Archive of Our Own ^beta

Carlos had his favorite numbers. They seemed arbitrary to people who weren’t Carlos, but that was fine. They made sense to him. Five, for example. Five was a good number. Five was a foundational number. Fives helped life make sense. Numbers divisible by five were always obvious, in the same way numbers divisible by two were, but better. At least, they were better in Carlos’s eyes.

Five was also the age he’d been when he fell in love with science. His tía had given him a book about the solar system for his birthday, and he’d looked at the labeled pictures and short, easy phrases explaining the very basics of planetary orbit and gravity and gas giants and the sun. He’d learned how the planets circled the sun, the largest object in the solar system, and the universe had clicked into place. In his little five-year-old brain, everything suddenly made sense. The world had rules it had to follow, even if the adults in his life said it didn’t, and he was going to learn every last one of them he could.

So, naturally, five is one of Carlos’s favorite numbers. Another one of his favorite numbers is twelve. Twelve is a great number. So much was measured by twelves. Twelves measured days, measured years, measured time. Twelve could be divided by four distinct factors, including two, three, and six. Most numbers couldn’t do that! How exciting! 

Twelve was also when Carlos got his own library card, and no longer had to rely on his parents to take him down the street to check out books all the time. Twelve was when Carlos realized he could go sit in the library all day if he wanted to, reading whatever he could get his hands on. He used his newfound freedom to learn as much as he could, as broadly as he could. He checked out a physics book at one point and spent a day doing the experiments outlined in its pages, taking notes on his observations like any good scientist would. 

He made a pulley with one of the training wheels he pulled off of his old bike and some string and rigged up a mostly-pointless curtain behind his door. It didn’t… necessarily serve a purpose, but it was fun and he felt cool whenever he used it, so it stayed. He was pretty sure his parents weren’t so thrilled about the new holes he’d made in the ceiling while installing it, though. 

Twenty was one of Carlos’s favorite numbers, too. Twenty was the atomic number of calcium, which was vital to human functioning. It was also one of the most prevalent elements in the Earth’s makeup, which was exciting to Carlos, at least. It was also the number of faces on the largest Platonic solid, which was a delightful little fact Carlos had liked to pull out at college parties. Most… other people didn’t get the same joy out of that fact that he did.

Twenty was also the age he was when he finally, finally got an autism diagnosis. He’d been struggling in college, actually. Pretty hard for the last couple of years. He was… behind on the four-year graduation plan, and it was starting to stress him out. He could keep applying for scholarships all he wanted but unless he was actually passing classes, that wouldn’t matter. It had been a day when he’d been on the verge of tears trying to read an assignment for an English class (he had to take it, had to get all his gen-eds out of the way between the classes he wanted to take) when he’d gotten the email. Just a single attachment, a default thank-you message, and the evidence he needed that he was actually struggling, not just lazy. Not just bad at school. 

He’d taken it to the accommodations office. He managed to get help, actual classroom support, for the first time in his life. It was easier. He wasn’t drowning anymore. He could breathe again, for the first time since early in high school. It was- it was magical.  

He graduated only a year off schedule, after that, and then grad school, and then- well. Who knew what would come next?

Thirty-two was another one of Carlos’s favorite numbers. Thirty-two was… admittedly, less of a scientifically important number to Carlos. It did have some fun properties, though! For example, thirty-two was the freezing point of water in the Farenheit system. That was a pretty well-known science fact, of course. It wasn’t particularly relevant where he lived, though, since things didn’t exactly freeze out here. Also, Carlos liked thirty-two because it broke down into five twos, and that just felt good to him. 

The main reason thirty-two was one of Carlos’s favorite numbers, though, was because it was his age when he first arrived in Night Vale. Moving to Night Vale had initially been a temporary arrangement, but it turned out to be one of the most important decisions of his life. It had been a scientific inquiry initially. A weird little town that he couldn’t find on a single map, that no one he talked to seemed to know existed. Carlos himself wasn’t entirely sure how he’d found out about Night Vale. He thought it might have been in a book, or maybe it had been a discovery made during a Wikipedia rabbit hole at three in the morning. Maybe he’d just woken up one day and known it was out there, somewhere, for him to find. Calling for him, tugging him toward itself as though by a string.

It didn’t matter then what had brought him to Night Vale, though, and it still didn’t matter. He’d submitted the paperwork to the University requesting a sabbatical. Even while he was waiting for it to be accepted, he’d been packing up anything he thought he might need long-term. When his request had been accepted officially, he’d sent out a message to a handful of other scientists he’d met during some conference or another and proposed a trip out to what he believed would be the most scientifically interesting place in the United States of America.

Mark and Luisa had been on the original team. They were, admittedly, funny and interesting and were good scientists. Nilanjana came later by a few months, and they got along much better than either Nilanjana or Carlos had anticipated initially. At the end of the day, he was honestly happy it was those three who ended up sticking by him, even after things got scary.

But that was later. When he’d first arrived in Night Vale, he hadn’t begun to question why he’d known about this town when no one else had. He hadn’t questioned how quickly the paperwork had gone through university admin for his sabbatical. He hadn’t even questioned that he had no idea when he’d actually entered Night Vale. He’d simply passed some arbitrary boundary, and seen the lagging sky and the bizarre wildlife, and felt in his gut that he was home.

Cecil had been… Well, Cecil had been overbearing, originally. Carlos had been a little put off by him at first. Here was a man, whom Carlos hadn’t ever seen, announcing to anyone who listened to the radio (which was, somehow, everyone – the radio just turned on when Cecil’s show started, regardless of what you’d been listening to beforehand) about his big crush on Carlos. It had been… weird. Very weird. A little worrying. But he didn’t feel like he could leave Night Vale based solely on the oddly focused attention of the local radio host. There was too much here to see, to investigate, and he’d just have to put up with… that.

Then, he’d actually met Cecil, and the situation changed.

Carlos would have loved to say it had been some big, grand moment. Something that would fit well into a romance novel. Some special meet-cute where he saw Cecil for the first time and he was perfect and he knew they’d be together forever. Something where one, or both, of them talked with confidence. It hadn’t been anything like that.

It had been in the Ralph's, in the produce aisle. It had been while Carlos was operating on, optimistically, thirty minutes of sleep, two shots of espresso, and a five-hour energy. He’d maybe been vibrating out of his skin a little bit. He’d been a mess, his lab coat rumpled and stained with some neon-green something he hadn’t been able to get out for the last three days straight, but it was just a grocery run so it shouldn’t have mattered. 

Carlos hadn’t even realized the man wearing the hot-pink crocs with the eldritch-looking decals, and the eye-searing blue-and-pink dress, and the hazard-vest orange fuzzy hoodie, and heart-shaped sunglasses (at ten at night!) was Cecil until he spoke. Actually, Carlos had sort of just assumed he was maybe high. He’d lived on campus. He’d seen some interesting people. Whatever the situation was, though, Carlos had to admit it was some kind of look. It worked. He wasn’t sure how, but it worked, at least for this guy.

“Carlos?” Cecil had said, and there was no mistaking his voice, not when Carlos had been hearing it for… however long Cecil’s show lasted every day. Carlos almost dropped the bag of grapes (mostly normal. Mostly. They were glowing a little, but Carlos was pretty sure it was fine, at this point) he’d been examining.

“Hey,” Carlos said, and he looked at Cecil, and suddenly was supremely worried about how frazzled he looked, and the green stain, and the fact he certainly hadn’t actually washed his jeans in four days, at best.  

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here!” Cecil continued, leaning on the stack of watermelons beside him. They growled, and he removed his arm. He didn’t seem sure what to do with it then, so he just stuck it in a pocket lined with high-visibility reflective tape.

“You, uh, either,” Carlos said, still dumbly holding the bag of faintly-glowing grapes. His throat didn’t seem to want to work. Fantastic. How did small talk work again?

“How’s the science going?” Cecil continued. Carlos wasn’t sure how to read his expression.

“Good, great,” Carlos responded, finally putting the grapes into his basket. “The science is going fantastic.”

“That’s awesome!” Cecil said, and then, before Carlos could get a chance to respond, “I think I forgot to turn off my stove. Great seeing you!” 

And then, he escaped, leaving a baffled, half-delirious Carlos alone in the produce section of the Ralph's. 

He honestly hadn’t been sure it hadn’t been a particularly vivid dream until the next day, when Cecil bemoaned his social blundering on the radio. 

And maybe Carlos sort of fell in love, too.

He had more favorite numbers: six (the atomic number of Carbon), sixty-four (a standard number of bits for computer image storage), one-hundred (boiling temperature of water in degrees Celsius). 

Five, six, twelve, twenty, thirty-two, sixty-four, one-hundred. Carlos’s favorite numbers, in ascending order. One-hundred, sixty-four, thirty-two, twelve, six, five. 

Five hours drafting out how exactly he was going to ask Cecil out, twenty-seven days after his injury at the bowling alley and he’d realized just how badly he wanted to. Six words, I am calling for personal reasons, before his script went off the rails, and he had to improvise the rest of it. Twelve months in a year, only ten of which he got to spend with Cecil before he got stuck in a desert otherworld. Thirty-two days before he ran into the masked army, marching through the desert.

Sixty-four weeks before he could get back in touch with Cecil. 

One-hundred pointless, circular attempts to reach some place, any place, beside this radius around the mountain with the lighthouse and the blinking red light.

It had started as a reasoned, calm exploration. He could trust that his team would keep that door open for him. He could trust that he’d be able to get back. It had been just him, and the house that did not exist, and an open door. Then, it had shut, abruptly, without a single word from anyone on the outside.

“Nilanjana?” Carlos had asked, twisting the doorknob and hoping. It opened, but not into Night Vale. It opened into a vast, endless desert with a mountain in the center. A lighthouse, a blinking light. Just like he remembered Cecil’s intern, who he was pretty sure was named Dana, describing on air, whether or not Cecil was aware of it. His stomach sank. He turned around, but the door was gone. Just an endless horizon of sand and empty, blue desert sky.

What had happened? Why had the door into Night Vale shut? Who had shut it? Would he have known more if he’d been listening to Cecil’s show more intently? He couldn’t believe that his team would shut him in here without a reason. He was here now, though. A desert otherworld, stretching out, empty and hot before him.

His phone was at almost full charge, but he doubted it would work out here. No cell towers, no wi-fi, no nothing. Just… sand. Sand and the mountain. He had to try, though. Space and time were weird in Night Vale, and Cecil’s intern Dana had still been texting him from the Dog Park, at least.

Hey, he sent, and waited.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Not even an indication the message had gone through.

He tried not to panic.

He started walking. He kept walking, and walking, and walking. He reached the mountain, and picked a direction. He came back to the mountain, with no recollection of turning, and yet there it was. A mountain, standing alone in the sandy endlessness, in front of him and getting closer as he walked.

He kept trying. And trying. And trying.

By attempt number thirty-nine, he was frantic. He should have paid a little more attention to what Cecil’s intern Dana had said. He wished he’d paid more attention. He had no idea how the desert was doing this, whatever this was. Was it a repeating landscape? Was it even the same mountain and lighthouse and blinking red light each time?

He was speed-walking through the sand, stumbling on the shifting ground beneath him occasionally. This wasn’t working. If there was a way out of here, running in one direction wasn’t it. He had to- he had to try science. He had to apply empirical methods to his situation. First,  he had to figure out if walking was even doing anything for him.

He decided to test it by dragging a large stone near the bottom of the mountain, right where he’d arrived, to a point where its displacement would be noticeable. Then, he tried again. Attempt forty.

The stone was where he’d moved it to. 

He was stuck in some sort of geographical loop. Some sort of pocket dimension, maybe, if such a thing existed. He laughed, a little, breathy and panicked. It was Night Vale. Pocket dimensions could exist. Simple quantum physics.

Except, this wasn’t Night Vale, and he was alone.

He collapsed with his back against the stone as the laugh turned to a sob. He worried for a moment that if he started crying, he’d become dehydrated, and he’d lose any hope he had of surviving out here. Then, he realized, he had no idea how much time had passed. No idea if it even mattered. He felt, physically, exactly as he did when he first entered, albeit a bit tired from walking for who knows how long. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. It probably wouldn’t matter. If he could get dehydrated out here, or starve, he’d be dead before he could find a way out, anyway. 

A sun that hadn’t moved once in the sky the whole time he’d been here beat down on the back of his neck as he cried until he couldn’t any more.

It took him a while to figure out the time shift. It hit him after he got to talk to Cecil again, back in Night Vale and leading a successful uprising against StrexCorp. He had wondered, at the time, why exactly he couldn’t get in touch with Cecil at all for the last… his best guess was year. Time was weird here, too. But it was probably a year. It was after the doors had shut, after he’d been locked out here for the long run, even as Dana had celebrated returning to Night Vale after years away from her family.

She didn’t specify how many years. Just, years.

It had been a phone call, after Dana had been announced mayor, apparently, and Strex had been officially ousted.

“I’ve been so worried for the last six weeks,” Cecil had said, and something in Carlos’s heart had turned to ice. “For lots of reasons, but… because I had no idea where you were. You weren’t with the rest of us.”

“What happened over there?” Carlos asked, instead of what he really wanted to address: six weeks? More than a year passed here.

“It was… a lot.” Cecil sounded tense. “Strex was a lot. After Tamika’s parade rebellion failed, Lauren and Kevin…” A long pause. “I couldn’t reach anyone, since they’d taken my phone, so I couldn’t even text you to make sure you were okay. I got to know some of your scientists, by the way,” he said, and the last sentence was much lighter. “They seem fun.”

“Yeah,” Carlos said, feeling cold despite the heat. Six weeks, he repeated internally.

“Have you been okay? Dana said the desert otherworld was pretty boring. It was a lot of sand, and- she said there was a mountain, can you believe that? Ridiculous.”

Carlos snorted despite himself, sitting at the foot of that mountain. “Absolutely,” he agreed. Cecil’s adamant refusal to acknowledge mountains was… kind of cute, if more than a little worrying. “There’s a lot of stuff out here, actually,” Carlos said, as though he hadn’t spent the last year-and-then-some alternating between sitting on top of the mountain and pacing pointless loops around it. “It’s very scientifically fascinating out here.”

Cecil snickered on the other side of the line.

“Think you could report on any of it to me, you big, bad scientist, you?”

Carlos smiled at the note of flirtation in his voice.

“Maybe,” he said, matching Cecil’s tone. “You sure it would interest you?”

“I’m very into science,” Cecil said. “I think I could manage to keep up.”

They talked all night, until the line cut off, from whatever force existed which separated them in time and space.

He had recorded the time shift, of course he had. He’d be a bad scientist if he didn’t record something so important. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to bear reporting on it, but he recorded it. Besides, Night Vale had rejected him. He didn’t belong there, according to the laws of the universe that controlled the doors. He’d thought he’d been starting to belong there, with the cries of interloper dwindling and people remembering him for him, not just the new scientist in town, but, well.

So, instead, he made himself comfortable in the desert otherworld. He studied everything he could. If he was going to be here for a long time, he wanted to understand everything he could about his new environment. It was mostly sand and rocks, sure. But there were some interesting ruins up on the mountain he could investigate, and he could talk to the masked army members. He could explore this place that he’d found himself living in, whether it was a place he’d wanted to end up or not.

Carlos wasn’t sure when one year had become two, had become three, had become four, had become five. Carlos still called Cecil every night (for Cecil, that is). He still did his research. He had himself, and he had his makeshift lab, and he had the desert. He had new things to explore. He’d told Cecil he didn’t feel trapped here, and he’d meant it, mostly. There was genuinely so much exciting stuff here to investigate! And time moved so much more slowly in Night Vale than it did for Carlos, and… well. It was fine. He was used to this, really.

He’d been working on his own for so long back at the University of What It Is that he genuinely didn’t remember most of his coworkers there. He remembered Janet, of course he remembered Janet, but she was the only person who bothered to keep up with Carlos when he’d been working. He was always drawn more to science than to other people. Science had clear rules, clear guidelines, clear steps for trial-and-error. People did not.

Maybe it wasn’t a surprise Night Vale had rejected him, then. He was far more drawn to the ways the world was made up of conceivable, observable facts than the strange mix of high-control and high-chaos that was Night Vale. Maybe the town had known that. Carlos wasn’t fully convinced the town wasn’t alive in some more literal way. 

So, it was fine.

Then, there was Kevin. Carlos, initially, hadn’t really known how to engage with Kevin. Kevin looked a lot like Cecil, except for all the ways he didn’t. Except for all the ways Kevin felt like a mean joke from the universe itself, sent to remind Carlos that Night Vale had rejected him. Kevin, when he’d first wandered into the path of Carlos and the masked army, had set about moping (while smiling, smiling the whole time, as though he couldn’t physically stop smiling). Then, one day, Kevin had decided he couldn’t just sit around and be unproductive. As though that were the worst crime a person could commit.

From what Carlos knew of StrexCorp, it probably was, to Kevin.

“I was thinking,” Kevin said, one day, sitting in Carlos’s makeshift lab. “What if we… expanded this little settlement you’ve got going on here?”

Carlos frowned, looking up from where he’d been examining a rock sample through a microscope.

“In what way?” Carlos asked, turning to Kevin. They’d found him a pair of sunglasses, somewhere out in the sand. It was a little easier to look at him, to pretend there were eyes behind the dark lenses and not just two hollow sockets. 

“Well,” Kevin said, walking his fingers along Carlos’s counter. “We could set up some essential structures. You know, in case other people come to… whatever we’re calling this place! And maybe if we had a community, that community might need a radio station?”

“Is that what you want to work on?” Carlos asked. He hadn’t really thought about anyone else being out here, beside himself and Kevin and the masked armies. He’d sort of assumed it would just be him and Kevin out here forever, two outcasts from the rest of the world.

Carlos wasn’t even sure if he was aging, out here. It was something to investigate. Not right now, though. He was having a conversation right now.

“Maybe,” Kevin said, with that permanent, somewhat unsettling grin. “I was wondering if you wanted to help! Two bodies are better than one, after all. We could scavenge raw materials from the ruins, even! It could be a fun adventure. What do you say, Carlos?”

“It… could be an interesting project,” Carlos admitted. He was sure Kevin’s grin widened, somehow. 

“Oh, what fun!”

“Why don’t you ask Doug if he’d be willing to get his masked army to help move big rocks and stuff up on the mountain?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea.” Kevin nodded seriously. “Ah! This is going to be so much fun, Carlos! I’m so excited!”  

He stood up, knocking over the stool he’d been sitting on.

“I’ll be back,” Kevin said as he righted it, and then left.

Carlos returned to his rock and wondered how Cecil was doing back in Night Vale. He wondered when it was, back in Night Vale. 

He wondered if Cecil was doing okay, stuck doing long-distance with him. What was even happening, back in Night Vale? It hadn’t been something Carlos had really asked about. He wasn’t sure when his call would drop each time. Sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes it would, Cecil’s voice scattering out into an empty signal and static. 

Instead, they talked about how they themselves had been. Carlos talked about all the science he was doing in the desert otherworld. Cecil talked about minor news stories, and Khoshekh, and Janice. They talked about nothing in particular. Until, one day, Cecil opened the call sounding beyond exhausted.

“Carlos, hey, sweetie,” Cecil said by way of answering the phone. 

“Hi, sweetheart,” Carlos said, “How are you?”

“I’m…” Carlos couldn’t see the expression on Cecil’s face. He could hear the exhausted sigh. “I have… a problem.”

“What is it? Maybe I could help.” Science could help most problems, in Carlos’s experience.

“I’m… Someone, and I don’t know who, but someone is using me without my… awareness, or permission, to protect Dana. The Mayor. Urgh.” 

Carlos frowned. He wasn’t sure he could solve that with science. At least, not from here.

“How could someone be doing that to you, though?”

“The… the auction,” Cecil said, and he almost sounded scared from across the phone line. “Lot 37. Do you remember?”

“Of course, you talked about it on your show!” And then, it clicked. “Oh. Oh. You don’t think whoever bought it…?”

“I do.”  

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I can’t… when it happens, I can’t remember anything that happens. It’s like I never even left my booth. The only reason I found out was because the… the Erikas, they- they sent me a picture of me, only I don’t remember being in the place it was taken at that time, and it’s kept happening since then-”

“Sweetie, honey, breathe,” Carlos said, because Cecil was starting to panic. “I’m trying to find a way for you to visit. Do you think that would… break the connection this person has to you?”

“It… it might,” Cecil said, slowly. “It might. It… it wouldn’t hurt to try. But you don’t even know how to get me there.”

“I’m working on it. I’m working on it every day. There’s just… not many leads. I got here through the house that doesn’t exist, and then it closed behind me and I couldn’t get back out. But I don’t even know if that’s still a tenable entrance. As soon as I get a lead, any lead, I’ll let you know, okay?”

It was all Carlos could do. It was what he was good at. Science. He was so good at science.

“Okay,” Cecil said.

“How’s getting your vacation time from Station Management going?”

“I haven’t heard anything.” Frustration. “I’m waiting patiently, but… no one knows when Station Management will address it Or if they’ll address it.”

“Look at it like this, maybe: it’ll give me the time I need to get you over here, so you don’t waste your whole vacation waiting for me to figure it out!”

Not, of course, that he really needed it, with the time difference. In the time it would take Carlos to figure this out, it may only have been a few days for Cecil.

“That’s… yeah. Yeah, that works.”

“I love you,” Carlos said. “So, so much. We’ll find a way to get you here, just you wait. Maybe once I can figure out where all these things from our world came from, I’ll know how to get you here. It shouldn’t be that much longer.” 

“I love you, too,” Cecil said, on the other side of the line. “I’ll see you soon.” 

Carlos could only hope that would be true for them both.

People came. People from Night Vale, and suddenly, he had leads. It barely took him any time at all to figure out how, exactly, to get Cecil into the desert otherworld. He left voicemail after voicemail about the situation, day after day, even though he knew Cecil was only getting them hours apart. 

He didn’t once answer Carlos’s calls. He tried not to be disappointed by it. He knew Cecil was busy. Then, a change, and a moment of joy as Cecil and Carlos hugged at the edge of the settlement as Cecil told him he’d gotten his vacation approved.

That night, Cecil stared up at the sky, littered with stars Carlos couldn’t document permanently, with a slight frown on his face. They were sitting out on the rocks near Carlos’s lab, wrapped in a blanket together.

“What if I just stayed here,” Cecil said, his arm intertwined with Carlos’s. Carlos nudged Cecil’s foot with his own.

“Stayed here?”

“In the desert otherworld. With you.”

Carlos lay his head on Cecil’s shoulder. 

“You could. What about the radio station?”

Cecil loved the radio. Cecil loved the radio in the same way Carlos loved science. It would be wrong to take him away from that permanently. Even if Cecil was offering to leave it himself.

“I don’t know,” Cecil said, and sighed. “It’s just. I miss you.”

“I’m right here,” Carlos said.

“Back in Night Vale. Things are…” Cecil sighed. “Things are weird back in Night Vale.”

There had been no headway on solving the Lot 37 situation, Cecil wasn’t saying.

“What’s going on in Night Vale? Specifically.”

Cecil was quiet. Quiet long enough Carlos started to worry.

“Dana’s up to her old, disruptive habits,” is all he said, when he decided to speak again. Carlos wasn’t totally sure what that meant. 

“Oh,” Carlos said. “How so?”

“Carlos.” Cecil said, a little sharper than Carlos had been expecting. “Carlos,” he said again, softer. “Can we just drop it? Please? I just… I just. I just want to be here. With you.”

“Okay,” Carlos responded, and felt as Cecil leaned further against him. 

Carlos… couldn’t exactly lie. He’d be happy if Cecil wanted to stay here. It would be the two of them, and the scientifically-fascinating desert, and no one around to tell either of them that they were existing wrong. Maybe Carlos could talk to Kevin about giving Cecil a spot on his new radio station, once he got it set up. 

Even still, Carlos thought, Cecil’s smile may have been a sad one.

Cecil left at the end of the week, and it was just Carlos again. Just Carlos, and the masked army, and Kevin, and his lab. It suddenly felt empty, despite the fact the desert otherworld settlement he and the masked army had set up had recently gained a whole town’s population. It suddenly didn’t feel as interesting to be here as resuming his efforts to get back to Night Vale from when he’d first come- when he’d first gotten trapped here.

And, one day, he found a door out in the desert.

“I should go back,” Carlos said, pacing around the lab. Doug and Alicia weren’t in here currently, but Kevin was. Carlos wasn’t sure why he was here. Carlos wasn’t sure where he lived. “Something’s wrong.” Carlos was pretty sure Cecil didn’t want him telling Kevin about Lot 37, so he wouldn’t. At least, not unless Cecil said it was okay.

“Why?” Kevin said, crossing his arms. “Don’t you like it here? Aren’t you getting so much done?”

“I mean, yes.” Carlos frowned. “But there’s science to do in Night Vale, too, and if Cecil needs me-”

“He’ll be moving here soon, won’t he? Then it won’t be a problem! Just wait a little longer. Be patient. That’s what you’re always telling me, isn’t it?”

Kevin rolled the fidget cube Carlos had left on the work table back and forth, and Carlos frowned. He wasn’t sure why he was getting- territorial was probably the right word, but it felt too animalistic for what was happening in his brain. Kevin wouldn’t break the cube. He knew that.

“Please don’t touch anything in the lab,” Carlos said, clear and practiced. Kevin looked at the cube, surprised.

“Oh! My bad,” he said, pushing it across the table and holding up his hands. “Silly me.”

“I just.” Carlos snapped his fingers, one two three four five. “I want to make sure he’s okay. He went through a lot, dealing with St-” Carlos paused. Kevin was trying. He’d been making progress. He didn’t want to fuck it up, somehow. “Before I left,” he said, instead. Kevin’s smile still lowered, ever so slightly, enough to make Carlos want to backpedal. He wouldn’t, though. He was trying to do better about that. “And it just sounds like he’s been getting worse, every time I’ve talked to him. I’m worried that something in Night Vale is hurting someone I care about, and I’m just out here in the desert, ignoring everyone else.”

“But you’re getting so much done,” Kevin said, as though baffled as to why Carlos would be worried about anything else. He was trying, but. But he still didn’t fully understand that Carlos didn’t just care about doing work. It wasn’t work, anyway, not to Carlos. Science was his safe place, where things made sense and the world couldn’t touch him. But escaping like this, for so long, was hurting people he cared about.

This hadn’t happened before.

“I’ll think about it,” Carlos said, and Kevin perked up.

The next day, Carlos watched as his entire lab was destroyed. He listened as Kevin got frustrated on the radio that Carlos wasn’t getting his results, and he wasn’t totally sure if it was on Carlos’s behalf, or if it was Kevin’s still-lingering need for constant productivity. He thought about Cecil, how stressed Cecil had been when he’d first gotten here. He thought about how much time he was spending here, knowing how much time he was spending here and still making no moves to find a way back. How he had just stopped telling Cecil that he was even trying to find a way back. 

He wanted to go back.

It had been eating at him, ever since Cecil had been here. It had been… almost a year since he’d been here. Ten months since he’d last seen Cecil, not just talked to him once every ten days over the phone. 

Ten was a complicated number, now. Sure, base ten was the primary base used across the world. Ten was important. Ten was scientifically significant. But ten was also associated with every single time something had gone wrong, with being separated from Cecil, now. Ten days, ten months, ten years. Ten, ten, ten.

He was a little tired of counting by tens.

Perception was reality, wasn’t that the mantra Night Vale lived by? One of them, right alongside every saying Cecil had taught him to avoid legal trouble. Or extra-legal trouble. Carlos found himself smiling. He missed Cecil. He missed Night Vale. He was feeling homesick, if such a thing could be said about a town he’d lived in for just under two years as opposed to the ten he’d spent in this desert otherworld. He missed the fear and the weirdness and the disasters that made Night Vale feel alive, feel lived in, in a way the desert otherworld simply didn’t.

Kevin was a really good friend. Kevin was doing so, so much better now than he’d been doing when he’d first met Carlos, in Carlos’s opinion. Kevin still wasn’t Cecil. Carlos could still remember wandering in the desert, worried out of his mind for Cecil, when he’d first gotten here. He remembered his and Cecil’s first date, doing experiments on trees and avoiding buzzing-figure-based doom. Remembered kissing Cecil good-night, the way it had made him feel warm and alive and wanted when Cecil reciprocated.

God, Cecil. He’d just left Cecil out there, back in Night Vale, to deal with Lot 37 alone. What kind of a boyfriend was he? Cecil could move here, but he didn’t just love the radio. Cecil didn’t just love the radio, and Cecil didn’t just love Carlos. Cecil loved Night Vale, even with its police state and authoritarian government and all its dangers, both supernatural and mundane. Carlos even loved Night Vale, even after its rejection, even after he’d been here longer than he’d been in any singular place since he’d been a child. 

He remembered getting into Night Vale for the first time and the way it had felt like home, like his soul had settled for once in his then-thirty-two years of life.

He wanted to belong there. He wanted to belong to Night Vale, whatever that ended up meaning for him. 

One-hundred minutes between finishing his goodbye letter to Kevin and stepping through that old oak door he’d found buried in the sand, back into Night Vale, back where Cecil was, back where he wanted to call home. Sixty-four steps to the radio station, where Cecil wasn’t. Thirty-two minutes before Cecil got to the opera’s after-party where Carlos was getting caught up on the immediate situation by Steve, sopping wet, his clothes torn, wrist cuffed to a ripped-off chair arm. Twelve seconds between Carlos seeing him and the moment they collided. 

Six days where they didn’t leave each other’s sides, where Carlos went to the station with him, just to be there.

Five years between the moment they truly met, bedraggled and exhausted on a late-night Ralph's trip, and the moment Carlos proposed in a quiet kitchen, making breakfast for the both of them before work.

“Hey, honey,” Carlos said as Cecil entered the kitchen. “Sleep alright?” 

“Mmm. Yeah,” Cecil said, stepping behind Carlos to get a mug. “It’s a workday and you’re cooking breakfast, special occasion?”

“You could say that,” Carlos smiled.

“I could, huh? Could I be told what the special occasion is?”

“After you get your coffee. Be patient.”

“Alright, then, whatever you say.” Cecil smiled, a quiet laugh rumbling up through his throat. He retrieved his coffee hammer from the drawer with the beans, and Carlos shut his eyes for a moment, just taking in the comforting sounds of eggs on the stove and Cecil preparing his coffee. 

He’d given this up for ten years. He’d given this up for ten years and substituted the closeness, the knowledge that, at the end of the day, he could see Cecil and reach out and touch him and know he was real, with near-biweekly phone calls. He couldn’t imagine that now. He couldn’t imagine trying to live his life without Cecil in it. 

He brushed one hand over the box in his pocket. He knew it was just a gesture, a social convention, but he wanted to do it anyway. Scientifically speaking, it didn’t even need to even be a ring, to carry the message. It was, because Carlos, alongside being a scientist, was also a sap, and he was happy to admit it.

Nothing fancy. It was a plain copper band (because copper was such a scientifically interesting metal, he could talk about the scientific properties of copper all day) that he’d spent the last three months learning to make, because, well, science. Science and art weren’t that different, at the end of the day, and it had been a fun creative exercise. Also, he could find no one in town willing to sell engagement rings, since getting gemstones for jewelry was a dangerous endeavor which tended to end in venom-based fatalities. Good old Night Vale.

Cecil leaned against the counter as the coffee machine rumbled away, watching Carlos fondly.

“You sure you won’t tell me what’s got you in such a good mood this morning?” Cecil asked. Carlos shook his head.

“Wait,” he said. “It’ll be worth it, I promise.” He hoped. He couldn’t imagine a universe where Cecil said no. At the very least, it was so statistically unlikely that Carlos felt sure enough.

“Not even a hint?”

“Nope.” 

Cecil honest-to-goodness pouted, bottom lip pressed out. Carlos smiled.

“You have to wait!”

Carlos slid the eggs - fried, Carlos was pretty sure he’d finally gotten it to work right - onto two plates, already covered with hot breakfast foods: invisible toast, beef sausages, and hash browns. He set both plates down on the kitchen table as Cecil poured his coffee. Cecil joined Carlos at the table, leaning his head on Carlos’s shoulder before sitting down.

“Okay,” he said, as he completed their pre-meal bloodstone circle offering. “I’m so curious, please. I don’t think I can wait much longer.”

“Okay, okay,” Carlos said, chuckling. “So, ah.” 

Cecil watched, anticipatory and loving, as he raised a forkful of egg and potato to his mouth. Carlos pulled his notecard out of his pocket. Yes, he had a notecard. He wasn’t Cecil, he couldn’t prepare something to say and then just memorize it. Cecil’s eyebrows rose.

“Oh, it must be important,” Cecil said after he swallowed. 

“It is,” Carlos said. Cleared his throat. “We’ve, uh, been together now for… a little under four years, now, and we’ve known each other for longer. And you know, you know how much I love you.” Enough to re-uproot his life of ten years in a desert otherworld, he wouldn’t say, but he felt it. “I love you so, so much. So I… I wanted to ask to make it permanent.” 

Cecil’s eyes widened, breakfast abandoned on the table. Carlos pulled the box out of his pocket, opening it and setting it on the table. 

“Will you-”

“ Yes,” Cecil said, tears welling in his eyes. “Oh, Carlos, yes, a million times yes-”

In a moment, Carlos was off the ground, Cecil spinning him around the kitchen. He always forgot just how physically strong Cecil was until he was reminded, and it felt like he was falling in love all over again. 

They both laughed, and Carlos felt lighter than he’d felt in years.  

Carlos had made the ring a little too big to stay on Cecil’s finger properly with no reference, so instead, Cecil wore it to work around a chain they’d dug out of some forgotten drawer. They’d get it right for the actual wedding, they reasoned, and it made Carlos feel light all over again.

In the dark of a bedroom after their wedding, Carlos leaned his head on Cecil’s shoulder. 

“I have a new favorite number,” he announced. Cecil turned his head, his mouth at the perfect height to kiss Carlos just above his eyebrow.

“Oh?” Cecil asked, tangling their fingers together under the sheets.

“Two-thousand sixteen,” Carlos said, matter-of-fact. Then, softer: “It’s the year I married the love of my life.”

He could feel Cecil’s smile against his hairline, the warmth of his blood rising to his face against Carlos’s own skin.

“How do you make numbers sound so romantic,” Cecil asked, voice low and amused. “It’s like you have some sort of superpower.”

“Numbers are inherently romantic,” Carlos responded. “At least, to me. The cosmos, and everything in it, like the stars and the grass and the air and water and soil, it’s all atoms. And atoms can be represented through numbers, put together in lots of ways to form complex ideas, like love. Numbers are the language of the universe, Cecil.”

“Now I’m wondering whether I should have gone with erotic,” Cecil said, and Carlos laughed, soft and fond.

“Is that so?” 

“Absolutely.”

Cecil laid another kiss against Carlos’s hairline, and then, well. It was their honeymoon, after all.

Things went bad, not long afterwards.

First, the house that didn’t exist, which he still couldn’t pass by without feeling his heart rate spike and bile rise in his throat. Then, the decision to try and do something about it, and then the way it had all fallen apart. The way he felt the miniscule control he had regained over the last three years slipping through his fingers, heralded with heat under his feet, and unexplained pits all across town, and that centipede Kevin wouldn’t stop trying to get Carlos to worship early on.

The way he’d actually confided in someone how long he’d been there, something he’d sworn he wouldn’t do, and the way it didn’t make any of it easier to bear. It wasn’t that he was worried Nilanjana would tell. He was just actually aware of the tightness in his chest in a way he hadn’t been before.

The way he’d clung to Cecil, as though the physical closeness would make a difference. As if being so close to Cecil wouldn’t only kill them both if that centipede came for either of them. As though he could force the universe itself into submission if he just held on to the people he loved more than life itself.

He stared at the ceiling next to Cecil late one night, thinking about that place. Thinking about how time had moved but he didn’t. Thinking about how he hadn’t even been here, with Cecil, longer than he’d been in that desert otherworld, and now it was all in danger because of something completely out of Carlos’s hands.

“I can hear you thinking,” Cecil had murmured from beside him, more a feeling of vibration against Carlos’s collarbone than words.

“You know me,” he responded, turning so he could look at the top of Cecil’s head. “Always thinking.”

“And you know that I love that about you. What’re you thinking about?”

He almost said nothing, but Cecil had been there with him in the high school gymnasium.

“Janice,” Carlos admitted, and felt Cecil’s hum across his skin.

“She’ll be alright. Janice is tough. No particular thanks to Steve.”

Carlos understood there was something going on between Cecil and Steve that he wasn’t part of. He also knew Steve loved Abby and Janice with his whole being. He wondered if Cecil saw it.

“I know,” Carlos said, instead of any of that. “It just… scared me. It feels like it’s my fault, somehow.”

“You’re not the one making these pits happen, though, right?” 

“No.” 

“Then it’s not your fault.”

If only Carlos could bring himself to believe that.

If only that had been the truth.

Second, when Old Woman Josie passed away, and the way Carlos was suddenly Cecil’s rock when just weeks before it had been the other way around. Carlos remembered listening to the radio when Cecil had decided he was just done and had started talking, openly, publicly, blatantly about Josie’s angels. On the radio, which, even if Carlos knew that City Council wouldn’t hurt Cecil in any lasting way, he knew was still crossing a large, bold, red line.

He’d almost dropped his test tubes of colorful, bubbling liquid when he’d heard, in quick succession, Cecil say the words here is the secret hierarchy of angels, followed by the city-wide angels-acknowledged alarms. Luisa did drop the tray of potatoes she was holding and glared at them on the ground.

Carlos had set the test tubes down in their shelf and ran out of the lab, planning to head right down the street to the radio station and ask what, exactly, it was Cecil thought he was accomplishing by courting the government’s anger so blatantly. As he drove up to the station, though, he saw Cecil being led out of the station by a Sheriff’s Secret Police officer, looking mostly just… angry.

They made eye contact across the top of the police cruiser, and Cecil’s anger morphed into upset, but he didn’t fight the officer as they pushed him into the backseat, even as his eyes didn’t leave Carlos’s from across the lot.

They wouldn’t let Carlos see him while he was in jail, and Carlos nearly shattered in on himself. The only reason he didn’t was because of Nilanjana, who, quietly, had promised she’d help him sneak in to see him if the Secret Police held him too long.

It hadn’t been necessary, thank whatever gods or godlike beings were out there, because a week later, Cecil slipped into the house after being released by City Council on the technicality of forgetting.

“What, exactly, did you think you were doing by getting yourself arrested, Cecil,” Carlos said, pacing around their living room. Cecil was sitting on the couch, sitting in that way Carlos had finally learned to read as false nonchalance on Cecil specifically.

“I wasn’t really thinking so much as just talking, if I’m going to be completely honest,” Cecil admitted, twirling his finger around the chain his engagement ring still hung on. “I didn’t really care at the moment what consequences might come through.”

“You talked about the Erikas live on the radio. I don’t know how more blatantly you could have broken the law!” 

It was a clever way around the no-angels laws, but it was still a barely-tolerated one.

“They were Josie’s family. I couldn’t just- not acknowledge their existence when she’s-” 

“I know.” Carlos took a deep breath. Another. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. Yelling isn’t productive. But you scared me, Cecil, really badly. What if you couldn’t get yourself out of there?” What if they took you away from me forever?

Cecil slumped against the couch arm, the anger bleeding out of him. He sighed. “I’m sorry, too. I just… she was so important to me. She was my closest friend, and now she’s gone, and her last wishes are up in the air in a way they shouldn’t be, Carlos. And all I have to fight back with is a microphone.”

“Oh, hun,” Carlos said, dropping onto the couch. “I’m not saying we can’t fight back. Just… to do it in a smarter way. A way that won’t get you sent to the abandoned mineshaft outside of town for the rest of your life, okay?”

“Okay,” Cecil agreed. 

“I love you,” Carlos said, holding on to Cecil’s hand.

“I love you too,” Cecil replied, and smiled, exhausted.

Third and final, of course, had been the collapse of reality itself. Carlos… wasn’t sure if he’d existed for a good chunk of that. He couldn’t remember most of it. He mostly re-listened to Cecil’s reports on the ongoing situation, wondering why exactly so few Night Vales included him. He wasn’t sure if he wanted the answer. 

He listened to Cecil report on the brother he didn’t have, and watched the sky fall in on itself, and wondered if, in some cruel twist of fate, the fact he hadn’t come from Night Vale meant he wouldn’t even be given the mercy of ceasing to exist with this reality when it did cave in on itself.

He didn’t think he could handle that. This was his home now. He’d decided that when he’d emerged from the desert otherworld three years ago. So, while Cecil advocated for angel legalization on the radio, Carlos worked away in the lab to find some solution, any solution, to the collapsing of reality. 

Nilanjana, thank the Spire (and when had he started using Night Vale turns of phrase like that?) for her, kept him from drowning himself in his work again. She’d come knock on his door when it got too late, or he hadn’t come out for too long, and would insist on getting lunch. The world might be falling in on itself, but the Barista District was still held together, she’d argue. You’re useless if you don’t get rest, she’d say, even as she herself downed her fifth large coffee of the night. Go home, she said. 

She wasn’t above calling Cecil, if she thought she had to, which Carlos was simultaneously annoyed and impressed by. But he didn’t burn himself out trying to fix everything on his own now. 

And, sitting in City Hall with Abby and Janice as Steve gave his (and, by extension, Cecil’s) appeal for the legalization of angels, he celebrated with the rest of Night Vale when it went through. As soon as Cecil was done with his broadcast, Carlos was waiting at the door to sweep him up. 

The universe would hold together for another day, as unlikely as it may seem. And, now, his job as a scientist had become even more important. Cecil needed his help in simply finding things to acknowledge, to keep the world together. 

It was still its own sort of torture to hear Cecil, fully in his radio host voice, discussing what Carlos had handed him at breakfast that morning. 

“But he says, it is actually a doorway to another world,” Cecil was saying on the radio. It was just Carlos and Nilanjana in the lab right now, Luisa busy taking a walk and being disappointed in her potatoes, and Mark being on a conference trip. Carlos frowned at his whiteboard.

 “A world he himself was once stuck in for a year. There seem to be secrets about that year he is keeping to himself. Maybe someday we will learn what they are.”

Carlos, for all his more recent attempts to work through the messy feelings about the desert otherworld, still managed to shock himself while hooking up a machine. He hissed slightly, shaking his hand out. Nilanjana looked up from her work table, where she’d resumed her bacteria experiments.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she said. Then, after a beat, “you okay?”

“Yes,” Carlos responded. “Just shocked myself. Don’t worry about it, Nils.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“If you’re sure.”

Nilanjana knew. Nilanjana was one of the only people who knew. Carlos was pretty sure he’d let it slip to Mark, too, when he’d been overwhelmed. 

Cecil would never know, no matter how hopeful he sounded on the radio for answers. Carlos couldn’t do that to Cecil. He had enough going on with himself, he didn’t need to take up the mantle of Carlos’s time in the desert otherworld on top of that.

It was honestly better for all of them if Cecil just continued to believe Carlos had only been in the desert otherworld for a year. 

That being said, he had dragged Luisa and Nilanjana out to the house a few days ago. He needed to make sure that the converging realities hadn’t done something to it. Hadn’t changed it somehow. Hadn’t made it easier to get stuck there.

Nilanjana had given him some sort of look the whole time. Carlos was pretty sure she knew it wasn’t just a routine check of the town’s phenomena. Especially since he refused to actually let her or Luisa too close to the house.

Everything had seemed fine, though. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“But, you know, if it isn’t fine,” Nilanjana continued, giving Carlos another one of those looks, “you’d tell me before it got out of hand, right?”

Carlos sighed and set down his wires.

“Yes, Nils. That’s what I promoted you to primary assistant researcher for.”

Part of why he’d promoted her, anyway. She was also just a really passionate scientist and he thought of her as a friend, not just a coworker or a subordinate. If he could trust anyone to call him on getting lost in his work, he could trust Nilanjana. He was… pretty sure she thought of him as a friend, too. He’d never bothered to ask. He should probably ask. Should he ask? It might be weird to ask. Besides, he was still technically her superior. Would that make it a weird assumption to make? 

“Want to share what you’re thinking about over there?” Nilanjana asked. 

“Are we friends?” Carlos asked. Nilanjana blinked.

“I assumed so. I sort of guessed going through investigating, and then killing, a living bug god directly against the wishes of City Council counted toward friendship, anyhow. Do you think we’re friends?” 

“I had hoped so,” Carlos said, “but I wasn’t actually sure.”

Nilanjana blinked. Then, she smiled, faintly.

“Then we’re friends. Nothing more complicated about it.”

And, Carlos thought, she was a good friend. He wouldn’t trade her friendship for the world. He wouldn’t risk it again, not if he could help it.

Time moved. Not in the way that time moved anywhere else, but time was weird in Night Vale. Carlos had long ago gotten used to the particular eccentricities of time in Night Vale. Long passed were the days of Carlos calling Cecil, panicked and more than a little smitten, about how clocks weren’t real. Clocks were still real, at least as much as anything else was real, even if they didn’t work like clocks anywhere else in the world did. They didn’t have to.

Time moved, and even though time was weird in Night Vale, that progression was largely forward. Year after year passed, and year after year Carlos got further away from the desert otherworld. Year after year, he wondered more and more why he’d even been so concerned with the clocks, or with Night Vale’s weird seismic activity, or with the strange phantom cars or City Council or the glowing grapes at the Ralph's. And then, he realized it didn’t matter, and he really didn’t care, because this was just Night Vale. He didn’t have to explain any of it. He just had to observe. Bear witness, as Cecil said whenever Carlos asked why he went to work when it was so, so dangerous outside. All Carlos had to do was bear witness, to acknowledge, to record.

Five, six, twelve, twenty, thirty-two, sixty-four, one-hundred, two-thousand sixteen.

Carlos watched from the hallway as Cecil read bed-time stories to Esteban in his crib. He knew, if he had the opportunity to tell his younger counterpart that he’d fall in love with and marry and have a son with the overenthusiastic radio host in this weird, weird, wonderful town he’d arrived in, he’d be scoffed at. Not, of course, that he’d be likely to get that opportunity, but time travel was still legal here. It wasn’t technically impossible.

It was just part of his life, now, to consider such unlikely possibilities as time travel.  

“Little Red Riding Hood hid behind a rock. She listened in blood-curdling terror for the sound of her grandmother’s double approaching,” Cecil was reading in the other room. Carlos was pretty sure that wasn’t how Little Red Riding Hood was supposed to go, but he’d long ago given up on finding and pointing out the media discrepancies in Night Vale, too. Sometimes, your children’s books had to warn kids about local dangers. Local dangers like violent doubles. Sometimes, that meant that the media didn’t match up with its counterparts in the outside world. Like Little Red Riding Hood hiding from her grandmother’s double, who the Big Bad Wolf had warned her about.

“There was a sound immediately in front of her from the bushes,” Cecil continued. Carlos briefly wondered if he knew Esteban wouldn’t be able to make sense of any of these stories until he was older. Then, he realized it didn’t matter, because Cecil would tell them again, and again, and again. Probably even after Esteban was too old for them, and the thought made Carlos choke up. 

They had a son. They had a son who would grow up and make friends and go on play-dates and then real-dates, maybe, one day. He’d go to school. It was like he was sitting in the adoption office filling out forms all over again, the way it hit him. It would keep hitting him. It might never stop hitting him, wonderful and terrifying in equal measure. He looked forward to it not stopping, just like every other new, wonderful addition to his life Night Vale had provided. Every new, unique freedom and lack of expectation of perfection from him that had allowed him this. To stand in the hallway of his home while his husband read bedtime stories to their son.

Thirty-seven, the age he was supposed to be now, the age he very well might have been considering he hadn’t aged in the desert otherworld. Thinking too hard about it made his head hurt, though. Thirty-seven when his son entered his life.

Five, six, twelve, twenty, thirty-two, thirty-seven, sixty-four, one-hundred, two-thousand sixteen. 

“It wasn’t her grandmother’s double, though, who emerged. It was- oh!” Cecil paused for dramatic effect, a dramatic effect his audience wouldn’t be able to appreciate for a few years yet to come. “It was the wolf!” 

Carlos smiled as he watched his husband, and everything was right in the universe, if only for this one moment.