Chapter Text
Waking up is like drifting up on a warm current of air, until his eyes open. The light of the hospital room is harsh but the man sitting by his bed is incredibly soft. Carlos seems to have drifted off in the chair beside the bed in the same outfit he was wearing the last time TK woke up. If TK could keep his eyes open and string together more than a handful of words at a time, he would force Carlos to go home, shower, and sleep. But even thinking makes his head hurt from the effort.
He does manage to convince his fingers to wiggle slightly, giving Carlos’s hand a light squeeze. Probably more like a graze. Carlos startles, even at the light touch, and TK watches his face shift from fear to a blank slate and then a soft smile.
“Hey babe,” Carlos says, shifting slowly. “Thought you might sleep a little longer. You were just out for the MRI an hour ago.”
Somehow he remembers his dad’s house and his mother and Carlos in a jumbled mess. He focuses on Carlos. “Not dreaming?”
“What, dreaming about me?” Carlos shudders a little, and TK wants to take his question back. “No, this is horrifyingly real, TK. I would appreciate it if we could start going at least an entire year before the next hospital stay.”
“Doghouse,” TK says, with a smirk. Attempted smirk. His lip moves, at least.
“You’re on—” Carlos's voice cracks and TK cannot figure out why. He should know. “Probation,” he says finally, swallowing heavily. “We’ll see how this period goes.”
“Yes, officer.” So his wink is more of a blink, or just him fluttering his eyes closed because they’re heavy.
Carlos laughs, real and warm and TK is pretty sure that he could live in that laugh. As cold as he is from this latest brush with death, the lack of Carlos the last three months had been even colder. TK pushes his eyelids back open and basks in the sunshine of Carlos’s smile.
He’s not sure how much time passes, with Carlos playing with his hair and talking to him. TK tries to keep on top of the threads of conversation, but there’s stories about Paul and his dad who he saw at some point last night, he thinks. Nancy and Marjan are bringing…food, what kind TK cannot remember. He’s also not sure he wants to eat. Unless it’s cookies. Those were really good fake cookies.
The door slides open and the whole temperature of the room changes. TK is suddenly outside again and Carlos is stiff as a board. He’s also standing up.
“No,” Carlos says, his voice rough.
TK follows his gaze to see two nurses in the room. The worst part of hospitals, as well as the beds and the food, is the constant interruptions. TK remembers Carlos saying it hasn’t been long since the last tests. It’s nice that Carlos wants to give him a break, but the more they do, the sooner TK gets to leave. He reaches for Carlos’s hand. Where did it go?
“Baby, is okay.”
Carlos doesn’t seem to hear him. TK watches as his jaw clenches in the way that makes the vein stick out. TK likes that vein when Carlos isn’t mad at him. “Get out,” Carlos growls.
“Carlos.” TK tries again. He reaches for Carlos’s hand again but misses.
“Sir—” One of the nurses says, “we said we were sorry about—”
Carlos clenches his fist and continues in the same dangerous voice that TK really likes. “I’m going to need your shift manager. Now.”
“Sir—”
TK reaches out again and manages to connect with the back of Carlos’s fist. It’s just a brush of fingers against the back of Carlos’s hand, but it’s something. Carlos unfurls his fist and takes TK’s hand, but he doesn’t look away from the nurses. TK’s head hurts but he knows he needs to press on.
“Babe,” TK tries again, working to put a whole sentence together, “they’re doing their job,”
The sooner Carlos lets them do whatever the hell they’re here to do, the sooner they get to be left alone. If he can just get Carlos to look at him, he’s pretty sure he can get Carlos to back down. The nurses will do whatever they have to do and go, like Carlos wants. Carlos doesn’t look at TK.
“I. Said,” Carlos repeats, every word a sentence. “Go.”
TK just wants whatever is happening to be over with. His head hurts and he’s tired and he has no idea why Carlos is mad.
“Hey Carlos, bud, everything okay?” a voice that sounds like Nancy asks. TK manages to focus beyond the nurses and hey, it’s Nancy and Marjan. Food.
Carlos is probably hungry. He never does well with stress when he’s hungry. Has anyone fed Carlos? Carlos probably hasn’t eaten. He wouldn’t think about it.
“No,” Carlos answers. His gaze only flicks to the door for a minute. Is it about food? No, no Nancy asked if Carlos was okay. He’s not okay. TK frowns, unsure what to do with this information.
Carlos is still talking though. TK pulls together the words shift and find but the rest of what he says doesn’t make sense. Then, Carlos finishes with, “We need to have a word.”
“Okay,” Nancy says, slipping out and leaving Marjan standing in the doorway with a bright pink something.
“Sir, we’re just—”
Carlos is unmoved by the nurse. “I told you to leave.”
“If Carlos is telling you to go, I would. We all appreciate it when people listen the first time.” Marjan is smiling, but TK knows that smile. That’s her dangerous smile. That’s her fuck somebody up on the derby track smile.
“We have to provide—”
Carlos scoffs and TK knows that sound. It’s harsh and unpleasant and speaks to fights. It’s not for him though. TK holds on that it’s not to him. Carlos is still glaring at the nurses in the doorway. “You have not shown the ability to provide anything close to adequate or respectful care. You’re lucky I’m the only one who heard you last time, but trust me, you will not be on his roster or in this room ever again.”
TK tries to process what this means. He knows the words, they are all words he knows. He’s just so tired and his head hurts. Carlos is upset though, and TK doesn’t want that.
This time he tugs harder. “Carlos,” TK says, sharp as he can in the fog that’s surrounding his brain. When Carlos finally looks down at him, TK tries his best to smile. He hopes it’s a real one. “Hey,” he says, softening his tone.
Carlos breathes out a sigh, and the hard edge of his jaw and the way his eyebrows draw together smooth out. “Hey,” Carlos whispers back, “Trust me.”
TK does. He wonders if Carlos means about this or about something that went wrong earlier. TK is watching Carlos, trying to figure it out, and hasn’t even noticed that things have shifted once again. It’s not until Carlos’s jaw clicks shut with a decisive sound.
“This man is being unreasonable,” one of the nurses said. TK cannot keep them straight. They’re not looking at Carlos.
TK follows their gaze to the doorway where Nancy is standing behind another nurse in brightly flowered scrubs.
Carlos is talking again, and TK pushes past the pain to focus. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to take TK off of these nurses’ duty roster when they have shown nothing short of disrespect when treating him yesterday. Just because a patient is medically sedated doesn’t mean you can say or do whatever you want.”
“Sir, again, we apologized yest—”
“Perhaps,” Carlos starts in a tone that anyone should recognize as dangerous, “you’d like to repeat the conversation you were having when I walked in on you yesterday, for your supervisor and our friends. This is Nancy, who happens to be a paramedic and TK’s field partner, and she was the one who performed life saving treatment in the field. Marjan is also part of their firehouse.”
He’s so calm, though, it’s just the way he pitches his voice and the tremor just under it. It’s definitely mad and not the sexy voice, but it’s a thin line with Carlos. TK misses the sexy voice.
He’s not sure what happens as he’s thinking about the sexy voice, but he’s brought back to Carlos rubbing his thumb over the back of his hand. TK squeezes and is rewarded with a squeeze in return.
“Thank you,” Carlos says, and TK isn’t sure what he’s done to be thanked. Carlos also isn’t saying it to him, he realizes too late. It’s maybe to the woman in scrubs. The other nurses are gone?
Of course Carlos won.
“I would appreciate it if you would fill out an incident report for us,” the flowered scrub nurse says.
Carlos nods, but his thumb keeps strumming over the back of TK’s hand. “I’ll stop by when I have a moment. TK is my priority.”
How the hell had he gotten so lucky that after every grenade and awful word, Carlos still treats him like a priority?
TK isn’t sure where the nurse goes, but Nancy and Marjan have moved closer.
“Dude, I forget how scary you can be when you turn the full cop mode on,” Nancy says, waving her hand over Carlos’s general figure.
“It’s hot,” TK observes.
Nancy and Carlos laugh in unison and it feels good to make them laugh.
It is hot. The whole thing that happened was hot, even if it was confusing. Carlos did the thing with his jaw and his voice and he stood between TK and something he thought was bad. It’s always hot. TK can’t quite access the parts of his body that react when things are hot, yet. He supposes that’ll come back with time.
Marjan drops into the chair next to the one Carlos has been sitting in forever. The one he hasn’t sat back down in. “Yo, what the hell did those bitches say yesterday?”
Carlos shoots Marjan a look. His jaw is still clenched tight and he’s stiff when he shakes his head. It’s definitely a signal to leave it alone. Marjan glares right back at Carlos. Surprisingly, she doesn’t say anything. TK tries to figure out why. Marjan never backs down from a fight, not really. Something must have happened that he can’t track.
TK shoots a look at Nancy, but she’s also looking at Carlos with confusion. Maybe it’s confusion.
TK becomes aware that the shakes have come back and are traveling down his arm. They haven’t stopped since he woke up, and they come for him in waves. TK tries to hold his arm still. Moments pass before he realizes the tremors aren’t coming from him. His whole body would be shaking if they were. They’re coming from Carlos.
TK squeezes Carlos’s hand again. “Baby, you’re shaking.”
Carlos startles again and looks down at their joined hands. His face falls into a frown, but it doesn’t stop the tremors. He swallows hard, but sits down in the chair. Carlos reaches out his other hand, also shaky, and pets at TK’s hair. “I’m fine. I just…they shouldn’t have anyone on this floor like that.”
TK wants to ask what Carlos means by like that but the thought gets stuck in his throat as Carlos continues to stroke his hair. TK’s eyes flutter close and he thinks he can hear Marjan and Nancy in the background. It’s nice.
When he floats back up, Carlos is still perched next to the bed. TK smiles and it feels easier than most of the other times he’s managed to wake up. He rotates his head on the pillow, but Marjan and Nancy are gone. Instead there’s a new woman in blue scrubs. Redhead instead of the brunettes that were here before. She leaves the whiteboard in the corner and comes over to the other side of the bed. There’s a younger woman behind her.
“Hi TK,” she says, ponytail swinging behind her, “I’m Erica and I’ll be your main nurse this morning. Shauna will be supporting.”
Carlos begins to untangle himself from TK’s hand and TK holds on. “Stay,” he asks.
Carlos offers him a sigh and still detangles himself. TK cannot help the whine that slips from his lips. Carlos presses a kiss to his forehead and it’s not enough. “I’ll be right over here. They need room to work.”
TK misses the Carlos that made the other nurses go away. The blankets have made him warm and it’s cozy in a bed that should be awful and he doesn’t want to do anything. But the sooner the nurses do whatever they need to do, the sooner they’ll go away.
The nurse, Erica? Erica rubs his arm while checking the IV line. “We’ll try to make it quick and painless.” She leans in and whispers, “Got yourself a knight in shining armor in that one, I hear.”
TK rolls his head and spots Carlos against the window, his arms crossed. He’s not even sure what Carlos was defending him against, but man, it felt good. TK smiles. “Yeah.”