The community of Night Vale was creepy as hell. Its radio announcer, Cecil, was marginally creepier, the "marginally" of course coming from the fact that his creepiness was directed at Carlos in particular and not necessarily the human race in general. The scientist had first rolled his eyes at Cecil's declaration of instantaneous love, figuring that it was probably sarcasm or some kind of running joke, but as the months passed and Cecil's constant admiration did not waver, Carlos came to the rather uncomfortable conclusion that the other man was actually being quite serious.
And that, of course, was when Cecil's creepiness went from "well, he's a little weird, I'll admit, but" to "marginally worse than the entire town of Night Vale". Carlos had never had a stalker, and although Cecil seemed to be a remarkably harmless one, the scientist still had no idea what to do about it besides keeping a throwing knife under his pillow-which, it turned out, was a good idea in any case.
Carlos's first suspicions that he may have been mistaken about the town came when he found that the terrifying, unknowable horror of the city below the bowling alley was actually about the size of the average model train set, if the model train set had involved depictions of mysterious beasts and arcane symbols that mortals trembled to think about.
But this was Night Vale. Mortals trembled to think about their refrigerators.
Carlos's first suspicions that he may have been wrong about the town's radio host came shortly thereafter. A few minutes thereafter, actually, as he lay bleeding out from innumerable very small but very strategic wounds, listening to his own death being narrated. And then listening to the narration faltering, and hesitating, and stopping short altogether.
Cecil, who had informed the down of countless deaths, who had watched many of his own interns meet their inevitably horrific fates; Cecil, who had sounded appropriately mournful throughout each new addition to the various cemeteries and corpse collection and disposal agencies, but still kept his calm and stoic if sympathetic professional tone; Cecil, Cecil couldn't get the words out. Cecil was crying. Cecil was stammering, and denying, and falteringly switching to pre-recorded announcements.
Carlos hadn't even been certain that Cecil was able to cry.
It felt like... like watching a film you loved as a child and suddenly realising, with a creeping dread, the underlying darkness of the intrepid heroes' unenviable lives-but in reverse, the horror melting away into light and comfort.
It was, Carlos realised as one of the miniature soldiers slipped on his pooling blood, rather like how he gained a terrible fear of skeletons, pinstriped suits, and holidays from watching the Nightmare Before Christmas as a child, but then had been coerced into watching it again as a teenager and suddenly realised how harmless it all really was. How...
Innocent. Yes, that was the word. Innocent.
Night Vale was dark, and sinister, and confusing. But most of its deaths didn't stick for long, the prison cells had WiFi, and everything permanently catastrophic had a tendency to shrug and go away.
Cecil was also sinister and confusing. He had a strange obsession with Carlos's hair and with arbitrarily disliking those who dared to trim it. He delivered frightening news with a cheerful kind of calm and only the terror of street-cleaning day had seemed to even faze him (before now). He had no conceivable boundaries, he over-shared his thoughts, his emotions ran wild and unchecked in occasionally improbable directions.
But... Cecil hadn't harmed him. Broke down into tears at the thought of him coming to harm at all, from any source. Cecil's proclaimed affection might have been completely senseless, but it wasn't... a bad thing. Just a strange thing that looked like a bad thing but was really just strange.
Like most of the things in Night Vale. Like the lights above the Arby's, and the way they flickered dangerously down on Cecil and Carlos, and the way faint patches of their lemon-scented ash also flickered dangerously down on Cecil and Carlos. Frightening, but ultimately toothless. Figuratively speaking.
So Carlos reached over and rested his hand on Cecil's surprisingly warm thigh, and shut his eyes as Cecil nuzzled hesitantly into the scientist's shoulder.
Carlos gave Cecil's leg a gentle squeeze and started hesitantly sketching out plans for staying another year. For continued research. And perhaps for one other reason, but the other reason didn't really need to go on any of the reports, now did it?