Work Text:
That morning, as every other morning, Cecil woke in a state of foggy confusion. The room around him was unfamiliar, the white walls and the purple bed sheets. They were his taste in décor, but they weren’t his sheets. His heart was beginning to speed up with fear of the unknown.
A pair of toned arms wrapped around Cecil’s tattooed chest, and lips kissed his shoulder. The fear disappeared as quickly as it had begun to manifest, and Cecil pushed his hair out of his face so he could look back and smile at Carlos. The cloud of sleep over his mind had gone, and he was already starting to laugh at himself for forgetting what his own bedroom looked like.
“How did you sleep?” Carlos asked, rolling over so that he held himself up on his arms over Cecil. The blond man smiled and ran his fingers through the grey, perfect hair at Carlos’ temples. He could remember a time before he’d begun to grey, when they’d met in college whilst Cecil was studying communications and Carlos completed the first of his science-related degrees. They’d been together for well over a decade now; marriage had been discussed, but somehow no one had ever gotten around to proposing and so they stayed in quiet, content limbo. The memories of college had started to grow hazy and unreal, like a dream.
“Well enough.” Cecil replied as he kissed Carlos, which was a lie. He never slept well, but he’d stopped bothering Carlos by mentioning it.
Cecil thought to ask Carlos how he had slept, but the lazy morning kisses won over conversation. His fingers twisted in Carlos’ hair and the scientist trailed his fingers, slowly, over the black and indigo lines of Cecil’s tattoos. The kisses stayed slow but gained heat until Cecil flipped them over and rode Carlos until they were both gasping and clutching at each other’s skin.
Cecil rolled onto his stomach and watched Carlos get out of bed, his caramel skin damp with the sweat that stuck the dark strands of his hair together.
“Beautiful Carlos.” Cecil commented, prompting Carlos to turn around and smile as he headed to the bathroom for a shower.
“I was thinking we could have a night in together.” He told his boyfriend. “I’ll make enchiladas and buy some wine, it’ll be nice. I can get everything ready while you’re at work.”
Cecil beamed.
“That sounds wonderful.” He said. Carlos smiled again, before slipping into the bathroom. Cecil took a moment to hug his boyfriend’s pillow, breathing in the scent of it: the cheapest shower gel on the shelf, lime-scented. It smelt like Carlos. It smelt like home.
When he heard the sound of the shower running in the bathroom, Cecil pushed back the covers on the bed and got up, creeping to his nightstand and opening the bottom drawer. He sat, cross-legged and naked on the carpeted floor, and took out the purple leather bound journal that was half hidden among the miscellaneous crap filling up the rest of the drawer. A moment of searching, and he’d found a violet gel pen.
Cecil flicked to a blank space in his dream journal, flicking past pages and pages of cramped handwriting and bizarre illustrations oddly reminiscent of his tattoos, even the ones that had nothing to do with eyes or tentacles.
He wrote down the details of the previous night’s dream on the crisp clean pages of the journal. It was, he thought, a fragment of a bigger dream. He had dreamt of Carlos lying still on a linoleum floor with blood soaking his shirt while tiny fires burned behind him and someone sobbed in the background. It had been unnerving, but so were all of Cecil’s dreams. For several years he’d feared sleeping because of them. They were so vivid, and they were of such strange things- he dreamt of lights in the sky above the desert, of recording booths covered in blood and viscera, of glowing clouds and floating cats and an old woman’s house bathed in angelic radiance. The location of the dreams was familiar to him: Night Vale, the small desert community he’d grown up in. But the weirdness of his dreams was as of yet unexplained. He rarely read through the dreams journal, just because what he read in it gave him chills.
Cecil hurried snapped the journal shut and hid it away in the door again when the bathroom door opened behind him, standing up to smile innocently at Carlos. The scientist raised an eyebrow at him, towelling his hair dry.
“What’re you doing down there, Cecil?” He asked somewhat suspiciously.
“Nothing, nothing.” Cecil said hurriedly, skirting around the bed to stand in front of Carlos with a teasing smile, sliding his hands up his shoulders and into his hair again. “Beautiful, perfect Carlos.” He purred, leaning in for a kiss that the scientist dodged, pushing Cecil playfully back onto the bed.
“I have work.” Carlos reminded him, beginning to potter about in the process of getting ready. “Go shower.”
Cecil let out an over-dramatic sigh, but he followed the suggestion nonetheless. Upon stepping out of the water and reaching for a towel, he happened to glance briefly at the mirror. The thick fabric dropped out of his hands and onto the floor with a thump.
His tattoos were moving. They writhed on his skin, inky tentacles slowly coiling or unwinding and eyes blinking. The other, more abstract designs were smoking black ink that bled across the surface of his skin. He was frozen in place, staring at his reflection in numb horror.
“Cecil, have you seen my shirt?” Carlos poked his head around the bathroom door to ask, and the spell was broken. The tattoos were stationary again. Cecil took in a breath.
“Which shirt?” He asked with a genuine smile. He’d been startled by a trick of the light, that was all. And even if by some horror his tattoos actually had been moving, well, Carlos could make him feel better about literally anything.
“My pickup line shirt.”
“I wish I was a DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“I know where it is.” Cecil smiled.
XXX
After Carlos had located his shirt, and then his lab coat and one striped sock, and left for work, Cecil sat alone in the kitchen of their house, going over the notes for tonight’s show. He had a job as a radio presenter for an evening news show, which meant he usually walked out of the door to go to work as Carlos was walking through it to come home. It wasn’t the most desirable of lifestyles, but they worked with it.
He loved his job, but concentrating on the notes was impossible. He just doodled in the margins in purple ink, drawing odd shapes and designs that spilled from the memories of his dreams. When he glanced down at the paper, he saw that he’d written words.
ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD.
Cecil closed his eyes and pushed the papers away from him, sighing heavily. He could cope with the dreams. Lately, though, it had seemed as though the dreams were spilling over into his waking hours- the things he was writing, thinking that his tattoos were moving, the odd things he’d started seeing out of the corner of his eye.
There was a meow from the other room and Cecil instantly jumped up, scattering his papers and pens. He would take any sort of distraction from the thoughts about how his mind seemed to be unravelling in front of him.
He hurried to the downstairs bathroom, fully opening the door that was already slightly ajar to find out why his cat had meowed.
He stopped.
Khoshekh was hovering, apparently quite contentedly, in midair by the sink. He was on his back, grooming himself like he normally would have stretched out on the rug or Cecil’s bed. Instead, he was just… floating, like a furry black balloon.
Calmly, Cecil removed his glasses and put them down by the sink. He rubbed his eyes, reached for his glasses, and put them back on.
Khoshekh was lying on the floor, midway through licking his paw and giving Cecil a look that wordlessly asked why he looked like he’d just seen a ghost.
Cecil breathed a sigh of relief, but as he turned to leave the bathroom, he could have sworn his eyes in the mirror didn’t reflect blue, but a bright, intense amethyst.
XXX
Yes, Cecil though as he sat alone in his recording booth, sipping from a mug which claimed he ‘hearted’ science (it was Carlos’) and looking over his script again. Everything is well and good. This is how things are meant to be. Things had seemed remarkably normal since he’d gotten to the radio station. And if the racist asshole wearing a cartoonishly inaccurate Indian headdress he’d passed on the way to work had actually looked Native American when Cecil had glanced back at him, well, who cared? Not Cecil.
Cecil was lying to himself, but doing otherwise would require admitting he might be losing his mind.
He counted down in his head until the beep and cleared his throat before the on air sign in the booth lit up, leaning to speak into the microphone. He read exactly the words from the script.
“A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome, to Night Va-” Cecil broke off abruptly when he realised what he was saying, clapping his hands over his mouth and letting out a horrified scream. In front of the booth window, the new intern, Dana, shot him a confused and concerned look. Cecil took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I-I’m sorry, dear listeners, I must have read the wrong script.” But he knew he hadn’t. Those had been the words on the paper, and he’d simply read them automatically. Yet, when he looked again, they’d changed to what they were meant to be. He closed his eyes tightly, holding in the small, frightened noise that threatened to escape, and restarted the broadcast properly.
Just like that, everything was normal again. He settled into the flow of speaking on the radio- it was practically muscle memory, he’d been doing it for so long. But it required enough concentration that he couldn’t dwell on the oddities happening in his life at present, which was good. He played a song and sat back, closing his eyes and focusing on the charming sounds of the indie music. There was nothing wrong with him. There was nothing wrong with his life.
The song finished, and Cecil returned to the script.
“An announcement from the Sheriff’s Secret Police reads- no!” He clapped his hands back over his mouth and dropped the papers he was holding. Behind the tinted glass, Dana stood up with a frown and tapped on the window. Cecil just shook his head, trembling slightly and closing his eyes. Oh God. Oh God. Oh Godohgodohgod.
“And now,” He said shakily into the microphone, trying to cover his second slip up of the night. “The weather. Er. I mean, a new song from Taylor Swift.” He practically punched the button to start the music, removing his headphones so he didn’t have to listen to it. When he glanced out of the window again, Dana was gone.
Cecil leaned back in his chair and covered his face with his long fingers. He could feel himself shaking. The dreams were one thing, the subconscious doodling he couldn’t stop his hand from doing, but not being able to trust his own eyes? Things he hadn’t intended to say coming out of his mouth? He was mad. Mad, mad, mad. He needed help. He’d be locked up.
He’d lose Carlos.
When he uncovered his face and opened his eyes, there was a faint purple glow in the recording booth. Already dreading what he would see, Cecil glanced to the side.
Something… had formed on the wall. It was made of black, almost indigo light, curling in a circle and collapsing in on itself at the same time. There was a vortex on the wall. Cecil thought he could faintly smell animal blood. He stared at the vortex for what seemed like a very long time. He wanted to go through it.
Cecil was startled out of his trance by someone tapping on the window of his booth. The indigo light disappeared along with its source.
He got up out of his chair and exited the booth as indicated by station management- a lovely woman with a curvaceous figure and stark black hair. Her name was Ursula. Cecil had been terrified of her as an intern.
“What is going on?” She asked sternly, but her eyes seemed faintly concerned as well. “Did anything happen, Cecil? Something with you and Carlos?”
Cecil shook his head. He felt faint; everything was just piling up on him.
“No, no, of course not. Carlos is wonderful.” He swallowed. “I just feel slightly odd, that’s all. I’m going to go to the bathroom while the next song is on.” He darted past station management and Dana, who had fetched her, heading for the men’s bathroom. Perhaps if his show had more viewers it wouldn’t have been allowed, but talk radio had never been very popular outside of his hometown. He’d already played more songs than he usually did on his show.
Cecil pointedly ignored the small meow he heard upon entering the bathroom, striding over to one of the mirrors and staring into the sink. His hands clutched the counter, and they were shaking. Perhaps he should call Carlos. Perfect Carlos. He could help. He always helped.
He turned on the taps and splashed cold water on his face, which did little to help with the shaking. It didn’t really help with anything, actually, and he wondered why people always did that in movies.
Cecil looked up to face the mirror. He screamed.
Whatever was looking back at him, it wasn’t him. It looked like him, but it didn’t. It was hideous. A monster. Its hands, gripping the counter, were topped with thick, black claws, and its shrieking mouth was filled with tiny, sharp teeth. Its eyes were milky white, blank and empty; except for its third eye, which was bright purple and glowing as it peered through his hair. Tattoos writhed on its arms, alive and thrashing in fear; behind it, real, three-dimensional tentacles slowly oozing black ichor did the same.
Besides that, it was Cecil. It was Cecil exactly.
He screamed again, and reflexively punched the mirror. It cracked, spider-webbing out around his fist. The face that peered back, multiplied and cut in half by the cracks in the glass, was normal and human.
Cecil stepped back from the mirror, holding his hand against his chest. It pounded and throbbed, slowly spreading a scarlet stain across the white of his shirt. He had to reach out and grab the counter again to steady himself, and he couldn’t bring himself to look back at the mirror. He wanted to be sick.
He was still shaking so badly that he stumbled and tripped almost constantly as he fled the bathroom and then the station itself. The world was rotating around him, dizzy and spinning like the vortex that had materialized in his booth. When he looked up at the sky he saw no moon and no stars, just an empty, black titan of a planet and thousands of coloured, blinking lights.
Somehow, he managed to run all the way back to his home without stumbling into traffic and getting himself killed. He fell through the front door and staggered into the living room, breathing hard. He could smell the chilli and warm meat from Carlos’ cooking in the kitchen, and it should have been comforting. It wasn’t.
Cecil slid down the wall, hugging himself and only just realising that his frantic breaths had become full-fledged sobs. His face was hot and wet.
There was thudding on the floor as Carlos ran into the room, drawn by the sound of Cecil crying. Cecil’s vision was blurred and he didn’t see Carlos get down onto the floor beside him, just felt himself being pulled into his lap and cradled against his chest, his head tucked underneath Carlos’ while he trembled and sobbed and tried not to scream.
“Shh, shh.” Carlos murmured, kissing Cecil’s pale hair and burying his face in it. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’re okay, querido.” He pushed Cecil away slightly so that he could look at him, brushing his hair away from his face. “What happened, Cecil? Why are you crying?”
It took several minutes for Cecil to be able to calm down enough to answer. He could control the sobs but not the desperate, terrified tears streaming freely down his face.
“I-I’m going ma-ad.” Cecil stammered. His hands found Carlos’ hair, his fingers tangling in the strands. He clung to him for dear life, shaking like a leaf in the wind. “All day, I’ve been seeing things- and I have these dreams.”
“Is it about that book?” Carlos asked quietly, his hand running soothingly up and down Cecil’s back. “The one in your nightstand?”
Cecil looked up at him, startled. Carlos seemed sheepish.
“I saw you with it this morning. I’ve seen you with it a lot. It’s always on a morning, so I figured it was a dream journal.” He explained. Cecil couldn’t help a small smile.
“Amazing, clever Carlos.” He said, brushing the scientist’s cheek with the back of his hand. Then the eye tattooed on the back of that hand blinked and he burst into tears again. Carlos made a distressed noise and pulled Cecil close, hugging him tightly and peppering his face with kisses like he didn’t know what else to do.
“Talk to me, Cecil.” He practically pleaded. “I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me anything, querido, please. What have you been seeing? What dreams?”
There wasn’t silence, because Cecil was still crying; but no one spoke for several minutes as he tried to calm down again so that he could speak to Carlos. He no longer cared what he might think of him, he just didn’t want to be alone in this any more.
“I dream about us.” Cecil gasped, still clinging to Carlos. “In Night Vale. But it’s not how I remember it Carlos, not at all. It’s strange, and it’s scary, but I’m not as frightened of it as I should be.” The things in his dreams always seemed normal until he woke up. Even the hallucinations weren’t as bad as they should have been- up until the thing in the mirror, he’d been more afraid of his own mind falling apart than the things it was producing.
“You told me the dreams had stopped.” Carlos frowned, rocking Cecil back and forth where they clung to each other on the floor like drowning sailors. “You said they were gone.”
Cecil shook his head.
“I didn’t want to keep you worrying. The dreams never stopped.” He took a deep breath, preparing himself. “But they don’t go away when I wake up now. They stay. I keep seeing things everywhere and I don’t know what to do.” He’d started sobbing again.
“Shh. Shh.” Carlos murmured, squeezing Cecil tightly, comfortingly. “What have you been seeing?”
“Awful things.” Cecil gasped. “Things change when I look back at them, there are angels in the park and the clouds glow. Khoshekh was floating this morning. And I left work early because I looked in the mirror and… and I was a monster, Carlos.”
Carlos stared intently at Cecil, his brown eyes dark and contemplative. When he spoke again, he sounded incredibly, forcibly calm.
“It’ll be okay, Cecil.” He said gently. “We can get help for you, we can-”
“No, you don’t understand.” Cecil protested, shaking his head. Why couldn’t he stop crying? “It feels real, Carlos. The dreams that I have- I remember the dreams more clearly than I remember meeting you. Sometimes I- sometimes I can’t help but wonder if maybe that’s what’s real, and this is all a lie.”
Carlos looked scared.
“Carlos?” Cecil said, his voice high and hysterical.
Carlos said nothing. He couldn’t tell Cecil that sometimes he saw odd things too, that under the harsh lights of their bathroom his boyfriend’s tattoos sometimes appeared to move, his eyes to change colour. That sometimes Khoshekh didn’t land quickly enough when he jumped. The idea that Cecil’s creeping paranoia about their life being a lie might be correct was unspeakably horrifying, to both of them, and Carlos wasn’t going to do anything to further it.
“I’m real. You’re real.” Carlos said firmly, kissing Cecil hard on the lips. “Everything we’ve had together- all of that’s real, too.” He held Cecil close, smiling faintly in almost relief when he felt fingers wind through his hair. “You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure you are, querido. I promise you that.”
Cecil hiccupped, smiling shakily at Carlos. He didn’t know if he believed that they were just hallucinations and fever dreams, that the life they’d built for themselves was the only reality there was. In the back of his mind something insisted it was somehow false, that the world where Cecil had tentacles and a third eye was the real one. It seemed wrong, to be content with living a lie; but the world of this warped Night Vale was dangerous and unpredictable. There seemed to be, from what he’d seen in his dreams, a very high chance of he or Carlos being irreparably wounded one day. Where he was now, he was safe.
Cecil sat up and wrapped his arms around Carlos’ neck, hiding his face in the crook where it met his shoulder and taking deep breaths of air to try and cope with the aftermath of his crying. Carlos rocked him and held him, stroking his back and talking quietly to him in Spanish.
In the kitchen, the food began to burn. Khoshekh jumped down from the top of the wardrobe in the bedroom, and maybe he hovered above the floor and maybe he didn’t. The stars in the sky may not have been stars. Miles away, a city in the middle of the vast sand wastes of the desert slept, and perhaps they were normal and perhaps they were not. But here, in his living room, sitting curled on the floor by the door, Cecil knew he was safe.