I've Missed You...

[PunkPrince]

"Get dressed and get out."

Marilyn didn't have time to react before the bundle of her clothes hit her in the back of the head. They were what she usually wore for her nightly "work." She pulled herself to her feet and grabbed her bag from the floor, the one that held her money. Her entire body hurt. All she wanted now was to go home. He'd scratched her up pretty bad, and definitely hadn't been gentle. It hurt just to stand up. This guy had been into some rough shit, and safe words had been useless. He hadn't stopped, she remembered that much. She tended to disassociate during sex work. But he'd paid her. And she wasn't dead.

Slipping away into the apartment bathroom, she dressed herself again, not bothering to clean up her bleeding back. She was comforted by the pocketknife that rested in her against her thigh in the pocket of her shorts, and then attempted to scramble from the apartment, but was stopped by the man she had just serviced as he pinned her against the wall. "We should do this again sometime," he purred, running a hand up her thigh. Her vision was blurred and she felt dizzy. She caught a glimpse of a syringe on the nightstand. He'd shot her full of something. Some kind of drug. Fuck. That explained why she felt so sick. She had to get out of here. Get home. If you could even call it home.
"Next time," Marilyn purred to him, using the same sultry persona she had for this. Naturally she wasn't into this stuff at all. "Not tonight." Then she left as quickly as she could, trying not to stumble and hurt herself.

She had to get back to Tammie. Her girlfriend. They were both prositutes, and they both hated it. Marilyn didn't like having to have sex with people she didn't know just so she could have enough money to survive, and she wasn't crazy about her girlfriend having sex with anybody other than her either, but they'd both just accepted that it was either doing that, or starving. Occasionally one of them managed to find work doing some sort of odd job, but those opportunities were rare and never seemed to pay well.

Neither one of them had had a steady job for a while, and being transgender women made it even more difficult for them to find work. Marilyn had been kicked out by her parents at the age of eighteen, and with no job, had been forced to resort to prostitution almost immediately. Tammie had been another story. She had worked as a waitress until shortly after her mother's death, something that had completely shattered her. She'd had nobody to turn to to help her with her grief, it had affected her job performance, and she'd been fired pretty quickly. Having no other way to make money, she'd had to resort to selling herself for money.

Marilyn hated this. She hated fucking for money. Her family had cut her off, both her parents and extended family. Before she'd been kicked out she had been close to her younger cousins, but hadn't been allowed to see them since. Maybe they'd forgotten about her. Maybe it was better if they had. She gazed around the dark street. Where was she again? Where did she live? She felt like she was going to vomit.

Tammie had just returned to the motel. She turned the knob that was meant to lock the door. It didn't do anything. The lock was broken. It always had been. The action was simply a force of habit. She looked around. It was empty. Marilyn hadn't come back yet. She'd be back soon, hopefully. One of them always wound up staying out a bit later than the other.

They lived in a motel room, as they had for as long as they'd known one another. It was a pretty crappy place, but it was an okay size at least. More like an apartment than a motel room, but that was mostly because of the small improvements the women had made to it to make it more homey, a more comfortable place to live in. It wasn't exactly their dream home–far from it, actually, but it was what they had.

Tammie sat down on the edge of the bed she had shared with Marilyn for the past several years. Her body hurt. Luckily her clients hadn't been as bad as Marilyn's, at least not tonight. No scratches or bruises really. Her body was just completely exhausted. She undid the front of her black corset and fell back onto the bed topless. Still wearing her black sheer tights and her miniskirt. She could probably fall asleep like this.

Her mind had begun to drift off when a knock at the door pulled her out of it. Not Marilyn. Marilyn didn't knock. She stood up and grabbed a black tank top, pulling it on over her bare breasts, and then slipped into a pair of flannel pajama pants. She crept toward the door and looked through the peephole, hesitant to open the door to just anyone. Anything bad could happen if she did.

She was surprised by what she saw. Two kids. They looked harmless. No way they were at the right place. It had to be a mistake. She hesitated and then slowly pulled open the door. "Um, hi," she greeted, still a bit confused. "Can I help you with something?" She glanced over the two, peering down the road in hopes of seeing Marilyn. Where was she? Had something bad happened to her? Oh god, she hoped not.

 

[Vigilante]

"We're looking for our cousin. His name is Alex," Ethan began. "Is he here? We've looked all over, and we really need to find him." Hope was still present in his voice and his eyes. They had been on their own for days now and been to all sorts of motels. Ethan had never been much of runner, but he's had to run quite a lot lately. It wasn't safe for two kids out on the streets, particularly in the areas they've been searching in. Grace bit a man for touching her just the day before. Ethan knew they couldn't go on like this for very much longer. They needed to find their cousin. He was the only chance they had to stay together.

It was a gunman who took the lives of Ethan and Grace's parents. They'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ethan missed his mom, and so did Grace. They both had mixed feelings about their dad. Ethan felt relief to finally be freed of his father. He felt guilty for that, but he finally felt safe. It was an odd thing to feel safe when he's been in the least safe places possible these past days.

Grace had done all the talking at the start, but now she just stared at the stranger before them. She'd lost her hope, not that she had all that much to begin with. Alex had left them. Why would he want them now? Grace didn't want to be separated from her brother, but she wasn't handling everything as well as Ethan. She had reached her limit. Grace decided this would be the end of their search.

If they went back, Ethan would go to live with some relative he'd never even met who'd offered to take him in, not Grace. The social worker had told Grace she'd have to go into the system. She'd be a foster kid, and she knew how difficult it was for older kids to get adopted. She had no chance.

The girl leaned against her brother for support. The two hadn't managed to find much food the past couple days or a decent enough place to sleep. They'd run out of money. What each was wearing now, a blue-shirt with a shark on it with black jeans for Ethan and a yellow shirt with blue jeans for Grace, were the last of the clothes they'd brought with them. The day before, when Grace bit that man, they had to leave their backpacks behind when they had run from him.

 

[PunkPrince]

Tammie stiffened slightly as the boy spoke. Alex. The name Marilyn's parents had given her. Neither of them used it. Marilyn preferred to forget that it had ever been her name. Tammie didn't like to think about her birth name, Carter, either. But these kids might know Marilyn. They were looking for their cousin. Marilyn had had cousins that she was quite close to before her family had abandoned her. She hadn't seen them since. Tammie had never met them. She was quiet for a moment and then pulled the door the rest of the way open.

"I might know him..." She cringed at the use of the male pronoun. It felt wrong to use it, and she felt a wave of guilt wash over her. "Alex Havanna? I'm his girlfriend. He doesn't–I mean she doesn't go by..." She had no idea how to explain any of this to these kids, so she stopped trying to. "If that's who you're looking for, they're out right now." She reverted to the more neutral pronoun. "But should be back soon." Tammie hoped she was right. Marilyn was almost always back soon after she was.

"You two look like you're freezing." The poor kids didn't even have decent coats. They looked to have been on their own for quite a while, and she was worried about what might happen to them if she left them. "Do you want to come in and wait? You'll freeze if you wait out here. I can't offer you much, but at least it's warm in here. This really isn't the best neighborhood to be out at night in."

It really wasn't. The streets were riddled with crime. Thieves, rapists, murderers. It's the reason they had gotten the motel room so cheap. Every day that she and Tammie returned to the motel still alive was another day that they had beaten the odds. She hoped Marilyn was okay. She was pretty good at defending herself, but she could still get hurt.

Tammie stepped aside to let the children into the room. They weren't old enough to be on their own. They looked to be maybe twelve or thirteen, if that. How had they wound up in this shit neighborhood? She realized she hadn't bothered to introduce herself. "My name is Tammie, by the way."

 

[Vigilante]

Finally, they were getting somewhere. Tammie's reply had come off as a bit odd to Ethan. He didn't care about that though. Tammie knew Alex and they could see him soon. That was all Ethan could focus on. Convincing Alex to let them stay might be a difficult task. They hadn't seen their cousin for five years. A lot could change in five years. They also still didn't know why he left. Ethan defended Alex to his sister multiple times these past days. Grace couldn't get over that he just left like that and never even bothered to contact them.

Grace had asked about Alex many times, and her parents told her he didn't want to be part of the family anymore every time she asked. Grace believed that explanation, but Ethan never did. He thought there had be something that their parents wouldn't tell them. Grace thought that it would make since Alex didn't want to be a part of their lives, specifically her's. She was unwanted. Even that weird, distant relative didn't want her.

Ethan stepped inside without hesitation. Grace stayed where she was and folded her arms across her chest. "Grace," Ethan insisted. "Don't be ridiculous. She's fine. She knows Alex." Grace sighed heavily before entering the motel room and standing behind her brother. Grace wasn't like Ethan. She couldn't just trust someone so easily like he did. She couldn't trust anyone really, not since Alex left. She'd never forgiven her cousin for leaving.

"Nice to meet you, Tammie." Ethan smiled. "I'm Ethan. This is my sister, Grace. I'm older than her by seven minutes." Grace rolled her eyes, suppressing a comment that would have likely sparked an argument between the twins. She didn't feel like arguing. She didn't feel like doing anything. "Why do you live in a motel room anyway? Don't you and Alex have jobs?" Grace questioned, ignoring the look Ethan was giving her. Grace preferred to get right to the point about things. Ethan preferred a more polite and softer approach.

 

[PunkPrince]

Tammie laughed softly as the boy boasted that he was seven minutes older than his twin. "It's nice to meet both of you." She felt her face redden when Grace asked why they lived in a motel room. "Because we're too broke to live anywhere else," she said simply. Her blush only deepened when she asked about their jobs. "No, we don't. Not really. I mean, sometimes we do odd jobs to make money, but…"

She looked up as she heard the door open. A blur raced past her and half a second later she heard the bathroom door slam. She was slightly concerned but also relieved that Marilyn seemed to have returned unharmed. She gave a sideways glance to the kids and then headed back toward the bathroom door. She knocked lightly on it as she heard Marilyn retching on the other end. "Are you all right, Kitten?" she asked, using the nickname she had given Marilyn ages ago. The only response she got was a small whimper from Marilyn.

Tammie slipped into the bathroom and found Marilyn resting her forehead on the edge of the toilet seat. Tammie knelt down next to her. "You all right? What happened?" She tore a piece of toilet paper from the roll and wiped Marilyn's mouth, taking lipstick off with it. She noticed the scratches on her back. "You're bleeding." She moved to clean the blood off Marilyn's back, and Marilyn pushed her hand away. "I'm okay," she said, looking up. "I think the last guy drugged me. I'm okay. I just need a minute." Marilyn pulled herself to her feet. "I hate this."

Tammie gently took Marilyn by the arm. "You have visitors."
"Tell Devin to go home. I'll call him later."
"It's not Devin. I...don't think we can send them home."
Marilyn sighed and pushed her hair back away from her face. She didn't want any visitors. Nobody ever came to visit her aside from her brother, and it didn't make sense for anyone else to show up looking for her. She gave Tammie a puzzled look before following her out of the bathroom.

It took a moment for her to notice the twins off to the side of the room. She froze and then shook her head. No way it was who she thought it was. They had to have forgotten her by now. It had been years. But who else could it be? Nobody ever came to visit her, especially not someone she didn't know. She stared at them for a moment and then spoke.

"Grace? Ethan? Is that you?" Maybe it was just a side effect of whatever drug she was on. That made sense. She was hallucinating.