Archive of Our Own

“We’re going to go through security, and then we’re going to get something light to eat on the other side that we can carry onto the plane,” Carlos says. Cecil nods and squeezes, then lets go of Carlos’ hand. Cecil knows he’s unusually strong, and that kind of pressure must be hurting him. It must be, even though he hasn’t said anything. Cecil doesn’t want to hurt him, especially when he’s being so patient.

“I can order for you if you want,” Carlos says, and he takes Cecil’s hand again, running a thumb over the back as he pulls into long-term parking. “And then we’ll sit at the gate--”

“Are there going to be a ton of people?” Cecil asks, and he hates the tremble in his voice, hates having to do this--no, hates that Carlos has to do this, whether or not Cecil has to do it is irrelevant. One of these days he’s going to realize other boyfriends don’t have to do this, and it’s entirely possible that when he does they’ll be over.

Except they won’t, they can’t be. Carlos has promised Cecil many times that he’s fine as he is: that Carlos is used to people with anxiety, that he can’t imagine leaving someone over something like this. Sometimes he says it a dozen times a day, because Cecil knows it but sometimes . . . sometimes . . .

Sometimes he just needs Carlos to be louder than the insidious little worms of doubt in his head.

“There might be,” Carlos tells him, still in that soft comforting voice that feels like a warm blanket around Cecil’s shoulders. “But this isn’t a hub airport and we’re flying late in the evening, so probably not. And if there are, I’m here, and you have Lucy, right?”

The little doll he’s supposed to squeeze for panic attacks. Yes. Cecil nods. He checked three times before he left the house. “I’m sorry.”

Carlos kisses his temple, and Cecil melts a little inside. Night Vale is a pretty good town where mental illnesses are concerned--Cecil has a little table behind a plant in Big Rico’s they always save for him on Tuesdays, and he has an agreement with City Council that lets him be debriefed instead of re-educated so he can avoid things like dark rooms with small windows and more than three people he doesn’t know at a time--but he’s never met anyone so unconditionally kind about his problems. “It’s okay,” Carlos says. “You don’t need to be sorry. Do you want to talk about what we do next, or wait until we’re inside?”

“Talk now,” Cecil spits out, and then, because that’s unnecessarily rude, “please.”

Carlos squeezes Cecil’s hand. “So we’ll get settled at the gate and I’ll see if we can board early. I checked us in early so I could get the seats at the back, so even if we can’t board early we’ll still be on first. I have a couple of little pillows and a blanket in my carryon, so if you’re comfortable enough to sleep, you can. We have a direct flight to Boston, and when we get there my father’s picking us up. We’ll go straight to the house. Mom said she’s getting up early to make breakfast, and if we’re still tired we can sleep after we eat. The first day is pretty much shot from jetlag, but we might go out for dinner. Mom and Pop know you don’t do crowds, they won’t pick anywhere that’s going to be a problem. And the day after I have to go up to the university, but Mom’s home all day, she’d probably love the company.”

Cecil squeezes Carlos’ hand again. He has to stop doing that. Leaving Night Vale isn’t a reason to break Carlos’ hand.

Oh but he’s leaving Night Vale . . . and at the other end of this journey are people he’s never met, lots of them, some of whom he’s talked to briefly on the phone but most of whom are just names without faces or voices yet and at some point during the week he has to go to an event with these people . . .

Carlos brushes Cecil’s hair out of his eyes. “Don’t think too far ahead,” he counsels, and leans across the center console so Cecil can hug him. “It’ll be okay. You can stay at the house if you want to. You don’t have to go anywhere.”

Cecil squeezes his eyes shut. He does want to, that’s just it. He wants to hold hands and go to museums and restaurants and walk through Carlos’ old haunts and go see the library where Carlos earned his doctorate and meet his colleagues without feeling like someone clamped a vise around his chest. He doesn’t want to be terrified of these strangers the way he was terrified by the first reports of Carlos in the little town he loves so much.

Because Carlos loves them--well, most of them, every big project has at least one asshole--and Cecil wants to love them, too.

And for awhile, it looks like things are going to be all right. They get inside, Carlos checks their shared bag and quietly instructs Cecil through what he has to take off and how he should lay out his bag for security, and he squeezes Cecil’s hand before walking through the metal detector and slinging his laptop back over one shoulder.

And then Cecil walks through, and a harsh buzz goes off in his ears.

They’re going to miss the plane, and it’s his fault. They might go to prison, and it’s his fault. They’re going to be separated, and it’s--

“Cecil, shh,” Carlos’ voice says in his ear, and he looks up, trying to blink back tears, to stop shaking, to breathe. Carlos holds up his hands, presumably trying to leave them where TSA can see them. “They’ve got to pat you down. But it’s okay. I’ve set off detectors with my jacket zipper before. Some of them are really sensitive.”

Cecil swallows hard and nods, clenches his fists and tries to remind himself he can’t do it too hard or he’ll cut his palms.

And then the agent reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out Lucy.

“The hell is this?”

Cecil squeezes his eyes shut. Lucy is a ragdoll he got when he was five, dressed in little doll suspenders and called Christopher. Cecil was six when he swapped the suspenders for a wrapped piece of old shirt he called a dress, and later that year--when it became obvious nothing but the newly-christened Lucy would do for calming his occasional bouts of hysterical weeping and shrieking--his grandmother spent a long and unexpectedly rainy day with him in her sewing room, adding a long brown braid and making the enrido and huipil Lucy still wears.

She made the doll, too, and that’s why Lucy has metal shoebutton eyes and jewelry made out of wrapped copper wire. Lucy set off the metal detector.

“She’s a comfort item,” Carlos’ voice says through the wave of panic Cecil can feel squeezing around him like a snake. “He has an anxiety disorder.”

“It’s a doll,” the TSA agent says, and Cecil clenches his hands again. He’s heard this one before, and always from outsiders: what the hell kind of pervert carries a kid’s doll?

“And carrying her helps him avoid panic attacks,” Carlos answers. The agent looks ready to pull Carlos aside, too, and then an extremely large woman with a supervisor's badge shifts over--and that’s exactly the word for it, she shifts, nobody her size just walks somewhere--and holds out a hand.

“Let me see it, Dave,” she says, and when Dave opens his mouth to argue she raises a single eyebrow. Cecil watches her poke at the doll.

“Cute dolly,” she comments, and then she looks from the doll to Cecil. “She got a name?”

Cecil tries to answer. Nothing comes out but a tiny squeak. Then he feels Carlos’ hand on his shoulder. “Her name is Lucy. Like the Beatles song.”

Cecil doesn’t remember telling Carlos where he got the name from, but it’s true, and he nods, a tiny bob of the head up and down. The female agent is still looking over his doll.

“All right,” she agrees. “I’m gonna give Lucy a ride through the machine, but I bet it’s her eyes. Looks to me like they’re real antiques.”

Cecil swallows hard and puts a hand on top of Carlos’. “They were my grandmother’s.”

He watches the agent stare up at a screen on the other side of the machine. Lucy trundles serenely through in a little plastic bin and out, and the female agent nods at him.

“Better put her in your bag on the way back,” she advises, and initials their boarding passes. “Less hassle.”

Cecil tucks Lucy back into his pocket and lets Carlos grab his carryon. He feels sick, and he wants nothing more than to be back in their bed in the little bungalow house they picked out together. Carlos is looking at him with a significant amount of concern, and that only makes things worse.

“Let’s skip the food,” Carlos suggests. “They usually have snacks for sale on board--”

Cecil shakes his head, hard. “You said you wanted real food.”

“Yeah, before we ran into that TSA asshole,” Carlos says, and Cecil squeezes his eyes shut again.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Carlos says again. “You can’t do anything about his attitude. But I know kiosks are hard for you.”

And I know you didn’t have dinner because I was too anxious to eat and you didn’t want to upset my stomach with food smells, Cecil thinks, but he won’t say it. He can’t start an argument right now, even when he knows he’s right, he just can’t, so finally he mumbles “‘s fine” and reaches for Carlos’ hand, clamps their fingers together. Carlos drops a kiss on Cecil’s cheek.

“You’re really sure?” Carlos asks, and Cecil nods, once. He needs to get in and out. Needs to. Once they’re at the gate there might be a corner he can go hide in.

And this is why he does radio instead of television, because in radio nobody needs to see him. He doesn’t have to talk to anyone. The interns do that part of his job for him.

He tries hard to ignore everything until they reach the gate, and then Carlos tucks him into a corner with Lucy and half a sandwich.

“Will you be okay here if I go talk to the gate attendant, or do you want me to stay here?”

“Do you have to?” The gate area is almost abandoned, but Cecil is sure it’ll fill up quickly. Twenty-seat planes don’t make cross-country trips.

“I want to see if they’ll let us board early.”

Cecil considers. Then he nods. Carlos kisses his forehead and--pulls a book out of his carryon.

“People don’t usually try to start up conversations with people they see reading,” he explains. “You don’t actually have to read. But if you’re nervous, you can hold it open like you are.”

Cecil nods gratefully and watches Carlos head for the ticket counter, then nibbles at his sandwich. He’s not hungry, but Carlos went to the trouble of buying it, he should at least try.

He gets through about a third of it and can’t eat any more. He’ll be sick, he knows he will, and so he wraps it back up in the plastic and waits with Carlos’ book clenched in his hands until Carlos comes back, sits down next to him, pulls Cecil into the circle of his arms and makes him rest his face against Carlos’ neck so Carlos can rub his back.

“They’re still cleaning, but we can board in about ten minutes,” Carlos murmurs into his ear, low and soothing and really Cecil could listen to him read the phone book and become calm. “We’ve got two seats all the way in the back and the attendant said it’s not a full flight, she’s going to try to leave the entire row empty.”

Cecil nods against his shoulder. Carlos strokes his hair, and Cecil feels his stomach do a slow and ugly somersault.

Night Vale is a good town for people who are different, but there are people on the outside--plenty of them--who might be looking at them even now ready to hate and hurt and tear them down.

Carlos tips Cecil’s face up and kisses his cheek. “Shhhh,” he murmurs, and it’s not a be-quiet-Cecil sound, it’s a soothing sound, a relax-I’m-with-you sound, and finally Cecil puts his head back on Carlos’ shoulder with his face out, instead of in. A pair of legs appears in his line of vision, and before he can tense up a female voice that’s at least pretending to be friendly tells them their seats are ready to board.

There are flight attendants still picking up other people’s things from the last flight. One or two of them offer up curious looks as Cecil slinks past with Carlos behind him, and Cecil tries to make himself smaller, harder to notice. Carlos ignores them, and how he can do that Cecil will never understand.

It’s one thing on the radio, where strange looks and rejections can’t be seen. It’s another entirely when everyone is staring.

Carlos deposits Cecil in the window seat, rummages in the carryon and pulls out a blanket Cecil recognizes from Carlos’ loveseat in the lab office. He drapes it around Cecil’s shoulders, and Cecil cuddles into it immediately, breathes deep and smells Carlos all over it--long nights with cultures and catching a nap between cell cycles, the day the power went out and Carlos stayed on the sofa waiting for Cecil to pick him up and--

And that isn’t the smell of Carlos’ soap or skin or hair, certainly not a lab smell, and Cecil breathes deeply again before--for the first time since they left the house--he almost smiles.

“How did you--?”

Carlos pauses in untucking a pillow and smiles up at him. “I wore cologne to the lab yesterday. I was just writing reports, I didn’t see any harm in it,” he answers, and this time Cecil does smile, burying his nose in the blanket to smell all of Carlos at one time--Carlos at work, Carlos on date night, Carlos after rolling out of bed in the morning--and feeling like Carlos just wiggled something in the tight knot in his chest and pulled a whole hank of it loose and free. He reaches for Carlos’ hand.

“I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you,” he says, and this time Carlos kisses his lips instead of his cheek.

“You loved me,” he answers, and tucks the pillow against the window, where Cecil can lean on it and try to relax even if he can’t sleep. “That’s enough.”

Cecil’s about to ask how Carlos is supposed to stay warm--there can’t possibly be enough space in that bag for two blankets and two pillows--when one of the flight attendants stops by their seats and tells them full boarding won’t begin for another twenty minutes and asks if they’d like anything to drink. Carlos squeezes Cecil’s hand.

“I brought chamomile for us, if you have hot water,” he says, and Cecil’s fingers twitch in Carlos’ grip. Carlos glances at him--a little sideways glance, one Cecil used to think was probably annoyed until he realized just how good Carlos’ peripheral vision is with his contacts in--and then back up at the flight attendant. “And--”

And he pauses, and Cecil squeezes his hand, hard. She did ask, and they’re trying to be kind, and Carlos is here. “Do you have anything like--soda or ginger ale or--anything like that?”

Carlos squeezes his hand back twice in quick succession, and Cecil knows what it means: good job, I’m so proud of you. Suddenly he’s glad Carlos thought of a way to say it when other people are around, because the attendant tips her head to one side and purses her lips and he’s annoyed her she was trying to help him and he--

“Sorry, I don’t have them all memorized yet,” she says at last, and--smiles. She's embarrassed, when Cecil is the one who asked the question. “I usually read the list off the cart. I think we’ve got 7-Up, is that good?”

“That’s fine,” he says, and then, when she smiles and turns away, “thank you.” Carlos squeezes his shoulder.

"That was great, Cecil," he says, and when the attendant brings their water and Cecil's 7-Up Carlos puts a small white tablet in Cecil's hand. Cecil looks at it curiously.

"What's this?"

Carlos puts a cup with a teabag in it in front of him. "Dramamine. It's for motion sickness, but the important part is that it'll make you tired. I thought it'd help to keep you on your schedule, and if I need to nap in Boston you can lay down with me and get your bearings. Or explore the house, if you want."

"Maybe--I could take my walk?" he asks, and Carlos' brilliant smile is all the answer he really needs. An actor might be able to fake a smile like that, but Carlos can't even lie about his age. He's too honest.

It's one of the things Cecil loves best, out of the many things there are to love. He hates doubting everything around him, and Carlos' perfect honesty makes him almost impossible to doubt. He still second-guesses, sometimes, but Carlos is patient, and Cecil's never felt with Carlos the kind of crippling and irrational fear that killed him and Earl before they'd gotten much past the second date (and Cecil knows it's irrational, and he hates it, and Carlos knows it too but he never says it, just patiently reassures and gets on with things).

"If you want to walk around the block, I bet Julia would love to go with you," Carlos says, and Cecil quickly combs his mental bank of names before he starts to panic: Julia Hernandez, Carlos' little sister. Year-old baby. Husband in Iraq (and Cecil's sorry PFC Hernandez is there specifically, but he's not at all sorry there's one less person he has to meet right now). Likes to garden. Giggles a lot on Skype, like she's so happy in spite of her hardships that she can't help smiling. Cecil envies her. "Madison loves walks. The baby," Carlos supplies, before Cecil even has to ask. "The baby, good lord, Cecil, she's thirteen months old and I've never actually met her."

Cecil doesn't think this is an unusual state of affairs--he has a whole swath of aunts he hasn't seen since his first, and only, disastrous trip out of Night Vale when he was eight, and he's perfectly okay with that, thanks, he couldn't stand them nor they him--but Carlos' is the kind of tight-knit group that's probably going to start calling him "m'hijo" ten minutes after he walks in even if they hate him, and for Carlos, thirteen months without seeing a new addition is a little like thirteen months without air. "Is she going to know who you are?"

"We've seen each other on Skype," Carlos answers, and Cecil's pretty sure he's not imagining the tight worry Carlos almost, but not quite, has under wraps. It's one of the few things Carlos has admitted he worries about, probably because he's afraid of upsetting Cecil, a state of affairs so fundamentally unfair it makes Cecil want to cringe. Instead he wraps his arms around Carlos' shoulders and kisses his cheek, instead of the other way around.

"She's going to love you," he says, because if there's one thing Cecil finds easy, it's loving Carlos, sweet Carlos who fit so neatly into his life (and even managed to be civil with Steve Carlsberg, something Cecil finds about as possible as squaring the circle). Carlos smiles a little.

"I hope so. How's your tum?"

"Better." Cecil's a little surprised to realize it's true. The plane is quiet, and Carlos is close, and the smell of chamomile is soothing even though it's 7-Up he's still sipping. Carlos reaches up and runs his fingers through Cecil's hair. Cecil looks down at the Dramamine on his tray. "When should I take this?"

"Whenever you like," Carlos answers, and shows a second one to Cecil. "I usually wait until after they do announcements, but the knockout effect doesn't really work for me. I used to get carsick as a kid and I don't want to be that guy who, you know, really gets in touch with his childhood mid-flight."

Cecil startles them both when he actually giggles, and after a second Carlos starts chuckling, too.

"That'd be messy," Cecil agrees, and then the first part of Carlos' statement hits him. "How do you know it's going to work on me?"

"Educated guess. When I was sixty pounds lighter it worked on me, too. And you've never taken it, you'll be a lot more sensitive than I am. I could come up with half a dozen good reasons you're going to be out ten minutes after you take it. Did you get your bedtime meds?"

Cecil gasps. Of all the things he could have forgotten on the way out the door, how could he be so stupid--

Carlos shakes his head and puts a finger on Cecil's lips. "Don't beat yourself up," he says, and pulls a little travel bottle out of his jacket. "It's easy to forget things when you travel. I'm going to have to get a toothbrush in Boston." He shakes the bottle against his palm, and Cecil stares as his pills spill out across Carlos' hand. Pink--orange--green--the two little white ones that are supposed to help his concentration but totally don't--and Carlos displays them so Cecil can check the doses. "I realized two days ago our plane takes off around the time you sack out and I figured I'd better stick a dose in my coat in case we both forgot."

He tips the pills into Cecil's hand, and Cecil bounces them for a second or two before he dumps them all into his mouth and swallows them with a gulp of tea. Once upon a time he was embarrassed taking his pills in front of Carlos--so many, so often--and then one day Carlos read a name off a bottle and said nine magic words: "I took this when I was getting my doctorate."

In Carlos' company, he isn't strange.

There's no good reason Carlos sharing his prescription once upon a when should make him feel better, but--as Carlos has pointed out many times, about both Cecil’s brain and brains in general--there’s not really a good reason for anybody’s mind to feel better or worse about anything, given that no two people react to the same thing the same way even if they’re both supposedly neurotypical, and if it helps, that's all that matters.

Cecil took his pill that night at dinner instead of slinking off to the bathroom, and he's done ever since, Carlos sometimes asking softly if he's "set" when he comes to bed. It always reminds Cecil of Fridays, when Carlos celebrates his holy day with the candles and special bread he filled out a 75286-3A for (Religious Exemption From Town Dietary Rules, not particularly difficult but extremely long, probably to deter people using it to get illicit wheat products and peyote), and how he says a blessing over the food in a language Cecil doesn't understand and then hands Cecil a piece of the egg bread he calls challah and says all set, Shabbat shalom. It means "peace on the day of rest," something Cecil knows nothing about, and sometimes when Cecil takes his last pill for the night he thinks--with a level of irony most people who know him would never guess he could muster--we praise thee for the pharmaceuticals we are about to receive, that make possible a basic level of functioning.

A voice comes suddenly out of the loudspeaker in the aisle, knocking Cecil out of his peaceful reverie. "Flight attendants to the front, we're preparing to board."

Cecil tenses up. Carlos rubs the flat place between his shoulder blades. "You can take it now if you want," Carlos says. "First class boards first. It'll be probably ten minutes before anyone's back here."

Cecil nods and looks into Carlos' eyes, and swallows the last pill whole.

---------------------------

"Cecil."

Cecil grumbles a little and rolls under his covers. It's Saturday, he doesn't have to go to the studio at all, and he'll sleep in a bit if he wants to. Carlos rubs his shoulder.

"Cecil. Love. We're here."

Cecil's eyes snap open. They're on a plane, right; at some point in the night he remembers crawling over Carlos to get to the bathroom, but everyone on the plane was sleeping and the whole thing had the weird, hazy quality of a dream. "Boston?"

Carlos hums his assent. "It's going to be a little busy, but I called Pop and he brought Julia with him, so you can get in the car right away and she can help me with baggage claim."

Cecil nods and feels his stomach clench. Carlos pauses to kiss him.

"It'll be okay," he promises, and Cecil grabs his pillow to stuff in the bag. "Dad does this stuff for a living. You're going to be with someone who can help you and it's only for a few minutes. Make sure you check your pockets for Lucy before we get off so she doesn't get left behind."

Cecil sticks his hand in his pocket. "She's here."

Carlos kisses his cheek. "Take my hand," he says, and leads Cecil off the plane.

The concourse is full of rushing people, and Carlos leads Cecil to the wall and down a hallway, tucked tightly against Carlos' side.

A woman's voice calls Carlos' name, and Cecil bites his tongue and squeezes Lucy in his pocket while Carlos and his sister exchange hugs. Cecil plasters on his work smile and braces himself for--

--a hand, put gently on his arm. Julia smiles at him.

"So you're the one Carlos can't shut up about," she says, and Carlos blushes and nudges her side with his elbow. "That takes talent, getting more than half a dozen words at a time out of him usually takes pliers and torture threats."

Cecil unglues his tongue. "I didn't, I mean, I wouldn't--"

Carlos squeezes his hand. Julia chuckles. "It's just an expression. Outside Night Vale, I mean. Your police sound like they're really something else. I'm glad we finally get to meet you."

Cecil manages not to cringe by sheer force of will. Carlos already told him he hasn't bothered censoring his work to his family, with the minor exception that kids with guns in school are actually an extremely upsetting subject outside Night Vale and he'd appreciate if they could stay away from it, something childless Cecil doesn't think will be a problem. But he also knows there are things they think are strange, maybe even don't believe in at all, and it's this that frightens him--that they'll laugh at funny Night Vale Cecil and whatever stupid words come out of his mouth. Julia glances up at Carlos--he's taller, for a given value of "taller" in a very short family--and the niceties are over, now it's a brother and sister instead of two people reunited.

"I have no idea what your bags look like unless you're still using that godawful green thing that looks like it got trampled by a bull," she says, and startles a laugh right out of Cecil's mouth.

"He is," Cecil laments. "Mine is pink. They don't coordinate at all."

Julia giggles again, maybe at the idea of Cecil carrying a pink suitcase or maybe because--not that Cecil would say so, not aloud, not with the full extent of the vocabulary radio has given him--Carlos' suitcase is so incredibly ugly.

"Okay," is all she says, and in spite of himself Cecil relaxes a little. This is Carlos' sister, after all, and siblings can be different, but they can't possibly be so different that one could be so completely wonderful and the other mean-spirited enough to laugh at Cecil because he likes colors bright enough for people to look at his clothes instead of him. “Do you want him to take you out, or me?”

Cecil almost jumps because take him out, he doesn’t even have so much as a pocketknife and that’s really not a fair fight now is it and then he realizes she’s talking about the car and squeezes Carlos’ hand.

“I guess you should,” Cecil says, even though he really doesn’t want to. He knows Carlos has to stay for their bags, knows that, but knowing doesn’t make leaving his side any easier. “It’d be mean to make him go out and come back without getting to really say hello.”

Julia just smiles again and offers Cecil her arm. He takes it, glances back at Carlos as he walks out into a freezing Boston street and shivers.There are cold days in Night Vale, but never enough to be worth buying anything heavier than what Carlos calls a spring jacket. Julia tugs on his arm, gently, pulling him around to look at too many parked cars with blinkers on.

"We're the blue one," she says, and opens the back door. Cecil slides a hand into his pocket, holds onto Lucy tightly as he gets in. "We'll be out in a few. Oh--" There's a pause, long enough for Cecil to think that either Carlos has changed, living with him, or that maybe she and Carlos are very different after all. “Cecil, this is our dad.” She nods toward the front of the car, and a dark-skinned man with Carlos’ eyes turns around and smiles.

"Matéo," he says, and holds out a hand that reminds Cecil forcibly of Carlos: same square shape, same large, clean nails. "It's a pleasure."

Cecil hesitates, then holds out his own. "Thank you." And how stupid, you're supposed to say 'the pleasure's mine', thirty seconds in and he--

"Carlos sent us tapes of your radio show," Matéo (Matéo? First names, already? He's a doctor, and someone Cecil's just met that can't possibly be polite) says. His English is accented, but otherwise perfect. "I see why you're so popular. Most announcers these days are very canned."

Popular? The idea hasn't ever occurred to him, and he's alone in this car with a man he doesn't know and car horns and noise all around. He gives Lucy a squeeze. "Thank you."

Carlos' father nods, still smiling. There's something on the radio, soft, and Cecil strains to hear it. Opera.

"Carlos said you prefer quiet places," Matéo (and Cecil should ask him about that . . . no) says. Cecil nods. “We put you on the third floor. It is an old attic, but Carlos had his room there when he was a teenager, and it is very private for you two.”

Cecil squeezes Lucy again. One of these days he’s going to get used to the idea that sometimes things work out without inconveniencing other people, but today isn’t it. “Thank you.”

“Oh my god, it’s freezing out here,” Carlos says suddenly in Cecil’s ear, and almost-slams the door before scooting into the middle seat and putting an arm around Cecil’s waist. “I forgot what Boston winters are like. Hi, Pop.”

“They’re calling for a cold snap tonight,” Julia singsongs from the front seat. Cecil shudders and hopes the attic is insulated. Carlos will bundle him in blankets on blankets, but Cecil is the small one in this duo--taller but bird-boned and skinny where Carlos is solidly built--and he’s afraid of Carlos going cold because Cecil can’t warm him. “I put that plastic stuff on your windows. And took down your Donnie Darko poster since your boyfriend's here, like, wow, consumptive Jake Gyllenhaal is so not actually hot.”

“Julia, that was limited edition!" Carlos all but wails, and Cecil giggles in spite of himself. Carlos' offices in Night Vale--both the one attached to the lab and the one in their home that Carlos uses for things like writing letters--are decorated in framed movie posters, about which he can ramble for hours if asked. He might even know more about movies than science, although Cecil guesses that one is debatable.

“It’s in the closet, I put up the one you took out of your old office about philosophy and perversion instead. I guess when you go back to Night Vale we can call you a pervert.” Julia grins into the back seat. Carlos reaches out a hand to swat her, other arm still seated around Cecil’s waist, and when he sits back Cecil curls up into his side as closely as the seatbelt will allow.

"When I go back to Night Vale, I'm taking my Donnie Darko poster," Carlos answers. "You're a menace."

"You love me," Julia answers breezily, and for a second Cecil wishes he had someone to bandy with like that, and then he thinks he wouldn't be able to do it with that kind of confidence. "You should be thanking me, you need better taste in movie crushes."

"Cecil bought me a poster from The Sheik for Christmas," Carlos says. "He might actually convert me to the Rudolph Valentino school."

Cecil shifts. "I didn't really buy it," he confesses. "There's this room at the back of the Diamond--"

Carlos drops a kiss on his temple. "I did kind of sell you short, didn't I? He went down to the movie theater and sweet-talked the owner. They've still got promos from just about everything they've ever done. I don't know how he did it, I've tried. Shut up, Julia."

Julia giggles. Cecil finds Carlos' hand and twines their fingers together. "Mom said if you're not hungry we'll do brunch instead of breakfast 'cause you're so late."

"Late?" Cecil squeezes Carlos' hand harder than strictly necessary. "But--"

"You were already asleep," Carlos says. "Somebody got held up on another flight and we ended up waiting, so we got bumped to the back of the takeoff line. It happens."

Cecil curls into the corner. Late, messing things up before they were even on the ground--

"--and anyway Madison's going to be down for her first nap by the time we get in, so you can get up with her, she'd love that," Cecil catches through his panic. "And if we do brunch we can have late dinner and no matter where we go it’ll be less crowded, and that’s totally good, right?”

“Great,” Carlos answers, and rubs circles into Cecil’s back. “And a nap sounds great, too. I slept on the plane, but you know how well that usually goes.”

“We changed the bedding upstairs this weekend,” Matéo says, and glances at them in the rearview mirror. Cecil tries to shrink further into the corner. Carlos tugs gently on his waist, maybe afraid Cecil will tumble right out of the car if the door pops open. “And there is a lock now. The baby tries to get into everything. I assumed you would prefer to not be woken up with bananas smashed on your face.”

Carlos starts laughing and pulls Cecil against his side. Cecil finally gives up on hiding in the corner; there’s really nowhere to retreat to in the car. Carlos kisses his forehead.

"What does it say about my job that waking up to a fruit salad facial sounds normal?"

"Only on the fifth Tuesday of the month if it falls on a conjunction of Venus," Cecil supplies, and Carlos chuckles into his ear.

"We're almost home," he says, quietly, and Cecil nods against his shoulder as they pull onto a little side street, and then a smaller one still. There's a tiny woman with gray hair and brown skin standing on a porch with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, and as the car pulls into the driveway she comes down the steps to meet it. Cecil looks at her size and the shape of her mouth and decides Carlos' parents are one of the lucky couples who weathered their years together, instead of apart. Carlos tucks a blanket around Cecil's shoulders.

"I was going to give you my spare, but based on how my clothes fit you there's no way you'd even be able to get it on," he murmurs into Cecil's ear. "We're built too differently. But I can pick one up for you today. And at least--" he reaches into his bag, pulls out a bright purple toque and matching gloves, tugging them onto Cecil's head and hands before clasping their fingers together--"I remembered these. Ready?"

Cecil checks his pocket for Lucy and nods. Carlos tugs his hand and pulls him out of the car, and Julia throws her coat over Cecil's shoulders before darting into the house. It tries to slide, and Cecil ties the hood strings nervously around his neck while Carlos and his mother greet each other.

And then he introduces Cecil, and Carlos' mother just grins and laughs nervously when Cecil holds out a hand to shake and says "nice to meet you," and he's going to go out of his mind he just knows he is--

--except, he thinks as he slides toward panic, he knows that laugh. He even knows how he knows it--his show is always broadcast twice, once in English and once later that evening in Spanish, and her laugh is the same one he hears sometimes when he mistakenly picks up the station phone in English at night instead of saying Radio Comunidad de Night Vale, ¿de donde nos llama?

There are some hilariously large blind spots in his knowledge, but he still speaks well enough that his home with Carlos runs on Spanglish.

This is a problem Cecil can fix.

And so he turns his hand from a shaking position to a clasping one, and smiles, and tries again: "¿Como está, Señora?"

Carlos' mother laughs, and claps his gloved hand between her bare ones, and then pats his cheek. "Bién, bién, gracias, pero, m'hijo, háblame de tu," she says. "Eva. Mamá."

Called it, Cecil thinks, and he's too relieved she accepted the greeting to worry about her laughter, especially when he feels Carlos' hand on his elbow: two nearly imperceptible squeezes.

Carlos suggests they get out of the cold, and god, Cecil loves his accent, the one that's unnoticeable when he speaks English but jumps to the forefront as soon as he switches into what Carlos has called Mexican Spanish ever since the day Cecil asked if he spoke Weird or Standard. They head up the porch steps, and then Matéo (and oh god Cecil can't stand it) pulls Cecil to one side in what Carlos calls a mudroom. He pulls off his scarf, and Cecil quickly pulls off his new gloves and toque.

"I do not want you to think I have made you some kind of case study," he says. "I have not. But you probably know from Carlos what it is that I do, and from your own therapy that the better the picture, the easier it is to help. That is why I have asked so many questions of him."

Cecil nods, and feels a friendly hand on his shoulder. "Then I will tell you this as both a professional and as Carlos' father. You are as welcome here as you are in your own home in Night Vale, and if you need anything you only have to ask. And do not feel you are imposing. We would do the same for you as for Carlos. We may not be mamá and papá to you as we are to him, but we decided years ago any man or woman he cared for enough to bring into our home would be part of our family."

Cecil nods. "Thank you. Doctor Del Mar." And then he bites his tongue, hard, because he was told, he should have--

Carlos' father chuckles and shakes his head and pats Cecil's shoulder. "The formality is unnecessary," he says. "I hope you will come to see us as family. In the meantime Carlos has already told us you do not like being hugged, but the sentiment is there."

Cecil nods again and glances through a second door into the living room, where Carlos is laughing with his mother, and then--maybe because Lucy is still a light and comforting press against his side, maybe because he really does want to fit in so desperately for Carlos’ sake--holds out his arms and almost manages to put them around Matéo’s shoulders without being stiff. He feels the gesture returned--briefly but warmly--and then pulls his arms back down to his sides, elbows pressed against himself. He's trying to figure out how to excuse himself without sounding rude when Matéo toes out of his boots and motions Cecil out of his own shoes (women's loafers, and Cecil can't help it that the unspeakable forces in charge of the local Target decided to stop carrying them in the men's section, and he doesn't mind wearing women's shoes but he's still incredibly glad Carlos' family hasn't noticed).

Then he offers Cecil a pair of house slippers from a cabinet on the wall, and Cecil has just enough time to get uneasy as he puts them on--maybe they did notice, and he's being judged for deciding he'd rather wear women's loafers than men's sneakers--before Matéo pulls out a second pair and toes them on.

"It keeps the dirt out of the house," he says. "They put cinders on the road instead of salt now because they say it's better for the harbor and the sewer system, all well and good I say, but what is better for the harbor is much worse for the carpet, so we keep these for inside." He reaches for the second door--Cecil would guess it's for warmth except that it's only partially wood and mostly glass and can't do much to change the temperature, so maybe it's to cut down on mess--and opens it, holds a hand out to gesture Cecil inside in what's probably meant to be a welcoming way but actually makes him feel like he's walking into a locked cage.

Carlos turns when Cecil comes in, smiles and holds out an arm Cecil quickly tucks himself into. Carlos kisses his temple.

"Ma pointed out Dan's stuff should fit you until we can get you a coat you really like,” he murmurs into Cecil’s ear. “We can go looking later tonight when the stores start emptying out.”

Cecil nods. He likes shopping, actually, and he's a fairly good judge of color and value; it’s the crowds that get to him. Three hours all alone in a mall with a thousand dollars to spend would be heaven.

Picking out a coat might actually--against all expectations of his time in Boston--be fun.

"Also," Carlos says, and the sound of his voice low against Cecil's ear is enough to convince Cecil he might survive at least one day here. “Julia said she and Madison do walks with the couple next door and you’re welcome to join them when Maddie wakes up if you want to.”

Cecil feels his insides twist. He survived the airport, and even with his stomach tied up in a knot finding a coat with Carlos sounds like it could be a nice outing; this is asking too much, and finally he just shakes his head.

“Maybe--maybe tomorrow?”

If Carlos is disappointed, it doesn’t show; he just squeezes Cecil’s waist and says okay.

And then he yawns so widely it looks like his jaw should drop like a snake’s, and his mother--Eva, Cecil thinks, she said her name was Eva, asked him to use it--shoos him before Cecil can even begin, scolding at him in rapid Spanish.

Cecil doesn’t wait to be sure he’s being polite--he just smiles his usual unsure smile and follows, grabbing Carlos’ hand before he can set foot on the staircase, and Carlos looks back at him, startled.

“Can I come?”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

Cecil cons his stomach and considers. Then he shakes his head.

“Not really.” And he doesn’t want to face the kitchen alone--that, too.

Carlos squeezes his hand and leads him up to the second story, then opens a tiny painted door at the end of the hallway they both have to duck through. On the other side is a wooden staircase--not freezing cold, but noticeably colder than the rest of the house, and although there’s insulation peeking out between wooden boards the corridor has never been plastered. The staircase is barely wide enough for two, and so Carlos goes first, leading by a couple of steps.

“I thought this was the coolest part of the whole house when I was a kid,” he says, and then he pats a little recess in the right wall with a boarded-up bottom where someone turned the space between joists into a rough seat. “Pop had these friends from the practice with a whole platoon of kids who were complete assholes so I’d sneak in here and read whenever they came to visit. It was like being in a part of the house nobody else even knew existed--I mean, we knew it was here, but nobody used it until I moved up here. The main attic’s on the other side and you get in through a ladder. But this part--” And he opens a door at the top of the stairs that has an atom symbol on the door with the stenciled words WARNING RADIOACTIVE BIOHAZARD across the bottom--”is totally closed off. You can’t get to it from there.”

“Um--”

Carlos turns around. Cecil is hanging back, down near the recess. “What kind of radioactive biohazard is in there, Carlos?”

Carlos starts laughing and shakes his head. “There isn’t one. It’s an old joke with one of my friends. You might meet him this week, if you’re up to it.” He nods toward the open door. “Made my first week in Night Vale pretty ironic, though. Come on in.”

Cecil hesitates. He doesn't know how he feels, being at the top of this house he doesn't know. Then he reminds himself he has to go somewhere, and short of begging a ride back to the airport and braving the return trip to Night Vale alone, this is it.

So he steps through the door into a snapshot of Carlos Martín Del Mar, age 17, and looks around while Carlos, age 31, turns on a space heater.

There are the ubiquitous movie posters, of course--Fellowship of the Ring, The Blair Witch Project, a reproduction (probably) of 2001: A Space Odyssey that just about had to be the crown jewel of Kubrick-loving young Carlos' fledgling collection. But there's also a pair of hockey skates under the desk and a collage of brightly-colored space photos on what Cecil assumes must be the closet door.

"They're all from Hubble," Carlos says from behind him. "I wanted to be an astronaut, but if you can't make most of the guys in Mensa look stupid, it's not going to happen." He wraps his arms around Cecil's waist. "And that's how I ended up in Night Vale. Ten years earning a doctorate in quantum physics and somebody threw a folder on my desk suggesting it'd be most useful in a place where time and physics only exist when they feel like it."

"Did you ever stop to wonder if maybe there is a benevolent god who inexplicably takes a personal interest in the meaningless series of stumbles we label human life who might have sent you to Night Vale because you deserve puzzles to solve but you're too kind to be put face to face with the uncaring emptiness of the void and survive without becoming an apathetic shell-shocked mess who'd make me look sane and well-balanced?"

Carlos laughs. "You know, that's pretty much what Ma said," he confides. "Minus the void part, it was more like 'how can you not believe Hashem led you to Night Vale when everything you really ever needed is there,' but you're still the second person to bring it up in the last twenty minutes. And I have to admit being the first man on Mars pales a little in comparison to being the man who got to name Khoshekh. We already know what Mars is." Carlos pulls away to strip out of the shirt he traveled in and pull a set of flannels out of his suitcase, and Cecil creeps toward the bed to sit down. The blanket is a cheerful green floral at odds with the rest of the room, but it's soft, and when Cecil pulls the covers down to let the space heater warm them he catches a scent so familiar it makes him blink in surprise.

It's the lavender-lemongrass sachet Carlos keeps in their linen closet in Night Vale, even though the navy sheets on Carlos' childhood bed are nowhere near being the bigger yellow and white sets Cecil keeps to ward off the desert morning heat. Carlos catches the look on Cecil's face as he tugs on a tee shirt, and smiles.

"Secret's out," he chuckles. "Anything that resembles actual housekeeping came from Ma."

Cecil flops down into the bed and buries his face in a pillow. All it needs is the scent of Carlos' shaving soap and tousled morning hair to be exactly the smell Cecil knows, and he's no sooner thought it than he feels Carlos' hand on his back, rubbing a soothing pattern of figure-eights there.

"Gonna go mow my face," Carlos murmurs, and Cecil giggles. "There's a radio on my desk if you want some music. I'll be back in five, okay?"

Cecil rolls on his back and holds out his arms. Carlos reaches down, pulls Cecil up into a hug, kisses the side of his neck. Cecil rubs his cheek on Carlos' shoulder.

"I saw you and Pop talking in the mudroom," Carlos says into his ear, and puts a hand under Cecil's shoulders to lay him back down. "Everything okay?”

Cecil nods. “Just, you know. Mi casa es su casa and that kind of stuff.”

Carlos chuckles and kisses Cecil’s cheek. “He’s good at that. Hey--want me to bring up some water for your meds? It's nine o'clock here.”

“Yes, please.” And that means he should probably get off the bed and go root his pills out of his suitcase, but it’s soft--if not as soft as he usually likes--and warm, and as familiar as he’s going to have for a whole week.

He’s still thinking about getting his medication when the door closes, but then it opens again with no noticeable time gap and a freshly-shaven Carlos is grinning down at him, comfortably slouched on the side of the bed with a glass of water in his hand.

“I thought you were out like a baby on the plane, but maybe I was wrong,” he says, and Cecil wrinkles his nose in the way that always makes Carlos laugh. “I found your meds. And you might want to put Lucy up, it’s a pretty small bed and she’ll end up under it.”

Cecil blinks and stretches and sits up, holds out a hand for two pink and one white. “I noticed. It’s going to be a little tight. I don’t know how I’m going to survive an entire week spooning you, Carlos, it’s just awful.”

Carlos snickers the private little laugh that still makes Cecil thrill when he hears it; Carlos is one of the few people he feels comfortable snarking to, and not least because when Cecil does Carlos laughs that way, like he’s just said I can’t wait to get you alone or kiss me harder instead of of course you should put on a Miami Vice marathon, Carlos, I’d really like it if the Faceless Old Woman smashed the rest of our dishes in the sink and that low and somehow chocolatey laugh relaxes him in a way all the pills in the world can’t manage. Love can’t fix his brain chemistry, but it definitely makes living easier.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something. Let me in,” Carlos tells him, and Cecil scoots to the side under the rafters and hands the glass back to Carlos, who puts it on a plain wooden nightstand. “When we get up we’ll have brunch. And play with the baby, and if you want to we can go out back. You said you’ve never had a real snowball fight.”

“I haven’t. It snowed once when I was six, but by the time I had a sweater on it was all melted.” Cecil snuggles into the warm arms around him, pulls up the blankets--the two already on the bed, the one Carlos brought from Night Vale.

“We should fix that while we’re here,” Carlos says, and kisses the back of Cecil’s neck. Cecil tangles their legs together and shivers. Carlos breathes in deep and lets it go--already half-asleep.

Cecil reaches into his pocket and pulls out Lucy.

And sets her on the nightstand next to the waterglass, and pulls Carlos’ hand up to his heart.

He’s out of Night Vale for an entire week.

And right now, he feels like that might be okay.