Logical Conclusions
Category: The Mighty Boosh
Characters: Howard Moon, Vince Noir
Pairing: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Rating: PG
Status: Complete
Length: 5-10k words
Logical Conclusions by huntingsnarks
[nextpage title=”Chapter 1″]
Chapter 1
Author’s Notes: I think I listened to Numan’s ‘Cars’ slightly too many times today. 🙂 Vrooom! Hope you enjoy.
“Oh, come on, then!”
Vince ground his teeth loudly. As if the words and the grinding weren’t enough to adequately portray the pointy young man’s frustration, neon nails were engaged in a tap dance on the shop counter.
“Come on!”
Howard ground his teeth quietly, pulled his fawn fedora a little further down his forehead, and committed himself to the arduous task ahead. He would not crack, no sir. He would not crack. He would ignore the tapping. This Man of Action had stared down much worse provocation than this. He would not—
“What have you gone and done now, you jazzy pringle?”
Howard stared down at his clenched fist and, with effort, released. Two halves of a pencil clattered down to the counter unceremoniously. For a moment, the shop was silent as both men watched the leaded end roll about to a halt. Howard tried very hard not to feel threatened by the carbon tip that seemed to prod rather violently towards his heart.
“Now you can’t get angry at me next time I accidentally leave my hair straighteners in Stationery Village,” Vince crowed, triumphant. “Trust you to go about breaking your own children, Howard.”
“They’re not my children,” Howard bit back automatically. “I’m the mayor of the township, not Big Daddy Pencil, so shut your mouth.”
“Yeah, yeah,” sighed Vince, rolling his eyes and leaning back on the counter. “Don’t need to know any more about your stationery kinks, thank you very much.”
Howard pressed his fingers to his temples and massaged desperately. “I don’t have a thing for stationery, you berk, as I’ve told you many times before.”
“What about that time I caught you out back with your hands all tangled in the branches of the Sellotape Tree?”
“I was replacing the tired winter foliage for the spring display and got stuck in the adhesive!”
“Yeah, whatever; I’m never borrowing your tape again.” Vince grinned inanely as his blue eyes caught upon the matchbox car beside the register. As the shiny Prince of Camden busied himself in his habitual occupation of zooming the little red car through the air, Howard (rather gingerly) swept the pencil pieces into a waste bin.
He returned to his seat when the task was completed, and sighed heavily as his view of his beloved jazz records was obstructed by Vince’s swishing arm.
“Can’t you play with your car somewhere else?” he asked without much hope. Rather predictably, his expectations were met quite promptly. With a flourish and a build in vocal dynamics, the motor vehicle took a sharp turn onto Howard’s left arm.
“Brooom, brmm brmm broom,” Vince replied, eyes fixed on the little car as it swerved dangerously around the collar, wheels catching odd strands of Howard’s hair and tearing mercilessly through them.
“Watch it, ow,” Howard complained, before jerking backwards as Vince climbed right into his lap. Sharp knees dug into the flesh of his thighs as a vibrant stretch of lime assaulted his vision. Howard’s neck extended to its fullest capacity and his fedora promptly fell off, as if the bland accessory was fleeing from this technicolour invasion.
“What, what, what are you doing?” Howard finally managed to choke out, voice muffled by shock. His beady eyes squinted further as he tried to distance himself from Vince somehow, but their physical proximity rendered such efforts hopelessly futile.
“Vroooooom!”
The matchbox car raced up and through a smoky brown forest of hair, down Forehead Plain, along the crooked Nasal Ridge, entered Mocha-Stain Motorway and came to a sudden, screeching halt.
The screeching died away in the back of Vince’s throat as the car wheels prodded roughly against Howard’s terrified lips, which had drawn back a little in pure reaction to this violent infringement of the ‘don’t touch me’ rule. With some difficulty, Howard uncrossed his eyes from the little red vehicle and peered forward into familiar orbs of azure that seemed to be widening even now…
“Er,” he coughed, his crab-like eyes scuttling about nervously for distraction, and bulging a little at the sight of that nose, and those lips, so very close—
“Vroom, er, I mean, alright, Howard?” Vince squeaked—did he squeak? surely not, asked and answered Howard’s frenzied brain—and slowly, as if coming to, the smaller man began to slide backwards. The sleek nylon of Vince’s black stockings slipped easily against the tweed trousers beneath, and it was with little difficulty—barely a stumble, in fact—that the men were quickly a good, safe metre apart.
Safe? Howard’s mind hung on the word ‘safe’, though he wasn’t sure that such an adjective should belong to this situation. It was, however, easily a good metre; a satisfactory distance of solid wooden floorboards and manly sentiments. Very manly sentiments. Rugged, indeed.
Somewhat stunned, Howard raised his gaze from the floor and locked onto Vince’s uncharacteristically awkward pose. With his narrow shoulders hunched slightly inwards, and one boot digging nervously at the ground—well, perhaps ‘rugged’ wasn’t the most accurate description, either.
The offending matchbox car dangled unsteadily from neon nails.
Howard frowned, mind fixing eagerly on this distraction. Hold on a minute. Neon nails.
“Right, so, erm, what are you waiting for, anyway?” he asked loudly, rather relieved to have thought of such a nifty little conversation starter.
Vince’s response was immediate, and slightly hysterical. “What?”
Howard’s frown deepened in confusion. “Before, you were tap-tap-tapping away at the counter, and grinding your teeth. What are you waiting for?”
Vince’s face seemed to relax as he absorbed Howard’s explanation. “Oh, that. I don’t know.”
A very familiar ire rippled up Howard’s spine and into his brow, causing his jaw to clench noticeably. “Then why do it?” he managed calmly.
“Do what? The tap-tap-tapping?” asked Vince with an expression of innocence. He darted forward without warning (causing Howard to jolt back in his chair once more) but landed on the desk this time, swinging his heeled boots into the air and tap-tap-tapping with his neon nails. The motorcar skidded to the register, finally abandoned. “Is this what annoyed you, Howard? The tapping?”
Howard’s left eye experienced a slight twitch as his ears were once more assaulted with Vince’s upbeat percussive sequence.
“Yes, Vince. The tapping is what annoyed me. So why are you doing it?”
Vince grinned cheekily. “Oh, I know why I’m doing it now,” he answered quickly, tongue flicking up to curl impertinently about his incisor.
“Why before?” Howard growled, fists tightening. A good dozen pencils might have been crushed in his grasp had he been preparing to operate the electric sharpener. Unfortunately, the machine no longer inhabited Stationery Village; it had never really been the same after Vince’s most determined attempt to own the sharpest stilettos in Camden.
Neon nails adopted a more subdued rhythm as Vince seemed to consider Howard’s question. One set stopped their percussive nonsense entirely as Vince lifted a hand and examined the enamel. “I was waiting,” he said vaguely, frowning down at his manicure.
“I got that.”
Vince ignored Howard’s brittle sarcasm. “I was waiting for my brain to realise something,” he elaborated, nodding as if to confirm the truth in his words.
“What are you jabbering on about, you muppet?” Howard demanded, aching for pencils to crush within his fists.
“Well, you know when you know something, and you know that you know something, but you can’t actually remember what it is that you know?”
“No,” Howard answered quite truthfully, feeling as if his brain was beginning to leak out of his ears. It was not a pleasant sensation, and the jazz maverick was beginning to wish that he’d never even attempted to satisfy his curiosity.
Vince sighed. “Basically, I’m trying to get an obvious fact to peek out from behind the sparkly curtains in my mind.” After a moment of frustration, in which his boots kicked heavily against the counter, a thoughtful smile curled across his face. “I bet I’ve got some genius fabrics going on inside. Do I really, Howard?”
“I really don’t care to remember, my shallow friend,” Howard sighed. “So you can’t remember something, is that it?”
“Nah, that’s not it, not really,” Vince answered cheerily. “I think my brain cell’s trying to tell me something, that’s all. I feel like I can almost hear him shouting things sometimes when we’re down here in the shop.” He shook his head, ruffled his hair back into place, and rolled onto his back like an attention-seeking puppy. “You know, I think it’s just easier to ignore him.”
With a quick yawn and a stretch, Vince reached a hand across to Howard’s arm, which lay slumped against the counter. As soon as foreign nails made contact with the sleeve of his turtleneck, Howard jumped and snatched his arm away.
“Don’t touch me,” he hissed, and then froze. Vince’s hand, too, went limp on the countertop, as if both had suddenly remembered their interesting positioning during the Motorcar Adventures.
Unwillingly, Howard glanced down to the bright blue eyes nestled amongst fanning black hair on the countertop, and caught a flicker of almost-recognition leap into the normally vacant gaze.
“Oh, come on, then!” Vince muttered excitedly, eyes rolling inwards in some misguided attempt to look inside his brain.
It was with a chill and a whimper that Howard, too, came to the uncomfortable conclusion that his own mind was keeping something from him.
“Shut it, Vince.”
[nextpage title=”Chapter 2″]
Chapter 2
Author’s Notes: Jump in for a fidget on the couch, an accidental love proposition, a trumpet sock-puppet, and a good, solid slice of delusion
“Hold it right there, Vince!”
Howard grabbed at the passing silver blur, yelping as his fingers entangled themselves in floaty fabric. Before he could enunciate an appropriate expression of terror, his bottom found itself removed from the couch and positioned rather painfully on the hard floorboards.
“Oomph,” was all he managed as Vince fell about himself in laughter. With a sympathetic grimace for his abused behind, Howard climbed awkwardly to his feet and pulled his hand free of Vince’s gauzy wrap. “Oh, shut it, will you? I’m trying to talk to you, alright?”
“Nah, can’t really stop, Howard; there’s this genius gig going on at the Velvet Onion tonight, you should co—” He seemed to pause and check his own enthusiasm. “Well, you wouldn’t enjoy it, anyway.”
Howard sniffed. “I don’t doubt that. No, stop, Vince, I really wanted a word. Just a minute?”
It was with a fidget and an impatient wiggle that Vince perched himself on the edge of the couch, clearly ready to flee to the Onion as soon as Howard had finished. The older man cleared his throat, seating himself comfortably amongst the cushions at the opposite end of the seat. As if in subconscious protest to this deliberate distancing, Vince slid back into the couch from his perched position and propped his violet platforms on Howard’s lap.
Howard tried not to sigh. He really did. After all this time with Vince, he should be used to such Space Invasions by now.
“Come on, then,” prompted Vince, attempting to dig his flat-soled heel into Howard’s thigh with limited success. “You’re using up the public’s time with Vince Noir. Don’t deny the public what they want, Howard.”
It was rather easy to just come out with it. With a tone of vexation honed to perfection over the years, Howard presented his case:
“Vince. Bollo told me that he found you going through my things last night while I was at my jazzercise class.”
Vince looked outraged. “He told you that?” Betrayal rang freely through his voice.
“Yes, he did,” Howard affirmed, eyes narrowing. “We’re close confidants, Bollo and I; we keep an eye out for each other.”
“No you don’t! Bollo hates you, Howard! He doesn’t even know your name, and that must take some effort after all these years!”
“Look, you little titbox,” Howard began, dissolving into open irritation, “Bollo came and told me that because he thinks you’re going wrong! I’d agree with him, except that I know you’ve got nothing more to lose up there in your mind tank! Now, why were you looking through my things?”
“I was looking for something to fill up the hole in my mind,” Vince told his hands, which twisted and fidgeted in his lap in response.
“What, are you still caught up in all that nonsense?”
Vince looked up, his eyes wide and earnest. “It’s not nonsense, Howard! You don’t know what it feels like, being all uncertain and awkward all the time.” He paused, head tilted. “Well, of course you do, but it’s different for me! It’s like my confidence has melted away like a sugar cube in the rain. I don’t like it.”
When Howard ignored the somewhat insulting nature of Vince’s explanation, he found that he was able to feel a flicker of compassion in his chest for his distraught friend. He leaned forward slightly and placed his hands around the feet of Vince’s platforms (with some difficulty).
Squeezing lightly, he adopted a soothing tone. “Look, Vince, we’ll have none of this lack-of-confidence talk, alright? I’ve never seen anyone as brazenly self-assured as you, sweeping out of the flat each evening in the flashy couture of a futuristic high-street whore.”
Vince shrugged, hands jiggling about in his lap. “Yeah, well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I feel fine when I’m outside the flat. It’s when I’m here that I feel well weird, when I’m trapped indoors with y—”
He stopped himself mid-sentence. For the stretch of a silent minute, Howard’s face flickered between concern and hurt and anger and confusion and concern and then more hurt.
“What, me?” he said finally, feeling quite injured. “I make you lose confidence? The jazzy freak drains away your self-esteem like a greedy cobra?” Howard stopped and considered this for a moment. “Vince,” he started again, his tone kinder, “is it because you feel inadequate beside my striking appearance?”
Hands flashing out in front of him as if to ward away the absurd vibes in Howard’s words, Vince shook his head vehemently. “No way, Howard! If that was the reason, I’d have to off myself!”
Huffing, Howard collapsed back against the cushions. Compassion had been scraped from his being like the soppy sentiment deserved. “Well, then, Sonny Jim, I advise that you tear yourself away from me right now and regain your confidence before I physically remove it from you.”
“Oh, come off it, Howard,” sighed Vince, relaxing back into the armrest, folding his platforms more comfortably atop Howard’s thighs. “You know I could never stay away from you. You’re like my favourite pair of drainpipes—but well unfashionable.”
Howard, whose throat seemed to have recently encountered a sizeable lump, turned his head away in an effort to retain his affronted air. This was, after all, the closest thing to a statement of affection that Vince had awarded him since they’d left the zoo.
“Look, Howard, come on,” Vince wheedled, sounding slightly subdued. “You know I don’t mean it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Howard sniffed, “you have to use fashion terms, I know, it’s the mantra you live by.”
Vince frowned. “I live by a sea creature?”
“That’s manta ray, you twit,” Howard said, trying very hard to sound fatigued by Vince’s nonsense, but a touch of affection crawled treacherously into his tone.
“Oh, right,” Vince grinned, nodding his head as if he had any idea what he was talking about. “I thought you meant that you’d brought Old Gregg home after all.”
“Speak not his name!” Howard hissed, darting his beady eyes about the room as if expecting the love-struck serial killer to jump out from behind a curtain. Failing to catch sight of a pink tutu, Howard groaned, pressing his face into his hands. “What went on in Black Lake stays in Black Lake, Vince!”
He could hear Vince laughing, the serious tone of their earlier conversation clearly forgotten, but Howard was now very squarely set in a rather lousy funk. Old Gregg’s terribly voice rung clearly through his mind…
Do you love me? You must love me exactly as I love you, Howard Moon…
Do you love me?
“What?”
“What?” Howard said quickly, panicked. He couldn’t have spoken out loud, could he? Oh no, no, an accomplished Man of Action such as himself would never reveal his inner thoughts by accident, no sir.
“Did you just ask me if I love you?” Vince’s voice was decidedly odd.
Damn it.
After the rather fishy incident in Black Lake, Howard had refused to tell Vince much about his uncomfortable time in Old Gregg’s care. Among the many omissions in his account had been the manfish’s love professions. There were many fine reasons for the exclusion of this particular detail, yes sir—after all, Howard had to protect the younger man from the vile ways of the world. Oh, and Vince would never have finished laughing at Howard either…
But wait. Was it possible that Howard would be saved from the unappealing task of explaining his accidental outburst? Something like terrified comprehension seemed to have dawned on Vince’s face. Rather unkindly, Howard smiled just a tad as Vince’s fashionable pallor increased to an unattractive hue. Distraction had been found. But where?
“Er, Vince? Are you alright, little man?” Howard tried to mask the relief in his voice with concern, but the shoes in his lap seemed to freeze up just as he finished his question.
“Do I love you?” Vince muttered beneath his breath, all the while staring directly at Howard with blue eyes that seemed to bulge with terror.
“Right, yes, that’s right, Vincey Vince,” Howard said, his voice much too bright, and he released a short spurt of laughter. There was nothing forced in that laugh, nothing at all. He looked down after a minute, mostly to escape those unblinking eyes, and found that his hands had gripped rather tightly about Vince’s ankles. “Oh, er, sorry about that,” he said, hurriedly relaxing his fingers. “But we already know the answer to this one, don’t we? Shouldn’t you be snickering at me from behind in a human coke can? No, the question I meant to ask—that is—well, answer me this: do you love, er, Gary Numan?”
Two magic words and Vince unfroze like a paddle pop dipped into hot water.
“Gary Numan,” he said simply, and his eyes seemed to clear a little. “He’s genius, Howard! Did you know that Gary Numan was once mistaken for a spy? He was captured by a foreign government, but before his toes got nipped off by sharks, he played some electro beats and escaped into a nearby zephyr—”
As Vince continued, hands slicing through the air in action-fuelled description, Howard breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He’d been worried there for one uncertain moment—but no more. Maybe Vince occasionally succumbed to some understandable bout of uncertainty around his wiser and more conventionally handsome friend, but not Howard Moon. This Jazz Maverick was in control of his situation, day in, day out.
“I was once captured by a foreign government,” he interrupted half-heartedly, pulling Vince out of some fantastical account of Numan’s shark-defying exploits.
“Yeah, I know,” Vince said, rolling his eyes, “I was there. But that’s something you made me promise to never mention, isn’t it? Or should I go and tell Bollo that you’ve had important connections to Peter Jackson in the past?”
“They’re legal connections, you little tart,” Howard snapped, “and I was detained without reason! All I wanted to do was show that hairy Kiwi what a true rugged northerner looks like. How could he have missed my acting potential?”
“You grabbed a sword from the kid’s shop and poked him in the stomach, Howard,” Vince laughed, shaking his head at the memory.
“You shut your mouth or I’ll come at you like a sharpened piccolo,” Howard growled. A frown darkened his face for a minute as his mind sidestepped brilliantly to an entirely different (though no less infuriating) subject. “Hold on a minute,” he said, glaring directly at a smirking Vince, “you never did tell me why you were going through my things last night.”
Vince’s face fell immediately. “Look, Howard, I told you,” he began rather desperately, hands twisting back into his lap. “I was trying to figure out what my brain’s been trying to tell me.”
“And you were going to heal your mental instability by sewing little button eyes on my trumpet socks, were you?”
Despite his obvious disquiet, Vince grinned. “They looked genius, didn’t they? All dressed up for a jazzy performance.”
It was in a huff that Howard shoved the platform boots off his lap and stood to leave this infuriatingly nonsensical conversation. He made to storm his way from the room—and to the aid of his mutated trumpet socks—when the smallest of sighs reached his ears from somewhere in the vicinity of the couch. Peering backwards, Howard’s eyes met the subdued blue of Vince.
Oddly, the younger man seemed smaller from this height, almost engulfed by his ridiculous silver swathe of a wrap. Without meaning to look there, Howard’s eyes fell the short distance to Vince’s lips, which were tight and still, as if resolutely fastened to some kind of conclusion.
And then Howard left. A man of his stature in society could not be caught staring at another man’s lips for too long. And he felt so decidedly odd when he did so… it made him rather nervous.
[nextpage title=”Chapter 3″]
Chapter 3
Author’s Notes: Scramble aboard for a night in bed with Vince and Howard, during which a woman’s scream pierces the night and straighteners are misplaced.
Just as Vince’s old gothic watch heralded the midnight hour, a woman’s scream razored through the Nabootique.
Safe in his bed, Howard ripped himself upright, throwing his head around in all directions to look for the woman in question. The source of the cacophony seemed startlingly close. His mind, dulled by sleep, flipped about feverishly like a fish out of water until he came to a sudden realisation and shut his mouth.
The terrible screeching cut off immediately.
“What?” he said rather foolishly to himself, squinting into the darkness, and almost wet himself with terror when he realised that someone happened to be sitting in his lap.
“Gerroff me, don’t touch me!” he squeaked before clearing his throat hurriedly. “Don’t touch me!” he repeated, squeaking more manfully. His fists jerked upward and hovered in front of his chest, twitching forward now and then with a visible lack of control.
As his eyes widened and adjusted, Howard began to make out a very familiar, and very sheepish-looking face directly before him.
“Vince?”
“Alright, Howard?” said Vince, grinning rather nervously, still plopped down right in on top of Howard’s lap. His eyes were luminescent in the darkness.
Howard was beginning to realise just why he had woken to his own screaming at this ungodly hour. The darker part of his mind, that which was readily gaining strength from fatigue, was starting to mutter certain things involving Naboo’s apparent deafness to screaming in Howard’s room, and Vince’s own capacity to scream…
“You want me to scream, Howard?” Vince asked coyly. Jolting slightly, Howard’s hands crept behind him and across his headboard as if seeking an escape. Surely he hadn’t spoken aloud without meaning to—again. And there were implications in Vince’s soft voice that were not to be thought about here in bed. No. Certainly not. Howard realised that he must be imagining things. Again.
He shook his head, hot embarrassment bulldozing a clear path through his sleep-addled mental faculties. “You little tart,” he began, moustache bridling angrily. “Do you realise what time it—”
He stopped. Perhaps there was a certain order to which the night’s matters should properly be addressed. He wasn’t entirely sure that Vince was listening, either. “Get off my lap, you muppet,” he growled, pleased with his rational thinking.
Vince appeared displeased. His eyes narrowed somewhat as a sharp knee bit into the fleshy part of Howard’s thigh.
“Ow!”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say, Howard,” Vince said with an unhappy twist to his lips. To Howard’s despair, Vince settled himself even more comfortably into his nest of blankets and legs, peering sightlessly down at an invisible chip in his manicure.
“What on earth are you on about, Vince?” asked Howard, hands still searching for an exit in the headboard. He had a sudden thought. “Is this about a dream again? Did I say something different in one of your dreams? Because if it is, then my answer is the same as last time: I will not and never will let you look at my brain from the inside.”
Pouting, Vince looked up from his nails. Howard wasn’t mollified by the look of disappointment written all over the younger man’s face. “You got to visit my brain cell, Howard. It’s only fair that you let me climb into your mind.”
“You wouldn’t like it, little man,” sighed Howard, giving up the fight (for now) and relaxing back against his pillows. “It’s all beige and taupe up there, and you’d never manage to get through the jazz quarters without sinking into a scat coma.” He frowned. “Is that why your pointy behind is digging into my legs, then? Were you going to abseil down my nostrils and take a jaunt around my head?”
Unfortunately, Howard didn’t feel shockingly upset by this theory. He wouldn’t at all be surprised if Vince’s Plan Pony had mapped out some impossible night-time venture into his brain. Howard found his own lack of surprise in these circumstances rather disconcerting.
Thankfully—
“No, you berk. If I was taking a trip down Nostril Highway, I wouldn’t be wearing these boots, now would I?”
Relieved to be able to relapse into indignant fury, Howard exploded. “Then why did I wake up with an electro poof on my knees?” His beady eyes widened imperceptibly as a horrifying thought sprung to mind. His hands flew to his face.
“Cool your boots, you’re still the Moustached Maverick,” muttered Vince, looking rather put out by this fact. “I didn’t bring my razor this time, alright?”
“Do I have a mullet?” Howard yelped, fingers dancing around to the back of his head, and then the front of his head, and then the back of his head. The movement of his hands slowed somewhat as he satisfied himself that there was no party up the back, no sir.
“No, though if you want—”
“Definitely not, thank you,” Howard said quickly, shaking his head violently.
“But you’d be the toast of Shoreditch—”
“Nope, no, no sir,” Howard interrupted, voice firm. “Howard Moon has his own style, Vince; he is known for his soft, steely locks of brown—”
“Smoke,” Vince interjected unhelpfully, pulling a face in the general direction of Howard’s hair. “If you’d just let me apply the Goth Juice, you’d look well—”
“Hold on,” said Howard, jerking back up to a sitting position. He ignored the colony of ants that seemed to be marching up and down his legs and held out one hand, palm facing upwards, to Vince. “Give them to me.”
“What?”
“The scissors! What have I told you about scissors in bed, Vince?”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“No blades and no straighteners in bed, Vince; you promised me.”
In response, Vince simply raised his empty palms into the air and waved them in front of Howard’s face. “No scissors.” He frowned, momentarily distracted. “Where did I put my straighteners?” He shook his feathered hair and a shadow lifted easily from his face. “Nah. We would’ve smelt the fire by now.”
Howard decided to ignore this last statement. “But how were you going to cut my hair without scissors, you twit? Were you going to pluck out my individual hairs with your emergency tweezers?” He glared at the dark shape that was Vince on his knees, and watched as the younger man started to fidget with the cuffs of his enormous pyjamas.
After a moment, Howard was struck with an instance of doubt. “You did come over with the perverted intention of cutting my hair, didn’t you?” He laughed, but the sound was oddly hollow in the silent room. “I mean, why else would you—”
“Well, no,” said Vince slowly, voice oddly subdued. His blue eyes fell noticeably to his empty palms. “I was just scoping it out, that’s all. Tomorrow’s the big cut.” His eyes flashed upwards, meeting Howard’s with a sudden enthusiasm, and his fingers stopped toying with stripy fabric. “It takes all week to plan, actually. Your hair needs to grow another hundredth of a millimetre before the harvest can be cropped.”
When Howard responded, his voice was high and squeaky again. “You climb into my bed every night for a week?” His hands flew backward and started clambering around on the headboard, scrambling desperately for some sort of emergency latch.
“Listen,” Vince began tiredly, pointing at Howard’s blustering movement, “you’re not going to get anywhere with that, you know. I disabled the emergency exit three months ago by accident, and you never noticed.”
“I never had a lunatic in my bed before, either,” Howard muttered darkly.
“Yeah, you did,” Vince grinned, “plenty of times! You just always kept sleeping before.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Howard! I reckon you woke up this time because your mind was trying to tell you something really badly.”
“Yeah,” Howard said, “it was telling me to scream and frighten away the perverted pringle in my lap!”
“No, Howard; I reckon someone up there manning your mind tank was trying to tell you this.”
Without letting Howard get in another scathing retort, Vince pitched himself forward and pressed his lips firmly against those of his jazzy friend. For a moment, Howard’s arms continued to flail madly through the air as all his defence mechanisms kicked in as one against this ultimate invasion of personal space. And then, without warning, he felt himself lean into the kiss, moving against and then with the eagerness of Vince’s mouth.
And his mind flashed white with clarity—simple, brilliant clarity. The darkness and the fatigue and the irritation and the stolidity and the hustle and bustle of over-thinking fluttered away into nothing. There was nothing in Howard’s mind but warm sensation, and the feeling that he had finally flicked over to the Page of Revelations in Howard Moon’s User Manual.
Vince.
“Vince,” he mumbled against those eager lips, which immediately pulled into a smile that pressed and prompted a responding grin from Howard.
“Mmm?”
“When did you figure it out?”
“When we were in the Zooniverse, and I saw those two echidnas go at it in the marsupial enclosure—”
“No, not sex, you nonce! Us! When did your brain leap up and announce that it would be a good idea to go at Howard Moon in the middle of the night and scare him into returning your affections?”
“Oh,” Vince laughed, sliding one hot hand onto Howard’s cheek and fanning his fingers against the rough stubble. “I dunno, Howard. I guess I’ve always known, really, but you kicked me into gear the other day when you asked me if I loved you.” Vince paused, shaking his head. “You jazzy freak,” he added affectionately.
“Enough of that,” Howard huffed, pulling Vince so that his elbows slipped out and left him sprawling across the older man, a look of surprise splashed comically on his face. “Let’s just be grateful that your brain led you to a logical conclusion for once.”
“You want to see a logical conclusion?” Vince asked slyly, having regained his composure with one quick flick of his fringe. He bit his lower lip and stared at Howard’s mouth in a way that sent the jazz maverick reaching backwards for his headboard once more. “I broke it, remember?” said Vince, rolling his eyes, and leaned forwards with a predatorial smile on his face.
