When Love and Death Embrace
Category: The Mighty Boosh, Femmeslash
Characters: Anthrax, Ebola, Howard Moon, Vince Noir
Pairing: Anthrax/Ebola, Femmeslash
Genre: Romance
Rating: PG
Challenge: Challenge 07: Extended Scenes
Status: WIP
Length: 1-5k words
Notes: This is only a Part One as I started writing this and it turned into a monster that keeps growing and growing, and I realised that if I don’t cut it in two parts there is no way I’ll finish it in time for the Challenge. I’d say there’s at least another thousand words lurking in my brain. Also, I’m not an expert expert on Goths so excuse me if they are a bit ‘baby goth’, thought it’s on purposed in the flashbacks. I did however do some research, as I am anal like that. And have spent most of the week, while writing and while not writing, listening to Finnish Goth Rock (for 14 year olds) like The 69 Eyes and H.I.M (the first album mind you, it’s the best one, clearly) I’m not sure how that has anything to do with this, but.. That’s where the title is snatched. And quite possibly other things too… – beta’d by tartpants
When Love and Death Embrace by howlhowl
“What are we doing here again?” Ebola asked adjusting the balancing of her hat on her blond head. The black hat had a massive white feather weighing it down and making it tilt too much to her right. Anthrax pressed the doorbell of the Dalston flat.
“He said he was a warlock. I reckon this is better than sitting in the graveyard in the cold spelling incoherent nonsense on the Ouija board.” Anthrax said, and pressed the doorbell.
Ebola sighed and tilted her head more to the right morosely. “You don’t actually believe him though, do you?” she asked her friend. Anthrax turned around, and shook her head. “Never the less, I’m bored of the graveyard and the board. And I guess you never know. And if nothing else, he wasn’t terribly offensive to the eye.”
Ebola sighed again. The night before they had gone to the Black Spider, as usual, and stood vacantly not too far from the bar sipping their Bloody Mary’s with the usual forlorn expressions on their faces. She liked Black Spider. It was dark, dingy and horrible, and the music wasn’t terribly loud, since shouting just wasn’t very… well, gothic. Only cheerful people shout. And she and Anthrax were not cheerful. They were Goth Girls.
Suddenly this stick thin creature had interrupted them and their Bloody Mary’s, introduced himself as Obsidian Blackbird McNight or something and told them he was a warlock. Ebola would have laughed in his face, but she didn’t laugh. Goths do not laugh. She had ended up watching Anthrax look this bloke up and down, checking out the tight jeans and skinny frame draped in some sort of ripped black netting that revealed quite a bit but not too much. Sure, he wasn’t offending to the eye, but she wasn’t best pleased. Anthrax seemed to be ignoring her and on the look out for a Gothic Three-Way, if even that.
The door opened and Obsidian was behind it, grinning like an idiot, asking them to come in. Anthrax flashed her fangs at him, and climbed up the narrow stairs into the flat, Ebola following her less than enthusiastically. She wished they had gone to the graveyard. At least there she didn’t have to share Anthrax with some skinny git claiming he was a sorcerer. They all sat around a pentagram drawn on the living room floor when his watch in the shape of a tower started gonging midnight hour. Top Goth range.
“So, you really a sorcerer then?” she asked.
“Yeah,” was the answer.
“When are we gonna do some sorcering?” Anthrax asked, showing off her nice pair of fangs again.
“Right now. Just gonna call up my assistant”, he said and rang a little bell. To this cue a taller, older twit came out, hair backcombed, with a moustache and too tight black trousers, that had obviously been borrowed from the other one’s wardrobe. As was the t-shirt with a green skull on it. He came in carrying a white book (A white book? What kind of black magic was in a fucking white book?) and making a stupid joke about being the dark side of the moon. Howard Moon was his name. What a twit.
The sorcering had been a farce. This ‘Obsidian’ bloke had managed to summon a bouquet of fake flowers and an old lady in a pink cardigan. Terrifying. They had left, Anthrax exclaiming that “This is rubbish!” When they got outside, Anthrax seemed more frustrated than necessary. They decided to wander the streets as it was cold and foggy, with a potential of miserable rain in the air. Actually, the air seemed oddly green. A bit like the first night they had met. They were both 13 years old, stuck in Essex due to their youth and families. They had been living in the same town for their whole lives, less than half an hour from each other, but had never met before, not until the faithful day Anthrax, then called Susan, had walked in front of the car Ebola’s dad had been driving. She had gone by the name Poppy then. They had been on their way to ballet class, which she never attended again, when all of a sudden this mess of bright neon colours just appeared out of nowhere and smack, bang. Her dad was in a hurry to go back to work, so Ebola had stayed with the girl in the hospital, to make sure she was alright, and lied of course that she was her sister who in reality was perfectly well, reading Dickens in her bedroom. Otherwise the nurses would have made her leave.
Ebola had not too long before discovered the brooding sounds of the Cure and started circling her eyes with black eyeliner and backcombing her then brown hair (her mother wouldn’t let her dye it black or bleach it to death like it was now, saying that she would “look like a two pence whore”) into massive heights, much to her mother’s dislike. Despite her newly found gloomy nature, this brightly coloured little black haired girl had somehow fascinated her enough to lie to the nurses and doctors so that she could stay with her. Anthrax wasn’t seriously hurt, just a bit concussed and knocked out, and she woke up from her slumber before the day turned into the afternoon with a stranger with big, big hair towering over her bed. “Where the hell am I?” she had exclaimed. “In the hospital. You walked in front of my dad’s car.” “Oh, right.. Who are you?” and that was how they had met. They had started hanging out constantly, living only five minutes apart. Despite the distance or more like lack of it, they had never met before as they went to different school. They spent hours sitting in their bedrooms, alternating houses, listening to Disintegration and the Siouxsie best of Ebola had found at a charity shop her mother had dragged her to once, teasing their hair and practising applying large amounts of black makeup in between watching vampire films. The first time they had got together after parting around the last stroke of the day they met, Anthrax had abandoned colour completely and turned up at her new friend’s front step in all black with big hair and panda eyes giving Ebola’s mum a tiny heart attack.
Ebola stumbled stepping down off the side walk to cross the street. Not terribly graceful. On top of that, she felt her milky white contact lens come off.
“My milky lens!” she exclaimed. “It’s come off. Help, we must find it.” And the next second they were both on the ground wet from the rain, looking for it. It seemed to be nowhere to be found. To be honest, Ebola didn’t really want to put it back if it was in one of the puddles, so she didn’t bother searching them. Suddenly she felt something alien in her eye that had just lost the spooky white glow over the pupil.
“Oh wait. I think it’s just popped round the back,” she said, bopping her head to the right trying to get the lens to slide back into its place.
“Wait, let me help,” Anthrax said grabbing hold of Ebola’s face as they got up from the wet pavement.
Anthrax’s gentle touch on Ebola’s cold, pale cheek sent shivers down her spine. Her best friend’s touch always did. Sometimes more than others, but there was always a bit of tingling sensation involved. And she had touched her beyond the way most people touched their best friends, but it had mostly happened when they or more like Anthrax had had a bit too many Bloody Mary’s. Or as a part of a Gothic Three-Way. This broke Ebola’s heart more than she wanted to admit.
Suddenly she felt a single rogue tear start trying to find its way out of the corner of her eye. She fluttered her eyelids to make it go away. She really didn’t want Anthrax to see it.
But she did.
“Are you crying?” she asked, concern dripping from her voice.
Ebola shook her head, choking back a billion more tears trying to force their way out. But Anthrax didn’t seem too convinced. “What is it?” she asked, pulling her friend’s face closer.
“Nothing,” Ebola said and shook her again, this time more forcefully, almost as if she was trying to convince herself as well as friend. As she did so, she felt her lens missing in action pop back in its place.
“Oh my milky lens! It’s back in,” she declared almost triumphantly.
“Don’t try to change the subject.” Anthrax sounded determined to find out what was wrong but Ebola wasn’t quite sure what it was. OK, so that was a lie. Was she supposed to tell her best friend that she fancied her quite a bit and didn’t want to share her with idiots in black mesh tops? She closed her eyes and tried to look away but Anthrax’s hold on her face wouldn’t let her. She felt her friend’s warm breath on her lips, and suddenly soft lips too. Anthrax was kissing her. How dare she? This was what got her in this mess to begin with.
