Chapter Text
"Sometimes I really feel like I'm just their personal photographer." A woman around her age says to her as Trinity has a hand cupped over the phone screen to try against the sun, Baran and Yolanda's smiley faces stare back at her.
"Sorry?" She asks, and the stranger takes a moment before replying, snapping her own photos of a couple a few yards away wrapped up in one another.
"Third-wheeling, I love them, but I should start charging them to do this." She laughs, looking at Trinity expectantly to laugh along, as if they're both on the same side of the joke.
Trinity gives her a tight smile, and is saved by answering as the other woman is called over by her friends to move on.
But it sticks with her, throughout the rest of their time hiking up to the viewpoint, more pictures at the top that she does her best to squirm out of, follows her back into the city, sits alongside her in the backseat of Baran's car as she watches her and Yolanda laugh together in the front.
It slithers into bed with her as she tries to fall asleep that night. The steady breathing of the other two doing nothing to comfort her. In the morning, like always, she will wake to find that Baran, in the middle, will have turned away from her in her sleep, will be nestled up against Yolanda, the surgeon's arms wrapped around her, keeping her close. It didn't bother Trinity initially, in fact, she saw it as a mercy, to be able to slip out of bed without disturbing the others when she couldn't sleep or nightmares plagued her. Now though, she yearns for it, to be the one they turn to, something desperate and keening inside of her that wants to be held.
So she lets the feeling fester, doesn't acknowledge it, but knows that a handful of words said by a stranger didn't start this, only gave it the confidence to push into the light and out of the dark corners of her mind that house her insecurities.
Slowly, incrementally, she pulls back, Yolanda and Baran cuddling on the sofa and she twists away from them, makes herself look like she wants the space so they don't offer for her to join. Tells them she needs to stay at her own apartment for a Whitaker emergency, prays he doesn't mention to either of them at work that he's staying at the farm nearly full time recently. She doesn't let them touch her like she used to, redirects soft hands and murmured praise away, focuses on making them feel good, because she knows how to do that without letting it kill her.
And now she's watching them more, she can see how much they both fit together, how right they look. Both beautiful, yes, but they make each other laugh, they spend endless time talking about anything and everything after work, and Trinity is too tired to think, let alone talk, cannot contribute anything meaningful. The pair of them together certainly aren't a HR nightmare, that's for sure, they could be open at work, could seek each other out after hard days. Could drive in together and not have to worry about who sees them. And every scrap of evidence keeps building up a damning case against her presence.
Baran's arms wrapping around Yolanda's waist from behind as the surgeon cooks. She hums gently rocking them both side until Yolands is swaying in earnest along to the sound, even as she continues to stir pots on the stove. And Trinity stands in the doorway, watching unnoticed, waiting for the comforting swell of affection to prove all of her hypotheses wrong, to prove she belongs here. But it doesn't come, now it's just emptiness and the gnawing ache that she doens't belong in this moment.
----
"Hey, Trin, can we talk." Yolanda asks after dinner one evening.
And Trinity feels every muscle freeze up at once. She can see the way Baran and Yolanda share a look between them, another indecipherable thing not made for her.
"We just wanted to check-in," Baran says gently, Trinity can see the way her arm shifts, hand hidden from view by the dining room table, undoutedbly reaching for Yolanda's hand though. "You've not seemed...happy lately, I feel like you've been withdrawing, from us."
Trinity Santos is a coward, that much she has always known. In the same way she needed a stranger to force her to confront the fact that she was intruding on this relationship, she needs her girlfriends to point out the fact that she's been pulling away. She should have found the courage to break it off with them, but even though it hurts to see the pair of them happy and know there's no space for her, not really, it was always so much worse to face a prospect of not being involved with them at all.
Plenty of bad things have happened in her life, and she's got that feeling in her stomach now, uncomfortable roiling that this is one of them, still she cannot make her mouth move.
"It feels like you're having second thoughts about us." Yolanda says bluntly, but not unkindly, and still Trinity says nothing, focuses on keeping her face neutral. She watches both Baran and Yolanda stare at her, watches them go from staring at her hopefully to resigned and downtrodden. "If that's the case, then we want you to do what's best. We all knew that the three of us together would be a lot, and if it's not what you hoped for, then that's okay, Trin. We want you to be happy more than anything."
Her kind girls, her considerate girls. Her girls, or not her girls she supposes, giving her the easy way out of this when she has been too weak to do it herself. She wonders if they have figured it out too, or if they just subconsciously know something isn't right, that she isn't meant to be here, with them.
"You're right," Trinity says quietly, doesn't read into the flicker of devastation that flashes over Baran's face, or the way Yolanda presses her lips together tightly like Trinity knows she does when's she's trying not to cry, because that doesn't make sense, doesn't fit neatly in with everything else she knows. "I don't think this is working."
Fights against the snarling need in her chest that screams at her to be selfish for a little while longer, because being on the peripheries of their love has to be better than being alone. But that's not fair to them, and Trinity loves them far too much to do that any longer.
"I'll, um, head home tonight. I'll come by in the morning to grab my stuff whilst you're both at work." She says, pushes herself up onto shaky legs, doesn't acknowledge the aborted movement of Baran's hand towards her. "I'll leave my key under the mat tomorrow."
She should stay and talk with them like an adult, explain it as much as she can, or at least reassure them that isn't not their fault. Or rather, it's clear how perfect they are together, so maybe it is their fault, for having hearts too big to think they could fit her in too. But she doesn't, instead hurries out the door, and into the evening without another word.
Trinity spends the next 24 hours swinging wildly between a state of catatonia and uncontrollable sobbing. The sobbing mostly occurs as she's shuffling around Baran's apartment. She had found a couple of boxes full of her items on the floor by the sofa that they must have collected for her. Most of it's there, and she was grateful to them again. She could've sworn however, that she'd had more clothes at Baran's, but she checked the laundry basket and the pile of clean clothes waiting to be put away and can't find what she's looking for. She must have got it wrong, she decided, and headed out, left her key under the mat like she said, and tried not to cry too hard as she was driving.
By the time the next morning rolls around, she wakes up from a fitful sleep with a pounding headache but also a resolution to not let any of this shit follow her to work. If not for herself, then for Baran and Yolanda. They were both graceful enough to give her a way out that made it feel like it was her own choice, the least she can be is respectful to them at the hospital.
That doesn't mean she's going out of her way to have to speak to them though. She promptly assigns herself on chairs, tells Dana as much, and the charge nurse blinks at her surprisedly before waving her away. She stays out there for as long as she can, when she needs a second opinion chooses to seek out Samira as a first choice, and then, incredibly begrudgingly and with no small amount of resentment, Langdon. Christ, how has she ended up in a situation where he is a preferable choice.
But the Pitt is a busy place, and she cannot, will not of course, shirk responsibilities to her patients just because she is unloveable.
So she does what is required when she's called over to help with a string of traums from a multi vehicle collison. She does her job and does it well. She answers Baran, no, Dr Al-Hashimi's questions succinctly, and does her best to not look at her. When she does catch a glance of the attending she's shocked to see the dark circles under her eyes. Her first instinct is to ask if she's okay, Baran suffers from the occasional nightmare too and sometimes the pair of them will leave Yolanda fast asleep and curl up on the sofa together with tea.
Or they used to. And Trinity doesn't get to do that anymore, so she looks at her for one long moment more and then looks away back to the patient.
It's just her luck, although maybe she shouldn't be complaining since she's not the patient in agony right now, that a surgery consult is needed. That Yolanda strides through the doors and immediately begins assessing, takes control of the room. She's particularly snappy today, barely gives the latest rotation of med students time to think when she questions them before she's telling them the answer like it's obvious. It wasn't obvious, except Trinity's not stupid enough to point that out, Langdon is though, and he gets his own special dose of snarkiness from the surgeon as a reward.
There's objectively more than enouh doctors in here to handle this patient now. In fact, Trinity had been staring a little blankly at the screen in the corner ever since Yolanda entered the room. Which is why she jumps a mile when she's addressed directly.
"Doctor Santos, what would you suggest?" Garcia asks.
And she tries her best to muddle through something, she's not sure what part she's being asked to weigh in on, but she knows she's wide of the mark when the entire room seems to hold its breath. It's only then that Trinity looks up at the surgeon. On the surface she looks better than Baran does, but there's the crinkle in her brow that she gets when she's worried not pissed off, and her eyes are searching hers, not filled with irritation like they should be at her subpar answer.
In fact, she doesn't chew Trinity out at all, turns to Dennis instead and asks him the same question which he answers correctly.
She scurries out of the trauma room as soon as she can.
The rest of the shift passes in much the same way, she tries her best to avoid both of her girlfriends, or well, ex-girlfriends now.
(She has to take 5 minutes in a restroom when that little realisation sinks in.)
She ignores Whitaker's confused looks and attempts at asking her what's going on whenever there's enough of a lull for her to sit down and try to chart.
And then at the end of it all she high tails it out of there the moment handovers are done. Sits alone in her empty apartment and tries desperately not to think about Baran and Yolanda across the city curled up together on the sofa. It's better this way, she reminds herself, they deserve to be happy and she isn't going to get in the way of that anymore.