Work Text:
1.
His mother insists that his father loves him like it’s something they disagree on. He’s never doubted his father's love, but she acts as if love is an excuse and not the cause. And every time it happens he reads a book; he discovers his love for science while the back of his head still stings. It helps, and, at least a little, he can begin to forget.
That summer he loses his faith and his innocence. Some people call that growing up. He doesn’t.
2.
One night he thinks his father’s going to leave. There’ so much shouting and banging. He covers his ears but it doesn’t help because soon there’s a noise being made by his fingers sliding against his hair and his ears can’t take it. He tries his best to stop listening. They’re being so loud it makes his head hurt, his mother is crying but his father just keeps screaming.
It stops though. It winds down slowly and they go to bed. When he wakes in the morning they all act like nothing has happened.
Communication ruins families.
3.
He gets his degree and gets out. His classmates keep studying; they get honours and doctorates but Carlos is content just doing what he loves.
Visiting his parents becomes a less frequent activity because he finally has an excuse. His first job out of college is at some cosmetics company; it’s not interesting but it’s something that keeps him busy. There’s a girl who works with him. She smiles a lot and talks almost constantly. Carlos likes her. She’s kind to him.
One day he asks her if she would like to go to dinner with him and she smiled so brightly and started moving like her blood was on fire.
They go out a few more times, they kiss and hold hands and make jokes, but it doesn’t work. She tells him, as softly as she can, that he moves too slowly and cautiously for her. He fiddles with the cuffs of his shirt. Carlos knows she thinks he's scared of her, but he’s scared of something different, although they both manifest in the same actions and words so he agrees with her anyway.
They don’t talk about it on Monday morning at work. It’s better this way.
4.
He didn’t even think of it as abuse until he was 23, which is fucked up.
5.
The Night Vale project is perfect for him. It’s far enough from the people he knows that they will not insist on visits, plus it has that scientific intrigue which buzzes in his brain when he reads a small case study. Perfect.
6.
“Your father and I love you.”
“I know.”
7.
The first time he hears his name on the radio he goes completely still except for his hands, which are shaking slightly. He shuts his eyes and covers his ears: it’s a joke. It’s always a joke.
He remembers seeing Cecil for the first time; he looked sweet. He did not look like the kind of person to play tricks. And when Cecil coos on the radio, when he says he loves Carlos, it’s terrifying. And rightly so.
(He’s aware not everyone is his father - he’s not scared they are, but he’s aware they are people and he’s aware of what they are capable of. Especially those who love him.)
8.
It’s a while before he decides that Cecil is being serious. He starts listening to Cecil’s show while he works and it’s calming, even though it shouldn’t be. The worrying and impossible things Cecil reports on should make Carlos fearful but Cecil’s voice is too smooth that sometimes Carlos forgets to even listen to what he’s actually saying.
His colleagues are annoyed by how loud he has the radio while they try work, but they don’t say anything about it. Carlos only really smiles when he discovers something new and exciting or when Cecil croons his name during his show.
"He really likes you, huh?" one of his colleagues says at the end of one broadcast.
"Yeah, he does."
9.
He’s pacing around the room and sweating profusely. It’s just a phone call, he says to himself, just a phone call.
10.
"A scientist is self-reliant. It's the first thing a scientist is."
It’s sad when he says it. He tries his best to make it sound confident and hopeful, but it just sounds sad. Mostly because it’s only partially true. Although scientists often work alone, a good scientist knows that help is essential.
What he really means is: “I’m self-reliant. It’s the safest thing I can be.”
Then he kisses Cecil. He feels dizzy and when he pulls back after a few seconds Cecil looks like he’s going to collapse. Carlos smiles and leaves. He thinks, for all his nervousness and screw ups, that it was a good date. He’ll check Cecil’s broadcast to be sure.
11.
There’s a difference between remembering and reliving that goes beyond physicality.
12.
It’s after their 4th date when it goes wrong.
They’re at Cecil’s place, standing in his bedroom and kissing frantically. It’s nice - Carlos is smiling slightly and messing up - but it’s nice. One of Cecil’s hands is on Carlos’s waist and the other is tangled in his hair. It’s calming having Cecil’s fingers comb through his hair until there’s just a slight tug and Carlos automatically goes tense, pulls away and preemptively hisses in pain. When he opens his eyes again he sees Cecil, who looks confused and a little scared.
He makes his excuses, something about the lab and an experiment he has to get back to, and leaves. The strangeness of Night Vale suddenly feels a whole lot less frightening in comparison.
This is why they don’t make rom-coms about people with fathers like his.
13.
He still says grace. His colleagues used to find this laughable and even occasionally asked him why he still bothered. Now they just continue eating.
It used to be just habit, an almost instinctive gesture, but now he’s not sure. He’s not entirely sure of much these days.
But God doesn’t seem like the most improbable idea anymore.
14.
It sits in his lungs until he speaks to Cecil again.
It’s 2 days after he ran out and he’s been screening, not ignoring, calls from Cecil. When he finally picks up Cecil is obviously trying to suppress his journalistic curiosity and simply asks: “Are you okay?”
He thinks in that moment that, maybe, he finally is.
15.
Fear, much like divinity, encourages solitude.
16.
Cecil never asks. Carlos isn’t sure if that’s due to caution or lack of interest. He doesn’t care about the motive because he’s too glad that he doesn’t have to say it; he’s not even sure if he’d be able to.
17.
Carlos thinks the easiest way for Cecil to understand is to tell him a story. So he does, in the parking lot of the Arby’s, now a significant meeting place. He sits in his car, Cecil in the passenger seat, and stares straight out the front window. It’s important that Carlos tells him here.
“I used to think understanding something meant knowing everything about that thing intimately and completely. You changed that.”
“Oh?” Carlos smiles softly at the familiarity of that. Cecil, although suave and charming on the radio, was in conversation rather minimalist.
“I think, now, understanding something just means accepting it as it is.”
Carlos looks at Cecil and tries not to look too lost. He tells a story about a boy named Carlos who grew up in a house with a parent who loved him so much that sometimes that love was mistaken for bruises.
“You’re safe now, you know that?” It’s strange that Cecil can refer to living in Night Vale as safe, but it’s sentimental and just cheesy enough to make Carlos believe it.
“Yeah, I know.”
They sit a little longer and Carlos is happy. Some people love in funny ways that other people won’t really get. He understands that more than most.
18.
“Were you born in Night Vale?”
“Yes.”
“Do your parents still live here?”
“No.”
He doesn’t ask anything else.
19.
Building barriers and protection are different but often look the same. That’s funny, he thinks.
20.
He likes the nights they don’t go out the best. When they just sit at Cecil’s house and talk or watch a film. He likes it because it reminds him how easy this is. It’s still strange and scary, his palms still get sweaty and he still feels sick to his guts with nerves but so does Cecil. And that’s nice.
It’s a night like that Cecil notices Carlos had started wearing a cross.
21.
“I tried praying, I don’t think it worked though.”
“Oh. Are you using the correct Bloodstone?”
“I didn’t use one.”
“There’s your problem then!”
“We don’t pray with Bloodstones where I’m from. I think I might have just been thinking too much.”
“Maybe.”
22.
The thing about Night Vale is that one would assume that things that are scary outside of Night Vale seem less frightening within it. But it isn’t like that most of the time. He still glances anxiously around when he holds Cecil’s hand in public, he’s still pretty freaked out by spiders, and seeing middle aged men who look or act or speak even slightly like his father makes his skin feel too tight.
What Night Vale does is prioritise that fear. The selection of things that could kill him on a daily basis is something he is far more concerned about than holding his boyfriend's hand. That’s good, he thinks.
23.
They don’t talk about it. They don’t need to. It doesn’t feel like lying or avoiding or anything bad, it’s safe. Cecil knows and that’s all that matters, he understand that some things will make Carlos's eyes seem hollow and some things will make him shake, so he avoids them. And Carlos is grateful that Cecil doesn’t expect him to heal.
24.
This is how it works, you get out and you stay out. No one would expect any less.