A/N: This is an attempt to contribute to the very painfully low amount of Trinjin fic on the internet. I had some help with my friend for errors, structure, and critique. If there is something you can add that's constructive, that is fine; however, this is not a story I plan on building upon, and I do not write much, but it'll be appreciated. Hope you enjoy!
A relatively tall person's gait tends to be rather legato- until something unpleasant throws off their rhythm. Sinjin Van Cleef is walking home from school when he feels that familiar, sticky tug at the bottom of his left foot.
"Ugh!" His face contorts as he lifts his foot to inspect the damage. The culprit is a particularly large wad of chewing gum well-adhered to his left Converse.
Sitting on the curb of the sidewalk, he begins picking off what he can, lest he feels that irritating stick as he walks home. He decides that this must be at least three sticks of Big Red gum. With most of it removed, he scrapes the rest on the curb, and walks to the bushes to get dirt on whatever stickiness on his shoe is left. He nearly flinches when the bush rustles.
"Hello?" He peers behind the bushes. Then he sees a brightly-coloured boot. He would recognise that prodigy of a shoe anywhere.
"Trina?"
A head of shiny, perfectly styled hair pops from the bushes. "Yes, what do you want?" She impatiently pops her gum and checks herself out in her PearPhone's reflection. The scent of her gum travels to Sinjin's nose. Cinnamon. It was Trina's gum he stepped on.
"Er... What were you doing behind the bushes?"
"None of your business!" The young woman emerges completely, stuffing her PearPhone into her floral backpack. She attempts to walk away from the skinny jeans-clad misfit.
Sinjin glances at the watch his mother gave him as a peace offering after countless arguments last year, "But it's three o'clock... Don't you have a date at Nozu with some guy from Northridge?" His eyes squint at her suspiciously as he tilts his head slightly.
"How do you know about that?!" She whips around to face him squarely.
Sinjin, being the non-confrontational person that he is, turns slightly to the left, and studies a pole nearby. "Well, I read your Slap updates... and you have mentioned it once or twice... or several times in classes this week."
Trina's usually confident demeanor melts from her face. She takes a few steps away from him, and suddenly takes interest in the sidewalk or her shoes- he cannot tell which. "Well, it didn't happen..."
"Why not?" He gains the confidence to look at her again, and he can hear the dejection in her voice, although he is well aware that she often gets turned down.
"He cancelled last night. Said he broke his tailbone while skateboarding, but I went to his house this morning," she hugs herself, and looks at anything who isn't the tall boy standing in front of her. "He didn't look like anyone with a broken tailbone."
That doesn't sound too unordinary from her usual rejection stories. He has spent many a Friday night outside the Vega family's house, carefully concealed, and was a sympathetic audience to plenty of Trina's nights alone crying about her cancelled dates. Sinjin rocks to his heels, feeling bad to see her this way. "Hey," he says as he hesitatingly puts a hand on her shoulder, and offers her a polite smile. "At least it wasn't as bad as that 'I got abducted by aliens' excuse, right?"
Trina gapes at Sinjin, and her eyes widen in horror. "How did you know about that?!"
Oops. He might of accidentally overheard that while hanging out within earshot outside her house. "Uh..." He looks at his shoes. "You never did say what you were doing in the bushes."
Throwing her hands up, Trina spins around with her long, glossy hair trailing with her. "I don't have time for this. Goodbye, freak," She begins to strut away. Sinjin looks at her as she walks just a bit too robustly for her seven-inch, electric blue heels to support. He sees her ankle begin to bend awkwardly, and he sprints after her as fast as he can to catch her, but it's too late- she is down like a chopped Redwood only feet in front of him.
"FUCK," Trina's eyes water, and she bites her lip. That was a nasty spill. She looks at her foot as if panicking of what she should do next.
" Oh, gosh! Are you okay?!" Sinjin offers his hand to help her up, she looks around, and then reluctantly accepts.
Once she's up, she finds herself fit to answer. "Yes I'm fine!" She begins to walk away again with a very severe limp. She stops and whimpers, "No... not alright... not alright," She turns around with a helpless look on her face.
"Uh... I can help you home? Or to the Quick Care? It looks like you might of sprained your ankle," he stands next to her without waiting for a response. Ignoring her protests, he puts her arm around his shoulder to support her. "What'll it be? Home or Quick Care?"
Trina sighs in annoyance. "Fine just take me home. I live-"
"I know where you live," Sinjin says proudly.
"I am in too much pain to ask why," she rolls her eyes.
It is somewhat awkward at first, but eventually Sinjin and Trina find a way to best navigate without her having to put too much pressure on her ankle. The Vega home is not too far from school- only a few blocks. But Sinjin knows that the hill that is coming up soon will be slightly more difficult to help Trina walk up.
"Um," the clacking of Trina's one working foot fills the silence of her pause. "So what were you doing at school so late?"
"Burf and I were working on a project."
"Burf... the kid with the peppers?"
"And sometimes cucumbers... I grow those and give them to him," Sinjin replies.
"You garden?" She turns her head to look at him, almost interested.
"A bit. It's mostly just cucumbers, though," he says. "Burf and I had an agreement that if I grew him cucumbers, he'd provide me with a steady supply of Star Wars comics."
Before Trina can reply, they reach the beginning of the hill that had Sinjin worried earlier. Trina groans.
"It's okay, we'll just go slowly," he says, trying to remain optimistic. He tries supporting a bit more of her weight, but he is already the distance they've walked already, and both of them are sweating in the Los Angeles heat.
"Ow... okay... ow..." This isn't as simple as he said it would be. "Yeah... Sinjin I don't know if I can do this," Trina stops walking, forcing Sinjin to stop with her.
He sighs and looks at her up and down. Trina is curvy, but she isn't hefty by any physical means. "Give me your backpack."
"Why?"
"Just give it to me."
Trina frowns in confusion, but she hands it to him anyway. It's not as if today could get any weirder.
Sinjin puts his backpack on one shoulder, and Trina's on the other. He then puts one hand on her back for support, and scoops her up.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Furious she begins smacking his arms. "Put me down!"
"Look, Trina, it'll be graduation before you're able to walk up this hill in your current condition. Just let me."
"Ugh! I cannot be seen like this! If anyone sees me do you have any idea-? I mean my whole reputation will go down the tubes!"
"Your reputation is as good as mine," he is frank. He shrugs in apology.
"Eww."
"I know."
"You don't have any ice packs?" Sinjin was digging through the Vega's freezer in search for something that will help with the swelling.
"Ugh, no. Mom's paranoid about the chemicals or something?" Trina replies from the living room where she is lying on the red couch with her foot propped up on several pillows.
Sinjin shrugs, grabs a bag of frozen strawberries, and wraps it with a paper towel. "This will have to do for now," he says, walking back into the living room.
"What is that?"
"Strawberries."
"We eat those and now you're putting it on my foot?"
"Well there wasn't much else of a choice," he sits at the end of the couch and gently sets the bag on her ankle.
"OW!"
"Sorry!"
"I don't even know why I'm letting you help me," she looks up to the ceiling and places her hands behind her head.
"Well if I had to guess, I'd say you want me around, Trina," he adjusts himself on the couch, being careful not to hit her ankle.
"That's stupid. No one wants you around Sinjin," she states defensively.
"You can lie all you want, but don't think I don't notice evidence when it is staring me in the face." Sinjin has a confident smirk on his face, and Trina looks exasperated.
"You're crazy."
"Why were you in those bushes?"
"I like nature!"
"Name one species of plant."
"The, uh," she pauses. "The bristle brush!"
"That's for hair, Trina."
"The Laura Bush!"
"What?!"
"The Odd Life of Timothy Green?"
"Oh come on. That was a terrible movie," Sinjin frowns. "It was so bad, I gagged on my popcorn."
"Actually, you did gag on your popcorn... five times," Trina rebuttals.
"Ah-ha!" Sinjin jumps up and, and points his finger at Trina with so much energy that it's hard to tell that he carried her uphill for a block. "You have been watching me!"
"No I wasn't! I just happened to be at the same movie theatre with you!"
Sinjin puts his hand on her shoulder, and leans just close enough to almost touch her cheek with his nose."Trina, if you want a piece of the Sinj, all you gotta do is ask. No need to sabotage me with giant wads of gum."
"Eugh! I would never! Are you-?!"
Her rants of denial are halted when Sinjin's surprisingly soft lips lightly touch her left cheekbone. He doesn't move far away from her face after he kisses her cheek. Instead he looks into her brown eyes, currently widened in utter shock.
He is unsure of what he had just done. He is so used to being kicked, or hit, or smacked by being this close to a girl. So he is surprised when Trina says nothing. Her eyes go back to normal, and she looks into his eyes for a moment, then his entire face. Her mouth opens, as if she is going to say something, and then she closes it. Then she opens her mouth again, and groans in defeat. Suddenly her hands are in his unruly blonde hair, and within seconds, she has pulled him into a deep kiss.
Sinjin is... amazed. To say the least. After almost three years of knowing each other, he and Trina are actually kissing right now. He does this almost-sigh of content through his nose. He breaks away for a moment for air, and to look at her face, and initiates their second kiss. This time he pulls her into an embrace, and she places a hand on his face.
All of this is wonderful, but also somewhat awkward. Trina is still lying on the couch, and Sinjin is kneeling against the couch. He breaks away, and backs away to sit on the coffee table. He runs a hand through his hair as he contemplates what just happened. The same hair that Trina had her hands in only moments before. "Uh...Do you... need something else for your ankle?"
Trina looks somewhat bewildered at the fact that he suddenly stopped kissing her. "Oh... uh... no."
He gets up to go to the kitchen. His mind is racing, and he feels too idle just sitting there after just kissing Trina Vega. He is able to navigate well enough in the kitchen to find out where the cups and ice are. He gets them both cups of water.
They are both sitting in awkward silence after he hands her the water.
He looks at the ice in his water.
She fiddles with the bag of strawberries on her ankle.
He plays with a button on his shirt.
She scoots into a more comfortable position.
Moments pass.
Minutes.
Finally...
"Soo-"
"Um-"
"Oh... go ahead."
"No you go, I didn't really have anything to say."
"Oh. Well..." he crosses a leg over another. "You never did tell me what you were doing in the bushes earlier."
"Oh... that," her face scrunches up.
"Yeah, that... I mean... that's kinda my thing. Care to explain?"
Trina sighs heavily. "Well it's just that... that guy turned me down, and I was just feeling kind of upset about it all day. I mean, I guess these things happen to me a lot, but..." She is now attempting to sit up. She holds the strawberries in place as she maneuvers upright, placing her injured foot on the coffee table next to Sinjin. She continues, "Anyway... You're always turned down by people, and it doesn't even bother you. Or it doesn't seem that way. And sometimes I watch you- oh god that sounds bad- but I do it because... I just get happy seeing you. I don't know how to explain it! I just feel myself becoming so aware whenever you're around. I notice things that I don't normally notice, and sometimes it's all I need to get me through a rough day."
"Whoa."
"Why did I just say that?" She grabs a pillow and groans in it.
Sinjin usually feels quick-witted, and always ready for a reply, but not this time. He is certain he has never heard anyone speak quite like that to him at all. From a romantic or a platonic perspective. All he can do is just sit there, and think about her words still echoing in his head.
"Well, aren't you going to say anything?" Trina tries to gain her normal, assertive voice back, but her tone is still lost and swimming in emotion.
A few moments pass as Sinjin continues to think. He thinks about how often he flirted with her, and not expecting any reciprocation, that's just what he did. He thought about the Prome, and how they genuinely had a good time. He thought about her pulling into all of her shenanigans- such as helping her sell Tori's stuff online. He wondered how all this time has passed between them, and they never once even called each other "friend." She's been there for him more than he can explain. A few hours helping her with her schemes meant a few hours of him not having to deal with his mother. He thinks about how he genuinely enjoys her presence, that is, when she's not trying to kill him. All of these thoughts flit through his mind, and he finally comes to the conclusion that he must be in love with Trina Vega. The loud girl always living in the shadow of her younger sister. Maybe she's only so loud because she wants to be heard for once.
With this epiphany, he goes to sit next to Trina on the couch. "I don't think I can put things into words as well as you did," he grabs her hand. "But I think... I might... love you." Oh god. Why is it such a hard word to say? He's imagined this plenty of times with tons of people. Now that it's actually happening, he is at a loss for words.
Then don't say anything. Sinjin realises.
His free hand touches the side of her head, and guides her to face him. He starts to bring his face closer to hers, and then hesitates a moment. He isn't sure if this is what she wants. But she hasn't moved, and her eyes are half-open as if she was anticipating it. She doesn't seem opposed, so he finally brings his mouth to hers again. For a moment they both sit there, locked and unmoving. Sinjin takes his hand off of her face, but is unsure what to do with it now. It hovers at shoulder-length for a moment, then it touches her shoulder, then it moves to her back, in the space between her shoulder blades. From here he pulls her closer to him, and their kiss intensifies. It feels great. He's light-headed, he's in a state of bliss. He laughs.
"This is definitely an upgrade from sock-puppets."
Trina smacks the side of his head, and grins.