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TK doesn’t know when Carlos’s place had started to feel like home. It had happened slowly, so much so that he didn’t even really register it, until his dad had told everyone to go home and it hadn’t even occurred to TK that home could mean anywhere else.
It’s a new feeling. This sense of home in a place - in a person , if he’s being honest - is almost unnatural to him. Even the house he shares with his dad… From the start, TK had been clear that it was a temporary arrangement until they could both get back on their feet after everything.
Everything’s different now. Carlos is safe.
Carlos is home .
“Can I stay here tonight?” he murmurs into the silence, as if he hasn’t stayed over a thousand times before. Tonight is different, though; he needs that reassurance, that anchor - permission, almost, to hold on just that bit tighter.
Carlos kisses his head. “Always.”
*
They settle into bed, curled around each other much as they had been on the stairs. TK has to force himself to refrain from digging into Carlos’s biceps but his body is still too tightly wound to relax. If Carlos notices (and he does, TK knows this) he doesn’t comment, but his thumb traces grounding circles on the back of TK’s hand, and TK swears he’s never been more in love.
Not for the first time, he thinks back on the night. How he’d seen a turnout coat on fire right where his dad had been standing and another body bent over it as far as the flames would allow.
He shivers. “Can I confess something terrible?” he asks quietly.
Carlos shifts but TK doesn’t look at him, preferring instead to stare blankly into the empty space in front of him.
His voice is similarly soft when he replies, and TK can picture the look on his face. Open, caring, safe . “Okay.”
“I was relieved.”
Carlos’s frown is audible, but TK takes a moment before he continues, the guilt pricking uncomfortably at him.
“My dad was with Tim when he… When it happened,” he explains. “They were standing so close together, we couldn’t actually tell who had been hit. Smoke, you know? So when we did see, I was so relieved that it wasn’t him that it took me a second to realise that meant it was someone else. Tim was dead, and I was relieved .”
TK breathes out shakily, his own eyes widening at the weight of his confession. It’s as if, by saying out loud, he’s unleashed something in himself, and he can feel his mind start to spiral down dark pathways.
“Me too.”
Carlos’s voice is barely more than a whisper, but TK hears him like he shouted, so in tune to everything Carlos does as he is. He looks up, startled. “What?”
“I heard about everything,” Carlos says. “That someone from your crew had died on call. I was so worried that it was you, that when I found it it wasn’t…” He shrugs. “It was like you said. Relief. You’re not a bad person for feeling that way, TK.”
TK blinks, his mind stuck on Carlos’s words. “You were worried about me?”
“When are you going to get it in your head?” Carlos asks. “I’ll always worry about you.”
There’s that word again. Always . It’s a foreign concept, like home , except they’re starting to feel not quite so strange anymore. It’s terrifying.
It’s right.
“Me too,” TK manages. He feels Carlos smile into his hair, and TK finally allows himself to relax into the embrace.
“Get some sleep, love,” Carlos murmurs.
And TK does.