Cecil hurried out of the radio station, fumbling to lock the door behind him. He was running a few minutes later than usual, station management's office had moved into a different building, without notice or explanation. The room where it had previously been had been replaced by a mysterious sparkling veil behind which slightly glowing images drifted in and out of sight. Which was all well and good, of course, until you have to turn in your time sheet and you've got no idea which plane of existence to find your boss in, ugh.
Cecil put his hat on and stared resolutely forward as he walked past the "Unpaid Internship Available!" signs on the side of the building. He scanned the sidewalk for Carlos, who had (in his dependable, reliable fashion) called and told him he'd walk with him home. They were going to take public transit, but a swarm of beetles had obscured the subway sign all day, which Cecil took to mean that the 4 train was down. He didn't mind, it was awkward holding hands on the subway, particularly if you were having one of those trips where you lived 3,000 lifetimes and everything in the world turned to sound and energy and panic. And sometimes the teenagers in the seat in front of you kept their headphones on way too loud, which was just rude.
"Hey Cecil." Carlos greeted him as he walked around the corner, looking tall and dark and, for some reason, pizza-y. Cecil sighed involuntarily.
"It's so good to see you." Cecil said, running right into Carlos and wrapping his arms around him for a few seconds. "Today was terrible."
Carlos hesitated a second but he returned the hug.
"I might still have pizza in my beard." Carlos whispered. "I'm sorry."
"Mm?" Cecil pulled back and examined his perfect boyfriend's perfect face. Sure enough, there was a little grease near his jawline. "Did you put off your Big Rico's slice again?" Cecil nagged.
"Can I just say that my day was pretty terrible too?" Carlos said.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" Cecil squeezed him again before they began their walk together, holding hands and swinging them only slightly.
"How is Rakesh's grandmother?" Carlos asked, after a few silent minutes.
"She's sworn eternal vengeance on me, and at one point turned into a creature made entirely of rust and blood." Cecil said. "It was heartbreaking. And gross."
"Are you all right?" Carlos held Cecil's waist and pulled him closer.
"The secret police stepped in. Or, at least, I think that's what the bats were. Khoshekh was very upset by the whole thing."
"I'm glad you're all right." Carlos said.
"Oh Khoshekh hasn't killed anyone in days, and anyway I don't think he'd hurt me, I give him treats."
"I meant… ok."
Cecil pressed himself into Carlos's side a little closer and they kept walking. A group of four or five men all wearing pretty much the same nondescript gray outfit and walking in a huddle formed a group on the other side of the street. They were big guys, and looked menacing.
Carlos whispered in Cecil's ear
"Are we being tailed?"
Cecil looked up with a surprised smile, then glanced surreptitiously over at the men.
"Oh almost definitely. All the time."
"They're so obvious though." Carlos said. "I mean, aren't they supposed to be 'secret police'?"
"Well, they are wearing gray." Cecil pointed out with a shrug. "They're putting forth an effort."
"That guy's just talking on a walkie talkie. Not even a cell phone."
"Oh yeah, the mayor said she was going to budget for some more money for communications for the secret police, but they spent all of it on the harbor museum."
"Why are they following us, do you think?"
"Probably because we're so cute" Cecil said. "They get bored with tailing all the boring, non cute people."
Carlos almost blushed at that, but he recovered. After a few minutes one of the gray clothed men was walking right behind them.
"Hey." He whispered. "Psst."
They kept walking, aggressively ignoring their police tail.
"Hey. Kiss the top of his head." The man whispered.
"What!?" Cecil turned around abruptly, crunching the sidewalk. He stared the impolite policemen in the face and gave him an admonishing look. "Look, I appreciate you keeping us safe and all, like any other citizen, but just because my boyfriend is beautiful like a sunset after a forest fire and almost a head taller than me, that doesn't mean you can just tell him to kiss my head whenever you want. That's weird."
Chagrined, the secret policeman scampered back across the street with his cronies, where they formed a whispering huddle.
Cecil grabbed Carlos's hand again and continued to walk forward, in a huff.
"Like, that's ridiculous. If he wants to find out how relationship is going he can just listen to the show like everybody else."
Carlos squeezed Cecil's hand tightly, and said nothing.
That night Cecil came over to Carlos's place for dinner. He put on a hip hop record in which basic tasks were described via rhyme and lay down on the couch while Carlos started to make some fried rice.
"How was work?" Cecil asked, without looking up from the couch. "I mean, science?"
Carlos's hand slipped as he cut up a red pepper and he stared in disappointment at a bunch of unevenly shaped little red slices. He'd been planning what to say to Cecil since meeting him on the sidewalk but the moment hadn't been right. Now the moment was right and he wasn't ready for it.
"I… um." Carlos checked the rice cooker and nearly burned himself with the steam. "I got a letter." He said.
"Oh? From who?"
"My old academic advisor. The guy who got me through my Doctoral thesis."
"How sweet." Cecil said, not really paying attention. He was checking his hair in the mirror by the door. It was sticking up in the back, but that was neither here nor there.
"He…" Carlos stepped out into the living room with a sigh. It was now or never. "Cecil, I'm not totally sure what I'm doing here. Science-wise, I mean."
Cecil looked up at Carlos and slowly pulled himself into an upright position, running a hand through his hair.
"Weren't you doing something about time? Time in Night Vale being a scientific, you know, singularity?"
"I...I thought I was." He said, rubbing his eyes. He stepped over to his bag and pulled out the letter. "look at this."
He handed the Manila envelope to his partner and then went back into the kitchen to cut up an onion. This one ended up more uneven than the pepper had, and fume induced tears pooled at the corners of his eyes.
"This guy sounds like a total asshole." Cecil said, from the other room. Carlos almost smiled. In a few seconds Cecil was leaning against the doorway of the kitchen, paper in hand. "I mean, what does he have against Iambic pentameter? It's nice! It was good enough for Shakespeare, right?"
"Yeah, but this isn't poetry week. I'm supposed to be making an argument."
"And I'm sure you did! Carlos!" Cecil insisted, flipping through the letter angrily. "This guy is clearly ignorant!"
"Everything he said is right, Cecil. My argument doesn't make any sense outside of the town limits, and that, scientifically, means that it's not right."
"Carlos, I'm not sure I like the way you're talking about this." Cecil said, putting the letter down and staring his boyfriend right in the eyes. Carlos looked away, heating up the oil in the skillet for the fried rice which he was pretty sure was never going to actually be eaten.
"The nature of science is that you should be able to do the same thing any time any where and get the same results. That is what makes it true. If you get a different result you've either done something wrong or the science is bad. That's how it works."
"But that's not how life works." Cecil repeated. "That's not how people work."
"That's not how Night Vale works, you mean." Carlos said, dumping the veggies into the pan with a loud, almost violent sizzle.
"No, I mean, I don't think… Carlos, this guy is wrong. You're a brilliant scientist and I'm sure your argument is brilliant."
"I'm not so sure." Carlos said, stirring up the veggies. "I think… I think I might have to follow up with him."
Cecil leaned against the wall shakily.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
Carlos turned around finally and looked at Cecil, meeting his anxious stare.
"I think I'm going to have to go back to Arizona. Just for a while."
Cecil's expression cut deeply and immediately into Carlos's soul. Cecil's bottom lip was trembling while he remained stoic, like a ten year old whose parents were fighting in the next room. He swallowed and nodded, pretending to look away as tears flooded his vision.
"Mm." He said, and left the room.
For a few minutes the apartment was silent apart from the sizzle of the fried rice, which was excruciating.
Carlos dumped the rice in mechanically, knowing that the longer he remained silent the more difficult the rest of the conversation was going to be, but unable to think of anything to say. He could hear Cecil breathing shakily in the next room and wanted to stick his face into the hot pan to just end this excruciating moment.
"I understand." Cecil said, after about two minutes.
"Do you?" Carlos asked, peeking out of the room. He would have gone out to put his arms around him but smoke starting rising off of the rice and he hurried back with a few muttered curses taking the pan off the heat and turning the stove off. "The fire alarm might go off!" he warned Cecil. "Just so you know!"
"What's a fire alarm?" Cecil asked.
"You… what? It goes off when there's smoke. It tells you there's a fire. So the house doesn't burn down." Carlos explained, but as he looked around the kitchen he saw a little wiring place for a smoke detector, but no detector in sight.
"But those must go off all the time during rituals." Cecil asked. "That would be really inconvenient, right when you're trying to get through a chant."
"What happens when there's a fire though?" Carlos asked.
"Well, everybody can see a fire, Carlos. It's not all that hard to detect." Cecil was speaking in clipped tones. He crossed his arms and looked out the front window at the street, keeping his back to Carlos.
Carlos stepped a bit closer to him.
"I just think that I need to think some things through Cecil. With my professor in Arizona. I think I've been in Night Vale too long." He said, gently.
"Well, I can't go with you, obviously." Cecil said. "My radio show is slightly location specific."
"I wasn't going to ask you to come…" Carlos said.
"You weren't!?" Cecil turned around to face him, biting his lip.
"I… I…" Carlos reached out clumsily for a hug. "Cecil I love you."
"CARLOS." Cecil said his name like it hurt him to do so and turned around again, crossing his arms. "Carlos. Please don't say that to me when I'm trying not to cry."
"Oh Cecil…"
"No!" Cecil took a few more steps back. "Look, if I start crying then I'm just that crazy boyfriend who was trying to hold you back from your scientific career and I am not that person. I am a professional. I know I don't act like it sometimes and you always see me at my absolute worst but I promise you I am actually very good at what I do and I WILL NOT bar you from doing something you need to do."
"Cecil…"
"It's just I'd hoped we'd be together longer." Cecil said, and his beautiful deep voice broke just a little. "That's all."
Carlos was leaning forward to pull Cecil into a hug when he saw something out the window behind Cecil's head. It was dark, and so he should have been seeing only a reflection of his living room, but from across the street there was a red blinking light.
"Cecil… is that… a camera?" Carlos stepped closer to the window and cupped his hands over the glass to get a better view. Cecil shakily looked out next to him, trying to see whatever had perturbed Carlos.
The blinking red light stopped, and the bushes from across the street began to rustle.
"Oh no." Cecil said.
Without warning a large spotlight flashed into Carlos's living room, blinding both men and forcing them to stumble back away from the window. Outside the greenery was blowing around from the helicopter blades and the deafening hum of a helicopter engine.
"ATTENTION CARLOS THE SCIENTIST" A booming voice came down from the helicopter speakers. "THIS IS THE SECRET POLICE."
"Oh my God." Cecil muttered.
"DO NOT BREAK UP WITH CECIL BALDWIN, YOU JERK." The voice continued. "ARE YOU CRAZY!? YOU TWO ARE THE BEST."
Cecil stood up and flung open the window.
"GO AWAY!" He shouted.
"CARLOS." A metallic female voice screeched over the speakers. "THIS IS THE MAYOR."
Carlos looked at Cecil desperately and Cecil closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands.
"STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE CARLOS, CECIL IS ADORABLE. YOU THINK YOU CAN GET OUT OF HERE? WE'LL FIND YOU AND YOU'LL WISH YOU'D NEVER BEEN BORN CARLOS."
"You are not helping." Cecil whispered.
"WE REPEAT. CARLOS THE SCIENTIST. UNDER THREAT OF PHYSICAL HARM, YOU WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TERMINATE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH RADIO PERSONALITY CECIL BALDWIN."
Carlos looked back at the letter on the table, and then back at Cecil. His jaw was firm. His glasses were askew.
"You should probably go home." He said.
Cecil nodded. As he picked up his hat and coat from the rack by the door he looked back at his scientist, but Carlos was re-reading his letter and didn't even look up. Cecil slipped outside, to where a police cruiser was "unobtrusively" sitting outside. A man in gray was dabbing his eyes with a tissue in the driver's seat. Cecil opened the door and sat down in the passenger's seat.
"Take me home please." He said. "You guys are the worst."
Carlos ended up eating a bag of potato chips for dinner in front of the television that night. When he could no longer justify flipping through the channels and there was nothing more interesting on than "Say Yes to the Dress," he was forced to shut the TV off and curl up on the couch in the dark. His head ached dully from bad nutrition and the overstimulation of television, but after closing his eyes and letting his mind wander for a few minutes, Carlos felt a little bit better.
After a few minutes he stood up with a lurch and flipped on the light switch in his hall closet. Crouching down and digging through piles of sweaters and boxes he was saving for some reason or other, he finally pulled out an old briefcase. Unzipping it, he pulled out a portfolio, and smiled to himself when he flipped through some old, stale pages of his thesis work.
He didn't even get off the floor of the hallway, he just leaned back against the wall and began to read his old papers. There were some things in there that made him cringe, some typos from desperate all nighters that had slipped into the final draft, but the science, he was pleased to see, remained sound. He pulled out some more of his notes, from various experiments wherein he had proved that entangled particles behaved similarly in ways that could not be explained by statistics, probability, or even reasonable prearrangement. Looking at some of the numbers he had used, the feeling of excitement he'd felt when a particularly mind boggling piece of quantum mechanics had suddenly been illuminated into an even more mind boggling problem came rushing back.
He sat for three hours, flipping through his notes, and leaving a pile of papers around him on the floor. When he finally went to bed, with a crick in his back, he was too woozy and tired to allow himself to think about Cecil. He wasn't going to cry himself to sleep that night.
Cecil wasn't so lucky.