If Nosty wasn't on a downswing, he might have managed to stay away.
But morning after morning, he wakes before sunrise to the same aching, heavy, hopeless feeling in his mangled chest, and there's nothing for it. There's nothing to drink or to fight or to inject that will make a fucking shred of difference.
There isn't any way to arrest this descent once it's begun. Soon his thoughts will grow murky and run together in an endless loop: "Fucking hopeless. Fucking friendless. Fucking worthless."
Once a downswing takes hold of Nosty, it's only a matter of days until he'll need to crawl off somewhere and hole up, like some sick-as-shite animal nearing its end.
He doesn't want to eat. He doesn't want to fucking sell. He doesn't want to yell or front or collect.
The only thing Nosty wants is for his pretty bird to put her wrist against his cheek and then his forehead and to hear her softly tsk, "Poor Nosty. Poor Nosty," and then he wants to sleep and sleep and sleep until this wretched heaviness lifts, and he's able to breathe once more.
The upswings are fucking fantastic, mind you. (At least until his thoughts begin to race ahead of him so fast he can't tell fact from fiction.)
But the downswings…
Shite.
The downswings are fucking terrible.
Anyhow, it isn't as if he's waiting here at Victoria Station on a crisp weekday morning to fucking talk with Belle. He just likes to watch her when she's on her way to work, her tweed jacket belted tightly against the November chill and her heels clicking smartly over the sidewalk. It's easier to blend into the crush of Londoners here than in the posh neighborhoods surrounding Belle's flat. Over near Eaton Square, his hair and his dirty, ripped clothes draw stares. Near the Tube entrances, he's just one of the spattered, dreggy London masses.
Belle's running a bit behind schedule, and when at last Nosty spies her, all but jogging along Victoria Street in her haste to make the next train, he nearly gives himself away. Jesus. What the actual fuck is she wearing?
Her buttery leather boots with the low heel have been replaced by spiky, black patent pumps. Her wool skirt suit barely reaches below her jacket's hemline, and her hair, usually done up in a demure little half-twist, hangs in loose, windswept curls around her face.
And her face — what has she done to it? His beautiful bird, always bare-faced until this morning, is wearing full makeup. Belle's bow-shaped mouth is a deep burgundy, and her eyes are smudgy and dark. It looks…oh fuck…it looks as though she's done up for a fucking date.
Nosty may not know how the other half conducts their day-to-day, but a breakfast date in full makeup seems a bit…off. It doesn't seem like Belle.
And, Christ, he'll be crawling out of his skin until he knows who the deep burgundy lips are intended for.
The thought of some rich fuck so much as buying her a bagel…well, shite, it has him in a red haze.
Realizing that he's gone completely fucking daft, Nosty ducks his head and follows Belle down into the London Underground.
Belle jiggles her foot and cranes her neck, attempting to see where the waitress has hidden herself. Perhaps it would be best to simply walk up to the hostess's station and ask for the check? Seated next to the Cafe Rouge's expansive picture window, it appears they've been quite forgotten.
Beside her, Gerald happily inspects the bottom of his martini glass, contemplating three wet olives. It's his second martini, but, astonishingly, his fourth luncheon cocktail. What most amazes Belle is the inebriated accuracy of his hand when he reaches over to rest it on her knee for the umpteenth time.
What an absolute ninny she was, thinking this might be a job interview in disguise.
Granted, Gerald was her first and only beau at Cambridge, but he had mentioned a fiance during their recent phone call and then had gone on and on about his illustrious, swiftly expanding English faculty, and Belle had so much wanted to believe she was being casually headhunted by her beloved alma mater.
In any case, she doesn't remember him drinking like this while they were together. Or behaving so boorishly. Gerald is handsome as ever, of course, but a red latticework of veins has sprouted upon his Grecian nose since last she saw him. Belle pities his future wife.
"What was it we were just speaking of, Belle? Ah yes! 'A Room with a View!' Capital, capital film! The recurring theme of estrangement…the 'estranged social outsider.' And Mr. Day-Lewis's magnificent, restrained performance! Just altogether a capital, capital film!"
Gerald's eyes are now where his hand once was, Belle having gently but firmly removed it from her upper thigh.
She doesn't want to listen to any more of this stuffy, drunken pontificating. 'A Room with a View' was the final film she watched with Nosty, the evening before he was discharged from the hospital. As a result, she finds anything less than his passionate, ferocious conviction beyond tiresome.
"They think they're talking about fucking freedom," Nosty had fumed as the credits rolled, "Acting it out little by little so that we can follow along and feel superior. But Forster didn't know fuck about freedom. 'Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.' People with lives like this will never come near it. They wouldn't know what to do with it if they fucking had it."
"You know, I would have turned the movie off straightaway if I'd realized you hated it," Belle had murmured, her fingertips tracing soothing patterns along the inside of his arm. "Why didn't you say something?"
He'd looked down at her hand, and his chest and neck flushed red with discomposure.
"Thought maybe I could help you grade some of those papers," he'd said at last, looking away, and she'd let the conversation drop, but held onto him for awhile longer, unwilling to leave until he was drifting toward sleep.
Just who is Nosty, exactly? A homeless man who quotes Sartre and rattles off words like 'schadenfreude?'
Intelligent, certainly. Angry and passionate, indisputably.
A man with bipolar disorder who eschews medication and repeatedly maims himself? Erratic and unstable, without question.
The truth of the matter is…she misses him. Terribly.
Belle has no comparison point in her sedate, academic life for Nosty. She only knows that Gerald's drunken fumbling and long-winded opining is made all the more irksome by the unfortunate fact that he isn't Nosty.
Brushing the ever-wandering hand aside, Belle excuses herself to the loo and manages to capture the attention of the waitstaff. After the cheque is paid, there is an awkward, groping farewell hug at the table. Afterwards, Belle finds a polite excuse to hang back in the restaurant, not wanting to drag out this unsatisfactory reunion any longer than necessary.
"I'll look forward to reading your book, Gerald. Best of luck!" she calls to his back as he stumbles over the leg of a chair, rights himself, brushes off his expensive suit coat, and disappears out the cafe door with a little wave and as much dignity as his inebriation will allow him.
Belle sips her lukewarm tea, giving Gerald a head start, then slips on her knit gloves and exits the restaurant. Ducking her head against the biting November wind, she walks quickly back toward campus.
Less than a block from Cafe Rouge, in a dim alley off of Wellington Street, a flash of red fabric arrests her attention. She hears a muffled curse and a dull thud. Moving closer, Belle sees two men engaged in a furious struggle.
"You don't touch her!" Nosty snarls, slapping Gerald hard across the cheek, then jabbing a finger at his bloodied nose. "You don't even fucking look at her, or I'll fucking blind you, ken?" Another hard, dull thwack across the cheekbone.
Nosty has edged Gerald up against the alley wall, a box cutter to his throat.
"Stop it, Nosty! Stop it!" Belle runs toward them, dropping her purse and book bag onto the filthy asphalt. Heart pounding, she catches Nosty by the wrist, just below his dirty bandage, and yanks the blade away from Gerald's bobbing Adam's apple.
Nosty spins to face her, baring his teeth and brandishing his small, rusty weapon, as she stumbles back.
For the first time since they met, he sees horror and revulsion written across Belle's lovely face. She whispers his name, and he realizes he's frozen in place, his mind clouded by confusion and noxious, sickening shame. Fucking hopeless. Fucking friendless. Fucking worthless.
Belle quietly tells a shivering Gerald to go, that she knows this man, and she'll handle this, and her old beau is either drunk enough or unchivalrous enough to obey her. He lurches off, hand to his bloody nose.
After a long silence, Belle exhales slowly and quietly remarks, "That was…disproportionate, Nosty."
She gingerly takes the box cutter from his hand, retracts the rusty blade, and tucks it back into his coat pocket.
"That bloke was fucking pawing at you. You should have fucking slapped him, Belle" he mutters, looking anywhere but her face.
"Perhaps," she agrees, "but perhaps I made an allowance because he was well into his cups and because we're old friends from Uni. What do you think? Should I make an allowance for your temper, Nosty?"
Then, stepping closer, she sighs and asks softly, "Have you been following me?"
His tongue darts out nervously to wet his lips.
He's a first rate liar, of course, but he finds he doesn't have the stomach for it at this particular moment. He wants to explain himself, yes, but he can't do that properly either, not when they're nearly nose to nose. The burgundy gloss has rubbed off during her lunch, and Belle's lips are back to the natural shade of pale pink that twists his stomach in knots.
Nosty swallows hard, staring at her mouth, and then Belle shows some fucking mercy, reaching up to cradle his unshaven cheek in her fuzzy, gloved hand. He shuts his eyes for an incredulous second and hears her ask, softer yet, "How are you? Do you realize how much I've missed you?"
He groans, and it's a disgraceful, needy sound that escapes his throat before he can clench his jaw and bite his tongue against it.
Belle's other gloved hand reaches up to tenderly stroke his cheek.
And then he loses his fucking mind.
With a low, frantic snarl, Nosty crushes her tiny frame against his, stumbling backwards until his back collides with the brick wall.
He ducks his chin, his chapped, rough lips desperately seeking hers, and oh, oh Christ, Belle's exquisite mouth is already open, ready to welcome him. Nosty's sharp teeth graze against hers, and his tongue traces her slippery gums, her full lower lip, the roof of her mouth, anywhere, anywhere he can reach. And, fuck, Belle tastes just as sweet as he imagined, like milky, honeyed tea and balmy summer heat and…and…like fucking home. He's never had any home but this: Belle's soft, parted lips and Belle's hands upon his cheeks and Belle's warm body pressed against his.
Nosty's fingers curl and dig into the small of her back beneath Belle's prim, tweed jacket, urgently pressing her hips flush with his, likely bruising her hipbones with his own lean, hard frame.
Nosty fucking needs the relief of counter-pressure against his full, aching cock. He needs Belle to feel his absolute desperation and his fucking hunger and to…and to…
He very nearly sobs her name when Belle tentatively brushes her hot, wet tongue over his. A soft, gloved hand slips behind his neck, underneath his long hair, and her other hand travels slowly downward, stopping and perching on his narrow waist.
"Sweetheart," she whispers, "Sweetheart…"
Nosty's quick, ragged breaths create small clouds in the chill, winter air. He hates the hoarse, unsteady voice he hears panting and pleading, "Don't make me fucking beg, Belle…fucking please…"
And Christ, she kisses him back with ferocious intensity then. The hand between his neck and the brick wall grips him tightly, and the hand perched at his waist sinks lower, slipping in between the woolen folds of his kilt and, and…oh…oh fuck, Belle is slowly tracing the length of him with one gloved finger.
He groans loudly into her mouth, his flickering tongue showing her, frantically, the rhythm he needs now, this fucking moment, before he either comes or fucking expires in this filthy alley.
"Oi! There he is! Behind the dumpster!"
The fire running through Nosty's blood turns to ice. It's the fucking coppers.
The handsy Englishman with the face like a well-skelped arse has returned with reinforcements, and Nosty will be fucked before he spends any more time in the pen.
Cursing, he wrenches his shaking body out of Belle's warm arms and flees on foot, the coppers close behind.