Chapter Text
It's unclear when exactly she and Kimberly become friends. The process is so unconscious that it only becomes obvious what's happened in retrospect, when she realizes that somehow the defining factor of her relationship to the girl is no longer just teammate.
But it starts, Trini thinks, in Biology class.
More specifically, it starts with a jab in her side that pulls her out of a really good nap.
“Hey—” She wakes with a confused jolt, wide-eyed and ready to jump out of her seat before her eyes even focus properly. The only thing that stops her from doing so is a hand on her shoulder, the smell of vanilla and a familiar voice that seems simultaneously far away and way too near.
“Relax, it's just me.”
She's vaguely aware of the sound of chairs scraping against the floor and the chatter and footsteps of students leaving the room.
It takes a few seconds for the haze of sleep to wear off enough for her to make sense of what’s in front of her, and the first thing she registers is a torso wearing a light pink blouse and leather jacket, and her eyes travel up to rest on the smirking face of the girl attached to it.
“Learning by osmosis?” Kimberly asks. When she receives only a blank stare in response, she motions towards the open textbook on Trini’s desk that she had clearly been using as a pillow.
Trini's eyes move to the book then back to Kim, and she absently touches her face where, as she guessed, she can feel a few lines imprinted along her cheek from the pages.
Her eyes narrow in vague irritation — at being woken up that way? At falling asleep without realizing? At being awake at all? All three, probably — and she pulls her bag onto her lap from the floor and begins to pack her things away, ignoring the faint pang of embarrassment bringing heat to her face.
“Did you want something?” she asks, not looking up.
“Well, the bell rang and I noticed you were still asleep, so I figured if I didn't wake you up the seventh period English class would.”
Kimberly isn't a stranger anymore, so it makes sense that her eyes wouldn't pass her straight. Still, Trini finds herself a little surprised at the realization that this seat, the same back-row seat she’s been occupying since the beginning of the year, isn't enough to keep her invisible anymore. Or at least not from everyone. Clearly not from Kimberly, who less than a week ago didn't even know what class they had together.
“Thanks… I guess.” She stands up, putting her arm through one strap and slinging the bag around, and Kimberly steps back to make room for both of them in the small space between the desks.
Trini considers the girl for a moment. Her chin is up, hair framing her face. She’s pretty, more than pretty (it's hard to not notice, and Trini isn’t blind) but something in her expression, in the way her lips are parted just slightly like words are sitting right behind them, gives Trini the impression she's not quite sure why she's still standing there.
They're more than just acquaintances but they're not quite friends, not quite sure what to make of each other yet. And Trini’s not in the mood to stand there until they figure it out, so she turns to leave, mumbling, “See you ‘round.”
“Hey, wait.” A tug on her arm stops her.
She doesn't turn around completely, just slightly angles her body towards her to indicate that she's listening.
“I don't know if you heard Mr. Kennedy say he’s giving us a test next week—”
“I did.”
“Well, it’s forty-percent of our grade, and I don't know about you but I don’t know shit about this topic so I could really use a study buddy,” Kim says. “We could go to Krispy Kreme or something after training sometime this week, try to make sense of it over donuts?”
Trini’s glances down to where her hand is still resting on her arm, where she swears she can feel each individual finger through her jacket, radiating warmth even through the fabric. She pulls her arm away at the exact moment Kim drops her hand. Shoves her hands in her pockets.
She doesn't ask why she’s asking her out of all people, but she's definitely thinking it. Again: they're not friends, haven't had much interaction outside of Power Ranger stuff, don't know each other very well. Maybe that's the point, she thinks.
Or maybe, since her recent fall from grace, there aren’t many other options left.
Eventually, aware she's been silent for a length of time bordering on awkward, she gives a short, barely there nod. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”
“Okay. How’s tomorrow?”
“Sure.” Trini is walking away again before the word is even completely out of her mouth, but when she reaches the door she turns around and gives a mock salute. “See ya.”
Then she’s gone before Kimberly can reply, heading to her seventh period class with her bag hanging on one shoulder, an expression of vague confusion on her face and a flitting feeling in her stomach she can’t quite place.
-
“—so basically, the viral DNA integrates itself into the host’s genetic material, but doesn’t harm it.”
They’re sitting across each other at a table near the back, a chocolate glazed donut—the third one between the two of them in the last half hour—resting on a napkin in the center of the table and their notebooks on their laps. They've been discussing the concepts they've gone over in class so far, and Trini’s in the middle of explaining one Kim doesn’t understand.
A beat passes where she jabs the donut with her fork, breaking off a piece and popping it into her mouth. “Don’t look so surprised. I don't sleep in every class.”
“I wasn't—sorry.” Kim shakes her head, idly poking the other side of the donut with her own fork. “Clearly I'm the only one who needs help with this. You might as well be speaking Latin.”
If it’s meant as a joke, it falls flat, an unmistakable undertone of exhaustion beneath each word. Her eyes are downcast, dark circles right under them; the same dark circles Trini sees reflected back at herself when she looks in the mirror.
“I get it.” A sip of coffee. “If it makes you feel any better, this is, like, the only subject where I have any idea what I'm doing.” If she’s being honest, Biology is one of the only classes she actually pays attention in semi-regularly.
“It’s just hard to give a shit about school when, you know, the fate of the whole entire world is at stake,” Kim says, making quotation marks with her fingers and doing a (terrible) imitation of Zordon’s voice for the last part that gets a chuckle from Trini.
“Yeah. I don't care about this shit on a regular day.”
“Yeah, right. You obviously care at least a little.”
She shakes her head. “Nah, I just figure it's easier to put in the effort to not fail everything than it is to deal with my mom if I don't.”
Kimberly looks like she wants to know more, but nods and looks down instead, finally pulling off a piece of the donut for herself.
Trini regards her for a moment, thumbing the corner of a notebook page. “So, if you don't give a shit why bother studying then? This was your idea.”
The girl just shrugs, looking back up again. “I figure maybe I'll care later. After all... this,” she waves the fork around in a vague gesture that Trini assumes means training to fight an alien lady and her rock sidekicks and golden monster-pet-thing, “—is over. Life’s gotta go on, right?”
“Right.” Hopefully.
“And I figure if I ever wanna leave this hell hole, graduating from high school can only help.”
“I hear you on that, chica.”
-
It becomes a routine .
For the rest of the week, they head home nearly every day after training to shower then meet up in Krispy Kreme or Starbucks or anywhere that serves enough sweet things to make Biology bearable, and talk about fun topics like viruses and bacteriophages over dessert.
It turns out that Kimberly knows a little more than she thought and Trini knows a little less than Kimberly thought, and by combining their individual incomplete knowledges they manage to actually be productive most of the time.
Kimberly makes a joke about their relationship being pretty symbiotic at one point and earns a glare (“That was worse than your osmosis one”) so distracting she doesn't even notice the other girl stealing the last bite of her donut until she goes for it without looking down and stabs her fork through an empty napkin, then looks up back up just in time to see a smirking Trini stick it in her mouth.
What ensues is, of course, a fight over the last of Trini’s donut (not for the first time), which Kim wins (not for the first time).
Okay, so they manage to be productive like forty-percent of the time, but it's more than they would have gotten done on their own.
Not much changes outside of that; it's the only time they really talk to each other without the other Rangers around, aside from passing greetings in the hallway or Biology class.
But Trini finds her eyes wandering to the girl in the front of the class more often than she would like to admit, studying the lines of her, the dark bob of hair she never pulls back, the way she holds her pen, the way she rests her elbows on the desk and her chin on her hand. She's just intrigued by her, is what she tells herself and the flutter in her chest, and it's not entirely a lie.
The one time she gets caught—Kim turns around before she has time to look away and their eyes meet—the short-haired girl just offers her a smile.
That smile is the most interesting thing Trini sees all day.
-
The day before the exam they're sitting in Krispy Kreme again, taking turns answering practice questions and stealing bites of each other's food as the late afternoon crowd gradually filters in then back out again.
It’s Kim who notices first when she gets up for a bathroom break and takes a good look around them for the first time in very likely over an hour. “Shit.”
Trini looks around too, rubbing the back of her neck. One worker is walking around wiping the tables and the other two are leaning on the counters, eyes glazed over, obviously tired. She clicks her phone. 8:47. “Maybe we should call it a night. They're probably closing soon anyway.”
“Yeah,” Kim agrees. A beat. “Or we could go back to mine, if you want.”
The suggestion catches Trini slightly off guard, and her face instinctively slips into a neutral expression; a crutch. “Uh… I don't know.”
“Oh, it's okay, you don't have to,” Kim says with a shrug—too quickly, like she was expecting it.
Trini just nods, though she feels more disappointed than relieved, and they sit (well, Trini sits while Kim stands, hand resting on the back of her chair, fingers tapping silently) in that silence for a few seconds before Kimberly speaks again, slowly.
“...but it would be a shame if after putting in all this effort we didn't at least get everything we wanted to do done.”
She’s met with an immediate eye roll from Trini. And here she was, thinking that Kimberly Hart would concede so easily. “Wow. Seriously.”
“I'm just sayin’.”
A raised eyebrow.
A responding shrug.
Unsurprisingly, it’s Trini who gives in, but whether it's to Kimberly or herself, she can’t say. “Fine, I'll come to your stupid house.”
If Kimberly notices the way her eyes soften, betraying the pretense in her otherwise carefully projected apathy, she doesn’t say. Just smiles. “Great, be right back.”
-
Fast forward forty minutes and they’re in her living room, Kimberly sitting cross-legged on the floor with a small half-full container of Tropical Skittles next to her and Trini lying across the couch, one leg hanging off and an arm bent behind her head, papers resting on her stomach.
Kim did tell her to make herself comfortable.
Her parents are out, so they have the house to themselves, and they've turned their studying into a sort of game, going back and forth asking each other multiple choice questions.
“A, plasmid?”
“Someone’s on a roll.”
A fist pump. “Skittle me.”
Breathing out a laugh, Kimberly reaches into the bowl and picks out a skittle (yellow, of course) and tosses it at Trini, who catches it in her mouth easily before picking up one of the papers and holding it in front of her face with her eyes narrowed in exaggerated concentration, looking for a question she hasn't asked her yet.
Kimberly finds herself grinning almost involuntarily at the sight of Trini sprawled out on her couch, all initial awkwardness at being in her house gone. It’s bizarre how much tinier it makes her look, how she fits snug on the same couch that even Kimberly can’t lie on without her feet hanging over the edge of the armrest. It's kind of adorable.
Something like affection bubbles in her chest, warms her stomach, and she has to tear her eyes away; she busies herself with picking orange Skittles out of the bowl for herself instead.
“You know, you’re not what I expected.” The confession leaves her mouth before she really thinks about it; casual.
Trini stops what she’s doing and looks at her. “What do you mean?”
“I don't know, I guess at first you seemed sort of…”
“Antisocial? Overly aggressive? Unapproachable?” Her tone is almost overly nonchalant, like she’s reciting a list she’s spent half her life memorizing.
Kimberly scrambles to clarify, shaking her head. “No, no! Well...” She cringes. “Yeah, actually, kinda. Not in a bad way, just—” She’s avoiding eye contact by now, and she brings a hand to rest on her mouth in a gesture clearly meant to indicate that she entirely regrets the direction she has taken this conversation in.
The girl’s answer surprises her. “It's okay.” A beat. “You’re not what I expected either.”
Kimberly looks up at her. “Oh? What did you expect?” She's unsure she even wants to hear the answer.
“I don’t know. Stuck up little princess, head bitch,” Trini says, bluntly, because apparently it's honesty time. A little smirk appears. “Not that I was entirely wrong.”
“Hey.” Kimberly’s mouth is set in a scowl and her eyebrows are furrowed in faux-hurt, and the expression just makes Trini laugh.
Big mistake, because before she knows it, a Skittle hits her in the face, bouncing off her forehead and onto the floor.
“Um, ouch!” Trini’s the one scowling now, and Kimberly has this annoying smirk on her face. Another Skittle hits her face before she can even say anything else. “Okay, it’s on!”
She launches off the couch at the girl, whose back hits the floor with a squeak. Trini’s over Kimberly before she knows what hit her, knees straddling her torso, hands pinning her hands to the floor.
Kim’s too surprised to even react initially, to do anything but stare with a dopey sort of look on her face. They've ended up in similar positions during training, but this type of playfulness outside of the pit, outside the context of fighting, is different, unexpected. All she can focus on is the smell of Skittles and coffee, the feeling of soft hands and strands of brown hair falling on her face, and green eyes less than a foot away from hers.
That thought seems to occur to Trini too because she pauses mid-laugh, and Kimberly swears she sees her eyes flick to her lips, feels herself instinctively leaning closer...
Trini’s grip on her hands loosens the slightest bit and this snaps Kim out of her daze for just long enough to break free of her hold and try to flip them over. Trini reacts quickly, though, and soon they're a tangle of limbs, elbows knocking and hands tugging shirts as they each try to get the upper hand, until they eventually both give up and collapse on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, shaking with laughter.
What feels like hours but must only be minutes pass before they’ve caught their breaths, and Kim playfully shoves Trini’s shoulder. “You’re such an asshole.”
“You started it,” Trini says matter-of-factly, shrugging, a smirk on her face.
“Hmph.”
“Seriously.” Then, when Kim doesn’t reply she turns to face her. She’s staring at the ceiling, biting her lip, expression indiscernible. Trini wonders whether she had really been pretending to be hurt after all. “I didn’t mean it, obviously.”
A beat passes before Kim turns to face her, rolling her eyes. “No shit.”
“Seriously,” Trini repeats. “I've met a lot of girls like that, and let's just say I haven't had very good experiences with them. But you’re not like them, even if you used to hang out with them.”
Kim mulls this over in her head briefly before a little smile makes its way onto her face, and Trini feels herself go warm all over. Feels her lips form a smile that mirrors it. They stare at each other like that for a few moments before Trini finally motions to her right, eyes still trained on Kimberly’s face, and says, “So, uh... I think we knocked the Skittles over.”
They both turn their heads at the same time, and sure enough, it's flipped over, the colourful contents scattered across the floor.
Oops.
Their eyes linger on the scene for a few moments before meeting each other’s again, and they both make expressions that clearly say, Well, shit.
“We should probably clean that up,” Trini says, though it's more of an observation than a call to action.
“Oh, definitely,” Kimberly says, nodding.
But neither of them moves, until a smile breaks out on Kim’s face, then a snort (an honest-to-god snort ). Trini, lips pressed together, tries to fight it, she really does. But then a full on laugh leaves Kimberly’s mouth, and suddenly they're both rolling on the floor in laughter again.
It might be the lightest they've felt in weeks.
-
“I’ll drive you home.”
“It's not far to walk,” Trini says. It’s a lie. Her house isn’t too far from Krispy Kreme, but Kimberly’s house is… significantly further away.
Kimberly either doesn’t hear or doesn't care, because she's already grabbing her keys from the coffee table she tossed them down onto when they reached over two hours ago. Twirling them around, finger hooked in the key ring, she starts heading towards her front door. “Come on.”
“You know I’m a superhero, right?” Trini says, but she still slips back on her jacket and follows her out, books and papers tucked under her arm.
The drive is comfortably quiet, Trini staring out the window as they drive by houses and traffic lights and neon ‘OPEN’ signs on 24-hour convenience stores; Angel Grove at night. Her temporary, shitty, non-home. Seeing it like this, she thinks, is the only time she really feels anything for it, the only time she doesn’t feel like an outsider.
It’s not too long before Kim pulls up in front of her house. The lights are still on, because her parents being asleep already was too much to wish for, apparently.
A sigh. “Well, see you tomorrow, I guess.”
She undoes her seatbelt and her hand is reaching for the door handle when Kim leans over the center console and wraps her arms around her neck in an—albeit slightly awkward, given the position—hug. She hesitates before reciprocating, sliding her arms around Kimberly’s torso, hands resting on her back.
It’s a short hug, and they’re pulling away soon, settling into a comfortable silence interrupted only by the faint sound of the car radio playing at low volume, some song neither of them recognize. Illuminated only by the streetlight, Kimberly’s face is radiant, might as well be glowing, and fuck, she's stunning.
It's an objective fact.
Kim’s about to say something when a buzzing noise interrupts, and Trini pulls her phone out of her pocket. Her mom’s name glares back at her from the screen.
“Aaand there’s my cue to go,” she says with a roll of her eyes, flashing the screen for Kim to see before clicking the volume button to silence it. Her hand goes to the handle again. “Bye for real this time.”
Kim’s smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yeah. See you, Trini.”
“It's been good, Hart,” she says, then she's opening the door and stepping out into the coldness of the night, quickly shutting the door behind her before she lets too much chilly air in. Then with a tap on the glass and a short wave, she's heading up the walkway to her house.
She doesn’t miss the way Kimberly waits until she gets inside the house to drive off, doesn't even mind her mom’s disapproving comments about her getting in way too late for a school night, and where was she, and why doesn’t she ever tell them what she’s doing?
And she can't shake off the smile on her face when her phone buzzes fifteen minutes later and she glances down to see:
Kim, 11: 48 pm
let's not wait for another one of kennedy’s gross tests to hang out, yeah?
She’s doesn’t know when exactly she and Kimberly Hart became friends, but she thinks she can get used to it.