Summary: Carlos receives some advice from one Steve Carlsberg, Cecil and Natalia bond over ink and station management threaten the life of everyone at the radio station.
"That's it. I can't take it any more."
Ellie looked up from her microscope. The clump of hair under it had come from, supposedly, one of the spiderwolves that had run through town last week on a drunken rampage.
"What's wrong, Carlos?" She asked.
"My hair. I'm getting it shorn. All of it has to go. I'm sick of it."
"Seriously?"
"It's been too long for at least a month. And I want it gone." He blew another strand of curly hair from his eyes.
Ellie just looked at him and said, completely deadpan, "Cecil will be devastated".
"Cecil does not get a say."
"But he'll be so upset."
"ELLIE."
She giggled and turned back to her hair sample. "You're gonna make him sob." She muttered with a smirk.
"There's a barber down southwest 5th street. Go there." Jeffries offered. "The guy who owns it gave me a great trim last Friday. His name's Telly."
"Thanks, Brent." Carlos glanced at Ellie. It was only half-angry.
"Right. That's settled. I've got that exploding jelly problem under control for now so....if it's okay I'll head there now?"
"Yeah, we're good here. We'll call you if there's anything."
Actually, there was one more thing that Carlos wanted to study today...but it would involve going somewhere he was still trying to avoid. He turned to the intern who was having a tea break in the corner of the room.
"Natalia, how do you fancy expanding your physics skills today?"
"Sure. What did you have in mind?"
~
Carlos' hair fell to the floor around him in curls. Natalia was giving him a curious expression.
"You okay?" Carlos said.
"Yeah. Just trying to get my head around the fact that after this, I'm going to be seeing a 'hovering cat'" She made air quotations.
Carlos chuckled. "Scientifically speaking, it's the best description for it."
"That cat couldn't be in a worse place." A man getting his hair cut on the other side of Carlos said suddenly.
"What?" Natalia said.
"The radio station is a conspiracy." He said very seriously.
"Sorry, who are you?" Natalia said, arching an eyebrow and jumping down from where she'd been sat by the mirror to walk over to him.
"Steve Carlsberg."
Natalia paused and furrowed her brow, as if she'd heard the name before somewhere.
"Why is it a conspiracy?" Carlos turned slightly to face him.
"There are dark forces there. And then there's my step-brother."
"Sorry, WHO?" Natalia said.
"Cecil. He's meant to be the voice of our community and all he does is tell government-fed lies to us!"
Carlos blinked.
Natalia just snorted. "Yeah, right. Cecil says some weird shit, sure, but c'mon, he seemed nice to me."
Steve Carlsberg got up, running his hands through his new haircut, before giving what appeared to be a spine to the man at the till.
"Do yourself a favour and stay away from Cecil. He may be a good uncle to my little girl, but he's too much under the influence of the city council. And that management of his is to blame, I suppose. They're dangerous."
He pulled on his coat and, after nodding to Natalia and Telly, left.
"Geez, what a creep." Natalia said, turning back to Carlos.
"Maybe he has a point. A lot of the commentary from the radio station is from the council." Carlos mused.
"Pfft." Telly said. "Don't you listen to old Steve. Him and Cecil have a difficult relationship."
"Yeah." The other barber said solemnly, with a voice that reminded Carlos of an out-of-tune harmonica. "Cecil's a great guy. But him and Steve have always had a void there. Cecil's protective of his niece and they can both be jerks 'bout it."
Natalia smiled at the man before nudging Carlos. "See? Cecil is great." She grinned at him mischievously.
"Oh geez. Natalia, you have been talking to Ellie about Cecil, haven't you?"
"Aww c'mon, boss, don't spoil our fun! He's cute!"
"Nata-"
"You're all done, Dr Valdez." Telly said.
Natalia moved herself again so Carlos could look at himself finally in the mirror. He considered that maybe he had asked for it shorter than he could pull off. But it would be easier to manage.
"Thank you, Telly." Carlos said, before turning round, where Natalia was holding up her phone and took a picture of him.
"N-" He sighed. "Natalia, you ready to head to the station?"
"Sure. Just let me send a picture of this to Ellie." She grinned again.
As they headed towards the car, Natalia considered her options as she scrolled through her phone, eventually settling on the 'Night Vale' contact list.
Green, Ellie
Jeffries, Brent
Palmer, Cecil
Parker, Jermaine
Perez, Edwardo
Valdez, Carlos
She ticked Ellie's name and was just about to click 'done' when she felt her thumb hovering over Cecil's name.
He'd given it to her after he'd stopped by on Dot Day to put a dot on Carlos. He'd put a dot on Natalia's feather tattoo as well and had a decent conversation with her about tattoos. They'd had to cut it short as she'd had to get back to work, but she'd spoken to him enough to know that she liked him, so they'd swapped numbers.
She smirked to herself as she ticked Cecil's name and hit 'send'.
~
"What do you mean we can't go in?" Natalia demanded. "It's a community radio station! For the COMMUNITY."
"I'm not saying you can't, I just wouldn't." The intern in front of her said uncomfortably.
"Why not?" Carlos said, in a much more patient tone than Natalia was offering. "We just want to have a quick look at the cat, we won't be-"
"No scientists. Cecil's orders, sir."
Carlos sighed. "Cecil isn't your boss. Jeremy, wasn't it?"
The youth nodded.
"Just tell him it's me."
"He said especially you weren't allowed. If I'm being honest, sir.....Cecil's the only one in there today apart from myself. He wanted to minimalise people today."
"Minimalise?" Natalia said, raising her eyebrows.
"Yes, miss. It's contract negotiation day." The young man trembled slightly. "You don't wanna be in there. Just wait outside....please." He headed back in and bolted the door behind him.
"Dammit." Natalia said. "Now what?"
Carlos sighed. "Let's phone the lab and see if there's anything."
Natalia grabbed her phone from the van and dialled Ellie's number as Carlos fiddled with the radio.
".....Architecturally speaking, the apparent size of management's office does not physically make sense given the size of the building, but it's hard to say really, as no one has ever seen the actual office. Only its translucence.
Look, I've probably said too much. I can see down the hall that an envelope just came flying out. I pray it's not another HR retraining session in the Dark Box. Uhhhhhg. But what can I say. I'm a reporter at heart! I can't not report...."
Carlos blinked. There was a room in the building that didn't fit? Oh that was something worth looking at. The amount of things that the town had thrown at him had made his thirst for knowledge even greater. He even dreamed about chemical formulas, although he wasn't sure if that was the new advertising campaign for the Night Vale PTA's bake sale.
Natalia's voice raised from just outside the van as she finally got someone on the phone.
"Hey, El-oh, Edwardo, where's E-wait, what?"
"What is it?"
"Sshh...what do you mean the book is excreting gas?.....No, we don't have any with us.....how can there be sparks?!"
"What's going on, Johnson?"
"The books, boss. They're all steaming and smell like meat, and they're doing loads of weird things. Green and Perez are working on it now."
"That's fascinating! Is it all books?"
"It would seem so....." She listened to the phone again. "Uh huh.....well we're at the station......yeah...............uh huh.....well at least you've contained the gas- Perez? Perez?! I've lost him, boss."
"We should get back. I want to see these books. So....so scientifically incredible."
"Carlos, stop getting a boner over science and get in the van."
~
It took several hours for the frantic scientists to quell the effects of the book crisis. The lab was covered in mess and there was the faint smell of burning lemons coming from somewhere, but no-one could figure it out. They sat down on the sofas in the communal area quietly.
"Cecil was upset, y'know." Ellie said after a few moments.
"What?"
"Your hair. It was on the radio earlier. I'm pretty sure he may have tried to call out a full on mob hit on your barber."
"He....oh god." Carlos, out of habit, leaned his head forward. Normally his hair would cover his face but no longer, so they all saw the expression of exasperation.
"It will be okay, Carlos." Edwardo said. "Your barber will be safe. Probably."
Somehow, Carlos did not find that reassuring.
Natalia, meanwhile, put on the radio.
"....I am going to see if I can make a break for the door." Came Cecil's terrified voice suddenly. "If you don't hear from me again, it has truly been a pleasure. Good night, Night Vale. And goodbye!" The radio cut out.
"Cecil...." Natalia said. "That intern said he'd be okay, right? ....Right?"
Carlos got up and headed for the door, grabbing his coat on the way out. Cecil had been a bit of a creep, but he wasn't gonna let him die. Not if he could help it. Helping people was a scientist's job, wasn't it? That justified it. Nothing personal about it. He still wasn't ready to do personal. Not after Derek.
"Carlos, you wan' help?" Jeffries said.
"No, I just wanna see if he's okay."
"Come back soon, 'kay?" Natalia said, who looked even more worried for Cecil than he did.
"Will do."
~
There was no intern waiting for Carlos when he got to the station door this time. He went up the stairs and immediately felt like there was something else around. Watching him.
There was a deep growling noise coming from the corridor. He swallowed, stepping lightly and quietly so as to avoid detection by whatever was Cecil's management.
He spotted the radio booth to his right about three metres ahead. There was broken glass all around the door and a wooden beam was hanging down. Sparks were flying everywhere and the microphone that gave Carlos anxiety with its radiation level was left abandoned on what remained of the smashed desk. Then he saw an arm from under it.
He ran inside and pushed back the wood on the floor to see an unconscious Cecil with fragments of ceiling plaster in his hair and a cut on his head.
"Cecil...." Carlos whispered, his heart doing a little frightened tap-dance looking down at the injured radio host.
No. NO. His brain said. Think scientifically and non-personally. He needs medical attention and getting out of here. Scientists help people. Scientifically.
The growling noise was getting louder and Carlos decided to just make a break for it. He lifted Cecil up swiftly and headed for the door.
The growling behind him suddenly got very loud and very near very VERY quickly. Carlos ran faster until he was out of the door, Cecil in arms. He didn't dare to look back.
~
"He will be okay. Do not worry." Perez said, after looking the still unconscious Cecil over.
Carlos had reached the lab, asking them to phone the hospital. Instead, Edwardo had told Carlos calmly but firmly to put Cecil on a bed upstairs so he could look at him. Everyone just let him do it the moment he started talking about airways and how bleeding affects state of consciousness.
When Cecil was deemed to be okay, Natalia volunteered to get Cecil home. Carlos was grateful, and told them all that he didn't want Cecil to know that it was him that got him out of the radio station. They had just nodded. They knew Carlos well enough by now to know he had a good enough reason to keep it from him.
The only one who reacted in any other way was Ellie. She just smiled ever so slightly, being the only one who had noticed Carlos' flushed face when he had walked in carrying Cecil.
She knew he needed time still, but she could see it. It was only a slight, and she knew the pain from Derek was still there. But she would still place money on it happening eventually.
After all, as a true scientist, how could she ignore chemistry?