Author Notes: I warned that this would probably dissolve into fluff along the way. But don't worry the plot is not sacrificed entirely in the process, I just really like the idea of the imaginary zone and I can't help but slip in a bit of these two being adorable amidst all the Night Vale creepiness. :3
Chapter 9 - Mirage
If the answer to reaching sanity is to firmly grasp insanity, does that make belief the scientifically optimal choice? Or does it just make you crazy?
"So where are we exactly?" Carlos asked as he allowed Cecil to position him carefully in the middle of a sandy patch just off the highway. Cecil was very particular in his placement, tugging the sleeve of Carlos's jacket to move him one inch to the right, then taking a step back and shaking his head, tugging him back to the left again. Carlos couldn't see why it mattered that much, since there was nothing out there at all except the occasional sprig of sagebrush and a few cacti further out.
"This is the imaginary zone," Cecil said, carefully pulling Carlos one step forward before leaning back and nodding in approval. He didn't seem to think further explanation was required.
"What is an imaginary zone?" Carlos pressed, not satisfied with Cecil's answer.
"Well," the host drawled as he searched for a suitable explanation. "Nobody quite knows," he admitted finally. "They're patches of existence in Night Vale that for some reason or another were never fully shaped. Some people say they were mistakes made back when the desert was created that City Council later tried to undo. But they could only erase the mistake, leaving unusable creative energy." Carlos just stared blankly at him. He knew he should be more open to believing in things by now, especially since Cecil had cut his broadcast dangerously short specifically to bring him here afterwards. Cecil caught the shift in his demeanor. "Carlos," he said the word with a bit of a purr. "Carlos, Carlos." The scientist wondered if Cecil was stalling until he found the right words, or if he just liked saying his name. "Do you trust me?" he asked again, tilting his head slightly to one side.
"Yes," Carlos said finally. A smile played across Cecil's lips.
"Good. Close your eyes." Carlos did as he was told, but he still felt Cecil's hands reach carefully around him from behind and cover his eyes. He seemed to actually radiate the strange cool sensation that starkly contrasted the scientist's warm breath against his palms. Everything was contrast with Cecil, Carlos was beginning to realize. The radio host leaned in close, his voice lilting and hypnotic. "Where would you like to be? A forest, a canyon, an ocean – anywhere you like." Carlos struggled to think of somewhere he'd like to be; he found it hard to remember anything at all before the endlessness of the desert. "Where were you happiest?" Cecil prompted after a pause. Carlos thought back to his seventh birthday when his grandmother had taken him to the pier over the lake. It had been the first time he'd ever seen a ferris wheel, and he had been terrified of the height at first, but still remembered the day fondly.
"A boardwalk," he replied finally.
"Wonderful," Cecil continued, his smile seeping into his voice. "Right now, you're standing on a boardwalk. Beneath the wooden planks, water is lapping in rhythmic little waves. All around you are lights, glowing warm in the darkening evening. Do you see the lights?" Carlos shook his head. He couldn't see anything, his eyes were closed. "Carlos," Cecil continued patiently, "to see the lights, you have to believe they're really there."
"Cecil, there's nothing here," Carlos sighed in exasperation.
"Do you trust me to tell you the truth?" Cecil asked quietly. "Do you believe that I would never lie to you?" Carlos hesitated a moment, then nodded slowly. "You really are surrounded by glowing lights. They line the boardwalk and the food carts and the midway behind you. Do you see the lights now, Carlos?" Carlos thought for a long moment. In this strange, terrifying world where he trusted nothing - least of all his own senses - he somehow knew deep down that he trusted Cecil. And maybe if Cecil said there were lights, just maybe somehow there really were. He took a breath and tried to envision rough wood beneath his feet and an even row of bright lights lining the walkway. He pictured a midway of games and vendor stands of carnival food behind him. Finally he nodded.
"I think I can see them," he said slowly. He could feel Cecil let out an excited breath against the back of his neck, making his hair stand slightly on edge.
"Good, good. And the carousel, can you hear the music of the calliope?" Carlos listened, but heard nothing. "Listen, Carlos. Really, really listen." Carlos focused on the mental image of a carousel, tried to hear it playing until…his mouth went slack as his eyes shot open momentarily. Cecil's hands still darkened the world around him, but he could hear the garish music drifting lazily through the still air.
"I hear it." The stunned words dropped from his mouth. Cecil let out a small, bright laugh.
"One last question, my dear Carlos." Cecil dropped his hands and leaned in teasingly close to the scientist's ear. "Do you believe?" Carlos opened his eyes and stumbled backward in shock. There it was, exactly as he had pictured. He knelt to the boardwalk, disbelieving its existence. Tentative fingers traced along the rough wooden planks. It felt real. Slowly he rose to his feet, examining his hand, turning it this way and that and watching the dim light create shadows and flickers as it played across his skin. He turned quickly, looking for Cecil who had already wandered a short distance down the boardwalk. "Come on, then!" Cecil called over his shoulder, flashing an excited grin. Carlos hurried to catch up, still craning his head to take in the row of buildings all trimmed in gaudy colors and bright, flashing lights. He hadn't imagined such detail into the scene, and he wondered if possibly the detail had been Cecil's work or if maybe all the imaginary zone required was a basic idea and automatically filled in the rest. "Mm, the churro stand smells wonderful, don't you think?" Cecil added as Carlos fell in step beside him.
"I don't smell…anything…" Carlos trailed off, realizing mid-sentence that he did indeed smell something and it was in fact wonderful.
"Yes you do," Cecil said with a wink. "I'll spot you one, if you like." He led Carlos over to a little unmanned food cart. Now that Carlos looked around, the entire midway seemed to be unmanned.
"Cecil, why are there no people here?" he asked curiously, glancing around to confirm the suspicion.
"The mind cannot create a face on its own," Cecil replied as he flipped open his wallet and removed a few bills. "The imagination works only with faces it sees in passing. And I think pulling in real people to an imaginary zone could get a bit chaotic and probably slightly dangerous." He slid the bills across the counter and reached into the little glass box, pulling out two churros.
"If this place is imaginary, why did you just pay real money?" Carlos asked as he accepted the pastry. It was really the least important question on his mind at the moment, but something about the action seemed so strangely confusing that he couldn't help but ask. Cecil shook his head, an amused smile on his lips.
"Sweet, adorable, Carlos. True character is measured by your behavior when you are alone in an imaginary world of your own creation." He nodded matter-of-factly and turned to continue ambling down the boardwalk. Carlos remained frozen, staring in confusion at his churro. His mouth kept opening to ask a question, but his mind couldn't settle on just one. Finally he sifted through the muddle and found the question which seemed the most pressing at the moment.
"Cecil, is any of this real?" he asked with a frustrated little sound.
"Taste it and see for yourself!" Cecil called back, his mouth full. Carlos took a careful bite. It tasted like cinnamon and sugar and grease, exactly as it should. It felt real enough as he chewed and swallowed. Realizing he had fallen behind again, he jogged to catch up to Cecil's leisurely pace.
"But, Cecil, how is this even possible, how could any of this be real?" he ran a hand through his hair, trying to comprehend the sights and smells and tastes that every sense was assuring him truly existed.
"You're asking questions again," Cecil reminded as he folded the leftover wrapper of his churro and slipped it into the back pocket of his pinstripe pants. "What have I spent all evening trying to tell you?"
"To stop asking unknowable questions," Carlos mumbled. Cecil looked over at him expectantly. "And to just appreciate existing," he paraphrased.
"Isn't observation part of science?" Cecil asked, stopping and turning to face him.
"Part of science," Carlos emphasized. "The other part is explanation."
"Well, explanation, as we have discussed, isn't exactly a very possible thing here in Night Vale. But observation is. So observe. Observe and study and take it all in." Cecil gestured to the lights of the boardwalk all around them. "Write down what you find, write every detail so you never forget. Share it with your research team, compare all the things you observe. But don't question why those things happen; don't ask how they're possible. Just-" he reached out, resting his hands on Carlos's shoulders, his violet eyes sparkling. "Just observe." Carlos nodded numbly, for the first time almost beginning to understand what Cecil had been trying to say. It was a shift to be sure. Carlos had loved answers all his life. Facts were truth, and the truth was safety and surety even when people and feelings were unstable and couldn't be trusted. To never truly know the answers meant to live perpetually on the brink between losing and being lost. But maybe Cecil was right. Maybe Night Vale really was different, and maybe here not knowing was the best way to stay safe. Definitely the best way to stay sane. Cecil's lips tilted in a mischievous half smile and for a moment, Carlos thought the man might kiss him, but instead he let his hands fall back to his sides, turned, and wandered on down the boardwalk. Carlos kept up better this time, falling into rhythm next to him. As they walked along in silence, the carousel's music being the only sound, a sudden thought leapt into Carlos's mind.
"Cecil, is this a date?" he blurted unexpectedly. He had been so focused on the scientific aspect of the outing that he hadn't exactly considered the possibility that he had completely misread Cecil's intentions until that very moment. Cecil stopped mid-stride and looked at him suddenly.
"No," the radio host assured quickly. "I mean, not that this wouldn't make for a lovely date." He flashed a careful smile. "But, no. I brought you here simply to show you that not everything unexplainable is inherently bad. Night Vale can be truly wonderful sometimes." Carlos nodded, relieved. It wasn't that he would have minded going on a date with Cecil. Hell, he had almost asked the man to climb into bed with him less than 24 hours ago. But now was neither the time nor the place for romance. There were still too many questions that needed answering before he even considered the possibility of love. One of the questions happened to be if love even existed, but he was still procrastinating testing that hypothesis again.
"So now that I finally believe, what do we do now?" Carlos asked with a shrug. Cecil laughed and shook his head, crossing his arms.
"Yet another question," he teased good-naturedly. "Well, I brought you here so you could learn to experience rather than explain, so I suppose we should experience!" Carlos smiled slightly. For not being a date, it sounded rather like a date, but after all the stress he'd been under for the past few months, he figured one night couldn't really hurt. Besides, he told himself, if all he was going to do was observe, it was his scientific duty to observe as thoroughly as possible.
"Shall we start at the midway?" he asked, nodding towards the row of stalls each advertising its own probably rigged game. The first one they ducked into was a simple ring toss. A rectangle of glass bottles stood a few feet behind the counter, and an array of large stuffed creatures lined the walls. Carlos dug in his pockets for change, but Cecil smoothly tossed two quarters on the counter. He leaned over and pulled out two sets of six wooden rings, sliding one down to Carlos. Hand-eye coordination was a bit like words for Carlos - unnatural and bulky and thankfully not a major part of being a scientist. He was fine enough at precise actions like measuring grams of sifted powders into flasks or delicately adjusting slides beneath a microscope, but games and sports were not his calling. One-by-one he tossed each ring, missing each time by embarrassing margins. Cecil hooked two of his rings, and helped himself to his allotted tickets as a reward. Carlos sighed and glanced over the rim of his glasses at the prizes hung in even rows along the wall. None of them caught his eye except a large orange creature that seemed to be some sort of goldfish crossed with a panda. Being almost thirty years old and the proud holder of a PhD, he wasn't interested in stuffed animals normally. This one however kept blinking at him and cooing softly, wriggling its nose. He just wanted a better look – for science.
"Hey, Cecil, if I climbed onto the counter, do you think I could reach that-" he didn't know the proper name for the animal and didn't want to offend it by calling it something incorrect, so he just pointed. "That one?" Cecil clucked his tongue disapprovingly.
"Don't be silly, Carlos. I think we both have more integrity than that. If you want a stuffed animal, you can have my tickets, but I think we should win it fair and square." Carlos laughed, and realized it had been a very long time since he had actually laughed – not out of frustration.
"Come on, let's find something I'm better at." He pulled Cecil by the shirt sleeve down a few booths to a target shooting stand.
"This?" Cecil asked in surprise. "You're better at this?" Carlos shrugged innocently.
"I might be." He felt a wave of guilt as Cecil slipped two quarters across the counter again. Cecil noticed his expression and gave him a reassuring smile.
"Don't worry about it, it was my idea to come out here after all." He pushed up the edges of his sleeves, revealing those strange tattoos again, though this time they seemed more geometric and primal. Maybe tattoos in Night Vale were unstable and ever-changing like so many other facets of daily life, or maybe it was just yet another anomaly unique to the strange radio host. Cecil leaned over the realistic-looking rifle, carefully adjusting the sights. Carlos wondered if gun safety was something all Night Vale residents were forced to learn. He knew there was an NRA chapter and it seemed unusual enough that it might just be true. As if reading his mind Cecil added, "We learn how to shoot in the eighth grade. When we move up to high school we're each given our own mandatory firearm." He fired his three shots slowly and methodically, each one hitting the ring just around the center dot. Both accurate and precise, Carlos noted. He added the observation to the growing list of facts he was beginning to learn about Cecil. Carlos leaned casually over his own gun, adjusting it much more rapidly and firing his shots in quick succession. Each one hit the center mark exactly, causing a bell to ring below the counter. Cecil stared at him, violet eyes wide.
"What? I grew up on the bad side of Chicago, I had to learn a few things along the way." Carlos grinned, leaning over the counter and tearing off a strip of tickets. Some part of him enjoyed surprising Cecil, who never seemed surprised by anything.
"Ooh! Ski-ball!" Cecil suddenly chimed, sounding exactly like Carlos assumed he had as a little kid. "Carlos, can we play?" Carlos nodded, and Cecil ran ahead, slipping a quarter in two adjacent stalls. Carlos was alright at ski-ball. He threw the first couple balls, landing them somewhere near the middle. The last one hit the bottom, finishing out his score right around average. He glanced at Cecil's score which was at least triple his own. Cecil expertly tossed his last ball, landing it directly in the center. It wasn't a perfect score but it was close. A sudden idea formed in Carlos's mind as he watched Cecil lean casually against the machine, waiting for it to issue his hard-earned tickets. Cecil with his glossy, pale hair that never seemed to move even though the tattoos he tried so hard to hide seemed to move quite a bit. Cecil with his curious habits and his mesmerizing voice. Carlos was a little surprised at how quickly his mind formulated scenarios to get close to the man, but they had decided it wasn't a date, so he shrugged away his hesitation and cleared his throat.
"Do you have another quarter?" he asked casually. Cecil flipped him a coin, and he caught it with uncharacteristic ease and slipped it into the machine. "Now show me how you did that," Carlos nodded towards the score still blinking across Cecil's machine. Cecil did a terrible job of hiding the flash of excitement that crossed his face.
"Okay," he began, leaning close to Carlos without actually touching him. "So you just take the ball and you pull it back with momentum," he demonstrated the smooth motion, "and follow through by shifting your weight to the front a little."
"Like this then?" Carlos did a poor imitation, purposely bending his elbow slightly.
"Here, may I?" Cecil asked, carefully stepping behind Carlos. A flush of red crept to the scientist's face as his plan succeeded more smoothly than he expected. Cecil gingerly rested his chin on the scientist's shoulder, tentatively slipping his slender fingers over Carlos's hand. Carlos tried to focus even though Cecil's proximity was dizzying. Cecil smoothly guided his hand back and then shifted forward, tapping his wrist when it was time to let go of the ball. It rolled along and landed perfectly in the top-scoring cup. "There, now you've got it," Cecil said proudly, as he began to let go.
"Accuracy doesn't necessarily correlate positively with precision," Carlos sputtered quickly, glancing over at Cecil whose face was only inches from his own. For another moment, he wondered if Cecil was about to kiss him, so he quickly looked back down, reaching for the next ball.
"Alright then," Cecil said quietly, reaching back and placing his hand over the scientist's once more. They tossed ball after ball until the machine dinged with a perfect score. Cecil bounced up and down on the balls of his feet like a little kid as the machine spat out a seemingly endless stream of tickets.
"We make a pretty good team," Carlos noted, nudging Cecil's arm and hoping the light from the machine was dim enough to hide the deep red flush to his cheeks.
As the night wore on they found themselves riding the carousel multiple times in succession at Cecil's suggestion. They took turns changing mounts from pegacorns to shapeless amoebas to an invisible object that Carlos didn't trust until Cecil rode it first to prove it was actually really there. "Where to next?" Cecil asked dizzily as they stumbled away from the carousel, Carlos dragging his oversized, blinking stuffed creature behind them. It's all for science he reminded himself, choosing to ignore the fact that he hadn't smiled this much for years even prior to moving to Night Vale.
"How about the ferris wheel?" Carlos suggested.
"I'm not sure there is a ferris wheel here.." Cecil began hesitantly.
"Oh, I believe there is," Carlos said mischievously, pointing to the large wheel that he had just imagined into existence. Night Vale's brand of logic was proving to be far more fun than he had bargained for.
"Well," Cecil said with a whistle. "So there is!" They loaded the strange fish-creature into its own car for safety reasons and climbed into the next one together. Cecil pointed out a few major Night Vale landmarks including the Ralph's (not the dog park near it, Carlos noticed) and the station where he worked with its blinking light that kept watch over the town through the night. They spent a long moment of comfortable silence watching the lights glimmering above Radon Canyon before Carlos thought to ask what the bright glow far out on the horizon was. "We don't speak of those lights," Cecil replied abruptly. Carlos nodded, assuming it was just another one of the unspoken rules of Night Vale. Cecil shifted uncomfortably for a moment before admitting, "that's Desert Bluffs." Carlos didn't understand the hostility that Cecil bore towards the town, but was amused by the way his nose always wrinkled when talking about the place.
"One last place we haven't observed yet," Carlos said as they jumped out of the rapidly spinning ferris wheel, leaving the fish-creature to gurgle happily in its car for another spin. They ambled up the boardwalk, wandering into the hall of mirrors. They both began to laugh at the contortions and color and species changes their reflections underwent. One mirror even turned them both into distorted renditions of Rick Astley. At the last mirror, Carlos looked unreasonably tall and lean and Cecil was perfectly round. "Souvenir?" Carlos slid his phone out of his pocket. "Smile, Cecil!" he said as he flashed the photo. Later he would discover that Cecil's eyes had a strange tapetum-like reaction to camera flash and that they had turned out almost entirely white in the photo, but at the time he just allowed Cecil to lead him through the dark tunnel and back out onto the boardwalk. It had been the best night Carlos could recall in a long time, even if he still wasn't quite sure he believed any of it had actually happened. He tried not to let it matter as Cecil led him back towards the highway, the entire way recounting a story of the time he was arrested for looking identical to visiting royalty. Doubt winning out over contentment, Carlos glanced back only once. Disappointment welled in the pit of his stomach as his suspicions were confirmed; it had all been nothing more than a hallucination or a mirage of some sort. Believing in things hadn't made them real. There was nothing real out there at all - only darkness punctuated by sprigs of sagebrush and a few cacti further out.
Cecil was wrong.
End Notes: other fun notes on this chapter: it was partially inspired by falling asleep on a road trip listening to "Behind the Sea" by P!atD. Also it originally took place as a fluffy little oneshot set at the Night Vale Harbor & Waterfront Recreation Area, and was the first thing I ever wrote for this fandom. I like it much better as a part of this story though. c: New chapter will probably happen tomorrow since I'm trying to get this story all done before holiday stuff starts getting crazy. Thanks for the new follows!