Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (23 page)

knock
?" Lindsay yells, and feels like a teenager again, except he was much more careful as a teenager and would
never
have let his guard down enough that he didn't hear the creak of footsteps coming up the stairs. His hands are stuck. It takes far too long to pull them out the back of the kid's tight

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jeans, and then he's not sure what to do with them when he's got them free.

"Listen, it's not what it looks like..." Christ, that was a stupid thing to say.

"Oh please, it's
exactly
what it looks like," his mother shoots back. He could swear there's a smirk in her voice, but he can't bring himself to look at her to check.

"Yeah, Lindsay, I think the cat's out the bag," Valentine says quietly.

He's
definitely
smirking. He zips his jeans and straightens his t-shirt and makes like he's going to get up off the bed, but Lindsay clamps his hands at the kid's hips and holds him there because she's seen this much and this is horrific enough, but if Valentine gets up then she's going to get a fantastic unimpeded view of two erections and then he'll have to shoot himself in the head.

"The girls are coming round, I need your help with the wine. Just...

please
wash your hands first, okay?"

Yes, Lindsay decides miserably, she's definitely smirking, and Valentine's full-on laughing now, ducking his head and biting his thumbnail and actually blushing, but laughing.

"Fine," he snaps, "anything, just get out!"

"Your mum's a legend," Valentine whispers when the door's clicked shut behind her. Lindsay shoves him away and goes to lock himself in the bathroom.

***

He feels slightly more in control later on – and that's the thing, he thinks. The control. Being surprised like that, having the confession pre-empted and taken out of his hands, that's what shook him up so badly. Now she knows, now he's just got to address it, calmly and on his own terms, he doesn't feel half as bad as he thought he would.

"Sorry about earlier," he says casually, getting wine glasses down out the cupboard and busying himself with the corkscrew.

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"Bet you feel better now it's out in the open, don't you? I was wondering when you were going to tell me."

He turns round to stare at her, then slowly turns back, pours a glass, and downs it in one.

"What, you thought I didn't know? I'm your
mother
, petal. I know you.

Anyway, what rich successful thirtysomething businessman takes a
lodger
? You must think I was born yesterday."

Lindsay stays paralysed for a minute. He suddenly thinks about the house extensions and Prada handbags and five-star holidays he's always paying for, the expensive foreign specialists when she was ill and the new car every year, and her complete lack of reaction at having this celebrity kidnap victim in her home and he thinks, yes, she probably
does
know him, very well indeed.

Then he files the thought away in a mental box marked 'never to be opened again' and just passes her a couple of glasses to take through to the living room. Valentine's already in there, chucked headfirst into socialising and not looking like he minds; he's in the middle of telling a story when Lindsay goes in, gesticulating and laughing, although he breaks off when he sees Lindsay in the doorway and says, "Oh, speak of the devil."

Lindsay dreads to find out exactly what it is he's been saying, so he hands out glasses and starts pouring wine to change the subject. "I see you've already met this evening's entertainment so I won't bother with introductions..."

"Oh, shut up. Like I need your help to make friends. I've already got two nights out planned with the girls and you ain't invited, so suck on that."

"Lindsay, don't be so rude," his mother says in his ear – he finds that a bit unfair because he's not the one telling people to shut up and suck on things, but she's gone before he can protest. "This is Pip, he's Lindsay's-"

"Friend," Valentine says smoothly, when she pauses just the tiniest fraction of a second too long, and he looks at Lindsay with a strange expression, eyebrows raised just slightly like he's checking he's doing it right. That's what ends the whole stupid thing completely, it's that resigned little look.

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"My

friend
?" Lindsay repeats, as scornfully as he can manage, and crosses the room to slip an arm round Valentine's waist and bump a clumsy kiss against his cheek, in front of all his mother's nosy old gossiping harpy friends who babysat him as a child. The world doesn't end, the sky doesn't fall.

Valentine just looks down at the carpet and smiles, shy and speechless for once, and that makes everything okay.

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Lindsay kisses his mum goodnight and goes into the kitchen to make nightcaps with the sound of her footsteps on the stairs thudding gently somewhere above his head. When he carries the glasses back into the living room, he finds Valentine lying on the carpet with his head and the top half of his body under the Christmas tree, nestled in between the brightly-wrapped presents.

Lindsay wonders why nobody in his family is normal, and then he realises he's thinking of Valentine as his family now and sits down on the middle sofa cushion, surprised and feeling weird. He drinks his whiskey. He can smell church incense, still clinging to his sleeve like a faint whisper of unwanted rituals.

"
What
are you doing?"

"Stargazing."

"I'm drinking your drink if you don't come out."

"Drink it, I ain't thirsty."

He drinks it. The ice cubes clink gently against each other and the bottom of the glass. "Explain stargazing."

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"It's when you gaze at stars, Lindsay."

"I ain't dim."

The shoddy impression makes the kid laugh. "Shut your face, I don't sound like that." He wriggles a bit, twisting at the waist and bending himself so he can peek out at Lindsay from under the dark branches and twinkling fairy lights. "Come here."

"What for?"

"Cos I'm asking you to?"

So he slips down off the sofa and knee-walks over to the tree, still holding one of the glasses, and presses the cold condensation against that tempting stripe of bare flesh where Valentine's t-shirt's come up around his ribs in wrinkles. He yelps like a little puppy and snatches at the glass, but that only tips the ice cubes out all over his stomach and makes him gasp and swear and burst out giggling.

"You fucker, that ain't very nice."

"It's
very
nice."

Valentine squirms for a bit longer, but stills when Lindsay lifts his t-shirt higher and starts pushing the ice cubes about: mooring one in his navel to melt there in a chilly little pool, using another to trace the line of dark hair disappearing into his jeans until there's nothing left of it, writing a big wet L with the last one and then using his fingernail to scratch a V next to it, hard enough that Valentine makes a hungry little pain-noise in his throat and then a happy sort of hum when Lindsay goes over it again with his cold fingertip, very gently, until the white of the pressure floods pink.

"Yeah, I'm converted, I take it back." He finds Lindsay's hand and twines their fingers together. "Come here."

"I'm here."

"Come down here and lie next to me and I'll show you how you stargaze. Move them presents, come on."

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"I can't stand the smell of pine trees." He does it anyway, stacking gifts out of the way and awkwardly tucking himself under the lowest branches.

Valentine's still holding his hand, and when he's close enough the kid presses a kiss against his cheekbone and stays there, breathing quietly into Lindsay's hair, tickling his ear.

"Are you looking?"

"At what?"

"The stars. The fairy lights," he amends, when Lindsay doesn't say anything, and rolls onto his back again so he's looking straight up, through the tangle of prickly branches. "I always do it. Ever since I was little, any time I thought my mum and dad weren't gonna walk in on me and batter me cos they thought I was wrecking the tree or trying to rip the corners off the presents to see what they were, I always just... you know. Look at the lights. You see 'em better from down here, it don't look like a dying tree strangled with tinsel down here, everything's just green and all the lights and stuff, it's like magic and fairytales, oh
shit
how come I'm so crap at talking?"

"You get enough practice," Lindsay murmurs, but it's only for something to say and he shuts up after and just looks at the lights. Stargazes.

Then a pine needle drops in his eye and he nearly knocks the tree over flailing to get out from under it.

"You having a fit or what?"

Lindsay glares at Valentine with his one good eye, shoving his glasses up into his hair and rubbing at the other, smearing wetness all over his face because the eye won't stop watering. "Fucking... half a
tree
in my eye, great idea of yours, thanks very much."

"Trust you to get a piney splinter even though you've got
glasses
on."

"I'm just cursed."

"Lemme see." Valentine blots himself dry by tugging his t-shirt down to where it belongs and smoothing it out over his torso, and starts inching out from

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beneath the tree – managing it without dislodging a single needle or decoration, Lindsay notices, and kind of wants to break his nose. "Come here, stop poking at it, you'll only shove it in deeper. You'll blind yourself, you'll have to wear an eyepatch. You'd look good in an eyepatch, though, like Bowie..." He trails off.

His face is very close to Lindsay's; he's looking intently into his stinging right eye, and his breath against Lindsay's cheek is warm, and sweet from the chocolate baubles he keeps nicking off the tree. The main ceiling light isn't on, only the fairy lights on the tree and wound around the garland at the fireplace, and it's putting strange shadows everywhere, making everything look like it's in a dream or a Caravaggio painting. Chiaroscuro – he remembers the kid using the word talking about some old photos he found in a drawer a while ago. Lindsay had put them away because he was sort of embarrassed, but didn't do a very good job when he tried to hide them because he underestimated Valentine's curiosity and need to poke his nose into everything. It's not the
porn
aspect he's interested in, not really, because his collection of top-shelf Victorian and Edwardian photographs are mostly women. He just
likes
them, in a way he's never been able to word, so he never wants to share because he doesn't like stumbling over explanations, but Valentine found them and didn't bat an eyelid, just as sudden as a spark went off on one about photos, portraits, Sally Mann, Daguerre, through to paintings, Gerrit Dou's use of light and the way Degas treated his nudes, and Lindsay sat in silence and took it all in and thought to himself,
I will never never
never get used to these blue moons when he's smart
and then felt mean.

"Have you got it?" Lindsay says, less snappishly.

"Ain't nothing there. Stop being a little girl."

"Feels like there's something there."

"That's cos you keep digging your finger in, stop it." He pulls Lindsay's hand away from his face and kisses him, like a distraction. It's a pretty good distraction. By the time the mantelpiece clock softly chimes the next quarter-hour they're both half-naked – although opposite halves, Lindsay wearing only his trousers and Valentine wearing only his t-shirt – and both shining with sweat, partly because this house is always kept a degree or two hotter than hell and 189

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partly because Lindsay's got his lips, tongue, throat, fingers, all working Valentine's cock carefully, slowly, taking his time to finish what was interrupted earlier. The kid keeps laughing, very quiet and sounding happy rather than amused, and after he's finally come, silent and shaking, he slips his hands under Lindsay's arms and tugs feebly until Lindsay crawls up and manages to manoeuvre them so he's on the cushions holding Valentine on top of him in a sort of one-armed hug, stroking his hair with the other hand.

"What about you?" Valentine says. He sounds sleepy, although he's not too sleepy to nudge his head up against Lindsay's hand to demand more.

"I'm alright." He's not alright at all, he just wants to die when he even thinks about
that
on his mother's sofa. He trusts himself not to let anything spill, he doesn't trust the kid.

"You sure?" Valentine breaks off for a massive yawn. "Cos I'm gonna fall asleep, but I can knock one out for you dead quick if you like."

"Christ, don't bother if it's such a
chore
..."

"I owe you something wicked." His arm's dropped down to dangle over the edge of the sofa; when he brings it back up, his fingertip is wet from the lukewarm dregs of the melted ice cubes in the other whiskey glass, and he writes IOU on Lindsay's bare chest. "Morning."

"It's morning already, we're nearly three hours in to Christmas Day."

He sort of expects a trite, overexcited 'Happy Christmas!' at the reminder, but Valentine just murmurs something sleepy and incomprehensible, smiling. Lindsay plays with his hair until he's gone. He knows he should wake the kid back up and take him upstairs to bed – they
can't
sleep where they are, especially when half their clothes are strewn under the tree like rogue presents escaped from their wrappings – but just for now, just for a minute, he's going to keep his fingers tangled here in Valentine's hair and feel the weight of his sleeping body, listening to him breathe.

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Christmas morning is cold, with whistling gales outside the window and a strange quality to the light seeping through the curtains that means it's not
actually
going to snow but people are going to whinge all day about how it should. Valentine's already awake, lying on his side with his sleepy eyes half-open, and he smiles a bit when he sees Lindsay's just about conscious.