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I.
Cities from space look like spiderwebs. Cecil's seen the pictures (which, technically, he shouldn't have ever known about: the City Council banned knowledge of space travel decades ago. What can he say, he's always been a reporter at heart), and they're amazing. The bright lights spread out, streets and houses and parks clearly visible even from so many miles away.
Night Vale isn't like that.
"The Earth has become too crowded," the vague yet menacing organization's representative told them. She was a small, cold woman, full of angles and a face that tried to look pitying but came across as somewhat nauseous instead. "We need more room for, for lack of a better term, normal people. This town just takes up too much room. Technically, it shouldn't even fit in the state, since everything is so large, but there's closely connected parallel dimensions for ya, I guess."
The base they led everyone to -- Cecil, Carlos, the entirety of the Sheriff's Secret Police, even the librarians and, ugh, Steve Carlsberg -- wasn't on any map. Not even the ones with secret things, though those contained the secrets that everyone pretended to be ignorant of but everyone knew. That's the way Night Vale worked.
There were two ships and living quarters on each, though they were told that there was a device that would freeze each of them in time until they reached their destination. Something about saving food costs. The ships were on auto-pilot, anyways, so there was no need for a breathing crew. They'd get there and wake up and live on this other world that the scientists of Earth had prepared. And everything would be the same as in Night Vale.
(This planet was named Night Vale as well, but everyone had already agreed that it needed a different name. They couldn't go on pretending everything was the same after being cast out of their own planet.)
II.
"Carlos?" Cecil said, his smooth voice echoing around their tiny cabin. It had taken some bargaining to get a shared room, including a few skin and blood samples for the Organization's scientists to study. He didn't care about those scientists, of course, because his scientist cared too much about him to ever put him under a microscope.
"Carlos?" The word echoed again, but there was no reply.
There hadn't been a reply in days.
III.
Whatever gas the scientists had released to make them freeze until landing hadn't accounted for some of the more peculiar residents of Night Vale. Sure, Cecil looked human for all intents and purposes, but when seen in certain lights or if one stared too long at his shadow, he was something other. All hard angles and shapes and lines and the occasional writhing tentacle that didn't make sense on paper, much less as a solid form. He himself was a paradox, something that glided over mere human eyes and forced them to make something up to fill his space.
He was perfectly alright with that, of course. However they chose to see him had to be better than how he saw himself. He'd never liked the angles and cubes that greeted him in the mirror.
"Carlos," he said once more, "Night Vale looks beautiful from up here. All the other cities are shaped like spiderwebs, the houses and skyscrapers and streetlights are all spread out from the middle with roads collecting them and binding them together. But home--" no, it wasn't home anymore, not after they'd been forced out "--Night Vale looks like an eye. Isn't that just amazing? The dog park must be right in the middle there."
The cities were hardly even visible through the clouds now; it'd been a few hours since they'd lifted off. But he needed something to say.
When he spoke again (he wasn't sure how much space lay between his words, there were no clocks in the rooms of men that may as well be dead, but the Earth was far below them) his voice was quiet. "The silence is loud, Carlos. I don't want this. We could have fought them off, fought for our place in the world. Instead we were herded like cattle here."
Carlos had had a life outside of Night Vale, but he'd been herded along with the rest of the freaks and monsters that called the town home. "It isn't fair," Cecil continued, "but life hardly ever is, especially for those like us."
IV.
He talked to himself more than to Carlos, now. Carlos couldn't hear him, anyways, though the steady rise and fall of his chest assured Cecil that he was still alive. Thank God, he thinks, because without Carlos this whole thing would be meaningless.
Most of his time is spent staring out the small window. It's barely a square foot, but it's all he has. He makes up names for the stars -- that one is Carlos Major, that one is Dana, that one is Stacey and Chad and Jeffery. It occurs to him that nobody ever went in the dog park to get Dana and the hooded figures. What will happen to them? Will they be killed when the new residents move in? If the population problem was really as bad as it sounded, the park would surely be destroyed, and then what?
Maybe it had never been there in the first place. Maybe there was nothing to be destroyed.
V.
After Earth and the Moon and the Sun are far away, Cecil tries the door.
It comes open after a few days of trying.
"Hello?" He calls out, wandering the ship looking for someone, anyone who's still awake. But there's no response.
He's truly alone, and that scares him more than the empty void ever could.
VI.
He sleeps more often than not, and more often than that it's with one eye open.
He needs to know, he reasons, if something happens. So while he's curled into Carlos, one hand on the scientist's wrist to be sure the pulse doesn't stop beating a steady, human heartbeat, a faint glow reaches Carlos' face from Cecil's forehead. He rarely opens this Eye apart from when in his radio booth, soaking up information from all over town, since nobody can see him in there. The Eye acts as a barrier, of sorts: when closed, everyone else's eyes are closed too, though in a more metaphorical sense. They can't see his real form, the lines and impossibilities.
Lately, that form has grown darker, and he's not sure if it's from solitude or something else. But it's now more dark smears across the very fabric of reality than lines, and more tentacles and glowing eyes.
VII.
He never told Carlos about this form, and he doesn't plan to.
VIII.
A shrill shriek, like a human soul being torn apart, interrupts his sleep. Cecil jumps up immediately, darkness flying and Eyes searching the ship for any signs of life.
He finds life right in front of him. Cowering behind the bed, to be exact.
"C ar lo s?" he asks, reminiscent of the first few days on this solitary hell, but his voice isn't smooth anymore. It's quite the opposite, biting into Carlos' skin with every syllable of a name that doesn't even sound like his when spoken from this creature's many lips.
The scientist shrinks back further, looking around but unable to find any weapons to defend himself against this, this thing. What he sees, however, is emotion. The creature's many eyes that twist around the impossibly large form darken, then close, and the monster shrinks in on itself until it seems to be about Carlos' height.
"Where's Cecil?" Carlos asks, throwing an accusatory glance at the monster. The only reply Cecil gives is to shrink further, Eyes clenching tight until he can feel an arm, a leg, then two and a face and a nose. The black stardust still swirls around him, but Cecil is there too, and he's heartbroken.
A faint whisper in his mind points out that Carlos is alive and awake and they must have arrived, but the overwhelming thought is He hates me, oh god, he despises me he saw me he saw me he saw me he wasn't supposed to know oh no Carlos Carlos Carlos. His back is shaking and he realizes he must be sobbing.
"C-Carlos, I'm, I'm sorry," he hears himself say in a whisper, his voice hoarse. But why is he sorry? He was trying to protect Carlos, and what he got in return was fear?
Arms wrap around him, but he curls further into himself and denies any comfort from the man who just minutes before was terrified of him.
IX.
It doesn't take long to get Night Vale set up on this new planet. Or, Night Vale II, as they've elected to call it, since nobody could agree on a better name. It has a certain charm to it, if you look at it the right way or not at all.
Carlos hasn't spoken to him since they got off the ship.
X.
A knock sounds on Cecil's door. He opens up his Eye for just a moment, just long enough to see who's there without letting the abomination beneath his skin out for anyone else to see.
It's Carlos. Just as it's been every day for the past month.
He doesn't know why he's still angry. It's not as if it wasn't a reasonable response to waking up after somewhere around a year or ten of slumber and seeing a paradoxical creature looming over you. But he'd hoped for something different. If Carlos was to find out, that shouldn't have been his response. Fear, terror, loathing; they hurt. Worse than anything else Cecil had ever gone through.
But he can't ignore him forever.
"Door's open," he calls, voice as empty and unused as it's been since leaving the original Night Vale. Without his radio show, there's no reason to leave his quarters, so he's left maybe twice in the past four weeks. And he's spoken maybe once in that time.
The room is small, containing a kitchen and a bed and a small enclosed bathroom off to the side and not much else. No personal belongings; barely even recognizable as Cecil's home. Cecil, who'd spent a day tying pictures of him and Carlos to string and hanging them from the ceiling, so there was always a reminder of him even when the other man had to work late at the lab. It was alright, because in Night Vale, pictures did more than capture a moment. They froze it for eternity, among the rest of the moments scattered across the sky, so each glance at a photo brought back all the emotions.
There are no photos here, though he'd made sure to pack them carefully in his suitcase, in the pages of a book so they wouldn't bend or tear. No evidence of the nights Cecil reaches into the empty space in his bed and wakes up and realizes again how much he's screwed up.
Carlos sinks down onto the couch next to Cecil, and he could swear he's looking at a picture of their last day on the ship because he feels it all again: fear that Carlos will hate him after seeing the creature he's worked to hard to hide, anger that Carlos was afraid of him, heartbreak and despair upon seeing the matching emotions in Carlos' eyes.
"I'm sorry, Cecil," he says, and reaches around to brush away a tear that Cecil hadn't realized was there. He tries to blink them away, but in his carelessness opens his third Eye as he does it, letting darkness swirl around Carlos and himself. He doesn't bother to close it this time. Just turns to face Carlos and buries his face in the cotton of his shirt, wrapping all of his arms around him to be sure he won't leave.
"I was alone, Carlos," he begins. "For so long on that stupid ship, I was alone. I talked to you. Sometimes. About the stars, and all the things we never got to do -- we never did go to the Waterfront, did we? -- and about how perfect you are and how much I," a slight pause, though only Carlos would notice the sharp breath Cecil takes here, "loved you."
Loved. It sounded so strange. Like they were gone. "Love," he hastens to add on. "I still do. I just--"
"I know," says Carlos, wrapping his arms around Cecil and hoping he doesn't hurt the less human pieces. "I'm sorry."
Cecil closes his Eye, gathering it all back inside of him, and he can feel Carlos' frown without looking up at him. "You don't have to hide, Cecil."
But he does, he does he does he does he does-- "No, really, you don't. I love you."
Cecil looks up, and opens his Eye before kissing Carlos. Gently, though it's not as if they've never kissed before. Kisses after declarations of love are supposed to be special, Cecil thinks. Usually 'special' doesn't entail dark tendrils reaching into Carlos' hair as Cecil's hands wrap around his back, but they were constantly redefining things.
When Carlos opens his eyes, Cecil can see he's not afraid, and it brings him to smile for the first time in God knows how long.
"The Council released the ban on wheat and wheat by-products, since they don't seem to be turning into snakes here. Should we go grab some pizza?" Carlos asks, a tentative smile on his face. It's enough to make Cecil light up with joy again, and he nods. "I haven't had my required slice of Big Rico's in a few weeks, so I guess we'd better," he says, and kisses Carlos once again before standing up.
Yes, Carlos loves him, he's sure of it. He doesn't know why he ever doubted.
And as he goes out for the first time, he notices the new stars and suns (two of them, isn't that just fascinating?, Carlos says later, his face overwhelmed with happiness as he goes on about the uniqueness of this planet and how similar it is to Earth to allow them to live there) above, and he thinks they could be happy here, on a planet all to themselves called Night Vale II.