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TK zeroes in on the blood still staining Carlos’s collar the second he walks into the loft. He wastes no time in striding over and taking his face firmly in his hands, ignoring the protests already coming out of Carlos’s mouth.
“What happened?” he demands. He scans Carlos for injuries, his eyes almost fixing on the small cut near his hairline, taped over with butterfly bandages. Carlos sees the relief in his fiancé’s eyes at the knowledge that he has already been checked over and cleared to go home, but, naturally, TK won’t rest until he makes sure that he’s okay for himself.
“TK, I’m fine,” Carlos says, knowing it won’t make an ounce of difference.
“Nope.” TK moves his hands from Carlos’s face to push him gently towards the couch, making him sit. “Try again.”
Carlos sighs heavily and fixes TK with a raised eyebrow, but he’s not going to budge. “It happened on a call,” he explains. “The rookie tripped me accidentally and I hit my head a little when I fell. Seriously though, TK, you don’t need to worry, the paramedics on scene checked me out.”
“Well now the paramedic on this scene is going to check you out. Follow my finger.”
He rolls his eyes but obliges, thinking that will be the extent of it. Naturally, he’s wrong; as soon as this part is over, TK produces his penlight — from where, Carlos has no idea.
“So when you said check me out,” he tries, lowering his voice in what is usually a surefire way to distract TK, “that was strictly in the literal sense?”
But, tonight, TK is not going to be deterred. “Unless and until you pass the exam, yes.”
Carlos huffs. “You’re mean.”
TK just hums and continues his completely unnecessary, over-the-top examination in silence. It goes on long enough that Carlos gets a little fidgety — normally, he’s good at sitting still, but there’s something about being under his fiancé’s intense scrutiny that makes his skin crawl.
TK sits back on his heels and Carlos takes the opportunity to scoot further out of his reach, not caring whether he’s done or not.
“You’re turning this into something bigger than it is,” he complains, catching TK’s hands as they go for his head again. He meets his eyes and holds his gaze intently. “I’m fine.”
TK still looks concerned, but Carlos eventually wears him down, and he drops his gaze, laughing a little. “Well, good,” he says. “Because I’d hate for all this to go to waste.”
Carlos frowns in confusion, but then TK smiles bashfully and steps to the side, revealing the table covered in the cloth his mother gifted them as an engagement present, their best place settings laid out, and a cluster of small candles in the middle. A bottle of sparkling cider rests in an ice bucket, and, to top it all off, the soft, lilting notes of Carlos’s favourite Mexican tunes playing in the background.
“Babe…” He takes two steps forward, then turns around, shaking his head at TK. “What is this? Have I forgotten something?”
“Nope,” TK says, popping the ‘p’. He moves towards Carlos and grabs his hands, swinging them gently between their bodies. “Do I need an excuse to spoil my husband-to-be?”
“Otherwise known as your fiancé.”
TK grins and draws Carlos’s arms up and around his waist until his hands rest lightly on the small of his back. He brings his own hands up to Carlos’s neck, his thumb brushing gently at the underside of his jaw. “Hmm, husband sounds better,” he says, tongue darting out to wet his lips.
“Just a couple more months, baby,” Carlos whispers, his last words swallowed by TK’s mouth as he joins them in a kiss.
(They end up eating takeout hours later, after TK confesses to being so sure he’d set the mood just right that he hadn’t prepared any food.)
(Carlos would roll his eyes at his cockiness, but it’s not like he was wrong.)
TK wakes up the next morning thoroughly sated and blissfully happy. Sex with Carlos is always mind-blowingly, toe-curlingly amazing, but something about last night… His body aches pleasantly, and a slow grin spreads across his face as he replays some of those memories against the closed skin of his eyelids.
He’s definitely up for another round, but a soft whistle next to him lets him know that Carlos is still asleep, which provides TK with an opportunity he’s been missing for too long.
He’s so going to tease Mr. I-Don’t-Snore with this later, but first to get the evidence. TK grabs his phone but stops dead when he rolls over. The sheets are stained bright red with blood, and TK follows the trail to its provenance.
Carlos’s ear.
And his nose.
And, when TK bends over him to check, his other ear.
Panic threatens to swallow him whole, but TK pulls on the reins hard. He’ll be of no use to Carlos if he loses himself now. He forces himself to focus, to switch on his instincts and paramedic training.
Checks. He needs to check him.
“Carlos.” TK gently shakes Carlos’s shoulders as he calls his name, first in one ear, then the other.
No response.
Airways. He tilts Carlos’s chin up, relieved when they’re clear.
Breathing. He listens closely, watching for the rise and fall of Carlos’s chest — everything seems good, but TK knows there could be hidden problems that he can’t pick up without his equipment.
Circulation. And again the worry rises in him. Carlos is paler than he should be, and colder too, plus his pulse isn’t within the normal range. Added to the bleeding from the ears and nose, and it’s more than clear that something is seriously wrong with Carlos.
Maybe if TK were in the field, he’d be able to narrow it down a bit more, be able to actually do something useful. But he’s not; he’s in bed, in his boxers, and the only thing he can do is call 9-1-1, rattle off the meagre information he has, and wait for the ambulance to arrive, wishing, hoping, praying that everything will be okay.
After hours of waiting, the doctors eventually tell him that Carlos’s fall caused his skull to fracture and, given the time between the injury and him getting worse, he developed a subdural haematoma. They say that, though the skull fracture itself should only need pain management to heal, they had to perform burr hole surgery to treat the bleed. They tell him it all went well and Carlos should make a clean recovery, though there is still a risk that the haematoma could come back.
Which is why, when TK finally goes into the room to see Carlos, he almost has to run straight back out again to throw up.
Because the damn tube is still in Carlos’s head.
“It’s just for the next couple of days, Mr. Strand,” the doctor says, clearly catching on to his train of thought. “The bleed wasn’t as serious as we had feared but a repeated incident could be life-threatening, so keeping the tube in place for now will diminish the chances of that happening.”
“And…” TK swallows, his jaw working as he tries to find the words he needs for his next question. Sometimes he hates being a paramedic; it means that he understands some of what the doctors are talking about, and the bank of statistics in his head is running all the worst-case scenarios. “Will he… His brain… Will he be… him still?”
The doctor smiles kindly, understanding. “It’s true that many patients with subdural haematomas experience partial loss of brain function; equally, many recover fully, or almost fully. We won’t know until he wakes up and we can run some tests, but Mr. Reyes is young and healthy, and his case really was quite mild in comparison. His chances are good.”
TK nods and thanks the doctor, waiting for him to leave before he goes to the chair by Carlos’s bed, sinking down into it wearily. He quickly loses track of time, every hour just more of the same in these four white walls. Just more waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
Until, eventually, Carlos wakes up, and TK bursts into tears even as he’s calling the doctor.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Carlos looks confused, a hand reaching up to his head, to the tube, but before TK can move to stop him, the doctors push in front of him. They swarm the bed, flitting around the room doing their checks, but when it’s all over, they’re able to smile at TK and say that Carlos appears to be on track for complete recovery of brain function.
For some reason, it only makes him cry harder. He returns to Carlos, grabbing his hand and kissing it over and over, tears cascading down his face uncontrollably as he begs his fiancé’s forgiveness.
And it’s selfish of him, especially when Carlos still isn’t fully with it, but when Carlos weakly tugs his hand away to wipe away his tears, TK finally feels like he can breathe again.