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“Hello?” The scientist’s voice crackles slightly over the strained connection, but Cecil can make out the words crystal clear.
“Carlos, thank the heavens, are you alright?” He’s unspeakably grateful just to hear the familiar tones he’s missed in the weeks since the doors vanished. Carlos dismisses his concern with assurances of how fine the desert is, how the sun is bright, but not like it was. The words are meant to be comforting, but Cecil finds himself crying unexpectedly; he clamps a hand to his mouth to stop the shaky sound from betraying his tears over the phone.
“Hey,” Carlos soothes. “Hey, no crying. We’re not allowed to cry during these calls, that’s going to have to be a rule. I don’t know how long I can keep this connection at a time, so we have to make the minutes count.” The warbled edge to the words brings Cecil a twinge of selfish reassurance that the admonition isn't meant only for him. He clears his throat and wipes at his face.
“It’s good to hear your voice.” A pause as guilt rushes through him. “I’m so sorry I sent you in there,” he continues quietly. “If I had known you couldn’t come back - come home - I would never have sent you through those doors.”
“I would have gone with or without your suggestion, Cecil." He can practically hear Carlos rolling his eyes in that adorably miffed little way he's prone to do when Cecil worries. "You’re always saying curiosity kills the cat, but you never specified it could get the cat trapped in a parallel existence,” the scientist teases.
“You’re a cat in this scenario, spine ridges and all?” Cecil manages with a little laugh. It's easy humor, but it hardly helps to buoy their spirits. Suddenly he's afraid he's going to cry again. Carlos must be able to tell, because he changes the topic with a forced gaiety.
“T-tell me about today. Tell me what happened after the doors shut.”
“Steve Carlsberg hugged me,” Cecil groans after a moment. “And he started doing this horrible impression of you, and it sounded nothing like you. It was all squeaky and nasal and terrible. And he’s just terrible. And he gives terrible hugs.” Carlos laughs a little, and then catches himself. He's been a little self-conscious about his laugh since the throat spider incident, but Cecil thinks it sounds warm and sweet like a summer batch of mint tea left to steep in the sun. "See, not nasal and squeaky at all," he murmurs more to himself.
“Ceciiil," Carlos drawls, and Cecil can just imagine the way he's scrunching his nose, the tips of his ears flushing self-consciously pink. "What happened after that?”
“The doors were shut, and the sun set, and Josie threw a party over at the car lot. Everybody was there, and there was music and corn muffins and rattlesnake shots. Even the sheriff was there and he brought some illegal board games with him and everyone was just so happy.” The call goes silent for a moment, save the eldritch murmurings customary of long-distance calling.
“I don't hear anything. Which means why aren’t you there celebrating with everybody else?” Carlos asks gently.
“Because you should be here." It's the truth. Those doors should never have closed, not for his Carlos. He had saved the city on more than one occasion; what right did the universe have to exile him from its borders? Carlos inhales a shuddering little breath.
“I will be.” His voice cracks a bit. “It won’t be long now, you’ll see.” A loud clap of thunder echoes from the other end of the line, and Cecil's phone emits an electric shock in response that jolts through his bones. “I have to go, Cecil, my phone seems to be acting up.” The next sentence is muffled by another low rumble, but he can make out the last few words. “-by our anniversary, I promise. Don’t give up on me, alright?”
“Never,” Cecil promises as his phone illuminates with a bright flash. “I love you,” he adds, but the line has already gone dead.
-
The desert is lonely. Carlos doesn’t mind the heat of the blinding sun or the rough terrain leading away from the mountain or even the gnawing hunger in his stomach, but the loneliness is almost too much to handle. He never expected it would take this long to find a way back, but here he is nearly a month later and still no closer to crossing any dimensions. More than anything he misses home, with all its dangers and darkness. He misses his laboratory filled with confounding experiments, rice pancakes and scorpion syrup on Sunday mornings, Cecil's voice lulling him to sleep when the days feel too long.
They'd been naive, he realizes now, to assume that communication would be simple. Messages are sent and received with incomprehensible timing, and more often than not, attempts at contact are more frustrating than comforting. Cecil sends him vines of occult rituals playing backwards, snapchats of Steve’s Corolla all captioned with variations of ‘ugh’, and a single blurry attempt at weird sexting involving only a banned toaster and what appears to be half of an illegal hot dog bun. But every time he tries to call Cecil, it’s either filled with menacing static, or the crack in his phone screen will bleed, or black mist will pour out of the headphone jack. So the only voice Carlos ever seems to hear is his own anymore. Which is why when he hears his name spoken from behind, he nearly collapses from the shock.
“You’re the scientist, right? I mean it’s not that hard to tell since you’re the only person in, like, a mile, and you’re in a lab coat. Also I’m omniscient now, so, y’know...” Carlos turns to size up his companion - tall and dark and wearing only a tailored suit jacket and gold shutter shades over the place where humans have eyes. The visitor is fiddling with a cell phone that beeps and whirrs in the cartoonish effects of a game.
“Erika Vanston?”
“Erika with a K.”
“I literally just said that; you can’t tell spelling through pronunciation alone,” Carlos says flatly. It's been a long week of too many days and too few sleeps, and really he doesn't tend to feel any kinship whatsoever to pantsless billionaire deities.
“Rude. I crossed dimensions just to check on you.”
“Sorry,” Carlos mutters, rubbing at his eyes before replacing his glasses. “Bad day. Bad month I guess.” His scientific curiosity piques as he studies the less-risqué portions of the angelic being from the corner of his eye. He's never really had the opportunity to examine an angel up close, since every time he attempts to do so, he's loudly reminded by passerby and Secret Police alike that they don't exist. From this proximity, he can make out that their skin is patterned with galaxies, moving ever so slightly - in time with the universe he imagines. Eyes are everywhere there shouldn't be eyes, and a glimmering, razor-sharp ring crowns their head. “Angels can traverse different realities?” he asks, attempting to sound casual even as his excitement waxes.
“Mmmmmmmhm,” Erika mumbles without looking up from the phone in their hand. “So do... you want to talk about it?” Erika offers after an awkward pause. “I am a celestial being, so I can probably give you divine insight into your problems or whatever.” The scientist's hopes crest, then fall as he realizes that this is purely a social call and nothing more. Still it is a social call from a vaguely familiar entity. He eyes the angel for a long moment before his loneliness wins out over discretion.
“Where do I belong? I thought I belonged in Night Vale, but then the doors shut with me on this side.”
“Everybody has a void, Carlos. We all try to fill it with things that will make us happy, or make us feel like we belong. I filled my void with money.” A silence stretches on for nearly a full minute, only punctuated by the tap of Erika’s fingers on the touch screen.
“And what did you realize brought you true happiness in the end?” Carlos prompts.
“The money. I thought - I thought I made that clear. I’m freakin’ loaded.” Erika looks up from the phone for the first time since their arrival with a sparkling grin. “And it. is. awesome.” Carlos has to try very hard to not roll his eyes visibly. Divine insight is proving completely useless. “So a door slammed in your face,” Erika continues after a moment. “You’re going to let that keep you in this crappy wasteland?” Carlos can feel his patience slipping away faster than his guest deserves.
“What exactly do you propose I do instead?”
“Follow your heart or something,” Erika shrugs. “Trust me, I have a certificate in all this touchy-feely...stuff.” Carlos doesn’t even try to not roll his eyes this time. “Why aren’t you talking to your radio guy about all this?”
“He and I...” Carlos sighs. Erika is the very last person he wants to talk to about the current state of his romantic affairs, but it's becoming apparent that he won't be finding another confidant in the desert anytime soon. “We’re just not in sync right now. It’s the distance.”
“Communication is the key to every good relationship,” Erika suggests.
“Did you learn that in your feelings class?”
“Okay, first of all it was not a class, it was sixteen hours spent watching romantic comedies on Netflix. And it was definitely because I wanted that certificate and not because my PA fell asleep on my shoulder in the middle of Love, Actually.”
“If you wanted a certificate so bad, couldn’t you just...I dunno, buy one?” Carlos asks with a wry smile. The longer he spends with Erika, the more he wonders if maybe he'd misjudged Marcus in life as well.
“You don’t understand, Jake is cute when he snores. Like, really cute.” Carlos shakes his head with a snort. “Look, just talk to him about it before you have some sort of existential...thing,” Erika says gesturing vaguely as they begin to slowly disappear. Scientific curiosity gets the better of him again, and Carlos reaches out cautiously to see if the angel is still tangible.
“Why are you fading?" Hope sparks within him again for a brief moment. "Are you overlapping with reality like Dana used to? Is it difficult to stay in this reality since you don’t belong here?”
“Nah, this just makes for a fantastic exit,” Erika replies as the last flicker of golden wings vanishes into the endless desert sky.
-
Carlos waits a while before following the divine advice. The stars are just peeking through the cobalt canopy above when a groggy Cecil answers the phone.
“What time is it?” he slurs.
“Just after sunset,” Carlos shrugs, though he’s not sure why since there’s nobody to witness the gesture.
“It’s four in the morning here,” Cecil yawns. As Carlos begins to apologize, a strange desperation crawls its way from his stomach into his voice. He needs this, needs to hear home. He needs to know he's not completely alone. “Don’t go,” Cecil says, breaking off his suggestion to call back at a better time. “Please don’t go.” Carlos doesn’t want to let the desperation show, so he swallows back whatever he was going to say next. “How are you?” Cecil asks finally, sounding gradually much more awake.
“Scientifically fine,” Carlos replies steadily. It's oddly true. For spending weeks traversing a desert without food and water, he's physically no worse for the wear.
“And unscientifically?” Cecil asks carefully. Carlos bites his lip, afraid to say the words aloud. “Tell me what’s wrong,” the voice on the other end urges gently after the long silence.
“I don’t belong here, I don’t belong there, I don’t belong anywhere, and I'm a scientist who can’t even figure out basic trans-dimensional science and Marcus Vanston was just here quoting romantic comedies and cat posters at me, and I hate Love, Actually because everybody ended up miserable and alone, and what if Love, Actually is my love story and I’m meant to be miserable and alone too?” The horribly constructed sentence spills out in a single breath followed by a choked little sob.
“I...what?” Cecil asks.
“I never felt that I fit anywhere,” Carlos says deliberately, slowly, digging the fingernails of his free hand into his palm to focus the mess of thoughts. “And then I found a town full of strange and beautiful things that don’t quite fit and I found you and I thought..I thought maybe the life we were building together was where I belonged. But when those doors shut, I knew, I just knew. What if there is no way back because I don’t belong anywhere?” Carlos hates himself for breaking their rules, but tonight he can’t help the stray tears that mingle with the sand smudged into his cheeks.
“Oh, Carlos, my Carlos,” Cecil breathes the words in familiar curling patterns that soothe the scientist's nerves into a velvet calm. “You belong right here with me. What would ever make you think otherwise?”
“The doors. They wouldn’t let anyone stay who didn’t belong. And they wouldn’t let me stay. It’s science," he chokes. It strikes him odd that his trusted companions of logic and reason were what betrayed him in the end. It strikes him odd in a way that elicits a single, desperate laugh.
“Perhaps science isn’t absolute. Please don’t hang up on me for saying that,” Cecil amends immediately. “I’m not insulting science, I just...maybe science doesn’t dictate you. Or me, or any of us. You dictate your own choices. It's up to you to decide how you exist or where you belong.”
“I didn’t choose to be here,” Carlos says morosely. “I want to be home.”
“I want you home too,” Cecil admits. “I miss your warmth in my arms, the curve of your smile.. And I can't sleep in a bed without you, but home is something you have to find for yourself. Maybe in a different plane of reality, yes, but in yourself too. And if the only way to find it is to have you there and me here for a while, then it’s okay. It’s okay because you’ll know for sure by the end that this - Night Vale, here, with me - it's exactly where you belong.” Carlos knows it’s true, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. His whole life he’s always just assumed himself to be on the outside, and maybe it’s this silly assumption that’s keeping him isolated in an empty desert; the same way his assumption that he had to be perfect to be worthy of love nearly got him killed in a floating black cube. “Carlos?” Cecil asks after a time.
“I just didn’t think it would take this long,” he admits, swatting away an inky black shape that has begun to protrude from his phone’s usb port.
“Are there stars there?” Cecil asks unexpectedly. Carlos looks up at the night sky filled with flickering bits of light.
“Yes. But the moon doesn’t exist here as far as I can tell.”
“That’s alright, I don’t think it actually exists here either.” Carlos laughs a little at that, really laughs, and it’s so, so nice to feel something good again. “I’m looking at the stars too. If you like, we can pretend they’re the same ones. You can imagine constellations and name them, and when you come back to me we can spend a whole night finding them again together.”
The black shape is growing like an unnatural shadow, but Carlos isn’t ready to let the distance separate them. Not again. “Promise it’ll really happen? That I’ll really come home?”
“Oh, Carlos,” Cecil breathes the syllables again, that same gentle way he always does when the science gets too messy and the world becomes too much. “I believe in you so much. I haven’t given up on you; please don’t give up on yourself.”
The shadow is spreading so quickly now, but there's nothing immediately menacing about the event, and frankly Carlos is too tired to care this time. He lies down on the sand, removing his lab coat and then spreading it over himself as a makeshift blanket. "Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?" he asks, actually grateful for the depth of the darkness that has settled comfortably around him now. He drifts off to the hushed sound of Cecil's voice, and for the first time since the doors shut, he sleeps in peace and dreams of home.