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The guy is undeniably weird. There’s something…off about him. He can almost be normal sometimes. Still a little off-kilter, blunt and kinda rude, but maybe even a little bit charming if you squint. At other times his face just goes blank. His voice falls into a monotone. He’s not doing anything wrong, necessarily, it’s just…unsettling. He’ll sit perfectly still for inordinate amounts of time, back perfectly straight, staring into the distance.

At other times, he follows Dennis around like a rescued stray, all but clinging onto him, eyes big and glossy like he could burst into tears at any moment. Dennis talks to him all gentle and sweet and Andrew gazes at him with pure devotion. He just looks so vulnerable sometimes in a way that should feel like an act but doesn’t. Like what is it about Huckleberry that has this roided out criminal looking like a lost puppy? Just fucking weird, and Trinity doesn’t like it.

Plus he keeps cleaning the kitchen when it’s not even that bad. Okay, fine, it’s better than having Dennis’s dirty dishes in the sink all the time, but seriously what is that even about.

Also, he’s done his time or whatever, but how can Dennis be so chill about the fact that he’s an actual bank robber. Like okay robbing banks is kind of cool but it does not bode well for Dennis’s ability to respond appropriately to red flags and if anything happens to him Trinity would never forgive herself. So yeah, fuck that guy.

Then, Trinity has a shift that triggers her worse than it’s been in years. She’s been doing so well with her coping skills considering how many abused and neglected kids come through the ED, but it’s too much this time.

She gets wasted, thinking it’ll help. It doesn’t. Back to basics, then. She lays out her first aid supplies on the bathroom sink and sits on the edge of the tub, slicing into her thighs with a scalpel. It’s not helping like it used to, the pain isn’t anchoring her to her body like she needs it to. She goes deeper and deeper with each cut but she can barely feel it, she’s floating so far above her body—

“Oh fuck!”

Her head snaps up and Andrew is standing in the doorway. She shouts at him to get the fuck out and she sees him start to but he registers what she’s done. There’s so much blood.

“I’ll call Dennis—“

Her whole body goes cold. “No! Please. I’ll take care of it. Please don’t tell him.”

So Andrew is kneeling in the doorway watching Trinity, still wasted and dissociated, go through her first aid routine. They both know she needs stitches but it’s not like they can go to the nearest ER. Andrew has the supplies from the last time Dennis stitched him up but Trinity’s too drunk to do it and he won’t touch her unless she asks for help and she doesn’t. He keeps his arms rigid at his sides where she can see them, just keeping watch to make sure she doesn’t pass out. She’s not sure why it makes her feel safer but it does.

She tells him about her shift, about the man abusing his daughter who winked at her when the CYS caseworker wasn’t looking. Brazen taunting from a man used to getting away with it.

“I wish I could break each of his fingers one by one,” Trinity says.

“That…could happen,” Andrew says, low in his throat. A question.

Later Trinity will tell herself over and over that she blacked out, that she imagined it, that it didn’t really happen like that. But she looks from her gauze-wrapped thigh at Andrew kneeling there, his face open and honest and capable, and she nods just a little. Whispers his name, where he works. Andrew smiles, a quick little twitch at the corner of his mouth.

The next day Princess says remember that guy, the one we called CYS on? He came in last night. Garcia says his hands were totally destroyed, like someone smashed them with a hammer. He kept begging for forgiveness.