A/N: I know this has been done before, but I just couldn't help but give my own take on all the Tarlos happenings at the end of season 1. This fic follows them through the events of T.K. being shot all the way to laying on top of the car in episode 10.

Carlos helped Mr. Ackerman into the back of the squad car, relief deep in his bones. Tonight the man would go home to his family and no one had gotten hurt. A good night all around.

"It's so sad," his partner Sarah said quietly. "I can't even imagine, not knowing where your home is."

"I'm just glad it all worked out," Carlos said. "Coffee after we drop them off?" They still had six hours left on their shift and he was going to need caffeine to make it through.

Sarah nodded. "For sure."

Carlos was getting into the passenger seat when a loud crack split the night air. His eyes met Sarah's, her confusion mirroring his own. "Was that a gunshot?" Sarah asked.

"Stay with them," Carlos said, reaching for his weapon as he slid back out of the car and ran toward the house.

There was chaos in the hallway and at first Carlos couldn't see what was going on because most of the 126 crew was standing in his way, everyone yelling in horror. Carlos pushed his way through them and froze, unable to comprehend the sight before him. He felt like he had stepped off into the deep end of the pool and sunk straight to the bottom.

T.K. on the floor unmoving, eyes wide and unseeing, blood everywhere. Michelle hunched over him, hands working furiously to cut away his uniform, baring his wounded chest to the world. "I need help here!" Michelle shouted. "Mateo get Nancy and Tim in here now! Judd check on that victim!"

"I'm working on it!" Judd hollered. His back was to Carlos, hands outstretched toward a boy, no more than ten years old, who had a gun clutched in his trembling hands. "C'mon now kid. It's all right. Just put that down so we can help you out all right?"

Seeing the weapon in the child's hands brought Carlos back to himself. He keyed his radio, "Shots fired at 1940 Birchwood Avenue. We have a firefighter down, repeat a firefighter is down. Request additional medical units and immediate backup."

"Kid, you need to give me that gun right now," Judd said, more forcefully this time.

The boy nodded, eyes wide with shock and Judd slowly pulled it from his hands. "I got it," Carlos said, taking it from him so Judd could drop to the floor and begin CPR on the elderly man.

Carlos checked the chamber and removed the additional bullets. With the threat out of the way the firehouse team kicked into full gear. Tim and Nancy arrived, one of them moving to help Judd the other stopping to help Michelle.

It took everything in him to usher the woman and her grandson from the room, away from the chaos, away from where his heart lay bleeding out onto the hardwood. There was procedure to be followed, especially in a situation like this with a child and a weapon involved.

He passed them off to a newly arrived paramedic team then walked back to the squad car to bag and tag the gun. Sarah was waiting for him, the Ackerman's still sitting anxiously in the back seat. "Carlos what the hell is going on in there?" she asked.

Carlos barely managed to get the words out. "T.K.'s been shot."

Michelle burst out the front doors, T.K. strapped onto a gurney, oxygen mask obscuring his face, blood seeping through bandages on his chest. She caught Carlos' eye as Nancy and Tim got inside the ambulance, Owen climbing in behind them. "How bad is it?" Carlos asked, voice cracking.

Her face was pale, tense. "Bad. I'll call you okay?"

She grasped his arm, squeezing tightly, and then she was climbing aboard, the ambulance screaming away.

The next few hours were a blur. They brought the Ackermans back to the station, took tearful statements from them, the grandmother and her grandson. The grandfather was transported to the hospital and another officer was dispatched to be with him and take his statement if and when he woke up. Carlos turned the gun over to evidence and had to write up his own report of the incident. Then his captain wanted to speak to him and rehash the whole thing yet again. It was all Carlos could do to keep it together as he recounted entering the home, finding T.K. on the floor, and everything that had happened after.

By the time he had even one second to breathe he'd missed Michelle's call. He locked himself in a bathroom stall to listen to the voicemail she'd left, breath catching in his throat as she told him that T.K. had gone into hypovolemic shock and been taken immediately into surgery.

His whole body trembled as he played the message again and again, as if somehow it might change. As if somehow this was all just some sort of horrible dream that he would wake up from at any moment.

The rest of his shift was an exhausting blur and by the time he got to the hospital the rest of T.K.'s team had arrived and were sitting in the waiting area near to his room. Carlos could see Owen sitting by T.K.'s bedside and T.K. himself, pale as death, eyes closed, body listless in the hospital bed.

"Hey Carlos." Judd spotted him first.

Carlos swallowed hard, the tears he'd been holding at bay finally pricking at his eyes. "How uh," his voice broke and he tried again, "how is he?"

"Lung collapsed on the way to the hospital. Surgery went okay," Paul said. "But he lost a lot of blood. And he was…down for a while."

Carlos took a shaky breath. "They're worried about brain damage."

Marjan nodded. "He hasn't woken up yet. Cap hasn't left his side."

That didn't surprise Carlos in the least. The way T.K. talked about his dad it was clear they were close; Carlos envied it.

He shouldn't intrude, he knew that, but he couldn't stand being so far away. He just needed to…honestly he wasn't sure what he needed. Wasn't sure what was allowed or appropriate. Their relationship was new, they hadn't put any kind of label on it. He'd been waiting, trying not to push after T.K. had admitted how badly things had ended for him in New York.

Maybe he shouldn't even have come to the hospital at all. Maybe T.K. wouldn't want him here. But Carlos couldn't make himself leave. He chose to be selfish and step a few paces closer to the room until the captain spotted him.

He would be forever grateful to the captain for giving him time with T.K. He barely knew the man, they hadn't exchanged much more than a few pleasantries in their time working together, but somehow, somehow he knew that Carlos needed some privacy.

Carlos sank into the chair by T.K.'s bed, reaching tentatively for his hand. For a while he just sat in silence, replaying the events of the last few hours over and over again in his exhausted brain.

Without warning tears began to fall and he didn't have the strength left to stop them. "Hey," he managed to get out. "It's um, it's me."

If he'd been hoping for some sort of romantic, wake up moment he was sorely disappointed. T.K. remained as still as ever, the steady beeping of his heart monitor the only indication of life inside.

"I'm sorry if this feels…dramatic or something," Carlos said. "I don't…I don't know what the right thing to do is here. I don't know…exactly what we are yet but, I really, really would like you to wake up so we can find out. Because I like you T.K. I like you a lot."

He reached up and stroked T.K.'s hair. "Please," he whispered. "Please."

The captain returned too soon and Carlos felt he had no choice but to leave. He wasn't family. He was less family than even the rest of T.K.'s crew. It wasn't his place to sit vigil.

Michelle found him in the cafeteria, hands gripped tightly around a cup of coffee that had gone cold. He'd never even taken a sip. "Hey," she said softly, sitting down across from him. "How are you holding up?"

He shook his head. Everything felt so brittle, like if he moved even a little bit he would shatter into a thousand pieces. "I don't know what to do. How to feel. Where to…be."

She reached across the table, hands enveloping his wrist in a comforting gesture. "It's okay," she said.

"We just started getting to know each other you know?" Carlos said. "It's not even official we were just…dating."

"But you like him," Michelle said knowingly.

Carlos finally looked up, eyes stinging, throat tight. "I really like him. And I really, really don't want to lose him."

A/N: Leave your love in the reviews!