Chapter Text
Niall is jerking his cock when the toilet light clicks off. He keeps going in the dark. His trousers are shoved under his hips, belt hanging loose, shirt rucked up where his stomach pushes it.
He has been at it too long, long enough for the motion sensor to give up on him and for the head of his cock to feel rubbed raw under his thumb. His fist still moves, fast and stupid, up and down the shaft with no rhythm left except irritation.
"Come on," he says.
His cock stays half-hard in his hand, wet from spit and sweat, thick enough to shame him and too useless to finish. He squeezes at the base, drags his palm up, twists over the head, tries again. His balls pull tight, give him a small mean promise, then loosen before he can do anything with it.
Northbank Press has clean toilets, clean enough that every fucking sound he makes seems to belong to him: the dull slap of his fist, the catch in his throat, the belt buckle tapping his thigh. Tap, tap, tap. An occupied cubicle next to him could turn the whole thing into a risk, a story, a man holding his breath behind a partition. Instead the room gives him back only himself, so he spits into his palm again and puts his hand back around his cock with a grip that is already too rough.
The light comes on while he is bent over himself, shoulder pressed to the cubicle wall, mouth open around a breath that almost turns into crying.
"Fuck."
He keeps at it for another few seconds, furious now, wrist aching, skin slipping badly under his palm. A little clear wetness smears over his fingers, maybe piss, maybe precome.
The little pressure gathering under his stomach leaves before he can chase it. His cock softens in his hand with an ordinary little give.
Niall stands there holding it, breathing through his teeth, thumb still resting stupidly under the head, pressing for a few seconds after there is nothing left to press from. The smell thickens in the cubicle.
"You useless cunt," he whispers, and tucks himself away too quickly. The zip catches a hair. He hisses, bends forward, fixes it with two fingers.
Someone knocks on the outer door.
"Mr Kennedy?"
Niall looks at the cubicle lock.
"Mr Kennedy, Daniel's just wondering if you're still with us."
The voice belongs to one of the young women from editorial. Rosie, maybe. Or Rose. He has signed a book for her once and written the wrong name in it. She said it was fine then, with the careful cheer of a person making a note in her head.
"Yes," he says.
He clears his throat and tries again.
"Yes. I'm coming."
He gets the belt wrong, pulls it through the buckle from the wrong side, swears at it quietly, gets it right. When he steps out of the cubicle the mirror gives him a pale face, with a wet mouth. One side of his collar sitting higher than the other. He leans into the sink, turns the tap hot, and puts both hands under it.
The water bites him at once, so he makes it hotter and takes more soap, working it over his palm, between his fingers, under the nails, around the thumb, down to the wrist, then back to the palm again.
The smell stays in the little cuts near his knuckles. He raises his right hand before he knows he is doing it and sniffs, finds his cock or piss or precome under the soap, and washes again, harder, until the skin reddens.
He can hear Rosie or Rose moving outside the door, a polite shoe shifting its weight. He imagines her listening to the tap. Imagines her telling Daniel. Imagines Daniel's soft mouth making a joke about writers and nerves, because Daniel thinks every humiliation improves if you put it in a nicer room.
"Mr Kennedy?"
"Nearly done."
The paper towel tears badly. He takes another, leaves wet shreds on his fingers, picks them off one by one and drops them into the bin. One misses. He looks at the twisted bit of white paper lying on the floor beside the bin.
Daniel waits in the corridor with a folder under his arm and his phone in his hand. He wears a blue suit without a tie, trainers too white. He glances at Niall's wet cuffs, then at his face.
"Everything all right?"
Niall puts both hands into his pockets.
"Yes."
"You were a while."
"I know."
Daniel smiles with his gentle professional mouth, all concern and no teeth.
"What were you doing in there?"
Niall looks past him at the glass wall of the meeting room. On the table inside, two paper cups have gone flat at the rims. Someone has printed his pages and arranged them into a neat stack with a pink sticky note on top. His name is written there. NIALL KENNEDY. Block capitals.
"I had things to do," he says.
Daniel's smile stays, but has to work for it.
"Right. Well. We should get back to the ending."
#
"Fucking hell, Ruben."
"Put it deeper, Bambi."
"I am putting it deeper."
"You're tickling it."
"I'm not tickling it."
"Then why's it floating up like a shy turd?"
Niall crouched at the edge of the bank with his trainers sliding in the mud, both hands on the rod, trying to follow Ruben's instructions without giving him the satisfaction of looking confused.
The feeder swung a foot above the water, packed badly, crumbs dropping from it in sad little clumps.
Ruben stood behind him eating crisps from a packet he had stolen from Niall's bag.
"Lower," he said.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Fuck off."
Ruben laughed through a mouthful of salt and vinegar.
"Drop it. Let it go down proper. Carp don't come up for your benefit. Lazy fat bastards. Feeder sits on the bottom or they'll laugh at you."
"Fish don't laugh."
"You've caught one all day. You're in no position to say what fish do."
Niall opened his fingers. The feeder hit the pond with a small, unimpressive plop and vanished through the brown-green skin of water. Line ran out. He tried to hold it the way Ruben had shown him, rod up, not too high, not too soft. His wrist had already begun to ache.
"There," he said.
Ruben squinted at the line.
"Maybe."
A mosquito landed on Niall's thigh. He slapped it hard enough to leave a red handprint on his own skin.
"Ow. Fuck."
Ruben looked down.
"See, that's what happens when you dress like a lass at Butlins."
"They're shorts."
"Exactly."
"It's summer."
"We're by a pond, Bambi. Ponds have midges. That's why God invented jeans."
"Last time you took me to the river it wasn't like this."
"Because it was a river, Bambi. And last time you had three jumpers on and those jeans Lori buys you because she thinks you're still shaped like a church candle."
Niall scratched at the bite until it hurt.
"Do I look better without them?"
Ruben stopped chewing for half a second.
"Without what?"
"The jeans."
"I heard you."
"Then answer."
Ruben tipped the crisp packet into his mouth, shook the last crumbs onto his tongue, and crushed the empty packet in one fist.
"I’ve seen more meat on a cigarette."
Niall laughed and scratched at the bite again.
"That isn't an answer."
"It's the truest answer you'll get."
The pond sat in a shallow dip behind the trees. Every so often a car passed beyond the hedge with a wet hush of tyres. Reeds leaned over the far side. A plastic bag had caught on a branch and kept lifting itself in the breeze, white, then grey, then white again.
Ruben had caught seven carp. He had lined them up in memory if not in fact, each one getting larger every time he mentioned it.
Niall had caught one. Ruben had called it a rumour.
"Explain the feeder thing again," Niall said.
Ruben groaned so loudly a bird left the hedge.
"Bambers."
"You make it sound simple and then it isn't."
"It is simple. You're just too fucking educated."
"I'm not educated yet."
"Well, you've got the face for it."
"What face?"
"Constipated poet."
Niall smiled at the water.
Ruben came down beside him with the tub of groundbait and crouched. His knees cracked. There was dried mud on one shin, a green smear on his T-shirt, cigarette behind his ear though he was already smoking another. He picked up the spare feeder cage and pushed two fingers into the bait mix.
"Right. Watch my beautiful hands."
"They're filthy."
"Beautiful things often are."
"That's not true."
"You've no romance in you, Niall Kennedy."
"I've got standards."
"Aye, terrible illness."
Ruben packed the bait into the cage, thumb pressing it tight, crumbs squeezing out between the wires.
"This wee contraption gets stuffed with dinner. Hook goes in the middle, hidden. You cast. It sinks. Bait starts breaking up on the bottom, makes a smell, makes a cloud. Carp comes along with its big stupid mouth, starts hoovering, hook's there waiting. You lift. Fish regrets being born."
Niall watched the brown paste stick under Ruben's thumbnail.
"That's horrible."
"That's dinner."
"We're putting them back."
"Then it's sport."
"Sport's horrible."
"Well, that's Scotland."
Niall laughed, and Ruben looked pleased again in that quick sideways way, gone before it asked to be noticed.
Another mosquito came near Niall's ear. He swore and flapped at it with the hand that should have been holding the rod steady.
"Jesus, they're everywhere."
"They're after your blood. Posh blood tastes sweeter."
"I was born in Glasgow."
"Born in Glasgow, my arse. You move like the Queen’s lot. Diana doesn’t count, she shagged her way in."
Niall shoved him with his elbow. Ruben shoved back harder and nearly tipped him into the water. Niall caught himself with a boot in the mud and let out a sound that made Ruben laugh until he coughed smoke.
"You bastard."
"Nearly had a swim there."
"I'd have pulled you in."
"You couldn't pull a curtain."
"I could pull you."
Ruben's grin came up slowly.
"Could you?"
Niall felt the heat go to his ears and hated that Ruben saw it. He looked at the rod tip.
"With enough rope."
"Fuck off."
They settled into a quiet that did not last long. Leaves moved above them. A dog barked somewhere near the road and then lost interest. Niall's line lay slack for a while, then tightened a fraction. He held his breath.
"Don't you dare yank that," Ruben said.
"I'm not."
"Your shoulders are yanking."
"My shoulders are standing still."
"Your shoulders know you’re fucked."
Niall tried not to laugh and lost the little tremor in the line. The rod went dead in his hands.
"Oh, brilliant."
"You laughed it off."
"You made me."
"I didn't climb inside your mouth and do it."
"You basically did."
Ruben gave him a look over the cigarette.
"Steady."
Niall had been happy before he knew it, which annoyed him once he noticed. The day had arranged itself around him while he was busy being bitten alive: Ruben talking shite, water doing nothing, the cheap rod warm under his hand, his own legs out in the air like he had some right to summer. He was not thinking about school or Lori or the room at home or the way Ruben took up space in it and made every object seem to belong to him first. He was only trying to catch a fish.
"I love this summer," Niall said.
Ruben looked at him with the cigarette halfway to his mouth.
"That's gay."
"No, it isn't."
"Loving a summer? Very gay."
"Then you're gay. You're in it too."
"I'm improving it for you."
"You are not."
"Bambi, before me you were probably indoors polishing your wee sonic screwdriver."
"Fuck off."
"Nah. Look at you. Expert grip."
Niall smiled down at the reel.
"It's different this year. That's all I mean."
Ruben took a drag and watched the pond. The smoke came out of his nose.
"Only took me a couple of years to get you pregnant."
"I'm not that easy."
"I bet you're a nightmare. All clenched up and weeping."
"Ruben."
"What?"
Niall tried to look offended and laughed before he managed it. Ruben laughed too, louder, head tipped slightly back, throat open to the green shade. A mosquito landed on his neck.
Niall slapped it without thinking, and Ruben jerked hard enough to nearly drop the cigarette.
"Fuck!"
"Midge."
"You hit me like Maura."
"You deserved it from Maura."
Ruben rubbed his neck, grinning.
"Careful. I bruise. Delicate flower."
"You're a weed."
"Weeds survive."
Ruben scratched his jaw with his thumb. Niall pretended to check the line.
Ruben said,
"You had another one yet?"
"Another what?"
"Lass."
Niall frowned at the feeder cage in his hand.
"Ruben, I'm seventeen."
"Congratulations."
"I mean I'm not thirty."
"I know. You'd be taller."
"I'm not talking about this."
"Everyone starts different. Some lads are at it by thirteen. Some wait until they're married and then die of shock."
Niall gave him a look.
"When did you?"
Ruben took the cigarette from his mouth and studied the ash.
"Earlier than you."
"How do you know?"
"Because I fucking know you."
"You don't know everything."
"I know enough."
The rod tip twitched. Niall's attention snapped to it. Ruben's hand came out and hovered near his wrist.
"Easy."
"I know."
"Let it take."
"I know."
The tip bent again, a small nervous dip. Niall lifted too early. The feeder came loose with a muddy tug and skipped up through the water, empty. The hook swung back at them, shining and stupid.
Ruben clicked his tongue.
"Virgin hands."
"You said lift."
"I said let it take."
"You said easy."
"Easy isn't lift, is it?"
"It is sometimes."
"Jesus. Feel sorry for Mona being your first shag."
Niall set the rod down too carefully.
Ruben noticed the care before Niall did. His own smile kept going because it had already started, but his eyes changed.
"I'm joking."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
Ruben leaned back on his hands. Grass stuck to one palm.
"You were awful the first time anyway. Everyone is. You apologised after every thrust."
"I didn't."
"You were. You just don't remember it. Your mind erased all the pathetic shite again.'"
Niall laughed once because the shape of laughing was easier than deciding what his face should do.
"I wasn't going to remember it forever."
Ruben's grin returned, smaller and nastier by habit.
"Maybe you were. Or maybe you'll fuck one more lass once and carry it round till death. Our Bambi, ruined by a single tit."
Niall's hand closed around the reel.
"I won't."
The answer came out too quick and too flat. A mosquito whined beside his ear. His thigh burned in three places where he had scratched bites open. The empty feeder knocked softly against the mud near his boot.
Ruben moved the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other.
"Bambi."
"What?"
"I said I was joking."
"I know."
Ruben sat forward, elbows on his knees now. The cigarette had gone out. He looked at the dead end of it, then at Niall's hands, then at the pond, choosing badly between all three.
"Cast again," he said.