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“Shhhhh,” Vince whispers to the fifth step as he sets his booted foot down on it. It squeaks like a mouse dodging rusty wheels in a roller disco, and Vince rolls his eyes. At least a mouse would listen to him when he shushed it — maybe.
“Vince? Is that you?” Howard’s voice carries through the dark flat, brittle with worry. Coiled springs creak and groan, the familiar sound of Howard in bed, adjusting his bulk on an aging, too-small mattress. It’s practically Vince’s lullaby.
“Yeah, just me.” Vince catches himself on the landing, rolling his palm over the wooden ball that tops the stair rail, worn smooth and shiny from the habit. He picks his way carefully across the floor to the bedroom he shares with Howard, walking on tiptoe to avoid clunking about, just in case Naboo is asleep. “What’re you doing still up?”
When he reaches the doorway, the question answers itself. Howard is stretched out in his bed against the window, still in his rollneck and corduroy, an open book in his hand and the place marked with a finger. The bedroom is dark aside from the lamp on Howard’s bedside table and a nightlight under Vince’s dresser across the room. Howard wriggles to sit up further and feels about on the windowsill until he finds his favorite trombone bookmark.
“It’s barely past one-thirty,” Howard says, with a pointed look at the glowing red numbers on his clock radio. “You’ve only been out two hours.”
“Two hours?” Vince groans. He had known he was having an early night, but he hadn’t realized how early it really was when he left the club. “Fuck. They’ll never let me live that one down.” He can hear the taunts coming already. Next night out, he’ll have to really go all out if he doesn’t want people questioning his press age.
He stumbles over to his bed and perches on the edge, hissing with relief at being off his feet. He hadn’t even realized how far the ache was carrying though him until the weight is suddenly off. “It’s these fuckin’ boots,” he tells Howard, reaching for the zip just above his knee. “Thought I broke ‘em in when I went to get the takeaway yesterday, but they tricked me.”
The look he shoots his own shoes is full of irritation and admiration all swirled up together. Sneaky little bitches, but they looked so good on — black velvet climbing all the way to his thighs, delicate chains draped around the legs tinkling and shining with every step he took.
He rips the first boot off and groans again, rolling his ankle. He should have played at being drunk, stumbled and giggled his way into the room like the alcopops were fizzing up his blood so Howard would offer to help. Instead, Vince just feels weary, worn thin as an old sock. Flashes of relief and exhaustion radiate from the balls of his feet up through his arms and neck, and his head rolls as he yanks the zip down on the other boot. He sighs again at the wave of relief.
“I’ll never understand your ways,” Howard says archly.
“Of course you won’t. You don’t care about fashion. You wear socks with sandals.”
“That’s all a man needs in this world, Vince — the simple cushion of a sandal between himself and the hard city streets. A sandal has never hurt me.”
Vince snort-laughs at that, tossing his hair. “As if! I’ve seen you in the toilet, weeping over a couple fat blisters where your sock slipped down. I know your secrets.”
He stands up, wincing at the weight of his own body on sore feet, and tiptoes his way to the wardrobe to strip out of his party clothes, draping the nicer items over a chair so they won’t get lost in the pile that is his floor.
“Besides,” Vince adds as he skims out of his drainpipes, down to his electric blue pants, “I look my best in heels. You don’t get legs like mine or a bum like this swanning around the city in sandals.” To illustrate, Vince gives the bum in question a shake before turning back around and pulling on a pair of paint-splattered sweats no one can know he owns.
Howard’s book is up again, but around the edges Vince can make out a pinkish tinge to his mate’s face. He’s sure Howard’s mustache must be twitching. Vince flops onto the edge of his bed again, grinning, and kicks the boots aside, into beneath-the-bed purgatory.
If Howard doesn’t want to be teased, he shouldn’t make it so much fun. Vince can’t resist digging at him a bit more, so he raises one foot into the air and wiggles his toes. “Since you’re not doin’ anything better, you can put down that book and give us a foot rub.”
He’s expecting to draw a disgusted look, prepared to dodge a pencil or the book in question being lobbed at his head. So, he has no idea what to do when Howard tucks the paperback into the windowsill and gets up.
Even when he’s crossed the gulf of a few feet between their beds, Vince remains silent. It can’t really be happening, and therefore, it can’t be worth commenting on. Not until Howard drops to his knees beside the bed.
“Whatcha doin’, Howard?” It’s strange how Vince’s voice sounds there, husky and childish all at once, and small. It’s like talking to Howard with his ears underwater in the bath again, a voice coming out of his mouth that’s never sounded like him before.
The first touch of Howard’s fingers on the bottom of his foot is light, and his leg jerks on reflex, tickle nerves in overdrive. Only pure luck saves him from kicking Howard in the face, and maybe he should have, because then things could go back to normal — Howard, yelling in pain, back on his own side of the room, and Vince laughing to cover up the twinge of guilt in his chest.
But Howard doesn’t get kicked, and this time when he reaches for Vince’s foot, Vince sees the hand coming.
Hard to miss, really, Howard’s hands. Of all the parts of him Vince has seen, he thinks they might be the most underrated — big, warm palms and long fingers, callused at the tips from guitar strings, even those nails bitten to the quick, pale and pearl-like and kept brutally clean. Vince already knows the strength of those hands, catching him when he stumbles on a night out, pulling him closer, scrubbing over his scalp and twining into his hair in the bath.
Now, Vince elevates Howard’s hands in his mind by several places, because once Howard’s caught his foot, he digs those fingers into the underside hard. Vince bites back what would have been the most embarrassing noise he’s made in at least a week.
It’s a lost cause. He catches the first groan, but the second slips through his defenses and wriggles out, impossible to miss in the otherwise silent room. Howard pauses, and Vince curses himself. Any second now, Howard’s brain will catch up with what his body is doing and that’ll be it — back to their separate sides of the bedroom.
Howard doesn’t look up. “Everything alright?”
“Alright,” Vince echoes, breathy, fingers twisting and pulling at his satin sheets, pulse thrumming in his ears as he waits to see what happens next. He can feel the room pull out into wide focus as he and Howard edge along a precipice. One wrong step, one wrong breath, and—
Howard’s head ducks, and his thumb presses in hard to Vince’s heel. There’s no catching that sound at all, and when Howard doesn’t stop this time Vince takes it as blanket permission.
It’s easier to be shameless, anyway, with Howard’s big fingers digging into his heel and rubbing along the arch of his foot. The touch is firm, soothing and smoothing away the aches and lumps in his muscle. Fingertips creep, spider-like into the ball of his foot and Vince hisses sharply, then lets out the longest, lowest groan yet. He’s vaguely aware that if Naboo overhears him they’ll never live it down, but Naboo can fuck right off at the moment.
Howard envelops the whole foot between his palms — and Vince will be thinking about that when he’s alone in the future, thanks much — and gives it a parting squeeze before picking up the other one.
Vince lets himself fall back a bit as he sighs, elbows propping him up on the mattress and head lolling. The foot Howard already rubbed feels warm and tingly, resting on top of Howard’s thigh as the big man goes to work with the same determination on the other foot. Vince’s toes curl against Howard’s trousers, and worryingly he finds himself overwhelmed with a new appreciation for the texture of corduroy. Who knew it was good for something after all?
Deep in the fashion spiral that takes him down — could he steal some of Howard’s rattier cords to experiment with lining boots? — Vince almost misses Howard’s own, quiet hiss. But he doesn’t miss it when Howard’s hands stop moving.
Vince raises his head, blinking down at where Howard is stiff, crouched on the floor and still holding his bare foot. There’s a distinct twitch happening on one side of Howard’s face, and Vince knows it instantly.
“You numpty, you’ve gone and hurt yourself, haven’t you?” Howard doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to. Vince knows too well the look of a stubborn Northerner in pain and trying to be all stoic about it. Howard is shit at stoic.
“Twinged my shoulder,” Howard mumbles. “It’ll be fine in just—” He shrugs his shoulder and cuts himself off with another pained hiss.
“Well, what did you expect,” Vince teases, poking Howard’s shoulder with his toes, “a man of your age crawling about on the floor like that?”
“Thank you for the feedback, sir. See if I ever do anything nice for you again.” Howard doesn’t even bother making that claim sound outraged. They both know full well he’s lying.
Groaning, he starts to rise from the floor, his face all folded up in discomfort. Vince scoots up the bed, then pats the space next to him. “C’mon, then. I’ll do you.”
Even with his eye for fashion, he can’t quite classify the particular shade of red that washes over Howard’s face at the offer. ‘Beet’ would be too dark, ‘red’ alone not descriptive enough. It’s the sort of bright, pinkish hue that reminds Vince more of a rare flower he’d seen in the jungle growing up. He’d plucked it then, hoping to tuck it behind his ear and make a feature, but the delicate thing had withered and darkened, crumbling away in his hand.
“I don’t think—” Howard splutters, shifty little eyes darting away, but Vince isn’t in the mood to listen to a whole new list of protests. Rolling his eyes, he grabs Howard by the wrist and yanks.
Size matters, but Howard has never been skilled in coordination. It’s easy enough for Vince to unbalance him with the element of surprise, bringing him stumbling into the mattress, and as soon as he’s stooped enough to reach, Vince digs his pointy little fingers into that spot right between the shoulders.
Howard groans, and Vince smirks. He reaches for Howard’s arms again, tugging and turning until he’s settled, perched on the edge of Vince’s bed as Vince had been earlier. Vince clambers around behind him, settling on his knees — much more comfortable on the mattress than on the floor, thanks — and presses his hands into Howard’s shoulders again.
At the first touch, Howard flinches. His back muscles are so coiled up, Vince might as well be jabbing his fingers into a slab of pavement. That’s fine. He wouldn’t be Howard without the touch aversion, and Vince’s hands might be tiny in comparison, but that doesn’t mean they’re not strong. He puts his thumbs right under the shoulder blades and digs in like he’s mining for designer samples in a clearance sale.
It only takes a couple squeezes before Howard starts to loosen up, sighing as he leans back into the touch instead of away. Big man is too easy, really. Given free reign to go on, Vince doubles down the effort to keep him hooked. He dances his fingertips along the back and base of Howard’s neck, the tops of his shoulders, then works his thumbs into the shoulders again. He can feel lumps and taut threads of muscle roll under his hands, like hard little pearls of stress piling up under Howard’s skin. Each time he prods at one, it draws another small noise from Howard — a groan, or a hiss, or even a bitten off yelp when he digs in sharp at the underside of Howard’s right shoulderblade and feels a whole cluster of pearls rolling away.
Howard leans back, then back again, until he’s practically in Vince’s lap, his head rolling and bobbling from side to side with the motion. It’s good, seeing him enjoy something that isn’t jazz or a color-coordinated calender for once, but it’s also making it harder for Vince to work, balancing on his knees like he is with Howard’s weight pressed into his hands.
When Vince pulls back, Howard whimpers, and holding back his smirk would be too much to ask. He scoots back up the bed, leaning into the center of the headboard, and spreads his legs in a vee.
“Up here,” Vince says, crooking his finger, and the smirk becomes something rather softer when Howard complies, crawling up the bed to slot himself in the space Vince has made him. He’s well gone already if he’s willing to this, practically lying down between Vince’s legs.
With Howard all leaned up on him, warm and heavy resting against Vince’s bare chest, it’s hard to reach much of his back, but Vince can make do. He rubs Howard’s shoulders, the columns of muscle that build to his neck, and pushes at the knots and bundles of tension there, pressing at them with his thumbs until he feels the tightness wear away. Howard sighs, letting more of his weight fall against Vince, who is biting his own lip now as he works the muscles.
They’ve had their moments over the years, but Howard has never let Vince touch him so much, so freely, and the thought of it has Vince’s heartbeat all aflutter. His hands are aching now, muscles in his palms and joints complaining about the sudden use, but even with the discomfort Vince can’t bear to stop. Not when Howard is so relaxed, all warm and boneless and making these breathy little noises as Vince’s fingers tiptoe up to the back of his neck, dig into the columns on either side of the bone, and then comb, ever so gently, through his brown curls.
His hair always grows out faster in the back than the front. He’s due another trim, and Vince’s mind wanders off for a moment, considering how much to cut next time he catches Howard asleep on his belly.
With his brain no longer driving, Vince’s fingers are free to wander, and they continue on their merry way into Howard’s smoky locks, gently combing out the tangles and lightly massaging his scalp. With a happy little sigh, Howard rolls his head into the touch, and Vince continues his exploration. His fingers creep down, gliding along the curve of Howard’s ear, and then one finger (a single, brainless little finger) breaks away from the pack. He touches, ever so gingerly, the soft curve of Howard’s smiling cheek.
Howard locks up like a safe. Vince can hear the steel door slam.
It’s over, but Vince tries to save the moment anyway. “What’re you doing? Suddenly you’re brittle as a rice cracker.” He presses on Howard’s shoulders again, hoping to hit the right button to make him relax. “You’ll undo all my hard work.”
“It’s getting late,” Howard says, head down as he shrugs off Vince’s hands, scoots back to the edge of the bed. “Got to get up early tomorrow. The records need painting, and the walls need alphabetizing. Long day ahead, yes sir.”
Vince’s hands hang in the air, bereft, as Howard makes his escape, shuffling over to his own side of the room to dig out a pair of pajamas. He never raises his head, never looks back. Even as Vince lets his hands drop, worrying the denim on his thighs with finger and thumb, he makes no move to stand, leave, finish his own process of changing for the night.
With the light all dim and golden and Howard’s shadow lumbering over the wall, Vince doesn’t bother to pretend he isn’t watching, his eyes lingering on the way Howard reveals a strip of skin, then sweeps it away under a shirt like a magician swirling a cape to distract the audience. Nothing to see here. Vince disagrees.
Back in his own bed, Howard flicks off his lamp, casting darkness over his half of the room, and Vince still watches his outline, the dark lump beneath the covers.
“Good night, Vince,” Howard says, pointedly, and only then does Vince look away.
When he’s certain Howard is asleep — or at least faking it well enough — he gets up and returns to his closet. From the back, he unearths a pair of battered trainers and a well-worn jacket, a now-faded dark green with NOIR etched on the breast in white. Slipping on his disguise, Vince flips up the jacket collar, the long ends of his hair tucked underneath, and creeps out of the room in flat-soled shoes.
Outside, the London night is cold and windy, and the sky above is starless black and full of promise.