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.

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A lot of thinking goes into their relationship, in general. Making an intimate interaction look and feel convincing to an invisible audience must be done as thoughtfully as possible. They have sat together before, in places where crowds will drown out their whispers, and quietly planned out five minutes' worth of casual touching. They have scheduled dates based on how many people will likely be present to see them in the same place.

All this to say that it feels good-- it feels so good-- not to be thinking right now.

Cecil kisses a lot like he talks: earnestly, and without hesitation, and mostly by using his tongue. Carlos kisses like a movie star, and Cecil like a radio host, and it works. It works very well. He doesn't need to move his hand much at all to bury his fingers in Carlos' hair; he does this, and sighs, and it is a soft "Mmm" into Carlos' mouth.

Among the things he is not thinking about is their audience - the crowd of people, who may or may not have noticed them, who may or may not have tapped their friends' shoulders to point them out, who may or may not be smiling or frowning or shaking their heads at them. Cecil doesn't care what they're doing. Unless someone walks over here with the express purpose of pulling Carlos off of him, he will not care.

Of the two of them, it will not be Cecil who pulls away.

It works incredibly well. (Do you know the kinds of things he's thought about Cecil's mouth?) It falls into a loose rhythm: kiss, kiss, breathe. (Or Cecil's tongue, or his voice?) Hands run through hair, over skin, and tease at the edges of clothes. (It's harder than usual to deny those things now.) Breaths come in two forms: a sigh or a soft gasp, and Carlos feels his skin heating, his heart beating hard.

It is an indeterminate amount of time later when he pulls back -- it might have been a minute, it might have been five, it might have been a lifetime for all he knows -- when he pulls back, and looks at Cecil, and is flushed and short of breath and hazy-eyed.

"Cecil," he whispers, and is unsure of what he means by it. It could mean well, we've reached a break in making out -- do you want to stop? or there might be people watching already, we are in public, Cecil. But the tone of it isn't quite right for either of those things. Honestly, it sounds closer to kissing you is amazing and really I just want to say your name. It's not quite that. But almost.

Cecil has never seen Carlos like this before. Perfect is a word he's used to describe Carlos many times in the past, both on the air and in his own head; he has since amended it to a more realistic always slightly imperfect and sometimes more imperfect than at other times. He has even come, in his way, to love those imperfections of Carlos' that he has seen. It has taken some time, and several major national crises, for him to reach this point.

He must be regressing, or something, because he looks at Carlos - flushed and breathing hard and looking at Cecil like that, oh, oh wow - and has the thought, unbidden, that in this moment everything about Carlos is perfect.

He brings up a hand, to brush fingers against the side of Carlos' face, and does not take his eyes off of him. His expression is soft, and relaxed, and warm. "Yes, Carlos," he replies, only a little above the whisper, and it is also ambiguous - he might be saying I assume that you have something further to say to me and am making clear that you have my attention, or it might just be Yes, Carlos, everything that is happening right now is good and perfect, and I acknowledge that and hope to make clear that I don't want it to stop happening. It does not say Yes, Carlos, I want to stop.

He does take a brief second to glance over Carlos' shoulder at the crowd (smaller now than it was; people have slowly begun to take their leave of the party). There are no eyes on them that he can see, and he returns his attention to Carlos without a single shred of guilt.

It's the glance that is the moment's undoing.

The glance reminds Carlos that there are other people here, and that no matter how much it might feel otherwise, they are kissing for the benefit of the other people, and a glance of his own confirms that those people have begun to leave.

Cecil will see the moment Carlos begins to think again: thoughts appear behind his eyes like leviathans approaching the surface of unquiet water. First there is uncertainty, then discomfort, and the beginnings of self-doubt and self-consciousness. He can't keep kissing Cecil now. He shouldn't. The party is over. If he continues, he'll have to justify it -- to himself, or, perhaps, to Cecil.

No.

(His fingers linger in Cecil's hair, pulling away but slowly, fingertips just slightly calloused by years of handling Erlenmeyer flasks and test tubes and other scientific paraphernalia brushing over Cecil's jaw.)

"...we should probably go," he says, glancing out again at the emptying party. "It's getting late."

The expression of Cecil's face does several things in rapid succession. First, the vague, adoring smile disappears from it. Then it is surprised. And then it is confused. And then it is disappointed. "Oh," he says, as he makes a visible effort to think about something that is not Carlos' fingers in his hair, and the warmth of Carlos' skin under his hands, which... which are still on Carlos.

Uncertainly, he removes them.

"Back to... to my apartment?" he asks, and this is so hesitant that it has to be an honest question. Cecil has gotten good at asking this, and things like this, in a way that implies that anything is going to happen. Orchestrating the things that don't happen in a way that feels like they could is half of the act. If this evening had gone as planned, he would have been saying this with a grin, right into Carlos' ear, just loud enough for any nearby microphone to pick up, and preparing to feign disappointment when Carlos recited some rehearsed reason that he couldn't come.

But now, he sounds unsure. He feels like something has just ended, like he has just been told something he didn't want to hear, and with the alcohol still making his head feel lighter than usual (or is it the taste of Carlos' mouth still on his tongue?), he finds himself needing to ask for this clarification, even though it might come with consequences.

Was this a mistake? is what he is really asking. Do you think this is a mistake? Have I done something wrong? And-- yes, even, there is a part of the question that is really asking, that dares still to hope-- ...Do you want to come back to my apartment? Does this have to be over?

He glances at the party again, which is emptying out more quickly now, and there is a question in that glance, too. They will have to decide here and now whether or not they are going to be alone tonight.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

For a moment, Carlos looks at Cecil and realizes, I could go to his apartment. He could follow Cecil home, and they would put Khoshekh outside, and no one but them and the Peacekeepers on the other side of the cameras would know how they spent the rest of the night.

His mouth feels very, very dry.

But that, Carlos realizes, is a very bad idea. Colossally bad. They hadn't talked about this, and if he slept with Cecil now, they wouldn't be able to talk about it. Not honestly. Not without pretending feelings had been there all along.

He can't.

"...I shouldn't," Carlos says, also with more sincerity than is technically advisable in a heavily-surveilled police state. "You've had a few drinks, Cecil. I--I don't think it's a good idea." All three of these statements are true, and all are good reasons to not spend the night at Cecil's apartment.

Words, it turns out, mean very little just on their own. The words that Carlos is saying, taken for exactly what they are, each mean only one thing at a time. I shouldn't, for example means that Carlos recognizes the existence of at least one compelling reason not to go back to Cecil's apartment with him. I don't think it's a good idea means that Carlos, in this moment, has used his powers of judgment to come to a conclusion about his next course of action, but does not wish to be so rudely direct as to say that he thinks going home with Cecil would be a bad idea. On the surface, their meaning is no more complex than this.

However: Just as important, in Cecil's experience (as someone who knows a lot about saying words), is what words do not mean. For example: An interesting thing about I shouldn't is that it does not necessarily mean I don't want to. An interesting thing about I don't think it's a good idea is that it does not necessarily mean This will never be a good idea.

He still feels the ghost of Carlos' fingers on his jaw, and knows when next he looks into a mirror his hair will be mussed on one side where Carlos' hand ran through it. He is not going to argue with Carlos about the meaning of his words now, because the fact that Carlos does not want to come back with him is enough. But he is going to wonder about the meaning later, he thinks, when he is alone again; he is going to spend a long time turning Carlos' words over in his mind.

Even as he feels disappointment fall like a heaviness in his limbs (somehow a downward sensation despite the fact that emotions do not respond to the earth's gravitational pull), Cecil concedes the discussion with a slow nod, and sits back.

"Right," he says. "Of course."

He hesitates, and then a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. It is one he put there, and not one that came as a result of any real happiness on his part. It does not look anything like the smile that he wore a few minutes ago, when Carlos pulled back to look at him.

"Wow," he says. Brighter, and louder. "What a great party! I don't think I've enjoyed myself so much since the fifth Arena Crowning-- though, admittedly, my memory of the fifth Arena Crowning is not a vivid one, and has mostly been replaced in my subconscious mind with a probably-fictional series of events, because the power to persuade oneself to remember a more interesting life than one actually has is an important part of being human."

He is not really looking at Carlos while he says this, but in a direction that is sort of over Carlos' shoulder. The intent is clear: It might be better if this night is not allowed to become, or even to appear to be, a vivid memory for either of them.

Cecil's words wash over him, as they do, sometimes -- sometimes, Cecil just says so much, and there is so much on his mind already, that there's not room for everything Cecil has to say. There is certainly a lot on his mind right now, like how it's easier to pull away now than it was thirty seconds ago. It's easier to stand, and remember where he is, and to decide firmly that going home with Cecil is such a supermassively bad idea that it is completely out of the question.

"Yeah," is all he can really say, and the upward movement of the corners of his mouth is almost, almost convincing. "I'll get a ride back to the Tribute Center myself. You'll make it home okay, right?" Because Cecil has been drinking.

"Of course I will." Cecil makes a dismissive hand gesture, one that says I have been drinking at Capitol parties longer than you have, Carlos, and I am the sole arbiter of where I will wake up tomorrow, whether I know it now or not.

He stands as well, and wavers only a little bit. He makes a token attempt at putting his hair back in order, but must accept that this is not going to happen. He glances down at his communicator, and pulls up the contact number for the taxi service he normally uses after hours.

"...I'll see you soon, Carlos," he says, glancing up. And he should lean in for a good-bye kiss. He really should. This is what he would do in any other situation, any other prolonged social contact between them.

...but tonight, he finds that he can't. He leans in, as though he means to-- and then he only looks down at Carlos' hand, and takes it, and squeezes it briefly, as though that was what he'd intended to do the whole time.

"Good night," he says, and that's it, that's really it-- he will duck his head to look at his communicator, and call for a car as he moves away.

The squeeze back is reflexive; there's no thought in it. Carlos's thought is busy elsewhere, in a whirling mess of what-ifs and look-normals and did-I-make-the-right-call-heres.

He thinks he did, but he'll pick it over in his brain more later.

"Good night," he calls back, quietly.

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

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cool to end it here if you are!

yep totes!