Chapter Text
TK STRAND
There’s bright, early evening sun filtering through the windows of the loft and it catches the slightly-worn metal on the sobriety chip as TK flips it through his fingers. He’s lying on his back, spread out over the sofa with only a pair of pyjama shorts on and feeling kind of gross; the skin on his back sweating into the leather on the seat beneath him. That’s the problem with leather sofas, he thinks, as he continues to spin the chip absentmindedly. They’re so sticky in summer.
It’s not really summer in the sense that August is almost over, but Austin almost hit 100 degrees today, so TK’s not holding his breath. It’s not that he doesn’t like the warmer months, but Texas is so hot and makes him feel the need to have several showers a day. Also, the AC broke in the loft this month and it took a couple of weeks to get fixed, which meant Carlos buying seven fans from Target and directing them all at the bed so they didn’t have to sleep as far apart from each other as possible. It was a sweet gesture, but cuddling in a wind tunnel isn’t exactly TK’s speed.
The sobriety chip feels heavy in his hand as he flips it again, thinking about the meeting he had a few weeks back. Someone had been talking about their supportive roommate who refused to keep alcohol in the house and the line they used was cliche as all hell, but it’s somehow stuck with him. Home is not a place, it’s a person.
So maybe it’s cliche, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, TK thinks as he flips the chip again. He’s never felt more at home in Austin than he does now, even though the past year has brought him a lot of pain and his relationship with his dad, the whole reason he’s even in Austin, has suffered because of it. TK isn’t sure how to fix it, really. He’s not even sure it's incumbent on him to be doing the fixing. His dad just seems so far away these days.
But this year found him winding his way back to Carlos, and nothing could be more life changing than that. Carlos, who would do everything in his power to fix TK’s problems in an instant, but has learned to let TK fix them on his own; who wants to bubble wrap TK but respects his decisions, even when TK knows that he disagrees with them; who knows his whole heart and understands him on a level that no one else ever really has. Carlos is TK’s home - one that’s been built, strong and impenetrable, around him.
His phone buzzes on the counter and TK sighs, pocketing the chip and rolling off the sofa with a wince. As expected, the leather pinches as it unsticks itself from his bare skin, and he rubs his lower back gingerly as he stalks over to the kitchen, stretching his arms above his head as he goes. He’s had a nice day off, but it’s kind of boring when Carlos is working, and Carlos has been working almost non-stop since he was promoted to detective a few months ago.
Carlos needs a break and TK needs his fiancé's undivided attention for more than a few hours.
He flicks open his phone, silencing a few notifications in their group chat. It appears that Marjan and Mateo are having a spirited debate about the merits of melon, which is not something TK really has much of an opinion on. He scrolls back to the text message at the top of his screen, which is from Carlos telling him that he’s on his way home and asking whether there’s anything that he needs to pick up for dinner. TK shoots back a reply and then immerses himself in the task of pulling the cabbage, lime, cilantro and jalapeño peppers out of the fridge and throwing them on the counter of the island bench. He’s definitively the sous-chef in this relationship, but he thinks pre-chopping vegetables is probably within his skill set.
There’s a red-raw blister on his left thumb that aches as he presses the handle of the knife against it. It might be because he spilled freshly made black coffee on himself a few days ago, he can’t quite remember, but he switches the knife over to his right hand and continues chopping. If there’s one thing that an accident-prone TK will never regret, it’s the fact that he broke his left arm playing field hockey twice in six months, and had to learn to do everything with his right hand. His mom had developed an opinion of field hockey that was akin to her opinion on base jumping and he was never allowed to play it again, but he can call himself truly ambidextrous and that’s kind of awesome. Plus, it’s useful in a right-handed world. He can use scissors properly, for example.
By the time that Carlos slides open the loft door, TK is still finishing up the jalapeños, but he puts the knife down anyway and rinses his hands under the kitchen tap, drying them hurriedly on the towel that hangs over the oven. “Hey baby,” he calls, sliding himself over the main counter in a way that he knows Carlos only pretends to dislike.
“TK,” Carlos sighs, like he’s letting out a breath he’s held in for too long, and catches him around the waist with one arm as TK wraps his still-wet hands around Carlos’ neck.
The kiss Carlos presses against his lips is slow and purposeful; sweet, with the hint of pent-up energy that TK can feel on Carlos’ fingertips as they wind around his waist and scrape against his skin. He tilts his head slightly, pressing back against Carlos in a way that suggests he wants to take this further than he probably should, given Carlos has just walked through the door and is holding a plastic shopping bag and an avocado in his free hand.
“Did you even attempt to dry your hands?” Carlos asks, smiling into TK’s lips as he draws back and shivers, presumably from the multiple droplets of water which originated on TK’s fingertips and are now making their way down Carlos’ neck.
TK grins in response and places another quick kiss against the corner of Carlos’ lips before drawing back and accepting the bag and the avocado from Carlos’ outstretched arm. “Thanks for this,” he says, tossing the avocado lazily in his palm. “I never know how to pick the good ones.”
“You’re going to bruise it doing that,” Carlos replies, leaving a chaste kiss on TK’s forehead and loosening the buttons on his shirt as he crosses the loft towards their bedroom, “and it’s easy to pick the good ones. You just need to take the one from the back that no one else has touched.”
TK’s toes curl involuntarily on the floor as he bites his lip and laughs softly. He’s so painfully in love with everything Carlos does, it’s bordering on insanity. It should be illegal to make his heart thump so loudly in his chest talking about avocados, but Carlos somehow manages to make it both sexy and adorable.
Carlos re-emerges from their bedroom two minutes later, wearing a sleeveless grey T-shirt, navy sweatpants slung low on his hips and a tired, satisfied smile. “Should I bring you a shirt, TK?” he calls, padding towards the kitchen.
“Only if you want me to wear one,” TK calls from behind the island counter, slicing the soft flesh of the avocado with a small paring knife; a pan and oil set out on the stove in anticipation of Carlos’ arrival.
Carlos hums as he moves around the counter, trailing his hand along it as he goes. “I don’t think I do,” he murmurs as he drops a kiss onto TK’s bare shoulder, and then another into the crook of his neck.
“I’m handling a knife right now, Carlos,” TK says, sucking his bottom lip through his teeth and allowing the corners of his mouth to turn up into a smile. “It would be very dangerous to distract me.”
“I’m sure you could put it down for two minutes,” Carlos replies in a low voice, before he stills, his head slotted into the gap between TK’s ear and shoulder; hair tickling TK’s cheekbone. “Why are you cutting that with your right hand?” he asks.
TK turns his head to nuzzle his face into the soft curls, breathing in the familiar, calming scent of Carlos’ cologne and shampoo. “I’ve always been able to do stuff with my right hand, baby,” he says, placing the knife back on the counter just in case.
“But you’re left handed,” Carlos says, furrowing his brow. “I’ve always seen you do things with your left hand.”
“Yeah you have,” TK winks, as Carlos rolls his eyes, accepting another brief kiss before stepping away to unwrap the fish he brought home.
“You’re telling me that my fiancé,” Carlos pauses, his head now stuck halfway inside a cupboard above the main counter as he rummages around for a chopping board, “who has many skills, is also ambidextrous?”
TK leans on the island bench with one outstretched arm and smirks, feeling uncharacteristically proud of himself. “You’ve really never noticed?” he asks.
“Well it’s not like we’ve ever had a handwriting competition,” Carlos retorts, flipping the fish onto the board and filleting them with a speed that makes TK simultaneously impressed and slightly nervous.
TK snorts. “Because I would win,” he says, “your handwriting borders on illegible.” He pauses, admiring Carlos’ ass shamelessly as he finishes filleting the fish and turns towards the stovetop. “I can’t believe you’ve never noticed,” he adds, “some detective you are.”
Carlos, who is now drizzling oil into the warming pan and dropping the fillets into the spice rub he made that morning before work, stills and turns to face him. “You do almost everything with your left hand,” he points out as he flails a spiced-fillet in TK’s direction, chilli flakes falling to the floor, gently. “Except when you use scissors. You use scissors with your right hand.”
“Right hand supremacy,” TK sighs, scraping the chopped avocado into the salad bowl and throwing the unused portion of the vegetables back into the fridge. “Scissors are directional, Carlos,” he points out. “I have no choice but to conform to the will of the masses.”
“Scissors are directional?” Carlos repeats, brow furrowed as he turns back to the fish that’s sizzling in the pan.
“Yeah,” TK replies, “it’s a right-handed world, I’m afraid.”
“Huh,” Carlos says, contemplatively, “I never knew. That’s very impressive, babe.”
“I don’t know,” TK hums, squeezing the lime over the slaw and washing his hands again after throwing the rinds in the trash. “I feel like I need to prove this to you. Do we have any paper in this house?”
“Maybe in the drawer of my nightstand,” Carlos shrugs as the fish sizzles in the pan, filling the space with the familiar, tangy scent of chilli, coriander, garlic and a bunch of other spices TK doesn’t know the names of. “Hey, do we still have that salsa verde in the fridge?”
TK ducks his head in and re-emerges with the small, green bottle in his hand, to find Carlos staring back at him with an unreadable expression on his face.
“What?” he asks, sliding the green jar across the counter.
“Nothing,” Carlos responds, raising his eyebrows and looking away far too quickly to be nonchalant.
TK slides over next to him and ducks his head to press a soft kiss into his bicep, simultaneously dipping his left hand under the hem of Carlos’ shirt and running it up the warm, smooth skin of his back. He thrills in the way the muscles tighten, almost imperceptibly, under his fingertips, and the little sigh that escapes Carlos’ lips as he reaches his shoulder blades. There’s something so thoroughly intoxicating about the way that Carlos’ body reacts to his touch, even though he’s been doing it for years now.
“TK,” he says, with a warning lilt to his voice, “you want to wait until after dinner before getting into this?”
TK shakes his head and drops his hand to cover Carlos’ own on the countertop, running his thumb over the thin, platinum band on Carlos’ ring finger. It was one of his better ideas to buy Carlos a ring, even though it was a month after the actual proposal. TK likes playing with it, if nothing else. “I missed you today,” he whispers, letting his lips travel across Carlos’ shoulder, covered by the T-shirt, to his neck. “You work so hard.”
“So do you,” Carlos points out, lifting a fillet of fish from the pan onto a clean plate. “Do you know how hard it is to get through a full day of work sometimes when I know that you’re sitting at home looking like this?”
TK quirks an eyebrow as Carlos turns back to him, the warm, brown eyes tracking up and down his naked torso pointedly. “You’re my favourite thing to look at, you know that right?” he asks, an easy smile settling on his features.
“You’re only saying that now you know that my right hand is just as useful as my left,” TK sighs, biting the corner of his lip and allowing it to slide through his teeth playfully, revelling in the way that Carlos’ breath hitches softly and he coughs to try and cover it up.
“You’re a menace,” he mumbles, turning off the stove and running his hands under the tap before drying them thoroughly, pausing with the towel between his fingers and looking up at TK questioningly. “Do you think that you could actually—”
“With my right hand?” TK asks, pre-empting the question and stepping back into Carlos’ personal space, whipping the towel out of his hands and throwing it on the end of the counter; well out of reach. “I’ve never really tried, but I feel like we should run an experiment. You know, for science or whatever.”
“For science?” Carlos murmurs with a smirk, before TK covers his lips in a bruising kiss; his tongue sweeping across Carlos’ full bottom lip as he reaches up to encircle Carlos’ neck with his arms again, bringing them closer. He manages to get Carlos’ shirt off, and Carlos manages to flip him one-eighty degrees and shove his ass up onto the countertop, one leg curled around Carlos’ firm thigh, before they’re interrupted by a buzzing sound to their left.
Carlos groans and pulls back, looking for the source of the buzzing as a frustrated noise escapes TK’s throat. “It’s my phone, baby,” he soothes, a little out of breath, “just ignore it.”
“What if it’s important?” Carlos asks, reaching up to frame TK’s face with his hands in a way that always reminds him of Carlos breathing 'Tyler, can I say yes now?' at three-twenty in the morning. That moment was the most important moment of TK’s life to date. This phone call, however? It can definitely wait.
“Nothing’s more important than this,” he pleads, but Carlos has already reached across the counter and deftly plucked up the phone, scanning the caller ID and passing it to TK with a questioning look.
“Who’s Ethan?” Carlos asks, as TK feels the brown eyes roaming his features.
“No one worth interrupting us,” TK sighs, trying to put the phone down on the counter before Carlos’ hand catches him around the wrist.
“Answer it,” Carlos says, pressing a kiss into TK’s jaw. “We should have dinner first, anyway.”
TK rolls his eyes and slides off the countertop as Carlos turns back to the fish. As soon as he slides open the call, a little flutter of anxiety settles itself in his stomach that is only partially to do with his heated make-out session and otherwise due to the fact that Ethan Goldberg is very firmly from TK’s life in New York; a past life that he doesn’t often stop to think about.
“Ethan,” he says, in an excessively bright tone that earns him a suspicious side-eye from Carlos.
“TK Strand,” comes the reply from down the line, the smooth, deep voice of one of TK’s oldest friends causing his stomach to churn with anticipation. “It’s been a minute.”
They’d met in elementary school; TK being an overly vivacious six year old and Ethan being the shyest boy in the class. It was a friendship that spanned many years, sometimes with gaps in between where they didn’t speak to each other for six months to a year at a time, but somehow they always found their way back together. Ethan’s friendly, easy-going demeanour was always the perfect accessory to TK’s effervescent personality. They might have had a falling out one night after Ethan had discovered TK in a bathroom at a mutual friend’s house party, surrounded by several bottles of prescription pain killers stolen from the cabinet, but he hopes Ethan doesn't think about that too regularly.
“It has,” TK agrees, rapping his fingernails across the counter absentmindedly. “How have you been, man?”
“Pretty good, pretty good,” Ethan says, a comforting, soft edge to his voice. “I don’t see much of you on social media anymore,” he remarks, “what have you been up to down there in hick country?”
TK snorts and drops himself onto one of the stools on the opposite side of the counter. “I swear I haven’t opened Instagram since I left New York,” he replies, leaning into the cool marble with his elbow, resting his head on his open palm. “Texas must be doing things to me.”
“Yeah, I can hear that,” Ethan laughs, “you’ve got a little twang to your voice there, cowboy.”
“Seriously?” TK retorts, rolling his eyes even though Ethan is 1,500 miles away. “I still get called ‘New York’ over here.”
“Yeah well,” Ethan sighs, “you can take the man out of New York but not New York out of the man, I suppose.”
There’s a pause in which TK hums his agreement, and Carlos looks up at him from across the counter before spinning around to grab the slaw from the island.
“Speaking of New York,” Ethan continues, pausing in the middle, “How have you been? You know, health wise. Staying out of trouble these days?”
There’s a strain to his voice that makes TK deflate slightly and he can imagine Ethan tugging on the back of his hair in that characteristic way he always did when he was nervous or uncomfortable. He takes a deep breath and ignores Carlos’ pointed look.
“Yeah, pretty much,” he replies, trying to sound casual. “I think leaving New York has been really good for me, actually." He pauses, shoving his hand into the pocket of his pyjama shorts and closing his fingers around the sobriety chip.
Well, not including the Sadie-incident, he thinks. Then again, everyone in the meetings always tells him that it doesn’t really count as a relapse, since he didn’t choose it. It feels like cold comfort sometimes.
“That’s great!” Ethan says, with a little too much enthusiasm. “Lindsay and I were so worried about you, TK. You just up and left and honestly, we were beating your door down until your neighbour told us you and your dad had moved to Austin.”
Sure you were, a little voice in TK’s head says, venomously. He has no idea what Ethan and his girlfriend decided to do in his absence, but they were both close friends with Alex so there’s no way they didn’t know the real reason for his departure. At least they don’t know about the overdose, he thinks.
“Oh yeah,” TK starts, feeling Carlos reach over the counter to touch his arm comfortingly. “Sorry about that. The job offer for Dad just happened so quickly and he was really keen to get down here and set up the firehouse. You know how he gets when he’s fixated on something.”
“Sure do,” Ethan responds, and TK is grateful that he sounds convinced. “He’s a man on a mission.”
“Yeah,” TK agrees weakly as Carlos runs the back of his hand along TK’s outstretched arm.
“Hey, so I know this is a bit out of the blue,” Ethan starts, “but Lindsay and I - we got engaged.”
“Oh, no way!” TK exclaims, brightening considerably. “That’s great, man. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” Ethan continues, and TK can hear the smile in his voice. About time, he thinks. They’d only been dating since middle school. “Listen, it was actually ages ago but I guess being a hermit and all you didn’t see it on the socials.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” TK grimaces, as Carlos retracts his arm and pulls a stool out from his side of the counter to start putting together the fish tacos. Fair enough, TK thinks. This conversation might go for a while. “I’m really happy for you both. I wish I could come over and hug you guys!”
“Well actually,” Ethan starts, and TK’s interest is immediately piqued, “the wedding is in like a month. Lindsay really wanted a destination wedding, so we decided to keep it really small.”
TK’s mouth waters slightly at the smell of cilantro and lime being thrown over the spiced-fish and he shoots a pleading look at Carlos who shakes his head, knowingly. “I totally get that,” he says, absentmindedly. “Weddings are so expensive these days.”
“You do?” Ethan asks, evidently surprised. “I just hoped you weren’t offended that we—”
“God, no,” TK interrupts, swiping a piece of avocado from the taco plate and earning a look of admonishment from Carlos. “I’m just so happy for you both.”
“I knew you would be like this,” Ethan breathes, and TK can hear a strange kind of relief in his voice. “Which is why we thought—” he pauses, clearly collecting his thoughts. “Lindsay’s cousin just accepted a two month-long internship in England doing some physics-related research that I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of explaining,” he says, “so he can’t come to the wedding. We both wondered whether you would be interested in taking his place?”
“Me?” TK coughs, taken aback by the question.
“Yeah,” Ethan barrels on. “I know it's really late notice and the wedding is in Hawaii, but I already felt guilty not inviting one of my oldest friends and—”
“Hawaii?” TK repeats, as Carlos drops the tongs on the floor with a clatter and swears under his breath. “Ow! Carlos, that’s my foot—”
Ethan laughs over the phone, “sorry, I know this is very out of the blue. If you’ve got company, feel free to call me back with an answer later.”
“No, no it’s fine,” TK says, feeling a bit flustered. “My fiancé just dropped a pair of tongs on me. Thank you so much, Ethan, that’s really nice of you guys to think of me.”
“Hold on,” Ethan replies, and TK can hear a scrape of a chair against a linoleum floor in the background and is almost instantly transported back to Ethan's shitty Brooklyn apartment. “Your fiancé?”
“Oh, yeah,” TK laughs, sheepishly. “It’s kind of recent.”
“Congratulations to you too, then,” Ethan says, and TK can hear that weird relief in his voice again. “Well you should bring him. I mean there are two spots and we don’t really know any other…”
He trails off and TK can imagine exactly what he was going to say about single people and feels his stomach drop slightly. He tries to focus on the first part of the sentence instead. “I’m sure Carlos would love to come,” he starts, and then falters when he feels Carlos nudge his foot under the table and looks up to see an expression on his face that clearly reads ‘TK…’ in that warning tone Carlos loves to use so much. “Actually, Ethan,” TK continues, before his friend can respond, “do you mind if I just check our schedules and get back to you? You know, shift work and stuff.”
“No problems,” Ethan responds, flippantly. “I just need to know before the end of August either way.”
“Sure thing,” TK nods. “Hey, I’m really sorry to cut this short but I have dinner on the table and I’m kind of starving for a taco right now.”
Ethan laughs easily again. “Of course. Hey, it’s been really great to hear from you again, TK. We should do this more often. Or, you could come visit the City for a bit if you want a temporary return to civilisation.”
“And miss these wide roads with limited traffic?” TK jokes, “no dice. Come to Austin; we have a great grasp on personal space and a distinct lack of air pollution….and me, of course.”
He wraps up the call by promising to call Ethan back before September, and immediately shoves a taco in his mouth as he closes his phone.
“That was tactical, Tyler Kennedy,” Carlos says warningly, a look on his face which suggests an impending interrogation by Austin’s latest detective. “You know you can’t have a taco shoved in your mouth forever, right?”
Carlos’ reaction is a typical Carlos reaction; carefully considered and cautious. It’s the exact opposite of how TK likes to do most things, which is to dive into them headfirst without hesitation (his relationship with Carlos being the strange exception). In a way, Carlos is his perfect match. Right now though, TK is looking at him as if he is a particularly resistant handbrake.
“I don’t know, TK,” Carlos says slowly, rubbing circles into TK’s thigh soothingly as they sit, turned into each other slightly on the sofa. “Do you think it’s a good idea to get back in with that crowd? You left New York for a reason.”
“I guess,” TK admits, letting the words sit on his tongue for a minute while he thinks of a good counter argument, “but that was mostly because of the relapse,” he adds. And Alex, his brain supplies, unhelpfully. He’s never really spoken about the failed marriage proposal with Carlos, save to say that the break up was a bad one. A stubborn, superstitious part of him doesn’t want to contaminate the best thing that has ever happened to him by bringing up his cheating ex.
“Exactly,” Carlos replies, giving him a meaningful look. “It could be really hard for you, TK. I don’t want you to suffer.”
TK sighs and shifts on the seat, folding his legs up underneath himself. “Carlos,” he starts, collecting his fiancé’s hand with his own. “I appreciate your concern and I understand why you feel that way.”
“But?” Carlos interrupts, chewing his bottom lip in a way that is scarily similar to TK’s own habit. It’s unfortunately adorable that they share many of the same mannerisms, because it makes TK start to believe in crazy things like soulmates. With Carlos, he definitely believes in soulmates.
TK sighs and reaches over his shins to grasp Carlos’ other hand, bringing them together on his lap. “I’m responsible for my own sobriety and my mental health, baby,” he insists, wishing he could wipe the worried look off Carlos’ beautiful face. “I love that you are so invested in me, but I need to make these decisions for myself.”
He smiles a small, tentative smile as Carlos’ shoulders sag. “I’m sorry,” Carlos says, shaking his head in a frustrated way, “I’m overstepping again, aren’t I?”
“It’s okay, baby,” TK soothes, releasing his hands and crawling onto his lap, bracketing Carlos’ hips with his knees. “I know you’re just trying to help. Plus,” he adds, ducking his head to catch Carlos’ downcast gaze, “you know that I think you’re adorable when you get all lovey and concerned.”
“These aren’t my cow eyes,” Carlos murmurs, allowing TK to rest two fingers under his chin and lift it.
“I know,” TK frowns, “they’re too sad to be cow eyes. You need to stop beating yourself up about this.”
Carlos sighs and tosses his head to one side, slipping out of TK’s fingertips. “I don’t want to be controlling, TK,” he says, a muscle in his jaw flexing perceptively, before turning back to face his fiancé. “I just can’t help but feel so protective of you, especially after everything we went through earlier this year. I don’t think I could live with myself if something happened and—”
“Baby, baby,” TK breathes, “nothing is going to happen. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been right now, notwithstanding everything that’s gone down in the past six, eight months, and,” he pauses, catching Carlos’ cheeks in his hands and cupping them, gently, “I have an amazing guy, who loves me and who will help me get through all the hard stuff. Even if the hard stuff is in Hawaii.”
Carlos groans and TK is relieved to see that his eyes have stopped watering. “You’re impossible sometimes, TK.”
“I know,” TK grins, sliding his hands from the front of Carlos’ cheekbones to his earlobes, curling his fingertips around the soft skin on Carlos’ neck. “I just really want to go on a vacation with you, and this seems like a very convenient excuse.”
“It does,” Carlos says softly, allowing TK to trail kisses up the side of his jaw towards his lips. “But we could go on a vacation anywhere, TK.”
“Yeah but Hawaii, Carlos,” TK insists, becoming more frustrated that he can’t access Carlos’ lips rather than the fact that he won’t agree to the wedding-turned-vacation scheme.
“Okay, okay,” Carlos says, pulling away and reaching out to brush an errant strand of TK’s brown hair out of his face. He desperately needs a haircut. “Just promise me that you’ll think about it.”
“Definitely,” TK agrees breathlessly, more in an attempt to divert Carlos’ attention away from their conversation and towards something a little less wholesome. “Can you kiss me now?”
Carlos snorts and allows himself to be drawn into a kiss that ends up with him splayed out on the sofa, TK crowding over him as he grinds his hips down against Carlos’, making them both moan.
“Babe,” TK breathes, trying very hard to concentrate as Carlos rakes his teeth against the sensitive spot on his neck and then covers it with a kiss. “Are we going to try that thing?”
“What thing?” Carlos asks, impatient and hungry beneath him; one of his hands finding TK’s ass and using it to press them back together.
“Shit, baby,” TK gasps, as Carlos arches back into the sofa, panting. “The right hand thing.”
“The right hand what?” Carlos stutters, his face morphing into confusion. “Oh my God, TK,” he growls, clearly in a moment of clarity. “Fine,” he adds, “but don’t tell anyone that we did this.”
“It’s still my hand,” TK points out, a little whine escaping his throat as Carlos’ hands dive under the waistband of his shorts and travel across the skin on his waist.
“I don’t know,” Carlos murmurs, his lips now back on TK’s neck, “it still feels a little wrong.”
TK grins and arches up, pushing off Carlos’ chest to give him a teasing smile. “Oh no, baby,” he breathes, “it’s going to feel so right.”
“Oh, and we had hot sex on the sofa last night,” TK adds, as he packs an additional stack of gauze pads into one of the compartments and bites his lip, anticipating a response. Nancy momentarily puts down the mobile defibrillator she’s packing back into its box and glares up at him from her spot on the floor of the van.
“Gross,” she replies drily, in a voice that sounds exactly like she’s heard a similar aside far too often. “You know these things don’t have the same shock value after you say them like five hundred times?”
TK sucks his bottom lip through his teeth and grins, cocking his head to one side. “Then why can I still get a rise out of you?” he asks, grinning broadly as she slaps the top of his boots.
“Seriously, TK?” she groans, “It’s like listening to my brother talk about his sex life…and I’m never sitting on your sofa again. Don’t tell Paul this story because I’ll need to steal his seat the next time we play Catan.”
“Nance,” he teases, using a nickname he knows that only he’ll get away with, “I’ll clean the sofa, just for you.”
She shoots him a dark look. “With bleach? Actually, you know what?” she asks, throwing her hands up in mock surrender, “why don’t you just bleach my brain while you’re at it, TK?”
He lets out a short laugh and resumes packing away the gauze strips, watching for another friendly slap out of his peripherals. “Now that you’ve brought it up, how is your brother’s sex life by the way?”
Nancy groans. “I don’t have a brother, TK.”
“Wait,” TK stills, looking back at her to see her aggressively shutting the defib box with a harsh snap. “For real, you don’t have a brother?”
She turns back to him and gives him an exasperated sigh. “TK I have two sisters, I’ve told you this a million times, remember? You said one of them looks like my mum, one of them looks like my dad, and then didn’t have a single response for who I look like.”
He gives her a sheepish look, running a hand through his hair. The ruffling of it releases a smokey smell into the air and he cringes. He’d been sorely mistaken in his belief that switching into a paramedic role would mean smelling less like an open fire; it was never going to be the case when they were still having to re-sus people in burning buildings. “Doesn’t mean you don’t have a brother, though,” he points out.
“TK,” Nancy says, swinging her legs over the side of the van and jumping out, “I don’t know what to tell you, man. I don’t have a brother.”
“Hm,” he pauses, considering that for a minute and then promptly returns to packing the gauze before Nancy pops her head back in, arms laden with supplies to fill the remaining compartments.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, placing the items on the floor of the van and sorting them into two piles - one for TK to pack at the front, and one for her to pack at the back, wordlessly. There’s a quiet understanding between them now, so much so that Tommy accuses them of having some kind of hive mind, or sharing a single brain cell. Nancy claims that the brain cell is hers and TK just borrows it on occasion.
He closes the compartment he’s working on and reaches up for the clean syringes compartment. “I don’t know,” he says, collecting a packet of syringes from the pile Nancy has left at his feet, “you’re just tough. You know, you could hold your own in a fight.”
Nancy scoffs in response and pauses at her end of the van to shoot him a look. “An ability to fight people?” she paraphrases, one eyebrow arched. “What a compliment.”
“What?!” TK laughs, pointing a clean, packaged needle in her direction. “It is a compliment, Nance.”
“Stop playing with the sharps, TK,” she replies, turning back to her own compartment. “See? Just from that one sentence anyone would know that you’re an only child.”
“Except I’m not an only child,” he emphasises, hearing footsteps squeaking over the concrete on the other side of the van and hoping for Tommy so that she can back him up on his attempt to convince Nancy that she’s a total badass.
“You were an only child until you were an adult, TK,” Nancy points out, shutting three compartments at once and turning back to him. “That screams ‘only child’ with an inferiority complex,” she says, gesturing to the items still laid out at his feet. “Why are you so slow today?”
“Must be my inferiority complex,” he parrots, grinning as she picks up the items near his feet and starts rapidly sorting them into compartments, “but I’m not an only child!”
“You’re my only child,” comes a familiar voice from behind him, “and thank God for that.”
They turn, almost in sync, to see Owen Strand pausing to face them from just outside the door of the van, takeaway smoothie in hand. The last few months have aged him far more than they should have, TK thinks sadly, and tries to push the thought to the back of his mind as quickly as it comes. The ineffectiveness of his dad’s anti-ageing skincare regime is not his concern and if he starts thinking too much about his mom, well, TK isn’t quite ready for that, yet. Not at work, at least.
“Hey Dad,” he calls as Owen turns to continue down the firehouse towards the bunkroom, “do you know where Tommy’s at?”
“No, TK,” Owen calls over his shoulder without looking back, “that’s your boss, not mine.”
Nancy sighs and rests a hand on his shoulder. “He’s really not himself these days, is he?” she asks as soon as Owen is out of earshot. “Why do you need Tommy?”
There’s a warm rush of affection that washes over TK as Nancy changes the topic deftly. She might not be the warmest person in the 126 firehouse, but Nancy has a knack for reading people far better than she gets credit for. With TK, she says enough to let him know that she cares, without overstepping and without making it awkward, and he can’t quite put into words how much he appreciates that. Even if she does bust his balls at least eighty percent of the time.
“Need to ask for some time off in early October,” he says, following her back into the van and shoving the rest of the supplies haphazardly into the draws as she hands him the checklist to finish.
“Are you going to remember what you just put in?” she asks, eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed, “and do I want to know about why you need this time off?”
TK shrugs and looks back into the syringe compartment to count off. “Why do you say it like I’m doing something illegal?” he asks, losing track and starting the count again.
“Can we revisit how you told me, not five minutes ago, about your sex life with your disgustingly cute fiancé?” she says, derisively.
He turns back to her momentarily and grins, mischievously. “He is super hot, right? That’s not just me?”
“No,” she moans, giving him a defeated look, “well, I mean yes, he is objectively hot, but I meant that you’re cute together and it makes me sick.”
“So I shouldn’t talk about what else we got up to last night?” TK asks in a facetious tone, which earns him another friendly whack on the shoulder. “Hey! Okay fine, I’ve got a wedding to go to. In Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?!” Nancy yelps in a way that reminds TK how much he needs to get a life. He imagines that his friends would think that TK going to a new grocery store would probably be more his speed. “Who is inviting you to Hawaii?”
“A friend,” he replies, signing the checklist with his right hand just because he can, jumping out of the van behind Nancy and following her down the hall; her tight top-knot bobbing up and down as she walks.
“Which friend?” she asks, without turning back. “I know all your friends and as far as I know, no one is getting married except for Carlos, and he’s marrying you,” she says, stopping so abruptly that TK almost walks into the back of her as she spins around. “You’re not eloping are you?”
“What?” TK yelps, his face scrunching into a frown. “No!”
“Good,” she says, mollified, “because I already bought an outfit, so I’d have no choice but to murder you.”
“You and Carlos’ parents, apparently,” TK quips, grimacing. “Wait. Why have you bought an outfit? We haven’t even chosen a date yet.”
“I like to be prepared,” Nancy shrugs, spinning on her heel again and striding towards the kitchen. She wrenches open the fridge and plucks out two mineral waters, passing one into TK’s outstretched hand and throwing herself into a chair. “So which friend is this?”
“Oh,” TK replies, taking a swig out of the mineral water and realising that, once again, he is shockingly dehydrated. “A friend from a while back. From New York.”
“Hmm,” Nancy murmurs, swallowing a gulp of liquid and pausing to look at the label on the bottle. “I didn’t know you still had friends back there,” she says, in a far-away voice.
“Yeah, well,” TK says, taking another gulp of water and sliding out a chair to sit across the table from her, “we’ve been out of touch for a while. I think it was kind of a last minute thing, but I’m down for a trip to Hawaii.”
Nancy appears to drag her attention back to him from what must be a particularly riveting nutritional information statement. “What about Carlos?” she asks.
TK slides down the chair slightly and leans his head back against the hard wood. “Carlos,” he starts, and then peeks back up to see Nancy eyeing him beadily. “Carlos isn’t convinced,” he admits, sheepishly. “He says that I need to think about what I left behind in New York and why I left it.”
“He might have a point,” she says, now peeling the label of the glass bottle off with meticulous care.
“Yeah, maybe,” TK responds impatiently, “but it’s Hawaii! Also, Carlos can come with me and we’ve never been on a vacation together aside from to his parent’s ranch, but that doesn’t really count, does it? I mean we don’t even get to sleep in the same bed there.”
Nancy pauses, abandoning her crusade against the plastic label. “Oh my God,” she says, a shocked expression on her face. “You’ve never travelled together?”
TK furrows his eyebrows as he swallows the remaining liquid in his bottle. “Nancy, you’ve been working here almost the entire time we’ve been together. I don’t think either of us have had time to take off in the last two years.”
“But you’re engaged!” she insists, now rubbing wet rings into the tabletop with the bottom of her bottle. “I can’t believe you proposed without passing the travel test!”
“How hard can it be?” TK asks, genuinely perplexed. “We live together. We own a loft together!”
Nancy is quiet for a minute and then turns and leans on the chair to tip her empty bottle into the trash. “Travelling is different, TK,” she says, leaning back in the chair and giving him his least favourite Nancy look - the judgemental, concerned gaze. It’s a specialty of hers that he’s never been able to master. “You’re living out of each other’s pockets constantly; seeing each other’s annoying habits all the time. It’s different.”
“What?” he asks, gesturing to her, “do you and Mateo have a lot of experience in this area or something?”
She rolls her eyes. “Mateo and I have been dating for two months, TK. You’re getting married. This is a test, trust me.”
He pauses, rolling his bottle around on the rim, contemplatively. “So you’re saying,” he says slowly, “that Carlos might find me annoying? But Carlos already knows all my annoying habits, and half of them involve stacking the dishwasher incorrectly.”
“Well,” she smirks, snatching his bottle from his hands deftly and leaning to throw it in the trash with her own before standing up, “I don’t know how Carlos isn’t constantly annoyed with you, to be honest.”
TK groans as he picks himself up from the chair and follows her back towards the ambulance. “Thanks Nance,” he mutters under his breath, “great chat.”
It's past midnight when TK stumbles into the loft bedroom, shedding his clothes as he goes before dumping them in the laundry basket. Carlos has a thing about clothes on the floor (maybe the dishwasher-stacking isn't TK's only flaw) and TK is well trained enough to follow protocol to ensure that he doesn't get a pillow thrown in his face at six in the morning when Carlos wakes up to work out before his shift.
Carlos shuffles back into his arms with a little sleepy sound as TK slides under the covers, slinging one arm lazily over Carlos' waist and nestling his face into the curls at the base of his head. He breathes in the familiar, comforting scent and relaxes into the pillow, closing his eyes.
“Hey TK,” Carlos murmurs, “are you going to propose to me again?”
“Not quite three am yet, babe,” TK grins, pressing a soft kiss into Carlos’ shoulder. “Wait your turn.”
Carlos stills for a second, before pushing TK back and rolling over in his arms; a half-awake smile on his lips. He looks so perfect, spread out on their sheets, TK thinks; like the only place he truly belongs is in TK’s arms. Home is not a place, it’s a person, TK’s brain repeats, unprompted.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go,” TK blurts out, without really meaning to. He watches Carlos’ eyebrows crinkle in that way he loves so much and sighs, melting into Carlos’ chest. “To Hawaii, I mean. Maybe we should just stay here.”
“Hey,” Carlos says in a soothing voice, one of his hands threading themselves through TK’s hair on the back of his head. “Where’s this coming from?”
“I don’t know,” TK moans, pressing a kiss into the firm muscle of Carlos’ chest. Nancy is right, he thinks, turning his face to shamelessly stare at his fiancé’s abdomen. The man is disgustingly hot.
“Did something happen at work today?” Carlos asks through a yawn. “You were so excited last night.”
“Yeah,” TK replies dully, propping his chin up on Carlos’ chest and leaning his head into Carlos’ hands. “Nancy said you would find me annoying in Hawaii.”
“What?” Carlos scoffs, propping himself up on his elbows as TK tries to avoid sliding down into his lap. “Why would she say that?”
“I don’t know,” TK shrugs, giving into the inevitable and curling into Carlos’ lap as Carlos sits upright and runs the knuckles of his forefinger and middle finger along TK’s hairline. “Something about going on a vacation being a test and me being annoying all the time.”
Carlos is quiet for a minute and then exhales deeply. “TK,” he begins, “I love you and I don’t find you annoying. That’s not going to change if we leave Austin and go someplace else.”
“What about when I stack the dishwasher wrong?” TK points out, glumly. “Sometimes I’m annoying.”
“Yeah okay, sometimes that’s annoying,” Carlos agrees, and his stomach twitches beside TK in a way which means Carlos is trying to hold in a laugh, “but that’s only because it could be done a lot— you know what?” he says, interrupting himself, “don’t even worry about it. You’re not annoying, TK Strand. You’re the love of my life.”
TK sighs and leans forward slightly to kiss the skin that Carlos’ shorts have exposed on his inner thigh. “I love you too, baby,” he responds, “but I can love you here. I don’t need to love you in Hawaii.”
“But you could love me in Hawaii,” Carlos points out, pushing TK’s hair back off his head in that soothing way that his mom always used to do whenever TK was sick. Briefly, he wonders whether Andrea did that with Carlos, too. “I think we should go.”
“What?” TK frowns, twisting his head to look up at Carlos’ face; catching sight of the soft smile there. “Are you agreeing to go to this wedding to prove a point to my coworker?”
“Hey,” Carlos protests, “Nancy’s my friend, too.” He pauses, running his hands over TK’s hair again, “and I don’t do things to prove a point.”
“You sure about that?” TK smirks, thinking back to his first few weeks in Austin where he deliberately got himself into a bar fight and ended up in the back of Carlos’ colleagues' police van. There’s no way in hell that Carlos didn’t volunteer himself to be the officer to discharge TK after they let him go.
Carlos shrugs and taps TK’s nose with his forefinger. “Okay,” he admits, “sometimes. I want to go, TK. I’m just nervous about it.”
“Nervous about what?” TK asks, capturing Carlos’ finger with his hand and bringing it to his mouth to kiss it, delighting in the way that Carlos’ eyes trace over his movements with a kind of awed fascination.
He clears his throat as TK licks the tip of his finger and winks. “Are we having a serious conversation now, Tyler? Or are you trying to seduce me.”
“I’m always trying to seduce you,” TK grins, “but I’ll try to resist. What are you nervous about?”
Carlos sighs deeply and runs his free hand through his own hair, leaning back into the pillows. “I don’t know,” he groans. “I’m worried that it will be painful for you, I guess. That and,” he pauses, wincing, “I’m nervous to meet your friends. What if they don’t like me?”
“It will be fine, baby,” TK soothes, scrambling up Carlos’ chest to flop next to him on the pillows, intertwining their fingers together and pulling them into his lap, “and everyone will love you. How could they not? With that smile, and those eyelashes and your abs…God, Carlos, have you been working out harder than usual? They are criminal.”
“They’re just the things you like about me, TK,” Carlos points out, but there’s a small smile playing on his lips.
“That’s not true,” TK says, shaking his head. “I love everything about you. Even with your ‘no kissing before brushing your teeth’ rule, and your love for rules in general.”
“See?” Carlos says, rubbing the pad of his thumb over TK’s knuckle and licking his lips. “There are minimal rules in Hawaii. I hear it's completely lawless. It’s basically the perfect vacation for you.”
TK smirks. “I kinda like breaking your rules,” he says, ducking his head to press a quick kiss on Carlos’ lips to prove the point.
“Well,” Carlos sighs, smiling as he drops his head onto TK’s shoulder. “I just want to make you happy.” He pauses, shifting his head slightly to kiss TK’s neck and making him shiver before murmuring into the skin, “and I really want to go on a vacation with you.”
“Oh yeah?” TK asks, dropping Carlos’ hand to rake his fingertips along the inside of Carlos’ thigh in retaliation.
“Yeah,” Carlos repeats, pressing more kisses into TK’s neck and nipping softly at one of the pressure points there. “Preferably somewhere warm so you can be shirtless all of the time.”
“You liked that yesterday, huh?” TK says, smirking as Carlos huffs a laugh. “Do you think Ethan will let you go to his wedding shirtless?”
“I don’t know, babe,” Carlos whispers, now pressing a kiss behind TK’s ear. This one doesn’t have a piercing in it and he knows that Carlos has a particular penchant for accosting it as much as possible. “He’s your friend, and besides, I’ve never been to a wedding.”
“You what now?” TK asks, sighing happily as Carlos’ teeth rake over his earlobe predictably. He really needs to think more seriously about taking that other piercing out. “How have you not been to a single wedding? Isn’t your sister married?”
“Yeah,” Carlos concedes, “but Valentina eloped, TK. Which is why I know that my mom will literally hunt us down and make us get a divorce if we do that, just so we can get married again in front of her.”
TK chews on his bottom lip and grins. “I would never do that to Andrea, Carlos. I’m just surprised that you’re making a lot of important planning decisions about our wedding and you’ve never even been to one.”
“TK,” Carlos sighs, and TK can imagine the little creases in his forehead that appear when he’s exasperated, “there’s this thing. It’s called the internet. Not sure if you’ve heard about it.”
“Rings a bell,” TK teases, and feels himself get pushed flat on his back by Carlos; horizontal across their bed.
“Have you been to any weddings, TK?” Carlos asks, crowding above him and taking advantage of TK’s momentary surprise to pin his arms above his head; strong hands encircling his wrists.
“Of course,” TK smirks, before arching up to meet Carlos’ lips. It’s a few breathless moments later when he gets to add, “I almost drowned at one in Montauk.”
“What?” Carlos asks, snapping his head up in surprise from below TK’s jawline. “That sounds…positive.”
TK shrugs. “It was a formative experience,” he says. “You can keep doing that by the way.”
Carlos swats his chest with one hand, allowing TK to wrestle his hand free and dip it under the waistband of Carlos’ sweats; fingers curling around his hip bone. “I don’t think I need to go to a wedding before our wedding, TK,” he says, “but if you would like me to go to this far inferior wedding, I’m more than happy to do so.”
“Hey,” TK murmurs, allowing his fingers to travel under the fabric to rest in the small of Carlos’ back. “Ethan and Lindsay’s wedding might be really good.”
“Yeah,” Carlos smiles, dipping his head to leave a lingering kiss on TK’s lips, “but you won’t be at the end of the aisle with me, will you? So it can’t be that good.”
TK grins, licking his lips. “You’re sweet…and very hot.”
Carlos rolls his eyes. “You need to get a new line,” he says. “That one is from like two years ago. Are you going to say yes to Ethan then?”
TK reaches out to cup Carlos’ face, closing his eyes momentarily when Carlos leans into his palm to kiss it. “I guess I am,” he replies, opening his eyes. “Now Carlos,” he continues, trying to hold in the laughter threatening to bubble up in his throat, “which hand are we going for tonight?”