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booshslashhavenTitle: Enigma Variations, Coda, 8/?: Cake
Summary: There is cake. And more cake.
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Length: about 1520 words
Spoilers: Vince tells the story of how he and Howard got to Xooberon
Disclaimer: These are not my characters. I know them so well, but still I don’t own them and they’re not making me any money, they’re just making me happy
Notes: This future is entirely imaginary, but magic tomato soup cake is real. I found a recipe on the kookychow blog on Tumblr and it just seemed like the sort of thing Naboo would bake when he was high...
Enigma Variations, Coda, 8/?: Cake
‘More cake?’ Naboo pushes the loaded serving plate across the coffee table.
Howard shakes his head. ‘No, thanks, I couldn’t eat another thing.’
‘I could,’ Vince says hopefully.
Saboo frowns. ‘You’ve already had three slices.’
‘So what.’ Vince is unrepentant. ‘It’s fantastic cake.’ He can’t actually think of the right word to describe it: it’s sweet and spicy and slightly tangy, with a thick layer of dark chocolate icing.
So good to experience real pure flavours again, after years of nausea and metallic-tasting medication; to be really truly hungry and not just achingly empty. ‘Fantastic,’ he repeats.
‘Thanks.’ Naboo smiles. ‘It’s an old Earth recipe I found on the Xoobernet. Magic tomato soup cake.’
Howard looks slightly worried. ‘Did you just say soup cake?’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘Were you high when you made it?’
‘Yeah.’ Naboo wrinkles his nose defiantly, and Howard looks at him with pure affection. Vince’s tummy does a jimmy-flip that has nothing to do with the amount of cake he’s just eaten. A bit of Howard that’s been broken for a very long time has just fallen back into place.
‘It’s definitely magic,’ Vince says. ‘An’ there’s nothing wrong with putting soup in a cake.’ He catches Howard’s eye. ‘Hey Howard, remember the time we had that soup?’
Howard’s grin lights up the room as the double-act swings seamlessly into action. ‘Soup, soup, a tasty soup...’
‘OK, you win.’ Saboo wields the cake-knife as though it were a sword, cutting off another slab. ‘Have a fourth slice. As long as we don’t have to suffer another crimp.’
‘Crimps are good,’ Vince protests. ‘And anyway, who’s counting?’
‘I am. It’s my cake.’
‘Our cake.’ Naboo drains the last of his after-dinner tea, and leans back in his armchair. ‘I made it. Don’t worry if Vince pigs the lot, I’ll make you another one tomorrow.’
Saboo mutters something about it being a matter of when rather than if, but passes Vince the plate all the same.
‘He needs the calories,’ Naboo says.
‘Mmmmffff,’ Vince agrees, through a mouthful of chocolate and crumbs.
How fantastic is this, to be full of good food and sprawled on a squashy sofa in a room full of friends, with no need to worry about tomorrow.
Only one thing could make this any more perfect than it is, and that would be if they could get Bollo back from Ape Heaven. That was a nasty moment, when Vince asked ‘Where’s Bollo?’ just as they were all sitting down to dinner, and Naboo dissolved in tears and also had to be comforted...
Naboo is staring thoughtfully into his cup.
‘What is it?’ Vince asks, to stop himself thinking any more about Bollo. ‘The tealeaves think I’m gonna get fat on all that cake?’
‘Not exactly. It is about you, though, look.’
Vince peers into the cup that Naboo is holding out to him. The wonky tealeaf letters read HOW THE F*** DID THEY GET HERE?
Naboo grins at him. ‘Well?’
‘Long story.’ Vince fiddles with his hair. He doesn’t want to be the one who has to tell it.
Howard nods, and looks suddenly old and tired again. ‘Very long story.’
‘We’ve got plenty of time.’ Saboo reaches for the flask of xooberberry liqueur and refills their glasses.
‘It was our last chance,’ Vince says, as Howard struggles for words. ‘We were on some planet or other an’ I was in this clinic, but it wasn’t working. Howard was brilliant...’
‘Not really,’ Howard mumbles, and blushes in a way that does something funny to Vince’s insides.
‘No, you were, you did all that time travel research an’ put all those ads in the papers.’
As well as visiting every day with little cakes and funny stories and trying to keep Vince’s spirits up, even though Vince didn’t have much left to keep up by then.
Vince would have been stuffed, without Howard. Vince gives him a look that he hopes will convey how grateful he is, and makes a mental note to tell Howard in so many words, later, in the night times when they’re alone.
Maybe he can find a few ways to show him, as well.
Vince gradually realises that the room is silent and the others are all staring at him. He takes a deep breath. ‘Where was I?’
‘Ads in the papers,’ Naboo murmurs.
‘Oh yeah. Well, eventually Howard was contacted by a bloke who said he knew how to recalibrate the machine to do space instead of time an’ get us to wherever we wanted to go. Which was here.’
‘You could’ve taken a regular flight,’ Saboo says. ‘Or a carpet.’
Howard drains his glass, and shakes his head. ‘We’d nothing left. We’d spent it all on – treatments...’
Vince puts a hand on Howard’s. ‘This bloke Howard found,’ he says, ‘get this. It’s an amazin’ story. An’ watch the animations, they’re brilliant.’ He takes a deep breath and puts on his special storytelling voice. ‘Once upon a time...’
Howard smiles happily. It’s been a while since Vince had the energy to tell him a proper story.
‘...on some planet or other there lived a mechanical genius. His name was Peter an’ his ancestors had come from earth a very long time ago. They had a story in his family about his greatgreatgreatgreatgrandfather or whatever he was, that he’d had a magical friend who wore a blue turban an’ that he’d worked in a place called Dixons, he was where they got their engineerin’ skills from.’
Naboo looks gobsmacked. ‘You’re joking.’ The cartoons and music stop abruptly. ‘You went all the way across time and space an’ wound up with descendants of Pete’s?’
‘That was when we knew it’d work,’ Vince says, ‘it was so unlikely it had to be right.’ He clears his throat, and goes back to his proper storytelling voice.
‘One day Peter was reading his morning paper and saw an advert from two alien time travellers who were stranded on his planet. They needed someone to fix their broken time machine. Peter was intrigued when he saw that the aliens were from earth. He applied for the job and got it straight away, because nobody else on the planet could be arsed to apply, and the time travellers gave him everything they had left...’
‘Which wasn’t much,’ Howard adds.
‘Which wasn’t much, but Peter was a kindly man.’
‘Not so much a man, more of a purple blob with eleven arms.’
‘You don’t need to tell them that Howard, it’s in the pictures... Peter was a kindly purple blob with eleven arms and he felt sorry for the aliens because they were so old and ill, so he worked on the machine for fun anyway until it was as fixed as he could make it.
‘Then he programmed it with the coordinates of the planet Xooberon, loaded the time travellers inside, screwed the brass doorknob back into place, wished them good luck and closed the door.
‘The time travellers knew they didn’t have much time left. They hung on tight to each other as the machine rattled through space, and...’
The drawings fade to black and the music stops.
‘And you know the rest,’ Howard says hurriedly, pulling Vince close.
Vince puts an arm round Howard and hangs on tight, recalling the utter terror, the blackness of the freezing void held away by a few bits of wood and Peter’s alien expertise.
He’d always hated space travel; it always brought back unwelcome memories of his reluctant rescue mission.
He doesn’t want to think about that now.
‘It was my worst nightmare,’ he says, trying to crack a smile and not entirely succeeding. ‘Goin’ through time an’ space with only one outfit... An’ when we crashed, I thought, that’s it, curtains for Vince Noir, an’ all that flashed through my mind was, but I haven’t even got my hair...’
Howard pats him on the back; Saboo passes him a box of tissues.
Vince blows his nose. ‘Sorry.’ He grabs Saboo’s wrist, suddenly scared. ‘This isn’t the afterlife, is it? I didn’t actually get fried, I’m not lyin’ out on the sand all crisped and shrivelled an’ bald, am I?’
‘Look at me.’ Saboo’s voice is firm and clear. ‘Get a grip. This is real. You have gone into the future, so I suppose you could say it’s a sort of afterlife, but you’re whole, you’re here, you’ve got at least twenty years –’
‘Have I?’ Vince sniffs. ‘Have I really?’
‘I should know, you prize plum duff, I gave them to you.’ Saboo takes Vince’s hand in both of his own. ‘This is your future. It’s up to you what you make of it.’
That’s still scary. So many questions, so many possibilities. But maybe if Howard’s there too...
Vince yawns, suddenly exhausted.
‘Let’s sleep on it.’ There’s a wicked twinkle in Howard’s eye. ‘Come on, little man. It’ll all look better in the morning.’
‘And yes,’ Saboo says, grinning, ‘you can have cake for breakfast if you want.’
Cake for breakfast? Now that’s the sort of afterlife Vince can handle.
Summary: There is cake. And more cake.
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Length: about 1520 words
Spoilers: Vince tells the story of how he and Howard got to Xooberon
Disclaimer: These are not my characters. I know them so well, but still I don’t own them and they’re not making me any money, they’re just making me happy
Notes: This future is entirely imaginary, but magic tomato soup cake is real. I found a recipe on the kookychow blog on Tumblr and it just seemed like the sort of thing Naboo would bake when he was high...
Enigma Variations, Coda, 8/?: Cake
‘More cake?’ Naboo pushes the loaded serving plate across the coffee table.
Howard shakes his head. ‘No, thanks, I couldn’t eat another thing.’
‘I could,’ Vince says hopefully.
Saboo frowns. ‘You’ve already had three slices.’
‘So what.’ Vince is unrepentant. ‘It’s fantastic cake.’ He can’t actually think of the right word to describe it: it’s sweet and spicy and slightly tangy, with a thick layer of dark chocolate icing.
So good to experience real pure flavours again, after years of nausea and metallic-tasting medication; to be really truly hungry and not just achingly empty. ‘Fantastic,’ he repeats.
‘Thanks.’ Naboo smiles. ‘It’s an old Earth recipe I found on the Xoobernet. Magic tomato soup cake.’
Howard looks slightly worried. ‘Did you just say soup cake?’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘Were you high when you made it?’
‘Yeah.’ Naboo wrinkles his nose defiantly, and Howard looks at him with pure affection. Vince’s tummy does a jimmy-flip that has nothing to do with the amount of cake he’s just eaten. A bit of Howard that’s been broken for a very long time has just fallen back into place.
‘It’s definitely magic,’ Vince says. ‘An’ there’s nothing wrong with putting soup in a cake.’ He catches Howard’s eye. ‘Hey Howard, remember the time we had that soup?’
Howard’s grin lights up the room as the double-act swings seamlessly into action. ‘Soup, soup, a tasty soup...’
‘OK, you win.’ Saboo wields the cake-knife as though it were a sword, cutting off another slab. ‘Have a fourth slice. As long as we don’t have to suffer another crimp.’
‘Crimps are good,’ Vince protests. ‘And anyway, who’s counting?’
‘I am. It’s my cake.’
‘Our cake.’ Naboo drains the last of his after-dinner tea, and leans back in his armchair. ‘I made it. Don’t worry if Vince pigs the lot, I’ll make you another one tomorrow.’
Saboo mutters something about it being a matter of when rather than if, but passes Vince the plate all the same.
‘He needs the calories,’ Naboo says.
‘Mmmmffff,’ Vince agrees, through a mouthful of chocolate and crumbs.
How fantastic is this, to be full of good food and sprawled on a squashy sofa in a room full of friends, with no need to worry about tomorrow.
Only one thing could make this any more perfect than it is, and that would be if they could get Bollo back from Ape Heaven. That was a nasty moment, when Vince asked ‘Where’s Bollo?’ just as they were all sitting down to dinner, and Naboo dissolved in tears and also had to be comforted...
Naboo is staring thoughtfully into his cup.
‘What is it?’ Vince asks, to stop himself thinking any more about Bollo. ‘The tealeaves think I’m gonna get fat on all that cake?’
‘Not exactly. It is about you, though, look.’
Vince peers into the cup that Naboo is holding out to him. The wonky tealeaf letters read HOW THE F*** DID THEY GET HERE?
Naboo grins at him. ‘Well?’
‘Long story.’ Vince fiddles with his hair. He doesn’t want to be the one who has to tell it.
Howard nods, and looks suddenly old and tired again. ‘Very long story.’
‘We’ve got plenty of time.’ Saboo reaches for the flask of xooberberry liqueur and refills their glasses.
‘It was our last chance,’ Vince says, as Howard struggles for words. ‘We were on some planet or other an’ I was in this clinic, but it wasn’t working. Howard was brilliant...’
‘Not really,’ Howard mumbles, and blushes in a way that does something funny to Vince’s insides.
‘No, you were, you did all that time travel research an’ put all those ads in the papers.’
As well as visiting every day with little cakes and funny stories and trying to keep Vince’s spirits up, even though Vince didn’t have much left to keep up by then.
Vince would have been stuffed, without Howard. Vince gives him a look that he hopes will convey how grateful he is, and makes a mental note to tell Howard in so many words, later, in the night times when they’re alone.
Maybe he can find a few ways to show him, as well.
Vince gradually realises that the room is silent and the others are all staring at him. He takes a deep breath. ‘Where was I?’
‘Ads in the papers,’ Naboo murmurs.
‘Oh yeah. Well, eventually Howard was contacted by a bloke who said he knew how to recalibrate the machine to do space instead of time an’ get us to wherever we wanted to go. Which was here.’
‘You could’ve taken a regular flight,’ Saboo says. ‘Or a carpet.’
Howard drains his glass, and shakes his head. ‘We’d nothing left. We’d spent it all on – treatments...’
Vince puts a hand on Howard’s. ‘This bloke Howard found,’ he says, ‘get this. It’s an amazin’ story. An’ watch the animations, they’re brilliant.’ He takes a deep breath and puts on his special storytelling voice. ‘Once upon a time...’
Howard smiles happily. It’s been a while since Vince had the energy to tell him a proper story.
‘...on some planet or other there lived a mechanical genius. His name was Peter an’ his ancestors had come from earth a very long time ago. They had a story in his family about his greatgreatgreatgreatgrandfather or whatever he was, that he’d had a magical friend who wore a blue turban an’ that he’d worked in a place called Dixons, he was where they got their engineerin’ skills from.’
Naboo looks gobsmacked. ‘You’re joking.’ The cartoons and music stop abruptly. ‘You went all the way across time and space an’ wound up with descendants of Pete’s?’
‘That was when we knew it’d work,’ Vince says, ‘it was so unlikely it had to be right.’ He clears his throat, and goes back to his proper storytelling voice.
‘One day Peter was reading his morning paper and saw an advert from two alien time travellers who were stranded on his planet. They needed someone to fix their broken time machine. Peter was intrigued when he saw that the aliens were from earth. He applied for the job and got it straight away, because nobody else on the planet could be arsed to apply, and the time travellers gave him everything they had left...’
‘Which wasn’t much,’ Howard adds.
‘Which wasn’t much, but Peter was a kindly man.’
‘Not so much a man, more of a purple blob with eleven arms.’
‘You don’t need to tell them that Howard, it’s in the pictures... Peter was a kindly purple blob with eleven arms and he felt sorry for the aliens because they were so old and ill, so he worked on the machine for fun anyway until it was as fixed as he could make it.
‘Then he programmed it with the coordinates of the planet Xooberon, loaded the time travellers inside, screwed the brass doorknob back into place, wished them good luck and closed the door.
‘The time travellers knew they didn’t have much time left. They hung on tight to each other as the machine rattled through space, and...’
The drawings fade to black and the music stops.
‘And you know the rest,’ Howard says hurriedly, pulling Vince close.
Vince puts an arm round Howard and hangs on tight, recalling the utter terror, the blackness of the freezing void held away by a few bits of wood and Peter’s alien expertise.
He’d always hated space travel; it always brought back unwelcome memories of his reluctant rescue mission.
He doesn’t want to think about that now.
‘It was my worst nightmare,’ he says, trying to crack a smile and not entirely succeeding. ‘Goin’ through time an’ space with only one outfit... An’ when we crashed, I thought, that’s it, curtains for Vince Noir, an’ all that flashed through my mind was, but I haven’t even got my hair...’
Howard pats him on the back; Saboo passes him a box of tissues.
Vince blows his nose. ‘Sorry.’ He grabs Saboo’s wrist, suddenly scared. ‘This isn’t the afterlife, is it? I didn’t actually get fried, I’m not lyin’ out on the sand all crisped and shrivelled an’ bald, am I?’
‘Look at me.’ Saboo’s voice is firm and clear. ‘Get a grip. This is real. You have gone into the future, so I suppose you could say it’s a sort of afterlife, but you’re whole, you’re here, you’ve got at least twenty years –’
‘Have I?’ Vince sniffs. ‘Have I really?’
‘I should know, you prize plum duff, I gave them to you.’ Saboo takes Vince’s hand in both of his own. ‘This is your future. It’s up to you what you make of it.’
That’s still scary. So many questions, so many possibilities. But maybe if Howard’s there too...
Vince yawns, suddenly exhausted.
‘Let’s sleep on it.’ There’s a wicked twinkle in Howard’s eye. ‘Come on, little man. It’ll all look better in the morning.’
‘And yes,’ Saboo says, grinning, ‘you can have cake for breakfast if you want.’
Cake for breakfast? Now that’s the sort of afterlife Vince can handle.
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Date: 2014-02-17 07:39 pm (UTC)*chinhands*
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Date: 2014-02-18 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-18 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-23 12:52 pm (UTC)The fourth wall breaking is so beautifully done. I especially love Vince reminding everyone to keep an eye on the animations. And I loved Pete's cameo!
Does this mean this story will continue for 20 years? Oh happy days!
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Date: 2014-02-23 02:52 pm (UTC)Pete as a plot device occurred to me while I was scribbling in my notebook during a particularly tedious hospital waiting room session and I'm sure everyone wondered (and not for the first time) what I was spluttering about. Pete intrigues me. Maybe one day there will be fiction about Pete. Possibly in about 20 years when I've finally made myself write the concluding chapter of this story!