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Carlos wasn’t used to silence anymore.
It made sense, seeing as for five years he spent his time off wrangling any number of kids or trying to help make sense of three first responders’ schedules (with one that would take a month long trip every three months back to LA). The house was always chaotic and bouncy and full of laughter. He always had someone he could talk to, whether it be an adult or a teenager pretending.
But things were different now. Back to normal. Evan Buckley and May Grant and the 118 kids had returned to Los Angeles and reunited with their families (though Buck would be bouncing back and forth for a while longer due to his outstanding responsibilities in Austin). The 126 kids were back home with their parents. Jonah had returned to New York City with Enzo only days prior, finally comfortable with being with his father.
And Carlos and TK were back in their loft.
There were few people that Carlos would admit this to, but he had grown to hate the loft during those first six months after everyone vanished. He only came in when he absolutely had to, preferring to crash out on the Vega’s couch. By the time the LA group had made the move to Austin, he had basically moved everything of value and need out of the loft and was fully prepared to lock the door and throw away the key, mortgage be damned. The only reason why he couldn’t was because every time he thought of doing it, he felt like he would be throwing away another part of TK, and he couldn’t do that.
The loft had represented his life with TK. Without him, the walls felt cold and the room felt silent. Being in the space turned his stomach something awful.
Instead, Buck and May had ended up using it as a place to go when they needed five minutes away, when going to work just wasn’t cutting it. That meant it was still in good condition that random Tuesday morning when his phone rang and his voice came out.
“Did you become Houdini and not tell me, babe?”
Hearing TK’s voice only seconds after watching Buck’s face turn six shades of pale was not something he could have ever expected. It was as if he’d never left. It was the same TK tease in the words, the same TK love in the endearment, and the same TK chuckle filling the silence while Carlos did everything he could to not have a panic attack three feet away from all of the kids, who were currently witnessing the adult figures in their lives break down before their eyes as is.
“TK…?” He could barely get the word out of his throat. Please don’t be a dream. Please don’t be a nightmare. Please be reality. Please be-
“Los, you’re scaring me. Where are you… and where is Charlie! Oh, Judd is gonna kill me if she started walking without him knowing…” He could hear him moving around, calling out for Charlie, before cutting himself off.
Carlos patted his pockets for his keys, catching May’s eye as he practically tore out of the old Strand rental house (and how weird was it that he just immediately called it that for the first time in years). “TK, I’m on my way, okay? I’ll explain everything. I promise that Charlie is safe.”
He had never used the lights on his department issue vehicle for personal use before. First time for everything.
Three months had now passed since everyone had returned and life was returning to some semblance of normal. Or what was passing as the new normal.
TK had spent much of that time at the academy requalifying along with everyone from the 126 which had left Carlos a bit out of sorts. Without the constant distraction of having to shuffle the kids between four different schools and various activities, he felt… lost. His own personal schedule didn’t fill the time. And though he constantly volunteered to watch Charlie Ryder or supervise the Vega twins (who always allowed it with grace, those girls took after their godmother so much it was startling), it wasn’t enough.
As soon as the reunions at the Strand house were settled and the lease was re-signed back over, Carlos had moved back into the loft with TK. Though he hadn’t stepped foot in it for years, he could clearly see that Buck and May had kept it in good condition for the few times they’d used it as a mental health crash pad.
There was only one problem - it was too silent.
With TK and the others busy and the kids otherwise occupied, Carlos’ free time skyrocketed. When he was living at the Strand house, he would have just found a comfy chair and pulled out a book and read, the universal sign in their massive blended family for “burned out, please leave in peace.” But now? The thought of having the silence to read was startling.
He’d taken to avoiding the loft when he had downtime that couldn’t be filled up with TK or other obligations. He couldn’t help it. The silence he’d once loved wasn’t comforting anymore - it was heavy, stilted, oppressive.
Buck’s return to Austin had helped bring to light Carlos’ silence issue.
As he was now a detective, Carlos was able to set his own hours a bit. That meant that when he got a text message that just had flight details from LAX to AUS, he made it a point to be there to welcome his former housemate back to Austin from a redeye from hell.
“Remind me never to do that again,” Buck muttered, climbing into the passenger seat of Carlos’ squad car. He quickly stuffed his bag into the footwell before taking the very hot coffee that the detective handed over. “Bless you.”
Carlos didn’t bother hiding his chuckling. “You say that every time, and yet here we are again.” He carefully merged in with traffic and the duo began their slow trip back towards Austin proper.
It was a quiet ride. Buck spent most of the time dozed off, head against the window, lightly snoring. Carlos didn’t mind. This was a good silence. It was the norm for when the firefighter returned from LA. He always took the red eye because it was cheaper, and he always ended up sleeping in the car and being exhausted for at least a day.
The only difference about this return to Austin was that they weren’t heading for the house, where Buck would be practically dragged from the car by either the two little girls of their ragtag family, or one of the teens demanding his attention. Instead, they were heading for the loft where Buck was going to crash on the couch when he wasn’t pulling shifts at any one of Austin’s firehouses. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do.
Buck woke up as soon as Carlos’ cruiser shifted into park at the loft. He muttered out a garbled “Thankyou,” took the offered key, and stumbled out of the car, intent on getting in at least another few hours of sleep before he had to deal with being a responsible adult. Luckily, Carlos knew that the loft would still be empty for the majority of the day as both he was still on shift until six and TK’s last few classes would run until seven. Dinner wouldn’t be until late, which gave Buck some extra time to acclimate to the time switch.
Luck was on Carlos’ side that night and a case didn’t get sent his way, letting him slip out early to go home and start dinner for his guest… who already had dinner halfway done by the time he slid the door open. Soft music played out of their speakers while Buck was assembling what could only be described as a feast.
“And here I thought you’d still be asleep,” Carlos snarked, ducking into the bedroom to change out of his work clothes and lock up his service weapon before coming out and joining Buck in the kitchen.
Buck waited until the other man joined him before reacting. “Who needs sleep? I forgot how loud it is here.” Right on cue, sirens sounded from outside, echoing throughout downtown Austin.
“You live in LA.”
“I live in the suburbs. There’s sirens, but nowhere near as much.” Buck shrugged, turning back to the pot he was stirring on the stove. Oh, Carlos thought, he was making pasta sauce. He was feeling fancy.
Seeing that his guest had everything well in hand, the detective spied the novel he’d been attempting to read for several weeks on a side table. With a quick glance at Buck who gave him a nod in return, he snagged the novel and curled up on the couch, letting the soft music and sounds in the kitchen calm his mind and focus on the thriller.
The easy silence ended an hour later as TK came trudging in, bringing with him all of the younger members of the original 126. They were in the middle of a lively conversation and didn’t immediately notice Carlos on the couch, finger now being used as a poor-man’s bookmark, nor Buck in the kitchen, who was just pulling out a vegan lasagna out of the oven. In fact, the only reason they noticed at all is because the speakers automatically switched over to TK’s phone and the genre difference was glaring enough to bring everything to a halt.
“Oh hey, Buck! What are you doing in town?” Mateo asked, bouncing over to the kitchen and not letting the man answer before launching into a tale of something from the academy that they’d all done that day. Marjan and Paul started talking over the former probie to correct him with Nancy trailing behind in support, leaving TK to instead change direction and join his fiance on the couch.
“Any trouble today?” TK asked, dog-earing the page of Carlos’ novel before tossing it aside and stealing a quick kiss.
“Normal day, quiet afternoon. Picked Buck up around ten and he surprised me with prepping dinner for us.” Carlos reached around TK and grabbed his novel to exchange the dog-eared page (TK would pay for the pain he caused the book) with a well loved bookmark. “Finished half my book, too.”
TK grinned before settling in next to Carlos, letting their guests fill the loft with the noise of conversation, which worked to drown out his somewhat questionable taste in music. With every passing minute, Carlos relaxed. The noise reminded him of before, but also of the house, where it was only silent in the dead of night, and that was only in the last few years, once the babies were able to sleep through the night.
Once the impromptu welcome back dinner had been cleared and the guests well on their way home, Buck joined TK and Carlos in the living room to relax before they all headed to bed. For Buck, he still had one more day before he was back to work. TK would be at the academy for a few more weeks. Carlos had a twentyfour, which he wasn’t excited for.
TK clocked immediately that Buck had taken over the speakers again and music was once again playing through the loft. “Is that lofi?”
Buck shrugged, looking over one of TK’s textbooks that he’d been grumbling at. “May got me hooked. It chases away the silence when I don’t want to deal with it.” At TK’s raised eyebrow, he reached over and stole a highlighter and pen to make some amended notes in the margins. “This place gets quiet when it wants to. When you spend your time surrounded by like eight children of various ages, silence feels weird after a while.”
“What does that mean? And what are you changing, give me that!” He made a grab for the text, but Buck was faster and taller.
“Buck and May used the loft while…” Carlos trailed off. “I couldn’t be here, TK. You were here and then you weren’t. It was loud, then silent. I just…”
TK froze, fingers an inch from the book. “What do you mean?” There was a curious tone to TK’s voice, hesitant and worried filling in the gaps.
Carlos gave Buck a look, the universal Save Me! Buck nodded. “May and I came by about once a month each, her more if I wasn’t in town. We’d make sure everything was still in order and crash the night on the couch. Carlos didn’t set foot in here from about three days after we moved to Austin to the moment he moved back in.” He paused, watching TK’s face and the myriad of emotions playing across it, before deciding to finally just stop dancing around what Carlos couldn’t say. “He watched you vanish, TK. The room went from happy and spirited to quiet and cold. While May and I dislike silence because of our pasts, Carlos detests it because of what happened.”
TK looked three different shades of green. “You never… You didn’t say. I thought-”
Carlos shook his head. “I never told anyone. Buck figured it out one afternoon at the old house. He’d come home early and I’d had a panic attack. There was a leaky pipe here and the building needed someone here to supervise and the thought of being in this space without you was insurmountable. Buck volunteered to go and wheeled it out of me the next day when we were both off shift.”
Buck nodded. “I started playing music around the house because I knew it could cut through the silence, even at the other place. Figured it was a good idea tonight.”
With a groan, TK collapsed down next to Carlos, staring at his partner. “I would have made all of the playlists for you, babe. I didn’t know.”
Carlos rested his head against TK’s shoulder and didn’t respond. He didn’t need words to tell TK that it was okay, that he understood, that it wasn’t his fault. With him in the know, already things could get better.
By the time Buck was getting ready to fly back to Los Angeles, Austin felt different to him.
The entire original A-shift had finally been reinstated after nearly three months of requalifications and classes and tests. The paramedics were back together again. B-shift was made up of students that Buck had personally trained over the past few years, which had startled half of A-shift when they’d arrived for their first day back to see them ribbing on him.
Carlos had worked with Buck to install a few more wireless speakers around the loft as a temporary measure. When Buck had questioned the wording of the station, Carlos confessed that they were looking to move to a different unit in the building, one that didn’t have the bad memories that their loft did. While Carlos could chase away the silence, he couldn’t keep away the nightmares that still bothered him when he was alone at night.
Buck had offered to buy it off of them right then and there, but the pair had turned him down. As much as they loved the unit and the gesture, Carlos would never be comfortable in the space. The other man had accepted the answer without a fight.
As he had been packing up his bag to fly home, Buck realized that this would be one of the last times he’d have to do this. While in one of his many meetings with Deputy Fire Chief Tyson, they’d come to an agreement that he’d return twice more in the next six months to fulfill his obligations, and then he would be free to stay in Los Angeles full time. That had been a sobering thought.
He’d enjoyed being back in Austin with Carlos and the kids, and having all of the others back wasn’t half bad. It was like having two families, one here in Austin, one home in Los Angeles. He didn’t want to give it up.
“You good? You roll that shirt any tighter, you might actually rip it.”
Carlos had gotten good at dragging him out of his spirals.
“Billy said I only have to come back for two more month-long stints, then I’m done and can stay in LA.” He didn’t look up at Carlos as he said it. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
“But that’s great, isn’t it? You get to be with your fami-”
“That’s the thing Carlos,” Buck said, interrupting him. “I love it there, but I love it here too. I’ve missed the kids and everyone and Eddie since I’ve been here, even though I’ve facetimed more than I ever have. But when I’m there? I miss hanging out with you and being around the kids here. I’m split between both. I…”
Carlos sat down on the couch next to one of his neat stacks of uniform T-shirts, making sure not to topple them. “Ask Tyson to let you continue. Keep doing it. If it’s working, and you know it is, then do it.”
“But…”
The detective let out an exaggerated groan. “TK, get out here!” he called to his lover in the bedroom. As soon as the words left his mouth, he turned back to Buck and furiously whispered, “The only reason I said no to you buying the loft was because I thought you wanted to stay in LA. If you can make this work, I’ll get TK and we can sign it over as soon as the ink is dry on the deal.”
Buck blinked. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Carlos glared at him from behind his glasses. “No one expects me to be the crafty one. It’s not always TK who has the crazy ideas, Buckley.”
Epilogue
October 17, 2024, the one year anniversary of the blip, dawned bright and early, with the sun shining right through the windows and right into Carlos’ eyes.
Someone, and that someone was named TK, had forgotten to shut the blackout curtains when they got home from their shift, which meant that the morning sun was allowed to blind Carlos in a very unforgiving manner.
The only thing he could say was that he didn’t need to invest in an alarm clock on sunny mornings.
They’d settled into their new loft space only two months prior, after having to wait for the previous tenants to finally move out. It was similarly layed out to their previous one, though the windows were on the east side of the building instead of the west. The kitchen was also bigger and newly renovated, which both men had fallen in love with.
They were two floors above their old unit, which made it easy to keep an eye on it while Buck was back in Los Angeles, where he currently was today for the memorials. It wasn’t a bother to them. In fact, as soon as they had the keys to their new place in hand, the old one felt… less painful. Progress.
Carlos quietly moved into the kitchen and left TK to sleep off his shift, absentmindedly turning on some light music as he did. It made the mornings move smoother to have something light in the background. He didn’t need it, but he enjoyed it.
The two of them had grand plans for the day. They were meeting up with the rest of the 126 at the park before heading to the Ryder house for dinner. The Los Angeles kids were planning a big facetime call at one point, and apparently, TK had convinced Enzo to let Jonah in on it.
But for now, Carlos simply sat in their new bay window overlooking downtown Austin with a new book in his hand and let time pass by. He just sat back and just was.