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One of Carlos's earliest memories is being asked by a white kid in his class why he was putting on sunscreen when he was already brown; Cecil, listening to this story while walking around the front yard, pulling weeds with the heat of the desert sun beating down on the back of his neck, paused at that point and turned, held still in disbelief. "Do people really think..."
Carlos shrugged, kissed him and went to make some iced tea for him and Dana, crushing iced cubes, thinking that if love were scientifically observable, it would be here in this pitcher, the sweetness precipitating out in the frost. There was plenty of tea left for the following day and Carlos put it in a flask so Cecil has it with him now during his show. In one of his breaks he raises it in Carlos's direction, ironically toasting him through the glass; Carlos waves back. Cecil's smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.
Dana says that the sun she saw was red, and that has given Carlos strange nightmares of standing on the front step, watching the sun above Night Vale move through the entire main sequence, from coalescing nebula to dying star, in seconds while Cecil's hands freeze to nothingness in his grasp. He hasn't mentioned this to Dana or Cecil; he suspects they have nightmares enough of their own.
Cecil is reporting on what, by local standards, has been a slow news day. A couple of local kids are raising money for the Night Vale Community Widows, Orphans, And Everyone Else fund; on a little stand out at the front of her house, Old Woman Josie has been selling blessed lemonade. "How're you doing?" Carlos asks Dana, but there's no reply. She looks up and her lips curl wanly at him. Carlos smiles back.
"Cecil was saying," he says, "that you could maybe go and have some of the lemonade, and report back."
Dana shakes her head, and Carlos understands; Old Woman Josie lives at the edge of town, by the car lot, where the desert begins to curve smoothly towards the horizon, and Dana doesn't like the sun any more.
"It's okay," he says, gently, and goes downstairs for a moment to get the pizza they ordered; it will be cold by the time Cecil's show finishes, so they might as well eat. He tips the delivery guy generously and admires his antennae before going back inside.
"Thanks," Dana says, and they eat in companionable silence, pulling the slices apart and jointly moving all the mushrooms to Cecil's share. Some more of the iced tea is on the side and Carlos pours it out for Dana, then takes a sip himself.
It's still lovingly sweet, not unlike the lemonade, which as well as lemons, tastes like saran wrap, regret, and home. Carlos tried it in the morning on his way to the lab and found himself thinking of Dana, who as well as avoiding the sun (and, as this is Night Vale, that means she avoids going outside at all) moves stiffly, now, as though her skin is healing from the burns and her muscles are knitting themselves back together beneath but not becoming their previous whole, as though her body is only the sum of its parts. Dana could buy the lemonade and drink it in the centre of town, shouting into the sky about angels, and the City Council would do nothing; Night Vale itself is quiescent around Dana now, as though her trek across the sand at the dawn of the world forged her into its own sand and glass. No shadowy horrors come to her windows; the pizza they're eating is made of wheat. Her mom brings her over food in Tupperware boxes and her faceless old woman washes her dishes, except for the days when Cecil does, going over most evenings to see how she is. Sometimes Carlos goes too, and sometimes he doesn't; he feels, not excluded, but intruding, into something that has existed longer than Night Vale has been working its way under his skin. He has asked, in passing, how Cecil and Dana came to be friends – the answer was a Night Vale answer, involving sinkholes and shared crayons and finger-painted monsters in the kindergarten basement, but Carlos hears more in Cecil's voice than words, and thinks about what he might have done, long ago, if a little black girl with beautiful hair asked to borrow his sunscreen.
Dana puts down her slice of pizza and says, "What's that?"
In the studio, Cecil has just said: "And now, the weather" – but that's not it. Carlos looks up and breathes in and realises he took a second to recognise the sound because he hasn't heard it in so long, not for the eighteen months or more since he came to Night Vale, and in any case it's a sound of childhood, of home. The steady drumming on the roof goes on and Carlos abruptly realises that Dana is crying, very quietly, the paper plate falling out of her hands.
Carlos stands up and, behind the glass, so does Cecil. He comes out of the studio and glances at Carlos briefly before he takes Dana's hand and leads her out of the door and towards the stairs, nothing but certainty in his movements. Carlos hesitates on the threshold, looking at the empty room and Cecil's abandoned microphone and kind of wanting someone else to be there just so he can yell why the hell is it raining we're in the middle of the damn desert – and then his phone rings and it's one of his scientists shouting exactly that, so he hangs up because clearly they're on it, and follows Cecil and Dana.
Outside the sound of the rain is immense. Above him, the sky is rent by lightning and Carlos counts the seconds automatically until he hears the thunder, with some part of his brain calculating automatically that the storm is very close, right on top of them as though born directly above. He walks forwards slowly until he sees them, both sitting flat on the ground, Cecil holding Dana tightly, her head on his shoulder. She's still crying into his shoulder and he's holding her and he's crying, too, which Carlos can only tell because he knows Cecil's body language as well as he knows his own. The rain pours down on them both, trickling onto Cecil's glasses, snagging in Dana's curls, washing away salt.
Carlos thinks it would be quite besides the point to tell them they're both getting soaked to the skin. The rain is cool but not cold, pleasant and slightly sweet. After a minute they draw apart, and Carlos can see Cecil's lips moving and thinks he can guess what he's saying, something about love and home and missed you, but Carlos doesn't move any closer, not yet. In the strange light cast by the glowering sky, Cecil kisses Dana's forehead and the two of them get to their feet, helping each other up.
"Carlos," Cecil says, and then doesn't seem able to say anything else. He's bedraggled, wet through, grit and gravel sticking to his hands. Carlos loves him, utterly and completely. Dana still has one arm around him, holding her other hand out in front of her, letting droplets collect in her palm.
"Well," Cecil says, but he still can't speak and they don't move for a moment. They stand there, the three of them listening to the rain, listening to Night Vale listening to dead air.