Chapter Text
The streets are still packed by the time they peel out of the bar, skin sticky with sweat. A man in a garish outfit -- little more than a flash of red, white and blue in the corner of her eyeline -- stumbles and loses his footing, the beer in his hand sloshing violently through the air.
A pathetic dribble of Bud Light splashes down onto Trinity’s shirt, and her reflexes are only just quick enough to let her avoid being crashed into. She jumps back, fingers already pulling at the thin material of her tank, tugging it away from her over-warm body before it can seep into her skin. The man shouts her a garbled apology, but he’s already halfway down the street by the time it’s out, and it does nothing to soothe the flash of irritation that burns through her, hot and restless with nowhere to go.
“Yup,” she says, turning to face Mel, standing as close to her as she can get without making contact. “Definitely time to go home.”
She’s lying, actually -- she’d wanted to stay out longer, to hover by the bar until closing, to sink so many shots the day behind her melted away, out of sight and out of mind.
She’d wanted to get so drunk that the bartender would have to cut her off, just so that she could have an excuse to pick a fight; anything to let her channel her energy into something more productive than the psychic mental warfare she’s been attempting to enact on Garcia during breaks between songs, as if Trinity might be able to explode her with her mind from across the city.
But Mel’s been flagging for at least the past half hour, twitchy and overstimulated, eyes squeezing shut harshly under the fluorescent lighting of the bar, and Trinity’s a bitch but she’s not cruel. She knows Mel wouldn’t leave her alone here even if she asked her to, won’t be able to sleep tonight if she doesn’t know Trinity’s home safe, won’t believe her even if she swears she’s fine.
There’s a bottle of tequila in the apartment, anyway, with enough left in it to send her to sleep. She’ll live.
“Do you prefer Uber or Lyft?” Mel asks conversationally.
There’s a little bit of a slur to her words, and Trinity is suddenly giddy at the thought of it, her mood lightening as quickly as it had turned. Mel King is drunk. It feels a little like seeing your teacher at the grocery store, or like that one time she had locked eyes with McKay across the dance floor at the dyke bar: the childish excitement of seeing something you were never supposed to, and getting the privilege of watching the dynamics shift unexpectedly right in front of your eyes.
“Just whatever’s cheaper, usually.” She swipes through her apps with clumsy fingers until she finds Uber, punching in her address. When she glances sideways, she finds Mel doing the same thing, squinting down at the bright light of her phone screen, waiting as the Lyft app buffers, struggling to find a connection.
Hers finally loads, and she groans at what she sees: UberX, $47. Fucking surge pricing.
“Lyft it is, I guess,” she murmurs, clicking her phone locked and sliding it back into her pocket.
She shifts closer to Mel, peering over her shoulder curiously, dread pooling at the thought of their idea of a fair price for a ten minute ride. Instead of creating space from her, Mel just angles her phone closer to Trinity, an invitation. She can’t help but smile. “Do you live near here?”
“Um, kinda?” Mel says.
When the app finally loads, she clicks on the first suggested address, and something funny starts fluttering in Trinity’s stomach when she reads it, something that might be nausea but could just as easily be the stirrings of excitement, some fucked up Pavlovian response she doesn’t want to think too hard about.
"Like, a ten minute drive, maybe?”
Closer to fifteen, actually, she wants to correct, but she doesn’t, because she lives on the opposite side of town, a fact which she knows that Mel knows, and she doesn’t need Mel thinking too hard about why she might know that, why she might be familiar with her neighbourhood, what business Trinity might have in streets filled with neat, sprawling row-houses, rather than the shitty apartment complex she and Huckleberry call home.
Of course, Mel could probably guess without ever having to be told -- she knows they’re not exactly subtle about things at work. Even still, she feels no need to bring her attention to it.
It’s less that she doesn’t want Mel thinking about why Trinity might have been there before and more that she doesn’t need her wondering why she isn’t now, connecting the dots between her attitude today and her clearly cancelled plans and the urgency with which she had dragged her out tonight, like it was something that she needed, rather than just wanted.
The page switches before she can say anything, anyway. Mel sighs at what she reads, and when Trinity looks down, she can see her fingers twitching restlessly, balling into curled-up fists before straightening out and tensing, knuckles cracking under the strain of it.
On instinct, she reaches out to soothe, but stops herself halfway, letting her hand linger awkwardly somewhere near Mel’s wrist instead -- Mel doesn’t do well with unexpected touch, she remembers, just fast enough. Just another thing that they apparently have in common.
“Forty minutes?” she scoffs. “Seriously? It’s a fucking holiday, how are there not more drivers?”
Mel hums anxiously. Her hand flutters up to her face, finger twisting around a lock of hair, now sticky and plastered to her forehead, as opposed to the neat braid she’d had it tied in earlier. Trinity sighs, a pinprick of guilt washing over her at the memory of tossing her hairtie into the crowd earlier.
“I think drivers tend to prefer taking longer rides on holidays,” Mel says. “They get more money, and it’s less people potentially vomiting in their car.”
Sounds about right. Even still, Trinity’s face twists in annoyance. “Well, that fucking sucks.”
Mel just nods, head jerking a little too quickly to be natural. Trinity watches her throat bob around a swallow, and lets her eyes drift to the clench of her jaw, tight and troubled. She’s grinding her teeth so hard Trinity’s almost a little surprised they don’t start disintegrating when she opens her mouth.
“It’s fine,” Mel says, in the voice of someone who is very much not fine, thin and high and trying way too hard to sound casual. She pastes on a smile that is painfully easy to read, and hitches her backpack further up her back. “I can just walk.”
Technically true. Her neighbourhood isn’t that far away -- Trinity’s walked there plenty times herself, usually from even further away from here. It’s a mostly straightforward route. If she wanted to, Mel could pretty much sidestep all of the main streets and just go through the residential areas, lined with houses that should be asleep by now and lit only by streetlights dim enough to soothe, rather than overwhelm.
On any other night, Trinity would probably agree, and turn on her heel to walk home in the other direction without giving it much of a thought. Mel’s an adult, after all -- older than her, even -- and perfectly capable of walking herself home when there’s no other option available.
But it’s the Fourth. It’s the Fourth, and there are still reams of people milling around, noisy and careless and entirely devoid of any spatial awareness, evident in the dampness clinging to her underboob. It’s the Fourth, and even from here, tucked under the awning of a shitty karaoke bar, Trinity can hear the sound of block parties raging on well past quiet-hours, fireworks still cracking overhead, the tinny laughter of kids up past their bedtimes and their parents, too drunk to realise.
It’s the Fourth, and she still feels bad about how she left things with Whitaker. How all he had been asking was for her to say one honest thing that they both already knew to be true, and she hadn’t been able to, even when she had wanted to. The way he’d looked at her after, brow furrowed, teeth tucked below his lips, pity, and something else too, something she doesn’t want to think about. The churning feeling that had set in as she walked away, pushed him away, an old friend at this point, as comforting as it was hurtful.
She’d wanted to be a better friend, but couldn’t let herself reach for the parts of her that remembered how to be that person. Wants to be a better friend now, but he’s not here, might not be coming back, and she can’t let herself think about that for too long -- not now, not drunk, with the weight of a scalpel still burning heavy in her pants pocket, buried in the bottom of her bag, and yet close enough that she can still feel it in her hand if she closes her eyes tight enough.
Mel, though. Mel is here. She can be a good friend to Mel now, even if she’s never done it before. Even if she might not want her to, or doesn’t think Trinity capable.
A loud flash erupts above them, and Mel jumps, hands coming up to clasp over her ears in an instant. Her whole body tenses, from the rigid line of her shoulders to the pigeon-toe of her sensible work shoes. Trinity crouches to her knees and pulls the front pocket of her bag open, scrabbling until her fingers tangle around a spare hairtie, hidden under her emergency KitKat and a burnt-out Juul pod.
She reaches for the unopened bottle of water she knows Whitaker will have left in her bag, and spends a few minutes untangling the twisted strands of her own hair that have embedded themselves into the elastic, only getting back up to her feet when Mel’s loosened, some of the tension bled out of her body.
“Here,” she says, holding the items out in front of her. Mel’s brow quirks softly at the sight of them. “Take these, I’ll go find someone who can pick us up.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that.” Mel shakes her head. She pushes both of the strands of hair hanging down behind her ears. “I’m fine, I just got a little overstimulated. It happens, sometimes, with loud noises, but I’m okay.”
Trinity just pushes her hand out further. “Take ‘em.”
Mel still doesn’t reach out, although she eyes the bottle warily, as though she half believes it might be poisoned. Trinity watches her tuck and re-tuck the same strands of hair three more times before sighing and saying, “The bottle’s fresh, I swear. Huck keeps putting them in with my stuff when he thinks I don’t see him. Apparently I can’t be trusted to hydrate myself.”
“He’s not wrong,” Mel says. “I watched you finish three cans of Red Bull before noon today.”
“Aw, you pay attention to me?” Trinity bats her eyelids up at her owlishly, arranging her face into something doeish and undeniably Javadi-esque, the picture of innocence. She can’t help but break it with a smile when it lands, Mel’s face relaxing into something amused, her shoulders slumping down as she smiles.
“Seriously,” Trinity says, shaking her hand out in emphasis, and brightening when Mel finally plucks the items out of her hand. “I don’t wanna walk home either, man. I live across the river, remember?”
“Oh, that’s true,” Mel murmurs.
“Exactly.” Trinity beams as she feels herself already starting to win the argument. It was easier than she thought it’d be. “So, you take these, and I’ll go find us a ride. Fuck Uber anyway, right?”
Mel nods, and Trinity takes that as her sign to slink away to the side before she can start to feel bad about the idea again, floating back over to the brick wall of the bar and sliding up against it. She digs into the pocket of her jacket, pulling out her phone and her vape, and it’s only as she’s taking a long pull and unlocking her phone that she realises the one fatal flaw with her plan:
She doesn’t actually, like, have anyone to call.
She frowns as she scrolls through her contacts, for some reason bursting at the seams with people and yet entirely unhelpful: med school friends she hasn’t spoken to in over a year, her family all on the other side of the country, the occasional name she doesn’t recognise, followed by either tinder or hinge.
The issue with being a doctor is that the only fucking people you have the time to actually hang out with are other doctors, and all of those people are either working right now, or completely off-limits when it comes to a midnight bar pickup.
She switches over to the messages app and flits through the names in front of her restlessly, weighing up her options:
Huckleberry is an obvious no, already sequestered away at the farm. He’s probably balls-deep as she speaks, a thought grim enough to send a shiver down her spine.
Crash has her own car, but there’s no way in hell Shamsi’s letting her out of the house this late at night.
Samira’s definitely already asleep, phone on do not disturb and white noise machine turned up to volume ten.
Robby can hardly fit the both of them on the back of his motorcycle, and there’s also the part where she’d rather cut her own hands off than ever have to ask him for anything resembling a personal favour, especially after today.
She’s seriously weighing up whether their dyke bar comradeship is strong enough to consider waking up McKay when Mel floats back into vision, hair now tied back in a low ponytail, a dribble of water trickling down her chin. She’s peering down at her phone too, thumbs scrolling through her contacts, when she says, “I probably know someone that can pick us up. If you’re, um. Struggling.”
Considering the dire state of Trinity’s current option list, she’s seriously considering taking her up on that offer, until she catches a glimpse at Mel’s screen and sees her hovering over a contact called Frank :)
“No, no, it’s fine.” She’s sure her voice comes out much more strangled than she means for it to, but she just hopes Mel puts it down to the three shots she’d sank earlier, rather than the pulse of anxiety that zips through her the second she sees the name. “No, just-- give me a sec, I’ve got it.”
Suddenly much more motivated than before to find a ride and find it fast, a realisation hits her: there is one person that she’s pretty fucking sure will still be awake right now. If you’d asked her five minutes ago, Trinity would have said she was the last person she wanted to see tonight, and yet now--
Congratulations, Dr. Garcia, she thinks. You have been promoted.
She finds herself biting down on her thumbnail unconsciously as she navigates to their thread -- pinned, obviously, because she’s nothing if not a glutton for punishment -- and opens it. She hesitates for approximately two seconds, nearly letting herself chicken out, until she looks up and finds that Mel’s thumbs are moving, as if she’s fucking typing, asking, and.
trinity [12:13 am]
finished with ur plans yet?
A minute with no reply. Then two.
trinity [12:15 am]
not a booty call btw
She cringes at herself. She’s never said the words booty call a day in her life. She can’t tell if the clarification makes her sound more or less desperate -- hadn’t it been just a couple of hours ago she’d been told that was all she was wanted for? And now here she is in the middle of the night, texting like she wants to talk.
It must work, though, because it’s not long before her phone is buzzing softly against her palm.
yg 💐 [12:16 am]
?
She worries at her bottom lip for a second before responding, quick and easy:
trinity [12:16 am]
need a ride home
surge pricings a bitch
She should have been expecting it, but Trinity still jumps when her phone starts vibrating more insistently in her hand, a picture of Garcia flickering onto the screen before she has time to prepare herself for it. It’s an old one, taken only a couple of months into their thing. The haze of sleep has softened out Garcia’s sharp edges and she smiles up at the camera from where she lies curled in a mountain of blankets on Trinity’s bed, her arm stretched out and reaching for some place just past the camera, for Trinity.
Something unfortunate and aching swoops low in Trinity’s stomach at the sight of it, the memory that it pulls her back into. That had been the first time Garcia had stayed for longer than a coffee in the morning, the first time she’d relaxed enough to let Trinity kiss her before brushing her teeth. It feels like a lie now, or something that belongs to someone else entirely.
She sucks in a shaky breath and chances one more glance over to Mel, but she’s wrapped up in her own phone now, posture relaxed as she squints down at it. When Trinity peers over her shoulder, anxiety still fizzing in her stomach, she sees that Mel’s moved from her messages to Reddit, and is now apparently typing a heated reply to someone’s comment on r/katseye, thumbs skidding carelessly across the keyboard in her haste.
From here, she can see at least three typos that would normally have Mel King frowning, and yet she doesn’t even seem to have noticed, which is maybe the most telling indicator of her drunkenness.
“One sec,” she says to Mel, holding up her phone just long enough for her to see that it’s ringing without having to actually expose who’s calling, before stepping to the side, just far enough away to speak freely. She only lets her fingers tremble for a second before stabbing her thumb down on the accept button.
“I’m not a fucking Uber driver, Trinity,” is the first thing she hears when she picks up. Brilliant. So it’s a Trinity kind of night, then.
“Great.” She takes another draw of her vape, forcing herself to focus on the overwhelming sweetness of sour watermelon rather than the thinly-veiled needle of irritation that pulses through Yolanda’s words. “So, you’re not gonna charge me fifty bucks for a two mile drive, then?”
A sigh. If she closes her eyes, she can picture her expression: brow pinched, jaw clenched, neck vein activated. She’s probably rubbing at the bridge of her nose right now, exasperated as she always seems to be when Trinity’s involved these days.
“Whitaker can’t pick you up?” The sound of something rustling. Sheets, maybe? She’s probably just trying to get more comfortable. Her belly rolls with nausea as she considers the possibility that she’s moving away from someone, her elusive other plans. “I thought that was like, the whole point of him being allowed to use your car. Your own personal bitch boy, at your service.”
Trinity rolls her eyes. Of course she wasn’t listening earlier. “I already told you, he’s at the farm playing daddy daycare this weekend.”
“Oh, right, yeah.” She yawns, but it comes out muffled, like she’s trying to hide it in her fist. Trinity thinks she might say something else, but nothing follows, other than more rustling, and then two feet hitting hardwood floor.
She listens quietly, allowing the mental image of Yolanda -- soft and sleepy, shuffling around her bedroom and stepping carefully around Zeus, who will by this time of night be lying prone on the floor beside her bed, out like a light -- to warm her for only a second, before squeezing her eyes shut hard and forcing it away.
“So?” she asks. She can hear the petulance in her own voice, the brattiness lying under the surface. If her mother could hear her now, talking to someone else in the tone of voice Trinity usually reserves for her, she’d probably have a coronary. She kicks at a loose pebble trapped under her shoe, deciding to really commit to the bit. “Can you come get us or not?”
“Us? Who are you out with?”
Of course, now she’s interested. She sounds more awake than before, voice sharp, as if the idea that Trinity might have literally anyone else to spend time with is suspicious in and of itself, even as she’s probably tiptoeing around her own bedroom, voice low, trying not to wake up the woman in her bed.
“Jesus Christ, you are unbelievable sometimes,” Trinity hisses. She laughs, even though nothing feels funny right now. “I’m out with Mel, is that cool with you?”
Yolanda pauses. Behind her, a door creaks open, and then there’s the flick of a lightswitch. “King?”
“Obviously.”
“I didn’t realise you guys were so close.”
“I didn’t realise you cared.”
“Please,” she scoffs. “I don’t.”
And she probably really doesn’t, actually, but it feels a lot easier to pretend that whatever that thing is in Garcia’s voice right now is jealousy, rather than something else that would be much more humiliating for Trinity. Something closer to the truth, like I was pretty sure I was the only person you actually wanted to spend time with.
Something rises in her throat, messy and uncontainable, and she almost gags on it. It’s a lot harder to push down the thrum of the alcohol coursing through her like this, flayed open and at Yolanda’s mercy. All of a sudden, it feels like the ground beneath her is spinning, like she might be knocked off course at any minute.
It always feels a little like this, talking to Yolanda.
“Listen, you don’t even have to take me home if you don’t want to,” she says. Tries not to think about how it feels like she’s begging, or how that might be the only way to actually get what she’s asking for here. “I can walk, it’s whatever. I really just need you to give Mel a ride. She lives like, two blocks down from you.”
There’s the scrape of something being picked up off a dresser, and then a key turning in a lock. The quality of the call gets a little muffled as her footsteps get louder, shoes against concrete. Trinity can imagine her tucking her phone between her ear and neck with almost painful realism, shrugging her jacket up over her shoulders, keys dangling off one finger.
“Jesus, Trinity. Why the fuck would I make you walk?” If she didn’t know any better, she might almost say Yolanda sounds hurt.
“Don’t know,” Trinity shrugs. “Thought you didn’t wanna--”
She cuts herself off, unwilling to expand any further. She unfurls her fist, clenched tight around her vape, and rubs her hand roughly against her face, fingers pushing in hard against the newly-formed headache pulsing at her temples. This is not the time. She doesn’t really want for there ever to be a time, but if it has to happen, it’s definitely not going to be now.
“Doesn’t matter,” she says instead. Yolanda doesn’t challenge her on it, even though she knows her voice isn’t convincing in the slightest.
She just sighs, and says, “Send me the address.”
She pulls up seventeen minutes later -- not that Trinity’s counting.
She hadn’t actually told Mel who was picking them up when she’d walked back over to her, half because she was pretty sure she wouldn’t care, half because the thought of having to explain that her fucking situationship was the only person she had to call made her feel like sticking pins into her eyes.
All she’d said was chauffeur service is on its way, and then they’d crouched down on the sidewalk together and watched four TikToks dissecting the Katseye drama until the flash of headlights in their direction had pulled them away.
She’s starting to regret that decision a little now, watching Mel gape in the direction of the car, eyes saucer-wide as she watches Garcia step out of the driver’s seat and pull open the back door for her. She blinks a few too many times to be natural and pushes her glasses up her face, as if she for some reason can’t believe what she’s seeing, even though it really shouldn’t be all that shocking.
“Oh!” she exclaims, voice pitched just a little too high. “Um. Dr. Garcia! Hi!”
Someone fucking shoot her right now.
Yolanda, for her part, just looks amused, a lazy smile edging onto her face as her eyes flit between Trinity, who’s sure she must look awful, and Mel, whose face is going through some sort of complicated reaction as she processes in real-time the confirmation of a rumour that maybe she’d never let herself think about all that much until now.
“Dr. King,” is all she says, and then she’s locked in on Trinity, gaze sweeping over her again like she’s only just now seeing her.
Her eyes darken as she takes her in -- the soft swell of her tummy peeking out just over her pants, her exposed shoulder, the curve of her tits. Her date outfit, the one she’d picked out last night, chosen carefully to get this exact reaction out of her, highlighting all of her favourite parts of Trinity. Originally, she had intended for it to be the catalyst for some extremely extended foreplay, but now it just feels a little like torture.
Even worse, a spark of heat ignites in her belly at those eyes on her, too strong to be willed away, the same way that it always does when Garcia focuses her attention directly on her. It’s humiliating.
“Trinity.” Her voice is even, but there’s something laced behind it, like she can see exactly the effect she’s having on her, just how expertly she’s already unravelling her.
This is starting to feel like her own personal Saw trap.
The worst part is how fucking good she looks. She always looks good, that’s a given, but there’s something about this version of her that unspools Trinity every time: hair loose around her shoulders, skin dewy and moisturised, scrubs swapped for soft clothes. She can see Mel cataloguing the difference in her too, as if for the first time realising this isn’t Dr. Garcia stood in front of her, but Yolanda.
She’s wearing a pair of lounge pants that hang low on her hips, and under the fluorescent lighting of the bar’s neon sign, Trinity can still see the shape of the marks she’d bitten into them the other day. They had felt like a claim at the time, but seeing them now just has anger pooling in her stomach, low and hot, as she imagines other plans mouthing over them, rewriting the memory of her touch.
“Um,” Mel stutters again. “I didn’t know you went to UCLA too, Dr. Garcia!”
Trinity’s eyes flicker down to her chest, and she lets out a groan that’s both way too loud and way too obvious.
“She didn’t.” She pushes past both of them and loops around to get to the passenger seat. “Get in the car, Mel.”
“So,” Garcia starts, after several minutes of painful silence. “Good night?”
“Yes!” Mel exclaims, a wide smile on her face. She’s either entirely unaware of the tension simmering between them, or just doesn’t care enough to consider it, a mindset that Trinity finds admirable. “Trinity is a very good singer.”
She can feel the weight of Garcia’s gaze on the side of her face, but she refuses to meet it. “Is she?”
“Yes! She channelled Alanis very well.”
“You sang Alanis Morissette?” A snort. “I thought you guys were meant to be young. What song?”
“You Oughta Know.”
That seems to strike a chord. In her peripheral vision, Trinity can see the way her fingers flex against the wheel, the clench of her jaw. Good, she thinks. She deserves to feel a little chastised, even if it is at the expense of Trinity’s pride.
“Interesting.”
“Felt fitting,” she says, the first words she’s spoken since she’d gotten into the car.
That jaw clenches harder. “I’m sure.”
Trinity’s eyes flick up to the rearview mirror, catching Mel’s reflection. Her eyes are darting between the two of them, pupils wide, the same look on her face that she gets when they’ve got a particularly difficult patient, like she’s trying to figure them out without actually having to ask.
Another loaded silence, and then:
“Is music cool with you, King?”
Mel blinks, clearly surprised to be addressed directly. “Oh! Yeah, yes. Very cool.”
Yolanda rolls her eyes, but it’s not without a hint of affection. Her eyes only move from the road for a second as she extends a hand and starts navigating through Spotify on her CarPlay, scrolling through her saved playlists until she lands on one and shuffles it.
Trinity’s blood runs cold as the opening beats of Washing Machine Heart start thrumming through her sound system. A quick glance at the screen in front of her confirms her fears, that this is one of her playlists Yolanda’s playing, rather than the ridiculous mix of Tracy Chapman and Nickelback she usually has blasting.
It’s not even the playlist she’d made for her to listen to, is the worst thing. That had been humiliating in and of itself, because even though Garcia had been the one who’d asked her to make it, she’d spent three straight days poring over every song she’d ever listened to and double-guessing them all, analysing every lyric carefully to make sure none of them gave too much away, or implied something she wouldn’t be able to take back.
That playlist is full of happy, easy, casual songs -- Chappell Roan, Gaga, the occasional Hamilton track, because it always makes Garcia laugh when she shows off her theatre kid side. S&M by Rihanna, just to be a shit.
She’d added half of BRAT, just so she could watch Garcia’s lip turn up in distaste at the heavy bass lines, and also because the first time she saw the name she’d rolled her eyes and pulled Trinity into a kiss, thumb stroking over the apple of her cheek as she’d murmured you’d know a lot about that, wouldn’t you?
Most of the songs had been added straight from her and Huck’s shared going out mix, a choice that had felt safest at the time, because her nervous system still can’t quite tell the difference between showing real vulnerability and being held at gunpoint.
All this to say: there’s certainly no fucking Mitski on it.
Which means that she had been curious enough to go onto Trinity’s page and look through the rest of her playlists, the ones with her actual music on them, sad and slow and far too fucking telling of too many different things. The only small mercy is that she doesn’t seem to have saved her other Yolanda mix, and if she has, at least has seen enough sense not to play it now.
If she were still naïve enough to have anything resembling hope, she might take this as some attempt at connection on Yolanda’s part -- a desire to understand Trinity better, maybe, or just to feel closer to her when they’re not together.
But she’s not. So she doesn’t.
Instead, she clenches her fists against the cool of the leather beneath her, and forces her gaze to focus on the view out the window, blinking harshly against the brightness of the lights illuminating the streets. They’re starting to look familiar, but there’s something not quite right about them that she can’t quite put her finger out.
“Wait.” She frowns. “Where are we going?”
Finally, she turns to look at Yolanda, whose brow furrows in confusion. “To the address she gave me?” She turns to face Mel in the back seat. “Am I going the wrong way?”
“No, this is right.”
“Yeah, but-- I live the other way.” The confusion doesn’t leave her face. “You do realise you’re just gonna have to turn around and then come back the same way anyway, right? You’re adding like, forty minutes to your time.”
Garcia squirms a little in her seat, the first break in composure she’s had all night. She glances back at Mel once, quickly, and then says, “I didn’t think you’d be going back to your place.”
Is she serious?
Just to make sure: “Are you serious?”
Nothing.
“I told you that wasn’t why I called.”
Garcia scoffs. “Jesus, that’s not what I meant. I just thought you might want to sleep.”
She’s keeping her voice low, like she’s still at least somewhat aware of their colleague sitting in the backseat, listening in on a conversation that was never meant for her ears. Trinity, on the other hand, has none of the same compunction, still just a little too far past buzzed to allow herself to care:
“I mean, fuck, if I have a shitty bedside manner, what the fuck is yours?”
“What?”
“I mean-- what are you gonna do? Kick her out to the guest room? Put me in there?”
“What are you--”
“Do I have to pretend I’ve never been there in the morning? Do I call you Dr. Garcia?” Her grip on the wheel is so tight Trinity would be surprised if it doesn’t come away with claw marks. “We’re all gonna, what, have breakfast together? Or are you guys not at that stage yet?”
“Trinity.” The thinly veiled fury in her voice is the only thing to finally to shut her up. “That’s enough.”
Mel kind of looks like she’s going to throw up. Trinity can relate.
“The only person who has been at my apartment tonight other than me was my DoorDash driver. Whatever it is you think I’ve been up to, you’re wrong.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
She feels deflated now, off-kilter and embarrassed. She presses her head back against the window and tries to let the coolness of it wash over her, to ground her back in this new reality, but finds that she can’t, because reality is meant to at least make sense. If Garcia’s other plans weren’t sleeping with another woman, then what were they? Is that better for her, because at least it might still mean she isn’t seeing other people, or worse, because that means that really, she just hadn’t wanted to see Trinity?
If she’s been home all night, alone, if she DoorDashed dinner instead of cooking or going out, then that probably means she didn’t have any other plans at all, which means that she lied just so that she didn’t have to come over. And that she did so knowing that it would probably hurt her, or at the very least make her spiral thinking about it and what she might’ve meant. And that that didn’t matter to her, or at least not enough to stop her from doing it.
And yet she’s here now. She got out of bed and drove twenty minutes across town to pick her and Mel up, even though she could have just ignored her text like she’s done so many times before. She’s wearing Trinity’s t-shirt and she’d looked at her like that, and even now, after she’s done nothing but bitch at her this whole time, she’s asking her to stay the night, even though she knows they’re not going to have sex.
Trinity feels dangerously close to crying again, which is something that categorically cannot happen. Not here, not now, in front of a coworker that’s barely even a friend and Yolanda, burning a hole into the side of her face like she simultaneously wants to peel back all of Trinity’s layers and see what’s hiding underneath and also might be sick at the honesty of what she would find.
They’re turning into her neighbourhood now. In three more left turns, they’ll be at Yolanda’s apartment, and then it’s only a couple hundred feet ahead and a right until they’re at Mel’s.
She feels paralysed with the suddenness of it, like she hadn’t been given enough time to prepare; her stomach lurches in anticipation of the answer she’s going to be expected to give soon, a test she’s sure she’s going to fail no matter which one she gives.
Maybe Mel is more perceptive than Trinity had given her credit for, because, like some insane kind of olive branch, she says, “You can stay at my place if you want, Trinity.”
Her head snaps up so quickly it makes her dizzy, eyes meeting Mel’s in the rearview mirror. “What?”
“Yeah. We don’t have a guest room, but the couch is a pull-out, and it’s actually pretty comfortable.” Trinity studies her intensely for a minute, looking for any sign of artifice in her face, but finds none. Her expression is open and soft, genuine in a way she’s never had to train out of herself. “Or you can stay in my room, if that’s better. Becca’s sleeping at her boyfriend’s tonight, apparently, so I can take her bed. She won’t mind. Probably.”
“Um.” She peers over at Yolanda, who looks positively murderous at the suggestion. Both the neck and forehead vein are out to play now. “Are you sure that’s cool?”
Mel beams back at her. “Of course! I had a good time with you tonight.” Then, like an afterthought, “And I’ve never actually had a friend stay over before. It could be fun.”
And that’s just the saddest thing she’s ever heard. How is Trinity meant to say no to that? If it also happens to have the added benefit of pissing Yolanda off, making her feel even a little bit of the rejection Trinity had earlier in the day, well.
That’s not her problem.
“Sounds great, Mel-ody,” she says, forcing a smile onto her exhausted face.
Then she blinks, and they’re pulling up outside an unfamiliar building. Yolanda cuts the engine and looks over at her expectantly, hand hovering over the gearstick, like just one word and she’ll still take her home, forget about all of this,
Under the glow of the street lamps, she looks younger than Trinity’s ever seen her, tired and sad. Her brow is pinched, eyes wide and far too honest for Trinity to deal with right now. Against her better judgment, she aches to reach out and touch, to smooth away the worry lines and hold her close and breathe her in, let herself be comforted, even if it will all be gone by morning.
Mel gets out of the car first, breaking the moment, her bag swinging up and over her shoulders the second she’s out. Trinity makes to leave too, but before she can open the door, there’s a hand on her arm, the first physical contact they’ve made all day. Her skin burns with the touch.
“Trinity, just wait a minute.”
She swallows around something heavy, and wrenches away from her. “I have to go.”
From the gap in the open door, she can see Mel’s wide, honest eyes boring into them, and wonders not for the first time what all of this must actually look like. “Thank you for the ride, Dr. Garcia,” she says. “Um. I can give you guys a minute, if you want to talk.”
“That would be great, than--”
“No, it’s fine, I’m coming.”
Both of their voices overlap. Yolanda lets out a sigh that sounds like it comes from somewhere deep within.
“Trinity.”
She blinks one, two, three times, and finally pushes out of the door. If she doesn’t leave now, she knows she never will. She grasps at the backpack she’d deposited in the footwell and holds it tight against her chest, like some kind of protective barrier. Even still, she can’t help herself from seeking her out through the window, too drunk and bone-tired to deny herself one last look, just in case it really is going to be the last real one she ever gets.
“Why don’t you just try hitting me up tomorrow?” she says, right before slamming the door in her face.