Note: Here, let my throw my headcannons at you. Catch.

"Cecil, didn't you have a tattoo on this hand last week?"

Cecil gave Carlos a confused look. "Carlos, what do you – oh! Oh, you're talking about that eye – no, it's not on my hand. It just likes you. I'm sure you'll see it again sometime tonight."

Carlos looked absolutely perplexed. "What? Cecil, what are you talking about?"

Cecil paused. "They – do tattoos not move, where you're from?"

Carlos shook his head, quickly turning and holding up his hair to reveal the tiny tattoo of an atom below his hairline. "No, they don't. If they did, this would definitely be a moving tattoo."

Cecil chuckled. "I know a really good artist – he could do that for you."

"Really?"

"Mhm."

"Does it hurt?"

Cecil shrugged. "A little, but I don't have any comparison to what…normal tattoos would feel like, so."

Carlos pondered for a moment. "Let's get a matching one," he said suddenly, and Cecil jumped.

"I know it's stupid to, you know, get tattoos with someone you're not like, bound to, but, well, I really like you, and as more than just a romantic thing, and – ugh, I'm sorry, I'm stupid," Carlos backpedaled, hiding his face in his hands.

Cecil let out a long breath. "You just surprised me. Want to get that atom moving and I'll get one too?"

Carlos grinned like the sunrise. "Cecil, you're fantastic."

Carlos was breathless when Cecil finally released his lips. "C-Cecil," he whispered, feeling dizzy. He was glad the wall to his back was so solid.

"Carlos," Cecil breathed back, lips so close that Carlos felt them move. Something about that made Carlos' stomach flutter.

"You – you're tongue," Carlos finally gasped. "It's –"

Cecil chuckled. "Split. Had it done when I was sixteen."

Carlos blinked and then nodded, looking suddenly determined. "C'mere," he mumbled, using his grip on Cecil's hair to pull him back into a kiss. It was several more minutes before either spoke again.

"I like it," Carlos finally panted, scraping his blunt fingernails lightly against Cecil's scalp. "Feels nice."

Carlos was about to thank Cecil for a fantastic dinner when he paused. "Cecil," he said, "I think – is your nose bleeding?"

Cecil blinked and reached up to touch his nostrils. "Oh, crap," he muttered, standing and rushing into his kitchen to grab a paper towel. "Sorry, this is embarrassing," he said as he came back, a tuft of white tissue sprouting from his nose. "Get them all the time, don't know why."

Carlos just shook his head. "No, it's fine – actually, if it happens often, you should probably get it checked – but, Cecil, is your blood purple?"

Cecil looked at him for a moment, his head cocked to the side. "Yeah…. Is that not normal? I knew it wasn't common – I've only met one other person who had purple blood, and hers was significantly darker than mine, but I didn't think it was weird."

"Cecil, human blood is supposed to be red," Carlos deadpanned, standing up and coming closer. "It has to do with how iron and oxygen interact in the body. All vertebrates have red blood, and humans are vertebrates, obviously."

"Oh!" Cecil laughed. "That explains it, then. I'm only semi-human."

Carlos just blinked at him. At first Cecil didn't know why Carlos wasn't speaking, but then he realized that Carlos didn't know what Cecil meant.

"My mother was mostly human," he explained, "and my father was an inhuman humanoid. It says so on my birth certificate, if you want to see it."

Carlos opened his mouth and then closed it again, pausing to think. "What was your father, then? Better yet, what made your mother only mostly human?"

Cecil grinned. "My mother had some bat genetics in her, no one knows why, since my grandparents were fully human. And I don't know anything about my father other than what the city records can tell me."

Carlos nodded slowly. "You," he breathed, "you are so interesting."

Cecil flushed, and for the first time, Carlos noticed the violet tint to it.

"Cecil?" Carlos asked suddenly.

Cecil jumped a little, surprised by the sudden interruption of their comfortable silence. "Yeah?"

"What's that, on your forehead? Under your hair."

Cecil smiled. "Oh, that," he said, pushing his hair off his forehead. "I have a third eye."

Carlos gasped and leaned closer. "Is that – the phases of the moon?"

"Mhm," Cecil nodded. "I think that's the coolest part. It's functional, too, except when it's a new moon."

Carlos leaned in a bit more, inspecting the eye closely. Cecil took a moment to enjoy the view of Carlos' sharp face.

"So you can see out of it?" Carlos asked.

"Yeah, I can. It's a little different, the eyesight, depending on the phase, and it's a little sensitive to the sun, but I can see out of it. I can also see things that aren't around."

"What?"

Cecil paused, biting his lip. "I'm – I don't know how to explain it, really. It's like a…psychic ability, I guess? But I don't see the future. I can see things that are happening in Night Vale, as they happen. Sometimes."

Carlos nodded thoughtfully. "So, that's how you seem to know the news as it happens."

Cecil nodded too. "Yeah. I've been able to do it since I was a kid."

"That," Carlos grinned, shifting to kiss Cecil's long nose, "is so cool. It's amazing. You're amazing."

Cecil let his hair fall back and blushed. "Oh, Carlos."

Carlos just chuckled, kissing him chastely.

"Do it again."

Cecil chuckled, grasping Carlos' hands as his tentacles slowly emerged from their two-dimensional tattoos into their third-dimensional, solid state.

"That is amazing."

Cecil shrugged, still smiling. "It's pretty normal, for me."

Carlos just shook his head, eyes filled with awe. "It's just – they're so – they're beautiful, and they're so interesting and, oh, dios mío, I have so many questions, Cecil."

Cecil grinned wider. "Well?"

"I – how do I even – where do I start?" Carlos looked awed and lost and adoring, and Cecil couldn't help but giggle.

"How about this," he offered, "I'll tell you everything I know about them, and if you have any more questions after that, we can figure it out together?"

Carlos nodded. "Yes, that sounds like a much better idea."

"Okay, well," Cecil began, "I was born with them, all twelve of them; they were much smaller when I was young, but when I reached puberty, they – well, I gained the ability to make them change size."

Carlos just nodded, mouth wide open, looking absolutely stunned as he followed the movements of one tentacle with his eyes.

Cecil grinned again. "They originate from my back, six on each side of my spine, and so do the tattoos. I control them, but they do have a sort of sentience on their own. Hmm, let's see…. They release some kind of lubricant when I'm angry, or excited, or experiencing any heightened emotion, really."

Carlos' attention snapped back to Cecil's face, and Cecil laughed. "Yes," he answered the unspoken question. "Just, yeah. That too."

Carlos' face flushed crimson and he looked away again.

"Anyway," Cecil continued, only barely containing his laughter. "They're solid, but they can phase through things, too, on command – someone, a doctor of some sort, I think, called them fourth-dimensional, but I don't know anything about that."

Carlos perked up. "Show me?" he asked.

Cecil nodded, and one of his tentacles came around to wrap around Carlos' wrist, lifting it in the air. After a moment, Carlos' arm dropped again, with no visible change in the way the tentacle was positioned. Carlos gasped.

"Again?" he asked, and Cecil shook his head, smiling as he passed one of the tentacles through the coffee table. There was no change in the tentacle; it didn't change color or consistency or anything that Carlos could see.

"Oh, dios mío, que es tan increíble, no puedo ni siquiera –" Carlos rambled for a second and then seemed to catch himself, taking a deep breath. "Sorry."

Cecil smiled softly. "Don't worry about it. I quite like when you speak Spanish, you know."

Carlos blushed, glancing at their entwined hands. "What else do you know?"

Cecil pondered it for a moment. "Hmm. Well, I know I got the number of tentacles and their color from my father, since he was only humanoid, not human."

Carlos nodded. "Yeah. Anything else?"

"Um," Cecil stalled, flicking his eyes to the ceiling as he thought. "They're strong."

"Hmm? How strong?" Carlos asked, curiosity saturating his smooth voice.

Cecil looked around the room for a moment before he stood and walked over to his ancient TV and wrapped one long tentacle around it. Carlos watched with disbelief as Cecil picked the television up, with what looked like no effort at all.

"Can – do they get strained?" Carlos asked, unsure. He didn't know if that was how he wanted to phrase the question.

Cecil nodded, placing the TV back down gently and returning to his seat facing Carlos. "Not easily, but they can. If I use one too much in one day or keep them in the same position for too long, I get shoulder or back pain."

"Do you have any sensation in the tentacles themselves?"

Cecil grinned slyly, nodding again. "Yeah. They're actually quite sensitive to touch and warmth."

Carlos blushed furiously. "Cecil!" he reprimanded, his voice nearly a squeak.

Cecil just laughed heartily, grabbing Carlos' hand again.

"Any other questions?" he asked.

"Were you born with the tattoos or just the tentacles?"

"Just the tentacles. I got them bound to the tattoos when I was eighteen."

"So it's not just the whole spell thing that makes your tattoos move," Carlos thought aloud.

Cecil nodded. "I could have gotten stationary tattoos for the tentacles – a lot of people do – but I didn't want to."

Carlos laughed. "A lot of people do," he repeated. "Oh, Night Vale."

Cecil grinned. "What about it?"

"It's amazing. Fantastic. Mind-blowing. Kind of like you."

Carlos had never seen Cecil turn such a dark shade of violet.

There was a pause in Carlos' heavy breathing. Cecil shifted to look at him, only barely able to see him in the dark.

"Cecil," Carlos said slowly, his fingertips ghosting across Cecil's naked thigh. "Cecil, what are these? They feel like…scars. But they're so straight."

Cecil swallowed against the sudden hard lump in his throat, unable to speak for several long moments.

Carlos waited patiently, waited for Cecil to laugh and say, "Oh, those," like he usually did, but it never came.

Instead, Cecil's voice was tiny and broken. "Them," he whispered, like the word would break him.

Carlos bit his lip, sitting up and pulling Cecil with him. "What is it?"

Cecil made an unintelligible noise in the back of his throat, and just the way his muscles tensed made Carlos worry.

"Cecil, you can tell me, whatever it is."

"It's – it's not like everything else," Cecil hissed. "This – these s-scars…aren't like my tattoos, or my blood, or my tentacles."

"How so?" Carlos asked, keeping his voice carefully calm, despite the panic that was beginning to build in his chest.

Cecil flinched. "They're…controlled."

Carlos was lost. "Cecil, I – I'm not sure what you mean," he murmured desperately.

Cecil wrenched away from him suddenly, standing and flipping the lights on. Carlos blinked in the sudden brightness, but turned to watch as Cecil crossed his bedroom and dug in a drawer. When he turned back, the look in his eyes was stormy, and one of his tentacles was flickering between tattoo and solid.

"Cecil…?" Carlos whispered. Cecil just huffed and threw the box in his hand onto the bed. Carlos was reluctant, looking from the box to his boyfriend repeatedly before he finally touched it.

He didn't know what it was, but just touching the cold metal made his stomach drop.

Taking another glance at Cecil, who loomed above him like a statue, unmoving and looking incredibly upset, Carlos opened the box.

The first thing he noticed was a rag, torn and old and frayed, stained with purple. He touched it, staring for a moment, before the reality of it struck him like a fastball to the gut.

Blood. It was blood, on the rag, Cecil's blood. Carlos forced himself to hold still and not retch, taking a deep breath and looking back up at Cecil.

There was no change in Cecil's demeanor or expression. Carlos swallowed and looked back down at the box, willing himself not to flinch when he touched it again. Carefully, he moved it aside, unable to keep himself from gasping when he saw the razors and pencils and bits of glass littering the bottom of the box.

Some were stained the same purple as the rag, and this time, Carlos did retch, slamming the box shut. Without even looking at Cecil, he stood and marched out of the room, clad in only his boxers, and straight out the front door.

Carlos didn't expect Cecil to follow him, but when he glanced back, Cecil was jogging to keep up with his strides. Carlos walked until he couldn't see the lights from Night Vale's downtown, taking random turns as he did. All the while, Cecil followed, until finally, Carlos stopped, and Cecil nearly ran into him.

"Carlos?" Cecil whispered, and the way his voice cracked made Carlos' gut twist. "Carlos, wh-what are you d-doing? A-are you m-mad?"

"No," Carlos muttered. "I'm not sure what I am, but I'm not mad."

And with that, he reached back, took a deep breath, and hurled the box into the desert. There was absolute silence as they both stood and watched it fly, seeing it land with a puff of sand a bit in the distance. Carlos thanked his teenage obsession with baseball for the ability to throw.

"Let's go home," Carlos finally said, turning and grabbing Cecil's wrist. Cecil followed without words.

Once they got home, it was a long time before either spoke. Cecil sat next to Carlos on his couch, fidgeting, terrified that he'd screwed up.

Carlos fought the urge to get on his knees and absolutely worship Cecil until they both forgot about the scars.

Finally, it was Cecil that broke the silence. "Sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Carlos asked, carefully keeping the desperate edge out of his voice.

"I don't know," Cecil said helplessly. "I…. I don't know."

"Then don't apologize."

Cecil flinched, and Carlos wished that his voice wasn't as rough as it was.

"I love you, Cecil," he whispered, finally looking Cecil directly in the eye. "I love you so fucking much."

Cecil blinked, his mouth falling open a bit. Carlos realized that Cecil had probably never heard him swear.

But he continued on. "My god, Cecil, I love you so much more than I thought I could love anyone. I've never loved someone so much. I've never loved anything as much as I love you. You're beautiful, and you're fantastic, and you're sweet, and you're interesting, and you're amazing, and you're the most perfect man I've ever laid my eyes on, inside and out. And I fucking love you."

Cecil's lip was trembling, and Carlos brought his thumb to it, stilling its shaking. "I love you," he repeated. "And I'm sorry. That was impulsive."

Cecil just shook his head, eyes filled with tears. "I – oh, I l-love y-you, l-love you so, s-so much, Ca-Carlos," he whimpered, tears overflowing. "I-I l-love yo-you."

Carlos took the chance in the ensuing silence to kiss Cecil, gently, passionately. "Don't you ever leave me, Cecil Palmer," he murmured, lips wet with Cecil's tears. "Don't you ever go away."

Cecil just nodded, pressing back into the kiss with a solid determination that took Carlos' breath away.