Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (36 page)

"What, you've brought me camp camping?"

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Another half a step, putting his foot between Valentine's so he can press him even harder against the body of the car and the back window. "It was just a suggestion. You never see any women in this place, that's all."

"No. Just blokes fighting with their wives, and their mates who are too chickenshit to ask if they wanna talk?"

Lindsay lets him go abruptly, stepping back and trying to hide how he nearly stumbles over the beer cooler by getting another can out and downing half a Guinness in one. "Make yourself useful. You're sous-chef, you get to chop the onions."

"Can't I be in charge of the fire instead?"

He can't think of anything more terrifying. "We've got a stove, we don't need a fire."

"Excuse me, you ain't dragging me all the way back to England to sleep in a tent for two nights with a man who hates my fucking guts and then telling me I
don't
get to make a fire and do marshmallows. No way. What d'you think that dirt bit in the grass is, a fucking crop circle? That's for a FIRE."

He tries to buy some time with a compromise. "What's the point of having a fire in the daylight? Let's leave it til later. Now chop."

Valentine dashes off to find firewood, when everything's chopped and gently simmering in the big pot on the stove. It's very quiet, suddenly. Lindsay can see a couple of tents but no other people, and there's barely any noise above the quiet violin as the Tom Waits album comes to the end. He leans into the car to turn it off before it's stopped completely – and then it really
is
quiet, just the birdsong and the gentle bubble of the river a little way behind where they've pitched. This is how he likes it best, when the others are away and it's just him and the smell of slowly-cooking food and the sound of water, when it's not cold enough to need a coat and woollens but there's a nip in the air that makes you think nothing in the world could possibly be a better idea than getting under a blanket and just enjoying the outdoors. He spreads the smaller blanket out in front of a tree stump just the right size for a backrest and covers up with the

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other, like a faded old plaid barber's cloak. A hipflask full of Bushmills and a favourite book, and for half an hour he's lost. Then:

"Nearly fell in the river, I was saying hello to the ducks. Can I share your blanket?"

"No." Valentine sits down and wriggles his way in anyway. Lindsay closes his book on his finger to save his page and just leans back against the tree stump, waiting for him to settle so he can slip his free arm around the kid's waist and under the hem of his t-shirt, up to where his skin is warm and alive with breathing and heartbeats. "Comfy?"

"Yeah, now you're groping me."

"I'm not groping you. Your heart's going mad." He splays his fingers out over Valentine's chest, feeling the gentle thud against his palm.

"Cos you're groping me. What are you reading?"

"A book."

"Ha ha ha, I ain't special. What are you reading?"

So Lindsay flips the paperback open again, and, very quietly at Valentine's ear so his breath makes the kid's long hair tickle against his lobe, he reads the bit he's read a dozen times already and can't bring himself to turn the page from: "Si c'est aimer, de vivre en vous plus qu'en moymesme, cacher d'un front joyeux une langueur extresme, sentir au fond de l'àme un combat inegal, chaud, froid, comme la fievre amoureuse me traitte, honteux, parlant à vous, de confesser mon mal: si cela c'est aimer, furieux je vous aime, je vous aime, et sçay bien que mon mal est fatal. Le coeur le dit assez, mai la langue est muette."4

He's barely speaking at all by the end, it's just a breath of a whisper. He feels flayed open and embarrassed. He wonders how much of that Valentine 4 If that is to love, to live in you more than in myself, to hide great weariness under a mask of joy, to feel in the depths of my soul an unequal battle, hot, cold, as the fever of love takes me, ashamed, speaking to you, to confess my pain: if that is to love, then I love you furiously, I love you and know full well that my pain is fatal. The heart says so often, but the language is silent
. From Sonnets Pour Hélène by Pierre de Ronsard.

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understood, and whether it's the words or just the physical closeness that's making his heart go like this.

"J'aime d'entendre ta voix – is that right? Mais traduire... traduis? En anglais, s'il te plaît."

"Why?"

"Cos. You know I ain't very good yet. You talk too fast."

He throws the book aside and brings his other hand under the blanket to run up and down Valentine's sides, across his front where the line of dark hair is just starting above the low waistband of his jeans. "I said what the fuck happened to your ribs, porky?"

"Oh, don't." He sounds like he's going to burst into tears, suddenly.

Lindsay stills his hands and just stares at him, the bit he can see, just the side of his face and the slope of his frowning eyebrow over his closed eye.

"Christ, I was only joking..."

"Yeah, well
don't
. I know I'm fucking minging, you don't have to make a fuss, just... I'm sorting it, alright? Atkins or GI or Cambridge or
something
, I swear I'll sort it. It's living in France, it's all that fucking pastry."

"
What
are you talking about?"

"Like you ain't noticed. You even just said I'm porky."

"Yeah, what I
meant
is you don't look like you've just crawled out of Auschwitz any more. It's a
good
thing. I've stopped being scared I'm going to snap you like a Twiglet."

"I'm a fucking ginormous flabby monster. I'm 1976 Elvis. I've got a muffin top. You're just being nice."

"Oh, please. When have I ever been nice to you?"
That
makes him smile, or close enough. Lindsay tucks his chin over Valentine's shoulder and bumps a bristly kiss off his jaw, clumsy at this angle but good enough to make him open his eyes at last and smile a little bit wider.

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"Did you say je vous aime?"

"Might have done."

"Even when I'm fat?"

"Shut up before I slap you."

"Je vous aime," he says again, slow and quiet like he's turning the words over in his mouth to see how well they fit. He finds Lindsay's hands under his t-shirt and winds their fingers together. "That's about all I got. What was the rest?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Yeah it does."

"It doesn't matter."

"Was it all soppy and embarrassing?" Maybe he's pushing because he knows Lindsay's only got the one method of distracting him when he doesn't want to talk; he drops the kid's hand and starts tugging at the zip on his jeans, and Valentine laughs, all quiet and happy like he's won, and lifts up a bit so they can get the denim pushed down around his knees. "Dirty old man," he says again. "In public?"

"Is under a blanket in public?"

"I think it is."

"When there's nobody around?"

"The others are back."

"What?" Lindsay turns a bit to follow where Valentine's looking, and sees them by the shower block in the distance, walking up. "Great timing, as ever." He doesn't stop, though. He's had enough beer and whiskey for it not to feel like it matters any more. Valentine's cock is soft and warm in his palm, and he strokes it to life very gently with his thumb. "Are you going to be quiet?"

"Promise. Don't stop." He brings his knees up slightly as an extra shield from disgusted eyes, and finds Lindsay's book. By the time Danny and Ty get to the tent he's leaning back against Lindsay's shoulder like they're doing nothing 295

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more obscene than cuddling and Lindsay's reading aloud to him. It feels less revolting reading him love poetry when it's in French.

"Did you catch anything?" Valentine says. His voice is careful and steady, giving nothing away, but his bare skin under the blanket is burning.

"No. Didn't try, we were just walking. What's cooking?" Danny goes over to lift the lid on the pan and stick his nose in.

"Chicken and veg and stuff. I helped."

"Do you want a gold star?" Ty says, but there's no real sarcastic menace in it. He sounds too tired to bother. He busies himself passing beers around so he doesn't have to look at anyone; Lindsay's only got one hand free, so Valentine sorts the ring pull for him with shaking hands. He's doing a pretty good job of looking like nothing's happening. Lindsay just keeps on stroking him gently, only really moving his fingers so the others don't see his arm going. It's never going to get him off, a touch as barely-there as this, but it's making him sweat and tremble and breathe too fast and that's just as good, in a way.

Dusk fades in soon, and Ty spikes some lamps into the grass. Valentine says something about his fire and Lindsay says he's welcome to go and get it started, smirking and kissing the back of his shoulder when he declines. Danny's picked through the iPod and set the Charlatans blaring from the car, and he and Ty are taking it in turns playing his computer game, and everybody's a bit too drunk. It's a weird, quiet, comfortable evening, like it always is, except he doesn't usually have an armful of squirming person trying not to whimper too much.

"Are you hungry?" he says, speaking low against the kid's ear. "Because that's going to involve at least one of us getting up..."

"I ain't hungry for
food
, you fucking wanker," Valentine mutters back, and Lindsay laughs quietly and just keeps on stroking – but he's had a
lot
of beer, and he's been sitting in the same position for ages, and the kid's pressing against his bladder. As soon as he's realised, it's urgent.

"Get up, I want a piss."

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"What? Lindsay." He sounds panicked. "I'm-"
Naked with a hard-on
. He doesn't have to say it.

"Shush. Just keep the blanket on." He manages to wriggle out from behind him without exposing too much, not that the others are paying much attention anyway, and Valentine starts trying to pull up his jeans without actually moving.

"Fucking
wanker
," he mutters again. "Can you pass me my knitting out the back seat before you go?"

He's wearing it, five minutes later when he catches up with Lindsay in the trees. It's like a brown woolly t-shirt; the body of the jumper is finished but he's not started the arms yet, so they end just above where his own t-shirt sleeves end, with bright yellow wool tying off the ready stitches.

"You look nice."

"Ha ha ha. It's only cos it's long on me. Covers up stuff my clothes don't, if you get what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more."

"Don't watch me. I can't piss if you're watching."

Valentine rolls his eyes and turns his back, and Lindsay finishes and zips up, then tries to sneak up behind him but there's too much junk underfoot, crackling twigs and leaves and stones; the kid hears him and turns before he gets there, smiles a bit with just one side of his mouth, and then there's not much for a while except furious kissing.

"You're a bastard," Valentine mutters, muffled against his mouth, "you are, you're a fucking torture artist."

Lindsay slams the kid's back against the nearest tree, swallowing down his hungry pain-noises. "Artist, I like that." Valentine's mouth is warm and he tastes like beer. Lindsay slides his hands down from where they're clutched in his messy hair, down over the cloud-soft wool until he finds the hem and slips up underneath it, under his t-shirt to find his skin. He's warm there too, swelling in gentle bulges over the tight waistband of his jeans. He's aware of it, clearly, 297

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because he reaches down to grab Lindsay's hands and move them up to his waist, but now he knows it's there, now he knows it bugs him
this much
, he can't help teasing, touching him there again, sliding his thumbs across the front of him and following the line of the denim round, moving up over the thicker hairs disappearing behind the fly. "You sure you should be drinking beer? Getting a little belly there, aren't you?"

"Fuck off!" Lindsay pinches him gently at the side, and Valentine slaps at his hand. "I mean it, Lindsay, fucking stop it."

"Why?"

"Cos! I don't come and draw in all your wrinkles with a felt tip, do I?"

"Would that make you happy?"

Valentine's suddenly pulling faces, obviously trying really hard to stay sulky and not smile. Lindsay leans in and kisses him again, softly this time to placate him, and Valentine resists for three seconds then sighs quietly through his nose and melts against him, kissing slowly and combing his fingers through Lindsay's hair to hold him close. "You know what would?"

"What?"

"Go down." He tugs gently, trying to coax him. "Lindsay? Go down, yeah?"

"Alright." Valentine still doesn't let Lindsay's hair go when he sinks down to his knees and starts working at the fastenings on his jeans, dragging the black denim down to the top of his cowboy boots. "Hold these."

"I'll wear them." Valentine takes Lindsay's glasses with the hand not twisted in his hair and slips them on. "You'll feel like you're noshing someone clever. Do I look clever?"

"No." He doesn't bother looking. He doesn't bother taking the kid's pants down either, he just kisses him through the blue fabric, and again brings his hands up to touch where he's spilling above the waistband. "You're a short fat stupid fashion victim."

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"Why are you so fucking
horrible
to me?"

"You love it. I'm wonderful to you." In one move he's got the pants down and his mouth on Valentine's cock, sucking wetly. That should shut him up, he thinks, but then the hand twists even more forcefully in his hair, actually
painful
this time, and the kid knees him in the shoulder where the gunshot scar is. He's not expecting that, but he can't be angry even though the old wound still hurts a bit because he got a look at Valentine's scowly face as he went sprawling on the forest ground and he just looks so
sulky
, bottom lip out and everything, that Lindsay can't stop himself from cracking up. "I'm sorry, okay?" he calls at Valentine's back as he storms off, through helpless laughter. "You're not fat.