InsaneJournal

Fic: A Rare Bright One for Belfast (London Calling)
With vast love and appreciation to threewalls. Thank you so very much for the package.

Title: A Rare Bright One for Belfast
'Verse: London Calling Characters: Basch, Vossler (a wee bit Vossler/Basch, really)
Rating: Worksafe
Length: 1000-ish words
Summary: Basch's sentence is done.
Notes: Two years after Cell Mates.


The last four months pass so slowly that the day they're over takes Basch by surprise. Vossler had counted his by the days, hours, finally the minutes, and Basch with him, but when Vossler walked out, wearing the torn FC Sevilla jersey, not looking back (Basch was glad of that, maybe), the days smeared together. He knew his new cellmate's name, but he'd never bothered to say it.

The guard pulled him out of the cell, walked him in handcuffs still to the room where his bloodied sweater and work trousers waited for him. They'd been washed, but the stain's in the wool, a dingy red on the gray. His wrists were free and he alone--alone-alone--for the first time since solitary. The fact that he's putting on the sweater his mother knit when she was in the hospital the second time made him fold the prison jumper neatly on the table. His pants, the t-shirt beneath the sweater--they fit more snugly now. There had been little to do inside besides push-ups, break rocks on the line, wrestle with Vossler. The guard came back to say he didn't want to see Basch in here again, and Basch stepped blinking into the full light of day, wondering where Vosser was by now. He hoped somewhere warm, like southern Spain, where Vossler said he's from, or half-from, anyway, because he'd been in Ireland long enough to sound like it, and long enough not to be sent elsewhere when gone to prison. Basch has never been there, to Spain, but Vossler said it's beautiful.

He had to shade his eyes. It was a rare bright one for Belfast, and he knew it to be only in his mind, but it felt so much more than it ever did in the chain-link confines of the yard. At the street, he looked right, then left. He's not even sure which way to turn. Ma had been moved to a hospice in Newcastle--not even in Eire anymore, Christ Jesus--and he'd torn the bottom of the letter off, the part where she'd begun to say where Noah was moved to. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to know because if he never knew, he'd never have to keep himself from finding the bastard scab. He walked, not knowing to where. He couldn't go see Ma, not like this, with nothing but a stained sweater and a convict's beard.

Blocks away, he found a bench facing an empty park, quiet, because it was almost noon on a Tuesday, and he sat. He needed work, and he didn't think he'd find it again in Belfast. But he wasn't sure how he'd get anywhere else, either. Some other fellows inside--who'd been out and back again more than once--said that was the damn trouble of it. Basch rested his elbows on his knees and let his head hang, but a choking engine and thick exhaust made him raise his chin.

"Thought that was you." Vossler leaned half out of a once-green Gremlin. "If I shut the fucking thing off, it won't bloody start again. Shift it if you're coming." He closed the door and the whole car shook.

Basch got in, sat, staring--at Vossler, at the back seat full of clothes and a bag of apples, unpaired boxing gloves and scattered rolls of tape, crumpled betting slips on the floor. Vossler, with his hand still on the gearshift, leaned, kissed Basch on the mouth. It had only happened once before, in the dark, after Basch had come back from the last time in solitary. Their mouths had more often been elsewhere on each other. Basch wasn't sure if he preferred it that way, but it felt good now.

"Freedom. Tastes like kebab." Vossler grinned at him, and there was the takeaway paper on the floor. Basch thought he should be hungry--everyone always said they wanted food--food like mum's or granddad's or that pub in Cork--but he wasn't. It was just good to breathe. Though the air in the car smelled like a gymnasium and burning oil. Vossler pushed the car into a lurching drive, as though this were usual, planned. "You said you've done engine work, right?"

Basch clutched the door handle as a delivery van skirted them, horn blaring. Half the handle came off in his hand. He turned his eyes to the road. "A bit, aye." He'd learned some from the óglaigh, a bit more at the mine.

"Good," Vossler said. "We've a long way to go." He glanced at Basch, reached and put his hand on the back of Basch's neck, fingers squeezing warm and easy. "In a little while, any road." Basch didn't know where Vossler thought they were going, but he had said "we," and Basch thought his chest might burst at the thought of having somewhere to go.

Vossler pulled the car behind a long row of dodgy flats, and the car coughed to silence when he pulled the key. Vossler took the apples and another sack of groceries from the boot, and Basch climbed out the driver's side door because his wouldn't open again. That could be fixed with a bit of coathanger wire.

Inside, the apartment smelled a little of old cat piss, some tom gone several residents ago, certainly, but it also smelled of Vossler and the trainers by the door, of the open window and someone next door's sausage and mash. Vossler steered him toward the lumpy sofa, sat him down, and put a bottle of Guinness in Basch's hand. In his own, a juice glass of shiraz. According to Vossler, he had family in Spain, with grapes. He knew about wine. The glass chimed and Vossler sat next to him, and Basch swallowed beer as thick as bread. He closed his eyes against the dampness that prickled there, put his head back against the cat-scented sofa, and breathed. Beside him, Vossler's hand found his shoulder, and they only sat. Vossler said, "Take your time. We'll get the kettle on then."