Chapter Text
"Come here you motherfucker!" Trinity spits through gritted teeth as she rounds a corner of the hallway on her floor.
The hallway echoes with hasty steps, puffed breaths and the yowling of an angry cat that is booting it straight down.
That nasty creature done it again! Waving between her legs and sprinting away to chase temporary freedom.
Just as Trinity thinks she's about to yank the cat from the floor, that damned thing suddenly comes to a sliding stop, making Trinity almost trip over it's furry coat as she's carried on by momentum. Before she can recover from almost falling flat on her face, it's off again, sprinting in the same direction it came from.
Trinity curses lowly to herself and will's herself into another sprinting chase after her naughty pet.
With the hold up of righting herself, Trinity is significantly lagging behind the cat.
A door swings open just a few feet in front of her cat, which to her demise gives the fur ball the exact escape route it needed.
The woman, someone Trinity was yet to bump into during her time living here, yelps in surprise when a feline the size of a pumpkin all but rockets it past her legs and into her apartment.
Trinity's gonna murder the bastard.
"I'm sooo—" Trinity drawls out as she skids to a stop in front of the unfamiliar woman, "—sorry."
"I don't know what's gotten into him, I would swear it won't happen but I know it will, so..." Trinity quickly rambles an explanation, eyes flitting between the woman and the depths of her apartment in search of her hell-spawn, annoyance clear in her tone.
She takes a deep breath and finishes her rambles with; "so, I'm sorry in advance."
They stand for a moment in silence before the woman raises an eyebrow.
Trinity shifts awkwardly, shooting a look over the others shoulder, spotting her cat trotting across the hallway from one room to another. She has to bite her tongue not to curse.
"I haven't seen you around?" Trinity mumbles.
"That's because I'm just moving in." The woman answers, motioning to empty boxes hidden slightly off the side of the front hall that Trinity overlooked.
"And you are..?" The woman asks.
"Santos. Trinity Santos." Trinity introduces herself.
"And the kitty that ran into my flat?" Another question.
Trinity rubs a hand over her face.
"That's Sebastian, also known as Bastian... or bastard." Trinity introduces the feline from hell.
"Dr. Al-Hashimi," the woman, doctor, extends her hand in Trinity's direction.
Trinity takes it. "What a coincidence, I'm also a doctor." Trinity murmurs as she shakes the woman's hand.
"What hospital?" Dr. Al-Hashimi asks.
"Pittsburgh's traumatic medical centre." Trinity supplies, earning herself a small smile.
"Ah, what a lovely surprise, I'm set to start there in a few days." Dr. Al-Hashimi says, "maybe we will run into each other sometime."
"Yeah, maybe." Trinity replies, shooting another look past the doctors shoulder to look for her cat.
"Is Bastian friendly?" Dr. Al-Hashimi asks to which Trinity shrugs.
"Depends on his mood, he usually hates petting... And being carried..." She trails off.
"Well, than it's for the best you go pick him up yourself." Dr. Al-Hashimi says with a step to the side and an invitation gesture.
They close the front door after themselves, just in case the cat decides to go for another run.
The flat is rather bare, lots of boxes and empty furniture in the rooms. Al-Hashimi had to move really recently.
Bastian is perched high atop a bookshelf in a second room to the right, perhaps a future office.
Trinity glares daggers at him and if she didn't know better, she would swear the bastard was returning it.
She approaches the feline, warned by his furiously swishing tail. That's her only warning, that and his huge pupils, staring her down. The cat jumps, trying for an escape again, but Trinity knows his tricks by now and thus has little problem catching him midair and gripping tightly as he starts to yowl in protests and squirm around to get away from his captor.
"Don't be dramatic you heathen, you're the one getting yourself into these situations!" Trinity grits out angrily as she wrangles her cat into a more secure hold. One that would preferably spare her any new scratches.
There's a soft snort of laughter, the kind that's barely contained but clearly wasn't meant to have escaped.
When Trinity turns around, her eyes fall onto the other doctor. The woman's hand is hovering by her face, covering her mouth. An attempt of smothering another laugh that may have tried to escape.
Her gaze is pointed away, slightly squinted with laughter, the same way her head is tipped to the side.
Her smile is pretty, Trinity notes and then immediately regrets losing focus for even a moment, as Bastian is a wicked creature and manages to land a paw-full of claws at Trinity's forearm.
The younger woman hisses in pain, instinctively wincing, but she manages to keep hold on the creature.
"You...!" Trinity accuses, glaring down at her cat with renewed anger.
"You're bleeding." A voice states, somewhat laced with worry.
"Ah, nothing major..." Trinity observes with a quick glance downwards, spotting 3 straight gashes already beading with droplets of blood.
"Are you sure?" The older woman hesitates, almost as if she wanted to reach out but does not.
"I'm also a doctor, remember?" Trinity shoots to the other woman.
"Right, right." Al-Hashimi murmurs, more to herself than to Trinity.
"I'll... See you around? I need to contain this bastard before he manages to skip away again." Trinity says awkwardly, just as the said cat yowls loudly once again.
"Nice meeting you, Doctor Santos. Less so you, Bastian." Al-Hashimi bids her goodbyes.
"Likewise," Trinity agrees.
"I really have to go now, my arms are starting to hurt," Trinity murmurs, she nods to the cat still in air jail. "He's not exactly light."
Al-Hashimi nods, "of course, of course."
With that, trinity gets walked to the door and heads to her own apartment.
"Dennis!" Trinity yells to her roommate as she kicks the front door open. "Bastard got out again, we can't keep on like this!" She follows it up, knowing the other doctor is somewhere inside their flat as his shoes were, as always, kicked off haphazardly by the front entrance.
"How?" Comes a yell from what Trinity thinks is their kitchen.
"I don't know!" She shouts back, closing the door and dropping the cat to the black cat to the ground.
"If I did, the issue would be taken care off!" She shouts, progressively losing volume as she approaches the kitchen.
She finds Dennis by the stove, in his stupid sappy shorts, and funky socks, dancing to the quiet song playing on the radio.
He spins around, watching Trinity plop down on a chair by the table and their asshole cat trot up to him to demand whatever it is he's cooking with another wave of loud meowing.
"He's fat enough, don't even think about it, Huckleberry." Trinity pointedly tells him, knowing he's prone to caving in.
"I wasn't going to," Dennis lied weakly, but exchanges small smiles with his roommate.
"So, about today's escape..." He trails off.
"He somehow got past the baby gate we installed in the living room and dashed past me when I opened the front door. He had to be waiting by it when he hears me." Trinity grumbles.
Dennis sighs. "So what do we do now?" He asks.
"I have no idea." Trinity replies, dramatically throwing her hands in the air.
"I've also met a new victim of his." Trinity informs him.
"Really? I thought he managed to run into every resident of our floor?" Dennis asks puzzled.
"We have a new neighbour." Trinity hums. "Apparently she's going to work at PTMC as a doctor."
"What department?" Dennis asks, turning back to the dinner he was cooking for the two of them.
"No idea," Trinity huffs.
"Guess we will find out?" Dennis musses, Stirling the pot with boiling pasta.
"Yeah, I don't really care much." She waves a hand, "just know you'll see her around."
Dennis hums, lowering the temperature of the induction desk and moving on to making the sauce.
"Holler when you're finished?" Trinity asks, not waiting for a reply as she pushes herself up from the seat and heads to her bedroom.
As she lays on her bed, scrolling through her phone her thoughts bring her back to the new neighbour. To doctor Al-Hashimi.
Trinity wouldn't admit it, but the woman did pique her interest.
She was just curious, sue her!