Richard Rider Stockholm Syndrome 03 No Beginning, No End

No Beginning, No End

Richard Rider

Dedicated to LJ.

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August 2014

Pip wakes early on the Sunday morning, and for a moment he

can't remember where he is. He's kicked all his covers down so they're
tangled around his legs. Olly doesn't normally let him do that.

It floods back in a rush and he lays there still for a moment

listening to the sounds of the morning, birds singing and trees rustling
gently like a defensive moat of leaves all around the house. Mister Bollo is
tucked safe between the pillows and Pip brings him out carefully, more
nervous than ever about handling him now. He's stupidly, irrationally
paranoid, half-convinced that even looking at him is going to make all his
limbs fall off, but of course it doesn't. The monkey fits in his hand
perfectly. It always did. It's so strange how his hand and the monkey's
woollen body have always felt like they belonged, exactly the same now as
it was when he was four and his hand was tiny.

He could fall back asleep so easily. He almost does, lulled by

the hum of voices somewhere in the house and the familiar, comfortable
smell of his old cuddly, but two things happen: Dory comes running into

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his room in her nightie, wild-haired from sleep, and his phone beeps a text
through.

"MUM SAYS WAKE UP AND DAD SAYS YOU'RE LAZY!"

she shouts at him. He starts laughing, until she leaps on the bed and then
he's too winded to breathe. "WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP!"

"I ain't getting up yet, it's like five o'clock!" He gets her in a

headlock and lets her struggle there, shrieking and giggling while he tries
to focus his eyes to press the right buttons and read the message.

Can't stand waking up alone.
When can we move your things in? x

Pip smiles at that, helpless and goofy like he's fifteen, then he

turns his phone off. Lindsay can sweat. It'll annoy him, not getting a
response. He's brilliant when he's annoyed but doesn't really mean it, he
does that face. Pip can see it in his mind so clearly, the way Lindsay sets
his jaw and the line of his eyebrows and curve of his lips when he's pissed
off and amused and in love all at the same time...

"LET ME GO!"

"No way, you trespassed on my private property, you're my

prisoner now."

"As if I am!"

He starts tickling her mercilessly and she screams the house

down, kicking at him with her little feet, but she's still giggling so it's okay.
He always hated being tickled, it's like torture. People always think it's so
hilarious tickling someone who doesn't want it, as if acting like that isn't
basically rape. Dory's hysterical with laughter, though, laughing so hard
her eyes are streaming. Pip gives up after a particularly vicious kick in the

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ribs and fakes surrender, laying flat on his back and letting her sit on him
and punch the air like she's just scored the winner in the World Cup.

This isn't working, this ignoring-Lindsay thing. Pip's itching to

turn his phone back on and send back a giddy reply that's all <3 and
xoxoxo. He doesn't, he just squints at his clock on his bedside table. 8:17.
Ugh.

"Get off me, you spaz. I need a shower."

"Yeah, cos you STINK!"

"How come you're being so horrible to me?"

"No I ain't being horrible." She scrambles off the bed and kneels

up on the chair at his dressing table, a hideous gilt thing with a dark pink
seat cushion, so she can start stirring through his stuff. He's not moved
everything out of Olly's yet, just a few important bits he can't live without.
Some clothes, hair products, eyeliner, nailpaint. Dory pulls the lid off one
of his eyeliner pencils and starts drawing on the back of her hand, a big
loopy flower with a crooked smiley face in the middle. "Can I have a
tattoo?"

"Ask Dad."

"He says over my dead body."

"Well, then."

"Can I get one if I'm older?"

"Yeah. If you still want one when you grow a brain."

"When I'm seven? Cos that's well old."

"Aahh... bit older than that, maybe."

She goes tearing out of the room yelling, "PIP SAYS I CAN

GET A TATTOO WHEN I'M EIGHT!" He laughs, he can't help it, and

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gets up for his shower as soon as she's out of the room because he can't
cave in and text Lindsay back if he's in the shower.

***

He's living back at home now. Might as well make himself

useful and take Dory to ballet, and anyway it's an excuse to get out of the
house and avoid all the awkward questions about why he's there at all. She
makes him hold her Bagpuss backpack and grudgingly lets him hold her
hand while she pretends to be a tightrope walker on the kerb at the side of
the empty road.

"I can do it on my own," she says crossly, and Pip has to

struggle not to smile at how much she looks like their dad when she
frowns. That's so backwards, how she looks like their dad and he looks like
their mum.

"Yeah, I know, but what'll I do if you ain't looking after me? I

might like fall over the paving stones or something. Fall in the hedge,
spike myself on someone's fence, anything could happen. It's dangerous
for boys to wear heels, you know."

She looks at him suspiciously as if she knows he's taking the

piss but doesn't say anything else. It's a good comfortable sort of silence,
holding hands and skipping through the dappled sunlight under the trees. It
seems a shame to break it, but he's bursting to tell someone and she's as
good a confidante as any.

"Hey, you remember Lindsay you met the other day?"

"Yeah."

"Did you like him."

"He's well old! He's got a beard!"

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"Oh my god, please say that to his face."

"Why?"

"Cos it'll be funny."

"I ain't being funny, I'm just saying."

"Alright. But do you like him, though?"

She stops jumping from kerbstone to kerbstone and starts

walking normally beside Pip, scurrying a bit to keep up with his strides
until he realises and slows down. "He likes good music, don't he?"

"Sometimes. He likes jazz too."

"Jazz!" They make identical and quite realistic vomit sounds.

Lindsay was right, he has trained her well.

"Yeah, but... you're right, good stuff too. Do you like him?"

"Am I sposed to like him?"

"I'd be dead happy if you did, cos I think he's brilliant."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'll like him then."

"Do you know why I like him?"

"Cos he buyed you coffee."

"That's one of the reasons..." It's a bit weird, now it's come to it.

It shouldn't be difficult. It can't be nearly as horrible as it was on Friday
morning, when he and Olly had to tell the kids Pip was moving out and he
ended up in floods of ugly snotty tears until they got embarrassed and
uncomfortable and had to comfort him instead of the other way around.
For some reason it's still difficult to spit out the right words in the right
order. "You like Olly, don't you?"

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"I love Olly," she says, loud and vehement which only makes it

harder.

"Me too, but I don't love him like my boyfriend no more."

"How come?"

"I just don't. People can fall out of love, it happens sometimes

even if you don't mean it."

"Even to me?"

"That ain't the same kind of love, honey. This one can't stop, it

don't work like that. I mean, not unless you cut all my hair off in my sleep
or something, cos then I might dropkick you out the window."

"Okay. I won't do that."

"Good." They're out on Hampstead High Street now, weaving

around morning pavement traffic. He holds her hand tighter, scared she's
going to dash out into the steady stream of cars even though he really
knows she won't. "I love Lindsay like my boyfriend now, is that alright?"

"Spose." He looks down at her and her nose is wrinkled up like

she finds the whole idea revolting. He can barely keep from laughing then.
It's his favourite thing about her, how utterly open she is about everything,
how impossible she finds it to hide her feelings. Maybe it's because she's
so little and hasn't learned to lie very well yet, or maybe it's just the way
she's going to be forever. "He's older than Dad!"

"No he ain't!"

"But he's got a beard!"

"I like it. He looks all distinguished. He smells nice, he always

smells like black coffee and fresh tobacco, it's all manly like out a crap
romance book."

"That ain't nice, that's cancer. He smells like CANCER."

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"Did Dad tell you that?"

"I heard him telling Uncle Matt if you don't stop putting fags in

your mouth you're gonna die."

Two meanings. There's always something lurking below the

surface with Phil. They're getting along better than they ever have before
but it's still not right, it still feels as if they're constantly circling each other
like animals ready to fight to the death. Pip can't ever tell whether his dad
really means it any more when he calls him a dirty little poof or whether
he's trying to be all jovial and accepting and being insulting seems to him
the best way of getting that across, as if constantly reminding him he's a
shirtlifter is like saying, hey, look how normal this is for me, I ain't
bothered what you do with yourself. Sometimes it's like that – he
remembers that moment in the bar the other night when Phil gave him
money for johnnies and Pip hugged him on impulse because it felt sort of
good, a bit like being mates, very nearly like a normal dad and a normal
son for the first time in years and years. Sometimes, though, Phil just can't
behave himself, like when Pip turned up at the house on Saturday evening
after his day with Lindsay and Phil kept on and on with jibes and nasty
comments: what the fuck's going on with your hair? You want a haircut,
you look like Chrissie Hynde, what a fucking state, what you wearing them
boots for? He wants a woman, is he paying for your op then? You ain't
getting no money out of me for your tit job, I'll tell you that right now.

"Yeah, well," he says slowly, picking through his brain for

something to say, some excuse, but there's nothing. Smoking is a filthy
disgusting lethal habit, there's no way out of it. He changes the subject
instead. "How's your classes going? What's your teacher like, is she nice?"

"Alright."

"Just alright?"

"Yeah."

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"Don't you like it?"

"It's alright."

It's not alright at all, she's dragging her feet now and dawdling.

Pip stops abruptly in the street and crouches down to her level so he can
see her properly. "Hey, listen. If you don't like it you don't have to go, we
can go and play footie in the park instead."

"Mum says it's spensive."

"Mum's a fucking skinflint then, they're loaded, they ain't gonna

miss a couple of quid on some scummy ballet lesson you don't wanna go
to. I mean it, we ain't going if you don't want."

"Piggyback."

"Alright." He slips the straps of her backpack up her arms to

free his hands and lets her clamber onto his back, holding her safe by the
legs. "What do you say, then? Dancing or not?"

"Dancing's for girls."

"You're a girl, you spaz."

"I ain't a girl-girl."

"Well, that's good cos I ain't a boy-boy neither."

"You like football."

"Yeah, but I like dancing too."

"You're a boy-girl."

"Did Dad tell you that as well?"

"No, I learnt it myself."

"Might use you as the football if you don't start being nicer to

me."

"I am nice!"

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"Do you love me?"

"Yeah."

"More than what?"

"More than Appratite For Destruction and Mr. Whippy."

"That'll do."

***

An hour or so later Pip's sitting on the grass with Olly, watching

the kids all play some vague hybrid of rounders and dodgeball just down
the hill. He'd phoned when he and Dory found somewhere to stop and have
a top-up of breakfast, weirdly nervous and not sure they'd come, but they
did and it's not so bad now. Nothing's changed between them all, except
that when he hugs Olly to say hello he kisses the corner of his mouth from
habit without even thinking about it and then there's a second of holding
his breath and panicking before Olly just laughs softly and calls him a
queer.

"Your party was good," Olly says. He brought a bag of jelly

babies and they're both shovelling them into their mouths trying not to let
the kids see. I know we're meant to be, Pip said once, cos I eat all the
greens and yellows and pinks and you eat all the reds and oranges and
purples, it's perfect. Olly told him if that was his main criteria for picking a
boyfriend he needed his head checked, but then there was a jelly baby fight
and they didn't have time for much more talking. "Wish I could've stayed
longer."

"Yeah. I left early, too."

"Slag."

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"A bit." He's doing that awful thing again, smiling like a

complete dope without meaning to and without being able to stop once he's
noticed.

"I kind of expected you to be all black and blue by now."

"Not this time. It was just... nice. Weird. Sad. Quiet."

"Sad?"

"I don't know. Kind of."

"Yeah, I knew you'd have second thoughts about chucking me,"

Olly says, smirking, and Pip laughs and falls back on the grass, stretching
his arms up over his head and feeling the sun on his face, squeezing his
eyes shut because he didn't think to bring his sunglasses.

"Fuck off, as if."

"Why ain't you happy, though?"

"I am. Just, you know. Weird. It's good. I missed him. God, are

you alright hearing this? Shit. I feel like a right bastard still, just like oh my
ex is back in town, BYE!" He can't see Olly's face because the sun is too
bright, even when he tries to shield his eyes with his hand, but Olly doesn't
sound too cut up about it.

"Ah, stop it. I told you already, I was gonna call it off anyway."

"You and your addiction to spraying things up fallopian tubes."

"Yeah. If you'd just been born a girl me and you would've been

the happiest couple alive and you never would've met Lindsay cos we'd be
in our scummy little council flat making mongrelly brown babies."

"Urgh, Jesus, don't."

"Which bit, not meeting Lindsay or you having a vag?"

"Living in a council flat." He sits up a little bit, propping

himself on his elbows and squinting down the length of his body and past

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his cowboy boots to where the three girls are ganging up on Sam and
Joseph and pelting them with footballs. "Gives me panic-rash just thinking
about them growing up like me and you had to."

"We turned out alright."

"Yeah, but it was a fucking ballache getting there."

Pip's phone is in his front pocket, digging uncomfortably into

his hipbone now he's sitting like this, and he brings it out and just holds it
in his palm. He had a message when he turned it on to phone Olly but he
made himself leave it alone. He's regretting it now. It feels like it's burning
a hole through his jeans. Maybe Olly knows. He sounds casual enough
when he gets up and brushes himself off and says he's going to rescue the
boys, but maybe he knows. Pip turns the phone on quickly as soon as
Olly's gone and tries to wipe that ridiculous smile off again. Four new
texts.

You lazy bastard, it's half past eight. Wake up and tell me
you love me.

I know you can't go more than seventeen seconds without
looking at your stupid phone. Answer me.

Are you waiting for me to say I love you first?

You're a rose, you're a pearl, you're the spin on my world.
Now ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE.

He can't leave it any longer, what's the point? Shoving the last

few jelly babies into his mouth, he returns:

aint u got nuthin better 2 do than sexualy harass me by txt

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Then he counts off the seconds. Twenty-three before the phone

comes to life, flashing red and singing My Heart Belongs To Daddy at
him. He's giggling like a schoolgirl when he answers: "Hello?"

"Don't say hello like you don't know who it is."

"Hello, Lindsay."

"Hey. What's funny?"

"I set my ringtone for you to Marilyn Monroe. I'm Arthur

Miller."

"Get lost. I'm Arthur Miller."

"What do you want?"

"Shall I give you a list?"

"You're a dirty old man."

"Only when you're not here."

"When I'm there as well, I hope."

"Mmmaybe. What are you doing?"

"Cruising round the Heath picking up fit young men."

"I see."

"No, me and Dory come out here, we're skiving off her ballet

cos she don't like it. She's playing footie with Olly and the clan."

There's a very slight pause. "Olly's there?"

"Yeah, me and him just had a nice roll in the grass, jizz stains

everywhere."

"Shut up."

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"Well, stop being an arsehole, then. I can actually be mates with

someone without sucking them off, you know."

"Even him?"

"Yeah."

"You fell out of love with him very quickly, you... fickle young

tart."

"Yeah, well, I was never in love with him or anybody else in my

whole life except you, is that what you wanna hear?"

"More or less."

"There you go, then."

Another little pause. "Say it properly," Lindsay says, quiet and

kind of hesitant as if he thinks it's stupid.

"Say what?"

"You know what."

"Why?"

"Because I like hearing it."

"Now who's the barnacle?"

"I'm scared to death you're only going along with all this

because it's new and you're surprised and knocked off guard or something
and you don't really mean it because why should you mean it?" Lindsay
says, rushed like he's trying to get all the words out before he can change
his mind. He sounds strange and unsure of himself and he's never normally
like that. Pip feels a bit sick and wrong that he's enjoying it so much,
getting a weird thrill of pleasure like tingly fingers dancing up his back and
playing cat's cradle with his spinal cord.

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"When did I ever ever ever give you any reason to be jealous?

Or, like, think I'm making it up or something when I say I love you? I
won't lie about that."

"I know, but..."

"I ain't even that young and pretty no more, there's a million

little girly boys you might pick over me once you work out the places to
go. I should be getting all scared and emo, not you."

"I don't want a million little girly boys, I'm not a paedophile."

"You ain't a paedophile no more, you mean."

"Shut up. Graverobber."

"So we're agreed, then? I love you and you love me and fuck the

world cos they don't matter?"

"You make my brain hurt sometimes."

"Do you feel better, though?"

"Not really. I don't know. Yes. I think."

"How did I ever think you're sooooo brilliant and self-assured

and you always know what you're doing?"

"I do, most of the time. It's just... you. Ripping my axis out and

sticking it somewhere it doesn't belong so I spin all off-kilter."

"Are you saying you wanna be the taker for a bit?"

"I'm hanging up now."

"Don't go." He's flat on his back on the grass again with his eyes

closed against the harsh summer morning. It should be dark when you
close your eyes but the sun's making it bright pink. It always grossed him
out when he was little, closing his eyes and facing the sun and thinking
ewww I'm looking at the inside of my eyelids!

"I have to go, I've got things to do, I need to go to the library."

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"You're so rock and roll, I love it."

"That helps."

"Yeah."

"What are you doing today? Are you busy later?"

"Are you asking me out?"

"Might."

So so so stupid how happy that makes him, like a giddy 1940s

bobbysoxer. "Do it properly, then. I ain't just going out with the first rich
old git who clicks his fingers at me."

"Will you come out for dinner with me later?"

"In public?"

"Yes."

"Will you hold my hand where people can see?"

"If you behave yourself."

"Are you gonna bring me flowers?"

"No."

"Chocolates?"

"I might bring you some Haribo."

"Sold. I'm working late, come and meet me at the studio, yeah?

I'll text you the address."

"Alright. See you later, then."

"Lindsay?"

"What?"

"I love you."

He turns his phone off again and goes to hijack the football.

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***

Lindsay's never been in a tattoo studio before. Even when he got

his own stupid little thing one night when he was young and dumb and off
his face enough to think it was a good idea, that was a friend of a friend
who was learning and using anybody he could get his hands on as guinea
pigs in his dirty kitchen. It's a little place in Islington, or it looks little from
the outside, window crammed full of glass stencils and photographs under
a big black and white sign saying 'Inkubus'. It's much bigger when he's
inside, the room carries on behind the counter much farther than he
expected. He can see Valentine's back and hear the hum of the machine
he's using on the man in his chair.

There's a girl sitting at the counter doodling stars on a notepad

but she stops when she sees him and smiles, bright and cheerful. "Alright?
We're just closing in like twenty minutes, you wanna make an appointment
for tomorrow?"

NO. "Oh. Er, no thanks," he manages, a bit more politely than it

sounded in his head. "I'm just meeting Valentine, I'll wait."

"You're his boyfriend?" she says, wide-eyed in surprise as if he's

got three heads. Get used to it, he tells himself grimly. She looks a bit
embarrassed then, and tries to smooth it over with, "I mean... sorry, I ain't
being rude, I just seen his normal type and..." She trails off again. Not
much better, but at least now she looks really uncomfortable. Ha. "Go
through if you want, he don't mind an audience."

She goes back to her notepad, more like she doesn't want to

look at him any more than because she's got the urge to draw, and Lindsay
goes round the side of the counter and through the back room to where
Valentine and the other man are. Valentine sees him before he gets there,

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hears his footsteps and looks round, and he smiles so wide it's almost
impossible to be jealous any more or think horrible black depressing
thoughts about who he might really want to be with once all this novelty
has worn off.

"We was just talking about you."

"Good things?"

"Rob and his girlfriend are getting married too."

"Ah." Maybe if he ignores it then it'll go away. "Am I going to

put you off?"

"Nah, it's cool, pull up a chair, we're nearly finished."

He chatters on as he works, making introductions, talking about

the first tattoo Rob ever did for him when he was sixteen, telling Lindsay
about Rob, telling Rob about Lindsay, all the time scratching the inky
needle across the snake tattoo curling up Rob's arm and shoulder, filling
the last of the plain black bit with red. It looks a right mess, there's colour
smeared all over his skin and every time Valentine gets new ink on the
needle it seems way too much and it bubbles up around the point of contact
so it's impossible to see what he's doing – even so, every time he wipes the
excess off with a tissue it's always perfect and nothing at all like a five-
year-old who can't quite colour in the lines yet. Lindsay realises he's not
actually listening to what Valentine's saying at all, he's fascinated by his
hands and the colour of the ink, how blood-bright it looks on the needle
and how it gets muted a bit when it's injected, the careful shading of red to
skin tone. He knew that was possible, shading ink on skin like you're
taught to shade a pencil on paper when you're at school, dark to light to
make things look three-dimensional, but he's never really thought about it
until now.

"Think we're done here," Valentine says, and his voice is like

the trigger that breaks Lindsay out of hypnosis. He stops staring while

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Valentine's cleaning the image off and sticking a dressing over it, he starts
looking around the room instead at all the equipment and the paintings
hung on the walls. He recognises at least half of them as Valentine's – he's
never seen them before, but the style is unmistakable – and wonders how
long he's been here. Long enough to have put his mark on the place,
anyway. The few times Lindsay went into the salon in St. Lizier and saw
Valentine there brandishing his silver scissors or giggling about something
with a customer who had tinfoil in her hair, he always got an odd little
pang of some strange feeling he could never quite place – something like
exasperation and annoyance and vague embarrassment that he was living
with a hairdresser, but something else as well that made him feel a bit sick
with fear. Knowing that Valentine belonged somewhere he himself would
never fit in. It's the same again here, watching him and his boss clear away
their equipment and wipe some spilled ink off the chair; it's like a different
world, where some men have carefully-cultivated muscles and wear tight
sleeveless vests to show off the intricate tattoos right up and down their
arms, and some men wear eyeliner and nailpaint and cowboy boots with
sequins on. The alien from the next planet wears slouchy woollen
cardigans and can't even draw a stickman, never mind permanently scar a
lifelike portrait of somebody's face into somebody else's arm.

"So where are you off to?" he hears Rob ask. Valentine shrugs

his shoulders and looks at Lindsay.

"Where we going?"

"I don't know, I've not booked anything."

"Oh, that's nice, you ask me out then don't bother booking

nothing nice."

"You always whinge when I choose. 'Aahh no, that's posh twats'

food, I don't like posh twats' food, it sits on my hips...'"

"As if I even sound like that!"

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"That's a direct quote."

"Yeah, I can believe it as well," Rob says, and Valentine throws

a scrunched-up handful of damp paper towels at him. He ducks away,
laughing. "I'm going, you're alright locking up?"

"Yeah, see you tomorrow."

Rob leaves with his arm slung over the shoulders of that

awkward girl from the front desk, and Valentine disappears through the
back door with some black binbags; when he comes back in, instead of
tidying up any more he comes right over to where Lindsay's still sitting
and settles sideways in his lap, slipping his fingers up through Lindsay's
hair and kissing him. It starts off innocently enough but rapidly morphs
into something a bit more pervy, duelling tongues and hairpulling and
Valentine keeps making pathetic little gaspy giggly whining noises. He
changed position somewhere so now they're face to face; it's not a very
good chair for this particular activity so Lindsay's got his hands spread
over Valentine's arse to hold him there with his feet dangling a couple of
inches off the floor, but it's not helping very much at all, it's just making
Valentine wriggle.

"Stop that," Lindsay says, more like gasps, but Valentine just

bites him gently on the lower lip and keeps on kissing. "I mean it. Stop it
or you'll have even more mess to clean up."

That makes him laugh, bright girly bursts of giggles so he can't

kiss any more. He puts his arms round Lindsay's neck instead and settles in
against his shoulder, kissing him gently on the pulse. "Do you feel better
now?" he murmurs. He wriggles again when Lindsay brings a hand up his
back to start stroking his hair, but it's a lazy, pleased sort of wriggle this
time, not the sort with serious intent.

"About what?"

"Me wanting to be with you, not Olly."

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No. He feels like he's never going to get used to it, like he

couldn't get used to it before every time Valentine made some sly dig at his
dress sense or the music he liked or how he was just so fucking
unbelievably old. It's different now. It shouldn't be, they're still the same
number of years apart, but being with someone who's twenty-six when
you're forty-one is a bit more socially acceptable than a man in the middle
of his thirties shagging a teenager. It still feels strange, but it's more who
they are and not their ages, he realised a long time ago. Valentine's still
going to be a giddy foolish vain cross-dresser when he's ninety.

"Not sure. Show me again."

Valentine laughs and kisses him again, slow and intense and

wonderful. It's something Lindsay never realised he missed until now –
nobody else he's been with through all these years apart has wanted to kiss
like this. He never even wanted it himself until Valentine; it was like some
unwritten rule that you grow out of wanting it as soon as you're past
nineteen because you're supposed to be having lots of serious grown-up
sex by then and not wasting your time on something as juvenile as gropey
snogging. Not that he would turn down the sex, of course, as wonderful as
the kissing is...

Valentine is pink-cheeked when he finally pulls away, and he

looks pleased with himself. "You feel better now, right?"

"A bit."

"Alright. Get your breath back, old man, we can find

somewhere to eat."

***

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

They can't agree on anything, riding round town in a cab for

forty minutes peering through the window at each other's suggestions and
shooting them down. It's just like the old days, endless squabbling that
can't decide whether it's cheery banter or genuine annoyance. "Fuck this,"
Valentine says eventually. "We're getting a takeaway." That's okay. It'll
mean he has to stop trying to hold Lindsay's hand.

They wander down the riverside with their cardboard boxes of

chow mein. It's the second time in two days they've been down here, it's
starting to become a habit. It's hardly the most romantic place in the world,
a massive brown river in the middle of a filthy city, but Valentine doesn't
seem to care. He's not even talking much any more, stuffing his face with
food instead and then just walking along quietly when his empty box is in
the bin. They spent so much time messing around in the studio and fighting
over where to go that it's getting dark by now, not that London's ever
properly dark. There's a billion streetlamps and windows standing out
against the indigo sky and reflected in the black river like electric stars. A
little way ahead of them, Tower Bridge looms over everything like a sort
of majestic chaperone; just to the side of that, the white walls of the castle
are illuminated like it's Christmas. It's still warm but there's a faint breeze
making Valentine's hair blow into his face, and he turns round and walks
backwards for a while so he can keep it out of the way. Lindsay can't eat
any more now he's being watched so he throws his box in the next bin.

"Do you know how hard I'm going to laugh when you walk into

a lamppost or something?"

"Get stuffed. I know this town like the back of my hand. Ain't

that a stupid thing to say? How many people actually sit there staring at the
back of their hands learning what it looks like? That's weird, I wouldn't be
mates with someone who thinks that's a good hobby." He still turns back
round, tucking his hair behind his ears, and starts walking normally again.
His fingers brush against Lindsay's a couple of times; Lindsay can't decide

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, N

N D

whether it was an accident because of how close they're walking, or
Valentine's after something he doesn't really want to give. Yesterday was
different. Yesterday felt like make or break. Now it's here, now it's all
happening and it's real, the urge to prove himself isn't nearly as strong.

"Where are we going, then?"

"Dunno. Just walking. I like walking round London at night, I

do it all the time. Not for no reason, just cos... it's home, innit? It's brilliant,
you can't ever get bored of London cos even if you live here for like a
hundred and fifty years you still won't ever know everything about it.
There's always something new. Like, you're walking round somewhere
you've known since you was born and you look up and there's an old clock
on the side of a building you never seen before, or there's a little gargoyley
face over a window or something. Don't you think it's cool?"

"You'll get murdered and dumped in the river if you walk round

London on your own at night."

"Yeah, right. That's just narrow-minded Yorkshire propaganda.

Go back up north, you old square." He snatches at Lindsay's hand
suddenly, winding their fingers together and then covering them with his
other hand and squeezing tight so he can't escape. "HA! Got you. Lure you
in with casual conversation, then the superglue on the palm trick and you'll
never escape for the rest of your life."

He doesn't pull away. That's what Valentine wants, a reaction.

He's not getting one, good or bad. Lindsay just keeps his face blank of any
expression, just keeps on walking with him even though he hates this
holding-hands rubbish. It's not even about being uncomfortable because
complete strangers might suspect he's gay, which is what Valentine seems
to think his problem is. He was never bothered about being seen in
restaurants with Valentine last time, and what could possibly be more
homosexual than two men having dinner together at a table with candles
on it? Maybe two men booking a double room in a hotel – another thing he

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

never had any problem doing. It's just public displays of affection. His
whole life they've made him cringe no matter who the perpetrators are.
People getting all snuggly together in a cinema, all the hand-holding that's
there everywhere you look, or the very worst thing of all where vile
couples giggle and simper all over the place and hand-feed each other
strawberries in a restaurant or on a picnic blanket in a crowded park. It's
repulsive. Nothing in the world makes him feel so violent. He wouldn't
even use a gun, he could just pummel their faces in until there was nothing
left but pulp, that's how disgusting and offensive he finds it all.

Valentine's walking along happily, swinging their hands gently

now he's realised Lindsay isn't struggling, completely oblivious to
anything that isn't his own stupid clingy neediness. "Do you wanna go
somewhere?"

"Where?"

"Dunno. Anywhere. Out."

"Come home with me."

"You're insatiable."

"Well, you're very talented."

"Thanks."

Slight alarm bells now. Valentine's not going for it. He would

have jumped at it before, he probably would have initiated it himself. It
was usually his idea when they were out and he suddenly decided they'd be
better off in bed. Now... nothing. He's just walking along quietly, holding
Lindsay's hand.

"Or we can go out. If you want."

"Nah," Valentine says after a moment. "I might just go home.

Early start tomorrow."

"Is something wrong?"

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"No." He's such a fucking liar. Lindsay looks at him until he

goes on. "No, I swear! Nothing's wrong. I just been thinking today." It's
probably Olly's fault. Lindsay wants to smash his smug face in as well,
now. "I been thinking like... me and you should start over. Pretend we're
strangers, start from the beginning. Go out places, take it slow, just have
fun and stuff and work out where to go from there, not just move me in
your house and fit me round your life again."

"Were you really that miserable before?"

"No comment."

"Don't lie to me, then. I asked you all the time if you were

happy and you always said yes."

"I know. Sorry. I've grown up a bit since then. Stuff's different. I

don't wanna take stuff off people no more. I don't need looking after like a
little china dolly." He stops talking and glances round furtively as if he's
checking there's nobody standing too close and listening in. "Like telling
me what to do and everything, like how I got my arse smacked if I played
up-"

"Stop talking."

"No, it's important, I'm just saying! Just... I don't need it no

more. I needed it before, it weren't like abuse or nothing, Olly thinks it's
weird like I was your prisoner but it weren't like that. I swear I was happy
being with you, it was just different. And how it all happened, even the
weird stuff weren't really weird cos it worked, I needed it like that and I
think you needed it too, right? Like it don't matter if you're insane if you
find someone else who's insane in the opposite way cos then it fits like my
Hedwig tattoo. But I ain't crazy no more, I don't need you looking after me,
and what I was thinking today..."

Lindsay's half-afraid to ask but he does anyway. "What?"

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"What if that's all there was?" Valentine says, quick and

desperate like it's vomit. "If I don't need you looking after me no more are
you still gonna want me?"

"You're such an idiot."

"Wha-"

Lindsay holds Valentine's face in both hands and kisses him

right there in the middle of the path, cutting off his word and turning it into
a gentle, pleased sound of surprise breathed out through his nose. There are
people everywhere. Lindsay wants to be sick, it's like he can feel all their
eyes on him, but he does it anyway and when he finally moves away a
good minute later Valentine seems to have turned from himself into a silly
bashful schoolgirl, blushing and smiling and not quite looking up.

"Oh," he says, like that explains everything.

"Yeah."

"Thank you."

"That's a shit thing to say when somebody's just ripped all his

principles in half to make you feel better."

"Thank you very much?"

"You're welcome."

"Is that okay, then? Just... I never had a proper proper boyfriend

before. I mean, I only had one before you and we never went out places, he
just threw me round and fucked me. I wanna go out places and hear what
you been doing all this time. I wanna learn how to be proper friends with
you cos we weren't like that before, I don't think. I want goodbye kisses on
the doorstep feeling all naughty cos my mum and dad's just like ten feet
away in the living room. Just to test it. Like, trying it out to make sure it
ain't broken for good, you know?"

"I think I liked you better when you were stupid and impulsive."

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"Ah, shut up. You're just wounded you ain't getting a blowjob

tonight." He's holding Lindsay's hand again, and he brings it up to his
mouth so he can kiss it.

"You watch too many dumb American teen movies."

"Yeah. Fifty First Dates."

"Fifty?"

"Make them good ones, I might say ten. Now be a gent and

come and find me a cab, alright?"

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

The deal is simple: no complaining, no wimping out, they just

have to put up with the other one choosing somewhere to go. It should be
simple, but when Lindsay tells him to "dress nice for dinner" what the hell
is that supposed to mean?

"What are you slamming around for?" Phil says, as Pip's

running up and down the hall rescuing his stolen clothes from Dory's
room.

"I just... ain't got nothing to wear."

"Are you kidding or what?"

"No, I ain't got nothing nice, Lindsay says dress up nice for

dinner, what the fuck is nice meant to mean? Like, a suit?"

"Dare you to go in top hat and tails."

"Get bent." He slams his bedroom door but Phil just opens it

again and stands there in the doorway with his arms folded, looking at the
sartorial carnage.

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"Jesus. How can you say you've got nothing to wear?"

Pip throws two handfuls of coathangers onto his bed, each

holding a different shirt he bought for some reason and now never wears.
There's a white linen one like his favourite of Lindsay's, a dark purple
velvet thing with a high collar, one in black that laces up corset-style in the
back above cascading gathers of fabric, another white one with ruffles all
down the front and little black buttons, a rough grey silk blouse he got to
go under a dress last New Year for a party in the drag club, one in dark red
with massive pointed cuffs... "I ain't got nothing to wear what's nice."

"Come to mine instead, you can wear a bikini for all I care."

"Yeah, there's a difference between the Michelin man and

Michelin stars, thanks."

"What's he taking you out somewhere nice for anyway? You'll

only embarrass yourself."

"I'll embarrass him you mean, I don't give a monkey's what no

one else thinks."

"So just wear what you feel like and shut up."

"You're missing the point." He sweeps all the shirts off his bed

and flings himself down on his back. "Lindsay's picking tonight. I'm taking
him out clubbing next time, he ain't wearing a nice suit for that."

"You don't have to wear a fucking suit, would you get over

yourself?"

"He said dress up nice."

"Yeah, but he also tracked you down from Christ knows where

and reeled you in like a fish, I think he might like you alright as you are."

Pip stares at him until he looks away, still uncomfortable with

all attempts at being friendly. "Spose you're right."

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"Of course I'm right. Fucksake, grow some bollocks and stop

acting on just cos you think your fancyman likes you better when you ain't
being you."

"So help me pick something then. Let's bond. We can go

shopping if you want, I can give you a makeover."

"Maybe when hell freezes over, hey?" Still, he's almost smiling

now as he comes across the room, treading carefully on the little patches of
carpet between the scattered clothes. "Where you going?"

"Gavroche."

"Bit flash, ain't he?"

"Yeah. We been there before loads of times, it's alright, just

well up its own arse."

"Dress code?"

"Smart casual."

"So what did you wear before?"

"Whatever Lindsay told me to."

"Right."

"I might..." He trails off, scanning the room for anything that's

not crimson or hot pink. "Dunno. Can I get away with velvet jeans?"

"Yeah, if you wanna look like a pimp."

"Pimps don't wear skinnies, daddy." He spots them and leans

over the edge of the bed to grab at the cuff. "They're black. I ain't got much
that's black, might be okay."

"There's tons of black in here."

"Yeah, but... black satin, black tartan, black with sequins on it,

black and feathers..."

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"So what? Since when have you gave a fuck? Stop whingeing,

wear that-" He jabs his finger at a black waistcoat slipping off its hanger,
then looks round for more inspiration. "That white shirt, them faggy
trousers, them boots, that jacket, job done."

"I'll look like Russell Brand."

"Yeah and you don't see him getting turned away from nowhere

for looking like a frilly tit, do you? Your money's as good as his."

***

He feels like a frilly tit the next evening, wandering into the

restaurant with sweaty palms like they've never seen each other before.
"I'm meeting my-" he starts, but cuts himself short just before he can say
'boyfriend' because this woman looks like she'd have about as much
disdain for the word as Lindsay does. "Partner," he finishes weakly. "He's
already in the bar."

His dad picked well, going by Lindsay's face. "I was half-

expecting those stupid red jeans."

"Yeah, I ain't a complete social retard." He goes up on tiptoe to

kiss Lindsay's cheek, sod the five-star audience. "Do I look like Russell
Brand?"

"He's got a bigger brain and a smaller arse."

Good, things really are back to normal.

It should feel so much more awkward than this. He's been

waiting since Starbucks for the clicked pieces to come apart, but they seem
to be holding fast and the awkward silences Pip was dreading just don't
come. Chat flows as easily as it ever did, as if more than four years without
a word never happened at all.

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"What I wanna know," he says, prodding his first plate carefully

with his fork as if he thinks it might all be a joke, "is why would you take
some perfectly good fish and make it into mousse when you could just dip
it in beer batter and throw it in the fryer?"

"You really are just a sad, common little man."

"Shut your face, Enry Iggins. Some little Cockneys don't mind

being common, not if the alternative's a fucking pike mousse or artichoke
with bird livers in it."

"It's good. This one's got mousse, too."

"Christy."

"Chicken mousse."

"Chicken mousse? With mashed up livers? In an artichoke?"

"And truffles."

"Lindsay, that's vile. Mousse is meant to come frozen in little

plastic tubs with 'Iceland' wrote on top and chemicals so it's all different
colours you can't find in nature. It's pudding food, it comes after your
potato waffles and Findus Crispy Pancakes."

"You make me sad." That's such a lie, he's trying to hide a smile

behind his wine glass.

Talk moves on to horror stories from work, funny things Dory's

said recently, films they've seen and want to see; they go through every
single possible smalltalk subject except for the weather as they circle
around the giant dancing point that is the past. Pip's finally had enough
wine to go for it by the time the dessert plates come out.

"Sooo," he says slowly, and maybe Lindsay knows where this is

going because his eyes waver off to look at the tablecloth.

"So?"

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"Are you gonna tell me what you been up to, then?"

"No. It's not very interesting."

"I still wanna know. Why Canada?" Lindsay just drinks more

wine and starts spooning pear tart into his mouth, until Pip reaches over the
table to hold his free hand; then he stops, and finally looks back.
"Lindsay," Pip says quietly, loading the words with as much innuendo as
he can manage. "You wanna break my crème brûlée?" It makes him laugh,
and some of the tension goes away.

"Break your own crème brûlée."

"I like the way you break it better."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah."

Which is how they end up snogging like teenagers on the front

doorstep of Pip's parents' house, trying to ignore the embarrassed cab
driver who's impatiently waiting for Lindsay to get back in the car. "You
shouldn't say things like that to me in public," Lindsay murmurs, pressing
the words as kisses down Pip's neck to bite him low down near his
shoulder, the spot that always makes his knees go weak. "Not if you won't
come home with me."

"We're meant to be taking it slow, remember?"

"And whose stupid idea was that?" He slides both hands down

to Pip's backside, dragging him sharply forward. They're both getting hard.
Lindsay's right, it was a stupid idea. Maybe they should tell the driver to
go on, and Lindsay can sleep over here like Olly used to. His parents can't
complain, they never said anything about Olly even though they knew they
were boyfriends, it's no different...

He slips his fingers through Lindsay's hair, bringing his face

down and kissing him desperately, sliding his tongue wet and warm over

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

Lindsay's bottom lip and gently into his mouth, feeling out the familiar
shape of his front teeth and the way he moves. "Stay over," he says,
moving back just enough to look at him then crashing back when Lindsay
yanks on his hips again and kisses him furiously like he's trying to prove a
point. "Nobody's gonna mind," he manages when Lindsay lets him breathe.
"We're all adults, it's okay, nobody goes in my room anyway, we can be
quiet, will you stay?"

He wonders afterwards what Lindsay was about to say when the

door opened and interrupted. "Your sister's asleep, would you mind telling
that arsehole to turn his engine off right under her window if you're just
gonna stand there all night?"

There's no point trying to spring apart and make it look like

nothing was happening so neither of them bothers, they just stand there
together, Pip's fingers clutched in Lindsay's hair and Lindsay's hands
spread over the back of Pip's trousers again. Phil looks them up and down
and curls his lip but doesn't say anything else, just goes back in and slams
the front door with a sound much louder than anything the car is
producing. Lindsay bends to put his forehead on Pip's shoulder, breathing
slowly and moving his hands up his back to hold him close.

"I should go home. Work tomorrow."

"Fuck work, you're a billionaire."

"I got bored."

"Only you."

Lindsay smiles, Pip can feel the movement, then he lets go

suddenly and he's halfway down the garden path before he speaks again,
throwing it carelessly back over his shoulder like it means nothing. "I'll
phone you."

"Thank you for taking me out."

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"You're welcome."

"I had a nice time."

"Me too."

"I'll phone you. It's my turn next."

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

Standing against the bar at the back of a sweaty crush of

strangers, Lindsay's feeling impossibly out of place and wishing he'd never
agreed to this. Valentine's been acting magnanimous all night, like he
thinks he's doing Lindsay a great favour by picking this club over his usual
haunts, but Lindsay's not sure what the difference is supposed to be.
Maybe it's that there aren't any drag queens, thank Christ, and so far there's
been no McFly or S Club 7. Small mercies. It's all the Smiths, Joy
Division, the Cure, Siouxsie, the Clash, squeezed in around all this
Britpop and indie that makes him feel ancient. It's not so bad them all
thinking of 1982 as retro, but thinking of 1995 as retro is ridiculous and
depressing.

"You have to dance," Valentine yells in his ear, only just

audible above the music. He's drinking some foul electric blue alcopop
through a red and white stripy straw, chewing disgustingly on the plastic
end of it like he always used to. "My date, my rules."

"I said I'd come here, I never said there'd be dancing."

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"You're such a spoilsport." Elvis Costello fades into the Arctic

Monkeys and Valentine whoops and thrusts his bottle at Lindsay to hold,
launching himself back into the crowd of idiots who don't look good on the
dancefloor at all. He's wearing strings of neon glow in the dark beads tied
around his wrists so it's easy to keep an eye on him throwing himself
around as long as he keeps his hands in the air, which he does. Lindsay
steals a sip of the drink because his mouth's feeling dry but the chemical
taste almost makes him gag and he turns round to order a beer. When he
looks back at the dancefloor Valentine's been swallowed up by the crowd.

This is all so stupid. He feels like walking out, only he swore

he'd try. It might even be worse that there are plenty of people his own age
here, it feels like a convention for ageing hipsters. Fat middle-aged women
in black and white striped stockings and neon dreadlocks, men eyeing up
each other's 1970s tour t-shirts to see whose is the rarest. He had no idea
what to wear, he even thought about phoning Jones or someone to ask for
advice but couldn't swallow his pride long enough to scroll through his
numbers. It seemed safe enough to put on jeans and a faded soft old Joe
Strummer t-shirt he never wears any more but couldn't bring himself to
throw out, and Valentine gave him a wobbly wolf-whistle and didn't seem
to want to look away, but he feels ridiculous now. Just another identical
pawn. He wonders how many of these wankers are looking at him the
same way he's looking at them. It doesn't help that he's still holding a bottle
of WKD, he suddenly realises, and sets it down on the bar behind his
shoulder.

There, a flash of pink and yellow plastic. Without allowing

himself the cushy luxury of thinking too much, he swallows down the last
of his beer and starts pushing through idiots to find Valentine.

"Hello," he says in surprise when Lindsay taps his shoulder.

He's pale as ever except on his flushed cheeks, his eyes are bright, his
damp hair is sticking to his forehead in limp sweaty strings. He should be

E G I N N I N G

, N

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repulsive but he's not, he looks beautiful because he looks happy. "Are you
dancing?"

"Not sure I know how."

"Just jump around or nod your head, it ain't Strictly, there's a ton

of old people here who don't know how to dance neither."

"Cheeky bitch." He pinches Valentine's arse hard so he makes a

little noise of outrage and then bursts out into frothy girlish giggles before
slapping Lindsay's hand away and starting to dance again. It comes to him
as naturally as breathing, there seems to be no transition at all between him
standing still and him moving with the music like before, like the beat of
the song is flowing right through him. He's mouthing along with the
words, so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully pretty, and
he is.

There are things Lindsay can't forget, all the clubs and beach

parties and raves in airfields and pills and long-dead friendships and youth
that sometimes feels a million years away. You do things when you're
young, and when you look back on them decades later you're not sure if
you were really having a good time or it was just the drugs and company
that made it so. Valentine said once how jealous he was, you got to live
through a massive revolution like that when I weren't even walking and
talking yet, then Lindsay got in a mood and sent him to his room where he
could be as mouthy as he wanted about what a useless old fossil Lindsay
was. He remembers it all in a flash and feels pointlessly guilty six years
too late, and maybe that's what sets it all off. He doesn't pull his hand away
this time when Valentine tries to take it, just nudges into the tiny gap
behind him and lets him lead, glancing furtively around to see if anybody's
watching but they all seem wrapped up in their own business. Valentine's
pressing back into him on purpose, the bastard, moving his hips in a way
that can't be innocent and lifting his arms in the air, all dark sweat patches
and curls of dank hair under the little pink cap sleeves of his t-shirt. It's not

E G I N N I N G

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exactly dancing, not on Lindsay's part, more like vague awkward shuffling,
but Valentine must be having a good enough time because when he turns
round he looks so happy Lindsay actually feels a tiny twinge of that old
helpless emotion – not love, he's come to terms with how much he loves
him whether it makes sense or not, but that strange old feeling of needing
him happy above everything in the world. It never mattered how
subservient Valentine acted, they both always knew he'd get his way in the
end and Lindsay could never make himself care as much as he felt he
should because every car or holiday or surprise shopping trip made him
look like this, bright and exhilarated, and that was worth everything. It still
is.

"I love you," he murmurs right against Valentine's ear, so he

laughs breathlessly and turns around again to slip his arms up around
Lindsay's neck.

"I won't ever get sick of you telling me that."

"Come home with me."

"Lindsay, you wanker, you're just saying I love you to get me in

your bed." He's not really annoyed, he's still giddy and laughing. Lindsay
slides both hands down Valentine's back to gently squeeze his arse, no
longer caring if people see.

"This is a bonus."

"I ain't shagging you on our second date, I ain't just some easy

tramp you can click your fingers for." But he pulls Lindsay's head down
and kisses him, right there in the middle of a packed club full of people
Lindsay hates on principle, so long and sweetly and slowly that the song's
changed by the time he stops for breath. It's the first time he's been off-beat
all night.

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

Valentine phones him the next evening and doesn't even bother

saying hello, he just launches straight in. "I know I'm probably meant to
play it cool and make you wait and all that shit but fuck the rules, are you
busy tomorrow? Cos there's this thing I'm doing for my mate's birthday,
you don't have to come cos it ain't really your scene but if you want you
can, I'd love it if you did."

"What thing?" Lindsay says, instantly suspicious of how

carefully nonchalant he's being.

"Oh, just this thing. So you'll come, yeah? Get a cab to mine by

like seven or something, we can share."

"Alright?"

"Cool. Okay, wicked, see you tomorrow then, yeah?"

"Suppose so."

"Oh, Lindsay?"

"What?"

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"Dress nice," Valentine says in a voice full of smirks, and hangs

up. Dress nice. What the hell is 'dress nice' supposed to mean?

He realises as soon as he sees Valentine tripping down the

garden path in his heels the next evening, and feels stupid for not realising
sooner. "Princess Bar in Soho, mate," he says, then settles back in the seat
and presses a lipsticky kiss on Lindsay's cheek. "You look good enough to
eat. I just might turn out to be a slag after all."

"You certainly look like one," Lindsay says back, but only

because he feels like it's expected of him. Valentine's wearing a dark red
tartan dress with a corset bodice and massive fluffy petticoats holding the
skirt out, thick black tights, chunky biker boots, a gunmetal-grey steel
necklace dripping with strings of jade beads. He looks a disgusting,
grotesque mess. Lindsay's hard in an instant.

Valentine just laughs, pulling Lindsay's arm around him. "Yeah,

you wanna see my costume change."

"Not sure I do, thanks."

"You do."

He wants to see it much more after Valentine's spent a couple of

hours pouring booze into him. The place seems less of a freakshow when
he's a bit drunk – not drunk enough that he doesn't know what's going on,
just drunk enough that it doesn't seem to matter. The flashing lights and
horrible music start blending and making sense, the men wandering round
in wigs and stilettos start looking normal instead of like clowns, he's
actually almost enjoying himself. Mainly because every time Valentine
returns to the table after running off to talk to someone or fetch another
drink, he sits delicately on Lindsay's knee and slinks his bare arms around
his neck.

"Am I the prettiest girl here?" he whispers in a breathy little

tickle right in Lindsay's ear.

E G I N N I N G

, N

N D

"You're the only pretty girl here. The rest are hags and munters."

He laughs, tucking his face against Lindsay's neck and kissing

him there. "I need to get changed, it's my turn soon. If you can look but not
touch you can come with me, deal?"

"Deal," Lindsay agrees, but he's got his fingers crossed so that

makes it okay when he pushes Valentine's back hard against the closing
dressing room door, making it slam, and puts his hand up his skirt.

"Lindsay!" Valentine says, a ridiculous exaggerated pantomime

of affront. "Grabby hands get broken."

"Shut up." They're not tights, they're thick stockings held up

near the top of his thigh with bands of elastic hidden in the lace trim, and
above that, flimsy frilly black lace shorts. That bit's a surprise, he always
wore his own underwear before to make it funny and less of a real thing, as
if wearing men's pants cancelled out the dress. "You've got girls'
underwear on."

"Well, yeah. Do you like it?" He wriggles in place. Lindsay's

got the predictable urge to slap him there until he's blazing red through all
the layers of gauzy black. Valentine knows it too, twisting back to look
over his shoulder and curling his mouth into a slow, sly smile. He bends
over a little bit more, splaying his hands against the door. "I can take it off
if you don't."

"I hate it," Lindsay says, suddenly ripping at the fabric. It's

stronger than it looks, it won't tear, so he yanks the knickers down around
Valentine's thighs instead, leaving them stretched there around the tops of
his stockings. The skirts and petticoats keep falling down and getting in the
way so he bunches them all together and shoves them roughly at
Valentine's chest, telling him to hold them there, which he does with a
hand he's trying to pretend isn't shaking.

"Lindsay, I have to get changed..."

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"In a minute," Lindsay snarls. He can't make himself stop

looking, the ice-pale skin and black hairs, black lace, black elastic. He
looks more obscene like this than he would completely naked, there's
something so vile and seedy about only exposing the parts you need.

"Lindsay-" Lindsay slaps him hard and Valentine sucks in a

sharp, shocked breath that's more like a plea. He parts his legs slightly,
takes a little step back so he's bent over almost ninety degrees now. "I have
to get changed."

"You wouldn't have asked me back here if you didn't have

enough time." He starts rubbing the spot he slapped, warm soothing circles
with his big palm, and Valentine sighs and shivers.

"Not here. I don't wanna just bang you in a dirty dressing room,

save it for a bed."

"It doesn't always have to be some perfect candlelit romantic

moment, don't be so pathetic."

"Second time, though. I want it nice. Please."

He's still rubbing, both hands on both cheeks now, and

Valentine's breath is coming quick and shallow. "Do you love jazz?"

"I... quite like jazz. Please."

"Talk plainly. Do you want this or not?"

"Lindsay, I've really got to be on stage in like ten minutes."

"Fine." He steps back and watches Valentine drop his skirts and

turn round, flushed and breathless and still smirking. "I don't know what
you're smiling about, there's a word for people like you."

Valentine's got no shame, openly staring at the bulge in

Lindsay's trousers. "Yeah, you just wait, you don't know what cockteasing
is yet. Can you undo these laces?"

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It's not helping. It's really not helping. By the time Valentine's

shuffled out of his dress and into a glimmering white satin playsuit with a
blue striped sailor collar, Lindsay feels about ready to burst into flames
and hates himself for it, but what's the point? Must work on that, he tells
himself. Valentine's never going to change, it'll have to be him instead.

"Do I look nice?"

"You look ridiculous."

"Shut up, it's meant to be funny." He's straightened his hair for

tonight and it looks so much longer without all the usual backcombing and
hairspray, spilling out from under his sailor hat like a sleek black waterfall.
He tips his hat down and winks at Lindsay, then falls out of character and
turns whiny and bratty. "Wish I could kiss you. You'd smudge my face."

"So?" He's back on Valentine in a second, pushing him against

the door again and nudging his knee between his stockinged legs, winding
Valentine's smooth hair around his fingers and knocking his hat off.

"After," Valentine says, sounding desperate and miserable. "I

promise after, I have to go back, can I go?" Then he whimpers, catching
the sound behind his clenched teeth and clamped red-painted lips when
Lindsay tugs his hair to tilt his head and bites him on the neck, sucking
hard at the caught bit of flesh until it's hot in his mouth and Valentine
makes another little sound like a suppressed sob. "Again," he chokes, so
Lindsay slips both arms around his body to hold him tight and does it
again, bite-suck, hard and slow just below the first.

"Am I hurting you?"

"Yeah. Don't stop." His hands are claws, one scrabbling at the

door, the other twisted in Lindsay's hair. "Please, oh my god- oh!" he
splutters when Lindsay bites him again on the other side of his neck,
sucking a violent red bruise into his pale skin. It's the tiny noises he makes,

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every hitched breath, every oh and ah and yes, the way his fingers in
Lindsay's hair go limp and then tighten again when he's bitten...

"Christ, you look diseased," Lindsay murmurs, kissing gently

over the bruises. Valentine just laughs, weak and breathless.

"I have to go. Come on."

There's enough time for Lindsay to get some drinks and find his

table again, still miraculously empty though that's maybe because everyone
seems to be crowded on the dancefloor laughing at the man on stage.
Woman. Whatever it wants to be called. Lindsay drinks his whiskey and
starts on his pint and goes on ignoring the looks he's been getting all night.
Flattering, of course, but ugh. His jeans feel tight and uncomfortable, and
even over the music and voices he can still hear Valentine in his head,
those breathy little begging noises.

"-Ophelia Cumming," someone says, and the name breaks

through his thoughts like a bullet. He looks up, squinting when someone
swings a spotlight around and the beam strikes him right in the face, then
Valentine's stepping onto the stage and laughing, air-kissing the person
who was on before him, going to stand in front of the microphone with his
toes pointed slightly together in that way he's got of trying to look cute. He
does it with his face too, he's got this stupid performance down to an art
form: lowering his chin so he has to open his eyes wider to look at the
crowd, so they can see the long curve of his false lashes and the smears of
glitter eyeshadow, the sharp lines of his cheekbones.

"Alright?" he says, plastering on that infuriating cheeky grin.

Lindsay's lost, gazing at him like some disgusting lovelorn puppy, and
barely even notices what he's saying. Something about Tess, something
about anniversaries, some soppy crap about the club owner until he, she,
comes on stage for a hug and an air-kiss that won't budge anyone's make-
up.

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"Who's been at you?" he hears Tess say, pulling Valentine

towards one of the lights and peering at his neck. Valentine actually
blushes. It'd be adorable if it wasn't so ridiculous. If he wasn't wearing a
satin sailor suit and stockings that didn't quite cover the top of his hairy
legs.

"Yeah, my new boyfriend's got a big bad wolf complex..."

"New boyfriend?" Tess repeats, and the place erupts in whoops

and catcalls. It's worse than a room full of actual women, at least they
know when to give over. He tries to hide under the table but it's too late,
there's no point. He drains his pint instead and stares at the debris of foam,
until Valentine hops down off the stage and the crowd parts like a Red Sea
of feathers and spangles to let him through.

"Outed," he says, biting on his painted thumbnail and masking

anxiety with cheeky bravado. Lindsay tries to give him a black look until
Valentine sits on his knee again and kisses him and then he can hardly kiss
back because he can't stop smiling.

E G I N N I N G

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They're driving. They've been driving for ages. They went to

Bournemouth and had dinner in a pub and Pip ate a toffee apple walking
down alongside the beach, but it felt too much like all the times they
wandered round Llandudno when they used to live there all those years
ago and then everything went strange and awkward. They got back in the
car and just drove east instead, as close as they could keep to the coast;
they passed Dover not long ago, and that was weird as well, seeing all
those people on their way to France.

There's no point avoiding it. They're supposed to be talking, that

was the whole reasoning behind this stupid dating idea Pip's been
regretting more or less since the second he suggested it. "Do you miss it?"
he says abruptly, forcing out the question. "Living in France?"

Lindsay doesn't answer for a moment, keeping his eyes fixed on

the road and guiding the car around a bend. "I did. Less the place, more
you."

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"Oh." Pleasure unfurls somewhere in Pip's stomach and creeps

out through his whole body. He wonders if he's ever going to get used to
hearing things like this again.

"I've not been back since I left, it was too... don't know. All your

shit's still there, if you want it."

"Yeah, maybe." Reclaiming some old t-shirts and paintings vs.

never having to go to that paradise prison ever again. It's tough. He
changes the subject instead. "Where we going?"

"Not a clue. You just said let's drive."

"Can I have a go?"

"If you want."

"Pull up somewhere."

There's a turn-off a few minutes ahead and a sign Pip doesn't see

properly before it's too late to read it. Some kind of lookout point up a cliff
somewhere, a winding road ending in a little carpark surrounded by trees,
with some wobbly-looking picnic benches clustered on the grass. Lindsay
pulls up facing the wide darkening sky and sea and turns off the engine.

Pip's laughing without meaning to, trying to hide behind his

fingers. "You could've just stopped at the side of the road and swapped
seats."

"Could."

"What you brought me up here for, then?"

"Depends."

"I ain't having sex with you, you wouldn't respect me after."

"Probably not."

"I might let you kiss me, though."

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Lindsay's been stroking his fingers through Pip's hair since he

stopped the car, luring Pip in to settle his cheek against his palm, but now
he tugs harshly and drags him closer, hard enough to make him do a really
pathetic hungry little noise, and kisses him. It's hard and relentless, almost
like he's angry but his fingers are gentle again in Pip's hair, stroking and
coming round to cup his jaw and hold him close there. They didn't even
take off their seatbelts; Lindsay's is loose but he dragged Pip across so
sharply that his seatbelt locked and he cant move, aggravated and
struggling to find the button to pop it free without having to stop kissing.
He manages it after some fumbling, doing Lindsay's for him too, trying to
untangle the strap and pounce on him again at the same time. He's half in
the space between the seats, the gearstick is jabbing him in the side of the
leg, this is the crappest car ever for parked-up mischief.

"Buy me a new Ferrari," he murmurs, kissing up Lindsay's

cheek to his ear and just getting a mouthful of hair. Lindsay laughs, trying
to brush it out of the way, his sound of amusement morphing into a
cracked little gasp when Pip finds his earlobe and bites down gently.

"I bought you one, it's not my fault you lost it."

"I want another one."

"What for?"

"No roof." He sits back a bit, flushed and breathing unsteadily,

trying to figure out how to make this work. They got each other off in cars
loads of times before but they were always convertibles with endless space
to move up and down without crashing your head off a chunk of metal.
There was one time Lindsay's precious old XK8 was involved, but since
Pip was shoved face-first up against the boot leaving sweaty fingerprints
and harsh condensing breaths smeared over the back window he's not sure
it counts. He finds the lever under the front of Lindsay's seat and pulls it up
so the seat slides back as far as it'll go, then starts turning the round handle
at the side to recline it. That'll have to do.

E G I N N I N G

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"This is-"

"-a brilliant idea," Pip interrupts. He can't stop laughing, this is

so stupid and uncomfortable and teenage. There's a bit more room now the
seat is tilted back so far, more than enough space overhead for him to
swing his leg over both of Lindsay's and settle there, shuffling closer at the
hips and pressing into him so he can almost feel the rush of blood before
Lindsay even starts getting properly hard. Lindsay's hands are in his hair
again, one winding the long loose strands around his finger, the other
resting at the nape of his neck. He always used to do that and Pip never
quite knew whether it was meant to be control or protection or maybe a bit
of both, but just the feel of it now, the heavy weight of Lindsay's hand and
the heat of his skin, makes him feel dizzy. He can taste sweat on his upper
lip already, the car's getting so stuffy and thick with their breathing. He
finds the buttons to roll down the electric windows; that makes it cooler,
but now they can hear the quiet crash of the waves down below. It's like
before, that place they went the day he left the other two in Manchester
and moved into Lindsay's house. Their first kiss, first groping hands, first
blowjob. Later on that day back in Lindsay's house, their First Time. He
always thought of it with capital letters, something momentous like D-Day
or New Year's Eve.

"Stop thinking," Lindsay says. His voice is rough and quiet. He

uses the hand on Pip's neck to urge him to look up, right at him, although
their faces are so close Pip can't focus and it's all a twilight blur of shapes.
"I know what you're thinking, why does it matter?"

"It doesn't. It ain't a bad thing, just memories."

"Kiss me." Like he needs telling. He settles down on Lindsay's

body, reclined halfway between sitting and lying, and kisses him. It's
slower this time, more relaxed as if they've both stopped panicking the
other is going to run away. He feels Lindsay's fingers playing with the
bottom hem of his t-shirt, gently tugging at the fabric, smoothing it down

E G I N N I N G

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against the curve of his back, slipping just underneath to touch his skin. It
goes on for ages and it's wonderful, Moonage Daydream right through to
Suffragette City just kissing, barely even any tongue, just sharing breath.
It's dark out by now and there aren't any lights in the carpark; the only
illumination is from the dashboard and Lindsay's face is just black
shadows and tinges of LED green and electronic orange.

"I love you," Pip says, breathless, heart thumping, touching

Lindsay's face with the back of his fingers. Lindsay reaches to hold his
hand and bring it closer to his mouth so he can kiss it.

"You don't have to say it all the time."

"I want to. You need to know."

"I know."

"I have to tell you."

"You don't. I know."

"But..." He wrenches his hand free and thumps it against the car

door, frustrated and wordless. "You don't know."

"You're not making any sense."

"That's it, I can't make words work, how can you know? I love

Hawksley Workman and fast cars and candy floss and Miyazaki too, it
ain't the same kind of love but I can't like... make you know cos I don't
know what words."

"Philip-"

"Don't call me that."

"Sweetheart."

He almost bursts into tears then. The urge and the memories are

so sudden and strong. "Don't call me that, either."

E G I N N I N G

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Lindsay doesn't speak. This whole time he's had his hand there

resting on the back of Pip's neck underneath his hair, warm and
comfortable. He moves it now, down Pip's t-shirt to rub his back. He does
it so naturally and comfortably like he always used to, like nothing's
changed even though it has. "What's wrong with you?" he says quietly, but
it's not like an accusation or like he's annoyed. That's sort of worse than if
he was, it's making Pip's words stick in his throat and tumble out sounding
nothing like they're meant to.

"Stop being nice to me."

"Tell me what you want."

"I don't know what I want!"

"So now we're stuck, because I don't know how to make you

feel better if you can't tell me what's wrong."

There's so much he could say but everything sounds trite. You

can't pack a world of love and terror and regret and happiness into three
stupid crappy little words. He gives up instead, furiously wiping his eyes
dry with his palms and shoving Lindsay back against his seat to kiss him
again. It's different now, it's hard and forceful as if clacking teeth is the
snapping switch that's going to suck all the fog out of his brain. The album
finishes and jumps onto the next playlist, something hideously cheerful by
McFly that even Pip's not in the mood for just now. He slams the button to
turn off the stereo and mashes his mouth back on Lindsay's, banging noses
and fighting tongues. It's deadly quiet now without the music on, just the
sound of the waves below and their own breathing, half-murmured
questions and answers before Lindsay lifts Pip's t-shirt and drags it off
over his head and Pip starts unbuttoning Lindsay's shirt. He feels a bit
better when it's skin on skin instead of cotton on linen, no little plastic
buttons between them, just warm bare skin and the shifting muscles
beneath. It's calming, the friction of their sweat every time they move,

E G I N N I N G

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Lindsay's fingers trailing softly over his naked back and making him twist
and squirm.

"I don't wanna live where you don't no more," he says, losing

the words into Lindsay's neck as the fingers tracing the bumps of his spine
and the dimples above his arse make him writhe like a worm. "This is
stupid, I don't wanna just go places with you, I wanna be with you all the
time, I don't care, I don't want a normal boyfriend like everyone else, if
you wanna move back to France I don't even care, I just wanna be with
you."

"Don't be pathetic, it only suited you when you were nineteen."

He's so hard behind the fly of his jeans, though. Pip unfastens the button
and slides the zip down and Lindsay makes an odd noise in his throat, a
plea or an order but they're both unnecessary anyway because Pip's already
touching him, little sliding circles with his palm. "Don't stop."

"As if I'm gonna stop." He has to after a minute, only so he can

move to the passenger seat and slide it back like Lindsay's to give them
more room. "Take your jeans off."

"Are you telling me what to do?"

"You said don't be pathetic. Take your jeans off now. Or just

pull them down." He unzips his boots and kicks them off so he can peel his
skinnies down his legs and off, still with his pants inside. "Voila."

It's still too dark to see much but he can hear Lindsay muttering

something and feel the motion of the car as he lifts himself up and shoves
his trousers down round his ankles. Pip reaches out for him, landing his
hand somewhere on Lindsay's thigh and inching it up to his cock, already
hard and pointing up at the car roof like an arrow. He makes a noise when
Pip starts stroking him with his fingers curled loosely around, a desperate
sort of laughing gasp through gritted teeth. Pip smiles too, he can't help it,
he's never going to tire of making Lindsay do those noises, but it's not

E G I N N I N G

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enough; he needs to see, and he fumbles up near the rear view mirror for
the little light switch.

Bad idea, it turns out. Depending on your feelings about such

things. Two minutes in to a slow, teasing blowjob, all tiny feather kisses
and little kittenish licks like Lindsay only ever got on his birthday before
because he was too embarrassed to ask for anything that wasn't quick and
rough and Pip wasn't going to let him get away with being such a twat,
there's the swoop of headlights somewhere behind them. Lindsay swears
and nearly breaks the light in his haste to turn it off, then he sits there still
as death for a moment with his fingers clutched tight in Pip's hair as if he
thinks not moving is going to make them invisible.

"Can you stop squashing the do?"

"Shut up. Someone's there."

"I ain't blind. What do you expect, bringing me up some strange

road to bang me in a carpark? It's probably Kent's number one dogging
site."

"Fuck."

"Yeah, that's kind of the idea, I reckon."

"Shut up." He relaxes his hand a bit, and Pip sits up to peer

through the darkness at the other car before its headlights go off.

"Ugh, fucking hell, who goes dogging in a Mondeo?"

"I'm actually going to kill you. Shush." Pip moves out the way

so the window doesn't skim his nose off when Lindsay rolls it up. "Get
dressed."

"What for? They're miles away, let me finish."

He's saying it to tease and wind Lindsay up... mostly. That's

what he intended, but as soon as the words are out there he feels a
disgusting little thrill ripple through him. He's been watched before. The

E G I N N I N G

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first time he ever got a blowjob was off some man who offered to share a
cab with him one night and then started kissing him in the back seat. He
was only fifteen, the man must have been twice his age, he must have
known Pip was too young and that made him a sick freak who really
should have been reported, but the sensible part of his brain got stamped
out like a little fire by the more insistent part and he just let it carry on; he
leaned against the side of the car with his arms round the man's neck, he
didn't pull away when the man held his wrist in a vice grip while he
opened his own trousers then put Pip's hand there, he didn't complain when
the man got come all up his arm, he didn't say no when the man went down
on his knees in front of the seat and pulled Pip's jeans down and sucked
him off. He knew it was vile and wrong but that didn't seem to matter, it
was good too, and where else was he going to get it anyway? Kids at
school were copping off all the time, Olly already had two babies, but
everybody he knew was straight except some boys he'd fooled round with
at Scout camp. Why not? So he'd not just gone with it because he was too
scared of getting murdered to say no, he'd played along like a proper
professional little whore, making porn noises and exaggerated faces as
they drove round the dark streets. When he came it was stopped at a red
light with traffic whooshing past in front, holding the accomplice driver's
eyes in the rearview mirror and watching him bite his lip until it was
bloodless and white. After, when he really had time to think about what
just happened, he wondered whether he'd ruined their fun by not being
frightened or fighting but that just made him hard again and he felt sick
and guilty so he went online and wanked to porn instead. As well as that,
there were all those times in club toilets before he knew Lindsay, getting
off with men whose names he didn't know and looking up from kneeling
on the scummy floor to see the top half of somebody's head peeking over
the top of the cubicle from the one next door, balancing on the toilet seat
because nobody wants to put their eye near a glory hole. And all those

E G I N N I N G

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times with Olly, kissing at parties for whooping leering girls and
pretending it was a really funny naughty joke...

"You love this, don't you?"

Lindsay's trying to drag his jeans back up and start the car at the

same time but Pip snatches his hand away from the ignition and steals the
keys. "What's the problem? They're total strangers, you'll never have to see
them again, no point being embarrassed or nothing."

"I'm... you're completely missing the point. Give me the keys.

Now."

"Or maybe I'll just do this instead," he murmurs, trying to make

a show of it. Lindsay always pretended to hate it when he acted up like this
before but it never genuinely made him want to stop; it's the same now, his
cock is wet and rock hard and he draws in a harsh hissing breath when Pip
leans over and starts kissing him again. It's one of those stupid things he
always did because porn told him it was a good idea: little delighted noises
like nothing in the world was as wonderful as having a gobful of another
man's dick, not just using his hands and mouth but rubbing his cheek
against it too like a cat. Lindsay laughs but he doesn't sound amused, just
baffled and terrified.

"I hate when you do that."

"So how come you're so wet?"

"Stop talking."

It's too dark to see him properly, Pip wants to see his face.

"Turn the light back on," he says, pressing a trail of tiny kisses right down
his shaft and licking up again in a wide wet line.

Lindsay's got his hand scrunched in Pip's hair again like he can't

decide whether to shove him down and choke him or push him away.
"What if it's some poor innocent family wanting a picnic?"

E G I N N I N G

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"At half eleven at night in the middle of nowhere? Come on."

He breathes out very slowly. "You make me crazy," he mutters,

and snaps the little light back on.

Nothing happens. Lindsay's got his elbow in the rim of the door,

pressed against the closed window so he can hide his face from the other
car. Everything's quiet, they can barely even hear the sea now the windows
are shut. It's just their breathing and the gentle sucking noise of Pip
working his tongue. He's starting to think the other car might be terrified
innocents after all – or a police car, he suddenly thinks, and laughs with a
throatful of cock so he gags and has to pull away. After everything
Lindsay's done, if the thing he got done for was fucking in a public place
and offending people who shamelessly own a Ford Mondeo...

"Shit," Lindsay says. He sounds calm, but the way he's still

trying to cover his face gives him away. "They're driving closer."

"Told you. Get into it a bit, they'll be pissed off if they don't get

a good show."

"I hate you."

"You love me."

"I hate you so fucking much."

"Shut up." He shuts up willingly enough when Pip starts

sucking him properly, none of the casual gentle teasing from before but
long, wet strokes. Pip hears the sound of a car door opening, Lindsay
cursing under his breath. He's too low down to see out the window but he
can tell the light is on in the other car now. "What's happening?"

"You shit, don't stop, just let's get it over with and get out of

here."

"I wanna know what's happening, who's there?"

E G I N N I N G

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Lindsay's hand tightens in his hair, forcing his mouth down.

"There's a man and a woman. She's in the driver seat... fucking staring,
she's horrible, she's old, it's like Dot Cotton. The man's round your side...
oh Jesus, he's wanking. If he gets anything on my car I swear to god I'm
running him over and you with him, you little bastard, I'll never forgive
you for this."

He has to look up the second Lindsay relaxes his grip a bit, he's

too curious not to. He's not sure what he's expecting but what he actually
sees is just strange and hilarious, a man in a shirt and tie with skinny bare
legs having a wank eight inches away from him behind a bit of glass. He
gets a serious gigglefit, he can't help it.

"She ain't that old," he manages to say, but then the woman

starts lifting up her skirt and he screeches and dives back on Lindsay with
his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut so he doesn't have to see whatever it is
she's doing. "What if they wanna join in?" he says after a minute, pulling
off with an obscene smacking noise. "You can have the bird, I'll have Mr
Spindlylegs over here."

Lindsay pulls his hair hard. "No."

"Come on, I was just kidding."

"Horrible things keep happening to me because of you."

"You wanna fuck me?"

"No," Lindsay says again, but he hesitates first and that means

yes.

"Bet you don't think it's funny no more I carry johnnies and lube

round in my wallet, do you?"

"Shut your mouth. Give me it."

He can't figure out how it's going to work, where they're going

to position themselves. There's something a bit sexy about getting fucked

E G I N N I N G

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over the bonnet but Lindsay's always such a baby about things maybe
damaging his paintwork, and anyway that old woman might think it's okay
to climb on then and it really really isn't. He finds his wallet in the door
pocket and hands it over, trying to remember if he's ever seen any porn
about fucking in cars. Plenty on, none that he can remember in.

"Can your seat move back any more?"

Pip reaches down to pull on the lever again, shooting the chair

back another few inches. "That's your lot."

"Have to do." Lindsay's far too tall to be clambering round

inside a locked car trying to stick bits of his body up somebody else. Pip's
laughing helplessly by the time he actually manages it, pressing Pip back
into his seat, but he stops when he feels Lindsay's cock nudging up against
his arse, wet and cool from the lube. "Can't reach to sort you out, you'll
have to put up with it," he snaps, as if Pip should be apologising for getting
him laid or something, like fucking is a bad thing or some massive chore
he's not going to actually enjoy. He rams in hard and suddenly like it's a
punishment or something, and Pip makes an accidental noise of protest
until Lindsay bites down hard on his lower lip and shuts him up.

"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

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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."

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"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.

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"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

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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."

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"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.

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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

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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."

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"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."

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"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-the-

box 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."

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"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."

"No." It's even less comfortable than before, hanging halfway

off the sofa and already getting a sore back from having to bend it in ways
it doesn't want to go. It's sort of worth it even so, if a bit predictable.
Valentine's playing that old game again, stroking and kissing and loving
Lindsay's cock like a precious toy or pet. He hated it before, the
shamelessness of it all was excruciatingly embarrassing, but there's no
point caring any more because nothing's ever going to change. He just
watches, breathless and still so sleepy it feels like a dream, as Valentine
seals his lips around and starts sucking, humming gentle words of pleasure
and praise.

"You're disgusting," Lindsay says. He touches Valentine's hair,

and Valentine presses against his hand like a kitten eager for fuss.

"If you want."

"I didn't say you could stop. No more talking."

"Sorry." He talks again after a minute anyway; he can't keep his

mouth shut for long, even when there's supposed to be something corking
it like a bottle. "I meant it just now," he says softly, glancing up at Lindsay

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for a moment before turning his attention back to where his hand is,
nuzzling his face gently against Lindsay's cock and leaving a shiny
smeared little patch of wet on his cheek. "Talk nerdy to me. Read me your
lecture. I'll get you off and learn something, everybody wins."

"It's not written yet. I've been... distracted."

"What by?"

"Your tongue right now." That makes Valentine smile. He starts

licking again in long, wet stripes, and Lindsay curls his fingers around a
cushion until they hurt, his body prickling all over with a flare of
goosebumps.

"Oh right, and whose tongue you been distracted by when I was

out, then?"

"Nobody's. Just thinking."

Mouth suddenly too full for words, Valentine just hums a

question. "Mmm?"

"I want something," Lindsay gasps, bringing the clutched

cushion up onto his chest and hugging it to himself, needing something to
hold on to while Valentine works his lips, tongue, throat.

"Anything you want, I said I'll do anything," he says when he

pulls away for breath, then swallows deep again. Lindsay makes a choking
sound into his cushion, straining without meaning to against Valentine's
tight hold on his hips.

"Not from you, I want... I want... I can't stop thinking about it,"

he bursts out. His hair's falling into his eyes, and he manages to uncramp
one hand from the cushion to push it impatiently out of the way.
Valentine's looking up at him again and that question is in his eyes now,
not his voice. His eyes are streaming with trying not to gag, but he's doing
it. "There's... things in this collection I've been working on, rooms full of

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things and I want them, and that's easy enough because his wife doesn't
know what's there, I could keep what I want and nobody's ever going to
know, but... in the library, there's... Christ, don't stop, what are you doing?"

"You wanna steal a book." It's not a question, just a flat, vaguely

disdainful statement. "All the fucking beautiful things in the world and you
wanna steal a book."

"Don't stop. You did say talk nerdy to you."

"Yeah, for a game, but you're an actual nerd."

"Sweetheart," he tries; even though terms of endearment always

feel clumsy and sour in his mouth, Valentine seems to like to hear them
and maybe this'll work. "Darling. Love... oh I swear to god, Philip, don't
you dare stop now or-"

"Yeah, I fucking knew it, you're rubbish at being nice to me,"

Valentine says, pushing his bottom lip out and looking mournful, though
his eyes are glinting wickedly.

Trump card time. "There's some William Blake drawings I

could forget to mention if you behave yourself."

In just seconds he's smothering himself in the cushion, shouting

desperate incoherences out into the feathers and dimly aware of Valentine
purring encouragement as the last splash hits his cheek. It's still there when
Valentine steals the cushion again and climbs into Lindsay's lap to kiss
him, damp heat smearing into his beard. "If you just said that so I'd make
you come I'm gonna shit on you in your sleep."

"There's an unfinished one, looks like it might be an early

version of his Midsummer Night's Dream thing but the composition's not
the same. Some Divine Comedy watercolours. A whole sketchbook. A
pencil drawing of some old woman called Kate."

"You're kidding, you wanker." Valentine's gone very pale.

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"No."

"Is there a date on it? The... Kate, Catherine, that might be his

wife, is there a date?"

"I can't remember. Eighteen-twenty-something, six, I think, or

seven."

"Where is it, is it here, can I see?"

"It's still in Joan's house, don't piss yourself. It's only a drawing,

not a very good one either."

"Yeah, well shut up about stuff you don't even know about cos

what if that's the last drawing he ever did in his whole life when he was
dying in bed and he knew it and he says to his wife like 'Kate just stay
right there and let me draw you one last time cos you was always an angel
to me' then fucking died and nobody ever knew where the picture went and
people thought that cunt Tatham might've burnt it like he burnt other stuff
he didn't like cos it was too rude or blasphemy or some shit, yeah?"

Lindsay's brain never runs fast enough to keep up with

Valentine when he's excited over something, and he's never ever going to
get used to him liking anything slightly more impressive than old Nintendo
platform games. He's starting to get a headache. "Calm down. How many
times do you think he drew his wife?"

"Yeah, but maybe not in the year he died, you mong, he was too

busy jizzing in his paintbox over Dante, doing all them illustrations." He
shuts up for an impatient few seconds while Lindsay wipes a smudge of
semen off the corner of his mouth with his thumb, then grabs Lindsay's
wrist and sucks the thumb into his mouth. "Can I have it?" His mouth is
hot, tongue sliding across the nail and teeth pinching very gently at the
skin. "Please," he says, in his best wheedling voice, slurring around the
thumb in his mouth. "I want it. Please can I have it."

"Now who's being nerdy?"

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"You're a nerd. I'm just an enthusiast. I want it. I don't want

nobody else looking at it, I want it, you have to let me keep it."

"Do I."

"Yeah, cos I want it." Amazing how quickly all his new I'll-do-

it-myself principles go zooming out the window when there's something he
can't quite reach. He's acting like he did six or seven years ago, all his
same old sly tricks to get his way, twining his arms around Lindsay's neck
and making his eyes go big and innocent, slipping into a way of talking
that makes him sound very young. It's revolting really how shamelessly
manipulative he can be – though whose fault is that? Lindsay's for always
indulging him, of course. He still can't say no, though maybe that's partly
to do with how Valentine's still sucking gently on his thumb, all flushed
cheeks and pink lips and wide makeup-smudged eyes. "I did say please,"
he murmurs. "I'll be good forever. Can I have it?"

"Give me back my thumb." He wipes it dry on his shirt. He's too

tired for this dreadful sick familiar feeling of disturbingly wrong lust to
make as much of an impact as it always used to, which has got to be a
good thing. "Let's see how well you can behave between now and your
birthday, shall we?"

"That's like five months away!" He looks horrified and injured

by the idea, and this time it doesn't seem like it's for play. "More than five
months. I need it now."

"You need a slap, that's what you need. Don't be such a brat. I

could make a whole career out of these things and I'm giving them to you,
don't you understand? I don't think you realise how important all this crazy
old man's hoarded junk is."

Valentine looks sulky and hateful for a moment longer, but then

his face smooths out and morphs into a barely-contained grin. "I know how
important your old man junk is," he says, and Lindsay slaps him hard on

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the thigh and pushes him away so he can stand up and rush to the
bathroom before Valentine sees him laughing.

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It's so difficult matching up what he knows of the Valentines

now with what he thought he knew before. Like Wayne and Waynetta off
Harry Enfield, Valentine – Pip – used to insist stubbornly. Thuggish
unfeeling chavs who never really wanted him, that's how he put them
across. Now, in their house, that's hard to believe. There are photos
everywhere, school portraits and holiday snaps and baby pictures and all
sorts. Lindsay's looking at them all in turn when Valentine comes back into
the room from putting Dory to bed.

"You know what I look like."

"Not when you're fourteen."

"Pervert."

That doesn't deserve a response, so it doesn't get one. Lindsay

hears Valentine throw himself down onto the sofa with all his customary
gracelessness, but the television doesn't flick into life like he expected. He
can feel Valentine watching him. It's weirdly off-putting but he keeps on
just to prove some vague point, studying each of the photos on the

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mantelpiece, the big portrait above the fireplace of Valentine and Dory
laughing on swings in a snowy park, moving on to some framed snapshots
and a school newspaper clipping standing on one of the shelves in the
bookcase.

"That's when I was Caliban in The Tempest," Valentine says

from behind him. Lindsay bites down hard on his bottom lip so he won't
laugh at the idea of Valentine doing Shakespeare, but something gives it
away because Valentine makes an indignant noise and storms over to
where he's standing. "Shut your face, don't take the piss cos I done acting
for years and I got A in my theatre A level so fuck off, I done loads of
Shakespeare."

"Did you wear tights?"

"Shut up! I done him and Claudius in Hamlet and Sebastian and

Don Adriano-" That's when Lindsay's composure cracks and he laughs out
loud. It's even worse because he's been trying not to and that just makes it
louder and accidentally crueller.

"What about Titania?"

"Puck, actually. Please don't have a coronary, what's so funny?"

"You hate Shakespeare."

"Yeah, so? The isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that

give delight and hurt not. You know this? I know this whole shitty play
word perfect even other people's lines cos our teacher was Hitler.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears,
and sometime voices that if I then had waked after long sleep will make
me sleep again, and then in dreaming the clouds methought would open
and show riches ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to
dream again. When that shit gets scarred on your brain it's there for life, I
don't have to like it to be any good at it."

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It's a bit hilarious hearing those words in that voice. For the

millionth time since the day they met, Lindsay feels awful for being
surprised that Valentine's not a total idiot – although that doesn't make it
any less funny, and nor does his fury at being laughed at.

"Alright, cuntface, sit down and watch." Lindsay half expects

Valentine to start acting out a one-man adaptation of Hamlet for him, but
he finally stops sniggering when Valentine puts a DVD in the player and
comes over to slap him lightly round the head. "I said shut up and watch."

"I think you said sit down and watch, you didn't tell me I wasn't

allowed to jeer."

"I got all my school plays I ever did right from year one

nativity. My mum got them all transferred to discs when she thought I was
dead, I dunno if she wanted to make up a drinking game or what."

"You shouldn't talk about your mother like that. She sounds

alright."

"She sounds alright now she's sobered up, yeah. You wanna see

how shaky some of this camerawork is, though. OH my god, look, I forgot
this was on this disc, it's Hair..." He skips through another few chapters
then leaves the film playing, some crap song by a load of teenage theatre
brats with Valentine as their king. "I wanted Claude but this other wanker
sung better than me, I'm always second best. Still, I got to snog him on
stage, he weren't so smug when he found that out."

"I really couldn't possibly care any less about your school

plays."

"What if I tell you we all get our kit off and stand there willies

and tits hanging out?"

"I'd call you a fucking liar." But he's watching anyway, he can't

not watch; Valentine on the television screen looks almost exactly the
same as that day Lindsay grabbed him round the waist and rammed the

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barrel of a gun in his ear. His hair and clothes are even more stupid, which
Lindsay didn't know was possible, but there he is, young and twig-thin and
shockingly beautiful. "How old were you?"

Valentine's kneeling on the sofa cushion beside him, playing his

fingers through Lindsay's hair and singing along with his younger self right
into Lindsay's ear. It's too quiet to be singing, really, it's more a breathy
moaning murmur: "Once upon a looking-for-Donna-time there was a
sixteen year old virgin, oh Donna, oh oh Donna, oh oh oh..."

"Sixteen?"

Valentine laughs then, kissing him on the whiskery cheek.

"Eighteen. And I weren't a virgin." He finds the remote again and skips the
disc on until he finds something else. Same theatre but no singing now, no
nudity or teenage boys kissing. "Oh yeah, look, I'm Mercutio! Oh Romeo.
I well fancied him, I got off with him at a party one time cos he got
unlucky in truth or dare, highlight of my life. This bit's good, the very pin
of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft. Always made me
crack up, that line, I kept getting in trouble for laughing. Mercutio's alright,
I like him cos he just takes the piss out of everyone, he's like them drunken
bellends you see falling out of clubs at five in the morning and pissing up
shop windows."

"A gentleman that loves to hear himself talk and will speak

more in a minute than he will stand to in a month, that's about right. Can't
you shut up for more than two seconds at a time?"

He does, smiling slightly like he's pleased and amused that

Lindsay's actually interested. It's so strange watching him do Shakespeare,
knowing that his favourite things in the world include Pingu and fart jokes.
He's doing it well, too. That shouldn't be a surprise – he was always good
at mimicking people, and his French accent was as perfect as somebody
who'd been born there long before he could hold a stilted clumsy

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conversation, so it makes sense that he'd be alright on stage. It's still
unreal.

"You're like one of those brats from Fame."

"Nah, I weren't ever good enough to do something with it. Fun,

though. I just like showing off."

"I never noticed."

"Do you think I'm pretty there?" Valentine says suddenly,

pressing himself against Lindsay's side again and speaking softly in his ear.

"If you like jailbait, maybe."

"Sixteen's legal. I really was a sixteen-year-old virgin there, that

was Christmas in Year Twelve. 2004."

Christmas 2004, Lindsay remembers against his will, was when

his addiction peaked the first time and his mother dragged him back to his
senses. He twists his face up at the memory. "When you were a sixteen-
year-old virgin I was a thirty-one-year-old smackhead."

"Ah, well. We both got cured soon enough."

"I still feel like a dirty old man."

"Yeah, but you're my dirty old man." He looks like he's gearing

up for something wicked, he's got that look in his eye and his hand starts
wandering down south, but before it gets where it's going the phone rings
and Valentine swears and dives across Lindsay's lap to grab the handset off
the table beside him before the shrill noise wakes Dory. "Hello? Alright,
Mum? Was the flight okay? Cool, it's pissing down rain here. I mean it was
earlier, it's alright now. Yeah, Lindsay's here." He squirms round a bit to
look up at Lindsay, seemingly only just realising how he's positioned
because he breaks out in a brilliant smirking smile and wriggles in place
like he's setting a dare: I just dare you to do something about it when my
mum's listening. Meaningless smalltalk on the phone, prancing swordfights

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on the television screen, and all Lindsay can suddenly hear is the weight of
Valentine's breathing.

He cups his hand around the curve of Valentine's arse,

following its contours until he's got his fingers slipped down between his
legs, pressing against the seam on his jeans. Valentine's good at this, his
voice doesn't change at all as he's rattling on about something hilarious the
dog did yesterday. Alright, onto step two. He starts rubbing slowly, putting
careful pressure on and watching Valentine for a reaction. Still nothing
much, just a slight breathy laugh. It's not like he can see much anyway,
Valentine's resting his head on his hand on the sofa arm and it's hiding his
face.

"...but if they go on strike you'll have to walk back. You'll have

to swim back, you'll have to see Dad in his Speedos and you'll die. Well
yeah, I know, but at least you can go back in the hotel, right? If you're
swimming up the Atlantic with his arse in your face..."

He wriggles again saying 'arse' and Lindsay gives him a vicious

pinch on the right cheek. That's the first thing to get a result, a quiet intake
of breath and a jerking twitch of the hips. "Don't move," Lindsay murmurs,
quiet enough not to be overheard on the phone. "If you move again I'll
make you so sorry."

Valentine laughs again. Lindsay can't tell if it's because of what

he said or something Valentine's mum said, but either way his breathing is
going crazy. Lindsay pinches him again to get him up on his hands and
knees, quickly pulling the button and zip free and pushing him to make
him lie back down. His jeans are too tight to pull down easily. Nothing
new there, but it never stops being frustrating. He yanks hard, peeling the
denim inside-out and taking Valentine's neon orange pants with it, just
enough to expose his pale backside. There are two red marks from the
pinches, like fading speech marks.

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"...it's his own fault if he gets sunburnt, he knows he burns easy,

if he thinks it's too faggy wearing suncream he fucking deserves it, don't
he? Don't fuss over him, he's old enough to look after himself, if he wants
to turn himself into a bacon Frazzle on day one that ain't your problem..."

He's behaving himself, he's not moving at all, even though

Lindsay can feel his stomach muscles thrumming with the effort. He starts
the stroking again, much gentler than before, just the ghost of a touch on
the soft skin of his balls, repeating it ceaselessly until Valentine whines
against his hand, turning it into a cough to disguise it, and rams his
hardening cock hard against Lindsay's thigh. "Didn't I tell you not to
move?" Lindsay says, barely audible. The contrast in sounds makes the
slap seem even louder, a harsh crack so loud it almost seems to echo.
Valentine drops the handset and scrambles to pick it back up, moving
straight back to where he was told to stay when he's retrieved it.

"Sorry. Nothing, Lindsay just dropped something, he made me

jump. You sadsack, you're clearing that up," he says, raising his voice like
he's calling across the room. He twists back to look at Lindsay again,
laughing with his eyes and biting down hard on his red bottom lip. "Okay,
listen, I should go and help him. Send us a postcard, alright? Yeah. Okay,
bye." Then: "Lindsay, you wanker, I never thought you'd actually do it!"

"If you're going to keep on moving after I told you not to then

you've got to put up with the consequences." It's too difficult to play this
game when Valentine's so bright-eyed and exhilarated, laughing helplessly
and hard as a rock. Lindsay can't keep a straight face, he tucks his chin
down against his chest to try and hide how he's smiling but it's so obvious.

"You don't have to stop."

"Why don't you have any shame?"

"Wasted it all on being a Hanson fan."

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"I see." He lands another thunderous slap with no more

warning, and Valentine muffles a wonderful hungry noise behind his
closed lips. "I thought you wanted to watch your Shakespeare."

"With an alternative like this? Don't think so."

It's disturbingly thrilling doing this again. They're more used to

each other now, they're getting comfortable again, and it's easier to fall
back into the old ways – but a version of them that doesn't genuinely
involve Valentine doing what he's told. Everything's changed. Before,
Lindsay always had issues doing it and meaning it and doing it for fun, the
exact same action but different moods and reasons for it. Something of that
is gone now. It's easier. Valentine is alight with want and happiness,
shivering and desperate and loving it.

"I'll never understand you," Lindsay mutters, and slaps him hard

again.

"You don't have to understand it, just accept it. Like I don't

understand why a handsome man like you wants to ruin it wearing brown
cords but I never say nothing."

Slap. "What the hell are you talking about? You bring it up

seventeen times a day at least."

"For your own good."

Slap, slap, slap. "I'm not taking fashion tips from a man who

wears neon orange underpants."

"I love it when you talk down to me."

"Good." Another savage slap. His hand is tingling hot now. He

rubs his palm slowly over Valentine's warm skin to soothe the itch, and
Valentine lets his breath out in a long shuddering sigh.

"I'll come."

"Isn't that the idea?"

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"I bet you could make me come just spanking me and nothing

else."

"Don't say spank, it's horrible."

"Not so horrible you won't do it, though."

"That's true. Shush, now." He doesn't stop this time, hard slow

smacks with long pauses in between, stroking the flat of his hand over
Valentine's flushing skin. Valentine's curling his fingers tight around
handfuls of the throw cushion he's resting on, breathing in whimpers and
starting to sweat lightly.

"Can we go upstairs?"

"No, I'm having a nice time."

"Yeah, I noticed," Valentine says breathlessly, shifting his hips

to better press against Lindsay's cock. "Please, I wanna go to bed."

"No. Here."

Valentine struggles over onto his back, grinning like a madman.

"If it's cos you wanna leer at me being sixteen I already died ages ago." It's
awkward with his legs trapped together by his jeans, but he slips down
onto his knees on the thick carpet and manages to get Lindsay's trousers
open in two seconds flat; it barely takes any longer than that to bring him
off, which is so sad and embarrassing that Lindsay wrenches Valentine
away and comes in his hair instead, streaking white into the black and
smearing it in deeper with his fingers. He feels better then, more in control.
Valentine goes very still and closes his eyes, but he doesn't seem bothered.
"You're so gross. You're like an animal marking your territory."

"Be quiet. Stand up." Lindsay's still catching his breath, he can't

find any strength. He hauls himself up to sit on the edge of the cushion and
slips his mouth down around Valentine's cock, swallowing him deep and
holding him at the hips, guiding him to move and do all the work.

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Valentine laughs, like he knows. He tangles his fingers through Lindsay's
hair, whining and swearing under his breath until he goes very still and
comes in a hot surge down his throat.

"You wanker, I need to wash my hair again now."

"Go on, then."

"Why, you ready for round two?"

"Might be. Just take your time, I'm an old man."

Valentine disappears upstairs, waddling like a penguin because

he's not bothered pulling his jeans back up. Lindsay goes to wash his hands
and have a cigarette out the back door, stepping quietly so he doesn't
disturb the dreaming dog asleep in the kitchen. He's just settled back in his
seat, exhausted and flicking mindlessly through the Sky channels, when
Dory starts crying upstairs. Not even crying, but screaming and sobbing
like she's been set on fire. Lindsay jumps to his feet automatically,
suddenly remembers he's not playing dad to his dead best friend's children
any more, and sits back down. The instinct took him by surprise, and now
he feels kind of sick.

Half a minute passes. He stares at his hands and wills her to shut

up, but she doesn't. He can hear the shower still running upstairs,
obviously beating down too noisily for Valentine to have heard or he'd
have been in there with her the second she made a sound. Alice could howl
like this for hours on end if she was left to it, he found that out the hard
way.

Another half a minute and she's wailing so loud he can't stand it.

He's dug his fingernail so hard into the side of his thumbnail he's made it
bleed. Wishing death by freak shower drowning accident on Valentine
with all the force he can muster, Lindsay takes the stairs two at a time and
heads for Dory's room. The door's open just a crack and the noise she's
making is unbelievable. Tiny people shouldn't be able to make noise like

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that; it seems to go against all the laws of nature that miniature lungs can
have enough power in them to split your eardrums, but that's not too far off
what she's doing.

She's sitting up in bed when Lindsay goes in, curled up with her

knees under her chin and streaming with snot and tears. A good thing in a
way, because it means she's genuinely upset and not just being a shrieking
brat who doesn't agree with bedtime. She chokes on a sob when she sees
him in the doorway, curling even tighter into herself and staring at him like
she's still not sure what to think of him. Good, says the voice in Lindsay's
head, that's the first thing you've got in common. Let's work with this.

He goes over to sit on the edge of her bed. He's got no plan, this

is all desperate improvisation. "Did you have a bad dream?"

It takes several tries to get the words out. She's tired, she keeps

rubbing her eyes with her fat little hands, but she'll never go back to sleep
in this state. "It's dark I need a wee someone's took my rabbit," she
manages, helpless despair distilled into a single wet shuddering breath.
Clearly this whole fucking family is cursed and none of them should ever
be allowed anywhere near a stuffed toy because it makes them mental. He
feels like a bastard then. You're not allowed to think things like that about
a kid who's not even in full-time school yet.

"Nobody's taken your rabbit. There's nobody here except me

and Philip."

"I want my mum."

Oh shit. "She'll be back next week, that's not very long to wait,

is it?"

"I want her now."

She's gone hysterical again, hyperventilating and sobbing and

dripping snot all down herself. That instinct resurfaces, far too strong to
ignore now he has to look at her as well as hear her – he does it almost

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without thinking or realising he's moving, he picks her up like he used to
hold Alice when she had nightmares and woke the whole house up with
her terrified screaming. She's trembling all over, radiating heat like a tiny
little sun he's managed to catch like a butterfly, and her horrific bed hair is
sticking up in all directions just like Valentine's, thick with sleep sweat and
damp with tears. This is the final stage of it, if she's anything like Alice –
relief that something's being done and she's getting some attention, even if
it's not from her first choice. There's nothing left to do now but wait for her
to get bored, so he waits. He walks her around the bedroom for something
to do, murmuring soothing nonsense things at her, stroking her wild hair
away from her hot face.

"You shouldn't be scared of the dark. Look at this." He carries

her over to the front window and pulls the pointless gauzy green curtain
out of the way. The road is still and empty like a picture book; this is the
kind of area where people actually use their garages for their cars. There's
the noise of night-time traffic from the nearby Hampstead High Street, but
the thick double glazing dulls it right down to a hum so there's barely any
sound at all, just Dory's crying and sniffles as she finally starts to settle
down. "There's a cat there, can you see him? He just jumped off that wall
over the road, did you see?"

"That's Muggle-Wump."

"That's a funny name for a cat."

She looks at him like she doesn't quite trust him, but she's

calming. "Miss Farley said he wants a name so I called him after my book
Pip was reading me cos his face looks like a monkey."

"Whose face, Pip's?" She almost giggles at that but doesn't quite

make it, as if she's aware she's supposed to be upset and doesn't want to
cave in to being comforted this soon. "You shouldn't be afraid of the dark,
look how pretty everything is. Look at the streetlights. See that house

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down there, see in their window. They've got a fish tank all lit up. You
wouldn't notice that in the daylight, would you?"

"I don't like fish. They're slimy."

"That's because they live in water. It's good for them, it's like

wearing a coat."

"It's gross."

"You're a bit slimy yourself." Dory looks scandalised at that,

surprised enough to stop crying altogether. Lindsay tries really hard to
keep his smile hidden, using his shirt sleeve to mop her face under the eyes
then under the nose. "That's gross, you're like a pond monster."

"I am not!"

"You are, look, you've got snot all over my shirt."

"Sucks to be you," she says pertly, and then he can't help

laughing.

"I see your brother's been giving you English lessons."

"Anyway if I'm a pond monster you're a wookiee."

"Are we finished insulting each other now?"

"Pip says tell you only old men get beards."

"Pip's jealous because he can only grow hair on his toes and

knuckles." He shifts his grip on her so he can pull the curtain closed. She
feels heavier in his arms, she's relaxing against him all quiet and dozy with
one little hand pressed flat against the side of his face, the other curled into
a loose fist so she can suck her thumb and stroke her nose with her
forefinger at the same time. "Are you ready to go back to sleep now?"

"Let me take her to the toilet first."

Lindsay almost drops her at the unexpected voice. He turns

round to see Valentine in the doorway, not quite enough of a silhouette

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against the hall light to hide the strange look on his face. "How long have
you been creeping around?"

"Give her here, can you make her bed back up?"

Lindsay sorts the little West Ham covers and pillows back into

place while they're gone, and finds the lost rabbit tucked down between the
mattress and the wall. Dory looks at him with such grown-up gratitude
when she returns it's like he's saved her life. "Check down the side next
time," he says quietly, watching Valentine settle her back in bed. "He's
never getting stolen, I promise."

"Okay."

She lets Valentine kiss her on the forehead, hesitates for a

moment, then holds her pudgy arms up to Lindsay until he sits on the edge
of the bed again and kisses her goodnight as well. "Beaux rêves, chérie."

Valentine's gone by the time Lindsay manages to convince her

to let go. Lindsay thinks he's gone back downstairs until he hears a noise
and finds him in his bedroom scrubbing his damp hair with a towel. "She
was having nightmares, she lost her rabbit." He feels like has to explain
himself, like he's done something awful. It's there in Valentine's manner,
the way he's not really looking up or smiling or even making any
indication he's heard. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah."

"Right."

Silence again. Lindsay pulls the horrible gold and pink chair out

from its place under the dressing table and sits down to wait it out, but
Valentine seems really fucked off this time because it drags on for ages
while he slams around the room finding a comb and a change of clothes.

Abruptly, he stops where he is and says, "Is the reason you don't

wanna talk about all them years cos you met some woman and had kids

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and that's how come you suddenly know what to do with one when she's
crying when before you always said nothing in the whole world scared you
so much as someone else's bratty bastard crotchfruit?"

"You're ridiculous."

"Cos I don't mind, but-"

"You clearly do mind or you wouldn't be throwing such a fit."

"No I ain't throwing a fit, you'd know about it if I was." He

struggles into a Care Bears t-shirt that's far too small for him and starts
furiously combing his damp hair like that's to blame. "I noticed you never
said no just now."

"No."

"No you agree you never said no or no you never got nobody

pregnant?"

"What do you think?"

"Lindsay!"

"I couldn't get anybody pregnant even if I wanted to. A nice

doctor accepted a lot of my money to make sure of it."

"You're such a patronising fucking twat sometimes, you know?"

"So grow up and stop having a tantrum."

In a way, it's sort of comfortable. For so long he and Valentine

sniped at each other, then for so long they were apart. Since they met up
again it's been sunshine and rainbows, like a cracking mask hiding
something hideous underneath. It was always going to fall apart; maybe it's
better to fight it out properly instead of putting up with the constant sense
of unease.

"What's your problem, exactly? Your sister was crying, I made

her stop. How is that bad?"

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"You hate kids."

"I don't."

"You did."

"But I don't now."

"Fear of the unknown, innit? You don't get from hating them to

that without practice. And if you're someone's dad I wanna know about it."

"It's none of your business. You left me, remember?" Cheap

shot. Valentine gives him such a hateful look it actually makes his stomach
drop like when you think you're about to fall downstairs.

"Why can't you just answer?"

"Why does it matter?"

He knows why it matters. Every time Valentine goes round to

Olly's house, Lindsay feels sick and murderous. He's got to put up with
Valentine having photos in his house of his ex's swarm of children, and
their felt-tip pen drawings stuck on the fridge with magnets, and
Valentine's stupid mindless incessant chatter about every single detail of
Lillian's hockey matches and how good Sammy's doing at school and
Daisy's dance group got on Britain's Got Talent the other year and Joe
needs glasses like Olly and Sam but he's having wicked Gryffindor stripes
and and and- he never shuts up and Lindsay lets it happen because they're
all adults, they should all know how to get along, he should be a bit more
trusting, but it's so hard.

So he lets it all out like vomit, everything he's been avoiding for

months: the travelling, the women, the accidental backslide into needles
and tourniquets, Ellie, salvation, Montreal, kids, the antique bookshop they
bought for something to do, how genuinely content and happy he was.
Valentine throws his comb down and just sits there on the bed scrunching

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his hands in his hair until the spew trails off into thunderous silence. Then
it's his turn.

"Sometimes I really miss Olly," he says, still not looking up.

"Cos me and him... it weren't like I was settling just cos you weren't there.
I think he was a bit just cos he knew I wouldn't go mental on him like all
them idiot women but even so, me and him, it weren't even like friends
with benefits or nothing. If you never texted me that time me and him
would've been together ages or forever cos it was good, it worked. Then
you come back and it's like... chucking him off for something better like
changing your mind about your t-shirt, even though you still like your first
t-shirt. And you know I love you, but changing that quick when I never
thought me and him would ever break up... I mean it was all dead good, we
was happy, you know? Then just BAM, that's the end and it weren't for no
bad reason like we started falling out or nothing, it just stopped. And it
don't mean I don't wanna be with you but if we're doing this hand-holding
soppy truth shit it needs saying, I miss him sometimes really bad, I miss
living with the kids. Is that what it's like?"

Hypocritical jealousy started raging like fire the second

Valentine opened his mouth. Lindsay's made his thumb bleed again, just so
he's got something to concentrate on.

"You said sweet dreams in French," Valentine says quietly. "Is

that what you said to Alice?"

For a moment he's scared sick that Valentine's going to bring up

what happened to Ty and Danny, and he's not sure he can take it. "Mm.
Habit."

"We kinda lost touch. I should've made more effort with letters

and stuff but I didn't wanna be pushy with them and keep sending letters
they didn't reply to. Spose kids just move on quicker than grown-ups."

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Lindsay can feel Valentine looking at him, but he doesn't want

to look back. The idea of eye contact is unbearable, all those searching
questions and blunt answers he doesn't feel like dealing with. It's funny
how much they've got in common now, for people so completely different.
Even the names. Olly and Ellie. It's ridiculous.

"If you miss them they could come over for a visit," Valentine

says tentatively, and Lindsay makes an accidental sound of scorn.

"Because that wouldn't be awkward at all, would it?"

"Don't have to be. She's still your friend, ain't she? Like Olly's

mine."

Another silence, even longer than before. The chair's

uncomfortable, Lindsay's starting to go numb, but he doesn't want to move;
it's as if moving would shatter something delicate in the air. Then
Valentine speaks up again:

"You know what I said before... in France when me and you

was fighting, when I went away?"

"You said a lot of things."

"You know when I said I don't care if you wanna be with other

people, like if you fancy girls as well, I don't care if you wanna see other
people so long as you're nice to me when it's just me and you? I still mean
it. If it helps." It's a nice gesture, but he's lying. He wouldn't sound so
strangled and heartbroken if he meant it. "I mean... I never known what it's
like being any other way, I always knew I liked boys my whole life, even
when I was like seven I knew it. So if you don't wanna be with me all the
time... I don't mind, you can be with women as well if you want and I
won't kick off, it's alright. If you're miserable. If it helps."

"Philip-"

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"And I swear it ain't some open-relationship scam cos I still

wanna be with Olly or nothing cos I don't, but... is that how it works, being
bi? Are you miserable just being with one? I don't know what it's like but if
you slept with all them women and no men that means you really really
like it, and-"

"Maybe I slept with all them women because they didn't matter,

did you ever think of that?" Valentine just sniffs loudly, so Lindsay tries to
get a laugh with, "Disposable tarts, can't even remember their names," and
it works.

"You're a sexist pig."

"Then it's a good job I don't plan on trying to impress any

women, isn't it? Unless... do you count?"

"Fuck off."

"No." He gets up off the arse-numbing chair and goes to sit on

the bed. Valentine moves across the blankets to make space for him and
they end up cuddling like teenagers, Valentine popping some of Lindsay's
shirt buttons through so he can find some skin to touch and Lindsay
threading his fingers through Valentine's hair and combing out the tangles
he didn't reach yet. "I'm not miserable. I don't want to sleep with women.
They're harder to get off than you are, anyway." Valentine makes a
disgusted noise, but he doesn't talk any more and he falls asleep where he
is, half-dressed with his palm to Lindsay's beating heart.

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October 2014

The weather starts to turn, but it doesn't seem to get that much

colder. It just rains, endless miserable grey drizzle that always seems to
find its way into your collar no matter how tightly you button up or how
many times you wind your scarf round.

It's a week from Halloween, not even three months since they

got back together, less than a month since Pip moved all his stuff into
Lindsay's huge Georgian house in Dulwich and messed the place up, and
already it's like he's been there forever. It's only weird when he thinks
about it, but he can't help thinking about it all the fucking time – how easy
it all is, how it's so comfortable, how domestic they are. It feels like they've
been married for fifty years and it's so strange, it shouldn't be like this. He
kicks his boots off just inside the door, stepping around the little puddles
he's left on the hall floor so he doesn't get his socks wet, and unwinds
metres of the cold damp Doctor Who scarf that suddenly feels like it's
choking him. "Where are you?" he yells, even though it's kind of obvious.

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There's an amazing smell coming from the kitchen. He's already in pre-
emptive mourning for his waistline.

"Where do you think?" Lindsay's at the table with whiskey and

a cigarette and a book closed over his thumb to keep his page. He turns his
face up for an upside-down kiss as Pip goes past him to get a Corona out
the fridge. "You're late. If we had a dog your dinner would be in it."

"We can get a dog if you want. We can get a butch manly one

so you wouldn't be embarrassed walking it, I wouldn't make you get a
chihuahua or nothing. We can get a newfie. How come we ain't got no
limes?" He finds a Jif lemon in the cupboard and squeezes half of that into
the bottle instead, ignoring Lindsay's raised-eyebrow stare and muttered
that's disgusting. "We could get a cavalier like Dory's, they ain't manly but
they ain't girly."

"We're not getting a dog. Sit down."

He does as he's told, trying not to laugh while Lindsay fetches

him the plate of bangers and mash that's been waiting in the oven. "I like
you in housewife mode. Fussing round getting a nice hot dinner on the
table for your breadwinner when he's done at work."

"Shut your face. I'd earn more sitting on my arse and letting

interest build up for one minute than you make working in a whole year."
He's not really annoyed, Pip can read his moods like a book. It's even more
obvious when he doesn't go back to his seat but pulls out the one right
beside Pip and starts playing with his hair as he eats. "Your hair's wet."

"Yeah, genius, it's raining out."

"It's going all... frizzy."

"I'm sorry I'm so repellent to look at. Leave off, alright?"

"Did you have a good day? Tell me what you did." Lindsay

shuffles his chair a tiny bit closer, as close together as they can get, and

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keeps on stroking Pip's hair back off his face so he can lean in and press a
little line of kisses on his cheek, from his jaw up just in front of his ear. It's
still tender from the tragus piercing he got last week, but not sore-tender –
more like sensitive-tender, and the kisses and the heat of Lindsay's
whiskey breath and the tickle of his beard make Pip shiver, a surge of
goosebumps rushing through his body. He can't help laughing, shaky and
breathless.

"You're bored, ain't you?"

"Can't think what gave you that idea," Lindsay murmurs, pulling

bits of drizzle-dotted hair between his fingertips to squeegee off the rain.

"You're meant to have a nice time on your day off. Lounge

round in your pants all day eating Frosties out the box and playing
Nintendo, that's what days off are for."

"I'm not bored, just pleased to see you."

"I could get used to this, being worshipped. You could let me

finish my dinner first, though."

"Charming." He finally moves away, resting the side of his face

against his curled fingers and his elbow on the table, watching Pip eat like
he's in a zoo. Bit off-putting. Lindsay's cheeks are very faintly flushed
from drink. Whiskey always slows him down, makes him lazy and
affectionate, so unlike his usual self. Best taking advantage of it while it's
on offer.

"Come upstairs," Pip says. His chair scrapes on the floor when

he pushes it back to stand up. Lindsay stays where he is, propped up on his
arm, smiling with half his mouth like he's still a bit asleep.

"Whatever for?"

"You're a dirty old man. I just wanna show you something."

"I bet you do."

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"Come on." He slides their fingers together, leading Lindsay by

his hand like a child and picking up his bag from the foot of the stairs as
they pass. There's a filthy little germ of a thought that lives in his brain,
always just waiting for the right time to emerge and casually suggest a
replay of that one uncomfortable switcharound all those years ago. The
right time never seemed to come, there was never a time Lindsay was
drunk and Pip wasn't, not until now...

He takes Lindsay into the living room instead. That can wait,

but this can't.

"I have to show you this thing I got today."

"Alright."

He expects Lindsay to take his favourite armchair like he

always does, but he tugs on their still-linked hands and goes to sit on the
smallest couch instead, bringing Pip with him and only letting his hand go
so he can wrap both arms around and cuddle him like a teddy bear. Pip's
laughing again, he can't control it. It's not to mock but just because he's
overwhelmed and happy. Lindsay's never like this, he's just not the
cuddling sort. There's got to be a specific level of whiskey he needs in his
bloodstream to be this pliant and agreeable. Experiments might be needed,
like George's Marvellous Medicine...

"Lindsay, stop it."

Lindsay doesn't stop. Maybe it's obvious in Pip's voice that this

is the sort of stop that means I kind of want you stop to but oh god please
don't. His mouth is warm and insistent on Pip's neck, touching all the
invisible places that make him forget how to breathe.

"Listen. I changed my name, it's all legal." He says it quickly or

he won't say it at all, then sort of regrets it when Lindsay stops kissing him
and sits up, wearing that familiar confused-exasperated look on his face
again, all raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

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"What?"

"I done it a few days ago, I didn't wanna tell you til I got the

certificate through the post, look." The edge of the envelope is damp from
where the rain squirmed its way inside his bag even though he thought he'd
closed it tight enough, but the papers inside aren't damaged. He brings
them all out and searches through to find the certificate. "Yeah, here, look.
I changed my name."

"I don't think I want to look." He takes the page anyway, but

holds it face-down in his lap. "You changed your name to Ziggy Stardust,
didn't you?"

"No I never!"

"If it's Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane you can change it back

right now and we'll pretend this never happened."

"Don't be such a bellend, just look."

"I can't. It's something awful."

"It's Brown, you fucker. I got your stupid boring beige name

now, alright?"

"Oh," Lindsay says, very quietly. He turns the certificate over to

read it properly, then his mouth moves like he's trying really hard not to
smile. "Danger?"

"Well, I didn't wanna change Philip cos I'm kinda used to it

now, and I'd never change George cos of my grandad, and I can't change
Valentine cos you couldn't call me that no more and I like it. Olly bet me I
wouldn't do it so I had to."

"Philip George Danger Valentine Brown. You twat."

"I hate people saying 'danger's my middle name', they're all

dirty liars. Danger is my middle name."

"You need your head looking at."

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"It's hilarious."

"It's stupid."

"So what? You're missing the point a bit. I'm Mr. Brown now.

Pip Brown, like Ladyhawke. If you won't marry me. It's... next best thing,
innit?"

Lindsay's touching Pip's hair again, winding a strand around his

fingertip then letting it go and sliding his whole hand in there at the back
of Pip's head, tugging gently through the damp waves of black to hold him
close – not a cuddle like before, not exactly, but something fierce and
possessive. Pip clings on around his neck, he can't seem to get close
enough. He rests his face there, cheek pressed tight against Lindsay's
shoulder.

"I'm not marrying you," Lindsay says. It sounds muffled, he's

talking right into Pip's hair. "It's revolting. I'm not doing it."

"You said you would."

"Silly little girls need to learn that big cruel men sometimes

make promises they don't mean if they think it'll get them into bed."

"Ah, get fucked. You know I would've slept with you anyway,

you didn't have to lie about nothing." It still sinks his stomach and he feels
stupid because it shouldn't matter. It's just another bit of paper, like the
document he can whip out if anybody ever disputes the fact that his middle
name is indeed Danger. "Why's it revolting just saying you love me and
writing your name down?"

"It's just... ugh. God. It's foul. It's... saying all those vile soppy

things in front of everybody you know, it's just horrible."

"No it ain't horrible, you're just repressed."

"I'm not repressed."

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"Just don't lie to me no more, I don't wanna be lied to over the

only thing in the whole world what really matters, that ain't fair."

"But why does it matter so much? It doesn't change anything."

"If it don't change anything why won't you do it."

"I can't believe I almost forgot how... fucking irritating you are

sometimes."

I could say the same thing. He bites it back and keeps it in his

head where it can't do any more damage. Olly always said he was so
persuasive he could get off a murder charge just by doing his big sad eyes
at the jury, but Lindsay's tougher than that. There's a way to play him but it
involves words, so Pip's handicapped right from the start. "I just want
people to know," he says. He feels like a brat and he screws his face up,
trying to sound less sulky. "All my boyfriends ever wanna do is fuck me
up the arse in private then act on like we're hardly even mates in public.
And I see all them people like holding hands and stuff in the street and
okay, I get it, you don't wanna show off, you don't want people looking at
you going urgh look at that sentimental old git thinking he's fourteen
holding hands in public, which by the way they wouldn't cos nobody
actually cares, you're just neurotic. But that's okay, you know? That's you,
I love you, if I just wanted someone I could feel up when we was out
dancing I could find someone in like two seconds but I don't want no one
else, I just wanna be with you. But I want people to know. Even if it's just
this one time then you never look at me ever again except where people
can't see, I don't care, but I want..."

Everything. Stupid words. It all sounds pathetic. I wanna show

people I ain't some massive brain failure who's too stupid to be with
anyone whose IQ is bigger than their shoe size. I wanna tell them what it
feels like needing someone so much, cos if I don't let a bit out I'll blow up
like a bomb and lose it all. I want my dad to see I'm not just some festering
blister who only gets in the way and ruins people's lives. I wish I could

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stick a tap in and drain off how much I love you like bleeding the air out
your brakes but people don't work like that.

He tries again, swallowing hard to ease away the painful lump

in his throat. "It's just important. I love you. I'm yours. I need people to
know."

"Alright," Lindsay says suddenly. He leans down to grab at

Pip's bag, throwing stuff out onto the carpet, his iPod and phone and wallet
and gloves and Attitude magazine until he finds what he's looking for, a
green marker pen, and holds it between his teeth while he starts tugging at
the hem of Pip's t-shirt. Pip's too surprised to do anything but submit, he
lets Lindsay peel off his t-shirt and throw that on top of all the things from
his bag then just watches as Lindsay pulls the pen out of the cap in his
mouth and signs his name in big green letters on the side of Pip's stomach.
He holds his breath, trying not to suck in the belly fat everybody else keeps
telling him is imaginary. "There, you're mine, are you fucking happy
now?" Lindsay snaps, and throws the recapped pen across the room to get
lost in the bookcase somewhere. He runs his fingers through his hair and
sits there like that clutching his head. He's acting like one of them's done
something monumentally wrong and Pip's not sure which one of them it
was, not sure whether he's allowed to touch. He tries it, skating hesitant
fingers down Lindsay's spine. Lindsay doesn't object so Pip leans against
him, his cheek on Lindsay's back, and puts an arm round his waist. They
don't talk for a while. It's so still and so silent Pip can hear the thud of their
syncopated heartbeats, even over the gentle rain tapping down on the
windows – then Lindsay starts talking again, just like Pip thought he
would. He always found it easier to talk when he didn't have to make eye
contact.

"You'll get bored," he says, so quiet and hesitant he barely

sounds like himself. "You say you won't but how long did it take you to

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get over it before? Five minutes? You'll get bored soon enough, then you'll
be twenty-seven and divorced or whatever the hell you call it and-"

"I ain't after your money if that's what you're stressing about."

"Shut up."

"I won't get bored. I never got over you, I just learnt to cope."

"You said you wouldn't get bored of France but you did."

"Yeah, but we're in London now. Everything's changed."

"Has it?" Pip doesn't know how to respond to that. He sits up a

bit and kisses Lindsay's cheek, wasting a second of time while he tries to
think of something to say, but Lindsay sighs and gets to his feet. He's still
avoiding eye contact, looking vaguely out of the window and then vaguely
at Pip while he tries to smooth down the hair he dislodged by holding him
there. "I need a shower, I won't be long."

"Oh." Now Pip's looking out the window too, following the

trickling lines of raindrops on the glass. "Alright."

"Yeah. I'll just be a minute." Still he lingers on, stroking Pip's

hair and touching his face until Pip gives up being upset with him and
leans against him again, giving him a clumsy hug around the legs. "You
know I do," Lindsay says abruptly, still quiet and strained like it's hurting
him to say it. "You shouldn't want to hear it all the time, you know I do and
it's nobody else's business, I don't want them listening in, it's bad enough
just saying it to you."

"It shouldn't be bad, it's a nice thing."

"I love you, Mr. Brown," Lindsay says, soft and awkward, and

Pip squeezes his eyes shut so he can't cry.

***

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He doesn't need a shower at all – he had one just before he

started making dinner because he was muddy from working in the garden
and getting caught in the rainstorm – but the tiny shower cubicle in his
ensuite is about the only place in the house he can be alone. He doesn't
want to lock himself in the bathroom, it's not Valentine's fault, putting a
locked door between them would only aggravate things... shower, then. A
shower behind an unlocked door, elaborate incomprehensible shorthand
for "Please leave me alone but know you've done nothing wrong."
Ridiculous. He knows he's acting like an arse but it's done now, and the hot
water is helping. His skin starts reddening almost immediately when he
steps under the spray. The water's only just at the right side of his threshold
for pain, reinvigorating all the ghosts of Valentine's old shampoo drips so
he's breathing in a thick steamy cloud of cherry.

He's just rinsing suds out of his hair when the bathroom door

opens. "Alright, lobster man?" Valentine calls over the sound of the falling
water. He sounds cheerful. Good, he's over it.

"Are you coming in?"

"No thanks, normal people don't like getting boiled alive. You

got any razorblades?"

"Please don't slit your wrists in here. Do you know how hard it

is getting blood out of grout?"

"Ha ha ha. I just need a shave, I ain't got no blades in my

bathroom."

"Check under the sink."

He goes back to his hair – he never bothered with conditioner

for over thirty years, until Valentine sat on him the day after he moved into
the house in Wales and emptied most of a bottle onto his head, sternly
informing him it was for his own good – and listens to Valentine clattering

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around in the cupboard. He's not soaping up his face when Lindsay sneaks
a look at him, though...

"Philip. If you're shaving your bikini line it's over between us."

"As if I am. I'd need a blowtorch and chainsaw anyway." It's

impossible to see what he's doing, hunched over like that with his back to
the shower cubicle. The huge mirror is too steamed up to reflect anything.

"What are you doing?"

"Prep."

"What?"

"Just have your shower, alright? I'm busy."

Curiouser and curiouser. Lindsay's done now but he feels weird

and self-conscious, he doesn't want to get out the shower while Valentine's
there ready to gawp at him, so he stands there simmering in the hot water a
bit longer waiting for him to finish whatever the hell it is he's doing to
himself and get out. He goes eventually without another word. Bullseye:
curiosity piqued. Lindsay doesn't rush through drying himself off and
putting some old pyjama trousers on, he's got enough self-control for that,
but his brain is racing and finding no answers.

The obviousness slaps him round the face as soon as he goes

back through to the bedroom and finds Valentine lying on the bed, propped
up against a pile of pillows. Of course. He's watched him at work, he
knows how it's done. Valentine's whinged enough times about having to
shave some gorilla's furry back ready for the ink and needles – now it's his
own stomach he's bared, like a neck ready for the guillotine. What are you
doing? Lindsay tries to say again, even though it's clear, but he can't seem
to remember how to form the words so he just opens and closes his mouth
a few times and gives up. Valentine's wearing rubber gloves and magenta
skinny jeans and that's it, nothing else, just a look of intense concentration

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as he pulls his trolley full of gear and tiny plastic ink cups closer to the
edge of the bed and turns the machine on.

"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."

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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

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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 self-
confidence 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?"

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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

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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

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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."

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"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 make-
up 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

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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 glassy-
eyed 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.

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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.

"I'm glad you did that," Valentine says after a minute of giddy

laughing and trying to control his breathing, "cos if any of that got on me I
bet it would've stung like fuck."

"When does it stop hurting?"

"Dunno, depends. Not long. It stays warm for ages, though."

He can see it from where he is, laying sideways across the

middle of the bed with his head resting on Valentine's bare thigh. He'll
never get used to this, being so comfortable with somebody. He's still not
that alright with the idea of Valentine seeing him naked, he never really
was, but Valentine's never had any issues wandering around the house
without any clothes on trying to find his favourite pants in the washing
machine, cheerfully and enthusiastically drying himself off after a bath
even if Lindsay's in the bedroom trying to read a book, using the toilet
while Lindsay's brushing his teeth, everything. Lindsay's got no idea how it
feels being that comfortable with yourself, but it's weirdly okay being this
intimate with him. It never was with anybody else. Valentine yawns and
stretches his whole body, he's always wiped out after. Lindsay can see the
shift of muscles and bones under his skin, the stark bare patch at the side of
his stomach contrasting with the furrier half he didn't take the razor to, and
his brain throws it up in absolute surprise as if it didn't know it before: he's
beautiful because he's not and he doesn't care.

"You sleepy?"

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"Yeah. Shit, sorry. Come up here, let me-"

"It's alright."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"If you do it yourself I'll make approving noises in all the right

places."

That makes him laugh, he can't help it. "You idiot. What do you

want me to do with your things? I'll move it, you just lie there like a little
prince."

"You'll have to wash me down and bandage me up, Doctor

Brown," Valentine murmurs sleepily. He's smiling like he knows this
whole night has been ridiculous and loves it anyway. "Use that, that, that.
Try and not wipe the pen ink too much cos it wants finishing in the
morning. Wear gloves, you dirty monkey, I don't want your germs in me.
There's tape somewhere, clingfilm me up like a drumstick, you seen how
it's done." He's asleep before Lindsay's even finished cleaning away the
dots of inky blood-

-and when Lindsay wakes up in the morning it's to Valentine

shower-fresh and still slightly damp beside him, breathing noisily and
tracing the last letter n with his buzzing needle. He's hard, tenting up the
front of the stolen too-big pyjama trousers he's wearing, and Lindsay's not
sure whether Valentine's aware he's awake or not when he puts his hand
down over the blue cotton and starts gently stroking himself again.

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The arguments about whether or not Lindsay should come out

partying on Halloween night last for almost two weeks, ebbing and
flowing in intensity like waves. Halloween night is the worst. Halloween is
like a fucking tsunami.

"I'm not coming," he says. He's standing in the kitchen in his

oldest softest brown cords and a cardigan of thick blue and grey stripes
Valentine knitted for him six years ago. These are his slob clothes, his no-
way-am-I-leaving-the-house clothes. Valentine couldn't possibly be more
of a contrast if he tried. He's wearing black bondage trousers and a fishnet
shirt carefully ripped in all the places he's got tattoos so the words show
through. He's got a studded leather handcuffs on with the linking chain
unclipped, thick silver necklaces looped around his neck, staggeringly high
platform boots with chunky silver buckles all down the sides. His hair is
backcombed and reeking so strongly of hairspray it's a miracle he's still
breathing. The chains around his neck are fixed to a slippery silk cape. His
face is painted deathly grey, smudged black circles around his eyes, and

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he's wearing porcelain fangs. He looks like a cock. He doesn't belong in
Lindsay's kitchen. He doesn't really belong in Lindsay's life.

"What you gonna do then, just hang round here all night fapping

over Jamie Lee Curtis on telly?"

"I might read a book. I've got paperwork to do. This coffee is

very nice." He takes a sip, watching Valentine over the rim of the cup to
see whether he's reached giving-up point yet, but Valentine just scowls and
pouts like a grounded teenage girl.

"Why don't you wanna come out places with me?"

"What, like your ageing chaperone? I don't think so."

"Please?"

"No."

"Fuck you, then."

A flash of cruel genius: "If you go and wash your face right now

and tell Olly you're not going out tonight, I'll let you."

He actually considers it. Lindsay sees it swoop across his face

like a bat: oh my god followed by but I look fucking ace, I can't not go out
followed by but holy weeping christ is this ever gonna happen again?
followed by but we already got tix and they never ever come to London
with maybe a little hint of bet I could talk him into letting me fuck him with
my teeth in and my boots on. Of course, that's when Olly stumbles
downstairs and Valentine chews on his lower lip, teeth sliding through his
black lipstick and scraping lines of pink there as he makes his reluctant
decision.

"This is well gonna get on my tits by the end of the night, this

fucking tail," Olly's muttering, swishing his hips around and watching over
his shoulder as the cat tail sewn on his skintight trousers moves.

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"What the fuck are you?" Lindsay says, trying to keep his

roaring brain in one piece and drink his coffee like he's not noticed how
tight Olly's black velvet trousers are or the way his black and white stripy
silk jumper clings to the lines of his chest. It's so flimsy and ridiculous you
can see his nipples jabbing at the fabric. It's not like he's interested... he's
just not entirely convinced Valentine isn't interested, especially when he
makes a wobbly wolf-whistle around his unfamiliar sharp teeth and he and
Olly both crack up laughing.

"He's Catwoman."

"Get fucked, I'm a cat burglar." He tips his head down and

touches his fingertips to the pointy ears nestled in his hair, smirking like
he's doing something wonderfully clever and original.

"You'll freeze to death. You both will. You do know it's

November tomorrow, don't you?"

Valentine gives him such a disgusted look, as if it's alright to be

a stupid boring miserable old man when they're alone together but not in
front of his arsehole of a friend. "Lindsay ain't coming, he'd rather just
wank himself off with books and bank statements than maybe actually dare
risk ever having a good time."

"Ah, well. Ain't your scene anyway, mate, is it?" Olly says.

"Like you wouldn't expect him to come to some boring grey dinner full of
librarians." Smirking little cunt wart, Lindsay wants to throw the coffee
right in his eyes but Olly only bothered to give him the tiniest most fleeting
passing glance and now he's looking at Valentine again and holding up a
strip of black material. "Tie my mask on, yeah? Don't crush my hair, I used
like all the shit in your bathroom getting that right..."

Lindsay makes a ridiculous throaty snorting noise he

immediately hates himself for because it sounds stupid when it's supposed
to sound cutting and derisive. He swallows back the rest of his coffee and

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goes to put his cup in the dishwasher. That's the end of it, he thinks, the
brainless vain young peacocks are going out to see some band of posers
he's never heard of and he's going to get a rare few hours of peace,
happiness all round. Not so. He slams the dishwasher closed and turns
round to see why Olly's suddenly laughing to find Valentine pressed up
behind him with his mouth clamped over the side of Olly's neck. "Back
off, princess, you get dribble on my shirt you're a fucking dead man," he's
saying, forcing the words out even though he's laughing. His voice isn't
entirely steady. Not surprising, the way Valentine's sucking on his neck,
pinching the skin with his teeth and coaxing beads of blood up to just
under the surface.

"Left my hat upstairs, won't be a sec," Valentine says suddenly.

He goes striding out the kitchen like he's already forgotten the last five
seconds. Olly scowls after him, wiping spit off the side of his neck with his
palm then wiping his hand on his skinny thigh. Lindsay's still staring, not
angry, not really anything, just staring with his hand still frozen in place on
the dishwasher door.

"Did that actually just happen?"

"What?"

"You've got a..."

"What?" It's hard to tell if his eyes have suddenly gone

comically wide because he's got a mask tied over half his face, but he
seems shocked. "Oh my god he's such a fucking prick sometimes, he ain't
bruised me?"

"Mmhm."

"Shit. You got a mirror?"

It happens quickly then, strange and unreal like it's happening to

somebody else, like it's not really Lindsay's hand on Olly's suck-bruised

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neck, steering him viciously into the hall and slamming his head back hard
against the wall mirror. "There."

"Get your fucking hands off me!" The more he struggles the

tighter Lindsay's grip gets. Olly is obviously smarter than Valentine, he
realises much sooner and goes still, breathing hard and glaring hatefully at
him, defiant and unafraid. "I'm the victim here, mate. Don't kick off at me
just cos your boyfriend's a slag."

"You weren't exactly fighting him off."

"I got play-bit by a vampire on Halloween, what the fuck's the

problem?"

"The problem," Lindsay snarls, italicising the word by cracking

Olly's head back against the glass again, "is you, uninvited, in my house,
all the time."

"You think he ain't told me every single last detail of all the sick

shit you and him done together?" Olly snaps back, spit flecks flying.
Lindsay's got the urge to laugh at how much like a hissing cat he actually
is, whiskers drawn on his face and yellow contact lenses and long black
false eyelashes poking out through the holes in his mask, but he only wants
to laugh because he's so incandescent with fury it's laugh or genuinely rip
this bastard's skin off his skeleton. "You wanna see a head doctor, you
need help, your issues ain't getting better on their own and if you don't sort
yourself out you best not think he's hanging round to put up with you
slapping him round like his dad no more, cos he's better than that and he
knows it now. Don't get pissy cos your boyfriend's got a best mate and
yours is fucking dead."

Lindsay slaps him full force across the face, so hard his palm

rings from the impact. Olly just stares at him for a moment in open-
mouthed disbelief, then his face scrunches up with rage and he takes two
handfuls of Lindsay's cardigan and drags him into a violent headbutt. He's

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only an inch taller than Valentine so the blow smashes into Lindsay's
cheekbone instead, though that's probably worse; the pain is immediate
and immense, blooming up into his eye and making it stream. He's ready to
snap Olly's head right off like a flower but that's when Valentine comes
thundering downstairs shrieking, "You're both fucking wankers, why don't
you just fuck each other's faces?" and slams the front door behind himself.

Screeching car tyres. Silence.

"Bet you never missed him being a fucking brat," Olly mutters.

He's rubbing his forehead where already there's a mark Lindsay can tell is
going to swell up and bruise. He manages to wrench his tiny red mobile
out of his tight back pocket and holds a button to speed-dial, scowling at
the phone and hitting the end call button after a few seconds. "Ain't turned
off, he's just letting it ring to answerphone."

Lindsay's rage seems to be leaking out of his watering eye. It

was always the same with Valentine – sometimes things went too far and
then his anger disappeared like it was never there, things just got awkward
instead, confusing and painful and unpleasant but he never stayed angry
once they'd left that invisible Do Not Cross line a mile behind. "Get out of
my house," he says again, but he says it tiredly and without any threat.

"He's nicked my car, I know what my car sounds like."

"So get on the bus."

"I ain't going on the bus!"

"You're not staying here. I'm going to find him, you can sit on

the doorstep if you want but you're not staying here."

Ten minutes later he's multitasking like a champ, driving his car

and trying to phone Valentine and keeping an eye out for jobsworths in
police cars waiting to dish out fines and trying to recall exactly what it was
he said that made Olly think he was invited along on this manhunt. Olly's
sitting there in the passenger seat, pulling the sleeves on his cobweb-thin

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jumper down over his hands. The neckline is low enough anyway, but now
he's stretching it all out of shape and dragging it halfway down his chest.
Lindsay accidentally looks at him when he's checking the road to the left is
clear and sees the top half of a tattoo peeking out from behind the fabric on
his right pec: two curves like back-to-back parentheses and a swooping
line crossed through the middle. Pisces, for the second of March, when in
1988 the most impossible person in the world was born. Lindsay doesn't
remember the date but Olly's birthday was recent, about a month ago, and
Valentine's got a Libra symbol in the exact same place. He's never made
the connection until now. He tries to loosen his grip on the steering wheel
because his fingers are starting to cramp.

"Hampstead's too fucking far away," Olly says sullenly, staring

out the window. "What if he ain't even gone to his mum's? What if he's
drove to Edinburgh in a sulk?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Obviously you don't know him as well as you think you do if

you don't believe he would."

"Shut up."

"I-"

"Shut up."

"No wonder he walked out on you, you overbearing fucknut."

"Am I talking in my head?"

"I wish you were." Amazingly he does shut up after that, folding

his arms and pouting. It'd be almost bearable, totally ignoring each other, if
not for Lindsay's throbbing cheekbone. He can't stop thinking about things
he's spent all this time trying to lock a door on. Valentine punching him in
the same eye when he found out about Ellie. All the endless spitting raving
jealousy they can't get over no matter how much reassurance they get and

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give. Ty and Danny slumped on the cold concrete and spewing blood, dead
too quickly even to realise it was happening.

It takes forever to get there. It's so busy, cars and buses on the

roads and pedestrians in idiotic costumes on the pavements. They get stuck
in a jam on Wellington Road, fuming and cursing the accident up ahead
and glaring at the screaming ambulance trying to squeeze down a gap in
traffic that doesn't look big enough. Lindsay's got a sick feeling in his guts
that it might be Valentine, he might have slammed Olly's people carrier
into a lamppost and scattered booster seats and old crisp packets
everywhere, but when they finally crawl past it's a screeching middle-aged
woman being cut out of a tiny Ka. Even so, it feels like he only starts
breathing again when they're turning off Rosslyn Hill and following the
last few bends to the Valentines' massive white house. The black car is
there, parked crookedly against the kerb, and the relief is staggering.

Through the wrought-iron gate, up the cobbled path, under the

dark trees. Lindsay and Olly stand there together on the doorstep like
nervous kids on first-date night with the vicar's daughters, eyeing each
other uneasily. They can hear voices in the living room seeping out of the
open window, but the heavy curtains are closed.

Olly rings the bell. The voices stop for a second then start up

again. Valentine is yelling and cursing now, they hear him shout, "If that's
one of them they can go and die in a fire!" moments before the hall light
flicks on and there's the fumbling sound of chains and locks. Valentine
senior opens the door and gives them both such a vicious mean look
Lindsay almost want to laugh.

"What?"

"Trick or treat?" Olly says tentatively. Phil curls his upper lip

like he's smelling something bad.

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"You look a fucking state, son, you're as bad as him indoors.

You wanna sort your life out."

Olly ignores it. He probably gets it a lot, Lindsay realises with

something that's almost like sympathy, even though what Valentine's dad
just said is totally true. "Is Pip in?"

"NO!" Valentine shouts from the other room. Lindsay sighs and

leans against the wall, punching a text message in and pressing send while
the other two bicker like women.

"Can you just tell him I wanna see him, please?"

"He knows you're here, he don't wanna come out. What you

done, anyway? And you," he adds, turning on Lindsay. "What you done to
him to make him come stamping in here like a raging fucking bull?"

"I've done nothing. Your son just can't seem to decide who he

wants to sleep with, that's all."

"Lindsay!" Olly gasps, so melodramatically it's like he's doing it

for a joke when he's really not, he's just as much of a drama queen as
Valentine. Valentine must get the text at that exact second because that's
when his tantrum properly kicks off.

"Oh my god he's such a fucking cunt sometimes, I ain't going

out there, they can both fucking rot in a pit for all I care, they ruin my
life."

"What did you say?" Phil demands.

"None of your business."

"He told me to grow up," Valentine shouts from the other room.

Phil doesn't say anything but he kind of looks like he might agree.

"What happened to your face?"

"This little thug headbutted me."

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"Yeah, only cos you slammed me against the wall by my neck

and slapped me."

"Only because you and Valentine were getting up to it when I

was standing five feet away."

"He's a bloody vampire, you mong, he bit me, end of drama!"

Olly howls, at the same time as Phil snaps, "He's got a name, you know."

"He's got my name," Lindsay snarls back, and everything's

suddenly very quiet.

Then a tiny voice behind them squeals, "Olly!" and Valentine's

little sister comes flying up the garden path trailing powdery bandages
behind herself. Lindsay watches him stoop to hug her, wincing when her
momentum makes her bang her forehead off his, but she doesn't even seem
to notice, she's chattering on like a clockwork toy. "Me and Rishi and
Jeffrey and Jeremy done mummies!"

"Yeah, babes, I can see."

"And we got Monster Munch and Haribos and Mars bars and

Twixies and Magic Stars and jelly worms and cola bottles and flying
saucers and I got two toffee apples and we ain't even done Downshire Hill
yet!" Olly lets her go and she digs through her little plastic pumpkin to find
a lollipop to give to him and a jelly worm she holds up for her dad, then
she's speeding back to where her friends and some of their mums are
waiting by the gate.

"You didn't get a sweet," Olly says smugly. Lindsay puts his

hands in his pockets so he doesn't smack the bastard again. I hate my life
and everyone in it, he wants to say, but instead he takes a deep calming
breath and makes himself look at Phil.

"Please could you tell Philip I'm sorry I hit his friend." He grits

his teeth saying the next bit, forcing it out and trying to make it sound less
grudging than it does in his head because he just knows Valentine is there

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listening at the living room door and if nothing else works, this is the bait
that just might lure him out. "Tell him I love him and I'm going home. If
he wants a lift back he's got to come out now."

Not to be outdone, Olly hurriedly butts in with, "Tell him I'm

sorry I nutted his boyfriend and said he needs a head doctor."

"That ain't even the point!" Valentine yells. He slings the door

open and shoves his dad out the way to come and face them both down.
His stupid platform heels are so high he's almost as tall as Lindsay and it's
disconcerting being eye to eye like this. Lindsay feels sort of like he's
shrunk, not that Valentine's grown. "You," he says, jabbing Lindsay hard in
the chest with his forefinger, "are a fucking jealous cunt and if you don't
trust me after all this time then me and you ain't gonna last very long. I
ain't rolling over and taking your shit no more, I don't need you no more, I
can live without you and it makes me feel a fuckton less crazy when I do
so just fucking watch it, alright? I might remind you I weren't the one
fucking other people's wives at funerals while my boyfriend sat at home
feeling like shit. And you," he turns on Olly and pokes him in the chest as
well, "you don't get to drag old demons up just to be a bitch cos some
things are fucking private, alright? And if I ain't allowed to ever talk about
it again then you ain't allowed neither cos what me and him done is none
of your fucking business."

"Get inside the house," Phil says, deadly cold. "The neighbours

can hear you."

"So fucking let them hear, sadsack net curtain twitchers. GET A

LIFE, YOU PRISSY OLD BITCHES!"

Phil punches him hard in the jaw. Lindsay reacts before he

thinks and breaks Phil's nose. Olly jumps away but trips over a carved
pumpkin and goes sprawling on his arse on the lawn. Valentine's mother
appears from nowhere and slams the front door on them all. All that in no
more than three seconds.

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"Come home," Lindsay says quietly. Valentine's grey and black

make-up is smudged and diluted, nothing as obvious as tear tracks but the
redness of his eyes gives it away. As much as he's been shouting, he looks
more upset than angry. Some strange haunted shadow seems to be hanging
over him again, like it sometimes used to when he was very young and
begging Lindsay to hit him to scare it away, and he doesn't want to face it
any more so he steps around Valentine and goes back down the garden
path clutching his throbbing knuckles. After a moment he hears the heavy
clomp of Valentine's boots behind him, and then Olly's clicking cuban
heels as well, but he doesn't look back because he doesn't want to see
Valentine's dad's face streaming with blood from his mashed nose.

"Bev!" he's shouting at the top of his massive lungs, hammering

hard on the front door with his fat fist and ringing the bell over and over.
"Come on, love, let me in, I never started nothing! I ain't got no shoes on!"

Valentine's laughing helplessly by the time they reach the cars,

trying to do it quietly behind his hand. "I like her when she ain't always
wasted. She well tells him off all the time, he ain't got a chance. He's
sleeping in the garage tonight, I bet."

"Are you bleeding?" Lindsay asks. He finds Valentine's hand

and pulls him under a streetlamp, turning his chin up with his fingers so he
can see. "No, just swelling."

"Yeah. Bruises all round tonight, hey?"

"Hm," Lindsay murmurs vaguely, because he doesn't know

what else to say. Olly's still standing there just outside the gate, pigeon-
toed and shamefaced, and he talks to him instead because even that is
easier than dealing with Valentine just now. "Did you break your arse?"

"Ripped my tail a bit."

"Good."

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Valentine's watching them both, nibbling on his black painted

thumbnail and looking troubled. "I'm gonna hug my friend now," he says
to Lindsay. "You don't have to like it. You don't have to believe I don't
wanna fuck him. Feel what you want but it won't make me stop."

"Fine."

He leans against the car and lights a cigarette, keeping his eyes

on the ghostly plume of smoke and the cracks in the kerbstones and the
nighttime green of the privet leaves, but he looks up eventually because...
he's not sure why. He can't help it. Valentine is towering over Olly, Olly's
heels aren't nearly as big. They're hugging and talking quietly, a private
ear-whispered conversation he's not allowed a part of. It's alright. It'll have
to be, because the alternative might as well be death. They break apart
after a while and Olly gives him a sort of half-smile and awkward wave as
he gets into his own car and drives away.

"Do you wanna talk?" Valentine says tentatively. Lindsay holds

his lungful of smoke and hands over the cigarette so Valentine can have
the last few drags. Phil is still bellowing at the front door. Obviously he
doesn't care that much about what the neighbours think.

"No," Lindsay says, blowing the smoke out through his nose.

"Do you?"

"No."

"Good."

"Do you just wanna go home?"

"Yes."

"Can I drive?"

"No."

He wishes he'd said yes just a couple of minutes into the drive.

If Valentine was driving then Lindsay could fake being asleep just so they

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didn't have to force chatter to make the silence less agonising, but as it is
they just sit there for the half an hour it takes to get back to Dulwich and
listen to each other breathe. Valentine keeps taking extra deep breaths as if
he's about to say something, but the words never actually make it past his
lips. Not a single word is spoken the whole way back.

The darkness in the house is cloying and suffocating. Lindsay

wanders round switching lamps on while Valentine rummages through the
booze cabinet and starts drinking neat vodka in girlish little sips straight
from the bottle. "You want some?" he says. The first words since
Hampstead.

"No."

"You want a whiskey and ginger or something?"

"No. You'll miss your band."

"I got their CDs. It's alright. Don't feel like it no more, anyway."

"Mm." Lindsay goes to sit down on the couch, suddenly

exhausted. "Actually, can I have that whiskey?"

"Yeah. Anything in it?"

"Ice?"

"Alright."

He's got his eyes closed, just listening to the tinkle of glass and

ice and the splash of pouring liquids. He's not really tired, just wiped out
and not in the mood for facing up to all this old insanity that's just been
kicked up around them like a dust storm. Things would be so much easier
if they could all just forget, but how do you do that? He's living with the
man who got his best friends killed on a petty vengeful whim, and they
creep around the fact like an unexploded bomb.

"Lindsay," Valentine says quietly. Lindsay makes himself open

his eyes. "I done your drink."

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"Come and sit with me." The burn of the whiskey and the cool

wet ice wakes him up a bit, and he starts curling his fingers very gently in
Valentine's tangled black hair when he sits down. Valentine sighs, a tiny
little breath of a sound, and leans back into his touch. "I didn't know you'd
told him everything."

"All of it. Even the horrible shit things. I didn't think it mattered,

I never thought you'd come back. I wouldn't've blamed you, neither."

"It doesn't matter."

"It fucking does matter, are you mental? I used to think about it

all the time. I used to get nightmares cos I kept seeing that man I shot in
my dreams. Like I couldn't stop remembering how much blood come out
of him, I couldn't stop thinking how fucking lucky it is I'm such a useless
shot cos I aimed in his guts. I wanted him dead for hurting you. But I
swear, I mean it, I swear to god, on Dory's life, anything you want, I swear
I never meant for Ty and Danny to get hurt. And it weren't fair Olly
bringing it up like that, like turning it all into some shitty thing what don't
even matter, just like 'oh yeah my bessie's fine and yours ain't' like it don't
even matter cos it does." He can't seem to stop now he's started, vomiting
out words like he's got violent food poisoning. "My mum and dad wanted
me to go to some therapist cos I stayed over loads after Dory was born and
I woke them up just as much as she did cos of my bad dreams. They said
maybe I had post-traumatic stress disorder from getting kidnapped and it
needed dealing with but how could I tell them what really happened? Like
'oh no I weren't actually kidnapped, it was just a scam cos I hated you and
didn't think you even cared enough to pay up, oh yeah and by the way, you
know that boyfriend I just broke up with? Wait til you hear this...'"

He drinks from his vodka bottle again, leaving a greasy smudge

of black around the rim, but his hand is trembling and he spills some from
the corner of his mouth. Lindsay chases the drip with his fingertip,

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smearing the make-up beneath, but he doesn't say anything. He doesn't
know what to say, but Valentine's doing enough talking for both of them.

"Olly knows everything, I had to tell someone cos it was

splitting me open, I was going out my mind. Cos I know it's all my fault,
even if it turned out worse than I meant it's still my fault, even if they
started it. Olly says it ain't my fault really cos if I got bullied my whole life
and never done nothing... like everyone's got a breaking point, right? And
it's like wrong place wrong time, Ty ripping my monkey was just the little
thing what pushed it just too far, and I weren't getting back at him, I was
getting back at Darrell for making me and Olly run round giving bags of
coke to people when we was like twelve years old and battering us cos he
thought we nicked some money when really they just never gave us
enough, or like getting back at Steven Ambrose for pissing up my back at
Download just cos he didn't like me, or my mum and dad for everything.
That ain't an excuse, just like an explanation. It don't make it okay, it won't
ever be okay and I don't know what to do cos even when me and you ain't
fighting, even when everything's good and people think we're like this
perfect happy couple, it's still just there and it's never going away. And I
know you said never talk about it ever again but that ain't working cos not
talking don't make it go away and I love you so fucking much, and I don't
know what to do cos it was all a mess before, me and you were proper
screwed in the head and like I thought at the time it don't matter if you're
crazy if you're with someone who's crazy in the opposite way cos you still
fit together like Aristophanes said, but I don't wanna be crazy no more.
And me and you keep on talking and talking but we ain't talking about
nothing what matters, and it don't matter if I love you and you love me cos
I can't do this if we just keep on pretending this massive elephant ain't
there doing a big shit in the middle of the room."

"You grew up," Lindsay says. He untangles his fingers from

Valentine's hair, but only so he can lean over to set his empty glass down
on the coffee table. As soon as he's done that he's back again, slipping his

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arm behind Valentine's shoulders and back into his hair, crossing the other
arm around to meet the first and hugging him hard to kill time while he
tries to think of something to say. He can feel Valentine moving, twisting
the cap back on the vodka bottle, then he's clinging back like he's
drowning.

"You kept telling me to."

"You were too young before. It never should have happened."

"Do you regret it?"

"Absolutely."

"All of it?"

"Everything."

"You're a fucking liar," Valentine says fiercely, and holds

Lindsay's jaw to kiss him viciously hard, slimy with black lipstick. He
breaks off for a moment to pull out his false pointy canines, then he's
shoving Lindsay's head back against the top of the cushion and climbing
into his lap to sit straddling him, kissing down the soft whiskers on his
neck and under his chin. "You don't ever have to say I love you back, I
don't care, I just wish I knew how to make it so you don't hate me, cos
loving someone ain't the same as not hating them. Look at me and my
dad."

"I don't hate you."

"That's one of us, then."

"Philip," Lindsay says, trying to squirm away from his mouth

for just a second. "Pip. Christ, all those names and I still don't know what
to call you."

"Valentine."

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"What?"

"Listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"It's not my place to forgive anybody, but if it makes a

difference you should know I do. If that helps." Eye contact is horrible, it's
always been painful for him to look people in the eye when he's being
sincere – people who matter, anyway. His mum. Ellie. Valentine
especially. Lindsay's got his eyes fixed on a point somewhere near
Valentine's nose, saying the words very quietly because they're
embarrassing. He feels stupid saying them, so he does it very quietly and
without looking him in the eye. "What did I tell you before? Either I get
over it, or I don't get over it. I might have bad days when I bring it up just
to be horrible because you're winning an argument or something, but if I
don't get over it we're both in trouble because nobody else in the world is
ever going to want to put up with either one of us."

"That's a fucking bleak view on our relationship, Lindsay." But

he's smiling, his eyes are shining like a little girl at a boyband concert. He
presses his face into Lindsay's neck again, breathing hotly against his skin.
"You've got lipstick in your beard."

"Want to get lipstick somewhere else?" Lindsay suggests, and

Valentine collapses in bright bursts of laughter. Lindsay pretends he can't
feel the dampness on his neck and Valentine doesn't seem to realise,
wiping his eyes with his fingertips in an absent sort of way like he doesn't
know he's doing it.

"I think you should make good on your offer from earlier, since

I never actually went to the gig."

Lindsay makes the split-second decision before forty-one years

of repression can clamp down on his good sense. "Alright."

"...you ain't serious."

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"As if I'd joke about this."

"Spose." Valentine sits back on Lindsay's knees to see him

better, looking at him strangely. "Are you ill?"

"No."

"Will you do what I say?"

"Within reason."

"Will you wear my handcuffs?" Valentine says, smirking slowly

and running his fingertip across the shiny silver buckle of the left one.

"Will you tell Olly?"

"If you wear my handcuffs I ain't telling no one, that'll be my

private wank fantasy for life."

"Fine. But don't expect me to enjoy myself."

"Yeah right. You'll be all like 'please sir, can I have some

more?' when I'm done."

"Money where your mouth is, please."

"Fucking best night of my life!" Valentine says, pumping the air

with invisible pompoms like a retarded cheerleader, then he stops and
remembers. "Well. It's getting there, anyway."

Lindsay has to disagree, when he's naked on his back with his

hands cuffed together around the centre bar of the bedstead. He squirms
about, hot and sweating and uncomfortable while Valentine takes forever
and a day in the bathroom cleaning the grey paint off his face. When he
finally deems himself ready to be looked at, face cleaned but eyeliner
reapplied and hair fluffed up into even more of a ridiculous birds' nest, he
comes back into the room and stands at the foot of the bed with that
asinine smirk still on his face.

Then he starts taking off his clothes.

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"Don't look anywhere except at me," he says quietly, as if

Lindsay could look away. Being naked seems to be his favourite state, but
this is something else. He unfastens the twelve buckles down the side of
each boot, working them slowly one at a time, then steps out of them and
starts peeling himself out of his silky zippered trousers, taking his pants
and socks with them. He's half-hard already and stroking himself harder,
watching Lindsay's face for a reaction he really doesn't want to give.
Lindsay's trying so hard to keep his face blank, but it's impossible;
whatever doesn't show there is obvious from the way his cock is laying
heavy and aching against the crease his thigh makes when it meets his
body and hardening by the second. Even worse, or maybe better, Valentine
moves his hand away from his flushed cock and starts putting his boots
back on. He turns round, utterly shameless, and bends over to start
refastening the twenty-four buckles from the instep up, and Lindsay's
mouth goes dry like cotton wool.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Did I say you could speak?"

"You never said I needed permission."

"Consider it said." He's smiling, though, pink-cheeked and

looking at Lindsay though his long black eyelashes, much more coy than
dom. He's crap at taking charge. "These boots weren't made for walking."

"You're ridiculous."

"And you're not doing what you're told." He leaps on the bed

suddenly, making the mattress bounce up and down squeakily, and throws
one leg over Lindsay's hips so he's sitting just above his cock, maddeningly
close but not quite touching. He slaps Lindsay on the cheek very lightly
and whispers, "One more sound out of you that ain't just 'yes' and you're
getting gagged with Ophelia's knickers, is that clear?"

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Lindsay sighs, mainly because he thinks it's expected of him,

and says, "Yes."

"Good," Valentine murmurs through that curling evil smile, and

moves down the bed to press a kiss against the ancient tattoo on Lindsay's
ankle. That's as close as he ever dares to get to anybody's feet, with his
ludicrous phobia, but he's got no qualms about working up. Lindsay
watches the red lights of his digital alarm clock change seventeen times,
gritting his teeth and twisting his hands uselessly in the black leather cuffs
as Valentine ghosts his lips over every available inch of skin except the
parts that really matter.

He cracks eventually. "Do you want me to say please so you've

got an excuse to shove your knickers in my mouth?" he blurts out, and
Valentine laughs breathlessly.

"Now you're getting it."

He returns from his underwear drawer with a pair of repulsive

hot pink frilly French knickers he's never actually worn, thank god, and an
ivory pair he said he wore when he was Tess's bridesmaid. This set he
pushes into Lindsay's hands; the pink pair go into his mouth, not quite
enough to make him retch. They hang half out between his lips like
magenta cotton puke.

"I won't hear you saying stop. If you can't breathe or you ain't

having fun just drop them other knickers and I'll stop, alright? Nod or
shake."

Lindsay nods his head, feeling sick with embarrassment and

even sicker at the rolling surge of heat in the pit of his stomach. The safety
talk was always the fucking worst. He remembers that day forever ago,
seven years ago, when they talked about rules and safewords and
boundaries and it felt like it almost killed him.

"Good. Now be quiet and let me play."

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It doesn't seem fair. 'Play' in Valentine's language appears to

mean 'cut off your circulation by sitting on you and masturbating'. Still, it's
sort of hypnotic. It could be worse. Valentine is such a disgusting little
exhibitionist, at least he's putting on a hell of a show: spitting in his cupped
hand, moaning gently as he's stroking himself, closing his eyes and tipping
his head back like Lindsay isn't there, like he's utterly alone and having the
time of his life, then the next second hunching forward with that filthy
smile curling up the corners of his lips, staring Lindsay in the eye and
laughing when he squirms. He's still got his ripped fishnet shirt on, he
keeps hooking his fingers in the holes and twisting the fabric back on
itself. He always needed something to hold on to while he was getting off.
Lindsay's name is very visible under the black mesh, bold and new, stark
against Valentine's skin, and he keeps his eyes fixed there, watching the
shift of Valentine's muscles and the way he's gently thrusting his hips up
and down to meet the movement of his fist. The buttery soft leather of
Valentine's boots is pressed close against Lindsay's thighs and once that
fact breaks through all the other sensations it's the only one he can focus
on.

Valentine knows. How the fuck does he know? "You like my

boots?" he says sweetly, like he's talking about kittens or fairy cakes and
not platform heeled buckle boots that come right up above his knees.
Lindsay shakes his head, but something gives him away. His skin is
shining with sweat, it's sticking his hair to his forehead, and his cock is wet
and flushed dark, aching and ignored. Please he tries to say, but the
revolting gag turns it into an incoherent strangled throat noise that just
makes Valentine laugh and apparently take pity on him because he gets up
off the bed then, though he makes sure to carefully drag the full length of
his boot across Lindsay's thigh until all his skin feels on fire. He stands up
beside the bed and fights free from his fishnet top, throwing it to drape
across the lamp in the corner and sliding open the top drawer to find lube
and condoms. Lindsay steals the opportunity to get a proper look at him.

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It's not like he doesn't get to see him wandering round the house naked all
the damn time whether it's appropriate or not, but there's something
thrillingly different about his manner tonight. He's always so casual and
comfortable; tonight, he seems very aware of himself, but not in the way
Lindsay always feels, as if he's embarrassed or he feels like he doesn't
belong in his own skin. It's a new kind of confidence, a sort of look-at-me
bravado, but he's making an effort to hold his belly taut and it seems like
every single movement is carefully calculated to show off his best side –
the back – and provoke the biggest reaction in a way that doesn't seem
entirely comfortable. The heels make his arse look magnificent, as much as
Lindsay always takes the piss about his insane choice of footwear. He must
know this, shifting his weight from foot to foot to make the most of it,
glancing back over his shoulder to make sure Lindsay is hungrily watching
the way it makes his flesh bounce.

"Dirty old man," he says cheerfully, rolling the johnny down

easily. He does it so naturally, he's not even looking what he's doing. He
never had to before, he never had a reason to wear one and the one time he
got to top they never bothered. Now Lindsay can't stop running awful
pictures through his mind: Valentine with Olly's legs wrapped round his
waist or up over his shoulders, Olly bent face-first over some piece of
furniture or a car seat and Valentine draped over his back and sheathing
himself up Olly's arse like a sword. He doesn't realise he's yanking angrily
on the handcuffs until Valentine's giving him an amused, indulgent sort of
look and telling him to calm down.

How can I calm down? he wants to shout until his throat cracks

and bleeds. How the hell can I calm down when Ellie's all the way in
Montreal where you never have to see her but the person you've been
living with is in fucking Shoreditch and constantly in my house? Once after
that time in Donington, off their faces on pills, when Ellie sucked one off
the end of Lindsay's finger and Ty tried to take his face off for it, Danny
sagely told him that jealousy's a terminal illness, mate. There's tricks to

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make you feel better but nobody's getting over that shit. A rare moment of
cod profundity from the computer game nerd who still got his mother to do
his washing in his mid-thirties.

He tries to calm himself. Feeling like this gets them nowhere

except into endless spiralling arguments about trust and blame-slinging.
Valentine doesn't seem to notice there's anything wrong, blithely crawling
back onto the bed wearing nothing now but his boots, silver necklaces and
that cursed condom. He's holding a pump-top bottle of lube and he does
his favourite thing with it now, the thing he always does when Lindsay's
the one on top because he says it feels nicer when it's all slidey for both of
them, not just the one doing the actual ramming: he pumps out a big goopy
mess of lube all over Lindsay's body, between his navel and where his hair
gets thicker at the base of his snail trail, scooping some up on his fingers
and leaving the rest where it is. "Alright?" he says, raising his eyebrows
with the question and waggling his slippery fingers like he's waving hello,
and Lindsay can't do anything but helplessly nod his head. He makes the
most pathetic noise of his life at the first touch of Valentine's fingertips,
part whingey protest and part encouragement because it actually feels
good, he's determined to let it feel good this time – it's not like he's got the
problem of worrying whether his friends are listening in any more. It's just
strange and hardly real, tied to the bed with somebody's fingers twisting up
his arse when he's only ever had anything up there once before in his life
and that doesn't count because he didn't come. He squeezes his eyes shut
and tries to steady his breathing, then he decides that's stupid. He's come
this far, he's handcuffed to the bed, he's about to let a tattooed part-time
drag queen in thigh-high leather boots fuck him. What's the point of trying
for self-control?

It's better when he lets go. He stops trying to breathe slowly and

just lets it burst out through his nose in a desperate, pleading moan, settling
into a vague pattern of hums and whimpers when Valentine starts working
his fingers in and out carefully, two at first and then the unexpected,

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delicious burn of three. His eyes fly open in horror when he feels the tip of
Valentine's little finger brush against his arse where the other three are
pressed, but Valentine laughs and tells him shush, babe, I'm just kidding
and he settles back against the pillows trying to glare fiercely but really
just sweating like hell and chewing on the knickers gag until his jaw hurts.
The pressure's making his injured cheekbone throb again, making his eye
feel watery. He's terrified it's going to spill over and Valentine's going to
think he's crying, but it doesn't happen.

His cock feels so much thicker than his fingers. Lindsay makes

more incomprehensible noises around the gag, clenching the fabric hard
between his teeth and trying to move his hips, though he's not exactly sure
whether he wants to move away or push himself down harder. It's so
different to how he remembers it before. They were drunk before. This
time they're stone cold sober, he's not feeling any kind of effect from that
double whiskey earlier. He's not feeling anything at all that's not connected
to what's going on between their bodies, the hot wet demanding thrust of it,
the press of Valentine's fingers in his thighs, the soft leather boots, the ache
of unused muscles holding his legs in unfamiliar positions, the soft brush
of Valentine's backcombed hair against his shin, the glistening sheen of
sweat all over their skin and how he can barely tell it apart from the slick
of lube on his body making every touch of Valentine's belly against his
cock almost unbearable. He winds the ivory satin pants around his hands,
slipping and twisting his fingers through the leg holes so there's not even
the slightest change he'll accidentally drop them. From years of thinking
this kind of loss of control would send him mad, he's reduced to a
whimpering sweating mess of need, and when Valentine grasps a frill on
the pink knickers and pulls them out of Lindsay's mouth like a magician,
the only thing Lindsay can do is gasp in lungfuls of hot sweaty air and let it
out in a babbling string of frantic shamelessness: please, ohgod, please,
yesss, harder, there, there, fuck.

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"Told you I'd make you beg," Valentine says. He's on fire with

happiness, laughing and breathless. He manages to get a hand between
them to wrap around Lindsay's straining cock and brings him off in just a
couple of strokes, kissing him hard and biting his lip raw, swallowing
down his gasps and swears like water while Lindsay jackknifes on the bed
and doesn't even care if he dislocates his shoulders with his hands still in
the cuffs. He barely even realises when Valentine comes a minute later.
He's vaguely aware of the room going quiet – the only time Valentine ever
shuts up in bed is when he's coming – but it's like a dream. It feels like his
entire lower half is still twitching and spasming, damp with sweat and
riddled with goosebumps.

"Please, please god let me do this again," Valentine says after a

moment when they've both started to come down. His face is flushed dark,
high up on his cheekbones. It makes him look very young, like it
accentuates his angles and turns him back into that pointy-faced
bewitching idiotic teenager Lindsay first knew.

"Maybe," he manages. He can still taste cotton in his mouth,

and the sharp tang of blood where Valentine bit his lip, though it doesn't
feel like it actually broke the skin.

"Maybe my arse, you fucking loved it!"

"Mm... it's like chocolate cake. Once in a while it's nice, but

how sick would you get if you had it three times a day?"

"As if you'd get sick of it. I never seen you come so hard."

"Shut it." He clings the chain between the leather cuffs against

the bedstead. "Let me out."

"I see we're back to Bossyboots Brown," Valentine says, knee-

walking up the bed with one leg on either side of Lindsay's body until he
can reach the buckles and work them loose. Lindsay can't help wincing at
the ache in his shoulders, but at the same time he's wondering how bad it's

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going to be in the morning and kind of relishing the thought of feeling it all
day at work, every time he puts a book back on the shelf remembering how
it happened...

"Christ, I'm turning into you," he murmurs, twisting the second

half of the sentence into an unstoppable yawn. Valentine just laughs,
throwing the cuffs onto the carpet and settling Lindsay's arm around his
body.

"No more taking the piss cos I like getting tied up and

molested." Now he's yawning too, wide and childishly sleepy against the
back of his hand.

"Don't go to sleep in those stupid boots."

"You love my stupid boots."

"Take them off."

Lindsay helps, pulling Valentine's right leg into his lap and

working on those buckles while Valentine does the rest. As soon as they're
off, Valentine dives across the room to turn off the lamp in the corner then
gets back under Lindsay's arm, sliding his fingers through the lube still
pooled around his navel and smeared across his body. He'd almost
forgotten all the madness of the night, until Valentine's voice suddenly cuts
through the darkness in a searching, hopeful whisper: "Lindsay? Are me
and you okay?"

"I think so."

"I know we're fucked up."

"Yeah."

"And there's things that won't ever go away."

"Mmhm."

"But there's more good than bad, ain't there?"

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"You know pillowtalk makes me homicidal. Go to sleep." He

hears Valentine laugh quietly, feels a gentle kiss on his shoulder, and
responds by brushing his fingers against the place he can always find in the
dark, the Hedwig tattoo on Valentine's hipbone.

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10.

December 2014

It's hard to say whose idea it was to have a massive family

Christmas in their house this year. They both swear blind it was the other
one.

"I hate Christmas," Lindsay says, trying not to sulk like a

teenager. "I would never suggest this circus."

"Well, I'd never suggest putting you and my dad in the same

room with mistletoe, would I?"

Lindsay goes away to quietly remove every scrap of mistletoe

from the house and put it in the bin outside, just in case.

It's not so bad, all things considered. The run-up to the end of

the year is completely taken over by Valentine's favourite thing in the
world – shopping – which means for the first time since Lindsay met him
he seems genuinely, constantly happy without even the smallest blip.
That's quite pathetic, really. He's late home from work every night, laden
down with bags in every imaginable colour of paper and plastic, brimful
with clothes and toys and wool and books and sometimes secrets; these he

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tries to smuggle into the house and up to the room he's taken over for his
sewing machines and art junk, but since he clatters around accidentally
making way more noise than usual every time he tries to be sneaky, it's
completely obvious when he's bringing something back for Lindsay.

Lindsay actually braves it one time, wrapping his scarf round

tightly against the winter chill and then nearly passing out from heat
exhaustion on the loathsome Northern line, packed in so tightly with a
gaggle of Christmas shoppers that he can't even get to the door on his stop
and has to stand there fuming at them while the train takes him to the
wrong side of the river. It's not claustrophobia that makes him like this,
just a deep dislike for people in general. It's the same with cats and dogs
and children; occasionally you'll get one that doesn't instantly make you
want to kill it, but as a species people are as bad as cockroaches. You don't
want to be trapped in an underground tunnel with cockroaches. He
breathes deeply in the cold winter air as soon as he breaks free from the
crowd, then decides there's not enough nicotine in it and lights a cigarette,
plugs his earbuds in and turns Rattus Norvegicus up as loud as he can bear
it so he doesn't have to reply to anybody who thinks wishing him a happy
Christmas might actually give him one, and starts walking back across
London Bridge.

It's so easy to see Valentine, even though the whole of London

is like a page in a massive Where's Wally? book full of identikit people in
hats and scarves; Valentine is the one being chased by three children in
wide wobbly circles around the ice rink, screaming louder than any of
them. Olly's oldest two are far too grown-up to play, of course. Lillian is
skating round the rink with three of her friends, all of them posing
nonchalantly every time they glide past a gang of boys as if they haven't
even noticed them. Sam is far too cool to go on the ice at all. Lindsay
recognises the slouchy dark grey hat he's wearing as one Valentine was
knitting a few weeks ago. He's not sure whether going over to him is a
good idea – everything they've talked about and fought about and

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Valentine's cried like a baby about has resolved some problems but the
thought is still there, deep inside his brain like a tumour: They fucked each
other while this kid was sleeping in the room above, and they did it for
years.

It's stupid. It's not Sam's fault. Lindsay starts wrapping the cable

of his earphones around his iPod and goes to stand with him.

"Nice hat."

"It's warm. What's up?"

"Nothing much. Walking on the beaches, looking at the

peaches."

Sam smiles suddenly, looking down to the phone he's got

cradled in the palm of his fingerless glove and pressing a button. The tinny
sound of music is almost lost in the noise of the crowd, but just about
audible. "Whatever happened to all the heroes, all the Shakespearoes?" he
says, then turns it back off and shoves it in his pocket. "You got good taste
for an old fart."

"Well, then. You've got good taste for someone who wasn't

even born until this century."

"Are you coming shopping with us?"

"Might. Why, do you want me not to?"

"No, you should come cos it might not take like seven hours

then. He's..." He makes a frustrated, vague sort of gesture and stops,
thumbing his glasses back up to the top of his nose.

"What?"

"Nothing. I ain't badmouthing your boyfriend."

"I badmouth him all the time, don't worry about it."

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"He's worse than my nans and aunties and mum and dad and

sisters and their mum all put together. He needs... on a bloody lead like a
dog. Him and my dad do my head in when they make me go shopping, I'd
rather lie down in the road."

"I know that feeling. Not that I've ever had the pleasure of going

shopping with your dad."

"Lucky," Sam mutters. He doesn't say anything for a while, just

watching the skaters on the ice rink down at the bottom of the castle wall,
then hesitantly he says, "You don't like my dad very much, do you?"

And then there's a problem. Do you lie to a twelve-year-old

child and tell him you don't feel sick and murderous every time you see his
father, or do you tell the truth and sound like the worst bastard alive for
irrationally hating the man whose boyfriend ran off with you?

"I don't know him very well." That'll do.

"He don't like you."

"That's hardly a secret."

"He thinks you're bad for Pip."

Lindsay's starting to regret coming over. "Well-" he starts, but

Sam interrupts.

"You don't have to get defensive or nothing, that's just what Dad

thinks, it ain't what nobody else thinks. Me and Lilly was talking about it."

That feels weird, having his love life raked over by Valentine's

ex's kids without realising they even really remembered that he existed.
He's got no idea what he's meant to say now. It's not like he talks a lot
anyway, but that's by choice; he's always got the perfect word to use at the
right time to win an argument or make somebody feel really good or really
bad. He's hardly ever genuinely lost for words.

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"Oh," he manages vaguely. He goes in his pocket for another

smoke but makes himself stop. Like Olly needs another reason to hate him,
if he ever found out Lindsay was blowing smoke in his kid's face. Then:
"Do you think he was happier before?" he says, quietly so nobody else
hears and quickly so he won't wuss out of it.

"Pip?"

"Of course Pip. I don't care whether your dad is happy or not."

That makes Sam smile. Pip always said he had an odd sense of humour, all
straight talking and sharp wit. God knows where he got that from.

"He just frets. He's a pain in the arse, he acts on like we're all

still Joe's age, he don't mean to be a bastard or nothing, he just worries.
And yeah Pip was happy before but he's a bit simple, innit. Long as he gets
fed and shagged he's alright."

It's so difficult not to laugh at the kid, how grown-up his

scornful tone of voice sounds – difficult as well to keep thinking of him as
a kid. Twelve or not, Olly's spawn or not, he's kind of alright.

"I think I can handle that much," Lindsay says, and Sam gives

him a smirking sideways look.

"I bet you can."

When Valentine and the others finally tire of skating and come

dashing over in a blur of rainbow scarves and pompom hats, they find the
unlikeliest friends in the world swapping music and sneering at the world –
and while the rest of them go shopping, Lindsay and Sam have coffee and
talk about the Clash.

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11.

Lindsay's mum drives herself down from Wales on Christmas

Eve morning, and in her usual style she gets straight to business as soon as
the hugs and hellos and how-are-yous are over with and Lindsay's nipped
out to the shop because she's fussy and doesn't like his teabags.

"I want to ask you something," she says to Pip.

"Yeah?"

"Can I have a tattoo?"

When Pip's stopped hacking up his lungful of hot chocolate he

shrieks, "What?" She doesn't say anything for a minute, just stays where
she is with her legs curled up beneath her and the side of her face resting
on her hand, smiling faintly.

"What's this, Mr. Valentine, ageism?"

"Not at all." He can't stop laughing, she's just so much cooler

than Lindsay and it's amazing. "Do you know what you want? I'll do it
now if you're ready, I got all my stuff here."

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"Ready when you are. I've been thinking about it for years."

It's probably not very nice for Lindsay to come into his living

room and find his mother half-shirtless on the couch and his boyfriend
looming over her with a felt tip, but that's his own fault for being so
narrow-minded. He doesn't even say anything, he just stares at them
blankly for a moment then turns right back round and leaves. They hear
him slam every door between them and the front one, then the snarl of his
car engine as he escapes.

"You know what, for someone so good in bed he can be a right

fucking prude sometimes," Pip says without thinking, then realises and
lamely adds, "Oops!" but Frances just laughs.

"He's like his dad."

"Oh yeah, he was a bit of a love machine too, was he?"

"A prude," she says, but she's fighting back a wicked smile.

"He'd hate this. He didn't even like me driving or drinking or listening to
the Clash. He never said I couldn't, he wouldn't have dared, but he didn't
like it. He was just old-fashioned, it was a different generation. Same as
you two, hey?"

Pip moves his stool a bit closer to the couch and just goes on

drawing, inking little swirling mehndi-style curls into the peacock's long
tail where it swoops from the front of her left shoulder down to the middle
of her chest. "You do know this is gonna hurt like fuck, don't you?"

"I had my whole breast chopped off, petal, I think I can take it."

"Well. Good point, yeah." The old scar underlining his drawing

is ugly and lumpy but everywhere around it is tanned. She probably
sunbathes topless and fuck what everyone else thinks. "Can you see what
I'm doing, does this look alright?"

"It's beautiful."

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"I can wash it off and start over if you want anything different."

"No, it's perfect. I trust you."

"Alright." He shuts up for a while, getting everything ready on

the top tray of his wheeled stand, lining up his little ink cups and taking the
lid off his Vaseline tub. "Ready?"

"Think so."

"I'm gonna do one little line on his crown so you can see what it

feels like, yeah?"

"Mmhm."

He turns on his machine and gets started, drawing the inky

needle tip down the first tiny pen line. "How's that?"

"For god's sake, I'm not a balloon, you won't pop me."

He laughs at that and gets started for real, working steadily over

the outline of the bird's head. "Your skin's amazing. You've had work
done, ain't you? Joan Collins."

"How dare you!"

"Like a facelift. Chestlift."

"You'll get a slap." There's a laugh in her voice, she's not really

annoyed.

"How come you never got reconstruction surgery?"

"Because everybody kept telling me to, like the idea of a one-

titted woman's the most disgusting thing they could think of. Like 'you
really should get that sorted, you know' or 'how can you bear it, don't you
get funny looks?' and 'you won't find a nice man if you're only half a
woman'. Hilarious. Like that's the only thing I could possibly be living for,
pulling some shallow berk not five years after my husband popped it."

"You punk. Rebel where you can, right?"

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"I just don't want any nosy buggers telling me what to do with

myself."

"Amen." He moves his hand for a second so she can rest her

arm up above her head, and holds his breath to draw the long top line of
the peacock's body. "I know you've got a boyfriend, though."

"You don't know any such thing."

"Yeah, but ladies don't wear red lacy bras if they don't want

people seeing them."

She hesitates for a moment, then says in that same suppressed-

laugh voice from before: "Busted."

"You have? That's ace, that's so cool! How long for?"

"Well I don't know, I've not met him yet. We've been talking

online, there's a whole group of people meeting up from the Mescaleros
fanboard tomorrow night."

"Lindsay's gonna shit himself inside out."

"Don't tell him, he'll only sneer."

"Yeah, but what did you just say? Nobody gets to tell you what

to do with yourself. If you wanna go out with someone that's up to you, not
him."

"But I don't want him to get all... you know."

"So stop letting him get away with it."

"Mm. Can you stop for a minute? I need a break."

Pip turns his machine off and holds up her water bottle so she

can get at the straw without shifting. He watches her while she's drinking,
how brightly her eyes are shining and how pink her cheeks are. She's
blushing like a teenager. Lindsay couldn't be annoyed, how could he

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possibly be annoyed? Pip's never seen her look this flushed and thrilled
before, and he's been to a Siouxsie gig with her.

"You should tell him. He'd be happy for you, I bet he would."

"Yeah, maybe. We'll see, he might have a face like the arse end

of a cow, no point getting excited and spilling the news until I see him in
the flesh." She's got her chin tucked down, looking at the dark tattooed
lines on her chest. "It's wonderful, I love it."

"Will be when it's done. You ready to go again?"

She nods, and Pip turns his machine back on to start tracing the

long flowing outlines of the tail. "Tell me about Lindsay."

"When he was young?"

"No, I mean your Lindsay." That's no good, that still covers

them both. "Your husband," he amends. "Lindsay don't talk about him
much. He goes all emo if I ask. Like sometimes out the blue he goes oh
let's watch this film on telly tonight cos it was my dad's favourite or he
points a car out and says my dad had one of them when I was little, but
anything else... nope. He ain't even got pictures in the house. He's got loads
of you and him but there's only that one of all three of you up on the
landing wall."

"Yeah. He took it awful hard when he died, he was only

eighteen."

"Were they close?"

"Best friends. I never saw him so comfortable with anybody

else in the world until you, not even Tyler."

He feels a shock of warmth in his stomach, unfurling out across

his skin in every direction and making the hairs on his arms and neck stand
up. "Yeah?"

"Why are you surprised?"

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"Dunno. Just always am. Me and him ain't got nothing in

common, we shouldn't get on. I just suddenly remember sometimes and it's
like... oh yeah, he thinks I'm alright, this is amazing."

"Well, I never thought I'd marry a farmer twice my age. You

can't choose things like that. How boring would it be if you got to
choose?"

"Try telling Lindsay that next time he has a fit cos I'm wearing

magenta skinnies."

"He's not allowed to say a thing against your clothes. I'm

running out of storage space, I've brought a ton of photo albums you two
can have, his old school pictures with rubbish eighties hair and those
ridiculous things all the kids wore at raves."

He has to stop and turn the needle machine off again, he's

laughing too much to concentrate. "You do know you're my favourite,
right?"

She doesn't answer, she just gives him that familiar evil smile

again and settles back against the cushions, holding the other half of her
shirt down over her shocking scarlet underwear. By the time Lindsay gets
home the tattoo is finished and hidden back under her shirt. He pretends it
doesn't exist, and finally makes that cup of tea.

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12.

Ellie phones on Christmas afternoon. Her name flashes up on

Lindsay's mobile when he's not in the room and Pip's not sure what to do,
leave it and let it ring or take it to find him or... this is fucking stupid, he
tells himself, and answers it just before the sixth ring sends it to
answerphone.

"Hey, it's Pip."

There's a little pause before she replies. "Hello."

"I think Lindsay's having a poo or something, shall I get him to

ring you back?"

"I can wait. I just wanted to say happy Christmas."

"Joyeux Noël in Montreal."

"Yes."

He escapes from the noisy living room and goes into the library

where it's silent, like the tons of books are studio soundproofing. It's cold
in here, and as he talks he manages to squirm into a cardigan Lindsay left

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at his desk without dropping the phone from where it's tucked between his
ear and shoulder. "How are you?"

"Fine. It's been snowing. The girls still aren't used to white

Christmases, I think they're trying to build an igloo in the garden."

He's trying to imagine them, all these years older than they were

when he knew them, and he can't picture it. He wonders why Lindsay's got
no photos of them up in the house when Pip's got loads of himself with
Olly's kids – wonders how much he misses them and if he regrets
anything, and wonders if Ellie hates him, or both of them. He's got this
urge to apologise and doesn't know whether he should.

"We sent some stuff, did you get it?"

"Yes. Thank you. We're not opening anything until after dinner,

it's not even eight o'clock yet."

"Oh yeah, time difference. I always forget." Lindsay's old grey

cardigan is thick and slightly scratchy against Pip's bare arms, but it smells
warm and comforting; not aftershave, because he doesn't shave, but soap
and cigarettes and espresso and sweat. He brings the deep V up to cover
his nose, but then he can't talk into the phone. He doesn't know what to say
anyway. The silence drags on, excruciating and brimful of unsaid things.

Ellie is the first to crack and say something. "Are you happy?"

"Yes," he says cautiously, dropping the fabric away from his

face, not sure whether it's an accusation. You boyfriend-poaching whore.

"That's good."

"Yeah. So's Lindsay."

"I know."

"I'm sorry," he says, then cringes and hides in the cardigan again

because he never meant to, it's only going to blast this all wide open and
make it sound like he wants to talk about it when he doesn't. "I never

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thought nothing would all work out like this, I never meant to steal no
one's boyfriend."

"You didn't. He left, he went and found you. You didn't find

him."

"Spose."

"I don't want things to be awkward."

"No."

"I don't want to waste your Christmas, I should go."

"You don't have to."

"There's a snowman to build."

"Alright."

"Will you tell Lin I phoned?"

"Yeah, I'll get him to ring you back, alright?"

"We're flying over in February for my nephew's wedding, I

hope we can meet up."

"Yeah. Cool. Me too, that'll be ace. Say happy Christmas to the

girls from me."

"I will. Bye, hon." She hangs up quickly and Pip brings his

socked feet up onto the cushion of the old leather armchair, pulling his
knees up to his chest and stretching the cardigan right over his legs. It feels
like ages later when someone taps on the door. Pip's face has gone damp
and warm from his own breaths trapped in the prison of wool where he's
been hiding again, and the air feels very cool on his skin when he looks up.

"Yeah?"

"Don't be rude, come back and be a good host."

"It's only our family, they don't count. I was on the phone."

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"Oh." Lindsay closes the door behind himself, comes right over

and crouches on the floorboards in front of the chair to start unbuttoning
his stretched cardigan from around Pip's legs. "Is everything alright?"

"Ellie says happy Christmas and thank you for the presents and

they're all coming over in February for a wedding so let's meet up."

"That'll be nice," Lindsay says after a tiny pause. "I hate when

you do this to my clothes, stop it."

"Sorry." Pip drops Lindsay's phone on top of the paperwork

scattered across the desk and wraps his arms around his knees instead. He
wishes he'd just let it ring to answerphone, wishes she'd called five minutes
earlier or later when Lindsay was there to pick it up himself. "Do you talk
to her lots?"

"Said the pot to the kettle."

"I'm just asking, I ain't being pissy or nothing."

"Good. There's no need." He creaks to his feet and leans over to

put a kiss on the top of Pip's head. "Come on, let's go back through."

"I want a proper kiss first."

Lindsay's smiling a bit now, threading his fingers gently through

Pip's hair. "Is that so?"

"Yeah. Sit down, I want a cuddle." He gets up and manoeuvres

Lindsay into the chair, curling himself awkwardly into his lap until
Lindsay laughs and slips both arms around him.

"You're too big for this."

"Shut up. Nobody's ever too big for a cuddle."

It doesn't happen nearly so much any more. Back when they

started it would happen all the time against Lindsay's fibbed wishes, Pip
would curl up like a cat and just sit there watching telly with him or getting
in the way when he was trying to read, or he'd fall asleep wrapped in

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Lindsay's warmth and scent until the grumbling about how heavy and bony
he was woke him back up. Lindsay always let it happen, though, so he
couldn't have minded that much. He's skimming his fingers down Pip's
back now, slipping under the loose hem of the open cardigan and up to rub
wide circles against the cotton of his t-shirt. "Don't be upset. It won't do
any good. What happened happened and now it's stopped so just let it go."

"Now who's being a pot? Or a kettle. Which one are you?"

"Not sure it matters."

"Do you love me?"

He feels another kiss bump gently off the top of his head, and

slips the tip of his thumb between his lips because he feels tired, suddenly,
and like he might cry. "I do when you behave yourself," Lindsay murmurs
into his hair, never stopping the slow, warm movements of his hand.

"I am now."

"I know you are."

"I want everyone in the world to fuck off, I just wanna be with

you."

"Don't be silly."

"I ain't even being silly, just it feels like that sometimes. Like if

the whole world just disappeared I wouldn't even care long as you was still
here and I was still here." Lindsay doesn't make any reply to that, unless
the action of tipping Pip's chin up with his fingertips and kissing him softly
counts as one. Pip clings on, sliding his fingers across the short soft hair of
Lindsay's beard like it's the silky edge of a comfort blanket. "Lindsay. I
love you."

"I know you do. You don't have to keep telling me, I won't

forget."

"I like saying it."

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"Don't get offended, but you're really heavy."

"Charming." He really doesn't want to get up. He tries moving

instead, spreading his weight a bit more and settling back against Lindsay's
chest, tipping his head back against his shoulder so he can still see him. "Is
that any better?"

"Yes. Sweetheart, come on, we can't leave them on their own all

day."

"It's just family, who are we trying to impress? I like it when

you call me that."

"I know." Lindsay exhales, nothing as dramatic as a sigh, just a

little quiet breath that tickles the side of Pip's face. His hand is resting on
Pip's chest now, and he starts inching it down to touch the button at the top
of his jeans. "Is this what you want?"

"It's always what I want."

"Can you be quiet?"

"Not sure."

"Put your thumb back in." He shifts the arm around Pip's body,

moving up around the front of his shoulders, and presses his palm gently
against the red denim between his legs. "Can you be quick?"

"Yeah," he says, slurring around his thumb. He can feel himself

getting instantly harder, the pressure of Lindsay's hand and the way he's
learning to look him in the eye. His zip sounds like a chainsaw in the thick
silence when Lindsay draws it down, and he braces his feet against the
chair to lift up and push his jeans and pants down just enough so Lindsay
can start stroking him gently with his spit-wet hand.

"Quiet," Lindsay murmurs against Pip's hot face. "I don't need

my mum hearing you get off."

"Or mine. Or my dad."

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"Look how hard you're getting. Vile little exhibitionist, you love

this."

"I love you."

"Thumb," Lindsay orders, and Pip puts it back between his teeth

and tries not to make any more sounds, tries not to think about all the
parents and the little sister playing card games down the hall. Tries to wish
the whole world away, especially Canada.

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13.

It's probably not going to be too bad after all. He can pass

rudeness off as being a fussy chef and not wanting anybody getting under
his feet in the kitchen while he's preparing dinner. He can hear shrieks and
thuds upstairs in the living room and Valentine laughing, obviously
determined to give his sister a good go on the BMX they bought for her
whether it's pissing down rain outside or not. Lindsay tries not to think
about chipped antique furniture and sticky drinks spilled on expensive
cream rugs and pops open a bottle of wine. It's the only way to get through.

He thinks it might be Valentine when he hears footsteps on the

stairs a while later, and he's half-right. It's a Valentine, it's not his. He's still
getting used to being the second most important person in Valentine's life
now he's got a little sister. It's strange. He tries not to let it get to him as
much as it does.

"Beverley," he says when she comes into the kitchen. It sounds

stupid and formal and he downs his glass of wine. "Can I get you a glass

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of-" Oh shit. "Anything?" he finishes weakly. If she noticed the stumble,
and she must have done, she's too polite to let it show.

"Just water. Show me where you keep the glasses, I'll do it."

"Up there. Water in the fridge, there should be ice left in the

freezer." He wants more wine and feels awkward about doing it when she's
there. It's no different to Valentine smoking all that weed in front of him,
or getting delirious on pills a couple of the times he talked Lindsay into
coming out with him; it's a constant itch, one he can't quite reach to
scratch. Things are different now, he cares enough not to let it get too
much again – but that's what he thought last time, and the time before.
Self-control always seems such an easy concept when it's not being tested,
but the step from getting off your face in a packed club and feeling the
bass and chemicals thump through your veins with your blood to that
pointless state of slow suicide was such a tiny one.

Maybe she'll go and he can finish the bottle in peace, he hopes,

but he can feel her watching him, and then he hears the scrape of chair legs
on the floor as she sits down.

"Your house is beautiful."

"Thank you."

"How long have you lived here?"

"Permanently since July but I used to own a business with

branches in London, I stayed here when I was needed in town."

"I grew up in Herne Hill. Weird being back."

"I know. Philip gave me the tour. 'This is Grandad's house,

there's Grandad's church, this is where Grandad taught me to ride my trike,
I fell over on this road one time and Grandad piggybacked me home and
he ran dead fast and it felt like flying, that's his gravestone...'"

"He's got him on a pedestal the size of Nelson's Column."

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"I noticed."

"Same with you, though." Lindsay's not sure what to say to that

so he stays quiet and just keeps on peeling potatoes in the sink. "He talks
about you all the time, whenever he comes round."

"...Oh," he manages, desperately wishing she'd just go away. He

pours another glass of wine. She'll just have to put up with it.

"Can I help you with anything?"

"No, it's fine, there's not much else left to do." But she comes

over anyway, leaning there against the counter with her sweating glass of
ice water and not really looking at him.

"Why don't you ever come with him when he visits?"

It's obvious, surely. "I don't think Philip's dad and I see eye to

eye on very many things."

"You're marrying my son. I want to know who you are."

"Oh Jesus," he mutters to his potato skins, sounding disgusted

but not nearly as bad as he always feels every time this tripe is dragged up.
"What's he told you?"

"Well, just a lot of wishful thinking, apparently." Now she's

looking at him, he can sense it without even glancing up. "It doesn't change
anything, I still wish I knew you."

"Why?"

"Why not? That's the point of a family." She goes silent for a

while, just watching him work, then says quietly, "He must have told you
everything."

"Yes."

"So you know there's a lot of lost time to make up for."

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There's a stupid short fuse somewhere in him that loathes this

kind of heart-to-heart and always does its best to ruin things when it gets
too uncomfortable. "The reason he's round your house so much is that he's
scared to death your husband is going to belt Dory until she bleeds or
break her jaw, and you'll let it happen and when she comes to you for
comfort you'll just open another can and tell her oh darling that's just too
bad but if you learned not to backchat then you wouldn't get hit for it."

"He's never touched her. You shouldn't take Pip's word as truth

anyway. If he lies to me about you asking him to marry you then why
wouldn't he exaggerate things from before?"

"He's not that good an actor. You should have seen him when-"

Lindsay stops himself short, making sure the ancient lie is fixed properly
in place like a brick wall in his head. "After he was kidnapped, when he
came home and then couldn't stand it and left again. It's a six-hour drive
from London and he was still shaking when he got to mine. You don't get
that angry unless you're scared to death." But this is a dangerous memory
to revisit: Valentine's shining eyes and sulky mouth and petulant attitude,
how long and straight his hair was and how darkly he'd drawn the black
onto his eyes, how he pushed and pushed until Lindsay snapped and held
Valentine over his knee like a bratty disobedient child just to shock him
into stopping. Fucking hypocrite. That's the worst thing, how he knows
Valentine gets under your skin and flicks all the switches. Valentine said it
himself later that night, when they'd both calmed down a bit, I must have
'hit me' on my face because everybody wants to.

"Can't people change?"

"Phil punched him in the face this Halloween. Nearly knocked

some teeth out."

"Yes, but since neither of you bothered to ask what happened

after you left, let me tell you how I shut him out the house all night, I had
the locks changed in the morning, I started getting advice about divorce

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and custody, and the only reason it never happened is because he's getting
this anger management counselling thing."

He almost laughs at that. It sounds like such pretentious

American bullshit, counselling. "And that's going to erase the past, is it?
You being too drunk to care that your husband was battering your kid?"

"No, but you tell me what else I can do. Go on."

"Why do I always end up in fights with your family?"

"Because you're a judgemental, arrogant, hypocritical prick."

Bizarrely, of all the possible openers in the world, that's when

they begin to be friends.

"Do you mind?" Lindsay says, nodding at his wine bottle.

Beverley shakes her head no and watches him pour. As soon as all the
food's cooking they both sit at the kitchen table, and things feel less
strained now they've crashed through whatever barrier was there and come
out onto the other side where things are calmer, like a storm that's washed
the sky clean and blue.

"It's nobody else's problem, it's mine. Can't expect anyone else

not to drink. He shouldn't have told me about your drugs thing."

"Probably not."

"I think he was trying to be helpful. Sort of, common ground.

Or something. Because your mother and your boyfriend bonding over their
addictions is a great idea."

He resists the urge to crack his head off the table at the dreaded

b-word. "Why did you start?"

"Don't know. I was young. Kids drink too much. Then my mum

died when I was twenty and it just got worse. We were stuck in that
revolting flat block because Phil was too stubborn to let my dad help us

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with money, he just worked all the time instead. Everybody drank in there,
and worse. What about you?"

"Rich. Young. Stupid. Everybody was doing it. You know, '90s

rave scene..." He can feel himself pulling a face at the memories. It feels a
million years away and it's all so embarrassing, that dreadful music and the
ridiculous clothes everybody wore, how depressingly young they all look
in the photos. "And it felt good. It doesn't always have to be about
escaping, sometimes you're just after a good time and you're too into it to
know when to stop, then suddenly you've got a habit worth more than what
most people earn in a year."

"Do you miss it?"

"Sometimes. Do you?"

"Yes, but I don't miss how it made me act. You get so... I don't

know, when you stop drinking. All those people making idiots of
themselves, falling off their heels and rolling in the gutter and sicking up in
their own hair, it's disgusting."

"You're not meant to feel pious, you're supposed to want to help

people. So I've been told."

"Too selfish," she says, with a faint smile that's so much like

Valentine's Lindsay can't help returning it.

"Me too."

She doesn't seem old enough to have a kid who's almost twenty-

seven. Lindsay's seen old photos, the papers through those horrible few
days when Valentine went home to his parents and the snapshots he's
claimed from them and put up in little picture frames all over the house,
and it's like somebody else. She looks her age but slim and fresh and pretty
now in no make-up and a dark blonde ponytail, wearing jeans and a
handknit boyish cardigan she just unwrapped from Valentine earlier. She's

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only a year or so older than Lindsay, and he feels a sort of abstract terror
every time he accidentally remembers.

"Is it weird having such a massive age gap between Philip and

Dory?"

"It was. Not any more. I mean, some of the girls I knew when I

was sixteen were having babies at the same time as me, so that wasn't
strange, and a lot of the friends I've got now are just having their first
babies in their thirties and forties, so that's not strange either. I got
paranoid people might think we were trying to replace him, that bit was
weird."

"Does he think that?"

"Don't know. I think he used to. He's mad about her, you know

he is."

"Did he tell you I thought she was his?"

"People always think that. Don't you ever want kids?"

"Christ, no. No thank you. No." She's giving him that faint

smile again, raising her eyebrows in a question, so he fumbles on. "I never
did. I had the op when I was twenty-one, graduation present to myself. I
always knew."

"You could adopt."

"That's even worse. Somebody else's child invading your life."

"Pip told me you've got stepchildren."

There's not enough wine in the world to be having this

conversation. "Not really. My best friends' kids. Like Olly's for him."

"Are you two getting along yet?"

"Not really."

"Are you jealous?"

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"Why are you interrogating me?"

"Just trying to get to know you."

"I'm not jealous," he lies through his gritted teeth, probably not

very convincingly. "We've just got nothing in common, we're never going
to be friends."

"Alright."

"Have they always been so close?"

"Since they were tiny, completely inseparable. We started going

on joint family holidays because they kicked off so much about being
forced to spend two weeks away from each other. Sohini... Olly's mum...
she was really good to me, I know she's still not really forgiven me for
being such a mess but she was always so good to me, and to Pip. For Pip.
She was more his mother than I ever was."

"I'm sure that's not true."

"Are you?"

"Well..." He wonders where his own mother is. Her talent for

walking into conversations only seems to manifest itself when she's not
wanted, never when she is. "Everyone messes up somewhere, right?"

"Even you?" she says with a taunting gleam in her eye just like

the one that's always there in Valentine's.

"Of course not, I'm flawless."

"So Pip keeps telling me." She gets up to fetch more water;

when she sits down again, she's giving him a strange, thoughtful sort of
look. "You met in Edinburgh, right?"

The lie is familiar and faultless – it should be, they practised it

enough. "He was there for some gig, I was working. Same hotel."

"Eyes meeting across a crowded dining room."

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"Not quite. He rolled in drunk one night and threw up on my

feet in the lift."

"He told me. He bought you some new shoes and lurked round

the lobby for hours waiting for you, he didn't know your name or room
number."

"Nice shoes. He looks like a tranny but he's alright at picking

for other people. Right size, too."

"Did you...? And him."

"No," he says firmly. "Don't ask me questions about your son's

sex life."

"Just nosy. Do you always go for younger men?"

"I'm not answering that."

"That's a yes, then."

"That's a keep your nose out of my bedroom."

"I'm just... building up this picture. Why he went to you. We

thought Olly was hiding him."

"I think he just didn't want to be in London. You can't get any

less London than Llandudno."

"Was he really that upset?" She sounds upset herself, not crying

but her voice sounds dull and miserable.

"He said he didn't want to be around you any more after you

gave false sob stories to all the papers pretending you were glad to have
him back."

"They weren't false. Misjudged and clumsy, yeah, but not false.

I think Phil was trying to apologise, make a grand gesture, something. You
can't get much more of a public apology than spilling up your guts in the
Sun. Obviously it never came across like that."

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"No."

"We got the money for them the day they asked for it. I was

plastered, I hardly knew what was going on, but Phil never rang the police
or considered it might be a hoax or anything, he went to the bank right
after they phoned. Why would he do that if he didn't care?"

This conversation is making him wish for a needle and spoon.

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Your house, do what you want." She watches him light up but

doesn't take one when he offers, just leans her face against her hand and
looks down at the grain of the table. "He wouldn't talk about it," she says
softly. "When they let him go. Then when you broke up and he came back
again, he still wouldn't talk about it, still won't talk about it. I don't know
what they did to him that was so bad he can't talk about it. I think I'm
going crazy sometimes thinking all these hideous things because I don't
know. That scar on his wrist where they tied him up too tight and the rope
burn got infected, I can't stand seeing it, it makes me sick, I hate it. I
think... things are getting better now, we're friends now, I never thought
that would ever happen, but there's things I don't know and probably won't
ever know and I hate thinking he's holding all that back because it's so
awful he just can't let it out. Did he ever tell you? You don't have to say,"
she adds in a hurry. "I don't want details or anything if you don't want, but
do you know?"

This is a bit of the lie they never bothered to create because they

never expected it to be an issue. Everything's changed now, and she looks
so hopeless he makes the split-second decision to end it. "He told me some
things," Lindsay says slowly. "I don't think I know everything, but he's
talked about it and he's alright."

"Really?"

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"It's just something that happened a long time ago. Don't let it

get to you, look at him now. He's as balanced as he's ever going to be, he's
got a job and degree and friends, he's happy. Don't get stuck in the past, it's
grim. Much more pleasant right here and now."

"I'd drink to that if I could." She's smiling again, a tiny glimmer

of it around her mouth and eyes. "You'll do. Marry him, make him happy."

"Never," Lindsay snaps, but he can feel himself trying to smile

as well so he goes to prod a bubbling pot of potatoes to hide his face.

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14.

It's ages before everyone goes home. Hours and hours. It's way

past the Queen's speech they all laughed at his dad for stubbornly wanting
to watch, it's past dinnertime, it's even past Dory's bedtime and she's gone
sleepy and bratty by the time Phil picks her up as an excuse (Pip thinks but
doesn't say) not to hug anybody goodbye.

"Thank Christ for that," Lindsay mutters five seconds after the

front door's slammed shut behind them all. "I thought they were moving
in."

"Shut up, Scrooge. That's my family."

"Tunechanger."

The living room is a dump; sweet wrappers scattered

everywhere, stray curls of wrapping paper and ribbon they missed when
the binbags came out, glasses with smudgy fingerprints on them and half
an inch of leftover drink at the bottom. Lindsay looks twitchy and shell-
shocked, like any moment now he's going to lose all control over his stupid
picky urges and jump up to find the hoover. Pip sits on him so he can't,

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kneeling on the couch cushions one leg either side of Lindsay's and
shuffling closer until Lindsay holds onto his arse like a reflex to coax him
the last few inches.

"Got you another present." He's holding it in his hands, a small

box wrapped in gold foil paper with a huge loopy black ribbon bow.
Lindsay looks wary.

"I don't trust your presents."

"But this one's fun. You gonna open it?"

"No. It's a... vibrating LED cock ring or something."

"I know where you can get one if that's what you want."

"No."

Pip wriggles under Lindsay's moving fingers and unwraps the

parcel himself, tying the chiffon ribbon around Lindsay's neck like a cravat
before he starts unpicking the sellotape from the paper. "You're such a
spoilsport. You're meant to be all excited about presents. Here. Happy
Christmas, you miserable old fart."

Lindsay looks no less terrified, taking the box out of Pip's hands

and looking at the writing on the side. "'True Romance – The Game Of
Honesty For Lovers'. You make me sick."

"I wanna play."

"With your handcuffs and a belt?" It's the only time Lindsay's

ever sounded hopeful about such a prospect.

"No. Get upstairs."

***

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Lindsay seems to mind much less when he's halfway down a

bottle of Bushmills. He's gone all quiet and lazy, flushed cheeks and
curling smile. He'd do anything in this state, but since Pip's finished off
nearly a whole small bottle of Malibu mixed with cherry coke he doesn't
trust himself to take proper advantage. He just keeps on working through
the cards.

"Next question. What turns you on more than anything else?"

"You."

"Elaborate."

"Your big round peachy bottom."

"You're very shallow, Lindsay."

"Like a summer puddle."

"Why ain't you playing properly? We're meant to be bonding."

"Urgh." Lindsay's lying on his back with his shirt unbuttoned,

propped up halfway by a pile of pillows, and he turns his head to the side
to awkwardly take another drink of whiskey. "I like it when you do as
you're told."

"You like bossing me around."

"I like..." He trails off, walking the fingers of his other hand

across the bare stripe of skin where Pip's t-shirt has lifted up.

"Being in control."

"Yes."

"See, you've got control issues. It's cos of your dad dying and

cos of your drug problem."

"I'm sorry, did you get a psychology degree while my back was

turned?"

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"We're bonding. The point of the questions is so we talk. I've

got control issues cos I had to look after myself when I was growing up
cos my dad was out at work and my mum was pissed all the time. I read a
book on it. That's how come I used to get off on you bossing me round so
much, cos it meant I never had to deal with shit on my own no more."

"Pick another card, I don't want to talk about it."

"What would be your ideal Valentine's Day gift?"

"A gun to shoot myself in the face with."

"You still ain't bought me that '63 Corvette you promised me

like five years ago."

"I was drunk, I don't think it counts."

"That's what I want. You've got a month and a half to find one."

"Don't hold your breath."

"Next question. Slow and sensual or fast and filthy?"

"Depends how much alcohol is involved and whether you've

been getting on my nerves or not." Lindsay stretches like a cat. It makes a
bit of hair tumble over his forehead and into his eyes, but he doesn't bother
flicking it back out of the way. It's too long, he keeps grumbling about
needing a haircut, but Pip's developing a mild fetish about it and can't
bring himself to hack any of it off.

"I wanna brush your hair," he says suddenly. It makes Lindsay

laugh, closed eyes and shining pointed canines.

"It doesn't need brushing."

"I want to."

"I can't move."

"You'll like it, I'll make it nice. I can do Indian head massage

and everything. No girly brushing, just... yeah?"

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"Do I have to move?" Lindsay's eyes are still closed, he's still

smiling. He hardly ever looks this content, like there's nowhere in the
world he'd rather be than lounging on his bed at seven o'clock on
Christmas Day evening wearing a chiffon gift ribbon around his neck.

"Move forward. I'll sit behind you. Read the next question."

"You didn't answer the last one."

"Oh, you wanna play now?" He loosens the ribbon from its bow

and drapes it around the bedpost, slipping Lindsay's open shirt down his
shoulders and kissing the nape of his neck softly, talking very quietly
against the hot skin there. "Depends on mood, innit? Sometimes you just
wanna get banged. I like it when you go slow. I like you looking at me but
I know you don't like it, so whatever." He starts pressing his thumbs into
the muscles at the back of Lindsay's shoulders, wondering if he's still a
moaner like he was before, then laughing softly and kissing Lindsay's neck
again when he finds out that yes, he is. "Is that good?"

"Mmmhm. Mmm."

"Read the next question, my hands are busy."

"No." His fingers stop stroking Pip's leg and reach up towards

the bedpost, slithering the wide black ribbon free and letting it fall on the
pillows. "I'll go as slow as you like if I don't have to look at you."

"I think I just came in my pants."

"Shame. Don't stop yet."

"Coming?"

"Touching me, you halfwit."

"You're so nice to me. You're so romantic, I love it." He slides

his thumbs across, making tiny circles either side of Lindsay's spine. "Read
the question or I'm stopping."

"What is your ultimate fantasy?"

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"Blindfolding you, now you've suggested it."

"Now who's not playing properly?"

Pip keeps his hands moving while he thinks, combing his

fingers through Lindsay's hair to work out the tangles. "There ain't much
we ain't already done, hey?"

"You warped me. I was a perfectly normal-"

"-drug addicted bisexual hooker-fucking criminal."

"-perfectly normal sensible man with normal sensible urges

before you."

"As if you was ever normal. You was just repressed."

"Well, what is it?"

"I don't know." He's getting hard now, wriggling in place to

press against Lindsay. "I like playing pretend, that's fantasy. Like, let's
pretend you kidnapped me, and you tie my hands behind my back and
blindfold me and I don't even know what you look like but I know you've
got a gun and if I don't open my mouth and take what you give me then I'm
gonna die."

"That's horrible."

"I never said it made sense, just it's hot. Or like let's pretend

we're in some old stuffy boarding school and I cheeked my teacher and
now I'm getting put over his knee and spanked."

"I hate it when you say spank. It's so Enid Blyton."

"She was an old pervert."

"Anyway, I'm fairly sure they didn't get put over their teacher's

knee. Maybe the desk. I don't know. Or touch your toes. You couldn't do
that, your fat little belly would get in the way- OW!" he yelps when Pip
tugs his hair hard.

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"Be nice."

"Don't tell me to be nice and tell me you want me to punish you

for not doing your prep. You wouldn't like it, anyway. You wouldn't like
being caned, I'm not sure they ever hit with just their hands in schools."

"I dunno." He starts working his fingers through Lindsay's hair

again, rubbing his scalp like he's doing a shampoo job in the old salon. "If
any teacher tried hitting one of the kids in my school they'd have got
knifed. How do you know I wouldn't like getting caned, anyway?"

"Well, I wasn't that thrilled..."

"You ain't that old!"

"No, you're just impossibly young."

"What happened?" Pip realises he's stopped moving his hands

and starts up again, sliding his fingertips through Lindsay's hair, trying to
concentrate on that and not on how sickeningly fascinated he is.

"Only once. Before we moved to Wales. I don't know if the

comps still did it but my school was private."

"Toff."

"Shut your face."

"Did you have to bend over in your uniform?"

"I was eight. Don't you dare think dirty thoughts about me, I

feel violated."

"Did you, though?"

"No. Twice on each hand. I wouldn't stop talking."

"Naughty."

"It's sick. They'd do it in front of the whole class, it made your

fingers swell up like sausages. You'd get this massive welt across your
palm. It's disgusting, nobody should ever hit a kid."

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"You hate kids."

"I want them not to exist, I don't want grown men to hit them

with sticks."

"They don't still do it, do they?"

"No."

"Cos Dory's school's private. And if anyone there ever hurt her

I'd kill them. Actually genuinely kill them."

"My mum tried," Lindsay says. Pip can't see his face but there's

a smile in his voice. "I couldn't hold my knife and fork properly at dinner, I
couldn't pretend nothing was wrong. My dad said just let it go, I played up
and got hit for it and that's the end, issue dealt with, but my mum lost it
and went round Mr. Lyth's house and when he opened the door she
punched him in the face. He had a black eye for ages."

"Your mum's amazing."

"Dad said complaining about violence by using violence was

stupid and setting a bad example, but I never got hit at school again."

"You're right, it's sick. That ain't me being a hypocrite or

nothing. It's different."

"Yeah."

"Don't hit me with a cane."

"I don't have a cane."

"Candy canes off the tree?"

"Don't think they'd hurt enough to be worth it."

"It's different. If it's playing. Like it hurts, course it hurts, but it's

nice too. Even before when you did it for real, it weren't for nothing stupid
like just talking."

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"And you weren't eight, being humiliated in front of a room full

of people."

"And that."

"And power-crazed bullying sadists like that won't stop no

matter how much you like jazz."

"Bastards. What's your ultimate fantasy?"

"Sitting on my bed having a shoulder rub that never ends."

"You're such a fucking useless pathetic old man," Pip says

grumpily, but he moves his hands down from Lindsay's hair and back to
his shoulders, gently kneading at the muscles until he makes more of those
quiet sighing noises. "Nothing dirty?"

"I like when you wear dresses."

"Yeah, I knew it. You just wanna rub up against them frilly

knickers."

"It's not the knickers. It's..."

"What?"

"Bending you over something and lifting your skirt up. Easy

access. It's so naughty."

"That's more like it."

"You remember that time you made a video of yourself?"

"Wanking in that pink corset dress."

"Mm. And you said it to make me jealous, I think, you said you

weren't wearing underwear, you'd been out all night dancing with strangers
and you weren't wearing underwear."

"I was really, I was just messing with you."

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"I could have killed you. I was so mad, I nearly got in the car

and drove back, but I kind of couldn't walk."

Pip starts laughing, muffling the sound in kisses against the

back of Lindsay's neck. "Did it make you hard?"

"I was crippled."

"What about it?"

"Everything. You. You being shameless. The dress. Your waist

looked tiny. You being... you're such a whore sometimes, you know?"

"Yeah."

"Looking up through your eyelashes like that."

"I know."

"It's all so calculated. Nothing about it was natural, it was you in

a dress having a wank and doing everything you could think of to wind me
up."

"Worked, too."

"I wish it didn't. It's embarrassing."

"Why is it? It ain't embarrassing just thinking something's hot.

You can be as sensible and respectable as you like through all the day and
night but all that goes out the window when it's about sex. Just go with it.
If it makes you hard and it ain't hurting no one who don't wanna get hurt,
then it's a good thing. No drama. You need to just let go sometimes."

"I think I did," Lindsay says, still sounding sleepy and vaguely

amused. A thrill dashes up Pip's spine like stroking fingers.

"Yeah, I ain't forgetting that one any time soon. You should let

me do it again."

"Stop bringing the topic up when I'm drunk."

"No."

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"I'll cane you."

"You can fucking try."

"Do you want the next question?"

"Alright."

"Have you ever had a threesome?"

"Kind of." The angle is strange and it's making his arms ache, so

Pip slides his arms under Lindsay's instead and around his bare chest.
"First time I got a blowie was off some stranger in a cab and the driver was
watching. Olly says that's called being molested but I don't care, it made
me come. I done it with other people in the room, too. I mean, not like
proper doing it but sucking someone off, yeah, or getting sucked off. A
few times. And I was in the same room with other people doing it. That's
just what happens when you're a teenager at house parties, innit? Limited
bed space for everyone who's copping off, you can't be selfish. But not a
proper threesome like in porn. You?"

Lindsay winds his fingers in with Pip's. "No," he says after a

moment.

"Is that the kind of no what actually means 'yes but I don't

wanna tell you'?"

"Something like that."

"Were you wasted?"

"Sometimes."

"It happened more than once?"

"Maybe."

"How many?"

"I don't know."

"Roughly."

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"No idea."

"Yeah, but make a guess. Less than ten times?"

"More."

That twisting, writhing curl of heat flares up again in Pip's

stomach. There was a time when hearing anything like this would have
driven him insane with jealous fury, but now he's intrigued and just a bit
turned on.

"More than ten but less than... fifty?"

"I really have no idea. Maybe more. I don't know."

"Fucking hell. And everyone thinks I'm the slaggy one." It's so

obvious now. The thought was there before, but shadowy and unformed.
It's getting clearer. "It was Ty, weren't it?" No answer means yes. "Who
was the plus one, was it Danny?"

"Get stuffed."

"Was it Ellie?"

"No. He was so jealous."

"Prossies?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, then you should've not read the question." He kisses the

back of Lindsay's shoulder gently. "Was you and him ever in love?"

"No. It wasn't like that. Just... sharing girls."

"Alright."

"God, that sounds horrible."

"What was I just saying? If it gets you off, it's good."

"Don't you mind?"

"He's dead and they did it for pay. What's the point?"

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"Suppose."

"What's the next question?"

"Can I have a kiss?"

"I think you made that up."

"Might have done." He turns round in Pip's arms, propping

himself up with a hand on either side of the pillows and managing to look
at him for about half a second until he bottles out and his gaze wavers off
to rest somewhere above Pip's shoulder. "Well?"

"You can if you look at me."

"I just did."

"Properly."

"Why?"

"Why is it so awful just looking at me?"

"It just is."

"Do you love me?"

"Most of the time."

"So why can't you look at me?"

"I don't want to."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Lindsay."

"I'm drunk. I just told you things nobody else knows."

"Yeah, so if you're alright with telling me you and your best

mate used to dee-pee fifty or more prossies how come you can't even look
me in the eye?"

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No answer. Lindsay starts kissing his neck instead, pulls Pip's t-

shirt up over his head, kisses down his body and over the tattooed name,
unzips his jeans and peels them down and kisses him there as well. Fine.
Pip curls his fingers around the bars in the bedstead, holding tight and
watching the top of Lindsay's head as he sucks. He looks up once,
hollowed cheeks and apologies in his eyes, but then his hair falls down in
his face and hides him and Pip gives up.

"If you want you can bring a woman home and I can try," he

says, helpless and desperate because being in love is easy but everything
else is just stepping-stones of problems. "I got off with a girl before me
and Olly got together cos I wanted to see if it'd work cos men were doing
my head in but it was a disaster, we kissed for hours and that was nice and
I got her bra off and that was nice but she took her jeans off and I couldn't
do it. But if you want I'll try. Or you can just do it. It ain't cheating if I say
it's alright, if I'm here when it happens."

"Shut up," Lindsay says harshly, replacing his wet mouth with

his fast stroking hand so he can talk. "I don't want anybody else, don't be
such a pathetic fucking martyr all the time."

"Do you love me?" Pip says again, and Lindsay slaps him hard

on the side of the thigh.

"YES!" he yells, "YES, how many times do I have to say it?

Yes I do and if you ever ask me again I'll break your neck." Pip tries to rub
his stinging leg but Lindsay snatches his hand away and wraps Pip's
fingers tightly around his own cock, still wet from Lindsay's mouth, and
starts sliding his hand up and down to urge him on so he can move up the
bed and finally look at him, direct and intense and barely even blinking
until Pip lets out his held breath in a shuddering moan and comes all over
himself.

"I'm just checking," he says quietly when he's got his breath

back, feeling stupid all of a sudden – feeling small and useless just like he

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used to back when they first got together, when Lindsay was the most
important thing in the world and his word was law.

"Why do you have to check every five seconds?"

"Because I don't know what you're doing with me."

"I'm not talking any more. We go round and round in circles and

nothing ever gets resolved so what the fuck is the point?"

"Ain't it nice hearing it?" He starts wiping his sticky hand off on

the sheet, slowly and methodically, finding creases to slip between his
fingers and blot it all away. "I love you. Don't you like hearing it?"

"You don't have to say it all the time."

"Did you tell Ellie?"

"Yes," Lindsay says after a tiny hesitation, and it feels like a

punch in the guts.

"Why did you tell her and you won't tell me?"

"Because she didn't nag."

"Olly told me. Olly looked me in the eye all the time and told

me and never minded me telling him."

"So why don't you go back to him if he's that special?"

"Why don't you go back to Canada?"

"Because. I. Love. You." He's speaking very slowly and

carefully, and the words don't seem to match up with how aggravated he
looks.

"You wanna hit me right now, don't you?"

"You make me feel like that a lot."

"What happens more, you liking me or you wanting to hit me?"

"I can't tell any more. It all blends into one."

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"I know I get on your nerves. I don't mean it, it's just what I'm

like."

"I get it. I've known you long enough."

"Just so long as you always like me more than you hate me."

"You're so pathetic sometimes."

"I'm just saying." He unzips Lindsay's jeans and puts his hand

there in the V between the two halves of denim, stroking gently. "Tell me
what you want."

"I'm sick of talking."

"So tell me what you want so I know what to do, cos then I'll

shut up, won't I?"

"Do what you want."

"Seriously?"

"Mm."

"Cos I'm quite tired, what I really want is a little sleep." He

removes his hand suddenly and turns onto his side with his back to
Lindsay, waiting and counting just four seconds before Lindsay's hand is
on his wrist, squeezing hard enough to hurt and dragging him back. There's
not a lot of talking after that.

Lindsay bins the question cards the next morning and Pip calls

him an ungrateful cunt with no respect for Jesus, but then Lindsay cups
Pip's face gently in both hands and gives him such a sweet kiss he forgets
why he was annoyed.

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15.

Things go wrong on New Year's Eve. He should have expected

it, he thinks, covered in blood and shaking so much he presses the wrong
buttons trying to call for an ambulance. It doesn't matter how happy,
domestic, content, sane you feel, things always get fucked in the end.

It starts with an argument, as most things do.

"But I wanna spend midnight with you," Valentine says, looking

at Lindsay's reflection in his dressing table mirror as he's drawing black
lines under his eyes with a pencil. He's annoyingly sulky and completely
delicious, in buckle boots and scarlet jeans and a ruffled white shirt. If he
doesn't get that brattish look off his face...

Lindsay makes an actual effort to stop thinking like an

oversexed teenager and shrugs into his shirt. "You can. You can come to
Ronnie Scott's with us."

"I'd rather dip my face in acid."

"This ticket is still going spare."

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"You're sick in the head. I wanna party, not sit there surrounded

by rich wankers in dinner jackets fapping over some cunt on a trombone.
Only tossers and twats and sad old men listen to jazz, it's the fucking worst
crime ever committed in the history of humanity."

Lindsay discreetly checks his watch. Loads of time. Valentine

always starts getting ready long before he needs to and then changes his
mind a dozen times about what shoes he wants to wear or how dark his
make-up should be. Well, this evening he's just going to have to make his
mind up more quickly.

"You'd better take that back."

"As if I will! Jazz is for paedos and people who fuck their

mums." He's almost laughing now, Lindsay can see it brimming up in him,
trapped behind his tightly-clamped lips. Lindsay moves quickly so he
won't crack up himself, hooking one arm around Valentine's neck and the
other around his body and dragging him backwards off his stool. He yelps
angrily and almost falls but Lindsay's holding him too tightly, fighting
back against his squirming and trying to dodge the kicking heels.

"I warned you. Now shut up."

"Fuck off, Lindsay! You'll make me late!"

"It's ten past five."

"I ain't done my hair yet!"

"You shut your mouth when I tell you to," he hisses, twisting

his hand in Valentine's hair and tugging hard, "or you'll have no hair left."

"You fucking bastard, you wouldn't da-OH!"

But his chest is heaving under the press of Lindsay's arm and it

wasn't an ow of pain, it was an oh of please. Lindsay moves his hand
again, slowly this time but pulling Valentine's hair taut until he whimpers.
It doesn't happen so often any more, this thing Valentine always used to

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call playing – rough, snarling, painful, hurting him when he's done nothing
to deserve it just because it gets them both off – but he's still never said his
words yet and meant them, not since Lindsay's birthday back in August
when he was on the brink of tears and trying to escape.

"Tell me you love jazz and I'll stop."

"Oh. Oh you fucking cunt, that ain't fair."

"You chose the words." He drops his other arm and pulls

Valentine round to face him with the hand fisted in his hair, slapping him
hard across the cheek. "And mind your mouth, you filthy brat."

The bloom of red isn't just on the place Lindsay slapped, but

creeping into Valentine's other cheek as well. He looks longingly at the
scatter of pencils and nailpaint bottles on his dressing table for a moment
like he's weighing up the pros and cons of each activity, then makes his
choice. "What if I don't?" he says, all brazen defiance and infuriating smirk

Lindsay's just following all this along, making it up as he goes,

trying to read Valentine and find out what he actually wants. It's grown
since the beginning, this thing, it's turned epic and sprawling. When it
started it was about Lindsay taking what he wanted, controlled enough to
stop if the kid really asked him to but not controlled enough to stop
himself. It was about a jigsaw of flaws fitting together, his need to be in
charge of every tiny detail in his life to compensate for the years he felt
like it was skidding away from him versus Valentine's need to please. It
felt like a crazy balancing act and they'd each fallen off opposite sides of
the beam; when Valentine felt useless and like he had no say in his own
life, he just sat down and gave up and attached himself to the first person
who could tell him what to do, right down to bedtimes and meals and the
consequences that came when he didn't do as he was told. Everything's
different now, and the thought's always lurking there at the back of
Lindsay's mind: he never needed to be told what to do. He needed
encouragement, independence, his friends, no matter how much he

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stamped his foot and insisted he wanted Lindsay and nothing and nobody
else. Valentine needed Olly, and the thought makes him fucking sick.
Before, hitting him when he played up and ordering him around happened
everywhere, not just in the bedroom. It's a game now. It was a game
before, sometimes, but now it's only a game and it feels wrong because...

"Sometimes I still want to hit you," Lindsay says, pressing the

quiet words in a murmur of kisses down the long line of Valentine's neck.
"I want you to do as you're told and come and go when I say and shut up
when I tell you to and not talk to anybody but me." Valentine stops
pretending to struggle against his grip and goes very still, but he's tilting
his head for Lindsay's mouth. Lindsay bites him just where his neck starts
to curve into his shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark and make
Valentine choke out a desperate needy noise of pain.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You keep telling me to talk to you."

"I don't mind. If you want to. Honest, I don't mind."

"You should mind. I was awful to you."

"Lindsay, nobody in the whole world ever looked after me like

you do, how is that awful?"

"Because..." He stops talking, looking stupidly down at where

Valentine's started gently stroking the back of his hand with the lightest
touch of his fingertips.

"I don't give a fuck what's right or wrong. You hit me cos I was

an irritating rude little twat, you told me what to do cos I would've just ate
sweets and smoked weed all day if you never. I don't know if it sounds shit
or what but if I'm doing alright now it's cos I actually bother to think
sometimes now, like oh yeah I wanna do this thing or play my music so
loud it hurts but what if it's bothering someone? Maybe I won't do this
thing, then, or maybe I'll put headphones on. Just stupid baby things but

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they all add up, you know? I ain't such a selfish mindless brat no more,
ain't that a good thing? I never used to think about nobody but me and how
shitty my life was and how anyone who didn't let me do whatever I wanted
was just a horrible bastard trying to make it worse, but now I don't make
people want to batter me all the time and hey, you know what? My life is
fucking brilliant now and I wouldn't've got here if you never dragged me."

It's not the first time, and it's surely not going to be the last, that

Lindsay can't help noticing who's really in charge here and always was.
Nobody's ever made him feel as small and pointless and pathetic as
Valentine manages without even trying. He takes his hand out of
Valentine's hair and lets him turn round to press a soft kiss onto Lindsay's
lips, just standing there miserably without responding because it's taking
all his effort to stay there at all and not run away from his stupid outburst.

"If you want me to come to your jazz wankers' dinner, I will."

"No. You don't have to, you'd hate it."

"But do you want me to?"

"It's not up to me."

"I'm asking you."

"No." He makes himself move, sliding his hands up the rough

fabric of Valentine's shirt and drawing him closer against his chest in a
desperate, clinging sort of cuddle. "You'd hate it, honestly. You'd ruin
everybody's night with your moody brat face."

That makes Valentine laugh. He's gently mimicking Lindsay's

movements from earlier, trailing his fingers up the back of Lindsay's neck
and into his hair. "You just can't stand the idea of being away from me for
more than five seconds, can you?"

No. "Arrogance is ugly."

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"Ain't arrogance if it's true. You just can't stand the idea of you

being stuck there with people in black tie all being smug about your
brilliant collective music taste while I'm out having a wicked time dancing
with Olly and getting wankered on alcopops." He's smirking again.
Lindsay can't see his face but it's so evident in his voice. He's trying to get
a rise. "Such a shame you won't be there, innit? Cos you know I get all
affectionate when I been drinking. Who am I meant to kiss at midnight?
Spose it'll have to be Olly..."

It's an invitation and Lindsay accepts it, loathing his weakness

and Valentine's fucking charity but completely unable to stop: shoving
Valentine away, throwing him onto the bed, kneeling over him, yanking
his hair again to slap his face in the same spot as before and snarling,
"Don't you dare. If you ever even look at anybody else I swear to god I'll
skin you alive, do you understand?" This is just a game in the way a West
Ham/Millwall match is just a game. Valentine's playing along, making
himself look angry and defiant – but it's all a mask for what's really
happening, the thing that makes him give Lindsay's hand a final gentle
squeeze before dropping all the way into it and yelling and kicking and
cursing and hitting back until Lindsay finds Valentine's buckle-up
handcuffs in the drawer beside the bed and binds his hands behind his
back, peels his stupid jeans down around his stupid boots, starts hitting him
so hard and for so long his shoulder aches and his palm seems like it's on
fire. He feels sick with himself, he can barely stand it, or the way
Valentine's voice changes from furious shrieks and swears to trembling
desperate pleas and finally to sobbing apologies and promises. This should
be calming him down, it always did before; back in Wales and France,
Valentine learned how to read him like a book and always did something
wrong on purpose when he knew Lindsay was in a jittery mood so he'd
have an excuse to get it all out. There's nothing so different here, except
that Valentine's closer to thirty than his teens now and it just feels like
some vague unexplainable type of wrong.

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"I won't do nothing, I swear," Valentine's saying, stumbling

over the words in a voice thick with crocodile tears. He's not even
flinching at the slaps, he could take ten times this. Lindsay's not sure which
idea is more disturbing: doing it for real like they used to, or playing like
it's a big cheerful game of charades. His hand is flaming but he's not ready
to stop, and nor is Valentine if that whiney noise when Lindsay hesitates is
anything to go by, so he snatches Valentine's hairbrush off the table next to
the bed and uses the back of that instead. Valentine laughs, quiet and
amazed and breathless, curling his fingers tight around each other and
whimpering into the pillows at every impact.

"You're laughing, you're spoiling it."

"You don't even know how much I love you sometimes."

It's impossible to keep up this pretence of a game when

Valentine's reacting like this, squirming against the covers and making
beautiful desperate happy noises. Lindsay throws the hairbrush across the
room and uses pinches and slaps to get Valentine exactly where he wants
him, facedown in the pillows with his knees tucked beneath him and his
arse in the air so Lindsay can spread him wide and start kissing him there,
brushing his lips across the warm red cheeks and down between. It's really
just to regain the upper hand; it's obviously the last thing Valentine ever
expected, from the harsh way he sucks in his breath at the first sliding wet
touch of Lindsay's tongue, and that means Lindsay's won. He's never done
this to anyone before – the idea revolts him and the one time Valentine did
it to him he spent the whole time wishing for death – but it's not so bad. It's
less invasive than swallowing a mouthful of semen, after all, and at least
he's fresh out of the shower...

"Hold still," Lindsay says, though Valentine probably doesn't

hear; he's writhing around and thumping the mattress and shouting into the
pillow too much to notice. Enough of this. Lindsay unfastens his trousers
with one hand, holding the other cupped in front of Valentine's face and

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ordering him to spit, slicking himself ready and pushing into him hard
enough to make him sob again.

"Undo my hands?" Valentine says, making it a stuttered

question and not a demand. Lindsay wraps his arms round Valentine's
body again and rocks back to sit on his heels, bringing Valentine with him
and holding his hips tight for balance, thrusting up hard into him and
forcing him down.

"Just say you like jazz and I will."

"You're such a cheat."

"Alright." He can't stroke Valentine off and hold him steady at

the same time so he doesn't bother touching him, just keeps his hands
where they are with their manicured nails digging little semicircles into
Valentine's sweating flesh. His cock bobs there, wet and straining and
ignored, poking about ridiculously as if he's trying to fuck thin air while
his hands twist and pull in the leather cuffs behind his back.

"Please," he splutters after another minute, "I can't stand it,

please, it hurts, I need-"

"You need to say it."

"Fuck you," Valentine says, dropping his head back against

Lindsay's shoulder and looking at him so adoringly it's almost sickening.
His cheeks are flushed pink and his hair is sticking to his forehead in dark
sweaty strands. They'll both need another shower after this, but Valentine's
said before there's something brilliantly filthy about a quickie you don't
have time to wash away properly...

"Fuck you."

"Yeah, I had noticed... oh my god Lindsay, please-"

"Do you love jazz?" Lindsay murmurs in his ear, walking the

fingers of his right hand over his tattooed name down to brush against the

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dark hair between Valentine's legs, ready to touch him if he'll only say it,
but there's a defiant, dancing gleam in Valentine's eye and he's almost
laughing again.

"I fucking hate jazz!" he shouts, probably loud enough to

embarrass the neighbours, and cracks up laughing until Lindsay shoves
him down on his front again and then he's got no breath for anything but
gasps.

***

It seems a shame to leave the club early but Lindsay can't really

make himself mind all that much. The music and company and food and
wine and atmosphere were all faultless, and he's missing the best bit by
leaving before midnight, but Valentine's on his mind and he's had enough
quality champagne to plummet straight into that disgusting mawkish mood
he always recognises but never manages to get rid of once it's there.
Luckily it's not there very often, but it's in full force tonight. It's icy cold
out, not raining any more although it has been, and his breath hangs in
front of his face in a fog of warmth as he says goodnight to the doorman
and heads down Frith Street in search of a cab, tapping out a text message
as he goes.

Coming to find you. Stop blowing Olly, you tart. x

He thought it might be hard finding a cab tonight of all nights,

but it's a strange time to be hailing one; of course everybody's at a party by
now, less than an hour before midnight. One stops for him as soon as he's
out on Shaftesbury Avenue, and he slumps in the back seat after telling the

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driver the address, rubbing his hands together against the cold and pulling
his scarf right up over his chin. Valentine's there on the street already when
the cab pulls up at the side of the road outside Trash Palace, sitting
piggyback-style with his arms around Rob's neck and his feet swinging,
chatting and laughing with some people Lindsay doesn't know.

He opens the door and calls out. "It's freezing, get in the car."

Valentine laughs and kisses the top of Rob's bald head before he

hops down. "See you Monday, yeah? Everyone, this is Lindsay. Lindsay,
everyone."

"Hello, everyone."

He ignores the chorus of hellos and shifts across the seat to let

Valentine slide in beside him, chattering away drunkenly before he's even
closed the door. "Fucking packed in there, I never seen nothing like it!
Ain't normally that busy even on New Year's. And you'd think I'd learn but
nooo, course not, I have to go out in boots I never worn before, fucking
killing me dead. I done a dance-off with someone who challenged me cos
he said he'd swap shoes if I won and I won but his were well too big,
should've checked first innit? Ah well, least I won, and hey for your
information Olly ain't even in there so shut up. Mate, can you take us, um,
can't remember the name, just take us through like Fleet Street and stuff
and I'll say when to stop, yeah? Yeah, so anyway Olly and the kids went
out for food somewhere and they're all coming, oh fuck my feet hurt. Did
you have a nice wank?"

"Very nice, thanks."

"Who was there?"

"Amy and Giles, Erica from the library, Will, Susan-"

"Susan's a bitch."

"So's Olly and you don't hear me complaining."

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"Except when you do?"

"Yeah. And they all told me I'm an idiot for going to stand with

the tourist plebs in Trafalgar Square and missing the rest of the night but I
said I want to spend midnight with you and if tourist plebs are the price I'll
gladly pay it a hundred times over. Then Will pretended to throw up."

"I don't know who Will is but I bet he's single."

"Yes."

"Jealous."

"Maybe."

"Thank you for coming," Valentine says suddenly. He slides

even closer and finds Lindsay's cold hands, holding them together between
his own and blowing on his fingers. "You're such an old man, you're
always cold. Ain't you brought gloves?"

"Obviously not. You're welcome."

"Cos I know it meant a lot, your shitty thing tonight. And I

wouldn't really have minded if you wanted to stay. Cos, you know, we ain't
gonna see nothing cos fuck all happens anyway, we'd have been better off
staying out, you know? But it's something you should do just once, innit,
do New Year in Trafalgar Square? And we never done it before, we grew
up in London and never done it before, and it's nice hanging out with the
kids anyway. But I know it ain't your thing and you would've had a nicer
time in your wank club so I mean it, it's dead sweet you coming out with
us."

"You're drunk. You talk too much when you're drunk."

"I ain't even drunk, I had like three drinks, I'm just happy, they

played S Club for me and they played the Sweet, I'm just off my tits on
joy." Like it needs demonstrating, he lets Lindsay's hands go and plants a
big loud kiss on his cheek. He stays there for a few minutes, just leaning

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his head against Lindsay's shoulder, then sits up again to speak to the
driver. "Mate, I really dunno where we're going, can you let us out here?"

This is the first big mistake, Lindsay thinks later when he's

running the night through his head on a loop, but how many people really
bother to be cautious about letting their phones and wallets show these
days? He pays the driver and Valentine gets his shiny new phone out to
find out where Olly is, the car drives away, they start walking, and then
Valentine's not there any more. It happens as suddenly as that.

There's a tiny space between two buildings, a fire escape

glinting somewhere at the back, some big bins, the muffled sound of
somebody trying to shout when there's a hand over his mouth. It feels
unreal, totally unnatural, and he doesn't panic, he just steps into the
shadows after them. The man shouts something, an enraged snarl of pain,
then there's the sound of a scuffle though Lindsay's not sure which of them
is smacking the other. Valentine says quite calmly, "He's got a knife."
Everything happens so quickly like pages speeding by in a flickbook, and
when real time slams back into itself, Lindsay's hand is twisted around a
fistful of the man's hair and he's crashing his face into the brick wall,
dragging him away, crashing him back a second time. There's blood on the
wall and on his hand and in sickening little droplets on his skin.

"I think you can stop now," Valentine says. He still sounds as

calm as Lindsay felt when he realised what was happening, but his eyes are
wide and frightened in the dim light. Lindsay drops the man to the slimy
cold concrete and wipes his fingers on his trousers where the ends are slick
with blood. London's never seemed this quiet before. Neither of them
speaks for what feels like hours.

"A knife?" Lindsay finally says, sounding dull and stupid. "Did

he stab you?"

"No. He dropped it, he was trying to keep me quiet, I bit a

chunk out his finger and he dropped it. He was holding it on my throat,

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though." He's hugging himself, cupping his elbows in the opposite hands,
standing there all pigeon-toed and awkward like he's got no idea what's
supposed to happen from here. "Did you kill him?"

"I don't know."

"I hope so," Valentine says viciously after another hesitation.

He crouches down beside the mugger, turns him over onto his back, and
swears quietly. Lindsay's not looking, he's got his eyes fixed on the wall.

"Well?"

"His pulse is going. But... Lindsay, he ain't hardly got a face no

more."

Lindsay closes his hand around the phone in his pocket. It's cool

in his palm, which is suddenly sticky with sweat. "I should call the police."

"Don't," Valentine says immediately. "Let's just go."

"Are you crazy? There'll be cameras everywhere on the main

road, you bit him, I smashed his face in, there'll be DNA everywhere..."

"Don't call me crazy, you're the one with the anger management

issues. He had a knife, anyway. He said give him my phone and money or
I'm dead, he had his knife on my neck. Ain't it self-defence?"

"Just shut up a minute," Lindsay mutters, leaning against the

freezing brick wall and rubbing his eyes with the fingers that don't have
blood on them. "Just let me think." Easy enough to say that, but his mind is
blank like new paper. All he can see is Valentine's scared face, how wide
his eyes just were and the dark smear of blood on his mouth.

"You smashed him in pretty good considering it was

spontaneous self-defence," Valentine says quietly. "I don't think his pulse
is going no more."

"I told you to shut up." Then: "What are you doing?" when

Valentine picks the man's hand up by the wrist. "If you're trying to steal his

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watch I can just buy you one."

"Ha, ha, ha. I ain't stealing nothing. It's just..."

Lindsay sees the silver shine of the knife blade when Valentine

picks it up, using the other man's hand like one of those toy-grabbing
claws on a pier arcade.

"Philip. What are you-"

"If he stabbed me then you smashed his face in when he come at

you, that's probably alright, ain't it?"

"Put that knife down. Now."

"Better this than you get sent down. You know I'm right."

He doesn't know anything any more. The world is slipping out

of his grasp again and a tiny plaintive little voice in his head says I want
another go. Today doesn't count. I should get another go.

"It's okay," Valentine murmurs like it's a dream. "I ain't gone in

my kidneys or nothing."

"You idiot," Lindsay says desperately. Somewhere, fireworks

start going off and he has to shout to make the operator hear him when he
dials 999.

"It's only a flesh wound..." But Valentine sounds scared and his

shirt is hot and soaking.

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16.

This has to end. No more hospitals.

Lindsay watches them through the little window in the door,

Olly's fingers curled against Valentine's cheek, Valentine's hand on top of
Olly's. They're talking, but he can't hear the words. At least Olly's stopped
crying now. He ran past Lindsay in the corridor without even seeing him,
red raw eyes and the most stricken expression Lindsay's ever seen. It's so
hard to hate him, suddenly. He doesn't even feel jealous of the way they're
touching and talking – though as things are right now, he can't feel much
of anything at all. Tired, sick, scared, but it all seems far away like he's the
one on the painkilling drugs.

There's a noise behind him, rapid footsteps up the corridor. He

turns round and sags against the wall, he can't even find the energy to look
up and greet them until they're right in front of him and Valentine's mum is
flinging her arms around him, pale and shaking and fumbling for words.

"If you weren't there..."

"He's fine. He's awake, you can go in."

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She's gone in a second, but Phil doesn't follow.

"You can go in as well," Lindsay prompts. Phil just looks at

him, then down at his feet, shuffling awkwardly against the faux-marble
floor, and in a wave of horrified nausea Lindsay can sense it rising up
inside him, an apology or explanation or something awful and heartfelt, he
can almost see it like a balloon that was ready to burst two breaths ago.
"He'll be glad you came," he tries again, searching desperately for
something, anything, to make him go away.

"Does he just go looking for trouble or what?"

"We got mugged, it could've happened to anyone." There's a

short row of hard plastic chairs against the wall and Lindsay goes to sit
down, resting his elbows on his knees and raking his fingers through his
hair, but that hurts so he stops. He ran the water in the gents' until it
scalded, and washed the man's blood off his hands with such force his skin
is still tender and red a hour later. After a moment Phil takes the seat next
to him and they sit in silence. "Aren't you going in?" Lindsay says after a
while, just to shatter this agonising stillness, and Phil takes some deep
breaths like he's about to jump into a deep cold lake.

"I'm... really glad you're there for him. Cos someone's got to

keep him out of trouble."

"Christ," Lindsay says very quietly under his breath. He can

hear voices in the room, but they're too indistinct to make out the words.
"You would've done the same."

"I would've slaughtered the fucker."

"More or less did. He's alive but only because of machines."

"Good. Hope he can still feel it, the cunt. Hope he chokes on his

own throat."

"He's done it before. He's been sent down twice before for

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knifing people, or trying to. He's on probation."

"Fucked that for himself a bit, ain't he?"

"Yeah."

"You ain't in trouble or nothing?"

"Don't think so. Self-defence against a proven violent psycho.

I've still got to talk to the police, we both do, statements or whatever, but
they're not pushing too much."

"Probably glad to be rid of him. Bet they secretly love

vigilantes. All that fucking red tape and human rights for kiddy fiddlers,
must be a right pain in the arse."

"I bet."

More silence. There's a squeak of shoes down the corridor

somewhere, but they don't look up and whoever it is goes into another
room down the other end.

"I know you hate me," Phil says abruptly, really fast like he

needs to spit it out, like it's burning his mouth, "and that's alright, you've
got every reason to. But if you weren't there... he's alive when he might've
been dead, and that's cos of you. And I know it don't look it sometimes, but
that tranny in there... you know, he's my kid, I..." Now it looks like the
words taste really bad. "I love him."

"Tell him, not me."

"Yeah."

"He does drag, he's not a tranny. Brush up on your gay

terminology if you want to try bonding."

"Urgh." Phil sits up straight, then slumps against the back of the

chair. "I used to think I done something wrong. He wanted to go fucking
bollywood and ballet dancing lessons with Olly and his sisters when they
were kids, I wouldn't let him, I made him do football and rugby instead. He

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used to play with fucking dolls, I couldn't stand it. Them big ugly doll
heads with hair what little girls put in bunches and stuff. I took it off him
but his grandad kept all this shit in his house and he let him play with
anything he wanted when he was over if I weren't there, Barbies and
ponies and Sylvanian Families and shit. And... them clothes he wore,
fucking hell, ain't no wonder he got decked at school all the time turning
up with paint on his fucking fingernails and them faggy little silk scarves
and girls' t-shirts and Abba boots and everything. But you know what, he
never stopped even after he got like seven Year Tens ganging up on him at
once kicking his shit in cos they don't like nothing a bit different. He
always said fuck everyone else, it's their problem if they can't handle it, I
never hurt nobody in my life, it's up to them to change their attitudes about
if its alright to go seven on one on the short skinny girly boy who don't
know how to fight, ain't up to me to change my attitude about wishing I
was Marc Bolan. He's... I don't know. I never known someone so tough as
him. He don't think he is, he cries too easy, he likes girly films and
boybands and alcopops, but ever since he was tiny he always knew what
he was and never let nobody tell him different, or never listened anyway."

"Never heard you say so much." Phil almost smiles, but it fades

away when Lindsay add without entirely meaning to, "If you love him so
much and he's so strong and brave and wonderful why did you make him
hate you?"

"I never. I never meant to. He makes me crazy, he's a mouthy

little shit, I just wanted him to stop. It weren't cos he's bent or nothing, just
cos he always swore at me for not letting him do stuff and threw his shoes
at my head and locked himself in the bathroom screaming he wished I
would just go and die in a fire."

"That's still no excuse for a big grown man battering his kid

with a belt until he's bleeding." He tries to will away some old, sick
memories: the sound of leather hitting flesh and the sound it forces out of

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Valentine's mouth, a trembling, whining little breath of please that always
means please stop and please don't both at once. The feel of it too, bent
over the worktop in the garden shed with involuntary tears rolling down
his nose and turning the sawdust into spots of crumbly sludge. It made his
mum cry too, so it always happened there and never in the house, but his
dad was adamant, old-fashioned and strict and determined. It only
happened after warnings, it only ever happened when he pushed, when he
cheeked his mum and wouldn't apologise. Two or three times a year,
sometimes not even that, and as soon as he turned eighteen it stopped.
Even when he realised, when he tested it two days after his birthday and
told his mum to piss off when she asked him to bring in the washing off
the line, he just got a long, sad look off his dad. I thought we'd raised you
alright, he said, but obviously not. That was worse than anything. He'd
rather not sit comfortably for a week than ever put that disappointment in
his dad's eyes again – and one tiny pathetic helpless little point of comfort
five months later was knowing that he never did.

He realises Phil's talking again and rubs his fingers hard into his

eyes until he's seeing floating spots. "What?"

"I said I can't change the past. I ain't got a TARDIS."

That makes Lindsay laugh unexpectedly, though the memory

jabs like a bayonet. "He's so like you sometimes. He told me that exact
same thing once. Same words."

"Yeah, well, he's my kid, ain't he?"

"Aren't you going in?"

"Yeah. Just wanted to..." He stands, makes a vague sort of

twirling gesture in the air like he's trying to wind on the silence to find
where the words start again, another thing Valentine does all the time.
"Say thank you," he finishes lamely. "And I don't hate him or you or any
kind of bender, only the ones who tell me to die in fires and call me a fat

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baldy motherfucking cunt who should've got castrated before I ever bred."

"He's very inventive with his insults, isn't he?"

"He'd get a punch if he spent five minutes with Mother Teresa,

he's that fucking irritating sometimes."

"I live with him. I know."

"Yeah." Christ, why won't he go? He's still standing there next

to the chairs, and Lindsay feels weird and vulnerable being towered over
like this so he stands as well and shakes Phil's offered hand automatically,
without really thinking about what a strange, formal gesture it is until it's
too late and it's happening. "Thanks for looking after him."

"That's my job."

"That's my job but I fucked it up."

"Just go in and talk to him. He's crap at holding grudges, he just

wants everyone in the world to think he's wonderful."

The idea of following Phil into the room and having to spend

any more time with him being so awkward and sincere is repellent, so
Lindsay goes to fetch another cup of coffee and wash his stinging hands
again.

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17.

"Hey," Pip says softly, when he opens his eyes and sees Lindsay

lurking in the doorway. "Missed you earlier, everyone was here."

"I know. I was outside."

"Why didn't you come in?"

"Don't know. Thought you might want family time."

He still doesn't know, or he's not accepting it yet. "You're my

family too."

"Yeah," Lindsay says after a pause. Pip's too tired and doped to

feel much, but he's more than awake enough to see how uncomfortable
Lindsay is. It's written all over his face like words in a book.

"Come in. Come and sit down."

"Are there visiting hours or anything?"

"Dunno. Maybe for the NHS. You're paying for all this, you can

do what you like."

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"Suppose."

There's no point rushing him when he's in a mood like this, you

just have to wait til he's ready to get over it. Pip closes his eyes and settles
back against his pillows, still trying to find a way to breathe that doesn't
make his stitched side twinge, but then he hears quick footsteps and looks
up again to see Lindsay's face full of terrified concern.

"Are you alright, should I call someone?"

"I'm just closing my eyes, I'm fine."

"Oh." Another pause, then the quiet scrape of chair legs on the

floor as Lindsay sits down. His hand is warm when he slides it over Pip's
and winds their fingers together, slightly damp like he's just washed and
hasn't bothered drying properly. "Did you speak to the police?"

"Yeah, a bit. I'm meant to do a proper statement tomorrow but

they basically even said don't worry too much, he's a proper scumbag, they
was after him for stabbing up this old lady for her handbag anyway. They
were dead nice, I know PC Barnes anyway, me and Olly shopped his
brother to her..." He trails off, realising he's talking too much just to delay
the silence. "Lindsay, are you alright?"

Lindsay laughs a bit at that, not like he thinks it's funny but just

a quiet, disbelieving little noise. "You're the one with all the stitches."

"Yeah. It looks quite cool really, I was watching them sew me

up. Like this big triangle flap of skin. I'm gonna get a wicked scar like an
arrowhead, I might get 'this way up' tattooed under it when it's better."

"Oh good, you are alright."

"Yeah. Took a lot of bullets to bring down Bonnie and Clyde,

hey?"

"Mm."

He turns his hand over in Lindsay's, sliding their fingers

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together properly and feeling the damp heat of his palm. There's got to be a
key to turn somewhere, something to bring Lindsay back and wake him up
and make him alright. "I'm allowed home tomorrow," he tries, murmuring
as low as he can even though there's nobody else in the room. "Told you I
wouldn't stick my kidneys or nothing." Already it feels far away, like a
dream or an ancient memory of something that happened when you were
drunk. He can't remember the sharp pain of it, but he can remember the
slight resistance when he drove the flick knife into his skin and out the
back, the wet sound it made when he took a deep breath for courage and
yanked the blade up and out, tearing that huge red triangle into his side. It
wasn't deep enough to cause any proper trouble; he was clear-headed
enough to make sure the cut was shallow, like skinning instead of stabbing,
but that moment of shocked pain between driving the knife in and tearing
it upwards, when he had to fight down sick and talk himself into following
it through, felt longer than his whole lifetime.

"I can't stand being in hospitals," Lindsay says. His voice

sounds small and strange, completely alien. He never sounds this afraid
and unsure.

"Would you rather fix me yourself with a damp flannel and

some sticky plasters?"

"Shut up."

"Hospitals help."

"I know. I just hate them. Everything. The bad coffee machines

and how the corridors are always painted some ugly colour and nurses'
squeaky shoes and even if you're alright there's still a hundred other people
dying under this roof right now."

Pip doesn't know what to say to that. He's exhausted, his brain

doesn't feel like functioning any more. "Yeah but people die every day,
you can't mourn them all else you'll lose your mind. I'm alright and you're

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alright and we ain't been arrested and what else matters?"

"I miss my dad."

That twists his stomach a bit, underlining the throbbing

sensation along the stitched inverted V. "Babe, you know you're allowed to
talk to me about him at home, right? Not just when I'm in a hospital bed?"

"I know. It's easier to forget at home. It doesn't matter, it's

stupid. Do you need anything?"

"Lindsay," Pip says sharply, and Lindsay stops where he is for a

second, half out of his seat, then collapses back down with a heavy,
trembling sigh.

"What?"

"I need you to talk to me sometimes."

"I talk to you."

"If something's bothering you. Ever. Even if it's something little

and stupid, I don't care, just if you're sad sometimes and there's anything I
can do so you don't feel so shit-"

Lindsay interrupts. "It's nothing. I was just talking to your dad

earlier. I'm tired. Don't listen."

"I want to."

It's like trying to get blood out of a stone or wine out of a water

bottle. When Lindsay closes up like this, trying to prise him open only
makes it worse. You've just got to be still and quiet, lull him into feeling
like there's nobody else around and it's okay to talk to yourself, although
he's not mad or stupid so he knows it's really not. Eventually he starts,
slow and low, and Pip presses clumsy little kisses on the back of his hot
hand to urge him on.

"I didn't kill my dad, I didn't fetch him the pills or feed them to

him, but I was there when he did it. He always said he would if he ever got

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really ill, even years before he got ill. It was over Christmas sometime
when he told me he'd stolen the pills and he was thinking about it, but he
said he wouldn't do it if I didn't want him to."

The sicky feeling is back, and filthy crawling memories he

wishes he could rub out like pencil marks: Grandad George in the hospice
for the last few weeks, withered to hardly anything and too delirious to
know he had visitors, never mind to know who they were. He wonders
what he would have done if the choice was his. It's not so difficult, really.

"That ain't fair, putting it on you," he says quietly. He traces his

fingertip across the creases on the back of Lindsay's knuckles.

"No, I'm glad. If he just did it... my mum didn't know I knew

and it cracked her up thinking he did it all on his own."

"Didn't you ever tell her?"

"How could I?"

"Spose."

"It was the sixth of January. Nice way to top off Christmas."

"Is that how come you hate Christmas so much?"

"Slade is why I hate Christmas so much. This is why I hate

hospitals."

"But what about nice things? Babies getting born, or when

people get told they're alright now cos the test's come back clear?"

Lindsay reaches up to start curling a strand of Pip's hair gently

around his finger, and he clears his throat before he says anything else. "I
know. Don't listen, I told you. I'm being stupid. It was twenty-three years
ago, I should be over it by now."

And that's an attitude he hates, he always hated it, all those

people who ever told him to pull himself together and stop snivelling, stop
living in the past, stop going on and on about your grandad cos who really

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gives a fuck about some dead old man anyway? ME, he always wanted to
yell in their stupid faces. I care and if you knew him you'd care too.

"You shouldn't ever get over it," he says. It comes out more

fiercely than he meant it to, and Lindsay looks startled. "Yeah, okay,
remember nice things like him teaching you your guitar and holidays you
went on and bedtime stories and stuff, but if you got over him dying that's
like not caring when you still do. And even if it was horrible and it still
bothers you, ain't it good he trusted you that much and you was close
enough for him to say it when he didn't have no one else? Cos... he must've
been scared. And he told you, and he must've felt better just saying it, just
knowing he weren't the only person in the world thinking them thoughts."

"I don't think about it much. It's not like I saw him do it or

anything. I went to the toilet and he took some. Bit later I went to get a
drink and he took some more. I just sat with him after that. He told me
stories about courting my mum, then he fell asleep, then he died. It wasn't
dramatic. Better than the alternative. He was going to die anyway, at least
it was by his own rules and not because he just couldn't help it."

Pip's thinking about that underground garage all those years

ago, the revolver with the single remaining bullet and the gun he stole from
the security guard, and how he selfishly wanted to shoot himself first so he
wouldn't have to see Lindsay dead, but he was bleeding that much Pip
wasn't sure he'd be able to hold the gun steady. Probably not. He's staring
into space glumly now, wandering somewhere in the past to a time when
Pip was three years old and hundreds of miles away from him, and the
biggest thing he had to worry about was how frequently he and Olly got
lollipops stuck in their hair.

"I think you're dead brave," he says softly. Lindsay raises his

chin a bit to show he heard, but he doesn't look up. "If I was dying anyway
and I knew it was gonna hurt and take ages then I'd wanna get out too, but
not on my own."

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"Me too."

"What, are we making another big romantic suicide pact?"

Lindsay finally cracks a smile at that – a tiny, brittle smile, but a

smile all the same. "So much more romantic than a bunch of cheap wilted
flowers from that shop downstairs."

"I dunno, I'd quite like some flowers..."

***

Lindsay goes home in the morning to fetch his car, and when

Pip walks carefully out the doors and out to the pick-up bay he can't see in
the back windows for roses and lilies and carnations and orchids and
flowers he doesn't know the names of, all in a rainbow mish-mash of
colours and crinkly cellophane water bags.

"Didn't know what you liked so I got one of everything,"

Lindsay says, striving for casual and failing when his voice trembles
nervously. Valentine just laughs, amazed and delighted and amused, and
all the way home he holds Lindsay's hand even when he needs to use the
gearstick.

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18.

January 2015

It's so easy and there's so little fuss. Even Lindsay can't be self-

conscious and embarrassed by just going into a poky little office and
signing some papers. He looks wonderful, he always does, even in his old
soft brown cords and a blue stripy cardigan. No tailcoats, he said sternly
when he suggested it, after first insisting on no guests, no flowers, no
ceremony, and no party. No top hats. And NO dresses. Pip's got his
favourite red skinnies on instead, a loose black silky shirt, a knotted string
of pearls and his silliest white platform knee-high boots. It's partly to be a
brat because he doesn't like being told what he's allowed and not allowed
to wear, but partly because...

"The first time we ever went out to the pub," Lindsay says,

tapping a couple of cigarettes out of his case and lighting them both in his
mouth like an old film star before handing one to Pip. "I've not forgotten."

"I thought you might." He's surprised and pleased, but it hardly

matters. It's like dropping a thimbleful of water into the Pacific; adding
more when there's already so much doesn't make any difference. "Just

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testing you."

"How could I forget? Talk about being forcibly hauled out of

the closet."

"It's good for you. The closet's rubbish. People need to stop

wasting the space and fill it with clothes instead."

"Speaking of. Honeymoon in Topshop?"

"You're amazing," Pip says, and takes the cigarette out of

Lindsay's mouth so he can kiss him.

***

217

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