Chapter Text
Nothing good ever came Trinity Santos’ way.
She had come to realise this would always be the case.
Growing up, she imagined herself to have been cursed. Charmed in some way to receive years of poor luck. She always blamed the witchy looking woman she had met on a family holiday to Egypt aged nine. She was sure that woman had placed a spell upon her.
So after a while she stopped trying to block it. She took the hits. Built up skin of iron and stone, and watched but never flinched as they all clawed at her, trying to break through but never able to.
She almost found it hilarious. How much bad luck could a singular person come across in a lifetime? Surely she’d win a Guinness World Record, if anyone even cared to notice.
There had been moments, where light had attempted to shine through the cracks. A glimmer of hope in the distance, quickly extinguished by another wave of darkness. Light just didn’t seem to exist in Trinity’s world.
Even now, in the early hours of the morning no light filtered through her broken blinds. The moonlight and stars cloaked by whatever poison had been pumped into the sky over the years. Even wrapped safely in her bedsheets, her body still braced for the impact of something. Anything.
A rapid knock sounded at her door, making her heart skip a beat.
“What?” she croaked out.
Her door swung open with an obnoxious squeak, her rusting hinges still yet to be oiled. She squinted at the figure in the doorway, recognising the timid posture of her roommate even in the darkness.
“Sorry… I uh, didn’t mean to wake you. Um I think the faucet is broken and I was gonna wait to let you know but since our shift starts… shit soon, I thought I’d let you know.”
Santos sat up slowly, dragging a hand through her loose hair.
“For fucks sake Huckleberry,” she groaned, already picturing the repair bill. A bill she knew she’d have to pay out of her pocket alone. Not that she really minded paying all the bills, truly. Whitaker paid her back enough with meals and laundry, but sometimes she really had to hold her tongue.
“I know i’m sorry, I tried to stop it leaking but I think I somehow made it even worse…”
With a sigh, Santos swung her legs over the bed and stood up, grimacing at the creak of her floorboards. “On a scale of one to ten how bad is it? One being, I don’t have to open my wallet and ten being, we’re gonna have to relocate before the government find out we created a sixth ocean.”
Whitaker rubbed the back of his neck anxiously, “Uhhh like a four?”
Santos shrugged, “Okay we can leave it a few days then.”
Whitaker mirrored her gesture and stepped aside to let her through the doorway.
With a wide, unashamed yawn, she adjusted the way her shirt fell over her chest and padded into the shared bathroom. Her eyes fell upon the plastic pot that held three toothbrushes within—two white and one blue.
The third sat slightly apart from the others. Not much, maybe half an inch.
The bristles had begun to curl at the edges. A thin crack ran through the plastic handle where it had once been launched against the opposite wall. She remembered the sound it had made. Remembered the argument that followed.
Her stomach tightened.
“Trin?”
Whitaker's voice came from somewhere behind her.
“Hm?”
“The faucet?”
“Oh. Right.”
She tore her eyes away from the cup and stepped around the growing puddle spreading beneath the sink. The cabinet door hung open, revealing a tangled maze of pipes.
Whitaker hovered nearby like a nervous parent waiting outside a principal's office.
“I did try to fix it.”
“I'm sure you did.”
“I watched a tutorial.”
“That's never reassuring.”
“It had a lot of views.”
Santos crouched down and immediately regretted it.
Water sprayed directly into her face.
“Motherfu—”
Whitaker physically recoiled. “See? That's exactly what happened to me.”
She wiped her cheek with her sleeve and glared at the pipe as though it had personally insulted her.
“Yeah, but unlike you, I wasn't stupid enough to keep touching it.”
“I was trying to help.”
They fell into silence after that, Whitaker bouncing his leg anxiously as he watched santos get to work, checking his watch every 5 minutes.
Water dripped steadily into the bucket below.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
A pathetic little metronome counting seconds nobody could get back.
Finally, Trinity pushed herself upright.
“We're gonna be late.”
Whitaker checked the time (again) and visibly panicked.
“Oh shit.”
“Language.”
“You literally say worse.”
“That's not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“I don't know, Huckleberry. My parents said it to me and now I'm saying it to you. That's how trauma works.”
By the time they had rushed around the apartment getting ready for the day ahead (Trinity purposefully moving slower every time Dennis reminded her to ‘hurry up’) there was only 5 minutes scheduled before the bus would pull up in front of their complex.
The sound of their feet tapping against the metal staircase reverberated around the peeling white walls as they scampered down the four flights. The sun was only just beginning to make an appearance in the distant horizon so the dark sky swallowed Trinity once more.
They mumbled a greeting to the bus driver and squinted through the fluorescent lighting. The seats on bus 442 always looked a little moth eaten - cigarette smoke from past decades lingering even still on the faded fabric.
As usual, Trinity took the window seat, placing wired headphones in both ears and resting her head on the cool glass. She allowed her eyes to shut as the first few notes of a Radiohead song played through her headphones. Dennis always opted for no headphones. This always baffled Trinity. Instead he watched the city pass through the front window of the bus, as though he were experiencing it for the first time each journey.
PTMC was visible from miles away, the tall, cream coloured building standing out. The bus came to a halt just a short walk down the road from the entrance. Trinity usually kept her headphones in for this walk, keeping three paces behind Whittaker. But today, she stuffed them into her satchel and fell into step beside him.
“Gonna be a big one today,” she spoke up, startling Dennis.
“You think?” He replied, scratching the back of his neck. A nervous habit of his that Trinity had picked up on pretty early on.
She nodded her head to ground, “It’s icy. People tend to get more clumsy when it’s like this. I’m betting on at least four MVA’s.”
“You shouldn’t bet on people’s misfortune.”
She shrugged, “Better than focusing on my own.”