crack_van | Perfecting, by thingswithwings (NC-17)

Fandom: WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE
Pairing: Cecil/Carlos
Length: words
Author on LJ:

thingswithwings (inactive)
Author Website: on Dreamwidth; stories on AO3
Warnings: D/s, Service Kink, Food Control Kink, Bathing/Washing, Femme Top, Nail Polish, Rope Bondage, Cecil's Fashion Sense, Genderplay, Social Anxiety
Notes: set after “First Date” (ep. 27)
Why this must be read:

This is another of the service-top!Cecil fics that came out in the fall of 2013.* In this sultry, chronologically scrambled story, we watch Carlos trying to reconcile his (and by extension non-Night Vale society’s) preconceptions about sex, power, and gender with the reactions Cecil draws from him.

"No one's ever treated you like the precious jewel that you are?" Cecil asked lightly. Carlos fidgeted, reminding himself that Cecil really wasn't making fun of him when he said stuff like that, and then shrugged.

"Most guys, they want me to be the, ah. The butch one. You know." Carlos was tall, and broad, and brown, and tended toward muscle even in spite of the way he sometimes forgot to eat, or sleep, or . . . move. It'd been a struggle to stay off the football team in high school, and at 6'1" he had always felt like a weird clumsy giant in the lab, even in university. He'd never dated anyone bigger than him, including Cecil.

Certainly no one but Cecil had ever thought he was precious.

Cecil pursed his lips. "Do you like that?" He sounded dubious, and Carlos felt exposed, that Cecil should already be able to intuit this about him.

"Not really," he admitted. "I – you know, it's probably just that I get tired of always having to be the one who, uh, carries someone else to bed, that kind of thing."

"Hm. Maybe I should carry you sometime."

It was Carlos's turn to look dubious. Cecil was so perfectly average in height and build that he would be completely unremarkable at first glance if it weren't for his particular fashion sense and tendency towards bright colors. Carlos glanced down at their linked hands; Cecil's nails were pastel purple that day, to match his checked pants and the light glittery purple eyeshadow he was wearing.

"I'm stronger than I look," Cecil objected, half-laughing. "Come on, try it, I bet I can give you a lion-back ride." Cecil crouched down carefully, in the middle of the sidewalk, gesturing at his back.

"You mean a piggy-back ride," Carlos corrected him, thinking again of his neighbors in Tucson, his neighbors almost everywhere he'd ever lived, who would've balked at two men holding hands in public, much less queers giving each other piggy-back rides in the street.

“Perfecting” on AO3

* For the curious, the third title in the accidental service-top!Cecil trilogy, “Informed Consent,” by sabinelagrande, is linked in the notes to this story.