Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (7 page)

"That hurts."
"Good, I hope it kills you."

"Ah, you'd miss me if it did. Plus you'd be fucking a corpse, so who's the real loser?"

It gets better. It's not a great angle but he feels full and hot, Lindsay's kissing him, it's
almost
possible to ignore that couple outside. It's not a show any more, the noises and faces he's making are real, gasping pleas and gaping mouth as Lindsay starts fucking him with grim determination like it's his job. They never actually took Lindsay's shirt off, just unbuttoned it, so it's flapping loose around their bodies. Pip holds on to it, gripping tight like reins for leverage. He's got one leg hooked up over Lindsay's shoulder, one braced against the dashboard. He's still got his socks on, red with a little Christmas tree on each ankle. Well sexy.

"If I just open this window a bit, that man might put his finger up your bum. Wouldn't that be nice for you?"

"Don't you dare," Lindsay snarls. The car starts rocking when he picks up his pace, hard enough to be sore although it's the really
good
sort of sore, vicious deep burning rough thrusts that make Pip cry out. He exaggerates it a bit, he can't help it, he's never been able to resist playing up for an audience, that's why he did his theatre A level. This is just a
little
bit more interesting than Claudius. He can see the other couple a bit better now his face isn't crammed into Lindsay's groin, although he'd really rather not have to see the man jabbing his fingers up that old lady's vagina.

"Gross," he says, trying to make it look like an orgasmic moan for them. "We can go proper cottaging next time, I'll google for places where it's men-only."

"Fuck off. I'm never leaving the house again. Neither are you, I'm chaining you to my bed and throwing the key in the river."

"It's all I ever wanted, being your sex slave."
"Why are you still talking?"

Pip mimes zipping his mouth closed and squirms a hand down between their bodies to close around his own cock. There's not much space, he never usually needed a hand to get off because the press of Lindsay's body did it for him. He just thinks it might look good to the others. "You close?"

"No."
"What if I talk dirty?"
"That doesn't help."
"I think you'll find it does."

"In English, then. There's nothing arousing about having to correct your French verbs."

He's giggling again, it's impossible to stop. This is all so
stupid
. Best accidental hilarious encounter ever. You can't talk filth when you're sniggering like this, it doesn't work, but every time he tries to stop it only gets worse.

"Oh, for god's sake," Lindsay mutters. That's funny, too. God's somewhere above with a proper scowly face on, pointing out to all the dead churchies a perfect example of how not to live your life. He only stops laughing when Lindsay gets his other shoulder under Pip's leg, bending him in half like a newspaper and going at him so hard it wouldn't be a surprise if the car rolled backwards down the hill. He wants to laugh again at that image, the look Lindsay would have on his face as the car picked up speed towards fuck knows where, but he's got no breath. He manages a gaspy snorty sort of giggle but that's it, everything after that is just a whimper and then a final drawn-out shuddering moan when he comes.

He feels sleepy then, lazy and sated, kissing Lindsay's cheek and neck and stroking his hair while he finishes off. It seems to take forever, or maybe that's because Pip's got nothing to focus on any more except that man outside the window. He must have come ages ago as well, the woman's having a smoke round the back of the car and he's just leaning over now with his hands on his naked knees having a really good look. Lindsay's resolutely ignoring him, frowning so hard he looks like a Klingon and obviously just trying to get off as quickly as he can. Pip knows when he's there, the way he speeds up and the stupid desperate noises he makes and then the pulsing heat of it inside him, even through the johnny. Lindsay lets Pip's legs slip down off his shoulders and slumps against him, breathing hard. Pip winks at the man outside the window.

"Is he still there?" Lindsay asks, after a minute of hiding in Pip's neck.

 

"Yeah. Proper trying to look up your rectum now, smutty bastard."

"Jesus Christ. Show's over." "I think he fancies you." "He fancies
you
, you dirty bitch. You loved that, didn't you?"

"That was hilarious." He's got this sudden burst of conscience and doesn't want to hurt the man's feelings by laughing, but that only makes him want to laugh harder. He tries to shove Lindsay off him to cover it up, weeping hysterically into the footwell when Lindsay's back in his own seat and trying to turn his jeans the right side out so he can put them back on. It's tricky getting dressed in the car in the dark but Lindsay snapped the light back off with such intent that he doesn't really want to say anything. The other car is still lit up but empty. That means they're still lurking outside. Great.

"If you don't stop laughing I'll break your neck."

 

"Aw, shut up." He finds Lindsay's face with his hands and pulls him close to kiss him. "Swap seats, you said I could drive."

 

"Are you
actually
insane? Don't get out the car."

 

Pip pauses with his hand just ready to open the door. "Why not?"

 

"He could be an axe murderer or anything."

"Like he'd wait til
now
to off us, he would've done it while you had your dick up my bum and that blissful look on your face. They're just a pervy old couple. I'm driving."

He gets out quick before Lindsay can say anything else, leaving the door open so the light stays on. The man's still lingering close by. It seems sort of rude not to say anything, but what
can
you say at a time like this?

"Alright, mate?" Fuck, that sounds stupid. He chews hard on the insides of his cheeks to keep from laughing again but the man doesn't seem to notice.

"Yeah. Good show." "Cheers, we try." "You come here a lot?" "Nah. Bit new on the scene, you know?"

"It's normally busier than this. Come in the week, Tuesday or Wednesday, it's heaving."

"Oh, cool, thanks. You hear that?" he calls over the top of the car where Lindsay's just got out the driver's side door looking furious. "Tuesday and Wednesday's peak time."

"Thanks," Lindsay says shortly, getting back in the passenger side and slamming the door.

 

"You ever want to meet up again or something..." the man starts, trailing off and looking at Lindsay trying to hide his face again.

"Gimme your phone." Pip types in a number and hands it back. "You're ever in London, give us a ring." He speeds round to the driver's side so he doesn't completely collapse, waves goodbye to the woman and rockets the car back towards the winding road down the hill. He has to pull over to the side then so he doesn't crash, and has a proper hysterical giggling cry against the steering wheel.

Lindsay's staring at him like he's grown an extra head. "Did you just give that old creeper your phone number?" he says, very quiet and deadly calm. Always a danger sign.

"No, my dad's."
"Oh. Right."

Pip swears suddenly, seeing lights in the rearview mirror, the couple's car following them out of the picnic spot. He takes off again, twice the speed limit to get onto a main road and lose them, and Lindsay
finally
must have found something funny because when Pip glances over at him he's chewing his thumbnail and trying not to smile.

6.
September 2014

Lindsay always wondered how long it'd be before he got bored and itchy working a proper full-time job, but he never expected the ennui to come on so strongly after just two months. It's not that he's had enough, it's just the endless temptation of looking after these things: ancient books, old crumbling manuscripts, love letters written in spidery pencil marks by long-dead poets. The smell of everything, how wrong it feels locking them away in their little containers and sending them away to be put back in storage by whirring robots. Knowing that even with a whole lifetime, trying to scratch the surface of the archives would be about as much use as brushing a feather across the Koh-i-Noor. Sitting in his office one day, trying to write up notes for a talk he's supposed to give to his old college about the work he's been doing with his dead lecturer's collection and just doodling little circles in the corners of his notepad instead, he finds himself idly wondering how Danny would take this place. His genius was always in being so completely
normal
, squirming into somewhere and making friends, making people trust him, making everyone think he was the farthest thing from a threat there could possibly be. The time they did the job on the Walker gallery in Liverpool, he worked from the inside for years like Aesop's tortoise. It's different here. There's no goal, there's not just a single thing he wants, like Ty's painting, or this perpetual need to be tricking somebody, which was always Danny's favourite part. Just vague, unsettling memories of exhilarating getaways and how crushing fear eased into pride as time went on and they were never found out.

He's still feeling strange through the cab ride home, all through cooking a sad solitary plate of steak and mash because Valentine's out with his friends tonight, and through crappy mindless evening telly until it starts to get on his nerves too much to bear and he flicks the stupid machine off so he can think in silence the best way he knows how: he stretches out on his back on the biggest sofa and puts his arms over his face, blindfolding himself in the crooks of his elbows until the darkness is like a blanket.

He promptly falls asleep without meaning to, which passes the time and shuts up the voices in his mind at least. It's somewhere close to three in the morning when the bang of the front door wakes him; by the time Valentine drags himself upstairs to the living room, Lindsay's managed to pinch his contacts out of his sore eyes and find his glasses under all his paperwork and crumpled toffee wrappers.

"You look fit in glasses," Valentine informs him from the doorway. His cheeks are flushed from the cold outside, he even
smells
like the cold when he comes over to drape himself across Lindsay and kiss his bristly cheek. He smells like beer too, and he's almost floating in a clinging fog of marijuana.

"I told you I don't like you smoking that," Lindsay murmurs into Valentine's tickling hair. He's still half-asleep, it's difficult to get his words out, and it's not helped by the weight of Valentine's body pressing into him.

"Yeah, well I told
you
it's my mouth, lungs, friends and money." "Get your knee off my balls. I don't want you smoking it."

"Alright, alright, I ain't hardly had none anyway, I mostly just been drinking, I had like two goes. Ricky drunk all this bong water on a dare and threw up in Jono's face, like literally in his
face
, how grim is that? Fucking warped my stomach, I didn't want no more after that, his sick smelled like Wotsits."

"You're heavy."

"You're rude." He puts his lips back on Lindsay's jaw, brushing tiny light kisses down under his chin, down his neck to where the top few buttons of his shirt are open. Lindsay slips his fingers up behind his glasses to rub at his eyes again, then takes the glasses right off and drops them back on the side table, trying to wake up a bit more if this kissing is going somewhere interesting, but Valentine stops and just rests his head there on Lindsay's chest. He's sucking the tip of his thumb, he only does that when he's absolutely shattered. "I missed you," he says, sounding whiny and tired, but Lindsay begins sliding his fingers through Valentine's tangled hair and feels him start to smile.

"You missed me so much you stayed out til nearly three without even a text. Haven't you got work tomorrow?"

"Not til the afternoon, it's cool."
"Well some of us have got nine-to-fives, I need my bed."

"Nooooooo," Valentine whines, pressing his face into Lindsay's chest and pretending to sob. His eyes are red when he lifts his head, but not from crying. "Can't you work from home? You're meant to be the tidy one, what's all this shit anyway?"

"Lecture notes." Valentine starts to snore and Lindsay smacks him gently round the back of the head. "It's actually very important, if you must know. I've got letters between Hazlitt and Coleridge here that we never knew existed."
"Who and who?"

"Don't push me."

Valentine's laughing again, wriggling in place and putting another kiss just above where the two halves of Lindsay's shirt meet like that's going to lure forgiveness out of him. "I know who Coleridge is. Him and Wordsworth were bummers and he wrote a shit poem about a lesbo vampire."

"Well done, you've condensed one of our most beloved poets down to a wanker's soundbite."

 

"Talk nerdy to me, I love it, it makes me hard."

"I'm going to bed." But he can't work up the energy to heave Valentine off him so he just stays where he is until Valentine starts kissing him again, following his old trail backwards until he finds Lindsay's mouth. He wasn't messing about, he
is
getting hard, and when Lindsay puts his hands into the back pockets of Valentine's jeans to hold him there he makes a beautiful little whimpery noise and starts curling a bit of Lindsay's too-long hair around his finger.

"To sleep?"
"Maybe not."

"Pull a sickie tomorrow. I dare you. I'll make it worth your while."

This roaring, soaring love always bounds up like a jack-in-thebox and reminds Lindsay of its existence at strange and random times, like right now. He wrenches his hands back out of Valentine's pockets suddenly and wraps his arms round his body instead, hugging him hard until he yelps. "I think I'll need more information about the benefits before I make such an important decision."

"This is the deal. From now til when I go to work tomorrow I'll do
anything
you want."

"You have to do anything I want anyway."
"Yeah but I'll be extra enthusiastic about it. Deal?" "Alright."

"Alright," Valentine echoes, smirking gently. He slithers out from Lindsay's arms and down onto his knees on the carpet, working Lindsay's zip and button so expertly it's like he just wished it and it happened, tugging the clothes down his legs and right off his feet and cupping his palm around Lindsay's hardening cock, kissing the side of it lovingly. "So it don't matter how late we stay up, then."