Lost
A/N: That's right, another one. I snuck up on ya in the nighttimes!
Disclaimer: I may look like the lovechild of Rudy and Tony Harrison, but I do not own the Mighty Boosh.
Warnings: None
"Howard"
This one wasn't a message or a mischievous jibe with no meaning other than to make him laugh. It was just his name, written in Vince Noir's usual playful and colourful writing, where the letters played across the paper like a rainbow.
Nonetheless, it still managed to make his heart lurch painfully and tears blur his eyes, only for him to blink them quickly away. He sat down heavily, and just like that everything he had worked so hard to build back up again- his strength, his emotions, his personality- came tumbling back down like a child's building blocks.
Vince had started leaving him notes to find long before he had disappeared. It had been a silly game they had started playing; Vince would write a funny little note, hide it somewhere and then Howard would find it and leave an appropriate message in response.
And for a long time after Vince was gone they seemed to turn up everywhere: in cabinets, down the sofa, in matchboxes, in his trumpet case, under the bed, in his shoes...
And each time he found one he would fall to pieces.
But then they had stopped. They just stopped one day when he had been finding them for so long he expected them to never end. He went through a whole day of not finding one and became desperate to the point that he had started purposely searching, raiding the flat from top to bottom, and when he had searched everywhere, twice, Naboo told him that maybe there just weren't anymore.
And he had cried then, burst into tears like a child who had just been told there weren't any sweets left, huddled on the floor, ashamed of himself. If there were no more notes it meant there was no more Vince, and reality slammed the door wide open and snapped the little glimmer of hope he had had into too many pieces to ever fit together again.
In the end, he had to get himself together, and without the notes it was a fraction easier.
But now he had just found another note, nestled in his jacket pocket, and he instantly forgot everything in the world but Vince.
'Howard? Wassa matta?' Naboo was standing somewhere behind him, he guessed, and he heard the pad of gorilla feet.
'I found a note,' he barely moved his mouth.
'What?'
'A note.'
'What's it say?' Naboo's voice was softer now, and tinged with an emotion.
'It just...' The Maverick fought hard to keep the tears at bay, 'It just says "Howard"'