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

"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.

"Right," Cecil said. "North America." The words were clearly unfamiliar in his mouth, though he tried to pass it off otherwise. He went back to examining the painting.

"...It looks kind of like... District Four!" he supplied, after a moment. "I mean, there's... there's water in it. And there's also water in District Four."

"It wouldn't have been called District Four. It would have been called Texas. Or Louisiana." Carlos stroked his chin once or twice more, to help him think, but it was no use. He shook his head. "It's no use. There's not enough of it to tell."

"Texas! That's where Joel's from. You know-- that guy in District Eight, who has in the past mentioned that he is from Texas." This was the only mental connection Cecil had with Texas; he couldn't picture it, exactly, unless he pictured the coastal resort he'd stayed in once on a vacation to District Four. He thought it might be safe to assume, however, that it no longer bore any strong resemblance to the place it had once been. Most places were like that post-cataclysm, just in general.

This seemed to be the only conclusion to be drawn from this particular painting. Cecil turned away from it, scanning the room around them - the pieces of statuary up on pedestals, the fragments of paintings, and the occasional mostly-whole work of art scattered between, under brighter, prouder lighting. "Does any of this look familiar?" he asked. "Just at a first glance?"

Carlos looked. He paced around the room, making a wide circuit, looking at the paintings and the sculpture and shaking his head. He was a scientist, not an artist. Perhaps someone who specialized in this field would know more, but --

-- one piece in particular caught his attention. It was a skull, partially encrusted in diamonds. You could see bits of bone poking through, where the diamonds had fallen off, but it was clear that it had once been completely encrusted. Carlos had only been shown a picture, once, by a coworker, back in...was it 2007? 2008? And what had it been called?

"That one," he said, pointing excitedly and moving toward the skull. "I remember this. If it's the piece I'm thinking of, it's from very early in the twenty-first century. It's called..." He racked his brain, trying to remember.

"...For the Love of God!" Cecil exclaimed. He was not, however, commenting on the skull, but on the small plaque hanging on the wall beside the display, on which was printed the name. He was not sure how the name related to the piece itself, unless it was supposed to reflect the viewer's intended reaction.

He sounded impressed, though, and he leaned to look at the skull from another angle, admiring the way the light played off of the diamonds. "I like it," he declared, as though the room had been waiting for his opinion. "It looks kind of like the shoulderpieces the stylists had designed for District Six in their last appearance before the Fifty-Fourth Hunger Games! ...Though those are in a different museum." One with whose contents he was, obviously, rather more familiar.

"Yes, that's it! Cecil, I know this piece!" Carlos looked very excited. "That means the cataclysm must have happened after the turn of the century!" He paused, rubbing his chin slowly. "It's odd, though. If I remember right, and of course I do, because I have an excellent memory for science, Pluto was declared a dwarf planet in 2006. I didn't see this artwork--" he gestures at the skull, "--until at least a year after that." The cataclysm couldn't happened before the Pluto planetarium tapes were updated but after the creation of this skull -- it seemed impossible.

Cecil frowned. That was a contradiction. ...And also a long time ago. Wow.

"Well," he said slowly, "Maybe... maybe the tapes were also from before the cataclysm! Or based, perhaps, on prior knowledge that people more interested in the topic than I am have, that I do not. Maybe they were on loan from this museum, even. Or..." He considered briefly. "Maybe... maybe our timelines are not exactly equivalent. Maybe there existed months or years here, which time in your own world is not able to account for."

He made a wiggling motion with one hand, to indicate uncertainty. "Measuring time before and immediately following the cataclysm is a little.... eeeehhh. You know?"

"Yeah, I know," said Carlos with a shrug. "It's kind of surreal, knowing that whatever happened to your version of Earth didn't occur that long after when I was alive on mine."

It was interesting to think about. And frightening, in a distant, chilling sort of way.

"Well, I found what I came here to see. We can go wherever you want now, Cecil. My scientific obligations are fulfilled." I'm yours for the rest of the day, was what that shrug and that smile meant.

And it was the entire rest of the day. They did as they had originally planned - they walked the museum for a few hours, they went out for a late lunch, they returned to Cecil's apartment to share a glass or two of wine, and then they separated only long enough to be zipped and buckled into less practical, but better-coordinated clothes before they met again to attend a party. It was Cecil's party - not one that he'd put on, but one to which many members of the press had been invited, and the invitation had made clear that his plus-one was expected.

In some ways, the party was the most private few hours they had all day. There were dim corners and loud music; places where one could stand and be sought, but not noticed; places where normal conversation was all but inaudible. Even in Cecil's apartment, they knew that they were watched, and could be overheard. Conversation there was bright, and pointless, and careful. It was convincing; it was not enjoyable.

It was easier to pretend in a crowd, somehow. It was easier when Cecil could play his affection for an audience-- could look at their expressions and listen to their voices and know how convincing he'd been, what little gestures they liked and which they might not quite believe. He didn't always have to look at Carlos, either. He could talk about Carlos, like he'd always done, and not have to deal with the additional difficulty of looking into his face and being painfully, immediately aware of how many layers deep this deception ran.

--But, well. Three or four drinks in, it also became much easier to be close to Carlos. It became easier to stand or sit with an arm around his waist or a hand resting on his knee. It became less important whether the smiles Cecil directed at him were real or not; it mattered less what motivated him to spend minutes at a time just looking at Carlos' profile against the light.

And so there was something more natural (if less coordinated) in the way Cecil approached Carlos toward the end of the evening, a drink in each hand, to sit down beside him on a couch not dissimilar in design from the abstract furniture they'd been browsing earlier in the day. He sat down and did bother putting any space between them; because they were together, and this was one of the many small things that togetherness entailed.

"Carlos," he said by way of greeting, proffering one of the drinks (which glowed only faintly, as they were some distance from the blacklight under which it was intended to be drunk). He said the name like he'd used to say it on the air, sometimes - though now, because they were together, he could leave the perfect implied.

Carlos, in more buckles than he's sure are entirely necessary, has been fielding uncomfortably personal questions all night. He's getting better at smiling through the informal interviews, and his replies come more naturally than they did, but if he has to explain one more time about how grateful he is to the Capitol for bringing him and Cecil together, he will have to conduct a scientific study on whether or not it is possible for the words coming out of a person's mouth to make him or her physically ill, because all he has so far is compelling but anecdotal evidence.

Being near Cecil is uncomfortable. Being apart from him is worse. At least he doesn't have to worry about fooling Cecil, and at least when Cecil is close by, fewer Capitolites approach. It is with a genuine but tired smile that Carlos greets Cecil, and Carlos accepts the drink gratefully. He hasn't had that much this evening, only the two or three he's been unable to refuse politely, so one more won't hurt, right? After all, it's nearly two. He can't have to do this for much longer. Right?

"Hello, Cecil," he says, just loud enough to be heard. "I'm really glad to see you. The other guests -- they won't leave me alone."

He frowns. It's not a serious frown. He's not actually unhappy. He's not feeling much like taking any in-depth survey of his emotions at the moment, but he's pretty sure he's not unhappy. Just expressing sympathy for Carlos' plight, with his face.

"That's terrible," he says. He's looking right into Carlos' face. This is a good way to keep people from approaching, usually. Only the determined and those with temporary artificial impairment to their ability to process social cues tend to interrupt people with so few inches between their faces.

"Maybe-- maybe you should stay over here," Cecil suggests. Not out of the way, exactly, but with several backs between them and the main clump of laughing, dancing people. To clarify: "With me, I mean." As added incentive, in a lower voice: "It'll look really normal."

Why, Carlos thinks, as all the alcohol in his system makes a mad dash for his face, did Cecil have to take that tone with him? Staying over here isn't scientifically speaking a bad idea, but that tone makes it very difficult to maintain the level of emotional detachment that is appropriate when you are in close proximity to the man you are conducting a fake relationship with.

Very difficult.

"...you came over to me," he says, after a pause just a hair too long to be natural. "I was here first. So technically -- scientifically -- you would be the one staying here, with me."

He doesn't pull away. Maintaining physical distance is proving just as difficult as maintaining emotional distance. Actually, come to think of it, are there fewer inches between them now? Carlos thinks there are. Maybe he should have taken measurements, a moment ago.

Too late now.

Cecil has had a few drinks, it's true; but he feels that he has a pretty solid handle on his spatial relationship with the world right now. He feels assured that he is not imagining the nearer proximity of Carlos' face to his. He is fairly confident that this was intentional, on his part or Carlos', and that the meaning of distance or the size of the world in relation to them has not changed. (It is always important not to rule out other possibilities.)

He puts a hand up - the one not holding his drink, of course, that would be awkward and ridiculous - and puts it on the side of Carlos' face. It is an anchoring kind of gesture - Cecil, ensuring that his depth perception is not deceiving him, and the number of inches between their faces is as small as it appears to be.

(There are very, very few inches between them now. Carlos' skin is warm, and his hair curls around Cecil's fingertips.)

"...That's fine," Cecil says. More quietly than he says most things. It feels like there is not enough space between them even to contain the words he is saying. He keeps saying them anyway. "That's fine! I... I'll stay here. With you."

He swallows, and repeats, more quietly still. "...That's fine."

The universe moves according to patterns, Carlos knows; momentum, gravity, diffusion, inertia, all of them are the rails on which the universe runs. To take them off of those rails is nearly impossible, and only happens in places that are also impossible. The Capitol is not one of those places. Here, the universe is ordered. Here, it follows its own laws. And just as it is impossible to keep an object with mass from having gravity, it is impossible, after Cecil says that, after Cecil takes hold of his face, not to lean in and kiss him.

Carlos is still not quite used to touching Cecil. Everywhere he and Cecil are touching sends an electrical current through him. (Literally, because that's how the nervous system works.) It is a soft kiss but not a particularly short one.

He should be doing this for show. Carlos realizes that. He understands that this is supposed to be an act for him, and that he should make this look as convincing as possible while keeping it as impersonal as possible. He's been fairly okay at that, he thinks. According to their arrangement, he has to kiss Cecil but he can't want to, which is exactly the opposite of how his life has worked for the past year, but he's managed.

But he can't deny that he had leaned in to kiss Cecil because he had wanted to. Carlos wants to kiss Cecil. It is, objectively, a good idea to kiss Cecil. He is finding it very, very hard to keep those things separate right now.

So here, at this horrible party, in this horrible outfit, with a gently glowing drink forgotten in one hand, Carlos kisses Cecil, and can't stop himself from meaning it. If his mind were clearer and less full of Cecil's voice and Cecil's hand on his face and Cecil being really close to him and Cecil being flustered and telling him it's fine, maybe he would hope more that Cecil wouldn't notice.

They have done a lot of kissing, since that first kiss outside the Speakeasy. They have kissed in public, and gotten very good at catching in each other's glances when a kiss would be most appropriate. When it would look the best. They have kissed in private, as well, because it is important that their romance be as believable as possible; because if it should appear that Carlos the Scientist is not in love with Cecil Palmer, that his confession in the Arena was meaningless, then they may not bring him back the next time he dies. This is a price that Cecil is willing to pay to keep Carlos in the Capitol.

This kiss, however, does not feel like any kind of a price. It does not feel like an obligation. It does not feel planned, or decided upon. It-- it simply feels like it is happening.

Cecil is very, very happy that it is happening.

He has done his best not to be happy about anything that happens between himself and Carlos in recent days. He has done his best to relegate happiness to other things, because what they have - what they really have - is not something to be happy about. But right now-- with this kiss-- well. It's different. He's a little drunk; his heart is beating in his throat; Carlos' mouth is warm and soft on his; and it's just different.

It feels natural when it breaks, too. Not like they have decided that this is an adequate length of time for a kiss between two people who are in love to go on. Not like they are trying not to look like they are waiting for it to end. Just-- they come together, and Cecil's fingertips slide a little more into Carlos' hair, over his ear, and time moves on at its normal speed, and a good number of seconds elapse, and they come apart.

Cecil looks into Carlos' face, still only inches from his, and wonders-- and cannot ask-- if he was the only one to whom that did not feel sufficiently affected.

"I think," he says, "That-- that maybe, no one is going to bother us. For a little while." It comes out too soft and with insufficient flippancy and sounds not enough like what he intends it to be. It sounds like he doesn't care about what he's saying at all. It sounds like what he is saying and what he wants to be saying are two completely different things.

His fingers are still brushing Carlos' face. He hardly notices.

He should go, he thinks. He should stop this. He should run. Running is how he has always dealt with this: when things get too personal Carlos makes excuses, he backtracks, he leaves.

But what if he didn't? What if, this time, he stayed?

Carlos feels guilt curling in his stomach: he knows this has turned personal, and he knows that any argument against leaving is going to be rationalizing something he knows is a terrible idea. And yet -- with Cecil's hand in his hair and voice in his ears, with people around them just waiting to catch Carlos alone, with the whole pretense already in place -- it seems like there are so many reasons to stay.

His eyes drop to Cecil's mouth.

So many reasons.

If I leave now, I'll have to think of an excuse, he says to himself as he sets his drink down on the low table next to the couch, doing it without looking, not taking his eyes off of Cecil Palmer. It would have to be important enough to make leaving look believable, he thinks, as his hand slides to rest against Cecil's shoulder, low in front, almost his chest. It might look suspicious, crosses his mind as he leans in closer again, almost close enough for their foreheads to touch.

"I can't say for sure that they won't try anyway," he says quietly, under his breath. "That is, eventually. If we look like we're not busy." If his voice is too soft, it's because Cecil is too close to talk more loudly. If his pupils are dilated, it's because the room is dark. If his heart is racing, it's out of fear of discovery. And if he pushes Cecil back a few inches, slowly, with his hand and his forehead and his whole body, well --

-- okay, maybe he doesn't have an excuse for that.

It'll look really normal.

We should look like we're busy, Cecil concludes. Some part of him concludes that, anyway. There is definitely one part of his mind that is still capable of looking at this from the outside and thinking, If we are sufficiently close together, that will be construed as being too busy to talk to other people, and that is what we want to happen.

It is, however, not a prominent part of his mind thinking this, because most of him is considering with wonder how rapidly his heart is beating, and how he is not sure where his breaths begin and Carlos' end. More of him is concentrating on sliding his hand around to the back of Carlos' head, to rest at the back of his neck, to pull him still closer. He is wrapped up in sinking back against the couch, carefully, making sure that Carlos stays with him for every inch of this small distance.

He thinks he might reply. He considers it. In the end, though, he only nods once-- which Carlos must feel, because their foreheads are still touching. That nod moves smoothly into tipping his head to find Carlos' mouth, guided with the hand at the back of his neck, a kiss still soft-- but open-mouthed this time.

There is no space between them whatsoever. They are in public. Cecil's eyes have fallen closed, and he is not sure what surface his drink has ended up on; the hand not now winding into Carlos' hair is resting on his shoulder, and seeking purchase in his clothes.

This is a terrible idea, thinks absolutely no part of Cecil's conscious mind.

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

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ZOOMS THROUGH ANOTHER TRANSITION

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cool to end it here if you are!

yep totes!