#season 1 after a sucky year and already not really steady again after alex and then almost dying like this and he is not getting high

[parameddic]

@hvndredstories

It - he - hadn't been right since he fell through the ice.

Maybe it was meant to be nice, or relaxing. Have a break, let his body recover from literally dying, give his ribs a chance to heal over the cracks and the bruises and regain some of the weight he'd lost in the freezing. The coma had been, well, close, and maybe not any closer than he'd ever really been before but it was the closest he'd ever felt to it. You know? This was supposed to be time to catch his breath, everyone else was catching their breath about what had happened, and he sort of... it was all ...

grey.

He wanted to be alive, he was grateful to be alive, but he felt a bit like a zombie walking. Fragile. The physical therapy was taking it out of him, and he was still weeks of work away from being cleared again for duty. He -

[Text] Nikolai -> TK: I thought you wanted to talk.

Would it be really, really shitty of him to ask Nikolai to hook up, when that was the last text he'd received, more than two weeks ago? That was over a month of waiting on TK to get back to him. To be fair, a lot of that time had been spent in a coma, intubated, torn between staying alive and freezing to death, but he still... he still had said he'd wanted to talk. And then effectively ghosted the guy.

He hadn't asked Nancy her opinion. It would have been tough to ask her about this guy without it throwing up red flags and that was its own thing and yes he did want to talk and he desperately, really, wanted to feel something.

[Text] TK -> Nikolai: I really do, but tonight I want to f--

no.

[Text] TK -> Nikolai: I do. [Text] TK -> Nikolai: Can tonight just be a booty call?

It was exactly as promised. All else aside there was a certain predictability to their interactions, save for the advent of flooding emergencies or shelter-in-place orders or bleeding to death in dumpsters: they said what they wanted and then they took it, and gave it, and it was good and fair and the longer TK had spent with Nikolai the more he'd gotten to know about how this man's body worked, how to make him hum that low tone that tugged at something physical, low in TK's chest. It was good.

Nikolai saw TK, saw the lost weight, the paler-than-normal (and that was saying something) skin, the bruises still not fully healed on his chest, and he said nothing. One of the rules, no words, and even more so tonight because TK had in fact pressed him into the arch of the doorway before they were fully inside and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him and TK was not fragile or going to break or "you must be exhausted" by any of it, and -

he pulled away with a ragged breath inward, shaky and lost for a second because he did not know how he had lost his breath, and this was when he realised that if he did not stop now he was going to be crying, and that would be ridiculous.

"Sorry." He forced laughter, over the top of it. This was messy, and stupid, and not at all what either of them had signed up for. He pulled back and away and turned to conceal it, startled by the intensity of the emotion because he had not actually known he was holding onto it at all. He swallowed. Sniffed. When he swiped at his eyes they were dry, which he guessed was less pathetic than it could have been.

Their pants weren't even off yet.

He had asked him here. What TK had wanted out of that, what he'd... he shook his head, controlled his exhale. This suddenly felt very unhot. "I'm a mess."