Chapter Text
It was just another sleepy night in Night City, a place where nothing out of the ordinary for a city happens.
But this was not one of those nights, eventless and dark.
Now our story will begin, it shall begin, in a city park.
“GET OUT!” Cecil's father belted, shoving him out of the door of their apartment and slamming it, unanymously yelling “AND DON'T COME BACK YOU FUCKING FAGGOT!”. Cecil was stricken with a sense of fear in this situation. He had just been exiled from the 15-year care of his parents, the only objects on him being a key to the apartment that his bigoted father had forgotten to take from him, his cell phone, and a wallet containing his personal information and a small pittance of money that he had managed to grab from the lockbox under his bed before his father had caught up to him. He never did trust banks, always moving your money around without your permission for the sake of their other clients.
So, playing out his possible options, tears in his eyes, he ran, ran down the stairs of the apartment complex, accidentally tripping on the sixth step on the last set of stairs and tumbling the rest of the way down. When he came out of the shock of what had just happened, he felt the back of his head, and reeled back when a considerable amount of blood was staining his hand. But nonethematter, he still had to run, to keep running. Eventually, he came upon the city park in the central of Night City, sat down on a bench, and only then broke down, his tears a flowing river. Why had fate forsaken him, of all people?
After crying for several minutes, he calmed himself down, breathing heavily, inward, outward, inward, outward, in an attempt to get himself together. He knew he couldn't stay here like this. Safe as this town was, there was still one gang, an enigmatic one that nobody knew the name of. All they knew was that they congregated at the park on a random night each week, hoods concealing their faces. If he were caught by them, he would probably end up with a fate of showing up on the five o' clock news. He shuddered at the thought of being beaten or mutilated by a gang, a little voice in the back of his head saying that he didn't care what happened to himself anymore and that he should just let it happen, which he shook his head to, upset that he would even think that way.
He needed to stay the night with someone. He hadn't ever been the most popular student with anyone at the local high school, so he only had a handful of friends to speak of. There was Dana, a stout, african american girl he'd met in fifth grade who was a flute prodigy; Hyram, who had this strange disposition towards anything related to dragons; and Carlos. Carlos had just moved to Night City recently, and Cecil had never mentioned him to his parents, hell, they didn't even know he or his family existed in there neighborhood. The community wasn't as tight-knit as others, so there was no way Cecil's parents would've met Carlos's. His place would be the perfect hiding spot.
Pulling out his cell, he was once more fearstricken. His iPhone was only at 10 percent battery life! Besides, he hadn't known whether or not his parents had cut him off from the service plan they were paying for yet, so he had to make the call fast, or find a telephone booth somewhere to make the call. Flipping through his contacts, he smiled warmly at Carlos's number before tapping it so that the device would make the call. Carlos, for all intents and purposes, was his only hope.
<===>
Carlos, the scientist that Cecil mentioned earlier, was currently in his room. Well, room was a tad bit of a broader term, because at the current time it had carpet only on one half, the half he lived in. The other half at the current time was a laboratory setup, complete with sets of various graduated cylinders, beakers, Erlenmeier flasks, round-bottom flasks, test tubes, bunsen burners, and various chemicals deemed safe for learning chemistry at home, all on a steel table his parents had bought him from a scientific surplus website. At the moment however, he was on Tumblr, one of his favorite websites. His laptop glowed outward as he browsed the sea of posts below him, his expression changing depending on the nature of each post. Suddenly, he felt his phone ring beside him, a beaten up blackberry that still put up a fight. Three year's he had that phone, and it had done nothing but work and work and work until the labels on the buttons begun to break down and the back became covered in batttle scars. It was a trooper.
Seeing who it was, his expression changed to one of a warm smile. Cecil... Cecil, the one who he'd crushed on ever since he had moved to Night City. The one who wanted to be a radio journalist when he grew up, the sensitive one in his class who just wanted to curl up in a ball sometimes and hide away. Carlos was the first one that Cecil had told that he was gay, and Carlos, of course, took it well. He himself was bisexual, so once they had gotten close he began to have some more-than-platonic feelings for the smaller boy, although he never voiced them aloud. In fact, he had never told Cecil he was bisexual, it was just something he had kept to himself. Carlos had dated Dana for a long while, until they had broken up over an argument based on science, and Carlos, the scientist that he was, was not going to be allowing his honour as a scientist to be contested. As full-of-himself as that sounded, he was headstrong when it came to science based on factual evidence...
Nevermind, the Narrator thinks, this is useless, foiling the fuck about about things that don't pertain to the storyline on hand. Makes me sick, it does. Let's just go back to the storyline we were on and not get off track, thank you.
Pressing the green answer button on the phone's left side, he pressed the phone to his ear, greeting his friend and secret crush fondly.
“Hi Cece!” Carlos said happily into the phone, but the knowledge he was about to receive was going to take his happy mood and tear it asunder.
“H-hey... Carlos...” Cecil shivered as he talked from the park bench. It was cold out, and he knew that any more time out here would get him sick from exposure. As if the clouds opened and God himself was like
God: Cecil!
Cecil: Yes, God?
God: Fuck you!
It began to rain. A torrential downpour across the entire city, and cecil had nothing more than a purple-and-teal Hawaiian-style shirt on, and black skinny jeans. That said, he continued talking.
“C-carlos... my parents found out that I'm gay...” Cecil said, the wind biting him as he dropped that bombshell for Carlos.
“Cecil, no... how did they find out?” Carlos said, exasparated at the prospect of his friend being outed by his own personal information.
“S-search history, the fact that the discovered I'm a member of the Night City GSA, for god's sake, they even went online and browsed my texting history. I'm so fucked right now Carlos... I... Could I stay the night at your place?” Cecil said, tears pricking his eyes again, the tears insignificant as he was now fully soddened by the rain yet all the more significant from an emotional standpoint.
“I... of course Cecil!” Carlos said, happy that Cecil was trusting enough of him to use his place as a laying-low space. “I'll just ask my parents if it's alright!” Carlos, socks on his feet and Space Jam pajamas on his body, walked down the hall towards his parent's bedroom and poked his head in. “Mom, Dad, is it alright if I have a friend stay over tonight?” he said, smiling warmly at his parents. They were accepting and new-age as they come, and had a general respect for all (unless you were rude to somebody in their presence, they had a low tolerance for that), and didn't blink an eye over Carlos's coming out. To them, it was a positive for Carlos, opening up his dating pool significantly, although a nerdy scientist kid wasn't the most popular type in a date situation. “Sure hon, just make sure to get to bed at a decent hour. I'm certain it's important if they're staying over on a school night!” his mom said, smiling before looking back at her book on molecular neuroscience. “Thanks!” Carlos exclaimed, raising his blackberry to his ear again.
“Okay, come over when you have your things in order. And be careful about getting your stuff!”
<===>
Unfortunately, Cecil, despite attempting to be as quiet as humanly possible when sneaking back in for his money and laptop, opened his bedroom door only to find his twin brother smiling sadistically back at him and throwing a punch towards his face. “Hello Cecil, welcome back, you stupid fag.” Kevin said, his punch landing on Cecil's left eye. “Dad knew you would be coming back for your stuff, so I decided to take the liberty of making sure you and your worthless self never get to it. Take my advice and just run away now.”
Kevin had been a jerk in the past, but this was too out of bounds for anyone. Throwing another punch, Cecil expected it, dodging and rolling past him into his room. He and Kevin both looked at Cecil's laptop bag and instantly dove for it, Kevin getting there first but Cecil quickly swiping it from him, throwing it around his shoulder and grabbing his ukulele in the process. “I know I never learned to play you, but forgive me!” Cecil yelled, slamming it onto Kevin's head.
The arm and body of ukulele snapped in two upon impact, but it caused Kevin to stall, holding his head in pain as Cecil quickly moved down to where his lockbox was hidden. Grabbing the entire thing, he got up only to find Kevin angrily looming over him, kicking him in the chest and causing him to slam into a shelf on the other side of the room. Kevin walked to where Cecil lay, body splayed out on top of the broken shelves and grabbed his collar, lifting him up by it. “Weakass...” Kevin lauded, “Couldn't even beat his own brother in a fight...”
Suddenly, a certain anger-imbued strength flowed through Cecil, and he shoved Kevin back. Kevin was taken aback at this sudden display of strength, but only for a few moments as Cecil grabbed the lockbox by the handle and slammed it into the left side of Kevin's face, knocking him out cold.
“I am not weak...” Cecil said, wiping a little bit of blood from his nose and breathing heavily, a result of the strife that just occurred. He wasn't going to be able to hide that black eye that was forming from Carlos, but he just shrugged and, opening the lockbox, removed the cash and shoved it into his laptop bag, along with a couple sets of clothing, the bag now bulging due to the mass it was taking in. Sneaking out once more, Cecil heard Kevin groan and high-tailed it out of there, not wanting to deal with a round two he knew he couldn't win in his weakened state.
Stumbling onward, he eventually made it to Carlos's house, a two-floored mini-castle in one of the wealthier districts of the city. Carlos, as devoted as he was to Cecil, was waiting for him, opening the door and pulling him inside, hugging him tightly. “Oh god Cecil, I missed you! You need to be careful and stuff, y'know... Is that a black eye? Oh god, Cecil, what did they do to you?”
At once, Cecil corrected him, “HE did to me. My father was sleeping by the time I snuck back in to grab my money and laptop. My fucking psycho sadist brother decided to stay up all night waiting for me, and long story short I'm now down one ukulele, and he's currently icing the nasty wound I gave him with the lockbox, and of course the uke.” Carlos was astonished that he had walked away from that fight virtually unscathed, save for the black eye and a bloodied nose. From what Cecil had told Carlos, his brother was as crazy as they come, a sadist who killed small animals for fun as a child when they had lived in Night City's smaller sister town, Desert Bluffs.
The last one who had picked a fight with Kevin had both of their arms broken , and he'd been in and out of juvenile hall for the past several years, so at the very least the fact that it was his own brother showed restraint in the fight on Kevin's side.
“Oh Cecil...” he began to well with tears, holding Cecil even tighter as he started bawling, “There there... I'm here.” Cecil himself had begun to cry at his own life situation, taking comfort in the fact that his friend was hugging him. “You gonna be okay?” Cecil said, concerned with just how much his friend had cried.
“Yeah... I think so... Here, come on up to my room.”
<===>
Cecil had never seen Carlos's room before, but was astounded at the amount of scientific equipment that he had on the one side of it. And it was a mess, papers and notes scattered throughout in what could be best described as a case of “controlled chaos”. The other side however was like a step into any other boy's bedroom. A bed, a small closet, a bookshelve, and subsequently, a wide variety of differentiating genres and varying conditions of books, from near-new, to dog-eared with pages falling out. The whole room had that light musty 'Apple Store' smell, the one that all of the Apple stores he had ever gone to had, but to Cecil, it was wonderful.
More than that, it would be the place, although he does not know it yet, where he will be taking residence going forward, but that'll come some time in the future and is not part of this current train of thought.
Once Carlos had given him the grand tour of his room, he turned around and smiling, he asked, “Well, what do you think? Pretty nice, yes? Well, it is a little bit shabby. I hadn't been expecting you, so please don't be upset that it wasn't exactly the cleanest...” suddenly, Cecil smiled back, running up and hugging the 16-year-old tightly, exclaiming, “I love it! Oh, it's so wonderful! Thank you so much for letting me stay.” At this, Carlos blushed deep red, although in Cecil's current position wrapped around Carlos's stomach he couldn't see it, and Carlos made sure the red tinting his cheeks was gone by the time they broke the hug.
“So, what were you able to bring before fleeing again?” Carlos was curious about this, since he knew that he didn't have much time due to the altercation between he and his sibling.
“Oh, just some essentials, a few sets of clothing, my laptop and its trappings (the charger, a small graphics tablet, an expensive-looking microphone used for recording podcasts, a mouse with a handpainted eldrich horror's face on it, and a keyboard, an old black one with grey keys and a p/2 connection end that Cecil had somehow gotten an adapter to USB for), and of course whatever cash I had stashed under my bed in the fire-proof lockbox I decided to buy for it. Never know when a fire'll happen! Yes, I did come prepared” Cecil said matter-of-factly, pointing his thumb to his chest and grinning widely.
“You did indeed,” Carlos chuckled, “However, you did forget a sleeping bag, which is a little bit of an issue due to the fact that my brother Diego is going to be taking up the couch during his visit. Oh, I know, you can sleep with me!”
Carlos regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth, and his tanned cheeks turned a deep shade of strawberry red. But it seems as though it didn't phase Cecil, who smiled at the suggestion and said, “Sure! I mean, I didn't want to bother you or take your bedspace... I could just sleep on the floor, see?” Cecil laid down but found Carlos's bed and trappings took up practically the entire living, carpeted half of his room.
He tried lying down on the cold linoleum of the laboratory section, but gave a halfhearted sigh as he got up and dusted himself off.
“Yeah, I can see that's not going to work.”
“So it's settled then, we'll share the bed. I might need to convince my parents in the morning to let you stay here and lay low while your relatives are frantically going on a manhunt for you, but rest assured I won't be prepared to let them say no to a friend in need!” Carlos said, feeling a little bit like a hero to the freshman before him. And likewise, Cecil looked up to Carlos, knowing that he would protect him no matter what. “Well, it's around 11 now... let's go to bed, alright? I'm sure you'll feel jake for sure, with a bit of bedrest that is, Cecil” Carlos said, just jumping in and getting under the blankets due to the fact that he already had his pajamas on, covered with depictions of Charles Barkley and Bug's Bunny.
Yes, what a magical movie, Space Jam, the narrator thought as he had flashbacks of fond memories (and promise from the lead programmer that, for this upcoming prideless plug, a large sum of cash) playing the RPG based on Barkley's slam-jamming self, Barkley, Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden, episode one of the now internet-famous Hoopz Barkley Saga. Yes, that last plug did have an air of pridelessness, but hey, who's complaining when you're getting money in return! It's not “selling myself out”, I see it more as using my stance as a writer. Pepto Bismol, anyone? Because guaranteed, my interruptions are beginning to make you sick to your stomach at this point. To put it into words, Douglas Adams and Lemony Snicket did their interbook interjections better, hell, even the writer of the Eragon movie hired better narration talent to interject the storyline... no, that's too big a stretch. Nevermind! We need to get back and see what Cecil and Carlos are up to.
<===>
It was several hours later, and Carlos couldn't sleep a wink. He was thinking way too much about the boy lying beside him. That, and the close shirtless, pantsless proximity the boy beside him had. It was nervewracking, an experience he hadn't had before, even if they were doing nothing more than sleeping. Deciding he should just try and think of something else, he decided to follow the path in his mind that led to he and Cecil meeting in the first place.
As a kid, Carlos didn't have a lot of friends, and subsequently not a lot of sleepovers. He and his parents were spanish immigrants, and moved to America when he was five, and even at that primitive stage he had a somewhat strong comprehension of knowledge in certain respects, more than the typical five-year-old at the least. He could read and write fluently, a complete year before the students in his Kindergarten class were even beginning to comprehend speech and fluid thought. And where do you think his parents had the pleasure, at that time being skilled in the engineering of rockets? Florida, near NASA's launch site, smack dab in the deepest part of the deep south. Displaying knowledge in the field of rocketeering was the only way his parents could get a green card, and later citizenship, here, despite the general laxness when it came to who comes in and out of the country. It wasn't that Spain was bad, he faintly remembered the crashing of the waves and the sunny weather, playing on the beach at times, but his parents did need to make a living, and rocket scientists in Spain, which has no space program, was not very lucrative whatsoever. His parents always encouraged free thought, and allowed Carlos to develop by learning himself how to do things. Even when he screwed up, his parents were always there to guide him, and he did a bit better the next time using their guidance as “tips”. He developed leaps and bounds ahead this way.
Despite what his parents thought, more than a few kids at his elementary, and later middle school, were extraordinarily closed-minded towards science, and education in general. So many had that mindset, and it plagued him, giving him a fair share of bullies due to his weaker, ganglier build. He remembered that mindset being used by the 8th grade's class bully when he was in 5th grade, a large, bulky guy named Steve, who was a particularly nasty player in kickball, dodgeball, football, even track, despite his massive weight, labeling him a quote “icon of Sin”. Hearing those words chanted by him and his posse sent him home crying, his heart heavy, conflicted. Was he a bad person, bad enough to be labeled as such by an older student, thought he? His parents filed a complaint, but instead of doing anything the administration practically just tossed the thing out and told Carlos's parents that the board had decided against expelling Steve. Of course, the real answer was that Steve was the head lineman for the middle school's football team, and getting in trouble for harassing a student could have hurt the school's reputation.
As he grew older, the offenses grew more severe, the student's attacks morphing from the form of the verbal, to a complete other form, a physical one that left him often bruised and beaten after some days in the science classroom where he may have gotten a bit too in-depth with what his project did. Steve was the main offender, the brute not only becoming an even stronger brute, but also one more cunning. He made sure injuries dealt to Carlos weren't ones his parents could see if Carlos was wearing a shirt, which of course he often was. He didn't spend a lot of time outside, mainly since if he were caught in public by any of his bullies, he'd be harrassed, so his parents seeing the injuries while they were swimming wasn't an issue, since, well, he didn't swim. Or do anything much for that matter, mainly just reading, writing, and going on his computer. He didn't mind really, it just seemed normal to him. Sure, he resented his bullies, but he wasn't strong enough to fight them. Eventually though, his parents did notice the bruises after he had gotten out of the shower one day, and soon enough, they moved to Night City late in his freshman year of high school.
Cecil, ever curious about new students joining his school, made sure he was the first to meet Carlos before any of the moderately popular cliques grabbed him up. They bonded instantly, a bond now everbright due to the unfortunate hand fate had handed Cecil, a shining bond even. As he was thinking, he had subconciously wrapped his arms around Cecil's waist. Cecil himself was trapped in a nightmare. Strangely enough it was quelled by Carlos's cuddling, but once Carlos realized what he was doing he put a stop to it, turned around so he wasn't facing Cecil, embarassed and red in the face, and soon enough, fell under the guise of sleep, short lived because Cecil had begun to squirm about, covered in sweat.
<===>
Cecil's nightmare was not a pretty one.
No, in this nightmare, Cecil had, ironically, just woken up from a nightmare, was lying in his own bed, his skin slippery with sweat. He tried to get up to get a drink of water, but found he had no use of his limbs. He could move his neck, but his arms and legs were all but useless. At this point, he should have known this was all just a nightmare, but it felt. So. Real. Suddenly, his bed, somehow lifted by a set of mechanics similar to that of Wallace's bed in the old Wallace and Grommit shorts he used to watch, tilted forward.
Below him was a chute, and when he was tilted to a proper angle, he fell into it, sliding, sliding, until the small fractule of light he could still see from the chute's opening was gone. It was dark, but he could feel things slithering around him. Tentacles? They definitely sounded like tentacles, dripping some kind of ooze on him as he fell, on his arms? His forehead? His upper body? Whatever the source of the tentacles was, he could hear it whisper, in some form of gibberish language he couldn't comprehend, but for some reason could, some words anyways. Mainly repeating rounds of 'master, escape' and 'awaken now'. He couldn't make out what this meant, but soon, all thoughts of the tentacle's message dissipated he made it to his nightmare's final destination: Landing in a pit, he heard the footsteps of another approaching. Seeing the monstrosity, he wish he hadn't. It had a sharptoothed grin, blood staining its teeth. Its forehead was marked with a glowing tattoo of an eye, except it was crossed out in an 'x' formation with red blood. The arms, covered with... tattoos of tentacles? No, these weren't the same tentacles attempting to send him a message previously, these were spiky, deadly looking, something a science fiction writer would slap on the cover of their anthology if they wrote about multitentacled terrors and sold it at the five-and-dime. The eyes were by far the scariest part of whatever this was, glowing red orbs that were retracted into mere slits.
This... thing, whatever it was, was definitely humanoid, but with slightly, strangely lankier arms that stretched down to his ankles. All of a sudden, the creature's left hand opened and gripped Cecil's neck, choking him as it lifted. “Hey faggot, glad you could join me” the monster said, unmistakably in Kevin's voice. This was, Cecil interpreted, how his mind interpreted his older brother, a true monster, and now his mind had decided to throw him into his dreamscape since in that entire fight he had earlier with his older brother, he was truly afraid. Lucky me, Cecil thought, being lifted onto a metal operating table and being strapped in, I can't even escape you or any of the godawful members of my family in my dreams. Or nightmares. To the side of the table was a wide array of surgical implements, all of them decidedly (thanks again, subconcious!) more sharp and deadly than their real-world equivalent.
He didn't, however, see any anesthetic. He knew what was going to entail in this hellish nightmarescape. He was going to have a dream about getting gutted by his own subconcious's equivalent of his older brother. The gurney he was strapped to was cold, but it didn't matter. He knew what was going to happen in a few seconds in the nightmare and it wasn't his brother's monstrous form untying him, laughing it off and then sending him on his way back into reality. He could hear it approaching, breath hot and humid. “Now, brother, any last words before we begin? Of course not, you can't speak either. In fact, you can't do much of anything but watch as your body is dissected, picked away. So just try, just try to get out.” You know he's goading you. Getting out would be a frivolous attempt. Even if you could somehow maneuver your head enough to untie the straps with your teeth, and also somehow by nothing short of a miracle roll off of the gurney, you couldn't run. He'd probably enjoy watching you try to escape before slicing you open, the sick, sick sadist.
First, the monster reached for a scalpel, but this wasn't any ordinary scalpel. It appeared more a sacrificial knife, a primitive-looking, black-charred one that members of the aztec would've used to sacrifice members of their own tribe. It wasn't serrated, luckily, but any one cut from that blade would cause a deep wound. And it did. Suddenly, he dragged it across your leg, putting pressure on it at one point and, feeling the knife plunge in and begin to cut your leg open, scream out due to the axphyxiating level of pain searing, scorching your leg.
You bleed purple... purple? He didn't even know the human body could bleed purple, but this was a dream, so he dismisses it and focus on the fact that his leg. is. on. FUCKING. FIRE. Kevin-stein digs the blade deeper, beginning to drag it down your lower leg, the peculiarly-hued blood gushing out as the skin is cut away as though it's nothing. The pain is unbearable, blinding and unrelenting, and you feel as though you might lose conciousness. Can your dream dream self become unconcious, or die even?, Cecil pondered, as he began to black out. However, before it all faded to black and the wave of pain overtook him, he felt as though some kind of force was beginning to lift him, lift him out of the gurney and out of this part of the nightmare, into what could be construed as some kind of dream. He looked around, and suddenly he was lying on the bed of a cruise ship his parents had vacationed on when he was 8 years old, where his dad had maxed out their credit card to get money for drinks and gambling chips. In the end it was worth the risk, since their dad had doubled the money he took out of the credit cards, but he had a most severe case of alcohol poisoning for a month afterwards.
Kevin, well, whatever that construct that resembled his older brother was, it was gone. Looking down, he saw the deep laceration in his leg was beginning to somehow mend itself, through some dream magic fuckery unbeknownst to him. His leg was still moist with purple-looking blood, and slowly but surely, he was somehow able to get up, and look around the room. Nothing seemed different. It was night time, and, getting up, he walked out onto the balcony. The night sky was just as he had remembered it when he had snuck out on the balcony as a kid, but the moon... well, the moon was different. It was as though someone had made a mockery of it, as an actual smiling face in the shape of a crescent. It was creepy, how the moon stared down upon everything below it, but it wasn't the only thing Cecil had noticed. He also noticed that he was in an expensive tuxedo now, a dark purple one with a squid-shaped lapel and the standard black tie, white shirt.
He heard someone open the door. Whipping around, he looked at thin air, the light of the hallway shining in, the light glaring into the dark room that was being illuminated by that peculiar moon. He poked his head through the door, looking both ways for whatever or whoever had opened it, but saw nobody. Walking out, he felt the air of the door slamming behind him. This was most peculiar. Even more peculiar was that lounge music began to play throughout the halls, not too bad actually, just the standard jazz routines he'd go to this hipster-esque coffee shop/bar hybrid to see. He decided, as long as he wasn't going to awaken anytime soon he might as well wander a little.
It was a little strange, “walking” through this prefrontal construct, as it was controlled entirely with his thoughts, as though he were psychically controlling his own body. He could still feel a little limp he was giving from the still rapidly-healing wound, but he managed, wandering around, calling about once in a while only to find nobody answering. He wandered and wandered before finally reaching a great dancing hall, complete with chandeliers, fancy flooring, the works. Accross the room was another individual, sitting down backwards on a folding chair, their face concealed by a 30's style gangster cap, and bobbing their head to the beat of the public domain trash that had been pumped throughout the entire ship after the lounge music that Cecil, having listened to it for a continuous ~15 minutes, was sick of. But before the other lifted their head and revealed themselves to him, things suddenly went bright and he awoke, breathing in deeply, his pupils wide. What the fuck?...
He didn't sleep the rest of the night, he was afraid of having that same freaky dream.
<===>
The next day was a wednesday, but Carlos refused to allow Cecil to go to school, knowing he was still fluently jostled by everything that had happened. Instead, they decided to both take a sick day, lying out on the couch and watching movies, which his family seemed to have no end to. And, as Carlos expained, his parents were purists when it came to cinematography, animation, any media of film, so they only picked the best films out there. Cecil practically freaked seeing that his family owned every US-released Studio Ghibli film, along with a few of the Japan-only ones. “Yeah, they love Ghibli,” Carlos said, “They just need to wait until “When Marnie Was Here” to get a DVD release in Japan and then they'll have the complete collection!” Carlos took pride in their collection of DVDs, every good movie from every year that his parents had been alive, and many from before even that, a collection that began when his mother was only 18 and was pregnant with Diego. It started with one, but soon it grew, and grew.
“It became obsessive,” Carlos said, “Their quest to have the absolute best in cinema. It isn't hard, they make sure to read reviews online before they buy any of them, and see if they're worthwhile. And they've been adament on keeping it as up-to-date as possible, getting every good movie or animation each year and buying it.” Cecil was amazed, flabbergasted, he thought it was absolutely stupendous what Carlos's parents had done with their movies. He himself had a thing for movies, but on this scale... he at the very least kept around his guilty pleasure movies. Con Air, Waterworld and Short Circuit had a special piece in the teen's heart, even if they were giant flops and ended up slightly crippling the subgenres of film they were a part of. Looking in his laptop bag since he wanted to blog a little bit while the movie was going on, maybe tell some of his Tumblr followers what had happened (his parents and brother knew not that he had a Tumblr, and he made sure his was as inconspicuous as possible so that they couldn't find it), and possibly upgrade his blog's appearance (A/N: I did too, mine now has this kind of Windows 98 look :3).
In the end, they had settled on Howl's Moving Castle, a unanimous favorite of theirs. Once the movie was in and there was a bowl of popcorn between the two of them, they sat back and relaxed. Cecil booted up his laptop and saw that, luckily, it was still fully intact from the altercation the night previous, as pristine as he had always kept it, wiping it down with a cleaning cloth every week and making certain he only ate 'clean' foods near it, something that wouldn't get caught between the keyboard's keys. Opening up his Tumblr, he multitasked, half-focused at the movie before him, half-focused on writing a column of text about it. He hadn't intended on it getting a lot of notes, but a few people reblogged and he received a few asks in his inbox, asking if everything was alright. They were all from mutuals, save for a few anons, so he answered them honestly and told them that it was all right, and that he was crashing at his friend's house for the time being, until... well, he hadn't the slightest idea what was going to happen after this, so he kept things rather vague before swapping focus onto his blog's appearance.
It was rather gothic, but it was a sharp contrast to some of the rediculous stuff he reblogged. He didn't change much, just what his cursor looked like and some of the songs on his blog's playlist, before shutting it down and focusing on the movie. By the time he had begun to put his full focus on the movie, there was about 40 or so minutes left, and half of the popcorn was gone, practically absorbed by Carlos who ate this stuff up like he did the popcorn. It was nice, seeing him focused on something like that so wholeheartedly. When the credits rolled, Carlos yawned, looking down at his timepiece and seeing it was 12 already. “So, Cecil, what do you want to do now?” Carlos asked, Cecil looking back at him. “Well, the obvious option would be going back to the apartment and grabbing anything else I may have forgotten inside. My dad eats his lunch at work, and Kevin's in school, so it's chill if we go in and go out. We've got to hurry though, my dad's probably having the locks changed tonight so I can't get in anymore, or he already has...” Cecil sighed, hoping it would be the former instead of the latter. Reaching into the bag, he grabbed the key and emptied the possessions currently taking residence in his bag down onto the couch so that he could hold more. Carlos nodded, following him along and grabbing the keys to his mother's Bugati that was sitting in the garage.
Cecil was stunned at the amount of prowess Carlos had behind the wheel of such a powerful, expensive vehicle. Carlos, despite devoting copious amounts of time to scientific means, also focused a lot on his driving, to ensure the extra insurance cost his driver's liscense gave his parents wouldn't be any larger than it already was, which even then, was rather massive. The windows were tinted dark as part of the car's styling, so he knew he wouldn't be pulled over by a truancy officer as they arrived. Cecil's apartment was one part of a medium-sized complex of several, standard-looking. It used to be an old factory, but then someone decided it was a good idea to fill the inside of the place with apartments, which Cecil had always thought crazy, since the renovation costs and removal of asbestos from the insulation must've cost millions. There was still exposed brick in places, which added to the aesthetic, but still, other than that there wasn't anything that really defined it apart from the other apartments in the city. Getting to the front door, Cecil put the key in the lock, and to their elation...
The click of a now-unlocked lock resounded.
<===>
Even if they were in the green on the door unlocking, they made sure to keep quiet as possible, ensuring they weren't potentially heard by any of the other tenants. Looking around, Carlos smiled at Cecil and whispered “Wow, your apartment looks really good.”
“Thanks,” Cecil whispered, the two sneaking into his room. Things were in the same position as before after the fight- minus one unconscious Kevin. Cecil grabbed what he needed, more sets of his rather unorthodox-looking clothing, his blankets and pillows, a few of his favorite books, movies and CDs, and to Carlos's surprise, the now-broken ukulele that was lying on the floor. He stuffed the clothing and various books and disks into his bag, passing Carlos his blankets and pillows and grasping the broken uke and a book on how to play in his hands. “Don't worry,” Cecil said at a confused Carlos, “I know the guy who made this uke, he'll fix it for me if I ask him to.” Carlos didn't press the issue, but he was curious as to who the man (or woman) was that custom-made Cecil a ukulele of all things. With those things in hand, they went to the fridge, pocketing Cecil's energy drinks he drank whenever he had to work on a project long into the night. He didn't drink them often due to them slightly tasting like nuclear horse piss, but the caffeine and other things in the can did wonders for how long he could stay awake, and he'd need the caffeine in these coming weeks.
The reason he'd be awake so late: Studying books on the laws pertaining to the wellbeing of adolescents. He wanted out of his family.
<===>
Their next stop was this guitar shop well outside the main section of the city, that also happened to sell ukuleles. The owner was really lax, Carlos observed, and didn't really care that the two of them were out of school, driving a car much out of either of their price ranges, holding a broken ukulele. One look at the craftsmanship of the uke and the manager tilted his head back, calling out in an unmistakable Latino accent “Steve! Someone brought one of yours, but you're not gonna like the looks of it!” Down the stairwell came an extremely attractive, late-teens looking guy who had a light brushing of chin hair and a decently muscular build. His left arm, visible from the sleeveless “Legend of Zelda” shirt he was wearing was covered in a beauteous sleeve. Despite the possibility being near-impossible, looking at the face of the short-haired guy, he could recognize which 'Steve' this was instantly.
Looking back at him was Steve Carlsburg, the one person who made his life a living hell as a kid.
It was Steve, but at the same time, he had changed. His demeanor was calmer, and, although he didn't recognize Carlos at first, recognized Cecil instantly, much to Carlos's surprise. Typically, when someone made something custom-made for someone, the only interaction they had was:
Person A: Hey, here's the x you ordered!
Person B: Hey, here's your money!
>Person A exits stage left, Person B, stage right
Simple as that. However, what happened next was nothing that Carlos would ever see coming, an event so improbable that had he had been drinking a glass of milk, he would've spit it out.
“Honey, where have you been? I've been worried sick!” Steve came forward and gave Cecil a chaste kiss on the lips.
HONEY?!?!?!?!?!?!!! Carlos screamed internally, knowing the improbability of this being the case was incredible. Yet there it was, Cecil, his crush's, lips, kissing Steve, his childhood bully's, lips.
Carlos was livid, and at the same time just wanted to dissapear from the room, to just disintegrate from this earth. He hid the feelings between a pokerfaced demeanor, just seeing if this was just a platonic 'between friends' kiss, not what Carlos knew it was. While Carlos was imploding, Cecil greeted his significant other, smiling a toothy grin at their reunion. “Oh, it was terrible honey, I've been kicked out. They found out we were together, you see. I just hope this doesn't put a dampener on our relationship,” Cecil frowned.
“Of course not, dearie,” Steve said, nuzzling his forehead into Cecil's, “It was inevitable that they'd found out regardless, what with that flamboyant haircut and all.” Cecil giggled as Steve ran his fingers through his hair, all the while Carlos wishing this were a nightmare, that Steve was still in Florida. “Ahem, Steve, the ukulele” his (uncle?) interjected, interrupting the coddling that Steve was performing. Carlos smirked, thinking to himself, if he 'Coddled' anything he'd probably snap it in half with that build before returning to his original position of the matter, which was darkness and despair.
“Ah, yes, sorry uncle, I was just making sure my dear little Cecil was okay, “ Steve said, Cecil blushing at the pet name as he moved over to the uke. “It's my fault, I had to use it so my brother wouldn't slice me open or something,” Cecil said, looking down. “Aye, it's okay, so long as that psycho didn't lay a finger on you,” Steve said back, ignoring the fact that Cecil had a now-darkening black eye, “It's not like the damage was major, just the arm being broken in two. I'll replace it right away, especially for you, my love.” Steve was being incredibly cheesy with complements, and it caused Cecil's heart to melt like butter.
Steve hadn't acknowledged Carlos yet, so that meant to Carlos either that he knew who he was, or that his full focus was on Cecil. He did eventually look up from his work on the arm at Carlos. “And you are? I don't believe my Cecil's mentioned you during our conversations” Steve said, and before he could say anything, Cecil said, “Oh, this is Carlos. I'm crashing at his place since my folks kicked me out. He's planning on being a scientist when he grows up, isn't that right, Carlos?”
“Yeah, that's right” Carlos said, halfheartedly. “Now, I knew a Carlos when I was growing up,” Steve said, “What a shrimpy little guy. Me and my group used to bother the shit out of him. Not like you, of course,” Steve pointed at Carlos, screwdriver still in hand, “he was a fugly little fucker. Had a similar intrest in science though.” Steve laughed heartily, his words cutting like knives as the two of them began to laugh, Cecil too obliviously in love to realize that Carlos getting slightly flustered at Steve's words.
“Ah well, I'll never see him again.”
<===>
Carlos said nothing on the drive back, but Cecil certainly had an awful lot of good things to say about Steve, not knowing the full brevity of what Steve had done to Carlos. A lot of it was about his internship with his uncle at the guitar store, and how he wanted to start a band one day, and how he and Cecil had met. One night, when Cecil's parents were out of town and his brother was off doing his own thing, Cecil, out of curiousity, had snuck off and went to Night City's premiere gay bar, McD's (Stylized as Mc8==D's), owned by the fathers of his friend Hiram. It was the reason they were so rich, the bar was the only one of its kind within a fifty mile radius, so it got all of the lgbt traffic in the area, many of them singles.
On a basis of fate, he had snuck in on the night they were doing 'Singles Night'. The basis of which was that you would wear a tag with your gender, age, sexual orientation, and name, and walk around talking to other singles. Cecil had lied about his age, saying he was 18 instead of 15, but the rest of the information he put on the tag was valid, and he did look a bit older than his actual age, so things “checked out”. While he loitered, hoping to be noticed, he met Steve, who had only been there a couple of days, his own graduation from high school occuring a few days previously. They flirted for a while, exchanged numbers, and sooner or later, got together.
The entire story made Carlos sick. He knew Steve's type, the kind that acted all kind and everything until they could “get with” someone, and then showed themselves as they truly were, a cold hearted snake (look into his eyes, oh no, he's been telling lies). Even in the guitar store, he could see Steve give him the “Don't you dare fuck this up for me you fucking fucker” look, Allthewhile Cecil being mentally engrossed in Steveland, where everything revolved around Steven Carlsburg and everything having to do with his highly developed body, molasses-smooth southern accent, toned abs practically trying to tear through his shirt, seemingly kind personality, and, and... no wait, those were his good properties. He decided to shelve thinking about what Steve's shtick was for later, instead focusing on the road. He wasn't mad at Cecil.
He was afraid of what would happen to Cecil.
<===>
Later in the afternoon, they made it back to Carlos's home, parking the Bugati in the front yard and pulling out all of Cecil's stuff. Cecil stopped rambling on about “Perfect, perfect Steve” by the time they had made it back into the city, and conversation between Carlos and Cecil had gone back to a normal basis, but Carlos was slightly weighted down by the information that his school bully was not in fact dead to his existence in a metaphorical ditch somewhere like he had hoped, but the object of his affection's boyfriend. What if, on the next occasion in which he and Steve crossed paths, he recognized Carlos as 'that' Carlos and beat him into mincemeat?
The thought made Carlos shiver, but he ignored it, bringing the blankets and pillows upstairs and layering them onto the already thick pile of blankets and pillows on his bed. It helped to have various levels of blankets depending on the season. Summer, you could sleep in comfort, being only covered by one layer of blankets. Winter, you could surround yourself with all five. With the pillows it didn't matter however, they were just nice to lay his head on, the more the better. And Cecil brought five with him, a stack fit for complete cranial comfort when augmented with the five already there on the bed. With that in order, he cleared out some space in his dresser for Cecil to put his clothes in, just so he could get his stuff off of the couch of course.
It just, wow, it shouldn't have affected him so much, but it plainly just pissed Carlos off, the mere fact that Steve got easily what he only wish he had. And had more musical talent in his left bullock than Carlos had in his entire body, although Carlos was the smarter of the two. In fact, now that Carlos thought more of it, he realized that he could probably attempt learning that Ukulele. Cecil had mentioned how he'd never tried to learn how to play, so maybe if he played a really rocking love song on ukulele...
He knew that wasn't going to happen. The most use he could ever get out of that uke would be slamming it over Steve's stupid head.
Hearing his parents enter the house, and Diego pulling up into the driveway, he wiped the thoughts away, going downstairs to meet them so they could confirm nothing bad happened while they were gone. “Hey mom, hey dad!” Carlos said, turning the corner at the last step to face them. “Hey son, how's Cecil going?” His dad said, smiling. “Oh, he's recovered really well, at least he's taking things well. He's probably going to be here a while though, is that alright?” His parents looked at him, confused, but nodded, knowing that Cecil had most likely been kicked out. Carlos thanked them before going back upstairs to make sure Cecil's unpacking was going well.
When he went downstairs, he saw his older brother flopped out on the couch, the old contents of Cecil's bag sitting in a condensed pile on the carpet in front of the elongated seat. “Diego, you didn't just shove those things off and flop onto the couch, did you? They're my friend's things.” Diego, reprieved from his slumber, looked up and mumbled, “Of course not Carlos, I just placed them down and then slammed my body onto the couch, like I usually do when I stay over for a week and there's something or someone on the couch...” Carlos had faint memories of his older brother, having graduated from High School a couple of years previously while they were still in Florida, lifting him up and placing him on the carpet before flopping down on the same couch, still in his valedictorian robes and graduation cap, out like a light.
Old habits die hard, and Diego was a perfect example of that, trying hard, and yet not trying at all. He put in an awful lot of effort at work, but whenever he got an opportunity to visit after the move it was always him and that couch, attached at the hip until he went out into the city to look at what Night City was like, lalways finding something new to look at or see. He wasn't a bad brother, actually. He wanted to be a businessman working in New York somewhere when he finished with college, so at the very least he had ambition. Give him the tools and he could revolutionize the business world, Carlos knew it. And Diego, in turn, respected Carlos's ambition to become a scientist when many would make fun of Carlos for it while the two of them were both in the public education system.
He didn't know what team Diego played for, it was always a grey area while Carlos was a little more open about his sexuality, his brother being the one he told before his parents. He'd always assumed he was a ladies man, and had features greater than even Carlos's, a more defined chin and brighter eyes than he. Plus the prospect of Diego going on to be a very wealthy man must've been enticing to quite a few women, as it took brains to be that wealthy. In fact, a multinational conglomerate (A/N: obviously Strexcorp) had already contacted Diego with the promise of hiring him as one of their managers of the conglomerate's large educational devision, dedicated to... well, Diego had signed a non-disclosure agreement, so he couldn't exactly say. All he knew was that there was boatloads of money in it, but Diego knew his limits, and if things were slanting into a more 'evil' alignment, he promised he would quit.
Lifting up the pile of objects, Carlos slowly walked upstairs with them, making sure not to tip or lean forward due to their considerable heft and risk spilling things down. Making it back to his room, he daintily placed the laptop and the other objects onto the bed, making sure they didn't land too hard onto the cushy sleeping apparatus. “Thanks, Carlos!” Cecil said, smiling at Carlos and bringing his bag over, placing the laptop and its apparati inside along with a book on bloodstone rituals. “There, ready for going back to school tomorrow!” Cecil smirked, knowing Carlos saw the book on 1500's bloodstone rituals. Although there wasn't any science to them, it still bothered the hell out of the older, more religiously devout staff at the high school, a student learning about the history of the bloodstone rituals, and by extension how to perform bloodstone rituals. Cecil was genuinely interested in them, although only from a historical standpoint. He still enjoyed seeing them sweat and get extremely concerned whenever he'd look down at the book and suddenly look up at them and look them in the eyes.
Placing the bag on the other side of the room, Cecil yawned, opening the top drawer and grabbing out the pajamas he now had from their newest 'raiding' of Cecil's old residence Putting them on, Carlos in turn reached through the now-open drawer and grabbed a pair of pajamas, a pair with a 90's-style 'zig-zags, scribbles, and triangles' vibe to them. He put them on, loving the way they looked. Getting into bed, Carlos was out like a light.
Tomorrow was a new day.