Read Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome for Free Online

under the seat and slides it back as far as it'll go, stretching

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    out his long limbs and sighing when his joints all crackle like bubble wrap, leaving him feeling deliciously boneless and a bit like a basking cat, supine here on the car seat with the sun hammering down on his closed eyes. He finds it a bit weird that he doesn't find it a bit weird when Valentine throws a leg over him, shifting and shuffling until, miraculously, they're both comfortable in a sports car seat made for one.
    "That wasn't an invitation," he says, without bothering to open his eyes.
    Valentine takes the bottle. Lindsay can hear him drinking, then feels him lean over to put it somewhere out the way. Seconds later Numan flicks back on, but more quietly.
    "I'm gatecrashing."
    Lindsay's not hard, but Valentine is and that gets him started. It feels alright. Natural, kind of. He supposes it's been building up, this thing. Like tension, but not really, because tension implies you don't know whether you'll be getting it or not at the end. This has been on the cards from the beginning. It's not tension, it's just the way things are. It's like going up a hill and knowing you'll reach the summit sooner or later.
    "Fuck, I bet you even think in proper sentences, don't you?"
    He realises he's been tracing gentle, idle patterns on Valentine's skin with his fingertips, just under the damp hem of his shirt; he stops, then starts again when Valentine makes a spoilt little noise and covers one of Lindsay's hands with his own, urging him on. Lindsay has a fleeting fantasy of getting back out the car, throwing the kid face-down over the bonnet, and fucking him until he cries. Maybe he'd start taking things a little bit more seriously then.
    "What?"
    "I can almost hear your brain working. Wheezing like a steam train.
    What're you thinking about?"
    "Oh, I don't know," Lindsay murmurs, sliding his fingers higher up Valentine's back. "I'm thinking this is stupid and I should have put that bullet in your tiny brain before I got to like you so much."

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    C H A P T E R 3

    Valentine can't seem to decide whether to look pleased or worried, finally settling on a coy half-smile, bottom lip caught gently between his teeth.
    His eyes are very, very green. Lindsay's noticed before. They've just never been this close until now.
    "You're gonna be rubbish, you know," he goes on. "You should be a pop star or something. Bartender. Work in a shoe shop. Elbow into Radio 1 as a tea-boy and work up til you're running the joint. Anything except this."
    Valentine's arms snake around his neck. Lindsay feels his two forearms rumpling the back of his hair, the brush of a studded wristband against the top of his ear. "Why should I?"
    "You'll be useless. You'll get me killed. Next job, bam, we're both dead because you're an incompetent little monkey."
    "Yeah, probably." He's still smiling, though. Laughing, even, as he lets his head loll down against Lindsay's shoulder and tucks his face in against his neck like he's trying to sniff the blood in his pulse. "It'll be alright. It'll be genius, we'll be like Bonnie and Clyde."
    "You can be Bonnie."
    "Well, yeah, like there's any question."
    "What about the others, though?"
    "What about 'em?"
    Lindsay shrugs his shoulder until the kid sighs in fake-irritation and sits up a bit to look at him. "They won't think twice about giving you that bullet I should've given you before, if they think you're holding us back. You do know that, yeah?"
    "What's it got to do with them, anyway?"
    "Everything? We're a team. The only reason they didn't come today is because they thought I was gonna take the money and shoot you. You're not getting a share, that's not how it's working."

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    "That ain't fair, though. I saved your life. All your lives."
    "Don't flatter yourself. If you hadn't offered me your car we'd have just nicked another one."
    "Don't you fancy me?" Valentine says, and