When Carlos went by the station Monday morning, Cecil was not in the recording booth, not in the thrall of some unseen monstrosity, not eerily intoning some ominous message, pouring radiation out into downtown Night Vale. He was in the front lobby, with a cup of coffee, looking over the shoulder of an intern who was writing something up on her laptop. Carlos stood warily on the threshold of studio door and watched through the glass. The intern had asked Cecil a question over her shoulder, something Carlos couldn't hear, and he'd tilted his head to the side, considering it, and then responded. She'd nodded thoughtfully, her fingers tapping away at the keyboard.
Everything looked really, painfully normal, all things considered.
Carlos had made the decision to stop by the station the night before, when a few of the scientists had come careening back from Radon Canyon, mentioning flashing lights and unintelligible noises. It wasn't that Carlos didn't TRUST his team, it was just – well – he still caught them staring in horror at the night sky sometimes, or reacting to sudden noises that Carlos couldn't hear, and he could really use some additional data points before he investigated further. The fastest and easiest way would be to check with Cecil's radio audience.
Still, it had taken him a full 15 minutes to work up the nerve to enter the studio.
What had really surprised him, more than anything else, was Cecil's reaction to him. They hadn't really spoken since his first day in the city, except through communication with the interns or the other scientists, but since his visit to Josie, Carlos had started listening to the radio – and it had been everything he'd feared it would be. For somebody who was supposed to be reading the news, Cecil poured his heart out pretty shamelessly on his show, and Carlos was one of his favorite topics.
But, in spite of himself, Carlos was also finding the show incredibly useful. It would be worth listening for the community calendar alone.
Still, Carlos had braced himself for awkwardness, or embarrassment, or even worse, some kind of outright advances – but the whole thing had been surprisingly not weird. Aside from the fact that Cecil was obviously a bit too pleased to see him, he didn't give any indication of being the same man who openly gushed about him on the radio. Whether he didn't think Carlos tuned in to the show, or just didn't care, Carlos wasn't sure - but he'd listened attentively when Carlos described the situation in the Canyon, and had agreed to ask his listeners to report any information they had. Carlos had tried to impress up on Cecil how serious this was, that there could be something potentially dangerous happening, something that could put lives at risk, if they didn't figure it out, and Cecil had furrowed his brow and nodded his head and generally, Carlos thought, put a good effort into looking like he was taking it seriously.
That night, when Carlos looked up from the data he was analyzing in the lab and heard Cecil express his disappointment that he hadn't brought up weekend plans, he felt a twinge of guilt, and wondered if he could afford to be a bit less cold.
He needed to establish boundaries, he reminded himself sternly. One step at a time.
...
Carlos was putting in the effort. He took up jogging in the mornings again, and quickly learned that it was best to stay entirely out of old town Night Vale before sunrise. He'd learned that when the air quality report included the words "speckled" or "vibrating" or "jacobian" that it was best to stay inside for the day. He stopped whispering when conversing with the other scientists in public, and sometimes told little scientific anecdotes to the empty lab, just in case the secret police were listening, and getting bored.
He was beginning to get to know his fellow scientists, too. It was easier now that they were functioning more or less like normal human beings – or normal Night Vale citizens, at any rate. He'd even learned a few of their names – Alice, whose militant adherence to the "no food in the lab" rule had saved them during the wheat and wheat by-product scandal, or Rakesh, who had adopted one of the floating kittens down at the radio station, or Garrett, who was obsessively running some personal experiments on some slime mold that he'd found outside his apartment that he swore was communicating with him telepathically. They joined him in the lab, more often than not. They went out for lunch together sometimes, and not just for their mandatory weekly trip to Big Rico's. They got a coffee machine, and took it in turns to replenish the supplies.
It was nice.
And then one day Carlos caught himself saying "I'm heading back home" when he had meant to say "I'm going back to the lab."
Carlos dismissed it as a Freudian slip, a hint at some type of homesickness for the outside world – but you had to wonder.