The Mighty Boosh Halloween Special of Doom 2015 - Chapter 10
Title: The Mighty Boosh Halloween Special of Doom - Chapter 10
Pairing: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Summary: Despite being in the dark, some things become clearer.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1650
Notes: Apologies for the delay in posting, but I hope the fact that it’s a long chapter makes up for the lateness! Thanks again to ideserveyou for organizing this year's special; it's been a real treat to read and be able to join in.
Link to Masterlist of Chapters: Here
Howard blinked. And blinked again. Not that it made any difference in the view; the room remained stubbornly dark. With no windows and no other source of light, the only way he could tell he wasn’t alone in the universe was because of the racket everybody else was making.
“Christ, you’re hopeless. You’ve never met a situation you couldn’t make more difficult, have you?”
“S’not exactly helping, is it, Saboo?”
“Vincey? Moon? MOON, WHERE’D YOU GO? YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME HERE! Moon Moon Moon, if you can get me outta here, I promise not to hate you… so much… on Fridays…”
“Howard?” Vince’s voice somehow sliced like a knife through every other distraction and annoyance, sounding small and lost and oddly young. He never had liked the dark. For as long as they’d shared a bedroom, there had always been some cheerful, childish nightlight brightening the corner of it. “Howard? Howard, where are you?”
Deliberately tuning out Naboo and Saboo’s bickering and Fossil’s hysterical whimpering, Howard reached out into the darkness in the direction of Vince’s voice, cringing at the possibility of brushing against another mirror to god-knew-where-or another Vince, perhaps, or that black shadowy thing, whatever that was. But after a minimum of groping, his fingertips connected with Vince’s slight shoulders, and it was easy enough to bundle the Little Man into a hug and allow him to hide his face against Howard’s stomach, thin arms clinging to Howard’s hips.
Christ. He’d shrunk again, must have done, just in the last few minutes of darkness. Vince had to be at least a foot shorter than Howard by now. When Howard ran his hands over Vince’s form to reassure himself that Vince was really still there at all, he found that the sprouting rags seemed to have multiplied, too, beyond just the ones Vince had customized.
Vince’s hair, from what Howard could feel, seemed to have been at least half replaced with strips of worn fabric. Fortunately, Vince was too distressed at the moment to notice and squawk over Howard’s manhandling of his prize mane. It was the slightest of comforts that Vince wasn’t aware of what was really happening.
Yet.
“All right, Howard?” Vince pulled back, but quickly slid one of his hands into Howard’s and squeezed.
“Right as rain, Little Man.” Or as right as he possibly could be when trapped in a nightmarish mirror place with a splitting headache, a chorus of bitchy shamans, and best mate/life partner who appeared to be shrinking at a terrifying rate.
“Good.” Vince paused. “Howard?”
“Yes?”
“Is that… is that how I am?”
Howard blinked again. It still didn’t change anything. “Excuse me?”
“Like that-that thing! That Vince in the mirror, trying to come onto you! Cos his hair and makeup were perfect, yeah, actually kind of genius, but honestly? He seemed like a real dick.” Howard couldn’t see Vince’s face for the life of him, but the distress in his voice was real. “Is that really how I am, Howard?”
Howard thought of Mirror Vince, the very picture of effortless cool, with his flawlessly lacquered lip gloss, curled up into a sharp smirk, and a knowing, mocking glint in his cold blue eyes. With his shirt slit provocatively down to his navel and his trousers painted on and not a single strand of his artful sex hair out of place, Mirror Vince ought to have been something straight out of Howard’s fantasies… and yet he wasn’t, not really. Vince was never quite so glossy and airbrushed and flawless, not even in Howard’s totally psychologically normal dreams (he was willing to concede, in light of recent developments, that they were perhaps not quite so meaningless). Nor was Vince ever so aggressively forward. And he certainly wasn’t cold or cruel or mean in the way Mirror Vince seemed to be, not even on his brattiest days. Sure, Howard had been confused by the resemblance at first, but long before the visual confirmation, there had been something he’d sensed that had made his hair want to stand on end, a vague and indefinable certainty of wrongness. Something in him had known it wasn’t his Vince.
And then Howard thought of Vince twirling happily in his new glittery cape with a goofy grin, eager to show off to Howard, and of Vince in bed, hair like a black tumbleweed, whining about being made to brush his teeth. And of Vince’s voice in his ear, proclaiming that Howard had made him out of scraps.
Howard swallowed hard. “No. No, you’re not like that. Or he’s not like you. I met him before you found me, but I could tell… I knew he wasn’t you. That’s why I went through that mirror in the first place, to get away from him.”
“But how’d you know?” Vince persisted. “Even I couldn’t tell it wasn’t me. Not at first.”
Because I realized that he was a terrifying mirror demon seemed like the wrong answer for this situation. And it wasn’t the whole answer anyway, if Howard was being honest.
“Because,” he finally said. “The same way you knew which mirror I’d choose. I just knew. I know you.”
Vince didn’t say anything, but he sagged against Howard, wrapping his arms around Howard’s chest in a fierce embrace and burying his (slightly suspiciously damp) face in the crook of Howard’s neck and collarbone.
Wait. His neck? Only minutes ago, he’d been six inches shorter, at least. Howard was sure of it. The discovery was simultaneously reassuring and worrying. How…?
“Thanks, Howard,” Vince murmured into Howard’s neck before pressing a soft and fleeting kiss there, temporarily derailing any and all conscious thought.
“You’re welcome, Little Man,” Howard croaked, when he could remember how to form words again. When he kissed the top of Vince’s head, it was an intense relief to find only hair there, instead of rags.
“Great. Well, now that that’s settled, do we need to wait here until you’ve synced up your cycles and braided each other’s hair, or could you finally pick a bleeding mirror and start advancing this plot?”
“So glad you could make it, Saboo.” Howard glared in the general direction of the nasal, superior voice.
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea to forgo presenting my meticulously-crafted proposal so that we could all sit here and witness you tosspots holding hands and singing Kumbaya. It’s not my fault that you two can’t run a measly little presidential campaign without getting yourselves lost in a mental labyrinth of your own nightmares and pathetic insecurities.”
The pain in Howard’s head flared again, sharp and sickening. “I-wait. What do you mean? We’re in the Mirror Room, aren’t we?”
“Actually, it’s a Mirror World,” Vince interjected helpfully.
“Look, I told you before: I’m not really here and neither are you, you plum. This is nothing but a shared symbolic reality, constructed by your feeble brains out of your deepest fears and vulnerabilities. Which is why it’s so shit.”
“It a metaphor,” Bollo added.
“Yeah, thanks for that, Bollo. I got that.” Howard’s guts seemed to have started anxiously churning in time with the throbbing in his head.
“So… what does all that mean, exactly?” Vince asked. “Are you saying we’ve been imagining all this stuff?”
“Basically, yeah,” Naboo agreed. “But the danger’s real, so you’ve got to be careful. This is some dark magic, Vince-some seriously bad juju.”
“‘Seriously bad juju’?” Saboo repeated. “Tell me, Naboo, is that a technical term?”
“Oh, get stuffed, you great-”
“PLEASE,” Howard shouted. Gratifyingly, it seemed to shut everybody up for at least a moment. “Could we please, please just focus on what the hell we’re supposed to do next?”
“Pick a damn mirror and go through it. I thought that was abundantly clear. Should we have tried to convey it to you through interpretive dance?”
“But Naboo said that we had to be careful about picking the right one,” Howard said. “He said that if we picked the wrong mirror-”
“The consequences’ll be horrific, yeah,” Naboo agreed.
“But how is that even possible?” Vince piped up. “I mean, if we’re really just imagining all this.”
“Just because it’s imaginary doesn’t mean that it can’t kill you,” Saboo said. “Or worse. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but Naboo is right about the magic that caused this: this is some dark shit.”
Howard’s mouth suddenly felt very dry. “What-what about Fossil?”
“Forget Fossil,” Naboo said. “He’s trapped in his own messed-up mind already. You can’t even think of getting him out until you get yourself out.”
“I can find the heart mirror again, Howard,” Vince said softly. “I know where it should be. That’s got to be the right one, has to be.”
“Where will the next mirror lead?” Howard asked the shamans.
“How the fuck should I know?” Saboo replied. “I’m a shaman, not your therapist. Your minds made this place, and frankly, you both have some serious issues.”
“Aha!” Vince crowed. “Found it! This is it, Howard! Put your hand here, you can feel it.”
Howard allowed his hand to be guided to the smooth, cool frame on the wall, gingerly running his hands along the outside. Vince was right: this was their heart mirror.
“Ready?” There was a dull, thudding sound of a hand hitting an all-too-solid mirror. “What the...? Why can’t I just go through… Oh, wait, let me try something.”
Without warning, Vince slid his hand back into Howard’s, threading their fingers together and wiggling them a bit for good measure.
“Gotta do it together, don’t we?” he explained. “Cos it’s our mirror, yeah? Not yours or mine, just ours.”
“You and me all the way?” Howard felt a smile threatening, despite everything.
“All the way,” Vince agreed.
“Oh, get a room,” Saboo said.
“Bollo be sick,” Bollo agreed.
The next thing Howard knew was the tug of Vince’s hand towards their target and the silvery-slick feeling of the mirror parting around them like water.
They were through.
Pairing: Howard Moon/Vince Noir
Summary: Despite being in the dark, some things become clearer.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1650
Notes: Apologies for the delay in posting, but I hope the fact that it’s a long chapter makes up for the lateness! Thanks again to ideserveyou for organizing this year's special; it's been a real treat to read and be able to join in.
Link to Masterlist of Chapters: Here
Howard blinked. And blinked again. Not that it made any difference in the view; the room remained stubbornly dark. With no windows and no other source of light, the only way he could tell he wasn’t alone in the universe was because of the racket everybody else was making.
“Christ, you’re hopeless. You’ve never met a situation you couldn’t make more difficult, have you?”
“S’not exactly helping, is it, Saboo?”
“Vincey? Moon? MOON, WHERE’D YOU GO? YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME HERE! Moon Moon Moon, if you can get me outta here, I promise not to hate you… so much… on Fridays…”
“Howard?” Vince’s voice somehow sliced like a knife through every other distraction and annoyance, sounding small and lost and oddly young. He never had liked the dark. For as long as they’d shared a bedroom, there had always been some cheerful, childish nightlight brightening the corner of it. “Howard? Howard, where are you?”
Deliberately tuning out Naboo and Saboo’s bickering and Fossil’s hysterical whimpering, Howard reached out into the darkness in the direction of Vince’s voice, cringing at the possibility of brushing against another mirror to god-knew-where-or another Vince, perhaps, or that black shadowy thing, whatever that was. But after a minimum of groping, his fingertips connected with Vince’s slight shoulders, and it was easy enough to bundle the Little Man into a hug and allow him to hide his face against Howard’s stomach, thin arms clinging to Howard’s hips.
Christ. He’d shrunk again, must have done, just in the last few minutes of darkness. Vince had to be at least a foot shorter than Howard by now. When Howard ran his hands over Vince’s form to reassure himself that Vince was really still there at all, he found that the sprouting rags seemed to have multiplied, too, beyond just the ones Vince had customized.
Vince’s hair, from what Howard could feel, seemed to have been at least half replaced with strips of worn fabric. Fortunately, Vince was too distressed at the moment to notice and squawk over Howard’s manhandling of his prize mane. It was the slightest of comforts that Vince wasn’t aware of what was really happening.
Yet.
“All right, Howard?” Vince pulled back, but quickly slid one of his hands into Howard’s and squeezed.
“Right as rain, Little Man.” Or as right as he possibly could be when trapped in a nightmarish mirror place with a splitting headache, a chorus of bitchy shamans, and best mate/life partner who appeared to be shrinking at a terrifying rate.
“Good.” Vince paused. “Howard?”
“Yes?”
“Is that… is that how I am?”
Howard blinked again. It still didn’t change anything. “Excuse me?”
“Like that-that thing! That Vince in the mirror, trying to come onto you! Cos his hair and makeup were perfect, yeah, actually kind of genius, but honestly? He seemed like a real dick.” Howard couldn’t see Vince’s face for the life of him, but the distress in his voice was real. “Is that really how I am, Howard?”
Howard thought of Mirror Vince, the very picture of effortless cool, with his flawlessly lacquered lip gloss, curled up into a sharp smirk, and a knowing, mocking glint in his cold blue eyes. With his shirt slit provocatively down to his navel and his trousers painted on and not a single strand of his artful sex hair out of place, Mirror Vince ought to have been something straight out of Howard’s fantasies… and yet he wasn’t, not really. Vince was never quite so glossy and airbrushed and flawless, not even in Howard’s totally psychologically normal dreams (he was willing to concede, in light of recent developments, that they were perhaps not quite so meaningless). Nor was Vince ever so aggressively forward. And he certainly wasn’t cold or cruel or mean in the way Mirror Vince seemed to be, not even on his brattiest days. Sure, Howard had been confused by the resemblance at first, but long before the visual confirmation, there had been something he’d sensed that had made his hair want to stand on end, a vague and indefinable certainty of wrongness. Something in him had known it wasn’t his Vince.
And then Howard thought of Vince twirling happily in his new glittery cape with a goofy grin, eager to show off to Howard, and of Vince in bed, hair like a black tumbleweed, whining about being made to brush his teeth. And of Vince’s voice in his ear, proclaiming that Howard had made him out of scraps.
Howard swallowed hard. “No. No, you’re not like that. Or he’s not like you. I met him before you found me, but I could tell… I knew he wasn’t you. That’s why I went through that mirror in the first place, to get away from him.”
“But how’d you know?” Vince persisted. “Even I couldn’t tell it wasn’t me. Not at first.”
Because I realized that he was a terrifying mirror demon seemed like the wrong answer for this situation. And it wasn’t the whole answer anyway, if Howard was being honest.
“Because,” he finally said. “The same way you knew which mirror I’d choose. I just knew. I know you.”
Vince didn’t say anything, but he sagged against Howard, wrapping his arms around Howard’s chest in a fierce embrace and burying his (slightly suspiciously damp) face in the crook of Howard’s neck and collarbone.
Wait. His neck? Only minutes ago, he’d been six inches shorter, at least. Howard was sure of it. The discovery was simultaneously reassuring and worrying. How…?
“Thanks, Howard,” Vince murmured into Howard’s neck before pressing a soft and fleeting kiss there, temporarily derailing any and all conscious thought.
“You’re welcome, Little Man,” Howard croaked, when he could remember how to form words again. When he kissed the top of Vince’s head, it was an intense relief to find only hair there, instead of rags.
“Great. Well, now that that’s settled, do we need to wait here until you’ve synced up your cycles and braided each other’s hair, or could you finally pick a bleeding mirror and start advancing this plot?”
“So glad you could make it, Saboo.” Howard glared in the general direction of the nasal, superior voice.
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea to forgo presenting my meticulously-crafted proposal so that we could all sit here and witness you tosspots holding hands and singing Kumbaya. It’s not my fault that you two can’t run a measly little presidential campaign without getting yourselves lost in a mental labyrinth of your own nightmares and pathetic insecurities.”
The pain in Howard’s head flared again, sharp and sickening. “I-wait. What do you mean? We’re in the Mirror Room, aren’t we?”
“Actually, it’s a Mirror World,” Vince interjected helpfully.
“Look, I told you before: I’m not really here and neither are you, you plum. This is nothing but a shared symbolic reality, constructed by your feeble brains out of your deepest fears and vulnerabilities. Which is why it’s so shit.”
“It a metaphor,” Bollo added.
“Yeah, thanks for that, Bollo. I got that.” Howard’s guts seemed to have started anxiously churning in time with the throbbing in his head.
“So… what does all that mean, exactly?” Vince asked. “Are you saying we’ve been imagining all this stuff?”
“Basically, yeah,” Naboo agreed. “But the danger’s real, so you’ve got to be careful. This is some dark magic, Vince-some seriously bad juju.”
“‘Seriously bad juju’?” Saboo repeated. “Tell me, Naboo, is that a technical term?”
“Oh, get stuffed, you great-”
“PLEASE,” Howard shouted. Gratifyingly, it seemed to shut everybody up for at least a moment. “Could we please, please just focus on what the hell we’re supposed to do next?”
“Pick a damn mirror and go through it. I thought that was abundantly clear. Should we have tried to convey it to you through interpretive dance?”
“But Naboo said that we had to be careful about picking the right one,” Howard said. “He said that if we picked the wrong mirror-”
“The consequences’ll be horrific, yeah,” Naboo agreed.
“But how is that even possible?” Vince piped up. “I mean, if we’re really just imagining all this.”
“Just because it’s imaginary doesn’t mean that it can’t kill you,” Saboo said. “Or worse. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but Naboo is right about the magic that caused this: this is some dark shit.”
Howard’s mouth suddenly felt very dry. “What-what about Fossil?”
“Forget Fossil,” Naboo said. “He’s trapped in his own messed-up mind already. You can’t even think of getting him out until you get yourself out.”
“I can find the heart mirror again, Howard,” Vince said softly. “I know where it should be. That’s got to be the right one, has to be.”
“Where will the next mirror lead?” Howard asked the shamans.
“How the fuck should I know?” Saboo replied. “I’m a shaman, not your therapist. Your minds made this place, and frankly, you both have some serious issues.”
“Aha!” Vince crowed. “Found it! This is it, Howard! Put your hand here, you can feel it.”
Howard allowed his hand to be guided to the smooth, cool frame on the wall, gingerly running his hands along the outside. Vince was right: this was their heart mirror.
“Ready?” There was a dull, thudding sound of a hand hitting an all-too-solid mirror. “What the...? Why can’t I just go through… Oh, wait, let me try something.”
Without warning, Vince slid his hand back into Howard’s, threading their fingers together and wiggling them a bit for good measure.
“Gotta do it together, don’t we?” he explained. “Cos it’s our mirror, yeah? Not yours or mine, just ours.”
“You and me all the way?” Howard felt a smile threatening, despite everything.
“All the way,” Vince agreed.
“Oh, get a room,” Saboo said.
“Bollo be sick,” Bollo agreed.
The next thing Howard knew was the tug of Vince’s hand towards their target and the silvery-slick feeling of the mirror parting around them like water.
They were through.