Chapter Text
Carlos stared down a barrel of a gun on a fairly regular basis as a cop. He knew what to expect when he joined the police force long before the thought of going to the academy himself even entered his mind. His father was so very proud of his job that he spoke about it often and Carlos – forever seeking his approval - soaked up his words like a sponge.
What he hadn't expected was to face a man with a bomb strapped to his chest and with tears in his eyes begging him to let him go. It wasn’t something they prepared you for in the academy. Well, it technically was. His logical mind told him to follow the rules, call the guy out on his bullshit and make the arrest. But every other instinct screamed at him not to. The man looked terrified out of his mind and if it was all an act then it was definitely working.
But Carlos wasn't so sure that it was. The man was trying to sell them an incredibly odd story but for some reason, Carlos actually thought he was telling the truth. His partner, on the other hand, very much disagreed.
"I'm not going to risk losing my job because of your bleeding heart, Reyes," Mitchell said, stepping away from him as he attempted to get her to lower her gun and let the man go.
They've only been partners for a few weeks and things were going pretty okay, but with the way she looked at him now as she marched towards the bank robber made him think otherwise.
"Mitchell!" he tried again, putting away his weapon. "Let him go. I'll take full responsibility-"
"No," she snapped, getting out her cuffs and using them on their sobbing assailant. He dissolved into begging them in a desperate mix of English and Spanish that absolutely broke Carlos' heart. It didn't seem like he was acting. His desperation felt real. But then again, the man did just rob a bank and got caught. He'd probably try just about anything to get out of it. "I'm not falling for that one."
"What are you talking about?"
She shot him an incredulous look. "Did you think I wouldn't find out who your father was? Whatever happens here today, you're going to get out of it with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and I'm going to lose everything."
She started reading the man his rights and Carlos fought the anxiety clawing at his insides. Of course she'd assumed that he kept the fact that his father was a hotshot Texas Ranger to use at a later date, like a get out of jail free card when things got rough. When the truth was that he was trying to pave his own path in this job without the weight of his father’s accomplishments dragging him down. He didn't want to be compared to him, didn't want people to look at him and make assumptions that he was just riding his fame and enjoying the perks that came with it.
If anything, it was the complete opposite. He had to work twice as hard to stand out, to not be constantly compared or held under a higher regard than his coworkers.
So yes. He never mentioned it because he didn't want her to think differently of him. And in the end, it only made things worse.
"Mitchell, the bomb-" Carlos tried but she cut in.
“-is fake,” she said. “There is no crew waiting to bail him out, there is no kidnappers forcing him into this. And if it is real, he can’t exactly trigger it with his hands in handcuffs, now can he?”
Carlos bit back a sigh. “Fine. But we’re not going anywhere with him until the bomb squad gives us the okay.” He picked up his radio to call it in but Mitchell ignored him. She was in the process of shoving their perp into the back of their patrol car and Carlos took a few steps away, wary of the bomb still strapped to his chest. Bomb squad was probably already on the way, having been summoned when the robbery was first reported, he just had to give them a location. Hopefully, they'd make it here in time.
"Please!" Carlos turned towards the car and met the man's wide eyed and pleading stare through the window. "Don't do this!" he begged. "Please help me."
Feeling sick, Carlos turned his head and walked even further away, unable to listen to the man's increasingly desperate pleas. He picked up his radio. "Dispatch, this is 363-H20. We have the suspect in custody. We’re at the-“
A loud, deafening boom pierced the air, followed by a wave of heat and pain as he went flying through the air. He hit the ground hard, all air expelled from his lungs at the violent action and taking another one seemed downright impossible.
"Officer Reyes," he heard the frantic voice of the dispatcher through the ringing in his ears and reached for his radio. The voice seemed oddly familiar, but his brain couldn't quite make the connection. "Officer Reyes, do you copy?"
He tried to press the button to respond, but his fingers kept slipping and when he raised up his hand, he saw that it was covered with blood. His blood. He didn't know where it was coming from, wasn't even sure what happened or where he was or how long it had been or-
He must have drifted off for a moment, because when he came to, it was the familiar sound of sirens that caught his attention, growing louder by the second. He found himself smiling even through his gasping breaths, even though he couldn't quite remember why the thought of an ambulance made his chest feel tight, but in a good way. His head was swimming and the pain was all but gone now which deep down he knew wasn't a good sign but that was okay. It was all going to be okay.
Help was on the way.
*
When the call first came in, TK knees just about gave out. He kept telling himself over and over again on the drive to their location that just because an officer was injured in an explosion didn't mean that the officer was Carlos. Despite them constantly running into each other on calls, there were, in fact, other police officers working in the same area.
But then he heard the unit number and he was glad that he was sitting down already.
"Carlos," he managed to say when Tommy gave him a worried look. "It's Carlos. Captain, I can't -"
Neither he nor his partner were responding. All they really knew was that there was some sort of explosion. TK didn't have much experience with these calls because they weren't all that common outside of a battlefield, but he did recently jump through a minefield and he’d seen what happened to the man who was unfortunate enough to step on one.
His mind supplied him with an image of Carlos' body torn to pieces and scattered around for all to see and it was all he could do to stop himself from throwing up.
"Yes, you can," Tommy said, looking him right in the eye. "You have to. Carlos is counting on you doing your job and doing it well. Okay?"
TK took a deep breath and let it out. He nodded.
"Okay," Tommy said. "I know it's hard but try thinking of this as if it were any other call. We're going to do our best to save him. We just have to keep our head in the game."
Tommy was right. They had no idea what they were about to walk in on and he had to keep his shit together if he wanted to be of any help. The fact that Tommy hadn't benched him from the get to was a miracle of itself, but she probably knew that there was no force on this earth that could keep him away right now.
The ambulance come down to a stop right behind the firetruck that came here just a minute before them. They were already out on the scene and TK paused only for a brief moment to grab his bag and sprinted outside alongside Tommy and Nancy.
"Over here!" his dad called out and TK rushed towards him, ignoring the still burning wreck of a police car on his left that Marjan and Paul were working on extinguishing.
Even from a distance and despite all the blood covering the singed APD uniform, TK still recognized the unmoving body of his boyfriend.
He sank down on his knees so fast he could almost hear the crack as they met the hard concrete but he ignored the pain as he gave Carlos a quick once over. All four limbs were still where they should be and he was in one piece, but all exposed skin was red from the heat of the blast and covered in lacerations. One of his arms was pointing in the wrong direction too, probably a dislocated shoulder.
But the most concerning thing was the pool of blood coming from the still bleeding wound on his abdomen where his father was doing his best to keep pressure. Considering the circumstances, the wound was probably made by a piece of shrapnel from the exploding car.
"He was unresponsive when we got to the scene," he said as TK took over, bile rising in his throat at the feeling of warm, sticky blood seeping through his fingers.
"He's got a pulse but it's weak," Nancy said from beside him, checking his pulse and his pupils. "We need to get him to the hospital, now."
Everything after that was a blur. Someone brought a stretcher and they lifted Carlos on top of it before they loaded it up on the ambulance. His father's voice saying that they'll meet them all in the hospital as soon as they were done on the scene.
TK was on autopilot, focusing only on his ingrained training and Tommy's orders as he hooked Carlos up to the machines that showed the slow beating of his heart before it too gave out and stopped, the machine shrieking in warning.
TK jumped to perform CPR without any prompting, hearing nothing but the ringing of the heart monitor in his ears until Carlos came back to consciousness with a gasp, eyes fluttering open.
"Carlos?" he said, grabbing his uninjured hand and holding on tight. "Can you hear me?"
"Ty…" Carlos had rasped out, giving TK's hand a weak squeeze.
"I'm right here," TK had said, voice coming out hoarse, his composure starting to crack. "We're almost at the hospital. You're going to be okay."
Him responding was a good sign, as it meant that there likely wasn't any significant brain damage like TK feared when they found him unconscious on the scene. He was pretty far away from the car, though, so they couldn't rule it out just yet. TK was only hoping that by chance, Carlos hadn't been standing close to it in the first place instead of being thrown all the way there by the blast.
"Knew you'd come," Carlos whispered, eyes fluttering shut again no matter how hard TK tried to keep him awake and present.
"Carlos," he'd kept trying, growing more and more frantic as his pulse grew weaker. "Stay with me, babe. Just stay with me."
They came to a stop just as Carlos' hand went slack in his and the ambulance exploded in a flurry of motion. The door slammed open and there were nurses and doctors everywhere as Carlos was wheeled out of the bus and into the hospital, TK and his team quickly following suit, TK holding his hand and Tommy rattling off all that they've given him on the scene and his stats.
It was Tommy who held him back when they reached the point where they couldn't follow and had him sit down in one of the waiting room chairs and instructed him to breathe before he worked himself up into a panic attack.
Tommy made no false promises that Carlos would be okay, because they both knew that he was in rough shape and that it would take a lot of work to patch him back together.
"He's lost so much blood," TK sobbed, still covered in said blood all the way up to his elbows and all over his uniform. It seemed like too much for one person to lose and still live but Carlos was a big, strong man in his prime and TK had seen smaller people lose even more and still survive.
But none of them were Carlos. Who knew what kind of internal damage they were dealing with, and all of the other worst case scenarios were making his head spin.
"Don't give up on him just yet," Tommy told him as she pulled him into a hug and let him sob into her shirt. "Carlos is a fighter and he's in the best hands possible. There's still hope."
His dad and the rest of the 126 crew had joined them in the waiting room at some point and now they were all waiting on the doctors to bring them some good news. TK had let himself cry for a bit before he pulled himself back together for the time being and made himself useful.
They took off Carlos' jacket in the ambulance and it contained his phone that TK fortunately knew the password for and took on the responsibility of informing his parents of the situation. As it turned out, Carlos' father had already heard about his son being hurt through a friend in the station and was already on the way to the hospital with his mother.
And now here he was, tucked away in the empty hospital bathroom as he forced himself to take deep, steadying breaths as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were red rimmed from all the crying, and his hands were rubbed raw from his frantic attempts to wash away all of the blood. Carlos' blood. Just thinking about it made him feel sick.
He changed into a clean AFD shirt that his father had pressed into his hands as he led him in the direction of the bathroom so he didn't scar Carlos’ parents for life. They were going to be here any minute now, and TK was going to have to pretend not to be completely and utterly devastated and on the brink of having a full on breakdown.
Because as far as they knew, he was still nothing but Carlos’ friend.
Fuck, this really happened at the worst time, didn't it? But he'd promised Carlos that he'd keep his secret, and Carlos would have more than enough to worry about when he woke up for TK to add his parents knowing about them to the list. Now was not the time for dramatics and emotional outbursts. He had to keep it together for Carlos. And for his parents.
Anxious to be right there with the rest of them waiting for any news, TK wrapped up his silent freak out and looked in the mirror one last time, nodding. He still looked like a wreck, but at least all the blood was gone and he was in clean clothes.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob, cringing at the remnants of the blood still stuck under his fingernails that he couldn't quite get out. He clenched his eyes shut, willed his tears away along with the urge to curl up into a ball and remain right where he was, hidden away from the awful reality and the concerned faces of his friends and family.
Then, he opened his eyes and raised his head up high. No. No more running away, and no more hiding. Carlos was counting on him to be strong and he was not going to let him down.
His mind made up, TK pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway.