Work Text:
One:
“What do you mean you didn’t have a drink?”
“I mean,” Victoria squirms in her chair awkwardly, “I didn’t have a drink. It’s quite simple, actually.”
“Victoria, the whole point of throwing you a party was so you could ring in 21 properly,” Trinity looks at her pointedly, “which means having your first drink.”
“There was too much pressure!” Victoria exclaims, throwing her hands up, eyes growing comically wide. “Everyone just kept staring at me, waiting for something to happen, and the last thing I wanted was to take a sip and spit it out or throw up or otherwise make more of a fool of myself than I already have at work.”
“No one at work thinks you’re a fool. A klutz, maybe,” Trinity says with a smile and a nudge, “but not a fool. Anyway, you’re making too much of things. It’s just a drink.”
“It’s not just a drink, it’s my first foray into being a real adult woman and not just a little girl playing pretend.”
Trinity snorts, “I’m sorry, what? What the hell is a “real adult woman”?”
“You know, like…” Victoria starts gesticulating as she explains, “the woman who wears heels and makeup and goes out every night with her girlfriends to get drinks and talk about their love lives, their work troubles, and maybe goes home with a cute person from the bar at the end of the night.”
Victoria stares at Trinity, waiting for some kind of response, and as much as Trinity wants to be supportive right now all she can think is this is the most adorable girl in the world and in what universe could I be the cute person you wanna to take home? “You’re such a dork sometimes,” Trinity chuckles, taking a swig of her beer to swallow down the desire bubbling in her throat. “That’s why I love you.” Trinity scrunches her face. Shit. She anxiously watches Victoria for a sign of how they’re going to play this off, convinced her words will be taken as a bad joke at best, and the grounds for a deeply uncomfortable care ride home later this evening at worst. Victoria’s eyes linger on Trinity’s face for a beat longer than Trinity is used to. It is the kind of undivided attention that would usually make Trinity itchy, but she finds the longer Victoria stares the more at ease she feels. Actually, point in fact, this may be the most peaceful Trinity has ever felt. It’s as if Victoria’s eyes are a soft breeze after a humid spring shower- cooling, refreshing, and a definite sign of a beautiful day to follow.
“Oh really? That’s why?” Victoria smiles, almost nervously. Almost. Trinity wants her to be nervous so that she isn’t alone in what she’s feeling, but she cannot help but think that the hope is as silly as the three little words that escaped her mouth without her permission. It’s a futile thing, wanting what you think you can’t have. “I would’ve assumed it had to do with my big brain,” Victoria says with a waggle of her eyebrows, and Trinity laughs, grateful that no matter how much of an oaf she feels she is, Victoria will always play along so that she isn’t alone in her stupidity. With Victoria, Trinity is never alone.
“Actually,” Trinity jokes, “I think I love you in spite of that. Big brains can be kind of annoying after a while.”
“Very true,” Victoria replies seriously, “they become cumbersome, and make the owner of said big brain deeply insufferable know-it-alls.”
“You’re not deeply insufferable, Crash.”
“No?”
“No,” Trinity murmurs, leaning in closer to Victoria to whisper into her ear, “you’re only mildly insufferable, on occasion.” She winks.
“And yet, you love me,” Victoria says teasingly with a giggle, but there’s a lilt to her voice that makes Trinity think that she’s asking her a question. Like she needs to be sure. It strikes Trinity that she may have had one too many drinks, and is hearing things that aren’t really being said. It’s silly. All of this is silly. Victoria would never ask, because Victoria doesn’t think of her that way. It’s all in Trinity’s head. It has to be. They’re just friends. They’ll always be just friends. But…
“What are friends for, if not to love you unconditionally?” Trinity says, and it’s the first thing she’s ever allowed herself to say sincerely to Victoria.
“Friends?” Victoria echoes with a raise of her eyebrows. “Okay,” She snorts, eyes twinkling with a secret Trinity wishes she would spill. “Well, be a good friend and buy me my first drink, will you?”
Two:
“You’re not gonna get it,” Victoria says with a smirk. “You’re practically setting money on fire at this rate of loss.”
“If you think I wouldn’t burn everything down just to prove a point, you’ve got another thing coming, Crash,” Trinity retorts, tilting her head to eye Victoria pointedly.
“Very funny, but perhaps we could leave the arson to more capable hands and get a move on,” Victoria says, checking her watch. “Ferris wheel closes in an hour, I don’t think we have time to spare on your humiliation kink.”
“No, you’re right,” Trinity nods seriously, then says with a cluck of her tongue, “we need that time for your scheduling fetish.”
“It’s not a fetish!” Victoria shrilly replies, catching dirty looks from a family passing by. “Sorry,” she apologizes frantically, only to be met with glares from both parents. She turns back to Trinity and whispers, “it’s not a fetish. I just don’t want to miss the ride.”
Trinity snorts, “aww. That’s cute. You’re cute, you know that?”
“I’m downright adorable, I know,” Victoria says with a soft roll of her eyes and a smile that makes Trinity’s breath stutter, “now, could we get a move on?” Under the glow of the carnival, Victoria is almost ethereal- her hair practically glitters blue and purple, and the shimmery pink makeup she’s carefully brushed over her face reflects the blaring lights all around them rather majestically. When Trinity calls Victoria Princess of the PTMC, she doesn’t mean it as the slight Victoria assumes it must be because of her privileges thanks to her parents; she means it as the simple truth it is. To Trinity, Victoria is the epitome of a princess- kind, commanding, lovely beyond words or reason. She’s the sparkle to Trinity’s contrasting dust. “Trin?” Victoria asks, wide, espresso eyes curiously searching her face to figure out where she is in her head. If only she knew.
“Right, umm…” Trinity clears her throat nervously, but makes no attempt to stifle the blush she feels flooding over her face. It is what it is at this point. If the past two months of flirty quips, flushed expressions, and clumsy mistakes around Victoria haven’t given her away, then nothing will. It’s either her greatest luck or worst curse that Victoria is so oblivious. “Just one more throw,” Trinity says, focusing her attention completely on the rows of bottles displayed before them. She angles her body as if she’s about to throw the world’s most perfect pitch, then winds up.
“You’re not gonna get it,” Victoria repeats.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” Trinity murmurs, concentrating. She mimes tossing the ring to test out the force she wants to use, then lets it rip. Both girls watch with baited breath as the ring skips over the mouths of the bottles at the front before catching onto a mouth near the back, and spinning precariously. “C’mon, c’mon,” Trinity says under her breath, her hands balled into tight fists she’s holding close to her chest in anticipation of- “YESSS!!!” She pumps her fists into the air and jumps up. “Fuck yes!” another family passing by gasps at her expletive. “Shit, sorry,” she says with a sheepish smile. The parents shake their heads disapprovingly, quickly ushering their kids away. “Anyway,” Trinity spins back towards Victoria triumphantly, “HA! What was that?” she cups her ear and leans towards Victoria, “what were you saying about me not being able to do it?”
“You got lucky,” Victoria mumbles with a roll of her eyes, but there’s a twinkle of pride that gives her away. At least, that is what Trinity chooses to believe she is seeing as she celebrates her victory.
“What would ya like?” the booth vendor asks, pointing to the wall of prizes behind him.
Trinity gestures towards the wall. “Well, Crash?”
Victoria balks. “Me? You want me to pick something?”
“Isn’t this what all guys do for the girl they love, or whatever?” Trinity says in a joking voice, trying to hide how embarrassed she is at the grand gesture she’s spent the past half hour trying to make happen. A sharp, surprised laugh sings its way out of Victoria.
“Okay,” she murmurs, smiling in wonder at Trinity. She steps up to better look over the prize options, placing herself less than an inch away from Trinity, her wild orchid perfume flooding Trinity’s nostrils and winding its way down her throat, warm, sweet, and sticky and everything Trinity dreams of every night. “Hmm…” Victoria hums. “How about that one?” She points to a medium sized green teddy bear with a pink heart nose.
“Would’ve figured you for a pink girl, honestly,” Trinity snorts, gesturing towards the monstrous pink bears that take up the majority of the prize wall.
“Nope,” Victoria shakes her head, and gives a quick “thanks,” to the vendor as he hands her the green bear. “C’mon,” Victoria says eagerly, stuffing the teddy bear underneath her arm, then grabbing Trinity's hand and whisking her away towards the ferris wheel.
“Why that one?” Trinity asks, as if this is the most important question in the world and if she doesn’t get the answer she will die. She thinks, rather dramatically, that she might die anyway if Victoria keeps holding her hand like this, and she cannot imagine anything sweeter.
“Reminds me of you,” Victoria replies easily, like she’s simply sharing what the weather is and not revealing the kind of truth that Trinity will over-analyze for the rest of the week, playing the moment over and over and over again in her head until it becomes another memory she confuses for a dream.
“And you want to be reminded of me?” Trinity asks skeptically. Victoria shoots her a funny look out of the corner of her eye, then laughs, smiling at Trinity as if they’re sharing a secret. But Trinity doesn’t know what the secret is. It’s as unknowable to her as why Victoria showed up tonight after everyone else in their group bailed.
Three:
“Is this okay?” Victoria asks timidly.
Trinity looks at her bewilderedly. “Are you serious?”
“Y-yeah, I mean… I know we didn’t talk about this, but, I just assumed-”
“Victoria,” Trinity interrupts, “you broke into my apartment-”
“Whitaker let me in, it’s not exactly-”
“Decorated every single square inch with multi-colored ribbons, streamers, balloons, and confetti-”
“I mean, not every square inch, I couldn’t quite reach the back corner over there-”
“Splurged on a humongous cake I can’t possibly hope to finish, and secretly invited everyone we know from work-”
“Those are called friends-”
“To my home, without my knowledge, to surprise me for my birthday. What part of that seems okay?”
Victoria looks down at her hands. “I’m sorry, I-”
“Victoria,” Trinity murmurs harshly, voice growing thick with an emotion she’s not felt before and it’s funny because she had assumed that the emotion that now fills her would leave her scared, but all she can think is how secure she feels for once. She cups Victoria’s chin and brings her face up to hers. “It’s better than okay. It’s amazing. It’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“You’re not mad then?”
“Mad?” Trinity laughs, shaking her head. “No. Not mad at all. Just stunned, I guess.”
“Why?”
“I dunno, I guess I’m shocked that you care this much. I’ve never had a friend care this much about me before. Usually I’m the one doing all the caring.” She’s still cupping Victoria’s face. She’s still feeling Victoria’s breath directly on her own face, marveling at how warm and sweet every bit of her is.
“Well,” Victoria says with a sly grin, “not anymore you’re not.” She leans in and presses the faintest kiss upon Trinity’s lips, light and airy in the kind of dreamy way that makes Trinity wonder if this is real. If it isn’t, she doesn’t want to know. And if it is, she wants to make sure she gets this right. She’d like to get something right for once in her life.
“I love you,” Trinity confesses, caressing her thumb over Victoria’s cheek. Victoria giggles.
“So it’s a good birthday then?”
“The best,” Trinity nods with a shy smile.
“The best so far,” Victoria says adamantly. “I have big plans for next year.”
Four:
“Hey,” Trinity calls out as she closes the door behind her. Victoria doesn’t reply, she keeps herself planted near the ledge. “Crash? Victoria?”
“I’m here,” Victoria mumbles catatonically, keeping her gaze fixed on the skyline.
“You shouldn’t be out here without a jacket,” Trinity huffs as she joins Victoria near the ledge, draping Victoria’s puffy purple coat over her shoulders. “Jesus, what is it with everyone and this damn roof?”
“Dr. Abbot says it’s the best place to meditate,” Victoria offers, as if that makes any lick of sense. Something is wrong, something is seriously wrong- Victoria always makes sense.
“Abbot is also on a concerning amount of SSRIs, and tunes into his police scanner like it’s a radio station, so,” Trinity snorts, “we maybe shouldn’t be taking any advice from him.” Victoria half-smiles, but she doesn’t offer a quip back which scares Trinity. For as long as she’s known Victoria, she has never had nothing to say. The last time a friend was quiet like this, Trinity didn’t have the right words. She was too young to know how to help. She’s not entirely sure she can help now, but she knows enough to know she needs to try. “You okay?”
Victoria shrugs half-heartedly. “I don’t know. I just feel a little lost right now.”
“And you think standing in below freezing weather without a jacket is going to fix that?”
“Not exactly,” Victoria shakes her head, “I’m hoping the cold will shock my system enough to right whatever is wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. I don’t think she meant it that way.”
“I know she meant it that way.”
“Victoria,” Trinity sighs adamantly, “your mother doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with you, she just doesn’t understand you at this particular moment in time. But she’s your mom. She loves you. She has to, it’s written in the parent bylaws.”
“Yeah, but I want her to like me too, and clearly, she doesn’t.”
“Hmm…Do you like her?”
Victoria whips her head to look at her, ponytail swishing behind. “What?”
“Do you like her? Your mom?”
Victoria laughs dryly, but Trinity can see the cogs whirring in her head and knows she’s considering the question seriously. “Huh… you know,” Victoria laughs again, like she just figured out the solution to all of her problems. “I umm… I don’t think I do,” she says quietly, eyes bulging at the confession.
“Do you love her any less, just because you don’t like her?”
“No, she’s my mom.”
“Exactly,” Trinity says. “So she doesn’t like you. How many people actually like their parents, and how many parents actually like their kids?”
“Well, it’s really sad when you put it that way.”
“Eh,” Trinity shrugs, “it is what it is. Sometimes you have to make do with what you get.”
“And what if I don’t want to make do?” Victoria looks at her earnestly.
“Then I would say, let’s promise to never make do with each other.” Trinity holds her hand up, offering her pinky to Victoria. “Promise?”
Victoria smiles softly, loops her pinky around Trinity’s, and it might as well be as good as a ring. It’s the closest we’ll ever get anyway, Trinity thinks to herself. “Promise,” Victoria says, adding, “as long as you promise to both like and love me. I hate the one or the other thing.”
Trinity laughs, scrunching her face at Victoria’s choice of words. Do friends love each other the way Trinity loves her? She’s not sure. She’s also not entirely sure that Victoria feels the same about her, but she decides in that moment, as snow begins to fall around them, that it doesn’t matter if Victoria does or not. In all honesty, she’d be okay with one or the other when it comes to Victoria.
“I promise,” Trinity says, solemnly holding up one hand, “to both like and love you.”
“Okay,” Victoria murmurs. “Do you want me to promise too?” And there she goes again, asking questions Trinity is positive she’s hallucinating because there’s no reason for Victoria to want to know the answers. It’s a dream. Victoria has to be a dream. For once, Trinity decides not to fight it.
“Yeah,” Trinity replies softly. “I want you to promise.”
“Then, I do,” Victoria says easily. I do.
Five:
“Five, Four, Three, Two, One!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!”
Victoria jumps excitedly, and wraps both arms around Trinity as confetti and balloons drop around them, and for one perfect moment Trinity understands what Victoria meant when she said she wanted to be a real adult woman. She meant she wanted to live her life like a glossy movie, framed romantically and scored to induce swooning. Right now, Trinity feels like a real adult woman. And this is the scene where the crowd in her head cheers.
Without thinking, her hands cup Victoria’s face, and her lips plant themselves firmly upon Victoria’s. Victoria’s hands tangle into Trinity’s hair, holding her tightly against her as if Trinity is at risk of slipping away, and maybe it’s the champagne or the fireworks or the nagging fluttering in her stomach, but Trinity cannot stop herself from thinking that Victoria is the only person she ever wants to kiss on New Year’s Eve for the rest of her life. She pulls away, looking deeply into Victoria’s eyes as she whispers, “I love you. Happy New Year.” It’s too vulnerable to share, but if you can’t be vulnerable on New Year’s, when can you be? Trinity figures Victoria won’t remember this moment anyway. She’s had five flutes of champagne on a mostly empty stomach, and keeps rambling nonsensically about girlfriends and being in love and making double date plans with Whitaker and Kim.
“Happy New Year,” Victoria murmurs, pressing her smiling lips into Trinity’s in such a way that Trinity knows she will return to this exact scene in the movie of her life whenever she wants to remind herself that good things can happen.
One:
There’s a faint rustling happening in the muffled background of Trinity’s mind that stirs her awake. She blinks groggily, struggling to get her bleary eyes to focus as she tries to determine the source of the sound. Ughh. She wobbles her way up to sitting, and makes out a silhouette she’d know even in the darkest night. “What are you doing?” she groans, her voice raspy from tiredness… and the three extra shots she should not have helped herself to the night before.
“Cleaning,” Victoria whispers as she tosses another red plastic cup into the trash bag she’s toting around. “Go back to sleep, I’ve got this.”
“That’s not your responsibility,” Trinity mumbles, “I’ll take care of it later.”
“It’s not that big a deal, in fact, I think it kind of falls under the “perks of having a girlfriend” doesn’t it?”
“Friends aren’t obligated to help each other clean up the other’s party mess.”
“Girlfriend, Trin. Different thing.”
“We’re not- you’re not my girlfriend?” Trinity looks at her confusedly, wondering if she’s still dreaming right now or not.
“Sure, and Whitaker isn’t hooking up with Kim,” Victoria jokes, waiting for Trinity to quip something clever back.
“He’s not,” Trinity replies awkwardly, “he’s got some weird thing going on with the farmer's widow.”
Victoria laughs boisterously, only quieting when she realizes Trinity is being serious. “Oh, Trin,” Victoria murmurs gently, collapsing onto the couch as close to Trinity as she possibly can. “I don’t know about you,” she says, tucking a strand of Trinity’s hair behind her ear as she caresses her face, “but I don’t go around kissing just anyone.”
“You… don’t?”
“That can’t honestly be a surprise to you.”
“I don’t know!” Trinity exclaims, throwing her hands up. “We don’t… I mean, we’ve never… I just assumed we were friends.”
“You have a very funny idea of what friends are,” Victoria starts with a laugh, before her eyes widen in mild horror as she stumbles onto a new conclusion. “Unless you’re saying you think that I’m a player?”
Trinity cackles. “A “player”? Seriously, where do you get all of your slang from?”
“We’re not making fun of me right now, we’re making fun of you,” Victoria replies in a fluster. It strikes Trinity for the first time ever that Victoria is as capable of being flustered by herself, as she is of being flustered by Victoria. She wonders how many times she’s had Victoria like this and just not realized it.
“Right,” Trinity nods with a smile, finally catching on. “We’re making fun of me for not believing that the incredibly smart and kind and funny med student would be into me.”
“Hey!” Victoria playfully slaps at Trinity’s arm. “I’m also hot,” she says insistently, “everyone always forgets that part.”
“Believe me, Crash, I never forget that part.”
“Good,” Victoria giggles, “because it’s really important to me that my girlfriend thinks I’m hot.”
“Girlfriend,” Trinity repeats, trying the word out. It tingles on her tongue, sending a ripple of pleasure through her mouth not unlike the sensation she gets when Victoria kisses her. “And uh… just for clarification, how long have we been dating exactly?”
“Probably since the first time you said I love you,” Victoria replies with a laugh, as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world to Trinity that Victoria has been hers for as long as Trinity has been pining over her.
“You’re such a dork sometimes,” Trinity chuckled, taking a swig of her beer. “That’s why I love you.”
Victoria’s breath hitched. All the movies she’d been addicted to watching throughout her childhood had taught her that love was a sweeping grand gesture. Love was standing outside your window with a boombox; it was kissing in the rain; it was singing and dancing in the bleachers; it was a box of confessions written into letters never meant to be sent; it was the loudest declaration.
All the movies were wrong.
Love, real love, was a quieter proclamation. It was the gentle way Trinity asked, “you good?” at work whenever Victoria was having a bad day; it was the casual remarks about what a good job Victoria did that Trinity made whenever Dr. Shamsi was around to hear; it was the grounding hug in the stopped elevator when Victoria lost her first patient. Love was the easy, plain way with which Trinity said those three words, as if loving Victoria was the easiest thing in the world she could choose to do.
Victoria realized then and there, there was nothing easier than choosing to love Trinity back.
“For the record,” Victoria says, weaving her fingers through Trinity’s, “I love you too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Trinity beams at Victoria. “Wow. So,” she bites the smile growing, then asks, “my smart, kind, funny, hot girlfriend loves me?”
“Indeed she does,” Victoria smiles back. “What are you gonna do about it?”
“I can think of a few things I’d like to do, to start,” Trinity smoothly replies, blushing as she hears the words and what she’s hoping they insinuate leave her mouth. Victoria lunges forward, wrapping her hands around Trinity’s neck as she pulls her in for one bruising kiss after another, tongues and teeth and lips hungrily colliding.
In between kisses, Victoria exhales breathlessly, “It’s about fucking time.”