Before, back in the days of the Zooniverse, when every day had demanded a new and exciting perversion of a boring zookeeper outfit, Vince had never bothered to check if his glass was half-empty or half-full or half-stolen by Naboo for a make-shift hookah. Vince hadn’t needed to check, because his glass was unfailingly full to the brim. It wasn’t just full, either—it was slopping pink lemonade every which way.

Maybe that was the problem. Some lunatic had been slurping down the lemonade for the past couple of years, slurping away down to the cold, hard bottom of the glass, and now there was nothing much left.

It would be easy to blame Howard for this. The way his paunch had flung itself out in front like a flubby floaty ring that ships carried for emergencies—well, a couple of litres of sugary lemonade might have contributed. Not that the paunch wasn’t endearing.

And not that Vince would ever blame sugar. Howard, yeah, Howard might get a couple of handfuls of blame chucked square in the eyes, but sugar was sacred.

Oh yes, Vince’s glass was definitely empty, scrape the bottom empty, and it didn’t seem that any dregs had been left at all.

And Vince knew why, in the end. Beneath the gauzy layers of curtains and wraps that his brain cell had strewn about the place, Vince knew that he had been sinking into something decidedly un-sunshiney for a while now. And yeah, it was mostly to do with Howard, little to do with the adorable pudge and even littler to do with the bloody lemonade.

Well, it was hardly Vince’s fault that his sunshine persona had been stripped back to reveal black streaks! Howard had driven him to it with his years of taunting and bossing and settling back in his role of superiority. Vince had worked hard for Howard at the Zooniverse. He’d worked bloody hard to please Howard. He’d tipped his own glass happily and let pink lemonade slosh out into Howard’s.

And Howard had sampled it too, always with an unreadable smile at the edges of his lips, and had somehow retained the smile while his body froze up at the sheer concentration of sucrose.

Not that Vince knew what sucrose was. All he knew was that Howard had become strictly a tea person, tea without sugar, and he would no longer accept lemonade in his glass—even when the glass was as dry as Naboo’s sense of humour.

Not that Vince offered any more.

And so Vince had been left to the lemonade, which didn’t taste as sweet when he was drinking alone. And he’d added sugar. He’d added plenty of sweeteners. He’d bought any number of clothes, dyed his hair repeatedly, straightened it, fluffed it, slathered it in exorbitantly expensive product, become the King and Queen of Camden, procured a million worshippers, forbidden them to touch his hair, and still a bitter taste remained in his mouth.

So maybe part of that bizarre bitterness was despair, or confusion, or whatever. The thing was that Howard didn’t want to put up with Vince anymore, and maybe that was because the sweetness and the childishness had dropped off the electro poof like the zookeeper jacket. Maybe that was why Howard had been so eager to leave on his filmic art-house adventures with Jurgen Haagen-Dazs. Anything to get away from Vince.

So yeah, Vince missed the old days. He missed the classic times. Nowadays his stomach was always crawling with something that could have been guilt or self-loathing or shame or hunger, especially when he was around Howard, and Vince didn’t even want to try to work it out. Not that he could have.

See, he knew he was stupid now. Back in the Zooniverse, he’d had talent and he’d applied it—and it wasn’t even hair-care talent. It wasn’t even the talent of whoring himself out to the Camden night scene. He had been able to communicate with the animals, and he’d gotten along with everyone and they’d all loved him for who he was, not for the clothing that he wore or the flashy smiles that he painted over his lips.

Here in the Nabootique, anyone could communicate with Bollo. Vince’s greatest talent had run dry in a new scene of normality. And the former Mowgli couldn’t even hold a decent conversation with Howard anymore.

Vince’s glass was empty, so he decided to fill it. He walked all the way to Naboo’s room in his up-to-the-minute knee-high silver wellies and filled his cup with water from the Fountain of Youth (posted to Naboo by Saboo during a recent jaunt to Xooberon).

“Cheers,” he said to the empty room, raising the glass, and sipped.

Howard’s cup was empty, so he went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

He thought about asking Vince if he wanted a cuppa. He thought long and hard for about two seconds and then snorted dourly. Unlikely that Vince would want anything from Howard. He’d just about made that clear with the last series of jibes scrawled over the shop windows in the style of neon advertising. If those paint-slopped windows didn’t provide clarity, Howard didn’t know what did.

He released a few tasty bars of scat while the kettle gently whined, but there was a tenseness in his jaw that messed with the bebop, so he stopped. He slapped his hand on the counter in a sudden burst of frustration, and winced. Wiping a brown smush of Naboo’s latest brownie batch into a tea towel, Howard sighed and wondered what colourful destruction Vince would create to prevent his Jazzercise class that evening.

“Got yourself out of a jazz trance, all right, Howard!”

Oh, here we go. Wearily, Howard pivoted on his heel and prepared to face the familiar slice of daily denigration. When he’d reached half-circle, he had already begun to gesture defensively with the tea towel. And then he looked at Vince’s face. And then he dropped the tea towel. And then he generally gaped a bit, completely ignoring the persistent screeching of the boiling kettle.

Vince looked slightly worried. And that wasn’t even the start of it.

“You feeling okay, Howard? Only you look like you just saw Fossil practicing for the X-Factor. Oh, and what’s with the flat? Did you drag me to your aunt’s again while I was asleep?”

Vince was smiling now, and his cheeks, somehow fuller than they had been that morning, were pinching in with a youthful dimpling affect. There was nothing coy or held back about the smile. This was the smile that had once filled a special secret hole in Howard’s chest, the smile that he’d almost forgotten in the past year.

Something was wrong here, yes sir. Something had certainly gone wrong, most probably in Vince’s mind tank.

And Vince was smiling at him, just like the old times.

And even as he twitched with fear, Howard felt his own lips curl up slightly at the edges. And he smiled back. Habit. Pure habit.

“Cup of tea?” he squeaked, and almost fell to get out of the way when Vince nodded brightly, heading directly for the kettle.

“Oh, brownies! Can I have one?”

[nextpage title=”Chapter 2″]
Chapter 2

“No brownies,” was all Howard could manage, his breath wheezing musically from him like an enthusiastic accordion. His hands stuttered out in front of him, reaching towards Vince almost subconsciously. “No. No, no, no.”

“Why not? You let me have seventeen yesterday! You gave them to me all piled on a silver platter like a chocolate pyramid! You didn’t have a problem with me eating brownies then, so why now?”

Howard, by this point having backed up to the counter opposite Vince, swallowed fiercely. “I only gave you the brownies to shut you up about the beaver incident, Vince, and that didn’t happen yesterday!” He produced a terrifying blast of hysterical laughter and then shut his mouth hurriedly. “It happened three years ago, you muppet, and you can stop pretending now!”

Vince dropped the kettle back onto the counter and stepped forward, hands shoved in his pockets almost defensively. “What’s up with you, Howard? I only finished with those brownies at two in the morning! I can get the beaver to testify for me, if you want—though he probably wouldn’t agree to be in the same room as you.”

Howard, whose hands were now etched into the counter behind him, shook his head. And again. Now was not the time to defend himself. The beaver had lost the court case on the basis of circumstantial evidence, that’s all that mattered. Wait, no, no it wasn’t, lots of other stuff mattered, and-

“What the hell is wrong with you, Vince?” he heard himself demand, and as he watched his moustache twitch with vigour, he went cross-eyed.

From barely a metre away, Vince’s eyes widened comically. He threw his hands into the air, hip cocked. “I want a brownie, you nutjob!”

Howard gritted his teeth, feeling moisture gathering on his forehead. He forced the words out. “You. Are. Wearing. Trousers.”

“So what?” Vince’s gaze dropped down to his rather unobtrusive black trousers, following Howard’s eyes. “You’ve seen these millions of times, you lunatic.”

“Vince,” Howard said slowly, trying again. “Vince Noir does not wear trousers. Vince Noir wears luminous parcels of prostitute glamour.”

“How dare you?” cried Vince, looking quite shocked at Howard’s statement. “I’ll have you know that I dress like an electro god—or goddess—but it’s not like I’ve starting waltzing down the streets of Shoreditch in a golden tutu and crimson stilettos!”

Without speaking, Howard reached behind, fumbling for a moment with a tissue box, shook his hand out of the tissue-dispensing hole and clutched at the enormous gilt frame that he subsequently brought forward. He shoved the photo frame at Vince, who took it with an insulted huff.

Vince screamed, and they both jumped.

“What am I wearing?” gasped Vince, unusually stubby nails scratching at the glass that covered the offending photograph.

“That’s what I ask myself everyday,” Howard muttered before he caught himself, and Vince whirled about in his favourite cowboy boots, a picture of hurt painted on his strangely youthful face.

“What are you on about, Howard? What’d I do to you, alright?” His voice became progressively higher as he became more upset, and for the first time, Howard suddenly found himself wondering if Vince could possibly be as freaked out as he was right at this minute. “When did this photo get taken, ‘cause I must’ve been off my tits! I don’t remember this at all!”

“It was Lester’s birthday, remember, Vince?” Howard asked, and his hands were suddenly clasped over his distraught friend’s shoulders. A shudder ran through his body at the alien sense of physical contact, but there was something wrong here. He was feeling that old compulsion, that old need to protect and comfort and reassure, the weirdly emotional sentiment that he hadn’t felt since, oh, since the days of the Zooniverse at least…

“Lester’s birthday’s in seven weeks, Howard!” Vince cried, voice breaking on the word ‘seven’, eyes startlingly blue in their sudden sheen of tears. “We were going to get him those genius earmuffs, remember, so he can keep warm in style when he next goes skiing!”

Howard was vaguely disturbed at the fact that Vince hadn’t commented on the location of Howard’s ‘jazzed-up rapist’s hands’. Last time he’d clapped the younger man on the back, Vince had leapt right away, shrieking about his jazz allergies. Vince had never used to have a problem with touching Howard. Time was when he couldn’t remove the eager paws from his zookeeper jacket.

In fact—there was more than hint of the old ‘deja vu’ in Howard’s periphery, and he jerked backwards instinctively when Vince collapsed inwards onto his chest, grasping at corduroy with his fingers, burying his head in Howard’s neck.

“Whoa there, little man,” he said automatically, and he blinked as the old term of endearment slipped out of his mouth like a cheeky tadpole. Awkwardly, he moved one of his hands from a bony shoulder to a narrow back, and began rubbing in stiff circles.

Howard supposed that this little collapse of sanity wasn’t really all that surprising, really. If he had seen a picture of himself in that get-up, he probably would have leapt straight into the crazies. Thing was, though, the odd thing was, was that Vince had always spent such a lofty percentage of the day peering into mirrors—especially during the last few years of nipple-exposing cat suit. By all rights, it shouldn’t have frightened him so much to see the photographic evidence. And then again, there were the trousers.

Yes. The trousers were truly the most frightening aspect of this entire ordeal. Yes, sir; the odd hint of chub in Vince’s face could be explained away by misuse of Botox, a trend the electro poof was sure to leap on some day. Illicit substances were the clear rationalisation for the open affability and memory loss. But the trousers? The trousers?

“What have you done to yourself, little man?” Howard whispered into Vince’s hair, fighting the urge to sneeze into the jauntily propped-up black tufts even as his arms tightened unconsciously around his friend. “Did you eat seventeen of these brownies, just like that time at the zoo?”

Seventeen hash brownies: that might just explain the trousers. Maybe.

“No, I didn’t, you tit,” Vince mumbled into Howard’s jacket, rubbing his bony nose against the material like a cat keening against its owner. “Did you? This is comfier than I remember it, Howard. It’s like you’ve suddenly put on three stone overnight, right in your belly centre, just enough to cushion me like a comfy old beanbag.”

“I’ve done no such thing,” Howard said loudly, affronted, hastily pulling Vince away from his taut and toned stomach. “I’m just as sharp as ever, Vince. I keep fit with my Jazzercize classes, as you well know.”

“Yeah, about as sharp as a vat of Nutella,” Vince muttered, and seemed to frown for a moment over the word ‘jazzercize’. He wrapped his bare arms tightly around his orange and violet t-shirt, hiding the minky motif.

“Hey, what’s that?” Howard said gently, motioning towards the t-shirt. He felt that maybe it would be best to calm Vince down with inconsequential conversation while the effect of the tray of brownies wore off. “I haven’t seen you wear that shirt since we left the zoo.” He started speaking faster in response to the look of panic that suddenly rose to the surface of Vince’s face. “You were so proud when you won it for that article about giant minks in the Arctic. They thought you were the new Orwell, crafting a dystopian allegory about animal rights abuses.”

Howard chuckled, but Vince only shivered, clearly unable to understand the humour. The laughter died from Howard’s lips as the younger man turned his eyes on him, pleading inscribed in every millimetre of pupil.

“What’s happening, Howard?” Vince whispered, tears making a valiant comeback. “You keep talking like stuff that we did last week happened years ago, and it doesn’t make any sense! I woke up just before in a room full of magic books and Spider Dijon records with an empty glass in my hand, and I don’t even remember how I got there!” He paused, motioning down at his sinfully plain outfit. “And you have no idea how many genius fabrics I had to dig through to find my normal clothes!”

“Wait a second,” Howard interrupted, mind racing forward through possibilities. There were too many possibilities. This was much worse than the brownies. Naboo had far more dangerous items in his bedroom than a mind-altering batch of chocolate slabs. “Vince,” he said softly, pleased with the steadiness of his tone. “Was the cup completely empty when you came to?”

Vince frowned at the odd question, nodded quickly, paused, reconsidered, and then shook his head. “No. There was a tiny sip left, but I doubt you want it, Howard—it tasted well off.”

“Where is it?” Howard demanded, already stepping out of the kitchen.

“In the creepy magic room, Howard, but—”

Vince hurried after Howard, tears forgotten once more, and the two men skated through the carpeted corridor. When they finally reached Naboo’s room, Howard stuck his head inside, saw that the coast was clear, and sidled in with all the grace of a lame walrus.

“Oh, dear God, no,” he groaned as soon as he had set his eyes on the glass resting casually atop an ironing board. “You didn’t really drink that, did you?”

Vince peered in, glancing from the centimetre of fluid remaining in the glass to Howard’s shocked and appalled face. “How do you even know what it is, Howard? It’s a clear liquid!”

With a snort of impatience, Howard pointed directly at the open bottle sitting just behind the glass. With effort, Vince read the label displayed prominently in bolded letters: “Aqueus Fountain-of-Youth-seus.”

“You little shitbox,” Howard moaned, clutching at the sides of his face. “You’ve gone and de-aged yourself, again, even after last time, and now you think you’re back in the Zooniverse. Naboo is going to shoot me down.”

[nextpage title=”Chapter 3″]
Chapter 3

“Ha, genius! Who knew that he’d return to the mighty ocean? Hey, Howard! Howard, come quickly, he’s scuttling sideways down the sandbank—”

Howard sighed, and raised a hand to his face. The joys of Colobus the Crab had once seemed eternal—but ever since his recent crustacean catastrophe, Howard really couldn’t stomach the program. Crabs and stomachs should never meet, that was clear. (Even if Dutch cinematographer nutjobs couldn’t see that.)

“Howard? Howard? Howard, Howard, Howard—”

Was it really possible that Howard had missed this infuriatingly incessant barrage of toddler antics? Did he lament the loss of the Vince that had always sought his approval and attention?

Was that a smile curling treacherously across his face?

He sighed, rather dramatically, mostly for show. It was a habit that had ingrained itself into his subconsciousness—like taking your shoes off when entering your parents’ house. Before Vince could reach the concluding ‘d’ of his latest call, Howard stuck his head around the corner and raised his eyebrows in half-feigned irritation.

“This better be important, Vince. I was selecting the appropriate apparel for my Jazzercize class tonight.”

Vince nodded wisely, gesturing with his half-eaten banana. “This Jazzercize, it’s like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, yeah? Exorcise the jazz? ‘Cause you probably shouldn’t wear those hideous tartan trousers. They’ll know you’ve had a relapse and all.”

Just like that, Howard slipped out of his friendly new—or rather, old—persona, and found himself juggling a selection of rather cutting insults to shoot back at Vince. He opened his mouth, fists clenched, ready to spring some babies loose, but all of a sudden, something stopped him.

It was Vince’s face. The sunshine smile had gone. There was something that looked extraordinarily like it may have been regret—would have been regret on anyone else’s face, except for the obvious fact that Vince Noir did not descend to regret. Not for his behaviour towards Howard. But still, there was something like worry in wide blue eyes, and something that was, in actual fact, a crimson flush that was rising in Vince’s pale cheeks.

The blotchy redness coalesced even as Howard watched it, mouth still open, ready to sling those acerbic comebacks. Vince shifted, looking quite as uncomfortable as a person could look while all bundled in blankets on a squashy couch in front of a television.

Howard shut his mouth. Shook his head weakly. Smiled. Felt something very much like regret clump up in his throat. This was mind-addled Vince (more so than usual, his brain added snarkily, evidently still catching up). Vince from the Zooniverse. He obviously didn’t mean to offend Howard. He was just persuaded that the jazz maverick had finally decided to alter his ways.

Ah, yes. The Howard of the Zooniverse years could still be found changing his ways from time to time. The Howard of Now remembered this with a slight internal wriggle and a cringe. The Howard of Now was stagnant. Stagnant in his jazzy ways. There was something entirely too paradoxical about jazzy stagnancy. Howard shook his head again. All this introspection seemed to be producing waves of unwelcome self-doubt. No wonder he gave up introspection last New Years.

Clearing his throat, Howard decided to go with his most immediate compulsion, which happened to involve relieving Vince of his blatant embarrassment. “Jazzercize is good for the soul, Vince. It loosens you up, releases the tension and rigidity of life in the fast lane. You should give it a try, little man.”

Really, Howard didn’t know what surprised him more: the fact that the familiar endearment had slipped from his lips like a bear springing out of a two-year hibernation, or the fact that Vince was, at this very moment, nodding quietly.

“Yeah, I’ll give it a go sometime, Howard,” said Vince in a bit of a subdued tone. “As long as you keep the scat under wraps.”

Howard smiled fondly. “Scared of the power of the scat, aren’t you?”

“Am not!”

Scared for good reason. A memory prodded fiercely at the back of Howard’s mind, a photographic image of a feverish Vince lying prostrate in the Nabootique, babbling in the nonsensical language of scat. Howard shuddered. All right then, no more scat. Not until Vince had recovered his lost years, anyway.

Not for the first time, Howard wondered where Naboo and Bollo had got to this time, and how much longer it would be until their return. He wasn’t quite sure how he and Vince had recovered from the effects of the fountain last time, but he was certain that Naboo would be able to fix Vince in no time.

Howard was strangely uncomforted by this thought.

“—ward? Howard? Howard? Howard, Howa—”

“What?”

“Don’t you want to know what I was going to tell you before?” Vince beamed up at Howard, half-masticated banana oozing through his teeth, evidently recovered from his previous discomfort. From behind the clouds had poured the sunshine. The noisy, messy, irritating, banana-covered sunshine.

“Just tell me, you twit.”

With a cheeky grin, Vince whipped out a hand-held mirror from somewhere within his swathe of blankets. Holding it in front of his face, his smile faded to a look of intense concentration.

“I wanted your opinion, Howard.”

Howard’s eyes widened. Vince wanted his opinion? Last time Howard had been invited to advise the electro ponce on his personal Look, they had ended up being chased offstage in full mediaeval costume. And Vince had only consulted Howard because his confidence had been so severely sapped by Lance Dior.

“I want to dye my hair back to normal. What do you think?”

If Howard’s eyes had widened any further, they would have attained an average size and shape—but unfortunately, it seemed that they had reached their beady limit.

“Your hair, Vince? But you love your hair! You won’t let anyone touch your hair! You even tried to avoid touching your own hair last month, don’t you remember? Your hair is the canopy of your Amazonian rainforest, Vince! Don’t upset the rainforest! You don’t want the rainforest to die, do—”

“You’ve gone wrong, Howard,” Vince interrupted breezily. “I mean, I’m loving the futuristic cut, obviously. In a couple of years, all the kids on the Camden scene are going to be wearing their hair like this. But the black, it’s well hardcore. Drains the colour from my face.”

Howard didn’t agree. The startling darkness of Vince’s hair made his huge eyes pop out in their vivid blue. If Howard had been able to speak, he would have made that point clear. Instead, he just jittered about in a nervous fashion like a mime performing for a crowd of blind lions.

“Yeah, makes me look all angular.” Vince made a face. “You want to help me dye it back, Howard? Only I don’t think I could hold all the implements myself.”

“Me?” Howard cleared his throat. “Don’t you want a hair-care specialist to handle it for you? You used to have a whole team of them running around, Vince—blew the whole budget on your follicles, if I remember correctly.”

Vince glanced away from the mirror for a second, grinning briefly at Howard. “Don’t trust them to remember the right colour and coordination of each strand, Howard. But you’ve told me enough times about your photographic memory. I trust you, yeah? Please?”

Without really knowing why, Howard nodded his assent. It was the shock, that’s all it was, in the end. Nabootique Vince would have been at Howard with the hair straighteners if he had attempted to do what Zooniverse Vince wanted him to. It was all a rather large heap of confusion. That’s why he had agreed.

It had nothing to do with Vince’s trusting smile, filled with trust, and echoes of the word trust, and trust trust trust. It had nothing to do with the affection that was growing achingly strong within Howard’s chest.

“I trust you, yeah?”

Yeah.

[nextpage title=”Chapter 4″]
Chapter 4

“Weren’t you supposed to be at some weird jazz cult tonight?” asked Vince, words muffled beneath a fuzzy orange towel. He lifted his head, a wide grin on his face, hair all hidden beneath an enormous pretzel of turban.

“You look like some kind of lunatic housewife with your hair all done up like that,” Howard replied, avoiding the insulting question with admirable dignity.

“A psychedelic monk, more like,” said Vince, spinning back to the mirror and giving the orange tower a bit of an encouraging pat. “This is going to be well genius, Howard. Once the basic backcomb structure is back where it belongs, everything’ll be just like it used to.” He glanced back at Howard, hands pausing on the sides of his head. “Well, almost. You thought about getting a haircut recently? Wish you’d let me do it, Howard. I’d love to get my hands on those smoky curls.”

“I don’t need a haircut to define my personality, Vince,” Howard said briskly, shifting his weight as he avoided the hungry blue eyes staring at his head from across the room. “Howard Moon lets his movement speak for him, sir. It’s all about smoothness, agility, the confidence of a man who dares to defy follicular convention.”

“Shifty, that’s what your movement’s crying out, Howard,” said Vince, shaking his head. “You should tell your movement to shut it immediately, and let my scissors run the conversation right to your hairstyle.”

“There are more important things to life than hair, Sonny Jim,” Howard continued, deftly ignoring Vince’s interruption. “Things like jazz, and philosophy, and women, and stationary, and everything else that should matter to a well-rounded gentleman of the modern age.”

“I’ll have to get at you in the middle of the night,” said Vince distractedly, musing away to his turbaned reflection. “You’ll never even notice me snipping away, knees planted on either side of your snoring body. You’ll wake up in the morning to a brand new cut and people will never have to listen to your edgy rapist movements again—”

“—Howard?”

But Howard was off, striding down the corridor with his shaking fists stuffed in his tweed pockets. The perennial hair debate was nothing new, of course (it was, in fact, perennial) but hearing Vince launch into the same old arguments using precisely the same disturbing ideas was too much.

He had almost forgotten the disturbing nature of their current situation. He had almost lost himself in the absolute effervescent happiness of the old friendship, the old Vince, the Old Days themselves relived in a sea of bathtubs and bubbles. Old Vince. Well, Young Vince, in the technical sense. Having Young Vince around made the Young Howard pop out for a breather, and that was the real problem, wasn’t it?

Howard had forgotten the past two years in a single cheeky flash of bright blue and dimpled cheek. It was as simple as that. Black trousers had erased series of endless outrageous cat suits in a single instant. It hadn’t seemed to matter that the reappearance of the old dynamic was the result of a hideous and dangerous magical misdemeanor. Everything had suddenly been all friendly jibes and played up condescension again.

Yes; Howard had once more tasted the sweet taste of condescension, superiority, misplaced pride and blind arrogance. He had slipped back into his former patterns like Vince had slipped back into his favourite black trousers—except Vince had an excuse for his current insanity, didn’t he? Howard’s excuse was nothing more than a subconscious desire to regress into the golden days of Howard-and-Vince, when verbal weaponry was an extended inside joke and not just, well, weaponry.

Nostalgia tasted sweet, and this unexpected sojourn into the past was positively irresistible. After the built-up bitterness of the Nabootique, Howard had clung to the sugary intrusion like a bee high on pollen.

And it was a fatal attraction, in the end; he knew that. Howard knew it, as his hands clenched in sweaty fists, and he marched his way through the limited space of the house in agitated circles. Vince was going to snap out of this momentary delusion in no time. Bitterness would swing back onto the palate in no time at all.

And everything would taste all the more bitter for the sweetness that had briefly brightened the flat.

Howard didn’t know how he would stand it. It was simply tragic that the entirety of six hours spent in Young Vince’s company could affect him so bloody much. It was like his malaise of the past two years had been wiped out instantly. He hadn’t felt so light and frothy and happy since the heady days of the band that had failed to make it to the big time. Even failing at the music scene was a triumph back then. Failing with Vince—with Vince—had been an award in itself. They hadn’t failed together for an awfully long time.

Vince hardly failed at all, these days. And Howard? Well, he did nothing much but fail, to tell the truth of it. And failure was no longer the source of adventure it had once been.

But back in the bathroom, waterlogged and scowling and trying not to inhale the stringent aroma of hair dye, that hadn’t been a failure, had it? No; despite his grumbling, Howard had been warmer and fuzzier than a bunny rabbit burnt at stake. He had positively shivered with happiness.

All this was an exercise in illness, wasn’t it? Insanity, that was the only viable explanation. Why else would Howard have cancelled his Jazzercise class two hours before it was due to start, purely to be able to stay home and mess about with Vince’s precious mop of hair? Howard Moon was not the type of man to sit around and play hairdresser, no sir.

But that’s what he’d been doing all afternoon—playing with Vince’s hair. And he would have done the same for Bitchy Vince; there was another troubling fact. Howard would have joined Vince in a series of madcap hair adventures despite their inability to get along if he had just been asked. Vince hadn’t asked anything of Howard in such a long time.

To tell the truth, Howard had the funny feeling that he might have felt even happier if it had been Non-Magicked Vince to entrust him with his precious hair.

It was a strange thing to feel while applying liberal doses of hair dye on military command, but nonetheless, Howard had felt definite touches of something almost but not entirely unlike unmanly affection. Some might call it love. Howard didn’t really want to put a name on it. The nameless tinge of the old days had flirted back across his vision, glazing everything in saccharine happiness. He hadn’t felt that in a long time (or rather, hadn’t allowed himself to feel it).

Stomping across a trail of blackened banana skins (and hastily retreating out of Bollo’s room) Howard slammed his eyes shut, trying to forget the treacherous tinge. Even their friendship had failed, that was the important thing to remember. Their friendship had failed. Failed, failed, failed. Vince may have succumbed to a magical delusion, but even he wasn’t that deluded. The only tinge in his eyes came from his own silvery reflection.

“Always knew Harold a nutjob,” muttered a deep voice from across the room, and Howard, one eye squinting for a clear path through the furniture, didn’t exactly mince his words in reply.

“What’s up with you, you ballbag?” Naboo asked flatly, padding across to Howard and stopping his frenzied pacing with a single hand to tweed-clad arm. Howard froze up completely, staring down at Naboo’s hand with the wide eyes of a rabbit caught in headlights.

“Er, well, in short, er, Vince seems to have—”

“Naboo, outta the zoo! And Bollo, you’re not dead! Imagine that!”

After a rather violent pause, three pairs of eyes swung around to the kitchen door, through which Vince had recently passed. Howard felt his mouth drop open of its own accord, despite supposedly having known what to expect. From behind him, he heard Bollo’s almost reverent whisper:

“Precious Vince gone wrong in the mind tank.”

“It’s genius, isn’t it?” Vince gushed, ducking his head and allowing the blonde and brown mass to feather about his face. “You wouldn’t believe the hair products I found in the bathroom cabinet! There was this hairspray, right, called Goth Juice, and the label said that it was made from—”

“—the tears of Robert Smith.” Howard completed the sentence with an involuntary shudder at the memory of the horrifying Nanatoo incident. What had he been thinking, dressing up like a goth to impress those girls? They wouldn’t have gone off with Naboo and Bollo if he’d shown them his trumpet socks, oh no. And then he shook his head, trying to regain focus.

“Yeah, Vince went through your stuff again,” he said heavily, pre-empting Naboo’s accusation. “And I wouldn’t bother turning your back on us, either. I personally had nothing to do with the whole incident, and Vince—well, Vince can’t really remember anything he’s done for the past couple of years.”

“Fountain of Youth again?” Naboo said sourly, and he wasn’t looking for an affirmation. “I should have known better than to trust you two alone in the flat for an afternoon. The Shaman Council is going to skin me alive for this. Two separate abuses in two years; it’s gotta be a record.”

“There is a cure, isn’t there, Naboo?” Howard asked quickly. He felt, rather than saw, that Vince had strolled on over to the arena of conversation. Automatically, he flinched from Vince’s questioning touch.

“If there wasn’t, you’d still be messing your pants, wouldn’t you?” Naboo sighed, raising his eyes to the ceiling in disdain. “Give me a week, and then we’ll get Vince back to normal.”

“Ah. Do you have to brew the remedial potion under the light of the full moon?”

“No. Shamansburys is only open on Mondays.”

With a final derisive shake of the head, Naboo and Bollo left the room, the gorilla patting Vince comfortingly on the shoulder as he passed.

“Since when have Naboo and Bollo hung about together?” Vince wondered aloud, peering towards their room with wide eyes. “I thought Naboo was more of a frog person, personally.”

With a sigh, Howard steered Vince back towards the couch, sat him down, and flicked through the channels until his ears were assaulted with the kind of music that Vince revered. He then turned to leave for some more aimless pacing, but his arm was caught by familiar fingers.

“Howard?”

“Yes, little man?”

“Thanks for skipping your jazz cult to help me with my hair and all.”

“My pleasure,” said Howard, patting Vince awkwardly on the back, and pulled away, wishing that the two words weren’t brimming over with truth.

[nextpage title=”Chapter 5″]
Chapter 5

Author’s Notes: Vince’s POV!

Fairy bread. Fairy bread would be genius. Of course, Clive wouldn’t want any; he was on some kind of ridiculous diet, refused to eat anything but ukulele leaves or something. But Vince’s tummy was rumbling steadily, a hungry steam-train, so he said his goodbyes and wandered out of the marsupial enclosure and into the zoo proper.

Koalas were well cool, what with their enormous fluffy earmuffs and perfect manicures. Vince ducked his chin, laughing at the sheer liquid brilliance of it. His own stubby nails flashed into the rather dull midday light, and he shook his head. How did they do it? Climbing all those trees, nails dug right into the bark, and still no scratches in the varnish, nothing. Whereas his nails, well, they looked nothing like as good as they had yesterday.

Vince Noir was not used to a manicure. He spent far too much time shovelling manure and digging out frozen bodies and finger-painting to worry about the state of his nails. It was just that, well, after actually experiencing a perfect manicure, after waking up and finding that his cuticles were in top-notch form, it seemed an awful pity to destroy the varnished artwork.

Though he did kind of wonder about the fact that this Vince-imposter-of-the-supposedly-present had found so much time to spend painting his fingertips.

Thing was, Vince had gotten up early that morning, not having managed to sleep much anyway, and he’d had a good wander through the flat that apparently belonged to the kiosk shaman. He’d opened all sorts of doors, peeking in kitchen cupboards, behind the (simply enormous) bathroom mirror, in the fridge, everywhere—but he hadn’t been able to find a single piece of artwork that his future self had constructed. Nothing. It looked like, amazingly enough, Howard’s new Vince had devoted himself entirely to, well, himself.

Howard’s new Vince. Vince shuddered from feathery tip to cowboy-booted toe. The words fit together all wrong, like ‘diet chocolate’ or ‘tween fashion’. An unhappy frown flooded its way across Vince’s pointy features, and his chubby dimples became lost in gloom.

Howard’s new Vince. Were Howard’s old Vince and Howard’s new Vince two completely different people? This line of conceptual thinking was too difficult for Vince’s brain to stick to, so he detoured into thoughts of how everyone had been treating him since he’d woken up in this crazy future world.

Well, it wasn’t too hard to figure out. Everyone had been treating him like he was a nutjob. Whenever Vince launched into conversation, a strange, grimacing smile had twitched onto Howard’s face, and Vince had found himself plonked down in front of the telly with the remote control in his hand. Naboo and Bollo hadn’t even bothered with that much effort, preferring to scoot out and fill the house with weird-smelling smoke.

And although Vince had been more than put out by Bollo’s abandonment, mentally comparing all the fun times they’d had together to this post-death inattention, Howard’s strange behaviour had bothered him more. Evidently, Howard missed his new, selfish, painted-up Vince.

Vince had always felt childlike in comparison to Howard. It’d never bothered him before now. Even in school, Howard had hunched over his work with such tension and social awkwardness that he had seemed decades older than his classmates. The moustache hadn’t helped, either. But back then, Vince had still felt like he and Howard were somehow equals, meeting each other not in the field of height, but the field of deviation. Neither of them had fit in anywhere until the Zooniverse, but they hadn’t needed a place to fit in when they fit in with each other, two peas in a spacepod.

Now Vince felt childish and unwanted. He wasn’t oblivious like Howard; he could see the doubt and reserve in Howard’s eyes whenever conversation perked up. It was like the jazzy northerner was constantly expecting some form of verbal slap in the face, and it was well off-putting. Conversation with Zooniverse-Howard had been a stream of meaningless banter, friendly insults flying every which way, batted down with a swipe of retaliation. But now…

Howard had grown up or something. He didn’t believe in himself; even Vince could see that. It used to be all ambition this, ambition that, all of it ridiculously pretentious, but the belief and (short-lived) drive had still been there. And where had he ended? He’d ended in a shop, working for pittance and apparently sinking ever deeper into a jazz daze.

Vince kicked aside an empty bottle and watched it scrape along the grey pavement. Howard was all grey and empty now—and what did that mean for future Vince? Had he sipped away all the colour and content like a fizzy drink bandit?

A hand reached up and hesitantly settled into a mass of soft familiar hair, which had so recently been foreign and black and edgy. It was a relief to know that the unwelcome change had been fixed. His fingers laced about individual strands as if caressing the colours.

All the colour in the new Vince seemed to have splashed out in his outfits, all bright exterior. Vince wondered what the inside was like. Was it as black and edgy as the punked up hair, or daring and glossy as the cat suits? See, it wasn’t exactly that Vince had anything against the technicolour jumpsuits as such—his favourite outfit back home was what Howard liked to call ‘the human coke can’. But that suit had been purely for the Arctic experience, not for every day wear and tear. He loved his clothes, there was no question about it—but he was about more than just his clothes. He had his painting and Charlie and his cowboy boots (which didn’t really count as clothing, right?) and Gary Numan and his hair and army of Mod Wolves and Howard.

He had Howard. He had Howard. He had had Howard? Did new Vince have Howard?

Was that the problem?

Did Howard no longer want Vince at all, or did he just want his new Vince back?

Either option left Vince with rapidly smudging eyeliner, and he swiped at his eyes with a fierce hand. This was why he didn’t like thinking too much. He was made for carefree laughter and poncho-happiness, not thinking about stuff. Thinking was Howard’s thing, and maybe that was what gave him his Howard-y edge, but right at this moment, edge was the last thing Vince wanted.

What he wanted was to be back in the Zooniverse with Howard, crimping or bickering or freeing mutants or being told off by Bob Fossil. The usual fun stuff. And if he couldn’t have that, he just wanted to be back with Howard. He wanted to know that Howard wanted him. He wanted to make Howard want him, non-future Vince.

He wanted non-future Howard.

And so, with a new resolution stuck resolutely in his mind like a fluoro post-it note, Vince finally stopped ignoring the ninja that had been hopping along beside him for a couple of streets now.

“You one of the nutters who’s been giving me magazines all day long?” he asked bluntly, jabbing one end of his feather boa towards the ninja.

The ninja glared back at him through his black mask, arms bouncing up and down in rhythm to his jogging motions. “Cheekbone!” he cried, thrusting the cover towards Vince with notable impatience.

Reluctantly, Vince swiped the proffered magazine from the irate ninja. “Look, can you point me the direction of the Nabootique before you run off again?”

“Cheekbone,” the ninja said grouchily, pointing down the next street before making a complicated gesture that Vince took to mean, ‘then go left’. “Berk.”

“Cheers,” said Vince rather moodily, staring after the departing ninja’s back. It was all really a massive waste of paper, wasn’t it? Who thought up the concept of a magazine that expired three hours after it was printed? Obviously, they hadn’t heard of the internet. (Not that Vince himself had ever used the internet—but he’d endured a rather lengthy Howardian dialogue on the matter last Thursday.)

He started off in the direction that the ninja had suggested, relieved that someone had been around to tell him where to go. That was the problem with wandering off to a strange zoo early in the morning. The only people who had seemed interested in giving him directions were fierce-looking Camden types, who beamed when Vince approached, but raked his outfit with clear disdain.

After an eyeful of a lusty-looking stranger from across the street, Vince upped his pace and pulled his boa closer about his neck for protection.

Howard screamed. Vince winced. He tried to whisk the little touristy shot-glass behind his back before Howard noticed it, but a hand had wrapped itself around his wrist. He looked down, saw a paisley sleave, and winced again.

“Alright, Howard?” he tried, a nice touch of innocence attached to his tone. He beamed, and tried to make his eyes go all wide and twinkly. Howard’s outrage/indignation/self-righteous anger had always been a bit tempered by the old wide blue eye trick.

“What do you think you’re doing, you little titbox?”

The words seemed to explode from Howard’s mouth. Vince jerked back, smile snatched away. The bare inch of liquid in the shot glass spat out and over the rim, and Vince winced a third time as he felt the wetness on his fingers. There went that hope. He hoped his fingers didn’t de-age right back to childhood.

“I was just, I was just, look, Howard, it’s not what it looks like!” he said quickly (too quickly, perhaps), stumbling over his words. His voice strained with panic or guilt and he felt like he was about three years old again, a three-year old being told off by his angry father.

Howard rose up onto his elbows, tiredly rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Vince waited, a good two metres back from the bed, perched on the edge of his boots, ready to dart off and out of their shared bedroom.

When Howard looked up again, there was something apologetic in his wan smile. Vince noted this absence of anger, felt himself slacken in relief, and dashed forward, skidding to his knees by the bed.

“Alright, Howard, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you and all.”

“I’m sorry, too, little man; it’s just, well, I forgot for a moment. That you’re back.” (Vince’s heart swelled.) “Or, rather, that you’d gone.”

Disappointment and hurt gushed over and around each other in cold swells. Vince settled back on his heels, hands hanging dejectedly in his lap. He was no good at holding back his emotions, what with his huge canvas of a face, and really, what was the point of pretending?

“What’s in that shot-glass, Vince?” Howard asked sharply, voice tinged with suspicion.

“That aqueous stuff you said I’d been drinking,” said Vince, sounding hollow and tired even to himself. It was an odd sound. Foreign. Hollow? Wasn’t that some sickness that trees got sometimes?

Howard spluttered for a moment, twisting himself around in the sheets as he struggled to sit up. “You were trying to poison me with that liquid youth business?”

“Well, yeah,” said Vince, shrugging. “I’m sorry, I suppose. It’s just, well, you’re not really happy, here, are you?” The words popped out in little bubbles of anger. “You don’t try and sound superior all the time, Howard! You don’t fuss about with big ideas about what you’re going to accomplish, and you go to Jazzercise classes! The Howard I know, he’d be planning a Jazz revolution, not little weekly notches of jazz. And you don’t like—you don’t like Vince anymore. Me. Do you?”

Now it was Howard’s turn to wince. “Don’t be like that, Vince. You know we’re best mates.”

“No, I don’t know that,” Vince all-but-whispered, collapsing on the bed and hunching over his crossed legs. “You get all angry all the time. I’ve only been here since yesterday, and already I’ve seen you give yourself twelve Chinese burns! What’s all that about, Howard?”

Howard shifted uncomfortably. Vince wondered if he was trying to move himself away from the spot where the bed dipped under Vince’s weight. He waited, but Howard didn’t seem to want to answer.

Vince scooped at the air with his colourfully booted toe, and hunched his shoulders up about his head. “Just thought it might make you happier if you were back in your Zooniverse character.”

For an exceedingly awkward moment, there was silence in the bedroom—and then, completely unexpectedly, Vince felt a hand settle on his arm. He looked up, all wide eyed and twinkly, and saw that Howard had shifted a little closer. The hand made a little patting motion, and went to shift away, but Vince darted for this open doorway and started moving towards Howard for a hug. He went quickly, expecting to hear the words, ‘don’t touch me’, spurting from Howard’s lips. When the reprimand failed to appear, Vince squinted one eye open and peeked out at Howard.

He was wrapped all the way around the jazz maverick, arms clamped about pyjama-clad torso and legs sprawled across his lap. Vince had never managed to gain this much physical ground with Howard, even in the Zooniverse.

From ten centimetres away, Howard looked just as surprised. Before the jazz maverick could come to his senses, Vince ducked his head and planted it firmly against Howard’s broad chest, closing his eyes and listening to the rhythmic pounding.

“M’sorry, Howard,” he murmured, and his arms tightened around layers of sheets and pyjamas and Howard, and he almost felt secure.

“There, there,” Howard said gently, clearing his throat and recommencing the patting motion on Vince’s back. He sighed. “Sometimes, yeah, I wouldn’t mind going back to the zoo days. But not by magic. And, you know, we’d probably just grow apart again.”

Vince snuggled in closer as strong arms tightened around him, though he was sure Howard was acting without thinking about it. He tried to ignore the last few words Howard had spoken. Nose pressed flush into warmth, he shifted the tiniest bit and risked brushing his lips against the skin there.

And everything went all tense, although Howard didn’t say anything. Vince closed his eyes, sighing softly, and pulled back to expose a wide grin that didn’t come close to twinkling blue.

“Why are you still in bed, anyway? You never used to sleep in on Saturdays.”

“Couldn’t sleep last night.” Howard shifted uncomfortably, but he returned Vince’s grin with an uneasy smile of his own. “Where have you been? You didn’t leave the shop, did you?”

“Yeah, I did. Went down to the local zoo. Joey told me about it one time, before, well, Bainbridge’s plot. It specializes in Australian animals.” He lowered his eyes, laughing half-heartedly at the memory. “There was this koala, Clive—you should meet him, Howard! He was catching me up to date on the latest fashions.”

“That’s right. Another bear for another week, that’s how it was, wasn’t it? Hit it off with a polar bear, out to dinner with a panda, holiday with a grizzly—what next?” Howard chuckled, shaking his head in bemusement.

“I don’t know, Howard, we just get along! Well, except that Clive was telling me that he’s not really a bear, is he? He’s more of a marsupial or something—has a pouch to keep his accessories in and all—genius!”

Howard frowned. “Only females have pouches, Vince. Either Clive’s been telling you tales, or you’ve spent the morning conversing with a gender-confused koala.”

“Your concepts of sexuality are so outdated, Howard,” sighed Vince, pulling further back out of Howard’s arms, which had gone limp a few minutes earlier. He put on a brave face, because that’s what he did, didn’t he? Banter. Wasn’t that what he’d wanted? “If I was a koala, I’d definitely have a pouch! Imagine that! It would be well convenient.”

“Yeah, you’d probably burn a hole right through your marsupial pouch with a pair of straighteners first chance you got. One permanent Nicky Clarke scar is never enough in the world of fashion, I suppose.”

“I haven’t got any scars.”

“Er, right.”

And everything descended into awkward silence once more—well, until Vince’s stomach launched into rumble, obviously sick of being ignored all morning.

Howard snorted. “You wouldn’t happen to be hungry, would you?”

“Fairy bread,” Vince remembered, and hopped out of bed with barely a sigh. “To the kitchen!”

Again, Howard looked slightly shifty, and only sat up slowly when Vince confronted him with an impatient gesture. “Thing is, Vince, I don’t think we have any proper bread in the house. You’ve eaten nothing but malt loaf for about three years now for your GI diet.”

“Hundreds and thousands?” Vince asked after a moment, still hopeful.

“I don’t think so, little man.”

“I’ll just have to use smarties, then,” said Vince resolutely, and marched from the bedroom before Howard could say that smarties weren’t on the GI list. No fairy bread? What kind of life did future Vince live, anyway?

No wonder he hadn’t fit into those skinny jeans this morning. He didn’t seem to fit in much here at all.

[nextpage title=”Chapter 6″]
Chapter 6

“Alright?”

Vince grinned widely at the two girls walking along the footpath on the other side of the street. At the sound of his voice, so unfittingly bright in the gloom pressing down from above, the girls stuttered to a stop and whipped around to stare at him. Vince admired the way their colourful coats swung out and about behind them, a languorous echo of their sudden movement.

“You talking to us?” the shorter one squeaked, stalking across the street before Vince had even had the chance to answer her. The other girl, features almost hidden beneath a cloud of frosty blonde hair, sighed, checked for traffic, and darted after her.

“Yeah, hi there,” said Vince, slightly nonplussed. To tell the truth, he’d never had such an easy go of it on the chatting-up scene. He found girls slightly scary (not that he’d ever let on, obviously). Compared to Howard, he was a Flirt Expert; but so was Bob Fossil, when it came to that. Almost unconsciously, Vince straightened and tossed his hair to the side, nodding at the approaching girls.

The short one was winking at him. Vince blinked back, hands jammed in the pockets of his black trousers.

“We were just talking about tonight, discussing which club to go to, and all,” she said, nudging her friend, who smiled from behind her hand.

“Oh, yeah, the clubbing scene!” Vince exclaimed, rocking forward on his toes. “I go clubbing all the time, yeah! I’m a regular Jack of Clubs, dealing out the shapes and the excitement.”

“Which one are you going to, then?” the blonde one asked, and she seemed genuinely interested, which didn’t play to Vince’s strategy. He tilted his head as he thought for a minute.

“Well, all of them! I’m gonna be leaping from club to club like a frog in an electro pond.”

The girls seemed disappointed. Vince inwardly revelled in his successful dodge. Then—“We thought we’d stick to the Velvet Onion tonight. Any chance you’d be, um, leaping past?”

Vince backed up quickly, but he could already feel the bubble-bath fizz of triumph. Did it really matter that he wasn’t actually interested in these girls? It felt good that someone seemed to be ready to flirt with him, even if that someone wasn’t really anyone, in the end. Triumph was quick talking and quicker results, right?

“Yeah, the Velvet Onion! I’m the Onion’s main drawcard, you know. Best friends with the manager, everything!”

“Yeah, we know, Vince. You have that twitchy retard under your thumb.” Shorty shuddered.

Vince wobbled back a bit, surprised out of his balance. “You know who I am?”

Since when had he been on name-terms with girls-from-the-street? Ever since he left school, all his female contact had come from women who liked to spend their days chatting up chimps (or pandas, but that was beside the point).

Shorty exchanged a glance with the icy blonde, and looked back, batting her lashes, playing along to what she obviously thought was a game. “Of course we do. Vince Noir, Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, Prince of Camden,” she simpered. “You’re the Confuser. Is it a boy?”

“Is it a girl?” the other joined in, peering at Vince seductively through her fringe. “We don’t mind.”

“Oi,” said Vince. Now here was a pleasingly familiar insult. “I’m not an ugly lady, alright?”

“You’re telling me,” Shorty said, scraping her manicured nails along his bare arm. He shivered reflexively and she smiled. “All the girls want you, all the guys want you—”

“That freak coming out of the shop definitely wants you,” her blonde friend interrupted with a snigger, pointing behind Vince.

Vince pivoted on his heel, distinctly relieved. A grin split his face, and he waved energetically, even though there were barely three metres between them. “Howard!”

A pleasurable squirm wriggled through his tummy at the thought of the girl’s words. She thought Howard wanted him. A bath bomb detonated in the tub, and everything went all fizzy. These girls certainly seemed to know everything else about his life—or more than he knew, at any rate.

“Ladies,” said Howard breezily, stepping up and easing his way into the conversation with the grace of a fedora in a sea of Stetsons. Vince beamed up at him, but lost some buzz at the sight of the grimacey-smile propped up beneath that mocha stain ‘tache.

This was a look Howard generally reserved for meetings with Bob Fossil. This was a beaten, defeated, let’s-just-get-it-over-with-and-dash-my-ego-to-bits-with-your-pointy-heels-and-feminine-ways,-shall-we? look.

Vince frowned. This was the look he reserved for moments of concern. The Howard he knew had a certain naïve, misplaced optimism where it came to members of the female genre. The Howard in the here and now looked like he could already taste the salty brew of rejection.

And sure enough—

“Get lost.”

Howard laughed in a strange, hollow sort of way, and tilted the brim of his fedora to the unimpressed girls.

And Vince tried very hard not to feel relieved at this obvious lack of interest. Relief clouded the concern like the clouds above clouded out the sun, and Vince shook his head to get his priorities in some kind of order.

“Hey, ladies, this guy bothering you?” a deep voice demanded from behind all four, and Vince swivelled around once more, an indignant ‘no’ on his lips.

“Yeah, a bit,” purred Shorty, winking slightly at the lofty figure of Man who had spoken, coiffed head blocking out a good proportion of grey sky. The Man shook his head, and his enormous handlebar moustache bristled about in a most threatening manner.

“Step aside, sir,” he barked at Howard, who declined to acquiesce. Vince, feeling quite proud of his best mate, grinned encouragingly at him, but didn’t manage to prompt much moustache-movement in reply.

“Hello, who’s this?” the Man announced sharply, thrusting aside both Shorty and the blonde as he stepped towards Vince. The girls hissed indignantly, and made off quickly, shooting envious looks back at Vince and waggling their fingers in farewell.

“He’s with me, alright?” Howard answered, and a couple more bath bombs went off in Vince’s belly chamber.

“Fat chance,” snorted the Man, wrapping an arm the width of Vince’s thigh around the electro’s shoulders. “How’s it going there, sugar lemon? Remember me from Thursday?”

Vince’s eyes bulged, and he tried to wriggle free of the imposing arm with no avail. “Get off me!”

Thursday, Thursday, he was so emphatically glad that he couldn’t remember last Thursday—

“Thursday?” Howard said quietly, tiny eyes pricked on Vince. “You told me you were out shopping with Lester last Thursday.”

“I was playing hopscotch with a hedgehog last Thursday!” Vince protested, writhing about beneath the mass of Man muscle around his shoulders. “I haven’t seen Lester for weeks, you know that! He’s been hanging out with that girl from Dixons, remember? Naboo introduced them or something—”

“Nonsense,” bellowed the anonymous Man, sweeping Vince close to his protruding pectorals effortlessly. “Now, stop playing about, or I’ll wager this party will take a very nasty turn for your pretty little face.”

Without warning, Howard stepped forward and clenched his fists in a manner that was almost but not entirely unlike a threat. “You let him go right this minute, sir, or I’ll come at you like a ten-tonne truck of pain.”

Vince gasped and stumbled as he was dropped from the Man’s biceptular embrace. He skidded back to a safe distance behind Howard, and peered forward at the scene ahead. The Man had rolled the sleeves of his shirt way up past a train station of flesh graffiti, and was cracking his knuckles menacingly, one by—crick—one.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Yeah, it is!” said Vince triumphantly, clinging to Howard’s shadow and prodding his defender forward with enthusiasm. Of course Howard was going to leap to the rescue! He’d spent all those hours talking about his years of fistfight experience, and, though Vince had never actually witnessed any proof of this fighting ability, he’d never doubted that Howard would pull through for him.

This wasn’t any old kangaroo, after all.

Vince blinked as Howard’s open, sweaty palm was shoved in his facial direction, as if the jazz maverick was signalling for Vince to STOP IT. Nodding happily, Vince gave a final jeering shout, pushed Howard towards the growling Man, and prepared to stop and allow Howard his concentration.

And the fist came roaring through the muggy air like a comet streaming testosterone, and Vince’s mouth fell open in—

“Alright, Howard?”

Vince grinned uncertainly down at the mess of blood and suffering on the couch, and, having planted the two cups of tea on the table, sat down himself.

“I’ve done better.”

“You’ve done worse, yeah? Remember the time you died? Your hair was all grey and stringy, remember that?”

“There’s more to life than hair, Sonny Jim; and in any case, I fail to see how ‘matted with blood’ is better than ‘grey and stringy’.”

The smile broadened on Vince’s face, and he bent forward to fuss over Howard’s palette of injuries.

“How did you stop that twat from killing me, anyway?” Howard asked rather grumpily as he allowed Vince to prod gingerly at his limbs, supposedly testing for serious damage.

Vince grinned, sitting back on his haunches and untying the yellow scarf from around his neck. “Well, you remember when you were boxing that kangaroo in Fossil’s Shady Underground Boxing Competition?”

Howard’s eyes almost bulged free from their stingy sockets. “You grabbed his balls!?”

“No, you batty crease,” said Vince through a safety pin that was lodged between his front teeth. “I stuck my fingers in his eyes. First lesson of basic self-defence.”

Howard sighed, though whether in relief or annoyance, Vince didn’t know. “So what’s that got to do with the Killeroo?”

“Nothing much. But I saved you both times, didn’t I? Like a regular maiden in distress, aren’t you?”

Lifting his arm to allow Vince better access, Howard clenched his jaw. “Shut it.”

Vince coiled his tongue around his molar in concentration as he pinned the makeshift yellow tourniquet in place. Once finished, he clucked his tongue in triumph and bent down to beam close up to Howard’s face. “Don’t I get a kiss for my troubles or something?” he said softly, honing in on Howard’s eyes, deliberately direct.

Howard scoffed loudly. (Too loudly?) “I’ll feed you to the bloody dragon if you’re not careful, sir.”

Vince settled back, smile slipping from his face. He busied himself with the rearranging of the tourniquet, and began to mop half-heartedly at the crimson rivulets of blood.

After a moment, Howard cleared his throat. Tension was thick in his windpipe, it seemed.

“You’re brave, Howard, even if you don’t believe it, you know,” Vince said quietly, blue eyes far from brown this time. “Who else was going to stand up for me out there?”

“You were the one who saved me, little man,” said Howard, sighing. “I am a sodding maiden in distress, aren’t I?”

“Do I get my kiss then?” grinned Vince, hope bobbing about in his chest, bouncing off the many badges littering his vest.

“Have you heard of the feminist movement, Vince? Modern maidens aren’t required to prostitute themselves out to their rescuers. Hand me my cup of tea will you? I think you’ve safety pinned me to the couch.”

And with those extremely hurried words, Howard risked deflating the balloon of hope propped up in Vince’s chest—but the darting of the eyes and the shaking of the hands that reached for the cup just added a bit more helium.

And the mother of all bath bombs rolled an inch closer to the tub.

[nextpage title=”Chapter 7″]
Chapter 7

Author’s Notes: Back to Howard’s POV.

“You’ve given me a face.”

Howard paused for a moment, mentally replaced the period with an exclamation mark, and then resumed.

“Why have you given me a face?”

A slight frown apparent even through his dynamic fringe, Vince glanced up. His paintbrush dangled midway between his splattered palette and the canvas. “What are you on about?”

“A face,” Howard tried again, still feeling that his voice lacked the particular straining emphasis that this fact demanded. “You’ve painted my face into that portrait. Why?”

“Cool your boots, Howard,” said Vince, twirling the brush through a thick dab of crimson. “I paint what I see, alright? We only went through this for about an hour a couple of months ago when you asked me to paint you last time.”

“That wasn’t just a couple of months—but, but,” Howard stuttered, feeling awfully out of step here. Really, he should be pleased, shouldn’t he? Back then, way back at the Zooniverse, he would have been strutting about in triumph to see the lofty swipe of his moustache curling across Vince’s canvas. But, but—why the difference now? Why was everything so different now, this time, here in the flat with the same old (old) Vince and just boring old (well, new) Howard?

“Look, I dunno,” sighed Vince, brush sliding vigorously across the taut material now, adding slashes of colour to this composition that affected Howard so deeply. “Your face isn’t well bor—I mean, it’s different now, yeah?”

Howard straightened his shoulders, heaving back the old dignity like Sisyphus up the slope. “You drew me with a fleshy balloon for a face last time, Vince. I don’t think I’ve changed quite so much to alter that particular perception of yours.”

Vince pinned his eyes to the canvas, plainly refusing to meet Howard’s (almost unwavering) gaze. “Yeah, you have.”

“Now, you look here, sir,” said Howard, bristling like a mocha stain ‘tache in a gusty breeze. “I’m more of a fleshy balloon now than I ever was back at the Zooniverse!”

For some mad reason, any insinuation to the contrary seemed to be a hideous insult to the former Howard, the Howard of ambition (failed) and courage (in a manner of speaking) and dignity (well, his imagination was working on it, wasn’t it?) That Howard, the Howard of the Past, was to be protected. He was as sacred in all his romanticism as Vince of the Past was. Except that, oh, well. Vince of the Past.

Was now Vince of the Present. And Vince of the Present was still working away at that treacherous image of a face, wasn’t he?

Sacred-ity be damned.

“Back then, Vince,” he said slowly, now working hard to keep the bite from his tone, “you said I hadn’t really done anything, didn’t you? You said that my face lacked character, that I was all ambiance.”

Howard nodded, though Vince determinedly refused to. “So what have I magically done now to earn that character? You’ve stepped in here right out of the Zooniverse, fresh from your buoyant, plein de vie Howard—and you try to say that you see more than ambiance in my face. And I’ve done nothing, really, have I?”

Vince pursed his lips, his cheeks unhappily blotched about with red. His brush strokes had faded from angry slashes to uncertain smears. Finally, as Howard watched, waiting, breathing through his nose, Vince met his gaze.

“Word on the street is that you’ve been slashing up big beefy blokes for your best mate, Howard. I wouldn’t call that nothing.”

Now it was Howard’s turn to flush, and both men averted their eyes while the Man of Action cleared his throat repeatedly.

“That’s not going to swing it, Vince,” he said finally. “I failed at saving you loads of times back at the Zooniverse. Why should this time thrust any weightier substance upon my character?” Next moment, Howard grimaced, and waved a hand in the air. “Replace ‘weightier’ with ‘deeper’, please. I’ve had enough lip from Bollo about my current girth as it is.”

“He told me you stretched his favourite apron, Howard,” Vince grinned, but his mouth soon faltered back into a despondent line.

“Howard Moon doesn’t wear an apron, sir,” said Howard, forcibly injecting some levity into his tone. “This cuisinier shows no concern for condiments. Let flour fall where it may, I say.”

“He showed it to me,” Vince replied, voice still subdued. “The ties were all stretched and straggly, like over-cooked spaghetti.”

“So I fail at that, too,” Howard sighed, and all levity leaked from his voice like gas from the mouth of a balloon. “I don’t even deserve a fleshy balloon, little man. There should just be blank canvas. Man unformed. Nobody ever saw him and nobody ever wanted to.”

“Look, you’re not still mooning over Mrs Gideon, are you?” Vince asked, sounding appalled. “You know she went and got off with that panda, didn’t you?”

“It’s not about Mrs Gideon, it hasn’t been for years,” said Howard softly, and the truth crept into his voice with a timidity that spoke as loudly as a megaphone.

“Well, you’ve never been nothing, Howard,” Vince said, voice the same size as Howard’s, but coming steadily closer. A moment later, Howard felt a small, warm, paint-sticky hand slip into his. He felt too tired to bother flinching away. “You’ve never been nothing, not to me.”

Howard raised his head, shaking his scraggly fringe from his eyes and staring intently at the electro boy who was perched right down at his feet.

“Why?”

“‘Cause you’re Howard, you muppet,” and the mouth stretched into a endearingly toothy grin, “and I’m Vince. You’re not nothing, ‘cause you’re with me. And I’m not nothing, ‘cause I’ve got you jazzing it up beside me twenty-four seven.”

Howard allowed himself one brief, reluctant smile. “Alright, so I’m not nothing, but I used to be a big fleshy dough bag of a balloon, didn’t I? All ambiance and such?”

“Never said ambiance was a bad thing, Howard,” Vince said earnestly, propping himself higher on his knees, and squeezing the hand that lay forlornly in his. “My face is too busy, you said it yourself. But you know what?”

“What, little man?”

“I make too busy work, don’t I? I look well genius, and all the girls love it, don’t they?”

Howard snorted. Vince grimaced a little himself at the memory of the previous day’s events. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? But you, Howard, you don’t even have to accessorize, do you? Right now, with that cappuccino moustache—”

“Mocha.”

“Whatever; point is, you’re not nothing with me and you never will be. You rescued me yesterday, didn’t you? You got all banged up from it, too. What other accessories do you need?”

At these words, Howard craned his neck downwards and examined the canary yellow knot tied just beneath his chin. Vince’s makeshift tourniquet had stayed there during the night, hadn’t it? He couldn’t really bring himself to take it off—and not for any dodgy reason, either. He was worried that Vince had safety pinned the scarf right the way through to his favourite chequered shirt, that was it.

And yet, as he peered down at this evidence of his battle wounds, the evidence that Vince was currently propping high as a demonstration of Howard’s character, Howard let himself breathe deeply. The sweet, fruity scent of Vince was inhaled straight into the lungs, and he closed his eyes to avoid becoming dizzy.

And then the small hand slipped from Howard’s, and the glorious scent didn’t seem to matter so much anymore.

“Come take a proper look at my painting, Howard,” Vince said gently, placing his hands about the Jazz Maverick’s wrists and heaving him to his feet.

Dully, Howard stepped around to face his portrait, and when he looked, he blinked, and after that he looked more closely.

“I got a bit carried away, didn’t I?” Vince laughed, slinging a skinny arm about Howard’s stiff shoulders. “Thought you’d like the toga and all; you always said it’d suit you more than Bollo.”

“What am I standing on?” Howard asked lightly, shock draining the volume from his voice. “It looks like—”

“Yeah, well, it is,” muttered Vince, digging his heel into the carpet and ducking his head slightly. “It’s my favourite film, alright?”

Howard shook his head. He’d never really pictured himself in a toga, maintaining a ridiculously affected pose with one arm bound in a bright yellow sling, lauding it up atop Pride Rock. He supposed Vince had entered some insane new realm of artistic licence.

He coughed. “It’s pretty good considering you didn’t draw it from life, little man.”

When Vince looked up at Howard, eyes sparkling through feathered fringe, his smile was broad and genuine. “Yeah, I did. That’s how I see you, Howard. Face and all.”

[nextpage title=”Chapter 8″]
Chapter 8

“Three days,” Howard muttered, hands receiving his forehead, fingers digging right into his cranium. “Three days, three days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then—”

And then (and then and then). Naboo would pick up a few odds and ends of juju from Shamansburys, some magical antidote would be brewed up in a garbage can (Bollo’s latest venture into the world of fondue had melted more than cheese), and then—

And then Vince would be, well, Vince again. Real Vince. Celebrity Vince, wreathed top to toe in the glittery garments of a rather whorish Prince of Camden.

Real Vince. Howard snorted. Real Vince had gone into hibernation for the past couple of years, all tucked away in his fluffy pink boots and bobble-topped beanie. Real Vince had recently re-emerged from his snarky slumber, and the clouds had finally parted, and the sun had splashed out onto Howard’s face again.

Howard didn’t quite know how he was going to face the cold on Monday. He had three too-short days left of sunbathing, but the tan wouldn’t even show come next week.

“Alright, Howard?”

Howard muttered something nondescript into his hands.

“Yeah, me too.”

Behind their cage of fingers, Howard’s eyebrows arched involuntarily. Just what exactly was he supposed to have communicated?

“I really miss the zoo,” sighed Vince, as if paddling along the same conversational waterway, so Howard allowed himself to nod. Just a little. It wasn’t as if he could let anyone know just how badly he longed for those crazy days of Fossil-type abuse, apathetic animals and Real Vince. The return of Zooniverse Vince had intensified these feelings tenfold in the past few days.

When Vince next spoke, his words came warm and close against Howard’s ear. “I miss it, and I’ve only been gone a few days. It must be much worse for you, Howard.”

Howard shook his head. He tried to inject some good solid breeziness into his voice, cringing when he heard the obvious falseness of his tone. “No, not so much, Vince. I enjoy my life here in the flat, don’t I?” He tried again. “Still got you, hey, little man?”

Vince shifted uncomfortably on the couch, and Howard groaned silently. Even if it was all a lie, and Howard didn’t in fact ‘have’ any form of Vince here in the Nabootique, Zooniverse Vince was completely innocent in the affair. He shouldn’t be strung out along an uncomfortable line of guilt.

“Don’t believe you,” said Vince finally, hopping up and crouching amongst the cushions beside Howard on the couch. Howard, head raised from his hands, automatic admonition on his lips, held the words back at the last minute. Instead of cutting forth with some scathing reprimand, Howard’s lips pulled into a reluctant smile.

“What?”

“Don’t believe that you don’t miss the Zooniverse, Howard,” Vince clarified, shuffling a little closer while swiping something from the back pocket of his trousers. “Why else would you have this thrust lovingly under your pillow, then?”

Howard made one desperate grab for the square Polaroid photo, eyes wide in sudden panic.

“Give me that, you little tart!”

Grinning widely, Vince clicked his tongue, holding the photograph right behind him on outstretched arm. He wiggled the little shiny square tauntingly through the air. Howard’s eyes wiggled back and forth in despair.

“You can’t just go scrounging beneath other peoples’ bedclothes, Vince,” he complained weakly, hands twitching in his lap. “It’s prima facie invasion of privacy, sir! Now, give me that photo or I’ll come at you like a six-foot court of law!”

“Don’t think I will, Howard,” said Vince, scuffling backwards through the cushions and perching lightly on the opposite arm of the couch. He held the photo close to his face and peered at the image with narrowing eyes.

Howard adjusted his shirt collar and thought hard about burying his face back in his fingers like an ostrich with its head in sand. He thought hard about burying his own head in sand. Cringing, he remembered the last time he had bodily parts buried beneath sand—but there wasn’t likely to be a coyote near the sandpit in the local park, now, was there?

“Why’ve you got this picture of Mrs Gideon under your pillow, Howard?”

Swallowing hard, Howard tried to ignore the clear note of petulance that had inexplicably settled into Vince’s voice. “It’s not a picture of Mrs Gideon, Vince; it’s a picture of me and Mrs Gideon outside the Zooniverse. And I didn’t put it under my pillow. It must have—well—fallen there from my Zooniverse scrapbook, alright?”

“What, fallen right into the pillow slip? Nestled itself snugly amongst the feathers? Tattooed itself with sketchy little love hearts right across the back—”

“You once found the mouthpiece of my favourite trumpet in the lining of your mattress, Vince. Don’t talk to me about the improbability of these incidents.”

Vince sighed, fanning himself with the Polaroid like a dispassionate French aristocrat knocked forwards a few centuries. “Don’t ask me how your golden knob found its way into my bed, Howard. Just admit that you’re still madly obsessed with Mrs Gideon. All these years later. And after she got off with the panda, and everything.”

Howard flushed bright red.

“I’m not still hung up about that woman, Vince! I just like that particular picture, alright? Your gargantuan nose takes up most of the photo anyway—you can barely see Mrs Gideon, can you?”

“I couldn’t help it! I wandered by at the wrong moment, Howard. By the time I saw the flash, it was too late! I was captured forever in your sentimental photograph. If that’s not a prima donna invasion of privacy, I don’t know what is.”

“That’s not gonna swing it, you muppet. You were the one who took the photo.”

Vince swung his boot over his knee and crossed his legs, hunching forwards over the Polaroid in question with a notable absence of cheeky grin.

“Shouldn’t’ve trusted me with the camera, should you? Like you said on the day, I wouldn’t know a Polaroid from a polar bear—though frankly, as we’re zookeepers and all, that wasn’t much of a solid argument.”

It was far too easy to see through Vince’s strained jab at a return to normal banter, and Howard decided that he couldn’t really even pretend to ignore it. Not without weathering a few crashing waves in the ocean of shame, anyway. Not if he wanted to take back a bit of the Old Howard, the Howard who had been the true all-or-nothing best friend of Vince back in the Zooniverse. And so, Howard, trying very hard to regress, floundered forward through the stormy waters.

“Not that it’s any of your business, really, Vince,” he started rather haughtily, then checked himself at the sight of the pointy little downcast face at the end of the couch, “but, well, the photo wasn’t under my pillow to remind me of Mrs Gideon, alright? You can’t even see her in the photo, really, can you?”

Howard glanced back up, and was rather taken aback at the expression of utmost revulsion now parading across the fairground of Vince’s features.

“Maybe Gideon’s taken a backseat, but I think—no. Christy, I think that’s Fossil, there, right in the background, coming out of Bainbridge’s office—naked.”

Clapping his hands over his ears, Howard leapt to his feet. “I’ve slept with that photo under my pillow for three years!” he cried, moustache dancing excitedly in his agitation.

“That’s well wrong, you know that, right, Howard?” said Vince, and his face didn’t show much sympathy, though his smile had evaporated entirely. “Snuggling under the covers with Fossil in the dark—sounds a right freak show.”

“Oh, stop it,” Howard said, mortification morphing into embarrassment which then flung itself in the path of anger and caused him to barrel on without really considering his words. “You’re just being petty, Vince. You’re all jealous at the thought that I still carry a torch for Mrs Gideon.”

“Am not,” Vince shot back, words slightly too quick, voice slightly too high. “Word on the street is that you’re still Fossil’s bitch, Howard—but then, you’ve always been someone’s bitch, haven’t you? Mrs Gideon’s, Fossil’s, Mine-In-The-Future; you can’t get enough of rejection, can you?”

“That’s not fair, sir! And it’s not true, either, at that!”

Fists clenching, Polaroid scrunching, Vince leapt from the arm of the couch and began advancing on Howard with a finger jutting out towards the northerner’s chest.

“Nicey nicey zoo zoo, for him and her and me and you, nicey nicey—”

“Stop it, stop it!” Howard shouted, panicking, stuffing his fingers deep into his ear canals and desperately attempting to block the cacophony.

“—for him, and her, and me—”

“We left all that behind, didn’t we, and thank God we did!”

“You haven’t left anything behind, Howard! You’ve got the past stuffed under your pillow to seep into your head at night! You act like you hate everything you’ve found outside the Zooniverse, but how are you going to improve things if you just anchor yourself to your old mistakes? Why don’t you take a risk for once, forget Gideon, and haul yourself an inch closer to reality? She never liked you, Howard. Are you ever going to get that?”

Without another word, Vince marched right out of the room, lobbing the crumpled photograph directly into Howard’s face. Shakily, Howard pulled his hands from where they had been hovering beside his ears, and leant down to pick up the Polaroid. He smoothed it out promptly, wincing at the wrinkles now distorting the shiny surface.

He swept an index finger over the colourful square, touching the dimpled cheek that sprawled in a cheeky 2-D fashion over most of the photo.

Really, Howard didn’t know how to take this most recent development in his sojourn back to a memory of an echo of Zooniverse life. There was a good slab of irony to be found in the fact that Vince-from-the-past was urging Howard to embrace the future, whatever that concept entailed.

Sighing, Howard paused his finger over the confused-looking eyebrow of an otherwise invisible Mrs Gideon. Now, there had been a failure of the past—but obviously, even he had moved on from the muse of his Cream poetry after the Panda Bear Affair. No, this photo had earned its place beneath his pillow on other merits.

Ultimately, it was a snapshot of Zooniverse life, containing a sweet and artlessly selfish Vince, and a frowningly superior Howard. And they were together, captured in a candid moment of their everyday life, happy and self-satisfied (and entirely unaware of a blurrily naked Fossil behind the bushes).

And this photo stayed within the feathered innards of Howard’s pillow to comfort him, remind him that the bonds of friendship simply had to hold strong forever. A few years of gradual distancing, constant bickering and polar interests couldn’t possibly splinter the bond that had connected this swaggering duo from the Zooniverse, could they?

Could they?

And at this thought, Howard glanced rather unhappily towards the closed bedroom door separating him from Vince.

Three days. Three days to fix up the old mistakes of the past before the future caught back up with him.

End Notes: Please review! I want to know how you’re finding the story so far. Thanks muchly for reading, in any case.

huntingsnarks

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Half-Full of Hollow