Current location:	The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current mood:	relieved
Current music:	Bittersweet- Apocalyptica feat. HIM & The Rasmus

The Mighty Boosh Fanfiction: Present Sailors Part 12
Title: Present Sailors part 12
Pairing: Howard/Vince
Summary: All good things must come to an end (I heard that ‘thank goodness for that’ coming from the back! *squints in an imposing fashion and ends up looking faintly constipated*)
Word Count: Part 12: 7505
Rating: 12 by British ratings. some bad language, but not much. More like a PG.
Disclaimer: Mighty Boosh, its characters and situations belong heart, mind and soul to Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett- and for their meeting and conceiving of such a world we forever more heartily thank them. I own nothing; I’m just playing with the pieces for a space.

Later same day: Having had a break from the computer and having scanned the chapter, I realise how awful the grammer, etc, is, so I have been through and straightened it out! Thanks for bearing with me :-)

P.S: The Dark Knight is fab! :-D

A/N: And so it finally ends! Thank you for bearing with me, and thanks to everyone who encouraged, bullied, aided and abetted.

One request: if you have read this and not commented much, or even if you have, I would very much appreciate a comment. With this tale I have taken some leaps and made some gambles, and I would very much like to know if, as a whole, it worked or if I have overstretched the idea of working fiction with fanfiction. It was always my intention to make a story first, and work on ‘fan’ bits second- this one wanted to fly into crazy levels of originality vis a vis the ‘fanfiction’ remit.
Did it work?

I hope it’s anything like you hoped.




Howard watched Vince’s fall with horrified helplessness, unable to move or do anything; merely bearing witness. When his body hit the water, already unconscious and flat, belly-smacking it painfully, Howard felt the pain in his own gut. When Vince started to slide under the water, Howard made an instinctive leap for the side of the ship- and upon seeing the water below, faltered.
Repressed as he was, paranoid and almost cartoonish at times in his ridiculous gaffs and faux pas, Howard was also, underneath, a stronger man than he realised. The vision of Vince galvanised him, but the fear of water held him back. Caught between the two extremes, he twittered, and in doing so the cold, hard machine that had, until moments before, fought and killed without compunction cracked, and the feeling, living Howard started to spill back out into the light of day, blinking in surprise. His inner self had thought he’d been cocooned for a long time, a life-time, even, but here he was, summoned back once more, and because of what? Because- oh, oh shit.

Vince’s body, sliding under, as flattened, unconscious bodies are wont to do, had gone feet first, and had tipped up to almost standing, so his raised hands and head were the last parts visible. In repose, his face had relaxed into something younger-looking; vulnerable and fragile, like those elegant fingers of his... artist’s hands… Howard watched, mesmerised, as Vince’s head, tilted back, was the last part to disappear under water, aside from his hair which floated like a black cloud for a second, then was sucked under.
Inner Howard saw, and Inner Howard, forced to confront so much of late that he had all but crumpled, howled like the man of raging passion he did not, until now, know himself to be.
The floodgates opened, and it all came back to him…

Eleven years old and so full of himself because he’d achieved his Junior Savers’ Badge at the local municipal pool, Howard T J Moon struts into the swim baths, resplendent in his newest accessory: a verruca sock. A rubbery thing a bit like a foot condom that’s meant to prevent his plague-ridden underfoot skin from coming into contact with other, more wholesome children. But it matters not to the newly-bolstered Howard T J Moon, who feels it more a badge of honour; a man’s mark of bravely overcoming the odds of illness.
It would perhaps have been cooler if his dad had not insisted that he could make a verruca socks as good as any “shop bought rip-off.” Consequently the balloon, with the neck cut off and gaffa-taped around Howard’s ankle, is a little baggy, but it does the job, as Dad said, and, well, the money saved can be better spent on Dad’s well-earned evening can of light ale. Light ale not being a ‘shop bought rip-off’, apparently.
So into the baths he goes, and at once the sniggers start. It’s Vince Noir and his group of adoring fans again, giggling over in the shallow end, playing ‘splashy splashy’ with both girls and boys. Vince Noir- skinny little fellow, nose slightly too big for that narrow, elfin face, skin as pale as cream… Howard T J Moon, aged eleven shrugs off that line of thought. Vince is the coolest boy at school. It’s frankly amazing he’s put up with Howard for so long (about eleven years, give or take a few months), but today is Howard’s day, and not even Vince’s obvious popularity and his reign of the ‘fun end’ of the pool is going to weigh Howard down. After all, he’s a Junior Saver- he can go into the deep end!

Howard strides down the pool, away from the snorts and laughs, towards the adult end, where he receives a few odd stares from the older boys and girls. However, he gamely sits on the side and slides in, paddling happily across the lanes, causing a minor pile-up among the length-swimming seniors.
After a few choice comments on a little boy being in the wrong place, he sulks over to the edge, where he realises he’s being looked at. The rest of his year are paddling about, playing and swimming in the shallower end, but in the middle, like the eye in the storm, Vince is staring right at him, with one eyebrow and one corner of his mouth raised in wry amusement.
Howard sticks his tongue out at Vince and pulls himself over to the farthest end of the pool- the deepest part of the deep end- and pushes off to swim a whole length. He’s never done a length before, but Vince’s gentle admonition has riled him up, and he’s determined to prove who’s the better boy. A third of the way down, however, and not quite past the underwater ramp in the floor separating shallow and deep ends, and he’s in trouble, floundering tiredly. Howard bobs down twice, then resurfaces, panic starting to rise in his chest. He takes a big breath of air- and his arms fail him and he’s down a third time. This time he decides to sink until he hits bottom, then push himself up and along again with a good, firm kick to the floor of the pool. But once down, he tries to kick off- and can’t. His foot is caught. More exactly, his damn ‘verruca sock’ is caught- snagged in a filtration grate.
Really starting to panic now, he stretches upwards, trying to tear the rubber, but this must be the only balloon in the pack that is made of sterner stuff, and it refuses to tear. He tries again, this time waving his hand like fury, and his finger-tips break the surface and flap frantically.
Although he can’t hear it, there is laughing and pointing going on; both juniors and seniors think he’s having a laugh,
By the time they realise he isn’t, he’s all but out of air, and no longer flapping- or moving, for that matter- just hanging suspended between surface and floor, hooked tight, the world going black…

The next thing he knows, it’s a rush of noise and light, and a confusing sensation of someone pressing his stomach. He heals over- he appears to be lying on dry land- and vomits up water, then flops back. He stares blearily upwards, and into a pair of wide blue eyes.
“Is he back with us, Vince?” it's the voice of Mr Petersen, their swim master.
“Yes,” is all Vince says.
Mr Petersen’s face hovers into Howard’s line of vision, and his grey eyes frown into Howard’s brown ones.
“Balloons are not regulation footwear in the pool, Howard. You’re a very lucky boy; Vince here saw you go down and got you out from there, and he even gave you the kiss of life to help you come back.”
Howard stared into Vince’s eyes, too ashamed to say anything.
“How did you cut him free, Vince?” Mr Petersen then remembered to ask.
“With my cuticle trimmers. I always have them with me,” Vince replied nonchalantly, flashing a small pair of silver blades. Howard didn’t even want to think about where a young boy wearing naught by swimming trucks could secret such items, and Mr Petersen wisely preserved everyone’s innocence and did not ask. Instead he clapped Howard on the shoulder and told him again how lucky he was, and that he’d have a week’s detention starting Monday for wearing a balloon on his foot, endangering his life and nearly giving Mr Petersen a ‘bloody heart attack’.
Howard lay on his back on the side of the pool, just glad to be alive.
“It was a pleasure, ‘Oward,” Vince remarked, rather pointedly.
“Wha-? Oh, yeah, ‘fanks.”
Vince gave that funny half-smile again that had so annoyed Howard from the other end of the pool. “Why do I get th’ feelin’ I’m gonna be rescuin’ you f’years t’come?”
Howard turned his face away, eyes burning with tears of shame.

It was a good two months before his mother could persuade him to have a bath again.

Howard never forgot how the water had nearly claimed him. He learned to abide tankfuls he could stand up in- being forced to race porpoises every week at the Zooniverse actually helped him overcome some of his phobia, but he never forgot, at heart, how truly awful large bodies of water were...

Lost in his reverie, Howard paid no heed to the battle still desperately raging about him, until at this point a cross of steel suddenly clanged into his field of vision. The Bo’sun, seeing him stupefied, his sword drooping from numb fingers, had also seen the triumphant vampire swooping down towards him, its own weapon upraised for a killing strike. She lunged forward and stuck out her own blade, crashing into the vampire’s and preventing it from landing his mark. The vampire snarled. Howard peered at him in slow motion, vaguely curious; his head a mass of noise, memory and visions not altogether anything to do with the action spilling out around him.
The vampire’s eyes glowed briefly red, and he twisted his sword up and away. The Bo’sun threw Howard a faintly exasperated stare, and turned about to cover his other side, when-
- The vampire returned, having swooped up on a very short angle, and it came in with sword point low and very, very deadly. It struck home this time, alright- burying its sword up to most of its length in the Bo’sun’s side. She gave a great cry of surprise, adrenalin preventing any real pain from registering, and in reflex she threw her sword- impaling the flying murderer and sending it- a flopping ball of dead flesh and cloth, a sword puncturing its neck and gushing dark blood- into the sea. Then she collapsed to her knees at Howard’s feet. The whole thing must have taken only split seconds, but to Howard it lasted a lifetime. He saw the Captain, a few meters ahead and making good headway, along with her hard-pressed but determined crew, to retaking their ship, cleaning off the final flying vampires. A little further over, however, he also watched as Blondie and the Lookout, backs pressed together were out-manoeuvred and summarily run through, the vampire swords ramming in on both sides, going in up to the hilt and pinning their slim bodies together. They juddered once or twice, then their heads and arms dropped, lifeless, their bodies propped together in death.

Seeing this, the Captain gave a great holler, and turning to see if her Bo’sun was keeping up, saw her newly fallen. The Captain gave a great scream and flung herself towards her friend, her crew rushing to fill the breach left by her exit. She reached the Bo’sun and cradled her, shaking her conscious again.
“’M tired, Cap’n.”
“I- I ‘ad t’say- th' nightwatch is ‘pon us. She’s all yours, m’ Bo’sun.”
The Bo’sun touched the Captain’s cheek, and her hand flopped down again.
“I- followed you... ma’am... till... death.” And with a final shudder and choke of blood, she was gone.
The Captain glanced back at her crew- evening the fight, but with large numbers fallen; at the ship covered in blood and bodies and gore, then down to her friend and up at Howard.

“What y’waitin’ fer? Howard? HOWARD!”
Her yell broke the spell, and time sped up into real time again. It had been mere seconds since Vince had disappeared underwater. And in time’s new zippy format, Howard watched as a vampire appeared behind the kneeling Captain, and thrust his dagger up and into her back, the tip appearing through her chest. She stiffened and grunted. Sweeping up his sword, Howard decapitated the vampire in one movement.
The Captain glared at him, seemingly ignoring the protruding blade as a minor inconvenience “Go geh ‘im!”
“I-I’m scared!”
The Treasure gave an impatient yank towards the side of the ship.
The Captain’s face settled into something soft and sympathetic. “ Ah, Howard, th’ best treasure is th' scariest search, buh’ it’s the on’lything worth avin’.”
“I-!”
“Howard! You always ‘ad th’ Treasure inside ya! Fer – sake!” her voice rose in one final imperious yell. “Go geh ‘im b’fore ‘e bluddy well drowns!”
Her head lolled and dropped, all words done with.

Without knowing quite how, but driven somehow by his legs once more, Howard dropped his sword, spun on his heel, and kicking off his boots as he went, jumped onto the edge, and dived in. It wasn’t a pretty dive, but it was serviceable, and about as good a dive as any eleven-year-old would be proud to call their own.

The water was shockingly cold- refreshing after the hot day and hotter battle, but very cold, and salty. He broke surface and, marking where Vince had gone down, he took a HUGE breath, tipping up and duck-diving into the gloom below.
Something flashed below him- a golden spark. The medallion around his neck jerked and pulled him forwards. Not wanting to argue, he allowed himself to be led- and there was Vince- a dark shape just below, and falling still. He reached out a hand, and his fingertips brushed Vince’s sleeve. Frustrated, he kicked still further, the medallion straining like a Labrador on a leash. Howard made another grab- and caught Vince’s wrist. The tug around his neck subsided and he kicked upwards, pulling them towards the surface. He risked a glance back, and in the water, he saw Vince’s face- pale and wan, his hair floating like a dark, deathly halo, his black clothes hardly abetting the already worryingly morbid scene. Yet even in the water, even in this ghastly state, he was the most beautiful thing Howard had ever seen. A sudden fear shot through him. What if he was too late? How would he know? How could he live with himself if he was-? What if having bloody crises on ship while Vince sank to a watery grave was what amde him too late- NO!

Heaving Vince up into his arms, but, due to increasing panic not heeding to wait until they were actually out of water, Howard foolishly placed his lips over Vince’s, and holding Vince's chin in one hand and waist with the other arm, opened his mouth, sealed it with his own and blew what little reserve of air he had into Vince’s mouth.
Please, please don’t go! Don’t leave me behind!

Vince’s body twitched, and his eyelids fluttered. He’d been very lucky- having fallen in deeply relaxed, his soft palette had fallen forward and sealed his throat off from water entry. He’d been in a semi-suspended state of shock, his body about to start breathing again on its own, when the sudden influx of air entering his lungs had his woozy Brain Cell sending out instant messages like a demon, demanding to know what was going on. The sensation of a mouth on his, supplying the air, one hand on his chin helping the seal stay tight, one arm around his waist, holding him close, and all this taking place underwater had him flustered for only a moment, because there was something familiar but reversed about this situation...

Where breathing ended and kissing began was something of a grey area, as was who started it. It was both and neither. The amulets glowed brighter and brighter, the light a burning beacon that gathered in silent energy, shooting from the sea, into the sky. Something shattered, some invisible force dissolved away between the two figures in the sky, and the reaching fingers brushed, met and clasped. On the chests and around the necks of the Lord and the Sunne, golden shapes started to take form- chains and heavy medallions. But where the Lord had worn his crescent moon, and the Sunne a sun in splendour, now they wore the same amulet each- a combination of both; the moon and sun lovingly wrapped around each other, enjoined- a design new and different.
With a great sigh, the two entities clasped hands, gazed at each other, then they embraced, their bodies clinging together as if they could never be parted again. A great THOOM of super-sonic sound made their double form convulse, and their backs arched as the golden power raced through them, binding them together with blinding cords of light. A great humming, as of thousands of bees singing in barbershop scat harmony surrounded them, and as it crew in pitch, their own cries were drowned in a welter of sound and light...

And then the sky exploded.

In the soft un-sound underwater, in the clear sun-sliced blue Howard and Vince broke apart and regarded each other. Howard ran a strand of waving black hair through his fingertips, and Vince smiled warmly, curving his face towards Howard’s palm. The sweetness was short-lived, however, because it was getting hard for both of them to hold onto no breath. Howard gestured upwards, and Vince nodded. They started to kick their way upwards, but at that moment, there was a great explosion of light, followed moments later by a great, physical blow of percussive power that rammed into and through the water, smacking them both down, dazing and confusing them.
Howard was the first to recover, swiftly grabbing back onto his senses and Vince’s waist in one go. He gaped upwards as Vince shook his head awake, and they both stared at the flaming golden sky just visible through the seawater overhead.
And that’s when Vince started to choke. Howard watched, utterly powerless, as he, too, felt the chokes begin in his own throat.

This was it- they had had scarcely enough in them to reach the surface before the explosion- or whatever it was- had thrown them down once more. He tried kicking upwards, but his legs refused to obey him. Vince clawed his way up Howard’s body, to wrap both arms around his neck and hang there, his head tilted back, staring at Howard for as long as he could. He saw Howard’s eyes begin to glaze, and his weren’t long to follow. He dropped his head forwards onto Howard's chest. As much as he wanted to keep looking, he didn’t want his or Howard’s last vision to be the sight of the other drowning before their very eyes. He felt Howard’s trembling arms wrap around his body, and just before darkness came, and with it the start of the salty flow into his pounding throat and shivering lungs, he thought he felt Howard expel all his breath in one last shout. A strangely defiant gesture that send a flood of pride through his heart for the messed-up man he adored.

For his part, Howard had had enough. He’d had this blasted adventure only to realise what was missing in his life, and then to have it taken away again, and his own life with it, to boot.
Turning his head towards whatever it was above that had gone ka-boom and blown their chances of surviving, he screamed with the last vestiges of sense and oxygen before he, too, accepted the inevitable and opened his chest to the watery gloom.

A mass of bubbles floated upwards and broke the surface, and with it, discharged their last message.
“YOU BASTARDS!!!”


White.

It was white.

Time passed.

Maybe.

Um…

He opened his eyes again. Yup, still white.

He rolled over, but although there was solidity on his back, head and legs, suggesting ‘floor’, there were no markings to designate floor, ceiling, up, down, or side to side as such.

Just... very, very white.

What was he meant to do now?

Oh, yes-

The gasp for air was ragged, painful and elicited a whimper of pain at its end.

Hadn’t he been in water? Water...? He shivered. Water bad: land good. So it was weird, but it was solid, it wasn’t trying to drown him, it was just very... bright and so very white.

A soft sound to his left made his head turn. His arms were spread-eagled to each side of him, and only now did the left one report in with the sensation of weight, and now movement, along most of its length. Facing him, head on his upper arm, hand clasping it as if to a lifeline, a dark-haired man in loose, black clothing moaned again, then rolled away from him, gave a gasp of his own, and vomited up water. He felt compelled to put a hand to the stranger’s back and stoke it soothingly, so he did so with his spare right hand. This made him turn towards them, and when they rolled back to face whomever was stroking their back, blue eyes met his in mild confusion.

“’Oward?”
Oooooh, yes, how could he forget all that>?

Howard, recalling himself on the instant as if the memories had never been away, smiled shakily back at Vince.
“Alright, little man?”
Vince’s eyes were searching Howard’s face for signs of remembrance.
“I’m... Ok. You?”
When Howard smiled and ruffled his hair, Vince knew he remembered.
Thank God for that- any more ‘awkward moments’ now and I’ll scream!
“I’m ok.”
“One question?”
“Hum?”
“Where are we?”
“Ah.”

They peeled upwards to lean on their elbows, staring about them. Just a whole load of whiteness.
“A blank canvas,” Vince murmured.
Howard cast a glance his way. That was extraordinarily percipient of Vince. What had happened to them, exactly?
More importantly: would it last once they got home?
More important still: how the hell did they get home?!

“What’s that?” he wondered aloud, peering off into what, with a lack of dimension markers in this maddeningly blank no-place space, could possibly be called the ‘distance’. Only then by virtue of the moving splodges he had noticed starting small and getting larger with each breath taken; breath and heartbeat being the only markers of linear time in here.

Vince squinted along Howard’s line of vision. “Looks like people.”
“They’re some way off.”
Vince flashed a grin towards Howard. “Fancy a quick snog, then?”
Howard merely raised an eyebrow.
Vince nudged him. “You tease!”
This time Howard actually faced Vince and was about to say something, when a shapely leg in soft white knee-length breeches and bare feet suddenly appeared in the corner of his eye.
“JESUS!” he flopped backwards, startled.
“Not quite,” giggled a voice both familiar and strange. The inflection was just a little out- the enunciation a little more pronounced than Vince; otherwise it was Vince to a ‘t’.

For his part, Vince had had a little more warning on the newcomers’ arrival, having been facing that way already, but even he gave a small cry and jumped back on his bottom- to lean closer to Howard. Once he realised that it was the Lord now bending down and offering him a hand to stand with, however, he regained something of his composure and threw up a hand in response. The Lord heaved him upright. Vince scrutinised the handsome face. Still there were shades of worry and care on there, but overall he seemed... lighter.
In contrast, Howard, accepting the Sunne’s hand and hoofing into the upright position, was noticing how more... settled the Sunne appeared. That frantic, edgy disquiet he had worn like a thorny cloak across his shoulders and in his eyes seemed... dissipated somehow. The Sunne smiled, and he was... anchored.
That’s when Howard and Vince realised that the distant moving blobs had been these two, and they took a step or two backwards, unnerved by the suddenness of the arrival. Things were starting to coalesce- but at the same time, sense was not being made.

Instead the four men regarded each other- especially Vince and the Sunne, Howard and the Lord. They realised that these characters must be those whom their other half had met, and wary nods of greeting were exchanged, with an “al’righ’” from Vince and the Sunne. Vince couldn’t help noticing that the Sunne was lovelier; Howard noted the Lord’s manly authority.

The Sunne rolled his eyes. “Don’t be jealous, y’spanners! We came t’thank you!”
“Thank us?” Howard repeated, incredulous.
“Of course,” The Lord replied, “who else but you two could mend the mess of this place? I mean, look at us- we’d have fitted to no other lonely, separated set of star-crossed lovers, would we?” he made a duh shrug of his shoulders, and in doing so a golden medallion slipped from under his open-necked shirt, revealing-
“-that’s what I was wearing!” Howard exclaimed, and then fumbled on his chest, finally realising he no longer had it.
“Not quite,” the Lord told him, and stepped forward so he could see, holding up the medallion. “This is what it should be- both parts entwined, because two halves make the whole.”
The Sunne flashed his medallion for Vince to verify that, yes, both now wore the same design; a mixture of moon and sun.
Vince raised an eyebrow, and Howard gave a snort of bitter-sweet laughter.
“Would you like some fries with your over-baked metaphor?” he demanded, and folded his arms, face set in a determined sulk.
The Lord frowned, but the Sunne’s face displayed only concern. He laid a hand on Howard’s crossed arms and smiled, softly.
“I’m sorry y' feel so used and abused, Howard. I suppose... yes, it was that, but then, it 'ad to be so. You two had to work it out f' yourselves for our world to survive- you have to understand that. But while the theory is one thing- the actual sorting of it...”
“...The hard work of setting things right,” the Lord took up when the Sunne’s words failed him, “was something you both needed a boot up the arse to do! The practise, Howard, is scarier, but as necessary, as the theory.”

“’An practise makes perfect?”
Howard glanced to his side, where Vince stood, his face and posture as soft and vulnerable as the semi-whispered question. So much possibility in that suggestion- so much. A worlds’ worth; and Howard knew he’d rarely see Vince so... openly submissive as this ever again. It was something his friend would never, ever show- a weaker spot in which he could be kicked. Howard knew why it was, too. At school, Vince had learned the art of hardening his inner defences so that derision and laughter over his choice of clothes and behaviours would no longer hurt him. He’d watched his friend then become the double-layered tactician he was today; the apparent free spirit on the outside, the sunshine burning through his smile and his happiness, but inside, so deep it could hardly be seen, and perhaps only Howard knew of it because he had seen it happen, was Vince’s inner core- the awkwardness and shyness, the sensitivity he kept locked up out of harm’s way. Conversely, Howard wore his wounds on his sleeve; he had never developed that inner strength, but had, instead, felt all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But when Vince was over-excited, hyped and just plain batty, it was Howard who could calm him down. When Howard was scared, gibbering and frightened, it was Vince who gave him courage and woke up the stubbornness that could almost pass for bravery.

Howard unfolded his arms with a sigh, and dropping his hand, took Vince’s in it. Vince smiled and leaned against his arm, then his eyes flashed towards the two beings stood before them.
“’E’s right, though- you just took us ‘n used us f’ what you needed.”
“No, Vince,” the Lord’s tone with Vince was a shade sterner. “You came because you had to. If things had gone on as they were, both worlds would have been destroyed.”
When Vince gave a derisive shake of his head, the Sunne interjected softly, “imagine you left the shop, and never saw Howard again. Ever. Would you have lived after that, Vince?”
Vince’s head paused, mid-shake. His eyes dropped to his feet as his throat developed an annoyingly immobile lump. His hand flexed in Howard’s, which squeezed back.

“The truth of it might not be spoken, but it lies there in all our hearts and minds and cannot be denied. Not now.”
The Lord’s voice, faintly pompous, was still soft and sympathetic, and made them all pause.

Then Howard’s brow creased. “If we were so important- why did you nearly let us die?”
“Ah, that was unfortunate and utterly unintentional,” the Lord told him, having the grace to look a little embarrassed. “Got a little... ah... over-excited... there... um...” He flushed, hotly.
The Sunne grinned at the memory, then shook his head and swatted his flustered partner away impatiently, when both Howard and Vince looked about ready to murder.
“Wha' was vital was noh' only that you realised 'ow important you were to each other, but told each other so,” the Sunne explained.
“Bu’ we never spoke!” Vince was confused.
“A thousand, thousand unspeakable words in a kiss, Vince!” the Sunne grinned, and to prove it, kissed his Lord, one hand on his cheek.
Vince and Howard stared. It was weird, seeing a) two blokes kiss so close to them and b) looking so like them at some sort of fancy dress party as they did so.
“The kiss,” the Lord told them, breaking away from the Sunne, who giggled and touched a finger to his lips, “freed us- and we- well, we ended it all.”
“The end of all things,” Howard murmured.
“As they were,” Vince finished for him, his brow mightily furrowed as the pieces clicked.

“Exactly!” the Sunne clicked his fingers and pointed eagerly at Vince.
The Lord nodded, pleased, then added, “It’s a universal principle: no energy is created or destroyed; it is changed.”
“The Captain was right,” Howard said, growing excited. “She knew it ended all things, but- but she knew that it didn’t mean the end-” he broke off, his face draining of all colour. “The Captain! Her crew!”
“The battle!” Vince’s face, likewise, became as chalky white.
“I killed that boy,” Howard whispered, aghast.
“I killed Reticulo!” Vince whimpered.

“Peace!” the Lord’s voice brooked no argument.
“What happened to them?” Howard had to know, had to twist the dagger that bit deeper...
“As we’ve discovered- the end of all things- and the beginning of something new,” the Lord replied. He tilted his head on one side and quizzed Howard with a glance. “Do you know what the alchemical marriage is?”
Howard’s brain flip-flopped to find the answer. But it was Vince, lover of all things shiny who, of all people, spoke up first.
“Isn’t tha' about making gold?”
The Lord smiled. “Part of it. Alchemy was about the philosophy of change. In its purest form, alchemists were seeking to change themselves- purify their souls through their endeavours to find the perfect match of elements to return matter and the soul to its most glorious state- that of total combination.”
“A sort of before-the-Fall thing,” the Sunne supplied.
“So... turning lead to gold, finding the philosopher’s stone, that was all... a cover-up?” Howard was becoming annoyed. What did this have to do with them? With anything at all?

“No- that was the material side of it, and the part that most alchemists were interested in. But for some, it was about returning to a state of holy grace; purifying the spirit by finding the perfect elements to create the alchemical marriage of opposites.”
“Y’ mean they were trying to catch the... Holy Ghost?” Vince was incredulous.
Howard laughed. “It sounds that way, doesn’t it!”
“More like catching the attention of the Powers That Be, and, for some alchemists, that meant having them serve the human will conducting these experiments and resolve the rift between man and spirit.”
Vince’s mouth twisted in disgust. “So it’s all about power and control,” he spat; the freedom-loving, live-and-let-live-er disgusted by the hard-line nonsense of his former captives. The memory of the vampires left a foul taste in his mouth, and Davood’s selfless bravery left a twist in his stomach.

“Th' pirates, th' vampires- th' peoples of this world; they're like the raw elements and also like th' material alchemists tryin' to bend things into a shape of wealth and power,” the Sunne told Vince, eyes sympathetic over Vince’s wounded principles.
“But the real alchemical marriage... the thing that would heal and... resolve things... it was something already broken?” Howard’s eyes all but crossed with the effort of thinking so hard.
“Yes,” the Lord nodded once, heavily. “You and us- we- we had to come together to heal both worlds- you from yours, us in ours.”
Well, that explained what all this nonsense about alchemy was about, but...
“Why was it broken?”
“You tell us, Howard, Vince,” the Lord’s eye grew stern. “You were breaking apart as much as we did.”
Suddenly Howard and Vince realised they could not look each other in the eye. It was Vince who finally spoke, and it was using a word and with an embarrassment that he didn’t realise he knew the meanings of.
“Fear.”
“Exactly,” murmured the Sunne.

They took a moment, but Howard’s conscience still nagged him. “What about the people here- uh- there, wherever we’ve just been. The boy I..?” he couldn’t finish.
“Davood?” Vince asked, a world of guilt in his voice.
“Things begin anew. Maybe not as they were, but in a true equation, in the purest crucible, nothing is lost. Be assured, no blame rests on you.”
“I couldn’t help it- the sword- it seemed possessed!” Howard nearly wailed, lost in familiar self-recrimination. Vince took both his hands, and tried to get him to look in his eyes, but Howard had his squeezed shut, sobs now racking his body. Vince embraced him until they subsided a little.
Then the Sunne, squinting at Howard, ordered “Take off your trousers, Howard.”

“Pardon?” Vince answered for him.
“Take off your trousers, Howard,” the Sunne repeated, patiently.
Howard gaped, but then found he couldn’t move his hands. He yelped with surprise, as a familiar sensation of non-control over his own body threatened to overwhelm. Vince stared, his face a question.
“Help me?” Howard managed to ask, and needing no other invitation, Vince hastily untied the sash and fastenings, pulling down the trousers. Like a drunken man not in total control of his body and fighting the alcoholic misfirings in his brain, Howard thrashed his legs, kicking off the trousers bit by bit, until they lay on the non-ground before him. He thanked his lucky stars he’d remembered to put his underpants back on after his wash below decks.

The Lord stared at the trousers, then really stared, astonished. The Sunne, however, knelt by the discarded garment easily and gathered it up into his arms. He spoke to it sternly. “Come on, now, out!” And he gave the cloth a little shake.
A meandering, reluctant trail of smoke vaporised over the trousers and snaked a grudging path upwards. The Sunne glared at it, not without some kindness, until the tail of the thing had cleared the material. Then he held a hand out, palm upwards, and the smoke settled into a ball on his hand. He waved the trousers towards Howard.
“You can out these back on if y’like, or y’can keep flashing those fine northern pins of yours!” he grinned.
Vince sniggered.
Howard made a face and, carefully, as if they might explode, he took back the trousers, examined them, shook them, then climbed back in again, retying the sash without a second’s thought.

They all regarded the smoky ball- a faint lavender-coloured thing on the Sunne’s palm.
“Captain Harold. Well I never,” the Lord murmured.
“Who was ‘e?” Vince asked, Howard nodding his desire to know as well.
“Captain Harold of the Dawnbiter,” the Sunne told them. “One of the few male pirates in existence- an' then he died. Murdered by assailants unknown. Buh' they 'ad to have been able to fly to get into 'is secret lair...” Howard sighed. The cold-bloodedness of his fighting the vampires made sense, now. “He showed me friendship, once,” the Sunne carried on, dreamily. “He came to my island, an' he stayed a while, bravin' the insane outpourings of my lonely mind and heart. 'E listened t' me ramble, and he held me when I could not weep. He was kind- he reminded me of you,” he smiled up at his partner, who smiled back, troubled.
“He was my best agent in the world below. A Man of Action. I- I asked him to make sure you were alright,” the Lord confessed in a whisper.
“I know,” the Sunne assured him. “In return, Harold asked me t' look out fer 'is sister.”
“His sister?” Howard yelped.
“Yeah, th' Captain you knew- Captain Gideon. Harold’s sister. She 'ad been his first mate, an' she adored him, and never got over his loss. She inherited his ship, but renamed it, saying she couldn’t take a dead man’s ship, and it was too painful, an' took on a new crew. Only Gideon an' her Bo’sun remained of the original crew, although th' tale of her sufferin' carried like wildfire on the pirate seafronts, an' started a legend of the Captain who carried her famous brother’s spirit around with her.”
“In his trousers?” Howard gasped.
The Sunne shrugged. “Beats a borin' old jar any day, an' this way he got to go out an' about a bit, too. Now, Harold, come on, my old friend, my Lord’s best Chosen- time t' be gone an' back 'ome about your business.”
The smoke flickered. The Sunne frowned. “Home!”
The smoke gave a defiant flick of its tail, and streamed into the air, where it formed the image of a man the spitting image of Howard and the Lord; a man wearing the clothes Howard now wore. He bowed to the Lord, flicked a salute to Howard and winked at Vince, and then slowly he dissipated, his grin the last thing to disappear.

The Sunne stood up, brushing his hands off.
“Tha’s that, then.”
The Lord offered him a hand, and he took it.
“Time to be going.”
“Hey!”
The retreating twosome turned back as Howard yelled after them.
“What about us?” Howard demanded. “We want to go home!”
Vince nodded. “Yeah- enough’s enough!”
The Sunne’s mouth curved up into a smile that warmed his eyes. “It’s a blank canvas now, as you said, Vince!”
“So make the best use of a new beginning!” the Lord told them.
“Bloody riddles’re no good!” Vince yelled back. The figures had become appreciably smaller, even though they were not actually walking.
“How does any deus reset his machina? What’s the big return-to-zero function?” the Lord called.
A sudden, chill wind whipped at Howard and Vince’s backs, and with it came the flying spits of a cold, very wet rain.
“What d'you do to your brushes and pots to get 'em ready t' use again?” The Sunne hollered; the two beings all but obscured in a rushing, storming darkness that swirled around Howard and Vince, making them clasp hands and move closer together, anxiety levels appreciably rising.
“You wash them,” Vince whispered-

-the roaring monsoon was the biggest storm London had seen for many a year; rampaging, tantrum-ing its way across the city, playing merry hell with anything pointy enough to stick up in its way. Come the aftermath, there’d be a rather large bill for damages- slates and chimneys, aerials and satellite dishes, electrical lines and even bicycles and foolish pedestrians still out in the mess were swirled and battered by the unstoppably furious joy of the elements. And yet, for those watching behind windows, from under shelter, even those out in the thick of it, there was something... uplifting in the sheer utterness of it; utterly a terrific storm, utterly passionate, yet utterly cleansing. Looking back, most would remember it for how liberated it made them feel; as if something unneeded and damaging had been washed from their soul and spun away in the wind.

He was on a floor again, and he was wet again- soaked- and water was pouring all around him. He groaned and rolled over, pushing up onto his hands and knees. His head throbbed, and he touched his forehead gingerly. He had managed to bang it like a good’un. Opening bleary eyes, he saw a still form beside him, face down in the rainwater that gushed over the Nabootique’s doorway. The door flapped in the wind.
“Howard!” he gasped, and crawled over, hastily turning the other man over. A nasty purple welt was spreading over one temple, and it oozed a steady stream of blood. The flow was constant, but not pouring. Vince winced and, without thinking, tore a strip of semi-sodden cloth from the smock he was wearing, wadded it up and placed it over the wound. Howard gave a groan, then went very still.
“Howard? Howard!”
Vince knelt over him, tilting his head back, getting a weird sense of deja-vu as he strained over the sounds of the storm to catch a breath. He fumbled at Howard’s wrists- where’s the pulse?! And was it breaths first or chest pushing first? In the hurry, Vince’s Brain Cell panicked, and signed out.
“Fat lot of good you are,” Vince muttered darkly. He opted for breaths, figuring that’s what they did in the films. He closed his mouth over Howard’s and breathed...

Where breathing ended and kissing began was something of a grey area, as was who started it. It was both and neither. Howard’s arms twitched, then came up and encircled Vince. Laughing with relief, Vince broke away, to see Howard’s eyes open and staring groggily at him.
“Oh, hello,” Howard said, and then smiled.
Vince’s grin widened. “Hello, y’clumsy idiot!”
At that moment, the door gave a particularly formidable BANG, and the glass cracked ominously.
“Gotta get this door shut,” Vince told Howard, who nodded, groaned at the pain this gave him, and woozily rolled over to heave himself up onto hands and knees. Vince helped him to stand, and together they wrestled the door shut, pitched the bookstand beside it onto its side and across the door, and then slid down to sit in the puddles of water on the floor, backs against the overturned bookshelf. Howard touched his forehead gingerly.
“Ow!” he spotted Vince’s similarly bruised brow and reached for it, probing with gentle fingers.
“Ow!” Vince told him, taking his fingers before they inadvertently pressed too hard and made Vince reflexively punch him or something. He tore another strip of the smock (it was so last season, not worth keeping, and besides, it made him look fat), dabbed it in fresh rainwater, then wiped Howard’s face and forehead, carefully cleaning around the wound. A dryer piece of cloth from the t-shirt under the smock he tied around Howard’s head, steeping the blood flow. Howard groaned, and slid downwards gently. His head ended up in Vince’s lap, and he stiffened a little, part of his expecting rejection, even after the tender ministrations shown to him suggested otherwise.
“Hey, stop that, y’silly thing!” Vince smiled down at him, crossing his legs to make a comfier pillow for Howard’s head. Howard relaxed- really relaxed, even though he was lying in water with a terrific wallop on his head.
“Feel sick," he said. Vince held up three fingers.
“’Ow many?”
“Uh- three?”
“Bit a’ concussion, maybe, lie still ‘n’ we’ll get you to a doc as soon as the storm stops.”
Howard gazed up wonderingly at Vince, who gazed quizzingly back, his face suddenly lightening into a big grin. “With that bandage, y’look like a pirate!”
“I was a pirate... How did we get here?” Howard asked, his mind a muddled confusion of conflicting images and realities.
Now Vince looked confused, too. “I- we... had an argument, and the storm started- the door blew open. I think- you tried to close it, didn’t you? And it hit your head.” His fingers clutched momentarily on Howard’s cardigan, as if to haul him back from something awful. Although Vince was not entirely sure the story he was telling was true, yet the image of Howard being walloped by the door made his stomach queasy with distress.
“I tried to help- I think I slipped and fell on the water- hit my head, too.”
“But I was on a pirate ship, wearing haunted trousers- and you were with the vampires,” Howard said, uncertainly. They stared at each other, deeply confused.
“Somehow... th’ pirates ‘n vampires… seem more real,” Vince offered.
“But it couldn’t poss’bly have actually happened... could it?”
Howard looked almost frightened at the multiple memories jostling for position.
“Well… there’s one way to find out...” Vince offered, slowly.
“How?”
Vince gathered Howard more closely in his arms, staring him full in the eye. Hypnotised by the blue clarity, Howard’s own arms snaked across Vince’s shoulder, holding him back, helping to support his weight.
When their lips met, the storm outside shouted in approval, and having done what it set out to do, it buggered off, leaving a sky so vividly, impossibly blue in its wake, that London’s residents simply stood in the radiance of the sun, washed through by the dark rains, and gaped in amazement that two extremes could exist in such close proximity.

The kiss was good, and it was the right question, and eagerly answered, too.
The kiss was but the first; after all, it can’t rain all the time.