Half-Full of Hollow
Category: The Mighty Boosh
Characters: Bollo, Howard Moon, Naboo, Vince Noir
Pairing: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Rating: PG
Status: WIP
Length: 10-20k words
Chapter 2
Contents
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.”