a cactus and a lily find a common pot to grow - trixya

Chapter 12: Part 4 - i'll wear my third degrees and my heart upon my sleeve

Katya has a ritual for every time she goes to somebody's house for the first time, and I know it sounds weird right now, but it was mostly a grounding technique for when she was high out of her mind and had to find her way back to Earth before sucking a dick. She's done it so much that by now it's just a habit, an involuntary exercise that her mind does to try and better understand her surroundings.

One: she tries to smell the place. A house's smell tells you a lot more about the people who live there than any decoration piece ever will. Cigarettes is a classic, just like weed. Her own house smells like those two things. Glade spray scents were a common find, but certainly a weird one, it meant whoever lived there had something to hide. The ones she hated the most were the ones that smelled like bacon grease. That, unfortunately, was a common find. It meant the people who lived there had already stopped caring a long time ago.

Two: she looks for faces. Portraits, posters, paintings, anything with a human face on it. Is it a graduation picture? A family Christmas card in the fridge? A Justin Bieber poster hanging from the ceiling? She's met all of those and Justin is a lot scarier when he watches you fuck a 50-year-old dude from above the bed. There's no mercy in those eyes.

Three: she feels the floor. Is it hard? Noisy? Is there a soft rug? If the jumps, will it hurt her feet? Usually, the places she went back in her days as a sex worker had dirty, creaky floors and her cheap heels sounded like they'd punch a hole in them at any second, so she always minded herself and tried her best to tiptoe around to avoid any major damage. Other times she just stomped and prayed to God or whatever for the floor below her to open and swallow her whole, which, unfortunately, never happened.

Trixie's house is absolutely the most comfortable, safe and homey house she's ever been in. It's not exactly what Katya would have expected from a twenty-seven-year-old single teacher who lives on her own, but it's so pretty and so cozy she's willing to overlook the fact that anyone else would have mistaken that for a divorced mom's new home. It doesn't smell like anything specific, but Katya recognizes a hint of her perfume and some sort of sweetness in the air like something's about to come out of the oven ready to be devoured.

"Have you been baking?" She asks, taking off her scarf and leaving it on the coat hanger by the door, along with her boots. She's wearing Christmas themed socks.

"Yeah, I couldn't sleep last night, thinking about, you know, the thing Alyssa told us." Trixie takes Katya's coat. "Please, come in. Don't mind the mess." She frowns and Katya looks over to a perfectly neat living room. What a nutcase. The couch is white, covered in pink and beige cloth, just like the armchair in the corner. There are a huge TV and a white coffee table, which has a vase of lilies on top of it. This could be on Discovery Home and Health. She takes a quick glance at the wall and spots a few family photos on the wall, along with her own graduation picture from college. Katya would be lying if she said she didn't miss blonde Trixie a little. She also notices an empty spot, probably had a picture of her and Ian. More importantly, though, there's a fireplace. And it's huge .

"Do you wanna come into the kitchen?" Trixie asks and Katya nods. She steps slowly and carefully, hoping she won't slip on the polished wooden floor, but she doesn't - well, she does only enough so that it's fun and she's sure she won't fall down and hit her head. Trixie is wearing furry Puma sliders, while Katya has only her dumb socks on, and the floor doesn't creak at all, the only sound is their muffled steps from the rug they step on when on route to the kitchen. She feels safe, she feels warm and she's sure that if this were an open house, she'd buy it the second she walked inside.

The kitchen is also Discovery H&H worthy. Big, spacious and expensive-looking. "Wow," Katya says when she walks in, trying to count how many cabinets there are. Like, seriously, how many dishes does a person need? Jesus Christ.