Work Text:
In different circumstances Garcia’s double take would almost be funny.
She freezes in her tracks, eyes unnervingly stuck on Trinity while she slowly takes a step back until she stands still before the partially curtained-off exam bay. Her head tilts in careful consideration. Her hair is pulled back into a singular bun today, Trinity notices, baby hairs frizzing into tiny, static curls at her temples. Her stethoscope hangs limply from one hand that clenches briefly when her gaze flits across Trinity’s person once more.
“What happened?”
Trinity’s hand tightens against the gauze she holds to her arm, keeping pressure on the wound that is still weeping blood. For a moment, she entertains the notion of just not answering. It’s not like she owes Garcia anything. They ceased being something a long time ago. But then Garcia says, “Santos” like she used to before and Trinity folds.
“Intern with terrible hand-eye coordination.”
Garcia’s eyes flash to hers.
“Probably karma, right?” Trinity deadpans.
Garcia ignores her and steps closer like she belongs in this space; like this clearly non-surgical case is any of her business. Trinity’s breath catches in her chest as the exam bay shrinks around the two of them. It’s too small a space. Too narrow, for two people, for them, but Garcia either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She ends at Trinity’s bedside, stuffing her stethoscope into her back pocket.
Her hands are warm and firm against Trinity’s skin, fingers closing loosely around Trinity’s wrist as she carefully tugs the injured arm outwards. Trinity lets her. Her nervous system seems split between relaxing into the touch or tensing up in anticipation, leaving her weirdly on edge. Unease crawls up her spine while she lets up on the pressure she has dutifully been keeping for the past fifteen minutes to let Garcia take over.
Garcia peels the red-stained gauze away to uncover the wound running up Trinity’s arm, cutting cleanly through pale skin but somehow avoiding the tattoos that decorate it. Her fingers tighten minutely as she tilts it toward the overhead light to better inspect it. Blood wells up with the movement, sluggishly seeping past the cut’s straight edges and staining more of Trinity’s skin a sticky red.
“This looks deep.”
Trinity presses her lips together tightly with a roll of her eyes. “Yeah, no shit—“
Her mouth snaps shut at Garcia’s cutting look. They stare at each other for a long, heavy moment before Garcia turns her focus back to the wound. She takes a deep, measured breath, holding it for a few counts before exhaling.
“Scalpel?”
“Yep.”
It had sucked, the unexpected pain—the feeling of her skin splitting open so neatly at one wrong movement from the sharp blade. It had caught her off-guard.
(Maybe she had gotten too used to bracing for the sting.)
“Used,” Trinity adds after a beat. It’s medically relevant information, though she doesn’t know what Garcia is supposed to do with it.
Garcia’s expression remains stoic. “Where is Robby?”
“The intern was hyperventilating, so, you know.” Trinity gestures vaguely with her un-injured arm. Garcia is still holding the other one, familiar heat transferring from her fingertips to Trinity’s skin. It inevitably soothes a small fraction of her restlessness. “Either he’s currently yelling at Langdon for failing to supervise properly, or he’s talking the intern through some breathing exercises. Chances are fifty-fifty since his sabbatical.”
“And what about you?”
Trinity pauses. “What about me?”
Garcia pointedly looks around the exam bay, gaze ending on the table where half of the supplies to fix her up have already been laid out. “Unless you’re suddenly a one-handed prodigy, I assume you weren’t about to stitch this up yourself.”
Trinity fights to keep her lips from twitching involuntarily at the sarcasm she’d sworn to herself she didn’t miss. She clears her throat. “Huckleberry volunteered for the task, but they snatched him away for an incoming trauma after he washed out the wound.”
She had seen the conflict in his wet puppy eyes, weighing his stupid loyalty to her against the call of a job that is already temporarily down an attending, intern and resident, and she had told him she’d be fine. Sure, the cut is deep, the edges tugging unpleasantly when she moves her arm, but it’s not like she’ll be bleeding out anytime soon. She can keep pressure on it, and the stitches will work just as fine an hour from now. The patients in this hospital need his help more than she does.
“Whitaker was going to be stitching you up.”
“Yes,” Trinity drawls.
Garcia presses the gauze back to the cut and directs Trinity to hold it before she turns around and tugs open a drawer, gathering new supplies atop the cabinet.
Trinity curls her arm to her chest and strains her neck to try and see. “What are you doing?”
Garcia rolls both the table and drawers closer. She deposits the supplies atop the exam bed and pulls the stool towards herself, sitting down as she snaps on a pair of gloves. She positions herself at Trinity’s side and pointedly holds out her hand.
“What?”
“You’re not letting him near this,” Garcia says.
“Hey.” Trinity’s brows knit together. She’ll deny it until her dying day, but Huckleberry is shaping up to be a capable doctor. And Trinity is the only one who is allowed to bully him. She called dibs on their first day together. Garcia should keep her thoughts to herself. “So, what, you’re just going to abandon your surgery duties to waste your time stitching up an ED resident?”
Garcia stays quiet, pointedly looking between Trinity’s injured arm and the supplies. Any further questions and quips slowly die in Trinity’s throat. Another beat passes before she unfurls her arm and holds it out.
Despite reassuring Garcia again that Huck had already cleaned out the wound for her, Garcia dismisses the fact and irrigates it again. Deliberately, meticulously by the book, not a millimetre of the cut left untouched even if it means spending the extra minute at Trinity’s bedside. Why she’d bother with the extra work, Trinity doesn’t know. It’s not like Garcia still cares about Trinity. Or like she had ever cared in the first place.
And yet, the sting of the saline isn’t quite as sharp this time around.
The plastic basin thuds lightly when Garcia finally sets it aside. There’s a brief reprieve of her touch before it returns as she dries Trinity’s arm with soft precision.
Cold washes over Trinity, and she represses a shiver.
Garcia wordlessly sets up in preparation for the suturing. She doesn’t look at Trinity—hasn’t, since she picked up the saline. Trinity isn’t sure whether to be disappointed or grateful.
She allows herself to be directed to lay her arm atop a drape. Garcia draws up the meds Huckleberry had grabbed, warning Trinity before she injects it along the edges. Even with the warning, the lidocaine still burns unpleasantly going in, but the numbness that follows within minutes is almost as discomfiting.
It’s not the first time Trinity has needed stitches in her life – she was an adventurous kid, once, and a rebellious college student – but it has been a while. It’s strange, the lack of pain versus the present sensations of tugging and pulling on her skin once Garcia starts suturing. An artificial disconnect between body and mind. In more than one way, Trinity has been relegated to being nothing more than an observer.
Garcia’s hands are steady under Trinity’s watch, the small stitches decidedly neater than anything Huckleberry could’ve done. Even bites on both sides of the wound. Perfectly calculated tension. Finished off with identical ties, one after the other. Garcia is in her element, completing the work of a practiced surgeon, exuding the competence and authority that had attracted Trinity to her in the first place.
She feels it itching even now, burrowed underneath her skin in a way that has nothing to do with the sutures.
(If she’s being honest with herself, she doesn’t think it has ever gone away. No matter how much she begged it to.)
The near-quiet snip of the instrument sounds as Garcia finishes off another suture with practiced, controlled movements and moves in for the next stitch without a word. Though the ED around them hasn’t settled down, its noise has faded to the background without notice. Trinity is so used to the constant dialogue of a teaching hospital that the sudden realisation of silence in the exam bay is strangely jarring.
“It’s not a waste of time.”
Trinity startles, heat rising to her face as if she was caught watching, but Garcia still hasn’t looked up from her work. “What?”
“Stitching you up.”
Trinity stares at Garcia. She barely even notices when she goes in for the next stitch, threading the needle through Trinity’s skin.
What is Garcia’s deal?
Her rain checks hadn’t deterred Trinity as they should have, because Trinity is pathetic. A desperate loser, who had kept hoping maybe this time, until she had finally admitted that she was clinging to something that had probably never even been there.
Just casual, right?
(So what if Trinity doesn’t always know what she wants? What if Trinity doesn’t always dare to ask, because when it’s concrete, it can be taken away?)
Whatever she and Garcia had had, fizzled out entirely when Trinity had stopped replying to Garcia’s sporadic texts. One day they were talking, the next they weren’t, and Trinity pretended it didn’t feel like some part of her, deep down, was gaping from the loss. Waiting to be put back together.
And Garcia hadn’t sought her out. They went from flirting banter, to nothing but professional exchanges when they happen to be in the same room together. Garcia doesn’t even spare a scathing comment or sarcastic joke for her these days. Let alone something genuine, like the whispered conversations they’d had once upon a time, high on sex, pressed close under Trinity’s covers with the world far, far away.
Until now, apparently.
Trinity swallows heavily as Garcia ties off the last stitch and disposes of the needle. With Garcia’s touch gone, she dares to carefully flex her arm, testing the pull of the stitches. The cut has gone from an open wound to an irritated red line travelling up her arm. It’ll be interesting to see how it heals. All things considered, Trinity could’ve been far worse off, but it’s still going to leave a scar.
(What’s one more, right?)
“You’re going to be off work for a day or two while this starts to heal,” Garcia says, finally looking up at Trinity. She sounds almost… sorry about it.
Trinity grimaces and glances away. “Yeah, I know.”
Just her luck, but as much as she can’t afford to skip shifts as an R2, she knows overdoing it and either re-opening the wound or picking up an infection in the most infectious workplace on earth would put her in even bigger trouble. She’ll suck it up and make it through.
“Tell Robby or Al-Hashimi not to put you on cases with that intern for a while when you’re back.”
Trinity’s brows jump at the steely undertone. Garcia’s silence had lulled her into a fake sense of security, and now her hackles rise. “And why would I do that?”
Garcia looks at her like she’s being stupid. “Seriously?”
“What happened to ‘honest mistake from the rookie’?” Trinity laughs humourlessly. “Or does that only apply to interns you want to fuck?”
“Trinity—”
“Don’t.”
Garcia falls quiet. For once, she appears not to know what to do with herself. She ends up turning to the last of the gathered supplies and peels open a package of non-stick gauze to dress Trinity’s wound, securing it with medical tape. Trinity lets her.
It takes longer than it needs to.
“I—” Garcia stops. Then, “Please consider asking Robby or Al-Hashimi about the intern.”
It’s a softer request this time, made while she smooths down the last of the tape. Her façade cracks and a poorly hidden frown lingers on her face. Trinity’s chest aches. She clamps onto the hurt.
“I don’t know,” she says, staring at Garcia. “I figured I’d just ask her out for drinks.”
The crease between Garcia’s brow deepens, dark eyes sharp with a swirl of emotion. “Not funny, Santos.”
The ache intensifies and Trinity smiles sardonically to cover for it. They are at a stalemate until Garcia sighs and looks away. Trinity’s smile fades, its strain on her face easing.
She looks down at her arm and waits.
With Trinity all stitched up and bandaged, there shouldn’t be anything keeping Garcia in this exam bay, but she makes no move to leave. It takes Trinity another minute to realise she herself is free to leave too, and yet she hasn’t. Despite the tension and hurt and everything unsaid hanging in the air between them, she… doesn’t want to go.
For the first time in a long time, they’re in the same room and acknowledging each other in something other than a professional capacity.
Trinity has missed this, she realises. Being around Garcia for longer than a fleeting, passing moment. She likes being in her presence. Likes sharing a space, even though she shouldn’t. Even though they have nothing to discuss.
What would she say? I miss you? I considered casual, just to be with you again?
Trinity shifts on the exam bed, suddenly very interested in her bandaged arm.
“Thank you,” she says stiffly. “For taking the time to stitch me up.” Then, even if it hurts, “You can go. I’ll—You know, throw everything out.”
“Yes,” Garcia acknowledges, though her tone suggests the thought hadn’t occurred to her before. She makes no move to leave.
“…Is there something you need from me?”
Garcia is quiet for so long, Trinity starts to think there might be.
“No,” Garcia finally says. She turns as if to get up and leave, but aborts the move halfway through to face Trinity again, sudden steely determination set in her shoulders. “Why did you stop replying to my texts?”
Trinity blinks. It’s been months of silence, and this is the moment Garcia chooses to ask about it?
“Trinity.”
I don’t know, she wants to say, but comes out is the too-honest, “I was tired of being rain-checked on.” It felt like she was in it more than Garcia. Too much, if she is being honest with herself. “In the end it just seemed like an excuse. To—I don’t know, let me down nicely.”
Garcia raises a sceptical brow. “Would I do that?”
Trinity considers it, really considers it for a moment. “No,” she concludes.
If anyone would have told her straight to her face, it would’ve been Garcia. Not that she knows what to do with that information, or the nagging feeling she has known as much all along.
Silence falls.
“We agreed on casual.” The way Garcia says it, it’s almost like it’s as much a reminder for Trinity as for herself.
“Right.” Trinity presses her lips together tightly. “Right, but why should that mean you just get to cancel on our plans the second—the second you think of something else to do with your time?”
She watches Garcia process the words.
“I needed to keep my distance sometimes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t—” know, Trinity can feel is nearly on Garcia’s lips, but it sticks to her tongue instead, abruptly cutting off the sentence.
“Why?” Trinity asks again.
Garcia regards Trinity. Uncertainty creeps into her posture for the first time, outing itself in a foreign restlessness. She works her jaw. “I think,” she says. “I was trying to protect myself. I think—” In the most un-Garcia-like manner, she hesitates a split second, before, “I no longer wanted casual.”
Trinity’s heart stops beating.
“And that might have—"
“Garcia,” Trinity interrupts. At the familiar flash of annoyance in those dark eyes, she scrambles for something to say. “Just—Give me a second.”
Garcia grants her as much without another word.
Trinity churns the confession over in her head, inspecting it from every angle. She doesn’t doubt its truthfulness, but that doesn’t mean she knows what to do with it. Or how to feel about it.
But she can’t help but recontextualize every interaction they’ve had since she stopped replying to Garcia’s texts.
“Why didn’t you ask me about this before?” she asks. “About the texts, I mean.”
Trinity had assumed Garcia hadn’t cared, back then. That she hadn’t minded the fade into silence between them, the slow, inevitable death of a situationship. But now…
Garcia’s lips press into a thin line. “Desperation isn’t a good look on anyone.”
Right.
“Besides, I didn’t really understand why I cared. I’m not always great at…” Garcia dawdles, clearly uncomfortable admitting to anything but perfection. “Putting my finger on it in the moment.”
Trinity wants to look away, but she can’t. She’s stuck taking in the way Garcia’s façade has cracked open further, allowing Trinity a glimpse of what lies beneath. She rubs her thumb against the edge of the medical tape that holds the dressing to her arm until it starts to peel up and Garcia tugs her hand away.
The thing is, Trinity understood all too well why she cared. And just as much why she settled on agreeing on casual. She doesn’t know how to do relationships beyond ‘hooking up’. She can do stringless sex just fine, but the minute feelings creep up she is just a girl trying to keep her head above the water. Making it up as she goes. Failing. Ending right back where she began.
(Alone.)
“Trinity.”
Except Garcia is in front of her now.
“I didn’t really want casual, either,” Trinity confesses.
Garcia smooths the medical tape back down. It doesn’t stick as well, but it stays in place nevertheless. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Trinity shrugs. She inspects the curtain, watching Garcia shift in her seat from the corner of her eye. “Figured it wouldn’t lead anywhere.” Close enough to the truth. “You never mentioned anything either.”
“I didn’t.”
Her eyes skip across the faded blocks of colour decorating the white curtain. A thread has come loose at the bottom, dangling just above the floor. Trinity wraps her arm around her middle, pressing her fingertips into the familiar fabric of her scrubs as she lifts her gaze.
“We really suck at this, don’t we.” She dares to try for a wry smile, and her heart summersaults in her chest when Garcia’s lips quirk in response.
“We do,” Garcia acknowledges.
“I—” Garcia never stops looking straight at her and Trinity pauses, wetting her lips. Garcia opened up that vulnerable part of herself for Trinity, didn’t she? Why does it have to be this hard to do the same? “I miss this.” A beat. “I miss you.”
“Yeah,” Garcia says. It’s almost soft. “So do I.”
Trinity stares at Garcia. Takes in her perfect posture. The contours of her features. Surgeon hands resting in her lap.
The emotion swirling in her eyes.
“Think we could try again?”
If Trinity hadn’t witnessed Garcia’s slow-emerging vulnerability, she might have laughed. “Seriously?”
“Do you?” Garcia presses.
“I figured we might be doomed.” Trinity’s tone is dry, poorly masking the underlying worry that she’s right. That they never would’ve worked out anyway, no matter if either of them would’ve tried harder. Would have tried to communicate better.
“That’s a little melodramatic.”
Trinity senses Garcia is trying very hard not to roll her eyes, and, well… Maybe she’s right. Trinity does sometimes have the propensity for thinking the worst of any situation. Life has left her a little too jaded.
Leave it to Garcia to say it like it is and call Trinity to re-evaluate her own pessimism.
“I don’t know,” she ends up answering honestly.
Truth is, Trinity doesn’t know what it would do to her if they tried and it doesn’t work out. It scares her a little—okay, a lot, to consider putting in the effort again, opening her heart again, to the risk of everything going downhill in a few months anyway.
“Would you want to?”
Her first instinct is to shoot the question right back. Make Garcia answer, before Trinity herself has to crack open her heart further in search of earnestness. But she has never heard Garcia pose an empty question. She wouldn’t ask just for the sake of it.
Trinity gnaws at the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. She swallows down the metallic taste. “Yes.”
“I’d want to.”
Trinity’s eyes flicker to Garcia, whose jaw clicks shut the second she’s done speaking. “What?”
“You heard me,” Garcia says shortly, but it lacks its usual bite of impatience.
The agreement hangs between them like a heavy presence. Trinity digs her fingers further into her side, uncertain what to do with herself. What to do with this.
Where do they go from here? Wanting is all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t fix much. Trinity lets her focus drift around the exam bay, as if the furniture or monitors might hold the answers.
How do they go from casual, to radio silence, to something fuelled by feelings they had developed somewhere along the way and not known how to handle the first go around?
It’s tempting, to say fuck it and ask Garcia to come over tonight, but it would be all too easy to fall back into those old habits. It’s all they know, at this point. If they want to move beyond that, they need to break those patterns. Try something new. No more hitting you up tomorrow or ramen in bed.
Trinity squares her shoulders and looks at Garcia. “Would you like to go on a date with me?”
“A date,” Garcia echoes plainly.
“Yeah, you know.” Trinity gestures, unsure how she could be clearer than that. “Dinner. Drinks. Out.”
Garcia levels Trinity with a look. “I know what a date is, Trinity.”
“…So?”
A pause. “I’d like that. Yes.”
Trinity tries not to let tentative hope sing too loudly, but it’s hard to repress.
“We can text.” Garcia falls quiet, processing, as if she hadn’t actually expected to end up here. She regains her confidence quickly, surprise fading, and warmth blooms in Trinity’s chest at the sight. “To get the details sorted.”
Trinity thinks of the texting thread buried deep down in her messages, and the contact card for Yolanda she, despite everything, had never been able to bring herself to change back to Garcia. “Okay. Okay, yeah, let’s do that.”
A date. She’s going on a date. With Garcia. The renewed realisation swells inside her alongside a fresh bout of anxiety. She loops reassurances in her mind. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, it could go wrong. But she also knows she would regret not at least trying. Seeing, if it could turn out differently this time.
Trinity might be a pessimist, but she isn’t a quitter.
And neither is Garcia.
She holds Garcia’s gaze and finds her own doubt and hope mirrored. The storm inside her head slowly settles as she allows herself to exist in this moment.
Together.
They startle when Garcia’s pager beeps, their connection briefly lost as Garcia pulls it from her pocket and spares a glance at the screen. “They need me in the OR.”
The bubble that had enveloped them when Garcia decided to step into the exam bay, instead of walking past it, slowly retreats until it disappears fully. Trinity blinks and pulls an antiseptic-tinged breath into her lungs, becoming aware of the world that has continued around them. Patients and family chatting in the adjoining exam bays. Staff hurrying through the halls, settling at hubs.
They’re still in the middle of a workday. Trinity looks down at her bandaged arm. Or well, at least Garcia is.
(So much for not mixing work and their personal lives. Though honestly, that vow was destined to fail the second they settled on casual.)
“Right.” Trinity should probably find Dr Robby and discuss temporary medical leave before catching a bus home. Where she won’t be able to shower for two days. Ugh. But hey, at least she can probably guilt Huckleberry into doing her chores for the week.
Garcia gets up from the stool, surreptitiously stretching her back. She lingers. “We’ll text,” she says, gaze boring into Trinity until Trinity nods her confirmation.
A promise that this conversation will live on beyond this exam bay.
Garcia turns partially, slowing to a stop as a thought crosses her face. She looks back and nods at Trinity’s arm. “I’ll find Dana to come give you your shots before I go upstairs.”
Trinity groans and sags back against the bed. That had totally slipped her mind. Garcia raises a questioning brow. “This sucks.”
A careful beat passes. “Tell me about it,” Garcia says then, trying, probing, a light in her eyes that Trinity has missed.
Butterflies stir in her stomach as she looks at Garcia.
You could kiss it better, Trinity thinks of joking, but they’re not there. Yet.
Maybe they will be again someday.