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He watched the clock on the wall. It wasn’t that he wasn’t listening, but he was waiting for it to turn midnight. The man in front of him tapped away at his phone screen while talking about the game he was playing.
“I love them both in their own way, y’know? Like, I like Tsukasa and Rui and I like seeing cute ship art, but neither is more my favourite than the other.” Cecil said, eyes still on the screen.
“Yeah? Which one do you think I’d like more?” Carlos asked as he looked away from the clock. Cecil doesn’t really understand. It’s just another day for him, and he has no idea why Carlos insisted on staying up.
“Rui. No doubt. He’s weird and his favourite animals are platypuses and he makes robots. He’s more thoughtful than Tsukasa, but he’s very determined not to hide who he is. He wants to be as weird as possible while Tsukasa does so naturally.” Cecil explained. He knew him so well. He knew what he liked, he knew a bit about why. But he didn’t really know him.
That’s why this night was important. Come midnight would be… an anniversary of sorts. Twenty-one years since the worst year of his life. Since the creation of a declaration written on high school notebook grid paper that had formed his resolve to never return to that place. Mentally, and he supposed, physically too. Carlos tried to breathe calmly, but he felt his heart racing, his hands shaking, things he was no stranger to thanks to decades of forgetting and returning to various forms of ADHD medication. A battle that Cecil, too, was familiar with.
It was strange is a very sensical way, he supposed, that he would fall in love with someone with the same or similar neurodiversity as him, though he had always figured himself incompatible with anyone “normal”.
“Rui and Tsukasa both have their own journeys but Tsukasa’s story is about reaching for greatness and persisting while Rui’s is about how being different doesn’t mean he can’t have nice things.” Cecil continued, selecting a different song in the rhythm game.
It had a strange relevance to Carlos’ own thoughts, that Cecil would go on about this character. He loved listening to him talk about his interests, and vice versa. Carlos had often felt that his rants had fallen on deaf ears before finding his people. Cecil wouldn’t understand that. When he talked the entire town listened. Carlos wondered if he ever felt like a burden when he talked about his own things. He certainly did. It’d taken so long to trust that people like Cecil didn’t mind.
Carlos inhaled sharply as Cecil whispered “yesss” at a Full Combo and the clock struck whatever it declared as midnight. Carlos temporarily tried to reason that the clock didn’t know what it was talking about and therefore should not be trusted, but the same as the night he had first whispered his declaration, he felt compelled to continue when the arbitrary number dictated the moment was somehow “special”.
“Cecil, can I tell you about something?” It was terrifying. But Cecil didn’t notice. He had no way of knowing.
“What?”
“I… There’s a reason I wanted to stay up tonight.”
“Yeah, of course,” Cecil set his phone down. The peeling cat stickers on his phone case shining in the artificial lighting.
“When I was a teenager, I was bullied quite badly.” Carlos occupied himself but running his hands over a recent burn mark. “And during that time, I… well, I started to see myself differently. Like, no matter what happened to me, I always lashed out and was the one punished so I kind of started to think of myself as some kind of anti-hero.”
Cecil listened. It was all he could do. And though Carlos didn’t look at him, he was reassured by the expression he assumed he had.
“And at some point, I wrote a declaration to myself. On this night exactly twenty one years ago. I read it out at midnight, and I have reread it every year since. It shaped who I am today. It’s… I wrote about how I would never be bound down by anyone or anything. That it is my nature to follow my own will over anyone else’s and that no matter what, I would not back down. I was very justice focused.” He laughed and glanced up quickly to see Cecil smiling in a cautious, reassuring way.
“But since that night, I’ve realised that I… I was so used to the way I fit into society at that age that ever since I’ve felt like I could never fit in. Rarely had I felt community and whenever I did, it was sad and bittersweet. Like something- a form of happiness that wasn’t meant for me. I could never be… “normal”. There’re a lot of Will Wood lyrics I could quote about that.” He joked again.
“Yeah, I mean, Love, Me Normally and stuff.” Cecil nodded. Not because he agreed with him but because he knew it was what Carlos needed.
“Specifically the line from Outliers and Hypocrites, “to weird to love, too scared to die, too alien to take you home”, actually. I often though I could never take part in traditional happiness because I was built to be a cause and not to ever be loved. I felt that I was… I was more. I was a concept, a cause, a conscience and that I exist to make a statement and impact on others, but at the same time, I am too… inhumane to be capable of friendship.” Carlos had looked up for a while, but his eyes were driven back to his arms and hands from Cecil’s look of sadness.
“I know it’s stupid, but I thought that I was both way more than I was and way less. I hadn’t thought about my positive impact on people for so long I felt I had none. I fought so hard for my right to be me that I couldn’t understand anyone liking it. Even though I held myself in such high acclaim. I though of myself as a brave protagonist to my bullies, a cold-hearted villain to my friends, and something purely indescribable to myself.”
“That sounds like a lot of trauma, to be honest.” Cecil said as kindly as possible.
“Yeah, no shit. I was a mess.” Carlos laughs again at his misfortune in a way only he can find funny. Even then it’s not comedically funny, he though. “But ever since I came to Night Vale… I feel like I’ve found people who it feels natural to be around. I thought that I could never fit into a crowd, but here, I… I mean I always felt that other people could have real connections with anyone. I would get so defensive at anyone I didn’t like and I couldn’t even talk to them out of self-defense, which meant I didn’t want to be part of group chats or student run organisations, but in Night Vale… I don’t feel like I’m ever missing out if I’m defensive or whatever. An inherent connection that comes from shared suffering and victory and I’m part of something.” His smile was genuine now. “But I also never thought I could fit into something so small…” He looked Cecil in the eyes for possibly the first time all night.
“I didn’t think I could ever fit so comfortably with someone who felt the same for me. Love always seemed like it was too normal.” Cecil’s hand found his own, stroking it.
“Carlos, baby, nobody was “made” to fit in. We fit in when the people around us make room.” He said. “And you aren’t inherently this way either, you’re a product of your environment.”
“I know. I know that I’m not inherently evil and I know I’m not damaged beyond repair but I love that I’ve gotten used to these feelings. Community. Love. Belonging. Things that I’ve never needed but always wanted and now it isn’t bittersweet to me. It’s not sad in the same way. It’s sad that I was like this for so long. It’s sad that relationships felt impossible.” He laughs again and wipes away tears.
“You know, I think that Tsukasa help Rui learn that just because he’s weird doesn’t mean there’s not a place for him in the light. Perhaps, instead, you have found a place in the darkness that fits just right.” Cecil said, leaning across the table to kiss his boyfriend gently. “And I’m so happy that I get to be part of that.”
“Thanks for just listening, Cecil. I’ve never told anyone that before.” Carlos closed his eyes, thinking back to that teenager lying on his bed, looking up at glow-in-the-dark stars and feeling the world spinning around him. Turning it around in his head like a hands surveying a geode. Being thrown around by it like a D20 without a dice tray and just tessellating. Feeling the world spiraling outwards from him. That undersized teenager in his dark blue room with it My Chemical Romance and periodic table posters and unpainted Ikea bookshelves. That boy had often talked to himself, the soft, thoughtful lull of his cracking voice processing the events of the passing week, month, year. He knew that boy would feel undeserving of what he had now.
Meanwhile, Cecil contemplated his response.
“I will always listen.” He said, definitively. It would always be true, he knew. And he felt a statement would be best. His thoughts were not self-reflection, but wondering what could’ve been if they had met back then. If perhaps they had lived near each other. If perhaps that lost teenager in his space themed bedroom had left a window open and had been heard by the boy in a purple room who had just turned off the radio.
I wish I could have made it lighter, Cecil thought, but I’m so glad he’s getting better. Whatever that means.
“I have never been normal.” Cecil said out-loud. “But I suppose, in Night Vale, “weird” and “normal” are both taken in stride. I understand how conventional just doesn’t seem like your normal. I will always have an inclination for more unusual versions of conventional notions, but I think that normal is a suggestion. It is also a social construct like rules, gender, or fish, but that’s entirely irrelevant to the discussion.” This time both of them laughed dryly.
“Will Wood once said that people say normal isn’t a real thing but when you say “normal” everyone knows what you mean. Everything is made up sooner of later, and just because you know Adventure Time was right and “time is an illusion that helps things make sense” and that the maximum temperature for a human body is generally around 38-40 degrees Celsius doesn’t mean people generally frown upon arriving late on a 35 degree day wearing five different jackets.” Carlos gestured as he talked, to which Cecil laugh again, because it was actually funny.
“Why do you insist on using the metric system? Do you have no national pride?” Cecil teased.
“It’s scientifically accurate.” Carlos answered indignantly. “The Metric system has a standard meter, a standard gram, a standard litre, and zero degrees Celsius is the temperature at which water freezes, while one hundred degrees is when water boils.”
“Oh really? I actually did not know that.”
“Yeah, I know right? It’s crazy. Also aluminium is only said as aluminum in the states because some poor brit made a spelling mistake when importing it and it stuck.”
“Ah, okay, that’s kind of funny. I thought it was like how the spelling changed because newspapers charged by letter.”
“You would think it was like that. The one that I find really interesting is the “s” to “z” one because of typewriter ink.”
Cecil agreed. Carlos smiled in silence for a second. Cecil appreciated the moment more than ever in light of the previous discussion.
“You know, there were a bunch of people who were annoyed that Brandon Sanderson wrote a fantasy world in which metals are very important and still called in aluminum despite the scientific inaccuracy. I’m not that into Mistborn, though. I prefer his series Skyward. Spensa reminds me of my younger self, because she’s so chaotic and fiery.” Carlos rambled. Fast and bubbly, just like Cecil liked listening to.
“My favourite character is actually Mbot because he’s just a silly robot whose obsessed with mushrooms. Oh! Actually, in the third book, he ended up in a desert- or I guess, it wasn’t really a desert- Okay, they were in an in-between world that had a bunch of different biomes on different floating rocks- and he’s sees a catus and he writes a little poem! It’s really bad, but Spensa isn’t paying attention so she just says “yeah sure, it’s a good poem” and Mbot runs in through a poem rating matrix he made and he says himself “oh no, Spensa, that poem is terrible. You have terrible taste if you actually thought it was good” and oh right! I forgot to mention why he likes cactuses,” As Carlos continued to talk animatedly, Cecil nodded and “mhmm”-ed accordingly.
“He thinks they’re kind of like mushrooms. He sees them and is like “oh that’s so weird! You know they’re kind of like mushrooms. Except really dry.” So he starts taking samples of them just like he did with the mushrooms back on detritus. I forgot to mention, the first book takes place on a dilapidated planet that humans had come to inhabit since the disappearance of Earth.”
“And how does the poem go?” Cecil asked.
“Right, that, it was, uh…” Carlos thought for a minute and actually picked up his phone to check his notes app. “I wrote it down here. “Cactuses are so neat. They make me want to dance.” Isn’t that so cute?” Carlos was so excited about this book. Another thing that he liked. Cecil remembered how he had explained these things to him.
I like Things. He had said. I’ve always liked Things in a way I can’t really explain if you don’t know the feeling. It’s a very autistic way to be, though my ADHD makes it stronger, but I have Things, often media, but also science, and they just make me really really happy. I love you, but my Things are just as important to me. I like you and Things just as much.
The way he explained it made it obvious, in retrospect, that he was scared liking an activity or concept or character as much as a person, as his person, would give the impression he didn’t care. But Cecil understood. He always understood. Their entire relationship was built off of mutual info dumping. The way he saw it, it was like birds sharing their collection of shiny objects.
Presently Cecil did think the robot character sounded cute, but he also thought Carlos’ interest in him was cute. “Yeah, you really like this series, huh?”
“I really do. Spensa is so fun and there’s a line in a deleted scene that I love where Jorgan, the guy Spensa likes, calls her beautiful like a newly forged blade. And I think that’s pretty neat. I really like the way Jorgan talks about her in general. Not just beautiful. Also dangerous and passionate and grand, but not necessarily elegant.”
“Unconventional declarations of love. Yeah, strange compliments are the best.” Cecil agreed.
“Yeah! Like what you said earlier exactly!” Carlos smiled.
“Actually, there’s a line in a Will Wood song I think demonstrates that sentiment well.” Cecil said mischievously.
“Ha, so I’ve succeeded with infecting you with Will Wood?” Carlos snickered.
“It is good music. Well, when I said that, to be honest, I was kind of thinking about the line "could you be the light my x-rays need?" It’s strange and maybe a little off-putting to some, but it’s genuine, and affectionate.” Cecil said.
“Mmh! Yes! Um, It’s Kind Of A Lot is a great song! Ah, I’m afraid I connect a little too much with that part near the end.” Carlos leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers together in rhythm while he sung the excerpt.
“Sorry, darling, please excuse my constant need to self-aggrandise, coddling my narcissism, M.A.D. come ride my A-bomb, while I beg you to say I’m okay.” He had averted his gaze while he sang, but his eyes drifted back to Cecil who looked at him like a mostly solved puzzle, not realizing, as Carlos thought, that the puzzle in question was a painting that someone had taken a pair of scissors to.
“Hm, you really like …Well, Better Than The Alternative too, do you also relate to that?”
“And when we find out what’s wrong with me, could you tell me how I’m right by you, yeah. That too.” Carlos said, sheepishly.
“Well you’ll always be pretty to me.” Cecil said. Carlos blushed. “Actually, I quite like that. I’ve never liked the word handsome, and beautiful sometimes feels too big and grand. You’ll always be pretty to me. Perfect.” Cecil giggled as Carlos continued to blush. He ran his hands through his hair, and basically climbed across the table to kiss his properly. Deeply. Carlos’ hands grasped the back of his shirt, his waist, pulling him closer until broke away from the kiss and slid off the table and onto Carlos’ lap. They laughed. And they were happy. Now and forever they were happy.