Disclaimer: Welcome to I Don't Own Anything.
Author's Note: I so much want to contribute to this fandom… Please pardon the fact that it's only a ficlet.
Warnings: Fluff and feels and Cecilos. Fail editing, surely. Many thanks to idek mah bff Hannah for her help, opinions, and title suggestion. :3
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Tropaion
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The first is tarnished now, dusty and worn despite his best efforts to preserve it. Ironic, almost, in light of all that had (nearly) happened, that day… A strange but ultimately endearing gift to celebrate Carlos' existence. Carlos' continued existence. In the aftermath, of course, it commemorates much more—a head on a shoulder, a hand on a knee— and so it gets kept, with other sentimental trinkets, on a shelf in the bedroom. His bedroom. Which is later their bedroom. And the gift, once so soberly bequeathed, becomes a sort of a long-running joke: something referenced when the sex is particularly good, or when arguments are especially heated, or when either is feeling notably romantic. Something symbolic, unique. Something theirs.
Which is why, a year later, a second trophy joins it: given to Cecil with a blush and a mumbled comment about pairs and perfection and oh God this seemed like an okay idea in my head but now I feel really stupid I'm sorry I'm not good at these sorts of things and that is all he manages to splutter before being tackled to the ground, his mouth otherwise occupied. As always, Cecil is very insistent—and very convincing—when it comes to reassuring Carlos that he is, in fact, good at these sorts of things. Very good. So good. The best, really. This is, coincidentally, more than either can say about the quiche that Cecil had been in the middle of baking, and that they only belatedly remember in the wake of screaming sirens and a snowstorm of asbestos spat from their fire alarm. Carlos is fairly certain that they had not been preoccupied for the three-and-a-half hours that the clocks insist on, but Cecil just laughs.
(Time flies when you're having fun, my dear.)
Carlos doesn't dwell on it. As a general rule, time doesn't work properly in Night Vale, anyway. He knows that, now. Even still, it manages to move along, somehow: the days are marked by radio shows and experiments, contract negotiations and grant reports, and a minor apocalypse of wind funnels and blood rains and an apathetic pack of mauve llama that roam the streets eating red-flagged trash and spontaneously combusting. Time really does fly. Once, literally. And before they know it, they're on the cusp of another elapsed year.
When their third anniversary comes along, they decide to buy a trophy together. Rings would be more appropriate, Carlos thinks, but the way Cecil blanches at his most innocuous suggestion leads the scientist to hypothesize that such jewelry insinuates a meaning all its own here in Night Vale, and as per usual that meaning is something horrible.
But that's fine. This is fine. After all, as he soon discovers, there's something curiously intimate about making trophy-shopping a joint effort. Looking at samples, discussing designs, faces hot and fingers twined. They might even be embarrassed if the City Council hadn't recently banned such emotions. But they had. So they haggle and compromise while decidedly not feeling flustered, and after some friendly debate (and a few readings from one of Carlos' chirping machines), they take home a short, squat cup crafted from something reminiscent of solidified mercury. It smells like lemongrass, and glows a faint green on nights of the full moon.
(Their first kiss had tasted like lemongrass. Now, the flavor has matured: a ripe cantaloupe eviscerated straight from the fridge, seasoned with mint and nostalgia.
…he wonders when he started thinking like that.)
And he wonders where the days go. They keep slipping away. 1,456 of them, give or take a sunset. Four years, and now six trophies line the designated shelf. Carlos finds a feathery pink monstrosity at the local flea-free market and gives it to Cecil after an incident of particular prissiness; wearing a sarcastic smile, Cecil gifts Carlos a wee plastic goblet embossed with a homemade label: Congrats on Finally Remembering to Take the Empty Milk Carton Out of the Refrigerator.
(After that, he makes a habit of occasionally leaving empty juice cartons in predominant places in the fridge, then defending himself by sighting the award. Guess I'll need a new one, if you want me to remember both, he'll tease, countering the other's pouty frown with a hundred-watt smile. And Cecil will glower, and maybe bop Carlos' beautiful head with the cardboard pint, but it won't matter, because in about 10 minutes both know his gorgeous hair will be sex-rumpled, anyway.)
He blinks, and it's been eight years. Nineteen trophies. Among them, My Compliments to You on Your General Perfection; Good Job Surviving Another Harrowing Journey Around The Gaseous Ball of Energy That Is Slowly Killing Us All With Heat and Cancerous UV Radiation; Happy International Pancake Day (this one had come with a bottle of Tums and a spell to heal bruised spleens); Felicitations For Knowing What the Moon Actually Is (Now You Would Probably Do Well to Forget); In Honor of Remembering to Take Out the Trash Before it Fossilized in the Kitchen's Localized Time Loop; Way to Not Think About That Thing You're Not Supposed to Think About; World's Best Man of Science and Also Kisser; #1 (here, 'hairdresser assassin' had been scribbled out and) Radio Host (had been glued over it). The shelf is starting to sag in the middle, and the trophies clatter dangerously whenever the bedframe jostles the wall.
(Once, after a particularly rambunctious roll-thrust-groan, eight are knocked from their perches and tumble deafeningly around their ears, raining down in a dangerous storm like last week's shower of sentient meteorites. One smacks Cecil's shoulder; another gives Carlos a headache. But when all is said and done, they both feel oddly accomplished, lying in a tangle of arms and legs and sheets and engraved, metallic cups.)
A decade and a half; they have two shelves now, and so many trophies it is impossible to appreciate any individual award on display. Gold and silver and bronze and plutonium and crystal and gelatinous cubes and sandstone and one feathery pink monstrosity all blend together; during the full moon, the corner radiates such a colorful array of lights that, more than once, they wake to find a flirtatious Glow Cloud hovering outside their window, dropping a series of rabbit carcasses onto their lawn.
("We could try covering them with a tarp?" "But they make such an aesthetically pleasing night-light…")
Twenty three years, five weeks, two days. The tradition that had begun as something maudlin and sweet, then warped into a kind of heartfelt, yet occasionally passive-aggressive display of teasing affection, is gradually treated with some degree of reverence again. A trophy with intricately detailed handles and a cool, smooth base waits on the nightstand for him to find the morning of their next anniversary, somewhere above and to the right of where his boyfriend has collapsed. His birthday gift is a terrifying day in the hospital waiting room, and an opalescent plaque with the words I Love You carved in three human languages, and two series of glyphs.
("I… I'm sorry, sir, but…")
He cries.
Eight months, another minor apocalypse—this time featuring puce anteaters—, and a victorious football match against (awful) Desert Bluffs later, and he gingerly adds a new award to their collection: Thank You For Making Me A Better Person.
Four months after that, a retort: You've Always Been the Best. "Out of Everything and Everyone Ever," a sticker that has been applied to the trophy's handle adds. Ever. That night, they talk about time and the impossibilities of it. They laugh. In their kitchen, the time loop petrifies another bin of banana peels and empty syrup bottles.
The next morning, it all comes full circle.
We'll Always Be Together, an origami award promises, folded with shaking fingers out of discarded medicine packets. Always. Because Time is Circular and Physics is Weird and Somewhere You and I Are Just-Meeting, and Somewhere Else, We're On Our First Date, and Somewhere Beyond That, We're At That Town Meeting and We're Falling in Love at First Sight and All is Perfect and Right and Just Beginning.
He cradles the paper creation in his palm and compliments the other's very small, very neat calligraphy. They smile at each other, and one closes their eyes.
(Good night, Night Vale, good night.)
Three days pass.
(Static.)
With quavering hands, he unwraps the unexpected delivery, heart broken and hammering and not there at all. Translucent sheets of radioactive tissue paper fall to the floor with serpentine hisses before melting into buttery nothingness. He chokes on a sob. Then on a chuckle.
Congratulations on Being Alive.
He sets the last trophy beside the first, and realizes that his mouth still tastes of lemongrass.
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