Fic: Three Winning Wagers for Naboo the Enigma
Title: Three Winning Wagers for Naboo the Enigma
Summary: Howard and Vince have to pick up the pieces. And not just in Stationery Village
Rating: R
Warnings: much soppiness, a graphic description of scrambled eggs, and just a faint hint of reported non-con although nothing actually happened there
Spoilers: there are Jaffa Cakes for tea
Length: about 2750 words… how did that happen, when all the smut’s off-camera?
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters. I just borrow them to play with now and again, and I always mend them carefully and put them back when I’ve finished. And I do it all for love, not for profit.
Notes: Here you go, the follow-up to this that I wasn’t going to write but somehow I couldn’t resist…
It’s a brilliant kiss.Way better than their first one, on the roof. It’s all deep and hot and awkward and needy and it lasts for ages and Vince wants it to go on forever, in spite of the edge of the desk digging into his bum and the mess Howard’s big, eager hands are making of the precious Noir hairstyle…
Howard has to break it off though, he’s gone all shivery. He hangs on to Vince so tight it makes talking impossible, and buries his face in Vince’s shoulder.
His moustache tickles; his panicky breathing is hot against Vince’s neck.
Vince pats him on the back in what he hopes is a reassuring way.
“I’m sorry.” Howard lifts his head; looks over Vince’s shoulder. “Oh, no. I’ve messed up all your hard work. I’m so sorry. Here, let me -” He drags himself away from Vince with an effort, as though they’d been stuck together by some magnetic force, and leans over the desk, where the village seems to have suffered a major earthquake.
Vince knows how the village feels. The earth’s moved for him too over the past few minutes, and he’s not sure what’s holding him up any more.
Howard is fussing over Paperclip Park. “Won’t take me a minute to tidy this up.” The remaining section of the pencil fence collapses under his shaking hand.
“Howard, you berk, we don’t need to do that now.” Vince reaches for Howard, but the big man shrugs him off.
“Yes we do, look, this isn’t straight…” A pile of Post-Its teeters and falls, blocking the Envelope Entrance, and Howard gives a little moan of despair.
Vince grabs him and kisses him again, to shut him up. “No we don’t, I mean yes we do, but there’s other stuff we need to do first.”
“Like what?”
There is the sound of footsteps on the stairs overhead.
“Like not getting you sacked again, for a start.” Vince takes Howard’s hand. “Come on, we’re supposed to be stocktaking, let’s get out of here.”
…
When the stockroom door creaks open, the two shopkeepers are innocently sorting a batch of vintage lampshades.
“…and this, Vince, is the old ¾ B size, it’s two inches bigger than the C size and takes a hundred-watt bulb, which is too powerful for the C size… are you getting all this?”
Vince nods. “And what about the D size, Howard, should that go over here d’you think? Oh, hi Naboo.”
Their employer puts hands on hips, and looks at them with deep suspicion. “I hope you’re keeping an ear out for customers, Vince.”
“There aren’t any.”
“There will be. I bet you that bell will ring in the next five minutes.”
“How much?”
“Ten euros.”
“You’re joking. There’s nobody around. OK, done.”
The shop bell tinkles.
Naboo smiles serenely. “That’s ten euros you owe me. And somebody’d better come an’ mind the shop.”
“Yes, Naboo.”
“Yes, Naboo.”
“How does he do that?” Howard whispers, as they follow obediently out of the stockroom.
Vince gives his hand a squeeze. “Dunno, but it’s well creepy… Oh.”
Even Naboo is looking a bit surprised.
It isn’t a customer. It’s Adam.
His former employer glares at him. “What’re you doin’ here? You’ve bin sacked.”
Adam shifts his feet nervously on the doormat. “I, erm, I just came to collect my things…”
“They’re all packed,” Howard says. “I’ll go and get them.”
“Get on with it.” Naboo seems unimpressed with Howard’s forward-thinking organizational skills. He wags a threatening finger at Adam. “I’m goin’ out for biscuits. I’ll be five minutes an’ if you’re still here when I get back, I’ll get Bollo to throw you out.”
The bell jangles as he sweeps out, brushing Adam aside. Vince looks awkwardly at his ex-colleague. He wasn’t all bad, really. Apart from not being Howard... “Sorry you got sacked,” Vince mumbles.
“It’s OK. I’ve got something else lined up.”
“Good going, you’ve only bin gone a couple of hours.”
“Yeah, it was amazing. I went to the pub to think things over, and I met this guy, and we got talking…”
“Congratulations. I hope you’ll be very happy.”
Adam flings back his head with a shout of laughter. “No, not like that… turns out he’s a film director and he’s offered me a part in his latest project. Said someone had let him down, and I had just the right face to replace him. Funny how things work out. I thought I wanted to be a shopkeeper, but now I know my future lay in cinema all along.”
“He’s…not from Denmark is he?” Howard is standing behind the counter; Vince hadn’t heard him come back.
“Yeah, as it happens. Why?”
Vince waits for the outburst, but Howard just smiles as he hands over the suitcase. “Oh, just wondered… You can keep the case, you might need it. And good luck, hope it all goes well for you.”
“Thanks.” Adam sounds bemused.
“No problem.” Howard is still smiling.
“Erm, OK, bye then.”
“Cheerio.” Vince is still worried.
“Oh,” Howard calls, as Adam leaves the shop. “Bit of advice for you…I’d lock your hotel room door at night if I were you.”
Adam waves, and quickens his step. He doesn’t look back.
“What was that all about?” Vince asks.
“Long story, little man. Tell you later.” A frown briefly crosses Howard’s face.
“I’m sorry your big dream didn’t work out, Howard.”
“It’s OK Vince, I’ve got what I need. Hey, stop looking so worried, I’m not about to change my mind. Come here…”
They spring apart as Naboo clatters through the shop door, clutching a carrier bag. “That ballbag gone?”
“Yeah.” Vince does his best to sound casual.
“OK, you might as well close up for the day, there’s nobody around out there. An’ I got jaffa cakes.”
He wanders off upstairs.
Vince shakes his head. “That’s as near to ‘welcome home’ as you’re going to get from him, I reckon.”
“Never mind.” Howard pulls Vince close, and whispers in his ear, “I liked your welcome home better.”
Vince grins. “I’ve hardly started it yet.”
…
It’s been a genius evening, Vince thinks, as he helps Howard strip Adam’s sheets from the bed and put clean ones on. Starting with the jaffa cakes, which they shared sitting on the sofa, all four of them.
Just like old times, none of that nonsense about Adam having to sit in the armchair.
Howard sat at the end with big silly smile on his face as though jaffa cakes were the best thing he’d ever tasted.
Perhaps he’d been living on Danish pastries for a fortnight. Although actually that wouldn’t be bad. Maybe he just doesn’t like Danish pastries much.
The TV was completely shite on all channels and they ended up watching an episode of Colobos the Crab they’d all seen a dozen times before. Vince wondered whether Naboo’s choice of channel was a bit tactless, in light of Howard’s brief career as the Angry Crab of Trapped Wind, but Howard didn’t complain, he was laughing at all the jokes even though they all knew what was coming, and leaning on Vince’s shoulder a bit instead of keeping a space between them.
He didn’t even seem to mind when Vince slipped an arm round him. Although Naboo rolled his eyes at that point and stage-whispered: “Bollo, you owe me ten euros.”
There wasn’t even a murmur when Naboo told Howard it had been Adam’s turn to cook dinner, so he’d have to do it, and there wasn’t much in the fridge except bread and eggs.
So dinner was only scrambled eggs on toast, but Howard was still all organized about it. Vince helped, but that mostly consisted of staying out from under Howard’s feet, watching in admiration as the big man multi-tasked, putting the plates to warm, grilling the toast so it came out all the same colour with no burnt bits, and managing to keep stirring the eggs at the same time… and then turning the gas off way before they looked anything like cooked.
And yet somehow by the time he had made a pot of tea, and got the nicely heated plates out of the oven and put them in a neat line, and allowed Vince to help butter the toast, the scramble was no longer slimy and snotty-looking, but soft and creamy and delicious. The sort of scrambled egg you can just enjoy, because you know there won’t be a single gritty bit of broken shell in it anywhere.
Howard got a proper ‘welcome home’ from Naboo, after that. Even Bollo grunted something about Adam’s cooking not having been up to much, and offered to help Vince get Howard’s old stuff out of the loft in the morning.
“Not tonight?” Vince had asked.
“Not tonight, Bollo DJ’ing at new Jungle Room club tonight, Bollo an’ Naboo gotta go soon. Precious Vince wanna come along? Let Harold have early night?”
And Vince had been tempted, he really had, but only for a moment.
So off the others had gone, Naboo sporting a new sparkly turban and Bollo with his hair all fluffed up with Root Booster, leaving Vince and Howard alone.
When the door closed behind them, Howard looked suddenly nervous. He stretched, and pretended to yawn. “I think I do need that early night, actually.”
Vince’s heart sank. But he didn’t want to rush things, having so nearly screwed them up, and knowing how all-or-nothing it had been with Howard on the roof…
So he meekly agreed that an early night might be a good idea, and went to get clean sheets out of the airing cupboard.
It’s been a genius evening so far, but now something’s gone wrong somewhere. Howard said he wasn’t going to change his mind, and Vince trusts him on that, but still the big man seems on edge. He’s all clumsy and he’s talking too loud and his shoulders are hunched up round his ears. If he were a porcupine, all his prickles would be bristling.
“What’s wrong, Howard?”
“Nothing. Why?”
If he were a porcupine, he’d be a lot easier for Vince to understand.
Vince takes a deep breath, and ignores Howard’s warning signals. “You seem a bit… I dunno, tense.”
“Oh, I do, do I?”
If he were a porcupine, Vince would be running from the cage at this point, if he had any sense.
“Yeah.” Vince knows he should shut up right now, but somehow his mouth runs away with him. “Is it weird, bein’ back? Did you mind about Adam, really? Are you - are you changin’ your mind after all? Did you - ”
“Shut up,” Howard says desperately, “just shut up, stop asking me things, Vince, I can’t - I don’t know how I feel, alright? A lot of things have changed today, I have to re-think my whole philosophical framework…”
Vince fluffs the pillows. “No you don’t, you just need a snuggle and a sleepy an’ tomorrow you’ll be fine.”
“It’s all very simple for you, isn’t it?”
The quills are really rattling.
“Well, yeah. I’m a very simple person.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m in turmoil, Vince. Inner turmoil.”
“Maybe you should let it out, then.”
“Let it out?”
And now the porcupine's chisel-teeth are bared as well.
But Vince is beyond being scared. “Yeah. Why not? Naboo and Bollo’ve gone out, there’s only me here an’ I can go away if you like, an’ you can rant an’ rave to your heart’s content. Like you did at the Onion, when you were acting…”
“I - wasn’t - acting!” Howard’s face is twisted in pain, actual pain, not all that ‘grief of a sailor’ bullshit but the real deal.
“You weren’t… Oh.” Ouch. A whole bunch of sharpness, right in the guts. Vince had had to leave the theatre partway through Howard’s performance, he couldn’t bear to watch any more. All that anger and pain and howling animal noises - he’d had no idea that was all going on under Howard’s boring surface.
Nor had he realised at the time what it meant.
Just as well, probably.
“No, I fucking wasn’t.” There are tears rolling down Howard’s cheeks. “But you still didn’t get the message.”
“Howard, if it was that bad, you could’ve just said.”
“I tried. But Bollo was there, and you were obsessing over those ludicrous trousers…” Howard’s voice cracks and breaks.
He draws a huge, painful breath.
“Let it out, Howard,” Vince says, very quietly.
And Howard does.
All of it, fury, grief, frustration and a whole lot of things Vince doesn’t know the names for, all pouring out in a torrent of muddled words and yells and sobs, bringing the big man to his knees.
This is the outburst that Vince was sort-of expecting (and definitely worrying about) earlier. And he was right to be worried; it’s much, much worse than anything he could have expected.
Poor Howard. He must have been saving this up for weeks and weeks, possibly even years. Vince is blown across the room by the force of it, and has to hang onto the doorframe for support.
After what feels like several hours, it dies down. Howard gets shakily to his feet, forcing his face into an unconvincing expression of calm. “That’s better, I’m fine now.”
“No, you’re not.”
Howard’s face crumples again. “No, I’m not, am I?”
Vince shakes his head. He wants nothing more than to fling his arms round Howard, but he’s worried that might do more harm than good. “You will be. Give it time. Try to get some sleep.”
“I can’t sleep.” Howard scrubs angrily at his reddened eyes. “When I sleep, I hear Jurgen coming down the corridor, trying the door… the first night, I hadn’t locked it, and he tried - he tried - ”
“He tried comin’ on to you?” Vince had been afraid of that.
Howard sits down heavily on the bed. “He made it clear that this was part of the deal, that I’d have to give in sooner or later if I wanted to stay on board with ‘the project’. But I couldn’t - That was really why I left, in the end. Because I was never going to be able to - to be with him in that way.”
“You didn’t want him.” Vince is trying to hide his relief.
“I wanted you,” Howard says in a small voice.
But even when Vince goes to sit beside him, and puts an arm around his shoulders, Howard can’t look at him; can’t reach out to hug back. He just sits there trembling, and staring at the floor.
Vince chews on his lip, and tries to think. He doesn’t want to leave Howard alone, but bed is obviously out of the question. Howard needs to be somewhere he feels safe, and ‘in bed with Vince’ isn’t it, not yet anyway.
An idea strikes Vince. He stands up, and holds out a hand. “Get on the bus, Howard.”
“The bus isn’t here.”
“It’s a - a - mental physical bus, Howard. It’s here if we say it’s here.”
“Metaphorical,” Howard mumbles, “metaphysical means magic.”
“Well, it’s magic too. C’m’on, Howard, we’ve got work to do.”
Howard sighs, but he takes the outstretched hand as though he can’t think what else to do, and lets Vince lead him downstairs.
It’s a slow business, reconstructing the fallen-apart village, and at first Vince is doing most of the work while Howard leans against the wall and sniffs; but eventually Howard can’t resist coming to help, as Vince knew he wouldn’t be able to, and they work together until finally it’s all immaculate and Howard is very nearly smiling again.
They leave the drawing pins dancing in the brown paper ballroom under the neon highlighter lights, and Vince picks up the bus from the stop.
Howard really does smile then, and holds out a hand. “My turn to drive, I think.”
So Vince dings the bell and Howard drives the bus, slowly and carefully, back up the stairs and into Vince’s room, where he parks it on the bedside table.
…
Much, much later, Vince wakes to the sound of Naboo and Bollo coming upstairs, evidently having had a good night.
They pause at Howard’s bedroom door; Vince hears it creak as they open it a crack.
There’s a pause, and then Naboo whispers triumphantly: “Told you. That’s another ten euros you owe me.”
Bollo grunts disgustedly. The footsteps stagger unsteadily down the corridor, and then Naboo’s bedroom door clicks shut.
Vince chuckles, and snuggles down under the duvet.
Beside him, Howard slumbers peacefully on, all warm and snoring and possibly dreaming of neat rows of paperclips.
Although to judge from what’s going on in his pyjamas, possibly not…
Summary: Howard and Vince have to pick up the pieces. And not just in Stationery Village
Rating: R
Warnings: much soppiness, a graphic description of scrambled eggs, and just a faint hint of reported non-con although nothing actually happened there
Spoilers: there are Jaffa Cakes for tea
Length: about 2750 words… how did that happen, when all the smut’s off-camera?
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters. I just borrow them to play with now and again, and I always mend them carefully and put them back when I’ve finished. And I do it all for love, not for profit.
Notes: Here you go, the follow-up to this that I wasn’t going to write but somehow I couldn’t resist…
It’s a brilliant kiss.Way better than their first one, on the roof. It’s all deep and hot and awkward and needy and it lasts for ages and Vince wants it to go on forever, in spite of the edge of the desk digging into his bum and the mess Howard’s big, eager hands are making of the precious Noir hairstyle…
Howard has to break it off though, he’s gone all shivery. He hangs on to Vince so tight it makes talking impossible, and buries his face in Vince’s shoulder.
His moustache tickles; his panicky breathing is hot against Vince’s neck.
Vince pats him on the back in what he hopes is a reassuring way.
“I’m sorry.” Howard lifts his head; looks over Vince’s shoulder. “Oh, no. I’ve messed up all your hard work. I’m so sorry. Here, let me -” He drags himself away from Vince with an effort, as though they’d been stuck together by some magnetic force, and leans over the desk, where the village seems to have suffered a major earthquake.
Vince knows how the village feels. The earth’s moved for him too over the past few minutes, and he’s not sure what’s holding him up any more.
Howard is fussing over Paperclip Park. “Won’t take me a minute to tidy this up.” The remaining section of the pencil fence collapses under his shaking hand.
“Howard, you berk, we don’t need to do that now.” Vince reaches for Howard, but the big man shrugs him off.
“Yes we do, look, this isn’t straight…” A pile of Post-Its teeters and falls, blocking the Envelope Entrance, and Howard gives a little moan of despair.
Vince grabs him and kisses him again, to shut him up. “No we don’t, I mean yes we do, but there’s other stuff we need to do first.”
“Like what?”
There is the sound of footsteps on the stairs overhead.
“Like not getting you sacked again, for a start.” Vince takes Howard’s hand. “Come on, we’re supposed to be stocktaking, let’s get out of here.”
…
When the stockroom door creaks open, the two shopkeepers are innocently sorting a batch of vintage lampshades.
“…and this, Vince, is the old ¾ B size, it’s two inches bigger than the C size and takes a hundred-watt bulb, which is too powerful for the C size… are you getting all this?”
Vince nods. “And what about the D size, Howard, should that go over here d’you think? Oh, hi Naboo.”
Their employer puts hands on hips, and looks at them with deep suspicion. “I hope you’re keeping an ear out for customers, Vince.”
“There aren’t any.”
“There will be. I bet you that bell will ring in the next five minutes.”
“How much?”
“Ten euros.”
“You’re joking. There’s nobody around. OK, done.”
The shop bell tinkles.
Naboo smiles serenely. “That’s ten euros you owe me. And somebody’d better come an’ mind the shop.”
“Yes, Naboo.”
“Yes, Naboo.”
“How does he do that?” Howard whispers, as they follow obediently out of the stockroom.
Vince gives his hand a squeeze. “Dunno, but it’s well creepy… Oh.”
Even Naboo is looking a bit surprised.
It isn’t a customer. It’s Adam.
His former employer glares at him. “What’re you doin’ here? You’ve bin sacked.”
Adam shifts his feet nervously on the doormat. “I, erm, I just came to collect my things…”
“They’re all packed,” Howard says. “I’ll go and get them.”
“Get on with it.” Naboo seems unimpressed with Howard’s forward-thinking organizational skills. He wags a threatening finger at Adam. “I’m goin’ out for biscuits. I’ll be five minutes an’ if you’re still here when I get back, I’ll get Bollo to throw you out.”
The bell jangles as he sweeps out, brushing Adam aside. Vince looks awkwardly at his ex-colleague. He wasn’t all bad, really. Apart from not being Howard... “Sorry you got sacked,” Vince mumbles.
“It’s OK. I’ve got something else lined up.”
“Good going, you’ve only bin gone a couple of hours.”
“Yeah, it was amazing. I went to the pub to think things over, and I met this guy, and we got talking…”
“Congratulations. I hope you’ll be very happy.”
Adam flings back his head with a shout of laughter. “No, not like that… turns out he’s a film director and he’s offered me a part in his latest project. Said someone had let him down, and I had just the right face to replace him. Funny how things work out. I thought I wanted to be a shopkeeper, but now I know my future lay in cinema all along.”
“He’s…not from Denmark is he?” Howard is standing behind the counter; Vince hadn’t heard him come back.
“Yeah, as it happens. Why?”
Vince waits for the outburst, but Howard just smiles as he hands over the suitcase. “Oh, just wondered… You can keep the case, you might need it. And good luck, hope it all goes well for you.”
“Thanks.” Adam sounds bemused.
“No problem.” Howard is still smiling.
“Erm, OK, bye then.”
“Cheerio.” Vince is still worried.
“Oh,” Howard calls, as Adam leaves the shop. “Bit of advice for you…I’d lock your hotel room door at night if I were you.”
Adam waves, and quickens his step. He doesn’t look back.
“What was that all about?” Vince asks.
“Long story, little man. Tell you later.” A frown briefly crosses Howard’s face.
“I’m sorry your big dream didn’t work out, Howard.”
“It’s OK Vince, I’ve got what I need. Hey, stop looking so worried, I’m not about to change my mind. Come here…”
They spring apart as Naboo clatters through the shop door, clutching a carrier bag. “That ballbag gone?”
“Yeah.” Vince does his best to sound casual.
“OK, you might as well close up for the day, there’s nobody around out there. An’ I got jaffa cakes.”
He wanders off upstairs.
Vince shakes his head. “That’s as near to ‘welcome home’ as you’re going to get from him, I reckon.”
“Never mind.” Howard pulls Vince close, and whispers in his ear, “I liked your welcome home better.”
Vince grins. “I’ve hardly started it yet.”
…
It’s been a genius evening, Vince thinks, as he helps Howard strip Adam’s sheets from the bed and put clean ones on. Starting with the jaffa cakes, which they shared sitting on the sofa, all four of them.
Just like old times, none of that nonsense about Adam having to sit in the armchair.
Howard sat at the end with big silly smile on his face as though jaffa cakes were the best thing he’d ever tasted.
Perhaps he’d been living on Danish pastries for a fortnight. Although actually that wouldn’t be bad. Maybe he just doesn’t like Danish pastries much.
The TV was completely shite on all channels and they ended up watching an episode of Colobos the Crab they’d all seen a dozen times before. Vince wondered whether Naboo’s choice of channel was a bit tactless, in light of Howard’s brief career as the Angry Crab of Trapped Wind, but Howard didn’t complain, he was laughing at all the jokes even though they all knew what was coming, and leaning on Vince’s shoulder a bit instead of keeping a space between them.
He didn’t even seem to mind when Vince slipped an arm round him. Although Naboo rolled his eyes at that point and stage-whispered: “Bollo, you owe me ten euros.”
There wasn’t even a murmur when Naboo told Howard it had been Adam’s turn to cook dinner, so he’d have to do it, and there wasn’t much in the fridge except bread and eggs.
So dinner was only scrambled eggs on toast, but Howard was still all organized about it. Vince helped, but that mostly consisted of staying out from under Howard’s feet, watching in admiration as the big man multi-tasked, putting the plates to warm, grilling the toast so it came out all the same colour with no burnt bits, and managing to keep stirring the eggs at the same time… and then turning the gas off way before they looked anything like cooked.
And yet somehow by the time he had made a pot of tea, and got the nicely heated plates out of the oven and put them in a neat line, and allowed Vince to help butter the toast, the scramble was no longer slimy and snotty-looking, but soft and creamy and delicious. The sort of scrambled egg you can just enjoy, because you know there won’t be a single gritty bit of broken shell in it anywhere.
Howard got a proper ‘welcome home’ from Naboo, after that. Even Bollo grunted something about Adam’s cooking not having been up to much, and offered to help Vince get Howard’s old stuff out of the loft in the morning.
“Not tonight?” Vince had asked.
“Not tonight, Bollo DJ’ing at new Jungle Room club tonight, Bollo an’ Naboo gotta go soon. Precious Vince wanna come along? Let Harold have early night?”
And Vince had been tempted, he really had, but only for a moment.
So off the others had gone, Naboo sporting a new sparkly turban and Bollo with his hair all fluffed up with Root Booster, leaving Vince and Howard alone.
When the door closed behind them, Howard looked suddenly nervous. He stretched, and pretended to yawn. “I think I do need that early night, actually.”
Vince’s heart sank. But he didn’t want to rush things, having so nearly screwed them up, and knowing how all-or-nothing it had been with Howard on the roof…
So he meekly agreed that an early night might be a good idea, and went to get clean sheets out of the airing cupboard.
It’s been a genius evening so far, but now something’s gone wrong somewhere. Howard said he wasn’t going to change his mind, and Vince trusts him on that, but still the big man seems on edge. He’s all clumsy and he’s talking too loud and his shoulders are hunched up round his ears. If he were a porcupine, all his prickles would be bristling.
“What’s wrong, Howard?”
“Nothing. Why?”
If he were a porcupine, he’d be a lot easier for Vince to understand.
Vince takes a deep breath, and ignores Howard’s warning signals. “You seem a bit… I dunno, tense.”
“Oh, I do, do I?”
If he were a porcupine, Vince would be running from the cage at this point, if he had any sense.
“Yeah.” Vince knows he should shut up right now, but somehow his mouth runs away with him. “Is it weird, bein’ back? Did you mind about Adam, really? Are you - are you changin’ your mind after all? Did you - ”
“Shut up,” Howard says desperately, “just shut up, stop asking me things, Vince, I can’t - I don’t know how I feel, alright? A lot of things have changed today, I have to re-think my whole philosophical framework…”
Vince fluffs the pillows. “No you don’t, you just need a snuggle and a sleepy an’ tomorrow you’ll be fine.”
“It’s all very simple for you, isn’t it?”
The quills are really rattling.
“Well, yeah. I’m a very simple person.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m in turmoil, Vince. Inner turmoil.”
“Maybe you should let it out, then.”
“Let it out?”
And now the porcupine's chisel-teeth are bared as well.
But Vince is beyond being scared. “Yeah. Why not? Naboo and Bollo’ve gone out, there’s only me here an’ I can go away if you like, an’ you can rant an’ rave to your heart’s content. Like you did at the Onion, when you were acting…”
“I - wasn’t - acting!” Howard’s face is twisted in pain, actual pain, not all that ‘grief of a sailor’ bullshit but the real deal.
“You weren’t… Oh.” Ouch. A whole bunch of sharpness, right in the guts. Vince had had to leave the theatre partway through Howard’s performance, he couldn’t bear to watch any more. All that anger and pain and howling animal noises - he’d had no idea that was all going on under Howard’s boring surface.
Nor had he realised at the time what it meant.
Just as well, probably.
“No, I fucking wasn’t.” There are tears rolling down Howard’s cheeks. “But you still didn’t get the message.”
“Howard, if it was that bad, you could’ve just said.”
“I tried. But Bollo was there, and you were obsessing over those ludicrous trousers…” Howard’s voice cracks and breaks.
He draws a huge, painful breath.
“Let it out, Howard,” Vince says, very quietly.
And Howard does.
All of it, fury, grief, frustration and a whole lot of things Vince doesn’t know the names for, all pouring out in a torrent of muddled words and yells and sobs, bringing the big man to his knees.
This is the outburst that Vince was sort-of expecting (and definitely worrying about) earlier. And he was right to be worried; it’s much, much worse than anything he could have expected.
Poor Howard. He must have been saving this up for weeks and weeks, possibly even years. Vince is blown across the room by the force of it, and has to hang onto the doorframe for support.
After what feels like several hours, it dies down. Howard gets shakily to his feet, forcing his face into an unconvincing expression of calm. “That’s better, I’m fine now.”
“No, you’re not.”
Howard’s face crumples again. “No, I’m not, am I?”
Vince shakes his head. He wants nothing more than to fling his arms round Howard, but he’s worried that might do more harm than good. “You will be. Give it time. Try to get some sleep.”
“I can’t sleep.” Howard scrubs angrily at his reddened eyes. “When I sleep, I hear Jurgen coming down the corridor, trying the door… the first night, I hadn’t locked it, and he tried - he tried - ”
“He tried comin’ on to you?” Vince had been afraid of that.
Howard sits down heavily on the bed. “He made it clear that this was part of the deal, that I’d have to give in sooner or later if I wanted to stay on board with ‘the project’. But I couldn’t - That was really why I left, in the end. Because I was never going to be able to - to be with him in that way.”
“You didn’t want him.” Vince is trying to hide his relief.
“I wanted you,” Howard says in a small voice.
But even when Vince goes to sit beside him, and puts an arm around his shoulders, Howard can’t look at him; can’t reach out to hug back. He just sits there trembling, and staring at the floor.
Vince chews on his lip, and tries to think. He doesn’t want to leave Howard alone, but bed is obviously out of the question. Howard needs to be somewhere he feels safe, and ‘in bed with Vince’ isn’t it, not yet anyway.
An idea strikes Vince. He stands up, and holds out a hand. “Get on the bus, Howard.”
“The bus isn’t here.”
“It’s a - a - mental physical bus, Howard. It’s here if we say it’s here.”
“Metaphorical,” Howard mumbles, “metaphysical means magic.”
“Well, it’s magic too. C’m’on, Howard, we’ve got work to do.”
Howard sighs, but he takes the outstretched hand as though he can’t think what else to do, and lets Vince lead him downstairs.
It’s a slow business, reconstructing the fallen-apart village, and at first Vince is doing most of the work while Howard leans against the wall and sniffs; but eventually Howard can’t resist coming to help, as Vince knew he wouldn’t be able to, and they work together until finally it’s all immaculate and Howard is very nearly smiling again.
They leave the drawing pins dancing in the brown paper ballroom under the neon highlighter lights, and Vince picks up the bus from the stop.
Howard really does smile then, and holds out a hand. “My turn to drive, I think.”
So Vince dings the bell and Howard drives the bus, slowly and carefully, back up the stairs and into Vince’s room, where he parks it on the bedside table.
…
Much, much later, Vince wakes to the sound of Naboo and Bollo coming upstairs, evidently having had a good night.
They pause at Howard’s bedroom door; Vince hears it creak as they open it a crack.
There’s a pause, and then Naboo whispers triumphantly: “Told you. That’s another ten euros you owe me.”
Bollo grunts disgustedly. The footsteps stagger unsteadily down the corridor, and then Naboo’s bedroom door clicks shut.
Vince chuckles, and snuggles down under the duvet.
Beside him, Howard slumbers peacefully on, all warm and snoring and possibly dreaming of neat rows of paperclips.
Although to judge from what’s going on in his pyjamas, possibly not…