A/N: This fic as a whole contains explicit spoilers for "Eternal Scouts", "One Year Later" and, most importantly, "Condos". It's also safe to presume it may contain minor spoilers for any episode up to current, though I think it's safe to say the whole of it likely takes place prior to "Yellow Helicopters".

Also, although the last two chapters are not published at the time of this writing, the last chapter of this fic is explicit and so will not be posted here.

What Cecil didn't know was how well Earl knew Carlos.

He should have. Cecil seemed almost omnipotent at times, had seemed that way long before he had become Night Vale's Voice and it was only worse now that he had. He knew all kinds of things that happened all over town, things that were impossible to know, but he'd always seemed to have a strange blind spot for one particular boy-scout-turned-scoutmaster. So it wouldn't have surprised Earl at all if Cecil had never once seen him going about his day and it certainly didn't surprise him when his scouts got a mention on the radio and he didn't. But ever since The Scientist had come into town, it seemed like Cecil's awareness was constantly on him. Every broadcast had some little detail about him or his team of scientists and every broadcast, Earl wondered when Cecil was going to comment on the fact that Earl had been seen with them almost as much as with his scouts these days.

Not that Cecil needed to worry or anything, even if he was going to, which Earl was very well aware he was not. It's not like there was anything going on between them. There was never anything going on between Earl and anyone, as a matter of fact, a fact that Cecil was blissfully oblivious to, but that Earl was painfully aware of every day. But hewas around Carlos a lot, now, and he was surprised it didn't merit some kind of mention, even just in passing, particularly when Cecil would report on various stories that Earl knew he was there for and involved in without even a mention of him, as though he were just another one of the scientists.

See, Earl knew a lot about the town, and Carlos was constantly asking questions and getting into trouble, and he was a Scientist, not someone prepared to fight off the terrors of Night Vale. The man thought that you just went to the Library, just walked right in and got what you wanted. He thought the Librarians were there to help you. He needed someone to look after him, before he died some kind of horrible death. Cecil would be sad if he died, after all, and Earl could protect him. He didn't like Carlos but he didn't want Cecil to be sad.

And at first, that's all it was. He should hate Carlos and, truth be told, he was determined not to like him, to protect him for Cecil but to make his contempt for him well known in the process. He was an Outsider and he wanted him to understand that the only reason this place hadn't chewed him up and spat him out was that Earl kept saving him, and that he was only doing that because for some reason his "best-friend" had fallen head over heels for him.

But then Carlos was actually nice. Carlos was kind to him from the beginning, openly, honestly grateful to be rescued, eager to sit around and take notes on Earl's knowledge of Night Vale, its dangers and beauty both. He could sit around for hours and let Earl talk about scouting and badges and bloodstone circles, taking notes and asking appropriately interested questions as though the things Earl was saying were fascinating. He respected him in a way he was only used to getting from his troop. He listened to him, engaged and interested in precisely the way Cecil wasn't. It was everything he'd ever wanted in a friend, in something more than a friend, from anyone, and here it was from the one person in all of Night Vale he wanted to hate.

For a while he hated him anyway, just to be contrary. He pretended to be polite while he seethed inside. He was viciously, dangerously jealous. He hung around him and the scientists just to see them fail and laughed privately when they did. The whole thing was awful and made him feel like an awful person and lasted a little more than a week. Carlos was misguided and entirely too much of a hero with entirely too little concept of the consequences, but he was intelligent and earnest and every bit as unfairly attractive as Cecil made him out to be on the radio. Perfect. He was perfect, and he was as warm and present and real as Cecil was cool and distant and otherworldly; Cecil's laugh could send shivers of tension up his spine, but Carlos's made things relax and uncurl in him instead. He started spending time with him because he wanted to and less so that he could make sure he was there when he inevitably needed saving. They ended up talking about childhoods, about friends, about hobbies beyond their jobs and places outside of Night Vale. Earl hadn't been to any, but he had read about them and he could listen to Carlos talk about them all night, the cadence of his voice pleasant enough, even if he would never have described it as anything remotely approaching "caramel".

Cecil was allowed a little bit of dramatic license, of course, since he was in love but Earl denied himself that, forced himself to be realistic and call things as he saw them. He wasn't in love, after all, not with Carlos anyway. He wasn't allowed to be in love with Carlos. It sat more and more bitter in his heart every day, the truth of it like the twist of a dagger every time he smiled that perfect smile and Earl felt his own lips curl up in response.

He threw himself, instead, into making sure they got together. He encouraged Carlos to call Cecil to get the word out about things. He talked about him in as charming a way as possible, without seeming interested. Whenever Carlos was confused or, more often, horrified by something Cecil had said on the radio, either about Carlos himself, or about Science in general, he was there to explain what Night Vale was like, what Cecil was like. He played the matchmaker every way he knew how, and he was pretty sure it was working, Carlos starting to laugh warmly and shake his head when talking about Cecil, now, instead of seeming almost frightened by his enthusiasm. Earl basked in all of that fondness, his own little prize for a job well done, even though he knew none of it was for him. Friends. He couldn't possibly ask for two better friends, one a fond memory from childhood that provided a constant for him in a rapidly changing and frightening world and one a new presence in his life, interesting and interested, someone who he could connect with even without a shared past, who was just different enough to be remarkable and just similar enough, in many ways, that he could relate. He couldn't ask for morethan that, than seeing them happy and in love, could he? It would be all right. He would be all right. For them. With them.

Apparently, he couldn't even ask for that.

Saying good-bye to Cecil was surprisingly easy. There was only one thing he wanted to make sure Cecil knew in case he didn't come back from the Eternal Scout ceremony, only one regret he had ever had concerning his childhood best friend, and it was easy enough to slip it in at the end of the interview. He didn't know if it would make it on the air. He didn't care if it did anymore. He didn't care about a lot of things anymore. He would be mortified if he survived, but if he didn't, we could have had something wasn't a bad eulogy, after all. It was the story of his life.

Carlos, though, Carlos was more difficult. He hadn't had an entire lifetime to work out what he wanted to say to Carlos in his head. It didn't help that when he walked into the lab, Carlos was thankfully the only one in there but also very deeply involved in some kind of Science Thing, lab goggles on his head and dropper in one gloved hand. He put a drop of something on a slide and stuck it under a microscope and didn't even look up when Earl came in, just grunted some kind of non-committal, distracted greeting at him, leaning into the microscope and taking notes on whatever he was seeing, below. Earl felt a flash of something that was half irritation, half heartbreak, because Carlos had alwaysbeen happy to pay attention to him and he was only just realizing that it was actually mostly when Carlos wanted to pay attention, not when Earl wanted him to. Of course. Of course. The story of his life.

But Carlos wasn't native to Night Vale, he reminded himself, and if he didn't know about Librarians, or Dot Day, or re-education, maybe he didn't know about the Boy Scouts, either, and what it meant to say that no one had ever been an Eternal Scout before, the uncertainty and terror that might bring.

"Carlos," he managed, croaked, the words half stuck in his throat and there was a warm surge of something that might have been happiness and might have been tears when Carlos looked up out of the Science immediately, a little frown appearing on his lovely face. He tilted his head to the side quizzically,

"Earl? Is there something wrong?" Earl knew he'd gotten his earlier assumption correct, because Carlos didn't say it like someone who knew there was something wrong and was fishing for what. It was a genuine question, said with a hint of the kind of worry you get before you know if you should be worried or not. Earl suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here. If there was something worse than being ignored, he suddenly found, it was being paid attention to.

"It's nothing. I just. The Eternal Scout ceremony is in less than an hour. It's… two of my scouts are the ones being inducted and I'm both proud and terrified," that much was part of his prepared statement, falling rote off his tongue, but Carlos (Outsider Carlos) reacted differently from everyone else in town that he'd told about it,

"Terrified?" he set the dropper down and reached up, took off his safety goggles, which did completely unfair things to his beautiful hair, and looked more seriously at Earl, "Are you alright?"

"I'm…" no, no he wasn't alright, and he might now consider Carlos a friend, but he was still bitterly angry that someone who should have been something like a rival was theonly person in town to ask him that, "… confused," he finished, lamely. And he was. He was confused about a number of things. Carlos stripped off his gloves and stood, stretching all of the kinks out of his back and moving over towards him,

"All of the crazy bullshit you've saved me from, and you really think a Scout Ceremony is going to do you in?" Carlos raised his eyebrows in surprise and dismissal, still not quite understanding, "You'll be fine." I won't be, Earl wanted to say, the tablets under City Hall were very specific. I am going to my death and the only person in town that cares is someone who I want to hate with every fiber of my being and can't. Something must have shifted in his face, because even Carlos, who was self-admittedly not that great with picking up subtle social cues, seemed to realize that this was more serious than he was previously giving it credit for being, that Earl was genuinely scared and not just nervous about giving a speech or something.

"Hey…" Carlos reached out and put a hand on Earl's shoulder, warm, friendly, there, "Hey… you'll be fine. It'll be okay. You're one of the strongest people I know and I'm sure that you'll—mmrrph!" Earl didn't actually know why he kissed him, then, when he'd never given into the desire to before. It might have something with never havingadmitted to himself he'd had the desire to before, but once his mouth was on his, he couldn't remember anymore why he'd waited. He was going to his death and maybe, just for once before it was all over, he was allowed to be totally selfish and self-serving about something, to have something he wanted for no other reason than he wanted it. It wouldn't matter in a few hours anyway.

Carlos's mouth was warm, temperature but also temperament, and tasted like lavender, and Earl deepened the kiss without thinking. He got his hands in that ridiculously perfect hair and tipped his body into Carlos's. Carlos kept making little surprised noises every time he shifted, but he had his arms around him, hesitant but not unwelcoming, pulling him closer and Earl was going to be more embarrassed than he had ever been in his life when he finally pulled back, but right now the tension unwound from him whipcrack fast and he melted into Carlos's arms, a soft moan of relief bubbling up out of him, wretched and wonderful, against Carlos's mouth. Into Carlos's mouth, and he wasn't even actually sure if it was him who had started it or Carlos, but it was so unfair that even his tongue was perfect, sliding against his in a way that managed to be passionately hot andsweet at the same time, his hands having shifted up to cup against his cheeks.

Everything was so sweet; even as Earl could tell he was clinging too hard, probably uncomfortably so, Carlos was nothing but soothing, protective, even through the low, rumbling moan he voiced back into Earl's mouth when Earl shifted deeper into his arms. Earl had never, ever had anyone act like they wanted to take care of him, before— even when Cecil and he had been close, it had always been him taking care of the dreamy, excitable future radio host, not the other way around. Carlos kissed like he could somehow make everything bad in the world go away, if he could just kiss Earl long enough, thoroughly enough.

One kiss turned into two, three, more, each of them taking turns dragging the other back into them when one of them started to pull away. Time melted and pulled around them like taffy and Earl could feel his bones doing the same, the tension he had been carrying, his fear, until he wasn't sure how long they had been kissing anymore, until he wasn't certain of anything in the world but Carlos's mouth on his, the steady beat of his heart and the press of his hands, something that was not necessarily calm itself, but pulsed, breathed, calmed him. Carlos's hands soothed against his back when Earl stopped kissing him and clung to him instead, eyes screwed tight against having to witness and return to reality. He buried his head in Carlos's shoulder so he wouldn't have to see whatever was in his face, but whatever there was, Carlos said nothing, just slid his hands, warm (so warm) up and down his back, stroked through his hair, silent and solid and so very, very there. Gods but he was going to be so good for Cecil, excitable, passionate Cecil, everything that Earl couldn't ever have been and, for once, the thought didn't fill him with any bitterness or hurt, just a deep, deep love and an aching sense of melancholy, that he could never have something that beautiful.

Still, he had a job to do, and a very important one at that, and he was finding that his tension had, in fact, been soothed away, and he was left mostly just feeling proud and at a strange kind of peace with himself, with the world around him, with his inevitable, approaching death. It wasn't a bad note to go out on, being kissed warm down to his toes and knowing that everything would be all right once he was gone, that everyone he truly cared for would be taken care of. It was more than most people got. And by the time he took back his own weight and backed off, he was flushed but composed and Carlos… Carlos was flushed too, beautifully so, his eyes still a sort of shock-wide, but concerned as well, confused, even as his hands were reluctant to let Earl go.

"Earl, you—" Earl laid fingers over his mouth, because there wasn't any time, now that it was back to moving normally, and he had an appointment to keep,

"If I don't come back…"when I don't come back… he pushed completely away, made himself take a full step backwards before he lost the will to go, "If I don't come back, take care of Cecil for me. I know you think he's really weird, but I have never seen him love someone like he loves you," he finally, finally, allowed a little bit of his past to show in his voice, where Cecil was concerned, because Carlos needed to know how serious he was, "Never… Give him a chance at least, okay, and try not to get yourself killed. "

"I understand. I will, uh, I won't, but what about…" Carlos was talking to the air, "… you?"

Carlos looked around the empty lab, confused. He'd lied, when he said he understood. He didn't understand anything. He didn't understand anything at all.

And that night, when he listened to a repeat of Cecil's show, he understood too well, and too late.