#cecilos angts

[just-an-enby-lemon]

The man in his bed isn’t his husband.

He looks almost like his husband, more than even Kevin did, an almost perfect copy except there’s clearly something wrong - something “normal” , the end of the wonder. He sounds like his husband as well, the perfect honey voice he felt in love with. He had the looks, the voice and the ring and therefore it would make more sense for him to be his husband than not but just like the house that didn’t exist the man that came back from the radio station that day defied logic.

Carlos had missed the radio broadcast busy with scientific discoveries and tik tok videos and the series of small anxious breakdowns that the presence of Janet and the presence of the University of What It Is in Nightvale, his home, was causing. He had left home early to take Esteban to kindergarten and when he came back Cecil had already gone to work. And if it was a little early, Cecil had mentioned he wanted to check something up for a possible very important news report. 

So Carlos went to work and got distracted and missed the radio show. At the time he thought it would just mean that Cecil would mention it at dinner, pretend to not be disappointed that Carlos missed it and need some extra cuddles. He doesn’t know what he would have done if he had listened to it. If he had noticed how un-nightvale the program had been. Just a normal radio show.  Straight up from anywhere else.

A small voice in his brain screamed that maybe if he had just listened to Janet, if he had helped her, if he hadn’t been avoiding her calls like the plague, her arguments and insults and how she seemed to not realize how her science was poison instead of the pure thing they loved, maybe he would had been able to plead, to beg, to offer anything so she would just let Cecil go. But deep down he knows it is a lie. There is no debating with Lubelle and her people. The moment Cecil attracted her curiosity it was done. She was poison like that. A truer intrusive thought screamed that if he wasn’t so afraid of his past, so sure it would never come back to bite him he could maybe have helped Nightvale to get ready for if or when the university finally came. It was harder to ignore this voice but the memory of Cecil talking about how everyone had things that they regretted and there was no pointing in dwelling on it helped. 

Carlos missed the radio show. 

He didn't listen to the abnormal normalcy and instead he went home unconcerned, believing that a nice dinner with his family would just take the anxiety and stress away. It was his day to cook just like it was Cecil's day to pick Esteban back from school. And he had extra time to make dinner and be oblivious to the end of his perfectly imperfect little world. 

But eventually Cecil came home. Carlos heard his voice talking a little bit too condecently with Esteban and tried to ignore the alarm bells, Cecil likely just had a bad day, it happens. It doesn’t justify being mean to their son but he can understand it. He isn’t the only one affected by Janet's presence in Nightvale and the death that it caused. Until:

“And that’s why you shouldn’t have any feelings towards the moon, Esteban, don’t be stupid, darling, it’s just a rock in the sky. Honestly, Carlos, you should have already given some basic science lessons to our son.” 

And that was it.

The end of the world.

Carlos laughed nervously. Maybe it was a bad prank? He knew better of course but denial wasn’t just a very scientifically fascinating river in Egypt.

But still he served dinner and tried to pretend everything was okay. A soft peck on the lips, some nice dinner and a classic “how was the work”. Cecil called his food exotic and Carlos wanted to kill someone. So of course when Cecil said he had made a visit to Doctor Lubelle before work and she had run some tests on him and “it was totally normal, I don’t understand why I was so fused about it” , Carlos knew who he wanted to kill and was deeply regretting telling Cecil that violence wasn’t the answer days ago. 

The rest of the night was just a long terrifying disaster and Carlos had no idea what to do. They talked about normal boring things that neither he nor Cecil cared before and Cecil throwed away the food they usually left for the Faceless Old Woman because it was a silly superstition and ignored her whispers as if he just couldn’t hear her. Not even when she did the annoying nails on a chalkboard noise she did when extra angry with them. Carlos whispered he was sorry. 

When it got to Esteban’s bedtime it was Carlos who read him to sleep, even though it used to be one Cecil’s favorite activities, as his husband, no, the empty person using his husband’s face, was judging all of their toddlers books as weird and inappropriate. 

And as soon as he came back from his son’s room he discovered that Cecil was starting to pull the sheets of the mirror’s because it was a “silly superstition” and “normal people don’t do that”. The memory of what happened last time Cecil was in front of an uncovered mirror, of finding his husband on his knees in the middle of a panic attack, hands inexplicably bloodied would never leave him. It took so long to convince Cecil that he was real and while the man pulling the sheets wasn’t really Cecil, not when it mattered, Carlos knew this wouldn’t stop another episode or something even worse if he did that.  So he stopped it. There was no point in arguing with Janet and therefore there was no point in arguing with the Cecil she created. But he could ask, he could mutter “I know it doesn’t make sense but please keep them covered, for me” with the certainty that Cecil’s love for him was one of the few things that Janet couldn’t explain away no matter how hard she tried. It still hurts to see Cecil’s confused expression marred with implanted consdecession. And it hurted even more when his face became soft and to see that for a second he was being himself again and saying “of course, my lovely Carlos”.

They go to sleep and Cecil mentions a wardrobe change as he looks for sleeping clothes and Carlos has to hold himself from just going without any plan to the University of What It Is improvised location and give Lubelle a very violent piece of his mind. 

But he is a scientist and scientists always prepare themselves first. 

So he smiles and nods and tries to not think about how Janet for sure will call him tonight and how he doesn’t think he will be able to ignore her today. Tries not to hurt this fake version of Cecil, because it isn’t his husband's fault and Cecil has always been more fragile than he wants people to know and he doubts Lubelle's shitty transformation changed that. 

The man who isn’t his husband sleeps soundly at his side. But Carlos doesn’t sleep. He cries and he regrets and he starts to plan. Because he is going to get his husband back and he is going to make sure that Lubelle and her gooms (because they aren’t scientists, not really) will give all the wonder they took before leaving Nightvale once and for all. 

Is time to confront his past. And Carlos is afraid. But scientists never cower towards adversity. And Carlos is above all a scientist.