What You Want: 3/?

[squishyturtle.livejournal.com]

Title: What You Want (3/?)
Fandom: Mighty Boosh
Pairing: Vince/Howard
Rating: Still PG, gah, I promise there's slash coming up
Word Count:  this chapter is 3350 or something
Disclaimer: I don't own any of it, and no harm intended or profit made. I'm just playing.
Summary: Howard's looking for the perfect gift for Vince, so he resorts to reading his mind. As you do. And gets more than he bargained for, of course.
 

Uuurgh, sorry this took forever, but half my state was UNDERWATER. Got a bit distracted. (On that note - charity. It's good for your karma.)


PART ONE
PART TWO

PART THREE
 

Howard did not get a good night's sleep. If he'd thought Vince awake was confusing and overwhelming, Vince dreaming was a whole new world of crazy.

Howard had sat with Vince on the settee for a while, enjoying the sudden quiet of having only himself in his head (not that Howard's brain was quiet, it was a buzzing hive of creative and analytical activity, of course – it was just better organised). Vince was a warm weight against his side, sighing softly in his sleep with every breath, one hand spread over Howard's chest.

Howard was just contemplating going off to bed when he felt Vince's mind again.

It was just little flashes at first, in between darkness – a glimpse of a window, a giant guitar pick, the impression of walking along a branch high above the ground, and a low, satisfied growling. But slowly more things fell into place like a jigsaw puzzle, the illusion getting more intricate as Vince's presence in his mind grew louder and bolder.

He seemed to dream in textiles – hiding in the shade of green suede trees, under a sky of baby blue satin. Sequin flowers swayed in the breeze, were caught up, and floated away on the wind. In the distance, a waterfall of tiny glittering beads cascaded over the worn leather cliffs.

The dream jungle was dark and sweltering, alive with noise and movement, an explosion of life in his peripheral vision, fleeting and elusive.

In a clearing, a glittering silver fruit grew impossibly fast on a low hanging branch made of glossy multicoloured paper. It swelled and weighed down the tree until it's great trunk bowed. The fruit fell to the ground, the size of a beach ball, but the tree stayed curled protectively over it, bus ticket leaves fluttering as if in excitement or agitation.

The fruit twitched and jerked, and cracked all down the side. Silver glitter flaked off the surface like old paint, until the thing broke open to reveal a small, quivering ball of honey coloured fur.

The whole scene rippled like shifting cloth, rousing and resettling itself in cycles. The golden ball of fur shifted and darkened, growing as it stretched out two small paws and flicked its tail. The cub kept growing as it stood up, fur shifting through gold and brown, and by the time it was fully grown it was shaking out a thick coat of dishevelled, jet black fur.

For a moment, it turned, and seemed to look right at Howard's point of view, blinking in confusion with Vince's too-blue eyes.

Then it was off, racing over the rough tulle ground, and the whole forest sped past as it ran without getting anywhere. Everywhere its feet touched, multicoloured splashes of paint appeared on the ground – and the ground was construction paper now, crumpling under the paint paw prints.

Everywhere there was noise, a low drumbeat that could have been a heart, the chittering of hidden creatures, harsh panting and a deep, wicked growl.

Then the paw prints became hand prints, and when the panther took a sharp turn around a mountain of crumpled tinfoil boulders it stumbled, hit the ground, and when it struggled to its feet it was Vince.

He was younger than Howard had ever seen him, his jaw softer under his ridiculous cheekbones, and his mousey brown hair a wild tangle. He was all pale skin and scrawny, gangly limbs that promised height and grace, later, when he was grown.

On the settee in the living room, Howard smirked. Vince was wearing a loin cloth. And it was beige.

In the dream, Vince took off again. His huge blue eyes darted frantically around the jungle as his small, scrawny body raced through the trees. Sudden as a lightning strike, the boy laughed, and the jungle seemed to echo him, suddenly rolling with smug, derisive laughter. The earth shook with it, and Vince skidded to a stop in fine white sand, stumbling but not falling. He looked up, and in the trees huddled thousands of monkeys, facing away from Vince to mutter and giggle to themselves.

Vince turned on his heel and took off again, but everywhere he turned the way was blocked with tall trees full of monkeys with their backs turned to laugh. The sand flicked away under Vince's small, delicate feet as he ran and vanished as it arced through the air.

All at once the laughter died into silence. One of the monkeys turned to look right at Vince, and its face was that of a fully grown Vince.

It blinked its blue eyes, and smiled Vince's carelessly nasty grin, the one Howard dreaded.

The dream Vince stumbled backwards and fell on his rear, and all the monkeys turned to laugh at him, wearing his own face, older and crueller and echoed a thousand times around the tree tops. Underneath his body, the sand started to drop away as if in an hour glass.

In real life, the adult Vince's breath hitched on a whimper against Howard's shoulder.

“Vince!” Howard barked, alarmed, and Vince twitched. Inside the dream, a blast of trumpet song lashed out like a thunderclap, and the jungle shook. The sand continued to drop under Vince's small body, and he sank lower and lower. Never wake a man from a jazz trance, Howard thought, stupidly. He mentally flailed, before touching a gentle hand to Vince's temple and smoothing back his dark hair. “Vince,” he tried again, soft and soothing. “It's alright.”

In the dream, the sound of the monkey's laughter was replaced by rapid hoof beats. Howard stroked Vince's hair some more, and continued to mutter nonsensically to him in as soothing voice as he could manage.

The monkeys had their own faces now, and they muttered sullenly to themselves, watching Vince. The quicksand was now plain, rumpled calico, solid under the boy's hands and feet.

Howard brushed the back of his hand against Vince's cheek, still murmuring gently.

The hoof beats reached a crescendo as a horse burst through the crumpled velvet underbrush and stopped before Vince. It was a huge beast, and had to bow its great head to look at the young Vince, dark eyes staring into his blue. Its rich brown mane and tail seemed to ripple and shift like smoke in the sudden sunlight, and its coat seemed to be... tweed?

Vince stood up as the beast raised its head, and by the time he was upright he was an adult again, all dark hair and a hint of stubble, dressed in black drainpipes and a bright pink shirt, barefoot on the soft calico ground.

The horse backed up and trotted proudly around the circle made by their monkey audience. It pranced for a moment before bucking once, and at the kick of its powerful legs against the air, the monkeys exploded upwards in a spray of paper birds, that flapped frantically against the breeze. The horse tossed its mane and took off through the trees, chasing the paper birds as they fluttered overhead. The chaos settled back into chirping crickets, distant lion's roars and fluttering leaves of glossy green PVC.

On the settee, back in the living room of the flat, Howard was getting a headache. He shifted carefully out from underneath Vince and took great pains to tuck the sleeping man in comfortably.

In his dreams, Vince was running through the jungle once more, jumping and trying to catch the paper birds, watching them explode in showers of glitter when he got too close. On the settee, he was still and quiet.

In his own bed, Howard mentally re-memorised his guitar chords until he could ignore Vince enough to feel sleepy. The last thing he saw before he drifted off was Vince leaping upward into flight, becoming a stunningly colourful bird of paradise in mid air.

 

All through the night Howard's sleep was interrupted by Vince's – jerking awake every half hour or so to the feeling of flying (or falling), or the sound of robot pirates singing electro shanties, or the image of a theatre full of origami people.

Mercifully, after a few long, restless hours, Vince's dreams seemed to calm down and Howard was allowed a light doze.

By the time Howard had to get up to open the shop, he was at least partially rested, and Vince's thoughts had fallen silent. He was still curled up on the settee, sleeping peacefully, but his mind was a blank. Howard could barely feel him there in his own head at all, and he accidentally let his toast get cold while straining to hear anything, prowling around the sleeping electro ponce like a madman.

But there was nothing. Which, you know, was a tremendous relief and all; obviously a great mind like his would suffer from prolonged contact with Vince's mental glitter factory.

And, alright, it was starting to feel like Howard wasn't having any thoughts of his own, just gawking stupidly at Vince's. But... it was awfully quiet in his head.

Howard was dressed and down behind the counter by the time Vince woke up.

It took him a while to gather his wits enough to crawl out from under his mountain of blankets (he always got cold in his sleep, Howard knew, he was so scrawny). Vince's thoughts were all soft and warm and fuzzy, just like his bedhead, for about half an hour, until he'd had two cups of tea and gotten in the shower.

Howard very pointedly ignored the whole shower process, or at least promptly repressed it afterwards. But then there was all this towelling and moisturising and christy, he'd seen Vince naked loads of times before, what did it even matter, it's not like he was looking on purpose, it's not like he cared how long Vince spent rubbing all sorts of weird slippery things into his skin, not that he even noticed the whole showering business at all, he was far too busy thank you very much sir.

Of course, then there was all this straightening and spraying and product, and seemingly hours on eyeliner alone, and all that effort, and the whole time Howard had to watch his familiar, sleepy, unpolished Vince disappear under what everyone else saw.

And then Vince was almost ready to maybe make his way down to work at some point, and Howard had accomplished nothing all morning. Trade was oddly slow for the last few weeks before christmas, but Howard suspected that their customers waited until Vince showed his face before coming in to browse. They probably just didn't trust themselves around Howard's smooth sales pitches.

Halfway through putting his boots on, Vince started wondering idly what it would be like if all his shoes were roller skates, or if all the shoes in the world were rollerskates, and always had been. He pondered wearing normal shoes in that scenario just to be a trend setter, but decided he would rather not miss out on the fun. He wondered if people would still build stairs and speed bumps, or if buildings would even have more than one story. Then he thought about what it would be like if all the shoes in the world magically turned into rollerskates overnight, without warning, and...

Howard had to laugh at the images Vince was conjuring, and then tried to convince himself he was busy by making notes in the stocktake ledger.

Vince had his boots on by the time he'd thought out all the rollerskating possibilities, but as he stopped to touch up his hair again he started thinking about flying kites to pull you along on your rollerskates, as a legitimate means of transportation, because he clearly didn't understand anything about wind – obviously it would have to be something more controllable than a kite, something you could alter in the air, maybe collapsible, like an umbrella, Howard thought.

Vince came clomping down the stairs musing on the colour scheme for his transport-kite, and smiled when he saw Howard, a little shy.

“Alright?”

Howard just nodded primly, and pretended to be stocktaking some more.

Vince coughed a little, wanting Howard's attention, as he joined him behind the counter. “Sorry I fell asleep on you last night. I hope I didn't drool or anything.”

“No, you were alright,” Howard said, feeling Vince's relief at his answer (though he didn't know if Vince was relieved he was talking to him, or if he was just glad he didn't do anything so embarrassing as drool). “I was just surprised you weren't too caught up in Colobos to sleep.”

Vince smiled a bit and shifted his weight to one side, bumping his hip against Howard's in a familiar stance. “Bit tired, I guess. We can always watch them again another day.”

“Yeah,” Howard muttered absently, and was casting about for something else to say when Vince's hand shot out and seized the stocktaking ledger.

“Oh!” he breathed, dragging the book closer, and when Howard looked down at the page he was horrified to find he'd been doodling all over it - on his precious, perfectly organised ledger! And oh christy, he'd doodled Vince's thoughts.

There on the page were about half a dozen little stick figures (drawing was not his strong suit, alright?) in various scenes of unconventional aerial transportation. He was relieved to note there weren't any kites – that surely would have been too obvious, even for Vince – but half of the umbrella wielding figures were wearing rollerskates. One was quite obviously mid-take off, one skate extended daintily behind him as his open umbrella caught the wind. The others were cheerfully manoeuvring their umbrellas around the sky in the earnings column. He'd even drawn little clouds and swirls of wind.

“I was just thinking about this,” Vince said quietly, and all of Howard's stupid doodlings were coming to life in Vince's head, becoming beautiful. “Only... umbrellas, I like that.” Of course, Vince thought, you're right, that's much better, you're so smart.

“Like Mary Poppins,” Howard said stupidly.

“Ha, yeah,” Vince said, still grinning at the pictures. In his head they were transformed into glorious technicolour visions of wild, free joy in the sky. He looked up after a moment. “Who?”

“Mary... Poppins?” Howard repeated, confused. “The nanny, you know.” Vince still looked blank. “It's a very famous children's film.”

Vince gave a wry little half smile. “I haven't seen many kiddy movies – wasn't a whole lot of videos in the jungle, you know.”

“Ah,” was all Howard could say. “You would hate it anyway, it's widely renowned for showcasing the worst attempt at a cockney accent in all of history.” Vince pulled a face. “But she flew around with an umbrella, anyway.”

“Cool,” Vince said. He looked down at the drawings again and traced the biro lines with the tip of his finger. “Would it be hard to fly though?” He mused, and tilted his head to the side like a puppy, gazing up at the empty space Howard knew contained a mental image of the aforementioned umbrella flight. Even his mental image was in brightly coloured crayon. “How would you steer it? You could catch a strong wind and find yourself at a rave party in Sweden.”

“I could fly it,” said Howard. “Easy.”

“You couldn't,” Vince scoffed, but he was grinning a little, and Howard could see he was picturing Howard sailing smoothly through the air.

“I could. I can. I flew to work this morning.” Howard tried to hold in a smile, and when it kept creeping out, he had to look down at the ledger again.

“You live here, Howard.”

“From the... shop down the street. We needed milk, so I went out this morning. And flew back.”

“Did you fly there too?”

“No.” Howard accidentally caught Vince's eye, and had to hold back a giggle. “I walked there. Got to keep in shape, you know.”

Vince's grin was still cheeky and mocking, but his mind was bubbling over with delight and amusement. “As if. An umbrella couldn't even lift you. You weigh a ton, you'd need a crane just to get off the ground.”

It wasn't quite right – Howard couldn't muster his usual defensive bravado when Vince's affection for him was tickling over his senses. The bickering still worked alright, but it was all different. Neither of them could keep a straight face; it was like they knew all the punchlines already, and were leading each other through them just for fun. And it was fun.

“It's my manly bulk,” Howard countered. “I'm a man of substance. I'm solid character, all the way through. Like a brick. A brick of character. You're just jealous because you're hollow inside.”

Now Vince was snickering too, trying to hide it by chewing one thumbnail. “Like a beach ball, remember?”

“You're filled with glitter and confetti and sweets, rattling around inside. You're like a pinata.”

“I am lots of fun at parties.”

Howard snorted, and then thought of the fun he'd had with Vince at a certain party, and felt his face flush deep red, but he still couldn't smother his grin.

And then, even more embarrassing, Vince noticed his blush (unsurprisingly, since Howard seemed to have his undivided attention), and curiosity unfurled eagerly in his mind. But that was even worse, then he was staring at Howard, trying to work out what he was thinking about to make him blush like that, and his thoughts seemed to get even louder in Howard's head when all Vince's focus was on him.

Unbearably flustered, Howard tried to mentally recite stocktaking figures, but the numbers kept slipping away, so he tried complex jazz melodies instead. But then something strange happened – Vince's thoughts got quieter.

Howard paused. In his head, he quickly improvised up a storm of silent scat, and Vince's presence in his head retreated further, and grew muffled, like hearing your neighbours talking through the walls, but not being able to make out any of the words. Well, he thought, that could be useful to know.

Then he realised Vince was staring at him in that confused and slightly resigned way he always did when Howard went into a jazz trance or had a flashback or something, so he stopped.

In the absence of any more mental jazz, Vince's mind crept slowly back into Howard's.

The magic was gone. The strange smooth flow between them had halted suddenly and left Vince in the lurch, and now he was just... defeated. Like he'd been expecting that the whole time.

Howard blinked, and blushed again in embarrassment.

“Alright Howard?” Vince said cautiously, and it was equal parts concern and greeting, welcoming him back from his mental vacation.

“I'm fine,” Howard blustered. He turned away, let his lank hair fall over his face to hide him a little. “I think I'll go sweep out the storeroom.”

“Okay,” Vince murmured, but his thoughts were kind of... flat, and Howard could feel him sulking over yet another bafflingly abrupt end to a conversation. It wasn't right for the sunshine kid (even though he wasn't really a kid at all, any more) to be so confused and frustrated, and worse, resigned to this kind of social incompetence as a common occurrence.

So Howard gathered his resolve and tore a page out of the stocktaking ledger. He shoved it at Vince, muttering, “Best keep this, in case you ever do want to fly to a rave party in Sweden.” And he immediately scurried off to the storeroom.

Alone behind the counter, Vince stood clutching a page full of flying stickmen, and smiling to himself.

And if he was thinking about what a nutter Howard was, well, it was alright, because he was thinking it with fairly impressive quantities of fondness.

 

 PART FOUR

Comments

[justwolf.livejournal.com]

Please add a cut.

[squishyturtle.livejournal.com]

GAH, sorry, don't know what happened there. I think I tried to move it and ended up deleting it. Fixed!

[savanna-says-hi.livejournal.com]

This is unbearably cute! And I love how vividly you described Vince's dream.

Howard snorted, and then thought of the fun he'd had with Vince at a certain party Hehehe. X3

[squishyturtle.livejournal.com]

Well he IS very fun at parties XD Thankyou!

[squishyturtle.livejournal.com]

YAY! Thank you so much, and I do love seeing a de-lurk! <3

[ftw302.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I love this story, sosososoo happy to see it updated <3 <3 <3

I love how you've described Vince's dream, all textures and everything...verymuch how dreams go, and how the Boosh's animated cutaways are and stuff <3

Ah this..this story is so sweet <3 <3 moremoremore

[squishyturtle.livejournal.com]

haha Thankyou! I am always so happy to see YOU update! <3 Glad you like it.

[pitpony13.livejournal.com]

This story is so wonderful! It definitely brightened my day!

[librarynoise.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about this story today! So happy to see another part. :) I love the tension, and I could totally see Vince's dream. Very tactile and Booshy.

[squishyturtle.livejournal.com]

That was me, telepathically telling you I'd updated.

[greencurtains.livejournal.com]

This is one of the best things ever :') Like kittens and stuff, that whole roller skate business, it makes me feel good inside :')
<3

[unbelievable2.livejournal.com]

This is glorious! I love the fabric analogy. And the Vince-egg. And the description of the jungle through dreaming eyes and memories. And a tweed horse! Yes! And the wonderful monkey nightmare. Magical, all of it!

[plonster.livejournal.com]

Loving this! :)

[xthursdaynextx.livejournal.com]

This is really cute. I loved their conversation about flying with umbrellas and Howard's thoughts, thinking that customers were avoiding the shop because of his superior sales technique :)

[squishyturtle.livejournal.com]

Howard's superpower is obliviousness. XD

[monooccularcat.livejournal.com]

That is, I think, the best description I've read of Vince's dreamscape; lucid yet entirely ridiculous with dark corners.

[squishyturtle.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Dream scenes are so tricky, it's so easy to get too literal or cliched, so I'm glad you liked it! And 'entirely ridiculous with dark corners' sums up Vince and the boosh pretty well, I think XD

[graymalkin13.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is lovely! With the colorful images and the subtle shifting of emotions, and the awkwardness of dealing with telepathy (a favorite motif of mine)! Looking forward to the next part.

[doctorpancakes.livejournal.com]

The imagery in this was so brilliant! I flipping love this story!

[500daysofbummer.livejournal.com]

WOWOWOW, this gets better and better!!! the dream is described so beautifully, i love everything about this story, can't wait for more! :)

[meobnal.livejournal.com]

You've got their banter so spot on ♥

[pink-bambi13.livejournal.com]

So amazing! Just love it <3