Hey, this is my first story here so please be kind and read and review. I can take criticism as long as its constructive and not rude or just an all out flame. Flamers are uncool anyway.
Oh and just as a disclaimer (so I don't get sued) The Mighty Boosh doesn't belong to me, niether do Vince or Howard or Naboo or Bollo they belong to the lovely Julian Barrett and Noel Fielding (yum!). All I own is my lowly OC. :(
Shaya had never felt at home with her family. They just did not understand her, not the way Howard and Vince and the others did. Being with them was like being in a dream, a crazy-assed story complete with weird creatures and adventures. Sometimes she wished that she could write them all down – all of them— in a book, but their adventures were so fantastic, so crazy that she was certain no one would believe her.
Besides, where would she even start?
Shaya looked down at the purple notebook open in her lap. The blank pages seemed to mock her as she hovered over them, black biro in hand. She had to write something, anything. She had to have a permanent reminder of their time, their adventures together, if only to remind herself that it had all been real.
Shaya sighed and wiped her long brown hair away from her face. She was having difficulty concentrating, due to the jazz blaring from Howard's room. Pretty soon she was certain that she would hear Vince stomp upstairs from the shop, switch it off and yell at him for having no taste in music. She smiled, the pair were always at war over jazz, where always teasing each other about something, but she knew that no matter what they did, they would always forgive each other after a while.
She looked up over the rooftops of the other houses. This was her favourite place in the whole world, the rooftop. From there she could see everything, the world around her, the elaborate maze of the streets of Dalston from a totally different point of view. She stared up at the night sky, the stars twinkling down, and noticed that the moon was particularly bright tonight. She considered asking the moon where to begin, but as everyone knows, the moon is a simpleton and would only talk a load of nonsense. She smiled and wondered whether Naboo and Bollo were having fun on their shaman skiing trip in the French Alps.
She chuckled quietly to herself as she remembered the first time she stepped foot in the Nabootique. She had lost her family whilst they were out on a shopping trip and it had just so happened to be the first shop she had seen. She remembered being completely taken away by all the odds and ends that they sold all manner of things which were neither useful nor necessary. The first thing she had seen when she walked in was Howard standing behind the counter, trying to sell her some jazz related stationary, whilst Vince was sat in his barber's chair reading Cheekbone magazine, he was wearing a sparkly jumpsuit, his long black hair sticking up in all directions. She started talking to them and they hit it off instantly.
After that, she visited the shop more and more regularly, getting to know them better. She listened with rapt attention to all their crazy adventures they had at the Zooniverse, she helped Vince with his wacky costumes and Howard find a new sound for their band. She even joined in some the adventures herself, going back home to tell her mother everything. But her mother just told her to stop being so stupid and asked her what drugs she had been taking.
She recalled the night her parents had thrown her out of the house. It had taken her two trains to travel across London to the flat and it was a cold night. Vince had heard her banging on the door —he was the only one up that late at night — and had opened it to find her standing in the street shivering from the cold with her suitcase. She remained stoic as she told him what had happened and he had enveloped her into a warm, friendly hug. He helped her carry her luggage up to the flat where the others were waiting for them. Their eyes tired as they woke up to find the source of all the commotion.
After Vince had explained everything that had happened, the flatmates had unanimously agreed that she should stay with them, providing, as Naboo said, that she worked in the shop for him. Shaya agreed heartily and so she was welcomed into the fold. She had to share a room with Vince of course as he had the only room with a spare bed. But she did not mind such a Bohemian arrangement for two almost-adults. Since then she had never looked back. They were her family now; a stoned shaman and gorilla, Howard the jazz maverick, cream poet and would-be actor, author and musician and Vince. Vince with his fabulous hair and wacky dress sense, fickly following whatever trends he felt like trying out that day, skipping from nu-rave to mod to goth to punk so much that you never knew what he would be next. Shaya wondered whether he would go emo...
Emo Vince. Now that would be interesting. Somehow she doubted whether his sunny disposition would let him pull it off, but this was Vince, he could pull off anything.
Somehow she had managed to fit into this hotchpotch group of...the word men never really seemed appropriate to describe them, but it was the only word she could think of. Yes, she had managed to fit in with them, despite her arguably hippy ways, her floaty, floral dress sense and her quiet demeanour. Somehow, she had managed to worm her way into the hearts of these men to whom she was closer to then she had ever been to her own family.
Suddenly the roof window opened, the sound brought her out of her musings. Vince's head popped up out of nowhere, he gave her a cheeky smile, his blue eyes glimmering in the starlight.
"There you are!" he exclaimed, clambering up onto the roof to sit beside her, "What are you doing up here?"
The question brought back another memory for Shaya. Vince had asked her it before, when she had sat on the roof for some alone time and he had caught her crying. Of course, Vince being Vince had asked what was wrong and when she told him, he responded by lending her a poncho, because of course, it's impossible to be unhappy in a poncho.
Vince looked at her waiting for a reply. She was clearly spacing out so he waved a hand in front of her face.
"Shaya? Shaya?"
"Wha—oh yeah," she replied, a little flustered from her reverie, "I just came out here, because I'm thinking of writing all our adventures down. I couldn't think in there, with all the jazz music and everything."
"Yeah, Howard's jazz is annoying," he agreed, hesitated and then added, "But writing our adventures down would be genius. Maybe you should get them published and then Howard would be really mad."
They both chuckled at the thought. Howard had always wanted to be a writer, but had never really had the flare for it. It was Shaya who had a true writing talent, something that had always seemed to irk him, maybe that was why he was always a bit cold towards her whenever he saw her scribbling away in her notebook. This always seemed to amuse Vince, but then anything that irritated Howard was guaranteed to amuse Vince.
"Hmmm, sounds like a plan," she remarked, "But it would help if I could actually find a place to start."
Vince nodded silently. Today he had chosen to be a punk. His black jacket was ripped and decorated with safety pins and badges, a green and black tie from Topshop hung loosely around his neck. Shaya closed her notebook, realising that he was distracting her completely from her train of thought.
"It's no use," she muttered, "It probably would not be very good anyway."
She made to get down and go back inside the flat, but Vince put his hand over hers. She froze still and stared at it for a second, he had lady's hands, his fingers were long and thin, the skin was smooth and perfect probably from the expensive moisturiser he used.
"No," his voice was quiet and uncharacteristically serious, "Stay a while."
Shayla sat back down and stared at him. His eyes were heavily lined with black liquid eyeliner –probably her eyeliner which meant that it hadn't been tested on animals—which made his blue eyes even brighter. Silence fell between them and she found herself staring into his eyes unable to look away. She knew that she should say something, anything but her mind was too scrambled to think of anything. It was as though some weird juju had suddenly surrounded them as she realised how close they were sitting, how close their faces were getting. She wanted to run, to find an excuse to leave but somehow she was frozen to the spot. It was clear that Vince was experiencing the same thing; there was definitely some weird juju afoot.
Vince stared at Shaya; her eyes were a lovely shade of green, the same shade as grass. He held his breath, knowing that he had to somehow break the stalemate they were in. He knew it was time, time to show her how he really felt about her. Counting to ten in his head, he leaned in closer, closed his beautiful eyes and kissed her softly on the mouth. She bit back a gasp, taken by surprise before parting her lips and kissing him back.
After what seemed like an age, they broke apart. Vince gave her a swift searching look, his heart pumping in horror. What if she didn't feel the same? What if he had made a mistake? Their friendship would be ruined forever. But to his relief, she merely smiled back at him and gave him a sweet lingering kiss on his lips. He embraced her and she rested her head on his chest, laughing at how silly she had been not to recognise that it had been there all along.
And so the punk and the hippy were sat on the rooftops embracing each other. Two very different people drawn together like magnets, unable to resist the juju that had been between them all along. They held each other, staring out under the rooftops, sharing a moment that only the moon above could see. As they gazed out, Vince's arms warm around Shaya's waist, the smell of his cologne filling her nostrils, she realised how she would begin her book.
'Come with us now on a journey through time and space...'
