Archive of Our Own ^beta

DAY ONE

7:00 AM – 8:00 AM

Every time the ambulance bay doors open, they usher another frigid burst of winter wind from outside into the E.D. Trinity’s wearing a long-sleeve under her scrubs, but the intermittent gusts of cold air they keep getting treated to are still making her shiver. 

Unpleasant as it is, the cold does seem to be keeping people at home, indoors, and most importantly, out of their waiting room, so it’s been a relatively slow morning. Trinity doesn’t think of herself as superstitious, but she still doesn’t dare use the q-word on shifts like this. 

Across the E.D, she catches sight of Langdon coming out of Central 8. Normally, she tries not to pay too much attention to him – they’ve been perfectly civil with each other since he got back from rehab six months ago, but it’s not like she’s actively seeking out opportunities to work with him. But today, something about him has drawn her eye.

Maybe it’s the way he slams the lid on the disposal bin closed after trashing his gloves. Maybe it’s the tense set of his shoulders. Maybe it’s the way he’s scowling so hard she’s half-concerned his face is going to get stuck like that.

Next to her, Samira has her nose buried in one of the iPads, looking over some weird lab results for their patient in South 18 who presented with dizziness and joint pain. “What’s up with Langdon?” Trinity asks, trying to sound casual about it, despite the fact that she’s clearly probing.

Samira doesn’t look up. “Why do you ask?”

Trinity flounders – unlike her, Samira has a very low tolerance for workplace drama. Trinity, on the other hand, is fuelled by it, especially when it comes to Langdon. “I don’t know, he seems…off.” 

Mohan does look up at her, then, looking thoroughly unimpressed. “Maybe he’s just having a bad day,” she says, before following it up with, “How about we focus on diagnosing our patient instead of our coworkers?”

Trinity, thoroughly chagrined, takes the iPad Samira hands her. 

8:00 AM – 9:00 AM 

Their patient turns out to have Lyme disease. They prescribe a 2-week course of doxycycline, discharge, and move on. 

But Trinity doesn’t forget about Langdon. There’s something going on with him today, she’s sure of it.

Logically, she knows Samira’s right. It really is none of her business. And it’s not that she delights in other’s suffering — she’s pretty sure that would go against her Hippocratic Oath. But it had been very satisfying to see Langdon taken down a few pegs.

The thing is, Trinity Santos is a very competitive person. She can’t help it. It’s in her nature. And she also can’t stand arrogant assholes with high opinions of themselves, a category that Dr. Langdon very squarely fell into from the very first moment they met. So while she hadn’t come into that first shift with the express goal of somehow both meeting and making her mortal enemy,  she wasn’t exactly mad about it. Competition has always been externally motivating for her, so the concept of having a sworn nemesis kind of appealed to her. 

And Langdon had seemed a worthy opponent right from the jump — it was glaringly obvious to anyone with eyes that clearly he thought he was hot shit, which made him an excellent target for Trinity, who couldn’t stand men in general, but especially men with high opinions of themselves. But as infuriating as it was for her to admit, Langdon’s cocky arrogance wasn’t totally unfounded. He actually did have the smarts and the skills to back it up. 

It felt almost like a game to her; by making an enemy of Langdon, Trinity could channel the burning ire she felt whenever she looked at him into something more productive. It was clear that Langdon was the star resident, that he was the best. And if Trinity wanted to be the best, then she needed to be better than him. She could use her hatred of him to her advantage. Luckily, Langdon was incredibly easy to hate, with his stupid boy-band hair and his giant ego.

But then he’d come back from rehab, and he’d been…quieter. And sure, it’s entirely possible that this was his real baseline, that the Langdon she remembered from that first shift was just some kind of weird fluke, full of bluster and snide comments and practically bouncing off the walls with energy. Maybe he just had one too many Redbulls that day. After all, Trinity had only known him for one shift.

Even still, that’s her only model for comparison, so whether or not the Langdon who came back in July was the real thing or not, to her, he was different. He moves slower, his steps careful in a way they weren’t before. Like he’s afraid of making a wrong move. That restless energy is gone, but he’s still infuriatingly competent, and despite not moving at the speed of light any more, bouncing between cases like a fucking rogue pinball, he’s still whip-quick with his diagnoses and jokes and snarky comments. 

Much to Trinity’s dismay, the new-and-improved Langdon was a lot less fun to hate. Unfortunately, it’s not very effective, having a sworn enemy, when said enemy basically refuses to engage with you beyond the sort of communication that’s strictly necessary to get through their shared shifts. They certainly still weren’t friends, but the burning desire to outdo him in everything kind of fizzled out, not enough fuel on the fire.

Until today, because Langdon was angry about something, and it was clearly affecting him. Which meant it had the potential to affect his work. Bad for him, but maybe, possibly, good for Trinity. She felt a bit like a shark, smelling blood in the water.

The game was back on.

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM 

Overall, it’s been a slow morning, but it’s still pretty early when their first major trauma case of the day crashes through the doors. Two MVC victims, the stretchers rolling in one after another. Dana and Robby’s voices overlap as they each shout out commands, directing traffic. Trinity gets assigned to the first of the two cases, falling into step alongside Langdon, McKay, and Jesse, while Robby veers off with Samira, Ogilvie, and Princess into Trauma 2.

Langdon takes point, calling out orders as they swarm the gurney. Trinity calls out sats while Perlah starts cutting away what’s left of the guy’s shirt with trauma shears, and Jesse hurries to get set up for an intubation. They’re looking at multiple blunt-force injuries to the torso, broken ribs, possibly some facial fractures. 

“Must have hit the steering wheel,” McKay notes, examining the pattern of extensive red-purple bruising on the patient’s chest. At the head of the gurney, Langdon is struggling to intubate, which isn’t like him. He’s a few months shy of finally completing his R4 year, and even after his 10 month break and having only been back on the horse for 6 months, he’s still disgustingly competent. 

“Need a hand?” Trinity asks him coolly.

“Piss off, Santos,” he mutters without even looking up, instead glaring at the GlideScope screen like it’s personally offended him. She’s opening her mouth to insult him back when Garcia breezes in. “Whatcha got, Ken?”

Trinity’s expecting Garcia and Langdon to fall into their usual banter – Yolanda’s longstanding friendship with him is one of the only things Trinity doesn’t like about her, purely on principle. But today, Langdon doesn’t engage. Instead, he just makes a frustrated sound, adjusting his hold on the laryngoscope a second time, and doesn’t answer. 

McKay gives him a strange look. “Uhh, MVC victim, probably looking at broken ribs, fractures to the nose and orbital bones. Bruising on the chest and abdomen suggests internal injuries, we’ll order a CT when he’s stable,” she fills in, eyes bouncing to Trinity for a moment, like she’s verifying she’s not the only one in the room picking up on the weird vibes from Langdon. Trinity shrugs, as if to say, don’t look at me. 

From somewhere to Langdon’s right, Jesse calls out the patient’s sats again. They’re dropping – fast.

“How long have you guys been working on him? He should be intubated by now,” Garcia comments, eyebrows arching. 

“I’m trying!” Langdon snaps, with more venom than usual. “Can’t get a good view of the cords.”

McKay peers over his shoulder at the GlideScope view. “Deviated trachea?” she suggests. Langdon says nothing.

“Could be pleural effusion, mediastinal hematoma, a collapsed lung–” Trinity starts, trying to consider all the possible causes for tracheal deviation. If this guy took a steering wheel to the chest, like McKay thought, then all of the above are very possible. 

“Stablize first, diagnose later,” Garcia decides, cutting her off. “Langdon, move. It’s a surgery day, I get to crike. 10 blade and bougie, please.”

Trinity watches as Langdon steps back, out of Garcia’s way, dropping the laryngoscope onto a nearby tray table with more force than necessary. It clatters noisily, and several pairs of eyes turn in his direction. 

“What.” he spits out, glaring at them from behind his safety glasses.

“Damn, Pretty Boy,” Garcia intones, already halfway done the crike. She’s fast. Trinity has to will herself not to blush as she watches the other woman’s hands. “Who pissed in your cornflakes?” 

Langdon’s glare hardens, calcifies. “Wouldn’t you like to fucking know,” he mutters, stepping back from the table and wrenching his safety glasses off. His gown and gloves quickly follow suit, all of it getting stuffed into the disposal bin with extreme violence. “Garcia’s clearly got it from here,” is all he says, icy, and then he’s storming out.

Warily, Trinity meets McKay’s eyes over the prone body of their patient. Under the messy spray of her bangs, the other woman looks similarly gobsmacked. Langdon hasn’t had an outburst like that in…well, ever.

Crike finished (expertly, of course), Garcia straightens up and stares up at the doors, a curious tilt to her head. “Huh. Wonder what’s eating him.”

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM 

Trinity doesn’t see Langdon for the rest of the next hour. It’s getting busier, and as she rushes from patient to patient, she honestly kind of forgets about his tantrum in the trauma room.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM 

Shortly after eleven A.M., Langdon rips Ogilvie a new one for mixing up a patient’s meds. Everyone in the vicinity pretends not to overhear, but they’re all not-so-subtly listening in on the drama. Robby then banishes him to Chairs for the next hour, but not before pulling Langdon into Pedes and ripping him a new one over losing his temper (again) and shouting at the med students (...again). Langdon emerges from Pedes looking like a kicked dog. 

“What the fuck are you looking at?” he spits, when somebody makes the mistake of making eye contact with him, and then he stalks out to Chairs with his shoulders drawn up near his ears and his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

Trinity doesn’t like Ogilvie, possibly even less than she likes Langdon – he’s a know-it-all and way too full of himself, and honestly probably deserved to get yelled at. But she’s also been on the receiving end of Langdon’s ire, so she sympathizes. 

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM 

Langdon returns from his time-out in Triage. He avoids both Robby and Ogilvie like the plague, which seems to work out fine, since neither of them seem to keen to be around him, either. 

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM 

“Have you talked to Langdon?” Trinity asks McKay in passing the next time she sees her, mostly because they’d both been witnesses to his crash-out in the trauma room.

“No,” McKay answers. “But something’s definitely up with him.”

Trinity likes McKay. She’s much more receptive when it comes to workplace gossip than Mohan is. 

“Maybe his back is bad today,” Cassie muses. 

“If only Mel were here today,” Trinity sighs. “She could do recon for us.” 

None of them will say it out loud, but it’s a well-known fact among the nurses and doctors of the Pitt that Mel King is Dr. Langdon’s favourite resident. Not that he’s technically supposed to be playing favourites, but none of the attendings can really do anything to stop him, not when both Robby and Abbot each have their own not-so-secret favourites. Not when Langdon himself was once the favourite child, Robby’s golden boy. 

Mel’s a great doctor in her own right, and she’s past the point where she needs Langdon trailing after her for extra support or supervision on cases. Yet for some reason every time they’re on shift together, where one of them is, the other usually isn’t far behind. They do work well together, which is probably why no one’s yelled at them yet for doing it, and Mel seems comfortable around Langdon in a way that she isn’t with anyone else in the Pitt. She’s become less likely to shy away from intrusions into her personal space when it’s him, and though she usually flinches away from raised voices, she doesn’t do it as much when it’s his voice. 

As far as anyone knows, Langdon’s still living with his wife. Word on the street is that things are…strained, but they haven’t officially split yet. So while the Mel-and-Langdon of it all might be purely platonic, just two coworkers who get along well enough to have their own inside jokes, Trinity has her suspicions. She knows others do, too – there’s at least one betting pool about them. 

Next to her, Cassie snorts. “She does have a way with him,” she admits, which is putting it delicately.

“They call her the Langdon-whisperer,” Trinity jokes, and Cassie cracks a smile. That also happens to be the moment Dana chooses to stroll past, her glasses slung low on her nose. She gives them both a shrewd up-and-down look overtop the rim of the clear frames. “Quit gossiping and get back to work,” she admonishes, but there’s a quirk to her lips that tells Trinity she agrees with them, even if she’ll never say as much out loud.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM 

Trinity swings by the breakroom. She hasn’t eaten yet, and although she didn’t bring a lunch, she has it on good authority that there’s a Tupperware container of leftover pizza in the fridge with Dennis’ name on it, and she intends to get to it first. 

The door to the breakroom is closed. Not unusual – it is technically a communal space, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to get a little privacy and enjoy lunch or a coffee in peace. They all do it, from time to time. She ducks her head to peek through the window, which is little more than a vertical strip of glass above the door handle. Inside, the lights are dimmed, but she can see Langdon sitting at the table. He looks like he’s in crisis, bent over with elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Dana is sitting across from him, her back to the door and therefore Trinity, but she’s got one hand outstretched, palm resting on one of Langdon’s forearms, comforting.

Trinity turns around and walks away.

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM 

A patient of Langdon’s requests a new doctor. Trinity only finds out about it in the first place because she’s the doctor Dana calls over to replace him. Apparently, Langdon was being ‘rude and insensitive.’

Go fucking figure.

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM 

Trinity is charting at Central Hub when Perlah storms over, dumping an armful of supplies onto the counter and beginning to sort through it with poorly-concealed rage. Trinity valiantly attempts to stay focused on her charting, but it’s difficult. Whatever’s going on with Perlah seems much more interesting, especially when Princess comes over, eyeing the other nurse appraisingly. 

“You okay?” Princess asks in Tagalog. Perlah huffs and rolls her eyes. “He’s being such an asshole, today,” she mutters in response.

Princess casts a furtive glance around, before demanding in a low voice, “Who?” 

“Who do you think,” Perlah responds. “Langdon.”

“He’s always an asshole,” Princess supplies, slipping back into Tagalog, and Perlah snorts. “Yeah, but today he’s worse.”

Trinity very carefully keeps her eyes on her chart, while trying to scoot her stool closer to the pair of gossiping nurses and subtly as she can. She’d feel bad about eavesdropping if she didn’t know for a fact that Princess would do the exact same thing were she in Trinity’s position – suffice it to say, Trinity is never telling Whitaker any privileged information about her dating life in the workplace ever again.

“I heard his wife kicked him out,” Princess says, and Trinity catches the grim, conspiratorial look she gives Perlah in her peripheral. 

“That’s rough,” Perlah mutters. “But no excuse. He needs to get his act together.”

“You don’t think…” Princess starts, trailing off. She and Perlah exchange wide-eyed looks. Trinity, not an official participant in the conversation, is left to rely on context clues. You don’t think he’s using again?

“He wouldn’t be here if he was,” Perlah reasons. Princess looks like she wants to say more, but then a trauma comes crashing through the bay doors and they’re forced to disperse.

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM 

In the wake of two back-to-back traumas, Robby finds out about the patient complaint against Langdon and sends him home an hour early. Langdon looks like he’s considering fighting it, but then seems to decide it isn’t worth pushing his luck. Even after six months and several apologies, he hasn’t quite made it off Robby’s shit list. 

He at least has the decency to look properly chagrined as he makes his way to the lockers. 

6:00 PM – 7:00 PM 

The rest of the shift passes without incident. In fact, the E.D. almost seems brighter with Langdon gone, as though his presence had been weighing on them all like some black, noxious cloud. Like everywhere he went, he’d been leeching his toxic, angry vibes into the fucking air or something.

Still, Trinity keeps replaying what she’d heard from Perlah and Princess, over and over again on repeat. You don’t think he’s using again?

Sure, watching Langdon stomp around the E.D. today like he was wallowing beneath his own personal thundercloud had been entertaining, especially when it wasn’t Trinity he was yelling at. But there was still a line. She could laugh at him when a patient vomited on his shoes, could feel a mix of gleeful joy and satisfaction every time he got assigned to Chairs, which he clearly hated. But the thought of him relapsing, losing his job, losing his medical license, for real this time…that didn’t make her feel good. 

It made her feel guilty. 

She’s still stewing in it when she strolls out of the E.D. and starts heading towards the staff parking lot. It’s pitch-dark outside, half-past seven in mid-January, and bitterly cold, so she’s surprised when she catches sight of a dark, vaguely human shape leaning against the side of the building, lit cigarette in hand. It’s so goddamn frigid out she can’t imagine anyone willingly hanging around outside when they could be inside instead. 

Then she sees who it is. Tall, slight hunch to his shoulders, and that stupid swoop of dark hair.

“Langdon? What are you still doing here?” she demands, adjusting the shoulder strap of her tote bag. “Thought Robby sent you home.”

“Can’t go home,” Langdon tells her, flicking ash off the end of his cigarette and watching it land in the snow, presumably so he doesn’t have to look at her. “Abby kicked me out.”

So the rumours are true. Trinity doesn’t have it in her to fake a reaction. “Oh.” 

He narrows his eyes at her. “You don’t look surprised.”

She shrugs at him. “Nurses talk.” It’s not much in the way of an explanation, but he seems to catch her drift, judging by the way his mouth pulls back into a pained grimace. 

“Great,” he mutters, head tipping skyward. “Fucking…great. Just what I wanted. Everyone in the whole fucking E.D. to know what a sad-sack fucking loser I am.”

“Well, what did you expect?” Trinity snaps. “You’ve been biting everyone’s heads off all goddamn day.”

At that, he just sighs, sad and forlorn. The big, drawn-out sort of sigh that dogs sometimes do.

“Jesus, just looking at you is depressing,” Trinity mutters. Then, louder, she asks him, “You got somewhere to stay tonight?”

He spreads his hands, a helpless sort of gesture. His cigarette, still pinched between his index and middle fingers, is burned down almost to the butt. “I’ll have to get a hotel, I guess.”

“You really can’t go home?” Trinity asks. “Like, won’t your wife have cooled off by now, or something?”

“Don’t you have anywhere else to be, right now?” Langdon demands, glaring at her. The effect is somewhat lessened, since most of his anger seems to have faded and been replaced with a hollow-eyed sort of exhaustion. Trinity knows the feeling. “Like staying out of my fucking business, maybe?” 

Trinity shows him her palms, a gesture of surrender. “Okay, jeez, sor-ry. Was gonna try and be nice and offer up my couch for the night, but if you don’t want it–”

“Why the fuck do you care?” he bites out, blunt.

“Who said I did?”

His eyes narrow. Like he’s studying her, trying to guess at her inner workings, puzzle her out. “What’s your game, here, Santos?”

“Nothing. No game. You want the couch or not?”

She watches him stub out what’s left of his cigarette. He’s quiet while he considers her offer, his expression unreadable. “You work tomorrow?” he eventually asks.

She answers him anyway. “Yeah. You?”

He nods, just once, and seems to resign himself to his fate. “Yeah. Carpool?”

Trinity feels a strange sense of victory at apparently, having won him over. “I’m driving,” she says, in a tone that she hopes leaves no room for argument. 

It only occurs to her once she’s unlocking the drivers’ side door of her shitbox Honda Civic (manually, with the actual key, because the automatic unlock button on the fob stopped working like, a year ago) while Langdon watches her, unimpressed, from the still-yet-unlocked passenger side, that maybe she should’ve asked him to drive. 

His car is probably a lot nicer, senior resident salary and all. She doesn’t say any of that now, though, so they’re left waiting for her to get her cold fingers to cooperate long enough to get the door unlocked while Langdon stares her down from over the roof of the car. Seriously, why is he so tall? 

As soon as she gets the door open, she smashes her fingers down on the button to unlock the rest of the doors, and then she’s turning on the car, trying to tamp down the way her teeth are chattering as she adjusts dials until the heat is full blast. Langdon throws his backpack in the footwell and then folds himself and his stupidly long legs into the passenger seat. 

“You can move the seat back,” she tells him. “If you want.” 

“Thanks,” he mutters, and then he starts fumbling around trying to figure out what to press to get the seat to move. She very purposefully does not laugh at him while he does. 

“Tell me if you want the heat down. Or up. Or whatever,” she mutters, plugging her phone in and scrolling through her Apple Music in search of something to play. She doesn’t know what sort of music Langdon likes, nor does she care. It’s her car, she gets to pick the music. She settles on The Beaches’  'No Hard Feelings', and puts the car in drive. 

They sit in awkward silence for the first few minutes, cloying and tense. Trinity tightens her grip on the steering wheel and tries to focus on the road, instead of on who’s sitting next to her in the passenger seat. Langdon doesn’t say anything either, just sits there with his hands on his knees, eyes closed, breathing slow and deliberate. Like he’s meditating. Trinity is tempted to ask about it, but she holds her tongue.

They’re still a few blocks from her place when Langdon’s eyes blink open. “So what else are the nurses saying about me?” he asks in a flat tone. 

Trinity doesn’t say anything. Both hands still on the wheel, her fingers flex, spasm. She adjusts her grip, reaches over with one hand to fiddle with some of the knobs on the dash. Temperature, fan speed. 

“Santos.”

“Take a guess,” she tells him. 

“What, that I’m using again?” 

She’s kind of expecting his voice to come out sharp, angry. He’s been snapping at everyone all day. Instead, he just sounds oddly…defeated. 

“They’re just worried about you,” she mutters, very pointedly not looking at him. 

“I’m not,” he tells her, voice low. “I know it’s kind of a catch-22. But I’m not.”

Trinity does look over at him, then. Only briefly, since she’s still driving and that does require paying attention to the road, but it’s long enough for her to get a flash of his face in the dim evening light. He looks as sad and resigned as he sounds, mouth a narrow slash, eyes hollow. But he doesn’t look like he’s lying, and Trinity likes to think she has a pretty good nose for bullshit. 

So she tells him, plain and simple, “Okay. I believe you.”

They don’t say anything else to each other for the rest of the drive.

 “Okay,” she says, putting the car in park. “Ground rules.”

Langdon, to his credit, says nothing, just looks at her expectantly. The yellowish glow of the streetlight they’re parked under kind of washes him out, and the parts of his face the light doesn’t reach are left cloaked in shadows. Trinity prefers women, but she’s also not blind – Langdon's attractive, in a conventional sense. It’s the jawline, probably.

She turns as far towards him as she can manage, her right knee bumping the center console, and levels him with a hard stare. “Full disclosure, Dennis also lives with me.”

Langdon stares back at her. “Okay.”

“You can stay for as long as you need, but you’re sleeping on the couch. You are not to enter either of our rooms under any circumstances, especially mine. There’s one bathroom, so we all have to share. On days that we both work, Dennis and I have worked out a system for showers, which you must also respect. You can use the kitchen, but no eating my food. And lastly, you are not to comment on the cleanliness of the apartment, or lack thereof,” she lists, checking each item off on her fingers as she does. Then she raises her eyebrows at him expectantly. “Deal?”

Langdon nods. “Yeah, fair enough. Deal.”

He holds out his hand for her to shake. She frowns at it for a half-second before gingerly putting her palm against his. His grip is firm, his skin dry and calloused against hers (which are also dry, she knows. She and her skin’s moisture barrier are fighting a losing battle against the hospital handwashing policy…) 

“Also, I know Krav Maga, so.”

She might be imagining it – low lighting and all – but she thinks she sees the corners of his mouth twitch, like he wants to smile and is doing a poor job of holding it back. “Good to know.”

“I’m just saying,” she says, feigning nonchalance as she steps out of the car, slamming the door behind her. “I could totally beat you up if I ever needed to.”

Across from her, Langdon climbs out of the passenger seat. He shuts the car door a lot more gently than she had, then pauses to stretch, twisting at the waist with both hands braced on his hips, like he’s trying to loosen something in his lower back. “Drug addict with a fucked-up back, remember?” he groans. “Pretty sure I’m not winning any fights.”

Trinity doesn’t answer, too busy remembering how small and frozen she’d felt when he’d reamed her out in that trauma room, all those months ago. And yeah, she’d stood there and taken it and didn’t try fighting back, because it was her first fucking day and he was her senior resident so she had to, if she wanted any kind of a future in medicine (shitty but true) and also because she knew Samira definitely did not have it in her to just…stand there and take it, not like Trinity could. It was better for both of them if Trinity took the blame.

More than anything else, more than the yelling or the actual words he’d said, she mostly just finds herself remembering how he’d towered over her, once he’d actually stood up. 

So yeah, he’s an addict (former) and yeah, his back is fucked, but he’s also a man, one who easily clears six feet. Automatically, physically, he’s a threat.

But she doesn’t tell him that. Bag slung over one shoulder, she silently leads him up the stairs to her apartment.

Whitaker’s sitting on their dumpy couch eating cereal in just his boxers and a ratty UPitt t-shirt when she shoulders her way through the door.

“Hey, Huckleberry,” Trinity greets, throwing her bag down and kicking off her shoes. “Shoes off,” she orders Langdon over her shoulder. On the couch, Whitaker’s eyes go very wide at the sight of Langdon looming over Trinity’s shoulder.

“Uh–” he starts, glancing between Langdon and himself, specifically his lower half, where his legs are very bare. “I wasn’t aware we were having company.” His voice is pitched a little high with uncertainty.

“Langdon’s crashing here,” Trinity says. She knows it’s not sufficient explanation, and that Dennis is probably going to corner her in the hallway between their bedrooms later and bombard her with questions, but it’s all she offers him for now.

“O-kay,” Dennis says, still staring at Langdon with a deer-in-headlights expression. Langdon gives him a little wave. “Hey, Whitaker.” He sounds tired. Exhausted, even. Trinity gives him a hazardous once-over and finds that even in the warm light of her apartment, he looks no less washed-out and sallow than he did in the car. There’s dark bags under his eyes, and his shoulders are hunched inward, like he’s actively trying to make himself look smaller. No easy feat, since he’s probably around 6’1”.

“Hi, Dr. Langdon...” Dennis offers, weak and hesitant.

“I’m going to shower,” Trinity announces, wanting to escape the awkwardness, even if it does mean she’s effectively throwing Dennis to the wolves. Well, wolf, singular.

She showers, letting the hot water rinse away all the sweat and grime and awful shit she’d witnessed over the course of her shift – oh, the joys of working in Emergency Medicine. Even after she’s clean, hair washed and conditioned and skin suitably scrubbed, she stays under the water for a few extra minutes, eyes closed, letting her mind go blank.

She gets out, towels off, and gets dressed in a clean t-shirt – oversized – and a pair of loose sweatpants. Then she pads back out to the living room, making a pit stop in front of her tiny hallway closet to grab a couple of her extra blankets.

Dennis has since retreated to his own room for the night, but she finds Langdon stretched out on the couch, still in his clothes, scrolling idly through his phone. She tosses the blankets at him unceremoniously. They hit him in the chest, and he glares at her. “Thanks,” he drawls, locking his phone and tossing it aside.

“The couch is probably older than me, but it’s comfortable,” Trinity says. For some reason, she feels like she needs to explain herself to him, which is a thought she’ll have to examine later. It’s also not even remotely related to what she needs to ask him, but for some reason she’s finding it hard to get the words out, something else she’ll have to unpack at a later date, possibly with her counsellor. 

Langdon doesn’t say anything, so she forges ahead, awkwardness be damned. “Slightly invasive question.” 

He sighs a little, like maybe he suspects what this conversation is going to be about, but he does nod. “Shoot.”

“I know you’re clean.”

“A year and four months,” he says, like it’s automatic. 

“Yeah, congrats. Is that…are you…” How can she ask this? “Exactly how sober are you? I know you smoke.” 

“I’m sure my sponsor would love it if I was sober-sober,” Langdon says, wry. “But I still drink, sometimes, too. Not a lot. Not that I was a heavy drinker before, when I was still using. Not since undergrad, probably. 12 hour shifts, two young kids–”

Trinity puts up a hand to stop him. “Okay, I don’t need the whole life story. I just…is it gonna be an issue for you, me having alcohol and shit in the house?”

“Alcohol, no.” Langdon says, careful. “Other shit, maybe.” He eyes her, arms folded over his chest. He looks mildly uncomfortable with even having this conversation. “Depends what it is.”

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to snitch,” Trinity blurts out, before she can think better of it, and Langdon’s brows climb towards his hairline. He seems to school his expression, before telling her gently, “I’m not a cop,” in the same tone of voice he probably takes when he uses that particular line on patients.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s just, like, a bit of weed. Nothing crazy.” 

Langdon sighs, levelling her with a look that reads, seriously? 

“But I don’t want…I would hate to be the cause of you compromising your sobriety,” Trinity tells him, the words coming out a bit stilted.

“If I did,” Langdon says slowly, still looking a little but like he just bit into a particularly sour lemon. “Which, by the way, is not something I want happening, either, that would be on me, not you.”

“Shut up, you know what I meant.”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “Yeah, I know what you meant. And I appreciate it, seriously.” He pauses, studying his own hands where they sit in his lap. “It shouldn’t be a trigger,” he says, and then looks back up at her. “Is there anything else? Any…prescription meds? I’m not asking because I–”

“No, I get it. You need to know what you’re up against,” Trinity says, a bit more easily. “Strongest thing in my medicine cabinet is Midol.”

Something in his expression relaxes, but only minutely. “Okay. The weed, is it…do you smoke?” He’s using his doctor voice on her again, the fucker. 

She shakes her head. “Gummies.”

“Okay, good. Just don’t expect me to partake, and we should be all good.” 

Her breath leaves her in a whoosh, relieved. “Okay. Cool.” That whole exchange was supremely awkward. She turns to leave, then thinks better of it. “Let’s never speak of this again, yeah?” 

He snorts. “Sure thing.”

“You can shower, if you want,” she tosses over her shoulder at him as she starts making her way to bed.

“Oh, I’m allowed?” he calls after her, feigning surprise. She pauses in the doorway of her bedroom so she can glare at him. “Don’t be a dick.”

He actually looks genuinely chagrined. “Sorry.”

“Ew. Don’t do that, either. I’m going to bed.”

Before she can shut the door fully, he tells her, “Thanks for doing this.” The words come quietly, like maybe it pains him to say it.

“Ugh. Spare me,” Trinity grumbles, and then regrets it just a little bit, because he does seem genuinely sincere. “...You’re welcome,” she says, through gritted teeth.

She hears the pipes squeal in the bathroom when Langdon turns the shower on, and then she’s out like a light.

DAY TWO

She wakes the next morning to the blaring of Dennis’ alarm, audible through the thin walls. She groans, yanks her duvet over her head, and flops back down against her pillows. She doesn’t fall back asleep, though, since the alarm keeps blasting for several more minutes before it seems to finally rouse Whitaker. There’s a clatter, like something heavy getting knocked off his nightstand, followed by muffled cursing from his room before the klaxon sound finally goes silent.

With a few choice curse words herself, Trinity drags herself out of bed. Dennis gets first shower, since he’s faster, so Trinity skips the bathroom and heads straight for the kitchen. Over the top of the island, she can see a pile of blankets on the couch, vaguely Langdon-shaped.

“Langdon, you alive?” she calls out, rattling a few cupboard doors noisily for good measure as she starts coaxing her ancient Nespresso machine to life.

The blanket pile mumbles an affirmative, followed by what might be fuck off, Santos. Her mouth quirks in a half-smile. “You want coffee?” she offers, because yeah, he’s her mortal enemy, but she’s not a bad host.

The blanket pile grumbles some more and then sits up, revealing a bleary-eyed Langdon, his hair sticking up in all directions. Trinity has to stifle a laugh at the sight. “Coffee’d be good,” he rasps, his voice all scratchy and low with sleep.

“Sleep okay?” Trinity asks, trying to be cordial while she waits for the Nespresso machine to heat up. The couch is old and dumpy, but it’s comfortable. Trinity’s had plenty of good naps on it.

“Yeah, thanks,” Langdon answers, rubbing his eyes with a closed fist like a little kid and yawning. It shouldn’t be endearing, Trinity reminds herself. She hates this man.

It’s just…it’s kind of hard to hate him when he’s squinting at her tiredly, wearing soft sleep clothes with his hair sticking straight up in the back.

“You take milk? Sugar?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. Just black.”

“Oooh, so edgy.”

“Fuck off.”

“Do you need to shower?” she asks.

“I should be good,” he says. “Showered last night.”

By the time Trinity showers and finishes blow-drying her hair, Dennis and Langdon are both dressed, lounging around in the living room like they’re waiting on her, which she supposes they kind of are, since she’s currently the only one with a car.

“Ready?” she asks, grabbing a couple of protein bars and shoving them into her bag before she starts shrugging into her coat. She doesn’t wait to see if the boys are following before she starts heading downstairs, trusting that Dennis will lock the door behind himself like usual.

“I guess I’ll sit in the back?” Dennis offers tentatively, when they reach her shitbox Civic and it becomes apparent that their usual configuration isn’t going to work, not with three of them.

“It’s fine, I can–”

“You’re taller,” Dennis says, kind of blunt, as is his way. The words are accompanied by a small, almost apologetic shrug. Trinity doesn’t know what it is exactly he thinks he has to apologize for. Being short?

“Thanks, Whitaker,” Langdon says, hands stuffed in his coat pockets. For the first time, it occurs to Trinity that maybe it’s weird for him, being around Dennis. After Langdon went on leave, Robby had really taken Dennis under his wing, and it’s pretty clear to anyone with eyes that Whitaker’s become the new favourite, the new golden child. It must suck for Langdon, watching Robby just replace him like that. Then again, Trinity supposes, it’s not like that's Whitaker’s fault.

“I’ll get my car tonight,” Langdon says, to the car at large, once they’re all buckled in. Trinity nods, but says nothing, too busy scrolling through her playlists.

Thankfully, nobody says anything about the three of them arriving together. In fact, nobody really seems to notice. Not that Trinity really cares if people know, it just wouldn’t be great for her image. She’s Langdon’s self-proclaimed nemesis, she’s not supposed to be doing him any favours. 

They split off after night shift hand-offs, Whitaker to North 5 to treat an elderly patient with a head lac, Trinity to Pedes to help Mohan examine an infant with a fever. 

One very pointed look from Robby has Langdon sighing and slinking off to Chairs for most of the morning. Trinity tries not to enjoy his suffering too much. 

***

That night, they drive home separately, Langdon following Trinity most of the way in his big fuck-off Toyota Highlander, black and obnoxious, exactly the sort of car she’d expected him to drive. 

Dennis rides shotgun in the Civic, which gives him and Trinity some much-needed alone time to debrief. 

“So–” Dennis starts, and Trinity honestly isn’t sure how she’s going to explain this one. 

Yeah, sorry, I invited our coworker, who I famously hate, to stay with us because I felt bad for him and got scared he’d backslide if I didn’t, and also I felt like it would somehow be at least partially my fault if he did. I should’ve asked you first, though, since you’re my roommate and best friend. 

She’s prepared to face judgement, possibly disapproval. She gets neither. Instead, the first thing out of Dennis’ mouth is a cautious, “It’s nice of you, letting him stay.”

“I know it’s weird,” Trinity says, gripping the steering wheel. 

“I mean, it’s not that weird,” Dennis placates. 

“He’s kind of a trainwreck,” Trinity defends, and then feels some type of way about the fact that she’s defending Langdon. 

Dennis doesn’t disagree. 

She promises him, “It’s only temporary.” 

Temporary turns into a whole week, and then two. Langdon is actively apartment hunting, though he hasn’t had much luck so far. He’s got a pretty lengthy list of requirements – aside from the obvious, which is that he has to be able to actually afford the place, it also has to be close to the hospital, and close to his kids’ school, and have at least two bedrooms, and come with a parking spot, and have laundry in the unit, and allow pets, and, and, and…

He also keeps offering to get a hotel, but Trinity, for reasons she can’t fully explain, keeps brushing him off. They’re not quite at peace – Trinity’s not ready to let go of her dislike of him, just yet – but they’ve at least achieved a sort of ceasefire. They’re definitely not friends, but they’re…coexisting.

At first, it feels like Langdon is trying to take up as little space as possible, like Trinity’s apartment is a goddamn National Park and he’s trying to ‘leave no trace.’

But as time stretches on, it becomes kind of inevitable for evidence of his presence to start materializing. His soap bottles take up residence between Trinity’s cheap Head & Shoulders and Dennis’ Irish Spring – Dennis is a 5-in-1 kind of guy, while Langdon appears to have a whole arsenal of hair products, which honestly tracks. His travel mug joins the stack of dishes on the drying rack. His Nalgene water bottle with its collection of Paw Patrol stickers, courtesy of Tanner and Penny, appears alongside the pair of Owala bottles from the two-pack Trinity bought because it was on sale at Target for herself and Dennis. It becomes not uncommon for Trinity to trip over his giant sneakers at the front door, or to find one of his hoodies strewn around.

He’s surprisingly neat, even if he does seem to be allergic to putting his shoes up on the shoe rack, an affliction that Dennis also suffers from. He cleans up after himself when he cooks, never leaves laundry out, and the quilt and blankets he sleeps with are (usually) left neatly folded on one end of the couch when not in use.

Another (unfortunate) side effect of living with Langdon is that Trinity is forced to learn more about him. His likes, his dislikes, his hobbies and habits. Even though it’s mostly against her will, Trinity does like to know things, so every new piece of information gets added to a mental list, in no particular order.

1. He likes running, says it clears his head. Apparently, he used to do marathons. On mornings off, he’ll disappear for long stretches and return sweaty, despite the freezing weather. The first time he did this, stepping out in only a pair of athletic shorts and a long-sleeve, Trinity had gaped at him, and not just because it was weird seeing his bare legs. “It’s like five degrees outside, what the fuck are you doing?” 
2. He takes his coffee black, and drinks more of it than is probably healthy, especially given his taste for Redbulls. He’s taken to buying the sugar-free ones lately, which Trinity isn’t sure is actually healthier. She starts cracking jokes about a betting pool for what’ll kill him first, heart problems from his excessive caffeine intake or lung cancer from his post-rehab smoking habit. He usually brushes her off with a nonchalant, “We all gotta die of something.”
3. He’s one of those people who likes having protein with every meal, to the point where he actually buys the high-protein varieties of things like yogurt and granola bars and even tortillas. Trinity didn’t even know they made high-protein tortillas.
4. He likes hockey, enough that he commandeers the living room TV every time the Pens are playing and he’s not working. Much to Trinity’s chagrin, Dennis starts joining him. She suspects it arises out of a longing to partake in the sort of ‘bro-time’ Dennis has been deprived of since moving out of a house full of brothers and in with her, more so than an actual desire to watch hockey, since he doesn’t seem to actually know very much about the game (she overhears Langdon explaining some of the ins-and-outs of it to him on more than one occasion).
5. He doesn’t like to read so much as he likes audiobooks and podcasts. He seems to always be listening to something – in the car, when he’s cooking, when he goes for runs, whenever he’s just lounging on the couch scrolling through his phone. Trinity can relate to not wanting to do anything in silence, lest one of her own thoughts occurs, though she usually prefers just listening to music. Podcasts tend to bore her, and she’ll be damned before she listens to a man talking about his opinions on things. 

All in all, it’s not so bad, sharing her space with Langdon. But they’re still not friends.

***

They’re on day five of Langdon sleeping on her couch, when she comes home after an especially gruelling shift to find him parked at the kitchen island scrolling through apartmenthunter.com.

There’s a pot of something simmering on the stove – another discovery about Langdon is that he’s actually kind of a decent cook, which had surprised her just a little bit. She would’ve pegged him as one of those deadbeat sort of guys, the type who never bothered to learn any household skills and just expected his wife to always do it for him. When she told him that, he’d laughed and told her, “Nah, my mom made sure all us kids knew at least the basics.”

“I got groceries,” he intones, without looking at her. “You know they sell vegetables in forms other than frozen, right?”

“Fuck off,” Trinity grumbles, throwing herself down on the couch. “You’re not my dad.” 

“I’m not even old enough to be your dad,” Langdon mutters, sounding kind of affronted, even though the next thing out of his mouth doesn’t really help his argument. “How was your shift?”

“Shitty. How’s your apartment hunt?”

“If you want me gone, I’ll get a hotel,” he says, and he’s said it enough times now that it sounds like a rehearsed response. 

“Jesus, it was just a question. Are you always this defensive?” 

“What are you, my therapist?” he snorts. But then he probes, “Why shitty? What happened?”

Trinity has to tamp down her irritation. “I didn’t kill anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking.” 

“I wasn’t.”

Trinity sighs, leaning her head back against the couch cushions. “I just…we had this patient…”

Langdon listens quietly while she recounts the case. How something had felt off to her, a hunch, a bad feeling. How she'd hesitated, worried she was looking for zebras instead of horses, or however that saying went. Still, she'd pushed for the extra test, despite some pushback from Robby.

And when the results came back, her hunch was proven right. 

“Sounds to me like you did everything you should have,” Langdon remarks.

“I just…I was second-guessing myself, you know? And I just keep thinking…what if one day I miss something because I’m too afraid to act?”

“Yeah, I get that,” Langdon says, quiet. “But you’re a good doctor, Santos. And you have good instincts. Keep trusting your gut.”

“And if my gut is wrong?” 

Langdon shrugs. “You’re pretty good at seeing through people's bullshit. I would know,” he adds, shooting her a wry smile. 

“Can I ask you something that’s kinda none of my business?”

“If I say no, are you gonna ask anyway?” 

“Did your wife kick you out because of the drugs?” 

He levels her with a look that kind of makes her feel like she’s being X-rayed. “Even if she did, that wouldn’t make it your fault.”

She opens her mouth to respond, but he cuts her off before she can even start. “Santos. The only people responsible for my marriage imploding are me and Abby, and even then, it’s still mostly on me. Things weren’t great even before I went to rehab, but neither of us wanted to admit it.”

“What am I, your fuckin’ therapist?” she snarks, and he laughs, tilting his face towards the ceiling like he really is talking to God and Jesus when he says, “Jesus, thank God you aren’t.” 

DAY SEVEN

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Trinity needs a consult. She steps out of South 18, scanning Central for an attending or one of the senior residents. She’s hoping for Mohan or Robby, preferably – she’s got a hunch about this case and of the available options, they seem the most likely to entertain a zebra chase of this nature. 

Unfortunately, there’s no sign of either of them, and McKay appears absent, as well. 

But Langdon is free. He’s sitting at Central Hub charting, alternating between frenzied typing and trying to slam back a RedBull. It’s been busy today.

Trinity sighs, cursing inwardly. Great. Just great. Squaring her shoulders, she approaches him. “Dr. Langdon.” 

He swings his head around to look at her, can of Redbull held halfway to his mouth. “Dr. Santos.” 

“Do you have a second?” 

“Sure,” he says, his easy tone a contrast to the thinly-veiled suspicion in his eyes. “What do you need?” 

“I have this patient,” Trinity starts, thrusting her tablet at him. He takes it, scans over the chart with pursed lips. “38 year old female, presented with extreme fatigue and dizziness, labs all came back normal. She’s also been suffering from low mood and difficulty concentrating. PHQ-9 score of 16.”

“Okay, sounds like moderate to severe depression to me,” Langdon offers, glancing up from the chart with raised eyebrows. “Set her up with outpatient psych and discharge.” 

“My gut is telling me it’s something else,” Trinity insists. She’s expecting him to fight back, tell her she’s looking for something that isn’t there. 

Instead, he hands the tablet back to her and says, “Okay. What are you thinking?” 

Trinity blinks at him, surprised. “Could be hypothyroidism. There’s a lot of symptom overlap with depression.” She'd thought depression, too, at first, but...the patient doesn't seem depressed. Yes, she has low mood, sleep difficulties, trouble concentrating - all consistent with MDD. But she doesn't have the level of anhedonia Trinity would expect to see in a patient this clinically depressed. Instead, she seems more...frustrated than anything else, frustrated with how her symptoms are interfering with her daily life. 

He nods, hair flopping forward over his forehead. “Does she have any other symptoms? Joint pain, cold intolerance, weight gain?” 

Trinity falters. “I…can find out.”

Again, she’s half-expecting Langdon to chastise her. She’s wasting time and resources, taking up a bed when her patient should be getting discharged. But instead he just nods. “You’ll want blood tests to confirm. TSH and–”

“Free T4, yeah.”

“Keep me posted,” Langdon calls after her, and she remembers him saying something else. You’re a good doctor, Santos. Keep trusting your gut. 

“Yeah, I will,” Trinity tells him. “…Thanks.”

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

She catches Langdon as he’s leaving South 20. “Hey.”

“What’s up? Get those blood tests back?”

She passes him her tablet. “Yeah.” She watches him scan the results, blue eyes looking even bluer in the whitish glow of the tablet screen. “Huh. Low TSH and low Free T4.”

“Yeah,” Trinity says again, folding her arms over her chest. 

He hands the tablet back. “Well, you were right. It’s not depression.”

That makes Trinity pause. “But hypothyroidism would show up as high TSH and low T4.”

“Not if it’s a pituitary issue,” Langdon says. “Any history of TBI? Head and neck cancer? Autoimmune disease?”

“…she had throat cancer a few years ago,” Trinity says slowly. “They treated with radiation.”

Langdon makes a ta-da! gesture with his hands. “There you go. Central hypothyroidism, probably the result of a tumour or lesion. Rare type. Order a TRH stimulation test to check whether it’s pituitary or hypothalamic, plus an MRI to check for tumours. And loop someone from endocrinology in to confirm dosage before you start her on levothyroxine.”

“Okay. Got it,” she says, nodding. Before she turns to leave, Langdon stops her. “Hey, Santos. Good catch.” 

She doesn’t say anything, just gives him a nod, but a warm feeling blooms in her chest. Pride, maybe, or satisfaction. She’ll never admit it out loud, but before the whole…stealing benzos of it all, she’d actually wanted Langdon as a mentor – learn from the best, and all that. The nemesis thing had come after, when it became clear that he was more interested in being an asshole than showing her the ropes. If she couldn’t join ’em, she’d have to beat ’em, or however that saying went.

But maybe that could change.

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM 

MVCs always suck. 

“Restrained driver, female, early thirties, GCS 8. She lost control of the vehicle and hit a barrier pretty hard. Oxygen sats were low and she wasn’t protecting the airway so we intubated in the field. Her husband’s coming in the next ambo, he was riding passenger.”

“Thanks guys,” Robby says, brisk. “Okay, on three…”

Traumas always make Trinity feel a little bit like she’s looking at the world through a pinhole, like her focus narrows down to solely what’s right in front of her. ABCs, next steps, diagnosis, treatment. It’s fast in a way that other cases aren’t, laced with panic despite the way all of them are careful to remain level-headed, calm. Weighted, in the sense that they can’t afford to miss anything, not when someone’s life is on the line. 

The patient has multiple rib fractures, a collapsed lung, crush injuries to both legs, and a nasty-looking head wound that’s still bleeding sluggishly. Robby’s concerned about swelling around her brain, especially since she wasn’t protecting the airway, so she goes up for CT as soon as they stabilize.

It’s over and done within the span of what feels like minutes, but somehow also could have been hours, the way they all sag with exhaustion once the gurney is rolled out of Trauma 1. Next door, in Trauma 2, Trinity can glimpse flashes of people moving around through the double set of glass doors, can just barely make out the cadence of Langdon barking orders. They’re still working on the passenger, then. The husband of the woman she had just helped treat. 

Trinity peels off her sterile paper gown and blue nitrile gloves slowly, takes her time putting the bloodstained articles into the disposal. Usually, she’s still moving fast at the end of a trauma, adrenaline still pumping after the high-energy of a truly emergent case. But something about this one is sticking with her, giving her pause. 

Because amidst the bruising from the seatbelt impact, there had been other bruises mottling the woman’s belly and chest and sides, older ones, in various stages of healing. Like she’d been beat up. Her face had bruising, too, a blue-black stain along her jaw, plus some more swelling and split skin around her left cheekbone and eye. They’d written it off as injuries from the crash at first, but upon closer inspection, Trinity noted that the split skin along the ridge of her orbital socket was scabbed over, that the bruise on her jaw was green around the edges. Partially healed, like the wounds were old. 

She’d seen bruising like that before, more than once. Usually on women, but sometimes on kids, too. Someone was hitting this woman. Abusing her. 

And Trinity had a feeling she knew who. 

***

She lingers outside Trauma 2, chewing her lip apprehensively. Finally, the doors swing open. Mel steps through first, already looking tired from the adrenaline crash, a small crease between her brows. Langdon is close behind, one hand hovering at the small of Mel’s back. He’s still wearing his protective glasses, but they’re pushed up into his hair, holding it back from his face like a headband. 

Trinity tries to guess at the outcome of their case just by looking at them, but it’s hard to tell. 

“Did he make it?” she blurts. 

Mel blinks at her, eyes coming into abrupt focus, like she hadn’t noticed Trinity standing there until she’d said something. “Oh. Yes, he’ll likely make a full recovery. Did you treat his wife?” 

Trinity swears inwardly. Fuck. “Uh, yeah. Yes. She just went up to CT.” 

Behind Mel, Langdon narrows his eyes. “Something wrong?” he asks. 

Trinity shakes her head. “No,” she replies, curt. “Nothing’s wrong.” 

Then she turns on her heel and walks away. 

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

“Dr. Robby.”

He lifts his head from the chart he’d been studying. “Dr. Santos. What can I do for you?”

“Our MVC patient, is she back from CT yet?”

“Not yet,” Robby says carefully. “Why?”

“I just…the bruising we noticed. It wasn’t all from the crash.” 

“I am aware, yes,” Robby nods. “You’re concerned it’s from the husband?” 

“Aren’t you?”

“It’s a possibility,” Robby agrees. “But we don’t have all the information, yet. When she wakes up, I will page Kiara and we will talk to her.”

He says it very firmly, leaving no room for argument. Trinity makes herself give him a jerky nod and heads off to check on her other patients, trying to ignore the nagging, annoying feeling of knowing there’s nothing she can do. 

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

The wife is still sedated when she comes back from CT. Robby catches Trinity lingering in front of South 15 just once, staring through the glass at the woman’s prone form, still intubated, and shooed her away to pick up a case of intractable vomiting in North 4. She hasn’t tried again since. 

And then she sees the husband disappear into the patient room. Sees the door swing slowly shut behind him, like he’s making sure it closes. 

He’s still in a gown, but he’s up and about in a way that tells Trinity his injuries weren’t really that severe. She thinks she remembers Mel saying something about whiplash and a concussion, some cracked ribs and a nasty laceration from a piece of the windshield cutting into him, but otherwise, the wife seems to have gotten the worst of it. It pisses her off, knowing the evil bastard is getting off practically scot-free while his wife is breathing through a goddamn tube.

Cold dread settles in her stomach. She’s moving before she can think better of it. 

She reaches South 15 just in time to hear him mutter, “That’s what you get for trying to kill me, you fucking bitch.”

Trinity shoves her way through the door. 

“Sorry, sir. I really don’t think you’re supposed to be out of bed, yet.” It’s like she hears herself say the words from outside of her body. Like her mouth has completely detached itself from her brain. 

He looks up at her, framed in the doorway. He’s standing over his wife’s bedside, but he’s not holding her hand or touching her face the way Trinity has grown accustomed to seeing spouses interact with each other when one of them is sick, intubated. Instead he’s just kind of…hovering. 

She doesn’t like it. 

“I just wanted to see my wife,” he says, and he sounds so different than he had mere moments ago. Like a different person entirely. “I feel much better now. Please, can’t I sit with her? I’ve been so worried.”

He moves, reaching for his wife’s hand, maybe, and something in Trinity snaps. “Don’t fucking touch her.”

It’s a shame, really. Trinity was actually having a pretty good day. 

“What’d you say to me?” he demands, face going red underneath the butterfly bandages holding his various cuts and scrapes from the glass of the broken windshield closed. “Say that again, you goddamn bitch–”

Trinity steps further into the room. “You heard me, asshole.”

“You have no fucking right–” he hisses, and then he’s lunging at her, surprisingly fast for someone who’s just been in a car crash. He grabs her by the front of her scrubs and slams her backwards, knocking into an instrument cart before she hits the wall, hard. 

She could put her Krav Maga skills to good use, but she’s pretty sure doctors using martial arts moves on their patients is generally frowned upon. And Robby’s patience with her is thin enough, especially today. 

“Get the fuck off me–” Trinity exclaims, scrabbling at him, nails digging in, but his grip is too strong. He’s a big man, built like a fucking brick shithouse, and she hates him for it – hates that a man so physically large still feels the need to beat his wife in order to feel like a man. Hates that for the first time in a very long time, Trinity herself feels small and powerless and afraid. She’d promised herself–

The door is thrown open. “Hey. HEY! What the hell is going on in here?”

She recognizes Langdon’s voice, raised and angry, before she recognizes the shape of him, blurry in her peripheral. 

The crash of Trinity hitting the instrument cart (and the instrument cart then hitting the floor), must have attracted attention. 

Meaty hands stay fisted in the front of Trinity’s scrubs. Langdon elbows himself between her and the guy, all sharp edges. One of his hands splays out over the guy's chest, wide palm and long fingers. “Take your hands off her,” Langdon warns, an edge to his tone. “Now.” 

Still, the guy doesn’t move. Trinity wonders if Langdon thinks he can take this guy, if it comes down to that. While she admires his bravery, she’s not sure she loves his chances. Drug addict with a fucked-up back, remember?

But the two of them together, maybe that would–

“Am I gonna have to call security?” Langdon demands.

“Security? She started it–”

“This hospital has a zero-tolerance policy for aggression against healthcare workers,” he snaps. “Back off, or I will call security and have you removed.”

The guy is clearly seething, but he drops his hands. Trinity takes a step back, tries to breathe through the way her heart is racing. 

“Thank you,” Langdon says, exaggerated. “Anything like that happens again, I’ll skip security and go straight to the police. Understand?” 

“You can’t be serious,” the guy exclaims. “She’s the one you should be calling the cops on. I haven’t–”

Langdon’s eyebrows tick upwards. His voice is level, firm. Trinity doesn’t miss the way he not-so-subtly shifts so he’s standing between her and the guy. “Like I said,” he repeats. “Zero-tolerance policy. All you gotta do is keep your hands to yourself and treat me and my staff with respect, and we won’t have any problems. That sound fair?” 

“Yeah, whatever, man,” the guy scoffs. “But I don’t want her anywhere near me. Or my wife,” he says, jabbing a finger in Santos’ direction. 

“No problem,” Langdon says, a little more placating now. He tilts his chin towards the door, where Jesse is hovering, like he'd been ready to jump in too, if it came down to it. Behind him, a small crowd of nosy onlookers have gathered by the nurses' station. Trinity spots Ahmad among them, alert but hanging back, just in case his presence escalated things. Smart move. “Why don’t I have nurse Jesse here escort you back to your room? I’m afraid your wife isn’t quite ready for visitors, but I’ll come see you myself if anything changes.” 

The words are polite, framing it as a request, but one look at Langdon’s face tells Trinity he’s not really asking. Any refusal to go with Jesse back to his room, to cooperate, and Ahmad will be in here in probably about two seconds flat.  

She thinks Mr. Asshole might be coming to the same conclusion, though he looks decidedly unhappy about it. Very begrudgingly, he lets Jesse walk him back to his bed in North. 

Santos is about to leave the room, too, but Langdon stops her before she can even reach the door. “Dr. Santos. A word?”

She looks at him. He jerks his head at her, an invitation to follow him. Hands clenched into fists at her sides, she does. 

He walks past Central Hub, straight out the sliding doors and into the ambulance bay. Outside, it’s cold enough to make Trinity shiver, but at the same time, she kind of appreciates it. The cold helps her focus, brings her back to herself from where she’d still kind of been floating, outside of her own body. 

She watches Langdon take a pack of nicotine gum out of his pocket. He unwraps a stick of gum slowly, sticks it in his mouth. Chews. He’s been trying to quit smoking. 

Trinity kind of wants to ask if she can have some. Better yet, she wants to ask him for a cigarette. 

She doesn’t. 

Still chewing, he looks her up and down, clinical, like he’s scanning her for injuries. “You okay?” 

She wraps her arms around herself, hands squeezing her own shoulders. The feeling is grounding. “I will be.”

“Wanna tell me what that was about?” 

She tries to explain as best she can. The bruises. The evidence. What she’d heard him say before she entered the room. While she talks, Langdon listens, an unreadable expression on his face and his arms folded over his chest.

“Page Kiara, tell her everything that just happened, then go take ten in the lounge.” 

“I’m fine–”

“You’re really not,” he says, flat. No room for argument.  “You can’t go back in there, anyway. He asked for a new doctor.”

“Oh, bullshit–”

“You want Gloria down here?”

Trinity seethes. He’s right, and he knows it, and she hates him for it. “God, you’re the worst.”

“So I’ve heard. Go, Santos. That’s an order.”

She storms off. 

7:00 PM 

By the time her shift ends, she doesn’t even want to go home. She doesn’t want to get in Langdon’s car. She wishes she’d driven herself in today, wishes she had her shitbox Civic, so she could get in and just drive, uncaring where she ends up. 

Langdon finds her in the stairwell, staring at her phone. It’s open to her text thread with Garcia. They haven’t sent any messages to each other in months, but she’s debating whether or not it would be worth it to send her something. U up? feels too…frat-boy. 

The door to the stairwell pushes open. “Santos.”

“Go away, Langdon.”

“You want me to leave you here?” he asks. “Because I will. Don’t tempt me.” 

She closes her Messages app and glares up at him. “So then why are you still here?”

“You really don’t want to go home?”

“I would literally rather go anywhere else.” 

He spins his key ring around his pointer finger, the metal jangling. He’s got a beaded keychain shaped like a lizard, green and yellow. One of his kids probably made it. “Okay. So let’s go.” 

He drives them out to a nondescript brick building, one storey, industrial-looking. 

“Oh my God,” Trinity intones, staring at it through the windshield. “You’re going to murder me.”

Langdon rolls his eyes, already unclipping his seatbelt. “I am not.”

“This is exactly the kind of place you’d bring someone you were going to murder.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“We’re going to go in there and there’s going to be plastic sheeting on everything.”

“This isn’t Dexter,” he replies. “Just…you’ll see, okay?” 

He leads her inside. There’s no clear plastic sheeting, no chains or meat hooks or tables stacked with torture tools. Instead, the interior looks like a regular gym. There’s a couple people on treadmills, a few more lifting weights. The guy behind the desk – bald, Black, extremely jacked – gives Langdon a wave when they walk in. “Evening, Doc.”

“Hey, Andre.” 

Langdon leads her over to a row of punching bags.

“You still wanna be a surgeon?”

The question catches her off-guard. It doesn’t make sense to her, why he’s asking it, in this place, right now. “…Maybe.” She’d wanted to be, before coming into the Pitt. She’s not so sure anymore. She likes emergency medicine, more than she thought she would. The Pitt is the first place she’s felt like she actually belongs, without having to carve a space out for herself by force, with teeth and claws. 

“Then you’d better protect your hands,” he says, and suddenly the question makes a world of sense. He produces a pair of rolled-up cotton hand-wraps, dark blue, from a pocket of his backpack, tosses them to her. “You know how to wear those?” 

“I think so,” Trinity answers, peeling the Velcro open and starting to wrap them around her hands. Wrists first, then knuckles… She’s taken self-defense classes, but never boxing. When she’d learned Krav Maga, they’d worn padded gloves. 

Langdon watches, gives her an approving nod when she’s done. “Okay, have at it,” he says, directing her to the bag. 

She doesn’t know how long she spends just…whaling on the punching bag. By the time she steps back, she’s sweating all over, muscles burning and chest heaving. 

“Feel better?” Langdon asks, arching his eyebrows at her. 

She nods. 

“You got a mean right hook.”

“Told you I could kick your ass.”

She catches the barest hint of a smile, nothing more than a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Never doubted it for a second,” he assures her. 

“Do you come here a lot?” she asks him, wiping the sweat off her brow.

He shrugs. “It’s a good way to blow off steam. Works a hell of a lot better than yoga.”

Her eyebrows creep upwards. “You do yoga?”

“Tried it,” he corrects. “Tried a lot of things, when I was getting clean. Unfortunately, I’m a little too cynical for the inhale, exhale bullshit.” He tosses her a bottle of Gatorade. Electric blue, her favourite. “Drink that. Go get changed and meet me back at the car.” 

***

Langdon doesn’t say anything when she climbs into the Highlander’s passenger seat, or when she plugs her phone into his CarPlay so she can play her own music. He drives them back to her apartment without speaking, the only sound in the car the Wet Leg album Trinity had put on.

Only once he’s putting the car in park does he break the silence. “You gonna be okay?” 

“Yeah.”

He turns to face her, over the gearshift. “You can’t do that shit again. Start fights with patients.”

The way he says it makes her kind of want to start a fight with him. Say something mean, cutting. After all, he’s not exactly setting a shining example. His patient satisfaction scores are nothing to write home about, and she’s seen him get snarky with rude patients more than once. “I know.”

He looks like he wants to press her further, but thankfully, decides not to. 

He’s reaching for the door handle when Trinity remembers she should probably thank him. “Langdon. Thanks.” 

“Yeah. Any time.” 

***

Before she goes to bed, she opens up her text thread with Garcia. 

Hey, she types, staring at it for a few seconds, the cursor blinking blue.

Before she can think better of it, she hits send, then locks her phone and rolls over, pulling her blankets up over her head. 

She’s asleep not long after. 

***

When she wakes up, there’s a response from Garcia waiting for her, sent less than ten minutes after Trinity’s own text. 

Hey, it reads. 

Trinity swipes the notification away, ignores the red circle advertising her 1 unread message in the top-right corner of her Messages app icon. Peels herself off her mattress and goes to make coffee. She can hear Dennis in the shower, humming along to his vintage funk playlist. 

Langdon’s already up when she emerges into the kitchen, leaning against the counter in jogging pants and an Under Armour long-sleeve, staring down the Nespresso machine with apprehension as it struggles to life. A pan of eggs is sizzling on the stove. 

“Morning,” he greets. 

“Fuck off,” she mumbles, her voice coming out gravelly from sleep. 

Langdon snorts. “Fully recovered, I see.”

He passes the coffee he’d been making to her, pops another pod into the Nespresso to make a second one for himself. “Here. You need that more than I do.” 

“Thanks.” 

“Carpool again today?” 

“Sure.”

***

She’s not sure when it happens, the subtle shift in their dynamic. They’re not friends, but they’re not quite enemies anymore, either. Maybe it started the moment she offered up her couch, or maybe it was the day of that awful shift, when Langdon drove her to the boxing gym to vent all of her frustration. 

But something has changed, whatever and whenever it was, and it’s something she’s not sure how to quantify. 

They’re in the living room, sprawled out on the couch. Well, Langdon is on the couch, long legs stretched out in front of him and feet propped up on the coffee table. His socks don’t match. 

Trinity is on the floor in front of the couch, similarly stretched-out, head propped up against the front of the seat cushions. They’re both in lounge clothes. Trinity is in a pair of boxer shorts under her baggiest t-shirt, black with a print of David Bowie that’s so faded it’s barely discernible now. Langdon in blue plaid flannel pyjama pants and a loose-fitting t-shirt, plain white. His hair is messy, sticking up in the back where he’s been unintentionally rubbing his head on the couch cushions, building up static. 

It’s been long enough now that it’s no longer weird, seeing him in something other than scrubs. Seeing him outside of the work environment, relaxed, stripped back, unprofessional. Like he’s not just her shitty coworker she kind of has a vendetta against anymore, only she has no idea what to categorize him as if he isn’t. 

They’re watching Dexter, or trying to. Trinity’s already seen every episode at least twice, and her edible is starting to kick in. 

The question has been hovering on the tip of her tongue for a while now, but she hasn’t found the right moment to say it. 

“So, you and Dr. Garcia are like…friends, right?” she asks, slow, tentative in a way that she usually isn’t. 

Langdon laughs. Loud, with his full chest, probably with his head thrown back and everything. Not that Trinity would know, still stubbornly facing the TV. 

“Nope,” Langdon says, and it takes until his ensuing sentence for Trinity to realize he’s not saying no to her question, but rather to the very idea of answering it. “Leave me out of this. I am not touching whatever it is you’ve got going on with Garcia, not with a ten-foot pole.”

Trinity turns her head so she can narrow her eyes at him. “So she has talked about me?”

“Can I plead the fifth?” Langdon asks, tilting his head to one side.

Trinity makes a frustrated noise. “Ugh, come on, Frank-n-furter, I need a wingman. Dennis is no help, he’s too scared of her.”

“Who says I’m not?” he retorts, eyebrows raising. She just stares at him, pushing her lower lip out in a dramatic pout. He sighs. “God, you’re the worst. Look, Yoyo’s all bark, no bite, okay? I’ve known her since med school, and to be honest, she’s never really been the settling-down type.” 

Trinity’s jaw tenses. She has to remind herself not to grind her teeth together. “Right.”

“But who knows,” he adds, and it feels consolatory. “Maybe she’s changed. Matured.”

Trinity doesn’t say anything, turning back towards the TV, where Dexter is fighting with a man in an elevator.

“Can I ask…” Langdon starts, and Trinity feels her hackles rising already, mostly out of habit. “And feel free to deck me or whatever if this is way out of line,” he continues, and she turns back towards him, suspicious. And a little bit anxious, too, if she’s being honest. 

“You’re lesbian?” he asks, and Trinity almost laughs. All that buildup, just for that to be his million-dollar question? 

“I don’t necessarily like to label it,” she answers, relaxing minutely. “But I definitely prefer women.”

Langdon, to her surprise, accepts this answer easily. Far more than she would have expected him to. The only thing he says in response is, “Cool.”

They lapse back into silence for a bit. They watch Dexter load the elevator man's body into the trunk of his car.

“So, you and Garcia, huh?” he asks, and even though she’s facing the TV, she can hear the shit-eating grin on his face.

“I changed my mind,” Trinity bemoans. “I am not talking about this with you.”

“You’re the one who brought it up!” he protests.

“And I am regretting it more and more with every passing second,” she complains, and he has the audacity to laugh at her, at her misery, which has her swiveling back around to arch her eyebrows at him, incredulous. “Oh, please. You’re one to talk.”

He frowns at her, a divot forming between his brows that almost matches the one in the center of his chin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Trinity just blinks at him, because surely he’s not that oblivious. “Uhh, you and Mel?”

He doesn’t take the bait. “What about me and Mel?”

“Dude. Be so serious right now.” 

“I am,” he says, and Trinity is actually starting to believe him. Maybe he really is that oblivious. “There’s nothing going on between me and Mel.”

Still, she’s determined to get to the bottom of this. “And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it?”

Langdon remains committed to playing dumb. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“I refuse to believe you are actually that dense.” 

He gives her a blank look. 

“She obviously likes you,” Trinity tells him, gesturing wide. 

“Mel and I are friends,” he says slowly, looking at her like she’s just grown a second head. “That’s it.”

“Well, she definitely wants it to be more,” Trinity tells him, matter-of-fact, and…there it is. A shift in his expression, a flicker, there and gone, but he’s definitely curious. Interested. 

“Why…what makes you say that?”

Trinity fights the self-satisfied grin currently threatening to curl across her face. She can’t laugh yet. She has to hold it in. “She literally lights up every time you walk into a room. She laughs at all your stupid jokes. She’s constantly finding excuses to work with you—”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Langdon argues. “We’re friends. We work well together.” 

“Oh, I wasn’t finished,” Trinity threatens. “You know Mel hates when people touch her, right? Once, I accidentally brushed past her in the hallway by the elevators and I think she jumped ten feet in the air.”

“You probably startled her, that’s all. She doesn’t mind when I—”

“Ding, ding, ding!” Trinity exclaims, throwing her hands up in victory. “You’ve just proven my point! She doesn’t mind when it’s you.” 

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Langdon insists. “We’re coworkers. Professionals.” 

Trinity sighs, heavy, and pushes herself up onto the couch so she can face him properly. “Look,” she says, suddenly serious. “If you ask me—”

“—I literally wasn’t, but fine.”

“—Mel is the type of girl – or woman, I guess – who doesn’t have a lot of experience in the…romance department. She’s cute, but she’s kind of shy. Quiet. A little awkward.” 

Langdon doesn’t interrupt her again, but he still looks vaguely pissed-off.

“And you’re…look, I don’t usually swing that way, and I don’t want to fan the flames of your already oversized ego, but you’re a pretty conventionally attractive guy, Langdon. You’re ‘E.R. Ken.’ It’s not that far-fetched to say Mel probably has a crush on you. Hell, I’m sure every heterosexually-inclined woman in the department has at some point. I mean, a patient called you ‘Dr. Dreamy’ literally the other day.”

“This isn’t Grey’s fucking Anatomy, Santos,” he mutters. “And that patient was in her 60s. Literally a grandmother.” 

Trinity waves him off. “My point is. You’re like, the hot popular guy, and Mel is the shy nerd. A girl like her isn’t gonna think she has a chance in hell with a guy like you. And I know you’re a total attention whore and you probably love how she hangs onto your every fucking word and looks at you like you hung the goddamn moon, but if you don’t like her like that, you should man up and say something, set some sort of a boundary with her, because otherwise you’re just gonna end up leading her on.” 

It’s a lot of words, all at once. They leave her all in a rush, angry on Mel’s behalf in a way that she didn’t know she was capable of. After all, her and Mel aren’t that close. Trinity has no real reason to feel so protective of Dr. Mel King, outside of the often nebulously defined social construct known colloquially as girl code. 

Or maybe she’s just found another, new reason to hate Langdon. 

Langdon, who is sitting very still and quiet at the other end of the couch. 

She leans forward and jabs him in the ribs. “Langdon? Did you hear what I said?” 

“No, yeah. Just…just thinking,” he says, kind of absent. He does have a very pensive expression on his face, which lends him some credibility. “You really think she…”

Trinity just looks at him, as if to say, be so fucking for real right now.  

“I’m not trying to lead anybody on,” he says, spreading his hands in his lap and directing his gaze down at them almost helplessly. “I wouldn’t do that, especially not to Mel. It’s just…it’s complicated.”

Trinity shakes her head. “Mmm, I don’t know. Seems pretty simple from where I’m standing. You don’t like her, you let her down easy, she’ll get over it in a couple weeks. You do like her, you ask her out, she’ll say yes, everyone is happy.”

“I can’t just…I’m barely a year sober, I’m getting a divorce, I’ve got two kids under the age of six—”

Trinity groans, flopping back against the couch in exasperation. “Come on, Frankenstein. You’ve got baggage, so what? So does everyone. So does Mel, probably.”

“Maybe. But Mel deserves better,” he says, and he’s talking quietly, but his voice is suddenly intense, raw in a way that it wasn’t before, and Trinity thinks maybe she has been reading this right all along. 

“Well,” she says. “I won’t disagree with you there. You’re an asshole, you’re arrogant, you talk down to patients sometimes without even realizing you’re doing it, you stole drugs from the fucking emergency department—”

“Wow, this is a terrible pep talk,” he remarks, dry and sardonic. 

“—so God only knows what Mel sees in you, but for whatever reason, she likes you. You make her happy. And I think that’s what she deserves.”

“Yeah, well,” Langdon mutters, avoiding her eyes, a sure sign of victory. Point Trinity. “Nobody asked you.” 

DAY FIFTEEN

While carpooling is nice, and Trinity has been saving money on gas by making Langdon drive her to and from work, their shifts don’t always line up that way. The rotation this week has Trinity and Dennis off when Langdon’s on, and Dennis is gone, probably off playing Little House on the Prairie with Amy, so Trinity is enjoying a rare moment of solitude in her now frequently-overcrowded apartment. 

She’s lounging on the couch eating Cheetos and watching Criminal Minds while playing on her phone (to minimize the chances of a thought occurring, duh) when Langdon shuffles in through the front door, looking red-eyed and exhausted.

“Tough day?” Trinity asks, around a mouthful of Cheeto. Langdon doesn’t say anything, just glares at her from underneath the brim of his Penguins cap.

“Wanna talk about it?” Trinity offers, not letting up.

Langdon shakes his head, crossing the room to drop down on the opposite end of the couch from her, his leg only inches away from Trinity’s sock-covered feet, where her own legs are stretched out along the length of the couch. He usually looks pathetic, at least to her, but he looks especially pathetic now, all hunched over and curled into himself, elbows propped on his knees and head in his hands. She watches silently as he takes off his stupid ball cap and drags his fingers through his hair.

His hands are shaking.

She nudges the side of his thigh with her foot. “Langdon.”

He doesn’t answer.

She tries again. “Frank.”

“Don’t,” he says, and there’s a note of warning in his tone. But Trinity’s not afraid of him, not anymore.

“Tell me to fuck off, and I will,” she tells him, dead serious. She thinks maybe he’s going to take her up on that offer, but then he shakes his head. “I don’t…I don’t think I can be alone, right now,” he admits, and the words sound a little bit like they had to be pried out of him by force, like it took effort to voice them aloud. 

“That bad, huh?”

He just nods.

She offers the open bag of Cheetos. Again, he shakes his head.

They sit through a whole episode and a half of Criminal Minds in complete silence before he speaks again. He’s sunken back into the couch cushions, but looks no less like a shell of himself.

“It was a house fire. Parents, two kids. The kids’ bedrooms were above the kitchen. They came in critical. Smoke inhalation, thirty percent full-thickness burns.” His voice sounds oddly strained, like he’s trying not to cry.

“How old?” Trinity asks, quiet.

“The boy was 7. Girl was 4.”

Trinity sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Shit.” His kids are around that age. Penny’s three going on four, she’s pretty sure, and Tanner just turned six. 

She remembers that his birthday was recently because she’d made Dennis go halfsies with her on one of those little-kid Lego kits from Walmart, the ones with the oversized pieces so they’re less of a choking hazard. She’s pretty sure Langdon had teared up a little when she’d shoved it at him, a blue gift bow taped to the top of the box and a muttered explanation that this is for Tanner.

“We tried everything,” he says, sounding hollowed-out, completely broken. “They didn’t make it.”

She’d figured, as soon as he came through the door and saw the defeated expression on his face. “Shit,” Trinity says again, with feeling. “I’m so sorry.”

“I just kept thinking...” he starts, then trails off like he doesn’t want to finish that sentence. Losing patients is always hard, and it’s always worse when it’s a pedes case. Trinity can’t even fathom how hellish it must be to look at a patient and imagine that’s your kid.

“Yeah,” she agrees, because she hasn’t actually said anything in response to him yet, and she doesn’t know what else to say. For a moment, there’s a long, drawn-out silence, awkward and thick. Then Trinity works up the courage to ask him, “What do you need?”

“I already called my sponsor,” he admits. “And I’ve been fucking...chain-smoking all night. I probably reek.” He pinches the sleeve of his hoodie between his fingers and tilts his head to give it a perfunctory sniff. There is a bit of an…aroma to him, tobacco and nicotine, but Trinity wasn’t going to say anything.

Trinity nods. Still doesn’t say anything. Then she asks, “You want, like, a hug or something?”

His eyes find hers, freakishly blue as always. “Who are you and what have you done with Trinity Santos?” he says, and it’s strangely the most normal he’s sounded all night. 

“Offer’s only good for the next two minutes,” she replies, blunt. “Better cash in before I come to my senses.”

He laughs, and even though it sounds too sharp, lacking any trace of humour in a way that just feels wrong to her ears, Trinity much prefers it to him crying. She stands, pads over to his end of the couch in her socked feet, and nudges his knees apart until she can stand between them. She’s not gentle about the way she pulls him in, getting her arms around his shoulders until he relents and lets his head fall forward to rest against her sternum.

“Better?” she asks, daring to slip one hand into his hair so that she’s holding the back of his head. He doesn’t say anything, but she hears the way his breathing hitches, then evens out. His hair is soft under her fingers, if a bit greasy with whatever gel he uses to style it.

“This doesn’t mean we’re friends,” Trinity threatens.

“’Course not,” Langdon mumbles, forehead still propped against her solar plexus. He lets her hold him, but doesn’t try to hold her back, which she’s grateful for. Sometimes, the feeling of another person’s hands on her is still too much, especially big hands like his. A man’s hands.

She gives it a few minutes before she pulls back. “Okay, I’ve reached my being-nice-to-you quota for the day. Go shower, you do stink. I’m ordering pizza.”

The look he gives her isn’t quite a smile, but it’s something halfway there. Not a white flag, not a surrender – they’re both much too stubborn to ever cede that much ground to the other. But a compromise. Maybe even an olive branch. He stands, stretches his back, wincing, and then heads off down the hall to the bathroom.

She hears the familiar sound of the ancient plumbing squealing to life, and Trinity thinks maybe she’s getting the hang of this whole nemesis thing, after all.