Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. - Emily Dickinson

The next time they come back there are only two of them. The next time they come back they’re careless. The next time they come back he fights, the wet crumple crunch of something breaking under his fist, and a bright spurt of blood. He keeps fighting even though he knows he can’t win to buy Iris time to get away, and then he keeps fighting because he thinks they won’t actually let him get seriously hurt, that there’s something they need him for. It’s nice to be right he thinks vaguely even as they hold him down and slide a needle into his vein.

He comes to sometime later. There’s no light filtering in through the window now, when there had been earlier. He’s lost his sense of time, but it doesn’t get dark until after 7:30 this time of year, so he’s either only lost part of a day, or more than a full day. He tries not to panic that he has no way of knowing which it is.

There’s a sandwich on a plate next to him. It’s been there long enough for the bread to be dried out on the outside and soggy from the mayo on the inside. He eats it anyway. The seal on the water bottle they left is broken and he figures it’s drugged. He drinks it anyway because he’s more worried about dehydration than whatever they’re dosing him with.

He’s right. It’s not enough to knock him out, just enough to make him drowsy and sluggish, enough to make him clumsy and lumbering, graceless when he tries to stand. He gets up and walks in circles around the room to stay awake, to try and work some of whatever it is out of his system while he waits for them to come back.

He sits periodically to rest because walking in circles around the room makes him dizzy. He tips his head back against the wall and drifts.

Three months ago, TK loose and easy, relaxed now that his final papers have been turned in and he's been stuffed full of two slices of Paul’s lasagna and a huge wedge of the cheesecake Nancy brought. Carlos can't stop looking at him, and he's being obvious and he doesn't care. There's nobody at this table who doesn't know how in love he is.

He tells himself that he’s not worried. That Iris got out. That she’s safe, and she’s telling TK and the cavalry where he is.

They bring him a protein bar and more drugged water. He eats and drinks. Walks around the room with his hand on the wall for balance. Drifts in and out of memory with every step.

He's not really paying attention to the conversation, idly twisting his wine glass with the last few sips still left in it. His attention is caught when TK sits up, protesting, laughing. "One time. One time, Nancy. And, how do you even know?"

She's pointing at him and laughing, “I have my sources.”

“Well, that’s not terrifying at all.”

Paul quirks an eyebrow at her. "Share with the class?"

"TK played Cyrano for one of the kids in his study group."

TK kicks her under the table. "Saying I played Cyrano implies I ended up with the girl."

They come back again. He names them Minion #1 and Minion #2, because Marisol made them watch Despicable Me a few weekends ago when he and TK had babysat so Lorena and Tomás could go out on a date. The minions tell him the boss is arriving soon and looking forward to talking to him. They leave a stale muffin and another bottle of water. He doesn’t drink the water this time, tips it out carefully and lets the cheap carpet hide the wet spot.

Carlos hides a smile behind his glass of wine. "Was the girl in question a nice 15th C marble sculpture? Or, ooh, one of those art nouveau tables held up by a wood nymph?"

TK throws his napkin at him. "I mean, I wouldn't say no to one of those." He grins at Carlos and lets their fingers tangle. “You keep saying we need a new coffee table." Carlos leans back and enjoys the warmth of the wine, and the teasing, and the easy intimacy of touch.

They don't take any chances when they come for him this time. Three men, all armed. They blindfold him and walk him down a hallway, and then up in an elevator. He tries to count how long, see how far up they take him, but can’t gauge it. They push him into a chair and cuff his wrists to the arms, one on either side and cinch the cuffs tight. He pulls against them experimentally and they're tight enough that he'll have bruises by the time whatever this is is over. He thinks even TK might have problems getting out of this without help.

They take the blindfold off last and he blinks in the sudden light. A conference room. A nice conference room. The blinds are shut, but from ambient light he’s guessing they’re up pretty high. One of the downtown office buildings maybe?

And then they wait. It takes a while. Apparently the boss likes an entrance.

He looks up when there's noise in the corridor and has to work to keep from having a reaction when the door opens. She looks like a grandmother. Not one of his abuelas, to be fair, but in another context she looks like she'd bake you cookies and kiss your knee when you skinned it.

She sits down, and arranges her skirt across her knees, crossing her ankles and tucking them neatly to the side. In his head he can hear his Tía Francesca telling his cousin Anna that that's how a lady sits.

"So," she says finally. "I can't say it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance Detective Reyes. In an ideal world we would never have met."

He opens his eyes wide, the look that can get TK to do just about anything. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’m Daniel Alvarez.” He jerks at the cuffs. “What do you want with me?”

She gives him a dry look. "Detective Reyes, this will be a lot easier if we both agree that neither one of us is stupid.”

He considers that; borrows some of TK’s lazy confidence and relaxes back in the chair. He tilts his head. "Feels a little one-sided if you know my name but I don't know yours, Mrs?”

She smiles, and it’s disconcertingly motherly. "My son’s friends call me Miss Trudie.” It’s the name of a Sunday school teacher.

He’s not sure he’d count himself one of her son’s friends, but, "Nice to meet you Miss Trudie." He rattles his wrists in the cuffs. "I'd shake your hand, but . . . "

She smiles again and doesn't take the bait. "So, Detective Reyes, you’ve been investigating the Reuth art collection. Any particular reason?”

He opens his eyes wide again, innocent until proven guilty. “I enjoy art. Their collection is excellent and not usually open to the public.”

She purses her lips, but looks more amused than angry. “Detective, do I need to remind you again that neither of us is stupid?”

He inclines his head. “Sorry, ma’am. We heard that there was a big sale coming up, I got sent to investigate.”

She hmms thoughtfully and switches tacks. “Your companion. The one who declined my hospitality.”

He breathes and makes his hands stay loose and still, looks around the room. “She works in their PR department, helps coordinate their local community give-backs.” He shrugs. “I needed an in.”

She makes a thoughtful noise and snaps her fingers, and Minion #1 hands her a phone on cue. She looks at whatever is on the screen for a moment and then flips it around so he can see. It’s a video. Him and Iris.

"Listen, when they move us, if you have a chance I want you to run."

Iris turns her head slowly to look at him. "And you'll come with me?"

He avoids her gaze. "If I can, yes."

"And if not?" He doesn't need to look at her to see her incredulous expression.

"And if not," he says levelly, "I want you to run. I want you to take whatever chance you see and run."

"No."

"Yes."

"Is this some kind of macho bullshit?"

"No!" Her silence is loud, and after a moment he allows, "Okay, yes probably a little bit. But I need you to get out so you can tell TK where I am.”"

She arches an eyebrow at him. “You want me to tell TK I left you behind? "Do you know how much TK will lose his shit if you get hurt?"

He smiles faintly. "I think I've got a pretty good idea. But I want you to run anyway."

He shrugs. “Like I said, I needed an in. She could get me one.”

She makes a thoughtful noise. “You let her go.”

He shrugs. “I needed her to send up the Bat Signal. She’s a woman. I don’t like collateral damage. Pick a reason.”

She considers that. “Chivalry. Your mother brought you up well.”

“My father too. He taught me to hold doors for women, to keep them safe.”

She nods approvingly. “And TK?”

“My partner.” Considers the potential confusion and amends, “Boyfriend.”

She snaps her fingers again and Minion #2 hands her a phone that Carlos recognizes as his. She taps it to pull up the lock screen and examines the picture on it. “This him?” He nods. “Pretty.”

He blinks, surprised. “Uh, yes. Thank you.”

She looks him over. “No ring?”

“No ring,” he agrees. And then concedes, “We’ve been talking about it.” About it. Around it.

She rubs a thumb against the thin gold band on her ring finger. It’s the only jewelry she’s wearing, and it looks like a familiar well worn gesture. “Don’t wait too long. When you find the right person you should treasure every moment you get.” She folds her hands over the phone and looks at him. “You have disrupted my plans, Detective.”

He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Sorry, not sorry?”

Behind him he hears one of the minions snort, #3 he thinks. Trudie gives them a quelling look. “The partners at Reuth have lost faith in my son, and are insisting on having you give a final appraisal on the statue before they’ll sign the final sale.”

He nods. “Yes.”

She pins him with a look. “You are a complication.” He doesn’t say anything, and she huffs a breath. “Can I assume that you are not planning on authenticating the statue? That you will be saying it is a forgery, and laying the blame on my son’s doorstep?”

He tilts his head. “Is the statue a forgery?” She looks unamused. He settles himself more comfortably in the chair. “Your son is a liability.”

“My son is my son,” she says mildly, but there’s a threat there. She pauses and says with a shade of resignation, "He can be impulsive. Like his father."

“I don’t wanna be rude, ma’am, but your son is the reason we ever caught on to what you were doing.” She narrows her eyes, and he gambles with explaining more. “He was stealing pieces from the Reuth collection and leaving really obvious fakes in their place. You got burned because he was careless and led us right to him.”

She leans back and looks entertained. “Detective, are you arguing for a smarter class of criminal?”

He shrugs. “Makes my job more interesting when they are.” He pauses. “Your son is not interesting.” He smiles at her. “You, on the other hand, are fascinating.”

He’s not even surprised when they slip the needle into his arm this time.

Chapter Text

REWIND

TK is leaving a hickey, he can feel it. Mitchell is going to tease him about it on Monday, but that's a problem for the end of the weekend. Right now it's Friday night, there's leftover takeout cooling on the kitchen counter, a movie neither of them is watching playing low on the TV, and he has TK sprawled out on top of him, sucking a slow hickey at the corner of his jaw and sneaking a hand under Carlos's shirt to palm his stomach. He stretches his neck further into TK's kiss, ignoring the faint buzzing sound of his phone until TK stops what he’s doing and lifts his head.

He tugs TK back down. "They'll leave a message if it's important."

TK stays propped up, and Carlos makes a low displeased noise, trying to pull him back down. "They’ve called three times in the last five minutes,” TK says, entirely too reasonably for someone who had been slowly grinding his hips into Carlos’s thigh a moment ago. “Someone's looking for you, baby. You should probably answer it."

He grumbles as TK disentangles himself and hands him the phone, which has started ringing again. TK takes his place on the couch when Carlos sits up, stretching out, arms draped over his head across the arm of the couch. He looks like high quality porn of a Victorian poet dying of consumption, and he’s not even bothering to pretend like he’s not trying to distract Carlos, which seems unfair since he was the one who insisted Carlos answer the damn phone. Carlos bites his lip, eyes dropping to the splay of TK’s thighs, and then his attention snaps into focus at the voice on the other end of the phone. "Iris?"

TK props himself up, and mouths, '”Iris?” Frowns, and sits up straighter and says out loud, “Like your childhood best friend Iris?”

He nods distractedly; can’t imagine why she’s calling. "Wait, you're here? Like here, here?" He pushes himself up off the couch, and crosses to the door to buzz her in, and open the front door while they wait for her to come up. He turns to look at TK, who’s slowly sitting up and straightening his shirt. "Iris is here. She says she has something she wants to show us."

"Now?" TK glances at his watch. "At nine o'clock on a Friday night?"

Carlos shrugs, equally mystified. "Apparently?"

TK watches him from the couch as he starts to tidy the detritus of their evening. “When was the last time you saw her?”

He moves to the kitchen and starts to put away their leftovers. “In person? Years ago. She lives in Dallas, doesn’t come back to Austin much.”

“Why is she here now?”

He waves a hand in the direction of the open front door. “I know exactly as much as you do.” The sound of the lift door opening interrupts him, and he swings suddenly towards TK. “I have to warn you, Iris is, she doesn’t have a lot of filter.” She’d never had much filter, had never seen the point, and the few times he’s seen her in the last decade he’s understood Michelle’s comment that her meds have erased what little she’d had. And then she’s there before he can try and explain more.

It’s been years since he’s seen her in person, even longer since they’ve said anything to each other deeper than commenting on an Instagram post. He tries to remember the last conversation they’d had in person ‒ Christmas maybe, a year or so before he met TK, at her mother’s house, for a few minutes when he dropped off cookies and politely declined a mug of cider. He’s not sure now how they’d lost touch so easily, when they’d been so close before. Close enough that he’d asked her to marry him. Close enough for her to tell him no, because it wasn’t what either one of them really wanted and she loved him too much to be his escape plan.

Watching her walk down the hallway towards him he has double vision - the girl he’d grown up with, and this woman she’s become, superimposed one on the other. She’s wearing tailored slacks and a pale blue sweater. Her hair is up in a neat french twist, and she has a leather messenger bag over her shoulder. He looks for the girl who’d dyed her hair in candy cane stripes for Christmas one year to piss off her aunt, and doesn’t see her anywhere. But, when she gets close enough she throws her arms around him, and she still smells like lemon verbena and clove, and she whispers in his ear, “Hey loser, I’ve missed you.” And then she pulls away and slaps him hard across the face. “Where the fuck did you disappear to? I did not give you permission to ghost me.” Behind him he hears TK’s sharp shocked gasp, but he’s grinning, because this Iris he recognizes.

He grins and yanks her back in for another hug. When he pulls back she peers over his shoulder. “Is that TK?” She looks back at him, and punches his shoulder. “Damn, you got game while I wasn’t looking.”

TK slants Carlos a look he can’t quite interpret, and takes a step forward before Carlos can introduce him, holding out a hand. “I’m TK, Carlos’s partner. It’s nice to finally have a chance to meet you.”

Iris also gives him a look, although this one he’s familiar with - one he’d learned to be wary of before they graduated 2nd grade - and before he can intervene Iris is shaking TK’s hand. “I’m Iris, I used to be his beard.” She links an arm with TK. “I have heard so much about you. We should compare notes about what he’s like to sleep with.” TK smiles wide and easy, and Carlos thinks he might be the only person in the world who would see the brittle edge underneath it.

“Has he always snored?” TK asks lightly, teasing. “Is there a secret to sleeping through it?”

“Heard from who?” He asks blankly, and then belatedly, “I do not snore.”

Iris and TK give him identical, ‘bitch, please,’ looks, and he is momentarily terrified.

Iris follows TK over to the kitchen island where TK starts making tea, apparently on autopilot, and spares him a glance over her shoulder. “Michelle and Nancy talk about y’all.” She gives him a cheerfully malicious smile, and he braces himself. “You and TK are the hot gossip at the 126. There’s a pool on when—”

He cuts her off before she can finish, because he knows of at least five pools the 126 is running on their lives and none of them are something he wants to get into with Iris right now. “Michelle doesn’t even work at the 126 anymore.”

Iris shrugs. “Yeah, but she and Nancy are still friends.” She waves a hand around the loft. “How do you think I knew where to find you?”

She leans against the kitchen island, giving TK an evaluating look while he fusses with making tea and arranging a plate of cookies. Carlos suspects it’s more to give himself something to do than because he wants tea, but he doesn’t interfere. “So, you’re TK.”

TK looks up. “Am I as advertised?”

She tilts her head. “Nancy said you worked at the Blanton, I was expecting tweed and,” she waves a hand in the general direction of his head, “balding? Not Indiana Jones.” She considers him for another moment. “Wouldn’t have pegged you as Carlos’s type.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” TK says blandly, and does not meet Carlos’s eyes.

Iris stares at him for an unnervingly long moment before she takes one of the cookies TK holds out to her. “Didn’t say disappointing, just not what I pictured.” She chews thoughtfully. “It’s good I think. Carlos always needed a little bit of irresponsible adventure in his life.”

There’s a flash of hurt on TK’s face that Carlos catches before TK can mask it, and he clears his throat loudly. “Iris, was there a reason you came over at nine o’clock on a Friday night, other than to tease me?”

She gives him a dry look that says she knows what he’s doing, but she also sets her bag flat on the dining room table and pulls a file out of it. She points at TK. “I need you to look at this.”

“Me? Even though I’m an irresponsible adventure?”

Iris ignores his dig and just nods. “‘Chelle’s in Ecuador for a couple of months helping with emergency services after the earthquake last year, but Nancy says you know about art.”

TK gives Carlos a look that promises a lot of questions when Iris leaves, but crosses to the table to see what she’s taking out of the file. "Okay?” He looks at the page she’s carefully slid out of archival paper and set on the table. “I'm not sure what I'm looking at?"

Iris pulls a print out of something from a different folder and hands it to him. "According to this inventory record it's a sketch by Degas from 1864, a study for one of his paintings of dancers."

TK looks at the print out and then at the sketch on the table. "I mean, it's very much not that."

Carlos studies the sketch. It is a clumsy pencil drawing of a dancer with broad splashes of color daubed on with watercolors. It was very clearly not drawn by Degas. "Misarchived?" he suggests dubiously. Although at a glance he wouldn’t have said this was worth anything.

Iris shakes her head. “There’s nothing else in the inventory that even remotely matches this description. I looked. Twice.”

“Forgery?” he suggests even more dubiously, because his cousin’s nine-year old has a better sense of line and proportion than this. Mind you, Ari has TK as a part-time teacher, and also he might be biased.

TK looks offended. "Not a good one. I mean, even leaving aside the actual sketch,” he looks pained, “the paper isn't even pretending to be the right age, and I don’t think Degas ever colored anything in acid yellow and lipstick red.” He scowls at it. “If you're going to forge something, at least put a little effort into it." He glances at Iris, who looks relieved and vindicated, and his body softens in curiosity. "Where did you get it?”

She rubs her forehead. "So, I work at an oil company in Dallas.” Carlos raises an incredulous eyebrow, and she swats at his stomach without even looking. He winces at the hit. She’s never bothered to pull her punches. “They have a lot of money, and they need someone to help them look like they’re not evil.” She gestures at herself. “Enter me.”

TK eyes her. “And how do you do that exactly?”

“I spend their money,” she says cheerfully. “A lot of it, and as long as they get good press and a nice tax write off at the end of the year they don’t ask many questions.” She shrugs. “I get them to fund outreach to the unhoused in Dallas, help them find permanent housing if they want it, help them get meds if they need them, help them get clean if they’re interested, or give them a safe place to get high if they’re not.”

“Iris,” he starts and doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

She forestalls his attempt at a coherent thought. “I got lucky. I had you, and Michelle, and a mom with good health insurance. Not everyone gets that. Reuth has stupid amounts of money, and I’m willing to help launder their reputation if it means I get to do this.” TK’s looking a question at him, and he shakes his head to say he’ll explain later, and is unutterably grateful that TK accepts that and turns back to the demonstrably not a Degas sketch on the table.

Iris looks at it too. “We’re running a charity auction at the end of the month, the partners said I could go through the art storeroom and take a few things.” She waves a hand. “I mean, obviously not the expensive shit, but some of the little stuff that they just ended up with somehow and are never going to put on display because it’s not splashy enough. I was going through the flat files and found this, and I don’t know a lot about art, but I know that’s not a Degas.”

“Okay,” TK agrees. “I’m still not sure why you’re showing it to me?” He pauses and looks slightly alarmed. “Wait, did you just walk out with this? Drive it across,” he pauses and looks like he’s trying to count and then gives up, “I don’t know, like a lot of jurisdictions?”

Iris shrugs. “I said I’d found something interesting and wanted to get a second opinion about it. Which is true. Just maybe not the way they assumed I meant it. They let me sign it out.”

TK looks torn between being impressed and like he feels like he maybe ought to be disapproving. “Okay. Let’s put a pin in that for now. Why bring it to me?”

“I wanted to be sure I was right.” TK raises an eyebrow, and she shrugs, like it’s obvious. “You work at the Blanton.”

“With kids,” TK points out. “I’m a glorified art history teacher.”

Iris rolls her eyes. “Not what Nancy says.” TK opens his mouth, presumably to ask what Nancy’s said, and Carlos pinches him surreptitiously to get the conversation back on track. TK doesn’t flinch, but he does concede the point. “Okay, let’s say that maybe I know something about art forgery from working at the Blanton.” Carlos can’t help the noise he makes and TK glares at him. “I still don’t know what you want me to do about this?”

Her eyes slide to Carlos now. “You made detective.”

Carlos nods slowly. “I did.”

Iris nods. “I figure you probably won’t arrest me.” She gives TK a sidelong glance. “Probably wouldn’t be shacking up with him if that was going to be your first reaction.”

TK raises an eyebrow. “I’ve suddenly got a lot of questions about what Nancy’s been saying to Michelle about what I did before I got to Austin.”

“My money’s on gigolo,” Iris says matter of factly.

TK chokes and Carlos tries to bite his cheek against laughter and fails.

Iris grins at Carlos’s amusement and then sobers. “Look. If I take this to the cops the best case scenario is they think I’m off my meds and delusional, worst case they think I’m off my meds and I stole it and I get put on a psych hold.” She gives them both a hard look. “I’m not off my meds, I’m not delusional, and I didn’t steal it.”

TK’s face doesn’t change, but Carlos can feel the shift in the room when he goes from mildly annoyed and wary to interested and sympathetic. “No, you’re not delusional. This is definitely not a Degas. And, if you stole it, why would you bother to bring it here to tell us about it?” Some of the fight goes out of Iris at TK’s words, and he can’t help reaching out to squeeze TK’s fingers in gratitude.

TK doesn’t look away from Iris, but he does let their fingers tangle for a moment. “I’m guessing this isn’t the only thing you found that seemed out of place?”

She bites her lip and shakes her head. “I can’t be sure, but I think there are at least another four, maybe five others, sketches like this - bullshit placeholders for what ought to be there.”

TK squints at the sketch, and Carlos can literally see the moment the switch in his brain trips over to intrigued. “Okay, but why?”

Iris frowns. “What do you mean why? Someone is obviously stealing art from the collection and replacing it with shitty copies so they can sell the real thing.”

TK nods. “No, I get that. Steal the things nobody’s going to go looking for, something that maybe they bought as part of a lot at an auction. Just,” he gestures at the obviously-not-a-Degas sketch, “it’s not worth all that much, even if it’s a low stakes crime you still have to make the swap, and then find an under the table buyer. It seems like a lot of effort for not that much reward.”

Carlos considers what Iris had said. “Could add up though. Not worth much if you steal one, but if you steal five or ten or fifteen pieces? Maybe it’s not going to buy you a boat, but pay off your credit card? Take a nice vacation? Most theft is for less money than you’d think.”

TK still looks skeptical, but accepts the premise. “Okay, let’s go with that for now. I guess my next question is, what do you want to do about it?” She frowns, obviously confused. TK waves a hand at the sketch. “I’m assuming this visit isn’t just because you want me to confirm what you already know, and then you’re going to drive back to Dallas and put it back where you found it and pretend like you never saw it?” She shakes her head. “And, you don’t want to tell the partners that someone in their art department has sticky fingers?”

“I was the last one in there. Not all that eager to have them point the finger at me and take it to the cops so they can set me up for it.” She flashes Carlos a look. “No offense.”

“None taken.” He says dryly.

TK frowns. “So what do you want to do?”

She gives him an exasperated look. “I don’t want to do anything, that’s why I brought it here.” She narrows her eyes at him. “What do you want to do about it?”

“I want to figure out who’s lifting nice art and leaving shitty didn’t even try copies in its place.” TK says promptly.

Carlos shakes his head. “Why do you sound like you’re more offended that it’s a bad forgery than that it’s a forgery in the first place?”

TK’s lips twitch. “We’ve all got our priorities, babe.” He looks back at the sketch and then at Iris and rubs his forehead. “So you came here because I work at the Blanton, and Carlos is a cop you can trust?”

Iris nods. “Not like my social circle includes a lot of cops. Most of the people I work with don’t trust them much.” She flashes Carlos a grin. “No offense.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “None taken. Again. But, I’m APD. This is a little out of my jurisdiction.”

TK taps his fingers on the table. “You’re sure this isn’t the only thing that’s been replaced?” Iris nods. “And there’s no chance it’s just a partner or someone taking something home to put on their wall, and forgetting to let anyone know?”

She snorts. “They like their expensive art to look expensive. That does not look expensive.” She shrugs. “Also, I asked around with the admins, none of them knew anything about it, and they’d definitely have been the ones doing the actual picking if one of the partners wanted something. Most of them don’t know how to open their own mail.”

TK’s lips twitch again. “Fair enough.” TK looks indecisive for a moment, and then seems to come to some kind of internal decision and glances at Carlos. “Matt?”

He nods in agreement. “Matt.”

Iris looks between them. “Who is Matt?”

“FBI White Collar. We’re friends.” TK smiles at her, and there’s only a little edge in it. “Don’t worry, he’s got a soft spot for art thieves.”

“I did not steal it,” Iris objects, but without heat.

She leaves the sketch on the table when she puts her coat back on, he suspects on the basis that if someone is going to get caught with it she’d rather it wasn’t her, although what she says is, “Not my taste. Doesn’t match my carpet or my drapes.” She waggles her eyebrows at Carlos when she says it, and he hears TK muffle a surprised laugh.

TK promises to set up a meeting with Matt. She looks at Carlos for confirmation that he agrees, and he’s unexpectedly surprised and touched that even after all this time and distance between them that she still trusts him. He nods. “Matt’s good people. He’ll believe you if you explain it to him like you did to us.” She still looks dubious and he adds, “We’ll go in with you.”

She rolls her eyes, and sounds more like herself when she says, “Like it wasn’t always me holding your hand when we were kids.”

TK leans back against the loft door when he closes it behind her. “So, that was Iris.”

Carlos nods, tidying away the dinner dishes that he hadn’t gotten too before Iris arrived. “That was Iris.” He looks up to find TK staring at him with an exaggerated ‘and’ expression. “And, I don’t know what you want me to say?”

TK pushes himself off the door, crossing to the kitchen to lean a hip against the counter, watching Carlos as he finishes cleaning. “You were best friends in high school. You asked her to marry you.”

“She said no,” he points out. “She laughed in my face actually.” And then she’d held him while he pretended he wasn’t crying, but he doesn’t add that, although he thinks TK might somehow know anyway.

“And then?” TK asks patiently.

He shrugs. “And then we graduated, and I went to UT Austin and she went to Tulane.”

He dries his hands and leans against the counter, absently folding the towel into neat thirds and fussing with hanging it over the oven door. It’s been a long time since he thought about what happened next, and he’s never talked about it to anyone who hadn’t been there when it happened.

He stares at the spoon rest on the counter, not really seeing it. “Halfway through Spring semester our first year her mom got a call from her roommate because she hadn’t been home in a week, and then it turned out she hadn’t been to any of her classes in a month, and nobody knew where she was. Her mom filed a missing person’s report, but it went nowhere. Michelle took a leave of absence and basically moved to New Orleans to look for her. I drove out when I could, spent a lot of weekends there. It took us until almost Thanksgiving to find her, living in a tent city.”

He looks up at TK and answers the question he’s politely not asking. “Schizophrenia. Nobody saw it coming. Her mom got her into an in-patient facility in Dallas, and she was there for a year, trying to find the right combination of meds. She wouldn’t let any of us visit her. When she stabilized enough she started letting Michelle go up to see her, or Michelle just stopped taking no for an answer, I’m not sure. I tried a couple of times, but she’d be out, or close the door in my face, or tell Michelle to tell me to go away. Michelle asked me to stop trying, that it was making her anxious, so I did. She was my best friend, I never wanted to make her life harder.”

He takes a shuddery breath, reaching for composure. It’s been years since he thought of this, but talking about it now brings it back, the worry, the fear, and then the way he’d felt abandoned, even though he knows that isn’t fair to Iris. When he looks up TK is looking at him with sympathy, like he knows the things Carlos isn’t saying, isn’t letting himself feel, even now. He forces himself to finish. “It never seemed like she was really ready to let me back in, so we were facebook friends, Instagram friends. I always kind of got the feeling that she wanted to start a new life, didn’t want anything that reminded her of before.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” TK says softly.

He finds he’s blinking back tears he didn’t expect. “I missed her. She was my best friend, and I’m glad she’s got a life that she loves, and she did what she needed to do to have that, but for a long time it felt like I’d lost one of the only people who really knew me.”

TK catches his wrist when he tries to reach for the mug on the counter, pulling him into a hug, pressing a kiss to his temple, and he lets himself sink into it, remind himself of what he has now, of how far he is from the boy Iris knew in high school.

It isn’t until later, when they’re getting ready for bed, that he asks lightly, “Partner?”

TK meets his eyes in the mirror and mumbles through a mouthful of toothpaste, “What?”

He turns to lean against the sink while TK spits and rinses his mouth. “Earlier. When you introduced yourself to Iris, you said you were my partner.”

“Yes? Should I not have?”

He half laughs, and runs a hand down TK’s back. “No, sorry. Just doesn’t feel like a word you chose at random.” TK nods warily, and he curls a hand around TK’s hip. “I guess I’m just curious why partner instead of boyfriend.”

TK leers cheerfully at Carlos. “Would you prefer lover? Beau? Swain? My steady? You wanna give me your letter jacket, baby?”

He flicks a finger at TK’s stomach. “Swain? Really?” TK grins, and he tugs TK in. “I’m serious. It’s not a big deal, I’m just curious.”

TK shrugs against him, and twists to look at the reflection of the two of them in the mirror. “I’m at school with all these kids. And they’re awesome, don’t get me wrong. They’re amazing, and brilliant.”

“And young?” he guesses when TK trails off.

TK groans and thunks his head back on Carlos’s shoulder. “So young. They make me feel ancient sometimes. Like, I’ve had two careers already, and I’m working at a third. I have an apartment, and a mortgage, and weekly date nights.” He turns his head to brush lips against Carlos’s jaw. “I’ve met my someone. We’re not dating, we live together. Saying you're my boyfriend doesn’t feel like it’s enough, you’re more than that.” He turns in Carlos’s arms to look up at him, away from the mirror. “We’re bigger than that.”

His breath catches, the way it always does when TK is this close, this sincere. “And partner means that for you?”

TK stretches up to catch his lips in a kiss. “Work in progress. But it’s closer than boyfriend.”

Chapter Text

Whatever they give him isn’t as strong this time, not enough to knock him out completely, just enough to make him pliable, make his thoughts scatter. That’s probably the point. They ask him about TK, about Iris. He tells them the first thing that comes to mind.

Six months ago - He tracks TK down at the diner, sitting in their usual booth, table littered with mugs and plates. He slides cautiously into the seat opposite him, moving a stack of books so he has a clear view of TK. "Hi."

TK looks up briefly. "Hey, babe."

"Thought you had class this afternoon?"

TK hums distractedly. "Professor was sick. Class got canceled. Went to the library instead."

Carlos glances at the piles of books on the table. "And then you brought the library here?"

TK makes a face without looking up from his laptop. "People kept wanting to talk to me about whether Francis Bacon is an example of intersectionality."

He raises an eyebrow. "Is he?"

TK rolls his eyes. "Not unless being kind of a dick is suddenly a protected class."

He looks up at Amy when she brings him a glass of water. "How long has he been here?"

"Since two."

He winces. He looks at the coffee pot in her hand. "How much coffee has he had?"

She snorts. "Oh, I cut him off a couple of hours ago, switched him to mint tea."

That gets TK to look up, and it's like he focuses for the first time since Carlos sat down. "Baby? What are you doing here?"

"It's Thursday."

TK blinks. "It is?"

He nods, not sure if he should be worried that TK can't remember what day it is, or sort of touched that even stressed and mind clearly a thousand miles away TK has still managed to end up at the diner for date night.

When he can focus again the minions look bored, but Trudie looks interested. “TK is a student?”

He nods woozily. “What are you drugging me with?”

She frowns, apparently thrown by the question. He wonders if that’s because nobody’s ever asked her that before, or if she doesn’t do this often. “Just a sedative.”

“Opioid?” A spike of fear breaks through the artificial lassitude for a moment, makes his question sharp.

She gives him a quizzical look. “No. Is that a concern? Should I make a note?” It reads as genuine concern, although he’s not sure he trusts what she’d do with the information if he said yes.

He can’t stop the way he closes his eyes in relief though. He knows that’s not how addiction works, not really, but he also knows what it would do to TK if he was exposed to drugs here, because of this. He knows they’d weather it, but he also knows that TK would never forgive himself for it either.

Trudie graciously allows him the pretense that she hasn’t noticed his relief. “I don’t like using drugs as a general rule, but you were fighting and I couldn’t have that.” She smoothes her skirt, an unguarded gesture. “I find addiction makes people,” she makes a face.

“Desperate?”

"Unpredictable," she corrects, and then shrugs, a tiny precise movement. "I like it when people are predictable. It makes them so much more useful." She smiles brightly at him. “You were saying, TK is a student?”

“Started his Masters last semester.” Whatever they’ve given him makes him more honest than he’d like to be. “It wasn’t easy.” He leans in, confiding, “He kind of took the backroads to get to college. It took him a minute to figure out how to fit it.” He pauses, and grins a little too broadly. “But, he’s good at that kind of thing.”

"He writes weird papers,” One of TK’s study group confessed to him when they were all out at the end of the semester. “He comes at all the theory sideways, like it's a stray cat he has to coax into letting him pet it, and his citations are for shit.” She sits up straighter in her chair. "But, you get to the end of one of his papers and you're like, fuck, how have I never noticed this detail? How have I never looked at it this way before?" She leans into him and lowers her voice even more, words sliding on the alcohol she’s been drinking. “I’ve read porn less erotic than his paper on Gentileschi.” She blinks at him seriously. “Makes me need to go to my bunk everytime I look at one of her paintings now.” He swallows a laugh and swaps her beer for water, and makes a note to be sure that she doesn’t leave on her own tonight.

Trudie looks curious, like she wants to ask more, and he hopes she won’t. It’s not a memory he wants to share. One of the minions behind him does something that catches her attention, and when she looks back at him she’s more focussed. “You, Detective Reyes, have a problem.”

He makes an interrogative noise.

“You interfered with my plan.”

He nods. “Okay. I can’t promise that I won’t keep interfering when you let me go.”

She tilts her head. “What makes you think I’m going to let you go? You’ve seen my face,” gestures behind her, “all of our faces.”

He sits up straighter. “I’m an APD detective. People are going to notice if I don’t show up for work. My parents will notice if I’m not there for Sunday dinner. TK will notice if I don’t come home. People will look for me.”

She concedes the point, but seems unmoved. “You complicated my life. And now you are going to uncomplicate it.”

He blinks at her. “How?”

“You are going to be my guest for the weekend, and then on Tuesday you are going to go to Reuth and certify the statue as authentic.”

“Why?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

He nods. “Why would you trust me to do that? What’s to stop me from saying whatever you want to hear now, and then exposing you on Tuesday?”

“Ah that.” She gestures at one of the men behind him, and the hair on the back of his neck stands up, because he hadn’t realized that anyone had come into the room. He hands her an ipad. “I know you won’t believe me, but I am truly sorry about this, Detective Reyes.”

“What?” he says urgently, trying to twist his head to see what the men behind him are doing.

She turns the pad around. There’s a video playing. It’s of TK, waiting in line at a coffee cart. “This was taken just the other morning,” she notes.

He knows it was. TK has an 8am staff meeting every Thursday. They’d moved it to accommodate his class schedule this semester and he feels guilty for making everyone come in early because of him, so he always stops and picks up coffee for the meeting. He doesn’t actually like the coffee from that coffee cart, but Tanya’s got a weakness for their cinnamon honey lattes, so he stops there on Thursdays. He’s wearing the sweater Carlos’s mother gave him for Christmas. The same one he’d been wearing when he drove up to Dallas.

He tries to hear Matt’s voice in his head saying, “He always knows where the cameras are, he’s annoying that way.” But it’s been years since TK has needed to be on his guard like that. Austin has smoothed his edges, polished and softened them like sea glass. He's easier now, relaxed to fit the curve of Carlos's hands. He's shaped himself to TK too, expanded to fill the space TK opened for him. They're neither one of them the same anymore. Normally he loves that. Today he wishes TK was more like the brittle skittish man he met three years ago, not the steady partner he goes home to every night.

He yanks against the handcuffs now. “What did you do?”

She looks up at the man who’d handed her the ipad. “Caught him on his way to work I believe?” The man nods. She flips the pad and looks at it dispassionately. “We’re just keeping an eye on him. No contact.” She looks up at him and smiles, and there’s nothing motherly in it this time. “Not yet.”

There’s a way that panic can make you feel nauseous, and he has to swallow hard before he can get the words out. “Tell me what you need me to do.”

Trudie gives him an approving smile, like a teacher with a student who’s given the right answer. “You’re going to help me steal a statue.”

Chapter Text

REWIND

They meet Iris at the FBI late on Tuesday afternoon, after TK’s done with classes. Iris does not fidget in the conference room they're shown into while they wait for Matt to extricate himself from the zoom call he's trapped on, but it looks like it takes effort. After watching her visibly force herself to calm for several minutes, he puts a hand on top of hers. "Hey, Matt's cool. This is going to be fine. I promise."

She takes a breath and shakes out her shoulders. "How exactly are you on a first name basis with the FBI? You somehow never got around to explaining that part.”

TK's about to say something, but Matt arrives, trailed by someone who hand to god looks like he's not old enough to drink yet, let alone be a member of the FBI. Matt waves a hand at him in introduction. "Our newest team member, George Eliades. George, this is TK Strand from the Blanton, and Detective Reyes from APD. We've worked with them on cases in the past." He looks at Iris. "And you must be Iris Blake?”

TK props his chin on his hands, looking across the table at where George is carefully opening a leather bound notebook and clicking open a pen. "Matt, do you have a mini-me?"

Matt looks pained. "George is a fully trained and qualified FBI agent. Try and remember you’re supposed to be impressed by that.” TK grins, and Matt cuts off whatever he was going to say next, gesturing at Iris. “Maybe we let Ms Blake explain why we’re here?”

TK shuts up, and lets Matt listen as Iris lays out what she'd discovered, and then what she'd gone looking for, and looks troubled when she concludes with, "And then I showed up at Carlos’s house, and he said we should talk to you."

Matt looks at the two of them. “What are you thinking?”

Carlos shrugs. “Iris was concerned that if she went to Dallas PD that she’d get accused of having stolen it herself, and I don’t know anyone in Dallas PD, so me vouching for her isn’t necessarily going to do much. And, it’s art, so—“

“Also, it’s a pattern,” TK interjects. “Iris found this one, and then a couple of others that look similar. They’re relatively small scale.” He glances at the faked Degas sketch, “I can’t imagine getting more than a grand for the original of that, but maybe they’re using this as a way to test the security?”

Matt hmms thoughtfully, looking at the sketch. "And you don't know when the thefts might have occurred?”

Iris shakes her head. “This is the first time I’ve had anything to do with the art department at Reuth.”

Matt makes a frustrated noise, but waves a hand to indicate it’s not at her.

George is the one who breaks the silence. "Do you know when all the items that were stolen were acquired?” Iris gives him a politely confused look, and he explains, “If there are multiple items that have been replaced with bad forgeries, then we can maybe triangulate when the thefts might have taken place based on the date of acquisition."

They all blink at him, and Carlos reminds himself that George managed to get into, and then make it through the FBI academy so he should probably be less surprised that he’s not an idiot. Iris nods thoughtfully. “I don't know when all the pieces were acquired, like I said it’s not my department. But I know they bought the Degas two years ago.”

George makes a note. “You’re sure about that date?”

Iris makes a face. “Yeah. One of the partners won’t shut up about it. He has it hanging in his office, because apparently it compliments the color scheme. Mostly I think he likes it because it gets him laid." She clamps her mouth shut, and glances at Matt, “Sorry, that was unprofessional.” Carlos wonders how long it had taken Iris to learn how to exist in a corporate environment, and how many times a day she has to literally bite her tongue.

TK echoes her disgusted face. "Doesn’t make it not true. Some people really don't deserve to have money."

Iris snorts, relaxing. "Anyway, according to the archive records I saw the painting and the sketches were bought at the same auction.”

TK makes a thoughtful noise. “All of the items in the lot would have been authenticated by the auction house before the transfer, so it has to have been after that."

Matt nods. "Definitely narrows down the window of opportunity. Do you know who would have had access to the collection since then?"

Iris frowns. “Honestly, probably not all that many people. The partners, obviously. Their admins, if they requested something. There would be access logs from the card reader on the door. But, when I put in the access request the IT guy said something about how I was only the second person to request access since Mary Ann left.”

“Mary Ann?” Matt asks.

Iris nods. “She was the Art Director who bought the Degas.” Matt and George both perk up, but she shakes her head. "Her husband got a job in New York and they moved. We used to eat lunch together sometimes. She’s nice.”

"Just because she was nice doesn't mean she isn't a thief," George explains to her seriously. "Thieves are frequently quite charming, it's how they get away with it." Behind his back Carlos can see TK smirking, and Matt carefully does not look in their direction.

Iris somehow does not roll her eyes, but Carlos suspects she'd like to. "Yeah, but if she'd lifted the pieces she'd probably have left better forgeries in their place. She was good at her job." She gestures derisively at the sketch masquerading as a Degas.

"So, who was the other person who asked for access after Mary Ann left?" Carlos asks, before the conversation gets derailed.

“I guess the job was open for a while, so nobody requested access until they hired the new Art Director last summer.” She makes a face. “Dr. Darryl Chambers.” TK raises an eyebrow at her tone and she huffs a breath of exasperation. “They introduced him to us at a company wide meeting, and he interrupted one of the partners to correct them about his title. I heard from one of the admins that he sent back the first offer letter because they didn’t get all his degrees right.”

“Other than pompous,” Matt asks wryly, “what’s your impression of him?”

She pauses, and finally says, “I’m told he has a very impressive resume.”

TK narrows his eyes at her curiously, and when she doesn’t elaborate, prompts, “But?”

She shifts in her chair. “No but.” TK keeps looking at her and she sighs. “You look at that sketch like it’s offending you by existing. He looks at the real thing in Hayden’s office like it’s just a thing taking up space. I don’t think that’s how you’d look at it.” He’d forgotten how perceptive Iris can be, eerily like TK that way, and has a horrified moment where he wonders if he has a type.

Matt hmms thoughtfully and turns to George. “Run a background check on this Darryl Chambers, see if anything pops. If nothing else I’d like to know where else he’s worked.”

TK’s still looking at Iris though. “What else?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing.” TK gives her a disbelieving look and she scowls at him. “Fine. He’s creepy. Like don’t be alone in a room with him kind of creepy. Like make sure you don’t leave at the same time as him kind of creepy. Like walk through the garage with your keys out kind of creepy.”

TK leans back with a hint of satisfaction in the curl of his lips. “Remind me never to ask what you really think of me.”

“Don’t be stupid enough to ask,” she suggests tartly, and Matt scribbles something next to Chambers’s name, and she adds pointedly, “That doesn’t actually mean he’s a thief though. It just means he’s a guy.” She glances around the table. “No offense.”

It’s a week before Matt calls and asks if they have time to drop by the FBI again. This time Matt’s waiting for them in the conference room with Iris when they get there. There’s a rolling whiteboard set up with evidence photos taped to it. Along the top there’s a row of seven photographs of pieces that all look similar to the shitty Degas forgery Iris had brought them originally, and then below that a series of what look like images printed from the internet of various antiques. The conference table is littered with files.

TK glances around the room curiously. "Slow crime day in Texas?"

Matt gestures at the whiteboard. “Your boy’s been busy.”

“My boy?” TK says curiously, and wanders over to the whiteboard to take a closer look.

“Miss Blake,” George starts.

Iris snorts. “Iris. Seriously.”

He colors, and Carlos wishes he was close enough to kick TK to see if TK is seeing what he’s seeing. George clears his throat and starts again. “Iris was able to get us records on who had access to the art collection since the Degas sketch was purchased.” Carlos raises an eyebrow at Iris in question.

She shrugs and wanders over to the whiteboard to look at the pictures over TK’s shoulder. “Guy in IT has a crush on my peanut butter cookies.”

“They are good peanut butter cookies,” Carlos agrees seriously. Iris winks at George.

George clears his throat again before continuing, and Carlos stifles amusement. “Anyway, it turns out that the only people who have accessed the collection between the purchase of the Degas and now are Mary Ann Colliers, the former Art Director, Darryl Chambers, the new Art Director, Lydia Prins, Marshall Hayden’s Executive Assistant, and Miss Blake.” Iris gives him a look, and he blushes again. “Iris, sorry.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, we excluded Iris on the grounds that she brought this to our attention.” TK has caught on to George’s nascent crush on Iris now, and he’s looking speculatively between them. “We looked into Lydia Prins and Mary Ann Colliers, but neither one of them show any kind of suspicious spending patterns, or have any significant outstanding debts. We can’t definitively exclude them, but they don’t appear to be of interest.”

“Unlike Darryl Chambers,” Mat interjects. He waves a hand at the whiteboard. “Turns out there are some interesting patterns that emerge around Dr. Darryl Chambers when you start digging.”

TK and Iris both pull their attention away from the whiteboard to look at Matt.

“I started with his resume,” George tells them, pulling it up on the screen. “Darryl Chambers, no PhD that I can find, has a pattern of short term employment. He gets hired to curate a private collection, stays long enough to make a big purchase – the kind of purchase that puts a collection on the map – and then he moves on. I looked at the last five places he worked, and matched those to press releases about large art purchases at those firms.”

TK swivels back to look at the website printouts. “These?” George nods. “Okay,” TK says, “but that’s not unusual. That’s kind of how consultants like that work. They get brought in to make a splashy purchase, and then someone else gets hired long term to build a collection around that signature piece while they move on to the next place.”

George nods, and gets markedly less formal the more into explaining his research he gets. “True, but this is where it gets interesting. So, Chambers cold calls these big companies, says he’s heard that they’re looking to expand their art collection, or offers to help them create one as a tax write off, whatever, and he says he has a line on a piece that could be a focus point for their collection. He seems to tailor it to whichever partner has the most money or influence to catch their attention. If they bite, he gets hired, sticks around for 8-10 months to orchestrate the sale and transfer, sticks around for another month or so, and then leaves.”

TK nods. “Okay? How is that interesting?”

George holds up a finger. “Sometime shortly after he leaves there’s a rumor about a big underground auction. Five big purchases, five big underground auctions. It’s not proof, but it is interesting.”

TK tilts his head. “None of that popped when Reuth did a background check on him prior to employment?”

Matt shakes his head. “For one thing, nobody’s ever reported anything stolen. Whatever he’s doing, he’s leaving good forgeries in place of the original. For another thing, the auctions are never held in the same market where the piece was purchased, so even if you were paying attention to the underground scene the link wouldn’t be obvious. And, for a final thing, we don’t actually know what was up for auction, so can’t be sure that those auctions are for the same pieces that Chambers helped purchase.”

George glances at Iris, and offers her an explanatory comma. “Underground markets are not known for advertising their sales.” Iris gives Carlos a ‘no shit’ look behind George’s back, but doesn’t say anything, just nods her understanding when George glances at her. Carlos is impressed. Iris in high school never had that kind of tact. Age mellows all of them, he supposes. He’s not sure if he should be annoyed or flattered that she doesn’t bother to use her new found tact on him.

“Also,” Matt adds matter of factly, “Reuth lacks the FBI’s resources.”

“And their suspicious minds,” TK murmurs, but it’s only loud enough for Carlos to hear.

Carlos hides a smile by turning to the pictures taped to the whiteboard. “So these are those big ticket items?”

George nods and points to them in turn. “A pair of portraits of two young women, possibly sisters, by Petrus Christus, stolen from a law firm in Atlanta. A set of five Tang Dynasty painted horses stolen from a venture capital company in Boston. A Fabergé egg stolen from a Wall Street brokerage office in New York. A custom made art installation by Julie Mehretu from the lobby of a tech company outside of San Francisco. And, four illustrations from a bestiary compiled fo rthe court of the Emperor Jahangir, stolen from a bank headquarters in Chicago.”

TK gives a low whistle. “They’ve got range, I’ll give them that.” He peers at the pictures again. “Do we know for sure that these are forgeries?”

George gives a one shouldered shrug. “Something that would hold up in court? No. But, anecdotally, yes we’re pretty sure.”

TK looks curious. “How’d you figure that out?”

George looks a trifle smug. “Harvard mafia.”

Carlos and Iris both blink, but it makes TK laugh. George takes in their confusion and explains. “Turns out I know guys at at least three of those companies, and the two that I didn’t I knew someone who knew someone. I asked for a favor, if they’d let one of my beloved high school teachers come and take a look at their special thing. And then I sent in an art authenticator the FBI uses sometimes when we need an off the books evaluation to take a look at them all.”

TK looks impressed. “Nice.” George ducks his head, pleased, and Carlos has a feeling that TK has made another conquest in the FBI. “And his verdict was?”

“He said he’d need a lab to make an actual verification, but in his professional opinion they were all very very good forgeries. Definitely more than good enough to stand up to the kind of viewing they’d get in a law office, or wherever, but probably not quite good enough to stand up to an insurance evaluation, or if they were loaned out to a museum.”

TK contemplates the whiteboard. “So, your working theory is that Chambers comes in, persuades these companies to buy a big ticket item, replaces it with a forgery, and then fences the original?” George nods, and TK lets out a low whistle. “You have to admire the elegance of it.”

Matt gives him an exasperated look. “Do I?”

Iris frowns. “And nobody’s noticed?”

Matt sighs. “The FBI is somewhat unfortunately jurisdictional.”

TK snorts, and says to Iris in a loud aside, “What he means is that each office has their own little fiefdom and they don’t like to share with each other, so if you’re smart about it you can run the same con over and over again as long as you do it in different parts of the country, and nobody will notice.”

Iris blinks and gives him an odd look, but Matt just waves a hand. “Yes, yes, we know it’s a problem. Anytime you want to suggest a way to fix it.”

TK shakes his head. “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

“Also,” George points out, “they aren’t fencing the items in the same market they’re stolen from, which makes them harder to link.” He points at each item in turn. “Auctioned in LA, Miami, Vancouver, Atlanta, New York.”

Iris tilts her head. “Why do good forgeries for the big stuff, and leave shitty forgeries for the small stuff. Why steal the small stuff at all?"

George starts to say something, but TK nods thoughtfully. “That’s a good point.” TK peers more closely at the photos of the potential forgeries on the white board. ‘The thing is, to pull off a con this flawless, and do it over and over again without anyone realizing? That requires skill and finesse. It requires an obsessive attention to detail, and inordinate pride in your work.” He glances at George who looks like wants to object, and smirks. “We call them con artists for a reason.” TK gestures at the pictures of the clumsy sketches and then at the flawless forgeries. “These thefts were not done by the same person.” He spins to look at Iris, “And, you don’t think Chambers could put together a forgery like this?” It’s not really a question.

Iris shakes her head. “He’s crass, and a bully, and sloppy about it. If this requires planning and patience, he is not your guy.”

"Someone else is pulling the strings?" Carlos suggests. "Chambers is the front man, but someone else is the brains? And he’s just taking advantage of the situation for some extra spending money?”

“It’s just a working theory at the moment,” Matt admits. He looks at Iris. “But, if we’re right, then it means Reuth is planning on buying something big. Any idea what that might be?”

Iris shrugs. “Wouldn’t know.” She gives TK a sidelong look. “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” He snorts in appreciation.

George sighs, and then Iris stops suddenly, scrabbling for her bag and pulling out her phone. “Wait.” She scrolls rapidly. “There was an email the other day about how there was going to be some kind of big unveiling of something in the Spring.” She scrolls more, and then holds up a finger triumphantly. “Okay, so the email doesn’t say what it is, but on the cc line they’ve included Marshall Hayden and Beau Dawson.” She looks up at their blank faces. “They control the purse strings. If there’s a big purchase, they’ll be the ones approving it.” She frowns at her phone again. “I know Lydia, I can probably find out what they’re thinking of buying.”

Chapter Text

They blindfold him again, but don’t knock him out this time and he’s grateful for small mercies. He blinks in the light when they take the blindfold off, trying to figure out what kind of room they’ve led him to now. And then his heart sinks when his eyes come into focus and he sees Iris sitting in the corner of the room, on the furthest edge of the bed from the door. She looks more angry than scared, but it's been a while and he doesn’t know if he can read her accurately anymore.

Minion #1 takes great pleasure in noting his dismay. “Yes, we caught up to your companion.”

Carlos ignores him, attention on Iris. “Are you okay?”

She gives him an approximation of a smile. “Fine.” She sweeps her hand around the room. “Enjoying the hospitality.”

He follows her hand, taking in the upgrade in their room ‒ apparently agreeing to be their patsy has its benefits. There’s a bed this time, and a bathroom, but there’s nothing in the room that doesn’t look like it hasn’t been bolted to the floor.

“Can I have a phone?” he asks as the minions turn to leave. Minion #1 gives him a flat look. “Look, I was supposed to talk to my boyfriend last night and I didn’t. If I don’t talk to him today and give him a reason why I stood him up he’s going to get suspicious. I’m assuming you don’t want anyone getting suspicious?”

Minion #2 looks like maybe he thinks this is a valid point, but Minion #1 doesn’t seem moved by Carlos’s logic, and he tries again. “Look, you know who I am, which means you know who my dad is. If I don’t call and give TK some kind of explanation for ghosting him last night he’s gonna call in the cavalry. That seems like it might throw a few wheels in your plan out of whack.” He raises his hands. “But, hey, just my two cents, feel free to ignore me.”

Minion #1 shifts on his feet. “I’ll take your suggestion to Miss Trudie.”

Carlos lets himself collapse down onto the bed. “Sure. I’ll just wait here, shall I?”

Minion #2 snorts, and Carlos flips him a sarcastic salute as they leave.

As soon as the door closes behind them he turns back to Iris. “Truth this time. Are you okay?”

She stands and pushes up her sleeves to show him her arms. “A few bruises from where they grabbed me, but nothing serious.” He winces at the finger marks on her wrist, and she shakes her head. “I’ve gotten worse volunteering at the shelter on weekends. I’m fine. What about you?”

He gives her a narrow look, but does her the courtesy of taking her at her word for now. “What happened?”

She scowls. “I got as far as the highway and then they caught up with me.”

“The highway?” They’re not at all where he’d thought they were; he’d thought they were still downtown.

She nods. “It looks like an old conference center, didn’t look like it was still in use - the lawns are all overgrown, and the ground floor was dark.”

“Did you?” She shakes her head before he can finish asking if she’d managed to find a phone to call anyone. “Okay. Well let’s hope they let me call TK then.”

He turns to examine the room more closely ‒ one double bed, table with two chairs, all bolted to the floor, bathroom with a shower, a sink, and a toilet. It’ll be awkward, but at least not as bad as it could be. He gestures at the bed. “I can sleep on the floor.”

She glances towards the bed as well, and rolls her eyes at him. “Don’t be an idiot.”

He tables the argument for the moment, and sits down on the bed, reassured when she doesn’t move away from him. “You’re sure you’re okay? None of them did anything?”

She raises her eyebrows, and then catches his meaning. “No, nothing. I wouldn’t say they were perfect gentlemen, but they didn’t try anything like that.” She pauses, and then says more slowly. “Darryl wasn’t with them.”

He remembers her saying that he made her uncomfortable, and gives her a sharp look.

She shrugs and gestures at the door. “They’re doing a job. He feels entitled.”

Carlos nods. That tracks with what he’s learned. Darryl Chambers is the weak link ‒ nepotism at its finest, only their front man because his mother is the boss and she’s got a soft spot for him. There has to be a way they can use that. He clears his throat and gestures at the room. “I am sorry about the close quarters.”

She rolls her eyes at him again. “This gonna be a thing with you? Apologizing for things you can’t control? I think I’m safer with you than with any of the alternatives.” It’s a good point, and he just barely stops himself from apologizing again for apologizing before. She notices, because she’s always been good at reading him, and snorts.

He prowls around the room once, and then twice, looking for something, anything. “I’m sorry,” Iris blurts out on his third circuit of the room. “I forgot my laptop. We’re planning an event with the Mayor’s office. I needed to finish working on the presentation. I thought it’d be fine if I came back to get it. I’m sorry.”

He considers being angry with her, for risking coming back, for putting herself in danger, for giving him someone else he has to worry about, and then discards it, because what’s done is done, and it’s pointless to be angry now. “It’s okay.” She looks doubtful, and he smiles. “No, really. We’ll be fine. I’ll get you out of this, I promise.”

There’s a sound at the door, and he stands up, motioning her to stay behind him. She makes a faint noise of protest, but doesn’t argue.

It’s Minions #2 and #3 and Trudie. She sits down at the table, tucking her legs to the side again, neatly crossed at the ankles. “Detective, won’t you join me?” He wonders if she’s going to offer him tea next. He sits warily. Iris stays in the corner of the room.

Trudie looks at both of them, and then the bed and frowns. “I’m sorry I don’t have separate accommodations I can offer you.”

He wonders what’s wrong with the rest of the hotel, but shakes his head, separate might be less awkward, but Iris is right, this is safer. “It’s fine.” He gambles on how she’d reacted to the way he’d talked about TK earlier. “I have a boyfriend.”

She brightens. “That’s true.” She glances at Iris. “The gays make such good friends for a girl.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Iris blink and he wills her just to roll with it. She gives Carlos a dry side eye before she gives Trudie her attention and says with deceptive innocence, “I’ve always thought so.”

Satisfied Trudie turns back to Carlos. “Charles tells me you wanted to call your boyfriend.”

He nods. “I was supposed to talk to him last night. I’m afraid he’ll be worried and call my dad or Dallas PD, and that might interfere with your plans.” She narrows her eyes at him, and he holds up his hands. “I’m just trying to get everyone out of this safe. Getting more people involved won’t do that.”

She hmms thoughtfully, turning the phone over in her hands. It’s not his, he notices. “Okay,” she says finally. “I’m going to put you on speaker.”

He dials one of the only numbers he knows by heart and waits, crossing his fingers that TK will pick up an unknown number. It takes four rings, but then TK says, “Hello?”

He clears his throat. “Hi honey.”

There is a tiny infinitesimal pause that he hopes nobody else can hear, and then TK says brightly, “Baby, I was worried. Everything okay?”

He nods his head, although TK can’t see him. “I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t call last night. I ran into an old friend from high school at the bar, and we lost track of time.” He lowers his voice and confides. “I maybe didn’t keep a good count of how many drinks I had, and I forgot my phone in the bar. I’m just glad I asked for a wake up call this morning or I’d have missed all the morning sessions. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

There’s another tiny pause. “Okay. Well I’m glad you had a good time last night, baby. Not sorry I missed the snoring.”

“I do not snore,” he objects automatically.

In the corner Iris snorts softly.

TK snorts too, and it comes through with crystal clarity across the speaker phone. “When you’ve had a few, you absolutely do. It’s cute.”

Trudie gestures at him to wrap it up. “Sorry honey, I’m being pulled into a meeting and I need to go.” He pauses. “I stopped at the bar just now to see if anyone turned in my phone, but no luck. I’m using the courtesy phone at the hotel. I’ll have to get my cell replaced when I get home, but I don’t want you to worry if you don’t hear from me today.”

TK pouts dramatically enough that you can hear it over the open line, but all he says is, “Fine, call me from the hotel tonight?”

He glances at Trudie and she nods. “Of course, honey.”

“You going to see your high school friend again tonight?”

He glances at Iris. “Yup, we made plans.”

There’s a hitch in TK’s silence that he hopes only he noticed. “Great. Tell me about it later?"

“Tonight,” he promises. “Love you.”

There’s a soft inhalation of breath, and then TK’s quiet, “I love you too, sweetheart.”

Trudie looks pleased when she disconnects the call. “That’s nice, the way you say I love you. That’s important. Don’t lose that, it’s too easy to forget, and then it’s hard to remember the last time you said it, and that’s not a thing you don’t want to remember.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Iris says suddenly, with unexpected sincerity.

Trudie swings around to look at her, and he wishes she wouldn’t, that she’d just keep ignoring Iris. “Have you lost someone too, dear?”

Iris nods. “My father. When I was 12.” He remembers the way she’d pretended none of it touched her all that summer afterwards, until the day before they went back to school and the way she’d broken, crying in his room because her father had always bought her new pens for a new school year and nobody had remembered. He remembers running for his mother, because he knew this was bigger than he could help with, and that they’d all driven out to Target and his mother had bought them dinner from the food court and then new sets of matching notebooks, and highlighters, and fine nibbed pens for taking notes.

Trudie nods sympathetically. “So young. That must have been hard for you, to grow up without a father.” She sighs. “We lost Darryl’s father when he was 17, older than you, but I’ve always worried about the steadying hand he didn’t have in those important years. I tried my best, but a boy does so need a father.”

He catches Iris’s eye, and she repeats, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Just for a moment Trudie’s face crumples, and then it’s gone. “Well, it was a long time ago, but thank you.”

There’s an awkward silence and he finally breaks it. “What happens now?”

Trudie twists her wrist to look at her watch. “Now it’s time for lunch. I’ll have someone bring you something.” She taps the phone on the table. “I’ll be back in a while, we’ll talk more then.”

Chapter Text

REWIND

He can hear music leaking out from the apartment as he comes down the hall, some kind of instrumental thing, the kind TK listens to when he's studying, because he can't concentrate if there's anything with words, but finds silence too distracting.

When he opens the door he's greeted with Matt at one end of their dining room table, files spread out in front him, and TK at the other end, books bristling with sticky notes stacked haphazardly around him. He raises a hand in greeting. "Hi, Matt." He turns to TK. "Matt's here?"

TK tips his head back for a kiss. “Liz is having dinner with her college roommate who hates Matt, so Matt's hiding out until Liz texts him an all clear. And he's here instead of at the office because he's trying to set a good example for his mini-me."

"She doesn't hate me," Matt protests. "And, how do you even know that?"

TK looks at Matt over the rim of the reading glasses he's started wearing when he needs to work at night. He's been fretting about them, and Carlos has so far been too amused by his vanity to tell him how unbearably sexy he finds them. He's saving it for a night when TK needs an ego boost.

"Liz works three buildings over from the library. I’m at the library so much I feel like I should be paying rent there, and sometimes she takes pity on me and lets me eat lunch at the cool kids table." He tips his head back again to look up at Carlos. "They have the best gossip."

"I think I liked it better when you weren't friends with my wife," Matt notes, and then determinedly signs three pieces of paper and slaps a file shut and moves it to a different pile.

TK looks unrepentant. "You wrote the recommendation letter. No one to blame but yourself." He reaches for Carlos's hand, tugging slightly. "Your mom stopped by this afternoon and brought us a casserole. I figured there was more than enough for three." He gestures vaguely towards the kitchen. "I set a timer."

Carlos glances reflexively in the direction he's pointing. "She did? Did she say why?"

"I think your mother would be offended by the idea that she needs a reason." He raises an eyebrow at TK and waits. TK lasts less than a minute. "She said she knew that the semester had started up again and that we were both busy and she wanted to give us a night when we didn't have to worry about dinner." He glances at Matt. "Carlos's mom loves me."

He flicks TK's ear, but nods confirmation at Matt when Matt looks up. "She really does."

TK follows him into the bedroom when he retreats to lock away his gun, watching appreciatively from the doorway as he washes up.

"I am actually capable of feeding you without help," he grumbles when he meets TK's eyes in the mirror, but there's no real irritation there. His mother likes his boyfriend enough to make food and then drive all the way into Austin to drop it off, and probably stayed for tea and cookies and gossip. It still catches him off guard sometimes that this is his life now, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever take it for granted.

TK takes a step into the bathroom, resting a hand on his stomach with easy familiarity. "I think it means she approves of me."

"My mother adores you." TK looks faintly smug, and he takes the tiny half step he needs to be in TK's space. "I like that she adores you." TK nods and tips his head back for Carlos's kiss, and then curves a hand around his neck and takes it deeper. "We have company," he mumbles against TK's mouth.

TK hums. "If Matt wants to sit at our dining room table and work on case files he won't let me see, then Matt can politely not think about what we're getting up to behind closed doors in the privacy of our bedroom for five minutes."

He laughs and shoves TK away. "Five minutes? Not really selling yourself there, babe." TK raises an eyebrow, and Carlos preemptively slaps a hand over his mouth. TK grins behind it. "What kind of casserole did my mom bring?"

TK trails behind him as he goes back into the living room, and starts to clear his end of the dining room table. "King Ranch, I think. She said she has no faith in my ability to handle anything hotter than a canned chili." He glares at Carlos. "I wonder who gave her that idea?"

He meets TK's glare cheerfully. "Couldn't possibly be the way you turned bright red and drank two cups of milk when you tried some of the mole poblano.” TK sticks his tongue out at Carlos, and hip checks him on his way to the dining room.

Matt makes a low amused noise, and then smacks a hand down on top of the file TK's idly looking at, and shoves a different file at him. "Here, if you want to be useful, take a look at this."

TK obediently opens the file. "What is it?"

"Something the Houston field office forwarded me. There’s something hinky about it, but I can’t put my finger on what.”

TK mouths 'hinky' at Carlos, who grins and leans in to look at the file over TK's shoulder. He frowns at it. "It's a forgery."

TK's head twists to look at him, and Matt looks surprised.

He points to the photo of the title page of the book. "That's Doves Type font. This says it's a first edition published in 1895, but Doves Type font wasn't invented until 1899 at the earliest." Matt and TK are both staring at him now, mouths unflatteringly agape. "What? I can know things."

TK recovers faster. "Just so you know, that was extremely hot."

He snorts, and Matt rolls his eyes and points a finger at him. "No, I need to know how you know that."

He shrugs and goes to check on the casserole. "Guy I dated my senior year was a font geek. He was really excited when they dredged the Thames and found a bunch of the original," he pauses trying to remember the word, "imprints? sorts? keys? the original letters, whatever they're called."

"Sorts," TK confirms absently, looking down at the title page again, squinting at it.

"You're sure this is that font?" Matt questions.

He pulls the casserole out of the oven. "I mean, you should definitely have someone else take a look at it to be sure, but yeah, Doves Type is pretty distinctive, and Greg was really into it." He reaches for plates and hands them over the island to TK. "There's a whole story about the font and how it got lost and then recreated and then rediscovered." He hands TK a hot mat for the table and then brings the casserole over.

Matt still looks skeptical. "Font geeks?"

He goes back for the salad TK had made earlier and was waiting on the counter. "Don't underestimate the erotic appeal of a good serif font." He catches the look TK throws him, and almost drops the salad at the banked heat he sees there and raises an eyebrow at TK.

TK shrugs. "What you said, don't underestimate the erotic appeal of a good serif font." Matt rolls his eyes at both of them. TK takes the salad and moves the file to make space for it, but pauses, still staring at the title page.

He nudges TK with his elbow to get him to sit down. "Doves Type font was famous, the William Morris groupies plotzed for it." TK grins and hands him a plate to serve the casserole.

"I'm rubbing off on you."

"Dirty," he says automatically.

TK waggles his eyebrows. "If you play your cards right."

Matt ignores them, and takes the plate Carlos hands him. "A story?"

He serves TK. "Hmm. It was invented by two guys and then somewhere along the line they started hating each other. Can't be in the same room with each other without drawing blood kind of hate each other. So, they have to split up the company and the font is the most lucrative part of the business so obviously they both want it. The judge finally gets fed up listening to the two of them yelling at each other, and goes Solomonic on the problem - first guy gets it during his lifetime, second guy - and his heirs, I guess - gets it after that. And everyone thinks great, case closed, problem solved. Only the first guy decides that's not good enough and he secretly dumps all of it over a bridge into the Thames, because I guess if he didn't get to take it with him, nobody gets to have it?"

He glances up and finds TK, glass halfway to his mouth, just staring at Carlos. He grins and hands Matt a plate of food. “Anyway, 100 or so years later a couple of the pieces wash up on the banks of the Thames, and then someone persuades them to dredge part of the Thames and finds another 150 and,” he spreads his hands, “voila Doves Type font lives again.”

Matt blinks at him for a second, and then shakes himself and takes a bite of food, making an appreciative noise. He glances at the file and taps it. “Thank you. I’ll have someone take a look at that.” He takes another bite and chews slowly. “Actually, since you’re both here, there was something I wanted to talk to the two of you about”

“You mean hiding from Liz’s friend was just a ploy?” TK asks, and then takes a huge bite of the casserole, and Carlos wonders if he’d forgotten to eat lunch again today.

“I’ve been putting out feelers with some of my contacts about your Degas sketch. See if any of them have seen it pop up”

TK pauses, mouth comically full, and swallows audibly. “Matt, are you seeing other informants?” He puts his hand to his chest and gasps dramatically. “Are you stepping out on me?”

Carlos doesn’t bother to try and smother his laugh, and Matt says blandly, “Yes, I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s not me, it’s you. Do you want to hear this, or not?”

TK grins and takes a more reasonable bite. “Yes, obviously.”

“Well, it’s going to sound anticlimactic now,” Matt complains. “Yes, the Degas sketch and a couple of the other pieces Iris brought us sounded familiar to them. No, nobody could identify Darryl Chambers by name, but they said the description fit.” He pauses and checks his notes. “Big guy. White. Looks like your least favorite gym teacher.” TK snorts. Matt closes his notebook. “More interesting, is that three different people made a point to tell me that there’s noise going around the community about something big coming on the market soon.”

TK chews thoughtfully. “Hmm.”

Carlos raises an eyebrow in question. “Good hmm, or bad hmm?”

TK shrugs. “Interesting hmm. If they’re running the auction here that’s a different playbook than they’ve used previously. They’ve always fenced in a different market than they stole from before. Be interesting to know why.” He taps his fingers on the table. “Could mean nothing, there are always rumors about something, only people who gossip more than cops are fences looking for the next big score. Keep an ear out though, if it’s really big you’ll start getting out of town players coming in. Nobody likes outsiders playing on their turf. People might get chatty.”

“It’s like you think I don’t know how to do my job,” Matt says, but he also makes a note.

TK smiles at him sunnily. “Never caught me.”

Chapter Text

They both wait until the door closes and they can hear footsteps moving away before they move. Iris comes over to the table this time, leaning in a little and lowering her voice. “Think there are cameras here?”

He glances around. There’s nothing visible, but that doesn’t mean anything. They’d been recorded earlier. He pats his pockets. They’d taken his wallet, and phone, and keys, but, hah! yes, they’d left him his pen. He pulls it out triumphantly and Iris gives him a baffled look. He puts his finger to his lips and then walks around the room with it carefully until he’s satisfied.

“No bugs.”

She raises her eyebrows. “And your magic pen told you that?”

He snorts. “No, but the bug sweeper in the pen did.”

She eyes the pen. “TK sure does give you interesting presents.” There’s an edge in her voice.

“FBI actually,” he says mildly.

She blinks at him for a moment, and shifts gears. “TK told me he doesn’t drink.”

“He doesn’t,” he agrees.

“And you never liked getting drunk, even when we were in high school.” He nods. That hasn’t really changed. “So that was what? A coded conversation, telling him where we are?”

“I appreciate your faith in my ability to communicate that on the fly, but no.” She goes blank, and he swears at himself. “Hey no. TK sent up the bat signal last night, I promise. We are getting out of this fine.” She doesn’t look convinced, and he says it again. “I am going to get you out of this, I promise.”

“So the phone call was?”

“Mostly what I told them it was, to reassure TK.” After a moment, because she looks tense, he concedes, “His ex used to call him honey, he’s not a fan. He knows I never would. The phone call was to tell him we’re okay, but not alone.”

She lets out her breath, and she’s covering it well, but she’s scared. He’s not sure how to reassure her. He looks at her suddenly. “Do you need meds?”

She blinks at him, uncomprehending for a moment, and then, “Oh, no. I get shots every couple of weeks. I don’t need another one for a week or so.”

He breathes a sigh of relief, and gets up, walking around the room, examining it more carefully. "Where is TK when you need him?" he mutters.

She glances around too. "You think he'd be able to get out of a locked room?"

He tugs experimentally at the table, but it doesn’t budge, and then crouches to look at how it’s bolted to the floor; absent some power tools they’re not getting it loose. "He can get out of most things holding him down if he wants to."

"TMI," she says primly.

It catches him off guard, and he barks a laugh. "I didn't mean it like that."

He stands up slowly and crosses to the window. It’s non-operable, and there’s some kind of film on it that’s preventing him from seeing outside, but he’s guessing it’s late-morning/early afternoon from the tiny amounts of sunlight leaking around the edges where the film doesn’t quite meet the window frame. Trudie’s offer of lunch was not untimely. Good to know. He tries picking at the film, but can’t get an edge to come up.

She shifts to watch him. "I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you even meet?"

“TK?” She nods. He smiles with the memory. "We met at a bar," leaves out the part about the blowjob in the bathroom. "I had no idea who he was except a cute guy who was flirting with me. And then he was a witness at a convenience store robbery and I got a call from the FBI five minutes after his name went into the system." He smiles ruefully. "And then it got more complicated."

She look unsatisfied, and he waits. "How does it work exactly?" she finally asks. He quirks an eyebrow, and she makes a small tense gesture. "You're a cop. And like I'm not all thin blue line, but you're a cop and he's a thief. That doesn't—" she flails.

"Give me moral quandaries?" he suggests. She nods. He shrugs a little helplessly. "I don't know what to tell you. Maybe it should bother me, but it doesn't." He looks at her. "He's a good person, in a way that has nothing to do with legal or illegal. He cares about people, and he sees them." Sees me, he doesn’t say. "He's never hurt anyone, and he's never stolen from anyone who was losing anything they really valued." He lets his hands rise and fall. "And, he was already retired when I met him, maybe that helps too." Her face stays blank and he doesn’t know what to make of her question or her lack of response. He gives up on the window and crosses back over the table. "What about you?"

She shifts in the chair, crossing her legs. Trudie wouldn’t approve, he thinks wryly. “What about me?”

“What do you think of him?”

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Does it matter?”

He shrugs, because yes, and no. “You’ve always been good at reading people. Better than I was, most of the time.” Iris has never had the patience to put up with bullshit. It makes her tactless sometimes, but also usually right.

She snorts.

He sits down opposite her. “Come on, tell me what you think of him.”

“I told him he was wasting his time getting an art history degree.”

He winces. “What did he say?”

She shrugs. “He told me he agreed with me, and then he asked me why I thought that.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him people make up things about art to make themselves sound smart. That all the people who say that looking at Starry Night made them cry were probably just sad anyway, and that if seeing the Mona Lisa changed their lives they need to talk to a therapist about letting other people make decisions for them.”

He laughs, and then because he can’t help himself, asks, “What did he say to that?”

She shifts in the chair, crossing her legs in the other direction. “He told me about this Rothko painting he’d seen once. He said he’d never really understood the hype about Rothko, that it always just looked like blocks of color to him, wasn’t transcendent the way people say it is. But then he’d seen this one, on a wall, nothing else near it, just this painting of blue on blue dividing blue, and he totally lost himself in it, forgot where he was, and what he was doing, didn’t hear anyone around him.”

She lapses into silence, and he flicks a finger at her “And?”

She huffs a breath in exasperation. “And I asked him what the point of that story was. And he said there wasn’t one really, just that sometimes you can be surprised by something you thought you knew, that sometimes you can find the one example that makes you change your mind, that sometimes you just need to keep looking until you find the right key to unlock the closed door.” She pinches him. “I don’t think he was talking about the art then. I think he was talking about you.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and if his voice is a little hoarse she doesn’t call him on it.

After a moment she says contemplatively. “When we get out of this, we should all go see the Rothko chapel in Houston. I think I’d like to try and see what he sees.” He looks at her curiously, but before he can say anything she interrupts his thoughts. “Why does TK want the degree?" He frowns at her, and she waves her hands. “I know he agreed it was a waste of time, but that’s bullshit. Nobody spends that much time and money on something without a reason.”

He snorts in agreement, and considers the question. “I think he wants to prove he can.”

“To himself or to you?”

He makes an equivocating noise, because as much as he doesn’t like it there is a part of TK that he thinks is trying to prove something to Carlos. “Me, himself, the rest of the world.” She raises an eyebrow in question, and he tries to explain. ‘Who he used to be is more or less an open secret, I’m surprised Michelle didn’t know, honestly. I think he wants to prove that that’s not all he is, or can be.” He smiles. “You’re kind of alike that way.”

She eyes him. “Are you trying to get me to give you my blessing?”

“I wasn’t aware I needed it?”

She sniffs. “As the first person you asked to marry you, I think I should get to weigh in on the second person you ask.”

He stares at her. “What?”

“I see how you look at him.” Her voice softens. “Like you never ever looked at me. Like I’ve never seen you ever let yourself look at anyone.” She taps her finger on the table. “So, tell me, that Klimt in your living room, is it real?”

He keeps staring at her, and answers the question on autopilot. “I have been promised that it is a very good forgery.” She gives him a flat look, and he grins. “Yeah, I give that like a 3% chance of being true. To be fair, he didn’t steal it; it was a present.”

She turns back to studying the table top. “Okay, so he finishes his degree, proves whatever he needs to prove to himself, then what?”

He raises an eyebrow at her, although she’s not looking. “Are you checking to see if he’ll be able to keep me in the style to which I’ve become accustomed?”

She cracks a grin. “I need to know what his prospects are before I can ask what his intentions are.”

He gives her a bemused look. “His boss at the museum wants to get him more involved with orchestrating the Blanton’s big exhibits - coming up with the theme, and the design, tying it in to programs and community outreach, and,” he adds dryly after a moment, “soliciting the donations to fund them, schmoozing money out of companies like yours.”

Iris barks a laugh. “Fuck, I bet he's good at that. God, he must just make panties drop."

He snorts, because she's not wrong. And then there’s the sound of a key in the lock and he stands hastily, pulling her behind him.

Chapter Text

REWIND

He’s in the middle of going over case notes with Captain Washington when his phone rings. He flips it over to look, and frowns when he sees the caller ID.

"Everything okay?" she asks

He flips the phone back over on the desk and turns back to the case files. "Just my father-in-law." He looks up and catches her surprise, and adds awkwardly, "more or less. I'm sure it's fine, I’ll call him back later."

She gives him an exasperated look and stands. "I’m gonna give you a piece of advice from someone who’s been married for the better part of 20 years, when your father-in-law" catches his expression and amends dryly, "more or less, calls, you pick up. I’m gonna go get some coffee. Call him back"

He watches her leave and then hits redial. "Owen? Is everything OK?"

"Oh yes! Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, everything‘s fine. I was just calling to see if you had time for lunch today." It’s not actually as reassuring as Owen probably means it to be.

"Sure?" He glances at his watch "I could meet you somewhere in half an hour." Owen names a place about halfway between the station and the firehouse that they've all been to before and liked, and Carlos decides to find that encouraging, although he still has no idea why Owen was calling.

Captain Washington comes back holding a cup of coffee and raises her eyebrows in question. "He asked if we could have lunch." He gestures at the files they'd been reviewing. "Do you mind?"

She rolls her eyes at him and snags the file he's holding out of his hands. "Get the hell out of my office, Reyes."

Traffic is predictably terrible, and Owen is already seated and halfway through a glass of ice tea by the time he makes it to the restaurant.

He drops into the seat, apologizing. "Sorry, traffic."

Owen waves it away. "Don't worry about it."

The waiter brings him a menu, and he takes it automatically, smiling thanks at him, and then doesn't open it, focusing on Owen. "Is everything okay?"

Owen looks startled for a moment, and then chagrined. "Yes, yes, everything is fine. I promise. I really didn't mean to scare you. It's just been a few weeks since I've seen you, wanted to check in, see how things are going."

He fiddles with the ice tea that’s waiting for him, and assumes that if Owen ordered it it's probably not sweet tea, and squeezes lemon into it. "Sorry, semester’s picked up, we keep losing track of time." He tries to think about their schedule. "Maybe dinner sometime next weekend?"

Owen gives him a wry look. "I wasn't trying to guilt you into dinner. If I wanted to do that I'd call TK directly."

He blinks. "Oh. Yes, that makes sense. Sorry, what was the question?"

Owen leans back in his chair. "I wanted to see how you’re doing." He fidgets with his sunglasses, and it makes Carlos perversely more comfortable that Owen is apparently nervous about whatever this conversation is. "I know that last semester was," Owen pauses, obviously looking for the right word, and Carlos waits, curious to see what he'll choose. "An adjustment," he says finally.

Carlos nods cautiously. "Yes."

TK’s first semester at UT had been full of days when Carlos barely saw TK, because he'd either been at work, or in class, or at the library, and even when he’d been home he'd been studying, or catching up on work, and Carlos thinks that in those four months he woken up alone more times than he hadn’t. And, he's proud of TK, obviously he’s proud, but he also discovered that he’s a little selfish and he'd missed TK’s attention. He'd missed eating breakfast with TK, missed the way TK would drop by the station sometimes and bring lunch, missed listening to him gossip about the people at work over dinner. He missed being the focus of TK's attention. He knows that's greedy, and that it’s his own problem to deal with because he doesn't want TK to give up a single part of what he's doing just because sometimes Carlos feels a little lonely.

He can feel himself flushing for just thinking that while he's at lunch with Owen, and he takes a hasty sip of his ice tea and opens the menu for cover. When he looks up Owen's looking at him with amusement, and he has a horrified moment where he wonders if he'd said any of that outloud.

Their waiter swoops in to take his order and his menu, saving him from his embarrassment, and he tries to avoid Owen's sympathetic and too knowing gaze.

"I remember what it's like," Owen says when their waiter leaves. "Gwyn and I met in law school."

Carlos stares at him, startled out of his own awkwardness in surprise. "I didn't know you'd gone to law school."

Owen grins. "I dropped out beginning of second year to go to the Academy instead. Gwyn, obviously, finished. We got married the summer after she graduated." He smiles ruefully. "She got pregnant not long after that, definitely sooner than we'd planned. She studied for the Bar in between throwing up and eating obscenely large bowls of mac and cheese from the deli down the street from us. And, then we had a newborn while I was trying to make lieutenant and Gwyn was trying to make it through her first year at a corporate law firm. I remember what it was like, trying to figure out how to balance everything, trying to figure out how to keep all the balls in the air. It can be easy to let your relationship be the thing that slips."

"Winter break was nice," he admits under the force of Owen's calm regard. "For both of us. We both needed it, I think."

Owen nods. "Semester's started up again though."

"Yes," he agrees, and thinks a little ruefully that it's possible he's started to be a little jealous of TK's JSTOR account, which is not a sentence he'd ever imagined he’d be thinking. "We're figuring it out." Owen doesn't say anything, and it's just as effective as when his mother does it. "I'm proud of him.”

Owen's smile is small and private, and so full of love that it makes Carlos's heart trip over just to see it. "Me too." He taps the back of Carlos's hand. "I'm proud of you too, you know."

Carlos's startled, "Sir?" is instinctive and reflexive, and he corrects himself before Owen can frown in disappointment. "Owen, sorry."

Owen smiles. "Eh, work in progress. We were up to 54 days since you last called me sir, new record." He wishes Owen was joking about that, but he's seen the counter at the firehouse and knows he isn't, and that it will be reset to zero when Owen goes into work later. "I meant what I said though, I'm proud of you too."

"For what?"

"For loving TK. For being his partner. For taking care of him, even when he thinks he doesn't need it."

He looks at Owen helplessly. "It's not a hardship. I love him."

Owen nods. "I know. And, I'm grateful." His hand tightens on Carlos's. "He's happy here, in Austin, with you. Happier than I think I've seen him," he shakes his head, "maybe since he was a little kid. Even if you didn't look at him exactly the same way he looks at you, I would always be grateful for that, But you do, and that's just an honor to be allowed to see. Gwyn and I," he grimaces, and adds dutifully, "and Enzo, you have no idea what it means to us to know that, to be able to be a part of his life like this."

“Owen,” he says, and then stops, because he has no idea what to say except, “I love him. He makes me really happy.”

Owen’s smile feels like a benediction. “I’m glad.” He straightens when their waiter comes back with their food. “Now that’s out of the way, did TK tell you about the call we went on the other day where Nancy and Tommy pulled an actual lizard out of a man’s leg?”

He shudders and looks at Owen aghast. “His leg?”

Owen nods. “Apparently it was just hanging out there to keep warm.” He grins. “Be grateful TK wasn’t there, he’d probably have tried to bring it home with him.” Carlos eyes Owen, trying to decide if he’s joking, and Owen nods. “I cannot tell you the number of animals TK tried to convince Gwyn and I would make appropriate pets. It’s a miracle we never ended up with a snake.” Carlos shudders again, and makes a mental note to never let Nancy tell TK about that call.

The rest of lunch is less emotionally weighted, and while Owen would never in a million years admit that he’s gossiping, they gossip over sandwiches about the 126 and the people at the station that Owen knows, and Carlos tells him the latest installment in the ongoing saga of TK versus the person who approves his expense reimbursements at the Blanton. It’s nice.

TK’s on the phone when he gets home, and he pauses in what he’s saying when he hears the door open and sees Carlos. “Hang on, Carlos just got home. I’m putting you on speaker, and then can you say that again?”

Iris’s voice comes over the speaker, and he has a moment of qualms about TK and Iris talking to each other without supervision, but she’s talking and clearly backtracking to catch him up so he files that away to think about another day and pays attention. “Okay, so Lydia was on vacation for a while, and it took me a minute to catch up with her. But, I found out what they’re buying.” She pauses, and then clearly reads something off a piece of paper. “It’s a Corradini?”

TK chokes. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.” She makes the p pop with smug satisfaction. “I don’t know why that’s important, but you seem impressed, so hang on, I’m sending you a picture.”

It takes a moment to come through and when it does TK makes a low moaning noise, zooming in on different angles of the statue and squinting at his phone. “Jesus.”

“Mary Magdalene mourning at the tomb of,” Iris corrects. There’s a rustle of paper and there’s a pause while she summarizes whatever she’s reading. “It was made for the Corsini family in,”

“In 1748,” TK interrupts her dreamily. “Corradini was working in Naples. The statue was a private commission for Bartelomeo Corsini.” He leans into Carlos and confides, “There’s a rumor that he asked Corradini to make Mary look like his beloved daughter who had died a decade earlier. There’s no proof, but I like to think it’s true.” He zooms in on a detail and sighs in appreciation. “It was moved to the Palazzo Corsini in Rome, and then back to Florence, and then eventually to the family estate outside of the city in Mezzomonte. It’s been there since about the 1840s, in the grand ballroom.”

“Would you like me to leave the two of you alone for a while?” Iris interrupts. “I can call back later when you’re done mooning over it.”

TK snorts. “Yeah, yeah. What were you going to say when I interrupted?”

“Seriously, I can call back. You sound like you need a minute.”

Carlos interrupts. “So, to summarize, very expensive statue?”

“Very rare and expensive statue,” TK confirms. “Never been on the market before. How much money does Reuth have exactly?”

“Too much,” Iris says cheerfully, “but they let me basically spend a lot of it however I want, so ask me if I care.”

TK swallows a laugh, and presumably commentary on private art collections in the hands of people who don’t care about what they’re buying. “I’m surprised it’s even on the market.”

Iris flips paper and after a moment reads, “Private auction by Christies. Apparently the family are selling the statue to fix up more of the old palazzo and open it up for events, weddings, that kind of thing.”

TK tsks. “Being Florentine nobility just isn’t what it used to be.” Then shakes himself and says more seriously, “Well, that is definitely worth stealing.” He pauses and says almost admiringly, “Stealing a statue is really fucking hard, you have to admire their chutzpah.”

“Priorities,” Carlos reminds him, “You’ll call Matt?”

TK snaps back to himself. “Yup. As soon as we hang up.”

Carlos goes to shower and start dinner while TK talks to Matt, and by the time the chicken is in the oven TK has retreated to his laptop and books. Carlos sets a timer for the chicken, and another for when he’ll need to ask TK to clear enough of the dining room table for them to eat dinner. He sorts the mail and starts a load of laundry while he waits, and then nudges TK when it’s almost time to eat.

“I had lunch with your dad today,” he says while TK is stacking papers and closing books.

TK makes a vague interested noise that lifts just enough at the end to count as a question, distracted by something in one of the books that he flags with a sticky note before he closes it. Carlos waits. It always takes a moment for TK to surface from studying. “You had lunch with Dad?” He frowns. “Did I know about that?” He looks briefly panicked. “Was I supposed to be there? Shit, did I stand you up?”

Carlos laughs, and starts to set the table. “Relax, you didn’t forget anything. I was surprised when he called.”

TK’s expression clears. “Oh, thank God.” He takes the silverware from Carlos and finishes laying their places. “What did he want?” He frowns again. “He’s not in trouble is he? I know he acts sometimes before he thinks.”

Carlos snorts, because Owen’s turf wars with APD are the stuff of legend, and he’s deeply grateful that his station is not in the 126 catchment area. “No.” He looks at TK and says more hesitantly. “He wanted to ask how the new semester was going. How we were doing.” Pauses and corrects himself. “How I was doing.”

TK takes a step into him, and Carlos’s hands automatically come up to cup his hips. “He likes you,” TK says softly.

He nods and tightens his hold on TK’s hips. “I think he was checking in on us. He talked about your mom, and when they were first married.”

TK shifts a little closer, and sounds curious. “He doesn’t talk much about when they were married.”

He strokes a hand up TK’s back. “I think he wanted me to know I could talk to him, that he could relate.”

TK hmms. “He likes you,” he repeats. He presses a kiss to the edge of Carlos's jaw, feathering a line of kisses to his ear, and Carlos leans into it. "I knew doing this was going to be hard, but I don't think I realized how hard."

“Hey. No. I'm proud of you. You know that, right?" He can feel TK's lashes against his neck. "We knew there would be an adjustment period, and the first semester is over." He jostles TK a little bit. "And, I had a whole month of you to myself over Christmas."

TK nods, leaning into him more, settling his face into the crook of Carlos's neck. "This semester will be easier, I think." Pauses, and says so softly Carlos isn't sure if he's meant to hear it. "I hope." He tucks TK in closer and dips his head to press a kiss to his head. "I'm sorry it’s taking me so long to figure out how to do this, balance everything."

He presses his face into TK's hair, the smell of his citrus and mint shampoo is familiar and soothing. "Proud of you," he repeats, and feels TK nod cautiously like he's willing himself to believe it. "Even if the next three years are like this I'm not going anywhere."

"Fuck that," TK mutters. "I wouldn't survive that. I mean I'd still be here, you're fucking stuck with me, but I'd be a broken shell of a man."

Carlos snorts. "Good to see your sense of drama hasn’t suffered."

He wakes up slowly the next morning, expecting TK to be gone already, but rolls over into solid warmth and finds him still there, propped up against the pillow reading something on his phone. He blinks at TK sleepily for a moment. "You’re still here."

TK smiles down at him, running a hand through his wild bedhead and pushing the curls back before he scratches lightly at the nape of Carlos's neck. He stretches into it shamelessly. "I called in sick. Tanya said that Erin could take my workshop this morning, and that I should stay in bed until I feel better."

He grins and presses a kiss to TK's arm which is the only part of him he can easily reach. It's Saturday. They have nothing to do, and nowhere to be, and nobody knows they're here. "Sounds like good advice."

TK grins down at him, hand tightening on his neck. "Nobody knows we’re home," he says, echoing what Carlos had realized a moment ago.

He presses another kiss to TK's arm. "No, they don't," he agrees.

TK twists to set his phone on the bedside table and goes to take his glasses off, and Carlos reaches up to stop him almost before he realizes he's going to do it. "Leave them on." Belatedly adds, "please."

TK twists back and peers down at him uncertainly. "Really?"

He looks up at TK, messy hair and old worn t-shirt and glasses and wants so much he can barely breathe with it. He tugs TK down into the nest of blankets and rolls on top of him, letting TK feel the way he’s getting hard. "Really."

TK huffs a laugh, and hums into the next kiss. "You really like them?" he asks when he pulls away for breath.

Carlos wants to laugh because TK has no idea. "Sexy librarian is a trope for a reason. You wear them and I want to get lost in your stacks."

TK gapes at him, and says reproachfully, "Baby, that was terrible."

He reaches down to hitch TK's leg higher on his thigh, and rolls his hips down in a lazy grind. "You wear them and I want to check you out.”

TK groans again, but arches into Carlos's kiss, and slides a hand down Carlos's back to keep him in place, like he had any intention of going anywhere.

He kisses TK, slow and messy, the way they haven't had time for lately. "You have fine written all over you."

TK buries his laugh in Carlos's throat, and pinches his hip. "These are terrible. Did you google library puns?"

He grins and shifts TK just enough to reach for lube and slicks his hand before he reaches between them, wrapping his hand around TK's cock. TK's voice hitches gratifyingly at the first stroke. "Maybe." He props himself on an elbow and looks down between them, where TK's rolling his hips up into Carlos's grip, pushing the back of Carlos's hand against his own cock, smearing lube and precome between them. "What does one library book say to another?"

TK stares at him, and then plants a foot and rolls them, sitting up in Carlos's lap, hand wrapping around both their cocks. "I don't know. What does one library book say to another?"

He grins. "Dewey belong together?"

TK groans in despair, but he also rubs a thumb around the head of Carlos's cock, so Carlos doesn't think he's actually that appalled. "What," he asks, and closes his fingers in a tight slick tunnel around Carlos's dick, "am I going to do with you?"

"I have a few ideas," he admits.

TK snorts, and takes his hand off Carlos's dick, and Carlos whines in disappointment. TK shakes his head, "Hang on, sit up for me?" He pushes Carlos back up the bed, until he's sitting up, propped against the pillows and has TK in his lap, grinding down.

He drops his hands to TK's hips, pulling him closer. "Better?"

TK makes an agreeing noise, reaching for the lube and pouring some into his hand to warm before he reaches for Carlos's cock again, stroking slow and firm, enough to bring him up to the edge, but not enough to get him off any time soon. He drapes his other hand over Carlos's shoulder, leaning in and mumbling against his lips. "Wanted to kiss you. Wanted to make it last."

He nods and tightens his hand on TK's hip, and presses the other to the base of TK's spine, encouraging the slow roll of his hips, and opens his mouth under TK's and thinks that if anyone rings the doorbell or calls them right now he won't be responsible for his actions. And then he stops thinking past the stroke of TK's tongue in his mouth, and the weight of TK spread across his thighs, and the slick heat of TK's hand on his cock. It's slow languorous climb towards orgasm, the coil tightening imperceptibly with every stroke until he steps over the edge without realizing it was there, more of a rippling letting go than a sharp drop, and he shudders through his orgasm, unwilling to stop kissing TK until he's pulled every last shiver and aftershock out of him. TK pulls away right before it turns into too much, tiny nipping kisses at the corner of Carlos's mouth while he remembers how to breathe again.

He feels boneless and washed clean, and sags back against the pillows. TK's still hard, and he bends his legs to give TK something to lean back against. He closes his hand over TK's, messy with come and lube and wraps them both over TK's cock. TK moans, and his hips push up into the tunnel they've made. He nods. "Come on, use me to get off."

TK gasps an agreement, and drops his free hand to the bed for leverage, fucking up into their joined fists, the rustle of the sheets as their bodies move together the sound track to the morning. He wishes he could kiss TK, but he's beautiful like this, a lean long line above him, working himself to orgasm. He curls over when he comes, hand behind Carlos's neck to hold him in place for a frantic kiss.

He stays there, sagged against Carlos, still curled over, head on Carlos's shoulder, panting hot breaths across his skin. Carlos doesn't move, content to bask in the afterglow until it gets sticky. He lets his mind wander to the rest of the morning, shower, and then breakfast, french toast maybe if they still have bread left, and then maybe the farmer's market and lunch afterwards. The day stretches before him, empty and full of the promise of doing nothing much, but doing it with TK.

TK finally shifts, making a face at the mess between them, and pressing a hard fast kiss to Carlos's mouth before he carefully gets up and holds a hand out to pull Carlos up after him. "Shower?"

He nods. "Definitely."

He soaps TK’s back, enjoying the simple tactile pleasure, and the way TK pushes back against his hands for more. “You didn’t have to call in sick this morning just for me.”

TK turns, swiping water off his face to look at Carlos, and catching his hand to still it when he goes to wash TK’s chest. “Wasn’t just for you. I needed this too.” He takes the loofah from Carlos and adds more soap and uses it to scrub Carlos’s chest. “Tanya’s been after me for a while to give up the Saturday morning workshops, let Erin take them over.” He hangs the sponge up, and steps aside enough to let the shower rinse the soap off of Carlos. “I’ve been putting her off because sometimes it feels like the only time I get to talk to the kids anymore. But, she’s right, I need to let Erin take them.”

“TK,” he protests.

TK shakes his head. “No, Erin’s great at them. The kids love her. I think I’ll stick with this group until their workshop is done so I can see them through to the end, but then I’ll let Erin take the next group all by herself.” He smiles faintly. “It’ll be good for her. Job growth, or whatever. I’m being a good manager.”

“You love working with the kids,” he says softly.

TK looks up at him. “Yeah, but I love you more. You know that, right? I miss just having you to myself.”

Carlos resents TK sometimes for how easily he can say things like that, like it doesn’t cost him anything to admit it. He’s also grateful, because he’s still learning how to ask for the things he wants and needs, even when they feel selfish, and everytime TK leads the way it feels like a little part of the wall inside him gives way, like there might be a time when the wall crumbles entirely. He can’t say that yet though, but he cups TK’s jaw and kisses him, and tries to put all of it into the press of his body against TK’s, and he thinks, he hopes, the way TK pushes back and presses hands firm into his shoulders means he understands.

Chapter Text

Minion #3 brings lunch, and then, unexpectedly, when they ask, a pack of cards. They play War, and gin rummy, and then poker all afternoon. He’s reminded of the last time he played poker with TK, and does not offer Iris the same table stakes. His internal clock says it’s edging into evening when they hear noise outside the door, and they both freeze mid game.

Minions #2 and #3 escort them upstairs to what looks like it was a small private dining room in another life. He wonders where Minion #1 is. There’s a table set for four, with white linens and china and wine glasses. The minions station themselves around the edges of the room while Trudie gestures politely for them to take a seat, and apparently they’re having dinner with Trudie and her son? He trades a look with Iris at the sheer surreality of it.

“I hope you don’t mind if we join you for dinner? I do so hate to eat alone.”

He sits, because what else is he going to do? He glances at the fourth table setting. “Will your son be joining us?”

She hmms, and takes a sip of water. “He got caught in traffic coming back up from Austin.” Carlos has to work not to have a reaction at the reminder that they know where TK is, that they’re watching him. Trudie smiles at him blandly, and then there’s a noise in the hallway and she turns, smiling. “Here he is. I always say, there’s nothing like food to bring a growing boy to the table.” She tilts her head for Darryl’s kiss on her cheek, and then smiles at the table. “Miss Blake, I assume you’ve met my son before?” Iris nods warily, and her posture goes rigid when Darryl sits down next to her. Trudie nods. “And Detective Reyes, I believe you’ve met my son as well?”

She knows they’ve met, but he can roll with whatever veneer of polite convention she wants to play at, and he holds out his hand to Darryl Chambers. “Just once. Nice to see you again.”

Darryl ignores him, and gestures sharply at the minions to start serving dinner. Trudie’s eyes narrow in annoyance, but she doesn’t say anything. Carlos eyes the plates Minion #3 brings over from the sideboard. Steak, and scalloped potatoes, and green beans. He glances at the sideboard. There’s a tray of what looks like chocolate mousse waiting for dessert. He has a half-hysterical moment of wondering if Minion #1 is toiling away in the hotel kitchens, or if they’ve kidnapped a local chef to make them meals.

He slowly smoothes his napkin into his lap, watching Trudie, waiting for her to take the first bite.

She catches his gaze and giggles. “The food isn’t drugged, Detective Reyes. You should eat.” She nods at Iris. “You too, Miss Blake.”

He keeps his hands in his lap. “I was taught it’s rude to start to eat before the hostess.”

She beams at him. “Your mother raised you well.” She takes a bite and motions for them all to eat.

He takes a bite of potatoes and chews. They’re very good. He’s tempted to ask for the recipe.

She takes a careful bite of her green beans before she turns her attention to Iris. “What do you do Miss Blake? I’m afraid Detective Reyes has been very close mouthed about you.” Iris gives her a wary look, and he holds his breath that she’ll be cautious, instead of brash. He wishes he dared kick her under the table, but settles for giving her as pointed a look as he dares.

She glances at him, and he’s guessing that she’d really like to roll her eyes at him and ask him to have a little faith, but she doesn’t. She takes a sip of water to steady herself and says, “I work for the charitable division of Reuth.”

Trudie smiles approvingly, and cuts a small piece of steak off and eats it neatly. “I always think that’s such a worthwhile vocation. Your parents must be very proud of you.” She raises an eyebrow inquiringly.

Iris freezes, and swallows. “My father, he died when I was little.”

Trudie’s face pulls taut and she reaches across the table to put her hand on Iris’s. “Of course, you said this afternoon. How rude of me to bring it up again. A father is so important in a little girl’s life.” Iris nods numbly, and he remembers when Mr. Blake had died, the way that he had seemed to take a piece of Mrs. Blake with him. Trudie pats her hand again. “But, your mother?”

Iris nods and swallows the piece of steak she’s been chewing. “Yes. My mother, and my sister. My sister especially. I think sometimes she was almost a second mother to me.”

Trudie nods, and looks a little wistfully at her son. “I always wanted to give Darryl a little brother or sister, someone he could help shape, someone to look up to him.” Honestly, he thinks that sounds like a terrible idea, but he nods blandly when Trudie glances at him.

“Do you have brothers or sisters Detective Reyes?”

“No, ma’am.” She shakes her head in disappointment, and there is an odd part of him that wants to reassure her. “I have a lot of cousins though.”

Iris glances at Carlos with an expressive ‘what the fuck?’ twist of her lips when Trudie turns to ask the minions to refill the water carafe..

Trudie turns her attention back to them. “And your parents, are they proud of you? They must be, following in your father’s footsteps.”

Iris, who had been there for his childhood, and his adolescence, even if she hadn’t been there when he’d applied to the Academy over his father’s disapproval, looks at him curiously. He chews while he thinks about how to answer that. “I think my father didn’t always want this life for me, and there were a lot of years when I thought he disapproved because I’d chosen it anyway.” He hesitates and then adds, “I thought they were disappointed that I’m gay.”

Iris is looking at him, eyes sharp, angry he thinks, on his behalf. She’d always been his first and loudest champion. Trudie looks thoughtful and interested, knife and fork both resting while she listens.

“But they came around?” It seems important to Trudie in a way he doesn’t really know how to parse.

He considers. "I think I hurt them by not being honest, by not letting them see me. But I didn't disappoint them for any of the reasons I was afraid of, and they’ve always been proud of me. It just took us all a while to learn how to talk about that.”

Iris flinches in her chair, and he gives her a sharp wary look, not sure if she’s going to say something, but her eyes are on her plate, and her hand is clenched around her fork. His eyes jerk to Darryl, and to where his hand is not visible beneath the table. He glances at the table top, trying to see something that will force Darryl to move the hand he’s sure Darryl has on Iris’s thigh. Iris’s grip tightens on her fork until her fist is almost white, and just as Carlos is about to do something desperate like knock over his glass of water, Darryl moves to cut himself another bite of steak. He leans in to Iris to whisper something to her, and Carlos hates that there’s nothing he can do to stop this.

Trudie either doesn’t see, or ignores, the interplay and takes a sip of wine. “That’s good. A parent should be proud of their child. My husband, Darryl’s father, never approved of Darryl’s interest in art.” She purses her lips in a discontented moue. “He thought it made him weak.” She reaches out to pat Carlos’s hand. “I think he was worried that it might make Darryl gay.” And Carlos has no idea how to react to that, and he glances at Darryl involuntarily. Darryl looks like he’d like to forcibly shut his mother’s mouth, and apparently even criminals get embarrassed by their mothers, which is . . . interesting? Trudie continues like she doesn’t notice, or more likely doesn’t care, about the undercurrents at the table. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with being gay, and I would have loved a son-in-law just as much as a daughter-in-law, but Michael, Darrryl’s father, didn’t see it like that so I had to have him killed.”

Carlos chokes on the mouthful of potatoes he’d just taken and stares at her. He swallows with effort when neither Trudie nor Darryl seem to think she’s said anything noteworthy. Iris kicks him under the table, and he pulls himself together fast. Thankfully Trudie doesn’t seem to require a response to that statement, and turns back to Iris. “I know Detective Reyes has a partner, but are you seeing anyone dear?”

Iris shakes her head. “I’m kind of married to my work.” Trudie makes a disapproving face, and Carlos does frown at Iris this time, to get her to say something else. She scowls at him, but adds, “It’s hard to meet people.”

Trudie nods, appeased. “Don’t leave it too long, dear. The years can slip away from you, and children are such a blessing.” Iris nods, because what else is she going to do, and Trudie turns to Carlos. “Are you thinking of children? I know it must be more complicated with two men?”

He blinks, and he really should have seen this coming. “We haven’t really talked about it,” he admits. Trudie frowns, and he adds hastily, “But, TK really loves kids.” Which has the merit of both being absolutely true, and sidestepping the question. He clears his throat when the moment stretches too long. “Speaking of TK, can I call him?” Darryl makes a derisive noise, but Trudie looks pleased that he’s asked. “I promised that I’d call him this evening,” he reminds her.

Darryl’s face seems to be set in a permanent sneer, but he limits himself to a single disgusted, “Got you on a short leash, doesn’t he?” His mother gives him a stern look, and he subsides, nursing a scotch he’d had one of the minions fetch for him.

She holds a hand up, and one of the minions puts a phone in her hand. She sets it on the table between them. “Go ahead.” She holds his wrist when he goes to take it. “On speaker please, Detective. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but well, I don’t trust you.”

He can’t help his amused snort, and refuses to think about how much he’s enjoying the murderous look Darryl’s aiming his way right now.

TK picks up on the first ring, like he’s been waiting for the call. “Hi honey.”

TK makes a tiny abortive sound that he cuts off fast, and when he comes back his voice is light and breezy. “Hey, baby. Did you get out of your meet and greet early? I didn’t expect to hear from you until later.”

“In between dinner and going out for drinks with some guys I met,” he lies, and TK makes a noise of understanding, which to be fair he probably does because TK goes to more conferences than he does. “I thought I’d sneak in a quick phone call while I was waiting.”

“Learn anything fun today?” TK asks cheerfully. Carlos spins a lie about sessions on mediation and conflict deescalation. He can see TK’s leer through the phone, “Yeah, wanna come home so I can deescalate you?”

He laughs. “What? That doesn’t even make sense.”

TK shrugs. “Made you smile though.”

He dips his head and pretends like he’s alone. “Yeah. How was your day?”

He doesn’t know what TK hears in his voice, but he immediately launches into an involved story about the drama between three of the kids in one of his classes who all live together. "I do not miss my 20s," TK finishes.

He snorts. "Your twenties were two years ago."

TK makes a horrified noise, like he actually had not realized that. "Baby, I need you to come home. Remind me that I'm still bendy and fun. These kids are making me old before my time."

He doesn’t know whether TK has genuinely forgotten that they're on speaker phone, or if he just doesn’t care. If he had to bet he'd say the second. "Soon," he promises, and hopes it's a promise he doesn't have to break.

TK sighs. "Tell me about your day."

He shrugs. "You know conferences, lots of seminars in stuffy rooms about things you already know." He flicks Trudie a glance. "Sometimes you meet interesting people though, and I did get chocolate mousse for dessert, so it wasn’t a totally wasted day." She gives him an amused half smile. He turns his attention back to TK. "I'll be home in a few days." Crosses his fingers that that's true. "I love you."

"Love you too," TK says, easy as breathing. Darryl has his finger over the end call button when TK says suddenly. “Oh, shit, I almost forgot. We got another reminder today from the condo association about the bill for the elevator repair, I thought you said you’d taken care of that?”

He makes a face. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call them when I get home.”

TK makes an exaggerated discontented noise over the phone. “I can call them.”

He cuts TK off. “No. I said I’d take care of it, and I’ll take care of it.”

TK sounds whiney, and Carlos forgets sometimes how good TK is at this. “Okay. But remember we’re having that new bedroom set delivered next week, and I don’t want them to corner me when I ask to tie up the elevator for an hour.”

“That bedroom set you wanted to buy to replace the perfectly good one we already had?” he mutters, mostly under his breath, sneaking a look at Trudie to see if she’s paying attention. She is, but she’s got her eyes focussed on her plate, giving them as much privacy as she can. Before TK can say anything else, he softens his voice. “I love you, but I really have to go. You don’t need to worry about it. I have it handled.”

Darryl’s finger cuts off TK’s response, and Carlos glares at him.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asks.

“It’s fine,” Carlos says shortly, and ignores the speculative look Trudie gives him.

The minions bring out coffee and small rich truffles, but Trudie doesn’t seem to want to linger any longer, and the evening winds down not long after that. Trudie excuses herself, and proves that she’s aware that her son is not entirely trustworthy by having them escorted back to their room when she takes her leave. They play another few desultory rounds of cards before they give up and get ready for bed, even though it’s probably still early. He falls asleep more easily than he thought he would, thought he’d be awake listening for the sound of someone at the door, or trying to think through how to get them out of this, but he’s asleep almost before he’s under the covers.

He comes awake sometime later to a dark room. His internal clock says it's pre-dawn and he should try and go back to sleep. He doesn't think he'll be able to, but he closes his eyes and lets himself pretend for a moment that he's at home. Lets himself pretend that the body in the bed behind him is TK, that if he opens his eyes he'll see the shadow of their dresser cast by the ambient light that comes in through the high loft windows. It used to bother him that the loft never really got dark, that the street lights from outside always cast the loft in soft shadows even in the middle of the night. He's gotten used to it now, likes the way it means he can navigate around the loft without turning a light on.

Iris turns over and her breathing changes and he knows she's awake. He doesn't say anything, wants to hold onto this stillness for just a little longer.

Iris shifts and brushes against him. "Are you awake?" she whispers.

"Yes."

"I lied, earlier," she says abruptly.

He turns to face her. "What? When?"

She gestures vaguely at nothing in particular. "When I said you’d ghosted me.”

He props himself up, trying to see her in the dark room. “What? That was weeks ago.”

She shrugs. “I know. Doesn’t make it less true though.”

He blinks at her. “Okay. What made you think of it now?”

She shrugs again. “Nothing in particular.” He stares at her and even though he doubts she can see him she relents. “Mom always worried about me. Worried about me more than she ever did about Michelle. And, it just got worse after,” she stalls and then picks up again, “after I went crazy in college.”

He scowls at her. “You didn’t go crazy. You were sick.”

She smiles. “I’m still sick, I just manage it better now. And, I’m allowed to say crazy. It happened to me.” She rubs her eyes. “Mom worries all the time now. What happens if my meds go out of whack? What happens if I stop going to work, will anyone notice in time? She’d like it better if I was in some kind of residential program, or better yet if I came back and lived at home where she could keep an eye on me.”

He reaches out to brush her arm gently. “She loves you. You scared her, scared all of us, when you disappeared like that in college.”

She turns her head. “I know. But she’s scared of me? For me? Scared, either way. She wants to wrap me in cotton balls and lock me away where nothing can hurt me.” She tilts her head. “I won’t let her. But it always feels like I’m one episode away from losing that fight, and it’s exhausting.”

“Is that why you left? Because, you ghosted me first.”

She sighs. “Kind of? It was hard in the beginning, I had to make myself into someone new, and it was hard to do that if I had all these reminders of who I used to be. Bad enough to have Mom there, hovering, and Michelle. I couldn’t do it if you were there too.”

He swallows down the hurt. “And after?”

She doesn’t meet his eyes. “After it was easier to just keep moving forward. Every time I thought about calling you it felt like my throat was closing, and I just couldn’t.” She pauses. “You didn’t call either.”

“Michelle asked me not to. I assumed she was passing on what you wanted her to.”

Iris nods. “That’s fair. She was, even if I didn’t tell her that outright.” She leans her head on his shoulder. “I missed you.”

He glances down at her. “Really?”

She nods. “‘Chelle talks about you. Nancy talks about you. I ask about you.”

He tries to figure out what he feels about that. “I didn’t know Michelle and Nancy were that close.”

Iris shrugs. “‘Chelle hired Nancy for the 126. Nancy says she imprinted on ‘Chelle like a baby duck, and now we’re stuck with her.” She glances up at him, eyes full of mischief. “I think they’re friends, and just bad at words.” He snorts. She nudges him. “We okay?”

He has no idea what they are, but he’s never been mad at her. Missed her, and worried about her, and let himself forget about her but he’s never been angry at her. “We’re okay.”

Chapter Text

REWIND

Matt calls as he's plating his dinner. He tucks the phone against his shoulder as he grabs a knife and fork and sits down at the table. "What's up?"

"Hey, sorry to call at dinner time, but I have something I want to run past you and TK. Can I stop by?"

Carlos pours himself a glass of wine. "You're welcome to, but it's just me tonight. TK has an evening Board meeting."

"Tomorrow?"

He thinks about TK's schedule. "TK has a morning meeting, and then he has class in the afternoon, and a study group in the evening."

"Thursday?"

"Morning school tours at the Blanton, afternoon classes, and then date night." He hesitates for a moment before he rules out offering up date night. There's a voice in the back of his head that says that work should come first, and they can always have another date night. But, Thursday night is the first time all week when he knows without question that he'll sit down to dinner with TK. And, he also knows that Matt will understand that because every Friday night Matt stops at Liz's favorite bakery and picks up dessert, and Liz makes pasta, and they both turn off their phones.

Matt doesn't push, just says, "Friday morning?"

"I've got court all day on Friday. But, Saturday would work. TK runs a workshop at the Blanton on Saturday mornings, but I usually meet him for lunch afterwards if you want to join us?"

There’s a startled pause, and then Matt says, "No. I'll just tell you now over the phone. You can tell TK when he gets home."

He spares a regretful look at his cooling dinner, but stretches for the notebook TK uses in that one class where the professor has outlawed laptops and insists everyone takes notes by hand. Every time TK talks about it Carlos thinks he'd fail just because he'd never be able to read any of the notes he took, but TK has oddly neat handwriting, and mostly just complains that he misses things because he can type faster than he writes. He flips to find a free page and smoothes it out. "Okay, go."

"I've been asking around, and the consensus seems to be that your boy Darryl is indeed just a front man, definitely not the brains behind the operation. General opinion seems to be that Darryl’s a thug, and if you triangulate the rumors it seems like the back of house brains of the operation is probably a woman."

He frowns. "Nobody's seen her?"

"Nope. Darryl goes to the meetings, and signs on the dotted line, but the terms are always negotiated beforehand, and if anything does go sideways it's always one of the muscle who stand behind Darryl who acts as the voice for someone they call on the phone."

Carlos thinks. “Any ideas who she might be?”

Matt makes a disgruntled meh noise. “Either genuinely nobody knows, or they’re too scared of her to name her. Either way, I have nothing.”

“Makes you wonder why use Darryl as a front man at all, if he’s not the brains and not the muscle.”

Matt hums thoughtfully. “Maybe whoever this woman is has something to lose if she’s seen to be the face of the operation, it’s safer for her to work through an intermediary?” Matt pauses. “Is it possible she’s well known in some other way and doesn’t want her name out there linked to this?”

He looks at what he's scribbled down and taps the end of the pen against his mouth. He pushes his plate further to the side, he'll have to reheat it or deal with cold chicken, both are unappealing. Maybe he'll order pizza. TK’s always hungry when he gets home from Board meetings, and he likes pizza at any temperature. "Yes, but why Darryl? Surely if you’re going to use an intermediary you want someone smart? And apparently she has muscle she trusts enough to ride herd on Darryl in her absence, why not use one of them as the face of the operation?”

He can hear the rustle of Matt turning pages. "Maybe she doesn’t really trust them, or only trusts them to hand her the phone? Maybe she thinks someone smart would be a threat to her operation? Maybe she wants someone she knows she can control.” He snorts suddenly. “Hell, maybe Darryl’s related to her and she has to hire him. Nepotism is a bitch.”

Carlos thinks ruefully of a couple of the legacy hires in his own station and huffs a laugh. “Even criminals have pushy in-laws looking to get their kids into the business?”

“Exactly.”

He stares at the notes he’s made, not really seeing them. “Do we know anything about Chambers’ family?”

He hears Matt flipping through pages. “Only child. Father died when he was in high school. One uncle on his father’s side, divorced, and an aunt, also on his father’s side. Nothing suggests they’re close, but we didn’t do a deep dive.”

“Mother?” he asks idly.

“Stay at home mom, president of the PTA type. She travels with him now when he moves for jobs, looks like he supports her and she keeps house for him. There’s not much on her. She joins the local library and a bookclub wherever they go, pays her taxes on time. It looks like his father died fairly unexpectedly, and they didn’t have much after his death, and she worked to keep them afloat, maybe he’s taking care of her now? It’s always weird to think of criminals having mothers that they love.”

He grins. “TK adores his.”

“Gwyneth Morgan,” Matt says with feeling, “is a force of nature I would not cross willingly.” Next time they have dinner with Liz and Matt he is definitely asking for that story. Matt starts to say something else, and then cuts himself off and lapses into silence for so long Carlos almost thinks he’s forgotten Carlos is there when he says, “Is every week this busy for the two of you?"

He shrugs and morbidly nudges his congealing potatoes with his fork. "Some more than others. TK likes to get ahead on things when he can."

"Is it strange to say it makes me proud?"

He smiles a little. "No. You probably know him better than most people do.” And then, because it’s Matt, who probably does actually know TK better than almost anyone else, he asks the question that’s been eating at him. “Did I make him do this?”

It clearly takes Matt by surprise. “Make him? Do what? Go back to school?”

He nods. “I see how much he stresses about it.” He sees how much it eats at TK’s self-esteem sometimes to make himself vulnerable, to start over at something from scratch, to have to learn the rules all over again. “I feel guilty sometimes when he goes from class to work and then back to the library and then gets up the next day and does it all over again. It’s exhausting just to watch sometimes.”

Matt’s silent for a long moment, long enough that Carlos starts to panic, starts to wonder if TK’s said something to Matt, if Matt’s been thinking this too, and for how long, starts to wonder how selfish Matt thinks he’s been. “I think,” Matt says gently, cutting through his spiral, “that that’s only a question TK can answer for you. But,” he adds over Carlos’s frayed nerves, “I also think that I’ve never seen TK Strand commit to anything he wasn’t interested in, and also sometimes you do things for people you love but that doesn’t make those things an imposition or a sacrifice.”

“I . . . what?” he manages.

“I started my career doing undercover work. Did you know that?” He feels like maybe he had, but only vaguely. He makes a noise that Matt takes as agreement. “I loved it. I was good at it, and I loved the thrill of it. It felt illicit that something I enjoyed that much was totally above board, and got me bonus pay. But Liz hated it, and it made her scared, even if she never said that outright. The last undercover assignment I took I ended up in the hospital with broken ribs, a black eye, and bruised kidneys. It’s not the worst injury I’d ever gotten on the job, although maybe it was the worst since I’d married Liz. But, I’ll never forget the look on her face when I woke up, and I knew I could never do that to her again. That’s when I transferred to White Collar, and got interested in your boyfriend actually. She didn’t ask me to give it up; I did it because I love her.”

He gets what Matt’s saying. “So it wasn’t a sacrifice.”

Matt shrugs. “No, it was, but it's one I’ll never regret making. You make changes for the people you love, and I can’t tell you what TK thinks about going back to school, but I can tell you that he loves you, and whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it because he wants to, and he thinks it’s worth the cost.”

He thinks about TK saying he missed them too, and giving up Saturday workshops because being at home was more important, and hopes that Matt is right, because he’s not sure he can bear it if he’s not.

Two weeks later and they’re all back at the FBI offices downtown on a Saturday, sitting around a conference table that’s littered with blueprints, notes, case files, and the remains of lunch.

"I mean, what if we just let them steal the statue?" he finally suggests. They’ve been here for hours, and it’s edging into what might be considered dinner time and he doesn’t really want to eat another meal here, but they’re getting nowhere.

They’re reasonably certain that Chambers is behind the thefts, or at least they’re certain he’s the front man for someone who is orchestrating the thefts. They’re reasonably certain he’s planning to steal the Corradini. What they don’t know is how he’s going to do it, or – and maybe more importantly – how to prove it.

George gives him a dubious look, but doesn't look as scandalized as Carlos thinks he would have a few weeks ago – kid's learning fast, or they're corrupting him. Six of one, half dozen of another. "We're the FBI?" George hazards. "We think stealing is wrong?"

"Not if we steal it first," he points out. "Our problem is that we can't figure out how they're going to steal the statue, or who they is. If we steal it first and replace it with a forgery, and let them steal the forgery, then we can watch them do it and follow it back to whoever the boss lady is. She’s the real money prize here."

"I think you've been spending too much time with your boyfriend," George says, but he sounds more reluctantly curious than judgemental.

"Partner," he corrects absently, and avoids Matt's suddenly interested look. He looks at TK. "You wanna weigh in on this? You're the one with the practical experience here."

TK leans back in his chair, leg jiggling restlessly. "It's not a bad idea. It does mean that we have to figure out how to steal the statue first." He squints thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Also where to get a good enough forgery to fool them.” There's a pause where they all look at him expectantly, and he raises his eyebrows at them. "What? I never stole a statue. They're fucking heavy."

Iris makes a small surprised noise in the back of the room, but she just shakes her head when Carlos looks a question at her. He paces while he thinks, and TK doodles on a scrap of paper. He pauses and peers at it curiously. He’s drawn Matt as Owl, and George as Roo. He’s cast Iris as Rabbit, and Carlos as Piglet, and himself as Tigger. He leans down to whisper, “Because you’re bouncy and trouncy, or because you’re the only one?”

TK twists his head, so close Carlos can feel TK’s breath against the skin of his neck. “Because I’m fun fun fun fun fun.”

He snorts and goes back to pacing. He stops suddenly. "We don't have to figure out how to steal the statue, or where to get a good forgery. They've already figured that out. We just have to figure out what they're planning to do." TK and Matt both look up at him. He starts pacing again. "So, how do you make someone want to get off a nuclear submarine?"

Matt blinks. "What?"

TK snorts and lets both feet of the chair he’s been precariously leaning back in thump to the floor. "Hunt for Red October. He and Marjan bonded over watching it way too many times when they were kids." He reaches out and snags Carlos's hand as he passes and presses a kiss to it. "Dorks."

He stops pacing to look over TK's shoulder at the plans, although they're not telling him anything useful. "Bold words from someone who wrote a response paper last night about the merits of creative anachronism in A Knights Tale."

Matt looks bemused. "Didn't I write you a recommendation letter to study art history?"

That gets TK to look up from the floor plans and fix Matt with a stern look. "Do not diss A Knight’s Tale.” TK stands up, suddenly energized. “Okay. So, they have a forgery ready to go, because their deal is that they don’t leave a hole for anyone to notice. At some point after it’s delivered they have to swap the real statue for the forged statue.”

He taps his pen on the table in a restless staccato. “Okay, okay. So, moving statues is a bitch, it requires ropes and fork lifts, and it’s generally more of a pain in the ass than it’s worth. It’s a little easier if it’s still crated, so if you’re halfway sane you make the swap after it’s delivered, but before it gets uncrated.” He taps the plan of the building Reuth occupies. “Buildings like this always have night security, no way you’d get up to Reuth’s offices with a second crated statue and make the swap without anyone noticing.” He points the pen at George. “That, young padawan is why you do not steal statues, they take too much time to move.”

“Padawan?” George echoes. “Anakin ends up becoming Darth Vader, are you implying you’re going to turn me to the dark side? Also, doesn’t that make you Palpatine?”

It makes TK pause. “Okay, points to the baby FBI.”

“Focus please,” Matt says repressively, and TK and George both look chagrined.

TK regroups. “Okay, so something that size and weight’s gonna have to come up the freight elevators. They’ll do it after hours, because I guarantee that building has fussy tenants who’ll make a stink about noise during business hours.” TK taps the table again thoughtfully. “They need time to make the swap, which means they need to delay the whole delivery process somehow.” His eyes go a little unfocused, thinking, and Carlos shifts a little, trying not to be turned on by watching TK work his way through a heist.

“Break the freight elevator.” George says suddenly. They all swing to look at him. “If you break the freight elevator after hours you’re going to have to get it fixed and recertified by an elevator tech before you can use it again – and that’s going to take time, and it won’t happen that night. If you break the freight your statue gets stuck on the loading dock. It gives you time to swap it out for the forged statue while it’s still crated.” They all blink at him for a moment, and he shrugs. “My dad’s a foreman with the local elevator union back home. One of my brothers is an apprentice. Nothing happens with an elevator without a union tech signing off on it, and they charge extra for after hours work.” His smile sharpens. “A lot extra. No building manager is paying that unless someone is literally giving birth in the elevator.”

TK bounces a little. “Oh, okay, this is good. Our friend Chambers is Reuth’s paid in-house expert. He’s going to certify the fake when it gets uncrated. And that just leaves the auction house coordinator overseeing the delivery, and maybe an insurance agent, who is also going to have to sign off. But, if they’ve got a good forgery then probably everyone is going to see what they expect to see and nobody’s going to run off and do detailed testing on if it looks like a duck and talks like a duck.” He shakes his head in admiration. “Seriously, this is a really good con. I’m kinda disappointed in myself that I never thought of something like this.”

“So, how do we steal it first?” Matt asks practically.

TK frowns. “Oh, rain on my parade, why don’t you.”

Matt smirks. “Come on mastermind, impress me.”

TK narrows his eyes at Matt. “Okay, so they’re presumably swapping the statues on the loading dock while the freight elevator is out of commission, and they’re gonna want to drive off with the real one while the getting is good. So, we have to interrupt that long enough to swap the statues back so they drive off with the fake statue, and the real one that they think they stole is waiting to on the loading dock to be installed at Reuth.”

They all stare at the floor plans on the table. “What if they just can’t get out of the loading dock for a while?” Iris says. They all turn to look at her. “What if there’s an accident outside the loading dock so it blocks the entrance?”

“You’re going to have to get them to leave the truck long enough to make the swap,” TK points out.

“Good samaritan impulse?” George suggests. “Have someone come up and ask them for help? It’s hard to say no to someone to their face.”

“A woman,” TK says, and flashes Iris an apologetic smile. “Men will always get stupid for a woman.”

Iris makes a face, but doesn’t disagree. Matt and George bend over the plans again, discussing logistics, and Carlos absently starts to tidy away the detritus of lunch.

"So, not a gigolo," Iris says quietly, and Carlos freezes, stretched across the table in the process of collecting the box his lunch had come in. He forces himself back into motion before anyone notices, but stays tuned into the conversation.

"No, not a gigolo," TK agrees, and his voice is utterly devoid of expression, like he’s waiting to see what Iris will do with the confirmation.

She nods, and examines one of the floor plans, more Carlos suspects for something to do than because she's curious about it. "Didn't have art thief on my bingo card."

"Former," George mutters.

"Retired," Carlos says.

"Alleged," Matt chimes in repressively.

TK shrugs. "All of the above."

Iris taps her fingers on the table, and Carlos isn’t sure how to read her mood. He thinks TK isn’t sure either, because TK’s watching her warily, waiting to see which way she’ll break. “Art thief? Really?” she says finally, and she sounds more incredulous than anything else.

TK nods warily. “Really.”

She tilts her head. “Were you good at it?”

“I never got caught, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She hmms thoughtfully, and then looks at Matt. “Is that how you met? You were chasing him?” She pauses. “And you never caught him?”

Matt gives her a rueful look. “I was chasing him. And, no I never caught him, and he never lets me forget it.”

“So that means he was good?”

Matt’s caught off guard, Carlos can tell. “Yes, he was good. He was one of the best.”

Iris turns back to TK. “So you work for a museum now, and you used to steal from them? Ironic.”

“I never stole from museums,” TK says sharply.

Iris looks at Matt for confirmation. He waves a hand. “He really didn’t.”

Iris makes a ‘huh’ noise, and Carlos touches her arm. “Iris?”

She shrugs him off irritably. “Readjusting. Give me a minute.” She looks at TK. “Why not?”

He blinks. “Why didn’t I steal from museums?” She nods. “Because it’s unethical.”

She stares at him suspiciously, which is fair, it’s a bizarre answer if you don’t know TK, and she doesn’t. Not yet, not well enough.

Matt glances up from his notes. “If you’re going to give your TED talk about why museums are important, and rich people are the worst, can you take it outside?”

“Not all rich people,” TK argues, “just the ones who are invested in the status of the symbol instead of the actual symbol.” His lips twitch ominously. “It’s very Baudrillard if you think about it.”

Matt groans. “I knew I was going to regret writing that recommendation. Outside please. I do not have time for a discussion on the signifier and the signified; I’d like to get home sometime tonight.”

TK snorts, and inclines his head to Iris, inviting her to continue the discussion outside, but she shakes her head. “I need to get back to Dallas. I have a meeting in the morning about setting up a new shelter.” Carlos isn’t sure if that’s true, or if she just wants an excuse to leave, although if it’s an excuse it’s more politic than she used to be. It reminds him again that he doesn’t really know her anymore. TK looks doubtful too, and like he’d like to insist that she stay so he can explain more. Carlos thinks he’d like that chance too.

“We’ll see you soon?” he asks instead.

And she shrugs, threading her arms through her coat. “If you need me.” She glances at TK. “Seems like maybe you’re all set though.” And he has no idea what that means.

Chapter Text

They're both up and dressed long before they hear noises outside the door, both of them too uneasy to stay in bed.

They're idly playing Go Fish at the table when the door opens. It's just Darryl this morning, absent any of the ever present minions. Darryl holds up a paper bag and a tray of coffees. "Breakfast."

There are only three coffee cups in the tray, but Carlos peers behind Darryl into the hall. "Miss Trudie's not joining us?"

Darryl crosses the room and drops the bag onto the table. 'Church." He gestures at the bag. "Breakfast burritos. I figured you'd like some comfort food."

Carlos eyes the bag and the coffee without comment, but doesn't reach for them. Darryl grunts. "They're not poisoned. There's one for me in there too. You can pick which one you want to give me."

Carlos exchanges a glance with Iris and clamps down hard on the urge to quote the Princess Bride, and takes a coffee and a burrito, passing the bag to Iris. He doesn't actually trust Darryl, but at the very least he figures Trudie will be pissed if Darryl kills them, and that's probably enough to stay Darryl's hand for now.

He unwraps the burrito and takes a bite and chews. It's not the worst breakfast burrito he's ever had, but it is running a very close second. It takes effort to screw up a breakfast burrito this badly, and he idly contemplates how they've achieved it as he eats and waits for whatever Darryl has to say, because he’s here for a reason.

Darryl crumples up the wrapper of his burrito when he's finished and sits back in the chair with his coffee, studying them. "You think you're safe because my mother likes you." Carlos doesn't say anything, just hands Iris sugar and creamer for her coffee. Darryl sneers. "I'm her son."

"Yes," he agrees.

Darryl reaches out, curling his finger around a lock of Iris's hair that's fallen loose, letting it twist around his finger. Iris freezes, and Carlos can tell it's taking effort for her not to shrink away from Darryl's touch. He takes a steadying breath against the urge to knock Darryl's hand away. "Maybe I should get a girlfriend. Maybe that would make Mom happy." He glances at Carlos. "She's a romantic, has a soft spot for a love story." He lets go of Iris and she takes a hiccuping breath.

Darryl digs in his pocket and drops a phone on the table. "Thought you'd want to call your boyfriend."

He reaches for the phone slowly. "Yes. Thank you."

Darryl leans back, stretching his arm out so that it's resting on the back of Iris's chair, fingers playing with the ends of her hair. Carlos can see her hands tense on the coffee cup, but she doesn't move, and he is unbearably proud of her. He calls TK.

"Hi honey."

There’s that bare hitch in TK’s voice again before he says, "Hi baby. How's the conference."

He takes a sip of coffee and grimaces. "Oh, you know, stale coffee and staler donuts."

TK laughs. "Is it mean to tell you that your mom is making chilaquiles right now?" So, TK has looped his dad in.

He exaggerates his groan just to make TK laugh. "Did she make salsa verde?"

He can hear the smugness in TK's voice. "Yup. Because your mom loves me." He snorts, and TK adds, "I brought conchas from that panaderia your dad likes."

"Suck up," he murmurs, and TK doesn't disagree.

There's an easy silence that stretches between them, and he soaks it up like he can bank it against the rest of the day. "Who all is there?" he asks finally.

TK rattles off a list of half of his immediate family. "Oh hey, I have news though. Well, news and gossip." He makes an interested noise, ignoring Darryl's growing impatience. He'll spin this conversation out as long as he can, because TK's voice in his ear is a reassurance. "Ari got nominated for an art award. That picture she did of the Riverwalk is going to go up at City Hall."

"That's fantastic. You have to give her an extra hug from me."

TK laughs. "Pretty sure she might be hugged out today, but I'll let her know you're proud too."

Darryl makes hurry up and finish gestures, and his hand has migrated to the back of Iris's neck. She's stiff as a board, and Carlos interrupts TK. "Hey honey, I have to go, the first session is starting. Tell me the gossip later?"

TK stops talking instantly, but then says. "Hang on, your dad wants to say hi."

He hears the phone fumble as it changes hands. It gives him time to collect himself enough to say, "Hi Dad," without having his voice shake.

"Carlos," his dad says, and he can't read the tone of his voice. "TK says you're enjoying your conference."

"Yes," he agrees. "Learning lots of things, meeting new people, networking."

His father nods. "Good good. That's important for your career." And he recognizes what's in his father's voice this time, it’s worry. TK's told him they're being listened to, where Carlos is. He feels his anxiety spike in response to the unaccustomed apprehension in his father’s voice. Darryl reaches for the phone, and Carlos hastily says. "Sorry Dad, I really have to go," improvises, "the session is about to start, and the Chief of Police is here so—"

"Go, go," his father says genially and Carlos manages to get out a bare goodbye before Darryl's ending the call. He tries to think what it means that TK and Matt have brought his father into this, but he can't focus on it now because Darryl's looking at him, and he has his hand on Iris's back.

"My mother won't always be in charge, you know."

He has no idea where Darryl is going with this. "Okay?" he says cautiously.

Darryl nods. "She's getting older, may be time to think about a nice little house for her to retire to so she doesn't have to worry so much." Nothing he’s learned about Trudie makes Carlos think she'll find that remotely appealing, but then she's not his mother. He says nothing and Darryl leans in, and it has the advantage that it means he takes his hand off of Iris, and out of the corner of his eye he can see her relax a fraction now that Darryl's no longer touching her. "My mother's been wonderful, stepping up when my father passed." When she had him murdered him, Carlos thinks hysterically. "Raising me, teaching me. But that's hard work for a woman, and she deserves a chance to rest."

Carlos nods numbly, and realizes that he's somehow stumbled into the middle of a power play, and if he wasn't being held hostage, or if Iris wasn't there, this would be interesting. Maybe. As it is, it just makes his footing feel uncertain.

Darryl leans back, hand going back to playing with the ends of Iris's hair, and she's frozen in her seat. "I might have a use for a man like you."

Carlos stares at him. "Oh?” Darryl watches him. “What if Miss Trudie doesn’t want to retire to a nice cottage?”

Darryl shrugs. “Accidents happen.” Carlos wonders suddenly whether the minions who travel with Trudie are for intimidation or protection from her own son.

Darryl tugs on the ends of Iris's hair, almost like he's being teasing, but it makes her head jerk back, and Carlos can read the threat just fine. Darryl taps two fingers on the table, apparently satisfied that Carlos has heard and understood his message. He cups the nape of Iris's neck as he stands. "Might have a use for a pretty girl like you too."

Iris breathes shallowly after the door closes behind Darryl, and he circles the table to crouch next to her chair. "I will get you out of this. I promise."

"How?" she asks thinly.

"Darryl's not in charge," he reminds her. "His mother is, and weird as it sounds I think she'll keep her word."

Iris raises her eyebrows. “And you think she’ll just let us go?”

Well no, he does not think that, but he doesn’t want to scare her. He lies. “Yes. She knows where we live, and she knows how to threaten us. I think that’ll be enough for them to let us go when this is over. It’s harder than you think to explain a dead body.”

She gives him a long look, and he’s not sure if she believes him or not, but all she says in the end is, “You need to work on your reassuring voice.”

The rest of Sunday is a wash. Trudie stops in when she comes back from church, and apologizes that they’ll be on their own for dinner tonight. Sunday night is apparently family night for her and Darryl. Carlos tells her he understands, that usually he’d be with his family too. She looks pleased. It’s odd, but he actually likes her, which is probably dangerous to think, because underneath the church dress and neat hat she’s ruthless and he and Iris are nothing more than a road bump in her way.

Chapter Text

REWIND

He's been craving Thai food all day, and spends the drive home from work wondering if he can talk TK into ordering in tonight instead of cooking, marshaling his arguments in the elevator, and proactively caving on asking for them to make it spicy. He can always add chili oil if he wants. He’s halfway through, “Hey baby, wanna order in tonight?” when he sees TK and the question dies in his throat.

Empirically TK isn’t doing anything particularly seductive. He’s got his head bent while he fastens his watch, hip propped against the back of the couch for balance. But, he's wearing his black jeans. The ones that cling to his thighs and ass. The ones that hug everything. The ones that he wears when he wants to derail Carlos's entire train of thought.

He stops, hand on the door, staring. TK looks up at the sound. "Hey baby."

He manages to focus long enough to close the door, stepping into TK for a kiss. "Hey." The fabric of TK's shirt under his hands is soft and a little clingy, the kind of fabric that makes him want to pet at it, pet TK. "You look nice." He looks like sex. "Did I forget something? An anniversary?"

TK shakes his head, leaning up to bite lightly at the corner of Carlo's jaw. "I thought maybe we could go out tonight." He pulls away far enough to look down at TK. TK bites harder at the edge of his jaw and then soothes it with a kiss, and presses something into Carlos's hand. "Been a while since we went out."

He frowns at TK, playing catch up. "You've been busy."

TK nods. "I know. But, this weekend I cleared my calendar." He leans in to nip at Carlos's ear, and he sucks in a sharp breath. "I've missed you." TK slides a hand down to where Carlos is still holding whatever TK handed him and opens his palm out flat and Carlos obediently looks down to see what he's holding.

He looks up at TK sharply. It's the remote to a vibrating plug. The plug that TK is holding in his hand. The one they haven't had time to play with in a while. TK kisses his way up Carlos's neck, a kiss punctuating each word. "Every. Good. Boy. Deserves. Fun."

He smirks, turning the remote over in his hand. "And you've been good?"

TK looks up at him from under his lashes. "So good." He steps in closer, nudging a thigh between Carlos's. "I thought you could put this in me, and then we could go out. We could make out on the dance floor, make everyone jealous. Then," he flexes his thigh into where Carlos is already half hard, "you can bring me home and fuck me."

He dips his head, curving a hand around the back of TK's neck, licking along his collar bone where it's exposed by the loose collar of the shirt. "What if I can't wait that long? What if I want to fuck you in the club?" TK's breath hitches sharply. "Push you up against a wall." He runs a hand down TK's back to his ass, and then down, following the seam and pressing hard, just to hear TK moan. "You'll be slick and open for me, a little desperate." He pulls back enough to see where TK's biting his lips red. "You're already a little desperate for me."

TK breathes out. "Detective Reyes, I'm shocked. Are you suggesting we commit acts of public indecency?"

He tightens his grip. "Maybe you're enough to make a good man break his leash."

TK sways into him, and lets out a discontented whine when Carlos's phone buzzes loudly. He doesn't take his eyes off TK as he digs it out of his pocket and glances at the screen. "It's Matt. He's parking. He has something he needs us to look at."

TK swears. "Fucking seriously? One night. Is one night too much to ask?"

Carlos doesn’t let himself feel guilty for the warm flush that pools in his stomach and spreads heat through his body at the evidence of how much TK has missed this too. "It's still early. Matt's probably just stopping by on his way home."

TK makes a face and pushes back far enough to lean against the couch. The jeans do nothing to hide how hard he is. Carlos stares, and his mouth waters. TK looks aggravated, but resigned. "Somehow I don't think Matt's stopping by on his way home on a Friday night with good news." He sighs and heaves himself off the sofa, adjusting himself in his jeans with a wince. "I guess I should go change unless I want to give Matt an eyeful."

Carlos watches as TK walks across the loft, eyes fixed on the flex and shift of his ass in those jeans. He looks at his phone, and then at the remote still in his hand. Trying to park around their apartment building on a Friday night will take Matt at least 15 minutes. He can work with 15 minutes.

He follows TK into the bedroom, crowding him up against the dresser, shoving his hands down the back of TK's already loosened jeans, pushing them down his ass until they're trapped on his thighs.

TK hisses out a surprised breath. "Really?" He doesn't sound upset about it.

"We've got at least 15 minutes."

TK's hard against his leg, and he cups TK's ass and pulls him in closer, rocking his thigh up. TK's knees buckle a little at the pressure and he drops more of his weight onto Carlos, rutting into him. He grunts, and trails a finger down between TK's cheeks, testing, and then in when he feels slick welcoming heat.

"Thought you'd get a headstart?" he asks mildly.

TK pants against his neck. "Wanted to be ready when you got home."

He pushes the tip of his finger in further, rubbing his thumb around the rim of TK's ass. "Show me."

TK looks up, eyes hazy and lips swollen. "What?"

He pushes another finger into TK, he can’t give him what he really wants, not at this angle, but it’s enough for TK to feel him, feel the stretch. "Show me how ready you are."

TK blinks at him, and Carlos hitches his thigh up higher between TK's legs, giving him something to grind against and TK does, pressing wet sloppy kisses to Carlos's neck. He catches his own reflection in the mirror, TK working himself between Carlos's fingers and his leg, both of them still mostly dressed, the only sound in the room the rustle of fabric and TK’s low litany of, "fuck, fuck, fuck."

He turns TK's head slightly, nudging his chin up, so TK can watch them both too, and TK sucks in a harsh breath. "Shit we look good."

He buries a laugh in TK's hair, and then catches his eye in the mirror as he deliberately spits in his hand and shoves TK’s briefs down so he can fist his cock. "Talk to me, sweetheart."

TK responds immediately. "Jesus, your hand, 's so big. Feels perfect And," he jolts as Carlos presses a third finger into him, "fuck. Want you in me."

"Later," he promises, and TK swallows convulsively, hands clenching on his arm, straining for control. They don't really have time, but he wants to see this, and looks down, the fat head of TK's cock disappearing in and out of his fist, more precome slicking the way with each jerk of his wrist. He wants to taste, wants to feel the way TK's cock stretches his jaw, the weight of him on his tongue, but they really don't have time for that. Parking's messy around their building on a Friday night, but not that messy. TK's nails dig into his arm, and he flicks his wrist the way he knows makes TK insane. It only takes a few more jerks before TK's coming, arching into him with the force of it.

He holds steady until he's sure TK's legs are firm under him, and TK turns his face up, hand gripping the back of Carlos's neck, kissing him wild and hungry, hand reaching down to cup his cock through his jeans and Carlos steps back. "We don't have time." TK looks pointedly at the bulge in Carlos's pants. He shakes his head. "I'll keep."

He shifts to find something to wipe his hand with and isn’t expecting it when TK moves, spinning them so Carlos has his back to the dresser, and then TK is sliding to his knees, unzipping his pants and pulling Carlos's cock free. He reaches for TK. "We don't have time," he repeats unconvincingly.

TK looks up at him from under his lashes. "Matt can fucking wait." And swallows him down, like gag reflexes are a thing that only exist for other people and Carlos can feel the head of his cock pushing at the back of TK's throat. His hand spasms on TK's neck, and he doesn't mean to push, but TK's looking up at him from under his lashes and swallowing around the head of his dick, and he takes the permission TK's giving him and fucks in and in and in, and he doesn't know why he bothered worrying about how much time they have left because this is going to be over embarrassingly fast.

He comes like he's been sucker punched, hand tight on TK's neck holding him in place, and TK coughs when he finally sags back against the dresser, spent. "Jesus," he says faintly.

TK grins and pushes to his feet, kissing him, and Carlos can taste himself on TK's tongue and if he was even five years younger that would be enough to get him hard again. He settles for clutching at TK's back, and biting at his lip when TK pulls back. TK leans in for more and the door buzzer sounds and they both freeze, caught.

Carlos doesn't move. "One of us should get that." TK nods and reluctantly takes a shaky step back. Carlos looks down, but somehow, miraculously, he's avoided getting come on his shirt or his pants. He swipes his messy hand on TK's jeans, and grins at the look on TK's face. "What? You were changing anyway."

TK blinks at him and then laughs. "And everyone thinks you're the nice one." Carlos gives him a sideways smile and does up his pants and tucks his shirt back in before he goes out to buzz Matt up from the lobby.

He washes his hands, and then opens a bottle of wine and pulls out some crackers and cheese while he waits for Matt to come up, listening as TK changes and then water running as he cleans himself up. He's tempted to go back in, slide the vibrator into where TK's loose and slick, turn it on to the lowest setting just to see TK shift and squirm, but that won't do anything to help make himself look presentable by the time Matt gets there. And TK’s probably right, if Matt's stopping by on a Friday night he's probably got something that's going to require his actual attention, so he resists the urge.

TK's still looks a little fucked out by the time he makes it out to the kitchen. Carlos tries not to feel smug about that and fails. He suspects he doesn't look a lot better, but he's avoiding looking in the mirror for confirmation.

Matt starts to ask and then looks between the two of them and visibly thinks better of it. He takes the glass of wine Carlos hands him. "Sorry to interrupt your evening."

TK slants a glance at Carlos, but just nudges the cheese plate in Matt’s direction. "So, what do you need that’s so important that you’re stopping by our house on a Friday night instead of picking up eclairs for Liz?”

Matt suddenly seems to find the cheese fascinating, carefully constructing himself a cracker with a little bit of cheese and a wafer thin slice of membrillo. "I took your theory on how to circumvent the theft of the Corradini to my bosses today."

TK eyes Matt. “My theory?”

Matt brushes a crumb off the counter and onto his napkin. “Well, my presentation of your theory. I didn’t think you’d want credit.”

TK waves a hand. “I don’t. Still doesn’t explain why you’re here and not at home with Liz.”

Matt flicks Carlos a glance that has the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, and then looks at TK. "I have been asked to inquire if you would be interested in assisting the FBI in this matter."

Carlos blanches, but TK just leans back on his hands. "Can't."

Matt relaxes, and Carlos hadn't realized how tense Matt had been until he suddenly isn't, and takes a beat and reminds himself that he hadn't been alone in that hospital room watching TK die one heartbeat at a time. "Right, good. I told them you have a job and school."

TK nods easily. "Sure, that too. But even if wanted to," he holds Carlos’s gaze, "which I don't, I couldn't." He nods at the picture of Darryl clipped to the top of the file Matt had thrown down on the counter. "I realized, I’ve met him." He nudges Carlos with his foot. "Remember that conference Tanya had me go to up in Houston late last Spring?" Carlos frowns, and TK grins. "We stayed the night in that hotel."

Carlos coughs. "Right, yes." Matt tactfully ignores them.

TK smirks. “Anyway. He was there. Job shopping, I think. We talked for a while. He asked if the Blanton was looking for anyone.” He snorts. “In retrospect I’m glad I said we weren’t. Anyway, he’d remember me.” TK tilts his head. "Don't you have actual people who work for the FBI? Can't you send one of them?"

Matt sighs. "I suggested that. I was overruled." He crumbles a cracker between his fingers. “They listened to my, your, theory very politely, and then told me I was seeing plots where there were none. They gave me enough room to pursue it if I really want to, but I can’t have any additional resources to do it.” He looks unhappy. "They suggested if you weren’t interested, and I really wanted to stick my neck out on this, that I could ask your friend."

Carlos straightens abruptly, but TK gets there first. "Iris? No. Absolutely not."

"She's already got an in," Matt explains, like they don’t both know this. “She could tell him she noticed the petty thefts.”

“And blackmail him into giving up his network?” Carlos asks incredulously. “I know you’ve only just met Iris, but you have to realize that she can’t lie to save her life.”

Matt makes a face like he knows this, and he’d argued this and gotten nowhere.

TK's mouth is set in an immovable line. "No." Carlos glances at him, a little surprised at his vehemence, wonders where it’s coming from.

Matt looks briefly exasperated. "You're speaking for her now? Maybe she'll want to help."

"Do not," TK says lowly, and Carlos sees Matt take a step back in surprise at the undercurrent of threat in his voice. "No matter how you explain it to her there's no way she can understand what she'd be walking into."

"She's an adult," Matt points out.

"She is not a part of this."

"She came to you with the forgery. She's already involved. She has an in. She's got a vested interest in the case."

TK's mouth tightens. "Find another way." Carlos stills, shocked by the banked warning in TK’s voice. There’s a fraught silence that follows.

"What if I went?" It takes him a moment to realize he’d said that.

TK looks at him sharply. "What?"

"You know the FBI." He waves a hand apologetically at Matt. "If you say no, they’ll get Iris involved no matter what unless we give them an alternative." TK wavers and he presses his point. "And, Chambers doesn’t know me.”

TK crosses his arms. “And you’d go in as what exactly?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, whatever they were thinking of sending you in as.” He glances at Matt.

“Insurance investigator to confirm the security arrangements for the Corradini prior to the sale.”

TK frowns. “How does that get us closer to whoever is running Chambers?”

“We have to take Chambers out first,” Carlos realizes. “We need to discredit him, so that they need to have someone else in their pocket to make sure the authentication goes through. We just need to make me – the insurance investigator – look like an easy target. Give him some debts maybe, some bills he needs a little extra cash to for.”

Matt nods. "That was what we came up with.”

TK rubs his eyes, but he can see the moment TK caves to reality and starts thinking about how to make it work. “Massey owes me a favor, and Sterling Bosch owes him several million in favors. They’re insuring the statue. We can ask them to give you a cover. They’ll appreciate not being left to swing for the insurance claim on a Corradini.”

Matt takes the win without comment. “I’ll start building a cover, and making some calls.”

“Will you get push back from your bosses?” Carlos asks.

Matt shakes his head. “No, if they can’t have TK, they’d rather use you than risk a civilian. I’ll give you a call when I have it set up.”

TK grimaces. "Half baked FBI schemes. Yay."

He’s aware that TK isn’t happy about it. He’s also aware that TK very much does not want to discuss it by the way he pulls on ratty pajama pants after Matt goes home and curls himself into a corner of the couch. He barricades himself with his laptop and a pile of notes and ignores Carlos for the rest of the evening with a kind of distant politeness. There’s nothing specific he can point to, and TK is clearly trying very hard not to pick a fight about it, has retreated to his never ending pile of reading to avoid letting himself boil over. So the best thing Carlos can do is leave a plate of food near his elbow and respect the way TK is keeping a tight rein on whatever he’s working through. He has to have faith that TK will tell him eventually.

TK gives up on reading around eleven, and brushes the barest of kisses across Carlos’s hair when he goes to bed. Carlos wishes he could pull him back, pull TK down into his lap and make him admit to whatever’s bothering him, but he knows it would backfire on him, no matter how tempting it is. He listens to TK settle into bed, and gives him long enough to pretend to have fallen asleep before he starts the dishwasher and follows him.

He stirs when TK eases his way out of bed several hours later. He turns over and clicks the light on. TK freezes, halfway to the door. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

He pushes himself up. “Wasn’t really sleeping.” He scrubs at his eyes, and wonders if he should call in sick to work tomorrow, because he’ll be useless on this little sleep. “Neither were you.”

TK sinks down onto the bench at the foot of the bed. “No.”

He twists, crawling to the end of the bed. “Talk to me?”

TK leans back against his shoulder. “I don’t like you going undercover at Reuth?”

“You’ve done it before.”

TK shrugs one shoulder. “‘s different.”

“How?” TK doesn’t say anything, just shrugs again, and Carlos presses. "So it's okay for you to do it, but not me?"

TK swings around. "It's not your job."

"It's not yours either," he points out.

"It was though. Scamming people, running a con, that was how I paid my bills for a lot of years." Carlos doesn't try to argue the point, just waits TK out. Waits until TK gets to the point that's actually bothering him. "You've never even done undercover."

"True," he agrees. "But this isn't exactly going in with one of the cartels.”

“That we know of,” TK mutters. “Someone’s pulling Chamber’s strings. I’d be a lot happier if we knew who.”

Carlos concedes the point. TK shivers and pulls the throw blanket on the bench into his lap, twisting the tassels into knots around his fingers. "Conning someone, it's never what you think it's going to be. It looks like fun, trying on someone else's life, getting to be someone you're not for a day. But there's always collateral damage. You're lying to everyone, and when it’s the mark that's fine, that's the point. They're usually a pretty shitty person to begin with so you don't feel bad about it. But everyone around them, everyone who’s just doing their job, you’re lying to them too, and they end up getting hurt.”

He folds himself down onto the bench next to TK, pulling the quilt from the bed over his shoulders, and relaxing slightly when TK shifts closer, arms and legs sliding against each other. “We never talked about it.”

It takes a beat and then TK frowns. “Wait, talked about what?”

“What happened last year when you were gone.”

TK stills. “You know what happened.”

“I know the outlines. I don’t know the details.”

TK studies him for a long minute, and then shakes his head. “This isn’t about that.”

“Are you sure? Because it feels like it’s not really about me either.”

“The jobs last year with Cassel and Jack, mostly they were in and outs. Most of the time I didn’t talk to anyone but them for days at a time. There was no con, we had the codes, and we just had to wait until the house was empty for a couple of hours.”

“What about the rest of the time?” TK looks at him sharply. “You said most of the time, that implies that some of the time it was different.”

TK slumps. “There isn’t a story here. There’s no one person I fucked over that made me see the light.” He waits, nudges TK with his shoulder when it seems like he needs it to start talking again. TK leans against him a little more heavily. “There’s no one story. It’s lot of little stories. It’s lots of lies on top of lies on top of lies. Just a jenga tower of lies waiting to fall over. But the thing is you’re never the one the tower falls on, and you’re never there to see it fall, or see what it takes to pick up the pieces after. We go in, we get what we need, however we need to do it, and then we’re gone and we never see any of the people involved again. But we’ve taught them not to trust, to be suspicious, to keep walking the next time they see someone who asks for help. We didn’t ruin lives, or at least I tried not to, but we still got people in trouble. We still changed them.”

TK stops, twisting the tassels of the blanket around his fingers so tight Carlos worries about his circulation. “There was one house, we needed the security codes. I pretended to be a location scout for a movie and got their kid to let me in when his parents were away for the weekend at a spa retreat. I said I needed to check the light, that I was going back to LA on Monday, that if I couldn’t get in we’d have to find another location. I said I’d pay him for the favor. He wanted some extra spending money to take his girlfriend to a nice restaurant for her birthday. He thought he was doing his parents a favor. Instead we stole a nice little de Kooning. Not really my thing, but worth a lot.”

He nudges TK and tries to lighten the mood. “Well no, you don’t like anything painted after 1920.”

TK smiles briefly. “I’m almost sure that’s not true, but I’m too tired to think of an example.”

“What happened to the kid?”

TK shrinks into himself a little. “I don’t know. You can’t really go back and check afterwards. It’s against the rules.” He falls silent for a minute, and then very quietly, “I’d forgotten what it all felt like.”

“You didn’t like it?” he guesses.

TK’s laugh is bitter. “I loved it. The con, the art of it. I’ve always loved it. It’s why I was so good at it. It’s the come down I hate, the messy afterwards. That’s the part I forgot.” TK doesn’t continue for a while, and Carlos waits for TK to figure out what he’s thinking. “The thing is, it doesn’t matter how much I love the way it feels to run a con, because afterwards I hate the person it turned me into. It doesn’t matter how we talk about it, or what words we use, I was a thief and a con artist and I spent a lot of years hurting people, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident.”

“Yes,” he says evenly.

“I keep getting second chances to not be that person. And, I don’t know why.”

He reaches for TK, because he can’t not, pulling TK into the curve of his arm. “I don’t think there’s a score sheet.”

“Iris was surprised,” TK says after a long enough silence that Carlos had wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

“Art thief probably isn’t most people’s first guess,” he agrees.

TK lifts his head. “Think she’s still going to think I’m good enough for you now that she knows?”

“Does that matter?”

TK pulls away from him. “Of course it matters. She’s your friend. I lied to her about who I was.”

He stares at TK. “What?” It takes him a minute to parse what TK’s not saying, and then he shakes TK where he’s got his arm around him. “You didn’t con Iris.” TK makes a noise of dissent. “There is a difference between lying to someone and not telling them everything about yourself the first time you meet.”

TK gives him a hard look. “What was it you said to your mom once, that lying by omission is still lying?”

He lets out an exasperated breath. “You missed your calling, you really should have been a lawyer. That was me lying to my parents about something they already knew because I thought that was what they wanted. That was you lying to me about being in danger because you thought I needed protecting from you. You not telling Iris everything about yourself as soon as you met her is not the same thing. You have a right to privacy. You don’t owe anyone your past.”

TK takes a breath and fights to let it go. “Okay. Okay.” Carlos isn’t entirely sure TK believes him, but he believes him enough to nod and stop gripping his hand tight enough to bruise. “I still don’t like you doing this. I don’t ever want you to know what it feels like to lie to someone who trusts you.”

He shifts closer. "Baby, you think I've never lied to people who trust me before? I spent half my life pretending to be someone I'm not."

TK looks troubled. "When'd you stop?"

He reaches for TK again, pulling him back against him when TK doesn’t resist. "I think maybe the day I met you." TK rolls his eyes, but tips his head back for Carlos's kiss, and he looks softer when Carlos pulls back. “It won't be for long, and I'll talk to you every day. It'll be fine."

"Promise?" TK still looks uneasy, but resigned.

He kisses TK again. "Promise."

Later, on the edge of sleep, TK says, “Anila Quayyum Agha, Ekua Holmes, Vanessa Platacis, Georgie Seccull, and Jason deCaires Taylor.”

He rouses himself enough to say, “What?”

“Artists I like after 1920.”

He laughs quietly into TK’s hair and presses a kiss to the nape of his neck and tucks himself a little closer to the curve of TK’s back. “Show me in the morning.”

Chapter Text

They get escorted up to a conference room the next morning. There’s a muffin and bagel tray and a box of coffee from a local chain that does office catering, and it looks so much like every breakfast meeting at the precinct when the brass is trying to butter them up for some change nobody is going to like, it’s uncanny. He eyes the bagels, but he’s spent too much time listening to TK disparage any bagel made outside of a 25 mile radius of Brooklyn to actually take one. He takes a blueberry muffin and coffee instead.

He eats half the muffin before he asks, “So what happens now?”

Trudie puts down her bagel and wipes her mouth neatly with a napkin. “You have a meeting scheduled this afternoon with Mr. Litvik from Christies to confirm the transfer of the statue. You’re going to keep that meeting. We’ll drive you in.”

He nods and gestures at his clothes. “I’m going to need something to wear.”

“And a shave,” one of the minions mutters. He doesn’t turn around to find out which one. It’s not like he’s wrong.

“Iris comes with me.”

Trudie takes another bite of her bagel and chews and swallows and wipes her mouth again before she answers. “No.”

“Non-negotiable,” he says.

She smiles faintly. “You’re not in a position to make demands, I’m afraid. Call it an insurance policy.”

“TK’s not enough?” he says, and can’t shade the bitterness in his voice.

Trudie shrugs, and takes another bite of her bagel.

“Your son goes nowhere near her.”

It gets her to put her bagel down and she gives him an uncomfortably evaluating stare. “I promise you that no harm will come to Miss Blake while she is under my care unless you force my hand.”

He’s not sure if that means she knows that Darryl is not safe left alone around women, or if it’s more of a threat for his good behavior, but she’s right, he doesn’t have room to bargain.

There’s a suit waiting for him on the bed when they get back to the room. It’s not one of his, and he wonders who’d picked it out. He eyes himself in the mirror once he’s dressed trying to evaluate the effect. It’s not a cut he normally chooses - double breasted with a waistcoat instead of the single breasted he’s always bought.

He turns his head when Iris knocks on the bathroom door. She tilts her head. “Looks good on you.”

He makes a face. “I know. I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

She smiles faintly, and brushes a bit of lint off his lapel and smoothes his tie. “The waistcoat works for you. You should keep it when this is over.”

He catches her hands. “Are you going to be okay while I’m gone?”

She shrugs. “Not much we can do if I’m not.” He gives her a sharp look, and she pulls away from him. “I think my biggest problem is going to be boredom.”

“I’m going to get you out of this,” he promises her again. She nods like she believes him, and he hopes he’s not lying to her, and then there’s a knock on the door and it’s time to go.

It’s a longer drive into Dallas than he’d expected. How long had they been knocked out for that first time? Or maybe they’re driving him in circles to confuse him. He doesn’t know Dallas well enough to be able to tell, and wishes this was Austin.

In the car Darryl gives him a rundown of who to expect. The Christies representative will be there, and so will Marshall Hayden. Darryl’s obviously on edge, and doesn’t like being left behind in the car, but they’d burned him too well for him to risk walking into Reuth now. They’re sending Minion #2 in with him instead, to make sure Carlos doesn’t have a crisis of conscience and start talking out of class.

He gives Darryl a cheerful smile as he gets out of the car. “Anyone you want me to say hi to while I’m in there?” He thinks he hears Minion #2 snort with amusement, but can’t be sure.

Darryl glowers at him. “Maybe I should have asked Mom to let me stay behind, keep your lady friend company while you’re busy.” He smiles and it sets Carlos’s teeth on edge. “Wouldn’t want her to get lonely.”

He swallows and shuts the car door before he can say something he’ll regret, turning to Minion #2. “Shall we?”

When they get to the lobby Litvik is there, but it turns out that Hayden had a lunch that’s running long, and another one of the partners will be meeting them upstairs instead. He skims through his mental index of the Reuth partners to remember the background on Cameron Allerdyce – youngest person to make partner in the history of the company, not local, from Connecticut if he remembers correctly although that’s probably not all that important, MBA from Harvard, not married.

And then the elevator doors sweep open, and they’re in the entry lobby for Reuth. The statue – out of its crate now, but covered by a sheet until the grand unveiling in a few days – is in pride of place when you exit the elevator, no way you can miss it, or miss being impressed by it. Personally he thinks that Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb of Christ is a morbid choice for lobby art, but what does he know?

There’s a small commotion at the other end of the lobby, and Allerdyce sweeps in, followed by two harried looking junior execs, and a stern faced woman he’s going to stereotype as Hayden’s assistant based partly on the fact that she’s the only woman in the room, but also because she’s the only person in the room who looks like she’s got a handle on what’s supposed to be happening. Allerdyce introduces her as Lydia Prins, and he mentally fist bumps himself while she briskly goes through a stack of paperwork, getting people to sign on the dotted line, and then he’s up.

Lydia nods at two people lurking at the edge of the lobby and they come forward, carefully lifting away the sheet covering the statue, and she gestures for him to move forward and examine it. He’s dimly aware that she’s got the paperwork he needs to sign on her clipboard, waiting for his approval, but all of his attention is caught by the statue. When they’d swapped the statue it had been crated, and he’s never seen it in person before.

He takes an involuntary step closer before he can stop himself. He worries for a second that a real art expert would be more blase, jaded about the beauty, except he knows that's not true, because TK will stop breathing when he sees this statue. He's seen TK walk through the Blanton and wave at paintings like they're old friends, and then stop and stare at something he's seen a thousand times before and be in awe of it like it's the first time all over again.

He gives himself permission to react to it, and doesn't try to censor himself. It's stone that looks like fabric ‒ a veil carved in marble so sheer that he can see the coils of her hair through it. It's stone that looks like living flesh ‒ he can see the tension in her fingertips where her hands are pressed together in prayer. The ache of what she’s lost is a palpable thing, and he thinks that if she looked up her grief could burn the world down.

"Beautiful, isn't it," a voice behind him says, startling him.

He turns reluctantly, holding his hand out. "Daniel Alvarez, nice to meet you." He looks back at the statue, and says truthfully. "It's stunning."

"Cameron Allerdyce," the man says and shakes his hand. It's a good handshake.

"I think I fall in love a little every time I get to see it."

It's more sentimental than he'd usually be, but Allerdyce nods, like he understands. "Yes. Me too." Carlos glances at him, surprised by the reaction, and Allerdyce looks faintly surprised himself. Allerdyce clears his throat. "I don't know much about art, I'm afraid. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see when I look at it."

Carlos shrugs. "I don't think there's a wrong answer." Allerdyce nods, but looks dubious, and it almost makes Carlos smile. He shifts a little towards the statue. "I see love, and grief, and faith."

Allerdyce gives him a sideways glance. "Catholic?"

It's the kind of assumption that's purely about his last name and the color of his skin and always makes him want to be contrary and say no. But this isn’t the place for that, and also he’s never been able to convince himself that if he does that his mother won’t somehow know and be disappointed in him.

Allerdyce takes his silence as an answer. "Me too. Or at least, my parents are. I might have been more interested in staying if our church had ever had anything like this to look at.” He reaches out like he can’t help himself, and his hand skims the curve of her arm, a hair's breadth away from touching. “Makes me wish I had the kind of faith that created this. It feels like there’s something of the divine in it.” He pulls away awkwardly, flushing at having been caught being sincere, and clears his throat. "Also, it's a good investment for the firm. Good for our portfolio."

Carlos nods easily, but can't stop himself from adding, "Nothing to say that you can't love it too."

There’s a small bustle of activity to his left, and it reminds him that he has a job to do here, and he carefully inspects the statue, randomly peering at it more closely and then stepping away to get a bigger picture. He hopes he’s making it look convincing. Mostly he can’t quite get over his awe, suddenly has more respect that TK stole things like this and then gave them up. He’s not sure that if he stole this that he’d be able to let it go again.

“You’re confirming it’s authentic?” Litvik asks finally, hint of concern in his voice at how long Carlos is taking.

He turns away from the statue, and gives a reassuring nod, holding out a hand for the paperwork Lydia is holding. “Without a doubt. Congratulations Mr. Allerdyce.” He signs the page, and then Litvik signs it, and Allerdyce signs it. And then it’s done. They follow Allerdyce back to his corner office for bourbon to commemorate the occasion.

On their way out he waves to the two security guards standing at the entrance to the elevator banks. Minion #2 scowls at him. “What was that for?”

He looks at him blankly, and hazards, “Being polite?”

In the car on the way back Darryl is grumpy. Carlos chalks it up to having missed out on some seriously excellent bourbon. Normally he wouldn’t have indulged, he needs to be on his guard, but he couldn’t think of a polite way to decline. Also, it had been 20 year old, $500 a bottle small batch bourbon, and he’s not an idiot. It does make him more tolerant of Darryl’s bullshit as they drive back though. He takes Darryl through the entire transaction, and allows himself a mild smile when Minion #2 waves a hand in acknowledgement that Carlos had done exactly as he’d been instructed.

Darryl waits until Minion #2 has gotten absorbed in his phone, checking his messages, or his OnlyFans page, or probably just the basketball scores. Carlos thinks the Mavericks are playing today. He leans in a little closer to Carlos in the backseat and lowers his voice, although probably not enough for discretion. “So, about that thing we were discussing yesterday. Have you given it any more thought?”

Carlos leans away from him as far as he can without being obvious. “Not interested. Thanks.”

Darryl hmms. “What if I made it worth your while?”

Carlos jerks his head at Minion #2, and Minion #3, who’s driving. “You really want to have this discussion here?”

Darryl subsides with ill grace, and then abruptly tells Minion #3 to drive faster, although they’re stuck in rush hour traffic, so Carlos isn’t sure how Darryl thinks Minion #3 is going to accomplish that.

Chapter Text

REWIND

TK is adamant that Carlos can’t go undercover cold, that he needs training. How TK persuaded Matt that TK should be the one to train him he’s not sure, although he’s got his suspicions that it’s mostly because Matt thinks it’ll be funny. Probably also a little bit because he wants to keep Carlos safe, but mostly funny.

“You have to be someone specific,” TK says. “You can’t just be generic insurance agent #15, you have to be specific. You have to know what makes Daniel Alvarez tick.” He points a finger at Matt. “This is why FBI covers are always shitty, you just go with the generic. A good con is about the specifics.” He looks back at Carlos. “Who you’re being has to be a real person, you need to know where he lived as a kid, and where he went on his 3rd grade class field trip.”

“Do you spend a lot of time talking about your third grade field trip to random strangers?” Matt asks dryly.

TK glares at him “No, but maybe that’s when something happened that flipped the switch that made Daniel Alvarez fall in love with art. Maybe that’s the first time Daniel Alvarez thought art was something important and valuable.”

“Or maybe Daniel Alvarez went to the Alamo and didn’t listen to his teachers and played hangman in the bus on the way home like every other kid in Texas.”

“Hangman?” TK says incredulously. “Careful, your Gen X is showing.”

Matt flips him off, and Carlos tunes out TK and Matt bickering, and thinks about what TK is saying, and tries to imagine who Daniel Alvarez is – someone who has studied art academically and can assign value to it, someone who loves art for more than monetary value, someone who has made a profession out of looking at art – and he has a moment of understanding so clear it makes him want to laugh. He doesn't need to figure out how to be Daniel Alvarez, because the man he’s describing in his head is TK, and if there's anyone he knows it's TK.

He closes his eyes, and takes a breath, deliberately loosening his shoulders and his arms, shaking them out the way he's seen TK do before presentations to fractious high school classes, or papers he thinks he doesn't know how to write. He thinks about how TK moves and shifts his center of balance so it's less centered in his hips and more in his stomach and chest. He takes one more moment, letting it flow through him and then opens his eyes and gives TK and Matt a smile full of lazy confidence.

He tugs the fake Degas sketch that had gotten them all into this out of the folder and hitches a hip onto the table and taps the edge of the paper with his finger. “Your thief is lazy. This looks like it was generated by AI and printed out on copy paper.” He makes a moue of distaste, “And colored in by someone with no taste.”

TK's staring at him like he's never seen Carlos before in his life, and Carlos grins and swings his foot. “It’s how Beltracchi got caught.” He tilts his head, considering. “Well, to be fair, comparing Beltracchi to this guy feels a little insulting. Beltracchi was a master forger. But, my point stands, he got caught because he got sloppy and careless, and used titanium white on a forgery of a Campendonk.” He sighs a little wistfully. “It’s too bad really, because his game was impeccable until then.” He looks at TK. “He got caught on a scam involving a painting in Malta too. Is there something about Malta I don’t know?”

TK is apparently too flummoxed by Carlos’s act to issue his usual denial that he’d ever been caught, or that he didn’t steal the Caravaggio, and Carlos grins. “Beltracchi was good, but if we’re comparing favorite forgers‒”

“Were we comparing favorite forgers?” Matt murmurs, and Carlos ignores him.

“Van Meegeren has to be my favorite. Starts forging out of spite, and ends up a national hero for scamming the Nazis. Anyway,” he sniffs derisively and taps the forged Degas sketch, and reiterates. “Your thief is lazy, and we should catch him just for the crime of making that and calling it art.”

TK gapes at him. "What the fuck is happening right now?"

He winks at TK, and Matt starts laughing suddenly, folding over in his chair in breathless amusement. "He's being you."

TK blinks at him, and Carlos smirks. "What, like it's hard?"

TK stares at him, and then turns to look at Matt. "I do not sound like that." Matt wheezes with laughter, and TK swings back to look at Carlos, eyes narrowing as he walks around Carlos, examining him from every angle. “I do not sound like that.”

Carlos follows his gaze, tilting his head back and grinning. "Like what you see?" TK's mouth drops, and Carlos straightens, dropping his feet to the floor and sitting up straighter, flicking TK a look from under his lashes. "My bad, sweetheart, we're working now. I'll behave."

Matt puts a hand on the table and takes a deep breath to try and get his laughter under control. "For the record, this is the best thing I have ever seen."

TK mouth snaps shut with an audible click, and he tips an imaginary hat to Carlos. “Okay, yeah, you’re ready.” And that was all Carlos had really been hoping for, something to set TK’s mind at ease, watching him be completely discombobulated by it is just a bonus.

It's a picture perfect Spring day when he drives up to Dallas a few days later. The kind of day that would make TK turn up the dial on the stereo and blast the B52s and INXS and Blondie. TK's not in the car with him now though, he's in class, and as much as he misses TK's company, it does mean that he gets to listen to his podcast, instead of music that was old before either one of them was even born. He supposes he should be grateful that TK inherited Gwyn’s taste in music and not Owen’s.

He makes it to Dallas in good time, shitty leftover rush hour traffic notwithstanding, and he ends up with an hour or so to kill before he needs to be at his meeting at Reuth. He stops for coffee at the Starbucks in the lobby of Reuth’s building, and texts TK while he waits, more out of habit than because he thinks TK will answer during class. He's surprised when his phone dings a moment later.  / I think they should call this class 101 Ways Not to Design an Exhibit /

/ aren't you supposed to be paying attention? /

/ I can multitask / . . . / how much attention do you think I need to give to, don't write five paragraphs about the painting in 10 point font? / . . . / and, trying not to insult the art you're displaying /

/ you like this class /

/ 🙁 I do like this class, I'd just feel better if I was in Dallas right now /

/ your faith in me is touching, really /

/ I have all the faith in the world in you, it's the FBI I'm not sure about /

/ I'm telling Matt you said that / . . . / okay, going off line for the meeting, I will be fine, this is the easy part /

/ I love you /

/ I love you too. I'll see you tonight /

Reuth Legacy Holdings occupies the top 15 floors of one of the premiere office towers in downtown Dallas. It's all marble and glass and chrome. It’s impressive, he supposes, if you like that sort of thing. He lets his eyes wander around the Reuth reception area on the 47th floor, where they're planning to install the statue, if anyone asks he can say it's to get a sense as to security, which is not strictly speaking a lie. There are cameras at the elevators and pointing at the reception desk and at the hall leading back into the offices. The elevator from the lobby requires card swipe to access any of the Reuth floors, and there's a secondary bank of internal elevators that only service the Reuth offices, which Iris said did not require card access.

He's left waiting for less time than he'd been expecting, and it’s barely been ten minutes before he sees a tall white man wearing a suit and boots, who could not look more like a walking ad for Texas businessman if he'd posed for a catalog. "Alden Banks, you must be Daniel Alvarez?"

He stands up and shakes his hand. "Nice to meet you."

Banks leads him back past a row of window offices to a conference room that overlooks a park below. "I have to admit Mr. Alvarez I'm not 100% sure why you're here, your office was a little short on details when they called to set up this meeting. I didn't think you were due to come in until next week to review the security arrangements for the Corradini."

Carlos takes the coffee they offer him, and eyes the perfect cappuccino foam with a sense of bemused incredulity for how the other half live before he snaps back to the moment. He pulls a file folder out of his briefcase and lays it on the table. "I'm afraid that in our review of Reuth’s security protocols we undercovered some troubling information, and we wanted to bring it to your attention immediately."

Banks sits up a little straighter from his relaxed tilt back in his chair. "What kind of information?"

Carlos flips open the file. "We've discovered that your art director, Darryl Chambers, has been misrepresenting himself, and we're concerned that he might be trying to defraud you, and by extension Sterling Bosch, who will be insuring the Corradini."

Any hint of sprawl is gone from Banks' posture, and he spins the file around, skimming the information they'd put together on Darryl Chambers. It has the merit of being true, although it's fair to say they had omitted a few details. Banks looks aghast when he looks up again. "You're sure about this?"

Carlos shrugs. "We are sure that nobody named Darryl Chambers ever graduated from Yale, or worked for Sothebys, or any other reputable auction house that we can discover." He leans forward a little. "Off the record, we have heard that many of the art pieces he helped buy for the other firms on his resume have been determined to be forgeries after they were independently evaluated.” He tilts his head and acknowledges, “Very good forgeries, but forgeries nonetheless.” He spreads his hand. “So far none of those firms have been interested in opening themselves up to the kind of publicity that would come with revealing that they have been defrauded, so I do need to ask that you respect that I’m telling you this in confidence.” After a moment Banks nods his agreement, and Carlos doesn’t let himself visibly react, but it’s the first hurdle. If Banks had wanted to call those other companies the whole thing would mushroom out of control, and they need this small and contained for now.

“Why are you bringing this to us if you have no proof? This is a big thing you’re accusing Dr. Chambers of in the absence of hard evidence.”

Carlos nods seriously. “I understand your caution. The simple answer is Sterling Bosch does not insure any of the other pieces we have heard are forgeries.” He shrugs minutely, as if to suggest that if they had insured those pieces a forgery would never have been a concern. “However, Sterling Bosch will be insuring the Corradini, and we cannot insure a forgery, Mr. Banks. I am sure you can understand that.”

Banks nods slowly. “Yes. What do you see as the next steps?”

Carlos allows himself a small smile of victory. “The Corradini is still with the auction house, and Christies will independently confirm authenticity prior to sale. We have no concerns about their expertise or process. However, given the troubling pattern of evidence that seems to surround Mr. Chambers, we will have to insist that Reuth remove him from the process of the sale from this point onwards.” He leans in a little. “We would suggest, although obviously we cannot insist on it, that Reuth consider removing Mr. Chambers from his position as Art Director immediately.” He pauses, and then adds punctiliously, “Pending an investigation, of course.”

That’s three times he has very deliberately dropped Chambers’ title, and wonders if Banks has picked up on it. Probably. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man who lets a lot of things get by him.

Banks stands abruptly, holding onto the file. "Stay here." He waves at the receptionist. "Let Elaine know if you need anything."

Carlos drinks his cappuccino, which is much better than what the Starbucks downstairs had had on offer, and works his way through two more levels of the game Paul had downloaded onto his phone at the last game night. When Banks comes back he's not alone. He's got Chambers with him. Carlos hadn't actually been expecting to see him today and doesn’t have time to brace himself for it. Banks also has Marshall Hayden, the CFO, with him. Carlos hadn't quite been expecting that either, but he supposes it's a good indication that they're taking this seriously, or maybe just that they’re taking seriously how expensive the Corradini is.

He shakes hands, and notes that Hayden and Chambers both stumble over the name Alvarez in different ways, but doesn’t bother correcting them.

Banks nods at Carlos. "I took your concerns to Mr. Hayden, and he felt that it was only fair to let Dr. Chambers have a chance to address them directly."

Hayden brushes off Banks' attempts at politeness. "You've accused Dr. Chambers of theft and fraud. That's the kind of thing you do to a man's face, not behind his back." He looks like he's daring Carlos to have the courage to say it again.

Carlos doesn't take the bait, just twists his hands as if to say, 'what can you do?' and says, "I'm afraid that in our background check of Mr. Chambers we were unable to verify his resume. If Mr. Chambers is able to offer an explanation, I would be more than happy to clear up this misunderstanding."

There's a flash of such naked hatred on Chambers's face that Carlos almost wants to take a step back. They'd pegged Darryl as a mouthpiece, maybe one they could manipulate, but this man is volatile. He was already angry, and Carlos just trapped him. He feels a tendril of slippery uneasiness coil tight in his stomach. It tightens further at the calm cool mask that slips down over Chambers’ face when he turns to Banks and Hayden, and if Carlos hadn't just seen the fury he'd believe that Chambers was entirely disinterested.

Chambers shrugs. "It seems I've been caught red-handed, gentlemen. Mr. Alvarez is correct, I forged my education on my resume. You've heard the catch-22, you can't get experience unless you have experience? I'm afraid I didn't have the privilege of the kind of family that gets you into Yale, or an internship at Southebys, so I faked them until I did have the kind of experience you need to have the kind of job where nobody asks if your resume is real." He gives Carlos a look of intense dislike, and then turns back to Banks and Hayden. "But, I can assure you, that my work for Reuth has all been above board and by the book. You can check any of my files or emails, and you will find that everything is as it should be."

That is, Carlos reflects, probably true, because the part about buying a Corradini with Reuth's money is by the book. It's the part where he's planning on stealing it and leaving a changeling in its place that's illegal, and Carlos can’t imagine he’s stupid enough to have put any of that on company servers.

Hayden nods thoughtfully, but Carlos seriously doubts that either Hayden or Banks comes from the kind of family that can fathom this as a reasonable explanation. He's right. Hayden fires him on the spot, and has him escorted from the premises in under five minutes. Carlos is guessing it has more to do with being caught out by Chambers’ resume than because he believes that Chambers is going to steal their statue, but he’ll take it.

When Chambers is gone, Hayden turns to Carlos. "Mr. Alvarez, it appears we owe you a thanks."

He demurs just enough to look modest, but not enough to look like a pushover. They walk him out to the reception desk.

“You’ll be back next week to finalize the security arrangements?” Banks confirms, less a question than a statement.

He answers anyway. “Yes. I’ll arrive on Thursday to review the on-site security arrangements prior to the delivery of the statue that evening. I will return on Friday morning to confirm that everything is in order with the statue on site, but security and responsibility for the statue will remain with Christies in coordination with Reuth through the weekend. The final handover from Christies to Reuth will take place on Monday afternoon. I will confirm the authenticity of the Corradini at that point, and if all is in order Sterling Bosch will sign off on insuring it, and the statue will be yours.”

Banks nods. “Good. We will see you next week then. Thank you for your diligence in this, and I trust that we can rely on your discretion?”

Translated, don’t tell anyone we hired someone with a faked resume and put him in charge of a multi-million dollar budget. “Of course. Sterling Bosch holds the well being of our clients to be paramount.”

Banks gives a short sharp nod. “Good. Elaine can give you a recommendation for dinner.” He does not, Carlos notes, offer to take Carlos out for dinner.

He thanks Banks, and demurs when Elaine offers him a list of suggestions. “I’m flying out tonight. But I’ll definitely take you up on that list when I’m back next week, I’ll be here for longer then.”

He texts Matt when he gets back to his car, and then calls TK as he pulls out of the parking lot. There’s nothing they can do now except wait, and hope that Chambers and his handler take the bait, and that the FBI has written an enticing enough cover for him.

It’s pouring with rain when he drives back up to Dallas a week later, alone in the car again, listening to NPR again. TK's coming up tomorrow after his staff meeting at the Blanton, but Carlos needs to make a little noise about being in Dallas before then. Technically TK has a class tomorrow afternoon as well that he shouldn't miss, but it's on art and landscape in the 19th C, which TK had taken more because it fit his schedule and knocked out a requirement than any actual enthusiasm. TK had given him a flat unimpressed look when he'd voiced an objection to TK skipping class. "Are you trying to imply that you are less important than a two hour lecture about Frederick Law Olmstead?"

"You like Olmstead," he’d pointed out mildly, watching TK pack.

TK had pointed a shoe at him. "I do like Olmstead, which is why I can already bullshit my way through a 500 word response paper. This is not actually up for debate."

Since they need TK's help to sneak into Reuth's offices after hours, and steal a statue, and because he wants TK's brazen confidence on the job he doesn't argue hard about it, although the lingering sense of guilt that TK's been dragged back into this again, when he's supposed to just be a student and museum employee gets heavier with each mile he drives.

He makes sure that he repeats his name at least twice as he's checking in to the hotel, and leaves his car keys at the desk by accident and carefully doesn't fist pump when the concierge calls after him, "Mr Alvarez, you left your keys."

Just turns around with a rueful look on his face. "Thank you. I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached." She smiles politely before she goes back to her computer, and he goes up to his room. He carefully doesn't notice the man in the lobby watching him as he waits at the elevators.

He doesn’t actually have much he needs to do today, except periodically make sure that somebody says his name where the rotating cast of people who aren’t watching him can hear. So, he goes to the gym and has them charge a post-work out smoothie to his room and makes sure he repeats his name as they do it. He goes to the hotel business center and industriously answers work emails, and then idly looks into some lake country cottage rentals, because he has a feeling that they might want, or need, a little vacation when this is all over. He asks for a restaurant recommendation at the front desk, and ‘forgets his keys’ again so they have to call him back. He goes to dinner, and then lingers at the bar in the hotel when he comes back, telling the bored barman that he’s here on business, and then charging the drink to his room, before he finally lets himself go up to his room and lock the door.

He texts Matt and TK that he's in for the night, and then showers and tries to read the book his mother had recommended last week while he waits for TK to call him after he gets home from his study group. They watch House Hunters over the phone with each other, bitching about subway tiling and man caves. They watch longer than they usually would, and he knows they're both stalling. It's stupid. He's slept without TK before, stayed the night at his parents when he was there late enough that it made his mother nervous about the drive home, or when TK's gone up to New York for Passover. He knows how to sleep without TK, but he doesn't want to give up the sound of TK breathing in his ear.

"You need to go to sleep," he says softly when the clock ticks over to 12:01. "You have an early morning meeting."

TK sighs. "I know." There's a sound he identifies as TK scrunching down under the blankets on their bed, patting the pillow three times the way he always does before sleep. "I hate sleeping without you. It was the worst part of last year." Carlos barely stops himself from making a noise in shock, because TK doesn't talk about last year. Neither one of them do. But they talked about it a few weeks ago, and neither one of them broke; maybe it's good, maybe they’re both finally learning how to think about it without aching. "I'd wake up halfway across the bed," TK says. "Like I was looking for you. I got this white noise machine for my phone, because I couldn't fall asleep without the sound of you breathing next to me, that tiny almost snore."

"I do not snore," he says reflexively, because otherwise TK is going to break his heart.

He doesn't need to see TK to know he's smiling. "You do. It's cute. I like it."

"Oh well, as long as you like it," he grumbles, and then, "I hated sleeping alone too. The bed always felt too big, too cold." TK doesn't say anything. "Go to sleep TK, I'll stay on the line until you're asleep."

"You're humoring me." But TK doesn't sound mad about it.

"Yes," he acknowledges. "Or maybe I want to go to sleep listening to you too. Go to sleep. You'll be here tomorrow by lunch."

Chapter Text

Trudie and Iris are waiting for them in a small lounge area when they get back, both of them reading. He glances at Iris, who immediately closes her book and nods slightly that she’s fine. Trudie holds up a finger, and takes a moment to come to a stopping point in the book she’s reading before she reaches for a bookmark to mark her place and folds her glasses away. He tilts his head to see the title. She smiles and holds it out to him. He tries not to raise his eyebrows when he sees the half naked woman, curled improbably around an equally unclothed cop aiming a gun at the reader, but knows he’s failed when she says with something that sounds like mild embarrassment. “I have a weakness for romance.”

Darryl glances at the book and looks disgusted, throwing himself onto the couch next to Iris. She shifts away from the way his weight is making her list towards him. He smirks at her obvious discomfort and throws an arm across the back of the couch behind her head. “Mom’s always reading something girly like that.” He glances at the empty plate and teapot on the table. “You ate all the cookies?”

Trudie flushes slightly, and Carlos wants to tell Darryl to be nicer to his mother. But all he says is, “Any good?”

Trudie looks pleased. “The details on police procedure are lacking, but I quite like the setting. Do you read much, Detective?”

He nods. “I’m more of a political fantasy reader though.” He makes an overly expressive face at the book she’s reading. “Thrillers always feel a little like I’m taking work home with me.”

Iris snorts, and Trudie gives a delighted laugh. “You must give me some recommendations, Detective. I’m always looking for something new to read.”

She gestures for him to sit down. Minion #2 vanishes somewhere, and Minion #3 takes up his post near the door.

“Meeting today went well,” Darryl says before Trudie can continue. Her mouth sets in a thin line at his interruption, but she tilts her head inquiringly at Carlos.

He nods. “Yes. I said all the things I was supposed to. Nobody suspected anything.” He taps his fingers on his knees for a moment. “Does this mean that Iris and I can go home now?”

Trudie ignores him. ‘’Dinner should be ready soon. Would you like to call your partner while we wait?”

He wants to ask again about going home, but takes the phone when it’s offered to him, dialing and then handing it back to Minion #3 when he holds his hand out for it.

TK’s supposed to be in class right now, but he picks up on the second ring. “Hi baby.”

“Hi honey.” Trudie sits back in her chair, not making a secret of listening. Darryl settles back further into the couch, putting a hand on Iris’s knee and leaning in to whisper something in her ear.

Carlos watches them out of the corner of his eye, but can’t do anything about it. He sneaks a glance at Trudie, and she’s watching Iris and Darryl with a small pleased smile, and he has a horrifying thought that she’s mentally fitting Iris for a wedding dress right now. He pulls his attention back to TK. “I expected your voicemail,” he admits. “No class this afternoon?”

“Professor had that flu that’s been going around,” TK says easily. “TA graciously gave us the time back to work on our papers, and/or go get coffee.”

He leans back in his chair, idly worrying at a loose patch of weave on upholstery. “You ever think about that?”

“Getting coffee? Approximately every 15 minutes. The last time I was this sleep deprived I was doing 48 hour shifts with New York’s finest.”

He snorts. “I’ve seen our coffee budget, thanks. No, being a TA.”

TK groans. “God baby, when would I have the time?”

He taps his knee, interested suddenly. He’d asked more out of a desire to keep this moment of normalcy spinning out for as long as he could, but there’s something in TK’s voice that makes him pause. “If you did have the time?”

There’s a long pause like TK is considering and discarding responses. “I miss teaching. I mean, I still do it. But, the more I plan programs, the less I run them.” TK gives a weird half laugh. “Baby, I have staff now. Staff. And Tanya’s shifting me more towards administration, and– ” he trails off.

“And?” he prompts when TK doesn’t continue.

“And, I like it. It’s a different kind of way to think about getting people invested in art, but sometimes I miss just the way it felt to make one kid light up.”

“You think TA’ing would give you that back? Because I can help you find that time, if you need it.”

TK sighs. “No. And, no, but thank you. I spend enough time with the kids at UT, I don’t need to be responsible for more of them. If I want to get my kicks showing kids art we can always offer to babysit one of the hundred of your cousins’ kids. Ari’s getting really good. Actually, next time we’re out at the ranch, remind me to talk to her parents about the summer art camp we’re running at the Blanton this year.”

“There are only,” he pauses to count in his head, “sixteen of them.” He tries to sound stern or scandalized, but mostly he’s just amused.

TK hmms. “Seventeen next year. Lorena’s pregnant again.”

“Again?”

TK hmms again. “Pretty sure. She looked green on Sunday when your Tía Francesca said she’d made menudo.”

“Or that could be an entirely rational reaction to anything Tía Francesca makes,” he counters.

TK laughs. “Fair. But, Tomás was hovering, the same way he did the last time Lorena was pregnant. Wanna bet on it?”

He ducks his head, needs to hide the way this conversation makes him feel. There’s nothing particularly significant about what they’re saying, it’s just family gossip. But it feels intimate; that TK has been around long enough to remember Lorena’s last pregnancy, that he knows to avoid anything Tía Francesca makes, that he’s a part of the fabric of Sunday lunches at the ranch.

Iris makes a soft noise, and he looks up sharply. Darryl has his hand on her neck now, and she’s shifted as far down the couch as she can to get away from him. He glances at Trudie, but can tell she’s not going to stop it. He clears his throat. “Sorry, honey, I’m getting the signal that my table is ready. I have to go.”

There’s a forced quality to TK’s response. “Oh, of course.” He laughs, and Carlos wonders if everyone else can hear how artificial it is. “Think of me, eating a PB&J for dinner, while you’re enjoying your fancy dinner.”

“I’m at a TGIFridays,” he says with a shrug. “But, I’ll think of you when I order dessert.”

“What kind of dessert?” TK asks, and he hopes he’s the only one who can hear the way the question isn’t quite idle.

“Not sure yet, brownie sundae maybe.”

TK swallows. “That sounds delicious. You’re making me hungry, maybe I should go out for dinner too.”

“The diner?” he asks, light. “Amy would probably let you have pie.”

TK pauses. “No, I think I’ll hit up Dad, see if he’s free.”

“No pie for you then.”

TK laughs, and it’s only a little stilted. “No, probably not. I should let you go. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Co-dependent much?” Darryl sneers when TK hangs up.

He’d say something, but Trudie beats him to it. “You could do worse than learn from Detective Reyes, my darling, seeing as how he has a partner, and you’ve yet to bring anyone home to meet me.”

Carlos winces. It’s the sharpest he’s seen Trudie with her son, and he wonders what’s fraying behind the scenes. Darryl explodes up out of the sofa and stalks off. He sees Iris take a shuddering breath of relief. Trudie stares after her son with a melancholy expression that she wipes clear when she turns back around to them. And she says lightly enough, “Dinner, I think. Yes?”

Chapter Text

REWIND

TK knocks on his hotel door at 11:37am the next morning, and Carlos decides he does not want to ask exactly how far over the speed limit TK had to have been driving to make that kind of time. Opts for pulling him into the room and crowding him up against the door to kiss instead. He tastes like coffee and skittles and tic tacs. He feels like home.

"So," TK says, leaning back against the door when Carlos lets him go. "We're in a hotel."

Carlos pauses in unpacking TK’s bag. "Yes."

TK smirks. "You know what that means?"

He raises an eyebrow. "You can't get up at two in the morning to get something from the fridge to snack on?"

TK pouts for a moment. "Mean. But, you know what else we don't have here?" He makes a mystified gesture at TK, who grins broader. "Neighbors."

He blinks. "I mean, there are hotel rooms on either side of this one, so technically we probably do have neighbors, we just don't know them."

TK takes a step closer. "My point exactly. No neighbors we have to look in the eye in the morning if I make you get loud."

He thinks TK is probably trying to distract them both from what happens next, but there's a pooling heat in his stomach, like a pavlovian reaction at this point to TK saying anything with that kind of low promise in his voice. "If I get loud?"

TK shrugs, close enough now that Carlos can feel the heat of his body, and he walks two fingers up Carlos's chest to tug at the buttons on his shirt. "I mean, feel free to turn the tables, baby. I am all yours for the weekend."

He snags TK's belt loops, yanking him off balance enough to stumble into Carlos, bracing himself on Carlos's arm and hip. "Kind of hoping you're mine for more than the weekend, but we can start with that."

The knock on the door startles them both apart. TK leans his head on Carlos’s shoulder. “We could ignore it?” he suggests hopefully.

Carlos huffs a breath of laughter. “I said that last time, but you said it was rude.” But he doesn’t let go of TK, just raises his voice enough to be heard through the door without opening it. “Yes?”

“Lunch,” Iris says and smacks the door again, louder this time. He sighs and steps away from TK to open the door. She has her hand raised to knock again and he cocks his head at her in question. She shrugs. “I’m supposed to collect you. Your FBI friends want to go over the plan again.” She peers past him into the room, looking for TK apparently. “They have questions for your boy.” He raises an eyebrow slightly at her tone, but TK steps around him and out into the hall before he can say anything.

He follows them both down the hall to where Matt’s set up a lunch of take out chinese food in his hotel room, and he doesn’t fight for it when TK snags the cashew chicken and retreats to the couch. Matt raises his eyebrow at both of them, but doesn’t push it, just pulls out a pad of paper and starts to go down it, checking off each point as he gets to it.

Matt looks at George. “We’re set on surveillance at Reuth tonight?”

George hastily swallows his bite of spring roll and nods. “Across the street, and inside the loading dock. We couldn’t get cameras in Reuth itself, so you’re on your own there.”

Matt nods. “And Carlos’s cover is holding?”

George nods again. “They ran background; they got what we planted.” He hands Carlos the thin file with Daniel Alvarez’s Sterling Bosch profile picture clipped to the front. “We refined it a bit, if you want to take a look.” He skims the front page and then hands the file off to TK, who puts down the chicken to flip through it. Carlos steals it while he’s otherwise occupied and grins at TK’s noise of indignation when he realizes. He glances up and catches an unreadable expression on Iris’s face and frowns at her in question. She shakes her head and then Matt’s demanding his attention again and he lets it go.

“Okay,” Matt says, ignoring his own carton of lo mein, “So, Carlos you have another meeting at Reuth this afternoon with their head of security, and with the building manager to go over the security for the statue.”

He swallows his mouthful. “Yes. Confirmed it yesterday. Christies is in charge of the actual security for the delivery, it’s not technically Sterling Bosch’s problem until they sign off on the final sale and transfer on Monday.”

Matt nods. “And TK, you’ll,” he pauses expectantly.

TK looks up from the file on Daniel Alvarez and waves a hand. “Oh, I’ll sneak in the backdoor, snag a badge. Don’t worry about me.”

Iris snorts. “Playing to your strengths.” TK gives her a sharp look, but steals the last dumpling and stuffs it in his mouth in lieu of responding. Carlos feels like he’s missed something important.

Matt nods. “Right okay. So then Carlos/Daniel leaves, and—”

TK chews and swallows. “And then I’ll let him back in the side door and we’ll hide out in an empty office until after the cleaners leave.” He glances at Iris. “We still good to camp out in Dawson’s office?”

Iris nods. “He’s sailing around the Caribbean in his yacht.” She and TK make identical faces. Carlos is tempted to point this out, but doesn’t think either one of them would thank him right now.

Matt checks something off on his list. “Okay, so you wait until the cleaners leave, and then you go down to the loading dock to wait for Darryl and his friends to show up.” He looks at George. “We’re set on the distraction?”

George looks inappropriately gleeful. “Yup.”

Matt shoots him a look. “Something plausible and low key please.”

George nods. “Absolutely.” Matt gives him a dubious look, but checks it off on his list and goes to the next item.

“Okay, so let’s assume everything goes to plan.”

TK looks up alarmed. “Go knock on wood, throw salt over your shoulder, walk widdershins around the room three times. Are you trying to curse us?”

“Superstitious much?” Iris says with more bite than Carlos thinks the statement really needs.

TK ignores her, points at Matt. “Go appease the gods of honest thievery.” He glares at Matt until Matt rolls his eyes and stretches far enough to knock on the side table. Carlos eyes it, and doubts very much it’s made of actual wood, but TK sinks back onto the couch apparently mollified.

Iris gives him a look like, ‘can you believe this’, but he’s met TK before, and has game nights every other week with a bunch of firefighters who are the most superstitious group of people he’s ever met, so honestly he’s not even surprised by it. She sighs when he doesn’t agree with her, and says, “Honest thievery? Seems like an oxymoron.”

“Anyway,” Matt says repressively before TK can respond. “The statues get swapped, and then swapped again, bad guys drive away with the fake and think they have the real thing, but the real thing sits at the loading dock waiting to go up to Reuth whenever they fix the elevators.” He glances at his notes. “TK and Iris, you go back to Austin. And Carlos?”

“And I stay here and continue my career as an art expert.” Iris snorts.

Matt ignores them, focussed on getting through his notes. “We’ll have eyes on you the whole time, but we have to assume they’ll search you, so we can’t wire you. Which means we need you to signal us when you want us to come in.”

He nods. “What kind of signal?”

They all turn to study him. There’s nothing they can give him that he can be sure he’ll be allowed to keep. “Flip your collar up,” Matt says finally. “Like you’re cold.”

“Or a villain from an 80s movie,” TK murmurs.

“We’ll be watching.”

“Like this?” He turns the collar of his shirt up, and hunches his shoulders down like he’s leaning into the wind.

Matt nods. “Because we can’t wire you, we need to catch them selling the forged Corradini. It isn’t enough for them to have a forgery, we have to catch them selling it to someone else saying it’s the real thing. So, you’re going to have to persuade them to trust you enough to let you in on the sale details.”

He glances at TK, but he’s buried himself back in the file on Daniel Alvarez. “I know.” He looks at Matt. “I’ve got this, I promise. We’ve all been over the plan a dozen times. We know the plays.”

Matt blows out a breath, and puts one last check mark on this page before he puts his pen down and eyes the table. “Good. Now, are there any scallion pancakes left?”

Iris leaves after lunch to go home and pack some clothes for a weekend at her mom’s, rolling her eyes and declining George’s offer to walk her down to the car, muttering to Carlos that it’s almost as if none of them think she has any kind of common sense. Actually Carlos thinks it has more to do with the crush on her that George is nursing that he doesn’t think she’s noticed yet. He’s tempted to tell George that if he wants to ask her out he’s going to have to be blunt, because she’s got no patience for anything else. Or at least she didn’t. It’s not like he really knows her anymore. Maybe she likes the slow decorous approach now.

He reaches for the file on his cover once she leaves, the one he hadn’t looked at earlier.

TK cracks open a fortune cookie and reads the fortune, wrinkling his nose at whatever it says but doesn’t share it. He looks up when Carlos flips the file open. “For the record, I still don’t like this.”

He looks up, catching TK’s eye. “Because you don’t like that it’s me, or because you think it won’t work?”

TK looks unhappy. “It’ll work.”

Matt snags his own fortune cookie, but doesn’t open it. “Meet with your approval now?”

“Now that you’ve wrested it from Ted’s incompetence? It’s passable.”

Matt snorts. “High praise.”

TK had seen the problem before any of the rest of them had, sitting in Matt’s office in Austin three weeks ago flipping through the background file the FBI had put together on Daniel Alvarez, insurance investigator, while Carlos talked through details with Matt.

TK stands up and tosses the file across the table at George. “Tell me what you see.”

Matt side-eyes TK as George starts to read. "Are we doing teachable moments now?"

TK shrugs, but the twist of his lips says Matt isn’t far off. "Baby FBI's gotta learn sometime."

"It’s good,” George agrees. He looks up at TK to see if he’s gotten it right. “The last one was too perfect, it felt forced. This one feels lived in.”

TK nods approvingly. "Gold star for the probie." George rolls his eyes, but also pinks a little at the praise. Carlos wonders if he should mention that detail to Iris. TK flips through the file again, worrying his lip.

George watches him. “Did they do what you asked? Did they leave enough of an in? I’m still not sure I understand what that means.”

TK hitches a hip up onto the table, and Carlos will never ever get tired of watching TK in teacher mode. It probably says something damaging about his psyche, or maybe that they should play hot for teacher in bed. He has to stifle a burst of laughter at how horrified TK would be by the idea. He's down for most things in bed, but Carlos suspects he teaches too many actual teenagers with a crush on him (and the occasional grad student with a crush – Carlos has met TK's study group), to find anything sexy in teacher roleplay. He forces his mind back to the subject at hand when TK flicks him on the thigh and raises an eyebrow.

“To con someone,” TK says evenly, like he hadn't just caught Carlos daydreaming, “you have to offer them a thing they want, and you have to offer it to them in a way that makes them feel like they're getting away with something. To blackmail someone you have to have something they're ashamed of, that they want to hide. The guy Ted invented had neither." He scowls. "The guy Ted invented was wonder bread." He swings around to look at Matt. “Where do you get them from?”

“Central casting,” Matt says dryly, and gestures for TK to continue his teachable moment.

George laughs, and then coughs to cover it. They've corrupted him fast. He’s never going to be able to work for another FBI unit again.

TK has the file open on the table now, to a background picture of Carlos. It’s cropped to just show him, but he remembers when it was taken, remembers who else was in the picture with him.

“Is this enough?” He asks now, and, like George, looks to TK for confirmation.

George answers him. “It took me less than 30 seconds to do a reverse image search on this and find the uncropped picture, and about another 30 to find your name. If I can do it, so can they.”

They’re past the point now where TK can take his place, but when they’d first seen the problem he’d tried. He’d seen what TK wanted to suggest before he even managed to form the sentence, and he'd shaken his head before TK could say it outloud. "No. You promised."

TK had nodded. "I know. And I meant it. But, baby, it wouldn't be hard to convince them that I was playing both sides of the table."

"No," he repeated. "Cliff went to a lot of trouble to help clear your name, and unfuck the damage to your reputation after last time. And, you promised." He’d tried not to make it sound like a plea.

TK hadn’t even tried to argue further, just taken his hand, and twisted their fingers together, and there had been relief in his expression, although he’d angled his face so that Carlos is the only one who could see it. "And, I keep my promises."

He skims through the file now, seeing all the information they’ve twisted, the bits they’ve omitted, and the bits they’ve embellished. If you care to read between the lines it’s a damning record. They’re banking on the fact that whoever it is who is in charge can read what isn’t being said as easily as what is. He reaches for TK’s hand where it’s drumming on the table, and doesn’t care that Matt and George are watching. “It’ll work.”

Matt shifts uneasily, breaking into their bubble. "It gets them your real name, means you can't walk away from this."

"They can get to my real name anyway," he points out. “Big Brother is everywhere. At least this way I'm planning for it. Controlling the narrative."

He’s not as confident as he sounds, and he hopes probably in vain that TK can’t hear it. He bends his head rather than meet TK’s eyes, and skims through the history they’ve created, the places where they’ve built a picture of himself that is one step to the left of reality. It feels real, because it is real. He memorizes the stress lines they’ve hinted at, the places where he might be fracturing. When he glances up TK is worrying his lip. “Have we spooked them by getting Chambers fired? Will they cut their losses?”

TK shakes his head. “No. They’re too far in. A forged statue that good isn’t cheap. This kind of big con, it’s an all or nothing kind of deal – you spend a lot upfront, and gamble that you’ll get more back at the end. They’ll go through with it because they can’t afford to walk away.”

Chapter Text

Dinner is a crisp arugula salad with shaved fennel and pears and a pomegranate dressing, followed by a silky carbonara, and finished with a small slice of tart lemon chess pie topped with sweet local strawberries. He has to tamp down firmly on the urge to ask who the hell is doing their cooking, and if he can get a tutorial on how they got a perfect carbonara to the table from wherever they’re making this food. Iris slants him a look over her plate of pasta like she knows what he wants to ask.

Trudie is in an odd mood this evening, and it makes him nervous that he doesn’t know what’s behind it. He talks to fill the silence. “Can I ask, how did you get into this line of work?” he finally asks in desperation when all his other conversational forays have been met with polite but distant answers.

Amusement sparks in her eyes. “You mean art theft?” He nods and takes a bite of carbonara to stop himself from saying more, letting her fill the silence.

She takes a small sip of wine. “I was a teacher,” she says finally. “Before I met my husband,.” She twists the stem of the glass, and it’s the first breach of perfect etiquette that he’s seen from her and it makes him wonder.

“Before you met your husband,” he prompts when she doesn’t seem inclined to continue.

She takes another sip of wine, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Darryl’s bored look. “I worked for a while after we were married, but then once we had Darryl obviously that wasn’t possible anymore.” She shrugs delicately. “Michael never liked that I worked, said it made people think he couldn’t provide for me.”

Darryl scowls. “He always provided for us.”

Trudie nods. “Of course he did. He was a very good provider.” She takes a small bite of her pasta. “But after Darryl started school I had a lot more time on my hands, and I knew something about art from when I used to teach history, and so dabbled a little here and there while Darryl was at school and Michael was at work. Small jobs, nothing like this.” She glances at Darryl and then at Carlos. “It seemed like an easy way to build a little nest egg, and still have time to go to Darryl’s games and chaperone school trips, and work with the PTA, and have dinner on the table every night when Michael got home from work.”

Art theft as a stay-at-home mom side hustle is admittedly not a possibility any of them had considered, and shame on them for a lack of imagination. He wonders what TK will think of it when he finds out. “Is that why you use an intermediary?”

She wipes her lips. “Of course. I had a child at home. I couldn’t go running all over the country. And how would it look to the PTA if they found out? I had a reputation to uphold, and I couldn’t let Sherry Applethorpe take over.” She butters a piece of bread slowly. “And then of course when Michael died, I had to find a way to expand my hobby to support us both,” she waves a hand to encompass Darryl, who is staring at Iris. Trudie laughs brightly. “It turns out I’m quite good at it. Who knew? And, of course, it’s something I can pass down to my son when the time comes.”

“Of course,” he says dryly, and doesn’t look at Darryl.

Darryl grunts. “When is that time Mom? Because you keep saying that.”

Trudie ignores Darryl. “What about you Detective? Did you always want to be a police officer?”

“Yes. My dad is a Texas Ranger, I grew up knowing I wanted to serve my community.” He gives her a small conspiratorial grin. “And, my mom liked all the old detective shows. She’d let me watch Columbo, and Cagney and Lacey, and Murder She Wrote after school if I did my homework early.”

Trudie’s eyes crinkle in pleasure. She takes another bite of her carbonara and then gestures for Minion #2 to take it away, and taps her finger on the table, and he gets the sense that the mood has shifted again. “Being a detective is admirable, but it’s not lucrative.”

He winces. “I do okay.”

Trudie offers him a smile. “I’m sure you do, but you have a partner to support now too, don’t you.” He shrugs uncomfortably. She smiles. “I understand how that is. You have a lot of expenses though, a new mortgage, a partner in school,” she gives him a commiserating look, “a partner with expensive tastes from what I see.”

He swallows and pushes his food away, suddenly losing his appetite. “Are you checking up on me?”

Trudie laughs. “Of course I am, Detective.” She holds her hand out and Minion #1 hands her a sheaf of papers that she fans out on the table between them. “It looks like your credit score took quite the hit when you started living with Mr. Strand.” She peers at him. “He’s very pretty, but maybe not quite as responsible as you are with his finances?” He hates this. Doesn’t say anything, lets her infer what she wants to from it. “We couldn’t help but overhear when you were talking about new furniture, and condo association renovations,” she pauses delicately for him to respond. He makes a face, but doesn’t deny it.

She pulls another sheet from the pile and pushes it across the table to him. “But recently it seems like your finances have been improving.”

“I made some investments.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Detective, I thought we had both agreed that neither one of us is stupid, don’t disappoint me now.” She taps the page. “What I don’t know is if you’re taking bribes, or if you’re skimming from the evidence locker.”

“It’ll work,” he’d promised TK, was it really only a few days ago? Sitting in Matt’s hotel room with the remains of lunch spread around them. “You told me that. A clean cop is just an obstacle, but a dirty cop is a tool you can use."

"When did I tell you that?" TK had asked sourly.

"Don't remember." Which hadn’t been true. He had. It had been early on, when he thinks TK was still testing the boundaries of this thing they were building, seeing if there was a line he could cross that would make Carlos come to his senses and leave. TK had given him a look like he remembers too.

He crosses his arms and doesn’t say anything, and ignores the daggers Iris is staring at him, and wills her not to say anything.

She nods like he’s given her an answer anyway. “It’s risky what you’re doing. Especially for someone from a family like yours.”

“What does that mean?”

She spreads her hands. “I just meant, your mother is prominent in Austin society. Your father is a well respected name in the Rangers. No offense was intended.” He settles back in his chair, ill at ease.

Trudie starts to say something, but Darryl cuts her off. “What if we paid you to look the other way for us.”

Trudie’s lips tighten, but she nods at Darryl to continue.

He gives Darryl a guarded look. “I’m listening.”

“Mom always shopped our stuff around, but it’d be easier, more efficient to have a home base, get to know the market and the dealers.” Carlos does not volunteer the information that the FBI would be delighted if he did that, but there’s an expression on Trudie’s face that suggests she’s thinking the same thing he is. It explains why Matt had heard rumors about the auction being local this time. Darryl gives his mother a look that’s halfway between doting and condescending. “We could buy a house, give Mom a permanent home so she doesn’t have to travel around so much.”

“I want to give you a chance to settle down, darling,” Trudie corrects softly. “Meet someone, start a family.”

Darryl barrels on. “Austin/Dallas is a good market - lots of oil money, lots of tech start up money, but not the kind of attention that New York or LA has.” Carlos feels like he ought to be vaguely offended on behalf of Austin, but keeps his mouth shut.

“Where do I come into this?”

“You’d be my inside man, let me know what the police know.” Carlos notes the shift from we to I, wonders if Trudie has noticed it too. Would be surprised if she hadn’t.

He arches an eyebrow. “And that’s safer than what I’m doing now?”

Darryl leans forward. “It’s a burner phone, and maybe a couple of meetings a month at a nice coffee shop. Not like getting caught skimming from the evidence room. I’d just want information, I’ll take care of any consequences, your hands get to stay clean.” Darryl clearly has a flexible definition of the word clean.

“I’d need to think about it,” he says slowly. “I’d want to meet your fence.”

Trudie’s eyes sharpen, and whatever Darryl thinks, she’s the one he has to convince. “Why, Detective?”

He shrugs. “I need to know who I’m getting in bed with. Let’s say I trust you, but for this to work I’d have to trust your fence too, make sure they won’t sell me out if things get hot. Like you said, I’ve got a family name to protect.”

Darryl shrugs, and doesn’t look at his mother. “Sure. We can make that happen. We’re meeting with them tomorrow to discuss the Corradini hand off, you can come with us then.”

Trudie clears her throat in a way that if his mother had done it would have sent Carlos ducking for cover, but either Darryl doesn’t recognize it for the warning it is, or he ignores it. Carlos would admire his chutzpah, but mostly he suspects that Darryl suffers from the overconfidence of being a mediocre white man. Trudie snaps a finger at her minions. “Perhaps you could escort Detective Reyes and Miss Blake back to their room,” she says pleasantly, but Carlos doesn’t miss the ice in her voice. “My son and I need to discuss business.”

He gets up, and tucks Iris’s arm through his, She is rigid with fury, and he clamps down on her arm to keep her from pulling away, because he needs this to look normal. “Thank you for the offer, ma’am, Darryl. And, thank you for dinner.” Gives in to the impulse and adds, “Please give my compliments to the chef.” Minion #1 flushes ever so slightly, and Carlos grins to himself.

As soon as the door to their room closes behind Minion #3 Iris hauls back and punches him in the stomach. His father had taught them both when they were 12, and she clearly hasn't forgotten any of his lessons. He falls back more than sits down on the bed, and doubles over, nursing his bruised stomach and tries to get his breath back. "The hell, Iris? What was that for?"

She takes two steps to the bed, her arms crossed, staring down at him. "You planned this. You and TK and your friend Tulson, you planned all of this." She lets go of the iron grip she has on her arms and waves a hand jerkily at the room.

"Of course I didn't plan this."

She does not look in the least convinced, and kicks at his leg sharply, and he shifts out of range. "Like fuck you're a dirty cop," she says flatly.

He doesn't meet her eyes. "I have bills." She doesn't say anything and he risks a look up at her, and then hastily looks back at the floor.

"Try selling that to someone who hasn't known you since before your balls dropped."

He does look up at that. "You don't know me anymore. It's been years. Your choice, and I respected it, but you don't get to say you know me anymore."

She rolls her eyes. "You fell in love and finally let yourself be happy; you didn't have a personality transplant. You’re a dirty cop like I'm Lady Gaga. Which means," she jabs the ball of his shoulder with her finger and digs in, "that you fucking planned all of this." She takes a step back, hands falling loosely at her sides and she looks lost. "And you didn't tell me."

"You weren't supposed to be here," he mutters.

She gives him an exasperated look. "That makes it better how? Why are you even doing this? You're not FBI. You're not even Dallas PD. Why would you risk making TK lose you?"

It pulls him up short, because three days ago she'd been asking if he was sure about TK, and now she's on his side? "They wanted you to do it," he admits. "And, I couldn't let them."

It is the wrong thing to say, and she is back to furious again. "You're making decisions for me now? Poor Iris, too fragile, too helpless to make up her own mind. Better rescue her before she gets herself in trouble again."

His, "No!" is sharp enough that it cuts her off, and she stares at him, making an impatient ‘what’ gesture when he doesn't continue. He rubs his suddenly sweaty hands down his thighs. "I've sat in a hospital room twice now, not sure if TK was going to wake up. I'm not up for losing more people that I love." His voice breaks. “It was you or him or me. Neither one of us was going to let it be you, and I couldn’t let it be him again, and TK loves me enough not to ask me to.”

That drains the anger out of her and she plops down on the edge of the bed next to him. "I'm someone you love?" Her voice is small and unsure in a way she doesn't let herself show often.

He takes a risk and pulls her closer, until her head drops onto his shoulder. "You've always been someone I love. I asked you to marry me, remember? We're just bad at being pen pals."

She gives a tired snort. "Your handwriting is terrible. I wouldn't be able to read anything you sent me anyway."

He kisses the top of her head. "I lost you for years. I wasn't going to risk losing you again."

She's quiet for a long moment. "Me being here makes it more complicated, doesn't it?"

"I am getting you out of here," he says firmly.

Her head lifts. "Both of us. We're both getting out of here." She pins him with a look. "Promise me." He doesn't say anything, and she digs her knuckle into his thigh. "Promise me. TK's gonna come after me with a pickaxe if anything happens to you, and I don't want to have to go on the run; I like my apartment. Promise me."

His lips twitch slightly. "TK's not really into violence, he’s more of a mind games kind of guy." He yelps when she twists her hand. "Fine, fine, yes, both of us. No heroic measures. I promise."

Chapter Text

REWIND

The meeting with Reuth’s head of security and the building manager is unremarkable. Carlos inspects the security cameras, fiddles with the angles on a few of them to kill the blind spots because he might as well as long as he’s here, reviews the protocols for who watches the cameras, and the after hours card access to the building, and Reuth’s offices specifically, and to the freight elevator. He checks the doorway on the fire escape and the mailroom and declares himself satisfied. He pauses to go to the bathroom on his way out and trusts that whatever plan TK has in place to get in has been effective.

He pauses partway across the building lobby, because Elaine from Reuth’s reception desk is calling his name. She sounds a little out of breath from rushing, talking before she’s quite near enough. “Sorry, I was going to catch you before you left, but then I had to sign for something.” He takes a half step back towards her, and she stops, blushing. “I wanted to give you that list of restaurants since you’re in town for the weekend.” She hands him a neat stack of papers, menus from a variety of local restaurants neatly printed and collated.

He flips through them, and smiles at her. “Thank you. This is really thoughtful. I appreciate it.”

She fiddles with her hair. “I figured, you’re here for the weekend, and you don’t know anyone.” She pauses awkwardly, and it belatedly dawns on him that she’s flirting with him. “I, umm, the one on top is my favorite.” She points at it. “And, I put my card there too, if you know, if you wanted company? Or someone to show you around some of the things to do in Dallas while you’re here.”

He prays that TK is not watching this, because TK will never let him live this down. Knows that it’s going to end up on the FBI surveillance tape, and there’s nothing he can do about that, but Matt’s usually discrete unless he wants help finding the perfect birthday present for Liz and then he’s got no compunction about blackmailing people for suggestions.

He sighs and tries to let her down gently. “Really, this is very kind. But, honestly I’m probably just going to hole up in my hotel room and catch up on TV long distance with my boyfriend.” He can see her deflate, and then her mortified silence. He clears his throat. “But, these look great, and if I do end up going out I’ll be sure to try one. Really, thank you.”

She nods, tips of her ears red, and she gestures towards the elevators. “I should get back to work. Have a good weekend.”

He tucks the restaurant suggestions away in his bag and turns to spare her the embarrassment and continues on across the lobby, nodding goodnight to guys at the security desk, who are politely pretending they did not just witness any of that.

TK snags his arm from behind a door he hadn’t even known was there as he crosses behind a display of plants that puts him out of sight of the security desk, and gets them both up to a floor in the Reuth offices he should not possibly have access to. TK grins at him, and flashes a janitor’s pass at him. “Janitors have access to everywhere in the building. Nobody wants to stock their own toilet paper, or empty their own trash cans.” They wait in the maintenance closet until they hear the sounds of people leaving, and then TK checks his watch and starts to open the door.

Normally this wouldn’t work. Reuth isn’t the kind of company where everyone, anyone, clocks out at five, but at his recommendation Reuth has locked the whole building down after seven pm today for the statue delivery. They have a 15 minute window between when the guards do a sweep to make sure everyone actually left and kick them out if they didn’t, and when the cleaning crew comes into the maintenance closet they’re hiding in to get their supplies and get the nightly cleaning done early before the building locks down.

TK swipes them into an office at the end of the corridor, and they wait until they hear the cleaning crew next door, and then they slip out and leapfrog their way down to Dawson’s office that’s already been cleaned.

Once they've got the door locked behind them and the shades drawn against anyone from the outside looking in, Carlos sinks down into the office chair, feeling at loose ends. They've got at least two hours before the statue is scheduled to arrive. He spins idly in the chair. "So, tell me, Maestro, what do you usually do at this stage?"

TK raises an eyebrow. "At this stage?"

He nods. "The waiting." He gives TK a challenging look. "Because, baby, you are not good at waiting."

TK huffs a breath, half annoyance, half amusement, Carlos lets himself relax a little, hadn’t been aware of how nervous he was until that moment, and then feels his breath catch at the very deliberate, very obvious once over TK gives him. "Well I can think of a few things we could do to pass the time."

It makes him sit up straighter. "You want to have sex? Now? Here?"

TK looks around the office. "Well, nothing complicated. I mean, I didn't actually bring lube or condoms with me."

He can't help it, he makes a disapproving noise. "Really? That seems very unprepared of you."

TK pauses, staring at him, and then snorts. "Well, if I'd known that was going to be on the table. It’s not something that came up a lot when I was working with Jack. So to speak."

Carlos’s eyes slide to the desk speculatively, almost without his volition. TK makes a small surprised noise that makes him look up, and he scowls. "What? It's been a while."

TK chokes. "Okay, I'm low key offended by that. Did yesterday morning mean nothing to you?"

Yesterday morning in the shower before he left for Dallas, TK pressed against him, warm and wet, hand slick with soap on his cock, his moans swallowed by TK's mouth. He flushes. "Yesterday morning was very nice," he says primly. "I'd just like the opportunity to take my time. Without getting interrupted by anyone," he mutters.

TK takes a step closer, sliding between the chair and the desk and stopping Carlos's spinning with his foot on the seat between Carlos's legs. "Well, we've got some time now." He licks his lips, and Carlos's eyes are drawn to them helplessly. TK kicks Carlos's legs a little further apart. "Interested?"

He looks up at TK, licking his own lips, and reaches out to curve a hand around TK's hip. "Literally always, but you know that."

TK lowers himself into Carlos's lap, the chair creaking ominously beneath them. "Consent's important. I'd never just assume."

He tips his head back for TK's kiss, fingers flexing on TK's hips as he grinds down, mouth opening under TK's, moaning softly at the slick heat of TK's mouth, the touch of his tongue. He's dazed when TK pulls back, and watches with something that feels like amazement as TK slides off his lap and onto his knees, hitching Carlos closer to the edge of the chair and opening his pants with quick flicks of his fingers.

TK’s serious right now, not just teasing, he’s sure of it. If Carlos said yes, TK would go down on him here in this borrowed office like his own personal porn shoot. He’d draw it out, teasing Carlos, letting him get close to the edge before he pulls back, until Carlos is left desperate and with his hands clenched tight in TK's hair, straining for the touch that will put him over the edge. But Carlos isn’t sure how much good he'll be to either of them with the rest of this evening's plans if TK does. And, he wasn't just being facetious earlier. He wants to take his time, let them both get desperate, look his fill of TK spread out on sheets underneath him, drink in the feel of TK's skin against his, the feel of TK around him, under him, fill every sense with TK. A blowjob in this borrowed office would be – obviously – good, but it wouldn't satisfy the itch under his skin, and he pulls TK up, standing as he does and backing TK up against the desk.

TK looks surprised. "No?"

He shakes his head. "Not no, just not now. I told you, I want to take my time." He bends low to whisper in TK's ear. "I want to fuck you until you're shaking with it. I want you to fuck me in morning and then slide a plug in and hold me open and then fuck me again in the afternoon. I want to see every inch of you, leave marks so that anyone who looks at you knows what we were doing." TK makes a soft whimpering noise, and his hand tightens reflexively on Carlos's hip, and he can hear the way TK swallows. He takes a step back. "Now, what did you used to do with Jack?"

It takes TK a minute to come back to himself, to straighten off of the desk, and pull his clothes into place, very deliberately adjusting himself as he watches Carlos watch him. "Cards," he says finally. "We used to play gin rummy."

He blinks. "Seriously?"

TK nods. "Seriously." He reaches for his bag, and pulls out a well worn deck of cards, shuffling them in a waterfall, and then snapping them out into a showy fan..

Carlos’s phone buzzes and he pulls it out, smiling at the text. TK nods towards it. "Do you need to get that?"

He texts Iris back a / 👍/ and flips the phone over. "Just Iris checking to see how the stakeout was going." TK's face tightens, but it's there and gone so fast Carlos isn't sure if he imagined it. He watches TK waterfall the cards again before he deals them each five cards..

“You need ten cards for gin,” he points out.

TK nods easily. “Which is why we’re playing poker.” He picks up his hand and eyes them for a moment before he stacks them and folds his hand over them, waving at Carlos to pick up his hand.

Carlos picks his cards up warily, not sure how to interpret TK’s sudden mood shift. He studies his hand, and then narrows his eyes. "Are they marked?"

TK grins. "That would be telling. Ante up, Reyes."

"What are the stakes?"

"Truth."

His head snaps up, but all of TK's attention is seemingly on the cards. "High stakes," he says lightly.

TK shrugs. "No other way to play poker." Carlos stares at his bent head, trying to figure out what he missed, but TK's not giving anything away.

TK wins the first hand, which is approximately the least surprising thing Carlos can imagine. He can actually usually tell when TK is bluffing, he has tells if you know where to look, but right now he's too busy trying to figure out what's going on to pay attention.

He folds and looks at TK. "You won. Hit me."

TK reshuffles the cards for the next hand and doesn't meet Carlos's eyes. "What happens when I graduate?"

He stares at TK blankly. "We have a party?" he hazards. “You sleep for two weeks straight? Maybe afterwards we take one of those trips we keep talking about, you can finally show me the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum? Or we could go to Malta? See where that Caravaggio you didn't steal used to be; give you some better memories."

"You don't like traveling." And, TK still isn't looking at him.

He frowns. "Who told you that? My mother?"

TK snorts. "Your mom, your dad, approximately all eighteen of your cousins." He pauses. "Iris. Your dislike of leaving home is well documented."

He wants to say the prospect of leaving home is easier if he gets to take home with him. He wants to say TK has been his home for so long now he can't remember when he wasn’t. He wants to reach for TK. They always do better with touch. But, TK is sitting across the table from him and carefully out of reach. He tries to figure out what the important part of what TK had said had been. "Iris? When did she say that?" Knows he got it right when TK studiously does not react.

"We had coffee the other day."

He picks up the hand of cards TK deals him, looking at them, but not really seeing them. He loses, which is not surprising since he's not sure he could have told you what cards had just been in his hand if you held a knife to his throat right now. He waves a hand at TK to ask another question.

"Am I a stray?"

He stares at TK. "What?"

TK's gaze flicks up to meet his briefly and then back down at the cards "Am I stray you brought home and house broke?"

And seriously, what the fuck, and then says it outloud because he can't honestly think of a better response. "What the fuck, TK?"

It makes TK's mouth quirk slightly, because he's always entertained when Carlos swears, although he's never quite been sure why TK finds it so endearing. "Iris said you like to rescue strays. Says that's what you did with her."

He restrains the desire to bang his head against this very nice teak desk with difficulty. "Iris, who I've barely talked to outside of saying happy birthday on facebook in nearly a decade?"

"Iris, who you almost married," TK counters.

He leans across the table awkwardly to take TK's hand, forcing him to relinquish the cards. "When I was lonely, and scared, and unhappy. I'm not that boy anymore, I haven't been that boy for a long time now."

TK's fingers curl around his. "I hate that you ever felt like that."

"Every morning I get to wake up with you, I forget who that boy was a little more."

TK's face softens. "Yeah?"

He rubs a thumb hard into TK's palm. "Yeah." Dips his head to catch TK's eyes. "You've never needed me to rescue you."

TK stares at their hands, and considers Carlos from under lowered lashes, and he's struck all over again by how beautiful TK is. "Not sure that's true. Or at least, you gave me a reason to figure out how to do the rescuing myself."

He wants to stay here, in this moment, but he's stretched at an uncomfortable angle across the table and after a moment TK releases his hand and deals the cards again. He wins this time, and he's not sure if TK let him, or if TK's distracted now too.

He considers TK, faint embarrassed flush painted across his cheeks. "Why did you want to marry Alex?"

TK's head jerks up so fast he thinks he hears something pop, and it's his turn to stare at Carlos. "For the wrong reasons," he finally says.

He takes the deck of cards from TK and shuffles them absently. "What does that mean?"

TK sits back, fingers tapping restlessly at the table now that he doesn't have the cards to fidget with. “I wanted a way out of my life, and Alex seemed like a grown up way to do that. He had a respectable job, and friends who went to brunch on the weekends, and I don't know, a 401K and a life plan. Mom liked him. Dad didn't." He smiles ruefully. "Enzo didn't either, which probably should have been a red flag. Dad and Enzo agreeing on anything always feels like it should be a sign of the apocalypse."

"Owen and Enzo both like me," he objects.

TK grins. "Now, sure."

"Wait, what?" Because, what?

TK kicks his foot. "Enzo thought dating a cop, even a really hot cop, was playing with fire. He asked if I was trying to give him heartburn." He tilts his head. "He came around." Carlos gives him a dry look, and TK grins again before he sobers. "Alex was a fantasy of a life I thought I was supposed to want - house and a picket fence and 2.5 kids. But he was just a fantasy. We never really spent enough time together to get past the part where the sex is exciting and you're on your best behavior all the time."

He flicks TK a look from under his eyelashes. "Are you saying our sex life isn't exciting?"

TK kicks him again. "Obviously not. But, Alex and I never got to laundry on the weekend, and grocery shopping lists, and going to bed just to sleep. And it turns out I like those bits too, maybe even more than the sex.” He pauses. “Well, okay, not more than the sex, but as much as the sex?” Carlos arches an eyebrow and TK grins briefly before he sobers. “Alex and I, we were always stuck at the beginning of a relationship, before it gets real. I think I thought, I don't know, that maybe if we got married I could take a short cut? Because that's what people do, they grow up and get married, that's what real life looks like, and I really needed something that felt real when I met him." He grimaces, “Dad tried to talk me out of it, but I figured go big." TK looks up at Carlos, evaluating. “There a reason you’re asking?”

He shifts a little and fans the cards out. He gets now why TK's been playing with them, they're a useful distraction. “Marjan dealt Mitchell in on the firehouse pool about us.”

TK’s smile is wry, “That would explain why she asked me for Mitchell's number the other day.”

“My mother keeps dropping hints. Even my father is asking leading questions.”

“Mom and Dad and Enzo too, if it makes you feel any better.” TK sits up a little straighter in his chair. “Does it bother you?”

He shrugs helplessly. “No? Yes? I’m never sure what to say.”

“There's no right or wrong answer,” TK says carefully. He bites his lip. “We’ve never really talked about it. Is it, is it something you’d want? Marriage?”

He shrugs helplessly, and has nobody to blame for this conversation but himself. “Yes? No? Or, not no, but more like it’s not a requirement. I love our life. I don’t need it to change.”

“Evasive answer, Detective. Do I need to win another hand of poker to get you to actually answer the question? Because I can do that."

He looks down at the table and forces himself to ask. “Do you feel trapped?”

TK blinks at him. “What?”

Carlos goes to wave a hand to encompass any number of things he doesn’t really have words for. “School, work, do you regret it?”

TK sits back in surprise. “Do I regret our life? No. What kind of question even is that?”

He grabs for TK, before he can retreat into himself, before Carlos can make this worse. “I’m saying this wrong. I see how hard you work at school, I know it’s not always easy for you, and I wonder sometimes if I guilted you into it.” He closes his eyes and blows out a breath. “Matt said I had to actually ask you the question, instead of just doom scrolling in my head.”

“Matt deserves a raise,” TK says dryly, and then pokes Carlos in the shoulder until he lifts his head to meet TK’s gaze. “Yes it’s hard, maybe even harder than I expected it to be, but I’m getting better at it, and it’s getting me something I never knew I wanted before.”

Carlos tilts his head, curious, because he’s reasonably sure that TK’s not talking about them. TK ducks his head, embarrassed? Nervous? Carlos can’t quite read it. “Tanya wants me to pitch an exhibit proposal to the Board. A big one.”

“TK, that’s amazing.”

TK nods. “If you’d asked me when I was 19 or 24, or even 28, if that was something I wanted I would have said no, because it wasn’t something I could even imagine. You gave me the space to figure out that I want this, you gave me the courage to want it and believe that I could have it.” TK looks down at their hands, thumb rubbing over Carlos’s ring finger. “I don’t think I knew how to imagine you either.”

Carlos’s voice is hoarse. “I know I didn’t know how to imagine you.”

He can see the hint of TK’s smile even though he’s still looking at where their hands are intertwined. “You never answered the question. Is marriage a thing you want?” He does look up at Carlos now, and repeats like he thinks Carlos didn’t really hear him the first time, and maybe he’s right. “There’s no right or wrong answer here.”

He smiles. "You keep telling me I'm stuck with you. I keep trying to tell you that's not a bad thing." He reaches out to tug on TK's hand. “Hypothetically, yes, marriage is a thing I want, if it’s a thing you want.” He holds up a hand. “But, there’s no timeline, and no pressure, and no boxes we’re trying to check.”

TK looks at him carefully, and Carlos meets his gaze easily, because there’s nothing but truth in what he’s saying. TK nods slowly, and then leans across the table to kiss him lightly, and then again, deeper, but still soft and sweet; a kiss to seal a promise. The alarm on his phone dings softly and TK pulls back reluctantly. "We're up. Ready to go steal a statue?"

Chapter Text

He and Iris are both up and dressed by the time the morning mist has burned off, neither one of them willing to be caught unprepared, both of them nervous for what happens today. Breakfast is greasy egg and cheese on an english muffin and gas station coffee handed to them impatiently by Minion #1. “Miss Trudie?” he asks leadingly as the bag of food is being shoved at him.

“Busy,” Minion #1 says curtly. “None of your concern.”

He nods and retreats to the table and eats breakfast with Iris and tries not to speculate about what’s happening on the other side of the door. They’re both bored to screaming with card games, and they’ve exhausted the supply of news to give each other. He’d give his eye teeth for the book Trudie had been reading last night, just for the distraction.

Iris is jittery, pacing back and forth. He’d knock on the door and ask if the gym in this conference center is still half-way functional to give them both a way to work out some of their nervous energy, but he doesn’t want to draw attention to themselves this morning. Minion #1 had seemed on edge, and that’s putting him on edge. He ends up losing at solitaire in game after game while Iris lies on the bed and pretends to nap.

It’s lunchtime before Minion #1 returns, holds the door open and jerks his head at them. “Lunch.” They scramble up and follow him.

Lunch is better than breakfast, but not by much. It’s takeout pizza gone lukewarm, with too sweet tomato sauce, and too salty cheese. He eats mechanically, partly for fuel, and partly for something to do. He skips the coke though, and opts for water. He doesn’t need the caffeine putting him more on edge.

Trudie sweeps in, followed by Darryl with a scowl on his face. Carlos wonders if he has other expressions. She eyes the pizza without enthusiasm and leans back to ask Minion #2 something. He nods and vanishes out the door. Darryl rolls his eyes behind her back and grabs a slice of pizza, taking a huge bite out of it and chewing. Trudie regards him impassively for a moment, before she appears to dismiss him from her attention, turning to Carlos and Iris on the other side of the table.

“Did you sleep well? I’m sorry I was busy this morning.”

Iris gives him a sidelong look, and he shrugs. She answers for them. “Yes, thank you.”

Trudie nods, and then smiles when Minion #2 returns with a plate and a knife and fork, and a pot of tea. She thanks him, and then takes a slice of pizza, neatly cutting off a piece. She doesn’t eat it though, glances at her son, and then back at Carlos. “You will be coming with us this afternoon.

He clamps down hard on his expression, and restricts himself to a nod. “Okay.” And then, because not being curious would be stranger than asking the question, says, “Can I ask what changed your mind?”

Trudie shoots her son a tired look. “My son mentioned your role as a police liaison to them,” her mouth twists, “I believe he was trying to impress on them his efficiency.” Carlos has been reamed out by his instructor at the Academy with less venom than that sentence contained. Iris pinches his thigh, and he covers her hand, squeezing. Trudie waves a hand. “Anyway. They have decided they would like to meet you.” She gives him a thin smile. “You can mutually vet each other.”

He squeezes Iris’s hand hard. They are almost out of here. “Thank you.”

She pours herself tea and takes a restorative sip. “What’s done is done.” She shoots her son a look. He’s reading something on his phone and doesn’t seem to be listening. “My son has been asking for the opportunity to take on more responsibility with the business for a while now.” She smiles and rubs her forehead. “He sees how it wears on me. He’s a good son.” Carlos wonders if she’s trying to convince him, or herself.

Trudie takes another sip of tea. “It’s hard to believe sometimes that I’ve been doing this for nearly forty years.” She glances at Darryl again. “It’s hard to believe my son is a grown man. I still remember when he was born, how small he was, how fragile.”

Darryl gives an irritated huff. Carlos can almost sympathize.

“It’s hard to let go, believe that your child is really grown up.” She makes a tiny frustrated gesture. “Still, I can’t do this forever, and Darryl is right, I need to let him take the wheel. I need to trust in his judgment.”

Carlos thinks that that seems like a disastrously stupid idea, but he keeps his mouth shut. “Is there anything I should know before the meeting?” He asks cautiously, not quite sure who he should be addressing the question to.

Trudie starts to say something, and then thinks better of it and cedes the conversation to Darryl.

“Just keep your mouth shut,” Darryl says. “The only time you need to talk is if they ask you a direct question, and they won’t.”

Carlos nods. “Where is it?”

Darryl gives him a sharp look. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

He takes the hit. “What did you tell them about me?” Darryl gives him another sharp look, and he holds up his hands. “I want to make sure that anything I say matches what you told them. I’m invested in this going well too.”

Darryl subsides with ill grace. “Told them you’d tried an undercover op on us, and we sussed you out and turned you. Told them you had a weakness for pretty boys with expensive taste and needed a little something extra on the side to keep up.”

Beside him Iris digs her fingernails into his arm hard enough that they’ll leave marks, but she doesn’t say anything. He tries to look annoyed. “Fine.”

Darryl sneers. “What, you have a problem with that?”

He shrugs. “Maybe a little more commentary on my life choices than I appreciate, but whatever. It’s fine.”

Darryl glances at his mother like he’s asking if there’s anything he’s forgotten, or maybe just for approval, but apparently Trudie really has ceded control, because she just smiles and pours herself another cup of tea, and asks Iris if she’d like a cookie.

They have an hour before they need to leave. Carlos has no idea when the meeting is supposed to take place, so he has no idea far away that means it might be. It gives him time to fret about how everything on the other side of this is going, and whether Matt has everything in place. He has no way to confirm, but TK hadn’t warned him off, so he has to take it on faith that they’re on track.

He glances at Trudie in surprise when she joins them in the entryway with her coat on, and clearly planning on coming with them. “I didn’t know you were coming with us.”

Trudie pauses in tucking her reading glasses into her purse. “I don’t usually, but I also don’t usually have a chance to see my son work.” She gives Darryl a fond glance. “Call it maternal pride. I want to see him put everything I’ve taught him into action.” Oversee it to make sure Darryl doesn’t screw it up, he translates in his head. He thinks Trudie is not as blind to her son’s faults as she’d like to be. It also points to the idea that people do know who she is, they’re just more scared of her than they are of the FBI if Matt couldn’t even get a hint of her identity.

His next surprise is when Minion #2 comes down with Iris in tow. Darryl looks at him like he’s particularly dim when Carlos asks why Iris is coming with them.

“I can’t exactly leave her here on her own, can I? And we need everyone on site. She’ll stay in the car while we negotiate.”

Trudie purses her lips. “Negotiate?” she asks cautiously.

Darryl nods. “Yeah, I think I can get a better deal for the statue.”

Trudie’s lips thin further. “I set the price in advance so there are no surprises.”

Darryl nods. “I know. But, they’ve been taking advantage of you.” He pats her arm. “Not your fault, Mom, just guys like this need to know there’s a man in charge that they can’t intimidate.”

Carlos is hard pressed to imagine anyone more intimidating than Trudie, but not his place to comment, so he just makes sure that Iris is in the car with Trudie, and not the one with Darryl. As he steps outside into the chill Spring wind he flips his collar up and hunches his shoulders for warmth.

Chapter Text

REWIND

“How are we going to know when George’s distraction is up?” he asks as they circle down the stairs, because George hadn’t actually ever given them details.

TK doesn’t look back. “He says we won’t miss it.”

He peers down at TK, surprised at how calm TK is with not knowing every nut and bolt of the plan. “You like him,” he realizes.

TK stops on the landing to wait for him. “He’s okay for a baby FBI,” he allows.

Carlos snorts. “He’s not that young, he went to law school and the FBI Academy, you know that, right?”

TK sniffs. “He’s still in his mid-20s.”

“Barely.”

“Still counts. Besides, he’s a surprisingly original thinker for someone who still has crease marks from the Academy.”

“We’re corrupting him,” Carlos says dryly, and TK’s laugh echoes in the stairwell. “Although, Matt did personally recruit him to the Austin White Collar office,” he adds in the interest of fairness. “Maybe Matt’s corrupting him.”

“Hmm,” is all TK says.

A heist, he discovers a little bit later, is a game of hurry up and wait. They find a space behind a stack of boxes in the loading dock that keeps them out of sight, but gives them a clear view of the street entrance, and a slightly obstructed view of the entrance to the building. It also gives them enough room to sit down, with their backs against the wall while they wait. The concrete is cold under his ass, but it could be worse, he supposes; the only other thing large enough to hide behind is the dumpster.

Once they witness the auction house deliver the Corradini, and the chaos and yelling that ensues when the freight elevator is revealed to be out of service – point to George – they have no real time frame on what happens next. After the auction house delivery men leave, possibly a little too eager to hand off their expensive cargo and go home, TK sneaks into the corridor that leads to the freight elevator. When he comes back he confirms that the building manager is yelling at the elevator company, and apologizing to Reuth, and then yelling at the elevator company again. More points to the baby FBI, because he’s right, the building manager isn’t willing to pay to have elevator techs come out after hours just to get a hunk of marble upstairs. Instead he leaves it in the corridor just beside the freight elevator, and stations a security guard to keep watch.

Now they're just waiting for Chambers to show up to make the swap. Carlos eyes the rolling door to the loading dock. "How are they going to get the door open without alerting the building manager or the security guard?"

TK shrugs. "No idea." Carlos peers at him in the dim light, and TK shrugs again. "Genius part of this plan is, we don't need to know. Chambers and his guys have already worked that out, at this stage this is all on them. We don't need to do anything until they've made the swap." TK scuffs his heel against the concrete. "Of course the downside is we won't have much time after that."

It's well past nine before they hear something outside the loading dock. They both turn to look at it, waiting. There's a loud bang, and then another, and after a moment the security guard who'd been stationed with the Corradini emerges with the building manager – apparently not concerned enough to call out the elevator techs after hours, but concerned enough about the potential for things to go wrong with a several million dollar statue sitting in a hallway to stay. They talk for a moment and then the building manager keys in a code and the door to the loading dock opens and he goes out to investigate. He's smart enough to leave the security guard standing on the edge of the loading dock platform, but then he comes back a moment later and shouts at him to come help. Carlos can't quite hear everything they're saying, but the gist seems to be some kids knocked something over while they were tagging the building, and the building manager wants the security guard to help him do a walk around of the building to see if they spray painted anywhere else.

TK smiles, and says under his breath with genuine admiration, "Nice."

An unmarked van rolls in a minute later, and TK shifts to attention, watching carefully. They open the back of the van and reveal a crate identical to the one in the hallway outside the broken freight elevator. One guy loads it onto a forklift and moves it down towards the freight elevator.

Carlos finds himself holding his breath, torn between watching them and keeping an eye on the loading dock bay entrance. They watch as the fork lift comes back, loaded with presumably the crate holding the real Corradini and maneuvers it onto the truck. TK pulls out his phone and texts George / showtime /. Very very softly he says to Carlos, "These guys are good." He shows Carlos the timer on his phone, less than three minutes have passed since they drove in.

George's diversion turns out to be a car crash. There's the sound of someone braking sharply, and the metallic crumple of a fender being hit, and then two cars are parked across the entrance to the loading dock. The first car opens and what looks like a teenage girl spills out, already on her phone and swearing. Carlos assumes she’s not actually as young as she looks, which is probably annoying for her in 90% of her daily life but perfect for this diversion.

She's glaring at the dent in her bumper when George gets out of the other car, very obviously drunk and belligerent. Even from across the loading dock Carlos can hear him say. "Look what you made me do!"

"What I made you do? You ran into me." She looks up and sees the van, and Chambers' men standing beside it, and enlists them as witnesses. "You saw it, right? He ran into me."

"You stopped in the middle of the fucking street. Women can't fucking drive."

Chambers' men are already moving towards them, aware of how long they have until the building manager and security guard get back from walking around the building, but George's aggression apparently puts them squarely on the girl's side. "Hey now, man, that's not how you talk to a lady."

TK waits until they're solidly halfway across the dock before he gets up. Carlos stands up with him, and they split up. Carlos heads for the forklift, TK goes for the van stepping up into it lightly and releasing the tie downs on the crate.

Carlos keeps an eye on the cars, George's job is to get Chambers' men out of sight and earshot of the loading dock for long enough for them to swap the statues back. George has progressed to insults, the girl is looking tearful. Carlos wonders if they give acting classes at the FBI.

The girl is arguing that they need to exchange insurance information. George is maintaining it was her fault. Chambers' men want them to just move the damn cars. It's four conversations all happening on top of each other. They finally persuade the girl to at least move her car, but she puts her foot down on letting them leave until she has contact information from all of them, and pictures of the damage to her car. "You're witnesses," she says loudly. George heaves a sigh so loud Carlos thinks it might have its own weather system.

The second she moves her car and Chambers' men follow her down the street – because TK was not wrong, there is nothing like a girl in distress to make a man stupid, and fuck the patriarchy and all the pernicious evils of misogyny, but hell if it isn’t effective – Carlos fires up the forklift, sliding it under the crate and backing up. He silently thanks every summer he worked on the ranch, moving bales of hay, for how easily this comes back to him.

They make the swap, but TK is still in the truck tying down the crate when Chambers’ men round the corner of the loading dock, heading back towards the truck. He sees TK’s eyes go wide and alarmed when he hears them talking. There’s nothing Carlos can do except text George / STALL THEM / because of all the people here tonight he is the one person whose face absolutely cannot be seen if they want to pull off the other half of this scheme.

One of Chamber’s guys gets a text, and he tugs the other one to hurry. “That was Kevin, he says they’re on their way back, just coming up to the corner. We have to be gone.”

George appears in the loading dock door like a guardian angel, walking in a weaving path, stumbling occasionally, towards Chambers’ men. They pause halfway to the truck, and through the open truck door Carlos can see TK racing to tighten the straps and checking them against the picture he’d taken earlier to make sure they match. One of Chambers’ men is talking to George, telling him to call an uber and go home and sleep it off, shaking him off impatiently when George tries to get him to agree that the accident wasn’t his fault.

TK finally steps up to the edge of the truck and looks at Carlos, asking if he’s clear. Carlos leans sideways to get a clear line of sight to Chambers’ men and nods. His heart seizes when TK stumbles on the lip of the truck, and the sound it makes is unnaturally loud, but George chooses that moment to fall over and laugh and TK manages to regain his balance and melts into the shadows. And then Chambers’s men are in the truck and driving away, and less than a minute later the building manager and the security guard are rounding the corner, grousing about the feckless youth of America.

He hugs TK tight when they meet up at the side entrance and TK nudges open the door he’d left propped open earlier. They rendezvous with George and his scene partner, whose name turns out be Denise Marks. She’s a Dallas rookie and having the time of her life tonight.

“You’re sure we left the real Corradini in the hallway? You didn’t mix them up?” George asks as they walk back to their cars.

TK tilts his head. “Well, if we did, we’re all going down for art crimes.” He holds out a fist to George. “All for one, and one for all?”

Carlos snorts. “The real one is waiting to go up to Reuth tomorrow morning, fake one drove away with Chambers’ guys. I marked the real crate before we took it out of the van, just so that we wouldn’t have a conversation like this.”

“Spoilsport,” TK murmurs.

He and TK separate in the hotel garage. He has to assume he’s being watched at this point, and can’t be seen with TK. The wait for TK to follow him up does nothing to temper the razor sharp sing of adrenaline in his veins.

He yanks TK into the room as soon as he’s close enough, and swings the door closed, leaning against it. “Is this what it was like for you? The rush of pulling it off, of beating the odds?” He gets now why TK had been addicted to it.

TK cocks his head and looks at him, and there’s banked heat in his eyes. “Sometimes.” Takes a step closer. “Yes.” He takes another step, in Carlos’s space now, nudging a thigh up between Carlos’s legs, and his breath catches. He’s already half-hard. TK’s lips curve in a smile. “Feel that?” He nods. “That’s the edge, you need to ride that until the end. But you have to ride it, you can’t let it ride you or you get stupid.”

He nods again, and spins them, pulling TK across the room. He knows what TK’s saying, he gets it. Take the excitement and use it, but don’t get cocky with it. But he’s got the smell of TK’s after shave in his nose, and the feel of TK’s skin under his hands, and the way TK’s breath hitches when Carlos drops back onto the bed, and he wants.

TK stares at him for a long moment, naked appreciation in his eyes. “What do you want, baby?” He hadn’t realized he’d said it outloud.

"I'm playing you this weekend, remember?" TK raises an eyebrow in confusion, and Carlos very deliberately puts his hands over his head and spreads his legs.

He can see the way TK's eyes darken, although his voice is light, "Are you calling me a pillow princess?"

He holds in the urge to roll his eyes and shifts his hips on the bed instead, arousal making his breath start to come short under TK's steady gaze. "No, I'm saying I want you to fuck me."

TK sucks in a sharp breath, and nods, almost to himself. "Yeah. Yeah. We should do that."

TK puts a knee on the bed, and then changes direction. “Strip,” he says over his shoulder as he disappears into the bathroom, and Carlos doesn’t think he’s ever gotten undressed faster in his life.

When TK comes back to the bed he’s obeyed his own instruction, and he's holding a towel, since they can't exactly just change the sheets, and he knows Carlos well enough to know that he'd rather sleep in the wet spot than call down to the front desk for someone to come up and bring them fresh linens. He's also got the terry cloth belt of the hotel robe in his other hand. He holds it up in question, and Carlos can already feel the thrum of anticipation in his dick and nods.

They figured out a long time ago that bondage does not work for them. TK gets distracted by trying to get out of whatever it is that's holding him down, like his brain is on autopilot. "Occupational hazard," he'd said wryly once. Carlos just flat out doesn't like it. But this works for them – hands clenched around a soft terry cloth belt, or tangled in a t-shirt.

TK isn't going to bind Carlos, just give him the belt to hold onto, a reminder to keep his hands where TK puts them, something to hold on to. It means TK's going to take his time. It means TK's going to take Carlos apart at the seams and put him back together again into something new, something that belongs to TK and no one else.

TK knee walks up the bed, dropping lube on the sheets near Carlos's waist, and then considers something for a moment before getting off the bed again. Carlos turns his head to see what TK's going for, frowning when he comes back with the remains of the glass of ice water he’d brought up from the bar downstairs on their way in. TK gives him a slow smile. "Patience. You'll see." He gets back on the bed, swinging a leg over Carlos's waist, settling back over his dick and Carlos moans a little. TK's mouth quirks in a smile. "Gonna get you louder than that."

Carlos shifts under him. "Promise?"

TK smirks and takes a slow drink of the water. "Promise."

TK fishes one of the ice cubes out of the glass and presses it to his nipple. He hisses with the sting and hisses again for a different reason when TK replaces the ice with the heat of his mouth - sucking and worrying at the nipple until Carlos arches into it.

He makes a noise he doesn’t recognize when TK's fishes another ice cube out of the glass and presses it to the opposite nipple. When TK looks up at him his eyes are dark with arousal, and his voice is low when he says, "Yeah?"

Carlos's voice is ragged when he agrees, "Yeah."

TK's mouth curves in a pleased smile, and Carlos braces himself as TK reaches for another ice cube, tailing it down his chest – a line of icy fire, followed by the incandescent heat of TK’s mouth. He clutches his hands around the soft terry cloth belt to stop himself from reaching, tips his head back on the pillow to pant for air, cock already hard and leaking on his stomach.

He jerks in anticipation and spreads his legs automatically as TK moves down his body. He moans softly when he's rewarded with the press of ice to the inside of his knee, trailing up the inside of his thigh, TK following the path with his tongue stopping just short of where Carlos really wants him, and then again on the other side. Carlos twists his hips, searching for friction against air.

When he looks down, TK is smirking, pleased, turned on, enthralled by what he’s doing to Carlos. He jolts, not ready for it when TK moves lower, presses ice for a second to the thin skin of his perineum and then moans at the hot touch of TK’s mouth there. TK sits up straighter, tipping one of the ice cubes in his mouth for a moment before letting it slide back into the glass with a clink. He watches and still isn't ready when TK bends his head to lap at the head of his cock, where he's leaking and wet. He twists into it and TK teases going down a little further just for moment before he pulls off to take another drink, and then he slides his mouth down around Carlos's cock, cheeks hollowing, cold and then burning hot and it's too much sensation and not enough. TK pulls off again slowly with a pop before reaching for the glass again.

Carlos give up on trying to find a pattern in his touches - ice and then wet heat on his balls, the inside of his knee, the crease of his groin, a slow slick slide down his cock until the head nudges at the back of TK's throat and then an equally slow slide up until TK's sucking at the bundle of nerves under the head, tonguing at them while Carlos gasps for air, a slow hickey sucked into the corner of his hip where he'll feel it tomorrow every time he moves. He loses himself in the unpredictability, the clutch of his hands on the terry cloth belt and the weight of TK's hands on his skin his only tethers.

He only registers that the glass is empty when TK straightens and drops it over the side of the bed to land with a soft clunk on the carpet. When there's no touch that comes after Carlos forces his eyes open and lifts his head enough to see TK watching him. "I know I said I wanted you to get loud, sweetheart, but this is kinda blowing my mind too." He can't find words to respond and TK's gaze turns sharp. "Hey, baby, I need you to talk to me for a second.”

He swallows around a dry throat and finds his voice for TK. "Green. I promise. Green."

TK watches for another moment, assessing, and then nods, reaching for something in the sheets. He shuffles a little closer between Carlos's spread thighs, running hands up them, and then there are slick fingers at the rim of his ass, not pushing, just petting, getting him used to the sensation. "Ready?" TK asks softly.

He tightens his hands on the belt and nods, lets out his breath slowly as TK's touch gets firmer and then there's a slick finger in his ass, and it always feels different than he expects, than he remembers, always more. TK waits, watching until Carlos's face smooths and he nods again, and then he moves, crooking his finger, finding Carlos's prostate with unerring precision, like he’s drawn a map and X marks the spot. Carlos arches into it helplessly, moaning once deep and loud for TK's benefit, and then a second time because he can't help himself.

TK breathes, "Yeah, there we are, sweetheart, I've got you, I promise."

And he does, he always does. Carlos plants a foot, trying to push down on TK's finger. "Please, I need more."

TK gives him more, two fingers thick and real and inescapable, shuddering spikes of electricity running up his spine with each twist of TK's fingers. He feels slick and open long before TK lets him have a third finger, and he rocks down on them, his cock leaving a sticky trail on his stomach with each shift of his hips. He can barely hear over the beating of his heart, can't think past the feel of TK inside him, feels like he's drowning in it. And then there's a thumb, rubbing at the edge of where he's stretched wide around TK's fingers, and he makes a noise that's desperate and longing.

He pants, trying to come back to himself a little when TK pulls his fingers out and wipes them on the edge of the towel, murmuring, "I've got you, sweetheart, just hang on." And then the blunt head of TK's dick is pressing against him, and TK is pushing in, one long endless thrust that Carlos can feel in his throat. He tips his head back to moan his pleasure, words gone. TK shifts, lifting one thigh over his shoulder, and Carlos curls the other one around his waist, pulling him down, wanting TK as close as they can get and then closer still.

TK leans over him, hands sliding up his wrists and unclenching Carlos's hands from the belt to thread their fingers together. He ruts up, needing TK to move, needing more of this moment. TK pauses, stretched out over him and bends to catch his mouth, and Carlos sighs into it. And then TK starts to move, and the drag of TK's cock inside him punches the breath out of him with each thrust, pressing against his prostate with each stroke. It feels like TK's trying to mark Carlos from the inside, the way he'd left mouth shaped bruises on Carlos's thighs earlier. It feels like TK has left traces of himself everywhere on Carlos, writing an invisible story of their lives on his skin with each touch.

He hitches his hips up, straining for more, and TK pauses, shifting his grip to hold Carlos’s wrists down with one hand, and using the other to hook underneath his knee to spread him wider, fuck him deeper. It changes the angle and he’s dizzy with how good this is. He stretches up for a kiss and TK meets him halfway, presses him down into the mattress, rolling his hips in a relentless grind against Carlos’s prostate. He makes a noise that he’d be embarrassed about any other time, but right now the head of his dick rubs against TK’s stomach with each circle of TK’s hips, and he’s so close he can taste it.

TK lifts his head, his hips stilling for a moment and Carlos whines, trying to push up against where TK’s weight has him pinned. “God you’re gorgeous. I can’t believe I’m the only person who gets to see this.” He looks awestruck.

Carlos frees his hands from the loose grip TK has on his wrists, because he can’t not touch, threads his hands through TK’s hair, pulling him down for a messy sloppy kiss. “Only you. Always you.” His hips twitch up, looking for more, and he tugs on TK’s hair. “Also, baby if you don’t fucking move I’m going to murder you.”

TK’s face splits in a grin, and he braces himself before he hitches Carlos’s hips a little higher and pulls out just enough to slam back in and then stills again. “Yeah?” He nods frantically, twisting against TK, he just needs a little more. TK doesn’t move. “I promised I’d get you loud, sweetheart.”

Before he really has time to process what that means TK has their hands threaded together again, using them for leverage, and he’s fucking Carlos with intent now, the crude slap of their hips a counterpoint to the way it punches a moan from Carlos with each thrust. He tries to get a hand free to touch himself, because he’s so so close, but TK tightens his hold, eyes hot and fierce. “No, this is all mine.” And there’s something in Carlos that turns molten at the words. TK bends over him, not really thrusting anymore, just that endless perfect rolling grind, and then TK whispers in his ear. “Come for me, baby. Just let go.”

And he comes like he’d been waiting for TK’s request, and he can’t hear himself over the roar of blood in his ears, but from the smug expression on TK’s face he’s guessing he was loud. He comes back to himself in pieces, limp and wrung out, brain a blank sheet, but he can still feel TK hard inside him, holding himself still through Carlos’s orgasm. He presses his heel into TK’s ass. “Come on, baby, finish what you started.” It’s going to be too much, he knows that and wants it anyway, wants the feeling of TK losing himself in Carlos, the hot messy rush of come, wants the way it’ll make him feel claimed, TK’s inside and out.

TK hesitates for a moment, and then he moves, hard fast thrusts, chasing orgasm. And he was right, it’s almost too much, the drag and push of TK’s cock inside him sending confused jolts of pleasure through him that feel like they’re frying his nervous system and he grips hard at TK’s hands to ground himself. And then TK’s there, and he’s shaking as he comes, hot breaths panting against Carlos’s neck as he collapses. He frees their hands so he can wrap his arms around TK and hold him close, stretching his legs out to ease the strain in his muscles as TK slumps against him.

TK finally pushes himself up, and gently pulls out, reaching for a towel on the side of the bed that Carlos hadn’t noticed before to clean them both enough for the moment, although they’ll need a shower before they sleep. He snuggles against Carlos when he’s done, one arm thrown over Carlos’s chest, one leg tucked between his, and Carlos can feel where TK’s dick is softening against his thigh. He traces an aimless pattern on TK’s back, still trying to bring his brain back online for anything more than bed soft, TK warm, sex good.

TK rubs his nose against Carlos’s chest, pressing a kiss to his skin. “You good, baby?”

He rolls them so that he’s facing TK, catching his mouth in a lazy kiss. “Spectacular.” He’ll feel tonight in every muscle tomorrow. It’s exactly what he’d wanted. TK traces the outline of his lips with his thumb, and Carlos bites at it lightly. “Feeling a little possessive tonight?” TK makes a noncommittal noise against him which means TK knows exactly what he’s talking about and just doesn't want to admit it, which makes him curious. He pinches TK lightly. “My orgasm is yours?”

“She was flirting with you,” TK mutters.

He stills. “Who? Elaine? The receptionist?”

“Yes.”

“I was being polite. And, she’s not exactly my type.”

“I know. Still don’t have to like it.”

He rolls onto his back and grins at the ceiling. “You were jealous.”

TK makes a disgruntled noise but doesn’t disagree.

Chapter Text

It goes right before it goes wrong.

They make good time, despite a snarl of traffic on 635 that makes Darryl swear. They’re heading west out of the city, but Carlos doesn’t know where beyond that. It takes him by surprise when they pull into a small neat airport, although he supposes it makes sense. They have to transport the statue somehow, and plane is faster than truck, and anyone who has the kind of money you need to buy a black market Rococo statue probably has the kind of money that runs to private aviation.

They pull into the hanger before anyone else gets there, and more minions appear out of the woodwork, or at least out of the office at the back of the hanger. Presumably, they’d been tasked with keeping an eye on the statue for the last couple of days. They’re as professional as all of the other minions Trudie employs, and they very obviously do not like Darryl, and do not like that he’s taken over this deal. They keep giving Trudie sidelong looks, like they’re waiting for her to step in, or for her to give the final approval on Darryl’s decisions, but she just takes Iris into the small office at the back of the hangar and doesn’t say anything one way or another. It creates tension that winds higher with every adjustment Darryl makes to the plan.

Carlos tries to keep an eye out for any sign of movement on the perimeter, any sign that the FBI is there and waiting. He tells himself that it’s good that he doesn’t see anyone, because if he could see them then so could the minions. He doubts Darryl would notice a four ton pink elephant in the middle of the room (four ton pink marble statue he wonders to himself, and digs his fingernails into his palms to keep from succumbing to hysteria), but the minions are professional. They’d notice.

There’s a plane that comes in low over the horizon, touching down with barely a bounce, and taxis to their hangar, pulling to a neat stop at 4:00pm on the dot according to the large clock on the hangar wall. He is reluctantly impressed by their sense of timing.

Steps unfold from the belly of the plane, and disgorges two men who look like the kind of dude bro businessmen you see in downtown bars at 7pm on a Thursday night. From the way their jackets hang he can tell they’re both armed.

He waits until Darryl greets them, and then when they insist, calls his mother out from the office to come meet them too. They greet her with markedly more warmth than they’d greeted Darryl, and Carlos can see the way it makes Darryl’s teeth grind. He thinks that if they’d known this, if they’d had more time, they could have exploited it, run this take down a different way, let Darryl implode under the weight of his own hubris and personality. Preferably a way that had Iris several hundred miles away at the time.

He waits by the cars for his turn. His turn doesn’t come. There’s a commotion from the front of the hangar, and then a large black SUV swerves into the space, and two men spill out from the back, heavily armed. “We’ve got company,” one of them reports.

The two men who came in the plane swing back to look at Darryl. “Were you followed?”

Darryl blusters. “Of course not. What kind of amateur do you think I am?”

“The kind that’s been tied to Mommy’s apron strings too long to know a tail if you saw one.”

Darryl flushes, and Trudie takes charge. She points at the two men who came in the SUV. “Are they here already, or did you pass them on the way?”

“Passed them.”

“How far back? Do we have time to transfer the package and get the plane in the air?”

They both shake their heads emphatically. “Maybe 10 minutes out.”

Trudie nods. “Okay.” She snaps her fingers at the two fences. “Anything on the plane you’ll miss?”

One of them disappears back inside to grab something, and emerges a minute later clutching a suitcase. “Good to go.”

Trudie nods sharply, and points at the SUV. “There’s a service road down past the Towing Services company. It’s old and nobody uses it, but it’ll take you out to the construction site that’s south of here. There are dirt roads in there that’ll cut you over to 377. Go.”

They nod, and then they’re gone. Carlos can only hope that the FBI is competent enough to have scoped the area, and has eyes on that road, because Trudie might be the big catch here, but they’ll want these guys too.

Trudie nods at her minions. “Where’s the statue?”

They snap to attention so fast it’s almost comical. “Still on the flatbed, ma’am.”

She chews her lip, thinking. Darryl tries to interrupt, and she snaps her fingers at him to shut up. He does. “Okay, see if you can move the flatbed to another hangar. The feds will need a search warrant for the other hangars if they don’t look like they’ve been broken into. Maybe we can still salvage this.” Three of the minions peel off, and a moment later he hears the sound of a truck starting up.

Trudie points at the two remaining minions. “You, take a car each, lead the Feds on a merry chase for me.” She eyes them narrowly. “Don’t get caught. I’ll call with a meet point tonight.”

They both give her crisp nods. “Yes, ma’am.” Carlos can’t help but admire her efficiency.

“Great,” Darryl says, “Now what do we do? You’ve sent all the cars away. How are we getting out of here?”

Trudie gives him an impatient look, and gestures broadly at the plane, as if that was obvious. “Get Miss Blake. I’ll get the pilot.”

Darryl turns to go, and then turns back. “How did the feds even know we were here? I didn’t say anything, and you didn’t say anything.” His eyes light on Carlos. “You.” It is a moment of unfortunate perspicacity on Darryl’s part.

Trudie follows Darryl’s pointing finger and her eyes narrow. She snaps at Darryl again. “Get Miss Blake. I’ll deal with this.” She walks over to him. “Detective?” He nods, and she blows out a breath. “How disappointing. I liked you.”

He glances towards the office where Darryl is pulling Iris with him with difficulty. She’s struggling against his hold. It’s buying them time for the feds to arrive, and Carlos tries to gauge how much time has passed since Trudie and Darryl were tipped off. Not long enough.

“You don’t have to do this.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Do what?”

He gestures at himself, at Iris. “Do whatever you’re planning to do to us. I know we’re a liability now.”

She hums in agreement. “I was planning on pushing you out of the plane once we were in the air,” she says without a hint of discomfort. “No blood, no fuss.”

He takes an involuntary step back, and then regroups fast. “We’re not interested in you.” She raises an eyebrow again, and he corrects. “Well, we are, obviously, but we’re more interested in your buyers, in your go-between. You could cut a deal. Nothing you’ve done up until now has been violent, it’s just theft. You and your son can cut a deal.” He can hear cars coming down the runway now, a steady hum of tires on asphalt. He’s not paying attention to the right thing and he barely has time to get an arm up when Iris screams a warning.

Darryl is big and tall and he probably has 50 pounds on Carlos. He’s not trained, but right this moment that doesn’t matter, when he’s yelling at Trudie to take care of it, and Carlos is trying to push against the arm Darryl has crushing against his throat, and he can see Trudie pulling a needle out of her bag. He struggles harder, sure that whatever’s in that needle, he won’t wake up from it this time. He can just see Iris yanking at Darryl’s arm, and he backhands her and Carlos hears the sicking wet crunch of his hand breaking against something, and then her screams are abruptly cut off and there’s a thud as she falls, but he can’t see where, and then there’s a needle in his neck and he knows nothing.

Chapter Text

REWIND

TK leaves in the morning. “I could stay,” he argues over breakfast.

“It’s a waiting game at this point.” Which he knows TK knows. “And, we need to give them space to approach me.” Which he knows TK also knows.

TK makes a face at him. “They can’t wait that long. They have the final transfer on Tuesday, and as far as they know there’s a forged statue in the Reuth lobby right now, so they have to have someone in their pocket to guarantee the certification and payment.”

“And you have fifteen year olds to entertain this afternoon, and nine year olds to inspire tomorrow morning, and a lot of parents to send home horny and frustrated.”

“I think you overestimate my appeal,” TK says dryly.

“I think you haven’t seen the way they look at you when you’re not paying attention,” he retorts, and gets a faint smile out of TK.

“Don’t you trust me?” he teases.

TK shakes his head. “It’s not that. It’s just, the art of the con is knowing more about your mark than they know about you. And, we don’t. You’re going in blind.”

He touches TK’s hand where it’s curled around a cup of coffee. “I have the best of the FBI watching me, I’ll be fine.”

“You have Matt and George,” TK says flatly.

He nods. “LIke I said, the best of the FBI.”

“You call me every day.”

“Every day. I promise.” He holds up his hand. “Pinky promise.” TK doesn’t smile.

“I want a safe word.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Kinky.”

TK’s mouth is hard. “Not joking. A safe word. You call me every day and if you need out you give me a safe word and I will get you out. The FBI is sending you into this blind, and it’s sketchy as hell, and you know it, and I know it, and Matt knows it. So, a safe word.”

“Matt has given me check-in protocols. You know that.”

TK nods, unmoved. “I know, and I’m giving you more.” Carlos leans back in his chair, unimpressed. TK scrubs a hand across his mouth and relents. “I did no contact with you with Cassel and it fucked me up. Not just after, but during. It threw me off my game. I’m not doing that again. I’m not risking you being off your game.”

He studies TK, gets what he’s saying, what he’s admitting, and nods in agreement, but can’t resist teasing. “What are you going to do if I use it? Call in the cavalry?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

TK’s still drawn tense, and he doesn’t want to leave like this. “Okay, so what’s my safe word?”

TK thinks for a moment. “Banana cream pie.”

He makes a face. “I hate banana cream pie.”

Unexpectedly it makes TK laugh. “I know. That’s why I chose it.”

TK leaves after breakfast with a final hard kiss and a threat to stay safe. Carlos finishes getting ready for the day, and then drives to Reuth to meet with them to meet with them and the security from Christies to review the arrangements for the statue over the weekend, while it’s on Reuth property, but technically doesn’t belong to them yet. It is utterly uneventful, except that Elaine does not want to meet his eyes, and he wishes there was a way to ease her embarrassment, to tell her that it was flattering, and if he was at all that way inclined, or didn’t feel the sweet ache of the way TK had fucked him last night with every step he takes, then he’d have been pleased to take her up on her offer. Telling her that, he acknowledges, would probably not make her more comfortable.

He goes back to the hotel afterwards, and parks himself in the business center to visibly be seen answering emails, and then goes out to lunch at a local cafe where he pretends not to notice the man at the corner table who followed him from the hotel. Matt calls and they act out a professional sounding conversation about the Corradini and Reuth and security. George calls a little later and he lowers his voice enough to sound like he’s trying not to be overheard and has a conversation about an overdrawn bank account. As soon as he hangs up with George he calls Matt again and has an opaque, low voiced phone call about getting cut in on an unnamed deal. The man at the corner table ostentatiously doesn’t eavesdrop.

He cedes his table to a grateful looking mom with a toddler and a baby, and carefully doesn’t notice the car that trails him. He calls TK from the car. “I’m being followed.” He peers in the rearview mirror and rolls his eyes. “Badly.”

TK snorts. “Would you like a more competent criminal?”

He turns on his blinker for the turn back to the hotel. “Yes. You were always competent. It’s why Matt liked you.”

TK makes an outraged noise. “Excuse you. I was more than competent. I was a fucking master of my craft.”

He grins and pulls into the garage. “I’m about to lose service.”

TK sobers abruptly. “I can’t tell you to stay safe, but promise me you’ll be careful.”

He can’t really promise that either. “I promise I will come home to you.” It’s the same promise TK has made him three times now, and he’s come back to Carlos every time. It feels like a good luck charm.

“I love you.” They both pretend they don’t hear the shake in TK’s voice.

“I love you too.”

TK takes a breath, and Carlos can hear him swallow. He waits, and finally TK says, “See you on the flip side.”

“See you on the flip side,” he agrees and hangs up as he pulls into the garage.

He parks in a corner that’s dark enough to look tempting, but not so far from the elevator that it looks suspicious. The car that was following him creeps down the aisle parallel to where he’s walking and he rolls his eyes again. He tracks the car as it stops at the end of the next aisle and a car door closes. “Come on,” he mutters under his breath as he walks. “I’m such a good target. Just obliviously on my phone, checking the scores, not paying attention to anything or anyone.” He glances up when someone stops in front of him, and his eyes widen. “Iris?”

But Iris is looking over his shoulder, suddenly terrified, and he hears her say, “Dr. Chambers?” And then there’s hand over his mouth and he’s breathing in something that smells faintly sweet and cold and his muscles go watery and he stumbles. It feels like going from zero to drunk without passing go. He hears Iris’s panicked shout, and he takes a gasping breath to try and steady himself and feels himself go under.

He comes to slowly, disoriented. He can hear someone breathing nearby. He’s on the floor of a van or a truck. It’s moving. He tries to catalog what he can before he opens his eyes and alerts whoever is in the vehicle with him that he's awake. It's just on the too warm side of comfortable. The air smells stale. He'll need to move to be sure, but nothing seems like anything hurts except his head.

He opens his eyes cautiously. Dim light filters in through a dirt caked back window. Some kind of van. He listens to the sound of the road under him. It’s smooth, but they’re not moving fast enough to be on a highway.

"Oh thank God, you're awake."

He turns his head cautiously, and grimaces when the movement sends a wave of nausea through him. Iris scrambles over to him. "Hey, don't try and move too fast. It's unpleasant." He snorts, because that's an understatement, and she carefully helps him sit up slowly. He's panting by the time he makes it upright, and swallows hard against the queasy feeling in his stomach.

"Where?"

"Where are we going? No idea."

He nods and regrets it. "What?"

She frowns. "What happened, or what were we dosed with?"

Honestly either would work, but, "Dosed?" Eventually he's going to work his way up to two word questions.

She shakes her head. “Don’t know. If this was a movie I’d say chloroform, but chloroform doesn’t really work like that, so,” she shrugs.

He tries to think. “Ethyl chloride maybe?” She raises an eyebrow at him. “Party drug in the 80s, went to a seminar on it at a conference last year.”

She makes a face. “It’d be classier to be a gothic heroine.”

He pushes himself up a little more against the wall of the van and feels disproportionately pleased that it doesn't make him want to throw up this time.

"Do you know how we got here?" His voice is a little rusty and he would commit crimes for some water right now, but at least the fog is starting to clear, although the headache seems to be settling in.

She shakes her head. "We were in the garage, and I was walking towards you, I saw Chambers, and then nothing."

He nods carefully. "How long have you been awake?"

"Not long. They took our phones."

He closes his eyes for a moment to think. "Okay. Are you hurt anywhere?"

She shakes her head. "A couple of bruises, but nothing serious. You?"

He stretches cautiously. "Doesn't feel like it." He looks around the van again, trying to find anything that will help, but it is depressingly empty. He pushes himself up slowly and crawls to peer out the back window, trying to guess what time it is from what little light is making it through the caked on dirt. All he can see is road. Not helpful.

She bites her lip. "How long until someone notices we're gone?"

He crawls back towards her. “It was mid-afternoon when I left the cafe, and it took me about 20 minutes to get back to the hotel, so a couple of hours, maybe four, at the outside.” He tries to inject as much reassurance into his voice as possible, because she's been remarkably calm so far, and he doesn't want her to start panicking now.

She shifts closer, shivering a little. “That’s very specific.”

He tucks an arm around her, pulling her in closer to his body for warmth and comfort. She doesn’t tell him not to. "It's Thursday. It's date night." She looks dubious. "There was a city wide manhunt for TK once and he still made date night. We have a zoom call set up for seven tonight to have dinner together. He'll give me a thirty minute grace period in case something came up with the case, and then he's calling in the cavalry."

Chapter Text

He comes to already fighting, swinging his fist out wildly, and twisting against the hands holding him down. He's not sure how long it takes before TK's voice penetrates his blind desperation, before he recognizes the familiar smell of his father's cologne, the one he's worn for as long as Carlos can remember.

He blinks his eyes to focus and sees his father crouched over him, TK kneeling on the carpet beside him, and he lets himself sag against both of them. Relief leaving his muscles lax. In the background he hears Matt giving orders. His hand tightens on TK's leg. "Iris? Where is—"

TK's hand curls around the back of his neck. "She's safe. We got her. She's meeting us at the hospital."

He can't help the face he makes. "Do I have to? I'm fine."

The degree of unimpressed TK levels at him could power Austin for a year, and he caves rather than try and argue with TK at his most stubborn. The breakthrough reaction to whatever Trudie had given him hits him at the hospital when they're taking his vitals, sending the monitors haywire, and he catches a glimpse of TK's white face and set lips before a team of doctors descend on him and block his view.

The next time he wakes up he feels better. Still a little fuzzy, but without either the sharp crystalline edges of an adrenaline high, or the terrifying sluggishness of Trudie’s drugs. The room is quiet except for the beep of the monitors, and it takes him a moment to realize that TK is there, curled in the chair next to the bed, one hand on Carlos's wrist, two fingers over his pulse point. He blames whatever drug is still left in his system that it wasn't the first thing he noticed.

He shifts, turning on his side, trying to be quiet to not wake TK, but it jostles his wrist under TK's hand and he comes awake silently and instantly. Carlos wonders if he's seeing a glimpse of what TK had been like when he was a paramedic three lifetimes ago, or maybe someone he'd been more recently when he'd been TK Strand, master art thief, and needed to be on his guard all the time.

He smiles at TK, and can feel it wider and sloppier than usual. "Hey, sweetheart."

TK's forehead drops against his hand, and the brush of TK's eyelashes against his skin is magnified times a thousand. "Hi, baby."

He clumsily strokes a hand across TK's head when he doesn't seem inclined to lift it. "You called my dad?" TK snorts wetly, and he realizes TK is crying. "Hey, hey, I'm okay, I'm fine."

TK sits up at that, scrubbing a hand irritably over his face, and he looks exhausted. "Yes, I called your dad. You disappeared off the face of the earth after lunch on Thursday. Matt was supposed to have eyes on you, but you vanished. They bounced your calls across half of Europe and Asia. The first time we got eyes on you again was when you went to Reuth, and they managed to lose two different FBI tails when they left. Yeah, I called your dad."

There's a commotion at the door, and TK looks over at it, and then at his watch, and his lips twitch in impressed amusement. "And, that'll be your mom. She made good time."

"You called my mom?" he says plaintively.

TK gives him a flat look. "Technically your dad called your mom. Also," he adds more primly, "your mom likes me, I'd like to keep it that way."

It isn't until much later when Matt comes in with George to take his statement that he finds out what had happened.

“They gave us the slip,” Matt mutters.

George raises his hand. “Technically they didn’t give us the slip, they gave Dallas PD the slip.”

“Yeah, you let me know how that goes over with the Texas Rangers Major on the other side of that door,” Matt says dryly. George subsides.

“They picked you up, and gave us the slip. We didn’t even know they caught Iris up too until you called TK. And then we couldn’t track the cell signal, they had that thing bouncing across about three continents, and I don’t know, the fucking moon. Brass wanted to wait until the meet at Reuth, because we were pretty sure you’d turn up there.” His lips twitch. “That’s when your boyfriend took matters into his own hands and called a friend,” he pauses, “colleague? Anyway, someone whose name I’m not supposed to ask about, and got them to track the cell signal the next time you called. That was Saturday night. My bosses were,” he frowns, “let’s go with unconvinced by his source. TK was unimpressed,” the set of Matt’s mouth tells Carlos TK’s reaction had been a little more emphatic than that.

“How did my father get involved?”

George volunteers the answer. “TK said he was going to breakfast and came back with four Texas Rangers. It was,” he pauses, “really cool.” He sounds awed, and there’s a hint of Texas that’s crept into his accent that Carlos has never heard from him before and distractedly he tries to place it. It’s possible he’s not focussing on the right things right now.

“Amarillo?”

George nods agreeably. “Small town about 50 miles south of it that nobody’s ever heard of, but yeah. Good ear.”

Matt clears his throat. “The Deputy Director suddenly discovered a sense of urgency and was persuaded to accept the help of the Austin Rangers Field Office.” His lips twitch. “It was actually very cool.”

Carlos snorts.

“Anyway, with what TK’s friend got us, and with your father leaning hard on pretty much everyone — he’s impressive.” Carlos nods, he’s always known that was true. “Anyway, things moved faster after that. We got eyes on the conference center you were being held at. We couldn’t get eyes and ears inside the building, but we had surveillance on all the entrances and exits. There were some,” he coughs, “heated arguments about whether we should go in, or wait until we had the buyers. TK argued to let it play out.” Carlos blinks, slightly surprised. Matt shakes his head. “He had faith in you. Said you were okay on the phone, didn’t give him a safe word.” He spears Carlos with a look. “I do not ever want to know.”

Carlos snorts again. “Not like that. It was for this job, if I needed an out.”

Matt gives him a bland look. “If you say so.” He throws one of his pillows at Matt who laughs and hands it back to him. “It’s almost as if TK didn’t trust the FBI.”

“Almost,” he agrees dryly. “Then what? I saw the feds at the Reuth offices.”

“Yes. I have been told to ask how you clocked them so fast.”

“Shoes.”

Matt raises his eyebrows. “Shoes?”

“Feds never remember to change their shoes when they go undercover, you can always spot them.”

“TK?”

“TK,” he agrees. Matt sighs and makes a note in his file. Carlos suspects that no FBI agent in Matt’s office is going to make that mistake again.

“Anyway,” Matt picks up the thread of the story again. “We had ears in the Reuth offices, and it seemed to go more or less according to plan. Iris was a complicating factor, because we weren’t sure how to get her out at the same time we got you out – or if they were keeping you in different places. TK said you’d never put her at risk, so if you were okay playing this out then we should trust you. Your dad agreed.” He skims his finger down the file, like he’s checking his notes. “They were both unhappy but sure about it.”

That is— He’s not sure what it is. Humbling? Something. Something he needs to think about when his thoughts feel less fragmented. “Then what?”

Matt shrugs. “Then we waited. We didn’t know where they were keeping the statue, or where the handoff was going to be. Other than Darryl Chambers they’re very competent criminals. We saw them load you and Iris into cars and we followed. Things went to hell before we were close enough to stop it.

He nods, and worries at the edge of the hospital blanket. “I remember the needle, and then waking up and my dad and TK were there. What happened in between?”

Matt’s mouth flattens. “You died.”

He stares. “What?” It explains the shake in TK’s hand earlier, and the way he hasn’t wanted to let go of Carlos.

Matt nods. “They overdosed you with morphine.”

“How?” he gestures at himself.

“TK,” Matt says succinctly. “CPR and then narcan from the medical box in the airport office.” Matt shakes his head. “I forget sometimes that he used to be a paramedic.”

“Yeah,” Carlos agrees hoarsely.

“He held it together. I don’t think I could have done it.” Matt’s thumb rubs almost reflexively at his wedding ring. “My worst nightmare is having to watch something happen to Liz.” It’s like Matt can see the crushing guilt rising like a tide in Carlos, because he adds matter of factly. “For the record, I said exactly the same thing to TK last year when he was the one in the hospital.”

He manages to lift his lips in a tiny smile, and croak out. “Good to know I’m not special.”

Matt waves a hand. “Birds of a feather, peas in a pod, misery loves company, something like that.”

“What happened to Trudie and Darryl and the minions?”

Matt looks briefly amused at the use of minions as a collective noun before he sobers. Behind him Carlos can see the way George has shrunk down on himself and he can guess what Matt’s about to say a second before he says it. “Darryl Chambers was killed on the scene. Gertrude Chambers was taken into custody. The,” his lips twitch minutely, “minions were picked up leaving the scene and are currently in custody and being questioned.”

“How many?”

It’s George who figures out what he’s asking first. “We picked up seven people leaving the scene, did we get all of them?”

He breathes a sigh of relief. “Three minions who came with us, two at the hangar, and then the two buyers. Yes, you got everyone that I know about.”

They go through some more of the details of what Carlos learned about Trudie’s operation before he starts to fade and Matt closes his notebook. “We don’t have to do this now. It can wait until you’re back in Austin and feeling better. Besides, I think there are some other people who have a better claim on your bedside than I do.”

Matt has his hand on the door when Carlos calls him back. “You said you were questioning the minions now?”

Matt stops at the edge of his bed “Yes.”

“Can you find out who was making dinner?”

Matt peers at him with concern, very obviously wondering if this is some kind of third stage drug reaction, or if maybe Carlos had hit his head on the way down and this is a concussion talking. “What?”

He gestures impatiently. “Trudie served great dinners. Shitty breakfasts, okay lunches, but really good dinners. I wanted to, I don’t know, find out who was making them. Make sure they got paid for it, or complimented, or something.” He pauses and considers whether maybe Matt’s expression isn’t that out of line. “Never mind.” Although he wouldn’t mind the recipe for that carbonara, but manages to close his mouth before the thought escapes.

Matt pats his leg. “I’ll ask. I’ll let you rest now.”

His father comes in when Matt leaves. “TK somehow persuaded your mother to let him drive her to the hotel. He’ll be back in a while.”

He nods, grateful he hadn’t had to ask. He laughs suddenly, and is horrified that it comes out more as a hysterical giggle than an actual laugh. “TK called the literal cavalry.” His father gives him a patient look, and he waves a hand trying to explain. “No, you don’t understand, before I left he threatened to call the cavalry if anything happened, and then he actually did.” He has a sudden image of his father and his team galloping up to the freight terminal where the meet had taken place, taking Darryl and the buyers down with lassos, and claps a hand over his mouth to try and stifle the sounds coming out of his mouth, and then all of a sudden he’s shaking and he can’t breathe and his father is there, pulling his head down until all he can smell is his father’s cologne and lavender ironing spray his mother uses, and it drowns out the antiseptic smell of the hospital. He takes shuddery breaths, trying to pull himself together, ashamed to be falling apart now that it’s all over and everyone is safe. But, when he goes to move back, his father’s hand tightens on his neck, keeping him there, tight in the curve of his father’s shoulder.

“Just, give me another moment, mijo.” His father’s voice is rough in a way he’s never heard it before.

Eventually his father pulls back, and he tries not to miss the warmth. He fusses with the blankets, straightening them across his lap. “It just hit me. That you didn’t know where I was. I thought you did, the entire time, everything I did I assumed you knew where I was.”

“Worst call of my life, when TK called me.” His father sits on the edge of his hospital bed, and for the first time in maybe his entire life Carlos can see that he hadn’t shaved that morning, dark shadows on his jaw. “Maybe you and TK, you don’t work with the FBI anymore.”

He gives a wet laugh. “No arguments here.” He can guess how much Matt left out of the barebones of his account in the way that exhaustion pushes down on TK’s movements, and the careful way Matt had looked at him, the way his father stays until TK gets back.

TK sits with him through a doctor doing rounds, and a nurse coming in to check his vitals, and then another coming in to change out the bag of saline. He helps untangle Carlos from the mess of cords so he can get up to pee, and then stare at himself in the mirror in the bathroom, not sure if he does or doesn't recognize himself anymore.

There's a knock on the door, and Iris pokes her head around the edge. She has a black eye, and her wrist is wrapped, but she’s dressed in street clothes, not a hospital gown, and she’s more mobile than he is, and he’s intensely grateful for that.

Her gaze sweeps the way TK is sitting on the edge of the bed, Carlos's hands folded between his, the multitude of wires and tubes he's hooked up to, the monotonous beep of the heart monitor. "Is this a bad time?"

TK looks between them and stands. "I'm gonna go find some coffee," he waves his phone, "give everyone an update on how you're doing so they stop blowing up my phone." The ‘give you some time’ goes unsaid.

Iris watches impassively as he passes her, and Carlos mouths, "thank you," at him when he pauses at the door. She waits until the door clicks closed before she says thoughtfully, "I think I like him. I think I approve."

Carlos laughs, half relief, half amusement. "I thought I wasn't supposed to need your approval."

She shrugs. "Well, you have it anyway." She crosses to the end of the bed and then stops, hovering like she's not sure if she's allowed to touch.

He stretches a hand out to her. "You need to get closer so I can hug you without setting off all kinds of alarms."

She's still cautious when she comes around the edge of the frame and perches on the mattress by his hip. He yanks her closer now that he can, and she throws out a hand to brace herself on the pillow before she crashes into him. He tugs her in the rest of the way, holding her close, letting the reality of her sink in. Everyone had said she was fine, but there was part of him that hadn't quite believed it until he saw her.

"I was worried," she says into the fabric of his shirt.

He strokes her hair. "Me too. I'm glad you're okay."

She straightens and slaps his shoulder, but more gently than she usually would. "I was worried for you, not for me, you idiot."

He cracks a grin. "Oh, I was worried for me too."

She shoves him gently. "Don't do it again. You scared the crap out of me." She glances back at the door. "Scared the crap out of your boyfriend too, and I don't think he did anything to deserve it."

He nods solemnly. "Cross my heart, I will try not to get shot up with morphine by a crime boss again."

She scowls at him. "You're making fun of me."

He tugs her down close enough to kiss her hair. "I'm not, I promise." He pulls back and looks at her carefully. "You're really okay?"

She nods. "They didn't touch me." She holds out her arms. "I barely even have bruises to show for it." A small line of tension in his shoulders relaxes. She twists and digs her phone out. "I even got my phone back. 45 texts from 'Chelle, all of which say something like 'I leave the country for two fucking months'."

He smiles. "Your mom?"

She shrugs. "Hovering. Wants me to move back down to Austin. Worried this will fuck with my meds. The usual."

"Will it? Screw with your meds?"

She shrugs again. "It might. Or it might not. Either way I'll deal with it." She pins him with a look. "Either way it's not your fault. You kept your promise, you got us both out of there."

His throat tightens at how nearly a lie that had been. Iris watches him carefully when she says, "Darryl was shot."

It's a statement not a question, but he nods anyway. "Yes."

"Trudie was arrested." He nods again. She considers. "You liked her."

He starts to deny it, and then pauses. "Yes. She was dangerous, and amoral, and I don’t think she really cares about anything except her son, but she could be kind when it suited her, and she was interesting if nothing else."

Iris nods. "What happens now?"

"A lot of witness statements, and then depositions, and eventually a trial. We'll probably both have to give evidence, but you might not have to testify."

She nods absently, like that hadn't really been what she meant. "Will you go see her?"

He pulls back. "Trudie?" He hadn't thought about it. "I don't know." Even if he can get Iris out of testifying at Trudie's trial, he'll have to. He's not sure how it'll feel to see her again for the first time from the vantage point of the witness stand, where he has the power and she's the supplicant. It gives him an uncomfortable twinge of relief? satisfaction? Something he doesn't find flattering to know about himself.

Iris interrupts his thoughts. "What happens to us?"

"Well, I'm kind of hoping you don't ghost me again."

She smiles and shoves him, harder this time, like she's less afraid he'll break. "No. No, I don't need that this time. I'm not that girl anymore." She smiles slyly. "Besides, Nancy dealt me into the 126 pool. I have money riding on—"

He clamps a hand over her mouth. "Do not finish that sentence." She grins behind his hand, which is of course when TK backs into the room, hands full of two coffees and a bottle of water.

He hands the water to Carlos, and is unsympathetic to the longing look Carlos gives the coffee. He hands one of the coffees to Iris, and Carlos wonders if he should worry at the amount of time they've clearly spent together if TK already knows her coffee order. He keeps the other for himself and takes Iris’s place when she stands up and cedes it to him.

Iris stops at the end of the bed, looking at where TK’s hand has found his wrist again. Carlos isn’t sure if TK has voluntarily taken a hand off of him since he came to in that airplane hangar. She nods once, decisively. “Yes, I approve.” She sketches the vague shape of a benediction in the air. “You have my blessing. Go forth and be happy.”

TK glances at Carlos, eyebrow raised, and then back at Iris. “Thanks?” But there’s nothing but warmth in his voice.

The doctors make him stay overnight, and he stops arguing when they pull a cot into the room for TK to stay with him. There are more tests in the morning, but in the end all he has to show for his misadventure are bruised ribs from the CPR TK had given him, and a lingering headache.

It's early evening by the time they have signed discharge papers in hand and he’s free to leave. He lets them wheel him to the exit without protest, because he used up the store of hills he has the energy die on persuading his parents that it’s okay for them to go home. He's still not entirely sure why his mother had agreed, and wonders if TK had said something, and if so what.

TK pulls the car up to the entrance, and hovers while Carlos pushes himself out of the chair and hands it back to the orderly. "Matt got us a hotel room for the night."

"Can't we just go home?" He's not sure if he succeeds in making that not sound like a whine.

He twists in the seat and catches TK's worried look. "Baby, it's a three hour drive home, maybe more with traffic."

He nods, and regrets it when it makes his headache spike. "Just down the street."

It gets a weak snort from TK. "All you people here have the most warped sense of distance."

He reaches for TK's arm and misses, catches his wrist instead. "I just want to sleep in my own bed, and take a shower in my own bathroom, and wear my own clothes. Please, I just want to go home."

TK's face crumples, and Carlos swears at himself, but then TK takes a deep breath and pulls a u-turn back towards the highway. "Okay, we'll go home."

He falls asleep somewhere between Waxahachie and Hillsboro, lulled by the hum of the car and the low soft sounds of Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash playing on the stereo. Normally he'd tease TK about raiding Judd's music collection, but tonight it just feels soothing.

He doesn't wake up until TK shakes him awake and he recognizes the parking garage of their building. TK doesn’t move to get out of the car though, just sits there with his hand on the key still in the ignition, only the slow ticking cooling of the engine breaking the silence. He comes more awake with worry. “TK?”

TK shakes his head, mouth pressed in a tight line, holding on to control with the barest thread. He finally takes his hand off the keys, swiping irritably at his eyes. “Shit.”

“Sweetheart?” he tries again.

TK clears his throat. “I wasn’t going to put this on you.”

“TK? Talk to me.”

TK’s hands flex on the steering wheel, and then he shifts in his seat to face Carlos as much as he can in the confines of the car. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” He’s at sea in this conversation, no idea what TK’s apologizing for.

TK gives a short bark of laughter. “I don’t even know where to start.” He waves away Carlos’s attempt to interject again. “I knew you didn’t like being left behind when I went out, with Belyaev, with Daley, with Cassel, but I didn’t know what it was like until now, being the one left behind, being the one who had to wait, and listen, and hope.” His mouth twists in sour amusement. “It sucks.”

“Yes,” he agrees, because there’s no point in lying.

TK’s head drops. “Why do you even put up with me?”

His head hurts too much for this. “Because I love you,” he says with exasperation. “Because I trust you, the same way you trusted me.” He skates a finger across the unhappy creases at the corner of TK’s eyes. “You know that I only get scared because I love you, right?”

“I got a glimpse of what life without you would be like,” TK says quietly, “and I didn’t like it.” His head lifts, and gives Carlos a fierce look. “I’d survive it. I promise. I’d stay clean. I’d finish my degree. But I’m not sure how much of me would be left at the end. You’re the love of my life.”

Carlos smiles, and leans in enough to brush a kiss across TK’s mouth. “Ditto. I think if we both just remember that we’ll be fine. Although Dad suggested maybe less working with the FBI.”

TK snorts and drops his head to Carlos’s shoulder. “Yeah, if you could go back to some nice safe murders and home invasions I’d appreciate it.” Carlos thumbs the nape of his neck, letting them both sit in the quiet for a moment, until his ribs twinge and reminds him that they can be doing this more comfortable places than the front seat of a car. He tightens his fingers. “Hey, can we go home now?’

TK lifts his head, and whatever he sees in Carlos’s expression makes him smile. “Yeah, come on baby, let’s get you home.”

Chapter Text

EPILOGUE

Amy gives him an alarmed look when they walk in the diner that Thursday. "You look like you got rode hard and put up wet. What the hell happened to you?"

Behind him he hears TK choke on his tongue, and he reaches out without looking to smack at him. "Work. Long week," he tells Amy. "I'm fine."

She levels a judgemental stare at TK. "What kind of care do you call this?"

TK holds up his hands. "Hey, not my idea."

He glares at both of them impartially. "I'm standing right here, and I'm a grown ass man."

Amy hmms skeptically, but leads them back to their usual table, leaning her hip on the edge of the booth and watching as he slides in. "You know, y'all ain’t missed a week here since whatever that nonsense was last year. I held my tongue then, but if you're gonna miss a week and then turn up looking like this I'm thinking maybe we do need to have that conversation."

TK gives her an outraged look. "You held your tongue?" Carlos ducks his head to hide a smile, because Amy had been vocally unimpressed the first time they'd come back to the diner after the ice storm, he'd come back from the bathroom to find Amy sitting across from TK in his seat deep in conversation. He'd hovered just out of earshot, and whatever she'd said to TK had ended up with her ruffling his hair and telling him to take care of his man, if he didn't want someone else to do it for him.

She sniffs. "Imagine what I could have said if I wasn't."

He intervenes. "Just a work thing Amy, I promise."

She taps the table and looks dubious but leaves them menus and promises to come back with water. TK peers at him over the menu. "We could have stayed in tonight."

He flicks a finger at TK's hand on the table. "Date night," he reminds him. TK hmms in reluctant agreement and glances down at the menu. Carlos looks down at his own menu, although it's never changed and it's been more than a decade since he's needed to read it. "Are you getting onion rings?" Answers his own question. "Of course you are. Just, I was kind of feeling french fries tonight." TK doesn't say anything, and he glances up but TK’s studying his menu with the kind of focus he usually gives to articles about semiotics. "We could get both I guess. Or maybe Amy'll do half and half?

"Marry me.”

His head snaps up. "What?"

TK closes his eyes and shakes his head. "I'm doing this wrong. That was supposed to be a question."

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Amy freeze, two glasses of water on her tray, and then slowly turn around and retreat. He focuses back on TK. "TK, it's been a long week, we don't—"

TK interrupts him. "This isn't that."

He swallows around a dry throat, and suddenly realizes he wants this to be real so much he cannot breathe. He swallows hard and tries again. "TK, I know you were scared—"

TK reaches across the table to put a hand over his mouth, stopping him. "I have spent my life being scared to love things in case I lose them, like if I said it outloud it was putting Fate on notice." He drops his hand from Carlos's mouth to link their fingers together. "But, I’m not scared this time. Or, I am, but the love I feel is bigger than the fear. It’s bigger than anything, and I can’t hide it. I don’t want to.” Carlos starts to try and say something, but TK keeps talking, like now that he’s started he can’t stop. “This isn’t drama, or reaction, or relief, or whatever else you’re worried about. It’s just love. The kind of love I want the whole world to see, and every day we’re not married feels like a wasted chance, and—"

He's dimly aware that he’s crying, and he doesn't care, turns his hand under TK's and grips it tight, interrupts him. "Tyler, can I say yes now?"

TK stops, and looks shell shocked, like there was part of him that thought Carlos might say no. And, there's a table between them, and that’s too much space. He gets up without letting go of TK's hand, and he's vaguely aware that the entire diner has stopped talking and is staring at them and ignores it. He slides into the booth next to TK. "Ask me again."

TK stares at him, with huge awed eyes. "Marry me?" he breathes.

He catches the last word with his mouth, kissing his answer into TK's smile. "Yes."

TK's hands come up to cup his cheeks, "Really?"

"Take the yes, sweetheart," he whispers into the space between them, and TK's whole face lights up, and the diner behind them erupts in applause, and he buries his face in TK's shoulder, blushing furiously.

Amy appears at their table with water and an entire cherry pie with sparklers left over from New Year’s stuck into it, sparking and scattering light across the table. "Feels like maybe a cherry pie kind of occasion," she says before she pulls Carlos up and out of his seat to hug him, and there's fizzing joy under his skin and he picks her up and swings her around out of sheer exuberance and laughs at her squeal of surprise.

“Been a long time coming, sugar,” she says when he lets her go. “You got all the happiness in the world coming to you.” She crooks a finger at TK. “Get over here, you think you’re getting out of this without a hug too?” TK laughs and slides out to hug her, and then spins and dips her dramatically when someone with a sense of humor cranks the jukebox and Be My Baby blares out. And then the whole diner is up and dancing, and they’re being passed from hand to hand, to people he’s never met before, and cooks and diner regulars he’s known since he was 18 and barely himself yet.

When he finally gets handed back to TK, Save the Last Dance for Me is playing on the jukebox, and he dances with TK in a slow shuffling approximation of a waltz. “We can never tell my mother this many people knew before she did.”

TK snorts against his shoulder. “I do not have a death wish. We are telling every single one of our parents that they are the very first to know.” And then he tips his head back and Carlos can’t not kiss him. He gets a lifetime of this, he realizes, of slow dancing in diners and their kitchen, of negotiating parents and work and school, and never having to do any of it alone.

“I love you,” he whispers into TK’s ear.

TK shifts impossibly closer. “Fiance,” he says quietly, with satisfaction. “Told you I was working on something better than boyfriend.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

one of those art nouveau tables held up by a wood nymph

Art nouveau (approx 1890-1910) was a celebration of nature, and took inspiration from plants and nature - characterized by long sinuous and flowing motifs. Think Mucha, and Charles Rennie Macintosh.

Art deco (approx 1910-early 1930s) was characterized by geometric lines and symmetry. Think Erte, Lalique, the Chrysler Building, and South Beach in Miami. They kind of bled into each other a lot.

Chapter 2

He looks like high quality porn of a Victorian poet dying of consumption

Specifically the painting I’m thinking of is The Death of Chatterton (1856) by Henry Wallis. Chatterton actually committed suicide by arsenic poisoning, rather than dying of consumption. But, the image is the quintessential dying young romantic.

According to this inventory record it's a sketch by Degas from 1864, a study for one of his paintings of dancers.

Edgar Degas - French artist (1834-1917)
Examples of sketches of his dancers from:
- The Morgan Library -Three Studies of a Dancer
- The Met Dancer Adjusting her Slipper
- The Art Institute of Chicago Dancer Turning

Chapter 3

People kept wanting to talk to me about whether Francis Bacon is an example of intersectionality.

Francis Bacon - Irish born British painter (1909-1982). He was gay, also famously kind of a jackass.

I’ve read porn less erotic than his paper on Gentileschi.

Artemisia Gentileschi - early 17th C Italian painter. She’s known for being one of the few really well known female artists of the period who was well known at the time - she was the first woman accepted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence. That period of art is actually not particularly my thing, but the way she paints women is striking. She gives them much more interiority than you usually see. Her St Catherine of Alexandria (a self-portrait in the guise of a saint) is lovely, as is Susanna and the Elders.

Chapter 4

A pair of portraits of two young women, possibly sisters, by Petrus Christus, stolen from a law firm in Atlanta. A set of five Tang Dynasty painted horses stolen from a venture capital company in Boston. A Fabergé egg stolen from a Wall Street Brokerage office in New York. A custom made art installation by Julie Mehretu from the lobby of a tech company outside of San Francisco. And, four illustrations from what is thought to be a bestiary compiled for the court of the Emperor Janaghir, stolen from a bank headquarters in Chicago.

Petrus Christus - early 15th C CE netherlandish painter. I was particularly thinking of his Portrait of a Young Girl in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Tang Dynasty - late 7th/early 8th C CE China. I was thinking of something like this horse statue which is in the Met, New York

Peter Carl Fabergé - 19th C CE Imperial Russian jeweler. I did not have a specific egg in mind, although I am quite partial to the Lilies of the Valley Egg

Julie Mehetu - contemporary Ethiopian born American artist.  I was thinking here of something like Epigraph Damascus in the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Emperor Jahangir - 16th C CE Mughal Emperor - I was thinking of something like this illustration of a zebra specifically.  See here for more on the arts of the Mughal empire - apologies that it’s from the V&A, but sins of the Empire, they do have a lot, and a nice little write up.

Chapter 6

That's Doves Type font. This says it's a first edition published in 1895, but Doves Type font wasn't invented until 1899 at the earliest.

The Doves Type font story is WILD. And, I really want to know what Robert Green said to convince the London Port Authority to dredge the Thames for old type sorts.

the William Morris groupies

William Morris - English textile designer, poet, artist, etc. (1834-1896). Associated with/founder of the Arts & Crafts Movement - which embraced pseudo-medeivalism like they were auditioning for the SCA (do not get me wrong, I am weak for the Arts & Crafts movement style, but they were a lot). He had his own printing press - Kelmscott Press, and is maybe most famous for the edition of the Kelmscott Chaucer, sometimes referred to as the most beautiful book ever printed (take this with a grain of Euro-centric salt).

Chapter 7

That all the people who say that looking at Starry Night made them cry were probably just sad anyway, or that seeing the Mona Lisa changed their lives need to talk to a therapist about letting other people make decisions for them.

Starry Night (painted 1889) by Vincent van Gogh

Mona Lisa aka la Gioconda (painted early 1500s) by Leonardo da Vinci.

He told me about this Rothko painting he’d seen once.

Mark Rothko (Markus Yokovlevich Rothkowitz), Russian born American painter (1903-1970) - known for abstract expressionism dominated by blocks of pure color. He intended these as ‘drama’s and they were intended to elicit an emotional response from the viewer that wasn’t hindered or shaped by the guidance of labels.

Specifically I was thinking of Untitled (1968) at the Yale University Art Gallery.

we should all go see the Rothko chapel in Houston

Rothko Chapel - a non-denominational chapel in Houston. Rothko was commissioned to create a meditative space filled with his paintings. He completed the paintings, but committed suicide before the chapel was complete.

Chapter 8

I found out what they’re buying.” She pauses, and then clearly reads something off a piece of paper. “It’s a Corradini?”

Antonio Corradini (1688-1752) - Venetian Rococo sculptor, known for his mastery of the veil.

The statue in this story does not exist, I invented it, although the subject matter wouldn’t have been unusual for the period. The history of the Corsini family, and Coradini’s work for them is true (although, the bit about his beloved daughter I did make up, he had a daughter who died, no idea if she was his favorite though).

I was thinking of the Dama Velata, Adonis, and Veiled Truth.

Chapter 10

a response paper last night about the merits of creative anachronism in A Knights Tale

I’m giving TK the opinion of Michael Livingston in his article A Knight’s Tale is the Best Medieval Film (No, Really). I also more or less subscribe to this view - we can’t inhabit the past, because our context is too removed, so to understand the past we need to be able to see/hear/understand it through our context. A Knight’s Tale is actually pretty good at this, although it doesn’t seem like it on the surface.

”It’s very Baudrillard if you think about it.”

Matt groans. “I knew I was going to regret writing that recommendation. Outside please. I do not have time for a discussion on the signifier and the signified, I’d like to get home sometime tonight.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), French sociologist. There’s a period in time where every liberal arts college student is introduced to the concept of the signifier and the signified and becomes unbearable about it (to be clear, I am not excluding myself from this group). Usually they grow out of it. Baudrillard didn’t actually invent the concept, that was Saussure, but somehow Baudrillard’s the one everyone thinks about in conjunction with it.

The signified and the signifier, simplified is - the signifier is the spoken or written word for an object (a cat), and the signified is the concept that that word stands for (the concept of a cat).

Chapter 12

Instead we stole a nice little de Kooning. Not really my thing, but worth a lot.

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Dutch born American painter. Also an abstract expressionist, like Rothko (and Jackson Pollock). Gansevoort Street (1949) and Woman Standing - Pink (1954-55) are good examples.

Later, on the edge of sleep, TK says, “Anila Quayyum Agha, Ekua Holmes, Vanessa Platacis, Georgie Seccull, and Jason deCaires Taylor.”

Anila Quayyum Agha, Pakistani artist. She does a lot of with installation art and sculpture using patterns based on Islamic geometric shapes. If you have a chance to go see an installation of hers anywhere I highly recommend it. I adore her work.

Ekua Holmes, American mixed-media artist. She does these gorgeous layered pieces. If you have kids/know kids/have a thing for picture books you might have seen some of her art in books, it is nothing like seeing it in person, there is so much texture and depth in her work that cannot be rendered in a printed version. It’s magical.

Vanessa Platacis, American installation artist. She does these cool spray paint stencil installations that evoke history and the decorative arts.

Georgie Seccull, Australian metal sculptor. She does these incredibly dynamic metal sculptures and installation pieces of animals. I would go to Australia just to see one of these installations.

Jason deCaires Taylor, British underwater sculptor. He does these big underwater sculpture installations, and if scuba diving didn’t freak me out as much as it does I would 100% go see one. As it is I shall have to settle for looking at them online.

Chapter 14

Beltracchi was a master forger. But, my point stands, he got caught because he used titanium white on a forgery of a Campendonk.

Wolfgang Beltracci (1951-), German art forger. He admitted to forging hundreds of paintings, and was found guilty of forging 14 works of art worth $45M (he claims to have faked more, but wasn’t convicted of it). He was caught because he forged a painting by Heinrich Campendonk (1889-1957) and used a paint - titanium white - which was not in use in Campendonk’s time.

Van Meegeren has to be my favorite. Starts forging out of spite, and ends up a national hero for scamming the Nazis.

Henricus Antonius van Meergeren (1889-1947). He was a Dutch artist who received no acclaim for original work, and out of spite decided to prove his talent by forging paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. He’s low key famous for that, but what got him national acclaim was that he sold a forged Vermeer to Göring in WWII. When he was accused of selling cultural property to the Nazis after the end of the war he admitted to forgery rather than be considered a traitor. I’m not saying he was a good guy - he did bilk his victims out of about $30M, including the Dutch government. But, as forgers go, he’s kind of awesome for pulling one over on the Nazis.

Are you trying to imply that you are less important than a two hour lecture about Frederick Law Olmstead?

Frederick Law Olmstead (1822-1903), American landscape architect. Considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the US. With his partner (Calvert Vaux) he designed Central Park and Prospect Park in New York. He was also involved in the design of the Emerald Necklace in Boston, and a wide variety of college campuses (University of Chicago, Mount Holyoke, Stanford, et al).