Chapter Text
Trinity has had exactly one yogurt, one protein bar and two beers across seventeen hours and it is resulting in more honesty than she is accustomed to. She and Mel had watched a couple stumble out of a bathroom together, clearly post-fucking with the way they're disheveled and giggling. Trinity tips her drink in their direction. "Cheers," she mumbles to no one. "Fff-uckin' get it." No one else is around here.
Mel slumps against the vinyl booth they're occupying, "I feel like everyone has had sex before me," she states flatly, her eyebrows turned down in clear dejection. "Even my sister has had sex before me," she adds, also some beers deep on no lunch. Or dinner for that matter.
"Well sex and dating isn't all it's cracked up to be anyway, lemme tell ya, Melatonin," Trinity says as she stretches, kicking her legs out under the bar table.
"Really?" Mel looks at her with wide eyes, clearly eager for a story-time Trinity does not have in her.
She shrugs. "Just you know, situationships," she says, making air quotes around the word. "Stupid shit. No one's dating anymore," she grumbles pessimistically. "Sex is all that's left and even that's just. Whatever." She purses her lips and flicks her head, frustrated. "You can ask Dr. Garcia if you really want to hear it from the master herself," she mutters sarcastically into her drink before taking a long drink.
Mel looks quizzically at her before lifting her eyebrows in shock. "You're not dating Dr. Whitaker?"
Now that catches her off guard. "Wh-what?" She coughs into her bottle. "What the fuck?"
"I thought you two were dating? But you're not dating anyone you just said?"
"No, ew!" Mel might as well have just said she thought Trinity was dating her own brother, "God, no, Mel. I'm a lesbian. He's my fucking roommate." How fucking dense is this girl? "Why did you think that?!"
"You live together and you have a lot of in-jokes. I thought you were a couple?" She doesn't seem to understand what she's said that's wrong.
"You couldn't tell I'm gay?"
Mel shakes her head, clueless. "No, should I be able to?"
"Clearly I'm doing something wrong," Trinity rolls her eyes. "Why do you suddenly care about relationships so much? They suck anyway, is the point I was trying to make."
"Well with everything today I'm just realizing I want to have sex too, I'm tired of missing out on things. And you need to be in a relationship to have sex since you need two people and-"
Trinity barks out a laugh, "No, you don't."
"You don't what?"
"You don't need to be in a relationship, I can confirm that," Trinity says definitively before gesturing to a waiter for another beer.
"Well where do you find someone to have sex with if you're not in a relationship?"
"I dunno, you just ask. That's what I do. Tinder." She gestures vaguely, pitches her voice comically, "the apps."
"I don't think I want my first time to be with a stranger," Mel says thoughtfully.
Trinity slams her bottle down mid swig. "Holy shit, you're a virgin? How old are you?!" Trinity can feel the assholishness emanating from her tone but she’s had a shit day so excuse her for being a bitch. And also all the other times she was a bitch because there was probably a reason there too, she thinks wryly.
"Twenty-seven, is that bad?" She looks genuinely worried, it's kind of sweet.
Trinity stares down into her now-empty bottle and thinks on it. “No," she starts. "No, actually I think that’s pretty fuckin’ awesome. I wish I had waited to have sex honestly.” She sighs. This drinking on an empty stomach must be really getting to her because she is not usually this light weight. “Shit, the shit I would’ve avoided,” she says too honestly.
Mel doesn't seem put off. “Oh. Can I ask about it?”
“Oh now you want to ask permission to ask stuff?” Trinity side eyes her.
“Sex is often a sensitive subject” Mel says matter-of-factly, lifting a finger up. “So I… wanted… to ask first," she says slowing down as she speaks and dropping the ends of her words awkwardly.
“Well fuck me, 'Mel-feasance," Trinity says, gesturing her hand up. "Shoot.”
Mel wastes no time. “Ah, well um," she pushes up her glasses. "Does it hurt? Since you wish you had waited?”
“Well it’s not supposed to,” Trinity says quickly before thinking about it. She tilts her head back and forth before deciding “not unless you’re into that.”
“Ah." She nods in that way Trinity knows means she doesn't get it. At all.
“Like bondage stuff?"
Mel looks at her and gives a tiny shrug.
"Fifty shades?" Nothing.
"Whips and chains?" Mel shakes her head.
"…Rihanna?” She hums a little bit, the questioning expression still on her face, sloppily moving her hand to the beat. "Es-es-es n em-em-em?"
“Ohhhh,” Mel nods excitedly as Trinity hums. “I didn’t know Rihanna was serious about that, I thought it was another exaggeration. I’m not always the best with those.”
Trinity drops her hand and expression. “I can see that.”
Mel ignores the dig — or maybe, Trinity thinks, she just didn’t catch it — “but then why did you wish you waited?”
Trinity sighs. Drinks. Thinks. Drinks again.
“Oh, um if it’s too sensitive we don’t have to-“
“Not everyone was nice to me," she says curtly to the coasters. "So it hurt more emotionally than anything else.”
“Oh.” Trinity can feel Mel looking at her.
“You surprised?” She turns to look at Mel. Let her look her in the face if she's going to try any of that pity shit-
“More about sex being emotional," Mel responds lightly.
Trinity expression switches from guarded anger to confusion. “Well what- what do you think sex is?”
“Biological. Physical. Practical.” She says it plainly, like it's a given.
Trinity blinks. Shakes her head. “I. Definitely didn’t think you would say that.”
“Why?”
“I just. I guess I thought you were like a fantasy romance reader. Fairy smut and whatever the fuck.”
“I don’t know what that is," Mel says directly. "I don’t really read. Or I used to when I was little but then it got harder to find the time.” Trinity notices a cadence to the way Mel speaks. Slowly, and then faster, almost on a beat, and then trailing off again. She wonders if Mel is even aware she does it.
“Huh."
Mel sits up and rubs at her neck awkwardly, "I guess I could read to see what sex is all about-"
"Nooo, I'm gonna stop you right there," Trinity waves her hand out. "Do not do that. The stuff out there is garbage."
"Oh," Mel twists her lips. "Then I guess I'll just wait?" She slumps back against the booth and sighs dramatically. "Or never know is probably the answer with the way my life goes." It's the most hyperbolic Trinity has ever seen her, unless she's still being genuine? It's hard to imagine Mel and sarcasm.
"Well that's dark. And sad." Trinity clears her throat and takes another sip. "Besides," her tilts her head, considering it in real time as she says it. Before she can regret it: "I could just show you."
"Okay." Mel agrees pleasantly, like maybe Trinity just offered to buy her lunch sometime, or offered her her spot in a line, not just casually agreed to casual sex, what the fuck?
Trinity swallows, "Guh- wait, seriously?" Okay she knows she didn't have that much to eat today but she seriously cannot be so drunk she's fucking hallucinating-
"Yeah," Mel starts, "it sounds like you know what you're doing and my sister who has a guardian and an aid watching her all the time has had sex. With a boyfriend. And I have no one watching me and I haven't and I thought I would at least before her but that hasn't happened and I want it to and I know you and you're offering so," she pauses to take a deep breath in. "Okay."
Maybe it's the day wearing on her, the holiday alone again because Garcia and even fucking Fuckleberry had abandoned her and does saying yes make her a bad person? Is that taking advantage? Maybe that free therapist she had during pre-med would say Trinity's "indulging in bad behavior" not being a bad person but still. Wait-
"Are you even into girls?"
“Well when I watched Pirates of the Caribbean, I thought Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom were both really pretty?” Mel offers.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Trinity laughs. “Then yeah, let’s have sex.”