Without the heavy, silver chain link bracelet brushing over the back of his wrist and anchoring the appendage to his body, Nosty's right hand feels fucking weightless.
He halts abruptly in the middle of Buckingham Palace Road and tilts his face upwards toward the spitting sky.
Sleet has numbed his forehead and fingers, but his raw cheeks and exposed throat can still feel the icy sting. His leather jacket is pish-poor protection against this wretched, baltic weather.
Nosty laughs aloud, baring his teeth against the onslaught.
He is thinking of the Hungerford Bridge.
It's just a wee jaunt past the Queen Mum's house, and—more importantly—it's at a fair distance from Waterloo, so there is little risk of running into one of his dodgy-as-fuck business associates. He cannot be around his boys right now, not with his bloodshot, watering eyes and helter-skelter, runaway thoughts. Not until he's got his nut screwed on proper-like.
Aye, within the half hour, Nosty could easily be standing high above the roiling River Thames.
He doesn't want to fucking die, of course.
Shite, no.
He isn't some unhinged jakey who's gone out the fucking window. Nosty simply suspects that—without the dead man's silver bracelet weighing him down and anchoring him to this shite planet—he could easily tip over the side of the bridge railing and float upwards, toward the bright, disinterested winter moon.
The idea of flight has niggled at him before whilst on an upswing, and tonight he'd very much like to give it a try.
On this particular night, untethered from Belle's chain link talisman, freed from her easy lies about human constancy, and kept promises,and love's enduring mercy—freed from the fucking gormless illusion of his beautiful bird's faithful and everlasting love—aye, on this cruel night, Nosty truly believes that he could tip over the edge of some high precipice and fucking take flight.
He lifts his wet, wind-chafed hands up in front of his face and smirks to see the puckered, pink bite mark on his left wrist.
The idea of him as some posh bird's fucking fella.
"You thought she had hold of your heart, Nosty son," he lectures his frostbit fingers, "What she really had hold of was yer fuckin' tatties!"
He snorts, flexing his frozen knuckles.
Behind him, a hackney driver lays on his horn.
"Oi!—get outta the road! Move yer skinny, grotty arse, ya fucking haggistani cunt!"
The hackney driver hangs halfway out his rolled-down window, squinting through the heavy sleet. Likely, he's on his way to pick up a fare from one of the minted neighborhoods nearby. His loose jowls shake as he gives the hackney's horn one, two, three short blasts.
"Oi! Oi! Get a fucking move on, Mac!"
Nosty spins round to face him with a snarl. His field of vision narrows and darkens. He no longer feels the cold.
Should the need arise, he'll tear this loud, chuffie bastard and his fucking motor car right in fucking two. He thrusts a hand deep within his jacket pocket and digs out a dented, rusty box cutter. When the lunatic lays on his horn a fourth time, Nosty screams and charges the hackey's black bonnet.
The lily-livered cunt curses and hastily ducks his head back inside the vehicle, stomping on the gas pedal.
The hackney's wheels smoke and screech against the icy road. A side mirror makes sharp, brutal contact with Nosty's right hip, and then the cabbie speeds away, flicking an angry 'V' out of the open window.
"Fucking jock!"
The words are thrown back at him like a discarded cigarette butt. They linger in the chill night air just above the hackney's swiftly disappearing tail lights.
"Fucking fog-breather! Limey bastard!" Nosty lopes after the fleeing vehicle, his hand pressed to his injured hip. "Up yer arse wi' it, ya fucking crumpet-stuffer!"
When the red tail lights are finally out of sight, he limps over to the curb and yanks his damp kilt downwards, examining the reddish bruise that is blooming over his right hipbone. It pains him now, and it's going to be a fucking torment come morning. Nosty wants—
Nosty wants to go home.
He wants to go home and be held.
At this moment, he wants Belle's arms around him more than he has ever wanted anything—more than a bed at Bethlem Royal when he's come undone and is itching for a fucking holiday, more than a hot meal when his empty stomach is cramping and collapsing in on itself, more than a decent bottle of gin when he's desperate for some sort of a fucking escape, more than an intact tarp when the callous London sky opens up and takes a fucking pish all over him.
More than anything, Nosty wants to turn around and limp home to his beautiful, wee bird. He wants to feel her gentle hands in his wet hair. He wants to hear her to fuss and cluck over his fearsome bruise, then suck in her breath in sympathy when she covers it with an ice pack.
He wants to hear her say his name.
He tucks away his box cutter and fingers the house key in his pocket.
He could let himself into Belle's warm flat, just as he has done so many nights before. He could retrieve her dustpan from the walk-in pantry and sweep up the shattered remains of her ceramic lamp and picture frame. After, he could walk down the dark hallway to their bedroom and watch her while she's tucked up snug beneath the soft duvet, lost to sweet, inscrutable dreams. He could crawl silently in beside her—just as he has done so many winter nights before—and hear her breathe his name. His real name.
"Arran."
Belle always reaches out for him, even in her sleep.
And then, maybe—maybe he could fucking lacerate himself with apologies and maybe be forgiven. But no—he doesn't belong to Belle anymore; he isn't her sweetheart—and he cannot fucking bear it.
Nosty remembers the fierceness in her face when she spat, "Get out!" and he remembers her startled blue eyes, wide with fear and disbelief whilst he shouted himself hoarse.
Aye, Belle has had herself a wee, thrilling walk on the wild side, but now she's prudently reconsidered and stamped him 'return to sender.'
Nosty turns on his thick, black boot heel and continues trudging away from posh, soulless Eaton Square. He lifts his wet leather collar against the wind. His busted hip won't be carrying him all the way down to the beckoning River Thames tonight, but it's time to find some fucking shelter and hunker down anyhow.
The bridge will fucking wait.
Briefly, Nosty considers Victoria Station—he could hop a turnstile and sleep on a warm, well-lit, rattling train—but he quickly discards the notion. Victoria Station reminds him of Belle and her generous, greasy bag of burgers and her scalding hot apple pie—and what it felt like to be claimed and kissed and taken home and tucked into bed.
Instead, he travels south along Morpeth Terrace, lurching along, gripping his hip and grinding his teeth until he is standing in front of a squat, glum-looking building that has surely seen better days. The painted sign in front of the low, wrought iron fence reads 'St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Primary School.' Rude graffiti has transformed the double "oo" in "School" into a pink-nippled pair of chebs.
Nosty hisses and sinks his incisors into the inner flesh of his cheek whilst climbing the spiky, metal barrier.
The nearby streets and alleyways are all deserted, so there's no need for him to fucking scramble. Once he is safely over the fence, he keeps to the long shadows and makes his way toward a ramshackle playground tucked away behind the decaying, brick school building.
Everything looks exactly as it did when he was a wee beastie of seven.
Same rusted, rotting tire swing. Same steep slide. Same creaky, red teeter-totters with peeling paint. Same wooden playhouse with decaying slat walls and a wee, pretend chimney stack.
Nosty ducks into the tumble-down playhouse, remembering shrill, childish voices: "Oi! Whyn't you ever change yer manky clothes, fookin' porridge wog? Have you only one shirt?"
"Ha! Ask 'im why he doesn't never comb his grotty hair!"
"What's wrong wi' yer fookin' comb, Scotty? Dunno how it works?"
"Ech—shite! Get a whiff of 'im! Scotty's plum fookin' ripe! How'd you get so fookin' nosty, Scotty?"
Nosty eases himself onto a low, wooden bench that juts out from the wall of the playhouse. To his right is a pretend plastic sink filled with mud and wet leaves. To his left is the squat, open door. The dogged wind howls in, but at least the roof keeps the fucking sleet off.
He crosses his ankles tightly for warmth and clasps his numb hands together on his lap.
He remembers:
"Ach—mingin'! He's eatin' food right outta the fookin' bin! God, he's nosty! Don't yer foster mum never feed you nothin', Scotty?"
"Oi! Give 'im yer crusts! See if he'll fookin' eat 'em! You'll eat fookin' anything, won't you Scotty-no-mates?"
"You better fookin' watch it! Looks like Scotty's gettin' cheesed off!"
Nosty closes his eyes and slouches his shoulders forward for a wee spell, summoning up Belle's bonnie face. He can't sleep for shite whilst he's on an upswing, but at the very least he can rest his worn down, weary bones and dry off bit.
He let her see it once, but only by fucking accident—the real extent of his brokenness.
Not just the extensive waterworks that accompany his hairshirt downswings—though, of course, Belle has seen plenty of that sorry shite as well—but rather his panicky, irrational reptile-brain, which hecannot fucking conquer, no matter how hard he fucking tries.
His bird had woken up one morning before sunrise and found him bent double on her living room rug, his back wedged against the upholstered base of her sofa. He had propped up a large sofa cushion near his head and another one near his cold, bare feet—his very own barmy, nonsensical, imaginary shelter. He had gone and fucking gorgedhimself the night before on food from Belle's fridge and cabinets—and afterwards felt too sick to come to bed. It was fucking humiliating.
The wrappers and remnants were strewn all around him, dirtying her fine, polished floor. His face and fingers were a filthy disgrace.
"This looks very snug, Nosty."
That was all she had said before draping a white throw blanket over the two cushions and crawling in close beside him.
Belle had laid her small hand over his weakly thudding heart and gently asked, "Would you like a little breakfast, sweetheart? Maybe some toast to settle your stomach? Or some weak tea?"
He had groaned, feeling ill and so fucking ashamed to be caught out behaving like a dafty lunatic.
She had made a soft, sympathetic noise and taken his face in her hands, settling his stubbled cheek—still dark and sticky from last night's chocolate ice cream—against her warm, slender shoulder.
Belle had touched her tender lips to his forehead several times and brushed away the stale crumbs from his long, manky locks.
"I ate too much," he had told her, stupidly.
"I know, sweetheart." She had kissed the sharp ridge of his nose, considering. "But no permanent harm done. We can visit the market today, and you can fill up as many trolleys as you like. We can keep food in every single room of this flat, inside the pockets of every piece of clothing you own—whatever it takes to make you feel safe."
"It won't ever be enough."
He had hated the ingratitude he heard in his own rough voice, but Nosty spoke only the ugly truth—there would never be 'enough' food to keep him from doing something fucking foolish like gorging himself to the point of illness again. His reptile-brain would always be lurking below the surface, ready to catch him out and degrade him.
"Your body will learn 'enough' once it has truly had 'enough' for a good, long while. You've survived so much, endured so much—just be patient with yourself, sweetheart."
He had tried to pull away, muttering, "Ach, don't talk about it, Belle," but his bird had held on tight and begun to lovingly knead the sore muscles of his neck—achy and tense from spending all night on the fucking hardwood floor like a ratarsed eejit.
"It's only the truth. You've been so brave, Nosty." Her warm fingers had moved in slow, tranquil circles, working their way upwards along his stiff neck to the base of his skull, beneath his hair. "So resilient."
"Ach, no, Belle, I'm not—"
He knows himself to be a nasty, peedy, mean blighter. A fucking waste. Riddled with scars. Hardly resilient.
He doesn't want her to have the wrong fucking idea of him. Her love won't amount to fuck all if she does.
"Yes, 'brave.' 'Strong.' 'Courageous.' And your body will learn when you've had enough. Just give it some time. Does that feel nice, Nosty?"
Belle had begun to use her fingernails against his tingling scalp, just the very way he favored, so he had given her a jerky nod and stopped his protesting, gently biting her shoulder in gratitude.
Belle's other hand was resting lightly on his taut, grumbling belly, warming and soothing and stroking it. After pressing her lips to his temple, she had begun to move the pads of her fingers in careful, feather-light circles around his navel.
It made his belly feel better, somehow.
"That's good. I want you to feel nice, sweetheart. I want you to tell me when this feels like 'enough.'"
There had followed several minutes of languid, stomach-calming caresses and tender kisses pressed to his brow and nose and eyelids—and then Belle had taken his hand from where it lay limply against his chest and threaded their fingers together.
"I want you to promise me something, Arran." She had nudged his chin upwards with their twined, fisted hands. Her face was very solemn. "Promise me that you won't hurt yourself again."
Moving her own hand, she had forced his knuckles to trace the jagged, pink outline of a bottle scar. Then another. And another.
"What does it fucking matter, Belle? It's not like I'll ever be able to trade this shite in for an undamaged model."
He had attempted a careless laugh, but the earnest look on Belle's face had killed it on his lips.
"I like you just as you are," Belle had softly replied. "This model, here in my arms. Every scar, every inch. You're enough, just as you are."
She had shifted her body from beneath his and settled his sticky head upon the nubby, woolen rug, knocking over a sofa cushion. "Everything is still in perfect working order, Nosty. Still serviceable." She was teasing now, slipping so effortlessly between somber and playful.
Shite, she was a marvel.
The white blanket had fallen over his face, so he didn't see the precise moment Belle moved their woven hands to one side and took his flat, wee nipple into her mouth to suck. The pleasurable shock of it sent heat rushing downwards beyond his uncomfortably taut belly, all the way to his tight, drawn-up bollocks.
Belle rolled the little bud around with her tongue and worried it a bit with her teeth, then returned to the tight suction that made him hiss and tightly cradle the back of her head.
He hadn't known it fucking felt like this for blokes.
Once she had him groaning, she had broken the tight seal of her lips and rested her chin upon his mangled chest, whispering, "Promise me, Nosty, and I promise I'll make you say 'enough.'"
"With you bird, it's never fucking enough."
She had hummed in amused agreement and then moved lower to kiss each of his prominent ribs, pausing long enough for her hot breath to warm them. Eagerly, Belle had taken his bony hips in her hands and slipped her palms around beneath his arse cheeks, squeezing roughly. Against his eyelids, the throw blanket was soft, and it captured his quick breaths, warming the space around them.
Here and now, hunched over in his cold playhouse shelter, Nosty focuses on that moist warmth, trying to summon up more than just Belle's bonnie face, trying to summon up the memory of her loving, tender touch.
But it's a fucking uphill battle.
Unwelcome thoughts intrude: "Oi! Come on an' give the skinny blighter a fookin' bit of sandwich! Shite, I can see his fookin' ribs through the front of his t-shirt. You've got a chest like a fookin' rake, Scotty!"
Nosty pushes the intrusive voices away, focusing on the memory of Belle's pink lips, moving from his lean, ticklish ribs to his uncomfortably tight belly. Her moist tongue had darted into his navel, bringing a startled smile to his mouth, and then she had slowly followed the sparse, wiry trail of hair on his stomach farther down—much farther down.
He had bit his dry lips and begun to impatiently arch his hips, but Belle had murmured, 'Just relax your muscles, sweetheart. Don't make yourself feel ill. Let me take care of you."
"Shite, I think I'm gonna be fookin' ill! Scotty's got a rotten piece of fruit in his lunch sack. It's gonna draw flies!"
With determination, he pushes the thoughts back once again.
Instead he sees: his beautiful bird moving to kneel between his spread, bent knees, ducking her head very low, her silk hair brushing past his thighs, knocking away the second pillow with her bare feet.
Belle had kissed her way around the thick, swollen base of his cock, nuzzling at his dark, springy curls, then flickering her tongue lower, over the sensitive, paper-thin skin of his balls—and then downwards even further still. With a hand tucked beneath either of his thighs, Belle's warm tongue had bathed the smooth, hairless flesh behind his balls, flickering up even to the very rim of his clenched arsehole.
"Oi! You're fucking filthy, Scotty!"
"Ach—no, Belle, that's fucking filthy!" He had tried to turn over, to move out of reach, but her hands held him gently in place.
"Does it feel good, Nosty?" Her hot breath had teased the flesh of his inner thighs.
"Aye," he replied hoarsely, his face hot.
"Then it isn't nasty. Let it feel good. Tell me when it's enough."
Her tongue resumed its wanton course; her warm hands massaged the muscles of his arse and thighs. Her palms and fingers set a steady, maddening pace that reminded him of the rhythm his rigid cock was craving.
"Yes, ah—fuck—Belle—"
"Mmm?"
"I think—wait, ah—enough, Belle. I need to—I need to fucking come."
In the here and now, in the freezing, dirt-floored playhouse, Nosty sighs and lets his head fall back against the slat wall. His right hand creeps upwards to the slit in his kilt. He's a fucking animal whilst he's on an upswing. Can't leave himself alone.
Belle's lips tight around him. Belle's head moving beneath the blanket. The wet sounds her mouth makes.
"Yer so fookin' nosty, Scotty!"
Belle's warm hands beneath his arse, cradling it, rocking his hips so he doesn't have to expend any fucking effort.
Beneath his damp kilt, Nosty's numb hand moves faster.
His lips are parted, and his eyes are clenched shut. He is dreaming of his beautiful bird, who loved him for a little while.
He'll head back to Waterloo in the morning. Can't fucking hide from his boys forever, can he? His real life is waiting for him. It always has been.