Archive of Our Own

He hasn’t left. Gwyn is barely certain he’s moved. You would have to, though, as a human being to stay alive. He was sitting outside the hospital room door when she arrived - when Owen arrived - a constant presence. No one had explained what happened when TK moved back into Owen’s. Had never betrayed each other’s confidence with what was certainly a shared and private heartbreak. And still, Carlos is here.

Nancy and Tommy had both confirmed that Carlos had been the first to arrive, not ten minutes after TK had been brought in. The nurses and staff couldn’t get him to budge. When visiting hours ended, he remained in that chair. Gwyn had even spotted his parents coming in to sit, hand over food and try and coax him home. He didn’t go and the food got passed amongst the other people waiting for TK to open his eyes. Gwyn hasn’t seen him eat and she cannot blame him.

So, three days in, Gwyn can’t help but sit down next to this man who has kept constant vigil at her son’s door.

“Coffee?” She offers, holding out a cup.

“No. I—no,” he whispers, lips dipping into a frown. “Thank you.”

The waiting room has emptied and it’s just the two of them here now. Owen disappeared for a quick shower and to make sure Buttercup is okay. Something about hospitals at night have always left Gwyn spooked. She’s glad to not be alone, but she knows everyone who can should be getting a solid night’s sleep.

“It’s late, Carlos. You should go home.”

His eyes slide toward the door, toward TK. “Can’t,” he chokes out.

“Carlos.”

“I know he wouldn’t—I shouldn’t be here…we’re not.” Carlos swallows over the stumbling words. His voice cracks as he says, “He left me as his emergency contact.”

Gwyn has been in the throes of her own fears and grief, and she can see the same feeling mirrored in Carlos’s eyes amongst the tears he hasn’t let fall. The unraveling of their relationship makes even less sense in light of everything Gwyn’s seen since she’s been here.

“I don’t know what happened, you’ve both been silent about that, but clearly there’s still something here.”

Carlos lets out a short, mirthless laugh. “When someone can explain it to me, I’ll let you know. Anyway, I just…when, when he wakes up and is okay, I’ll go. I just…need him to be okay.”

“You should go sit with him.”

Carlos shakes his head stiffly. “No. I…”

“Go. I’ll stay out here.”

“I…” Something in his eyes looks suspiciously like hope.

“Go.”

She watches him stand and walk with halting steps into TK’s hospital room. There’s a moment at the door where she thinks he won’t cross the threshold. He does, and Gwyn lays her head against the glass of the ICU wall, giving them a moment of privacy.

~*~

With the push from Gywn, Carlos slowly gets up. His muscles protest the movement, already unused to holding his weight and movement.

Gwyn told him he should go home. Everyone has told him to go home. He can’t, though. There’s nowhere else to go. Carlos’s home already walked out of the house they chose together and is once again in a hospital bed.

He hasn’t managed to go inside the hospital room in the days since TK has been here. There was a barrier at the threshold - a force field at the door that kept him on the opposite side. It could have been caused by TK laying in bed, lifeless and cold, a machine forcing air in and out of his lungs. It wasn’t TK. Not really.

More likely it was the fact that the closest he had been to TK in weeks had been on the collapsed church call. Doesn’t help that TK just standing there, even sullen and avoidant, was like staring into the sun, warm and blinding.

“Hey—I -uh,” Carlos stumbles, sitting heavily in the chair. Everything reminds him of when TK got shot, but worse because this time he knows he’s crossed a line he cannot come back from. “I know I don’t really have a right to be here. I—I let you go.”

TK may have loaded the gun, but the truth is Carlos had pulled the trigger. He knew damn well that TK had come to him a mostly feral thing, a cat you had to approach sideways and not make direct eye contact with in fear of scaring it off. Carlos was good at that, assessing, side-stepping and letting things lie. Things had been better, and then, it had all unraveled.

Carlos selfishly takes a moment to card his fingers through TK’s hair, where it lays unnaturally flat against his forehead. “I know you love me, and I love you. And it’s okay if I’m—If it’s not enough. But I need you to love yourself enough, Ty. I…”

There’s so many things he wants to say, but none of them are right at the moment. So many of the things he wants to say are selfish. He doesn’t want to be selfish here. This isn’t about him.

“You don’t have to-” Come home, say you love me, apologize, open your eyes right now. “I just need you to pull through, alright. I can-” Carlos can’t quite manage to say, live without you, because he’s pretty sure he hasn’t been living since everything fell apart. “Just wake up, please.”

TK doesn’t have a quippy response, or even move. The ventilator hisses and the heart monitor beeps and TK is as lifeless as he was when Carlos ran into the hospital, barreling straight for Nancy.

He prays to a God he hasn’t cared for much since he came out, the church extra murky on his existence being a sin or not. He calls on St. Michael, patron saint of paramedics and the police. He pulls in Padre Pio, patron saint of healing and illness and finally St. Jude, hospitals and lost causes. Carlos’s life certainly feels like one now.

A groan pulls him out of his current prayer.

He watches as TK’s eyes flutter and his hand squeezes against Carlos's own. Carlos squeezes back and wants to cry. He won’t though. There’s still things to do.

“Gwyn! Gwyn,” Carlos calls out, knowing full well who deserves to be here.

Her heels clack against the linoleum floors as she calls out for TK in response.

And with that he slips back, untangling himself from the man he’s no longer got a right to sit beside. Gwyn rushes forward, replacing his hand with her own. With another groan, TK flutters his eyes open and Carlos closes his own.

TK struggles to speak, and Gwyn pets his hair like he might break. “No, honey, no. There’s a ventilator, just wait. It’s okay. Just wait.”

Carlos slides further out of reach. He heads out to find the doctor who will give TK the clearance to be okay. He has to see this through.

~*~

Gwyn hasn’t pulled herself from TK’s bedside since Carlos called for her. She sat beside her first born and stroked his hair while doctors checked him over and the ventilator was removed. She’s been able to catch the shadow of Carlos, back at his post, just out of sight of the bed. He’s been on his phone, the waiting room slowly filling with the members of TK’s Texas family. Gwyn imagines he’s the one who’s been calling them all in.

Doctors finally give TK an update on his condition, but it feels like it’s more for her and Owen. TK is still confused. Gwyn waves Carlos to come over the threshold, but he stands just outside the doorway, watching. His arms are crossed over his chest, and Gwyn can see his jaw clenching as he waits.

The words full recovery, lucky guy, someone looking out are all tossed around. Owen says something about the invincibility of Strand men. Gwyn looks to the hallway for Carlos, but he’s already gone.

He doesn’t come back.

A week later, TK is settled back at Owen’s. Her mothering has been called smothering today. Once Judd shows up with baby pictures and stories to match, Gwyn leaves them to talk and slips downstairs. On instinct, she grabs a container of matzo ball soup and gets in her rental car, leaving her son in the care of his friends.

The address of their, of Carlos’s, new place is familiar only as a note in her phone, but the mezuzah on the door frame looks just as it had when she’d packed it for them. Her fingers trail over it before she rings the doorbell.

The Carlos that opens the door is in no better shape than when she last saw him. His face was shaved sometime in the past few days and his clothes only have a preliminary layer of wrinkles, but he’s pale with bags under his eyes. Eyes that go wide as he realizes who is at his door.

Guilt fills her as Carlos stiffens and his hand clutches at the door frame. He chokes as he stutters, “Is…Is…”

“Oh, oh no, sweetheart,” Gwyn coos, the endearment falling swiftly. “He’s fine, he’s fine! I was called Smother today.”

His fingers loosen and the color returns to them. Carlos swallows, “Good. That’s…” He blinks and she can tell that he’s confused. “Why are you here?”

Gwyn takes a moment. It must be incredibly odd to have your ex’s mother show up on your doorstep unannounced. Hell, she had to do everything in her power not to go to Alex’s house and rip him limb from limb in the aftermath of him dropping the bomb of his infidelity on TK.

She smiles at Carlos. “Apparently, I have some extra mothering that needs to go somewhere, so I thought you could use it. I brought soup.”

“Thank you. I still need…” He swallows the thought before it gets out, eyes going blank. Ah yes, he’d asked for her family recipe ages ago, the last time TK had gotten banged up. She’d never sent it.

“So—Here,” she says, handing the soup over. She should head out.

Carlos takes the soup and it seems to shock him back into himself. He waves her inside, heading for the fridge. “Come in. Come in. It’s not—I’m usually a much better host.”

The house isn’t as clean as the one she remembers. There are takeout containers on the counter and some dishes by the sink. There’s a blanket draped over the back of the couch haphazardly. It has a Yankees pattern and couldn’t have belonged to Carlos.

“All things considered you’re doing great,” Gwyn offers.

He puts the soup in the fridge, alongside the mineral waters that Gwyn would recognize anywhere. He seems to still a moment before coming back and closing the door.

“I’m…not,” he answers, voice hoarse.

Unlike the hospital, it’s the final crack in the dam. Carlos’s face crumples and Gwyn is moving into the kitchen. She does the only thing a mother can do, and wraps him in her arms. Carlos cries in gasping sobs into her shoulder and Gwyn strokes her hand over his back. She had been prepared to hate him when TK told her about their break up, but there were no details to go on. And now she can see— Carlos clearly still loves TK beyond reason.

She lets him cry, rocking with him in the kitchen.

“He’s really okay?” Carlos asks, pulling back and wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his Henley.

“You could come and see for yourself.”

“No. No I can’t. I lost that privilege.”

Gwyn ignores what she is sure is one of her son’s hoodies lying on the corner of the couch as she moves to sit. “Carlos, I moved into my ex-husband's house and refused to leave when I found out he had cancer. You haven’t lost the right.”

“Owen let you stay,” Carlos reminds her.

What’s unsaid is that Carlos doesn’t think TK would let him. TK hasn’t mentioned Carlos since he woke up. He has, however, pointedly asked every day who has stopped by that he might have missed.

“Carlos, I don’t know what happened and you don’t have to tell me, but what do you want?”

Carlos gives a ghost of a smile. “Things I can’t have.”

“You two are the most stubborn—I know where TK comes by it. Owen and I are nearly impossible.”

“So are my parents. How long are you in town?”

“Booked my return flight for next week.”

“He'll miss you. Broke his heart when you left last time. Not that—” Carlos closes his eyes and pauses, shaking his head. “Sorry, it’s none of my business.” Anymore Gwyn hears.

“It’s okay.”

“He-uh-he deserves to be happy.”

“You both do.”

Carlos buries his face in his hands. “I let him go.”

“Carlos.”

“I was tired and I knew he was pushing, testing the boundaries and I just…let go. Everything was so far out of reach.”

“TK’s a runner.”

“I know. I didn’t stop him. I didn't chase him down.”

Chasing doesn’t always help when it comes to TK. Gwyn knows that. She suspects Carlos does too. “He still loves you.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s enough. I just want TK to be happy and healthy, and maybe—maybe that’s not with me. And that’s…okay. I can live with that. As long as…”

“Loving a Strand can be hard. TK’s a lot like his dad.”

“No. It’s easy,” Carlos shoots back, “I just need him to love himself half as much.”

Gwyn feels that as acutely as if she’s actually been punched. Carlos hasn’t known her son on drugs. He hasn’t seen the very worst of TK’s self destructive tendencies, but he already knows how deeply they run.

The mystery of their break-up continues to build, because while he’s given her some details, none of them make concrete sense. She tries to pull a common thread out but all she gets is that Carlos blames himself.

They sit in silence for a while until Carlos curls up on the couch, taking TK’s hoodie with him.

By the time Gwyn slips out, Carlos’s mother is coming up the walk with a platter of food. Mrs. Reyes stops and blinks at the sight of a woman coming from her son’s house. Their sons’ house.

“Oh.”

Gwyn smiles, wishing most desperately they were meeting under any other circumstances. “We didn’t get a chance to meet in person. I’m Gwyn, TK’s mother. You raised a good man.”

“So did you. TK is doing alright? Gabriel and I were so worried.”

Relief floods her and Gwyn didn’t realize she was worried about TK being the Alex in this situation until this very moment. Mrs. Reyes seems just as affectionate and concerned about TK as Gwyn is about Carlos.

“Yes. He is. Practically ran me out of the house today.”

Mrs. Reyes nods her head at the door. “Knock any sense into that one?”

Gwyn shakes her head. “Not yet. I think my visit rattled him, though.”

“Good. Swift kick in the pants is what they both need. Not that anyone listens to their own mother. Here. You take this to TK. Carlos is sick of me stopping in anyway.”

“Oh, I—”

Mrs. Reyes shoves the platter into her hands. “Aren’t these for Carlos?”

Mrs. Reyes places a comforting hand on her arm. “Oh, I’ll send Gabriel over with some more for Carlitos later.” Mrs. Reyes squeezes Gwyn’s arm. “Tell TK that we miss him and we prayed for his recovery.”

“I will, and feel free to stop by.”

~*~

The sound of the key snicking softly in the lock, turning the tumblers, causes a brief wave of hope and happiness to rise in Carlos's chest before he remembers. TK hasn’t used his key since he left and he won’t be using it today. Heavy boots and a deep sigh echo from the front door and Carlos buries himself deeper into the couch TK had insisted they needed. It remains surprisingly comfortable despite how it looks.

The boots come off with two dull thuds and stocking feet pad into the house. “I’m not in the mood, Papi.”

“Too bad, Carlitos. I’ve got tamales, carnitas and Shiner and your mami isn’t here to say anything.”

“Mami sent you,” Carlos points out.

“Ay, but not the beer, mijo, not the beer.”

Carlos tucks the sleeve of TK’s sweatshirt further under his head so his father won’t be able to see what he is using as a pillow. He wants to be left alone. It’s hard enough to get up and pretend to be functional during his shifts. On his days off he cannot bring himself to pretend.

There’s the hiss of two beers opening and then they’re placed in front of him. His father sits beside him on the couch and then the TV is on. Football graces the screen but Carlos cannot follow it. His dad is rambling on about the game like a commentator, but it’s just white noise. Instead he watches the condensation begin to bead on the beer he’s not drinking.

“You know, it’s hard the first time you live with another person,” his dad says, the first thing in the last half hour that wasn’t about first downs or penalties. “TK is the first, right? You haven’t had a roommate who was a secret novio?”

“No.”

His dad takes another sip of his Shiner. He tilts it at Carlos. “‘Cause your mother thought that Luna boy might have been something, you know.”

God, how many assumptions did his parents make about people he’s known since he was seventeen? “He was straight, Papi.”

There were other guys he dated, sure, but none that were worth living with, not until TK. TK who made him want to push the issue with his parents for the first time in ten years. TK whose relationship with his parents was so open and loving that Carlos ached to try and build something with his own again.

He’s grateful, and always will be. Right now, however, he would like to be alone and drown in the emptiness of this house with the missing heart.

“Ay, anyway. It's hard, making a house into a family home.”

“You didn’t live with anyone besides ma, did you?”

“No, and not until we were married. No shame in living at home ‘til you’re married.”

Carlos doesn’t particularly want to move home to the awkward silences and things that remain unsaid, but he’s not sure he can keep living here without TK. The ghosts of the life they were supposed to have haunt him in every room. Somehow, Carlos had been so far into the future, he hadn’t noticed the present slipping away from him.

The future that wasn’t going to be felt more real to Carlos than his current reality. He can see the path they should have followed: marriage, kids, growing old together. Carlos had crafted it all on what, apparently, was a shaky foundation. Maybe he was still spinning castles in the clouds.

His dad lifts his bottle of Shiner to his lips and sighs. “I ever tell you about the time she left me?”

Reality crashes back in, and Carlos feels cold all over. “Papi, what?”

“We’d been married three months. She packed a bag, sailed out the front door, and went right back to her childhood bedroom.”

“Mami?!”

There are certain things that are unshakable in Carlos’s life. The things that prove the world is actually the world. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, his abuelitas are the best cooks in the world, and his parents are madly in love. He and his sisters grew up used to catching their parents in a variety of embraces throughout the house, overflowing with affection and touch.

The idea that his mother had ever walked out on his father is unthinkable. Andrea Reyes is the glue that keeps their family together.

“Yes,” Gabriel Reyes confirms, tipping the bottle of Shiner back.

Carlos can’t help but taste bitterness at the back of his throat. “She came back.”

“We were stupid about it for awhile. Your mami told me not to bother you, to leave this whole mess well enough alone—you and TK. Said you didn’t need your parents to meddle. No one likes to listen to their parents.”

“Is this a story?” Carlos asks, trying to interrupt his dad’s circular rambling.

His dad picks at the edge of the beer label, considering it carefully. “I never told her that if your abuelo hadn’t shown up with Shiner and tamales and kicked my ass a bit, I migth have been too stubborn and stupid. I would have missed out on thirty years with your mami, you and your sisters. It would be my greatest regret. I don’t want that for you.”

Carlos is already neck deep in regret. It’s drowning him slowly. He’s not sure the shore is even reachable anymore.

“Why did Mami leave?”

“Ay, it was something silly that blew up into a whole mess about my family, her family and what we wanted from life, how we were as people. Whether or not we made the right choices. We said things we shouldn’t have. Things you cannot take back. Things you have to work through later and sometimes it's easier to not. To let it go.”

“It’s not up to me.”

“The hell it’s not.”

“Dad, you can’t make people stay who don’t want to stay.”

“You’re honestly telling me TK, who suffered through a very rough Sunday dinner at Tia Lucy’s, doesn’t want to stay? Tia Lucy’s is a great place to separate the wheat from the chaff. You remember that Diaz kid your sister brought once? Looked like someone in a bear trap considering chewing his own arm off.”

“The point, Papi.”

Gabriel sighs and pats Carlos’s leg. “Point is, kids like TK don’t always think they’re allowed to stay.”

Carlos rolls his eyes. TK’s not a kid, and the whole concept is ridiculous. “He is. It’s his house. He has a key.”

TK hasn’t returned it and Carlos won’t ask. He’s still hoping that one day the person who walks in the door won’t be his overbearing if well-meaning family.

“That’s not what I meant, Carlos.”

Carlos repositions the sweatshirt under his head. There’s still the faintest whiff of TK's smell, a mix of fancy herbal shampoo, coffee and the slight edge of antiseptic. It shouldn’t be possible to still smell, this far out. “What did you mean?”

“Your sisters got your mom on this whole love languages thing. You know,” Gabriel explains, as if Carlos maybe has never heard of the concept of love language, “where you see how you give and receive love through quizzes. Your mami has been talking about it non-stop. Made me take one.”

“How does this explain what you meant?”

“Patience, Carlitos. Anyway, your mami says that I clearly lean toward acts of service and physical touch.”

Carlos closes his eyes, wondering if he could just have the couch swallow him whole. “Dad, I don’t need to know—“

“Thing is, your mami leans towards words of affirmation. I am not very good at that. I don’t think you are either.”

The number of conversations he has had with his father about how men are or what they should be flood his mind. Carlos wants to yell and tell his father to get out. That you can’t just tell someone that men aren’t soft, they don’t share feelings or cry, and then fault them for doing what you said.

But then he hears TK’s voice asking him to tell him what he’s thinking, what he feels, why TK has to do the digging, is Carlos even fully here?

“You’ve also never been one to rock the boat. Three sisters, I get it. They were enough drama, all together. You kept the peace.”

“Papi…” He really doesn’t want to be talking about this with his father.

“All I am saying is that between moving in with a partner for the first time, the house burning down and maybe some of this love languages stuff, TK needed more than you—“

Carlos sits up, scooting to the corner of the couch. “You think I don’t know that?”

“Carlitos.”

“You think I don’t know that I messed up? That I wasn’t enough?” Carlos demands, embarrassed as emotions run out of his control.

He’s been Gabriel Reyes's only son his whole life. Carlos is painfully familiar with never being quite enough. Thing is, he never used to feel that way with TK. TK who is full of vibrant smiles and casual touches and plans.

“Ay, mijo, you’re enough.”

“Sure,” Carlos says, swallowing the pain and the disbelief.

“I’m just saying you may need to consider what you actually want and how you can go about getting it. And if it requires putting yourself out there then you should do it,” his father suggests, taking another sip from his Shiner.

Carlos feels a hand clap him on the shoulder. “I’m going to go grab some food. I’ll make you a plate.”

~*~

“Smells good.”

Gwyn throws a smile over her shoulder. TK looks good, skin pink and eyes alert, the same things you hope for in a newborn. “Figured you were tired of your Smothered matzo ball soup.”

He’s kind enough to smile and press a kiss to her cheek. God, she’s missed him. “Yours, never.” TK’s eyebrows raise to his hairline. “Tamales?”

“Andrea Reyes dropped them off,” Gwyn says, carefully dropping the bomb in the middle of the conversation.

“Mrs. Reyes?” TK whispers, stepping away.

Gwyn tries to keep her voice casual. “Yes. She said that she hoped you were doing better. Said that they miss you.”

It was more than one might expect after a break up. Gwyn’s own parents had never particularly cared for Owen, who had dropped out of law school to chase death every day.

“Oh.”

Gwyn plates up a few heated tamales and watches TK carefully unwrap them from the corn husks.

“Mom.”

“Yeah.”

TK pauses, using the fork to carefully open the cornmeal and let the steam rise out. “In the hospital, after I woke up and the doctor was telling us everything, you kept looking in the hall at someone. Did-did Enzo come down early on and I forgot?”

“No. He’s been taking good care of your brother in New York this whole time,” Gwyn reminds him.

“Oh.”

Gwyn watches until TK swallows a bite before she shares, “I was looking at Carlos. He refused to come inside.”

“Carlos?”

Gwyn puts the dish towel down. “Honey, I know you don’t want to talk to me about any of this. And if you’re happy to keep lying to yourself, that’s fine. But you left Carlos as your emergency contact. That wasn’t an accident. He was the first person there, before me, before your dad. He didn’t leave, the whole time, until the doctor said you were fine.”

“Could only stand to be around until I was awake, huh?” TK asks, bitterness curling through his voice and pulling his lip up at the corner.

“Tyler Kennedy!” Gwyn snaps and has the pleasure of startling her son. She hasn’t raised her voice at him since she told him about the paternity of his brother. She’s a little more than furious with both boys over this mess they’ve found themselves in. “Carlos said he knew you didn’t want him there but that he couldn’t leave.”

“Whatever happened, I don’t think either of you have an accurate picture of what the other one actually wants or feels. All I know is that man sat guard outside your hospital room for days on end and no one could budge him.”

“When you say no one,” TK trails off, continuing to pick at his meal.

“The hospital staff very quickly realized it was futile to argue with him, but the team tried, your father and I tried, his parents tried.”

She decides he could use a larger push. “Love like that doesn’t come around very often.”

It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. TK is still distant, reserved. “Love isn’t always enough. Look at you and Dad.”

Gwyn has worried about the lasting repercussions of her and Owen’s ill-fated reunion last year. At this moment, her fears that she’s done more damage to his faith in relationships are at the front. TK may be a grown man but somewhere inside he is still the little boy who had begged them to get back together. They had, and then once again they’d imploded again.

Gwyn’s tone turns stern as she says, “TK, you and Carlos are not me and your father.”

“Anyways, I ruined it,” TK says, stabbing off another piece of the tamale and staring at it like it might have answers.

Gwyn wipes down the counters, making her voice deceptively casual. “That’s funny, Carlos thinks he did.”

She hides her smile as the fork clatters to the counter. “What?” TK husks.

“He said it was his fault and that he’d lost the right to see you. Seemeds to think he wouldn’t be allowed in the door.”

“He said all that in the hospital?”

“No, he was nearly catatonic in the hospital. I stopped by his place today.”

“You went to our—” Gwyn pretends she didn't notice the slip of tongue, or the emotion that was in his eyes before he shut it down. “What? Why?”

Gwyn frowns at him. “Someone needed to check on him.”

“He didn’t fall through the ice and nearly die,” TK reminds her.

“No,” she agrees, “he’s just in love with a man who he didn’t feel he had the right to take care of in the aftermath.”

And maybe she over identifies with Carlos. The baby being Enzo’s meant she had to go. Owen didn’t understand but Gwyn knew she’d lost him, again. She had wanted to stay. She had wanted to be here for the surgery, and the rest of his recovery. To be here for the rest of his life. And instead, she did the right thing and went home.

It was awful.

Living in this house again while TK recovers has been a struggle. She’s in the middle of a daily deja vu where everything is just slightly skewed. She knows what it’s like to see a person you love in pain and not be able to do anything about it. She’s watched Owen like a hawk since she touched down.

TK is looking at her with horrible recognition. He always has a sense for when she’s talking about herself more than his own life. She regrets that. TK has spent more time looking out for her and Owen rather than himself. He takes the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Her voice is brittle as she explains, “The mezuzah is still on the door, your sweatshirt is on his couch and your mineral water is in the fridge.” Unlike Owen’s house which only retains her blender on the counter.

“I don’t—”

Suddenly, she’s exhausted. “TK, your father and I, we taught you the wrong lesson.”

“What? Mom, you and Dad did a great job.”

Gwyn has always had doubts. If they had done a great job, maybe TK wouldn’t have turned to drugs. Maybe he wouldn’t have followed Owen on a path of death defying choices. Maybe he wouldn’t be waiting for the other shoe to drop like she always is.

So, Gwyn starts down a path that remains difficult to tread. “We taught you to run when things got hard. We both have a habit of running to our work rather than trying to stay. Your dad runs into buildings. I run to other countries. You followed your dad into a line of work that treats your body like a tool. Sometimes, you run so far away from reality, it’s hard to hold on.”

“I’m sober. I have stayed sober this whole time,” TK reminds her.

Gwyn takes his hand, hoping she can squeeze all of the faith and love she has for him through the touch. She wants to impress on him that she’s not worried about that. “I know. And I am so proud of you. I’m just saying, you don’t always have to run.”

TK takes a deep breath and takes his hand back. “Everything changes, Mom. Nothing lasts.”

“Things last, TK. People just don’t always choose the things that last.” She hasn’t always chosen the things that might last.

TK doesn’t say anything. He just continues to pick at his tamales.

Gwyn puts her hand back over TK’s, waiting for him to stop. “You know how I know you and Carlos aren’t just like your father and I?”

“How?”

“You haven’t said a word to anybody about what happened between you. All I can get from either of you when I press is that you each blame yourself. When your dad and I-”

TK rolls his eyes. “I was there, I haven’t forgotten.”

“We blamed each other,” Gwyn continues, as if he hadn’t just rolled his eyes at her. “We told the story in a way that put the other one in the wrong. Your father still tells divorce stories like they’re funny.”

They’re not, not really.

“You get to choose what you keep, TK, and what’s worth it,” Gwyn promises him.

~*~

His fridge is full of food that his mother has made and he cannot eat it all. So, Carlos does what he has been doing every day off for the last week, packs the food into take out containers which go into reusable shopping bags and then into his Camaro. Today, it gives him enough time to let the tres leches cake cool that he baked at 4 in the morning, and also let the milk mixture soak in.

When he pulls up to Paul’s place, there’s an RV parked out front. He heads up the steps and rings the doorbell. When the door opens, there’s a middle-age woman with Paul’s kind eyes at the door.

“Hello!”

Carlos blinks and reboots his brain. He knows how to talk to a friend's mother. He’s good at it. “Uh, hi. I was dropping off supplies for Paul.”

She leans back into the house and yells, “Paul, honey, your friend -“

“Carlos, m’am,” he supplies, manners kicking in.

“Ah, Carlos is here. He brought food!” Paul’s mother turns back to the door and waves him inside. “Come in.”

Carlos finds himself relieved of his bag of food and sent into Paul’s living room. He’s already unsure if he should be here with Paul propped up on the couch and his mother bustling around. Carlos knows he probably would have sent everyone away.

“Hey man, sorry,” he says as Paul puts a bookmark in his book and sets it off to the side, “didn’t realize your family was here.”

“S’okay. They just made it up across the border. Took them a bit coming up from Brazil. My sister’s asleep and my mom is in cooking overdrive,” Paul whispers, rolling his eyes affectionately.

“Well, I was under the impression you might need some food and my mom is cooking enough to feed all of Travis County, but it seems like you might also be drowning in food.”

Paul nods and smiles, “You should take some. My mom’s greens are no joke. It’s nice to have a change of flavor every now and then.”

“Ma, Carlos has old containers for the other day in the dishwasher. Pack them up with some greens and ribs.”

Mrs. Strickland comes in from the kitchen, hands on her hips. “Paul, you don’t have to yell. What will Carlos think of your manners?”

Carlos bites back a smile as Paul shoots back, “You told me I wasn’t allowed to get up.”

“Have you been feeding him this whole time?” Mrs. Strickland asks, ignoring Paul’s protest.

“Haven’t been the only one, I don’t think. It’s been a rough week.”

Mrs. Strickland smiles at him warmly. “Well, it’s so nice to see Paul so well taken care of. Are you a firefighter, too? Are you in the same house?”

“Ah, no,” Carlos answers her. “I’m with Austin PD. Paul’s a good friend.”

“I’m so glad. Texas looks good on him.”

“Mostly, when I’m not injured,” Paul quips from his spot on the couch.

“You sit and visit with Paul and I’ll take care of everything,” Mrs. Strickland says, waving her dishtowel at him.

Carlos sits on the edge of Paul’s couch. “You’re doing okay?” Carlos asks, looking Paul over carefully.

There’s still a lingering edge of guilt over how long it took him to realize Lindsay was missing. That he sent the team into the ice palace, as Paul called it, and Paul got hurt. Carlos has been second guessing most of that day ever since. The decision to bring Lindsay’s family over to the rescue team and have them beg to get their daughter out has haunted him.

“Man, it’s not your fault.”

Carlos clicks his tongue. You can always second guess a call. “I should have noticed she was missing earlier.”

Paul frowns. “Her fellow volunteers didn’t notice she was missing. We all got out alive.”

“Yeah.” Barely.

Everything went wrong from the start that day. They’d ended up with friends in three separate hospitals and he hadn’t even gone to see Marj and Paul then because he couldn’t leave his post.

“How’s TK?”

“His mom says he’s doing okay,” Carlos says, avoiding Paul’s eyes. He picks a spot on the wall just beyond his head to focus on. “So does Nancy.”

Paul’s eyebrows shoot up to the top of his forehead. “You haven’t seen him?”

“Paul.”

“Man, he almost died!”

The thought circles in his head all the time. He can still see Nancy’s face when she told him that they were worried about TK. He pushes the abject terror down. “I know! So did you and Marj. It was an awful day.”

Paul smirks at him. “As pretty as Marj and I are, you’re not in love with us like that. Unless you are, in which case I am flattered but I don’t swing that way.”

“I told you I could overlook you being straight,” Carlos jokes back, forcing that sick feeling that comes when his brain circles TK and their break up and the ice for too long to the back of his brain.

Paul, however, seems to settle into seriousness again. “Man, you know I just want y’all to be happy.”

Everyone just wants them to be happy, but Carlos couldn’t seem to keep the happiness together at the end. He couldn’t hold on to how things needed to be and even when he’d tried to fix things, Carlos had only made things worse.

“It’s TK’s call,” Carlos says.

He knows he should have chased TK, should have gone after him, but it felt so much like forcing things. TK came back before. This time he didn’t. Instead he took his things and went. Carlos doesn’t want to be the kind of guy who holds on too long, someone who becomes the only one still invested, desperately holding onto things that don’t exist anymore. Trouble is, for all that he’s said everyone needs to move on, Carlos hasn’t. Not really.

Paul keeps one eyebrow raised. “Is it? Takes two to make these things work. Or so I hear.”

Carlos wants to crawl out of his skin. Instead he stands and wipes his hands on his pants. “I’ve got food for Marj in the car. I should go.”

Paul looks him over and Carlos wonders if he also finds Carlos lacking. He doesn’t say anything, just nods and then yells. “Ma, Carlos will take the food I made you pack for Marj.”

“I have two legs,” Mrs. Strickland yells back.

“I know but he’s going over there anyway,” Paul yells.

Carlos accepts the extra bag of food, which is just as heavy as his mother’s deliveries. He drives towards Marj’s house and his thoughts just don’t stop circling. Everyone is pushing him to make the first step. To be the one to make the grand gesture. Carlos doesn’t know if there’s a grand gesture big enough to convince TK to come back home.

Instead he walks up the steps and lets himself into Marj’s apartment. She’s settled in on her couch, a bright orange scarf wrapped around her head. “Hi Carlos.”

“Hi Marj.”

She raises a careful eyebrow at the bags he takes toward the kitchen. “You hosting a party at my place?”

“Uh, no. Food from my mom,” he hoists the bag from his house first, followed by the second, “and Paul’s.”

Marj grins and he’s grateful she made it out of that car accident with only minor injuries. “Alright, lay it out. Let’s see this week’s menu.”

They fall into familiar patterns of jokes and teasing as Carlos unpacks the bags and loads containers into Marj’s fridge. If she looks twice at the slice of tres leches cake, she doesn’t say anything. He hopes she won’t.

“Oh, I also brought you my duty schedule. If you get the urge to get into some trouble, chica, pick one of those times, will you?”

Marj accepts the paper version of his schedule and just smirks. “You worried about me or something, Reyes?” she teases, but it’s not funny.

Carlos doesn’t blink, but catches her eyes. “Yes. You almost died.”

“Still kicking. Can’t keep Firefox down.”

Maybe he’s still sensitive from talking to Paul about that awful day and the way the news rolled in about people he loves. Maybe it’s the fact that the former members of the 126 have taken Captain Strand’s method of risk assessment to heart. Carlos goes into his job every day knowing that things could go wrong, but he doesn’t run headlong into trouble.

“Y’all are not invincible, you know,” he snaps at Marj.

Marj leans back on the couch and smiles. He loves that she’s not even bothered, but it drives him crazy. She just tilts her head and asks, “You mad at me, or someone slightly more masculine and a lot paler?”

“Marj, don’t start.”

She picks at the blanket on her lap. It’s meant to lull him into a false sense of security, this fake-casual behavior. “From what I hear, you were the one talking to him when he woke up.”

“He doesn’t know that. Does he?” Carlos feels vaguely desperate at the thought that TK might know he was there.

Marj’s eyes blow wide and she is still smiling. He doesn’t know why. There’s nothing happy or amusing about this conversation. “Why are you tweaking right now?” she asks. “Maybe he should know you give a shit.”

“He knows how I feel about him,” Carlos protests.

The worst part, the hardest part, is that he loves TK so much and it wasn’t enough.

“Does he?” she asks. Marjan holds up her hand and starts ticking off fingers. “You haven’t seen him since he woke up. You haven’t been dropping off food for him on your meal train days, like you have for me and Paul and the Ryders. You haven’t said a thing to him.”

“He doesn’t want to see me.”

“Or maybe he wants you to push past his stupid words and show him,” Marj yells.

Carlos just stares at her. Why would he say they were done and then want Carlos to keep trying? Why would anyone take all their things and want you to keep chasing them? He knows he could have fought harder. He could have done more, but once TK said he wasn’t coming back, what was he supposed to do?

Marj is pulling herself further up on the couch. “I know it’s stupid, okay, but it looks like you’re both waiting for the other one to make a move and I hate to say it but he almost died, Carlos!”

Why does everyone keep saying that to him? He turns to look at Marj. “I know…I know…”

Suddenly he cannot breathe. Everything feels like it’s too close and too tight. He can see TK in the hospital bed after the lake, and in their house as it burned, in Sun and Salt barely able to stand, in a hospital bed with a gunshot wound in his shoulder. Sees visions of things he has no practical experience of but have been confided to him in whispers, like TK lying on the floor of a New York city apartment.

“Oh, shit, come here.”

Carlos lets Marjan pull him down to the couch. Her arms wrap around him and pull him in close. The sick feeling of guilt that she’s the one doing the comforting, after everything, curls in his stomach and spreads along his shoulders. Nothing had happened to him, except that some of the people he cared for the most had almost died. He was fine.

The guilt compounds when he remembers that Marjan is the second person whose shoulder he’s cried on in as many days. The second person who he should be taking care of instead of the other way around. But he cannot seem to stop. He lets Marj pet him and tries to get himself under control.

“You know,” she tells him, “If I had said something, anything, to Salim; if I hadn’t buried everything so deep, I might have saved us before it was too late.”

“Maybe it’s already too late,” Carlos murmurs.

Marj slaps him on the shoulder. “Bullshit. I have seen you two apart. It’s not too late! And there’s no random dental hygienist in the way.”

Carlos swallows against the lump in his throat. If it wasn’t too late, wouldn’t TK have stayed? Couldn’t he have gotten him to stay? But he knows it’s not true. Because if Carlos is honest, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to do what TK had wanted, had needed.

He forces himself out of her embrace and off the couch. He should be a better friend.

“Didn’t take you for a coward, Carlos. Besides, you cannot tell me you baked tres leches for me or Paul. It’s not either of our favorite.”

“Thanks, Marj. I’ll see you later.” With that, Carlos does something he’s not proud of; he bolts.

“Carlos! Carlos!” Marj calls after him as he locks her apartment door behind him and heads for his car.

As he drives, he thinks about the fourth bag in the back of his car. The one that’s not for Paul or Marj or Judd and Grace. The one he’s not been able to bring himself to drop off every time he’s gone out. He’s driven on by the captain’s house and dropped it off at a community fridge instead.

Tonight, he ends up standing in front of Captain Strand’s house, bag in hand, knocking on the door. He can hear his father and Paul and Marj all pushing him forward, to do something if he wants to fix this potentially unfixable thing. He sends another prayer up to St. Jude, to follow him into this house and to TK.

Gwyn opens the door. Carlos twists the strap of the bag further around his hands. “Hey.”

“Did you want to see TK?” Gwyn asks, like there’s anything else he could have been there for, and he appreciates it. He does.

“Only if…only if it’s okay with him. If he doesn’t want me here, I’ll go. I just…” Carlos sucks in a breath and it feels like glass cutting his throat.

Gwyn doesn’t pay attention to his rambling, or the fact that he feels like he’s dying just standing here. She just looks back into the house and yells, “TK, you have another visitor. You up for it?”

Carlos sends Gwyn a desperate look because he said only if TK wanted to see him, meaning that TK should know who is at the door. He wonders if she knows Carlos would be sent away if she used his name.

“Sure,” TK calls back and he sounds like, well, like a TK that Carlos hasn’t heard from since long before the accident. “I’m going stir crazy in here anyway.”

Carlos grips the bag tighter as he makes his way through to the couch. TK is still talking to whoever he is imagining is here. He’s tapping in a piece on a donut puzzle on the coffee table. “My parents are beyond—” TK looks up and freezes.

“Hi,” Carlos manages, stopping in his tracks as TK’s eyes turn unreadable.

TK pulls the hood up over his hair, closing himself in like a turtle retreating into his shell. Once, he would have known what to do to fix this situation. Right now, he’s frozen as TK says, “Carlos.”

The voice is blank and frozen, and it sounds a hell of a lot more like the TK he has known lately. Carlos wonders if this was a huge mistake, but the sight of TK alive, breathing and warm is worth any mistake he’s making. He looks away from TK’s beautiful, alert, but cold eyes and focuses on the bag of food in his hand.

“So, I-I just brought some food,” Carlos stumbles, trying to focus on why he’s here. “I, uh, I told your mom I would go if you wanted me to. ”

TK tucks his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “I had your mom’s tamales yesterday.”

“Oh, good that’s…that’s good. There’s more in here than tamales. Some carnitas and…” He thinks about the tres leches cake in the bottom and it feels like an empty gesture.

TK sighs and suddenly Carlos is back in their living room, the night TK walked out. “What are you doing here, Carlos?”

“I had to come.”

“Why?” TK asks, like he really doesn’t know.

Carlos feels immediately selfish that he’s here, and incredibly stupid that he never understood how TK felt. He fidgets with the bag in his hands.

“Because…because I…I needed to see that you’re okay. I…”

How can he explain the nightmares that have plagued him nightly ever since TK was held hostage months ago? Nightmares that compounded after their bedroom burst into flames around them. That haven’t stopped in the time since they’ve been apart. He hadn’t shared all that before TK walked out their door, and he’s not sure he can do it in Captain Strand’s living room with TK’s parents somewhere probably listening.

Carlos closes his eyes and forces himself to try harder. “I… TK, whatever else went wrong, whatever else you think, I love you. And like I said, I’ll go if that’s what you want.”

“What do you want?” TK asks.

For you to come home. To have a second chance. To go back and fix everything.

Instead of saying any of those things, Carlos opens his eyes and says, “Just to see that you’re alright.”

“I’m not.”

Carlos feels his panic rise, searching for any sign of harm that he missed. TK stands, and shrugs. “I mean, physically sure.”

“Oh.”

TK’s lips curve up in a facsimile of a smile. “Haven’t been okay for a while now.”

Carlos swallows hard over the lump in his throat. “Me either.”

This time it’s TK’s turn to say, “Oh.” TK’s half detached when he shrugs his shoulders and watches his toes rub the carpet fibers. “I figured…”

“Figured what?” Carlos asks, horror seeping into his voice.

“That you’d be…better off,” TK whispers, but it might as well have been a shout.

The emotion he thought was horror before is swamped by something far stronger. The bag of food drops from his hands to the floor. “Ty, I…nothing about this is better. There’s nothing about waking up, in the bed we picked out, alone that’s better. There’s nothing about walking into the house and knowing you won’t come home that’s better.”

“You didn’t stop me,” TK accuses.

He didn’t. The times he tried never went well, not the first time he tried to make TK dinner and he ran, not the time he tried to hold onto TK when their dads pulled their fake arrest. And TK came back.

“I wasn’t going to trap you where you weren’t happy! I want you to be happy.”

TK’s hands fly out of the pocket of his hoodie and emphasize his words. “I wasn’t trapped! I just wanted…I wanted you to tell me what the hell was going on with you.”

Carlos closes his eyes. “I know.”

“What is going on with you?” TK asks, his voice cracking.

There’s so much to say. The words get stuck in Carlos’s throat, but he has to try. Marj is right, he’s a coward, but not for the reasons she thinks. He’s terrified of leaning too hard on TK. He’s terrified of being too much and not enough at the same time, especially when TK needs him. TK needs him to be strong, needs his support.

“I didn’t want…” He tries to get the words past the block but they won’t come. He picks a different angle. “I’m not good at…” The rest of the sentence chokes him. “I don’t…”

“Carlos?”

TK is moving towards him and Carlos takes a step back because he’s ruining it. He can feel the conversation unraveling. Carlos takes a step back and watches TK stutter to a stop. He closes his eyes, because Carlos can’t do this right. “See, this is it. This is the thing. You’re the one who was hurt. You’re the one who should be comforted and I’m over here…I’m…”

Falling apart. A hot mess.

“‘Los,” TK breathes and it slots into Carlos’s brain like a puzzle piece. It doesn’t soothe his feelings like it should, instead Carlos feels like his body is shaking apart. He cannot seem to open his eyes or move.

Before he can make his body work, TK’s arms band around him. Carlos reacts on instinct, pulling TK even closer. He buries his face in TK’s shoulder, overwhelmed by the actual smell and not the ghost he’s been getting from of the abandoned hoodie.

What do you want?

This. Just this.

His face is hot and wet and he’s cried more in the last few months than he has since he was a little boy. Carlos has no idea how the well hasn’t run dry yet.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into TK’s neck. “I’m sorry.”

He’s not strong enough. He never really has been. Papi’s always known and Carlos has tried so hard to be what he needs to be in this world, what other people need him to be.

“I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Hey, hey. Shh,” TK whispers.

And Carlos is back in the driveway of their old house as it falls down behind them, with TK holding him close. He’s here and there at the same time. Carlos feels his hands claw at TK’s sweatshirt, pulling him in as close as he dares.

Time is a funny thing. It could have been hours, it could have been minutes, but Carlos has no idea how long they stand together in the middle of Captain Strand’s living room. Eventually, the tears slow and he doesn’t have to hold on to TK like he might disappear if Carlos can’t feel TK’s heart beating against his chest.

He pulls back to touch his forehead to TK’s. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

“TK, no, I should have been better. I should have done better.”

“We both could have,” TK offers, and Carlos thinks it’s more than he deserves.

Carlos knows enough to know that he didn't say everything there is to say. Because I love you isn’t always enough. “I miss you.”

~*~

Gwyn pulls her coat tighter around her shoulders, looking up at the sunset in Owen’s backyard. Austin isn’t as cold as New York this evening and two hours in the yard with Buttercup is nothing. She slid out when she heard TK ask why Carlos was here. Some things are too personal for a mother to hear. So she’d taken Buttercup and slid out of the house. They’d walked around the block and then settled in the Adirondack chairs in the backyard.

She texted Owen to stay out of the house until she sent him the all clear. TK and Carlos needed to talk after everything. Owen entering would ruin that in a heartbeat. He’d make smoothies and want to talk about his day and Carlos would go home and leave them to their time together.

Instead, Gwyn focuses on the dog. “What do you think, Buttercup? Are they talking? Are they getting anywhere?”

Despite wanting to know, Gwyn refuses to look at the door where she might see something. She doesn’t want to intrude on their privacy. Whatever she needs to know, TK will tell her later. She just hopes it works out. She wants more for her son than she and Owen have managed.

On cue, the glass door behind her slides open. “Hey, Mom.”

Gwyn turns to see TK poking his head out of the door, his hands buried in his hoodie pockets. “Oh. I uh, everything okay?” she asks, fumbling her words.

“What did you hear?” TK asks quickly, biting his lip.

“Nothing,” Gwyn says.

TK sucks in a breath like he’s not sure he believes her. Probably because she said it too quickly. She didn’t actually hear anything, nothing real, but TK’s tended towards private since he turned fourteen. “Mom.”

Gwyn looks at her son. “You asked Carlos why he was here and I took Buttercup for a walk. Then we had some playtime in the backyard.” Buttercup bumps her hand and Gwyn gives her head a few good scrubs. “Didn’t we? Didn’t we?”

TK laughs, and Gwyn looks up to see him shaking his head. “So many years of begging for a dog, and this is what I get?”

Gwyn pats Buttercup another time. “Did Carlos go home?”

“Uh, no. He’s uh,” TK scrubs at the back of his neck, smiling softly. “He’s reheating some food. You want dinner?”

Gwyn smiles in return. “Conversation went that well?”

TK shrugs, still rubbing at the back of his neck. “It’s a start.”

Gwyn types out a quick all clear to Owen. She gives a smile to TK. “Well, if Carlos is cooking.”

“Reheating,” TK corrects, “he’s just reheating.”

“Mmmm,” Gwyn hums and follows TK into the house.

“I hear there’s dinner.”

Carlos turns from the stove and offers her a shy smile. It’s the best he’s looked since Gwyn laid eyes on him in the hospital. “Uh, yeah, and dessert.”

“Dessert?” TK asks, perking up further.

Carlos smiles, wide and indulgent. He still looks at her son like he hung the moon. “Check the bag.”

TK dives into the bag and comes up with a container filled with a cake. His voice pitches up in excitement. “Is this tres leches? Your mom made tres leches?”

“I made tres leches,” Carlos clarifies.

TK seems to melt at that revelation, his mouth forming into a soft pout. “It’s my favorite.”

“I know,” Carlos says, a blush rising on his cheeks.

Gwyn is fairly certain TK didn’t even know about tres leches cake back in New York, at least not enough to consider it his favorite. She remembers a lot of years of funfetti cakes.

TK continues to examine the box. “This isn’t the whole cake.”

“It’s most of the cake.”

“Where’s the rest of my cake?”

Gwyn pulls up a seat on the barstool. The banter is familiar to the relationship she knew them to have. It’s not exactly the same. Half a year ago, TK would have have been all over Carlos, nipping at his shoulder, caressing his waist, instead of half way across the kitchen. Carlos would have been swatting him away, laughing and telling him to get out of his way. But this is something.

Carlos does laugh though, even if it’s tight. “Your team was very grateful for the cake. Paul and Marj and the Ryders all said thank you.”

TK softens again and is about to say something, when the door opens, pausing the conversation in the kitchen. “Hello!” Owen calls from the door. “Smells great in here.”

“Carlos is cooking,” Gwyn calls back.

“Reheating,” TK corrects.

Owen comes around the corner. He looks older both since she left and TK’s latest accident. “Oh, hello Carlos.”

“Hello Captain Strand.”

Owen smiles, tilting his head to the side and shaking it. “Owen. I’ve told you, it’s Owen. Really, Carlos, I think you could have that down by now. It’s just two syllables. Also I haven’t been reinstated.”

Carlos just nods and TK mouths a very fierce Dad to which Owen mouths back what? TK rolls his eyes, but Owen comes over and hugs TK. He pulls back holding the back of his head. “How you doing, kid?”

“I’m good, Dad.” Owen seems to look him over even closer. TK knocks against Owen’s shoulder and Gwyn feels a tug of regret for all she’s lost. “I’m good. Still can’t get yourself reinstated?”

“I refuse to apologize to that vindictive son of a bitch,” Owen chirps, sliding from cheerful and moving into sullen and stubborn. “I regret nothing. He clearly doesn’t regret anything he’s done. I don’t see why I should.”

“Dinner will be ready in five,” Carlos says from the stove.

Gwyn stands up and pulls at his sleeve, heading toward the dining table. “Owen, help me set the table.”

“What? Why?” Owen asks, baffled.

How a man who is so intelligent and able to read a room for potential disasters is unable to read the situation in his own living room is beyond her. The worst part is she still loves him, beyond reason. Gwyn pulls harder. “Because, I want to hear more of your theory on why apologies aren’t necessary.”

Predictably, Owen balks. “They’re not necessary if people don’t mean them.”

“I seem to remember something about that during our divorce. Refresh my memory.”

Gwyn gives TK a wink, while he rolls his eyes right back at her. She pulls Owen to the dining room, prepared to hear his predictable thoughts on table settings and the appropriate silverware to lay out for the meal they’re about to enjoy. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees TK open the container of cake.

“I said, dinner will be ready in five,” Carlos chides warmly, “Not, ‘cake now.’”

“Ah, but that doesn’t stop me from cake now,” TK shoots back.

“Use a fork, please,” Carlos laughs.

“Oh,” Owen whispers to her from where they’ve stopped on the other side of the shelving unit.

She just knocks Owen on the shoulder and prepares to set the table in tandem. TK says something else that’s muffled by cake, something she cannot make out and Carlos chuckles. Owen hands her a stack of plates, and Gwyn steels herself for the fact that she’s going to have to break her own heart in leaving again.

~*~

The ride to Austin-Bergstrom is quick and relatively painless but TK is still picking at his fingernails. TK hates that he scared his mother and she had to come down here because he was in the hospital, again, but he also hates that she has to leave. Still, he keeps a brave face as he pulls her bags from the trunk of Carlos’s Camaro.

She seems to sense it, as only Gwyn Morgan can. “Are you sure?” she asks, resting her hand on his wrist.

TK knows she’s been worried about leaving, and even invited him up to New York if he needed a break. TK said no. There’s nothing for him in New York but bad memories and a million places to get pills. Texas has his dad ready to pull the firehouse back together, once and for all, the best crew he’s ever been a part of, and a man who has cracked open a door that TK thought was closed to him forever.

Ever since Carlos showed up with a bag full of food and had broken down in the living room, he had kept showing up, with more food and offers of rides to the airport. He made something that felt a lot like hope bloom in TK’s chest.

TK presses a kiss to his mother’s cheek. “Mom, I’ll be fine.”

Gwyn takes his chin in her hand and brings his face in close, like he’s seven. “Because I hate getting phone calls that require me to get on a plane,” she says, sternly.

“I will do my best,” TK offers, knowing he can't promise anything.

His mom takes her turn to kiss his cheek. “You’re going to be okay.” It’s not a question. There’s something about the faith his mother has in him.

His mom looks behind him, to Carlos. She opens her arms and TK watches as Carlos wraps his mother in a deep hug. “Take care, Carlos.”

Carlos closes his eyes before pulling back. “Have a great flight, Gwyn. And thank you, for everything.”

TK isn’t entirely sure what has passed between his mother and Carlos since she’s been in town. There’s a level of understanding between them that hadn’t existed the last time his mother had been in town. TK wonders if too many hospital vigils have made them a level of co-conspirators.

“Thank you,” she says, pulling back from Carlos’s arms. He watches his mom put her hands on either side of Carlos’s face. “You got the recipe?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She doesn’t even say anything about ma’am not being an appropriate term of respect for a New Yorker. “You should come visit New York sometime.”

Carlos glances at TK and seems to shuffle, a blush rising, one of his hands catching the other arm behind his back. “We’ll see.”

They have a long way to go before there’s a New York trip. He and Carlos had talked about it before but this new after they are working on isn’t the same.

Gwyn grabs TK in a final hug. He doesn’t want to let go. He wants her to stay. But TK is no stranger to the things he cannot have. She whispers fiercely in his ear, “I love you, TK.”

“I love you, too,” TK says, trying to keep himself from falling apart. “Call me when you land.”

“Okay,” she promises, letting him go, but not without rubbing her hands down his arms as if she’s trying to memorize the feel of him.

“Keep an eye on him for me, will you,” Gwyn asks Carlos, once again looking over TK’s shoulder. TK follows her gaze to look at Carlos.

Carlos lips twitch in a smile he’s trying to hold back. TK also notices how Carlos grips his hands behind his back. “I will.”

“Hey,” TK protests.

“Bye honey,” Gwyn says, again. “I love you.”

TK laughs, waving her toward the door. “Get going already. You don’t want to miss your flight.”

She takes her bags and disappears through the sliding doors, with one look back over her shoulder. TK waves as she leaves.

Carlos’s arm settles on his shoulder, warm and comforting. TK has missed this. He’s missed everything about this. TK just has no idea what they’re doing. “You okay?” Carlos asks.

TK leans into Carlos’s touch despite his uncertainty of where everything with Carlos is going. “I don’t actually remember when you were able to walk into the airport with people, all the way to the gate, but I wish we could.”

“Your mom is pretty special,” Carlos confirms, giving TK’s shoulder a squeeze. He pulls TK toward the car. “Come on. We can at least watch her plane take off.”

“What?”

Carlos just smiles at him, bright as the Texas sun. “Get in.”

Carlos drives them out to a field just outside the airport. He cuts the engine and must be able to read the question on TK’s face. “The northbound planes take off from these runways. She’ll go right overhead.”

“Thank you,” TK whispers.

Carlos just shrugs. “It’s the least I can do.”

The least Carlos could have done was the silence that had stretched between them in the weeks following their last fight. The least Carlos could have done was dropped off food like a good southern neighbor and pretended that they weren’t ever more than just coworkers. TK was certain he’d pushed too hard, been too needy, too broken to really be in this relationship. He’d acted out and left and been too much. Alex had felt that way about him. Other boyfriends had felt that way about him, too.

They end up lying on the hood of the car, warmth from the engine coming up behind them, waiting for the next flight to New York. Every few minutes a plane takes off, a deep rumbling vibrating overhead and shaking through TK’s chest. It’s a regular Austin winter day, meaning that it’s warm and his hoodie is enough to hold onto the sun’s warmth. After everything, TK’s just glad that the world isn’t the cold and gray space he woke up in after the lake incident.

“I really hope the next time she visits it’s not because I’m in the hospital,” TK shares.

“Me too.”

“It was better waking up to her this time instead of some random girl my dad was dating,” TK jokes. Carlos doesn’t laugh and TK glances over at him.

Carlos swallows hard. “Yeah.”

Oddly enough, they’ve barely talked about when TK was in the hospital. Carlos keeps showing up, but when they have talked seriously, it’s been about before. Mostly, though, TK has just enjoyed having his best friend back.

“She said you were there,” TK starts, seeing if Carlos will say anything more.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Carlos lets out a shaky breath and a brittle laugh. “It’s hard to believe something was worse than you getting shot, but uh, I think this topped it.”

“Carlos.”

Tears start to gather at the edge of Carlos’s eyes. “And the whole time, I knew…I knew I shouldn’t be there, I just couldn’t go. And then your mom made me go in your room, when I didn’t deserve to be there.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t deserve to be there?”

“TK, you didn’t want to see me.”

“There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t want to see you. I just didn’t know how to get past…everything,” TK says rather than list all the ways he’d failed in their relationship.

“It was like everything had floated so far away,” Carlos agreed.

“Yeah.”

“I should have…before, you asked, what was going on with me and I didn’t want to say anything because you were already struggling with everything that was happening with your dad and the 126 and I…”

“Carlos, you can lean on me,” TK interrupts.

TK knows that at first, he was so wrapped up in his own feelings and emotions that he hadn’t seen how far away Carlos was getting. He had been selfish and let himself fall into Carlos's arms without thinking, rage at Carlos about how unfair things were. Sex was never a problem, but sometimes TK would initiate it to make up for a lack of communication and to still feel connected. Somewhere in there he’d forgotten to check in on Carlos, and when he noticed, Carlos wouldn’t share. He would deflect and turn things back on TK.

If he’s honest, it all brought him back to the days when his parents walked around him on eggshells in New York, never wanting to push him over the edge or into trouble again. The same thing had happened when they were breaking up as he was getting his one year sober coin.

“I’m not used to being the person who leans on other people. I’m the person other people come to for help,” Carlos admits.

“And you’re amazing at it, but you’re not alone. And I, despite all evidence to the contrary, am not going to break if you depend on me. Unless that’s what you think, that I’m, you know.” Weak. Fragile. Broken.

“TK. TK,” Carlos says again, until TK looks into those deep brown eyes he’s missed. “You’reone of the strongest people I know. The things you do, the things you overcome, I’m impressed every day.”

“Then why?”

“Because it’s not…” Carlos stops, sighs, and TK feels like he’s slipping away once again. But Carlos twines his fingers with TK’s, grounding them together. “You know the day you were taken hostage?”

“Yeah?” TK prompts, unsure of where Carlos is going with this.

“I got suspended that morning,” Carlos tells him, his voice tight and jaw clicking.

“I vaguely remember that.” The whole week was very blurry still in TK’s mind. He remembered that his parents and Carlos had been hovering, that Carlos had been there when his mom had finally moved out. Carlos had been there every day and had mentioned a small technical suspension that had allowed for him to be around. He couldn’t remember them talking about it in depth.

“Yeah,” Carlos lets out a shaky breath. “I came to find you but you were out on calls. I wouldn’t see you again until…”

“I was bleeding from a head wound, held hostage by guys who made bombs in their house,” TK fills in. There’s a hazy memory of relief while sinking into Carlos's arms. There’re the stories of Carlos being a hero, figuring out what was wrong and where to go.

“Yeah, but, on the call for the bank robbery I trusted my gut. I knew the guy who robbed the bank wasn’t the one who made the bomb. I knew. He just, he was so desperate to go home, to see his son, and he didn’t want us to get hurt. I knew that. I believed it. I let him go and I was right. He was picked up by the same guys that took you.

“And my dad, my dad came in after they’d taken my gun and my badge and said maybe-“ Carlos voice cracks and TK’s heart breaks right with it. “Maybe, I didn’t have the right instincts.

“And you know, growing up as Gabriel Reyes’s only son and being me, it wasn’t…it wasn’t easy. He always thought I was too soft. And I learned that if I was taking care of other people, of their feelings it wasn’t…it was better than having my own.”

“Carlos.”

“I love my father,” Carlos continues, and TK remembers the fight after the farmer’s market and how he didn’t realize how deep this wound went, even after he promised Carlos he didn’t have to say anything. “I love him. He’s a great man. He just has these ideas of how a man should be, what that means. All I ever wanted was for him to be proud of me.”

“So, I’m not always great with sharing everything in a relationship. I felt like you had enough on your plate without my stuff. So I didn’t want to tell you about the recurring nightmares or the fact that I couldn’t sleep or that I didn’t want to let you out of my sight. It was too much, with everything else.”

TK wants to know more about the recurring nightmares that Carlos hid, and how Carlos felt like too much. Carlos, who had seemed so put together until he was slightly off, and TK wondered what he had done wrong. “I wish you had told me.”

“Me too.”

They continue to watch the planes take off overhead. TK is starting to put together a better picture of what had gone wrong between them. He’s spent the last few months thinking that it was something that was lacking in him. TK has spent hours trying to figure out why Carlos wouldn’t confide in him. Turns out, in a lot of ways, it had nothing to do with him.

When it comes down to it, they’ve wasted so much time by not talking.

His thoughts are interrupted by Carlos. “He came to talk to me about the break up, you know? My dad,” Carlos clarifies. “Apparently my mom is really into love languages.”

“What?” TK asks, trying to imagine Gabriel Reyes talking about love languages.

Carlos laughs, a rumble in his chest. “Yeah. So, he came to remind me that Reyes men aren’t very good at expressing their feelings.”

TK thinks about the man who waited for him on the stairs the night that Tim had died, the one who can pinpoint someone’s emotions and stare at them with big brown eyes until they confess everything, who knows how to just exist in a space rather than offering up platitudes and promises. The person who helped TK see the world as warm and colorful rather than dull and gray.

“You’re good with feelings,” TK tells him.

“I’m not. You wouldn’t have wondered if I missed you if I was. You would have known,” Carlos’s breath hitches and he starts over again, “You would have known you are essential in my life.”

“Hey, hey.” TK strokes a hand through Carlos's hair and pulls him in closer. “We both didn’t do a great job.”

“Uh, my dad had a theory about how moving in together probably made everything harder.”

“Why?” TK asks.

“Did you ever live with anyone, a partner, before?”

“No,” TK says, wondering if they hadn’t discussed this before. “You were the first.”

“You were the first for me, too. And my father reminded me that being with someone, making a new home, a family, isn’t easy and we’d only been in the house for, what, two months before it burned around us.

“And then we didn’t just negotiate how to move your stuff in with mine, but how to build a whole place from scratch and we were both…”

“A mess,” TK offers.

He remembers trying to take care of everything on his own as he lost the 126 and watched his father’s downward spiral, but that he had sucked at it. He remembers Carlos pushing them forward into a new house, a new life, and TK feeling like Carlos was trying to ignore everything falling apart around them.

“Yeah,” Carlos agrees.

“Do you think…do you think we could try again?” TK asks, hoping against hope he didn’t actually ruin everything when he left and didn’t come back. “I don’t know if I’m ready to move back in, yet, but maybe we could...”

“I think we’ve already started. From the moment I laid eyes on you there was something about you, Tyler Kennedy Strand. And maybe it’s silly to think it’s fate, but it’s never faded. And just know—your key is always good in that lock. Whenever you’re ready.”

TK feels tears well up in his eyes and tucks his face against Carlos’s chest. “That’s a pretty big promise.”

The seed of hope that was planted earlier this week begins to germinate, roots stretching down into his chest.

“I love you, TK. I told you, you’re essential to my life. So, whenever you’re ready, we’ll move forward. And I will do better, about being open, about leaning on you.”

“And I will do a better job of not taking up all the air in the relationship.”

“You don’t,” Carlos protests.

TK nuzzles in closer. “I do, and you let me.”

Carlos laughs softly and presses a kiss to TK’s hair.

They stay out in the field, watching planes take off until his mom’s flight status shifts to departed. Carlos presses a final kiss to TK’s head. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

Carlos slides off the hood and heads to get into the Camaro. TK stutters a little because where Carlos is taking him isn’t home, not really. They’re rebuilding that from the ashes of this breakup. The foundation they’ve been laying this week feels a lot stronger. So TK slides in the passenger seat.

“Okay, Carlos, take me home.”

He’s willing to ride along, however long as it takes.