Work Text:
“Listeners, I have just received word that Carlos, the beautiful scientist with the perfect hair, has called a town meeting. He has specifically requested my presence there, and though I have a responsibility to you, my radio audience, I find myself compelled to oblige Carlos. He makes requests so rarely, it would be impudent of me not to.
“I will remind you, listeners, that Carlos, who is easily the best-looking and and most eloquent of the scientists studying Night Vale, has also been, for the past several months, my boyfriend. Our relationship is progressing quite well, if I can trust my judgment at all, and while I don’t know that I can, I also don’t know that I cannot. Just this weekend he took me out to dinner, and we… oh. There’s no time for that. I have to go now if I am to make the town meeting. I leave you, listeners, with a pre-recorded list of safety tips, courtesy of the Sheriff’s Secret Police.”
***
The hall was nearly full when Cecil arrived. The only open seats were near the back, but, as he cheerfully explained to John Peters, you know, the farmer, Cecil got to see Carlos up close nearly every day, so it only seemed fair that other citizens would get to be closer to him, just on occasion, just during important meetings like this. John may have smirked at Cecil’s explanation, but it was too small a facial gesture to be noticed.
For a few minutes the hall was all shuffling and the murmur of distracted conversations and people munching on the cookies that Old Woman Josie had brought and the last few seats finding their occupants. Just as the last person took the last seat, Carlos appeared on the stage.
He smiled at the crowd gathered there, and if Cecil’s heart wasn’t the only one that started to beat more quickly, it was certainly the one that beat the hardest.
Carlos began to speak. There was no microphone visible, but he was audible to the entire room, either through the use of a clip-on wireless mic attached to his shirt collar, or a simple amplification spell. As Carlos was a man of science, it was probably the latter.
“When I first came to this town, I was looking for answers. I didn’t necessarily expect to find any. I knew that most questions worth asking don’t have easy answers, and that the most interesting questions only led to more questions. I came to Night Vale expecting to find mysteries, to find questions beyond the obvious ones, to find the most scientifically fascinating community in the US. And I did find those things. But I also found some things that I hadn’t expected.
“What I didn’t expect to find was a home. What I didn’t expect to find…” Carlos paused, swallowed, continued, “was love.
“I arrived here a stranger, an outsider. I’d never prayed in a bloodstone circle, I’d never paid for a meal by leaving money under a sugar dish, and I’d certainly never been attacked by wheat or wheat by-products. Since living in Night Vale, I’ve experienced all of those things. I’ve gotten to know many of you, and you’ve made me feel like I belong here, like you accept me as one of your own and like there’s a place for me in this town.
“And no one has made me feel more at home and accepted than the man I am privileged to call my boyfriend, the lovely and talented Cecil Palmer. Cecil, are you here?” Carlos scanned the crowd, looking for Cecil in the first few rows.
Of course I’m here, thought Cecil, you asked me to come. He waved his hand from the back to catch Carlos’ attention.
“Ah! There you are,” said Carlos when he saw the slender arm raised into the air from the back of the room. “Mr. Palmer, would you please join me onstage?”
Cecil rose from his seat and sidled out of his row, past neighbors and acquaintances who obligingly made room for him. The eyes of everyone present followed him while he walked all the way to the front of the room, to the side of the stage and up the stairs to stand beside Carlos. Nearly everyone smiled knowingly as he passed.
“Cecil,” Carlos said in a breathy tone, turning to face his boyfriend. The audience watched Cecil melt onstage. Well, not physically melt, though his knees did buckle noticeably.
Cecil may have said, “Yes?” But he wasn’t amplified, so the assembled crowd couldn’t hear.
“You are the most kind, most welcoming person I have ever known. Since the day I first arrived in Night Vale you’ve generously offered me your time and assistance and emotional support. And even if I didn’t immediately reciprocate your affections for me, I have always appreciated them. You’ve been a friend, a companion, and more to me. There is no one I would rather spend the rest of my life with.”
Carlos took one of Cecil’s hands between both of his own, but soon removed one of his own hands to fish in his pocket, bringing out something that glinted in the lights on the stage. Then Carlos knelt on one knee, holding Cecil’s hand with one of his and the glinting object in the other.
“Cecil, you are my moon, and my stars, and the void that holds them. Will you…” he faltered, just for a moment. Cecil, eyes wide with surprise, held his free hand to his mouth. “Will you make me the happiest man on Earth?” Carlos concluded.
Cecil shook his head. “No,” he said. Though he had no amplification, Cecil made a living using his voice, and he knew how to project. The entire room heard him.
In the shocked silence that followed, you could hear the whirrs and hums of the Secret Police’s surveillance equipment.
Before anyone, especially Carlos, could react, Cecil smiled. “I’m going to become the happiest man on Earth.” He pulled the scientist to his feet and wrapped his free arm around him.
When the two men kissed, the room erupted into applause.
***
“Carlos,” Cecil started, once the crowd had mostly dispersed, giving the two of them congratulatory handshakes on the way out, “Aren’t people upset that you misused the town meeting time by proposing to me? What about the thing you called the meeting for?”
Carlos smiled at Cecil, and it was a good thing he was actually holding Cecil at the time, because otherwise Cecil might have lost his balance. “Read the sign out front when you go back to the station.”
“I tried reading it on my way in. It won’t let me right now.” The sign out front of the community center was incredibly fickle, and would occasionally make itself illegible to those whom it felt had wronged it.
Carlos placed a kiss on Cecil’s forehead. “It wouldn’t let you read it before, because you weren’t supposed to. I struck a deal with it. It’s actually a pretty reasonable sign once you get to know it.”
So, when Cecil had reluctantly peeled himself away from Carlos, to go back to the station and take over from the Sheriff’s Secret Police “Handsaw Combat Safety” tutorial, he passed the sign out front and read:
TONIGHT
Carlos the Scientist
Proposes
To Cecil the Broadcaster
(Admission is Free)
***
“Listeners!
“You will never believe what happened at the town meeting today! Well, some of you may believe it, because you were there, but… Oh, but I should start this story at the beginning. Earlier today, I was doing my broadcast and I got a text from Carlos, asking me to come to a town meeting. He said it was important that I be there. So I go to the town meeting, and there aren’t any seats up at the front, near where Carlos will be, but that’s okay, because I get to see Carlos all the time and most other people don’t…”
In a lab on the other side of town, Carlos and a few other scientists listened to the radio, not bothering with the pretense of working during the broadcast. Carlos covered his mouth with embarrassment over many of the things Cecil said, but the other scientists could see, through the gaps in his fingers, that he was covering a smile.