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It was Carlos's morning to check the monitoring stations placed out in the scrublands. Usually a boring duty, today was livened up when he drove out to the fourth station and found that the live trap the biologists had set out had a new catch. Carlos squinted at the green-furred, bushy-tailed, snub-nosed not-a-squirrel crouched at the bottom of the cage.
The not-a-squirrel glared back with beady black eyes and ruffled its fur defensively, sending a puff of yellowish powder into Carlos's face. It smelled of honeysuckle and sour apples, and he coughed as it stuck in his throat, frantically waved off the—poison? Smokescreen? Dandruff?
His skin tingled slightly but didn't grow scales or melt off his bones, so he counted himself lucky by Night Vale standards. The wind blew most of the powder away, so Carlos brushed the little caught in his collar into a test tube for further analysis, and buckled the cage with the creature in his car's back seat to bring back to the biologists.
He was halfway to the fifth station when the itch began. It started on his chin, but when he scratched there it moved under his collar, then his chest, then spread further, until it felt like his entire epidermis was ready to crawl off his skeleton. He fidgeted against the seat. Maybe the irritation was due to oversweating; even with his car's AC cranked to maximum, he was as hot as if he were still standing out in the desert sun. He was wearing khakis and his lightest-weight labcoat, but the clothing felt too tight, collar constricted and trousers pinching. His skin itself felt too tight, scraping against the car seat and his muscles alike until it was abraded and aching.
His heart was pounding in his ears and his breath was coming too fast. He tried to undo his collar so he could breathe, but his fingers fumbled with the clasp, until he finally grabbed it with both hands and wrenched it open, popping off the button.
This necessitated taking his hands off the steering wheel, though he didn't realize the inherent problem with this until the car rammed into a large yucca palm, throwing him against his seatbelt. Carlos blinked through the sweat stinging in his eyes at the spiny tree branches outside the cracked windshield. A little observational voice in the back of his head noted that it was lucky he'd also taken his foot off the gas pedal, rubbing his legs together in a fruitless effort to relieve a growing pressure.
He tried opening a window, but the blast of hot desert air made it worse, so he shut it again. He groaned as he stripped off his lab coat, scraping his hands over his arms—skin to skin contact helped ease it a little, but not enough—
In the back seat, the creature in the cage was squealing. This isn't normal, the little voice of reason remarked, in discordant counterpoint to the thing's cries. Itching, difficulty breathing—allergic reaction?
There was a first-aid kit in the glove compartment, complete with an epi-pen, a precaution taken after learning first-hand that just about anything in Night Vale could induce an anaphylactic reaction. He dropped the kit but managed to get the tube out of it first, tore the cap off with his teeth and jammed the injector into his thigh.
The surge of artificial adrenaline cleared his mind somewhat, but didn't alleviate the sensitivity, and made his heart pound even faster. He felt like he could feel every drop of blood being forced through his veins, acid and boiling. Brilliant, the obnoxious little voice warbled, if it is poison you've just accelerated its spread through your system—
"Shut up!" Carlos told it, but his subconscious countered, Get medical attention, idiot! which was annoyingly correct. It took some squirming to extract his phone from his pocket, and the car seat chafing against his skin made him hiss. His hands were shaking as he hit 9 on the phone and then stopped before adding 1-1. He was far enough out from Night Vale that he wasn't sure what switchboard the call would be directed to. He couldn't risk some poor outsider EMT's life, not when they would have no idea what this even was—or believe it if Carlos told them, because he had a growing and rather disconcerting suspicion...
Help! and he wasn't sure if that was the little voice reminding him or calling for it. Either way, he knew the number for help, in Night Vale; it was programmed into his phone, but he'd had it memorized for a year now anyway.
The call rang three times before being picked up, with a mumbled, "'lo, who's this?"
The voice was thick with sleep—Cecil's show didn't usually start until the afternoon, so most mornings he slept in—but still rich and solid and it went through Carlos like a bolt of lightning, like a charged wire had been strung up his spine, jerking him painfully taut. "Ce-cecil?" he gasped out.
"Carlos? Oh, good morning!" Cecil's voice came awake, alive; and it was physically, euphorically agonizing, the sparks it sent through Carlos, as if every nerve ending he possessed were vibrating to the soundwaves over the phone's tinny speaker. He groaned, and Cecil said, "Carlos? Is that you? Is something wrong?" with an anxious, tender concern was almost worse—
"Cecil, oh god Cecil, stop—no don't stop—I need your hel—your—need your—need—Cecil, I—I think—"
"Carlos," Cecil said, his baritone firming into the calmly instructive voice from emergency broadcasts, only Carlos couldn't quite grasp what he was saying, because it wasn't on the radio but to him. Cecil repeated his name, Carlos, each exquisite syllable like the strike of a match head, and Carlos was the match, flaring up hotter than the desert sun.
"I think," Carlos managed to say, with the tongue of flame in the furnace of his mouth, "that I found one of your pollinating marmosets?" and then the fire reached his brain and he didn't think again for quite some time.
Carlos came...not awake, exactly, but consciously aware, in degrees. His head was throbbing; there was a sour taste in his mouth, and his dry tongue rasped against its roof when he worked his jaw. He felt bruised and sore, feverishly sweating but chilly. A cold draft gusted over his bare skin, though the surface under him was too warm, and when he shifted his skin stuck to it, parting with protest. Vinyl, he identified, as he pried up his arm, to pull the thin cloth over him tighter around his aching body.
"Should I turn down the AC?"
Carlos's eyes popped open; he sat up so fast that he nearly bumped his head on the car roof. "Cecil?" he said, or tried to say; his throat was so rough that it came out as an unintelligible hiss.
"Here," Cecil said, and handed Carlos a plastic bottle, uncapped, so Carlos could put his lips right to it and pour the warm, clear water down his abraded throat. He coughed around it but kept drinking until he'd drained the bottle.
"How do you feel?" Cecil asked.
Carlos realized he was sitting in the backseat of Cecil's car, the early '80s monstrosity that might be mistaken for a small barge, if the desert had more bodies of water. The upholstery was a cool, clean white at the moment. Outside the tinted windows were the scorching grit and brambles of the scrublands, though the car's interior was cool thanks to the thermodynamically dubious climate control installed in most Night Vale automobiles.
Cecil was sitting backwards on his car's front bench seat, arms folded over the edge and chin resting on his bare forearms as he watched Carlos. He wasn't smiling, which rendered his face inscrutable; Carlos was becoming practiced at interpreting every shade of Cecil's smiles, but he had few opportunities to study his other expressions. That furrowed brow might be concern, or anger, or merely concentration.
Carlos coughed again, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, "I'm feeling..." Better was what came to mind, but he wasn't sure it was true; he couldn't quite remember how he'd felt before. He'd been itchy and too hot and his skin—
His skin was no longer burning, but still itched with dried sweat; the air stank with it and his hair was frizzing and stringy, scalp prickling when he dragged his fingers through it. Raising his arm shifted the lab coat draped over his chest, and he realized when he grabbed for it that he wasn't wearing anything underneath.
He belatedly registered that Cecil's shoulders were also bare. Looking at their curve brought a flash, a fragmented sense memory of smooth skin against his lips, against his teeth and tongue, and the salt taste of sweat.
There was a red mark on Cecil's shoulder, at the junction of his neck. Carlos leaned forward to look more closely, but Cecil twisted away from him, casually covering the mark with his hand. "Carlos," he said, and Carlos observed that Cecil was using his radio voice, precisely enunciated and so level it could be used to survey land. "Do you know what happened?"
There was another smell on the dry conditioned air, on his skin and Cecil's, more bitter than sweat. Carlos breathed it in, and remembered—not linearly or coherently, but vividly, an explosion of acute sensations: yellowish honeysuckle pollen catching in his throat, the sun hot in his eyes, smells too sharp in his nose; heat and sweat, aching demanding desperation—then finally skin against his skin, a body against his body, grabbing and rubbing and clutching and forcing, friction and pressure and more heat, and at last release.
And through all of it, Cecil's voice around him, surrounding him, engulfing him. Cecil saying his name—probably other words, too; but all Carlos could remember was his name, "Carlos, Carlos," the baritone thrum so intense that his heart beat in tempo with it.
"Oh," Carlos said weakly. "Oh god." He pressed his head into his knees, wrapped his arms over his stomach, wishing he hadn't drunk so much water; it was sloshing in his stomach, rising in his gorge.
"Carlos," Cecil said—not like he said it usually, no effusive dear Carlos, beautiful Carlos, my wonderful brilliant Carlos. Nor like he'd said it in Carlos's most recent memories, over and over—begging him, but Carlos hadn't listened, he hadn't—he had—
"Oh god," Carlos said again, gagging on it. He folded his arms over his head but he couldn't block out Cecil repeating his name. When he felt a couple fingers brush his bare arm, so very cautiously, he flinched away, pressed himself as far back into the car seat as he could manage as he shook his head. "No, don't—don't touch me—"
Cecil yanked back his tentative hand like Carlos was a rattlesnake. His face was as far from smiling as Carlos had ever seen it. "Ah—excuse me," Cecil stammered, his voice raw.
Carlos stared at him, then wrenched his gaze away when Cecil shrank under it. Carlos glared at his own clenched fists instead, choked out, "Cecil, no, it's not—you shouldn't, you shouldn't have to touch me, not when I—when I just r..." The word was emblazoned clear across his mind in three languages, but he couldn't make his mouth shape it. All he could manage was, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Cecil, I'm so sorry—"
"What?" Cecil's voice was so sharp with shock that Carlos looked back at him involuntarily, then was trapped by Cecil's stare, not retreating now but meeting his directly. "You're not, you can't be sorry," Cecil said. "It wasn't your fault. You didn't expose yourself deliberately, did you?"
"No," Carlos said, "but I shouldn't have called you—I figured out what was happening, I could've gone to the hospital, or ridden it out by myself—"
"Maybe, or maybe not," Cecil said. "There's no antidote, and in sixty percent of cases, without external stimulation, the victim's heart gives out."
"—Sixty percent?" Carlos said, momentarily diverted by this incursion of hard data. "How do you—"
"We lose a couple people annually to marmoset pollen," Cecil said, in his even announcer's voice. "Teenagers, mostly; and occasionally older men seeking improved performance. Didn't you hear last year's PSA?"
Carlos racked his brain. "...No?"
"This is weeks before their usual pollinating season, though," Cecil said. "So it should have been safe to trap one. But I should've been more careful; if I'd realized it was actually in the car with you..."
"What could you have done, even if you'd seen it?" Carlos said. "It was too late, I'd already inhaled a sufficient dose."
Cecil's stare was intent, not afraid or angry, but searching. "Do you not remember?"
"No—no, I do," Carlos said, because he couldn't exculpate himself so simply. "Some details are fuzzy, but..." If he mapped the aches of his body to the marks on Cecil's he could no doubt work out all of the awful truths—
But Cecil frowned—still not angry; ire made his voice rumble like a truck driving down a dark gravel road, but his baritone was pitched lighter now, gentler. "You shouldn't be that fuzzy, not with early season pollen especially. You might be hypersensitive? I should take you to the hospital; Night Vale Specific has an allergy ward, and marmoset pollen is a specific enough reaction to apply—"
"Allergy—oh no," Carlos said, and very nearly was sick on Cecil's car seat. He set his knuckles to his temples, squeezed to contain his throbbing skull. "It was my fault. I thought I might be reacting, I used the epi-pen—the epinephrine must have increased the efficacy—"
"Oh, that explains it," Cecil said. "Thank goodness!"
Carlos couldn't help but look up at that change in tone. "Thank...?"
Cecil still wasn't smiling, but relief brightened his face. "I was worried, you were taking longer to recover, and obviously you'd breathed in more, but first, and I was worried that..." He swallowed, voice hoarsening, "...That I—IdidnthurtyoudidICarlospleasetellmeIdidnthurtyouplease?" Cecil asked, all in a breathless rush, so that even with his precise elocution it took Carlos a moment to parse the words.
"No," he said, as soon as he had, "you didn't hurt me, Cecil—I don't think you could ever hurt me. But did I hurt you? Physically, I mean, are you injured anywhere, or—"
"I'm fine," Cecil said, though the flat line of his mouth and even flatter baritone denied this.
"I'm sorry," Carlos said, "I'm so sorry I called your number—I should have tried the secret police, or the hospital, or—or anybody—" Given Carlos's much-touted status as the town's most admired outsider, he wouldn't have had to look far to find a willing volunteer; and he hadn't exactly been in a choosy frame of mind. Anyone would've done.
Anyone but Carlos's boyfriend—anyone but Cecil, who doesn't enjoy or have any more interest in sex than Carlos himself does, under normal circumstances.
Cecil might even have been counting on that, assuming that Carlos wouldn't be strongly affected. And instead Carlos had—had—with Cecil...
With Cecil, who Carlos hadn't even seen naked before this—not because Cecil is shy or prudish but because Cecil is a man who even in this day and age wears a tie to work at a job where he's unseen; because Cecil is as private with his body as he is public with his voice, keeping just that much of himself only to himself. Carlos had entertained vague notions of suggesting skinny-dipping or a sauna on a date, because he doesn't like sex but does like the sensuality, the closeness, of skin against skin; the trust of literally baring oneself. But he hadn't yet, hadn't decided if he was going to. It hadn't mattered, when he already shared with Cecil an intimacy that he'd never believed he could have with anyone.
Carlos didn't want to look at Cecil now, didn't want to take more from Cecil than what he'd already stolen. If Cecil wasn't covering his nudity now, it wasn't out of trust, but resignation of what was already betrayed, already lost. After this, how could Cecil ever believe that Carlos didn't want any more from him than what they had—he'd always wonder, wouldn't he, why Carlos had called him, had demanded this from him—
"But I wouldn't have wanted you to call anybody else," Cecil said. "Not when you needed help so badly—I like that you call me first. That you trust me to help."
It took Carlos a second to backtrack to where that made sense. "Usually, of course I'd call you first usually, but for this—anybody could've come, Cecil; there are plenty of people who wouldn't have minded helping me—"
"I'd have minded," Cecil said. "And would you have wanted to wake up now with just anybody? What if who came had been, ugh, Steve Carlsberg—you wouldn't have wanted that!"
"I didn't want this at all—I didn't want to do this!" Carlos cried, in blatant denial of reality, regardless of whether it was a reality he completely remembered.
"I know," Cecil said, stricken. "Carlos, I know."
Of course Cecil knew—Cecil, who hadn't wanted it in reality, and Carlos clamped his mouth shut before he could belittle Cecil's sacrifice still further.
"Could you...can you ever forgive me, Carlos?" Cecil asked into his silence. "For coming here, for—"
"Forgive you? Cecil, I was the one—it was for my sake, you were trying to save my life! I didn't give you a choice; I know you didn't want to do—to do anything that I—"
"Well, I wouldn't want to usually," Cecil interjected, "but it was different this time, of course."
Carlos stopped. "How was it different?"
Cecil's eyes narrowed. "You said you remembered?"
"Remembered what?"
"The marmoset was terrified, between the cage and the drive," Cecil said, a little too quickly to be narrating. "It was shedding pollen everywhere. Your car was full of it, everything coated in yellow. Which I ought to have noticed—but when I arrived here and saw you in your car, you looked so...you didn't look anything like yourself. And your car had hit a tree, and I was so concerned, I wasn't thinking—but as soon as I opened your car door to get you out, I got a mouthful of pollen thick enough that I could taste it. And after that I really wasn't thinking, and you were right there, and I just—and you just—we just—"
"...We?" Carlos said faintly. "You mean, it wasn't only me...you were, too?"
Cecil nodded.
"And you—we did...?"
Cecil nodded again, his face as miserable and ashamed and unnerved as Carlos felt, like looking into an emotional mirror.
And for some reason, that most likely had to do with living in Night Vale longer than was recommended for one's mental health, Carlos found that reflection so painful it was hilarious. He felt an improbable, undeniable humor bubbling in his throat, rocked his head back against the car seat as his shoulders shook with silent laughter.
"Carlos?" Cecil said, so gravely concerned that Carlos stifled his mirth, opened his eyes to meet Cecil's.
"Cecil," he said. "Oh, Cecil. Can I kiss you?"
He had to steel himself to ask it, but when he did, Cecil's eyes, Cecil's whole face lit like a candle, his body tilting forward. Carlos didn't wait for another answer, just leaned forward to press his lips to Cecil's over the car seat. Cecil kissed him back, close-mouthed and sweet and so gentle, like always. After a moment he twined his fingers through Carlos's hair, and it was everything Carlos wanted or could imagine wanting. Pollinating primates aside.
He felt warm when they broke apart, not too hot or sweatily tight, but comfortable. Cecil's hand was stroking his hair, and Carlos propped his arms against the back of the front seat and tipped his head into the caress, let it soothe his throbbing head.
After a moment he inquired, "So, if you remember everything..."
Cecil's hand paused. "The majority?" he warily admitted.
"Then do you know where our clothes are?"
"Ah," Cecil said. "Some articles, but they're not very accessible?" and he pointed out the tinted windshield, to the pair of jeans whipping in the breeze at the top of the yucca palm. "The rest, I'm not quite sure. Except for your lab coat, that was still in your car."
Carlos looked down at the coat, bunched in his lap, then out the window again. "Right, my car." It was under the tree, its hood visibly damaged. "I'll need to call a tow truck out here for that, I guess. Do you have your phone on you?"
"I do, but..." Cecil coughed delicately. "Maybe after we've found a way to clothe ourselves? Not that I object to your perfect physique, but I would object to you being arrested for public nudity."
Carlos forbore arguing that the scrublands were not exactly public. Night Vale's decency codes were as Byzantine as the rest of its laws. Fortunately Cecil's windows were tinted opaque. And the lab coat was long enough for modesty. "If we drive to my place, I can duck inside and lend you something to wear? At least enough for you to get into your apartment without being arrested. Then I'll arrange a tow while you do your show. And after...maybe you could come over? I'll make dinner—how about invisible corn tamales?"
Cecil finally, finally smiled, small but cheering up. "Dear Carlos, that sounds fantastic."
"Good," Carlos said, then looked back at his car. "Oh, damn it, the marmoset's probably still in the cage. I can't just leave it there." It wouldn't be healthy for either the animal, or the tow truckers. "How can I get it out, if it's still shedding?"
"That's not a concern for us now," Cecil said. "We'll be immune to the hormonal influence for the rest of the pollination season."
"—Hmm, that implies it is a reproductive strategy," Carlos mused. "I was wondering if it was a defense mechanism, but a one-shot wouldn't be as effective..." He would have to ask the biologists—later. After pollination season was well and truly passed.
Pulling on the lab coat, Carlos got out of Cecil's car. The desert breeze sent the coat's hem flapping against his knees as he crossed over to his car, dancing a little on the hot sand under his bare feet.
Fortunately the driver's door had been left open, so the marmoset had gotten plenty of air. It still looked deeply unhappy about its circumstances, fluffing its green fur at Carlos when he picked up the cage. Though now the yellowish dust it scattered didn't taste of anything but sand. He set the cage down on the ground, opened it and stood back to let the creature crawl out and scamper up into the yucca palm, where it chittered at him irascibly.
"Sorry for the trouble," Carlos told the marmoset with a wave. He retrieved his phone from the floor of his car, then returned to Cecil's car, climbing in the front passenger seat next to Cecil. With effort he resisted his curiosity and averted his eyes from Cecil's nude figure, looking out the window instead.
The desert's heat had raised fresh sweat, so the air conditioned interior made him shiver, even in the lab coat. Cecil lifted his arm, offered, "Over here?"
Carlos hesitated; but Cecil sounded so unabashedly amenable that Carlos pulled up his legs and slid across the bench seat to lean against him. Cecil wrapped his warm arm around Carlos's shoulders, tucking him against his side. It wasn't so different from how they often watched TV, though usually with less stale sweat and more clothing.
"Apologies for the AC," Cecil said. "If it's too hot, everything sticks to the seats..."
"It's okay," Carlos said. "This isn't bad at all."
"Mm," Cecil said, one of those wholly noncommittal noises which Carlos suspected he practiced, in the interests of maintaining journalistic neutrality on the air.
Carlos squinted up at the sun. "Isn't it time for your show, though?"
"Who knows?" Cecil said. "I've got the only working watch in the city," and he brandished his wrist, the timepiece being the only thing he was still wearing.
"True," Carlos said. "However..."
"You're sure you're all right?" Cecil asked, soft and abrupt. His arm tightened momentarily around Carlos's shoulders, then relaxed, though his spine was still stiff.
"Yes," Carlos said immediately. "I'm a little sore and sand-scratched, and maybe sunburned. But nothing a nap won't fix. Are you—"
"I'm fine," Cecil said. "As long as you are."
Cecil sometimes had a way of saying things that made it nearly impossible to doubt him. Like he was daring reality itself to try to disagree. Carlos didn't try. Though he couldn't help himself from asking, "Cecil, if you remember most of it...what did I—what did we actually do?"
Cecil tensed again, but didn't fidget, or try to push Carlos away. "Nothing overly complicated. Neither of us were that coordinated; it was somewhat like being very drunk. Only more...energetic. So more stroking and grinding and grabbing, rather than trying to stick anything anywhere in particular. And it didn't last very long, after we came."
"But I didn't hurt you."
"No," Cecil said, definitively. "You didn't do anything that I didn't want, at the time."
"But not now?—You aren't experiencing any side-effects, or aftereffects, or...?"
"Other than a slight hangover, no," Cecil said, then asked, a touch nervously, "Are there aftereffects for you, Carlos?"
"No?" Carlos said. "I don't think so...but, I don't remember much of it, so..."
"I can try to drink to forget tonight, if you'd prefer me not to remember, either?" Cecil offered.
Carlos shook his head. "I don't think it'd work like that, and anyway that's not what I want. It's not..." He sighed, leaned his head against Cecil's bare, warm shoulder. "You said that you'd have minded, if I'd called someone else, to...uh...help me."
"I would have."
"But if you didn't want to—was it just for me? For my sake..."
Carlos felt Cecil's chest rise and fall as he breathed. "I thought," Cecil finally said, choosing words with the same care he'd give an editorial on his show, "that if it were me, I wouldn't want anyone else but you. So that was for you, what I thought you might want. But it was also for me—the worst kind of selfishness, I'm ashamed to admit. I didn't want anyone else to be with you like that. Even if I didn't want to be either."
"Oh," Carlos said.
"I'm sorry I'm so selfish," Cecil said. "But I'd do it again, if I had to."
"Oh," Carlos said again. Then hastily added, "I plan on taking precautions to ensure that it never does happen again. So you don't have to worry about that."
"Good," Cecil agreed, even more definitively.
"We should probably be getting back to town," Carlos said. He slid back across to the passenger seat to fasten his seatbelt, twisting to keep it from digging into his side through the thin lab coat. Cecil didn't bother with his own, just started the engine.
They were making their bumpy way back to the road when Carlos finally brought himself to ask, staring fixedly out the windshield rather than at his boyfriend, "Cecil, out of scientific curiosity...what was it like, the two of us? Not what we did, but...how was it?"
Cecil considered a moment, then said, "Sticky. Messy. Inelegant. Uncomfortable. You know. Sex."
Carlos let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, in another laugh, aloud this time. Looking over, he saw Cecil's lips turn up in a silent echo. "Yeah," Carlos said. "Sounds about right."
Then he reached across the seat to put his hand over Cecil's on the gear shift. "But," Carlos said, "for the record, if anything like this ever happens again—there's no one I'd rather be sticky and messy and inelegant and uncomfortable with, than you."