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When Carlos got into this... relationship with Cecil, he was prepared for a lot of things. Night Vale was weird, after all, you had to be prepared for a lot of things. He was prepared for the weird date customs, for the paperwork, for the effort ignoring the cameras and microphones would take. He was prepared for the scientists to rib him, he was prepared for Station Management screeching at him through the door when he came to visit Cecil during work once. He was prepared for Cecil's oddities, the strange things to his person and behavior that would make Cecil Cecil, the Voice of Night Vale. Nothing could unnerve him that much, not after the Night of the Third Date fiasco. (No, that's private, you don't get to know that.)
Surprisingly, it was the mundane that ultimately caught him off guard.
Cecil, it seemed, was not very good at keeping his shirt on.
It's not that he didn't like shirts. A visit to Cecil's home after the third date (a lovely affair in which no huge scientific disasters happened but Carlos was certain he'd managed to botch up somehow) showed Carlos that Cecil in fact had lots of shirts (and pants) and that he liked to leave them all over the floor and chairs. He'd spent a good five minutes apologizing and cleaning, shoving the shirts into drawers and closets as he accidentally confessed the amount of time he took in trying to find an outfit suitable for their date and just hadn't had time to clean up and forgot all about it. It was, rather, that Cecil seemed to rarely keep one on his person.
Carlos certainly wasn't complaining. Cecil was rather nice to look at, all lean and wiry muscle moving mesmerizingly under scrutiny. And Cecil would wear a shirt when he left the house, usually a nice lavender button-down that accented the dark purple and black tattooed tentacles that twisted their way over desert-tanned skin. It's not like he wouldn't, yeesh, that would be rude. But when Carlos started spending more time at Cecil's he realized that the majestic Voice of Night Vale, capitals and all, would almost always end up returning home shirtless.
Assistant Diane had once told Carlos that she'd seen Cecil running away from a report gone awry with mic in hand, headphones around his neck, and shirt trailing behind him like right out of a comic book. (An intern was left at the scene, trying to clean up the rest of the equipment. A moment of silence for Intern Katherine.)
Once, when Carlos came over after Cecil had a huge argument with Station Management to comfort his boyfriend, he found Cecil sitting in the break room, head in his hands and a viscus lavender slime on his very bare torso.
Carlos just accepted it for a while, in that sort of way that you just accept things when it comes to Night Vale. But after awhile, he started getting curious. It made no logical sense, really. Why did Cecil have a thing for taking his shirt off sometimes? It seemed like he'd strip like he was Superman sometimes, and Carlos didn't think too badly of himself when he admitted that it was a little... silly.
Silly's a good way to put it.
But one does not just ask their boyfriend “why do you strip so much?”. It's not a common inquiry in the world of boyfriendhood, as far as he can tell. Then again, this is Night Vale. Still, though! Carlos isn't a Night Vale native, and he still likes proper “rest of the world” manners.
So instead he just resorts to staring at Cecil blankly, attempting to telepathically communicate this inquiry. Truthfully he wouldn't be surprised if that tactic worked.
As luck would have it, Cecil is not telepathic. In fact, Cecil started to question Carlos as to why he'd go off into blank headspace while staring at him.
This continued for a few weeks, maybe two or three of quiet observation, quiet notes jotted down in the corners of his mind about the circumstance of Cecil's bizarre shirt-losing tendencies, before Carlos came to some sort of conclusion.
Unfortunately, this conclusion was just fucking ask him already you have no idea whatsoever.
So he did. Falteringly. Awkwardly, as is custom, because this was his boyfriend he was asking a question of and not a science experiment he couldn't figure out. And when he did ask the immediate response was a sudden creeping red flush and a quick burst of “it'snotabigdealhonest.”
Which, of course, prompted Carlos to ask further.
“What's not a big deal?” He asked, leaning forward. Cecil was sitting in the chair opposite, having just pulled on one of the closest lying shirts after coming back home from work. Cecil looked so uncomfortable, tattoos twisting under his skin anxiously, face an almost-glowing red. “You can tell me.” Cecil squirmed around uncomfortably, eyes scrunched together and jaw clenched. He whined when Carlos leaned forward to hold his hands. “I mean it, okay?”
Concerned, Cecil still looking like he was going to spontaneously combust at any given moment (and this possibility not entirely out of the question in Night Vale), Carlos stood up to kiss the man's forehead, to the side of his third eye. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want t-”
“They're slimy!” Cecil burst out suddenly, tattoos twisting and third eye marking glowing. “They're slimy and it's gross I'm sorry!”
Carlos blinked. Carlos blinked again. Carlos opened his mouth to say something, and ended up just blinking once more.
“What's slimy?”
But Cecil was squirming, twisting to get his hands out of Carlos's and twist his way out of the shirt because what was that pushing up against his skin what. And then they just snaked their way out of Cecil's skin, thick and black, the tattoos coming to life and twisting in the air around the pair and wow, okay, they are slimy. They dripped a dark lavender ooze all down Cecil, trailing thick strands of glop down and Cecil seemed to barely move in time before they slimed the couch. He ran, tentacles sliding up and down his arms, hugging his body and distinctly touching nothing else.
“Cecil? Cecil, wait!” Carlos ran after him, definitely worried, and now sort of understanding exactly why shirt-losing was a thing.
He found Cecil in the bathtub, looking absolutely miserable, thick black and purple tentacles squirming out of his body. Lavender eyes stared at Carlos, embarrassment and unhappiness prominent in those irises. His pants stuck to his body, gooped up and gross.
Carlos resisted the urge to lean against the door, arms crossed, and say in a sardonic tone So, that's what's slimy. Instead he went over to his boyfriend, carding fingers through white hair. “So. What's all the fuss about?”
Cecil looked just about ready to cry. “I- I'm sorry you found out like this, Carlos, but I'm... I'm disgusting!”
“No, you're not.”
“Yes I am!” Cecil looked away, one hand holding tightly to the one arm closest to Carlos. “Nobody else has this gross yuck on them after they defend themselves, I'm the only one that soils all his clothes whenever something happens. They said it'd go away soon enough, it was just a phase, it's just hormones Cecil, they'll stop oozing when you get older but now I'm older and they're still gross whenever they manifest and if I keep them out they finally get normal and velveteen but whenever they come out they're all gross and I keep ruining my shirts because I can't control them half the time they just come out when I'm stressed so I started just taking my shirt off when they might be in danger but sometimes I forget and this stuff doesn't come out half the time so they're just ruined and-”
Carlos put a finger to Cecil's mouth, shooshing him quietly. “Calm down, love. This is why you come home shirtless?” A mute nod. “Why don't you just keep one at work, just in case something happens?”
“They keep disappearing,” Cecil bemoaned. “I tried but no matter what they just keep disappearing so I just wash off in the bathroom and continue because, you know, I can't just leave work, you know how Station Management gets. I'm so glad nobody mentions it, usually, but- Oh, Carlos, I'm so sorry I just-”
There wasn't much else Carlos could do but hug him, so he did. Slimy tentacles and all.
“It's okay, Cecil. Really. I was just curious.” He assured the wailing radio host, who at this point was bawling, not choked and restrained like the day Carlos nearly died, but completely mouth slack and head tilted back with thick inky tears crawling down his cheeks. “You're fine; you're not gross; where did you even get that idea; you're perfect, slimy tentacles and all.”
Large watery eyes blinked up at Carlos's face when he pulled back, petting white hair soothingly. “Y- you mean it?”
It was uncommon for Cecil's voice to break, and such a quaver stabbed Carlos right though the heart. He almost crushed Cecil's face to his chest, nuzzling into him. “Of course I do.”
Cecil threw his arms around Carlos in return, tentacles catching him in a silky, gooey net as well. Carlos jumped, but otherwise didn't make complain about the arms slicking slime through his (perfect) hair and on his (luckily very waterproof and hopefully slimeproof) lab coat that Cecil loved so much. He was laughing, Cecil was, choking laughs that hiccup on accidental tears as he smooshed his face into Carlos.
They stayed there for awhile, laughing and hugging, gooping themselves up more than Cecil usually ever did because he found that his extra limbs were good for hugging every part of Carlos and he didn't feel like putting them away just yet. Carlos found that he didn't really mind.
(Later Cecil apologized all in a rush when he realized that Carlos's clothes, hair, and just about everything was tinted lavender with slime. Carlos found that his lab coat was not actually slimeproof, but the lavender stains were actually kind of pretty. It didn't come out of his shirt though. Once again, he found that he didn't really mind.
Though he figured he'd start working on a slimeproof fabric, just in case.)