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Carlos wakes up like he does every morning, spending a few moments in the limbo where he isn’t sure what day it is or whether he has to work or not. Where the last grips of sleep still linger, threatening to pull him back under if he lets it.
He likes this part of waking up. It’s calm in the fact that yesterday’s worries have yet to resurface and the future problems of today are unable to make themselves apparent just yet. He’s able to just exist.
Without opening his eyes, he raises his arms above his head, stretching them up until his knuckles bump against the headboard. When he’s satisfied, he brings them back down and rolls onto his side, maybe in the hopes of catching a few more minutes of sleep seeing as his alarm has yet to go off.
Those thoughts go out the window when his hand bumps into the warm flesh of another person.
Carlos’ eyes shoot open as he bolts upright and when he scrubs his hand over his eyes, he can confirm that he isn’t hallucinating and there is in fact a stranger in his bed.
His mind races as he racks his memories of the night before, but he continuously draws up blanks. Surely he should remember bringing someone home but when he sneaks another glance at the man sleeping peacefully beside him, he’s met with nothing but unrecognition.
Maybe he went out last night and ended up drinking too much. It doesn’t seem like him, but it’s the only plausible explanation he can come up with.
Except the possibility of the argument doesn’t seem so valid because Carlos doesn’t feel hungover. Sure he has a headache, but it’s not nearly enough to match up with the fact that he seems to have blacked out everything. The last thing he remembers is being on shift yesterday and then nothing. Everything after that until the moment he opened his eyes this morning has mysteriously been wiped.
On shaky limbs, he quietly pulls himself out of bed and only then does he realize that he’s only wearing boxers, adding to the suspicion that he must’ve had a one night stand. He quickly grabs a pair of sweats, pausing at the door to take one last look at the stranger.
Despite his confusion on how he ended up in this situation, he isn’t so out of sorts as to not applaud himself on the beauty of the man that he seemingly brought home. The stranger before him is undeniably gorgeous with his softly tousled brown hair and toned muscles and Carlos finds himself wishing he could remember what happened between them or even his name.
When Carlos deposits himself on the living room sofa a minute later, he starts making a mental list of what he knows. One, most obviously, he seems to be suffering from some sort of memory loss which is likely alcohol induced because he can’t for the life of him think of another reason. Two, he must’ve slammed water last night in order to not be feeling like complete shit right now. And three, he brought home a stranger.
The most perplexing part of the situation is that number three is what Carlos thinks is the most concerning. Drinking too much isn’t something he does often, but he’s done it a few times so the possibility of the situation isn’t out of the question. One night stands, on the other hand, are relatively out of character for him. He’s a fan of dinner and getting to know someone, not meaningless sex with someone who he can’t even remember the name of.
Said someone chooses that moment to come down the stairs, already completely dressed. He makes a detour on his way to the kitchen to drop a kiss on top of Carlos’ head whispering a ‘good morning’ before he moves to the kitchen.
The gesture is sweet, although it definitely wasn’t what he was expecting. The man himself is rather captivating, digging through Carlos’ fridge as he grabs an apple. If Carlos wasn’t so enamored by the man’s confidence and lack of hesitation about making himself right at home, he thinks he should be annoyed. But he’s not, there’s something about him that seems familiar and comfortable and Carlos finds himself being immediately drawn to him.
“How’s your head doing?” He asks, looking over to Carlos before he turns back to the coffee pot.
Carlos is distracted by the green eyes that he is introduced to before he’s able to answer. He’s assuming the man is talking about his hangover. “I’m good,” he answers honestly.
“Are you sure?” He says with a frown, looking genuinely concerned.
Carlos can feel the curious expression on his face. “It hurts a little bit, but not as bad as it should, all things considered,” he says with a small laugh.
The answer must not appease him because the frown doesn’t dissipate, but he nods and moves on. “I wish I had the day off, too,” he says. “I want nothing but to crawl back into bed with you.”
He thinks the morning and the way the man is acting is oddly intimate for someone he hardly knows but he’s cute and he wouldn’t mind seeing him again so he goes along with it. “That can be arranged,” he suggests.
The stranger smiles. “Hold that thought for later. I really do have to go.”
Carlos keeps the easy going smile on his face despite the pang of disappointment he feels. He’s about to ask for the man’s number when he comes over to Carlos, bending down to capture his lips in a tender kiss.
Carlos’ mind spins with the sensation of it. He’s more than sure it’s not the first one they’ve shared, but to Carlos it is and he wants the moment to last forever. Of course as soon as he thinks that, the man is pulling away and is out the front door.
It takes Carlos a moment to realize the whispered ‘love you’ the man said before he left.
He must have imagined that because there’s absolutely no way he said that. He’ll blame it on the nonexistent hangover or maybe a lack of sleep that caused his brain to let the domesticity of this morning cross some wires and present this scenario that he finds himself hoping for in his future.
The rest of Carlos’ morning begins to go by without a hitch. He takes a shower and goes to make some breakfast as usual, but that’s where the similarities end.
He figures he should wash his sheets and goes to collect the rest of the laundry but as he sorts through it, he starts to find pieces mixed in that don’t belong to him.
At the first foreign sweatshirt, he figures he must’ve accidentally grabbed it from someone at the station or another officer might’ve put it in his bag by mistake. But then he comes across a couple of button down shirts with patterns that are way louder than anything he would ever wear and he can no longer play it off as a minor mistake.
It makes zero sense, if he’s being completely honest and he doesn’t know what to make of it.
He abandons the laundry, stumbling out of the room as he searches for something else. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but there has to be something. Some kind of sign that can indicate what the hell is happening.
When he returns to the living room, he starts noticing things that he failed to when he first woke up. His heart starts the pound and his lungs become a little tight as he looks at the picture frames littering the walls and shelves. He sees his family, Michelle, and some of his other friends, but a majority of the people in the photos are people Carlos has never seen in his life. And the most heart stopping, mind bending part of it is that right next to him, at the focal point of almost every single photo, is the man he woke up next to this morning.
This has to be a dream or some kind of twisted joke that the universe decided to play on him. He’s half expecting someone to jump out with a camera, shouting that he just got punk’d. But the seconds tick by and nothing changes. He forcefully closes his eyes and reopens them, he pinches himself, he opens the front door to glance around the neighborhood, but every time he focuses back on reality, it’s the exact same.
Before Carlos can truly start to panic, he has enough brain cells to figure he should call someone, to at least get a second opinion before he determines that he’s actually losing his mind.
Locating his phone does nothing to quell his nerves as the lockscreen is a picture of the same stranger with a very large dog licking his face. He would find it absolutely adorable if he weren't so alarmed.
He calls Michelle, not only as his best friend but as someone who can tell him if he’s having a stroke or something.
“Carlos, hey. What’s up?” She answers.
“Can you come over?” He blurts out, cutting to the chase.
“Um,” she laughs lightly. “I’m in New Mexico, Carlos. It would take me a while to get there.”
Carlos sinks down onto the sofa. New Mexico? “What?” he cries out. “Since when?”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line before Michelle calmly asks, “Are you feeling okay? Where’s TK?”
“Who’s TK?” He asks. He hoped calling her would help him feel better but she’s only adding to his confusion.
“Carlos, where are you?” Gone is the calm tone she used before and it’s been replaced by urgency and worry.
“I’m at home,” he states.
“What year is it?”
“What? Michelle-”
“Just answer the question, Carlos.” She cuts him off.
“2019,” he states matter of factly.
She hears her swear to herself before she’s blurting out a million things. “Just stay where you are, okay? I’m going to call TK but I just need you to stay put. You’re going to be fine,” she reassures.
If he thought he was panicking before, it’s nothing compared to the way he feels now with Michelle treating him like he’s sick or dying. “What’s going on? What do you mean?”
The silence that follows his question is deafening before she speaks up again. “I think you’re suffering from memory loss.”
“Memory loss? That’s impossible,” he cries out. “I’m fine. I remember everything just fine,” he tries to reason.
“Carlos, it’s 2022,” Michelle states and Carlos feels like the rug has been pulled out from under him.
It’s impossible. There’s no way three years of his life have just disappeared. It doesn’t make any sense.
Except it does make sense. There are people in his life that he can remember. Items in his house that he never bought. But listening to logic proves to be difficult at the moment and denial is the only strategy Carlos has to cope with the given situation.
He vaguely hears Michelle repeat that she’s going to call TK but her words sound like they’re underwater. She must, however, because no more than ten minutes later the stranger from this morning, TK, he presumes, is bursting through the door.
His eyes track over every inch of Carlos’ body as he comes to squat down in front of him and Carlos feels like he’s under a microscope. “Michelle called me,” he starts out, a little unsure. “Told me that you’re having some memory problems.” His voice is neutral and if Carlos knew him a little better he would be able to pick out the anxious ticks he has and the way he’s carefully hiding how scared he is.
“Um, I guess, yeah,” Carlos says weakly.
“You don’t remember me,” TK says. It’s not a question but Carlos answers anyway.
“No,” he says and TK’s face falls. “I’m sorry,” he adds, not exactly sure what he’s apologizing for but he’s not loving the way TK’s looking at him and he feels like something here must be his fault.
“It’s not your fault,” TK says immediately, reading his mind. He raises a hand to Carlos and Carlos watches with wide eyes as he brings it around to the back of his head. The hand hovers just over his hair and TK asks, “Can I?”
Carlos isn’t exactly sure what he’s asking but he nods anyway and his fingers carefully trace along his scalp. He winces when they come across a particularly tender spot and TK frowns, pulling back.
“I knew you should’ve gone to the hospital yesterday,” TK says, muttering more to himself than to Carlos. “We’re going now,” he continues, leaving no room for argument. Not that Carlos would at the moment. He’s not a fan of hospitals, but finding out three years of his life are gone is more than enough reason to go.
As TK ushers him out of the house, he fills him in on the fact that Carlos got hit on the head with a beer bottle at work yesterday. He was breaking up a bar fight when one of the instigators was able to get to him, crushing the glass against his skull. TK informs him that he’s a paramedic and he checked him out on the scene. He was bleeding a lot, as head wounds do, but it wasn’t anything more than a surface wound and he didn’t even get a concussion. Certainly nobody expected this to be the outcome.
Carlos doesn’t know what to make of all of it and he zones out practically the entire drive, trying to process everything that’s happened in the last couple of hours.
“You’re going to be fine,” TK says as they walk through the doors of the emergency room. Carlos isn’t sure who he’s trying to convince.
Carlos’ feet dangle off the edge of the examination table. He can barely touch his toes to the ground and it makes him feel like a child as he waits here for the doctor to come back with his test results.
TK is sitting in a chair against the wall, seemingly lost in his own mind at the moment, and there’s a physical distance between the two of them.
He wants to reach out, longing for some form of comfort from someone he so obviously trusts and cares for, even if he can’t remember it, but he refrains himself. He imagines TK feels the same way if the way he was doting on him earlier is anything to go by, but the Carlos sitting here isn’t TK’s Carlos and he knows the other man is probably afraid to overstep. The elephant in the room is ever apparent as they both find themselves in uncharted territories that they don’t know how to navigate.
“So, you’re my boyfriend?” Carlos hesitantly asks, realizing in the craziness of everything, the nature of their relationship was never defined. He put together that they live together and neither of them are wearing rings so it seems like the most logical answer.
TK looks at him for the first time since the doctor left and plasters a smile on his face that Carlos can tell is forced. “Yeah.”
Carlos nods. “How long have we been together?”
“A little over two years,” TK answers.
Carlos woke up this morning thinking it was 2019, so that must mean that he met TK shortly after the last moment he remembers.
“I should probably call your parents,” TK says, pulling out his phone.
“My parents know about us?” Carlos blurts out. There’s a mess of emotion that runs through him at the news. Overall he’s happy because if his parents know about him and TK, that tells him that TK and he are very serious. If TK means enough to him to face his fears of confronting his parents about his sexuality, they must really love each other. But he does have to wonder how they took the news.
“Yeah,” TK answers, with a smile that’s much more authentic, knowing what that means to Carlos.
“Oh,” he says, smiling back.
“I should've asked this sooner, but if you’d rather be with them, I completely understand. I mean at least you remember them and wouldn’t be stuck with-”
“No,” Carlos cuts him off. “I want to stay at my house and I want you to be there, it’s clear we love each other and I know this is hurting you too.”
TK finally gets up from his seat, crossing the room to stand in front of Carlos. He reaches his hand out but freezes in the air, halfway there. Carlos takes the leap for him, grabbing his hand and squeezing.
“I do love you, even with a few missing memories.” TK says. “And we’re going to figure this out, you’re going to be okay.”
The doctor knocks on the open door once, causing TK to step back, but the hold on Carlos’ hand stays.
Carlos takes a deep breath, time for the moment of truth.
The weight of the news follows them the whole ride home and still lingers as TK digs around in the fridge, pulling out some leftovers to reheat for dinner.
The good news is that physically he’s fine. There’s the small cut on his head from where the bottle struck, which apparently TK already made note of when he was called to the scene yesterday, but other than that there’s no indication that it ever happened. No swelling, no brain bleed, and as TK already confirmed, no concussion.
Which as relieving as that is to hear, it means there’s no clear cut reason as to why he’s experiencing such extreme memory loss and with no cause, figuring out how to fix it becomes that much harder.
The doctor said the memories may start to come back on their own over time, and doing things to help jog his memory may help, but they’re just going to have to play the waiting game and be patient.
But Carlos doesn’t know realistically how long he can be in this limbo where he’s stuck between some version of himself he doesn’t know and one that’s stuck almost three years in the past. There might come a point where he has to accept that there are things he’ll never get back if he wants to be able to move on, and he hopes that it isn’t a deal breaker for those around him who came into his life after the cut off point.
Dinner is solemn and TK tries to engage him in conversation, telling him a bit about their relationship and their friends, but when Carlos continues to fail to have any hint of recognition in his eyes, TK grows quieter.
Carlos insists on cleaning up, wanting to do something to occupy himself and TK gratefully takes him up on the offer, forming a weak excuse about something he needs to go do. It’s not hard to tell that it’s a lie and that TK is barely holding it together. Carlos waits a minute before following him but just as he’s about to knock on the closed bathroom door, he hears the sound of a muffled sob and is devastatingly aware that TK came up here to get some space away from him.
Carlos is the one that got hurt and while the situation is confusing for him, he can’t imagine what it’s like to be in TK’s shoes, to have a boyfriend that suddenly no longer remembers anything about you.
He stands frozen in the hallway for one more second before he quietly heads back downstairs, feeling like he’s intruding on TK’s privacy. He wants to reach out to him, to comfort him, but he knows that TK wants the Carlos he knows and if he went in there, it would probably only make things worse.
The next few weeks are a learning curve for the both of them.
They dance around each other in the house but slowly they grow into a balance of familiarity and comfort. Carlos gets a few memories back here and there, much to the help of TK telling him stories, showing him pictures, and taking him to some of their favorite spots.
They come to him in flashes, just bits and pieces and at first Carlos confuses it for a deja vu moment until he recounts what he remembers to TK and the other man looks overjoyed as he confirms the memory.
After a few days of just the two of them getting used to their new reality, he gets reintroduced to their friends, which was overwhelming at first but he quickly became fond of them and as he gains even more memories, that feeling grows.
He relearns things about TK, too. His favorite movies, the way he takes his coffee in the morning, and even deeper things about his past and what he hopes for his future. TK almost cried when Carlos cooked him tamales and without even thinking about it, made a reference to the first time they shared this meal together. That was a good day, a real stepping stone in the path to getting back what they once had.
They sleep in the same bed every night and while they fall asleep with a purposeful distance between them, more often than not he wakes up with his limbs tangled with TK’s as if his body can remember what his mind cannot. Although they occasionally hold hands or cuddle on the couch when watching a movie, TK hasn’t made any move to kiss him since that first day.
It’s understandable no matter how much Carlos wishes he would. TK’s just feeding off whatever signals Carlos gives him, not knowing how much is too much or what would be an overstep. And at the beginning he was okay with it, TK was still a stranger. But as each day goes by with another small memory resurfacing, Carlos finds himself wanting TK to be his for real again. Even without the knowledge that they’re together, Carlos thinks he would want him anyway, like no matter the universe or the timeline, they’re meant to find each other.
He bites the bullet one lazy Sunday morning. He’s in his own corner of the couch reading a book with TK’s feet in his lap as the other man scrolls through his phone. TK’s bundled under a blanket with his hood pulled over his head to fend off the chill of the cool winter morning when Carlos bookmarks his page and tosses the book on the end table, no longer able to go another second without proving to TK that he’s all in. TK looks up, a curious expression on his face as he pulls his legs back to himself and shifts into an upright position.
Before TK is able to ask what’s wrong, Carlos is across the couch, crowding into his space. He catches the small nod TK gives when Carlos looks to his lips, and then they’re kissing and it feels a bit like coming home.
The closer they get, the more he can tell that TK is becoming comfortable around him again. He talks more openly about his feelings and fears, no longer afraid to have Carlos help carry the weight of his problems. He cries into Carlos’ arms one night, letting weeks of bottled up emotions about how scared he was to lose Carlos flow free. Carlos holds him, whispering soft reassurances that he’s here and while he isn’t completely whole yet, he knows deep within his soul that he’ll get there one day.
Eventually Carlos goes back to work, a transition that was easiest of all. Most things haven’t changed much and he was able to pick up right where he left off. It was a new feeling, however, to bump into TK on calls. It fills him with a sense of giddiness, his infatuation with the man has him looking forward to any opportunity he has that might allow their paths to cross throughout the day.
When he pulls up to one scene to see TK in the back of the ambulance with a little girl, laughing as she places the stethoscope over his heart, it isn’t hard to figure out how he fell in love with him and he thinks he might already be halfway to doing it again.
Carlos spends a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to get all his memories back. He doesn’t know if they will continue to come bit by bit like they have been until everything is back or if one day he’s going to reach this threshold that’s going to trigger the rest of them to come back in full force, hitting him like a tidal wave.
Turns out it’s the latter.
He wakes up alone in bed one mundane morning, wondering where TK went. He considers the possibility that TK went for a run, knowing sometimes that he likes to do that early in the morning before the rest of the world wakes up. He sits with that thought for a minute before he realizes that he was able to remember that fact and all the other previous times TK’s done that.
He continues to think, breathing heavily at the potential of this moment becoming monumental, and finds that it’s all there. Every single thing.
He remembers pouring rain and the brightest smile he’s ever known. He remembers line dancing and flirty looks. He remembers stunned silences and a forgotten bottle of champagne. He remembers teary eyes and a busted lip. He remembers the first time he’s even known full blown fear and stark white hospital sheets. He remembers a green sky that matched green eyes.
He remembers natural disasters, keys pressed into palms, kisses trailed across skin, career changes, kidnappings, date nights out, date nights in, fighting, making up, and clinging to each other as if nothing else in the world mattered.
He remembers TK, what it’s like to love him and to be loved by him.
He bolts out of bed, pounding down the stairs to find that TK did not in fact go for a run and is currently buried elbows deep into a sink of soapy water.
Carlos grabs him, spinning him around. TK’s so startled that he drops the plate he was holding back into the sink, causing a splash of water to soak both of their shirts, but Carlos couldn’t care less because he’s tilting his head and kissing TK with everything he has.
He feels TK’s hands come up to hold his face as he gets with the program, leaving soapy suds dripping down Carlos’ neck. Carlos pulls back, out of breath as he presses their foreheads together and just breathes him in.
“Good morning,” TK says with an amused undertone in his words.
Carlos keeps his eyes closed as he slowly whispers, “I remember.”
TK pulls back, a hand on his chest and something brewing in his eyes, a mixture of hope and fear at the idea of hoping too much. “What?” He asks, shaking and watery.
“I remember everything,” Carlos repeats.
The tears threatening to spill over in TK’s eyes finally do and he pulls him in, crushing their bodies together. Carlos fists his hand in the back of his shirt, savoring in the warmth of the love of his life and cursing himself for ever forgetting it. At the first sound of a sob that gets muffled in Carlos’ neck, he pulls TK impossibility tighter, whispering reassurances of love as he presses kisses to any part of him he can reach.
“I missed you,” TK whispers into his neck, sounding wrecked, but so, so relieved.
“I’m here now,” Carlos says. “I’m here, TK. I love you.”
At that, TK cries even harder if possible. “I didn’t know if I’d ever get to hear you say that again,” he confesses, breaking Carlos’ heart.
Carlos doesn’t know how long they stand in their kitchen, clinging to each other as the gravity of what could’ve been truly sinks in. Eventually, they’ll need to separate. There are people they should call and Carlos should probably go back to the hospital, just to confirm that everything’s okay, but that can wait. For now, everything they need is right here.