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It's a beautiful day on the cusp of summer, and Vince is laughing at him, which is nothing new, but he sort of doesn't mind this time. It's difficult to mind on a day like this when the world seems like it's coloured in Crayolas. Yellow sun hanging there proudly as if it's single-handedly invented the whole concept of yellow just for today, and sky so blue it's like Ribena without the water.
"Ribena's purple, you berk."
Howard hadn't realised he'd been writing his poetry out loud. "Artistic interpretation."
"Yeah, but you're not allowed to say the sky's purple when it's blue just because you're an artist."
"Hey, I'll say the sky's purple if I want to, little man. They call me the-"
"You call yourself the Cream Poet, Howard. Leave the other colours alone, get your groping hands off, yeah? They don't like being felt up like that, you make 'em feel cheap."
"Oh, now you talk to colours as well as animals?"
"Yeah!"
He points to himself, the bright splodges of colour on his vest - Howard's vest, really. He refused to wear any of his own clothes to help paint the windowsills of the new shop and said he couldn't wear Howard's out in public in case he got seen by a passing baying mob and lynched for crimes against fashion, but maybe the heat got to him, or the endless alcopops, or Naboo's threats about what would happen if he didn't start pulling his weight, because they eventually reached a compromise and now he's wearing one of Howard's white vests completely without shame, although you wouldn't know it's one of Howard's because it's covered in paint and jewels and beads, mad swirls of colour covering every last inch, and a big smiley yellow face in a sequinned cowboy hat right in the middle. He's even stitched funny little tassels on the straps like mini epaulettes.
"The sun has got his hat on," he says gravely. "Hip hip hip hooray." Then he breaks out in a smile that makes the world spin a little bit faster. "I'm not telling you what the colours are saying, you've just got to listen properly. Get painting."
Howard catches the paintbrush Vince throws at him (he's very pleased with himself about that even though he's holding the bristle end) and for a while there's nothing but the whirr of summer insects and the wet slap of brushes in the silence
-of the cabin, Vince is at war with his sleeping bag, struggling to get free and making tiny whimpery noises of panic. He's crying, still asleep, frantic and desperate, smearing his tears against his pillow, and the whimpering sounds like pleading. He's dreaming. Howard's a smart man, well-read and full to bursting with all sorts of worthy knowledge, but he's dozy with sleep and can't focus enough to remember - are you not supposed to shake people out of nightmares? Or is that sleepwalking? He rubs his eyes hard with the heels of his hands, trying to wake them up, and the brain behind them. He doesn't know what to do, and the noises Vince makes when he's having nightmares are enough to make him feel a little bit mental, like the threads of his sanity are slipping through his fingers the way he lost his birthday balloons once as a child. He'd thought they were magic. Magic floating balloons, red and blue and green and yellow and purple and white, but they floated too far and too high in the park, drifting on the wind way above the trees, and jumping couldn't get him high enough and crying couldn't call them back.
"Vince?" he says, quietly. "Wake up. Come on, little man, wake up."
It's like some subconscious part of Vince is programmed to obey Howard's voice, because he opens his eyes immediately and begins fumbling with his sleeping bag zip, sliding it down just enough that he can reach his arms out, begging for comfort instinctively before he's even fully awake. Howard flinches back (he hates being touched, he hates it so much, he can't stand it, people all close to him and invading his space and the smell of other people's skin on his, he can never get that away even after rubbing a whole bar of soap off to nothing, even then he can smell people on him and he hates it, he hates it so much he could scream) but then he's far enough away to see the lingering terror in Vince's eyes and that changes everything. He lets Vince pull his zip down as well, lets him shuffle over, still tangled from the waist down in his sleeping bag, lets him tuck his dark head between Howard's neck and shoulder, lets him slip his shaking arm across his waist in a fierce, frightened cling that's far too desperate to be called a hug or a cuddle.
His skin is buzzing and screaming in protest, but Vince is calming down, breathing less raggedly, and he's not crying any more, and that's worth it. Howard grits his teeth and tries to make himself do something useful, take some part in the comfort-giving, but what he intended as a soothing hair-stroke turns into an awkward pat on the shoulder.
"There, there," he says, and feels like a prize idiot.
"I don't know how to get close enough to you," Vince blurts out, and he presses his face into Howard's neck. His breath is hot and wet against the skin. Howard hopes it's tears, sweat, even spit, just not snot because then he'll have to peel himself like a banana.
"Any closer and you'd be inside me," Howard says. He realises too late it sounds like a bad pulling line, but Vince is too distressed and still too far in sleep to make a thing of it like he normally would.
"Don't die again. Don't. Ever. Okay? Okay, Howard?"
"Okay. Shush now, go back to sleep, I promise I'm never going to die."
(Little white lies never hurt anybody, right?)
In the world of Vince Noir, people do come back from the dead, but what happens to the Sunshine Kid when night falls? Vince's fear is nocturnal, like a bat, and immense and soul-shaking, but he never remembers in the morning. It's like it dissolves in the light, gets washed away down some kind of emotional plughole like shampoo in the shower. Vince photosynthesises his fear, Howard thinks, like a plant. A delicate flower. Vince would knock him out with his platform boots if he ever heard Howard call him a delicate flower in the light of day. It's different at night. Everything's different at night.
"You can't die," Vince murmurs, fading back into sleep. "You're a very important person. I wrote it on your coffin."
Howard tries to make himself relax. He's all tense, like a clock wound too tightly. It feels like all his cogs and springs are (tick-tock, tick-tock) seconds away from bursting free. He eventually manages to coax his fingers into Vince's hair, but they're so stiff and embarrassed he's afraid it's going to wake him, so he moves his hand back down to Vince's shoulder, stroking little circles into the sleep-warmed cotton of his pyjamas, fighting nausea, waiting for morning to come
"-on!" Vince yells. "Man of action my fucking arse, come on an' hit me, then! I'll fucking cut you up like a paper snowflake, you KNOB."
Howard just blinks. Vince swearing still comes as a shock, like a bucket of ice water in your face when you're sleeping. It's this place, he thinks, it's the shit and grime of Hackney seeping into their pores. They never fought back in the zoo, never, or at least not like this. They'd bicker and argue and fray each other's very last nerve, but he always dragged Vince out the shit when he fell in it and Vince always did the same for him and there was nothing bad enough to make them shout and throw things like this, threaten and spit and sneer and raise fists and slam doors-
The pain's too sudden and intense for sound. He just blinks again, feeling warm and peaceful and floaty and weird, and only realises Vince has stopped snarling in a very abstract, distant kind of way when the door opens again and a pair of round, horrified blue eyes stare up at him.
"Oh fuck," Vince says. "Oh fuck. Fucking hell. Oh fuck."
"You're still swearing," Howard hears himself say, lazily, even sounding a little bit amused (although that's almost definitely hysteria and when the ripples of it turn into a tsunami he's quite sure it's going to drown him) "even when you've cut off my fucking finger."
"You're swearing too."
"I think I'm entitled to a little bit of a swear, don't you?"
"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I suppose you are."
"I'm bleeding quite badly."
"I can see that. Don't get it on me, this is cashmere."
"You bitch." Ripples are morphing into little waves now. "Pick it up."
"What?"
"My finger."
"No way."
"Vince."
"No WAY!"
Little waves getting choppier. Howard's starting to feel seasick. He slumps against the doorframe and squeezes his eyes shut.
"Do you know how close I am to finding that new note?" he asks, very slowly, very calmly. "Do you know? How can I do that with nine fingers? I'm using all ten and my toes and you don't even want to know what else as it is. Don't you want to get signed? You pick my finger up right now and make Naboo fix me or, or I swear to GOD, Vince, I fucking swear to almighty fucking God a little bit of fucking blood on your fucking cashmere jumper is going to be the least of your fucking worries because I'm going to rip out every single fucking one of your hairs and make a rope and use it to tie you to the flagpole on Buckingham Fucking Palace by your ballsack, sir, is that clear?"
The pain's starting to come through now, a sharp bright ray of sunshine poking through a stormcloud, and the waves are raising higher and higher like snakes poised for attack, but it's worth it, Howard thinks, he'd go through twice this to see the look of shock on Vince's face again. That, sir, is how you win an argument, he congratulates himself, and he starts giggling, a silly girly high-pitched crazy giggle. Vince frowns, crouching to pick up the severed finger, twisting his face up as if that's going to make it less of an ordeal.
"Alright, keep your hair on, pottymouth," he mutters. "Ugh, your fingernail's disgusting, haven't you ever heard of cuticle trimmers?" Then: "OH SHIT!" he yelps, as the tsunami of hysteria finally knocks Howard into a dead faint and he collapses, dripping blood all over the living room
"-101."
"Room... 101," Howard echoes, uncertainly. The girl behind the desk just looks at him blankly. "Never mind. That's fine."
They struggle upstairs with Howard's little holdall and Vince's nine suitcases because of course the lift's not working. They can't afford a holiday in a place with a functional lift, but a holiday where you have to get upstairs on your own steam is better than no holiday at all, as Vince is telling him, gleeful and overexcited and racing into the room the second Howard's figured out how to work the keycard so he can test how good his bed is for jumping on.
"This - is - genius," he says, bouncing like a jack-in-the-box and making all the pillows tumble off onto the ugly patterned carpet. "Holiday! An' then, Howard, an' then, an' then-" Now he's stuck in a loop of jumping and landing funny and giggling at how close he is to toppling over and then catching his balance and jumping again, he can't even finish a sentence.
"And then we get kicked out the hotel when you go through the floor?"
The bed makes a noise of outrage when Vince does an extra-high jump and lands on his arse in the middle of it, crosslegged like a little kid at school. He's beaming like nothing in the world has ever pleased him as much as the bounciness of this cheap hotel bed (for some reason, that kind of makes Howard want to cry) and he pats the mattress until Howard gives in and sits next to him, fastidiously removing his sandals first.
"An' then we go back home an' I get to start work at the zoo!" he manages. "Elephants an' ocelots an' penguins an' gorillas an'-"
Howard interrupts gently. "Don't get all excited, little man, you'll be on something rubbish first. Frogs, maybe, or stick insects."
"Stick insects are wicked, though! They're insects, right, but they look like sticks! Imagine that!"
"You'll have to sleep on the floor in the hut when you're on nights, and you're all bony, you'll get bruises off the floorboards. And it's all cold and draughty, it'll mess your hair up something awful."
"Oh. Well... there's a plug for my straighteners, yeah? No worries, then."
"You'll have to shovel more shit than you'll ever want to see in your life."
Vince isn't giggling any more, or even smiling. He's biting his lip. He looks upset.
"I mean, you've got gloves on," Howard says quickly, to make him feel better. "And it doesn't smell that bad when you're used to it."
"I'm not bothered what it smells like. Just... Howard?"
"What?"
"Are you trying to put me off working with you?"
"What? No!"
"Sounds like it."
"I'm not, though. I just don't want you to get disappointed, you know? Thinking it's all nice and easy and you get to play with fluffy tiger cubs all day. It's hard work."
"I don't care."
"You might get-"
"I don't care! I just want..."
He trails off, then tries again, quiet, faltering and not quite meeting Howard's eyes.
"I just wanna be with you, okay? I don't care if it's hard work, I like being round you, I don't wanna do anything else. I wanna be a zookeeper with you."
"Even if you end up with bats in your hair."
"Even if there's bats."
Howard realises he's smiling like an idiot, but it's okay because so's Vince
"-Noir, shop-painting star!" Vince yells, brush held high above his head in victory.
Howard's splattered in red from head to foot. "That doesn't scan properly. I'm afraid you're just destined to be a rock and roll star."
"Oh no, what a shame." He chucks the brush back in the empty paint tin and goes over to the big wooden crate they've been using as a sort of refreshments table. It's covered in bottles and glasses, sweet wrappers, crisp bags, banana skins and apple cores and orange peel. "Satsuma?" he says. He starts peeling one, staining the bright orange with the red caught under his fingernails.
"That doesn't look very sanitary," Howard says, or at least tries to say, because he's suddenly got a faceful of satsuma and Vince is laughing so hard he stumbles on his heels and plants a skinny little arseprint on the freshly-painted windowsill.
"Oh shit," he says, but he's laughing fit to burst, spitting satsuma segments everywhere, dripping juice down his chin, quaking so hard with giggles he can't even mop himself up. It's infectious when he gets like this, when he really laughs so hard he can't talk or walk or breathe or anything, there's no fighting it, Howard doesn't even try any more, he just lets it carry him off. He grabs another couple of satsumas and tears into them with his fingernails because the splat they make is so much more satisfying that way, and he pelts Vince with handfuls of squishy dripping fruit until it's all over his face and his painted vest and standing out bright alongside the streaks of red in his hair. Naboo's going to murder them for this, he knows, for wrecking the paint job and smearing goo all up the shop windows, or he's at least going to spike them with something that's going to cause extreme pain and misery, but right now it's okay, right now nothing in the world matters, because it's a beautiful day on the cusp of summer, and Vince is laughing.