Nosty's head is bowed against the frigid, spitting rain. His chafed, red hands are tightly fisted and thrust deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. Long, wet ropes of hair slap against his face and shoulders, keeping time with his boots as they strike the damp pavement. Already, he's put ten blocks between himself and Belle and that fucking hospital, and he's moving fast.
Glancing furtively over his shoulder, Nosty quickens his pace.
On his left, rush hour traffic creeps along the A202. Impatient drivers lay on their horns, eager to get home to their warm suppers and soft slippers and tumblers of scotch. Hungry, overtired children wail in back seats, and commuters curse one another, pounding on their steering wheels. Brakes screech, and red taillights flicker, and people shout, but this is a tony, residential, safe neighborhood, so Nosty allows the angry, noisy lot of them to slip away, sinking deeper into his own troubled thoughts: the hospital…the bracelet…Belle.
Once he crosses over Lambeth Road, nearer to the river, he'll need to hold his head up high and put on the swagger, but, for now, he is the only danger for miles around. No need to put on a show.
With every footfall, a single word reverberates within Nosty's wet skull: "Fuck."
He takes long strides, tramping through dirty puddles and soaking his only pair of socks: "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
His shins are abraded and sore from where the sodden, red kilt flicks and rubs against them: "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
On either side of the busy street, warm flats are filling with soft lamplight, and tellies are flickering to life, broadcasting the evening news: "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
A beautiful, dutiful lass (his fairy-fucking-godmother, really) all but begged him to take an expensive piece of jewelry off her hands. Quite literally. Nosty can still see the heft of the bracelet in his mind's eye, dangling from Belle's outstretched fingers, the soft luster of the silver and her touching eagerness to fasten it around his injured wrist: a talisman, a charm, her tender claim upon him.
The dead man's silver is worth 400 quid at least, possibly more. Within days, Nosty could have easily doubled that amount. Then tripled it.
Oh, he would have been set for a good long while. Able to take a true holiday. A little mental health vacation. But looking into Belle's earnest eyes, blue and clear as the summer sky, so yearning and so fucking good…Nosty knew he couldn't sell her dead brother's bracelet. He couldn't sell it, and he sure as shite couldn't wear the fucking thing while sleeping under a fucking bridge. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
He's come to Clapham Road. If he continues onward instead of turning right, he'll be at Belle's dry flat in under an hour.
Oh yes, he memorized that address. Her phone number, too.
Nosty's memory is like that: sharp and agile and fail-safe. On occasion, he thinks it might be nice to switch it off and take a little rest. There's plenty he'd like to forget. Not Belle, though. He wants to remember the way she looked in the dark, when the pale, blue light from the hospital telly set her pretty face aglow. He wants to remember the smile that always seemed to be playing around the corners of her mouth and the warmth in her voice when she whispered goodnight, Nosty, careful not to wake whoever else was sleeping with him in the room that night.
He wants to hold on to what it was like to be with someone who treated him like he was family, laughing and sharing her spoon when he groused that she had helped herself to a larger portion of their nightly dessert: "Here then, have a bit of mine, Nosty. You whinger." Belle had happily licked the spoon clean afterwards, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to share utensils with a mad, minky waster such as himself.
With a gnarl, deep in his throat, he turns right, away from Belle's posh neighborhood and her inexplicable fondness for him. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
Now, if he were to go to her flat (and he fucking won't, but say for argument's sake that he did), Nosty believes Belle would still be happy to see him. She wears her heart on her sleeve, that one, and the gladness he read on her face, day after day at the hospital, was genuine. He may not understand why she lights up at the sorry sight of him, even after her grief for her brother had lost its sharp edges, but he trusts his ability to read people. And Belle fucking cares.
She might even try to hug him. He can imagine it: standing on her doorstep, out of the rain, and tiny Belle reaching out to pull him in.
What would it feel like to let her? Would she slip her hands beneath his leather jacket and clutch him tight around the waist? Maybe be so happy to see him that she'd press her flushed cheek to his chest and cry a little bit?
Belle's so fucking wee; she only comes up to his chin. Possibly she'd tip her head back and smile a watery smile at him. Tears not for her dead brother, but just for him, all his. And then…maybe he'd comfort his pretty bird by kissing the soft, white flesh of her neck and her delicate collarbone and by licking the little hollow of her throat until she begged him for a proper fucking kiss, her pink, pliable lips parting for his tongue. She'd taste so good; he fucking knows it, like the sweetened tea she carries with her in a thermos and sipped while grading papers by his bedside. Would she be shy in his arms or fucking begging for it? Nosty can't decide which would excite him more…"Fuck! Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
At Lambeth Road, the sidewalk becomes cracked and uneven. Tidy window boxes filled with autumn mums give way to iron security bars and drawn curtains. Everything looks a bit more shoddy.
Nosty throws his narrow shoulders back, shakes his long hair out of his face, and begins to saunter, as if there's nowhere he'd rather be than out for a stroll in a dodgy neighborhood on a shite night such as this one.
He strolls past liquor stores and cheap takeout places, greasy fish and chip spots and run-down corner markets. His empty stomach rumbles.
His injured wrist is still tucked conspicuously into his jacket pocket, as if he's fingering a weapon. In actual fact, those sheepshagging cunts at the hospital nicked his blade, but there's no need for anyone else to know it. His other arm hangs loose now, swinging confidently as he strolls. He owns these fucking streets.
Walking down a steep, muddy bank, Nosty sees the glow of a half dozen trashcan fires burning beneath the Waterloo Bridge. His boys are carrying on about who's most pished and who amongst them is the biggest arse bandit. It's past dark, so they're all drunk as skunks and fucking loud besides.
"Miss me, ya minky bastards?" Nosty spreads his arms wide and receives the welcoming hollers with the beneficence of a king. His smile (more a baring of teeth, really) glitters dangerously and doesn't reach his eyes.
"It's fucking Nosty!"
"Oi, Nosty!"
"Where ya been at, ya Weedgie cunt?"
He lets that last bit slide because they're all beyond blootered and won't remember fuck all come morning. A smoke is offered, then a half-empty bottle of cheap gin. When he takes his place of honor on an overturned milk crate near the largest fire, it's impossible not to think of Belle and the warm suppers she brought him nightly.
Early on, she'd discovered his sweet tooth, and so Belle had plundered the bakeries near the university in a blatant attempt to win him over with buttery shortbread, slices of chocolate cake, and clootie dumplings. On the whole, it had been successful.
What sweet treat had gone uneaten tonight, resting on the edge of the nurses' station in its white bakery box while he had fled a pair of pretty blue eyes and an outstretched hand?
The food was really fucking nice, okay? But even better was the little game they played with the movies from the King's College library. Every evening, Belle would bring one film she loved, one she loathed, and one that was part of the coursework she assigned her students. He would guess, usually correctly, which was which, and then choose which film they'd watch later on.
If he chose something from her "blacklist," as she called it, Belle would leave a little lamp on and grade papers while he watched, a wry smile playing over her lips. But if he chose one she enjoyed, all the lights would go off on their side of the room, and she would sometimes slip a hand through the metal bars of his hospital bed and rest it on his forearm. Belle preferred drama, emotional intensity, and catharsis, and, although Nosty would have preferred a few more car chases and fiery explosions, he found he liked her hand on his arm in the dark even better.
An ugly bird stumbles closer while he distracts himself from memories of Belle by talking shite with his boys. He recognizes this one, with her boyish, close-cropped hair and slouchy clothes. Kaz is her name, and he sure as fuck knows what Kaz wants.
"Oi Nosty? You fancy doing any business tonight?" She's pished, of course, and slurring her words. Looks even worse than when last he saw her, if that's possible. Even more broken somehow.
"I need a little something to keep me going, yeah?" Kaz explains without any shame, and that's one nice thing a bottle of gin will do for you. It takes away the shame, at least for a little while.
"Eh?" He replies, addressing not her, but rather the whole drunken lot of them: "Didya mind the shop while I was away, lads? Am I open for business?"
His boys loudly assure him that they fucking tended what needed tending and that he fucking ought to be open for business, since it's well past time the boss got his fucking dobber wet after such a long absence.
"Have any money on you, sweetheart? No, I didn't think so. So I suppose it depends…on whether you're prepared to pay in kind."
Nosty stands, looking over at her at last, raising his eyebrows and running his tongue slowly over his lower lip. Behind him, there is whooping and scattered applause.
Kaz's eyes go flat and glassy, but the bird nods once, saying, "Alright then, let's have a go. Where d'you want it, Nosty?" This is met with still more cheers. His boys do so love their dinner theatre, sometimes sans dinner.
He escorts the pathetic, strung-out little git a short ways off from the fire and gives her a rough push towards the wall. Kaz turns her back on him, tugging at her loose-fitting pants and bracing herself for a fast fuck against the underside of the bridge, but Nosty catches her by the wrist and spins her back around, speaking low and fierce: "I fancy a wank tonight, lover. Don't know where that fud of yours has been, now do I?"
Her face doesn't register relief or anger or embarrassment or any other emotion, but Kaz pulls up her pants with one hand and thrusts the other through the slit in Nosty's kilt.
Her touch is cold and clumsy and gruff.
Everybody knows Nosty likes it fucking rough.
His cock is shrunken and flaccid when she first grips him. There's nothing about this sorry-as-shite situation that arouses him: not her glassy, drunken stare; not the hard, quick, mechanical yanks she's giving him; not the sickly smell of stale liquor that's all around them. After a minute or so, her brow knits, and Nosty knows he cannot allow himself to remain soft much longer. He'll be fucked before he lets word get around that his cock is anything less than fully functional.
He focuses on the the fullness of the bird's cheeks, how they remind him just the slightest bit of Belle. Oh fuck, there it is, the first twinge of movement from his uninterested cock. Beautiful Belle. He summons up her heart-shaped face, the swell of her breasts beneath her cashmere cardigans, her gleaming brown curls, and her posh little voice. Oh fuck, yes, there it is, the blood pooling downwards and his desire coiling tightly and his sleepy cock coming to life.
Oh yes, and there's one particular memory that will bring him off right quick. Oh fuck, yes.
That night…that night when some bint nurse he'd never laid eyes on before walked in with a tub of warm, sudsy water, determined to give him a fucking sponge bath.
"Gotten a bit stale in here, yeah?" she'd said cheerfully, then given the gauze covering his wrist a little tug, saying it likely should be changed, and that had fucking hurt…so bad that he had yowled like a puss with its tail caught in the door, and Belle…oh Belle…beautiful, perfect Belle had gotten so angry at that…didn't like to see him hurting, and she had sent that nurse from the room and said, oh God, she had said in her posh little voice, "We'll take care of this ourselves."
And then…oh fuck, and then she had turned their movie back on, and while soldiers sprinted across a battlefield and landmines exploded she had wrung the warm water out of the washcloth and…oh, oh, fuck…she had begun with his neck…and he was so glad it was dark so that she wouldn't see his pulse racing beneath her fingers and the way his cock twitched beneath the thin hospital blanket.
And then…oh God, and then after she'd finished with his neck, Belle had carefully washed behind both of his ears like a good little mother, gently tracing the shell of each ear with the warm cloth, and he didn't know…oh God, he didn't realize what that would do to him.
He'd drawn his knees up then, tenting the blanket so she wouldn't see, but Belle must have known…she's good, but she's not fucking stupid…and she hadn't stopped, had she? If anything, she took more care with him after that, first tugging down one side of his hospital gown, then the other. Slipping the warm cloth up so gently beneath his arms, then down over his chest, grazing over his nipple and his ribcage. He'd kept his eyes on the movie, but hers were on the scars that decorated his pale skin.
"Poor Nosty," she whispered, "Poor Nosty," and, oh, he liked that. He liked that so fucking much. He liked being fussed over and soothed, as long as it was by her and no one else was around to hear it.
She'd done his arms next, careful of his injured wrist and careful to keep the washcloth comfortably warm. And then…oh fuck, and then she'd reached out to straighten one of his legs, gently lifting the hospital blanket to his thigh. He'd kept the other leg bent, hiding the way his cock lay full and heavy against his stomach, but when Belle moved higher and higher, he thought he might come just from the warm, upward strokes along his inner thigh…oh fuck, oh fuck…
Cursing, Nosty spends himself in Kaz's rough hand, and she stumbles back, glad of the numbness born of gin and glad to be free of him.
When he's finally able to catch his breath, he rearranges his damp kilt and retrieves the bird's hard-earned stuff-and-all from his boys.
Afterwards, Nosty crawls into his regular Waterloo spot beneath a tented tarp, drawing his knees up tight and pressing his back to the cement wall. His stomach growls and he thinks maybe he should get up and go find something, but then that familiar, sick, hollow feeling is clawing him back downwards, and he finds he doesn't care enough to move.
Nosty drifts into an uncomfortable, uneasy sleep, thinking of white bakery boxes and silver bracelets and Belle's beautiful, beautiful blue eyes.