Chapter Text
"He's running out the door,
He's running out,
He runs, runs, runs, ruuuuuu- What?"
The mic dropped from Kevin’s mouth to his side, and he turned his sight onto his fellow bar patrons. Searching the crowd, he finally spotted the one individual who had dared interrupt his expertly mournful falsetto with their undignified cough. Under his eyeless stare, the man (a quick Mind's Eye analysis revealed his name was Elliot) shrank back.
"It's just," Elliot said shakily, "you've been singing the same song over and over again. Three times already. I like Radiohead as much as the next person, but you're really bringing down the mood here at karaoke night."
The rest of the bar audience grumbled agreements and nodded their heads to each other. One couple had the booklet with the track listings spread open between them; they kept eyeing the karaoke machine with undisguised annoyance.
Kevin lifted his nose defiantly. "I've paid for my songs in advance," he explained with a sniff. "I get to decide how I use them, and I'm going to use them to grieve. Now if you don't mind..."
Just as Kevin was about to jump back into his song, he noticed Elliot's eyebrows fall. "I'm sorry. What happened, Kevin?" the man asked.
The newly reestablished radio host turned his face away. "Oh, I... I'm sure you don't care about silly old Kevin's problems." The crowd, perhaps moved by the lack of a happy smile present on his face, began to vocalize their disagreement with his assessment. "Someone special- someone I loved- has left me." A chorus of awwwws filled the bar room.
"Okay," Elliot conceded with a nod. "Okay, Kevin. I know what it's like to lose a boyfriend. You go right ahead and keep singing. We don't mind. Just... maybe something other than Creep?"
Carlos wasn't your boyfriend, Kevin's thoughts hissed at him. He never was. He never would have been. And in the end, he hated you. He hated your guts. He hated you like everyone hates you. Listen to their fake sympathy.
The radio host sighed. "If I must." He leaned over to the karaoke machine, canceled the current song, and quickly typed in a different selection. The couple with the track list looked at each other and shrugged, caught in indecisive inaction. It didn't matter what song they picked. They weren't going to be getting their turn that night.
"This is the way you left me," Kevin sang as his new song started up. "I'm not pretending-"
As one, the gathered audience all groaned. The radio host had sung this particular song for over an hour at the previous karaoke night.
"No hope, no love, no glory,
no happy ending-"
***
"It's gratifying to see so many familiar, smiling faces." Lauren Mallard, Kevin's former boss and colleague from StrexCorp, and all around broken septic tank of a person, stood at the front of that night's town meeting. She'd insisted on getting the opportunity to speak, and those who normally organized such community events were just intimidated by her enough to allow it to happen. No one had forgotten who gave the orders at Strex, and, lacking appropriate leadership themselves, it was easy to fall back into old habits.
If Carlos were still here, Kevin thought ruefully, he'd never let this happen. He would have been our leader, and he would have shown this vile, unctuous woman her place. If Carlos were still here... if Carlos were still... if only I hadn't driven him away...
"I know each and every one of us mourns the loss of StrexCorp and our home dimension," Lauren continued, before interrupting herself to pantomime tears streaming down her face. The act was not helped by the perpetual, insipid smile that couldn't be displaced. "I know that was a dark day for me, my friends, just as it was for all of you. But I say to you now, why should we let those nasty Night Valeans ruin a good thing? Or keep a perfectly good copyright all to themselves, am I right? That's why I would like to propose that we start up a brand new branch of StrexCorp here! In this... lovely little town in the middle of literal nowhere."
Foul, nauseating shrew, Kevin thought, narrowing his eyes. She's going to ruin everything. "It's called Desert Bluffs Too," he spoke without bothering to raise his hand. He put as much sunshine as he could stomach into his voice. They had no sun in the Otherworld, but he could still remember what its warmth felt like as it beamed proudly over the original Desert Bluffs, back in the old days.
Back before Strex had taken that away from him, too.
"Desert Bluffs Two?" Lauren repeated. "Really?"
"No," Kevin answered with a smile. "Of course, you would have known it was called Desert Bluffs Too if you had been at the meeting in which we decided it. That was the very same day you arrived in town all parched and dried up like an old prune. Which is weird, considering you don't have to drink water in the Otherworld. I guess you didn't know that, either, did you?"
"You don't?" Lauren asked, the smile faltering. "Oh. Well, that's... nevermind." In the next moment, her facial expression was back in full force, and turned solely on the radio host. "Kevin. Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. Dearest Kevin, isn't it marvelous that you're here, too? I'll be relying on you especially to help with my plans, my friend. Together, we can rebuild our old lives and get New StrexCorp Synergists up and running! What do you say, Kevin?"
Many faces in the town meeting hall turned to look at Kevin, as if he had any sort of authority. It had never been Kevin they looked to before. It was always Carlos. Carlos was the one who decided such things. Carlos always knew the best option moving forward. If Carlos were here... If Carlos were here...
But he wasn't, and Kevin could feel his resolve crumbling away under the expectant smile of Lauren Mallard. He, too, remembered whom it was giving the orders. "Whatever you say, Lauren."
Lauren's eyes narrowed at him. "Good. Now, I was thinking," she continued, barreling ahead as though she never doubted Kevin would acquiesce to her wishes, "the new headquarters of Strex is going to require a site somewhere in town large enough to house everything I have in mind. Cubicles, break rooms, my spacious office, machine gun security... you know, the works? I've been walking around your precious little town, and I've noticed plenty of buildings here in- what did you call it? Desert Bluffs Tú?- but absolutely none of them have that certain je ne sais quoi I'm looking for. Therefore, I am going to require a brand new building, and I just know if we all pitch in together, it will spring forth from the ground in no time!"
Several people chattered dubiously among themselves at this proposal, but only one stood up to oppose it. "That's going to be difficult, if not impossible," Brian the Conscientious Objector said, living up to his title. "The giants built everything here in Desert Bluffs Too, not us. And they've already taken off. Everyone here? We're pretty much all office workers and salarymen. I don't think a single one of us has built anything more complicated than a patio barbecue."
Lauren's smile remained, but her eyes betrayed her displeasure. "I'm sure we'll manage," she said through gritted teeth. "What was your name again?"
Brian blanched. "Uh. Brian?"
"Brian," she repeated. "Brian. Just goes right ahead and speaks his little mind, doesn't he? Enjoys contradicting people and just... dampening everyone's day. Bri-an. B... r... Mmhmm..." Lauren made a note, causing the Conscientious Objector to turn an even ghostlier shade of white. He promptly sat down, after which, she continued. "Now, the question of where we should build our new corporate headquarters. I did see a few unoccupied buildings on the edge of town. Looked like some pathetically tiny house, next to a building full of broken equipment? Tsk, what an eyesore! I don't think anyone will object-" She glared at Brian, but he said nothing. "-if we tear those worthless buildings down."
Kevin could feel his face heating up. "Lauren," he said, his voice sharper than he had intended. He swallowed, cramming his disgusting, negative feelings back down where they belonged. "Lauren, those were the first buildings in town. They're historic. Do you really need the headquarters to be right there? You have a whole desert. Why not build... anywhere else?"
"Kevin," Lauren said on an exhale, her disappointment in him clear and undisguised. "Kevin, Kevin, Kevin... Is that sentimentality I hear? You know what StrexCorp says about sentimentality. Just because some house or other is old doesn't make it worth hanging onto. Age does not denote worth! We must destroy the past so the future can thrive."
You dripping dumpster bag, Kevin thought. You rotting sack of rat droppings. He didn't protest again.
***
Kevin expected to feel more the day Carlos's laboratory and tiny, one-room house were torn down. He expected his heart to be ripped asunder with every wall that fell. He expected his lungs to pop from his wailing. He expected his kidneys and liver and appendix to all fail and burst simultaneously the moment the dust settled.
And yet, the calmness he felt surprised him, even as he observed the total destruction of the past near-decade of his life. How many hours had he spent lounging around in that laboratory, watching Carlos putter away with his incomprehensible science? How many hours had he spent sitting on a workstool, wistfully dreaming of a future that would never come?
Their daily routine together had been soothing and expected, the same every day. It was a comfortable rhythm capable of quieting all the chaotic noise within Kevin's head. Often, he found himself relaxing within the scientist's presence, and the tight control he held over his features would slacken.
And then Carlos would turn away from whatever experiment he'd been working on, and Kevin would remember himself and contort back into shape. He won't know you're happy if you're not smiling!
Most of the laboratory glassware Carlos used were former jam jars, but Kevin remembered the day when they'd found a single, unbroken Erlenmeyer Flask lying on its side in the barren desert. He could still see the way Carlos's face changed when he saw it, the way it shifted into a look the radio host didn't recognize.
"Oh my god, Kevin! Look! It's... it's perfect!" the scientist had said. "I cannot believe I just used that word. Nothing is perfect. But this flask is... near perfect."
For the rest of the day, the sight had perplexed Kevin until, lying by himself at night, he realized something startling. The sparkles in Carlos's eyes, the small grin that graced his mouth, the way he kept looking at the flask as if it were the most scientifically interesting object in the whole other world... Carlos had been happy. Was he happy? Was that what happiness was supposed to look like? If it was... had Kevin been doing it wrong all these years?
He couldn't remember what had made him happy while working for Strex. He remembered smiling, but he didn't remember why.
Carlos made him happy. He wanted to be happy while in his company. He wanted to smile, and to see him smile in return. He wanted to be a reason the scientist smiled.
He wanted to be the reason Carlos was happy. He wanted to matter.
But in the end, he didn't matter, just as the laboratory and little house didn't matter. They used to matter, but they were just piles of rubble and rock now that Lauren had her way with them. Tomorrow, there wouldn't even be rubble left, for it would be all cleared away and a brand new StrexCorp building would take its place and his nightmare would start all over again.
But that was tomorrow. For now, Kevin wandered through the sandstone chunks that once made up his life. Jagged shards of glass and metal lay scattered throughout, evidence of the equipment the scientist had once been so proud of, including the remains of his computer. Breaking it had been the reason Carlos gave him for leaving. This piece of trash was the catalyst that had told him to run back to Night Vale and never set eyes on this place or its people ever again.
Kevin wished they'd never found the damn thing.
He moved on, sweeping the Mind's Eye through the wreckage until something shiny and unbroken caught its attention. Kevin bent down and picked the mysterious object up, turning it this way and that in his hands as he examined it for any damage. There was none. Perhaps Status Quo had fixed it, or maybe it had always just been this lucky.
In either case, Kevin rescued the surviving Erlenmeyer Flask and took it home with him. He didn't know what he would do with it, or even why he wanted it in the first place, but he set it on his windowsill anyway so he could watch the way the blinking red light refracted through its glassy surface.
***
"Is that a smile I see?" she'd asked, leaning over the chair he'd been strapped into. His arms were bound and his head had been tied down, so now he could only watch them with his eyes. "I don't think it is."
See, this is why I don't sleep, Kevin thought to himself in a rare moment of lucidity, the dream he was experiencing pulling back just enough for him to remember he was not awake. The cactus tonic had never held appeal for him, because if he slept, he dreamed, and if he dreamed...
His dreams were real, but only in the sense that they had once happened, though were no longer actually happening. Still, he didn't care to remember these feelings, the hopes and the fears associated with a man who used to exist but no longer did.
This man had been named Kevin, and within the dream he was tied to a chair and was attempting to smile.
"I... I am smiling, Lauren," he pleaded, his dry lips stretched as far across his teeth as he could still manage. His cheeks burned from extended use, and they quivered with the effort of holding the expression for so long. "I'm smiling. I'm smiling!"
"Kevin," Lauren said, her voice, while still bright and cheery, was also admonishing and disappointed in him. "Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. This smile? This smile you're showing me right now? This smile that's so wide, so toothy and brilliant... so... very... fake."
"N-no, it's not fake, I-I promise," he begged. "Please, Lauren, I'm trying."
But Lauren was already shaking her head. "You're. Not. Trying. Hard. Enough." She raised a well-manicured hand and beckoned the surgeon over to her side. He carried with him a shining, sharp scalpel, holding it aloft so it caught the light. "That's your problem, Kevin," Lauren continued as the doctor loomed over him. "You never give it your one hundred and ten percent."
"No, n-no no, please, Lauren, I'll-I'll try harder! I'll try harder, please!"
"Do you know the story of All Smiles' Eve, Kevin?" Lauren asked as she backed away. Her eyes were alight with religious fervor. "You should."
He did. He knew the story of All Smiles' Eve, as every word had been beaten into him until he could recite it, frontwards and backwards, from memory. He needed to know it if he were to become the Smiling God's mouthpiece, or so Strex said. He would be the one to spread this glorious gospel for all to hear, a figurehead for the faithful.
He knew the story of the Good family and their quest for smiles, as daughter Falisha carved into the flesh of her loved ones with a piece of broken glass until they all bore permanent expressions of joy upon their bloody, ruined faces. He knew of the ecstasy they experienced once their outsides finally matched their insides. He knew of the Smiling God's pleasure, and how it rewarded them for their devotion with eternal digestion.
He'd known the story, but he had never truly understood the story until he felt the surgeon's scalpel tear through skin and muscle, extending his own smile inch by excruciating inch, first one side, then the other, while his screams bounced reverentially off the cold, clinical walls. He screamed until those screams were drowned out by the blood that filled his mouth. He screamed because it was the only way he still knew how to pray.
And all the while, Lauren Mallard had watched.
There had been a time once when Kevin considered himself handsome, with his high cheekbones and unmarred skin that was complimented by pale hair and golden eyes. He could gaze at himself in the mirror for ages and think, "Yes, Kevin, this right here is a good-looking fellow."
He didn't want to appear ungrateful after his procedure, especially not out loud where Lauren might hear. He was the mouthpiece of the Smiling God, as they kept telling him, and it was required that he look the part. If he wasn't smiling at all times, then how would anyone know he was happy? And he was happy. He was happy. He was happy.
He could not afford to not be happy.
And yet, when he looked at himself in the mirror and saw for the first time the scars he'd been left with, the scars that forever changed his face into one he did not know, the scars that proved his devotion to a Smiling God he'd had no choice but to love...
Kevin had started to cry.
***
Carlos always claimed that taking the cactus tonic and sleeping through the night had helped him, allowing his emotions to settle so he could think clearer during the daytime hours. He claimed it had been good for his mental health. Carlos had said a lot of things that turned out to not be true, specifically the bit about not leaving the Otherworld.
Kevin did not think allowing himself to dream had had any beneficial effects. What was the point of dwelling on the life of a person who had been so thoroughly eradicated?
"It's another beautiful day in The Bluffs, listeners," Kevin said into his microphone, falling into the comfortably familiar cadence of his radio show. "Expect blue skies and a blessed, ominous rumbling sensation to shake your possessions off the walls at around two o'clock, just like it does every day!
"Now, here's traffic: I don't know if you've noticed, listeners, but we don't have any traffic! That's because, believe it or not, we don't have any cars here in Desert Bluffs Too. Frank Donelly, who lives atop the northwest bluff, has started building DBT's very first car out of gas canisters and hollowed-out coconuts, but he reports that progress has halted due to an unforeseen coconut shortage here in the Desert Otherworld. Well, you know what I always say. 'Anything can be a coconut if you try hard enough. Tumbleweeds. Cacti. Funny-shaped rocks. The skulls of your enemies. Anything.'"
Kevin held the community calendar printout in his hand, and was just about to read off the scheduled spider infestation for Monday evening when the sound of his studio's door opening, closing, and the following click, click, click of heels upon the tiled flooring alerted him of his unscheduled yet not unexpected guest.
"Oh, listeners, what a delightful surprise!" he said, cranking the level of smile in his radio voice up to eleven. "Former CEO of StrexCorp, Lauren Mallard, has just walked into my recording booth. Uninvited, I might add."
"Former CEO of StrexCorp and future CEO of StrexCorp, Desert Bluffs To Division," Lauren added cheerfully into the guest microphone, taking a moment to wipe a little viscera off its surface. She sat in the chair opposite him and crossed her legs.
"It's Desert Bluffs Too. And just what do you think you're doing here, Lauren?" Kevin asked, matching her level of cheer and raising her a passive-aggressive joviality. He was not going to let her beat him, not here. Not in the radio station he'd built with his own two hands.
"Well, Kevin," she said as if in friendly, scripted conversation with an old pal, "I know how excited you are about the new corporate headquarters of StrexCorp. Why shouldn't you be? At Strex, we always considered ourselves a family. Ah, yes, we certainly did. We were a family built on capitalism and a strong work ethic. And we should always be happy when one of our family members succeeds at something they've worked hard for all their life." She paused. "That family member being me. I'm the one succeeding. Be happy for me."
Kevin feigned shock. "Oh, Lauren, I would never have guessed you meant yourself. You are just so very good at being humble!"
"Yes, I am, aren't I?" Lauren agreed, steepling her fingers as she stared down the radio host. "Oh, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin... we were a family, weren't we, Kevin? Remember how we were your family?"
An image flashed through Kevin's mind: faces he had no names for, people with laughter like musical notes, and wide, beautiful smiles. (Were those smiles? He could no longer tell.) He should have known them, should have recognized them by the curls in their hair and the shape of their eyes. (Eyes... eyes... He'd given up his eyes for something he also didn't remember. Something... something... someone? It no longer mattered.)
"The only family worth having, Lauren," Kevin parroted back at her. How could he ever forget? Lauren had personally ensured he knew that fact. She'd ensured a lot of things in his life, just as she'd ensured the last natural sight he ever saw would be her smiling face.
"You see, that's why I'm here today, Kevin," Lauren went on. "Your family needs help. I need help. I know I said I was successful earlier, which I clearly will be, but... well, the charmingly incompetent members of this desert otherworld community I tasked with constructing my brand new corporate headquarters have- how to put this lightly-? failed spectacularly. Catastrophically, one might even say."
Kevin nodded and snapped his fingers. "I thought I heard a thunderous crash coming from your building site earlier. Any injures?"
"Many."
"Well, as my dear old father used to say, 'Kevin, you step on that rusty nail, you just walk it off and pretend it never happened. Like a man.' Oh, he was a great father." In truth, Kevin didn't know if he'd had a great father or not. He couldn't even be sure he'd ever had a father in the first place, or if he'd sprung from a mud-womb fully formed. But he did like to tell such anecdotes of a person who may have, at one point, existed, if just to pretend someone had cared enough about him to offer up life advice.
"As it turns out, just stacking rocks on top of each other is no way to create a sound structure." Lauren shrugged her shoulders, as if the loss of life and limb of her workers was one big old whoopsy-daisy. "Who knew?"
"I knew, Lauren," Kevin answered. "I knew. And anyway, you were warned that nobody here has any sort of construction know-how." He placed his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand. "What a shame the giants are nowhere to be seen. Everything in Desert Bluffs was built by them."
In turn, Lauren set both of her elbows on the desk and leaned forward, the corners of her mouth twisting ever upward, and her eyes narrowed to slits. "Oh?" she intoned sweetly. "But you see, a little birdy told me that that's not quite true. Is it? A little birdy told me that this very radio station was not, in fact, built by giants. Now, I wonder who that intrepid builder could have been?"
Kevin already knew he'd lost, but he continued smiling regardless. He would not give her the satisfaction. "Why, you're talking about me, aren't you?"
"I sure am!" Lauren admitted, the Cheshire grin still spread across her face. "What an achievement this place is, especially to have been built by a blind man. Truly astonishing, Kevin. That's why, as of tomorrow morning, you are officially in charge of my construction crew! You will build StrexCorp anew. Isn't that fantastic?"
You leaking pustule, Kevin thought bitterly. You noxious gasbag. You overgrown sewage dump. "And you came here today, to my radio station, so you could ask me on the air. Everyone will hear my answer. How clever of you."
Lauren turned her face away and laughed, and it had all the musicality of a car crash. "That's cute," she said in a low tone, once her giggles had faded away. "After everything we've been through together, you still think I'm asking."
I hate you. "Well, how could I say no to you, Lauren?"
***
He didn't think about it. He didn't have to think about it, since the answer to all of his problems seemed so very clear before him. He took nothing as he left and didn't even look back as he trekked out of town under a moonless night sky. He took nothing because she had already taken everything from him. Again.
Bad enough she wants to rebuild Strex, he thought as he climbed a sand dune. Bad enough she wants to rebuild Strex in my Desert Bluffs Too. But now she wants me to build it for her? No. No, not again. Not again. Not again not again not again- "Not again!" he shouted into his silent, empty surroundings. "I won't do it. I won't do it again. I won't. I won't."
One foot in front of the other, out into endless, sandy landscape he trudged. Anything is better than that fate, he thought. Anything. Anything.
Anything.
Anything.
Anything.
Anything?
Is there even anything left out there for me?
The original Desert Bluffs had turned its back on him. Why shouldn't it? He'd betrayed them and they had no reason to forgive him.
Carlos had turned his back on him. And why shouldn't he? He'd been betrayed as well, and why should Kevin ever be allowed to earn his forgiveness?
But Desert Bluffs Too... that was supposed to have been his fresh start, and even they were bending their will to the whims of Lauren Mallard, and history would just repeat itself as it always did. His past was inescapable. He was doomed to a cycle of abuse and misery, mutilation and torture.
Receiving and giving.
It was simply what happened when one worked for Strex. The abused eventually rose up the ranks and were promoted to the abuser. Smiling was the one true way to show your happiness, and happiness was the only way in which you could live. To be unhappy, to dissent, to rebel, to riot and to resist... these were all good ways to get oneself or someone else killed.
But to give in? To give over your all, your being, your flesh and your blood? This was survival, and to survive meant seeing a new day. Survival meant doing what you must because there was no other choice. Survival was doing what you were told, when you were told, by those who outranked you.
His one singular act of rebellion was to hide The Mind's Eye from view. Strex could never be allowed to know he possessed it; otherwise they would have just taken that from him, too. He'd forced it down, dulling its strength to the point it could no longer be seen when in use. Now, as far away from Desert Bluffs as he could be, Kevin doubted it would ever be seen again, even if he'd wanted it to be. Cut off from the old gods who'd bestowed it upon him, it was simply too weak to ever recover.
This, too, was survival.
Somewhere along the way, Kevin had forgotten what it was he was surviving for. Maybe it had been Strex all along that gave his life purpose. After all, they had given him a direction, a job, and a meaning. Under StrexCorp's guidance, he'd been propped up as the one true mouthpiece of The Smiling God, and spread its love to all who would listen.
For as the Voice of Desert Bluffs, the populace had had no choice but to listen to him.
Strex had physically blinded him, it was true, but in doing so they'd opened his metaphorical eyes to something larger than himself. He had to believe The Smiling God was real, that this mortal suffering meant something, that by turning his back upon the Old Gods of Desert Bluffs, he wasn't ultimately dooming himself and his town. If the Smiling God wasn't real... If he'd been spreading lies... lies far larger than the ones he'd already been spreading...
No. No, he couldn't dwell on that. He needed the Smiling God to be real, and doubt would only weaken his resolve. If he thought about it too long, his head would hurt, and his eyeless sockets would sting, and the muscles of his cheeks would ache.
Yes, Strex had blinded him, and in turn, he'd become deaf to the cries that surrounded him, to the pleas and the sobbing, the begging and the screaming. If his fellow employees would only do as he did, they could be just as happy as he was! They could smile all day every day, and nobody would ever be sad again. There'd be no need for all the fighting, for the violence and the punishment.
Just smile, he'd think to himself while he stood complicit by Lauren's side. Smile and it will all be over. Smile, and the happiness will follow.
But then... that was just the biggest lie he'd told yet, wasn't it? He had now seen for himself what real happiness looked like. He'd seen the way Carlos's eyes lit up when they'd found that Erlenmeyer Flask. He'd seen the way the scientist looked when Cecil held him in his arms after their long separation, and they'd both laughed and cried and kissed, all at the same time, in confusing, beautiful, messy joy.
Carlos's definition of happiness did not match Kevin's, and it hurt to watch him that day when he was at last reunited with the man he loved. Witnessing Carlos and Cecil's love blooming in front of him, Kevin had realized he wanted that, wanted to be involved in that, wanted to be that. He hadn't known how empty he truly felt until he'd seen exactly what he didn't have illustrated in excruciatingly saccharine detail.
He had forgotten, at some point in his StrexCorp-life, what it felt like to desire love.
There was a great, bottomless pit within Kevin's heart, and that gaping hole in his chest had hurt too much every time he imagined the scientist leaving him. You'll never have to go through with this, he'd thought to himself, even as he finalized his contingency plan by digging out the basement under his home. Carlos won't ever leave you. He said he wouldn't. He said you're his friend, and he is so good, so very, very good. He wouldn't lie about that. He couldn't.
And yet, 'friend' didn't feel right when Kevin considered Carlos. The word had been used and abused too much in the past, stretched and twisted by people like Lauren, who often referred to Kevin as 'friend.' She must have been using it in a much different fashion than Carlos did, because it didn't seem like the scientist actually wanted anything from Kevin beyond companionship.
The closest comparison Kevin could come up with was his relationship with Irwin, the former Scoutmaster of Desert Bluffs. They had called each other 'friend' as well, but Irwin had also been Kevin's 'lover' for awhile, and thus the definitional waters seemed a bit muddied. There was a point in which the radio host thought that perhaps he and the Scoutmaster could have had something together, but Irwin had ultimately left him, too.
'Friend' or 'lover'? What was the difference? 'Lover' felt more appropriate, because Kevin loved Carlos. He was certain he loved Carlos. He didn't understand Carlos, or his strange, unappealing Science, but he loved him all the same. Gentle, quiet Carlos, who treated him just as he'd treat anyone. Carlos, who spoke to him like a person and looked at him without fear. Carlos, who didn't ask anything of him and didn't even seem to notice when the smile would slip and he'd forget to put it back on.
If this wasn't love, then what was it?
If he'd really been paying attention, maybe he would have realized his mistake. Carlos had never looked at Kevin the way he looked at Cecil. The Mind's Eye, incapable of seeing things that did not exist, had made note of that fact, but Kevin chose to dismiss it. The Eye was originally a tool made for exposing secrets, not for stating the obvious.
The Mind's Eye may have tried to warn him that the scientist's affections lay elsewhere, but it had no qualms whatsoever in allowing him to watch while Cecil received those affections. It had no conscience of its own, no morals or societal expectations to stop it from what it was made to do.
Kevin knew it was wrong to invade their privacy. He also knew it was wrong to swing the field of vision around so that it matched what Cecil must have been seeing. Even more wrong still that he should pretend he was Cecil in those moments, gazing into Carlos's eyes and knowing that every word he said was for him and him alone. It was a harmless daydream, at least that's what he told himself, and he'd been so lonely while the scientist was preoccupied.
Surely, Carlos would hate him if he ever found out. He already hated him. Why shouldn't he?
In the end, Carlos had tried to leave, and Kevin had panicked and fallen back on his plan for forced confinement. The pieces of this plot had slotted into place so well; Lauren would have been proud of him, for she had taught him everything he'd needed to know to carry it out. But then, Carlos had resisted. He'd fought and he'd pushed and he never gave in. He did not smile, and he would never smile for Kevin again, not after what he'd done to him.
And in trying to hold onto it, Kevin had crushed the very relationship he'd cherished so much.
"Kevin."
"Son of a- biscuits and gravy!" Kevin narrowly avoided the surprise obscenity that tried to exit his mouth. StrexCorp's version of happiness did not allow for even accidental cussing. Once his heart rate had returned to a normal speed, he whipped around to confront this midnight prankster who had caught him so unaware. "Oh. It's you."
Before him stood the imposing leader of the masked army. Or rather, Kevin thought it was their leader. He'd never been able to tell them apart the way Carlos had, nor had he ever taken the time to learn their names. He couldn't even really be sure this was a member of the army they'd spent so much time with, for they all looked the same to Kevin. Still, it seemed the giant leaders of each army were the only ones to bear the oxen horns upon their skull-like masks, and so, too, did this one.
Kevin looked around one side of the beefy man, and he looked around the other side. "Where is the rest of your army?"
The giant shrugged. "Sometimes, to wander alone. Enlightenment." He gestured grandly around himself, then up to the starry, moonless sky above. The Mind's Eye rolled at the theatrics. Kevin had never been able to get a single straight answer out of any of them. They always seemed too entrenched in their own riddles and secretive, nomadic lifestyles to just say what they meant.
If I wanted to, Kevin thought ruefully, I could see right through your mask and know exactly what you looked like. So much for your mystique. Instead, he said, "That sounds like a delightful way to spend one's night. How simply enchanting."
The masked giant stared at him, unspeaking and unmoving. He stayed this way long enough that Kevin began to feel antsy. He didn't like this silence, so unlike the silences Carlos often fell into while working on his Science. Kevin could prattle on for ages without the scientist saying a word. It was companionable and comfortable, but this?
This was interminable.
"Kevin," the giant at last said, allowing the radio host to finally breathe easily. He reached into one massive pocket and pulled out what at first Kevin thought to be a bottle of cactus tonic.
Oh, Smiling God, does he know? he thought as a prickle of guilt wedged itself into his heart. Does this... this behemoth know what I did to his favorite 'Little Man'? He swallowed down his panic just in time to realize that it was not the sleeping drought at all, but a much smaller container filled with some sort of pearlescent, pink liquid. The glass vial looked minuscule in the army leader's gargantuan hand, but when he offered it to Kevin, it was more the size of a can of soda.
The radio host sloshed its contents around. "And what is this mysterious, magenta fluid?" But when he looked back up again, the giant had already begun to turn away.
"Enlightenment," he explained with accompanying jazz hands, and before Kevin knew it, he had loped off into the darkness of the night.
Kevin held up the glass and tilted it this way and that, letting the fluid shift back and forth. "Well, I'll be," he said quietly. "'Enlightenment,' is it? Heh. The giants were holding out on us. They had alcohol this whole time and didn't share a drop of it."
The radio host enjoyed a classy glass of white wine once in awhile; at least, he did back when such things were readily available. That was about as much frivolous revelry as StrexCorp would allow him. What he was not accustomed to was accepting dubious drinks from enigmatic acquaintances. The last time he'd done that was long before Strex had come to town, and it had ended with him waking up stripped naked in his neighbor's pool with a hangover the size of a bus.
He did know how to have a good time back then.
In any case, what did he have to lose? He'd gotten drunk on far more questionable moonshine before, and he didn't think the giant would intentionally poison him... unless he did know what had happened with Carlos, but Kevin was willing to bet that wasn't the case. Without any more hesitation, he popped the bottle's cork and took a sip.