Cecil spent the day naming the people in his life on a loop in his head, the volume of his thoughts turned up loud as if thinking them with more intensity would help him keep them in a tight, closed fist. When he started to fear that it wasn't enough, he switched to saying them aloud. "Janice, my niece. Carlos, my love. My fiancé. My fiancé. Carlos. Old Woman Josie. My dear friend. Abby, my sister. Janice's mother. Janice, the best kid ever. Steve." He said the name with the usual bite, but found that he wasn't really feeling it. He panicked for a moment, thinking he'd forgotten how much he hated Steve, but then he settled back down once he examined that thought and discovered he'd just had a shift in perspective. Actively hating Steve seemed silly and inconsequential when he didn't even hate Diego, who had done things much more deserving of his ire. Perhaps he'd lost the capacity to hate anyone at all. Probably if he saw Steve he would find it again, but it seemed unlikely that he would see him again. "My brother-in-law. Janice's stepfather. Earl, my old friend. Dana, my friend, former intern, and mayor of my old town. Night Vale. No. My town, Night Vale."

He'd tried making himself hurl a couple more times, just in case he hadn't completely emptied, but there was nothing left. Just bile, and then not even that. He'd made himself shaky and lightheaded. "Carlos, beautiful Carlos," he murmured, huddled against the wall, "A scientist and a brilliant mind and an incredible heart. Night Vale, where I grew up and went to Scouts and played in Mission Grove Park and avoided the library like a smart kid, and… and did a bunch of other things I have trouble remembering but that's not, that's not because of that pill. My… my bowling league. Janice. The community radio station. The… the interns that I need to remember so that I wasn't lying when I said they would be missed."

He talked to the bathroom walls until it was mostly incoherent muttering, pulling himself up from the floor to drink from the sink when his mouth got too dry. He needed to hold on. He needed to stay coherent. He was terrified of falling asleep.

He only fell silent when the front door creaked open. "Cecil!" A voice called. That was odd. Diego would know where he was. He pulled himself to his feet, managing to sway only slightly.

Nothing happened for long enough that he thought maybe he should do something. He cleared his raw throat and scraped out, "What? I'm in the bathroom!"

A moment later the door opened. "Oh, there you are." Diego smiled softly at him.

"It was locked," he said, allowing a note of mild confusion into his voice.

"It was locked?" Diego's smile vanished and was replaced with wide eyes, guilt-ridden. Oh, he was good. "You've been in here all this time? I'm so sorry, honey." He pulled Cecil into a hug. He smelled good. He always smelled good.

"Who are you?" Cecil asked with what he felt to be the appropriate amount of curiosity.

"I'm Diego," he said, pulling back. "We live together." He didn't act surprised that Cecil didn't know.

"Oh." They lived together. Cecil hoped he would allow it to stay at that, nothing more. The 'honey' had sent a shiver of unease down his spine. Diego wasn't supposed to call him that, for some reason more significant than just the fact that he was not his honey. Though he wasn't sure exactly what that was.

"You look awful, come on out and eat something." So Cecil did. He wasn't sure what questions he should be asking, if any, so he decided to stay quiet and let Diego take the lead.

But Diego wasn't saying much either. He seemed jittery as they ate, like he didn't really know what to do with this now that he'd gotten it. At one point he knocked over his own glass of water, getting Cecil's plate a little wet. He stammered out his apologies, grabbing paper towels to mop up the spill. Cecil just mumbled that it was fine and the evening continued on.

"What are you thinking about?" Diego finally broke and asked after they'd cleaned up from dinner.

How awkward that dinner was, he thought, and said, "This is a nice house."

"Oh. Uh, thanks." He cleared his throat. "I mean, it's your house too." Cecil shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded. After a beat of silence Diego grimaced. "This is weird, isn't it?" Cecil just shrugged. "Do you want to watch something?" Diego tried.

"Sure."

Pointing out that a situation was weird was almost always done in an attempt to make it less so, but it didn't really work. They watched an episode of Jessica Jones side by side on the couch. Cecil could feel the tension in Diego's body the whole time, even though they weren't touching. They hardly said a handful of sentences to each other up until Diego decided to go to bed.

He didn't lock Cecil's door that night. Cecil curled up on his side on the bed and replayed their interactions over and over in his head, trying to figure out what was bothering him so much. It had been awkward and Cecil hadn't known what to say without stepping on a mine, sure, but there was something else. He'd felt like he'd just bathed in slime ever since Diego had hugged him. Was that it? He didn't want Diego touching him? No, that wasn't it. He'd said something. He'd called Cecil 'honey,' that's right, that was it. And that was wrong, that felt wrong to hear, because…

He shot upright in his bed, heart pounding. Carlos.

"Oh no, no no no no no."

This was not happening. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Carlos, Carlos. Carlos calls me honey, among many other adorable nicknames; it's the most overtly affectionate part of his personality. Oh God, oh God." He wanted to write his name somewhere, to carve it into stone, but anywhere he did that Diego might see.

There was no way he could go to sleep now. He climbed off the bed and huddled into a corner of the room, wanting the feel of something solid, something grounding at his back. He recounted whatever memories of the two of them he could think of, telling them quietly to himself like he might regale his listeners with them on the radio, except much more hurriedly and close to a breakdown than he usually preferred to be on the radio. It didn't matter if he never saw Carlos again, if these stories remained just a part of his past with no hope of adding more to them in the future. He needed to remember them.

When he found his eyelids had closed, he snapped them open again. Over and over again, each time. He couldn't lose consciousness, who knew what would happen if he lost consciousness… Eventually it would have to happen, but not now, sometime later when he could be sure he wouldn't lose anything. Just one more night, and then surely it would be a little safer.

But he hadn't gotten sleep the night before, either. Eventually pure exhaustion dragged him down.

For some reason he woke up hunched in the corner of his room. His legs were folded at an uncomfortable angle, so he stretched them out in front of him. There was a nagging tug at the back of his mind, like he had been supposed to remember something when he woke up.

Carlos. That was it. He had been making sure he wouldn't forget he was dating Carlos. Beautiful Carlos. His chest felt warm and tingly just from the thought alone. He put on some clothes and went out into the hall, pleased to find that his door was unlocked, though as soon as he thought it he wondered why he would think his door might ever be locked from the outside.

In the kitchen, a man was pouring a glass of orange juice at the counter. He had part of his hair pulled up onto the top of his head in a sloppy bun that most of it wasn't quite long enough to fit into. Cecil's lips quirked up, struck with the urge to run his fingers through the gently curling, left-behind strands. He came up behind him and covered his eyes with his hands, mouth close to his ear. "Guess who?"

The man stiffened, his hand flying to his pocket. "Sorry," Cecil chuckled, sliding his hands back from his eyes to smooth down his neck. "Didn't mean to startle you." Carlos turned his head, and Cecil weaved his fingers into those soft strands and kissed him.

Carlos just stood there unmoving for a moment, apparently still recovering from his surprise, before turning to face him fully and tilting his head just so to kiss him back, his hand curving over the nape of Cecil's neck. Cecil sighed into it, pressing forward until Carlos' back hit the countertop, drawing a small noise from his throat. Cecil paused and leaned back, eyes opening.

His stomach dropped straight to the floor. This was not Carlos. Diego's eyes were still closed, his lips just barely parted. Cecil removed his hands and took a step back, struggling to swallow. Diego opened his eyes at the loss of contact.

"I'm sorry, I-I don't know why I did that," Cecil forced out.

"No, it's—" Diego cleared his throat and shook his head, blinking. "I didn't mind. I was thinking actually, earlier, that I wished I'd done a better job getting us off on the right foot last night."

"And this is a… better foot?"

"I'd say so, wouldn't you?" He smiled, cute and a little hesitant, and reached out to grasp Cecil's wrist lightly. Cecil could feel his own pulse fluttering wildly against Diego's thumb. He wished desperately that he could take it back, rewind, not do what he'd just done. "Don't worry about it," Diego assured him, pressing the briefest, softest peck against Cecil's mouth.

He was the one who went and ruined whatever careful balance they had, not Diego. He'd elevated it into something more than just living together, and he didn't know how to undo it. "Okay," he squeaked.

"I have to go to work in a bit. Are you gonna be okay here?"

"Um. Yeah," he said, wondering what would happen if he said no. He had to stop himself from walking to the bathroom on autopilot, because he wasn't supposed to know that was where he went. Although if he did slip up like that, he could just act a little confused and blame it on muscle memory.

But Diego never told him to get in the bathroom. He just finished up what he was doing in the kitchen, packed up his computer bag, said goodbye, and left. Cecil stood dumbly in the middle of the living room.

So this was what it felt like to have Diego's trust. He tried the front door just in case Diego had truly lost it, but it was locked up tight. He wondered what he was supposed to make of that.

Well. He had the whole house to himself, for the first time—ever. In however long he had been here. Even before the pill, he had stopped asking, too discouraged to hear the answer. It was months by now, surely.

What could he do with this freedom? He wandered the house for a while, poking in cabinets and drawers. A lot of it was stuff that he'd already seen from cleaning the house, but he did find a sketchbook in a chest in the living room that he had been too nervous to pull out before for fear that Diego would come out of his office and see him flipping through it. He pulled it out now, opening it to a random page. On it was a swirling floral design done in blue ink pen, with tendrils of flowers curling around the center in a shape reminiscent of the sun. He traced his finger over the smoothly curving lines. It would be awesome as a chest or back tattoo. Maybe that's what it was.

The rest of the sketchbook showed equal talent. Desert landscapes, fantasy landscapes, geometric designs, people. Several of Diego. With no prior knowledge, he would have definitely said that whoever owned this sketchbook was very much in love with Diego. Had he seen this? He supposed if he had, the drawings might just seem cruel in light of Kevin's apparent deception.

He replaced the sketchbook and took a nap in his own bed, a luxury which felt like the height of indulgence. He was still a bit anxious about forgetting after what had happened that morning, but forgetting Diego was at least better than forgetting Carlos. Although it had lead to a rather unfortunate consequence. But he was exhausted, and he had this bed, when usually during the day he had to make do with a wall or a bathroom mirror, and he ended up waking up feeling like he was emerging from a coma, it had been such a deep sleep. The deepest he'd had in days.

He took quick stock of his memories, decently satisfied that at least the essential ones were there, although he supposed he would have no real way of knowing if he was missing something vital. His stomach growled and he realized there was no reason he couldn't eat something. Lunch had become something of a foreign concept, but if he was hungry, why not? He padded out to the kitchen and made a PB&J, using the knife he still kept transferring into the pocket of whatever pants he was wearing.

Eating in the middle of the day. This new arrangement they had might not be so bad.

He'd been worried that Diego would try to kiss him now that that was a thing that had happened between them, but he didn't. He was much more physically affectionate than he'd been before, leaning his head on Cecil's shoulder when they were on the couch, stroking his hair if Cecil was laying down, resting a hand on his knee, but he didn't take it beyond that. The familiarity was much preferred to the tension of before, and Cecil found himself feeling a warm little glow, a thrill in his chest each time Diego would bestow some small gesture of closeness. It felt like winning his favor, gaining his approval, and made him think there was less to worry about.

One evening Cecil was doing laundry while Diego was in his office, and he came across an article of clothing he hadn't had to wash before. It was one of Diego's, kind of like a sweater, but thin and a little filmy. He searched for a tag to see if it was safe to machine-wash but found none, so he carried it over to Diego's office door to ask. His hand was raised to knock when he heard Diego talking quietly through the door.

"—than that. And much more selfish."

Cecil lowered his hand. He didn't want to disturb him while he was on the phone.

"I guess you'll see when you get here, won't you?" Diego said. "If that's all you had to say, I think we're done here."

He backed up quickly from the door, in case Diego was about to come out as soon as he hung up. Cecil wouldn't want to be just standing there. Sure enough, a few moments later the door opened.

"Are we expecting company?" Cecil asked from over by the laundry room, effectively ruining the guise that he hadn't been listening in. He was just too curious.

"What? No." Diego looked alarmed by the mere suggestion.

Cecil propped the hamper on his hip. "Who was that you were talking to, then?"

"You heard that?"

"Just the tail end. You said something about you'll see when you get here."

"Oh, yeah." Diego scratched at the back of his head, looking strangely relieved. "It was just a work associate who's coming into town."

"Oh. Not to the house."

"No, not to the house."

"Okay." He swallowed down a strange sense of disappointment and pulled out the odd sweater thing. "So, what the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

Another afternoon when he had free reign of the house, he was struck with the desire to cook something. He rifled through the fridge, disappointed but unsurprised that there was not much to work with in there. Diego didn't cook all that much, after all. He supposed he could wait until he got home and ask Diego to pick stuff up at the store, but he wanted to make something now, and besides, it would have been kind of fun to surprise him with it.

He'd just about given up when he spotted a box of brownie mix at the very back of the highest cabinet. "A-ha!" He pulled it out, checking what he'd need. Just eggs, oil, and water. There was vegetable oil in the pantry, and one of the few things in the bare fridge was a half-dozen carton of eggs, since Diego did cook breakfast every once in a while. Baking wasn't exactly cooking, but right now it would scratch the same itch.

It felt good to do something with his hands, something that felt a little more satisfying and productive than cleaning the same things over and over or endlessly doing laundry, but as he mixed the ingredients in a bowl he couldn't help but feel a bit like a house husband. His life wasn't bad, per se, but sometimes when he had too much time to think—which was quite a lot—he couldn't help but feel this strange sense of emptiness. They never went out, they never did much of anything. Diego did, presumably, while he was at work or running errands, and Cecil didn't want to seem ungrateful that he himself didn't have to work, but… maybe he wanted to. Maybe that's what was missing.

His ruminations effectively put a damper on his chipper baking mood, but once the pan was in the oven and the chocolate scent started to waft through the house, it returned a bit.

When Diego came in the door he looked a little thrown by the smell, and Cecil was suddenly filled with doubt. Maybe Diego hated brownies, and the smell of them, and chocolate in general, after all there was probably a reason that this box had just been sitting in the cabinet unmade.

"Are you… baking?"

"Yeah," Cecil admitted, sliding over at the counter to block the pan from view. "I made brownies."

"Really?" Diego put down his bag and came closer. "We had a brownie mix?"

"I found it in the back of the cabinet. I was thinking I would surprise you."

Diego's expression softened. "It smells amazing."

Cecil let out a relieved breath. Diego slid an arm around his waist and pulled him close, pulling a squeak from Cecil's throat. He pressed his lips to Cecil's temple. "Thank you, honey. That was very thoughtful."

He still didn't kiss him on the mouth. Cecil wondered if he wanted him to be the one to initiate that, so that he would be sure Cecil was comfortable with it, or if he just wasn't used to taking the lead. Or if it was something else entirely.

They decided to eat brownies before dinner because they were proper adults. Cecil bumped into the counter getting a plate and the knife in his pocket thumped against it, digging into his leg slightly, not really enough to hurt, but he froze, eyes wide. Had Diego heard that?

He chanced a glance over his shoulder, but Diego was looking at something on his phone, and a moment later Cecil wasn't even sure what he was being so paranoid about. Why would Diego think anything of a thump against the counter?

Cecil couldn't remember exactly when he'd started toting a knife around, but he kept transferring it into his pants every morning, getting the acute sense every time he touched the handle that it was for his own self defense, and that he'd known what he was doing when he'd started carrying it. He didn't know exactly what that entailed and didn't like to look too deeply into the feeling, because the only thing he encountered in his day to day life that he could possibly defend himself against was Diego. And he didn't want to think too much about that. It only gave him a shiver of unease when he looked at the man and reminded him that the front door was always locked from the outside.

He let Diego cut the brownies, because he always had a knife on him, too, and had less qualms about showing it than Cecil did about his own. Cecil leaned against the counter and watched his back, letting his fingers white-knuckle against the handle of the drawer behind him. The thought of having to use his knife to hurt Diego made him want to turn his own skin inside out. It would be impossible to go through with, unthinkable.

"I was thinking…" he started hesitantly once Diego had rinsed his knife and handed him a plate. "About the possibility of me...working."

Diego's mouth twisted. He didn't look up from his plate. "Really?"

"I just thought I could pull my own weight a little more around here."

"Were these," he held his forkful of brownie in Cecil's direction, "just a way to butter me up?"

"No," Cecil said immediately. "I was just thinking about this as I made them."

He was met with such a lengthy period of quiet that he was fully ready to take it all back, to assure Diego that he was grateful for everything, especially the luxury of not having to work. But finally Diego spoke. "You want to do radio?"

Cecil held very still. "That would be amazing."

Diego nodded. He was frowning, but Cecil thought it looked more considering than upset. "I have the day off tomorrow. We'll see what we can figure out."

Cecil let out his breath and perked up. That had gone much better than he thought it could. He set in on his brownie, for the first time actually looking forward to tomorrow.

At breakfast in the morning, Diego sat with a packet of paper next to him on the counter. Cecil took his seat with a sense of anticipation, curious if this had something to do with what they'd talked about last night.

"What's that?"

"I made a run to the radio station and picked this up," said Diego, seeming pleased with himself. Without even knowing what it was yet, Cecil couldn't help but be touched. He had asked for something that might have even been a bit unreasonable and Diego had already been working on figuring it out for him before breakfast. "It's a script of the broadcast that—the, uh, last host was going to make the day he quit. It's outdated now, but I thought it could work as good practice so you can see if you've got the hang of it, since right now you don't know what's going on in town to report on. I thought you could record yourself reading it in my office. Then if you do want to pursue it, we could talk about how you might actually do the job."

"Oh, okay," Cecil said, unsure how much of his eagerness it would be proper to display. On the one hand, he wanted Diego to know he was grateful and excited for the opportunity. But on the other, even though Diego seemed alright with it, he still felt a little bit like he was stepping out of line and asking for too much. "That would be great."

He was impatient all through breakfast. When they'd finally cleaned up, he was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. So much for disguising his eagerness.

"Can I do it now?"

Diego chuckled, apparently charmed by his enthusiasm, so that was good at least. He unlocked the door to the office and showed Cecil the recording equipment. Cecil got all the levels on the audio console to where he wanted them, testing the sound in his headphones and gain staging each plugin. His fingers felt right pushing around the little sliders and turning the dials, like every time his hands had felt restless over the past several weeks this is what they had been itching to do. Once he was satisfied, he took the script from Diego at his side and hit record.

"Feel free to romanticize your own pain," he said into the mic, with the appropriate level of gravitas. "If you do this enough, it can become merely a compelling backstory rather than present, debilitating trauma. Welcome to Desert Bluffs."

Something about the texture of those last words felt wrong in his mouth as he said them, like his teeth didn't quite fit together properly. He paused with a faint twinge in his stomach.

Next to him, Diego straightened, chin raised and looking to the office door like he'd heard something. Cecil removed one headphone, listening.

"What—"

He heard it the second time, a loud, insistent banging on the front door of the house.