26 Fics in 26 Minutes

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A story for a song by a band starting with every letter of the alphabet. Ranging from angst to fluff to humour to porn to general whimsy. Encompassing Boosh, RPS, Nathan Barley, Robots in Disguise, and Asylum, and probably a few other things too.

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The Zutons – Long Time Coming

Contents

The Zutons – Long Time Coming

Vince stumbled into the hotel room, clutching a half-empty bottle of champagne and giggling. Howard was a way behind, having somehow managed to use his key to open the wrong hotel room and almost been murdered by drug dealers, who luckily for him realised he was far too drunk to realise what was going on.

“Howard! I think I found it! I think this is us!” Vince caught sight of the floor-to-ceiling view of New York, and headed towards it, unfortunately running out of legs after the two he had, and crumpling to the floor, amazingly without spilling any champagne. He lay there giggling as Howard finally found their room.

“Vince? Vince! Vince, where are you? Vince, I just met Mr Kipling! He had all these bags of sugar in a briefcase, it was amazing! Vince?”

Howard closed the door, caught sight of the floor-to-ceiling view of New York, headed towards it, and tripped over Vince, who dissolved into laughter again.

“Vince? I can’t see you! Vince?”

Vince crawled up and unhooked Howard’s jacket from over his head, smoothing down his hair. “Hello Howard.”

“Vince! There you are!”

“Here I am,” said Vince fondly, still smoothing Howard’s already-smooth hair. “Here I am.“

Howard’s face was flushed, his eyes were bright and wild. “Can you believe this?”

Vince shook his head, and then couldn’t work out how to stop. Howard took hold of him by the chin and he grinned up at him gratefully. “Thanks. And no, I can’t believe it. I’m going to need much, much more champagne to believe it.”

Howard wagged a finger at him. “Don’t drink the minibar.”

“Why?”

“It’s expensive.”

Vince held up a finger, spilling champagne in the process. “But. We’re going to be millionaires.”

Howard’s face lit up, and he clicked his fingers. “Open the minibar! I demand it!”

Vince got to his feet carefully, using various delicate portions of Howard’s anatomy to pull himself up, which produced some interesting responses, and headed off to find the minibar.

Howard crawled towards the giant windows, and propped himself up against them, feeling excitingly afraid that the glass would suddenly break and send him hurtling towards the city below. The remarkably beautiful city. The city that had brought him and Vince such good fortune and so would now be remembered by him as the greatest city in the world, with the exception of Leeds (because Americans had funny accents and Leeds… ians, didn’t.)

“Howard?” Vince called from the other room.

“I think. I’m going to get more people to call me ‘sir’.”

“No, but, Howard? You want to come here.”

Howard grinned, eyes filled with the amazing view. “No I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. Really.”

Groaning, Howard got to his feet, entangling himself in his jacket again. He tore it in his haste to get rid of it, which was unlucky seeing as it was a brand new tuxedo, but he figured that as he and Vince would be millionaires soon, he could afford a new one.

He wandered through various rooms in their hotel suite before he found Vince, sitting on a simply huge bed. A huge four-poster bed, covered in rose petals and with candles lit all around it. A bottle of champagne lay chilling in a bucket nearby.

Howard blinked. “You were only gone five minutes.”

Vince bit his lip, head down on his chest. “I think I did something naughty.”

Howard sat down on the bed next to him, taking the champagne bottle away and putting it down carefully on the floor (on his third try). “Tell me. Tell your bandmate. Your old, million-dollar, highly successful, bandmate.”

“Well.” Vince tipped his head sideways until it came to rest on Howard’s shoulder, which seemed to fit, and so no one made any moves to stop it. Howard put his arm around Vince, and squeezed.

“Well,” Vince said again. “You remember when we did Pieface Showcase and that nice man said he was going to give us a record deal?”

“Vividly.”

“And we signed the contract and then went to meet the boss and then he said he’d pay for our hotel?”

Howard’s lips moved for a few seconds trying to follow all of that, and then he said, “Yes.”

“And you said I should get the nicest room in the hotel because we’re millionaires now and highly successful musicians?”

“That sounds like me. Highly successful.”

“Well.” Vince’s voice got a little lower, and Howard leaned in to listen and then found his head was on top of Vince’s. But it seemed to fit, and no one made any moves to stop it.

“Well, I went and said to the receptionist that you and I were celebrating a new partnership, and that we wanted something a little special to celebrate in style, something private and exclusive and luxury.”

“Sounds perfect,” Howard said, patting his friend’s shoulder companionably.

“Yeah, but. We’re in the Honeymoon Suite.”

Howard sat up, looked around. Walls covered in paintings of Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Marilyn and Joe. Giant bed covered in rose petals. Champagne. Chocolates. And, now he came to think about it, a worrying amount of condoms in the bathroom cabinet, not to mention lube, sex toys, and several pairs of fluffy handcuffs.

He blinked a couple of times. “Well.”

“I said that,” said Vince. “It is a bit, isn’t it.”

Howard took a deep breath, and let go of Vince’s shoulders, standing up with some difficulty. “But it’s not the first time people have… thought that. About us. And I’m not going to let it ruin my excellent mood.” He stared down at the carpet, which was a fetching pattern of red hearts on a white background. “You take the bed, I shall take the sofa, which I saw a moment ago and seemed quite comfortable.”

He turned to leave the room, and heard Vince say, “oh.”

Howard froze, span, felt ill but managed to focus. “Oh?”

“What?” Vince looked up from where he had been staring at the attractive carpet glumly.

“You said ‘oh’.”

“Did I?” Vince sighed. “It’s possible.”

“Why did you say ‘oh’?” Howard asked, taking a step forward.

“Never mind.” Vince played with a ring on his little finger, spinning it round and around. “I think I was just thinking that… so much good stuff has happened today, I was hoping for just one more thing. Like, the most perfect day ever, would have one last, tiny thing.”

“Well, not tiny,“ Vince amended hastily, tugging on his trousers.

“What thing?” asked Howard hopefully, eyeing the huge bed and remembering the handcuffs and also, now he thought about it, what had seem to be a fairly sturdy whip, back in the cabinet.

“It’s not important. I was just getting greedy.” Vince sighed again, a heart-rending sigh that made Howard want to bundle him up and do obscene things to him.

“No, but wait.” Howard held up one finger. “Because there’s one thing that could make tonight perfect for me too.”

“I don’t have any Miles Davis on me.”

“Not that!” A part of Howard’s brain rebelled at discarding jazz so quickly, but it was shouted down by a far more powerful part of his anatomy, that, luckily for him, was focused on the important things in life.

“Then what?” Vince looked up at him through eyelashes, hair curling across cheeks, lips parted slightly, and Howard realised that there were other ways of communicating besides words. He took two steps forward, tripped over the champagne bottle, and rather than giving Vince a chaste kiss on the cheek, was propelled forward into pinning him down on the bed and making their private parts collide in an immensely personal way.

Vince struggled to focus at such proximity, but eventually managed to find Howard’s lips and gave them the attention they deserved. For several long minutes.

Eventually the more rational parts of Howard’s brain (the ones not pickled in finest quality Dom Perignon) reminded him of the need for oxygen in a healthy functioning body, and he sat up slowly, one hand reassuring on Vince’s arm.

“Stay here,” he said commandingly, and Vince shivered. “I’ll be back in a bit.” He got up and headed for the door, coming back briefly to say, “You’re going to love this.”

Vince settled back in the pillows and waited.

Howard headed straight for the bathroom cabinet, throwing the doors wide, making one of them bounce back off the wall and clunk him painfully on the wrist. He opened them a little more gently, took in the amazing and mind-boggling sights contained therein, and swept items into his arms at random. Howard had never heard the words ‘cock ring’ or ‘butt plug’ and wasn’t to know he was carrying armfuls of them at that particular moment in time.

Shedding hardcore fetish gear along the way, he returned to the bedroom, the vicious-looking whip held safely in his teeth.

“Ta da!” he said, or rather “Abaa!”

There was the soft sound of snoring from the bed. Howard dumped his armful of marital aids onto the minibar (where they would freak the shit out of the Vietnamese chambermaid the next day) and clambered onto the bed.

Vince was shirtless, resplendent, and unconscious. He lay back on the pillows, rose petals scattered about him hither and thus, head thrown back and arm cocked at an angle across his belly.

Howard shook him by the shoulder a little, but he was out cold. He curled up next to him, chin resting on his arm. Well, he thought to himself. This is still good, isn’t it?

A certain portion of his anatomy, very wide-awake for the late hour of the evening, complained bitterly.

A certain portion of his brain devoted to the heart-eight time signature and Rhapsody in Blue pointed out that there was no music at all, let alone anything by Charlie Parker.

But the rest of him just peered across at Vince, listened to him sleeping, watched his chest rise and fall, and thought: lucky bastard that I am.

~fin~

Maestro
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