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Carlos won’t eat takeout.
It takes TK a little while to notice—he barely has his own head screwed on straight, and he’s very well aware of the need to get his house in order before a non-consensual relapse turns into a lot of very consensual relapses—but once he does notice, he can’t stop noticing.
TK asks Carlos if he wants him to pick him up some coffee from their local place—and Carlos says he’ll make his own.
TK suggests they grab burritos when they’re both getting off shift at the same late hour—and Carlos says that he’ll make food at home.
TK brings in food from the new Indian place they’ve been wanting to try—and Carlos doesn’t eat a bite of it, just pushes it around his plate so it looks like there’s less than he started with.
But it really comes into focus when TK opens the freezer and finds it stacked full of neat little containers and bags of meal prep, all sealed with tape and marked like someone is trying to preserve evidence inside of them.
“Babe,” TK says, closing the freezer because he isn’t really sure what to do with that. “Are you stocking up for the end of the world, and you just forgot to tell me?”
“If the world ends,” Carlos calls from where he’s sitting at the table reading, “I don’t think our freezer will work.”
That’s not necessarily incorrect, but it does beg the question of why their freezer looks like that. TK heads over to Carlos, stopping behind him so he can wrap his arms around Carlos’s shoulders. Carlos leans his head back against TK’s chest and smiles up at him.
It’s the kind of smile that makes TK think about other things, but he doesn’t want to get distracted from this point just yet, so he pushes, “Then why does our freezer look like you’re ready to feed an army?”
“I just want to make sure we have enough food,” Carlos says, and if TK weren’t wrapped around him he wouldn’t notice the way that Carlos is very still while he talks.
It’s the reaction that makes TK keep pushing, because asking about meal prep shouldn’t be making Carlos this anxious. The man loves his meal prep. “Babe. Have we ever not had enough food? And even if there’s no food in the house, there’s a place literally around the corner that we can pick up from.”
That gets Carlos yanking away from him, standing up so quickly TK stumbles back and has to catch himself so he doesn’t fall over. And just as quickly Carlos is turning and grabbing his hand, steadying him, making sure he didn’t fall—
But not before TK sees the look of absolute terror on Carlos’s face.
–
The problem is what to do about it.
If it were anyone else, TK would talk to Carlos about it. This is exactly the sort of thing Carlos is good at, understanding what’s going on with people and how to help them. He’s a man who was born to read other people’s emotional states, for good and for bad.
TK, on the other hand, is too much like his father—he gets too caught up in his own head, too wrapped up in himself as a frame of reference. It’s also one of the many things that makes his dad a bad person to ask about this.
And he’d ask his mom, but.
Well.
Paul, Matteo, Nancy, and Marjan would probably all be happy to help, but the problem is that they’re Carlos’s friends too, and TK thinks Carlos would be embarrassed to have them know about whatever he’s struggling with like this. Carlos is intensely private in that way, would rather hole up and lick his wounds in private than have the people he loves know that he’s hurting.
Of everyone TK knows, Carlos is least into the mortifying ordeal of being known.
That leaves Judd, in the firehouse, but some days Judd has the EQ of a banana, which means that really that leaves Judd and Grace, who together add up to about five functioning people (four and a half of whom are Grace).
So while Carlos is on shift, TK bakes a batch of cookies, divvies them up, and heads over to Judd’s and Grace’s place, where he is met by a very unhappy baby.
“I’ll switch,” TK tells Grace, handing over the container of cookies and taking a crying Charlie Ryder. He bounces her a couple of times, sticking out his tongue when she looks at him, and her crying slows a little, though it doesn’t stop.
“God bless you, TK Strand,” Grace says, heading into the house to put the cookies down. “Now if you can get her to stop crying altogether, I might put you in for sainthood.”
“I don’t think either of us are Catholic enough for that.” TK heads into the house too, nudging the door closed as gently as he can so he doesn’t jar or startle Charlie. “Why are you crying, Charlie? Did something happen? Was Judd mean to you?”
“Judd is out buying the world’s largest bottle of children’s Tylenol,” Grace tells him, “even though we already have two bottles in the house. I also expect him to come back with another stuffed animal or two, and maybe some alcohol.”
“You can never have too much children’s Tylenol,” TK tells Charlie. She’s staring at him with open fascination now, so he makes another face at her, just to see if it will get her to laugh.
When he looks up at Grace, she’s smiling at him. “Now,” she says, “not that I don’t love seeing you, but I assume you didn’t come to my house just to talk to Charlie about Tylenol.”
“I brought cookies.”
Grace taps the top of the container. “I see that. But that’s what we here in Texas call a ‘pretense’.”
“We call it that in New York, too,” TK concedes. “I just…I need your advice on something.”
“I’m happy to give you whatever advice I can,” Grace says. “But I have to ask—why me?”
TK opens his mouth to give a nice answer—but what comes out is, “You have mom energy.”
Which is an utterly humiliating thing to say to a woman not much older than him, so TK takes the opportunity of another wail from Charlie to turn away slightly, bouncing her up and down. Grace does not need his mom issues right now, and that isn’t even what this is about.
He startles when a hand touches his shoulder, but when he turns it’s to see Grace giving him a very kind look. And even more kindly, all she says is, “I’m happy to help if I can. Why don’t we sit.”
They sit, and she parcels out some of the cookies he brought, and then TK blurts out, “Our freezer is full of food.”
Grace blinks at him. “Do you…need someone to take some of it off of your hands? Because I’m sure the firehouse would take it.”
“No,” TK says, then, “I think Carlos would lose his mind if I gave any of it to anyone else. Which is kind of the problem. He’s gotten…weird about food recently.”
“Is he eating?”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s eating, he’s just…” TK chews on his lip, playing absently with one of Charlie’s hands. She has such small fingers. “He won’t eat takeout anymore, and when I say our freezer is full of food, I mean it’s full of food, all taped up like he thinks someone is going to—”
Fuck .
“Like he thinks someone is going to…?”
“I think I figured it out,” TK tells her. He hesitates, then hands Charlie back to Grace, even though he misses the little girl’s weight in his lap, warm and heavy and comforting. Charlie’s wails pick up a little. “I’m so sorry. I need to go.”
“Yeah, of course,” Grace says, looking a little confused. “Come back here any time you want to help my baby stop crying.”
“I will,” TK says. “And…thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
–
Of course, now that TK has figured out what the problem is, he still needs to figure out what the hell to do with it.
The first thing he does is go to a pharmacy and buy a few boxes of naloxone; they already have three or four in the house, and TK always carries some with him, but—like fire extinguishers—it can’t hurt to have more.
Then he goes home and starts to think.
It’s just after six when Carlos gets back from his shift, and the first thing he does—the first thing he always does—is lock up his gun, because TK hates being near guns any more than he has to, no matter that the gun is in the hands of someone who loves him. The person who shot him didn’t mean him any harm, either.
Only once his gun is away and he’s changed into civilian clothing does Carlos head back out to flop down next to TK on the couch, curling into him and resting his head on TK’s chest. TK reaches up to card his fingers through Carlos’s hair, feeling Carlos shudder and relax against him.
And then TK says, “We should go out to eat tonight.”
Carlos freezes, going so still TK can hardly feel him breathing, but his voice is impressively almost normal when he says, “Why don’t we stay in, instead. I made some stew over the weekend that we can reheat—”
“Baby.”
“I don’t want to go out,” Carlos says. He sits up then, shifting over so he’s bracketing TK with his body. He presses a kiss to TK’s lips, his chin, then starts working his way down TK’s throat, leaving a trail of heat behind. Against his better instincts, TK tips his head back to give him more room to work, because TK can never resist Carlos when he’s touching him. “Let’s stay in, cariño, have a night just for us.”
That sounds like heaven–but TK pushes Carlos away, gently, keeping one hand cupping the back of Carlos’s neck so he doesn’t go too far. “We should go out,” TK says again. And then, because he needs to bite this bullet, “You need to figure out how to eat food that other people have touched again.”
They’re close enough for TK to see Carlos’s pupils dilate, for TK to feel him go rock-still—and then all of the starch runs out of Carlos’s body, and he drops down on TK’s chest, head tucked under his chin. “I’d hoped you hadn’t noticed that,” he mumbles. “I’ve been—I’ll get better at it. I’ll fix it.”
TK pulls Carlos into his arms, maneuvering them so they can lie comfortably together. He can feel little trembles going through Carlos’s body. “It’s not about getting better at it, or fixing it—it’s about the fact that you shouldn’t have to go through life afraid of eating anything that you didn’t make yourself.”
“I can eat it if you made it,” Carlos says against his shoulder. “I trust you.”
That feels like a gift, that trust, and TK lets himself feel that through his entire body, because he never thought he would get to have this. But still, “I don’t cook much, baby, and one day we’ll have to go to someone else’s place, or out to a restaurant, or to a wedding, or someone will bring takeout, and you—”
Carlos is shuddering now, real shaking through his entire body, and TK holds on tight as Carlos says, “I know, I know, I’ll figure it out, I just can’t—I just—I wasn’t watching, and I didn’t see her put it in, and I couldn’t taste it, and every time I think about eating food that I didn’t make all I can think about is what else could be in it, what they could be putting in that I just don’t know about, that I just haven’t seen, and you can’t see them cooking when you get takeout or when you go to a restaurant, and I just—I just can’t—”
“It’s okay,” TK murmurs, even as his heart breaks to hear Carlos saying this. “It’s okay, baby. You’re going to be okay. You just need to breathe.”
Carlos sucks in a deep, shaky breath, then another, and slowly his trembling dies down, until he’s limp in TK’s arms.
Only then does TK say, “I found a place where they cook all the food in front of you. It’s their shtick—you can sit right at the bar and watch every stage in the process. I think we’d—I’d like to go there with you and try. And if it doesn’t work, or if you can’t eat it, then we can come back here and eat your stew, and we’ll figure something else out to try. Can you do that for me?”
Carlos is silent for a long moment, just curled up against TK’s chest, and it’s long enough that TK thinks he’s going to say no. And if he does, TK won’t push, not tonight. He knows that recovery isn’t linear, and sometimes what works is something to jolt you out of the rut you’ve fallen in, and sometimes all that does is make things worse.
But he can’t stand to see Carlos suffering like this, not and not try to do something to fix it. Not when he’s the only person Carlos trusts enough to even let see him like this.
Finally, Carlos says, “Yeah, okay. We can–we can try. But I don’t—I might not be able to—”
“Just saying yes is already a victory,” TK tells him, and means it. “However far we get, that’s okay.”
“Thank you.” Carlos leans up again to kiss TK, just once, and it’s almost chaste, but when he pulls away TK can see that his eyes are shining underneath the dark circles. “Thank you for loving me like this.”
“Any day.” TK kisses him again, because he can’t resist, then says, “Come on. We have some weird artisanal food to eat.”