Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (30 page)

"What...?"

"Get out of jail free card. Next time you misbehave, I'll let it slide."

"Oh. Right." He still looks uncertain. He's still flushed, his eyes are still desperately hungry. "Lindsay? Can I... can you make me come now?"

"Pardon?"

"Please," he adds, hurriedly, and Lindsay feels a rush of pleasure up his spine like fingers.

"That's better," he murmurs, smiling half a smile, and he pushes Valentine onto the sofa and peels his jeans the rest of the way down his legs, off over his bare feet in a messy bunch of red denim. He doesn't bother with his t-shirt, or his own clothes; fair's fair, he's promised the kid a reward for behaving 239

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himself and that's what he's going to get.

"Pull your knees up to your chest," he says. "All the way up. Hold them there for me. Use your hands, okay?"

Valentine does as he's told, biting on his lip. "Are you gonna fuck me?"

"Not yet." Lindsay sits down next to him and runs his hand down Valentine's thigh, drifting over the border where pale skin becomes pink, then doesn't waste any more time; he leans over and spits a couple of times on the kid's puckered little hole, where it's stretched and unashamedly on show, and begins working it in with his fingertips. He keeps repeating it, spitting and pushing and spitting and pushing until he's got two fingers fully inside and the kid's tossing his head side to side and moaning and begging like a whore.

"This...

it's...

fuck
, Lindsay, fuck, yes, please... oh
god
, it's..."

"What? It's what?" He slides his fingers out to the first knuckle and spits again, slides them back smoothly, and Valentine sounds like he's about to burst out crying.

"It's filthy, innit? Filthy and dirty and naughty. That spanking you just gave me, that can be for this, yeah?"

"Oh?" he says, vaguely amused but mostly just turned on by the crack in the kid's voice. "You don't want to save it up for something else?"

"I... no. This."

Lindsay laughs, then. "If you
like
having your bottom smacked like a naughty little boy, you can just say so. Just ask nicely, any time you want it."

"Please, please, more..."

He crooks his fingers just right; Valentine chokes his name and begins to come in thick bursts all over himself, and he's looking like Lindsay like he's his world.

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In sixteen years of playing this game, they've never lost. They've conceded a draw a couple of times – escaped with their hides intact but no prize, or the prize and a long, serpentine cut across the stomach from a flick-knife, or the time their driver got killed but they found Valentine – but they've never actually
lost
.

"First time for everything," Valentine says, gasping for breath and laughing his head off as they run for their lives. Fuck knows where Danny and Ty are.

"What?"

"Thought you said you're invincible?"

"Did

I?"

"Well. You were a bit drunk."

"Shut up. You're not helping."

It's not real. It doesn't feel like real life, or even like a film; it's like dropping a photo album and scattering pictures everywhere. Running. One of the 241

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lightbulbs is flickering. Booting the door open to the underground car park. They don't know where they're going, they hit a dead end. Valentine swears like hell.

He's got the same look on his face he's got when he's fucking, all flushed cheeks and bright eyes. He's liking this far too much. Lindsay grabs his elbow to get him started running back. The security guard's too quick, he's already there, he shoots twice and Lindsay throws Valentine behind him and gets both bullets. One clips his side and one slams into his chest under his collarbone. It's a split-second before he really registers the impacts and retches from the pain, but by that time he's already collapsed. Valentine neatly catches his gun out the air when he drops it and cocks and fires, cocks and fires, five times in all, calm and deliberate, until the security guy's writhing on the concrete floor. The shots echo and die away.

Lindsay's got blood on his hands, a cartoony sort of red he doesn't quite believe.

All that, in ten seconds.

Real-time creeps back in, and Lindsay realises the kid's on his knees beside him, saying his name over and over and over.

"What?"

"Oh, thank fuck... Jesus, you're bleeding like hell."

"Thanks,

Sherlock."

"Can you see a bright white light?"

"Yeah."

"Oh fuck. Fuck! Okay, listen to me, don't go near it, okay?"

"What?"

"Stay away from the light."

"What are you talking about?"

"That's death, innit? Don't go near it, promise me."

"I mean I can see the electric lights on the ceiling, you berk."

"
You
berk! You knob, I thought you were dying."

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"You didn't specify what
kind
of bright light, you just said bright light, you might've been testing my eyesight."

"I ain't fighting with you when you've been shot."

"Shut up, then.
Ow
." Ow doesn't really seem enough. He slams his fist down on the ground, he bites his tongue as hard as he can without tearing it off, and none of it works to distract him from the searing pain of the gunshots, not that he expected it to. Valentine's muttering swears under his breath, chewing on his lip, speed-dialling someone on his phone and then punching the end call button with an infuriated snarl.

"No fucking reception underground. Where the
fuck
've them two dicks got to?"

Dead? He doesn't say it. He doesn't know. They'd had two guards after them, not just one, and Ty's always been the kind who shoots to kill and asks questions later, if he bothers to waste time asking questions at all when he could be rifling through pockets and wallets and nicking rings off dead fingers, so the idea that he's done a runner instead of staying to spray bullets around is a bit ludicrous. They could have got away. They could be coming to help. They could be dying, or dead, or captured.

He can't be bothered to say all of that, though. "Don't know," he manages, and, "
Ow
," again. It's a crappy little ineffectual sound but it's that or scream like a girl, he thinks, and screaming like a girl isn't how he wants to go.

Valentine looks terrified. "What shall we do?"

"Don't know," Lindsay says again.

"I'm phoning nine-nine-nine."

"Don't! Just keep trying the others." Then: "Oh
fuck
," he says, in a horrified undertone, when he touches his fingers to the hole in his shirt and the pain's like ripples from a brick pelted into a pond and there's bile and blood sharp in the back of his throat. His tongue's hurting and he hopes to god the blood's from that and he's not spitting it up and drowning in it. He wishes he had some 243

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Anadins with him, then he wants to crack up laughing at his own absurdity, but he's too afraid to laugh in case it makes him throw up a glot of blood, and it's not funny anyway, so he doesn't.

"Hurts?"

"Fucking stupid question, that, even for you. I'm dying."

"Okay," Valentine says, "I'm gonna do something well undignified now, so don't look."

"What? Come on. There's not a millimetre of you I haven't seen."

"You ever seen me shit out a johnny full of coke?"

"...No. No, I haven't."

"Yeah. Close your eyes. Don't look."

Lindsay closes his eyes, and tries to close his ears and mind as well. The pain's worse with his eyes closed, when there's nothing else to focus on, and it doesn't matter how he writhes around, he can't find any position that makes it hurt any less.

"Mind if I ask what you're doing with an arse full of drugs? I thought I told you you weren't to touch that stuff."

"I'm just looking after it."

"You couldn't use your pocket?"

"Ty said do it like this in case we got nicked." Lindsay can hear him shuffling around, and he feels like he's about to faint. "I mean, I said what about cavity searches and everything, but he made me do it anyway. I reckon he just wanted an excuse to get his fingers up me."

"
What
?" Lindsay says, then winces at the echo rolling around the car park, then swears like a sailor at the pain and the way the movement seems to squirt out another hot jet of blood. He snaps his eyes open.

"What?"

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"What did you say about...? Did he...? Fuck, I'll kill him,
fuck
, he's fucking
dead
, I'll
kill
him, I'll-"

"Yeah? I thought you said you were dying?"

"I'll haunt him. I'll come back and haunt him and he'll die anyway from fear."

"I'm kidding, he never really touched me. It was in my pocket."

"He... shut up. Stop it. I'm dying. Don't confuse me. What?"

"I just like it when you get all possessive. Cos... you know. It's like you're saying I love you, then."

"What?

You.

Jesus
."

"You could just
say
I love you, you know. Might be better for your blood pressure."

"I'm

dying
. I can't breathe. I'm not going to
have
a blood pressure in a minute. Christ. Oh god, oh
fuck
it hurts."

"You want some of this?"

It's so tempting. It'd be so easy, and it's fucking killing him to turn it down because he
knows
it'll help, but he forces the words out. "No, get lost, I stopped using that shit years ago, it fucks you up."

"It's a painkiller, innit?"

"I don't want it. I'll die in sober agony, thanks."

"Alright. If you change your mind-"

"I

won't."

"Okay, okay." A very short pause. Valentine clears his throat. "So. Why can't you just say it?"

"Say

what?"

"You

know
what."

"It's hardly the time or place."

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"It is if you're dying."

"I

can't."

"You're a dick. Just fucking
say
it!"

"I

can't
! I'm... English."

"What am I, a Martian? I say it all the time. I know you love me, why can't you say it?"

"If you know, then why do I have to?"

"You're missing the point a bit."

"I took your bullet, you little twat, don't you dare question whether I love you."

"Yeah, but you could
say
it."

The throb of the gunshots is pounding all down his arm and body. The pain's so bad he wants to cry, like he's five and he's skinned his knee coming off his bike.

"Je t'aime," he says, through gritted teeth, to shut the kid up. "Je ne sais pas pourquoi. Tu es... complètement bête, tu t'habilles comme une pute travestie, je
hais
ta musique, tu es fou, tu me rends fou, mais je suis fou de
toi
et je pense à toi tout le temps et je t'aime, oui. Tu comprends?
Je t'aime
. Seulement... pas en anglais. Je ne peux pas."1

Valentine's shifting about like he's uncomfortable. "I ain't got no idea what you just said but I think I need to change my pants."

"Maintenant,

ta gueule
."2

"That's... French, yeah? I never knew you could talk French. You 1 I love you. I don't know why. You're... completely stupid, you dress like a tranny prostitute, I
hate
your music, you're crazy, you make me crazy, but I'm crazy about
you
and I think about you all the time and I love you, yes. Do you understand?
I love you
. Just... not in English. I can't.

2 Now,
shut your mouth.

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could've said something before. I ain't been to France. Ain't never been out the UK and Ireland. Sad, innit?"

"Tragic. I've got a house in France. If I'd known I was gonna die today I'd've changed my will for you."

"You ain't gonna die, shut up." He doesn't sound so sure, though.

Lindsay feels the kid's fingers begin to move in his hair, gently stroking in a way he supposes is meant to be comforting, only his hand's shaking so it's a bit of a failure. "Pack it in, you old drama queen, you're scaring me. Ain't
that
bad, is it?"

"I can't breathe properly."

"Yeah, that's cos you're panicking. Just, calm down, alright? It'll be okay. It'll be fine."

"Won't, though." He needs to cough, and he tries to do it as gently as possible, but the pain in his shattered shoulder is immense and he starts to see funny dancing black spots around the edges of his vision. "Shit, oh god, I'm gonna faint like a fucking girl, oh god..."

"Don't, don't," Valentine says. He's gone all shrill and desperate. His hand suddenly moves out of Lindsay's hair and pinches his earlobe hard between two sharp fingernails.

"YARGH! What the fuck d'you think you're doing?"

"You're awake now, though, ain't you?"

"Ow. Fuck. Yeah. For now."

"There's gotta be an ambulance or something on its way, somebody'll have heard the shots or the guards'll have called out for help or the others are coming or something. You ain't gonna die. You won't, it's fine, you won't die."

"Yeah, but then what?"

"What?"

"Hospital with two coppers watching over us the whole time. Murder charge."

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"Come off it." Valentine nods over to where the security guy's lying.

"He ain't dead, least not yet. I can see him moving. I'm gonna go and kick him in in a minute, but I ain't a murderer
yet
. And you never even shot no one before."

"No,

but

they
don't know that. I'm not turning the others in, what else are they gonna think? Double murder, that day we first met, that'll get pinned on me, and today, and whatever else they can join the dots to. You say you love me, let's see if you're still waiting when I get out on parole in two hundred years."