"Palmer, I'm fairly sure the point of walking the line isn't to then sit at the end of it," Earl teases as he finishes collecting the debris in the aftermath of their high school graduation ceremony. Cecil is perched on the edge of the broad bloodstone altar where hours earlier, 72 seniors enthusiastically marched their way through commencement. He's the only other soul in sight; everyone except the scout troop who volunteered for cleanup duty dispersed almost immediately following the ritualistic sacrifice and outpouring of confetti. By now even the troop has been dismissed for the day, leaving only the two of them and however many secret police dared to linger at the site. The vacant lot seeming clean enough for Earl's liking, he tosses aside his work gloves and pushes himself up to sit next to Cecil on the intricately carved pedestal.
There's space between them now. It's a mere few inches physically, but so much further beneath the surface. Still, the air in the clearing tastes of nostalgia, prompting some small spark of camaraderie between the two old friends.
"Really though, aren't all you cool kids supposed to be at some big shindig down at the Desert Rose?" Earl asks as he follows Cecil's gaze to the early shades of a sunset over Night Vale's unremarkable skyline. Cecil shrugs.
"I guess this is what happens when your ride decides he'd rather ride with someone else from here on out."
Earl can't come up with any sort of condolence that doesn't sound sarcastic and forced beyond belief; he chooses to gloss over the sympathy altogether.
"I still have my truck you know," he offers with a grin. "I can get you to the Desert Rose." Cecil shrugs again and pushes himself off the altar with a nod.
"You can just take me home. I have some copy-editing to do for Leonard tonight anyway," Cecil says as he pulls open a rusting door and climbs into the familiar cab.
"Ceec, we just made it through high school, and you're not even going to party a little bit? I have a case of orange milk under the back seat." It isn't a serious offer, but he still feels a little disappointed when Cecil quirks his lips and shakes his head indecisively.
"Years later and you still don't have air in this thing?" his passenger jokes as they turn onto the highway leading towards town.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Astral-Projection-Is-A-Valid-Form-of-Transportation. Some of us actually like to arrive at our destinations in a corporeal form - warm though those forms may be."
Cecil's bright laugh escapes into the desert night as he lowers the window for a breeze and slips out of his hooded graduation robe. Earl glances over to watch Cecil's nose wrinkle that same way he never quite managed to grow out of, but his eyes wander instinctively down to a cluster of yellowing bruises along his friend's collarbone instead.
"Jesus, Cecil," he breathes without thinking. The cab immediately drains of humor. Earl knows he shouldn't press the issue, but he's done biting his tongue and letting the behavior slide. "Why do you always pick the worst guys?"
"You're really going to lecture me when you know I already feel like shit?" Cecil retorts.
"Language!" Earl barks instinctively. He's momentarily startled at just how quickly he's adopted his mentor's behavior as scoutmaster. Cecil rolls his eyes dramatically and adjusts to watching the scrublands blur past. "You know you deserve better than how they treat you, right?" Earl adds a little softer. Cecil fumbles with the door handle.
"Just let me out here. I'll walk home."
"Ceec, we're in the middle of nowhere," Earl protests even as he pulls his truck off to the sandy shoulder. Cecil slips out of the cab, but boots are quick to follow his footsteps into the sun-streaked sand wastes. It takes Earl no time to catch up to his friend. "You're not even going the right way," he points out. With a heavy sigh, Cecil turns back to face him. He folds his arms close across his chest, bracing for a lecture. "You know you deserve so much more," Earl repeats gently. "You deserve someone who thinks you're amazing and takes care of you. Someone who's going to hold you when you feel disconnected and kiss you just because, and never hurt you this way. You deserve-"
"You?" Cecil interrupts, humorless sarcasm clear across his face. "I deserve you?" Earl is caught off guard as much by the question as by the tone in which it's asked. "You're wrong. You don't care about me. You never cared about me," Cecil snaps. "All those times I walked away, not once did you ever come after me. And I wanted you to!" His voice breaks slightly despite his attempts to keep a cold exterior. "It's fucked up, I know, but I wanted you to see that my life was a mess, that I needed you. But you just..you just let me fall apart. We don't talk anymore - as far as I can tell we aren't even friends! You haven't even looked my way in over a year." Earl drops his gaze to a tumbleweed invading the few feet between them. Cecil laughs dryly. "Hell, why break that streak now?"
"You're wrong," Earl says, keeping his voice steady and leveling his gaze with Cecil's. "How do you think you made it home all those nights you were too blind drunk to even walk? Why do you think the worst guys, the ones that even you knew were bad news, never asked you out on second dates?" Cecil's mouth falls slightly open, but no words make their way out. Acting entirely on impulse, Earl takes two steps closer. "I let you go because I thought that was what you wanted. Cecil Gershwin Palmer, you can accuse me of a lot of things, but don't you for one second say I never cared about you."
The tense moment lasts only a heartbeat, but also stretches on forever before Cecil reaches up and pulls Earl into a kiss. It's sloppy and uncoordinated and tastes wrong. Earl cups his face in both hands and kisses him again, gentler, more carefully, and suddenly they're fifteen and by a campfire underneath a canopy of stars until reality and biology forces them to separate for breath.
"I have always cared," Earl whispers as he presses his forehead to Cecil's.
"Even after all the ways I've treated you?" Cecil asks uncertainly. "All the years I've wasted..."
"It doesn't matter anymore," Earl assures him, unable to stop the grin that's spread across his face. "None of it matters except what happens next. We're officially adults as of today. It's a new chapter, and we don't have to be the same people we were. We can write a new story together. We can start right now."
Cecil laughs, a choked hiccuping sound of relief as he twines their fingers together. "So where do we go from here?"
Earl leans down and kisses him again softly, the way he's always dreamed of doing, and nothing could ever feel more right. "We don't have to go anywhere. We can stay right here if it's what you want."
It's not that Cecil wakes up early so much as he doesn't really sleep. He dozes off sporadically throughout the night, but drifts back into consciousness frequently. It's not entirely unpleasant either; the breaks in his fitful sleep are filled with little glimpses of fluttering eyelashes so pale they're nearly translucent and sinewy arms smattered with freckles wrapped protectively around his waist. He memorizes the moments as best he can. They're numbered after all, and he knows their number is small.
Earl usually wakes with the sunrise, so Cecil waits until the sky begins to quaver between indigo and periwinkle before disentangling himself from their makeshift bed of old blankets on sand. Several yards away from the still-sleeping scoutmaster, a vividly-colored bird pecks a rhythm into a cactus in search of nourishment. Cecil whistles a soft two note call and begins to tap a message with a fingertip on one of the empty orange milk bottles they left strewn about the night before. The bird picks up on the message and begins to rap the new rhythm into the body of the cactus. A scout with as many avian communication badges as Earl will parse the code as morse immediately. With little trouble he will translate the letters and understand the message.
What he won't understand is the sentiment behind the generic goodbye and the insincere promise of a postcard from some faraway destination. Earl would never understand it because he still believes in concepts like love and honor and some modicum of good left in the world. Where Earl saw galaxies and stars, Cecil only ever glimpsed the empty void behind them. They could never have their own story. They could never have anything.
Cecil is careful not to wake him, tiptoeing as he collects his clothes and belongings from around their little campsite. For one last moment he looks back at everything he ever wanted dreaming peacefully beneath a lightening sky. It's true, he thinks, that people look younger when they sleep. Earl could be the same boy he first fell in love with all those years ago in the same sandy desert beneath the same starry sky. His fingers ruffle through mussed ginger locks affectionately. "I could never deserve you," he whispers. He leans in to press one last kiss goodbye to Earl's temple before slipping silently away as the first beams of sunlight paint the desert sky.
notes: haha remember when I said it gets happier? I lied, whoops. but I felt it was time to tie in a little bit of canon! (Cecil sounded slightly suggestive about remembering their gradation party so...I sorta ran with it?) there will be one more chapter after this, and as promised it really will end kinda happily!..ish!