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Los Santos looked different in winter, before the snow fell. Snow was nice, it made her feel like she was inside a snow globe, and it was generally a welcome sight– one she had a connection to, for reasons she could never disclose to the world. But the time before snowfall was always…weird.
Tracey de Santa didn’t know why things seemed a bit darker in that period, not necessarily in a depressed-loser sense, though, but in a more, “i’m-realizing-things” kind of sense.
Sighing, she pulled the velvet hair tie off her hair, blonde strands descending in sunny waves around her neck and instantly shielding it from the cold, whistlingwinds. It wasn’t enough, unfortunately. The cold was piercing her Ponsonby’s minicoat and crawling up her exposed legs. Maybe Amanda had been right….wearing a dress in such weather with no stockings underneath might have been a stupid decision. But what Amanda didn’t understand was that sometimes, you just had to do it for the aesthetic.
“Are you cold?”
The man seated next to her on the bench asked. He’d noticed the shivering, however subtle it had been. He shifted forward slightly, setting his coffee cup on the bench as he began to peel off his own jacket.
“No, Uncle T, it’s fine.”
“I don’t think so. Why the hell aren’t you dressed for the weather?”
Trevor scoffed, taking off his jacket anyway and thrusting it into Tracey’s lap. He made sure that it was spread out when he’d thrown it, so that it covered at least a little beneath her knees. He motioned for her to fix it herself, and she did, albeit half-heartedly.
What was the point of wearing this cute coat if it wasn’t visible?
After that, they collapsed into comfortable silence again. Well, not so comfortable, actually. Unusually, Tracey was sitting all tense, a little too scrunched together, fiddling uncontrollably with her hands…
Something told Trevor her discomfort wasn’t stemming from just the weather.
And he could also tell that whatever was bothering her, he would soon come to know. It wasn’t totally rare for them to hang out, but they’d usually go to shopping centers, shopping (mostly Tracey’s forte), eating, venting (Tracey doing most of this too) and staring at people at the beach and judging each and every single one of them.
Mirror Park, though? They’d never visited.
Trevor was silent. He’d respond to the small-talk prompts from the girl but that was it; he didn’t want to derail the incoming discussion. He was giving her time to collect her confidence, and he would wait however long she needed.
After about twenty minutes of nothing, Tracey cleared her throat and the air shifted. Trevor stayed still, so as to not disturb the atmosphere.
“Uncle T….”
For the first time since they’d sat down on the cold, uncomfortable bench, Tracey turned to face Trevor, but their eyes did not meet. She kept them trained down.
….which slightly worried her uncle. Here she was, an (over)confident, (extremely) loud, (frankly) unambigous girl, acting like what Ron would call “her government-replaced shadow-self” (GRSS).
“Yeah, what’s up, kid?”
He kept his tone as casual as possible.
“What….what do you think of…of, like, you know.” It took her some time to decide what it was that she wanted to say, “Let’s…let’s say there was, like, someone who you knew, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And…this person was, um. Like, odd. In the sense that they were, like, considered “unconventional” or whatever by literally everyone. And, like, they were…they were different. What would you do?”
….that…
Did Tracey realize she’d described him? Was this going to be something about him?
Oh, boy. He hoped not. Whether the question was aimed at him or not, it didn’t matter. He tried to think of someone “unconventional” that he knew of (besides himself). Ron and Wade came to mind. Did Lamar count?
“What would I do? Well, hmmm,” he feigned contemplation, “well, Trace, I wouldn’t do anything. Your question doesn’t really make much sense.”
He was right. Tracey knew that. She tried rephrasing.
“Like….let’s say the whole entire world thinks this person is, like, a loser or weirdo. But like, it’s a secret that they’re a weirdo, I guess? So, you don’t really know that they’re, like, weird. But let’s say you, like, find out or something. So then, do you, like, abandon them? Because they’re like, a social reject or whatever?”
Trevor blinked.
First of all, why all the fucking “like”s? Second, what the hell? He couldn’t tell if this hypothetical scenario pertained to him, or if it was totally unrelated and something she genuinely needed help with. But asking Trevor what he thought about “social rejects” was….probably not going to clear anything up. What the hell would he know about being on the other side of that term?
“Tracey. Look at me. Do I look like a social accept ?”
The girl pursed her lips for a moment.
Right.
Oops.
“And,” Trevor continued “if I was being purposely mislead to believe something that wasn’t true, which means this person lied to me, and he continued to lie to me for 9 fucking years and then some more , I would fucking rip that piece of shit limb from fucking limb and then chop him up into tiny pieces and douse them all in gasoline and then watch them fucking burn to a crisp!”
Trevor’s voice had gradually gotten steadily louder, more irritated and aggressive— Tracey hadn’t seen that coming (she never did. Nobody ever did.) but it didn’t take her by surprise too much. If she brushed off the dark, violent threats as a twisted sense of humor, it was actually pretty funny, in a cartoonish way. The specificity of these off-track rants always had something to do with her father– which would also be disturbing but now that both men had made up, this grudge was still hilarious for a bunch of reasons (at least, to her and Jimmy.)
She would have at least chuckled like she usually did, but the moment was different. Not anything like usual. She just sighed.
“No, Uncle T. You’re not getting it!”
“So then be upfront about it, kid!"
Tracey licked her lips, looking around the empty park, mind racing. Ugh, having to think so much was such a headache. She wondered if this had been a bad idea.
"Okay, Okay. I will, but Uncle T, you gotta PROMISE you won't tell Daddy."
Trevor paused, carefully regarding the younger woman as her request registered.
“Woah, woah, kid. Listen. I ain’t hiding nothin’ from Michael if it’s about his family, okay?”
“But—”
“No butts! Now, tell me, what the hell is it? What happened?”
Tracey’s mouth opened and closed several times, but no words came out. She didn’t want to be snitched on— that’s the whole reason she had come to Trevor in the first place. And she was confident that Trevor wasn’t the snitching type, but….the sensitivity of this topic…
“Are you in trouble? Is it that ponytail prick again?” Trevor pressed, discarding his initial intent to take it slow. When Tracey had mentioned the secret thing, he’d gotten extremely worried.
To his relief, though, Tracey was shaking her head— which meant Lazlow hadn’t shown his slimy self to her since the last disciplinary session he’d had. But something was still wrong.
“So? What is it then?
Tracey could never become a criminal. She had already known that to be true for several reasons, but this basically confirmed it. A little heat, a slightly insistent method of interrogating, and she was already cracking under the pressure.
She looked at Trevor for the first time since they’d sat down, trying to communicate with just her eyes, hoping the previous conversation they’d had just a minute ago would shed some light onto her half-spoken sentence (it didn’t. Trevor had already forgotten about it.)
“I’m….”
“You’re what? Huh? What is it?”
“I’m…you know…”
A sudden pause.
Trevor’s eyes widened.
Apparently, he’d caught on.
“Are….are you….?” Trevor had never appeared this horrified.
Tracey nodded, keeping her eyes on him, watching for his reaction closely.
His face stayed surprisingly neutral.
“Who is it?”
“Someone at college.”
And, abruptly, Trevor was jumping to his feet, clearly enraged. Instinctively, Tracey followed suit, also standing up, not having expected such an intense reaction— even from Trevor.
" I'm gonna gut that motherfucker and hang him with his own innards!"
Somewhere, along this discussion, a disconnect had occurred. Who could blame either of them when both had spoken half-sentences at the most crucial point of discussion? It hadn’t been intentional, of course, just an in-the-moment atmospheric influence.
"Him? Who the eff is ‘him’, Uncle T?!"
"The fucker that got you pregnant! If he really cared about you he'd have been more careful! Tell me, who the fuck is this guy?"
Silence, again.
Tracey stared at her uncle, eyes wide, too stunned to really even react. With a sigh, she was sitting back down and, before Trevor had stomped away with the goal to disembowel an imaginary stranger, telling him her truth as clearly as she could think of.
"There is no guy. That’s like, sorta the problem."
For another brief moment, Trevor stopped spewing incredibly violent threats to the ground and stared at Tracey, who was sure that he had gotten the message now.
She was wrong.
“HE FUCKING LEFT YOU!? TRACEY, DON'T FALL FOR MEN LIKE YOUR FATHER!"
"Uncle T!"
It’s not that he had insulted her father–Trevor was absolutely right on that front– she wasn’t offended, she was stressed out (and a little embarrassed). She realized she would need to really, properly, slowly spell this out so as to not send her uncle spiraling into a fit of hellish rage.
" I am not pregnant. I'm in love."
Trevor stood dumbfounded, breathing heavily, "I'm lost."
He didn't know what to be pissed off about now.
"Why— why is this news?"
"Because... because..."
"What's his name?"
And if– God forbid– she said Lazlow, he was going to actually kill that slimy bastard this time. He had it coming for a long time, anyway.
" Her name is Mary."
The equivalent of several hundred computer-error pop-ups crowded Trevor’s brain for a second. Tracey kept her gaze locked with his, in hopes that maybe if they had eye contact she might be able to anticipate his reaction. She really didn’t know how he would take it.
Sure, she had had her suspicions about him for a long time— it was part of why she came to him in the first place. But it was always possible that she had misread his eccentricity, and maybe she’d misinterpreted the tension that had always existed between her own father and him— memories of North Yankton flooded back to her in that moment, and the strained, tensed discussions she’d overheard when they had thought nobody was listening.
But she would be there, sometimes. And from everything she had gathered up until then, Trevor had seemed like someone who wouldn’t make a big deal out of this—
She wasn’t so sure about her father.
Yet, she was terrified. Shaking, eyes downcast again. Every minute that passed with Trevor saying nothing was agony. And then, she heard him sigh deeply and braced herself.
"Who is she, then? What’s she like?”
And that was it, she felt a weight lift off her chest, and she would have cried if she wasn’t worried about ruining her makeup. Instead, she smiled to herself, beaming.
“She’s so odd, Uncle T. Like, super weird. But not in, like, a creepy way…well, I thought she was creepy in the beginning but turns out she’s the cool kind of weird, you know?”
And so, Tracey told him everything that had been on her mind for the past couple months. Things she couldn’t even bring herself to write in her diary— and god, did it feel good to just come out and say it.
She talked non-stop for almost 40 minutes. It helped that Trevor was asking questions about Mary (that pertained to Tracey), because Tracey loved answering them.
"Trace, I'm sure you can tell Michael. He won't mind."
That’s when she fell silent.
"....you really think so?"
" I know so."
Tracey hummed. Several things came to mind…she studied Trevor not-so-secretly, observing him as he stared off into the distance. She didn’t know if it was just her, or if he looked a bit…
" Okay. I will. But….only if you're there with me."
Her gloved hand took his, and squeezed it.
Trevor squeezed hers back once.
" Of course I'll be there, kid."