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She suspects Whittaker doesn't really care for her all too much. Anytime she tries to relate to him, it turns into him qualifying every single one of his opinions with "Feel free to disagree," or "I kinda think" about the most banal things like college football. He dances around her, if she's heading out for a run, suddenly his 6:45P.M. nightly walks are delayed. Conversations with him die out as soon as they start up, he never asks anything about her. She was sure it was his meekness, but two months in, and he still freezes when he sees her in the apartment. His eyes go wide for a second, and then seemingly he remembers to smile. He apologizes to her a lot, for such petty shit too. He uses her lunchbox one day and nearly folds into himself on the ride in when she points it out.
She doesn't care all that much, the price of living is so high already, it should not include getting along with your roommate. That being said, it does grow a little annoying when every joke of the Pitt most weeks is about how buddy buddy they are.
It also likely doesn't help that they spend an excessive amount of time together. She's sure a break from each other would be nice, but she sees him nearly constantly and is always judging his reactions. If not to her then to others, usually nurses, always women. It usually helps to have some digital separation, she knows if people text her back or react to a message that it's good. People are usually more direct with her that way. But she instead just catches Whittaker naturally at work and when she asks what he wants from the Thai take out place next to their apartment he again freezes, eyes wide. He looks at Nurse Handzo and then so does she and then Handzo's darting her eyes between them.
"I'd like some pad see ew if you two are offering." She laughs.
"Yeah, um that." He looks down, defeated.
Jesus fuck, why is he so dour? He can't be like that with patients.
When he receives his order, he seems a little confused at it all.
"You've never had Thai food before, have you?" He looks down and just shakes his head like a caught dog "That's on me, I forget you're still very rural."
"I don't know if I'd say I'm that rural. I mean, UAU was in Lincoln."
"I don't know if doing two years of college online then going to a Seventh Day Adventist college is really what people mean when they say urban living."
He presses his lips into a thin line, "Well Lincoln's still nothing to sneeze at."
She fiddles around with the remote, and he settles enough to take a bite of his food. She thinks how cat like he is sometimes. She had an ex who had this sad little grey cat that would just make these big eyes at her but would startle at her every move, then it'd just purr looking at her. When Whittaker declares that his food is great then jolts at the eye contact they make, she thinks of that weird fucking cat.
She lands on a season of Drag Race she's sure she's seen before. Whittaker gets through the mini challenge before scooping up his half-eaten take-out and sulking towards his room.
"Hey uh," he whips around, and again she feels guilty fuck "You know it's fine if you don't want to do dinner together every night. I get that we see each other too much already."
He scrunches his eyebrows "No, I don't really like competition shows. It's not you."
"You can ask me to change it."
"It's your apartment."
"You live here too."
He ducks his head closer to his chest, "Yeah uh yeah I do." He nods.
"We can watch that sitcom you were telling Samira about."
She ends up falling asleep on the coach watching 'Good Times' with its unexpected biggest fan. She doesn't mean to, actually the facts that Whittaker tells her are too bad. But she's not been this full in a while, nor this comfortable.
When she wakes, it's with one of her throw blankets tucked over her, the TV off, and a glass of water on the end table, coaster under it and all.
One day Princess had leaned real close to her face, spitting distance, and asked her what Whittaker's deal was. She'd answered honestly that she had no idea, then she'd leaned even closer and murmured "Tarugo." Holding up her fingers to indicate scale.... Maybe girth?
"No!" Princess gasped.
"Why would I know that Princess?" That earned her a laugh and a swat to the shoulder.
She'd told that joke before she'd 1) Walked in on Dennis in the half bath by accident and found out ehhh kinda? 2) Walked into his room to change the air filter only to find all his belongings shoved into one corner. The hangers she'd given him were bunched in the corner of the closet, his duffle lays open on the duvet, his pajamas shoved haphazardly inside. He'd been more unpacked in the abandoned wing. She pounds in the center of her forehead as if to punish her lack of foresight. Of course this is weird, he'd been what? Housing insecure at best, homeless in honesty, for what he admitted was greater than six months. He'd attempted to pitch this strange almost Reaganite image to her, that this made him a better doctor and so in a way was an educational experience. She didn't call him out on his bullshit then, as a kindness, mostly. Being housed is what should make him a better doctor. Not make him hole away out of fear he'll anger her at work and at home.
She goes about fixing this in the most subtle ways she knows how. She buys a Kool & the Gang poster for him, claiming she found it at a record store. Which isn't a lie she did buy it there, but she'd only been there for it. Even chucks him some poster tape. Whatever, he's still a college kid technically, she'll get on him about framing it after he graduates.
When his allotted winter break comes up, she doesn't make mention of it. She pictures, catastrophizes as Garcia says, that if she does he'll get this image that she's pushing him out. She gets the image of him on Christmas, Charlie Brown tree and all, in the abandoned wing while she works her double.
It works out in her favor, he stays for the entire break. He doesn't make an excuse to her, no feigning academic responsibilities like he did for Thanksgiving. On Christmas, he brings her a dinner plate and a Tupperware of homemade sugar cookies. They're the nice kind, with the royal frosting that usually only tastes right from bakeries. The kind she'd mentioned loving every time they passed the dinky grocery store bakery. The kind Moms make on TV. Maybe they make them in real life, but those Moms are unknown to Trinity.
Dennis sits at Robby's desk, spinning himself slightly as he eats a particularly malformed cookie Santa. (The icing tastes right, but his artistic abilities are not why he's ever been admired) He's smiling and doesn't seem particularly worried about the amount of crumbs he's spilling.
"Trinity," he rubs his chin where she's gotten some icing when she mimicks him he stops, "Yeah you got it."
"Thanks for saving me from having schmutz on my face in front of Perlah." She mimes licking her thumb, pressing it towards Dennis wiping his face as the nurse often does.
"Maybe that's my gift to you!" He laughs, pushing her away.
"Not the cookies?" She knit her eyebrows, that was the surprise.
"Well they're cookies I mean..."
She frowns, "Yeah Huckleberry, I wasn't expecting a diamond ring."
He goes red, "I'm sorry."
"Jesus Dennis, I'm saying thank you."
"It's hard to tell with you sometimes." He stops spinning, a little regretful he'd said it at all.
"Then I'm sorry. Not you." She takes another bite, chews for a little longer than needed just to get comfortable again, "And I'm sorry that you're going to be stuck making these for me until we're as old as Robby."
Dennis opens his mouth then closes it then opens it wide enough for her to see his permanent retainer. When he finally does speak it's a simple "You're welcome."
"I take it back, as old as Abbott." She takes another bite to accent it.
Robby's protests that Abbott's younger as he snatches a cookie from her stash. When she guards them shooing Ahmad's fingers away Dennis smiles in a way she's not quite seen before. It's one of recognition, the kind you make when passing a friend on your way to class, or maybe when you see a piece of art in person for the first time.
Dennis heads home on his own accord and magically Robby finally has a case for her.
"He's a softie for the season. Even if he doesn't celebrate." Perlah shrugs. She's wearing the Santa headband Princess had donned all of December and so Trinity can't help but snicker at the explanation. Noticing that Perlah quips "Oh come on like you aren't too; my Marawi girl."
"Oh I was raised Catholic." She corrects, her eyes not leaving her incomplete chart.
"Jeez and you're working a double? Dana would've never let that slide."
"I offered." She shrugs. She knows Perlah's frowning so she doesn't look up, "You're right though my Dad's Muslim."
Perlah takes the hint as she is known to do "You think you could get Dennis to make Eid cookies?"
"I think if I explain Eid to him yeah."
"What's that thing that Esme says?"
"Bless his heart?"
"Yes!"
And though Trinity has not prayed with any real intention since that first deposition she takes a small solitary moment to hope that he will be blessed. Whatever that means these days.
When she gets home Dennis has dozed off on the couch Living Single still playing. He can't have been out for too long, but she's never seen him sleep and so when she dips to shake him awake she stalls. He looks almost Botticelli-esque asleep, lacking his sharp edges, looking so much younger. Like an angel. So instead she pulls her San Marcos blanket over him and lets him sleep.
The first time she invited Garcia over Dennis makes himself scarce. So scarce that the next morning Garcia announces just louder than normal volume:
"I thought you had that little roommate kicking around here."
"It's his final semester he's probably sleeping."
"With those eye bags?"
Speak of the Devil - Dennis peers out from his door wide eyed.
"Dr.Garcia."
"Jeez-" she looks over to Yolanda who doesn't even go to correct how formal he's being.
"Whittaker." She clicks her tongue lifting her chin.
"I didn't know you were here." He looks down "Well I didn't know it was specifically you."
"The bloodhound is funny too?" She looks back at Trinity "How's Oklahoma 50th in education if they turned this guy out."
"He's from Nebraska."
"Trinity there's not that much of a difference." Whittaker holds his hand up, smiling at his own quip. Fucker.
Yolanda finds that fucking delightful, and then she's somehow teasing Dennis about his reliance on cash crops.
After she leaves Dennis and all his snark retreat for his routine shower. He emerges still a little pink in the skin. They both somehow have the day off and so he's wearing jeans and a T-shirt from his undergrad alma mater. 'Erunt Omnes Docibiles Dei' is emblazoned across his back.
"Trinity um," he's picking at his fingers, already torn off all his hangnails they grip at nothing, "Can I ask you something."
"Yeah."
"Are you and Garcia like," he weaves his hands together. It's such a Protestant gesture in her eyes, she can't help but smile.
"Scissoring?"
"No! G-d no! I mean together!" He immediately unclasps his hands mortified.
"Don't worry Huckleberry, I know." She lets him cool down, the pink in his skin is starting to dissipate "We've been seeing each other yeah. I don't think it's," she mimicks his hand weaving, "That serious, but we're definitely scissoring at least."
He grows pink in the absence of his heat flush.
"You're a lesbian though, right?"
"Yeah." She quirks her eyebrow, she's not really had to tell anyone that since undergrad.
"Oh, thank G-d." He sighs running a hand down his face, his colour returns to something resembling normal. "I just uh, I don't really know what to do with people's boyfriends."
"Amen to that." She chuckles.
"I uh, well it's nice to know she's not gonna beat up for supposedly hitting on you then for being a fag." He laughs, but it's a humourousless thing, more a mechanic response in his throat than delight.
"Well don't worry, I don't think you're my type."
He shrugs, "I've learned not to count myself out too early."
During their errands, she sneaks peaks of him behind her. He had some fear of her too. Not the natural kind that came with distinction and consciousness, the kind that drives you when you have nothing else powering you. The kind you learn to have. The kind you get from spending high school half drunk and half assaulted. When they pull into the grocery store parking lot she can almost picture them before it. Then she sees them so vividly together, the Nissan Altima she had in high school parked. A cigarette in her hand a Bud Light in his. His lip split face bruised, her in her leotard, just her leotard. She spent so many nights like that and will never spend one like it again. The loss in her chest is filled with the nostalgia she feels for her own tableau.
She's less nervous with him at home now, the kind of anxiety she didn't realize she was holding until sleep comes much easier the following nights. There's a jammy unpleasantness to being around most men that she can't help and that they can't. Compulsions that tell her they'll grab the small of her waist from behind their stubble prickly against her ear and she'll know the rest. That's why she didn't live with men before this. Maybe that's why she didn't notice the heaviness in her gut, like she'd swallowed a lead ball. Its absence leaves her nauseous and guilty. It's about control, not attraction. She's always known that. If Dennis wanted control, he'd be a much different man.
When she spends much of their movie night trying and failing to swallow this nausea, he notices. He pretends to be too freaked out by her choice of a Cronenberg film and instead puts on some Tina Fey romp, which doesn't really serve to lessen her load. Most of her night is spent on the bathroom floor, various times she shuts the light off, curling in on herself half cushioned by her bathmat, only half aware of her body.
In the morning she can't remember if she slept and the appearance of two bottles of Gatorade in front of her door only serve to slow her mind even more.
'Sheetz had 2 for 1 feel better :( lmk if its flu' reads the sticky note he's placed on one of the lids. Next to them is the rapid response COVID/Influenza tests he'd knicked on his PEDs rotation.
The COVID and flu test is negative, as she expected. She snaps a photo and sends it to him. Timeliness proves his best quality as moments later she hears a knock on her door.
He stands outside still half mused from sleep. Presentable enough for a Sheetz but not as sharp as he'd like to be in daily life. He lights up at the sight of her, she can't imagine she looks anything but awful.
He speaks to her quietly about calling in, and she just nods, following his steps.
She'd been so worried this would ruin her forever. There are still those tense, nearly transcendent moments where she's sure it has. Then there are the moments where it all coalesces, and she realizes the strangeness of the way she's been treated. Below the cruelty of it all. To think of treating someone in that way is a strange thought, isn't it? Most people never think of it. If they do it's with concern, with wet blue eyes telling you to call out. It's so exceedingly normal, so exceedingly Nebraska, to carry concern. She feels young for the first time in years, and she's stuck blinking at her phone, regretting that she had not been this version of herself in this very moment her whole life.
And so when she walks by Princess leaning real close to Whittaker's face, spitting distance, asking him what Dr.Santos's deal is she doesn't blink when he answers:
"She just cares a lot."