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There was a way in which Cecil knocked on the door that Carlos couldn’t explain. It was a sort of polite fluttering, like an arrhythmia or a butterfly, but it sounded completely different from the dry rapping of mysterious men with leather brief cases or the controlled knocking of Cecil’s fellow scientists, when they bothered to knock. No, Cecil’s knocking was unique enough to set Carlos’ pulse up at the sound of it, enough to make the man lurch ungracefully to his feet and trip over his shoes in a scramble to answer the door. Naturally, once he’d opened it, the most intelligent thing Carlos could spit out was a “…Hi?”
"Carlos!" Cecil chirped, his hands clasped behind his back and looking like he was almost bouncing in place. "I thought I’d come over even though it’s late but the radio show took a little longer since the funeral for our poor intern Rita was messier than usual and took some time to maneuver around and I was possibly wondering if-" Cecil’s monologue was cut short by a soft hiss of pain. "Ah, sorry. I was wondering if I could come in, if it’s not too late in the evening for you?"
"No, I just made a pot of coffee," Carlos nodded, stepping aside so Cecil could walk in. Upon a second glance Carlos realized that the smooth-talking radio host’s skin was a bright, angry red color. He frowned as Cecil stepped into his messy apartment and inhaled the aroma of coffee deeply.
"And it smells fantastic," Cecil remarked brightly, turning to face Carlos.
"Thanks, it’s just instant coffee," Carlos muttered thoughtlessly, narrowing his eyes at Cecil’s skin. The way he’d tenderly fiddle with the cuffs of his shirt indicated that indeed, he had a nasty sunburn. "Did you forget sunscreen?"
"Uh-" it was strange to hear such an eloquent speaker choke up like that, even for a moment. "…Yes," he admitted finally, rubbing the back of his head with a wince. "You shoudln’t worry, really. It’ll be healed in a day at most-"
"Go sit on the couch, I’ll get some aloe," Carlos cut Cecil off with a curt sigh. He began to walk into the bathroom when he added over his shoulder "And take off your shirt, it’ll make things easier,"
When he came back with a long bottle of unnaturally colored Aloe Vera Gel Cecil was still standing where Carlos had left him, his face redder than it should have been and his eyes quite wide. Even that funky lavender eye tattoo on Cecil’s forehead looked wider than it should have been.
"Something…wrong?" Carlos asked.
"You asked me… to take off my shirt," Cecil replied. Carlos frowned.
"Sorry if it was a bit forward," he remarked, holding up the bottle of aloe. "But it really would make it easier to apply,"
"Well if you insist," Cecil replied finally, undoing his bow. As a result of Cecil’s apparent shyness Carlos got to watch the man undress, which wasn’t really awful. It was a bit cute how Cecil’s fingers occasionally stumbled over buttons.
"What happened to the tattoos on your arms?" Carlos wondered, pointing. Usually Cecil had a wide array of interesting tattoos on his arms, like pyramids and tentacled things that Carlos really hoped were octopi of some kind but had a sinking suspicion weren’t.
"Huh? Oh those," Cecil nodded, slowly and carefully pulling his sweater-vest over his head. "They’re hiding because it hurts for them to be on my sunburn,"
"… Hiding?" Carlos asked slowly. "As in they…move?"
"Well of course they do," Cecil nodded earnestly. It was almost funny, considering how long Carlos had spent in Night Vale he still retained an amount of shock in his system from hearing such… absurdities. Behind the shock questions pinged steadily in the back of his head- when did you get them, did you get them locally, do they change color, do they grow…
"Carlos?" Cecil prompted. The way he almost purred the word out made the scientist shiver slightly as he glanced at the now shirtless Cecil quickly.
"Uh, yeah sorry," Carlos nodded, indicating for Cecil to sit on the ratty love seat that worked as a couch for Carlos. Cecil complied and Carlos sat next to him, opening the aloe gel with a loud snak . “ It’ll probably burn at first,”
"Well you don’t have to-"
"But it’ll feel better in the long run, I promise," Carlos finished, squeezing some of the jiggling green substance on his hand and rubbing it between his palms quickly for a moment. It occurred to Carlos a bit too late that gloves may have been a good idea, but the scientist shook his head a little and began to gently apply the gel.
Cecil didn’t like it- which was completely understandable. His skin felt hot under Carlos’ aloe-coated hands and Cecil let out a steady hiss like steam, interspersed by soft whimpers and whines. They made Carlos uncomfortable so he kept his touches light- the man was not a sadist for God’s sake he was a scientist. Every now and then Carlos would mutter an apology to Cecil, especially when he rubbed the back of Cecil’s neck, which was the reddest area.
Now with normal aloe gel it lays on top of the skin for a while, but on Cecil it seemed to absorb at a much higher rate than it should have. Carlos didn’t exactly notice this at first but when he glanced at the first limb that was lathered up with the stuff he saw that it was no longer slimy, or red and angry looking. A nice, base tan had settled where the gel had been.
"Your arm… it’s…"
"I told you it would be gone in a day at most," Cecil remarked, almost sounding miffed that Carlos had doubted him. Carlos stared at Cecil, at a loss for words. "Not that I d-don’t mind you touching my skin! I just would enjoy it more if you didn’t do it while I was so severely burned!"
"…Oh." Carlos replied, unable to really say much more. Instead he opted for watching Cecil’s skin absorb the aloe gel at an inhuman rate, and his rather unusual tattoos migrate back to Cecil’s arms. They didn’t move in a manner that Carlos could acutely detect, the movements happened between blinks and subtle glances at Cecil’s face.
"Should I put my shirt back on?" Cecil asked slowly after his skin was fully not-burned. "Or do you still need it off for… further experiments?"
The double entendre was lost on Carlos until after Cecil had left to go home (looking sort of droopy), and Carlos spent most of the night alternating between hypothesizing about Cecil’s skin and slapping himself in the forehead for being so dumb.
If Cecil was extremely upset by this treatment it was hard to tell, since the next day Cecil gave the public a compliment-littered litany of the previous night’s events. Naturally, Carlos locked himself in his lab, his face burning hotter than the desert sun.