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The only benefit to finishing so late in the day—9 PM, a little later than on the dot, and fuck Trinity feels dead on her feet—is that the cab they snatch up on The T is pretty damn empty. Not actually empty. Not even really sparse of passengers. But emptier than it is in the morning—and emptier than it is when her shift would have actually finished. Most the seats are still taken, but not all the seats. For once, Trinity manages to grab one.
…or, two seats.
It’s wild, to think about the fact that their first patient of the day started here. On the T tracks. A bump on the head, shoved down onto the tracks. Trinity shudders, as the doors slide open, and she steps in over the gap. Whitaker is on her tail, borderline crowding her, and the memory of how today started only drags the exhaustion back through her—somehow making it more prevalent.
She sighs, sinking down into the cool vinyl, her legs throbbing from being on her feet all day. Honestly, sitting down feels almost like a luxury, after the day she’s had. A part of her still tenses, that something might urge her to her feet—some emergency or a superior negging her for slowing down, but for the rest of the night the hospital is behind her.
Her head spins lightly, the call for dinner rumbling low in her stomach—those Kit-Kats from earlier doing little for her now. Trinity licks her lips, already considering what she might even when she’s home. Not many groceries, that’s for sure. She’s never been… good at stocking up, at the usual adult things. You know like food shopping, or cleaning, or… Yeah, that’s sorta thing.
It’s warm inside, a swathe of hot air compared to chilly September night already settling down outside. Almost heavy, really, with the weight of the heat—sticky, the kind of air that’s nearly tangible, the way it glides across her skin.
The flickering, artificial white light flooding from the roof of the cab flattens everything. Figures The T would find the worst possible bulbs, and use thousands of them to light each and every cab. It’s so bright Trinity has to strain her eyes as she steps inside, and she’s unsure if the lights are the cause of the incoming headache edging it’s way into her skull, or if the day behind her is responsible.
She grimaces as the smell—faint, but enough to notice—of wet clothes, old fries and mildew mingling in the cab. It’s a stark contrast from the smell of the hospital, which smelled mostly of bleach and, towards the end of the night, the coppery twinge of blood. Trinity hadn’t minded the hospital, not even the bad smells, because it reminded her that she was getting what she wanted. She’d worked her ass off to get there—and there she was, in all it’s chemical-filled, shit, vomit and blood filled, glory.
There’s nothing glorious about damp passengers and McDonald’s leftovers crammed into the drains in the floor.
“You better be grateful I bought you a ticket, Huckleberry,” she say—only half joking—and she drops her bag down by her feet. “I’m not usually so generous to my roommates.”
Whitaker fumbles down into the seat beside—dropping is over-stuffed bag by his feet too, pinning it between his calves. He’s tired, they both are, and all he can do is offer her a tired blink at the light jab.
Trinity has no fucking idea what she’s doing. Even after the walk from the hospital, to the station, Thing 2 in tow right on her heels. Nothing, not a reason becomes clear in her head as to why she offered. Inviting some random guy to her home, not just to visit but to live with her?
It seems fucking insane.
It is fucking insane, actually, and yet…
Here she is, sitting next to a guy she’s known for 15 hours. Giving him her spare room—like a goddamn lunatic. Maybe that shit show of a first shift really did a number on her, some sorta brain damage, lapse in judgment, anything at all that might explain it. Because the alternative is that she’s got more of a bleeding heart than she thought; Trinity just can’t accept something as sentimental as that.
He slouches slightly as he sits, and it’s weird to see him outside of the context of work. Whitaker looks about as good as Trinity feels—and maybe she looks worse. His eyes look wet enough to shed tears, though she supposes he might just be that tired, his hair is a ruffled mess atop his head, sticking to his forehead with sweat. The light washes him out too—just like the rest of the cab—and his skin looks… almost sickly. His cheekbones and necks are still flushed with the exhaustion of their shift, even as he shivers slightly in his oversized jacket.
Trinity can’t help but notice the nervous fidget of his fingers in his lap—the way he locks his two pointer fingers together, squeezing slightly. It’s a small gesture, but Trinity has always been good at noticing the small things. The details no one else sees, the things that could be meaningless, but aren’t.
This kid’s probably scared shitless, planning to spend the night in the abandoned wing of a hospital, and now here’s Trinity shoving her unfounded generosity in his face.
But, shit, she’s fucking scared too!
Whitaker—he’s just a man, a man she hardly knows at all. Who knows what he’s capable of? He seems harmless. Really, he does, and maybe that’s part of why she offered. Still, she’s on edge, and apparently so is he.
It’ll be impossible to kick him out once he’s moved in, she realizes that as she watches him shuffle around in his seat. They work together now—and that stupid depressed puppy look has already worked on her once, and he didn’t even seem to be trying that first time.
Though, at least if he does turn out to be some psycho, she’ll have her neighbor Maureen to hear her screams. Maureen would call the police. Right? She’s always bringing Trinity cookies—so she’s bound to worry eventually.
So… Silver-linings, huh?
The cab rattles slightly as the engine sputters to life. It rumbles low, a steady motion against the soles of her sneakers, and the light overhead flickers again. The noise is soft, and yet it floods harsh in her ears, in the consistent way that only teeters on driving her mad but never quite reaching there.
“How much was it?” he asks suddenly.
It makes her jump. His words echo through the empty cab, even though it’s only a mumble. Goes to show how truly empty it is. And for a moment Trinity barely comprehends what he says, her own exhaustion catching up with her.
She blinks dumbly, even that small effort feeling too straining, and rests her chin against the curve of her shoulder. The striped pattern down the sleeve scratchy against her skin, and she’s silent for a moment, staring at him.
Oh.
He’s asking about the ticket.
Fucking duh…
“I was kidding,” she says softly.
She runs a hand through her hair absently—ruffling it out, her scalp slightly sore from the tight ponytail her hair’s been pulled back into all day. For a moment his gaze follows the movement, and whether it’s due to his jittery nature, or because Trinity is the only interesting thing to be looking at, she can’t be sure.
Her gaze flickers out to station, the railings and platform as they finally pull out, in the vague direction of their apartment. It’s dark out, and her gaze blurs a little at the buzzing skyline of lights in the distance. The yellow neon lights of the station reflect off the window, retreating as the cab picks up speed, the engine rumble quieting to a gentle hummmmm.
They pass the graffiti she first saw on her way in—a giant dick spray-painted in purple on the side of an office building. It’d made her laugh, a soft scoff into her sleeve, this morning. Now, she simply rolls her eyes, because really she’d just like for them to be moving any faster.
The streets are quiet now, no cars either side of the cab as it glides along the rail, and there are barely any pedestrians either. It seems… lonely out there. Hell, it’s lonely in here—if you ignore the oversized boy pretending to be a man sitting right beside her.
A part of her wonders if she’ll regret being so kind in the morning. Besides, it’s not like she can really go back now—not now that they’re moving. He already knows what direction she lives in, and… Well, he’s right there.
“You’re broke, right?” she asks, meeting his gaze again. For a moment he startles, like he’d expected that to be the end of it, and for her to ask nothing more.
“Well,” he starts, blinking again, “yeah, but—”
“I’m doing you a favor,” Trinity cuts him off, raising a brow. It’s enough for his jaw to snap shut. “So, don’t worry about the stupid ticket. I’ll let you know when we’re at my station. Or, our station now, I guess.”
“Right.” He blinks, then swallows. Damn it, why does he always have to look so… pathetic? “Thanks. Um, yeah… Thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” she says with a sigh, tilting her head to rest it against the window. She glances at him, staring a moment longer, and lets her eyes flutter closed. “Just gonna rest my eyes.”
“Are you sure we won’t miss the stop?”
Trinity cracks her eye open, looking at him one last time.
“We’ll be fine,” she says—and she nudges his leg with her knee. Whitaker jumps at the sudden touch, and Trinity can’t even blame him. Still, it makes her laugh—a small puff out her nose, as she savors the cool glass against her cheek and temple. “Not sleeping, m’listening to the announcements. ‘Kay?”
“Right.” Whitaker pauses, and there’s a rustle, his arm brushing her own as he moves around in his seat. “Sure.”
“Cool.”
The cab is almost liminal, so late and so quiet. There’s the distant thump, thump, thump, coming from another passengers headphones—the squeak of sneakers against the shiny floor, and the gentle rattle of the doors as the cab sways with each turn and twine along the rail.
At some point, Whitaker relaxes beside her, and that’s probably a good thing. His arm goes limp, shoulder pressed against her own in the minimal space allowed by the twin seats they snatched up. Outside the wind whistles past, through the small gap of the open window above her head, and her hair flutters back and forth across her forehead with each gust and push that sneaks through.
Soon enough, the announcement for her stop garbles on the speaker.
“Next Stop—”
“That’s us,” she gets out with a breath, slugging her bag over her shoulder and shoving her way to her feet. “C’mon.”
She sways with the train, gripping one of the bright yellow support beams and swinging herself towards the door. Whitaker blinks a little owlishly, following after her with dragging footsteps. They escape the cab with little fuss, the pair of them spilling out onto the ghost town of a platform. Trinity can’t help but keep glancing over her shoulder, checking Whitaker is following as she makes her way to the stairs, out onto the street, in the direction of her apartment.
It makes her stomach twist in knots—the way he keeps looking at her.
Not because it’s disturbing, or scary, or even threatening in the slightest. No, he keeps… Doing this smile. The little quirk of his lips at both sides—so small, so slight, she can hardly see it in the dim light—and the puffing out of his cheeks, almost like a hamster. His hands are buried in his pocket, shoulders slouched, eyes wide like he’s never seen a goddamn street in his life.
He’s overly grateful, and it makes her… uncomfortable. The same way a patient getting emotional makes her skin itch, the same way being vulnerable makes her sick, the same way she ends up nursing a headache after speaking to her mom for longer than 15 minutes.
She ends up keeping her head forward—trusting that Whitaker is following her. Because, she thinks if she were to look back one more time and see that stupid fucking half-smile on his face, she’ll throw up on his shoes. And Trinity doesn’t want his vomit shoes in her apartment, either, thanks.
“My older brother would’ve lost his mind over that train,” Whitaker says, breaking the silence. He clears his throat, adding, “uh, the third oldest one.”
“You the youngest, then?” Trinity asks—and she’s not even sure why she asks. But it feels right, and her shoulders relax slightly when Whitaker moves up to walk beside her on the sidewalk.
“Yeah,” he says, almost laughing, smile wider than it’s been since they left the hospital. “How’d you know?”
“I have two younger brothers,” she replies with a shrug, fingers brushing up and down the length of her bag’s strap. Her nail drags across the divots, bouncing along the rise and fall of the fabric. “It’s easy to spot when you know what to look for.”
Whitaker hums, nodding slightly. “Yeah, uh… My brother would have loved it—the train,” he says, and he jerks his head back towards the station. It’s long behind them now, beyond twists and turns of roads and blocks. “There aren’t any where I grew up.”
“On the farm?”
“Well…”
“Don’t start hesitating on me now, Farm Boy,” she says, and she nudges him again—this time with her shoulder. Whitaker’s prepared for it now, and he simply side glances at her, shaking his head with a huff. “And it’s not a train. More like a tram—but if you wanna sound like a real native, call it The T.”
“The T,” he repeats softly.
It’s a little funny, seeing him so… deer in the headlights with just a tram. Trinity can’t imagine it—growing up like that, in the middle of nowhere, on a goddamn farm. She’s a city girl through and through, really. Afternoons after school catching a bus from downtown, when her mom was too busy working to take her to practice—and how she used to miss it on purpose just to skip as much of her training as she could.
She never did bother to learn how to drive.
Absently she wonders if Whitaker can, and if the only thing holding him back is being strapped for cash and the lack of a car. She can’t really picture it—his scrawny self in one of those fuck-off, oversized trucks dominating the road. Trinity almost laughs at the image of it, and scuffs her shoe against the sidewalk, glancing over at him again.
“Anyway,” Trinity says, speeding up her footsteps—suppressing a smile when Whitaker is quick to keep up. “Pick up the pace, Huckleberry, or I’ll leave you behind and you can bunk in one of these dumpsters.”
She wouldn’t actually leave him behind. Still, the threat gets to him enough that they reach Trinity’s apartment in record time. She warns him about the long-trek up—considering the broken elevator—and they get moving. Though, the climb four stories up is nothing, not compared to how tired her feet, her legs, her whole body already is.
She fumbles for her keys as they reach the door, and she swings the door open in one smooth motion.
“Well, here it is,” she says—not really know what else to say—as she steps inside. “Home sweet… Home.”
Trinity drops the keys onto the small side table by the door, the soft jingle ruminating in her mostly empty apartment. It’s a total disaster, right as she left it this morning—the kitchen filled with a pile of dirty plates, and a stray jacket half-draped on a counter, spilling over the half-wall dividing up the open plan concept. The sofa is still on it’s last legs, a pile of clean and yet to be put away laundry sitting, waiting, on one of the cushions.
Even the walls are bare, any and all character in this place comes from the spiral of mess that seems to follow her. The kinda chaos she can never keep up with—because Trinity prefers to keep moving, not slowing down.
Maybe, if she weren’t so exhausted, she might have the decency to feel embarrassed about the state of her place. She might apologize for the dirty shirt Whitaker as to step over as he walks through the door, or wince at the bra that definitely isn’t hers poking out from beneath the couch.
Frankly, though, she doesn’t give a single shit right now.
Gently, slowly, Whitaker peels his bag off his shoulders. His hands grasp awkwardly at the strap on top, and he lowers it down onto the floor. He’s careful, like he might break something—or he’s not sure he can take up any space.
“Wow,” he breaths out, eyes scanning the space—hand reaching out the brush the brick wall in small entry way. It's funny, seeing him so… awed by a shitty, way too expensive, apartment that Trinity has done little working bringing any life to. Though, he grew up on a fucking farm or something—and he was planning to live in the abandoned with back at the hospital—which means this is almost definitely a major upgrade. So, maybe Trinity can’t really blame him for his reaction right now. “This place is…”
“A mess,” Trinity finishes for him with a smirk. She tugs of her jacket and hangs it up—holding her hand out for his. Whitaker hesitates, glancing down at her open palm blankly. “I don’t have all day, Whitaker—your jacket?”
“Oh, right! Right…”
Whitaker tugs it off quickly—almost as quickly as he tugged on a shirt back at the abandoned wing at the hospital. Trinity takes it and hangs it up beside her own, and her heart squeezes slightly at the sight. It’s… a weird feeling. It only dawns on her now, that she really will be living with someone else. Having someone else so close, in her personal space, right down the hall or on her sofa or cooking in her kitchen.
Shit…
“Thank you.”
“Stop thanking me, it’s weird,” Trinity complains with an eye roll. “And take your shoes off, leave them by the door.”
“On it!”
For a long moment Whitaker struggles to pull off his sneakers—they tumble to the floor in a pile, thudding and thudding as he hops from foot to foot. Trinity takes a step forward, guiding him further inside, and all of it so… awkward. The only people she’s ever brought over are hook ups and… Well, Maureen whenever she drops off cookies—and Trinity is sick of spending her afternoons trying to politely kick out her old ass neighbor, as nice as she is. Trinity doesn’t really do polite. Not easily, not happily, hardly ever.
The place feels smaller with him in it, almost like he’s seeing too much, even with his cursory glance around the living room. His eyes land on the bookshelf—the haphazard pile of dusty medical textbooks from school, the dead plant sitting on the window ledge. They’re small things, things Trinity doesn’t even really care about, but it feels intrusive anyway.
This is her own fault.
Inviting what’s essentially a total strange to live with her.
Fucking idiot.
She clears her throat, grabbing his attention again.
Whitaker shoots upright at the sound. He very nearly trips over his own feet in the process, eyes wide as he meets Trinity’s gaze again.
“C’mon,” she says, jerking her head as she steps towards the tight hallway shooting off the living room. “I’ll give you the tour.”
Trinity taps on the first door they walk past.
“My bathroom,” she says. “You have an en suite—I took the bigger room, so, you know, I take the hall bathroom. It means we can keep to ourselves.”
“I’ll stay out of your way,” Whitaker replies, and she can almost hear the way he swallows after he says it. “You’ve already done—”
“Enough gratitude, it’s making me sick.” Her hand finds the handle of the guest room door and she pushes it open. Trinity lingers in the doorway for a moment, unwilling to step inside—she shakes her head, forcing her foot over the threshold and flicking on the light. “And this is your room.”
“Cool,” he says with a nod, stepping in behind her.
It’s entirely bare—even the bed is missing any sheets. Mainly because Trinity never really planned on having anyone move in here. She really didn’t do roommates…
The one person she would have ever considered sharing a living space with with is long gone now.
Maybe one of her brothers could have stayed over, if she ever bothered inviting them to see her. Trinity is really bad at keeping in touch with her family.
Nonetheless, it’s Whitaker’s room now.
“A couple ground rules,” she says, taking another step forward, tugging open the closet with extra bedding she’d tucked away a while ago. “No stealing my shit, no eating my food. Do not come anywhere near my room without knocking, do not ask me where I’m going or who I’m with, and…” she pauses, tossing the bundle of sheets into his chest. Whitaker struggles to catch them—jolting back slightly as the smack into him. “These are clean, so. There.”
“Understood.” For a couple seconds longer Whitaker fumbles with sheets, placing down the now messy pile onto the stiff mattress. And for a reason Trinity can’t place, she lingers by the door. She watches as he sets it down, waits for him to look back at her—over his shoulder, like he’d expected to see her waiting there. “Do I also need a hall pass to use the kitchen or…?”
At that Trinity tenses. Her hand finds the side of the doorway, and she frowns. Taking in the words.
“You live here now, dude,” she replies briskly, swallowing down the dryness in her throat. “Don’t… I don’t want you to feel like you can’t live. Actually live. Just…” Trinity cuts herself—feels herself on the edge of getting sappy, an shuts down any of that. Any of it that might be brewing, all gooey and gross, in her chest. “You’re not a guest. Got that?”
Whitaker nods, sitting down on the edge of the bed. His fingers pick at a stray fiber hanging loose on the mattress. Trinity thinks that might be the end of it, and she turns her head—ready to mutter out a goodnight, go collapse in bed, contemplate the terrible decision that landed her in this awkward predicament.
A terrible decision she’d make all over again.
Fucking damn it…
“I—I know you told me to stop thanking you, and I will,” he says, and he holds up a hand—as if to stop her, as she turns with her mouth already open. Words already primed on her tongue, though they die when her eyes flicker to his open palm. “But not a lot of people would have… I don’t know, I just—I’m not taking this for granted.”
He falls silent, just for a moment, but it seems poignant somehow.
“I just wanted you to know that,” he finishes, nodding slightly, fingers spread and pressing into the mattress.
Trinity lingers in the doorway, watching the way he fidgets on the bed. His face is so open, and for the first time tonight, she thinks… Maybe this will work. It might all turn out okay, and she won’t find herself regretting it. A part of her, as much as she loathes to admit it, thinks he looks right there. Like maybe this could be his room, and them living together makes sense somehow, and that maybe this is fine.
“You’re not so bad,” she says with a small smile. “You know, for a Huckleberry.”
At that, he laughs—and she laughs too. It’s weird. Like, really weird. Because all the times she’s laughed in front of him, she was laughing at him. Hell, all the times she’s seen Whitaker laugh, he was laughing at her. And maybe they’re still laughing at each other, but this time they’re doing it together.
“You know, since that we’re roommates now,” he says. “How about instead of Huckleberry… you call me Dennis?”
Dennis.
Of course he’s a fucking Dennis.
Trinity hums, as she’s considering the idea. “Dennis Whitaker, huh?” she replies, looking him up and down—as if sizing him up. Even though her next words came to her the second he asked. “But you’re such a Huckleberry, I really don’t think I can ditch it.”
He shakes his head, but he doesn’t fight it.
She turns to leave. Ready to leave him to make his bed and unpack his shit and… Other moving in things. Besides, Trinity has shit to do—like raid her fridge and figure out something resembling dinner, and she has a pillow with her name on it just waiting in the other room. Oh, and shit, maybe a beer would be nice too…
“Goodnight, Santos,” Whitaker says suddenly, and she pauses, almost back in the hallway now.
She doesn’t look back. But she relaxes a little, and she hadn’t even really realized she was tense.
“If we really want to be on first name basis, you should call me Trinity,” she says with a sigh. “Night, Dennis. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Somehow, as she closes the door behind her, the tightness in her chest—a feeling she hadn’t even realized was there, until now—-loosens slightly. She’d been more on-edge than she thought, inviting Whitaker to live with her. Which, maybe she should have seen it coming.
Just for a moment, she stands there in the hallway. She rolls her shoulders, ears pricking with all the sounds filtering in through the tragically thin wall. Whitaker tugs open a drawer—she can hear the roll of it, the scrape of wood against wood—and she just glad he’s getting settled. She meant what she said.
Trinity knows very few things worse than feeling like a stranger in your own home.
Though, she could easily name a couple worse things. Not that she wants to focus on that right now.
Everything is the same as it was this morning when she left for her first shift. Down the hall the refrigerator keeps humming, the sound of her downstairs neighbor's TV blares through the floor, and the buzz of traffic outside easily slips through the cracked open window in the living room.
The only thing that’s different is that Dennis Whitaker is living in her spare room. And Trinity supposes she’s just going to have to get used to it. She did throw herself into this predicament, after all.
Besides, he really is alright.
They always seem to start the same. The nightmares, that is. Mainly, because, when they start, they never really feel like nightmares to Trinity. Even though all of it is familiar—total déjà vu, every single time—and no matter how aware she is that all of this is just in her head, Trinity can never break away from it. It’s sorta like being strapped into a rollercoaster.
Once it takes off, she has no choice but to grin and bear it.
It’s summer. It’s always summer time. The air is sticky with a thick heat, and it clings to her skin and her shirt sticks wet and claustrophobic against her back. Cicadas and crickets screech loud around them, and Trinity can never actually see them—the bugs—but they’re there, because they were there in the memory. They exist in the periphery, like set dressing to her many bad memories. All the memories—the good, the bad, the sort her mind can’t help but warp.
Trinity’s never been good at leaving things alone. She picks at old wounds, she goes down paths she knows she shouldn’t, she never knows went to leave well enough alone. It got her in plenty trouble today—even though she exists outside of today now, stuck in her own head, stuck in the past she can never change. Hypervigilance one of those things she can just never shake—and her nails dig, they scrape, at this old wound again.
She curls her toes into the soft grass beneath her bare feet. It’s still damp from a sprinkler, the short strands getting caught in the night breeze.
“You see that?”
Trinity’s head snaps up, blinking at the sudden voice. That voice. The final piece of this twisted, fucked up déjà vu spiral clicks right into place.
Harper is still alive.
She’s seventeen, and she’s alive, and, fuck, she’s even smiling. It’s hard to say if she looks right—Trinity often can’t stomach looking at old photos, not without knocking herself sick, sending her into another spiral. Her mind wraps her memories beyond recognition, she’s self aware enough to know that. Harper grins at her, messy dark curls spilling out of her ponytail, freckles scattered across her cheeks as they curve along the rise of her lips. That beat-up telescope Harper had begged her parents for is propped up next to her, seated on the hood of her mom’s car. It’s covered in Hello Kitty stickers—Trinity had never been a fan, but Harper had, so they’d decorated it together.
Because Harper had always been good at that. At dragging Trinity out of her comfort zone.
Trinity knows that night, she knows it really well. Twenty minutes from now Mr. Kim will come out and struggle to wrangle them both inside, because it’s late and they have practice early tomorrow. And tomorrow morning Mrs. Kim will scold the both of them for scratching the hood of her car with the telescope.
In a week the scratches won’t matter, because Harper will be gone, and Trinity will spend the rest of her life blaming herself. But her dream never makes it far enough—not even twenty minutes—to eclipse any of those memories.
Harper leans over and squints through the eyepiece, her face glowing with some kind of holy excitement. Just the sight of it makes Trinity excited herself—even though she really wanted to head inside, and stuff her face with another bowl of Mrs. Kim’s seolleongtang. Because back then Trinity would always do anything for Harper—even if it meant sweating out on Harper’s front lawn, squinting at the sky and struggling to spot any stars.
“Right there!” she says, as she shoves her face harder against the telescope. “See that?”
“No,” Trinity says from behind her. She swings back on her heels, waiting for her turn with the telescope. “I can’t see when you’re hogging the eyepiece, dude.”
Harper laughs, light and easy, and Trinity chest aches because she knows what’s coming next. The laugh always hits her the hardest. It’s the last part of the nightmare that burns away, it lingers the longest, once she’s finally woken up.
She sighs, glancing down at her hand. Instinctively she flexes her fingers, frowning a little as she stares. No scar. No angry mark across her knuckles. Just smooth, tan skin. Trinity’s seventeen again, just like Harper, because this is the last sleepover they had together.
Before everything went to shit. Back when Harper was still alive.
“It’s Vega,” Harper says. She pulls back from the telescope and points her finger toward the sky. Slowly, she traces her fingers along invisible lines between the stars. “Brightest in the Lyra constellation. You can always find it if you look up long enough.”
“They’re all the same,” Trinity mutters, flopping down onto the grass. “It’s just dots.”
“You say that because you’re impatient.”
“No. I say it because they’re dots.”
“Okay, asshole,” Harper shoots back. She sits down beside Trinity, stretching her arms up toward the sky. Her hands spread out, against the inky black sky like it’s a canvas, the little dots of white blinking and twinkling through the gaps in her fingers. “You ever think about how those dots are technically already gone?” she asks, “like, exploded millions of years ago, but we’re still seeing them. It’s like—” She pauses for a moment. Trinity wonders if she knew something back then—knew what was coming next. Or maybe she hadn’t paused, maybe Trinity remembers it wrong. “Like ghosts. The whole universe is full of ghosts.”
For a moment, they both fall silent. Harper’s house was just far away enough from the city that the sound of traffic couldn’t reach them—and it was always a little easier to see the stars
For a moment they’re silent. Harper’s house was just far enough away from the city that the sound of traffic couldn’t reach—and it was always easier to see the stars, with the lack of light pollution. Harper tilts her head, a small smile on her face as she waits for Trinity’s next line.
Like they’re in a play, and she’s slipping up on her cue.
“You’re so fucking weird,” Trinity says, finally, with a soft snort.
“Yeah, and you love it,” Harper replies, nudging her softly in the shoulder.
And she did. God, Trinity really did.
For a moment, she forgets this is a dream. It always happens here. In this tiny, golden window where everything feels normal again. The knowledge of what comes next melts away, and Trinity sinks back into the grass, forgetting she’s even following a predetermined path she’s walked hundreds of times before.
The cicadas and crickets, the stars blinking above them, Harper’s voice. It feels like she could reach out and hold this moment in the palm of her hands. It would be warm, sticky like the summer it exists within. Fuck, she wishes she could just hold it and never let go.
But then it shifts. Always does.
The heat bleeds out the air first. Not exactly a chill rolling in, but more-so the warmth and the sticky humidity is sucked away. Color drains from the grass until it turns dull gray. The cicadas and crickets fall silent. Trinity holds her breath.
Harper turns toward her, but her face isn’t lit anymore. Her smile is still there, but it’s not right. Too still, like she’s performing—how she looked towards the end, like she’s holding it in place for Trinity’s sake.
“You need to stop coming back,” Harper says softly. “You don’t belong here.”
Trinity swallows hard, her stomach plummeting. “What?”
“You keep coming back.”
She wants to move, but she can’t. The air thickens, syrupy and it’s suddenly impossible to breathe. The stars above them flicker, and one by one, the whole sky melts into black.
“You have to stop,” Harper says—and her voice cracks. She’s not scolding, she’s begging. “We both know you can’t save me, Trin.”
“You think I’ve forgot that?” Trinity asks with a scowl, shutting her eyes, because looking always hurts too much.
“Two weeks from today you’ll find me,” Harper explains softly, says it as if it’s as something as dull as the weather. “But it’s still the past for you. Nothing you’ll do will stop me—and still, you come back.”
“I don’t have a choice, Harper.”
“Of course you do,” Harper says—and Trinity opens her eyes, meeting her silver gaze through the dark. “You always have a choice. You know that better than anyone.”
Beneath them the ground trembles. Instinctively, Trinity’s hand shoots out, reaching for her. But Harper’s already pulling back, silver eyes gone glassy, the edges of her silhouette fuzzing and spitting around the edges. It reminds Trinity of a VHS tape, the sorts her dad would put on when things had been simple. None of this is simple, and Harper is smoking now as she blurs, like she’s bit lit on fire from the inside out.
“Wait—!”
Harper is already gone before the word leaves her throat. The telescope collapses down into the growing abyss around her. The air sizzle, smelling like fire and blood. And then, like always, Trinity is left standing alone. She stares up again, to where the stars have reappeared—watching her from above, ghosts of stars that aren’t even really there.
Trinity wakes with a pant.
Her hands shake as she pushes herself out of bed.
You’d think, after so many nightmares—so frequently—she’d get used to them. That’s the whole thing with nightmares, though Even if it’s the same thing every time, they still get under her skin. Santos can feel it under there, and she has to fight the urge to scratch. To tear at skin, dig in her nails, tug and tug until the feeling is gone.
Though, it just makes sense that she’d get the nightmare today. After all, today she’s thought about Harper more than she probably has in the last year. First shift from hell and all—reminding her of Harper over and over and over. It’s part of why she felt so exhausted, along with literally everything else too.
She’s found fresh air helps.
That and vaping.
The apartment is as dark as she left it before bed. Nothing’s really changed, even with a new person living here. The same floorboards squeak, the window frame still rattle with the wind, the same stale city smell leaks through the vents. She can navigate is easily, as if she has her eyes closed. Except, well… It’s not entirely the same.
“What are you doing?” Trinity asks as she freezes in the not-really-doorway to the kitchen, finger still hovering over the light switch.
Whitaker stares back at her, caught mid-crime, the fridge yawning open behind him. The pale light paints him in sickly yellow. He’s holding a half-empty bottle of sriracha—it’s crusted cap proof it hasn’t been used since Trinity’s last stir-fry attempt.
“I was… hungry,” he says, shutting the fridge. The magnet seal clicks, and the lights goes out. Now it’s just moonlight, washing him in faint blue. “But you have no food.”
Trinity sighs, the tension finally leaking out her shoulders. “We’ll go grocery shopping after work tomorrow,” she says. “Sorry. I'm terrible at being human.”
At that, Whitaker actually smiles— small and sheepish, but real.
“It is pretty difficult,” he admits, and something in his tone makes her laugh, quietly.
For a moment, they linger there. Trinity traces her socked toe along the grout between the ugly kitchen tiles. Whitaker stares at anything that isn’t her. She hopes this awkwardness doesn’t become a permanent fixture in their new living arrangement.
“So,” she says finally, “you couldn’t sleep either?”
He shakes his head, but before he can answer aloud, Trinity is already moving. She crosses to the window behind him, hooks her fingers under the frame, and pushes it up. Her fingers are still shaking, as they curl around the wooden frame painted white, and she does her best to ignore that. Cold night air whips in, and she shivers—but it’s the kind of cold, as sudden as it is, that helps her breath. Especially on nights like this.
She glances back at him.
“Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you my special spot.”
“Should I be concerned?”
“Only if you’re afraid of heights.” Trinity hoists herself onto the counter, slides on leg out the widow, and then the other. She disappears for a second, before her arm snakes back through the frame, hand outstretched. “Take my hand, Huckleberry.”
Whitaker hesitates, but he takes it. The metal beneath their feet hums faintly with the wind, groaning softly under both their weight.
“A fire escape,” he says, looking around, his voice flat—like he’d expected something more interesting.
Or terrifying, probably. Trinity knows she has a reputation.
“Yeah,” she says, dropping onto the edge, her legs danging into the dark.
She pulls her vape from her pocket, thumb flicking it on. The glow lights her face for a moment, before the smoke drifts out her lips—thin and silver, lit by spindles of moonlight. She drags the pad of her fingers against the glossy, orange plastic—savoring the bubblegum flavor of the dinky thing she should know better than to use. Trinity’s never been great at taking doctor’s advice, though.
“Building policy says no vaping inside. So, I found an alternative to standing out on the street.”
For a while, neither of them says anything. The alley below is quiet, just the low hum of the city and the rattle of the fire escape probably taking more weight than it has in a good while. It’s not an uncomfortable kind of silence—steady, and maybe they’ve gotten used to each other already from how often they’d collided paths today. Or maybe they’re both too tired to find any discomfort in this silence, because Trinity thinks if she were to feel another emotion, she might fall face first off this fire escape and sleep forever.
“I always liked looking at stars,” Trinity says suddenly, voice softer. She tucks her vape back into her pocket.
Whitaker tilts his head up, eyes searching the dim sky. “They are pretty,” he hums. “Back home it was way easier to see them.”
“Nebraska, right?” she asks—and she sighs when he nods, shaking her head slightly. “Man, I’d kill to see a sky like that. I’ve always lived in cities. I grew up in fucking Seattle.”
“What was that like?” he asks, and he says it so earnestly. He looks at her, face open. “I’ve never been that far north.”
Usually Trinity probably wouldn’t answer a question like that honestly—without a joke, at least. Not to a guy she’s just met, too. But Whitaker is… Maybe she’s being preemptive and naive, but he seems different.
“Loud, busy. Like Pittsburgh, but wetter,” she says with a small laugh. But it quickly fades, something heavy—the remnants of her nightmare—tugging in her chest. Her shoulders deflate. “I don’t think I could ever go back, though,” she says, softly, eyes fluttering slightly with the pull of exhaustion.
“No?”
“Nah.”
Better she not elaborate on home right now.
Psh, home. As if she’s ever considered that house back in Seattle, or even the city itself, a home…
She stares up. And for a good long while, that’s all she does. The stars are weaker here. Most of them are drowned out by the haze of the city lights, leaving only a handful sharp enough to be seen. She tracks one—except maybe that’s a plane, but it doesn’t really matter—until it slips behind a dark cloud.
Trinity really did used to love stars. For hours she and Harper would stare up at them—Harper pointing out constellations, and Trinity making ones up that didn’t exist. Shapeless, dump things. Things Trinity isn’t sure she could remember now. They got to be alone, and they were just kids, and the world was unfair as fuck but at least they had the stars.
Now, every time she looks up, she feels that same ache—an ache she’s been carrying for a long time. It’s not heavy, and most the time she can ignore it, but on nights like this—with nightmares, with a day full of reminder after reminder—she feels it.
“…Sometimes,” she says finally, voice low, “I wonder if stars get lonely. I know that sounds ridiculous. I guess I thought about it more when I was a kid—before I knew they were just dead suns, millions of light years away.”
“I get what you mean,” Whitaker says after a pause. “They’re beautiful, but space is… huge. Makes you wonder what’s out there. Or if any of this even matters.”
“Getting dark, there, Huckleberry,” she says it jokingly—cracking a smile. But when she meets his gaze, he’s deadly serious.
His eyes sparkle in the moonlight, and something about him seems smaller now. Not the man she’d been half-afraid of inviting back to her home, but maybe the boy she could have known, if they’d met before today. It seems silly to think about. They’re nothing alike, they grew up worlds apart, and yet… A part of her thinks, no matter the choices she’s made, she was always supposed to end up on this fire escape. Next to a guy she’s known for about 20 hours. Talking about fucking stars.
“Everything matters,” she says softly, forcing her gaze back to the sky, letting her eyes drown in the darkness. It’s not dark enough—though. She thinks again of Whitaker’s home in Nebraska, wonders if the sky in a place like that would swallow her whole. Like her nightmares swallowed… Better she not think about that, either. “If it didn’t then we wouldn’t have fought like hell to make it here.”
“To your fire escape?”
“To being doctors,” she shoots him a look. “Or doctor and student doctor. But you get my point. It has to matter—you know it matters, so don’t get all deep and pessimistic on me now.”
Whitaker hums, dragging the pads of his fingers across his knees. Trinity watches the little indent lines he leaves behind in the fabric of his sweatpants, and swallows, suddenly uncomfortable in the silence.
“Besides,” she says, forcing a grin, glancing up to meet his eyes again. “There’s totally aliens out there.”
Whitaker looks at her, brows raised. “You think so?”
“Obviously!” she says. “You know, when I was, like, seven—I wanted to be an astronaut. Or maybe I just wanted to fight aliens…”
That earns a quiet laugh from him.
“I actually wanted to be an astronaut too. I, uh, had this little action figure I used to carry everywhere,” he says, holding up his fingers, inching them apart to display the toy’s size. Trinity doesn’t even notice she’s smiling until it hurts, and he continues, “I lost it in one of the fields near our house. My brothers helped me look for hours, but we never found it.”
“Is that what made you quit the dream?”
“No. My brothers making fun of me did.”
Trinity chuckles. “Mine died because I just couldn’t commit to one dream at the time. The longest were gymnast and doctor—both my parent’s favorites, actually.” She snorts. “Never made it to the Olympics,” she adds. smiling falling. “So… Here we are.”
“My parents didn’t even want me to go to college.”
“Wow,” she says, exhaling, “my mom couldn’t wait for me to be gone. Our parents couldn’t be more different.”
“Yeah…”
They sit in silence again. The air is colder now, it’s the kind that settle into bones. Trinity rubs her arms, shivering.
“It’s cold as fuck,” she says, standing. “I’m heading back in. Bedtime.”
Whitaker nods, following after her. “Good idea,” he says. “That actually helped.”
“What? The cold cured your hunger?”
He smiles faintly. “No. But it helped the sleep part.”
“Good,” she says, sliding back through the window. “Because tomorrow I’m waking you up, and if we’re late on my second day, I’m kicking your ass.”
“It’ll be my second day too,” he says, struggling his own way through the window. He finally stumbles through—-catching himself on the counter as he glances at her. “You really think I'd be late on my second day?”
“I wouldn’t put it past you, Huckleberry. Night, again.”
He nods, looking back at her as they move down the hall. “Yeah. Goodnight.”
Trinity’s already halfway through the door to her bedroom when she realizes—mid-exhale—that her hands have finally stopped shaking.