Chapter Text
Trinity hadn’t meant to drink that much. She had told herself on the drive over: three drinks, that’s it. But once they got inside, the day caught up with her. Langdon showing up again. Garcia feeding her that bullshit excuse about having other plans. As if keeping it casual meant losing manners and ditching someone hours before said event.
The karaoke bar smelled like spilled beer and fryer grease, the kind that she knew was going to cling to her clothes. She and Mel found an empty table near the speakers, and by the time Trinity lowered herself into the sticky chair, her throat was already dry, her hand already up, flagging the waitress for a second.
Her chest was warm, her skin clammy, her top sticking to her back; her feet ached from her twelve-hour shift, so finally taking a seat felt like a relief.
Mel took small sips of her Dirty Shirley, the one ounce of vodka to the five ounces of soda barely doing anything.
She kept thanking Trinity for the invite. Trinity waved it off—she’d done nothing, really, if anything she should be thanking Mel for coming—but Mel wasn’t letting it go, talking about how her sister went to see the fireworks with her boyfriend.
The door kept opening and closing, letting in the booms, the cheering, like the country wasn't on fire half the time.
"Do you have anyone, MelBel?" Trinity tipped her head, waiting.
Mel's cheeks pinked. She took a bigger gulp. "No. Not me. You?"
Trinity let out a short laugh. "Yeah, me either. Well—yes but no. It's complicated." It shouldn't have been complicated. It was supposed to be sex, nothing else. Ten months of sleeping with Garcia.
Garcia spent most of her time at Trinity's place, usually in the bedroom, sometimes in the living room. For God’s sake, Garcia had a toothbrush in the bathroom.
She leaned back in her chair, letting the room blur a little around the edges. The bar was full—groups loud from cheap drinks, couples everywhere, all that red-white-blue crap taped to the walls.
A couple near the bar had their arms around each other, swaying off-beat while the frat bros on stage butchered whatever song they picked. Trinity watched them for a second, then took a long sip of her drink, the sweetness sticking to her teeth, the alcohol warming her throat.
Trinity ordered two gummy bear shots and begged Mel to take one with her, something about celebrating America's fucked-up birthday.
The MC grabbed the mic, voice booming over the speakers. "Alright people, who's having fun tonight?" The crowd cheered, a messy wave of noise rolling through the room. "Good! Let's get more folks up here—don't be shy!"
The shot hit her tongue sour and sweet, and she let out a whoo before grabbing Mel's hand and pulling her toward the stage.
The lights were too bright, and Trinity felt them on her face as she grabbed the mic. Her voice wobbled on the first line, pushing through the next words slower. Trinity's gaze drifted toward the door, a stupid part of her imagining Garcia walking in and seeing her up here, singing like she wasn't pissed off and three drinks in.
With the song finished, Trinity headed for the bathroom. She waved off Mel's worried look, saying something about a small bladder, and stumbled into a stall.
She pressed her forehead to the cool metal door.
She dug her phone out of her pocket and stared at Garcia's contact. Garcia's smiling face, on top of some fucking mountain, rain jacket hood on. Garcia probably didn't know she had the share contact photo option on.
Idiot.
The last text was from two days ago—Trinity asking if she wanted to come over, a thumbs up on the message. Trinity blinked at the screen, her vision a little swimmy, thumb hovering over the keyboard.
She slipped it back into her pocket; she wasn't letting Garcia ruin her night; more than she had already.
She and Mel kept drinking—mostly her—while she bobbed her head to whatever song was playing. She talked to Mel without really tracking the conversation, something about movies maybe, and picked at her mozzarella sticks between the sips of water Mel kept sliding her way.
Around eleven, they decided to call it a night. They waited on the sidewalk for their rides, music spilling out of the bar, the July breeze sobering her up a little. Fireworks cracked overhead, bright and pointless.
Trinity watched Mel climb into the car, roll down the windows, and lean out, grinning wide. "Thanks for tonight. I had a really fun night."
Trinity lifted her hand in a small wave, giving her a closed-mouth smile, amused by her. "See you at work."
She didn’t remember much of the ride home. Just the cool window against her temple, the driver’s radio low, the city sliding past in streaks of light. The stairs up to her apartment. Peeling her clothes off and leaving them where they fell. The cool relief of the sheets when she finally lay down.
Her phone buzzed somewhere on the nightstand. Her eyes were already closing.
She’d check tomorrow.
Trinity woke the next morning with a low groan, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead, head pulsing. The stale grease smell from last night clung to her shirt, sour, making her stomach tighten.
The apartment was quiet, Dennis having gone to Amy's to play dad and farmhand. The room was warm. Bright. The birds outside were way too loud, each chirp landing against her skull. She turned over and dragged the other pillow over her face.
The fabric carried that faint woody-spicy scent—Garcia's evening fragrance, expensive. Trinity pulled it closer without thinking, breathing it in, her eyes slipping shut for half a second. Then she shoved the pillow away, irritation cutting through the expensive haze.
Ding.
Her phone.
Ding.
Fuck.
She rolled over, head still pounding, eyes squinting at the sun gleaming through her curtains. She reached for her phone, the screen too bright, the notifications stacked. Huck. Mel. Garcia.
Mel's was the newest: Thanks again for last night! Another from her right under it: Hope your head doesn't hurt too much. Drink electrolytes.
As if Trinity didn't know how to recover from alcohol.
Huck had sent a picture of him and a baby cow. She keeps hiding behind the tractor. We're calling her Moo-dini. Trinity let out a scoff-laugh, hearting the photo.
She didn't open Garcia's. Her eyes slid past the first few words in the preview, want me to… before she tossed it onto the bed and dropped back onto the pillow, head still pounding.
There wasn't anything Garcia could say to make this better. Garcia had said she'd try to hit her up on the fifth. Seemed early for a hookup.
Maybe she'd do some laundry; wash the sheets.
After waking up from her second sleep, her headache was gone, but her mouth still had that sticky-dry feeling. She tried to form saliva, rubbing her hand over her eyes as she swung her feet over the edge of the bed, letting them hang for a moment.
With a low groan, she pushed herself upright and headed for the bathroom. She passed her reflection without looking at it, lifting her shirt to scratch at her ribs as she turned on the shower.
Steam filled the bathroom fast, fogging the mirror. She stepped under the water, muscles loosening as the heat hit her shoulders. Garcia hated how hot she turned the water. The way Garcia had once slid the door open, arms crossed, complaining, and stepping in anyway. Her mouth on Trinity’s shoulder, the water between them. Now the water ran over her face. She opened her mouth to catch a few droplets, blinking against the spray until she felt herself wake up for real.
Trinity pulled on a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt, then paused in front of the bathroom mirror and just stared. Her hair was still damp, sticking to her neck. Her eyes looked clear but there was a faint puffiness. She brushed her hair back with her fingers, then brushed her teeth, watching the toothpaste foam swirl down the drain.
Back in the bedroom, she grabbed the pillowcases and stripped them off, the fabric snapping as it left the pillows. She yanked the fitted sheet next, the whole bundle sliding off the mattress in one motion. Her phone tumbled with them, skidding across the sheets before hitting the floor with a dull thud.
She stared at it on the floor, then kept stripping the bed. Sheets in her arms, she carried everything to the washer and shoved it in, slamming the lid harder than she meant to, the sound echoing in the quiet apartment.
When she walked back into the bedroom, she bent to pick the phone up, thumb brushing the cracked edge of the case. Garcia's message sat at the top of the screen, waiting.
She dropped onto the couch, feet on the coffee table, phone in hand.
Might as well rip off the bandage.
As soon as she opened the message, Trinity's eyes widened. She didn't even register Garcia's reply at first—her own photo filled the screen. The one she didn't remember taking.
She was lying on her side in bed, elbow propped, her face out of frame. The burgundy one-shoulder top that made her chest look incredible. The one she stupidly bought to work because she convinced herself she and Garcia might actually go on a date. Watch the fireworks together. As if.
Her bare legs were tucked in at an angle, the pose intimate. Looking at it now, she could see exactly what she'd been trying to do.
Beneath it was the message she had typed: hot
And below that, in Garcia's usual, unbothered tone, the reply: want me to come take it off?
Trinity stared at the timestamp. She had sent it around midnight and Garcia had replied a minute later. That meant Garcia had her phone in hand; awake. Plans her ass.
A minute wasn't casual. A minute meant Garcia had been right there, probably waiting for something from her. Maybe even checking. Maybe annoyed Trinity hadn't texted sooner.
Had Trinity become so predictable?
Her eyes dropped to Garcia's reply again, jaw clenching. The fucking audacity. If Garcia had actually wanted to be with her, she could have. She didn't need to wait for a half-coherent late-night message. She didn't need to reduce everything to this kind of interaction.
"Fuck you." Trinity huffed. She tossed the phone to the far end of the couch, bouncing against the cushions. She leaned forward, reaching for the remote. Anything to put something else in front of her.
She flipped through the channels, settling on some competition show, volume low. The day moved on, hours blurring—laundry hummed in the background, takeout containers piled on the coffee table.
Dennis came in sometime after dark, boots heavy, muttering a greeting as he passed through. She grunted without looking away from the screen.
By the time she finally dragged herself to bed, it was dark. No other messages were waiting for her on her phone.
She stared at the ceiling, watching the strips of orange-yellow light stretch across it from the street outside.
She rolled onto her side and pulled the blanket over her face.
All she smelled was clean laundry. No more woody-spice.
The next day didn't offer her the same mercy.
It was shit the moment she walked in—the ED already louder than usual, monitors beeping over each other, someone shouting for more gauze.
She stepped into Trauma 2 with the night shift still elbow-deep in a mess. Blood streaked the floor, a fresh splatter catching the toe of her shoe as she moved in to assist. Why she had ever decided white shoes were a good idea was a question for another time.
Thank whatever god was up there that Garcia wasn't in yet for the surgical consult. Trinity didn't have the bandwidth for Garcia's voice, her face, her anything right now.
She snapped on gloves and took over compression, the rhythm automatic. This she could do.
She rested against a counter in the Hub, tapping notes into a tablet. Someone stepped up beside her.
"You have blood on your shoes."
Garcia.
Trinity turned, aware of Princess' and Perlah's eyes flickering over from the desk—as if she hadn't seen the wager board with santos and garcia? scribbled in the corner like a joke someone thought they were subtle about.
Garcia stood there in her crisp purple scrubs, hair pulled back into that neat bun, looking irritatingly relaxed.
"And you have eyes." If they were stating the obvious, she could do that too.
Garcia's gaze slid to the board, a faint lift at the corner of her mouth.
"Why are you down here?" Trinity asked. She couldn't think or see a single reason Garcia would willingly be in the ED. Garcia hated the chaos, the noise.
"It was cold upstairs," Garcia said lightly. "Heard it was hot down here."
Garcia thought she was so fucking funny.
Trinity placed the tablet down on the counter and turned toward Garcia, who was watching her with that familiar gleam of amusement. Was Garcia really going to do this, right here? Wouldn't be the first time she said something borderline not work-appropriate. Trinity had never minded. If anything, she craved the little comments Garcia tossed her way—all in the name of teaching the intern, of course.
Garcia stepped closer, and of course she had the stupid two-inch height advantage that made Trinity have to look up—something Garcia enjoyed far too much.
"Fuck off."
At that, Trinity caught Dana narrowing her eyes from the other side of the Hub. A silent reminder: patients around. People can hear you.
Garcia didn't flinch. "Did you have fun?"
There was something genuinely wrong with Garcia. They didn't do chit-chat.
"Yeah. I did. No flakes around."
Garcia let out an amused laugh, slapped the counter once, and started past her but not before leaning in, her breath brushing Trinity's ear as she whispered, "Burgundy looks good on you."
Heat shot up Trinity's neck. Her ear went hot, probably bright red. She planted both hands on the counter, staring down at the blood on her shoes, trying to block out Perlah's and Princess' fast whispers.
Fuck. Why was it so easy for Garcia to get under her skin?
She hoped Garcia got stuck in the elevator.
Two hours later, she had taken slime out of a kid's ear, applied a cast to a woman who had slipped in a grocery store—sue city—and stitched up a teenager who insisted he "barely felt it" while his mother hovered.
She had also broken up an argument between two brothers in triage, both insisting the other started it. Siblings.
With a sigh, Trinity dropped into a chair and re-tied her hair into a tight ponytail. Her neck was hot where the strands had been sticking to her skin.
"Mel's telling everyone you have a nice voice."
Fuck.
She should have gone to the bathroom and hidden there. Maybe then she'd get thirty seconds of peace.
She looked up at Javadi's face—those wide, doe eyes staring down at her, bouncing from foot to foot. She wished she had even half that energy.
"Well I don't." She clicked into a chart, hoping looking busy would make Javadi leave her alone.
"She does," Dennis said, rolling his own damn chair over, like it was fucking story time.
Trinity shot him a look. He opened his eyes wide and shrugged. "What? I can hear you sometimes when you're showering."
"That's an invasion of privacy."
"Not the only thing I hear," he muttered, logging into his own computer.
She scoffed and turned away from him. "Whatever." She shifted back to Javadi. "What?"
"How come you didn't invite me?"
Oh god.
"Mel was feeling down, and I had a shit day and she was there. Don't take it personally, Crash. Still my favorite." Trinity sent her a wink, laughing at the way Javadi's face lit up.
"Hey." Dennis said, offended.
"Shut it."
All three of their heads turned when someone called Javadi from across the Hub. She huffed, dropped her shoulders, then looked back at Trinity and Dennis.
"I want to go next time."
"Sure."
Trinity and Dennis fell into silence, the only sounds the keyboard clicks and the ED around them—people moving, drawers slamming, a kid crying somewhere down the hall.
“Are you okay?” Dennis asked.
“Hmmm?” Trinity looked over. He had stopped typing, just watching her now.
“Are you okay?” he repeated.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” She squinted at the screen, fully aware of his eyes on the side of her face.
“You were quiet last night.”
“Jesus, Dennis. You complain when I’m quiet, you complain when I’m not. Which one is it?”
She could just tell him. Tell him that Garcia only reached out when it was convenient, when she needed a release, when Trinity was easy to find. Tell him that she was done with whatever the hell she and Garcia were doing. She was tired. Over it. Done.
But she didn’t. Because it was her problem, not someone else’s. She bit her lip as she kept her eyes on the screen. Dennis watched her for a beat too long.
“Okay,” Dennis said quietly, backing off, knowing that she wasn’t going to offer anything more.
Before she could try to lighten the mood, Robby’s voice cut across the Hub, already moving. “Incoming trauma! Need all hands.”
Trinity was up before she finished registering the words, the chair rolling back. Dennis was already beside her, the conversation between them long gone. Not like there was much anyway.
The bay doors banged open. Hot air and engine noise rushed in with the paramedics, the gurney rattling hard over the threshold, one wheel catching. A blur of red bloomed through the white sheet, soaking down the rails.
"Female, mid-thirties, pedestrian versus vehicle—car turned into the marathon route and plowed through the runners before anyone could stop it. She took the hit and went over the hood." The medic rattled it off without slowing. "BP's been dropping the whole ride, tachy, abdomen's rigid—possible internal bleed. In and out, but responsive."
"Trauma 1," Robby called.
They moved as one. Hands under the slide board, the count, the lift—the woman transferred over with a wet groan. Her face was a mess of blood, dark hair matted across her forehead and stuck to one cheek, a deep split above her eyebrow still welling. A race bib hung half-torn off her shirt, the number smeared red. Her eyes were open, glassy and unfocused, drifting along the track lights overhead like she was trying to read something in them.
"Rigid belly, she's bleeding somewhere we can't see." Robby's hands moved over her abdomen. "Full trauma panel, type and cross, two units on standby. And get Garcia down here now—if she's going to the OR I want surgical eyes on her first."
"On it." Princess was already at the phone.
Trinity worked the line into the woman's arm, taping it down, calling out the pressure, doing the thing her hands knew how to do without her. Eighty over fifty. The numbers weren't moving the right way.
It didn't take long. Garcia rarely made anyone wait.
"What's up, party people?" Garcia strolled in, grabbing a gown and shrugging into it. "Heard somebody needs me to do the real work."
Nobody answered her. There wasn't time.
She snapped her gloves on, tugged the goggles down, and stepped up to the bed, eyes already dropping to the patient.
"Neema?"
Everyone in the room froze, heads snapping up at the sound of Garcia’s voice. She didn’t look at any of them—just stared down at the woman on the table.
Trinity saw the way Robby’s mouth tightened at the recognition. He took one step closer, voice low.
“Dr. Garcia,” he said, not quite under his breath. “If you know her, you’re off this one. You know that.”
Garcia didn’t even look at him.
“I’m the best she has right now,” she said, leaving no room for argument. “You want to pull me, you find someone better in the next thirty seconds. Otherwise I’m staying.”
Robby opened his mouth, closed it, held her eyes for a long second. Whatever he saw there, he didn’t like it but the numbers on the monitor weren’t waiting.
“Stabilize her,” he said finally. “But Shamsi scrubs in the second she’s free. You’re not taking her up alone.”
Garcia didn’t answer. That was answer enough.
The woman—Neema—rolled her head slowly toward the voice. Through the blood, through whatever was happening inside her that her body couldn't keep up with, her mouth pulled into a smile. Her teeth were pink with it.
"Yoli." Her voice came out wrecked, barely there. "You look like shit."
Then Garcia was moving, gloved fingers pressing into Neema’s abdomen, eyes flicking to the monitor, working even as her jaw set hard.
“Yeah, you don’t look good either, Neem.”
And Trinity—who had never once thought to—looked. Under the blood drying dark across her cheek, under the split eyebrow and the matted hair, the woman was beautiful. High cheekbones, a wide mouth, light brown eyes gone glassy but still warm somehow, even like this.
She caught Dennis's eye across the bed. What the fuck. He gave the smallest shrug, the barely-there lift of someone who'd clocked it too but knew better than to say a word in this room.
"Who the fuck drives into a closed course?" Garcia's voice came low, clipped, not really to anyone. Neema's eyes had drifted again, losing the thread, lips parting around nothing.
"Neema. Hey—look at me." Garcia's voice dipped, soft, low, private. It was the kind of voice you used in the dark with someone, not under fluorescent lights with a tube cart rolling in. A voice Trinity knew too well—the one Garcia breathed against her neck in the dark, tell me what you want, hands moving lower.
Neema's eyes found Garcia’s face again. Then it changed, something slipping loose behind it, fear cutting clean through the haze.
"Yoli." Her hand twitched against the sheet. "Yoli, I can't—I can't feel my legs."
Garcia kept working. Only her voice changed—fast and clipped.
"I've got you. I'm right here." Her fingers kept moving over the rigid belly, eyes flicking up. "CT, full spine, now. Second line, wide open. Santos—pressure."
"Eighty over fifty," Trinity said. "Still dropping."
"Hey. Look at me." Garcia leaned into her sight-line without breaking rhythm, hands still working. "Don't you worry about your legs. You hear me? We're going to get you back out there running. I promise."
You didn't promise that. Not in this room, not with those numbers, not with a spine they hadn't even scanned. Trinity knew it. Robby knew it. Garcia knew it better than any of them.
Neema's mouth twitched, the smile trying to come back. "Still," she slurred, eyes sliding half shut. "Still be faster than you."
Garcia looked away briefly, swallowing whatever reaction threatened to show.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "Yeah, you will."
Then Neema's breath hitched. Again, wrong—a wet, catching pull, her chest stuttering on the left, not rising the way it should.
Robby had the stethoscope on her in a second. "Breath sounds down on the left, trachea's shifting—tension pneumo. We decompress now. Chest tube."
"Dennis. Set up." Garcia hadn't looked away from Neema's face.
Dennis grabbed the tray, gloves snapping, but his hands fumbled the kit—scalpel skidding across the metal, the drape sliding half off. "Sorry, just—give me one—"
"Dennis."
"I've got it, I've got it—"
"For fuck's sake." Garcia was already around the bed, shouldering him aside, snatching up the blade. "Move."
Her hands didn't shake. Trinity watched for it—wanted to see it, needed to see Garcia lose her composure; didn’t find it. She watched her find the space between the ribs with two fingers, mark it, draw the blade in one clean line. A dark spill ran off the edge of the table; a drop landed on the rubber toe of her shoe.
A beat later, Neema's breath came easier.
Trinity had never seen Garcia move like that for anyone. She was good, composed but this was different. There was something almost tender in the way she touched Neema’s abdomen, a softness Garcia never let anyone see out here, where reputation and hierarchy mattered. Trinity only knew it from the quiet of her apartment, from moments Garcia pretended didn’t exist in daylight.
Garcia leaned in closer, her jaw tight, a small pulse jumping at her throat. Trinity saw her mouth move—something only meant for Neema, too quiet to catch. Then, louder, the soft voice back just for a second. "There you go. I've got you."
Trinity stood at the foot of the bed with a bag of saline going warm in her hands, blood drying into her shoe, watching Garcia lean over a woman who had called her Yoli.
The jealousy came as a slow twist, something low and shameful, because Neema was bleeding out and still Trinity wanted—wanted Garcia’s voice to dip that way for her, wanted to be someone Garcia didn’t hide tenderness from. She wanted to know where they stood, tired—so tired, of pretending it didn’t matter, of pretending she didn’t want the thing she had built the walls to keep out.
Keeping it casual.
The elevator doors opened and they took her up—Robby calling ahead, the team moving fast, Garcia right at the rail with one hand on the gurney, her other hand wrapped around Neema’s. Garcia didn’t look back. She kept her eyes on Neema’s face all the way into the elevator, head bowed.
The doors slid shut on the back of her scrubs and that was it. Trinity stood there a second longer than she needed to.
She wondered if Garcia would scrub in. Knew she shouldn't—you didn't operate on someone you—someone you knew like that, everyone learned it day one, you were too close, your hands lied to you. Shamsi would take it. Robby would make sure of it.
Dennis’ voice cut in beside her, “Who was that?”
“I have no fucking clue,” Trinity said.
She didn't even know Garcia had people like that. Ten months and Trinity could count on one hand the things she actually knew about Garcia's life outside that apartment. She'd never asked. Hadn't wanted to know, she had told herself. Casual. Clean.
She peeled off her gloves and got back to work.
The ED swallowed the hours—sutures, a febrile toddler, an old man convinced his medications were poison. The trauma bay got cleaned and turned over like it had never happened. Garcia never came back down.
Trinity was parked at the Hub closing notes, the tablet propped against her knee, eyes burning. Her shoe had dried stiff.
A few feet away, Perlah and Princess had their heads together at the desk, voices low.
"Did you see her when she came down for the forms? She looked a mess.”
“I’ve never seen her like that,” Princess whispered.
Trinity kept her eyes on the screen. Tapped through to the next chart. She wasn’t listening. She wasn’t.
"They obviously knew each other. The way she—"
"I heard it was her ex-fiancée."
Trinity's thumb stopped over the screen.
Ex-fiancée.