thecapitol | Today's log brought to you by the letter "C!" C, as in Closed!

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Today's log brought to you by the letter "C!" C, as in Closed!

WHO| Carlos, Cecil, and a ｃamera ｃrew
WHAT| A chat. Carlos has been given a break from working on the disease to see -- right, that guy he confessed love for in the Arena. Too bad it wasn't true.
WHEN| Late last week, before Carlos makes his discovery.
WHERE| In the Capitol! Outside the Speakeasy, then inside the Speakeasy.
WARNINGS| Huge, horrendous amounts of awkward. This is a painful truth. Also, the first part of this log IS televised. Feel free to assume your character has seen it.

Carlos stood, trying not to fidget, on the curb next to the Speakeasy. He had it on good authority that this was the one building in the Capitol where you could have a private talk -- a really private talk, without the Capitol listening in on you. Carlos needed a place like that. The deception he was about to discuss wasn't just for the Capitol's citizens. It was important that the administration swallow it, as well.

But oh, god, was he not looking forward to discussing it.

The camera crews didn't help. They knew exactly why Carlos had been allowed out of the lab and who this appointment was with, and were eagerly asking him question after question.

"Of course I'm looking forward to seeing him--"

"--no, I haven't seen him since before the Arena--"

"--yes, I really thought I was going to die--"

"--thank you--"

"--I'm sorry to hear that, I didn't mean to make anyone cry--"

"--excuse me, but I've been working on identifying a very important disease -- isn't anybody going to ask me about that?"

"--listen, thank you, but I'd really rather not answer any more questions. I'm just here to meet Cecil..."

Carlos couldn't hear anyone's approach, not over the clamor of the press, so he looked around for Cecil instead. With any luck, this place's bouncers would keep the reporters out. It was part of why Carlos had chosen it. Carlos knew he ought to look excited: after all, he was seeing the man he was purportedly in love with for the first time in over a month. Really, though, he just felt sick. Sick, and guilty.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A familiar panic crawled up the back of Carlos's neck, up his spine and into his cerebellum. It was the same panic he felt when Cecil called their meetings dates, or complimented his shirt, or asked him about weekend plans. Carlos had always dealt with situations like this by not dealing with them -- by brushing past them and carrying on with the conversation as though nothing had happened.

It was a terrible thing to do right now, but it was instinctive. Carlos couldn't talk about how complicated that kiss had been. He couldn't. He didn't have the words. So instead, he opened his mouth and said, "We need to talk about what we're going to do about this." That was better. That was something he could explain. "I understand if you don't want to keep up a pretended relationship. I shouldn't have put you in this position in the first place, and I'm not going to hold you to something I didn't even ask you about." He didn't quite manage his usual no-nonsense, all-business tone, though. Carlos still felt too guilty. Somehow, the fact that Cecil wasn't angry about it made it worse. It reinforced how helpless a position he was in, as a Tribute, and how unsurprising it was that someone would make the decision to lie about a relationship in order to save his or her life.

Cecil considered, for a moment, being angry. He considered leaning in and throwing words like stones at Carlos' face, one by one-- I asked you about the kiss, Carlos, he could spit, or If you can't be bothered to tell me you're planning to lie to me, Carlos, the least you can do is listen when you finally come clean--!

But no. He couldn't do that. No matter how angry he wanted to be - no matter how much he wanted to react to this like a normal person would react to the realization that their stated affection had been used as a means to an end - he realized with a sinking stomach that he couldn't do that to Carlos.

Even now, there were things happening here that were more important than his anger. A too-public fight with Carlos might make it clear that the entire confession had been a plot. To destroy the illusion only minutes after their first-ever onscreen kiss (their only kiss, he tried not to remind himself) would be suspicious at best, and they could not afford suspicion. Not now.

He made himself look straight at Carlos. "...I am not sure, Carlos, that we have a choice." His voice was, at least, even. He could not manage normal, but-- it was even.

This was easily one of the worst conversations Carlos has ever had. He can remember very few that had been truly worse: it was hard to be worse than I used the way you feel about me to increase my popularity as a gladiatorial prisoner-slave in a desperate bid for survival. I kissed you outside and I can't even talk about it because the way I feel is more complicated than Night Vale's tax laws. If we break up, it might be suspicious enough to get us arrested, but if we don't, it'll be a fake relationship done exclusively for the cameras both visible and hidden.

But he continued it, because this discussion had to happen. Carlos couldn't run from it any more than he could have run from a parasitic organism that had already burrowed into his skin. The only way out was to go on.

"But there must be something we can do," he argued, looking thoroughly miserable. "I won't force you to do this, Cecil. If there's some way you could make it look like you -- you lost interest," he said, still miserable. "Or you realized I wasn't what you thought I would be, or I stood you up one too many times to stay late at the lab, or no matter what you say I can't talk about how I feel and you've just had enough--" Somewhere along the line, this had turned from a list of hypothetical reasons to break up with Carlos to a list of real reasons people had broken up with Carlos. Carlos didn't seem to notice, though, and just went on.

"Please. I don't want you to do this because you don't have a choice. That would be just as wrong as what I did in the first place." He hoped that it was clear that he was listing these reasons not because he wanted to end this false relationship at all costs but because he wanted to give Cecil an out from a truly awful situation.

God. It was like Carlos didn't realize what he'd done. There were relationships you could end, in life - arrangements that just didn't work out, whether for external reasons or because of incompatibility, or timing, or people's disinclination to call you back, Cecil, god, it's only been three hours, I said I'd call when I got a moment-- no, I'm not ignoring you--!. Those relationships petered out slowly, or exploded quickly, and the circumstances of their ending didn't matter at all. No one watched those relationships; no one judged a person's sincerity, or political loyalty, or likelihood to commit an act of high treason, based upon the small relationships they ended or allowed to end.

This was not one of those relationships.

"It isn't that I do not have a choice, Carlos," Cecil said heavily. "It is that my choice lies between the vindication of my own feelings of hurt, disappointment, and betrayal, and the very real possibility that the Capitol will find a public spurning of your affections suspicious. And by suspicious I mean likely to render one or both of us expendable." There was no way, in Cecil's mind, that a breakup could look convincing - a deathbed confession couldn't be canceled out by a few too many late nights at the lab, and it was difficult to argue for a frustrating lack of emotional availability when Carlos had spoken the words I love him on national television.

But he was managing matter-of-fact now, bringing his voice back up to speed, distancing his tone from his feelings a little. "While I do feel hurt, and disappointed, and betrayed, and while I understand that the vindication of those feelings through a messy public breakup would be considered by some to be a justifiable reaction-- I-- I cannot consider that a viable choice."

"But you know what this means," pressed Carlos, through his own writhing feelings of guilt and shame. "Cecil, the relationship won't just be for the public. We'd have to keep it up in private, too. Fooling the Peacekeepers won't be as easy as fooling the public."

Hearing Cecil say all this -- knowing what it all meant -- it was a level of rationality Carlos honestly wasn't sure he had expected. He wasn't used to feeling like between the two of them Cecil Palmer was the better person. He wasn't used to Cecil Palmer being right.

He felt like such an unethical scientist right now.

Well, maybe you should have thought of that, Carlos, before you--

--No. That was unfair. Cecil had grown up in a world where most of his life was monitored. Keeping his relationships as public as possible was, in some ways, an unconscious reaction to it - the lines between a public and a private romance were much, much blurrier for him than they were for Carlos.

No, this bothered him more because it smacked of a conversation they'd had weeks ago, in Cecil's living room, on the evening he'd gotten his last-ever bid. This wasn't the same situation - not by a long shot - but thinking of what a false relationship would entail (what had just happened would not, could not be their last kiss, for one), Cecil found that it had a similar aftertaste.

"...I have told you before, Carlos, that I would never ask anything of you with the expectation that you would be unable to refuse me." He was looking at Carlos just to fill his field of vision with something - it made it easier not to picture what the next few weeks were very likely going to look like, should they decide to go through with this. "And it is for that reason that I ask you now: Would you be able to keep up a relationship in private?" I am not the problem here, was what he did not say.

He let the silence sit a second. ...Just a second. "If not," he couldn't help adding, "Then we will have to find a different and equally convincing way to persuade the Capitol either that your insincerity was in no way self-serving, or that my extremely public affection for you this past half-year has been completely meaningless. So."

Can I do that? wondered Carlos. He, too, understood what the next few weeks would be like. There would be dates, and hand-holding, and kissing -- his face flushed a little redder -- and talking about his feelings. He could see the Flickerman interview already.

The worst thing about it was that it wasn't a lie. Not completely. Carlos wouldn't say he was in love with Cecil; feelings like that took time, and intimacy, and more shared experience than he and Cecil had, Carlos felt. But Carlos felt a lot of things about Cecil Palmer. He wasn't in love but he was at the point where he was awkwardly not saying anything about how he felt, and if Carlos had had his way, he would have wanted at least another few weeks of casual saying-absolutely-nothing before getting into a serious relationship.

If he agreed to do this, the deception would be twofold. He would be pretending to the public that his feelings were real, and pretending to Cecil that they were a lie.

How did one of these things not scientifically cancel out the other? How was neither one a truth?

What if he told Cecil now? What if he explained his feelings as best he could, and tried for a real relationship? Carlos turned the possibility over in his mind and found that no, he didn't want to do that. If he confessed his feelings now, in the context of dishonesty and a PR-motivated relationship, it would be hard to keep straight what he actually felt and what he was exaggerating for the cameras, and even if the Arena confession hadn't happened, Carlos wasn't sure he'd want a relationship right now.

He wanted to kiss Cecil. Just not like this.

"I," he began slowly, thoughtfully. "I could." He didn't know how convincing he could be -- after all, he wasn't any kind of actor at all -- but Carlos knew that this was important. Cecil was in danger now, too. "If you can."

Cecil felt misery curling in his stomach. He had believed it. He had really, really believed what Carlos had said in the Arena. He wondered now how much of it had been blind wishful thinking; he wondered how he had managed to extrapolate so much feeling on Carlos' part from a few public dates, a few private conversations, and a brief moment on a rooftop with Carlos' hand on top of his. He wondered how he had been so definitively, pervasively wrong.

More than that: He was realizing, in the distant, under-the-skin way one realized the air was getting heavier before a storm, that he did love Carlos. For all he had been saying it for the better part of half a year, this was more than an embarrassingly public crush on a celebrity from a foreign world, and more than dates and hand-holding and candid photo shoots in tasteful and well-coordinated outfits. He cared for this beautiful, awkward, seditious scientist in a way that felt important-- in a way that he (he!) didn't feel he could communicate.

It was both the source of his crushing disappointment, and the reason that lying to the entire Capitol about it even seemed possible. Because Carlos - Carlos as a living, breathing, person, Carlos as his entire self with all its imperfections, Carlos standing not on a pedestal over Cecil but sitting right before him looking thoughtful and sad and guilty - Carlos was more important than any relationship, true or false. Carlos was worth protecting.

He looked up at Carlos. There was resolve in his expression. This was not the time or the place to say any of this - not knowing what they had ahead of them. But, well-- people said something about how actions spoke louder than words, right? That was a thing people said. (Cecil was willing, this one time in his life, to allow himself to believe that that was true.)

"Look," he said, "I am a journalist. I think I'd have to be pretty good at acting to get a job reporting facts in the Capitol!" This wasn't remotely sarcastic - this was a genuine argument in his favor. "So. You won't need to worry about me."

(All the words he was saying made it sound like they were really doing this. God. They were really doing this.)

"I'll do the best I can," Carlos promised, looking up at Cecil. He knew that if he wasn't convincing, the deception would reflect badly on Cecil as well, and Carlos would no longer be the only one in danger. And here Cecil was, willingly risking his own position of relative safety -- by pretending to have a relationship he'd wanted badly for six months.

Carlos felt another surge of hot shame.

"I'm so sorry, Cecil."

As soon as they left, their respective safeties would depend on Carlos's ability to lie. It was a sickening thought.

Cecil opened his mouth to say It's fine, Carlos. He failed to say this, and tried again with I understand, Carlos. This also being less than a success, he made an attempt at You have nothing to apologize for, Carlos, and that failed miserably as well, and he gave up.

"These things happen, Carlos," he said. (Actually, they didn't - he was fairly certain their case was unique, even among Hunger Games-related entanglements - but they were the exception that proved the rule, he supposed. That was what that meant, right?) "Though I think I should ask, before we--" Before we leave this place hand-in-hand and gaze into each other's eyes as we pass the cameras-- "...before we... leave, whether there is anything else you have to tell me."

This wasn't a tone he usually took, and especially not with Carlos. It was pointedly neutral, the kind of tone under which anything could comfortably sink. It was... professional.

Anything else?

Carlos thought. He thought about District 13. He thought about Brainiac 5, and his offer to deliver technology from Lonestar. He thought about the Initiate, and the Tributes banding together to stand against the Capitol.

He thought about his own experience of death in Night Vale, and about what he had thought as the world went black.

He thought about the other Cecil Palmer, most likely dead one way or the other, and about how at some point that Cecil had become the other Cecil. He even thought, briefly, about Steve Rogers.

He shook his head.

"No," he said. "I think that's it."

Cecil nodded.

"Well," he said. "As I don't have any confessions to make...."

He stood up, pointedly. He'd thought this date would last longer, when he'd gotten Carlos' request to meet. At this point, though, he had no interest in seeing it continue. Maybe tomorrow, he'd feel ready to spend hours in public with Carlos; but in this place, devoid of cameras and microphones, without the invisible buffer of their shared deception between them, another moment of this conversation felt absolutely unbearable. Pretending that they were obsessed with each other felt easier right now than sitting here under a throbbing cloud of Cecil's unrequited disappointment.

They hadn't even ordered drinks; the exit would be easy. After a second's pause, Cecil held out his hand to Carlos.

"We should probably stop by my apartment before you go," he said briskly. "Just for... oh, half an hour? For the purpose of promoting gleeful media speculation, of course. After that, I'm going to-- that is, Khoshekh and I are..." The outstretched hand made a brief Never mind gesture. "I have some work to get done."

Carlos did not allow himself to speculate what exactly Cecil would do after Carlos left. He also did not allow himself to think about what the media would think that he and Cecil were doing during that half hour. Neither of those were things Carlos needed to know, and both made him feel that guilty surge again.

He nodded, and took the hand, and stood. Carlos schooled his face into a neutral expression, and tried to ignore the novelty of holding Cecil Palmer's hand.

But before they left, Carlos gave Cecil one more look -- are you sure? that look asked. This is our last chance to plan something else.

In response, Cecil smiled.

It was a wide, bright, adoring smile, all the force of its beam trained on Carlos and no one and nothing but Carlos. It was a smile that had just been told marvelous and long-awaited things. It was a smile that could think of no reason not to be happy.

As an expression of eager and heartfelt affection, it was utterly without seam. Cecil, it said, was committed to this. He had made his decision, and there would be nothing halfhearted in his act. (Because he had to do this now, and completely, or not at all. Because hesitating would remind him of the many choices still open to him, and hesitation might make an easier one far, far too feasible. Because he simply didn't want to talk about this anymore.)

He laced his fingers with Carlos' and gave his hand a squeeze. "Come on," he said, already working into his voice the tones of one who had not experienced the past fifteen minutes as they had actually happened. "I bet those cameras are still out there! And while they will almost certainly pretend that they haven't waiting for us specifically, they totally have been, and we should respect that."

His smile stayed fixed in place as he turned to move toward the door.

Carlos's heart sank. Of course this was metaphorical, and his heart actually stayed in the exact same place relative to his body that it had always been, but it felt about three times as heavy as usual. Through that heavy heart, he attempted a smile of his own: quieter, shyer, and a little sad. It hardly looked forced at all as he followed Cecil out of the bar and into the light of the afternoon.

The next few days passed like a whirlwind for Carlos. In between work on those diseases, he was finding time -- making time -- for his boyfriend. Carlos was now allowed to go three places: to the Tribute Center, to the lab, and to Cecil Palmer's arm. Carlos wasn't the only one with a vested interest in being seen with Cecil: the Capitol apparently thought that he set a good example and was eager to show off how native he had gone.

Right now, Cecil Palmer was at the Capitol Art Museum, so Carlos was allowed there, too. Carlos was still in a respirator most of the time, though he took it off for meals, since that was polite. He also took it off to kiss Cecil, something that was happening with alarming frequency. Today, for instance, he would be taking it off when Cecil arrived.

He stood in the museum's lobby, flanked by peacekeepers that he was pretending weren't there, and scanned the crowd for his...well, his boyfriend.

Making time for Carlos was something Cecil had become accustomed to doing even before they had started... well. Dating. All he had to do now was make more time for Carlos. There were worse punishments, he supposed; that they were allowed so much time around each other probably spoke well of their deception.

And, honestly, it was easier than Cecil would have expected to keep up a bright smile in public; to watch Carlos sidelong with fondness in his eyes when he was distracted by something else; to run fingers absently through his hair when they sat close; to tug him close at opportune moments and press a kiss to his cheek, or to the back of his hand, or to his mouth. True, these things were easy mostly because they were all things that Cecil had done anyway, or had desperately wanted to do, before circumstances had turned them from distant hopes to nigh-unpalatable reality. But-- details.

He saw Carlos' detail of Peacekeepers first, from his place at the top of the low, wide staircase leading out of the lobby into the museum proper. It was a game of image association to which he was becoming accustomed, finding the only Peacekeepers in any space who were stationed next to a labcoat. His grin grew about three sizes when he caught sight of Carlos; he raised a hand (with two tickets in it) and waved.

"Carlos!" he called, in a way that would be attention-grabbing both for his boyfriend, and for the crowd around them, from whom he had to assume some level of investment. Peacekeepers (and quarantine regulations) kept people more or less out of their way; but, well, this was a public relationship, after all. (He did not think about the fact that Carlos would likely kiss him as soon as he'd ascended the stairs; he chose not to think about this in general, outside of the basic expectation that it would happen. It was easier that way.)

Carlos's face lit up. Fond smiles were getting easier for him, too: it felt almost natural now to respond to Cecil with a smile instead of distant professionalism.

It was a short climb to the top of the stairs. Though Carlos's smile was mostly hidden behind the respirator, it was clear in his eyes and his voice as he said, almost bashfully, "Hi, Cecil."

He was standing too close to Cecil to be casual; this was not, scientifically speaking, a just-friends distance. This proximity clearly said dating.

"Thanks for coming. I've been wanting to take a look at this museum for a while, but after that first Arena, it was kind of hard to make myself go," he said cheerfully, as though museums had not made him deeply uncomfortable for months. "But I'm feeling a lot better now, and I heard they had art from before the cataclysm that nearly destroyed your world. I'd really like to see it. It might confirm my suspicions that Panem is an alternate version of my own world, which, while not scientifically important, is a question that has personal importance to me."

"I haven't been here in years," Cecil said, casting a fond glance over the bright, open lobby. "I just haven't found the time! So, really, I should be thanking you for the opportunity." Truthfully, Cecil's appreciation of art had always been sort of vague, in the sense that he knew art was important and probably very interesting, but not so much so that he spent any amount of time looking at it himself.

A shame that they would be trailed by Peacekeepers the whole way, but the more private part of this date would come later. That was how they usually arranged it. "I have to admit, it seems difficult to imagine that Night Vale and Panem might have some distant, common dimensional ancestor-- but hey! Very, very few things are impossible." He wasn't quite ready to get so conditional as nothing is impossible. That felt like a lot of commitment.

"...Hello, by the way," he added after a pause, leaning in a little, and reaching with a smile for Carlos' hand. This would be, he thought, a good stopping place for a kiss-- a good dramatic beat. (These were the terms in which he had begun to think about these outings. As though he were reading off a script, and this was just a stage direction.) It would depend on whether Carlos felt like taking off his respirator at this particular, highly public moment.

Carlos was also getting good at picking out which moments were appropriate for which public displays of affection. It helped that he was paying a lot of attention to the cues Cecil gave him; normally, Carlos didn't notice that kind of thing. Funny how being in a life-and-death charade of a relationship changed things.

"Hello."

He smiled shyly at Cecil, then pulled his respirator off. Not completely off -- this wasn't nearly as dramatic as their first kiss had been -- but tucked down under his chin. He leaned in and met Cecil halfway, and a completely respectable three-second greeting kiss was exchanged. Carlos never really had the heart to feel anything while the kisses were happening; the looming knowledge that none of this was real weighed on him too heavily for that. (It was only later, after they had parted ways for the night, that the kissing bothered him.)

The kiss was a good one - brief, but familiar, implying that this happened more and at greater length when they didn't have other things to do. This was true; but Cecil liked implying it better than establishing the truth of the implication. There was much less that could go wrong there, emotionally.

"So!" he said brightly as they stepped apart, gripping Carlos' hand and taking the first steps into the museum proper. "I thought we could start in the modern sculpture section-- you know, the one with all the abstract furniture-- and then go through the pre-cataclysmic section right before lunch. Unless you'd rather see the latter first. I've just always liked these chairs they have-- like, they look like they're covered in eyes, and the eyes follow you around the room-- it's really cool."

This was how people on dates behaved-- they talked about mostly meaningless things, and exchanged a lot of light physical contact, and acted happier about each other's company than about any many-eyed chairs they had come to see. Cecil was, therefore, behaving exactly like a person on a date.

"The pre-cataclysm pieces are what I'm really interested in," Carlos admitted, "but we can look through the other sections too. I don't mind." He really didn't: the easy shrug of his shoulders and cheerful tone made that clear. He was on a date, and what he was really interested in was spending time with Cecil, right?

He laced his fingers through Cecil's a little shyly. This relationship was moving faster than Carlos was used to -- of course it was, it was for the cameras, it had to -- and holding hands was still kind of novel. Especially since it was Cecil Palmer he was holding hands with.

This was complicated.

He nodded his head forward. Lead on.

Cecil led from beside Carlos-- though at the first turn, he did not go in the direction that the signs indicated led to the abstract sculpture section. "Well, if you want to see the pre-cataclysm section first, then that's fine," Cecil said magnanimously. "After all-- you haven't been here before."

He leaned in to plant a brief kiss on Carlos' cheek, slowing his stride just for a step and giving Carlos' hand a squeeze. "Today is all about you."

This was something Cecil was fond of saying to people that he was on dates with, though his record of putting it into actual practice was patchy, at best. (Carlos may or may not have come to realize this by now.)

(Carlos had noticed. However, it was very important that he and Cecil got along on camera, and he didn't really mind letting Cecil run things. Usually it turned out all right.)

"Well, okay," he said agreeably. "Really, I just want to see if there's anything I recognize. It shouldn't take long. We have plenty of time to get to both." Then they could go see the eye-chairs. Carlos had to admit, he was a little curious about them.

"Wouldn't that be cool, though?" Cecil said as they continued on, past the open glass doors leading into the pre-cataclysmic art (the oldest wing of the museum). "Like, what if something like Night Vale existed in Panem at some point? Before it was Panem, I mean. When it was... whatever it was, before."

He came to a halt in front of a painting fragment - only a piece of the completed work, obviously, and only partially restored, but a part of what must once have been a fairly imposing seascape. Cecil frowned at it, tipping his head as though this would help him to understand it better.

"How about that one?" he asked. "Does that one look familiar?"

"America," Carlos supplied. "Based on the positions of the mountain ranges and bodies of water, I'm reasonably certain that the landmass we are on used to be called North America."

He paused there to give the painting fragment a good long look, stroking his chin with his free hand.

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