Chapter Text
This was not the life TK Strand expected.
When he married the love of his life, his soulmate, four years ago he’d had to sit by himself for 20 minutes before the ceremony in the bridal suite where he and Marjan and Nancy had gotten ready, sipping virgin mimosas (not so virgin in Nancy’s case) and buttoning TK’s cufflinks and reapplying Nancy’s lipliner and perfecting Marjan’s smokey eye.
The girls had given him a moment and he’d taken it, sitting quietly on a silver velvet couch. He conducted a quick inventory of the life he was currently living and how his teenage self would never believe he’d lived this long, let alone built such an incredible life surrounded by an amazing and supportive family, with a man he never could quite fully imagine.
He’d seen the lines of Carlos Reyes in the fantasies that he only allowed himself to have on his darkest days. On the first night he spent in rehab in Malibu, he dreamt of dark, kind eyes and strong hands. A man who knew all of his flaws and loved him, not despite those flaws, but for every piece of him. A man who knew his past and wasn’t repelled by it, as he often was of it himself. Someone who was flawed in his own ways, who would let TK in to see his deepest secrets, and would let TK support him. Someone who was secure in the places TK was tender and vulnerable, insecure in the places TK was confident; someone to balance out his weaknesses and help carry the load. Someone to build a life and a family and a home with.
But for so many years it felt like that man would always be just a dream. He didn’t feel worthy of a life full of love and compassion and sweetness. It wasn’t until he found himself lost in those gentle, soulful brown eyes on the side of a highway one rainy night shortly after his life, once again, fell apart and he’d moved to Austin, Texas, that he finally let himself begin to believe that maybe, one day, it could be real.
But even then, four years ago as he stood at the altar and held Carlos’s hands and promised to nurture his heart for the rest of his life, as if it was his very own, he never could have predicted this life.
His mother had told him once, years ago, that he’d always been surrounded with love. It’s something he’s never fully been able to comprehend. He’s never felt it as deeply as he does right now, as he crouches on the floor, thankful that the IKEA playmat under his knees is thick and plush, and wrangles a wriggly six year old into a sitting position on the edge of his bed.
“Um, TK?”
TK looks up from where he’s struggling to work a bright, festive candy cane sock over Jonah’s wiggling foot. “Stay still, bud.”
Jonah’s foot stills, undoubtedly a feat for him as the rest of his tiny body is vibrating with excitement. It’s his last day of school before Christmas break, which means today is the day of his class’s big Christmas party. There will be games and music and gingerbread house building. Jonah and all his classmates made stockings a few days ago during art hour, and they’ve been tasked with bringing stocking stuffers to fill each other's stockings. He’s been talking about the party for weeks now, even cajoling TK into baking Nanaimo bars, which they’d decorated with red and green sprinkles and tiny fondant mistletoes.
He’s got a bag of mochi squish animals and packets of brightly-colored slime to bring for his friends’ stockings, a result of duping TK’s dad into bringing him present shopping after Abuela had already brought him to buy stocking stuffers the day before.
“Okay, but, um, TK…” Jonah starts again. “Can Papa bring me this morning? I mean, can Papa bring me to school?”
It’s TK’s day off, thus he’s on drop off duty. He and Carlos typically trade off, but more often than not it’s TK bringing Jonah to school in the mornings.
Carlos’s drop off days are rarer, and thus more special. And TK’s had a growing suspicion since September, when Jonah started first grade and this new routine began, that on Carlos’s drop off days the two most important men in his life get up to some secret extra-curricular activities before school. Jonah’s always a little too excited to go to school those mornings.
“I don’t know, buddy,” TK responds, pulling a cheerful red sweater over Jonah’s head. It’s decorated with three smiling snowmen wearing cowboy hats, a gift from Auntie Marj. Jonah had squealed with excitement when she’d given it to him, eagerly pointing out Carlos Snowman on the right, TK Snowman on the left and Jonah Snowman in the middle.
“Let’s get your pants on and you can go ask him.”
He grabs the Carhartt chinos from Jonah’s bedside table, the only kind of pants he’ll wear ever since Uncle Paul brought him to the Carhartt store over the summer and spent hours picking out little outfits for Jonah.
As soon as his pants are buttoned Jonah is up and flying out the door of his bedroom, skittering across the wood floor in his thick socks and calling for Carlos, who’s in the kitchen on the main floor making breakfast.
“Careful!” TK calls after him. “Jonah! Please use the handrail on the stairs.”
Jonah skids to a stop at the top of the stairs, making a show of grabbing for the handrail that’s just at his eye level, and making his way down the stairs at a comically slow rate, taking each one with two feet. He’s been extra careful on the stairs, thank god, ever since TK took a fall last year, a consequence of slippery new Gold Toe socks on wood steps, scaring the crap out of Jonah and Carlos.
They moved into this house shortly after they got Jonah. The two story home in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood has a mostly open floor plan. There are two bedrooms on the top level; one is Jonah’s bedroom and the other they use as a guest room, Andrea spends at least a night or two every month, more frequently on the weeks when TK is on the overnight schedule. On those nights she and Jonah will pile onto the couch in the large upstairs living room that serves as Jonah’s playroom, Carlos’s yoga studio and TK’s reading nook. TK and Carlos have come home more than a few times and found Jonah and his abuela passed out on the couch in front of the glow of the TV, a Disney movie playing out its final minutes.
There’s a half wall in the living room that allows them to look down into the open living space of the main floor, making the room feel much more open and inviting.
When Jonah gets to the bottom of the staircase he bolts to the right, straight to the kitchen where Carlos is working at the island, chopping an avocado for his and TK’s breakfast. He looks very handsome in his dark blue button up and tie, already ready for work.
To the left of the kitchen is a small dining room with a table large enough to host their families for holidays, their friends on game nights, the Reyes tías and primas for tamale parties, and Jonah’s friends when he has his little sleepovers.
Directly across from the kitchen is the large living room with a gleaming white marble fireplace on the far wall, a large flatscreen TV is mounted above the fireplace. Behind that is the master bedroom, which came equipped with a large walk-in closet, an ensuite bathroom with a beautifully tiled corner shower and a large tub that Carlos had installed as a surprise for TK right before they moved in.
“Papa!” Jonah shouts as he bolts into the kitchen, running straight into Carlos’s arms where he’s waiting, ready to scoop him up and shuttle him into a stool at the island. He sits him right in front of a plate of cut up bananas topped with Greek yogurt, granola and blueberries, which is one of Jonah’s favorite breakfasts.
“What's up, mi niño?”
Carlos slides a cup of orange juice across the counter to Jonah and turns to press a kiss to TK’s temple when he trails into the kitchen shortly behind Jonah.
“Will you, um,” Jonah pauses to take a too-big bite of banana. “Will you take me to school?”
Carlos makes eye contact with TK, a silent question, and TK shrugs, wordlessly responding that it’s up to Carlos. He pats Carlos’s arm as he moves behind him to the espresso maker on the back counter.
“Sure, I can take you to school, buddy,” Carlos replies, leaning over the counter conspiratorially. “But I have to get to work so we’ll need to leave soon. Do you think you can eat your breakfast quickly?”
Jonah nods enthusiastically and starts shoveling his food into his mouth at double speed.
“Okay, little dude,” TK laughs, turning from the fridge after he’s grabbed the oat milk for his coffee. “Don’t choke. You can take a second to chew.”
Carlos shakes his head in amusement, hiding a smile while he passes a plate with eggs, avocado and lightly buttered sourdough toast over to TK when he takes a seat at the counter next to Jonah.
“Just like his brother,” he says fondly.
“Excuse you,” TK responds with feigned offense. “I’ve never eaten so fast I choked on granola.”
“I seem to recall you wolfing down almost an entire meatloaf at Paul’s house on one of our first dates,” Carlos says, raising a teasing eyebrow. “Also there was that time when you practically inhaled a baked potato at that steakhouse when I told you I’d booked a room at the Four Seasons for after dinner. I thought I was gonna have to call a paramedic for the paramedic.”
“First of all, Paul’s meatloaf is magic and you know it,” TK says. He swallows and gestures towards Jonah. “And maybe let’s not talk about the Four Seasons right now.”
He feels his cheeks start to go pink at the memory of what they got up to in that Four Seasons suite.
“What’s the Four Seasons?” Jonah asks.
“It’s a hotel,” Carlos says cooly, leaning on his elbows and scooting Jonah’s cup closer to him. “Drink your juice, mijo.”
“My friend Eric went to a hotel, he said there was a pool,” Jonah says. “Can we get a pool?”
“Why do you want a pool, bud? You don’t even swim.”
TK tried enrolling Jonah in swim lessons when he was four and he’d been so scared, even with TK and Carlos in the water with him, that they’d given up after only a few classes.
“So we can get a leatherback sea turtle,” Jonah says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Carlos shakes his head fondly.
“Just like his brother.”
“Hey, what kind of shoes do frogs wear?” Jonah shouts.
“I dunno, flippers?” TK answers.
“Oh!” Carlos says. “Water moccasins.”
“Toad sandals!” Jonah cries, delighted at his own joke.
“Um.” TK says, looking to Carlos in confusion. “Toad sandals?”
“Yess!”
Carlos’s brow furrows and then he lets out a chuckle. “Mijo, do you mean open-toed sandals?”
“Oh yeah,” Jonah giggles.
“Your brother,” Carlos says gleefully, pointing an accusatory finger at TK while he laughs along with Jonah. “Leave it to the two of you to get so distracted laughing at your own joke that you forget the punchline.”
“Okay,” TK ruffles Jonah’s hair. “Let’s just finish your breakfast.”
One of the things they don’t really tell you about raising a kid is how funny they are; Jonah is constantly doing things every day that are so wildly unhinged. A few months ago he took a bunch of pipe cleaners from his art class and twisted them in his hair because he wanted it to be curly like Carlos’s. He demands bacon at every coffee shop drive through. He still insists on calling restaurants eat houses, “TK, can we go to orange eat house?” (Whataburger); “Papa took me to blue eat house!” (KoKo’s), TK is already mourning for the day he grows out of that one. He’s always making them laugh. One of TK’s favorite parts of the day is when he and Carlos settle down in the lawn swing on the back patio in the evening, unwinding with a glass of wine and a mug of tea, stroking a hand through Carlos’s hair while they chuckle about all the ridiculous things Jonah did and said that day.
It’s rushing to after school pick ups and arranging playdates, it’s tumbling classes and tee ball games. It’s arranging his schedule to be at every Christmas recital and parents day, being there to hug him when he’s sad, to bandage scraped knees and ice his banged up elbows when he falls off the back of the couch in a misguided attempt to bend it like José Rivera, his favorite Peruvian soccer player. It’s a feeling of pride as he watches his baby brother learn about the world, and every moment of it is a gift.
TK watches his husband as he moves around their kitchen, taking bites from his own plate while he fills a thermos with coffee and grabs a protein bar from a cupboard to throw in his bag for later. He winks when he notices TK watching him.
“What?”
TK shakes his head. “Nothing. I just love you.”
Carlos smiles and ducks his head, coming around the counter to kiss TK on the cheek. He smiles into it, feeling all the love that pours out of Carlos’s generous heart every day. He’s become softer, TK thinks, in the years since his father’s passing. That once the rage had left him, he funneled the grief into gratefulness, for his family and the life he’s still here to live.
“No kissing!!” Jonah demands, throwing his hands in the air in protest.
“Cover your eyes, dude,” TK replies, passing a hand along Jonah’s hair and holding it across his eyes, causing the little boy to giggle.
“Be nice to your brother,” Carlos chides, dropping another quick kiss to TK’s brow before going back to what he was doing.
TK smiles to himself. He never thought he would have a family like this. They came together out of necessity, when Jonah suddenly needed a home, but they built it out of love, by choosing each other over and over again. They vowed on their wedding day to protect each other’s hearts, to be by each other’s sides and walk the path of life together no matter where the journey takes them. And every day since then they’ve chosen to do just that.
He remembers the way he felt when he learned that Enzo, Jonah’s father, was planning to send three-year-old Jonah to a boarding school in Switzerland where he’d spend his entire childhood being raised by an institution with no family around, nobody to hug him or to tell him about their mother, nobody to read to him and tuck him in and dance with him in the kitchen to goofy Diana Ross songs. With nobody to remind him that he’s loved.
TK’s heart had broken thinking of his brother growing up in such a cold place. He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he didn’t try to stop it.
There was a fleeting moment when he thought he might have to do it alone. When Carlos was still raw and reeling from his father’s horrendous murder, when he’d resigned himself to spend his life investigating the case until he tracked down the murderer himself, and he’d sworn he’d never rest until justice was served. TK had understood, of course, had stood by Carlos's side for a year and a half and supported him while he pursued the answers he so desperately needed.
But then suddenly there was a little boy who needed him, his baby brother. The only living piece of his mother that he had left. And everything changed. His priorities shifted, the only thing that mattered was that Jonah was kept safe, that he had a home where he was surrounded by love, where he could learn all about his mother. She might not be there to take care of Jonah anymore, but she could send her love through TK, his big brother.
In the aftermath of Enzo’s arrest, Carlos told TK he wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility of a child, not when he had so much unfinished business and his heart was so consumed with fury and grief. Even though it terrified him to think about a life without Carlos, TK was faced with the possibility of having to break his own heart in order to give his brother the life he deserved.
And then Carlos caught his father’s killer, and, to his surprise, the fury of his grief didn’t subside. Because now without mountains of casefiles and suspects and leads to fill it with, the chasm of pain inside his heart only grew deeper.
TK remembers holding Carlos as he cried the night after he came home from the hospital, after the shoot out in the desert with the man who had killed his father and then served as Carlos’s boss and trusted mentor for a year. Carlos woke in a panic, finally succumbing to the emptiness of having what he felt was the last piece of his father finally put to rest.
Later, after TK had soothed him and reassured him that Gabriel wasn’t gone, that he lived on through the memories that Carlos and his sisters had of him, through the way Carlos carries himself as a husband and as a Ranger, Carlos told TK that that wasn’t everything Gabriel was. That although he had forgotten a lot of those sacred moments from his childhood, like the voices his dad would do for his beloved stuffed animal, Kique the koala, and puppet shows when he was sick, he’d spent the last year and a half getting to know his father through not just his old case files, but through the people who knew him. The Rangers that worked side by side with him, his informants, the barista at the coffee shop down the street from the Ranger station, his mom. He’d been learning new sides of his father, and the most important one was that despite everything, he was a good man. And a good father.
Gabriel Reyes wasn’t always the most receptive father to his son, didn’t always know the right things to say or the best way to show affection. But there was no doubt about it, he loved his family, loved being a father and a husband. He’d always provided, always showed up when they needed him. He and Carlos had finally begun to really understand each other when he was taken from them so violently and so prematurely.
After a year and a half of pursuing the why of Gabriel’s murder, he was finally ready to face the why of the pain. Gabriel was his dad. And Carlos realised that it wasn’t through solving his murder, or becoming an exemplary Ranger that he would continue his father’s legacy or make him proud. It was by being a good man, a generous and gracious husband, by prioritizing his family and building a good life. And, he told TK with a hopeful spark in his eye, by being brave. By being a good father to a little boy who desperately needed one.
TK knows that Carlos was scared, that despite coming to terms with everything his father was, he was still terrified of making the same mistakes and possibly causing more harm to a vulnerable little boy. But Carlos took to fatherhood naturally. His fear only made him more mindful, more sweet with both of them, more purposeful of prioritizing his family and holding up his promises.
He knows he would have taken Jonah in on his own if he had to, but this family wouldn’t be the same without Carlos.
Carlos, who is always coaxed into reading at least two extra stories when he tucks Jonah in at night, because he always reads them in the silly voices that Jonah adores.
Carlos, who lets Jonah ride around on his shoulders through the farmers market, the same one they’ve been going to almost every weekend since he and TK first started dating. The vendors they know by name, June, who provided the flower arrangements for their wedding, Marisol, who always gives Carlos an extra sample of her raspberry honey, and Maurice, who’s lamb rounds are the only cut of lamb Carlos will use for his carnitas, all love Jonah and have stickers and sweets for him when they stop by their booths.
Carlos, who spent an hour digging through boxes in his parents’ garage one afternoon after TK called him at work to tell him Jonah had the flu and that he’d been feeling so rotten he was practically inconsolable. He came home with Kique, his old stuffed koala, and put on a little puppet show in Jonah’s room until he fell asleep.
TK Strand is living a full, beautiful life. And it’s due in no small part to the man that’s walking through it by his side.
Later, when Jonah has gone up to brush his teeth before he and Carlos head out, TK corrals Carlos in the foyer where he’s just finished packing up his work satchel and pulling his boots on. He hands Carlos Jonah’s lunchbox and leans in for a kiss.
“You remind me of him, you know,” he says softly when he pulls back from their kiss, running a hand lightly over Carlos’s hair. He still gels his curls back for work, but since he wears the cowboy hat with his Rangers uniform, TK doesn’t have to be quite so careful not to mess it up as he did back when he was working as a patrol officer.
“Babe,” Carlos says, eyes going dark and shiny.
“It’s true,” TK says, cupping Carlos’s cheek with a soft hand. “It’s in the way you love us, the little ways you take care of us.” He moves his hand down to Carlos’s chest and rubs over his heart. “You’re an amazing man, an incredible father. He’s proud of you, I know it.”
“Thank you, baby,” Carlos replies, voice rough and eyes soft with fondness.
“You don’t have to thank me,” TK says, leaning up for another kiss, quicker this time. He knows they’ve got seconds before Jonah comes flying back into the room. “I always wanna make sure you know. You’re everything to me, to us. And we love you very much. I don’t know what we would do without you.”
“I love you too. You are both so precious to me.” Carlos smiles, grabbing TK’s hand and cradling it between their chests. “And you’ll never have to find out. I’m not going anywhere.”
The sound of little feet pattering across the hardwood floor is all the warning they get before Jonah is upon them.
“Are you KISSING?” he shouts.
“Not anymore,” TK mutters under his breath, causing Carlos to laugh and playfully flick the side of his head before he turns his attention to Jonah.
“Do you need help with your shoes, mijo?”
“No!”
Jonah grabs his blue and green Nikes, clearly pleased with himself when he manages to get them on the correct feet on the first try. It takes him a few minutes, but he’s able to bunny ear the laces into a tight enough knot before he bounces up and lets TK slide his backpack on.
Once he’s hugged TK goodbye, Jonah covers his eyes while Carlos properly kisses TK before they’re out the door and bounding down the driveway. TK stands in the doorway and watches them load up into Carlos’s truck. He waves as they back out of the driveway, sighing fondly to himself as he watches his whole world driving slowly away down their sleepy residential street.
This is not the life he expected, but somehow it’s everything he always wanted.