Half-Full of Hollow

Posted on by
Fed up with his increasing alienation from Howard, Vince decides to forcibly regress into his sunshiney days.

Category:

Characters: , , ,

Pairing:

Genre: , ,

Rating:

Status:

Length: words

Chapter 3

Contents

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.