Logical Conclusions
Category: The Mighty Boosh
Characters: Howard Moon, Vince Noir
Pairing: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Rating: PG
Status: Complete
Length: 5-10k words
Chapter 3
Contents
Chapter 3
Author’s Notes: Scramble aboard for a night in bed with Vince and Howard, during which a woman’s scream pierces the night and straighteners are misplaced.
Just as Vince’s old gothic watch heralded the midnight hour, a woman’s scream razored through the Nabootique.
Safe in his bed, Howard ripped himself upright, throwing his head around in all directions to look for the woman in question. The source of the cacophony seemed startlingly close. His mind, dulled by sleep, flipped about feverishly like a fish out of water until he came to a sudden realisation and shut his mouth.
The terrible screeching cut off immediately.
“What?” he said rather foolishly to himself, squinting into the darkness, and almost wet himself with terror when he realised that someone happened to be sitting in his lap.
“Gerroff me, don’t touch me!” he squeaked before clearing his throat hurriedly. “Don’t touch me!” he repeated, squeaking more manfully. His fists jerked upward and hovered in front of his chest, twitching forward now and then with a visible lack of control.
As his eyes widened and adjusted, Howard began to make out a very familiar, and very sheepish-looking face directly before him.
“Vince?”
“Alright, Howard?” said Vince, grinning rather nervously, still plopped down right in on top of Howard’s lap. His eyes were luminescent in the darkness.
Howard was beginning to realise just why he had woken to his own screaming at this ungodly hour. The darker part of his mind, that which was readily gaining strength from fatigue, was starting to mutter certain things involving Naboo’s apparent deafness to screaming in Howard’s room, and Vince’s own capacity to scream…
“You want me to scream, Howard?” Vince asked coyly. Jolting slightly, Howard’s hands crept behind him and across his headboard as if seeking an escape. Surely he hadn’t spoken aloud without meaning to—again. And there were implications in Vince’s soft voice that were not to be thought about here in bed. No. Certainly not. Howard realised that he must be imagining things. Again.
He shook his head, hot embarrassment bulldozing a clear path through his sleep-addled mental faculties. “You little tart,” he began, moustache bridling angrily. “Do you realise what time it—”
He stopped. Perhaps there was a certain order to which the night’s matters should properly be addressed. He wasn’t entirely sure that Vince was listening, either. “Get off my lap, you muppet,” he growled, pleased with his rational thinking.
Vince appeared displeased. His eyes narrowed somewhat as a sharp knee bit into the fleshy part of Howard’s thigh.
“Ow!”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say, Howard,” Vince said with an unhappy twist to his lips. To Howard’s despair, Vince settled himself even more comfortably into his nest of blankets and legs, peering sightlessly down at an invisible chip in his manicure.
“What on earth are you on about, Vince?” asked Howard, hands still searching for an exit in the headboard. He had a sudden thought. “Is this about a dream again? Did I say something different in one of your dreams? Because if it is, then my answer is the same as last time: I will not and never will let you look at my brain from the inside.”
Pouting, Vince looked up from his nails. Howard wasn’t mollified by the look of disappointment written all over the younger man’s face. “You got to visit my brain cell, Howard. It’s only fair that you let me climb into your mind.”
“You wouldn’t like it, little man,” sighed Howard, giving up the fight (for now) and relaxing back against his pillows. “It’s all beige and taupe up there, and you’d never manage to get through the jazz quarters without sinking into a scat coma.” He frowned. “Is that why your pointy behind is digging into my legs, then? Were you going to abseil down my nostrils and take a jaunt around my head?”
Unfortunately, Howard didn’t feel shockingly upset by this theory. He wouldn’t at all be surprised if Vince’s Plan Pony had mapped out some impossible night-time venture into his brain. Howard found his own lack of surprise in these circumstances rather disconcerting.
Thankfully—
“No, you berk. If I was taking a trip down Nostril Highway, I wouldn’t be wearing these boots, now would I?”
Relieved to be able to relapse into indignant fury, Howard exploded. “Then why did I wake up with an electro poof on my knees?” His beady eyes widened imperceptibly as a horrifying thought sprung to mind. His hands flew to his face.
“Cool your boots, you’re still the Moustached Maverick,” muttered Vince, looking rather put out by this fact. “I didn’t bring my razor this time, alright?”
“Do I have a mullet?” Howard yelped, fingers dancing around to the back of his head, and then the front of his head, and then the back of his head. The movement of his hands slowed somewhat as he satisfied himself that there was no party up the back, no sir.
“No, though if you want—”
“Definitely not, thank you,” Howard said quickly, shaking his head violently.
“But you’d be the toast of Shoreditch—”
“Nope, no, no sir,” Howard interrupted, voice firm. “Howard Moon has his own style, Vince; he is known for his soft, steely locks of brown—”
“Smoke,” Vince interjected unhelpfully, pulling a face in the general direction of Howard’s hair. “If you’d just let me apply the Goth Juice, you’d look well—”
“Hold on,” said Howard, jerking back up to a sitting position. He ignored the colony of ants that seemed to be marching up and down his legs and held out one hand, palm facing upwards, to Vince. “Give them to me.”
“What?”
“The scissors! What have I told you about scissors in bed, Vince?”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“No blades and no straighteners in bed, Vince; you promised me.”
In response, Vince simply raised his empty palms into the air and waved them in front of Howard’s face. “No scissors.” He frowned, momentarily distracted. “Where did I put my straighteners?” He shook his feathered hair and a shadow lifted easily from his face. “Nah. We would’ve smelt the fire by now.”
Howard decided to ignore this last statement. “But how were you going to cut my hair without scissors, you twit? Were you going to pluck out my individual hairs with your emergency tweezers?” He glared at the dark shape that was Vince on his knees, and watched as the younger man started to fidget with the cuffs of his enormous pyjamas.
After a moment, Howard was struck with an instance of doubt. “You did come over with the perverted intention of cutting my hair, didn’t you?” He laughed, but the sound was oddly hollow in the silent room. “I mean, why else would you—”
“Well, no,” said Vince slowly, voice oddly subdued. His blue eyes fell noticeably to his empty palms. “I was just scoping it out, that’s all. Tomorrow’s the big cut.” His eyes flashed upwards, meeting Howard’s with a sudden enthusiasm, and his fingers stopped toying with stripy fabric. “It takes all week to plan, actually. Your hair needs to grow another hundredth of a millimetre before the harvest can be cropped.”
When Howard responded, his voice was high and squeaky again. “You climb into my bed every night for a week?” His hands flew backward and started clambering around on the headboard, scrambling desperately for some sort of emergency latch.
“Listen,” Vince began tiredly, pointing at Howard’s blustering movement, “you’re not going to get anywhere with that, you know. I disabled the emergency exit three months ago by accident, and you never noticed.”
“I never had a lunatic in my bed before, either,” Howard muttered darkly.
“Yeah, you did,” Vince grinned, “plenty of times! You just always kept sleeping before.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Howard! I reckon you woke up this time because your mind was trying to tell you something really badly.”
“Yeah,” Howard said, “it was telling me to scream and frighten away the perverted pringle in my lap!”
“No, Howard; I reckon someone up there manning your mind tank was trying to tell you this.”
Without letting Howard get in another scathing retort, Vince pitched himself forward and pressed his lips firmly against those of his jazzy friend. For a moment, Howard’s arms continued to flail madly through the air as all his defence mechanisms kicked in as one against this ultimate invasion of personal space. And then, without warning, he felt himself lean into the kiss, moving against and then with the eagerness of Vince’s mouth.
And his mind flashed white with clarity—simple, brilliant clarity. The darkness and the fatigue and the irritation and the stolidity and the hustle and bustle of over-thinking fluttered away into nothing. There was nothing in Howard’s mind but warm sensation, and the feeling that he had finally flicked over to the Page of Revelations in Howard Moon’s User Manual.
Vince.
“Vince,” he mumbled against those eager lips, which immediately pulled into a smile that pressed and prompted a responding grin from Howard.
“Mmm?”
“When did you figure it out?”
“When we were in the Zooniverse, and I saw those two echidnas go at it in the marsupial enclosure—”
“No, not sex, you nonce! Us! When did your brain leap up and announce that it would be a good idea to go at Howard Moon in the middle of the night and scare him into returning your affections?”
“Oh,” Vince laughed, sliding one hot hand onto Howard’s cheek and fanning his fingers against the rough stubble. “I dunno, Howard. I guess I’ve always known, really, but you kicked me into gear the other day when you asked me if I loved you.” Vince paused, shaking his head. “You jazzy freak,” he added affectionately.
“Enough of that,” Howard huffed, pulling Vince so that his elbows slipped out and left him sprawling across the older man, a look of surprise splashed comically on his face. “Let’s just be grateful that your brain led you to a logical conclusion for once.”
“You want to see a logical conclusion?” Vince asked slyly, having regained his composure with one quick flick of his fringe. He bit his lower lip and stared at Howard’s mouth in a way that sent the jazz maverick reaching backwards for his headboard once more. “I broke it, remember?” said Vince, rolling his eyes, and leaned forwards with a predatorial smile on his face.
