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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
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