"… but Mayor Cardinal has yet to respond."
Cecil looked over the notes he had scattered over his desk to find the traffic report that the latest intern had just dropped off, leafing through them in the thought that maybe he had buried it beneath a few other reports he just hadn't gotten around to cleaning up. A few sketches of his perfect Carlos lay in the margins and he smiled sorely as he looked over them.
Eventually, he found a paper titled 'traffic'. Well, he assumed it said traffic. It, like all other recently issued reports, were written in dance cues and he still hadn't quite figured out how to translate two pirouettes and a backspin. He lifted it out from the mess, but he never got the chance to read it out as his phone rang.
"Oh?" he set the paper down and picked up his phone, a grin quickly filling his face as he read the name of the caller. "Hold on, listeners. Carlos is calling me. Hello?"
He knew it wasn't professional to answer the phone on the air, but he was saving the prerecorded segments for a later time. Besides, Carlos might've had news to share with Night Vale, and it was his duty as a radio host to update his city.
"Yes, of course..." he said slowly, almost cautiously, "but why..."
He listened for a long moment, Carlos' side of the conversation barely audible over the air. Then, voice shrinking to be barely a breath, Cecil's hands began to shake on his phone.
"You're..?" he whispered, a faint break in his voice swelling shut with the purest sounding form of hope. "Yes! I'll be right there."
He hung up the phone, the beep clearer than Carlos had been, before rushing to fumble with his microphone.
"Listeners, I have to go," he said in a rush, voice shaking on the edge of an ecstatic laugh, "but my duty as a radio host comes above most things, so before I do... I leave you now... with the weather."
He pressed the red button and basically threw his headphones onto his desk before running out of the studio as fast as his feet would carry him.
When an intern noticed that there was no one in the studio as the weather wrapped up, they hurried in to play a set of prerecorded advertisements for Half Price Books-
"Half off your books, half off you! If you're lucky, you may even get to pick what half. Of the books, that is. But then again, probably not."
-and Disney-
"We own everything. You think we're kidding? Point to something. No, that's ours. That's also ours. In fact, everything around you is ours. Give them back or we'll have to take them by force."
-and eventually a sports section that was just otherworldly screaming and sobbing.
"Go Red Sox."
The intern was almost tempted to sign off the show themselves when a man stumbled into the studio, of perfect complexion and hair, carrying a sleeping Cecil in his arms. He abruptly apologized with a little grin, showing off teeth like a military cemetery, before carrying the radio host over to his chair. The man sat in the chair instead, tucking the sleeping man in tighter against himself and holding him snugly, before scooting up to the microphone and fumbling with the headphones until he had them adjusted over his head. He pressed a promising looking red button and smiled again when the 'On Air' sign lit up, waiting until the intern shut the door to speak.
"Hello, listeners," he copied how Cecil regularly resumed the show, petting the man's cheek softly with a fondness in his eyes, "Carlos here. I'll be doing the rest of the show for now, seeing that Cecil's fallen asleep. If you listen closely, you can hear him snoring."
He became quiet for a moment, lifting the microphone a little closer for the man's heavy breathing to be heard over the radio. It was hard to get a good angle, seeing that the radio host had now tucked himself in against his neck, but he tried his best anyway. He set the microphone back again and cradled him closer to his chest.
"Isn't it cute?" he sighed, stammering for a moment after he realized he had said it and coughing it off as discretely as he could manage. "But I'm sure you're all more worried about how I got back."
He took a little breath, knowing his voice was nowhere close to his boyfriend's. He didn't know if the people cared, to be honest, or if they even noticed he was gone, seeing that time didn't exist in Night Vale.
"I had spent... many weeks looking for doors like the one that had brought me to the strange other place to begin with. There was nothing, though, besides the miles of empty hot sand, mountains, and the lighthouse on top of it. While the lighthouse did in fact have doors, none of them led back to Night Vale. They just led inside the lighthouse. For a long time, I thought I would never get back to Night Vale... and that made me sad. But then... several hours ago, a door appeared in front of me in the sand, and I was curious."
He paused to think about the door, remembering it to the best of his abilities, squeezing Cecil's hand as it sought his out in his sleep. Carlos brought it to his lips and gently kissed his fingers, smiling as they tightened around his own.
"Its hinges seemed to fixed into the air itself, or maybe a structure that just simply didn't exist in that strange place. It was a dark purple, nearly black, and carved into the wood in several different... fonts, I could say... were the words, 'Carlos belongs in Night Vale', over and over, all overlapping each other. I wanted to study it, but I grew fearful that the door wouldn't last long, so I opened it and walked through. The moment I stepped out of it though, it simply... disappeared. There wasn't a door in sight anywhere, or even an imprint from where a door may have once been. There was just sand, miles and miles of it, and an old pavement road with small plants growing out of the cracks. I knew at once that I was back in Night Vale, and I was happy once again."
"I plan to conduct a full investigation on the door when I find it again," he assured Night Vale, leaning back in the chair so he could bring his knees up against the desk to hold Cecil there against him. "When I realized I was in Night Vale again, I called Cecil and he came to get me."
The scientist grew quiet for a moment, ears darkening in the faintest as a small smile stretched over his lips.
"He parked his car on the old pavement road and we stood there for what felt like hours, just holding each other... until the second sun started its rotation and we had to get back," he gave a sheepish laugh. "I apparently missed a few recently passed curfew laws in my absence, but I'm happy to hear Dana is in office. I'm also afraid, but mostly just tired. Also a little hungry."
He yawned into his free hand slowly, wanting to just lay his head against Cecil's and sleep now, but he felt it was his duty to at least finish this broadcast. He owed Night Vale that much.
"I offered to drive, seeing that he had been on and off the verge of tears ever since he put his arms around me, and he agreed. He wanted me to take us home and I wanted that too, but I remembered that he had to finish up his show, so I drove here to the station. He held my hand on the drive and grew quiet after a while, but I assumed he was just staring at me. He does that sometimes. But when I parked outside and looked over, he was fast asleep. I think it's safe to assume he didn't sleep well while I was gone."
His voice got softer at the mention and he thought of the bags under his boyfriend's eyes. They had been so dark when he had got out of the car. Cecil had always said he slept well, but Carlos didn't need to be a scientist to know that he was lying.
"I think it's safe to assume I didn't sleep well either... but I picked him up and I carried him inside, so happy to have more than just his golden voice with me."
He counted Cecil's breaths for a moment, tracing small circles in the back of his hand with his thumb, grin growing at the small smile on the man's lips.
"Dear listeners, I'm so happy to be back," he said quietly, never taking his eyes off of his boyfriend, "to be back in Night Vale, to be back out of the unyielding heat and away from the large nomadic army that never quite stayed stationary long enough for me to feel safe, to be back in a town with people and friends I know, to be... to be back with Cecil. But right now, I think our place is back at our home with Khoshekh."
Little by little, Cecil stirred from his sleep, eyes meeting Carlos', and all at once he was grinning wider than should be humanly possible. He looked around them, from the station to the headphones over Carlos' ears, before throwing his arms up around the other's neck and hugging him tightly. Carlos squeezed him back just as tightly, if not more.
"I don't see a lot of science getting done over the next few weeks, what with all this time I have to make up," Carlos went on, pressing a few kisses to his boyfriend's forehead. "The City Council has now declared time imaginary, so we have to find new measurements for how long I've been away. I ah..."
He stopped and looked down at Cecil, earning his gaze at the silence. When the radio host took the hint, he grinned gently and nodded, nuzzling his head under Carlos' chin.
"Up next, the sound of the universe stilling itself overnight while I lay with my perfect boyfriend in something other than my dreams," Cecil said in his golden voice, slow and rhythmic, the sleep already gone from its tone. "Goodnight, Night Vale."
"Goodnight."
-F.J. III