Entertainers

The sweetest candy. So sweet, it made her throw up.

Or maybe that was the copious amounts of alcohol she consumed that was finally coming back up. Hard to say.

All Trixie knew was she needed to throw up; preferably not down the nice girl's throat.

She stumbled into one of the nearby stalls, managing to hover her face over the seat and upchuck whatever conglomeration of liquids sat in her stomach. Almost immediately, Pinkie followed her in, yanking on her hair perhaps a bit too hard, but it was appreciated nonetheless.

Pinkie placed her free hand on Trixie’s back, rubbing it with a gentleness that felt like she’d done it many times before. Not a single strand of Trixie’s magnificent hair was stained with bile as she threw up, tears in the corner of her eyes and the rancid taste of vomit lingering on her mouth even after she’d emptied her stomach.

When she was done, Trixe just sat there and took in the musty of air of the bathroom, leaning against the stall and wiping her face.

“Any better?”

“Trixie ... .is always,” she dry heaved, placing a hand over her mouth. It quickly passed. “At her best.”

“Mhm, I’m sure.” Pinkie chuckled, getting to her feet and extending her hand. “Can you stand?”

“Trixie can do anything!”

Trixie said as her knees wobbled, almost buckling and falling to the ground face first. Luckily, Pinkie caught her, wrapping her arms around Trixie’s side.

“So can Pinkie! When she’s sober.”

With careful steps, Pinkie guided her back to their stall, where two plates of pancakes waited for them. She guided Trixie to her stall, making sure she got safely in and didn’t make out with the floor.

Trixie stared at the pancakes like they were going to mug her for pocket change, poking them tentatively with the fork she’d been provided.

“You know, you don’t have to eat them if you don’t want to.” Pinkie had already chomped into her first one, leaving half it hanging from her fork. “I know for me when I get drunk I get hungry, but some people get super nauseous and can’t eat at all. Probably should have asked you that before ordering pancakes for you to be honest.”

“No, Trixie can—” her stomach gurgled, and not out of hunger. She dropped the fork, fidgeting in her seat and trying her best to ignore it. “Maybe Trixie’s just not hungry; she apologizes.”

“Don’t worry about it. My tuitions already paid for this month.” she finished her pancakes, swallowing it whole with disturbing ease. She dug her fork in the center of the second one, before flinching as she just held it there. “So, maybe I should wait until you’re sober to ask this, but you might forget.”

Trixe was leaned down when Pinkie spoke, trying to nibble off a corner of the pancake. The flavor hardly registered beneath her alcohol-laced breathe, but the texture was extremely soft and pleasant to chew.

“Yesh?”

Pinkie chuckled a bit at the sight, before her face grew stiff.

“Why did you kiss me?”

Trixie froze, the warmth of The Denny’s seeming to vanish for just a moment as she gulped. Some part of her wanted to believe she actually didn’t do that, or that if she did, then they’d both write it off as silly drunk antics and nothing more.

Unfortunately, Pinkie was able to see through that guise.

“Trixie…” She shook her head, rubbing a hand up the side of her head and grabbing a handful of her hair. “I don’t know. No, that’s a lie, I do know, I just don’t want to put it in words; there’s no succinct way to do so.”

“Trixie, we’re in a Denny's at three am.” Pinkie began lightly stabbing the fork into the pancake, poking little stab marks into the batter. “Plus, you’re hammered; I don’t expect you to talk like Shakespear like you normally do.”

“Trixie doesn’t…well, okay, mayhaps on occasion she has dipped into a much older tongue.”

There was the very brief period of her time where Trixie was in theater and believed her future to entail method acting. Of course, that meant she forced herself to actually learn olden english, and speak it for a good few weeks after her role as Ophelia was done.

It took even longer not to slip into every now and again.

“Come on, you referred to yourself with ‘thy’ for months. Not to mention that you, unironically, used ‘ye’ to refer to places.”

Trixie could feel her face going flush for a reason aside from the intoxication.

“Regardless!” She said a bit louder than she intended. “Trixie kissed you because…she needed comfort.”

“Comfort?” Pinkie began spinning her fork in a circle like a drill, though it wasn’t picking up speed. “I was comforting you; you could have hugged me if you want.”

“Not that kind of comfort.” she emphasized, giving up on the pancakes. “Trixie…in that moment, was overwhelmed. I needed something else, to be distracted, to just,” she’d never put it in words, never gave it a first thought. It was an internal sensation she had, or perhaps a lack of one, that had always pushed her to be intimate with another.

Except for Starlight, that’s all it had ever been. It was a hole she never thought she’d find herself at the bottom at again.

“To not exist.”

Pinkie stopped her twirling, shifting in her chair and crossing her legs. Her lips parted as a noise that half-resembled a word escaped, before muting herself with a close of her jaw. Then, she reached forward, placing her hand on Trixie’s.

“I understand.”

Trixie could feel every syllable in Pinkie’s words, the vibrations as it went up and entered her ears. Her heart dropping, and, for just a fleeting second, a tingle of sobriety peeked through, and she forgot why she got drunk in the first place.

“You do?”

“I do. Probably better than you think.” She pulled her hand away, and Trixie found herself missing that touch much more than she expected to. “I’ve been where you have a few times. I know how easy it can be to just give in to every impulse just so you don’t have to think, how hard it is to not spiral like that. When I first got to college its basically all I did, haha.”

Her laugh was hollow and solemn, like the static of a dying machine. Suddenly, Pinkie seemed much less interested in her pancakes, eyes staring off into the distance as she placed one arm on top of another.

“After a while, you learn to live with it. But, every now and again, I need that ‘moment to not exist’ too. Despite that,” Pinkie turned back to Trixie, narrowing her eyes in something that almost resembled anger. “Please don’t try to use me like that again. I want to help you, but not like that; I won’t be that again.”

‘Again?’

Trixie was admittedly curious at the implications of that, but not enough to push it.

“Trixie apologizes. It was a moment of weakness, as ashamed she is to admit she has those.”

To Trixie’s surprise, Pinkie just laughed. Shaking her head as she raised her arms and ran her hands through her hair.

“No need, but it’s appreciated. Actually, what are you doing tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” Trixie took longer to search through the depths of her hazy memories than usual, but eventually her mental calendar came to mind; with the caveat of being as off as a crooked picture on a wall. “Trixie…has tomorrow off, she shall say. If she’s wrong, then the consequences are for future, sober, Trixie.”

“Hmmm, I don’t know if I prefer sober Trixie. Drunk Trixie is more…” Pinkie tapped a finger against her elbow, droning to herself a tune Trixie didn’t recognize. “Sincere. Though, that may not be a good thing for you. Oh well!”

Trixie tilted her head, her mouth slightly opening as she considered asking for elaboration.

Of course, that was a rabbit hole anyone who knew Pinkie long enough was aware not to jump down. She didn’t have time for that.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because, I have an idea!” Pinkie reached into her mane, pulling out a small notebook and a pen that very much so resembled a lollipop. “Let’s see, with a few calls I can move that up to tomorrow, which would free up this party and…”

She muttered to herself for nearly a minute, her pen moving almost as quickly as her words; Trixie could have sworn she saw bits of steam coming off the end of it.

“Trixie, I think I have a solution for your burnout;” Pinkie flipped the notebook around, showing that she had filled one of the pages with a drawing of her, Trixie, and a very large birthday cake with multiple stick figures around it in a circle. “A party!”

“A party?”

“A kids party!”

Trixie stared at the picture like she expected it to start moving. Knowing Pinkie, it very well could have.

“A kids party.”

She hadn’t been to one of those since…well, since her own parties when she was younger. Trixie never got along very well with children, for one reason or another. It wasn’t that she hated them, they just…didn’t seem to like her.

Then again, that was long before she started her obsession with magic. Maybe this wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

“Alright, Trixie’s game.” She tried once more to eat her pancake, ignoring the acidic taste in the back of her throat and the dull pain in her mouth. “Trixie will go to a kids party and show them the greatest performance their little minds can handle!”

“Awesome!” Pinkie nearly jumped out of her seat, right before remembering where she was and what she had in her hands. “Then, we better get eating. It starts early tomorrow!”

Trixie looked at how many pancakes she had left, and gulped. Her stomach was about to be as upset at her as her head will be in a few hours.

__________________________

Trixie stumbled into her dorm, guided by Pinkie; she was even considerate enough to leave the lights off despite fumbling around in the dark.

“Is that yo— no that’s a beanbag. Ah! Here’s your bed.”

Pinkie, with Trixie draped over her back like the cape she tended to wear, was guided to her bed. She laid Trixie with extreme gentleness, placing her head on the pillow and the blanket up to her shoulders. She groaned, rolling onto her stomach and burying her nose so deep she could hardly breathe.

It made Pinkie grin, just a little.

She turned to walk out, only to feel something yanking on her sleeve.

“Wait.”

Trixie’s voice didn’t sound like her own at all. It was so small and quiet, as meek as Pinkie’s sister. Pinkie couldn’t even see Trixie’s face, most of it was hidden in the pillow or under a blanket. However, she could feel her hand. It was trembling.

“I…haven’t slept by myself in a long time.” She said it with a reluctant sigh, as if admitting something she’d been waiting too for a while. “Please, sleep with me tonight. Just for tonight. Trixie…I’m begging you.”

Pinkie was taken aback, which is a rarity for her. She’d never seen Trixie so vulnerable, nor had she heard her beg before.

So how could she say no?

“Scooch over.”

Pinkie laid beside her, giving her most of the bed. They were close enough to hug if they wanted, but neither did. Instead, they held hands and shared a pillow.

For the first time tonight, Pinkie was close enough to Trixie to smell her without the alcohol overpowering her senses.

She smelled like firecrackers.