Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (5 page)

"You'll be useless. You'll get me killed. Next job, bam, we're both dead because you're an incompetent little monkey."

"Yeah, probably." He's still smiling, though. Laughing, even, as he lets his head loll down against Lindsay's shoulder and tucks his face in against his neck like he's trying to sniff the blood in his pulse. "It'll be alright. It'll be genius, we'll be like Bonnie and Clyde."

"You can be Bonnie."

"Well, yeah, like there's any question."

"What about the others, though?"

"What about 'em?"

Lindsay shrugs his shoulder until the kid sighs in fake-irritation and sits up a bit to look at him. "They won't think twice about giving you that bullet I should've given you before, if they think you're holding us back. You do know that, yeah?"

"What's it got to do with them, anyway?"

"Everything? We're a team. The only reason they didn't come today is because they thought I was gonna take the money and shoot you. You're not getting a share, that's not how it's working."

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"That ain't fair, though. I saved your life.
All
your lives."

"Don't flatter yourself. If you hadn't offered me your car we'd have just nicked another one."

"Don't you fancy me?" Valentine says, and the sudden question is startling, now it's face to face and not over a transatlantic phone call, like they've reached the top of that metaphorical hill and found a sheer endless drop instead of a nice gentle slope downwards. He's gone all wide-eyed and serious. His cheeks are very pink again, but it's not the wind-chill this time. He's radiating heat – his face, his arms, the fingers creeping into Lindsay's hair, the insides of his thighs where they're pressed flush to the outsides of Lindsay's. His cock.

"Never really thought about it," Lindsay says, pleased that his voice is holding steadier than his thoughts.

"Can you think about it, then?"

"What, now?"

"Can I kiss you while you're thinking about it?"

Lindsay's eyes flick like a reflex to Valentine's mouth, which the kid apparently takes as a 'yes'. He kisses like he does everything else –

enthusiastically, no finesse, giggling a bit, fidgety. He stops briefly to remove Lindsay's glasses then he's off again, sucking on Lindsay's tongue, licking round the points of his canines. It's several minutes before he realises Valentine's kissing him and rubbing down against him in time with the music, and then he's laughing too, he can't help himself.

"Get off me. No, I don't
fancy
you, we're not thirteen years old."

"So what do grown-ups say, then?" Valentine's kissing down his cheek now; Lindsay's weirdly glad he bothered to shave this morning, because the people he usually sleeps with aren't that much into snogging like teenagers, and this is really nice, and Valentine doesn't seem like the kind of bloke who'd be quite as passionate with his kissing if he was getting stubble-burn on his chin.

"Are you attracted to me? Sexually?" He sniggers at that, like he's pleased with 39

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himself for saying a dirty word.

"I won't have sex with you." He will, though. He knows he will, if it comes to it. It just wouldn't do to
both
be so eager.

"Okay." He goes back to raining hot, sloppy kisses down onto Lindsay's mouth. "You will next time."

"What next time? There's not even a
this
time."

"So stop kissing me back."

"Mmm... no, thanks, I don't think I will."

"Ha." The kid's smiling, kissing him, unbuttoning his shirt from the bottom up as Lindsay tries to navigate the weird way he's wearing his belt – it's slung low around his hips and buckled at the side, held in place by a single loop opposite. He's oddly annoyed that it takes him so long to work it out, so he whips the belt free extra-speedily to compensate. The kid's nuzzling against him like a cat, kissing all down his jaw and neck.

"I liked the beard," he murmurs, muffled against skin. "Was that just for disguise?"

"Yeah. The glasses are for real, though."

"Like them, too." Teeth on his ear and the wet point of a tongue, and Lindsay shivers. "Can I do disguises if I'm in your gang? Can I dye my hair? I hate it blond. Can I get coloured contacts? I always wanted blue eyes. Really, really blue, like it ain't even real. Like a Crayola. Can I do that? It'll be wicked."

Oh. "I like the green."

"I'll leave 'em green if you grow the beard back. Deal?"

"Maybe."

"I'll get a hat, too. No,
lots
. Lots of hats."

"Will you shut up?" More kissing, hands splayed on Valentine's hips, pressing him down. "Question, anyway. What's your real name?"

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He still doesn't know, and of course he's been away all week on business in New York where the news didn't even come close to reaching. It's a sideline, the legitimate stuff – it's got none of the thrills of the bank jobs, but he just refuses to lie to his mum about what he does for a living. Danny and Ty think it's hilarious, that, but then they're berks. He's got no idea whether this shit's hit the papers. He supposes it must have done. He could find out the kid's real name in a second just by stopping at a garage and flicking through the Sun, but that sort of feels like cheating.

"I told you."

"You told me
a
name." Button, zip, open in two blinks. "Real people aren't called Pip Valentine."

"No, well. I ain't a real person, am I?" He's squirming as Lindsay slides his hand into his jeans, and making these funny noises that are mostly heavy breaths but almost little laughs. "I'm a figment of your imagination. You're having a wet dream. Any minute now you're gonna wake up in a mess and spend the rest of the night all frantic trying to fall asleep again and pick it up where it left off like it's Eastenders, cos I'm the fucking best wet dream you've ever had."

"Oh, please. Eastenders? I'm a very deep and complex man."

"I am, too." He absolutely is not; Lindsay's worked his hand right inside Valentine's pants, and the first touch of bare fingers on bare cock makes him whimper and arch, white-knuckled on the steering wheel with one hand and the other pinching hard into Lindsay's shoulder.

"You are
not
deep and complex. You're the most 2-D person I've ever met in my life. Miyazaki drew you and threw you straight on the scrap pile because you look too anime."

"Wow." The kid sits there in contemplative silence for a bit, then turns his smile up like the Blackpool Illuminations and lets Lindsay's shoulder go so he can slip his hand up the side of his neck and wind bits of his hair around his fingers instead. It's strange gesture, Lindsay thinks – even more intimate, somehow, than what he's doing himself, sliding his thumb over the wetness on 41

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Valentine's cock until he shivers all over from holding a moan back. "You know, that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me."

"Well, then, that's a bit depressing."

"If I'm Miyazaki, you're like a bent James Bond."

"Oh?"

"All this... cars and stuff. Guns and disguises. License to thrill."

Don't laugh, Lindsay tells himself, don't laugh, don't laugh, that was awful, so don't laugh. "Yeah, that's a deal-breaker, that. Take it back or I'm shooting you in the head." Shit, he's laughing. He bends his head to lick a long line up Valentine's neck to cover it, from where his t-shirt starts right up to his ear, and Valentine protests in bubbly giggles just like a girl. "What's so funny?

You think I'm kidding?"

"
Fuck
," Valentine says when he feels the gun barrel nudging the skin above his throat, but he doesn't sound scared or angry; he sounds like he means what he says.

"Want to hear a secret?"

His mouth's open, just slightly, and his breathing is noisy. His chest's going like mad. He looks like a heroine off the front of a Mills & Boon romance, all slack wet lips and flush-stained cheeks. "Yes please."

"I've never actually shot anybody."

The kid's eyes stutter closed, and he sort of smiles. "You're like a virgin.

I'll be your first time." Slowly, slowly he moves his head back so the gun stops pressing into the soft underside of his chin. Lindsay doesn't move his hand, he just waits to see what he's doing; his breath lodges in his throat when Valentine bumps his nose on the cool metal and then, eyes still closed, takes the end of the gun in his mouth. Of course it's suggestive. Everything the little twat does is suggestive.

He tugs on Valentine's t-shirt until he kneels up, and with his free hand he sets about pulling his jeans down his skinny thighs, just enough. It's incredible

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how hard he is. The kid's crooked teeth clack noisily against the gun barrel when Lindsay's fingers wrap round his cock. He glances back at the kid's face; his eyebrows are drawn together and there's a tiny bubble of spit at the corner of his lips, smearing against the metal. His eyes are open – begging, but not for his life.

Less than a dozen strokes and it's finished, he's whimpering around the gun barrel and coming hot and hard over Lindsay's hand. Lindsay bends to kiss the goosebumps erupting on his bare arm, and the kid takes a shaky breath and smiles, moving back off the gun.

"So that's being held at gunpoint, is it?" he says. "I don't know why all them fucking bank workers keep complaining." He kisses the end of the gun tenderly, then takes it from Lindsay's slackening grip and puts it on the passenger seat. Lindsay's got no strength to resist because Valentine's started licking his own mess off his fingers. He feels slightly like he's going to faint at the tongue sliding down the pad of his thumb, the lips sealing round and sucking gently.

Valentine says, "There, now. All clean. Told you I'd be a good slave. Wife.

Thingy," and Lindsay thinks he's never had to come so badly before in his life.

He can't do anything about it, though. He can't bring himself to move, not just yet, except to lean forwards and press his face against Valentine's chest, breathing in the scent of his sweat and the champagne-damp cotton.

When he feels less on the verge of passing out, he looks up. Valentine's waiting patiently for a kiss, so he gives it and slumps back in the seat, arms loose around the kid's waist.

"It's a bit romantic, this, innit?"

Valentine's too close to be anything but a massive smudge of crooked nose and luminous green eyes, but Lindsay can feel he's smiling, and feel fingers in his hair again, tangling and stroking, clinging, possessive.

"I don't know what you mean." He darts forward to kiss him again, to shut him up and get him away from such a stupid dangerous topic, but the kid's even quicker; he bumps against the horn when he jerks back, then collapses into hooting laughter when the sound blares out and frightens birds out of the trees.

He laughs like lemonade. He's all fizzy. Lindsay feels his nose wrinkling up like 43

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it always does when he's amused or confused, and he grabs Valentine by the hair and sets about giving him a proper kiss, thorough and insistent and determined, but it doesn't really work. Doesn't work at
all
. Valentine's smiling wider than ever when he finally wrenches himself away.

"I mean it, though," he says. "It's like off a romcom. Me and you, windows down, roof rolled back, wine, parked up a cliff, sound of waves, sun setting..."

"...and fellating an illegal gun in a stolen car full of ransom money?"

"Don't spoil it, you fucking wanker." Another kiss, forceful, shoving him back against the headrest, then Valentine's looking at him again, but in a way that's less about seeing than pleading. "Do you love me?"

"What?" Lindsay bursts out laughing, he can't help it, bemused and slightly horrified. "Slow it down, okay?"

"Cos, I think you do." He's going on like he didn't even hear Lindsay speak. "Even if you don't know it yet. Cos it's like, it's fate or something, innit?

Me and you. A hundred million ears in England, and your gun went and raped mine. That's storybook, that is. That's fairytale."

There are several things Lindsay wants to say to that, but he decides they can wait until after he's come. Priorities.

"You can have the car," he says on an impulse. "If you want it. It's yours. I feel like a tit driving this."

"Oh, that's generous, innit? We bought it with my ransom money!"

"Excuse me.
My
money."

"Our money?"

"Mine."

"Ours," Valentine says, nodding his head like a corporeal full stop. He begins to clamber into the back seat, awkwardly because his jeans are still trapping his knees together, limbs poking Lindsay in the stomach and face. He's

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all sticky from his orgasm. Lindsay gives his softening cock a quick hard suck as the kid's hips wriggle past his head, and he stops there for a second, trapped between the headrests, panting and giggling. "Do you mind? Fucking hell, help me, I think I'm stuck."

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I wanna... come on,
help
me, don't just sit there, gimme a push."

He tumbles onto the back seat when Lindsay shoves him, and then he's ripping at the knot in one of the bags with his fingernails and teeth. It's like a massive plastic pass-the-parcel; they triple-bagged the cash to keep it secure and burned the suitcase it came in, just in case it had a tracker on it or something, and with every layer he tears through he's getting more aggravated until he finally finds it, the crackle of purple paper, and then he's dragging it out by the handful, unwrapping the bundles and laughing like a madman. "I wanna rip off Steven's head and cover myself in his blood!"

"...You're a bit mental, really, aren't you?"

"Yeah. I reckon my mind snapped like a Twiglet with all the strain of being a hostage," he says, "stuck in a house all week with nothing except them two goons while you went swanning off having a wicked time without me," but he sounds kind of absent. He thrusts a big wad of twenties into the front seat, and another and another until the car's covered in ransom like it's been parked under a money-tree in the middle of autumn. "I'm well crazy. I'll be a liability, you're right. We're gonna die, Clyde, me and you, we'll get gunned down like dogs, but it's okay cos I was fucking dying anyway."