Work Text:
Trinity had been given a lot of nicknames throughout her life. From the easy ones, usually coined by childhood friends – Trin, Trini, Tree – to the more obscure ones, like Tri-State, from a friend in gymnastics. She didn’t remember the in-joke behind it anymore, but the name had stuck. Another friend had done his level best to try and come up with one related to the Holy Trinity, but they’d stopped talking before he got there. Shame, because it might’ve been funny.
She had ones she hated, for obvious reasons: my little secret, pretty young thing. She hadn’t heard them in years, but they still stung. Still made her want to vomit. She mentally flinched away from most terms of endearment because she heard them in her old coach’s voice.
As Trinity had gotten older she'd started pushing people away, anyone who knew her from before. Before gymnastics. Before everything. They saw her too well, knew that she wasn't quite right. Being seen had left her feeling flayed. So, no old friends. No nicknames, either. Until Whitaker had given her an entirely new one.
It had been their first shared night off in a while, with the promise of a free tomorrow to boot. Trinity had almost suggested they go out, but the exhausted look in Whitaker’s eyes by the end of shift had made her change her mind. Truthfully, she’d been worn out, too – they’d lost a patient that morning, and while she could compartmentalize the grief and guilt, the emotions of everyone else around her left her weary. A night of bar hopping might’ve been a nice momentary distraction, but she would’ve felt like shit the next morning, anyway. Delaying the inevitable ordeal of feeling her feelings, as her therapist put it, rarely made them actually go away. A lesson she'd learned the hard way, after years of repression culminated in her having what could only be described as a complete fucking meltdown.
They'd agreed to spent their night watching TV and getting tipsy.
Six o'clock found them sprawled across Trinity’s couch, takeout containers and a few cans of cheap beer (courtesy of Abbott) cracked open on the worn coffee table. Though firmly slouched on opposite ends of said couch, her feet were resting in Whitaker’s lap. Most kinds of touch made her squirm, especially coming from men, and after just one month of cohabitation, she wasn’t quite ready to let him cuddle up to her. Ever the perceptive type, Whitaker had noticed her aversion and had taken to treating her like a semi-feral cat getting used to kindness for the first time. It was a fair analogy – she, too, was prone to biting when threatened. Tonight, he’d gently put his hand on her ankle, testing the waters; despite her body instinctively tensing up, she let it stay.
Whitaker was a firm believer in old-school tech, and had thrifted them a cheap DVD-player one week into being roommates. It was more cost-effective on the long run, he reasoned, than getting a streaming subscription. Since she would've been the one paying for it, Trinity had agreed. She'd then gotten into the habit of checking various bargain bins for discounted movies or box sets. Their collection was growing at an alarming rate.
They’d started House a couple of weeks ago after she'd snatched the first season from the 50% OFF NOW shelf at The Exchange in Oakland, because they both got a kick out of correcting medical inaccuracies but didn't like the unnecessary drama of Grey's Anatomy. Plus, Lisa was hot.
They were halfway through episode 9 when Whitaker opened his mouth to say, “Tommy.”
“What?” Trinity glanced at him. “Who’s Tommy?”
“You,” Whitaker said, with a tone implying it was self-explanatory.
Normally, Trinity bristled whenever she felt condescended to, but the beer had mellowed her out. That, and the fact that Whitaker often went out of his way to praise her skills as a doctor. At first she’d thought it was overcompensation for something, or a way to get her to lower her guard, or some bizarre form of negging intended to make her doubt said skills. But no, it turned out Whitaker was just nice, and for some fucking reason, liked her. He just wanted her to feel appreciated. The whole thing made her queasy.
“What?” She asked again, the television now forgotten. “What the fuck are you on about?”
Whitaker lolled his head towards her. She’d recently cut his hair, and the tad-too-short strands were sticking to his forehead in the humid heat of her apartment. “I was just thinking that if I’m Huckleberry, then you’re Tom Sawyer. You know, his best friend? Hence… Tommy.”
Trinity opened her mouth to argue – against which part exactly, she wasn’t sure – but the look of startling sincerity in his eyes made her re-evaluate. Being mean to Whitaker – genuinely mean, not just ribbing – was like kicking a puppy. Plus, she was making an effort to be less bitchy in general. Her therapist called it an exercise in lowering her defence mechanisms. Trinity called it being a pussy, and only committed to said exercise in moments like this – at home, comfortable. Safe. Baby steps, or something. One day she'd maybe graduate to being less guarded at work, too, but that day wasn't today.
“You’re such a fucking nerd,” she said, but her tone was laced with affection. “I didn’t realize you’d actually read those books. Do you guys live like the Amish out there? Nothing else to do but read by the candlelight and ponder on the good word?” Then the rest of his sentence clicked. “Wait, I’m your best friend?”
Whitaker immediately frowned. Meaning, she’d said the wrong thing again. Trinity did that a lot, said things that made sense to her but apparently were perceived differently by other people. It made conversations a fucking minefield.
“I mean, yeah? Aren’t you?” He asked, his tone imploring. His eyes did the sad puppy thing again. It was another Whitaker-ism she’d thought he did on purpose to gain her trust, make himself seem less threatening – but no. Whitaker’s expressions came to him freely, uninhibited. It made it easier to trust him. She could usually take one look at his face and know exactly what he was thinking.
Trinity hadn’t asked much about his past. She was too preoccupied with the fear that if she did, he’d probably ask her back out of politeness, and then she’d either have to tell him things she didn't want to, or lie. From what she’d gathered though, he didn’t miss home much. Or at least he didn't seem all that eager to go back there, like, ever. So, he probably didn’t have a best friend waiting for him back in Bumfuck, Nebraska. Or any friends, really.
Did he have friends at the Pitt? She’d seen him talking to people, sure, and he was kind of impossible to dislike. But if she thought about it, most of the time, he gravitated back towards her. Like a moth to the flame, except to call her the light in anyone's life was laughable. Still, it was, empirically, true. Every break or pause he got, he'd slink over to her desk to chat.
So yeah, okay, probably she was his best friend. Only friend, maybe. Which was kind of miserable to think about.
Was Whitaker her best friend, though?
Not like it was a tough competition. Trinity had been trying to make friends with Victoria, but Whitaker had told her last week that Victoria thought she hated her guts, so clearly that was going great. She wasn't sure what it was she was doing wrong, and thinking about it for too long gave her a headache. Then there was Robby, who she was shocked to her core to discover she not only liked, but actually kind of trusted – but he was her boss, and also old, and most of the time, preoccupied with putting out the various fires at the ED. They weren't exactly friends.
She'd made small talk with Mel, who was sickeningly nice but who also seemed to find Trinity kind of off-putting. Which, fair. Whenever she had night shifts, she found she got along well with Ellis and Abbott, to the point she and Ellis usually brought each other coffee if they knew they were working the same shift. She knew Ellis took hers with sugar, no milk, and that she was a Scorpio, too. She knew Abbott was a vet with a fuckton of trauma, and that he often sneaked towards the staircase leading to the roof at the end of the night. So far, she'd never followed him, but she felt that if she did, he wouldn't mind her company.
But however much she liked these people, she hadn’t felt the need to reach out to them outside of work. Not in the way she did with Whitaker, who she texted daily, often inane shit like his daily horoscope chart or some dumb meme or a link to whatever she’d been reading about the night before when dealing with another bout of insomnia.
Whitaker was different. He didn't expect much, but he cooked for both of them often. He didn't touch her unless she said it was okay. He remembered her allergies, and absorbed tidbits about her she hadn't even realized she'd shared. Once, when she'd been up at night crying after a flashback, he'd knocked on her door to ask her if she was okay. When she'd told him to fuck off, he had. She'd apologized the next day, and he'd said, what for?
“Uh, yeah,” she summarized, out loud. “I mean, I guess so. Huckleberry and Tommy against the world or whatever.”
Whitaker beamed at her, like he’d won the fucking lottery – like it was a good thing, being stuck with Trinity. Fear swam in her belly at the thought of what would happen if he knew everything about her. Would he still be happy to share the couch with her if he knew about her past, her abject fucking rage, her scars – the way she sometimes thought about jumping from her balcony, letting herself splatter against the pavement like a rotten fruit?
She smiled back so weakly, it was more a facsimile of a smile than anything.
“Great,” Whitaker said. The corners of his eyes crinkled. Whether he noticed the tenuousness of her expression or not, he mercifully didn’t comment on it. His head lolled back towards the TV. “Huckleberry and Tom. I’ll save you under that in my contacts.”
Trinity took a steadying breath. It was easier to compose herself when he wasn’t looking at her. “You sure you want people seeing you getting weirdly intimate texts from someone called Tommy? Kinda gay, if you think about it.”
Whitaker’s surprised chuckle jostled her feet, still in his lap. She frowned. When had she stopped noticing the touch?
“The nurses would have a field day gossiping about that,” he said, but he didn't sound annoyed or resigned, just amused.
“Bet you ten dollars Perlah and Princess will ask me about it.”
“You can’t say both, that’s against, like, the rules of gambling. Increased probability or whatever. Pick one.”
Trinity stuck her tongue out at him; he flipped her off. She smiled, genuinely this time. “Fine. Princess. Ten dollars.”
“Alright, I say Perlah. And I’ll take that bet.”
They shook on it. His hand returned to her ankle again. Trinity shifted imperceptibly closer.
After the episode ended, they stayed in place, staring at the now black screen. Neither wanted to get up to put the next episode on. Outside, cars were speeding by – people coming home from work, tired, stressed, beeping their horns. Trinity loved the sounds of the city. The clamour of it was comforting to her. She couldn’t fathom living somewhere like Broken Bow, where the only noise was probably from mooing cows, or tractors, or something.
She let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, forcing her shoulders to lose their tension. She looked at Whitaker’s side profile, the curve of his nose, the way his eyes drooped downwards.
Best friend. She hadn’t had one since… She stopped her train of thought.
"Hey, Huckleberry," she said. He hummed in acknowledgement. “Do you even have ten dollars?”
“Fuck you,” Whitaker said. But he was smiling.