Chapter Text
Trixie wakes Katya up with a nudge to her shoulder that rolls her toward the edge of the bed. She does it three times, each nudge more urgent than the last, and Katya grunts awake and looks over at Trixie with one cracked, glaring eye.
It takes in the sight of Trixie’s face, bruised and with dried blood crumbled across her lower cheek, and she blinks awake. The night before comes rushing back to her in glimpses of neon lights, undulating crowds and Trixie tossed onto the gravel. Katya pushes against the mattress and turns to face her in the morning light. She looks uncomfortable.
“Are you okay?”
“We need to get up if we’re going to leave at a decent hour today.” Trixie’s voice is clear where Katya’s is clouded with sleep.
And just like that, Trixie is out of bed and sailing across the bedroom in her nightgown. It flows pink behind her, and Katya watches half in awe, half in confusion, as Trixie sifts through boxes marked “Blouses, “Bottoms,” and “Underwear.”
Trixie dresses quietly, and Katya watches her. She catches sight of her soft, white belly, where a yellowing bruise has formed beside her bellybutton. It must have been a residual hit or where Violet tried to get a grip on her as she went down. Katya wants to crawl across the bed and kiss it, run her tongue over it and pull her back onto the mattress with her, but when Trixie pulls the gown off completely Katya sees her face set with purpose and she thinks twice.
Katya turns to face her alarm clock and finds it gone. She remembers Trixie frantically packing up the rest of their belongings when they got home the previous night. She doesn’t know how Trixie knows what time it is, but finds that she doesn’t care. She knows everything she wants to know.
“What time is it?”
“Nine oh’ eight. Pearl and Jinkx will be over in twenty minutes for breakfast. You want me to set you some clothes out?”
She’s already rifling through Katya’s boxes. She tosses a white undershirt onto the bed and Katya scoots towards it to put it on.
“Yes, ma’am. Will you gimme a kiss?”
Trixie pauses in her search for good work pants and turns her head to face Katya. It’s turning red from her bending so far over, her fat cheeks pushed up towards her eyes. It doesn’t help her offbeat attitude, and Katya imagines it hurts her wounds.
A moment passes where Katya fully expects Trixie to return to her search, leaving her request hanging in the air awkwardly, but then Trixie is standing up and padding over to her. There’s a barely noticeable limp, and Katya pushes to hang her legs off the bed in her direction and wrap them around her thighs when she meets her. Trixie holds Katya’s clothes between them, just under her breasts, and Katya hopes they smell like her all day.
Trixie leans down, lips pursed. Her lids flutter shut. This close, Katya can see the slept-in makeup, the mascara clumped and crusted around the corners of her eyes. She can’t remember the last time Trixie went to bed with her makeup on. Not even in her worse state had she ever neglected her favorite nighttime routine.
“Don’t kiss me,” Katya mumbles. Trixie opens her eyes in a hard glare. Her nostrils flare a little. “I don’t want you to hurt your lip. Let me kiss you instead.”
Trixie’s look softens and she nods, and Katya presses her lips to the corner of Trixie’s mouth that isn’t currently housing a split lip. She can still feel the fever in in the skin, the tightness of it underneath the swelling. Katya kisses it lightly, can’t help but run her tongue against it and suck gently. Her fingers hook around Trixie’s lace underwear, aching to be underneath them like they weren’t allowed to after the bar.
Katya pulls away when she gathers the strength, and Trixie hovers, still with eyes closed and a parted mouth. She breathes in deep and opens her eyes, smiles a little at Katya, and then presses her clothes into her stomach.
“Get ready,” She says softly. “I’ll make your favorite.”
By the time Katya emerges from the bedroom and successfully dodges the boxes lined up the hallway, she can smell breakfast going and hear the sound of the percolator. Her mouth waters, and she remembers they didn’t have dinner last night. She had contemplated a leftover dinner roll when she was in bed, but Trixie’s sleeping form wouldn’t let her out of her grip. Now her stomach rumbles and she picks up her pace. She trips over a box rounding the corner to the living room and Trixie giggles, not even having to look to her left to know what happened.
“I’ll be glad when we’re finally settled down.” Katya sighs. She heads towards the percolator and stands facing it, coffee mug in hand. She stares it down, waits for the rumble to subside, and then pours out a measure. “You want some?”
“I couldn’t possibly.” Trixie expertly flips an egg in the pan.
Katya knows to get out of her way when she decides to cook, so she sits at the kitchen table, testing her coffee every few seconds and burning her lips. She can’t help but think that it can’t sting half as bad as Trixie’s lip does.
She wants to talk about the fight, now that the adrenaline has worn off and she’s slept on it, but finds herself shy around the topic. Katya doesn’t imagine that Trixie will yell at her, or cry, even. In fact, Katya has no idea what Trixie would say if asked about it. The potential lack of words, so unlike Trixie at all, intimidates Katya into keeping her mouth shut.
But the feeling that something is going unsaid between them still lingers. Trixie cooks egg after egg in silence, toast pops up from the chrome toaster and she butters the slices before they get a chance to cool off. Her morning routine, however rarely practiced, is still flawless.
“You cooked for your family, didn’t you?”
Trixie pauses long enough to glance over at Katya with a wry smile.
“Yes.”
“Did they make you?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Trixie wipes her hands on her apron and faces Katya. “Unless we wanted to eat burnt toast every morning, I was cooking. Daddy never wanted to spend money on help, and my mother can’t cook to save her life. That’s why everyone at Perot’s knows me by name.”
Katya hums and returns to her coffee, Trixie to the last egg to be flipped.
“I appreciate you cooking for me sometimes,” Katya says. “You’re gonna make me fat once I hit forty.”
“That’s my plan,” Trixie grins. She winces a little and the grin goes away, but her playful tone stays. “I wanna get you all plumped up so I can sleep on you comfy. You’d look cute with a little belly.”
“You don’t like me now?”
Katya stands and inches towards her, pulling her workshirt up bit by bit. Trixie does a double take and inhales, shoves the frying pan off the hot eye and snaps the heat off. She blinks slowly as she drags her fingertips along the hard plane of Katya’s stomach.
“I like you now,” Trixie whispers. “I wanna fuck you now.”
Her fingers are already drifting towards the waist of Katya’s jeans, and Katya groans when they slip underneath and snap the waistband of her underwear against her skin.
Katya comes with the formica digging a hard line across her lower back, her stomach fluttering with her orgasm and Trixie moaning sympathetically along with her. Her jeans and underwear are pooled at her ankles, and she leans forward with trembling muscles to pull them back up when Trixie washes her hands.
“You’ve got a lot of energy this morning,” Katya pants. She manages to gather herself and reach over to smack Trixie’s ass before sitting back down at the coffee table, affecting what she hopes is a casual demeanor in the event of Pearl and Jinkx arriving. She thinks she can hear them talking outside.
A wave of realization his her when she sees Trixie look out the tiny window above the sink and purse her lips in a smile.
“What can I say? Last night’s still stickin’ to me.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you how you’re doing.” Katya fiddles with the handle on her coffee mug. She doesn’t look up when she sees Trixie walking towards her.
Trixie’s fingers curl underneath her chin and pull it up. She still smells like Katya, and it sends a tiny jolt through her core. She isn’t one for branding her partner, but she can’t deny the satisfaction of her smell lingering on Trixie, how her fingers will be far enough away from Pearl and Jinkx that they won’t pick up on it over breakfast, but Katya will know.
“I’m doing fine.” Trixie says resolutely. “I’m a little shaken up, but I’m fine. This isn’t my first time around the track.”
Katya’s eyes bug a little and Trixie laughs. The back door opens before Katya can respond and she turns to greet Pearl and Jinkx, who both look half asleep as they stumble inside. Outside of Farmers Market season, Pearl has never been known to be an early riser. It doesn’t surprise Katya that Jinkx would follow suit.
There’s only two chairs, so Katya sits Trixie on her lap and Pearl takes the floor at her own insistence. Trixie serves coffee and then breakfast, and they eat in silence. Pearl and Jinkx wake with each sip of their coffee, and once the plates are washed, dried, and packed into the box by the sink, they’re ready to talk.
“So, we got some interesting information this morning.” Pearl glances over at Katya with a smirk.
“Oh?”
“Something about both of you being banned from Busted Saddles for life? Does that mean Ducky’s is going to have to be our permanent spot now?”
Jinkx laughs and holds her mug out for Trixie to refill. Trixie chuckles, too, but Katya can only muster a half smile.
“Well, you two aren’t banned. Why would we make you go to Ducky’s with us? Such a sad old place.”
Trixie sits back down on Katya’s lap and Katya gives her thigh a loving squeeze. Pearl stands and rests against the back of Jinkx’s chair, looking back and forth at Trixie and Katya with earnest.
“Whatever happened at that bar last night doesn’t matter. I know you two; you wouldn’t get yourselves banned without a damn good reason. And I have my theories on what happened, but at the end of the day, I know you’re the ones in the right here. Ginger’s been looking for an excuse to get us the hell out of there for ages.”
“A high school friend of mine called.” Jinkx tacks on. “Trix, do you remember Farrah?”
Trixie nods and sips her coffee, as if the whole thing doesn’t involve her in the least.
“She was there last night. Said you gave Violet a run for her money. I don’t know much, since Farrah was three sheets to the wind even when she called an hour ago, but I do know that whatever you did to Violet was well deserved.”
“I beat the shit out of her, Jinkx.” Trixie says casually, then sips her coffee again. Pearl guffaws and looks at Katya incredulously. Katya merely shrugs in response, but she can’t help the smile creeping onto her face. “I did. She hurt me, very badly. And that’s not even mentioning what she’d done to my woman before I came along. And I’d had it. I promised Katya that if I ever saw her again I’d beat the living hell out of her, and I did.”
“She’s still Satan’s right hand woman, I’m sure,” Pearl toasts Trixie.
“I could never beat all of it out of her- it’s in her DNA to be a nasty little thing. Bless her heart.”
“What do you think about it all, Katya?” Jinkx asks innocently enough. They all look at her expectantly, Trixie leaning back a little to meet her eyes.
Katya can only shrug again. “It’s not my place to have an opinion. I support Trixie, and if she thought that was the best thing to do, then I’m glad she did it.”
Trixie beams at her and gives her a kiss on her temple, and soon she and Jinkx are talking about the best poultice to use on Trixie’s bruised knuckles and Pearl is telling Katya about the TV show she watched last night on the new channel.
The coffee mugs are cleaned and placed with the dishes and then Pearl and Katya load the table and chairs into the bed of the truck. Katya knows not everything will fit in one trip, and after some deliberation they remove the table and chairs to slide the bed in first. Trixie and Jinkx sit splayed out on the carpet where the bed was, disassembling the frame.
___________________________________
It’s 1970, and Katya will admit to thinking she’d never make it this far in life. It always seemed like such a far away year, and every passing one that brought about new social chance she hoped would bring her time to be vindicated. The Civil Rights movement soothed her nerves, gave some privilege to those who deserved it more than her, but she knew it wasn’t enough to right all the wrongs. And then the Summer of Love happened, listened in on crackly radio waves, and Katya wanted to be at Woodstock. And Trixie’s angel face, and suddenly the sixties were gone in the blink of an eye.
Now Katya stands, looking at the land she grew up on, the land that has been in her family since they immigrated all those years ago, and she knows she won’t see it again. It feels right, the entrance of a new decade and the exit of the past that only ever did Katya any good when she forced it. She stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the plot of land, and wonders if the next owner will tear down her family home, maybe erect some building for public use. Or maybe a newlywed couple will move in, and they’ll get a dog who can run the length of the horse pen. Maybe they’ll have a baby and build onto the house- that had always been her plan, if she could ever work out the logistics.
She still hasn’t been vindicated, but she thinks Trixie is kind of like her vindication. She’s delivered her from evil, given her a clear path to a better future, and wants to see her succeed alongside her. Katya can’t imagine moving into the seventies with anyone else.
__________________________________________
Moving is probably never easy. That's what Katya tells herself as she shoves the tailgate shut on her belongings for the last time.
The house is empty now. A house that had held generations of Katya's family, immigrant farmers and homemakers and those who had dreamed of a life away. They were all dreamers, the one thread outside of DNA Katya holds in common with them. She had always found a way to tamp her dreams down, but today she was finally making one come true.
Katya was leaving Big Rock for good.
It had taken her and Trixie a good chunk of the summer to find a nice enough home outside of Nashville for the money they had available. While they weren't picking between two lean-tos, they clearly were not on the same eschelon as those where they were searching to live. Many of the homes in the country were outrageously expensive, something Katya balked at the moment their realtor told them the average price for a two-bedroom house out in the fields. Katya had bitten the bullet when Trixie fell in love with a ranch house and cashed in almost all of her savings, securing them a perfectly good home in which to grow old together.
College courses in Nashville were a are two weeks away, and Trixie is anxious as all get out to settle into their place. Katya can't blame her; for all the lack of comfort she's putting herself through to have a better life, she should be able to at least come home and escape it all. Escapism couldn't be acheived with boxes lining the walls.
Moving had taken place over three long weekends, finding new ways to pack up dinner plates and records and old trinkets Katya had forgotten she'd kept when her grandpa died. Trixie rolled them up in newspaper and tucked them away in boxes Pearl had pilfered from the back of the grocery store, and Katya stacked them two-high in the bed of her truck and held it all down with a tarp.
This would be their last trip, with the things they had been regularly using during the move. It was such a small load that Katya feels like they've forgotten the other half of their belongings intended for the trip. But it's all moved out, as one final inspection of the house proves. After Katya insisting they double check it all, Trixie had pat her butt and left her to wander the house alone for the last time.
It all looks strange to Katya. She finds herself walking through the empty rooms as if they were still full, dodging the couch and the coffee table.
She sighs heavily as she sits on the floor. As she observes the room that looks smaller than it ever has, her eyes are pulled to a scratch on the baseboard. Looking closer, she can just barely make out an inscription:
Katya + Pyotr 42 43
It’s written in her brother’s chicken scratch, with her perfect penmanship correcting him.
Katya crawls closer and stares.
All at once, she remembers the New Years Eve spent inside the house with her brother closest in age, both too young to partake in the family’s traditional bonfire. She and Pyotr had been left to their own devices, and at age six and-a-half she’d already had plenty of experience correcting her more chaotic brother’s behavior. She laughs when she remembers Pyotr pushing the bookshelf to the side and begging her to sign her name beside his, her refusal and insistence she be the lookout, and her rapid chastising in a language she barely remembers as she corrected the year. Their mother had come in to check on them just as Pyotr had pushed the shelf back into its place, and no one had been the wiser.
Katya touches the insignia and smiles. After a moment, she takes out her pocket knife and carves to the right of it:
Katya + Trixie 70
Trixie's in the truck, wearing Katya's Stetson and making some crummy joke to earn a laugh from teary-eyed Pearl, who's leaning against her door. She strokes Trixie's hair as they speak, winding a curl around her finger and then letting it bounce back, over and over again.
Katya wants to take Pearl with them, but she and Jinkx are getting serious, if there's any more room for that with them, and there is no way Pearl is leaving now. Maybe a year ago, when Katya's Playboys had been her saving grace. But then Katya was waiting for something. Back then she hadn't known what it was.
She kicks a rock out of her way and sidles up beside Pearl, wrapping an arm around her waist. Their flannel rubs together the way only flannel does, and it makes Katya shiver. Pearl gives her a big smile, too big for the pain evident in her eyes, and Katya returns it.
"I'm gonna miss you." Pearl says. "Plain and simple. I don't know what I'm gonna do without my partner to come help me harass the townspeople."
"I thought that's what Jinkx was for," Katya laughs. Trixie tuts from over their heads and she looks up at her. Their smiles match.
"You're responsible for yourself, you hear?" Trixie points a finger at Pearl, who rolls her eyes. "I don't wanna hear when I call that Jinkx has been mothering you. And don't mope around, either, because you can always come and visit."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I wish she could be here," Katya sighs. "it's too bad she had to help in the gardens today."
"She told me to give you this," Pearl takes Trixie's hand and kisses the top of it sweetly, then turns to Katya. "And to give you this."
Pearl's hand swats the seat of Katya's jeans with the force of a thousand suns, all before she can blink. Trixie's flattered blush turns into an obnoxious laugh when Katya jumps a foot into the air and hollers.
"What was that for?"
"She said she doesn't know yet, but you'll probably earn it before she sees you again."
Trixie's laugh hiccups into a sigh as Katya rubs the sore spot on her ass. The humor between them dies down again and Katya knows what's coming next. She can feel it in the way Pearl fixes her face and grabs Katya's hand.
"Don't, Pearl."
But it's too late. A big, fat tear rolls down Pearl's narrow cheek. She sniffles and then Katya hears Trixie sniffle, too. She can't bear to look up at her. Before she has to out of girlfriendly duties, Pearl speaks.
"You come back and see me, now. I really don't know how I'm gonna get on without you around here, but I'll find a way. And if any old bastard tries to buy this place I'll burn it to the ground before they can hold a bible study in the living room."
"You've always had my best interest at heart."
Katya smiles at Pearl serenely, but she can feel the tears beginning to well up behind her own eyes. She hasn't cried yet, hasn't planned on crying ever, not about something so happy as moving out of town, but seeing Pearl like a little girl waving her dearest friend goodbye tears at her heart.
There had been no one else by Katya's side like Pearl, not until Trixie came into her life. Pearl has been the one sturdy thing keeping Katya's life from falling to pieces many a time. And many a time, Katya has been that same sturdy thing for Pearl. Their friendship has weathered innumerable storms. Without one, the other loses some of her power.
But Katya won't let the tears fall just yet. She wants to cry into Trixie's armpit in the middle of the night, in the cold dark of their new house with their new air conditioner. She hopes it will evaporate her tears so they won't chill Trixie's nightgown. She wants her woman's plump fingers wiping her tears away and blotting up snot with her white t-shirt. Crying in the daylight just isn't as satisfying.
And she knows if she cried now, Pearl would be completely inconsolable.
"I love you, Pearlie." Katya pulls her in for one last hug, patting her back so that it sounds like a drum under her hand. "Take care. I'll call you when we get there."
Trixie leanes out the window and hollers goodbye at Pearl as Katya pulls away. In the rearview mirror, Katya sees Pearl waving goodbye, one hand in her pocket. The house gets smaller and smaller, and soon Katya sees nothing but the dust.