Fic: Reality Mix
Title: Reality Mix
Authors: Calistomyth and Knightaimee
Pairing: Vince/Howard, Noel/Julian, Julian/Julia, Noel/Dee (all implied)
Summary: This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
Word Count: ~3640
Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, fluff,
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: major character death, swears, implied het, tissue warning.
Disclaimer: We do not own the Boosh but we do own our own molten sexual tension :D
Author notes: Endless thanks to our beta Sisidraig!
Please heed the tissue warning (certain parts are based on genuine experience) and let us know if you think the rating should be increased. Though there is nothing graphic, it is intended to be sad. On the other hand, it does have a debatably happy ending.
Bonus points (cyber hugs) for anyone who can guess where any of the interview references are from. :)
*
"It’s cancer, Noel."
"Christ."
"Yeah…"
"Not... not the good kind then?" Noel clings at straws.
"There’s a good kind?" Julian doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
There’s a silence, which speaks louder than any voice.
"Are you having treatment?" Noel enquires.
"There is none."
"What?"
"There is no treatment."
"But that’s ridiculous, of course there’s treatment, Ju!" Noel is angry.
"There’s nothing they can do."
"They don’t know nothing!" Noel fumes, "I know more than them. What about chemo? Radio? Surgery?"
"It wouldn’t work. There’s no point." Julian maintains.
"Stop being thick, of course there’s a point!" snaps Noel.
"It’s too risky to operate, Noel."
The raven-haired man glares at his friend’s face; the face which has been growing ever more gaunt and with this diagnosis would never again look healthy.
"So…why don’t they pump you full of drugs? That’s what they always do!"
"Cheers, Noel." Julian interjects.
Noel stalls. "What?"
"Thanks for the support." He mutters, bitterly.
Noel loses his tongue but realises the pain in his chest. Like a steel bar had been heartlessly rammed into his torso and was now being wriggled about. The nervous butterflies from before had evolved into giant cold crabs, clawing at his insides, looking for an escape. He wished it was trapped wind.
The rage dies away, and Noel’s eyes begin to prickle. "I’m sorry," he cracks.
Julian sighs. "Me too."
*
Running parallel in another universe, a different plot develops.
*
"Hey, Howard."
"Hey, Vince."
"Alright?" Vince asks, studying his friend’s red-nose, wet-eyes and a tissue clasped in one hand. The electro poof had decided to materialise from his room to check up on the Jazz Maverick after hearing what sounded like an explosion but was actually only a sneezing fit from the Northerner.
Howard lets out a long sigh, "I’m tired, little man."
Vince considers this for a moment. "Why don’t you have a little sleepy then?"
"It’s three o’ clock in the afternoon, Vince."
"Yeah, but you’ve been up since five this morning," Vince pointed out. Howard sighs again. He brings his fingers up to his face to massage his eyelids. Vince, having known Howard for a very long time, knew that inside his mind was a mental battle: part of him saying he needs rest, the other half feeling guilty that it would mean missing the best part of the day. Vince tries to offer a compromise, "Who says our body clocks have to fit in with the shop working times?"
"Well yours certainly doesn’t. On Friday you didn’t turn up at the shop until an hour before we closed."
"I had to catch up on sleep somehow, Howard. Work is dry but that all-nighter was like a cool glass of lemonade after enduring a dessert."
"I think you mean desert." Howard corrects.
"No, I don’t. I mean like cheesecake and stuff; makes you thirsty." Vince explains with a cheeky grin.
"As clever as this metaphor sounds, Vince, I’m not sure what it’s got to do with you not showing up at work." The older man counters as another pair of crow’s feet forms.
"What I’m trying to say is that it’s a Sunday afternoon. If you want to go to bed then there’s nothing wrong with going to bed- that’s what Sundays are for."
Howard still doesn’t look convinced.
"It’s just a nap, Howard," Vince reasons.
"I’m not old."
"You are a bit," Vince remarks.
"We’re the same age!" Howard insists.
"That’s not the point. It’s all about the inner child, Howard!"
"What are you, five?" says Howard
"Fifteen, actually. Naboo worked it out." Vince is grinning. "It was genius!"
"Great, so if you’re a pubescent teenager then what am I?"
"You’re about sixty five," Vince predicts.
"What?" the small eyed man shrieks.
"I’m kidding. Howard, stop fretting- it’s only a nap," reassures Vince.
"I don’t think I’m that tired any more," Howard grumbles.
"Are you kidding?" the self-proclaimed Prince of Camden hollers, "are those shopping trolleys under your eyes?"
Howard gives Vince a look. "Piss off."
Vince has the decency to look upset.
"Fine." He storms out of the room.
Ten minutes, seven successive sneezes and five tissues later, Vince decides to take pity on Howard, consenting to making him a cup of tea. Vince’s voice is still quietly berating as he chastises his friend from the kitchen, yet Howard can detect unspoken humour in his eyes whenever he glances over. Vince sets the steaming beverage in front of his best friend and takes a seat next to him; their shoulders touch. Howard doesn’t have the energy to shove him off.
Vince apologises and it feels strange to Howard.
So, he responds, "You don’t bloody have to, you berk," not moving, save for his small eyes darting, and his chest rising and falling.
They don’t say anything else as the seconds tick by, unchecked, on Howard’s ancient wrist-watch.
Vince suddenly reaches forwards and plucks Howard’s neglected tea from the table. It’s almost cold but there’s still some heat remaining; it flows promptly to Vince’s palm from the warm porcelain. He hands it to Howard with a tiny smile.
*
Noel tries to sleep in the sticky, plastic, dark blue chair next to Julian’s mint green bed. He vaguely wonders who decided on the colour schemes as he awkwardly leans over and rests his head next to Julian’s unmoving elbow. The blanket has small squares cut out of it- a standard pattern for hospital fabrics, apparently. It’s the same on the bandages, and the plasters, and the gowns. He wonders why. He wonders about its practicality.
Julian keeps whimpering. Pain filled gasps accompanied with a finger twitch, the sudden jerk of a leg or a grimace on his face. Rarely all three - he struggles to coordinate.
Sometimes, he can open his eyes. Silent looks; pleading for Noel to read his thoughts and understand. Noel is scared. He can’t understand. He can’t face it. It’s not real. Please let me be dreaming. He wants to watch the sun blow up, while he’s playing tennis. Then he’ll say "Oh that’s it" and he'll know he’s dreaming.
But for some reason they have reached the end of the world with the sun still intact. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
Noel cringes in sympathy as Julian moans. It’s the early hours of Sunday morning. Nurses are few and far between at this time.
Still, he gently squeezes Julian’s hand as if to explain. "I’ll be right back, Ju."
Noel steps out into the dimly lit corridor. The eerie glow from a few dying halogen strip lights illuminates the thin corridor. There are heavy fire doors placed at set distances along it. He peers through their glass windows and even with the metal lines partially obscuring his vision, he can tell that the corridor carries on for a very long distance.
After a time, he finds a nurse.
She can’t help. "I’m afraid we can’t put his morphine level up until the doctor signs for it, sir."
"Right… and when will that be?"
"First thing tomorrow morning," the nurse answers.
"What?" Noel howls.
"I’m sorry, sir," she consoles.
"Can’t you just sign it? He’s in pain. He’s dying for fucks sake."
"I’m not qualified to, sir."
"Those doctors look about seventeen!" And they do. They seem fresh out of medical school; some of them appear to be falling faster than their patients…"How could they know what they’re doing more than you? Surely you’re old enough to have the experience, right?" Noel persists. "I thought nurses were meant to care for people."
"I’m afraid you’ll have to take it out with the higher ups that invented paper work and the suing culture." Noel thinks she is only half joking.
"Fucking hell…"
"I really am very sorry, sir," she maintains.
Something in Noel’s mind is telling him not to, but he’s desperate. He can’t help but blurt out the question: "Don’t you know who he is?!"
The nurse doesn’t even bristle. Her tone remains calm. She’s not even angry. It’s some ungodly hour on a Sunday and she still manages to be professional.
"He’s a very sick man, who needs his friend to keep him company and to stop harassing the nurse." Noel wonders how she could know what Julian is thinking when he, himself, cannot. "The morphine levels he is on will suffice for the night, Mr Fielding." The nurse is kind. Noel doesn’t understand how it is possible to be so kind when so much shit is happening. He wonders how anyone could work here; no smiling faces; no loyalty, recognition, little gratitude, just sick people crying out in agony.
Everything is wrong. He hates it. He wants to run. He could run. He could pretend to be climbing Everest. He could move to St Lucia. He could go live with Inuits.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he goes back to the sticky blue chair, next to Julian’s mint green bed.
*
Howard sneezes.
"What number are we on now, Howard?" comes the gentle cajoling voice that Howard has become largely acquainted with as of recently.
"Fuck you, Vince," says Howard, not missing a beat. Howard’s voice lacks any vigour or vehemence the words should come with. He sounds tired and strained.
Vince chuckles, safe in the knowledge that it’s all in jest. He emerges in the living room; he smiles and rolls his eyes at Howard’s prone form flopped haphazardly over the sofa, limbs star-fished.
He approaches the back of the sofa, and looks down at Howard. His eyes are honest.
Vince opens his mouth, and says something that Howard thinks he immediately recognises, but catches himself: No, it’s not the same. It seems to be universes apart from what he had expected.
"You’re all right, Howard." Vince smiles.
He jumps onto the sofa next to Howard, who in response lets out a self-pitying moan and moves to accommodate the smaller man. Vince grabs the remote control and switches the dvd player on. Colubus the Crab plays.
A couple of hours later, Vince asks Howard a platitude and receives no answer. He lifts himself from where he had been leaning on the maverick, glancing at him. Grabbing a blanket from the back of the sofa he rests it over Howard’s sleeping form.
Sometimes Vince can be the adult.
*
Noel holds it together for Julian.
Not that he thinks Julian knows this. Julian seems too far gone to be aware of his surroundings. The drugs have stolen him. He’s not Julian anymore. Julian would know that Noel was hurting. Julian would be there for him. Julian would be there for his boys. Julian would jump out of the bed demanding to know where his wife was. Julian wouldn’t let the doctors and nurses do these horrible things to him. He wouldn’t.
Noel holds it together for Dee. She loves Julian too. It hurts her as much as it hurts him. Maybe.
Noel holds it together for Julia and the boys. He sees Julia standing at the side of Julian’s hospital bed, sobbing. Noel thinks he should be there for her, now Julian can’t.
Noel offers to look after the boys. He and Dee take them to the park and have a picnic. They eat jam sandwiches and Haribo’s Fantasy Mix. They push the boys on the swings and spin them on the roundabout until they’re nearly sick. Children again, for an afternoon.
*
Embracing lightness is not one of Howard’s natural abilities.
He is into Hamlet, philosophy, poetry, unrequited love, literature, tea, brown, and getting into trouble with individuals from even the coldest and most distant reaches of the universe. Consequently, Vince’s perpetual duty is to coax all the lightness in the world to creep just that little bit closer to Howard, encouraging it, until it can brush its multitude of timid fingertips upon Howard’s worried brow. It allows Howard to slip into synchronisation with him. It secures the balance, the rightness of the universe; here is where no differences seem to stand between them. Nothing is questioned.
They tend to crimp until dawn during times like this.
At times, the transience of Howard’s borrowed optimism is plain. Yet at others, it clings to him, or he to it, and it seems everlasting. Vince hopes the latter will happen today but he never can be too sure. For now, Vince has only just managed to gently erode the edges of Howard’s hostility throughout the course of the Jazz Maverick’s Man Flu and this often appears to be enough.
Still, Vince would do anything for Howard. He has done so for the immeasurable amount of time they’ve known each other and so does not stop here.
He knows of a way to get Howard to fully commit to frivolity and the carefree aspects of life and to forget tragedy and hopelessness, dullness and the same old hot beverage he’d been drinking for years.
Satsuma fights.
Howard was experiencing another day of drowsiness, when Vince emerged from the bathroom alongside the scents of whatever shampoo he was using these days. He thinks he can smell mango - or is it strawberry? It’s probably both.
Vince knew that an oft-felt side effect of Man Flu was indeed melodrama and knew that very soon his best friend would abandon all feelings of lethargy when his mind was redirected elsewhere, anywhere away from his illness.
"Alright?" Vince smiles, rubbing his wet hair with a towel.
Howard groans and tries to sneeze but doesn’t quite manage it.
Then: "You?"
"Not bad," Vince replies, his smile lingering a bit too long for Howard’s liking. He then swiftly disappears into his room.
Only to return carrying four Satsumas.
Howard feels his brow crease in perplexity.
"Vince, what are you doing-?" A Satsuma hits him squarely on the jaw.
The laughter in Howard’s tiny eyes immediately flares up, the flipping of a switch. "Ouch! Oh, you’ll pay for that, little man." Standing and removing his angry muffin cardigan, he stumbles towards their basket of Satsumas and grabs a handful. Vince has already run into the front room, standing by the window, preparing to throw a second. Howard poises a Satsuma in the throwing position.
"Prepare for the beating of your life, sir!"
*
Noel hates this. Lack of control, lack of comfort, the general lack of life. The same stale air seems to be being breathed in and out, over and over. It's killing them.
You can never tell what time of day it is. The dark windows are covered in blinds, which are often drawn to allow the patients to sleep whatever hours they choose.
Julian never chooses. He’s drugged to sleep on a daily basis. If he wasn't robbed of enough already, his free will was slowly disappearing, too. Soon ... well, soon there would be nothing left at all.
Apparently, Julia has put on some jazz music to keep Julian company while he has no visitors. Noel promptly switches it off as he sits next to him.
"What have I told you? I don't want you listening to that rubbish."
Noel looks to Julian's ashen face and was astonished to find the eyes cracked open and gazing at him. Noel wonders what it might mean that Julian is now more lucid and compos mentis than he had been for the past two months. He smiles with false bravery.
"You're going to have to listen to me instead. Hope that's alright, cos you don't really have a choice." Noel feels awkward. His best friend is lying in a hospital bed, dying, and he can't even crack a decent joke. Julian's eyes close and Noel tenses in horror but, then, when they reopen a fraction, he releases a breath he didn't realise he was holding. It appears to take a considerable amount of energy for him for open his eyes even the smallest amount. Noel appreciates the effort, even if Julian seems ready to give up.
"So, it’s about..." Noel quickly grabs his phone out of his pocket, "three fifteen on a Sunday. Oh, don't start telling me off about having my mobile on, Ju; all the doctor's have theirs on. It’s a waste of time and money putting up those signs telling us to turn them off. They're just whinging on about it for no reason... Probably cos they're jealous of our social lives or something; don’t want to know how much they’re missing out on by working all the time. You know what those academics are like!”
There's another silence, filled with distant noises from the rest of the hospital. Breaths rattle their escape through the cracked lips of the patients’ dry, open mouths. There are whirring noises from the breathing apparatus, beeping from the ECG’s, and a continuous humming of hushed voices.
How many other people are having conversations like this? Noel thinks. He racks his brain, trying to find something else to talk about. He knows that nothing needs to be said, but there’s a void that he feels must be filled with his voice. He thinks of past conversations; meaningless but oh so important. There’s no point in Noel telling Julian that the green hospital sheets aren’t his colour. There’s no point in saying who was winning in the football that afternoon. Noel sees little point in explaining the current complexities of everyday life; they do not compare. They are hardly consequential in comparison.
Regardless, Noel can think of nothing else to talk about.
"You know, those green hospital sheets really aren’t your colour." Noel cracks a sideways smile, taking a seat in the dark blue chair. Julian gazes at him, eyes laughing: piss off. Noel’s heart leaps for joy at the response. Part of him thinks that his overactive imagination dreamt up his dying friend’s reaction but a bigger part tells him to believe. "They should offer a range, you know? Navy blue, rustic red, pretty lilac… Hey- that colour would look great! Though, you’d prefer brown, right? Paranoid nutmeg or something…" He forces out a chuckle, acting more confident than he feels.
Julian just lies there, his face ashen, bedraggled hair motionless on the hospital pillow and small, dark eyes not even trying to focus anymore. The perfect picture of a dying man lay before Noel and he was making small talk? A sob escapes, and tears jump down his own cheeks.
"Sorry- I’m sorry." Noel furiously wipes at his face with the sleeve of his own black jacket. He knows that if Julian could speak he would helpfully point out the box of tissues on this bedside table but Julian can’t speak, so Noel doesn’t reach out for them. "Christ. Sorry. I promised myself I wasn’t going to-" He cuts himself off mid sentence and covers his face with his shaking hands. He concentrates on quietening his shuddering breaths. He pushes the heel of his hands to his eyes and lets out a heavy sigh before pushing them back through his own hair, ruffling it.
"I need to wash my hair." Noel blurts out. He sniffs and offers a watery smile to Julian’s non-judgemental face. "Yours could do with a rinse, too, Ju. I could ask that nice nurse you fancy to do it?" More smiles. "I could do it for you?"
Julian just looks at him. Noel doesn’t understand the response. He can’t think about how Julian might have replied. Even his own imagination has abandoned him now.
"Shall I get us some warm water? And shampoo?" Noel studies Julian’s face for any flicker of emotion that might indicate the answers to these questions. He’s about to rise from the chair to call a nurse when something stops him.
No.
They watch each other. No one has spoken, yet they both understand.
"Maybe we’ll do it later, eh?" Noel suggests, trying to stay upbeat; positive.
Don’t be stupid. The younger man feels his throat tighten.
"You’ll be ok, Ju." No matter what, it’s going to be ok; everything works out in the end.
Don’t lie.
They wait; one for a revelation, the other a miracle, which would never come. The latter sits with his fingers twisting, wringing and pulling at the black band worn on his left wrist. He shuffles, crossing and uncrossing his legs.
"I don’t know what to say." Noel mutters. "Of all the times to be speechless…" He tugs at a loose thread on his red drainpipes. "I need a drink," he groans with another half smile. He proceeds to chew on his bottom lip and crosses his legs once more.
"It’s not so bad here- not really." Noel rambles, "It could be worse, anyway."
How?
"I mean, we could be stuck in some stuffy recording studio with snotty business men breathing down our necks," Noel knows he is making no sense. "At least the doctor’s don’t walk in at inappropriate times, eh, Julian?" Another snort of laughter escapes as a sob.
And they stare at each other; little more left to be said.
"I love you, Julian."
I’m sorry.
The rugged man’s eyes close.
Noel timidly grabs Julian’s hand; is it allowed?
Julian lets out a final agonised breath. Noel weeps.
*
After what seems like eternity, but was in fact only twenty minutes, Howard and Vince call a truce. They fall together onto the double bed, not caring that they are covered in satsuma juice or that they should be in their own beds. Howard doesn’t care that Vince is cuddling him. Vince doesn’t care that Howard has managed to trap his hair underneath his torso, hence making it very difficult to move without feeling something rip from his head. Nothing matters apart from the closeness. Nothing matters. And it is perfect.
Vince comfortably grabs Howard’s hand; it is allowed.
Howard lets out a final contented sigh. Howard and Vince sleep.