Chapter Text
Trinity liked to consider herself someone well intentioned. She wasn’t like Mohan, who’d serve up those intentions with a kind smile and kinder words. Wasn’t like Robby, who used his age to his advantage—made those intentions come from someone with a charming smile and fatherly face. She wasn’t even like Crash, who put her foot in her mouth half the time it opened up the first month or so at the Pitt, and still couldn’t control her stupid, soft-mouthed face—but did consistent good.
Trinity Santos liked her intentions (well or otherwise) with a bite. Something unserious. Corny. Something that didn’t come off good or kind or soft—she was hardly charming, smiling, or fatherly. She was nothing like them at all—but she still liked to consider herself well-intentioned.
The thing with McKay was well intentioned.
At first.
Look, she was no stranger to inappropriate relationships with older women. Inappropriate relationships with older women in power. The whole thing with Garcia proved it more than anything else, but she wasn’t the first, and Trinity doubted seriously that she’d be the last. The thing about Dr. Cassie McKay is that even though she’s older, she’s hardly in a position of power. Yeah, she’s about a year ahead on the food chain—but, professionally? They’re basically around the same low rung.
But Crash? She’s different. Javadi’s a med-student. Javadi isn’t even an intern yet. Javadi—Javadi would probably die of shock if she’d seen half the places Trinity had slept when she herself was an MS4, never mind the things she’d been actually doing. There’s this awful, doe-eyed naivete to Javadi.
Brilliant? Yeah. Clever? Totally. Her IQ was ridiculous, little miss never stepped a foot in high-school (said with a proud, cocky expression on her dumb little face). She’d be a doctor at twenty-two, if things went as planned, and for a dork like Victoria Javadi, everything always went as planned.
And the little idiot just kept trailing after McKay. Lost puppy. Looking and being led, giggling and flushing and failing to keep any sort of poker face.
(Trinity had tried to teach her to keep things cool in the face department and failed utterly. Even Huckleberry had given it a shot before shaking his head sadly and declaring nothing could be done for the patient. Javadi had punched his shoulder for that before Trinity could, winning her grudging respect and allegiance—not that Crash appreciated this, the little asshole.)
So. The thing with McKay started well intentioned. The—watching. Analyzing. Considering.
McKay was a good doctor. She cared about her patients and got along with them—but she was also whip smart. She knew when to ask for help (gag) and she knew when she could handle something herself. She tended to be mostly self-assured, and wasn’t afraid to advocate for herself, her patients, or—crucially—Javadi. She moved with a quiet, almost over looked confidence.
A sort of… power. Unapologetic, if more subtle than what Trinity tended to be attracted to.
Her new interest in McKay hardly went unnoticed—but it was only Dennis doing the noticing, and that was largely because he seemed to know her better than anyone else in the ED.
Regardless, by the end of what Trinity would later dub the sit back and watch period of observation for McKay, she was sure that nothing untoward would be going on. For one thing, Crash had like literally zero game, and McKay seemed more inclined to treating her like a kid sister or daughter. The second, likely main thing was that she was too focused on her job, her son, and the people she helped. The woman was so painfully self controlled and repressed it was ridiculous.
The third, final, and most interesting reason was—well. McKay was just really bad at being flirted with.
Yeah, she muttered sometimes about wanting sex and being pent up but that was all talk. Bluster and half-thought out fantasies of some dude sweeping her off her feet and pounding her into the mattress. Every time a patient so much as gave her a second glance or was a little too intentional with their words her cheeks would flush a terrible, uneven pink. She wouldn’t giggle exactly, but her laugh would go all high and her eyes would duck so low…
Embarrassing, Trinity thought, and then—a private correction—kind of cute.
“I don’t like that look on your face,” McKay said.
She’d asked Trinity to take a look at something ‘odd’ again, and it turned out to be a reaction from another stupid TikTok trend. Trinity had felt more inclined to be sympathetic, considering the idiot in the hospital bed was an elderly woman who clearly had never learned about internet safety rules, but had swiftly fell into annoyed again when the patient’s twenty-something son had proceeded to needle McKay for a dinner date.
“What face?” Trinity asked, with picture perfect innocence. “I don’t have any sort of face. I’m featureless, even.”
“And corny,” said McKay.
“Who doesn’t like corn?” Trinity asked, grinning and waggling her eyebrows. “Tell that to your bag of skinny pop in the break room. Fan of white-cheddar, McKay? That’s lame. Pick a real flavor. Eat it with your chest, none of this baby shit—”
McKay shot her a look—half chastising and entirely too amused. It’s usually enough for Trinity to make one last crack and then stop, pleased from even the slightest reaction—keyword being usually.
However, Trinity has just seen McKay get chatted up by a conventionally attractive patient about twenty years younger than her. McKay had gotten so flustered by this dude that it gave Trinity a terrible case of second-hand embarrassment just thinking about it.
Trinity realized quickly that she was not in a ‘get one more crack in and then stop’ mood, she was firmly in a ‘I have to get her to blush like that or I’ll die’ mood. The latter often showed up with women, and she often indulged it.
What fun would life be if she didn’t?
So—Trinity smiled, the specific one. Heavy lidded and mouth curving up on just one side, slanted and egotistical and entirely too full of herself. She crafted it in high-school intimidating other girls on the gym mats, and then really perfected it in college talking women into her dorm room.
“That’s the face,” said McKay, with unease.
“It’s not a good face?” Trinity asked, not quite pouting and ignoring the fact that she had apparently been making it unintentionally. Hmm.
“It’s—a perfectly okay face,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But it usually comes with—something a little evil attached to it. That’s your—I’m about to pull on Vadi’s pigtails face. That’s all.”
“Evil? Dr. McKay, I am astonished at your prejudice.” Trinity set a hand over her heart. “And after you so generously described my face as perfectly okay.” She shook her head, sucking on her teeth. “A girl could take that to the ego, you know. Here comes an older woman, all handsome and charismatic, and she says your face is just okay. Oh, the horror.”
McKay blinked.
Then she blinked again.
And then, much easier than Trinity had expected, she started to blush. Not just a baby blush, not lightly or faintly pink—but a full on, red to the tip to her forehead to the bottom of her chin, blush. It went so far as to seep into her ears, settle down her neck and collarbones—which, of course, Trinity couldn’t help but notice.
Hmm, she thought, I absolutely have to do this to her again, or I might actually die.
Trinity smiled, slow. “Dr. McKay,” she said, just on the edge of teasing, “could it be that no one’s ever called you handsome?”
McKay coughed, spluttered, and—crucially—did not deny it.
Trinity was talking before McKay could compose herself. This was her attack strategy. She’d run her mouth before the other person could speak, making it so that they were too busy thinking about the words she’d said to say too many of their own. This worked for arguments, teasing, and—happily enough—flirting.
“Well, you are,” she said. “Handsome. It’s an undeniable fact, you know. The sky is blue, the sea is treacherous, Cassie McKay is handsome. All the girls know it.”
Then, because she was still Trinity Santos, she made a heart with her fingers and started making obnoxious kissy noises.
McKay scoffed, fist to her mouth as she averted her gaze. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Bet you roll up on everyone with that kind of line.”
“Nuh-uh,” said Trinity. “That’s a Santos original. Just for you.” Then, realizing that might be a smidge too far, she huffed a little, words coming out airily. “If I’d known no on had ever called you handsome before, I woulda said it a long time ago. Peppered it in here and there. Someone asks about you I’d probably go, oh, did you mean Dr. Handsome? Things of that nature.”
McKay’s eyebrow raised. “Dr. Handsome.”
“Or McDreamy,” she said, “if I was in the mood to make a reference. I could also go for McSteamy, but someone might genuinely report me to HR for those connotations. Best not chance it.”
She laughed, still a little pink. “Sure, Santos.” She cleared her throat, composing herself. “Well. I gotta get back out there.” Then she was awkwardly fleeing—ears pink.
“Hmm,” said Trinity.
Maybe she didn’t have to worry about Javadi after all. Who knew? There was always the chance that Crash would grow a pair and pick up a few things from Trinity’s excellent example but—well, she doubted it. There was… a new undercurrent of understanding that Trinity now had for Javadi. For some reason, Trinity could no longer begrudge her taste when it came to older women. McKay was really—oddly cute. Big eared, with dimpled, goofy smile, blue-eyed… and Trinity hadn’t been lying. She was handsome. “Hmm.”
A gentle cough.
She turned.
“What are you doing?” Dennis asked, hesitant. His eyes darted from her to the direction that McKay had disappeared to.
Trinity sucked on the inside of her cheek, just barely keeping herself from grinding the soft tissue there between her molars. It’d been a disgusting habit that dogged her from elementary to college, and now—was making a reappearance. His question had unsettled her, though she could not quite find the words as to why. It wasn’t an accusation, though oddly felt like one, but couldn't be if it was coming from Dennis.
She shook off her unease, flashing him a smile—tongue under teeth. “Being a wingman.”
He blinked. “Really?”
“They don’t breed for brains on that farm of yours, do they?” She sighed, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back into her chair. “No, I’m not being a wingman. Honestly, Huckleberry, Jesus.”
“Then… what?”
Trinity sucked on the inside of her cheek again—the opposite side this time, just to mix things up. “You think Crash is ever gonna crack and make a move?”
His brows furrowed. “I think if you like her you should tell her how you feel.”
“What?” Trinity paused for a moment, genuinely startled. ”No, brainless, with McKay.”
Dennis watched her for a moment. “No.”
“No faith in our young bisexual friend, Huck? For shame, for shame.”
“None at all,” he said, and the words were heartless but his face was entirely too sympathetic. “I like Victoria, but she wouldn’t do that. She knows better.” You, on the other hand, do not, he seemed to think but wisely did not say.
“Hmm,” said Trinity.
Dennis groaned, looking around the ED before lowering his voice. It was ridiculous, like he was trying to keep everything they discussed some big secret—as though there was information he thought had to be kept secret. She’d only said Cassie was handsome, for fucks sake. It wasn’t like she was proposing. “Just—just keep it in your bedroom this time, okay? I’m scarred for life.”
“You saw a nipple, Huckleberry.”
“It was inside your mouth—”
It became a game, almost. How can I make Dr. McKay blush today?
What McKay had dubbed an ‘evil, perfectly okay face’ became a permanent fixture to Trinity’s repertoire of weapons, and something that she could never let the other woman live down. She referenced it constantly, pointed at her own smug grin and dropped lines about evil sorcerers and then pointed at McKay and said something stupid.
For example:
“You should know a little about evil wizards, McKay, being such a dashing knight in shining armor—”
“Hey, McKay, need me to use some of my evil powers to get that old fuck to shut up?”
“Hey, Doc Handsome, everything perfectly okay in triage?”
“Hey, Dreamboat, need me to take a look at something weird again?”
That last one wasn't a reference to anything, but it made McKay blush red and totally and utterly fail not to laugh bashfully.
The best part, other than McKay either getting so flustered it was embarrassing or her desperately trying to act like she wasn’t, was the way everyone else reacted. It was hilarious. It was clear that it came out of left field for them—they didn’t know what to make of it at all, and Trinity revealed in the small, controlled chaos of it. Some thought it was funny (Robby, Dana), others thought Trinity was being an asshole again (Langdon, Jessie), and few thought she was actually being sincere (Mel, Al-Hashimi).
(Al-Hashimi’s quiet discussion about appropriate workplace relationships was still bouncing around in her head. It’d been five minutes of monumentally painful advice and sympathy, and it had almost made Trinity regret the entire thing. Almost.)
She had admittedly been a little… concerned how Crash would take the blatant (yet joking) flirting, but she seemed to think the entire thing was just as hilarious and scandalous as Trinity did. Granted, she showed those feelings with less warmth and approval then Trinity would’ve liked, but what could you do? It wasn’t like she was expecting open arms from Javadi—especially when you considered her gigantic, mommy-issue induced, soft spot for Cassie McKay.
And, like most soft spots, Trinity couldn’t help but press a little.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Crash asked, during a moment they were alone with Dennis in the break room. Neither of them paid him too much mind, considering he was hunched over a sandwich and tearing into it with all the ferocity of a wild boar.
“Crashing and burning,” said Trinity, smoothly. “I didn’t even get her number yet, horrid. How’d you manage, huh, JV?”
“Um, maybe because she actually likes me and I don’t harass her every other second?” Her big eyes became even bigger with judgment. It was almost adorable. “And Mateo and I switch off babysitting for Harrison, so. You know, it’s just—practical.”
“Prac-ti-cal,” Trinity sounded out. Her brows went high and her voice went mocking. “Living up to your moniker, Javadi.”
“You’re the one who said you’re crashing and burning.”
“Nah, nah. You’re still on that? Jesus, Crash—old news! Move from newspaper to digital, for the love of God. You call yourself a Gen Z?”
“Then why are you still calling me that,” she muttered under her breath.
Trinity graciously chose to ignore this. The fact that Javadi didn’t immediately get on her hands and knees and sob out a thank you only went to show the depth of the kid’s selfishness. Sigh. “You’re playing this shit like it’s JV—junior varsity. Jesus, Crash, I know you’ve never stepped foot in a high-school but you’ve gotta have watched some fucking movies. You love Molly Ringwald, right? I know you do. It wafts from you, like a pretty in pink stench.”
“You’ve watched pretty in pink?”
“Sure I did, Ducky,” said Trinity. “Which I call you with love in my heart and because you’re just as bad with women as him.”
“That’s such a dumb thing to say—he should’ve been the love interest,” Javadi snapped, looking genuinely offended more by the second thing than the first. Trinity basked in this. Of course Crash would get caught up in an opinion Trinity hadn’t even expressed. Baby lion, all milk-teeth and doe eyed. “Like, he sucked a little, but he was waayyyy cuter than the other guy. And way nicer. And also—did you just say bad with women? Is this little nugget of wisdom coming from you?”
“I can’t drop a dime or two on a young padawan?”
“Not when you’re trying to fuck my Jedi master,” she said, annoyed, and then stormed off.
Trinity watched her go, smirking. “She’s so embarrassed she said that. You could see it—look, her little hoodie is shaking. Kind of like a tail. You know, she’s kind of like a baby deer, actually. My teeth ache just looking at her. Should I start howling?”
Dennis looked up, mustard on his lip. “You’re seriously depraved.”
“Thank you, Huckleberry. I cherish that.”
“You would,” he said, and then hunkered over his sandwich again.
Things continued.
McKay, because she wasn’t actually a teenager, grew used to Trinity’s half-joking flirts.
Her embarrassment rapidly changed over into a sort of fond amusement, like leaves fading from green into orange-red with the turn of the season. It was like she knew what Trinity was doing but didn’t feel the need to call her out on it. This was an amazing and somewhat impressive attitude to have, considering the fact that Trinity didn’t even know what she was doing. As Crash might have put it, the wisdom of Cassie McKay (Jedi master) was endless.
Things must be right in the world if a woman like McKay finally got used to be called handsome, but the impulse (needneedneed) to see her blush didn’t fade. If anything it only got worse, only made Trinity work harder for it—not that it was a whole lot of extra effort. Sure, McKay had gotten used to words like handsome and dreamboat, but she sure as shit didn’t know what to do when Trinity laid it on a little thick.
It’s all obviously a joke. Her words were overt, her innuendos hardly subtle, and the language she used primarily fell into a realm both ostentatious and ridiculous.
And yet.
Yet…
Things don’t change, exactly, until the reappearance of a patient McKay had treated. A charming old white guy who insisted on calling her Dr. Hazel Eyes—as though it made sense. Trinity, because she was smart and brilliant and right all the time, felt the absurd need to correct this false nickname. It was a matter of pride, dignity, and country. It would be unamerican not to fix this mistake.
So, Trinity—primed with evil expression and with lip gloss that made McKay look at her mouth about five times just that morning—saddled right up next to her and grinned, all teeth. “Hey there, Doc Hazel Eye.”
“Oh, lord,” said McKay. This was something she said a lot when it came to Trinity. Oh, lord. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Like she was some tiny, fluttering devil on her shoulder. Trinity preened at even the idea of it. “You heard he’s back again, kid?”
The use of the word kid was pointed, and not subtle—but Trinity cared little for it, and thus each time it was used she barrelled right past it with the energy and power of a bullet train. Kid dead on the tracks. Scrape her off the rails before Trinity Santos comes running right through again! Alas, Cassie McKay was clearly a sadist.
“How could I not, when he’s so loudly declaring his love and affection for our fair maiden McKay?” Trinity gasped, putting the back of her hand on her forehead and pretending to faint. “Oh, the scandal! The colorblind old man has come back to steal thy virtue! Don’t trust his old-fashioned dancing, fair knight, ‘tis how they getcha.”
“Colorblind?” McKay asked, a little amused and ignoring about everything else she had to say. A shame.
“Either that or he can’t fucking count, hence the singular Doc Hazel Eye,” said Trinity, bouncing from foot to foot. “Your eyes are blue—except for that little piece of brown, right there.” She saddled up a little closer, grinning, and reached up as though to touch her—stopping a few inches from her face rubbing her thumb back and forth in the air. She squinted. “I guess that makes your right eye hazel, if you wanted to be generous to the old white man.”
McKay blinked once, twice, and then tried to speak. To her credit, she managed to sound somewhat composed, and if not for the soft bloom of pink crawling into her cheeks she would have done just fine. “Not a demographic of people you’re particularly generous to.”
“Oh, how you get me.” Trinity mock swooned, allowing one hand to land very gently on McKay’s upper arm—not squeezing, not groping—a hint of affection in an otherwise silly declaration. This type of thing was something that she had perfected long before Cassie McKay. “Take me away from here, Dr. McKay. No one understands me like you do. I’m falling in love.”
“You’re ridiculous,” declared McKay. Her cheeks, nevertheless, pushed past pink and into a solid red.
She made it too easy, which Trinity was honestly thankful for, because the ‘I have to make her blush or I’ll die’ urges had yet to lessen really at all. If anything, the more she did it the worse it got—which was something that she refused to examine too closely.
“Am I?” Trinity asked, lowering her voice a little. Her hand became a hint more present on the sleeve of McKay’s sweater, just enough to feel a little hint of warmth through the fabric. “You have to tell me why. I think I’ve behaved perfectly acceptably, you know.”
McKay blinked. She looked, quite suddenly, like a deer in headlights. “You—you think you’ve been good, kid?”
“You don’t?” Trinity pouted, and then dropped her hand, sighing. Though she was no longer touching her, she didn’t move to give the other woman space. That, in Trinity’s opinion, would signal retreat—and she was a good soldier in the matters of this war. This battle for—well, she didn’t actually quite know what for, but she knew that she was fighting it with courage in her heart. “That’s too bad. Well, nothin’ for it, McKay.”
“You know, you can call me Cassie,” she blurted, startled by herself. She jerked forward a little, like she was chasing the hand that stopped touching her. It was oddly—starved. It made Trinity feel an uncharacteristic pulse of guilt, like she’d pulled a chicken leg from the jaws of a starving puppy. “That’s—you know. An option.”
Trinity smirked, but it felt ill-fitting and false. “You gonna call me by my first name too? What’s next, promise rings?”
“Oh, that’s a bit more commitment then I expected from you, kid,” said McKay. Her cheeks were still flushed, but her eyes were—oddly knowing.
Trinity scowled.
“There she is,” said McKay, with surprising warmth. “I was wondering where my favorite surly R2 disappeared to. I missed you.”
Missed—
“I’m your favorite? Oh, Cassie.”
She blushed again. Too easy. Layup. Trinity needed to see it again and again and—
Whoa. Pump the breaks, Santos. Chill. It wasn’t that serious. It wasn’t—it was... A little joke. A way to let off some steam. A fun little—distraction from work. Something to make the days a little more bearable, and make Trinity feel less like she had to kill someone every time a patient said something stupid.
“You’re,” said McKay, and then faltered. “I, um, have to go check on a patient.”
“Far be it from me to keep you from your job, Doc Handsome.”
McKay—Cassie, Trinity allowed herself a single solitary second to think—hurried off. Cheeks red, ears burning, and shooting shy little glances out of the corner of her eye before she disappeared past a glass door.
“Huh,” said Perlah, somewhere behind her. Then, in Tagalog, “I didn’t think you liked white girls, and it’s funny you talk about jobs like you don’t also have one. Dana’s going to kill you if she sees you flirting instead of checking on that stomach abscess she threw your way.”
“I’m not too picky about girls,” replied Trinity, in the same language—making Perlah snort derisively. She leaned on the short wall of the hub, grinning. “And, c’mon, did you see that? It’s almost funny. She’s tripping over herself like a teenager. Isn’t she like, seventy?”
“Forty-three, you little shit.” Then, “You’re making fun of her,” Perlah noted, half-disapproving and half-amused. This was a somewhat normal expression for her to be wearing in regards to Trinity, so it was quickly identified and then disregarded.
“No,” said Trinity, though she absolutely was. “I’m only curious. Can’t I be curious? Besides, it’s a little nice to see her knocked off balance every once in a while. She needs—some levity. She’s so wrapped up in all this shit—the street team, the patients—a pretty younger woman dropping innuendo isn’t a hardship. It’s not like I’m giving as much of a shit about this place as she is. Figured I’d… lighten the load.”
This was, unfortunately for Trinity, rapidly becoming the truth. Speaking in Tagalog with Princess or Perlah had the habit of dragging out things she tucked away—the relief that only they, not any of their other coworkers, would understand what she said. This didn’t mean she spilled everything, however. She hadn’t mentioned how much she liked seeing McKay flustered. She hadn’t mentioned how worried she’d initially been for Crash, or how frustrated she’d been with McKay at the start for—entertaining Javadi. For not quietly discouraging her. For, if anything, drawing her closer.
(She had not spoken of Langdon, though Perlah must have pieced it together by now. Trinity refused to. She—)
Perlah hummed. It wasn’t a sound of agreement, but rather acknowledgement. “Tread carefully, Lion-heart. The shadows in that cave are long and dark.”
“Perlah,” Trinity drawled. “Are you worried about me?”
“No, because you’d inevitably make it weird—though, if I was, it’d be because you are like the unruly niece I never wanted,” she said, simply. Then, because she was not above her own eccentricities, she reached up and pinched Trinity’s cheek, pulling out from where it’d been pressed between her teeth. Her smile was fond and almost sad. “You’re too reckless with yourself,” she said, and then the touch was gone, her back was turned, and she was humming something under her breath.
Trinity rolled her eyes, turning away and rubbing absentmindedly at the little red mark she’d left behind—and then paused.
McKay, who’d just slipped out of her patient’s room, staring. Eyes dark. Mouth turned down.
Trinity laughed, and batted her eyelashes. It was cartoonish and ridiculous and should have dissolved whatever dark shadow had seized McKay’s expression—but.
Her mouth curved upward, but her eyes stayed dark. McKay’s shoulders dropped, and she turned away—inexplicably satisfied, yet undeniably affected.
By what? Trinity wanted to ask. Not me. Certainly not—no way.
“Hmm,” she said, narrow eyed, and then got back to work. She ground the soft skin of her cheek between her molars, gnawing until she couldn’t deny the ache any longer. It was hours later, when she had already long been tasting blood and snuck away to the bathroom to spit it out, that she realized that she had (perhaps, maybe, possibly) made a mistake. Trinity rinsed out her mouth, plucked the soft tissue out of her teeth, and said: “Oh.”
She does not avoid McKay or otherwise change her behavior. Trinity does not entirely understand why she does not do either of those things. Certainly it would be smarter, certainly it would be—understandable. McKay doesn’t do—whatever it is that Trinity has been trying to do. She wasn’t quiet about it—Trinity had overheard things about old hearts and old dogs and new tricks and blahblahblah.
The point, being—Trinity Santos was not going to be waking any old and slumbering hearts. There was just no way. But!
But—if she was lucky, and that didn’t happen often, so if she was smart—she could at least get a good lay out of it. If Cassie was receptive. And if Cassie actually like women, which Trinity was sure was at least a little true but had no physical evidence of—aside from the gawking that occasionally made an appearance.
If anything, she had mostly physical evidence of the contrary. The man child Chad, the half-demon spawn Harrison—who was not the angel baby Javadi was convinced he was. Trinity had been left alone with him in the break room twice and both times the two of them had conspired to set something on fire. Granted, Trinity had been the one egging him on, but the point still stood.
Unfortunately, being someone the demon spawn enjoyed also meant that on the off chance Mateo and Crash were unavailable, she was inevitably requested. In hindsight, she’d find this funny, because the way she saw it: each and every one of Harrison’s babysitters wanted to fuck his mom.
But that was hindsight.
The phone call was now.
She was sitting on her bed, listening to music and painting her nails. Her fingers were done, and likely to be inevitably peeled off by the end of the day, but she took great care with her toes. Maybe it was a little ridiculous to be so vain about them, but she found the action soothing—another splotch of color on her body. At least this one didn’t cost her money (tattoos) or blood (…hmm).
Trinity was startled out of her brief melancholy when the music cut off—her phone vibrating on her comforter. She blinked—an unknown number. A Pittsburgh area code, though—so. Maybe not a crazy ax murderer or telemarketer? Biting the bullet, she reached over and answered it—turning it on speaker and going back to her nail polish.
“Hello?”
A brief moment where no one spoke.
“Hello…?” Trinity dragged out the word, annoyed this time.
There was an awkward cough over the line. “Hey—heya, Santos. It’s, uh, me. Cassie.”
“Cassie,” she said, sounding out the name with a fake gravitas. “Whoa. Could it be the Cassie who calls me by my first name? Could such a person exist? Much to think of, much to ponder…”
“I got your number from Vadi,” she continued, still awkward.
Trinity snorted, continuing to paint her toenails. She couldn't help the little satisfied smile that curled her lips upward. “I hope you know you crushed her soul doing that.”
“And I know it’s last minute,” she murmured—this entire thing was obviously rehearsed, because there was no way she’d let a jab at Crash slide otherwise, “but I have to go to a meeting and don’t have anyone to watch Harrison. As a last resort I can drop him off with my ex, but. Um—” She laughed, a little dark and disdainful. It sent a spark of interest down Trinity’s spine. “No, thanks.”
“Gasp. Doc Handsome, are you asking me to go steady with you? Be your one and only babysitter?”
“I have a roster,” she said, amused. It was a crying shame Trinity couldn’t see her face, because she was sure it was pink.
“Whoa, I have competition? Told you all the girls think you’re handsome,” Trinity managed a smile. “What time do you need someone to watch your spawn?”
“Please don’t call him spawn.”
Trinity didn’t pout, but it was a close thing. “He thinks it’s funny.”
“He’s a twelve-year old boy. He thinks that everything terrible is funny, kid.”
Trinity huffed. “Well, I’ve found that he has an elevated sense of humor. Beyond his years, even.”
“Or, maybe, you just have the humor of a preteen?”
“Hurtful,” she said. “Anyway? What time? Preferably not in the next ten minutes. I’m painting my toenails and if they get smudged because I have to shove my feet into my sneakers, I’ll kill somebody. You’ll have to apologize and take the blame at Huckleberry’s funeral. He’s the closest.”
A brief pause. “What color?”
“For the funeral? Black, right? Oh, maybe pink. I think he’d find that funny beyond the grave.”
Through the thin wall that connected their rooms: “I would not!”
“It’s like I can still hear his voice,” Trinity laughed.
“She was asking about your toenails, idiot!”
“Oh,” said Trinity, startled. Her hands hovered over her own feet, and she felt—not bashful, but… “Blue,” she said. Then, “Perv. Why are you thinking about my feet?”
“So, Whitaker can hear every word we say,” McKay noted, voice a little strangled. “Fun. I wonder if we can get him to stop listening.”
“Sure we could,” said Trinity. “He bought noise canceling headphones like a week after he moved in with me. He charges them religiously, just in case.” Well, he hadn’t bought them. More like she’d given him an old, crappy pair that she didn’t want to use anymore. Her much nicer ones sat untouched in her drawer.
“Why’s he have to do that?”
Trinity grinned at her phone. “Dreamboat, you are treading on some thin ice. Hmm, I wonder—why would he need something to drown out what’s going on in my bedroom? I’ll give you three guesses. I can even give you a hint, if you’re so inclined.”
McKay went very quiet over the line. “Oh.”
“Oh, she says.” Trinity laughed, high and cruel. A hyena, the approximation of humanity in something beastly. “Cassie, you’re so sweet. I really could just eat you up.”
“And you’re still depraved!” Dennis said through the wall. “Also, I found my headphones, thank God!”
“I never should have taken him home from the kill shelter,” scoffed Trinity. She put away her nail polish and wiggled her toes. Perfect, obviously. “So, Cassie, what time do you need me? Just drop a pin and I’ll head over. Don’t get mad if your spawn comes out of the experience speaking in tongues and cursing his classmates, though.”
“I’ll chance it, kid,” said McKay. Her voice had gone—not distant, exactly, but not as warm or amused. “I’ll text you the address—if you could be here in two hours I’d appreciate it.”
Trinity rolled her eyes. “Sure, Doc Handsome. Or you could, you know, do something from this century and drop a pin. Unless you don’t know how to do that, in which case I will laugh and show you how later.”
A very pointed silence. “You’re a brat.”
“Aww,” said Trinity. “Took you long enough to figure that out, McKay. See you soon. Maybe I’ll even flash you my toes, since you were so interested—”
The line went dead, but Trinity was not phased. As far as she was concerned, that was pretty much an admission of guilt.