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“What are you doing?”
Carlos looks up to find TK frowning at him from their bedroom.
“I…” Carlos holds up the blanket in his hands, unsure what else to say. He thinks it’s pretty obvious what he’s doing. Then again, tonight has proven that he can’t do anything right, apparently, when it comes to TK.
“I thought I’d… give you some space,” he says quietly. He shakes the blanket out, reaches for the pillows at the other end of the couch. Past experience has taught him that he needs to let TK cool off, let TK walk away and come back to him when he’s ready. He’ll wait out here until he does.
TK sighs and leans against the doorway. “Do you want some space, Carlos?”
“I want to give you some space,” Carlos repeats, busying himself with the pillows and the blanket.
“I don’t want you to do that.”
“Then what do you want?” Carlos snaps, and bites his lip, looks away. He didn’t mean to sound so harsh. But he can’t do anything right tonight, it seems.
“You, Carlos,” TK says softly. “I want you.”
Carlos glances back up, and TK’s mouth is twisted into a frown, the hurt in his eyes clear from across the room.
“Just come to bed, please. If you want to, I mean.” He ducks his head and retreats back into their bedroom, leaving the door open behind him. An invitation.
Carlos stares back down at the couch. He’s spent many a long night on it, poring over case files, going through surveillance footage. But not without TK there, curled into his side, nearly crowding him off the cushions. Somehow, he thinks he’d be more uncomfortable with the whole couch to himself.
So he abandons the couch and goes to TK, crawling into his usual place beside him. TK turns to face him as he does, but keeps his hands to himself, and they lie in the dark, inches and miles apart.
Some of the heaviness leaves his heart, with TK beside him. Carlos always feels better when he’s near TK. But the bitter taste of resentment and guilt and the words he said to him still lingers on his tongue, and the air between them is thick with tension. They’re both holding back, Carlos thinks, each waiting for the other to reach out first.
“There’s something I need you to know,” TK finally says, so quiet Carlos almost doesn’t hear it.
“What’s that?” he breathes.
“I don’t need you in my life, Carlos.” There’s a hard look in his eyes as he says it, and for a split second, Carlos’s heart stops.
“I want you,” TK continues. “I want you in my life.”
Carlos out a breath, his mind flashing back to another late-night conversation. I know I was a little bitch, and I’m not sorry, Carlos.
“What do you mean?” he asks again.
“There’s a big difference, to me.” TK shuffles closer, until Carlos can feel the warmth radiating from his body. “I, um… I actually talked about it with Cooper, the other day.”
“Oh,” Carlos says. There’s a little twist in his gut at the name, and he hates himself for it.
“In my last relationship,” TK says, “I needed him. Alex.”
Now that name fills him with rage. He fights it down, turning his full attention to TK.
“It’s like… he was my stability. He was proof that I had my life together, you know? I put everything on him. Everything. And that… was way too much to invest in one person. So when that fell apart…”
“You did too,” Carlos murmurs. They’ve talked about it before, but every time they do, his heart aches the same.
“Yeah.” TK bites his lip. “So… if you need me to need you —
“No.” Carlos is sure of that. “No, TK, that’s not it. I promise.”
“Okay.” TK exhales. Beneath the covers, their knees brush together. “So… what is it?”
“I…” Carlos tries, but no words come to mind. Only feelings, hot and sharp and too big to name. “I don’t know,” he whispers. Why doesn’t he know?
“You know,” TK says gently. “Talking to Cooper, or just going to meetings, to therapy… it helps me work through things. Untangle things, you know? All the… the big, messy feelings I feel. So that I can come home. Like I said. And talk to you about it.” He gives Carlos a gentle nudge with his knee. “Maybe… you should try that sometime.”
“Maybe,” Carlos mutters. Some part of him resists the thought, insists that he doesn’t need it. He wants to say so, to protest, but that’s not the conversation they need to have right now.
“I just…” he tries again. “I got… frustrated, I think. Because… ugh.” He huffs out a breath, frustrated, and TK’s knee presses gently to his again. Why is this so hard?
“It feels like I’m not enough for you,” he says, an echo of the words that poured out of him earlier. “Like… I don’t need you to need me. But… I want to give… to be able to give you what you need. And it frustrates me that I can’t. And I feel like I’ve failed you, somehow.”
“But that’s the thing.” Now TK shifts closer, and finally, he reaches out first, draping an arm over Carlos’s shoulders. “That’s what I mean when I say that I want you. You don’t have to be everything, or give me anything, or do anything for me. You can just… be. Be here, be yourself. Be with me, go through life with me.”
“But partners are supposed to lean on each other,” Carlos says. “Right? We support each other, we catch each other when we fall.”
“We do. But…” TK sighs. “You know, this felt a lot clearer when Cooper explained it to me.”
Carlos chuckles, and any remaining tension melts from the air. TK presses close, tucking his head against Carlos’s chest, and Carlos draws him in tight.
“We do that because we want to,” TK murmurs into Carlos’s chest. “Not because we have to. Not because we’d collapse without each other. Does that… does that make sense?”
“It does, I think.” Carlos presses a kiss to the top of TK’s head. “And… and I love you.” That’s one feeling he can translate into words.
“I love you too.” TK pulls away a little to look up at him, so Carlos can see how it shines in his eyes. “So much.”
Whatever else happens, Carlos thinks as they drift off to sleep, he can trust that that much will always be true.