Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (12 page)

"Don't," Lindsay starts, suddenly remembering how to talk, but Valentine doesn't even look at him.

"You've had your say, shut up." He starts drawing his inky needle across the first curved line of the green capital L, moving smoothly and carefully with his tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth like he always does when he's concentrating. His breathing is steady, but it's the sort of steady you really have to work for, not the steady you get when you're actually comfortable and sure you know what you're doing. Lindsay moves a pile of Valentine's ironed clothes off the chaise under the window and sits down to wait, because he can't make himself leave.

After only ten minutes the buzzing of the machine is making him crazy, the relentless drone like a trapped fly. He wants to get up and leave, but then he looks accidentally and he's stuck like velcro. It's horrific, it's like the disgusting primal urge that makes you open your car window for a better view of an accident.

"I can't believe you're doing this." His voice doesn't sound like it belongs to him.

"Why can't you believe it?" Valentine's voice doesn't sound like his either. Everything feels wrong and skewed like an Escher picture. "I tattooed myself loads of times before, I know what I'm doing."

"You're insane."
"I can't see properly. Can you bring that mirror over?" "That'll make me an accessory."
"It ain't a crime."
"It's criminal stupidity."
"Lindsay. It's started now, I need some help. Please."

At least you're never bored
, his mum said once when he was venting to her about some stupid thing Valentine had done, and he grumpily told her he'd prefer that.

"It's heavy," he says as he's lifting the mirror off the wall, sounding petulant. "Where do you need it?"

"Bottom edge on the bed, just hold it, tilt it down so I can see. Bring the chair over, sit down.
Don't
knock my stuff, you brontosaurus, I'll go through my kidney..." As suddenly as he broke off he's concentrating hard again, as if it's not even registering in his brain that Lindsay's in the room. This close, it's almost like Lindsay can feel the buzzing needle himself. It's impossible trying to ignore it now, he
has
to watch: Valentine's steady hands in their black latex gloves, one resting on his taut stomach and clutching an inky clump of tissue and the other holding the needle machine and tracing Lindsay's handwriting permanently into his skin; the wet pink point of his tongue tucked at the corner of his lips; the faint sheen of sweat on his body, blending almost imperceptibly with the smear of Vaseline on the letters.

He watches Valentine draw the s, the a, the curly-tailed y, then he stops and turns off the machine. His hand is shaking now when he sets it down beside his ink cups and the room feels unnaturally still and quiet without the buzzing. "I need a drink," he says, half-laughing. Lindsay feels more sober than he ever has before.

"Stop, then. Come downstairs."
"Ain't finished yet."
"You don't need it all."
"It's my skinsuit, I'll customise it how I like."

"I thought you said you're mine," Lindsay says quietly. Valentine won't look at him, he's slumped back against the pillow hiding his face behind his crooked elbow. "Doesn't that mean I get a say?" Things were so much easier when the kid did as he was told – when he was still
the kid
. Lindsay's not thought of him like that in years. It's overwhelming how much he's changed, all the things Lindsay's still discovering; not just new tattoos and new scars and new holes he's jabbed through his ears since that day he left, but maturity and composure and this casual selfconfidence he only ever faked before. The stabbing thought digs into his mind, not for the first time and impossible to ignore: Olly was good for him.

"I
am
yours, you spaz." Valentine's cheeks are as pink as the dirty open wound on his stomach when he removes his arm and looks at Lindsay. His eyes are both green today, he's not wearing his pretentious blue lens. "Don't you feel better? I wouldn't scar your name on me if I didn't mean it. I ain't just playing around, this ain't just some half-arsed giddy crush cos I'm mental and you're dangerous."

"Stop it."

"Hold the mirror still." He picks his machine up again and starts tracing the flowing lines of the F. "How come your mum and dad didn't call you Francis Lindsay instead of Lindsay Francis?"

"I assume my dad wanted someone to share the pain."

"You'd be Frank. That's a proper old man name. Frank and Philip Brown. Jesus, what a pair of boring fucking beige old cunts..." He falls silent, staring into the mirror and carefully etching the initial and the dot – then he stops again and puts the machine back down, cleans off the excess ink with his tissue, and stays there completely still for a while. The only moving part of him is his chest as he breathes, he's clearly trying to calm it down. "Your name's too long. You couldn't be called Al or Bob or something, you couldn't just sign your initials."

"I didn't
ask
you to-"

 

"Do you want a go?"

 

Lindsay curls his fingers more tightly around the top rim of the mirror so he doesn't drop it. "Absolutely not."

"I trust you. I can't do no more, it's..." Valentine holds his hand up in front of his face again. It looks steady enough, and he seems surprised. "Well, I can't."

"Good."

 

"Have a go. I dare you. Live a bit. You never used to wuss out on nothing."

 

"If it's hurting you, just
stop
."

"It don't
hurt
," Valentine says, smirking mischievously and shaking his head so his fringe falls into his eyes and he has to peek through the strands, just like he always used to when he thought being cute would help his cause. "I'm just finding it a bit hard to concentrate." His smirk gets wider. He's so disgustingly unsubtle. Lindsay looks anyway, he can't help it, just a quick and almost involuntary flicker of a glance – yeah, he's hard. Revolting little narcissist, it's probably because of the mirror.

"Tough. Do it yourself or not at all, because I'm not."

Five minutes later, clumsily clutching the buzzing machine in his sweaty hand, he's remembering all the fucking stupid things Valentine ever talked him into and cursing his inability to say no and mean it. Nobody else in the
world
pushes him around like this. He can feel Valentine's eyes on him like they're lasers and he doesn't want to look up, but it's easier than looking at the filthy sore reddened flesh he's supposed to be making worse.

"If you're worried about hurting me... you know, you hurt me loads of times before," Valentine says. He's talking very softly, like there's somebody else in the room and he doesn't want them listening in. Lindsay won't look at his face, but he can see Valentine's muscles moving under his lightly-tanned skin. He must have been on holiday somewhere over the summer. Just one of a billion things Lindsay doesn't know. He's got this sudden weird feeling that there's a complete stranger lying half-naked and hard on his bed, but then Valentine speaks again and shatters the mood, crossing one arm over the other and resting his hands near the half-finished tattoo so Lindsay can see the faint scar circling one wrist like a watch strap. "Or have you forgot?"

"Shut up."

"You can't've forgot." He's gone bright-eyed and lazy now, smiling slowly and looking down through his eyelashes and his overgrown tangle of hair in some grotesque charade of coy. "Not even telling me off if I talked back and stuff, just doing it cos you
wanted
to. Remember?"

Of course he remembers. Yanking hard on Valentine's hair, slapping his face, bruising pistolwhips, slamming him violently back against the wall, all those times he rammed his cock in the kid's mouth until he choked and his eyes streamed with tears, or the times Valentine talked him into playing a sick game of let's pretend involving blindfolds and handcuffs and guns and gags and nighttime drives to secret places and the agreement that no didn't mean no even if he screamed and begged and cried saying it.

"It's different." He feels clumsy and stupid holding the machine, like he's wearing his thick bulky gardening gloves. "I'll go off the lines."

"No you won't, you ain't four, you can follow a
line
." "But-"

"I'm yours. Forever and ever amen. Do it. If you do it maybe you'll believe me."

As if Lindsay's not stressed out enough already, Valentine makes a needy little moaning sound in his throat at the first touch of the vibrating inky needle and Lindsay almost drops the fucking thing to stick deep in his flesh like a thrown javelin. "Is that... too hard? I don't know what to do."

"It's fine. Try and do the lines in one, don't just stop halfway cos it'll go lumpy. Just follow round the pen marks." His breathing's going funny again, Lindsay has to tell him to hold still because he won't stop squirming. "If we was in the shop we'd probably get closed down, you ain't meant to do this without training."

"I wonder why."

"Spose it's different in private. All sorts of dirt's allowed in private." He's so shameless Lindsay's almost embarrassed
for
him, but what good did that ever do? "Look, you're doing fine, don't freak out, you're alright, you're doing it. How's it feel, branding your boyfriend like cattle?"

"Shut your mouth. You're not my boyfriend." He painstakingly follows the last curved outline of the capital B, trying to ignore how Valentine's dropped his hands down to wind his fingers tight in the twisted folds of the covers, and turns the machine off. "I'm not doing any more, I feel sick."

"Alright, wussypants, leave it." He takes the machine when Lindsay holds it out to him and puts it back on his trolley. "Lindsay F. B," he murmurs, touching his fingertip to the shining smear of Vaseline near the wobbly letter Lindsay just drew on him. "Lindsay FaceBook? No, Lindsay Fucks Boys."

"Shut up."

"Feel it, feel how hot it is, I never get used to that."
I don't want to
is right on the tip of Lindsay's tongue, but Valentine takes his hand anyway and drives it like a pencil, or like his needle machine, to feel the inflamed skin around the letters. "Like sunburn."

"Sunburn's horrible."
"Yeah, but this is nice." "You need professional help."

"I'm alright. Loads of people get boners off tattoos, me and Rob put bets on who's gonna get one. Ain't shameful or nothing, it's just what happens, it ain't
real
pain, ain't like getting punched in the nose. It's like... you do remember, don't you?"

"I said shut up," Lindsay mutters as he's moving the mirror from where he laid it on the bed, but it's automatic now, like he's just saying it to fill in a gap like um or ah. Of course Valentine doesn't shut his stupid mouth, it only makes him do that ridiculous curling teasing smile even more.

"Like all them times I never even done nothing wrong and you slapped me anyway." His eyes follow Lindsay as he circles round the foot of the bed to get on the other side, the
wrong
side. This is where Valentine usually sleeps; the pillow smells of him, there's a smudge of black makeup on the white cotton and the little cabinet beside the bed is littered with jewellery and abandoned Haribo, and the stupid monkey lying there in the middle of it like a dragon guarding its treasure. Still watching Lindsay like he's waiting for a reaction, Valentine lifts his hips off the bed and starts inching his tight jeans down his legs with his pants still inside. His cock springs free, flushed and wet already. "I know you liked it else you wouldn't've kept on doing it. It weren't proper pain, just really
warm
, it's the same thing."

Of course he liked it. It terrified him because it came on so suddenly and so fiercely, all this desperate
want
he didn't even know had been hibernating ready for the right person to shout boo and wake it up – the first time he ever hit the kid, he didn't know where
that
came from, only that it needed to happen. All the times after that as well, the clumsy rules they came up with and the way he got itchy when Valentine behaved himself for too long and started actually
wanting
him to backchat so he'd have an excuse to wrench him away from what he was doing and hurt him. Valentine always called it
playing
when it happened for no reason and that made it so much worse, better, the two things were the same. He can remember countless times Valentine started laughing after he was allowed to come, breathless and exhilarated, while Lindsay moved his shaking fingers over the kid's red face or arse as if he could soak up the heat from his flaming skin like a sponge to burn away this awful urge to apologise.

"I'll do it myself if you're just gonna stare at me," Valentine says. He's still smirking. He's probably doing it on purpose because he knows how much that smug look makes Lindsay want to slap him.

"Fine, do what you want."

"Dirty old man, you just want a show." It's disgusting how pleased he is by that idea. Any excuse to show off. He peels off one of his gloves and curls his fingers round his cock – his left hand, so his right arm doesn't have to go anywhere near the letters – and starts stroking himself loosely, never looking away from Lindsay's face. "What should I do? Tell me what you want, should I do it fast or slow or what?"

"It's your penis, you can do what you want with it." "Oh my god, don't say
penis
. Not unless you wanna play doctors and patients."

Shut up
is getting old so he doesn't say it again, he just snatches Valentine's hand out the way and leans over to use his mouth instead. Valentine makes a desperate whore noise, twisting his fingers in Lindsay's hair and whimpering something that sounds a bit like please but doesn't quite get there. Lindsay usually likes taking his time over this, getting Valentine into that state where he's frantic and almost crying and glassyeyed when he looks down like he can't even see Lindsay is there, then pulling away and waiting until he's back in himself a bit before doing it again until Valentine's actually genuinely pleading like his life is at stake. There's something so good about taking him down like that, after all the shameless calculated words and looks before – show him who's
really
in charge. Or something. But this time it's fast and hard and Valentine's bucking up into his mouth in less than a minute, hissing his breath out through his teeth when Lindsay digs his fingers hard into Valentine's hip and rams him back down against the mattress to silently tell him
still
, flooding Lindsay's throat with his come while he's sucking too deep to even taste it.