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Carlos had a PhD before anyone gave him a word for it.
He was doing post-doctoral research at Cambridge when he met Jane, in her second year of a sociology doctorate program. She was from Manchester, and her blatantly Northern cadence got her a little chaffing in Cambridge's venerable halls.
Carlos loved her accent, how much expression and attitude she could inflect in only a few words. Plus she was brilliant and insightful and had boldly dyed hair and a cute apple-cheeked smile, and she asked him out—for lunch, the first time, so they could talk about the potential cultural impact of his research into the universal wavefunction and quantum states.
Jane was disappointed to learn that there would be no forthcoming travel between parallel universes, but she still asked him if he wanted to catch a movie together. Which should have been a clue, but she was so easy to talk to, that they ended up dating before Carlos really noticed.
She was the third girl—woman—who he had ever gone out with; and at first it was wonderful, the best by far. Jane was a great kisser who liked flavored lip balms so he never knew what she was going to taste like, coconut or mango or mint. She loved classic scifi television, and when they watched Star Trek DVDs curled up together on her couch, she fit against Carlos like she'd been specifically sized to tuck under his chin, so he could feel her laughing as she complained in her gorgeous outraged alto about unnecessarily updated special effects. And she was patient with him, so patient, dropping hints about taking things to the next level but never pressing when he hesitated.
And Carlos thought that maybe his mother had been right, that he'd just been looking for the right girl. That maybe he'd finally hit the major milestone of adolescence, a couple decades late but who was counting? So the next time Jane made an oblique allusion to him staying the night, he said yes.
She had all the necessities in her nightstand drawer—which she closed before he could peek into it, with a wink and a, "Don't want to scare you off yet!" And her teasing, like sex was supposed to be fun, a game instead of a romantic bar to hurdle, made it easier for Carlos to admit that no, he wasn't a virgin, and no, he'd never had any bad experiences in bed or elsewhere; but he didn't have much good experience either, and it had been a few years.
So they'd had sex. And Jane had been happy to take the lead, happy to show him what she liked, to ask what he liked with a tender, open anticipation that made Carlos almost, almost want to confess the truth, that he'd rather just be cuddling on the couch watching old TV shows.
He didn't, though. And while it took time to get over his nerves, in the end Jane had enjoyed herself, vocally and expressively, and thanked him with kisses afterwards. They showered together and it wasn't as awkward as the first time, his first year of grad school, when he'd gotten soap in his eyes and his elbow in Lashanna's eyes and had been so embarrassed that he'd sent her five emails within an hour after she'd left, and then didn't pick up the phone when she called.
It went so well, in fact, that a few nights later Jane wanted another go, and then a couple days after that, and he could tell she was thinking about it when they cuddled, when they kissed, her tongue sliding between his lips with a passion that Carlos wished he shared.
He tried, and he didn't think he was doing that badly. But after their fifth time together, Jane flopped back on the pillows, sweat and activity scattering her multi-colored hair across the sheets like streamers. She looked up at him over her, reached up to touch his face and said, "You aren't really into this, are you, Carlos?"
And Carlos, in the unpleasantly bleary post-coital haze, answered honestly—like an idiot—"Not really."
Then he'd gotten a grip, corrected, "No—I mean—you're great! I'm sorry, I'm not—I just don't—"
"Hey," Jane said, "hey, it's okay," and she looped her arms around his neck to pull him down for a hug—not anything more, not pushing up against him suggestively, just holding him. Even with the sticky stink of sweat and semen and the too-hot bare skin, Carlos liked this part, this closeness. It was worth the rest, pretty much.
The next day Jane invited him over for dinner—and burned it, so they got takeaway kebabs instead. While Carlos was licking tangy sauce from his fingers, Jane said, thoughtfully, like she was planning an experiment, "Maybe you're asexual?"
It was the first time he'd heard the word outside of reproductive biology. Jane's explanation led to a long discussion until midnight, and then Carlos on his computer until dawn, researching social science obsessively for the first time in his life, finding correlations and confirmations, statistics and anecdotal evidence, corresponding to his own experience.
It helped to have a word for it. For himself. Carlos was a physicist, not a linguist; but he knew the importance of words, of names and definitions.
His family had moved to a different state when he was nine, a new school where he was the only kid in his class who spoke Spanish at home, where they made fun of how his mother said his name, exaggerating the r and lisping the s. He'd worked for months to sound like everybody else, begged his parents to use only English if he had friends over and then was embarrassed anyway when they got grammar wrong. In junior high he'd tried going by 'Carl' for a time but it never sounded right, never sounded like him.
Then in high school he was called 'geek' and 'nerd'—but the existence of the insults meant that his predilection for learning was a known quality, not a unique outlier but a defined, shared characteristic; and that made all the difference. Life, he learned, wasn't actually about making yourself fit in; rather it was about finding where you fit. If he was a nerd, then all he had to do was figure out the position of a nerd in society; and that led him to chemistry club and science fiction and the existential purity of physics.
It was the same to be called asexual, to be able to label this aspect of himself as an observed, recorded state of humanity. It allowed him to place himself, to reorder his social relationships. Like his physics research, breaking matter down to its fundamentals to identify and catalog all the parts of the universe. Quark, lepton, photon, gluon; heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual, asexual: each with their own specific properties of existence and rules of interactions, connections they could make and connections they couldn't.
Though none of his newfound knowledge made it hurt any less, when Jane broke up with him. "I'm sorry," she said, "I tried, it's not you, Carlos, it's really not you, you're lovely; it's all me, I'm sorry," and she was crying.
They stayed friends; they still met up for lunch and she kept showing him early Doctor Who serials. He missed the cuddling, missed the more intimate conversations that you could only have curled up together, whispering in one other's ears. But he adjusted to it, until she started dating another guy, Steve something.
(Years later, he'd recall this and think, of course his name was Steve.)
Steve gave Carlos suspicious, jealous looks, every time he came over to find Carlos and Jane sharing a basket of chips or laughing at the TV. For a couple weeks—and then suddenly he was fine with it, greeting Carlos with a casual, "Hey, mate, how's the physics?" and plunking down on the couch between Carlos and Jane to put an arm around her, like Carlos wasn't even there.
"What'd you say to him?" Carlos wondered at their next lunch, and Jane looked down, uncomfortable, and admitted that she might've sort of hinted that Carlos was gay.
"But I'm not?"
"Yeah, I know," Jane said, "it's just, it's hard to explain."
"We were going out," Carlos said. "You didn't tell him we used to go out?"
"Yeah, no, I know," Jane said again, and kissed his cheek.
His post-doc grant ran out six months later, and Carlos returned to the States. Jane still had his email, but he didn't give her his new cell phone number.
He didn't date again after that. He made sure to avoid accidental flirting, always clarified when talking research with fellow scientists that his interest was professional, not personal. Fortunately most women interested enough to ask him out weren't as subtle as Jane, so it was easy to say no, to nip any potential relationship in the bud before anyone's feelings got hurt.
His mother asked if he was seeing anyone, every time they talked on the phone. Carlos tried explaining asexuality to her once. It went about as well as explaining quantum mechanics. She was quiet for a moment, then said, "You know I'd still love you if you liked men."
Carlos sighed. "I know, Mama. It's not like that."
"It's all right to still be looking—I was twenty-six before I found your father..."
"I know," Carlos said again, and didn't point out that he'd blown past that implicit limit almost a decade ago.
"They're out there, the right girl for you. Or boy! I just worry that you're lonely, mijo."
"I'm not." And he wasn't, really. He had friends, colleagues and lab assistants. And his work. Science was his mistress and his lover and his bosom companion. Carlos was happier losing himself in the ecstasy of discovery, stealing secrets like kisses from the endlessly beautiful universe, than he could be trying to satisfy any human partner.
Then he came to Night Vale.
The trouble with Night Vale was—
Well. For a while Carlos kept a list. It started with:
1. Confirmed 8.5 on the Richter Scale; presumed IX and observed I on the Mercalli intensity scale - no observable, measurable impact
2. Unidentifiable radiation emanating from unknown source in Radon Canyon
3. Unidentifiable radiation emanating from unknown source in the community radio station
4. The community radio station
5. The community radio station host
with the incredible baritone6. Who apparently likes my hair?
In the following weeks it continued:
26. Disappearance of black metallic trees
27. His name is Cecil?
And later:
52. Wheat (& wheat-byproducts)???
53. Cecil?????
The last items were:
99. ¿CLOCKS?
100. Call Cecil re: man who was...what was he doing?who??
By then Carlos was starting to understand the ban on writing implements. He didn't stop any of his experiments, but he buried the notebook with the list in the equipment closet under the tool box, and tried to forget he'd ever written it. (He kept his stash of illegal ballpoints, however.)
If science was his paramour, then Night Vale was an aphrodisiac. Carlos hadn't known what obsession was until he started trying to unravel the community's impossibilities. For every mystery he solved, a dozen others were revealed, an immortal hydra of scientific exploration, fractal knowledge, forever unfolding. It was dangerous and sometimes deadly and almost always absurd; and he'd never been happier.
It didn't occur to him that there might be more to his contentment than science. Not until he was lying, bruised and bleeding, on the polished floor of lane five, squinting up into fluorescent lights and listening to Cecil's voice breaking on the radio.
It hurt, more than just the piercing pain from his chest, to hear the grief in that beautiful baritone. He knew how Cecil felt. When he'd fallen in the pit, his last coherent thought had been that he wouldn't hear Cecil's voice again. That he wouldn't ever see Cecil again.
Oh, Carlos thought, with the zoned, focused clarity that follows near brushes with extinction. He'd become familiar with such vividness in the last year. So it's like that.
Then he thought, Of course. Of all the times his subconscious could have come out to him as gay, of course it would be in a hole in the ground under a bowling alley, while being viciously attacked by microscopic denizens of a miniature city.
Night Vale, really now.
Later, sitting on the trunk of his car in the Arby's parking lot, waiting for Cecil to arrive, it occurred to Carlos that he probably owed people an apology. An explanation, anyway. Jane would want to know that it hadn't been her after all. And his mother would be happy for him.
Then Cecil showed up and Carlos's breath caught in his throat and any analysis of his latent sexuality flew out of his head. As much as he adored Cecil's voice, he found he also enjoyed sitting with him in quiet understanding silence, with the warmth of Cecil's head on his shoulder and his hand on Cecil's knee, an intimacy that wasn't awkward or forced but really...
Really neat, Carlos thought to himself the next day—kept thinking to himself, as he went through the day's experiments, and he couldn't help grinning every time he did.
He called Cecil almost every evening, after his show wrapped up. Carlos would've worried that he was overdoing it; it had been so long since he'd dated anyone, and he wasn't sure how it worked when you were going out with another man.
But Cecil always sounded so delighted to talk to him. He would say that he'd just been thinking about Carlos, and Carlos would say, "I know, you said so on the air," and Cecil would make a giddy bashful noise, and Carlos would find himself grinning helplessly again.
He was used to hearing Cecil daily on the radio. But actually communicating with him, talking and listening to that amazing voice answer, speaking to him and no one else, about all the inane insane things Cecil had lived through...Carlos would've been ecstatic to have a real-time recounting of Cecil's entire life in Night Vale; every tidbit Cecil casually dropped was a tantalizing thrill.
It was such a charge that Carlos didn't realize they hadn't actually met in person since the Arby's, not until four weeks had passed.
He briefly worried that Cecil might be avoiding him. Then it occurred to Carlos that having made the first move, maybe it was his responsibility to advance the relationship. So he called Cecil, making clear that it was for personal reasons, and they managed to schedule their first date.
It could have gone better, as dates went. The enormously impactful not-small-at-all talk was somehow harder in person, meeting Cecil's eager eyes. Then, walking in the park after dinner, Carlos wasn't sure if he should try to hold Cecil's hand, whether that was something guys did. To cover for his confusion he suggested experimenting on the trees, but then Cecil touched his cheek and it was all Carlos could do not to—jump? Laugh? Grab him and kiss him? Put his hand to Cecil's face in return? He didn't have any idea what he wanted to do or what Cecil expected him to do, so he didn't do anything, just kept taking readings.
So in the end, Carlos was kind of grateful that he needed to save the entire town from turning into malevolent shadow entities, as it was a better excuse than anything he could've come up with on his own, to not invite Cecil in.
Though Cecil sounded so softly, sadly disappointed when he did, that Carlos had a moment of alarm that he might be screwing this up. So he leaned across the seat and kissed Cecil good night—in his panic not trying to make it anything more than the kisses he liked, a warm, soft intimacy.
He found that in most respects, physiologically and perceptively, kissing a man wasn't that different from kissing a woman. And then at the same time it was entirely different, because he was kissing Cecil, kissing the lips that shaped Cecil's spectacular voice, sharing more than words and thoughts.
Later, after Carlos figured out how to dispel the luminatemporal radiation which had altered the townsfolks' atomic structure, it occurred to him that maybe the first kiss with a man should have more to it than warmth and softness. Especially after making Cecil wait this long, there should've been more heat and lust, probably. Or did gay men prefer romance? Or was that a stereotype? Carlos wasn't sure Cecil identified as gay anyway; he hadn't actually said so one way or another. He'd never talked about any woman's beauty on the air the way he did about Carlos's hair, and teeth, and voice, and quite a lot of other details. But then, Carlos couldn't recall Cecil talking about anyone else the way Cecil talked about him.
The problem was that Cecil's broadcasts tended to be powerfully, dramatically descriptive while not actually describing the majority of what he talked about. And he could be intensely emotional without clarifying what emotion he was actually feeling. Which, in Night Vale, made more sense than it really ought to; but it left Carlos at a loss as to what Cecil really wanted from him.
More than dinner or stargazing; Carlos could guess that much. But if Carlos was actually gay—had been gay all along?—maybe it would be different now?
On the other hand, when Carlos tuned into the radio the next day after their date, Cecil hardly sounded disappointed in the kiss, inexperienced or unlustful though it might have been. So Carlos had at least bought himself a little breathing room.
(He also realized that he'd need to pick up a few standard end-of-date report forms; gay romantic etiquette aside, it couldn't be polite to always leave that duty to Cecil.)
Their second date, a week later, was a Saturday afternoon at the Night Vale Zoo. They did hold hands at the wolf den, but further developments were cut short by a brief hyper-rabies outbreak spread by an escaped flying wombat. Fortunately the zookeepers had vaccine on hand for all zoo patrons, so Carlos didn't even have to go back to the lab. The frothing was a turn-off for kissing, however; they just shook hands when they bade each other good evening.
Their third date was the traditional dinner and a movie, eating at Big Rico's and then heading across the street to the Night Vale Motion Picture Theatre, which for some reason was showing Twister on seven screens and Old Yeller on one. Cecil picked Old Yeller, which Carlos was dubious about as a date movie; but they got popcorn and sat together in back, and the theater was half-empty so no one would notice if they engaged in a little traditional cinema canoodling.
Except that Carlos wasn't sure how to initiate that, once they were seated; and Cecil was being as gentlemanly as ever, letting Carlos make the first move. Though when Carlos glanced from the screen a few minutes after the film began, he saw that Cecil's face was turned toward him. His eyes shone with slightly more luminosity and different hues than the projector could account for.
"Um," Carlos whispered, "don't you want to watch the film?"
Cecil's teeth also were luminous, when he smiled. "I've seen it. They always play it here."
"Oh. Then why..." and Carlos stopped, because there was an obvious reason why Cecil would want to go to a movie he'd seen before: it wasn't the movie he was interested in watching.
It wasn't as if Carlos hadn't known how much Cecil liked looking at his hair, or jawline, or anything else—the whole town knew, and Carlos regularly got curious looks aimed at the top of his head from pedestrians across the street or people leaning out of upper story windows. He'd been self-conscious about it for the first month, hence the haircut; but by the time it had grown back in he was used to it.
But this was different, feeling Cecil's eyes on him, intent and appreciative and wanting. Not a bad feeling, or even an uncomfortable one; but Carlos wished he knew what Cecil was wanting, what Cecil wanted him to do.
After a few minutes, he whispered, "You can touch it?"
He saw Cecil blink, shining eyes dark and then lit again. "What?"
"My hair," Carlos said. "You can touch it. If you want...?"
"Oh—oh! Really?" The brightness of Cecil's grin in the dark was disproportionate even to the improbable whiteness of his teeth. "But the popcorn grease—"
"It's okay," Carlos said, "it can be washed—"
His hair, he meant; but Cecil said, "Oh, right, of course—you're so smart!" and jumped up and sidled out of the aisle. He came back a minute later with his hands smelling of the beeswax and pepper that was the standard soap in Night Vale public restrooms, sat down next to Carlos and stretched his arm over the back of the seats so he could, carefully—not fearful, but like a child trying to touch a bubble without popping it—brush his fingertips over Carlos's curls.
Carlos leaned back into his hand. Cecil, encouraged, combed his fingers through the roots, then began to massage his scalp. His touch was sure but tender, and Carlos closed his eyes on the movie and relaxed into it. It had been a long time since anyone had played with his hair; he'd missed it.
By the time Old Yeller met his tragic fate, Carlos was leaning on Cecil's shoulder with his arm around Cecil's waist, and Cecil's hand still stroking his hair with as much caring reverence as when he'd started. Cecil only stopped when the dog died, to blot his eyes with a dark silk handkerchief that Carlos suspected was monogrammed. He offered another to Carlos, which Carlos refused, then belatedly cited a crumpled kleenex in his pocket, rather than admit he hadn't cried at a movie since Spock had been brought back to life.
He did mention that he'd always thought that Old Yeller had been put down for disease, not dying heroically saving his master from a herd of mutant zombie boars. "The TV edit," Cecil said knowingly. "The original cut is always better. It's based on a true story, you know, from the writer's childhood. He grew up near here."
"Ah," Carlos said. "That explains it."
It wasn't until the end credits that Carlos realized that tame hair-petting and snuggling between seats hardly counted as making out. Even if Cecil hadn't been expecting a blow job under the popcorn, he was a grown man; he couldn't help but be disappointed to not get so much as a fondle out of a whole movie. It was too late now, with the lights coming on, but Carlos could make up for it.
They climbed the six flights of stairs to the exit—Carlos would have to sneak equipment into the cinema sometime, to determine how the theaters were always on the ground floor when the movie started and the sub-sub-sub-basement by the credits—and emerged winded but smiling into the chilly desert night. It was cold enough for their breath to make white puffs in the air as they walked to Carlos's car. Cecil, acclimated to Night Vale's daytime heat, was shivering in his light jacket; Carlos took off his lab coat and draped it over his shoulders. Cecil started with surprise, then grinned, so happily that the void filling the sky behind him seemed further away, as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. "Thank you! As thoughtful as you are beautiful..."
On the drive to Cecil's apartment, Carlos concentrated on the road, and not on the destination. Or on Cecil in the passenger seat, who was still wrapped in his lab coat even with the heat turned on high, and occasionally seemed to be sniffing the collar, with little shivers as he did. Not really like he was still cold, though; when he put his hand over Carlos's on the gear shift, his fingers were warm.
Carlos stopped the car under the streetlight in front of Cecil's apartment. His hands tightened around the steering wheel as Cecil said cheerfully, "That was fun, I had an amazing time! Would you like to go again? I wouldn't mind seeing Old Yeller for the forty-third time—"
Carlos made himself let go of the steering wheel, leaned across the seat and took Cecil's face in his hands and kissed him—not a quick smooch but a real kiss, the kind of kiss Cecil deserved, deep and long and hopefully wanting, desiring, yearning—the way everything Cecil said to him sounded like it was yearning, quietly and patiently, for more. He opened his mouth to Cecil's, slipped his tongue between Cecil's parting lips—
Their teeth scraped, jarring and loud, and Carlos flinched back before he could stop himself, breaking them apart. He took a breath and was going to try again—except that Cecil had pulled back, too. He was looking at Carlos—staring at him in the streetlight's sallow glow, oddly intently. Well, the intensity was usual; but the sort of open-mouthed hesitancy was not—not like he'd been so blown away by the kiss that his jaw had dropped, or even that he was surprised. More like he'd been about to speak and then at the last second was deciding whether or not he should.
After a moment, Cecil closed his mouth without saying anything.
"Um," Carlos said. "Sorry. It's—it's been a while, and I'm not...um...I haven't..." He probably should've mentioned to Cecil sometime before this that he was only newly gay and had no idea what he was doing and maybe asked for advice, at least some basic guidelines. It seemed late for that now.
"No," Cecil said, to what question Carlos wasn't sure. "It's all right, Carlos," and his voice was subtly different, the same pitch and timbre but it was like hearing it over the radio, as if Cecil wasn't really sitting in the passenger seat across from him, but was just a vision, a hologram or a hallucination.
Carlos reached out without thinking, obscurely relieved when his hand met Cecil's arm, his lab coat's sleeve, without passing through it. "Cecil," he said, reckless with Cecil being still here, for at least this moment, "I could come inside, you could show me your audio tapes, or introduce me to the Faceless Old Woman, or—"
"Another evening, how about." Cecil opened his door, extracted his arm from Carlos's grip—carefully, gently, kindly—and said, as careful and gentle and kind, "It really was wonderful, but I have an early morning meeting with the interns, tomorrow. My apologies, really." He got out of the car.
"My—my apologies," Carlos echoed, and then, before Cecil could close the door, cried desperately, "Cecil, I had a great time, too, I really did—"
Cecil smiled, not as vivid as usual but not false. "I'm glad," he said, though he still sounded like he was speaking over the radio.
"Could we go out again—" Carlos started to ask, but Cecil had already closed the door. Carlos watched him head up the walk and into the apartment building. He waited until he saw the lights come on in Cecil's rooms; then he drove home.
Carlos listened to the radio the next day, but Cecil didn't mention their date, not any part of it, not even to recommend the movie theater. When the show ended that evening, Carlos tried calling Cecil. It had been so long since he'd gotten Cecil's voice mail that when the recording came on, Carlos froze and hung up without leaving a message.
Cecil didn't call the next day, either, though Carlos was careful to keep his phone on him all day. He was busy in the evening, however, working with the chemists to try to extinguish the freezing cold, bright purple flames which had lit in the lab's transmission electron microscope. They gave up after midnight and just sat and watched the strangely beautiful violet pyre, drinking beer and taking occasional temperature readings. The fire didn't get quite down to absolute zero, so Carlos won fifty bucks. But by the time the microscope was reduced to frost-limned ash, it was too late to call Cecil.
The next day there were three more chilly purple conflagrations around town, so Carlos marshalled the whole science team and joined forces with the Night Vale Fire Department (who kept insisting that the flames were lavender and therefore were nothing to worry about, as lavender had been legally declared harmless some years back.)
Eventually they found that heat retarded the purple fire's spread. A judicious deployment of space heaters and control fires limited the damage to a tree, a garden shed, and a wooden scaffolding that had apparently been erected for the construction of the Sand Wastes Hotel & Spa Resort, right before the hotel owners had absconded with all the funds.
Carlos didn't know about that backstory until he was listening to Cecil's show, driving back from the sand wastes and feeling heroically triumphant as only a scientist in Night Vale could, riding high on the heady victory of mind over physically impossible matter.
At least until Cecil on the radio reported, "The scientists have said that they believe these fires were naturally caused, not set by any supernatural arsonist with a grudge against our community—"
Which was accurate, insofar as a scientist had indeed said that, in answer to questions from the sheriff's secret police.
But the scientist who said it was Carlos. Even though Cecil attributed it to "the scientists", like he did with all the science team who weren't Carlos (and weren't comfortable with being identified on the air, however much Carlos tried to point out the statistically lower casualty rates of named citizens, excluding interns.)
Carlos listened to the rest of the show, the details of their fire-fighting, but Cecil didn't mention him by name once. As soon as he said his final, "Good night," to the town, Carlos grabbed his phone.
He got Cecil's voice mail again. This time he left a message, "Cecil, we should talk. I should talk. I'm really—I'm sorry I screwed up, I didn't—I have to talk to you, when can I see you? Can I see you, please?—oh god that sounded so pathetic. Sorry. Er. Call me? Bye. Goodbye."
Three minutes later, Cecil called him back. Carlos, alternating between clutching his phone and clutching his hair, answered before his ringtone started playing. "Cecil!—Um, hi, are you there?"
"I'm here," Cecil said. He didn't sound angry or upset, but over the phone it was difficult to identify his radio voice. "If you want to meet, how about we get together this weekend? This weekend would be better—"
"Yes," Carlos said, "I mean, no, I mean—are you free now? I can come over to the station to pick you up."
There was a momentary pause; then Cecil said, "That's not necessary—"
"Yes, it is," Carlos said. "I'm leaving right now, I can be there in five minutes. Please, Cecil?"
There was another pause, before Cecil agreed, "All right."
Cecil was waiting outside the station when Carlos pulled up; but he hesitated before opening the door and climbing in. He finally did, however, smiled and said, "Hello, Carlos," and his voice almost sounded like it came from his mouth and not the radio.
"Hi," Carlos said, and drove them back to the lab. He'd already dismissed the rest of the science team, claiming he needed to minimize biofeedback for a delicate experiment. It hadn't exactly been a lie; this was going to be delicate for sure. Possibly painful and miserable as well. But he figured the lab was more private than a restaurant, while less awkwardly personal than one of their homes.
Though the potential for awkward was higher than he estimated anyway, considering how Cecil's eyes widened when Carlos directed him upstairs to the lab. "Really?" Cecil asked, sounding all like himself, and he practically hurdled up the stairs, as eager as a kid on Christmas morning running to see what the drugged government grizzly bear had brought him.
He didn't even seem disappointed by the lab's lack of Tesla coils, sizzling Jacob's ladders, or giant bubbling glass condensers, though Carlos would bet that Cecil believed that the act of Science requires such accoutrements. (In his defense, science in Night Vale sometimes did.) Cecil did grin at the racks of test tubes, tap a cautiously inquisitive finger on the mass spectrometer, and regard the chemicals cabinet with such awe that Carlos opted not to tell him that the padlock was protecting little worse than the constituent elements of household cleaners and table salt.
Instead, after giving Cecil a moment to gawk, Carlos said, "Cecil, we need to talk."
Cecil was turned away, but Carlos saw him stiffen, his spine tensing to a rigid rod. Though when Cecil turned around he was still smiling calmly. "Okay," he said, came over and sat on the lab stool next to Carlos, and tipped his head expectantly.
"Ah." Carlos said. He licked his dry lips, tried again. "Um. You see. This is..."
"Carlos," Cecil said, and though his hands were in his lap, his voice was almost physically bracing, as supportive as a hand on his arm. "It's all right. I brought the form, if you don't have one around," and he reached into his jacket pocket. "I thought you might not, since you didn't know about the end-of-date reports—"
"—The form?" Carlos asked. True, the Night Vale bureaucracy loved its paperwork; but he'd thought Cecil would've mentioned previously any need to file a formal confession of sexual identity—
"The official relationship termination form," Cecil said quietly.
Carlos blinked, and blinked again, and then choked out, "So—so you're breaking up with me?" and though his voice didn't crack he was aware that he sounded more adolescent than Cecil at his worst, babbling about his crush on the radio. He couldn't help it; it had been too long, and he'd forgotten how much this hurt. He'd thought—anticipated—dreaded it was coming; but he hadn't correctly braced himself. The last time Jane had been crying; but Cecil, who wept shamelessly over cinematic canines, was dry-eyed and calm now, while Carlos was embarrassed to feel his eyes burning.
Cecil frowned at him, like he was disappointed to see Carlos's vaunted scientific self-sufficiency go up in so much emotional smoke. Or maybe it wasn't disappointment but confusion, because Cecil sounded baffled, as he said, "No; aren't you breaking up with me?"
"What?" Carlos said. "No I'm not—I mean, yes, if that's what you want, I will, but—"
"Why would I want to break up with you?" Cecil said, even more bewildered. "You're Carlos!"
"I'm asexual," Carlos said. "I thought that maybe I was actually gay, and repressed, or somesuch, because I never fell in love with a man before you; and I thought that because of that it'd be different, that it would be different with you, but it's not—or, it is, everything is, with you; but I'm still asexual, and—"
"Wait." Cecil held up his hand. His face and voice both were entirely blank, emptied like a drain had been pulled in his heart and every last drop of emotion had spiraled down it. "You—Carlos—you're in love with me."
Cecil said it so flatly that it took Carlos a moment of precarious silence to realize it was actually a question, just missing the inflection. Carlos swallowed, said, "Um. Yes?"
"Oh," Cecil said, as flatly. And then again, "Oh!" only this time pitched so high that Carlos suspected only dogs and bats and Night Vale's carnivorous sail-eared mole-rats could hear the full articulation.
Cecil seized Carlos's hands, stared him in the eyes, smiling so widely that Carlos could count every one of his teeth, including those he believed humans had evolved out of several eons previously. "Me, too," Cecil said, warm and deep and so full of meaning that it felt like the air itself thickened to the consistency of honey to hold it. "I'm in love with you, too."
Gulping down that too-important air was the only thing that stopped Carlos from pointing out that Cecil had already confessed this, on public radio, the first day they met. Instead once he caught his breath, he said, as steadily as he could with Cecil's hands warm around his and Cecil smiling at him with such open, generous affection, "Thank you, Cecil, I'm so—I'm so glad you didn't want to break up, but...did you hear what I said—?"
"About the asexuality? I heard, but I don't see what that has to do with it; we're not quite at that stage in the relationship, are we?" Cecil paused, head tilting in consideration. "I admit, I hadn't realized there were any asexual humans outside of Night Vale. How do you do it? Budding, or fission? Or more conventional self-fertilized live birth—though I didn't realize human males outside of Night Vale could carry to term, either." He blinked. "Wait, have you reproduced already? Are there genetic duplicates of yourself in the world? Can I meet them—?"
"No," Carlos managed. "—I mean, no, I don't have any clones, and I can't give birth, and that wasn't what I meant by asexual. Sorry, I should've explained better. I can reproduce like most humans, technically; I just don't have any drive to motivate me to do it. I don't feel sexual attraction."
Cecil was frowning at him again. Carlos swallowed, closed his hands around Cecil's before he could pull away. "It's not that I'm not into you, Cecil," he said. "I am, I really am. I'm just. Not into sex. I can still have sex, I don't hate it, so we can do it sometimes; but I'm probably never going to want it, or want you like that, and I'm sorry—"
"Why?" Cecil asked, still frowning.
"Just—because? As far as I've been able to determine, I was born this way," Carlos said. "It's simply a biological possibility, like being homosexual or heterosexual or—"
"Not that." Cecil shook his head. "Why do you keep apologizing? You did before, too, in the voice mail, and in the car in front of my place, after you kissed me. I assumed—I thought you were sorry because you'd decided that you didn't like me after all?"
"Oh—no—absolutely not that! But..." Carlos took a breath, heard it shake as he inhaled. "I know that it's...difficult. That you naturally want more, expect more, out of a relationship, and I can't give you that, and it's not fair to—"
"No, I don't," Cecil said, his brows drawn down in confusion again. "Why would I expect more? I knew you weren't interested in me sexually; I heard that the first time you spoke to me. It was one of the things—the many, many things," and Cecil smiled, his eyes roving over Carlos like he was trying to look at all of him simultaneously, "that made you perfect."
Carlos gaped at him. Of all the madness he'd heard spoken in Cecil's unnaturally exquisite voice, this was some of the least expected. "How could that be perfect...?"
"Because," Cecil said, with an air of forbearance that implied he thought Carlos was being a bit dense, the way he got whenever Carlos mentioned mountains, "I've found that people I like, who are sexually attracted to me, tend to want to have sex with me, sooner or later. Like," he grimaced, "Steve Carlsberg."
"Steve Carlsberg?"
"We went out," Cecil said, lowering his voice enough that the secret police would probably give him a citation later. "For almost a year. And a few months in we had sex, to try it out, and then after that Steve wanted it all the time—sometimes twice a week, even! And when I said no, because, what do I look like, a pollinating cactus marmoset?—he'd pout. And even sigh occasionally. It was terrible. So we broke up, and then to show me up he got obsessed with proving that there's something wrong with government conspiracies. As if you could conceivably have a functional nation without the support of an elaborate network of clandestine organizations with secret mandates!"
Living in Night Vale had honed Carlos's ability to focus on the most important part of a conversation. "You and Steve Carlsberg dated?"
"Ugggh," Cecil said eloquently, and hid his face in Carlos's hands, which he was still clutching.
"So..." Carlos said, as his brain's processing finally caught up, "You're in love with me, and you want to go out with me, but you don't want to have sex with me?"
Cecil lowered their joined hands enough to peek at Carlos from under his lashes. "I do if you want to," he said. "But I didn't think you did, until you kissed me the other night. That was...Steve used to kiss like that. So I thought that you'd changed your mind. I figured out a plan for that, though—"
"A plan?"
"It was why I wanted to wait until this weekend to see you," Cecil said. "Which was such a long time, but I thought it would be better—I had to call all over town, but I finally got a lead on where to submit a sentiment requisition from the feelings delivery service. It's not guaranteed, but deliveries can be influenced a bit. I figured there was a pretty wide range that could work, though I was hoping for something simple, like tender desire or burning passion or animal lust—you didn't sound like you wanted anything especially kinky?"
"Um, no...?" Carlos stammered.
"So I can put in the requisition order," Cecil said. "If you want me to. Whatever you want, Carlos, I want to give it to you."
Carlos stared at him, at last blurted out, "But what if what I want is to know what you really want?"
"Then we'd have a circular argument, and those are illegal after sunset," Cecil said, straight-faced.
"You're making that up," Carlos accused.
Cecil blinked at him with possibly assumed innocence. "Haven't you memorized the city ordinances by now? There are only about eight thousand." He added, in a tone that would be smug if it were anyone else's voice, "Besides, I asked you first. So, dear Carlos, what would you like to do?"
He wasn't only asking with his voice, but with his smile, with his eyes on Carlos's, his hands wrapped around Carlos's, his whole being oriented toward Carlos, expectant, undeniable.
Carlos hadn't considered feelings delivery, though he was only mildly annoyed with himself for missing it; with certain present exceptions, feelings weren't something he gave much thought to. It might be interesting—from a scientific perspective, at the very least—and perhaps it was an experience Cecil personally craved. Perhaps Carlos could requisition a feeling himself, and they could consummate their relationship in the expected way. That might be what Cecil really wanted.
But Cecil had asked what he wanted.
"Have you ever seen The Twilight Zone, Cecil?" Carlos asked. "The original, of course, with Rod Serling."
"No?" Cecil said, shaking his head.
"I think you'd like it," Carlos said. "As a period drama—or maybe a sitcom? It might have been filmed around here, wouldn't be surprised. I haven't seen it for years, but I just bought it on DVD, and I'm curious to see how it plays in Night Vale. I suspect there's a lot of edits I haven't seen elsewhere. I'd like to watch it with you, at my place, tonight. I only have a futon, not a real couch, but it's comfortable. We could get take-out and watch an episode together. And if you enjoy it we could watch some more, or put on something else, and cuddle. And talk. And maybe kiss a little. And, um, you could brush my hair."
Cecil waited a moment, then asked, "And that's all?"
Carlos nodded.
Cecil hesitated, long enough for cold anxiety to coil through Carlos's gut. Honesty was the best policy only if you were willing to endure its consequences; why had he risked something—someone—so uniquely, incomparably amazing—
Cecil finally asked, "Could I—that is—would you mind if I braided it? Your hair?"
Carlos blinked. Then smiled, honestly, warm all through. "I'd like that," he said. "I'd like that a lot."
Cecil's smile brightened like it had been switched to high-beams, too brilliant for so much as a shadow of a lie. "Oh, my sweet, perfect Carlos—so would I!"