Will his boys be able to fucking smell it on him, this new and execrable weakness?
Will they know at a glance that these past few days have transformed him into someone's sweetheart, someone's precious love, Belle's baby and her beautiful boy?
It's inconceivable that these sweet, searing words will leave him unmarked. She whispered them into the shell of his ear, and he felt layers upon layers of his filth and his skin and his fucking contamination peeling away, leaving him raw and shivering and exposed. Belle has scraped him clean and remade him newborn.
His boys will surely see it. They're sure as fuck going to smell it on him, and then—well, then he'll be fucking done for, won't he?
His mates are a pack of wolves, and it was him that taught 'em how to howl and claw. It was Nosty that taught 'em how to scrape open another bloke's wound and how to scramble for the biggest piece of the fucking pie and how to step on the backs of the meek and the spineless.
It was him that taught 'em to look for the downcast eyes, the hunched shoulders, the palsied hands, and the shameless, desperate hunger that transforms men into things. It was him that taught 'em to sniff out weakness and how to fucking piss on its shoes, and now—well, now it's going to take all the self-mastery he has to put 'em off the scent.
He's never been away this long before.
Nosty didn't fucking bite and slash his way to the top of the Bankside dogpile just to throw it all away for a clean blanket and a plush mattress and a warm hand wrapped around his joystick.
But—but…that warm hand is attached to the loving arm that held him close while he cringed and wept, and that loving arm is attached to the sloping shoulder that he gripped and burrowed his wet face against, and that sloping shoulder is just above the unblemished heart that carries his heart, and—oh God, oh fuck, if Belle told him to stay, he would stay. If she took him in her arms and told him he must choose—her or the only life he's ever known—he would choose her.
Nosty rests his unshaven cheek on the mattress, staring at Belle's reflection in the bathroom mirror. She is painting her mouth a deep burgundy with a dainty, wee wand. Already, she has put on her theatre clothes: a black dress with a low, scooped neck and sheer, black stockings. Her brown hair falls in loose, gleaming ringlets over her pale shoulders.
His bird's so fucking beautiful.
As if aware of the content of his thoughts, Belle meets his eyes in the mirror and presses her lips together, blotting the dark lipstick. Then she beams at him, and he feels it deep within his rib cage, the liquid warmth spreading swiftly outwards to his face and his churning belly. His head may be resting against the mattress, but even so—Belle's warm smile leaves him dizzy and wanting.
Hanging over the hot, humming radiator in the bathroom is her—his—cashmere scarf. It seems that she took a damp rag to it while he was dozing. The memory of that scarf moving between his legs has his skin buzzing and his face burning.
Belle crosses the dark room and sits beside him on the rumpled bed, her hip pressed to his drawn up knees. She reaches out to smooth the long locks back from his face and bends forward to nuzzle his temple with the tip of her nose.
"I left a ticket on top of your clothes, just in case you change your mind about the play," she murmurs, kissing his ear. "There are fresh towels in the bathroom, if you need them. I should be home around midnight, depending on how they block the scenes and how late the class discussion runs."
She slides a soft hand underneath the blankets, grazing his arse and thigh. "I love you, Nosty," Belle says quietly, her eyes alight. "I love you with all my heart. And I want you to know that if you don't come back…I'll come and find you."
He shudders at the thought of it: Belle wandering some dodgy neighborhood after dark, searching for him. Did his bird ever hear him talking about Waterloo or Blackfriars? Maybe with those fucking jakeys at Victoria Station? And—and…she loves him? Fucking shite. He doesn't know what to do with this shite.
"Promise you won't ever come hunting, Belle," he demands, raising his dizzy head off the mattress, "It's not safe." She quickly slips her fingers beneath his dreads and dips her dark lips to his neck, gently kissing his swallow tat.
"I can't promise that, Arran," Belle whispers, grazing her teeth along his throat and afterwards kissing his clenched jaw and bidding him a soft "Goodnight."
She doesn't order him to stay.
Nosty listens to her footsteps receding—soft at first, then louder once she's put on her heels—and exhales at the sound of Belle's front door being pulled shut and the deadbolt sliding into place.
Shite.
With an uneasy sigh, Nosty sits up and swings his skinny legs over the edge of the bed. After a week of him sleeping and eating and carrying on in these sheets, Belle's going to need to fucking burn them. His wrist is healing nicely, though, and the most recent scar on his chest had faded to a pale, puckered pink.
Bare arsed, Nosty walks over to the upholstered chair where Belle has stacked his neatly folded clothes. His black leather jacket is draped over the back of it, and a ticket from the dry cleaner is attached to the coat's ripped lining.
On the seat of the chair is a pile of new t-shirts: black and gray and white. And underneath the shirts—oh fuck. Belle has bought him two new kilts, both a fine, red tartan. Both made of the softest wool. They look like the sort of thing you would get from a posh tourist trap back in Glesgie for five hundred quid a fucking pop.
Tucked underneath the swank, red kilts are several pairs of thick, woolen socks.
The back of his throat is fucking burning, and his eyes sting like someone chucked sand in his face. Belle's housed him, fed him, fucked him, says she loves him—and now she's buying him fucking presents.
Overcome, Nosty nearly overlooks a small, white box tucked in amongst the socks.
Scrawled on the lid in Belle's precise, elegant cursive is a line he recognizes from 100 Selected Poems:
"my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom"
A tremor runs through him when he picks up the wee box in his hands and feels the unexpected heft of it. Resting within is the silver, chain-link bracelet—the same one Belle offered him back at King's College Hospital.
Nosty's hands are shaking as he lifts and fastens it around his uninjured wrist: a talisman, a charm, her tender claim upon him.
He walks on unsteady legs to the bathroom and turns on the water in the shower. Steam fills the room while he sits on the edge of the tub, lost in thought.
First he'll get himself cleaned up, then he'll go check on his boys down at Waterloo, and afterwards—afterwards he hopes the Globe Theatre will let him in the fucking door.
If not, he'll come back here and wait for Belle.