Standard Disclaimers: Diane Duane is the genius behind the magic. I'm just barrowing them for the sake of my own amusement.
1. "I love you."
Carl's hand stops inches from the doorknob.
"I love you and I want you and it's making me crazy that we're so close you're in my head but I don't have any actual claim to you. So I just started locking it out. But wizards have trouble lying to themselves and I have trouble lying to you, so it was affecting me and us and this partnership and just…I'm sorry."
Carl lets him stutter himself out, then finally turns around. He raises one eyebrow at Tom, then the other. His eyes widen.
"You.…I….. we….." he says, before trailing off into inarticulate noises. Then hands are on either side of Tom's face and firm lips are pressed roughly against his, brown eyes more familiar then any other are locked onto his.
On one level Tom is registering the taste, the feel, the heat of the man connected to him at several points. On an entirely different level, he is feeling Carl fully for the first time in way too long, hearing Carl's voice inside his head completing the earlier spoken words with could have told me, love you, want you too, could have avoided all of this if we weren't so stupid before they liquefy, Carl providing Tom with an emotional replay of the last several months from his side of things, feeding frustration, anger, self-blame, and a whole lot longing into Tom's system as he pulls the same from his partner
"Oh." Tom's heart whispers, lacking anything else to say.
"Yeah, oh" Carl agrees.
The words liquefy into feelings once more.
2.They leave the Callahans to welcome their children home in privacy.
The dogs begin barking as soon as they show up in the back yard, and for once Carl doesn't feel like telling them to be quiet. Instead he catches Annie's paws when she tries to jump on him, letting her weight push him over into the soft grass. Wrestles with her a bit, allows her to win. Laughs when she leans in to lick his face.
Does it some more when she scampers away and Tom takes her place. He can taste the same heady rush in Tom's mind, and it feeds his own euphoria. They break apart for air after a bit, Tom wearing the same goofy grin he feels taking up most of his face.
"They did it," they tell each other, then break into another bout of laughter that has Tom rolling onto his stomach beside him in the grass. The dogs have stopped barking but stay close, watching their humans with looks of bemusement, tails wagging anyway because the good mood is catching.
"You did it too," calls a voice from the house, and all look towards it. Peach is upside down for Carl because he's still on his back, but he swears she looks proud of them.
He thinks she may have a right to be.
3. Dairine leaves looking angry and determined. Nita leaves looking just plain scared. Carl begins with determined, but after they leave he puts his head in his hands and doesn't say anything for a few minutes. Tom grabs them a pair of cokes from the fridge, and places one to the back of his partner's neck.
"It's not fair," Carl says for the both of them, but picks his head up and takes the bottle from Tom's hands. Tom kisses his cheek and whispers "at least we're trying to level the playing field," into his hair.
In a few minutes they have a scheduled conference with an Advisory from Brooklyn. Until then, they have the time to take a second for themselves.
4.Carl wakes up on the first day of what they will later call That Week (short for That Week The World Almost Ended) with an intense feeling that they have forgotten something very important.
Tom, who was up almost an hour and a half ago to follow some muse, lists off all the things he can think of. His two magazine deadlines and the rough draft of that t.v. show script that needs to be turned in by Friday morning. Carl's meeting with the head of finance on Wednesday and the one with his department on Thursday. That the lawn needs to be cut, the fish fed, and that the dogs are getting a little shaggy.
Carl still feels like there's something they missed.
"Now I think you're just being paranoid" Tom tells him. "Get over here and give me a kiss before you're late to work."
Carl does.
It doesn't erase the feeling.
5. The words are coming fast now, pouring from somewhere in Tom to their rightful place on the page. Mostly. Back space and cut and past are wonderful computer features.
He's so absorbed in the work that he doesn't catch the sound of the key in the lock, so the sound of the door being opened makes him jump. He whirls around in time to see his partner's back disappearing around the corner into the side hall. Before he can shout out a greeting Carl reappears, minus tie and suit jacket, and the look of him, all tenseness and dark eyes, stops the words. His partner holds up a hand, palm outward, and Tom nods back at him. Carl disappears around the corner again.
The sound of the bathroom door shutting just short of slamming. The sound of the shower running.
Tom turns back to his keyboard. The words don't come so smoothly anymore.
Half an hour latter Carl is back, flopping down on the couch. Tom saves his work and goes to perch on the couch arm besides his partner's bare feet. He reaches out and pushes jean leg aside to give the nearest ankle a squeeze. Brown eyes meet his, a tired smile softening his partner's face. Tom takes the hand that reaches out to him and follows it's tug until he can rest his chin on Carl's chest, their legs intertwining to make the fit more comfortable.
They watch each other for another minute or so, then Tom places a kiss to the t-shirt right over where Carl's heart beats, feeling muscles let go of the last bits tension under his lips.