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Really, Carlos thinks as he swings his butterfly net at the swarm of phosphorescent winged cockroaches, the only person prior to Cecil who has loved him so fully and purely is his abuela.
“Grandmother!”, he translates for the cockroaches, who still avoid his net but are curious all the same, their question a buzzing quality in his brain. He spares a thought for their telepathy and evident English language patterns, changing his technique of swinging the net to one of randomization as opposed to the previously attempted premeditation. They seemed to be catching on to that.
His abuelita, he contemplates as he ducks a particularly large specimen of flying neon cockroach, had always called him ‘mijo’, taken him to the museum to look at hands-on children’s’ science exhibits, and sang low and sweet to him on nights when the void felt like it was going to swallow him whole. She was tall and thin and had a presence that commanded respect. She had made her fortune single-handedly after her parents emigrated to the U.S. Her name was Mara.
Mara was entirely United States, flag waving, hot dog eating American when she was at her business, but at home she relaxed and let her culture seep back into her bones. She had a hauntingly beautiful voice that could have sung arias if she had chosen to, but at night when Carlos called her to his bedside in a cold sweat, she sang ancient Guatemalan folk songs, deep and resonant and in a language Carlos couldn’t comprehend, but which made the hairs stand up on his arms and the back of his neck.
His abuela’s eyes would go distant and foggy, her callused but manicured hand clutching his like a bird claw and only relaxing on the last note. The songs always seemed to dim the stars outside Carlos’ window a little, the humidity in his room increasing and making beads of sweat roll down the back of his neck. He asked for those songs so many times he could probably sing them himself now, relying on phonetics. Somehow, he doesn’t think it would be the same. Mara knew things that gave the words power, things that Carlos with all his skill at science could never reproduce.
Carlos can almost hear it, he thinks dreamily. Almost feel his abuelita’s hand covering his own. He looks down to find a monstrous glowing cockroach on his hand instead, lightly vibrating, the dusk of Night Vale’s magenta sunset reflecting off of its hard shell. He contemplates it a second, giving it just enough time to bite him with tiny purple teeth and make him wince before it takes off to the sky to join its swarm. Its humming swarm. Which is now humming a traditional Guatemalan folk song, deep and resonant over Night Vale.
All the hair on Carlos’ arms stands up, all the hair on his neck. Hair he didn’t even know he had is standing on end. Hair he probably DIDN’T have until right this second has sprouted in order to stand on end. He swears he feels it growing on his head.
The cockroaches are becoming louder, more menacing than Mara ever was, rising to a terrible crescendo as their phosphorescence synchronizes and they rise, a blinking writhing mass, higher and higher into the sky, before taking off at an alarming speed. Although Carlos has been watching, carefully, he couldn’t say with any certainty which way they’ve gone.
He spares a moment to regret not obtaining a sample for scientific posterity, then a longer moment contemplating the advantages of spirituality and whether his abuela could hear him if he tried to pray. Then he collects himself and his instruments and prepares to head back to his house/lab, which has proven to be a particularly dangerous combination with the kinds of oddities Night Vale produces. There is an oozing pit in the middle of his living room that coos at him whenever he walks by. Sometimes he feeds it celery.
He bends down to pick up his last giant bulletproof bug collecting glass jar and almost misses what’s inside it. Probably would have if not for the low buzz of a Guatemalan folk song. In the very bottom of the jar, a tiny little dot of glowing light is crouched. Carlos drops a couple of butterfly nets in his rush to grab his magnifying glass, fixing it on the tiny specimen. It’s the smallest cockroach he’s ever seen, humming his abuela’s melody all by itself. It scritches its tiny fangs against the glass, either in an attempt to nuzzle Carlos’ hand or eat it. Carlos chooses to believe to former, and when he gets home he sets the jar on his bedside stand, picks up his phone, and calls Cecil.
X
X
This is the problem, Carlos thinks. He just can’t stop phoning Cecil. Can’t stop meeting Cecil for coffee. Can’t stop wanting to run his index finger down the line of Cecil’s throat.
Carlos has had sex before, had even enjoyed some of it. Occasionally though he had categorized it in his head as participant observation and taken mental notes while gazing blankly over his partner’s shoulder and waiting for it to end.
Cecil is a different creature entirely. He makes Carlos desire things he didn’t know it was possible to desire, things he didn’t know he could even conceive of. Carlos wants to run his hands through Cecil’s hair, he wants to count the strands and write the result in grease pencil over porcelain, wants to measure Cecil’s fingers with his mouth, inch by inch, and then press those fingers into his own hair and have Cecil pull. He wants Cecil to devour him, to inhabit him, to serenade him in languages written on the skin. There are concertos in Carlos just waiting for the right conductor.
He wants desire to become tangible, wants his body to become malleable, like gold heated above a Bunsen burner, like salt sparking green in the flames. He wants to suck at the place where Cecil’s neck meets his shoulder, take readings on the pressure necessary to create a bruise and hear that deep, sensuous voice breathlessly speak his name, powerfully speak his name, whispering it and singing it and screaming it.
There is a pot of ink the color of midnight in the cabinet in Carlos’ study, and at night he imagines Cecil in his bed next to him, thinks of peeling back the covers against stretches of skin, fantasizes about dipping a brush in the ink and writing love songs in long dead tongues on Cecil’s shoulder blades.
He could write a poem on the bottom of each foot, a psalm to the Earth where Cecil touches it. He would write about the moon if it weren’t forbidden. Maybe he will anyway.
Carlos thinks about the word ‘passion’, rolls it around on his tongue like a hard candy, like the kind his abuela used to keep in a depression glass bowl on the mantle, hard and smooth and tasting vaguely of summer.
Guilt overwhelms him when he has these thoughts, when he catches his palms tingling as he writes out equations, rubs his thumbs along them and realizes he was thinking about the place where Cecil’s shirt tucks into his pants. He rubs his hands hard against his jeans to dispel the feeling.
At first, Carlos thought that Cecil’s regard for him was dangerous, malevolent and volatile like the town it was embedded in. But now, now Carlos has realized that Cecil is nothing but innocence and fond regard, resting his head on Carlos’ shoulder and perhaps twining a strand of Carlos’ hair around his finger.
All of his actions and thoughts towards Carlos are pure, unsullied. They’re from a love that’s deep and patient, that feels like coming home. And Carlos’ thoughts feel painfully dirty in return. He wants to possess Cecil in so many ways it makes his stomach churn.
So he keeps his distance. He loves Cecil too, in his own imperfect way, and cares too much to ruin their relationship. But slowly, micrometer by micrometer, he is failing.
When they go out for coffee to discuss the latest tectonic plate shifts that released thousands of dark blue marbles with tiny eyes in their middles into the streets right outside of Big Rico’s, Carlos can’t stop thinking about how Cecil’s lips might feel against the curve of his ear.
Sitting on the hood of his car at the Arby’s and watching the lights swirl in the void, Carlos’ hand on Cecil’s knee and he wants to move it higher, wants to tip Cecil’s head resting on his shoulder and kiss him, open mouthed and deep, slow and then not slow, pulling Cecil’s shirt out of his pants and putting fingerprints on his ribs.
But he doesn’t, and it makes something ache in the soles of his feet, like roots growing into barren soil.
X
Matters come to a head on the Monday Carlos visits Cecil at the radio station. It would have been a Sunday, actually, if Sunday’s hadn’t been cancelled.
This is probably his third time visiting, and he’s feeling more and more at home there. There’s even a slightly grainy picture of him hanging next to the one of Dana on the wall nearest Cecil’s desk. At first it made him uncomfortable to be placed next to the intern who so infamously disappeared into the dog park, not to mention the fact that she has a proper picture while his looks like it was taken by the Sheriff’s Secret Police. Carlos never asked Cecil how he got it. Finally, though, he decided that since Dana wasn’t actually dead, and since he’d been through a brush with death himself, maybe the wall wasn’t so much a portent of doom as it was a ‘Congratulations, Cecil likes you AND you haven’t died!’. Sometimes he thinks this makes him deserving of a trophy, and then he remembers he already has one.
Unfortunately, while the office itself gives Carlos a nice warm feeling in his toes, seeing Cecil in the office gives him an even nicer sensation in a completely separate part of his anatomy. Carlos gulps and shakes his head to dispel those thoughts, but it’s hard when Cecil is leaning his elbows on the polished ebony, head inclined towards his microphone, eyes closed against the rapture he experiences when he records his show. His low, sensual ‘radio voice’ isn’t exactly helping matters, either, despite the fact that it’s currently saying, “…should have the mutilated corpses cleaned off the streets in a matter of hours, but request your help with the resulting blood stains. If you’re running low on your bleach ration for the month, step outside and say the word ‘bleach’. Then go back inside and it should have appeared under the right hand cabinet beneath your sink”.
Carlos smiles indulgently, because Cecil is, quite frankly, utterly adorable.
Cecil gets through an endorsement for Walgreen’s (“Float in the dark waves on your back. Roll in the tide so you are on your stomach. Take a deep breath in, concentrate on the water and microbes that fill your lungs. Open your eyes so the fish can eat the viscera as it dissolves. Walgreens; The Pharmacy America Trusts”), and goes to the weather. He takes off his headphones, rolling his shoulders in a decadent stretch, and pushes away from the desk. Carlos likes watching this part, because it’s when Night Vale’s Cecil becomes Carlos’ Cecil.
“Hey”, Cecil says, tilting his head back over his chair to smile toothily at Carlos, voice still rough and going straight through Carlos’ skin and nestling down in-between his ribs. “How was the science today?” he asks, reaching out to run his fingers over the back of Carlos’ hand.
Arm covered in goosebumps, Carlos still manages to stumble through an explanation of the phosphorescent cockroaches, and Cecil for all that he makes a living talking is a profoundly good listener. Soon Carlos feels himself loosening up, tension forgotten as he explains his theory about the creatures’ telepathy.
The release of tension, however, isn’t dispelling the frank desire Carlos has to stand up and take Cecil’s head between his hands, lean down and press their mouths together, screw the rest of the broadcast and take this show on the road. He excuses himself to the bathroom before things get out of hand.
Khoshekh gives him a terrifyingly guttural purr when he enters, and Carlos moves over to the sinks to pet him. Very carefully, and only on his purple stripes, never the cerulean ones. This creates increasingly interesting noises to emanate from the cat, and Carlos begins to wish he had his notepad.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, but when he hears the door creak he realizes that it must have been some time because that’s Cecil’s voice saying “Carlos?” in a worried tone. “Is anything wrong?”
Carlos sighs, braces his hands against the cool edge of the sink. He’s suddenly bone tired, and he can’t find the energy to lie to Cecil right now.
“I…I mean, well, the fact of the matter is…I just really want to kiss you. And…more. Than that. But if you don’t that’s fine! That’s good, we can work with that”. He stares at his hands as he says this, notices the drip in the faucet and the tiny green tentacle just peeking out of it. He’s so focused on not focusing on Cecil that he doesn’t notice the sharp intake of breath, or the gentle sound of loafers against the tile floor. If he hadn’t been trying not to see the sad but gentle resolve in Cecil’s eyes, waiting for the soft explanation that Cecil just isn’t sexual in the way that Carlos is, he might have had the chance to look up and see Cecil’s reflection in the mirror, which would have been a sight indeed and definitely would have demanded an at least 5 pages of description in his notebook. A good 3 for the appendages alone.
The hand sliding around his face to cup his jaw, however, he notices. He probably pays a little too much attention to the way three fingers come behind his ear, one in front, thumb under his jaw. He has enough time to categorize the exact angle of Cecil’s nose right before Cecil kisses him, an angle that he will write in his journal, using the midnight colored ink from the cabinet in his study.
There is certainly no way he could not have noticed the way Cecil kisses. They’ve kissed before, certainly. A few times, at least. It had been perfect, and Carlos would not have exchanged those first kisses for the world. Soft and lasting a few stuttering heartbeats, they were ideal first kisses.
But this….oh. Cecil is magnificent, his brain supplies helpfully. The angle keeps changing to newer and better ones. Carlos categorizes them all for later analysis. He will connect the imprints Cecil’s fingers leave on his skin with a felt tipped pen, create constellations that don’t exist yet, and he will name them Eros, and Agape, and Philos.
Cecil is pushing him back now, gently nudging him, breaking contact and gasping against his neck, voice not a whisper but so low and broken it might as well be, “Carlos. You should have told me”, the reproach in his voice both softened and underlined by the bruises he’s pulling to the surface of Carlos’ shoulder joint. They bump into Khoshekh on the way to the wall, and the cat, very out of character, barely grumbles. Carlos thinks, giddily, that the cat must be absorbing some of their happiness.
The tiles feel cool through the back of Carlos’ plaid shirt, and his hands come up to grasp Cecil’s waist, giving in to his impulses and tugging the shirt out of the waistband of Cecil’s pants, running his hands up Cecil’s sides, fingers gliding over and counting his ribs. Cecil is making increasingly interesting sounds, and his hands on Carlos’ chest, which somewhere along the line has been exposed by the unbuttoning of his shirt, are trembling. But for all Carlos’ fears, it couldn’t be mistaken for reluctance. How he ever thought Cecil wasn’t interested in sexual contact, he can’t fathom. He had so committed himself to the idea, and was truly fine with it. He loved Cecil, and that was that. This is a different way of expressing love, though, and one that Carlos is familiar with. He’s proud to discover that he’s not relieved, because that would mean Carlos is someone he doesn’t want to be. Instead, he’s just happy in a way that he’s always happy with Cecil.
Cecil’s long fingers are making their way into the back of his pants, solidifying this revelation. If possible, Carlos presses himself closer. The fingers slide, excruciatingly slow, around to the front, and not only was Carlos entirely wrong about Cecil’s feelings towards intimacy, he’s failing pretty spectacularly and returning the gesture. In fact, he’s just shaking, head thrown back against the wall, hands gripping Cecil’s hips tighter and tighter. Cecil, on the other hand, is smiling like the devil himself, like an angel, kissing Carlos on his temples and muttering sweet nothings in Weird Spanish as he eases Carlos’ zipper down.
Unmodified Sumerian and teeth on Carlos’ earlobe as his pants and underwear are pushed down, regular Sumerian as Cecil divests himself of his own, and nothing but a sweet, soft kiss as Cecil’s hands take them together and gently stroke.
Carlos swears he can see the void, and all the stars within it, and that it is about to swallow him whole.
His brain, or something like it, kicks online and he adds his own hand over Cecil’s, the other finding Cecil’s hand on his chest and intertwining their fingers. Cecil is back to talking in his ear, this time in a sultry mix of Spanish and English, but the words themselves are less sultry and more devotion, adoration, amazement that Carlos is his and Carlos wants this.
Just as he comes, Carlos has the epiphany that pure and innocent loves does not necessarily preclude sex, does not exclude dirty desperate sex against the wall of the office bathroom with the floating cat mere feet away and probably watching them. In fact, in some cases, it includes all of these and more, can even make love grow where you didn’t believe there was any more room, like a vine finding a new trellis. Cecil follows him shortly, and this time its Carlos whispering low in his ear, dirty and innocent and passionate and pure.
They stay like that for eternity, in some moment of time, but in another one they clean up and then get caught making out in the bathroom for a while, holding hands and smiling. Belatedly, Carlos realizes that Cecil is humming something between their kisses, into their kisses and into Carlos’ mouth. Something Carlos knows.
“Where did you hear that”, he asks in a lull between lips meeting lips.
“Why”, Cecil replies, “it’s the weather today. Didn’t you notice?”
Carlos smiles, lays his head on Cecil’s shoulder and wraps his arms around a body that is neither thin nor fat. Of course it’s the weather. Still stuck on repeat from when they left it.
All the hair on Carlos’ arms stand up. All the hair on the back of his head and his neck stands up. Cecil starts to sing the words, low and dark and in a language Carlos knows but doesn’t know. Of course Cecil would know the words. Carlos smiles into Cecil’s neck, sways them back and forth on the tile of the bathroom, and hums along.
So this is love.