A/N: **distracts you from my lack of updates on other stories (which I promise I haven't forgotten) with a semispontaneous Cecilos**

In the outside world, as his brain had subconsciously dubbed it, there were plenty of things about himself Carlos had seen as unusual. Or that is to say, there were many things that people had pointed out as unusual to him. Repeatedly. Sometimes forcefully. There was his obsession with science, and how he rarely talked about anything else. His thick, black-rimmed glasses and how nearly blind he was without them. His pudgy stomach and pudgy fingers, and the way he slipped into grammatically nightmarish Spanish whenever he was excited or frustrated. His mind worked differently more often than not. And then there was his attraction towards other men, which in itself tended to cause all sorts of problems.

But the only thing unusual about him in Night Vale was his lack of a last name.

When he left the outside world, he had had a last name. And then, in Night Vale, he didn't. He had signed the research grant application with his last name, and all of his research was filed under it. But when he was signing a receipt, or for his mandatory weekly slice of Big Rico's, or for anything else that didn't simply require a blood smear, just Carlos the Scientist was needed. Or simply, Carlos.

He suspected Cecil was somewhat at fault, with his radio show that seemed to be playing any time Carlos went anywhere. One day Carlos was a new and anonymous face, the next, the day after Cecil's broadcast, the whole town knew him.

Carlos shook himself back to the present and found that he'd been staring at the store's pasta selection for a good five minutes. He sighed and put the package of spaghetti in his shopping basket where it belonged. Outside, he had hated shopping. The fluorescent lights, bright sounds and smells, and abrasively helpful store employees made it a dreaded weekly ordeal. But here, he moved unhindered through the dimly lit aisles. Cecil's omnipresent voice droned softly over the speaker. The whole store had a hushed, almost librarylike atmosphere.

Unfortunately, to check out he still had to bypass a real clerk. (He couldn't call them a "person" with much accuracy.) His fingers twisted, agitated, in the pocket of his lab coat as he fidgeted in line. Cecil said something about a traveler wearing indescribable buttons.

The conglomeration of pulsating ectoplasm spoke with a pronounced Southern twang as Carlos set his groceries on the counter. "Heeey… You're that Scientist fella, ain't ya?" they asked after he had swiped his card. He mumbled an affirmative.

"Cecil's got a lot to say about ya, don't he?" said the ectoplasm. "He might seem a bit intimidatin' over the radio, but he's a real sweetheart. Go ahead and take your bags, dear. They're biodegradable, so just throw 'em in the compost when you're done. Now don't you go dyin,' y'hear? That'd break our Cecil's heart! And we wouldn't want that, would we?" Suddenly the ectoplasm doubled in size, their voice dropping to a low growl and leaving Carlos with no doubt that they could find and do terrifying things to his immortal soul even after his death.

Carlos retreated.

Time passed. Cecil continued to be his not-so-secret admirer. The lights above the Arby's blinked incomprehensibly. Hooded figures lurked. Highlighters disappeared. Carlos called Cecil – not for personal reasons. The tiny civilization under lane 5 of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex started their war. Carlos narrowly avoided the ectoplasm's wrath – and called Cecil. For personal reasons.

Tonight was their sixth date.

Carlos had decided that Cecil was easily his favorite person in Night Vale. Maybe anywhere. Granted, Carlos didn't know a huge amount of people, but Cecil outshone everyone he did. He listened to Carlos talk about experiments for far longer than anyone else had lasted, and was very nice about informing him when he had gone a bit overboard. His perfect voice was incredibly soothing, and Carlos could listen to it for hours. (He had downloaded all of Cecil's broadcasts onto his phone and listened to them when he was feeling overwhelmed.) In the earliest days of their relationship Cecil had been slightly overenthusiastic with spontaneous physical contact, but he had gotten much better about making sure it was okay first. His eight purple tentacles had taken some getting used to, of course, but after Cecil had sat patiently on a stool for two hours in the lab while Carlos scanned and examined and analyzed and tried to understand, they became just another mysterious, wonderful Night Vale thing.

They were stargazing. None of the stars were in the right places. This had scared Carlos when he had first came, because all of science said that stars were more or less a constant that appeared in constant, predictable shapes and positions. But that didn't worry him anymore, because things were different in Night Vale. Like sunrises, and mayors, and clocks.

(Well, he was still a little bit concerned about the clocks.)

It was probably sometime before midnight. Cecil and Carlos were sharing a blanket at the top of a hill in Grove Park, lying on their backs and staring at the stars. Their hands were intertwined and Carlos could feel at least two tentacles snaking through his hair. Another had been thrown across his stomach, and he stroked it idly. Cecil was explaining Night Vale constellations in that lovely voice of his.

"…in the west you can see the Teleporting Rattlesnake starting to rise. We're lucky it's decided to show up for us tonight. Sometimes it doesn't bother to rise at all, choosing to lurk in the shadowy domain that is the side of the earth just beyond our weak human eyes. It looks like it's taken a special fondness to you – see how it's already completely above the horizon?"

Carlos watched the Rattlesnake creep across the night sky. Much as he loved this astronomy lesson, he had just remembered that he had a question for the radio host. "Cecil?"

"Yes, Carlos?"

"Why don't you ever use my last name on your show?"

Cecil did not reply. Carlos went on. "I mean, you always say Jon Peters – you know, the farmer? Or Leann Hart, or Sarah Sultan, or Hiram McDaniels – almost everyone, you call them by their full names. But…I'm always just Carlos the Scientist. I'm confused why that is."

"Would you like me to start using your last name?"

"No, it's fine! You don't have to. I was just…just curious. I mean, it's not like my name's super exotic, or hard to pronounce."

The tentacle Carlos was holding curled around his hand. "Is who you're born as more important than who you are?"

Carlos was silent for a while, watching the stars and thinking. He tried to keep his thoughts from straying to the circumstances surrounding his departure to Night Vale – bad memories – but Cecil's comment had brought them to the forefront of his brain.

He squirmed slightly on the blanket and reached down to swat a mothsquito (Lymantria carnivora, native only to Night Vale) on his leg. It fluttered off disgruntledly to land on Cecil, whose tentacle smacked it out of the air. "I don't know. I was just curious."

Cecil made a small m-hm noise. "Last time we talked you were doing research in the Whispering Forest, I think you said you were comparing it with sailors' accounts of sirens and seeing if there could be a connection. Have you made any progress on that?"

Carlos smiled and scooted closer to Cecil on the blanket. "Actually, yeah, it's been great! See, I have a hypothesis that what sailors claimed to hear was a variety of whispering kelp, and its long strands resembled the hair of mermaids swimming underwater. And I think that our Whispering Forest is simply a rare landbased species. I went out to the forest last week with a recording device, and…"

He talked about science until the Teleporting Rattlesnake had crossed the sky and lost itself in the lights above the Arby's. He told Cecil about all his hypotheses and plans and pet projects and theories, pausing only to answer Cecil's occasional questions. Eventually they drifted into companionable silence, which drifted into some moderate making out. Carlos got home an hour before the first strains of cacophony reached him from the east.

Strex gained power, and he was forced to flee to the desert. It took him a month and Dana to figure out that he and Cecil could still communicate, though for a good part of that month he didn't know where Cecil was. He missed Cecil, of course he did. The desert's offputtingly vast emptiness and puzzling landscape made him feel lonely and hopeless, surrounded though he was by an entire army. But none of them were Cecil. None could even compare.

The desert, though, the desert! Excluding Night Vale, he had never found a more scientifically fascinating place on Earth. And it made sense, while he was here, to gather all the information about it he could, didn't it? Once he returned home, who knew if he'd ever be able to study it again?

He did make it home eventually – saving Night Vale in the process, not an unusual event. And he was glad to be out of the glaring sunlight and constant sweltering heat, glad to be able to touch and hold and kiss his Cecil again. They spent a lot more time together now, still somewhat in awe of being in the same dimension. Cecil would volunteer as his lab assistant for a day, holding test tubes and jotting down observations and monopolizing the background music. Or Carlos would come to the station on slow days and try to distract Cecil through the glass. During the weather they would sit in the studio and drink coffee and giggle enough to make the current intern roll their eyes at the pair of them.

They went on a lot more impromptu dates. Usually to get food first, then wherever they managed to end up – somewhere quiet, usually. It could be a walk around Grove Park, or curled up together on Cecil's couch watching a movie, or anywhere, really. The first few times had obviously been in celebration of their reunion. But Cecil had continued to invent excuses, and soon Carlos joined, and it almost had become a competition to see who could come up with a more ridiculous reason to do something together. Carlos hadn't woken up with Khoshekh on his face for once. It was their 777th-day anniversary. Steve hadn't bothered Cecil with a pointless conspiracy theory in a week.

This was the first time Carlos had just said, "Why not?", and invited Cecil to watch the sun set with him on the cliffs of Radon Canyon. They brought a picnic supper with them, and sat munching on sandwiches with their legs dangling into oblivion.

"Your shirt is new – what material is that? It looks like you're wearing a black hole…" said Carlos.

"I was hoping you'd notice it!" Cecil replied. "It's called void. It's so dark it absorbs light. The City Council only legalized it last week. What do you think? Do you like it?"

"It's…wow." Carlos reached out to touch Cecil's sleeve, marveling at its smooth texture and how it distorted light around his fingers. "What's it made out of? The fabric feels almost like regular cotton, but…maybe some kind of photon-averting fibers…? This is fascinating, Cecil, I'm going to have to borrow it sometime."

Cecil laughed. "It's just void, Mr. Scientist."

Carlos looked up. "Mr. Scientist."

"That's you."

"I know that's me. Just…I know we've talked about this before, but everyone else, you call them by their full name. Except Josie and Dana, but – it's never Steve or Larry, or Tamika, even though you know them well enough to use their first name – and in a town as small as Night Vale, most people do too. But you're always so formal. Steve Carlberg, Larry Leroy, Tamika Flynn. I'm Carlos the Scientist. But –" Carlos gave a short laugh. "You do know my last name, don't you?"

"Of course I do, Carlos! But – " Cecil paused, and continued in a more serious tone.

"Names…they're the carriers of what makes us us. When I say someone's full name, I'm talking about not only them, but the person they are. Names are what we use to identify ourselves, and so they become ourselves. They hold memories and thoughts and opinions, they all come with connotations and weight. Some people don't fit with their name – it's not an accurate representation of them, or it's too accurate of a representation of who they were before. So they change it, or don't use it at all. Most people in Night Vale are comfortable with their current name, whether it's the one they were born with or not, and comfortable with themselves.

"You're not entirely comfortable with your name, though, are you? Something happened that made you dislike it – I'm guessing something outside, because you were like this when you came. And the way you didn't try to keep any connections with the outside world, you wanted to start afresh in this new town. As a scientist. Thus. Carlos the Scientist."

Carlos swallowed and slipped a hand into one of his many pockets. "Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. I would…rather you not call me that anymore. Carlos the Scientist, I mean."

Cecil blinked. His tentacles stopped their expressive waving in midair. "Um…okay. I guess I'll just call you – ?"

Now this was the tricky part. Carlos swung his legs up, scooted away from the edge of the cliff, and half-rolled, half-rose to one knee, pulling a small box out of his pocket and flipping it open. "How does Carlos Palmer sound to you?"

Cecil's jaw dropped, his eyes widening, before his face split into the biggest grin Carlos had ever seen – even bigger than when he had returned from the desert. "I – Carlos!" he squeaked from behind his hands, which he had clasped to his face in shock. (They were doing nothing to hide his beaming.) "Yes, oh my god, yes!"

Carlos let out a breath of laughter. He felt light-headed, his stomach was soaring, he couldn't stop smiling – euphoria, that was the word for this. "Well, come on, I need your hand. To put the ring on."

"Oh! Right. Of course." Cecil removed his left hand from his face and Carlos slid the ring onto the fourth finger. He noted that they were both trembling. Cecil's hand wrapped around his own and tugged him close, and he leaned forward and kissed Cecil like never before. It was clumsy and shaky with shock and that lovely euphoria, and they were both smiling too hard for it to be particularly sensuous, but it was one of the sweetest they'd ever shared. Cecil had gently encased both his arms in several layers of tentacle, leaving his hands free to run through Carlos's hair and cup the back of his neck.

Then Carlos lost his balance, falling into Cecil, who caught the both of them just in time to save them from tipping over the edge of the cliff. Carlos burst into giggles and Cecil couldn't help but join in. They sat holding each other and laughing and kissing until the last rays of sunlight were getting bored with the spectacle and deciding to pack up and head home.

"We should probably head home, Carlos. It's not a good idea to be caught in Radon Canyon at night," said Cecil, helping his fiancé to his feet.

"Of course. Cecil?"

"Yes, sweet Carlos?"

Carlos blushed, the sudden compliment catching him by surprise. "Your tentacles are a little…tight around my arm. You don't have to let go, but – "

"Oh! I'm sorry, Carlos. Is that better?"

"Much. Yeah. That's perfect. And, Cecil – "

"Carlos?"

"I love you."

"I love you too."

The Teleporting Rattlesnake winked above them all the way back to Night Vale.