you queer, you know, just sharing a bed. They looked at him like he'd sprouted an extra head, and Lindsay went to clear their empty bottles into the kitchen so nobody could see him fighting back a smile.

Now the house is silent and the plan's thrumming round his head, but not urgently. It's just a quiet presence lurking at the back of his mind where he's shoved it. They've got more than a month to sleep on it. He's the one who always urges the others to leave it as long as possible, to get comfortable with the plan and learn it like a song. They'd go in guns blazing without even thinking about it if he wasn't there to keep them focused, he thinks. They've done it before, got too impatient and just come up with their own quick little scam and not bothered informing him – they were sorry after, when Lindsay used one of his fake

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identities to sort out their bail. Danny apologised like a child who'd smashed a window. Ty just sulked like a teenager. They've been friends since university, but he's never liked owing anything to anybody, and he's not had a chance to pay Lindsay back yet – not in money, but in gesture – and that makes him fucking sick as a dog. It was interesting, Lindsay thinks, seeing the kid pick up on all this. He's really not as thick as he seems. He's barely read a book that wasn't for school, years ago, and he likes films with car chases and fart jokes; nobody could call him intelligent, but he's
sharp
, he's perceptive when it comes to people, and the longer he spends with the other two the more confident he seems to get with this careful, delicate power-balance.

("You're top dog, ain't you?" he said earlier in the kitchen, slipping up behind Lindsay and kissing the back of his shoulder as he uncapped beer bottles on the counter. "I weren't sure. You are, though. That's genius. I'm like your moll. You're Fat Sam and I'm Tallulah." Lindsay turned round and shoved a couple of bottles in his hands and said he could be a waitress instead.) The kid's wearing vest and pants, Lindsay's wearing the bottom half of his blue pyjamas, and they weave around the bathroom sharing the space like they're dancing. Lindsay pisses while the kid picks out his stupid single blue contact lens, he washes his hands and face while Valentine stands on tiptoe to see in the mirror over his shoulder and fingercomb his hair back into an elastic band, then they go for toothbrushes at the same time and fight for the cold tap.

Valentine accidentally spits a gobful of foam onto Lindsay's hand as he's rinsing his brush and he cuffs him gently round the back of his head, but he's half-smiling at him in the mirror when he does it and the kid laughs. They go back through into the bedroom with Valentine's hand resting lightly against the small of Lindsay's back until they reach the foot of the bed and have to split up, then it creeps back again when they're under the covers and Lindsay's flicked off the lamp. He kisses Valentine on the forehead and they just lie there, breathing, listening to the silence. Somewhere, somebody coughs. Lindsay can't tell whether it's downstairs or down the hall.

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matter. The new moon's round the other side of the house, and there aren't any streetlamps or anything visible through the window, just a dusting of stars. They never pull the curtains any more, Valentine says he likes feeling the stars above him. Lindsay can feel the kid's eyes are open anyway, his long eyelashes are touching his face like butterflies. He angles a bit to kiss him, tingling with toothpaste, and Valentine slides a hand into his hair to keep him there, kissing back gently like he's afraid of shattering the spell. Lindsay's not used to all this kissing; it freaks him out a bit sometimes and then he wants to break it off and put his tongue to use somewhere else instead, because it's been an awful long time since he's sat around with somebody and just
kissed
them for hours on end.

Since he was... nineteen, probably. Then he remembers, and indulges him. He's kissing him now with his hand on the back of the kid's neck so he knows that it's okay, he can keep going, and it's all smiles and tongues and quiet breathing.

They still don't talk, they don't need to, talking's such a waste of energy when they can say the exact same things without making a sound. Valentine slips one leg between Lindsay's and shuffles to lie half on top of him, putting a careful pressure on their awakening erections without breaking the kiss. It's like a game of chess, he's waiting for Lindsay to make the next move, so Lindsay slides his hands under Valentine's vest, over his ribs, feeling him laugh softly and squirm and shiver at the touch, then keeps moving and takes the vest over his head and tugs him back in for a kiss that seems endless. They're naked almost without effort, kicking the rest of their clothes off to lie in crumpled little heaps at the foot of the bed, and it's several minutes before Lindsay realises there's something slightly different about the way they're lying now – a tiny, massive difference.

Valentine's on top of him, which is nothing unusual, and bits of his hair are falling out the elastic band and he's got Lindsay's stubbly face cupped in his hands and he's kissing him like his life depends on it, which is nothing unusual, but this time the kid's not straddling him and rubbing against his cock, he's between his legs and rubbing against his cock. He's got one leg bent and shoved up flush against Lindsay's arse, under his thigh, hooking his leg up and over his own.

Oh
, Lindsay thinks, and gets no further. Now he's aware of it he can't

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seem to turn his mind off. The kissing slows and falters and stops, and starts again because Valentine's an insistent little bastard and won't give up without a good fight, and stops again when Lindsay gives him a gentle warning bite on the lip because he can't remember how to talk. Valentine's stroking Lindsay's face now with his fingertips, very gently, his cheeks and forehead and chin and nose and ears and eyes and mouth like he's blind and trying to learn him by heart.

There's a gun on the bedside table. It'd be so easy to grab it and shove it in the kid's mouth, or ram it against his temple hard enough to hurt, or turn it round and crack him over the cheek with the handle. So many options. Punch him. Wrap his fingers round the kid's neck and squeeze. Throw him onto his front and hold him down and fuck him so roughly he cries. So, so many options, and the kid's breathing is quick, frightened, apprehensive, like he's expecting all of these and then some more. It's only to get his reaction, Lindsay tells himself, when he reaches out to find the bottle of lube where it's standing between the gun and the darkened lamp and hands it over, but then the kid's doing a quiet amazed nervous sort of half-laugh and it's a bit too late to take back your "go ahead" when you've already got a slippery fingertip up your arse so he just lays there, stiff and still as a corpse while the kid sucks his cock, all unrefined and sloppy because he's concentrating on the slide and thrust of his finger. Lindsay bites his tongue, then changes his mind and bites his knuckle because that's less likely to get cut right through and fall off.

It all seems to take far too long; the kid's being careful. Maybe it's obvious Lindsay's never done this before. He knows Valentine's never done this before. First times all round. He gnaws on his knuckle like a dog with a bone until he can taste copper, and slings a pillow down the bed hoping he'll get the message and just get on with it, get it
over
with so they can play the amnesia game and never mention it again. It's still not too late to belt him with the gun.

He just doesn't feel like he can move, at least not in any way that doesn't involve lifting his hips so the kid can tuck the pillow under him, or letting the kid guide his legs up around his waist, or choosing another knuckle to clamp his teeth around when Valentine begins to inch inside him, maddeningly slowly. Hours or centuries or possibly minutes later he starts to move properly, gentle tiny little 221

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slides at first, and longer, smoother strokes when he's got the hang of it, and everywhere he touches, Lindsay's skin prickles and sears. Valentine finds Lindsay's mouth with his fingers so he knows where to aim a kiss in the darkness and that's it, that's all there is, it's kissing and fucking and quick hard breathing and the rhythmic creak of the bed. Valentine's making noises, not really moans or cries or swears or pleas but somehow all and none of them at once, they're just noises. If they can hear the others coughing then the others are going to hear this and Lindsay can't stand the thought of facing them in the morning after they've been forced to listen to him getting fucked by this overenthusiastic little twat.

Oddly, he thinks he'd be okay if things were the other way around, the
usual
way, but not this. Even if they don't know the details, that's not the point,
he
knows and he feels sick at the idea they might be listening.

"Shush," he says, "shh, shush." The first words either of them have spoken and they're not even real words. He covers Valentine's mouth with his hand and the kid whimpers through his fingers, sounding desperate and delirious as he comes in repulsive hot splashes, shuddering all over and digging his fingernails into Lindsay's waist. Lindsay's not close, he's nowhere near. He's hard, but his pleasure seems foggy and far away until Valentine's recovered enough to realise and slithers down the bed again to suck him with every scrap of skill he's got. Lindsay's melting against the mattress in no time at all. Quicker than he expected or thought possible, Valentine's got the suction and heat and the wet flick of his tongue just right and Lindsay's clutching the pillow poking out under his hips until the ends of the feathers prick his fingers like fairytale spindles, gritting his teeth against a cry until his jaw aches. Valentine swallows around him, waits until he's done, swallows again, and stays there with his head resting against Lindsay's thigh.