"Oh, come on, then!"
Vince ground his teeth loudly. As if the words and the grinding weren't enough to adequately portray the pointy young man's frustration, neon nails were engaged in a tap dance on the shop counter.
"Come on!"
Howard ground his teeth quietly, pulled his fawn fedora a little further down his forehead, and committed himself to the arduous task ahead. He would not crack, no sir. He would not crack. He would ignore the tapping. This Man of Action had stared down much worse provocation than this. He would not –
"What have you gone and done now, you jazzy pringle?"
Howard stared down at his clenched fist and, with effort, released. Two halves of a pencil clattered down to the counter unceremoniously. For a moment, the shop was silent as both men watched the leaded end roll about to a halt. Howard tried very hard not to feel threatened by the carbon tip that seemed to prod rather violently towards his heart.
"Now you can't get angry at me next time I accidentally leave my hair straighteners in Stationery Village," Vince crowed, triumphant. "Trust you to go about breaking your own children, Howard."
"They're not my children," Howard bit back automatically. "I'm the mayor of the township, not Big Daddy Pencil, so shut your mouth."
"Yeah, yeah," sighed Vince, rolling his eyes and leaning back on the counter. "Don't need to know any more about your stationery kinks, thank you very much."
Howard pressed his fingers to his temples and massaged desperately. "I don't have a thing for stationery, you berk, as I've told you many times before."
"What about that time I caught you out back with your hands all tangled in the branches of the Sellotape Tree?"
"I was replacing the tired winter foliage for the spring display and got stuck in the adhesive!"
"Yeah, whatever; I'm never borrowing your tape again." Vince grinned inanely as his blue eyes caught upon the matchbox car beside the register. As the shiny Prince of Camden busied himself in his habitual occupation of zooming the little red car through the air, Howard (rather gingerly) swept the pencil pieces into a waste bin.
He returned to his seat when the task was completed, and sighed heavily as his view of his beloved jazz records was obstructed by Vince's swishing arm.
"Can't you play with your car somewhere else?" he asked without much hope. Rather predictably, his expectations were met quite promptly. With a flourish and a build in vocal dynamics, the motor vehicle took a sharp turn onto Howard's left arm.
"Brooom, brmm brmm broom," Vince replied, eyes fixed on the little car as it swerved dangerously around the collar, wheels catching odd strands of Howard's hair and tearing mercilessly through them.
"Watch it, ow," Howard complained, before jerking backwards as Vince climbed right into his lap. Sharp knees dug into the flesh of his thighs as a vibrant stretch of lime assaulted his vision. Howard's neck extended to its fullest capacity and his fedora promptly fell off, as if the bland accessory was fleeing from this technicolour invasion.
"What, what, what are you doing?" Howard finally managed to choke out, voice muffled by shock. His beady eyes squinted further as he tried to distance himself from Vince somehow, but their physical proximity rendered such efforts hopelessly futile.
"Vroooooom!"
The matchbox car raced up and through a smoky brown forest of hair, down Forehead Plain, along the crooked Nasal Ridge, entered Mocha-Stain Motorway and came to a sudden, screeching halt.
The screeching died away in the back of Vince's throat as the car wheels prodded roughly against Howard's terrified lips, which had drawn back a little in pure reaction to this violent infringement of the 'don't touch me' rule. With some difficulty, Howard uncrossed his eyes from the little red vehicle and peered forward into familiar orbs of azure that seemed to be widening even now…
"Er," he coughed, his crab-like eyes scuttling about nervously for distraction, and bulging a little at the sight of that nose, and those lips, so very close –
"Vroom, er, I mean, alright, Howard?" Vince squeaked – did he squeak? surely not, asked and answered Howard's frenzied brain – and slowly, as if coming to, the smaller man began to slide backwards. The sleek nylon of Vince's black stockings slipped easily against the tweed trousers beneath, and it was with little difficulty – barely a stumble, in fact – that the men were quickly a good, safe metre apart.
Safe? Howard's mind hung on the word 'safe', though he wasn't sure that such an adjective should belong to this situation. It was, however, easily a good metre; a satisfactory distance of solid wooden floorboards and manly sentiments. Very manly sentiments. Rugged, indeed.
Somewhat stunned, Howard raised his gaze from the floor and locked onto Vince's uncharacteristically awkward pose. With his narrow shoulders hunched slightly inwards, and one boot digging nervously at the ground – well, perhaps 'rugged' wasn't the most accurate description, either.
The offending matchbox car dangled unsteadily from neon nails.
Howard frowned, mind fixing eagerly on this distraction. Hold on a minute. Neon nails.
"Right, so, erm, what are you waiting for, anyway?" he asked loudly, rather relieved to have thought of such a nifty little conversation starter.
Vince's response was immediate, and slightly hysterical. "What?"
Howard's frown deepened in confusion. "Before, you were tap-tap-tapping away at the counter, and grinding your teeth. What are you waiting for?"
Vince's face seemed to relax as he absorbed Howard's explanation. "Oh, that. I don't know."
A very familiar ire rippled up Howard's spine and into his brow, causing his jaw to clench noticeably. "Then why do it?" he managed calmly.
"Do what? The tap-tap-tapping?" asked Vince with an expression of innocence. He darted forward without warning (causing Howard to jolt back in his chair once more) but landed on the desk this time, swinging his heeled boots into the air and tap-tap-tapping with his neon nails. The motorcar skidded to the register, finally abandoned. "Is this what annoyed you, Howard? The tapping?"
Howard's left eye experienced a slight twitch as his ears were once more assaulted with Vince's upbeat percussive sequence.
"Yes, Vince. The tapping is what annoyed me. So why are you doing it?"
Vince grinned cheekily. "Oh, I know why I'm doing it now," he answered quickly, tongue flicking up to curl impertinently about his incisor.
"Why before?" Howard growled, fists tightening. A good dozen pencils might have been crushed in his grasp had he been preparing to operate the electric sharpener. Unfortunately, the machine no longer inhabited Stationery Village; it had never really been the same after Vince's most determined attempt to own the sharpest stilettos in Camden.
Neon nails adopted a more subdued rhythm as Vince seemed to consider Howard's question. One set stopped their percussive nonsense entirely as Vince lifted a hand and examined the enamel. "I was waiting," he said vaguely, frowning down at his manicure.
"I got that."
Vince ignored Howard's brittle sarcasm. "I was waiting for my brain to realise something," he elaborated, nodding as if to confirm the truth in his words.
"What are you jabbering on about, you muppet?" Howard demanded, aching for pencils to crush within his fists.
"Well, you know when you know something, and you know that you know something, but you can't actually remember what it is that you know?"
"No," Howard answered quite truthfully, feeling as if his brain was beginning to leak out of his ears. It was not a pleasant sensation, and the jazz maverick was beginning to wish that he'd never even attempted to satisfy his curiosity.
Vince sighed. "Basically, I'm trying to get an obvious fact to peek out from behind the sparkly curtains in my mind." After a moment of frustration, in which his boots kicked heavily against the counter, a thoughtful smile curled across his face. "I bet I've got some genius fabrics going on inside. Do I really, Howard?"
"I really don't care to remember, my shallow friend," Howard sighed. "So you can't remember something, is that it?"
"Nah, that's not it, not really," Vince answered cheerily. "I think my brain cell's trying to tell me something, that's all. I feel like I can almost hear him shouting things sometimes when we're down here in the shop." He shook his head, ruffled his hair back into place, and rolled onto his back like an attention-seeking puppy. "You know, I think it's just easier to ignore him."
With a quick yawn and a stretch, Vince reached a hand across to Howard's arm, which lay slumped against the counter. As soon as foreign nails made contact with the sleeve of his turtleneck, Howard jumped and snatched his arm away.
"Don't touch me," he hissed, and then froze. Vince's hand, too, went limp on the countertop, as if both had suddenly remembered their interesting positioning during the Motorcar Adventures.
Unwillingly, Howard glanced down to the bright blue eyes nestled amongst fanning black hair on the countertop, and caught a flicker of almost-recognition leap into the normally vacant gaze.
"Oh, come on, then!" Vince muttered excitedly, eyes rolling inwards in some misguided attempt to look inside his brain.
It was with a chill and a whimper that Howard, too, came to the uncomfortable conclusion that his own mind was keeping something from him.
"Shut it, Vince."
A/N: I think I listened to Numan's 'Cars' slightly too many times today. Vroooom! Hope you enjoyed.
Oh, and please REVIEW! Reviews make me ever so happy (and the update of chapters ever so snappy)...