“I get acne.” You shrug, in lieu of an explanation and Trinity can’t seem to shut her mouth—jaw still hanging as she looks from you to the nearest bottle that reads Low pH Good Morning Cleanser. You see Trinity’s stare, “That’s for my morning routine.”

“You do all of this? Every day? Twice a day?”

“Uh, yeah? What else would I do?”

Trinity blushes, hand rubbing at the back of her neck. “I don’t know, just splash your face with water? Maybe.”

You are stunned dumb. Blinking at her with the sporadic pace of what you could only describe as the morse code equivalent of a keyboard smash. How did you not know this about your girlfriend? It doesn’t feel like a pertinent question, a make or break like ‘do you want kids?’ or ‘would you sleep closest to the door—no matter what side of the bed that is—and protect me from any intruders that might try and murder us?’, but it does somehow feel like something that you should have known before the 3 month stage of your relationship.

The life of an ER doctor strikes again.

“We’ll have to start you out on something more delicate, I don’t want to overwhelm your skin. Would you say your skin is more oily or dry?” You drop from your perch on the sink, washing off your hands and gently taking Trinity’s face into your hands. “I’m thinking maybe we just exfoliate today and see what happens. And some moisturiser, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Trinity takes your vacated seat, getting on her tippy-toes to reach the lip of the sink. Her feet swing like a little kid’s as she watches you pick out the different bottles, turning them in your hands, weighing them, before either putting them back down with a shake of your head or giving them over for Trinity to hold. “Uh, this feels like more than just exfoliating.”

“Well, I have to cleanse your skin first. Gets all the icky stuff off your skin, and then we can exfoliate. I just—you’re a doctor, don’t you tell your patients about the importance of skincare?”

“Normally they come in with more problems than bad skincare.” Trinity hums, eyelids fluttering shut as you start gently rubbing what she suspects is the oil cleanser into her skin. It doesn’t smell of anything in particular, which means she can get the perfect whiff of you. She hadn’t realised how much she enjoyed the smell of you until she was stuck in the ER, and the cloying smell of antiseptic and iron bombards her senses.

Being in your apartment just solidifies it, being surrounded by your smell; whatever fruity body spray you had fallen in love with that week, the smell of your deodorant—usually something gentle, like vanilla, or that Wild deodorant with the smell ‘Thunderstorm’ which Trinity didn’t know was such an obvious smell until she was tucked under your arm and pretending she wasn’t turning her nose closer to your armpit whenever she got the chance.

She could almost curse the Pitt for denying her more time with you. For times like this, intimate and so pitifully mundane that if she told Dennis how lovestruck she was from you simply caring about basic skincare, he might send her upstairs for a Psych eval.

And he almost does, when he sees her the next morning, scrutinising her as she leans her elbows upon the desk at Central. “Since when did you know how to moisturise?”

“Uh, around about the same time you learnt how to keep your scrubs free of bodily-fluid, Fuckleberry.”