'Twas the night before Christmas
And out by the stairs,
A jazz maverick was waiting
For a Mowgli in flares.
"No, give me the bananas, Bollo. Come on. Fine then, don't, just get out of the kitchen before your fur starts matting with the flour. No, give me the flour – oh, sod it."
Howard's shoulders slumped. The sudden movement puffed a small white cloud of flour about his head. It was quite fitting, really. The northerner had been labouring under considerable storm clouds for some time now. The purpling sky outside was bereft of sunlight; snow would be arriving shortly.
Yes, quite fitting for Christmas.
Where was Vince, anyway? He never missed a day of baking, no sir – not the Electro Mixer. Pancakes, soup, whatever the recipe, Vince was always there.
And he had promised. And yet, as Howard struggled to breathe through the heady mix of flour and various spices hanging about the air, his beady eyes fixed on the electric beater lying abandoned on a nearby counter.
Should've expected it, really. Vince didn't exactly show much interest in hanging about the flat with Howard anymore. It wasn't like old times. Howard didn't even bother buying satsumas at the market anymore.
Howard glared after Bollo, and waved his oven mitts through the air with considerable ire.
"Twit," he muttered, turning back to the lumpy muck that should have been a firm mound of dough. "Now, the construction of a house from this mess. Possible? Yes sir. This man of action works alone."
Peering over the red, green and yellow towers of Sweet City, Howard shook his head in despair and his oven mitts off his hands. To tell the truth (though he never would) Howard had no idea how to go about building a gingerbread house. After all, he'd never done it alone. Vince always brought out a large technicolour drawing of where each of the walls was to be situated, misspelt instructions appearing in little speech bubbles from the mouth of a Plan Pony.
Howard shook his head in abject despair. What he wouldn't give for Vince to be poncing about behind him as usual, all frilly in some neon pink apron, one hand in the dough and one hand working on the erosion of Sweet City. What he wouldn't give for even a Plan Pony…
The claggy dough sprawled threateningly across the kitchen bench top. Even with a rolling pin in hand, Howard didn't want to touch it. Quite frankly, it looked rather evil – and not just to taste. He hadn't been able to remember how much cardamom was supposed to go in. Just in case, he'd made up for inadequate spices by dumping thrice the amount of honey in the saucepan. Well, at least Vince would have to approve of the extra sweetener – although Howard had tried to balance the saccharine taste by adding a cup of salt…
Thrusting his hands in the air (and rather missing the extra dramatics conveyed through his mitts) Howard gave up. He gave up. Vince wasn't here, and Howard had given up. Well, that wasn't really a new state of affairs, now, was it?
Ever since Howard and Vince had started working down in the Nabootique beneath the flat, their relationship had been wilfully antagonistic at best. Howard would brandish a diamond of a jazz record under Vince's nose, and Vince would descend to new depths of ridicule. And then leave the shop. Howard couldn't even tell himself that Vince was avoiding his jazz allergies; all records in the Nabootique were firmly enclosed in individual plastic pouches, yes sir.
No; Vince was avoiding Howard. That was clear enough. Vince was setting aside his old zoo buddy, his old school buddy, his best mate and crimping partner, for a whole new exciting scene.
And Howard was giving up. Every time Vince left the shop, every time Howard didn't say anything, he was giving up.
Howard decided that enough was enough. He was a jazz maverick, a genre spanner. Howard Moon, colon, explorer. There was nothing in his personal description to suggest culinary prowess (though Howard would never admit to any deficiency in this field). However, he could tell himself that he still held some sway over Vince through the bonds of their long-term friendship.
With one last defiant punch to the mound of greyish dough, Howard left the kitchen and settled himself on the couch by the stairs. He would sit there until Vince waltzed back in, and attempt to resurrect their friendship. Through angry and bitter confrontation.
With his little finger, Howard worked at removing flour from the corners of his eyes.
Two hours later, the door banged open in the shop below.
Howard jerked awake mid-snore. He squealed in alarm before suddenly realising that his pinkie still rested within his left eye.
"Howard? Is that you?"
Howard leapt to his feet at the sound of Vince's familiar voice, and brushed at himself nervously. He frowned as an inordinate amount of flour puffed from his muffin skivvy. He hoped that his moustache hadn't gone completely white. What would Lester Corncrake say at that?
"Alright, Howard?" Vince asked brightly as he clambered up the last stairs, a giant shopping bag hanging from his arm. Howard blinked for a moment, momentarily stunned by the palette of metallic colours screaming from Vince's outfit. Trying to recover from the visual overload, he focussed on the quietest piece of the costume – Vince's favourite festive boots. The crimson leather clashed brilliantly with the green baubles that bobbled from the laces.
"No," he said finally, his tone extremely short. "I am not alright. I am not even quasi-right. And neither is the gingerbread house."
Vince stepped closer, the green baubles dancing merrily on his boots. "Hey, cheer up, Howard, I slapped one together before I went out."
Howard's moustache twitched. His arm ached desperately for a Chinese burn. His eyes ached from flour build-up. "You what?"
"Yeah, me and the Plan Pony put some good hours in while you were out at your Jazzercise class this afternoon. You should see it, Howard, it's dynamite!" Vince held up a gloved finger, and Howard watched, silent, as green baubles swung merrily from his wrist. Wide blue eyes sprung wider with excitement, Vince dashed off into the bathroom (of all places) and came back panting.
Howard's tiny eyes widened to the size of bronze pennies.
On a grand silver platter that Howard didn't recognise stood a glorious fairytale castle, icing piped along walls in delicate artistry, multi-coloured skulls lining the gingerbread carapace. Sprouting out before a chocolate-coated portcullis was a magnificent gingerbread drawbridge. As Howard watched, mouth open, Vince reached out and tugged on a small liquorice lever. The drawbridge lowered smoothly, strung from a pair of raspberry bootlaces.
"It's well genius," said Vince proudly, a smile stretched across his cheeky face. "I drank a jug of eggnog before making it, I was blazing!"
Howard cleared his throat. "Are – are they turrets?" he asked weakly, prodding a finger towards the gingerbread castle.
"What's a castle without turrets?"
"I– "
For a long moment, Howard had absolutely no idea how to respond. He stared down at the castle built by Vince and the Plan Pony. He thought of the lump of doughy muck awaiting him in the shadows of the kitchen.
Vince had left him to attempt a gingerbread house alone. Howard had given up.
"How could you?" Howard whispered, eyes narrowing into floury creases.
Vince looked startled. He held up his hands nervously and took a step backwards, almost tangling himself up in swinging baubles. "What?"
"How could you do this to me?"
"What?" Vince repeated, his mouth curling into its all-too-familiar sneer. "Howard, I think all that jazz has finally sent you wrong."
"You left me here in the flat all alone on Christmas Eve. You left me to make a gingerbread house by myself." Howard paused, steaming and red, almost as toasty in appearance as he had become far off in the desert of Xooberon. "We always make that gingerbread house together, Vince, you and me, and you broke that tradition, sir. It doesn't matter how many turrets your fancy castle sports about town; our little square hut was just fine when we made it together."
All of a sudden, Howard's memory fixed upon the small zookeeper's hut that he had shared with Vince for years in the Zooniverse. Without warning, his eyes misted over and his vision disappeared in a cloudy soup of flour paste.
"Howard?"
Despite himself, Howard blinked at the new, unexpected note of timidity in Vince's voice.
"I didn't mean to – well, I just didn't think –"
"You never think, little man," Howard sighed, turning away to hide the wet floury splodges discolouring his muffin skivvy. "That single brain cell of yours is entirely pre-occupied with one person, and that person is not Howard Moon." He paused. "Believe me. I've been inside your mind."
Expecting an acerbic comeback, Howard prepared his regular defensive line. If Vince cut into him, he would come at the electro fairy like a buzzard, like a cylinder –
A small hand slid gently onto the whitened sleeve of Howard's skivvy, unusual in its silent tentativeness. Without even thinking about it, Howard shrugged away from Vince's touch, and he didn't even need to say the words.
Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me.
"Whatever."
Howard flinched at the sharp antipathy in Vince's voice, and hunched his shoulders further into himself as crimson boots stomped away from the living room. Gazing about the room to distract his eyes from other activities, Howard found the gingerbread castle. On the floor. Turrets smashed to tasty smithereens, drawbridge dangling from a single rope of raspberry bootlace.
Well, there it was. The definitive end to the fairytale friendship.
Just in time for Christmas.
A/N: Part 1 of 2. Fluff peeps through the heavy clouds of angst...
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xx Froody