Half-Full of Hollow

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

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Chapter 5

Contents

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.