Yolanda is a runner. Gets up religiously every morning an hour and a half before her shift and squeezes in at least a few miles, before heading back home to shower and make breakfast.

When Baran, and then eventually Trinity, too, had started sleeping over more regularly, she fell out of the habit for awhile. Waking up with their warm bodies wrapped around her was much more preferable to the cold winter air waiting for her outside the walls of her apartment. But summer comes, and the sun rises earlier, and she has always had a hard time staying in bed when it's light out.

Things are more settled between them now, too. More domestic in a way that Yolanda never thought she would be. Baran and Trinity know their way around her apartment, move through it like it is their home, too. It doesn't make her skin itch to think about leaving them in her home without her.

So she starts setting her alarm again, a little earlier than she used to, and cuts her runs just a little shorter, because if she's up early enough and runs fast enough, she's home before they're even awake.

Which is why it's so surprising, on this warm June morning eight months into their relationship, to step back through her front door and hear voices coming from the bedroom. Or rather, Trinity's voice, begging. For what, Yolanda doesn't know. She can just make out an almost pathetic string of "please, please, please" coming from behind the closed door as she hangs her keys on the hook and toes out of her sneakers before heading in the direction of the sound.

Trinity is laying almost exactly where Yolanda had left her an hour ago, right in the middle of her bed, hair mussed with sleep and oversized sleep shirt tangled around her middle. She's shifted from her side to her back, hands gripping tightly to the headboard just above her.

What's really changed is Baran.

Baran, usually so put together, even in sleep, looks wrecked now. Her hair is falling out of its bun, her pajamas have been tossed to some forgotten corner of the room. Yolanda can see the barest hints of sweat dripping down her neck. She's on her knees, straddling one of Trinity's thighs, hands braced on either side of Trinity's head, grinding rapidly into the girl beneath her.

"Oh thank god," Trinity whines when she sees Yolanda. "She told me I couldn't touch her until you got home."

"Is that right?" Yolanda hums, leaning against the door frame.

Baran just laughs at that, and doesn't stop moving her hips.

"Please," Trinity cries again, pulling against the headboard and rolling her hips to better meet Baran's downward motion. The movement causes Baran to gasp, and her eyes seek out Yolanda's, an unasked question floating between them.

No one really says anything for the long minutes it takes the drugs to kick in. Trinity keeps her eyes shut to it all, anchoring herself in the feel of Yolanda’s hand in hers and the gentle press of Baran’s fingers against her scalp. Slowly, by small degrees, the pain in her stomach begins to lessen. She finds herself releasing muscles she didn’t know were pulled tight, uncurling a little from around her center. Finally, finally, she opens her eyes. The look on Dennis’s face makes her want to shut them again. He looks like a kicked puppy. Or a child watching a puppy get kicked, if Trinity lets herself be imagined as the puppy and not someone to whom Nothing Of Importance is happening. She would prefer to be the latter, but the meds have softened the edges of everything a little and she supposes she’s okay existing somewhere more in the middle.

“So…” she drawls slowly when the silence becomes unbearable. “How’s everybody doing?”

“You wore our Crocs to the hospital?” Dennis blurts out, tension in him snapping. Trinity grins. She knew she could count on him to distract her.

“Jesus Christ,” Yolanda mutters to her left. “They were the only shoes by the door!” “I tried to get her to go to my room for something different,” Trinity says.

“Yeah, and then you almost vomited all over the welcome mat.”

“Why does it matter?” Baran chimes in. “They’re just shoes.”