night vale fic: O Christmas Tree
Title: O Christmas Tree
Pairing: Carlos/Cecil
Rating: PG
Words: ~2,200
Summary: All Carlos wants for Christmas is a Christmas tree. His first stop is the nursery on the other side of the car lot from Old Woman Josie's place.
Notes: Written for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smokefall and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandom_stocking 2013.
[@AO3]
O Christmas Tree
"I've been thinking," Carlos says, pausing as he spoons more sugar into his coffee. "We should get a Christmas tree."
Cecil tilts his head to the side and hums under his breath. The tattoos on his arms are red and black today, and they seem to shift over his skin as he fiddles with his bagel. "A Christmas tree? That would be fun. I don't think I've ever seen one."
Carlos considers this statement over several sips of coffee, then decides he must have heard it wrong. Or that Cecil meant he'd never had one. Everyone has seen a Christmas tree. Still, Night Vale being Night Vale, Carlos figures it won't hurt to ask:
"Where did you keep your Christmas presents? When you were growing up?"
"Under the Chalk Spire, just like everyone else," Cecil replies, in a tone that suggests Carlos must've just fallen off the turnip truck. He pops the last of his bagel into his mouth, wiping his cream-cheesy fingers on his napkin as he chews. "After that flock of predatory birds pecked it down, the City Council decided we should use the bloodstone circle in Grove Park. The Brown Stone Spire has a nicer enclosure, but it insists anything left within a ten-mile radius is a ritual sacrifice."
Carlos sips his coffee again. "Of course."
+
Carlos' first stop is the nursery on the other side of the car lot from Old Woman Josie's place. The manager's name is Linda; she has a squat, froggish face and blonde hair that hints at green in direct sunlight. Carlos would normally blame that on exposure to chlorine, but the only public swimming pool in Night Vale currently functions as a convalescent home for disabled alligators, and the private swimming pools that aren't weapons caches are either filled with pudding or haunted by the creeping fear.
"What is it you're looking for?"
"A Christmas tree."
She blinks at him a couple times, then shakes her head like she has water in her ear. "Tell me again. I've almost got it."
"A Christmas tree."
She waddles away and into one of the outbuildings, leaving Carlos alone with several plants that are disturbingly sentient and several more that are probably carnivorous. The largest one looks like it might be salivating, so Carlos edges away from it, taking care not to make any sudden moves. The sky is the same dull orange as a rusty can, and the aluminum awning over Carlos' head is only holding the heat in.
Twenty minutes later, after Carlos has sweated through his collar and the worrisome plant's drool has coalesced into a puddle the size of a dinner plate, Linda comes back with a dying palm leaf, two prickly pears in painted ceramic pots, and an inflatable Saguaro cactus that, its label promises, will be a full six feet tall when actually inflated.
"Something like this?"
"No," Carlos says, as politely as he can manage. "Nothing like that at all."
+
Home Depot is completely across town from the nursery, but the traffic on Route 800 is fairly light and for once all the ghost cars are traveling in the opposite direction. Carlos makes the drive in little under an hour, which he actually thinks is pretty good time, considering that he missed the 22½-way intersection where Earl crosses Oxford and 5th as Ouroboros circles back on itself.
Inside the store, the customer service robot directs Carlos to Gardening via Morse code transmitted from its glowing and singular LED eye. Carlos takes a wrong turn somewhere between Painting Supplies and Portable Launchpads; he ends up in the bathroom section of Home Improvement, where he gets attacked by an alarmingly animate shower massager and loses an argument with his own reflection. By the time he finally locates Gardening, he's soaking wet and questioning nearly ever life choice he made in college.
Gardening boasts an impressive selection of tumbleweeds. According to the sign on the wall, they are available for either twenty-five dollars or a biography of anyone besides Helen Hunt.
"Can I help you?" someone asks in a two-pack-a-day voice.
Carlos is only half-surprised to find a human wearing an orange apron. The guy looks to be about fifty, so he probably got hired well before management switched to mechanized employees. "I'm looking for a Christmas tree."
"Sorry," the guy says, after a long pause that feels somewhat confused. "We just sell the tumbleweeds."
"Only tumbleweeds?"
"Except in the summer months, when we sell titan arums."
+
"Excuse me?"
Her Target nametag says +♥º VERONICA º♥+, but she resembles the late intern Vithya so strongly that Carlos can't stop himself from staring openly. He only met Vithya once, when he brought Cecil lunch at the station the day before she disappeared; Veronica's hair is darker if Carlos remembers correctly, but she has Vithya's sharp chin, button nose, and glowing orange-red eyes.
"A Christmas tree," Carlos says, blinking himself back into the here and now.
Veronica gives Carlos a look that suggests he's a few onion rings shy of a full sampler platter. "A Christmas... tree?"
"Yes."
"I don't know about trees, but all our holiday stuff is on aisle thirty-one, down past the bacteria incubators."
Carlos thanks her, glad to finally be making some progress, until he gets down past the bacteria incubators and discovers there is no aisle thirty-one. He sees a twenty-nine, which offers knitting supplies, including rune-carved needles apparently made of bone, and he sees a thirty, which offers things Carlos doesn't look at too closely because of the hooded figures lurking close to the shelves, but the following aisle is thirty-two, which offers various kinds of bedding, mostly alligator sheets sets and blankets woven from porcupine quills.
The next redshirt Carlos finds is the spitting image of intern Dylan.
"Can I help you?"
"Yes, I'm looking for aisle thirty-one."
"Thirty-one is gone. We moved it out to the loading dock yesterday."
"Is it still out there?"
"No. Something about black helicopters and a flash of light -- I didn't ask."
+
Carlos brings Cecil a large pineapple, potato, and calamari from Big Rico's for lunch. They've already filled their weekly quota, and Carlos is kind of tired of pizza, but he's had a long, frustrating, and scientifically improbable day, despite the fact that it's barely twenty minutes past noon, and he isn't feeling up to the Nahuatl chanting ritual needed to open a portal to Subway.
"I understand the shower massager," Carlos says, even though he isn't sure he does. "Assuming it was connected to a water supply, pressure could have built up in the hose, causing -- "
Cecil kisses him, soft and slow and easy. He tastes like pizza sauce and the tarragon chewing gum he keeps beside his microphone, so Carlos curls his hand into Cecil's hair and allows himself to be distracted for a few minutes.
"Home Depot is a dangerous place," Cecil says eventually. The tattoos around his wrists flicker from purple to blue. "I've told you not to go there alone."
"I know, but you had that thing at the library, and I -- how did that go, by the way?"
"Oh, it went very well. I found the grimoire Tamika wanted, and I didn't see a single librarian."
"That's good."
Cecil kisses him again, a little dirtier this time, one hand curled in Carlos' sleeve and the other cradling Carlos' jaw. In short order, he nudges Carlos back against the desk and makes a dark, encouraging noise into Carlos' mouth; Carlos is just starting to think they might finally cross the broadcast station off the to-do list when someone bursts through the door without bothering to knock.
"Cecil! Cecil, I -- oh, God. I'm sorry!"
"Hello, Maureen," Cecil says, clearing his throat. "Is everything all right?"
"There's a hooded figure downstairs, and it won't leave, and it won't tell us what it wants, either. It just kind of thrashes and buzzes at anyone who comes near it."
Cecil sighs and straightens the collar of his shirt. "It came for an interview, about a possible expansion to the dog park. Bring us two cups of coffee, if you don't mind. And the pepper spray from the break room. You know, just in case."
+
"Trees?" the clerk repeats, in a voice so incredulous and shrill it echoes off every flat surface inside the Hobby Lobby. "This is a craft store, mister. We don't see trees here. You'll have to try the nursery. Or John Peters. You know, the farmer."
Carlos sighs inwardly and rubs his hand over his face. "Not a real tree." He wanted a real tree this morning, but at this point he is willing to take what he can get.
"Oh." The clerk chews her gum at Carlos for a few moments, then points toward the back of the store, an area hidden by turquoise shadows. "We've got a couple of fake ficuses down by the silk flowers."
"What about Christmas trees? The kind that come in a box?"
"Oh, okay. You want one of those trees that comes in a box."
"Yes." Carlos smiles and half turns in the direction she pointed, undeterred by the fact that the turquoise shadows have started to quiver. "Are they with the silk flowers as well?"
"No. We've only got one left, and it's in the back. I'll go get it."
She pops her gum at him a few more times, then ducks into the Employees Only area behind the register. He hears a distressingly solid thud and a series of cracks that sound like a rock shattering through glass, and then something starts to moan, low and quiet and pained. The turquoise shadows curve up along the back wall of the store, and Carlos inches closer to the cash register kiosk, tapping his fingers on the counter in a mix of excitement and concern.
After another thud and a louder moan, the clerk comes back with a Bonsai tree inside a miniature glass terrarium.
+
When Carlos finally does think of it, he wants to slap himself for not thinking of it sooner. If he had just ordered the tree on Amazon to begin with, he wouldn't have wasted the entire day driving and being threatened by strangely-colored shadows and man-eating plants.
He uses the computer at his lab, because the internet connection in their apartment only seems to work when Cecil is standing right beside the router, and he spends an hour looking at all the different trees Amazon has to offer, before finally settling on an imitation Douglas Fir, six feet tall and white lights included. He adds a few boxes of decorations to his cart -- glass balls and crocheted snowflakes and a ceramic angel that, if anyone asks, looks nothing like the creatures that may or may not be living in Old Woman Josie's house, based on the description that Cecil absolutely did not get from Old Woman Josie herself -- and he clicks the checkout button with the warm sense of satisfaction that comes from a hard-won victory.
And everything is fine, until he enters his shipping information and Amazon refuses to acknowledge his zip code. Forty-seven minutes and a frustrating conversation with a customer service representative named Jorge later, Carlos learns that while Amazon did at one point deliver to Night Vale, it doesn't anymore because it is under an International No-Fly Zone, despite being part of the continental United States.
+
Carlos arrives home well after dark, hungry but unwilling to cook and equally unwilling to risk the delivery hyenas from Gino's Italian Dining Experience and Grill and Bar. He settles on a glass of orange milk and a unnecessarily large bowl of BBQ potato chips; he kicks off his shoes and slouches into the living room, only to discover a box and an envelope waiting for him on the coffee table.
Inside the envelope, he finds a note from Cecil saying that he's going to be late because the station is running an in-case-of-pterodactyls evacuation drill and not to wait up. Inside the box, he finds a six-inch tall potted pine tree, decorated with miniature glass balls and bits of silver string. Carlos sets it in the center of the coffee table and smiles. He hasn't bought Cecil's gift yet -- Cecil is impossible to shop for, and he still has six days left, okay, six entire days -- he's going to put it under this tiny, perfect tree.
Or beside it. It's not exactly tall.
When Cecil hasn't come home by midnight, Carlos sends a text. He's on his third orange milk and his second bowl of BBQ potato chips, and his mouth is full when Cecil calls back sounding irritated and tired.
"The whole thing was such a mess," Cecil says. "They ended up bringing a real pterodactyl, and then -- never mind. I'm on my way now, so I'll tell you about it when I get home."
Carlos stretches out on the couch, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear. "What about the tree? Where did you get it?"
"Don't ask."
"Cecil."
"Let's just say, if a hooded figure knocks on the door in the small hours asking for a favor, we are neither of us in position to refuse it, okay?"
"I love you," Carlos says, watching the lights from the television glint off the glass balls and silver string.
"I love you, too."
Pairing: Carlos/Cecil
Rating: PG
Words: ~2,200
Summary: All Carlos wants for Christmas is a Christmas tree. His first stop is the nursery on the other side of the car lot from Old Woman Josie's place.
Notes: Written for
smokefall and fandom_stocking 2013. [@AO3]
"I've been thinking," Carlos says, pausing as he spoons more sugar into his coffee. "We should get a Christmas tree."
Cecil tilts his head to the side and hums under his breath. The tattoos on his arms are red and black today, and they seem to shift over his skin as he fiddles with his bagel. "A Christmas tree? That would be fun. I don't think I've ever seen one."
Carlos considers this statement over several sips of coffee, then decides he must have heard it wrong. Or that Cecil meant he'd never had one. Everyone has seen a Christmas tree. Still, Night Vale being Night Vale, Carlos figures it won't hurt to ask:
"Where did you keep your Christmas presents? When you were growing up?"
"Under the Chalk Spire, just like everyone else," Cecil replies, in a tone that suggests Carlos must've just fallen off the turnip truck. He pops the last of his bagel into his mouth, wiping his cream-cheesy fingers on his napkin as he chews. "After that flock of predatory birds pecked it down, the City Council decided we should use the bloodstone circle in Grove Park. The Brown Stone Spire has a nicer enclosure, but it insists anything left within a ten-mile radius is a ritual sacrifice."
Carlos sips his coffee again. "Of course."
+
Carlos' first stop is the nursery on the other side of the car lot from Old Woman Josie's place. The manager's name is Linda; she has a squat, froggish face and blonde hair that hints at green in direct sunlight. Carlos would normally blame that on exposure to chlorine, but the only public swimming pool in Night Vale currently functions as a convalescent home for disabled alligators, and the private swimming pools that aren't weapons caches are either filled with pudding or haunted by the creeping fear.
"What is it you're looking for?"
"A Christmas tree."
She blinks at him a couple times, then shakes her head like she has water in her ear. "Tell me again. I've almost got it."
"A Christmas tree."
She waddles away and into one of the outbuildings, leaving Carlos alone with several plants that are disturbingly sentient and several more that are probably carnivorous. The largest one looks like it might be salivating, so Carlos edges away from it, taking care not to make any sudden moves. The sky is the same dull orange as a rusty can, and the aluminum awning over Carlos' head is only holding the heat in.
Twenty minutes later, after Carlos has sweated through his collar and the worrisome plant's drool has coalesced into a puddle the size of a dinner plate, Linda comes back with a dying palm leaf, two prickly pears in painted ceramic pots, and an inflatable Saguaro cactus that, its label promises, will be a full six feet tall when actually inflated.
"Something like this?"
"No," Carlos says, as politely as he can manage. "Nothing like that at all."
+
Home Depot is completely across town from the nursery, but the traffic on Route 800 is fairly light and for once all the ghost cars are traveling in the opposite direction. Carlos makes the drive in little under an hour, which he actually thinks is pretty good time, considering that he missed the 22½-way intersection where Earl crosses Oxford and 5th as Ouroboros circles back on itself.
Inside the store, the customer service robot directs Carlos to Gardening via Morse code transmitted from its glowing and singular LED eye. Carlos takes a wrong turn somewhere between Painting Supplies and Portable Launchpads; he ends up in the bathroom section of Home Improvement, where he gets attacked by an alarmingly animate shower massager and loses an argument with his own reflection. By the time he finally locates Gardening, he's soaking wet and questioning nearly ever life choice he made in college.
Gardening boasts an impressive selection of tumbleweeds. According to the sign on the wall, they are available for either twenty-five dollars or a biography of anyone besides Helen Hunt.
"Can I help you?" someone asks in a two-pack-a-day voice.
Carlos is only half-surprised to find a human wearing an orange apron. The guy looks to be about fifty, so he probably got hired well before management switched to mechanized employees. "I'm looking for a Christmas tree."
"Sorry," the guy says, after a long pause that feels somewhat confused. "We just sell the tumbleweeds."
"Only tumbleweeds?"
"Except in the summer months, when we sell titan arums."
+
"Excuse me?"
Her Target nametag says +♥º VERONICA º♥+, but she resembles the late intern Vithya so strongly that Carlos can't stop himself from staring openly. He only met Vithya once, when he brought Cecil lunch at the station the day before she disappeared; Veronica's hair is darker if Carlos remembers correctly, but she has Vithya's sharp chin, button nose, and glowing orange-red eyes.
"A Christmas tree," Carlos says, blinking himself back into the here and now.
Veronica gives Carlos a look that suggests he's a few onion rings shy of a full sampler platter. "A Christmas... tree?"
"Yes."
"I don't know about trees, but all our holiday stuff is on aisle thirty-one, down past the bacteria incubators."
Carlos thanks her, glad to finally be making some progress, until he gets down past the bacteria incubators and discovers there is no aisle thirty-one. He sees a twenty-nine, which offers knitting supplies, including rune-carved needles apparently made of bone, and he sees a thirty, which offers things Carlos doesn't look at too closely because of the hooded figures lurking close to the shelves, but the following aisle is thirty-two, which offers various kinds of bedding, mostly alligator sheets sets and blankets woven from porcupine quills.
The next redshirt Carlos finds is the spitting image of intern Dylan.
"Can I help you?"
"Yes, I'm looking for aisle thirty-one."
"Thirty-one is gone. We moved it out to the loading dock yesterday."
"Is it still out there?"
"No. Something about black helicopters and a flash of light -- I didn't ask."
+
Carlos brings Cecil a large pineapple, potato, and calamari from Big Rico's for lunch. They've already filled their weekly quota, and Carlos is kind of tired of pizza, but he's had a long, frustrating, and scientifically improbable day, despite the fact that it's barely twenty minutes past noon, and he isn't feeling up to the Nahuatl chanting ritual needed to open a portal to Subway.
"I understand the shower massager," Carlos says, even though he isn't sure he does. "Assuming it was connected to a water supply, pressure could have built up in the hose, causing -- "
Cecil kisses him, soft and slow and easy. He tastes like pizza sauce and the tarragon chewing gum he keeps beside his microphone, so Carlos curls his hand into Cecil's hair and allows himself to be distracted for a few minutes.
"Home Depot is a dangerous place," Cecil says eventually. The tattoos around his wrists flicker from purple to blue. "I've told you not to go there alone."
"I know, but you had that thing at the library, and I -- how did that go, by the way?"
"Oh, it went very well. I found the grimoire Tamika wanted, and I didn't see a single librarian."
"That's good."
Cecil kisses him again, a little dirtier this time, one hand curled in Carlos' sleeve and the other cradling Carlos' jaw. In short order, he nudges Carlos back against the desk and makes a dark, encouraging noise into Carlos' mouth; Carlos is just starting to think they might finally cross the broadcast station off the to-do list when someone bursts through the door without bothering to knock.
"Cecil! Cecil, I -- oh, God. I'm sorry!"
"Hello, Maureen," Cecil says, clearing his throat. "Is everything all right?"
"There's a hooded figure downstairs, and it won't leave, and it won't tell us what it wants, either. It just kind of thrashes and buzzes at anyone who comes near it."
Cecil sighs and straightens the collar of his shirt. "It came for an interview, about a possible expansion to the dog park. Bring us two cups of coffee, if you don't mind. And the pepper spray from the break room. You know, just in case."
+
"Trees?" the clerk repeats, in a voice so incredulous and shrill it echoes off every flat surface inside the Hobby Lobby. "This is a craft store, mister. We don't see trees here. You'll have to try the nursery. Or John Peters. You know, the farmer."
Carlos sighs inwardly and rubs his hand over his face. "Not a real tree." He wanted a real tree this morning, but at this point he is willing to take what he can get.
"Oh." The clerk chews her gum at Carlos for a few moments, then points toward the back of the store, an area hidden by turquoise shadows. "We've got a couple of fake ficuses down by the silk flowers."
"What about Christmas trees? The kind that come in a box?"
"Oh, okay. You want one of those trees that comes in a box."
"Yes." Carlos smiles and half turns in the direction she pointed, undeterred by the fact that the turquoise shadows have started to quiver. "Are they with the silk flowers as well?"
"No. We've only got one left, and it's in the back. I'll go get it."
She pops her gum at him a few more times, then ducks into the Employees Only area behind the register. He hears a distressingly solid thud and a series of cracks that sound like a rock shattering through glass, and then something starts to moan, low and quiet and pained. The turquoise shadows curve up along the back wall of the store, and Carlos inches closer to the cash register kiosk, tapping his fingers on the counter in a mix of excitement and concern.
After another thud and a louder moan, the clerk comes back with a Bonsai tree inside a miniature glass terrarium.
+
When Carlos finally does think of it, he wants to slap himself for not thinking of it sooner. If he had just ordered the tree on Amazon to begin with, he wouldn't have wasted the entire day driving and being threatened by strangely-colored shadows and man-eating plants.
He uses the computer at his lab, because the internet connection in their apartment only seems to work when Cecil is standing right beside the router, and he spends an hour looking at all the different trees Amazon has to offer, before finally settling on an imitation Douglas Fir, six feet tall and white lights included. He adds a few boxes of decorations to his cart -- glass balls and crocheted snowflakes and a ceramic angel that, if anyone asks, looks nothing like the creatures that may or may not be living in Old Woman Josie's house, based on the description that Cecil absolutely did not get from Old Woman Josie herself -- and he clicks the checkout button with the warm sense of satisfaction that comes from a hard-won victory.
And everything is fine, until he enters his shipping information and Amazon refuses to acknowledge his zip code. Forty-seven minutes and a frustrating conversation with a customer service representative named Jorge later, Carlos learns that while Amazon did at one point deliver to Night Vale, it doesn't anymore because it is under an International No-Fly Zone, despite being part of the continental United States.
+
Carlos arrives home well after dark, hungry but unwilling to cook and equally unwilling to risk the delivery hyenas from Gino's Italian Dining Experience and Grill and Bar. He settles on a glass of orange milk and a unnecessarily large bowl of BBQ potato chips; he kicks off his shoes and slouches into the living room, only to discover a box and an envelope waiting for him on the coffee table.
Inside the envelope, he finds a note from Cecil saying that he's going to be late because the station is running an in-case-of-pterodactyls evacuation drill and not to wait up. Inside the box, he finds a six-inch tall potted pine tree, decorated with miniature glass balls and bits of silver string. Carlos sets it in the center of the coffee table and smiles. He hasn't bought Cecil's gift yet -- Cecil is impossible to shop for, and he still has six days left, okay, six entire days -- he's going to put it under this tiny, perfect tree.
Or beside it. It's not exactly tall.
When Cecil hasn't come home by midnight, Carlos sends a text. He's on his third orange milk and his second bowl of BBQ potato chips, and his mouth is full when Cecil calls back sounding irritated and tired.
"The whole thing was such a mess," Cecil says. "They ended up bringing a real pterodactyl, and then -- never mind. I'm on my way now, so I'll tell you about it when I get home."
Carlos stretches out on the couch, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear. "What about the tree? Where did you get it?"
"Don't ask."
"Cecil."
"Let's just say, if a hooded figure knocks on the door in the small hours asking for a favor, we are neither of us in position to refuse it, okay?"
"I love you," Carlos says, watching the lights from the television glint off the glass balls and silver string.
"I love you, too."