Disclaimer: I do not own Howard and Vince or The Boy With the Thorn in His Side by The Smiths.

A/N: Thought I'd try something different. When Howard met Vince. No slash, cos they're kids. (Slight implied future slash if you choose to read it that way.)

The Boy With the Thorn in his Side

1984

The boy with the thorn in his side

Behind the hatred there lies a plundering desire

For love

It was still nearly a year before Morrissey would pen those lyrics, and a good six years before a late-blossoming puberty would make a consuming desire for love a major feature in Howard Moon’s life, kicking off what he would later call his ‘soft phase’ of poetry writing (‘Your knees are soft…as the soft belly of a soft cat’ being one of his more memorably embarrassing efforts). It was over two decades before he would realise that this seemingly inauspicious cloudy day was the day which would change his life forever. And he would never listen to Morrissey. At least, not willingly.

He was at this moment, however, preoccupied with a thorn; the thorn in the paw of a lion pulled out by a valiant Androcles in Howard’s attempted retelling of the story for history homework, to be specific. Lanky, unkempt, in too-short trousers which showed his ankles and a duffel coat two sizes too big (‘to grow into’, his mother had told him when he’d stared dubiously at it in the shop), Howard cut a sad figure sitting alone on the park bench, exercise book in hand, biro held thoughtfully between his lips. In Howard’s mind, this holding of his biro between his lips was a scholarly affectation which made him appear more intellectual. In actual fact, it stained his lips blue.

It was perhaps prophetic, considering that it was to become a recurring feature in their lives, that the first time Howard met Vince, he should be on the run. Stationary (and stationery-stained) as he was, Howard may not have looked as though he was on the run. But the fact that the very thing that he was running from was running – well, after school football club – gave his sedentary refusal to engage in physical activity a kind of quiet triumph. It was a protest, of sorts. Of course this was not how it would be seen by his teachers or the other boys in the football club, who would, if Howard was not mistaken, term it ‘hiding like a wuss’. Still, this discrepancy of opinions over the value of sport gave a gentle nudge to young Howard’s burgeoning belief that he was in some way set apart from his classmates, destined for greater things.

As a spiky shadow fell over Howard’s exercise book, he clutched it defensively to his chest. Howard still firmly believed in spite of repeated proof to the contrary in the form of mediocre grades, that his superior work was the object of envy, to be jealously guarded. It was no matter that his fear of other children copying his work had never been justified, or that his spidery scrawl would hardly have been legible upside down anyway.

“Alright,” said a voice. Howard looked up suspiciously. The owner of the voice was a small, skinny boy of his own age or perhaps a little younger, with pointy, visually noisy features peeking out from under a mop of dirty blonde hair.

“Alright,” Howard responded, guardedly.

“What’re you doin’?” asked the boy, wide blue eyes blinking with innocent curiosity from beneath his heavy fringe.

“Homework,” Howard replied shortly. “History.”

“What’s it about?”

“Androcles and the lion.” Howard said and stared at the boy, waiting for the punchline. But it didn’t come. The boy seemed genuinely interested.

“What’s that then?” He cocked his head to one side like an inquisitive bird. Howard felt the tightly coiled feeling in his stomach that had started as soon as he discerned the presence of another human being begin to uncoil ever so slightly.

“It’s about a valiant-“ Howard was pleased with that word – “Hero called Androcles, who ivaliantly/i pulls a thorn from a lion’s paw. And years later the lion repays this kindness.”

“How?”

“Er…by not killing him.”

“That’s a rubbish story,” the boy said, but it was said without malice.

“It’s an ancient Greek myth,” Howard said. He wasn’t entirely certain that this was in fact true, but he thought it sounded impressive.

“I’ve heard of Ancient Greeks,” the boy said, “They were all benders, or something.”

“They were not,” Howard said indignantly, cheeks flushing at what, to a ten year old boy was an extremely rude word. “Androcles was a man of action. He wasn’t afraid of lions.”

“I met a lion once,” said the boy, changing tack. There was something about the way he said it, not saw a lion, but met a lion, that made Howard’s skin prickle with interest.

“As if you did,” he scoffed.

“Yeah, I did,” protested the boy. “Cos I used to live in the forest with Brian Ferry, and one day he left me with Jahooli the leopard and Jahooli wasn’t supposed to take me to the other side of the forest but he did, yeah, cos he owed money to a loan shark, not like the phrase, an actual shark, so he went there and on the way we met this lion, big as a car and everything, well scary, and the lion said to me ‘alright, got a light?’ and I said ‘no, sorry mate’, cos I don’t smoke, an’”

“That’s not true, though, is it?” Howard interrupted, “Lions don’t talk.” Somewhere in the corners of his mind, Howard registered that talking lions were not even the strangest facet of this story. Once again, however, the boy was not phased by his scepticism.

“Well, course they do. Only not all humans can talk to animals. I can though.”

“Can you really, sir?” Howard hoped his tone was suitably withering. Why was the boy still here? Why was he talking to Howard, as if…as if he was worth talking to? What was the trick?

“I bet your lion story’s good, too, really,” the boy said, placatingly. “My name’s Vince. Vince Noir.”

“Howard Moon,” Howard replied. Momentarily, he debated holding out his hand for the other boy to shake, but decided against it.

“You know, you an’ me, I reckon we should stick together. Cos you’re like me, see?”

“I don’t think we are,” Howard said doubtfully, considering Vince’s infectiously sunny nature and his oddly flamboyant outfit that looked slightly as though he had made it himself.

“Course we are. Me an’ you, we’re not like everybody else. We’re going places.”

“Are we?” Howard asked, floored.

“Course. Aren’t you?” Howard puffed himself up, this unexpected and seemingly unwarranted belief in him, when all anyone up until now had ever done was mock his dreams and ambitions, appealing to Howard’s growing conviction that he was in fact a misunderstood genius, unappreciated in his own time.

“Yeah. Yes. Of course I am. Lots of places, sir.”

“See, I told you.” He plonked himself down on the bench beside Howard, uninvited. Howard became slightly jittery at this sudden intrusion into his personal space, but when Vince made no move to touch him or look at his homework, he allowed himself to relax. Howard, having never really had a friend before, not a proper friend, was suddenly unsure what their verbal agreement might contractually oblige him to do. Would Vince want to copy his homework? Would he expect Howard to lend him his best action man, or would the second-best one do? Should he offer to share his lunch? He looked over at Vince. He’d noticed he was skinny, but not quite how skinny. He had a certain look about him, too, not scruffy, he was too carefully groomed for that, but…uncared for. Howard thought again about his stories about living in the forest with a leopard and a ferret called Brian and wondered.

Howard, who had remained silent as his new friend prattled on about animals, 70’s and 80’s pop stars (which meant nothing to Howard) and talking bubblegum, suddenly blurted out,

“Do you want something to eat?” Vince’s eyes took on a hungry, wolfish expression for a second.

“Yeah, alright,” he said, outwardly casual.

“My house, it’s not far…” Howard was embarrassed. Was that too much, so early in their friendship? He had a horror of pushing things too far and being knocked back, being laughed at. Safer to keep everyone at arm’s length. A sad thing to have learned already at his age. But Vince just grinned.

“Alright. But you do know now you’ve asked me in you ain’t ever gonna get rid of me, right?”

Not too much, then. Once Howard Moon crossed the boundary of friendship, it was forever. Apparently.

The house was empty when they got in, to Howard’s relief. He didn’t want to face any awkward questions about why he was bringing stray boys back to the kitchen instead of being at football practice. He poked in the cupboard for something for Vince to eat, pulling out a packet of fondant fancies.

“This is all I can find,” he said apologetically, offering Vince the box. He had a feeling that any cakes that not only had pink icing but were termed ifancies/i were not exactly manly snacks. Not the kind of thing Androcles would have eaten. “Help yourself.”

“They’re pink,” Vince said admiringly, clearly not bothered by the possible effeminate nature of the cakes, “Genius.” He took three and stuffed them into his mouth hungrily. Howard stared in horrified fascination as Vince ate hungrily, crumbs and flecks of cream getting all around the corners of his mouth and on his chin. Vince made a satisfied noise that sounded a bit like, “Mmdemmeliccoussmm” and reached for more of the iced cakes.

Howard, who never had had much of a sweet tooth, nonetheless derived an odd kind of pleasure from introducing Vince to different kinds of sweet treats over the next few weeks, simply because the delight Vince took in them was so overwhelming, it was hard not to be swept up. And it wasn’t just sweets. There was the time Vince discovered Transformers (“They’re robots, Howard, but they’re in disguise! Imagine that!”). Even Vince’s endless enthusiasm over new hair products and fashions had its charm, for all Howard’s attempts to remain aloof. It wasn’t something that ever stopped being charming, Howard decided when Vince, at the age of twenty-seven began complaining that Wagon Wheels weren’t as big as they used to be and waxing lyrical about the time he’d eaten one as big as his own head.

Fortunately, Howard’s mother, when she returned from work that afternoon, was not angry about the sudden disappearance of an entire box of fondant fancies. In fact, whether from concern about Vince’s undernourished appearance or relief that Howard appeared finally to have made a friend, she invited Vince to stay for tea, and after that Vince became something of a regular pointy-faced fixture at the Moon family dinner table.

From that day on, Howard cultivated towards Vince an air of proprietary patronage which disguised just how grateful and awed he was, deep down, that Vince wanted to be friends with him. When Vince arrived at school the following Monday and chose – ichose!/i – to sit next to Howard, Howard was positively beaming. It was even better than the time he’d got a Roland Rat pencil case for his birthday, or the time he’d found a shiny pebble in the playground, the feeling that he had something other people envied. Look, he wanted to say, it’s so pretty and shiny and I found it and it’s mine.

Some two decades later, shortly after a holiday in the wilderness that had gone disastrously wrong, Howard would find himself thinking the exact same words as he followed Vince across the threshold of some new club or other, but that time the words would have an extra layer of meaning, like a jammy wagon wheel; an undercurrent of unrecognised desire and a horrible, twisting feeling in his gut as Vince smiled and danced with a parade of glittery-attired boys and girls, that that last part wasn’t true, that Vince wasn’t his at all anymore, if he ever had been.

Howard’s retelling of Androcles and the Lion was marked as a ‘very faithful retelling’, although his teacher had been unimpressed with the repeated use of the word valiant and suggested he consult a thesaurus. A piece of advice which Howard took painfully literally for the next year, to the annoyance of everyone around him. Vince’s terribly spelled, ungrammatical account of his own meeting with a nicotine-addicted lion was praised as ‘imaginative’, although sadly lacking in an appropriately satisfying conclusion.

Sometimes Howard forgot how they’d met. It seemed as though Vince had always been there, and he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been around. Other times, Howard mythologised their meeting, with him as the valiant man of action who had rescued a near-starving Vince and taken him in. But really, deep down, Howard knew that it had been just as much the other way around; they had rescued each other. And not for the last time.