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“So, Nancy and Mateo,” TK says not-so-slyly the moment the loft door closes behind the pair in question. The gang is setting up Catan, a four-person version that might as well be a double date with the way Paul and Marjan have already spent most of the intervention part of this hang holding hands. TK smiles at how happy they all are.
The first person to react to his statement is, of course, Carlos. Their eyes meet, and he wiggles his brows before saying, “You know, I had an inkling at the firehouse the other day, but I wasn’t sure. Paul’s chili distracted me.”
TK laughs at that, as does Paul who seems to have been able to drag himself out of his and Marjan’s bubble to briefly engage in the conversation about their apparently now-dating colleagues.
“Thank you, Carlos! It was damn good chili.”
“Hell yeah, it was,” Marjan adds in, a proud smile across her face as she stares at Paul, still holding pieces of the game in her hands.
“I wouldn’t know,” TK grumbles, “since someone ate the last of it before medical came back.” He glares at his boyfriend, ignoring the laughs of their friends. Also very pointedly ignoring the fact that he did eat almost a full bowl of chili before the call and can confirm that it was very good chili. But that’s completely beside the point! He was out saving lives, and his boyfriend decided to eat his lunch!
“It was the corn chips,” Carlos deadpans. “Besides”—he leans in closer to TK so the tips of their noses are touching and lowers his voice to a husky whisper—“I think I more than made up for it that evening.”
TK shivers at his words. He’s about to reply with something sultry, momentarily forgetting about their whereabouts, when Marjan interrupts them with a whistle.
“You guys, there are guests in your home,” she teases in a semi-serious tone. “Guests who are expecting a game of Catan before you throw us out for the night, so please, drag your asses out of that disgustingly adorable bubble of yours, and let’s play.”
In all fairness, TK wouldn’t expect anything else from her, but that doesn’t stop him from turning to her and Paul, saying, “Says you two!” with a smirk splashed across his face, then turning back to press a too-long kiss to his boyfriend’s lips. In spite of their loud comments over the top. He feels Carlos smile into it, so TK calls that a win.
“Gross,” Marjan says at the same time as Paul says, “Adorable.”
Laughing, TK pulls back and turns his attention back to the game board, ignoring his friends’ eyes on him. He doesn’t mind; they’re always teasing him and he gives as good as he gets. Although he must admit, Nancy has been the worst, completely insufferable, since she got her way, as she puts it, with them getting back together after TK’s—
Oh! Nancy! He can’t believe he got distracted away from the real topic of conversation by Carlos. How rude of his sexy boyfriend.
“So back to what just happened,” he steers clumsily. Carlos just jabs him in the knee as if to say yeah, that was bad. Not that he could disagree; it was terribly unsubtle.
“What, to you two making eyes at each other?” Paul offers with a poorly-concealed smiling eye roll. “I hate to break it to you, brother, but that is not new. You are like that all the damn time. Right, Marj?”
Marjan hums knowingly as she finishes setting up the board. “Let’s Catan, you guys!”
“Woah, woah, woah, wait!” TK interrupts. He knows he’s getting increasingly like a child not getting his own way, but he wants to discuss them, goddammit. He wants to know how he missed his partner and little brother getting together right under his nose when everyone managed to see he and Carlos were together before they were even together together.
Maybe he’s the only clueless one.
He turns to Carlos. “Babe, if you knew, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know,” Carlos amends, “but I had a feeling at the firehouse. Before you guys went on that call, they just seemed…”
“Close,” Paul offers, and Carlos nods. “They’re not as subtle as they think they are. But, Carlos, did you get more low-level crush than we’ve already been going out for coffee vibes?”
Carlos hums his agreement. “They’re not subtle with that coffee thing either, are they?”
“Wait, they’re not going for coffee?”
Paul, Marjan, and Carlos all exchange looks before they burst out laughing. Paul and Marjan collapse against one another whilst Carlos grips TK’s thigh, leaning against his shoulder.
Unimpressed, TK folds his arms and stares down his friends.
Once their laughter subsides, Carlos turns to him, deadly serious, and says, “Babe, did you seriously not understand?”
He frowns.
“So if I told you we danced all night that first time we met? Mr. I’ve only known you for fifteen minutes.” Carlos raises an eyebrow, a smirk high on his lips. “You and your innuendos every ten seconds didn’t understand? Seriously, TK?”
Thinking about it, he did wonder about the strange look he got from Nancy as he offered their coffee services. Because it is very nice coffee, even if he does say so himself, especially now there aren’t any mealworms next to it. He was just focusing on finally being able to get on with their Catan game, he thinks, and he’d been disappointed when he realized they were being ditched. For coffee, of all things.
(Or maybe it was Carlos’ fault. Probably there being distractingly gorgeous again.)
But now it makes sense.
“Oh,” he says, a sheepish smile on his lips.
“TK, we’ve all heard your comments to Carlos.” Paul gestures between them, side-eyeing Marjan as he does so. “And you’re telling me you missed that comment about coffee? For real?”
He shrugs, then throws his hands up in the air. “Maybe they did want coffee!”
“You’re clueless!” Marjan says. She leans across the table, across the game board, and touches his knee, throwing on her best over-the-top teasing voice. “It’s okay, babe, I won’t tell Carlos about our coffee dates.”
“Oh, fuck off, Marj.” He rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning. They all are. “But if you won’t tell Carlos, I won’t tell Paul,” he adds, copying her tone.
She just leans back and mimics zipping her mouth shut. TK and Carlos exchange knowing looks.
It’s a funny thing, TK thinks. The fact that Nancy and Mateo have been at it the whole time, and he hadn’t realized, yet Marjan and Paul have been, for lack of a better word, pining over each other for months now. Paul and his Marjan is my ride or die, Marjan pulling herself apart when they weren’t talking… Look, TK might be clueless in some situations, but this isn’t one of them.
Besides, Carlos agrees with him. And that says it all.
“All right, let’s play,” TK says a moment later. He can try pushing the topic again later.
—
“What do you really think about Nancy and Mateo?” Carlos asks later that evening as he finishes his nighttime routine, glancing briefly over to TK, already tucked up in bed.
He looks up from his phone where he’s been trying to read a paramedic’s point of view article, though he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little distracted. It’s probably something to do with the fact that Carlos is wearing nothing but a towel around his hips, his hair damp and fluffy from the shower, and TK might be salivating a bit. Just a bit.
But that’s beside the point…
“Hm? Oh, yeah, I’m cool with it,” comes his nonchalant reply.
Carlos turns around, standing at the foot of the bed with a pot of moisturizer in hand, and shoots him one of those looks. One of those looks that says you ain’t fooling me, but it’s slightly sexier because it comes from Carlos. Which really, really isn’t helping at the moment, TK realizes.
“I am!” he argues. “I am, I’m happy for them. I think they’re good together, even if it will be weird to have another couple on the team.”
Humming, Carlos squeezes a dot of cream onto his hand and starts rubbing it into his bare skin—arms, chest, stomach; it’s really not helping the situation. No, no. It’s really not helping TK’s situation.
“So you’re weird about them both being on the team?” Carlos furrows his brows, then spreads cream across the skin there. “Seriously, TK?”
“No!” he argues again, a little whiny like the child he sometimes is but mostly jokey. “No, babe. I don’t care about that. Even if we are the firehouse couple.”
“I’m not a part of the 126, TK.”
Oh, now that presses all the wrong buttons. Huffing, TK drops his phone to the covers and crawls along the bed until he’s kneeling at the end, facing Carlos. He tilts his head to the side, accidentally getting distracted—again—by the movement of Carlos’ fingers across his bare skin, before he’s pulled back into the moment.
“Carlos, you are part of the 126,” he insists because it’s the truth. “You have lunch with us, our hangs are always here, and the team loves you. Catan wouldn’t be the same without you,” he finishes with a smirk.
“I know,” Carlos says simply, smiling. He pops the lid back on his moisturizer and sets it down on the dresser behind him before turning back to TK. Taking his face in his hands, he leans in close. “But if we’re counting partners in the 126–”
“Only the ones the team loves.”
He huffs out a laugh. “So Grace and I?”
TK nods, leaning into his boyfriend’s touch. “But with Nancy and Mateo now and the way Paul and Marjan are going, I’m gonna be the only one without my boyfriend on site all the time.”
“Apart from Judd.”
“Judd will be off for months with his leg injury. It’s unfair, Carlos.” He pouts, truly pouts. “I’m truly happy for them, and I’ll be over the damn moon when Paul and Marjan sort themselves out, but can you imagine how insufferable they’ll all be?”
Carlos leans in close, touching their noses together again. “Like us, you mean?” he asks in that deep and sexy voice. “You were just showing off in front of Paul and Marjan, weren’t you? Wanting them to know what we have.”
Unable to deny it, TK just nods.
“You want to be the firehouse’s couple, don’t you? That why you keep sending me code sevens?”
He lets out a shaky breath. “It’s selfish, too. I wanna see you.
Carlos raises an eyebrow. “Is that all?”
“Maybe the uniform,” TK admits.
He can’t explain it; there’s something so unfairly sexy about his boyfriend in his cop uniform. Every time he comes sauntering into the firehouse like he owns the place, TK almost melts on the spot. The walk, the uniform, the way his eyes never leave TK’s. It’s a lot, and he’s sure it makes him far more insufferable than Nancy and Mateo are ever going to be. If they’ve managed to keep it professional thus far, they’ve already beaten TK and Carlos.
Carlos drops his hands from TK’s face and instead pushes his shoulders back until TK falls back onto the bed with a soft thump. He towers over the bed, hands on hips, and says, “Just the uniform?”
TK holds himself up on his elbows, getting the best view of his boyfriend this way. He swallows thickly at the sight—he always has to if he’s being honest, there’s just something about Carlos that always gets him—but he lets his eyes rake up and down his body without an ounce of shame.
“No,” he says eventually. “All of you.”
A smile softens his features, though his actions are anything but. He yanks at the towel on his hips and throws it purposefully over the bed, over TK, and onto the floor. Without a moment’s hesitation, he climbs onto the bed and covers TK completely. On all fours, he leans down to slot their noses together, letting their lips brush but not meet.
“You’re a tease,” TK whispers between them. His hand moves along the skin of Carlos’ side, a light and tantalizing touch he knows can and will drive his boyfriend crazy. As if that isn’t precisely the point.
“Says you.” Carlos scoffs lightly. “Like you haven’t been eyeing me up ever since I walked into the room.” He presses a kiss to TK’s jaw. “I see you, TK. I always see you.”
TK shivers at his words, but he manages to shoot back a teasing, “It’s been longer, actually.”
“Longer?”
He nods, pleased when it earns him another peck to the cheek before Carlos pulls back and looks him right in the eye, waiting for an explanation. To which TK just shrugs as best he can and says, “It’s not my fault you’re so hot, is it?”
“TK,” Carlos breathes, low and barely there, lips ghosting over his. “Fuck.”
“Now will you please kiss me, babe?”
Carlos does.
—
After, TK is resting his head on Carlos’ chest. He’s smiling to himself, happy and sated—for now, anyway—and thinking about the day’s revelations. Carlos is running his fingers through TK’s hair, and if he weren’t so caught up on everything that’s happened today, he’d be well on his way to a great night’s sleep.
“I don’t have a problem with them,” he says honestly.
Carlos hums. “Oh yeah? What is it then?”
He sighs. It’s nothing. He’s pleased for his friends, he truly is, and he’s been thinking about all of the ways he can get Nancy back for her incessant questioning about Carlos during those few months and now the near-constant teasing. It will be funny; they all tease each other, so he’s pleased to have more teasing material. Plus, they’re well suited, he thinks, even if he never saw it before.
But there is one thing.
“Carlos, Mateo sleeps in my old bedroom.”
There’s a beat of silence, then, much like earlier in the night between friends, Carlos bursts out laughing. It’s that real type of laughter, unapologetic and gorgeous. TK loves it, or he would if it wasn’t aimed at him.
“Carlos!” he whines, but it’s only half-hearted. He makes no attempt to move off of his boyfriend despite the fact he’s moving up and down with every huff of laughter.
“Is that what you’re worried about? Babe, you haven’t slept in there for—”
“We had sex in that bed! And now they… They…” Dramatic or not, he shudders and buries his head in the crook of Carlos’ neck. He presses a kiss there before mumbling, “We’re never having sex again.”
Carlos laughs again. “I think that ship already sailed, TK.”
TK just groans.
Gently, Carlos guides TK’s head out of its hiding place so their eyes can meet. He smiles that perfectly soft smile, then pecks TK’s lips. “I thought you genuinely had a problem with them,” he murmurs. “But you’re just overthinking it, aren’t you?”
“He lives with my dad, he sleeps in my old room, and I work with them both.” He sighs, leaning, as always, into Carlos’ touch. “I just don’t know how we all missed it.”
“Speaking of, do you think your dad knows?”
“Oh god,” TK says, eyes wide.
Carlos frowns in confusion.
“Those walls are thin.” He doesn’t have to say anymore; it’s evident from the way Carlos’ face falls, promptly followed by him turning to bury it in the pillow, that he understands. In actual fact, he’s probably reliving the same memory as TK right now, one involving Owen, a peanut butter and banana smoothie, and… Well, the less said about that, the better.
“Too thin,” Carlos gulps, and TK rests his hand over his heart.
“Let’s just be glad we’ve got our own place now, babe.”
He moves to face TK, leaning in close once more. “Oh, yeah. Because we both know you can’t keep quiet.”
TK can’t deny anything. He just kisses his boyfriend instead.
And if he proves him right, it’s with great pleasure.