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The moon in Night Vale shines brighter than it does in the surrounding cities (brighter than it does anywhere, for that matter). Carlos has long since grown used to it glowing with an almost otherworldly luminescence every night, and he’s learnt how to sleep through its brilliance, but he will never tire of watching Cecil practically thrive under its light.
He sits outside, on the lawn, every evening, with a shallow bowl of water beneath his fingertips. Carlos isn’t sure what he does out there, whether it’s spellwork or prayer or something that’s both - or neither. The moon lights him up beautifully, pulling shadows into his cheeks and his skin glows beneath it, like the beams revitalise him.
Carlos stands at the kitchen window and washes up from dinner, watching him like it’s the first time they’ve met.
Esteban hovers at the back door like a moth until Cecil waves him over. Water drips from his fingers like diamonds. Perhaps for Cecil, they are. Esteban sits cross-legged next to Cecil on the grass, and Carlos can admire how the moonlight affects their son, too. In much the same way as it does Cecil, the moon sinks deep into his skin, lifting an almost-inhuman glimmer from it.
Cecil meets his eye through the window and smiles. His eyes look like swirling whirlpools in the dark and Carlos would happily drown.
He pulls the plug from the sink and tugs the window open wide enough that he can lean out of it. The evening wind ruffles his hair. “Cecil, don’t stay out too late. It’s getting colder, and I don’t want either of you getting sick.”
“We’re nearly done, my dear,” Cecil calls back. He indicates for Esteban to put his hands in Cecil’s palms and guides him through the sigils he performs.
“Okay, well, don’t forget to put your bowl away when you’re done,” Carlos says. “And Esteban, you need to put your school bag away, please.”
“Yes, dad,” Esteban shouts. He sounds far more interested in the magic Cecil is weaving than anything Carlos could say to him, and Carlos can’t blame him. Cecil looks like he’s one with the sky when he does this, like his body is leaking out in the air. The lines of his body blur in the darkness, and he becomes hazy and intangible, and he looks exactly like he belongs there.
Carlos pulls the window shut and moves to the sitting room, pushing in Esteban’s chair from the kitchen table as he goes. There’s Cecil’s stack of books on the end table, piled about seven high, and he realigns them absently. The top cover displays a pair of eyes, and Carlos looks over it, feeling them follow him.
The back door opens and closes, and then clicks as Cecil locks it. The zip of Esteban’s bag and then the rustle of his books and papers is indescribably loud, followed by his rushed footsteps as he hurries to sort them.
Cecil appears behind him and wraps his arms around Carlos, hooking his chin over Carlos’s shoulder. He pushes his nose into Carlos’s neck, and it’s icy cold, but his breath is warm. “You look lovely in the moonlight, you know,” he says. The sitting room doesn’t see the moon; its windows face west, and the sunset always casts lavic shadows across the carpet, but Carlos knows that Cecil sees the things that aren’t visible to his eyes.
He scoffs, though. The moonlight tends to wash him out, and in place of the mythic shadowy glow it gives Cecil, he looks drawn and sickly. “Not with you standing there, too.”
“Please,” Cecil says. He moulds his lips to the curve of Carlos’s shoulder. “Nighttime suits you.”
“It suits you more.”
“Be that as it may,” Cecil tells him, “sun or moonshine, you’re beautiful beneath all of them.” He says the words into Carlos’s skin, and Carlos can almost feel them taking root there so he’ll carry some part of Cecil with him everywhere.
“Ew,” Esteban says from the doorway. “Dad, I put my school bag away.”
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Carlos says. He pulls away from Cecil enough that he can turn to face Esteban. Cecil merely twists with him, latching onto his shoulders once more. “It’s getting late. If you’ve finished your homework, then go and get ready for bed. We’ll be up in a second.”
Esteban lingers by the stairs. “Actually, dad, I had a few questions I’m stuck on. If you could help me. Please?”
Carlos nods. “Of course. What subject is it?”
“Physics,” Esteban says. His mouth twists into an ugly grimace and he lifts up a stack of crumpled papers.
“Where on Earth did you get those?” Cecil asks. “They look like someone ate them and regurgitated them into your school bag. Do you need more binders to organise your papers?”
Esteban looks at Carlos. He makes the ‘please make him stop’ look, and Carlos bites his lip and smiles. “Cecil, Esteban already has twenty binders. I think that’s more than enough for now.”
Cecil pushes Carlos’s glasses up his nose for him. “You’re right, of course. Esteban, why don’t you get ready for bed, and then dad can help you? Then you’ll be ready for sleep once you’re done.”
“It’s not that late,” Esteban tries.
Carlos makes a show of checking his watch, and then checking Cecil’s too (even though both of them display different times - Cecil’s appears to be operating on a time zone that isn’t quite Earthen in origin). “It’s half-past eleven,” he says, “that’s nearly midnight. And you were supposed to be asleep half an hour ago.”
“It’s a weekend,” Esteban says quickly.
“That’s no excuse. Growing kids need at least nine hours of sleep a night,” Carlos says. “And you have the book club in the morning, don’t you? That starts at quarter to ten, so you’ll need to wake up at nine to get there in time. So you should go to bed at midnight at the latest, and if we’re finishing your homework, that’ll cut it close.”
Cecil’s laugh blows across Carlos’s skin. “Carlos is right, baby. Go upstairs and get ready, and then you can finish your homework.”
Esteban looks like he’s about to argue. He pushes his own glasses up his nose (in an exact mirror image of Carlos), and purses his lips. “Fine. I’ll be down in a minute.”
His footsteps upstairs are heavy, and Cecil chuckles. “I wonder if he’ll grow out of that before our house falls down.”
Carlos leans back into his chest. “I hope so. I don’t think the foundations could take it if he’s twenty and stomping around all the time.”
“Perhaps we should get a bungalow,” Cecil says. “There would be no stairs to collapse.”
“I like our house,” Carlos says. “Maybe once we’ve retired, though. When we’re too old and our bones are too weak to use stairs any more.”
“I can’t wait,” Cecil tells him. He pushes his face into the crook of Carlos’s neck again, blowing at a cool breath. It makes Carlos shiver.
Esteban practically gallops down the stairs again, skidding to a stop in the sitting room. He’s dressed in sleep clothes, wearing Carlos’s old Jurassic Park t-shirt and pyjama pants with tiny space rockets on them. “I’m ready,” he announces, presenting the physics papers to Carlos.
Carlos laughs, and takes them. He moves so he can sit on the couch, and Cecil sits next to him, leaving a gap of space between them. Esteban squeezes into it, and reaches over to shuffle the paper around to the page he wants.
“Are you sure you’re doing this at school?” Carlos asks.
“Yeah,” Esteban says. “Why?”
Carlos glances at him. “No reason. I was doing this sort of thing for my masters, is all.”
Esteban shrugs. “I dunno. Penelope at school gave it to me. She said she got it from the library.”
“So it didn’t actually come from a teacher?” Carlos says. Esteban shakes his head. “Mm. So you’re doing it for fun, or for homework?”
Esteban blushes, “we’re just trying to get ahead of the class.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Cecil says. “You must take after Carlos, being so clever.”
Carlos feels himself blush too. “What questions did you have, then?”
“A3,” Esteban says. He points it out. “I couldn’t figure it out. Ms Calaghan said I was doing really badly in math this semester.”
“Well, this is physics, not math,” Carlos says, “and this is degree physics, not eighth-grade physics.”
“I know,” Esteban says. “But I wanna understand it. I mean, I answered the rest of them.”
Carlos flicks through the rest of the papers. “You sure did. They all look like the right answers, too. What didn't you get about this one?”
“The equation,” he says, “I asked Penelope, and I looked in the books, but I just didn’t know it.”
Carlos lists off the equation. Cecil’s hand rubs a smoothing circle into his back.
Esteban looks like all the puzzle pieces have fallen into place. “That’s so obvious. Why didn’t I get it?!”
“Don’t feel bad, sweetpea,” Cecil says, “if Carlos is right, and he always is, then you got all the rest of the questions correct, and he wasn’t doing this sort of work until he was doing his master's degree.” He leans in to poke Esteban’s cheek, grinning. “Maybe you’ll end up even smarter than he is, and Carlos is the smartest-“
“Person you know,” Esteban finishes for him. He leans into Cecil. “I know. I don’t wanna be too smart though. People will think that’s silly.”
“Smartness isn’t silly,” Carlos says. “You know, lots of people find intelligence attractive.”
Esteban shrugs. “I guess. I just don’t want to be a genius. That’s embarrassing.”
“Carlos is a genius,” Cecil says. “And the only thing embarrassing about him is his Doctor Who obsession.”
“Hey!”
Esteban giggles. “It is kinda embarrassing, dad.”
“You’ve collected every different colour bottle of that Dalek bubble bath and we’re not even allowed to use them,” Cecil says. “They sit on the side of the bathtub, mocking us.”
“And you have the novelty Sonic Screwdriver spork set,” Esteban says.
Carlos grumbles. “They were an anniversary gift.”
“Yeah, a stupid one,” Esteban says.
“You know, I seem to remember that you’re the one who cries every time we watch the season four finale,” Carlos says.
Cecil gives him a look. “The only reason you don’t cry is because you’ve watched it so many times you’ve become desensitized to it.”
Esteban wriggles between them. “I love you,” he says, settling so that his weight is distributed across both of their laps. Carlos wraps his arm around Esteban’s shoulder like it’s second nature.
“We love too, baby,” Cecil says. Carlos watches him press a kiss to Esteban’s temple. “Are you getting tired, now?”
“Mm,” Esteban says.
Carlos breathes out his laugh. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.” He starts to shift off of the couch.
Esteban’s eyes are sliding shut when he says, “I’m not sleepy.”
“You’re falling asleep in front of us,” Cecil murmurs. He moves to pull Esteban into his lap, and then stands, prompting Esteban to wrap his legs around Cecil’s waist and his arms around his neck.
“You’re almost too big for that,” Carlos says. Esteban is nearly three quarters as tall as Cecil, and still growing quicker than Carlos can keep up with. He stands too, collecting the physics papers, and then starts to follow Cecil up the stairs.
“He’ll never be too big to be carried to bed,” Cecil says over his shoulder, “not if he has any say in it.”
Carlos laughs under his breath. He can see Esteban’s head lilting to the side as he drifts off again. He pushes open his bedroom door for Cecil, and slides the papers onto Esteban’s desk.
Cecil deposits Esteban on his bed, taking care to tuck the blankets around him and sinking to his knees to press a kiss to his forehead. “Good night, baby.”
“Goodnight,” Esteban mumbles out. His voice is muffled with sleep already.
“Sleep well, sweetheart,” Carlos whispers. “Sweet dreams. We’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you in the morning,” Esteban repeats. Carlos waits until his breathing evens out, before shutting his bedroom door gently and following Cecil out to their bedroom.
“You know,” Carlos says, curling up next to Cecil on their bed. “We could probably put him in for an early graduation.”
“You think so?”
“He may not want to be a genius, but he’s incredible,” Carlos says, “We should talk to his teachers and make sure he’s not being held back in classes, or anything.”
Cecil hums. “He takes after you.”
“He takes after you, too,” Carlos says. “You know, every time I look at him, I just see you in him.”
The windows in their bedroom lets the moon shine straight through, and it washes over Cecil like the light is drawn to him. “He’s going to be brilliant, isn’t he?”
Carlos nods, reaching over to put his hand on Cecil’s stomach and brush over the soft fabric of his shirt. “He’s already brilliant. He’s going to grow up to be amazing .”
Cecil smiles a breathy smile, and pushes it into Carlos’s skin. The moon is cold, but on Cecil, it’s wonderfully, distinctly warm.