Archive of Our Own

The decision to keep a close eye on the new addition to Night Vale's scientific community had everything to do with Cecil's professional integrity as a journalist and nothing to do with Carlos's perfect hair or his beautiful lab coat or the strong, capable hand that Cecil was currently shaking.

The handshake might have lasted longer than was strictly necessary for a friendly introduction, but Cecil had to give one of his Eyes enough time to slip unnoticed from his palm to Carlos's, nothing more. The Eye would make its way under the cuff of Carlos's lab coat and up his arm, where it would stay hidden until Cecil decided to check in on all the fascinating science the new scientists would surely be doing.

It was just a normal Eye, like the ones the Night Vale Community Radio interns were contractually obligated to accept without question or resistance, not that Cecil usually bothered—it was so tiring manifesting new ones all the time. As a result of his selective conservatism, he had a few to spare; it hardly mattered if he gave one little Eye to Carlos.

What Station Management didn't know wouldn't hurt Cecil.

Probably.

But what was life without risk?

***

Science was a little less interesting than Cecil had anticipated.

For the first month or so it was mostly Carlos and his team standing clustered around one humming electrical instrument or another trading confused looks and taking the instrument apart only to put it back together again.

Carlos was especially handy with a screwdriver.

The scientists also seemed to spend a lot of time yelling, but that was speculation on Cecil's part. They could have been practicing the town chant. It was an Eye, not an Ear, though he wasn't half bad at lip-reading as long as the language was English, Spanish, Russian, or modified Sumerian. (And as long as whoever was speaking had lips.)

But putting the Eye on Carlos meant he could only look out from a vantage point on Carlos's body, and the best spots for the Eye to remain unnoticed—the hollow of the throat or the nape of the neck—almost never included a view of more than Carlos's hands (which were very nice) unless there was a reflective surface nearby. Reflective surfaces made Cecil uncomfortable.

And, okay, maybe he didn't strictly need to see Carlos to report on science news, but it would've been nice.

There was another option: an All-Seeing Eye. But the energy to even think about manifesting one was hard to come by, and, well, it would be really forward of Cecil to ask Carlos to accept one. The last person he'd given one to had been Earl Harlan, and that had been after they'd been dating for two months.

Since Carlos hardly ever spoke to Cecil—he seemed more comfortable giving interviews to the interns—Cecil made do with putting another ordinary Eye on one of Carlos's colleagues. It was easy to arrange since the woman kept coming to the station to see Khoshekh, claiming to be some sort of zoologist, but, honestly, what sort of zoologist didn't recognize a totally normal cat when she saw one? Sure, he hovered four feet above the ground, but he was still a cat.

Despite her inability to identify domestic felines, Janine kept her hair in a sensible ponytail and often had her back to Carlos in their laboratory next to Big Rico's, so she was ideal for Cecil's purposes.

His purposes which were all related to keeping up with the latest scientific developments, obviously, not just gazing at Carlos peering into a microscope or pouring over seismological graphs or running his perfect hands through his tragically shorn (but beginning to grow back) hair.

Cecil still used the Eye he'd placed on Carlos, of course, especially when he was disassembling something. Like clocks. He really seemed to like taking apart clocks, which was silly, since everyone knew clocks ran on gray matter.

Every once in a while when Cecil looked in on Carlos he found him checking his personal email. Cecil immediately looked somewhere else when that happened—he wasn't spying on Carlos, after all. It wasn't his fault if he coincidentally caught a glimpse of Carlos's reply to an email from his sister asking if he was seeing anyone. It was only that: coincidence.

(Carlos had answered, No. Please stop asking. Lovely Carlos was so polite.)

Then Carlos called Cecil.

He'd seen Carlos dialing from the Eye on Janine and heard his home phone ring approximately fifteen seconds later. It took about that long for the Sheriff's Secret Police to intercept and tap phone calls, but Cecil had long ago given up on Carlos ever calling him. It was only with great reluctance that Cecil blinked himself back into his corporeal existence to check his caller ID, and—

It. Was. Carlos.

And then perfect Carlos called Cecil again less than a week later, having spent the intervening days disassembling more clocks with shaking hands.

(The other scientists on Carlos's team met without him, presumably to discuss the clock obsession. One of them might have caught sight of the Eye repositioning itself on Janine as Cecil verified that Carlos was not in the room. Janine might have been slapped in the ear by her concerned colleague. Cecil might have felt a little guilty.)

They met for coffee and Cecil was so excited and so nervous that he barely managed to stop himself from using the Eye on Carlos to give himself a brief once over to make sure his hair looked okay—the desert wind was usually an apt stylist, but it'd been in an experimental phase lately, and that didn't suit Cecil.

But it wasn't a date.

Which was fine.

Maybe it wasn't as fine as Cecil tried to make himself believe it was, but he'd been meaning to brush up on his denial skills—what an excellent opportunity to practice!

***

It was just as well the recent weather wanted to express itself in such long, dirge-like music; Cecil often found himself drifting to view Carlos in between studying Trish Hidge's daily denial sessions in the mayor's office and looking in on Madeline LeFleur's new brochure design, 'Leave Your Life Behind and Come to Night Vale! We Have Sand!'

After the episode with the clocks, Carlos called Cecil several more times with questions and warnings and pleas to address his radio audience, and they were, at least, becoming sort of friends. And if Carlos only ever wanted to see Cecil in person to talk about science, that was fine! Science was very interesting.

"I'm not calling for personal reasons," Carlos always said.

"You can call me for any reason," Cecil always replied.

Cecil's denial skills were getting quite the workout. He was glad he'd observed Trish's practices so closely.

"It's fine that Carlos only wants to be casual friends. I don't spend any time lying awake at night in melancholy contemplation of what will never be, and it doesn't make any organs in my chest hurt at all!"

That one was particularly convincing, even if he did say so himself.

***

Poetry Week was a busy week for Cecil. He read all the poems sent in to the station and picked out a government-mandated selection to read on air; he wrote his own poetry and tried to think of words that rhymed with 'science'; he hoped very hard that the hooded figures wouldn't slaughter the whole town because of the poem written about the dog park; and he lamented the unfortunate fact that he'd never given Intern Dana an Eye.

An eventful week, to be sure.

He often found himself looking at the picture of the black stone monolith that Dana had texted him before her presumed demise. There was something about the poem inscribed at its base—the one written in 1954—that tickled the deep recesses of Cecil's memory. It was one line in particular that did it, but when Cecil tried to recall which line it was he could only see a shining obsidian wall in his mind.

If he wasn't meant to remember, he wouldn't.

Most importantly, Cecil discovered that Carlos preferred to write haiku for his own government-mandated poetry.

Clocks tick all wrong but
how? how? how? how? how? how? how?
Gray lump, teeth and hair

Cecil also discovered Carlos wasn't writing enough of it to appease the City Council, but science itself was a sort of poetry, wasn't it? And Carlos did science all the time. It wasn't anything that the Sheriff's Secret Police needed to know about, certainly.

Janine wrote poetry about cats. It didn't seem like she was trying very hard, but it wasn't Cecil's place to judge her efforts. That was up to the librarians, obviously.

Old Woman Josie wrote dirty limericks. Really dirty limericks. When she wrote a particularly filthy one, she held it up to the Eye on her forehead to make it easier for Cecil to read. She could always tell when Cecil was looking in on her. The angels blushed when they found the pages strewn about the house.

Big Rico wrote villanelles about lighthouses and wheat. Big Rico missed wheat and wheat by-products with a fervent intensity. His poems were often dotted with tear stains.

Cecil wrote about the fleeting frailty of life, Carlos, and portobello mushrooms. (He had a craving.) He never read his own poetry on air.

***

Sometimes when he was bored or lonely or forgot that other people existed, Cecil flicked through all of his Eyes in rapid succession, fast enough to give himself a pulsing headache, to prove that even if he was hallucinating everything he could at least do so with admirable consistency.

Today, he saw:

Old Woman Josie, baking Devil's food cake for the angels;
Telly the Barber, somehow still alive in the Sand Wastes, helicopters circling overhead;
Big Rico, covering a slab of unidentifiable meat with something red;
Larry Leroy, watching TV;
Madeline LeFleur, sipping her coffee, knuckles white around the handle;
Trish Hidge, currently a horse;
Coach Nazr al-Mujaheed, unrolling his tongue in his office;
Denise Flynn, reading with her daughter;
Janine, crouching in the lab's supply closet with a tarantula on her shoulder;
Carlos, looking at a text Cecil had sent him weeks ago, asking about the moon;
so many others, going about their daily lives, cowering in terror, screaming in terror, running in terror.

Another normal day in beautiful Night Vale.

***

Larry Leroy's beard, while looking luxurious and giving Larry an air of peppery wisdom, made seeing the Whispering Forest rather difficult. The Eye could have moved to somewhere obvious, like his forehead, but the only person Cecil felt comfortable doing that with was Josie.

(The Eye had been with Josie longer than Cecil could remember. She might have been the first person he'd given one to, but the memory was hazy and Cecil had been wrong before. He did remember that she'd demanded it on the grounds that she was an old woman living by herself and needed someone to alert the proper authorities if she fell and couldn't get up. It had been before the angels came.)

Since the Secret Police could never quite manage to re-educate the curiosity out of him, Cecil found himself on the edge of the Whispering Forest where the creeping fear began, peering into its cool green depths. He wasn't close enough to hear it yet, but something in his gut told him he should run.

"Cecil?" said a voice behind him.

He squawked in surprise. "Carlos," he said, clearing his throat. He couldn't run in front of Carlos. He didn't want Carlos to think he was the kind of man that ran away from things that were, allegedly, incapable of giving chase.

Carlos kindly did not call attention to Cecil's undignified greeting, saying only, "What are you doing here?" in a curious tone.

"I had a craving for acceptance and hollow platitudes," Cecil replied, cursing himself for wearing a plain NVCR tshirt instead of one of his good tunics. It wasn't the one with the unidentifiable stain that loudly offered him unsolicited relationship advice, thank goodness, but Cecil liked for Carlos to see him at his best.

(Never mind that Cecil had seen Carlos in everything from his well-fitting boxer briefs—an accident Cecil had blinked away from swiftly, blushing—to the nice button-down he'd worn under his lab coat at that first press conference, almost a year ago.)

"I see," Carlos said. "You're not—maybe you shouldn't—I don't think you should go in, if what the botanists said is true." The way Carlos tripped over his words was so charming; not at all like Cecil's bumbling stammers.

"Probably not," Cecil agreed. "I don't think I'd be able to do my job if I became one with the forest, ha ha. Um. Are you here to do science things?" Science things, honestly, why couldn't he have said something smarter-sounding? And had he actually said 'ha ha'?

"Getting some samples for Nathan," Carlos said, holding up a collection kit. "The, uh, team decided that I would be the least susceptible to the whispering. If it exists. And I've got earplugs."

"I see," Cecil said, hoping he sounded intelligent like Carlos instead of repetitious. "Didn't the Night Vale Community College botanists take samples?"

"No," Carlos said, a disapproving note in his voice. Cecil was glad it wasn't directed at him. "These are the same botanists who think sunflowers are out to get them."

Cecil opened his mouth to correct Carlos, because it was a proven fact that sunflowers were hellbent on revenge and were out to get any and everyone who had eaten their young, not just the botanists who should have known better, but got distracted watching Carlos tie a length of rope around his waist.

"Hold this, would you?" Carlos asked and handed Cecil the other end without waiting for a response. "Pull me out if I start sprouting leaves."

Cecil nodded, gripping the rope tightly, giddily elated that Carlos trusted him enough to be one of his fail-safes. That was good, right? His palms started to sweat. He wrapped the rope around his fingers a few times to prevent any potential disasters.

Carlos put his earplugs in and ventured bravely under the trees, pausing every few feet to take a twig or a leaf or a soil sample.

"Try not to pick any bark off of former Intern Richard," Cecil called, then remembered Carlos couldn't hear him. Oh, well. Losing a little bark was hardly the worst thing that had happened to Richard this week.

As fascinating and as rare of an opportunity as it was to watch Carlos work in person, Cecil found himself half-wishing something would happen so he could heroically pull Carlos to safety. He guiltily buried the thought as soon as it surfaced; the only way to tell when an unspoken wish would come true was the faint scent of cyanide, which Cecil was genetically incapable of smelling.

"Hey, Cecil!" Carlos shouted. "I'm going to take the earplugs out. Be ready!"

Cecil braced himself.

Carlos took the earplugs out.

Nothing happened.

Carlos stood there for several minutes, head cocked to the side as though he were listening to a quiet, ungendered voice whispering what were sure to be entirely true compliments, but he never sprouted any bark or leaves or anything else that would require a daring rescue.

It was hard not to be disappointed.

"Did it speak?" Cecil asked as Carlos came trudging out of the forest of his own free will and root-free feet.

"What? Oh, yes," Carlos said, holding the specimen jars at eye level and rattling a few twigs around. "The same sort of things it said to Larry Leroy and the, uh, late Intern Richard. I've got to get these back to the lab. Thanks, Cecil."

Had Carlos been listening to Cecil's show? How else would he have known what the forest said to Richard and Larry? The thought filled Cecil with glee and despair.

"You're welcome," Cecil remembered to say as Carlos's car disappeared in the distance. He was still holding the rope, now attached to nothing.

He looked back at the forest and imagined walking inside. Maybe it would tell him how well the style of his glasses complimented his facial structure—true. Maybe it would tell him he had a lovely voice—also true. Maybe it would tell him he looked like a casual and fun guy in his NVCR tshirt—hopefully true.

But it wouldn't say Cecil in Carlos's caramel voice.

***

It was too bad that the destruction of an All-Seeing Eye didn't provide any sort of manifest energy kickback, though Cecil could feel the desperate shriek that was its death knell and a sparking, hollow place in his soul at its abrupt absence.

He hadn't opened the All-Seeing Eye in years, carefully respectful of the last request Earl had made when they'd gone their separate ways. Cecil understood why; it would have been odd to know that at any given moment your ex-boyfriend could be watching you from over your shoulder, two feet up.

(Ending a relationship with a member of the Secret Police was similarly awkward, according to Old Woman Josie. She'd been trying to make Cecil feel better. It had worked until she'd gone on to describe what had happened to each of her subsequent beaus in gory detail and Cecil had had to bang his head against the wall to stop the images.)

But the proud and terrified Scoutmaster Earl Harlan had been killed in whatever alternate dimension he'd been dragged to during the Eternal Scout ceremony, and the All-Seeing Eye couldn't exist without a living host.

Cecil almost wished he'd broken his promise and given in to the temptation to open the All-Seeing Eye after seeing Earl at the station. If he had, maybe Earl's last moments in the burlap tent in the vacant lot out back of the Ralphs would have at least been witnessed by someone who used to care about him instead of a horde of mute, bloodthirsty children and other dying or dead people. Cecil hoped it had been swift; Earl had always hated watching the municipally-mandated Torture Hour on Monday night television.

It was a little comforting to know that if he had looked and left himself vulnerable to attack the five mute children occupying his radio booth would have ensured Cecil's fate matched Earl's.

And if Cecil were dead, he wouldn't be sitting across from Carlos in the Starbucks that had opened next to the Pinkberry.

He was trying to be interested in the diagrams Carlos kept pushing across the tiny table and whatever Carlos was saying about blood and tree sap, but their knees were touching.

"----- --- ----- -----?" said Carlos, whose knees were touching Cecil's.

"Uh huh," Cecil said for the fifth or sixth or thirteenth time.

"Where?" Carlos asked.

Before Cecil had to admit he hadn't heard a word Carlos had said, the barista who'd been wiping the tables around them snapped to attention and started signaling Cecil in semaphore.

"Oooh, uhh," Cecil said to stall for time as the barista finished her message. "Yeah, uh, oh, trees! Yes. Mission Grove Park has some. They've been near that thing I'm not allowed to acknowledge or speak about for years. Would those be scientifically significant?"

"You mean the," Carlos said, making a series of expressive hand gestures that translated roughly to 'The Shape in Grove Park that vaporized Intern Leland.'

Cecil carefully did not acknowledge or speak about it, which Carlos correctly interpreted as a yes. It made Cecil smile; Carlos was adjusting to Night Vale so well. He really deserved some sort of acknowledgement for it. Also, their knees were still touching.

Carlos declined Cecil's offer to buy him another coffee like he always did and left shortly thereafter, but Cecil imagined he could still feel the lingering warmth from that most wonderful point of prolonged contact. He sat at the table, not moving until the phantom memory of the touch faded entirely.

The barista grinned brightly with three impressive rows of teeth when he left her a generous tip and an NVCR internship application.

***

"We have nothing to fear and never did," Cecil repeated into his microphone, blinking away from Denise Flynn at Jeremy Godfrey's birthday party at the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. Carlos's Eye had only given him a view of a rough rock wall gripped by strong hands; Denise could always be counted on to have a good view. She was very tall.

He continued on with his broadcast, turning the trophy he would soon give to Carlos over in his hands. He rubbed at a smudge with his sleeve.

Intern Kai, his face distraught, entered the booth and handed Cecil a note.

His blood turned to ice and he flicked back to the Eye on Denise so quickly it sent a stab of pain through his head that paled in comparison to the choking fear that consumed him when he saw what Denise saw: Carlos, brave Carlos, bloody, unmoving, alone in the underground city.

So much blood.

Cecil's vision blurred with tears, sight wavering between a watery view of the pin retrieval area and his radio booth as his control slipped. He fumbled with his switchboard and took great, gasping breaths as he tried to—tried to—

Look again, three soundless voices intoned. Look again. Watch with all your eyes.

He knew he had to obey the voices.

But—

He knew he had to obey the voices.

He looked again.

***

The nearest person—Intern Kai, the one with the distraught face who'd brought him the terrible, thankfully false, news—got an Eye unceremoniously slapped on his forehead as Cecil rushed out of the station.

"Stare at something cerise if Station Management notices I'm gone!" Cecil called over his shoulder, corporeal eyes still gritty from dried tears. "Take shelter under a desk and try not to move!"

The trophy. It was still in his booth.

Well. Now it needed a good polish before he could give it to Carlos.

Carlos, who wasn't dead. Carlos, who was alive.

Carlos was alive and wanted to see him. Cecil didn't care if Carlos wanted him to warn his radio audience that sinkholes were going to open up all over town or that mailboxes were temporary wormholes to Gino's—Carlos was alive. Cecil had never been so glad of anything.

The parking lot of the Arby's was empty except for Carlos sitting on the trunk of his car.

Carlos said, "After everything that happened, I just wanted to see you."

It was the most beautiful thing Cecil had ever heard, and when Cecil climbed onto the car to sit with Carlos the hand on his knee was the most marvelous thing he'd ever felt. It was a thousand times better than Carlos's knee touching his at Starbucks, and that had honestly been pretty great. Cecil put his head on Carlos's shoulder and everything was wonderful. Well, the dried bloodstains on Carlos's shirt weren't wonderful, but they were on Carlos; sheer proximity upgraded them to at least okay.

They sat, looking up at the lights above the Arby's. They did not need to speak.

Night fell, the darkening void making the lights all the more beautiful, but also reminding Cecil that everything had an end, no matter how wonderful it was.

"I've got to check in at the station," he finally said, the words reluctantly falling from his lips to break the bubble of calm that had enveloped them. Carlos shifted as if to straighten from his slump against Cecil, but Cecil did not let him.

Carlos stopped and his fingers tightened on Cecil's knee. "Your show is still going? Cecil. I thought I heard you signing off?"

"I almost did. Like, three times. I got a little flustered. Wait, how did you hear—?" That was embarrassing, but he barely felt a twinge of it through the cloud of euphoria sitting next to Carlos produced. It was almost like the time the City Council had gassed the streets with that mind-control drug and no one had cared about anything but obeying. It had been very relaxing.

"Everyone in Night Vale has their radio set to your show. I never really thought about it before, but today I was glad that they do. I thought I was going to die, and I could hear you. Hearing you—it made me realize I wouldn't have chosen to hear anyone else."

This time it was Cecil who straightened up. The dull flush across Carlos's beautiful cheekbones was lovely and meaningful, but he ducked his head to hide it. Cecil wanted to press his fingertips to the underside of Carlos's square jaw, tip his perfect face back toward the lights and kiss him, but he lost his nerve with his hand in the air between them.

Carlos didn't notice. He cleared his throat. "Anyway, I don't want to get you in trouble, especially not with Station Management."

(Cecil clearly remembered the day Carlos and one of the other scientists had tried to take radiation readings around the door to Station Management's office. No one had died except an intern, but the close encounter had obviously stuck with Carlos.)

"It's okay, I left Intern Kai with instructions to warn me if they noticed." He flicked to the Eye on Kai but blinked back without seeing more than a flash of black text on a sheet of goldenrod copy paper when Carlos made a funny choked noise.

He twisted, scanning the parking lot for danger, but Carlos was only looking at Cecil.

"Is there something—oh, how rude of me, I should have said I was going to do it right then, I'm sorry. I think Kai had a message for me, I need to read it."

Cecil, I hope you can read this. We only had yellow paper. The weather says it will cover for you & to take your time & to tell Mr. Scientist that it loves the way his hair absorbs sunlight & to please not wear goggles outside because it likes getting in his eyes.

Below the first paragraph was an addendum. Weather still going, but Station Management getting suspicious. Smoke is coming from under the door??? I am under the intern desk with the bones.

Cecil sighed and dutifully relayed the weather's message to Carlos, but Carlos didn't seem like he was listening.

"Did you know your eyes go all," Carlos waved a hand in front of his own rich brown eyes in lieu of an actual description, "when you do whatever you just did?"

"I've never seen it," Cecil answered. "Why? Is it weird?"

"No, well, yes, but. Um. It's—it's—pretty?" Carlos offered after several false starts. "Kind of glimmery."

Cecil's heart flipped and he could feel himself blushing. "Thank you," he said, his voice a much higher pitch than he wanted it to be. "I need to get back to the station before... before." Though relinquishing this closeness with Carlos, the closest they'd ever been, was the last thing he wanted to do, Cecil had responsibilities.

Regretfully, he slid off the trunk of the car and tried to ignore the pang of loss that twanged in his chest when Carlos's hand slipped from his knee. Carlos hopped down beside him, pebbles crunching under his feet. There was a light touch at his elbow and Cecil turned toward Carlos like a vengeful sunflower scenting a botanist, but all Carlos did was look at him.

Cecil gathered his courage, nervous despite the understanding they seemed to have forged under the lights, and gingerly put his arms around Carlos, mindful of the bloodstains and the injuries beneath them.

Happily, wonderfully, Carlos hugged back.

Station, Cecil reminded himself. Kai was probably still alive; it would be good to keep him that way, especially now that he had an Eye. But Carlos was so warm and solid and alive.

"Could—would you—" Carlos started. Cecil felt him swallow. "The station needs you."

Cecil stepped away, shivering in the rapidly cooling night air. He nodded, smiled, and made himself leave. When he looked back over his shoulder, Carlos was still standing in the parking lot. He waved to Cecil, nothing more than a curl of his fingers, but Cecil felt their tug. He waved back.

***

Intern Kai was cowering with great skill under the bone desk when Cecil returned. He might have whimpered a little when Cecil patted him on the shoulder, but he was well enough physically. Station Management's door was rumbling ominously, but did not open.

As Cecil bade his listeners a final good night, meaning it this time, his phone vibrated.

A text.

He coaxed Kai out and guided him to the station's front door and gave him a little push to get over the threshold. He seemed okay when he got into his car, if a bit hollow-eyed, but that would only impede his vision if he let himself spiral into despair. He'd be fine. Probably.

Responsibility discharged, Cecil finally looked at the text.

It was from Carlos.

Thanks for meeting me. I was going to ask you to come back after your show but I lost my nerve. I hope you have a good night.

Cecil wanted to rush back to the Arby's parking lot, but a brief look through Carlos's Eye showed he was ensconced in his lab, not in the parking lot, but he wasn't working. The sight of Carlos's strong fingers drumming on the table next to his phone filled Cecil with a warmth that left his toes tingling.

He texted back, I will always come if you ask. Good night. Then he got in his car and started driving so he wouldn't be tempted to watch Carlos read it.

***

Sitting under the lights above the Arby's with Carlos was the start of several new problems for Cecil.

First, there were the cowboys out wandering the Scrublands and Sand Wastes. No one knew where or when they'd come from, but they phased in and out of existence enough to make it impossible for the Secret Police to successfully apprehend them. Their favorite activity seemed to be shooting at each other without any of loss of existence, which led to the NRA advocating for their incorporation into Night Vale's tourist attractions. Madeline LeFleur of the tourism board had taken to writing angry letters to the station about how it wasn't the NRA's place to decide such things and she'd show them how guns didn't kill people, etc. She sent at least six per day.

Second, Intern Kai was looking more and more hollow as the days went by. The cutest cat video couldn't get him to smile or stop his eyes from sucking in all the light around them, and he kept spilling coffee everywhere. Frankly, being around him was a real downer.

Third, Cecil wanted to watch Carlos all the time and he couldn't because that would seriously throw off the balance of science-related news versus other important community stories, like the cowboys and the Faceless Old Woman.

But Cecil worried.

Worrying wasn't something Cecil did a lot of, but his pitiful attempt at denial—"I'm sure Carlos is totally fine and I'm definitely not thinking about the bloodstains on his shirt from that night!"—had only made Khoshekh and the kittens hiss at him in unison.

And, okay, maybe the fact that Carlos had yet to make any sort of move was also fueling Cecil's worry. Everything that had seemed so clear between them beneath the starry void had gone fuzzy and uncertain under the piercing light of the sun.

It wasn't like Carlos hadn't had the opportunity to ask Cecil out on an official date; they kept running into each other all over town. Big Rico's, the Ralphs, the elementary school—they'd even seen each other during a midnight jaunt in the library, which had been extremely fortunate for Cecil because he'd left his morningstar under his bed and Carlos had had some sort of blinking device that confused the librarians' sense of smell.

They'd run into each other so many times Cecil began to wonder if Carlos was the one with Eyes everywhere and he'd only imagined that they'd been his since before he could remember.

Despite how brightly they smiled at each of these incidental meetings, Carlos never tried to make any plans with Cecil. Not even strictly science-related coffee.

So Cecil worried.

"Stop worrying," said Old Woman Josie over the phone. "You're depressing Erika. Look."

Obediently, Cecil opened Josie's Eye. Erika did look despondent, draped over a chair much too small for its body. Many of its wings and arms drooped onto the floor. "I can't help it," he protested.

"You're being stupid. Call him. Ask him to dinner."

"It can't be me," Cecil said. "I always mess it up." Every time Cecil had thought something was a date or strongly hinted that a date would be more than welcome he'd been wrong or ignored.

Josie made a phlegmy noise of disgust and hung up.

"I guess I deserved that," Cecil said to the dead air.

"I dunno, I thought it was a little harsh," said someone else on the line.

"No, she was right." Cecil sighed. "Ugh. What am I supposed to do?"

Cecil got the impression of a shrug. He put the phone down.

***

They continued to run into each other everywhere two people could conceivably be at the same time and a few places they couldn't.

Cecil tried not to push.

He tried not to say things like, "Well, I'm going to go get some lunch now. By myself. Unless someone joins me," or, "There's a new exhibit at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies that sounds really interesting and science-y, and they only blind you for a few days if you look at it," or, "Why does that scientist with the red hair keep touching your arm when he talks to you in the lab?"

He tried not to take it personally when Carlos became steadily more nervous and jittery every time they saw each other.

He tried not to mope around his apartment because that got on the Faceless Old Woman's nerves, but every day he came home from work and found that more and more of his plates had been glued together, so he was probably moping a lot.

But he tried.

***

Intern Kai was shambling through the halls of the station, running into walls. Navigating with buzzing shadows in one's eye sockets was probably hard, but, really, he could have been more careful around Cecil's 'Best Surviving Radio Host' plaques. Cecil watched Kai's progress down the stairs and out of the building, where he stumbled across the parking lot away from town and out into the desert.

Cecil wondered if Kai would show up for his shift the following day.

He did not. The Eye Cecil had so hastily bestowed upon him showed nothing but darkness, which wasn't particularly helpful.

Cecil sighed and shouted a request for a new intern at Station Management's door, as was customary, and tried to narrow down the list of things he'd have to do himself before his show if the transfer took as long as it usually did. He wished Dana would stop being trapped in the dog park.

Denise Flynn had conveniently left her notes from the previous night's PTA meeting on her desk, which Cecil could just make out with the Eye positioned on her elbow as she stood making herself a cup of coffee. That saved him one phone call.

Madeline LeFleur was writing another angry email about the partially incorporeal cowboys not being a tourist attraction; nothing new there.

Larry Leroy's report about the sky above John Peters's farm merited a call because the only Eye near enough to see anything was Larry's, and he was inside watching TV with his windows boarded up.

"Hey, Cecil," said Larry. "No intern today?"

"The last one wandered into the desert," Cecil explained. "Your email said something was happening over John Peters's farm?"

"Yeah, yeah. The sky. It's chartreuse. Not the normal shade, it's all... furry."

"Okay," Cecil said. "Go on."

Larry did, but Cecil barely heard him. It was a deplorable lapse of professionalism, but at the exact moment Larry began to speak, Cecil's personal phone started vibrating.

The display said that it was Carlos.

Carlos, who hadn't called him since the day the war began with the miniature underground city.

"ThankyouforyourreportLarrybye," Cecil said and hung up.

He had to lunge for his cell phone before it skittered off the desk and into the pocket dimension where things that fell off the desk went, never to be seen again until the next new moon. That was the only reason why he sounded a little breathless when he answered, "Hello?"

"I am calling for personal reasons," Carlos said. And then he continued on about a strange source of energy approaching town, but Cecil was too busy replaying that first glorious sentence in his mind to listen closely.

"Probably nothing," Cecil told him. "The City Council didn't mention it." Carlos hummed in the way that meant he was thinking big science thoughts.

"Anyway, I am calling because..." Carlos cleared his throat. "I am calling because..."

"Of personal reasons?" Cecil supplied hopefully.

"Yes." Cecil heard Carlos take a deep breath. "Are you free for dinner tonight?"

Cecil's heart leapt into his throat, but he took his own deep breath and said, "That depends."

There was a long pause. "On what?"

Say it, Cecil told himself. No mistakes or misunderstandings this time. "On if you want to have dinner as friends or as—as a date." He squeezed his eyes shut and hurriedly added, "I mean, okay, either way, yes, I'm free, but um. Just to be clear." Oh, god, could he have messed that up any more? No, probably not.

Cecil was listening so hard for the inevitable 'never mind,' that he almost missed Carlos saying, "Er, I meant as a date. Unless—"

"No no no no no, a date is good! That would be—" don't say neat, don't say neat, "—neat." Cecil whimpered quietly and slumped down in his chair. He seriously considered climbing on top of the desk and rolling off so he could disappear for a while.

But Carlos laughed, just a little. It was a nice laugh, kindly meant. It was as perfect as the rest of him, not too loud, not too giggly, rich and warm. "Okay. I thought we could meet in Old Town after your show?"

"I can leave early," Cecil blurted. "I mean, if you want. Meeting while the sun is up would be safer. Totally up to you."

"Okay," Carlos said again, saving Cecil from backpedaling any further. "If you won't get in any trouble."

Oh, that was so sweet. They hadn't gone on one date yet and Carlos already cared about Cecil's well-being.

This was going to be perfect.

***

Despite the buzzing shadow entities trying to impinge on the perfection of their evening, Cecil thought the date had been a success. Lots of conversation, minimal awkward silences, and sharing that slice of carrot cake had been very romantic.

And the kiss! Carlos had kissed him. His heart fluttered just thinking about it.

The memory of the kiss almost made him forget to call in their end-of-date report to the Council, but Kalinda, the Secret Police officer who lived in his building, had helpfully reminded him by shooting an arrow through his window with a note attached—written in blood, not ink, of course. She was a good neighbor—very quiet—and also gave excellent fashion advice in the form of setting fire to anything that didn't meet her exacting standards.

Report submitted, Cecil opened Carlos's Eye so he could watch him work on the buzzing shadow problem. Cecil had thought about mentioning Intern Kai to Carlos in the car, but then—well. He could hardly be blamed for forgetting after being kissed by Carlos.

(He'd wanted to check in on Carlos the second he'd disappeared into his lab, but he'd never mastered the art of looking through one of his Eyes and driving at the same time, and the driving had been hazardous enough with all the shadow entity pedestrians thinking they had the right of way.)

Cecil sighed happily as he watched Carlos adjust some humming electrical equipment. Maybe after a few more dates Carlos would accept an All-Seeing Eye as a token of his devotion.

***

And there were dates: dinners, a trip to Radon Canyon, an outing to the farthest flung seismometer, a few quiet evenings sitting together enjoying each other's company. (Carlos was maybe a little too fond of combining dates with scientific work, but the fact that he wanted Cecil there with him made Cecil smile. A lot.)

Sometimes there weren't dates, like when Carlos got too wrapped up in an experiment to remember to check the time or his phone, or when Cecil had to placate Station Management with a few hours of keening if the interns were slacking off, or that time when the whole town had been struck by a sudden fugue state.

And that was okay. They both had their own lives; the time they did spend together was wonderful.

They hadn't gone any farther than some making out with Carlos's casual lab coat discarded on the couch next to them, but that was okay too. Cecil was determined to let Carlos set the pace. Cecil had been in love for over a year; speed hardly mattered now.

The one thing Cecil had to make a genuine effort to not be impatient over was Carlos's Eye. He wanted to give Carlos an All-Seeing Eye more than anything. Manifest energy buzzed under his skin every time he touched Carlos, begging to be allowed to take an earthly shape on Carlos's beloved body.

But.

It was a silly thing to be concerned about in a life full of uncertainty, but—

Carlos hadn't called Cecil his boyfriend yet.

Cecil hadn't said it yet either, but oh how he longed to; the word wanted to tumble from his lips, reverberate in the air, fly in joyous circles into the ears of every entity in Night Vale.

But he wouldn't, not until Carlos said it first.

Cecil tried to help him along by showing up at the lab (using the Eyes on Janine and Carlos to scout the area) whenever someone new was there so Carlos would be obligated to introduce them—assuming Carlos remembered to look up from whatever he was doing—but so far all that had resulted in was Carlos saying things like, "This is Cecil. Yes, he's the radio host."

(There'd been a three day span where Nathan, the dendrologist, had enjoyed anterograde amnesia. Carlos had introduced Cecil to Nathan six times. The amnesia had eventually forgotten to exist like it usually did, but now Nathan thought Cecil's name was Cecilcecilcecilcecilcecilcecil.)

Cecil had also tried willing Carlos's sister to email and ask if he was seeing anyone again, but he'd never been very good at long-distance psychic compulsion techniques.

So he'd resorted to denial practice. Again.

(Except he was pretty sure he was actually getting worse at it the more he practiced.)

"Maybe Carlos doesn't like the word boyfriend! Maybe he prefers something more intimate. I suppose it is a little silly for two grown men to use the word boyfriend, though I've always liked it. But it's fine if he doesn't! Maybe he wants to use the term significant other, that sounds very official. And significant."

That's rationalization, not denial, Kalinda informed him via blood-written arrow note.

"I know," Cecil moaned and covered his face with his hands. Something patted his back comfortingly. It was best not to look.

***

Carlos was nervous.

Carlos being nervous made Cecil nervous.

No, not nervous. Anxious.

Cecil was anxious and Carlos was nervous and they sat at the kitchen table in Cecil's apartment, poking half-heartedly at the lovely meal Josie had coached Cecil through cooking.

Tonight was supposed to be the night Cecil asked Carlos to accept his All-Seeing Eye. He'd prepared his bloodstone circle with the appropriate offerings of blood, memory, and potpourri, and tidied his bedroom. Then Carlos had shown up with his hands fisted in the pockets of his business casual lab coat with half a frown on his perfect face and Cecil had nearly wilted on the spot.

He tried to make conversation like everything was fine.

"Any new scientific discoveries today?"

"Hm? Yes, it's very good."

"Did you hear that the incorporeal gun-toting cowboys rounded up a posse and headed south? Now the NRA can't lobby to have them as an official tourist attraction and Madeline will finally stop writing all those letters."

"Mhmm."

"The City Council declared it was going to start growing its own genetically altered wheat in the dog park."

That one was obviously nonsense, but Carlos only nodded absently.

Cecil gave up and opened the Eye on Trish to see if the trench Mayor Winchell was pacing into the desert had gotten any deeper. It had. It had also uncovered something that Cecil suspected might be a corner of the monument dedicated to the Apache Tracker.

Carlos cleared his throat. Cecil blinked away from Trish.

"I'm sorry," Carlos said.

Time slowed as Cecil waited for whatever dire pronouncement Carlos was about to make. His palms began to sweat. His heart felt like it had fallen out of his chest and splattered on the floor at Carlos's feet. (A quick glance revealed the splat he'd heard was the candy cap mushrooms making an escape attempt.)

"I didn't mean to be so preoccupied, I should have—well, here." Carlos took a smallish box out of the pocket of his lab coat and pushed it across the table.

"What's this?" Cecil asked, not touching the box. Carlos didn't seem like the type to end a relationship with a deadly spider, but Cecil was so lost and anxious he couldn't discount anything.

"I don't actually know if today is the right day or not, since time here is all," Carlos waved a hand in the air, head tilted to the side, "but I did some calculations and I'm mostly sure it is. Um, our one month anniversary, that is. So I got this for you." He pushed the box a few inches closer to Cecil.

Our one month anniversary.

Our one month anniversary.

Our one month anniversary.

Cecil's hands were shaking as he reached for the box.

"I know you have that silver allergy," Carlos was explaining, but Cecil only heard him from far away, "and I know you don't like gold, so I thought that this was a good solution. I know it's a little odd, but trees remind me of you—that sounds weirder, doesn't it?—and if you don't like it that's fine, I won't be offended, you can say so."

"Carlos," Cecil breathed. There was a wristwatch in the box, made of a smooth, green wood. It was beautiful. Carlos was beautiful. "I love it." He loved Carlos. Also, this meant Carlos was definitely his boyfriend. Significant other. Whatever.

Cecil did his best not to sigh in a lovesick manner when Carlos grinned and said, "It's the one true timepiece in all of Night Vale. I observed it for a few days to be certain. One hundred percent gray lump-free."

The watch fit perfectly.

Later, Cecil wouldn't be quite sure how it happened, but he was out of his chair and in Carlos's lap with his arms wrapped around his neck and they were kissing and he might've stepped on the candy cap mushrooms but he did not care.

"Mmph," said Carlos. His arms went around Cecil's waist and held him close.

Carlos's hair was mussed by the time Cecil pulled away, his back knocking into the table and rattling the cutlery. Carlos laughed into Cecil's collarbone and together they managed to wiggle the chair away from the table enough for Cecil to stand up, although after the wiggling he didn't particularly want to stand up anymore, so he went back to kissing Carlos like his life depended on it.

They stopped when an arrow thunked into the wall near their heads.

You didn't file for a kitchen intercourse permit, read the attached note. Cecil went bright red and crumpled it before Carlos could see.

"What—"

"Nothing! Nothing. A friendly reminder." Cecil stood up, face still flushed as he straightened his tunic and held out his hand. "I have something for you, too. If you want it."

Carlos's hand was warm as Cecil led him down the hall to his bedroom. He tried to recall the last time he'd had someone he loved there, but couldn't.

"Er, I didn't give you that expecting, um, anything," Carlos said, frozen in the doorway, their arms outstretched between them. He was such a gentleman.

"No, not—although, if you want to—my bloodstone circle is in here." Bolstered by the knowledge that Carlos was definitely his boyfriend, he added, "Do you want to?"

Carlos gulped. "Ye-es?" he said, like it was a secret. "Do y—"

"Yes." Cecil couldn't remember the last time he'd been this happy.

Cecil was blushing and smiling and Carlos was blushing and smiling and they stood there staring at each other for so long Cecil almost forgot the actual reason he'd brought Carlos to his bedroom, but the small bloodstone circle on top of his dresser began to emit a faint glow and he remembered.

"Um, right. Right. Carlos, would you do me the honor of accepting an All-Seeing Eye? From me, obviously. I don't think anyone else has them."

"A what?" Carlos looked adorably confused, much like the time they'd seen Cactus Jean teaching Champ to climb cacti in the park.

"An All-Seeing Eye," Cecil repeated.

"I don't know what that is, Cecil."

"Oh! Of course not, most people don't. Sometimes I forget that being a scientist doesn't mean that you know everything," Cecil said. Carlos made a complicated face that was at least three or four expressions combined into one. "Let me show you a normal Eye."

"But I can see your eyes." Carlos was so funny.

Cecil tugged Carlos out of the doorway and toward the bed. They sat down and Cecil gently took Carlos's hand in his to coax out the Eye Carlos had carried with him for over a year.

It came willingly, peeping out from under the white cuff of Carlos's lab coat. (The lab coat that would soon be on the floor, if Cecil had anything to say about it. He hoped he did.) It settled on the pulse point of Carlos's wrist, still half-hidden, and Cecil was blinded with envy for a brief second, wishing he could know the flow of Carlos's blood as intimately as the Eye did.

"I've seen that before," Carlos said slowly, drawing Cecil back into the present. "I see it all the time, actually. It's always on my hand when I'm working. Well, it is now. I think it was shy at first."

Cecil blinked. "It is?" It wasn't supposed to be. It was supposed to stay out of sight when Cecil wasn't using it.

Carlos nodded, his fingers coming up to cover the Eye. Though he couldn't feel the touch, Cecil shivered. "Tell me about it," Carlos said.

Cecil had never had to explain his Eyes before. It was flattering and embarrassing and he tried to keep it simple, but he started waxing lyrical about the importance of reporting balanced news when the City Council permitted it, and he hadn't even gotten to All-Seeing Eyes when the sound of Carlos repeating his name broke through his monologue.

"Please tell me you haven't been spying on me since I came to Night Vale," Carlos said after Cecil had sheepishly stopped talking.

"Of course not!" Cecil said indignantly. "I use my Eyes for news, not gossip. And sometimes cooking lessons, but Josie knows about that. Well, maybe I've been checking in on you more since the war with the underground city started, but I... I get worried."

Carlos was looking at Cecil with an expression Cecil had never seen before, a deep furrow in his brow that made him look very serious indeed. He pulled his wrist away from Cecil and was quiet for a long time, looking down at the Eye. He didn't move, he didn't speak, and not a hint of what he was thinking crossed his serious, perfect face.

It was terrible.

Cecil didn't know what he'd done wrong, but it was clearly something. He looked at the watch on his wrist and told himself everything would be okay, and it would be okay if Carlos didn't want the All-Seeing Eye Cecil so desperately wanted to give him. It would be okay if Carlos wanted Cecil to take the normal Eye back. He clenched his fists, focusing on the pressure of his nails against his palms. It would be okay. It would be okay.

He couldn't stand the silence any longer. "I'll take it back, if that's what you want. I'll give it to an intern. Forget I said anything about an All-Seeing Eye. Please don't..." Cecil swallowed against the tightness of his throat. "Don't..."

The bloodstone circle glowed a little brighter as his nails broke the skin.

Finally, Carlos spoke. "At first I thought it was the City Council or the hooded figures making sure I didn't study anything they didn't want me to," he said, gaze fixed on his fingers tapping against his wrist. "I told myself that was what I thought, anyway. It always felt too friendly for me to really believe it. Like it liked me."

"I do like you. I like you so much."

Carlos looked up at Cecil and his beautiful brown eyes widened. "Oh, Cecil, I'm sorry," he said, and then his thumbs were brushing against Cecil's cheeks and Cecil didn't know why but Carlos was touching him again and that was a good thing. "I like you a lot, too. It's just—I'm still adjusting to Night Vale. I'm in a perpetual state of paradigm shifts and that was—that was a big one. Come here?"

Slipping under Carlos's arm was a little uncomfortable since they were nearly the same height, but Cecil would have gladly folded himself into thirds to fit. It was even better when Carlos flopped backward on the bed and gently tugged Cecil down with him. Cecil shoved his glasses somewhere in the direction of the nightstand and put his head down on Carlos's chest and listened to his heart beating and breathed.

"Was that our first fight?" he couldn't help asking. In Cecil's experience, first fights usually involved projectile weapons and a lot of yelling.

"No," Carlos eventually replied. Cecil breathed a sigh of relief. First fights were important whether deadly projectiles were involved or not and when they had theirs Cecil at least wanted to know what they were fighting about. "Is that thing on your dresser supposed to be glowing like that?"

"Maybe. Don't worry about it."

There was a steady drip, drip, drip coming from somewhere nearby as they laid there. It was slightly worrying, but also soothing. Paired with the steady thump of Carlos's heart in his ear, Cecil was half-asleep when Carlos asked, "In the spirit of scientific inquiry, how is an All-Seeing Eye different than an Eye?"

Cecil took a few moments to gather his fuzzy thoughts. "It's like a bird—not a hawk. A penguin. It's like a benevolent, floating shadow. It's like a third-person camera. It's like all of those things."

"Okay," Carlos said slowly, and Cecil loved the way he could feel the rumble of Carlos's oaky voice under his cheek. "Disregarding the fact that penguins can't fly—please don't argue with me right now," he added before Cecil could do more than draw a breath, "the All-Seeing Eye just... gives you a better view?"

"Mhm," Cecil agreed. "And its physical manifestation is a little different. And it's permanent."

"Permanent," Carlos repeated, but it didn't seem to require a response. "No x-ray vision? No thought viewing? No mind control?"

"The Council outlawed all forms of x-rays over a decade ago after the incident with the cyclops. But no, none of that."

"It doesn't sound that different from the Eye I already have."

"It's very different," Cecil protested, groping for words like he only ever did around Carlos. "Normal Eyes are—they're—they're not for personal reasons. An All-Seeing Eye is."

"Oh," said Carlos. It was a sound of understanding, but not of decision.

***

"Listeners, that was not at all how I planned on the evening going, but it was still good, if emotionally harrowing at times." Cecil looked down at his watch and rubbed his fingers over the smooth wooden links of the band. "That's the nature of relationships, though, wanting to be with someone even if they make you question everything you think you know and everything you don't think you know, isn't it? Also, that was the first time I've ever fallen asleep with a boyfriend before, ah, you know, and it was really nice. Carlos's hair in the morning is adorable, dear listeners. I hope I get to see it again soon.

"In other news, the incorporeal cowboys are back, and they are building an incorporeal ranch out in the desert to house the corporeal six-legged cattle they seem to have rustled on their trip south. I sent Intern Belinda out to investigate. More on this story soon."

***

The bloodstone circle in Cecil's bedroom was starting to hum in agitation.

It had been ten days.

Ten days of wearing the watch Carlos had given him, ten days of brief phone conversations, ten days of not seeing Carlos at all. Cecil knew Carlos and his team were busy running important tests on the old oak door out in the Scrublands and the nonexistent house behind the elementary school in hopes of helping Dana, wherever she was, but Cecil missed his boyfriend.

His boyfriend who had never given him an answer about the All-Seeing Eye, who had professed a desire to deepen the physical aspect of their relationship without making a move, and who had then become completely absorbed in his work.

The cutest cat video couldn't ease that sting.

To make matters worse, everything in his bedroom was dripping when Cecil came home from Intern Belinda's burial in the station break room.

Nothing was wet, and he couldn't see any dripping, but it definitely sounded like he'd walked into a downpour. In the interest of not drowning, Cecil slept on the couch and tried to ignore the noises the Faceless Old Woman was making in the kitchen.

He could siphon the energy the circle contained back into the ether, but that would be such a waste. Technically, Carlos hadn't said no to the All-Seeing Eye, so Cecil clung to the hope that it could still be used for its intended purpose. He didn't want to bring it up over the phone, but he was going to have to do something soon.

Your energy is leaking into my living room and upsetting my fish tank, said a note pinned to Cecil's coffee table with a blowdart.

That was not good.

I need to talk to you. In person. It's important, Cecil texted Carlos.

His phone rang a few minutes later. At least he hadn't been completely forgotten.

"Hey, Cecil," said Carlos. "Could you take a look at this thing we found? We think it might be connected to the door somehow."

That was not what Cecil wanted to talk about. Had Carlos even read his text? But Carlos was asking for Cecil's help, and that was impossible to resist. "Do you want me to come out there?"

"Oh," Carlos sounded surprised. "No, that's not necessary. I thought you could look through the Eye?"

Cecil didn't know whether to be happy that Carlos was asking him to use the Eye or infuriated that he was using it as an excuse to not see Cecil in person. He settled on both.

"Sure," he said through gritted teeth. The Eye had apparently decided to give up the charade that it was staying hidden like it was supposed to, because the first thing Cecil saw was an unflattering view of Carlos's face from below. It was still Carlos's face, though, so it wasn't that unflattering.

"Can you see me?" Carlos asked, and Cecil's vantage point rose as Carlos presumably lifted his hand to peer closely at the Eye. "Huh. That's interesting. Could we maybe do some tests—"

"Yes, fine, whatever, what did you want me to look at?"

Cecil's view swung around again. It was making him nauseous. "We found this half-buried near the door. Janine said she's never seen anything like it."

Any child would have recognized what Carlos was pointing at. "That's an amphisbaena double skull. Don't touch the fangs."

"A what?"

"An amphisbaena double skull. Didn't you learn about them in elementary school?"

There was a long pause. "No?"

Carlos's education was a continuous source of mystery to Cecil. How could he know about meizoseismal regions and Rayleigh waves but not basic architectural principles or venomous snake species?

"Amphisbaena are extremely poisonous two-headed serpents that live in the desert. One bite from either head is instant death," Cecil quickly recited. There was a muffled sound through the phone and Janine, who had been poking at the skull, jumped back, hands behind her back.

(Failure to memorize the list of venomous desert-dwelling animals in the second grade resulted in a visit from the Sheriff's Secret Police and a special survivalist camping trip in the Sand Wastes. It was a good year when one or two of the children made it back to town.)

"Is that the only reason you called?" Cecil tried, giving Carlos one more chance to remember his text.

"Um, yeah. Thanks for—"

Cecil closed the Eye and pressed End Call so hard his screen cracked.

***

The dripping spread to the kitchen. Cecil left a note on Kalinda's door apologizing and promising to take care of it soon and stomped extra hard down the stairs on his way to the station. Crushing a few of the underground city denizens wasn't nearly as satisfying as it usually was.

Intern Balthazar handed him a stack of papers and a partially shredded copy of the community calendar before Cecil could wave hello to the station oracle. It was going to be one of those days. "Coffee, please," he told Balthazar.

Cecil had barely gone three step before Balthazar reappeared. He was very fast. "Mr. Scientist is here to see you. I sent him to the break room. That was okay, right? Oh, god, I hope it was okay. Here's your coffee." And then he was gone again.

Carlos, at the station? Cecil looked down at his mug and his papers and not his watch and decided he was going to handle this professionally. The station was his place of employment, after all, and he probably shouldn't get his hopes up that Carlos was there for personal reasons.

His plan to nonchalantly stroll past the open break room doorway was foiled when there was a great clatter within and then Carlos's hand was on Cecil's shoulder and he said, "Cecil," like they hadn't seen each other in decades.

(The past ten days had certainly felt like decades to Cecil, but Carlos only seemed to notice time when it wasn't doing what he thought it should be doing.)

"Carlos?" Cecil's plan was further ruined by his inability to say Carlos's name with professional detachment.

"I tried calling you, but all I got was a screeching noise. I tried texting you back and got cuneiform error messages. I went to your apartment, but I couldn't find the building anymore, and I thought—I thought something had happened."

"Third Sunday of September in odd-numbered years the building is invisible between noon and eleven pm," Cecil said, voice faint as he fished his phone out of his pocket only to discover that it hadn't survived the crack he'd put in the screen. He had a spare in his booth, but, more importantly, Carlos had been so worried he'd stopped working.

Carlos's hand dropped from his shoulder as he tilted the broken phone toward the light. "Did you try texting Dana again?" he asked, taking Cecil's mug and putting it on the table.

"No," Cecil said, embarrassed that his fit of pique had caused Carlos distress. He wanted Carlos to help Dana, of course he did, but Carlos wasn't the only scientist in Night Vale, though he was obviously the best. He could have taken a little time to see Cecil at least once.

Cecil cleared his throat and shoved the broken phone back into his pocket. "Did you have some science news that Night Vale's citizens need to know about?"

"What? No, Cecil, I—" Carlos stopped, looking like he'd been slapped. "I... I've been pretty terrible this week, haven't I?"

"I'm sure you've been an excellent scientist for the past ten days."

Carlos pressed a hand to his forehead and Cecil was thrown disconcertingly into a series of foggy images: Carlos with men Cecil had never seen before but disliked instantly, clocks and calendars and Carlos by himself in a lab, by himself in a home somewhere Cecil had never been, standing alone in front of some sort of committee—

The vision ended as abruptly as it had begun, leaving Cecil feeling like his head was in a vice, a sensation he was intimately familiar with from re-education sessions. The papers were crumpled in his fist and Carlos was looking at him with concern, reaching out with both hands but not touching. The Eye was on Carlos's palm.

"Cecil? Are you okay? Your eyes—did something happen?"

In the face of uncertainty, Cecil decided to be certain that nothing strange had happened. Nothing ever really happened, did it? What was one little stream of memories compared to the infinite, unknowable universe?

"I'm fine," he said. He tried to smooth out the papers. "Look, I've got to get over to Night Vale Community College to interview Sarah Sultan before my show starts, but if you want to make it up to me, could we have dinner at your place tonight? I won't be able to go home until eleven; the last time I tried getting in when the building was invisible it did not go well."

"Okay," Carlos said. "And we can talk about what you texted me about? No science, I swear."

Lovely Carlos looked so serious Cecil couldn't help throwing professionalism out the window, stepping into that perfect body to wrap his arms around Carlos's waist and kiss him. Carlos hugged back surprisingly hard.

***

As Cecil had suspected, it was definitely one of those days. He spent a lot of time shuffling through his various Eyes around town, keeping tabs on the blinking light/mountain/floodplain/masked army situation as Intern Balthazar fielded a record number of calls. Station Management even sent a second intern, Vithya, to help.

He saw:

Old Woman Josie, knitting something with an odd number of sleeves;
Big Rico, busy serving masked soldiers in his restaurant;
Larry Leroy, outside looking at the blinking light on the distant mountain;
Madeline LeFleur, brochures spread across her desk;
Trish Hidge, watching Mayor Winchell hold her mayoral bloodstone aloft on the floodplain;
Coach Nazr al-Mujaheed, drawing a red X through a list of names;
Denise Flynn, waiting in line behind a pair of masked soldiers in the Ralphs;
Janine, measuring the amphisbaena skull, heavy gloves on her hands;
Carlos, scraping the sides of a pan with a spatula;
so many others, watching the passing of the masked army through town.

***

Dinner was delicious. There were jackalope egg omelets and chewy cheese buns (Carlos assured him several times that they contained no wheat or wheat by-products) that Cecil wanted to eat every day for the rest of his life, no matter how long or short that might be.

"Mmm," he said, polishing off a third cheese bun. "Never let Big Rico know these exist. He'd weep and then abduct you."

"Noted," Carlos said. He was smiling a beautiful smile with his perfect teeth and Cecil found that he didn't want to potentially ruin what had been a really nice evening by bringing up the All-Seeing Eye. He'd go home, drain the manifest energy back into the ether, and never think about it again. He'd had lots of practice at that.

(Maybe he'd think about it every time he put on his watch and sigh a little, but better a melancholy memory of what would never be than no Carlos.)

But Carlos, lovely Carlos, kept trying to bring up the text Cecil had sent him no matter how many times Cecil deflected by asking about the old oak door or how his mother and sister were doing. Carlos was terrible at picking up subtle hints. (He was also terrible at picking up obvious hints.)

Quite by accident, Cecil hit upon a convenient distraction: Night Vale Community College's adjunct professor of archaeology, Harrison Kipp, and his radical theories about the pyramids and human evolution. Carlos insisted Professor Kipp was, in fact, correct, which was completely absurd. Their spirited debate lasted through Cecil eating two more cheese buns and moving from the table to the couch.

Watching Carlos gesticulate wildly while trying to explain the (supposed) mathematical principles behind the pyramids, Cecil had never been more in love.

"I want to meet this professor," Carlos was saying when the doorbell rang. Then he said, "I don't have a doorbell."

According to Cecil's watch, it was 11:02 PM. With a growing feeling of dread, Cecil followed Carlos to the door.

There was a petite, dark-haired woman on the step. She looked harmless, which was how Cecil knew she was anything but. "Cecil," she said, ignoring Carlos's politely confused greeting.

If she'd been wearing her balaclava, Cecil would have recognized her instantly.

"Hello, Kalinda," Cecil said. He realized why she was there. "Oh, no."

She nodded once. "I'm not here officially, but that could change at any moment," she said, holding up one slim hand, palm out, a gesture of peace. "You need to come see this."

"See what?" Carlos asked, looking back and forth between Kalinda and Cecil. "I'm sorry, who are you?"

"My neighbor. I've got to take care of something," Cecil told him. "I'll, um, see you later?"

Carlos stared at Kalinda with a heartwarming expression of growing suspicion. "No."

That hurt. "I won't see you later?"

"I'm coming with you."

They argued. No matter what Cecil said, Carlos would not be convinced to stay behind. Kalinda performed a sequence of gestures that translated to, "Do you want me to knock him out?" but Cecil declined her generous offer.

Cecil sighed. "Okay, fine. But you have to stay back if I tell you to. Promise me."

"I'm not promising that."

"Carlos." Stubborn had to be pretty high up on the list of things a scientist was.

"Cecil," Carlos replied in the same tone.

"Cecil, Mr. Scientist," interrupted Kalinda, "I could get tapped for active duty at any second and you're not going to like that much."

"Right," Cecil said and herded Carlos toward his car for the short drive. Kalinda refused a seat inside the vehicle, but a series of light taps signalled her taking a spot on the roof. In the passenger seat, Carlos had his arms crossed over his chest and a determined glint in his eye that made Cecil momentarily forget they were driving toward their potential doom.

"Are there new lights in the sky over there?" Carlos asked suddenly, leaning forward to peer through the windshield.

There were not new lights in the sky.

There was a car-sized Eye floating in the air above Cecil's apartment building, tethered through means not visible to humans, glowing and growing in pulses of hazy violet.

The Eye saw them coming.

"This is bad," Cecil announced.

***

On the bright side, the inside of Cecil's apartment didn't sound like a rainstorm anymore, and the giant Eye had politely used the hallway and stairs to get up to the roof instead of blowing a hole through the ceiling.

Everything else was pretty bad.

Hooded figures were gathering on the sidewalk across the street.

On-duty Secret Police officers were beginning to arrive on the scene, and Kalinda would only hold them off for so long.

None of Cecil's neighbors were particularly happy with him.

His bloodstone circle had scorched the top of his dresser and smelled like decaying meat. It would have to be replaced, assuming he lived long enough for that to matter.

The Eye's gaze stayed fixed on Carlos as long as he was outside, which made an unfortunate amount of sense since Cecil had summoned the manifest energy with the thought of using it for Carlos firmly in mind. He'd even sacrificed the memory of—of... well, it had had something to do with Carlos. The blood had all been Cecil's, though, and the potpourri had been a generic scent from the Ralphs.

"How do we get rid of it?" Carlos asked. "Er, assuming that's what needs to be done."

This was all Cecil's fault, and Carlos was saying we.

Cecil cleared his throat. "I've got to drain the energy back where it came from. You should—you should go back downstairs." Cecil had never attempted to drain such a huge amount of manifest energy back into the ether, but it was the only thing that could reasonably be done without danger to Carlos or the rest of the town.

It was highly likely that funneling that much energy would result in the total obliteration of the one doing the draining.

Carlos didn't move, because of course he didn't. Cecil crossed the room, grabbed two fistfuls of lab coat, and kissed Carlos like it was Street Cleaning Day. He savored the warmth of Carlos's skin, the firmness of his lips, the slow, slick slide of his tongue, the squareness of his jaw, his panting breath.

He pressed his forehead to Carlos's, ignoring the slight discomfort of his glasses digging into the bridge of his nose. "Please go downstairs and wait," he said, trying to sound confident. "I'll be able to concentrate better if I know you're safe."

"You'll be okay?" Carlos asked.

"Go," Cecil replied.

He watched Carlos's descent through his Eye, possibly for the last time. Carlos was swinging his hands as he went down the stairs, but Cecil ignored the motion-induced nausea for the glimpses of Carlos's beloved, worried face.

When Carlos was safely on the ground, Cecil put his hand out toward the scorched bloodstone circle.

The sound of trumpets split the air.

"Stop," an angel thundered. It was tall and radiant and had appeared in the extremely limited space between Cecil and the dresser.

"But—"

"The energy will flay your mind open, watcher. This must not come to pass. We will aid you. It is foreordained."

Without waiting for a response, the angel lifted Cecil under the arms like he was a toddler and flew out the window.

***

A crowd had gathered in the street between the hooded figures and Secret Police.

Some of them said they'd been sent by a shared, prophetic dream. Others had found themselves walking out of their homes toward the glowing, pulsing Eye with no memory as to why. A few had received calls from Old Woman Josie. Mayor Winchell had been delivered by an angel.

The angel holding Cecil put him down on the steps leading up to the building. Another angel had pulled Carlos aside and was talking to him a little ways off, but Carlos kept looking at Cecil, an unreadable expression on his face.

Potential buzzed in the air like a swarm of flies.

(Actual flies also buzzed in the air. There was a man in a tan jacket standing amongst the hooded figures.)

"What am I supposed to do?" Cecil asked the angel that had carried him from the building.

"Watch with all your eyes," Erika intoned. "The time of prophecy draws ever nearer. It is foreordained." One of its many hands stretched out toward the giant Eye on the roof of the building, somehow touching it despite the impossible distance. Another hand reached toward Cecil, one long finger beginning to glow with hazy violet energy.

When Cecil only stared wordlessly, the angel repeated, "Watch with all your eyes," and if an angelic being could sound peeved while smiling its eternal smile, this one did. It jerked its head toward the gathered crowd and pressed the tip of its glowing finger between Cecil's eyes.

"Oh," Cecil exhaled, instinctively using the energy to manifest half a dozen Eyes.

The Eye on the roof let out an otherworldly shriek and shrank. (Probably. It was hard to tell from where Cecil was standing.) Cecil was tempted for a moment to try looking through it, but Erika poked him hard in the shoulder and gestured to the line forming at the foot of the steps.

The hooded figures and the man in the tan jacket standing with them watched and did not move.

At the head of the line, Kalinda smiled at him without moving her lips. He pressed his palm to her forehead.

"You owe me new fish," she told him as she stepped away, an Eye creeping down the side of her face to disappear beneath the collar of her jacket.

Teddy Williams was next in line, though he opted for a handshake transfer, followed by Interns Balthazar, Vithya, and Jesus. The angel kept the manifest energy flowing as the entire staff of the Moonlite All-Nite Diner stepped up, carefully keeping their distance from the employees of Dark Owl Records. Jeremy Godfrey, Janice Rio, Cactus Jade and Champ, Tamika Flynn, Dana's mother and brother all received their Eyes as if they were soldiers preparing for battle.

Carlos was still standing off to the side, but the angel had gone and he was speaking rapidly into his phone, paying no attention to Cecil at all. Cecil told himself he was not disappointed and turned back to his angel-appointed task.

The line was dwindling; the Eye on the roof was perhaps a quarter of its original size, peering forlornly out over the edge of the building and shrieking pitifully. Cecil couldn't help but feel a little sorry for it.

Leann Hart accepted an Eye with a hand on the hatchet hanging at her side.

Behind her was Steve Carlsberg.

"No," Cecil said. "No way. Get out of here, Steve."

"Watch with all your eyes," Erika intoned sharply through its smile, jabbing Cecil in the back.

"I don't—"

"All your eyes!" it barked, still smiling.

"Fine," Cecil hissed. "I am doing this under extreme protest."

After he'd given an Eye to—ugh, ugh, ugh—Steve, Cecil wiped his hand vigorously on his pants. When he looked up again, Mayor Winchell was standing in front of him.

"If you ever open it, you will regret it," she growled. She was terrifying in scaly lizard slippers and a bathrobe.

"Yes, ma'am," Cecil squeaked.

Survival instincts made him keep his eyes on her as she walked away down the street, brushing past the hooded figures. When he turned back after a poke from Erika (and that was getting really annoying, angel or not), there was a cluster of scientists in front of him.

"Hey Cecilcecilcecilcecilcecilcecil," said Nathan, apparent spokesperson of the group. "Carlos called and said you needed some volunteers."

His heart flipped and his stomach flopped. Was that why Carlos had been so intent on his phone call? Cecil looked around, trying to see through the milling crowd, but couldn't spot Carlos anywhere.

"Have you seen him?" he asked, but they all shook their heads.

There was an awkward moment when Janine stepped up to receive an Eye. Erika made a disapproving noise when Cecil opted to pretend to give her one instead of informing her she'd had one for over a year, but it was for the best. After Janine there were a few apprehensive-looking lab assistants, and then there was only one person left in line.

Carlos.

"I hope the scientific community is adequately represented now," Carlos said with a small smile. He looked over Cecil's shoulder at Erika. "Is there enough left?"

Cecil's heart began to beat faster.

"Yes," Erika said, and unceremoniously shoved the last of the manifest energy at Cecil. It buzzed under his skin, crackling as Carlos took Cecil's hand, demanding to leap to its intended host.

"Cecil," Carlos began, face serious, "I would be honored to accept an All-Seeing Eye from you."

Cecil tried very hard not to crack any of the bones in Carlos's hand with the force of his squeeze. "Um. Okay. But not here."

"It is finished," Erika boomed to the crowd, trumpets bugling in the background. There was no trace of the Eye on the roof of the building.

Somewhere else, there might have been cheers or relieved smiles. But it wasn't somewhere else, so everyone quietly left to go back to their lives as if the interruption had never occurred.

***

The decaying meat smell had faded in Cecil's bedroom. His dresser was still scorched and his bloodstone circle needed to be replaced, but since he had come close to unleashing a potentially malevolent, sentient giant Eye on the town and having his brain liquefied, he counted the evening as a win.

"The angels were pretty dramatic," Carlos said, running a hand through his hair as he looked everywhere but at Cecil. "When I see them in the Ralphs they're usually very serene; they always let everyone go in front of them in line. I saw one stand there for an hour waiting to buy salt and jackalope eggs."

"Oh, well, you know angels and prophecies. They get a little over-excited."

Cecil's mouth went dry when Carlos finally glanced at him. He didn't know what to think. Had Carlos only agreed to the All-Seeing Eye in the heat of the moment? Cecil couldn't—wouldn't—hold him to a decision like that.

"Look—" Cecil said at the same time Carlos started, "So how—"

They both paused. Carlos cleared his throat. "How do we do this? The All-Seeing Eye? Can I, um, can I keep the one I already have or do you need it back?"

"You don't have to," Cecil blurted, though the buzzing barely contained by his skin objected vehemently. "This has been such a weird day; I don't want you to make any decisions you'll regret. Maybe—maybe you should go, think about it—"

"I've been thinking about it. I've been thinking about a lot of things. That's what scientists do." Carlos's smile invited Cecil to smile back, so he did. As if the smile were a signal, Carlos caught Cecil's hand and raised it to his lips, kissing his knuckles before pressing his palm to his stubble-roughened cheek. "I didn't mean to be so busy with work this week. I'm sorry."

Cecil was sure all of his vital organs had melted into useless gelatinous lumps, but he did not care. He did not care at all.

"I meant what I said. I would be honored to accept an All-Seeing Eye if you still want me to have one. Ever since the bowling alley I've been telling myself I'm done wasting time, but it's—it's been hard for me to put that into practice. I'm very... attached to you, even if I'm terrible at showing it sometimes. It's been a long time since I had anything or anyone else I cared about, and I'm not good at it, but I want to be."

"Carlos," Cecil said. It was the only thing he could think to say. "Carlos. That is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."

Carlos's cheek warmed under Cecil's palm. "It's the truth," he mumbled, looking down, and he was so perfect in that moment that Cecil couldn't not kiss him.

"We'll need a catalyst," Cecil said after he pulled away, walking Carlos backwards toward the bed. "Sacrifice is out, since my bloodstone circle is damaged. But there's another way," he continued, reluctantly reclaiming his hand to push Carlos's lab coat off his shoulders and down his arms, leaving a pool of white on the floor. It looked exactly like he'd imagined it would. "A much more enjoyable way."

For once Carlos seemed to understand what Cecil wasn't saying and began unbuttoning Cecil's shirt. "I can do catalysts," he said. "I am a scientist, after all." His grin made Cecil's toes curl.

Eagerly he started to do the same to Carlos's flannel shirt, laughing when they got in each other's way and smiling when Carlos stopped to carefully remove his wristwatch and set it aside before slipping Cecil's shirt off. Their pants went the same way; one of Cecil's shoes ended up under the bed, never to be seen again, but that hardly mattered.

What mattered was Carlos spread out on Cecil's bed in nothing but his boxer briefs.

Carlos had scars from the underground city attack, and Cecil found he both loved and hated the sight of them, torn between sorrow and satisfaction that Night Vale had left its mark on Carlos as it had on all its residents. It meant that Carlos belonged.

He atoned for his delight by pressing his lips to the scars and running his fingers over them until he had them memorized. Carlos did not seem inclined to mimic the action, but that was just as well; Cecil had many scars and not much patience.

He did not expect Carlos to grab two handfuls of his ass and squeeze. Cecil made a noise that was half surprised squeak, half indulgent moan, and all embarrassing.

"Sorry," Carlos said into his neck, the scrape of his teeth making Cecil shiver. He did not sound sorry. He also did not let go. "Been wanting to do that for a long time."

"You can do that whenever," Cecil told him. "But, ah, wait, one second." Shimmying out of his boxers while straddling Carlos's lap was not an easy feat, but he managed. Carlos's hands returned immediately to where they'd been and, yes, that was much better.

"Is there anything we need to do for the, uh, the thing?" Carlos asked, hands nestled against the tops of Cecil's thighs as his fingers boldly quested inward, rubbing against Cecil's perineum and skirting the edge of his hole.

"The thing," Cecil repeated, the head of his cock brushing against Carlos's stomach as he braced his arms on the bed. "The, um, oh, the catalyst. Just—ah, do that again." The pad of Carlos's finger felt like it was electrified as it circled his entrance. The looks Carlos had given him when he'd worn that particularly tight orange- and teal-striped pair of pants made a lot more sense now. "Just—orgasms. However. Whatever. You should, um, naked. Now."

"In a minute," Carlos replied, mouthing at Cecil's collarbone.

"Ungh," Cecil sort of protested. It was hard to find anything disagreeable about what Carlos was doing with his fingers. He'd never jumped straight to that kind of penetration with a boyfriend before, but it seemed like a fantastic idea with Carlos. "Wait, wait."

Immediately, Carlos froze. "Should I not—?"

"You definitely should," Cecil said. "But I need to—I might forget where the condoms and lube are if you keep going, and since—well, I didn't file for an unprotected sex permit, did you?"

"No? No. That's a thing?"

"Uh, yeah. How else would the City Council estimate the population control budget?"

"Population—Cecil, tell me you can't—"

Cecil stopped Carlos's inevitable descent into illogic with a kiss, his tongue sliding along those perfectly straight teeth. He knew the distraction had succeeded when Carlos's hands tightened once more on his ass. "Let's not get off-topic," Cecil said, shifting to draw Carlos upright. "We can discuss permits later."

Reluctant as he was to stop touching Carlos, it was either that or sprout a spontaneous new limb capable of reaching the nightstand drawer. After a few seconds of willing it to happen, no handy limb appeared, so Cecil clambered to his feet. When he turned back to the bed he nearly dropped the lube, because Carlos was naked.

Carlos. Naked. In Cecil's bed.

Naked.

Carlos's cock was as perfect as the rest of him.

Yes, Cecil decided, that was definitely going to be inside him tonight. He pushed the lube into Carlos's hand and straddled his thighs again, nearly humming with glee as he pressed close and dropped the condom onto the sheets. (It glowed in the dark; it would be easy to find.)

Carlos made a startled sound when Cecil's hand closed around him and Cecil almost let go, wondering if maybe he shouldn't have been so forward even with the nudity and strong implication of things to come, but then Carlos tried to push into the touch, his thighs flexing uselessly, pinned as he was under Cecil. Cecil wiggled to get a more comfortable angle and smiled when Carlos sucked a breath in between his teeth.

"I thought maybe you could use that," Cecil said when Carlos seemed content to do nothing more than wrap an arm around Cecil's waist and press his face into Cecil's chest. Not that Cecil disapproved of Carlos's apparent intent to remain as close as possible, but there were certainly ways to be closer.

"Hm? Oh. The—oh. I didn't mean to push for, uh, that, I just—I really like your butt," Carlos mumbled, face hidden.

"I want to," Cecil said, sounding as eager as he felt.

"You're sure?" One of Carlos's hands was already sliding down Cecil's back.

"It is foreordained," Cecil found himself saying, echoed by a faint blare of trumpets. "Uh. That was—weird. What I meant to say was yes."

The next thing Cecil was truly aware of was Carlos working two fingers into him, thumb rubbing his perineum in maddening counterpoint. It was entirely possible that there'd been a time skip, but Cecil didn't think to look for the signs faced with the dilemma of rocking back onto the fingers or pressing his cock forward against Carlos's stomach.

His eyes were closed. He was holding on to Carlos's shoulders too tightly, but he couldn't let go. The manifest energy was pooling in his fingertips, throwing itself against the barrier of his skin even as the sparking pleasure igniting at the base of his spine bloomed into a rolling wave as Carlos's clever, perfect fingers found his prostate.

"Now, now, now," he chanted, still holding on too hard. The fingers withdrew and he heard Carlos fumble in the sheets, the condom packet tearing, the click of the lube cap. He did not open his eyes. All he wanted was to feel Carlos; seeing him would be—too much, not enough, a distraction, an unbearable focal point.

"Like this?" Carlos asked, voice rough.

Cecil could only nod. His thighs burned as he lowered himself until the head of Carlos's cock nudged against his entrance and then Carlos's hands were on his hips, guiding him down until he was gasping with the feeling of being filled.

He felt Carlos say, "Cecil," against his chest. He was able to slide one hand from Carlos's shoulder to the nape of his neck, fingers questing further to his jaw to tip his face up into a kiss, full of tongue and teeth and certainty.

He pushed Carlos to lay flat on the bed, bracing himself on Carlos's chest as he began to move. Carlos held on to his hips and breathed in ragged pants. Cecil wanted to look, wanted to see Carlos's face, but he wanted to feel Carlos moving inside him more. His legs were beginning to shake, but between the energy crackling through his veins and the sheer joy of finally being with Carlos, he knew he wouldn't last long enough for it to matter.

There would be other times to go slow, to learn, to explore.

There was a frantic feeling welling up in his chest, like the wings of thousands of insects buzzing to get free. He knew Carlos could feel it, too.

Carlos shifted and used his new leverage to thrust up into Cecil, grip tight on his hips as they brought their bodies together harder and faster.

"Cecil," Carlos said, "Cecil, open your eyes."

He was looking at his hands splayed across Carlos's chest before he quite knew what had happened, gaze rising to take in Carlos's beloved, pleasure-flushed face, bottom lip caught between his teeth. Their eyes locked.

The sensation of his orgasm was nearly lost in the hot torrent of manifest energy surging from his body, rising and spilling over and finally, finally finding its place entwined with the flesh and blood of Carlos's existence. They cried out, rushing emptiness and unbearable fullness mixing in swirling spirals of overwhelming sensation and then they could only feel each other as Cecil collapsed on top of Carlos, slipping seamlessly into unconsciousness.

***

The next time Cecil opened his eyes, the sun had risen.

There was a glass of water on the nightstand, and he was under the sheets. His skin felt paper-thin, translucent, like everything inside him had been bared to the world. No, not the world. Carlos.

The memory of the previous night was as clear as the void on a cloudless day.

There was someone in bed with him. It was, presumably, Carlos, but Cecil was struck with the terrifying thought that it was not, that Carlos had been replaced with a doppelganger in the middle of the night while Cecil slept the sleep of the exhausted.

But a doppelganger wouldn't have an All-Seeing Eye. The real Carlos would.

Cecil rolled over, going slowly so as not to alert the potential Carlos duplicate that he was awake.

Carlos was—

He was laying on his back, half-covered by the sheet, definitely still naked.

His hair was as mussed and adorable as it had been the first time he'd fallen asleep in Cecil's bed.

His face was serene and unlined.

He was not a doppelganger.

The All-Seeing Eye wasn't immediately visible, but at least a dozen Eyes were roaming over Carlos's skin as if they had every right to be there.

"Oops," said Cecil, louder than he'd intended. Carlos stirred, rolling onto his side, one arm looping around Cecil's waist as he blinked his way back to consciousness. Cecil's heart began to beat faster with an alarming mixture of love, lust, and dismay.

Something of it must have shown on his face because Carlos's gaze sharpened and he sat up. "Cecil?"

"Don't look down," said Cecil.

It was not the smartest thing to say to a scientist, because Carlos looked down immediately.

A dozen Eyes that shouldn't exist blinked up at him. "Was this supposed to happen?" Carlos asked, raising his hand to a spot to the right of his sternum where there were three Eyes slowly rotating in a triquetra-like pattern.

Cecil shivered—but that wasn't right. The Eyes weren't meant to be a touch conduit, so he was clearly imagining things. "I don't think so," he said, trying and failing to remember how giving Earl an All-Seeing Eye had felt. Maybe he'd simply underestimated how much energy there'd been and the rest of the Eyes had just... happened. They were tiny pieces of Cecil, after all, he couldn't blame them for wanting to be close to Carlos.

"Is one of these the All-Seeing Eye?" Carlos asked, the sheet pooled in his lap as he twisted to peer over his own shoulder. There were faint, fingertip-sized bruises there.

"No," Cecil said, shifting to look at Carlos's upper body from all angles. It was a good excuse to ogle him. "I thought it would be where my hands were when, ah, you know."

Carlos grinned the grin that Cecil had fallen in love with. "I know," he said. He leaned over and kissed Cecil, sweetly, gently. It was a good morning sort of kiss. Carlos was covered in Eyes that weren't supposed to exist and instead of being upset he was being... perfect. "So," Carlos said, sitting back and clearing his throat. "It could be anywhere on me?"

"I guess. Maybe you shou—ummm..." Naked. Carlos was naked. Naked and standing beside the bed, examining his legs for the All-Seeing Eye. It vaguely occurred to Cecil that he should help.

"See anything?" Carlos asked.

"Uh huh," Cecil said, still staring.

"I meant the All-Seeing Eye," Carlos said, dry as the desert that cradled Night Vale, but he was smiling, a faint dusting of red over his cheekbones.

"Oh. Oh, right. Yes. The All-Seeing Eye. Nope, don't see it."

"Hmm. Well, let's do this scientifically," Carlos said, sitting back down on the bed. Cecil wriggled closer until they were side by side and he could absorb the warmth radiating from Carlos. He wanted to climb inside his skin and stay there forever. "Can we eliminate any variables?"

"I can... I can take back the regular Eyes?" Cecil offered. His interest in science was still amateur at best, but he honestly tried to pay attention when Carlos was teaching him things. "I should do that anyway, there'll be a new crop of interns soon."

"Alright," Carlos said, and watched quietly while Cecil worked.

The Eyes tried to scatter when they felt him calling, disappearing to the backs of Carlos's thighs and calves. An especially enterprising Eye tried to hide between his toes. But one by one they came, sullenly sliding from Carlos's skin to Cecil's outstretched hand.

The three Eyes to the right of Carlos's sternum did not budge, even when Cecil put his hand directly on top of them and called with all his might.

"Cecil? Cecil, stop, you're shaking."

He slumped forward, resting his forehead against Carlos's chest and staring at the offending Eyes. An arm wrapped around his shoulders and he leaned all his weight against Carlos, grateful for the support. "You're naked," he mumbled, eyes half-shut.

"Should I—"

"No."

"I was going to ask if I should get you anything," Carlos said, one warm hand stroking down the length of Cecil's spine. "I don't know what to do to help."

"Putting clothes on will not help," Cecil informed him. He wondered if anyone who owed him a favor was high enough in the city government to get an edict passed that banned Carlos from wearing clothes while in Cecil's bedroom. Maybe if he found a pygmy kraken for Kalinda's fish tank she would whisper in the right ears. "I'm going to try opening one of these," he decided, tapping the three Eyes on Carlos's chest. "If, um, if I get stuck in a trance or something a small flesh wound should snap me out of it. Or a loud noise."

Carlos looked unsure, but hesitation wouldn't help.

"Huh," Cecil said, now looking at Carlos's worried face from above, just like an All-Seeing Eye was supposed to operate. "That's weird. But hey, it worked!"

The penguin's eye view also revealed that while Carlos's hair was sexily tousled, Cecil's looked like imps had nested (and perhaps mated) in it. It took him a few seconds to get the hang of moving his arms while watching from above, but eventually he managed. Hair fixed, he blinked back to his corporeal existence. He much preferred looking at Carlos's face up close.

"Am I supposed to be able to tell when you're doing that?" Carlos asked. "Because I felt something, and I would really rather it was you than, uh, not you."

Earl had never said anything about knowing when Cecil was looking in on him, but Earl had never said a lot of things. Cecil frowned. "I don't know. Was it a bad feeling or a good feeling?"

Carlos hummed his science thoughts hum before saying, "Good. It was good."

"I hope it was me, then." Cecil smiled. "But it could've been the feelings delivery service, you never know. I got a 'just noticed a giant winged scorpion on the ceiling directly above me' the other day right when I noticed a giant winged scorpion on the ceiling directly above me."

Carlos looked intrigued. "One of the white ones? We've got one at the lab we've sort of adopted as a mascot because we can't catch it. We named it Snowball. Where were you when you saw it? Janine's trying to do a study—um. Sorry. I should not be talking about science when we're—sorry." Before Cecil could say anything (like "You wouldn't be Carlos if you didn't talk about science, although maybe don't mention Janine when we're naked?"), Carlos said, "Could you try opening one of the other two Eyes? I want to see if I get the same feeling."

Because Cecil was curious, he wasted no time following Carlos's suggestion.

He was falling, flying, pulled, pushed.

It was utterly strange and completely familiar and lasted for eons or less than an instant.

He found himself looking down on his bedroom once more, only this time both he and Carlos were asleep.

"Cecil, I can feel it again," Carlos said, voice hushed but the same it had always been, though Cecil had a strange feeling that it should have been different. The Carlos that Cecil could see slept on peacefully, one arm on top of the sheets, reaching for Cecil. The Faceless Old Woman came into the room and put a glass of water on the nightstand. Distantly, Cecil could feel Carlos squeezing his shoulder. "Cecil? What do you see?"

"The past." He blinked back to his own two eyes in the present and glanced over at the water glass. "Or an alternate dimension exactly like this one but slightly behind in the timestream. But probably the past."

"Do you think the third one would show you the future?" Carlos asked, sounding intrigued.

"Or an alternate dimension exactly like this one but slightly ahead in the timestream," Cecil said, a chill creeping up his spine. Would Carlos want him to look? The future was dangerous enough as an abstract concept; knowing anything about it without the protective obfuscation of the various forms of prophecy would be... inadvisable. Very inadvisable. Not illegal, obviously, but the City Council frowned on it.

More importantly, if Carlos was ever planning on breaking up with him, Cecil didn't want to know about it in advance. Or ever.

"I don't want to use it," Cecil blurted out before Carlos could ask any uncomfortable questions. "I don't want to passively observe your future; I want to be a part of your present that becomes your future and if that's not—not meant to be, I don't want to see it. And I'm sorry that this happened at all, but I don't know what happened to make three All-Seeing Eyes instead of the one you agreed to, and—"

"Hey, Cecil, it's fine. It's fine, all of it's fine." There was an arm curling around Cecil's shoulders and coaxing him to lay down, much like the night Carlos had first found out about the Eyes except with nudity. "I don't want you to do anything you don't want to, and honestly, I—if you—if you're not part of my future, for whatever reason, I don't really want to know, either, no matter how scientifically fascinating seeing the future could potentially be."

Words couldn't come close to expressing the joy Cecil felt bubbling inside him, but he tried anyway. "Oh, Carlos, I'm so glad you feel that way."

Carlos didn't reply directly, but his arm tightened around Cecil and he pressed a kiss to the top of Cecil's head. Cecil rubbed his cheek against Carlos's chest and closed his eyes, pushing aside his concerns about the future to enjoy being with Carlos in the present.

The last of his lingering fears dissipated as his hand wandered down Carlos's side, cataloguing the dips, ridges, textures, and imperfections that were all equally part of Carlos and so equally loved by Cecil.

Neither of them had said I love you yet, but Cecil thought it would be okay if he said it first. Not now, but soon.

***

Cecil did not open the third All-Seeing Eye, and Carlos did not ask him to.

But if he had, he would have seen:

A dark line in the sky, leading toward Old Woman Josie's house;
Yellow helicopters hovering over Night Vale, uninvited, unwelcome;
A triangular logo with an orange 'S' in the middle above the entrance to the radio station;
Mirrors, broken;
Green meadows out in the desert turning black, consumed by fire;
An army of hundreds of children, doing drills out in the Sand Wastes;
Large, featureless black cubes where the vacant lot out back of the Ralphs used to be;
and a thousand other things, inexplicable until experienced.