Work Text:
The race car bed is not part of the plan. The race car bed is better than the plan.
TK turns the corner in Costco and there it is. Scarlet red and both grand and tiny at the same time – the way these things for toddlers are. The display model sits on top of boxed up replicas like a dragon on its golden hoard, though the cardboard is dreary beneath the faraway light. Lighting in Costco, TK always thinks, is like the sun struggling to break through a layer of raincloud. Nonetheless, in his mind’s eye the race car bed becomes a McLaren in a showroom. Magnificent. Bright red and posed on a suedey white mat, glistening under the beam of ten strategically directed spotlights.
A couple of aisles away, Carlos scrutinizes car booster seats and other child-safety related items, which is what they are actually here for. The plan. The to-do list. The boxes to tick in a Moleskine notebook. The style of Jonah’s bed has only formed a brief discussion, natural assumption falling to some…regular frame? White or unpainted timber. Whatever. Practical and unfancy. Boring. Boring like some austere, army-esque cot in an extremely expensive and strict boarding school in Switzerland. A place where kids can spell the word onomatopoeia at the age of five but do not know what a hug is. No.
TK’s realization illuminates Costco like a flash of lightning. The bed has to be special. Special like this.
He finds his husband crouched next to a panda-patterned booster seat, peering at the item the way he peers at suspects across the interrogation table. Carlos nudges his slipped glasses up his nose, and with intense focus begins to practice undoing and redoing the seatbelt with a swift sleight of hand.
“This is good,” Carlos says as TK arrives in front of him with a bounce. “But I don’t know.” He squeezes the padded headrest hard, little panda faces smushing under the pressure of his no-nonsense, large hand. “The sponge here is a little thin. What’s up?”
TK is basically doing a twirl now, trying to get his husband to follow. Sensing the urgency, Carlos neatly places the model booster seat back onto the shelf where he found it, and wanders with TK around the corner.
TK halts before the race car bed on display, opening his arms wide for the big reveal. “Baby, how perfect is this?”
Carlos grins, relaxing an arm around TK’s shoulders. “It’s very cool.”
“Right? I always wanted one when I was a kid. Did you?”
“Of course I did.” Carlos hums thoughtfully. “Maybe not one with flames all along the side, though?”
TK slowly turns from Carlos and inspects the bodywork of the vehicle. He had clocked the particular design feature of the flames, but hadn’t considered how this might appear to the social worker. The sensible person whose assessment of their home, and them as a couple, could be make-or-break.
“Let’s see if they have ones without flames,” Carlos says, “Or we’ll order one.”
They end up ordering. The Costco beds without flames are blue, but the one for Jonah needs to be red. This is now very important. Although suddenly not as important to TK as the lack of vehicular toddler beds in the style of ambulances. ("EMS hate starts from birth", Mateo rightly points out when TK scrolls pages of beds on his tablet). Nonetheless, a flameless red race car bed arrives a couple of days later. Carlos lovingly assembles it and fits the mattress and blue sheet. TK finishes dressing the dividing shelves with books and charming little toys they’ve acquired along the way; toys Carlos had when he was a kid filling an entire section. In his teens, TK angrily discarded most of his childhood things, only really retaining a few plushies. He’d tried to throw them away too, but they looked at him with their sweet, heartbreaking glassy eyes and he couldn’t do it. It makes him laugh to think of it now. Skateboarding down Fifth Avenue, acting like the coolest fifteen-year-old New York City has ever seen, yet clutching his teddy in his bedroom. But anything with a face, TK’s a goner. That’s why he once brought home a wild alligator lizard as a pet – and why it was a difficult goodbye when he and Carlos ended up driving to the greenbelt to release their little escapee with a taste for human flesh.
Carlos' mom, though, kept just about everything from his childhood. Carlos was thirteen when they worked together to place formally beloved items in plastic caddies for safe keeping in the basement.
“You’ll give these to a child of your own one day, mijo,” she prophesied.
There have been times, over the years, when it’s been on the tip of Carlos’ tongue to tell Andrea to take his old toys and books and things to Goodwill or the church. Or just pass them off to the grandkids she actually has already. Somehow, though, he could never bring himself to suggest it. Maybe because he knew, in his core, she was right. There was still enough of a flashlight struggling to blink on deep inside him, helping him to navigate towards fatherhood. That old, internal flashlight that he’d dropped when terrified – when puberty snuck up on him, pushed him into the thorns. In near-total darkness, he had to make his way to this beautiful life with another man. In the center of the maze, his family were there – and not only were they accepting of him and TK, but embracing. Sure, neither TK nor Carlos thought their entryway into fatherhood would be through adopting TK’s three-year-old half-brother –
and it seems it won’t be, after all. After all that.
Two Hours Later
Carlos smiles with a kind of polite mania and gives a little wave as he rolls the door to the loft shut. As the latch clicks, he closes his eyes and lets out the painful breath he’s been holding the whole time…with the exception of when he started going off in TK’s defense, and he doesn’t know where that rant might have ended if TK hadn’t laid a placating hand on him.
Lingering by the door, he can hear the heels of the social worker tapping along the concrete floor of the common hallway towards the elevator. Another few seconds pass before he steels himself and turns, expecting to see TK floating around their space like a sad, vanishing cloud.
Carlos can’t see him anywhere. Already gone.
“Babe?”
No reply.
Carlos slots his hands into the pockets of his smartest black chinos and slumps into the living room, toes pinching in his stupid shiny brogues. He wore these shoes to Marjan’s wedding, owned the dancefloor in them – and they did pinch a little by midnight, but nothing like now. The pinch feels like some other cosmic punishment, irritating as icy rain dripping into his collar. Here in the loft, the universe giggles behind its massive starry hands, and Carlos is reminded again that they are forever at the mercy of tiny things and decisions made by other people.
Shoes scuffed from the dabke, he took time yesterday evening polishing the leather. Ready for the visit. Ready for anything. TK did too. The two of them sat at the dining table with their smartest shoes laid out on newspaper, Gabriel’s old shoe polish kit between them. They polished and they buffed and they chatted with nervous excitement about bringing Jonah home. What’s the first thing they should do as a family of three?
“I’ll cook him whatever he wants!” Carlos announced.
TK laughed. “That’ll probably be, like, a hotdog with chocolate sauce and a side of Jelly Beans.”
“Consider it done.”
They were goofing, giddy – perhaps due to the shoe polish fumes – by the time they went to their bedroom to pick outfits to go with the footwear. After emptying the entire closet onto the bed, Carlos opted for his creamy, slightly retro bowling-style shirt. Something that said “A DAD!” without literally having the words embroidered on the breast pocket in pale blue cursive. TK chose a polo t-shirt in a shade somewhere between dusky blue and dove gray, as if to say, “Cool, sensible, calm, ready. Ready.” Ready for anything. Ready for the park swings and sandcastles, the coloring books, the meltdowns, the cuddles, the Disney sing-along mix in the car, Little League, fort-building, swimming lessons, cycling lessons, the removing of water wings, the removing of training wheels. Carlos waiting on the other side of the shallow end of the pool with his arms open. “That’s it, Jonah, swim to me. TK is right behind you.”
Carlos finds TK in the little nook they created for Jonah by setting up dividing shelves in their open-plan space. A room of one’s own. The best they could do quickly in a one-bedroom apartment. This, for a little boy whose mother is dead and whose father will be years in prison. The social worker’s reaction to their set up had been friendly and gracious – not what she’d usually encounter, but obviously a temporary arrangement as far as she was concerned, and adorable enough to win her over. She was dubious and then open-minded when she queried TK’s addiction and recovery; fine with it when TK eagerly committed to random drug testing. But, God damn. Wistful tales about emergency calls that nearly killed them, all in a day’s work, broke the charming spell. It’s possible Carlos tipped things over the edge by talking about kicking down the door of a cartel’s stash house.
Carlos and his all-consuming cases of gangland murder and mayhem. TK and his long shifts in which the floor is always lava. The logistics of actually being present to look after Jonah or any kid are their own challenge, even with Andrea enthusiastically on hand, and it is true that Carlos is only alive now because of light armory and a chaotic ally in Sam, who has Annie Oakley-levels of marksmanship. TK is only alive now because he was treated just in time for hypothermia, and the wind changed and blew the toxic cloud away, and a bullet missed his heart too.
But it’s all so regular to them, so survivable. As much as TK spiraled over the placement of the race car bed, Carlos never believed that their lives, and their home, their jobs, their offering, with all its colors, toys and books, could truly end up less favorable than some staid dorm in a boarding school five thousand miles away, even though Jonah would never have anything like privacy there. No one to kiss him goodnight. Here, he has a nook – he has a family who loves him. He has two potential adoptive parents who could both bite it in the field, yes, but also – they could not! They could live to be a hundred. That is also an option. In fact, Carlos is determined to cut back on alcohol and up his fiber intake to ensure it. He’ll wear two tactical vests, one on top of the other, if he has to, and a heavy-duty helmet. Forget the Stetson. Let the other Rangers laugh.
The only certainties are the things that have already come to pass for Jonah. One incarcerated father and one deceased mother. What none of them have is more time to lose.
“Hey, TK.”
TK, lying on his side on the race car bed with his knees pulled up to his chest, shifts so he’s flat on his back, facing the ceiling. His long legs dangle most of the way off the mattress. He swallows hard. Carlos watches the dome of his Adam’s apple sink. Tears slope from his right eye. Then his left. Then both at once.
Carlos wants to lie down with his husband, but it’s fair to assume two giant men together on a toddler race car bed will result in that bed being flattened to the floor. Which maybe doesn’t matter now. But still. Too much has already been crushed for one day.
Carlos instead picks up the sturdy wooden stool they found at the flea market. The stool is squat and has little lions and tigers painted along the seat’s circumference. He deposits it next to the bed and sits down, reaches for the globe-shaped nightlight by his feet. This was his nightlight as a child, and it still works. In a dad-like way, Carlos thinks: They made things to last in the ‘90s. He switches the nightlight on.
The late afternoon’s amber sunshine floods through the west-facing windows, so it’s slightly difficult to make out the swirling constellations that project onto the shelves and the ceiling and travel across their bodies too. But stars are there. Stars are everywhere. Seeking them makes more appear, just like with a real night sky.
Carlos reaches for TK’s hand. TK snatches him up eagerly and interlocks their fingers, pulling Carlos’ hand so it’s sitting on his stomach. TK feels warm through the cotton of his polo shirt. His chest rises and falls with uneasy breaths. They stare up at the faint stars and planets that happily circle around on their ceiling. A weightless cosmos. Everything looks easy.
Nearly five years ago now, a solar storm hit Austin. Five years seems unbelievable – somehow so long ago because so much has happened, and yet not long ago at all, because so much is the same, like their butterflies for each other. At nightfall, auroras swept in falling golds, greens and purples through the sky, and TK and Carlos watched it unfold. It was like a storm from heaven, all light instead of rain, all stillness instead of wind. TK and Carlos lay down on the roof of Carlos’ Camaro and watched the lights dropping towards them. In a state of reverse vertigo, they fell in love. Their whole lives together stretched out, wide as the sky, dark in places, dancing in others.
“Listen to me, TK,” Carlos says.
TK closes his crying eyes and nods him on.
“I know you think we blew it–”
“Think? She said no.”
“This was just one conversation. There still has to be room for appeal if we make changes. A lot of people work dangerous jobs and have kids.”
“Yeah, because they get knocked up. Not because the state hands them over!” He swallows. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I’m just trying to take it all in.”
“I know. Me too.”
“I really thought we’d lost him because I’m an addict. Like she thought I’m dangerous.”
“Oh, baby.”
“Carlos. I’m–” TK shuts his eyes. “The only way we’re going to get another shot is if I quit my job.”
“Look at me.”
“But I can’t.”
“Can’t look at me?”
TK nods, but that’s not all that he means. “Quit. We crunched the fucking numbers. You have the sums in your spreadsheet and I nearly threw up when I saw it. We cannot afford this place, or this area, and a child, on just one salary.” Carlos frowns, reworking a few Excel formulas in his head. There has to be a way to argue with the math even though he was the one who presented the math in the first place and made the case to stay in the loft. He watches TK’s lip move with a heartbreaking quiver as he prepares to make further points.
“When you were here on your own,” he begins, “You were up to your eyeballs in payments.”
“I was making a lot less then,” Carlos says quickly. Doesn’t want to think about that time.
“But you only had yourself to feed. You’d be taking care of Jonah and me. And what about health insurance, and all that? His inheritance is his college fund and I don’t want us to dip into it ever. What about retirement?!”
“Baby,” Carlos cuts, “I hear what you’re saying. I hear you, okay? But if you’re sure – if you’re willing to quit and stay at home so that we can have Jonah, then we’re going to make this work. We’re going to be a family. You and me.”
TK whimpers. It’s okay that he can’t speak anymore and needs a minute. It’s okay.
Carlos looks around, looks at their home beyond the dreamer’s disco of the starry nightlight. Their downtown loft. Such a trendy place that has cradled them. Here they’ve broken up, renewed their relationship, hosted parties, grieved for TK’s mom, got engaged, grieved for Carlos’ dad, lived as a married couple – and now they’re here grieving again.
Carlos looks at the swirling stars and concentrates.
He can hear the creak of a porch swing that needed fixing, so he fixed it.
He can hear the thump of child-feet running down the stairs, the double-thump of a devoted dog tumbling along after.
He can hear himself yelling from the kitchen, “Jonah! Stop cannonballing down the stairs!”
“It wasn’t me!” Jonah chuckles. He’s about nine. Full of lightning-bolt energy and his brother’s charm. “What’s for dinner?”
TK wanders in from the back yard then with the carrots he dug up. Carlos is going to roast the carrots, and they’ll have chicken, potatoes and broccoli to get their greens. In this fantasy, Carlos has decided Jonah will be satisfied with this. The kid has finished his homework. He’s restless. Carlos hands him the vegetable peeler and a potato. TK is on his knees on the tiles, kissing their dog on his head.
“How about we lie down in our own bed and look for houses, husband?” Carlos says.
TK opens his stinging eyes. “What?”
“Somewhere up in Lamplight. Closer to my mom.”
“Isn’t it still too expensive?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Not necessarily. We might get lucky.”
TK raises an eyebrow. “What happened to it’ll be years until we need to move? You were all about the nook.”
“Today happened,” Carlos answers, firm again, in a way that makes TK’s hairs stand on end.
“I guess I could quit and retrain for some office job somewhere.”
“And feel out-of-place and miserable for the rest of your working life?” Carlos responds so instantly, it’s like he’d already prepared for TK to come out with this and had scripted his rebuttal.
“That’s how it is for so many people,” TK whispers.
“Well, I’m not okay with that. That’s, like, the thing I’m okay with the least.”
TK huffs, rubs his face. He knows Carlos doesn’t want to give up the loft anymore than he wants to give up his job, but he knows also that sometimes the thing that wasn’t the plan is better than the plan, when the plan had been about want instead of need. “You know, you really do surprise me daily.”
“I’ll go get my laptop.” Carlos laughs, kisses TK on the forehead and hops to his feet with determination. He’s quite intensely given himself a job to do, which is usually a sign he’s struggling more than he’s letting on, and maybe TK will talk to him about that later, but right now he just needs to be allowed to get on with it.
TK pushes himself up, perching on his elbows. Sniffing back tears, he takes in the stars, the shelves, the toys – dinosaurs, wooden cars, so many exciting storybooks. This little nook with its little race car bed for the little boy who needs, more than anything, love.
We’re going to make this work. We’re going to be a family. You and me.
“Babe!” Carlos yells from the bedroom. TK can hear him clattering about. “If you don’t get in here soon, I’m going to start without you!”
This makes TK crack a laugh, and a couple more tears slip into his mouth before he can wipe his face with his hand. Usually when one of them hollers that from the bedroom, they are referring to something very different than house hunting.
TK gets up from the race car bed, switches off Carlos’ old, adorable nightlight. He gives a green plushy stegosaurus a pat before he weaves his way out of the dividing shelves and into their sun-filled living room.
In their slightly softer-lit bedroom, Carlos has stripped out of the clothes that were annoying him. He lies on their bed in nothing but his boxers, glasses and gold cross necklace, his laptop resting on a throw pillow on his thighs.
Keenly, he says, “Hey, check this place out. It’s a real fixer-upper but it’s got three bedrooms. One of them is really small. But bigger than the nook. And it’s near my old elementary school.”
Carlos turns the laptop around. The house is white, gable roofed, has an upstairs, a rickety-looking porch and a very overgrown yard.
“It’s beautiful,” TK whispers.
“It’s a start right?” he says.
And TK loves him more than anything.
More than anything, love.