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Nancy has her arms crossed and looks highly annoyed, as they watch Tommy jog into the Dojang, and TK can’t understand why. He did something good for their captain, something nice. She was upset about having to miss her daughter’s ceremony and TK fixed that. Nancy’s irritation doesn’t make any sense and it’s making all sorts of alarm bells go off in his head.
“Gotta hand it to you, Strand. You move fast,” she grumbles.
TK grins and tries to diffuse it. “Lights and sirens help.”
“Wasn’t talking about your driving,” she deadpans, and TK frowns. Something uncomfortable twists in his chest.
It’s the same feeling he’d been gripped with when Judd was giving him a hard time, back when they first arrived in Austin. TK hadn’t understood then, either, what he’d done wrong. He gets it now, but at the time it had felt personal and targeted and highly unfair. He hates it when people don’t like him. TK supposes he’s not unique in that respect, he supposes most people don’t enjoy being disliked, but he really hates it.
“What were you talking about?” he asks, not entirely wanting to know the answer but aware that they can’t just pretend she hadn’t said anything.
Nancy sighs.
“No, that’s not fair,” TK protests. “You can’t say that and then not tell me what you meant.”
“I just think maybe you could wait a bit longer than a few days before you start to take over.”
TK blinks and shakes his head in confusion. “Take over what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she mumbles.
TK leans back in his seat. He grips the steering wheel to have something to do for his hands, and for a minute or two they float in tense silence. Then his emotions get the better of him, and he says, “Yeah, it does matter, actually. We’re partners. This isn’t gonna work if you hate me and refuse to say why.”
“Is that what we are?” Nancy asks with a cruel laugh. TK is struck with the urge to unbuckle his seatbelt and get out of the car and storm off down the street.
He doesn’t get to prod her for more information.
“That was quick,” Nancy says, as Captain Vega exits the building and heads back towards the ambulance.
Concerned, TK asks, “Does she look …?”
“Not good,” Nancy agrees.
“What do you think happened?”
“Are you gonna ask?” Her annoyance is gone, suddenly. Instead, she just looks upset.
Captain Vega climbs into the back of the bus, slamming the door a little harder than she usually would.
TK twists around, looking through the window. “Cap?”
“Just drive.”
TK wants to pry, but instead he starts the ambulance and pulls it away from the curb. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Nancy rub her hands over her face. Once again TK is struck with the prickly, awful feeling that he’s done something wrong, and once again he has no idea what it is.
Carlos is already there, when TK arrives at his house later that evening. He’s upstairs, TK can hear him, and he doesn’t come down right away even though he likely heard TK coming in.
Were TK in a better mood, he might find something pleasingly domestic in that – that Carlos doesn’t instantly greet him like he’s an invited guest all the time these days, that TK is beginning to come and go as he pleases without asking Carlos if he can. TK’d had a day off last week while Carlos was working and his parents were arguing in the kitchen, so he’d spent the afternoon here by himself – made himself lunch from Carlos’s fridge and watched half a movie and lifted some weights in the spare bedroom where Carlos has a bench and a yoga mat and some sparse gym equipment. He never mentioned it and Carlos hadn’t either, even though he is eagle-eyed and would certainly have noticed that TK’d been here while he was at work. He’d been annoyed by the bickering but then it had been nice, to spend a few hours alone in this house without feeling like it was a hotel room.
TK takes his shoes off and walks in his bare feet into the living room, falling heavily down onto the leather sofa. He slouches into the back cushions, grabbing for the remote that’s balanced neatly on the square arm of the couch and clicking the television on. He flips a few channels until he lands on a cooking show, and he watches it with mostly unseeing eyes; the volume low and the subtitles off so it’s just color and movement for him to stare at as he stews.
“Hey,” Carlos says brightly, jogging down the stairs in dark jeans and a royal blue t-shirt. His face changes as he gets to the bottom of them and looks at TK. “What’s wrong?”
TK sighs noisily through his nose and tips his head back onto the firm cushion. “Do I just have, like, absolutely no poker face?”
Carlos is still for a moment and then he walks over, rounding the coffee table and sitting next to TK. “Not at the moment you don’t. Did something happen?”
“Yes,” TK admits, hating how petulantly the word sounds on its way out of his mouth. “Although I still don’t know exactly what.”
He doesn’t blame Carlos for not quite knowing what to make of that. Slowly, Carlos moves in a little closer. He smooths his hand over TK’s hair and TK looks at him, irritated with himself for putting that concerned look on Carlos’s face. He has such a nice smile. He should always be smiling; too often he’s frowning instead and TK is the reason.
“Nancy’s mad at me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Carlos moves again. He shifts in even closer, and TK reluctantly lets himself be rearranged until he’s resting against Carlos’s chest. Carlos wraps his arms around TK and TK holds onto them, squeezing his forearms like handles on a bumpy ride. Carlos doesn’t say anything. He kisses TK’s hair and then looks up at the TV. For a moment, TK watches the dark-haired woman sliding sliced jalapeños into a sizzling wok. Carlos brushes his thumb, slow and rhythmic like a metronome, over the side of TK’s hand, and TK sighs again.
“She was pissed that I rearranged the way we store some shit in the ambulance,” TK says finally. “Even though I asked Captain Vega and she said she liked it.”
“Okay,” Carlos says slowly, waiting for TK to continue.
“And then … I still don’t know what happened. Cap was gonna watch her daughter’s black belt ceremony and I suggested we drive there instead so she could watch in person, ‘cause it was in our area, and Nancy’s mad about that too. And then it …” TK gestures vaguely in front of himself, looking for the words, grumbling in frustration when he can’t find them. “That all went to hell too, and I don’t know why that happened either. And I tried to ask Nancy and she wouldn’t tell me.”
“Okay,” Carlos repeats.
TK shakes his head. He’s aware he probably isn’t making any sense, letting the story emerge in pieces and not providing any necessary context that would help Carlos understand.
“It was the ride back that was the worst. Crushing silence. I was praying for a call. You know, a minor fender-bender or a choking victim. Anything to lighten up the mood.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”
“Did I make a really big mistake by becoming a paramedic? You know, maybe I should have stayed a firefighter, at least over there nobody hates my guts.” TK asks, the worry of it squeezing around his windpipe.
He’s gone back and forth a hundred times on whether it was the right decision. Maybe he should have gone back one final time and remained where he was. Maybe he was just being impulsive and seeking disruption because he was upset about other things. Carlos was so wonderful and supportive but maybe what TK really needed in that moment was for someone like Judd or Marjan to tell him he was being stupid.
“Nobody hates your guts, TK,” Carlos says quietly, pressing another comforting kiss to TK’s head.
“That’s not true,” TK argues. He knows he’s being a pest but he can’t seem to turn it off now that the dam has broken. “Nancy hates my guts.”
“Babe, she lost her partner. Getting a new one has to be tough for her.”
TK resists an urge to roll his eyes. Carlos is always so rational, and it makes TK so acutely aware of when he’s overreacting, even though it rarely helps him stop. Sometimes, when TK wants Carlos to join him in his outrage and he doesn’t, TK’s feelings get bigger to compensate.
“Yeah, I get that. I do. It’s just … it doesn’t give her a right to rip into me.”
“What’d she say?”
TK lifts his feet off the couch and sets them on the floor, sitting up so he can look at Carlos. “She said that I sat at the cool kids table?”
“The cool kid’s table.”
“Not my words, hers. And Tim had this theory that, you know, firefighters were the jocks that can do whatever they want and paramedics were the science geeks. And life is high school or whatever.”
“Life is high school,” Carlos agrees, and TK bristles. It feels like he’s taking Nancy’s side and it’s making the hairs on the back of TK’s neck stand up.
“Yeah, but not at the firehouse. We’re all part of the same team and we’re all part of the same family.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes!”
“Hm.” Carlos blinks and looks back at the television.
TK’s cheeks instantly heat up. “Hm? What was that hm?”
“Since you guys started doing the 126 hangs over here, how many times have you invited Nancy? Or Tim?”
“Yeah, well that doesn’t – you know, we’re …” TK babbles, and then he stops.
It hits him, with all the force of a sucker-punch to the gut, that Nancy and Captain Vega aren’t the only paramedics who work at the 126 and TK’s not sure he even knows the first names of any others. He realizes he’d been so upset the night Tim died – because he was their colleague and it happened right in front of them all – but TK never had a single conversation with him while he was alive. He remembers so clearly sitting in the firehouse that night and listening to a tearful Nancy tell them all things about Tim that none of them had known.
“God, we’ve been such jerks,” TK groans, suddenly wanting to dig a hole out back in the dirt and cocoon himself in it.
Carlos massages his shoulder.
“How did I not see it?”
“It’s not your fault,” Carlos says. “The cool kids rarely do.”
It’s the same thing Nancy had said the other day, and it makes the clenching in TK’s gut intensify. Carlos kisses his cheek, laughing softly, and then he grabs TK’s arm and lifts it so he can reverse their positions, tipping sideways on the couch and leaning against TK, who wraps his arms around Carlos, resting his chin on Carlos’s head.
TK stares at a spot on the floor a few feet out, focusing until his vision blurs at the edges. There’s an awful pit in his stomach, and he clenches his jaw and blinks in quick succession as his eyes start to sting.
“You were popular in high school, weren’t you?” Carlos asks, a minute later when TK’s been marinating in his regret.
TK’s brow furrows as he struggles to remember. He had friends and he doesn’t recall being specifically picked on, but he’s not sure that’s quite the same thing. “I don’t know.”
Carlos chuckles softly.
“What?” TK asks defensively.
“The fact that you don’t know answers the question.”
“What does that mean?”
Carlos reaches for the remote on the coffee table. He shuts the TV off, the screen going black before he sets it back down and turns over onto his back, his head sliding into TK’s lap. Looking up at him, he says, “Sometimes you notice the absence of something more than you notice the actual thing. If you weren’t popular, you would definitely know.”
“Were you?”
“Definitely not.” Carlos smiles at him and shrugs.
TK isn’t sure what to do with that information.
Carlos sits up. He curls his hand around the back of TK’s neck and kisses him, suggesting, “How about we go out for dinner? We haven’t done that in a while. Maybe you could use the distraction.”
TK nods, relatively certain that isn’t going to help but too defeated to argue.
Hours later, he lies awake thinking about what Carlos said.
He doesn’t remember feeling cool, he remembers feeling deeply lonely and pushed to the side by his parents. He remembers always being worried someone was going to have a problem with his sexuality and being so desperate for acceptance from anyone who might give it to him. Being called popular makes it sound like he’d had a fantastic time in school, and that’s a far cry from how TK would characterize it. But when he really thinks about it, he remembers kids being shoved into lockers and insults being tossed across the math room, hurtful nicknames that picked on someone’s weight or acne or lack of fashion sense. He remembers girls crying in bathrooms because rumors had been started. And he doesn’t remember any of those things happening to him.
TK had a face full of pimples too, at 15, and nobody said anything about it. He was skinny and uncoordinated. He loved biology. His parents were separated and his dad was never around. He was a target-rich environment, to anyone who was looking for one. But he remembers being widely liked, across different groups and cliques and social strata. He remembers orchestrating it that way on purpose, bending himself into a pretzel to meet everyone’s varying expectations of him so that no one would have a reason to reject him. And from the outside, he realizes, that would have looked very different than it felt.
TK reaches down underneath the blankets, fingernails scratching at a phantom itch surrounding the faded scars on his thighs. They haven’t been scabs in a decade but sometimes TK’s mind still tricks him into feeling them prickle as they heal. He wonders if Carlos has noticed them. It’s almost inconceivable that he hasn't – Carlos is tactile and thorough and has made it his life’s mission to become the world’s leading cartographer of TK’s body in a way that makes TK feel so incredibly loved – but he’s never mentioned them.
His head turns on the pillow. Carlos is on his side, facing TK, but it’s dark and his face is half-pressed into the pillow so TK can only make out the shape of his nose, the slope of his cheek and the shadows of one set of eyelashes fanned delicately against his skin.
It makes it difficult to breathe, just for a moment, to imagine Carlos at 15; too thin for his height because he was still growing, realizing he didn’t look at girls the way he was supposed to and so utterly terrified he would be found out that isolation was the safer option. He imagines Carlos at 17, having worked up what must have been a mountain of courage to come out to his parents, and then crestfallen in the days and weeks that followed when they acted like it never happened, or maybe didn’t approve and were hoping it was a phase he would grow out of. He imagines Carlos at 19, joining the police academy, already othered by culture and now without the comfort of his family he’d always sought.
He’s been so alone, and the thought of it breaks TK’s heart. He’s been stranded on an island, and people visit occasionally but no one ever stays, despite how resolutely Carlos hides pieces of himself away in the hopes that they will.
TK moves closer to him, unexpectedly unable to resist. He brushes his fingers over Carlos’s hair. He stirs, and TK softly shushes him, not really wanting Carlos to wake up. He’d been so peaceful, and TK doesn’t want him disturbed.
“TK?” Carlos whispers, with his eyes closed.
“Yeah, it’s me,” TK whispers back. “I’m okay, go back to sleep.”
Carlos leans into his hand like a cat and sleepily nuzzles him, and then he moves forward slowly until TK is on his back again and Carlos is half on top of him with his head on TK’s shoulder. TK holds him as Carlos’s breathing evens out and he falls asleep again. It’s a long time before sleep finds TK too.
The next afternoon, TK finds the people he’s searching for in the break room. Marjan has her feet up on the coffee table and Paul is lying on the couch with his head in her lap. Mateo is in a chair across from them, animatedly telling them a story that it doesn’t seem like the others are fully listening to. For a moment, TK just hovers in the doorway and watches. Mateo seems to be recapping a movie he’d seen recently, and Marjan is nodding politely. She notices TK first, and the raise of her eyebrows stops Mateo in the middle of a long, run-on sentence.
“Hey, guys,” TK says.
“If it isn’t the return of the defector,” Marjan jokes.
Paul gets up, making room for TK to join them on the couch.
“How long is that gonna be funny?” TK asks. “You literally saw me yesterday.”
Marjan clutches her chest dramatically. “Sometimes I can still hear his voice.”
“I work in the same building, literally the only thing that’s changed is that I’m not swinging an ax anymore.”
“Aw, but he looked so cute swinging an ax.” Paul pinches his cheek and TK laughs and shoves him off.
“Wanna listen to Probie explain everything that happened in every scene of the last episode of WandaVision?”
“Hey, Marvel is making art with this one,” Mateo interjects, pointing a finger in Marjan’s direction. “The whole series has been awesome and if you’re not gonna be cool and watch it, you’re gonna have to listen to me tell you about it.”
“Maybe another time,” TK answers.
“How’s it going, over there?” Paul asks, nodding in the direction from which TK had just come. “New job, new crew.”
“Yeah, it’s good.” TK nods. “I still wasn’t completely sure, at first, but I like it. Captain Vega’s pretty awesome.”
“Battle of the captains?” Marjan nudges Paul to lean backwards against the sofa cushions so she can look at TK across him.
“No, I mean, my dad’s great, too. Obviously. But working for your dad is a bit … I don’t know. Complicated.”
“I can see that,” Paul tells him.
Marjan laughs quietly and adds, “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to work for my dad.”
“Hey, listen. We gotta talk, though,” TK says. “About Nancy.”
He’s met with three sets of curiously frowning foreheads, and TK sits forward on the couch with nervous vibrations in his stomach and launches into the speech he’d prepared.
Carlos’s house is empty, when TK arrives after his shift. He’d known it would be, Carlos isn’t off for another hour. He lets himself in and changes from his street clothes into plaid pajama pants and one of Carlos’s hoodies. It has APD on the back in blue lettering and it’s too big on TK, the shoulders slouching and the sleeves slipping over his wrists. It smells like Carlos, like deodorant and soap and clean sweat. TK puts the hood up so he can be fully surrounded by it.
He makes his way into the garage in socked feet . TK flips the light switch, crossing the cold cement floor and tilts his chin up to look at the colorful stack on the shelf. In his hand he holds a dusting cloth and he reaches up, wiping away at some of the dust that’s collected on the sides of the boxes. He has to go up onto his tiptoes to reach for the top box; a red, rectangular one with words printed in yellow.
TK coughs as he inhales a small cloud of dust. It’s called Catan, and the art underneath the title is of a large setting sun and three figures contemplating a long, winding path. TK wipes the rest of the box down and then notices something he hadn’t before – it’s tightly wrapped in a layer of clear, sealed plastic. It’s new, never been opened before, and TK frowns and looks back up at the rest of them. Without the dust obscuring it, he can see they all are. They’re all unopened.
Carlos had said they were old, that they were games he used to play with his family and he was storing them. That hadn’t been true.
TK swallows. It’s not a development he’d been expecting but it adds up, and fits with his working theory of what’s really going on. It hurts his heart and his feelings just a little bit to think Carlos hadn’t been comfortable being honest, but he struggles with that, and TK knows it, and he tries not to take it too personally.
Heading back into the house, TK picks at an edge of the cellophane with his fingernail, tearing it so that he can remove it. He drops it into the garbage underneath the sink and moves to the dining table, pulling the lid from the box and unpacking its contents. He sits, typing how to play Catan into the YouTube search bar on his phone, and selecting a video that looks promising from the results.
He’s lost track of time by the time the door finally opens. The video is only 20 minutes long but he keeps pausing it, making notes in the app on his phone, scrubbing backwards to rewatch parts of it. He was never much for board games, and this one seems to have so much strategy incorporated into it, as opposed to just rolling dice and moving a marker.
Carlos comes into the room, a bag slung over his shoulder and a tired expression on his face. He sends a casual hey in TK’s direction and TK looks up and watches his expression shift as Carlos gets closer and notices the game board on the table and the mess of cards spread out face up so TK can familiarize himself with them.
“Hi,” TK answers tentatively, feeling nervous all of a sudden. He doesn’t think Carlos is going to be angry, but Carlos had told him to leave it alone, when he’d found the stack of games in the garage, so TK worries maybe he’s crossed a line.
“What. Uh, what are you doing?” Carlos asks.
“Learning.” TK tries to smile at him, and his stomach clenches a little when Carlos doesn’t immediately smile back.
“I’ll be right back,” Carlos says after a moment, gesturing to the bag he’s still carrying. He turns to go, but then he doubles back and TK’s shoulders relax marginally as Carlos puts a hand on his shoulder and leans down to kiss him hello before he heads upstairs.
TK takes a deep breath and presses his phone screen to resume the video. He tries to follow what the man is explaining but his mind keeps wandering as he listens to the sound of Carlos moving around above him, so he gives up and pauses it again. He waits, with his hands folded on the table in front of him, picking anxiously at a hangnail on his thumb.
A few minutes later, Carlos comes back downstairs. He’s changed clothes, now in sweatpants and a teal t-shirt, and his hair is damp. TK didn’t hear the shower running; Carlos must have just rubbed some water from the tap over it to rinse some of the hair gel out. Wordlessly, he walks over and sits at the table across from TK, his eyes traveling contemplatively over the board and cards.
“Should I not have done this?” TK asks, wincing.
Carlos shakes his head slowly. “No, it’s … it’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
Carlos raises an eyebrow at him, his expression playful, and TK laughs.
“Alright, maybe I did. Maybe I’m stubborn.”
“You don’t say.”
“But so are you,” TK tells him, and Carlos nods.
“I know.” Carlos gestures at the game. “This one’s a bit complicated.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that,” TK agrees with a sigh. “It was just the top one on the pile, I should’ve Googled some of the others. But maybe we could play a couple times, just you and me, until I get the hang of it. Then we can teach the group together.”
Carlos looks up, frowning. “The group?”
TK shrugs one shoulder. “I thought the next time we have the 126 over, we could have a game night.”
“Oh.”
TK chews at the inside of his cheek and watches as his boyfriend’s normally steady hands pick up a card or two, examining them. He appears lost in thought, and TK debates whether he should bring it up. In the end he decides he has to, because Carlos knows it already, and it will just hang unsaid between them if TK pretends he hadn’t noticed.
“They’re all new,” he says quietly. “All still in the packaging.”
Carlos nods.
“You said …”
“I know. Sorry.”
TK shakes his head. “You don’t have to be sorry, I just …”
He watches as Carlos brushes his thumb along the surface of one of the resource cards. His expression is a little unreadable, and it’s making TK anxious. He doesn’t look angry. He just doesn’t look particularly happy either, and TK’s had about enough of hurting people’s feelings, this week.
“The first time I saw your bed, I remember thinking that it was too big for one person,” TK says, letting the words pour out of him because he isn’t always so good at accepting long stretches of silence and not filling them with whatever thoughts are bounding around in his head. “And wondering if you did that on purpose, because you were hoping one day someone would share it with you for more than just a night. My dad’s is the same, and he’s always perpetually hoping to get married again, even though he’d deny it if you asked him. And then I thought maybe this is another one of those things.”
He clenches his jaw together to bite back the rest of what he was going to say, aware that he’s babbling and fighting to stop it as Carlos looks up at him.
“What things?”
“I wondered if maybe you loved playing games with your family when you were a kid and you’ve been collecting them since you moved out in case one day you’d have new people to play them with. Since things with your family are … tricky.”
He tracks the expression on Carlos’s face, observing as he moves along a pathway of different emotions, ending with a frown and looking down at the table between them. “I don’t know if I like how easily you see through me.”
TK inhales and then Carlos looks up at him through his eyelashes, smiling. TK lets a breath out in relief and laughs softly. “Yeah, I know what that feels like. Uncomfortable, isn’t it?”
“A little bit.”
TK presses his lips together and makes the decision in a split second. He pushes his chair back, getting up and crossing around the end of the table. Carlos slides his own back a little, aware of what TK’s doing and making space for TK to sit in his lap. He likes TK in this spot. He’s rarely admitted it, but TK’s known it since a long time before he wanted it to be as true as it is.
He holds Carlos’s face and kisses him; keeps it soft but lets it linger. When it ends, he rests their foreheads together, noses touching and sharing air, and waits. Sometimes Carlos needs time; TK isn’t a patient person by nature but he’s trying. He’s getting better.
“I don’t have a ton of friends. I never really did,” Carlos says eventually, into the miniscule space between them. “I’ve got coworkers I get along with, but they’re work friends, I think it would be weird if I invited them over for game night. I’m not in touch with anyone I went to school with. Michelle is gone. And most of my cousins have families of their own now. For a while, it kind of felt like everyone was moving on and starting their real lives and I was just stuck here waiting.”
“For me?” TK asks, halfway as a joke, but Carlos smiles into his cheek.
“Pretty sure, yep.”
“So teach me to play.”
“It’s kind of lame.”
“You don’t think it’s lame,” TK argues. “You like it, otherwise you wouldn’t have it.”
“What if they think it’s lame?”
“Then I’ll beat them up.”
Carlos chuckles. “All three of them?”
“You think I can’t?” TK challenges, and smiles when Carlos laughs again, warmly.
“I’m sure you can. You’re very tough.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” TK agrees, poking him gently in the shoulder to emphasize his point.
Carlos looks at him with his eyes shining and smiles a little.
“I’m gonna invite Nancy, next time,” TK tells him, “but I’m gonna invite you, too. As more than just the guy whose house we use as the location for it.”
“You’re not using me. I like your friends.”
“They like you, too. But baby, the thing is? You keep calling them my friends.” He kisses Carlos’s hair and rests his cheek against it, as Carlos’s arms slide around his middle. “And I want them to be our friends.”
Carlos exhales shakily, but he nods. “Okay. Yeah. I want that, too.”
“Do you wanna know the reason I was popular in high school?”
“Sure.”
“I cared so much about being accepted that I got really good at being what everyone wanted. Even if that meant I was a different person depending on who I was talking to. I don’t wanna do that anymore. Especially since it …” he trails off. He’s never given Carlos this part of his past, mostly because it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Since what?”
“Since I tried heroin for the first time because I got mixed up with a group of older boys and I wanted them to like me so badly I would’ve done anything they asked.”
Carlos hugs him a little tighter.
“I was lonely even though there were always people around, and I felt like my parents thought I was always in the way, and I just … wanted to belong somewhere.”
Carlos’s hand pushes underneath TK’s hoodie and his palm presses into the small of TK’s back.
“Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is I love you, and I like you, and I don’t want you to do it either. To feel like you have to pretend to be someone else just so you can belong. Okay?”
Carlos lifts his head and looks back into TK’s eyes. He’s smiling more genuinely, this time. “You’re pretty amazing sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” TK repeats incredulously with a raised eyebrow.
“All the time,” Carlos corrects. TK kisses him, and into his lips, Carlos whispers, “Thank you for caring this much.”
“So, are you gonna teach me?”
“I’d love to. You’re off tomorrow, right? We’ve got all day.”
“I am,” TK agrees reluctantly, “but I have to go to the firehouse, actually. I have to do something.”
“Oh?”
“Something for Nancy. To make her feel included.”
“Oh.” Carlos’s forehead wrinkles again, but his eyes are still shining and his smile is so warm. He looks so pleased, and his approval wraps around TK like a blanket. He slides his hand up, cupping it gently around TK’s cheek, guiding him into another achingly tender kiss.