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Mornings like this don’t happen very often, lazy gold sunlight crawling in through the windows and the smell of butter warming on the pan. The city around them blinking open its millions of shutter eyes with a great yawn that scares the pigeons off rooftops into the air. On the rare occasion Vince can muster up the half asleep surgical precision to remove himself from Howard’s sleeping grasp, he does like to make breakfast. After slipping on a silky blue robe, one of Howard’s favorites, and tiptoeing into the kitchen. Normally Howard’s the one to leave Vince in bed, but they’d stayed up late the night before and while his own body could cope, Howard needed his beauty rest. Which leaves just enough time and space to slop some ingredients into a bowl and make some mediocre pancakes. One of the only things he knows how to make without setting off the fire alarm. By now Howard had shown him how to do it more times than he could count, so they ought to be at least decent. They wouldn’t be the best. All that mattered was when he took that first bite smothered in syrup and butter and kissed him with sweet lips and a sticky mustache. As far as he was concerned he was the best cook in the world. He smiles as he pours a yellow disk of batter into the pan and it hisses on the hot surface.
It’s a nice routine to get into, waiting for the tiny bubbles, watching them all pop then flipping. Pouring another in and repeating all over again. He stacks three together before he hears the door to the loo shut, Howard’s awake. The whitenoise of the shower and the creaking of their pipes comes after that, the ones Naboo keeps saying he’ll fix. Would it be so bad to chuck the whole pancake idea and join in? Creep in the door quietly, woosh his robe off and hop into the spray. Howard’s sputtering surprise and annoyance at his shower being interrupted can only last so long. Quickly replaced by thinly veiled affection in a kind of ‘I can’t stay mad at you’ corny way. A huff of surrender into a twitching grin and then he’s very keen on the idea. The amount of praise that follows is more of a shower than the shower itself. A kind of feeling shower. He hears it shut off, and slides another pancake onto the plate set aside. Humming to himself, a bit of Ramones, then hears Howard doing the same. Only definitely not Ramones, something jazzy and awful but it still makes him smile. Like their brainboxes were talking without them knowing it.
Like little bees, buzzing to each other through their little hivemind, only it was just the two of them instead of hundreds. And they didn’t have to do any real work like real bees did. Except Howard, the reason someone came up with the phrase ‘busy bee’ in the first place. Even when he was sitting down he was filling his head up with heaps of information. Dry stuff about the entire history of the paper weight or something. Though Vince had to admit he couldn’t pass up hearing him jabber about it later. More just watching the way his eyes lit up and how his hands moved when he talked. Sometimes he’d even pace about the room like a mad professor discovering monkeys had invented typewriters. Didn’t really matter what he was talking about, Vince just liked seeing his brain going like a runaway train puffing steam into the distance.
He’s pulled from his train metaphor by big arms wrapped round him and a body slotting in behind him all warm and smelling like aftershave. “Morning, sunshine. Smells good in here.”
If it weren’t for the rumbly morning voice and the way his cheeks were hot he’d laugh at such a corny line. By now Howard could quote Shakespeare at him and he’d be a giggling mess. Of course it was all still well embarrassing but unfortunately he was so sick with love it didn’t matter. Howard deposits his morning peck on the cheek. Not nearly enough, he presses up in a demand for more and of course he gets what he wants. “Yeah, they’ve turned out pretty nice, other’n that one he’s gone all crumbly and burnt. Dried up,” he gestures with the spatula as Howard chuckles and lays more kisses to his face, smooth and full of sleep.
Hang on, smooth?
He spins around in his arms and gasps. He’s never seen anything so terrifying, so shocking in his life. “What have you done with my Howard?”
“What, you don’t like it?” Howard throws it out with sarcasm but he truly does want to know. It matters far too much how Vince feels about it in fact. This was not the warm reception he was expecting this morning, though it’s probably not what Vince expected either.
“I don’t even know who you are anymore!” Vince squawks, standing there with his mouth hanging open like Howard’s grown another head. Quite a ridiculous and dramatic thing to say about something so small. Meaning it was a perfectly normal reaction for Vince. Especially when it comes to cosmetic matters. A hair out of place? It’s a tragedy. The wrong shade of pink to go with his eyes? It’s a travesty. Earthquakes could crack the flat in half and lava could pour out into the streets, as long as it didn’t muck up his hair he wouldn’t pay it much mind. Something very admirable about that kind of steadfast dedication.
A nasty burning smell tickles past his nose and they both look to the source. Shouldn’t have distracted Vince from the pan. He curses quietly, scraping the poor thing off the skillet and turning off the stove. “Look what you’ve done, upset the whole balance of things here you have!”
“Alright, I’ll get out of your hair.”
Howard withdraws and Vince hears the chair scrape on the linoleum as he takes a seat at the grungy kitchen table. He just can’t quite believe Howard would do something like this. Seems too impulsive, and that was Vince’s gig. Changing his look and that. Flitting about on the breezes of fashion as Howard likes to say. He distributes pancakes and silverware, hands Howard his cup of tea and sits down at the other side of the table. This way there’s a crispy dead bouquet of flowers between them, obscuring the bottom half of Howard’s face. One that he bought a few weeks before and Vince had jumped his bones for it.
“Vince,” Howard starts diplomatically. Vince won’t have it, throws the diplomacy in the bin like the blackened pancake.
“How could you shave your mustache Howard?”
Howard’s eyebrows raise and wrinkle his forehead. “If I’d realized it was going to be a national emergency I’d have left it.” He sips his tea, closing his eyes in pure bliss before setting it back down.
“It’s just not like you I mean, not just your face. You never like to change things Howard, once I cut your hair a bit too short and you went quiet a whole day.” Vince remembers how awful he felt about it, making him feel uncomfortable. After years of knowing him, Vince knew how it all worked, Howard had laid it out when they were small that he sometimes didn’t feel up to talking. So they would sit in silence, or sometimes Howard would ask him to just talk while he listened with his eyes closed and his hands idly bunched in his big jacket. By the end of the quiet day Howard assured him that he knew he didn’t mean any harm. Told him to just be more careful next time where he snipped. They’d sat on the sofa close but not touching while the telly played reruns in black and white. “Well out of the blue. Could’ve at least warned me!”
Howard peeks over some faded lilies, only seeing the top of Vince’s bedhead as his eyes are stubbornly on his plate. “What d’you mean? I did, right about last week.”
“Oh…” Vince returns, still not looking up. There’s a long pause, not uncomfortable, those hardly ever happen between them. Only marked with sounds of fork scraping and more sips of tea. Howard stands when he sees the bottom of his mug and takes two slow steps to the other side of the table. To take Vince’s plate at first, but seconds go by hovering there and he can’t stop the persistent needling doubt at the back of his head. He sets the plates down on the counter.
“Is it really that bad?” Howard asks, his voice sounding young and when Vince looks up at him it’s a similar story.
Slowly, he stands to trace over the wavy line of that handsome mouth it bows to show Howard’s teeth in a sleepy grin. The years between now and the last time he saw his upper lip fall away like dry flower petals. No one could be sure they even existed in the first place looking at him. Could be Howard’s face has always looked a bit older, or could be that he’s been nipping off to run a cold shower in the fountain of youth when Vince’s back was turned. Either way it’s uncanny. The bare scruffy faced idiot who he remembers falling in love with is standing in their dimly lit kitchen. Like he should have a bag slung over his left shoulder and papers falling everywhere. Talking to Vince at length about philosophical theory while they tuck into greasy chips and Vince twirls his hair. Staring up at the stars on a clear night with a cigarette dangling from his lanky fingers all red from trying to play guitar faster than anyone in Leeds. Every moment that Vince snatched up like a starving man, hanging onto Howard’s sleeve like he had hung those stars. He thought he was so wise, so worldly and even sometimes the tiniest bit cool. Only because he didn’t try to be, Howard had the quality that his sexyness, his coolness, was horribly effortless. Completely oblivious to his own talents. That was the same man stood before him. Though now he was in a nightmarish beige hawaiian shirt, completely contradictory yet very him, instead of a ratty jumper.
“No,” Vince leans up for a proper kiss, the ultimate test. Tastes just as sweet, still a bit strange but it’s the same brilliant mouth and the same breath tickling his skin. “Not too bad.”
“Hmm had a change of heart ay?” Howard smiles wolfishly, pulling Vince in by the small of his back with his big mits. “One little kiss and you’re singin’ a very different tune all of a sudden. Is that it?”
“Alright ya jack o clubs,” he slings his arms around his neck, Howard practically supporting his full weight at this point. Gives into another lazy touch of those lips, only to get used to the feeling. Definitely not because Howard’s hands stroking up and down his back melt him like butter on a sunny sidewalk. He parts to aimlessly nuzzle against the warm smooth skin of his face which quickly turns into Howard trailing kisses across his cheekbone. A happy little hum accompanies every one, he can’t help it. At the end of the trail Vince pulls back enough to look at him again, to make sure he still looks just as fatally attractive as he did before. Yes, in fact it’s worse. He sighs.
“Really though, what’s got you like this?”
Vince rolls his eyes, so Howard becomes content with the fact he’s not going to get a real answer. Then something changes in his gaze, so extraordinarily subtle he might not have seen it if they weren’t inches apart. Unfocused, like he’s become smoke Vince can see right through to the other side. Then a droop of his dusky pink lids as he looks not up at Howard’s eyes, but somewhere around his chin.
“It’s just…” Howard waits patiently for him to continue, toying with the silky belt of the robe distractedly. He could wait all day this way. Taking in the blush high on his round cheekbones and the changes in his face while he thinks. “You look quite like how you did in uni.”
The words come out all shy. In fact it’s not dissimilar to the way he used to talk in those days, voice airy and higher in his throat. The statement makes sense mostly, that was about the time he’d started on the long and arduous trail of growing facial hair. Finally adding something noticeable to a face that nobody seemed to notice. Present company excluded. Yes, the timing association makes sense but he can’t make the connection to the headspinning kisses. University was not one of his most composed periods. Losing himself in work and totally without a sense of style, or hygiene for that matter. He shudders to think. While Vince had explored a lot of looks, all very contemporary and Howard had to admit stylish, Howard had no look at all. An unkempt student who didn’t know up from down and smelled like an ape from working nights in a financially challenged zoo.
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Yeah! You were well sexy Howard! I mean, of course you’re a knockout all the time but I dunno…” he trails off to chew on his lip, nervously monitoring Howard’s reaction. “Something about...seeing you like this. It’s silly,” he stalls further.
“It can’t be any more nonsense than anything else that comes out of your mouth,” Howard assures with a wry smile. “Go on.”
Vince huffs out a breath but goes on with a colony of butterflies in his belly. Saying this shouldn’t be difficult by now, but he can’t help feeling small. Thrown back in time. He’s just as scared, but Howard’s hand rubbing patiently at his back urges him on. “That’s when I found out I was in love with you.”
“Is that so?” His face goes all soft, his words dripping with dreamy affection.
“Yeah,” is all Vince can dumbly reply.
“The greasy jazz scholar do it for you? Howard Moon the starving artist?”
“Guess so,” Vince laughs as Howard lets him go and meanders over to the sofa. An invitation to talk more, he’s caught his attention. “I mean, I was in love with you before then, that’s only when I realized it...wouldn’t go away ya know?”
“Hang on, before then?” Howard asks, the hand around Vince’s shoulder clutching tighter. It’s funny watching his features bounce back and forth between astonished and loving. Right now they’re very much in astonishment. Like he’s been told that jazz was invented a hundred years before all his books on the shelf told him. Vince nods to answer him. He needs a bit more contact to speak, curling his legs up and leaning further into Howard’s side. Pleased to see his eyes flicker down for a moment before they’re back to feverish searching. The earnest look of confusion and hope turns Vince’s heart fragile. White and blue china pumping in his chest. He watches his Adam's apple bob before he speaks again low and steady. “How long?”
Any plans for the day are instantly thrown out the window with that. Suddenly it seems ridiculous to do anything but spend the rest of the day right here with the man he’s loved for so long it’s loopy. Reminiscing about times that were better and times that were worse. Letting all the butterflies fly from his mouth. “Er,” really smooth start. “Sometime before that, musta been 17? 16?”
“Since then…” Howard has to collect all his thoughts, fit them back together in an order that makes sense with what he’s just heard. Of all the times they’d talked about the past, their shared past, he can’t fathom this never coming up. Can’t fathom how he’d gone so long without realizing and Vince had gone so long the way he had. Right there in front of him all this time and he was blind to it, looking right past as if it weren’t there. All the women he’d chased after, when he’d come back to Vince sounding so upset by it. When he’d thought all those times were some strange envy that Howard was in love. It must have hurt. He knows exactly how much it hurt. He sets his hand on Vince’s hip, a request to be closer without the need for words. Vince unfolds his pale legs and Howard draws him into his lap where his head drops perfectly onto his shoulder. He needs him to know, he needs him to feel all the apologies through his arms and his hands and his lips. It’s all he can do to keep the tears from coming. He kisses more apologies into his temple.
“I thought you knew,” Vince mumbles half into his shirt. “I wasn’t exactly good at hiding it,” he laughs.
“What do you mean?” He strokes satin at Vince’s flank, half to comfort himself.
“What? I mean Howard, I asked you on dates loads of times in secondary school. You remember.”
Memories do pop up. Vince tripping over his new platforms, his sandy hair sticking up wildly where he’d backcombed it. Asking Howard if he wanted to go to this concert it’s really underground, or come have dinner later at the chip shop down the road. “Those weren’t dates Vince, those were outings. Friends do that.” He’s read about those.
Vince pulls back to look him in the eyes with his mouth open wide in shock, with his lips drawn back he looks a bit like a yawning rabbit. “Howard, we went to that dance together!”
“We were going stag.”
“Going stag? I tried to dance with you!” His voice is going to new heights with how unbelievable this all is. Here he was, years and years of thinking Howard was just too far above him and turns out he was just too thick to notice. That big handsome nose wasn’t too far in the clouds, too lofty to ever look in Vince’s direction; he was just not even looking. A laugh starts sneaking up his throat, bubbling up and over until he can’t stop. “Howard!” He doesn’t even know what to say, it’s all so ridiculous. Howard sat there arms around him giving him worried looks. Nothing will come out of his mouth but cackling laughter, he covers it to try and stop but it keeps on. So he gives in and throws his arms back around Howard’s neck and puts all the crazed joy into his cheeks.
“You worry me sometimes,” Howard grumbles before the infectious laughter takes him too. Chuckling away the hurt in his chest in a way only Vince can conjure in him.
“You worry about everything you muppet,” he laughs one last time before they’re both quiet again. Drifting in each others space. Howard’s laugh lines that fan out from his eyes and accentuate the hollow of his cheek beside his mouth are more apparent this close. He reaches out to touch them, not just the laugh lines but the frowny ones too. The ones that mark him as a worrier, and a big grump, and a deep thinker. Howard closes his eyes as he follows them with his fingers. Paradoxically young and old. It feels strange to see such a peaceful expression on the face that would never rest the last time it looked this way. But it’s good, something satisfying in knowing that that particular Howard is still here. No longer so lonely and scared. That he’s finally gotten where he needed to be and maybe that had something to do with Vince. He can only hope that’s the case. He withdraws his hand and hides in the shelter of Howard’s neck. Brown curls tickling his skin.
“I wish I’d known,” Howard’s murmur cuts into the silence.
Vince pets through the delicate hair at his neck, trying not to let on how much he wishes the same. “It’s alright. S’better this way. If you’d have tried kissing me in Uni my head would have basically popped like a balloon full of angry sparrows. I basically worshipped you, you were like Jagger, Howard.”
“C’mon, couldn’t have been on the level with Jagger.” Howard peers at him sceptically.
“You’re right, not that much but it was pretty fuckin’ close.”
Howard laughs, patting his flank goodnaturedly. “I’m honored, sir.”
“Yeah, you better be, that’s the highest Noir honor you know?” Howard nods with a scrunched up smile, his eyes shining through his dark lashes. Then he’s leaning in to breathe a long sigh into a kiss that makes Vince’s stomach swoop. He lingers when he pulls away, letting their lips part with a quiet sound.
“I love you so very much,” he says, voice breaking somewhere around the word so. The way it’s put together like he’s reminding Vince, like he feels scared he’s forgotten.
“I know Howard. I love you too, you bighearted limpet,” he kisses the corner of his mouth where there would normally be mustache in the way. “Done it so long I don’t think I could do anything else.”
----------------------
The flat is eerily quiet, no ruckus of potion making in the kitchen, no glamrock muddled with singing along and the steady chugging of a sewing machine. Remnants of some kind of culinary disaster cling to the sink and the counters in the kitchen, a teal colored sticky substance. The mind boggles to think of what it might be. Whatever it was smelled like a blue raspberry legal action. Just another thing to scrub from the countertops and grit his teeth trying to find the right cleaning product combination without creating something toxic. Certainly it would end in giving in and knocking on the door at the end of the hall to simply ask Naboo to spell away his own messes. But now was not the time, maybe tomorrow would be. Not after he’d been minding the shop alone all day. Redirecting a steady stream of ogling trendy traffic like he had a whistle between his lips and keeping his voice the perfect flavor of welcoming but professional. Telling hooligans off from touching the glass figurines on the shelf because he didn’t like how they were looking at them with their grimy paws. There had only been one highlight to the day. When an old woman so small and crumpled by age she barely reached the counter pointed a trembling hooked finger up to the records. She asked for the Billie Holiday one at the front and paid from a small beaded coin purse that she snapped shut before shuffling back out the door. The first one he’d sold in such a long time it wasn’t worth mentioning. Almost cured his fear of little old ladies that had been sticking around since Nanageddon.
The record player switches on and Carol King begins serenading over piano about earth moving love with her creamy voice. A perfect record for removing the day’s sensible clothes, tying his bashful hickory robe over his vest and flannel trousers, and collapsing onto the sofa with a nice mug of oolong. He lets every bone and joint fall into relaxation, it’s tiring being a brandysnap. Vitally important to be so “uptight” though. If he didn’t keep such a strict regimen nothing would ever get done in the place. Mostly what wore him down that day though was trying very hard to do Vince’s job. Be both the bait and the business.
The reason he’d been the whole captain and crew that day was he’d given Vince the go ahead to take a day for himself. Go do his hair or visit some friends whatever he did on his own. He’d been working far too hard, scribbling out designs and lyrics, hunched over frilly and patterned fabrics. Thrown himself into the work too far and Howard had to yank the rope a little to pull him back out. Took some convincing, some tactically placed words before he finally agreed. Though not without several unsure nail bitings and doe eyed looks through his fringe. Howard knew the value of work but he also knew the vital nature of rest, and Vince could get himself caught up in something to the point of tunnel vision. Some days he’d drop into Howard’s lap like a wrung out rag and confess he’d not done anything all day but work on a single jumper. So the exhaustion was well worth it. The unkind customer is dim when compared to Vince’s sunbeam smile and the grateful kiss before he hurried out the door. All Howard had to do now was keep himself occupied till he heard the telltale sound of kicky boots on the stairs.
“I’m back!”
And there they were. His heart does a skip and a hop.
“I’m up here!” Howard calls back as the boots reach the top of the stairs behind him. Vince sounds happily out of breath, exhilarated.
“I know you are, ya peanut. Playin’ your tunes loud enough to wake up the whole city,” he laughs, then the sofa shifts as he drapes himself over his shoulders from behind and nestles in with a sigh.
“Well it coulda been Naboo playing it.” He smells like one hair product too many, like the salon down the street that Howard’s sat in with a newspaper while Vince had his hair done many a time. Watching him through the reflection making smalltalk with the hairdresser and his heart jumping out of his chest when their eyes met and Vince would smile knowingly. “How was Rachel?”
“What? How d’you know I went to the Salon? You ain't even seen me yet,” Vince asks incredulous and disappointed.
“It’s the smell. That place uses specific-”
“Alright Sherlock, I get the picture.”
Howard takes one of Vince’s hands from his chest and brings it to his lips, speaking against his knuckles between pecks. “Was it meant to be a surprise? I’ll forget it and you can burst in with your little hairdo and I’ll ooh and ah for you.”
“Could you?” Vince asks genuinely, like Howard’s offered to build him a house from strawberry bootlace and biscuit. Anything for that undisguised excitement laced through his words.
“It’ll be a worthy cause for my acting. They’ll write books on the nuances of it, sir.”
“A whole documentary just about your left eyebrow. ‘How did he do it?’ Like a bellydancin’ caterpillar on his face!’” Vince laughs as he withdraws, biting his thumb in thought.
This has got to be done right, if not he’ll just end up scaring Howard half to death like he did to him with that mustache business. It’s just that this deserved a big reveal, or a medium reveal at least. And he wanted Howard to like it, really he did. Even the master of stylish trends and trendy styles, the prince and princess of Camden, got cold feet sometimes. Howard never had a bad thing to say about his hair, frustratingly so sometimes, but there was still that little nagging feeling he would react strangely. Of course he would never take any style opinions from Howard Moon, the world would crumble like soft cheese if he did. What he needed was something in the middle, something a bit gooey and romantic that Howard would like. Touches of drama to it. Bad romantic movies that grow on you the more you watch them until you cry at the crying scenes and really root for them running through the airport. Go heather! Get to the plane in time! “Alright, cover your eyes.” He fluffs his hands in his hair and shakes them out one more time.
Howard does as he’s told, holding in the laugh at the back of his throat with immense effort. Behind him Vince makes a barely concealed sound of excitement. Howard would be doing the same if he did that sort of thing. Really it didn’t matter that his trademark look changes on a whim of a flickering strobe light. Doesn’t matter that change is more consistent than consistency when it comes to Vince. The changes are always exciting, always another reason for him to go out, for him to jump up and down waiting for Howard’s review. There’s never a dull moment. So why would he ever get tired of it? Every time feels like the first one, though he could say that about anything they do. Everchanging and constant in the same breath. Though this one must be particularly special, if he’s been waiting this long. “Is this the part where you leave me here covering my face like an idiot?”
From in front of him now, he hears Vince snicker mischievously. “That is quite a good idea actually,” he sounds like he might actually do it.
“Ah, but there’s one fatal flaw in that plan.”
“What’s that then?”
“There’d be no one to gawk at you while you strut around the house like an overgrown peacock.”
Vince scoffs.
“Wandering around without an audience for the rest of time. I’d shrivel up.” He feels something bump into his knees, then a gentle weight in his lap. Some cross wiring happens between his brain and hands and before he knows it they’re off his face.
“Howard!” Vince cries completely affronted. He squeezes his eyes shut immediately.
“Sorry! Force of habit,” he can’t be sure but he could swear in that flash he saw something gold.
“Oh, alright you might as well look now,” he can practically hear the eyeroll.
“You’re sure?” Howard hears him sigh, he’s sure.
Everything is slightly blurry at first, like a half remembered dream, from squeezing his eyes so tight. When his vision adjusts there’s Vince, close enough he can see the little flecks of silver in the iris blue of his eyes. They exchange a smile, a tiny silent hello before Howard sees it. At first it seems to be a strange trick of the light, the evening fire of the sunset in through the windows leaving stark shadows and furious highlights. It’s not though. Falling around his cherubic face, where it normally would be black, his hair is honey-blonde. A color that’s so very familiar it pulls at his heartstrings to play a song he knows forwards and back. The color it was when they’d sit together in the park after school tearing away the fleshy segments of a satsuma between them till it was gone. When he’d open the door to his dorm late at night and see that mop of hair, let him in and laugh until Howard’s ribs were sore and Vince’s makeup had run down his face. Between now and then he’d dyed it many times, in the Zooniverse there was some of it left. This felt different though. Vince’s eyes are hooded, one kanine hooked over his pink lip tentatively waiting for a response. He feels lightheaded, the feeling of looking at something so big he can’t wrap his head round it. Standing on a cliff and gazing out into the ocean, looking at every star in the sky. He gives into the sensation, reaching up to touch it. Skirting his fingers along the newly cut fringe gently resting above his brow, taking a lock between his thumb and forefinger here and there. At that, Vince’s face moves from expectant to something warm and cautiously vulnerable. His eyebrows drawn up imperceptibly half crooked, almost a sadness to his gaze and his lips parted.
This wasn’t just a change of style, it was something else entirely. Though he couldn’t put pen to paper on what it was.
“D’you like it?” Vince whispers, if he used his voice now he’d let on too much. Even if that was already a lost cause. There was a spell held in those brown eyes that made something bloom inside him. Pops of lavender and butter yellow and coral fluttering in the wind of his breath.
Howard’s fingers are hesitant on the back of his head, pausing attentively in that way he does when he’s trying to put a spotlight on what he’s about to say. “Do you like it?”
The question is so unbelievably Howard that Vince couldn’t stop the smile on his face with a thousand frowning armies. Covering all the bases, timidity hidden by a cloak of chivalry. His mind is already made up, but he’ll always let Vince through first. “Of course I do silly man, it’s my hair isn’t it?” Howard nods, pulling his mouth into a thin line and breathing out a sigh. Preambles of keeping back tears before they inevitably come.
“I love it,” he croaks through a smile. Then Vince is being pulled into a tight embrace, falling into Howard’s warmth naturally. “I love you,” he speaks the words against the crown of Vince’s head fiercely.
“Oh Howard,” Vince’s voice is warm and kind. “I love you too, my sweet man.”
Howard feels awash in it, the title wave of time. Long years they’d known each other have been thrown into sharp detail all at once, out of the blur of everyday life. Things he wouldn’t think of normally popping into his mind. It’s so easy to take this for granted, to make tea and mind the shop and go on without feeling the insurmountable significance of what they have. What they found together. He cradles the back of Vince’s head, feels warm breath stutter against his neck and holds him even closer. How terribly lucky he is to hold something so precious in his arms. A fleck of sunlight with a heartbeat and a kiss sweeter than honeysuckle. The love of his life and the most wonderful person he’s ever had the pleasure to know.
“Vince,” he wants to tell Vince all the prose floating through his mind. But it will always come out all in pieces, jumbled up by his nerves. “You…” he swallows. “Every time you change...I get to fall in love with you all again.” Vince makes a choked little sound. “I get to relearn it all. All the tiny details, like the mole above your right eye.” He gives the spot a kiss. “The way your eyes go all big and you shake your hair out when you take a bite of something really good, sometimes it’s even my cooking. I even find something new sometimes, a different cut that makes your face look sharper or some newfangled scene I haven’t even heard of but brings something else out in you.” He strokes his hair, soft and warm like one of the tiny creatures he used to care for at the zoo. “Maybe that makes up for all those years. All the time you were…”
“Oh Howard don’t,” he soothes, shifting in Howard’s lap to cuddle in closer.
“I can’t-I can’t help it,” he swallows a pitiful sound back down. “Just can’t quite believe I have you, little man.”
That pet name is the last heartfelt straw fluttering down onto Vince’s back. One only used on very special occasions and very special moments. He pulls back to hold Howard’s face in his hands, scratchy stubble wet with tears. Meandering down to his chin like a stream over a picturesque mountain, a rocky crag that’s watched wars start and end without blinking. Howard the wise old mountain, Howard the steady range, always there with a foothold when Vince begins to fall. He smears the tracks from his angular cheekbones, all the while keeping himself steady. Even when Howard sniffs and another tear eeks out. “That’s it, love.” His features begin to relax, his hands slide down to the dip of his back. “You get yourself so worked up, Howard. S'alright, I’m not going anywhere am I? You’re all I’ve ever known really,” Howard’s brow crumples up, just under the handful of grey hairs peeking out from his curls. He’ll look so handsome when they finally outnumber the chestnut brown. “What I mean is, you don’t need to ‘make up’ for nothing. I reckon I’d have just kept waiting if nothing happened, just can’t picture anybody else in my head, s’always been you.”
“Vince,” Howard’s doing his best to calm down but every word out of Vince’s mouth makes him think about it all the more. The cold bitten fingers on his hot cheeks, the thumb swiping back and forth with such effortless care. The light has turned a warm shade of pink now, the sun still setting and the world still spinning around them while they sit here together. Time passing wasn’t important in this moment. All that mattered was the way the rosy glow caressed Vince’s features like a lover, the way it reflected on his glassy eyes and turned them from icy blue to periwinkle. Lit up in such a romantic hue was where he belonged, like something otherworldly that flew out of the sky and landed in Howard’s palms. He can feel Vince’s heart beating against them now, so fast he’s worried it’ll burst. He doesn’t think he could go on after that.
“Howard marry me.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Vince says all deer in the headlights, he ducks forward to kiss Howard but he’s having none of it. He gently pulls him back by his shoulders.
“Did you just propose to me?” Howard needs to know, needs to know he heard right or if he’s finally gone completely over the hill. Vince withdraws and twists a lock of hair between his fingers, somehow managing to slouch so much he’s now looking up at Howard rather than down.
“Might have done,” he mumbles, looking like he’s just confessed he broke one of Howard’s records rather than said the most beautiful words he’s ever heard.
“Vince, don’t be joking now,” he feels like he’s shaking, he probably is. “I simply want to know if I’m completely barmy and hearing things or if you just asked me if-”
He throws his pale hands in the air and buts in, voice loud and wavering. “Alright, I did! I said it. I wanna marry you!”
His brain locks up, checking and rechecking what’s just happened in triplicate while his hands lock up where Vince’s shoulders were a moment ago. Just hanging in the air. “I-” he never thought he’d hear those words, not ever. Not from the only lips he’s ever wanted to kiss and ever kissed. Said by the melodic voice that’s followed behind him for what feels like his whole life.
A voice he wants to hear for all the time he has left.
“Vince, I've never wanted anything more in my life.” A smile begins to draw across Vince’s features, no longer afraid. “I want to be with you until the oceans dry up, washing dishes and writing music that the world won’t be ready for in a hundred years.” Vince laughs tearfully, knocking their foreheads together and finding Howard’s hand.
“Howard you big romantic sap,” Vince sniffs. “Go on, I know you’ve got more in there, ya lump.”
Howard laughs, he’s completely right. “I’ve always got more Vince. For you. I could fill books about you, darling. I can’t wait to write more. To wake up every morning and see your face,” Vince huffs out a short breath against his lips. “Watch you putting on lipstick in the vanity and watch your hair turn silver-”
He jerks back, with an indignant expression. “My hair’s doing no such thing, thank you very much.”
“Not even a little?” Howard teases, Vince shakes his head like a stroppy teen. “Not even if it were in style?”
“Don’t go trying to outsmart me Howard Moon, I’m not budgin,’” Vince says resolutely before he gets a thoughtful look. “How d’you think we’ll do our names?”
Getting right to it then. He pauses, lazily wandering his gaze about the room as if he hasn’t thought about this a million times before, hasn’t written it down in his notebook like some teenage girl. All he needs is a glitter pen and he’s there. “Hyphenated, Moon-Noir?”
“Moon-Noir…” Vince mutters, rolling it in his mouth like candy. “Sounds genius.”
“Vince Moon-Noir…” Howard will be saying that a lot more.
“Howard Moon-Noir…” Vince answers with a grin.
The years will never touch them, as long as they’re together, there will always be enough time.