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There are a slew of things that are strange about Night Vale, from the apparent lack of universal laws of physics and gravity to the swirling vortexes that are birthed from seemingly nowhere. Carlos is a cautious man, a man who knows that any misstep could be his demise and any Tupperware left unchecked could contain a poisonous scorpion that had mysteriously grown from his leftover turkey sandwich overnight. He is a man of vigilance, constant vigilance as a certain character from a certain treasured series of books about witchcraft and wizardry would say.
When it comes to Cecil, however, his constant state of alarm and extreme awareness of his surroundings… well, they diminish. No longer does he find himself setting his wristwatch to go off in ten second intervals while he’s studying his bacteria cultures so he can check his surroundings and make sure he’s not going to be maimed or turned inside out by some ethereal creature or something. It has happened before to others, and Carlos, conscious and aware Carlos, refuses to believe that just because he’s an outsider that he’s exempt from these strange happenings.
But just because he’s an outsider doesn’t mean he can’t fall in love.
Post-near death experience, he’s come to grip with many things. One, despite his constant vigilance, he was nearly killed but survived due to the sacrifice of another man. A racist man, yes, but another human being nonetheless. He is not as invincible as he’d like to believe. Two, Cecil has breached him so very thoroughly, intimately, a Trojan warhorse that had wheeled its way past his flesh and lodged itself painfully in his heart. No amount of vigilance or hyper-awareness could have prepared him for that.
And his lack of attention, his love-blindness, letting down his guard, is what causes the unthinkable to happen.
He should’ve noticed. Their sixth date on the sixth day of the sixth month, the numbers should’ve been warning enough, especially in Night Vale. He’s too busy admiring the tattoos whirling on the back of Cecil’s pale hand to notice the way the other man’s third eye is widened and bloodshot and quivering with fear as it flicks back and forth as if searching for something. He’s too busy cupping Cecil’s neck, roping him in for a kiss, hand smoothing down his back to pull his hips closer. Too busy whispering his desires to fuck him into his ear, too busy listening to his moans to notice the way Cecil is glancing over his shoulder with indescribable fear and hunching his shoulders when there’s so much as a twig snapping nearby.
Carlos, stupid, idiotic Carlos, fails to realize the dangers even as he’s getting laid and his senses are heightened twofold. The pleasure is… well, indescribable, wonderful, even with Cecil’s… slightly different anatomy. Afterwards, he’s too busy basking in the afterglow of his first time with Cecil to notice the way he shivers in his arms and quietly pleads with him not to let him go, not even once. Not tonight.
“Mmm,” Carlos hums hours later. The sun is coming heavy and warm through the white drapes, warming the thin sheets covering his body as he stretches and arches his back. “Mmm, wow. Last night was so-”
He lets his arm fall lazily to what should’ve been Cecil’s side of the bed, but he finds that it is empty. It’s not even warm, and a spider scuttles across his arm. Carlos sits up abruptly, the sheets pooling in his lap, looking down in disbelief. Cecil wouldn’t have left him overnight, would he? It had been their first time, after all, and before Cecil had seemed so eager and pleased at the fact that Carlos wanted him just as badly, just as desperately. So why on earth wouldn’t he have stayed? At least for breakfast.
Feeling dejected, hurt, confused, and perhaps a trifle angry, Carlos gets out of bed and shuffles to the bathroom, where he takes a shower. He had scrubbed it clean and had gotten new soap, too, having had expected Cecil to stay over and take a shower with him in the morning. But now he stands in the downpour by himself, head down, feeling pretty damn sorry for himself.
Had he not properly fucked him last night or something? As far as he can tell, his penis is pretty damn good, perhaps a half an inch more than average and pretty damn thick. He had worn a condom, had trimmed his pubic hair and had shaved his face and showered. He had eaten out Cecil’s crazy… whatever it was between his legs, best described as a purple tentacle-and-pussy combo. Cecil seemed to enjoy it! He had orgasmed and everything, and Carlos had, of course, cuddled him afterwards, which any gentleman should always do. Cecil seemed to enjoy that.
So what’s the deal? Carlos finishes his shower and dries off, feeling more peeved and hurt than before. What the hell did he do? Had the paperwork not gone through? With a towel around his waist, he goes back to the bedroom and pulls on jeans and a black t-shirt before shuffling his way downstairs with a scowl on his face. He’s going to give Cecil a piece of his mind!
He doesn’t expect his lab to be a complete disaster area when he gets downstairs. In horror, he gapes at the broken beakers and dripping liquid and the haze of chemicals that should not be mixed floating in the air.
“Me cago en todo lo que se menea!” he barks, his voice muffled by the collar of his shirt as he cups it over his mouth and nose. He rushes to the window to open it and turns on a fan to get the dangerous chemicals out. As he coughs and wonders what the hell happened in here, his eyes drift to the door and he nearly falls backwards.
It’s absolutely coated in spatters of violet blood, some of it still dripping to the stained carpet below. That’s when Carlos, stupid, stupid, idiot Carlos, realizes that there had been a struggle, and that Cecil hadn’t vandalized his laboratory or something. With concern bubbling up in his throat, he snatches his labcoat from the back of a dining chair and throws it on before rushing outside and looking wildly up and down the street. His shoes are still halfway on, so he bounces up and down on the sidewalk while he looks around. Past his doorway, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of Cecil anywhere, not a drop of blood or anything. Stumbling slightly, he begins to walk briskly down the sidewalk, and that walk turns quickly into a jog as he peers into Big Rico’s parking lot. Cecil’s vehicle is still there, which means his boyfriend has either been kidnapped or worse.
Cursing again, Carlos runs to his truck and hops in, shakily twisting the key in the ignition and swearing to himself as the engine roars to life. The tires shriek in protest as he tears out of the parking lot like a wild animal, roaring down the street at at least twice the municipally approved speed limit.
At a stoplight, he’s impatiently tapping his foot and thinking about how concerned he is for Cecil, so much so that he doesn’t see the black mist slowly drifting out of the vents of the truck, a slow, oozing mist that fills his nostrils with the smell of licorice and immediately makes him woozy. He realizes that something’s wrong about a minute too late. Coughing, Carlos stuffs his shirt against his mouth and nose again and starts frantically cranking the window. However, the crank seems to be jammed, so he tries to open the car door, but it’s locked, somehow, from the outside and he can’t get out. He’s desperately slamming his elbow into the window now, but the mist has turned his moves sluggish.
The light’s green but the gas pedal isn’t working. Behind him, cars are honking. A balaclava-clad Secret Police Officer is approaching his truck. His vision’s going hazy, he can’t breathe, it’s suffocating him, coiling in his lungs and slowly, slowly putting him under. The very last thing he sees before he passes out is the officer opening his car door with ease, moving Carlos over, and getting into the driver’s seat himself.
He dreams of everything. He dreams of whirling clocks and stopwatches all recording different times, all while being surrounded by this dark haze that swirls around his ankles and creeps up the legs of his pants, tickling at his thighs. He dreams of Cecil, of sweet and beautiful Cecil, with his inhumanly ivory skin, not Caucasian but white, pure, colorless white like the polished shell of an egg with a slight purplish hue. In his dreams, Cecil lies below him, stretched open and nude and his, his alone, his own dark skin sliding along a plane of printer-paper white, sucking splotches of purple and marking that perfect, eerily flawless skin. Cecil moans for him in such a lovely voice, violet eyes (plus the spare on his forehead) half-lidded and filled with adoration, his shifting black tattoos manifesting into spare limbs that Carlos loves so very much, all because they are a part of Cecil and that it is more of that perfect man that Carlos can love.
With his dreams still buzzing in his head, Carlos can feel the effects of the mists slowly lifting. With it, his unconsciousness. He begins to feel things outside of his dreams, something wet, something digging into his wrists and ankles, an unbearable, sweltering heat wrapped tightly around his cock-
His eyes snap open. At first everything’s pretty blurry because he’s still groggy as hell and he doesn’t know where he is. Beneath him, he’s pretty sure he’s lying open-eagled on a slab of stone of some kind. For a brief instant, his mind flashes to his fifth grade history class and the Aztecs and their sacrificial pyres where their hearts were cut out and hurled, blood and all, into the shrieking crowd below. The horror wakes him up more, and he soon realizes he’s not in his lab or his truck anymore, he’s in some sort of building or structure, and there is nothing but black void above him or to the left or right of him.
He’s aware of a slow humming and the flickering light of candles in a large circle around him. As he looks around, he sees robed figures, perhaps the City Council or the Secret Police or both. Their hoods hide their faces, but he knows they’re watching.
A quick pull of his wrists reveals that he is chained to the stone pyre by both his wrists and ankles, keeping him firmly in place. Below, a robed figure has their hand around his naked cock, stroking in slow, deliberate motions, its hot hand almost painful. Carlos pants, wondering if the robed figure is Cecil, when he happens to look to the right.
What he sees makes him jolt and cry out in alarm. Cecil, his dear and darling Cecil, is chained and on his knees, shivering in the candlelight. All around him, his tentacles are a writhing mass of black and purple, a stark contrast to his colorless skin. They’re chained too, stretched out to impossible lengths of up to twenty feet, the tips flailing restlessly against the binds that hold them up and apart.
“Cecil!” Carlos cries. This makes Cecil jump and look up, lips parted and eyes sad and soaked with tears. All at once, just with the apologetic look on his face, Carlos knows that this is something that Cecil has been aware of. Roughly, Carlos jerks his hips to the side, bucking the robed figure off of his dick. “What the hell is going on?!”
“I’m-” Cecil begins, but there’s a slamming noise and he jolts, face contorted in pain, the chains rattling loudly as his tentacles pull at their restraints.
“Silence,” one of the figures says in a deep, menacing voice. “Carlos The Scientist. You have violated laws 356A, B, and C, 408, 413, and 874H. Trespassing on Night Vale property.”
“All of our permits were approved to come to Night Vale for studying, we-”
Something not unlike an electric shock violently silences him, and he moans with pain. Somewhere nearby, Cecil whimpers.
“Silence! Permits are given a 18 month clearance, after which they are rendered obsolete. After which, the trespasser must make a choice. Become part of Night Vale, or leave. Permanently. After donating his life force to our Voice, of course.”
Carlos’s eyes flick to Cecil in a panic as the hooded figure gestures to him.
“What?”
“The Voice of Night Vale. The physical manifestation of our… most beloved town, of course.”
Cecil’s arms flex against the chains binding him and he growls lowly, making Carlos’s face go pale with fear.
“He is nothing but a personification, an avatar!” the robed figure jeers. Carlos stares at Cecil as he bows his head and fat tears drip to the concrete below his knees. “And yet, yet this foolish town believes that he has fallen in love with you, as if he has any knowledge of true emotion or warmth!”
Around Carlos, the vigil murmurs and the hums turn into mocking chuckles. Carlos blinks in utter bewilderment as he shakes his head.
“He wishes to spare you,” the robed figure grumbles. “Though you’ve dug your nose into matters that no outsider should ever know, have trespassed our town, have soiled, our town! The gall, the nerve of some despicable individual - participating in coitus with our property.”
Cecil’s arms flex again and this time something happens, a low rumbling that has chunks of dirt falling from the void and hitting the ground. It knocks some candles over and Carlos’s eyes water as he gets grit in them. Realizing they’re underground, Carlos stares up at the blackness above him. Directly above them should be Night Vale. If Cecil is the… physical manifestation of an entire town, then he wouldn’t be able to leave, or the town and himself would blink out of existence. All that talk on the radio about his fear of not existing suddenly makes sense.
All at once, his dreams of someday eloping with his love, taking Cecil out to see the mountains he firmly does not believe in, showing him lakes and the oceans and the green grass and the flowers, everything that is full of life, it’s all crushed. His eyes, already watering, begin to leak and tears slip down his cheeks and into the shells of his ears.
“Now you understand, fiend, the severity of the crimes you have committed,” the robed figure says, as if scolding him. “And now you must pay the price. You will pay your debt in blood to our town, our Voice, which will allow its avatar to live for another millennium. You will be drained, and you can die with honor knowing that you have donated to the life force which keeps our town alive.”
Carlos can’t swallow what he’s being fed, because the emotions on Cecil’s face look so real and agonized that he can’t possibly accept that this man, this warm and beautiful man, is anything but a human and his lover.
“Our Voice wishes to make you a part of him instead, tying your life to his and forever binding you to this town just as he is bound to this town. But it has never been done. Surely you would die from the strain, so-”
“YOU PROMISED!” Cecil screeches out of nowhere, his bellowing voice making the town above rumble. Carlos’s eyes widen as he hears screams above and the crash of buildings collapsing. The Council is repeatedly electrocuting him, but Cecil doesn’t seem to register it. One by one, his tentacles are snapping the chains and sending them crashing to the ground or swinging into a robed figure, knocking them back.
“Cecil!” Carlos calls, panic setting in as more dirt falls down from above and the screams from the town on the surface get progressively louder. “Cecil, please!”
Cecil's eyes, glowing white, slowly become dull again and he sniffles, shaking as he hunches over on the floor.
“You promised,” he repeats, looking up pleadingly at the Council. “That we could at least try.”
The Council, looking rather shaken by their ‘puppet’s’ power, reluctantly reach out to unbind him. Carlos wonders how long Cecil has been under their control. Wonders if they are outsiders themselves, they along with the Secret Police. If Night Vale was once a free town, if Cecil was once a free spirit.
These thoughts disperse as Cecil shakily stands and goes to Carlos’s side, reaching out to stroke his hair with quivering fingers.
“Sweet, beautiful, perfect Carlos. I am so sorry this happened. I tried not to fall in love, I really did,” Cecil whimpers. “Because I knew it would hurt you.”
“It’s okay,” Carlos murmurs, even though he knows all too well that it’s not. Cecil’s tentacles are forming somewhat of a protective barrier around them, to the Council’s annoyance. “I couldn’t help but to fall in love, either.”
Cecil’s eyes get teary again and he leans down to kiss him. It’s chaste and sweet, and despite everything, despite their nakedness, the fact he’s chained to a sacrificial pyre, he deepens the kiss because he needs Cecil more than he ever has needed him before. Cecil moans softly and practically lies over top of him, one leg already hitched up on the stone slab.
He pulls away, however, and cups Carlos’s cheeks.
“You must make a choice,” he says urgently. He strokes Carlos’s hair over and over. “My dear, wise, lovely Carlos, you can either die now or live forever.”
Carlos’s head spins with confusion and he looks up at Cecil, who gazes down at him through the mussed blonde hair that flops forward into his face.
“You would never be able to leave Night Vale, just like me, or see any of your relatives or your friends, it would be horrible, really, spending the rest of eternity by my side,” Cecil blubbers. Tears are dripping down onto Carlos’s face now. “So I will be completely accepting of your decision to die, if you wish, but you must give me warning so I can look away because-”
He bites his lip and fails to hold back a sob.
“I don’t want to see you go.”
Carlos just looks at him for a long time as he’s literally given the choice to die now or live forever. Both sound awful, he supposes. But an eternity with Cecil doesn’t sound too bad. His mother practically disowned him when she found out he was going to be a scientist rather than a dentist like she wanted, claiming it was a ‘fool’s work’ and a ‘waste of tax money’ since ‘everything had already been discovered’. His sister didn’t need him anymore. Friends. What friends? He had none. Why else would he have come to Night Vale in search of a place to study alone?
What’s tying him to the outside world, exactly?
He wants so desperately to touch Cecil’s face, but he can’t. Not with the chains. He rattles them and sighs. Cecil just sniffles.
“I need your answer,” he whispers. He caresses Carlos’s face and Carlos just shuts his eyes for a moment.
“I wish I had more time.”
“I know, my lovely and perfect and sensible Carlos. But we’re out of time.”
“I want to be with you,” Carlos finally says. “And to perhaps share your pain and burdens with you. There is nothing keeping me away from Night Vale, but everything is keeping me here. Especially you. You’re my home, now. My most precious discovery, my strange town, Cecil. I’m in love with this town. I’m in love with you.”
Cecil is weeping again but he’s smiling, leaning down to kiss Carlos full on the lips.
“You’ll stay with me forever?” he whispers when he pulls away.
“Yeah,” Carlos says. He wishes he could be a bit more eloquent, but truly he spent all of his eloquence in his confession to the Voice of Night Vale, the definition of eloquence and poise. So a simple ‘Yeah’ will have to do for now.
“Neat,” is what Cecil says in reply, and they laugh together like true human men, foreheads pressed together even though it’s kind of strange feeling the squish of Cecil’s third eye.
Carlos watches with a dazed smile as Cecil climbs up onto the slab and mounts him, straddling his body. His singular pubic tentacle, eight inches long and very thin and prehensile, coils around Carlos’s cock, working it slowly back into arousal.
“Has he made his choice?” the robed figure from before asks, sounding annoyed and angry that his puppet disobeyed his will.
“Yes,” Cecil sighs. “He’s going to become a part of me.”
He sounds whimsical and relieved, like he’s in a dream, and Carlos could totally understand if they weren’t currently surrounded by peeping toms.
The robed figure heaves a sigh.
“Very well. What part of you shall he be?”
Carlos hisses as Cecil raises his hips and lowers himself onto him, shivering as he’s slowly filled.
“My sky,” he murmurs. “The stars. The universe! Not the lights above the Arby’s, but the stars, all of them. All of Night Vale’s stars. All of my stars.”
Carlos wants to tell him that the stars above Night Vale are only the same once in a great while because the earth is constantly moving, but he lets it go because he’s sure that Night Vale isn’t even on Earth’s plane of reality, that they’re caught in limbo somewhere between the void above and the void below.
“The Stars of Night Vale, then.”
“Of course,” Cecil replies, voice strained as his face flushes deep violet. He braces himself on Carlos’s chest with both hands and rides him slowly, gyrating his hips and parting his lips as a heady moan escapes him. “It feels-”
“Perfect, yeah,” Carlos interrupts, grinning a bit to himself as he shuts his eyes and tips his head back. Cecil is tight around him and wet and slick, and it almost makes him forget the Council around him. They’re beginning to chant, lifting their arms to the dirt roof high above them, into the void. As Cecil’s mewls and moans become higher and higher pitched and louder, their chants grow more intense, rising rapidly in volume and darkening in tone until their voices are throbbing in Carlos’s ears, their rhythm spurring him on, pumping his cock in and out of Cecil wildly like a machine. His fists clench and he wishes, fucking needs his arms to be cut loose from their chains so they can touch the man who’s frantically riding him like his life depends on it.
“F-F-Feels amazing-” Cecil chokes. Carlos bobs his head in agreement dumbly. “Close, Carlos, oh god-”
Carlos’s name spills from his lips over and over and, with an otherworldly shriek of ecstasy, he cums, back arched beautifully and his fingers tangled in his own hair and his head wrenched back. He sobs with pleasure as Carlos bucks up into him as deep as he can go and cums violently inside of him, the Voice’s inner muscles working to milk him dry.
Panting, Carlos shuts his eyes as Cecil calms down, but opens them again when he feels a looming presence over him. Above him hovers a lone black tentacle that has a flared tip and is dripping a steady stream of fluid onto Carlos’s lips. Fearfully, he glances at Cecil.
“I need more of you,” he says. His voice is dark, frightening, which makes Carlos lick his lips. Immediately the taste of the fluids floods his senses, and his lips part as he lets out a moan. Inside of Cecil, his dick gives a feeble twitch despite the fact he just came.
“What is that…?”
“Don’t worry, my love,” Cecil says, then plunges the tentacle into Carlos’s mouth. His eyes widen and he thrashes a bit, but the tentacle wriggles its way down, down, down his throat and his esophagus and forces itself into his stomach, where it releases wave after wave of warm fluids that make Carlos’s head go numb. “Everything is going to feel wonderful soon.”
And it does. For hours it seems, perhaps days, Carlos can’t tell, they make love over and over with seemingly endless energy. At one point the Council releases his arms and he and Cecil gladly switch positions. Quite literally, they fuck all over the enclosure they’re trapped in, play with hot candle wax, tie each other up, and after a while Carlos is positive they have exchanged body fluids to the point that the difference between his sperm cells and Cecil’s are indiscernible.
“Ah, gods yes, fuck me, fuck me harder!” Cecil cries out from underneath Carlos as a robed figure feeds him a gluten-free Subway sandwich. Carlos, silly, human Carlos, had nearly starved to death he’s pretty sure, so the Council had been forced to feed him mid-coitus. Cecil doesn’t seem to mind, of course.
The aphrodisiac boiling in his insides keeps him hard, eliminates the refractory period, and for a few panicked minutes he’s afraid he’s quite literally dumping every single sperm in his body into Cecil’s hole. Then he comes to find that the production rate of sperm has been increased exponentially, because he’s still cumming hard and thick with every orgasm. Cecil’s stomach is even beginning to bloat, the pale skin pulled taut as he’s filled and filled and filled and filled until finally…
“Ohhh, god,” Cecil moans. Carlos pants and straightens, staring down at his handiwork. They’re both disgusting and covered with cum from head to toe, and Cecil’s hole is a constant stream of his natural lubricant and other fluids. He’s sprawled out on the stone slab now, arms lying placidly over his head, a blissed-out smile on his face. “Mmm…”
“How do you feel?” Carlos murmurs. His hand ghosts over the swell of Cecil’s stomach, which trembles beneath his touch.
“Full. Wonderful. Complete,” he whispers. He blinks lazily up at Carlos and chuckles softly. “We’re both gross.”
“I know.”
“The Council left to go eat and take a bathroom break, I think.”
“How long have we been…?”
“Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Who knows? Time is irrelevant. Time… no longer exists to you. To us,” Cecil breathes. “Welcome, my love. To me.”
“I don’t feel any different,” Carlos says.
“The ritual is not yet complete, technically. What do you think you donated all of this life force for? I have yet to turn you.”
Stricken with a sudden fear, Carlos gulps.
“Will it hurt?”
Cecil smiles apologetically and raises a tentacle. Its tip has hardened and has become sharp like a dagger. Carlos shivers.
“Oh…”
“I will make it as quick and painless as possible,” Cecil murmurs. He reaches down and takes Carlos’s cock in his hands, even though it is completely flaccid now. Another tentacle sneaks behind him and nudges its way past the cleft of his ass and slips inside of him, purposefully massaging his prostate. Carlos moans, even though he still feels terror at the feeling of the dagger tentacle creeping along his back, scratching between his shoulder blades and looking for the perfect place to pierce.
“I’m afraid,” Carlos admits as he feels the pressure of the dagger appendage increasing. His cock is twitching feebly in Cecil’s hands.
“I know. But can you trust me?”
“I-I…”
“Put all of your faith in me,” he says. He starts mouthing a nipple and Carlos can feel his heat rising.
“Okay-”
“Do you trust me to bring you back to life, Carlos?”
“Yes.”
He cums weakly and it’s dry. It fills him with pleasure before there’s a quick burst of pain in his back. It grows quickly, though, because the dagger roots itself deep in his body and splinters off into many branches, spearing his heart and his lungs and his stomach and kidneys and appendix, shattering bones and severing his spinal cord and bursting out through the front of his sternum. The last thing he sees is Cecil’s beautiful face doused in his blood, his face lax with pleasure and his mouth open to accept waiting spurts of hot life force.
And then everything is dark.
Being immortal is not much different, but everything becomes much more pleasurable. He only feels pain when he wants it; he feels no depletion of energy. He no longer needs to shave in the morning and he doesn’t need to sleep, but he does like to rest his eyes (all three of them) from time to time just to think and be alone with his thoughts.
Being the personification of Night Vale’s stars is fitting, he thinks. Beneath his skin, in his jet black blood, black as the void, deep within the marrow of his bones, he feels the constant thrum of the stars millions of lightyears away, he can feel the solar flares and he can feel the explosion of a star, the suck of a black hole, the pulsars emitting from the core of a neutron star.
He can feel the universe. He understands the void. He understands the stars, can see into forever and eternity and beyond, and his third eye can see deeper into space than any human-crafted telescope ever invented. From where it blinks on his forehead, images of alien civilizations and a thousand different dimensions and all of the answers to any question the universe has ever posed-
“What are you thinking about?”
Carlos’s third eye closes and his normal pair opens. He turns his head to the side to see the glowing face of his lover, who is still basking in the afterglow. They had made love under the stars on the roof of his apartment. Earlier they had shared wine and had a picnic out here in the darkness, enjoying the pitch black reflection of space swirling all over Carlos’s skin and, of course, the constellations in the sky.
“I was thinking about eternity. All of the scientific discoveries humans have yet to discover, they… they know so little, Cecil.”
Cecil sits up, bare legs folded neatly to the side, his lovely hair shifting atop his head. He traces circles over Carlos’s chest.
“I know,” he says. “It’s so amazing and beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I wish I could teach them,” Carlos says. “And show them… this.”
He gestures to the sky. A shooting star flies across his inner elbow and Carlos watches as the reflection of it fizzles out on his skin. It had been shocking when he had first stepped outside at night. Indoors and during the day, he appears just as normal as anyone else, a caramel-skinned Hispanic man clad in a labcoat with a beautiful radio show host on his arm. However, at night, his true colors show, the light of a billion stars reflected on his skin as if he was a man-shaped mirror. He thought he looked strange at first, but Cecil could only gaze at him in absolute awe, for he was the literal manifestation of the heavens above.
Carlos watches Cecil looking up at the sky for a long while as he lies back and rests his head on his hands. He doesn’t mind that they’re both naked. Once upon a time, he supposes he would’ve been ashamed, but upon learning every secret of the universe, he realized that human vanity is of no importance. Should’ve never been important.
“Would you like me to tell you the secrets of the universe, my love?” Carlos asks out of nowhere. “What’s on the other side of a black hole? What’s beyond our universe? What your alternate selves look like?”
Carlos sits up and rests his head on Cecil’s shoulder. Cecil leans back, allowing Carlos to wrap him in his arms.
“What would you like the stars to tell you, my dear, sweet, beautiful Night Vale?”
“Let’s keep it a secret,” Cecil giggles. He turns his head to nuzzle Carlos’s jaw. “I want to discover all of your secrets one by one, along with the people of Night Vale. But… perhaps you could tell me how to discover these secrets of yours, so my people stop flailing around so much and actually get work done.”
Carlos chuckles as Cecil kisses him once, and again, and again.
“God,” Carlos murmurs as Cecil lowers him onto their picnic blanket. “Again?”
“Mmm,” Cecil hums, lazily grinding against him and working them both back up to pleasant, simmering arousal. “Of course.”
“How does it feel to make love to the stars?” Carlos asks softly. He may know the secrets to the universe, but Cecil is as much of an enigma, a mystery, as he always was and always will be. Cecil’s third eye blinks open and Carlos can feel him enter his mind, entering it because Carlos is, after all, a part of Night Vale, literally and figuratively. He closes his eyes and moans as Cecil prods and sifts through his memories, massaging his emotions, leaving fluttering kisses on his innermost human fears and desires. It fills Carlos with pleasure just having Cecil there inside of his mind as if he had belonged there all along.
“It feels like making love to you,” Cecil finally answers. While he had been poking around in Carlos’s mind, Carlos hadn’t noticed Cecil had begun to slowly ride him again. Carlos places his hands lovingly on his hips and helps his slow, languid movements. He chuckles at his lover's answer.
“That seems dull, don’t you think? Making love to a human.”
Cecil smiles and shakes his head with a look on his face that always reminds Carlos that Cecil is old, older than the earth, probably older than the universe itself. And that Carlos is still so very young, a toddler on the cosmic perspective of things. It makes him feel humble. Tiny.
“Silly, beautiful, amazing, simple, wonderful Carlos,” Cecil whispers. He kisses Carlos’s lips just as another shooting star rushes up his nose, across his eyelids, and to his temple. “You were my starlight all along.”