title from "Remember Us" by Gabriel Royal because even if it doesn't fit the fic, it's my favorite weather and none of you are my mom. some details in earl's life may be wrong bc i wrote this w/o wifi? but i'm not fixing it sorrynotsorry
also, someone please stop me from writing one-shots when i ACTUALLY HAVE STUFF TO DO!
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Sometimes, Earl remembers.
He remembers being young. He remembers his mother crying when he was chosen to join the scouts. He remembers meeting Cecil and becoming his friend, despite the prophecies surrounding the weird boy. He remembers being a teen and watching Cecil develop a type, watching him date scientist after inattentive scientist (The one who kept dropping apples, the couple who was amazed by all the radiation, the one with the pigeons, the one who was obsessed with peas, the one-). He remembers falling in love with Cecil – not instantly, no; he fell in love with Cecil the same way he opened his yearly feeding lottery ticket: achingly slow, shaking with terror and ready to deny everything if necessary.
There's still a lot he doesn't remember. He doesn't remember what happened in the other dimension with the weird children, he doesn't remember having a son, he doesn't remember going to culinary school, he doesn't remember aging so much.
He doesn't remember coming back to Night Vale.
But he's here, with a popular restaurant and a full staff that looks up to him; with a cache of memorized recipes and the knowledge of the exact color of correctly cooked steak; with perfect, beautiful Cecil, whose current scientist boyfriend is "working in a desert otherworld right now, no. he's not trapped, don't call it that."
He doesn't know why or how he was given a second chance, but he's home and he's so so thankful.
And besides, cooking is basically science, right?
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Scientists that Earl says Cecil dated are, in order: Sir Isaac Newton, the Curie's, Nikola Tesla, and Gregor Mendel.
Review or w/e.