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They finally talk after they have sex, and then have dinner, and then have sex again.
TK is reclined on his pillow, half-propped against the headboard, running his finger back and forth across Carlos’s shoulder. Carlo’s face is pressed to his stomach and arms are tucked close around TK’s hips, and he looks smaller than TK is used to. From the beginning, Carlos has always seemed big to him. Broader and slightly taller, yes, but also in the way he cares and loves and feels without reserve. He’s spent the last year shrinking under the weight of his father’s murder and everything he’s taken upon himself in the wake of that, and now it feels like it might snuff him out completely. He can’t stop thinking about the look on Carlos’s face when he said his anniversary gift was dumb. TK hopes he never sees his husband looking so small and uncertain again for as long as he lives.
Their bedroom door is half open so TK has a clear view of that box still sitting on their dining table. He’d been stunned for a second when he opened it and found it empty, his mind scrambling to find a reason. Of course, it landed first on this being a message. If Carlos didn’t even want to get him something for their anniversary, maybe it meant that Carlos didn’t want to do this with him anymore. He should have known better. Maybe a year ago he would have, but things have changed so much since then it’s hard to know what to think about anything these days. Now he looks at that box and sees what Carlos saw: a promise. Another vow to add to the ones he made for their marriage. He just doesn’t want Carlos to swing so far in the other direction that he feels like he’s given up. TK knows that’s something Carlos would never get over.
“It’s not that I don’t want justice for Gabriel or that I don’t want you to find it. You know that, right?”
Carlos’s shoulders tense and then, a long second later, they ease, but deliberately, like Carlos is forcing the muscles to relax.
“Yeah, I know.”
His hand trails up to scratch into Carlos’s hair and then tugs gently to make Carlos look at him.
“Do you? Because it’s important to me that you understand. All of this.” He gestures like that will encompass the couples’ counselling and the arguments and the silences. “It’s not because I’m angry or because I feel neglected or because you fell asleep during sexy time.”
Carlos breathes a small laugh and TK’s heart leaps at the smile that pulls at the corner of Carlos’s mouth.
“It’s because I’m worried about you. You take on so much and the longer you go without finding an answer, the harder you try. But the harder you try, the less of you there is for anything else. I don’t understand how it feels to lose a parent and not know why. I can’t imagine how much that must hurt, and I’m so proud of you for shouldering that burden, because I know you’re doing it for your family too. But they wouldn’t want you to lose yourself in the process, and neither would your dad. I just worry that you’re going to work yourself to death if you don’t give yourself a break.”
Carlos ducks his head back down to press into TK’s stomach and TK smooths his hand through Carlos’s hair. The silence stretches, but it’s not one of the silences that TK has become used to, one of the ones that weighs heavy under everything they’re not saying. Carlos has always liked to think before he speaks and that’s what this is. TK knows the difference the same way that he knows how to tie his shoes: something learned years ago and now so deeply ingrained that he can never unknow it.
Finally Carlos shifts and says, “I understand what you’re saying. I can’t even say that I haven’t thought the same. It’s just hard to let it go, even for a night. Whenever I’m not working on the case, I think about how the person responsible is out there, getting away with it, living a life that my father was robbed of. What if I take a night off and that’s the night I would have figured it out or taken the call that would make it all make sense?”
“If you think like that, it will consume you.”
“I feel like I’m never going to solve it.”
“You will!” TK says it fiercely, because even though he knows the case has stalled, he also knows there’s no one more determined to do right by his family than Carlos. “I know you will. But you need balance otherwise when you do solve it, all you’ll have is grief. I don’t want you drowning in that either.”
Honestly, TK would sign Carlos up for grief counselling too, if he thought he would go for it but getting him to agree to couples’ counselling was hard enough. Maybe if TK offered to go with him it would be easier, but he’ll take one hurdle at a time for now.
“Campbell told me something this week.”
TK frowns. He’s usually pretty good at following Carlos’s trains of thought, especially because they tend to be more linear than TK’s own, but this feels like they’ve taken a hard right onto a dirt road that TK didn’t even know was there.
“Ranger Soup?” he says, trying to get his bearings.
Carlos snorts. “He’s not that bad.”
TK hums, unconvinced, because he’s deeply suspicious of anyone who’s not impressed by his husband.
“Well? What did he say?”
“That he and his wife have been married for almost 11 years and he gets her the same bouquet for every birthday, anniversary and holiday.”
He’s glad that Carlos isn’t looking at him, because he doesn’t know exactly what his face is doing, but he’s sure it’s nothing attractive.
“Okay. And is Mrs Soup… happy with that?”
TK would not be happy with that if he was Mrs Soup.
Carlos pinches his hip, which is not going to deter him from referring to them as the Soups for the rest of this working relationship, and probably even beyond that.
“He said it’s because she understands that a Texas Ranger has more important things to think about than anniversary gifts, and that we owe it to the people who’ve been wronged to bring them justice. Maybe she does understand but it made me think of my mom and how my dad always had something special for her birthdays. Or how when he had to go out of town, he would come back with gifts for all of us. They were usually just small things that he probably picked up on his way out, but at least we knew he’d been thinking of us when he was away. My dad worked so hard, but I think he did it for us as much as he did it for the victims. We were the thing that always brought him home. I want to help all those people, but I don’t ever want you to think that you’re second to anyone. Without you, I don’t have anyone to bring me home.”
It casts Carlos’s late nights in a new light. Even though he understood why Carlos was working late, it was hard not to let it get to him when he was getting into bed alone again. The thing that has always been true, though, is that Carlos always comes home. TK might go to bed alone, but he never wakes up alone. He’s just never connected that with him being the one Carlos always comes home to.
“Thank you for always coming home,” he says, because he’s never said it before and he realises now that he should have. It’s one of the small ways that Carlos has found to show TK that he’s been trying, and it deserves to be acknowledged.
“I miss you.”
Tears prick at the corners of TK’s eyes. “I miss you, too, baby. But I’m right here. I’m in your corner, always. I’m on your team. You’re not alone and you don’t have to do this alone either.”
The rest of the tension eases out of Carlos’s shoulders but it’s more natural this time. It leaves him loose and pliant, a heavy, trusting weight across his midriff that TK is happy to carry.