Fic: The Logistics of a Cuddly Bear Mating With A Peacock (5/10)
The Logistics Of A Cuddly Bear Mating With A Peacock (5/10)
by me, doctorpancakes
Fandom: Mighty Boosh
Pairing: Howard/Vince
Rating: PG-13, this chapter
Word Count: 1530, this chapter (6629, so far)
Warnings: illustrations
Disclaimer: I own a bag of frozen shrimp and a mild case of heartburn, but not the characters of Boosh or Barley.
Author's Notes: Illustrations!
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
“I’ve got something really special for you, Howard,” said Lester Corncrake, noted jazz-fancier, brandishing an especially dusty LP. Howard sneezed. “The only copy known to exist of Larry ‘Toast Soldier’ Corrigan’s fabled Bebop Breakfast album.”
“You’re going to give me a dance lesson to Bebop Breakfast?” stuttered Howard in jazz-fanboy disbelief.
“Believe it, Howard,” nodded Lester. “You are about to be witness to one of the greatest, rarest jazz recordings of all time. Strap on your jazz goggles, baby.”
The speakers crackled, hissed, and popped in response to the sensitive needle’s journey over the near-pristine vinyl. The two men sat in reverent silence as they waited for the music to begin. It began with a saxophone solo. A very familiar saxophone solo, thought Howard, but he attempted to dispel the thought. It was not long, however, before the truth became painfully clear.
“You know, this isn’t as bebop as I seem to remember, when I played with old Toast Soldier back in ‘59,” observed Lester, listening intently.
“Uhh, that’s because this is Careless Whisper,” cringed Howard.
“You sure this isn’t Blue Rondo a la Burnt Toast?” asked Lester, straining against the sound of George Michael’s soulful vocals.
“Definitely Careless Whisper,” said Howard.
“Well, nuts,” said Lester, snapping his fingers in defeat. “One of them hooligans at the record store’s gone and played a prank on me! Guess I can’t show you any of my groovy jazz moves then.”
“Sorry Lester,” shrugged Howard sadly.
“Though I suppose...” said Lester, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “there is the business of you’re gonna have to kiss that girlfriend of yours, and I don’t suppose you’ll have got a lot of practice with that either, so I could show you - ”
“That... really won’t be necessary,” interrupted Howard, flustered. “I think that’s one thing I definitely don’t need lessons for.”
---
Arguably - not even arguably, factually - the best bit of doing a big shop was lunch. And so the three intrepid lads - some more intrepid than others - waddled into a small eatery, laden with shopping bags.
“Uhh, Vince, just because you’re having a gay wedding doesn’t mean we have to turn into women,” grumbled Dan, as they seated themselves in the obnoxiously girly tea room that Vince had chosen for lunch.
(Leroy thought it was funny.)
“Hey, nothing girly about the jacket we picked out for you for the wedding. Or the matching braces. Besides, nothing about fairy cakes says you have to be a woman to eat them, either” countered Vince. “Look, one of them’s got little frosting bumblebees on it. What’s girly about bumblebees? Most bumblebees are miserable bastards, in real life.”
Dan sighed, and said nothing.
“So I thought that after lunch we could check out Todd the giraffe’s new London boutique,” said Vince, plucking the delicate sugar blossom from the top of his fairy cake. “I hear it’s well genius.”
“Oh really?” asked Dan, immediately regretting having done so.
“See, it all started when Todd met this Canadian bear named Maria,” said Vince.
“They met in a reverse bikram yoga class - that’s where you do yoga in a really, really cold room - and it turns out they got on brilliantly! But Todd’s mates reckoned that it wouldn’t be long before he realized that one of the foremost authorities on menswear had nothing in common with a small brown bear from the Canadian Rockies. She didn’t even wear clothes, how could it possibly work out between them?”
“But Todd’s a giraffe, he doesn’t wear clothes either,” observed Dan, poking at his cake’s lavender frosting.
“Todd became a clothes-wearing giraffe pretty soon after business took off - how could he not want to wear his own genius designs?” shrugged Vince.
“Also, why does that plothole bother me more than the logistics of a bear mating with a giraffe?” mumbled Dan.
“Because that’s personal, Dan. I didn’t ask,” eyerolled Vince.
“Of course,” said Dan.
“I mean, I have my theories,” added Vince, with a lascivious nod. “Anyway, turns out Todd and Maria ended up getting married, and they’re really happy together; who would have thought it, right?
“And Maria’s got these preternatural superpowers when it comes to managing business - “
“Even though she was born and raised in a forest,” interjected Dan.
“I was born and raised in a forest, Dan,” said Vince.
“And are you good at business management?” asked Dan.
“Nah, I’m a bit simple,” smiled Vince. “But Maria’s an absolute genius at it! So she takes care of managing the business, while Todd handles the creative end of it. It’s perfect!”
“Right,” nodded Dan. “So, the moral of the story is that sometimes two very different people can fall in love and turn out to be perfect for each other in spite of their differences, kind of like how some people might not ‘get’ you and Howard, but you love each other very much.”
Vince blinked.
“Actually, I just brought it up because it was apparently Maria’s idea to open a boutique in London,” he said, peeling back the pale blue paper of another cake.
---
Meanwhile, Howard - not quite ready to trust Vince’s sartorial judgment - had enlisted Bollo to help in his search for what on earth he was going to wear to the wedding.
“What about this one?” asked Howard, flipping to the next swatch in his book of corduroys.
“Not so much, Harold,” said Bollo, shaking his head gravely.
“Howard,” sighed Howard.
“Howard,” shrugged Bollo. “That brown wash you right out, make your eyes look well swampy.”
“You’ve said that about the last five swatches, Bollo,” moaned Howard. “Look, if you’re bored, just say so.”
“Cheers Harold,” said Bollo, patting Howard on the shoulder and standing. “Bollo going to go play tetris and listen to happy hardcore.”
“Fine,” sighed Howard, flipping idly through his catalogue of browns.
It was shortly after Bollo left - and Howard could just hear the thumping strains of obnoxious electronic glee from Bollo’s room down the corridor - that Vince rolled in, looking thoroughly blissful, basking in the afterglow of a good day’s shopping.
“Have a good shop, Little Man?” asked Howard.
“Oh Howard, it was genius! You don’t know what you were missing,” said Vince, his eyes gazing off into his little dreamland of vintage boots and cake.
“Found something ridiculous for the wedding, I take it?” asked Howard, attempting a surreptitious peek at Vince’s impressive haul.
“Nah, that’s still looking hopeless,” Vince frowned.
“Then what’s all this?” puzzled Howard, eyeing the seemingly endless array of bags strewn about the room.
“Oh yeah, turns out I needed these,” smiled Vince.
Howard sighed. Of course Vince needed all this. As far as Howard was concerned, all they needed was each other, a lifetime supply of tea, and a stack of jazz records. But Vince was not such a man of simple pleasures. Even if he was, you know, simple.
(Vince, on the other hand, thought that Howard was not as complicated a man as he thought he was, but that there was something comforting in the way he smelled a little like black tea and antique books, though he would likely never say so.)
Howard was uncertain how long he had been lost in his philosophical reverie, but when he surfaced, it became evident that Vince had been excitedly sharing an anecdote about his day for some time.
“… almost fist-fought a ten-year-old girl over a pair of drainpipes!” he exclaimed. “Dan had to drag her off me; she was vicious, all fangs and claws, it was awful! That’s how I got the bruise, anyway. Then after lunch, we stopped at that market across from the tube station, and we ran into Henry, you know, the osprey, the one with the voice just like that bloke off the Dragon’s Den? Turns out he’s moved to Rutland because of his allergy to breakfast cereal…”
As he listened to Vince’s story, Howard squeezed his way in between the plentiful shopping to snuggle in beside Vince, sneaking an arm around him. Vince nestled into his side, never stopping his endless stream of conversation.
“… then we met up with Jones, who stopped to pick up some teeny-tiny dungarees after his gig, and apparently he found this nappy bag that also has a pocket for his LPs, and a special clip on the inside for hanging your headphones. It’s well brilliant. But how was your day?” asked Vince.
“It was all right, yeah,” nodded Howard. “Lester came round, we got into some serious grooves, it was pretty dynamite stuff.”
“Genius,” said Vince sleepily. “I’m dying for a tea, how about you?”
“That’d be lovely,” murmured Howard.
“Brilliant,” beamed Vince, affixing a tender kiss to Howard’s cheek. “Cheers, love.”
“I’ll make it then, shall I?” sighed Howard, padding off to the kitchen.
Chapter Six
by me, doctorpancakes
Fandom: Mighty Boosh
Pairing: Howard/Vince
Rating: PG-13, this chapter
Word Count: 1530, this chapter (6629, so far)
Warnings: illustrations
Disclaimer: I own a bag of frozen shrimp and a mild case of heartburn, but not the characters of Boosh or Barley.
Author's Notes: Illustrations!
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
“I’ve got something really special for you, Howard,” said Lester Corncrake, noted jazz-fancier, brandishing an especially dusty LP. Howard sneezed. “The only copy known to exist of Larry ‘Toast Soldier’ Corrigan’s fabled Bebop Breakfast album.”
“You’re going to give me a dance lesson to Bebop Breakfast?” stuttered Howard in jazz-fanboy disbelief.
“Believe it, Howard,” nodded Lester. “You are about to be witness to one of the greatest, rarest jazz recordings of all time. Strap on your jazz goggles, baby.”
The speakers crackled, hissed, and popped in response to the sensitive needle’s journey over the near-pristine vinyl. The two men sat in reverent silence as they waited for the music to begin. It began with a saxophone solo. A very familiar saxophone solo, thought Howard, but he attempted to dispel the thought. It was not long, however, before the truth became painfully clear.
“You know, this isn’t as bebop as I seem to remember, when I played with old Toast Soldier back in ‘59,” observed Lester, listening intently.
“Uhh, that’s because this is Careless Whisper,” cringed Howard.
“You sure this isn’t Blue Rondo a la Burnt Toast?” asked Lester, straining against the sound of George Michael’s soulful vocals.
“Definitely Careless Whisper,” said Howard.
“Well, nuts,” said Lester, snapping his fingers in defeat. “One of them hooligans at the record store’s gone and played a prank on me! Guess I can’t show you any of my groovy jazz moves then.”
“Sorry Lester,” shrugged Howard sadly.
“Though I suppose...” said Lester, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “there is the business of you’re gonna have to kiss that girlfriend of yours, and I don’t suppose you’ll have got a lot of practice with that either, so I could show you - ”
“That... really won’t be necessary,” interrupted Howard, flustered. “I think that’s one thing I definitely don’t need lessons for.”
---
Arguably - not even arguably, factually - the best bit of doing a big shop was lunch. And so the three intrepid lads - some more intrepid than others - waddled into a small eatery, laden with shopping bags.
“Uhh, Vince, just because you’re having a gay wedding doesn’t mean we have to turn into women,” grumbled Dan, as they seated themselves in the obnoxiously girly tea room that Vince had chosen for lunch.
(Leroy thought it was funny.)
“Hey, nothing girly about the jacket we picked out for you for the wedding. Or the matching braces. Besides, nothing about fairy cakes says you have to be a woman to eat them, either” countered Vince. “Look, one of them’s got little frosting bumblebees on it. What’s girly about bumblebees? Most bumblebees are miserable bastards, in real life.”
Dan sighed, and said nothing.
“So I thought that after lunch we could check out Todd the giraffe’s new London boutique,” said Vince, plucking the delicate sugar blossom from the top of his fairy cake. “I hear it’s well genius.”
“Oh really?” asked Dan, immediately regretting having done so.
“See, it all started when Todd met this Canadian bear named Maria,” said Vince.
“They met in a reverse bikram yoga class - that’s where you do yoga in a really, really cold room - and it turns out they got on brilliantly! But Todd’s mates reckoned that it wouldn’t be long before he realized that one of the foremost authorities on menswear had nothing in common with a small brown bear from the Canadian Rockies. She didn’t even wear clothes, how could it possibly work out between them?”
“But Todd’s a giraffe, he doesn’t wear clothes either,” observed Dan, poking at his cake’s lavender frosting.
“Todd became a clothes-wearing giraffe pretty soon after business took off - how could he not want to wear his own genius designs?” shrugged Vince.
“Also, why does that plothole bother me more than the logistics of a bear mating with a giraffe?” mumbled Dan.
“Because that’s personal, Dan. I didn’t ask,” eyerolled Vince.
“Of course,” said Dan.
“I mean, I have my theories,” added Vince, with a lascivious nod. “Anyway, turns out Todd and Maria ended up getting married, and they’re really happy together; who would have thought it, right?
“And Maria’s got these preternatural superpowers when it comes to managing business - “
“Even though she was born and raised in a forest,” interjected Dan.
“I was born and raised in a forest, Dan,” said Vince.
“And are you good at business management?” asked Dan.
“Nah, I’m a bit simple,” smiled Vince. “But Maria’s an absolute genius at it! So she takes care of managing the business, while Todd handles the creative end of it. It’s perfect!”
“Right,” nodded Dan. “So, the moral of the story is that sometimes two very different people can fall in love and turn out to be perfect for each other in spite of their differences, kind of like how some people might not ‘get’ you and Howard, but you love each other very much.”
Vince blinked.
“Actually, I just brought it up because it was apparently Maria’s idea to open a boutique in London,” he said, peeling back the pale blue paper of another cake.
---
Meanwhile, Howard - not quite ready to trust Vince’s sartorial judgment - had enlisted Bollo to help in his search for what on earth he was going to wear to the wedding.
“What about this one?” asked Howard, flipping to the next swatch in his book of corduroys.
“Not so much, Harold,” said Bollo, shaking his head gravely.
“Howard,” sighed Howard.
“Howard,” shrugged Bollo. “That brown wash you right out, make your eyes look well swampy.”
“You’ve said that about the last five swatches, Bollo,” moaned Howard. “Look, if you’re bored, just say so.”
“Cheers Harold,” said Bollo, patting Howard on the shoulder and standing. “Bollo going to go play tetris and listen to happy hardcore.”
“Fine,” sighed Howard, flipping idly through his catalogue of browns.
It was shortly after Bollo left - and Howard could just hear the thumping strains of obnoxious electronic glee from Bollo’s room down the corridor - that Vince rolled in, looking thoroughly blissful, basking in the afterglow of a good day’s shopping.
“Have a good shop, Little Man?” asked Howard.
“Oh Howard, it was genius! You don’t know what you were missing,” said Vince, his eyes gazing off into his little dreamland of vintage boots and cake.
“Found something ridiculous for the wedding, I take it?” asked Howard, attempting a surreptitious peek at Vince’s impressive haul.
“Nah, that’s still looking hopeless,” Vince frowned.
“Then what’s all this?” puzzled Howard, eyeing the seemingly endless array of bags strewn about the room.
“Oh yeah, turns out I needed these,” smiled Vince.
Howard sighed. Of course Vince needed all this. As far as Howard was concerned, all they needed was each other, a lifetime supply of tea, and a stack of jazz records. But Vince was not such a man of simple pleasures. Even if he was, you know, simple.
(Vince, on the other hand, thought that Howard was not as complicated a man as he thought he was, but that there was something comforting in the way he smelled a little like black tea and antique books, though he would likely never say so.)
Howard was uncertain how long he had been lost in his philosophical reverie, but when he surfaced, it became evident that Vince had been excitedly sharing an anecdote about his day for some time.
“… almost fist-fought a ten-year-old girl over a pair of drainpipes!” he exclaimed. “Dan had to drag her off me; she was vicious, all fangs and claws, it was awful! That’s how I got the bruise, anyway. Then after lunch, we stopped at that market across from the tube station, and we ran into Henry, you know, the osprey, the one with the voice just like that bloke off the Dragon’s Den? Turns out he’s moved to Rutland because of his allergy to breakfast cereal…”
As he listened to Vince’s story, Howard squeezed his way in between the plentiful shopping to snuggle in beside Vince, sneaking an arm around him. Vince nestled into his side, never stopping his endless stream of conversation.
“… then we met up with Jones, who stopped to pick up some teeny-tiny dungarees after his gig, and apparently he found this nappy bag that also has a pocket for his LPs, and a special clip on the inside for hanging your headphones. It’s well brilliant. But how was your day?” asked Vince.
“It was all right, yeah,” nodded Howard. “Lester came round, we got into some serious grooves, it was pretty dynamite stuff.”
“Genius,” said Vince sleepily. “I’m dying for a tea, how about you?”
“That’d be lovely,” murmured Howard.
“Brilliant,” beamed Vince, affixing a tender kiss to Howard’s cheek. “Cheers, love.”
“I’ll make it then, shall I?” sighed Howard, padding off to the kitchen.
Chapter Six