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Dr. Santos feels like sharp edges, to Mel.
She doesn't have synesthesia, to be fair, so maybe 'feel' isn't exactly the right word. Of course, Mel isn't entirely sure anyone really has it. She had listened intently during one of the neuroscience classes she'd taken in undergrad, nodding along to the Ph.D candidate describe the taste of certain letters, and how some words were more pleasant to say than others, like she hadn't sounded like bizarre.
It had made Mel think about her high school english teacher talking about metaphor and simile, about voices like warm honey and looks with more meaning than Mel could puzzle out. How understanding the author's meaning and the author's words could often be two completely different things.
She wondered if there were conditions that were the opposite of synesthesia, where sensations weren't confused, but maybe— totally absent. Or so minimal that it the taste or sight or smell of them just didn't register at all. She thinks of how Becca can't stand some fabrics, about listening to her parents comfort her twin in the middle of a meltdown, and how Mel's own discomfort hadn't seemed real, if that was what Becca's was.
When Dr. Santos looks at her and raises an eyebrow, something unhappy and unimpressed twisting her expression, Mel wonders all over again.
Sharp edges. Not cutting, but. Close.
"Mel— I need a hand, and every other person in the ER is apparently busy—" Santos' voice takes on an edge that Mel's not entirely sure where it's aimed. At least, not until she spots Whitaker slip into a trauma bay, hot on the heels of Dr. Shen and Dr. Langdon.
She hadn't heard the incoming trauma get called. It makes her brow furrow and her stomach tense, aware of her own distraction and having to push down the mild discomfort it caused.
—Had she forgotten something? Missed something else critical? It wasn't excusable, she was responsible for these things—
"Mel?" Santos repeats herself, brows furrowing and moving a little more deliberately into Mel's path as she taps the corner of her iPad against her palm. "Knock knock, you home?"
"Who's there?" Mel mutters half under her breath, and raises her eyes to meet the other doctor's.
She's rewarded with a momentary flash of something, unidentifiable and fleeting, before the same distance seems to cloud Santos' expression. It makes Mel speak, before the words can hang for too long between them.
"What's up?"
"I need help with an LP, but, y'know. That one pesky oath means I can't just go in by myself."
"Oath?"
"Yeah, oath. The long one, bunch of words about harm and duty, they made it sound really important in a bunch of those lectures we attended?" Santos' words get shorter, faster and more clipped, as she works to get her joke out.
It's Mel's least favorite habit of Santos'. Mel understands, she does, the realization of what Santos had been saying registering the exact same moment Mel had spoke, but Santos is always quick with the next word, with the next joke—
"Y'know, Hippocr—"
"Yeah, I— I know. Big fan of his board game," Mel interjects, gaze darting over Santos' face and her slightly bemused expression. "With. With the hippos."
Santos is quiet for a beat, before she lets out a quiet huff of laughter. Or, at least Mel thinks it's laughter.
"Was that a joke?" Despite the bluntness of her tone, there's a ghost of a smile on her lips.
"I think so," Mel says, and opens her mouth to try and explain before good sense wins out. Her jaw snaps shut a little loudly, and when her eyes find Santos' again, she knows they're a little wide.
Santos' laugh is sharp, too. Husky and warm in her throat, but still undeniably sharp.
"Okay, Mel Brooks, wanna help me with this lumbar?"
Mel doesn't quite smile, but when she meets Santos' gaze, she thinks Santos' still understands.
The Fourth of July had been miserable, for half a dozen reasons all rolled into one.
Even so, the end of the night had been unexpected, and when Mel thinks back on the day, she can't help the warm flush of something that isn't quite happiness that fills her chest. Dr. Langdon (—Frank, he keeps telling her to call him Frank—) returning had been unexpected and so necessary she couldn't quite describe it, and even though she'd been convinced she might go home straight from the roof, karaoke with Santos had been even better.
Friends. Even if Becca was— despite anything else. She thinks she might actually have some friends.
It makes the blank, exhausted stare that Santos is giving her a little more confusing that Mel had anticipated.
"Tonight?" Santos asks, her gaze tracking somewhere over Mel's shoulder to— Dr. Al, talking intently with Whitaker, when Mel glances back to see what she's so focused on.
"Uh. Yeah, I thought. I checked, we both have tomorrow off, and I thought you might want to blow off some steam."
Mel had checked their schedules. Looked at four different game shops in the area, and of the two of them that have a concession stand, only one sells beer. Karaoke had been Santos' way of relaxing. She thinks this might be hers. Maybe.
She's wanted to go before. But Becca hates most board games, and Mel had only convinced some of her undergrad dorm roommates to play monopoly once, and she'd won because the rest of them had gotten bored. She thinks this might be nice. Maybe.
"With a game of Candy Land?"
"There's beer," Mel interjects quickly, even as she feels a sinking sort of certainty of the answer.
"Cool— uh, rain check, maybe?" Santos rubs over her forehead, and when she lowers her hand, some of the dark hair pulled back from her face has wiggled free, dangling down in front of her eyes. "Not that it doesn't sound fun—"
"Rain check," Mel agrees, dropping her gaze. Sarcasm. She knows it when she hears it, and with Santos, it was easier to just assume she didn't really mean what she was saying. Mel nods briefly, and backs up a step. "No! It's, that's. Fine. Rain check." She nods at the other doctor, and when she turns on her heel, the floor squeaks.
She almost goes anyway. Becca was spending the night at Middle Hill, and Mel, for once, doesn't want to go home to an empty apartment. There was the stray cat that she's been feeding, but he doesn't always show up in the evenings, and she can even admit to herself that its a pretty sad excuse for company. She wonders if Santos likes cats. She wonders if Santos likes anything, really.
When she gets home, a little unit on the bottom floor of a townhome, it feels bigger than usual.
"Have you seen my backpack?" Langdon's voice is a distraction, and Mel glances up from the tidy line of stitches she'd been putting in the upper thigh lac of the last trauma patient who'd come in.
Langdon looks a little frazzled as he sticks his head in the door, his normally well-groomed hair standing up in tufts. His gaze is on Mel, but Santos replies anyway.
"You left it on Dana's computer, she was going to throw it away." Santos has her own line of sutures to attend to on the other side of their unconscious MVA patient. CT had shown no major internal concerns, and Al-Hashimi had put them on clean up while she tried to get him a bed upstairs.
Despite the threat to his belongings, Langdon doesn't look particularly unnerved. Dana likes him too much to do anything to him, Mel thinks, and she's certain Langdon is thinking the same.
"Did something come up?" Mel asks quietly, her hands stilling with the hemostat still tight on the suture needle. There was still a few hours left in the shift, and she relaxes some when Langdon shakes his head quickly.
"No, I'm out a little early today. Parker's on her way in to cover for me." He glances over her work, and Mel fights the sensation of being graded. "I'm taking the kids to those movie in the park things, y'know?"
"Oh, yeah— I took Becca to one a couple weeks ago." Mel isn't sure when she became aware of Santos' eyes on her face, but she has to work to keep her gaze on Langdon instead.
"Zootopia 2?" Langdon asks, the knowledgeable tone of someone else who'd sat in lumpy grass for someone they love.
"That's the one," Mel agrees, and can feel Santos' gaze get even more pointed. It shouldn't be possible.
Langdon tilts his head, and the smile he sends her is a little wry. "I'll let you know how Hoppers goes over."
It's not until he leaves, the door swinging shut behind him, and Mel has dropped the leftover thread and needle into the steel tray at her elbow that Santos speaks.
"Cozy of you," she says, her gaze still on the long laceration that traced from the man's armpit towards his stomach.
"I'm sorry?" Mel asks, her eyes landing on the half lidded and guarded expression on Santos' face.
"You and Langdon." Her next mattress stitch is a little too deep, and she swears as she snips the thread and tugs it out with a pair of tweezers. "Thought you were gonna make a picnic date for a minute, there."
"What-?" Mel laughs, even as her cheeks heat and her shoulders inch towards her ears. "We— no, that's not—"
"Not what's happening?" Santos finally meets her eyes, and the sharp look in her eyes makes Mel want to apologize, almost instinctively. Before she can respond, Santos speaks again. "Better not be. He's still married." Her voice makes it clear that she's not happy with that, either.
It was an odd place to be. Langdon's return had been messy, and Mel couldn't quite reconcile the relief at Dr. Robby's sabbatical with the way he'd treated Langdon that first day. But Santos had been stranger.
Mel didn't listen to rumors, as a rule. She knew how often they were inaccurate, and how often they were just— mean.
Sharp.
"He and Abby are trying," Mel says, her eyes landing back on the patient in front of her. It felt less loaded then looking at Santos. "And— it's not— I'm not interested in him. Like that."
"No?"
Mel frowns, and fights the urge to snap. It's not— She doesn't owe Santos anything. She wasn't sure what had inspired her that night, to pull her to karaoke and drink and laugh and be her friend, but Mel doesn't owe her anything.
"No." Mel can feel her lips curling down unhappily, and without looking up from the shiny plastic surface of the IV tape in his elbow, finds herself speaking again. "He's. Not the type I'd be interested in."
"Why not?"
It's not the reaction Mel expected, and she finds herself looking back up at Santos.
"Why— He's—" He's married, he's her friend, he's Langdon— "He's tall."
"He's tall?" Mel's gaze is fixed on the wall above Santos' shoulder, the list of direct extensions for different department taped up next to the phone, but she can hear the way the other doctor's eyebrows raise.
"Among other things."
"Other things." Santos has given up stitching the last inch of the wound in front of her, and with each forced inhale and exhale of the patient's vent, the edge of the wound shifts and stretches. She needs to finish.
"Other things," Mel confirms, and wishes she'd stood up to help Langdon find his backpack.
Santos hums softly, and Mel lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding when Santos leans forward to sink the tip of her suture into the deep fascia, burying the knot and pushing through the pale looking skin beside the wound.
Mel thinks that might be it, until Santos makes a soft sound and Mel meets her eyes once more.
"So. Who would you be interested in?" The deliberate casualness makes Mel freeze.
She wants to say nothing. Certainly doesn't let herself think of dark hair and bright eyes and all the things she does like when she pushes a hand between her legs when she's alone at night—
"Parker."
Santos glances behind herself, towards the door of the room, like she's half convinced the doctor had stepped in and Mel was just greeting her.
"Parker?"
"Dr. Ellis, I mean."
"I know who you mean, Mel." Santos is blinking, and Mel watches the way Santos seems to process in real time what Mel had said.
"She— with the deposition," Mel stammers, wondering what she'd just done. "She's really—" The memory of her pulling Mel into the hall and explaining the lawsuit all over again, gaze intent and voice even huskier than usual makes a chill chase up Mel's arms and spine if she thinks about it too long.
She makes a point not to think about it for too long. She's not worried the effect will wear off. She's just— being practical. Dr. Ellis is her coworker.
When Mel looks up, Santos has an expression that makes Mel want to freeze. The mouse in front of the tomcat, deer in the headlights. The exact same chill shoots from her chest down to her—
"Mel," Al-Hashimi's voice cracks through the tense silence as she pushes the door of Trauma One open. "I need you to supervise Ogalvie on his hip reduction patient."
"Right." Mel almost knocks over the steel tray next to her as she stands, eyes fixed on the other doctor like a lifeline. "On my way."
Mel can feel Santos' eyes on her the entire way out of the room, and she wonders when the sensation became one she enjoyed so much.
Mel has her hands full with an iPad and Dr. McKay explaining her diverticulitis case when Santos slides up next to her.
She doesn't speak immediately, almost uncharacteristically, and it's not until Mel and McKay are both staring at her that Santos notices.
"Are you done?" She asks, glancing between Mel and McKay.
McKay's expression always reminds Mel of a fox, sharp and amused and a little more knowing than Mel's entirely comfortable with.
"All good," McKay says, and with another glance at Mel, tugs the iPad from her grip and turns to head towards North 6.
It leaves Mel empty handed, and she awkwardly clasps them in front of her before turning to Santos. Before she can speak, Santos cuts her off.
"You have plans for Monday?" She asks, with no lead up.
"Sorry?"
"Monday. You have it off, don't you?" Santos raises her eyebrows, and her eyes dip down to Mel's hands, still held in front of her, until Mel flushes and drops her hands down to her side.
"I do," Mel says, but she's not entirely sure. She'd swapped shifts with Langdon, and her schedule had gotten a little confused from there. She thinks Monday was unaffected, though.
"Cool. So you're free?"
Mel isn't sure how to feel about the assumption that she didn't have anything going on, but—
"Huckleberry and I were going to go out to this park, like an hour away, all these rocks make up these waterslides, and the high is supposed to be like, 94 or something miserable." Santos' doesn't slow her speech, something deliberately casual and unaffected as she describes it that somehow still feels— off.
Mel is squinting at her, lips half parted, when she realizes.
Santos is excited.
"So. You down?"
Mel has to blink, refocusing on her words and not the slightly unexpected sight of Santos, bright eyed and almost anticipatory. She wants an answer. She wants to know if Mel wants to go.
"I. Sure. Yeah. That sounds fun."
When Santos smiles, her face transforms. Mel isn't sure she's seen it, at least not directed at her, and she blinks again, feeling for all the world that she was looking directly into the sun.
"Cool. It will be." The smile is gone, replaced with a casual smirk and raised eyebrows. Mel remembers, though, burned into her retinas like an afterimage. "Text me your address, we'll pick you up. 9, I think."
Mel nods, and finds her own smile a little wider than she anticipated.
Saturday brings a slew of cases, mostly from a nursing home with a flu that runs through the residents, and Sunday turns into a day of chaos when Dr. Al calls out sick and Dr. Abbot has to pull a double to cover the ED.
It feels like carried momentum when Amy, Whitaker's— something, Mel still doesn't quite understand— calls him to come over and help with Theo, his— Mel really doesn't know that, either, but Santos doesn't slow down her irate explanation long enough for Mel to ask.
It all leads to Monday morning, Santos driving and Mel sat shotgun, alone in the car and heading south to Ohiopyle State Park.
It's a little more than an hour to the park, and Mel has to work to keep from rambling.
The front seat of Trinity's (Trinity, not Santos, heavily impressed upon her after the first five minutes of the drive) car is comfortable, even if Mel feels overexposed in her shorts and the rash guard top she's got on. Santos is wearing denim shorts and a tank top that clings to—
It clings. Mel doesn't look.
Over the drive, Mel learns about Whitaker, and his admittedly bizarre relationship with the widow he was living with part time. She learns about Dr. Robby inviting Whitaker to housesit. She learns about Trinity's frantic attempts to avoid traveling home to see her family in Seattle for the holidays, and that she's one of four siblings.
It's nice. And when Trinity asks her about herself, it's easier to speak than she thought it might be.
The park is gorgeous, when they get there, the parking lot is half full, even this early in the day. Trinity's rapid fire questions slow while they pull items out of the trunk, head down the stairs, and find an outcropping to claim as their own.
The river is shallow here, flowing over broad, flat chunks of sandstone, cutting in smooth paths that more than one person is sliding down with more glee than Mel thought possible for 10:30 in the morning. Natural waterslides, or, that's how more than one tourism site had described them. Mel's curious research the night before doesn't prepare her for the sight, large leafed oaks spreading out in a green canopy and the cool mist of flowing water dropping the temperature to something manageable in its wake.
"Cool," Mel says, and Trinity's grin is wide enough that Mel finds herself grinning back.
"Did you always want to do emergency medicine?"
Trinity's voice cuts through Mel's absent minded day dreaming, and she shifts from where she's been reclining on the rocks.
They'd spread a couple towels across the stone, out of the path of the water, and Trinity had pulled out food and, after a little while, a thermos of iced tea that was cut with something stronger than lemon juice. Mel hadn't had much, but it left her loose limbed and relaxed, and she'd set her glasses next to her head and stared up at the swirling, unfocused mess of green and blue above her. The occasional squeal of someone shooting down the slides had been the only noise for a while now, and Mel twists her head to look up at Santos.
She's not as blurry as the leaves, but Mel reaches for her glasses anyway. She likes being able to see Trinity's face when she speaks. Mel thinks she might actually be starting to understand exactly what she means when she does.
"For my specialty?" Mel asks, even as she tugs the frames into place and looks up at Trinity. Her own eyes are hidden behind sunglasses, hair gathered into a bun at the back of her head and tank top discarded to reveal a light blue bikini top. It looked like it might be crochet, or something equally intricate. Mel doesn't look close enough to tell. "Not at first. I— I thought about doing anesthesiology."
"Wanted access to the good drugs, huh?" Trinity jokes, her eyebrows wiggling above the dark plastic of her sunglasses. Her teasing expression only lasts for a moment, and as they both pause to watch a kid rush past, water shoes squelching as he headed for the top of the rocks to slide down again. When she speaks, her voice is a little more pensive. "What changed?"
Mel laughs, a little aborted noise, and her fingers fold over her stomach. She's still got the rash guard on, and she toys with the material over her belly button. "A lot," she murmurs, and knowing how much she hates vague answers herself, makes herself hold Trinity's gaze.
"I— I liked my emergency medicine rotation." She thinks back to those two years of med school. Thinks of the number of conversations that felt like something else entirely was being said, about the layer of some nuance that, try as she might, she couldn't notice until after the fact. "It was all— right there. In front of me." A complex trauma or a quick, decisive diagnosis relied on her knowledge. She could count on that, if nothing else.
"Mel King values transparency," Trinity says softly, something musing in her tone, and when her gaze lands on Mel's, it's like the sunglasses aren't even there. Mel knows what her eyes would look like if she pulled them off.
"Mel values understanding," she corrects, and Trinity wets her lips before nodding, turning to face the river again.
Mel doesn't pull her glasses off again. She watches the shape of the leaves above her, the wispy clouds that sneak between the canopy of the trees lining the river, and when Trinity isn't looking, the curve of the other woman's jaw as she lounges on the stone beside her.
She feels stupid, standing at the top of the rocks.
It's only Trinity, standing on the edge of the stone a little above her that keeps Mel from turning and heading for the car.
"C'mon, you've got the damn sandals on already, go, already!" Trinity's a touch exasperated, but her amusement is still obvious. She's got Mel's glasses safely in her care, and last Mel had seen, dangling from the string of her bikini top between the pale triangles of fabric on her chest.
Mel was glad to be a little bit blind.
"They're Tevas," she corrects, mostly to herself, but sighs as she sends a slightly begrudging salute toward Trinity. The slides hadn't looked that impressive from the sidelines, but she's feeling less courageous as she lowers to her butt and slides into the groove closest to her.
Trinity whoops as Mel pushes forward, the cool rush of water hitting her back and legs with enough force to make Mel squeal, flailing for a moment before she got comfortable with the movement.
It's fun, stupid and exhilarating, and when she gets spit out on a flat portion of the stone, she's laughing.
She can hear Trinity getting closer, trotting down the stone towards her, and before she can reach Mel, something childlike and excited hits her, and Mel squirms over to the next slide. Trinity's betrayed shout when Mel slides away makes Mel laugh— no, it makes Mel cackle.
It's great —it's perfect—until she hits the rock.
"Isn't the whole point of this stupid place that it's smooth?" Trinity complains as she urges Mel to sit on the back of her car.
It's a hatchback, some little oval thing that Mel can't tell apart from most every other car on the road, but it means when Trinity lifts the back hatch, there's a flat spot for Mel to sit. Half of their stuff is still down by the river, but Trinity's ranting too much for Mel to get a word in edgewise.
"One would assume," Mel says quietly, frowning at the stinging discomfort high up on her flank, just under her ribs. She's going to leave a wet spot on the interior, but she doesn't think Trinity would listen to her if she said so.
"Stupid— someone should put up a sign—" Her voice gets a little muffled, and she reaches past Mel to pull out— a first aid kit. Mel has a first aid kit in her car. She somehow didn't think Trinity would be the type.
"Does that have a suture kit?" Mel asks, reaching for the apparently better stocked kit, when Trinity smacks her hand away.
"Yes, but I won't know if you need it until you show me—"
Mel frowns, and her attention finally comes back to Trinity.
"Show you what?" She's got her towel bundled up in her lap, and part of it tucked up under her arm. The coverage makes her feel secure, and she doesn't know that she wants to give it up.
"Whatever you're hiding from me." Trinity blinks at her, and pushes her sunglasses up until they're perched on the top of her head. There's a moment of tense stand off, and finally, the other doctor sighs.
"C'mon. Your shirt rode up, you hit something. Can I please just see your ribs? I'd feel guilty if you had a punctured lung and you were too polite to tell me."
It's easy to forget how much Trinity sees. It's impressive, sometimes. Not so much now.
"I don't have a punctured lung," Mel says, and adjusts the towel. "I wouldn't be breathing this well if I did."
Trinity doesn't rise to the bait. "Well, we can cross that off the differential." She surveys Mel's face, and sighs again. "Mel. Please?"
Mel. Not Melanoma or Melancholy or Melisma.
She presses her lips flat and drops the towel onto the car hatch beside her, before squirming out of the rash guard. It's stuck to her skin now that it's soaked through, and she grunts a little before dropping it in a wet pile on her lap. Sitting there in just a swimsuit top, she should feel exposed. Instead, she just feels warm.
Trinity puts on gloves, tucked somewhere in her kit. Mel isn't sure why it relaxes her, but when Trinity hisses softly and prods at the tender skin on the side of her ribs, Mel only shifts a little bit.
"Bad?" Mel asks, twisting to try and look down over her own shoulder. Trinity pokes her arm, and Mel moves it accommodatingly.
"No punctured lung," Trinity says, and glances up to meet her gaze. "But apparently you found the one sharp rock in the whole river."
"Stitches?"
Trinity laughs. "You shouldn't sound excited about that."
"I just want to know where you got the kit."
Trinity laughs again, and there's a soft thump against her shoulder. Mel blinks, and it's only when she turns that she realizes it's Trinity's forehead, banging softly against the point of her shoulder.
"I'll send you a link," she says, and the look she sends up at Mel through her lashes is warm, fond, and Mel—
Mel's bleeding. She's sopping wet, her braid dripping river water down her spine, and she can't stop thinking about what it would feel like to kiss Trinity.
"I'd like that," Mel says softly.
When Trinity shifts her into a better position, Mel moves willingly.
When she flushes the wound with— bottled saline, Mel really does want the link— Mel shivers at the first gush of water, but doesn't protest.
When she applies the tidy line of steri-strips over the wound, Trinity's fingers linger on Mel's skin, and Mel wishes she wasn't wearing the gloves.
It's… odd, at work.
Mel keeps the cut clean, and in a few days, the strips peel and fall off on their own.
And when they're at work, Trinity is quick to share a smile with Mel, and even quicker with a joke, but they never feel pointed at Mel. Not anymore.
Still, after that day, nothing seems to change. Mel invites Trinity to another night out, and gets a polite rejection. Dr. Langdon tells Mel about his son getting in trouble for starting a food fight in kindergarten, and when Mel laughs, she can feel Trinity's gaze on the side of her head.
She'd think she was crazy, if she wasn't so certain that Trinity had wanted to touch her as badly as Mel did.
So when Becca cancels on her— the third time this month, another night with Adam and his parents, all without Mel, without Mel's input, without a thought for her own sister— Mel wants to scream.
The instinct sucks. She's not an angry person. Certainly not about Becca. But for the first time, she wonders if her sister got that bizarre sense that she'd always assumed they both missed. The understanding, the subtle, unspoken messages that apparently did everything from explain something without words to get you a boyfriend—
Mel doesn't think that her frustration is obvious. No one comments on it. Maybe she's missing the output module, too. The unspoken, silent transmission that let people know she needed something. Someone.
Her frustration lasts through the last of her shift, through handoffs, through the drive home, through ordering a pizza in a fit of self pity, through the knock at the door.
"Trinity?"
"Gonna let me in?"
Mel isn't sure what's more shocking: the sight of Trinity on her doorstep, or the first aid kit in her hand.
"I— is something wrong?" Mel's focus can't seem to shift from the kit the other doctor is holding.
"Nope." Trinity pops the 'p' with deliberate volume. "At least, not medically." She brandishes the kit in demonstration. "Present. Merry Christmas."
Mel blinks and steps back as Trinity bullies her way inside. She should maybe object to the treatment, but something warm is bubbling behind her sternum, and she can't quite make words come out around it.
"It's August," Mel says, mostly for something to say, and watches as Trinity takes in the apartment. Her apartment.
"Sick digs, Mel." Trinity sets the kit down on the kitchen counter, where a small pile of bills sit alongside Mel's work backpack. "What are you doing?"
"Right now?" Mel looks down her body, like there's something she's missing. She's still in sweats, her comfy, soft ones, that she usually didn't wear unless she was sick. She feels a little obvious, until she remembers Trinity wouldn't know that. Unless she somehow— intuited it. Mel wasn't ever certain what Trinity could figure out from looking at her.
"No, next fall. Yes, right now." Trinity rolls her eyes, but it doesn't feel like it's at Mel's expense. "What about that— board game shop? Game cave? Thought you might want to blow off some steam." Trinity pushes her hands into her jeans pockets, and Mel only processes that Trinity is— she's dressed up. Dark jeans and a comfortable looking top, but nicer than her scrubs, and Mel isn't sure what to do with the knowledge.
"I ordered a pizza," Mel says, like that's an explanation. "I— I was just going to stay in." She's already stretched thin, and she wants— Quiet. Calm.
Trinity blinks, and Mel has an absent thought that she surprised her.
"Enough for two?" Trinity finally says.
Mel nods.
"Yeah. I think."
Mel does get distracted, before the food comes. The kit is cool, and now that she's not bleeding in the back of Trinity's car, she can poke and prod through it. She realizes, belatedly, that she should probably be concerned about what Trinity is getting into, but when Mel turns to look, she's just poking through Mel's bookshelf. It's mostly medical textbooks, but Trinity still seems content.
"What were you gonna watch?" Trinity finally asks, and when Mel turns (the hemostats were crappy, but there were a nicer pair tucked in alongside the cheaper ones, and Mel was wondering if Trinity had done that, too), Trinity is flipping through the apps on her TV.
"Oh, uh—" Mel doesn't want to confess her proclivity for terrible reality TV. "I don't know, I hadn't decided."
"No?" Trinity asks, and when she finally clicks over to a streaming service, Mel flushes a little.
"No. Not really. If— what do you want to watch? I don't have a ton of stuff, but. Your choice."
"I don't care, genuinely. I'm intruding on your evening, remember?"
"Yeah, but—"
"Mel."
"It doesn't matter. I'm flexible."
"Mel."
"Dealer's choice—"
"That doesn't even make sense!" Trinity's hands come up to tug at her hair, and she presses the remote against her forehead like she's trying to push it into her eye. "Mel, I— Your opinion matters. Please. I know you have a— a fetish for being accommodating, but— you don't always have to give up shit for other people! Just pick! You!"
The apartment is quiet in the wake of Trinity's outburst. She lowers the remote, and as Mel stares at her, she taps it against her palm in a staccato rhythm.
"Sorry." Trinity drops her gaze, and with a tiny wince, tosses the remote back down on the couch. "I— You just don't have to roll over all the time. You're worth listening to." She shifts, and glances towards the door. "Enjoy your pizza, Mel."
She's leaving. Mel frowns at the remote, then up at Trinity, and the thought of her walking out the door is unacceptable.
She almost trips in her haste to get between Trinity and the door. Her braid flops against her back, and when she straightens up, Trinity is giving her a guarded, wary look.
It seems obvious. Mel isn't sure why it took her so long to spot it.
"You mean it?" Mel says, a little nonsensically, but before Trinity can ask, she clarifies. "You mean it. That I'm worth listening to."
Clarity. A brief flash of it, before the guard comes back up.
"I do." Trinity's gaze is heavy, and when it rests on Mel, it feels like a blanket. She shivers before she can quite stop herself.
"Good," Mel says. And when Trinity opens her mouth, Mel kisses her.
It's objectively a bad first kiss. Mel makes contact mostly with Trinity's open mouth, and Trinity laughs against her lips at the realization. They're both breathing a little hard, but Trinity reaches up to cup Mel's jaw, tilt their heads, and then—
That's better.
That's much better.
Trinity kisses Mel like she's got something to prove, and Mel supposes she sort of does. It's overwhelming in the best way, but each brush of Trinity's lips against Mel's seems to melt away the frantic, buzzing energy that's been dogging her all afternoon. When Mel grips Trinity's hips, she sighs, and when Mel parts her lips for the soft brush of Trinity's tongue, she melts in the heat of her attention.
Their first kiss was bad. The second is perfect.
The pizza delivery eventually breaks them apart.
Mel's braid came undone at some point, and the look the delivery driver gives her when she takes the box from him makes her flush pink up to her hairline.
Mel does choose what they watch that night. She's pretty sure Trinity gets more into it than she does.
Trinity doesn't comment on the toppings on the pizza, and when Mel leaves a neat pile of the crusts in the box, she just snags one with a raised eyebrow and a pleased noise before biting into it with gusto.
Eventually, when the last light of the late summer sunset dies in the front windows, and the latest episode fades to black, Mel speaks again.
"I've got a lot of opinions," she says softly. She keeps her eyes fixed on the rolling credits, then the loading wheel as the next episode auto plays.
"I gathered," Trinity says, and there's just a hint of laughter in her voice.
"Strong ones," Mel continues, and twists to face her. "And— they come out at the wrong moment and annoy people and I don't think I can change most of them."
She's been trying, with uncooked tomatoes specifically. She hasn't been successful, at least, not yet.
Trinity doesn't speak at first, and when Mel is certain she's going to stand up and leave, Trinity finally responds.
"I also have strong opinions. And God knows I say them at the wrong time."
Mel blinks, and her brow furrows as she takes in Trinity's expression. Mel hasn't been surprised by Trinity's opinions in— weeks, at least. Maybe a couple months.
She doesn't know why the thought surprises her. Trinity wasn't as opaque as she might seem to be, and it's a relief, the longer Mel thinks about it. She chews on her lip for a moment, and when she looks up to meet Trinity's gaze, Mel nods.
"Okay."
As the theme song starts up again, Mel runs her eyes over Trinity's profile, lit up by the glow of the TV screen. It means she watches the way Trinity's gaze focuses on Mel, and in between one heartbeat and the next, it softens into something so familiar that Mel forgets how to breathe.
She still doesn't have synesthesia. And maybe she's missing some wiring that would have made her a great anesthesiologist. But as she scoots closer on the couch until her shoulder knocks into Trinity's, she thinks whatever she does have is pretty good, too.