Chapter Text
StrexCorp Synernists, Inc
To: Cecil Palmer
From: Representative B-4879245
Re: Notice of Final Warning (Time Sensitive)
Dear Mr. Palmer,
Regarding your broadcast on Friday: Well done! As always, your professionalism and dedication to reporting under fire merged seamlessly with your ability to soothe and entertain your listeners. Night Vale is truly Blessed by a Smiling God™ to have daily access to your influential and informative vocal skills.
That said, this is a notice to cease and desist immediately.
Due to previously issued warnings, your most recent breach of approved content has resulted in a two-week paid suspension from Night Vale Community Radio, effective immediately. Please surrender your studio to your approved replacement and refrain from any unofficial broadcasts during your suspension period.
This notice acts as your final disciplinary warning. Further breach of approved conduct will result in more permanent consequences as outlined by section forty-one, subsection C of your contract (see attached).
Regards,
Emily Alvarez-Quinde
Assistant Director of Media Corrections
-
Carlos dodges the worst of the debris and sets a mental reminder to gather some samples, then plops into the chair at Cecil’s left.
“Hey,” he says, skimming Cecil’s elbow with his fingertips. Cecil’s hands are engaged in the steepling of his fingers, and his wrists in a delicate curve; Carlos works with what he has. Cecil’s tattoos warm to his touch but remain stationary, which is unusual. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine, my dear Carlos, from the optimist’s perspective. I find myself, at present, facing two weeks’ paid vacation, albeit presented as a disciplinary action by the company that currently heads our small town’s even smaller radio station.” His head dips very slightly, indicating the folded paper to his right; Carlos reaches with his unoccupied hand.
“You were suspended?” Carlos flips the paper without thinking; the reverse is blank. A paperclip-shaped indentation is all that remains of the attached contract. “What consequences? How many of these do you have?”
Cecil’s lips pull toward a wry little smile. “Several,” he admits.
“For what? For doing your job?”
There’s a faint susurrus of fabric on fabric as Cecil shrugs, his fingertips lifting apart and tapping together again, a meeting of whorls and loops and arches. His index fingers settle against his lips. “There are details I am discouraged from incorporating into my broadcasts. Particularly my own speculations. I’ve been…not quite subtle enough for the particular tastes of StrexCorp Synernists, Inc.” A musing furrow appears between his eyebrows. “My reports on Tamika Flynn in particular resulted in four of my initial warnings.”
“Cecil,” says Carlos again, because its shape is familiar to his teeth and his tongue, because Cecil is staring mid-distance at nothing and speaking with detached, deliberate formality. Carlos takes Cecil’s hands between his own, pressing the palms together like they’re praying. “Cecil, look at me,” he says; with an effort, Cecil complies.
“Dear Carlos,” he murmurs. “I’m afraid you have found me lost in thought.” He still sounds like the voice of his gravest broadcasts, but the wordplay is encouraging, and his pupils have constricted appropriately to the level of light in the room. Carlos breathes an unsteady sigh belied by the sturdiness of his hands. He’s not used to this Cecil, not in proximity. This Cecil reminds him of miles-off thunder, of distant galaxies, of neon in the dark. His surface solidity implies a fracture, like the brightly-colored layers of a cast. Carlos holds all the tighter, as though the physicality of his grip might anchor Cecil to their kitchen.
“Will you tell me?”
“Of course.”
Carlos studies Cecil’s face, lifts their hands to kiss Cecil’s knuckles. As Cecil starts to come back to himself, Carlos discovers a storm in his expression, indecision layered like ink beneath his skin. Apprehension trips down Carlos’ vertebrae. “Have you eaten today? We could talk at the Moonlite. It might be beneficial to the productivity of the discussion.” It’s not as central as Big Rico’s, fairly private as far as privacy goes in Night Vale, and Carlos is itching to get Cecil outside. He looks as though he’s been sitting here for hours, and he smells strongly of coffee, which indicates his neglect of proper nutritional intake. “Would that be all right?”
Cecil closes his eyes for a very long moment, light refracting through his lenses to map his eyelids like stained glass. Carlos wonders over them. Wonders over Cecil. Wonders over the way Cecil takes back his hands, retracting them from Carlos’ grip as though they are fragile, breakable as the silence.
“The Moonlite All-Nite Diner,” says Cecil. He pushes back the chair and stands. “That sounds fine, my dearest Carlos.”
“Great,” says Carlos. “Two minutes. Let me change.”
-
Carlos shuts his eyes, condensation trickling down his fingers as he clutches his water glass, knuckles white. The beginnings of a headache burrow against his temples. When he looks again, Cecil has retreated, hunched over his coffee, hands curved around the mug. Uncertainty is sketched like shadows beneath his eyes. Their waitress shuffles out from behind the jukebox, collects their order from the kitchen window, and carefully deposits it at their booth before slinking back into her hiding space. Cecil stirs a vortex into his coffee. “It wasn’t meant to be rhetorical.”
Carlos takes up his fork and begins to cut his pancakes into pieces, arranging them by shape as he marshals his thoughts. It’s too much, and that’s all he can think; the sacrifice is too great, too real, too permanent. A permanent solution to a temporary problem. Sheer reflex shakes his labcoat sleeves over his wrists, but that’s an old wound, and this one is fresh. He cannot fathom the legality involved—but there, he’s thinking like an outsider again. This is Night Vale. Legality is fickle.
“What are you thinking?” Cecil asks. His voice is soft and ocean-floor deep. “I’ve spent the day alone with my thoughts. I’d kind of like to hear someone else’s.”
“You can’t,” blurts Carlos. “Cecil, it won’t—” He cuts himself off. Returns to the question. One step at a time, approach it like academia. They both need to see all sides of the problem, and he needs to counter with facts, not emotion. Carlos the Scientist picks up the thread. “How will you be able to speak for Night Vale if you don’t have the literal ability to speak?”
“I will speak for as long as I can continue. That is my responsibility.” Cecil abandons the warmth of his coffee mug and stretches an arm across the table, his hand like an offering. Carlos takes it. “I can’t lie for them. I can’t do the show that way. There has to be something between the lines. There are things I will not sacrifice, Carlos, not in clear conscience. This is not Desert Bluffs.”
“This has only just started. Night Vale’s going to need your show. Tamika’s militia still has limits, and the rest of the town… You coordinate people, you get them to think. They need you, scientifically speaking. You’re a necessary element. You’re the Voice for a reason.”
“And if I don’t uphold that reason, what happens? Either way, the consequences will resonate. My silence is going to speak, Carlos, and it has to say something worth itself.”
“But you won’t say anything, ever again.”
“But at least my voice will still be mine.” Cecil squeezes his hand, perhaps harder than he intends. Carlos reads in it the severity of their situation. The facts begin to bleed, just a little.
“Cecil,” says Carlos, “there are other ways to broadcast. Just take the suspension, and I’ll take some time off, and we’ll figure it out, but together, okay? You don’t have to walk into it just to make a point. This is dangerous, Cecil, and we, I, we need you.”
“This is—”
“I need you.”
Cecil’s eyes widen as though he’s surprised, though he shouldn’t be, not by something like this. Carlos has spoken these words before, has forced his voice through this aching, desperate pitch; it’s the context that’s new, the seriousness of the encounter. But Cecil should be used to shifts in gravity, given the relationship of gravity to Night Vale. Cecil should know that the intensity of an emotion is not diminished by the time it takes to build.
When Cecil regains command of himself, there’s a rasp in his voice that is not often audible. “I am trying to be what you need,” he says. “Because you are very important, Carlos.”
Carlos tries for a smile. “Scientifically speaking?”
“For personal reasons,” Cecil corrects.
The waitresses scatter as the jukebox disappears.
-
“Cecil.” Carlos shivers and speaks against his hair. “Please promise you won’t do something stupid. Promise you won’t let them hurt you to make a point. Let me help; I can help. Just promise, I can help.” His arms pull tight around Cecil’s shoulders, their bodies so close that he can feel Cecil’s tattoos. They remind him of static against his chest, of the faint, buzzing warmth of a plasma sphere. Carlos cannot fathom Night Vale without them, cannot imagine another voice on the radio. “Please,” he insists. “Promise me, Cecil.”
Cecil’s whole body hesitates. Carlos holds all the tighter.
“You and me,” says Carlos, “we can figure it out. I can help. I’m a scientist. You’re Cecil. You’re amazing. Just don’t, please don’t, I can’t begin to explain—”
“Carlos,” soothes Cecil, full radio-timbre.
“Cecil,” says Carlos, refusing to be soothed.
Silence flits between them, slipping like water through nonexistent spaces. From the corner, something breathes. It might be the moonlight. It might be something entirely different. It might be their lungs, held separate and solitary, a rift in their dimensional expectations.
The moonlight does not need to breathe.
“Okay,” says Cecil. The sound is soft. Soft in the manner of dead, distant stars, burning in silence an eternity away. Soft like mizzling rain in the desert. Cecil sighs. “I promise.”
Carlos tries to believe.