#userpauline

With a shaky breath, he stepped past the threshold and let his work bag slip from his shoulder, listening to it as it landed with a heavy thud beside him. With a nudge of his elbow, the door swung to close and clicked shut as pressed his back against it. Carlos let his head tip back and rested it against the smooth gloss-finished door as he slid down to the floor, eyes falling shut as he did so.

When he found himself at his final resting point with his knees drawn to his chest, he reached trembling hands up to press the heels of his palms to his eyes and dropped his head forward into them as if trying to block out the world. He curled his fingers into the tendrils of curls, tugging at them in an attempt to keep himself somewhat centred.

It was late, late enough that most people would be in bed asleep. But that was not the case tonight. In fact, he had been so lost in his head that it took him a few moments of sitting in his own silence that he began to register the quiet tones of the TV in the living room, signaling to him that TK was home and reminding him that he doesn’t live alone anymore.

From his crumpled position on the cold floor, Carlos heard the shifting of a body moving on the couch and a quiet, “Babe?” drifted over to him. Carlos tilted his head to the side and cracked open a watery eye to see what he assumed was once a relaxed boyfriend, was now sitting upright and alarmed on the edge of the couch, eyes soft and eyebrows creased in worry.

It hit him then that this is the first time that he’s had someone to come home to on one of these kinds of days; where all of the built-up, suppressed emotions that he has held back came flooding right to the surface when he was alone, behind closed doors where no one is privy to his unguarded state. Part of him doesn’t want to be seen like this; vulnerable and exposed of his most private emotions. He’s so used to being the solid one, the dependable one, the one that holds people steady when they are the ones that are falling apart. The other part of him is more selfish, wanting to be the one being comforted instead of being the comforter for once.

That feeling has him and the wall that he’d carefully constructed around himself to get him through to the end of his shift crumble then and there. The stinging tears that he’d been holding back all through his drive welled in his eyes, not yet spilling over.

TK didn’t seem to need any explanation, instead, he beckoned gently with his hand, a quiet invitation of offered comfort. And that was exactly what Carlos needed. Climbing to his feet, he moved towards TK who had repositioned himself against the armrest. He settled against his chest, lying nestled between TK's legs, and buried his face into the fabric of his shirt, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend’s torso and fisting his hands into the material.

TK seemed to read that he didn’t need to be asked what was wrong but instead stayed silent as he wrapped his arms around him, tucking his head into the corner of his neck, hand gripping comfortingly against the base of his head.

He didn’t want to talk about it and yet the words, “I couldn’t save her,” still left his lips unbidden with his voice cracking on the coat-tails of a hitched breath and muffled by the material of TK’s shirt as the scene once again played over in his mind.

With his face pressed against TK’s neck, Carlos doesn’t see is TK’s face morphing into understanding of what he was feeling in this moment. Empathetic tears welled in TK’s eyes as he tightened his hold as if bringing their bodies closer would somehow allow him to leech that pain from Carlos. As if he were trying to take away that shadow of heartbreak that comes with losing someone on the job.

A silent sob passed his lips unbidden; still, he tried to choke out, to explain what had happened. To give a reason as to why he was coming home such a wreck, “I was so close,” is all he was able to manage before his throat closed over from the tears, voice soundless when he tried to say more.

“Shh, you don’t have to tell me right now. Just let yourself feel what you’re feeling,” TK murmured into his hair, and pulled him ever closer, running his fingernails in firm but soothing patterns along his back.

And with that permission, he released all of the emotions that had been coiling and festering deep within his heart. Letting himself properly cry in a way that he never had in the company of another before, his tears steadily soaked into the collar of TK’s shirt. Heart-wrenching sobs wrecked his throat and chest as he let himself weep for the youth that had been lost; of the future that the young woman would never get to see. Of the family and friends that would mourn her. Of the unforgiving nature of the way, her life had been taken.

Something that Carlos had found recently is that time seemed to pass differently when you were in the arms of someone you love. It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours for all they knew from where they were on the couch, and yet neither of them moved. No complaint from TK was heard for he knew exactly what his boyfriend was feeling for it was not so long ago that he had done exactly the same thing with Carlos on the stairs.

Eventually, the tears and the choked-off breaths began to ebb leaving Carlos to feel empty and exhausted. He breathed in deeply, soaking in TK’s warmth, and focused instead on the steady heartbeat of his boyfriend. He matched his breath to TK’s, finding the comfort that he had been craving since he had left the scene. This was the most vulnerable he has ever been in the company of someone he loved, and he didn’t feel like he needed to hold back. He felt safe.

Giving himself a bit more time to compose himself from that onslaught of emotions, Carlos took in a few more deep breaths of TK’s musk before he released TK’s shirt and pulled away.

He pressed his lips together as he sniffled up the last of his running nose, suppressing the urge to apologise for his breakdown knowing that TK would immediately tell him that he didn’t need to. And he knew that to be true, he said the same thing when TK curled up in his lap when they had lost Tim, still, it didn’t negate the vestiges of the awkwardness of full-fledged ugly crying in front of someone, regardless of how intimately they knew him.

TK for his part just watched him carefully, chewing absentmindedly on his lower lip like he always does when he worries. Carlos watched him silently, unsure of what to say as TK reached over to gently wipe away the streaks of tears that had trailed their way down to his chin and then dried his face with the sleeve of his cardigan.

“Better?” he asked quietly, bringing his hand to rest against Carlos’s cheek.

Carlos leaned into the touch and shut his eyes for a second and sucked in a deep steadying breath, “yeah,” he says and opened his eyes as he exhaled, “thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“I know, but I wanted to anyway.”

TK hummed knowingly at that and Carlos lost his gaze as it slid away to something past him before returning with a soft but assessing gaze, “Are you hungry? I managed to throw together a chicken noodle stir fry.”

“Is it even edible?” Carlos joked half-heartedly, grateful for the change of subject and thankful that TK chose to play along.

“Hey! I’ll have you know it’s one of the few things I can cook well,” he said with a light, playful shove.

“Well in that case I have to at least try some,” Carlos relented almost mockingly while feeling the tiniest of grumbles growing in his belly at the thought of food, reminding him that it was late, and he had eaten lunch earlier than usual.

TK disentangled himself from beneath him and moved towards the kitchen, but not before pressing a kiss to the top of his head and squeezed his hand as he stepped away. What he missed was the look of sadness that overcame TK’s face as he pulled a covered bowl from the fridge and a surreptitious wipe of tears from his cheeks as he set the microwave.

While TK reheated his dinner, Carlos found his thoughts drifting in the absence of his warmth, inevitably wandering back to earlier that day. He felt so lost in his mind, numbed by what happened yet entirely encompassed by that single moment that it seemed impossible for him to break away from it.

He was so detached, staring unseeingly that when TK returned with a warmed bowl that he jolted at the sound of TK’s voice bringing him back to the present with a quiet, “here,” as he passed over the steaming bowl over before returning to his place.

Despite their playful joking, he sobered at the thought of eating as he stared into the bowl, with his stomach sending him conflicting signals as he picked at the noodles, making him feel both nauseous while it also continued to rumble at him wanting the nourishment.

He only managed a few mouthfuls, finding that he was barely tasting the meal as he chewed mindlessly as he stared at the TV. TK, for his part, was flicking through the channels until he landed on an old school channel that was currently playing Hogan’s Heroes, not that he was paying much attention to it.

And then he blinked and the next thing he knew it was well past midnight and yet neither of them had made a move from the couch, slumped against each other, and bundled under a throw blanket watching back-to-back reruns of M*A*S*H.

Somehow they were both still awake,

His barely touched bowl had been moved to the sink but remained full and unwashed, instead, it became replaced by two bottles of water which each stood soldier-like within easy reach on the floor beside the couch, beading with condensation. They were sitting side by side but somehow he still managed to curl around TK enough to be able to hear the steady and soothing beat of his heart.

Maybe it was the fact that they had turned off all the lights and were only lit by the faded light produced by the 1972 medical drama, but Carlos could feel his tongue loosen in the honest hours of the night and started speaking quietly.

“It was a call to one of the college dorms. A bunch of the kids decided that it would be a good idea to try magic mushrooms for the first time. One of the girls was having a bad trip and disappeared.” He shivered at the thought of what came next.  

“She somehow managed to make it to the roof of one of the buildings nearby. Thankfully they had the foresight to have at least one of them was sober and called for help. By the time I got up there, she was dangerously close to the edge,” TK’s arm that was circled behind him tightened its grip, pulling him closer as he continued, “Mitchell stayed below to keep the other kids contained and EMS was just arriving on scene by the time I had her stepping away from the edge. And then a bird-”

His throat closed up as if it were trying to protect him from saying the next part, he swallowed hard around it, “-a bird of all things startled her and she… she stepped back and slipped. I couldn’t catch her in time.”

“Oh Carlos,” TK murmured, bringing his other arm to cocoon him in a comforting embrace.

“I almost had her TK, she was a couple of steps from my hand, and then she was gone and there was nothing I could do to stop it,” His throat felt raw as if he had been screaming for hours, “The look on her face won’t go away, it’s the first thing I see when I think about it, not to mention how she looked… how she looked on the ground from the roof. How do you move past something like that?”

The silence that followed was both deafening and comforting. He could feel TK thinking as he pressed his face into his hair. Eventually, after a pregnant pause, he spoke in a quiet and comforting tone.

“It’s not easy to move past something like that. And I know I wasn’t there for it, but I can only imagine that you did everything that you could have done in that situation and that’s what you have to focus on and take comfort in knowing and not with the what if’s.”

“Is that what you do?”

“When I can. And when I can’t, I talk to a therapist to remind me. It helps, you won’t ever forget, but it helps.” TK answered, then added regretfully, “It’s, unfortunately, one of the biggest cons of being a first responder.”

TK reached for the remote and turned off the TV before extricating himself from Carlos and the couch, before reaching down a hand, “It also helps to sleep next to someone instead of being alone.”

Carlos gave him an appreciative smile and accepted his hand, allowing him to pull him to his feet and lead him upstairs to the bedroom.