everyone wants a ride

His muse is always touching him.

His muse has always touched him. Casual contact, such as Ford has become used to seeing from the outside. The kind of thoughtless touches that imply closeness and unity. Group belonging. Animals grooming each other, picking through thick fur for bloated fleas. Pets with their lavish and doting affection, butting and nuzzling.

And claiming, he strives to not think.

It’s natural to enjoy these things. Bill’s fingers are electrodes as they leave his skin prickling in their wake, his synapses snapping. His blood rushing to the surface. Gathering. The tingling anticipation when sharp claws ghost just over his flesh. They are black, like ink, like dark matter, like the pooled shadows at the bottom of a staircase. They are sucking and absorptive, swallowing light and reflecting nothing back. The canyon without its Echo, and Narcissus left to his shallow pond.

They skate over him, in this muddled landscape. Nothing holds him down; Ford is left free to twitch and shiver, fighting against the autonomic reflexes that trigger to pull him back from danger. He is supine, his hands are supinated, and long claws tickle at the plump curves of his palm. They follow the ley lines, the fault lines. His mother claimed to read them; to know which led to prosperity and which were at danger of a sudden slip.

Not to mince words, his mother was full of applesauce.

Still, Ford thinks of her, if only through rote association. Bill follows his love line and chuckles at the ineffectual tremor in Ford’s fingers.

“What do you say? Wanna know your FORTUNE?” A constellation of eyes hang in the air around him. One of them has warped into a mouth, and grins with pearly white teeth.

“I think I have a pretty good idea of what it is,” Ford replies. A few of the eyes giggle. The mouth licks its lips.

“I BET YOU DO!”

The claws continue, a stylus skipping across the bumps and ridges of his skin. Bill’s skin – if it could be called that (this is up for debate) – is perfect. Unblemished. Unchanging, unpulsing, unwrinkled. It feels like warm glass in his hands, slender and inhuman limbs he can wrap his fingers around. Delicate, even. Fragile. Bill laughed at him, of course, when he mentioned any of this.

Three tiny pinpricks when they tap down on his wrist. Ford sucks in air through his teeth, a quiet hiss, and watches delicate beads of blood collect. A thoughtful pause needle-pricked into his skin, three red dots evenly spaced. Needle-pricked into only skin, nestled between blue-green branches of his shallow-running veins.

“OOPS,” Bill says. “I forget how DELICATE these SKIN SUITS are!” The pad of a thumb swipes across his wrist. His ellipse turned into a faint, tacky smear. The claws return, and Ford’s heart skips a beat as one settles into a little dip near the edge of his arm. Hovering over his pulse point, Bill must have felt it, too. The eyes and mouths are all grinning and Ford squirms, flushed.

For a split second, the tension wires strung between them are charged with unfamiliar potential. The eyes, with their quivering pupils and fluttering lashes, the mouths spilling with sharp teeth and lolling tongues, the black arms and black hands and black claws – they seem like they aren’t promises anymore, but warnings, and each of Bill’s multiple gazes flit to his face at once. Bill’s finger crooks, like a cobra, like a wasp, like Ford’s one whiplash snap away from poisoned, from exsanguinated, from-

The moment passes. Ford’s breath relaxes out in a long sigh and the claws drag up his arm. It’s almost ticklish. His skin tingles and tightens up into goosebumps, fine hairs rising while Bill’s fingers drag and swirl like they’re caught in the eddies of a great gyre. They could follow Ford’s own currents of darkly deoxygenated blood all the way back to his heart.

Humans are simply designed for touch. It lowers blood pressure (Ford’s pulse pounds in heady spasms). It reduces heart rate (Bill’s fingers climb, tickle in the crook of his elbow and higher; the rapid beat of his heart climbs in tandem). It stimulates the frontal cortex, that crawling, tickling sensation behind his brow; the same area that is triggered by enjoyable smells, and sweet tastes.

And touch stimulates the secretion of oxytocin. The big name in this cascade of effects, the bonding hormone. The pleasure hormone, and two palms creep onto his inner thighs. Fingers knead at his muscles. His hips twitch and buck. His legs strain to spread. His mind buzzes, navigating a hot wet fuzz that has draped across his neurons, replaced coherent thought with desire and yearning and need.

“Bill,” Ford says on one panting, huffed breath.

There are hands all over him now, smooth and warm. Touching him. Dragging through his hair, stroking in long lines down his sides. Ford’s topography mapped out in scintillating detail. Burning parallel lines scratched into his skin by the lightest pressure of nails. One catches across his chest and he jolts in a shudder, a sharp burst of conflicting sensory input. Heat sparks and flares in his gut.

“SIXER! Eyes open, Four-Eyes!”

The hands are gone. Ford opens to his eyes to a world of static grey. The edges of his vision seem to pulse and seize.

“Bill?” There’s no sign of his muse, no sign of anything. Not a landscape, not a starscape – nothing but quivering, shaking grey, like Ford’s fallen into the snow between television channels.

Alone. And exposed.

“Bill?” he asks again, and his answer is a deep, rumbling brontide.

The blank world goes clonic in response, jerking fitfully as fat tears begin to rip in the very air around him. The greys and statics being stretched beyond repair, as something looming behind them digs its way through. A brash of ugly, clashing colors is revealed between the splits, protruding like innards from a dehisced wound. Laughter pours of these tears, getting louder and louder as more of the sky ruptures. Most of it is unfamiliar, save for one high-pitched peal. It sets his teeth on edge, hearing it mixed with the caterwauling wails of unknown others. It’s a bore drilling through the hinge of his jaw, a sewing needle piercing through his eardrum-

“TIME’S UP!”

“Bill!”

Ford awakens tangled in his sheets, with his alarm clock blaring at him and sunlight stabbing at his eyes. He slams his hand down on the clock, sagging back into his pillow with relief as the sound cuts off. The warning tension of a headache lingers at the base of his skull. He groans, throwing an arm over his face. What time even is it? When was the last time he’d set his alarm?

When was the last time he’d woken up in the morning? His schedule has become a disjointed fracture of sleep-wake cycles. AM and PM – what did it matter? Circadian rhythms are for cicadas. It’s a leftover byproduct of a passed over time; the ridiculous part is the way humans cling to it, assign value to night and day and when and where. Why should some things only be done during the day? Why should sleep be confined to night? There are even studies – Ford has read them, he has, he saw them somewhere – about how short bursts of sleep throughout the 24 hour period are more effective. Perhaps more similar to what their ancestors had done, because when you think about it, how does it make sense for an entire tribe of people to be asleep at once? Or to rely on just a few tired, lonely souls to keep them all safe, to serve as vanguards and bulwarks against the threats brought about by thick, seeping darkness? When you really think about it-

His alarm clock rouses from its snooze setting with an ear-splitting blare. Ford’s hand darts out to crush it again. What had he been thinking about? When was the last time he’d set his alarm? Why did he set his alarm? What could possibly have possessed him to plan an interruption to his time with his muse?

The realization is sudden, but not like a train slamming into him. More like a pillow being lazily tossed into his face. He’s supposed to meet Fiddleford today.

Of course, they’ve already met. Ford is brushing his teeth, staring at his reflection in the mirror without really seeing it.

This will be their first meeting in Gravity Falls. Ford’s showering in the blurry world without his glasses.

Also their first meeting in an uncounted number of years. His glasses are fogged, sitting on the counter after he steps out, running fingers through shaggy hair. The electric razor buzzes in his hand while he shears away stubble.

The last time Bill was in his body, he left bruises on his forearms. Mottled purple and green, thick pools of blood congealing beneath the skin. Ford shakes his head in wonderment at what his muse could have gotten up to. No true harm done – what’s there will just be recycled back into his body, eventually – but Ford opts for a long-sleeved sweater.

He leaves the lights on. He leaves the doors open. Bill always turns them all on, opens everything up like there’s a hidden prize somewhere in the cabin. He locks the front door, if only to dissuade any visitors. The bulk of his work has already been moved to his study, sequestered securely behind a code only two beings know.

The drive into town is uneventful. There are trees. There are squirrels. Ford catches a glimpse of some unusual silhouette between the tree trunks. He gives it a cursory glance through his rearview mirror, but he’s already running late.

People are still eating waffles. The tines of their forks scrape across their plates when they drag soggy bites of the stuff through clinging, stretchy puddles of syrup. Someone is eating an omelet, scratching his knife across shoddy porcelain and then stabbing – one, two, three; clink, clink, clink – for every bite. Background conversations a monotonous buzz, interrupted by barks of jeering laughter. Pieces of meat sizzling on the flattop behind the counter, spitting and hissing akin to the cornered prey animals they were stripped from. Water boiling, bubbling with low-throated gurgles in multiple coffee machines. Florescent lights on and humming like a dislodged hive of hornets.

Ford feels eyes on him. He half expects to turn and find the slit pupil of his muse looming over his shoulder. He keeps imagining the fluttering insect-skitter brush of lashes across his skin. He catches flashes of gold in his peripheries, twisting around to find nothing more than light glinting off what are undoubtedly fake gold chains and earrings. One memorable time, the spot light glimmer comes off a man’s gold tooth as he throws his head back and laughs, laughs, laughs. Ford watches his throat ripple as he does so, almost convulsively.

His coffee cup keeps getting refilled. His leg jitters under the table. He keeps checking his watch, because the clock on the wall seems suspended in time, the second hand caught at the forty-five mark. It ticks up and then bobs back down, flittering around the line. The other hands are still, declaring it to be 5:37. His wrist begs to differ, and where the hell is Fidds? Ford thought he was late.

He got the time wrong. One of them did. Ford assumes it was himself. Or something happened. Fiddleford got lost, his flight delayed. His flight crashed, detoured. It was all a fever dream. Their long conversation nothing more than a preamble, Bill helping his psyche get amped up for an actual, honest-to-Betsy conversation. Or worse, maybe Fiddleford had only been humoring him; had let Ford work himself into excitement over- over speakerphone, or maybe he recorded the whole thing, and now there was a group of people, somewhere, laughing at him-

-head thrown back and throat, gullet jerking, quivering, gold glinting off a razor-sharp canine-

The little bell above the door chimes and Ford jerks. There’s a lanky man with travel-matted hair standing stiff in the doorway, his shoulders slouching in towards each other. His white, short-sleeved and button-up shirt is wrinkled, but there are still sharp creases denoting where it had once been pressed and ironed. Even with his tie loosened around his neck, the top button of his shirt undone, he’s a loose, wiggly tooth among the flannel and jeans aesthetic of the locals.

“Fiddleford!” Ford calls. He stands up, raising a hand, grinning in the face of eyes snapping towards him. Fiddleford smiles as he surges forward, his own hand thrust outward.

“Stanford Filbrick Pines, as I live and breathe!” Their hands meet, and shake.

They talk over breakfast. Fidds gets a waffle. Ford an omelet. The owner gives them each a piece of pie to go. On the house, with a wink, and they’re left to stare at each other in slack-faced disbelief as she saunters back behind the register.

“Unbelievable,” Fidds says again, and they’re on the porch, drinking warm beers with some kind of knock-off name like Budds Rite. “I cannot be-lieve a city slicker like Stanford Pines ends up in a place like this.”

Ford scoffs, shaking his head, but really, anyone is a city slicker compared to Fidds.

“I guess the open air did me some good,” Ford says. “Like you always said, huh?”

“Oh, I was full of hogwash.” Fidds waves a hand in the air. “Always think ya got the answers for everything ‘til you’re a few years down the line.”

Fidds leans over to spit off the side of the porch and Ford takes a swig of his beer. Night is only beginning to settle; the sky is still orange and pink and vibrantly lilac, but the sun has slipped beyond the cover of the trees and stars are peeking shyly between clouds. He smiles, thinking of nights long passed. Hours wasted with the man beside him, mouths chattering a mile ahead of their thoughts, expounding on ideas inspired less by scientific rigor and more by their own egos.

Freshman year, they had jointly ended world hunger, solved tense geo-political arguments, (re)invented perpetual motion machines, and designed a realistic AI that always knew the exact conversational moment to go for a high-five.

Well, theoretically, that is. In practice…

“Hey,” Ford says. “Remember how we almost flunked out of Professor Hilbert’s class freshman year?”

Fidds bolts upright, jabbing his finger in the air, accusatory.

“Now that was some baloney if I ever saw it! What kinda cotton-headed, air-between-the-ears moron grades for attendance at a college?”

Ford laughs at the well-worn rant, tilting his head back to watch the night sky bleed in from the day’s edges.

“Well, hindsight and hogwash, right?” Ford offers, and Fidds looks genuinely offended.

“I can own up to my mistakes, Stanford, and let me tell you something right.” That finger is back, pointing at Ford while he struggles for a straight face. “There is no world in which a man should pass all his examinations with flying colors and still be saddled with a 2.5 GPA for the semester!”

“Maybe not here,” Ford says. Fiddleford squints at him. “Not, uh, in this dimension.”

“This your way of getting to the subject at hand?”

“Uh-” Ford swallows, his ears burning, and Fidds starts to laugh.

“Jesus, Ford, ever the conversationalist.” Ford stares at the piss-yellow ring of beer puddling around the rim of his can. He drums his fingers along the tin. “Ya know, this is why Franchon never called you back.”

Ford gives a startled burst of laughter and then groans. “Oh, Franchon…”

A dancer and a poet, and self-proclaimed philosopher. She was beautiful, not kind, and had a strange intensity to her that Ford had never seen before. And her favorite subject to talk about was breath and air, and the symmetries of nature. That cells could breathe, that you could find one, just one cell in your body, and sync up to it, through meditation.

“What was it you lectured her about again?”

“The Krebs Cycle,” Ford admits, remembering how the light drained from Franchon’s eyes, her gaze distant and glassy. “In my defense-”

“How many diagrams did you draw her?”

“I was trying to agree with her!” A pause. Ford clears his throat. “In a manner of speaking.”

Fidds claps him on the shoulder.

“I know you’re itching to start – I am too, to be honest. I just need a night to unwind first,” Fidds says. He crunches his empty can in his fist.

“I understand,” Ford says, and he does.

The night air is cool on his face. The slight dampness that he’s learned comes with wooded seclusions, places where life heaves abundantly forward. The porchlight casts a faded pall across the grass, and he can still make out the shape of his car in the driveway. The woods are dark, but they are not silent. Pauses are filled with the stadium echo of chirruping insects, of skittering-pawed nocturnals, of snapping branches and falling leaves. The night sits, still and watchful.

Fidds is next to him. Fidds is here. Inside, in his study, are notebooks. Dozens of them. And somewhere below them is a hollowed-out cavern playing host to a growing collection of scrap metal.

He can wait, Ford decides, and tips his head back to finish his drink.

“Of course,” Fidds drawls. “I wouldn’t say no to a little sneak peek at those books of yours…”

They spend the rest of the evening indoors, reading and arguing. Proving and disproving theories as fast as they can be speculated. Fidds will fall intensely quiet, eyes gliding back and forth as he reads, and Ford will grin, knowing what’s coming, ready with a refute for the exact moment that Fiddleford throws the notebook back down and shouts hogwash.

Hazy predawn light blossoms outside the windows when Fidds finally ambles off towards the attic, hastily remodeled into a spare room. Ford collapses into his bed, and into sleep.

He doesn’t dream. Not of anything.

It must be afternoon by the time Ford has peeled himself away from his drool soaked pillowcase. He finds Fidds in the kitchen – in the clean kitchen, with miles of empty counterspace, and the dishwasher quietly churning.

Fidds is sitting at the table, reading another notebook. He raises his mug in greeting.

“You must have one heck of an electricity bill,” he comments.

“I wouldn’t know,” Ford says as he pours coffee into a chipped mug. You’re an all star!, the mug assures. “Payments are automatic. Out of the grant money, I guess.”

“It’s wasteful,” Fidds says, “leaving the lights on all night long.”

Ford frowns, thinking. He’d turned everything off before they went to bed. Well, he’d thought he’d turned everything off, but he had been pretty tired. Exhausted, even.

“Hmm.” Noncommittal grunting. Fidds shakes his head.

“I’ll build you some solar panels.”

They’re more subdued below the scalding eye of daylight. Fidds orders him out of the house around three when a cursory glance through Ford’s cabinets and refrigerator reveals condiments, flour, and unexpected mold growing in unexpected places. People stare at him in the streets. They stare at him in the aisles, at the register. Ford almost expects bats to fly out of his wallet when he opens it to pay.

They stock his pantry together. Fidds makes something or other on the skillet.

They read. They sleep.

Ford doesn’t dream.

He wakes first in the morning and makes a batch of pancakes from a half-remembered family recipe. They’re a little rubbery. He’d had to turn off lights in every room. He chews, and watches Fidds drown his plate in syrup.

“So,” Fidds says later. He drapes the blueprints across the table. “Where are we supposed to get some of this stuff?”

“I still have a few things I need to show you,” Ford replies. He waggles his eyebrows. “How do you feel about hiking?”

Not great is the evident answer across the following days.

Fidds huffs and puffs along at Ford’s side. Each step is preempted by the thudding jab of his walking stick into packed earth. Fiddleford’s curiosity is hardly dampened by the conditions or environment; Ford is surprised to feel as though he hasn’t talked this much in a lifetime. Conversations on planes outside the physical, solely in one’s own head – those, Ford is realizing, don’t provide the same effect. A silly little idiosyncrasy of the human body, he muses. Tongues flapping, skin slurping, teeth occasionally clacking together. All unnecessary facets of the human experience, but facets none the less. Bill will no doubt find it amusing, that Ford feels amiss without these sensations. Doubly so, that Ford only noticed his discomfort long after the fact.

Ford has noticed that he hasn’t seen Bill once since Fiddleford arrived.

Sitting under the tangled canopy brambles, surrounded by the chirping of insects and animals, Ford doesn’t see the stars laid out above them as they make camp for the night. They are out there, of course, seeming to turn in lazy spirals. Twinkling, winking and teasing; diamonds embedded into the velvet ebony skin of the sky. Hiding themselves from his view. Ambivalent towards his very existence.

Ford doesn’t dream.

They wake and walk and talk. Progress peppered with recurrent pauses for rest and food. For the most part, they avoid the old paths that Ford used to frequent alone, overgrown in his absence. Paths that lead to the nests and dens of what he once considered otherworldly creatures. He knows now, of course, that they are not just otherworldly – they are the lost denizens of other dimensions, spat out between rippling holes in the flimsy material separating universes.

Still, the weirdness of the world will not be contained.

He and Fidds are crouched down behind a yawning spray of spade-leaved brushes. A pack – a parcel? Ford hasn’t decided yet – of plaidypuses is… well, not quite frolicking in the swampy clearing nearby. They’re mostly stationary, flat paws and feet slapping in the mud. One of them is rolling back and forth on its back, its toothless bill of a mouth gumming at its fellow’s tail.

It isn’t that they are dangerous. Not in any sense of the word at all. They have learned to fear humans, however, and while neither Ford nor Fiddleford especially resemble woodsmen, it’s best not to startle them. Ford watches a plaidypus dart its nose into the shallow waters. Is it hunting? He shifts to get a better look, then swallows a sigh as the creature does nothing more than begin to blow bubbles.

Fidds is squinting intently at the group. His shirt is close to matching their coats, a weird mishmash of red and green and yellow-ish stripes.

“Is that one there a different sub-species?” Fidds says in a croaking stage whisper. Ford winces at the volume of it, but the herd seems undisturbed. He follows the straight-line pointing of Fidds’ finger to a small lump of brown/red fur gurgling on a grassy knoll.

“What? No, no, that’s just a youngster,” Ford says. “They don’t acquire their vertical stripes until sometime in their adolescence.” He thinks.

Fidds makes a kind of humming noise of ascent. He’s still squinting, leaning forward. A thin, solitary line of sunlight has made its way through the canopy, lands in a ghostly beam to spill across Fidds’ face, the curling ends of his hair turning to gold. Motes and insects glitter into view as they cross its path before drifting off again. In the light, his dark brown eyes are shot through with sparks of honey, his pupil a starkly black pinprick.

“I think that one’s actin’ strange, Ford,” Fidds says. Too loud again. Ford looks to the creatures. Probably, Fidds is referring to the plaidypus idling on its backside, flappy flipper-like paws waggling in the air. Chewing steadily on its friend’s tail.

“They’re very simple creatures, Fidds,” Ford says with a chuckle. “I spent a few weeks studying them last summer, and I can assure you, this is all entirely within the bounds of normalcy for this particular species.”

Of course, this isn’t Fiddleford’s field of expertise – or lifelong passion, for that matter. It isn’t that surprising for the mechanist to feel a little wrong-footed. It is endearing, in a way, to see Fidds out of his element. They’re so neck-and-neck in so many other areas. And Ford isn’t too full of himself to be incapable of admitting that, in certain areas, Fidds’ abilities have surpassed his own abilities. That’s the whole reason Fidds is here, after all.

Fidds hasn’t stopped staring, eyes narrowed suspiciously at the ridiculous little creature in the swamp, and Ford has a sudden desire to show him everything he’s found out here, every strange and marvelous beast that has made Gravity Falls their home away from home.

“So they usually go all grey and blobby-like?”

“Believe me, I’ve seen all there is to see- wait, what did you say?” Ford turns his attention back towards the herd, in time to watch the head of the slow one – the one on its back, chewing on another – finish bubbling outwards, the fur gone from it, the skin looking slick and smooth and bloated, as if it were filled with viscous fluid or puffing up with air.

“That’s new, ain’t it?” It’s hard to rip his eyes away from the gurgling thing, but Ford manages a glance at his friend – to find him smirking, looking about half the way to an I told ya so.

“Fidds, this is no time for-”

They’re cut off by the sudden frantic squawking of the herd. The flip-flopping patter of their flat feet in the mud as they scramble away – away from the grey, now fully grey creature in their midst. Which is chewing something. Ford catches sight of one with an oval chunk missing from the tip of its tail.

“Fiddleford, I believe we may have stumbled upon a new denizen of Gravity Falls!” Ford is patting down his jacket, looking for- for a notebook, a pen, an anything that he can jot observations down with. From what Ford can only assume is nowhere, Fidds has produced a butterfly net.

“I told ya so, Ford.”

The rest of their day is, technically, as far as progress towards the ship is concerned, wasted. It’s difficult to consider it as such, when they end the day with what appears to be a tiny shapeshifter captured in a hastily-emptied Tupperware container. They poked holes in the top, just in case it needs air. In the shifting shadow-play light of a crackling fire, Ford sketches the weird, bug-eyed creature.

He lies down in his sleeping bag. Fidds is already snoring away in his own. The embers, sullen and red as they simmer in the remains of their campfire, cast a dull orange light into the tent. Tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon, they should reach the crash site. And then they will really be able to get started. Ford twitches and shifts, unable to get comfortable. Unable to still his hands. Unable to stop his thoughts.

It must be nerves. It twists in his stomach, brings a cool sheen of sweat forth to bead on his skin. He is nervous, of course; Fiddleford will be the first person, not including himself, to see a real, honest-to-Betsy space ship. That’s enough to make anyone nervous.

He can’t see the stars. They’re out there, beyond the canvas of his tent and the interlocking branches and leaves of the forest. Ford closes his eyes. Light plays across the inside of his eyelids. Cells misfiring in the absence of stimulus, creating scintillating circles and starbursts of expanding color. Opens them again, fingers twitching under his covers. Heart thumping in his throat.

He closes his eyes, into darkness.

Darkness that is wet, and hot, and alive.

It heaves around him, air moving in rhythmic, rushing tides tugged along the wake of a distant and unseen moon. Fluttering, quivering around him, it draws closer and relaxes away, threatening him with touch but never fulfilling its empty promise. Air blows upwards, rustles his hair. His skin feels clammy, feverish in its wake. The darkness huddled close with radiant heat. Cool air rushes down, the darkness pulling back. A chill settles, icicles snapped off a dribbling branch and driving spikes into his bones.

Ford can’t see. Air swirls around him. He thinks he’s probably floating.

“Bill?”

It is wet, like the inside of a lover’s mouth. Slick, slippery. Yielding, flushed flesh, engorged tissues, and around every bend, hiding beneath a veil of smooth invitation: a curving band of sharp, white teeth. Ford looks into the darkness, eyes straining for a flash of light.

“Where have you been?” he asks.

The air draws in, cool and biting, and then stills. Things in the darkness shake and quiver in unknown patterns. Pulsate and pound and thrum. Surge. He thinks, perhaps, that floating was not the right word. He feels dangling, somehow, limpid and stringless. Warm air gusts upwards again, as if he is inside some mighty bellow as it breathes.

“Eh, CLOSE enough!”

“Bill!”

There is white light, a singular line spreading like fire engulfing a taut string, branching off at its ends to form his muse’s familiar shape. Such things always come in threes. An eye, a tie, a hat. Legs and arms and cane. Behind Bill, in the gauzy light he casts, Ford can see the hint of walls. Glistening and elastic. Spreading away, then drawing, shrinking closer. He strains to get a better look, squinting around blinding yellow and then-

And then, his muse is touching him. Hands on his cheeks, squishing his face.

“Hey Fordsy,” Bill says, body winking and sputtering in time to his words. “I got a QUESTION for you!”

Ford swallows, hands curling at his sides.

“Uh, yes?”

“Would you consider yourself to be… boring?” Bill flutters his lashes; the ghostly contact makes Ford squirm. “You know, like a BORING kind of person?”

Ford’s cheeks blaze beneath his muse’s hands. Air drags downwards around the both of them.

“Uhh.” Ford clears his throat.

“A STICK in the MUD!” Bill clarifies, dropping his arms and drifting backwards. When the air sucks in, flowing downwards, the heat of Bill is like the sun glowing on his skin. The dank, hot air misting around them obscures this effect.

“Well…” His mind is plagued with jeers, old and frail and well maintained. Classmates from every school year, girls who turned their noses up at him, boys who shoved him in the dirt. The thumping bass of a party nearby as Ford laid curled with a book on his bed.

“A NEGATIVE NANCY – or NATHAN, your PICK – a NINCOMPOOP, an EGGHEAD – well, actually, you ARE one of those -” Bill counts each one on his right hand, sprouting new fingers as he runs out – “a SNORE, a SNOOZE, a WET BLANKET-”

“No!” Ford snaps his jaw shut, startled at the fervor of his claim. “No, Bill, I’m not.”

Bill’s eye is wide, his pupil depthless. It is times like these that Ford remembers what a pupil is, anatomically speaking – a hole through which light might pass, a chasm in which one might fall. Depthless. And it draws to mind not the living, heavy darkness around them, but something colder, emptier. The space between stars, the black hole that peaks through the gaps in Bill’s teeth, can be spotted yawning above the languorous curving of his tongue.

Bill’s eye is wide, and then it is not. It’s curving and amused, a playground bully’s sly smirk. Except, well, Bill is no bully. The extra fingers he grew shrivel and curl and fall off. They flake into thin, crumbling fragments and then disappear into dust.

“EXACTLY! Stanford PINES is no slouch on the creative and DARING front!” A spark lurches its way down Ford’s spine. The heat in his cheeks doesn’t lessen, but feels less scalding all the same. Bill flickers out of existence, reappears at his side with an arm tossed across his shoulders. “SO THAT LEAVES me WONDERING... why the skin suit?”

Ford is caught off guard, by the question as much as the unnatural way Bill’s arm stretches so he can flick him on the nose.

“Wh… what do you mean?”

“I MEAN, Sixer, this is YOUR dreamscape – anything’s possible, right?” Bill’s gone from him, his shoulders cold in his muse’s absence.

To tell the truth, Ford hasn’t considered this before. Conjuring things – creatures, landscapes, items – sure. It seemed only natural, to one who was so used to the desire to shape the world. Here, Ford could literally leave his handprint on the scientific world, etch his name into the buildings that shunned his presence in the waking world.

But to change himself. Ford raises his hands before him, gaze flitting across his palms as his mind whirrs ending. It seems so fundamental. His body is him, after all.

“Not REALLY!” Bill pipes up. His muse is in front of him again. “I mean, I DO IT all the TIME!”

It’s almost grotesque to watch Bill’s shape as it bubbles and curves and expands, colors shifting. In no more than the blink of a few eyes, he travels through: a deer, a human, a hawk; becomes Stanford Pines for a split second, before his lines condense and straighten again. Ford’s stomach roils, his skin cool and everything inside it feeling molten. Bill expands – adds a third dimension, his color deepening to a vibrant red. The color of bitten lips or burned, eroded skin. The bright burst of arterial blood.

The color of a carnation when it is used to signal love. Bill rolls his eye.

“SEE? Still 100% BILL CIPHER, RIGHT?” Ford nods, though he’s somewhat lost the string of their conversation. This new form of Bill’s has his muse segmented into three pieces, lined with long, curving teeth and dribbling tongues that sweep in languid strokes through the air. It’s almost an inversion – his pupil a glittering gold protuberance from the black tar of his sclera. Gold to match his limbs and, Ford smiles, his hat. His extra limbs, with hands that quiver and clench in the air asymmetrically.

“Right.” Ford’s mouth is dry.

“So why don’t you GIVE IT the ole COLLEGE try, huh? Let’s see what STANFORD PINES looks like in his WILDEST dreams!” Two of Bill’s bottom tongues are sliding around each other, coiling like a caduceus. A bright burst of Bill’s laughter snaps him out of his staring.

“Shapeshifting!” Ford blurts out, much his own chagrin. He clears his throat, and tries again. “Uh, I’ll give it a try Bill.”

“It’s pretty INTUITIVE once you get started!”

Ford nods again, frowning. Intuitive hardly seems like a word that could be applied to something as astounding as manipulating matter. And getting started seems like the most challenging aspect. He closes his eyes, taking in a long, slow breath. Exhales just as slowly, feels his racing heart begin to drag down as well. Tries to focus his awareness to the sensations of his body. The physicalities that aren’t really physical, here. The dampness on his skin when air gusts upwards. The arrangement of his limbs, on his body, and their relation to one another. Their relation to the outside world, which is harder when one’s floating in empty space.

Breathes. And tries to picture himself, reimagined. Changed. New. Thinks of Bill many months ago now, when his arms had formed a rippling cascade of after-image multitudes. Had pulled him in and pressed against him and held him, hard, against living gold. Something along his chest feels fuzzy and warm, and then, dizzyingly, there.

“Extra ARMS? Not exactly INNOVATIVE, but not bad for a first try!”

Ford’s eyes jolt open and his gaze darts to what are, yes, extra arms. Another set just below his original, nearly identical to the top set. And almost effortlessly, they move. He moves them, as if the tract for their nerves has always been laid. The neural bumps and ridges in his brain always in existence, and Ford laughs aloud at the ease of it all. How natural it feels.

“Bill! This is incredible!” He interlocks four sets of fingers, claps them together, gives himself two fist-bumps. Thinks of all the use he would get out of them, how many more notes he could write down in the moment of discovery, when his thoughts fly so much faster than his body can move.

“YUP!”

And he could do more. He could be so much more in here! His thoughts drift towards the shapeshifter he and Fiddleford had found – does it feel the same way he does right now?

“Actually, that little PEST you two stumbled upon today is what brought all this to MIND!” Bill says, pricking the delicate bubble of Ford’s thoughts. “Figured if you found THAT so interesting, you might wanna give it a SHOT yourself!”

“How… you know about that?” Ford asks. “You weren’t there, were you? I haven’t seen you in days…” His chest aches a little, his elation deflating.

“Aww, Fordsy, no need to feel GUILTY! I’m in your MIND, remember?” The environment is suddenly, abruptly different. Ford’s feet hit the grassy ground with a firm thud. He stumbles under the weight of his own body. “And I’m ALWAYS WATCHING!” The bark on the trees surrounding him splits, eyes appearing scattered over their surface like boils and blisters. Ford’s heart gives a lurching beat.

“You’ve been with me? All this time?” And he’d been feeling so… alone.

“WELL DUH! ‘Til the end of TIME, right pal?”

“’Til the end of time,” Ford agrees.

The rest of the night passes swiftly, and Ford finds himself baleful of the hazy morning light. Fidds is whistling outside the tent. Some kind of meat is sizzling over a brand-new fire.

“Ford? Ya up in there?” Fidds calls to him, and continues after Ford’s grunt of assent. “That shapeshifting fella of ours got out in the night! Musta figured out how to make itself little.” There’s a thoughtful pause, during which Ford can’t help but smile up at his tent as he pictures his friend stroking fingers along his own chin. “Dang clever of him.”

The day spends itself quickly as well. They descend into and emerge from, bruised but victorious, the still intact insides of an ancient alien space craft. The sun is all but set by the time they have staggered free of its hatch, a massive pack of rare and precious metals hanging from each of their backs. They make camp up on that grassy knoll, let the ruddy orange red of the sunset fade out like a curtain being drawn.

They’re sitting side by side, eating beans out of tin cans. Not by necessity, but by choice – Fiddleford insisted a camping trip wasn’t a camping trip until someone had eaten some beans out of a tin can. They’ve been quiet for a while. The thrill of their day draining, their limbs turning heavy and leaden as they creep towards exhaustion.

“You seem different,” Fidds says. Spoons a spoonful of beans into his mouth.

“Different?” Ford isn’t nervous. He very casually stirs his own spoon. “How so?”

“Mmm.” Fidds swallows. “It’s hard to say. You seem more… self-assured. Calmer.” There’s a pause. “Happier, I think.”

Ford lets go of his spoon to drape his arm on the crook of his knee. He out across the valley, at the twinkle of lights in the town spread before them. The high cliffs, broken decades ago by technology that even now, humans can’t fully comprehend. And above them all, the clear black blanket of the night sky keeping its silent watch. The stars, white and glinting, all look like eyes to him.

“You know what?” Ford finally says, and resumes eating. “I think you might be right.”

------------------------------------

Ch. 8:

“What if he’s right?” Ford asks, the words pulled out from his mouth by some unseen force and as soon as they float before him he wishes, wishes that he could reel them in again.

Instead, Bill stares at him. And his words echo and clang, as if they are bouncing off a cymbal, growing louder instead of fainter, layering over themselves like a cacophony of startled crows. Ford claps his hands on his ears, the sound piercing through his skin and bone, sewing through his eardrums, and the last one - WHAT IF HE’S RIGHT - is like a megaphone pressed to the side of his head.

And then it’s silent. His head is ringing with brilliant chimes he knows are nothing more than mixed stimulus interpretation, but that doesn’t make them any quieter. Bill huffs, a noise Ford struggles to hear, and his muse rolls his eye.

“OH, you’d LOVE that, wouldn’t you STANFORD?” His heart clenches; something has gone horribly wrong, Bill has misunderstood him, and now he’s offended his muse, because love has to be the opposite side of the spectrum of what he’s feeling right now.

“Nuh-” Ford starts, and stops. His words sound gummy and distant, like he’s miles under water. He works his jaws up and down, expecting his ears to pop, or something. “Bill-”

“You’d just LOVE for all of THIS to be your own work, wouldn’t you? Stanford Pines, SINGULAR GENIUS! All this time I’ve been WATCHING out for you-” Eyes flare to life in the darkness around them, their fathomless gazes fixated on Ford, or stuttering and jerking in the yolky milk of their sclera, seizuring and shaking. “-and I should I have been watching out for YOU!”

“Bill, I wouldn’t- I would never-”

“I’ve SEEN it all before, too!” Bill continues. “You’d THINK I’d SEE this COMING!”

Between one blink and the next the landscape has changed. They’re in the library, endless books piled high on shelves stretching into the sky, beyond the reach of Ford’s sight. The stacks are peppered with balconies, and on each is a marble couplet – men, women, children, animals – frozen in the process of pushing one another over the balconies’ edges. As Ford stares they seem to warp subtly, their limbs elongating, or lower jaws yawning open wider and wider, eyes sinking deep into their skulls. They reset themselves when he blinks, only to begin their slow deterioration again, and a feeling like sea sickness shivers and sloshes in his stomach.

“Bill, please,” Ford says. He has to stop his plea short, clench his teeth against a hot roll of nausea in the back of his throat. He focuses on his muse, but the edges of his vision keep shifting and changing and resetting themselves.

“Always too BLIND to what’s CLOSEST to you, ain’t THAT the truth?” The shelves and bookcases tremor with his muse’s anger. One of the statues is jarred loose and slams into the ground Ford’s feet, exploding into sharp edged chunks and billowing white powder. Ford winces away, covering his face as he is pelted with tiny plinks of debris.

“Bill-”

“Well it’s just what I GET, huh! What is it that SELKIES are always saying: a human would as soon PET you as SKIN you!” It’s like Bill is speaking directly into the bones of his skull. His head aches with it. His teeth feel loose in his gums. “But HERE we are ANYWAY!”

Carlos didn’t listen to the radio anymore.

…Really!

Okay, okay, correction: Carlos shouldn’t listen to the radio anymore. And, he at least didn’t listen to the radio when anyone else was around.

There were quite a few factors that had led to this decision. He was the head of his scientific outcropping, for one thing. The leader his fellows looked to for guidance. It simply wouldn’t do for them to see him reeling at Cecil’s blithe and otherworldly announcements.

Packs of roaming dogs – possibly anarchist and almost certainly the product of a society that glorifies gang violence.

Glow clouds that drop heavy animal carcasses onto the streets and then join the PTA.

Pyramids that are nothing more than viral advertising, not that that has ever worked. Oh, but that actually reminded him, he was out of cereal, wasn’t he?

All of this and so much more, so much worse came falling out of Cecil’s mouth like he was reporting on a vaguely interesting pile of rocks collected by a local fifth grader. Cecil’s mouth. The radio host greeted him with the biggest grin every time they met. Like he was excited to find Carlos still existed, thrilled that the particular array of molecules and atoms and weird in-between fluids that constituted Carlos had remained in his absence. Cecil would remember himself, eventually; would cough or look away. Sometimes he would bite his lip to aid in chasing away his smile.

And Cecil was so tongue tied around him. It was charming, or it would have been charming, except that speechlessness in Night Vale seemed to be catching and contagious, as Carlos was often struck by the same. Directly after every blurted neat - which was more often than not but not as often as one might think – Cecil’s mouth would pull down into a devastated pout. When Carlos managed to string more than five words together, which generally turned into five paragraphs of science, Cecil’s mouth would hang open, just slightly, his eyes big and wide and totally enraptured and totally uncomprehending.

Carlos sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It still hadn’t grown out, but his haircut had just been a couple weeks ago.

Which brought him to the second factor in his decision to not listen to the radio. When all was said and done, it wasn’t, strictly speaking, surprising to hear an inflammatory and incendiary editorial from a newscaster. The… topic was unusual (and made Carlos pretty embarrassed if he thought about it for too long), but people made mountains (they’re real, Cecil) out of what Carlos considered anthills at best, all the time.

But those editorials rarely prompted full blown vigilante justice. Or at least, those editorials usually took longer before their words could seep into a population and cause it to explode outwards in violence. It had taken Cecil, like, twenty minutes, tops, to convince a town to turn on one of its own. Even a few of his small band of scientists had been taken in the sudden, violent tide. Over a haircut! When they’d gotten back, Carlos had questioned them thoroughly and scientifically, and very calmly, using scientific methods. He had not grabbed at the unevenly shorn locks of his hair in an outward display of unmanageable stress and confusion.

The shared look they had pinned him with meant something like what the hell are you talking about? And then they had said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

So, that was a little, uh.

It was-

It was definitely not good.

A later, admittedly calmer and more thorough examination of the three wayward scientists hadn’t revealed any lasting damage or abnormalities. No busted or bleeding eardrums, no apparent trigger words (they tried barber and Telly and hair cut and, to Carlos’ everlasting chagrin, Perfect Carlos) – all of which revealed nothing worse than a splitting headache and an overwhelming desire to get a slice at Big Rico’s. Oh, and Mikaela got a sunburn, which she used to request sick leave for the rest of the week. Carlos couldn’t fault her there.

Overall, they were about as close as any of them felt to normal here in Night Vale.

“…one of you out there has been using writing utensils…” the radio said, as if in dramatic emphasis of his point. Well, technically the radio did not say this, Cecil said it. In his deep and resonant voice, tone ominous and dire, dropping into a lower register as he drawled out the words writing utensils, unfurling and sinister. It drew a small shudder down his spine, his flesh pinching up into pricks of gooseflesh, and somehow, Carlos both coveted and dreaded being the target of that sentence.

Uh, that is to say, Scientifically Speaking, Cecil was a talented orator.

And used this talent for really terrible things. Carlos frowned at his dashboard, the dated knobs and tick-marked horizontal-line display of the radio, feeling the spark of Cecil’s words trying to catch in his brain. The dried out hay stack of paranoia, ready and eager to distrust those around him, particularly, as Cecil pointed out, those who knew his most incriminating secrets.

Turn on them now, Cecil didn’t have to say, before they turn on you.

His hands gripped the steering wheel tight, knuckles going pallid where the dark skin of his hands was a thin stretch over the bulging ridges of his joints. With the slippery ease of oil spilling across water’s surface, Cecil changed direction, and led them directly to Factor Three of Carlos’ Decision to Listen to the Radio Never, or Okay, Maybe Sometimes but Only Privately. Whichever.

“Just the other day, I was talking to Carlos - perfect Carlos - our resident scientist whose hair, I must say, is growing back quite nicely.”

Perfect Carlos, said with the distinct impression that Cecil was swooning, stricken with love, and Carlos shifted in his seat, embarrassed even by himself. Embarrassing, and yet, enjoyable, in a way that somehow made Carlos feel distinctly that he was taking advantage of Cecil. The scientist couldn’t explain it, to himself or to anyone else, except that maybe it was some undefined sense of guilt. He knew he wasn’t perfect, after all; whoever Cecil thought he was, whoever it was Cecil was truly gushing about on the air waves, it wasn’t Carlos. To take enjoyment in his proclamations, then, was wrong.

Now, whether this wrongness was accepted by his body or not, well, he couldn’t control that. The hot curl of warmth in his chest, his stomach, the goofy grin. The fluttering, almost giddy feeling-

“I mean, it’s kind of at that in-between stage, where you know someone has gotten a haircut, and it’s sort of growing out, but you can tell they don’t really know how to style it yet – Listeners, I’m not usually one for the scruffy, unkempt look, but Carlos the scientist wears it well!”

Uh, was his hair that bad? Cecil had said it was growing out, right? Carlos fiddled unconsciously, or perhaps self-consciously with the soft, curling ends of his hair, wondering how he could fix it. Since the red light he’d been sitting at for the past few minutes wasn’t showing signs of changing anytime soon, Carlos yanked the rearview mirror out of place, startling at the glimpse of something, rotting and ghastly in his backseat, but focusing mostly on examining himself, wondering if there was something he should be doing differently with his hair.

He ran a hand through it. He shook out the front, tried out smoothing down the sides. It always seemed to bounce back to the same configuration, dark and messy. Unkempt. Maybe he should slick it back? The idea of another hair cut – just a trim this time! – flitted uselessly through his mind, and Carlos was almost offended the thought had existed in the first place. There was no way, after the Telly Incident, that he was going to get his hair cut.

At least, not before he had a serious conversation with Cecil. So, probably never.

The loud, ear-piercing shriek of a diving bird of prey broke him out of his thoughts. The light had turned green, and an SSP officer cleverly disguised as a Slow Children: Are the First to Go sign was shaking their balaclava-clad head at him, holding a megaphone in one spray painted hand. The officer lifted the megaphone to their mouth again, and the shriek erupted from its cone shaped end once more, prompting Carlos to wince and clap his hands over his ears.

“All right, all right, I’m going!” he replied.

He worked his jaw up and down, trying to dislodge the stubborn ringing the officer’s polite notice had brought about in his ears. His actions weren’t particularly effective. He turned up the radio instead, hoping he could at least drown out the high, sharply-pitched whine that was almost certainly a sign of late-in-life tinnitus.

“…is happening currently in the station,” Cecil was saying. Carlos frowned, curious, as there was a thick, heavy pause and then a quiet intake of breath. “N-Noooope. Nothing like that at all.”

Huh. That was weird.

It was probably nothing.

Well, no, it was probably something, but it was probably something Cecil could handle. Whatever it was.

“In actual news, Old Woman Josie reports that the inhumanly tall, winged creatures who are definitely not angels, and who all go by the name Erika, have been having some, uh-” Now that was unusual. Cecil stalled for words so infrequently (on air, at least) that any slip up counted as statistically significant. “Sooooome issues with the water heater. She didn’t expand, or tell us why she thought this was news worthy, but, there you go!

“Personally, I don’t see why she needs hot water,” Cecil continued, and now Carlos was really paying attention, because his voice had lost its normal composure. Strained and tight, like he was holding himself back from something. He was still mulling this over when low groan came out over the radio, the sound shooting through his body like an electrical current, heading straight down to his-

Oh boy.

Distraction, he needed a distraction now. What had Cecil been reporting on? Old Woman Josie’s angels? No, something to do with her water heater. But it would give him an excuse to go over there, and maybe sneak a closer peak at her angels anyway. Focus on the science, not on the breathy – was he panting now, Jesus, Cecil – voice that delivered the news. He had a goal now, an idea of what was going on in town; the reason he listened to Cecil’s show, as Carlos told himself. He could – he should – just turn the radio off right now-

“Oh, yes, do keep going,” Cecil purred, an expression Carlos had never heard encapsulated so fully, and it was followed up by a wet, choked gasp. Yeah, it would probably be for the best to keep this on. “With the, uh, news! Of course. The news.” How Cecil made that phrase sound so dirty, it should have been illegal. Was it illegal? Did this count as some sort of public indecency?

Cecil continued on with his report, voice deep and rough and making it very difficult to concentrate properly on the content of his speech. He was talking about something, and Carlos, through the application of logic and critical thinking, could conclude for himself that that something was, well, somewhere. Existing? He was thankful there weren’t many other drivers out on the road. The rest of Night Vale was probably busy listening to Cecil’s broadcast as well.

Carlos dug his nails into the faux-leather finish of his steering wheel, gritting his teeth. There was a sharp, angry thrashing in the pit of his stomach that caused Carlos a brief moment of panic before he recognized it for an emotion and not, say, a grotesquely huge parasite about to erupt through his skin and viscera. Though even that might be preferable to the admission that he was feeling a bit possessive of the radio host currently giving a breathless report concerning the secret police dropping canisters of tear gas onto reporters. Just the thought of that, and its possible ramifications – freedom of press, at least! – should have doused his arousal, but to his shame, it really didn’t.

Well, it did a little, but then his mind helpfully crafted a scenario in which he was in the booth with Cecil, biting and suckling at the other’s smooth flesh, licking long, slow stripes over heated skin while Cecil trembled above him, fingers tangled in the perfect hair he so loved to extrapolate upon and body squirming, pinioned in place by Carlos’ hands on his hips while Cecil forced himself to concentrate, to finish the news segment and get to the weather, wherein he would-

No, no, that wasn’t helping things, thanks though.

One his hands had even drifted down to his lap, palming at himself through the rough denim of his jeans. It was testament to how badly Carlos was affected that he allowed himself a moment, enjoying the little tingles of electricity flaring through his body, rolling his hips against his own hand. And god, Cecil was not helping matters, releasing a noise on air that was nothing but tortured consonants and then a high-pitched, thready whine that had Carlos longing to be in that sound booth with the radio host, so that he could give Cecil what he so desperately needed.

Not, uh, not that he knew what Cecil needed. Though with the way the radio host said his name, Carlos thought he had a pretty good idea of how he could help Cecil.

“…About the station? About how it was definitely not the site of strange, or unexpected, o-or slick and, uh, distracting events?” Cecil was saying. Carlos had managed to wrest control of his hands and had them both firmly planted on the steering wheel once again. The few coherent thoughts he had were dedicated to wondering if he had accidentally turned onto one of the spatial-loop streets again, because he was pretty sure he should have reached the used car lot by now. “Well, that was-”

Cecil cut out again, and Carlos grit his teeth so hard he could hear the tension sizzling in his ears and above that white noise sound was nothing but Cecil’s muffled groaning, and slick, wet sounds, like flesh sliding on flesh, little strangled gulps set to an uneven, irregular beat, like something was hitting the back of Cecil’s throat repeatedly and wow, Carlos was going to crash his damn car if this kept going. In the back of his mind, it occurred to him that he should probably be worried about what was happening at the radio station.

There was a wet pop and then coughing, and then wet, ragged breathing. His mind, unbidden, provided him a wonderful image of Cecil on his knees, Carlos’ hand buried in his hair and dragging him off his aching cock. Pop, just like that, when those talented lips slipped off the head of his dick.

“Uhhh… Where was I?” Cecil sounded utterly disoriented, dreamy and languid even as his voice came out thick and gravelly, like the deep, sonorous sliding of tectonic plates. “Oh! Yes! The… station. Everything is great, here! Here, at the station. Yup.” Okay, Cecil didn’t sound believable there at all. But he had interns, right? Night Vale wouldn’t actually let something bad happen to their beloved radio host.

Right?

Carlos drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He pulled his car over, just to get a better idea of where he even was, not to prepare to turn around and head to the radio station. If something was happening there, maybe it would turn out to be scientifically interesting. Definitely worth looking into. The angels could wait, Carlos reasoned. And for how helpful they seemed to be around Old Woman Josie’s house, they could be considered withholding when it came to indulging scientific curiosity.

“…everyone’s favorite scientist, Carlos! Isn’t that… something!” Carlos sucked in a sharp, trembling breath, because whatever he had expected out of today, it had definitely not been Cecil saying his name like that, his voice so dark and rough. Like Cecil was right there with him, was seconds away from pouncing on him with predatory intent. “He’s heading over there right now, to do some sort of science, I would imagine! And all without the use of writing utensils, Steve Carlsburg.”

It was absolutely a problem when even Cecil’s aggressive, Steve-Carlsburg-induced annoyance did little to dampen Carlos’ arousal. Though he wasn’t super keen on hearing Cecil say anyone else’s name at just this second. And Cecil just sighed, sweet and wistful.

“Apparently, Old Woman Josie – or perhaps her tall friends, who are totally not angels, you guys – or perhaps just her faulty water heater, have become the subject of Carlos’ scientific inquiry.” There it was again, Cecil’s voice dipping into those lower registers, the words spilling from his lips like thick black ink. It sent a shudder down Carlos’ spine.

“Can you even imagine?” Cecil was breathless.

“Being the subject of such focused, intense scrutiny?” Oh. Yes, Carlos could suddenly imagine that. Imagine Cecil-

“Helping out both science as an over-arching ideal, and a beloved member of our small community?” That, somehow, finally, was the last straw, Cecil saying it like he was in process of dragging Carlos down a dark hall, like they were already tumbling into sheets together, like Cecil was lying spread in wait and ready for Carlos to pull him to pieces.

Carlos fumbled with his belt and unbuttoned his jeans, yanking himself out with almost too much forth and trembling as his fevered skin was exposed to the artificially cooled air of his car. His car, god, he was in his car, but he really didn’t care. He fisted himself, hips bucking, feet scrambling to plant anywhere on the flooring that wouldn’t result in the engine revving to life. The last sane part of his mind was reminding him that he really shouldn’t be doing this - the consequences for law-breaking in Night Vale were often vaguely sinister or sinisterly specific, and while he didn’t remember which one Public Indecency fell under, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

There didn’t seem to be room for anything in his body but bright, flaring need. It was a heat that sparked along every inch of nerve, root and ending alike. A heat that made his toes curl and his chest ache and pooled low in his gut while his heart beat became rapid and erratic. And all he could hear was Cecil, his quiet panting and bitten back whines, voice rumbling and grating and deep. Cecil, saying his name. Carlos, he would say, sighing and longing and full of too much, so many emotions Carlos couldn’t name them all, oh, perfect, yes-

And as perfect as the image was, of Cecil lost in pleasure beneath him, a pliant and eager thing, an inscrutable piece of Night Vale itself subject to rigorous scientific inquiry as Cecil would say. As wonderful as all that undeniably was, Carlos’ body jerked and stuttered and he came into his own palm thinking of Cecil on any other day. His face lighting up – sometimes literally – at the sight of Carlos, how Cecil acted like nothing of note existed outside of the space Carlos immediately existed within. How Cecil had once spent literal hours listening to Carlos ramble about science and though Carlos would eat his own shoe if Cecil had retained more than a sentence’s worth of information from it, the radio host’s attention had never drifted, his eyes never glazed over; Cecil had never tuned out the boring, stuttering scientist who got too enthusiastic about possibly-non-existent earthquakes.

Hell, Carlos even thought of that annoying way Cecil had of condescending to him, when something ridiculous and outrageous and against all laws of reason and science happened, something that was just so completely Night Vale happened, like Carlos was the outlandish one, not this insane town.

Most of all, though, he just thought of Cecil, strange and sweet and intimidating and utterly smitten. Of the terror of instantly and how the disappointment he’d expected to follow such a proclamation had never come.

The weather report was drawing to a close as Carlos slumped bonelessly in his seat. When his heart stopped thudding so loudly in his ears and his breathing rate had returned to its typical 16 breaths a minute, Carlos began to move again. Cecil came back on, sounding for all the world like the past 30 minutes of broadcast hadn’t occurred. Well, except for him referencing it? Carlos guessed? He still wasn’t sure what was going on, but Cecil sounded like himself again, if vaguely annoyed and disappointed.

“Remember, Night Vale, every mistake you make, every minor indiscretion you commit, carries unspeakable – and, I might remind you – completely avoidable consequences.” Carlos shuddered, unpleasantly this time. “Stay tuned next for the quiet, vigorous sounds of lemon scent scrubbing, and deep, unflinching feeling that you will never truly be clean again.”

For once, as Carlos stared at his white-splattered hand, he thought he knew exactly what Cecil meant.

Chews me up and spits me out, and then walks my ass home

Maybe they had both tried to fight it. Or maybe neither of them had.

Summer, sweltering and long, had stretched and stretched and stretched. They had lost track of the days. They had spent hours in the scrublands, Cecil’s skin darkening and Earl’s freckling. Cecil had gone one day without a shirt, and Earl had warned him, halfheartedly, about how bad of an idea that was but Cecil had rolled his eyes and said something like uhh, I think I know what I’m doing? in that weird lilting thing he did sometimes and Earl had shrugged.

The tops of Cecil’s back and chest and all over his shoulders were raw and red and, on their peaks, blistering. He’d teared up when Earl had rubbed salve across his tender skin but made no moves to pull away. Those tears had finally spilled when Earl pressed maybe a little too hard in some places, mesmerized at the slick feel of it. The way the top layer of his skin was so thin and translucent where fluids built up beneath it. He wondered at the kind of pressure Cecil must feel when he dug his thumb into their centers, and then he kissed his friend’s tears away and told Cecil you’re an idiot.

Cecil hummed, wet and quiet and miserable, in agreement.

They hunted animals. Well, mostly Earl hunted, and Cecil practiced waxing philosophical about everything under the flat, blank eye of the sun. A rock. A bush. A particularly clumped and, in Earl’s opinion, boring mound of dirt. Also in Earl’s opinion, Cecil was already good enough at waxing philosophical. It seemed to be an inborn talent of his, and one that Cecil insisted on practicing almost constantly, for one reason or another.

“It’s for poetry week,” Cecil had told him once, lying sprawled on his couch with his feet in the air and his head dangling upside down, close to the ground.

“It’s for the radio,” Cecil said more often now, and he said the radio like it was a creature to be cooed and awed at and placated.

“Don’t you ever see it?” Cecil had asked him, in the middle of the night, cold and shaking. His knees were damp from the ground, mud caked onto pieces of him in a patternless array. Asked Earl after waking him up and going on and on about a dark planet lit by no sun, with deep oceans and thick, gnarled forests, and craggy mountain peaks.

“Uhhh, no?” Earl was pretty sure that wasn’t the right answer. He’d tugged Cecil close and let his friend shiver out the rest of the next to his side, limbs entangled so he knew Cecil couldn’t slip away. Limbs entangled so Cecil knew he wouldn’t be dragged off into the orbit of some lightless, pulsating nothingness.

“It’s so I can remember,” Cecil said in the desert. The day had ground on and on and on, and now the sky was a murky twilight around them, dry and warm, all violets and dark hues, shadows elongated and dripping into one another. The fire crackled and popped. Grease dripped off the meaty, sinuous carcasses of Earl’s prey and sizzled in the open flame.

Cecil was sitting on a rock, a blanket he’d brought from home used as a cushion. Earl sat on the hard Earth next to him, resting his head against Cecil’s knee.

“Just the Important stuff,” Cecil continued. A hand insinuated itself into Earl’s hair, cool fingers and dragging, scraping nails whose movements echoed and radiated down along his spine. “Like how time can be so strange and so constant all at once. At any other point on the long and circuitous timeline, we would not be here. Just an hour or two in either direction - or even a minute, or even a second - we would not be where we are. We would not be who we are. There are so many tiny moments just like this one. Where would we be right now if even a single one of them had gone differently? Who would we be?”

The fire crackled and popped. Grease dripped off the meaty, sinuous carcasses of unnamed animals and Earl leaned forward. He rolled the sticks that speared them so a new aspect of their muscle was exposed to the lick of the flames. He tried to reach that precise char Cecil seemed to like, and that someone had once told him was exceptionally carcinogous. Probably, Cecil was the one who told him that.

“I’m afraid,” Cecil admitted. It was soft and quiet, like a distant roll of thunder. The mere preemptor to something huge and dark and roiling. Earl considered this fact. He scooted back until his spine rested on the rock once more and then reached up, tugging Cecil down to be level with him. There’s nothing to be scared of, he could say, but he didn’t want to. They both knew there was, objectively, more to fear in the world than there was to take comfort from.

“Will you tell me? What you’re scared of?”

Cecil told him. Earl didn’t remember most of it. He mostly remembered the smell of smoke and ash, the bitter taste of carbon, the sweeter, salty taste of Cecil’s skin. How it looked, lit by moonlight and the flickers of dying embers. How Cecil looked, when he was a dark silhouette against a darker sky, when his features were soft and blurred by the early morning sun. The smoothness of his skin, with its frequent breaks for puckered scars and long swathes of old, silky burns. The raw patches where he’d fallen recently, the familiar places – his neck, his hips, a particular spot along his ribs – that had him shaking and sighing. Cecil’s hands on him, exploratory and claiming, gripping and digging and biting.

Cecil’s voice, saying his name. Reduced to whimpers, and reduced to broken sentences, and finally, reduced to huffed pants of air, quick and heaving.

They spent their increasingly short nights curled together, breath ghosting over skin.

The bathroom door is one-way and tends to slam shut behind anyone too vigorous or distracted to guide it back to its resting, entropic default.

 Cecil and Earl stumble inwards, the door yielding in fear to the combined weight of their bodies, and neither of them have the free hand necessary to snag onto the door’s edge. It bangs shut but neither of them hear. The only sounds they are keyed in to are the wet, sucking sounds of lip against lip, the jarring clack of teeth when one of them tilts their head without warning. The rustle of clothing, high-pitched keening whines stuck in the backs of throats, thick whimpers released to the uncaring void of the night above.

 They manage to clamber into a stall, Cecil’s hands buried with strands of red hair tangled between his fingers and Earl’s roaming up and down the dip of a spine or the jutting outline of hip bones. The scout cups his palms against the fleshy curves of Cecil’s ass, pulls and grinds and fills the bathrooms with –

 “Oh, oh! Earl,” purred and satisfied and as dark as chocolate, as strong, disgustingly bitter coffee. “Is that a new badge?”

 Earl doesn’t respond. Or he does, by way of digging his teeth into the soft, yielding flesh of Cecil’s neck. He can feel skin and corded muscled beneath his mouth, and Cecil’s body quivering like a plucked heart string, all stretchy lines and life-sustaining tension. They crash into a wall, Earl’s hands slipping down to claw into the backs of Cecil’s thighs and his darling, distracted radio host hiking his legs up, crossing slender ankles at the base of his spine, and one long roll of his hips has them both moaning. Cecil tosses his head back, a resounding crack against the stale tiles of the bathroom wall and Earl feels carefully manicured fingertips gouging crescents into his shoulders.

 They were supposed to be doing an interview. Something for Cecil’s new listenership. It had, obviously, predictably, gotten out of hand. Earl pulls away to look at his old friend’s artfully messed hair, sticking with sweat to his forehead in some places, like at his temples. A flush has suffused his cheeks, the vaguely violet color that can barely be picked out from the color of his skin. Cecil watches him, digs white teeth into the plump curve of his own lip, and with a smooth, sinuous motion that ripples down his spine, has ground their hips together again.

 “Cripes, Cecil,” Earl murmurs, licking a clean line along Cecil’s jaw. Cecil laughs and the sound is a little mean, but ultimately familiar.

 And then a sound that is utterly unfamiliar pierces the air. It sounds like the grating of bone against bone, inside a joint that was once fluid and supple but through time and wear has been ground down to rough, skipping surface over rough, skipping surface. Grinding, anxious molars, sharp rocks pressed beneath booted feet, the quiet whine of a bone as pressure is applied and applied and applied until it snaps. It is a sound that slips through the membrane of his eardrum and settles deeper inside. It is the sound of tension, skin pulled until it shreds apart, the last frayed twines of a rope right before it snaps and lets you plummet down a cliff side, bouncing against rocky outcrops on the way down.

 Cecil moans and rolls his eyes.

It's Always Someone Else's Fault

“I want you to know,” Bill says, in a part of the dream Ford won’t remember. Brains, man – too easy. “There’s one big, bad truth to life, the multiverse, and everything in it, and do you have ANY idea what that is?”

Ford shakes his head, bemused and captivated. Like he doesn’t notice that the hands Bill has cradling his cheeks have turned and begun to dig claws into the soft meat of his skin and fat til they hit teeth.

“Everyone – and I DO mean everyone – gets EXACTLY what they deserve, Sixer,” Bill says. There’s no blood, not while Bill’s in control and most of Ford’s higher processing is taking a nap. It’s superfluous details like that that get a message all muddied up. “Wait, that’s not right; everyone gets exactly what they EARN! You – me – big dumb babies – everybody! Now isn’t that a comforting thought?”

Eh, Ford can’t answer, can he? Dumb and mute, mute and dumb. Didn’t they mean the same thing? This isn’t really about having a conversation anyway. Bill just wants this idea to take root somewhere in the back of Ford’s mind. A beautiful, delicate flower, whose petals uncurl into a mouth that whispers in the dark.

“I want you to remember that, Fordsy! Because there’s a day coming, probably soon, but who am I? Nostradamus?” Laugh track laughter riots in, jumbled and monotonous and abruptly silent. “Okay, I helped him but I wasn’t him.

“What I’m saying is, things change. And when they do, you’ll probably be asking yourself something like oohhh, what did I ever do to deserve this.” Bill sprouts an extra hand which he holds against his upper corner, charading that he’s swooning. And then it drops and clamps around the back of Ford’s head, tangles fingers in his hair and yanks him back.

“And I just want you to THINK real hard about that!”

The scene changes. Ford is on a boat. He blinks, as if startling out of a daydream, eyes blinded by the sparkling, reflective sunlight dancing on the restless water. Wind blows in heavy surges and makes waves that move across the sea in straight lines like marching soldiers. When Ford breathes in, it’s salty and brackish and clean – all the best parts of the ocean, with all the worst carefully extracted.

His forearms are resting against the battered wooden railing bordering the stem of the ship and he straightens himself. He wonders where Bill might be. His whole body feels warm, like he has been on the prow of the boat all day. Ford smiles, an upwards tick of one edge of his lips, when he sees that his skin has been darkened to imply a life – or at least a few weeks’ time – on the sea. The waves below slap against the side of the boat, wet and quiet, rhythmic, hollow. It’s a sound he had heard only a few times in his childhood, and that he had dreamed about for many years after, even without Bill’s help.

When had he stopped dreaming about it? About this?

There are gulls crowing, too, high pitched and creaking. Ford remembers that he said they sounded sad, one day on the beach. Stan had laughed and punched his arm, and then they’d pretended to fight. They’d rolled around in the coarse sand until they were both laughing, and the thought had left his mind. Ford had spent the rest of that afternoon pasting bandaids across their raw scraped skin. A melody cuts through the haze of his nostalgia, rolling out from the cabin to his right.

“Dream, dream dream dream,” croons out, static-y like the records Ma would put on in the living room. Ford knows the song, of course, and it makes something fluttery and nervous flare to life in his stomach. The door to the cabin swings open without a sound, and Bill steps out. Bill and not Bill, because what steps out is a human, and Ford freezes in place.

Is he dreaming? Is this not the mindscape? This Bill – lithe and tall, blond, golden-eyed – it’s not unfamiliar. It is, in fact, a design entirely of his own conception, the result of his daydreams. Idle thoughts made flesh about how his muse might look if he were ever inclined to be less geometrical. Ford swallows, his palms sweaty and his hand clenching into fists as Bill saunters closer. The song keeps playing.

“Thought I’d change things up a bit!” Bill says, an explanation of sorts. “But you’re looking a little seasick there, Sixer!”

“Bill, I- What are you doing?” Stupid question – Bill has come to a stop just before him. Ford can feel his heart hammering in his chest as his muse reaches out a hand, but Bill only settles it on the railing behind him, effectively locking Ford in place on one side. Bill is so warm. Ford’s skin tingles where Bill’s arm brushed against it. “What is all this?”

How did you know?

“I’m in your mind, Fordsy! What did you think that meant?” Bill taps a finger on Ford’s temple, a move that he uses to transition into petting through his thick dark hair. It’s all too much and Ford feels a growing urge to put distance between them, wary of the other shoe that must be waiting to drop. “No more secrets! And I have to say, this one’s a doozy, huh? I’m impressed you managed to keep it to yourself for so long!”

Bill is too much, a figure plucked right out of his dreams. Smiling at him, leaning in to him. This isn’t something that happens to him, to people like him. What has he even been thinking, entertaining thoughts like this? Bill tugs lightly at his hair, and Ford clears his throat, awkwardly slipping his hand in the scant space between them to adjust his glasses.

“I know we’re technically both in your head right now, but do you mind getting out of yours for a second IQ?” Bill is taller than him like this, just a little, and he’s grinning down at him as if the world is a joke only he can figure out. No, that’s not quite right; because what Ford feels, staring up at him, is that Bill wants him in on the joke as well.

“I have to admit, I’m still not sure what this is all about,” Ford says. He isn’t sure what to do with his hands, so he presses them against his thighs.

“Giving you what you want! I thought that was obvious!”

Whenever I want you, all I have to do is, the radio sings, and Bill’s fingers tighten in his hair and pull, and Ford finds himself tilting his head back to follow his lead. And then his muse has darted forward, pressing their lips together, his stray arm leaving the railing to rest a hand at the small of Ford’s back. He stays stock still, almost afraid to move, too nervous to really enjoy himself. But Bill’s lips are warm and soft, and his touch is strangely grounding while Ford feels like he’s floundering. His muse sidles even closer, slotting a leg between his own.

When Bill retreats it’s with a grin. Ford is surprised to realize he moved his hands to Bill’s hips at some point, sliding around to the dipping curve of his spin and encouraging him closer. It could be a trick of the light, but Bill’s eyes look like they’re glowing. A warm breeze rustles his hair. It’s like a scene out of a movie. He should be grateful – he is grateful, truly, for this and even more, for everything else Bill has given him. Nevertheless, there is some lingering sense of wrongness about all of this.

They stay for a moment, Bill’s fingers stroking up and down the back of his neck sending endless waves of shivers and goosebumps down his core. And it almost feels possessive, the way Bill remains, for once, in his arms. The way he lets Ford’s hands stay hooked onto his hips. Ford digs his fingers in and leans forward to press chaste kisses along the slope of Bill’s neck. He smells bright and fresh, like rain, like the sharp promise of lightning. Bill laughs and tilts his head to the side, giving him more room.

“That’s the spirit!” Bill says, encouraging. His skin is feverishly hot beneath Ford’s mouth, and Ford earns a shudder out of him when he grazes his teeth over a sensitive spot near his jawline. It’s gratifying. Ford still pulls away.

“Bill,” he says. His muse opens his eyes and straightens to regard him. A smile plays sweetly across Bill’s lips. There’s a writhing, sinking, twisting feeling in Ford’s chest, but he continues anyway. He says, “this isn’t what I want.”

A slight furrow develops between Bill’s eyebrows, like he’s not entirely sure what he’s hearing. Ford can understand his confusion – after all, his muse has had to dredge through the slurry of his mind to come up with the skin he’s currently wearing. He even feels unappreciative, rejecting something Bill has crafted for him so thoughtfully. Still, Ford can’t shake the discomfort, that only increases in sharp, exponential lines every time he hears the rush of waves or the creaky-door squeal of a seagull high above. He extracts his hands from Bill’s hips and cups them instead around his cheeks.

“This isn’t the you I want, Bill.”

It’s uncanny, because Bill looks absolutely baffled, and his expression seems like the first genuine one Ford has ever seen. He has no proof of this, just a gut feeling. There’s a rawness to Bill’s perfectly sculpted face that hasn’t been evident previously. And, Ford spies, a light flush has suffused his muse’s cheeks. Ford likes to think that he has caught Bill off guard, and delivered a compliment so unexpected that even Bill - Bill - could not see it coming.

And then Bill just bursts into laughter. Howling laughter, like a yelping hyena. Laughter that’s hard enough to make him hunch over, holding onto one of Ford’s shoulders for support. Ford smiles, though he isn’t sure he understands the joke, and pats Bill’s back. He lays his palm flat on Bill’s spine, feeling his chest shaking beneath it. The sensation drives a short, sharp tac into his heart somewhere. It’s been a long time since he has touched another person like this.

“Wow, Stanford Pines, certified heartbreaker – who knew!” Bill says as he straightens. “Well in that case, go ahead! It’s your mindscape, show me what you want!” It’s fascinating to study how expressive Bill is a human, his mirth and excitement unabashed. Ford is grinning as he watches an apparently great idea flash into his muse’s mind. Bill perks even further and slaps him on the shoulder. “Oh, I know, let’s make it a game! You show me something YOU want, and then I’LL show you something you want!”

“Don’t you mean something you want?” Ford asks.

“Isn’t that what I said?” Bill beams and Ford frowns. “I’m like an open book here, Sixer, but YOU’VE got layers!” Ford snorts. If there was one single phrase that could be said to be the least fitting descriptor of his flighty muse, like an open book was a definite contender. “Layers, and repression! And I’m gonna help you shed off both!”

If Bill thinks he can scare Ford off now, well, he might be right. But Ford can spot a challenge when it’s laid down, and is always willing to rise to the occasion. Ford closes his eyes. His hands are anchoring pinions, clenched to Bill’s hips, as he feels the world drips away like thick, melting wax beneath his feet. It’s his own doing, but it’s still disorienting. When the dizzying vertigo seeps off into the void around them, Ford opens his eyes to the night sky.

Bill is in his arms, flesh and bone and hot, coursing blood. The reflective light of a million non-existent constellations shimmer dully in his eyes. Above the couple, unseen, a nebula opens its own glowing, consumptive eye.

“So that’s ONE thing you want, Sixer,” Bill says. He can’t seem to help it, he darts forward and plants a short, sharp peck of a kiss. “Now let’s see one MORE!”

Bill’s skin unravels like knitted wool unspooling. Globules of waxy human pieces float in the air among the ribbons of flesh. Sharp jags of white, sun-bleached bone are scattered among the refuse. Ford’s stomach roils. His insides feel hot and molten and his skin feels cold, ice cold, and goosebumps prickle across his flesh. There’s a bright, blinding light that Ford is forced to turn away from. He lifts a hand, shielding his eyes. Like the phantom lick of an open flame, his skin heats where the light touches. When he can look again, that light has burned away Bill’s human remnants, and left in its wake is Bill, strange and alien.

“My turn?” Ford ventures, and watches that eye twitch upwards in what he knows is a smile.

Arms and arms and arms sprout. They are the creeping black of the sticky night, the spider web in which stars and planets hang. They elongate and curl and pet over him, utterly soft and utterly inhuman. They pull him close. They stroke against his skin, following the straight lines of his bones and the curves of his fat and muscle. They slither between his thighs and cup the backs of his legs. Long fingers encircle his wrists and ankles. Press thumbs into the sides of his throat, rubbing at the ridges of his esophagus and the splayed butterfly of his thyroid.

“My turn,” Bill says next. The hands around Ford stick to his flesh like wet paper and become chains. His arms are dragged behind his back. His legs are bent and rather than floating nebulously, he slams into a hard ground. A collar fits heavy around his throat, tight enough to press bruises against the hyoid bone of his neck when he swallows.

A violent shudder raises the fine hairs on his body as it clatters down along his vertebrae. An unpleasant – and beneath, a deeply pleasant - heat suffuses his cheeks and pools low in his organs. Ford’s first reaction is vehement denial. His second, third, and fourth are frantic, pleading, and embarrassed denial. The words rise in the back of his throat like bile, and he can feel them eating away at the back of his teeth in their eagerness to be expelled.

He chokes them down. The denials and the refutes and the rationalities – all the things that would, at any other time, distance him from these base urges. Protect and shelter him from an outsider’s expected revulsion. The words that are a last bulwark between himself and the world. Ford swallows them back down. He sucks in a great breath through clenched teeth and feels his chest shake. And then he allows his head to hang forward, under the weight of the collar slung around his neck.

Under the greater weight of a muse’s (god’s, a god’s) all-seeing eye.

It feels like the universe he has conjured holds its breath as well.

A hand cards through his hair, fingers crooked and turned so claws drag across his scalp and he shivers. Bill is touching him. No. Not just touching. This isn’t one of the friendly, mindless gestures Bill usually plies him with. Bill isn’t ruffling his hair, his fingers aren’t just running over his skin. He’s being stroked, and it’s insistent, demanding. It’s possessive.

Bill is petting him.

A slurry of combative emotions mixes in his chest. But if Ford lets all that go, releases the flotsam and jetsam of his emotional mind…

“Good boy, Sixer,” Bill says. The sound doesn’t seem localized, thrumming deep in the taut membrane of his ear drums. “I think the game’s over, don’t you?” Ford’s eye are shut – he isn’t sure when they did that. He nods, and wonders which of them won. A hand strokes down his cheek. He turns his head to capture its velvety fingers in his mouth, rolling his tongue across them. Bright laughter bursts around him like super novas. “You know what? Let’s call it a tie.”

Ford is terrified. His heartbeat is frantic, and some part of him feels it is timed to something outside himself. Not the deep, elongated quivering of the bass notes of the universe, but a high-pitched, shivering thing, full of energy rather than entropy. He doesn’t think of the blackness of night but the radiance of stars, the flare of fusions – he thinks of arcs of heat and light pulling themselves free of a distance sun. Bubbling and boiling hot and brief. The surface below him is firm, the chains around him are grounding. Hands drip over him like ink, slow and staining.

“Haven’t you always wanted this, Fordsy? Okay, not this scenario specifically, that would be kinda crazy! But you want to be chosen. Noticed. Stand out in the crowd. Wanted above everyone else. Well, guess what, buddy? You got your wish!”

Hands and heat and stricture.

“You know how many humans there are on just one planet? A lot! And out of every single one of them, you’re the only one I wanted! The only one CAPABLE enough, SMART enough, DRIVEN enough and- you get the idea, right?”

Shaking and trembling and pleading.

“Shhh, shhh, you don’t even have to ask for a thing here, Sixer! I already KNOW what you want, right? You don’t have to ask. Haven’t I always given you everything you need?”

Coiling and tightening, grinding teeth and licking tongues.

“Just like that. You’re it, Fordsy, this is all for you. I’ve said it before – you’re special. I wouldn’t do this for just ANY genius, you know.”

Something bites his throat and sucks on the flesh clinging to his hipbones. Something claims his mouth and tugs his hair and traces symbols into the skin of his back. Ford recognizes the patterns from their work – Sirius, traced down from either scapula; Polaris, fingers tracking along the indents between his ribs; Algorab, from his floating ribs down to the small of his back, ending a looping circle.

“See? Even in ways I can’t predict! Even in ways you can’t control, Sixer! Always impressing me, and you don’t even have to try!”

It feels like breath hot and damp on the back of his neck.

“And there’s only one thing left for you to do for me. Isn’t that right?”

Too much- it’s too much- he can’t-

“LOVE the enthusiasm! Now, come on, Sixer, come on.”

And blinding white. Shivering limbs. Only one name on his tongue, stretched and repeated until it loses all meaning, until Ford’s tongue is numb, until his muscle tremble and sag and he is grateful he doesn’t have to hold himself up.

Then nothing.

Then, inexplicably, something.

Ford groans as awareness seeps into his body. His last memories are of the mindscape. Without thinking, he rubs at his neck, where he expects to find crescent-shaped punctures and oval bruises. Little blossoms of erupted capillaries. Instead he finds unblemished skin and tense, knotted muscles. He – his body – is sitting at his desk. His coffee pot sits directly on the table, and has clearly damaged the wood beneath its smooth surface. He reaches out a hand – it’s cool to the touch, and mostly empty.

Everything wars with one another. His mind tells him what aches he should feel – bite marks littering his body like scattered dust, bruises around his wrists and ankles and neck – and his body disagrees. His neck aches and his back throbs and it would probably be good to suspend his feet above heart-level for a while. A migraine spasms at his temples with each hear beat. It leaves him disoriented. It feels like there is a time delay between his deliberations and his actions. He tries to pick up a corner of the graph before him and waits, one-Mississippi-two-Mississippi-three-Mississippi-four before he watches his hand surge forth, clumsy like he’s wearing a glove.

None of it matters.

None of it matters because stretched out before him, with various paperback books stacked up as paperweights, is the diagram. The Diagram. The completed plans. Straight lines and sloping lines, rings within rings all placed together at last. The specs are listed out in a neat table in the bottom right. A helpful scaling guide is drawn next to it in achingly perfect detail.

This is- this is it. This is what it will be. This is what Ford will build. All the scraps of data, the endless formulas, the equations and numbers and thought experiments – they have all coalesced, finally, suddenly, and just a few months ago, this would have been alien to him. But he knows the symbols that ring around the portal’s entrance, he knows the catalysts and the reactants and the inhibitors he will need to gather to conduct the precisely timed reactions he needs. His hand strokes over the page, delayed and soft and reverent.

There are not words for how he feels, and for the first time in his adult life, Ford thinks back to the quasi-religious upbringing he’d been reared in. He thinks of the stilted descriptions the angels received, beings at once awesome and awful, beautiful and dreadful, terrific and terrifying. He thinks he might at last understand. The flooding of something larger than oneself. Ford feels lighter, more joyed, more elated and excited and eager than he has ever before in his life.

And, at the same time, he has never felt sicker. He looks at the schematics, at his life’s work, and his stomach drops and drops like someone has fed him a sphere of dark matter. Panic and despair, because- because-

“Bill,” he says, his tongue thick and numb in his mouth, and he doesn’t wait for the light in the corner of his eyes, or the chiming tone of his muse. “Bill, I can’t build this.”

“I know you can’t, Sixer!” comes the immediate reply. “But you know someone who CAN!”

The call is predictably awkward. This is meant in a very literal manner, as Ford had modeled for Bill multiple times over a majority of the last two days using increasingly obscure, complex, and emotionally distressing equations. His muse enjoyed the quantification of human emotions, but not so much the argumentations. According to Bill, there was no one better suited for this work than McGucket, and it couldn’t have just been a coincidence that the universe had plopped a connection like that in Ford’s lap.

Coincidences aren’t real! Just like consequences! Or TIME! Time Babies are real, though! Unfortunately real.

It isn’t that Ford doubts his muse. He knows – knew – Fiddleford McGucket is talented. If his old college buddy has kept up with his esoteric hobby of building robotic monstrosities, all of which used to run on his own custom-made engines, well, Fiddleford will definitely be up for the task of helping him. Still, the thought of calling him makes his palms sweat and his stomach do flip-flops. Bill doesn’t have any advice for him in this category.

Look, call your old pal Glasses or don’t! It’s up to you! You’re still gonna change the world, Fordsy! Even if it takes an extra ohh, say, 30 years as you get caught up to where your buddy is now in the realm of mechanical engineering and whirligig-tinkering!

I thought you said time wasn’t real, Bill.

Hey, don’t get smart with me Smart Guy! Besides, consistency isn’t real either!

So Ford stalls for a day or two. He obsesses over the design during this time. As though through sheer willpower, or perhaps a heretofore unknown property of osmosis, he could acquire the mastery necessary to build his portal. Or maybe if he flips it upside, it won’t seem so challenging to complete… hmm, no that makes it worse.

He is too eager to wait much longer. He calls Fiddleford and they make small talk. How have you been? Good. Oh, not much. How’s the family? Ford learns Fiddleford’s father passed about six months back. How’s Elizabeth? She left Fiddleford years ago, but it’s all right – he’s met someone new. Ford and Fiddleford enjoy a brief spat about the future of personal-use-electronics (Ford is certain that it can’t be done, and more certain than ever from his years in this quiet, wooded hick-town that most of the general population will never find a use for a computer).

And then Ford drops the bomb.

Well, he carefully lowers the bomb to the ground.

Ford starts off slow. Brings up theories both of them remember from college. Many of them had been the topic of fierce, late night debate as they sat on one bed together in their dorm room, drinking warm beers because their mini-fridge had been disassembled and reassembled into a machine that passed butter. Fiddleford still has his reservations. He says something folksy about the probability of multiple dimensions existing in the way Ford describes, but Ford can’t make heads or tails of the idiom involved. Something about a possum and a June bug. Fiddleford’s tone, however, is easy enough to read. Skepticism, with an oily patina of have you lost your damn mind.

But he listens. His friend listens to him. And that was the hard part, because now Ford eases into the science of the thing. His excitement grows as he speaks and like a plague, he can feel it spread to Fiddleford. There’s the sound of a pen scratching on paper as Ford talks, Fiddleford only interrupting for ask for clarification here and there (pointed, intelligent observations that oh, Ford has missed so much) or to quietly exclaim something about buttering biscuits. The conversation stretches for almost two hours and Ford has only begun to string out the barebones of the operation.

“You’ve really done this, haven’t you?” Fiddleford asks in a hushed tone. They had fallen silent, Fiddleford staring in something like a blank horror at his crude notes and Ford doing much the same as he flips through notebook after notebook of Bill’s work.

“I have,” Ford replies. “But I can’t do it alone. Fiddleford, I need your help.”

Fiddleford buys his plane ticket that night.

Ford falls asleep easily that night, awakening into his mindscape. It’s a library without a ceiling, his usual nightscape above. Marble statues, bleach white from time and age, are arrayed in pairs throughout the great hall. Ford notices as he walks along that in each pair – here two lovers sighing, here two men grappling, here two children running – one of the statues is missing its face. Not missing in the sense that there is a blank slate, but missing in the sense of cracked and broken marble. Like their faces have been smashed in a fit of rage.

Even for Ford, it’s not exactly subtle.

“Bill?” he finally says. He’s staring at the chipped, maimed face of a young man. It looks like someone has taken a chisel to it. The right angle, staccato wounds remind Ford of a rock quarry he had seen once.

“What?” comes the reply from behind him. Arms wind around his chest. “I’m just saying, not ALL partnerships can be as good as ours!”

Ford laughs, shaking his head. He should defend Fiddleford but Bill is tugging him back now, into a waiting tangle of limbs, and nothing else seems more important.

A/N: So, this was supposed to be more plot-y but it just turned into weird, mildly suggestive porn. Ohhhhhh, well!

Find my way, away from this place

There are some things that, Earl thinks, would be easier to forget.

He remembers the dark silhouette of Cecil’s house, against the spotted backdrop of a night sky. Later, he remembers someone telling him that the stars are moving away, that everything is drifting apart, and even later, he recognizes that the night is more void than stars. But that is later. In the moment, Earl remembers that, in a town full of people who can’t sleep through a night, Cecil has gained a reputation of not sleeping.

Earl tosses stray rock after stray rock after cactus prickle at Cecil’s darkened window, until it swings open and he tosses a pebble square into Cecil’s face. It’s gratifying to see that his aim is good, even when he isn’t aiming.

“Earl?” the vague blob that must be Cecil says. Earl grins. “Uhhh… Why didn’t you just use the door?”

His face drops. His cheeks might have literally burst into flames. A bedroom light winks on behind Cecil, spilling out into the night and illuminating the craggy rocks and sparse patches of rough grass that make up the yard. The rest of the house stays silent, and still, and empty.

“It’s tradition,” Earl claims as he steps closer to the window sill. Cecil rests his forearms on his side of the sill and leans out. He looks neither tired nor rested, but he does smile. Earl’s stomach does quiet and enthusiastic flip flops.

“Gimme a sec,” Cecil says and dips back into his room.

The muffled sounds of vaguely defined rummaging drift from the open window. Earl inches closer, posture snapping straight and cheeks flushing scarlet red again when he catches a glimpse of bare skin. Clearing his throat, Earl makes a sharp quarter turn, so he’s staring out at the huddled and indistinct buildings of the neighborhood. His gaze keeps flickering back to his friend, mind recreating a piecemeal layout of Cecil’s body.

Pale skin. No tan lines – how? Scars. Typical scars. Weird scars. A fresh and precisely printed scattering of starburst bruises across his back, indicative of a recent librarian encounter. Earl scrunches his nose for a moment and then remembers, oh shit, there’s a book report due soon.

It isn’t like – this isn’t the first time he’s ever seen, Cecil. They’ve been scouts together for years. But something about stealing furtive glances has Earl’s heart pounding. It beats frantically against his chest, and Earl is reminded of the time he’d caught a bird in his hands, its fragile, tremulous body twitching within the cage of his fingers. On his next sneaked peak, his gaze meets Cecil’s, and he has just enough time to register the other boy’s smirk before he’s staring deliberately ahead again, spine rigid like he’s trying to pass inspection.

There’s the dull thudding of Cecil’s boots across his wooden floors and then one tight-clad leg is dangling out the window. Cecil, practiced and capable, swings his other leg out and drops the short distance down. He’s gotten a little bit taller than Earl lately. The wide neck of his tunic displays the yawned-angle lines of his collarbones. He’s gotten a little scrawnier than Earl lately, too.

“What’s on the agenda for tonight, Scoutmaster?” Cecil asks. He gives a blithe salute that, if given to the real Scoutmaster, would have him stranded in the sand wastes for an impromptu survival training session.

“I am not the Scoutmaster,” Earl grumbles, but not earnestly. He kind of likes it – Cecil calling him that – even if he doesn’t approve of the blatant disrespect for their actual Scoutmaster it carries.

“Oh yes, you’re right – specificity and accuracy is vital under all circumstances,” Cecil says. “So then, allow me to amend my previous statement: What’s on the agenda for tonight, Senior Patrol Leader Harlan?”

“How would you like to earn some new badges, Weird Scout Palmer?” Earl asks. He’s smirking, arms crossed over his chest, and Cecil slinks forward like some predatory animal.

“Mmmm, there’s little I love more than earning badges under you, Senior Patrol Leader. Sir.”

The line between teasing and everything else with Cecil is always thin and frayed. Earl turns his head to the side and coughs, to hide the shiver of something that creeps its way up his spine like fingers. Which is dumb, because even if he can feel a bone-deep shiver you can’t hear one.

“Very good, Weird Scout,” he says, looking to his friend once more. “I think you’re gonna really like this one, Cecil.”

“Of course I will,” Cecil replies sincerely. So sincerely that it sends another, less overwhelming tremor rattling up between Earl’s vertebrae. “Lead the way.” Punctuated with a gesture.

“Shouldn’t you lock up?” Earl means it as a polite suggestion. The house except for Cecil’s room is silent, and dark, and empty. He’s still not sure if it’s something they’re meant to acknowledge. Cecil gives a shrug and swings the window shut in a very good enough kind of manner.

“Good enough!” Cecil reiterates. “Anything that can open doors won’t have the patience to wait around until morning, and items stolen in the night are really the least of our worries.” He looks ominously up to the sky, but Earl knows he’s only looking at the endless crushed velvet of the void above. It’s full of stars tonight.

Earl extends his hand and Cecil takes it without a word.

Their drive is quiet. Earl drives slouched with one hand on the wheel. Cecil sits on the passenger side with one foot up on seat. It would bother Earl if his car wasn’t already prone to being covered in dirt from scouting. When they go over bumps in the road, the equipment in the backseat jingles and makes annoying, plastic-y squeaking sounds. On the gearshift between them, their free hands lie, Earl’s right and Cecil’s left, fingers casually laced.

They used to have to walk out here. There’s something about Cecil’s knee that catches Earl’s attention, the way Cecil hunches over to rest his chin on it as he gazes through the windows at the rugged expanse around them. Earl is taking the long way, deliberately turning onto the back road that leads to a spatial loop. The world around them is dark and quiet. The ground is indistinguishable from the sky. There’s something about Cecil’s breathing that catches Earl’s attention, measured and calm and unhurried.

Eventually Earl takes the jeep off the roads, driving into the sand wastes. Night Vale becomes a bulbous glow behind them. The headlights cut silently through the night, revealing rocks and sand and occasionally, the shimmery blue-green, glassy and reflective eyes of scared, mute creatures.

Cecil shifts in his seat. He stretches out his legs or folds himself into contorted positions. He disentangles their hands so he can run cool fingers through Earl’s hair. He leans his head against Earl’s shoulder and sighs, content. He slumps his weight against the far door and watches the desert pass, and his breath fogs the window.

Earl turns the car off. Cecil’s hand slides into his hair again and tightens into a fist at the back of his skull. Cecil is already tilting forward over the armrest so it’s easy to meet him for a kiss. A quick brushing of lips, chaste, before they press into each other in earnest. Cecil is Cecil, is eager and reaching, scrambling for him. Earl clamps a hand on the back of his neck and holds him steady, guides him until they both settle into a languid, breathless give and take.

They pull apart, only far enough to share breath. Earl can feel in the lines of Cecil’s body that he’s about to lean back in, start them all over again. Stoke the fires inside of each in them with gentle licks and careless clatters of teeth. He gets close enough for their lips to brush over one another.

“Cecil,” Earl says, and he tightens the grip he maintains on the scruff of Cecil’s neck. Cecil stills, backpedaling so they can look into each other’s eyes. His lips are a little swollen, blushed red where Earl bit at them.

“Scoutmaster,” Cecil says in mock severity. Earl grins.

“We still have a hike to get through, Scout.” Earl can feel the mood in the car wither, Cecil going practically boneless in his seat out of protest.

It isn’t far. Earl drove them closer to the main attraction than he would for anyone else, scout or otherwise. This is a gift, after all. Their packs are on their backs and their breath shivers up in white, icy clouds in front of their mouths. The desert crunches under their feet. Earl had brought a jacket, but Cecil’s wearing it. There is no light, no sound, nothing to disturb them in any direction. The air smells sharp and clean, and is bitingly cold against any bare skin.

Earl throws his arm out, horizontal across Cecil’s chest and bringing them to a halt. There’s a row of craggy rocks before them, jutting darkly out of the desert sand. The dead limbs of sleeping trees twine upwards into the air around them. In the summer months, this place is an oasis, but during the winter, it’s a serene graveyard. In the night, the water before them is unnaturally black, as though it is swallowing all light. The only interruption of its smooth surface is the speckling reflection of the stars above. As though as a swathe of the sky had fallen to the earth and now laid longing and still.

“Earl…” Cecil whispers. His voice is rough and he’s shivering.

“Let’s make camp.”

They set up quietly. Cecil’s gaze keeps darting over to the calm pool, as though he is afraid to keep his eyes off of it for too long. Their tent goes up, their blankets unfurl. Cecil drifts between the thick trunks of the trees like a shade and returns with tinder. Their bloodstone circle gets arranged in exacting perfection near the fire pit. Earl sneaks up behind Cecil and slips his cold hands under the blond’s jacket, beneath the thin material of his tunic. He strokes upward along the lines of his stomach and nibbles the side of his neck.

They help each other undress. Each newly exposed piece of skin is peppered with bites and pressed with kisses. Earl pulls Cecil’s boots off and nips at the protruding bone of his inner ankle. Cecil unbuttons Earl’s shirt, following his fingers’ movements with a trail of suckling mark that will bloom purple. They spent a while just sitting, chilly fingers running over arms and legs, up the delicate bows and arches of spines. Exploring territories they’ve seen a thousand times or more in careful detail. They kiss, long and lingering. Their limbs slid together, as if they are loath to allow any space to part to them.

“Don’t you want your badge?”

Earl leads them to the edge of the water. Cecil is flushed and his jaw is clenched tight – Earl can tell from the tight cords of tension in his neck. Cecil’s neck, which is sporting fresh imprints of his teeth. Earl goes in first, the pool a freezing shock to his system. He leads Cecil in deeper, two steps until it’s sloshing around their knees, four and it’s up to their waists. Cecil’s teeth are chattering; his skin is prickled with goosebumps. His eyes flicker between staring at the water and staring at the sky.

Earl takes a backwards step into a deep drop off, the water suddenly diving into the earth. Even Earl isn’t sure how far down it goes – he can’t hold his breath long enough to reach the bottom. Cecil stays resolutely still, his body shaking, but a few gentle tugs and he’s following Earl. They’re both treading water, their heads and shoulders and arms above the surface. The ripples they make, the sounds and splashes – they all die quickly, unnaturally so, as though the disturbances are being soaked up by something.

They paddle out into the middle of the lake and here, finally, when they glance around, the ground and the sky truly look as one. In the starlight, Cecil’s eyes are wide and terrified, and even through his constant movement, Earl can tell he’s shaking.

He’s so beautiful. Their own reflections don’t appear on the water’s surface.

“What do you think, Cecil?” Something far, far under the water brushes up against their legs and Cecil shudders bodily.

“I-I’m preeeetty sure that I’ve a-already got the existential dread and terror badge,” Cecil stammers. Whatever deep thing is beneath them briefly drags Cecil under, but he surfaces again in the next instant.

“You have,” Earl agrees, grinning. “Too bad you can’t earn the same one multiple times.” Cecil shoots him a look like then why the hell are we here, but before he can give voice to his complaints, Earl continues. “Extant Existence – confronting your existential dread!”

“Your own small, particular space in the cold void,” Cecil says, “and the large, uncaring creations beyond your own existence.”

The whatever-it-is below them, that they are no doubt disturbing, moves a cumbersome limb and creates a wake effect that bobs them up and down. This is apparently a last straw for Cecil, as he flails and throws himself onto Earl, clinging to the scout leader. This causes them to sink, which causes him to panic more, which further enrages the Thing under the Water, until the water is sloshing and raging in white capped peaks and long, dripping tendrils are lifting out of the surface of the water.

“Cecil! Cecil!” Earl calls out between spitting out mouthfuls of brackish water. The other boy is still in throes of total terror, churning the water around him with every slap of his arms on its surface. With a growl, Earl shoves Cecil’s head under the water, tangling his fingers in Cecil’s silvery locks. Seconds pass that, for sure, feel longer to Cecil and then Earl drags him up gasping into the air. “Come on, we have to get out of here.”

Cecil nods dumbly and Earl lets go. They swim back to shore, occasionally being dragged under by strange currents and even stranger creatures. The large tentacles protruding forth from the pool’s center smack noisily against the water, sweeping across it as though it is searching for them. Earl punches at them when they venture too close.

Cecil reaches the ground first, scrambling on hands and knees through the shallows. Earl manages with a bit more finesse, stumbling after him. The tender skin of Cecil’s palms splits on the sharp rocks and leaves thin streamers of vibrant red in water trailing behind him. They’re both panting by the time they reach the large outcropping marking the edge of the pool.

It takes a while for Cecil’s breathing to even out again. He keeps shivering for a long time after that, even with Earl’s arm draped over his shoulders and a blanket wrapped tightly around the both of them. They lean their foreheads together. Cecil’s mouth is slack when Earl kisses him the first few times. He seems to come back alive piece by piece, until he’s climbing frantically into Earl’s lap, and even the scout leader’s steady hand can’t calm his pace.

They grind against each other, too far gone for any more finesse. Cecil clings to him and murmurs a litany of pleas. Earl grips his hip tight in one hand, aiming to leave five imprinted bruises, and drags him down harder and harder. The only word Earl can manage is Cecil. One of them slips a saliva slicked hand between them, wrapping around both their lengths, jerking up and down and just barely out of time with the desperate pace they’ve cultivated.

They sleep outside of the tent, beneath a wide canopy of stars, limbs wrapped possessively around each other. Earl tells Cecil,

“Happy birthday.”

Are you afraid when I look your way

There are certain things Earl knows by heart, that he’s sure Cecil has forgotten.

Like the scout’s pledge. Perhaps the shape of it, the feel of it in his mouth – perhaps that lingers somewhere in the back of Cecil’s mind, like the stirring of an empty house, or the cool tunnels of petrification that radiate off the dog park. The idea gets planted in Earl’s mind. That’s why he’s falling down drunk, and verbally stumbling his way through an oath that has no right being as old as it is.

“O-on bladed beams and night’s- no, knife’s- knife’s edge,” Earl slurs into Cecil’s shoulder. The radio host is a solid presence at his side. A good thing he is, because Earl is leaning his weight onto him almost entirely. Cecil has an arm wrapped around his waist, and Earl has an arm slung across Cecil’s shoulders.

“Yes, yes, it’s all very ostentatious,” Cecil agrees. Earl misses a step, threatening to topple them both. Survival training in the sand wastes has only filled him out even more as time marched strangely, elongatedly onwards. The daily threats of city living have only thinned Cecil more, into lean and supple lines that, Earl thinks, complement his own. Cecil splays his free hand across Earl’s chest. Their movement stops as Cecil braces his legs, anchors them solidly to the ground beneath the yawning, spinning void.

“I stand in front of the pious sand,” he recites. Cecil raises an eyebrow. “A bulwark against the hateful sun.” Cecil’s hand on his chest lifts and then gives him a couple encouraging pats.

“Rehearsing for the next induction ceremony? Admirable, but is this the best timing…?” Under his arm, Cecil rolls his weight across his shoulders, hefting him back up with a grunt. They stagger onwards, both quiet for different reasons. Cecil straining, trying to remember where the scoutmaster lives and Earl sullen as his brain shuffles the long lines of the pledge backwards and forth, with no particular order.

“Cecil,” Earl states abruptly, and digs his feet in so they are jarred to a stop. He maneuvers them easily, Cecil yielding to his lead like always. Like past always. “Ceec.” Earl plants a heavy hand on each of Cecil’s shoulders, crumpling the delicate fabric of his shirt. “It’s important.”

Cecil’s hands are on his hips, cold like he has dripped down from the blackness of the night. They are perfunctory, stabilizing. There is none of the clawing, scrambling, scratching in his hands, except in the ghost of Earl’s memory. Just a quiet, distant weight, a curious tilt of his head. His eyes, Earl thinks, his eyes are different. They gleam in the crisp gloom of the evening, lit like the moon with borrowed light.

“Yes, I understand, very important business,” Cecil says. “I have nothing but the utmost respect for your work, Scoutmaster.” Earl draws his hands inward, so his thumbs can press along the slender column of Cecil’s pale throat.

“Is that all, Cecil?” Earl wants to shake him. He bites his lip, and his gaze drops to a silvery line on Cecil’s bottom lip, all but invisible. Unconscious mimicry, striving to put them both on even footing, Cecil swipes his tongue over his lip. His tongue looks wet and pink and shiny. The night is cold, Cecil is cold, and Earl feels something hot and tarlike bubbling in his chest.

“Earl,” Cecil says, softly and severely. Earl’s heart gives a pitiful leap during the pregnant pause Cecil leaves hanging between them. “Where is your apartment?”

They stumble onwards in the night. Now Earl notices the flush to Cecil’s face. The orator is in short sleeves, and goosebumps prickle the long expanses of his arms. Earl himself is wearing shorts that leave his slender and defined calves free to the environment, but he has long since gotten acclimated to the waxing and waning moods of the desert. It’s only Cecil’s effervescent moods that still catch him off guard, so utterly at odds with the Cecil he spent so many long years learning.

Wasn’t there a part of the oath that Cecil liked best? Earl tries to remember as he dips his hand down. He slides his arm off Cecil’s shoulders, and brushes his fingers just over the surface of his skin, skating along the fine downy hairs of his arm, standing on end. He feels Cecil’s arm around his waist tighten. He watches the sharp shadows of Cecil’s Adam’s apple flex and morph as he swallows.

The street lamps glow dull and sallow. A quiet snoring sound comes from one of bushes they meander past. Even with Earl preoccupied, unable to offer much more than a grunt or a shaky nod towards one street or another, they make it to his apartment complex. Cecil coaxes him up the stairs. Earl trips over his own feet, and when Cecil catches him close, he can smell poisoned roots and curdling ozone. They stand on the bristled welcome mat before his door.

“Do you have your keys? I can help you unlock the door, if you need me to,” Cecil says. Earl reaches forward and brushes a stray lock of hair behind the radio host’s ear. Cecil catches his hand against his cheek. “Sooo, that’s a yes? I need to open the door?”

“Ceec,” Earl murmurs. He savors the chance to lay his palm flat, the cool of Cecil’s skin interrupted by the delicate flush spread across his cheekbones. “We are the pale watchers, the Eye of the city.” Cecil stiffens, his brow furrowing, nigh imperceptible creases on his face.

“We guide the unseen Hand,” Cecil says, the phrase like a well-worn psalm on his tongue. “We wait for our post eternal.”

There’s a moment where their eyes meet, and Earl can almost see him. It’s just right there, hovering out of his reach, and Earl is frozen, unsure which action might tempt Cecil closer and which might shove him further away. The silence between them unfurls like a ribbon. Earl is scared to even breathe, but he cups Cecil’s face and waits.

Inaction being a choice of its own, the moment passes.

Cecil’s hand drops first, and he lets out a laugh.

“Wow, the things you remember from childhood, huh? You know, sometimes I can even recall, word for word, those horrible cereal commercials! You know the ones, right? The wheat ones?” Earl’s hand slips away as well and he sighs. His fingers stroke along Cecil’s cheek as it leaves, but he doubts the man even notices.

“The ones that just devolved into chanting at the end?”

“Yes! That’s it precisely! Wheat cannot kill you, it can only make you stronger,” Cecil quotes with another laugh. The radio host is relaxed around him. Not the way one is relaxed around someone they care very much about however – Cecil is relaxed in the way one is relaxed around someone they care very little about. Not so much as to not care at all, but Earl thinks that he if were, say, swallowed into a pit for all eternity, Cecil might not lose more than a week or two’s worth of sleep over it.

And there was a time when it only took the idea of being separated for a week to bring on the sleepless nights.

Earl sighs again and pats his pockets. He pats the two on the front of his shorts, and then he pats the ones on his backside. A creeping dread must have been blown along on the breeze, because it suddenly curls around the end of his spine. Earl pats at the pockets hanging forlorn and empty on the sides of his thighs. He even pats the extra secret pocket sown into his shirt. Cecil casually finds something exceedingly interesting on the ground, so as not to have Earl’s secrets revealed.

“Cecil,” Earl says, and Cecil jerks his gaze back upwards.

“Scoutmaster,” Cecil says in kind.

“I don’t have my keys on me.”

You're always talking but you're not playing

There are certain things Earl remembers, that he knows Cecil doesn’t.

One of these is the way Cecil’s lips look after getting sucker punched. Split and swollen, a steady stream of blood and spit dribbling out. Red, cracked. It only accentuates their natural pout, and their owner’s natural inclination to use them to sulk. He’s doing so now, worrying the wound with his straight, white teeth and sniffling dramatically at precisely timed intervals. Earl shakes his head and wets the cream-colored terrycloth towel in his hand again. He presses it up against Cecil’s lips and savors the quiet hiss that whispers out, hot against his palm.

“I told-”

“Told ya so?” Cecil finishes for him, voice muffled around the washcloth still pressed against his mouth. It comes out slurred too, like Cecil is being careful, cognizant for the first time of how his tongue and teeth scrape along the inside of his mouth on every word.

“No- well, yeah, I did, but that wasn’t it,” Earl replies, and uses his free hand to pinch Cecil’s cheek. It causes him to wrinkle his face up in faux displeasure and leaves a smudge of red on his cool, pale skin. “I told you Steve was gonna punch you if you kept on like that.”

“Ugh,” Cecil says, as if that is explanation enough. It probably is, for Cecil. “He needs to learn when to keep his big trap shut.”

Earl snorts and pulls the cloth away. Cleaned up, it doesn’t look as bad, but bright red blood has trickled out from ragged gash in Cecil’s bottom lip, branched out like the roots of trees into the fine creases of his lip. Earl lifts up his free hand, the one not holding the increasingly stained rag, and takes hold of Cecil’s chin. He swipes his thumb along Cecil’s bloodied lip, presses down hard in the center, digs his blunt nail in, just a little. He does it again when Cecil sucks in a quick, shuddery breath around his thumb.

“You’re the one with the fat lip here, Cecil,” Earl says. Cecil is staring at him, and his tongue comes out to lick at the coppery, metallic liquid still oozing sullenly out of his lip. His tongue licks against Earl’s thumb before the other boy jerks his hand away like he’s been burned.

“Yeah, well…” Cecil says. His eyes are downcast now. “What badge do I get for that?”

Earl rolls his eyes, and is about to say that there isn’t a badge for getting rightfully bopped in the face, but he checks the Scouts’ Book of Accomplishments index just to be thorough – and because Cecil will make him look anyway, probably multiple times until they find a vague enough entry that Cecil can wriggle his way into saying applies – and there it is.

“Hey, there actually is one here!”

“Oh? What? Let me see!” Cecil crowds into his space, lanky limbs and cool skin that don’t ever show the barest hints of sunburn, and never the untamed spattering of freckles that Earl himself sports. Cecil, pale and excitable like a moon drenched lake, who never looks like he belongs smeared with dirt and blood.

Grinning, Earl can feel the tightness of his own sun kissed cheeks. He prods the intersection of a row and a column, a single, purposeful point. A fuzzy and nondescript black and white color badge, and a title printed neatly at its side. Cecil squints and leans forward, and Earl eyes the column of his neck. The drying line of thick blood over his chin.

“Just desserts from a just desert?” Cecil reads aloud, and then he straightens. Cranes his neck to gaze at Earl head on, chest canted towards him. They’re sitting on a wide, flat rock that’s been sopping up heat all afternoon, which is why Earl feels so warm and fuzzy. The rock is same matte brown as the rest of the desert, its only distinguishing feature being its relative height. “I thought that was one for, eating a bunch of ice cream? Or something.”

“Dutifully getting what’s coming to you,” Earl corrects, his lips twisting as he tries for a serious countenance. Cecil’s jaw drops and his eyes widen, the very picture of scandalized outrage. It’s enough to send Earl into fits of giggles, which Cecil seems to take as a personalized affront to his person, as after a huff the boy launches himself at Earl, and sends them both tumbling backwards into loose, coarse desert.

They wrestle, briefly, tossing each other back and forth with hurried, meaningless jeers. But Cecil’s good at subterfuge and subversion and, Earl guesses, probably anything that starts with a sub. And Earl’s good at being a scout. He lets them struggle for a while, racking up points towards the heat death of the universe, but Earl imagines that the stasis of the desert can make up for a little bit of racket every now and then. Their scuffle kicks up loose puffs of dust and sand that linger in the air.

When it’s over, Cecil’s on his back, chest heaving up and down and eyes all glittery with mirth. Earl’s got one hand cinched around both his slender wrists and he’s crouching over him, knees bracketing Cecil’s hips. Cecil smiles with his bloodied teeth, with dirt and grit sticking to the wet curve of his lip. Earl revises his earlier appraisal – Cecil looks as good as home, scuffed up and eager.

“Do you really think I got what was coming to me?” Cecil asks. He licks his lips then pulls a face, and turns to side to spit. “Blegh.”

“Nah,” Earl says, and he wants to lean, and he thinks Cecil wants him to, too, but he stands up instead, and brushes off his clothes. The plastic container he’d filled with water got spilled in their scuffle, and lies toppled next to the dark patch of its contents seeping into the sand. “You still got plenty coming, Cecil.”

He holds out his hand and Cecil grasps it. Earl yanks him to his feet. Cecil doesn’t let go, stays half a hand’s length too close.

The door to management’s office creaked open. Thick, dark smoke rolled out, spilling across the station’s floor and obscuring the well-worn tiles. Cecil eyed this event carefully, but the bright “ON AIR” sign was due to flicker to life at any moment, and the imminence of death becoming ever so slightly more imminent was no reason to shirk one’s responsibilities.

And one, single Door opening was no reason to panic.

From his viewpoint in the glass recording booth, it didn’t look like the paint had begun to peel in slender crackling curls off the walls, so, that was a good sign. Maybe a freak breeze had blown the door open, and this had nothing to do with management at all! After all, one of the interns had been doing building maintenance this week, which had mostly consisted of the poor young man oiling every door hinge, every desk drawer (did those need oiled? Cecil, and he assumed, the world, did not know), and all the ominous, ever-turning gears within reach. Of course, this did not fall inside the regular scope of practice for interns, but ever since poor Terrence, the intern, had fallen into the oil pit that had appeared on the lawn of Marcus Vanston’s private mid-week getaway house his upper extremities had been replaced by dark, indistinct limbs consisting of constantly dripping, slippery ooze. Great for lubricating doorways, not-so-great for working with expensive radio equipment or handling anything paper.

So, yes. That was probably it. Most likely. The Door, previously rusted shut with a long dried, brown and flakey liquid, had just undergone too much upkeep recently, and, being unused to such things as responsible homeownership, had simply slid open on its own. Without the knowledge or consent of the beings who resided beyond its stone carved form. Assuming that the smoke – which still continued to flood the hallway, having reached knee height and now accumulating upwards towards the ceiling – was not corrosive or poisonous in some unforeseeable manner, an intern was probably already on their way to just, gently tip that door shut again. Cecil was halfway to convincing himself that this was the case when the “ON AIR” sign buzzed on, casting a dull yellow sheen across the bubbling surface of the smoke.

“When one door closes, another door, somewhere in your house, opens – and who knows what’s lurking behind that one,” Cecil said, slipping into his role as the Voice of Night Vale with the ease of a parasite slipping into a second skin. Really, it was his first and only skin, as he never could truly stop being the Voice. “Welcome, to Night Vale.”

The instrumental opening was coming to a close when the light hanging nearest to management’s office began flickering. Cecil watched it flash on and off with suspicion and growing mistrust, but that was how he watched most things.

“It is Listener Appreciation Week here at Night Vale Community Radio and I, for one, could not be more pleased!” The flickering grew more intense, both in frequency and in number of light bulbs flashing. The entire hallway was having an epileptic fit, but the obscuring smoke was, actually, quite helpful in this situation. “We’ve been fielding listener suggestions and tips left, right, and double left all week and, frankly, most of them were awful! You should have put more thought into this. And that last one? Pretty embarrassing stuff! I can’t believe you thought that would be a good idea!

“Also, I would hate to start something like a city-wide manhunt, but one of you out there has been using writing utensils. I’m not going to name any names, but I think it suffice to say that it is someone you know and love, very much. The very last person you would expect to betray you, the one person you believe that, in this life, you can trust the most. A person that knows your deepest, most intimate and incriminating secrets. If this person is capable of so blatantly violating bans are that in place solely for our protection, why, dear Listeners, I think that begs the question… what else is this person capable of?

“Now, I know better than most how inconvenient some of these bans from City Council have been. Just the other day, I was talking to Carlos - perfect Carlos - our resident scientist whose hair, I must say, is growing back quite nicely.” Cecil was looping a dangling wire around his index finger as he spoke, completely absorbed in his memories of said scientist and also completely missing the way the bulbs in the hallway had begun to crack and explode. “I mean, it’s kind of at that in-between stage, where you know someone has gotten a haircut, and it’s sort of growing out, but you can tell they don’t really know how to style it yet – Listeners, I’m not usually one for the scruffy, unkempt look, but Carlos the scientist wears it well!”

A tentacle darted through the dense, roiling darkness of the hallway and slapped against the glass of the recording booth. The spider web of hairline cracks that splintered out from its impact site formed the words GET TO THE POINT. Cecil cleared his throat.

“Anyway, I was talking to Carlos and he mentioned how much easier things would be if most forms of standard writing utensils weren’t banned. I said, uh huuuuhh, and he said that while most mundane charting and frantic, terrified note taking could be replicated with a tablet, it just wasn’t the same. There was something intrinsically missing from the process that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Touch screens and styluses weren’t banned, he continued, so it isn’t so different from using a pen and paper, but…

“And then, he trailed off, offering only a shrug and a very non-committal hand wave.” Beneath his desk, something snaked itself around Cecil’s ankle and he flinched bodily. “I-I nodded, and told him that we all lose something small and intrinsic to ourselves every day, usually without acknowledging or even so much as noticing this loss, until we have lost so much that we find ourselves hollow and aching inside, with no idea as to what we are aching for, so, I was happy he was cognizant of his own forfeitures.” The something around his ankle had become the something around his leg, coiling upwards around his pant leg. “Listeners, if perfect Carlos, with all his sciencing and postulating – if he can avoid the use of writing utensils, well, so can you!”

Thin streamers of jet black smoke were trickling in through the cracks in the glass, and were curling upwards into the room from crack between the floor and the bottom of the door. Cecil thought about taking his shirt off and stuffing it beneath the door, but both of his legs were now ensnared by something that he wasn’t quite ready to check out just yet. Oftentimes, Cecil had found, the solution to an issue was simply ignoring the existence of said issue entirely. Denial was an essential skill to cultivate in Night Vale.

“In other news, nothing at all strange or unexpected or kind of wet and slimy – nothing like that at all is happening currently in the station.” Perhaps in response to his talking about them, or perhaps in an unrelated and coincidental manner, the twin tendrils coiled around his legs tightened dramatically. “N-Noooope. Nothing like that at all.”

The things around him were cold and damp, soaking through the fabric of his slacks where they twitched and pulsed against him. They had wound high enough to clench around his thighs, their tips flicking at the upper curve of his hipbones. Cecil still wasn’t sure how they had managed to squirm between his legs and the seat. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, and his skin felt kind of prickly and warm where the tentacles’ viscous fluid was seeping into his clothes. In fact, his whole body was feeling kind of prickly and warm.

“In actual news, Old Woman Josie reports that the inhumanly tall, winged creatures who are definitely not angels, and who all go by the name Erika, have been having some, uh-” More tendrils blossomed from, somewhere, and wound around his arms. Up close, the liquid they were coated in smelled sickly sweet, like road kill left to bake in the afternoon sun. Oh, and cotton candy! One of the tentacles trailed across his cheek, leaving a sticky smear behind. He felt heat rush to his face, and his brain felt foggy. “Sooooome issues with the water heater. She didn’t expand, or tell us why she thought this was news worthy, but, there you go!”

Cecil gulped, and hoped that didn’t count as unapproved sponsorship. With a touch more force than was strictly necessary, Cecil loosened his tie and collar. It was so. Hot. In this booth. Was it the booth? Was it always this hot? Was it the biting and acrid smoke that was now starting to build up inside it?

“Personally, I don’t see why she needs hot water,” Cecil said. His voice was trembling. “Why do any of us need hot water? We are in a desert, Night Vale!” When – and how – had he lost his shirt? Tendrils were sliding up and down his arms, so slick and cool in sharp contrast to his overheating flesh. He sucked in a shaky breath as two more tentacles began groping up his chest, circling around his waist and cinching tight. The thin, tapered end of one slinked around his throat. It squeezed ever so lightly, just enough to make his already dizzy head swim, and Cecil let out a groan. “I mean, hot water, right?” It came out deeper, a bit more derisive than he had truly intended.

His breathing had gotten a little faster, a little shallower, and he was squirming in his seat. He was burning alive, a raging fire pulsing through his arteries, in the delicate capillary tangles so close to the skin and in the thick vessels so deep inside him, a fuse struck from both ends. Each sweep of the tendrils over him brought him a scant moment of blessed relief, swiftly followed by even brighter sparks of heat, so that he was left gasping and striving for their constant touch.

There was a dull, hollow thunking, and the end of the tentacle wrapped around his neck pressed up against his chin. Cecil blinked groggily but allowed it to tilt his head upwards. He licked his lips and wondered if there was some way to tempt the tendril closer. The thunking continued and Cecil focused on its source. The thin white cracks on the window of the recording booth had reformed themselves into the words KEEP GOING. He felt a bone tingling shiver roll down his spine in a heady wave.

“Oh, yes, do keep going.” All the tendrils – wrapped around his arms, his legs, his waist, his neck - clenched in warning. “With the, uh, news! Of course. The news.” The tentacles relaxed and Cecil felt a fresh surge of whatever strange, dripping liquid they were coated with rush across his skin. It soaked into the fabric of his slacks and probably the chair, and dripped off his bare skin to patter on the floor like the quiet whispering of rain.

“The Sheriff’s Secret Police issued a statement earlier today, concerning the you-know-what, located, you-know-where, in which they detailed that everything is… fine. Just, terrific, really, thanks for asking.” Every long, lingering stroke of the tendrils up or down his skin sent electrifying bolts through his body, pooling low and molten in his stomach. “When questioned further, they said oh, you know, things are just… totally normal. Nothing to see here.” His hips were twitching and he kept shifting his weight back and forth, searching for some kind of relief. It was taking all his concentration not to stutter his way through the report.

“And when pressed about the low, continuous buzzing coming from the you-know-what and the mysterious and unidentified bones strewn about you-know-where, they slid on their standard government-issued gas masks and released a container of tear gas on the gathered reporters. An officer, hovering overhead in a blue, unmarked helicopter and shouting through a megaphone, said everything. Is. Under. Control. Before dropping another canister of tear gas on the dispersing crowd.”

The idea of tear gas assaulting his senses should have been a nice, refreshing douse of arousal-dampening irritant, particularly since the black smoke was already drying out his eyes and making it difficult to take in any deep breaths. But the tendrils around his legs had other ideas, and their ends suddenly, deliciously slipped between his thighs, wriggling wetly against his clothed and straining erection. A reward for a job well done, he assumed. Cecil dug his teeth into his bottom lip, making a weird, almost pained noise low in throat. His hips jerked upwards, or tried to, but he was held firmly in place by the tendrils wound around the rest of him. A whine may or may not have escaped him.

“L-listeners, remember what I said earlier?” Cecil was squirming in his seat. “About the station? About how it was definitely not the site of strange, or unexpected, o-or slick and, uh, distracting events?” His back was arched as he strained forward, trying to press himself into the teasingly light touches while his limbs were solidly anchored in place. “Well, that was-” The rest of his sentence, which Cecil had planned to be something like ‘not quite accurate,’ was replaced by a muffled and unintelligible sound as the end of a tendril slithered into his mouth.

His first reaction, thanks to the preparedness lessons of his childhood in the boy scouts, was to shake his head and reel back, but there wasn’t far to go and the tendril wasn’t attached to anything corporeal enough to escape. The thick, clear fluid it was covered in was disgusting on his tongue, and it spilled down his throat without him even needing to swallow. It seared all the way down his esophagus, hot and burning like ice in his stomach. It reminded Cecil of nights spent trying to forget, and he inanely wondered if he was going to remember any of this.

And at all once he relaxed. He pressed his tongue against the thick, intruding thing in his mouth. It felt like coated rubber, like some kind of dense and durable skin stretched taut overtop of delicate, blubbery insides. Made slimy and slippery by that, that liquid, that secretion, that whatever-it-was! Which, now that he thought about it, didn’t actually taste bad at all. It was… good! It was… really good! Cecil’s cheeks hollowed out briefly as he sucked at the appendage, moaning appreciatively as a wave of that fluid was released in his mouth and he swallowed down as much as he could. The tentacle itself followed, slipping down the back of his throat effortlessly, until he could feel it from the inside, straining against the tight rings of his throat, stretching it obscenely and he would have reached up to stroke its bulge, pressing up and distending his skin, if only his hands and arms and limbs weren’t tied so thoroughly down.

It withdrew in one smooth motion, leaving Cecil coughing and licking at his lips. Licking at the long, elastic string of saliva and mystery fluid that stretched between his lips and the tapered end of the tentacle. He tried, mindless, to follow, and thrashed against the loops pinning him down, groaning a wordless plea. That dull thunking came again, and he glanced up to the cracked glass. More words in thin, spidery, splintering print were there, but his vision was swimming. He focused instead on the void-black darkness that resided on the other side of the glass, pressing in like water on the sea floor, leaking into every crack and crevice, the glass – his only bulwark – on the verge of bowing and snapping.

Cecil caught a glimpse of his own vague reflection in the darkened glass and shuddered unpleasantly.

The tapping came again and this time Cecil could pull himself together enough to read the words. THE NEWS, it proclaimed, THE NEWS. He cleared his throat, trying to ignore the way his blood sang at the rough scratch he felt in his esophagus. He twisted his body as much as he could in the tentacles’ wet and unyielding grip.

“Uhhh…” he said intelligently. “Where was I?” A voice – or many voices – or not a voice at all, whispered behind him ‘the station.’ “Oh! Yes! The… station. Everything is great, here! Here, at the station. Yup.” He rolled his head back, leaning into the touch of a soaked, dripping tendril as it pet against his hair. Cecil shivered as he felt cool, viscous ooze dribble across his scalp. The fluid matted his hair and rolled in thick globules down his neck, down his cheek. The third eye flickered open, but it was pretty out of it too, when all was said and done.

“Oh! Heeeere’s something!” Every inch of him was drenched and dripping. Every. Inch. “It seems that Old Woman Josie’s water heater issue has caught the attention of everyone’s favorite scientist, Carlos! Isn’t that… something!” Cecil bit the inside of his cheek. Everything smelled like honey and blood and brimstone. Sweet and rotten and biting. “He’s heading over there right now, to do some sort of science, I would imagine! And all without the use of writing utensils, Steve Carlsburg.”

Even with the added, distasteful thought of Steve Carlsburg on his mind, Cecil couldn’t help but to sigh wistfully. “Apparently, Old Woman Josie – or perhaps her tall friends, who are totally not angels, you guys – or perhaps just her faulty water heater, have become the subject of Carlos’ scientific inquiry.” His heart was already pounding at an alarming pace, but Cecil was mildly certain he felt it speed up even more so. “Can you even imagine? Being the subject of such focused, intense scrutiny? Helping out both science as an over-arching ideal, and a beloved member of our small community?”

A different kind of heat blossomed in his stomach, thinking about Carlos. It was strange to say, and therefore Cecil didn’t say it out loud, but it felt less… synthetic than the fire that had all but consumed his body over the course of the show so far. His brain felt as though it was melting into a fine, still kind of gritty and poorly mixed slurry, and yet it managed to conjure images of Carlos looming over him in his crisp, white lab coat, a wild curiosity (and something else) smoldering in his dark eyes, his perfect hair slightly messed but still perfect, and what if these weren’t slippery, otherworldly tendrils wound about his limbs but some sort of this-worldly restraint, used to keep track of unruly volunteer test subjects and-

“C-Citizens of Night Vale, this is not an emergency, but I take you now to an emergency broadcast of the weather!”

Cecil went to flip the small red switch on the soundboard that would kill the live feed from his mic before remembering that his arms were still bound motionless from shoulder to wrist. Well, less remembered and more jerked fitfully against his captor while letting out a choked off sob. The tentacles in their collective consciousness were thoughtful – one flared to life like a dark sunspot in the air near the soundboard and flicked the switch off for him. And then slightly less thoughtfully, as one they hoisted Cecil into the air and deposited him with a grunt and a heavy thud onto the cool tile floor.

“Oh, please,” Cecil moaned. He twisted his wrists around to palm at the tendrils he could reach, and they in turn dragged his arms up over his head. They coiled tightly, drawing his arms close and tying together them from wrist to elbow. “Please, please, please.”

He didn’t have the brainpower left to be ashamed of his general lack of verbal finesse. His focal point was rapidly narrowing to his poor, neglected cock that strained against the soaked fabric of his breeches (and less pleasurably, against the hard line of his zipper). His heels slipped against the slime covered tiles of the floor as he kicked in an attempt to gain some sort of leverage. The surface of his skin was so hot, or maybe it was whatever junk was underneath it that was so hot. Carlos would know.

A strangled cry was torn from him as clever and surprisingly dexterous tentacles wormed their way under the waistline of his pants. They might have undone the zipper as well, he wasn’t really sure, but when had he ever been sure about anything? They yanked his slacks down all the same, leaving them tangled in a sodden pile somewhere around his knees and he moaned wantonly as thin, loose loops slinked around his cock. His back arched almost violently off the floor and he cracked his head pretty hard on the tiles but Cecil could scarcely notice. It was like a livewire had been attached to his dick, all sharp, buzzing electricity tearing through his body at the barest touch.

“Nnnggh,” he said through clenched teeth, and it was probably more begging than saying, but without syllables or vowels or anything to help distinguish it as English, it could just as easily be mistaken for demanding. Cecil thrust his hips weakly upwards, unable to gain any traction. The tendrils around his cock remained stubborn and limp, refusing to give him any sort of friction or relief. His pulse was bounding, his head was swimming, and he bucked pathetically, helplessly in the grip of the tentacles. “Please, please, I-I’ve been good, haven’t I?”

That could have been the right thing to say, or not. Either way, Cecil was flipped roughly onto one side and his pants were pulled the rest of the way off. His body shivered in the cool air of the booth, and his skin stung wherever it came into contact with that fetid, coiling smoke, still leaking in from the door. None of it was enough to quench or distract from the roiling heat inside him and he wriggled his body in a manner that he could only hope was tantalizing to sentient masses of tentacles and exhaust.

Of course, it was quite hard to judge things such as intent or interest or even wretched, bone shattering loathing, which Cecil believed he could spot from a mile away – these things were difficult to ascertain when your compatriot for the moment was nothing more than fuzzy, stinging smoke and bullish, intrusive limbs. Either way, and that is to say, regardless of intent, the thing lifted his leg into the air, spreading Cecil in a manner that on any other occasion would seem vulgar. Instead of feeling shamed – certainly, that would come later – Cecil whimpered and murmured hazy platitudes. His lower back bowed and then arched, as he felt the sweet, wet touch of a tentacle upon him.

When it squirmed its way inside him Cecil almost sobbed with relief. His hands scrambled at the smooth, rubbery surface of the tendrils that bound him, his fingers and nails unable to find purchase. It worked him open slowly, so slowly, careful and meticulous, its movements alien in nature. Cecil let out a long groan. His hips stuttered as he tried to thrust himself back to meet it, but he was kept pinned precisely in place. Cecil wanted it so badly, oh, no, he needed it. This creature, this thing knew what he wanted so why, why wouldn’t it just-

Cecil let out a long groan, a wordless monosyllabic expression of pleading. Pleading wasn’t even the right word, was it? Was there a more fitting synonym, something that encompassed the desperate yearning in his chest, bottomless in his stomach, that writhed and hitched and robbed him of breath? Cecil couldn’t think of one, couldn’t think of anything. He could think of nothing except the way the thing inside him moved, deeper and deeper and so utterly inhuman.

And then it withdrew in a smooth, quick motion, his insides screaming in protest at the abrupt emptiness. It thrust back inside him and set its pace, unhurried and clinical. Clinical, like a scientist? His thoughts drifted endlessly towards Carlos, even as Cecil purposefully steered them away. It felt, well, wrong to think of Carlos now, no matter how badly or fervently he might wish for the scientist to be here. The tentacle rammed itself into him, measured, precise, detached. No matter how Cecil whined and squirmed, thrashing in his binds, the tendrils around him held steadfast. The pace inside him never changed, brutal in its consistency.

“Nnnnngh, please – oh, harder please,” dripped off his tongue, Cecil hardly even aware of his own words, his lips and tongue forming desperate words. None of it made any difference to his treatment. He was held prone and spread, unable to pull away or push back into the tendril fucking him. All he could do was accept whatever was thrust upon him, and pray for mercy.

Mercy, of course, as a vague concept and an unreachable abstraction, offered Cecil nothing in this situation. Every nerve ending his body felt alight with an untamable fire. His skin, his very being was burning alive, so unnaturally hot, and the tentacle inside him was icily cold, sending shivering waves of goosebumps prickling across his flesh on every push inside him.

Perhaps something he did – some mindless twitching of his body, some numb plea from his mouth – perhaps something made a difference. The tentacles began to drag him forcefully across the floor, down to greet the tendril slamming deep inside him. Cecil found himself crying out on every firm, body shaking shove. He felt so full, like the tendril was stretching him completely. He wouldn’t be surprised if its tip came crawling up the back of his throat, wriggling out between his clenched teeth. It didn’t, of course, but the pace became faster, rougher, everything slick and hot and cold.

His muscles clenched tighter and tighter, heat pooling down between his hips. Each thrust rocked his body, wound some coil within him. Cecil bit harshly into the curve of his bottom lip, his entire body trembling and on edge. Every gasp of air he dragged in became trapped in his chest. His skin tingled and prickled and rubbed smoothly across the slimy surface of the recording booth floor.

Gods above, the thing buried so deep inside him started writhing, undulating like a sea slug, or something more appealing, like a ribbon in a strong breeze. And it pressed against him, more importantly, pressed against a point inside him that had Cecil’s vision whiting out, had him throwing his head back, arching his back in a painful jackknife that had some distant portion of brain wondering if he was about to pull a muscle. There was some pathetic, desperate, wailing keen in the sound booth, and Cecil couldn’t even string together enough syllables turn it into words or pleads or anything more than a base, animalistic cry for more.

The thin tentacles around his dick started moving, swirling around the head of his cock, slurping up and down its length. After the extended teasing – torture – Cecil could only toss his head from side to side, his hips twitching, fingers curling around the tentacles still binding him. Everything rushed together, blurred. Everything constricted, squeezed, tensed, every muscle, every blood vessel. Every thought in his brain fled except - yes, yes, oh masters, yes and finally, finally -

Cecil moaned as the tension inside him snapped. A rushing tide of relief. The tendrils milked him thoroughly, still wrapped around his cock, still positioning his body like a doll’s, still slamming into him over and over, until he was thoroughly overstimulated and groaning for an entirely different reason, struggling with loose, sore muscles against their titanic grip. They squeezed around him, harder and harder, until he went limp in their grasp, shudders rippling through his body.

The tentacle inside him gave one last, painful surge and then withdrew in an abrupt jerk that left Cecil reeling. As if that was the cue they had all been waiting on, the other tentacles dissipated. His limbs dropped to the floor like they were made of lead. Little drops of the ooze splattered up from where his arms and legs fell into puddles. Cecil laid on his side, stunned and blinking.

He rolled onto his back, wincing at the spark of pain moving incited. The black smoke that had crept into the booth began to coalesce. It formed roughly the shape of an envelope, and then it was an envelope, crisp and white and singed at its corners. Its top had been carelessly torn open. It fluttered through the air and landed in the thick slime coating his chest, sealing itself to his skin.

Cecil gave himself a moment for his stuttering heart to kick back into its typical, regularly irregular rhythm. Outside the glass of his booth, he could see the smoke retreating like a storm rolling off into the distance. The light bulbs hung dark and limp and broken. An intern would have to fix that. Gingerly, Cecil eased himself up onto his elbows. He peeled the envelope off his chest. It had been soaked in mysterious secretions so thoroughly that it was nearly translucent, but he could see it was addressed to –

Oh, no -

Station Management.

Well that answered that question, didn’t it? He slipped his fingers in the envelope to retrieve the missive, face scrunching as he unfurled the damp and curling paper. The contents revealed a fan letter -no, worse, a listener suggestion, long and rambling but with one oft-repeated line that explained, well, most things.

Cecil’s sexy voice, the letter cooed, squealed, begged for over and over. More of Cecil’s sexy voice. Cecil himself could feel his eyebrow twitching in annoyance. He had to anchor himself on the sound board to get back to his seat, his tremulous legs unable to hold his weight. Sitting wasn’t the most comfortable endeavor, either. And now that the strange, falsely induced heat had evaporated like morning dew, all Cecil felt was gross and slimy and cold. He flicked his mic back on and using as few fingers as possible, hefted his headset towards one ear.

“Well, another crisis has been averted – or perhaps not averted, but weathered, as some crises must be. I was not at liberty earlier to tell you, dear listeners, what was truly happening here at the station. There was something strange and unexpected occurring, and it was slick and distracting – so distracting that I was forced to abandon my journalistic integrity and redirect you all to the weather report!”

Cecil sighed. “Listeners, this appreciation week is for you! An expression of our, well, appreciation! And you are appreciated! We want to fulfill your requests, we want to take your tips and suggestions into account, we want to improve your listening experience! But this will not happen if you address your letters incorrectly!”

Perhaps in emphasis, Cecil’s fist clenched around the offending, drenched letter in question. “Remember, Night Vale, every mistake you make, every minor indiscretion you commit, carries unspeakable – and, I might remind you – completely avoidable consequences.

“Every possible event has already happened. Or is happening currently. Or will?”

“You’re just making excuses.”

“It’s inevitability, darling.”

“An outcome is hardly inevitable if you’re the one tweaking variables in its favor.”

“Thereby furthering its inevitability.”

Rosalind heaved a sigh and Robert knew he had won. She leveled a dreadfully serious and unimpressed expression his way. Does his own brow quirk upwards like that in annoyance? But it’s all in jest, a facetious argument he knows he would be making – had made, does make – were he the one on the other end of the conversation. His lips twisted in amusement.

“I’ve lost this argument before, haven’t I?”

“Perhaps you’re still going to,” she muses. Her eyes narrow and then in tandem they turn. It wasn’t clear when they were, but the clouds outside were fluffy and patriotic. No Elizabeth. They shared a glance – which timeline was this? But it would serve for his purposes. Their purposes, truly. “Is this the sinner or the saved?”

“The sinner, one should hope – look at the beard!”

“Or lack thereof.”

“Five o’clock shadow.”

“Closer to seven or eight.”

“Now you’re simply being contrarian.” Robert said, but he couldn’t shake her disproval. She had already bent to his whims, and as stiff as she was, he wondered how much farther she would be pushed. “Consider it a kindness.”

“I consider it a dalliance,” she responds. “One never knows just which crushed butterfly will precipitate the disaster.”

“When disaster is the default, how much worse could one endeavor to make it?” At that, finally, she laughed, and Robert felt some tension ease. Odd that a tightening of muscle fibers, tugging against ligament and bone, could so affect one’s mood.

There’s a brief static discharge and time makes its presence known. It’s another tugging, and Robert finds it almost difficult to imagine a, time, when its forward flow was all he’d known. He feels so separate from it. And so close to it. And so before it. There’s a headache on the way, or here already, and Rosalind places a hand on his shoulder. Her slim fingers grip him tight.

“Well, shall we wake the slumbering giant?”

“Allow me,” he says. Robert leans over the messy figure sprawled on the bed and taps his shoulder. Booker grouched in his sleep and rolled over, not deterred in the slightest. “This is hardly the time to be so stalwart.” He rapped his fingers against the hard bone of Booker’s scapula.

The rough cut man came to awareness slowly and, honestly, who could sleep so deeply in an unknown city, when he was here to do a job? Well, Robert supposed it was better than immediately casting Columbia into revolt and bloodshed. Booker finally opened his eyes and rolled back round, easing himself into a sitting position.

“Look, he’s been wounded,” Rosalind comments with arms crossed over her chest.

“Not a shocking development.”

“No good for our purposes.”

“We’ve made do with worse.”

“Quite.”

Booker stares at them with bleary eyes. Then his face scrunches almost comically and he rubs his eyes, as though with force he could scrub their image from his retinas. He appeared nearly disappointed when he looked at them again.

“Do you require assistance?” Robert offers. His green eyes follow Booker’s hand as it inches towards the edge of his bed, where he no doubt stashes his weapons. “I don’t think you’ve ever shot us, Mr. DeWitt.” The brunet freezes.

“No, I don’t believe he has,” Rosalind said. “I don’t believe he ever will. There is only so much wiggle room, after all.”

“Indeed.”

“You guys are giving me a headache,” Booker replies. His voice is rough from sleep and when he moves a certain way – leaning to one side or another – his otherwise symmetric features warp into a wince. “Can I help you with something?”

“You are helping us.”

“And we are helping you.”

“None of this is helpful.” Both the Luteces are smiling and it makes Booker feel on edge. There’s something off about the two of them, and he always feels like he’s following about 30 feet back when he’s talking to them.

“I’ll grant you that,” Robert said. “Although we did already offer.”

“I don’t need assistance.” So forceful, so tactless. Booker to the core, except when he is Comstock.

“Are you so certain about that?”

“Because from our perspective, it appears you may be wounded.”

“Perhaps mortally so.”

“I’m f-” cut off with a grunt. “…Fine.”

The twins shared another glance. Robert leaned back in and snaked his hand around to the side Booker had been favoring, pressed the pads of his fingers against the tender area. Taken off guard, Booker let out a hiss of pain and jerked backwards, banging his head against the wall. With an expression more smug than it probably needed to be, Robert pulled away again, holding his fingers up. They were wet and shiny with blood.

“It’s nothing,” Booker snaps. Robert looks at him expectantly and wiggles his fingers. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Oh come now, we are doctors,” Rosalind says.

“Physicists,” Booker argues.

“Still one more PhD than you’ve got to your name,” Robert says.

“Two if we’re counting.”

“Who says we are?” Booker seemed displeased.

“Either way,” Rosalind continues, “of the three of us in this room, two of us are experts-”

“And one of us has experienced live combat, so-”

“A point that, to be sure, would be taken under further consideration if said ‘combat expert’-” Robert made sure to emphasize this with the appropriate hand gesture, seeming immune to Booker’s pointed scowl. “-weren’t currently trying to sleep away a bullet wound.”

Quiet falls over the room. Like the proverbial sharks smelling blood, the Luteces look far too… content. The cats that got the cream. Booker can tell he’s losing. He sighs and they look between themselves.

“All right.” Booker gave in.

“Oh?”

“All right?”

“Yes!” Anything to stop this two-headed interrogation. “Whatever will get the two of you to shut it.”

Robert places his clean hand in the middle of Booker’s sternum and applies a slight, clinical pressure until Booker is leaning his weight against the wall behind him. Rosalind sidles in closer as well, peering intently at the man’s ragged shirt. The dark material is well suited for hiding all manner of cuts and bruises, but her eyes focus in on the growing wet patch that makes the fabric cling tighter to his skin.

“Well, what do you think?” Robert asked. “Your professional opinion.”

“A bullet hole with no bullet.”

“Intriguing. Where did it go?”

“Out the other side, one would imagine.”

“I told you I was fine.” Booker’s complaints are silenced once more, but this time it is Rosalind who has her fingers against his side.

“There’s no place in the examination room for backtalk from the patient,” she stated plainly. “Besides, you were most certainly not fine – you would have bled out here, in this drafty little room, were it not for our intervention.”

“And then what would Elizabeth do?” Robert adds.

“And then what would you do?” Rosalind finishes.

They’re both staring at him disapprovingly, and Booker throws his hands up, grunting in near immediate regret of his actions.

“I get it, I get it,” he mutters and begins to unbutton his shirt. At the last button, Robert moves forward in a fluid motion, slipping a hand under either side of the shirt and pushing it away from Booker’s chest, down his arms. Rosalind joins in too, her touch precise as she carefully peels the wet material off of his wound.

“There we are,” she murmurs. “One perfectly punctured entrance wound. And, judging from the angle…” With a stern hand, she guides Booker to lean forward. Robert’s splayed hands rest against his chest and provide him support. When Booker glances up, Robert meets his eyes with one side of his lips quirked upwards. Rosalind pulls the remains of his shirt down, exposing his back. “Ah ha!”

“Have you found what you were looking for?” Robert answered his sister but his gaze was fixed to Booker. The brunet struggled not to move.

“Whenever have I not?” Rosalind turns away from Booker, facing her back towards him so his view of her hands is obscured.

“A force to be reckoned with,” Robert replies. His smirk only widens and Booker finds himself transfixed somehow. The Luteces were always intense – and confusing – but this feels different somehow. The redhead flips back around and in her hands is a syringe, some liquid glossy and red filled to overflowing within.

“Hold still, this will pinch,” she says. Booker only gets out the beginning of a threat before the needle is shoved into his side, right beside his open wound. “And then burn.” She presses the plunger down and it feels like the hole carved through him has been set on fire. “Brother, be a dear and hold him steady, would you? All that thrashing is bound to interfere.”

“My pleasure.” Those hands are off his chest in a flash, iron grips around his forearms, and Rosalind’s hands cup either side of his neck and drag him upwards with gentle guidance. Weight settles across his legs, and beyond the all-encompassing searing shooting through him, Booker recognizes that Robert has climbed into his lap, using his body to keep him still.

“The things I do for you,” Rosalind comments, and Robert makes a shushing noise.

Pain stretches out seconds into minutes and hours, but eventually Booker slumps, breathing heavy, a thin layer of sweat accumulating along his skin. Slim and cool fingers card through his hair, pausing to run up and down and up at the base of his neck. He opens his eyes to find he is leaning his forehead against Robert’s shoulder, and the other man has moved his hands from his arms to his sides.

“Welcome back, Mr. DeWitt.” From his position, he could feel Robert’s chest reverberate on every word. His mouth moved against the soft fabric of the redhead’s coat.

“Is he trying to communicate?”

“Oh, give him a moment.”

“I already have – more than one. I say we call the experiment here, he is clearly-”

“’M fine,” Booker slurs. “What the hell was in that syringe?”

“Nothing to worry about.”

“You wouldn’t understand even if we told you.”

“What ever happened to bedside manner?” Robert titled Booker’s head up, and Rosalind’s fingers were still in his hair.

“Whatever indeed.” Robert closes the scant distance between them, lips brushing against Booker’s without hesitance. The gunman’s lips are chapped and windburnt but Robert hardly finds that disagreeable. Rosalind’s grip tightens and she gives a pointed tug, and Booker’s mouth slips open. The twin in his lap shifts forward and a tongue slides into his mouth.

Somehow, Booker’s hands end up resting on Robert. More than resting, fingers digging in to the small of his back and pinning the physicist in place. The kiss ends and Robert pulls away, tongue darting out to swipe along his lip. Booker’s gaze is glued to the sight until subtle pressure from Rosalind has him turning his head, and the other twin is leaning in as well, meeting his lips with the same self-assurance as the first had.

He’s pretty sure he bled out after all.

Regardless of his personal thoughts on the matter, he finds himself leaning upwards into her touch. For such a clinical and exacting mind, the way her tongue moves… Or perhaps it makes sense that she knows the precise way to dip in and withdraw, to pull him into following her lead. Robert’s hand grazes along his chest and Booker feels the man lap at the tender junction of his jaw and neck, before soft lips are brushing over his skin, before blunt teeth are dragging against him.

Booker’s eyes slip open and he isn’t entirely sure when they shut in the first place. Rosalind is pulling away from him and she looks smug in a way that would normally do nothing beyond pissing him off. But in this one moment, that look feels like a promise and with her brother nibbling and sucking at his neck, he’s, well, outside of his comfort zone, to understate things.

“Brother.” A muffled noise from Robert. “I believe I’ve come around to your way of thinking.”

“I told you so,” Robert says, straightening finally. “Hmm, that felt quite nice this time.”

“Satisfied?”

“Hardly.”

“You talk too much,” Booker growls and one of his hands darts up to wrap around Robert’s necktie, yanking him back down. His other reaches blindly around the man and fumbles at Rosalind’s skirt, twisting in the tan material and urging her closer as well. Both the twins laugh at his impatience, one against his mouth and the other untangling his fingers from her clothes.

“What a gentleman,” Rosalind says. Booker’s eyes closed again, but when he opened them it’s to Robert smirking, his own twin’s pale arms wound about his neck and shoulders from behind. She was pressed up against him, and Booker had a moment to imagine what Robert must be feeling, her soft body flush along his own. And had a moment to wonder when, exactly, they lost their clothes. Like they can hear his thoughts, they share an amused glance.

Robert lifts himself from Booker’s lap, and then an R. Lutece is sitting on either side of him, each pinning one of his hands with one of their own and running lithe fingers up and down his body, pausing to tickle and ghost over various areas. Robert seems fixated upon the bony prominences of his body, his touch lingering over his hips, up the faint bumps of his ribcage and across his collarbones. Their eyes meet and the physicist playfully taps the taunt skin at the hollow of his throat, causing Booker to swallow involuntarily.

Rosalind’s hand slides coolly back and forth across his chest, following the patterns of his muscles and scars downwards. Her eyes flicker, from his body to his face, and Booker could believe that she was cataloguing every shift of his muscles, every twitch of his face and hitch of his breath. Perhaps predictably, neither of the twins pay any attention whatsoever to his growing erection, even when Rosalind’s hand moves down and begins to squeeze along his thigh, as though she is testing his muscle tone.

Well, now he just wishes he had bled out.

“Pulse rate: 76,” Rosalind announces, and Booker scowls when he notices her fingers have wrapped around his wrist, pressing innocuously against his pulse.

“Respirations: 18,” Robert replies and when Booker meets his eyes his grin broadens. “And pupils dilated – 5mm.”

“Flushed skin, mild uncontrollable musculoskeletal spasms,” Rosalind continues. Booker’s starting to get fed up with this, and he’s just opening his mouth to call it off, shifting to throw them off. “I think we can do better, don’t you?”

“Great minds think alike.”

After a short period of bickering, the twins decided that they would first take turns.

“This better not be one of those contests you two are so fond of,” Booker said, lying back across the bed and propping himself up on his elbows.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You know – heads or tails, bird or cage.”

“Rosalind or Robert?” The Luteces looked at each as though the idea had never crossed their minds. A beat. “We would never.”

“It would hardly be fair.”

“Indeed,” Robert agrees immediately. And then he seemed to take pause as well. “And just what do you mean by that, I wonder?”

“It seems to be quite clear what I mean,” she replies.

Booker sighed. Whatever weird rivalry they constantly had going with each other, he wanted no part of it. Of course, as they were so fond of pointing out, every side had its opposite, every hand its other – the pat on the back that came with the shove off the cliff. In other words, the bright side of life, as Elizabeth would say, and Jesus, he did not want to be thinking about her at the moment.

He was forcibly removed from his thoughts by a hand wrapping around his cock and he let out a breath hissed through his teeth. Robert dragged his hand carefully up and down. There were just the faintest of calluses along his finger tips and palms, no doubt from handcrafting reality-breaking machines for a living. Booker could feel a flush creeping across his skin as he was coaxed back to full hardness.

Both of the twins were glued to his reactions, and he felt like some sort of science experiment. He could feel Robert adjusting his grip with almost minuscule detail, tightening here, loosening there, twisting his wrist just so. Booker’s breathing hitched with one particular stroke. Always look on the bright side of life. The Luteces looked more excited now than they had even before.

“If you intend to waste your turn, then just let someone else have a go,” Rosalind says. She had leaned in close to her brother, her lips almost brushing against his ear. Robert turns his head towards her, just a fraction to the side.

“Feeling a bit eager, are we?” Robert’s wearing a grin now that he seems to reserve for his twin alone. Rosalind returns it, and Booker takes the moment to let his eyes wander over them, long limbs and pale skin, light patterns of freckles that are barely visible.

“I don’t know, are we?” Nonsensical, at least to Booker, but that was half of their conversations anyway.

“One of you two needs to get on-” with it, Booker finishes in his mind as aloud his sentence ends in a groan. Robert drooped down and wrapped his lips around the head of his cock, sucking lightly, and Booker’s hips twitch when a tongue slides over its tip.

He can’t do much thinking, then, as Robert begins to bob his head, the same calculating manner as before, though it carries an urgency that might divulge some of the redhead’s more personal interest in the matter. It doesn’t take long for him to find a pace that has Booker’s hand twisting in the sheets. Up and down, his tongue pressing along the underside of his dick, his hand moving faster below and slicked with his own saliva.

Booker’s entire body feels ablaze, his head thrown back against the pillows, eyes clamped shut as he tries his best to keep from squirming, writhing beneath Robert’s ministrations. The tempo Robert had built up suddenly slows, becoming languid. Now the man sucks and laves at him almost luridly, taking him deeper into his mouth on each down stroke. Booker lifts his head to watch and finds Rosalind with her fingers tangled in Robert’s red hair, guiding his movements up and down.

“Fuck,” he manages to breathe out, Rosalind’s eyes flicking up to meet his gaze with a smile as she pushes her brother down further on his cock. There’s a slight flush to both the twins’ faces, more pronounced across Robert’s high cheekbones. Booker tosses his head back again, his hips giving an aborted, mindless buck.

Heat coils tight in his stomach, Booker certain he’s about to lose it when Robert takes his cock fully in his mouth, in his throat, and he has to clench his hands to keep from fisting them in Robert’s hair himself. And then Robert is disengaging from him entirely, wringing some pathetic, whining noise from the back of his throat that has both Luteces chuckling at his display.

“Do you think he wants to call the game early?” Rosalind asks.

“That’s not very sporting of him,” Robert replies, voice breathy and rough at the edges. It makes Booker want to drag him back down onto his dick.

“Shut up,” Booker manages to groan out. The temptation is rising to wrap his own hand around his cock and finish himself off, but it’s just barely suppressed as the twins shift positions. Robert moves to his side and Rosalind sidles in between his spread legs, a cool hand on either of his thighs. Booker tries to hold still but his muscles twitch, and he fidgets when he feels a bead of precum dribble down the side of his aching cock.

“Poor thing,” Rosalind says, sounding for all the world like she’s never even heard of the concept of empathy. Even so, her soft hand encircles him and Booker gasps as she slides up and down his still slick length.

Booker’s thrusts up into her hand, meeting her on every smooth, downward stroke. The sensation is almost enough for him to miss her other hand slipping lower, fingers wet and viscous running over his skin and leaving a cool trail behind them. And one slips inside him, the slight discomfort enough to make his hips stall for a moment.

“A little faith would go a long way,” she commented. Booker kept his complaints to himself, mostly due to Robert’s mouth meeting his again. It’s enough of a distraction - Robert’s tongue, Rosalind’s hand around him - until she crooks her finger just so and presses, and Booker’s seeing stars, moaning into their kiss, hips twitching and unsure if he needs to thrust forwards or lean back.

Every rub of her finger inside him sends bolt of heat searing through his body until he’s certain he must be shaking, certain that he has never felt such straining for relief. He grows sloppy with Robert, until they part so Booker can pant and moan and writhe beneath the twins. Please, please,

“Please,” Booker mutters aloud, and is immediately rewarded with Rosalind’s mouth on his length and one more hard, firm press inside him has him coming all over her tongue. A groan escapes him when he feels her swallow around him, and his tensely wound body slumps as soon as she pulls free from him.

If the twins say anything to one another, Booker doesn’t hear it over the rushing tide of his heartbeat in his ears. It slows to a dull thump as his thought processes creak back into full function, and he looks to Robert first, who’s looking at Rosalind, who’s licking her lips and watching Booker. The gunman clears his throat and Robert turns his head to watch him as well.

“So, am I supposed to, uh, choose…?” he trails off, and any slight apprehension he may have held is quashed when both the Luteces start laughing at him.

“Oh no, not at all.”

“That’s not how this particular exercise works.”

“And besides, this is only round one.”

Booker stayed annoyed for exactly as long as it took for their words to sink in.

“Round one?” He hopes he doesn’t sound too excited.

“Yes,” Rosalind says. “And a bit of reciprocity every now and again never hurt anyone.”

“Never?” asks Robert.

Frank Fontaine had been holed up in this dingy security room for God only knew how long. Through the hazy film of smoke his piercing eyes stayed fixed to the various screens, watching the static-lined grey images of his Frankenstein creation – bought and paid for, signed, sealed, delivered – as he carved a bloody path through the soaked streets of Rapture. Well! Let it never be said that Frank didn’t get what he paid good money for. Except…

He struck a match, a small orange flare in the otherwise white washed room and heaved a frustrated sigh. He stooped forward to light his cigarette. His gaze flicked to the door as he heard the shambling gate of one those lunatics walking by, dragging something heavy along the floor behind it. They were always muttering to themselves, the damn Splicers – could never shut up long enough to give him five minutes to think. And think he needed to, because for the last what, half an hour, his good ol’ boyo down there had been in the same damn spot.

Doing the same. Damn. Thing.

At first, Frank had been annoyed that this particular set up hadn’t included sound, but as he watched Jack’s repetitive, rhythmic movements, he couldn’t deny his relief. On the grainy screen, Jack raised his wrench again, blood and tiny flecks of something – tissue, bone – flying off its end before he was swinging it back down. And then again. And then again. And then again.

“Hey, boyo,” Frank said into the radio, his phony accent firmly in place. No response. Jack’s arm raised again and the worthless bugger didn’t seem to react to his voice at all. The wrench crashed back into what had to be nothing but pulp by now. Frank slammed his fist down on the consul before him, so hard that the buttons beneath his hand buckled and a few forks of electricity sparked up from it. “Would you kindly stop doing that and get back to your god damned mission!?”

Jack’s whole body shuddered, as it had every time before when Frank had used his trigger, but a brief interlude later he was back to swinging his wrench. Thump. Thump. Thump. Each impact on the screen was so visceral he could almost hear it. Yeah, if Frank had had to listen to that all this time he would have lost his mind, as if watching his expensive toy break right before his eyes wasn’t enough to do the same.

It was a shame that Suchong was already wearing his Chicago overcoat, so to speak, cause Fontaine would love to wring his scrawny little neck for this. As it was, he could at least take some comfort in knowing the old needlenose had died a screaming, messy death as far as could be determined. Frank hunched over, running his fingers through his hair. What the fuck was he going to do?

They were so close. Jack had been everything he’d been promised, and more. Barked, leapt, and bit like a trained dog: only at the word of his master. He was not going to lose to Andrew Ryan, not now, not when he could taste the splendor of Rapture and everything beyond it on the tip of his tongue. He lifted his head, holding his cigarette steady as he took a deep drag, eyes glued to the bloody figure on the monitor. Still thumping away.

Christ.

Frank was not the kind of man to give up and throw in the towel the moment the world decided to give him the royal shaft. No, he was no quitter, but he wasn’t a damned idiot either. He knew when to cut his losses and walk away. If his pet project down there wasn’t responding to his commands, then he was no use, whether he snapped out of this loop or not. But that would mean scrapping years of planning – and cash.

He stood up, his chair scraping across the steel ground as he did so. The sound was almost deafening in the silent office.

“All right, Jackie boy, you’re a real piece of work, you know that?” Frank snarled into the radio. He didn’t bother to disguise his voice. “I’m coming down there, and would you kindly just keep doing exactly what’re doing now?” He didn’t bother to look at the screen, instead grabbing his pistol off the top of the control panel. A flick of his wrist had the chamber sliding smoothly open, ingrained habit making him check the number of bullets within before clicking it shut again.

There was a sudden pounding on the door to his right, and the muffled voice of one those drug-addled freaks. Degenerates. They’d gotten the job done, sure, of bringing the great Andrew Ryan’s city to its knees around him, but they were nothing more than lousy, soft minded marks. Rich kids who played at being tough, sheep who played at being shepherds. The door shook in its frames, the metal bending inwards where the Splicer was no doubt slamming his weapon against it.

Well. If he was going to go around knocking on death’s door, who was Frank to disappoint? And since he wouldn’t be shooting his little science project in the head anytime soon – unless things really took a turn – he would at least get the grim satisfaction of putting something out of its misery. He dropped his cigarette to the ground, crushing it beneath the heel of his shoe, and tossed his gun to his left hand, then back to his right. Then he opened the door, raising his arm to point the barrel right at the freak’s eye socket.

Three quick shots later Frank was stepping over its mutilated body, a fine speckling of blood painting his face and clothing. One good thing about living in a city gone to absolute hell – no worries about cleaning up after yourself. He spat on the corpse as he walked by, and wracked his brain trying to remember how to get to where Jackie boy had last been.

Thankfully, Jack wasn’t too far away, at least in terms of Rapture. Frank had even been planning on moving camp soon before the kid had gotten it in the tangled wires of his head that he had to make mashed potatoes out of some Splicer’s brains. It wasn’t too difficult to avoid the worst of the packs of roaming loonies, Frank having spent the better part of the last few hours watching security feeds from all over the sunken and sinking city. What few he couldn’t avoid he blew the brains out of, and even if his natural inclination towards bloodlust was being slackened, his ire towards the one forcing him out into this cesspit was only growing.

The streets slowly became more and more abandoned, until Frank couldn’t even hear the Splicers’ incessant yammering and muttering, the shuffling of their unsteady gaits as they stalked back and forth, searching for whatever it was crazy, strung-out people searched for. A dull, wet thunking filled the air, and he followed it. It was a long while before he came to Jack, and never once did the sound falter or change in rhythm. There was something to be said for consistency, wasn’t there?

Frank kept his weapon drawn as he strolled into the square Jack had stopped in. There, lit by the flickering glow of a street light, was Jack. He was down on his knees, straddling what Frank assumed had once been a Splicer. There was nothing but a fleshy mass of tissue and bone shards where its head used to reside, and Frank’s features twisted in distaste as he watched Jack slam the head of the wrench into that pile again. And again.

He stalked over to the boy’s side and crouched down, gun held loosely in his fingertips. Even getting this close didn’t seem to show any signs of shaking Jack out of his stupor. Frank watched him bring the weapon down a few more times.

“What am I going to do with you, boyo?” he said in Atlas’ voice. His eyes raked over the kid’s face, searching for any sign of recognition. Nothing. Frank sighed, straightening up again.

Damn it all to hell. The man before him was liberally splattered with blood, the dark red seeped into the thick wool of his sweater. There were cuts and burns littering his body, holes punched in his clothes and skin where bullets had ripped through him. A particularly nasty laceration that curved along his side was still dripping blood. Jack’s eyes were glassy, unfocused, and not for the first time Frank wondered just what, if anything, was going through his mind.

“Hey,” he said softly, still in cloaked in his disguise, “would you kindly look at me?”

And there, finally, a reaction. Jack blinked once, twice, his movements stilling. His body gave that shudder Frank had seen through the screen. It was unnerving up close, watching his muscles clench and unclench in a desynchronized wave, producing a jerking, shivering motion. If Frank were a lesser man, he would have withdrawn, but he knew the value of keeping a cool façade. Jack raised his head, staring at him. Frank grinned.

“There, that’s better. Now drop the wrench, would you, that Splicer’s more than a hair past dead,” he said. The clanging, metallic crash of the weapon sliding free from Jack’s fingers was like music. That was a relief – his science experiment wasn’t broken beyond repair, at the very least. But it did beget one to wonder, what the hell happened?

Frank stood to his full height, chuckling as Jack’s gaze followed him. Good boy, wasn’t he? He maneuvered to stand fully in front of him, legs planted on either side of the mutilated remains of the Splicer. With one hand, he reached out and grabbed Jack’s chin, tilting his head back so he could get a clearer look at him.

The kid looked out of it, that was for damn sure, but it was hard to say what was wrong. Too much ADAM? Too much alcohol? The pieces of a phrase some Sunday school teacher had said to him once - something about violent acts warping the nature of a man - floated in the back of his mind, but Frank had never believed any of that hogwash. He looked Jack over, until, there: on the edge of his temple, a thick bruise was forming, so purple it was near black. Coated in blood as Jack was, Frank had missed it at first, but it seemed as though this thug of a Splicer had brained his business partner here something good.

He tugged Jack’s head to the side, the man following his lead docilely. Frank crouched back down, setting his weapon on the ground, and his other hand drifted up to press against the bruise, followed it back where it disappeared into his hairline. Jack let out a sharp hiss of pain at the contact. The pale threads of his hair were wet and clumped together. Frank carded his fingers through the matted strands, feeling at the small gap where Jack’s skin had split. He could feel the other man shivering.

“Well,” he began, “I don’t suppose a first aid kit’s gonna be fixing this, is it?” Even with his head turned, Jack’s gaze was still glued to him. Frank let go of him, but Jack stayed in position until he was guided to look forward again. “What would you do without me, boyo?” Nothing, Frank assumed. Or perhaps that wasn’t quite accurate – the kid had been up on dry land for a stretch, after all. Frank hadn’t seen him in a long, long time.

Frank grabbed his gun off the ground and stood. Jack stayed almost motionless on the ground, staring at him expectantly, eagerly even. Waiting for his next command. Frank sneered – it was pathetic. It was enticing. Not to say that he’d been getting his rocks off watching Jack skip to whatever tune Frank chose, but it carried a certain thrill to it all the same. And here in the flesh, well, it was becoming a whole different story.

“Ah hell, you’re going to the Vita-Chamber after this either way, aren’t you? Stand up and follow me, would you kindly,” Frank said. He’d slipped out of character but Jack didn’t seem to notice. Whether that was due to the command or the head trauma, it wasn’t clear, and Frank didn’t give much of a damn either way.

They didn’t have to go too far. The kid was thorough when he went through a place, picked it clean of loot and Splicers alike. Frank dropped onto one of the benches lining the walkways, slinging his arms up to rest along its back, and spread his legs. Man alive, there was a time this part of the city would have been packed to the brim, gaggles of girlies running around tittering, all of them looking like starlets thanks to Plasmids and good old doctor Steinman. Now the lighting flittered incessantly, and the low buzz of florescent bulbs was the only sound.

Jack stopped a few feet in front of him, and with the barrel of his gun Frank gestured him closer. Like the well-heeled beast that he was, Jack came to him, standing just before him between his knees.

“Sweater off, boyo. Time to see what good money can buy.” Without hesitation, Jack’s hands went to the hem of his thick sweater, pulling it up and off. His actions didn’t slow even when threads of it clung to his wounds, peeling away from old and fresh injuries alike. He held the bulky fabric in his hand for a moment, and then let it fall in a heap to the dirty floor.

Apparently, good money can buy a lot. Jack was a picture perfect specimen, spine straight even with his torso littered with gashes and contusions. Some nasty bruises were focused along one side of his ribs, like he’d been kicked while he was down. Well, haven’t we all been? A half healed bullet hole near his shoulder, a shiny red and blistered patch down his chest, and randomly placed lacerations, shallow and deep, from those hook-handed freaks.

“On your knees, would you kindly,” Frank murmured. Jack dropped immediately, a sharp crack resounding as his knees slammed into the pavement. The kid didn’t even wince. Frank dropped his gun on the bench next to him, leaning forward slightly. He placed his hands on Jack’s shoulders, his left thumb drifting down to rub circles around the raw looking puncture wound.

“I guess those doctors really knew what they were doing when they put you together, huh? You know, they shuffled through your ‘genetic code’ and just picked and chose what they wanted. Wonder what got left on the cutting room floor, don’t you?” Jack looked confused, and Frank took the opportunity to shove his thumb into the bullet hole. Hands were suddenly around his forearm, strong fingers digging in tight, pulling him away, and Frank laughed.

“Oh, so there’s something inside there after all? I was beginning to think you were all brawns and no brains! Now would you kindly let go, and keep your arms down?” The grip around his arm loosened, Jack’s hands going slack and his arms lowered to dangle at his sides. “Good boy.” It seemed something was starting to cut through whatever haze the kid had been in – he was beginning to look more and more aware, concerned even, as Frank flip flopped between being ‘himself’ and Atlas.

“Just a concussion, boyo, nothing to fear,” he cooed in his false voice. Frank shoved his thumb back into the wound, twisting it. “A few wires crossed in that head of yours.”

“A-Atlas?” Jack’s voice came out scratchy and wane, like he’d been screaming his throat raw recently. He jerked and gasped in pain when Frank thrust his thumb in deeper, bent and hooked it, but didn’t lift even a pinky to resist in any other way.

“In the flesh,” Frank said. Sure, there was nothing to be gained from messing with the poor man’s head right now, but what the hell. He was allowed to cut loose, have a little fun. “Couldn’t very well leave you twisting in the wind all alone, now could I?”

“You came to help me?”

“’Course I did, boyo.” Frank watched the way Jack’s chest rose and fell, short and shallow breaths leaving it practically heaving. He wrenched his thumb free and Jack’s breathing stuttered, his muscles bunching and trembling minutely. With his now free hand he cupped the side of Jack’s face, thumb leaving wet trails of blood where he stroked it up and down the smooth skin. Dealing with this kid was like shooting fish in a barrel. “I said I’d be looking out for you, didn’t I?” Did he? Frank didn’t even remember, but it wasn’t as though it mattered.

Jack, for his part, looked relieved, his shoulders slouching as his body relaxed. Frank gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and then let his right hand travel lower. It brushed over the raw, burned patch of skin on his chest – and Jack’s chest leapt beneath his touch, breath caught in his lungs – continued lower, settling over the curving and ragged laceration that was still steadily weeping hot red blood.

“And since I’ve helped you, well, here I was thinking you might be inclined to return the favor.” Frank had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing as Jack frowned in confusion, frazzled brain clearly overclocking in an attempt to remember events that never happened. One would think he’d be adept at it by now. “Well, boyo? What do you say? Would you kindly lend me a helping hand?” Or mouth.

“Of course, Atlas,” Jack said, the reply instantaneous. Frank slid his hand around from his cheek to bury his fingers in the short strands of Jack’s hair.

“There’s a good lad.” A tremor quaked through Jack’s body at that, and oh, wasn’t that interesting? If Suchong still resided among the living, Frank would be tempted to give him a raise. “Now, why don’t you start off by relieving me of my belt, eh?”

The man hunched forward, but then abruptly froze, and Frank felt his jaw clench in irritation. What in the bloody hell was the matter now? Jack looked just as troubled, his eyes flickering, and then it clicked together. The command to keep his arms down was still in play. Frank chuckled and pet through Jack’s hair a few times in comfort, even as the fingers of his other hand slid up and down the jagged opening of his wound.

“Ah, here boyo, let me,” Frank said. His hands left Jack, coming to deftly flick his belt free of its buckle, sliding the black leather free. “Now, with your mouth, would you kindly.” That seemed to resolve whatever internal conflict had made ol’ Jackie boy stall out, and Frank filed it away as useful information.

He leaned back against the bench, one arm slung over it and the other resting a hand in Jack’s hair again. The boy lowered himself, bending forward, and Frank’s fingers tightened in his hair when his lips brushed against his clothed erection. Damn, it had been a while. His hips were already twitching, eager to drive upwards, as he felt Jack fumbling clumsily with lips and tongue and teeth at the button of his pants.

It took him a few tries, but Frank thought of it as a tease, Jack’s mouth just barely ghosting over him. And he didn’t even have to say anything before Jack was taking the zipper of his slacks between his teeth and dragging it downwards. Frank let out a breath hissed through his teeth. Jack stopped there, apparently unsure how to proceed.

“Good, very good.” He kept his left hand clenched in Jack’s hair, gave him a short tug, and with his right he reached down to free himself from the confines of his briefs. His fingers and palm were still damp with Jack’s own blood, and he smeared the substance on himself as he briefly stroked up and down his cock. “Ah, Jack, look what you’ve gone and done - your blood’s gotten everywhere! Would you kindly clean it off for me?” Jack frowned, like he was processing something. “With your tongue, boyo.”

Frank was getting good at this. Whether the enthusiasm had anything to do with the kid’s inner workings or was just a by-product of his conditioning, Frank didn’t care to know, but Jack leapt to task like he’d been born to do it. His eyes were glued to the man as he lapped at his cock, tongue dragging over every inch of it. Long strokes and short strokes, without rhythm but firm against his hard flesh, and now Frank couldn’t help but to shift his hips, his legs falling further apart. At the tip of his cock, Jack licked over and over, running around the head to ensure he’d gotten every single drip of his blood off.

“Mouth open,” Frank growled, and he held Jack’s head still as he thrust his dick into his mouth. He felt his dick hit the back of the kid’s throat and he let out a groan, jerking Jack’s head back off of him before pushing him back down. “Relax.” So easy, just like that, Jack went from gagging and coughing to smoothly accepting Frank’s cock down his throat. Frank thrust up, jamming his dick as deeply as it would go. “Choke.” Fuck, he was going to cum, the muscles of Jack’s throat suddenly clenching and spasming around his flesh, and after an elongated moment he wrenched the kid off him again, letting go of him to try and delay the inevitable.

Jack leaned away from him, to the side, coughing violently. Tears were leaking from his eyes – probably involuntary, Frank had choked enough whores on his cock to be familiar with the signs. Frank allowed him some time to recover, using it to calm down himself. He loosely palmed his dick, which was glistening and soaked with saliva now. When Jack finally seemed to have composed himself, Frank cleared his throat, prompting the man to turn to face him once more.

“Now, you get the idea, right boyo? Know the rhythm?” Jack looked at him blearily but nodded his head. Frank put his hand gently on the side of his face again, cupping his cheek. “You still want to help me, don’t you? You were doing so good.”

“I’d do anything to help you, Atlas.” There was a flush to his cheeks.

“Course you would.” He threaded his fingers back through Jack’s hair and guided him down. “Now, would you kindly suck my dick?”

Frank should’ve been doing this from the damn start. That enthusiasm was back, Jack’s mouth sliding up and down his cock fervently, Frank could imagine almost hungrily. Like Jack wanted it. When he thrust upwards, forcing the head of his cock to his throat, he could feel Jack gag against him, and he did it once, twice, until the third time he felt himself just slip down his throat. Those eggheads sure did know what they were doing.

Drool was leaking over Jack's chin, out of the sides of his mouth. Frank fucked his face, the hard grip on the back of his head driving their pace. He wasn’t going to last much longer. Frank gave a few more rough, particularly forceful thrusts.

“Swallow, would you?” And Jack was gulping him down like was trying to drain him. He lodged himself as deeply as he could manage, moaning lowly as he emptied himself straight down Jack’s throat. Frank held him in place until he was sure he’d gotten it all, and then let go, slumping on the bench. “Stop, that’s enough.”

Jack pulled away, coughing again, one hand rubbing his throat. They were both heaving for breath. Frank let his eyes slip shut for a minute, listening to his heartbeat thump in his ears. Damn. It was going to be a shame to have to off the kid after all was said and done. Maybe he’d think about coming up with a work around. In the meantime, Frank straightened, tucking himself back into his pants and straightening his clothing.

“Nice work, boyo,” he said. The kid's face was still flushed and his lips were cherry red. Frank sighed and picked up his gun. “Now, there’s just a few more things you could do for me, Jack.” He flicked the cylinder open, and fumbled in his pocket for more rounds, sliding bullets into the empty chambers. “First of all, would you kindly forget about the last, oh, 40 minutes of your day?” Jack’s gaze went blank, and Frank slammed the cylinder shut. He flipped the pistol, and then presented it handle first towards Jack. “And finally, would you kindly shove the barrel of my gun in your mouth and blow your brains out?”

No hesitation, just how Frank liked it. Jack reached forward and grabbed the pistol. And then his mouth was opening, the barrel of his gun sliding in where his dick had just been, and then Jack was pulling the trigger, and then his body was falling backwards, the Plasmids in his veins already lighting up, doing whatever scientific bullshit they did to revive the Ryans in their fancy Vita-Chambers.

Frank stood and picked his pistol up from the ground. He stuffed it into the holster at his side, and then lit a cigarette. His gaze rested on the bloodstain Jack had left behind.

“How does your story go, Miss Utena?”

“Hmm, let’s see.” Utena glances to the side, bites her bottom lip, and then looks up. “I save Himemiya!”

X.

Let’s start again.

“How does your story go, Miss Utena?”

“Hmm, let’s see.” Utena leans back in her chair, crosses her hands behind her head. “I save Himemiya!”

X. X.

Let’s start again.

“How does your story begin, Miss Utena?”

“Hmm, let’s see,” Utena says. She stares off into the distance for a second, before smiling bashfully, a light pink coloring her cheeks. “You know, it’s hard to pick a point to start at!”

A puppet leans its head to the side.

You see, there once was a princess.

No, skip that part.

You see, there was always a prince.

No, that part’s not real.

You see, there’s always a rose garden.

A puppet sits up straight and then leans forward, and nods its dark, blank head enthusiastically.

Yes! Yes!

There was a rose garden. The door before her opened slowly. Petals were falling in the air. And something turned to look at her. It grinned at her. It reached out and captured her heart in a vice. It smiled so sweetly as it closed its fist, and ground her heart into its most basic pieces.

And? And?

And her palm was wet. Himemiya’s palm was wet, first. Then her fingers were wet, and then it was running out between her fingers, across the bumps and lines of her hand. She was smiling. Utena wasn’t smiling. Down in a dribble, down her wrist. She was smiling. A drop trembled on her skin and fell, and the droplet splashed back up and lingered in the air.

“Miss Utena…”

Utena is laying on her back. Her hair is spread out like a fan beneath her, pink ribbons curling against the dull greyness of their standard-issue sheets. She’s staring straight ahead, like a broken doll, over a dark skinned shoulder. Their shadows are shifting, a silent movie, indiscriminate hands moving lower, and her breath seizes in her throat.

“Himemiya,” she says, and her voice wavers. Their shadows stop. Himemiya pulls away, and looks at her, eyes narrowing behind her glasses. Looks at her, and smiles, and pulls away. Utena sits up and fixes the collar of her shirt. “I don’t…”

“Yes, Miss Utena?” Anthy looks like nothing has ever touched her. She smiles. Utena doesn’t.

“I don’t know.” Utena can’t look anymore. Her gaze is fixed on the floor.

“Of course, Miss Utena.”

But did that really happen?

X. X. X.

Let’s start again.

The lunches Wakaba made her were always extravagant. This one was so beautiful that Utena didn’t even want to pull one morsel free. But when she hesitated, Wakaba pouted, and so she shoved some in her mouth, and didn’t have to feign her reaction as the food melted in her mouth. Wakaba cheered, throwing her full weight on her, her arms cinching like a vice around her upper body, shaking her side to side.

“Ahhh, Utena, I just knew, I just knew you’d love it!” Wakaba rubbed her cheek against Utena’s. Utena struggled not to choke.

“It’s-” She was interrupted by a coughing fit that did nothing to discourage Wakaba’s grip. “It’s fantastic, really,” she was finally able to gasp out. “But don’t you think it’s a little much?”

“Nothing is too much for my most beloved! My most stalwart prince!” Wakaba declared. She dropped Utena like she was old news, standing up heroically. Her arm straightened out, her finger pointing resolutely towards the horizon. “Nothing is too good for the girl who isn’t a princess!”

What?

“What?”

What?

Wakaba turned to look at her, the sunlight behind her radiating outwards like an aura.

“Oh Miss Utena, didn’t you know?” They both looked to the side in surprise, and Himemiya was there. A cone of shaved ice was in her hand, melting in the summer heat, and pink lines of water and flavoring dripped down her hand. “A girl who cannot become a princess, is doomed to become a witch!”

But did that really happen?

X. X. X. X.

Let’s-

“This is where I dueled you,” Utena says. The wind whips her hair around in wild array, the petticoats of her dueling jacket ruffling. She turns around and there he is, smirking and oppressive.

“Yes,” is all Touga has to say. He comes forward and suddenly there’s a hand resting at the small of her back, a hand cupping the curve of her jaw, and she finds herself arching, leaning forward. Petals are falling in the sky.

And her blade doesn’t stop at his rose. It jabs into the soft meat of his chest, slips between the hard, firm armor of his ribcage. A cat is yowling in the night somewhere, in the distance, and she can hear wedding bells ringing.

“But you can’t be my prince,” she says. She’s saying the wrong lines. She wants to wrench her blade free but she can’t, it’s stuck, and tears prick the back of her eyes, burn brightly and well in the corners, and she-

X. X. X. X. X.

Let’s-

“This is where I dueled you,” Utena says. The wind whips her hair around in wild array, the petticoats of her dueling jacket ruffling. She turns around and there he is. Her heart beat quickens in her chest.

“Yes,” is all Akio says, and she tries not to think of Anthy when her gaze rests on his lips. Anthy…

“I don’t…” A clattering sound startles her, and she jerks, staring wide-eyed at the ground where her weapon has fallen. He comes towards her, his cape billowing out like a prince’s, like a real prince’s, and when he cups her face in his hands she finds herself arching, leaning forward.

Petals are falling in the sky.

“But you can’t be my prince,” Himemiya says, and bright pain is pulsing in her heart, is echoed by the physical pain lancing through her shoulder.

“Didn’t you know?” Akio says, his lips brushing against hers with every syllable. “A girl who cannot become a princess…” His fingers wrap around the shining point of the blade pushed through her chest, and pulls it closer. The handle of the blade sticks at her spine, and drags her closer as well. “Is doomed to become a witch.”

X. X. X. X. X. X.

Let’s start again!

You see, there was once a princess, and she wanted to see something eternal. And that eternal thing she saw was suffering and love, woven together in a never-ending pattern. She wanted to do something about it.

Did she want to own it?

Did she want to stop it?

Did she want to experience it for herself?

But was leaving her coffin really such a good idea?

X. X. X. X. X. X. X.

She saw something eternal when Anthy smiled.

X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X.

You see, there was always a prince.

No, that part’s not real.

X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X.

The room was dark. Utena knew there was a world outside this place, but here it was easy to pretend. When she looked out the window, all she saw was the moon and the stars, and there was something strangely comforting in the idea that their light was a billion years old. Her gaze dropped from the window, and fell to their clasped hands, their intertwined fingers.

“Himemiya,” she began. Anthy’s eyes opened in the darkness, emerald pools glinting the scant lighting. “I was afraid of the dark.” Anthy’s lips part. “When I was little, I mean.”

“Oh?” In anyone else, Utena would take it as a dismissal, as a sign that they weren’t interested. After all, who wasn’t afraid of the dark when they were little? But with Anthy, but with Anthy…

But with Anthy, the way she sighed it, the way her voice lilted up at the end, the way her eyes peered so intently, so intelligently at her, like Utena was being unraveled to her core…

“My parents…” They died. “My parents wouldn’t give me a night light, you know? They wanted me to get over it. They knew…” They would die? “They knew there wasn’t anything to be scared of.”

“So what happened?” Anthy’s fingers twitched between hers.

“Well, to be honest, I had tons of nightmares. I would run into their room all the time, and beg them to stay there until it was morning.”

Illuminated only by the moon, Utena could see Anthy smiling. Her eyes flicked over her face, again and again, and she wanted to remember this moment forever.

“But you know something? It’s silly, but…” Utena watched the even, rise and fall of Anthy’s chest. “I was always, kinda, a little afraid of it after all.” The hollow of her neck held a teardrop of dark shadows. “But when I’m with you…”

Anthy’s eyes widened.

“When I’m with you, I…” Their hands tightened, and Utena’s knuckles were almost white with exertion.

“When I’m with you, I’m not afraid anymore.”

X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X. X.