Carlos is surprised that Cecil continues to come visit him, but he supposes it is his job. Their routine goes something like this:

Cecil breezes in, usually with some mysterious, slightly creepy greeting, and puts his evidence bag on the table. He cheerfully tells Carlos what he needs analyzed, and then takes a seat on the patch of counter that Carlos makes sure is always open. Carlos is usually busy with something, but thankfully he's always been pretty gifted at multitasking. Cecil is full of interesting things; tidbits about cases, quotes from TV shows, musings about the universe, and, very, very rarely, facts about Cecil himself.

Carlos looks forward to these moments; for some reason, he finds Cecil absolutely fascinating. For instance, he now knows that Cecil once wanted to be a radio host, loves his mother dearly, doesn't know his father, has tons of tattoos, and went to school in Europe. In return, Cecil knows that he doesn't know his father either, his mother is Colombian, he graduated from Harvard with honors, and he loves grapes.

The friendship is strong with them.

Carlos hasn't pointed it out to Cecil, who seems too innocent to notice, but the other detectives have definitely taken an interest in their sudden bond. He's pretty sure there's a pool going around, actually, though based upon what he doesn't know. For now, he's fine with ignoring it and worrying about Cecil. As a very platonic friend.

Worrying? Why is he worrying? Well, it's mostly because Cecil's been getting more and more dangerous assignments. For a while after the Peters murder, Cecil got the more generic ones; a small-time thief, a bit of vandalism, things like that. But then he started receiving things like domestic abuse cases, kidnappings, and even a few more murders. He just has to keep reminding himself that this is Cecil's job and he signed up for this. After all, they wouldn't let an untrained amateur investigate these cases. This leads to Carlos musing about how Cecil probably knows how to shoot a gun, and, well, he's always had a thing for bad boys. Dana asks him multiple times that day if he's okay, because he keeps squirming and turning red at odd moments.

But overall, Carlos is really happy with the situation. He gets to see Cecil often, which makes him feel a lot more at home with the new environment, and Dana actually has some great conversational skills. He's making friends with other NYPD employees. Carlos' mother is very proud of him, and tells him so in rapid Spanish whenever they speak on the phone.

Even better is the sheer amount of nerd culture that makes its home among police officers and attractive detectives. Turns out, Cecil watches Supernatural and Doctor Who, and they can while away hours analyzing the writing of the latest episodes or gushing about how amazing the actors are. This is how Carlos finds out that Cecil is not quite straight, actually.

They're talking about the various pros and cons of the doctors over the years, and Cecil lets a sly smile creep across his lips.

"Tennant is not exactly hard on the eyes, Carlos. I'd say that allows points in his favor," he says, narrowing his eyes and purring Carlos' name.

The subject of this amazing attractive very arousing smooth rendition of his own name clears his throat and gazes intensely at the test tube he's holding up. Which he totally did not almost just drop.

"Yeah, but neither is Smith," he says, trying to sound like a person with a normal pulse whose palms are not sweating.

Cecil grins and nods. "True, but Tennant had better writing behind him. Moffat has no idea what he's doing."

"Well that's not exactly fair, I mean he did some really great episodes," Carlos murmurs, his heartbeat slowing a bit.

Cecil launches into a full-blown argument about what exactly is wrong with Moffat's style, but Carlos lets it fade into pleasant background noise as he continues his scientific work. Honestly, sometimes it's nice not to have to worry about keeping a conversation going.

Unfortunately for Carlos' lovelorn self, he never does notice the smoldering looks that Cecil sends him over the desk. That's the thing about scientists, though; they never look up from their work until it's finished.

Persistent is the fifth thing a scientist is, after all.