Exams are over, birthday tomorrow and well over 3 months worth of summer holidays ahead of me... gotta be the time to start bombarding you lot with new and pointless fics =D
Disclaimer: Not MINE!!
Warning: Latin is taken from some VERY dodgy online translator! I'm not entirely sure what it says! :D
People had always wondered how Vince stayed so young. He never seemed to age. Each birthday would go past but no more wrinkles would appear on his handsome face. He never looked too old to dress in cat suits. He never looked like mutton wearing cowboy hats to make him seem more lamb. In fact, as Howard looked through the photo's of them, he could see that Vince's face hadn't changed in over ten years. Sure there'd been a few image changes, okay a lot of image changes. But the eyes, the nose, the skin - it was the same. Howard looked at his own face in the mirror and compared it to an old photo. Although he wouldn't like to admit it; he had had a few more wrinkles, a few more crows feet around his eyes, a couple more sun spots but that didn't mean he looked any worse. He just looked older, more defined, even more like the global explorer he really was.
He looked back to the photo and shivered slightly. Surely, surely Vince couldn't still look like that. He should have at least a few wrinkles. Unless… Had Vince been back to the fountain of youth?
"Howard!" Vince exclaimed in shock, "How dare you? I haven't been back to Xooberon since we drank all that potion."
"It's just, you look the same. I mean, you look exactly the same."
"Good genetics." The smaller man shrugged.
"But we're the same age."
"As if. I'm much younger."
"But we used to be the same age."
"What are you talking about?"
"We were in the same year at school."
"So?"
"So how are you younger now?"
"You asked too many questions." Vince snapped and was straight out the door on the way to a TopShop sale.
Later that afternoon, Howard went rummaging around Vince's room for evidence, aka a bottle of Fountain of Youth water. There was nothing in the wardrobe, nothing in the chest of draws, nothing under the chest of draws. There was nothing in the space under the floorboards (the one that Vince naively thinks is a secret) but in there was just a whole load of sparkly items that aren't in fashion anymore but Vince just can't let go of and a jazz magazine. Howard frowned, he picked the magazine up and flicked through it quickly until there was a picture of himself staring up from the centrefold. Typical Vince, keeping that magazine, probably waiting until the perfect moment to unleash it's hideous embarrassment on the world again. He threw it back down in the hole angrily and was a about to replace the floorboards when he saw a brown, rope like material just below all the glitter. He pushed everything else aside and gave the rope a sharp tug and then there was a loud creaking and a grumbling noise from behind him.
He turned slowly and watched in utter disbelief as a wall panel rotated little by little, like it was straining painfully. He could tell this hadn't been opened in a very long time. Howard's jaw dropped as the bright purple wall paper was replaced by brown paper, curling at the edges and stained with what looked like smoke marks and then there was the painting that adorned the wall.
The gold frame adorned with delicate floral patterns and something underneath the painting scribed in Latin; 'is pictura ostendo quis is vere est' but that wasn't what made him recoil in horror. That wasn't what made him feel sick to his stomach. The painting was of Vince. His glossy black hair a little less glossy a little more grey. His eyes a little less bright. There were a few more crows feet in the corners of his eyes a few more sunspots. It was still Vince, he was just… older. Who would do something like this? Who would choose to paint Vince older than he was? And why was Vince keeping the painting?
Suddenly, there was a shout in the living room. Naboo telling Vince not to go in his room. Howard jumped. He thought he'd been alone in the house but the turning of the door handle told him otherwise.
"No!" Naboo yelled again, "Vince you can't go in there."
There was the sound of a scuffle and Howard scuttled back to the tatty bit of rope and tugged on it hard. Then he winced as that wall scraped and creaked over the carpet and ceiling as it rumbled and rotated slowly. He begged it to be quiet but it was too late. Vince had heard. So, why wasn't he flying through the door and attacking Howard with torrents of verbal abuse? Howard was sure he heard a sob though it didn't sound as though either Vince or Naboo were crying. It was more a sound of injustice, of betrayal.
Then he heard Naboo say;
"You'll have to tell him the truth now Vince."