#trimberly week day 1 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kxmberlyhart · 7 years

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Title: The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell

Summary: "Trini sighed and was about to swipe left because she wasn’t interested in looking for love right now. Tinder is just… Tinder. It’s all just a game to her.

That is until she accidentally swipes up.

'You Super Liked Kimberly!'"

Trimberly Week: Day 1: Coffee shop, college, fake dating au

ps. there’s more social media au edits if you read this mess of a story :)

Read @ ao3 (formatting might be a little better?)

D a y 1: Coffee shop, college, fake dating au.

Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe left. Swipe left. Wait, is that the hot girl who sits in front of me from Environmental Bio class?

Trini lays in bed staring at her phone for a little while, examining the picture on her screen. Tinder app currently displaying the hot girl that sits in front of her in Env Biology class. The girl who asks and answer a lot of questions during class, a beauty and brains girl, no doubt.

Trini knew her name because she was a gay mess when she saw her sit in front of her the first day of class, waiting for the girl’s name to be called. Kimberly Hart. They’ve talked before. “Can I borrow your pencil?” but Kimberly never returned it.

Tinder is just a game to her though. Trini wasn’t desperate or interested to find love at the moment that she has to resort online dating apps to find someone for her, it’s just for fun. It’s a trend that people are doing and there isn’t really any harm in what she’s doing.

Until the girl from Biology appears on her screen.

Kimberly, 20

University of California 2 miles away

UC. Pre-Med student, part-time model. Swimming and Diving Team Captain. California girl, born and raised. Adventure is out there.

Trini looked at Kimberly’s four pictures:

A simple close up picture of her in a daydream state. It features her face which pretty much says it all, profile picture worthy most definitely.

A group photo with two boys right next to her, all of them wearing Anaheim Angels gear, “Ew she likes Angels. Go Dodgers!” Trini thinks to herself, flicking to the next picture.

A professional model picture that captured Trini’s attention, raising her eyebrow in delight, a smile smile twisting her lips upwards.

Finally, a fucking black and white photo that that just killed Trini’s ovaries because holy hell this girl is hot.

Trini presses the lock button and home button of her phone four times, taking a screenshot of each picture.

Seeing that this Kimberly Hart person from the bio appeared on her tinder, it means that her preference is women (or both men and women, but Trini doesn’t care). Trini went back to the home screen of Tinder.

Trini sighed and was about to swipe left because she wasn’t interested in looking for love right now. Tinder is just… Tinder. It’s all just a game to her.

That is until she accidentally swipes up.

You Super Liked Kimberly!

Trini threw her phone as far as she can in her dorm room and hits the wall as she gasped with her eyes wide open, hands frozen in front of her then bringing them to clutch her hair. Panic spread everywhere, ready to pretty much rip her hair and insides until she is dead.

“FUCK!” Trini yells, getting up from her bed and pacing back and forth. “Fuck…” Trini repeats but nothing is helping. “FUCK!” Trini’s palms closes and opens as she breathes in an out to calm herself.

Trini makes her way towards her phone to check if any of it broke. Luckily, nothing is broken but the screen still showed that Trini super liked Kimberly. She exits the app and free falls back into her bed.

“Shit. What the fuck do I do?” Trini lays down on her bed for a solid ten minutes just staring at the ceiling. “Shit!” Trini sits up, “I have class with her tomorrow” Trini cussed then whispered the herself.

Trini reopened the app and looked at her own Tinder profile.

Trini, 20 University of California

Environmental Biology major. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell I’m 5 feet. Fucking fight me.

“I think I’m gonna nap and just never wake up” Trini crawls on her bed, grabbing the covers and pulling it over her head. Her head drops face first into the pillow, she didn’t breath until she ran out of oxygen.

Trini clenched the pillow and pulled it further into her face and just yelled, “FUUUUUUUUCK!”

Later than night Trini gets ready for bed when she opened her phone and a notification from Tinder appeared.

Congratulations! You have a new match!

“What the fuck” Trini asks as she opens the notification and waits for the app to open.

It’s a Match!

Kimberly Super Liked you!

Then two bubbles with their profile picture side by side.

“Holy shit”

—

Trini lays still in bed, current time: 6:50 AM. Awake an hour earlier than her usual time and she has three hours to get ready before biology with Kimberly. It’s basically killing her inside as time passes by as she doesn’t know how they will interact.

Trini grabs her phone from her nightstand and her heart stops as she sees a notification from Tinder. There could only be one person.

Kimberly sent you a new message

It was date marks at 1:23 AM, meaning Trini was already asleep at that time when Kimberly sent a message.

Kimberly: Hi! So we matched. You’re in Environmental Bio with me right?

Trini debated with herself whether she should respond or not. Of course she should respond, she’s going to have to face this girl in a couple hours. Socializing. Not Trini’s speciality.

Trini: Hi. Yeah.

“Good enough” Trini gets up from her bed and heads to her closet to grab some clothes and off to the shower she goes. Since she woke up really early, it’s probably best to grab some coffee before class to calm her nerves a little bit.

Once Trini got out of the shower, she heard her phone ring and she opens it up to see another notification from Tinder.

Kimberly: We super liked each other and all I get is “Hi. Yeah.” ? Kimberly: It’s probably better to talk in person, yeah? Kimberly: See you in enviro bio later ;)

The wink face killed Trini. She sits down on her bed for a moment then she smiles to herself, unbelieving that she actually managed to find a girl. On top of that, one of the hottest girls she had ever seen in her life.

Trini gets dressed, time check, 8:02 AM, two hours before class. She heads for the campus coffee shop to grab some coffee and catch up on some reading that she had ignored this previous week.

Trini grabs a plain black coffee and heads to the counter where all the milk and sugar are. Filling the cup to the top with milk and adding three packets of sugar. After stirring gently, she takes a sip to see if it’s to her liking, finding it a little bitter, she adds a little bit more milk and one more packet of sugar.

“You sure do like your coffee sweet and creamy, huh?” Trini looks to her left after the person had spoken, finding herself standing next to Kimberly. She stood there with messy, wet hair, assuming she just finished swim and dive practice.

“Uh… Kimberly…” Trini backs up a bit and she hits a person using the counter as well. She spills her full cup of coffee in front of her and Kimberly.

“Ow, ow, ouch” Kim takes her top and pulls it away from the hot liquid that just spilled and Trini does the same, placing her now half cup of coffee on the counter.

“Oh, no,” Trini grabs the napkins and dabs it on Kim’s shirt. “Shit, I’m so sorry, I’m a…” Trini stops then mumbles “gay mess”

“Hey, Trini, right? Easy,” Kimberly says grabbing Trini’s hands to stop her from panicking even further. “It’s okay, I was gonna head home anyway, I always head home after practice.”

“I’m so sorry, Kimberly” Trini mumbles under her breath but Kimberly caught on and smiled at the smaller girl. A finger landed on Trini’s chin and lifted up and she was faced with Kimberly once again.

“It’s okay. Look, my dorm is close by, we can clean up there. I live at the Riverside dorms”

“I live at the Orange dorms. Opposite side of the campus from you” Trini grabs napkins and leans down and cleans up the spill of coffee that was on the ground.

Kimberly does the same, “Ok, my dorm is closer to our class so let’s just go there” Kimberly gets up and throws the dirty napkins away. It’s not that Trini’s scared to go with a stranger to their dorm, it’s more on she’s scared she’s going to Kimberly Hart’s dorm. “I’m not a murderer or anything like that, I promise. Just trust me.”

“Is this how you get all the girls?” Trini teased a little, even as a gay mess she managed to get that one out.

“Just the really cute who’s a gay mess” Kim smirks.

—

“So I didn’t clean prior so excuse the mess” Kimberly twists her door open and Trini entered Kimberly’s dorm. She lives alone just like Trini but Kimberly’s dorm was more high end than Trini’s. A studio type dorm with bigger moving space, a clear living room area, and a kitchen of her own.

Trini saw a bunch of plates stacks on the sink, a couple of clothing thrown around the room. Kim made haste to grab the clothing on the floor and shove them into the closet.

“You have a nice place, Kimberly” Trini says, actually attempting to make conversation, still looking around the room. Everything is nice. All of Kimberly’s items looks like it’s pretty expensive. Trini sits down on the comfy couch watching Kimberly attempt to hide her mess.

“It’s nothing. Also, you can call me Kim. I have a bunch of shirt you can borrow but since you spilled coffee on me, I get to chose what shirt you wear” Kim starts rummaging through her closet, not that Trini minded until she pulls out a familiar red shirt.

“No.” Trini groans when she saw the logo. A red shirt with a big letter A with a halo. “You cannot make me wear Anaheim Angels gear. I’m too proud of a Los Angeles Dodgers fan. I’ll just head home and change, it’s not far.”

“Come on. You spilled coffee on me, wearing this is your apology,” Kim holds the shirt by its shoulders and pushed it towards Trini. “Plus, if you wear this today I’ll like you a lot more”

Trini is at crossroads with herself. The girl or her loyalty to her favorite baseball team.

When is she ever gonna get another chance with a girl like this?

“Fine” Trini takes the shirt into her hand and heads for the bathroom. A small grimace at the shirt she’s holding up but she has to stay strong for the girl. Trini looks at the mirror and takes off her coffee stained shirt and puts on the Angels shirt. “Ew. I’m sorry, Dodgers” Trini steps out and shows Kim her shirt.

Kim smiles as she picks up clothing that she herself needs to wear. “Looks good, I’m going to shower really quick because I smell like chlorine. Hang back and don’t ditch me okay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, princess”

“Princess?”

“I mean if that’s okay”

Kim smiles at the nickname that she already received, “Completely fine”

—

It’s been a whole week since the two met online. Trini started waking up a little earlier to meet up with Kim at the campus coffee shop every Monday and Wednesday mornings. After grabbing their cup of coffee, they would head to Kim’s apartment where Kim would shower and Trini would just sit on Kim’s couch and browse her phone. Then they would head to class before 10 AM then after class that’s it. They would usually text about themselves to get to know each other better but their relationship right now is basically friendship even though they know there’s something there between them.

They haven’t planned any kind of date yet. The only dates they were having are their campus coffee shop dates and that’s barely a date.

Trini feels a hand grab hers as they walked towards Kim’s dorm, unconsciously wrapping her own hand on Kim’s. Trini looks down at their now intertwined hands then up at a smiling Kim.

“Is this okay?” Kim asks, squeezing Trini’s hand slightly. “I mean… we’re kind of dating, right? Like we haven’t gone on our first date but we’re dating, right?”

“Yeah, I like to think we are” Trini looks down and smiles to herself because this entire thing just feels so right.

“Good because I really like hanging out with you” The two reaches the Riverside building and Kim presses the elevator for them to the fifth floor. “And if you’re free next Thursday,” Kim lets go of Trini’s hand and pulls out two tickets from the pocket of her bag. “I got us tickets to the Angels vs. Dodgers game”

Trini looks at the tickets, official tickets to the game at the Dodgers stadium. “Wow, uhm… are you sure our first date should be a baseball game where we support rival teams?”

“Come on. I know you’re a big baseball fan, I’m not that big of a fan. My friends are huge fans and I go with them every once in a while. This baseball rivalry is not going to ruin our relationship” Kim waves the two tickets in front of Trini with a hopeful smile on her face, “What do you say? First date? Don’t dodge this, dodger” Kim laughed slightly at her own joke.

“Alright, it’s a date” Trini laughs at the witty joke Kim just said. The two reached their floor and Kim opened her dorm room and let themselves inside.

“Can I tell you something? It’s a funny story and it led me to this really great girl, actually” Trini bites her lip as she closed the door behind her. “I use tinder to just look at girls… I always swipe left on everyone even if they’re cute. When I saw you on Tinder, I looked at your pictures and all, as I was about to swipe left, I accidentally super liked you…”

Kim let out a laugh at the silly story, the story that basically started it all. “You said this girl is really great? You like her a lot?” Kim steps forward and takes Trini’s hand in hers, never breaking eye contact.

“I like her a lot”

“I like you a lot too” Kim runs her hand up and cups Trini’s jaw, Kim leans in and kisses Trini’s cheek. “I don’t kiss before the first date”

“You just did”

“I mean on the lips”

“Does that mean i get to kiss you after the game?” Trini smiles up, getting up on her tippy toes and leaning slightly forward to tease Kim.

“Hmm,” Kim smirks and pulls back, “If the Angels win, you can kiss me. If not, you can kiss my ass”

Trini gasps as she pushes Kim slightly away, both of them laughing. “Wow, I can’t believe you. You are the death of me, Kimberly Hart. Making me double cross my team again.”

—

Kim wore her white and red Angels jersey along with an Angels cap while Trini wore her white and blue Dodgers jersey accompanied by a Dodgers cap. The two sat on their seats, sharing a large Dr. Pepper, popcorn, and a hotdog.

Baseball—it’s a fairly uneventful game. There’s a lot of talking going on in the background until the batter hits the ball, then all eyes are on the field seeing the event that unfolds to score a point.

Trini had to admit that a baseball game for a date is actually pretty nice. They both get to talk about themselves, their hands intertwined majority of the time, laugh together, and catch a game that they both enjoy, despite the team rivalry.

Kim laughs every time the Dodgers scored, Trini would jump up her seat and yell along with the rest of the Dodgers fans. Then, Kim would snicker at Trini’s grumbling face every time the Angels scored, planting a kiss on Trini’s cheek to lift her spirits up.

At the end of the game, 3-2 match, meaning the Dodgers wins and Trini was sufficiently happy. They stayed in their seats for a while, waiting for the crowd to thin. They walked out of the stadium hand in hand, they switched hats sometimes during the game, like star crossed lovers amongst their fellow fans.

“So, Dodgers won. That means I don’t get to kiss you” The two arrived at Kim’s car, parking near the streetlight of the almost empty parking lot.

Before Kim unlocked her car, she looks at Trini and saw the smile fade into a small disappointed pout. Kim walks to Trini and grabs her jaw and leans forward to capture her lips. Trini kisses back, her feet tippy toed, hands slowly wrapping around Kim’s waist. Kim pushed her arms to wrap around Trini’s neck.

Their bodies moving closer and Trini’s body slowly sandwiched between Kim and the side of Kim’s car.

A long beeping sound and a bunch of wolf whistles broke them apart. They looked to where the ruckus was coming from. A bunch of guys with their heads hanging out the window and catcalling the two girls kissing.

“Fuck off, assholes” Kim yelled and Trini gave the guys the middle finger. They heard a roar of laughter and eventually they drove off.

“Well that happened” Trini giggled and dropped her head on the top of Kim’s chest, snuggling for warmth and comfort that Kim provided. “I really like kissing you” Trini mumbles into Kim’s shirt. “I really like you…” Trini continued, “Even if you’re an Angels fan” Trini looks up and giggles at Kim.

“And I really like you too… Look at you, hitting first base” Kim leans forward, their noses touching.

“Wow, baseball jokes, witty”

Kim drove Trini to her dorm, kissing her goodnight at the car, almost not wanting to pull back. "Message me when you get to your place?" Trini smiles, pulling back from the kiss, only to receive another kiss.

"Of course"

Trini sits on her bed once she gets to her dorm, taking off the Angels hat that rests on her head and smiling at the eventful first date she just had with an amazing woman. Smiling to herself, still unbelieving that any of today had just happened.

Trini opens her snapchat and checks the snaps that she and Kim had sent to their story.

Kim: Keep the hat. It's a prize for Dodgers winning ;) Trini: Not sure if I wanna keep an Angels hat. Trini: Kinda have a reputation to keep Trini: But bc you're pretty i'll hold on to it Kim: Pretty girl is flattered. Thanks for today, I had a lot of fun. Coffee tomorrow morning? Trini: ofc. Goodnight princess. Kim: goodnight Angel :x

—

“I didn’t understand the entire lesson at all” Kim groans at she exits the class with Trini by her side.

“I kinda get it, I have to read the chapter again to understand even further” Trini says, grabbing on to Kim’s arm and snuggling with it. “Can we study at your place?”

“Of course”

The two walked back to Kim’s dorm. They’ve been dating for the past two months and everything is well. A normal routine of seeing each other every day of the week. Trini wakes up even earlier to grab coffee for the both of them, heads to the pool where Kim trains every morning. Trini would then hand Kim her coffee and both make their way to Kim’s dorm.

With Trini grabbing coffee in the morning for them, it adds time for them to spend together. They grab breakfast sometimes, they hang lazily, they cram their environmental biology lessons before the quiz or test, or they make out. On weekends they often run errands, go on dates, Kim sometimes have competition, Trini makes sure to support her girlfriend. Often Kim is helping her friend, Jason with his photography project and is often the muse. Trini would be sitting in the sideline watching at Kim gets pampered for her mini shoot with Jason, just watching at how beautiful her girlfriend is.

Making out is both their favorite activities. Trini would often just be lying down on Kim’s bed while Kim takes a shower. The next thing she knows, Kim is crawling on the bed and kissing Trini.

“And deleted” Trini drops her phone on the bed and looks over at Kim doing the same thing. They both had just deactivated their Tinder accounts and deleted the app. Both haven’t logged back in the app since they both met and have no intention of ruining just the most perfect relationship they both have been.

“Okay, so tell me what you learned during class and teach it to me” Kim flops on her bed in front of Trini with her textbook and notes open, a bunch of pens, pencils, and highlighters scattered around but only the pink and yellow highlighter used.

“The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”

“Oh God, I cannot believe you, you nerd” Kim sits up and faces Trini. “I remember looking at your Tinder profile and saying how big of a bad ass nerd this chick is”

“I told you, I never took Tinder seriously. It was honestly to turn girls off but I managed to lure your nerdy ‘I’m a smart ass pre-med student and I’m going to be a doctor’ ass” Trini scoffs and laughs, looking down at her textbook and attempting to read the chapter.

Kim just stares at her girlfriend. Scooting a bit more to Trini and wrapping an arm around Trini’s shoulders. Her nerdy, Dodger loving, succulent caretaker, adorable, small girlfriend. “I love you”

Trini looks up from her book and directly into Kim’s sincere eyes. “What?”

“I love you, Trini Gomez” Kim closed her eyes and laughs to herself, bringing her hands together while still holding Trini. “I’m so glad you accidentally ‘Super Liked’ me. I am hopelessly in love with you”

Kim pushes herself up on the bed until she’s forehead to forehead with Trini. Trini smiles, hearing some pens fall off the bed. “I love you too, Kimberly Hart. I’m so happy you actually ‘Super Liked’ me.” Trini releases a giant grin, still unbelieving that this woman actually ‘Super Liked’ her and is now her girlfriend.

Trini feels Kim’s lips on hers and she believes.

Notes:

AN: Los Angeles Dodgers and Anaheim Angels both play for the MLB. They’re only about 30 mins to an hour away from each other in the Los Angeles vicinity so a lot of people root for their team when they go up against each other. Also, they go to University of California (probably UCLA but it's a fake UC), I didn’t specify which because I don’t want to research that much into it. So fake UC school! Yay!

So I had a Tinder way back when it was popular just for fun because my friends had it for fun. I haven’t used it in forever so I re downloaded it for science (just for u guys, I deleted it again). I hope you guys enjoyed! And enjoyed the pictures I made as well!

Enjoy the rest of Trimberly week! This is the only work I have done so far and hopefully I find the motivation to write more.

#Trimberly #Trimberly Week #Kimberly Hart #Trini #Power Rangers #Trimberly Week Day 1 #social media au #college au #coffee shop au #tinder au #my fic #my post

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andawaywego · 7 years

Text

cyrano’s got nothin’ on me

by andawaywego

[or: Jason asks Kim out and Trini is too good a friend for this crap]

… Jason asks Kim out on a Thursday. Trini’s not sure why it’s important that it’s a Thursday, only that it is. Thursdays suck. Not quite the week, not quite the weekend. She supposes, also–along those same lines–that she’s not even really sure why it’s important at all . Because it isn’t.

Or…shouldn’t be.

Jason can ask out whoever he wants. He could ask out Alpha-5 for all Trini cares. And it’s not like she has a monopoly on Kim’s time anyway, even if they usually do spend their Friday nights babysitting Trini’s brothers together. Even if her going on a date with Jason would take that away from her.

That tiny shred of a regular schedule.

They’re in the pit when it happens and Trini is delicately putting a bandage over a particularly bad scrape on Kim’s shoulder. She’s being a good friend. Because that’s what friends do. Friends press antiseptic wipes into cuts and wipe away blood and sometimes even press their fingers to their lips and then press those fingers into the Mickey Mouse band-aid. It’s not weird.

It’s completely normal.

“How bad is it?” Kim is asking, her voice that soft timbre that definitely doesn’t make Trini’s knees shake a little from where she’s kneeling on them.

That would be crazy.

“You’re fine, you big baby,” she jokes, trying to get rid of some of the tension of the moment–that unnecessary weight that is always added so immediately whenever her and Kim’s skin meets.

Kim laughs, this light sound that hardly even sounds like her.

It’s a nice moment–Kim sitting on a rock, Trini kneeling beside her, fingers keen and careful as she presses the adhesive sides of the band-aid down. And then Jason comes shuffling over with his hands wringing out some gross sweat towel like he’s nervous and his eyes are downcast, which is definitely weird because–

Well, because he’s Jason. He exudes confidence and this boyish, who-fucking-cares swagger most days that she’s slightly envious of, if only because he can get away with it, as a boy, without being called a bitch .

But she digresses.

“Hey, Kimberly, can I, um…talk to you for a second?”

It’s not an unusual request, if only because he’s been known to pull each of them aside for the occasional heart-to-heart just to ensure that they’re all on the same side. Usually, they are.

This is not one of those times.

From the side of Kim’s face Trini is on, she can see her eyebrows lower down in confusion. She can see that biting frown twisting on her lips, and Trini, in turn, frowns in mere response.

It’s bizarre.

“Yeah, sure,” Kim says. “What’s up?”

The moment Trini realizes it’s weird is the moment Jason glances at her, as though waiting for her to duck out or excuse herself, which–

She doesn’t have to, okay? Kim is probably the only female friend she’s ever had. She has a right to bear witness.

Make sure Jason doesn’t say anything stupid.

Like, You really sucked at training today.

Or, Those jeans don’t look great on you.

Or–

“I was, um…sort of wondering if you maybe wanted to go on a date tomorrow…with me.”

Yeah, something like that.

Kim is silent for a really long time, her mouth just sort of hanging open as she weighs her options, no doubt. Trini knows the feeling. And it’s weird that Jason would even ask, but it’s not necessarily surprising.

It’s practically set in stone. Two kids, fallen from grace, who used to run in the same social circles. If things were different and Jason hadn’t gotten almost expelled for that cow prank and Kim hadn’t nearly been taken to court over the Amanda thing, they probably would have ended up here either way.

Still, there’s the group dynamic to think of and Trini is half-expecting Kim to just blurt out the word, No, and then hightail it out of there, leaving Trini to slink out awkwardly from underneath Jason’s heavy, disappointed gaze.

There’s the group dynamic and the fact that this could sincerely screw that up.

Trini imagines all of this going through Kim’s head and more and then Kim says, “Um…” but instead of delivering some devastating blow to Jason’s ego, she says, “Sure.”

Sure .

The word sends a pang through Trini’s head, the beginnings of a headache. She frowns, bites her lip and presses the band-aid too hard onto Kim’s shoulder, making her yelp out in pain.

“Jesus, Trin! Be careful.”

When she looks up, Jason is frowning at her. Perhaps over the fact that she’s just (accidentally) hurt Kim, but it doesn’t appear to be the look of someone who’s just asked out Kimberly Hart and gotten a positive response. Trini would be jumping for–

For nothing.

Because she’d never ask out Kim because she’s not that girl. She’s not the kind of girl who develops feelings for her straight best friend. Her first best friend.

Jason smiles. “Great. I…I’ll text you, okay?”

Kim bobs her head. “Yeah, great,” she says and then Jason leaves. He joins Zack and Billy by the ship and they leave together.

It’s quiet for a couple of minutes–just the sound of Trini breathing too harshly for someone who’s literally just kneeling there–and then Kim clears her throat.

“Are you okay?” she asks, like it’s supposed to mean something different. Something deeper.

Trini nods. “Yep. Fine.”

She pulls herself up and grabs her things and it isn’t until she’s soaking wet and running home that she realizes she just stormed off like a character from some stupid teen drama. She stormed off for no damn reason.

Because she doesn’t have a reason, she thinks as she sinks heavily, wet, onto her bed and feels the soak of the sheets beneath the seat of her jeans.

At least, not one she’s willing to consider.

It only gets worse.

Or, weirder, actually, because Trini has absolutely no opinion of Kim going on a date with Jason, so how could it possible get worse?

Answer: it can’t. It can’t get anything because Trini doesn’t care.

“Morning,” Jason greets from beside her locker as she approaches that next morning and she frowns at him. It’s too early for his perky smile, the way his blue eyes shift in the flourescent lights.

She grunts and tugs her locker open, shoves some of Kim’s books aside so she can get her things.

“Was your night okay?”

She has to hand it to him, he’s genuinely trying. He may not be the elected leader she would have voted for as President Power Ranger, but he tries to make sure they’re all on the same page. Even when he’s asking one of them out.

“If you’re looking for Kim, she doesn’t come get books till after third, so you can come back later.”

Jason frowns–this pretty thing that turns down his lips like some Teen Beat poster. “I wanted to talk to you, actually,” he says and Trini ignores him, grabs her books and slams the locker closed. “I have a favor to ask.”

She feels sluggish, weighted down like she’s just been pushed off a cliff and into an unexpected bed of water waiting below. “What kind of favor?”

And the sheepish look Jason gives her is answer enough.

Okay, so it shouldn’t piss her off. There’s no reason for it.

Teen comedies should have taught her that she should do anything for her best friend, even help the guy she’s dating date her. Especially that.

Of course, in a teen movie, she’d probably fall in love with Jason at the end and Kim wouldn’t be a very good person so the audience wouldn’t feel bad that she’s left all alone, but…

Yeah, no. That’s not gonna happen.

“You’re gonna what ?” Zack asks at lunch, halting mid-throw with a tater tot in his hand. The face he’s making is torn between amusement and sincere pity, so Trini looks away–squints until she can just barely see the pile of tater tots he’s been making in the football field down below the bleachers.

“You’re making a mess,” she admonishes, trying to change the subject, but Zack is never so easily swayed.

He frowns and drops his arm. “I’m sorry,” he starts, “but it sounded like you just said you’re helping Jason get ready for his date tonight.”

She looks away, finding something interesting to pick at on the knee of her jeans.

“His date with Kim.”

She frowns.

“The same Kim you’re in love with.”

Except–

“I’m not in love with Kim,” she snarls and Zack nearly looks afraid for a second before a smug look replaces it.

“Mhm,” he hums and looks away. He chucks the tater tot from before and it lands in the same pile in the middle of the fifty yard line.

“I’m not.”

He nods. “I heard you.”

“Yeah, but you don’t seem like you believe me.”

He chucks another one and then turns to meet her eyes. “That’s because I don’t.”

And, well.

She doesn’t owe any sort of explanation to him anyway.

“So,” Kim starts at the end of the day, standing by Trini’s locker and Trini can’t even look at her, can’t bring herself to do it.

Keeps hearing, the Kim you’re in love with, over and over in her head. Zack’s stupid voice.

Stupid words.

Stupid Zack, always making things more complicated.

“Yeah?” Trini prods, because it’s rude to ignore someone you’re not technically mad at. It’s rude to ignore your best friend at all.

“I, um…Have fun with your brothers tonight, I guess.”

That’s when Trini remembers that she’ll be babysitting alone for the first time since before Rita–since before meeting Kim. She’ll have to deal with Diego and Alex not wanting to do their homework on her own and Kim won’t be there after bedtime to watch cooking shows in the dark living room with.

Which is fine.

Because Trini isn’t needy. She doesn’t need to spend every single Friday with Kim like some standing date.

Date.

“Right,” she says and tugs the last of her books out. “Have fun on your date .”

If she spits that last word–if she slams their shared locker door a little too hard–she doesn’t mean to. And it doesn’t mean anything when she’s scared to look back at Kim as she leaves, scared to see her reaction.

At home, she tries to smother herself with a pillow only to be interrupted by a phone call.

“Hey,” Jason says when she answers. He sounds anxious and Trini closes her eyes against her growing migraine. “Could you…I don’t know what to wear. Could you maybe come over and help me?”

Like she’s some sort of dating-Kimberly-Hart expert. Like she’s a dating expert at all .

The clock on her phone says 3:47. The date isn’t until 7:00 .

Trini sighs. “Be there in five minutes.”

Jason answers the door like he’s just run a marathon. He looks sickly, his blue eyes darting around nervously as his hand clasps around her wrist and drags her inside and down the hall to his bedroom.

“Sorry,” he says, once the door is closed. “My mom knows I’m…” He trails off. “And if she sees you, she may think you’re who I’m taking to dinner.”

Trini nods. She gets it.

Mrs. Scott is almost as overbearing as her own mother–something that her and Jason had only just begun to bond over before this whole date fiasco started. Now, she’s–

Now she’s fine. Because this is fine.

Jason is her friend and Kim is her friend and this is totally fine .

“So…You’re taking Kim to dinner then?”

Her curiosity gets the best of her, bubbling up in her chest and her stomach and making her feel antsy. She taps her foot against his bedroom floor and takes a seat on his messy bed, pushing a couple of dirty t-shirts onto the floor to make room for herself.

Does curiosity always feel so nauseating?

Jason crosses his arms over his chest and looks towards his open closet, his messy dresser drawers, all of them pulled out and torn apart. “Yeah,” he says. “That, um…that pizza place over on Maple?”

She nods. Her brother ate seven slices of pepperoni there last month and upchucked on checkered table cloth. Good times.

Of course, she doesn’t tell Jason that because he looks nervous enough already without hearing about her kid brother puking everywhere in the same restaurant where he’s about to take Kimberly Hart on a date.

“You good?” she asks. “You look sick.”

And he does.

Jason nods and uncrosses his arms to wipe his palms on his jeans. “Yeah, I’m good, I’m just…”

But even he doesn’t seem to know what he really is, and the subject is promptly dropped.

“Okay.”

She pulls herself to her feet and edges around him to his closet and pushes around at a couple of flannels he has hung up inside it. “What were you thinking, clothes-wise?” she asks, because all the shirts look pretty much the same, most of them checkered blue and red.

Jason shrugs and he doesn’t seem to know what he’s allowed to do with his hands, because he keeps moving them around–stuffing them in his pockets, running his fingers through his hair, rubbing his face with his palms.

“Dude, are you sure you’re okay?” she asks. “Because, like…You look like you’re gonna ralph”

“I just…” He looks away and then crosses the room to sit in her recently vacated spot on his bed. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do or say tonight. I just feel like…This should be easy, right? If it’s meant to be?“

Trini knows that feeling–feels it pretty much every time she’s left alone with Kim, but it had been the most poignant that first afternoon alone, before they’d defeated Rita. She’d made a fool of herself going out for coffee with the other girl–hadn’t known whether she should hold the door open for her and ended up slamming it shut on Kim’s face. She hadn’t known whether or not she’d been meant to pay for her own half or not and ended up accidentally making Kim pay for the whole thing and then–

It hadn’t been pretty, but she’d like to think it’s gotten simpler since then.

Still not perfect by any means, but definitely not the disaster of that first afternoon.

“Hey, Kim is easy, okay?” Trini says, but it’s a lie and it comes out sounding like some sort of comment about something else entirely. She blushes and Jason gives her an odd look at her phrasing. “What I mean is–” She starts, clearing her throat. “–is that she’s not gonna, like, judge you or anything. She has like endless chances for us weirdos.”

Jason smiles in relief at her words. “Don’t lump me in with you,” he jokes and Trini smiles, the mood suddenly a good deal lighter than it had been mere moments before.

“Just open the door for her. Hold her chair out. Ask her questions, I guess. She doesn’t like to talk about herself unless you make her, but it makes her feel better to do it, so…And she might try to steal your food, but just let her because she makes this really cute face when she thinks she’s gotten away with it.”

Jason is looking at her weird again, his eyes narrowed and Trini looks away, back at his closet.

“How about this one?” she asks, pulling out a button-down shirt that looks exactly like the others.

But Jason seems pleased. He smiles and takes it and makes Trini turn around as he changes.

It isn’t until 6:00 when she’s making sure his hair looks decent that Trini realizes what she’s helping him prepare for.

“Thanks,” he says on his way out, his keys jingling faintly in his hand as he makes his way to his recently-repaired truck.

Trini nods and swallows around the lump in her throat, wonders vaguely if she might be getting sick. Other than the faint, persistent nausea, though, she feels completely fine.

“Have fun on your date,” she says and the words sound wrong coming out of her mouth, leave her tongue feeling heavy.

Jason nods and smiles as he backs down the driveway.

Trini almost follows him. She even starts to–heading down those familiar back roads to Kim’s house–but she stops herself before she gets too far and pulls over on the side of the road.

“What the fuck is happening?” she whispers, head against the steering wheel.

Jason’s tail lights disappear up ahead and it’s only once they’ve completely disappeared that Trini turns around and drives herself home.

Her parents leave at eight for their weekly scheduled date night and her brothers’ long division homework does little to distract her. Trini feels sick–like she’s trapped in some sort of funhouse mirror, stretching and pulling and shrinking again until her insides are a jumbled, sick mess.

Zack texts her once around nine with a stupid meme she doesn’t fully understand and Billy sends a picture of his cat about twenty minutes later with a message that just says, You feel off. Maxwell wanted to say hi. Call me if you need me! :)

The offer’s nice and all, but all it does is remind her of why she feels off. And why she doesn’t want to think about why she feels off.

Twenty minutes after she puts the boys to bed–when she’s flopped back on the couch trying to take some sort of enjoyment in the way Gordon Ramsay is yelling on screen–the doorbell rings.

She contemplates just leaving it. Her dad forgets his keys sometimes and hates pulling out the hide-a-key rock they have by the front stoop because “the neighbors might catch on”, but being forced to out his secret is punishment enough for forgetting them again .

But then it rings again. More insistently. Loud enough to wake Diego and Alex.

She pulls herself to her feet and grumbles all the way to the front door, unlocking it and ripping it open. “Mom, you gotta start making sure he grabs his keys before you guys–” she starts, and then promptly cuts herself off.

Jason is standing on her porch with the shirt she picked out for him tugged up around his elbows. He’s kicking at the wooden steps and shifting his weight and he says, “Hey,” when she sees that it’s him.

That damn lump in her throat is back. “What do you want?” she asks, meaning it to sound harsh, but comes out insecure and a little wobbly.

“I, um…” He shuffles just the tiniest bit closer and his posture very nearly has her pitying him.

“How’d it go?”

The question is out of her mouth before she can even stop herself. Jason’s head tilts up as her words hit him and she gets the answer from the way his eyes drop.

This time, it’s her that tugs him into the house.

They’ve got maybe twenty minutes before her parents get back. Thirty, at the most, but that’s only if her mom decided dessert was worth it for the night and she usually doesn’t, citing that “room for dessert” means you did not have enough to eat at dinner.

Trini rolls her eyes at the thought and realizes too late that Jason must think it’s directed at him.

Which, it is. But only a little.

She doesn’t want to talk about that.

“What went wrong?” she asks and Jason shrugs, tosses his hands up in the air.

“I don’t know!” he says. “It was just…it was weird. I thought maybe…”

He doesn’t have to finish. He’d thought that it wouldn’t be weird, that the stars would finally align because, based on every group dynamic ever made, Fred and Daphne always end up together.

But that metaphor pretty much sucks. Mostly because she’s pretty sure that makes her Scooby.

Jason is too big for her couch. He looks humongous and out of place, but he presses his face to his knees at an awkward angle, and she’s pitying him before she realizes why. Disgust twists in her chest a second later, because a tiny thrill of pride had shot through her when she’d realized the date hadn’t gone well, and what kind of friend does that make her?

“Wanna be specific or am I gonna have to prod the rest of it out of you?”

She pokes his ribs, making him squirm, and then he finally pulls himself upright.

“We didn’t have anything to talk about,” he tells her. “We just sat there for, like, twenty minutes in silence. It was weird! And…I tried to hold her hand on the way into the restaurant and she just…I don’t know.”

Trini’s not sure if that’s meant to convey that Kim had pulled away or that she’d been superbly and shockingly terrible at holding hands in the first place. She’d go with the latter, if only for the comedy of the thought, but she knows it’s not true.

Because she’s held Kim’s hand exactly three times–once after Kim had confessed everything that happened with Amanda two months ago; once on the couch just two weeks ago; and the other just earlier on in the week when they’d been patrolling through the streets for anything strange.

Kim’s hands are warm without being sweaty, soft without being clammy. Her grip isn’t too firm.

It’s not like Trini has held a hundred different hands in her life, but she’s pretty sure Kim’s would be at the top of her list even if she had .

“It just felt wrong,” Jason admits. “And then we talked and I just…I realized why . Or…I don’t know.”

Trini’s head spins. She has so many questions, she’s not sure where to even begin

“Maybe you went about it the wrong way,” Trini tries. She really wants to be supportive because Jason is her teammate and her friend and she wants Kim to be happy. And if Jason can make her happy, then she’s gonna damn well do her best to make sure he does . “She’s…Kim is sorta hard to pin down. It took me a while to get her, but she’s…I don’t know. You’ll get there.”

Jason is quiet for a long time, just kind of slumped over with his face pressed into his hand, his elbow braced on his thigh. Trini isn’t sure what she’s supposed to say and Gordon Ramsay is saying, “You’re a fucking lunatic!” on screen, so she watches him storm out of whatever restaurant he’s trying to fix and waits for the silence to be broken.

But the moment it is, she wishes it hadn’t been. Because Jason says, “You’re a good friend, Trini. You really care about her,” in this super insistent way she doesn’t know what to say to.

“I mean, she’s my friend, so I–” she starts, but Jason’s eyes really should be illegal.

They’re too blue, too easy to turn into watery messes that you can’t turn down.

She sighs. “Yeah, I do,” she says, and it’s at least enough to get him out of her house before her parents get home.

did you guys miss me?

The message comes through while Trini is lying in bed an hour or so later, just kinda staring up at the exposed wood of her ceiling, that messy dent she hasn’t quite gotten around to patching up yet.

Her phone blinds her eyes and she doesn’t know how to say no because the answer is yes.

The boys did, she sends back and it’s read immediately, making Trini’s heart flutter.

Somewhere across town, Kim is lying in bed with her phone open waiting for Trini to text her.

just the boys?

Trini sighs. Yep, she types, then, how was your date with our dear captain? even though she already knows the answer.

It goes unanswered, but read, for probably about two full minutes before Kim finally texts back.

fine, it says, and then, i gotta sleep. see you tomorrow.

Kim, it seems, isn’t anymore willing to talk about what happened, and Trini shouldn’t, but she’s relieved for a moment before the disgust sinks in.

She really is the worst.

I’ll help you, she texts Jason a minute or two later and the response she gets is immediate.

“You seem better,” Billy chirps happily when she swings into detention the next morning.

He’s already at his desk with some homework pulled out, hands folded neatly on his lap, and his smile is impossible to ignore.

“I’m fine, Billy,” she tells him. It’s not necessarily a lie, just a marginal bending of the truth.

He nods. “Okay. Well…Maxwell says hi.” He smirks at his own cleverness and Trini smiles.

“Cool,” she says. “Tell him I said hi back.”

And then she’s in her corner of the room, burying her face in her English homework and ignoring the way Kim’s look burns into her face when she climbs down the steps a minute or two later.

Jason comes slinking down just before Mr. Narvy and he throws a note at Trini’s head as soon as roll call is finished.

what’s the plan? it reads, in scratchy mostly illegible letters.

Trini sighs and glances at the back of his head and then across the room where Kim is sitting, her head lowered over her homework. She’s bouncing her leg like she sometimes does when she’s taking a test in Biology. It’s a movement that Trini has become more than a little familiar with since the beginning of the school year–since before they officially met–and it makes her smile a little distantly.

She scribbles down her plan as quickly as she can manage and chucks it at his head, then pulls out another piece of paper, writing out A wild Jason appears! at the top of it in as close to Jason’s handwriting as she can manage.

It hits the back of Jason’s head with a painful looking thump. He whips around to glare at her in confusion and she just mouths, “Throw it to Kim,” with a particular harsh jut of her head towards the girl in question.

So he throws it to Kim.

It lands on her desk and she immediately stops bouncing her leg, head twisting around to look at Trini, as if the note had come from her, which…it had . But she catches Jason smiling at her instead.

Trini watches the exchange out of the corner of her eye and then the note is being discreetly tossed her way by Jason a second later.

All it says is, hey .

Which, for Kim, is wildly solemn.

Jason is watching her and Trini’s heart is pounding in her ears. The fact that it’s not her own name she’s writing down doesn’t make her feel any better.

Jason uses ASK TO A MOVIE TONIGHT.

Her hands tremble as she waits, which is stupid of course because it’s not like she’s asking Kim out (even if she is ).

Technicalities.

Kim is smiling. Trini can see that cute (what?) little curve of her lips from where she’s sitting. It must be a big smile.

She’s pretty sure she’s having a heart attack.

The answer she gets a minute later is, sounds good!

She should feel proud, maybe. Because she just asked out a pretty girl, because the pretty girl said yes, even though the way she went about it was possibly the dorkiest, quasi-lamest thing she could have done.

It’s not clear what expression she expects from Jason when she sends the note chain back to him with she likes dramas–bring tissues scribbled on the front, but mild disappointment certainly isn’t it.

At least training is cancelled.

A silver lining perhaps, but Kim flakes out after detention and Trini isn’t sure what she’s supposed to do now that she’s gotten Jason another date, so she goes to the mine anyway.

Zack is already there, swinging his legs over the edge of the cliff.

“You look pissed,” he says as she slumps down into the dirt beside him. “How’s the whole Cyrano de Bergerac thing working for you?”

She frowns, momentarily confused and Zack shrugs.

“What?” he asks. “I read.”

Jason calls her a couple of hours later, freaking out about movie times and choices.

“I don’t know, dude,” she says and resists the urge to chuck her phone into a rock.

Zack chuckles humorlessly from his spot on top of the train car. She flips him off.

“It’s like you’ve never dated a girl before,” she says, and it really is.

Not that she has either–not that she has much experience–but she’s been to the movies with Kim. She’s sat beside her in a mostly-dark room with one bucket of popcorn between them and felt the exact same nervousness that’s probably jumping in Jason’s throat right now.

Mostly, she just hates knowing that her and Jason have that much in common, so when he says, “You’re right. It’ll be fine,” a minute later, it’s satisfaction she feels when the line clicks dead.

He doesn’t show up on her doorstep that night, which she takes as a good sign.

For him.

Around ten, he texts her the thumbs up emoji. She doesn’t want to think about what that means.

“How are things with Jason?”

Trini asks it out of obligation, out of some masochistic tendency that she relies on like bad limp. She doesn’t want to know. Or, rather, 90% of her doesn’t want to know. It’s that rogue 10% that would much rather her be left a crying mess on the floor with her hard-to-process feelings.

Except they’re not so hard.

“Good,” Kim says and she’s cradling her paper coffee cup in her hands and exhaling bright, white curling air that spreads upwards, chilled and freezing microscopically.

Trini nods and presses her coffee further between her knees, bundling into her coat and trying to ignore the cold metal of the park bench beneath her legs.

It’s quiet. Trini lets the unspoken reasoning behind her brief, unimportant interrogation settle into the space between them, which doesn’t say much because there’s not much space. Kim’s arm is pressed up against her own and Trini wants to move and doesn’t in equal, confusing parts.

“Are you…” She’s not certain how she wants to ask that. Mostly because she’s only had a couple of days to come to terms with where this has been heading since she met Kim on that stupid cliff two months ago.

Her dumb, teenage heart got away from her and now she can’t so much as look at Kim without imagining Jason kissing her. The thought makes her sick. The thought of Kim with anyone (else) has made her sick for a while now, but she’s only just now begun to understand the reasoning behind it.

“Yeah?” Kim prods and she’s looking at her now.

Trini meets her eyes, but barely–refuses to get lost in the darkness of their color, that beautiful shadow around Kim’s pupils that spins her out of control every time.

Trini tries to hide the severity of the moment by taking a sip of her coffee, wincing at the bitterness, but relishing in its warmth. She’s not sure who’s idea it was to sit in the park in the middle of November, but she’s fairly certain that her nose is never going to be warm ever again.

“Are you going to go out again?” she asks, once the scalding coffee has slipped down her throat.

Kim looks away. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe. If he asks.”

Quiet again.

And then Kim bumps Trini’s shoulder with her own. “The beanie actually makes more sense in the winter,” she jokes and the image of Jason pressing his hands into the graceful convex of Kim’s waist makes her swallow a little more thickly than usual.

Billy brings her some cookies that night, the kind you can find at every other grocery store. The somewhat chalky, sprinkled kind that mostly just taste like processed sugar and food dye.

It’s a nice thought and Trini eats three of them on the couch while Billy sits beside her and reads.

“Is this because Jason and Kimberly are dating now?” he asks and Trini doesn’t think there’s any point in answering because that’s all this has ever been about.

She likes Billy and his gentle voice, the way he’s always trying to perk everyone up, no matter what the circumstance. She especially likes how good he is at it.

“You should talk to Kimberly,” he says a little later and she’s got her head on his shoulder, feeling the way he moves as he chews one of those cookies. “Nothing else is gonna help.”

And of course he’s right. He’s Billy. And Billy is never wrong.

But the timing doesn’t seem right. She doubts that it ever really will.

Kim comes over that night–just hefts herself through Trini’s window like she sometimes does on nights when it’s late and she gets antsy, or when she can’t sleep and knows that Trini will be awake. It’s late and Trini is lying in her bed with the lamp off and the thing is, she’s so used to this at this point that she doesn’t even jump when she hears the window creak open.

(even though the first time it had happened, it had been enough to send her into some sort of Rita-induced PTSD flashback that had taken Kim twenty minutes to talk her down from)

“Sorry,” Kim mumbles, when she knocks a stack of drawings off of Trini’s desk and Trini jumps up to help her gather them.

“What are you doing here?” Trini asks, kneeling on the floor with Kim and pushing papers together like some sort of movie-script meet-cute.

Kim smiles at her sheepishly, her eyes dark in the shadows. “I wanted to see you,” she says and the words thump hotly through Trini’s veins even though the meaning is probably different than what she hears.

What she feels.

“Okay, weirdo,” she mutters, half-joking and then Kim is lying on the covers beside her in her bed.

They’re silent for a long time, Trini’s lip trembling as she tries to figure out the best way to out herself. To say, I want you to date me, not Jason . Without scaring Kim away.

But her confidence unfolds under Kim’s gaze and the feeling leaves her empty as fear creeps up her spine.

And then Kim reaches out and grabs her hand, squeezing her fingers gently. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks. “You’ve been weird lately.”

Trini doesn’t have a good answer for that, not one that has zero chance of sending Kim running into the night. She shrugs. “I’m okay.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Trini sighs, hating the way she feels dizzy and wired at the same time from the mere offer.

“No,” she says. “I’m good.”

Kim doesn’t buy it. She rolls her eyes and then stares Trini down so intensely that Trini has to pull her hand free in order to lessen the severity of the moment.

It’s a teen movie scene, but Trini isn’t the protagonist and by all laws of 90’s rom-coms, Kim should be in Jason’s room right now, sharing this moment with him and not the best friend that is probably in love with her. Maybe.

Because the protagonist should kiss the love interest here. It should be that great moment before the low point, when everything is going okay and then something happens. Something humiliating or just enough that it breaks them apart, that everything is bleak for about ten minutes of screen time before the grand romantic gesture–the running through the streets, the song on the jukebox, the big banner declaring their love.

Trini hates that sort of thing because big moments like that only happen after something awful.

It feels more like a misguided apology than an actual revelation.

For a second, she’s certain that Kim is looking at her lips–that they’re both leaning forward and that she’s moments away from what might be the greatest kiss of her life But–

Nothing happens. Either she pulls away or Kim does or all of it was imaginary in the first place.

“You can talk to me, you know,” Kim tells her, voice soft and careful as it blows through the air between them. “About anything.”

The prospect of it is meaningful, but Trini is fairly certain it would fall apart in practice.

What straight girl would be okay with their best female friend harboring some pretty intense feelings for them?

She has a lot of faith in Kim–this girl lying in bed with her in the dark, who crawled up the side of her house in the middle of the night to ask if she’s okay–but trust can only do so much.

It’s not two days later when Jason comes to her again.

“Okay,” he says, in the middle of the cafeteria, waiting for Trini to figure out if she wants strawberry or chocolate milk. Mostly, she’s trying not to look at him. The milk doesn’t matter. “So the movie thing was great, but we’ve gotta talk tonight. And…we’re okay around you guys, but alone? I don’t know. That’s what was so bad the first time.”

“I can’t help you talk, Jason,” she tells him.

She picks chocolate because she doesn’t want to look at anything pink right now.

“I can help you ask her out, I can tell you what kind of movies she likes, I can tell you that nine times out of ten, she’ll greet you by saying, ‘Wazz poppin’, but I can’t talk for you.”

Billy is sitting at the table and she loves him, she really does.

(hell, she loves all of them, and maybe that’s what’s screwing her over)

But he must hear that last part, because he smiles as they take their seats. “Actually,” he says, “you might be able to.”

“Can you guys tell me what the plan is again? Cause I’m pretty sure it’s stupid, but I want to be really sure, y’know?”

Trini glances over at Zack, sitting on Jason’s bed with this stupid smug look on his face.

She likes him sometimes, but not when he insists on being solely expository.

“So, I’ve got Jason hooked up with a couple microphones and this hidden chest harness for my GoPro and Trini is gonna monitor his date with Kimberly to make sure nothing awkward happens.”

“So…Would you call this a double date?” Zack asks, still smirking. “Or…I guess, a tricycle, maybe?”

Billy looks at him, confused, and then goes back to strapping the harness over Jason’s undershirt, where it’ll be hidden by his button-down and tie.

“Thanks for doing this again, Trini,” Jason says, beaming. “I…I just want tonight to go well. Third date and all.”

“Right.” She swallows around the bile in her throat. “Well, you know me. Resident Kim expert. Here to help.”

Her head is starting to pound and Kim isn’t supposed to arrive for another twenty minutes. There’s something to standing in this room with three boys, preparing one of them for a date with the girl she likes.

Maybe loves.

Or…Whatever.

Doesn’t matter.

Because Kim is her friend . Her best friend and she’s worked for it, so fucking hard for the past two months. She learned how to handle Kim on her own–learned her quirks and her habits–and she didn’t just ask her out on a date in an attempt to wing it and then beg someone else for help.

She doesn’t care, of course. Because if Jason makes Kim happy, then so be it.

She can be supportive.

Witness her being supportive. She feels her eyelid twitch.

Maybe she could fake food poisoning and guilt Kim into taking care of her like she did when she had a cold last month. Kim could make her that cheddar chicken noodle soup again and they watch bad reality TV in Trini’s bedroom and–

That sounds a lot like a date.

Maybe Jason should fake food poisoning.

“How do I look?” Jason asks, turning a little so they can see.

The camera is hidden well behind his tie, but Trini is skeptical on how they’ll even be able to see . Billy looks proud. He claps his hands together.

“Good,” she manages.

The doorbell rings and Jason waves her off to answer it so he can make sure his hair looks alright.

Kim looks beautiful and Trini immediately stops wondering why Jason wanted her to meet him here instead of him picking her up. Stops caring. Because Kim is wearing a skirt and Trini’s seen her legs before, of course, but it’s different like this somehow, in the low light of the cold evening.

She’s shivering too.

“Hi,” Trini says and Kim pushes her way inside.

“Hey,” she says in the foyer, the door still open a little. “Why are you here?”

Her tone is a little more uneven than usual, the inquisition raising up at the end and Trini frowns, trying to think of a good reason.

“Oh, well…being supportive,” she lies. “Zack and Billy are here too.”

Kim nods. “Is Jason ready?”

She seems tense, for some reason. Her shoulders are hiked up higher than usual and her tone is biting now, a little annoyed. Trini has no idea why.

“I think so.”

Silence descends and Trini sniffs, trying to break it, if only for a moment.

It hardly works.

“You look…wow,” she says and Kim brightens a little, her shoulders drooping.

Trini reminds herself that she shouldn’t hurt like this, because she’s doing this for Kim (and for the dizzying rush she gets every time Kim smiles at her now, but she’s trying not to factor that in right now).

“Thanks,” Kim says and her voice is low, hardly a whisper. “So do you.”

Her eyes drop down to inspect Trini’s outfit like she’s never seen it before, even though it’s the same thing she wore to school earlier. The moment is nearly too much. If Kim weren’t dressed and ready for a date with someone else, it would be overwhelming for a lot of reasons.

In any case, Jason comes in a second later and greets Kim with a boyish smile that makes Trini shrink into the corner soundlessly.

“You look great,” he says and Kim smiles–different than the one she’d sent Trini for her similar comment.

“Thank you,” she responds and then they’re out the door, Kimberly sending a little wave as they back out of the driveway and head towards town.

Trini watches them through the window and the moment is so stiff and unyielding for a second that she doesn’t even know what to do.

And then Billy says, “We should probably get ready, huh?” and the moment is broken.

Thankfully.

At least it’s not the pizza place again.

Granted, it’s still Italian food, but that’s pretty much the only kind of restaurants Angel Grove has anymore, as if Rita’s gold monster had had a vendetta against fast food chains or something.

She snorts at the thought of Jason taking Kimberly Hart on a third date to McDonald’s.

“What’s so funny, pip squeak?” Zack asks from the cramped back of her car. His knees are practically in his chest and Trini rolls her eyes at him.

“Nothing,” she says.

Billy has his laptop out and is hooking it up to the camera on Jason’s chest, to the microphone in the pocket of his shirt. “Do you need to be alone?” Billy asks her and she gives him a confused look. “When you woo her? That can get pretty personal.”

Her face flushes and Zack cackles in the back, slapping the seat with the flat of his hand for effect. “I’m not wooing her, Billy,” she says. “I’m just here if Jason needs to phone a friend.”

Billy shrugs and goes back to fiddling with his computer. “If you say so.”

Jason’s truck is in the parking lot of the restaurant, just three down from where Trini is parked. They can see through the windows, but not much further than the front entrance. Jason had held the door open for Kim as they’d gone in and she imagines them holding hands on the table top.

Her stomach twists.

“–sea this time of year,” comes Jason’s voice, suddenly, through the speakers of Billy’s computer.

Trini whips her head around to look and is immediately faced with the somewhat blurry image of Kim across a table. She has her elbow leaned on the tabletop, her chin rested prettily in her palm. Trini sucks in a breath and holds it.

“Yeah, that’s true,” she drawls, sounding bored. “Weather is funky like that.”

Trini smirks at her vocabulary and ignores the look Zack is giving her.

The silence between the two is palpable, even through a damn computer screen. It’s actually a little painful to witness and Trini starts to rethink her entire life leading up to this moment.

“This is not going well,” Billy cuts in as they watch their friends order their food and then return to sitting in silence.

Trini can’t look away from Kim, at the bored, taut expression on her face. The way she keeps looking to her left, where she assumes a window is sitting. She must be eager to leave and Trini feels bad, immediately, for the thrill this realization sends through her.

Suddenly, there’s a loud thump in the speakers and Billy glances at her.

“I think that’s your cue,” he says.

And, it is.

“I don’t think even you can fix this, Trin,” Zack says and she reaches back a hand to shove him just as Billy passes her the speaker they have attached to the tiny earpiece Jason is wearing.

“Hey, Jase,” she says into it and the image of Kim on the screen jostle, as though he’s been started. She rolls her eyes. “It’s me, weirdo. Act natural, or she’s gonna know something is up. Don’t just sit there, weirdo. This is awful. Ask how her day was.”

On the screen, she can see Kim move as Jason clears his throat. “So,” he starts, “how was your day?”

The smile she sends is blinding. “It was okay,” she says. “Coulda been worse. I could have been pushed off a cliff.”

Trini frowns at the reference, at the way it ignites her chest. It doesn’t make sense for to be bringing that up. Not unless Jason knows about their first meeting.

But he doesn’t.

Because he stays silent and then she says, “How was yours?”

“Okay,” he returns.

Silence again. Trini runs a hand through her hair.

“Jesus, dude,” she says into the speaker. “You’ve talked to humans before, right?”

He doesn’t answer, of course, because he can’t, but she hopes the point got across regardless.

“Ask about her interests, okay? Ask what her favorite movie is,” she suggests. “She’s gonna say Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but it’s really ClueTell her you like that movie if she does that, okay? She’ll probably do her Tim Curry impression. It’s cute. You won’t have to pretend to laugh.”

Jason is quiet for a second and then he follows orders.

Now, it’s not just Zack who’s staring at her. It’s Billy, too. And she knows why.

This is ridiculous and super masochistic, but she’s in too deep already. If she can’t have Kim, the least she can do is make sure that whoever does appreciates the right things.

True to form, Kim says Breakfast at Tiffany’s but brightens up the moment Jason mentions Clue. Her laugh is brilliant–this bright, white thing in Trini’s chest–when it comes through Billy’s laptop.

The conversation doesn’t last long enough to make the following silence less unbearable. Trini’s starting to think it’s always going to be back to square one.

Fortunately, their food arrives and that buys her some time.

Not much, but some.

“Dogs or cats?” Jason asks a couple minutes into their meal, as per Trini’s instructions and Kim cites back the answer Trini had already prepared him for verbatim.

For a moment, Trini is able to imagine that it’s her sitting across from Kim at that table, that they’re on their third date and there isn’t any weird tension. That things are perfect and Kim is smiling at her and Zack’s stupid, knowing looks are nowhere near her.

“Just fucking talk about something, man,” Trini says a little later, because she’s getting frustrated beyond reason, now.

It’s almost like Jason is trying to bomb this.

“This is nice,” Jason says. “I’m glad you decided to try this again. I know the first date was…weird.”

And–

There they go.

That doesn’t sound nearly as stilted as the rest of the conversations did.

Kim is nodding and running her fingers through the ends of her hair. Trini can hardly breathe at the sight. “Me too,” she says.

The silence is basically square one. Kim and Jason’s super weird reset button that gets pressed every thirty seconds.

“Can I ask, though,” Kim says and Billy glances over at her. Trini frowns at him, looks back at the screen. “What do you want this to be?”

Jason must wiggle or something because the camera jostles a little too violently and then slants to the side.

Zack tugs the speaker from Trini’s hand and says, “Yo, dude, you fucked the camera up,” into it.

Jason must hear, too, because he says, “I…Can you give me a second? My phone is buzzing.”

It definitely isn’t, and the frown Kim gives him is a good indicator that she knows it, but Jason gets up from the table anyway and Trini watches (sideways) as he pushes his way through the dining room and out the side door. When she looks up through the windshield, he’s there, barreling towards her car in shaky, frightened movements that almost seem over exaggerated.

She rolls the window down and Billy gets out of the car to adjust the camera.

“It’s like you want her to figure out I’m out here feeding you lines,” Trini tells him and Jason gives her this weird look she can’t interpret.

She doesn’t have the mental capacity for it right then.

“How am I supposed to answer that question?” he asks, sounding panicked.

Trini sighs. “You don’t know what you want from this?” she asks and Zack peeks his head around the chair, pressing his temple into hers, but she doesn’t push him away. “Why did you even ask her out, then?”

That, somehow, seems like a harder question for him. His eyes widen in alarm.

“Okay…” She sighs again and pushes her forehead to the steering wheel for a moment, thinking over her options. “Go back in,” she says. “Go in there and I’ll…I’ll help you, okay?”

Jason nods and Billy finishes fixing the camera.

“Thank you,” he half-whispers, and then he books it back inside.

“Sorry about that,” they hear over the laptop.

Kim smiles placidly. “Sure. Everything okay?”

Jason doesn’t respond, which must mean he nodded or something. “To answer your question,” he starts a second later, and Billy pushes the speaker into her hand again. Zack pulls his head away and then looks out the window.

Trini closes her eyes.

“To answer your question,” she repeats, buying him time like he’s thinking because she’s thinking. She’s lining up all her reasons in a row.

Because she shouldn’t have signed up for this. This stupid, pathetic third-wheel living where it’s almost like she’s on a date with Kim if she squints her eyes and tilts her head.

She’s not . Jason is.

Jason is on his third date with Kim, to be specific.

And that hurts more than she’ll ever be able to compromise.

She doesn’t know why he wants to date Kim, that’s part of the problem. But she has her own reasons. And she’ll never tell them to Kim, never say them out loud in any way that means anything. But maybe this is enough for now.

“I wanna be with you, Kim. I…I wasn’t sure for the longest time. I thought…I thought if I told myself enough times over that what I felt for you wasn’t real, then it couldn’t hurt me. You couldn’t hurt me, but…”

She trails off, and she’s not certain, but she doesn’t think she can hear Jason repeating her. She looks to Billy for help, but he doesn’t seem perturbed by it, which must mean nothing is wrong.

So she presses on.

“I think I’m the only person I can’t lie to. Not really. And I think you’re a close second,” she says. “I wanna be with you. Only you. For as long as you’ll have me. Because…because when I met you, it wasn’t anything special. Not that first time. But every time since then has been something else. You are something else. And I–”

Her voice cracks and her hands are shaking. Zack is breathing down her neck like he wants to reach out and comfort her, but doesn’t know enough to.

“I wanna go on a hundred bad dates with you. A thousand good ones. You’re worth every moment. Even the bad ones.” She takes a shaky breath and she can hear Jason on the other end.

She can hear him say, “This is what I was trying to tell you,” which is a good enough ending for what she’d been trying to say.

When she looks up at the screen, Kim is staring at what she assumes must be Jason’s head–that spot right above the actual camera–and her eyes are watering a little. If it’s something she can see through the pixelation, she gathers it must be a pretty emotional response.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s enough for me.”

And then her eyes finally lock onto the camera. The same camera that’s supposed to be hidden, that she’s not supposed to know about.

“Where is she?” she asks and Trini’s heart beats out a confused, panicked tempo in her ears.

“What?” she asks, no one in particular.

“Outside,” Jason says. “She’s right outside.”

“Can she hear me?”

Trini whips her head over to look at Billy, who is staring at her expectantly. To look back at Zack who is also watching, also waiting.

Kim is looking into the camera at her and her mouth is opening like she’s going to say something–like she’s going to finish off whatever cruel joke this is.

She could hear her?

So, Trini does what she always does–that fun thing she’s never been fully proud of.

She opens her car door, gets out, and runs all the way home.

By the time she gets home, she can’t feel her legs, which she’d be worried about, but she can’t even wrap her mind around anything other than the memory of Kim’s voice saying, can she hear me, can she hear me, can she hear me. Her front porch light is off and her parents are upstairs no doubt, her brothers in bed already.

Trini doesn’t want to go inside. Can’t even bring herself to it.

She slumps down on the porch and closes her eyes, grits her teeth, tries to focus.

Kim had heard her say all of that. Jason had somehow turned whatever radio connection that had into some sort of grand public humiliation event. She’d guess, based on Zack and Billy’s looks that they’d known, too. That they’d known it was coming.

Jason must have figured out her feelings for Kim and decided to teach her a lesson. It was only a matter of time.

Her hands tremble.

“Trini!”

And Kim–always Kim–is running down the street after.

That grand romantic gesture she never wanted, because it means the other person messed up. Because it means things are far from perfect.

Trini stands up, fists balled at her side, and wills herself not to cry. “What do you want?” she snarls. “Come to get a good laugh?”

Kim steps back from where she’s stopped in front of her and it’s unfair that Trini aches for her to come back immediately, to be closer. “I’m not here to laugh at you, Trini,” she says, but it’s not convincing.

“Oh, sure.”

She turns on her heel, intent on going inside to hide away from all of this. To possibly stop being a person forever.

Sorry to inform you that Trini’s existence has been cancelled altogether. Thank you for your understanding .

“Trini!” Kim says and Trini is drawn to her. Always. She stops walking halfway up the porch steps, but she doesn’t turn around. Not yet. “Why did you run?”

“Why do you think , Kim?”

She can practically see the cogs moving in Kim’s head, the way she starts to put things together. Still, it takes her a minute.

“Jason meant well, I think! He…I didn’t know what he was doing. I thought he just–”

She cuts herself off and then laughs, a little self-deprecating and Trini finally turns.

“What are you talking about?” she asks, eyebrows drawn together in confusion.

“I’m…” Kim looks beautiful in the streetlight, in the harsh light of the moon above them–dark hair haloed somehow. Trini scoffs and crosses her arms. “I…Did you mean all that stuff? The stuff you said?”

“No,” Trini says immediately. “I was just helping Jason.”

Kim quirks an eyebrow and takes one solid step forward. “You didn’t mean any of it?”

Trini shrugs and looks away. The trees in her yard are far more interesting.

“Jason…I told him, that first date when things got all weird, that I thought I knew the reason why it felt wrong…And he offered to talk to me about it just so I could…I don’t know, process I guess. I think I only said yes to him out of expectation. I think he only asked me out of expectation. We…We’re better as friends. We’d be a dating disaster.”

Trini wants to say that she’s pretty sure her and Kim are already off to a worse start.

“And I know why now,” Kim continues. “Because…Because I want all that stuff with you, too. Every part of it. You’re…You’re the one I want to be with, Trini. If you’ll have me.” When Trini doesn’t answer, she barrels on with defenses, with excuses. “I guess…It’s super fucked up, but Jason was trying to help, I think. I told him that I didn’t think you had a clue about this… thing… between us, and I think he wanted to help you realize it’s there, too.”

She smiles and Trini fights the urge to return it.

The whole thing is fucked up. And sure, Jason and her might have meant well by it–Zack and Billy, too, no doubt because they’d absolutely had to have been a part of this–but…

Kim takes another step forward and the toe of her shoe bumps into the bottom of the steps. “I didn’t know what he was doing until he came back in and…and he told me to listen and…Trini, I would never–”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Trini snaps, cutting her off. She knows how that sentence was going to end. “I’m gonna kick his ass. We don’t live in an episode of Friends. I thought…I thought I was never going to get a chance with you.”

Her fists are still clenched and she’s shaking and she can’t even really process her anger because she’s feeling too many things, holding them all in.

“You could have just talked to me about this. You didn’t need to go to a guy you just fucking went on a date with.”

“That’s bullshit, Trini!” Kim fires back, angry. “You…I thought you were either being a bitch about it or were just super naive. I thought it was obvious what was happening between us and you just…refused to acknowledge it. What was I supposed to think? I didn’t want to lose you!”

The words are harsh in the cool night air and Trini is certain right then that her and Kim might break each other apart a hundred times over before they ever start to fix each other back up.

“No more secrets between us if we’re going to do this, okay? I…I come to you and you come to me and that’s how it’s gotta work.”

Trini’s mind sticks to the if we’re gonna do this part, playing on an endless loop as she stands there.

“From now on, we talk to each other. Deal?” Kim says this with some degree of feeling Trini has never felt for herself.

She shakes her head. “Deal.”

They’re silent for a moment, but a different silence than that awkwardness during her and Jason’s not-date.

“Cards on the table–did you mean all of that? About wanting everything?” Kim asks. “Even the bad moments?”

Trini stares at her in disbelief for a moment and then smiles, tiny and afraid. She takes a step down, closer, hovering just by Kim and murmurs, “Of course I do, you idiot,” and Kim leans up, closer to Trini’s face, closer and closer until she’s all Trini can see and feel and know.

And her lips brush against Trini’s cheek, then jaw.

Trini’s arms come uncrossed and then her hands are on Kim’s shoulders, fingers tightened in her jacket and Kim presses those lips to her jaw one more time as Trini tugs her up, whispering, “Trini,” so quietly it nearly gets lost as Trini finally kisses her and lets her grip loosen.

Zack’s, “Where’s my thank you?” gets him a punch in the gut right there in the middle of the hallway the next day at school. Billy gets a half-glare (because it’s impossible to be mad at him) and Jason gets the cold shoulder for half the day and a couple of well-timed, vulgar hand gestures when she catches him throwing his puppy dog eyes her way.

Kim gets three kisses before lunch and a couple of admonishing comments whenever Trini passes one of the boys in the hallway.

“Punish me, too,” Kim says. “I’m just as bad.”

She means it seriously, but too much time around Zack twists the comment in Trini’s head and she wiggles her eyebrows until Kim kisses her again, right against their shared locker.

At lunch that day, Jason slides a note over that just says, A wild apology appears! Jason uses SORRY I FUCKED UP.

She rolls her eyes at him, but it’s hard to stay mad when he so desperately needs a haircut–when the ends of his bangs are starting to curl by his eyes.

A couple minutes later, she steals his pre-packaged cookie and Kim is holding her hand under the table, so when he says, “It’s super effective!” she lets it slide.

It’s not ineffective .

She doesn’t really forgive Jason.

Tells him as such that next day at training and then sidesteps a putty so that he gets his ass handed to him on a silver platter.

“Yeah, I um…” he says later, with a bloody nose and one hand messing through his hair. “I guess I deserve that, huh? That was…really…”

Bad , Trini wants to finish.

Later, though, it’s hard to remember why she was ever angry in the first place when Kim has her pressed into her bedroom door once they get to her house, before it’s even fully closed. By that point Jason is nowhere even close to her thoughts.

(nothing regarding him really is, actually)

Still, though, it’s basically the worst way they could have ever gotten together.

One of them, anyway. But Trini figures it had to happen sometime.

And at least it didn’t start on a Thursday.

…

#i did this from tumblr mobile #cause i'm on vacation #you should be proud #trimberly #trimberly fic #technically not fake dating #or sorta #whatevs #andawaywego fanfic #10k #trimberly week day 1

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barbie-verse · 7 years

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Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Power Rangers (2017), Lemonade Mouth (2011) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Kimberly Hart/Trini Kwan, Kimberly Hart/Trini (Power Rangers 2017) Characters: Trini (Power Rangers 2017), Trini Kwan, Kimberly Hart, Zack Taylor Additional Tags: Trimberly Week, lemonade mouth au, Alternate Universe, idk how to tag, there's a little language, more tags to be added as I update, Trimberly Week - Day 1 Summary:

A Lemonade Mouth Au that was meant to be for Trimberly Week but who knows when I'll update

#Trimberly Week #Trimberly #Lemonade Mouth #fanfic #Power Rangers #hey guys pls read this fic #i worked hard on it #Trimberly Week Day 1 #30th #July #2017 #July 30th 2017

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zephyroh · 7 years

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Trimberly Week - Day 1 // Coffee Shop - Read on AO3

‘I think I’m witnessing this girl having a mental breakdown.’

Trini leaned against the counter as she hit ‘send’, then resumed to covertly watch Kim at her table. She had mentioned the girl to Zack briefly after her previous shift. He obviously teased her for having a crush on her — ‘if you had seen her, you’d get it’, she had simply answered, not in the least embarrassed — but she felt the need to share the sight in front of her with him.

Panic! At The Coffee Shop

Trini’s head popped up as she heard the front door of the shop open loudly. She sighed as she put her costumer face on. She had twenty minutes left off her shift and all she wanted was some peace and quiet before going back home.

The coffee shop, located on the campus, was almost empty at this hour. Students usually favored the library rather the shop in the evenings. Except, apparently, for the girl who had just came in, and seemed to be in quite a rush.

She had her head down, phone in hand, and headed straight for the counter without even looking up.

“Hi, I need coffee!”, she announced with a voice that Trini would only describe as “panicked”.

“Yup, that’s usually why people come here.”, Trini simply replied with a bored voice. That made the girl finally look up from her phone, and Trini thanked her habit of always maintaining a perfect composure as well as her trained poker face because damn she was gorgeous. She was slightly out of breath, short-ish black hair all over the place and soft eyes, despite the panicked look on her face.

She just looked straight at Trini, agape, blinking a few times but without saying a word for a while, before snapping out of it and blurting out, a bit flustered:

“Yeah, right- umm sorry. A large latte, with sugar and soy milk, please. Name’s Kim.”

The barista felt an amused smile growing on her lips at the mess of a girl in front of her. While she was typing the order, and starting to prepare it, she heard the girl’s phone ringing. She couldn’t help but let out a chuckle when she heard “Go! Go! Power Rangers!” blasting out of the device.

“Jason!”, she practically shouted, picking up the call. “Where the fuck are you? This is an emergency! Like Defcon 5 emergency!”.

As she was stirring up the coffee while pouring the warm milk in it, Trini frowned at the analogy. She was pretty sure that girl had no idea what she was talking about. Her doubts were rapidly confirmed when the girl responded to what her interlocutor was saying – probably the exact same thing Trini was thinking.

“I don’t care about this Defcon shit, it doesn’t even make sense! Bring your ass over here!”. She hung up the phone dramatically, turning to Trini with a desperate sigh. The small girl had to hold back another laugh because she thought her behavior was adorable, but it was probably not the moment to mess with her.

The girl thanked her – and Trini’s stomach was a little too happy at the smile she gave her – before walking to a table, sitting down. And then she proceeded to smash her forehead against the table with a loud whine.

__________________

Kim’s leg was bouncing up and down relentlessly as she was staring at her phone. How long did it take to cross the campus on a fucking bike? She took a long sip of her drink and relished at the sweet taste. She shot a discrete look at the cute barista — she had almost drooled when she had looked up from her phone to order her coffee, and was dead embarrassed at the way she had stopped functioning for a second. She hoped the barista hadn’t noticed, but wasn’t too confident about that

However, losing her means in front of a cute girl was the least of her problems right now. She needed Jason like, yesterday. On cue, the doorbell rang, announcing someone entering the shop. For the third time in ten minutes, Kim’s abruptly turned around on her seat to see who it was. She already had three false hope, and was starting to lose it — well, more than she already had.

Her body flooded with relief at the sight of her best friend’s familiar combo of red jacket and blond hair. As he was approaching, she shot up from her seat and launched herself into his arms, making him almost trip. Taking a step back to balance the weight, Jason laughed into her hair.

“Well, someone’s happy to see me!”

They parted and he took the seat in front of her. Judging by the state of panic of his friend, he asked worriedly. “So, what’s going on Kim? You’re freaking me out a little. Well, more than usual.”

“Okay so, I’m in trouble.”, she answered with a trembling voice. “Like huge trouble. As in more that the time I stole my dad’s car to go to the beach party and crashed it into a street light while drunk. Or more than the time I made you climb up the neighbor’s wall and you broke your leg. Or more than the time we set the couch on fire.”

“The time you set the couch on fire. I vividly remember telling you playing with that many candles was a bad idea. Like all of your ideas actually”, he corrected with a stern tone. Kim merely rolled her eyes, sweeping the comment with a wave of hand. “If you’ve killed someone, I am not taking Billy’s van to help you bury the body, he’d freak if there was blood on it.”, he added in a mocking tone, hoping to calm her down. It didn’t work.

“My parents want to visit next week”, she deadpanned with a grave tone.

Jason raised one eyebrow, expectantly. “… And? It’s not that terrible.”

“Remember when I told you my parents weren’t happy about my choice in college?” Jason nodded, waiting for the follow up. “I actually didn’t tell them I registered here.”

Jason’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He just stared at her, flabbergasted, as she avoided his gaze.

“You— you didn’t tell them you dropped out of med school?”, he whispered strongly, as if Kim’s parents would hear them if he spoke too loudly.

“No, I did not! Why are we whispering?”, she answered in the same tone.

Jason slapped his right palm against his forehead, at loss for words. He knew Kimberly was reckless and often acted without thinking about consequences, but this one took the fucking cake. He rubbed his eyes roughly, and his heart melted at the sight when he re-opened it. Kim looked so desperate, and he knew about her difficult relationship with her parents, so he could understand why she wouldn’t want tell them.

He reached to grab her hands in his own, gently rubbing them with his thumbs to reassure her.

“You’re gonna be alright, okay?”

Kim shot him a small, thankful smile. She knew she could always count on him to help her through awful situations — situations she’d often put herself in.

__________________

Trini rubbed firmly the back of her neck and her shoulders as she looked at the clock. Forty minutes left. Her feet were hurting, and she was having murderous urges after the last customer had complained about his drink for five whole minutes because it wasn’t lukewarm enough. She hated people. All of them. She couldn’t wait to strip out of her uniform and go slouch on Zack’s bed to watch Netflix.

Her heart sank when she heard the doorbell ring and the door open, cursing internally whoever just came in… just to lighten up — always internally of course — when she saw the girl from the other day step in. She still had her leather jacket on, and this time was wearing what Trini made out to be a tank top that let her see the pink of her bra-stripes. She didn’t have to force a smile when the girl reached the counter.

She looked less panicked that the day before, but not very collected either. She was nervously tapping the wooden counter with maroon painted nails as she ordered with a strained voice.

“Hi! A large latte with sugar and soy milk please.”

“Are you sure?” Trini couldn’t stop the words from coming out of her mouth.

“Pardon?”, the girl asked with a confused look, tilting her head — and Trini couldn’t help but notice again how cute she looked.

“No offence, but you look like your heart is about to give out”, the barista explained.

“Yeah, exactly, that’s why I need my coffee.” Trini frowned at the unexpected answered, and the girl continued as to answer the unasked question. “Coffee helps me calm down.”

“Yeaaaah, I’m not sure that’s how it works, physiologically speaking.”

“Well, it works, psychologically speaking, and that’s good enough for me,” she fired back with a wink, and Trini happily gave up the argument.

“For… Kim, right?” Trini congratulated herself when she saw the girl’s pleased – and maybe even flustered – smile.

“Attentive, I like it… Trini.” Trini didn’t know if it was the playful tone, the way Kim leaned on the counter or the smirk on her lips, but she lost her composure for a second and her heart skipped a beat. Thankfully, the girl must have mistaken her little gay panic for confusion because she gestured Trini’s apron. “You have a name tag.”

A minute later, Kim sat at the same table as before, and Trini noticed she was bouncing her leg again. ‘That poor girl must have a stressful life’, she thought. She remembered wondering what she and the blond boy — probably her boyfriend from the way she jumped in his arms, Trini had noted with disappointment — were talking about the last time, because from afar it looked pretty animated.

Trini caught herself staring at Kim for the rest of her shift.

__________________

Kim yawned loudly, covering her mouth with her hand as she tried to smother the shiver running down her spine. She was striding through campus, heading toward what was starting to become her lair. Good wi-fi connection, unlimited amount of food and coffee, and a cute barista to look at, who would ask for more?

She usually went after her last class in the early evening, but this morning she was too tired to function without a little help. Her stress and the thought of seeing her parents soon had kept her up all night; she needed caffeine to get through the day, to stay awake more than to calm her down this time.

She barely tried to hide her smile as she noticed that Trini was behind the counter. Nor did she try to contain her flirty attitude when she ordered her usual drink and a muffin. She also intentionally brushed her fingers against Trini’s when the small girl handed her the receipt. She was almost proud of herself at her successful move when she tripped on her feet as she was turning away, dropping her muffin and almost spilling her drink all over the floor, letting out a loud “Fuck!”.

She sighed out of desperation — she was so done with herself — as she bended over to pick up her muffin, and her mortification only grew stronger when she heard Trini’s light laugh behind her.

She turned and shot her a fake mad look. “Shut up! Not even one word.”, she ordered but couldn’t hold back the embarrassed laugh in her throat.

Trini playfully mimicked zipping her lips before winking, and Kim almost tripped again before settling down at her usual table.

However, her mood considerably darkened when she felt her phone vibrate, the screen reading a text from her mother. “We’ll be here in a couple of days, not sure when yet. Eager to see you. Love, Mom.”

The very same feeling of dread that had kept her up all night crept back into her bones. She dropped her head in her arms with a whine. She was starting to make it a habit of it.

She was joined a few minutes later by Jason, and his ever so calm composure, the opposite of Kim at that moment. He offered her a sympathetic smile when he saw her frantic state.

“Be careful, or you’re gonna get white hair sooner than you should.”, he joked, sitting down to face her. She ignored the comment, reaching to take a sip of her drink. When she put down the cup, she had the most serious look on her face, which was rapidly contradicted by her following words:

“So I thought about my problem, and I’ve come up with the only possible outcome that’ll get me out of this mess.” She paused for dramatic effect, and Jason raised an unimpressed eyebrow, half-convinced by what was going to come next. He knew her too well. “I’m gonna fake my death and move to Canada.”, she finally revealed.

Jason threw his head back, letting out an exasperated groan. He rubbed his forehead, taking a deep breath, then looked back at Kim with a pleading look.

“Kim, when are you gonna learn to take responsibility for your actions. You can’t run away from all your problems.”

“Yes, I can, Mom!”, she mocked. “I can sell the apartment, take the car and never return.”

“You wouldn’t even know how to fake your death!”, he argued before realizing he should not be encouraging this discussion.

“Errrr, yes I would. I’ve watched ‘Gone Girl’ like three time, I’m pretty sure I have the basis covered,” she countered proudly. Jason just threw his arms in the air, at loss for words.

“It’s too early for this, I need coffee. Want a refill?”, he asked as she nodded vigorously.

He returned a few minutes later, with a smirk on his lips and a question in his eyes.

“Kim…,” he teased, “How come the barista knows your name and your coffee order? How many times have you even been here?”

All he got in response was a bashful smile.

__________________

‘I think I’m witnessing this girl having a mental breakdown.’

It was eight in the morning — her only morning shift that week since she’d always ask her manager to not put her down for openings — she had not been in a good mood. Trini was not a morning person, and her tolerance for customers decreased exponentially the earlier she had to get up. Except this day, because this morning the beautiful Kim had walked into the shop again, and Trini was not about to complain. Trini was pretty sure the girl had flirted with her, before tripping on her own feet, and Trini had decided she could definitely just watch this girl for an entire day and she’d never be bored.

As if on cue, she witnessed Kim burying her head in her crossed arms with a loud whine — and it was definitely not the first time Trini had heard her make that sound.

‘You should probably not be turned on by that, Crazy Girl :p’ She rolled her eyes at her best friend’s answer.

Trini looked up again to see Kim stretching — her tank top slightly rising to uncover a tanned skin, allowing Trini to catch a glimpse of toned abs —, her hands combing through her hair. Trini’s breath stopped for a second, and she had never been so glad to have a morning shift.

Her mood however deteriorated when the door opened to let the blond boy walk in. She turned and went into the back store to get some coffee beans to grind, and mostly avoid watching the two together. It wasn’t that she was jealous per say, she barely knew Kim. But she had to admit it was a little frustrating to have her flirt with Trini, just to run into her boyfriend’s arms the next minute.

When she got back, he was standing at the counter, waiting patiently with a polite smile. Trini cursed him in her head. She barely nodded her head to acknowledge him, not even bothering to greet him. He didn’t seem to mind or notice.

“I’ll take an espresso, for Jason, and my friend over there would like a refill of-”, he started but Trini mechanically interrupted him.

“Large latte with sugar and soy milk for Kim, got it.”

Jason merely raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then a wide amused grin grew on his lips and he looked delighted for reasons Trini did not understand.

They left a few moments after, all playful and teasing, knocking each other shoulder and Trini felt a pang of jealousy — she had to admit it — when the Jason guy ruffled Kim’s hair as she was giving him a beaming grin.

The rest of the day passed by painfully slowly. She had a long lunch break during which her manager Rita called her. She was sick and couldn’t work today, and they were still understaffed so Trini had to pick up her shift, meaning she was going to have to close the shop. A whole day of work at Krispy Kreme, how wonderful… At least she’d be payed extra. Near the end of the day, she was texting Zack, raging over Blond Perfect Jason and asking if he still had weed for the night when the door opened.

Trini’s secret prayers were answered when she caught sight of Kim’s leather jacket and purple bra-stripes. And when Kim shot her a soft smile, Trini forgot all about Jason. The barista noticed that the girl looked more tired than desperate this time, and Trini couldn’t decide which was better. She didn’t even wait for Kim to place her order to start preparing the drink, and the grateful look on Kim’s face as Trini handed it to her was totally worth it.

“On the house tonight”, she said with a wink. “You come here like twice a day, it’s the least we can do for our most faithful costumer. Besides, you look like you really need it.”

Kim chuckled lightly at the comment. “Is that your way of telling me I don’t look good?”

Trini rolled exaggeratedly her eyes, trying to contain the endeared smile on her lips. “Fishing for compliments now? Like you need anyone to tell you you look ho-good! Tell you you look good”, she stuttered, trying vainly to look detached like she hadn’t just called Kim “hot”.

But then again, the smirk on Kim’s lips was worth it.

Two hour later, Trini was finishing up tidying up behind the counter and preparing to close. When she looked up, she saw Kim was the last person there, crouched over papers and books, two empty cups of coffee lying there and a half eaten cookie.

Trini shamelessly ate her up with her eyes, taking in the way Kim’s hair was falling in front of her eyes, how the girl’s hand mechanically reached to tuck them behind her ears, how she frowned in a terribly cute manner at her books when she was focused. She couldn’t help but notice how red her lips were from biting, and how her hands were always busy playing with her pen.

She was however disturbed in her contemplation when Kim’s phone rang, breaking the bubble the girl was in. Kim picked up her phone, her eyes widening with horror when she saw the ID of the caller. She forcefully put her phone down, screen facing the table, letting it ring and vibrate against the wood.

Concerned as the now too familiar panicked look on the girl, Trini left the counter to approach the table. Kim acknowledged her with a small smile, and Trini noticed the girl was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Hey, everything’s alright?”, she asked and mentally cursed herself at such a lame question. Everything was obviously not alright.

“I think I’m having a panic attack.”, Kim answered, almost calmly.

“You’d know if you were having one.”

“A small one then!”

“You can’t have ‘small’ panic attacks.”

“I think I have at least one once a day, actually,” she retorted and Trini couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of this girl.

She tentatively reached her hand across the table, brushing against Kim’s finger. Kim immediately turn her wrist to let Trini have access to her palm.

“Wanna talk about it?”, the barista asked with concern. Kim’s eyes were focused on their joined hands, the frown never leaving her face. The phone stopped ringing.

Analyzing the look on Kim’s face as she was studying the way their hands fit together, Trini was starting to think that maybe the girl’s constant state of panic was about that. Not about her specifically, but college was a time where people were starting to discover more about themselves. And the first day, things seemed pretty tense with the Jason guy… Maybe Kim was discovering herself, and she had trouble dealing with it. Trini had to shut down the little voice in her head saying she would love to discover Kim herself.

After a long moment of silence where Trini could almost see the turmoil in Kim’s head, the taller girl finally whispered:

“Have you ever felt so lost that you just want to bury yourself in your bed and never leave for the next decade?”

“About three times a week, yeah,” Trini laughed. Kim’s lips twitched up, but she kept frowning.

“I just– My parents are gonna be in town soon and I have something to tell them. And hell’s gonna break lose. And I’m just not ready for it. “

Trini felt a pang of pain in her chest. She definitely knew what Kim was talking about. She had felt the same thing during high school, never knowing how to talk to her parents about her girlfriends, or her life in general. Now she was away, they never talked much about it, but she felt much better now that she didn’t have to see them every day and carry the weight of it every day. Recently her dad had called her and asked at the end of the conversation if she had “someone” in her life, as opposed to her mother stubbornly asking about “boys”. So, maybe there was hope somewhere.

“Maybe they’ll be more understanding than you think,” she tentatively suggested.

Kim chuckled humorlessly. “Yeah, right. I think they’ll just break out the body bag because they’re gonna straight up murder me.”

“They’re your parents, in their own way, they surely love you. I mean, if they’re coming to visit you at college, which – correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t wanna assume – they paid for, they care about you and your well-being. Maybe it’s not gonna be that bad.”

Kim ran her free hand through her hair – at Trini’s delight – and let out a noncommittal groan. “Yeah, Jason said the same thing…”

Trini frowned at the mention of the boy. But if he gave this advice to Kim, he wasn’t as bad as Trini had think – had hoped.

“They’ll learn to accept yourself as you are. You have to start to accept yourself as well,” Trini continued, and she realized she was still caressing Kim’s hand as she was speaking.

“I guess…” Kim said, unconvinced, a small confused smile as she was having trouble following Trini. “But no offence, considering the – situation”, Kim hesitated, trying to find the right word. “and knowing my parents, I really don’t see that discussion going well.”

“You have to make them understand you’re not gonna change.” Trini squeezed Kim’s hand in comfort. “Besides, it’s not like it was uncommon, and it’s becoming more and more accepted. They’ll get over it, eventually.”, she added with a hopeful tone – half talking to herself as well.

She had felt so alone during high school, thinking she was the only one in the world with those weird feelings, it had been a lifesaver to find LGBT organization and associations in college. Maybe they would help Kim as well.

Kim’s head popped up, meeting Trini’s eyes for the first time of the conversation. This time, she looked completely lost and confused.

“Wait– what?”

Trini noted the edge of panic back in her voice. Maybe she had come in too strong, she thought with guilt.

“Well, you know… the whole gay or bi thing.”, she finally let out.

Kim froze, eyes wide. For a second, Trini thought that she was going to get angry, that she’d panic even more and lash out. However, Kim’s reaction was totally unexpected and took her by surprise.

She threw her head back, laughing with an open throat. Her hand let go of Trini’s as she brought it to her mouth, while the other was gripping her ribs. It took about two whole minutes for Kim’s laughing fist to calm down in front of a very confused Trini.

Kim was wiping tears from her eyes as she started to apologize. “I’m so sorry, I just did not expect that. At all. I didn’t mean to be rude!”, she managed to let out between two giggles, kind of cancelling her apologies. She took a deep breath, effectively calming down. “You thought I was gonna come out to my parents?”, she asked with an amused smile.

Trini covered eyes with one hand, wincing with embarrassment. She felt like a total idiot. “Obviously, I’ve misjudged the situation.”, she stated, scratching her head.

Finally looking up, she felt her humiliation disappear because Kim was smiling gently at her, and was reaching her hand across the table to touch Trini’s hand again.

“Obviously,” Kim laughed softly. “Well not totally. Because I did come out to my parents a while ago. That hasn’t been much of a problem for me actually. I’ve always known I wanted to do like, half the football team as well as half the cheerleading squad.” Trini almost choked with laughter at the casual way Kim was putting it. Kim frowned as she realized the crassy way she formulated it “Hold on, that came out a bit wrong.”

“If that’s how you announced it to your parents, I bet!”

They both laughed, their hand never parting. After a moment of silence, Trini finally asked in a more serious tone:

“So, what do you have to tell your parents?”

“They think I’m in med school. I’ve actually dropped out last year because I hated it, but never told them,” Kim explained, the frown back of her face. “They’re big lawyers, always busy, always on business trip. So they just send me money to compensate. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great not to have to worry about that. But they want me to be this successful surgeon, keep up the family name, but I hated it, I was miserable. So one day, I just dropped out, and registered here.”

“Just like that, on a whim? Just– change college and your entire orientation?”, Trini asked bewilderedly.

“I’ve always been reckless and impulsive, you can ask my best friend Jason!”, Kim laughed in response. Trini interiorly cheered at the mention of “best friend” and suddenly she didn’t hate Jason anymore. “But three days ago, they called and said they wanted to visit, so I’m screwed and I’m probably living my last hours right now.”

Trini laughed at the girl’s dramatic antics. Her heart beating fast in her chest, she returned playfully “I might know a way or two to make them fun.” For an instant, she thought Kim was actually going to die of her heart attack right in front of her.

The girl gasped, then blushed furiously, biting her lips and running her hand in her hair, before finally meeting Trini’s eyes and answering with a sparkle in her eyes: “What are you suggesting?”

“Is your roommate there tonight?” Trini hated herself for breaking the mood, but they would need to be alone to do what she had planned for them, and a roommate would get in the way.

“I’m not living on campus actually, I have an apartment not far from here,” Kim answered breathlessly. She hurried in stuffing her books in her bags, trying and failing to not look flustered.

“Oh, so you really are loaded,” Trini laughed, impressed.

She stood up gesturing the door. “Well, lead the way.”

Kim merely grabbed her extended hand in response.

__________________

“Sorry, dude. Can’t make it tonight, I’ll explain later, promise,” she quickly texted Zack. They had planned their usual hang out night, but at this moment Trini was following Kim – who was still holding her hand – in her building, and she certainly did not have time to be more specific.

Trini had taken the time to get the booze and weed from her car before letting herself be guided by Kim. Five minutes later, there were standing in an elevator, and the tension was palpable. Kim was restless, shifting on her feet while Trini’s gaze couldn’t focus on one thing more than two seconds.

Kim lead her in a hallway, rushing her out of the elevator as soon as it stopped. She let go of Trini’s hand to get her keys from her bag and Trini’s mourned the loss of contact.

Half an hour later, they were sitting down in a dimmed light offered by a single lamp on the table, backs against the couch, a glass of wine in hand, shoulders and knees touching. Trini was focusing on rolling a joint and Kim was watching closely, admiring the work and Trini’s agile fingers – and she was drunk enough to wonder what else those fingers could do.

“You bought this yourself?”, she asked while pointing to the bottles of wine on the floor. Kim’s speech was a bit slurred, and she leaned in a bit more than necessary into Trini.

Without looking away from what she was doing, nor breaking her concentration, Trini answered distractedly: “What, have rich people never heard of fake IDs?”

“Oh no, we have”, Kim said, “I’m just surprised yours works.” That made Trini look away from the half rolled joint, meeting Kim’s eyes with a raised eyebrow. “Fake ID or not, you still kinda look twelve.” She teased and Trini rolled her eyes. As Kim was giggling, proud of her joke, Trini decided Kim was definitely a cute drunk. And she was wondering what high Kim was like.

Trini lighted up the stick as Kim was getting up to put on some music. A slow, sensual song started playing and Trini met with hungry eyes when she looked at Kim to pass her the joint. Her breath quickened as she watch Kim placing the joint between her lips, slowly inhaling and exhaling the smoke and Trini thought she never looked hotter than at this moment.

Soon, the alcohol and the weed were forgotten, kicked to the side as eager lips met and hands were exploring bodies. Kim dragged Trini on her lap, running her tongue on the whimpering girl’s neck. She slid her hands over Trini’s waist, gently rubbing her nails against the skin, raising slowly her shirt, asking for a silent permission. She took the tugging of her hairr and Trini crashing their lips together as a positive answer.

Trini’s shirt fell on the floor, next to an empty bottle of wine and a still smoking joint butt, quickly followed by Kim’s tank top.

Trini was grinding against Kim’s hips and the girl’s moans were all she could hear. Kim was too focused on Trini’s body to noticed anything else.

Therefore, neither of the girls heard jiggling keys in the lock, nor noticed the door opening, nor saw the two persons entering the living room.

The light went up, illuminating the scene.

“Sweety, surpri-AAAAh!”

Everyone froze in shock in horror as they were processing what was happening. Trini was straddling Kim’s laps, both girls shirtless, two bottles of wine on the floor and the room smelling unmistakably of weed.

Kim’s parents jaws were hanging low, mumbling incomprehensible words, before her mother started to gain composure.

But before she could say anything, Kim blurted out.

“I dropped out of med school!”

#trimberly #trimberly week day 1 #trimberly week #kimberly hart #power rangers #trini kwan #mine #did i used gypsy for like half the graphic you ask #you bet ur ass i did #mywork #myfics #*powerrangers #mytrimberly

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art3mislance-blog · 7 years

Text

How Physics Scored Kim a Date

Here’s my entry for Trimberly Week! Also posted on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11643270

Everyone told me not to do it, that there were much easier courses that I could be taking to fulfill my physical science requirement. Take astronomy, geology, even food science. But no, I had to insist on taking the harder course so that she could prove her friends and family wrong. That I wasn’t just a pretty face, that I actually had a brain and not just looks and cheerleading skills. But I never expected it would be this hard.

The course from hell that I was talking about was Physics 151: General Physics I. To the naked eye it seemed like a generic, easy gen-ed. But it was actually a two-faced bastard, made to cause procrastinating students to sign up without further investigation past the name, lulling them into a false sense of safety. That was until they showed up to the first day of class to find that it was not as easy it seemed to be, that this physics was the one for the engineering students, one of their prerequisites. Stupidly I had stayed in the class even after hearing this, I mean if a bunch of engineering freshman were taking the course, then surely I, a superior sophomore, could handle it. Right? God was I wrong.

I got a C- on the first exam. My heart had jumped into my throat when I had seen that score staring back at me from my laptop screen. After that I had really buckled down and made sure that all my homework was done and that I was studying a little bit each day and attending every class. But it still wasn’t enough, I just scraped by with a solid C on the second exam. I still had two more exams in the semester and I needed a B+ on both of them to be able to get a good grade in the class. But at the rate I was going it didn’t seem like that would happen. I couldn’t even hate the teacher because he was really nice and understanding, but I just couldn’t seem to grasp the material.

I groaned and ran my hand through my hair, still surprised a bit when my hand stopped short, unused to the short locks. I shouldered the door open, not even looking up at the old auditorium. It had been jam-packed with around three-hundred students for the first few days, but now only around sixty or so showed up. I bee-lined for my unassigned seat, second row, three in from the left. I shuffled in, slipping my bag off my shoulder, ready to throw it under my chair, only to stop short when a pair of legs come into view. I narrow my eyes and allow my eyes to travel upward. My heart stutters in my chest as I take in the girl who has claimed my seat. Her dark brown hair falls in waves to her shoulders, a yellow beanie covering her head. She’s decked out in a pair of skinny jeans and a yellow, plaid shirt to match her beanie. She’s doodling something in her notebook, lost in her own little world. Before I can even think I blurt out, “You’re in my seat.”

I press my lips together, regretting saying it as soon as the words leave my mouth. The girl’s eyes lazily looks up at me, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“That’s my seat, I sit there every day,” I wave my hand at her, emphasizing the seat she’s in specifically.

A smirk makes its way over her face and she leans forward, looking behind her. She scans the back of the seat for a moment before her eyes turn back to me, eyes sparkling with mirth. “I don’t see your name on it.”

I huff, “I’ve been sitting there every class since the start of the semester.”

She shrugs her shoulders, turning her attention back to her doodles. “Well you should have gotten here sooner, princesa. Besides there’s plenty of other seats open,” her eyes dart along the row, which is completely empty except for her.

I frown, heaving a sigh before dropping my bag and taking the seat next to her. I pull the small desk out before I begin to riffle through my bag for my notebook and pen. When I have them and I’m all settled I look up to find the girl staring at me. “The entire row is empty and you had to take the seat right next to mine?”

“I like the view from my seat and this is the closest thing that I’m going to get to it. If you’re going to steal my seat then you’re going to have to deal with me,” I say stubbornly.

She glares at me for a moment, but I maintain eye contact, though it’s not easy. Her eyes are pools of chocolate and I could feel myself getting drawn into them. I want to allow myself to get lost in them, but at the same time I know I should look away, lest I scare her off. Thankfully she just narrows her eyes at me before dropping her eyes, going back to her doodle once again.

For the next few minutes an awkward silence hangs over the two of us. She scratches away at her paper, doodling random things like lightning bolts to pass the time. Meanwhile I glance around the room, taking in all the bored faces, staring at their phones until the teacher starts the lesson. I soon get tired of this though and turnmy attention back to her, “I’m Kim by the way.”

“Nice to know, princesa,” she mutters, not taking her eyes off of her paper.

“You’re not going to tell me your name?” She glances over at me, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. Unfortunately the teacher takes this moment to start teaching and I have to tear my eyes away from the beautiful stranger, diverting my full attention to the PowerPoint. I sit through the lesson, hastily writing everything I can down, barely understanding anything about it. I know that we’re learning the conservation of momentum, and I get the basic principle of it down. But when it comes to the practice problems he shows I can’t make head or tales of it.

By the end of the lesson my hand was cramped from all the scribbling I had been doing and I tighten it into a first before relaxing it, trying to ease the ache. “You really like physics, huh?” the mystery girl asks, causing me to jump lightly.

A snort breaks past my lips before I can stop it, “Quite the opposite, actually.” She raises an eyebrow at me, “I’m actually doing horribly in the class, I need to pay attention to try and get better than a C on my next exam.”

She furrows her brows, zipping up her bag before standing. I follow suit and we both shuffle out of the row, slowly walking out behind the other students. I figure that is the end of our conversation and that we’ll part ways once outside the building, but she surprises me when she asks, “I could, uh help you sometime if you like.”

I shoot her an incredulous look, “You don’t even like me!”

She frowns at my words, “Why do you say that?”

I roll my eyes, starting to walk in the direction of the dinning common. “You won’t even tell me your name for starters.”

She rolls her eyes at me, checking her watch. “Look I have chem in five minutes, we can talk more during class on Wednesday.” With that she abruptly turns and starts speed walking away.

“I still don’t know your name!” I yell out.

“See you Wednesday, princesa!” she calls over her shoulder.

Giddy excitement rushes through me, I haven’t been this excited to go a physics class since, well, ever. Next to me Jason nudges my shoulder, wiggling his eyebrows at me, “Getting pumped to see your girlfriend?”

I ram my shoulder into him, making him stumble to the side. “She’s not my girlfriend, and can’t I just be excited for physics?”

“No you hate the class,” he deadpans, “Besides, all I’ve heard for the past day and a half is about this sarcastic little shit in your physics class who stole your seat. Going on and on about how beautiful her eyes are, how her raspy voice is just great, and-”

I punch his shoulder, “Shut up, so maybe I have a crush on this mystery girl, but nothing’s going to come of it. I don’t even think she likes me.”

He shoots me a glare as he rubs his shoulder, “Dude she said she’d help you in physics, if she hated you she definitely wouldn’t be signing up to spend more time with you.”

He’s got a point, even though everything else about our interaction makes me believe that I’m just a nuisance to her there’s no denying the fact that she offered to spend more time with me. Clearly she can’t dislike me that much, right? Unless she plans on making fun of me the whole time for being unable to grasp General Physics. I groan, “I’ll see you later, Jace.”

He sends me an encouraging smile before I break away from him to head into Hasbrouck, the building I have come to loathe. When I make my way into the auditorium I find that the mystery girl is in my seat again, glancing up at the door. We make eye contact for a moment before she looks away, a bit of pink tinging her cheeks. My hope rises, maybe I do have a chance after all.

I make my way over to the seat next to her, hesitating for only a moment before sitting down. “Hey there, Sarah.”

She turns to me, confusion plastered all over her face. “Who’s Sarah?”

I shrug, “Not you, I guess. I don’t know your name so I thought I’d give it a go.”

She rolls her eyes at me, “So you’re struggling with physics?”

Deflecting I can deal with that, “Yeah it’s not my strong suit, I took it to get rid of a gen-ed. Obviously it’s not my strong suit, unlike you Carry.”

She sighs in exasperation, “Not my name, princesa. Besides, physics not for everyone, what’s your major?

“Journalism, how about you, Lucy?”

She groans, “Would you quit it with the names?”

“Not until you tell me yours,” I shoot back.

She just shakes her head at me, “I’m a mechanical engineering major,” she mutters, “So what are you struggling with?”

I shrug, “The problems, I guess. I usually can understand the theory behind everything, but when it comes to putting it to action I crash and burn.”

She nods, biting her lip. My breathe catches, oh god was it hot in here or was it me? Actually it’s the mystery girl, she was definitely causing the room to go up a few degrees with her presence. I wet my lips, my mouth suddenly dry as I find myself staring.

“Kim!” she says, snapping her fingers in my face.

I blink, dragging my eyes away from her lips up to her eyes. “I can’t meet with you tonight at 4 if you want? We could go to the library and I can see if I can help you.”

“Really?!?” I ask, excitement evident in my tone. I throw my arms around her without thinking, “You are literally a life saver!” She squirms in my grip and I let her go, unable to stop smiling. “I can pay you if you want? I’d feel bad if you helped me with nothing in return.”

The girl hesitates for a moment, her hands playing with a hairband, showing her nerves. “Well you could buy me dinner, in return.”

Oh my god. Did she mean as in a date? Was I making this up? I didn’t even know this freaking girls name, Christ I had only known her for a few days. But god would I love to take her out on a date. “D-dinner?” I somehow manage to squeak out.

She blushes and turns red, dropping her face down to her notebook. “Forget it, it was a stupid idea.”

“No!” I yell, drawing the attention of a few people in the area, I don’t care though because a pretty girl might have just asked me on a date and I can’t let her think that I don’t want it. “I would love to have dinner with you! Would, uh, would it be a date?” My voice cracks on the word date and I cringe, god I just sounded like a fifteen-year old boy.

She looks at me through her lashes, biting her lip once again. “Yeah, as a date.”

A grin stretches across my face. “Deal, but only if you tell me your name.”

She rolls her eyes at me, but holds out her hand. “Give me your phone.”

“That’s not your name,” I shoot back, even though I’m unlocking my phone and handing it to her anyway. She rolls her eyes at me and takes the phone. She messes around with it for a moment before handing it back to me.

I look down at it to find that she has created a new contact and sent a text to herself with my name. I quickly look at the top of the screen to find the name Trini with a yellow heart next to it. I grin, turning back to her, “It’s a pleasure to meet you Trini.”

#trimberly #Trimberly Week Day 1

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