Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Taking care of others has always been a red string through Trinity Santos's life.

Once, it started under the conviction that even the smallest animals, much to the disdain of her mice-fearing mother, were deserving of the same care that she got whenever she scraped her knee. In her makeshift treatment room that also happened to be her cramped, shared bedroom, she attempted to revitalise dehydrated bees, injured critters, and called the deaths of ample birds unable to survive the vicious attacks of her cat Moxie. In hindsight, she isn't surprised by the amount of nannies quitting their job over her veterinarian tendencies, but on the other hand, if they couldn't handle one girl and her unrelenting hyperfixations and strong will, they probably weren't meant to look after kids after all.

In middle school, however, her desire to help others shifted from animals to people, when she watched Holly Mayfield trip and crash into the side of a closet in their class room, her proximal phalanx breaking in half cleanly to the extent of dislocation. Trinity remembered the chaos that errupted once realisation kicked in for her classmates. She could still hear the blood curling screams and shrieks of Holly and her friends, the choruses of "oh my gods" and "what the hecks" when people realised what had happened, and the dull thud of Theo James' body as it hit the floor. Amidst all of it, Trinity had watched, fascinated by the abrupt curve in her classmates' finger, her head spinning with a million questions that she couldn't wait to find answers to.

She still feels resentment over the fact that she hadn't been able to help her classmate when she needed it the most, instead gently herded outside of the classroom as soon as nearby teachers found out about the disaster.

At the end of that day, behind the horribly slow laptop that she shared with her parents and siblings, she learned that that fracture most likely would have been the result of a bone tumor, that they could both be benign and malign and that Holly was going to be okay if it was benign. Despite the fact that the bone tissue was dead, it could either grow back by itself or through a simply surgery through which they could replace said tissue. While it wouldn't inspire a future career in orthopedics specifically (even though the vast reasons as to why bone tumours could just pop up like that were interesting, admitttedly), it would inspire a turning point for Trinity's future career; even though she had long dreamt of becoming a veterinarian, Trinity Santos was going to help people in their most vulnerable moments. While she was acutely aware that taking care of humans would be different from animals, it was exactly the fact that it was different what piqued Trinity's curiosity. While animals would never be able to tell her how they felt or what they needed, humans could, and even though that would also mean that she would have to deal with bigots and assholes, she knew that the idea of being able to help someone in the most stressful times in their lives and make sure that they would be okay would outweigh that possibility. The fact that it would be hard work hadn't fazed her either. She had always been an inherently curious and competitive student, and her revelation had meant that she was early in figuring out her options to manage the funds that she would need to put herself through medical school. Even when the journey proved to extend beyond these hardships, she found ways to make it work.

But not even Trinity would have guessed that she would be right back at taking care of wounded birds again when she decided to offer her second bedroom to Dennis Whitaker.

(1)

As promised, Huckleberry didn't get in her way much. Admittedly, it was almost like she was living with a ghost; she would only find suggestions of her newly coined roommate in whispers around her apartment; figurative whispers when Huckleberry forgot to take his toiletries back into his room like he did until Trinity got fed up with his apologies for each time he left something behind ("just leave it here, Huckleberry"), but also literal ones whenever he stubbed his toe at 3 AM outside her door and tried not to curse too loudly. Generally speaking, she could recognise that he truly made an effort to cause her any reason to be annoyed by him, and even though it may seem so to some people, she really wouldn't go out of her way to find reasons to be annoyed by him unless he made it easy to do so.

That, however, came to an abrupt halt when he started packing his lunch in plastic lunch bags. Or rather, when she started to become aware of it.

It was really not that Trinity had some idealogical aversion to it. In fact, she didn't want to judge anyone at all, especially when she knew that they didn't have as much money. She knew that Huckleberry was paying her as much rent as he could realistically manage to miss every month, and after that, contributed to other costs like groceries even though she had repeatedly told him that it wasn't necessary; he had a big heart and a bigger feeling fear of being too much. He was bound to run out of money at some point, which logically meant that he didn't think to buy anything like a lunch box unless he could justify such a purchase before anything else. So instead, when he had gained permission from her to do so, he started using the plastic bags that she had gotten at some point during her life in Pittsburgh, probably to pack leftovers, or something. She couldn't care less that he used them; if anything, she was happy they wouldn't accumulate much more dust now that she had her second hand tupperware boxes to replace their function.

It was the fact that Huckleberry would, eight times out of ten, show up to the Pitt with absolutely decimated sandwiches that pissed her off to no end. How he managed this in their commute that was mainly done by car? She has absolutely no clue. At this point, she was convinced that he must be carrying bricks in his backpack, and anytime anyone had a break with him, they held their breaths in the least conspicuous way possible to witness the state of his lunch.

While most of their colleagues simply wrote it off as 'just his luck', and Huckleberry himself quietly made do with what was left of his lunch, Trinity eventually had enough of the pitying stares and silent resignations. She had always resented pity, the fact that people sometimes felt so comfortable to draw conclusions about the state of her being and life while there was no way in hell that they even knew half of it. She wasn't pitying Huckleberry when she left him her old lunchbox at his bedroom door; she was simply tired of watching him attempt to eat flattened bread and pulverized slices of cheese, ham and other toppings without it looking unbearably pathetic. On top of that, lunchboxes were so much better for the environment; while the hospital was bearing down on making everything more sustainable it would embarassing to keep bringing in single use plastic while everyone else used paper straws and wooden cutlery.

In fact, she made sure to let him know on the note she attached to the lunchbox.

'Just take it. Single use plastic is so fucking bad for the environment.'

During their next lunch time together, she watched Huckleberry eat a fully in tact sandwich, and she told herself she was just relieved that her patient pulled through just before her break.

Chapter Text

(2)

Deep down, Trinity always knew that there would come a time where she and Huckleberry couldn't keep dancing around each other in her apartment. In fact, she was quite surprised that they had been able to live their lives relatively seperate from each other; making their own meals, doing laundry when the other wasn't using her shitty washing machine, and using the bathroom when the other didn't need it; she had been very much content with all of that. Even if that system was bound to crash and burn at some point, she had just hoped that that realisation could have waited until after their last shared shift of the week.

Their week, generally, had been a lot; normally, they didn't share as many shifts, but with Langdon being gone, Mel's sister getting sick and Mel getting sick herself afterwards and McKay's kid breaking his wrist to the point of needing surgery, they had found themselves taking up extra shifts the entire week to make things work. That ultimately meant that both of them constantly needed to wait for the other to finish cooking or to finish showering so that they found finally get to bed, and that they hadn't been able to really keep track of either the apartment or their laundry. Their apartment was an actual pigsty at this point, and she was dreading to relearn that fact the moment they walked through the front door, especially after the clusterfuck of a shift that they had just finished three hours over time on account of a mass collision. Trinity was happy that they were able to help everyone with the minimal amount of casualities or serious complications, but she knew that something had to change between now and the second she opened the door, or she would go absolutely insane, cry, or worse, both at the same time in front of Huckleberry, which was something that she wasn't quite ready to do, ever.

Honestly, seeing the state that Huckleberry was currently in, she wasn't going to be surprised if he went down first, the bags under his eyes having reached a new record and his skin paler than ever. Even though she could safely assume that he was used to a certain degree of chaos from his upbringing on some farm in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska (she still heard the echoes of Huckleberry's hands twisting that rat's neck from time to time, fuck), everyone reached their limits at some point. Which was only more likely and more understandable if it happened in the aftermath of treating dozens of car crash victims in a short amount of time, as if the week hadn't been busy enough in and out of itself.

Obviously, she was doing this for his well being, then.

Which was why she took a deep breath and turned around to face him before she actually unlocked the door, much to the evident surprise of her roommate.

"Listen, I don't have it in me to wait for you to be done with anything tonight, and I'm pretty sure you don't want that either. You look like shit, in case you didn't know yet. I suggest that we break up tasks so that we can just get everything get over with and go to bed as soon as possible. If you do the laundry and kind of try make the apartment liveable again, I will cook for both of us. Say yes or I will go insane."

She was almost surprised that she was still able to string together coherent sentences, much more so to hear Huckleberry agree with limited terror in his eyes, even when he asked a million questions before he actually got to work (no, Huckleberry, as long as you don't shrink any of my shit I don't care that you wash our stuff together. I also don't give a shit if you touch my stuff as long as you don't go through it. Just get on with it I fucking beg you). After that, a quiet nod shared between them confirmed that she did not have to take care of everything by herself, and she opened the front door to their, as expected, shared pigsty of an apartment.

Even though it was her suggestion to split up the housework, she was pleasantly surprised by how quickly they were actually able to sit down and put on the next episode of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives with two bowls of her improvised pasta dish. Most importantly, though she was taken aback by how calm she felt from not having to do everything by herself. Maybe they should just help each other out a little more to make their daily lives a little more bearable. Sure, she wasn't esctatic to be touching his dirty laundry, but if it meant this much peace at the end of a stressful day, she could accept that minor defeat.

Luckily, when she voiced this ("Okay, fuck this, this is nice, let's just do this every night"), Huckleberry quietly agreed in between bites.

Maybe having a roommate wasn't so bad after all.