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Carlos couldn’t hear his own voice over the sound of the definitely-not barbeque sauce dripping from the roof of the ceiling. He knew what he was saying. Some form of what he had planned to say, a much less eloquent and thorough form. Which was why he had the letter in the first place.
Regrets. Mistakes. Spending time with someone he thought had made him happy but who wasn’t the one he really wanted and who apparently preferred his radio studio with animal blood. Not truly being happy after all.
Boundaries. It was hard to get a message through to Kevin sometimes.
He hoped he had put the letter on a less blood-splattered part of his desk, because by the time he really noticed what he was doing again, he was out in the desert storm. His goggles were pressed hard around his eyes. They were the only thing protecting him from the pain of the storm. Carlos thought that maybe he should take them off. He deserved it.
Rewind some.
When you’ve looked for months, even while distracted by some fascinating science, and there’s no sign of any more old oak doors. When there’s only two people in an entire dimension that are the same height. When that other person looks exactly like the boyfriend you miss so dearly, apart from the eyes.
Scientists are, scientifically speaking, still only human.
(Though not for lack of trying to become cyborgs or beings of pure energy.)
Return to Carlos, who had a year of work break in half and get covered in blood and, in a moment of clarity, finally remembered a lesson he had thought he’d learned grad school. A lesson that apparently he hadn’t learned all that well. Because with a year of work down the drain, his first thoughts after the denial and anger and anguish were that A) his other scientists would have chewed him out for not keeping backups and B) he really, really, REALLY missed Cecil.
And that was the most important part. He had distracted himself from that long enough.
It took him hours to get through the desert otherworld to the Dog Park. It took him another hour to figure out how to get out. Granted, that hour was 59 minutes of crying over a tree and cursing botany as if it was the cause of all his problems instead of himself and 1 minute of pushing open the unlocked front gates. If there was a man in a tan jacket standing by the gates, winking at him as he ran past, he didn’t notice. He wasn’t even sure why he thought there might have been.
Carlos had no idea where home would be from here. Or even if Cecil was at home or at the radio station or— He remembered that the opera was tonight. Opera was good! Opera was, according to a colleague’s data, responsible for the majority of foot fetishes prior to the internet, but it was also where Cecil was. He ran down the sidewalk towards….he checked a street sign, turned around, and then actually started running towards where he remembered the construction to be.
By the time he got there, there was a crowd of people streaming out of the building, an impossibly long stretch limo on the street, and char marks on everything. He didn’t have much time to think about that, since a rather large man pulled him into a tight hug.
Carlos recognized the man rather quickly, so he wasn’t worried. Instead of fighting the hug, he chuckled weakly. Then realized exactly how weak he felt and leaned heavily on Steve Carlsberg. He looked over and saw Abby helping Janice into the limo. The limo that Steve was dragging him into while babbling about the opera.
He ended up slumping down in one of the long couches that lined the limo interior, Janice beside him. Carlos told her about his plans to stay, if Cecil wanted to. The bottom dropped out of his stomach at that thought. What if Cecil wanted to move? They could move somewhere else. He could get a job at a university somewhere, though it would be hard for him since he hadn’t taught in………And Cecil could work radio anywhere. He was talented enough that all they needed to find was an open position.
While he was distracted, Janice squealed and rocketed across the limo to someone. Carlos stood up. He gripped the back of the couch tightly and looked over at who Janice was talking to. And looked. And looked.
And eventually, Cecil looked at him too.
And that was that. He was home again.
There was a lot to be done in the next few weeks. Filling out paperwork over his return, hoping his office in the lab was still his and not taken over by the other scientists, unpacking all the boxes Cecil had packed to move (because it was his fault they weren’t moving and it wasn’t fair to make Cecil do that work again). Spending as much time with Cecil as possible. It’d probably take a month at least before either of them would stop feeling this overwhelming joy at being together and go back to the whelming joy of togetherness that Carlos had missed so dearly.
…At some point, Kevin would retaliate. All the sad letters in the world wouldn’t stop that, only possibly delay it. And before that happened, Carlos would tell Cecil about his…mistake. No, his cheating, no use disguising it. It would be unfair not to tell him, but even more unfair to tell him now, when they were so happy to be in each other’s arms that they would forgive just about anything just to stay there. So when things were settled, he would tell him. And make no excuses. And hope Cecil would forgive him.
A scientist is self-reliant. A scientist is in need of other people. Those are the first two things a scientist is.