A/N: Thank you to all you reviewers! But I'm also going to apologize. One: yes, this is another fillery kind of deal, mainly because I didn't want to rush the conclusion that we're nearing. Two: It's a bit of a shoddy attempt at song-fic-ing. (That's not quite a verb, is it?) Hopefully you'll enjoy it, anyway.

Chapter title comes from the beautiful, beautiful 'Through My Sails' by the inhumanly talented Neil Young.
The song quotes that are scattered about are from, of course, 'Wild Horses' by the Rolling Stones.

TWELVE

Total Confusion- Disillusion

It felt like no time at all to Vince. There he was, having a great time with Jeanie or whatever the hell her name was, and all of a sudden, for no discernable reason, he was being slapped in the face. If that had been the extent of it, Vince could've recovered nicely and played it off as her being kinky. But she'd pushed him as well, and then Leroy was barreling over toward him. Before he knew it, he was standing out in the hallway, hastily throwing on his clothes, having been pushed out by the owner of the flat. Vince could see the unnamed girl holding back the other as Leroy closed the door, leaving the two men alone on the outside.

"Okay," he began, trying to stay calm as possible. "What in Lucifer's sweet hell was that?"

Vince let out something in between an exhale and a laugh, completely misconstruing his words. "I dunno! She just flipped shit on me; I don't understand!"

Leroy stared at him with narrowed eyes. "What? You really have no idea what just went on?"

"I've gotta be honest, I lost all focus after…" Vince's voice trailed off thoughtfully as a pang of regret cut through his strange high.

"Yeah. That's what I thought. What about the progress we made? Huh? What about your niche?"

"Before you go bangin' on about stuff again, can you please tell me what I'm bein' penalized for?" Vince asked, distraught.

"Alright, that's fair," agreed Leroy. "Tell me, what's that girl's name you were with?"

Vince's face scrunched up into an almost Billy Idol-esque sneer, struggling in vain to remember. "Janet?" he ventured.

"No, but even that was closer than what you've been callin' her all bloody morning."

A few silent moments passed before the words crashed down on Vince, whose eyes shot wide open in horror. "No… Leroy, I didn't… please, please tell me I didn't…"

"You did," he confirmed. "Janine is absolutely gorgeous. She's feminine, she's sexy, she's fun… why the fuck would you call her Howard?"

"How many times did I do it?"

"A bloody lot, Vince! She didn't hear you the first few times, but- oh, God…" Leroy's voice hit a downward stride and then cracked, as if realizing something horrible. "You weren't… you weren't pretending it was him, were you?"

Vince looked down at his feet, his hair coming down around his face like a black, impenetrable barrier. "I just… I wished it was him," he answered, in a voice so uncharacteristically small and fragile it made Leroy do a double take.

"I don't know why I ever tried to help you," he eventually said. "You're way too far gone. How can you give this carefree lifestyle up? It's you, Vince; it's-"

"No, Leroy," interrupted Vince, his voice growing stronger. "It's not much to give up."

"Well, you'd better piss off, then."

"You're really sendin' me off?"

"What'd you think I've been gettin' at?"

Vince looked up at Leroy, his countenance completely pained. "Why don't you send the girls off instead?"

"And miss my chance?" Leroy scoffed. "While you're gone, I'm gonna try my luck at a three-way."

Vince flinched, thinking of all the times he'd said something to that effect to Howard when he had struck out. "Please, Leroy," he pleaded. "I've got nowhere to go…"

"Don't bullshit me, Noir; you can nip off back to your precious Howard."

"He ain't gonna wanna see me after all that!"

Leroy laughed. "Are you kidding me? The man worships you. It'll be like the fuckin' Prodigal Son. Wait, no. The fuckin' Prodigal… Gay Lover? You know what I'm gettin' at."

"I can't keep takin' advantage of him; please, just for a few hours so I ca-"

"Piss off, mate." With that, he disappeared back into his flat and cried a hearty "laters!" from behind the closed door.

Vince sighed and dug his iPod out of his jacket pocket, hurriedly burying the headphones into his ears. He could always turn to the likes of Mick Jagger when the rest of the world refused to empathize; Mick always took Vince's side. Today was a little different, though. When Vince was dejectedly trudging out of Leroy's building and into the cold streets, Mick's voice brought tears to his eyes.

"Childhood living is easy to do; the things you wanted, I bought them for you..."

As much as it hurt, Vince refused to change the song. It was very much the anthem of Howard's stupid, inveterate loyalty.

How had they gotten to this point, anyway? It seemed like a lifetime ago that they were Howard & Vince, the unlikely tag-team. Now they were Howard, depressed loner, and Vince, reckless partier. There was definitely no way to track their degeneration, or to even find anyone to wholly blame it on. The fault was both of theirs. Years of unspoken feelings, unjustified fears and petty jealousies threw them too far off course.

"I watched you suffer a dull, aching pain; now you've decided to show me the same."

Vince remembered the day after the zoo was shut down. They'd been illegally sneaking into their hut after closing time every night for years, neither of them having anywhere else to stay and neither of them ever really taking the initiative to find a place. They'd had each other, and so they'd slowly converted their location of employment into home. It wasn't surprising that when that home was taken from them, Vince fell into his first real fit of depression. Having to live without the animals, without everything he'd become familiar with… without Howard… it was too much for him.

The first week after the zoo's closing was spent in a daze. Vince saw nothing of his best friend; he was too preoccupied trying to get as inebriated as possible while finding the cheapest motels available to crash at to answer his constant calls. It wasn't until eight days later that they talked. Howard had called to tell him that Naboo went freelance and asked for them, personally, to live with him in his new flat. (This, unbeknownst to Vince, was a lie. Howard was equally as lost on his own, and had tracked down Naboo with the idea of renting out a vacant office space as a shop. The shaman had seen through the seemingly entrepreneurial suggestion and asked, "You just wanna live with Vince again, yeah?" Howard had stammered like an idiot until Naboo silenced him with a, "I'll see what I can do.")

When Howard had left for Denmark to work with that pretentious director, Vince's separation anxiety had been much worse. He firmly believed that Howard would never come back, and since his music career was clearly not working out the way he'd always hoped, he concluded that he had nothing to live for. So he'd returned to his vices of drugs and alcohol, only this time, Leroy was there to encourage him. Was that what this whole thing was about? Punishing Howard for leaving him again? He was only following his dreams, and it wasn't as if he could have had any way of knowing just how much his absence would hurt Vince.

"No sweeping exits or off-stage lines could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind."

That sentence did Vince in. As soon as it was sung, he crumbled up against the nearest brick wall, let out a loud sob, and fell onto the ground. "Whadya lookin' at?" he began to scream as more and more passersby stared. "Go on, keep walkin'!"

"Wild horses couldn't drag me away; wild, wild horses, we'll ride them someday."

The final line of the song- the one line tainted with the most sorrowful tinge of optimism- stopped Vince's crying. What was he doing? Howard loved him. Instead of wasting away the confession in his violent come-down, he should be trying his best to rectify the situation. Remaining sat against the wall, he pulled out his phone, tore out an ear-bud, and hit his speed dial.

Each ring on the other line made him more and more impatient, and the sound of it going to voicemail did nothing to help his sanity. But he wasn't going to misuse this phone call. "Howard?" he cried frantically. "I'm so sorry about before. I didn't put her up to that, alright? It was Leroy. You were right about him; you're right about everything, okay? I have a million apologies I've gotta make, and I'll make 'em all in person, I swear… I swear on Jagger and Numan and Bowie and everythin' else. I'll be gettin' straight home to you as soon as I figure out where the hell I am, and you'd better be there, because I need to see you as soon as possible. I love you, too, Howard, I always have and I always will." He took a deep breath and hung up, praying to every deity out there that Howard would listen to the message.

That's the annoying thing about prayers, though. They like to go unanswered.