wickerpark | Are You, Are You Coming To The Tree [Carlos &Ty]

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Are You, Are You Coming To The Tree [Carlos &Ty]

Sarah had called him. Told him. The conversation had been painfully short, though. She sounded worried, but Ty never said more than 'thanks' and 'I've got to go'. He cancelled his appointment the next morning, opting to go up to the house and attempting to do something. Mostly he just stayed clear of Poncho and the rest of the crew as they wired the house.

By the end of first day, nothing felt as if it had changed. He felt calm, but perhaps that was just a mask he wore. When Ollie tried to call him on Skype that night, in those rare moments that the ship was close enough to not rely on satellite exclusively, Ty didn't answer. He just let it ring before he pulled on a hoodie and took off to run the beach in the pitch black of night.

Except all that did was bring back memories he didn't want to deal with right then.

For the next week he kept dodging everyone. Sarah, his Dads, his therapist, group meetings,....Ollie. Especially Ollie. It was easier to sit on the balacony of their rental with a case of beer and cigarettes. Everyone else would just ask the predictable- 'are you okay', 'how are things', and his favorite 'do you need help?'.

Maybe if he had asked for it, though, he wouldn't have written that letter to Ollie. He wouldn't had cleaned the house with an insane determination for the last three days. He would have slept. He wouldn't have been focused on the mechanics of how to best just....let it all end.

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A part of him had half expected to pass Ty on the road back from LA. But he hadn't, and he hadn't been able to face it yet when he got back - so he went through the official motions. He got discharged, he got fucking diagnosed, which just made him feel like he was broken now, and he got contact names for L.A.

A therapist. A support group at the West L.A. Vet Center.

There was nothing of his in San Diego, really. He and Gael had been planning to move in together when he'd gone missing, and his belongings were already in L.A. In storage, Gael had told him on the phone one night. Sarah had come out and gotten everything out of his apartment one day so he didn't have to look at Carlos' name everywhere.

So technically he could have just left. But both Gael and his mom had asked if he'd seen Ty yet, and how long were they going to let him get away with saying no?

That was how he ended up in front of a rental near the beach, ringing the doorbell. Definitely more Byrd's type of place than Ty's, he thought. Well, that was love for you.

The thought might have been there at one point, but it had faded pretty quickly. Sarah had told him about Gael as soon as the accident had reached her, not that he'd gone to see the guy. He couldn't have helped him.

When the door bell rang, Ty looked back at the bedroom behind him at first and considered if he wanted to go answer it before leaning forward a little to see what cars could have been parked out by his. Only he couldn't see the cars, the balcony didn't stretch out far enough for him to catch a peek.

So he resolved to ignore it.

Until it rang again. And then a third time. If they were looking for Ty, they probably very well knew he was there. His car had been parked out front. Along with Ollie's and the two bikes. There was no denying he was there. So with a groan he finally stubbed out his cigarette and picked up his beer before making his way down to open the door with the intent of telling whomever was there to fuck off.

Except he hadn't expected it to be Carlos Sanchez.

"....Sancho." He said, after a long, heavy silence.

Carlos wasn't sure who else Ty knew who would be this persistent. And even so, he was tempted to just give it up and say he tried. But they had been - hopefully still were - best friends, and he'd never been one to give up that easily.

Still, they just stared at each other through that silence like a pair of ghosts. "Ty," he said evenly. There weren't any smiles here, he thought. No shocked joy, no emotional tears. Not from either side.

"Are you going to make me stand here all night?" He asked.

There were a few others. Rodney was one, though not in California so moot point. But at Carlos' words, he jerked a little into motion, moving out of the way and waving the guy in with the beer in his hand.

"Yeah, yeah..." What else was he going to say or do? "Um, you want a beer?" What else did you ask people who came back from the dead?

"I wouldn't say no," Carlos said, catching the can when Ty tossed it at him. There was a slight flinch as it smacked into his hand. He couldn't even begin to understand the things that triggered him. It seemed to be everything right now, and he sighed as he cracked open the beer and took a long drink.

"So," he said. "I'm not dead."

"So I heard," Ty said, leaning against the kitchen counter as he looked Carlos over. There was a lot to say, he figured, but he couldn't work out where to even start. 'Sorry, they wouldn't let me go back'?

"POW," Ty said after a moment, nodding to himself as before reaching up to scrub his still cropped hair. "Guess they should have let me go back for you after all." Well, let someone go back. Abadan had been a little bit of a shit show, though. So much chaos, so many people killed at the last moment. They'd known being the last to evac the area was going to put a bigger target on them, but the SEALs and Rangers hadn't expected quite what they got.

"I'm sorry," he said as he exhaled slowly. "Really."

"There wasn't any getting to where I was," Carlos said after a moment. "If there was, no one would have stopped you." It was what he told himself to deal with the simmering anger about what had happened, but it was also true.

"I was shot up pretty bad," he said, looking down at his beer. He couldn't quite manage the flickering, reassuring smiles he'd always had. "It would have been hard getting me out alive. Iran takes pretty good care of its prisoners. Considering. And it wasn't your fault."

He scrubbed a hand over his hair. "There wasn't really anything anyone could have done."

"Yeah, sure man." It wasn't like it would have been easy, and fucking hell- if the other guys hadn't tackled him, he would have made it. "Then at least you wouldn't have spent that year alone, right?"

Fuck it, he thought as he drained his beer and tossed the can with a sigh.

"Wasn't my fault. I hear that a lot, man. But who was giving the orders around there?" He'd been in charge of the final evac, and maybe the fact that only 'three' had 'died' was seen as a good thing for high ups? It hadn't ever set right with him. "Collins and Jensen didn't make it, so as far as things not being my fault? I hope you'll understand if I disagree."

Maybe it was more survivor's guilt than anything, but it was hard to see it any other way. He'd told all three of them to hang back and cover when all hell started to break loose. All so the rest of them could get the wounded loaded in trucks, and they could get the civilians out of the way, and clear of the gun battle.

"Por amor de Dios," Carlos muttered into his beer before he pinned Ty with a look. If the three of them hadn't hung back, the casualties would have been much higher. He knew that - he knew that and he'd been in prison a year.

"Do you really think I wouldn't blame you if it was actually your fault?" He said. "If it were actually your fault, Kagan, I sure as fuck wouldn't be here right now. I lost a year. I didn't see daylight most of the time, fuck, I didn't speak to another person for months at a time. I would fucking love to blame someone. But I can't, because we were all doing our damn jobs. We all knew what we signed up for."

He ran his fingers through his hair and set his beer down hard on the counter. "You can't control everything, man. I guarantee you Jensen and Collins knew that."

"And you wouldn't have spent that year there if we'd gone back. No one was supposed to get left behind." Not that he'd ordered the helio to take off. Murph had to literally body slam him into the ground and haul his ass into the helio.

"You telling me I made the right call does not excuse that my greatest duty was to all three of you! I was charged to get everyone home, and I sent three home in coffins, one of which was fucking empty! So excuse me if I can't just get over the fact that left you to die, Sanchez." It probably didn't help that he'd drank most of a twelve pack of beer already. That his Bi-polar disorder wasn't properly treated because he couldn't bother to take meds, or that he had PTSD. It was like he was a virtual Molotov Cocktail.

"I would probably just be fucking easier to blame me and get it over with."

He wasn't the only one suffering, Carlos thought a bit bitterly, but God knew that whatever anyone else thought didn't matter a damn once Ty Kagan had made up his mind about something. It had always irritated him, but now it pissed him off to a probably unnatural degree.

It was probably lucky that all that happened was his empty beer can suddenly heading like a bullet right between his eyes.

"Oh, right. It'd be fucking easier. Is that easier for you and the guilt you're enjoying here, or is it somehow going to make it easier for me? Because I hate to fucking break it to you, Ty, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to help me sleep at night. Just because you think something doesn't make it so."

Getting pegged in the face with a beer can, albeit empty one, was not a good sign for things to come. And it was probably a good thing that there was enough space and a chair between them for Ty to pull up short on his reflexive response. He'd already put a nice dent in the fridge, Ollie wasn't going to be happy if he came home to even more damage.

"Why are you even here, Sanchez? I know you've already been to LA, hell- I'm surprised you're not there again already. You come here just to tell me I'm full of shit?" He sure as hell wasn't enjoying the feeling of guilt, but there was a lot of other things in the middle of all of it he didn't want to get into.

"You're my best friend, asshole," Carlos snapped. "Maybe you thought I'd just never speak to you again when I turned up alive, but sorry, that's not in the cards for you."

Maybe he shouldn't have bothered, he thought. Maybe Gael had been right to warn him, and he should have waited until he was in a better place to have this conversation. Who the fuck knew if there was ever going to be a better place, though.

"Whatever," he said tiredly. "I'm going back up in the morning. Just give me my sketchbooks and I'll be out of your hair."

He wanted to say 'I'm sorry', but nothing came out as he looked at Carlos. If he were honest, he would admit that he knew exactly why he was not apologizing.

"They are upstairs." Ty said with a sigh, before turning to move to the staircase that led up to the bedroom. In the room everything was tidy and tucked away with the efficiency of any military officer. But on the desk was a pair of envelops with letters inside. And a single Glock pistol.

Ignoring the letters and pistol, Ty moved to the closet and pulled out a box where he kept a number of things from his time in service.

Carlos' eyes flicked over the letters that he knew he'd written in moments of...he didn't even know what, really, before he reached out and picked up the pistol. His own was long gone, he thought. He sure as hell hadn't gotten it back when Iran had traded him for one of their own.

"They decided not to give me a new one of these," he said dryly as he set it down again. "I'm guessing because they weren't really letting me back in the Navy anyway."

"That one belongs to Ollie." Or at least, it was one weapon that Ollie was issued but was supposed to be locked up. Ty, however, was a clever guy. He missed having a weapon to hold, and he'd been told he wasn't allowed to have one. At least for now.

But...Ty was a clever guy.

"Your books." Complete with everything in them. Letters and all. "I never did make it out to give them to your mom."

Back in the day they would have said something snarky about pilots needing extra weapons - because, really, they flew some of the most expensive weapons there were, how much did they need?

And it was a hobby to needle Ollie a little, even when he wasn't there.

But right now he was a little uncertain where he stood so he just set it back down again. "Thanks," he said. "For not taking them to my parents. They've been through enough crap because of me right now." Bethany was talking to Felipe about relocating to California, and Carlos sort of hoped his father won that battle. He got it, really, but he needed to stand on his own. "Dad told me you were in his business now, sort of."

"It isn't like I've been...around much in Albuquerque." Ty said, before shrugging a little. There wasn't much he could say or do that would convince people that everything was alright, but he supposed he didn't have to offer up more than was asked for.

"Yeah. Sort of." He said, leaning against one of the side tables. "Building a house for us to move into, away from the beach. Flipped a couple of houses. I do alright at it. Pay contractors, for the most part." Pedro was pretty handy, really.

"I'm surprised Byrd gave up the beach," Carlos said casually. "Always figured he loved it so much because he so rarely has to deal with sand in a wetsuit." Pilots tended to stay dry, after all, unless something went wrong.

Admittedly, Ollie had been shot down more than once, so he was at least familiar with that part.

"You any good at it?" He asked, though. It was a little effort to tease Ty, even though the tension in here was thick enough to slice with a knife. "Dad'd be happy to hear that at least one of his sons went into the family business, even if it was the one they kind of adopted."

"He's getting the pool of his dreams and an outdoor kitchen. The man can be bought." That and they'd both realized there wasn't much in the way of homes on the coast around San Diego. "And he gets a nice view of the ocean. So, he can't complain too much."

Talking about Ollie was easy enough, he realized. It was easier not to focus on himself, or Carlos, or anything to do with Iran.

"I have an eye for how things should look, the actual building part...eh." He wasn't always the best. But he could follow instructions pretty well. "You're dad would likely be disappointed with my lack of skill, to be honest."

It might be, Carlos thought, that they spent a lot of time talking about Ollie. Hell, Gael might be a safer subject of conversation now, and that had never been the case. "Gael just has an apartment," he said. It was, admittedly, a rather ridiculously palatial apartment in LA, but still. "But once your sister gives me the keys to storage shed where she stashed everything I own, it'll be fine."

He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but helping Gael get back on his feet would keep him busy for a while.

"I could always show you how it's done," he said, though, with a smirk. "I'd bring shame on my family if I couldn't hang drywall."

"If you want to hang around." Ty said slowly, turning to look at Carlos for a moment before shrugging. "Won't complain, honestly. Just...don't be shocked by my lack of building skills. I never really spent any time trying to build things in my life."

Even in the Navy.

Still he scrubbed his hair, and sighed just a little. "You could come by the house. You'd like it." It was a good view.

The way to go now, Carlos thought a bit wryly, was to pretend he was completely the same man he'd been before that battle. He shrugged. Pretending was a skill he'd picked up over the years. Might as well put it to good use. "No reason for you to," he teased, "but don't worry, I'm sure time will wedge the silver spoon the rest of the way out. I wouldn't mind it," he added.

"There's only so much I can do around L.A., anyway. It's not like I have a career anymore, anyway." Probably should think about....college, or something, he thought. That thing he'd joined the Navy to avoid.

"Not much to do in San Diego either, just so you know." Ty said with a slight smile. He turned to move toward the balcony and nodded Carlos over. Sitting down again, he stared out at the ocean for a moment, not saying anything.

"I...am sorry, you know." He said after a moment, "I don't know how much I can help..." or if he could help at all. "But...I get it. What...it means to wake up in a cold sweat. Terrified. To flinch at the sound of...firecrackers." He could understand it, at least. Even if he couldn't help Carlos deal with it.

"That's because you hate sunshine, babe," Carlos said dryly. "California's always made you twitchy." Here was hoping he got over that, Carlos thought, because he rather thought that Ollie had probably kissed the ground when he'd arrived.

He gave Ty a sidelong look, raising his eyebrows. "It's sirens more than firecrackers," he said after a moment. "Sirens get me on the defensive right away." There'd been sirens over the gunfire that day, and they'd woken him up most of the days he'd been in prison. "Have to start seeing a therapist next week. They gave me a reprieve to move or whatever."

"Not true. I love sunshine. I hate sand. I could do with a lot less sand in my life." It wasn't even the damn ocean that bothered him, either. Iran, he figured, had ruined his chances in loving a beach. But Ollie, honestly, couldn't have been happier. Ty figured it wasn't the worst thing to sacrifice.

"Yeah," he said nodding. "I can see it. Goddamned motors for me." He heard them in his sleep, with the rattling of bullets that rained down. It wasn't always that one day, every day in Iran seemed to blur into one in his dreams. "They have these group meetings at the VA, group therapy. They discharged me, but practically ordered me to attend them." He smiled a little at that. His commanding officers had tried hard to keep Ty from falling into the deep end.

Not to mention it was never a good idea to let a former SEAL go it alone. A hard less learned from the past.

"Who couldn't?" Carlos muttered. He wasn't much for beaches right now. But then, neither was Gael, so maybe he'd be over it by the time his boyfriend was walking again.

He preferred thinking in terms of when instead of if. He'd tried thinking that way in Iran too, but success had been limited.

"Yeah, I know all about those. The COs can't get out of the habit of issuing orders, even when they're booting you out." It wasn't even that Carlos had planned to spend his life in the Navy - he'd been thinking law enforcement or intelligence, in a vague sort of way. "How much do you hate them?"

"To be fair, that is what we're trained to do." Ty said with a rye smile as he lifted his fresh beer to his lips.

It took him a moment to really think about his answer to Carlos' question. He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and looked at it carefully before smirking a little and shaking his head. "Not the worst thing, really. I hate pyschologist, but...don't know. The group is okay."

"You've always hated psychologists," Carlos said. "Nothing real new there." He had a hard time believing that Ty really wanted to talk about it, though, with other people. Even if they were people who got it, mostly. Carlos didn't really want to, though he would go through the motions, just like any other crap mission he'd ever been on.

He shrugged. "Guess I'll see what mine's like," he said. "Not much else to do, really."

No one wanted to talk about it. Carlos would figure that out soon enough. Everyone worried the about the same sort of things, and no one wanted to admit it and then eventually....one by one people talked. And gradually things got better.

For some of them.

Ty glanced back at the gun on the table, and bit his lip his for a moment.

"Won't be as bad as you think." He promised, before shrugging. "Or so they say."

Weird for Ty to be the one pointing that out, Carlos thought, but he shrugged and straightened up a little, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I should probably get going," he said. "It's a long drive this time of night."

"Shorter than this time in the day." Ty promised, but nodded as he stood and walked Carlos out of the apartment.

"Uh...if you want, you can come by. Whenever. Just...I think I'm going to head home for a while. See the family."

"Probably a good idea. Keeps the impromptu visits out here to a minimum." Though Carlos imagined that it was probably going to be years before Bethany and Felipe stopped the impromptu visits to him. He didn't mind so much.

"I'm gonna take some time to settle in," he said though."It should be a couple weeks at least before Gael gets sick of me hanging around the hospital all the time."

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Are You, Are You Coming To The Tree [Carlos &Ty]

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