Work Text:
Carlos had known it would end up like this.
His longest relationship had lasted six months, and that had been with a fellow scientist who was almost as dedicated to science as Carlos was. It had taken Carlos a month to realize that the 'we make really great work colleagues' speech had actually been him getting dumped.
Carlos loved his work, and he worked a lot. His personal relationships tended to suffer in favor of the work.
And Night Vale was so unique, there were so many things to keep him occupied—well, it was no surprise this thing with Cecil seemed to be faltering, barely two months in.
It was part of why he'd resisted so long, not that he hadn't been intrigued and attracted and interested in Cecil, but there were a lot of things in Night Vale that interested Carlos. He couldn't help but want to study them all, and therein lay the problem.
Cooking dinner for Cecil the other night had started off well, despite the really unsubtle hints Cecil had had to drop to make it happen in the first place—and if Carlos thought the hints were unsubtle, god knew what subtle hints he'd missed.
But then Carlos had gotten distracted by the energy signatures the not-a-mirage army had left as they'd passed through town. He'd only meant to take a few measurements—he'd even waited until after they'd finished eating—but one thing had led to another, and who knew how long the energy signatures would be around before an otherworldly wind swept them away?
Cecil had said goodnight at some point and left, which Carlos only knew because a member of the Sheriff's Secret Police had been nice enough to tell him when he'd looked up and noticed Cecil wasn't there anymore. (Carlos still wasn't sure how he'd interpreted the series of clicks and whistles that emerged from the balaclava-covered mouth into something understandable.)
He'd also failed to remember to tell Cecil his good news: the City Council had approved his request to become an official, permanent resident of Night Vale.
He'd put his application in after the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex tiny hostile city incident, right after he'd asked Cecil to meet him in the Arby's parking lot. Somehow it had seemed like the right thing to do.
(The permanent part of the application had made him nervous at first, but, he'd reasoned, he was far more likely to die a horrific death and/or be consumed by the void before he'd feel the urge to leave Night Vale and study something else, so permanent was okay.)
Now he wasn't sure if he should tell Cecil.
It was only a matter of time before he completely ruined things.
Cecil didn't deserve that.
***
So instead of facing the issue like a man, he holed himself up in his lab for two weeks, eating way too many slices from Big Rico's (which would've been inadvisable even before the ban on wheat and wheat by-products) and not answering any calls, texts, or the doorbell. The tiny notes that appeared through the keyhole of the door in the lab that opened to a blank wall were left where they landed.
He still listened to Cecil's show, though. If there was some other way of getting the news in Night Vale (besides being caught in the middle of an event as it occurred), Carlos hadn't found it.
Not that he'd tried very hard.
Which—shit, he was late. The radio had been trained to turn on at the start of Cecil's show—no action necessary on Carlos's part—but ever since the half-failed dinner date it'd remained silent until Carlos remembered to jab at the buttons, none of which did what they were supposed to anymore.
The radio had obviously sided with Cecil in this non-breakup.
Carlos couldn't blame it, really.
He finally convinced it to work and Cecil's lovely voice floated through the air, halfway into a sentence. "...thought he liked me, listeners, but he won't answer my calls or transdimensional notes—written with food paste, in total compliance with the ban on writing implements, of course."
"I do like you," Carlos said out loud, feeling like an asshole. He'd never managed to say that directly to Cecil himself.
"I told myself he was probably caught up in something sciency, since his work is very important to him, and I understand that, listeners, I do. Each and every one of you is very important to me. But it's been two weeks; that's not good, is it?"
"It's not your fault," Carlos muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose and glancing over at the small pile of paper scraps on the floor. They glared back accusingly.
"Maybe I pushed too hard. We weren't even together long enough to need the blood of a sacrificial white armadillo to make the breakup official." There was a long sigh. "And now: the weather."
At first Carlos thought the lyrics were, "You're an asshole, you're an asshole, a coward and a jerk," before he realized his radio was actually singing over whatever the real lyrics were.
He couldn't help but agree.
***
Two days and one small disaster later—Cecil had reported on it as he always did, except this time Carlos wasn't 'my Carlos' or 'perfect Carlos,' he was only 'the scientist'—his guilt sat heavily in his stomach when it wasn't trying to claw its way up his throat.
He owed Cecil an explanation. He knew he did. This wasn't middle school, when suddenly ignoring a person was an acceptable way of initiating a breakup, even if it was for Cecil's benefit.
"Finally," the scrubby bush to the left of the lab's door said as he stepped out.
"Bring him flowers," said the one to the right. "He likes wolfsbane."
"I'm not—" Carlos began, but gave up quickly. He rubbed at the ache in his sternum and started walking.
The pain got worse as he neared Cecil's apartment building, tiny pinpricks of heat in his ribs and a squeezing around his heart, but he kept going.
Somehow he was in front of Cecil's door. He wasn't sure if he'd walked there or been teleported the last block, or if he still needed to knock.
The door swung open. "Carlos?"
"Cecil," he managed to gasp before he blacked out.
***
"You're sure he won't need anything else?" Cecil was saying when Carlos fuzzily swam back into consciousness. "No, no, he's still his normal color. No puncture wounds. Yes. Okay."
For a few confused seconds, Carlos had no idea where he was. His attempt at sitting up only got him halfway, panting and propped up on his elbows, but he recognized his surroundings. It was the floor of Cecil's living room, where he'd been once before, except he'd sat on the couch. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and there was pentagram drawn on his chest in something decidedly sticky. His chest hair in the middle of the pentagram was singed in a pattern he recognized but couldn't name.
"Carlos?" Cecil asked from the kitchen doorway, the receiver of an avocado green rotary phone clutched in his hand. "Yes, he's awake. Thank you, Dr. Williams."
Suddenly Cecil was kneeling next to him. Carlos had no idea if he'd blacked out again or if Cecil was just being Cecil. Cecil's hands hovered over his lap like he really wanted to reach out and touch Carlos but wasn't sure if it would be welcome.
Carlos tried to ask "What happened?" and croaked like a frog instead. (A normal frog, not the species that lived in the cacti in the Sand Wastes.)
"You won't be able to speak for a few minutes," Cecil told him helpfully, resting his hands on his knees. "I had to perform an emergency exorcism on you." He pointed to where an iridescent black thing writhed feebly on the carpet, much too close for comfort.
Carlos twitched away from it.
"Was that—was that why you came here?" Cecil asked. "Because it really would have been better to go to someone licensed, I haven't had to—"
Carlos shook his head.
"Right," Cecil mumbled. "You—you should rest for a few minutes, I'll get you a pillow." He started to rise, but Carlos was able to function enough to grab his hand and tug him back down.
They stayed like that, Cecil's skin cool under Carlos's sweaty grasp, until Carlos could form words again. Miraculously, the first thing out of his mouth did not pertain to keeping the now-still black blob for analysis. "Hi," he said, sitting up and letting go.
"Hello," Cecil replied. "Was that your first possession?"
"I guess so? I didn't know I was possessed; I thought it was just guilt."
"Oh, it was," Cecil said, clearly eager to explain. "Manifestations of guilt don't turn demonic unless you feel really terrible about something, and the first organ they go for is usually the one responsible for bringing them into being." He tapped the center of the pentagram on Carlos's chest, right over his heart.
Of course. Because collapsing and being saved by his almost-ex-boyfriend wasn't embarrassing enough.
"I'm terrible at relationships," Carlos blurted out.
"I'm beginning to understand that," Cecil said, not missing a beat. "So you weren't ignoring my calls for the last sixteen days because you were doing important science things?"
"I was, a little," Carlos mumbled. "Mostly..." he waved his hand at the black blob.
"Mostly working on your guilt demon? That's larger than average, you know."
Carlos ruthlessly tamped down on the urge to pepper Cecil with questions about demon sizes. Some distant corner of his mind was gibbering hysterically (and had been for a while) about the fact that the black thing on the floor had been inside him, trying to eat him alive, but he was so used to ignoring that corner it barely registered. He'd had over a year of practice, after all.
"Carlos," Cecil sighed. Carlos's heart gave a traitorous leap at hearing Cecil say his name with something other than worry. "Why did you come here? You're going to have to explain, it's not my week to have telepathy."
He squeezed his eyes shut so he didn't have to see Cecil's face. "I came to tell you that I'm terrible at relationships and that you shouldn't be in one with me."
"Oookaaaay," Cecil said. "That doesn't actually sound like you're breaking up with me."
Cecil had a point, but it would be easy to remind him why he should want to break up with Carlos. "I keep getting distracted by stupid experiments on our dates and I avoided you like a preteen for the last two weeks. My longest previous relationship lasted six months. That's it. Six. Possibly it was only five. If you extrapolate from that data, being in a relationship with me is going to end badly."
There wasn't a hint of gloom or irony in Cecil's matter-of-fact tone when he said, "Everything ends badly. Why should a relationship be any different?"
"What? No, Cecil, that's not—" True wouldn't come out, "—not the point. You deserve better. I don't want to hurt you."
It might have been a trick of the light, but when Cecil tilted his head something flashed in his eyes, just for a second, violet and glowing. It was beautiful. "That's the best way to tell if something's real. Besides looking at it, of course."
They sat there on the floor looking at each other.
The pentagram on Carlos's chest began to itch, and he raised a hand absently to scratch at it, jumping a bit when Cecil caught his wrist. "Can you stand?" Cecil asked.
Once Carlos was mostly steady on his feet, Cecil led him to the kitchen sink, where he got a dishcloth embroidered with a cheerful daisy pattern wet and started wiping away the pentagram. He seemed to be deconstructing the lines in a specific order, but when Carlos tried to memorize it he found himself thinking about pyramids instead.
"It's grape jelly," Cecil explained, carefully removing the circle around the pentagram. "I was making a sandwich."
Goosebumps rose up on Carlos's bare arms. He was suddenly very aware that he was half naked in Cecil's kitchen. With Cecil. Who was touching his chest. Carlos shivered.
When the last of the grape jelly was gone, Carlos asked, "Now what?"
"I don't want to break up," Cecil told him plainly. "You cooked dinner and even sat down to eat it all with me on our last date; that was good. You put us first for a little while. I would've liked longer, but if I wanted miracles, I'd ask the angels at Old Woman Josie's out near the car lot."
"Cecil..."
"It would be silly to break up now," Cecil quickly continued, twisting the dishtowel in his hands. "We haven't had time to get the proper leverage to rip each other's hearts out. We haven't—" He made a frustrated sound and dropped the towel on the counter. Carlos pretended not to notice the ragged tears it now sported.
"Cecil," he tried again. He reached out and tipped Cecil's chin up to look him in the eye. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was such an asshole, I'll try harder not to be in the future. On our next date I promise I won't do any science—"
"Or chew loudly," Cecil interjected. He leaned closer.
"Or chew—is it that bad?"
Cecil nodded.
"Or chew loudly," Carlos amended, "and—and—"
"You'll invite me in for coffee at the end of the night?" Cecil offered, smiling one of the smiles that used to make Carlos very, very nervous. Now it made him nervous in a decidedly different, more pleasant way.
"And I'll invite you in for coffee," he said.
"We could have coffee now," Cecil suggested. "Since you're here already."
Carlos swallowed and closed his eyes. Their noses were brushing. He'd never wanted to kiss someone so badly. "I don't think saving me from a guilt demon counts as a date. And thank you, by the way. For saving me."
"Oh, it wouldn't have killed you. You can live without a heart, right?" One of Cecil's hands came up to press over the patch of partially singed chest hair.
"No," Carlos said, "I can't."
Carlos politely ignored the high-pitched noise Cecil made right before he leaned into the kiss.
(He also hoped that Cecil knew he meant his answer both metaphorically and literally, but he could clarify that some other time when there wasn't imaginary coffee to be had.)
***
"Nice," the scrubby bush to the left of the lab's door said when Carlos returned the next morning.
"Knew he'd be a biter," said the one on the right.
The radio clicked on when Carlos set the tupperware container Cecil had let him borrow on his workstation. The remains of the guilt demon inside made a squishy noise as it rolled. Cecil had assured him that it would be perfectly safe to analyze it now that Carlos didn't feel guilty anymore, but before he got started he carefully set an alarm on his phone to go off at six.
Carlos had a very important date tonight, after all, and this time he'd be sure to remember to tell Cecil that his residence in Night Vale was permanent.