Then everything was grey, now it's just static

Chapter 1

The doctor had told him to stay home, to take a few days off. TK had tried one day, more for Carlos than for himself. They had turned off their alarms—they were both on leave after all, so they could sleep late—there were no schedules, no obligations, just recovering because a psychopath had drugged them both with oxycodone at lunch.

Oxycodone for Carlos meant a severe headache, the feeling of having spent the whole night drinking, and being groggy. He hadn't been able to get much rest that night because of the vomiting and the damn diarrhea and worst of all was not being able to control his own body for hours... No, that wasn't the worst of it for Carlos.

Worst of all was looking at the other side of the bed and seeing TK.

His boyfriend hadn't said anything since he had woken up on the floor of their apartment and Carlos had told him what had happened.

"TK, my love. Sadie..." He didn't know how to tell him, there was no nice way to tell TK that a complete stranger had thrown away two years of sobriety for him just because she was obsessed with his father.

"Carlos, what happened?"

But Carlos saw in his eyes that TK already knew. He knew that feeling, feared it, hated it, it was now part of his nightmares. He'd had nightmares about going back on drugs ever since he'd been on the verge of losing the fight against substances.

Two months ago he had won the battle; he almost believed, as stupid as it sounded, that he had won the war, because he had been stronger than the need, he had been able to recognize the problem, to face it and not let himself go.

But this was much worse. Here it was not about having made a decision or having made a mistake. Here, someone had taken away his freedom, taken away his security, put him in front of the darkness and thrown him into the abyss.

"No... no," sobbed TK as he listened to Carlos's account. "She couldn't do that. What did she use?"

"Opiates."

Carlos felt TK's body shuddering and shaking with tears against his as he pulled him into his arms. They stayed there for a moment, sitting on the floor of their bedroom until the paramedics told them they'd better get a full checkup at the hospital.

They didn't say anything new. Sadie had drugged them with enough to knock them out.

"I don't know if she wanted to kill you guys," Gabriel said when he went to check on them in the room that night. "She seems confused, I think she's lost it."

"Don't be fooled, Dad, that woman knew exactly what she was doing. She told me everything thinking she was going to..." Carlos turned to TK.

"It's not the first time they've wanted to kill us, Carlos," TK said quietly. "It's always because of something my father does, though."

Carlos and Gabriel looked at each other, but neither said anything. TK had been blunt when he had told his father to go home.

It wasn't a "I don't want to see you, go away, please." But his look had made it clear. TK partly or wholly blamed his father for what had happened, so when he told him to "go home, Dad, we'll be fine," Carlos knew something huge had broken between TK and Owen.

They were released the next day, although they had to take several days off work, because the after-effects would last a little longer.

The next day was the hardest either of them had experienced in a long time. Carlos thought that waking up the day after the fire that had destroyed his previous house was the most upsetting moment he had ever experienced. To open his eyes and realize that they had been left without a home; there could be nothing worse.