Chapter Text
Two weeks after PittFest, near the end of what’s been a suspiciously quiet shift, Garcia approaches Robby and asks if she can borrow Dr. Santos. “For a teaching moment,” she says.
Robby darts a glance between the two of them over his reading glasses. Know what this is about? he asks her with his eyebrows. Trinity shrugs. The last time she had spoken with Garcia, she called her trouble. She can’t imagine what else Garcia might have to say.
But Robby doesn’t know this and even if he did, he’d probably just tell her to get over it. “Go forth, Dr. Santos,” Robby waves his hand, “be taught.”
Garcia turns on her heel, heading towards an empty patient room, and Trinity trails after her obediently. Wherever Garcia wants to take her, she’ll follow. She’ll follow her anywhere, even with the memory of their last conversation still haunting her. Like a sunflower turning to capture the warmth of the sun, her head follows Garcia’s movements on a swivel every time she comes through the elevator doors, hoping for a sliver of the attention she had shown on her first day.
By the time the door clicks shut behind her, Garcia has hopped onto the table and is taking off her sneaker. Ah. A teaching moment. Trinity busies herself with the instrument cart to hide the flush creeping up her neck, rummaging for a pair of scissors. When she turns around again, the sneaker is off, along with the sock, and she’s presented with Garcia’s elegant foot and the neat line of sutures running across the top of it.
“Well?” Garcia looks at her expectantly.
Trinity holds out the scissors. Garcia had done her own sutures, so it’s only natural for her to be the one to want to take them out. She probably only asked Trinity to come with her so she could watch, and humiliate her further in the process.
Garcia just rolls her eyes and hands Trinity an alcohol swab instead. So it’ll be her wielding the scissors, then, just like she’d been the one wielding the scalpel. Stupidly, she wonders if Garcia is going to put her hand over Trinity’s, if they’ll take out the sutures together. But Garcia just leans back on her hands and waits, regarding Trinity expectantly.
It’s like when she was doing clinicals, interacting with patients for the first time as a third-year med student, willing her hands not to shake. Thankfully she’s taken out sutures more times than she can count because if she screwed up in front of Garcia again, she’d quit the program. Change her name, move states, start fresh somewhere else. Possibly leave the field of medicine entirely. She’s always wondered what it would be like to have an office job, to leave passive aggressive notes in the break room fridge and cut donuts to split with her coworkers, into halves, quarters, then eighths.
The sharp smell of the alcohol swab permeates the room when she rips the packet open. The swab is cold on Trinity’s fingers but Garcia doesn’t flinch when it touches her skin. Like a statue carved out of stone, unflappable.
“How are you enjoying the Pitt so far?” Garcia’s question comes out of nowhere and Trinity pauses just as she’s about to cut the first suture. The Pitt, when Robby says it, is coated with wry affection; from Garcia’s lips, it sounds lightly amused and more than a little condescending. The Pitt where you all play doctor, not like us surgeons, in the OR playing God.
“I’m liking it.” Trinity clips the suture, careful not to catch any of Garcia’s skin. “Kind of peaked early though. Nothing’s been as eventful as my first shift.”
The tendons in Garcia’s foot flare out as she contracts and flexes her toes. A puff of air on Trinity’s hairline: Garcia leaning closer to inspect her work.
“Good,” she says before settling back on the table.
Trinity shifts uncomfortably on the stool and leans down to resume her work. Another cut, the slight pucker of Garcia’s skin clinging to nylon as she drags the suture out. The puncture hole is tiny, black and precise. Hiding the secrets of Garcia’s body, all the layers of skin, tendon, muscle, bone. There’s no follow up to her earlier comment. Garcia gazes at the ceiling, drumming her fingers on her stomach, content to let them sit in awkward silence. Had Trinity said the wrong thing? Was she supposed to pretend like PittFest was nothing out of the ordinary, just another day in the ER?
Or had the mention of her first day reminded Garcia of the other events of that day, when she’d brought her suspicions about Langdon to Garcia and been so crudely brushed off? Is this, in fact, an embarrassed silence, Garcia working up the courage to apologize now that Trinity has been proven right?
She drops the third suture into the tray, then the fourth and the fifth. Garcia still doesn't say anything; an apology, it seems, is not forthcoming. Trinity didn’t know what she expected. There has been nothing to indicate that Garcia has spared her or the situation with Langdon a second thought and even now, with Trinity bent over her foot, there’s no indication that Garcia is thinking about her at all. She might as well be a robot, a suture-removing robot, not worthy of a sliver of Garcia’s attention, which of course only makes her crave it all the more.
There are only two sutures left. After Trinity takes them out, Garcia will be gone, whisked back to the fourth floor until Robby calls her down for the next consult. That could be hours away. It might not even be until tomorrow, given how slow it’s been today, nothing but routine headaches and chest pains.
She takes her time with the next one, painstakingly lining up the scissors for the perfect cut. Still no movement from Garcia, no attempt to speak. Even her pager is silent. She drops it in the tray and strips off her gloves. Instantly, she experiences the loss of the warmth of Garcia’s foot under her fingers, the blood and life pulsing beneath the surface. Her toes, with the silver polish starting to chip. Trinity could have easily leaned down to suck them into her mouth, savored them like five pieces of sour candy, one by one. That’s how close Garcia let her get.
And now, the moment is over. “Well,” she says, “your wound looks like it’s healed just fine. Clean with soap and water daily and come back if you notice any pain or swelling.”
“And what about secretions?” Garcia runs her thumb over the thin raised line of scar tissue before putting her sock back on. “Should I come to you for that as well?”
Trinity blushes — somehow, Garcia has managed to make an infected wound sexually charged. “Definitely see me for secretions,” she says, gratified when Garcia finally meets her eyes.
Garcia hops off the table, not caring that she’s crowding into Trinity’s personal space and preventing her from standing up from her stool. In this position, Trinity has no choice but to crane her neck up to look at her. There’s a predatory gleam in her eye that makes Trinity shiver. A helpless animal, begging for mercy at the feet of her pursuer.
“If it’s still quiet here by 4:00, come up to the fourth floor. I have a partial colectomy, you might find it interesting.”
Trinity nods, trying not to appear too eager. Garcia smirks down at her, reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Her hand stays there, resting on Trinity’s jaw. It’s a light touch but it pins her in place and she hopes to a God she no longer believes in that Garcia isn’t close enough to her pulse point to feel how rapidly her heart is beating.
“And then, Dr. Santos,” and Garcia’s expression turns sultry, calculating, “I believe you owe me a cocktail.”
—
The colectomy was interesting, an opportunity to see Garcia in her natural environment, working in lock step with Shamsi and grilling the surgical residents for a change. Trinity had even been allowed to hold a clamp for a while and get a closer look, but that’s the furthest thing from her mind when she and Garcia are crashing through the front door of Garcia’s townhouse with all the coordination of two people who have had one drink too many.
The door slams closed and Trinity wastes no time pushing Garcia up against it without breaking their kiss. Push and pull and Garcia’s mouth: hot, aggressive, intoxicating, all-consuming. Trinity could drown in the leftover taste of salt and lime on her lips.
A hand grabs firmly on the hair at the base of her scalp, pulling her back, her mouth gaping open like a fish out of water, chasing a kiss that’s never going to come. Garcia traces her lips with the index and middle fingers of her other hand; slick with arousal, they had been busy beneath her dress. Trinity sticks her tongue out to get a better taste, but Garcia pushes her tongue back into her mouth with those same fingers so quickly she gags.
She’s not sure what comes over her. Perhaps Garcia’s eyes, pupils blown black but still belittling, perhaps the memory of Garcia commanding the operating room today, the heat she’d felt between her legs after Garcia mocked one of the other resident’s sutures. Whatever the reason, with Garcia’s fingers still hooked in her mouth, Trinity drops to her knees like a marionette with the strings cut loose, looking up at her through her eyelashes.
She hears a sharp intake of breath and watches Garcia tilt her head — considering, recalibrating. The air shifts around them, electric with anticipation.
“Hands behind your back,” Garcia says, so quiet Trinity almost misses it under the hum from the refrigerator. Her mouth fills with saliva, from the command and from the faint taste of her still on her tongue, and she clasps her hands obediently.
The fingers that had been in her mouth recede and redirect to trail along the side of her face. Where it might have been a tender gesture from someone else, from Garcia, it’s almost ominous instead, charged with kinetic energy. If Garcia slapped her right now, she wouldn’t be surprised. She would probably like it, in fact, might gasp at the impact but she’d beg for more, until her cheek was numb and red and her ears were ringing and her boxers soaked through.
She’s wrong. The slap never comes, and instead, Garcia cups the back of Trinity’s head and guides her under the rucked up skirt of her dress, pushing her face directly to her cunt. Trinity breathes in the scent of her greedily, rubbing her nose up and down the wet lace at the front of Garcia’s panties.
“Nope,” Garcia says, one foot coming up to poke Trinity’s rib and chastise her for the hand that had started creeping up the outside of Garcia’s thigh, “no hands.”
She whines in discontent, stymied by the excess fabric over Garcia’s cunt. She feels gangly, uncoordinated and off balance on her knees with her arms behind her back, her neck craned at an uncomfortable angle and blocked from getting to taste Garcia directly from the source. She settles for mouthing ineffectively at what she hopes is Garcia’s clit, hidden from her under a layer of fabric and Garcia gasps, tightening her grip on her hair. “Figure it out, Dr. Santos. You’re almost there. I know you can do it.”
Trinity shakes her head, frowns, then tries moving lower. She follows the edge of Garcia’s thong until it tapers to a scrap of lace barely covering her entrance where she’s hot and dripping and sweet. It makes a mess of her face but she revels in it, wants to make sure she’s covered in Garcia’s scent and slick so she can smell it on herself for days, so she takes her time tonguing at the gusset of Garcia’s panties, at the tight muscle of her entrance, before working her way back up until finally, finally, she wraps her lips around the hard nub of her clit.
“Good girl,” Garcia says, and the words send an electric shock straight down her spine. She still sounds controlled, somehow, not even a little bit breathless after how long Trinity had spent mouthing sloppily up and down her cunt. If Trinity had any patience left, she’d see how far she could push it, see if she could break that control. But she’s done with being patient. Even at a less than ideal angle, even if she can’t show off her best technique with her hands behind her back and Garcia’s panties twisted somewhere around the crown of her head, Trinity swipes her tongue in lazy circles, lets Garcia grind against her nose, her lips, however she wants to use her, until she has Garcia gushing in her mouth.
The hand in her hair pulls her up until she and Garcia are face to face, then pulls her in for a messy kiss. It’s like no other kiss she’s had before, all teeth and spit-slick lips, like Garcia is actively devouring her, or at the very least, licking the taste of herself off Trinity’s skin. It feeds the embers of her arousal until it’s closer to a bonfire, burning through her body and she’ll die if Garcia doesn’t touch her, literally die. This intense feeling of desperation is a foreign one — she never gets like this during sex, not ever. Sex, for her, is about service of the other person and she rarely, if ever, craves being touched in return.
Ten minutes of rubbing her face all over Garcia’s cunt was all it took to turn her understanding of herself on its head.
Garcia’s hands stay tangled in her hair, manipulating her face to get her where she wants her. She seems in no rush to escalate things or move them along, content to nip at Trinity’s bottom lip and suck on her tongue, unaware of the fire raging in Trinity’s veins, ignoring the whimpers and whines falling from her mouth. She doesn’t recognize herself, not the noises she’s making nor the awkward grinding movement of her hips, chasing the solid muscle of Garcia’s thigh, these embarrassing, undignified motions that betray her want.
Really, there’s nothing Trinity wouldn’t do at this point for the lithe fingers in her hair to travel further south. Maybe what Garcia needs is a suggestion and all Trinity needs to do is lead by example. She moves one hand away from where it was busy groping Garcia’s ass and walks her fingers under the hem of Garcia’s dress. Her panties are still twisted from Trinity’s work earlier, pushed to the side and soaked with come and spit. She hooks a finger in the waistband and pulls them down; they’re useless to her now. She walks her fingers further, waiting for Garcia to stop her. Further, and she swipes through Garcia’s folds, swollen with arousal, wetter, even, than she had been when Trinity was eating her out. She did that, Trinity thinks with a frisson of delight, she made the fearsome Dr. Garcia so wet that she’d ruined her panties, so turned on that her hips are bucking up into her hand, and it makes her so pleased that she rewards herself with a grind against Garcia’s thigh.
“Inside,” Garcia breathes the words into her mouth and Trinity complies, sliding one finger easily into Garcia’s wet heat. She moans as Garcia’s walls cling to her, clenching down and sucking her in, and curls her finger until she finds the rough-textured spot that makes Garcia sink her teeth into her ear.
“Good girl,” Garcia says for the second time that night and Trinity can’t even pretend anymore that it’s not affecting her. It so obviously is, the evidence is in the wet spot that’s surely soaking through her boxers and possibly even her jeans, in the way she pushes her finger in and out of Garcia’s cunt harder and faster, ignoring the burning in her wrist from the awkward angle, just because she’s desperate to hear those words again. She’s being good. She’s being good for Garcia. Garcia thinks she’s good.
The second orgasm takes longer but Trinity is relentless in her pursuit of it, adding another finger and her thumb on Garcia’s clit, pawing at the top of her dress to free her tits so she can get a mouth on her nipples. It lasts longer too, wrenches a throaty moan out of her and her back arches off of the door in a perfect bow, taut with ecstasy. Trinity can feel her pulse thrumming beneath her lips in the crook of her neck, hot and damp and perfect, the slight spice leftover from her perfume. When she lifts her head to meet Garcia’s eyes, they’re nearly black with lust.
“Aren’t you full of surprises?” She chuckles breathlessly, brushing her finger affectionately over the tip of Trinity’s nose. The motion is patronizing, makes Trinity feel like a child, and she flinches away, which only succeeds at making Garcia laugh even harder, her cunt clenching down on Trinity’s fingers. She pulls out with a squelch, licking off Garcia’s juices mulishly. She’s not a child, she’s a fully grown adult woman who made her senior resident come twice before they’d taken their shoes off. They haven’t even really made it into the apartment. Trinity couldn’t say whether the floor is carpet or hardwood, whether Garcia has bookshelves or a TV or even a couch. She feels like maybe she deserves some credit for that, some acknowledgement maybe. Or if she’s lucky, maybe some relief on her aching clit.
If this were any other hookup, she wouldn’t hesitate to dip her fingers below her waistband and get herself off. It wouldn’t take much, at this point, with how worked up she is from feeling Garcia come twice, once against her tongue and then again wrapped hot and tight around her fingers. But she can sense that Garcia wouldn’t like that, and if she is allowed to come tonight, it’s going to be at Garcia’s hand.
Garcia, who has pulled her dress back into place and pushed past Trinity to walk deeper into her living room and sit on the couch. She beckons Trinity over and Trinity complies, even as irritated as she is, drawn into her orbit like a passing comet caught in the gravity of the sun.
She shakes her head when Trinity goes to sit down next to her. “Not there.” She jerks her chin down at her feet. Does she want Trinity to kneel…? Another shake of the head, no. What else could she possibly —
Oh.
Trinity looks down at her foot. The foot, the one she’d cradled in her hands earlier that day, the one she’d taken seven sutures out of because that’s the foot she’d dropped the scalpel into two weeks ago. She looks up again at Garcia, double checking, and finally, Garcia nods.
Trinity takes a shaky breath and drops to her knees, bracing herself on the seat of the couch and bracketing Garcia’s shin. It seems like maybe it’s not going to work, what with the awkward angles and limbs getting in the way, but Garcia is not one to be disobeyed, in the ER or elsewhere, so Trinity has no choice but to spread her legs and lower herself.
How could she have had a moment’s doubt? Of course Garcia knew what she was doing — Trinity gasps the moment her crotch meets the top of her foot. But the pressure is still not quite enough. She looks up again, imploringly, and gets another nod. She shifts her hips back and forth. Garcia’s dark eyes bore into her. What she must look like right now, with red cheeks and strands of hair falling around her face, still fully clothed and letting out the occasional pathetic high-pitched whine.
“Poor baby,” Garcia coos, tucking Trinity’s hair behind her ears. Her fingertips are gentle, trailing along the tender skin under her jaw before grasping onto her chin. “Is this not enough? Do you need more? Do you need me to touch you?”
Trinity nods as much as she can with Garcia holding her head in place, bears down harder with her hips to grind into the top of Garcia’s shoe.
“I don’t think you do,” Garcia continues conversationally, as if Trinity isn’t at that very moment humping her foot like a dog in heat. “I think you could make yourself come like this, with just my foot.”
To make a point, she wiggles her toes, sending a light flutter of movement over Trinity’s clit. She gasps — she couldn’t, could she? Come without Garcia touching her at all, without even taking off her pants? It would be a first for her, but then she’s never been quite as wet as this, so wet her boxers are slipping and sliding, nearly frictionless against the swollen lips of her cunt. Her cheeks burn with humiliation and she wants to look away, but Garcia’s firm grip on her chin keeps her in place. She’s flayed open under Garcia’s gaze, nowhere to hide, like Garcia can see right down to the heart and soul of her, like Garcia knows she would do anything for her attention and approval, and she feels her cunt clench down on nothing as she comes.
And that’s how they begin.