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Chapter Text

            “Good news Night Vale! City Council has announced an immediate initiative to reduce waste and redundancy in order to stretch your municipal budget dollar even further—“

            Carlos smiled hearing Cecil’s voice return from the weather report. He sterilized his loop in the burner flame and began inoculating a fresh rack of plates for culture.

            “—so this initiative will address possible closures of roads less traveled, deletion of surplus residents with less than two punches on their alert citizens cards—“

            Busy work like sample preparation was the dull part of science. But oh, who was he kidding? What dull part? With a practiced hand, Carlos happily scrawled a fishtail on the last plate in the rack. Beth, one of his team members, began streaking the samples and Carlos followed behind her, taping shut and labeling each petri dish lid.

            “—and potentially cashing out PTO surpluses, and other cost saving measures for you the citizens of Night Vale. ‘The more we save,’ one City Councilman added. ‘the more we can spend on you!’”

            Carlos wasn’t really listening. It was almost lunchtime, and if dealing with things called ‘nutrient broth’ was making his stomach growl, he must be hungry.

            “‘And also’, City Council asks, ‘have you seen the new Viking River Cruises website? The Copenhagen, Bruges, Svitz package looks especially lovely.’ I have to agree listeners. I just pulled up the site and the gallery photos look like a fairy tale… Anyway, I know all of you will want to cooperate fully—excuse me, you can’t come in here—what’s that? Hey, we’re on the air! You can’t—”

            Carlos’s head spun round to the radio from where he was carrying the plates to the incubator. The broadcast continued to air sounds of a struggle, shouting, a chair hitting the floor, some feedback and then static.

            He didn’t even remember letting go of the tray as he ran for the door. He didn’t get his keys, or consider his car — he just sprinted in a b-line the three and a half blocks towards the radio station. Winded, he streaked across the back parking lot of the Moonlight All Night Diner and clutched the stitch in his side as he rounded the corner of the station in time to see three black clad Sheriff’s Secret Police officers haul Cecil from the building. One had Cecil from behind, hugging his arms down to his sides, another hoisted his legs, arms looped around his knees, while a third talked into his headset and carried Cecil’s jacket, satchel, and the brown bag lunch Carlos made him, the top of the bag delicately pinched in his leather gloved fingers as though the contents might be contaminated.

            Cecil bucked and brayed, trying to get free. “You can’t do this! I want to review my contract with HR! Who will feed Khoshekh? Oh god, Sean! Sean! Tell intern Amal where his food is!”

            To Carlos’s horror, he spotted a black panel van at the end of the block where they were headed, and gasping, managed to speed up and close the distance. “Put him down! What’s going on?” He grabbed at one of the officers’ shoulder, but was shrugged off roughly.

            “Carlos!”

            Carlos’s eyes locked on Cecil’s wide panicked ones, and it felt like an ice pick stab in his chest — would his last sight of him be this? Cecil struggling, and terrified, before vanishing into some unmarked black van to god knows where?

            “What has he done? Why are you arresting him?” Carlos threw himself at the scrum of officers, but only bounced off one of their open palms thrust out against his chest.

            Now at the van, one pulled out a tape measure, held the length against the curb and nodded to the others. They dumped Cecil exactly one foot off of the radio station property. Releasing the tape with a snap, the Sheriff’s Secret Police officer hooked it back into his utility belt before thrusting a ream of forms into Cecil’s shaking hands, then the three sprang into the van and were gone.

            Panting, Carlos dropped to his knees by his boyfriend. “Cecil? What’s going on? Did you get fired?”

            But Cecil had become quiet. His gaze went back to the station, his face, stricken, lost.

            “No, I…” One of the forms — they looked like carbons in triplicate—started to blow from his hand. “I…”

            Carlos gathered up the papers for safe keeping and began looking over Cecil thoroughly, frantically, arms, legs, head, like a parent checking their child after a spill from a high tree branch. Physically he was in one piece. He searched Cecil’s face, feeling the ice pick sensation now twist. “Cecil.” Carlos swallowed hard, his mouth going dry. “It’s not the lottery, is it?”

            Cecil’s eye’s didn’t move from the station. “It’s my PTO.” He said slowly. “I’ve accrued too much… …they’re making me… …I mean, I have to… …I’m on…

            “What?” Carlos blurted. “What’re you on?”

            “Vacation.”

...to be continued...

Chapter Text

      “Cecil, this is wonderful.”

      “It is not wonderful.”

      “Three weeks? Of course it is — and the timing is perfect, scientifically speaking. Look, all my new samples are prepared and will need almost a month to culture before the next phase of testing.  And I can shift everything else to my team.” He waved at Beth who, behind a window looking into the lab, was in a hazmat suit sweeping up the tray of petri dishes.  “Well, okay. I have a little bit left to prepare today, and maybe tomorrow, but neither of us have had time off since I moved to Night Vale.”

      Cecil crossed his arms, hunching down in the weathered leather sofa in the break area of Carlos’ lab.  His petulant look started to crack, drifting back to the fearful one Carlos had seen out on the sidewalk. “But I don’t know what to do for three weeks…”

      Carlos tried not to laugh. He dropped down beside Cecil and put his arm around him. “We’re going to sleep in.” He lowered his voice, but still couldn’t hide his happy enthusiasm or relief. “And I’m going to make you breakfast in bed, and we can plan some quick getaway. Get out of the apartment, even get out of town for a few days.”

      “The station needs me—“

      Carlos caught himself before he tried to counter this; he wanted to bring Cecil around, not accidentally start an argument.  “Of course they do.”  He squeezed him and dropped his head on his shoulder.  “But I need you too, and we deserve some time off, right?”

      Cecil nodded, sighing.  “Of course…” He looked down at Carlos, who wiggled his eyebrows at him, and his anxious look melted a little. 

............................

      But when Carlos got home that evening, he waded waist high into coils of paper - Cecil’s un-scrolled station contract, and Cecil, eyes huge behind reading glasses, was trying to find a clause or loophole.

      “There’s just too much fine print…” He moaned.

      It was clear his boyfriend wasn’t going to let this go, so Carlos decided to roll with it. “Want me to take a look?”

      Cecil held out the coil of scroll, his eyebrows up in a pleading look.

      “Oh wow. You weren’t kidding.” Carlos squinted down into the blocks of minuscule cramped dense text. “It’s like it swallows light…”  He saw Cecil’s face fall, and straightened up determinedly. “Not a problem.” He strode into the kitchen and slid it under his household microscope. “Here we go. ‘Paid time off’…”

      Cecil hovered over him as he read, which made Carlos nervous, since nothing he was learning was likely to cheer Cecil up.

      At last he looked over.

      “Well?”

      “There’s a clause that says the station has the right to enforce vacation time as a cost saving measure to keep you from cashing it out.  I’m sorry, but it’s right there.” Carlos stepped back so Cecil could look through the eyepiece.  “If it makes you feel any better, based on their scale, it lost most of it’s value when they converted it back from when you were paid in scrip.” He added hopefully.

      Cecil’s face was hard to read when he straightened up.  It wasn’t exactly resigned or disappointed the way Carlos expected. “…Did you really run all the way to the station when my show cut off?” He asked at last.

      Carlos rubbed the back of his neck and grinned. “Well, yeah…”

      Taking the lapels of his lab coat to pull Carlos closer, Cecil kicked the ribbon of paper behind him.  A slow smile spread across his face and he leaned in and rubbed noses with Carlos. “Maybe three weeks isn’t long enough.” 

      Others might have thought it odd, Cecil’s attitude adjustment after learning he was indeed contractually obligated to take his vacation, but Carlos just chalked that up to him loving his job as much as he loved his hometown, although possibly because of or in spite of it’s bureaucracies and municipally mandated controls he couldn’t say.  Either way, by the time they settled into bed, Cecil was nestled against him, happily quizzing him on places he might want to go.

      “Mmm. I have a sister in New York… …I’ve never seen the redwoods…”

      “Me either—“ Cecil yawned. “Supposed to be amazing… Have you been to Seattle?”

      “Nope. None of the west coast. Have you?”

      Cecil squeezed him, eyes closed. “Uh-uh. Just Europe. …That’d be nice…”

      “What?”

      “See more of Europe…”

      “We need to make a list.” Carlos could feel Cecil’s arm across his chest loosening it’s grip and knew he was falling asleep.

      “Mm hm.”

      Carlos smiled and pulled the covers over Cecil’s shoulder. A list could wait until tomorrow.

............................

      Cecil did not wake up to the annoying beep of the alarm.  Rather, he recognized the familiar rich scent of fresh coffee and something warm and sweet… He rolled over and lifted his phone: 

      14:13 it read.  

      He blinked and stretched, paddling his feet in the smooth warmth of the sheets. He should get up, but this was really nice.  He should believe Carlos more... vacations were a good thing.

      When Carlos brought the tray in, Cecil sat up, crawling up to sit against the headboard, and turning red.  “I can’t believe you really did this.”

      “What? I said I would bring you breakfast in bed.”  Carlos scooted in beside him. “I didn’t mention that I’m joining you though. The french toast is rice bread by the way — kind of gooey”

      “It’s fantastic.”

      “You should probably try it before you say that.”

      “It’s fantastic.” Cecil repeated and kissed Carlos’s cheek. He’d gone all out: coffee, french toast with strawberries and powdered sugar. There was even orange milk.  Carlos was afraid of the stuff after he’d run a barrage of tests on a pint at the lab and couldn’t reach a  conclusion as to what exactly it was.  But Cecil loved it, and Carlos remembered and included it — on Cecil’s side of the tray.

      This is a good omen, Cecil thought.

      They ate with the laptop flipped open, bookmarking travel sites and building a list of destinations.“Just list everything. Brainstorm. Skies the limit. We can pick and choose through them tonight.”

      “Tonight?”

      “I need to go take care of a few more things at the lab - but by tonight it’ll be official. Both of us off the clock.  In fact, put them in order — your top picks on the top of the list, okay?”

      Cecil kissed a wisp of powdered sugar off Carlos’s cheek. “Okay.”

............................

      City Council, in conjunction with a vague, yet menacing, government agency had other ideas though…

      In the shower, Cecil was thinking about New York… He was curious to meet some of Carlos’s family, and by New York, did Carlos mean the state or actually New York city — because if he meant the city, well, wow… He needed to text him.

      Stepping out of the tub, his foot slipped on an envelope that had slid under the bathroom door. Inside was a telegram: “The Night Vale Medical Board regrets to inform you that you lack the proper vaccinations to enter the state of New York.”

      Cecil crumpled it and flushed it away.

      Seattle, he thought putting away the breakfast dishes. That would be a totally different climate and atmosphere, and neither of them had ever been…

      The phone rang, and putting it to his ear, he heard a series of taps and scratches, repeating in a loop.  Unless his morse code training as a Weird Scout was completely scrambled, it said Seattle was experiencing a deadly outbreak of panache.

      “Fine.” he snapped and hung up.

      He decided to take the laptop to the Moonlight and on the way texted Carlos asking if he wanted to visit family in Florida.  Before he could hit send, he heard an air horn and looked up. Overhead a crop duster drug a banner clearly stating: “The Scientist may not visit family.”

      Cecil scowled and deleted the text.

      At the diner, his research into Toronto was vetoed by a black clad secret police officer waving napkins at him in semaphore: “Canada is on our watch list.”

      He ordered tea and San Francisco was denied by a note on the napkin under his cup claiming panache was spreading down the pacific coast.

      By the time he headed home, he was fuming.  “Europe.” He announced to no one in particular. “It’s down to Europe!”

      A red tailed hawk skimmed his head and dropped a note: “You can’t afford it.”

      “Says who? And how is that any of your business?” Cecil demanded turning in the direction the hawk had come.

      A raven cawed and clipped the back of his head dropping his latest bank statement and credit card bill.

      Cecil crammed them in his pocket, too angry to speak and stalked the rest of the way down the block.  At the empty corner, he finally lost it.  “It’s my time off for pete’s sake!  Where exactly would be okay with you? Huh?”

      A small black drone buzzed down in front of him dangling a bright yellow greeting card. Cecil snatched it off and opened it.

      “Stay-cations are a fun and affordable way to—“

      Cecil ripped it up half-read. “No. NO! You can make me use my time off with no notice, you can drag me out of my station, but short of house arrest, you will NOT dictate that I stay home!”

      When the next drone hovered down, Cecil yanked it from the air, popped off the propeller and hurled it over the dog park fence.

............................

      Carlos got home that evening, and opened the front door to mosquito netting flopping down in his face, khaki bundles of sleeping bags and rucksacks littering the entry hall.  He found Cecil in the living room with compasses, maps, a butterfly net and the Sibley bird book of the Southwest spread on the coffee table, and sorting through a trunk of scopes, binoculars and other tactical gear he couldn’t recognize.

      “Uh, hey. What’s all this?”

      Cecil beamed up at him, put a finger to his lips and darted a shifty look to the windows before grabbing Carlos’s sleeve and towing him into the kitchen where he turned on the faucet full blast.  Carlos frowned.  It was never a good sign when Cecil resorted to white noise to block the Sheriff’s Secret Police audio surveillance.

      “I figured out what we’re doing.” Cecil hissed happily. “We’re going off grid!”

      The water sputtered and cut out — Cecil looked down in alarm.

      “I think they’re onto that trick.” Carlos whispered.

      Cecil’s gaze shot daggers out the kitchen window and Carlos thought he saw a flash of a black clad shape ducking behind the adobe courtyard wall.

      His jaw set and eyes narrowed as Cecil looked around the kitchen quickly, then suddenly lit up. “Ha!” He snatched the sugar bowl and dumped it into the sink and began scratching in it with his finger.

      Carlos looked down and his eyes widened. Scrawled in the sugar was one word: 

      “Camping!”

Chapter Text

            “Cecil, it’s January!” Carlos waved out the window where a dusting of snow the afternoon sun hadn’t melted yet made the barrel cactus in the courtyard look like it was wearing a jaunty white beret.

            “Yes, but it’s a dry cold.”

            Carlos cracked a smile at this despite himself: the Night Vale Tourism Board’s latest slogan was “Yes, but it’s a dry heat!”

            “It’s okay,” Cecil continued whispering. “I’ve done cold weather camping — I was a Weird Scout, you know.  Here, I made us a provision list so I can keep packing if you, um, don’t mind running to the Ralph’s?”

            Looking around the living room at the evidence of Cecil’s tornado-like activity of just a few hours, coupled with the twitchy way he kept checking over each shoulder while pressing the list on him, Carlos relented.

            In the grocery store hunting dehydrated foods and trail mix, he tried to inventory what brought him to this.  He enjoyed the cheerful zen Cecil, the one who felt comfortable and assured in his bizarre town and laughed or shrugged off things that left Carlos hastily restocking their block’s bomb shelter.  The one who calmly talked his listeners down with, “Look, it’s probably nothing.  If we panicked every time a sentient doomsday device escaped the Museum of Forbidden Technology…”   And lately that Cecil was very rare.

            Even petulant pouting Cecil was okay with Carlos.  Irritability to stimulus was a healthy response in a living organism. …Just so long as it was followed by appropriate reactive compensation reestablishing homeostasis, of course. Venting and expressing frustration was fine. It wasn’t directed at him. He was just its witness, and he could usually defuse it with a hug, a kiss, or acknowledging that Steve Carlsberg or the new station owners did indeed stink. It was when that anxious look flashed in Cecil’s eyes and he got quiet and shut down that Carlos couldn’t bear.  It was then that he wanted to roll up his lab coat sleeves and punch something, or outfit his Prius with jammers, smoke screens and oil slicks like James Bond, bundle Cecil into the passenger seat and drive them the hell out of Dodge to somewhere with no vague yet menacing government agency, or secret police, or librarians, or street cleaners… 

            Carlos shook his head quickly to stop that line of thought and refocused on the display of  jerky.  That list had no end.

            Maybe the camping thing was a good idea.  Get them out of town for a few days and away from, well, everything.

…………………..

            On the one hand, Cecil’s packing for their expedition looked practical, knowledgeable even.  Wool socks, layers of clothing, iodine tablets, shelf stable foods… But then, with the same matter of fact air, he added an ivory Billiken and a crumbling dried out cimaruta wrapped in a handkerchief, along with toothpaste and Carlos’s allergy medicine.

            The superstition or belief thing was something Carlos tried to get used to, adjust his thinking to. In his academic and professional communities, Carlos’s peers, had they known about them, would have scoffed at Cecil’s bloodstones and chants and called it ‘woo’ — and at one time Carlos would have too — but none of them had lived in Night Vale.

            “Did you get everything taken care of at work?” Cecil was now rolling up some rugs and an old Pendleton blanket.

            “Yeah. It was a Skype meeting I couldn’t reschedule — we were reviewing the graduate applications for the research team here.”  

            What Carlos did not mention was what his colleague brought up during the call:

            “Is that a hex sign?” 

            Confused at first, Carlos saw he meant the wheel of stars drawing on his bulletin board, visible behind him. “Oh. Uh, no, a Bloodstone Wheel. It’s a local thing, a protection charm.” Janice, Cecil’s niece had made it for both of them, but it was Cecil who cheerfully tacked it up and declared it a lab-warming present.

            Carlos saw the “Oh, really?” look in the other scientist’s eyes even across the streaming video and felt himself get angry — which was weird because he’d sort of done the ‘oh really’ thing himself when Cecil had hung it.

            It was complicated. 

            Cecil and he were very different in many ways. But they fit. Like Halloween night, laying out on the boardwalk of the waterfront area, Carlos could point out and name the constellations and stars and describe their distance and composition, and Cecil in turn could tell the intricate stories of the myths that named them.

            And while in his heart Carlos didn’t feel any comfort or faith in all the incantations or talismans, he would not discount or disrespect them — and if Beth or anyone on his team had a problem with that or so much as smirked at Cecil using Astrology and Astronomy interchangeably, Carlos would just have to drop a few more racks of culture plates for them to sweep up. 

…………………..

            “Why would city council ban you from visiting family?” Cecil was driving and telling Carlos about that morning.

            Carlos looked up from his map. “I have no idea.”

            Earlier, as they made back and forth trips to load the car, Carlos found a yellow note stabbed under the windshield wiper. Cecil couldn’t have missed it — it must have been placed the moment he turned his back but before Carlos arrived.

            “Any attempt to remove Lot 37 from this address will result in criminal charges being filed.” It might have looked more official if its author hadn’t printed it in Comic Sans.

            Carlos stepped out from the cars into the aisle of the parking lot and looked around slowly, holding up the note. “I’m calling your bluff.” He said clearly. “Filing charges means whoever would have to go on record and identify themselves to make a report. Cecil and I would love that information.” Then very deliberately he tore the note in half, quarters, eighths… confetti.

            Absolutely nothing happened.

            “That’s what I thought.”

            Presently they rode past the shadow of the Whispering Forest.  “I would feel better saying this if we’d found something on the bug sweep of the car, but those guys are—“

            Cecil shushed him. “Then don’t say it. Okay? We’re barely even out of town. Be nice.”

            Carlos watched the dark trees glide past in the evening light.  “So I guess you can’t tell me where we’re going either?”

            “I thought we’d visit Desert Bluffs for a few days.”  Cecil stated loudly, smirking at Carlos. But he reached over and tapped the map, and Carlos saw a section of the sand wastes amended in what looked like purple crayon. Above the sketched trails and land features, the area was labeled “Hidden Gorge”.

Chapter Text

            Between examining the crude map in the dwindling dash light and hurrying to snap off the radio when NVCR’s weather turned into intern Amal’s nervous ‘um’ and ‘uh’ filled reading of the Community Calendar, Carlos hadn’t noticed Cecil monitoring the rearview mirror.

            “How long have they been back there?” He stole a look over his shoulder and saw the van’s headlights many car lengths back.

            “Since Old Town.” Cecil sighed. “I really thought they’d drop off once we got this close to the forest.” He flashed his lights at an oncoming car, who flashed back. “They really don’t like it…  Does this thing have four wheel drive? And how do you feel about the trees?”

            “Uh, no. Wait, Cecil, what?”

            But Cecil had already cut the wheel and the Prius darted left. Carlos swung into his seat belt and braced himself with an arm on the dashboard just in time to see an onslaught of dark branches slap the windshield as they plowed into pitch black. The car bumped and lurched over roots and rocks with only a spot light of fast approaching tree trunks visible in front of them. Cecil dodged them, veering the wheel this way and that.

            “Oh god…” Carlos moaned.

            Finally cutting right sharply, Cecil braked hard, sending up a spray of leaf litter and killed the headlights. He immediately flipped on the radio and punched the volume up full blast, and stabbed at the ‘seek’ button until talk radio became Patsy Montana yodeling “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart” loud enough to shake the doors.

            “Have you lost your mind?” Carlos tried to catch his breath and reached for the radio but Cecil slapped his hand away and gestured out the windows.

            It was black.  No other car headlights.

            A slow nervous smile crept on Carlos’s face but as he reached for the blaring radio again, Cecil caught his hand and shook his head fiercely. He pointed at the closest tree and gave Carlos a meaningful raised-eyebrow look.

            Right as comprehension dawned, Carlos’s car door opened and he twisted to see several branches bobbing and fidgeting behind each other like a gaggle of shy autograph hounds.

            “What wonderful music.” Light voices shivered and chimed. “You have such lovely taste.  Won’t you roll down the windows and share it?” It sounded like a gentle harmonizing choir oozing from the very moss and lichen.

            Cecil flopped across Carlos’s lap and yanked the door shut.

            “I wanna learn to rope and ride!” Patsy wailed.

            Their eyes met as Cecil straightened up and Carlos jerked his chin forward in an unmistakable signal: Go.

…………………..

            By the time they emerged on the other side of the forest, Carlos’s ears were ringing from everything from be-bop, death metal, neo-soul to Tibetan throat singing. He’d never felt so glad to see the desolate expanse of the sand wastes in his life. Yes, it was now fully after dark, very cold, and they were off road in a featureless desert, but at least there was no black panel van stuck to them and they could turn off the psychotic blare of the one radio station they’d found that was weirder than Cecil’s own.

            If Cecil had any concern about the open empty sand wastes, he didn’t show it. He drove on just as though he were following clearly marked street signs and labeled paths among the odd rocks and saguaros. Only a couple of times did he lean forward to peer up over the dash at the sky, with an “Oh!” and a shake of his head, before continuing, chuckling to himself like he’d forgotten something, duh, very obvious.

            If he’s navigating by stars I will eat a bloodstone, Carlos thought.

            At one point Cecil pulled out the Billiken and set it on the dashboard, and Carlos wasn’t sure if he was consulting it or just wanted some added company. He started to ask, then got distracted as he noticed a ridge of rocks and the incline changing. They were approaching some geographic land form; the gorge.

            “Do I even ask how it is you know where Hidden Gorge is?”

            “Well, it’s not the Hidden Gorge — or not all of it at least.” Cecil began. “This is kind of the back door of it. I mean, the whole gorge is enormous. Completely a labyrinth and mind meltingly deep.  So all the stuff you’ve heard —you know, about the mayoral race — no one knows where the machines and all that is.  But the scouts have always known about this little outer area.”

            Carlos nodded wondering if it was a bad sign that this explanation, because it lined up perfectly with his wondering how exactly you hide something the size of the Grand Canyon, made perfect sense to him. He didn’t like to consider that he was buying into the group delusions of Night Vale, but agreeing to ignore the location of Hidden Gorge seemed harmless enough.

            After twisting and turning down a few slopes and around some tall fingers of sand stone outcroppings, Cecil parked on a flat area looking away from their destination. The site was shielded by the rising entrance rocks of the canyon and overlooked open desert, a gentle slope only broken by a deep arroyo feeding into the gorge.

            Carlos frowned, not looking forward to the prospect of freezing and fumbling to set up camp in the dark, but one look at Cecil’s blithe eager face made him keep his mouth shut. This was what was left to him for vacation and Carlos was not going to be added to the list of things spoiling it.

            To his surprise though, Cecil had a fire going before he’d even finished unloading the car, and dark or not, Cecil guided him easily through setting up the tent almost as quickly as they made the bed at home. He left Carlos to finish hammering the stakes, put water on for tea and began zipping two sleeping bags together and lining the tent with the rugs. 

            Carlos finished and sat by the fire to warm up, watching as Cecil whistled and nested. The dust from the old tent and the smoke from the camp fire were making his sinuses act up and the day’s work, the errands, and all the rest were catching up to him.

            The next thing he knew, Cecil was beside him pressing a mug of tea into his hand and offering him his allergy pills. “Drink up and we can go to bed.” He kissed Carlos’s temple and finger combed his hair. “If I’m tired, you must be too.”

            Carlos nodded, downing a pill and leaning into Cecil’s hands.

            Soon they had fumbled out of their top layers of clothes and shoes and crawled into the sleeping bag nest. Carlos put his head down, shivering and curling up as his body heat and Cecil’s began to warm the space. The rugs kept the ground from being as hard as he imagined… He heard the sound of Cecil zipping the tent shut and felt him settle in beside him.  His hand went forward and stroked his arm. “My happy camper.”

            Cecil laughed, then got quiet. “Look, I know it’s not a new city or breakfast in bed,” he said softly, “but we’ll have fun.” Carlos felt him nuzzle his hand on his shoulder.

            “We will.” Carlos agreed. “But I’m still sleeping in.”

            “Oh, me too.”

            “Do you think you can survive a week without cat videos?” They had shut off their phones to prevent tracking and left them in the trunk.

            Cecil shoved him under the covers, laughing, then immediately wiggled forward against him. “I’ll try.”

            “Cold turkey. Wow. Maybe we can get you a chip.”

            “Stop it.”

…………………..

            Cecil meant to sleep in — he did — but true to every time he camped, the sunrise woke him right up. So really, he’d slept as long as his body wanted to, and that was sort of the same thing.

            He poked his nose out of the tent flap admiring the pink and purple streaks lighting the sky and slope beyond the site. Nice. But besides seeing the sunrise, he wanted to get up for Carlos. Their plans had taken a huge left turn, quite literally, that included abusing his car and Cecil thought maybe after a night of sleeping rough in the cold, it might help if he woke up to hot coffee and breakfast waiting for him.

            The scientist was still passed out, huddled deep in the bag.  Cecil slid out carefully and folded his side of the bedding over on top of him for additional warmth.  Dressing quietly, he climbed out of the tent.

            The fire had completely gone cold, so Cecil started over, gathering up some dead palo verde and mesquite branches. Then he remembered something and began poking around the tall limestone rocks behind the site. “Ha.” He grinned. The scout master when he was young had always stashed some extra wood for when the boys foraging for the meager desert kindling came up short, and good old Earl had continued the tradition.  Cecil grabbed up a couple ironwood logs making a mental note to replenish them.

            Rebuilding the fire and assembling the coffeepot, he scanned the sky. No helicopters.  Realistically, he knew that unless they resorted to eating yucca roots and cactus pads —or god forbid, hunting— this jaunt was only going to last a few days, and then he’d be stuck back home.  He pushed this thought aside with a frown and began looking through the perishable provisions to decide on breakfast.

            Sometime after his second cup of coffee, Cecil saw Carlos’s head emerge from the tent flap and glance around blearily. Uh oh... “Good morning.  I wasn’t too loud, was I?”

            Carlos crept out and proceeded to jog in place shivering as he yanked on an extra shirt and jacket, breath steaming. “No. no…” He croaked groggily.  “That smells good.”

            Cecil opened the skillet resting in the coals to reveal scrambled eggs and corn cakes. “Breakfast is yellow today.” 

            But Carlos had wandered over, shoes untied, to circle his Prius and Cecil grimaced nervously.  Sure there was smeared sap and a lot of scuffs, but really didn’t the damage look minor? The ride through the forest wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to this car. Passing through a shadow entity had fouled up the alignment something awful, and Cecil still remembered the heated phone call when Carlos discovered Triple A refused to cover any resident of Night Vale.

            He chewed his lower lip watching Carlos complete his circuit.

            His boyfriend rubbed at one of the sap streaks only to reveal a deep scratch underneath, but then he just shrugged and patted the hood. “Lookin’ good old girl.  There’s coffee?”

            Cecil beamed. “Yep.”

…………………..

            “Almost there…” Cecil said again.

            They had been hiking down into the gorge for over an hour, and despite the chill breeze making his nose run, Carlos was sweating in his layered clothes from climbing up and down rocks on the twisted path Cecil led them on.  He looked up at the orange and cream jutting rock walls surrounding them, making the blue of the sky just a wide ribbon above.  “And you’re sure you know where you’re going?”

            “Well, even if I don’t, you have to admit this is really pretty—”

            “Cecil!”

            “Kidding! I remember exactly where we are, and I promise, none of the landmarks going in are the desiccated remains of previous hikers.”

            “Not funny.  I liked you better when you wanted on my good side.”

            “Oh, I think you’ll like me again when we get where we’re going…”  

            Carlos smirked at the smug look on Cecil’s face, but he’d noticed a change in the air. A damp smell. And the ground under them had become deeper with sand and spotted with river rocks like a dry bed.

            Rounding another turn in the gorge, the incline dropped sharply, and below in the widening of the gorge, Carlos could see a bedrock shelf with a deep pool of water about twelve feet across, bubbling and feeding through a wide fissure into another channel of the canyon.  Cecil removed his backpack and began picking his way down the incline.

            Carlos followed, slower, and by the time he got to the bottom, Cecil had dropped his pack and was tugging his shoes off. Grinning, he hurried to catch up, smelling steam in the dry air.  At the edge of the bedrock slab, Carlos shed his own pack and saw Cecil shucking his jacket and shirt, and looking a little like a one-legged crane, clumsily hopping to get the last leg of his balled up pants off before wading bare ass into the pool. “Ah!”

            Stripping down too Carlos eased down one of the rocks into the hot water and groaned happily.

            “Back on your good side?”

            “God yes. Yes.” He stretched and sank, relaxing and tipping his head back in the warmth.

            Cecil grinned and bobbed under too. “There’s a dozen of these all along here, but this is the easiest one to get to.  And through there,” he pointed to the fissure opening, “It goes into a really big pool--it's fed by all the little ones.  It’s warm enough to swim, but not hot like this.”

            Carlos stretched again, feeling the warm tingle of muscles relaxing, then glanced around curiously. “These layers are really unusual for this sort of geothermal event. If I took some samples I wonder if I would find any volcanic residue? A hot spring in this region is unprecedented.”

            “Oh, it’s not a spring. This is heated by the bloodstone factory run off.”

            Carlos yelped and was all the way ashore and back to their packs before he saw Cecil laughing at him. “Bad side?” Cecil snickered.

            Stalking back to the pool with a grudging smile, Carlos narrowed his eyes and drew a point in an imaginary column with his finger. “Bad side.”

            “Would a back rub even things out?”

            “It might.”

            Sitting on a rock shelf, Carlos dropped his head forward in the steam while Cecil massaged his shoulders and upper back, using the heel of his hands and occasionally the flat of his knuckles or an elbow to press in deeply.  It felt incredible…

            But both of them were also starting to flush and sweat.  “You said the bigger pool in there is cooler?” Carlos pointed.

            “Uh huh.” Cecil let Carlos’s gathered up wet hair drop back on his shoulders.  “But if we go in there, I have to show you something.”

            This got him a dubious look. 

            “You’ll like it!  It’s… ah, well, pretty neat.”

            Cecil led the way as they half swam and half waded through the rock opening, making Carlos face one of the walls.  The pool bottom dropped away and they were both treading water as they entered an enormous open dimple of clear blue water, the size of a baseball field.

            “Over here. Don’t look yet…”  Swimming awkwardly, Cecil tugged Carlos by the hand.

            “I’m not looking.”

            “Almost there…” 

            Carlos could see in his peripheral vision that they had swum close to the  canyon wall.

            “And turn around — Behold! The Cyclops!”

            Carlos flipped around to see about fourteen feet up an enormous skull partially exposed in the layers of the rock wall.  Humanoid in shape, it had a smooth white forehead broken by a giant hollow socket and two fang like teeth protruding from below it’s nasal cavity.

            “Cecil,” He breathed, forgetting to tread water. “That’s a mastodon skull…”

            “Okay..." Cecil huffed. "Is the other definition of scientist ‘a party pooper’?”

            “Oh, Cecil, you misunderstand — this is better than a cyclops skull…”

            “It is?”

            “Well, not that finding a cyclops skull wouldn’t be amazing —but they’re probably not real. Historians think finding these might have begun the myths about them. And no one has found one of these in this region.  If that’s here, there might be giant sloths, or Smilodons or other Pleistocene mega-fauna…”

            Cecil grinned, possibly a little slyly.  He knew damn well it wasn’t a cyclops skull.

            Swimming in the larger area was a little disconcerting because it was so deep and surrounded by the shear towering canyon walls - there seemed no ready escape when tired.  Carlos swam back and fourth studying the fossil before he found an area where sheets of the surrounding slabs had toppled in and there were several flattish rocks to perch on only a few feet below the surface. Cecil found one just inches down and stretched out on it with his face poking through the water’s surface. “Ah… Wake me before I get skin cancer.”

            “Sure.” Carlos said distractedly.

            Cecil cut his eyes watching him swim back to the shelf with the skull and he smiled. He knew Carlos was in hog heaven, or whatever the scientific equivalent of it was.

…………………..

            Losing track of time at the springs, they’d hurried back to camp trying to avoid getting caught in the canyon in the dark. Carlos built up the fire and they wolfed down canned stew and the last of the morning's corn cakes.  Presently the fire was dying down, enough that Cecil switched on the battery lantern in the tent.  They crawled into the zipped together sleeping bag, now sandwiched between the Pendleton blanket and Indian rugs, which made it heavier but more warm. Both on their stomachs, propped on their elbows, they watched the dark slope dotted with rocks and scrub before the arroyo.

            “Right there.” Cecil pointed and handed Carlos the binoculars. “By the horse crippler.”

            Crawling lazily onto the rock was a chubby iguana-sized black lizard. It had pale sky blue luminous spots all over it and it’s wide flat head held a pair of wicked looking slitted moonstone eyes.

            “Nocturne Monitor.” He told him. “They’re the only warm-blooded reptile in the area.”

            Carlos made a mental note to pay better attention to the old local fauna books Cecil had brought.  He yawned and huddled further in, enjoying the quiet. He was tired from hiking and swimming, and his allergy pill was making him dozy, but this was nice.

            For a while the other things they spotted weren’t as noteworthy: a burrow owl, some foraging mice, large tumble bugs. Carlos drifted…

            “Oh, oh — right there. Jackalope.”

            Carlos reached for the binoculars. The animal had a white winter coat, making it harder to spot, but there it was, browsing a tuft of buffalo grass.  It occurred to him sleepily, that this could easily be a dream. Glowing spotted lizards and antlered bunnies… 

            Cecil dug out a thick pair of goggles.  “Here, trade.” He worked them over Carlos’s head and flipped a switch.  Immediately the landscape appeared in pale green: night vision.

            “Four, five, six point.  Oh - drop tines! I need my camera.”

            Carlos settled down, resting his chin on his arms and watched the rabbit continue to yank off and consume strands of desert grass, while Cecil rummaged behind him for the camera.

            On the other side of the arroyo, Carlos noted two white dots down near the ground and recognized the reflected eyes and outline of a hunched coyote. “You’d better hurry.” 

The animal tensed, but the jackalope was oblivious, still chewing a long strand.  After quickly slinking as close as it dared, the coyote sprang — and vanished. In the instant of the leap, something down in the ditch, something large and black, darted up and snatched it down without even time for it to yelp.

            The jackalope kept eating.

            Carlos sat up backing into the tent, heart hammering. “Argon, neon, xenon…” he swore.

            Cecil snapped a couple shots. “Ha. Gotcha.”

            “Did you see that?” Carlos stammered.

            “Saw it? I just shot it.”

            “No.” Carlos pointed shakily. “The coyote…”

            Cecil traded the camera and zoom for the binoculars once more. “What coyote?”

            But he didn’t have to ask.  The large and black thing was climbing, leg by dexterous leg out of the arroyo on the far side, the coyote hanging limp from, was that mandibles? Pedipalps? It was huge, covered in shaggy fur, and rows of just way too many bead-black eyes glinted in the protrusion holding it’s prey.

            “Oh, …spiderwolf.” Cecil shrugged.

            “What do we do?” Carlos demanded, not taking his eyes off of it.

            Cecil gave Carlos a weird look. “Uh, let it eat?”

            “That thing is huge!”

            “Oh please, they’re not venomous…”

            “Something that size doesn't have to be!”

            “Look, it’s okay.  They’re very timid.  See? Our talking’s already scared it off.”

            Carlos saw the black form vanishing back into the trench, but he didn’t feel any better.

            “They’re timid?”

            “Very. Won’t come near a campsite with all the fire and tent flapping and people smell.  I promise.”

to be continued...

Chapter Text

            The tent seemed awfully bright when Cecil woke up.  Weird. He blinked and squinted at the overhead canvas glowing with sunlight, one hand feeling for Carlos and the other for his glasses before he heard the activity outside.

            Sticking his head out, the mystery was solved. Carlos had the tarp that served as tent fly removed and rolled up on the trunk of his car. He also had gathered up the hatchet, folding shovel, a bunch of the tent cords, his notebooks, some ziplock bags, and he appeared to be triaging what he could fit into a backpack.  

            While sometimes he outwardly groused about it, Cecil loved when Carlos hit the fever pitch of being absorbed and excited by Science. His frantic, purposeful activity, the muttering to himself — it was adorable. He looks a bit like someone preparing to hide a body, Cecil mused fondly as he pulled his clothes on and climbed out.

            “Carlos?” Cecil called quietly, but the scientist was too engrossed in his packing.

            Cecil came closer. “Carlos? Oof — ow.” He looked down at what tripped him: the car jack and tire iron.

            “Oh wait.  Those have to go too— Maybe they could fit in your backpack?”

            Cecil raised his eyebrows with a small smile. “My pack? What are we prepping for exactly?”

            The scientist stared at him a moment, his face going from enthusiastically preoccupied to a little worried and guilty. “I thought maybe with the tarp and some basic tools we could…”

            Cecil waited, trying not to laugh or let his smile broaden.  “We could…?” He prompted.

            “…Excavate the skull?” Carlos asked meekly looking around at the completely inadequate gear. “Oh who am I kidding? There’s no way…”

            “Well,” Cecil surveyed the collection. “If anyone could figure out how to do it with this stuff, I’m certain it would be you.  But, and I’m very sorry, I can’t let you take it out of the gorge.  I mean, even assuming we could rope it to the hood of your car, what would be down there to surprise the scouts with on their campouts? Janice doesn’t even know about it yet — you don’t want to spoil that do you?”

            Carlos smiled a little, embarrassed. “No, of course not.”

            “It really is a fixture. Rumor has it Earl named it and talks to it.  I’m sure he’d cry if it disappeared.”

            “I could not have a weeping scout master on my conscience.”

            Straightening Carlos’s flannel collar as if it were the lapels of a fancy dress shirt, Cecil leaned in and pecked his lips. “You are a better man than many.”

……………..

            After breakfast, they replaced the tent fly and the tools.  “What about soil samples?” Carlos asked.  “No harm in taking them, right?”

            “No,” Cecil agreed. “No harm in that.” He watched Carlos happily cram the zip lock bags back into his pack wondering if trail mix crumbs or instant chili would contaminate any tests. Meh. Not his area. “Did you want to go back to the springs today? It looks like it might rain.”

            Carlos scanned the sky. “You’re right. Maybe explore the upper shelves?” He pointed to the rocky plateaus a little north of the opening to the hot springs.

            Once their packs were ready, they set off, Carlos running a little ahead towards the arroyo. Cecil called him back.

            “It goes straight into the gorge, doesn’t it?”

            Cecil nodded, “Yes, but the bottom will be uneven and it may be too narrow to pass if it goes through rocks. Besides, if we climb down there and have to go single file, I can’t do this.” He took Carlos’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

            Carlos grinned and laced his fingers through Cecil’s and they hiked side by side towards the opening.

            It was overcast and colder, with occasional wind gusts coming off the plain of the scrublands.  Carlos was glad when they entered the gorge and the rock channels shielded them somewhat.

            They moved upstream from the entrance to the hot springs, climbing through more narrow and random corridors.  Carlos could see what Cecil meant by describing it as a labyrinth; he had no idea where he was and trusted that Cecil knew the way back.  When they came to a large stone cairn, Cecil pulled out a spool of 100 lb fishing line and some blue chalk.

            “Are we going to be like Hansel and Gretel?” Carlos laughed.

            “A little bit.”

            In terms of wildlife, hiking in winter wasn’t the most interesting visually. The reptiles and bugs were hidden away, and they only saw a few flitting birds hunting.  Here and there was a patch of unmelted snow shielded in a rock crevice. Occasionally Cecil left a trail marker with the chalk.  Carlos yawned. Rain or not, the springs and another look at the skull seemed more exciting.

            By midday they reached the far side, able to see the upper rim lip just about twenty feet above them.  They followed along the lower cliff wall, looking for a break or anywhere with purchase to climb up.  Instead though, the cliff became scooped out, a concave shelf like a half cave, high enough to walk under with out ducking.  Upon entering, both of them froze in their tracks.

            “Did you know this was here?” Carlos asked.

            “No.  No idea.” Cecil breathed.

            They both stared at the shelter wall.  Climbing all over it were red sepia and black stained carvings, sketches and scrawls. Hundreds of incised drawings, some clustered in groups on outer swells in the rock, others spanning down the length of the half-cave.

            Petroglyphs.

            Slowly, they wandered down the extent of the crevice, inventorying the artwork.

            There were human figures  of different sizes, some with box-shaped bodies.  There were some recognizable animals.  But there were also spirals, wheels, orbs, dashes, diamonds, things that looked like plants and on and on. It was hard to take it all in…

            After a couple more passes back and forth, Cecil plopped down in the center, just letting his head swivel back and forth as he gapped at them.

            There were multi-legged and multi-horned beasts either hunting or being hunted by crowds of stick figure humans.  Triangles and squares clustered together to form a village maybe? Long and tall —impossibly tall humanoid figures with rays and lines radiating from their shoulders and heads. One of the largest of them had a weird rune above it that Carlos could have sworn resembled the Gucci logo.

            Also there was a glyph that could only be a spiderwolf. Multi-legged, large and black, even in this crude rendering it had a predatory hunch to its body.

            “Look. They’re hunting it.” Cecil breathed.

            “Uh-uh. It’s after them.”

            “Nonsense. See, they have little spears and pointy rocks.”

            “Self defense.” Carlos insisted.

            “You aren’t afraid of regular spiders are you?”

            “Only really big ones.”

            “How big is really big?” Cecil watched Carlos crouch close squinting at the wall. “Gum ball size? Hamburger size?”

            “Why are all your size reference points things you put in your mouth?”

            Cecil wiggled his eyebrows at him. “C’mon. How big?”

            “If it can wear a tie or carry a cell phone, it’s too big. And if it can carry a dead coyote, it’s WAY to big.”

            Carlos kept scanning, trying to get a rough count of different animals pictured and hoping to find something out of the ordinary — not just deer or jackalopes — maybe something like the Mastodon. But here was another spiderwolf above the area that looked like a village. …And a spiderwolf crawling towards a sun like orb. …And a spiderwolf reaching out from a twisting ribbon of blue slate, surrounded by stick people with spears. …And a spiderwolf with a beehive shape filled with tiny circles…

            “I think this is an egg sack.” Carlos shuddered.

            “It must have been an important animal to them.” Cecil began digging in his pack, pulling out a thermos. 

            “Or this area was completely infested. Does RAID work on them?”

            They ate their lunch still staring at the wall, occasionally pointing out or commenting on what something might be.  There were an infinite number of orb shapes cut into the rock, the majority of which weren’t filled in with the red or black pigment, so they showed white against the rock. One set of these was arranged in concentric rings like a diagram of planetary orbits — if the Milky Way galaxy contained twenty planets all the wrong size to be those named and they orbited a black void instead of a gaseous burning star. So Cecil figured it was probably just a doodle.

            “There’s something familiar about it…” Carlos said around a bite of sandwich. “I can’t put my finger on it.” His eyes traced the line of the circles as he chewed.

            “Like the tablets at City Hall?”

            “You’ve seen those?”

            “No, of course not. But still, this is kind of what I imagine…”

            “See how that group is placed? and then just two feet away there’s another cluster?”

            “Yes, and?” Cecil asked eagerly.

            “It’s interesting…”

            Once he’d polished off his sandwich, Carlos pulled out a notebook and began sketching sections of the wall. Cecil scooted up behind him, slipped his arms around his middle and leaned in to set his cheek on his shoulder. He rested like this for a bit, feeling Carlos bob slightly as he drew or turned his head, and listening to his body sounds of breath and heartbeat. But by the time Carlos flipped the notebook to fill a fourth page, Cecil kissed the back of his neck and rose.

            “Mm. You were warm back there.”

            “Need to stretch my legs.  I’m going to scout up further ahead a little bit.”

            “Not too far? I won’t be much longer.”

            “Not far.” Cecil pecked his cheek. “Don’t want to violate the buddy system.” He winked.

            Soon Carlos was engrossed in his next sketch. This would have gone a lot faster if they’d had their phones and could have taken photos, but he didn’t discount the detail oriented direct observation method of drawing as a means to prod his brain into making possible connections to meaning and symbol, or even to notice glyph similarities or possibly different artists styles…  He rubbed his chilled hands together and realized he was on a sixth page. Crap. Reluctantly he slid the book in his pack and slung it over his shoulder. Maybe he could do some more when they headed back.

            Following Cecil’s path along the cliff wall, the rock shelf gave way to sheer cliff, then a broken slope of mixed dirt and boulders.  The terrain rose a little until the upper lip was only about ten feet above him.  But still, he didn’t spot Cecil. 

            “Cecil? Hey? You hear me?” Carlos called.  He looked down the interior slope, rough terrain dropping off into the canyon…  He would have heard something if Cecil slipped, right?

            “Up here!  Carlos, you need to see this!”

            He looked up and saw Cecil waving at him from the upper rim, looking as delighted as the first time he saw Maru body slam into a box.

            “Come on!  I got up right there!” Cecil pointed to the boulder strewn slope.  “This is so neat!” He vanished back over the lip of the rim.

            Carlos quickly climbed, picking a path between the rocks, grinning with anticipation. What could top discovering the petroglyphs?

            Gaining the rim, the afternoon sun had made it through the cloud cover, and Carlos squinted through it to spot Cecil many yards away in a barren naked expanse of red sand. He was waving at him eagerly and gesturing down to the ground where he stood, but Carlos couldn’t see what it was… He waved back and approached curiously, rubbing his eyes and averting them from looking directly at the sun. Then he saw what Cecil was pointing to and froze.

            At his boyfriends feet was a tiny miniature house.

and still to be continued...

Chapter Text

           “Cecil, get away from that!” Carlos shouted.

           “Why?” He was even more confused when Carlos grabbed him around the middle, a half tackle, and hauled him several yards back.  “Carlos, what are you doing?  It’s just a doll house or some toy.”

           “No, it’s not!” The scientist yanked down the collar of his shirt and coat showing some of the scars across his neck and chest from his visit under the bowling alley.  “That’s one of their buildings!” He snapped.

           Cecil got still.  Less from perceiving any real danger, and more to let Carlos calm down. “Okay…” He said slowly.  “Carlos, look. Even if it’s from down there, I’ve been here peeking in the windows for a little while now.  I’m pretty sure it’s empty?”  

           Carlos looked back at the structure.  It was deserted looking, to be sure, but after what happened before, he felt it would be foolish to let himself be taken in by a harmless appearance.  “Stay here.”

           Cecil nodded.

           As Carlos got closer, he understood more why Cecil thought it was an abandoned toy and harmless.  The mud and wood constructing the house was different from the red sandstone of the gorge, and it had bleached out to almost bone white in the desert sun. Everything around it dwarfed it and either weather or desert animals had put a couple holes in the roof and a side wall.  He glanced back at Cecil who was watching him, his head tilted and eyebrows raised.

           Slowly, Carlos knelt and looked through the doorway and a couple of windows.  Wind blown sand had settled in the rooms, and only vague shapes and outlines under it hinted at furnishings. Poking softly through one of the windows, his finger uncovered a stool and what might have been a blanket.  He looked up and motioned Cecil to come over.

           “You don't think it’s a doll house? People abandon and dump the strangest things in the sand wastes all the time.  And, I mean, it doesn’t fit in out here —why would they build here and how would they even get to this place?” Cecil dropped to his knees and peered into the room Carlos had prodded with his finger.  He frowned at the small objects surfacing from the sand.

           “It’s not a doll house.  Toy houses are all wood or plastic — not covered over in mud like adobe.  And you’re right.  I don’t think they would or could build here.  It makes no sense.  It’s like it just dropped here, like in the Wizard of Oz.”

           Cecil brightened at this. “Let’s take it back with us then. We can fix it and give it to Janice.”

           Carlos shook his head.  “I don’t think we should move it — and I probably shouldn’t have touched it.”

           “Why?” Cecil thought about arguing — this was the man who was ready to skull-nap the scouts mastodon just this morning. But seeing the seriousness of Carlos’s face, Cecil just waited.

           “I’m not sure. I don’t feel — We don’t have enough information.” Carlos struggled to piece together his misgiving. He was a scientist, damn it. This gut feeling had to come from a reason. “Maybe whoever did this was like us and just saw it as an abandoned structure, like picking up an empty sea shell…  Or maybe it happened when people still lived in it.  Maybe this was done by someone who didn’t care what happened to the inhabitants…  If that’s the case, I don’t think we should leave any evidence that we saw it.”

           Cecil climbed back to his feet, dusted himself off and offered Carlos his hand to help him up. “Okay.” He said simply.  “Did you finish your cave sketches?”

           Carlos eyed him. “You’re not disappointed?”

           Cecil shrugged and smiled. “Carlos, that it reminded you of the night you got hurt would have been enough to make me happy to leave it here. But whatever the reason, if you don’t want it, I don’t want it.”

………………………..

           Cecil drew his stick of marshmallows out of the fire and held them out to Carlos who used graham crackers as tongs to remove them.  “Truth or Dare?” He repeated.

           They had returned to the petroglyphs and Cecil noticed, by the time Carlos had filled another four pages he seemed happily distracted from the creepy footnote of discovering the house. Then they had to hustle once again to get out of the gorge before sunset. It was dark when they got back to camp, so they built up the fire and ate the last of the perishable food: hot dogs. Now things had devolved into sticky dessert and games.

           “Dare.” Carlos said, quickly shifting the hot goo and chocolate cookie mess hand to hand to cool it.

           Cecil grinned, and his eyes roamed over the campsite and surrounding rocks. “Okay.  I dare you to climb up on that rock and do your best coyote yip.”

           “Is that all?” Carlos squished the s’more and broke it in half, holding out some for Cecil.

           His partner took it delicately. “You need to sound like a coyote.  Really sell it.”

         “I think you’re running out of dares.”

           “You could try picking truth once in a while.”

           Carlos polished off the graham cracker and licked his fingers quickly, finally dusting them on his jeans. He looked at Cecil askance, and was shooed towards the rock impatiently.

           Scrambling up onto the flat of the boulder and looking down at Cecil in the firelight, he could see his breath. “Do I have to get on all fours and act the part or just yip?”

           “Up to you.” Cecil smiled. “Just so it’s long and loud.”

           Carlos cleared his throat, dropped down to hands and knees, cracked up, rolled his eyes and stole a look at Cecil.

           “Quit stalling! Sing!”

           Carlos threw back his head and yipped and yodeled and did a very convincing high-pitched howl. Breaking off he grinned at Cecil triumphantly— and then the dark all around him sounded off with dozens of answering cries, just as loud, even louder, sounding just as close.

           Instantly Carlos was back by the fire, head jerking to look over both shoulders and muttering the names of noble gasses. “That’s not funny!”

…………………..

           “Okay… Truth.”

           “Hypothetically speaking, if you could ask the mayor or city council to grant one thing for you, what would it be?” Choosy about his truth questions lest he step in a sensitive area of Cecil’s chopped up memory, Carlos felt safe that he knew the answer to this. It was the same thing he wanted: to know the name of whoever purchased Lot 37.

           “Free Fey.” Cecil said firmly and without hesitation. “I don’t know how — maybe ask Megan Wallaby for help — she seems good with computers. But WZZZ could use any machine for their broadcast, and Fey isn’t just a machine or software anymore.”  He sighed and stared at the fire.

           Carlos cupped Cecil’s chin, leaned in and kissed him softly. He held his confused gaze, smiling fondly, then kissed him again.

           “Um, I forgot —whose turn is it?”

…………………..

           “Wait — so you were just being nice on Halloween? I was freaking you out?”

           “Well, not you specifically. It was more like what we might watch…”

           Carlos had finally chosen ‘truth’ for once, probably to ward off another request for him to sing the periodic table, and Cecil had told him to admit something embarrassing.  He thought he might as well come clean about horror movies since they streamed so much stuff to watch together.

           “Do they all bother you?”

           Carlos shifted, feeling his face get hot, and laughed a little. He wasn’t expecting to have this strong a reaction to talking about it. “It’s irrational, which means it’s silly.” 

           “It isn’t. You can’t always control what will press your buttons, and I want to know.”

           Now immensely self conscious, Carlos rolled his eyes. “Okay, so as a kid, certain things that were cruel would really disturb me — things other people thought were cute or funny, and the fact that it bothered me made it worse.”

           “Cute or funny?”

           “Like in Willy Wonka, when that girl turns into a berry?”

           Cecil frowned. “Well, that was disturbing.  How old were you?”

           The validation that someone from a place like Night Vale agreed with him about that scene was not lost on Carlos.  He shrugged. “I don’t remember. Pretty young. And it turned into this thing where if I watched something, I never knew if it was going to freak me out, but then if someone saw I was avoiding it, I got made fun of.” He looked at Cecil and had to laugh at the completely unhappy look on his face. “I got over it. I mean, I like Halloween and spooky stuff for fun — but some horror movies, okay, a lot, are awful.”

           “Like which ones? Frankenstein? Amityville Horror?”

           “No. No. I’m not afraid of monsters and ghosts. And like the Exorcist, you know where you have to be religious to really believe it? Those don’t bother me. It’s the ones where some sadist tortures people and you see how terrified they are…”

           “Like Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”

           Carlos nodded. “My older cousin made me watch Last House on the Left with her and I was up for weeks. To be fair though, I think I was nine?  Cecil, hey, don’t look like that!” Carlos chuckled.

           “You do know that the stuff I was suggesting on Halloween wasn’t cruelty, serial killers and rapists, right?” He asked, his voice almost cracking.

           “Well, no. I kind of pushed scary movies from my sphere of attention, you know?  I don’t keep up with the names.”

           “Oh god.” Cecil choked and it took Carlos a moment in the dark to realize he’d started laughing, doubled over with relief.

           “Cecil?”

           “I don’t like the torture blood and guts stuff either.” Cecil tried to catch his breath. “Night of the Lepus is giant bunnies invading a small town.  And now I’ve brought you out here and spooked you with coyotes, and spiderwolves and jackalopes…”

           “So I guess it’s good we skipped movies that night?” He put his arm around him and pecked his jaw.

           “I’m totally making you watch it when we get home.”

…………………

           Later still, they got in the tent with the lantern to get out of the wind.  Cecil immediately got ready for bed and stretched out under the covers, but Carlos sat up, cross legged, flipping through his drawings.

           “Maybe we could go back tomorrow and take your camera…”

           Cecil propped up on one elbow. “We can do that. But if we stay on, we’re going to need to pack some water out of the spring pretty soon. We’ve used up most of what we brought.”

           “Mmm.” Carlos flipped the book shut and smiled. “Springs it is.  Twist my arm.”  He stretched out beside Cecil and reached over to touch the whisker growth on his chin.

           “Oh don’t.  I’m a mess.” Cecil laughed.

           “Very rugged.” Carlos kissed his nose. “Tired?” He asked lower.

           Cecil nodded.

           Carlos shifted up and leaned over him. He cupped both of Cecil’s shoulders in his hands and pressed them down into the ground with his full weight.  Cecil felt his chest muscles stretch open and the knots in his shoulders, neck and upper back tingle and let go.  He sighed, looking up at Carlos with a little smile. Carlos leaned further in, still keeping up the pressure, and gently kissed him, turning his head and carefully pressing in slowly.  Cecil parted his lips, yielding, welcoming, and his hands went up to stroke and clasp Carlos’s shoulder, the nape of his neck.

           After a moment, Carlos pulled back, smiling at how Cecil’s mouth followed him like a magnet until their lips parted and he let his head drop back.

           This was one of Carlos’s favorite looks. Breathy, flushed, eyes closed and so buried in the sensation he always looked a little confused and disappointed to resurface, blinking back to reality. This time it was mixed with a touch of sleepy weariness that Carlos found even more charming.  Then Cecil’s eyes found Carlos and crinkled up as he smiled.  ...Sometimes Carlos would interrupt a perfectly good, soft deep building kiss because he loved this look so much. It made him feel a weighty ache and hunger, and the naked fond delight in Cecil’s eyes that followed, happy to be teased and checked in with, well…  maybe Cecil was a better camper, maybe he didn’t spook at animals or dread horror movies, and maybe he had a steely iron nerve when it came to mouse-sized abandoned houses, but beyond fear or question he was helpless in his affection for Carlos.  There was nothing to discuss or do but press in closer, slide arms in for Cecil’s neck and head to rest on and turn his head and get back to the business of touching those lips and leading him softly down again in that sweet dark sensory dive…

           After a little though, Carlos drew back, nuzzling Cecil’s cheek and slipping his glasses off. “Mmm. You said you were tired. Roll over.” He murmured in his ear and scooted off the sleeping bag.

           “Hmm?” Cecil blinked at him.

           Carlos began tugging off his top layers.  “Roll over. I’m going to work on your back.”

           Cecil wrestled around in the bag and stretched out, folding his arms around his pillow and letting his head drop.  Climbing in, Carlos straddled him and worked his hands under his shirt and began to press his way up Cecil’s spine.

           “This is sort of weird in the cold.” Carlos laughed quietly. “Trying to find you under all this. I hope my hands are warm enough.”

           “You’re hands are fine, and you've found the tired places,” Cecil murmured happily. “Where did you learn that shoulder thing?”

           “Graduate school. A housemate did yoga and body work.”

           “It’s nice.”

           “More on the shoulders?” 

           Cecil nodded into the pillow.

           Carlos kneaded down the base of Cecil’s neck and began pressing slow circles working his way out from the spine along his upper back, noting the little sighs of pleasure.  He stayed on this area, gradually softening his pressure as the knots let go, until Cecil grew quiet and Carlos saw he’d dozed off. Carlos slipped beside him, carefully drawing his shirt down and working the layers of the bag and blankets over them both before flipping the lamp off and settling down with a yawn.

………………….

           In the dream, everything was bathed in a pale yellow, like storm light or eclipse light.  Carlos looked up from the instrument he waved over the tiny house and saw a glint off something several yards in the distance.

           Crossing the flat plane, he looked down and there, half buried in the gritty orange dust was something white. He knelt and gently blew the dry soil away to reveal the skeleton.  So small, hardly two inches, crushed and pathetic looking like a dried up fledgling on a sidewalk, but unmistakably human.

           Carlos felt a cold wave pass through him.  He didn’t want Cecil to see this… Quickly he glanced back towards the house, towards camp, and in this light, he could see several other bleached forms, fanned out as though fleeing from the house dropped out here with no protection from the baking sun, no resources like water. Dream physics showed him their minuscule fingers, fine as bare leaf veins, stretching out towards him and their fallen companion at his feet…

           A far coyote yip woke Carlos, and he found the tent a dim pool of blue moonlight.  His face and the top of his head were cold, but the rest of him was pleasantly warm in their cocoon. He burrowed deeper in and slid up close to Cecil, cinching an arm over his ribs, wanting the vision of that yellow plane to fade.

           Cecil made an inquisitive noise, not really awake.

           “You’re nice and warm.” Carlos answered very softly.

           “Mmm…” Cecil stretched a little, cat like, and curled into Carlos’s arm contentedly, his breaths lengthening again as he settled deeper back to sleep.

           He smelled good, Carlos noticed, focusing on details to distract himself from the dream remnants.  Five minutes after waking, you forget 50% of a dream and within ten minutes, 90%. The trick was to occupy your mind with something else instead of ruminating over the events of the nightmare. Cecil’s unique scent was of skin and salt and maybe a little mustard from the day’s sweat now mixed with desert sage, creosote and smokey campfire. Carlos closed his eyes, nose buried in Cecil’s hair, and even detected a little sweet marshmallow.

           The coyote song continued, but faint, far in the distance.  There was just the quiet of the breeze against the tent canvas, and the wonderful absence of sirens, helicopter roar, road noise, bull horns, screams, rhythmic chanting or the tell tale ‘blip-blip’ of a secret police squad car pulling someone over to interrogate.  It was incongruous, a paradox to his scientist brain, that he should be so very aware of being out in the uncharted open, the vast empty winter sky and stretching desert all around, small and exposed in their messy little camp, and yet he felt so at peace and secure.

Chapter Text

          Carlos woke up still pressed up against Cecil, who was now on his back.  Or rather, Carlos woke to find himself on and around Cecil. His head was on his chest and his right arm was still snugged around his ribs while his left snaked up Cecil’s side and grasped his shoulder. Even Carlos’s right leg was half hitched over him, bent knee resting across his thighs. It was as if his subconscious somewhere in the night mistook the radio host for a body pillow.

          HIs partner didn’t seem bothered in the least by the suffocating arrangement, letting his arms rest lightly around Carlos’s back and shoulders and softly stroking his hair.

          Carlos smiled sheepishly and squeezed him more as he stretched a little in place.

          “Good morning.”

          “Morning.” Cecil continued petting his hair.

          “How long have you been up?”

          “Not long.”

          “How long is ‘not long’?”

          “Only a little while.”

          “Have any of your extremities fallen asleep?”

          Cecil considered this. “No, but I’m a little worried about your arm.”

          “It’s fine.”

          “A scientist’s arm is always fine?”

          “Exactly.”

          “Good. I’m going to remember this the next time you call me an octopus.”

          “That seems fair.” Carlos conceded. “This won’t be a regular occurrence.”

          “How sad.”

          “It’s strictly special circumstances.”

          “I see. Did you get too cold or have a bad dream?”

          Cecil guessing it off hand like that was almost enough to make Carlos untangle himself.  Between the spiderwolf and truth or dare discussion, he didn’t really feel like admitting to anything else that made him feel like a big chicken. However, Cecil asked a question and Carlos had factual answers… As a scientist, he couldn’t help but impart them. “A little of both.” He admitted. “Or I just couldn’t resist being in such close proximity… You do know that I like it when you’re an octopus?”

          “Is that so?” Carlos could tell Cecil was working very hard to keep a straight face. “I’ll keep that in mind. I mean, after this I might be able to see the appeal a little bit.”

……………………

          Eventually, reluctantly, Cecil untangled himself to see to the fire and Carlos began hunting for fresh clothes among the tossed salad of bedding and garments littering the tent floor.  Damn it was chilly. He huffed and watched the plume of his breath as he quickly shucked off his pj bottoms and boxers and grabbed a clean pair from the duffel bag.

          The handkerchief with the cimaruta tumbled out with them, unfurling and scattering dust and shriveled drop-shaped leaves all over.

          “Crap.” Carlos erupted in a sneezing fit before he could even corral the mess into a central spot.

          “You okay?” Cecil called

          “Fine!” Carlos managed between explosive sneezes.

          He threw his pajama bottoms over the branch and tucked his mouth and nose into his t-shirt neck, eyes watering.

          Why was this thing even here? No, no. Do not ask questions you don’t want the answer to.  He didn’t want to hear anything that made him look at Cecil like he was Luna Lovegood warding off nargles.

          Quickly he dressed, pulled on his top layers and jacket, then, still with his makeshift face mask, uncovered the dried branch.

          As best he could, he scraped together the detritus and piled it on the hanky, then he lifted the branch itself and set it on top. The stem that was tied with a silver moon charm was dangling half off — probably from being packed smooshed in the bag — but there was nothing Carlos could see to do about that now. What did Cecil expect tying it up with their clothes?  He rolled the whole mess up carefully and knotted the corners for good measure, frowning.  He didn’t want to take another allergy pill and be a zombie all day.

          Breakfast made him feel a little better. Cecil brought him hot tea and oatmeal while Carlos huddled by the fire trying to see if his sinuses were going to behave.

          “It’s all astronaut food from here on in…” Cecil was saying.

          “Huh?”

          “We’re down to just the dehydrated stuff and trail mix.” Cecil shook a ziplock at him brightly.

          “Oh.” Carlos scanned the sky noting several dark clouds over the gorge.

          “You okay? I heard you sneezing.”

          “I’m fine.” It came out sharper than Carlos intended. “Do you think that looks like rain?”

          Cecil nodded, some of his perkiness fading. “It does. I spread the tarp over there to collect it in case it keeps us out of the springs.” He pointed, but his eyes hadn’t left Carlos and his brows knitted with concern. “Are you sure everything is okay? It’s not the nightmare is it? What was that about?”

          Just suggesting he recount it sent Carlos’s brain digging, against his will, for any scraps of it.  “I don’t remember.” He sighed. “It was just processing events, you know? Being in a new place. New stimulus.” And then the red dust and yellow light surfaced back to him and he shuddered. “It had to do with that house.” He forced a shrug, now resigned to taking another pill before this headache came on.

          Cecil got beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “The house? Do you remember any details?”

          “I don’t want to remember details.” Faint thunder rumbled.

          “But it could be important, a municipal sign or portent—“

          “It’s not a sign or portent.” More thunder rumbled as though on cue. “And that wasn’t a sign or portent either. There is no credible evidence that psychic phenomena exists. I’ve been really open to these things since I got here, but Cecil I can’t do it at the expense of critical thinking.  And you’re a smart guy — sometimes I don’t understand the line where you buy into this stuff…”

          “This ‘stuff’?” Cecil sniffed, his eyebrows going up.

          “Things my coworkers see like the Bloodstone Wheel and the chanting — I get it when it’s municipally mandated, but here we are away from all that and you’re still bringing that weird-ass kewpie doll and some dried out smelly branch!” He pointed to the Billiken still smirking from where it sat on the car’s dashboard.

          Cecil drew himself up standing, crossing his arms and turning away. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

          Now it was Carlos’s turn to huff. “Every scientist has to deal with people rationalizing wishful thinking.” 

          “How’s this for critical thinking…  I-I think - I think you’ve spent so much time worrying about what your little Ph.D-ed lab-coated friends thought, you made the assumption that you knew why these objects were important to me.  You’ve certainly never asked me.”

          Carlos blinked. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped.

          Cecil sniffed, uncrossing his arms to point at the car. “That doll — “

          “It’s not even a real icon. Historically, it’s made up. A souvenir invented…” Carlos muttered.

          Cecil scowled and he fell silent.

          “That doll,” Cecil began again quietly, “And the rue branch were gifts from my mother.  Yes, they are supposed to be charms — but whether I believe that or not, it was nice to think she’d want us to be safe and have a good time. And I hung the Bloodstone Wheel at your work because Janice made it. I hate to think this embarrassed you, but you’re mistaking sentiment for superstition.”

          The thunderhead rumbled again and they both looked up before the rain began to spatter and darken the ground.  As the bottom fell out, Cecil ducked for the tent while Carlos jumped in the car and in moments the rain was so hard it was difficult to see across the campsite. It was just a wall of white noise and more thunder rolls.

          The downpour shifted quickly though, after about ten minutes it petered out, moving back to the rocks outlining the gorge. Carlos looked out the windshield to the sagging tent, zipped shut. His face was burning — he hated confrontation, especially when he was wrong, and the fact that he had been mentally congratulating himself on his tolerance for so long made him feel like a bigger jerk. He swallowed and palmed the ivory figurine.

          Ducking under the dripping tarp and unzipping the tent, he found Cecil crouched under the wool blanket wiping his face hastily. “Cecil…” Carlos said quietly. “I’m sorry.” He sat awkwardly and kicked his now soaked and muddy shoes off outside before shifting his legs in. “You’re right —I shouldn’t have assumed those things.” Tentatively he held the small statue out. “And even if you did think they had powers, it’s not my place to judge or disrespect that.”

          His boyfriend took the doll and held it in his lap. “It’s okay. I’m sorry about the trip.” He swallowed. “It’s cold, and I know you’re uncomfortable and I know — I know you’ve been trying really hard to be a good sport.”

          Carlos put a hand on Cecil’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’ve had a good time.” He said quietly.

          Cecil gave a dry laugh and wiped his cheek quickly. “Ha.”

          “No, really. Look, I won’t lie, because I know you’ve heard me grumble about field work conditions sometimes, but it’s beautiful out here, and I never knew you could spark flint, or identify animals, or make dehydrated food into something we’d actually enjoy eating. And it’s so quiet — this has been the first time we’ve been together where we’ve actually been able…  Been able to focus on each other enough to…” He faltered.  

          “Get on each other’s nerves?” Cecil asked.

          Carlos laughed. “Yeah, but also to joke and play around and talk.” He slid his arm around Cecil’s shoulders and pulled him in, nosing his cheek.

          Cecil sighed and nuzzled him back, still worrying at the doll in his hands. Carlos had hoped to make a joke about it; admit that the thing’s smug smile irritated him so maybe it was a bit of jealousy?  But the moment didn’t feel right and then something else occurred to him and he voiced it before he thought it through:

          “Do you remember when she gave it to you?”

          “N-No.” Cecil choked, and that was the dam breaking, like the cloud unloading outside. Under his arm, Cecil’s shoulders heaved and Carlos quickly gathered him to his chest, untangling the blanket to get his arms around him directly. There was nothing he could say to this grief, so he held him as tight as he could, pulling him into his lap and tucking his own head down over Cecil’s for the most contact.

          It made better sense to him now. Of course he would hold onto tangible objects he knew were from his past, from his family. His head couldn’t be trusted to hold onto memories, and what family did Cecil have? He was closer to his young niece than his sister he hardly saw, and then there was the brother-in-law he didn’t get along with.  Here was why he clung to the structure at the radio station, to Dana, joking with the Seans — hell, he was even okay with his pet living there. It was the substitute for his family. But the objects and their origins, they were touchable proof that his people had once existed. That Cecil came from somewhere.

          Was that why they were banned from seeing Carlos’s relatives? It was impossible to think the stricture was out of any consideration for Cecil’s feelings.  Clearly it was to protect any scripts or reeducation that had been put in place…

…………………….

          The rain, while it had stopped over the campsite and open desert, could still be seen centered above the gorge; towering thunderheads and a gray trailing haze of falling water.  Carlos even climbed up on the fingers of sandstone over the tent and could see a random snaking dark line of wet stretching from their campsite and dividing the sand wastes before them down the slope and across the arroyo. One half was dry pale cream and the other dark brown mud.

          Afraid of washout flooding the springs, they collected water from the tarp and hiked along the flat upper rim on their side of the canyon, occasionally peering across with binoculars to see if they could recognize landmarks like where the petroglyph shelter or the miniature house were.

          Along the way, they talked about what to do next. Their water was limited without being able to enter the gorge, and both of them were feeling grubby… Carlos suggested they could go back to town for more provisions, but Cecil shrugged this off. “If the weather isn’t going to hold, we should pack it up.  It was worth a try and a change of scene, but huddling in a cold tent out of the rain?” He sighed. “Besides, right now a hot shower and shave sounds really good.”

          “So, head back after the hike?”

          “Yeah.”

          They trekked on, watching the continuing build up of the distant thunderstorm over the gorge.

          Carlos found some tracks and began flipping through one of Cecil’s guide books. “Reptile. It’s got to be that monitor if those are the only warm blooded ones…”

          Cecil smiled and pitched a stone into the canyon, trying to hit a mesa-like tower a few yards out. The clatter as it struck echoed repeatedly.  Dropping to his hands and knees, he whooped into the canyon and grinned at Carlos as the sound magnified and bounced. “Neat.”

          Carlos closed the book and joined him, bumping shoulders before bellowing, “And now the Weather!” then both cracked up when the sound came back over and over distorted.

          “How far do you think that carries?”

          “If a scientist yells in a gorge and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

          “You are so deep.” Carlos smirked, but really he was just glad Cecil was smiling again. “You talk in your sleep.” He announced sitting back on his heels.

          Cecil twisted around and sat with his legs dangling over the edge. “I do not.” He smoothed his jacket primly.

          “You haven’t this trip, but at home you do.  You narrate. I used to stay up and listen.” Carlos studied Cecil’s face enjoying his reaction.

          “I don’t believe you.”

          “I’ll show you — I caught some of it on a voice memo with my phone one time. ‘Haven’t we all had insomnia at one time or another listeners?’ or something like that. When I tried to wake you,” Carlos stifled a laugh…

          “What? What did I do?”

          “You flopped over and were laying on my hair — I couldn’t get up. Every time I tried to, you started shushing me and saying ‘Please! We’re ON THE AIR.’”

          “I did not!” Cecil scooted back from the edge so he could shove Carlos, blushing.

          “I have digital proof. I couldn’t reach my phone to shut it off.” Carlos put his hands up in surrender letting Cecil push him. “One night you interviewed Michael Sandero — both heads — on what the first head was going to do after his surgery.  Apparently he had been talking to Megan Wallaby and Sarah Sultan about some options. And one night you mediated a round table discussion between a hooded figure, Simone Rigadeau, an angel and half a dozen old interns.”

          Cecil put his hands down, curious despite himself. “What did we discuss?”

          Carlos tried to keep a straight face.  He’d been sitting on this as potential blackmail material for a long time. “Whether or not the internship program should be opened up to Buddy Holly, robots, pteranodons, other worldly children or any other non mortal entities that might be more - and if I remember right you were quoting station management - ‘more durable’ than human college students.”

          “And?”

          “And what?”

          “What did they think?”

          “I don’t know! I could only hear your part of it.”

          “Right.” Cecil’s face was burning to the tips of his ears. He covered his face only letting one eye steal a look at Carlos.  “Do you really have a recording?”

          “Afraid so.”

          “Do I do this every night?”

          “I don’t know about every night. I mean, sometimes I get lucky and fall asleep first.”

          “But I do it on the nights you don’t? Carlos, how do you get any sleep?”

          “I know how to make you stop.” Carlos gently tugged Cecil’s hands down from his face.

          “Do I even want to know?”

          Carlos smiled, a hand sliding behind Cecil’s neck to draw him in so he could kiss the corner of his mouth. “I let you be an octopus.”

Chapter Text

          The last thing Carlos decided to do was collect his soil and rock samples. He knelt and began pulling out  the zip locks he’d squirreled away in the back pack and glanced at Cecil. “It won’t take long.”

         “Take all the time you want.  I’m going to walk back and get a head start on packing up.” He bent for a kiss before he left.

         It was a good kiss.  Carlos caught himself still smiling as he filled and labeled the last bag some time later.  As he followed the canyon rim back towards camp, he thought he might just need another one like it before they began the drive back to town.

         But as the slope cut by the arroyo began, veering away from the canyon and back towards the sandstone fingers, something didn’t look right.  He couldn’t make out what it was from a distance, but there was some thing dark near their camp and closer, near the part of the arroyo just down from the site.  He broke into a jog trying to get in range to make sense of it, then balked as his chest felt a stab of cold.

         There were two dark sedans.

         They stood out heavy and black against the pale of the washed out sandstone and desert plants. One was across the arroyo right at the campsite, and what was worse, with it was a man in a dark suit, a man who was not tall, but tall enough, to be standing behind Cecil with an arm hooked around his throat and holding a knife lazily at his side. Cecil was still, his wide eyes locked on Carlos. The other car was here, on this side of the ditch, waiting for him. And it was obvious, both were placed like game pieces to hem him in or chase him if necessary, whether he jumped the ditch and ran for his own car or just fled into the open desert on this side.  Either could head him off easily if he dashed for the entrance to the gorge.

         As surreal as it was, Carlos found himself continuing to walk slowly towards to closer car, the campsite, his mind in a blind panic for what to do.  They weren’t the Sheriff’s Secret Police — the vehicles would have the logo. Black meant World Government, right? Or was that just for helicopters?

         As he got closer, the passenger door to the car closest, the one on this side of the arroyo, opened and another man in a dark suit, a man who was not short, stepped out, appearing to be working on a newspaper puzzle.  He looked up and waved to Carlos happily.  Carlos froze and blinked before continuing.

         “Hello.  We’ve been waiting for you to get back.” The man said brightly.  He waved, motioning Carlos closer and came forward away from the black sedan. Approaching slowly, Carlos had trouble seeing into the tinted windows, but it appeared there was also someone behind the wheel. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel a throb in his ears.

         “I don’t want you to worry too much about your friend back there.” The man was saying. “This isn’t about him.  And there are things that could happen to him and then there are things that people would notice if they happened to him. Do you understand the difference?”

         Carlos licked his lips and nodded slowly.

         “So let’s talk about you.” The man tucked an illegal pencil behind his ear nonchalantly and folded his newspaper — was that a sudoku?

         Carlos eyes took in the objects, the motion, but he couldn’t focus. “O-Okay.” His gaze flew back to Cecil and the man who was not tall, or really, as Carlos saw him, that thing with a knife.

         “You see, it’s just that we thought — that we were informed — that our testing site was a clear area. No one wants to leave evidence of their failures, you understand? No one wants there to be someone to blame.”

         “No. Of course not…” Carlos began, his mouth so dry it was hard to make the words. “You mean the house.”

         “Testing site.” The man corrected firmly. “As a scientist, you understand the importance of thorough testing.”

         Carlos nodded. “Certainly.”

         “The difference being, in our line of work, we prefer our testing not to be peer reviewed. We prefer a clean area with no evidence. You can appreciate a sterile environment…”

         What was Cecil doing? He kept making a motion with his hands, like waving him to his right towards the gorge.  Since the man with the knife was behind Cecil and staring straight at Carlos, he did not notice. Cecil pointed down adamantly and made the motion again. Bewildered, Carlos forced himself to look at and listen to the man in front of him lest he follow his gaze and see Cecil signaling. 

         “Are you saying,” Carlos struggled to make his voice steady, “That we’re evidence to be removed?” Voicing this made Carlos nauseous, but even so, he forced himself to wander just a little in the direction Cecil had gestured —an experiment.

         The man mirrored Carlos’s steps and narrowed his eyes with what might be intended as a sympathetic look, but to Carlos it just looked — amused. He realized the man must think he was angling to dash around him… “I feel quite a few residents would notice if your friend were removed.” He said simply. “And we don’t want that. So there are other options. Maybe we just remove the memory of this trip? And that could be for the best if it were also the memory of how his companion became another fatal statistic of Skeleton Gorge. How tragic would that be?”

         “Very.” Carlos breathed.

         Cecil was making a beckoning motion now, but the man who was not short’s back was to him. He smiled broadly at Carlos. “I was really hoping you’d think that.”

         Did Cecil want him to try to casually back him into the arroyo? Who would fall for that?

         Carlos blinked back to focus on the stranger again. “What?”

         The man seemed genuinely eager and pleased. “It occurs to me that someone in your line of work could give us some insight into our failures and make our future endeavors a success.” He smiled, “Don’t you agree?”

         Carlos took a step forward experimentally. “Yeah, of course.” He nodded, adding eye contact, then took another step as he added, “I think I could do that. Anything to help.”

         Like a dancer following a subtle lead, the man who was not short stepped back in his wake, a little closer to the ditch. He beamed. “Excellent. So much better than having someone to blame.” He turned and strode right to the arroyo edge to wave eagerly at his companion. “He’ll cooperate!”

         And then he vanished.

         Carlos blinked.

         He was gone?

         The man with the knife faltered, and it was enough for Cecil to elbow him, duck out of his grip and run.

         There was a squealing and then a horrible wet noise in the arroyo, and Carlos saw the man with the knife start to rush to where his companion vanished, then stop short and wave at the sedan closest to Carlos before dashing for the one at the site. Carlos took off.

         Bolting after Cecil on his side of the trench, Carlos heard the car engine start and the crunch of sand ground under tires.  He didn’t dare look back, only focused on catching Cecil until they were both sprinting towards the gorge with just the ditch between them. He could hear the sedan closing the distance - child’s play to run him down with only a few moments head start.

         “We have to go in!” Cecil was shouting. “Fastest way into the gorge.” He leaped into the trench and waved his hand up at Carlos. “Come on!” 

         Carlos grabbed Cecil’s hand and jumped roughly down after him, recovered from tripping to one knee and then both were running flat out, not turning even when they heard the skid and grind of a tire running off the edge and a wheel well eating sand.

         “Are you alright?” Carlos panted, his eyes flashing to Cecil’s.

         “I’m okay.”

         “How,” Carlos gasped, “How did you know that thing was still right there?”

         “Trap-door spiderwolf. Once they build a trap, they pretty much stay put.” Cecil heaved as they scrambled closer to the canyon.  “He’s been there the whole time since you saw him —  I didn’t think you’d want to know that.”

         The passage twisted and dropped off suddenly —maybe a hundred feet— as it entered the gorge, and Cecil pulled up short, thrusting his arm across the opening to stop Carlos. A thunderclap over head made both of them jump and look back anxiously for their pursuer. Echoing down the trench they could hear voices: the other car driver and the man with the knife shouting to each other.  Then both voices were drowned out in the roar of rain as the clouds let loose.

         How far behind them were they? Frantic, Cecil found purchase on a narrow shelf of the canyon’s interior wall and pulled Carlos up behind him and they both began to quickly scramble and climb along this makeshift trail until it ran out and they had to search for foot holds and outcroppings before they found another jutting shelf. In minutes, both were soaked through and despite being desperate to put distance between themselves and those men, the slick rocks and mud coating their shoes slowed them down. Numbing fingers soon made gripping the wall even harder.  Far down below them, the trickle of runoff in the canyon bed from the earlier rain was now transformed into a gray rushing tide.  When Cecil spotted a rock overhang, he scrambled up and under it and pulled Carlos in behind him out of the downpour.

         Peering out, they saw the mouth of the arroyo explode with a gushing spout of run off and the rush below swelled into a river of white water rapids, a rising flood as the rain poured down.

         Cecil huddled, the space too small to sit up in, blinking, stunned, and trying to catch his breath. Carlos did the same trembling and pressing beside him for warmth.

         “They can’t still be following us.” Carlos breathed, teeth chattering looking at the rising water and slick run off from the walls.

         Cecil shook his head. “Either they climbed out or they got washed down there.” He looked off the shelf down the steep plunging wall into the raging water.  “I couldn’t see anyone when that washed out.  I think they climbed out.”  He gave a worried glance to the slick shear walls going to the rim, then to the drop off below them again, before backing into the crevice and putting his arms around Carlos. They were both dripping wet and freezing, but between the danger of climbing in the storm and the threat of the men out of the canyon, there was no where to go.  If the runoff kept rising, if it threatened to wash over this shelf, they’d have to risk something, but only then…

………….

         When the silent drone dropped down in front of them, Carlos just blinked at it.  So cold and close to shock, he couldn’t make sense of what it was, like some sort of hallucination, and stared blankly at its single beady camera eye.  It wasn’t until the side of the enormous midnight blue copter blotted out the view from the crevice opening and tactical gear laden officers leaped out on a repel line and hauled them inside that Carlos came to himself. 

         He was pushed down on a drop seat beside Cecil as the chopper made a stomach lurching swoop away from the canyon wall and upward, then veered one way and another navigating the storm winds. The sickening swaying stopped as it locked direction and began to climb a little. Masked, black-clad officers pulled Carlos up and began stripping off his chilled and sodden clothes, rubbing him roughly with an army blanket and yanking a dry fleece hoodie and sweatpants onto him, the clothes also black and emblazoned with the SSP Academy insignia.  In moments he was pressed back on the bench seat, Cecil also changed and similarly dressed at his side, and both being covered in some sort of heat reflective emergency blanket that resembled aluminum foil.

         “How?” Carlos asked dully.

         “The cell phones.” Cecil blinked. “I got them out to check if you really had that recording…” He stopped when an officer pushed a flask to his lips and drank readily.

         At Carlos’s turn, he found it was brandy and gratefully swallowed it too, glad of the speedy warmth to his insides. He leaned against Cecil and tried to make eye contact with one of the officers buzzing around the hold of the chopper. “Are we being arrested?”

         “You’re being taken to the Randy Newman Memorial Airport. Crews have been searching for you for the last three days.” The SSPO cocked his head. “Why on Earth would you turn off your phone for that long?” He chided.

         Carlos and Cecil exchanged looks.

         Another officer produced a scroll. “By order of Mayor Pamela Winchell, all restrictions and bans placed on public servant Cecil Gershwin Palmer by NVCR have been lifted and in accordance with a writ by City Council to prevent professional fatigue and burnout, he is ordered and awarded an all expenses paid travel package for the remaining two week duration of his vacation. Um, plus one.  Could I be your ‘plus one’ Mr. Palmer?”

         “No.” Cecil took the papers and swatted him away, slumping back against the hull and Carlos’s shoulder. “There’s already plane tickets and everything.” He murmured flipping through the packet in wonder.  “Good old Pam.  I take back every time I ever said anything about Hiram McDaniels being dynamic…”

         Carlos sighed and settled back, absent thoughts of their soaked campsite and his Prius maybe being found by a pack of boy scouts vanishing as he listened to Cecil. “Where is it for? Where are we going?”

         Shuffling and scanning documents, suddenly Cecil’s breath hitched and he beamed.  “Oh…” His arms snaked around Carlos and he pulled him in tightly, pressing an excited kiss to his cheek. “New York City — they’ve arranged for us to visit your sister!”

EPILOGUE

         “Mr. Harlan! Mr. Harlan!” Frank Wilson ran up to Larry Leroy clutching and waving a damp sketch book.

         “For the last time, son, I ain’t your Scoutmaster.  I’m just helping out.  What’d you find there?” He added tapping the book.

         The scouts who volunteered had done a good job packing up the washed out campsite.  The tent, tarp and gear was all sacked in plastic trash bags and loaded in the Prius.  Larry would sort it and hang up what needed to dry in his barn later.

         The boy was breathless from running, so in answer he just held the book open to a two page spread of Carlos’s cave drawings of the orbs.

         “Huh.” Larry said, continuing to let the boom hoist the front of hybrid up behind his rusted tow truck while he stared at the pencils. “What’d you make of that?” He scratched his goatee.

         “It’s all in parts.” Frank complained.  “You’re supposed to put it all on one page to make it work.” The boy announced as if this were obvious.

         “That so?”  It wasn’t obvious to Mr. Leroy, nor was he especially fussed about some scribbles. He returned to the car, checking the tow chain, and then scanned to see how the other two scouts were doing clearing the site.  It was spotless.  He waved them over and moved up the truck bed to pull some firewood out. “You remember where the stash goes?”

         The other two boys nodded and ran to hide the wood.

         “See, Mr Leroy — maybe he drew it too big to fit it all on one page.  It’s supposed to be stronger if you draw it bigger.” 

         Larry looked down and saw that Frank had yanked out the pages and begun arranging them in the damp gravel.  “Ah, I see it now…”

         Spread in a big circle about 5 feet across, Frank hastily swapped the placement of two pages then tilted a couple others until the pattern was perfect.  It was something Larry Leroy could draw from memory by the time he was Frank’s age: a Bloodstone Wheel.

         “You better gather all that back in his book though.  I don’t think a scientist is gonna like you tearing out his notes.”