On Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday I went to stand in the queue at the only open till in the supermarket.
As I approached from the left (a little stymied by people passing this way and that through the queue), I could see an old lady (let’s call her Maude) and an old man (let’s call him Mervyn) approaching from the right. Maude, with the ease of a professional, just slotted into the queue ... but Mervyn was hesitant and was hovering. I sighed a little and rolled my eyes at ending up further back in the queue, but I was already thinking fuck it, let it go, he’s only got a small basket of stuff.
Then the queue began to move. Mervyn caught my eye and said “Go on, you were before me.” I smiled at him and, without actually saying anything, motioned for him to carry on. He smiled back and moved into the queue. At that point, another checkout opened. The lady on the till called to us to come down, so Mervyn and I walk towards the newly opened checkout together. Yet again (gentleman that he was proving to be) he offered for me to go first. Yet again I smiled and gestured with my hand that he should carry on.
As Mervyn was paying for his shopping, I was about halfway through unloading my trolley’s contents onto the conveyor belt ... and this is when the 30 something Phone Zombie (let’s call her Karen) appeared. Karen didn’t acknowledge anyone or anything, she was just intent on the fact that she had her phone in one hand and her basket of shopping in the other. Hmmmm ... what should Karen do? After all, the contents of her basket needed to be put on the conveyor belt ... buuuuuuuuuut that would mean putting her phone down. Hmmmmmmmm.
I continued to put my shopping on the conveyor ... Karen seemed to be staring at my shopping on the conveyor and then at what was left in my trolley. The dilemma continued to roll around inside her head. She looked at her phone again ........ and then, one handed, just tipped out the contents of her basket onto the conveyor belt leaving me with no room to continue unloading my shopping. Now both hands are on her phone and she’s back to scrolling.
I did attempt (futilely) to get her attention, but nope, Karen was now heavily into phone world. So ... I got the little plastic shopping divider and used it to push Karen’s shopping further down the conveyor so I could carry on. Oh the relief when I finally got out of there!
I could just avoid using the manned checkouts and avoid the Phone Zombies of the world, but I’m one of those people who refuses to use the self service, as monkey does not see and do and take jobs from other people thereby insuring further profit for the money men. Anyway ... now I’m going to sidle off the page to get breakfast, with a nod and a smile out into the Universe to the lovely Mervyn ... and a sigh in the general direction of Karen who, for all I know, is still in the supermarket on her phone because she couldn’t bear to raise her eyes from her screen to find the Exit ...
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The newest episode featuring @weirdreindeer is live on Anchor! As ever, I'm still waiting for the YouTube version to finish, because it can't just upload after two days of waiting. Anyway, enjoy our 3.5-hour-long discussion about character design, BG3, and monsters!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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A/N This is a follow-up to what I thought was a little non AU Trixya one-shot a few weeks ago. I was surprised by the lovely response, and had more Trixya thoughts/feels, so here’s some more!
Chapter One
It was 11:07pm, and Katya was beyond antsy. She sat on the hotel bed in with her legs in a wide V, feet springing back and forth on the comforter like windshield wipers. When her eyes drifted from the nightstand clock, she laughed out loud again at the sight of the two gifts she’d set up there for Trixie’s return. Everything about the situation was new territory for her—planning a surprise trip across the country, writing down and rehearsing what she wanted to say, coordinating with Milk to get into Trixie’s room during their gig. She wouldn’t have believed any of it if she’d been told about her own behavior even a few months ago.
Her phone lit up with a call from Milk.
“You whore! Where have you been? At first I thought the key wasn’t gonna work and I was like aghhh, but I’m in her room now and-“
“Katya. Are you alone?”
“What? Yes.”
“Okay good. My phone died at the venue, and I just now finally got it charged in the Uber. Listen, I think you want to get out of the hotel. We can meet up in the parking lot and I’ll tell you more, but-“
“Wait wait, what? Why do you sound like that? Are you okay? Is Trixie-“
“Yeah, everyone’s fine. Listen: Trixie’s boyfriend showed up tonight too. I guess he has this whole New York City weekend thing planned for them. I don’t know, he was at the show tonight in the front row with a bunch of flowers. She brought him up onstage at the end and they kissed and stuff. I was backstage, so I have no idea if this is real, but one of the fans started yelling about an engagement. They were all filming on their phones. I’m just a couple minutes away from the hotel. I think they might get there before me, but I can try to stall them? What do you want to do?….Katya, are you there?….Katya?”
Katya had been nodding in silence but was jolted into a response.
“Yes! Yeah, yep. Um. Okay. I don’t have a lot of stuff with me, so I can leave pretty easily. Cool. Thank you for letting me know.”
“Katya, hey, are you okay? I’m really sorry. Do you want to meet me in the parking l-“
“Thanks again.”
Katya ended the call. She stared down at her phone for a full minute, finger hovering over the Instagram icon, before slipping it into her pocket and standing up to collect her backpack and little travel pillow. It wasn’t until the door clicked behind her that she realized she’d left both the extra room key and her gifts for Trixie inside. She turned back to stare at the door, wondering what she could say to the hotel staff to be let back in, when she heard an unmistakable sound: Trixie’s screech-laugh erupted from the lobby around the corner. Thinking back a couple of hours, Katya pieced together that he hotel was laid out in a horseshoe shape. There was no exit between where she stood and the front lobby.
She took a few steps in each direction, heart pounding, searching for an open room door or stray laundry cart to jump into-anything. No such luck. When Trixie, her boyfriend and Milk turned the corner all at once, they saw her looking up at a fire sprinkler head. Trixie’s mouth fell open.
She was out of drag already, her face still glowing from adrenaline and makeup remover, and she carried a huge bouquet of pink roses. She looked from Katya to the others, then back to Katya.
“Ahhhhh! What are you doing here?!! Is this part of my surprise weekend?”
She cocked her head to the side and grinned at her boyfriend, while Milk approached Katya and tried to catch her eyes. He jumped in:
“Kind of! Uh, I asked Katya to do a little cameo in this video project I’m working on. Her flight got delayed and she missed the show tonight, but I figured we could still meet about it while we’re here.”
Trixie ran over, pulling her boyfriend by the hand. “Oh, work! Are you staying in this hotel? I’m so glad you’re here. Tonight was ridiculous. I have so much to tell you. Hey. Are you okay?”
She got a first good look at Katya, who had closed her eyes and gone pale. Trixie’s hand dropped instinctively from her boyfriend’s, whom she handed the bouquet of flowers.
Milk stepped in again. “I’m sure you’re drained, right? I have a bunch of Gatorade in my room. Should we all get settled and maybe meet back up in a few minutes?”
Katya took a deep, shaky breath and felt the beginning of tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. She had the sense that things would change forever once she opened them again, and she let out a soft “Please, no.”
“Are you sure? I’m just a couple doors down.”
“No, I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t do this.” Another shaky breath. “I fucked up.” Without looking at Trixie, she gestured in her direction.
“I came here for you. Um. Because I want to be with you.” She couldn’t stop now. She reached for some of the words she had planned to say to her best friend, but they didn’t make sense anymore. When she continued, it was half to herself and half addressing the room.
“I was doing so good.” Katya broke away and started pacing the hallway, wiping away tears and laughing incredulously.
“What did I think? This is so weird, I, I’m not. I don’t get to have that world. I don’t get to have a life with you. I thought I saw it, I thought I saw what it could look like. I saw it. But I’m. I didn’t…I didn’t need to do this. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry! Fuck!”
She had been walking more and more quickly as she spoke, her voice rising in pitch with her panic, but now she wandered slowly back toward the group and lifted her hands to rest on Milk’s chest, shaking and dazed. “Can you, can you help me get out of here?”
With that, Trixie whispered something quickly into her boyfriend’s ear and made a beeline for Katya. She took by the shoulders and turned her so they were face to face.
“Hey. You’re okay.” She said gently. “Come with me.”
She led Katya into her room, scooping up her bag and pillow on their way. Once inside, she sat her down on the foot of the bed and squatted in front of her with a hand on each knee.
“I want you to breathe, okay? Just stay here and breathe. It’s just us. Breathe. I’m gonna be back in just a couple of minutes, okay? I promise. Just get that breathing down. Do your yoga stuff. You know how to breathe”
“Okay.”
Trixie gave her legs a quick squeeze and left the room. When she returned in just a few minutes, true to her word, it was with a huge bottle of water, a bag of pretzels and a package of fruit snacks. She set them out on the bed next to Katya, then settled a few feet away on the floor against the wall. Â
“I need you to start eating, and then I need to say something.”
Katya had immediately started feeling calmer at Trixie’s touch in the hallway, and at this point her breathing and heart rate was almost back to normal. The feeling of panic had been replaced with a duller feeling of dread, and the last thing she wanted to do was eat, but she could sense that she had little choice. She opened the pretzels quietly and bit into one.
“Okay good. Thank you. Now, I need you to really hear what I’m about to say. I’ll write it down too if you want, seriously, so you can read it as many times as it takes. You are my best friend, Kat. That is important business to me. And nothing is gonna change that. You don’t have to try and become something you’re not because you’re afraid of losing me. You couldn’t lose me if you tri-”
“NO.”
Katya never raised her voice, and Trixie was thrown by the intense focus in her words. She set the pretzels down on the bad and kept her eyes on picking away crumbs as she spoke. “There are a lot of things in my life I’ve done because I was afraid. A lot of things. But this isn’t one of them. I mean I am afraid, obviously. Fuck. But you don’t make me afraid. You make me the opposite of afraid. You’re the only…” Trixie saw her hands search to take hold of the ends of the mattress as she searched for the words she needed, unsuccessfully. Trixie was usually the one to help finish her thoughts.
Time passed. Trixie noticed the items on the nightstand.
One was a stuffed bear with a pink cowboy hat, and the other was a large adobe pot with a cluster of bright pink flowers inside-too small for the amount of soil it sat in. She stood up to get a closer look.
“What are these? Did you bring this stuff?”
A new wave of embarrassment rose in Katya, and she sighed. “Yeah. They’re presents. I got them at the airport.”
Trixie couldn’t help but laugh. She moved to the plant for a closer look. “Girl, they don’t sell big ass potted plants at the airport.”
Katya stood to start gathering her things together. Her voice was low and even, and she spoke as though she was trying to get through this final obstacle all in one breath.
“Those are flowers. They’re called clustered poppy-mallow. They’re really endangered, and they pretty much only grow in a couple places in the Midwest, and I saw them online on one of those time-lapse videos. They reminded me of you. And I bought some seeds online. They’re actually wildflowers, like prairie type flowers, but I started them in a little pot to make sure they do okay in LA…which they should, based on the dryness and climate and stuff. Um. They look fucking dumb right now because I just gave them a bigger pot, but they’re actually doing really well according to Karen.”
“Karen?”
“Oh. Yeah. At the garden center. The one in WeHo, by that sunflower juice place? Karen keeps the flowers when I’m out of town. Um. But I’ve been taking care of them. I know like, everything there is to know about them. And I wanted to show-to show them to you. And now I would really like to go.”
She had the bag and pillow in her hands at this point. Trixie stood still, back still facing Katya and inadvertently blocking her from taking the plant. She and made gentle thumb imprints around the perimeter of the soil as she finally began speaking. Â
“This is a lot, Kat.
I don’t understand.
I’ve worked really, really hard to take this whole idea of “us” off the table for myself. I didn’t think it’s what you wanted. You don’t want this. This has been…I don’t even…some nights it’s been really hard, you know? And then sometimes I thought I felt something changing between us. But I could never tell, because you never gave me any sign. I never, never knew if I was just crazy. I can’t believe we’re talking about this. I almost said something that night last summer when we were sitting on the hood of my car. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah, I do.” Katya had moved closer behind Trixie, and the breath from the words just behind her ear made her stomach clench. “I think about it a lot.”
Trixie could sense Katya’s hand about to take hers, and she spun around in place.
“So why now?”
She looked proud, almost defiant.
“W-what?” Katya stammered.
“Why are you asking for this? It’s been so long. How can I trust this? If you wanted me, you would have known by now. Right?” She was half pleading, half accusing. “You would have known.”
“Trixie, no-“
“Katya, you’re just scared of thing changing. You think you want this, but it’s too much. You’ll get bored. The sex…settling down. All of it. You would get bored and you would leave. You would leave me.”
In all the scenarios Katya had played out in her mind of how this conversation might go, she never imagined that she would be looking into Trixie’s eyes and seeing just as much fear there as she felt herself. A switch flipped inside of her. She lifted a hand to cup her face, fingers sliding to the back of her neck and thumb tracing her smooth cheekbone, and leaned forward to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Her hand moved down Trixie’s arm and took her hand, and she led her to a full-length mirror near the entrance of the room.
He stood in front of Trixie and wrapped the taller man’s arms around his waist. “Look.”
Trixie could see over his head into the mirror, where the shorter gave a small wave and a smile.
“Look at us. I see it now. Everyone does. I’m so sorry I kept you waiting.” Katya turned to face Trixie, who was looking down and biting his lip, hard. “I swear I see it.” He shrugged, “It’s all I see.”
Katya ran his fingers up Trixie’s neck and into his hair, massaging gently and adding pressure as he pulled his forehead close to his. “Can I show you?”
Trixie’s whole body was still tense, and Katya wished he had the same ability as the younger man to relax him with one touch. He thought about all the times Trixie had been restrained about sex in the past because it wasn’t special enough. Because it wasn’t earned. Because it wasn’t the right person. All the times he had gone home with trade while Trixie had gone home alone. He held his breath and pushed down the fear that maybe he really had missed his chance. He was about to say something else, when he felt Trixie jerk his head in a small nod. Relief flooded his body, followed by a cautious warmth creeping up through his arms and legs and into his chest. He had thought about this moment so many times, in so many ways, and he was giddy with options.
Instinct took over in the end. His arms circled around Trixie’s neck, and he leaned up into the warmest, deepest kiss he could offer. Trixie whimpered involuntarily at first, and resisted, but Katya kept up a gentle rhythm of licking and sucking on his bottom lip until he felt his mouth give and then fall open for him. Trixie slid his arms around the smaller queen’s waist and relaxed a bit more into the embrace, giving Katya some of his weight. It felt as easy as breathing. Katya couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across his face, which broke the kiss and made them both laugh breathlessly. He took the opportunity to slide his hand down to Trixie’s chest, where he paused at his heartbeat, then down his stomach. He lifted Trixie’s shirt over his head, then allowed himself to reach for the stiff hardness that was now almost flush against his stomach. As many times as he’d imagined this moment, the heavy, pulsing feeling of Trixie’s cock through his clothes consumed him in a way no one ever had before. He kissed Trixie again, a messy hunger taking over for both of them as they fought for dominance with their lips, teeth and tongues, until Katya broke away again with a gasp and slid around to the back of Trixie’s body. He reached under his arms and started unzipping his pants, signaling for Trixie to take them the rest of the way off. He knelt to the floor and explored each new inch of flesh as it was revealed, kissing, licking, and running his hands down the back of Trixie’s legs.
As Trixie started to peel off his underwear, Katya felt an intense and unexpected new sensation that made him look away for a moment. He needed to take care of Trixie. He understood what sex was to him, and he felt a swell of privilege and gratitude to have him in his hands. Katya had always acknowledged sex as something sacred, but this felt completely new. When he turned back to face Trixie, Katya saw that he had a plug in. He looked beautiful, and Katya traced his fingers along the sides of his hips. It slowly dawned on him that Trixie had inserted the plug that evening thinking that the night would end his boyfriend, and his throat caught suddenly in a mix of lust and emotion. Without touching him there, Katya rose to his feet and wrapped one arm around Trixie’s waist in a hug with another resting on his hip. He found Trixie’s eyes in the mirror and saw a mix of uncertainty and deep desperation there.
“Do you want this?”
“I…” Trixie looked lost.
“It’s okay. Whatever you want is okay, baby.”
“I…” He moved Katya’s hand down and back as his voice faltered. “Yes. Three years. I need you.”
Katya sprang into action. He grabbed a small container of lube from his backpack and took off his own clothes as quickly as possible. He stood in front of Trixie again, and the younger man’s hands fumbled over his body to touch as much as possible right away. He let out a moan when he felt Trixie grab his length like the most natural thing in the world and begin pumping him for the first time, leaning into the touch for a moment before looking up to the taller man to kiss him again, bite lightly on his earlobe and whisper, “Get on all fours for me.”
Katya warmed up some lube in his hands and gently worked the plug out of Trixie. A primal, possessive streak flashed through him as he imagined the younger man in this position with his boyfriend. He knew the thought was in the room for both of them, and he knew it was risky, but he needed to put it all on the table.
“Did he use his hands on you first, or his mouth?” Katya asked Trixie’s reflection. His voice held a challenging note, and the younger man’s face was clouded with hurt for a moment before making the decision to respond. “He used his hands. Uses.”
Katya began licking the perimeter of Trixie’s opening slowly while massaging his thighs and spreading him even further apart.
“Does he open doors for you?”
“Sometimes.”
Katya began licking more roughly. “Mmhmm. And is he a good kisser?”
“Yyyyes.” Trixie felt drunk on his need for Katya, and on the honesty of the moment.
“Does he smoke?” Katya made his tongue stiff and dipped it deep inside. Trixie moaned loudly.
“N-no! He doesn’t smoke. And I love that.” Katya’s fingers dug into Trixie’s hips. He replaced his tongue with one, two, then three lubricated fingers moving slowly in and out, then repositioned himself so that his face was visible to Trixie in the mirror again. He saw the younger smiling at him darkly.
“Does he make you laugh?” Katya asked, crooking his fingers expertly inside Trixie and eliciting a wilder, more guttural moan. He was panting now, with one hand up on the mirror for support, but managed to answer.
“Some. Sometimes.”
“That’s right. That’s what I thought.” He crooked his fingers again, to another load moan, then removed them and teased his slick head around Trixie’s hole.
“Do you ever think of me while you’re fucking?”
He could tell immediately that this question pushed too far, and Trixie leaned away from his touch and into his forearms on the floor breathing hard. When he answered, Katya could hear the pain and hurt in his muffled voice.
“What if I do, Brian? Huh? What the fuck was I supposed to do!?” Katya wrapped an arm around his hips and pulled him back towards him gently. When he spoke again, he kissed Trixie’s shoulder and was leaning forward to speak right into his ear.
“I’m sorry.”
He re-entered Trixie gently and began grinding slowly as he spoke, a free hand pumping him in tandem with the motion.
“Does he feel like we feel?”
Trixie shivered and arched his back.
“Does anything else in your life make this much sense?
Do you know how hard I want to work at loving you, Brian?
Please look at me.”
Trixie’s eyes met his again in the mirror as the older queen filled him again and again. He kept pumping at a slow, steady rate, brushing Trixie’s prostate each time, as he spoke.
“You know me. You know it all. You know this is new for me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Brian, for me, it’s all been leading to you.”
Trixie’s felt himself slowly shaking off the heaviness as his words sunk in. He committed the moment to his memory, smiling up at the truth in Katya’s bright eyes, as his body let go of its last bit of control and came in his hands. Katya followed close behind, coasting on Trixie’s happiness, and held his hips up with a strong bicep as they rode the aftershock together. Eventually, Katya crawled over to the bed to drag the bedding to the floor where they lay. He made them a makeshift pallet and pulled Trixie in close, who smiled shyly at him in the mirror.
“This is the beginning.”
Katya squeezed and bit down his neck playfully, then kissed him.
Katya’s eyes flickered to the nightstand clock again–the third time in ten minutes–as she shook out her hands to try to and bring back some blood flow. It wasn’t working.
Sometimes she felt like her nerves were closer to the surface of her skin than other peoples’, or that her brain sent messages with more force than necessary. Life was raw for Katya. It always had been. There was a time when she thought she would grow out of it and toughen up, but her sensitivity only came into sharper focus as she got older. When she found something beautiful or interesting or funny, it could send her soaring through the day. On the other hand, the pain and injustice in the world was sometimes too much to process. It didn’t just translate to angry retweets for her; it kept her up at night. She could never read or learn enough. She made mental connections so quickly and creatively that people struggled to keep up with her in conversation. It didn’t frustrate her–she had almost no capacity to feel spiteful toward other people–but it did leave her feeling lonely more often than not.
With her travel schedule being as packed as it was these days, she spent most nights chatting with friends and fans after shows about the music, the looks of the night, the other queens. Without meaning to, she always searched their eyes for something else. Sometimes those conversations led to sex, which was the only thing that felt honest enough to lean into. She could give that. She could connect there. She could funnel all of the different pieces of herself, the things she didn’t have words for, into that act. She was kind and responsible to the smallest detail when it came to sex, which protected her partners from getting hurt or feeling used.
It was a life. She managed. She had her art, which kept her busy and inspired most days. She was making so much money that she couldn’t even remember the feeling of being broke.
There was a heaviness underneath it all, but she was equipped to deal with it. She knew when to surround herself with people and when to go hiking alone. She no longer asked herself what the point of everything was, and she was determined to never unload a single ounce of the weight she carried onto someone else.
But then there was Trixie.
It was filming day for season two of Unhhh, and Trixie came back from their ten-minute break in a daze. She settled onto her chair as an assistant fidgeted with Katya’s mic, gazing intently at her phone screen and compulsively bouncing one knee. She didn’t notice how loudly her stiletto was clacking against the floor until Katya bubbled up with laughter and started swatting at her foot with a paper fan.
“Girl. Where’d you go??”
Trixie looked up, though not exactly at Katya, and turned her phone screen towards her. There was a glare, so Katya took it in her hands to get a better view. She recognized it immediately as a series of texts from the younger queen’s boyfriend:
J: So theoretically…what would you look for in a boy ring?
J: Forget I texted that. This is not a text conversation. I’m just in front of this window downtown and this thing caught my eye.
J: I’ve been thinking a lot about that movie we watched the other night. About diving in, and how life is short. Can’t wait to see you tonight.
Katya kept her eyes on the phone, face locked, as the assistant finished up with the mic and Ron began to speak:
“Okay guys, I think we’ve got pretty much everything we need. Can we just finish up with a little more of the football stuff?”
They’d been filming a sports-themed episode that day, among several others, and Trixie had started a story right before the break about playing pee-wee football as a child. It had everyone on the set doubled over with laughter, but Trixie asked for a break so that she could try and remember the exact sequence of events before telling it.
She had great comedic instincts, but she was also a perfectionist. Katya had never known someone quite so driven. In the three years since she’d met other queen, Trixie had achieved nearly every goal she set for herself. Fitness journey, check. Country album, check. Katya knew she would land on All Stars 3, and she believed whole-heartedly that she could win it. Her mind flashed back to the last time they’d sat in these chairs for filming, when Trixie had talked about becoming husband material in 2017 and locking down that part of her life. It felt abstract back then–maybe because the idea of settling down, especially as young as she was, was so foreign to Katya. But it was suddenly the most obvious thing in the world. A soft ringing started in her ears, and she felt cold in spite of the bright studio lights.
When she made the decision to look up at Trixie, it was with a huge grin. She thrust the phone back towards her and willed the next words to leave her mouth.
“You cunt! You know I don’t get it, but get yourself that white picket fence, mama.”
She watched a small smile creep onto Trixie’s face.
“It’s totally ridiculous, right? Like, it’s been four months?”
Katya could hear the giddy note in her voice. She knew it like the back of her hand. And she knew what Trixie needed from her, so she squeezed her arm and dropped from Katya into Brian mode for a moment.
“I’m happy for you.”
The next half hour was a blur. Trixie told the pee-wee story, and Katya listened. She could get away with being a little more subdued than normal since it was the end of the day and everyone was exhausted, but she still managed to laugh at all the right moments. It felt wrong to fake something that normally came so easily, but it wasn’t difficult. She wished it was more difficult.
She wished it was more difficult to avoid de-dragging with Trixie once they wrapped. She made up an excuse about needing to figure out a paperwork detail in the WOW offices upstairs and then let everyone know that she’d lock up the studio if they had left by the time she was back. She walked up through the main building and out onto the back parking lot for a cigarette. She noticed her hands shaking as she lit it, and she reminded herself to take deep breaths and feel her feet on the ground. She stood there for a few minutes, smoking and noticing the breeze on her face and a blinking neon sign across the street. Without warning, her brain flashed to the vape pen she’d halfheartedly bought a couple of months earlier to try and quit smoking. She remembered Trixie’s face light up the first time she saw it, and how she found little ways to encourage her in the pursuit each time she saw her. By the time she took her last drag, she felt tears rolling down her cheeks. She knew better than to fight it, so she waited it out and promised herself that this would be the only time.
The next two weeks sent their fans into a tailspin. Katya decided to double down on the public Trixya declarations, wrapping up their storyline and cashing in on years of tension. She pined over Trixie, Trixie wouldn’t have any of it, they were still the best of friends. That was the story, and that was the foundation she needed to set to protect herself for whatever was going to happen next. They hadn’t spoken in real life since filming, one of the longest stretches they’d ever gone without contact. Trixie had sent a text that night:
T: Are we good? I waited for a while downstairs. Wanna get dinner?
K: Duh. And I would, but I’m exhausted. I forgot about some weird thing in my contract, so I have to come back to WOW tomorrow morning and figure it out with legal.
T: Okay, well let me know if you want to go to Laila’s show with me and Courtney this weekend. Season Two is going to be sickening YASS MAMA BOOTS THE HOUSE DOWN.
K: Mother, we’re breakaway staaaars again.
T: You’re done.
When the Valentine’s Day video surfaced of Katya discussing her onstage at the gig, Trixie didn’t reach out. She never did. That was understood. Katya pushed it further at the next gig, for reasons she couldn’t explain. Nothing. But when she got in touch with Milk to get face to face with Trixie at their hotel in Syracuse for the benefit show, she had never felt more sure of something in her life.
10:38. It was a college show, and Milk guessed that they’d be back by 11. She would wait.
