Archive of Our Own

Carlos knew something was amiss when he woke up on the mattress, rather than entangled in a mass of tentacles.

He opened his eyes to see Cecil, sleeping on his side with his back to Carlos, and his tentacles draped limply across the bed. They were pale, a sickly mauve shade rather than their usual rich purple, and a little clammy when Carlos put his hand over one. Cecil twitched at Carlos's touch, his tentacles squirming as his shoulders tightened.

"Cecil?" Carlos said. "Are you all right?"

Carlos rolled over toward Carlos, eyes squeezed determinedly shut. "m'sleep," he mumbled.

"Yes, but your tentacles..." Carlos prodded one of the appendages, flopped slack and gelatinous across the mattress. It rolled over to reveal its underside suckers, but didn't wrap itself around Carlos's wrist.

Cecil's eyes popped open. "Oh," he said. "Oh, dear, I'm sorry, Carlos!" He sat up and pulled the tentacle out from under Carlos's hand with a shrug of his shoulders. "How embarrassing..."

"What is?" Carlos asked, inspecting his fingers with interest. They were lightly coated with a cloudy, slippery substance that he had never noticed Cecil secreting before. He brought it to his nose and sniffed experimentally, but the only odor was a vague dampness.

Cecil was wrapping his tentacles around his torso, only not with their usual serpentine dexterity. He was using his hands to tuck them under the elastic waistband of his pajama bottoms, knotting the shoestring-skinny ends together to hold them in place. "It's nothing," he said. "Probably allergies, that's—" He was interrupted by a cough that caught wetly in his throat, and drew Carlos's attention immediately back to him.

"That doesn't sound good. Are you coming down with something?"

Cecil shook his head. "Allergies, surely. It's basilisk shedding season, you know—" He broke off to cough again.

His voice was a little rough, Carlos noted. "Does your throat hurt?"

"It's just dry," Cecil said, and checked his watch. "I better get moving; there's an intern recruitment drive this morning. Leann Hart was looking for some assistance, and there are sure to be motivated young people interested in a career in traditional publishing out there; we just have to figure out which rocks or camouflage suits they're hiding under."

"You're not recruiting for the radio station?" Carlos asked.

Cecil looked surprised by the suggestion. "The waiting list is long enough already, we hardly want to add to it!"

A hot shower failed to eliminate Cecil's cough, and he made himself lemon tea instead of his usual coffee. He also skipped the rest of breakfast, even though he loved Carlos's pancakes. "I'm not hungry now, but put them in the fridge, I'll have them as a midnight snack," he said.

Carlos got out another ziploc baggie. He'd already put samples of the tentacle's secretion in two others. "Can you give me the saran wrap, too?" Cecil asked, feeling his torso with a frown. He lifted up his polo shirt, grimacing down at the tentacles tied around his waist.

They were more visible than usual; the mauve was now more puce, rather than shifting to match Cecil's skin-tone. Carlos wasn't sure if the color was the tentacles or the slippery ooze seeping from them.

Cecil wrinkled his nose as he tore off a length of plastic wrap and wound it around the tentacles. It was a difficult process; they kept writhing out from under it. Carlos helped him, holding the roll of plastic as Cecil turned in place, then securing it with a little duct tape. "Thanks," Cecil said when he was done.

Carlos put his hand over the plastic-wrapped tentacles. They squirmed dejectedly. "Isn't this uncomfortable?"

"Only a little," Cecil said. "And without it my shirt would be ruined in an hour. The only cleaners which can get this slime out of linen are banned as hazardous materials."

Carlos frowned. "Maybe you should call in sick today?"

"Oh, Carlos," Cecil said, smiling fondly. Unfortunately it wasn't a 'my boyfriend is so clever' smile but rather 'my boyfriend is an adorable idiot' smile.

"I'm serious," Carlos said. "If you're actually coming down with something, it's better to rest and recuperate now before it progresses. If you take a day off—"

"A day off!" Cecil laughed out loud. The humor at least kept his spirits up; he was still murmuring 'sick day' and chuckling to himself when Carlos dropped him off at the station.

Carlos went to the lab as usual, but he found it difficult to concentrate on his current projects. Even the secretion sample, however biologically fascinating, was insufficiently distracting. It seemed to take forever for Cecil's show to come on the radio, though relative time didn't seem to be passing appreciably slower than was normal for Night Vale; Carlos checked.

And when Cecil finally did come on the air, he sounded entirely normal as well. The tea must have soothed his throat; his voice was as rich as ever, not a hint of hoarseness. Carlos was relieved, and turned back to his work with the renewed focus that came from knowing that Cecil was broadcasting and everything was right (relatively speaking) in Night Vale.

A little after Cecil's show ended, Carlos was jarred from his science by his cell phone's ringtone. Cecil usually texted at Carlos's request, so as not to disrupt any dangerously unstable experiments, so it took Carlos a moment to recognize the sound. He fumbled for his phone with one hand, brought it to his ear and said, "Hello, Carlos here?" without looking up from his microscope.

"I don't mean to bother you at the lab," said a strange, croaking voice, "but can you come pick me up?"

"Excuse me, who—" Carlos pulled the phone from his ear to check the number, then blinked. "...Cecil?"

The wretched, cracked groan on the other end of the line said, "I thought I could make it home, but it's so hot out—but if you have an important experiment that's okay, I can—"

"I'll be right there," Carlos said, jumping up from his stool. "Where are you?"

Cecil often walked to and from work when the weather was fair and plastic bag attacks were low. He took a variety of routes, including a few side streets which only existed from certain directions or on foot, so Carlos drove in circles for several minutes before locating him. Cecil had only made it a couple of blocks from the station and was now sitting on the curb in the scant shade of an old postbox.

It was late evening, but the sun had declined to set on time tonight and was hanging out several lengths above the horizon. The night's chill was setting in regardless, however, as Carlos got out of the car.

Cecil, sitting with his knees up and his head down, didn't look up until Carlos closed the car door. His face was flushed and spotted with sweat despite the cool breeze. "I'm sorry to take you away from your science," he said, "I didn't realize it had gotten so hot out, and I didn't bring water, dumb of me..."

His voice sounded slightly better than it had over the phone, but not by much. "That's okay, I expected you to call," Carlos said. "Are you all right?" He put his hand to Cecil's damp forehead and was unsurprised to find it warmer than the sun would account for.

"Yes," Cecil said, "I'm fine, I was just thirsty, and a little dizzy, so I had to sit down, and then getting up was so hard, I couldn't—oh, no," and his eyes widened, "it's not one of those localized entropy implosions you were talking about last week, is it? I didn't meant to get you caught in degraded time, oh, Carlos, I'm—"

"Cecil, it's okay," Carlos said. "But you should be home and in bed, I think you have a fever." He slipped Cecil's arm over his shoulders and pulled him upright.

Despite the poorly timed sunlight he was standing in now, Cecil shivered. Carlos took off his lab coat and draped it around Cecil's shoulders as they got in the car.

Their place was technically only a kilometer away, but it took Carlos half an hour to navigate the convoluted side streets. By the time they pulled into the driveway, the sun had grudgingly set, and Cecil had dozed off, slumped against the window. He didn't stir until Carlos opened the passenger door, then nearly fell out, caught just in time by the combined efforts of his seatbelt and Carlos. Cecil sagged in his arms, blinking up at him in owlish confusion. "Carlos? Where, what, when—"

"We're home," Carlos said, forestalling the journalist question roll call, and helped Cecil out of the car. Once inside, he asked his boyfriend, "Have you eaten dinner yet?"

Cecil had to think about it, then shook his head. Carlos gave him a push toward the bedroom, told him, "Change and lie down, and I'll go see what I can make us to eat."

It took a minute to argue the cupboard into surrendering a couple cans of chicken noodle soup. Carlos dumped them into a bowl and stuck it in the microwave with the obligatory chant, then went to the bedroom to check on his boyfriend. Cecil had managed to get off his shirt and slacks but had given up on the socks, and had flopped back on the bed without sliding up to his pillow, his legs hanging off the end. He had dragged the comforter over himself, however, and thrown one arm over his face.

"How are you feeling?" Carlos asked, sitting next to Cecil on the bed.

"My head hurts," Cecil said, his usual rich baritone pitched up into a nasal whine, "and the light's too bright."

Carlos turned off the overhead light in favor of his bedside lamp, then got aspirin, a glass of water, and a thermometer from the bathroom. "This will help with the headache and fever, but we should take your temperature first."

Cecil lowered his arm to fix a bleary glare on Carlos. "We won't take it; I'll have to put that thing into my mouth."

"Well, yes," Carlos said.

"It pokes into my tongue. I need my tongue. For speaking on the radio."

Carlos checked the thermometer to be sure its metal tip was as blunt as the medical standard, then said, "It shouldn't do your tongue any permanent damage. Though I could check if it's rated for an under-arm reading—that won't be as precise, however, and scientifically speaking it's better to have an accurate evaluation of symptoms, in case a serious ailment develops—"

Appeals to science proved as effective on a sick Cecil as a healthy one. "Oh, fine," Cecil said, sitting up to snatch the thermometer and stick it in his mouth, glowering.

There was a rustle as he moved, and the blanket slid down his chest to reveal his saran-wrapped torso. "Your tentacles are still wrapped up," Carlos observed. "Do you want me to help you get this plastic off?"

"No!" Cecil pushed Carlos's hand away, and then, at Carlos's surprised expression, looked mortified. He ducked his head, and said, his voice dropping to closer to its normal register and his enunciation impressive, considering he was speaking around a thermometer, "Thank you, Carlos, but that's all right. They need to stay wrapped up, they're still gooey—"

"About that!" Carlos said, excited. "I was testing the samples I took this morning; the discharge appears to be a form of mucus, though it doesn't really compare to either phlegm or nasal secretions. It's closer to a hagfish's microfibrous slime, though it has human markers, along with some unique glycoproteins. At a guess it's an immune response symptom, or else a defense mechanism—"

"And it's your sheets it's defending against," Cecil said, plucking at the blankets. "Your mattress, too, and isn't it an expensive one? You don't want it getting all slimy."

"That's all right; I don't rely on its ergonomic properties now anyway, most of the time. But if you're worried we can put down some towels? And the sheets can be cleaned; I was..."

The thermometer beeped. Carlos took it out before Cecil could reach for it, checked it with mostly scientific equanimity. It was several degrees higher than the human average, but as Cecil's body temperature tended to fluctuate at nonstandard extremes anyway, it wasn't raised enough to be concerning. Carlos sighed in relief, gave Cecil the aspirin and told him, "I'll go get the scissors to cut off that plastic—"

"No—Carlos, leave it," Cecil said, grabbing Carlos's wrist—with his hand, since his tentacles were bound. "It's not that bad—"

"It's probably healthier for your tentacles, to air them out," Carlos said. "Besides, you're more comfortable sleeping with them out, and it's important for you to get good solid rest, to recover."

"But..." Cecil let go of Carlos's wrist, dropped his head and mumbled, "I sleep better next to you."

"Yes...?" Carlos agreed, confused.

"But you don't want to sleep with a pile of mucus-oozing tentacles!"

"Not especially, no," Carlos admitted. "But judging by this morning they're too tired to hold me anyway?"

Cecil sighed, his shoulders sinking like a deflating balloon. "All right, I...I guess you can just sleep on the couch—or I can, how about I—"

"Or we can both sleep in our bed like usual?" Carlos said. "Your tentacles can't be producing that much mucus, not if they haven't been leaking all day. And as far as I could determine the secretions are non-toxic. They might be infectious, but I've already been exposed, so that's a negligible concern."

"But if it gets on you—I told you, it stains—"

"I'll turn up the heat and sleep in the nude, that way I can shower off any residue tomorrow. As for stains, like I was saying, today I was researching an enzyme that should break down the mucus and safely clean it from most materials—"

"...You were researching that?"

"You mentioned you had trouble cleaning it up, so it seemed like an applicable investigation," Carlos said. "Now I'm going to get the scissors. And our dinner," since the microwave in the kitchen had gotten bored with beeping for his attention, and was now blaring midi versions of Metallica songs that could get them sued.

"Carlos," Cecil said, hoarse and miserable-sounding. Carlos turned back, but Cecil's head was down, chin sunk against his chest. "Thank you," Cecil rasped.

"It's no problem," Carlos said. "Science hasn't yet cured the rhinoviruses, but I could do that, at least." Since he was exposed anyway, he brushed Cecil's hair off his sweaty forehead to drop a kiss there, then went to get the soup.

Only as it turned out, it wasn't the common cold after all. The next morning Carlos woke up before his alarm went off, to Cecil coughing. He had thrown off all the covers in his sleep but now was shivering, curled in a ball around his pillow with his tentacles dangling flaccidly from his back. His skin was damp with sweat and mucus, and so was the towel under him, when Carlos patted it.

Carlos pulled up the blankets to tuck over Cecil. The back of his hand brushed one of the tentacles as he did, and Carlos frowned, feeling for the limb in the dimness. It was slippery with mucus, but more than that—shaking the slime off his fingers, Carlos reached for his bedside lamp to get a better look.

Then he grabbed Cecil's shoulder and shook him. "Cecil! Wake up! You—your tentacles—"

"Whah?" Cecil roused even slower and groggier than usual. It took a couple minutes for him to come around enough to focus on the tentacle which Carlos was holding in front of his nose.

It was limp, and its color had faded to a dull pinkish taupe—except for the tiny circles outlined in bright, angry scarlet which dotted it and Cecil's other tentacles, up and down their lengths. The spots were raised to the touch, like goosebumps or hives, and some were scattered on the skin of his back as well, spreading up over his shoulders.

Cecil grabbed his tentacle from Carlos's hands to examine it, then the others, twisting around to try to see his back. "No," he muttered, "no, no, it can't be—"

"What?" Carlos asked, his scientific trepidation spiking into completely unscientific panic. "What's wrong?"

Cecil was rubbing at his tentacles as if he could wipe away the spots, but only succeeded in pressuring the appendages' color to dull orange. "I thought I was too old—that I wouldn't—who did I even get it from?"

"Cecil! What is this illness?" Carlos demanded. "Is it dangerous, is there a cure—"

"No," Cecil said, hopelessly. "There's no cure; you can only endure it until it's run its course."

That it had a known course, at least, was a relief. Carlos exhaled, sinking back down on the bed. "So what is it, then?"

Cecil's hoarse voice was the very sound of despair itself. "It's the chicken pox."

The rest of the day had its ups and downs.

On the positive side, Carlos was able to reach the NVGH's nurse practitioner on call, and confirm that Night Vale's strain of chickenpox was no more dangerous to adults than to children, so antiviral treatments weren't recommended for most cases. Also on the positive side, Cecil was granted sick leave.

On the less positive side, notice of the sick leave came in the form of a brick stamped with the City Council's seal and hurled through their kitchen window. It not only left a mess of shattered glass, but also, as per the note wrapped around the missile, placed their home under a four-day quarantine, with both its occupants forbidden from leaving the premises. A follow-up brick included menus for every place that did delivery in Night Vale, including several restaurants, so at least they wouldn't starve.

While Carlos was frustrated to be denied access to his lab, he was grateful Cecil would have the time off to get better. And Cecil was very apologetic about the whole affair—almost to ridiculous lengths, though Carlos suspected the more esoteric emotional flagellation was actually Cecil practicing for a later conversation with Station Management.

In answer to all of it, Carlos assured Cecil that it wasn't his fault; since he hadn't deliberately gotten sick, he had no reason to apologize anyway. Especially as Cecil was not only barred from his own work as much as Carlos, but was the one who had to suffer through the symptoms.

"But you could get it, too," Cecil moaned. "I'm so, so, sorry, Carlos; I never wanted to bring you so low. Oh, foolish Cecil, why didn't I get vaccinated—just because the last batch of vaccine turned all those children into honey badgers, I still should've—"

"Cecil, it's all right," Carlos told him yet again. "I'm probably immune; I had chickenpox when I was a kid."

Cecil sniffled, though that might have been due to a stuffy nose more than emotions. "I'm very sorry to hear that, Carlos. Did everyone make fun of you?"

"Not that I recall...? But even if it was a different strain, there's a good chance the immunity carries over. I feel fine so far, anyway."

Carlos had the other scientists in his lab bring over the more portable pieces of his projects, so he could at least get a little work done, with the scientific equipment he had at home. In that he was far better off than Cecil. Not only did the headache and fever keep him from concentrating, but due to a byzantine interpretation of the town's quarantine code, none of his interns or other contacts around town were allowed to communicate with him, leaving him distressingly out of the loop of local events.

Since Carlos was still in touch with his team, he'd be able to let Cecil know if anything too serious happened, such as half the town sinking into the ground or another puppy infestation. But otherwise they were on their own, especially since the quarantine also unfortunately extended to their internet access; emails still came in, but their browsers would only take them to the Wikipedia pages for three species of extinct flightless birds.

Cecil bored of bed by noon, and ensconced himself on the living room couch with a box of tissues and a pile of towels for his tentacles. There he alternated naps with watching daytime TV. Periodically he fussed and complained until Carlos came to extract the remote control from the various places it got relocated by the Faceless Old Woman and local vagaries of spacetime folding.

Carlos offered to watch a documentary with him, but Cecil shook his head. "No, you do your science; that's important."

"Not really, with the limited equipment I have here," Carlos said ruefully. "I might as well take the day off with you."

"You don't need to," Cecil said. "It'll be boring, when all I can do is cough or ooze on you. You'll enjoy your science more, even if it's limited."

Carlos considered how he handled his own bouts with illness, which generally was to lock himself in a room with a bed and a laptop and wait it out. Human contact could be exhausting, especially when you weren't feeling well, even for someone with Cecil's outgoing nature. Also he was still clearly embarrassed about his tentacles' mucus production, however physiologically intriguing it might be. So Carlos acquiesced and retreated back to the mini-lab he'd arranged in his half of the guest bedroom, opposite Cecil's ham radio set, and only came out to fetch the remote as needed.

Come evening, Cecil shuffled into the guest bedroom, draped in two afghans and holding a menu, and croaked, "I'm ordering Big Rico's for dinner, what do you want on your half?"

Carlos winced at the rasp of his boyfriend's voice. "I can order for us," he said, getting up from his desk and reaching for the menu. "What are you getting?"

Cecil yanked it back out of reach. "I can do it," he said. "I'm just sick, I'm not an invalid."

"I know," Carlos said, "but you shouldn't strain yourself if you don't have to?" One of Cecil's pox-dotted tentacles had fallen out of its loose knot around his waist and was trailing on the floor. Carlos carefully picked it up and moved to tuck it back into place before it could be tread on, only to have Cecil grab his wayward appendage from him.

Cecil clutched the tentacle to his chest as he looked back behind him. "Oh, no," he said, "how long was that out? The living room rug—and the wooden floor—they're going to be ruined—!"

He actually sounded close to tears, in a way Carlos had only previously heard when someone Cecil cared about was in grave peril. "Cecil, it doesn't matter, it's nothing," Carlos said. "We can clean the rug—a little salt for the floor—and your tentacle isn't that slimy now anyway; the mucus secretions have slowed considerably." He took the tentacle back from Cecil, running his hands down its length with tender attention. The texture was wrong, not the usual smooth soft warmth, but clammy and cool, and bumpy with the pox marks, and the suckers hardly attached themselves to his skin at all. But it didn't leave more than a trace of slime on his hands. "Do they itch, now that they're drying out?"

"Some," Cecil said, fidgeting uncomfortably.

Carlos gave the tentacle a gentle squeeze. "Baking soda baths can relieve the itching of normal chickenpox, but the raised salinity might increase it for the tentacles—maybe we can try calamine lotion? Or do you know a recommended treatment—well, we can figure it out after dinner." He picked up the menu Cecil had dropped, and went to find his phone.

Cecil had a salve in an unlabeled mason jar. It smelled pungently of moss, crude oil, and a touch of mint, and its bright green clashed with the tentacles' sickly mauve, but Cecil said it helped soothe the itching. He applied most of it himself that night before going to sleep, only reluctantly giving the jar to Carlos for those parts of his back and the base of the tentacles he couldn't easily reach, with his tentacles as weak as they were.

Carlos was gentle with them, laying them out along the bed on a towel for the salve to dry. "Is this normal, for them to be so, um, wilting and thin?" Usually the tentacles could expand to impressive dimensions—in fact, most nights when they slept together, the tentacles outmassed Cecil and Carlos combined, easily supporting Carlos without getting squashed. Now they appeared to be limited to a kilogram or two at most, a small percentage of Cecil's own mass.

Cecil shrugged in a desultory manner, the tentacles flopping limply with the motion of his shoulders. "They get like this when I'm not feeling well, or when I'm very tired."

"Interesting," Carlos remarked. "It could be entirely due to the physiological demands, but it's also possible there's a mental component to manifesting the necessary ectoplasmic mass? I'll need to experiment—"

"No," Cecil said, "you don't need to. They're not an experiment, they're just my tentacles—and I'm not an experiment."

"No!" Carlos said, alarmed. "Of course you're not, and any possible study would be entirely voluntary; I wouldn't—I'd never—it's just...interesting," he finished weakly.

"No, it isn't," Cecil said. His back was to Carlos, but he sounded less angry than miserable, his voice raspy and cracking. "They're just feeble, and flabby, and slimy, and itchy, and I don't want you to study them. I don't want you to see them like this. To see me like this."

Carlos started to reach for his shoulder, stopped and got up instead. "Then, um, I can turn off the light?"

"Fine," Cecil said, pulling up the blanket over his tentacles.

Carlos switched off the light, then stood in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He thought it would be all right to see Cecil if he were just a dark silhouette, the symptoms of his illness indistinguishable. "Good night, Cecil," he said softly.

"Good night," Cecil answered after a moment. After another moment he added, mumbled into his pillow, "'love you, Carlos."

"I love you, too," Carlos said, and went back to his lab for a few hours, before joining Cecil in the dark bedroom. He kept the light off, and only stubbed his toes a couple of times before making it into the bed.

Carlos didn't set his alarm; if they had to be under an enforced quarantine, at least he could sleep in. When the sun in his eyes finally woke him, he was alone in bed, and the towels on Cecil's side had been picked up.

He heard the shower running, and then stop, and then Cecil emerged from the bathroom. He was swathed in his heaviest dressing gown, the velvet one embroidered with arcane symbols which privately reminded Carlos of the Sherlock Holmes stories he'd loved as a kid, if Cecil looked anything like Holmes, which he didn't really, except in the few ways he did.

His tentacles were tucked away under the robe and his hands were in the robe's pockets, but Cecil's face looked better, with more color to his complexion and his eyes brighter, and when he said, "Good morning, Carlos," his voice almost sounded normal, only a slight huskiness to it that was actually quite appealing.

"Good morning," Carlos said, getting up. "Are you feeling any better today?"

"The headache and sore throat are gone," Cecil said, "and I was just washing off the last of the slime. Mucus."

"That's great! If you're already almost well, maybe the quarantine can be lifted early—"

"I'm not well." Cecil's shoulders slouched with dejected remorse. "I'm sorry, Carlos, but this is just a later stage of the illness."

"...Oh," Carlos said. "That's...what are the symptoms? Are you still itchy? I can help apply more salve, or—"

Cecil shook his head. "No, there's nothing you can do. I'm just going to take it easy, maybe work a bit. You can go do science, or read in bed, or whatever you want—"

"Cecil, what's wrong?" Carlos reached for his shoulder, only for Cecil to jerk away. "If you tell me, maybe I can figure out a way to—"

"If you wanted to figure out how to treat people so much, then why didn't you just become a doctor?"

Carlos blinked, more taken aback than hurt by the harshness. "Because I don't really want to treat people?" he said. "Just my boyfriend."

Cecil looked immediately stricken. "Carlos, I'm—"

"I know you're sorry, it's all right, you didn't mean it," Carlos said. "I understand—you haven't really seen me sick, but you know how cranky I can get just when my allergies are acting up. Believe me, there's a reason I avoided going out with you last time I caught a cold, and it wasn't only because I didn't want you to get it."

"You avoided...? But I could have made you soup, or at least brought you tea and giant-scorpion ointment—"

"I couldn't impose on you like that. We'd just started going out then, and I'd have been lousy company. I was worried that it would've been our last date."

Cecil looked down at the floor. "I don't want to impose on you now, either."

"But this is different," Carlos said. "The situation isn't comparable. We're boyfriends now, we live together. You're my...there's a completely different level of social expectation. And I want to help in any way I can, scientifically or not, to get you healthy as soon as possible."

Cecil nodded. "To get out of quarantine."

"That, too, but most importantly I want my boyfriend to feel better. So if you want me to leave you alone so you can rest, that's fine, I can do that. But if there's anything else I can do for you, I want to do it. Even if I'm not a doctor, or a nurse, or anyone who knows anything about taking care of people..."

Cecil reached out and took his hand, in his own hand, his fingers curling around Carlos's. "But you don't have to take care of people. Just me."

"Yes," Carlos said, and tugged on Cecil's hand to pull him into a hug. Cecil tensed for half a second and then relaxed, tucking his chin into the crook of Carlos's shoulder with a pleased hum. Carlos knew how he felt; he'd missed this. He knew why Cecil hadn't been interested in cuddling at night—in all honesty, cuddling clammy oozing tentacles hadn't appealed that much to Carlos, either, and it had sounded like Cecil found it even more uncomfortable.

There wasn't any trace of mucus now, however, just Cecil's skin, warm under Carlos's as he idly stroked his thumb over Cecil's wrist, the knob of bone and the cottony fuzz of...

Of...?

"...Cecil? Why do you have down?"

Cecil jumped like he'd been stung by a bee and tried to pull back, but Carlos was clasping his arm, pushing up the sleeve of his dressing gown. The down ran down the length of Cecil's arm, replacing his body hair with a layer of soft yellow fluff. It was definitely down, Carlos confirmed, brushing the feathers' fuzzy ends aside to see the short rachises growing from Cecil's skin.

Cecil was squirming unhappily. "I've never noticed you having feathers before," Carlos remarked, running his fingers along them in fascination.

"I don't usually," Cecil said huffily. "I told you, I'm in the next stage of chicken pox."

"I see," Carlos lied. "Um, so how many feathers do you have now?"

Cecil sighed and shrugged off his dressing robe. The new down coat ran all the way up his arms to along his shoulders, then over his back to his tentacles, which were entirely covered in a thick layer of feathers. Most of it was baby-chick yellow, but the down on the tentacles was white on the underside between the suckers, and had a few brown and orange speckled feathers along the sides.

The tentacles themselves, Carlos was pleased to see, were in much better condition, thicker and with enough muscle tone to coil themselves around Cecil's waist. Carlos gave the topmost appendage a stroke, and it unlooped to encircle his wrist, as supple as ever, and even softer with its new feather coat.

"Look at that," Cecil said. His voice was muffled; he had clapped a hand over his face. "Or, don't, please don't—it's so...embarrassing!"

"It is?"

"I look like—like a newly hatched chick about to be fed to a rabbit in the Easter Parade!"

"Well, um..." Carlos struggled between assuaging his boyfriend's ego and a scientist's commitment to the objective observation of reality. "You make a very adorable chick?"

Cecil groaned. "No, I mean, you don't, of course not, you look more like, um...a kitten," Carlos said. "A soft fluffy kitten."

Cecil uncovered his face. "Really? But kittens aren't yellow..."

"If they can be orange-tabby, seal-point, and purple polka-dotted, I'm sure they can be yellow occasionally," Carlos said, carefully not mentioning that common kittens didn't have feathers, either. Also kittens weren't this extraordinarily soft—at least, Khoshekh's hadn't been, those he had dared tactilely examine.

He realized that he was still patting the tentacle wrapped around his wrist, and while Cecil hadn't pulled it away, that might just be his manners. With effort Carlos stilled his hand, asked, "Cecil, do you mind this? I know that usually contact with your tentacles is relaxing, but if they're still itching, or otherwise irritated by the new growth—"

Cecil sighed, but not unhappily, and unwound another pair of his tentacles to snake around Carlos's waist, comfortably close, though the feathers tickled his belly. "It's fine," Cecil said. "I look ridiculous, but I do feel a lot better."

"That's good," Carlos said, resuming his tentacle-petting with a clear conscience. Cecil shut his eyes and leaned against him, anchored by his tentacles around Carlos's waist.

After a minute, though, he lifted his head, said, "Carlos?"

"Hmm?"

"If you do have science to do today—I really am feeling better, you don't have to coddle me."

"Mmm," Carlos said, absently running the back of his hand down one of the tentacles around his waist. "What if I want to cuddle you, is that okay?"

"Did you say coddle, or cuddle?"

"...Um, which did you say?"

Cecil laughed his breathless, unvoiced chuckle. "Yes," he said, his tentacles tightening a little to draw Carlos closer. "That's okay."

They spent most of the day curled up together on the couch, going through their Netflix queue. After lunch Cecil turned off the TV for a couple hours to compose an editorial he'd been meaning to get to, and since he was the sick one this pricked Carlos's work ethic such that he got out his laptop and crunched a few random numbers.

But he was well-fed and drowsy, and Cecil's embrace was as warm as always and even softer, and Carlos dozed off. He woke an hour later snuggled against his napping boyfriend, in a nest of downy coils. The tentacles weren't nearly as large or supportive as usual, and Carlos's back was sore from the couch's uneven springs, but he was too comfortable to move further than necessary to put down his laptop and pick up the remote.

That night they went to bed together, and while Carlos was careful not to let himself get tangled in Cecil's loose tentacles—they were still small enough that he didn't want to risk rolling over and squishing them—he did burrow one hand into the sleepily squirming jumble on Cecil's back, caressing their fluffy warmth until he fell asleep.

The next morning he felt a pile of cottony down against his fingers, smiled and reached out and—"Ouch!"

"Umpwhah?" Cecil mumbled, still mostly asleep. "C'los?"

"Your..." Carlos turned on the lamp to get a closer look. During the night Cecil had apparently molted. Yellow down was scattered in clumps across the bed, like tiny soft tumbleweeds. In its place was a thick stubble of short white-tipped spikes, growing over his tentacles, back, and arms.

Cecil cracked open an eye to look at his limbs, then groaned and buried his face back in his pillow. "Pinfeathers," he said, like a curse. His tentacles writhed testily on his back.

"This is a new stage of the infection?" Carlos asked.

"Next to last," Cecil confirmed, then groaned. "Ugh, they itch!"

Though Carlos offered, the salve did little to relieve this irritation. Cecil scratched incessantly, digging in with his nails and scraping his pinfeathered tentacles against one another. He was so distracted he couldn't finish a cup of tea, putting it down halfway through to apply both hands to the problem.

Carlos's offers of assistance were grouchily rebuffed. He persisted long enough to convince Cecil to finish his breakfast, then retreated to his guest room lab before Cecil snapped something he'd really be ashamed of later.

He kept the door open, though, so he heard Cecil's yelped, "Ow! Ow ow," over the Spanish patter of the telenovela on TV.

Carlos hurried to the living room. "Cecil? What's wrong?"

Cecil had a hand clapped over the midsection of one of his tentacles, which had turned an injured greenish shade. "I scratched too hard," he said.

"Let me see?" The tip of one pinfeather had been snapped off; the broken rachis was dripping blood.

"It's not stopping." Cecil grimaced. "And I don't even have any bloodstones arranged."

"It'll need to be removed. Keep pressure on it, I'll be right back." Carlos fetched the needle-nosed pliers and a wad of gauze. He gave Cecil the gauze to press over the injury, then gripped the broken pinfeather with the pliers. "This is going to hurt," he warned Cecil, and pulled out the feather like removing an oversized splinter.

Cecil twitched, but kept still. Carlos put his hand over Cecil's, holding the gauze in place. His other hand he passed down the length of the tentacle. The pinfeathers were growing fast; they were already several centimeters long, looking like multi-colored porcupine quills. Unlike the down, these feathers weren't coming in yellow, but darker shades. The flesh of the tentacles underneath was an aggravated orange, though that could have been from the scratching.

In a minute Carlos checked under the gauze. The bleeding had stopped and the plucked follicle was scabbing over, and he nodded in satisfaction. "This should be all right."

"I thought you weren't a doctor," Cecil said.

"I'm not. But in college I had a friend with a pet parrot.—Umm, which isn't to say I think of you as a parrot, or a pet! But the basic nature of feathers seems consistent. These look like they should be grown in soon."

"If it continues to run its course, tomorrow should be the last day I'm symptomatic," Cecil said. "After that the quarantine should be lifted."

"So what's the last stage?" Carlos asked. "You're not going to grow a beak and wings, are you?"

He was joking, which by now he really should have learned not to do in Night Vale. Cecil just shook his head solemnly and said, "Probably not; that's a pretty rare side effect, especially in adults..."

By nightfall the most mature pinfeathers were more than a finger-length long. Cecil had spent most of the day either scratching or napping, which didn't surprise Carlos; the amount of metabolic energy needed to grow so many feathers must be exhausting. Cecil had avoided breaking any more of the feathers, but his skin was raw, and when they got in bed together he scooted back from Carlos's offered arm.

"I don't want the feathers to scratch you," he said. "And I'm sore all over, I don't really feel like cuddling tonight."

"All right," Carlos said.

Cecil lay on his side facing Carlos, curling his tentacles away behind his back. As Carlos awkwardly twisted to switch off the light, moving gingerly in deference to his spine, Cecil asked, "How's your back?"

"It's okay," Carlos said. "A little stiff, that's all."

"I'm sorry that I haven't been able to support it as usual. My tentacles should be back to normal within a few days..."

"Take as long as you need," Carlos assured him. "I survived sleeping on mattresses for most of my life. And it's no good if you strain yourself trying to not strain me."

He heard Cecil breathe out a sigh into the dark. "I'm sorry that I haven't been a very good boyfriend, these last few days."

"What are you talking about?" Carlos said. "I'm the terrible boyfriend—you're the one who's sick, and I've hardly been able to do anything, except talk about experimenting on you. I'm sorry that I'm not very good at caretaking, or coddling. I don't have much knowledge of it...maybe I should have studied medicine instead of science, after all." He tried a laugh, but it sounded hollow in the dark.

"No, not at all! You've been—great," Cecil said, and Carlos recognized the cut-off syllable as an aborted 'perfect'.

He smiled, extended his hand to find Cecil's and entwined their fingers. "Thank you," he said.

"Thank you," Cecil said. "And, I know I keep saying it, but I am sorry. I'm...not very good at being taken care of, or coddled. I'm not used to it—to having someone around, when I'm like this. Usually when I'm quarantined I'm...I was, I used to be, by myself."

"It's strange, isn't it?" Carlos said. "Living with someone, when you're sick."

"Or having to live with someone who's sick," Cecil said. "The downside of cohabitation."

"No," Carlos said. He brought Cecil's hand up to his mouth and kissed its pinfeathered back. "It isn't at all."

"Oh," Cecil said softly, not pulling his hand away.

"And for the record, though it's true that I appreciate the lumbar support, what I really miss about sleeping in your tentacles is having you hold me. I miss being that close."

"I'm missing that, too," Cecil said. His voice was dropping, thickening with sleep. "Holding you, being sound asleep but still knowing I have you here with me..."

"You have me," Carlos said. "Asleep or awake, tentacles or no tentacles, in sickness or in health..." He trailed off, realizing what he'd said; but Cecil's only response was a content mumble of agreement. Either he was already mostly asleep, or that wasn't a standard wording for that particular vow in Night Vale.

Carlos pressed another kiss to Cecil's hand, then shut his eyes, gathering the pillow up under his other arm. It wasn't nearly as comfy as a tentacle, but for now it would have to do.

Carlos woke up in the middle of the night, roused from an uneasy dream of watching Cecil taking flight on broad pinions. He'd flown up and up, climbing towards the sun, while Carlos stood below, trying to watch him through a pair of binoculars that he couldn't get to focus no matter how he fiddled with the knobs.

He started himself awake, and lay still for a moment, sorting out the dream from reality. In the darkness he could hear Cecil breathing noisily next to him, not quite a snore, but open-mouthed.

He gave Cecil a nudge in the ribs, impelling him to turned over back onto his side. Cecil's breathing quieted, but he made a little pained whimper. Whispering an apology, Carlos extracted the tentacle Cecil had squashed under his elbow, smoothing his fingers over the pinfeathers to check for injury.

They were all intact, but touching their stiff tips he felt a little roughness. Carlos tried rolling one between his fingers, feeling the flaking sheath loosen and crack off, freeing the feather.

Cecil woke a little later; Carlos heard his breathing's tempo change, though Cecil lay still under his ministrations for a bit before speaking. "What are you doing, Carlos?"

"Um...preening you, apparently," Carlos said. Another sheath crumbled satisfyingly between his fingers, the filaments underneath silky soft. "The feathers are nearly mature, so the keratin sheaths need to come off. They'll likely fall off on their own, considering how fast they're growing, but..."

He lifted his hand, only for a prickly tentacle to curl around his wrist and tug it back down. "Don't—don't stop," Cecil said. "Please?"

Carlos resumed, working his fingers over the pinfeathers one by one, until Cecil fell back asleep. A little later, Carlos joined him, his hand nestled in the silken grasp of a feathery tentacle.

Carlos awoke the next morning to an oddly specific mix of excitement and dread, almost like the day of a thesis presentation, or when he'd won the grant to come to Night Vale. He rolled over in bed—even after almost a week, it still felt odd, to be able to move so easily, without the give-and-take of a tentacular embrace—to see his boyfriend, lying on his stomach with his arms folded under his pillow, sound asleep.

For a long moment Carlos simply stared. He'd gotten over his amazement that he was sharing a bed with Cecil Palmer a while ago; he'd been adjusted to Cecil's tentacles for some time now. But Night Vale, and Cecil, still could take his breath away.

Carlos went to the bathroom, then came back to the bedroom and looked some more. He hadn't gotten around to getting dressed yet when Cecil finally woke up. He yawned, stretched and sat up, and Carlos couldn't help but gasp aloud.

"Carlos?" Cecil said, rubbing his eyes clear. "What is it, what's the matter?"

"Nothing," Carlos said. "Just you—they—"

Cecil turned, orienting toward Carlos's voice, and his feathers caught the light again as he moved. Indigo and magenta shimmered across the vivid, lustrous violet in iridescent waves.

Cecil frowned slightly at Carlos's entranced expression, following his stare back to himself. He twisted to try to see his back, raising his tentacles, which trailed banners of feathers to rival a peacock's tail, blazing in the sunlight in a scintillating cascade.

"Oh, good," Cecil said, sounding pleased as he patted one of the rippling falls of feathers, "they've all grown in. I should be molted by this evening."

"Oh," Carlos said. "That's..." He swallowed. "That's good. For you. I'm...glad you're almost better."

"Yes, then the quarantine will be ended, and you can go back to the lab to do real science," Cecil said, nodding at Carlos encouragingly.

Carlos forced his eyes from the feathers up to Cecil's face, met his eyes. "I, um...could we take some pictures, first? Before you molt?"

"For an experiment?" Cecil asked. "I guess that would be all right, as long as you didn't post them anywhere for people to make fun of. You can have the feathers, too—you saved samples of the down, right?"

"Yes," Carlos said. "And no—I mean, not only for an experiment. That, too, but—the feathers, with your tentacles—it's amazing!"

Cecil brightened. "Scientifically speaking?"

"Personally speaking," Carlos said. He took a breath, held it for a moment before blurting, "I know you're sick, and this is just a symptom, and you didn't want me to see you, but—but you're one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Which, actually you always are, but these feathers—they're almost as incredible as your voice."

Blushing wasn't really Cecil's thing, but it looked like his face might be trying to make a go at it anyway. "Oh, Carlos," he said, and his voice dropped into that particular unique register that not even streamers of iridescent feathers could compare to. "That's so sweet of you to say." He stepped forward, near enough that his tentacles could loop around Carlos.

Their feathery curtain rustled as it draped over Carlos, brushing soft and ticklish against his arms. He shivered and gulped back a giggle of pure astonished delight, running his fingers through the shining colors. Cecil half-closed his eyes, basking in the touch like Khoshekh getting scratched in the precisely right spot under his chin.

"You're feeling all right this morning?" Carlos finally thought to ask him.

Cecil nodded, head tipped lazily back. "A bit tired, that's all. They don't itch anymore...probably will when they fall out, but that's the price you pay, for returning to normalcy."

Normalcy which included mutable tentacle clutches. And sharing a bed, a home, with another human being who could get sick and cranky and oozing, as well as occasionally feathered. But in Night Vale, as in everywhere, you take what you can get. And Carlos still couldn't believe just how much he had gotten.

"No wings to fly away with, then?" he said, tracing the pattern of iridescence down one curving feather.

Cecil opened his eyes. "Looks like not. This time, at least."

"—But you shouldn't be able to get chicken pox again, now that you've had it, you should be immune, and besides, are you sure that's a symptom of this, and not another..." Carlos stopped when he noticed the twitch of Cecil's lips. "You're joking," he said.

"A little," Cecil admitted. "With the advances in modern medicine, there hasn't been a case of virus-induced avian transformation in, oh, decades."

"And you should be immune anyway; this is a one-time event."

"Yes, it should be." Cecil put his hands around Carlos's waist, interlocking them at the small of Carlos's back, under the loose embrace of the tentacles. Looking him in the eyes, he asked, "So what would you do? If I ever did happen to grow wings and fly away."

Carlos didn't have to think to answer; he'd had the night to consider it. Though honestly he hadn't needed any time. "Make myself a pair of wings and fly after you."

"Really?"

"I'm sure there's lots of science I could do in the sky," Carlos said.

"I'm sure there is," Cecil said, and wound a feathered tentacle around his shoulders to pull him into a kiss.