Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (47 page)

"Yeah, but next time I
will
, honest."

"You said that last time, too."

There's a smile in his voice, so Pip smiles back even though Lindsay can't see him. It's easy to forget there's a big room and the rest of the house behind them, standing like this with his nose only a few inches away from where the two walls meet and Lindsay draped around him like a blanket.

"Tell me you love me," Pip says, leaning into him, trying to soak up all his warmth.

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Please."

"Why?"

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"Cos I like hearing it."

"I

love

you."

"Tell me when I'm not expecting it, next time. Don't tell me just cos I ask you to."

"Oh, shut up. Go and get dressed."

"Okay." He turns round, twisting reluctantly out of their embrace, and puts a kiss on Lindsay's cheek like he always does after he's been told off and forgiven, like a ritual. "What shall I wear?"

"Whatever you want, you can pick."

He puts on Lindsay's pyjamas from last night, the blue stripy ones he's always trying to get rid of because he says they're old and horrible. Pip won't let him do it and Lindsay goes along with him, being all fake-exasperated and indulgent. It's only because he doesn't understand. Lindsay likes when things are new and neat without little cotton bobbles ruining the smooth fabric and ragged frayed bits on the ends of the drawstring. He doesn't get how nice it is when things go this soft when they're old – there's almost a joke there, Pip thinks to himself as he's cuffing the too-long ankles and wrists, and he's still smirking at Lindsay's reaction in his mind when he goes back into the living room.

"What's so funny?"

Lindsay's a perfect picture of calculated indifference, sitting there in his armchair holding the paper like he's actually interested in it and not just waiting for Pip to come back.

"Oh. Nothing. I was just... hey, can I see that?"

"What?"

"That thing, that bit on the front page, can I see?"

Lindsay raises his eyebrows and holds the paper out to him, but Pip doesn't read it; he folds the paper in half and kneels in front of the rack by the sofa so he can cram it in with everything else, then he crawls back to the chair

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and rests his forearms on Lindsay's knees, and his chin on his arms.

Lindsay's laughing a bit and trying to pretend he isn't. "I was reading that. What do you want?"

"Is your hand sore?"
That
makes his face straighten. He doesn't answer, but he lets Pip take his hand and unfurl his fingers, one by one. The skin there isn't red any more, it doesn't look any different to normal, but Pip bends his head to it anyway and presses a gentle, snuffly kiss right in the middle of his palm, and a ring of kisses around it, and all up and down his fingers. Lindsay smells of the fresh unsmoked tobacco he must have been rolling behind Pip's back while he was standing in the corner.

"What are you doing?"

Pip doesn't answer. "Poor hand," he says instead, in a sort of crooning sing-song like a child talking to a pet or a favourite toy. "That ain't fair, is it? I'm naughty and
you
get hurt for it, that ain't fair at all. Poor hand, I'm sorry." More kisses, kissing it better, and he looks up at Lindsay with his best, brightest smile.

Lindsay smiles back, in that way he's got. It doesn't always reach his mouth, when he's in a good mood, so it's not always easy to tell when he's smiling – but Pip knows him, and he knows how to read the tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and he knows Lindsay's smiling. It's enough for him to risk climbing up into Lindsay's lap, wriggling to get comfortable – and secretly, though it's a bit of a rubbish secret from the way it makes Lindsay catch his breath, to make sure he's still hard. He is. Pip settles eventually, with just the right amount of nonchalant pressure. He wonders how long it'll be before Lindsay makes a move.

Longer than last time, he decides. Lindsay seems like he's in the mood for teasing and playing, stringing him along until he begs.

"I want to come," he says, a sullen little mumble into Lindsay's stripy jumper, and Lindsay laughs somewhere deep down so it comes out all breathy and quiet.

"Oh

yeah?"

"That ain't what I meant, though. You're a dirty old man."

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"And you're a little fucking cocktease." He's saying it like he's talking about how nice the weather is or offering to make a cup of tea, something totally innocent. Pip whines, exaggerating it, pressing his face into Lindsay's shoulder and rubbing his cheek on the cashmere.

(It took forever to get him to actually wear pink, Christmas present or not. I look a right queer, he said, the first time he yielded. Well, Pip said, reasonably, my sore arse says you are, and Lindsay said yeah, but I don't need to
look
like it.)

"You ain't allowed to say things like that when you're off out. Cos, I mean, I can suck you off right now and it'll be fucking genius but then you'll go and I'll taste like you all night and you won't be here and I can't stand it."

"Shut up, stop whingeing." He's stroking Pip's hair, though.

"You should let me come. I can help, I can drive, weren't that the plan?"

"Plans

change."

"
Why
, though?"

"Because you and Ty fight like little girls and I can't take it any more."

"Can't believe you're picking him over me. If I was the jealous type..."

He smiles suddenly, feeling a tingly warm rush of pleasure because he's made Lindsay laugh, then slowly sobers as the fingers move out of his hair and onto his face, over his cheekbone and chin, as if Lindsay's blind and trying to learn him by heart. "Yeah, but seriously... what if, right, what if everything goes tits up now cos you've changed the plan last-minute and you forget in the middle?"

"Oh please. I've been at this since you were two years old, I think I know what I'm doing. I'm a better driver than you, anyway."

"Or you should stay here." It never works, pretending Lindsay didn't speak, but he always tries it on. "Let them two Neanderthals go and do the job themselves and balls it all up and get themselves shot to death. You can stay here with me. I'll do anything you want. I mean it,
anything
, just test me. It'll be brilliant."

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"I don't think so."

He wriggles about again, scowling. He never thought it'd work, but it's still aggravating, how sometimes he can make Lindsay do anything he wants and sometimes there's
nothing
he could possibly do to get his own way. "Whyyyy not, though?"

He stops, when Lindsay clamps a hand down over his hip, digging his fingertips in sharply to hold him still. "Because daddy has to go to work, sweetheart," he says, in a voice that's all warmth and syrup, "or we can't afford all these nice things."

Sometimes they're just mates. They go down the pub and drink pints and play pool, or whack each other's knuckles in air hockey at the beach arcades, or stay at home with a crate of Stella playing Mario and Mortal Kombat on the old SNES, and when they go to bed they don't even do anything, they just sleep – not because they're fighting, but because they're having a mates day and it's okay. It seems normal and natural. Sometimes (not often enough, he thinks, it's never never enough) they're in love, all stupid and giddy and clingy, sometimes they can sit here all twined together and do nothing but snog like berks for five hours solid. Or sometimes they fuck – no words or feelings or anything, only rough filthy primal
fucking
until one of them collapses in a gasping heap and puts up the white flag. A lot of the time it's just nice, after this much practice at being together – sort of routine, sort of predictable,
nice
. Dinner, squabbling over the washing-up, telly, bed, and it's brilliant. Sometimes Pip teases Lindsay until he snaps like an elastic band stretched too far. "Let's pretend like you kidnapped me for real," he'll say, handing Lindsay a set of handcuffs and his revolver and a blindfold, or he'll tug gently on Lindsay's tie and pull him into his study, sinuously arrange himself over the edge of the desk and smirk over his shoulder.

"Let's play a game where you're my new boss," he'll say, while Lindsay stands there mutely with his tie all crooked and his face starting to flush, "and I need showing the ropes, yeah? ...Sir."

Or sometimes he'll start up on this thing Lindsay pretends he hates, to see if the boundaries and his breaking point have shifted since last time. It all 385

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seems to depend on mood. Lindsay gets so self-conscious and embarrassed and it turns into a quick awkward little fumble, all averted eyes and shaky breathing –

or sometimes, Lindsay starts it himself. It's a once in a blue moon thing, a finding the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow kind of thing. Annoyingly, Pip forgets how to function and it fizzles to nothing, or he gets the giggles, he gets all stupid and nervous. For all the times he's told Lindsay to stop being an idiot about it and it's not like they're doing anything wrong, he's not always the best at taking his own advice. He tried to actually think about his dad one time – tried to imagine the cock in his throat was his dad's, tried to picture his dad's flabby, sweating face above his own, putting wet, meaty kisses onto his mouth as he plunged his fingers in and out. It just made him want to throw his guts up, vomit so hard he turned inside-out, and take a cheesegrater to his brain. He felt better, though, through the nausea, and couldn't stop laughing until Lindsay got annoyed enough to smack him one round the cheek. It meant he wasn't a sicko, not really, at least not in
that
way. It was just another game.

Lindsay's laughing again now, and Pip is starting to feel all nasty and damp under the armpits and on his palms. He scowls and pouts and squirms around some more, not sure how to get the upper hand again now Lindsay's actually playing along, or
teasing
that he's playing along even if he's really not.

"Dirty old man," he says again, feebly. He curls in on himself more, sideways with his knees pulled up and his head lolling against Lindsay's shoulder, and abandons the jumper to touch his fingers to Lindsay's face instead.

It's gone just past the scratchy, stubbly phase, his beard is long enough to be almost soft now. Not Father Christmas long or anything mad like that, although Pip did mock the flecks of grey a bit more than he probably should have. Just, disguise-long. A scruffy, curling mess around his chin and cheeks that tickles when they kiss and always smells faintly of cigarette smoke. "We don't need no more money, we're loaded. I don't want you to go."

"Stop it, please." He's got his careful warning voice on now. Pip ducks his head and bites his lip, but tries again anyway.

"What if something goes wrong, though?"

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"What'll go wrong? This is watertight, Danny's been on the inside all year. It's not just some dumb amateur ram-raid."

"Yeah,

but

what if
?"

"Well, then it'll be your job to bring me a rock hammer and a big poster of Rita Hayworth when you visit me in prison, won't it?"

"Fat chance. I ain't bringing you no half-naked bint, you can have a Ziggy Stardust poster and like it."

Lindsay laughs again and interrupts it with a kiss, and Pip slides his fingers up through the curling whiskers and into Lindsay's hair to hold him closer, to kiss him like everything is ending, one of those magical timestealing kisses where you lose an hour because every long minute feels like half a second.

If he can only kiss Lindsay well enough he can reorder time and stop him going, but Lindsay doesn't let him, he pulls away and smiles crookedly with only one side of his mouth, and Pip can feel his dark eyes all over his body like hands.

Something deep down in his stomach seems to explode, like a bright supernova of need, watching Lindsay lick his lips, teeth just bared now in a wolfish kind of smile. Pip doesn't need any command, just the look in Lindsay's eyes; he shivers, he can feel the blood rushing through his body and staining his skin, and he rips the old pyjama shirt over his head without needing to be told, throws it away somewhere, stands up in front of where Lindsay's sitting and twists a bit of hair round and round his fingers, nervous and needy and waiting to be told what to do. An impatient little noise escapes him against his will, like a sigh or a whimper, and it makes Lindsay laugh at him again. He doesn't think it's
with
him because he's not laughing, but it's okay, everything's okay.

The other side of Lindsay's mouth slides up to match the other, a dangerous, menacing smile Pip can't look at for too long. He lets his eyes flutter shut. He's suddenly taut with anticipation, breathing in rags and tatters, and the relief when he feels a hand twisting in his hair and
tugging
is like an orgasm on its own.

"What do you want from me? Is this what you want, is this why you 387

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were being such a fucking brat earlier?"

Lindsay's standing now as well, pressed up close behind Pip and talking in a slow murmur as he twists his hand more tightly and drags Pip's head back against his shoulder, stretching his neck and licking a line up it, right up to his ear. The other hand snakes around and starts rubbing him through the cotton pyjama trousers, torturously slowly.

"Come on. Answer, or I won't bother."

"Yeah, this is what I want."

"What

is?"

There's a smirk in his voice and he moves his hand away. Pip whines quietly, then more loudly when Lindsay wrenches his hair and hisses at him again to answer.

"Yeah, I want you to pull my hair, I want you to make it hurt, I want you to fuck me, I want your cock so deep it's in my throat, anything, I want you to make me come, I want
everything
, that's what I want, you, everything."