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They were at Cecil’s place, having a night in to watch TV. It was Carlos’s turn to control the remote which meant they were watching a documentary that Cecil didn’t understand in the slightest.
He sat with his feet up on the couch, his head resting on Carlos’s shoulder. Carlos was staring intently at the screen, taking furious notes in a black binder as a monotone male voice talked about gravitons and mitochondria. He was completely absorbed and oblivious to the man falling asleep on his shoulder, but Cecil didn’t mind. It was good to see Carlos so happy.
He closed his eyes and was starting to drift off when he heard a loud bang come from the TV. His head shot up and he looked wide-eyed at the screen. The documentary had ended and the screen now displayed a dusty man in a cowboy hat riding into town on a horse.
Cecil clapped his hands in excitement. “Oh, they’re playing Gunless, Carlos!” he said. “Can we watch that? Please?”
Carlos glanced up from his notes at his grinning boyfriend and gave him a guilty smile. “I guess we have been doing a lot of stuff I enjoy tonight, haven’t we?”
“It’s okay,” Cecil said. “I don’t mind. It’s a really interesting documentary! But I would really love to watch this movie. It’s a comedy! And there’s horses and cowboys and outlaws and everything!”
“You really like Westerns don’t you?”
Cecil nodded enthusiastically
Carlos smiled. He pulled a small green notebook out of his pocket and wrote one last note in it before moving to put away his science stuff. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s order a pizza and watch Gunless.”
Cecil grinned even broader and snuggled against him again to watch the movie.
***
Cecil sat on one end of the couch in Carlos’s apartment, an open bottle of bright green nail polish beside him. He frowned in concentration as he ran the brush across his nails. Every few seconds, he would put the brush back in the bottle so he could stretch his aching fingers. His Lyme Disease was flaring up and he could barely get through two strokes before having to take a break. After ten minutes or so of struggling – in which time he had only managed to paint two nails – he looked up at where his boyfriend was sitting in the soft leather chair across the room. “Carlos,” he said softly.
Carlos looked up and smiled at him. “Yes, Cecil?”
“Can you… Can you help me?” Cecil asked, hanging his head in embarrassment.
“Of course I can,” said Carlos, coming to sit on the couch next to Cecil. “A scientist is always helpful. What do you need?”
Cecil looked up at his boyfriend’s gentle smile and sighed. “Can you paint my nails?” he asked. “The pain’s really bad today.”
Carlos nodded and took the brush from Cecil. “I can try,” he said. “But I’m not a beautician. I’m a scientist!”
Cecil’s frown broke slightly and he let out a soft snort as Carlos held his hand in one of his own and used the other to carefully spread the polish over Cecil’s nails. A small crease appeared in his forehead as he frowned in concentration.
By the time Carlos was finished, Cecil was almost his usual contented self again, despite the pain radiating through his body. He held his handout at arm’s length to admire it, practically beaming at the uneven paint job.
“Good?” Carlos asked.
“It’s wonderful,” Cecil said. “Thank you so much!”
“Good,” said Carlos, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. He took a small green notebook out of his pocket and quickly jotted something down. He put the book away before Cecil could catch a glimpse of what scientific mystery he had just solved while painting Cecil’s nails. But that was okay. It was enough to know that he had been even a tiny part of it.
***
It was later that evening. Cecil had put away his nail polish and was lying back on the couch with his feet up on a stack of pillows. Usually at this point in the evening, he would be animatedly describing his day to Carlos with dramatic hand gestures, but today it was all he could do not to groan out loud. The arthritis was still mostly contained to his hands and feet, but when it flared up it ached deep in his joints and radiated through his entire body when he tried to move his fingers or toes.
Carlos looked over at him in concern. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Cecil started to nod, but winced and shook his head.
Carlos frowned and got up from his seat to crouch Cecil’s head. He reached up to run his fingers soothingly through his hair. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“My feet,” Cecil moaned.
“What about them?”
“They hurt.”
“I know, Cecil. But you already took all the painkillers you can today.”
Cecil moaned miserably, making Carlos cringe and lean over him to kiss his forehead. “Would it make it better or worse if I massaged your feet?” he asked cautiously.
“Better,” Cecil whispered.
“Okay,” Carlos said quietly. He lifted Cecil’s feet off the pillows being careful not to bump them. He sat down where the pillows had been and let Cecil rest his feet on his lap. He carefully took one of them into his hands and pressed the flat of his thumb into it. Cecil gasped as pain shot from his foot up to pierce his navel. Carlos immediately let go. “Did that hurt?” he asked.
“A bit,” Cecil admitted. “Maybe go a bit slower?”
Carlos nodded and pressed into his foot again, this time moving at half the speed he had been. Cecil sighed in relief as the pain slowly started to ebb away.
“Yes,” he whispered. “That feels so good Carlos!”
Cecil felt the tension leave his body and the pain soon became bearable again. “Thank you, Carlos,” he whispered.
“Of course,” Carlos said quietly.
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
As he drifted off, Cecil was vaguely aware of Carlos taking the green notebook out of his pocket again and making a note.
***
The moment Cecil saw Carlos waiting for him in front of the station, his expression lifted a bit. He ran to his boyfriend and flung his arms around him.
“Hey, Cecil,” Carlos said quietly as his arms tightened around his waist.
“Intern Ziv died,” was all he said. The words were half sob.
“I know,” Carlos said soothingly, rubbing gentle circles into his back. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Cecil just shook his head. He was shaking slightly from the stress of maintaining his professional appearance on the radio when all he wanted to do was cry.
To his relief, Carlos didn’t make him speak. He just nodded understandingly and opened the car door for him.
When they got to Cecil’s apartment, Carlos made him sit on the couch and wrapped a blanket around him. “Stay here, okay?” he said. “I’m going to make you some soup.”
Cecil nodded. “Thank you, Carlos,” he said.
Carlos smiled and put on a Western before heading off to the kitchen.
Cecil sat, wrapped tightly in the blanket for about ten more minutes before Carlos appeared and sat next to him. He wordlessly handed him a bowl of soup.
Cecil accepted it gratefully. He looked into it and a slow smile started to spread across his face. Carlos had cut up hotdogs into little octopuses and put them into the soup. “Thank you, Carlos,” he said.
Carlos smiled and kissed his cheek. “Feeling any better?” he asked.
Cecil nodded and kissed his cheek. He was about halfway through the movie before Carlos took the notebook out of his pocket and wrote something down. Cecil was too emotionally exhausted to read it over his shoulder.
***
A week or two later, the two of them were baking together at Cecil’s apartment. Cecil was beating the eggs and Carlos was poring over what he insisted was a highly scientific document but which looked an awful lot like a recipe card.
“Two cups of flour,” he muttered to himself.
“Use the spelt,” Cecil said. “The Sheriff’s Secret Police are doing random spot checks on brownies in search of illegal wheat products.”
Carlos nodded and took the bin of spelt flour off a shelf. He yanked at the lid but it was stuck. “Cecil, can you help me with this?” he asked.
Cecil set down the eggs and took a step toward him. But just as he got within a couple feet of him, the lid popped off, releasing a thick white cloud of flour into the air. Cecil shrieked as most of it settled on his sparkly pink top.
Carlos laughed. “You look like some sort of flour monster!” he said.
“Hey!” Cecil said. He reached into the bin and grabbed a handful of flour which he threw at Carlos.
Carlos gave a gasping laugh. “Mine was an accident!”
“Oh?” Cecil teased. “What are you going to do about it?”
Carlos narrowed his eyes and reached his hand into the bin of flour.
Half an hour later they were both sitting on the floor covered in so much flour it was difficult to tell what colour their hair, skin or clothing had been before the fight. The floor and counters were covered in an even coat of white powder. They were both laughing so hard they could barely breathe. Still panting, Carlos pulled out the small green book and a pen.
Cecil put his head on Carlos’s shoulder in an effort to see the contents of the book, but Carlos turned the book away from him. “What are you writing?” he asked.
“Nothing important,” Carlos said, blushing hard as he quickly stuffed the notebook back in his pocket. “Just, uh, science stuff.”
Cecil narrowed his eyes suspiciously but decided to let it go. There was no point in making a scene.
They sat on the ground for another ten minutes or so before standing up and starting the long business of cleaning.
***
The notebook was sitting on Cecil’s coffee table. The one Carlos had been hiding in his pocket for weeks. The one he had refused to let Cecil see. The one he had apparently forgotten to pick up this morning before leaving for work.
Cecil stared at it. He knew it wasn’t his. He knew Carlos was entitled to his privacy. But he had left it at Cecil’s the morning after spending the night. That almost made it Cecil’s, right? And what if there was something important in it? What if the contents of that book were a matter of life or death for the town? It would almost be irresponsible NOT to look at it.
Cecil reached out hesitantly and opened the book to a random page.
It was a list. A list that made no sense to him as he read. He turned the page, thinking maybe he could figure it out, but it just got more puzzling. “Sparkly balloons.” “Pizza from Big Rico’s.” “Playing with my hair.” There must be some sort of scientific explanation for this. Something that connected them. But Cecil couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Cecil?”
The voice came from behind him and he spun around quickly. “Carlos!” he said. “You’re early!”
“Yeah,” Carlos said, putting the key Cecil had given him back in his pocket. He was holding a small gift bag in his hand. “I was done with science today and I thought I’d come around early to surpri-“
He froze when he saw the book in Cecil’s hand. The gift bag fell to the floor and a small bottle of hot pink nail polish rolled out. “Cecil,” he said slowly. “What have you got there?”
“Nothing!” Cecil said quickly, trying to hide the notebook behind his back.
“Is that my book?” Carlos sounded almost as nervous as Cecil felt.
Cecil nodded slowly.
Carlos groaned and hid his face in his hands.
“But I didn’t understand it!” Cecil said quickly. “You’re secret science is still safe!”
“Not science,” Carlos muttered into his wrists as he collapsed onto the couch.
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Carlos, can you please tell me what it is?” Cecil asked quietly.
Carlos slowly pulled his hands away from his face and reached for the book. Cecil watched as he flipped to the first page and pointed to the title.
“Things that make Cecil smile,” Cecil read aloud. He looked up at Carlos’s face which had turned deep red. He sat down on the couch beside him. “Carlos?” he asked cautiously.
“I want to make you happy,” Carlos whispered. “I want to make you happy in as many ways as I can, because I can’t make you happy like normal boyfriends do.”
“Normal boyfriends?” Cecil asked. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” he said. “The whole… sex thing.”
“You think I’m not as happy with you as I would be with someone who had sex with me?”
Carlos frowned. “Well, yeah. Of course not.”
“Oh, Carlos,” Cecil said, placing his hand on top of his boyfriend’s. “I never need anything you don’t want for me to be happy.”
“But if I did want it-“
“No,” he said firmly. “Carlos, I don’t love sex. I love YOU.”
There was another long silence.
“You mean it?” Carlos asked softly.
Cecil leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I love you,” he repeated. “And I don’t care if we ever have sex. All I care about is that you hug me and talk to me and make me feel safe and loved.”
There was a small smile spreading across Carlos’s face.
Cecil returned the smile and reached for the notebook that had been discarded on the table. “Can I have a pen?” he asked.
Carlos looked confused, but he handed him a pen out of his pocket.
Cecil flipped the book open to a blank page near the back and started to write.
Things that make Carlos smile:
Dancing to old music
Science documentaries
Snuggling on the couch
Being told I love him
Cecil looked up from the page. “I love you,” he said. “And I want to make you as happy as you make me. Is that okay?”
There were tears in Carlos’s eyes as he nodded.