First, thanks for all the feedback I got on my songfic idea. As you can probably see by now, unless you have visual impairments, I have decided to go through with it. I have four more after this one, and any requests are more than welcome. All of them will probably be completely unrelated, and not related to any of my other fics.
So, please enjoy my first effort. It is nice and angsty, but expect fluff, oddness, and some more angst later.
Disclaimer: The Mighty Boosh is owned by Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. The song 'When You Were Young' is owned by the Killers.
Gosh, that was the dullest disclaimer I've ever written.
When You Were Young
You sit there in your heartache,
Waiting on some beautiful boy to
To save you from your old ways.
You play forgiveness,
Watch him now, here he comes.
Howard is leaning on a wall, empty-handed, across the room from the bar. He doesn't want to get too close to it; he's not drinking tonight. Or so he tells himself. He's told himself that many nights before, but he tends to find himself letting go as the evenings wear on, drinking just a little, and then more and more. He wants to cut down. He knows he drinks too much.
Vince is dancing. Howard can just see him in the darkness blocked in by neon lights, hips swinging, knees bending as he gets down to the floor at her feet and back up, arms encircling around her. Howard wonders if he's seen her before; perhaps he's even met her. He doesn't know. Vince sees too many girls. Some of them know he's screwing countless others besides them, but most of them don't. Vince doesn't seem to see a problem with this.
He watches Vince without moving. Had he moved, he would have moved around Vince. Vince is his axis, the sole recipient of the attention he gives too much of, the thought and reflection that intertwines itself with the young man's body, his mind, his thoughts and desires. He watches Vince's hips, his arms, his legs, his waist, his feet. His cock, which has gradually crept closer and closer to the woman's physical being. Like Vince is his axis, she is Vince's. Every movement he makes revolves around her. Every swing of the hips, every graceful decent to the floor, every turn and flick of the arms, every quick look and jerk of the head is built around her, and her alone.
As for Vince's thoughts, Howard doesn't know. It's possible that they too revolve around this woman, but Howard doubts it. What Vince's thoughts are remains a mystery to him, but the chasing he does, his lack of regard for affection or sweetness, his need for raw, hindrance-free sex leads Howard to believe that consideration of any part of the woman besides her body is of no importance to him.
She is far more graceless than he is. She moves to the beat, but he seems to move around it. Almost like he doesn't follow it; it follows him, and he can bend it to his will, to accommodate this move or that, to allow him to seduce her the way he wants. He is fluid, elegant and smooth. Howard wonders where he learned to dance like that. But this sort of dancing is more felt than learned. You have to be it, not think it. Vince doesn't think about much. He probably doesn't even know what a beautiful dancer he is.
He breaks away from Vince, severing the link to his axis. He heads for the bar, knowing he would have given up eventually anyway. A bottle would be best. Just beer. One unit, or some such tiny amount. But it won't happen. Double vodka. What mixer? Coke, just because he can't be bothered to say anything else. Downed. Another. Downed. Another.
He turns back to Vince, taking this one a little slower. He sips. Vince grinds. He sips.
Vince is coming over, his woman behind him, with a look on his face that says he wants to go. Howard would like to stay. It's quite early; he has only just started drinking, is only on his third double and doesn't feel anywhere near drunk enough. But when Vince goes, he has to go. This is a party thrown by one of Vince's friends, not his, and Howard's not even entirely sure what he's doing there in the first place, so the idea of him staying when Vince has gone is out of the question. He finishes the last of his drink, and follows Vince and his woman from the room. They have already gone.
He doesn't look a thing like Jesus
But he talks like a gentleman,
Like you imagined when you were young.
He walks a few paces behind them, deliberately slowing himself to make up for the slow speed Vince and his mate are forced to take by their high heels. He doesn't want to walk too close to them. Because the closer you get, the more it feels like you don't really exist.
He catches snatches of words. Pretty words. Flattering words. Compliments that may be meant, promises that are sure to be broken.
Movements; an arm round the waist, keeping a respectable upward distance. A touch of the hand that slowly comes closer into a clasp. A kiss from glossed lips to unblemished knuckles, on the hands, the wrists, all the way up the arm to the shoulder, to the neck.
Eloquent, charming, alluring.
Howard is almost jealous of the woman receiving these words. Why should a stranger who Vince will most likely never see again, however much she wants him to, be graced with these words when Howard himself never hears so much as a breath?
But at the same time he revels in it. He needs it, if he's honest. Because it's been so long he has almost forgotten that Vince has a voice. Sadly he remembers exchanges, conversations. Long talks about nothing, no meaning, no point, but which were everything to him. And everything to Vince too, at the time. Songs passing straight from the mind to the mouth, half a meaning, but which meant so much. A small, smiling boy, so much younger than his age, naïve, sweet, simple, open. A face that looked up at him, right up. He doesn't do that any more. It might be that his heels have gotten bigger, or perhaps Howard has just shrunk somehow, but he can't remember the last time he saw Vince looking up to him. He knows Vince's eyes are big, but he struggles now to recall when they stopped looking at him, so wide with admiration, with love.
He spoke different words then. Simpler words. He was never eloquent, his phrasing was easy and honest, whether he said it with sadness pulling at his face or a coy smile spreading to his eyes and his soul.
He always wanted to teach that boy to speak like a leader. Like a politician, or a poet, or a lawyer, or a spin doctor. Like someone whose words would be heard. Howard wasn't always sure he could do this himself, but whether or not he could, he always felt that desire to try, to impart some knowledge to the boy. To make him into a man.
And now that he is a man, now that he can speak like someone the world needs to listen to, taught not by Howard but by some other unknowable source, anonymous as everyone who associates with Vince these days, he has no more time for Howard. Words can get you anything, and Vince now realises this. Words can get you sex. Words can get you adoration. Words can get you the undying and unconditional love of people far too beautiful for the eyes of lesser mortals to see, and words can make them inferior, position you above them. Words can give you even the most wonderful of people, the most devoted and loving and beautiful and shining people, and make them yours to use and abuse and cast away wantonly as you see fit.
People like this woman. Howard wonders if he'll ever see her again. He doubts it.
He wonders how much of his life Vince has acted. Was he playing dumb back then, because he thought someone, Howard maybe, or someone else, thought it was cute? Is he playing smart now, because he knows he is older, and not that adorable child he had been before, and he needs to grow and become intelligent to attract those he lusts after to him? Or maybe he has always been this clever. Maybe this is the true Vince; this cold, userous thief of hearts, who shares his words only with the most unfortunate. They weren't unfortunate before they met him, but now that they have, there are none more unfortunate than they are.
Maybe it is now, not then, that he is finally being honest with himself.
They say the devil's water, it ain't so sweet.
You don't have to drink right now,
But you can dip your feet
Every once in a little while.
Vince and his woman reach the front door first, and he lets them both in, and he leaves it hanging open for Howard. Without a glance, he leads her to his bedroom and closes the door, leaving Howard to lock the front door for the night. He looks over at the bedroom door, sealed off, an impenetrable, a forbidden hold where he is not permitted to wander, even in thought.
He leaves it unentered, and goes to the kitchen instead. A small cupboard, one of the highest, full of old tins of food and dried, pre-packaged ready meals that will never be eaten. He pushes them aside. This is where he keeps the drinks, out of the way, and with things obstructing them, so he can't just reach out and grab them. He used to keep alcohol in his bedroom, a special bottle of vodka or whisky someone had bought him as a present, but he doesn't trust himself to do that any more. A bottle doesn't last him a month any more. A bottle lasts days now. One day, if he's feeling particularly sorry for himself.
The bulky dissuasions out of the way, he looks through the bottles behind. Stolichnaya vodka, a particular favourite of his. There isn't much left, just a little in the bottom of the bottle, but he feels down, and decides he deserves to finish it tonight.
What else? Gin? No, he doesn't feel like something so dry tonight.
Cognac, yes, that will do. Still full.
He takes the bottles to his bedroom. Hopefully he will be ready to pass out by the time he finishes them, because he doesn't want to have to get up for more when they are gone. He needs to be completely gone tonight. Stopping any earlier than the coma of drunkenness is unacceptable. But he knows that once these two bottles have been finished, he will not be able to make his way back to the cupboard for more.
Maybe he should have brought an extra bottle into the room with him, just in case.
No. If he did that, he'd start drinking in the morning. That's something he doesn't need.
He pours the last of his vodka into a glass. He doesn't drink from the bottle. He has some self-respect left. He sips it, savouring. He wants to enjoy it while he's still relatively sober. He doesn't mind so much about the cognac. As long as it is just sweet enough, Howard doesn't care what he drinks once he reaches a certain point. Thinking about this, he feels he has let himself down.
He drinks more, and listens.
He may not be able to go into Vince's bedroom, but the occurrences of Vince's bedroom may come to him. He hears groaning and panting and ecstatic screaming as they mate. They are not making love, as there is no emotional connection there. She may have one, but Howard fears that Vince may now be incapable of this. They are not having sex, as having sex is an altogether more human act, an acknowledgement of each other and an enjoyment of company and connection. They are not even doing it, as this implies a casual meeting, something no one cares for or considers again. This is primal, needed, urgent, yet with no lasting link and no regard to the other, at least, not from him anyway. This is animal, unthinking. They are mating.
Howard finishes his Stolichnaya. He lies back, empty glass in one hand, and sighs up at the ceiling. He reaches for his cognac, and sits up to pour. Fuck it, he thinks. He can't be bothered with the glass any more. He pushes the bottle to his lips and swigs deeply, letting the strong taste wash down him.
He knew he would give up eventually. Oh well. It has been a few days since the last time, and it will doubtless be days before the next. He may as well make the most of it.
He drinks and drinks, long, slow, deep, pushing out the sounds of now, of the mating in the room next door.
And sometimes you close your eyes
And see the place where you used to live
When you were young.
Howard knows he is dreaming. Or is he? Is it a dream, or is it a memory? This whole phase in his life was so bright and strange, so beautifully unreal, he can never tell what actually happened and what was created by his own imagination in lonely nights any more.
In the dream, he is outside in the sunshine, sitting on a bench. He is fairly certain this is a memory, made real again by drink, hypnogogia and an overactive mind. Yes, this really happened. He can't put a date to it, but he remembers every detail. He knows what will happen before it happens, and he looks forward to each new moment.
Vince approached him, a huge grin on his face, unmarred by makeup or decadence.
"How are they?" Howard asked.
"They're beautiful," Vince gushed. The new baby tigers had been eagerly anticipated by the zoo since their conception, and in the few days before the birth, they were all anyone had been talking about. Vince sat down next to Howard, eyes gazing up at the sky, smile still plastered over his face. "All cuddling up to each other and nuzzling their mama."
Howard looked at the pure rapture on the boy's face, his childlike joy at the miracle of life, and couldn't help but grin himself. Vince's wide-eyed elation was infectious. He was an odd combination; naïve yet experienced. Howard tended not to think about Vince having sex on a regular basis, but he always seemed to Howard to be the only sort of person who can truly have sex in its most pure, most beautiful form. And the reason for that was simply because he was unable to appreciate the purity of the act he committed. Vince didn't seem to have any idea of the links between sex and purity, or between sex and decadence. To him, sex must be an act of pure affection and love, something sweet to be shared with someone special. Not even a lover, perhaps even a special friend he could allow so close to him, someone with whom a deep bond didn't need to be cemented, but would be anyway.
Sometimes Howard dreamed of sex like that, but he knew he could never have it, because he was able to conceive of it.
Vince leaned over to rest his head on Howard's shoulder, and Howard instinctively moved his arm out of the way to accommodate him. He looked down, and saw Vince looking up at him, big blue eyes catching the sunlight, still smiling.
"You nancy," Howard laughed, smiling back.
"Brute," Vince giggled back.
The mating has stopped in the next room. It suddenly dawns on Howard that if he dies now, he will die happy, because he has gone back in time. He is somewhere where Vince has never degraded himself and those who love him, and where he never will.
In the silence of sleep, a bird calls, the sound mingling in with growls and grunts, and the distant mewlings of newborn tigers.