Work Text:
JUNE
Dennis Whitaker had misplaced his headphones at the worst possible time.
The noises he heard next were ungodly. They were uniquely profane in a way his theology teachers would blush at. They were begging for a noise complaint from the neighbours.
Dennis put his music on aloud, but it wasn’t enough.
Nothing would ever be enough.
Nothing would erase the memories, either.
JULY
It’s a nice night. Yeah, Trinity and Langdon tag-team bullied him and Langdon’s Gilmore Girl opinions were wildly off base, but it was easy and it was fun and the whole way through he had Trinity’s hissed voice in his ear: He had a bad shift. Lost a kid. Don’t be lame.
Which was uncalled for but fair enough – Dennis’ older brothers had always thought of him as the least cool of the bunch, four years the youngest and the only one interested in science beyond the perfunctory frog dissections in junior year.
In the morning, Langdon was asleep on their sofa, one bare leg dangling free from the blankets, when Dennis made up his bowl of Cap’n Crunch.
“Maybe you should date,” he suggested, after he heard the telltale click of Trinity’s door closing, her eavesdropping never as sneaky as she thought.
“I’d rather get hit by a truck,” Langdon murmured, eyes closed. “Would probably hurt less over time.”
“That’s a little mean.”
“Physically, I mean,” Langdon corrected, opening one eye. “Santos is a biter.”
Dennis sighed into his cereal, and Langdon looked pleased for making him sad.
AUGUST
Dennis Whitaker owed a lot to Trinity Santos. He owed her for the roof over his head, for the confidence she exerted on his behalf when he stuttered, for drilling him relentlessly on medical terms and procedures that she only half remembered sometimes.
They had fallen together in a closely inextricable way.
Where there was Trinity, there was Dennis. Where there was Dennis, there was Trinity.
They went grocery shopping together; Trinity pushing the cart and Dennis checking his collection of coupons to get just the right items in just the right quantity. When he got their shop down to under twenty bucks, Trinity would bump her fist against his shoulder and call him her favourite Huckleberry, as if she had another one to compare to. They did other things together too: hung out at the mall when they got bored, went and saw movies when a new horror came out that would give them both nightmares, though only he admitted to it. Their calendars were synced, so they were always apprised of each other’s plans, and three months into living together she told him that there was some big discount on their bills so the utilities wouldn’t cost as much anymore. He knew this was a lie, and she knew that he knew she was lying.
He appreciated it all the same.
Something else Trinity provided was Langdon. Or Frank, he sometimes called him, the two bonded by the misfortune of their names being that of elderly men. Dennis had been named for his grandfather, in fact, and Frank (who confided in Dennis that his name was actually Francis, and Dennis didn’t tell Trinity out of a new loyalty to Langdon for the honour of telling him such dangerous information) had been named for his mother’s dreams of a rich, elegant son who wore suits to his job and perhaps had a maid.
“Insurance, or something,” Frank had said. “Maybe she was hoping I’d just marry rich.”
Dennis knew the type of naming convention, because his next-door neighbour growing up had been given the forenames Alexandra Penelope Charlotte because she had been born with a shock of orange hair and her mother had hoped she might win the heart of Prince Harry one day.
Anyway, with Langdon came occasional rides to work, sporadic morning coffees, and frequent nights of pestering about Gilmore Girls and a free pizza because he claimed he couldn’t be bothered to ask for the cash.
In August, Langdon had to take the dog for a weekend from his ex-wife, and took Trinity and Dennis along for the walk in the park on the Saturday afternoon, a blissful rare weekend free from work.
“You are shockingly good with him,” Langdon said when Dennis got Benny to sit. Benny was of course short for Benzo, although Abby supposedly disagreed with this. Dennis also got Benny to lie down, roll over, and beg, which Langdon insisted were not tricks Abby or the kids had taught him.
“He needs to respect your authority,” Dennis said, sat in the grass while Trinity climbed the playpark’s jungle gym, surprisingly devoid of children for a Saturday.
Langdon frowned. “Sit,” he said.
Benny panted.
“Sit.”
Benny sniffed the grass.
“Sit.”
Benny looked gleeful as he wandered back into Dennis’ arms, allowing all the pets and kisses to his floppy ears.
“He doesn’t respect you,” Dennis said.
From the top of the jungle gym, Trinity called, “I know the feeling!”
SEPTEMBER
In September, Dennis caught the flu.
He was off work for three days.
On the first day, Trinity yelled drink fluids! as she left out the door, then frowned at him upon her return twelve hours later, because despite all the fluids he drank, he was not better yet. She grumbled a little about making him dinner, but made it anyway.
On the second day, there was a pinch of concern in her brow when he couldn’t get up in the morning. She helped him onto the sofa, left a series of drinks for him on the coffee table with four different medicines she swore by and put the TV remote within his reach. When she got home, she checked him over and made him dinner and sat on the other sofa and told him about her day until he fell asleep. Because he was asleep, he did not see her go to bed early, feeling a little rundown.
On day three, Trinity called in sick. The two of them bundled up on the sofas, Trinity whining about him making her feel gross and tired and sicky, and both of them too exhausted to get up in a timely manner to get their medicines and drinks of water and heat their bowls of soup. Somewhere around 5pm, seven episodes of Gilmore Girls done, the final seasons nearing, Trinity muttered, “This can’t go on” and started texting.
Shortly after their shift got out, Langdon let himself in, stood at a distance and sighed.
“You look pathetic,” he said, and Dennis didn’t know if he was talking to Trinity or him, but he found he didn’t care. He felt pathetic.
“Look after us,” Trinity pouted, and Langdon rolled his eyes but started wandering around their kitchen anyway, producing a face mask from his pocket so as not to catch their yucky flu.
He didn’t catch it at all, in the end, and sorted them out with their dinners and their drinks and their medicines before escaping and returning the next morning, Dennis feeling a lot better and Trinity feeling so much worse.
Langdon gave a lift in to Dennis, who happily sipped his flat white after they passed through the drive thru and got to choose the music and even got to check the maps for traffic when they got stuck for ten minutes behind an early morning car accident.
When they arrived, Robby said, “Good to see you up on your feet again, Whitaker,” to which Langdon cut in, grousing, “You know they don’t have, like, real food in their cupboards? It’s all cans. There was nothing fresh in that entire apartment. They’re gonna get scurvy—you’re gonna get scurvy, Whitaker. No wonder you caught the flu. Your immune system is fucked.”
Dennis made Trinity dinner that evening and the cycle started anew.
OCTOBER
The hug was going on too long for it to be a Trinity Santos hug, and Dennis realised that over the music and the chatter of the bar, she was crying into his shoulder.
He pulled away and she sniffed.
He remembered she’d had two gins, amongst everything else she’d drank that night. Whitaker smiled softly.
“Why don’t we go outside for a minute?”
Trinity nodded, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand, and the two of them stumbled uneasily out to the smoking area, Dennis’ hand guiding on the small of her back.
Dennis Whitaker loved Trinity Santos. He did. He’d grown up with three brothers and now he finally had a sister. One who bullied him and teased him and used up the last of the toilet paper without telling him, but one who got him, too. She knew when he was and wasn’t bothered by her jabs. She knew when he needed alone time and when he had to be around others. She knew he would take whatever he was given, and so never offered him anything cheap.
He'd never really bought into the idea of soulmates – someone who matched him perfectly, like a puzzle piece. But if he were going to, he’d probably think his squiggly edges matched up with her squiggly edges.
Outside, there were yellow lights and people milling around, chatting and drinking and laughing. Dennis found an empty spot by a heat light, pressing the button so the warm orange glow could fall over them. He saw Trinity sigh into it, and then watched her wipe her face of tears.
She was a weepy gin drunk.
“You feeling better?” he asked after a moment, rubbing one hand on her arm. Something else about Trinity – she liked touch. She craved it, though would never admit it. She liked hugs and cuddling and sitting with her legs flung over his or her head on his shoulder. She tapped him when she passed behind in the kitchen, she let him nap with his head on her thighs, she swung her arm loosely around his shoulder every time she wanted to drag him a certain way.
Trinity sniffed and nodded. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m happy. I’m good.”
“You better be. It’s your birthday,” he said.
“Not yet.”
“Yes, yet. It’s ten past twelve. It’s your birthday.” He watched her smile and then said, “Happy birthday, Trinity.”
She laughed, though she wouldn’t be born for another fifty-something minutes.
“Thanks, Huckleberry.” She never called him Dennis or Denny or even Whitaker. He didn’t mind. He had plenty of other people who called him by his name.
She paused a moment, then hugged him again. This one felt less teary, so he hugged her back happily, arms around her waist.
“You’re my best friend, you know that?” she said into his ear. She had never said it, but he knew. Trinity wasn’t a very good secret keeper, unlike him.
“You’re my best friend, too.”
“You’re the sister I never had.”
“I’m still a boy.”
“You can be a boy and a sister,” she told him, giggling, temples pressed together, her arms wrapped around his shoulders. “It’s all vibes.”
When they pulled apart, she slipped her arm around his waist so she could remain tucked into his side, the two of them basking in the warmth of the heat lamp.
“We’re like socks, you know?” she asked, looking up at him.
Dennis was pretty drunk, to be honest, but Trinity was drunker. He blinked down at her.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“We’re socks. You and me. Matching pair.”
Dennis blinked. “Like soulmates?”
Trinity laughed. “Like soulmates,” she agreed. “But socks.”
And well, maybe he did believe in soulmates after that. Just a little. But only because she said it first.
NOVEMBER
They had seen each other at work. She had apologised. They had eaten lunch and worked on cases and gotten along just fine.
But it wasn’t until they got back to their rustic (shit) apartment (though Dennis was just happy to have somewhere to live), that Trinity said, “You probably want to talk about yesterday, huh?”
Dennis raised his eyebrows at her, unimpressed. “You think we shouldn’t? You didn’t come home, Trin.”
“I was with Langdon.”
“I know that.” He dumped his back on the sofa, started peeling off his coat. “But I only know that because he texted me. Told me I could stop my search.”
Her mouth twisted. “You searched?”
“You didn’t come home.”
They stared at each other for a beat, then Trinity slipped her backpack off, letting her coat follow it to the floor. They were silent, toeing off their shoes and then putting all their stuff away in their rooms. Dennis hung up his coat on the back of his door, unpacked his backpack and repacked it for the morning.
Trinity appeared in his doorway.
His room was pretty bare bones but slowly becoming fuller. He hadn’t had a lot when he moved in with her, and the room only came with the bed. Now, though, from thrift stores and flea markets and Perlah’s mom getting rid of a lot of her furniture, the room was finally coming together.
She said, “I’m sorry I didn’t text you.”
He nodded, sighed. “Yesterday was bad for you?”
“Yeah.”
“You know you can talk to me about that stuff?”
“I have. Before, I mean. It was—it was about Grace.”
Dennis blinked, and twisted his mouth, and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. Today was better though. Do you want dinner?”
She made dinner. Pasta and sauce and frozen vegetables with real, non-frozen onion, because Langdon was mad about their eating habits and made them buy a vegetable every week. Last week was a bell pepper. The week before was tenderstem broccoli. Dennis hadn’t liked week they had courgette, and Trinity had loved the week they ate like twelve carrots to get through the bag. She had a lot of hummus, that week.
After, they sat on the sofa and watched a single episode of Gilmore Girls and Trinity pointed at the screen when Logan Huntzberger was introduced and said, “Him!” like she was unravelling a mystery set up months before.
When the episode was over (because they usually only watched one at dinner if they had the time and energy), Trinity did the dishes and then afterwards climbed onto the smaller sofa beside Dennis, even though the bigger one was free. She pulled her bare feet up onto the cushions, shoved them beneath his thigh.
“There are apps,” she said, “that mean you can watch each other’s location. We should do that.”
“Isn’t that creepy?”
“For some people,” she allowed. “But maybe we should have it anyway. If Langdon wasn’t in all those nurse groupchats, he wouldn’t have found me and I would’ve probably done something pretty stupid. You need to know how to find me, and I need to know how to find you in case you get, like, abducted or something.”
He chuckled. “I’m not sure I’m the normal target for abductions.”
“The kidnappers are fools not to steal you,” she said, sniffing.
They got the app, they linked them together. Their two little icons showed up on the map, side by side.
Dennis said, “But you’re feeling better today? Langdon helped?”
“Yeah. He did.”
“What’d you do?” he asked. “Just talk it out?”
Trinity looked amused. “We had very, very rough sex.”
Dennis blinked. Swallowed. Looked back at his phone. “Good for you,” he said very evenly, as Trinity cackled beside him.
There were things Langdon could provide that he couldn’t (or wouldn’t). There were things Dennis could provide that Langdon would never even think about.
Dennis said, “Do you want to play Uno?”
Trinity lit up, immediately off the sofa and running to her room. “I get to start first!” she called as she went.
DECEMBER
On Boxing Day, Landgon arrived at the apartment with his dog and a painstakingly ugly Christmas jumper worse than all others Dennis had ever seen. Tanner got it for him. He had to wear it.
They cooked up leftovers and watched Christmas movies in the living room. They played Monopoly around the coffee table (Langdon won; Trinity went bankrupt; Dennis was given the duty of banker and spent the entire game stealing money) and exchanged small presents because Trinity exerted a price limit and Dennis knew it was actually for him.
The day before, Dennis had spent the day with Trinity doing much the same, but only in their pyjamas and struggling together in the kitchen to cook a roast. They got all the timings wrong and so every item was finished at a different time. They ate the vegetables and then the pigs in blankets and then the turkey and then, finally, the gravy they’d forgotten to make until after they’d finished most of their meals. They’d slipped off at different points to facetime their families, Trinity’s in Philadelphia and Dennis’ down in Nebraska.
They worked the nightshift afterwards, slept until noon, and then hosted Langdon and his soft little goldendoodle who kept trying to eat the hotel pieces.
Half way through the afternoon, Trinity accidentally spilled her hot cocoa on Langdon’s jumper, and he said, deadpan, “Oh no. Whatever am I to do now?”
He changed it out for a nicer, red jumper from his bag, and Trinity had said, You’re welcome, prim and amused.
Dennis missed his family. Missed Christmases on the farm and his brothers and his brothers’ children, all so happy on Christmas day. But this was good too. This was still good.
JANUARY
Trinity was not the kind of girl to date.
She’d informed him as much right back when he moved in, that she wasn’t a commitment kind of girl and she found hook ups and flings to be more enjoyable. Settling down would be for her forties – right now was for fun and career progression.
And this was, of course, fine by Dennis, who didn’t really date either. Mainly because med school was hard and working in the pitt was harder and having any free time that he didn’t spend decompressing was hardest of all. So they spent a lot of time together and Dennis knew he’d never have to suffer that inevitable jealousy when someone stole Trinity’s attention away. It was petty, probably, but it was also true. He liked her time and attention, he liked being her friend. He didn’t want to lose her to some girl who didn’t know her like he did and then eventually, somehow, would start knowing her better. More.
All this to say: Trinity had hook ups.
Not on a regular schedule. Most of them were doctors or nurses or admin staff from the hospital. A pedes nurse with ginger hair; an oncologist with braids; a woman from payroll Dennis had not seen but heard for all of two minutes before he located his headphones (which he had become very strict about keeping in a safe place since the summer). She didn’t always bring them back to their place – more often, she went to theirs and would come home in the early hours of the morning, while Dennis was asleep, because she wasn’t a fan of sleeping in the bed with them afterwards.
Especially not after the blonde doctor she’d brought home who’d scoffed and said, “God, this place looks like a crack den,” and Dennis had been slumped on the sofa watching a long-form Minecraft storytelling video about a guy and parkour, so he’d heard the wince in Trinity’s voice when she said, “I mean—didn’t you live somewhere cheap when you were an intern?”
Neither of them had liked the shame in her voice. Their place was bad. It was cold and there were leaks and there was mould and the occasional bug and yeah, okay, maybe their oven was a death trap if Frank Langdon was to be believed – but it was their home, and they loved it.
The doctor had laughed, sharp, and said, “Yeah, but nowhere this shit.”
Trinity had still had sex with her (not that Dennis could hear over the sounds of his YouTube video), but the blonde doctor had left within the hour, and Trinity stopped bringing them home so much after that.
Then, in January, there was a familiar voice laughing with Trinity’s as they stumbled through the door, evidently drunk with a day off tomorrow. Dennis was in his room, though the door was open and he was just scrolling on Reddit (mainly on various farming forums, because he got homesick and, besides, he knew how to answer questions about why a tractor might be making a certain noise, or what the best all-purpose knife to get for work was), so he could hear when they wandered in.
The voice of the other woman was one that sometimes gave him nightmares.
“Hoo boy,” fucking Yolanda Garcia said, whistling. “Are those windows single glazing?”
Trinity scoffed. “Double glazing? In this economy?”
“So this place is gonna be cold, huh?” Trinity must’ve made a face or done something, because Garcia said, low and way too flirty for Dennis to hear, “Guess we’ll just have to do something to warm up.”
He sighed, reached for his headphones, then stopped, as they evidently weren’t cutting to the chase right away. Instead, he heard them walk across the living room, the telltale sound of Trinity landing heavily on the sofa. Probably, they were making out. Probably, Dennis needed to shut his door and put on his headphones and turn on that old Carrie Underwood album that got him through middle school and pretend that he didn’t have to work with Garcia again in a matter of days.
All of Trinity’s other hook ups had come from elsewhere in the hospital. Dennis would have to look Garcia in the eye and pretend he didn’t know what she had done.
He was about to get up and lock himself in his room, but then Garcia said, “Level with me. I thought I had you clocked as pretty—I don’t know, what are the kids saying these days, sapphic? When we first met.” He heard Trinity’s scoff.
“Well, I had you clocked too, considering you were openly flirting with me on day one.”
Garcia sounded like she didn’t mind, and perhaps even found it funny, that she did that, when she said, “Well, I like to be forward. Anyway, all the rumours, you know? You and Langdon—”
“Jesus Christ.”
Garcia laughed. “Okay, okay. Guess you get that question a lot.”
“Nah, most of the time they don’t even bother to ask. They just assume. Or put money on it. And talk about it daily whenever I so much as pass him in the hall.”
“He told me you weren’t together.”
“Hm? When was that?”
“Oh, months ago. I didn’t really believe it, though.”
Dennis knew he shouldn’t be listening, for the record. But frankly, Trinity knew he was in. They had each other’s locations constantly and he knew she checked on it as regularly as he did.
“So, what exactly are you asking me?”
“It’s no big deal,” Garcia said, and to her credit, her tone of voice conveyed that message. “I was just wondering—you’re very obviously into women, just wondering where the spectrum that laid? I’m, if you couldn’t tell, a massive fucking lesbian.”
Trinity laughed. “Well, I subscribe to the idea that sexuality is a fluid thing that can change dependent on a number of factors and external contexts and that to choose any one title for myself would be limiting and eventually redundant—”
“Sure, sure.”
“—but with all that said, I’ve used the term bisexual for years. However, if I were to describe my preferences, I would say it is that I am 99% attracted to women, and 1% attracted to men, and that one man is Frank Langdon.”
Garcia’s laugh was loud and cackling and clearly incredibly shocked.
Dennis slowly slipped off his bed. He wanted to listen in but the longer this went on, the more guilt he felt, and so perhaps slowly closing the door would be the best answer (especially because he was sick and tired about hearing about Trinity and Langdon’s… other activities). If Trinity was distracted, she wouldn’t even hear the door click shut.
He crept across the room as Garcia asked, incredulous, “What the fuck? Are you kidding me?”
Trinity laughed, too. “Nah, I’d say that’s close enough.”
“You’re acting very cavalier about this considering the batshit insane thing you just said.”
“Nah,” Trinity said, gleeful. “I stand by it.”
“The rumours are true—”
“Nope,” she replied, easy. Dennis reached his door, peered out, and saw the two of them on the sofa. Trinity’s legs were flung over Garcia’s, and the two of them had a tipsy way about them, how they were tangled and close together. “Never dated. We’ve just fucked a few times.”
“Jesus.”
“No telling, obviously.”
“Oh man,” Garcia said, grinning. “But that’s the news of the century.”
“Nuh-uh. Besides, I do mean it. I’ve never felt attracted to a man romantically, but recently I’ve stopped feeling attracted to them sexually too. Just can’t even fathom it. Langdon’s the outlier.”
“Never tell him that. His ego is already too big.”
“Oh, never,” Trinity agreed. “He got in before the cut-off, I guess. And he’s one of my best friends, so somehow his personality didn’t even ruin it.”
“I feel like I’m going insane. Langdon. My close, personal friend Langdon. I have seen that man tequila drunk and jumping into a pool from a frat house roof.”
“Oh yeah,” Trinity said, mocking. “That would do it for me, for sure.”
Dennis slowly started shutting the door, praying for no creaks. For once, God was listening.
Garcia said, “Wait. Wait. I need to know – is he good?”
“Upsettingly so.”
“Fuck.”
The two of them giggled a little more, and Dennis was almost all the way to getting the door shut, when Trinity seemed to catch him out of the corner of her eye and looked over. She didn’t seem annoyed for the interruption, just amused. Garcia, however, raised her eyebrows.
“And you live with Whitaker?”
Trinity didn’t answer, just smiled. “No eavesdropping, Huckleberry,” she said.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, and then out of a burst of sheer stupidity or tenacity, it was never clear with him, he looked at Garcia and said, “Doctor Garcia, good to see you. I ask that you please keep it down this evening. I have no interest in hearing whatever you two get up to.”
Only after he shut the door did they start laughing.
“What the fuck?!” Garcia cried, her voice muffled now. “Whitaker?”
Dennis gratefully pulled on his noise cancelling headphones and returned to his Reddit scrolling, blissfully deaf to the rest of the apartment.
FEBRUARY
Dennis had never been to the Langdon family home. Or, perhaps the Piper family home, now that Langdon had moved out and the two were divorced, although the children still shared his name and he was currently crashing there, so perhaps it was more Langdon than Piper right then. Anyway, Dennis had never been there before.
He arrived in the back of Mel’s Jeep, Trinity and Samira all crammed together in the seats. They didn’t really need to all show up at the same time, but the thing about having all your friends be people who work the same shift as you was that, actually, you were all free at the same times.
The house was picket-fenced and sided with blue panels. There was a porch and a pink tricycle out front; the windows filled with pictures and stick-on stained glass window decals painted by the kids.
Langdon opened the door when Mel knocked, and greeted them with raised eyebrows and the hair of a man who hadn’t showered in three days.
“What, you all got nothing better to do?” he asked, stepping aside as they entered, all of them carrying the various tray bake meals that Perlah had made. Most of the crew on the shift had donated money for the ingredients, and she had spent a day cooking casseroles and lasagnas and pies, as well as brownie deserts and snack servings of pre-cut carrots and cucumber and homemade dip.
“Your friends wanted to support you,” Mel said easily, with a smile. “Say thank you, Langdon.”
“Thank you, Langdon,” he replied, and took the trays from Mel but no one else, and they followed him through to the kitchen, which was a disaster zone of dishes and half-eaten food and his dog, who apparently only ate by first knocking the kibble all over the floor first.
They filled the freezer with the food and Langdon thanked them properly, sincerely, before a child started screaming in another room and his eyes closed for two seconds, like he was praying for something, before calling, “I’m coming, Kasey,” and telling them he’d be right back.
The second he was out of the room, Whitaker said, “This is worse than I thought it would be.”
“He hasn’t showered in days,” Trinity hissed. “I can smell it on him.”
Samira grimaced at the state of the kitchen. “I don’t even want to imagine what the rest of the house is like.”
Mel, ever the realist, said, “He’s under a lot of stress.”
This was true. Abby Langdon had been in a car accident only a week ago. She’d undergone surgery for the crush injury to her leg, and while their children had gotten away with very minor injuries, they had been acting out a bit ever since, probably as a response to the scary thing they’d experienced. Langdon had moved back in to help look after the kids and support Abby while she recovered, and he hadn’t been back to work yet, because the process to get a home aide to help Abby was apparently slower than anyone had expected, and it would be another week before one could start.
The screaming turned to crying in the other room, and Langdon’s soft voice was muffled through the walls.
“Divide and conquer, right?” Trinity asked.
“I’ll do the dishes,” Samira said.
“I can sort the rest of the room,” Dennis agreed.
“Mel, kids?”
“Sure. You should probably check on Abby, then.”
“Yeah. I’ll scope out the other rooms too. I’ve got a feeling the living room is gonna be a nightmare.”
Mel and Trinity vanished to the house, the crying continued, and Whitaker started collecting the bowls and cups on the counter, moving them to the side of the sink. He helped Samira empty the draining board, the two of them quietly hunting down the correct drawers and cupboards as they went, before she started running the water. He cleaned the counters, the table, and was sweeping up the floor, when the crying finally ceased and Langdon reappeared, blinking in confusion at what he was seeing, Kasey in his arms.
“Uh.”
“Just say thank you, Langdon,” Samira said over her shoulder.
“Thank you, Langdon,” he repeated, soft. He looked at Whitaker, who was frowning at a stain of—peas? Maybe?—on the floor. “What’s going on?”
“Trinity’s gone to check on Abby, Mel’s got Tanner. You can drop Kasey off with her too,” he said.
“Uh.”
“Mel’s here?” Kasey asked, eyes wide, looking around. “Melly, Melly, Melly!” She started kicking her feet, so Langdon set her down and she started toddling off in that waddling way of hers, in search. Dennis could distantly hear, Kasey! from Mel in another room, and Kasey’s responding cheer.
Langdon said, “I don’t understand.”
Samira took her hands out of the dish water, and levelled him with a look. Dennis forgot sometimes that they had known each other for a few years longer than he had even been in Pittsburgh. She propped her hip against the sink.
“We’re looking after you,” she said.
“We’re—I’m fine,” he replied, hesitant.
“I’m sure you are,” she agreed. “But we want to help you. So we brought you food, remember? And now we’re cleaning, because you have a lot on your plate.”
Langdon’s face twisted, unsure. “I know it might not seem like it right now,” he said, “but I can handle this. Like, I just don’t really have time to clean until after Tanner and Kasey are asleep, and both of them are having big freak outs every time I try to take them to school, because—I don’t know. They don’t like cars now. Which is a whole thing. So I don’t really get time in the day, and—”
“Frank,” Dennis said, mainly because his voice was taking on an edge of mania.
“Dennis,” Langdon shot back.
“We’re your friends, right?”
Perhaps once they weren’t, perhaps they were just people from work. But they spent Boxing Day together and evenings and they played stupid games and ate bad pizza and Langdon, seriously, literally never, made him pay for it.
“Yeah.”
“Then let us help. We want to.”
“You can’t just… clean my house for me.”
“We’re cleaning it for Abby and the kids, too,” Samira said.
He still looked unsure, so Whitaker took a breath and stepped in front of him and clapped him on the shoulder like Langdon always did for him, hoping he didn’t look as awkward as he felt.
“You’re doing really well,” Dennis said, “in a really shit situation. Go take an hour for yourself. Go shower. Go talk to Abby like your friend and not someone you have to look after. Go, I don’t know, walk around the block. We’re here to look after things until you get back.”
Langdon met his eye. He didn’t say anything, just nodded and slipped away and vanished upstairs. But Dennis had seen the look in his eye: the relief and the gratitude and the sadness, all rolled into one.
So they got back to cleaning, and the shower turned on upstairs, and Trinity appeared with the announcement that the living room needed hoovering and the kids’ rooms were bad, but Abby’s room was totally fine and did they know Langdon and Abby had been sleeping in the same bed since he moved back in and isn’t that insane but also doesn’t it kind of make sense because that sofa would be bad for his back and he would want to be nearby if anything happened and—
“For the love of God,” Samira said, “go clean something, Santos.”
MARCH
They’d had a girls night, the three of them, like they did a few times a month. They painted their nails and Trinity produced face masks and Langdon had chosen the movie 27 Dresses because he hated all twenty-seven and wanted to complain about it. Trinity had revealed her lifelong irrational hatred of James Marsden until his role in the Sonic movies, and then she’d gotten over it, and Dennis had acted as quizmaster for several online Teen Vogue quizzes for teenage girls, which Trinity and Langdon had answered with increasing fervour as the night went on.
Dennis woke up in Trinity’s bed the next morning, Langdon splayed out between them.
Dennis blinked, frowned, remembered the tequila portion of the night and Langdon complaining about the living room being cold and Trinity’s solution of everyone bundling into her bed for warmth.
It was admittedly the warmest sleep Dennis had experienced in this apartment. Langdon was a veritable furnace.
On the other side of him (Langdon was mostly on his front, mostly splayed over Trinity, an arm loose over her) Trinity was sat up in bed, scrolling on her phone. They had strange shifts today, none of them in until noon, and so no one was quick to rise.
She glanced over at him as he woke up, slowly shifting upright and sitting against the headboard as she was. Trinity grabbed a glass of water from her bedside table and passed it over Langdon’s head. Dennis smiled his thanks and drank, mouth gross and head faintly ringing.
“He awake?” he whispered when he was done.
“Nah,” Trinity answered at normal volume. “He sleeps like the dead unless you’re a crying baby, so don’t worry about it.”
Langdon’s wife had a home care aide now, and was slowly starting to put pressure on her leg again, though it would be months before she could walk normally again. She had regular physio and the kids were still hesitant about cars, but after a night of Kasey’s nightmares and crying, Langdon had put them in the car and driven around until they fell asleep, and they were a lot less scared of them after that. He hadn’t moved out of her place yet, but thought he would by the end of the month, back into the sad divorced man apartment that Trinity had been begging to redecorate.
The girls night was a fortuitous combination of Kasey and Tanner having sleepovers and Abby’s friend staying over for the night. They hadn’t gotten to do this in a while.
Trinity passed over a banana next – she had an entire bunch of them on the bedside table, which apparently drunk her had put there for this morning – and Dennis peeled it, idly looking around the room. He glanced over when she said, “Serious question.”
“Shoot.”
“What do you think about Langdon and Mel?”
“As people?”
“For each other.”
Dennis raised his eyebrows, glanced down at Langdon (still asleep), and shrugged. “They’re friends. I don’t really have an opinion on if they should date.”
“Hm.”
“Do you?”
“Clearly,” she said, “or I wouldn’t have asked. He’s into her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I had a tiny inkling but Abby confirmed it a while ago. Got me thinking.”
“About what?”
“Well, about if she liked him back. And I’ve been watching. I think she does.”
“They could just be friends.”
Trinity shrugged, dropping her phone into her lap, narrowly missing the arm Langdon had flung around her.
“Or, they could be secretly pining after each other.”
“I don’t know if it’s your business,” he hedged.
“It’s absolutely my business.”
“How?”
“Mel’s my friend and Langdon’s my—other friend. My good friend. My close, personal friend Frank Langdon.” Dennis knew, by the way, that Langdon was her best friend. Just like he knew that he was her best friend. Because, again, Trinity Santos was a bad secret keeper.
“Uh huh.”
“And I want them to be happy. Potentially, together.”
“So you’re going to meddle.” He said this with an unimpressed look.
She mock gasped, a hand flying to her mouth. “Meddle? Why, I would never.”
“Trinity.”
“I’m going to matchmake.”
“No.”
“Huckleberry.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Mr Whitaker.”
“You should respect their privacy.”
Trinity rolled her eyes. “I have. For months. I haven’t pried or outwardly questioned their little lingering looks or how close they stand or anything. Now, however, it is time to disrespect their privacy.”
“Trinity.”
“I’m going to matchmake,” she said.
Trinity grinned at him, pleased. He was about to argue further, but instead she just made a loud, shrieking noise uncannily like a crying baby. Langdon jerked awake.
“See?” she said. “I told you so.”
Dennis sighed. He felt very bad for Mel and Langdon. Very bad, indeed.
But, again, it was none of his business at all.