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Carlos is helping the man suffering from Alzheimer into the car, after his wife has hugged the fears away from him, when the 126 arrives. He frowns at the firetruck and the ambulance, not sure why they're here since the suspect is in perfect condition — if he doesn’t count Alzheimer, that's it.
“Cardiac event,” Michelle tells him as she rushes inside, following TK and the rest of them with her medical backpack dangling off her shoulder. “See you later?”
Carlos nods, unable to reply before she’s gone into the house. He turns toward his partner, who's now talking to the couple inside the patrol car, when the night air is pierced by the most unimaginable sound — something he wouldn’t have expected in a cardiac event call, after the police have already taken the intruder out of the house.
The gunshot cuts through the silence that's settled after the sirens have been muted and the situation has been controlled.
A gunshot Carlos wasn't expecting, something that has his instincts set into place. His hand goes to his holster before he can think of it.
And then it reaches his ears, something that's more worrisome than a gunshot in an otherwise safe environment, something that breaks his heart in two.
A name travels through the air.
“TK!” he hears in the distance, the echo of a feeling bursting in tiny millions of pieces as his ears ring with the name heʼs come to cherish as his own.
He draws his gun, signaling to his partner that heʼs going inside, firearm in front of him just as though it is a part of his outstretched hand. He quickly makes his way into the building, where there’s ruckus and noise and strangely a void big enough that he can hear his own thoughts.
The corridor is endless.
When he manages to get closer to the group of people pooling around someone on the floor, Carlos can't stop the mangled sound that escapes his parched throat. It's a wail, but it's a name, a prayer and an expletive, all at once — a wordless cry that pierces the air at the same time as Owen Strand clutches his son, red splashed everywhere on the wall behind them.
“TK!”
“TK!” his father screams, hands trying to assess his sonʼs state whilst fighting the urge to freak out. TK knows, because he's been on the receiving end of this very same treatment, less than six months ago, after he woke up from the dead.
But now TK doesn’t understand whatʼs going on. He was just using the battering ram to open the door, to enter the room where the man suffering a heart attack was, when—
Oh.
The pain spreads fast throughout his body all of a sudden, a shrill that deafens his ears and weakens his limbs. He has stumbled backwards, stuttering as he takes a step and then a fall, and his father's hands accompany him to the floor.
Breathing is harder with each second that passes, but he doesn’t understand why. He canʼt be dying. This doesn’t feel like the last time he died — this isn't the bliss he was looking for. This hurts like a bitch.
Carlos shows up and TK doesn't know what to make of it. It wasn't supposed to be like this — he wasn't supposed to go down during a rescue using the battering ram of all things. Taking the bullet is something that Carlos has to face from time to time — being a cop and everything — not something TK or any other firefighter has to endure on a daily basis. Falling from a burning roof, maybe.
Getting shot by a terrified kid behind a closed door wasn't anything TK would have ever expected.
He wants to reassure his father that he'll be fine. He wants to tell Carlos that they are still on for that rematch at the honky tonk dart pool next Friday. He even opens his lips, ready to speak, but the only thing that flows is a burst of blood he canʼt control, just as his limbs choose that very same moment to stop functioning and his head lolls back, almost colliding with the floor.
He sees the terror in his father's eyes, the determination in Michelleʼs stance, the confusion in Carlosʼ face.
And then suddenly everything is dark and the pain — the everlasting ache that reigns in his soul like a medieval king, with the knowledge that there’s nothing more powerful in the whole world, nothing overruling its tyrant dictums — that pain recedes and nothing hurts anymore.
The void is a comfortable blanket of darkness and blissful silence. So he allows himself to tip over the edge and plummet into the precipice.
He never crashes into the ground, forever trapped in a whirlwind where chaos doesn’t touch him. He’s free.
Finally.
Finally, he arrives at the hospital.
Carlos has never resented his job more than in the past two hours, when heʼs been trapped under the weight of the paperwork that comes with a firefighter being shot on site — the amount of words heʼs had to write down, after combing the scene with a heavy heart and shaky hands, is akin to the pain he's been feeling ever since he's watched TK dying in Michelleʼs hands.
She’d been able to bring him back, on the somber corridor where TK had met a fate more horrid than anything heʼd ever deserved.
Carlos had been unable to provide any help despite his training.
And now, after two hours fighting panic with only his partnerʼs hand on his shoulder as reassurance that everything has the potential to be okay, Carlos is finally stepping into the hospital, heart in his throat, fingers balling painfully at his sides, suddenly perfectly aware that maybe this isn't his place to be.
TK and him, they arenʼt anything, after all. Carlos is just another first responder who wants to check in on the 126 and their fallen member, the one to keep on with the jinxed destiny the original team had faced so many weeks before. He needs to remember that, a reminder in a voice that sounds suspiciously like Michelleʼs, because otherwise he might combust in grief.
Judd and Mateo look up at him when he approaches them, a question ready at the tip of their tongue, quelched by a quick glance from Paul. Carlos is grateful to have someone in his corner — someone who's seen them together, who's been witness to their dynamics, who knows the depths of sorrow Carlos is going through.
He stops short from crossing the threshold to the room, when he sees Owen Strand sitting in that uncomfortable chair beside the bed, reminding Carlos that there’s no place for him here. He almost backtracks, but Captain Strand stands up and offers an opening for him to stay — an understanding light in his tired eyes as he steps outside and beelines for the chapel.
And Carlos sits there, drawing circles on TKʼs skin that are meant to soothe himself rather than the firefighter lying on his back, unconscious, unaware of the pain.
Paulʼs hand lands on his shoulder, and it's all Carlos has in himself not to cry openly in front of everyone.
“Heʼs a fighter,” Paul says in a low voice, silence broken by Mateoʼs sniffles. “Heʼll get through this. Heʼll be back with us in no time.”
“I didn’t know you were friends,” Marjan points out. There’s no judgment in her voice, only a curiosity Carlos can't fulfill right now.
“We are,” he grits out. Heʼs managing to keep his tears at bay by biting the inside of his cheek, but he knows he wonʼt last much longer. “He is—TK will pull through.”
It doesn’t feel right, to be talking about TK when he is right here, when Carlos can touch him but nothing he does elicit any reply in TK. He wishes he could say all the things he longs to say, if only heʼd be allowed to — how TK lights his days, how he hopes he brings some color to TKʼs life, how whatever they have going on between them has grown from a fling to a fully formed feeling that has taken Carlosʼ heart hostage.
But TK wanted them to remain a secret — not because he was ashamed of them, but because he wasn't ready to let the world know that heʼs mending his soul. That Carlos can be a medicine TK hadn't anticipated.
So he turns towards the bed once again, swallowing the words and the tears and the strife, and wishes for the best.
“Weʼre all waiting for you, TK. Please, wake up.”
“Wake up,” his father is saying at the same time as he shakes TK out of slumber.
TK groans as he opens his eyes to meet his fatherʼs stern gaze. “What?”
“Where were you last night that you came back with a busted lip and bloodstains on your clothes?” his father demands, an edge of despair in his words.
Owen Strand has never been a man to shy from his problems — except when facing them would have saved any of his two marriages, that's it — so TK hadn't expected anything but straightforwardness from his father.
“Isn't it a bit early for the third grade, dad?” he asks, one arm slinging in front of his eyes.
“Itʼs way past noon on your day off, TK,” his father replies. “Iʼve just come back from my last shift, and Iʼve found a bloody t-shirt on the laundry basket and when I come up here I see you're still in bed looking like you've fought for your life. What happened, TK?”
He sighs. It’s obvious, now, that he canʼt lie to his father. He had hoped to be able to mask his wounds before his father came back home — it was supposed to be a quick relief, get in, throw some punches, get out. He hadn’t counted on the fight to break straight under his nose. He hadn’t counted on the police to raid the place. He hadn't counted on being processed.
He hadn’t counted on Carlos Reyes.
“Itʼs fine, dad,” he attempts to appease his father. “Iʼve got nothing broken, and no one got arrested.”
“That’s not the word on the street, TK,” his father counteracts. He manages to sit up in his bed and hugs his knees close to his chest. “Why were you at a bar alone, so late at night?”
And it all comes crashing down, dawning its truth on him as though his soul is the spur where the wild ocean breaks its tides.
His father is worried. Heʼs terrified, because TK is a reckless man, a bullet gone astray. TKʼs going to be the death of his father, if the dark bags under his eyes and the paleness of his skin are any kind of indication.
“Iʼm sorry,” he says, and he is. He really feels truly sorry. “I wasn't in a good place, last night. But I am, now.”
“Are you?” There’s more to that question than what anyone overhearing their conversation might understand. TK knows there’s this underlying fear that he's using again, the nuance in the question sending a new wave of guilt through his body.
“I am,” he says. “Everything is a bit gray, still, and I might have butchered one of the few friendships I had made here, but I am better.”
“Friendship, huh?”
TK recalls the look on Carlosʼ face the night before — the worry and the guilt and the pain and the unbelievable knowledge that he might have made matters worse by just saying one single word. He knows there might not be a second chance for them, that heʼs probably killed the only possibility he had at having a healthy relationship with someone.
But it's too soon. It’s too much. And Carlos doesn’t deserve the burden that TK holds in his heart.
It's for the best, he knows that.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says. “But I'll be fine.”
“I don't want to talk about it,” he says. “But I'll be fine.”
Michelle doesn’t buy it for a second, Carlos knows that much, but she’s clever enough to sit back on the chair across the waiting room, where Carlos has been staying for the past forty hours, give or take, unable to leave TKʼs side and profiting from his day off. “I take it things changed from weird to normal after a few dates.”
Carlos looks around to make sure no one else from the 126 is around, and thankfully the team is still inside, visiting TK and trying to avoid the prohibition of staying more than one visitor at a time.
“Not here, Michelle,” he tells her. “No one knows, and I am not comfortable outing whatever this is to them.”
“Is TK ashamed of you?”
Carlos shakes his head. He doesn’t think so — if that were the case, TK wouldn’t have asked him for help to cheer Paul up together. It’s more about privacy and the baggage TK carries within his soul, a burden Carlos knows he canʼt help with until TK decides to share it with him.
“Iʼm not sure I can tell you anything.”
“Does it have anything to do with the fact that Owen practically begged me not to give TK any opioid-based anesthetic or painkiller?”
Carlos winces. It’s not his secret to tell, and he doesn’t know much apart from what TK has been sharing with him in bits and pieces since that night at the precinct. It still isn’t his place, but he's saved from having to answer by Owen Strand stepping into the waiting room looking freshly showered and accompanied by a middle-aged blonde woman Carlos doesn’t know.
Judd leads the team out of the room at the sight of their captain. Carlos looks at Michelle with an arched eyebrow before exchanging a glance with Paul as well. Owen Strand looks exhausted but somehow defeated, as though heʼs received bad news.
“Iʼm sorry, guys,” he starts. The woman by his side squeezes his arm in support, and Carlos is happy that Owen Strand has someone. “Iʼve been told that they wonʼt allow anyone who's not me or TKʼs mother in his room from now on. It seems we are too many and they don’t care that I want you to be here for him.”
He’s looking straight into Carlosʼ eyes as he speaks, like he knows Carlos has a secret reason to be here that goes beyond having hung out with TK a couple of times — that the team knows — or being here as part of Michelleʼs support system.
“Iʼm sorry,” Owen repeats. “But I can't do anything.”
Judd nods as he takes an almost sobbing Mateo closer to his chest. “Do you think they'll allow us to go in again and say a few words to him? Just a quick see you later until he gets better and is able to come back to work.”
Owen nods his approval and the team goes back inside. Carlos can see them touching TKʼs arm, whispering something, and trickling out of the room with the same defeated rictus on their faces that Owen has.
Carlos stands up when Michelle gets out after her few seconds with TK, ready to leave with her. Captain Strand stops him with a hand on his arm and a soft smile as he says, “Officer Reyes, I was hoping you could give my boy some reason to wake up.”
“Me, sir?” he whispers. He wants to scream that there’s nothing he wants more than that, but he knows he canʼt. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
“I don’t know almost anything going on in TKʼs life, as it seems, but I know he came back happier when he was out with Paul and you.” Owen sighs. “Please?”
Carlos can't say no, not when he himself wants to be the reason why TK comes back — heʼs realized in these two days that heʼs already fallen for TK, the only thing he had sworn not to do. Neither of them is ready for this.
He wants to have the chance to find out if TK has ever felt the same about him.
Carlos nods and enters the room, fear gripping his heart as he steps closer.
He sighs at the unmoving figure lying on the bed, tubes and machines hooked on him as heʼs still unable to breathe for himself. Carlos reaches out, carefully avoiding the elements that keep TK alive, and grabs his hand. He caresses its back drawing small, nonsensical patterns that soothe him more than they do TK, given that TK is still unconscious with an undefined prognosis of waking up.
And then, he says the only thing that he can think about. The only reason he can give TK.
He hopes it's enough.
“I love you.”
“I love you,” he practices in front of the mirror, his reflection mocking him as he tries to tame his hair, tonight much more of a rebel than any other day. “I dream of spending the rest of my life by your side. Alex, will you marry me?”
He checks the clock on the wall for the ninth time in the past five minutes, and sighs in frustration when he realizes it's still so fucking early. He tries sitting down on his bed, but his legs bounce and his feet twitch and he has to stand up, too nervous to sit still and too chicken to try and get to the restaurant an hour and a half before the time heʼs told Alex to be there.
Alex.
He knows they haven't been spending that much time together lately. He suspects his boyfriend resents him and his line of work — Alex is an office guy, someone with a nine to five job and a nice apartment where he loves watching shows and cooking. TK loves his job — being a firefighter is his whole life — and all his boyfriends before Alex have always come second. Alex is different, though.
In the beginning, Alex complained all the time about TKʼs odd hours and him putting his fire family first. But lately, after those first few months, Alex has accepted TKʼs lifestyle and he even encourages him. Long gone are the days when TK ended up patched up after a rough shift and Alex wasn't there. Now, TK is more careful when it comes to the job because he loves Alex. He doesn’t want to put him through hell for being reckless while saving lives.
TK can see himself spending the rest of his life with him.
Two hundred and twenty-seven minutes later, TK is stumbling out of a club in one of the worst areas of New York, his once pristine white sneakers covered in mud, his shirt untucked and rumpled. Secured in his hand there is a small bag that holds all the poison his soul craves, but he still isn’t sure.
His heart is broken and his mind is screaming, and there is not an ounce of silence inside of him until he reaches his apartment.
His heart is broken and his mind is screaming, and there is not an ounce of silence inside of him until he reaches his apartment.
He hasnʼt wanted to leave the hospital, but it seems the doctors have been crystal clear to Captain Strand. Only family is allowed to visit now, and even though Carlos has the inkling that the woman who walked into the waiting room with him isn’t family, he knows he canʼt stay.
They are nothing, and yet Carlos feels his world has shrunk to the size of a golf ball with TK on that bed.
The last words heʼs exchanged with Owen Strand ring in his ears. He takes off his shirt blindly as he recalls the sadness in Captain Strandʼs eyes, the weakness heʼs felt in his limbs — something he doesn’t think is linked to his son being in a coma. He knows what it is, heʼs known since the moment TK did, but he's also aware that Owen Strand has wanted to keep his illness a secret from his fire family.
“Iʼm sorry,” heʼd told Carlos one last time. “I wish I could find a way for you to stay.”
“Itʼs okay, Captain Strand. Hospital rules.”
“But I wish there was a way, Officer Reyes. TK needs his friends, his family, the colors you've all brought into his life.”
The mention of that bit of information about TK — the reminder of what they almost had before a bullet took that future from them — hurts Carlos more than anything else.
He shakes his head at his reflection on the mirror, the image of a sad, pale man mocking back at him.
He remembers the words heʼs told TKʼs father, out of politeness when all heʼd wanted had been camping out in that hospital room until TK woke up. But Carlos doesn’t want to dwell too much on his own pain — undeserving as he is, because he's been too much of a coward to press the right buttons to make TK take a stance on their relationship — so he tries to forget that whole conversation.
His words echo in his mind though.
“Your son needs his father, too.”
“Your son needs his father, too.”
His motherʼs voice reels recrimination and something akin to resignation. TK keeps playing with his firetruck, feigning an indifference he doesn’t really feel. He doesn’t want to hear his fatherʼs excuses for having missed his birthday.
He just wants his dad to be here, with him, singing songs and blowing off the candles. He wants the dad he had before summer ended and something everyone calls nine-eleven happened. TK knows something bad happened a few months ago — his father went out for a shift after dropping a kiss on his forehead and wishing him a good day at school, and then he didn’t come back for days. Mom had been crying, TK had noticed.
His dad had been the only dad coming back home from his firehouse.
TK knows he should be happy he still has a father — his best friend Cole doesn’t anymore. But he barely has him anyway, so he isn’t sure why he should be happy. During Thanksgiving, his mom had made a speech about being grateful that they still were a family.
TK doesn’t know if having a dad who runs off to console someone elseʼs child counts as having a family.
Now, three weeks later, his dad has missed his birthday and TK is sure that this is the last straw for his mom. She has been crying when she thinks TK doesn’t see her, and she’s been talking to her friend Jack, a lawyer just like her, about things like divorce and custody. TK doesn’t understand those words but they don’t sound nice.
It feels weird, as though heʼs being pulled from different sides, every time his parents argue just like right now. He isn’t sure how to feel. He thinks heʼd rather his father hadn't come back home that day, because ever since he hasnʼt had a father.
Owen Strand has been a ghost, walking the corridors in their East Avenue apartment without seeing any of them — not his wife, not the son he once upon a time used to take to the zoo and to the movies and to Central Park to feed the ducks and play ball.
Deep inside he knows nothing will ever be the same.
Deep inside he knows nothing will ever be the same.
Carlos is getting ready for his shift when Michelle calls. He hasnʼt been able to sneak off work since he doesn’t have a reason to — whatever is going on between TK and himself, it’s not official. They're nothing but fuck buddies at best, and that isn’t excuse enough to skip work and rush to his bedside, even if that's what he longs to do.
“Michelle,” he answers his phone breathlessly, as though heʼs been running.
“I thought youʼd like to know,” Michelle starts, no pleasantries whatsoever. “TKʼs awake.”
Carlos feels a weight being lifted from his soul at her words. He breathes in deeply, somewhat shaky. “Is he—” He canʼt finish his own question.
“Apparently there arenʼt any side effects. Apart from the fact that heʼs been shot by a kid, heʼs fine.”
“Okay,” he says, then he falls silent for a long time. He muses about what this means now — how this shapes whatever they had into something new.
“Carlos,” Michelle speaks softly into his ear, the phone still pressed against his flesh. “Are you coming to visit him? Heʼs got at least a couple more days there.”
Carlos ponders his options. He’s declared his love for someone he doesn’t really know that well when said someone had been unconscious. He isn’t sure TK would welcome him, an intruder during his recovery, even though theyʼve been improving whatever they had.
He’s been feeling like an outsider every time heʼs stepped into that hospital room, even though Captain Strand has always welcomed him with open arms. But that hasnʼt been TKʼs doing — Carlos is aware that he might face TKʼs rage when he realizes that the lid on the box that held their secret has been lifted.
“I don’t think so,” he finally replies. “If TK asks for me, I will. But I doubt he will.”
“Carlos, you love him,” Michelle tries to kick some reason into him. “And maybe he hasnʼt realized it yet, but he loves you too. Your place is by his side.”
Carlos shakes his head even though Michelle canʼt see him. “Nowʼs not our time, Michelle.”
He hears Michelle sighing in exasperation at the other end before she speaks. “You’re wrong, Carlos, but I know you better than to try to convince you. There's no need to suffer like this, but I take it love isn’t easy these days.”
Carlos smiles. “No, it isn’t,” he acquiesces. “But it's worth it. He’s worth it.”
“He better,” Michelle tells him. “He better not break your heart. Heʼd have to answer to me.”
“I didn’t doubt it for one second.”
“See you soon?” Michelle asks. When he hums in reply, she continues. “Take care, Carlos.”
“You too, chica, you too.”
When he hangs up, he feels a smile fighting its way across his face. He might not go visit TK while he is at the hospital — he knows TK would be embarrassed that their secret has been outed without him allowing it — but at least now there is a future where Carlos can explain to TK his reasons for rushing to his side when he first heard about the incident.
Now they have time.