Archive of Our Own ^beta

TK comes to thoroughly appreciate his decision to rouse himself early for his shift and catch Carlos before he goes when the front door slides open at around the same time the morning sun clears the windows on their floor.

It goes about as perfectly as TK could have planned: he’s finishing up his breakfast of fancy-schmancy overnight oats on one of the kitchen barstools, idly scrolling on his phone, sunlight beginning to lap the walls, and when the door clicks a grin steals across his face. He sets his phone on the counter and his chin in his hand to watch Carlos arrive, wanting to see him from the moment he enters the room. 

Maybe he’s a little co-dependent, but that first glimpse of him coming home never fails to be therapeutic and a little thrilling. Watching Carlos coming back to him gets him every time.

“Hey, babe,” TK says, realising his long-distance vision hasn’t properly adjusted yet and rubbing at the sleep in his eyes.

“Hey,” Carlos calls when he finds TK awake. He starts unlacing his shoes.

His uniform shoes. Because he’s still in his uniform.

TK blinks. The image doesn’t change; still no boring polos in sight. He’s even got the belt on, that gloriously chunky thing that accentuates every sway of his hips, and good God, do Carlos Reyes’ hips sway. If TK hadn’t clocked this yet, he’d categorically be a negligent boyfriend, which is to say--he’s very much clocked it. 

As does he now, as Carlos saunters across the space of the loft and the belt--well--the only word he has for it is jiggles, it jiggles all low-slung over his hips, and his thighs strain in an honestly very unprofessional way against his uniform pants and his chest against the navy shirt, and all of a sudden the lines of his neck look incredibly… lickable.

“He llo,” TK reiterates. 

He sees Carlos’ eyebrows raise at his tone.

“Uh,” TK says, “Baby?”

“Yeah?” Carlos says, dithering in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips now. He hits a patch of sunlight, right on the money, and it strikes slivers of copper through his dark hair and softens the overnight stubble he’s grown. Mm, stubble.

TK gestures vaguely with a hand that’s gone limp the way his knees would be right now if he stood. It’s crazy that Carlos still has this first-crush effect on TK. “Can you… could you just–go back through the door then walk in again?”

Carlos opens his mouth quizzically.

“Don’t ask,” TK rushes. 

Carlos, perfect man, obeys him, sidling back behind the door then arriving a second time, and this time TK is very much awake to watch the grand entrance.

He slides from the barstool to meet Carlos in the middle of the room and presses the length of himself up against him as subtly as he can, pretending that he’s basking in the shaft of sun and not the other nearby source of heat.

Carlos chuckles, baffled, but kisses TK hello like he always does before he asks, “Are you gonna tell me what that was about?”

TK doesn’t want to, because he suspects if Carlos knows the wildly attractive things his hips do in motion, he might try to switch up the way he walks, even subconsciously, and that is simply not acceptable. “You look good,” he says instead, mumbling a little, nudging his face up an inch away from Carlos’. “In the uniform.”

“Thought I’d surprise you,” grins Carlos. He gives in to a second kiss, short like the first but a little deeper, a little hotter.

TK finds his hands drifting to that utility belt, trailing along the top of it where it meets his waist. The feel of it pressing against TK’s stomach when he’s this close to Carlos is oddly sexy.

“Anything crazy at work?” he murmurs against Carlos’ lips.

Carlos hums. His thumb is caressing TK’s jaw, running from his chin almost to his ear. “We ran a carjacker off the road,” he says in a low rumble. The way he looks at TK is almost too much to bear. There’s desire of a million kinds in his eyes. “That was pretty dramatic.”

TK hooks his hands in the belt and pulls Carlos closer still. “Mm-hmm.”

“Old guy, used to be in stocks, winning big, you know the type. He lost it all gambling and kept saying his Maserati had been stolen by the bailiffs. And, uh… after that, I spent three hours directing traffic.”

TK kisses at the hollows of his cheeks, humming as if all this is the most riveting thing he’s ever heard.

“Yeah,” Carlos says. “Uh…” 

He trails off. TK feels hands pluck just lightly at the waistband of his sweatpants.

TK huffs against his skin, knowing he’s gotten to him. He wanders up Carlos’ front with his hands, then, knowing he’ll have to get rid of the belt before he does anything about that pesky shirt, migrates back downwards to run his hands over it again.

“You like the belt, don’t you?” Carlos says.

“I like the belt,” TK admits, looking up at him and trying not to look too devilish when he smiles.

The acknowledgement of the strange hotness of Carlos’ utility belt sparks something fiercer in TK’s belly; he starts walking them back towards the wall by the door, unclipping the belt and tilting his head up for more kisses as he goes.

Carlos’ hand goes to the back of TK’s neck, habitual and familiar. It’s as comforting as it is enticing.

The belt gets tossed on the floor and TK starts working on untucking Carlos’ shirt so he can get at a worthwhile piece of skin.

Carlos’ lips desert TK’s just for a moment as he says, a little out of breath already, “How long until your shift?”

TK thinks Carlos knows this, but he also thinks Carlos likes hearing him say, “Lots of time. Don’t have to head out for an hour.”

“Mm,” is all Carlos says to that.

These kisses are some of TK’s all-time favourites: the ones that are caught between languid and heated, possessive and comfortable, where he has enough time to trail a hand down Carlos’ face but enough privacy to bite at his earlobe. 

Carlos holds his own, his hands bunching in TK’s T-shirt and playing with the sensitive hair at the nape of his neck and his mouth pulling at TK’s bottom lip until he can’t help but groan. He really is a marvel with his mouth. 

TK bumps his hips into Carlos’, nudging him back into the wall and grinding up against him a little. Carlos’ pants are thick and sensible enough that even if he is hard, TK can’t feel it. He’s going to have to correct that soon, especially seeing as he’s in thin old sweatpants that hide nothing.

His stomach fizzes as Carlos’ hand strays from the small of his back past the waistband of his sweats, just grazing the curve of his ass before he’s coming to rest cupping the back of his thigh. 

They keep teasing each other like this, edging each other towards arousal. TK knows just what gets Carlos going, and Carlos knows what does it for him, and yet somehow, they find a new way to do this every time. TK still feels like he’s only scratching the surface of the shades of Carlos.

Then Carlos slides his hand back up and finds TK’s ass and TK sighs into their kiss. Carlos squeezes at it, his tongue sneaking further into TK’s mouth at the same time in a combination that whites out TK’s brain a little.

And then Carlos frowns. He feels at TK’s ass again, experimentally.

Then he fixes TK with a look. “TK,” he starts. “Are you… wearing any underwear?”

TK squints as if trying to recall. Then, low and teasing, he says, “I guess you’re going to have to find out.”

Carlos throws his head back and laughs. 

In an instant, he’s got TK’s leg hoisted up against his hip at a right angle. He flips them around and crowds TK against the wall until they crash together, joined at the hip.

TK lets his own head fall backwards against the wall, biting his lip with glee and arousal. Carlos takes his exposed neck as an opportunity and starts to work up a hickey just below his jaw, the contact intoxicating. TK just grips at him for a moment, overcome with all of these new things that have transpired, but his wits are about him in a moment and he’s realising Carlos’ shirt is still disappointingly on him.

He decides to wait until they reach the bedroom. For the meantime, he nudges Carlos in that direction. Carlos’ lips make a thrillingly lewd sound as they detach from his neck.

TK does try to keep the journey to the bedroom efficient, he really does, but that uniform. It really does things to Carlos. Carlos must be thinking something similar about TK, because TK blinks and there’s something digging into his ass that is decidedly not an appendage of Carlos’. He stumbles a little--it feels like it’s probably the back of the couch, but he doesn’t really care--and perches on top of it as Carlos barrels back between his legs and attacks him with kisses that swell his lips.

“Miss me?” TK huffs.

“Nah,” Carlos deadpans, pulling away to purse his lips mischievously. He’s too gorgeous like this. It has to be outlawed. It’s probably dangerous for TK to be exposed to too much of turned-on Carlos.

Then, sweeping TK to his feet, he says, “Just this,” and grabs another fistful of TK’s clothed ass, like he hasn’t spent the last minute doing exactly that. Whatever. TK still gets off on it, embarrassingly enough.

TK hums, all kiss-drunk. “I know the feeling.” He bites the bullet and grabs at Carlos’ shirt, tearing it open and relishing the sound of the poppers flying apart. Carlos exhales in the same flustered way he had the first time TK pulled this on him, when he’d been so crazy he’d pulled buttons from their places.

It’s about Carlos’ pecs. They’re truly one of a kind, and TK doesn’t want to go another minute not being able to touch them. But he forgets in his blind quest that Carlos has an undershirt on.

TK halts, sighing. “Do you have to wear this?” 

“Yes,” Carlos says, mock-stern. “The shirt chafes otherwise, you know that. And my nipples show.”

“What if I want your nipples to show?”

“TK--”

TK takes an unconventional route to the pecs he desires, pushing his hands up underneath the undershirt and grabbing blindly at them.

Carlos’ expression barely flickers, but TK sees the warp in his lip as he bites it from the inside.

“Then I’d know where to aim when we’re on duty.”

“We--we can’t be affectionate on a call,” Carlos says haltingly. TK ghosts his thumbs over his nipples and grins when Carlos’ breath stutters. “We’d get sued.”

“Worth it.”

Carlos stands there for a few long moments, looking entirely fritzed-out as TK massages the impressive breadth of his pecs, toying with his nipples every so often. It’s his own moan that appears to pull him back to reality; he blinks, grabs for TK, and tosses him into the bedroom in one blindingly strong movement.

TK falls back on the bed, knowing it’ll cushion his weight beautifully because Carlos insisted on customising their mattress. His side is a little softer than TK’s to keep him comfortable and accommodate the width of his shoulders, a fact that TK will admit turns him on a little just hearing. Carlos’ hugeness is breathtaking, and he can throw TK around in a really exciting way, but often the best thing is when he’s heavy over TK yet gentle as a breeze.

Watching Carlos stepping out of his now-askew uniform, TK says gooily, “You should come home like this more often, baby. Actually, I think I’m gonna have to make it a condition of our relationship.”

“Oh, really?” Carlos teases him. He’s out of a shirt, shedding his belt. He does a goofy pelvis thrust in TK’s direction. “You like the cop thing?”

TK shucks off his T-shirt, his hands clumsy with desire, and starts working at the drawstring on his pants. 

“I like you,” he says.

Carlos seems a little floored by that. TK tells him all the time, but every time he does Carlos gets this stunned look as if he’d forgotten.

“Come here,” TK says, laughing. “Get in me, baby.” 

Carlos groans.

*   *   *

“Is that Pride and Prejudice?”

“Yes,” Carlos replies defensively. “Jane and Bingley are dancing.”

He’s a picture: sat up in bed with the covers over his primly stretched-out legs but hunched over a dainty little volume, squinting even with his readers on. He’s using the clear-rimmed ones tonight, and TK loves all of Carlos’ readers, but the clear ones have got to be his favourite.

TK steps out of his pants and indulges him because he’s a sap: “Who’s this Bingley guy?”

“The guy from right at the beginning that the Bennets were all excited about. He’s very eligible and he’s cute,” Carlos says, sounding enraptured.

TK has never really been a bookish person. Carlos’ habit of bedtime reading meshes very well with TK’s desire to both live vicariously through his love for reading and implement his own bedtime habit of sprawling all over Carlos. It’s rare when they get to do this because of their shifts, which makes these old-married-couple nights even more precious.

“Do you think him and Jane are endgame?” TK asks as he gets into his sleep shorts and literally dives into bed belly-down. Carlos’ hand migrates to the back of his head in an instant.

His tone mildly scathing, Carlos says, “It’s Pride and Prejudice, TK. It’s so old it’s in the public domain. Everyone knows they end up together.”

“I don’t,” TK contends with a face full of comforter.

A laugh breaks through Carlos’ words as he says, “Yeah, because you’re a dumb jock.” He messes up TK’s hair then and TK pretends that it bothers him.

“Why do you read it if you know how it ends?” he says.

Carlos shrugs. “Finding out how they get there is half the fun.”

TK’s eyebrows raise. He’s pretty sure there’s something meaningful in that, but he doesn’t need to unpack it right now. He’s got enough meaningful right here.

He’s still on top of the comforter but he can’t be bothered to get up so he can pull it out from beneath him, so he does a complicated wiggling motion instead to kick his way to the mattress.

Carlos snorts above him, tugging it away the rest of the way and laying it over him.

This is it. This is what TK was after. Carlos’ warmth has toasted up the space beneath the comforter--TK likes to think he’s soaked up enough Texas sun over his life that it kind of diffuses out of him. TK makes a pit stop at the stem of Carlos’ glasses, planting a peck on the plastic to let Carlos know he approves, then koalas his way around him to get the most of his warmth.

Carlos’ next laugh rumbles through his chest and vibrates in the arm TK has slung over him.

“You like the glasses?” Carlos observes astutely.

“I like the glasses.”

“I guess my weird eyesight is good for something, then.”

“Yes.” TK cackles. “You must suffer the curse of short-sightedness for my pleasure.”

Carlos makes a pained face, clutching the book to his chest. In a mimicry of a romantic hero, he declares, “I would gouge out my eyes for you, baby.”

“Don’t,” TK huffs. Imagine never seeing me in the shower ever again.”

A shadow of genuine horror crosses Carlos’ expression. “Yeah,” is all he says.

TK snorts harder. “Speaking of--suffering, though--your neck is in a bit of a janky position. Is it stiff again?”

Carlos self-consciously straightens up. “Ugh,” he says. “Yeah, it is. I keep hunching and then forgetting, I think.”

“It’s because you’re so big and strong and chunky,” TK croons.

“Chunky?”

TK flutters his eyelashes. “Chu-u-unky.” 

Carlos fake-shoves him. “I don’t know. I just hunch. I don’t know how I’m supposed to fix my own posture, you know? I just--do it.”

“I know. Want me to smooth it out?”

TK reckons that before their breakup, Carlos might not have admitted to such a trivial level of discomfort. He probably wouldn’t have allowed TK to help him. Tonight, he drops his book with abandon.

“I didn’t mean to take you away from Mr. Bingley,” TK says as he slots himself between Carlos and the headboard, bracketing him with his legs.

Shuffling forward to let TK in, Carlos breezes, “Mr. Bingley can wait. I know how it ends.”

TK reaches for his readers and tenderly eases them off the bridge of his nose before setting them on the nightstand. He sees the edges of Carlos’ mouth upturning as he straightens back up. 

To begin with, he just runs his hands lightly up and down Carlos’ back, with his fingertips then a little of his blunt nails. Getting Carlos used to his touch, he reasons, although if pressed he might admit that he’s more interested in exploring the ridges of his back muscles and getting him to shiver and relax into him.

When TK finds the rounds of his shoulders and starts to press into them, they’re a little knotted up. Carlos twitches just slightly beneath his hands.

“Sore?”

“Only a bit,” Carlos mumbles, sounding blissed-out already.

It pleases TK immensely to hear that quality to Carlos’ voice, enough that he just has to drop a kiss on either side of his neck.

He starts in on Carlos’ shoulders with his knuckles. Carlos audibly hums. He slumps back into TK, tension draining right out of him, but then straightens back up with a small, “Sorry.”

“No, it’s still comfy.” TK props himself up better against the headboard so he can support Carlos.

Carlos attempts to glance back at TK. “Don’t wanna squash you.”

TK doesn’t know how Carlos got the idea that either he’s a huge, hulking thing that TK can’t cope with or TK is some kind of leaf waiting to be crushed, but he’s bemused by it.

“You’re not a ten-tonne weight, babe,” he says. “You’re okay.”

“Sure?”

TK huffs. “Yes. Lean.”

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Carlos lays his weight back again against TK. 

There, TK thinks. He runs an indulgent hand through his hair, the longer curls he’s grown out recently, and trails back down to his shoulders to work out the rest of that tension.

He doesn’t quite send Carlos to sleep, but it’s a near thing. He knows Carlos’ sleep can be fitful at the best of times--he doesn’t exactly get nightmares, but he lies awake worrying, and wakes up worrying that he has something to worry about that he’s forgotten--but he thinks he’s going to sleep like a rock tonight. 

He slips down into bed at Carlos’ side, turns off both their lamps for them, and tugs up the covers while Carlos lays there bonelessly. In the dark and beneath the covers, Carlos’ always-warm hand finds his and squeezes once, gratefully.

*   *   *

TK’s feet drag on the floor as he turns the key to the loft.

It’s one of those rare days when he and Carlos finish their shifts at around the same time in the evening and they can pretend for the remainder of the day that they don’t work crazy shift jobs that feel constantly at odds. These are the days TK treasures most, when he really feels like he’s coming home.

Only today is not his day. He’d lost a patient today, a little girl. Right under his hands. From the moment they’d approached her, half-pinned under a pickup, the outlook had been bleak, but it didn’t change the sickening way his heart had sunk into his gut when Tommy declared her gone. Then there was the weeping father on the scene, the mother they’d had to contact on his behalf, and the truck driver frozen in guilt. 

It was nobody’s fault. Sometimes it’s worse when it’s that way. Nobody to palm off all of the blame and the hurt on when you try to move on.

TK knows it’ll take him a while to stop feeling like he’s been crushed a little himself. It always takes him a second. It takes everyone a second, he guesses, but it always feels like forever with him, which might have a little to do with the days when his grief would come out of this dangerous place of feeling that it should be him in place of all those bodies, because why would the universe take them but leave him still miserably existing? 

All of it ends in a bit of a mess that he has to re-learn how to deal with every time.

He doesn’t spot Carlos immediately; all his thoughts are fixed on getting to the couch. Because he hasn’t gotten a hello from Carlos, he presumes he’s crashing in the bedroom or using the bathroom or somewhere far away enough not to notice TK straight away.

TK won’t deny that it makes the heaviness in the pit of his stomach press lower. He’s that sensitive right now. He wants Carlos. Wants him now, in a childish, grabby-hands, koala-clinging way.

That’s when he hears the humming.

Raising his heavy head above the back of the couch, TK sees him in the kitchen: earbuds in, in a vest and shorts, swinging his hips around a mop.

Oh, man. It’s enchanting, the way Carlos doing literally anything can just--fix TK.

He rests his chin on the back of the couch and watches as a still-oblivious Carlos does a little shimmy and mimes putting his finger in his ear to reach an off-key high note. He’s not really going anywhere with the mop, just swaying it back and forth like a mic.

TK recognizes the Carlos-ified Beyoncé moves on sight, and sure enough: “Hold up, they don’t love you like I love you… slow down, they don’t love you like I love you-u-u…”

Now Carlos is two-stepping around the mop, one arm on the mop handle and the other in the air as he half-sings snatches of lyrics. His eyes are shut.

TK allows his head to fall sideways to rest against the couch and his heart to settle back in its proper place.

Laughing a little to himself, Carlos does a few seconds of actual mopping then lapses back into dance, only it takes him all the way round until he’s facing TK. This is when TK realises he’s just been staring silently at Carlos for a good half a minute.

“Jesus!” Carlos’ shoulders shoot up around his ears and he drops the mop. “TK?”

“Sorry,” TK says, fighting an unlikely smile. He corrals his heavy limbs up over the back of the couch to go to Carlos, who is a flurry of earbud-removal and mop-retrieval.

“When did you come in?” He sticks the mop in a bucket. 

TK wades across the damp kitchen floor, numb to the water soaking into his socks, comes up behind him and wraps his arms around him the moment he’s straightened up.

Carlos makes a small noise of surprise. 

“Hi,” TK mumbles into the back of his shoulder, squeezing tight around his middle. I have you. I have you tight.

Reaching behind him, Carlos pats TK’s side blindly. “Hey.”

TK tightens a fist in Carlos’ vest. It pulls the fabric away from the shoulder he’s got his lips pressed to so he can feel warm skin there.

He thinks Carlos might say something like you scared the hell out of me, but, after a stretch of silence where he just lets TK hang off him, he shifts against him just slightly and asks, “Can I get you some hot milk?”

The rasping of TK’s hair up and down against Carlos’ back is his answer.

He feels like a kid. He feels pathetic literally hiding behind his boyfriend. But his animal need for arms and skin is stronger than any sense of shame.

And Carlos takes it all in his stride. He wraps his fingers around TK’s wrist where it’s splayed across his own stomach and tugs at him gently, folding him into a proper hug.

“We could watch New Girl,” he suggests. His quiet rumble of a voice vibrates through his chest into TK’s.

TK breathes him in: lime from his post-shift shower and his own unique skin-scent. “Let’s,” he manages to say.

Carlos drops one of his hands. TK misses the feeling of being bracketed completely that Carlos holding him gives him, but he waits. A moment later, an earbud is being eased into his ear, Harry Styles coming into clarity.

TK looks up at Carlos. “You weren’t listening to this.”

“Did you watch me for that long?” Carlos chuckles. He’s got the other earbud in his ear.

“Did you just put this on?”

“I know you like this one,” is all Carlos says. 

Spinnin' out, waitin' for ya to pull me in

I can see you're lonely down there

Don't you know that I am right here?

Wrapping his arms around Carlos’ neck, TK noses against his forehead. He doesn’t know if he could kiss Carlos right now and put as much into it as he wants to convey. Instead, he tries to--he’s not sure, transmit all the love in his head and express-deliver it to Carlos’? 

Carlos plants a hand at the junction of his neck and starts to sway them to the beat. And TK smiles. He really smiles. It’s not quite weightless, but it’s a close thing.

Right here, right here

Spinnin' out, waitin' for ya

I'm here, right here

Wishin' I could be there for ya

Carlos starts manoeuvring them towards the fridge along to the music; TK goes with him without a thought, like a bobbing boat attached to an anchor. It takes them moving back in the direction of the cupboard and then the stove for TK’s tired mind to connect the dots and remember the plans for hot milk.

When Carlos has safely mixed milk in a pan with a dash of cinnamon and a spoon of honey, letting TK cling to him all the while, TK whispers to him, “I love you.” Presses it into the bones of his shoulders. “I love you, I love you.”

“Just milk,” Carlos says graciously. “I love you too, Ty.”

It’s not often he calls TK that. It’s short, sweet and ringing, lovely in Carlos’ mouth.

They watch the seasoned milk heat, waiting on it. There’s enough for two.