Work Text:
"You do know there is such a thing as too much sunscreen, right?" TK asked, faux exaggerated annoyance plastered on his face. He was lying on his stomach, enjoying their little beach spot and also kind of enjoying his boyfriend massaging high coverage sunscreen. He wasn't complaining about the contact, Carlos loved giving massages and TK loved receiving them. But what he noticed early on during their little beach trip was this: TK didn't like the feel of sunscreen very much. It felt sticky, and not in a way he liked. And it created this weirdly impersonal distance between his skin and Carlos' hands, one he found unnecessary.
Whoever said rubbing sunscreen on someone was erotic was a damn liar. After a while, it felt like TK was being buttered to go in the oven. When Carlos just laughed and decided to work in his fifth round on his already caked-on shoulders, TK finally objected by swatting at him to stop.
Carlos sighed, palms full of more white and with more white drops on his trousers than he'd ever seen. "You do know skin cancer is as prevalent as ever, right?", he asked, raising his perfectly shaped eyebrows and looking at him with a fond expression. Being looked at like that still gave him butterflies. He felt hot all over, traveling from his stomach all over his body, this warm feeling. Even under the shade. "And your skin looks like it hasn't seen this much sun in ... ever. City boy."
TK tilted his head sideways a little, peering through his sunglasses to take a peek at his already kind of reddening left shoulder. Touché. He just couldn't find it in himself to care about cancer right now, not when he had a shot of paradise right in his grasp.
"Oh, is that why you're making me look like Edward Cullen right now?" He countered, lifting himself up by his sandy hands to take the opportunity to laze in a much more comfortable position, with his pasty hairy legs positioned on Carlos' lap. Carlos just held up his arms to let him through, then continued massaging in the other sunscreen he had left on his left leg. "I haven't looked this white since I last had to order my dad a soy latte frappuccino with no sugar."
Carlos didn't even look up from the worship of his legs, just grabbed a hold of his toe when he wriggled one experimentally. "I want to take care of you," Carlos said under his breath, so softly TK almost didn't hear it. He did, though. Judging by the searing wetness forming in his eyes. He had to swallow twice to get his bearings, to stop looking at his boyfriend like a dear in headlights. Carlos looked at him, glanced at his open expression, but chose not to say anymore. He didn't have to. He heard the "I love you" just the same. Something he still didn't quite know how to deal with, not so soon after New York. A small, little part of him still froze up when he heard that, expecting that "But..." to follow. Threw him for a loop when it didn't, every time.
"I...," TK started, didn't finish. Let it hang in the damp air. Carlos just stopped his leg ministrations, turned towards him fully, with the most patient and yet playful expression he'd ever seen on him.
Fuck. Why was he so bad at this?
"I... I think..."
Why was he such a tool? Just say it back. Just say it back, damn it. It's easy. You've felt it for months. Say it.
"You think... you wanna take a swim with me?" Carlos, graceful as ever, changed the subject. TK let out a sigh of relief, biting his lip in frustration. He wanted to smack himself on the head. Carlos held out both of his still pearly white palms. "Wash some of this off?"
TK, not caring about the distance anymore, grabbed his hand. "Let's go."
--
He didn't even see it coming. That was the damnest thing, as a firefighter he'd been trained to spot the minute details, to know when shit was about to hit the fan. To feel the change of weather when lightning struck. This, though. This he hadn't seen coming, not by a long shot.
They were just in waist-high water a minute ago, TK thoroughly enjoying being wrapped around his boyfriend in broad daylight, the ocean lulling them to sleep, but somehow this beach had a life of its own. A lot of it. After something brushed on his leg, either a fish or trash or something, and after a group of noisy kids had decided to play water ball right next to their spot, the whole swaying around started to wear off. And though it wasn't that cold in, even the warmest waters can seem freezing when they were just standing. So TK had no choice but to let go of Carlos and use some of his high school swim team expertise to flip himself on his back, once again being basked in sunlight. Carlos, he found out, didn't like the water that much. Or he did, but as he put it, "I like it much more when I know our car keys don't get stolen".
("This is a kid's beach," TK retorted. "Exactly," Carlos said.)
But wading on the coast was only fun so long as he didn't get splashed with water from oncoming kids. He liked to imagine being the only other person to exist right now, but that was almost impossible when his beach vacation kept being interrupted by a bunch of families. So he decided to dive a little deeper, explore the area a little more, let the gentle waves take him farther out than he'd anticipated. That was his first mistake.
TK couldn't see past his toes anymore, the blue of the water betraying nothing of the actual depths of the ocean he'd found himself in, but he felt confident he could handle paddling back to shore. He'd been one of the best swimmers in high school, after all. Before he decided to flunk it and trade in the swim trunks for drugs. Had never really been his thing anyway, water never had the alluding all destructive wrath fire had. He always felt safe in water, in the pools he'd swum as a child and now. Boy, was he wrong.
There were some rocks off to his right. They seemed ancient and alive in the way only nature could, they'd been here and weathered the tides before he'd been born and would be there long after. They didn't have to weather that much right now, given the pristine and gentle breeze the ocean had in store for them today. Perfect, not a cloud in sight. But these rocks seemed like they'd been shaped by far more and for far longer. When he finally had made his way towards them, they were slippery and cold to the touch. The soft moss covering it almost felt alive under TK's fingers.
TK had never understood why some people didn't worship nature more than they should. This felt pretty damn ethereal to him.
Slowly, he swam around it with his left hand still touching the moss, trying to get a feeling for its shape. Everything under him was black but he imagined it to be reaching all the way to the bottom of the ocean, and the bottom of the earth.
He didn't know what brought it on, the sudden thought swimming to the surface in his head, but once it was there he couldn't make it go away.
I love him.
He loved Carlos. He fucking loved him. And it was unbelievably scary to think about, this deep feeling rooted in him just like these bunch of rocks were to the earth. Probably always been there, ever since Carlos first gave him one of those million-dollar smiles while dancing. Fuck.
I love him. I love him, I love him.
The thought felt safe being lowered onto the water, floating away and into the ocean.
"Fuck..." Some saltwater reached his mouth when he stopped supporting himself on the rocks, but it didn't matter. He was gonna go back out there and tell him, wasn't he. Yes, he was. He was going to stop being a tool and tell the man. He just needed to get back to shore to actually do it.
Thanks, rocks. You've been real helpful.
Getting back to shore in theory was supposed to be the easier thing. Easier than dropping that huge bomb on Carlos. He was a good swimmer, and the ocean was quiet. At least on the surface. But TK was never really good at looking at the whole picture. Hadn't even noticed the current change.
Instead, the bomb came from his left, from under him, a huge force that swept him off his feet, flew him into the air like he weighed nothing. It didn't feel real, it didn't feel like anything he'd ever seen before, this big hulking nothing. He thought it was a boat at first, or a submarine. That's what he thought. That he got hit by the hulk of a boat.
That's what it felt like at least. At once, all the air in his lungs was being kicked out of him, and he ended up back underwater, with no choice but to inhale a handful of saltwater. There was water everywhere, in his lungs, in his ears, his eyes, and everywhere stung. His head was swimming in seawater and confusion, trying to decipher what had been trying to hit him, what was going on, where was up and where was down.
It took him longer than he liked to swim back to the surface, gasping, the first breath upside was always the one that burned the most. He hurt all over, but his back worst of all, he felt like a big great bruise, thrashing about in the ocean, barely able to keep his head over water. And still, he didn't see the damn thing that hit him, looking around frantically, looking for the threat. Suddenly, the ocean didn't seem so serene anymore, and the black under his foot didn't seem as empty.
TK wanted to scream, his mind was yelling at him to yell for help. Vaguely he was aware that a kid was paddling not 15 feet away from him having the time of her life. Carlos was by the beach. And he wanted to yell, to signal for help, he really wanted to. It was just hard for his mouth and his head to cooperate when he felt like he'd just experienced a bomb slamming into him.
And then it went off again. But this time, it exploded in shards around his leg and then tore him under, back away from blessed oxygen and back into the terrifying big blue nothing. He noticed the water at first, the feeling of being dragged under before he noticed the pain at all. He was screaming, pushing water into his lungs, even though his ears felt like they were wrapped in cotton and his lungs were on fire. TK screamed while he was being dragged under, feeling the air bubbles he was letting out rise to the surface, thrashing about. It felt like there was steel iron being lodged into his leg, pinning him down, and he desperately tried to get it off of him.
That's when he felt it. The smooth, lined surface of a shark. He couldn't see it yet, no matter how hard he tried, because now with his eyes open they started to fill with more than just water but with his own blood as well. And that one stung way worse than the salt.
His first thought was I'm going to die, and then his second soon after was Carlos is never going to recover from this.
It was the second that set him back into motion, trying to thrash and swim himself out of the shark's grip. The thing wasn't even moving its body, it was just latched onto his leg. He couldn't feel where exactly but estimated a little under the knee.
Were there even sharks in Texas? Well, they were now.
There was a fucking shark latched onto his leg, and he was thinking of statistics. It was only ironic that he was still screaming while thinking all of this.
Right as TK got his head back enough to feel around the thing's head, feel around to find some sort of weak spot, the shark started using that opportunity to throw him around like a rag doll in the water. The motion was so fast TK hadn't thought it possible, but all of a sudden his brain and body were being spun around again, thrown this way and that. He wanted to throw up, needed to throw up, bile was rising rapidly up his throat. The shark adjusted its jaws to get a better grip to throw him with, and that second bite hurt a lot worse than the first one, but there was nothing he could do safe hold on to the ride. His leg wasn't the only thing searing with pain and after a while, the coldness of the water and the sheer horror of the situation started numbing his brain and his body.
TK would never stop hearing his own screams intermingling with an apex predator's crunching noises, though. That weird sawing sound traveling through the water, letting him know that yes, those were his bones being chewed on.
It wasn't even in a rush, that was the thing. It didn't seem to be in a hurry. This was its turf, just a little getaway vacation, a cheeky little snack. The shark almost reminded him of buttercup, and that thought almost made him laugh out loud with hysteria. He would have laughed had it not been that his mouth was still occupied with screaming and pushing salt and iron into his lungs
I'm going to die, he thought, not for the first time that day and certainly the last. There was nothing he could do about it. He was a human that was used to dealing with fire, but it was the water that had did him in. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm gonna fucking die, like this, right here. Who knows if they even recover my body, or if I'll be just another part of the ocean ecosystem.
That's when the shark let him go and tossed him back up the surface, tearing off chunks off his leg as a souvenir. TK never even felt his body hitting the surface.
--
Carlos heard the scream first, the little girl that had been playing near where they had been lazily making out not fifteen minutes ago letting out a deafening, earth-shattering cry. He'd been reading a passage of his novel, and while he did not immediately see the imminent danger, his mind still sprang into action like only being a cop could teach him. It took him less than a minute to throw his book into the sand and sprint towards the water, and a quick second of wondering 'where's my gun?', before he reached the shore.
TK. Where was he?
While everyone else on the beach, the girl's family included, went to comfort her, Carlos' eyes and mind went elsewhere: back to the ocean, trying to decipher the swimmers and see if he could spot a familiar face among them. TK was still in the water. So far, no luck. The beach wasn't exactly the smallest spot he could've taken them to, but in Carlos' defense, he had no idea anything like this could happen on such a peaceful, beautiful day. Whatever this was.
After he spent another round of looking over the swimmers and beachgoers to no avail, Carlos took the opportunity to let his cop instincts kick in and walk up to the girl to figure out why she would scream in the first place. He didn't even have to jog that close, as soon as he was within hearing shot of her and her family, he heard one clue and then another, and pierced them together accordingly. His whole body started running cold.
Blood. Shark.
"There's a shark in the water, everybody out! Everyone, get the hell out of the water! SHARK!" Carlos didn't even realize he was the one commanding everyone around, but suddenly there he was, shoving people out of harm's way and away from the beach, doing a body count. All the while thinking of one thing and one thing only: TK. Where the hell was he?
He couldn't be in the water, he just couldn't. That wasn't physically possible. Yeah, TK had a knack for getting in trouble, had been shot and kidnapped, but a shark? Did Texas even have sharks, let alone shark attacks? His family had visited Galveston beaches all his life and had never seen one, let alone anyone having been bitten by them. He knew the statistics, knew that nonfatal attacks weren't all that uncommon, but he'd only heard of surfers or boats being attacked by one, not simple beachgoers. And he still couldn't see the damn shark, nor the puddle of blood, nor...
Where was TK?
"Tyler? Has anybody seen him, tall, dark hair, white?" He was begging people now, walking around the crowd and scanning everybody, even though he knew it was hopeless and he had a sinking feeling as to why. "Ma'am, sir, y'all need to step back from the water, we don't know where the shark could be."
"But there's a boy floating over there, see?" Those words let a chill run down Carlos' entire body, face turned away from the beach, looking down at a couple of professional swimmers pointing behind him. "You see that in the distance?" He knew what he would find if he turned around, and damn his cowardly self but he didn't want to turn around. He didn't want this to be real. TK wasn't in the water. He wasn't. He was here, on this beach, just off screaming distance so he couldn't hear Carlos' pleas. Who knows, maybe he was getting them ice cream.
That little fantasy shattered as soon as Carlos turned around and noted the body floating there, a little offshore, next to some rocks. In a lake of his blood, almost rosy by now but still stark red against the pearly blue of the ocean. He was face down and so far away Carlos couldn't even tell anything else other than the brown hair, but that was enough. That was enough.
TK's body floating face down, unmoving. He thought he'd seen it all when TK had been shot and had been put in a coma, when his boyfriend didn't come home for dinner, all his years as a cop. This was worse.
--
Carlos didn't know the names or the faces of the two coastguards stepping in, nor the names of the men that ended up physically restraining him so he wouldn't just run back in there, desperate to get to TK. It didn't matter, all that mattered was that he needed to get to TK, he needed to see him, he was supposed to protect him and now here he was. Being forced to stand to the sidelines, watching his boyfriend of barely 3 months potentially slip from his grasp forever.
The only reassurance he had right now was that the coastguards were way faster swimmers than he'd ever been, and seeming them swim up to TK's lifeless body in record time and hooking a lifebuoy around his body as they went back helped soothe him. But only a little, because by the time he was finally being let go running towards his boyfriend, Carlos was unfortunate enough to see the full scale of the attack. It almost looked irreparable, TK lying there pale with his lips turning blue, his left calf gaping open enough to see muscle, some parts of his skin missing. The teeth marks. The shark had barely even used his entire strength from the looks of it, if it had TK would be... He'd be...
He looked dead. Right there bleeding out in the sand, being worked on by strangers trying to hold his leg together, that's what he looked like. Gone.
Carlos fell to his knees right next to him, being careful not to disturb the coastguard. Carlos held his breath, took lifeless hands in his, and squeezed. TK's fingertips were wrinkled from being in the water so long, so Carlos kissed every single one gingerly.
Come back to me. Please, please just come back.
It didn't take a lot for TK to wake back up, puking onto Carlos' lap, dizzy and disoriented. It didn't take a lot for the paramedics to be convinced to let him ride along either, their beach spot be damned. It didn't take a lot to scrub TK's desaturated blood and bile off his trunks, off his skin. In the end, it didn't even take a lot for TK to have a full recovery.
After all, the shark had just been playing. Trying to find out if the creature had been a seal, or a dolphin, or something edible. Carlos' carefully added sunscreen probably drove it off, unsatisfied with the taste, at least that's what TK commented later on. It was just one bite.
But Carlos wouldn't be able to step away from that beach for a while, no matter where he went. The sand between his toes never really stopped disappearing, not for months afterward. And TK, too, wouldn't be able to leave the water for quite a while either.