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The envelope is getting thick now.
There are a hundred little notes in there. More. Some scribbled hurriedly on scraps of paper; others written out thoughtfully and neatly on letter stationary, the handwriting hesitant as the writer tried to arrange the words to his satisfaction.
Carlos isn’t certain when he started doing this.
He thinks (he’s not sure, because he only started dating the scraps after he’d written about twenty) that the first one was “I should have said thank you.” That was in response to Cecil’s compliment on his shirt, which caused him to blush, stutter, and then come out with something sciency. (It’s embarrassing for a grown man to admit, but that had basically been his coping method in romantic situations for his whole life). On the reverse of the note, “You looked nice too. I always think you look nice.”
It’s one of the problems he has, with loving someone as effusive as Cecil. The science-speak he has no trouble with, but often the rest of his words take some shunting into place. They don’t obey him, don’t line neatly up or flow from his lips the same way they do for Cecil. This had never been a problem (well, it had, but Carlos hates to dwell on the past, especially his) until suddenly Cecil with his violet eyes and voice like black honey had decided to love him. And while at first Cecil was almost as awkward as he was (one of the early notes reads “He actually said neat. I think that’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard”) as their relationship matures, Cecil is much less prone to dissolving into an incoherent mush in Carlos’ presence.
Which is where Carlos runs into his small problem with reciprocation.
It’s not that he doesn’t feel the same way - he does, he really does, even if it took him longer, even if he doesn’t fall in love so much as abseil cautiously down to it. It’s that Cecil can make him feel all manner of things (brilliant, beautiful, heroic, unique, loved) with just a turn of phrase, and Carlos…Carlos just doesn’t know how to return the favour.
It started in small ways – as with the shirt comment, with things he only thought of after the fact. A graceful acceptance of one of Cecil’s less outlandish compliments, or a nice word about the show or even (after contract negotiation day) relief that Cecil was still alive. These things, while he lamented his own inability to communicate them, were harmless, whether spoken aloud or not. But after the evening at the Arby’s, and the rudely interrupted date at Gino’s, there was suddenly much more at stake.
From that period, the envelope contains “I never get tired of hearing your voice,” (the second date at the Moonlite Diner, as Carlos sipped his milkshake and listened dreamily to Cecil relating the events of the day). “I think your freckles are cute,” (while looking at Cecil, blushing and half-naked between Carlos and the mattress, suddenly overcome with self-consciousness the first time they do anything more than kiss). Carlos tried, in those heady days of early romance to say what he felt in a language that did not need words. He would nudge Cecil like a cat, demanding attention, humming in content as Cecil’s gentle fingers carded through his hair. Or he would pin Cecil’s wrists against whatever flat surface was available (Carlos marvels when he recounts exactly how many places they have done compromising things) and kiss him until his back arched and he was moaning. He would look, just gaze at Cecil, taking in the sharp lines of his face and trying to calculate the formula for the curve-and-point of his nose, and let Cecil catch him watching.
But then come the longer notes, the ones that express things that Carlos does not even know if he has the words for. These are the ones written out on letter-paper, a mess of corrections and scribble that are barely legible and almost completely unintelligible, especially to their author. These are the words that catch in Carlos’ throat when he wakes next to Cecil on an early weekend morning, watching the sun play in his hair. This is the feeling he has when Cecil absently takes his hand as they walk, unaware and uncaring, as if his hand belongs in Carlos’. It feels as though it does.
And as waking up next to Cecil becomes something so common as to be an unremarkable occurrence, Carlos regrets for the first time that he took sciences and ignored the arts. He can’t even remember the poetry he read in high school. He wishes he could, wishes he knew where to start looking for the words he needs. Facts and rules and numbers rattle in his head, reconfiguring the laws of thermodynamics and adjusting the formulae that circumscribe the universe so that the end result, the perfect and inevitable conclusion of all the quantum processes of the knowable world is him and Cecil, side-by-side in Night Vale. But while he can write down his calculations until his fingers bleed, he can’t translate them into words.
He tries anyway, one night as he listens to Cecil’s broadcast in his lab. He picks up a pen and writes you are the rain in the desert. He stares. Goes to cross it out. Pauses before he does, and writes beneath it you are sunlight on the sea. Your voice is the one sound I would take with me into a world of silence. I look into the void and am unafraid, because all I need to do is look to you standing at my side to remember that life is honeysuckle sweet, and the heart that beats in your chest is the most precious thing in all the cosmos.
It’s not right. It’s not even close to good enough, but something is lighter in Carlos’ gut after it is done. But not all the way lighter, however, because although the paper may have Carlos’ truth written on it, Cecil still does not know. It was hard enough writing the words, and he does not want to ruin it by speaking them wrong, so he tucks the paper into the envelope with all the other scraps, and looks at it thoughtfully. He takes up his pen one more time, and hovers over the front of the envelope. The answer is, of course, obvious, but it takes him a while to think of it. Then, he smiles, and writes, and tucks the packet into his pocket.
And one morning, not very much later, Cecil awakes to find Carlos has slipped out of bed to check an experiment, leaving him to sleep. He stretches out, meaning to take advantage of having the whole bed to himself, only to knock something off Carlos’ pillow. Frowning, Cecil props himself up to look at it. It’s an old, battered brown envelope, filled almost to bursting with assorted bits of paper.
Written on the front in Carlos’ hand are the words “I love you.”