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As Carlos tries not to squirm on the oozing couch, he thinks this could be worse. He could be being sacrificed, or playing Dead Man's Battleship (which, according to Cecil, is always fun on a Fridays night if you're okay with spending most of the next day picking up the loser's body parts.) So it could be a lot worse.
Cecil's father (who has been staring at him with pitch black eyes from within the summoning circle while Cecil and his mother chattered in some clicking and hissing tongue Carlos is sure isn't from this world) opens his mouth and lets out a long high pitched drone. Carlos covers his ears and Cecil and his mother stop talking. Cecil gasps, and his mother hisses, reaching out and swatting her husband with a long black tentacle. Cecil smiled sheepishly at Carlos. "Please ignore my father, dear Carlos. He's only joking."
There's another high pitched noise and Cecil replies with his own, and Carlos is seriously lost right now because he's had no idea what was going on for the past two hours they've been here, but he feels like he should be insulted. He also feels like he should be running away right now, but that is the normal "holy-fuck-what-level-of-hell-am-I-in" Night Vale feeling, so he ignores it.
Cecil begins having what seems to be an argument with his father, noises getting higher and higher until Carlos can no longer hear them, but he can see Cecil's mouth opening and closing. Cecil's mother turns to him as the vague notion to run a test or two on Cecil's vocal cords comes over him (those test would so not include seeing how loud Cecil could moan because that was a completely inappropriate thought to be having while you're meeting someone's parents (except that was exactly what those tests included.) She stares at him for a long moment before one of her tentacles wraps around his shoulders and she gives him a bone chilling- but, none the less, friendly- smile. "You're going to die one day, Carlos." she rasps. "And it's going to involve a lemon farmer and a herd of alpacas. But, that won't be for some time." She let's out an ear splitting shriek, making Cecil and his father fall silent. "He is accepted." she said to Cecil, and Cecil grinned, making some more clicking noises. Cecil's dad just glares, obsidian eyes narrowing.
They leave not long after that, hand in hand as they stroll through the streets of Old Night Vale. "Mom loved you," Cecil commented, kissing Carlos' cheek. "And dad'll come around, I'm sure of it."
"Yeah." Carlos says, because, really? He'd just been given a death omen by his sort of mother in law (because, marriage? So in the cards. Carlos may or may not have a ring stashed away deep in his lab drawers that he may or may not have bought in Cecil's size.) "You're parents are nice."
Cecil's smile gets impossibly wider, and it makes Carlos smile in return. "I'm glad you think so." He presses a kiss to Carlos' cheek.
"Mmhmm." Carlos swings their arms and leans his head on Cecil's shoulder. "So, I had some tests I wanted to run…"
"Oh?" Cecil drawls, raising an eyebrow, because "running some tests" became less an actual thing and more an innuendo a long time ago. "Would you like some help?"
"I would love some."