thecapitol | hey I just met you and this is crazy [closed]

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hey I just met you and this is crazy [closed]

Who| Carlos and Cecil
What| ...he's totally calling.
Where| The Tribute center and Cecil's apartment, since this is a phone conversation.
When| Week 4, around nine or ten on Wednesday morning.
Warnings/Notes| Cecil is a sixteen-year-old girl.

Carlos picked up the receiver of the public phone and stared at the sleek, modern keypad. He glanced over his shoulder -- this wasn't a phone call he particularly wanted witnessed. Not because he planned to do anything particularly scandalous, no: it was just the principle of the thing. Him, fresh out of the Arena, calling someone who had publicly declared interest in him -- it didn't matter that Carlos's intentions were completely impersonal and unromantic, he knew what it looked like.

But, reassured that he was alone, Carlos dialed the number that he had, in fact, memorized. He held the receiver to his ear and listened to it ring, waiting.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting, not after Kevin -- which was something he still didn't want to think about, even after a good night's sleep. If Carlos was hoping for anything, it was that this Cecil was his Cecil, the familiar one from Night Vale, who had simply gotten here before Carlos and would be able to tell him something useful about this place. But really, Carlos doesn't know who will pick up the phone, so he stands there, keeping his breaths even and his mind clear.

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It wouldn't be right to say that Cecil hadn't expected Carlos to call. But it also wouldn't be strictly accurate to say that he had expected it, either. He'd gone back and forth on the point several hundred times (in his estimation) since the week before, and never managed to leave that nebulous middle ground between half-expected victory and not-quite-certain disappointment. Carlos' death in the Arena certainly hadn't helped matters - it only added the mixed disappointment of Carlos' loss and the heightened anticipation of his return to the whole predicament. By Wednesday morning, Cecil's concentration was thoroughly, fundamentally shot.

He was at home when the phone rang. He couldn't stop his heart leaping in his chest when he heard it, as it had every time it had rung in the past two days. Get it together, Cecil! he admonished himself as he walked, and did not run, across the kitchen to pick it up; "Get it together, Cecil!" he said aloud, just before he picked it up and hit the receive button with fingers that were definitely not even trembling a little bit. It's probably not even him. It's somebody from the station. Or from Celebrus. Or a wrong number.

He takes a deep breath and puts the phone to his ear. "Hellooo...?" he says, and the hope in his voice is transparent as the miles of air between the places they stand, casting words out like nets, confident that they will catch each other.

It IS him, thinks Carlos in a wide-eyed moment of clear recognition. It has to be. No one else answers their phone like that.

"Cecil?" His voice would sound uncertain on the other end of the line, with the questioning note you get when you spot someone on the other side of a crowded room who looks familiar but is too far away for you to be sure, so you say their name and desperately hope it's who you think it is or else you'll have to have a very embarrassing conversation with a total stranger whose name you just got wrong.

It's Carlos. It's him. He called! Cecil would know that voice anywhere-- he's rewatched every one of Carlos' pre-Arena interviews four times or more, and an introduction is completely unnecessary. Oh, wow-- to hear his name borne on those velvet tones--!

"--Yes," he manages to say, emphatically. ...Too emphatically? Oh, no. "Er-- yes. That's me. Cecil. That is, I am Cecil. Cecil Palmer! Speaking."

Oh, god. Oh, god, it's not even ten seconds into the conversation and he's already wishing that time felt as nonexistent as it obviously is, so that he could go back to the seconds before he picked up the phone and not have said any of that. Unfortunately, he does not know how to exit the temporal stream in which he is a huge embarrassment, and so there is nothing he can do but try, as best he possibly can, to roll with it.

"...Uh. Hello, Carlos," he finishes, and lets himself pretend that nonchalance is actually something he achieved.

"I had to know if it was really you," Carlos says quietly. He still can't tell, not really, if this is the Cecil he knows or not, but the prognosis is not hopeful. It sounds for all the world like this is the first time Cecil has spoken with him.

But he had called them Carlos's team of scientists. Was that really coincidence?

"I know someone named Cecil Palmer. I worked with him for nearly a year, in a small desert town called Night Vale. I need to know if you're...him."

Cecil is not a scientist. But he is, he thinks, a fairly astute observer of the natural (and occasionally unnatural) world, and therefore can picture the abstract distance his heart leaps at Carlos' first statement-- and the exactly equivalent distance it plummets at his second.

He has put so much effort into appearing on Carlos' radar. It did not occur to him that he might not be who Carlos is looking for.

"Wow," he says, after a frozen-silent second, because he has to say something. "That's-- hard to say! I mean, I feel like I've known you a long time already!" He laughs, and immediately feels like it was the wrong thing to do.

"...That said," he adds-- slowly-- reluctantly-- "I've... never heard of a town called Night Vale. And I've never lived in the desert. Which is not to say," hastily, "that I am not who you're looking for-- I mean, who among us really knows who we are, anyway? Stranger things have definitely happened! But."

The word tastes of disappointment. "But-- as far my my admittedly fallible and certainly-not-entirely-to-be-trusted human memory can confirm, this is the first time we've spoken."

"....I see." The tone is hard to read, nasally neutral. Carlos frowns at the middle distance, deep in thought. It was most likely, he thinks, that this Cecil is an alternate-universe double who had actually lived in the Capitol all his life. If that was true, it implied that Cecil's overzealous attraction to him was a universal constant: that any Cecil Palmer in any universe would fall in love on sight with any devoted scientist called Carlos. It was an odd thought.

However, Cecil was right. Stranger things had happened. Carlos had seen what reeducation was capable of, and is also completely aware (and comfortable with the fact) that this phone was tapped. Cecil would know, too. Slim as it is, there is still a chance that this Cecil was Cecil from Night Vale.

....it would be impossible to determine over the phone.

"I need to meet you," he says, businesslike. "Even if you're not the Cecil I know, I have questions about you, and the Capitol, and the Hunger Games -- are you free today or tomorrow?"

If this Cecil was anything like the Cecil Carlos knew, Cecil would have his thumb on the pulse of what was happening in this city, which would make him as valuable a contact here as he was in Night Vale.

Cecil's heart leaps again, and this time it stays airborne. I need to meet you. He wonders if the Capitol dispenses recordings of conversations; if there is someone he could bribe to give him that sentence in a form he could replay over, and over, and over.

"Yes!" he says, again too emphatically but past caring. "I'm free right now!" ...Is he? There's that producer meeting, but that can be postponed, he thinks; so can work in general, actually, the show's not for another day-- and he was going to go shopping later, but who cares--! Yes. He is free.

"...if you are, I mean." Casual, Cecil! He loosens what has definitely become a two-handed vicegrip on the phone. "We could meet now. Or later. Or tomorrow. I'm free."

Carlos doesn't know if Cecil is really free or making time, and honestly it's not any of Carlos's business. If Cecil is amenable to meeting now, they can meet now.

"As you know, I only returned from the Arena yesterday," Carlos says, talking about his own murder as casually as he would mention a trip to the grocery store, "so I don't exactly have a lot of appointments. And I'd rather not put this off," he adds. The question was, where to meet? There was the tribute center, of course, but something makes Carlos hesitant to suggest it.

He's also hesitant to let Cecil choose the venue, of course, since this is not a date and there is no conceivable parallel universe where Cecil can be made to understand that, and he doesn't want this conversation to take place anywhere -- well, datelike. But the simple truth is, Carlos doesn't have the first idea where a good, discreet place to meet and discuss parallel universes would be, so the ball is in Cecil's court.

"Do you know somewhere we can talk about this? I don't know this place very well -- actually, I haven't been anywhere besides the City Circle and the Tribute center itself."

"Hmmmmm," Cecil says. To buy time. His mind is racing - he hadn't actually planned this far ahead, for fear that the universe would somehow punish him for so much confidence. Every small, relatively private, romantic-but-not-too romantic venue he can think of receives half a second's consideration, before he lights on-- yes.

"I know just the place," he says. "You'll love it-- it's this little coffeeshop where everything glows in the dark! I mean, not quite so much during the day, but we could get a cozy table at the back, get some coffee, and just-- talk! About the Arena, or the Capitol, or, you know. Whatever." The warmth in his tone suggests that he fully expects the conversation to be more personal than this - and that he assumes this to be a shared expectation.

"So, if that sounds good-- they gave you a GPS, right? Radioactive Coffee, just off of Centurion Drive and Victory Plaza! Or I could come to the Tribute Center and we could go together? Whatever works for you."

He waits, with bated breath, for Carlos' approval.

Edited 2014-02-20 14:50 (UTC)

Centurion Drive and Victory Plaza.

"Just a moment."

Carlos turns on the small holographic device on his wrist -- which had been one definite bright spot in the existential blur that yesterday was -- and pulls up the map. He flips through it, and after a few moments of silence, he finds the streets in question.

"Okay, I found it on the holowatch. I'll be there in...well, I don't know. Can you be there in an hour?"

God, this holographic watch-phone-map was cool. It was so cool.

"Yes!" Cecil cries. Whether it's an emphatic affirmation or relieved celebration is not immediately clear. "That is-- yes! Uh, yes. I'll meet you there. In an hour. That sounds great. I'll see you then."

He's already planning his route before he hangs up. It isn't too far from his place - not far from the Tribute Center, either, but definitely closer to where he is. This is because he has every intention of getting there first.

Forty-five minutes later, he's sitting at a gently glowing table toward the back of the dimly-lit coffeeshop, trying to force more than two minutes between glances at his watch and more than five minutes between glances at the door. He isn't succeeding in either endeavor.

He'd spent the ten minutes before making the journey waffling in front of his wardrobe, because his slightly-wrinkled CAPITOL RADIO: WELCOME TO PANEM t-shirt wasn't going to cut it, even for a casual (perfectly casual, completely casual) get-together. In the end, he'd decided on something close-fitting, but with only minimal amounts of feathers - certainly not party wear, but it showed off the patches of white veined-marble patterning he'd had done on his skin toward the beginning of the Arena.

He hopes Carlos likes it. He hopes Carlos shows up. He hopes Carlos is going to be here soon. (Get it together, Cecil! He has to be here soon.)

He glances at the door again, and back at his watch. It's been a minute and a half. Ugh.

Cecil has been sitting there for twenty minutes before Carlos walks in, looking like he wind had deliberately left his hair artistically tousled, resplendent in flannel and jeans a and a practical, only-slightly-fur-lined coat to keep the February wind at bay. It was a mercy he'd been assigned to the livestock district -- it made plain clothes of the kind he was used to easier to find.

He blinks as the door closes behind him, leaving him in glow-lit darkness. It takes his eyes a moment or two to adjust. Carlos looks around at the glowing tables and bar, coloring everything neon-green and yellow, and wonders how on earth he's going to spot Cecil in the dark.

Cecil had been right, though. Carlos likes it. It makes him wonder again if this is a Cecil who knows him -- could it be? That's what he's here to determine, and with determination Carlos walks toward the back, looking at the tables, searching for someone who -- well, he'd know Cecil when he saw him.

There. That's him. That is Cecil.

...what on earth is he wearing?

Carlos slides into the chair across from Cecil, making a strange gesture with his hands as he does so, as if he were sweeping a longer coat out of the way. "Sorry I'm late," he says. "It took me longer to get here than I thought it would." He peers at Cecil through his glasses, then takes them off to get a better look at the -- the patches of something on Cecil's skin with something very like concern. "Cecil, are you all right?"

Seeing Carlos on a screen, Cecil realizes the moment he walks in, could not ever have compared with seeing him in the flesh. No high-definition camera could reproduce the magnitude of his presence, which is-- is resplendent, is radiant, even in the dim glow of the coffeeshop. The way that flannel shirt hugs his shoulders. The calm-yet-analytical look in his dark, dark eyes. His hair. Just-- just. His hair.

He realizes he is staring only when Carlos has already crossed the room, sat down, greeted him, and asked him a question. He realizes that he has been staring, with his hands curled on the table between them, and that he doesn't seem able to stop. Huh.

"...Huh?" he says. At first, it's because the question doesn't really register completely. Then, Cecil realizes that he-- he doesn't understand the question at all. Are you all right? What does that mean? Of course he's all right! Why wouldn't he be all right? (He wonders if Carlos can somehow tell how fast his heart is beating; that he is very slightly dizzy; that he feels, somehow, too far away from his hands. He wonders if Carlos knows that he is responsible.)

But he puts on attentive interest - overcompensating a little, maybe, for his inattention of a moment ago. "I'm fine!" he says, brightly. "Completely fine!" And, because he has to fit that question into the flow of a conversation somehow, he adds, a little too aggressively, "--How are you?"

Carlos ignores the question and continues to look at Cecil's modifications. "You have patches of -- some kind of stone, I think it's marble -- in your skin." If it had been any other Capitol citizen, Carlos would have immediately written it off as a tattoo. However, this is Cecil Palmer, and the last time Carlos saw him had been in a place where patches of foreign substances in your skin was always bad news.

He still doesn't know whether this Cecil is his Cecil. Though this Cecil looks like his Cecil, and sounds like his Cecil, and stares awkwardly while not listening to a word Carlos says like his Cecil, tattoos are a thing Carlos couldn't imagine his Cecil with. He could, however, see his Cecil suffering from a case of partial petrification.

"--Oh! You mean this!" Cecil grins, a little relieved-- he didn't miss anything, not exactly. He holds out his arm to allow Carlos to look more closely, turning it to show off the stonelike glint of the skin even in the dim light. If Carlos decides to touch it, it will feel exactly like the skin around it, despite its stony appearance.

"I just had it done," he says proudly. "Last Arena I went for scales-- oh! That's right! You weren't here! Well, in the final week or so, they unleashed this dragon on the Tributes-- so I thought, I'd get the mod to match! And then this Arena came around, and I thought, what could possibly say museum more clearly than marble? Right?"

He sounds bright and eager, but he's watching Carlos' reaction with some small trepidation. It hadn't even occurred to him that Carlos might not like it-- he barely even noticed his own cosmetic modifications anymore, after the first week or so he had them. And his job involved so little interaction with actual people that he'd stopped thinking about the impression they made. ...Maybe he should have considered this.

Edited 2014-03-04 05:16 (UTC)

No Carlos isn't going to touch it, that might encourage Cecil and Carlos is always very careful not to do that. But he does look at it closely for a moment before sitting back and putting his glasses back on with a businesslike air.

"So you did do it deliberately. That's good. I'd thought it might have been a case of degenerative dermal petrification, which can get really bad if left untreated."

Cecil looks down at his arm. His expression is suddenly much more uncertain-- the nervous excitement half-replaced with self-consciousness.

"Oh," he says, because he isn't sure what else to say, and withdraws his arm. He folds his hands in his lap. He isn't actually sure what that combination of words meant, exactly, but the meaning is clear - Carlos thinks the pattern looks like a disease. How embarrassing is that? "Well, it's-- it's not! So, no worries!"

The statement sits in the air only two or three seconds before he can't help following it up, trying to bridge the awkward gap left by his self-consciousness. "I mean, originally I was thinking, what if I went for, like, feathers? Or some of those mask designs? It didn't have to be marble. I pretty much went with this just, like, on a whim." This is not even remotely true.

"But hey!" he adds. "It's perfectly removable! I could change it out at any time!" (So this doesn't have to be a dealbreaker! is what he means.)

That, that right there is the taste of regret, laced with guilt, followed by an aftertaste of awkward embarrassment. Carlos hadn't meant for it to come out like that. It sounded like he'd just insulted Cecil, which is the last thing he wants to do.

"No, no, there's no need for that," protests Carlos. "It's, um, really, it's fine. I'd just seen cases before, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't, um, that."

He really isn't sure how to make this situation better, or at least less palm-sweatingly awkward, so he pulls a quick breath and changes the subject.

"Anyway. I wanted to talk to you about...well, you. You're Cecil Palmer, right? What exactly is it that you do?"

Ah. Already Cecil can feel his embarrassment abating. His grin begins to return, tugging at the corners of his mouth-- he doesn't want to look quite so excited about getting to talk about himself, but! This is what he came here for! Getting to know each other! Learning each other's ins and outs, and ups and downs, and their places in the arbitrary stratification of society-- just,the little things necessary for the beginning of a friendship. (Just a friendship).

"Well," he says, "As you might know, I am the host of a radio show here in the Capitol-- Welcome to Panem! your source for all you need to know!" Spoken with a slight blah blah blah roll of his eyes, just in case the tagline is familiar. "It's kind of a new thing - I mean, radio, right? It seems a little... old-fashioned for entertainment news! But, hey-- since the start of the Neverending Quell, I think we've all been just a little more inclined to take those kinds of risks."

He's first-date overeager, and he can tell. He forces himself to cut that off right there, before it turns into rambling. He'd hate to ramble. "...Have you heard it? The show, I mean."

"No," says Carlos, shaking his head. "I didn't know you had a show, or -- I would have. When are you on?"

He wants to compare the two shows from the two Cecils -- perhaps he would record it, play it back, run it through sound-analysis machines. Test it, clinically and impersonally. Could there really be two Cecils, so alike and yet so different?

"Every Thursday evening! With the occasional special broadcast earlier in the week." Cecil is delighted - Carlos wants to listen. How amazing will that be, to speak into the microphone next week and know that somewhere out there, the waves of his voice are falling into Carlos' ears?

"I think you'll find it quite useful," he adds, because he doesn't want to look like he's making this all about him. "Since you've only just come back from the Arena, I mean. It can be hard to get used to the quick pace of Capitol life, and having a regularly-scheduled source of information about upcoming events and current trends can be very stabilizing! Or so I'm told." It's something station management's made clear, as the Tributes continue to trickle in from the Arena - his audience is not only the natives of the Capitol anymore.

"...How's that going, by the way?" he adds after a second-- perfectly conversational, as though he were asking about a new job, or a remodeling project, or something equally mundane. "The whole adjusting-to-life-in-a-new-world thing?"

Edited 2014-03-25 16:16 (UTC)

"Well, I don't really know yet," says Carlos honestly. "It's too early to say, since I was only revived in the Capitol yesterday. The Arena took a lot of getting used to, and now that I'm in the Capitol, it's all completely different. No one's waiting outside this room to kill me, for one thing." He takes his glasses off and polishes them on the front of his -- his shirt, not his lab coat. Carlos is, of course, stunning with them off.

Carlos is stunning regardless of whether or not he's wearing his glasses, in Cecil's estimation; but stunning takes many forms, and he takes a second to admire this one as it appears in front of him. With his dark eyes uncovered and his strong profile outlined against the glow-in-the-dark stars plastered on every wall, Carlos looks mysterious. Otherworldly. Celestial.

Cecil is a champion at multitasking, though - he has almost no difficulty at all carrying on a conversation and gazing at Carlos with his chin propped on his hand at the same time. "Most likely not," he agrees, because according to the laws of probability you can never be entirely sure that there isn't someone waiting behind any given door to kill you. But he's sure Carlos knows that. Carlos, after all, is a scientist. "I imagine it's easier to appreciate your newfound celebrity, as well! You know, without the distraction of sudden indoor volcanic eruptions, or the wrath of God, or slow starvation."

"They're certainly less likely here," Carlos agreed, knowing as well as Cecil did that nothing was certain and dangers lurked around every corner. "The celebrity doesn't really matter to me," he went on -- he had been small-town famous in Night Vale, thanks to the other Cecil, and it hadn't mattered to him there, either. Sure, he was recognized on the street, but that had nothing to do with what he had come to Night Vale to do. Sometimes fame made his job easier; sometimes fame made it harder. It was just a fact. "What I really want to do here in the Capitol is science," Carlos said, sliding his glasses back on. "Where I came from, our technology isn't nearly as advanced as it is here. We don't have force-field generators or holographic projectors yet -- our televisions have plastic screens that are dark when they're turned off. I want to find out how it all works, Cecil, and most importantly, I need to know how they brought me back to life."

That was the question that weighed on his mind most.

"Do you know anything about it?"

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hey I just met you and this is crazy [closed]

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