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Later that night, after they had finished releasing Lou the lizard to his newfound home in the greenbelt, Carlos learned that TK’s fish tank didn’t exactly have the best origin story.
“My dad surprised me with it when I got back from rehab.” He murmured, tucked inside Carlos’s arms and feeling so safe. Lying back to chest also made it easier for him to share the hard things out loud, since he didn’t have to see Carlos’s reactions flash across his expressive face. “He bought a couple fish from a questionable pet store and stuck them in my apartment the night before I returned.”
“Why’d he do that?” Carlos asked, his breath warm across the top of TK’s head as he leaned in to press yet another kiss onto his crown.
“He said that he wanted me to feel obligated to keep more than just myself alive.” TK scoffed at that, half laugh and half derision. “As if I wasn’t already responsible for the well-being of countless strangers at work every day.”
Uncertain as to how to react to Owen’s consistently questionable parenting choices, Carlos asked, “How did it go?”
TK turned his head to glance up at Carlos as he said, “Did you know that you can give a fish CPR?”
“…I’m sorry, what?”
“Yeah.” He turned back around and nestled down again, apparently satisfied by Carlos’s bemused response. “Though it doesn’t really tend to work since they’re not like humans. They’re either really alive or really dead, there doesn’t seem to be much in between.”
“I mean that’s… fair.” Carlos had no idea how to respond to that.
“So the first round of fish died within a couple of days because, like I said, my dad got them from a pretty shady place and I think they’d caught fishy diseases by the time he bought them. Also, I don’t even know if they’re supposed to be sold in the US or not. They seemed pretty colorful to me. But either way, chest compressions definitely didn’t work on them.” TK mused.
As Carlos tried his hardest to smother his laughter at the mental picture being painted, TK continued. “I didn’t know if it was more ethical to flush them, or maybe feed them to seagulls. To perpetuate the circle of life, you know? In the end, I decided to say a couple of words for them and dump them in the lake at Central Park.”
“That was very sweet of you.” He kissed the side of TK’s neck to try and cover up his grin.
“My dad was unsurprised when he found out about it, but he still dragged me out to another store the moment our shift ended so he could buy me more.” TK sighed, shaking his head slightly.
“What’d he get you that time?”
“A couple of betta fishes. He remembered something he’d read online about how they’re fighting fishes, so he figured it meant that they’d be more resilient.”
“Babe, that’s not… That’s not what that means.”
“Oh trust me, I know!” TK’s voice rose with indignation as he shifted sideways, turning so he could face his fiance. “I told him that it didn’t sound right, but did he listen?”
“Of course not,” Carlos answered, trying to keep his expression neutral. “It’s Owen.”
“Of course not!” TK repeated, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “I woke up two days later to find one murdered in cold blood and the other one halfway to death’s door, completely torn up.”
“Did that one survive?”
“I don’t know, I dumped it into the nearest river the first chance I got.”
Carlos’s eyebrows raised. “What for babe?”
“I couldn’t keep a serial killer fish around!”
A long pause was spent trying to process TK’s logic, though he quickly gave up. “And what did your dad say when you told him that time?”
“That I should have just named it Hannibal Lector and brought it into the firehouse for the rest of the crew to see.” Another groan. “One of the guys suggested having a betta fish fighting ring so we could place bets on them for entertainment when we weren’t out on calls.” He made a sour face. “I had to threaten to request a transfer to another firehouse before they’d finally shut up about it.”
“Firefighters truly are a different breed.” Carlos commented, slightly appalled but unsurprised. “Was that the end of it?”
“No.” TK admitted, glum. “Then came the guppies.”
Carlos could see the writing on the wall by this point. “And?”
“And we didn’t know to buy them in sets of three, two females and one male specifically.” Carlos didn’t even have to prompt him this time, he just answered, “Male guppies are horny nonstop, like twenty four seven. So if you don’t give them multiple females to chase after, they’ll literally chase a single female to death. To freaking death, Carlos!”
“That’s… wow.” He shook his head, speechless. “That’s really something.”
“I felt so bad for that poor guppy girl when I Googled it and realized what’d happened.” TK sniffed, causing Carlos to check and make sure he wasn’t actually starting to cry. “So then the evil rapist guppies had to go the way of the betta fish.”
Carlos kissed him on the forehead, both amused and endeared by how seriously TK took everything. He’s always had such a massive heart, even as a half-feral mess after first moving to Texas. It was one of Carlos’s favorite things about him.
“I’m so glad I’m not straight.” TK added after the fact, his tone so serious and mournful that Carlos literally choked on his laughter at that. “Baby, are you alright?”
“Fine, fine.” Carlos said, voice strangled. He coughed hard for a moment, trying to recover his composure.
“Are you getting sick?” He sounded concerned, even going so far as to lay the back of his hand against Carlos’s forehead.
“I’m alright, mi amor, I promise.” Carlos vowed, removing TK’s hand and kissing the back of it. He tucked it up against his chest and coaxed, “I’m really hoping you’re going to tell me that Owen gave up after that.”
“No, and I’d like to establish preemptively that the next incident wasn’t even my fault!” He groused, looking entirely put out.
“I really don’t think you’re responsible for any of what you’ve told me so far.” He pointed out, refusing to let TK take responsibility for his dad’s ill-conceived scheme.
It actually made him kind of sad, imagining a younger and much more vulnerable TK, fresh out of rehab and trying to do better for himself. Just wanting to get by in life, only for Owen to have come up with some arbitrary ass “responsibility” for him to be further judged over. Carlos could only imagine the ever increasingly disapproving looks that Owen must have given TK after every unfortunate incident.
“Either way, the goldfish still didn’t make it.” He shrugged, crestfallen. “Dad had roped me into agreeing to watch one of the guy’s cats while their family was out of the city on vacation, but he didn’t tell me until after he’d already used the spare key to drop Needles off in my place while I was on shift.”
“Needles, huh?” Carlos smirked. “Wonder if the kitty had some sharp ass claws.”
“Yep.” TK popped the last syllable, though it did nothing to hide his grim tone. “Something my poor little Golden Girls found out about the hard way since I didn’t have a lid for the tank at the time.”
He winced in response, dropping his head back against the couch cushion as he realized the implication. “Needles found a snack.”
“He had a weakness for sushi apparently.” TK grumbled in agreement and let out a small humorless laugh. “I came home to an empty tank, wet paw prints everywhere, and a very satisfied tuxedo cat literally licking his chops.” Then he grimaced. “I didn’t find their four little tails until the next morning, since Needles had decided to hide them under the pillows on my couch.”
Carlos’s sympathy gag reflex almost took over at that. “Please let that be the end.” He didn’t know how much more of this he could bear to hear.
“Oh, how I wish.” TK buried his face in Carlos’s shoulder, the words half muffled as he said, “There was one more.”
After several moments of weighted silence, he nudged the smaller man. “You gonna tell me about it, or would you rather we just go to sleep?”
“I can’t tell you.” He groaned, refusing to move even when Carlos nudged him again. “It’s embarrassing.”
“You saw how I reacted when you let Lou crawl all over me, I doubt it could be much worse than that.”
“Oh trust me, it is.” TK heaved a giant sigh, a slightly haunted expression flashing across his face. “The guys didn’t stop making fun of me for weeks after they heard about it from my dad.”
Carlos let himself roll his eyes after he made sure TK wouldn’t see. Owen Strand, ever the charmer. “I’m all ears babe, though you don’t have to share if you don’t want to. We can just go get comfy in bed and you can do your starfish impersonation. It’s scarily accurate.”
“Haha, very funny.” TK mocked, then peeked up at his fiance from under his long lashes after a second. “Ten minute rain-check. I just want to get this off my chest first.”
At Carlos’s encouraging nod, he said, “My dad’s last and final attempt ended with me taking a single catfish home, courtesy of the pet store workers’ advice. Honestly, at that point they were starting to become a bit wary of us. They probably thought that we were doing it on purpose.”
“I think that’s something they do have to monitor.” Carlos pointed out. “Animal cruelty laws and all that. They can’t sell fish to a home they suspect is unfit, or even dangerous for them to be in.”
“Good! Because as far as I’m concerned, I wish they would have just denied us the sale so my dad would be forced to finally stop. Though I have a feeling he probably would’ve turned it around and used it against me. As an example of how I wasn’t a responsible enough adult or something…” Carlos grit his teeth and prepared to interject if TK’s train of thought became anymore self-deprecating, but thankfully the focus shifted. “Either way, I ended up with one catfish, one tank.”
Carlos wrinkled his nose. “Sounds like the title of a horrifying viral video just waiting to happen.”
“You’re not far off.” That haunted look from earlier returned. “It seemed like it just suddenly doubled in size overnight. I know that’s not logical and in reality it was probably just growing normally while I was preoccupied with some busy shifts, but I swear, it’s like I just woke up one day and it was freaking huge.”
Carlos’s brow furrowed. “Growth is a sign of thriving, it meant that you were doing everything right.” Realizing that TK was becoming a bit agitated, he started rubbing his hand along the length of his spine in an attempt to soothe the slightly smaller man. “Was that not a good thing?”
“No, not when its big ass eyes wouldn’t stop watching me.” When he glanced up and saw Carlos’s skeptical expression, his hackles rose even further and faster than before. “I’m serious! No matter where I was in the apartment, I always felt like I was being watched. And any time I’d turn around and look at it, it was always staring at me. Nonstop. Just staring! Just floating there and staring!”
Ducking his head to avoid an emphatic handwave that came a bit too close to his face, Carlos switched to damage control before he could inadvertently make his fiance feel any further judged. “Why was it doing that, corazón?”
“Because it knew.” TK’s bright green eyes, wide with unease, were beginning to look a tad bit wild. “It knew and it wanted me to know that it did. It was sending me a message.”
Wondering when exactly this train had gotten so derailed along the way, he asked, “Knew about what, love?”
“All the fish that had died.”
“How would it even know that?”
“Some people say that water has memories, Carlos.”
“Babe, I don’t…” He trailed off, knowing how fine of a line he was walking here. He loved TK to death, but even Carlos could admit that the man wasn’t always the most rational. “Well, better question then. Why would it even have cared?”
“It probably thought the same thing was going to happen to it! I mean, could you blame it?”
Could Carlos follow the hypothetical line of thinking of a catfish that TK had projected all of his own self-blame and recrimination onto? No, he really couldn’t, but for TK’s sake he tried. “I honestly have no clue.”
“Exactly!” TK exclaimed, as if he’d just agreed with him. “So then in its mind, it was either kill or be killed.”
He didn’t know what the fuck was happening anymore. “You thought the catfish was going to try to kill you?”
“Yes.” A beat. “No.” Another beat. “Well, I don’t know…” He looked uncomfortable, shifting around and staring down at his lap as he thought back. “It just seemed like a pretty good possibility at the time.”
“I see.” No, actually, Carlos didn’t, but there was no way in hell he was going to say that. “Did you tell your dad about your concerns?”
“Not at first, but he noticed when my performance at work started to slip.” At Carlos’s inquisitive look, he explained, “I was having a lot of trouble sleeping at home. I couldn’t rest, knowing that its eyes were glaring a hole into the door, knowing that it was probably plotting and just waiting for the right moment to make its move. I never knew when or if it would strike. I had to stay on guard, and the insomnia was seriously starting to catch up with me by that point.”
“I’m glad he noticed.” Carlos said, completely earnest. “You could have gotten hurt or worse, working like that.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s what he said too.” TK muttered. “He kept pushing and pushing to get me to tell him what was going on, but I was too embarrassed. I already knew how he would react. But then he tried to ask if I was using again, and at that point I just got mad. Here I was being haunted by the ghosts of the fish I’d never even asked for in the first damn place, fish that were his goddamn idea. So I finally broke down and told him.”
“How did he react?” He drew TK in even closer to him, tucking him against his side in preparation for more of Owen’s dumbassery.
“He just said that I was still adjusting to being sober again for the first time in who knows how long, so it made sense that I was going a little crazy.” TK stole a kiss, then another one, clearly needing the comfort. “I mean, I couldn’t really argue with that. And at least at that point, he finally realized that the whole fish thing was actually a hindrance, rather than help.”
Thank fucking God. “So what ended up happening to the catfish?”
“One of the paramedics wanted it. Apparently he’d agreed with his kids that they could finally get a puppy whenever all of their fish eventually died, and he didn’t think the goldfish had much longer to live. He said he was going to add it to their tank at home as a gift for them, as well as himself.”
Carlos laughed. “Not ready to deal with housebreaking and coming home to find the couch all torn up?”
“Definitely not.” TK agreed with a smile of his own. “Though honestly at that point, my dad could have told me that he was going to stick it into one of the decorative fountains at a park for a prank and I would have been okay with it. I just wanted it gone.”
“That’s definitely understandable babe.” He leaned in close, stealing a quick kiss. “I’m sorry you went through that, but I’m glad that everything turned out okay in the end. I can’t imagine where I’d be in life if that asshole catfish had managed to take you out before I got to meet you and make you mine.”
“Shut up, you’re such a freaking sap.” TK pretended to push Carlos’s face away, but based on the delighted flush spreading across his cheeks and his uncontrollable grin, he not so secretly loved it. “C’mere, kiss me.”
Carlos was more than happy to comply and then some, and it was only once they started trying to break apart just long enough to head for the bedroom that he spotted the subject of their conversation again. He remembered what he wanted to ask.
“TK, babe,” He murmured between nips to his neck, “Can I ask you for something?”
“What’s that?” He panted back, letting out a soft moan every time Carlos bit down particularly hard.
“Could we get rid of the fish tank?”
They both paused for a moment as the request settled in the air between them, still wrapped around each other like ivy on a trellis. When TK reached up and caressed Carlos’s cheek, his expression soft and his eyes full of love, it was obvious that he’d heard and understood everything Carlos was leaving unsaid.
The acknowledgement that TK didn’t deserve to carry that weight around with him anymore. A gentle plea for him to start working on better boundaries with his father so something like that didn’t happen again in the future. And finally, a promise that they were in this crazy, ridiculous thing called life together and always would be.
“Absolutely, baby. Let’s go and donate it tomorrow.”