Chapter Text
“That’s it. Everything’s gone.”
Sheets of rain pounding into the barren landscape. Everything moved so slowly in the midst of disaster, despite control slipping so easily from her fingertips. Trixie was pulled from her car headed east down the highway into three foot high floodwaters. Through half-lidded eyes, she watched her silver jeep disappear in the distance as the military-grade caravan headed back up the road, into town and the eye of the storm. It felt like the end of her world.
“You’ll be able to come back to her after the storm passes,” an armed man in camo yelled from the side of the open van, pointing to the fading silhouette of her car.
“Fuck off, dude,” the blonde muttered, crossing her legs and running her fingers through her hair. She had two backpacks - one with necessities, one with things that were a little less than essential. The clothes on her back. The cards in her pockets. The cash tucked in her bra. Sitting on the platform of the van, heart barely beating, and with the rain spraying over the sides of the truck - Trixie knew this storm was beyond expectations.
“Why were you evacuating towards the sea?” the man asked after twenty minutes of silent travel.
“Family. Plus, I didn’t think it would fucking flood inland before it flooded on the coast.”
“The coast has a built in drainage system. They expect flooding, inland doesn’t. You still have a mobile device, right?”
“Yeah. I can contact ‘em.”
“Need a charge?”
“No. I...No, no thank you.” Trixie pressed herself against the back wall of the truck, sheltered by a small tarp. She pulled a blanket out of her bag, wrapping it over her head and torso.
The world was dark, and Trixie was afraid.
She opened her eyes next in the dark of night, a firm hand on her shoulder. It was the same man, leaned over and holding her bags.
“Ma’am, we’re here. The shelter.”
“Please don’t touch me.”
He pulled his hand away, instead gesturing to the bags.
“...When can I go home?”
“We’ll be back after the storm and when roads reopen.”
“When will that be?”
He looked out onto the building in the distance and sighed, only responding by inching the bags closer to her face. Trixie snatched them from him, standing and hopping off the edge of the platform. The man followed her inside, walking straight for a makeshift reception table in the entrance hallway. The blonde looked around, a bag in each hand, eyes wide. The shelter was a renovated high school, fit with a trophycase, student art displays, and a plethora of plaques decorating the walls.
“Yeah. Just the one tonight. Driving down the interstate - I asked, yeah, no, she’s not in immediate danger - look, just ask her, why don’t you?”
Thunder rolled across the sky, shaking the tiles beneath Trixie’s feet. Flickering fluorescent lights, the pale yellow walls with brick accents. The man stepped aside, revealing a shorter woman who gestured to her.
“Can I see your I.D.?” An accent. Something foreign.
She fished her license out of her coat pockets and dropped it on the table, not bothering to look at the woman. What was the point of leaving her car? She would’ve made it.
“You’re just a kid. Fuck were you doing out driving in a hurricane?”
“‘s not a big one,” she muttered.
“Still a hurricane. Where are you from?”
“You’re looking at my I.D., shouldn’t you be able to tell?”
The woman chuckled, extending a hand with the card out. “Wow. Won’t even look at me, huh? It’s alright. It’s happened enough times for me to stop taking it personally.” She yanked her hand back when Trixie moved to grab the card. “Though, listen up to this, okay?”
Trixie huffed, running her fingers through wet curls. It was hard not to be angry, but it wasn’t like the woman who sat before her was to blame for one of the worst hurricanes to hit her town - ever. She lowered her chin slowly, exhaling as she opened her eyes.
Bright, shining teeth. White as the blinding sun.
“Ah, that’s better. Alright. If you leave the shelter during the storm, you will not be allowed back in. We don’t care what reasons you had, it’s just protocol here. Your background check will fully process in the morning - which means we may have to call you in to talk about certain things, health and regulatory shit, special acceptions, what have you. But honestly, blondie, we’re at max capacity, so don’t expect anything special from us.” The woman - with a dirty blonde bob and bangs clipped out of her eyes - looked up at the man, smiling. “She’s the last for tonight, right?”
“That I’m scheduled for, at least. I don’t think anybody would be crazy enough to try driving this late in a hurricane,” he muttered, glancing at Trixie. “But...I may make the rounds one more time.”
“Poor bastard. I’m gonna take Pixie here-“
“Trixie.” She whipped her head around the glare at the woman, only to be met with a playful expression.
“Sure, sure. I’m gonna take her to the common area, but I’ll send Ginger up to man the desk until morning.”
“Alright. Have you figured out the smoke break situation?”
“No, but the dinner riots have quieted down. Most everybody is asleep. Stay safe out there.”
“And you in here.”
He walked away like a stranger, and Trixie didn’t mind. She stood awkwardly beside the desk manager, shifting her weight before the woman raised from her chair.
“...D...didn’t you say you’d take me somewhere?”
The woman tilted her head. Slowly, a small grin stretched across her face and she pulled a cloth napkin out of her pocket, wheezing into it loudly.
“What the fuck - are you okay?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just funny to watch you stand there and pretend like I won’t see you if you didn’t make any noise.” The woman beamed at her. “It’s not every day I get to be a pretty girl’s tour guide. Let’s show you around.”
Trixie blinked. Her hands tightened around the straps of her bags. And she nodded.
The woman was short, much shorter than Trixie expected. She stood a head closer to the ground than her, with a voice that floated between vocal ranges and tones. Dancing between complex teasing and indisputable sincerity. Walking quickly, like they didn’t have time to kill. Like Trixie would sleep at all that night.
“Alright, so!” The woman put her hands on her hips, straightened her back, and did her best to play off the horrendously loud cracking noise that echoed in the halls when she straightened her back. “Welcome to...uh...this fuckin’ high school! I’m your host, Katya Zamolodchikova, and don’t you dare get comfortable because the ceilings could fall through at any moment. Seriously, we’ve already evacuated once.”
“Ah.”
“It’s not great. Can’t lie. We have as many working bathrooms as a shitty high school usually has, there’s two gyms being used as common areas, we don’t have many mattresses, and...eh. Y’know. The commonalities - drugs, alcohol, chainsmoking insurrections. The roaches of the community we don’t think about too much - I can say that, I’m one of ‘em - are all out to play here. Keep your bags close, pretty girl.”
“Trixie. And you mentioned a riot earlier?”
“Ahhh, yeah, yeah. Do you smoke?”
“No. Fuckin’ gross.”
The woman glanced at her for a moment before continuing the tour. “Well, like I said. Chainsmoking insurrection. We didn’t schedule smoke breaks and they all needed one. It’s hard to remember everything. They got really angry and started throwing shit, and...it’s under control now. I think. That’s what matters.”
“Crazies.”
“You’re staying with a crazy tonight.”
“...What?”
“Do you even know what time it is?”
“It’s...dark.”
“It’s two in the morning, kid. I said I’d take you to the common room, but we can’t go in. Everyone’s asleep. Babies, toddlers, seniors...All hell would break loose if I opened the gym doors.”
Trixie huffed and held her bags close to her chest. “Do I...sleep in the hall, then?”
“Nah. You’ll be with me.”
She stood, staring at the woman.
“K...Ka-tea-uh, right?”
“Katya, yes.”
“Well, Katya, I, uh...I don’t wanna sleep with you.”
She chuckled. “You’re not the first woman who’s said that to me so nervously.”
Trixie’s face flushed and a bag slipped from her grasp, smacking against the tiled floors. She could feel the world shift around her. “N-No, I, I didn’t mean...it’s just, uh...I barely know you?”
“You won’t know anybody here, Miss Pixie. I can almost guarantee it. So you know me better than anybody else in this building.” She grinned. “So flattered you chose me, by the way.”
“Trixie. And I had no fuckin’ choice.”
“Our room is this way,” Katya replied brightly, picking up Trixie’s bag and guiding her down to the end of the hall. It was lit ominously in a way, with the single flourescent panel bouncing light across the floors and the chipped paint on the walls. Like God had left them all behind.
“...Our?”
Like a dorm room, Trixie. Don’t let the world wander in such a direction.
“Yeah, Ginger and I. A colleague of mine.” The woman smirked in her direction, resting a hand on the door handle. “Funny how your hair is so clean with your head stuck in th-“
“Shhhut up, shut up, I’m just. I’m just tired!”
“Mmm. Long day.” Cracking open the door slowly, Kaytya peaked her head inside. “You awake in there? I brought fresh meat.”
An older woman stepped out, with thick, red hair to her shoulders and a wide frame.
“...So you’re preying on refugees now, eh?”
“And if I am?”
“I’d say it’s fucked up. She looks like she’s sixteen, leave that girl alone.”
Trixie felt far away, removed entirely from the conversation. Like they existed in a plane far above her. What a disaster, her first year of college cut so sharply by a massive storm like this. Would things be able to return to normal?
“Out of her car, yeah. She’s been kind of out of it, and...today’s a lot of people’s first real night of sleep, so I didn’t have the heart to even touch the gym doors.” When Trixie returned to the world in front of her, she saw Katya leaning back and rubbing her neck sheepishly. The older woman had her arms crossed, a stern expression plastered to her face. “Sooo...since you’re on duty now, I was thinking she could crash in here for the night?”
“Poor thing. First she tried to drive into the eye of a storm, and now she’s being thrown into the middle of Hurricane Katya. I know what you’re doing, you skunk, and it’s a no from me.”
“I’m not doing anything, you fucking wretch! Do you want Pixie sleeping in the hallway? She can’t spend the night in that fucked up infirmary, she’s not even sick and I doubt what few nurses we have want more shit to handle.”
“I-it’s Trixie...”
“Is she trying to get into your pants, Pixie?” Ginger questioned snarkily, stepping forward and lifting her chin to stare at the blonde.
“Trixie-“
“Ginger, I told you, I’m not gonna try anything! I’m trying to be considerate to the entire displaced city in the gym!” Katya exclaimed, jumping between the two.
“There’s one mattress in our room. The room itself is about eight by eight feet. Are you comfortable with that, Pixie?”
“My name’s Trixie.”
“Ah. Sorry.” The older woman blinked.
“It’s...it’s okay. Things are just very-“
“We’re wasting time, and we need somebody at the desk! I’m sure Tracy’s fine with it-“
Without thinking, she snatched Katya’s arm back and pulled her towards her, eyes firey and lips curling into a snarl.
“How the fuck,” Trixie began in a hushed tone, “am I supposed to act polite and collected to one of the women I know I’ll have to deal with until this fucking hurricane passes if she can’t even let me finish a fucking sentence without cutting me off?”
The shorter woman stared at the blonde, her jaw slightly slack and her brows raised. A creeping bit of warmth travelling to her ears, spreading across her nose.
She had really nice bone structure.
Trixie flew backwards, stumbling and clammering to keep from dropping her bag. “Sorry! Shit, sorry! I’m super stressed out! My bad!”
Ginger took a step back, eyes wide. But then her expression changed - curious, maybe, definitely intrigued.
“Katya has a point, for once in her life,” she said with a smile. “I need to go handle the desk in case any stragglers show up. Try to keep from killing each other, okay?”
The older woman began to walk away, stopping for a moment beside Trixie.
“Fuck with her a little bit,” she muttered. “It can be fun.”
And like that, Ginger was gone.
Trixie watched her fading frame, sighing. It was going to be hell, the waiting game she had unwittingly signed up to play. When she turned back to Katya, the woman seemed a little shorter, her stare just as intense and her cheeks deepening with a rosy hue.
“...Ka-tea-uh?”
“Yes?!” she barked, jumping upright.
“I. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh. Oh, you didn’t scare me, Miss Trixie.” The name was smooth on her lips. Dripping like honey.
How terribly awkward. Trixie exhaled slowly, slinging her bag over her shoulder and trying her best to smile kindly. “Should we...settle in, then?”
“...RIGHT, that’s - that’s my job! Fuck, I’m so tired, I’m sorry.” The woman rubbed her eyes and stumbled into the side room with Trixie following close behind. “It’s not much. And by that I mean it’s not shit in the slightest, and I’m awful to sleep with but I’ll...you need rest. You’re just a kid.”
She wasn’t wrong. It looked like a storage closet with a mattress thrown in the middle of it. There was a trashcan that seemed to be a makeshift ashtray beside the mattress and under a nearby desk. What a wonderful world.
“...It’s nice,” Trixie lied thickly, her eyes dragging over the mattress. She dropped her bag and kneeled beside it, pulling out a scrunchie and her blanket from the ride over. It was a little wet, but it would do.
Katya watched her with thin eyes, seemingly documenting every movement. It felt like surveillance. A camera disguised as an attractive older woman.
“Everything alright?”
“You look tired, Trix.”
“Nicknames this early on?”
“Aw. Don’t you wanna be friends? I’d heard pretty girls like you were cold, but my heart didn’t want to believe it.”
“Y...you don’t have to butter me up like that,” Trixie murmured, pulling her hair back and falling back onto the mattress.
“Just being honest.” The older woman shrugged, slipping a hand into her pocket and pulling out a lighter. “Any plans on sleeping tonight?”
“...I wish. I don’t fuck with any of this at all,” she groaned, pulling the blanket over her face. “We evacuated way too late...all my friends skipped classes and left midway through the week, but I had a midterm.”
“Midterm?”
Trixie poked her head out of the blanket, looking up at the woman. She held a cigarette between two fingers, a softer expression on her face than before. Gentle and kind. “It’s like a mini final exam.”
“Oh. Huh. Sounds stupid.”
The blonde leaned forward, smiling nervously. “You don’t know what a midterm is?”
“I took a few art classes at a community college, I should probably remember this.” She laughed and unclipped her bangs, letting them fall over her forehead. “But y’know how it goes for artsy lesbians at a liberal arts school.”
“And what’s that?”
“You drop out and pick up roller skating again.”
Trixie stared up at her for a moment before slamming a hand over her mouth, muffling shrieks of laughter.
“What, what?!”
“Nothing, I just-“ She gasped and rubbed at her eyes, smiling up at the woman. “I dunno, I was thinking about throwing on my skates again sometime soon.”
A brighter look crossed Katya’s face. “Ah. How old are you, again?”
“No.”
She groaned and leaned into her cig, still smiling. “Can’t blame me for trying.”
“Did you sign up for shifts here so you could pick up easy, lost college girls?” Trixie shot at her, furrowing her brows.
“...I wish I had been that smart. How did you know they asked people to sign up?”
“Because in my shitty town, they resorted to asking college students. I would’ve if I hadn’t left - fuck, maybe I should’ve just stayed. I’ll never know. But I didn’t think they’d ask...uh, yknow.” She looked Katya up and down.
“I’m a public servant, Miss Trixie.”
“I always said I should drop out of college and become a ‘public servant’,” the blonde lamented, emphazing her point with air quotes. “Always seemed easier to make money that way. I don’t have the body, though.”
“The body to be a librarian?” Katya asked quietly, tilting her head.
“...’scuse me?”
“I’m a fuckin’ librarian, Pixie sticks.” A puff of smoke, swirling across the woman’s visage and fading as the two held eye contact.
She stared at Katya. And stared and stared and stared, staring until the woman nervously looked around the room to avoid Trixie’s harrowing gaze.
“You’re a government employee?”
“Yeah. I know. I slipped through the cracks.” What a peculiar way of putting it. “But you think I look like a hooker? How kind.”
Trixie rolled over on her side, facing away from Katya. Hiding the embarrassment that flooded through her body. The smell of smoke swirling in her lungs, the soft rise and fall of her breathing. Heavy hung the air between tethered strangers.
“And they didn’t ask me, y’know. I don’t wanna be here.”
“What?”
“I would’ve been fired if I had evacuated. Part of the job, I guess. Total bullshit. I sent my cat and all my books to the coast, where you were headed.” They sat in a moment of quiet before she exhaled, and the scent of ash strengthened in the room. “Maybe you crossed paths with the pieces of me that I sent to the shore.”
“That’s...that’s fucked up.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Katya murmured, dipping her head and letting out a puff of smoke.
The blonde sat for a moment, sighing and puling her hair over her face. “Sorry I yelled at you earlier. Really. I’m usually the one who cuts people off, too. You don’t get paid enough to deal with stupid whores like me.”
“S’alright.” Her voice was warm. The only warmth in the room. “Are you doing okay? Head-space wise? Did you leave just to be with family, or is your home fucked up, too?”
“...All I have is with me and in my car.” Trixie winced thinking about the highway again. “My room was first floor. Water up to my ankles. They’ll never let me move back in.”
“Apartment?”
“Dorm.” A deep sigh. “Which means they legally have to find somewhere for me to sleep...which means I’ll probably be in another gym, awake and staring at other ceilings until the semester ends. If it even starts up again.”
“I might not have anything, either. My home is surrounded by pines. Everything might be crushed, I’d be none the wiser.”
“You don’t sound too upset about that.”
“...Well. Y’know. Am I even allowed to be upset at this point? I dunno.” Quiet footsteps, curling around the mattress and beside Trixie’s back. She rolled over to look up at Katya, who had sat down beside her. “But don’t you think it’s funny how we can talk like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well...it’s funny, isn’t it.” The woman flinched and shuddered, dropping the smoldering butt of the cig beside the mattress. “How we can be so open and honest. Like we’ve been friends for years.”
“It’s just because I know none of this means shit and that I won’t want to remember much when I’m gone.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“So I’m meeting the real Trixie, eh?”
“I guess. A real pissed off and nasty Trixie.”
“Could we be friends?”
“No.”
The click of her lighter, and that same, burning scent.
“Is it because I’m a gay librarian?”
“No.”
Katya hummed under her breath. “Because I...haven’t showered in a while?”
The blonde scrunched up her nose. “No.”
“Why?”
“You smoke.” She rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin up on the edge of the mattress.
“We wouldn’t be that intimate,” Katya muttered, leaning back into the mattress.
“Still stands. It’s gross.”
“Mm.”
“But.” Pressing her face into the edge of the mattress, she sighed. “I guess it’s better than the gym with all those people.”
Katya glanced down at her, a sly smile stretching over her face. “Well...Hm. Now I feel bad, especially thinking that you’ll be sleeping in a gym for a while.” Trixie lifted her head. “And...well, I’m not implying you sleep in here with me, but...”
“...Is that an option?”
“I could try to make something work. You’ll be stuck with me for a long while, though.”
She stared up at Katya, her cheeks warming and her expression melting to one much softer. Gentle, even. “Thank you. It means a lot.”
Katya’s nose deepened in hue, her eyes fluttering. “C...Could we be friends then?”
“No.” Deadpanned.
“UGH. Fine. I’ll crack you down eventually.”
“Go to sleep, Katya. Or I’ll tell that other lady that you’re picking favorites.”
“...Rat.”
“Chainsmoking grandma,” Trixie murmured, her breath light and airy. Katya tilted her head to look at the girl, only to see closed eyes and a far-off expression.
She sat up, pulling her legs close to her chest and looking over the blonde. Chipped nail polish, unbrushed ringlets in her hair, pink everything, and a soft aura that surrounded her.
The world, crashing around them. Swirling winds and crashing thunder, knowing full well that her city and the blonde’s far off hometown could collapse beneath the storm. The heavy weight of loss, unknown and expected. It must be tiring, worrying about losing so much with so little to do. When all the world can do is beckon one to sleep.
Katya extended her hand, letting her fingers graze over the loose blonde curls for just a moment.
“Sleep well, kotenok.”