Narrow chest, narrow shoulders, narrow hips. Narrow mind? No; that was Howard's domain. Apparently.
Together, they made one balanced individual. That was their joke. That was the premise of their whole friendship, the foundation of the life they shared. One was shallow, the other deep; one bright, the other dark. Howard ate the crusts, and Vince ate the jammy middle.
But appearances aren't everything, after all. And Howard favoured rye, not the flimsy white squares chosen by Vince.
Howard didn't think he had a narrow mind, not at all, no sir. You can't enjoy jazz on a limited mind plane. Imagination, a lust for the unknown, the unseen, the obscene, that was the lifeblood of a jazz enthusiast.
Here are the cracks in the plaster of the perfect pair. Don't look too closely or the cracks will become fissures, and the fissures, fractures. Try not to see the fault lines. It's hard, that's true; fault is batted about a little too eagerly in this relationship.
Understandable, isn't it? Not too hard to see why banter lapses into bitter. They had spent too many years ignoring the cracks, sticking steadfastly to their chosen stereotypes. Howard was dark, Vince was bright; but the brightness faded and the dark somehow muted, lightened into something a little too close to despair.
New dynamic. New tension. Dye here, add a few pounds there, throw in a change of scenery, and there you are.
Two narrow minds – or, if not narrow, just as narrow as each other.
Two men, sun and moon. Can they connect at sunset?
Straight. Straight as a pole. Straight as Vince's face that first night at the Zooniverse, the first night in the shack on the floor, encased in squashy sleeping bags. Straight as Howard's rigid body as he heard the whispered words.
"Love you, Howard."
It was whispered fiercely, bitten out like something unpleasant but painfully necessary. Something slightly shameful. Embarrassing.
And Howard, constricted by a fear of closeness of any kind, that dreaded word 'intimacy', stayed silent in response. His eyes glared through the dark towards the invisible ceiling, and his hands clenched open and shut.
And Vince didn't say anything else that night, but his panda eyes next morning were truly something to behold. He hadn't slept. He was cheerful, though, quite normal and all, so Howard didn't bother mentioning it. Or, didn't dare, more like. His own panda eyes undoubtedly said more than enough.
So the next night, when Vince bit out the same words, again hissing it out like something shameful, Howard had had some time to think about it. And he found the words rolling off his tongue quite easily, like cheese down some hill in Gloucestershire.
"Love you too, little man."
And then they both slept.
Now Howard knew something more about Vince, his shallow mate, best friend, constant companion and oft-times, annoyingly, his saviour. Howard knew something none of Vince's steadily increasing swathe of admirers could possibly know.
Howard knew, first hand, Vince's desperate need for affection. Real affection. Vince Noir's Achilles' heel, invisible to all in daylight. Whether it was the somewhat unorthodox upbringing, the elusive parents, the patch of bullying in school, it didn't really matter. Vince needed to be accepted. He needed proof of that. Nightly affirmation. Without Howard's response, no matter how tired, fed-up, grumpy, incoherent or unenthusiastic, Vince did not sleep.
And this was never mentioned during daylight hours. Not even when they scurried hurriedly from Bob Fossil's nightmare regime in those final, dark days at the Zooniverse. Not even when dirty blonde turned black. Not through a million rape adventures, or a thousand Vince Noir rescues, or three odd Howard Moon manoeuvres. Not even as banter turned bitter, and snarkiness prevailed.
Not even that night (last night) when Vince stayed silent and didn't speak up after lights out.
And Howard couldn't sleep. Hadn't slept since, in fact. Funny thing was, though, funny thing was that he was pretty sure Vince couldn't sleep either – he'd just become more skilled at concealing panda eyes since the Zooniverse.
So they lay awake. This was the second night. Howard lay awake, straight as a straight pole, lying on his back and breathing through his nose to hide the fact that he was lying awake. He was angry at Vince (a pretty stock-standard happenstance in the flat above the Nabootique) – but now he was sleep deprived, all because Vince didn't just speak up and say those words.
Say them. Say them. Say them.
He breathed in time, a dogged little mantra. After a short five hours, Howard realised he couldn't hear Vince breathing, and had a minor attack of the Maybe-He-Didn't-Say-Anything-Because-He-Died-While-You-Were-Being-A-Twat guilt. And then, as he held his breath in momentary panic, he heard a very definite sigh from the bed across the room, and Howard realised that they'd been breathing in time.
Awake. Both awake. For the second night now. It was fucking ridiculous. Why couldn't he just open his mouth, give the very alive Vince a little piece of his fatigue-addled mind?
Why couldn't he just start off the bidding, launch the armada, and give Vince what he was obviously looking for?
Why couldn't he just tell Vince he loved him first, for once?
Because he was straight, that's why. Straight as a straight line.
So he didn't say it.
He was in dire straits, yes sir.
Where is he, then? Wait, wait and see. Stutter about a bit, it's alright. He'll come.
Everything swirled and blended into a nauseating cloud of black. Dark, dark, dark, down the tunnel, through the looking glass, and oh, what is that smell, it's worth the spinning darkness to escape the wall of smell that smashed up against the face and tunnelled down into the nostril cavities.
And Vince fell back, and as he fell, he was still waiting. Waiting for strong, steady, eternally reluctant, slightly smug Northerner arms to catch him. Wrap about his falling frame and pull him to a safe, soft haven.
Then he fell through the floor into blackness. Eyes rolled up into nothing. Then he stopped waiting.
And the Crack Fox knew this, and he lowered his filthy bottlebrush tail with extra satisfaction.
Vince may be shallow, but he's not stupid. Well, alright, he is stupid, he'll admit to it, too – it takes all sorts, and he's smart where it's needed, which is more than can be said of some. He knows that stupidity is more about missing opportunities, and he hasn't done that. Nobody calls him boring, and that's the important part. Vince Noir is original, or a damn good imitation of originality.
Vince knows he's as shallow as a toddler pool, but when he feels things, emotions, he feels them in colour.
Emotions bleed through his body like dye through silk. He hides them just about as well, too. He's the sunshine kid, yeah? He's yellow and gold and metallic and blindingly happy (when he's happy, that is, which is most of the time, really). Or at least, he used to be.
Nowadays, Vince can hide a little of what he's feeling. The fact that he needs to hide it just confirms the point, right? He's not the sunshine kid anymore. He's cooler, the height of cool, wears black and plays punk sometimes. Outwardly, emotions seem to slide off him like dye on pleather.
But they don't, not really. They thrum through his heart, his soul, his little mind and enormous eyes. They radiate outwards from inside, there to be seen by anyone who cares to see them.
But Howard doesn't meet his eyes these days. Every single day, Howard misses the rainbow thrown about the Nabootique from Vince's eyes – or dismisses it as light playing off mirrorball suits.
And every single night, as the two men lie awake in stony silence, the colours thrum through Vince's body until they fade to black.
Howard had said it first once, of course. Strapped back-to-back with a human coke can, death inches away in the form of Black Frost, there had truly seemed nothing more to lose. And Vince, ever-optimistic sunshine Vince, who knew salvation had to be on its way, had saved Howard. Again.
He had laughed.
In laughing, he had saved them both from the consequences of that pre-death confession.
And the moment had been forgotten. Well, not forgotten. Not by Howard, at least. Not by Vince either, if Howard knew the electro puppet as well as he thought he did, which he did, of course. Back then.
The moment had been… dismissed.
Tommy could go stick it. As could Mrs Gideon. As could the goth girls, and the electro girls, the bloody Pencil Case Girl, and above all, Precious.
They could all go to Monkey Hell, as far as Vince Noir was concerned (and let's face it, most of them deserved a less than saintly end). See, even after all this time, the electro prince was jealous. Bitten up with envy, to be honest.
Sour as an unripe lemon wrapped in sour gummy worms.
To all of them, all of those listed above, Howard had actively shown unmerited affection. Cream poetry for the panda-loving Gideon; a flash of the arse and several dead swans for the goth girls; Human Nature for the electro duo; a Pencil Case for you-know-who; his well-being for that sadistic coconut.
None of them was right for Howard, none! Vince hated them all, because Howard never seemed to see their flaws until it was far too late. Howard Moon, the Great Romantic, in love with love.
But not with Vince. Wouldn't even touch Vince by choice. Wouldn't let Vince touch him either, which was almost worse. Was it a fundamental lack of trust despite everything that they'd gone through?
Vince really wanted to touch Howard sometimes. Wrap his hands around that proud northerner neck and wring for a while.
And sometimes (most times) he wanted to touch other places, too.
Oh, bugger it, and let it all go to hell.
Howard braced himself against his mattress for the impending ridicule.
"I fucking love you, alright?" he said (well, roared) through gritted teeth and silent night. He found that he had swung himself up to a seated position, hands still firmly entwined in his sheets, singlet all sweaty and ridden up. His chest was heaving with anger and desperation and fear, fear, fear.
Vince was awake. He'd have to have been deaf to miss out on Howard's confession. Why wasn't he saying anything?
"Sentiment not returned, you prize muppet," came the eventual, faint reply, and Vince finally laughed.
"Don't think Naboo appreciated your little outburst, Howard," he said, but there was a tangible flush of sunshine beaming out in his voice. "You couldn't've just let him know in the morning, could you?"
"Oh, shut it," said Howard, rubbing at his eyes with sweaty fingers and wondering if dying of embarrassment counted as suicide. Well, he might as well go the whole hog. That's what the samurais did, wasn't it? "You know what I mean, Vince."
Silence again.
"You know what I meant, right, little man? Otherwise you know I'll never get back to sleep again."
"Is that why you said it?"
Howard sank back onto his elbows, letting his chin collapse onto his chest. He closed his eyes, fatigue thrumming between his ears like a conduit.
"Is it?" Vince said again, but now his voice was harder.
"'Course not," said Howard to his chest, barely murmuring, and not just for Naboo's sake, either.
"Then why?"
Well, it had never promised to be an easy night of banter. Howard could already feel himself sinking into a whole new realm of trouble and humiliation. Could he use his lack of sleep as an excuse in the morning?
"I don't know why, Vince," he said tiredly, tilting his chin slightly in the direction of the other bed. "Tell me why you love me, how about that."
Silence. It was getting rather sickening, all this black space brimming with tension. Repetitive.
"'Cause I always have."
"Fair enough." A pause. "Well, same here, really."
"Excellent."
"Well, now that lucidity has been shed on all factors," Howard began, stomach sliding down the sweaty slope into the arena of Supreme Discomfort, "let's get us some sleep, shall we?"
"Don't want to."
Howard found this statement slightly disconcerting. Slightly more disconcerting, however, was the fact that these words seemed to be coming from somewhere a little closer than Vince's bed.
"Vince?" he whispered, suddenly a lot more conscious of the dark. Before it had worked to his advantage, the shield of invisibility. Now his lack of sight was working against him. "Vince, what are you – mmph!"
He wasn't sure. He just wasn't sure. Wasn't sure of anything any more, to be entirely honest. What it felt like, well, what it felt like was that an excitable electro poof had suddenly attached itself to Howard's lips with all the pulling force of a jazzy hoover.
"Don't touch – oh, sod it," he murmured, and relaxed into the kiss, even going so far as to dangle his fingers about in the sleeves of Vince's makeshift pyjama top. Well, at least it was familiar. And it was heaven, too.
Finally Vince pulled back, and Howard moved forward this time, blindly seeking those warm, agile lips, moustache prickling like antennae.
"I think you've had enough for now, Howard," laughed Vince breathily. "Greedy and eager for more, who'd have thought it?"
"Juicy dangler," Howard growled, still pitching forward hopefully.
"You've had your fill tonight!"
"I love you."
There it was. He'd said it again – this time, far from pre-meditated. Far from threat of death, too.
So maybe Howard TJ Moon wasn't all that straight after all. Lines could be drawn crookedly, too. There were no hard-and-fast rules in Stationary Village.
"I know, you batty crease. Always knew you'd come around." Vince's voice lowered slightly, and if Howard could have leaned further forward, he would have.
"You were always well into my hair."
And Vince was that shallow, but that wasn't a bad thing, in the end. Vince Noir was shallow. And Howard Moon loved him for it.
Two men, sun and moon. Turns out that they connect very well at sunset. (And when they have sex, there's a bloody eclipse.)