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Trinity draws a line in the condensation on her glass, watching mesmerized as she creates a path in the cold fog; swirls that curl around and around until her finger slips and lands back atop the sticky bar top.
She pulls a face and wipes her hand clumsily on her jeans, the fabric rough against her fingertips. Her head is filled with cotton, heavy and unappreciative of the atmosphere of the packed bar, the shouted conversations and music making it near-impossible to hear your own thoughts. Sometime between shots four and five her pleasant buzz had skipped straight over into an overstimulated drunkenness that had been so far from the fun, mindless drunk she’d been aiming for, but going home wasn’t an option.
It still isn’t.
The ice clinks against the side of the glass as she lifts it to her lips. The taste – or lack thereof – hits her tastebuds with a telling delay and she frowns, looking down. It’s hard to make out the colour in the dimly lit bar, but now that she thinks of it, this doesn’t seem like the drink she had ordered.
“Hey.”
Water sloshes across the rim as she startles, pooling at the base of the glass. She casts a glance across her shoulder and instantly does a double take, her head awkward on her shoulders. “Garcia?”
There she is. Right amidst the chaos of the bar. Another patron bumps into her, shouldering past and she jostles, taking a step forward. Closer to Trinity. Sometime after their shift from hell she has exchanged her scrubs for loungewear that would look out of place in a bar on anyone else, but fits in just fine in the unfazed manner she always holds herself. Her hair is pulled back into a loose twist at the back of her head, stray curls brushing her jaw.
Trinity’s brows draw together, the sensation foreign on her face. “What are you doing here?”
“Paul called me.”
Her coat appears on the bar beside her arm.
“I called Whitaker first.” Paul grabs Trinity’s drink, emptying it out behind the bar without preamble. When he looks back up, his gaze isn’t on Trinity but on Yolanda and she huffs, moving so her face in front of his.
She doesn’t appreciate being talked about, thank you very much.
Paul just raises an unimpressed brow and continues. “But he said he was out of the city and it would take too long for him to get here. He suggested I call you instead.”
“I am fine!” Trinity declares loudly, a beat too late. To show just how fine she is, she hops off the bar stool. She wobbles as she finds her footing, ignoring how her stomach tilts and manages to stay upright. She throws Paul a triumphant look. “See!”
“Yes, Dr Santos,” Paul says placatingly.
Trinity narrows her eyes and turns to Yolanda. “See.”
Paul clears his throat. “I’ve closed out your tab. Have a good night, Dr Santos.”
Trinity represses the urge to glare at him, settling on huffing a muted fuck under her breath. She swipes for her coat, wrestling with sleeves that don’t want to stay in place as she puts it on. A second set of hands appears, holding it steady so she can slide both arms in.
Yolanda’s hands fall back to her sides. “Ready?”
“You don’t have to do anything.” Trinity considers attempting to do up the buttons of her jacket, but thinks better of it. Her hand-eye coordination might have gotten a little lost around drink number three on an empty stomach. “You should go home. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not going to leave you here.”
“I could get a cab,” Trinity argues. She’s still looking anywhere but at Yolanda, which Yolanda is having none of. Her pointed silence lingers until Trinity gives in and meets her gaze, the part of herself that’s desperate for Yolanda’s attention disgustingly weak. Spineless.
“Would you?” Yolanda’s eyes bore into Trinity’s. “Would you actually go home if I left? Or would you find another place to practice your self-destructive tendencies?”
Trinity’s mouth snaps shut.
Yolanda sighs. She sounds tired, and for a second guilt breaks through Trinity’s buzzed haze. She clearly didn’t sign up for this. She had said as much, earlier, and somehow they’ve still ended up here. “I’m here now, anyway. Just let me take you home.”
Trinity doesn’t answer, but sticks to Yolanda’s side as she turns around and navigates out of the bar. The July heat hasn’t settled with sundown, the air thick and humid when they step from one warm and oppressive environment right into another.
Despite the late hour, they pass plenty of partygoers on the sidewalk, talking loudly into the night. Trinity’s legs feel foreign under her body, carrying her forward at a painfully slow tempo. She half expects Yolanda to get fed up with her three seconds in, but she stays at Trinity’s side, one hand near her elbow—not touching, but ready to catch in case she stumbles.
Which she predictably does; the nose of her sneaker catching on the edge of the curb when they step down into the parking lot. Trinity doesn’t even fully process she’s falling until Yolanda’s arms are already around her, holding her upright until she gets her feet underneath herself again.
Trinity mutters a distracted thanks, trying desperately not to focus on the sudden feeling of Yolanda’s body, strong and familiar and warm at her side. The alcohol wins and she finds herself tilting sideways in a way that has little to do with her altered balance.
“Let’s not try and get back to the hospital before the start of our next shifts,” Yolanda says drily.
Trinity huffs out involuntary laughter, the amusement bubbling in her chest before she gives it permission to. Before she remembers she’s mad at Yolanda. Even if it is so, so nice to be in her arms again.
(Even if this is all she really wanted, today.)
“Right,” she mumbles. Her heart aches, but she pulls away from Yolanda’s warmth. She takes a moment to rediscover her equilibrium as the world continues to spin around her.
Luckily Yolanda’s car isn’t too far away. The headlights blink twice as Yolanda unlocks it from a distance, and Trinity trails along to the passenger’s side. It takes her three tries to open the door with Yolanda hovering at her side and she nearly faceplants into the centre console when she climbs inside, but makes it through the ordeal mostly unscathed. Yolanda double-checks Trinity’s fingers are at a safe distance before slamming the car door shut and heading around to the driver’s side.
The seatbelt is smooth against Trinity’s palm. It makes a funny sound as she pulls it down, and again when she lets it retract. She repeats the motion, captivated by the sensation that zings through the polyester until the metal buckle is unceremoniously snatched from her grip and clicks into the receiver.
Stunned, Trinity stares down as Yolanda buckles her own seatbelt and lets the engine rumble to life.
With the ongoing festivities the city is alive around them as Yolanda pulls out of the parking lot, but it’s startlingly quiet inside the car. Trinity picks at the hem of her sleeve, the dulling haze of the alcohol sluggishly starting to slip from her grasp. Paul must have cut her off earlier than she had realised. She aches for another shot to bring it back, and stubbornly ignores all the blaring warning signs that go off in the back of her mind at the thought. She exhales heavily and knocks her head back against the headrest.
It's not her first go-round with unhealthy coping mechanisms. But it’s her life. Her choice, whether she wants to go down that path tonight. Tomorrow she can try again to be better.
(She never is.)
“Why did you go to the bar?” Yolanda’s question is neutral, breaking through the silence, and Trinity hates it.
She knows she deserves judgement.
“Because,” she drawls. Her tongue sits clumsily in her mouth. She runs it across her teeth, shuddering at the plaque that clings to the enamel.
“Trinity.”
There’s something about the way her name rolls of Yolanda’s tongue that makes her skin crawl tonight. “You can call me Santos,” Trinity decides.
Hot situationship surgeons who raincheck on firework-watching during a hopeless shift don’t get first-name privileges. Especially not when they throw her words back into her face. She crosses her arms and slides down in her seat until the seatbelt stops her.
Yolanda sighs, eyes trained on the road. “Why did you go to the bar?”
Trinity can’t currently remember much of her decision-making process prior to heading down the block to the packed bar after work, but there is one thing she does know for sure. It takes a long moment for the words to finally take shape. “I didn’t want to go home.”
“How come?”
Wouldn’t she like to know. To—to realise that Trinity’s brain is even more fucked up than she already knows.
Trinity’s gaze latches on to a smudge on the passenger side window. Did she put that there? She tugs the sleeve of her jacket across her palm and vigorously rubs at the glass in an effort to clean it up. Leave no trace. Yolanda wouldn’t like that. She is perfectly fine without Trinity in her life. Trinity could just disappear, and she probably wouldn’t even care. Like poof! Gone. Casual. That’s what they are.
“Trinity?” Yolanda prompts.
Trinity’s eyes narrow and she turns to glare at her.
A beat passes before Yolanda lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Santos?”
Trinity sniffs. Her gaze tracks back to the windshield. She doesn’t recognize the road they’re driving down, but she can see an outburst of light and colour exploding into the sky off in the distance. Turns out they’re watching fireworks together after all. “It’s too quiet.”
“At home?” Yolanda asks, confusion colouring her voice.
Trinity’s hands are cold. She stares down at them, willing her thoughts to stop milling, but she’s talking before she thinks it through. The lingering alcohol burns through her usual filters, allowing the explanation to tumble past her lips at a speed at which half of the syllables slur together. “Huckleberry is off to the farm all the time, and now he’s going to be staying at Robby’s place instead of our apartment. And it was fine, before, to live by myself. I was used to it, but now I’m used to his stupid singing and dancing, and I’ve gotten used to you being with me more often than not if he isn’t, but I’ve fucked that up too, and when no one’s around, it’s—quiet.” A little smaller, she continues, “I don’t like it.”
She hadn’t even considered going home tonight when she’d realised she’d be the only one there for the weekend. She had gotten changed at work and had headed off to the bar without thinking further than ‘getting a drink’, because sitting there alone, surrounded by other drunks had seemed preferable to sitting at home alone.
A way to get back there anyway at the end of the night hadn’t even been a thought that crossed her mind. She knows that should scare her, because she had worked hard to create a home that offers the security and safety she hadn’t known the true definition of growing up, but today home meant isolation. A breakdown waiting to happen.
A breakdown she is apparently still having right now, hours later in Yolanda’s car.
Trinity is probably digging her own grave, and filling it with regrets to have in the morning, but now that the floodgates have opened she can’t stop her thoughts from churning. They cling like molasses to the inside of her skull, fuelling an alcohol- and exhaustion-induced headache. It settles between her eyes and she presses a palm to her forehead to try and combat the pain.
With her admission out in the open, she keeps circling back to today’s shift from hell and the words they exchanged in the hospital hallways and stairwell. When Trinity couldn’t stop herself from pushing despite knowing it was not the time nor place.
“Do you really think we’re nothing more than sex and ramen in bed?”
Trinity knows the answer, deep down. She knows the answer, because she’s sitting in Yolanda’s car, drunk and miserable. But she needs to hear her say it.
Yolanda taps her fingers against the steering wheel. She lets silence settle between them for a long, heavy moment. “No,” she eventually says. “And I don’t think that’s all you want, either.”
Emotion swells in Trinity’s chest, ready to lash out, rearing up for an argument that gets stuck on its way up. What are we? Yolanda had asked weeks ago, and Trinity had squashed down the feelings from the hope she sensed (imagined).
We’re just keeping things casual, right? she had answered, then. But, had she been truthful to herself and Yolanda, she would’ve said—
“I don’t want casual.”
It doesn’t feel like the confession it should’ve been. At this point it’s more like she is finally stating the obvious.
“I know,” Yolanda replies after a beat. “You don’t hide as well as you think you do.”
It’s things like that, that scare Trinity. That make her want to take back everything she has said. That define her avoidant edges, because she has let people in before and it has never ended well.
Casual had been an attempt at keeping that at bay, but even then she had known; had realised it was already too late. Casual had been a retroactive attempt at creating space. At creating safety she should have upheld in the first place, but—it had gotten the better of her. The addictiveness of a new relationship. Of getting to know someone, of stupidly falling for them despite everything that screams in her not to, of experiencing the kind of human connection she has craved ever since she can remember.
“Why?”
Trinity wets her lips and casts a look up at the ceiling. “What?”
“Why did you say you wanted to be casual, when you clearly didn’t?”
Isn’t that the question of the ages?
“I—I don’t know how to do anything else,” Trinity admits.
The confession brings along a wave of nausea and she squeezes her eyes shut. Usually she can handle her liquor, but she was already feeling like shit going into today. The binge-drinking was a poor decision to pile atop it, which she knew full-well going into it.
She is full of those, lately. Poor decisions. They tend to make an appearance the second things appear to be going well for once, though she knows even that is a lie. There is so much she holds back; so much that plagues her nightmares and so much she still bottles up, regardless of what everyone thinks of her. She has learned it’s the only way to keep herself safe and keeps everyone at an arm’s length, all in one breath.
The second someone like Huckleberry or Garcia comes close and prods at those defences, it raises her hackles and she puts up a wall or lashes out. For all that she likes to equate Dennis to a slew of pathetic animals, she knows there’s quite a few she can see herself in.
The lone wolf. The angry, kicked dog.
Dennis has stayed despite it all, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. He can either live with her, or go back to an empty room in the deserted wing of the hospital.
But Yolanda—
Yolanda has no incentive to stay. The second she loses interest—the second she no longer wants something casual with Trinity, she’ll leave.
She had left. Rain checked on a poorly disguised date to hang out with someone else instead.
“Didn’t you have plans tonight?”
Trinity doesn’t realise how abrupt the change of subject is until the words have already left her mouth. For what it’s worth, Yolanda takes it with more grace than Trinity deserves.
“I did,” she says.
“But you’re here.”
The look Yolanda throws her could almost be labelled bemused. Must be the alcohol speaking. “It’s three in the morning. I was getting ready for bed when Paul called. Unlike you, I still have a shift to report to tomorrow.”
Trinity blinks and simply stares as Yolanda flicks on the blinker and turns into the next street. It’s not until they park mere minutes later that Trinity realises they’re not at her and Huckleberry’s place.
Yolanda’s apartment building looms ahead through the windshield. The majority of the windows facing the front are dark, but a few stories up a light is on, casting out an orange glow. Through the drawn curtain Trinity spots the silhouette of the wonky vase one of Yolanda’s many nieces and nephews made for her last Christmas.
“C’mon.” Yolanda takes the key out of the ignition and unbuckles her seatbelt. She’s out and around the car to hold open Trinity’s door seconds later.
“Why are we here?” Trinity fights to untangle from her seatbelt. Yolanda doesn’t offer help, but has a hand at the ready to steady Trinity when she gets her feet on the ground.
“Because,” Yolanda finally says, shutting the car door. “Everything I need to get ready for work tomorrow is here, and I’m not going to leave you at an empty apartment right now.”
Just like before, she keeps one hand at the small of Trinity’s back, but this time Trinity manages to make it to the lift and up to Yolanda’s apartment unscathed. She’s aware she is well on track to sobering up, rather than the black-out drunk she’d started aiming for after throwing back her first few shots. The drinks she had are starting to settle uncomfortably, the nausea from before swirling low in her stomach like a foreboding omen.
Yolanda flicks on the entryway light on her way in and Trinity flinches back at the harshness, the brightness sending a sharp stab through her skull.
“Sorry,” Yolanda says quietly, turning it back off.
Trinity takes a deep, measured breath and plants a hand on the wall so she can toe off her sneakers without tipping over. Yolanda takes her jacket to put away along with her own.
“Let’s get you some water.”
For once, Trinity can’t find the will in herself to argue. She trails behind Yolanda, out into the dimly lit living room, lingering near the bar stools. Yolanda grabs two glasses from the kitchen cabinet to fill with water. She sets one down on the island that separates them, sliding it over.
“Thanks,” Trinity mumbles. She can feel Yolanda’s eyes on her, even as she breaks from her gaze, and has to force herself not to look back. Those eyes somehow always get her in trouble. Piercing. Unforgiving. Inescapable, even from across the ED.
Those eyes are still searching for connection when Trinity casts a glance around the room. At the cushions on the couch in disarray. The pair of wine glasses next to the sink, lipstick staining the rim. The half-drunk bottle sitting beside it.
She knows she has no context and no ground to protest anything Yolanda does in her own time, but even so the implication hits her like a ton of bricks and the nausea swells, finally reaching its breaking point.
“I’m going to throw up.”
She slaps her palm to her mouth and blindly stumbles to the bathroom, crashing down on her knees just in time for the compilation of tonight’s poor decision to rush up and come hurling out.
Somewhere between the third and fifth gag she senses Yolanda’s presence behind her. Yolanda graciously leaves the overhead light off, but does crouch down, rubbing soothing circles on Trinity’s back. She tucks the loose strands of hair that have escaped their ponytail behind Trinity’s ears before they can fall victim to her vomit.
The bile is vile, coating Trinity’s tongue with an acrid taste that she can’t get rid of even when she spits the last of it out. Yolanda disappears for a moment, reappearing with the untouched glass of water. Trinity takes it with shaking hands, rinsing her mouth. She tilts sideways until she’s off her aching knees, sitting on the bathroom floor, back pressed to the wall. The cold of the tile seeps through her jeans and shirt, and a shiver crawls up her spine.
Yolanda takes the glass from her before she can spill it all over herself. It clinks quietly against the sink as she sets it down, and she leans across to flush the toilet before settling down in front of Trinity.
Her expression is hard to gauge, in the near darkness of the bathroom, and Trinity once again averts her eyes. “It’s when you do things like this that I almost think you care.”
“Santos.” The way Yolanda says it is nearly angry, and Trinity lifts her head. “I do care.”
Trinity presses her lips together tightly until her frustration builds and spills over. “You rain checked on me today. We had plans and you cancelled, and then you sided with Langdon, and I know—I know you’re fed up about that, but it’s all that was in my head today. I get to work, and I’m behind on my charting, and then he fully blindsides me by returning to the ED and jumping right into it all as if nothing has happened. As if ten months have passed and nothing has changed.” She digs her fingers into her thighs. “So how come you claim you care, but the second work starts to affect me, you no longer do?”
Yolanda opens her mouth to reply, but the nausea rises again and Trinity clutches her stomach, surging back towards the toilet. She breathes heavily, pulling in measured breaths, entire body tense until the feeling subsides and she slouches back against the wall.
“He never apologised, you know.” Trinity can practically sense Yolanda is going to roll her eyes, so she bulldozes through. “Not—I don’t mean for his addiction. Or fucking with meds, because he can save those apologies for the list of patients he stole from.”
Yolanda takes a beat to reply. “Then what?” she asks, measured.
Trinity laughs, bitter and tired. “For gaslighting the fuck out of me when I noticed. For trying to make me seem incompetent on my first day. For yelling and berating me in front of half the staff and an unconscious patient. Take your pick.”
Her words ring within the confines of the bathroom walls. They’re too loud.
“He spent the entirety of today speed running through amends, and didn’t say a word to me until we were on a case together.” It’s not like Trinity had actually wanted to talk to him, but he hadn’t even tried. “I don’t know if he’s just expecting me to forget about it? Move past it? I don’t think we’ve had a conversation since he chewed me out before the Pittfest shooting, and he just tried to go right back to being my superior. To ‘teaching’ me. So I’m sorry, if I was a little touchy, but I can’t relax when he’s in the room. I can’t think before I act or talk, because—because my stupid fucking body is bracing itself constantly for whatever he decides to throw at me next.”
She locks her hands behind her neck, pressing her palms to the flushed skin to distract herself from the onslaught of anxiety and shame that flood her body.
“And I know,” she says before Yolanda can do so. “I know I was unprofessional, and I’ll do better.” She might be stubborn and ambitious and aggressive, but she has learned how to admit to her mistakes. There’s no shortage of ego in the medical field, but it should be able to take a good few hits and bruises. “I’ll be prepared next time, but today his return caught me off-guard. I had a bad day, and it shouldn’t affect my work, but today it did. I just—I couldn’t put it aside.”
“It shouldn’t have,” Yolanda agrees with a tilt of her head. “But I think I better understand where you’re coming from, in hindsight.”
“And there might not actually be sides in this situation, but—it felt like you were just completely dismissing me, in the stairwell. And telling me to call a therapist?” Trinity laughs humourlessly. “Fucked up, even for you.”
“Okay,” Yolanda says. She takes a moment. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let my emotions and grievances colour how I responded to you. You know I don’t like to mix work and feelings.”
“I do.”
It’s a boundary Yolanda has communicated before, but despite that, things inevitably slip. On either side. They don’t actively address their relationship, whatever shape it has, but they don’t beat around it either. The lines are blurred enough that, with the haze of anxiety and an overall bad day, Trinity hadn’t thought twice about pushing the topic every time their paths crossed. And despite her own boundaries, Yolanda hadn’t hesitated to reply.
Trinity doesn’t even know what exactly she’d been looking for. Reassurance, maybe. Something positive to cling onto outside of the hospital walls to keep her from drowning.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she finally says with an air of defeat.
“I can’t tell you what you want,” Yolanda says. “And I can’t tell you to tell me what you want, but it shouldn’t be on me to decipher. I don’t do one-sided relationships.” It’s honest and painful; an accusation that is like a punch to the chest but Trinity can’t find the arguments to dispel. “You told me you wanted to keep it casual, so I took it as a sign for more distance.”
The raincheck. The wine glasses. Yolanda’s refusal to hear Trinity out in the stairwell.
“If that’s not what you want, I need you to tell me otherwise.”
“It isn’t. It’s not what I want,” Trinity says quietly. She casts her eyes away again, but Yolanda dips her head to maintain eye contact.
“Okay.”
Neither of them knows how to continue. Trinity exhales and pulls her legs closer to her person, making herself as small as she feels right now. “I’m bad at relationships.”
The admission settles in the space between them for a long moment.
“I don’t expect you to know everything,” Yolanda says. “I don’t expect you to be perfect, because contrary to popular belief, I’m well-aware I’m not either. But Trinity—you need to be willing to try, if you think this is worth it. It’s not fair to either of us to keep it open for interpretation.”
“Yeah,” Trinity says. “I’ve figured that much out.”
“So?” Yolanda prompts. Her voice is steady as ever, unwavering, but Trinity hears the uncertainty hiding underneath and can imagine it’s the result of hope. “Is that something you’re up for? Trying?”
Trinity’s heart hammers in her chest at the question. She knows what she wants. The answer should be easy, but it never is. “Are you going to put up with me fucking up? This is going to happen again. Are you going to walk away when I can’t say what I want outright?”
“I like you, Trinity,” Yolanda says. “And—I think it would be worth it to give it a shot.”
“Yeah?”
Yolanda nods.
“Okay,” Trinity says. Then, a touch louder, “Okay. I think—I think so too.”
Yolanda smiles, carefully, and for the first time since she arrived at work today, Trinity can breathe a little easier. “Let’s get you off this bathroom floor.”
She closes the toilet lid and helps Trinity onto it, wetting a washcloth to wipe her face before offering her a toothbrush. Mint washes away the aftertaste of vomit and the lingering nausea graciously settles for now.
Yolanda rummages through the mirror cabinet for some ibuprofen. Trinity crosses her fingers they won’t make a reappearance before they get a chance to fix her pounding headache. She is probably in desperate need of a shower after her overtime shift and the hours spent in the bar after that, but she is in no state for that right now. All she wants is to close her eyes and fall asleep.
And so Trinity allows Yolanda to lead her to the bedroom. Allows her to help her undress, not giving her uncoordinated, exhausted limbs a chance to flail about. Allows her to guide her head through the collar of a soft oversized shirt.
“We’ll talk more later,” Yolanda says, guiding her into the bed.
“Tomorrow?” Trinity asks. The sheets are cool against her skin and when she presses her face to the pillow all she smells is Yolanda. She still feels like shit, but at least she isn’t alone.
“We could do dinner after my shift,” Yolanda suggests.
At least her relationship with Yolanda might actually have a chance this time around.
“It’s a date.”