Chapter Text
Owen planted himself firmly on the chair he had brought up from the kitchen into his son's room, where he remained -- after waking him up two and a half hours later and making him down the remainder of the bottles brought out earlier in the night from his fridge -- save for trips to feed and hydrate himself. After T.K. fell back asleep, feeling the pull of the daytime hours and a previous lack of sleep and energy, Owen finally let himself get up and go to the bathroom. On his way out, he stopped once more in the kitchen for an energy bar.
He dropped the snack and bolted at the sound of a clatter from the upstairs.
"T.K.?! T.K., son, you're alright. Everything's alright, just breathe." In a scramble to collect himself and his bearings, it appeared that T.K. had pushed himself back up against the headboard of his bed, if that being where Owen found him was any indication. He knew from many, many jokes after similar stress-induced moments of panic that his son did not, in fact, need to breathe. At this point, the reminder served more as a selfish comfort, some semblance of normal in their lives. "T.K.," he tried again. "T.K., hey, hey, shh. It's alright, it's alright." He repeated the words to his boy like a mantra as T.K. cut him off, recognizing his voice.
"Dad? Dad, where...where am I? What happened?"
"You're ok. We're in your room, but you're ok. I'm here," he comforted, rubbing his thumb down T.K.'s jaw. "I'm here."
"What happened?" Owen could see the terror clouding his eyes as he waited for the turn of events that landed him here. With his history, Owen realized, God only knows what he thinks is happening to him. "What did I...?"
"You were shot." Owen held back a moment, letting his words sink it. You were shot. Overall, nothing serious. That's all that happened. "Do you remember any of it?"
"...last thing I remember..." T.K. spoke slowly, letting the memories of last night come back to the surface. "...being at the station, talking to you, and petting Buttercup. After that, it's...it's all black."
"That's probably for the best." Part of Owen feared his son recalling on his own terms, with no preparation to buffer the blow, exactly who had done this to him. His sweet, kind boy had a way with kids, and he feared the devastation in T.K. finding out the truth so suddenly, especially after he just got him down from the panic of before.
"Dad, what happened? Who...who the hell shot me?" he wondered, momentarily questioning the way his father refused to look him in the eye. Owen knew it was coming, and T.K. did not particularly like the sigh he let out before answering, delving into the details of the call.
"Oh, that poor kid," T.K. whispered, and Owen's heart tugged at that familiar puppy-dog look in his eyes. "Wait," he looked around the room before returning to Owen's gaze, "I...I understand why we aren't in a hospital right now, but...what about the team? What do they know? What did you tell them?" Owen took hold of T.K.'s hands at the sound of reoccurring panic rising in his voice and shushed him again.
"I didn't...T.K.! I didn't tell them anything more except that we had it taken care of. I sent them all back to the station. Judd covered the rest of the shift for me, though it was nearly over anyway. He's covering for me tonight as well."
"Wait, we?"
Owen hesitated again, and only spoke when T.K.'s pressing gaze pushed him over the edge. "Michelle and I, we-"
"Michelle?! Did I...Does she...?"
"Yes, son," he admitted, though he would be finding time to touch upon the subject of the first question. "She, obviously with good reason, tried to take you to the hospital. I couldn't let that happen, and she is a medical professional. I skillfully convinced her to break protocol and let me take you home, and there wasn't much I could do about her finding out, but I promise, son, she's alright. It's Michelle. She doesn't want to see you hurt any more than I do. And you absolutely did not hurt her. You wouldn't hurt her."
"You wouldn't let me hurt her. That doesn't mean I wouldn't try."
"Hey!" Owen would be lying if he said it was the first time he'd heard T.K. talk down about himself, but the two had been working on resolving that over time, and he believed they had come too far to turn back over something like this. "I don't know if we would have gone through this life without a single other soul knowing what happened to you or not. What I do know is that if you hurt anyone -- and that is a major 'if' -- we would figure it out, and it would without a doubt, never be on purpose. You're not that kind of person."
"I'm not a person, dad. And now one of the most important people in my life knows that!" he shouted, though Owen knew in the way he flinched back and closed in on himself immediately after that this was not the rational side of T.K.'s brain talking. The silence in the room was stifling, but thankfully only lasted a minute or two. "Sun'll be down in a few hours, and we've had a long day. I'm gonna get some more sleep."
"Ok," Owen relented, running a hand through T.K.'s hair and giving one of those award-winning comforting dad-smiles. "We'll talk more when you wake up."
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Owen returned to work the next day, with what T.K considered an annoying level of conflict. He had been chomping at the bit to get back to work, but he knew just as well the questions and concerns that would arise if he walked into the firehouse a few hours after taking a bullet to the chest, displaying a wound that had fully healed. Michelle's professional opinion gave him a week as the the earliest he could come back to light duty without it looking suspicious, so a free week off he took, very begrudgingly. He had no idea of the tale his father spun to explain to the team why they could not visit him in the hospital until his father returned home from shift.
"Just to be clear, I -- with you for a father and a team of paramedics, and with my own dual-certification that the team is fully aware of -- signed myself out AMA in order to work with a holistic specialist at home..."
"I did add that the specialist was recommended by your mother because we all know how she's into that and how much you hate hospitals."
"And they believed that...?"
"If they didn't, they didn't tell me."
"What happens if they want to visit at the house and they find me up and around with barely a scar?"
"Well, then that specialist deserves a 10-star rating!"
T.K. shook his head and sighed, plopping into an armchair as he flexed the lingering stiffness from his muscles, aware of the minor burn in his chest.
His father sat across from him, hands folded and propped up on his knees. "Have we considered just coming clean to them?"
"That doesn't change anything, dad."
"What doesn't it change? We don't have to involve imaginary witch-doctors for one thing!"
"First of all, I don't think holistic practitioners would like that term. And second, there's still plenty of people we would have to lie to. The rest of the house? The department? The world could find out about the vampire firefighter?"
"The world is not going to find out, T.K. Especially not just because the team finds out. And what about that cop? You said you two were getting a little more serious?"
"I really like him, dad. I...I don't know. We both know what happened last time I was serious about someone."
"Well, there's one bright side in all of this."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Pretty sure you can't become a vampire twice!"
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T.K was too confused by the spiking hum that came before the spark to warn Carlos to get his hands off the reader. Suddenly the street erupted into blaring horns and sparks spitting and T.K. was pulling Carlos into his arms as if the colliding vehicles were right on top of them. Impulsive, but he didn't care. Despite just telling Carlos he was not sure what they were -- what or who he was -- he had a feeling he would risk his identity to the entire world to throw himself between a bus and this very not immortal man.
The water from the hydrant flooded the bus far faster than he thought it would, and he now realized how stupid he had been to not use up extra blood in order to heal the bullet wound faster than it would naturally as his father suggested. His reasoning had been not wasting rations that were not easy to come by, and his father had relented with an agreement that he take an extra day to rest -- a day he had not originally been scheduled for a shift anyway. His father did not need to know about the current outing with a certain officer, but he had a feeling he would find out T.K. left the house. None of that mattered though, because Ellen was piled under far too much and his limbs were growing tired, plus in the distraction of fire breaking out, the water had risen to face-level, and she resigned to her fate, sinking down beneath the surface. T.K., however, was renowned for his stubborn nature, and refusing to give up so easily, took in a deep breath of oxygen he did not need, and plunged his face into the water. 3 breaths later, and a familiar face revealed themselves through his water-blurred eyes, shoving a cloth over his face as he dragged him through the smoke.
In any other circumstance, T.K. would voice his concern to his father over just how skilled he'd gotten at lying to hide his son's non-human traits. Then, he feared, was not the time.
"I need to get home...I...need to..."
"Go. T.K., son, go. I'll tell medical I checked you out and cleared you. Go home."
He nodded a weary thanks and separated himself from his father. Looking up, he caught Carlos's eye, who looked torn, relieved, and started to make his way over. T.K. headed in the direction of the ambulances, praying he wouldn't notice him dip into the crowd and slip to the side of the doors. He paused for a moment as the doors thankfully closed behind a patient that was not him, and watched Carlos and his dad speak, content smiles on their faces. He wanted to run to him, hold him and just go back to Carlos's place and take a nap.
He wanted to be normal.
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He sat, leg bouncing and his fingers fiddled with a bottle of mineral water like his life depended on it -- a metaphor for something his brain could not get into at that particular moment -- as the rigs pulled into the bay and his teammates hopped out. His father noticed him first, of course, and then the others did in turn, starting with Mateo cracking a joke. "What are you doing here? How did it go at the hospital?" his father questioned out loud, before leaning in out of earshot. "I thought you were going home."
"I headed that way, and then...then I ended up here. I'm fine." He prayed he sounded convincing.
"Why do you look like you're about to jump off of a cliff?" 'Damn.'
"Can we use your office?"
He did not like the look on his dad's face, but he nodded. "Sure, come on."
"No, dad-" T.K. hopped up from the bench, squeezing past his dad. "Uh, hey guys? I wanted to...talk to you about something."
The team turned their attention to T.K., and he looked back at his father. "Uh, I think this is a private, team-matter. Upstairs?" he offered, and the team all shared concerned and odd looks, but followed the Captain and T.K. up the stairs. Paul, ever observant as he was, kept glancing between T.K. and Marjan in an attempt to gauge if she could see the pale complexion, tremble in his hands, and anxiety-ridden bounce in his step. She nodded and followed Judd up the stairs. Paul, being the last one in, closed Cap's door behind them.
"So, what's going on?" Judd asked, primarily directed at Cap.
"I'm not entirely sure what this is. T.K.?" There were plenty of news T.K. could share with his teammates, and Owen did not lie when he said he wasn't sure. He just simply wasn't sure what exactly was going to come out of his son's mouth. He wasn't entirely sure he was prepared for any of T.K.'s truths to come out, either -- not at that moment at least. Nonetheless, T.K. felt he needed to say something, and Owen was here for it. For him.
"I'm an addict, and..." Owen perked up at this, not prepared for there to be more. "I'm...a vampire?"
In hindsight, T.K. thought, he probably should have revealed these pieces of himself separately, because nobody wants to laugh when your friend is telling you about their lifelong struggles with substance abuse. Nobody outwardly laughed, hesitating as they took in the strange coupling of information and silently egged T.K. into an explanation with their gazes.
"It's opioids, and a few months back, I had a a breakup that went really bad. I was...I was going to propose, and he'd been cheating on me for months. Then he decided that he did actually want us to be together, forever. Except I didn't know how literally he meant it until I woke up in an alleyway with him standing over me, covered in my own blood with two holes in my throat. After that, I ran away from him, got ahold of some pills, and...I overdosed. My dad, uh, my captain-" he stuttered, giving his dad a look over his shoulder. "He found me unconscious. My heart had stopped, and...Well, he did what he does best, and he saved my life. The only reason I came down here is cause he forced me to. What I'm trying to say is..." With this, he turned fully back to his father. "I never really chose this for myself....any of it," he sighed. "Not even becoming a firefighter, and uh...well..."
"Hey, hey." Judd cutting him off made T.K. jumped, though he curled in on himself as if he could hide the fact right after it happened. "Whatever you gotta say right here, say it. Yeah?"
Paul clapped a hand against his shoulder. "Yeah, he's right, man. We got you, fam."
"Yeah, well, that's the point. Cause, today at that intersection when that woman was dying, I would've...I would have given her everything I had to save her. And I did give her everything I had, which is more than most people could do safely, probably...but it wasn't enough," he sighed, feeling the familiar pain of exhaustion and itch swell in his heart. He looked back at his dad again. "...until you showed up. All of you guys, and I knew in that instant that not only was she going to be ok, but...I was going to be ok, too, because this...this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, as long as I can do it, at least. And at least for now, this is where I wanna do it! With you guys, so...I choose this family, because this is...this is where I belong."
The team was all nods and smiles, until Mateo and Paul dragged everyone in for a hug.
"Alright, everybody go hit the showers. I'm proud of every one of you!"
"Don't you mean 'every one of ya'll?"
"Yeah, that too-"
"Wait, we aren't going to talk about the 'vampire' thing? You gotta show me, dude! That's so sick!"
"Hey, another day, probie. Can't you see he's had a long day." The team squabbled on the way out the door, leaving Owen and T.K. laughing behind them.
"Alright," Owen said, pulling out of the hug he'd pulled T.K. into. "I've got some paperwork I'm going to finish up, and then I thought maybe-"
"Hey, Mini Strand, you got company!" Judd shouted from below.
Owen gave his son a questioning glance and followed him towards the door, watching one officer Reyes stroll towards the bay. He looked up, meeting T.K.'s eyes with that soft grin he wore.
"How many life decisions did you make today?"
"One step at a time, dad," he smiled. "I'll see you at home."
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"What are you thinking?" Carlos asked, the two of them strewn across the hood of the car with shimmering auroras painting the skies overhead.
"I'm thinking...we make a pretty good team."
Carlos agreed, and their fingers intertwined, a thousand words filling the silence around them.
Maybe that silence would not be filled by any more confessions that night. A part of T.K. knew, he didn't want to risk losing this one. The team had been a safety blanket, he reasoned. More than one person, more than one reaction. Maybe if Paul had reacted badly, Marjan would have made him see reason. Though he hated to admit it, he'd been most worried about Judd's reaction, to either set of news. But Judd and his dad had gotten close, and he knew his dad would protect him. A part of him also knew, however, that those fears were not entirely rational. This was his team he was talking about.
And this is Carlos.
And Carlos, he knew, was both no different and on an entirely different playing field.
One step at a time.