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“Why did you choose me?”
Carlos is still trying to catch his breath, his left hand pressed against his sweaty curls as he leans back against his pillow. TK’s own sweat-soaked back rests against him, the thin sheet pulled low enough for Carlos to admire all of his favorite parts of his boyfriend’s body.
Wait, not boyfriend. Fiancé. His eyes drag down to where their hands are clasped against TK’s chest, their fingers intertwined so that they can each feel the cool metal of the engagement rings resting next to each other, the way they have for the last two hours. TK’s face is turned away from him, but he knows the other man is looking at the rings, too, by the tone of the question. Carlos’s eyebrows wrinkle in confusion.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
It’s quiet between them as Carlos stares down at TK, waiting for him to clarify what exactly he’s asking. It doesn’t matter that they’ve been together for almost two years, Carlos still can’t read his lover’s mind, no matter how hard he tries. There are some things that TK just has to decode for him.
“I mean, this ring symbolizes a choice, right?” TK asks, raising their fingers up to his mouth, and Carlos feels the soft press of his lips against his knuckle. “So, what made you decide to choose me?”
The words linger between them, no heavier than the breath used to speak them into existence, as Carlos contemplates TK’s query. He thinks back to just a few hours ago when he joined TK on his knees, tears in both of their eyes, and poured his heart out, telling him that he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life sharing the world with the person he cherishes more than anything else.
He knows he’s going to take every opportunity to tell TK how much he loves him for the next 70 or so years of their lives, but maybe that’s not what TK is asking from him right now. Maybe, in-between the words he’s saying, TK is asking a different question all together. And Carlos knows the answer to that question the way that he knows that the sun rises and sets daily; it’s a simple fact of life.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” he starts, wondering how he’s never told TK this before.
TK nods against him, his brown hair rubbing against Carlos’s chin. “Hard to forget the baby in a tree,” he replies, and Carlos can hear the smile in his voice. A smile appears on his own face, and he leans down to bury it into TK’s hair, pressing a kiss there as he inhales the other man’s scent.
“That’s true, your dad was pretty badass that day,” Carlos admits, raising his head to look at their ceiling as he bites his lip. “But, when I think about that day, that’s not usually the first thing I remember. I remember the rain, actually.”
He feels TK shift beneath him, no doubt to look up at him. Instead of meeting his eyes, Carlos simply tightens the arm wrapped around him, rubbing his thumb against the back of TK’s hand.
“That was like the third or fourth call of the night, and by the time you all got there, I was so cold and tired and moody,” Carlos mutters, closing his eyes as he’s pulled back to that evening. “All I could remember thinking was how I wanted to get back to the station and finish my paperwork so that I could just go home and sleep.
“Meeting your dad was pretty cool, I’ll admit, and I had been looking forward to crossing paths with Captain New York. And then he played the badass hero and I was really impressed,” he continues.
“I believe those were your exact words to me actually,” TK adds, leaning in further. Carlos feels his lips on his neck. “I can’t believe the first time you ever spoke to me was just to fanboy over my dad.”
Carlos laughs, bringing his other arm around to wrap TK in a full embrace. His eyes drop to meet TK’s green ones, seeing how they’re pinched at the corners from the wide smile taking over his face.
“There it is,” Carlos whispers, a sense of déjà vu stealing the breath from his lungs. “That’s what I remember more than anything about that night.” He brings his hand up to trace along TK’s jaw, absorbing all of the love in his eyes. “That million-dollar smile.”
“You’re such a sap,” his fiancé scoffs, rolling his eyes.
“I mean it, Ty,” he affirms, holding TK’s chin to keep him close. “I was freezing my ass off, and then you turned that smile on me and it was like I was suddenly on fire, I couldn’t explain it.
“You all left and I couldn’t focus for the rest of my shift, all I wanted to do was run after you and chase that feeling,” he continues. “And then I saw you at the bar and I wanted to talk to you so bad, and then you smiled at me again and it was like some crazy bruja magic. Your smile is the most beautiful, powerful thing I’ve ever seen, and I swore that I was going to do everything that I could to make sure it never disappeared.”
He stares openly at TK now, watching as his green eyes fill with tears. With a shuttered breath, TK pulls himself up to press his lips against Carlos’s, his smile making it difficult but completely perfect. Carlos can feel his tears as they spill out onto his cheeks.
“I choose you because your smile has always made me feel like I can take on the world,” he mutters when they separate, their foreheads pressed together. “And making you happy, making you smile so that you can share that power with the rest of the world, that’s all I want to do, for the rest of my life.”
He reaches up to brush the tears away from TK’s eyes, their matching smiles blinding.
“For me it was your eyes,” TK says quietly, his own hands coming up to run through Carlos’s curls, untamed from their previous activity. “That very first time you looked at me, those brown eyes cut right through me. I was so fucking terrified, because I knew then that I would never be able to hide from you. And I was even more terrified, because I kind of didn’t want to.”
TK’s fingers tickle his face as he traces along Carlos’s eyebrows, right above the brown irises in question. “I choose you because you’ve always seen me, for everything that I am, and you never once looked away.”
“And I never will,” Carlos assures him, reaching up to link their hands together again, their rings touching as if they’re magnets, incapable of separating for too long, just like the two men who wear them.
And as their lips press together, followed by their naked bodies and finally their souls, Carlos thinks about how, when it comes to loving TK, there was really no choice to make at all.
But if there was, he would make the same one, every time, without question.