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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
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