booshslashhaven | fic: The Power of the Amulet

Title: The Power of the Amulet – Part 3 (of 3)
Pairing: Howard/Vince
Author: Unbelievable2
Rating: NC-17 – for the story as a whole, PG13 for this chapter

Word count: 2,711

Summary: The aftermath of Howard’s encounter with Vince in “I Love the Chosen One”.

Warnings, warnings: In this chapter, tooth-rotting fluff, a complete rewrite of the ending to FOY and, by implication, total denial of series 3 canon. Please leave your disbelief willingly at the door……

Notes: This first fic has been waiting around for months until the wonderful obeythebunny and coeur_de_noir persuaded me to post.

It takes forward the storyline started by Phoon in that fantastic fic, “I love the Chosen one”, the first fanfic I ever read. I have asked for, and kindly received, Phoon’s permission to use her idea in this way. This story does, of course, mean an alternative ending to “Fountain of Youth”.

Thanks again to the wonderful obeythebunny for her kind beta-ing skills. XX

Disclaimer: Sadly I own neither the creators nor their characters, and I will not, nor would I ever wish to, profit from either.

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Part 1 here: http://community.livejournal.com/booshslashhaven/775464.html#cutid1

Part 2 here: http://community.livejournal.com/booshslashhaven/790467.html

Part 3

The lamps are guttering, Howard notices. He wonders how long they’ve been together, how long till dawn. He has an inkling that the nights are short in this strange place, but he can’t detect any graying of the light outside. He looks down at the sleeping man and strokes some of the black hair away from his face to gaze at it better. His heart is far too full for thought about what he sees. His finger traces a line from Vince’s ear to his nose and then across his lips. He knows he won’t wake him; he knows how solidly and absolutely Vince sleeps. And he smiles to himself as Vince’s face twitches to the touch and then settles down again with an inner sigh.

If this is his last night on Earth – well, Xooberon – it’s been a pretty damn good one. And all started by an amulet that’s basically the kiss of death to anyone who puts it on – he grins at the irony.

But looking at Vince only makes his body remember what’s happened, and he knows that if he’s to come up with a plan, then losing himself in those sensations isn’t going to be productive. He steels himself.

OK, so what’re the options?

One: Use the amulet – it’s buggered.

Two: Take the tests – Vince will die, and Howard too.

Three: Run away – desert in every direction, no map (they’d lost Naboo’s in any case), no idea whether any civilisation is two miles or two hundred from the camp; no water, no transport…

Four: ask the green-eyed woman… no, she’s not really a friend, is she?

Five: Find a friendly nomad – yeah, right.

No, hang on…

Five bracket A bracket: find an unfriendly nomad – the Blue Leader – kidnap him, hold him hostage, then get the nomads to take them somewhere to get batteries.

Yes! That’s a plan all right! Something they can easily do – they’re both at least two feet taller than the Blue Leader. As long as they’re stealthy and Vince concentrates on what he’s supposed to do.

Vince.

He looks down again, smiling. His stomach has the weird habit now of somehow dissolving inside him every time he sees that face. He bends his head down and kisses Vince’s brow lightly. Vince breathes out and his breath warms Howard’s skin.

They’re cold. He’s only just realized how cold they are – their skins, so hot in sex, have cooled quickly. Vince’s exposed chest feels icy. Howard reaches out and gropes silently around him, and in moments finds spare fabric which he pulls towards them. It’s Vince’s lampshade gown, and he spreads it over them both, hugging Vince tighter and feeling warmth creep back. He hears vague sounds outside which indicate that the nomads are still around their fire. Later, he thinks, when it’s quiet. That’s when we’ll pounce. Right now, the little man can sleep.

It isn’t going to work, is it?

Somewhat less than evens, thinks Howard, and that’ll be being lucky…

Howard presses his face against Vince’s cheek and sends a message to whatever deity happens to be hovering over, not that Howard minds which one.

“Take me”, he thinks. “Take us both. Things could get better than this but frankly I doubt it. Right now I have all I have ever wanted, all I ever needed.”

He knows it’s pointless. From all his other brushes with the after-life and things related he knows that life and death rarely synchronize in a user-friendly way.

Vince stirs, opens his eyes on nothing, and says Howard’s name; then nestles back again, never waking.

Howard shifts to accommodate Vince’s new angle, and something jabs into his armpit – the amulet, digging into his flesh. He reaches across, careful not to disturb Vince, and pulls it out, squinting at the heavy, ugly thing faintly glowing in the lamplight. With one hand he turns it over, flips the back open and, despite himself, smiles at the distinctly earth-bound batteries inside. But a thought springs up. This means that Naboo has changed batteries in the past – basic household appliance batteries. The Xooberon equivalent might be in the camp after all. It can’t all be oil lamps…

Good! Another plan segment – Five bracket A bracket-bracket one close bracket!

Absent-mindedly he rolls the batteries round in their housing with his thumb, and flips one out, bringing it to his mouth automatically to test for sure.

Ow!

Yes! Definitely a tingle!

Concentrating on keeping his hand steady – which is difficult – he stows the first battery between the heel of his hand and his little finger, and pulls out the other one.

Tingle.

Howard rolls the batteries round and round in his hand, trying to get them warm. He chafes the ends, even rubbing them across the fabric of the cushions, to see if any kind of static might help. Holding his breath he snaps them back and closes the amulet.

Wake Vince? No, it’s a long shot. It would be too cruel to raise his hopes before certain failure. Best he never knows.

Howard shifts so that both his arms and his legs are securely round Vince. He presses his head down against the other man’s. He could say things right now, the things that are surging around in his heart, trying to break out – Vince won’t hear. But he doesn’t. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and presses the button.

At that point the lamps choose to gutter completely, so that when he opens his eyes again it’s almost completely dark. Slowly he registers one lamp still burning in a corner. It’s the little orange one shaped like a satsuma which he and Vince gave Naboo last Christmas.

The little shaman is curled up in his bed, sound asleep, the discarded pipe of a hookah near him. Stray sodium light sneaks in through a crack in the curtains.

The cushions have disappeared. Howard is freezing cold, lying on the threadbare carpet and hard floorboards at the foot of Naboo’s bed, stark bollock-naked. His arm has gone to sleep, and Vince, lying on it, also stark bollock-naked, weighs a ton.

Howard allows himself to breathe a few times, to steady himself and make sure he isn’t hallucinating. Then he extricates his arm from beneath Vince and kneels up, letting Vince softly down onto the carpet. He lifts the amulet and, with as much delicacy as he can manage, disentangles the chain from his neck, taking great care not to touch the button, and gingerly places the whole thing on top of the chest of drawers opposite the foot of Naboo’s bed.

Nothing else happens.

They’re home. Home.

He turns back. Naboo is still sleeping, Vince is curled up on the floor. He should wake him. Howard reaches down to touch his shoulder and realises how cold Vince is again, how cold he himself is. Without another thought he scoops the other man up, one arm at Vince’s back, the other hooking under his knees, and, mildly surprised at his own strength, lifts him bodily and carries him off like a sleeping child down the corridor to their own room. He pushes the door open with his foot and closes it firmly behind them in the same way. Their room is quiet and soft with the comfort of familiarity and security.

Howard stands still for a moment, reasoning to himself, facing reality. They’re back, it’s another day, another planet. There’s no way he can expect what has happened on Xooberon to have a lasting effect. Life has tended not to treat him that favourably, and Vince – well, Vince has a tendency to forget important things. Anyway, he feels he should not presume…

He crosses the room to Vince’s bed and gently lowers the sleeping man on to it. Howard gathers the covers over him and straightens, still looking down at the form below him. The slim body is chilled to the bone. He himself now feels weak with cold, hunger and exhaustion. It surely can’t hurt if he holds Vince for a while longer, until they’re both warmer? Then he’ll go back to his own bed and wait to see what the morning brings.

He slips under the covers and draws Vince back against his body, as he had lain in the cushions on Xooberon. Howard tries not to think of those moments. He pushes his face into Vince’s hair and breathes, concentrating on counting the seconds between Vince’s breaths, whether they match his own. Gradually he feels his body relax as it warms beneath the covers. Vince’s breathing is sweet and steady. Howard will get up soon.

Howard sleeps.

It isn’t a good sleep. It’s a sleep born of a completely exhausted body with a mind still wired with the tensions of the previous day. Strange fragments of dreams jerk in front of his twitching eyes, mainly colours – of the desert, of the tent, firelight, a peacock feather slowly tracing across white skin, lamplight gleaming on oil, the glint of gold – and then there are two bodies, locked together in a violent grappling, falling endlessly to the ground…and crashing….

Howard wakes with a start. Gray light is seeping in through the curtains. He feels warm, warm with the pressure of another body against his. Vince is awake. He’s shifted round and his eyes are wide open, staring at Howard.

Howard stares back, not wanting to be the first to speak. The blue eyes seem like saucers, the face one big question-mark. Vince’s gaze flies round the familiar setting of the room, back to Howard’s face, down at the covers and Howard’s arms around him, and back to Howard’s face again. Then his expression relaxes and the mouth breaks into a wide grin.

“You got us back, Howard! You’re a genius! I knew you would!”

Howard’s heart can’t help but swell with the praise.

Vince twists slightly in his embrace, as if to verify they are really in their own room. Howard can feel tension building in that slim body, and he knows what will be coming next – a huge explosion of Vince energy and a volley of questions which will define Vince’s unique grasp of what’s happened. Questions like-

Can we have some tea?

Where’s Naboo?

Do you think there are any of those flapjacks left?

Is it going to rain?

Can we go shopping later?

But Howard has a question. He hadn’t intended to think of one, but he’s woken with it, and at all costs he has to get it out before Vince can steal a march and the moment is lost.

Vince opens his mouth to speak and Howard raises a hand quickly to quiet him. Vince shuts his mouth on cue and looks expectant.

“Vince, I wanted to ask you…”

Pause.

“Yeah, Howard?”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“When?”

Be patient, thinks Howard.

“On Xooberon? Where we’ve just been?

Again the grin, “Oh yeah, ‘course I do! That midget, wow, he was a bit mental, yeah? And the sand monster… and all them blue men?”

Howard raises his eyes to heaven.

“No! No! I mean… what happened to us… in the tent…?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” The sudden quietness of the voice unnerves Howard. He looks straight at Vince. The blue eyes are now wary, guarded, unsure. Vince knows exactly what Howard is on about.

“What about it?”

Howard swallows. He realizes he can get this very wrong. Vince’s eyes never waver, his face now oddly impassive.

Howard flusters. He wants to say “What did it mean to you? What do you want from me? Do you want everything? ‘Cos you can have it, just tell me what it meant to you…”

But instead he says, “Did I hurt you?”

Vince’s breath comes out in a rush that’s almost a laugh.

“Wha’?”

Howard presses on, the only thing he can say, and in its own way, just as important to him.

“Did I hurt you? In the tent, you… you were crying… I must have hurt you. You cried…”

Vince seems to have difficulty with his breathing. His mouth opens and shuts a few times without emitting words, then there’s another gust of air that’s almost laughter.

“Oh, Howard, ‘cos I was happy!”

“What?”

“’Cos I was happy, stupid! Never felt so happy!”

So people really did that? Howard has never before felt like crying himself when he was happy. Happiness isn’t such a regular feeling. But right now he feels his throat constrict with some sort of pain that seems completely correlated to the fire that has started to glow inside him. He puts his still-raised, questioning hand to Vince’s face, against his cheek, as if to check this Vince is real and not part of his dream, and Vince turns his mouth into it and softly kisses the palm. Howard’s throat hurts so much he thinks he might choke. He does his best. He manages to blurt out, “So you weren’t hurt then…?” Foolishly.

Vince turns again, smiling softly, eyes deep and dark.

“You idiot, Howard. As if you could hurt me. You love me.”

Ah yes, that. Suddenly the bonds round that heart of his burst open and all that surging stuff comes out. The words are said. Howard hasn’t said them; he hasn’t dared since that icy day long ago when those same words had made Vince laugh. But the love he had felt then - hesitant, unsure, his confidence crumpling in an instant for all his outward bravado - is nothing compared to the conviction that now sustains him, the ardour that possesses him. And even if he still can’t say those words, Vince has, and that counts, and they both heard. Howard knows there’s no way back for him now. The world has changed, and that’s fine by him.

But amazingly, he finds he can actually speak.

“Well, yes, that’s true, little man…

…I do.”

And equally amazingly, he finds this world-changing admission is really quite easy, after all.

He’s sure he’s being properly calm and mature about all this, a good example for Vince. He still doesn’t understand that Vince’s growing smile, like the sun rising, is directly related to the blossoming, unimagined joy radiating from his own face. In any case, he’s got work to do. He takes Vince’s words and his own and wraps them up carefully together with all the memories of the tent – the violence, the pain, the tenderness, the delight, every sensual experience – making a kind of pliable ball of treasure which he pushes far, far down inside himself, right to the centre of his ready heart. Yes, he thinks, that’s a good job done.

Vince is still looking at him, and his sudden preoccupation, with tender, baffled wonder. Surely even Howard can’t have missed what Vince has done, to make those words easy for Howard? Me for him, him for me….

So Vince has to do it for Howard anyway.

“’Course you do! ‘S’obvious…

And I love you… ‘s’obvious too… for a long, long time, really. You knew that, right?”

Oh yeah, right.

“We both did, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

Two smiles, one happy and confident; one happy – oh, so happy - and absolutely amazed…

I love you.

The words. The words from the tent, the words from the mirror. Words from Vince.

Finally, words from Vince.

Howard still can’t believe them at first, which is why Vince keeps repeating them, while Howard gulps like a stranded fish. And then suddenly Howard’s paralysis clears and in one swift movement he brings his arms round Vince’s back and pulls him in. Their mouths meet at once, Vince still speaking, so those words go into Howard’s mouth with his tongue, and Howard instantly wraps them up and takes them down, down to that deep place to store them with the rest of his treasure, where no-one can pluck them out again, not even himself.

And then he’s rising up again into the daylight of his new world to find that Vince is no longer concentrating and has taken his mouth off to kiss Howard’s jaw and throat and ear and nose and brow…

So Howard finds Vince again, and brings him back to the best kiss on Earth, if not the whole universe.