fic: the halloween special of doom, chapter 9
Title: The Mighty Boosh Halloween Special of Doom - Chapter 9
Pairing: Mostly gen, some Howard Moon/Vince Noir pre-slash
Rating: PG
Word count: 2330
Howard shook his head as the momentary dizziness passed; either the onset of garden-variety flu or the magic, he reassured himself, sniffing back a glob of phlegm; teleporting could be hell on the immune system. At least it was warm in here. Not that he could stay here, really. He didn't know what he could do to help with the rain, but it would have to be something; no man of action would simply stay off on the sidelines while his-- friend risked life and limb putting right what Howard had mucked up. Firmly ignoring the doll and her various other creepy, second-hand friends, Howard tugged on the hem of his jacket and strode towards the door-- but the door wouldn’t budge.
He frowned. It looked in every way like the door he and Vince had come through this morning, wood weathered and mildewed, but the handle wouldn’t even turn. He frowned harder, trying to ignore the prickle of foreboding creeping up the nape of his neck, and jiggled the knob. Maybe it was just a tricky lock. If only he had his set of adventurer’s lockpicks on him. Or maybe the wood had soaked up some of the moisture from the rain and swollen shut, that was perfectly plausible.
‘Well!’ he harrumphed, ‘then I’ll just have to climb out the window. Mightn’t be the most dignified thing I’ve ever done, but let it not be said--’
There was a laugh, rasping and echoing and directionless, lazy and amused. Amused at Howard’s expense. He shivered, but wrenched himself away from the door to stomp over to one of the windows, yanking at the sash. It didn’t move, and the laughter got louder, coalescing, finally, into speech.
‘I don’t think so, squire.’
Howard knew, sickly, exactly who would be there when he turned around, but knowing didn’t stop him flinching when he did. Indeed, there Terry was, lounging and smirking in his biker jacket, helmet held at his side, like a perverse purple orangutan done by Bosch.
‘You!’ His voice cracked, and he scowled. ‘I thought-- I thought the Shaman Council banished you! Set Fossil on you!’
Terry laughed again, and spat casually on the floor. ‘Strategic retreat, ‘s all. You think that overstuffed Bounty bar had anything on me an’ my lads? Hah!’
The unease in Howard’s chest, the foreboding prickling his skin, was condensing into a snooker ball singularity of dread under his sternum, drawing everything tight around it. He gulped in a fortifying breath of musty shop air. ‘That’s all well and good, but if you think I’m staying here to slouch about doing nothing like a grounded child while my-- my friends, my city--’
‘Yeah, you ain’t got a choice, though.’ Terry grinned horribly, gnawing on one fingertip. A demonstratively bored gesture, like a human chewing their nails, except that his fingertip stretched when he drew it away, purple gum snapping off in his mouth where he set to chewing it wetly. Howard nearly gagged.
‘Now look here, sir; your presence here is my fault, and I will be damned if I don’t--’
Terry cut him off with a crowish cackle. ‘Already are, chum! Where d’you think you are? Why d’you reckon I’m here? You’re dead, moron.’
Howard felt the words like small impacts to his sternum, and tried his hardest to stay firm and upright. ‘I’ve been dead, I’ll have you know. Death was not a shop, it was--’ Terry flicked the chewed wad of his own fingertip at Howard, hitting him in the cheek, horrible and slimy.
‘Ain’t feeling well, are you? Little bit funny, hmm? Dizzy? Bit weak? That’s what we call the adjustment process; you’re dead as disco, idiot. S’like you said, it’s down to you I’m here. Well, not strictly here, there. This--’ he flung out his unnaturally long arms, smiling that awful smile, teeth like a mouthful of cracked tombstones-- ‘is what you might call my prison. S’ where they kept me while that nonce Charlie was still on duty.’
He’s back on duty! Howard tried to protest, but the words creaked dusty-dry in his throat, and Terry continued on, waving a hand lazily.
‘So I figured, who better to take my place than my ~liberator? Course, it’ll mostly be just you here, you an’ the rain and these little beauties.’ He patted the horrible doll on her dusty curls. ‘But I reckon my crew’ll find time to come visit now and again, won’t that be nice?’
‘Nice’, Howard echoed, swallowing hard. ‘Yeah.’
Terry grinned again, and Howard flinched back. ‘You can try getting out if you wanna. That ain’t a strictly corporeal living body you’re wearing, but that don’t mean you can’t still wear your fingers down to bloody stumps tryin’a get the windows open.’
Howard couldn’t think of anything smart to say to that. The last time he’d died, it had been a mistake, a bureaucratic error; that had been easy to rail against, to demand Vince come get him. But Terry was right, this was his fault; Howard had been the one who brought him into the world with his selfishness and his jealousy; it was horribly easy to believe that maybe he deserved this. Not even a day ago, he’d been gearing up to try and express to Vince the truth of how he felt about him, and now-- Vince had said he’d forgiven him, that he understood, but how much did that even mean? Howard had killed one of his friends (even if he had come back), had set loose this menace and doomed the Greater London Area. Vince would be better without him, probably, without Howard bringing misery into his life.
Terry was watching with satisfied amusement, and he swung his comically undersized helmet up to perch atop his head. ‘Yeah, ‘s what I thought. See you, moron! I got a delivery to make; gotta keep the storm party going; keep ‘em well stocked up with special k and poppers and E.’
Howard flushed hot suddenly, head snapping up. ‘Fuck off!’ he spat, flipping Terry a pair of furious birds, but he was already gone.
~~~~~~~~~
Vince didn’t give a fuck about the Bellumon. He might have, otherwise; it had showed up like a gargantuan flying snake all in shades of blue, hungry mouth and scales that didn’t seem touched by the rain. It had looked at him with that blue eye like it knew him, and all Vince had wanted was to fly at it, to gouge out that stupid eye, trample it into the mud, but he hadn’t had the energy, somehow.
‘Piss off!’ he’d shouted. ‘Don’t you even look at me, don’t you fucking dare, just go do your thing and then die!’
Dennis had had some quieter words with it, and then off it had fucked to eat the rainclouds or… whatever. Vince was hazy on the details and didn’t give a fuck about that either. Now the shamans were huddled around their table, engaged in some private, worried conversation, and Vince was curled up against Charlie, wrapped in Howard’s thick wool coat. It was ludicrously big on him, lapels sticking out and the tailored structure of the shoulders half-collapsed where Vince’s frame completely failed to fill it out. It made him think of their time at the zoo, how big and broad Howard had got when he finally grew up properly, how it had made Vince even more eager to try and sneak cuddles out of him because it had felt so good to feel small and enveloped in Howard’s sturdy softness. The stinging in his eyes welled up at that thought, tears spilling out into messy hiccoughs as he clutched at the sleeves of the coat, burrowing into Charlie’s reassuringly solid pink body. It wasn’t warm, but at least it was something.
Charlie huffed a discontented noise, sending droplets flying from his Zappa ‘tache. ‘That was cold.’ He curled his amorphous body around Vince a little more firmly. ‘Hella cold, man. Shoulda told you what the plan was.’
If you weren’t familiar with it, Charlie’s voice might have been surprising; a rough tenor, like a chill Californian rocker who’d been smoking at too many festivals for too many years. For Vince, it was a comfort. Not many people could hear Charlie’s voice, but he could, and Charlie’d been his mate since he was little, since he moved to London, he looked after Vince. It had been well weird, going from the jungle where there were always people all around, where he’d sleep with at least one person almost every night, if not a whole pile of them, to London, where it was suddenly just him all alone in his room at night. Knowing Charlie was there looking after him had made sleeping much easier. He had shoeboxes full of Charlie stories, one for the biographical ones that Charlie dictated, and one for the ones he made up when he needed to think through something. Charlie helped him with that too, even when he wasn’t there.
Now Charlie was here, but Howard wasn’t. Vince didn’t know what to do with that. ‘Yeah’, he sniffed. ‘Dunno what I’ll do now; I’m not living with Naboo after this, I can’t-- I can’t-- why didn’t Bollo tell me at least?? We go back, me an’ Bollo, we had all those times at the zoo--’
The tears snuck up on him again, mid-sentence, choking him off, and he shook himself hard, pressing in against Charlie again. Charlie sighed, shaking his head and sending more water droplets scattering from the brim of his hat.
‘I dunno, little dude, maybe he didn’t know? That was fucking harsh. I wouldn’ta done that, and Howard pretty much killed me there.’
‘You know he didn’t mean to!’ Vince cut in desperately. He’d been furious with Howard, part of him still was, but he couldn’t even think of that right now, it was too much. ‘You know he’s just-- he doesn’t think sometimes, he does stupid things cos he’s mad or hurt, he’s-- well, ‘s like me, I guess.’ He ducked his head, chewing on his lip, face flushed tight and prickly under the chill of the air as he thought of all the things he’d never be able to apologise to Howard for, the things he couldn’t set right.
Charlie nodded, a movement that Vince felt through his whole bubblegum body. ‘I know, little dude, I know. Death doesn’t work the same for me anyway, no point holding a grudge. I got bigger things to do. ‘S happened to me before a coupla times anyway, dying and being brought back; nothing too new.’
There was a pause as Vince breathed, trying to get his tears under control, and Charlie looked thoughtful.
‘You could come on the road with me, if you wanted, once that snake thing does its thing’, he volunteered. ‘It’s a good gig; sometimes things get wild, but The Storm’s not bad guys. Lotsa travelling, good parties, bangin’ shows.’
‘Yeah’, Vince sighed, thinking of what a life on the road with Charlie would be like. Vince had never thought about being a roadie; he was Vince Noir, Rock and Roll Star, after all, but maybe that’d be alright. Better than living on his own someplace; he couldn’t think of anything worse than that. And then a thought occurred to him, small and tentative as a whistle in the fog, and he sucked in a breath, his eyes going wide. ‘Charlie?’ His voice came out very quiet.
‘Sup?’
‘You said-- you’ve died and been brought back before.’
‘Mmhmm. You should know, you’ve written ‘em all down. Or most of ‘em.’
‘Yeah.’ Vince nodded, his heart starting to beat hard. Howard had suggested it earlier, sort of, but Howard didn’t know about these things, didn’t know how they worked; Charlie did. ‘So what if-- you’ve got magic, like, like-- I mean, you’re not-- could we write a Howard story? If someone like Howard can write you out of existence, the two of us-- we can write him back, right? Surely. I can’t-- I ain’t much good at lots of things, but I can do that, I can tell stories. Yeah? The-- the thing, the Bellumon, it’s doin’ its job, don’t matter what we do now, right?’
Charlie made a noise, deep down in his bubblegum belly, rough and thoughtful. ‘Don’t want you getting your hopes up now, little dude.’
But Vince’s tummy was in knots, the kind of fizz that could be excitement or anxiety in equal parts starting up at the base of his skull. Hope was shouldering its way in despite the rain. ‘I know, I know, I know, but-- me an’ Howard, we’re not quite normal either, are we? Howard always thought we were just regular people living regular lives, but we ain’t really, are we? Anything’s a story if you make it. An’ you can make anything better if you just tell it different, I do that all the time.’
And at that, Charlie smiled down at Vince, shaking his head a little. It was the same look he’d given Vince when he was small, Vince remembered, before Vince really knew how people worked. ‘Yeah, yeah, alright. Can’t hurt to have a bash, right? It’ll take some black magic, but I got some dudes I can hit up if I need to for that.’ He produced a mobile from somewhere about his person, and then tucked it back away.
Vince couldn’t help it, he burst into a fresh wave of tears and flung himself at Charlie, wrapping his arms around as much of him as he could, squeezing hard and breathing in the comforting sugary smell. ‘You’re a genius! C’mon, right, what do we need?’
Over at the table, amongst the group of shamans, Bollo looked over at Vince and Charlie, and shook his head down at Naboo, grunting a little and frowning at him. He did not say that he had a bad feeling about this.
Pairing: Mostly gen, some Howard Moon/Vince Noir pre-slash
Rating: PG
Word count: 2330
Howard shook his head as the momentary dizziness passed; either the onset of garden-variety flu or the magic, he reassured himself, sniffing back a glob of phlegm; teleporting could be hell on the immune system. At least it was warm in here. Not that he could stay here, really. He didn't know what he could do to help with the rain, but it would have to be something; no man of action would simply stay off on the sidelines while his-- friend risked life and limb putting right what Howard had mucked up. Firmly ignoring the doll and her various other creepy, second-hand friends, Howard tugged on the hem of his jacket and strode towards the door-- but the door wouldn’t budge.
He frowned. It looked in every way like the door he and Vince had come through this morning, wood weathered and mildewed, but the handle wouldn’t even turn. He frowned harder, trying to ignore the prickle of foreboding creeping up the nape of his neck, and jiggled the knob. Maybe it was just a tricky lock. If only he had his set of adventurer’s lockpicks on him. Or maybe the wood had soaked up some of the moisture from the rain and swollen shut, that was perfectly plausible.
‘Well!’ he harrumphed, ‘then I’ll just have to climb out the window. Mightn’t be the most dignified thing I’ve ever done, but let it not be said--’
There was a laugh, rasping and echoing and directionless, lazy and amused. Amused at Howard’s expense. He shivered, but wrenched himself away from the door to stomp over to one of the windows, yanking at the sash. It didn’t move, and the laughter got louder, coalescing, finally, into speech.
‘I don’t think so, squire.’
Howard knew, sickly, exactly who would be there when he turned around, but knowing didn’t stop him flinching when he did. Indeed, there Terry was, lounging and smirking in his biker jacket, helmet held at his side, like a perverse purple orangutan done by Bosch.
‘You!’ His voice cracked, and he scowled. ‘I thought-- I thought the Shaman Council banished you! Set Fossil on you!’
Terry laughed again, and spat casually on the floor. ‘Strategic retreat, ‘s all. You think that overstuffed Bounty bar had anything on me an’ my lads? Hah!’
The unease in Howard’s chest, the foreboding prickling his skin, was condensing into a snooker ball singularity of dread under his sternum, drawing everything tight around it. He gulped in a fortifying breath of musty shop air. ‘That’s all well and good, but if you think I’m staying here to slouch about doing nothing like a grounded child while my-- my friends, my city--’
‘Yeah, you ain’t got a choice, though.’ Terry grinned horribly, gnawing on one fingertip. A demonstratively bored gesture, like a human chewing their nails, except that his fingertip stretched when he drew it away, purple gum snapping off in his mouth where he set to chewing it wetly. Howard nearly gagged.
‘Now look here, sir; your presence here is my fault, and I will be damned if I don’t--’
Terry cut him off with a crowish cackle. ‘Already are, chum! Where d’you think you are? Why d’you reckon I’m here? You’re dead, moron.’
Howard felt the words like small impacts to his sternum, and tried his hardest to stay firm and upright. ‘I’ve been dead, I’ll have you know. Death was not a shop, it was--’ Terry flicked the chewed wad of his own fingertip at Howard, hitting him in the cheek, horrible and slimy.
‘Ain’t feeling well, are you? Little bit funny, hmm? Dizzy? Bit weak? That’s what we call the adjustment process; you’re dead as disco, idiot. S’like you said, it’s down to you I’m here. Well, not strictly here, there. This--’ he flung out his unnaturally long arms, smiling that awful smile, teeth like a mouthful of cracked tombstones-- ‘is what you might call my prison. S’ where they kept me while that nonce Charlie was still on duty.’
He’s back on duty! Howard tried to protest, but the words creaked dusty-dry in his throat, and Terry continued on, waving a hand lazily.
‘So I figured, who better to take my place than my ~liberator? Course, it’ll mostly be just you here, you an’ the rain and these little beauties.’ He patted the horrible doll on her dusty curls. ‘But I reckon my crew’ll find time to come visit now and again, won’t that be nice?’
‘Nice’, Howard echoed, swallowing hard. ‘Yeah.’
Terry grinned again, and Howard flinched back. ‘You can try getting out if you wanna. That ain’t a strictly corporeal living body you’re wearing, but that don’t mean you can’t still wear your fingers down to bloody stumps tryin’a get the windows open.’
Howard couldn’t think of anything smart to say to that. The last time he’d died, it had been a mistake, a bureaucratic error; that had been easy to rail against, to demand Vince come get him. But Terry was right, this was his fault; Howard had been the one who brought him into the world with his selfishness and his jealousy; it was horribly easy to believe that maybe he deserved this. Not even a day ago, he’d been gearing up to try and express to Vince the truth of how he felt about him, and now-- Vince had said he’d forgiven him, that he understood, but how much did that even mean? Howard had killed one of his friends (even if he had come back), had set loose this menace and doomed the Greater London Area. Vince would be better without him, probably, without Howard bringing misery into his life.
Terry was watching with satisfied amusement, and he swung his comically undersized helmet up to perch atop his head. ‘Yeah, ‘s what I thought. See you, moron! I got a delivery to make; gotta keep the storm party going; keep ‘em well stocked up with special k and poppers and E.’
Howard flushed hot suddenly, head snapping up. ‘Fuck off!’ he spat, flipping Terry a pair of furious birds, but he was already gone.
~~~~~~~~~
Vince didn’t give a fuck about the Bellumon. He might have, otherwise; it had showed up like a gargantuan flying snake all in shades of blue, hungry mouth and scales that didn’t seem touched by the rain. It had looked at him with that blue eye like it knew him, and all Vince had wanted was to fly at it, to gouge out that stupid eye, trample it into the mud, but he hadn’t had the energy, somehow.
‘Piss off!’ he’d shouted. ‘Don’t you even look at me, don’t you fucking dare, just go do your thing and then die!’
Dennis had had some quieter words with it, and then off it had fucked to eat the rainclouds or… whatever. Vince was hazy on the details and didn’t give a fuck about that either. Now the shamans were huddled around their table, engaged in some private, worried conversation, and Vince was curled up against Charlie, wrapped in Howard’s thick wool coat. It was ludicrously big on him, lapels sticking out and the tailored structure of the shoulders half-collapsed where Vince’s frame completely failed to fill it out. It made him think of their time at the zoo, how big and broad Howard had got when he finally grew up properly, how it had made Vince even more eager to try and sneak cuddles out of him because it had felt so good to feel small and enveloped in Howard’s sturdy softness. The stinging in his eyes welled up at that thought, tears spilling out into messy hiccoughs as he clutched at the sleeves of the coat, burrowing into Charlie’s reassuringly solid pink body. It wasn’t warm, but at least it was something.
Charlie huffed a discontented noise, sending droplets flying from his Zappa ‘tache. ‘That was cold.’ He curled his amorphous body around Vince a little more firmly. ‘Hella cold, man. Shoulda told you what the plan was.’
If you weren’t familiar with it, Charlie’s voice might have been surprising; a rough tenor, like a chill Californian rocker who’d been smoking at too many festivals for too many years. For Vince, it was a comfort. Not many people could hear Charlie’s voice, but he could, and Charlie’d been his mate since he was little, since he moved to London, he looked after Vince. It had been well weird, going from the jungle where there were always people all around, where he’d sleep with at least one person almost every night, if not a whole pile of them, to London, where it was suddenly just him all alone in his room at night. Knowing Charlie was there looking after him had made sleeping much easier. He had shoeboxes full of Charlie stories, one for the biographical ones that Charlie dictated, and one for the ones he made up when he needed to think through something. Charlie helped him with that too, even when he wasn’t there.
Now Charlie was here, but Howard wasn’t. Vince didn’t know what to do with that. ‘Yeah’, he sniffed. ‘Dunno what I’ll do now; I’m not living with Naboo after this, I can’t-- I can’t-- why didn’t Bollo tell me at least?? We go back, me an’ Bollo, we had all those times at the zoo--’
The tears snuck up on him again, mid-sentence, choking him off, and he shook himself hard, pressing in against Charlie again. Charlie sighed, shaking his head and sending more water droplets scattering from the brim of his hat.
‘I dunno, little dude, maybe he didn’t know? That was fucking harsh. I wouldn’ta done that, and Howard pretty much killed me there.’
‘You know he didn’t mean to!’ Vince cut in desperately. He’d been furious with Howard, part of him still was, but he couldn’t even think of that right now, it was too much. ‘You know he’s just-- he doesn’t think sometimes, he does stupid things cos he’s mad or hurt, he’s-- well, ‘s like me, I guess.’ He ducked his head, chewing on his lip, face flushed tight and prickly under the chill of the air as he thought of all the things he’d never be able to apologise to Howard for, the things he couldn’t set right.
Charlie nodded, a movement that Vince felt through his whole bubblegum body. ‘I know, little dude, I know. Death doesn’t work the same for me anyway, no point holding a grudge. I got bigger things to do. ‘S happened to me before a coupla times anyway, dying and being brought back; nothing too new.’
There was a pause as Vince breathed, trying to get his tears under control, and Charlie looked thoughtful.
‘You could come on the road with me, if you wanted, once that snake thing does its thing’, he volunteered. ‘It’s a good gig; sometimes things get wild, but The Storm’s not bad guys. Lotsa travelling, good parties, bangin’ shows.’
‘Yeah’, Vince sighed, thinking of what a life on the road with Charlie would be like. Vince had never thought about being a roadie; he was Vince Noir, Rock and Roll Star, after all, but maybe that’d be alright. Better than living on his own someplace; he couldn’t think of anything worse than that. And then a thought occurred to him, small and tentative as a whistle in the fog, and he sucked in a breath, his eyes going wide. ‘Charlie?’ His voice came out very quiet.
‘Sup?’
‘You said-- you’ve died and been brought back before.’
‘Mmhmm. You should know, you’ve written ‘em all down. Or most of ‘em.’
‘Yeah.’ Vince nodded, his heart starting to beat hard. Howard had suggested it earlier, sort of, but Howard didn’t know about these things, didn’t know how they worked; Charlie did. ‘So what if-- you’ve got magic, like, like-- I mean, you’re not-- could we write a Howard story? If someone like Howard can write you out of existence, the two of us-- we can write him back, right? Surely. I can’t-- I ain’t much good at lots of things, but I can do that, I can tell stories. Yeah? The-- the thing, the Bellumon, it’s doin’ its job, don’t matter what we do now, right?’
Charlie made a noise, deep down in his bubblegum belly, rough and thoughtful. ‘Don’t want you getting your hopes up now, little dude.’
But Vince’s tummy was in knots, the kind of fizz that could be excitement or anxiety in equal parts starting up at the base of his skull. Hope was shouldering its way in despite the rain. ‘I know, I know, I know, but-- me an’ Howard, we’re not quite normal either, are we? Howard always thought we were just regular people living regular lives, but we ain’t really, are we? Anything’s a story if you make it. An’ you can make anything better if you just tell it different, I do that all the time.’
And at that, Charlie smiled down at Vince, shaking his head a little. It was the same look he’d given Vince when he was small, Vince remembered, before Vince really knew how people worked. ‘Yeah, yeah, alright. Can’t hurt to have a bash, right? It’ll take some black magic, but I got some dudes I can hit up if I need to for that.’ He produced a mobile from somewhere about his person, and then tucked it back away.
Vince couldn’t help it, he burst into a fresh wave of tears and flung himself at Charlie, wrapping his arms around as much of him as he could, squeezing hard and breathing in the comforting sugary smell. ‘You’re a genius! C’mon, right, what do we need?’
Over at the table, amongst the group of shamans, Bollo looked over at Vince and Charlie, and shook his head down at Naboo, grunting a little and frowning at him. He did not say that he had a bad feeling about this.