Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (22 page)

"They're fucking brilliant." He turns pages, running his fingers over the 175

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lines of handwriting with a care that's almost reverential. "You don't draw your y's like that no more, you don't do curly tails no more, you do little straight ones.

When did that change? Oh, look, and your f's and all, you do joined-up f's now.

Were you dead young here or something, didn't you know joined-up writing yet?"

"I... don't know," he says, bemused. He wasn't aware he
had
changed the way he wrote, or why it matters.

"Hahaha, fucking hell, your German report – 'Lindsay is especially competent orally'. A-
men
."

"Oh, shut up. Put it away, it's crap." He drops down onto the carpet next to the kid and wrestles the report and a couple of exercise books out of his hands, but by the time he's shoved them back in their box Valentine's already moved on to the next thing (the Clash poster still stuck inside the wardrobe with peeling sellotape, which makes him do a double take and then howl with laughter) and the next (running his fingers over the pattern of holes in the dartboard hanging on the back of the door, like reverse Braille) and the next – he lingers over these, the precious ES-175 Lindsay never used to let out of his sight, and his dad's favourite classical, and the crappy cheap battered old acoustic he bought off his cousin and learned to play on.

"You never told me you played guitar."

"You never asked."

"Why do I have to
ask
all the time?" He touches his fingers to the strings, strums across them gently. The sound is so clanging and awful Lindsay actually winces. "They could do with tuning."

"Why bother? I'm not going to play them."

"How

come?"

"I don't want to."

"Why?"

"Why do you ask so many questions?"

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"Cos it's the only way I can get fucking answers, ain't it?"

He doesn't want to fight, not on Christmas Eve and not over something so stupid, so he gets up off the carpet and sits on the bed, right back against the pillows. "I've forgotten how. Just leave it."

"You're such a liar," Valentine says, frowning, but he still comes over when Lindsay holds his hand out and curls in next to him, resting his head heavily against Lindsay's shoulder and winding a bit of hair around his fingers like he thinks Lindsay's going to change his mind and get up and walk away if he's not anchored down. He doesn't speak again, and Lindsay doesn't break his silence, just holds him and listens to him breathe.

It feels like a very long time passes before he starts to talk, quiet and hesitant and stumbling over the words because he's never said them to anybody before and isn't really sure what order to put them in. He talks about his dad first, and the band he played for in the '40s, how he got out of being sent to the army because his family were farmers but he lost two older brothers and always felt guilty about sitting in a smoky club and playing his trumpet while they were lying dead in the mud – although not guilty enough to stop, not until he had to.

Then he talks about his mum, the scandal when she fell in love with a man more than twice her age and eloped with him, and then the babies, all the miscarriages, the stillbirth, the older sister he never knew because she died after three weeks, how he came along and surprised all the doctors and his desperate parents by living. Valentine doesn't interrupt. He could have fallen asleep for all Lindsay knows, the way they're lying means his face is hidden, but he goes on talking anyway. It's like a cracked dam now it's started; he doesn't think he could make himself stop if he tried, so he doesn't try. He talks about his childhood, Keighley and Bradford in the '70s and '80s, the car accident that left his mum with a spot of whiplash and him with a tiny graze on his cheek but injured his dad's arm so badly he had to have it amputated just below the elbow – the depression, then, at having the piano and the trumpet and the guitars there in the house but not being able to get the right sounds out of them any more, and how eleven-year-old Lindsay had started to teach himself to play the guitar, slaving hours and days 177

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away over a stolen library book – the first thing he ever stole – so he could surprise a smile out of his dad with a clumsy little tune when he finally came home from hospital.

His throat feels itchy from talking. He needs a drink, but he still can't stop: inheriting the old farm, selling it, moving to Wales when Lindsay was thirteen. How he felt like he was in prison even so, as if anything he did that wasn't music was an automatic betrayal – all the things he wanted to do and didn't because he couldn't bear the thought of maybe disappointing his dad. It was always
words
he was interested in, not dots and lines scribbled on staves; words and phonetics and etymology and the gutchurning, headspinning thrill (better than any drug, better than sex) the first time he formed a sestina that really
worked
. He tells Valentine how terrified he was of showing his parents the acceptance letter from King's because he'd applied for English without telling them, gone all the way down to Cambridge on his own for the interview without telling them.

"Which

was

stupid
," he goes on quietly, "because of course they were delighted. But then the cancer stuck its claws in. He always asked me to play, every time I got up to visit. He used to sit there in bed with his eyes closed, just listening and smiling and dying. So that's why I've not been much in the mood for it since, that's why they stayed here when I moved out." Tiny pause. "I've just split my heart open for you, you shit, I'm going to murder you if you fell asleep and missed it."

"I ain't sleeping," Valentine says straight away. He finally releases Lindsay's hair and touches his face instead, stroking his cheek gently with his thumb. "I'm just... I dunno."

"You're

what?"

"Don't know. Wondering what it's like."

"What what's like?"

"Having a brilliant dad like that. One who ain't a complete twat."

Lindsay actually smiles at that, just a little bit. "Come off it, he wasn't

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perfect. He was, what, forty-eight when I was born? He was born in the '20s, he was like a living history book. Old-fashioned. Really strict."

"Fond of corduroy?"

"Shut

your

mouth."

"Bet he never broke your nose, though."

"Well.

No."

"And your mum's brilliant, too. You're so lucky."

He's never really thought of it like that. There's such a weird complacency you get with privilege, even the most simple sort, like never knowing what it's like to come home from school and
not
have a hug and a hot dinner waiting for you – and now he hates the kid again, for turning his whinging self-pity into empathy or compassion or (god forbid) love or whatever the fuck it is he's feeling. He wants to hug him. He wants to wring his neck. He doesn't do either. "I
am
going to tell her," he blurts out instead. "I swear I am. When the time's right." And that sounds ridiculous, a man in his mid-thirties still waiting for
the right time
. Valentine doesn't make a smartarse comment though, like Lindsay thought he might – just finds his hand and pulls it close enough to kiss his fingers.

"If it's gonna wreck your Christmas, don't. I can be your lodger, friend, workmate, whatever. I can stay in that room next door, it's fine. I just wanna have a nice Christmas, alright? Cos I ain't had one of them since I was about ten, so, just don't fuck it up, yeah? Cos I'm having a nice time. I like your mum. I like the fairy lights. I like your Joe Strummer poster. It's
Christmas
. Don't get all grumpy and worked up and spoil it."

"I

thought

you

liked
it when I get all grumpy and worked up." He only said it to make the kid smile, it wasn't supposed to be a come-on line, but he can't complain when there's a tongue in his mouth. "You're very pushy all of a sudden," he says, struggling to form the words around kisses and sudden laughter he can't hold back. Valentine shakes his hair back out of his eyes and smirks.

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"Yeah,

I

do
like it when you lose it. When I act up and you... lose it."

His idea of 'acting up' is a bit tame, slinging a leg over Lindsay's body and pinning both his wrists on the pillow above his head, raising an eyebrow like he's inviting a comeback. Lindsay's all crazy swinging moods today; that loathing from half a minute ago is gone completely and there's nothing left now except a hot delicious curl of something in the pit of his stomach. He doesn't move, he just matches the raised eyebrow and gentle smirk and waits, watching Valentine falter and then recover himself, laugh a bit breathlessly, and lean down to press Lindsay's wrists harder against the pillow, deliberate and forceful.

"Oh yeah, you wanna play like this now?"

"Well... since it's Christmas."

"This best not be my present, you cheap fucker, I want a proper present with ribbons
and
this."

"So demanding." He makes a lazy half-attempt to move his hands, just to see what happens, and gets the sharp scratch of fingernails pressing on his skin.

"No, don't move. You have to do as I say."

"Do I, now?"

"Yeah, you have to be a good boy-" He cracks up laughing, huge infectious peals of laughter. "
Fuck
, I can't fucking do this, I'm rubbish."

"How about you do as
I
say?"

"Yeah, I think I can manage that."

He rubs the eye without the contact lens, giggles morphing into shaky breathing as he waits for instruction. Lindsay thinks for a second about getting him to do something stupid, just to be annoying, but he isn't really in the mood for baiting him any more so he just says, "Good. Now take off your t-shirt. No,"

he interrupts himself just as the kid's moving to obey, darting a hand out to stop him. "I changed my mind. Don't take it off. Don't take your jeans off, either. Just pull your zip down. Pull your t-shirt up so I can see. Your clothes are staying on

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this time." Valentine does as he's told at once, shimmying the clinging t-shirt up his ribcage, popping the button through, drawing the zip down slowly. He's got ridiculous novelty Christmas pants on, red with little cartoon snowmen, just visible through the open v where the two halves of the zip fall open. Lindsay manages not to laugh for about two seconds, then he's collapsed as well and Valentine's smacking him on the shoulder, having a go at him for spoiling the moment although he's lost it again himself.

"You laughing at my sexy lingerie again? You bastard."

"Shut up. You're ridiculous. Shut up." He shuts the kid up himself quite effectively, pulling him in for a kiss, running his fingers down Valentine's body and slipping both hands under the loose waistband of his open jeans, squeezing his arse gently and grinding up against him, swallowing down his whimpering little moans.

"This is well dirty," Valentine murmurs, barely audible. Lindsay pulls his hands away and slides them back in place but under his pants this time, skin against skin, slipping a teasing finger down between his cheeks, and Valentine breathes
oh
but inflects it like
please
.

"Yeah?"

"Mmhm. Gropey snogging in your old bedroom?" He shifts impatiently against Lindsay's hands, trying to get more. "Cos... how many wet dreams have you had in this bed? How many times have you got yourself off? Did you ever do this with anyone else in here?"

Lindsay stops kissing him between words, stops the calculated movement of his hands. "What?"

"Come on. Share. Did you ever do this with anyone else? Did you have a boyfriend?" His cheeks are tinged pink and his eyes are bright, but it's not anger this time, it's not an interrogation like when he was throwing his fit about Harvey. "When you was in school. Did you get off with boys in here? Did you come home and pretend you had loads of joint homework projects to do when really you were pulling his tie and coming in his mouth, is that how it happened?

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In your school uniforms?" He's so hard now, pressing himself against Lindsay's leg deliberately to make sure he feels it. "Tell me."

"You had a hissy fit last time you even
thought
about anybody else."

"Yeah, but that weren't in
school uniforms
. Tell me. Make it up if you never got none."

He

did
get some, and quite a lot of it, although the stories couldn't possibly be that arousing – two frightened teenage schoolboys who didn't even really like each other that much but ended up in these clumsy fumbles because they didn't know anybody else who was the same, who wouldn't run and spread the word and get them in all sorts of hell. He remembers wordless, embarrassed handjobs, never any eye contact, clothes always on, feeling sick with shame the first time Jason actually put it in his mouth because that meant he was
seeing him
naked
.

"Don't you tell me what to do," he says sharply, to cover up his hesitation and stamp out the weird memories. "You're doing as
I
say, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry," Valentine says hastily, propping himself above Lindsay with both palms flat on the bed, so their faces are just inches apart, just waiting for Lindsay to make the next move. It's another kiss, just to get things moving, a long, slow, deep kiss that makes Valentine melt against him like his bones have all turned to jelly. He's kissing back, twining his fingers in Lindsay's hair, all tongue and gentle breathed laugher.

And then the pillow gets whipped out from under Lindsay's head and smacks him in the face.

"Oh, for god's sake. If you wanted to share a room you could've
said
so before I made the spare bed up."

"Can't

you