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Author: Evandar
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance
Pairing: Carlos/Cecil
Warnings: Eldritch Abomination!Cecil
Disclaimer: I do not own Welcome to Night Vale and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: Carlos and Cecil's wedding day arrives, and as it turns out, Night Vale has wedding rituals of its very own. Carlos isn't entirely sure what he's going to be letting himself in for, but he's pretty sure he's fine with anything that comes up - after all, he'll be with Cecil in the end.
AN: This was written as a pinch hit for the 2019
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justmarried exchange. I think, once upon a time, I said I wouldn't write any WTNV fic because of thesis-reasons, but Eldritch Abomination!Cecil is my favourite and I couldn't resist. 100fandoms table
And remember, listeners, that often the only difference between fear and love is the circumstances under which you met. Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Carlos reaches out and flips the radio off before the promised ‘two hours of whale song interspersed with symphonic car horns’ can try and convince him that permanent residence in Night Vale would be too weird to be worth it. And it would - try, that is, because no amount of time and exposure can erase his experiences before Night Vale. Memories of Mexico City followed by Albuquerque and Boston; Night Vale puts them both to shame, but he has to admit (privately) that not coming here would have been a lot quieter.
And a lot more boring. And he would never have met Cecil.
Cecil, who’s just announced on-air that Intern Haydn will be taking over for a week so that they can enjoy their wedding and a brief honeymoon. He’ll be cycling home now, Carlos realises, and he steps over to the stove to start the hot chocolate. He makes it in two separate pans, mixing cayenne into his own and ghost chilli into Cecil’s. By the time he’s pouring it out into their matching mugs (a gift from Old Woman Josie), Cecil is opening the door and stepping into their apartment.
He’s...not the kind of man that Carlos has always thought he’d end up with. Somehow, he’s better in every possible way. Brighter, more complicated, more interesting, and so strikingly lovely with his pale violet eyes and desert-dark skin.
Cecil practically skips to his side. His excitement is visible: his tattoos shift, twisting and flaring indigo and pink, and his hands are shaking slightly as he raises them to cup Carlos’ face. Carlos pulls him close, winding his arms around Cecil’s waist, tilting his head and drawing Cecil down into a kiss.
Cecil is only a little taller than him; just tall enough that Carlos has to rise slightly onto his toes. He likes it. Loves it, really, just like he loves the rest of Cecil.
“I heard the broadcast,” he says when they part. “Intern Haydn, huh? Station management approved?”
Cecil hums. The lid of his third eye flutters slightly, briefly revealing the violet iris and slit pupil. “I didn’t give them much of a choice, to be honest,” he says. “I have a lot of leave saved up. At least two centuries. So taking time off for my own wedding was, you know. Not exactly traumatic.”
Carlos has suspicions about the state Intern Haydn will be in by the time Cecil returns to his job, but he doesn’t voice them. Cecil, and the rest of Night Vale’s population, seem to be largely oblivious to the mortality rate of NVPR’s interns, so mentioning it won’t do any good - not to mention he’s selfish enough to not want their time together cut short because someone got eaten by a spontaneously appearing, hyper-aggressive giant squid, or whatever else decides to lurch out of the void this week.
“That’s good,” he says instead. “I wasn’t sure, what with the way contract negotiations go.”
Cecil grimaces, but doesn’t argue. Carlos leans up again to kiss him lightly on the lips.
The hot chocolate, by the time he remembers it, is cold.
...
Weddings in Night Vale are different from weddings anywhere else. At least, Carlos is pretty sure it’s going to be. Cecil did broach the subject when they first started planning, but there was a lot that Carlos wasn’t a hundred percent sure he followed. Cecil has a terrible habit of explaining things as if his listener is a life-long Night Vale resident and is, therefore, already privy to most of the details. He forgets sometimes, that Carlos is from a different place. A different country and, quite possibly, a different dimension. So his explanation was lacking in several key details and Carlos hadn’t wanted to ask for more.
He’s learned, by now, how to convincingly just roll with things. And to not scream unless everyone else is, because at least then there’s a chance it’s what he’s actually meant to be doing.
He has his suit (and formal lab coat) organised. He’d asked Cecil if he needed a hand with anything, more than once, but Cecil has had full control over proceedings since the start. All Carlos needs to do is turn up, look presentable, and not panic when something traditionally Night Vale happens.
He stares up at their bedroom ceiling. Cecil is curled in his arms, snoring softly. Every so often, on the exhale, he murmurs something in a language that makes Carlos’ brain twist. His third eye flutters, emitting a soft glow across Carlos’ chest. He’s beautiful and strange and Carlos can’t sleep because he can’t wait to spend the rest of their lives together.
Or, rather, the rest of his life with Cecil, who will, someday, leave him as dust lost amongst the sands of time. Cecil isn’t human. Carlos isn’t sure that there are any actual full homo sapiens in Night Vale; if they ever even settled there in the first place. Cecil looks approximately human, most of the time, and it’s comforting in a way (more comforting than bleeding eyes and gibberish madness). But because he isn’t human, Cecil will outlive him; he knows it in the core of his being, because there is no Night Vale without Cecil.
He lifts a hand to card it through Cecil’s hair. His fiancé - the man who will be his husband in, according to the clock, anywhere between eight and thirteen hours - snuggles closer, mumbles in the language of dreaming gods, and tightens his grip until Carlos feels less like he’s going to float away.
He shuts his eyes. He sleeps, safe in the knowledge that Cecil is, for now, his.
...
His abuela wanted him to get married in a church. Of course, his abuela had also died before finding out about Carlos' sexuality. She’d talked about him moving back to Mexico once he was a doctor and settling down with a nice local girl, but she hadn’t lived to see him achieve his doctorate. He hasn’t thought about her in a long time, but as he fastens his tie and slips his formal lab coat on over his suit jacket, he remembers the iron-grey of her hair and the scent of her perfume and the way she hugged like her arms were made of steel. She would have liked Cecil, he thinks. She was a tough old lady with good sense and who believed in ghosts and the chupacabra. She would have taken one look at Carlos’ skinny, Eldritch twink of a boyfriend and adopted him as her own, shoving food at him, feeding him up until he burst.
Her enchiladas were the best. He’ll make them for Cecil sometime soon, he thinks, because Cecil would have loved his abuela back.
(He refuses to think what the rest of his family would think of Cecil. They don’t think much of him, let alone someone like Cecil.)
But for all that his abuela wanted it to happen, he’s not getting married in a church. There is no church in Night Vale. Christianity as a whole didn’t catch on here, couldn’t compete with the soft-meat crowns and the chanting and the sacrifices that are a part of life here. Not that it matters, really. Carlos might have been raised Catholic, but he lapsed years ago. Instead, their wedding will be held in “you know, the Old Place, where the first settlers of Night Vale first gazed across the endless desert into the unending glare of the sun and screamed,” which is apparently where all Night Valean weddings are held (in addition to being both vague and highly worrying as a description). He can only assume that there will be a blood-stone circle and some ominous noises involved at some point, but, in all honesty, if there is then he doesn’t really mind. No matter what happens, he and Cecil will be bound by the end of it, and that is the part that Carlos is invested in.
He glances at himself in the mirror one last time. He looks...himself. A little nervous and a bit uncomfortable in formal clothing. The last time he dressed this smartly was when he interviewed for his post-doc at MIT. He brushes his fingers through his hair in a cursory attempt to tidy it, but fails spectacularly. As always. He’d be more self-conscious about it if he hadn’t had years of on-air declarations of love for his "perfect" hair to remind him that Cecil probably won’t care what it actually looks like.
Cecil.
He takes a deep breath and, steeling himself, opens the door to the living room. He pokes his head out and spots his fiancé instantly. It’s hard not to. Cecil is always striking in that lovely, approximately-human way, and his fashion sense is...something that wouldn’t fly outside of Night Vale but that looks spectacular on him anyway. He’s wearing something that looks like it might have passed as formal wear in the China of an alternate dimension - all flowing silks and vibrant, shifting patterns that echo the movements of deep-sea creatures.
He’s beautiful.
Carlos immediately feels plain in comparison, but he steps out of the bedroom regardless. His fingers twitch with a need to touch - to prove to himself that Cecil is solid and real and his to hold. He crossed the room and reaches out before he’s even really aware of what he’s doing; the silk is cool beneath his fingertips, and under it, Cecil’s arm is reassuringly there.
(He didn’t come to Night Vale to fall in love. He hadn’t even thought it was an option. But, looking at Cecil now, he can’t imagine it ever not happening.)
Cecil beams down at him, his smile a touch too wide and with a few too many teeth. He’s wearing eyeliner in a vivid shade of blue that makes his eyes - all three of them - appear even more uncanny. Carlos reaches up to touch his jaw, run his fingers through the fine glitter dusted over Cecil’s cheekbones. He thinks, for a moment, that he sees someone standing behind him, reflected in Cecil’s gaze, but he brushes it off as the Faceless Old Woman.
(He’s distressingly used to elderly women appearing behind him.)
“You look amazing,” he says, and he’s not even slightly embarrassed by it coming out as a breathy whisper.
“Oh, Carlos,” Cecil whispers back, and Carlos translates that as meaning pretty much the same. Cecil’s grip on his waist is a little too tight to be comfortable, but he leans into the embrace nonetheless.
“Shall we get going?” he asks. “Don’t want to be late.”
“Time is imaginary,” Cecil reminds him. “But yes. I don’t want to wait anymore, do you?”
...
He had thought, when it occurred to him to think about it, that the Old Place would be at the City Hall. It isn’t. Cecil gives him directions that take them out into the sand wastes, out into the desert, where the sky presses down on them with the full weight of the void and the sun hangs inexplicably low above the cliffs that no one looks at or acknowledges. When Carlos does look at them (scientific curiosity will always get the better of him), he sees dark shapes looming amongst the rocks, peering with all-seeing eyes from ancient caves. He shivers, suddenly cold, and averts his eyes.
As strange as it is to avoid mention of geological features, the citizens of Night Vale usually do so for a reason. He has to remember that.
He parks the car and Cecil leads him further out on foot, their fingers twisted together. Their feet leave no traces in the bare rock and sand, and the desperate plants clinging to life - which would usually snag at their clothes - do not. In fact, his eyes averted from the ominous shapes amongst the cliffs that aren’t there, Carlos’ gaze catches instead on the hem of Cecil’s silk robe. It gathers no dust. It phases through the light and the plants and drifts away into a dark dimension that makes Carlos’ teeth ache from witnessing. They are, if anything, no longer in Night Vale but in every Night Vale that has ever been and ever will be.
He knows it as surely as he knows pi. As surely as he knows that pi no longer applies to the things he may find here.
(There are footsteps behind him. An old woman with a cane and a face that is achingly familiar. He doesn’t look at her, but smells her perfume on the hot air.
(Behind her comes something else. Cecil has never spoken of his father. There are reasons for that.)
“Here,” Cecil says, and “now.”
Carlos turns to face him as he knows he needs to. Ghostly images shift on the edges of his vision, and he hears his abuela murmur her approval in his ear. She likes this one, she tells him, and Carlos quite agrees. He looks up at Cecil, and beyond him at the vast thing that is also Cecil but not as reassuringly near-human, and he speaks his vows. In Spanish, which he hadn’t intended, but knows that Cecil understands regardless.
Cecil speaks his, in the language he talks in while sleeping. Words that cannot be human - that vibrate, vast and terrifying, through Carlos’ soul - are shaped by almost-human lips, and Carlos falls in love a little more with each syllable. (He will never not love Cecil and the scientific impossibility of his very being.)
With the desert sun blazing above, and his dead abuela’s applause echoing in the cliffs that aren’t there, Carlos rises into his toes and seals their marriage with a kiss.
