Bent 11
Title: Bent
Author: Concupid
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Howard/Vince
Warnings: mentions of violence, explicit sex, mild dominance and submission
Summary: Vince talks about Charlie
Howard immediately tensed at the mention of Charlie. He could never put his finger on exactly why, but even stories like, “Charlie Tries to Order Something On-line but is Unsure of the Sizing” had an underlying darkness that put Howard on edge. Charlie was a strange mix of benevolent protector and terrifying monster that made Howard’s skin crawl.
“Why are you afraid of Charlie?” Vince asked with a knowing sneer. Howard prepared for another pinch. Normally, when Vince was in a mood, his assaults were of a verbal nature. Howard preferred the pinching.
The gender switch was a gift and a curse for Howard. He could suddenly see Vince so much more clearly, but what he saw was a little frightening. He’d always thought their friendship was easy and uncomplicated. Seeing the darkness in Vince’s eyes and the barely restrained anger that still lingered even when Vince was being tender and sweet, Howard was aware of how much Vince held back. Their dust-up on the island had left Howard devastated. There had been no teasing in Vince’s voice, just cold disdain as he mocked Howard’s loneliness. Howard was fearful of another real fight. He’d briefly gotten the upper hand on the island by ignoring Vince, but Vince remained hard and angry, and he wouldn’t stop punishing Howard until Howard found a way to properly punish himself. Cocoloco, Vince had Howard getting beaten up by a coconut. What could he do with his facilities about him? It was a scary thought.
Howard managed to be caught off guard by the second pinch.
“Oi! Pay attention, weasel eyes.”
Howard rubbed at his side and tried to focus his thoughts.
“Charlie makes me uncomfortable because you seem to love him but…” Howard watched Vince’s face turn into a cold mask, but he kept speaking. “He makes me uneasy because he makes you uneasy.”
Vince raked his fingers through his hair.
“Charlie was my brother.”
Howard immediately imagined Vince and the Hubba Bubba nightmare sat at a dinner table.
“Your brother?”
“Half-brother,” Vince clarified. “He was from my dad’s first family, the one he left when he got Mum pregnant with me. Charlie was getting in trouble with the law and dad brought him to live with us.”
Howard chose his words carefully. “What did he look like?”
Vince shrugged, “Like Dad. Like me. A little like Kurt Cobain. It was the nineties. Charlie was genius, he could actually make a cardigan look cool.”
Howard ignored the dig and changed the image from a bubblegum monster to Vince with bleached blond hair.
“The bubble gum…?” Howard trailed off under Vince’s hostile gaze. “We can come back to that.”
Howard spent years being tutored in the ways of the zoo by Tommy, only to be completely unprepared for Vince Noir. The Zooniverse had always been a strange and magical place, but when Vince arrived, things had gotten weird.
“So, Charlie came to live with you?” Howard prompted when Vince didn’t continue.
“I was eight, I think. He was fifteen. He wouldn’t go to school, he was getting into fights, shoplifting, drinking… He was amazing!”
Howard had to laugh at Vince’s enthusiasm. Instead of another pinch, he was rewarded with a cheeky grin.
“I was sneaking make-up in my bag to school, but I never did anything bad, but Charlie was cool. He had real edge. You never knew what he’d do. It was terrifying.”
Howard wrapped his arm around Vince and pulled him close. Vince tensed at first, but he allowed himself to be held so Howard pushed it a step further and kissed the top of his head.
“Charlie was genius. He snuck me into an Alice Cooper concert, he beat up kids who gave me a hard time in school…”
“Other eight-year-olds?”
Vince shrugged, “Sometimes. Or older kids. Or younger kids. Charlie didn’t care. He slashed an old lady’s tires for telling him to cut his hair. He didn’t care who it was, nobody crossed him. He could be so nice and sweet, but when he got angry… he just sort of went blank. You couldn’t get through to him.”
For all the cockiness in Vince’s tone, Howard could see conflict in his eyes. Charlie hadn’t quite fallen into place for Howard yet, but an image was forming. Charlie, the Hubba Bubba nightmare. The protector and avenger over which Vince had no control. A morally ambivalent figure who often meant well but did terrible things.
“What happened to Charlie?”
“Mum couldn’t deal with him. He scared her. She was afraid of me being around him all the time,” Vince tugged at his hair. It was still odd to see it un-styled and free of product.
“She said he had to go, so he and Dad left.”
Vince tried to shrug Howard off, but Howard held him tight. There were so many things about Vince’s story that struck Howard as painfully sad and telling.
“He just left?”
Vince shrugged. “He weren’t around that much anyway. Wasn’t a big deal. Only fair, really. He ditched Charlie for me and then me for Charlie.”
“Sounds like he felt guilty,” Howard hazarded, nervous of Vince’s response. “He left Charlie and Charlie went wrong.”
“And look how I turned out,” Vince snorted.
“I think you turned out pretty amazing.”
Vince paused for a moment, but otherwise did not acknowledge that he’d spoken.
“Truth is, I missed Charlie more than Dad, ‘cause I saw him more. Charlie left a whopping great pile of chewed gum under his bed and I started drawing the Charlie books… Sometimes I get confused about what really even happened.”
Howard stroked Vince’s hair and rocked him gently.
“Why did you never tell me about the real Charlie?”
Vince rested his head on Howard’s shoulder and whispered, “Dunno.”
Howard had no jokes, quips or stories to lighten the mood. His ability to evade an emotional scene had disappeared with his ability to go an hour without crying.
“It’s hard being friends with other men,” Howard announced, hoping Vince would follow his tangent. “Men get so competitive. We never had that. It’s just you and me, watching each other’s backs…”
Howard was suddenly aware of how often he’d failed to watch Vince’s back. He was also aware that Vince was currently (and shamelessly) eyeing his front.
“Mmm-hmm,” Vince agreed as he stroked Howard’s still naked leg.
“I’m trying to pour my heart out here,” Howard said with a weak attempt as his normal bluster. “This is no time for admiring my legs, willowy though they are.”
Vince ran his hand up Howard’s thigh.
“S’always a good time to admire your pins, Howard.”
Howard blushed as Vince pushed his legs apart, eyeing him with the kind of desire he normally reserved for a sale at Topshop or bag of crisps. Howard wondered if that fascination would end with the genderswap magic. As uncomfortable as he sometimes felt under Vince’s leering gaze, it was the first time anyone had looked at him as something desirable. Tommy said it was because Howard exuded an uncomfortable mixture of desperation and smug superiority. Howard thought the fact that he had a physique like “two hosepipes propping up a beanbag” might have been part of the problem. He knew he wasn’t hideous, but he wasn’t attractive like Vince; not in looks or personality or in any way that mattered. People either found him either too ordinary or too strange, and Howard found that to be profoundly unfair. It didn’t matter that Vince was shy around women or that his nose looked like the graph of some alarming trend, he was effortlessly sexy. Through every phase, even the unfortunate sleeveless tee-shirt debacle of 1999, people’s eyes were always on Vince. Howard went straight from being in Tommy’s shadow to Vince’s. Sometimes it seemed like Tommy and Vince were the only two people who had ever really seen him and he’d ended up having a go at Tommy with a cheese grater.
As Vince stroked the insides of his thighs, Howard tried to relax and let Vince show him what to do. Vince slowly sucked his finger before using it to stroke Howard’s sensitive entrance. His legs shook from the effort of staying still and fighting the instinct to pull away or cover himself. When the magic was over, it would be even harder to be so open (literally or figuratively) with Vince. He didn’t want to miss a single opportunity while he was capable of letting Vince in (again, literally and figuratively).
“Why are you letting me do this?” Vince asked as he suddenly pushed his finger inside.
Howard blushed furiously and stifled a moan. His entire body seemed to be vibrating. He was at the point where the line between pleasure and pain was a bit squiggly. He weakly asked, “What do you mean?”
“You look miserable, Howard. You look ready to have a heart attack but…” Vince teased Howard with a second finger as he stared Howard down. “Why don’t you just tell me to stop. You could.”
Howard closed his eyes and tried to stay quiet as his sensitive skin was stretched once again, but little whimpering noises kept escaping from his body. “I don’t want you to stop.”
“But you don’t like it.”
Howard was already getting hard. He couldn’t imagine how Vince could think he didn’t like what was happening.
And then, suddenly, he could.
Howard forced himself to look Vince in the eye, “Just because something makes me uncomfortable doesn’t mean that I don’t like it or that I don’t want it.”
Vince knocked the wind out of Howard as he pushed him to the ground and climbed on top. He didn’t complain, he just held on as Vince took care of all the details like the lubricant and johnny and the laws of physics. He was sore and tender but the feeling of being stretched and filled by Vince won out over any discomfort. As Vince slipped inside and quickly began moving hard and fast, Howard was again shocked by how much he didn’t know about his own body, and his own capacity for pleasure. Even as he felt a sting of pain from Vince’s aggressive motions, he couldn’t help trying to pull Vince in deeper. There was desperation in Vince’s love making and it was rubbing off on Howard. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. He just felt a deep and aching want.
“Christ, I’m going to miss this.” Vince’s face was unreadable in his intense concentration. He pulled Howard’s hands above his head and held them there as though Howard could be any more passive than he already was.
“You can always have this,” Howard promised. Even the feeling of Vince’s cock brushing his prostate had gone from pure pleasure to something more uncomfortable but not unpleasant. He hesitated before adding, “You could even make me beg for it if you wanted to.”
Vince stopped moving for a moment and looked Howard in the eye and said, “I can’t tell if you don’t know me at all or if you know me too well.”
Howard could see the love and the anger in Vince’s eyes as he fucked him for the third time in as many hours, and figured it was a little of both.
Author: Concupid
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Howard/Vince
Warnings: mentions of violence, explicit sex, mild dominance and submission
Summary: Vince talks about Charlie
Howard immediately tensed at the mention of Charlie. He could never put his finger on exactly why, but even stories like, “Charlie Tries to Order Something On-line but is Unsure of the Sizing” had an underlying darkness that put Howard on edge. Charlie was a strange mix of benevolent protector and terrifying monster that made Howard’s skin crawl.
“Why are you afraid of Charlie?” Vince asked with a knowing sneer. Howard prepared for another pinch. Normally, when Vince was in a mood, his assaults were of a verbal nature. Howard preferred the pinching.
The gender switch was a gift and a curse for Howard. He could suddenly see Vince so much more clearly, but what he saw was a little frightening. He’d always thought their friendship was easy and uncomplicated. Seeing the darkness in Vince’s eyes and the barely restrained anger that still lingered even when Vince was being tender and sweet, Howard was aware of how much Vince held back. Their dust-up on the island had left Howard devastated. There had been no teasing in Vince’s voice, just cold disdain as he mocked Howard’s loneliness. Howard was fearful of another real fight. He’d briefly gotten the upper hand on the island by ignoring Vince, but Vince remained hard and angry, and he wouldn’t stop punishing Howard until Howard found a way to properly punish himself. Cocoloco, Vince had Howard getting beaten up by a coconut. What could he do with his facilities about him? It was a scary thought.
Howard managed to be caught off guard by the second pinch.
“Oi! Pay attention, weasel eyes.”
Howard rubbed at his side and tried to focus his thoughts.
“Charlie makes me uncomfortable because you seem to love him but…” Howard watched Vince’s face turn into a cold mask, but he kept speaking. “He makes me uneasy because he makes you uneasy.”
Vince raked his fingers through his hair.
“Charlie was my brother.”
Howard immediately imagined Vince and the Hubba Bubba nightmare sat at a dinner table.
“Your brother?”
“Half-brother,” Vince clarified. “He was from my dad’s first family, the one he left when he got Mum pregnant with me. Charlie was getting in trouble with the law and dad brought him to live with us.”
Howard chose his words carefully. “What did he look like?”
Vince shrugged, “Like Dad. Like me. A little like Kurt Cobain. It was the nineties. Charlie was genius, he could actually make a cardigan look cool.”
Howard ignored the dig and changed the image from a bubblegum monster to Vince with bleached blond hair.
“The bubble gum…?” Howard trailed off under Vince’s hostile gaze. “We can come back to that.”
Howard spent years being tutored in the ways of the zoo by Tommy, only to be completely unprepared for Vince Noir. The Zooniverse had always been a strange and magical place, but when Vince arrived, things had gotten weird.
“So, Charlie came to live with you?” Howard prompted when Vince didn’t continue.
“I was eight, I think. He was fifteen. He wouldn’t go to school, he was getting into fights, shoplifting, drinking… He was amazing!”
Howard had to laugh at Vince’s enthusiasm. Instead of another pinch, he was rewarded with a cheeky grin.
“I was sneaking make-up in my bag to school, but I never did anything bad, but Charlie was cool. He had real edge. You never knew what he’d do. It was terrifying.”
Howard wrapped his arm around Vince and pulled him close. Vince tensed at first, but he allowed himself to be held so Howard pushed it a step further and kissed the top of his head.
“Charlie was genius. He snuck me into an Alice Cooper concert, he beat up kids who gave me a hard time in school…”
“Other eight-year-olds?”
Vince shrugged, “Sometimes. Or older kids. Or younger kids. Charlie didn’t care. He slashed an old lady’s tires for telling him to cut his hair. He didn’t care who it was, nobody crossed him. He could be so nice and sweet, but when he got angry… he just sort of went blank. You couldn’t get through to him.”
For all the cockiness in Vince’s tone, Howard could see conflict in his eyes. Charlie hadn’t quite fallen into place for Howard yet, but an image was forming. Charlie, the Hubba Bubba nightmare. The protector and avenger over which Vince had no control. A morally ambivalent figure who often meant well but did terrible things.
“What happened to Charlie?”
“Mum couldn’t deal with him. He scared her. She was afraid of me being around him all the time,” Vince tugged at his hair. It was still odd to see it un-styled and free of product.
“She said he had to go, so he and Dad left.”
Vince tried to shrug Howard off, but Howard held him tight. There were so many things about Vince’s story that struck Howard as painfully sad and telling.
“He just left?”
Vince shrugged. “He weren’t around that much anyway. Wasn’t a big deal. Only fair, really. He ditched Charlie for me and then me for Charlie.”
“Sounds like he felt guilty,” Howard hazarded, nervous of Vince’s response. “He left Charlie and Charlie went wrong.”
“And look how I turned out,” Vince snorted.
“I think you turned out pretty amazing.”
Vince paused for a moment, but otherwise did not acknowledge that he’d spoken.
“Truth is, I missed Charlie more than Dad, ‘cause I saw him more. Charlie left a whopping great pile of chewed gum under his bed and I started drawing the Charlie books… Sometimes I get confused about what really even happened.”
Howard stroked Vince’s hair and rocked him gently.
“Why did you never tell me about the real Charlie?”
Vince rested his head on Howard’s shoulder and whispered, “Dunno.”
Howard had no jokes, quips or stories to lighten the mood. His ability to evade an emotional scene had disappeared with his ability to go an hour without crying.
“It’s hard being friends with other men,” Howard announced, hoping Vince would follow his tangent. “Men get so competitive. We never had that. It’s just you and me, watching each other’s backs…”
Howard was suddenly aware of how often he’d failed to watch Vince’s back. He was also aware that Vince was currently (and shamelessly) eyeing his front.
“Mmm-hmm,” Vince agreed as he stroked Howard’s still naked leg.
“I’m trying to pour my heart out here,” Howard said with a weak attempt as his normal bluster. “This is no time for admiring my legs, willowy though they are.”
Vince ran his hand up Howard’s thigh.
“S’always a good time to admire your pins, Howard.”
Howard blushed as Vince pushed his legs apart, eyeing him with the kind of desire he normally reserved for a sale at Topshop or bag of crisps. Howard wondered if that fascination would end with the genderswap magic. As uncomfortable as he sometimes felt under Vince’s leering gaze, it was the first time anyone had looked at him as something desirable. Tommy said it was because Howard exuded an uncomfortable mixture of desperation and smug superiority. Howard thought the fact that he had a physique like “two hosepipes propping up a beanbag” might have been part of the problem. He knew he wasn’t hideous, but he wasn’t attractive like Vince; not in looks or personality or in any way that mattered. People either found him either too ordinary or too strange, and Howard found that to be profoundly unfair. It didn’t matter that Vince was shy around women or that his nose looked like the graph of some alarming trend, he was effortlessly sexy. Through every phase, even the unfortunate sleeveless tee-shirt debacle of 1999, people’s eyes were always on Vince. Howard went straight from being in Tommy’s shadow to Vince’s. Sometimes it seemed like Tommy and Vince were the only two people who had ever really seen him and he’d ended up having a go at Tommy with a cheese grater.
As Vince stroked the insides of his thighs, Howard tried to relax and let Vince show him what to do. Vince slowly sucked his finger before using it to stroke Howard’s sensitive entrance. His legs shook from the effort of staying still and fighting the instinct to pull away or cover himself. When the magic was over, it would be even harder to be so open (literally or figuratively) with Vince. He didn’t want to miss a single opportunity while he was capable of letting Vince in (again, literally and figuratively).
“Why are you letting me do this?” Vince asked as he suddenly pushed his finger inside.
Howard blushed furiously and stifled a moan. His entire body seemed to be vibrating. He was at the point where the line between pleasure and pain was a bit squiggly. He weakly asked, “What do you mean?”
“You look miserable, Howard. You look ready to have a heart attack but…” Vince teased Howard with a second finger as he stared Howard down. “Why don’t you just tell me to stop. You could.”
Howard closed his eyes and tried to stay quiet as his sensitive skin was stretched once again, but little whimpering noises kept escaping from his body. “I don’t want you to stop.”
“But you don’t like it.”
Howard was already getting hard. He couldn’t imagine how Vince could think he didn’t like what was happening.
And then, suddenly, he could.
Howard forced himself to look Vince in the eye, “Just because something makes me uncomfortable doesn’t mean that I don’t like it or that I don’t want it.”
Vince knocked the wind out of Howard as he pushed him to the ground and climbed on top. He didn’t complain, he just held on as Vince took care of all the details like the lubricant and johnny and the laws of physics. He was sore and tender but the feeling of being stretched and filled by Vince won out over any discomfort. As Vince slipped inside and quickly began moving hard and fast, Howard was again shocked by how much he didn’t know about his own body, and his own capacity for pleasure. Even as he felt a sting of pain from Vince’s aggressive motions, he couldn’t help trying to pull Vince in deeper. There was desperation in Vince’s love making and it was rubbing off on Howard. He wasn’t sure what he wanted. He just felt a deep and aching want.
“Christ, I’m going to miss this.” Vince’s face was unreadable in his intense concentration. He pulled Howard’s hands above his head and held them there as though Howard could be any more passive than he already was.
“You can always have this,” Howard promised. Even the feeling of Vince’s cock brushing his prostate had gone from pure pleasure to something more uncomfortable but not unpleasant. He hesitated before adding, “You could even make me beg for it if you wanted to.”
Vince stopped moving for a moment and looked Howard in the eye and said, “I can’t tell if you don’t know me at all or if you know me too well.”
Howard could see the love and the anger in Vince’s eyes as he fucked him for the third time in as many hours, and figured it was a little of both.