Work Text:
CARLOS discovered music, like most people, in his early teens. Lying on his bed after he’d finished his homework, he’d plug in his Walkman and just let himself go, let himself listen. He knew it was all a cliché, but in all honesty, he didn’t care. He went through bands like some women go through shoes; Guns N Roses, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, George Michael, Alanis Morissette. It took him somewhere else. He didn’t have to think about the bruises on his mother’s neck and the whiskey on his father’s breath, or his sister’s full time job.
The music helped, for a while.
When Carlos finished high school, his teachers suggested that he looked for universities – there was a man coming from Michigan, a scientist and lecturer who was going to be giving a talk and it would do Carlos good to go to it, maybe apply to go to school there. This town was poison for someone as smart as Carlos, they said, and so Carlos went to the talk.
The scientist was a tall brunette with a sprinkling of freckles. He was unbelievably cute and Carlos couldn’t help but stare. His name was James, and when he went up to Carlos afterwards and asked him if he wanted to go for a drink, Carlos discovered, in one fail swoop, boys and science.
He didn’t end up going to James’ Michigan university, he went to a better one nearby, but not close enough, apparently: James ended it two years later and cited that the long distance had killed it. Carlos only found out later that he’d been sleeping with two of his students.
Even without James to help him, Carlos graduated university, got his PhD in record time and then, broke and living in a student flat, took the first job he was offered. He only spent a year there before he got a call from a lady who refused to identify herself. All she said was that there was a new lab opening somewhere in the desert and they needed someone like him working out there. She left a number and hinted at a massive starting salary and that was how, two weeks and one seven-hour car ride later, Carlos discovered Night Vale.
The science worked like the music. It helped him to lose himself, got rid of the guilt and the heartbreak that James had left behind. There was always so much happening in Night Vale that it was easy to forget about bathing and eating. He could lose himself working on an experiment and only find himself days later, hungry and disoriented, when one of his team put a hand on his shoulder and suggested that he “take a break”.
He stumbled out into the night, a little weak on his feet, and headed home. He took a shower, ate some cereal and then slept for almost forty-eight hours. The next morning, he went to the grocery store. A petite blond man stood in front of him, and when he turned around to introduce himself, Carlos’s heart flipped in his stomach.
“Hello,” the man purred. “You must be Carlos.”
And that was how Carlos made the most important discovery of his life so far: Cecil.