Work Text:
To be honest, you're a dime
To be fair, you've got me on my knees
They meet when they’re eleven, the first day of middle school gymnastics. Their school has links to USA Gymnastics, so the ones that are good get to spend one afternoon a fortnight at a training facility in downtown New York.
Katya is small, just under five feet, with dirty blonde hair somehow contained in two Dutch braids. She wears two different Team Russia leotards and her lunch consists of three fruit roll-ups and a PB and J in a can.
Kameron is five' three, ninety percent upper body strength, and terrible at tumbling. She’s quiet, tries not to be seen or heard, and it’s already four months in that they learn she’s actually from Tennesse.
Asia is like neither of them. She’s got boundless energy, but, unlike Katya’s, it’s restrained and controlled. She wears only neon, sleeveless leotards, and braids everyone’s hair on the way, moving around the bus until she ends up back behind the TA where she started.
It would be wrong to say they were friends immediately, but Katya is weird, Asia is a secret nerd, and Kameron doesn’t speak, so it’s not like they’re not friends.
It’s December by the time Katya realises it’s probably not a good thing to eat three fruit roll-ups and then do vault - she makes them make a blood pact not to talk about it, with Koolaid instead of blood. She starts to try and trade the snacks for other alternatives. Thing is, though, Gia always eats salad, and she doesn’t really want ChiChi’s beef jerky, so she’s stuck with Kameron’s cream cheese bagel bites (four for one roll-up) and Asia’s apple and raisin bags.
After that, they talk more.
But to be young and not on time
It's like flowers blooming through November freeze
When she’s twelve, Kameron breaks her wrist in three places. She’s doing uneven bars like she always does and she loses grip on one hand. She’s forgotten her wrist supports and just given it a go, but she over-rotates on one wrist and the entire gym hears it. Katya laughs at her for a good five minutes, but Asia just watches her friend on the ground in shock.
Being a member of USA Gymnastics gives you good health insurance, or at least that’s what she hears her mum say while she’s in bed after surgery, Katya and Asia playing UNO at the foot of the bed. She fades in and out of consciousness for a few hours until she finally wakes properly to find Katya asleep in the chair, and Asia’s head resting on her lap. She strokes her hair gently with her none-casted hand and smiles at how soft it is.
It takes six months of physical therapy before she puts two hands on the bar again, and another three until she can kip-up, but Katya and Asia still help her through everything. They spend the afternoons after sessions together, and halfway through the year Katya is moved into her lit class, so they yell Hamlet lines at each other from across the gym as they run.
Asia will do odd jobs for her mum so she can scrounge enough money to take them both out for Jamba Juice and an afternoon of window shopping in the big city.
That summer, Katya tells them she’s gay over the flickering of a firepit. They exchange secrets like they exchange biscuits for smores, and chalk for grip. It’s fun, they’re young, nothing matters.
When I speak, I say your name
And when I wake, it's written up and down my walls
Asia turns thirteen while ice skating at the Rockefeller centre, hands gripping her best friends for dear life. Afterwards, they persuade her dad to buy them hot chocolate and make fun of how their jaws chatter until they’re warm enough to speak properly.
It’s that Christmas they become O’Hara, Mikey, and Zamo, playing snap in front of Katya’s open hearth.
They go back to school invigorated and raring to go, facing seventh grade with a level of enthusiasm most people only dream of. They get to go to the gym every single week now, and they’re starting to gear up for open selection for the U15 squad. They all go to gyms most evenings anyway, but it’s those afternoons that feel like they really matter.
Asia fails maths that year, but it’s okay because they all make the team, and that gives her a different kind of future, and when she asks Katya what she wants to be when she grows up, the blonde replies shark gymnast .
They get to pick their names for the squad jackets and it’s so obvious it pains them. They wear them to school like lettermen jackets.
To be honest, it's the same
Grumble, mumble, tumble 'round without a cause
Eighth grade kind of sucks, but Katya turns fourteen and hires a bouncy castle, and it’s all sort of okay. She gets her first girlfriend that year and it lasts almost three weeks until Violet gets jealous of Kameron and Asia and storms out of the cafeteria, like Katya is secretly dating both of them. She says she’s fine, but they still take her to get froyo like all good friends do.
They get to go to the Junior World Artistic Gymnastics Championship in Hungary and spend hours wandering around Budapest while the boys do their thing inside. Katya runs ahead, phone out, googling everything she sees, as Asia and Kameron swing their interlocked hands, strolling peacefully and watching to make sure their friend doesn’t get hit by a car or a rogue cyclist.
Katya wins silver on beam after a near-perfect performance and she and Asia holler their support for Kameron as she takes gold for uneven bars. They all wander through the plane on the flight, stretching and lunging every few hours to avoid clots, and Katya keeps her medal on, so she feels less like an idiot every time she lunges past men in suits.
In essence, Katya spends eighth grade with a renewed love for peanut butter and jelly (a valuable source of protein) and a distinct interest in how her best friends hold hands. They do it a lot - they just haven’t noticed yet.
And if you get the time
The number is still mine
Kameron is fifteen when she has her first kiss and it is awful. He is called Jamie and he plays baseball, and his mouth tastes like smoke and Twizzlers. He uses his tongue too much and she hates the way that his little patches of stubble brush her chin. She isn’t sure why he likes her, other than she’s quiet and good at English and he has a little bit of a thing for girls who won’t talk back to him. She certainly won’t.
Asia avoids her the week after and no matter how many times she says she didn’t like it, the tumbler will not give her the time of day. It takes a blackcurrant fruit roll-up and a fried chicken sandwich to earn her forgiveness, but Kameron still isn’t sure what she’s apologising for.
Her trophy shelf grows throughout freshman year as she joins the highschool team as well as the new U18’s. Katya and Asia make it too (thank god) and they have a sleepover just like in the old times, but it’s not candy anymore - it’s a bottle of toffee vodka they stole from Kameron’s older brother, while he’s off at Michigan State studying law or something.
Asia joins the debate team because she’s run out of AP classes she can fit in her schedule, and Kameron makes sure to cheer extra hard at the events Katya can’t make. She screams so hard when they win the final, she struggles to congratulate her in person, other than pulling her as close as she can and placing a kiss just above her ear.
Baby, share a dime
On the line
There in Minnesota time
They’re all sixteen.
Katya now reaches five' five on a good day and she wears her team USA leotards with pride. She could have a fast track to the Olympics if she tried a bit harder, but she also smokes behind the bleachers with the only other lesbian in school on the days she feels particularly cold
Kameron talks more now but she also sings under her breath when she’s supposed to be doing math or chemistry. She is only about eighty percent upper body strength now, but she has a nice ass and that’s all that really matters, she supposes.
Asia still braids their hair before competitions, pulling the braids into a bun at the base of their necks, so it doesn’t get in the way. She’s not loud anymore, she has all the energy she needs, but it’s channelled into other things. Her AP classes outnumber her normal ones and she only has enough free time for a smoothie and a bath on a Wednesday night, but she’s the only person any of them know who can manage a plate that full and they’re proud of her.
On top of all that, she’s rumoured to be dating the quarterback for a little while, and Katya and Kameron barely see her enough to dispute it. They bump into her at a party they are at and she’s swaying side to side, so they pull her into a bathroom and hold her hair back while she gets whatever she’s had out of her system and in the end they all promise to be better friends.
It’s all okay for a while after that. Katya kisses Pearl near the dumpster out back and Kameron gets another gold for the school team, and they still drink vodka under the covers - holding each other as their tongues loosen, and still nothing much changes.
Hello, goodbye, hello
Hello, goodbye, hello
Katya is seventeen on a snow day. The bus that was supposed to take them all to training got cancelled, so she sits alone in her room and facetimes them both and they sing happy birthday through the static.
That’s the year Asia quits the national team and though she still trains almost every day, she has more time. She drinks less and feels more, and Kameron holds her as she cries sometimes.
That’s the year Katya decides she doesn’t want to be a shark gymnast anymore. She misses the feeling of how soft her hands used to be sometimes and how she could eat half of a cheesecake and not feel guilty.
That’s the year Kameron stops looking at guys altogether. She spends the World Championship staring at the French Gymnast in her category - Nicky Doll - and they tongue kiss outside her hotel room, but even then it doesn’t feel right. She spends the morning at the gym, lifting weights for an hour until she can finally fathom that maybe it’s not gender that’s the question.
Asia picks them up from the airport in her 1987 pick-up truck, and they brave the hour drive in the sticky summer heat on tacky leather seats and with no aircon.
To be truthful, I don't know
If you're thinking what I think you do
Senior year rolls around too fast. They turn eighteen between college applications and scholarship meetings and gymnastics meets. Wiping chalk off their hands to sign contracts and papers.
Asia gets academic scholarship offers from every university she applies to - her SAT score one of the most competitive their school’s ever had. Katya ends up on partial gymnastics scholarship, a recurring Achilles problem the only thing that keeps her from the Olympics, but she’s still good enough for college level.
Kameron is the missing piece. She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s got offers, yes, but she hasn’t looked at them too deeply. All she knows is she can’t stand four years away from her friends. Katya and Asia are being taken to LA. LA it is then.
They graduate together, wearing the caps they made each other, and they toast marshmallows in the bed of Asia’s truck while they watch the sun go down.
To be fair, it's all for show
A clock's been ticking, tocking, taking time from you
LA is new.
They’re all still babies really - nineteen in a big city, all alone. New York felt more real, but Kameron hikes the Eaton Canyon Trail as much as she can to feel something that isn’t just hot sun and study pressure, but to no avail. Just because she lives with Asia and Katya doesn’t mean she sees them.
Freshman year is rough.
And if you get the time
The number is still mine
Sophomore year forces them all to make choices. They sit in the lounge of their three-bed condo for an hour before they crack. They talk about emotions and feelings and missing each other and realise none of them have been a good friends in the last year. Asia is always studying until she falls off the wagon and drinks herself into oblivion. Katya spends all her time in the gym, and Kam - she’s just trying her best.
Katya decides to major in design with a minor in business, and it makes sense to them all as she covers their refrigerator in pencil sketches of their favourite photos. She instigates game night and they sit around the coffee table wrapped in their duvets playing Uno and eating skittles like the respectable twenty-year-olds they are.
Asia chooses child development and education because she swears she spends her life around children anyway (Katya’s rubber duck collection does not help the argument). And Kam? Kameron takes a semester in Minnesota.
She feels lost - unsure of who she is and what she wants, so she takes a semester in a different state, where it’s cold and wet and a little bit more like New York. She takes physiotherapy and Shakespeare and biology and pre-calc just because she wants to and she likes them. She learns Mandarin on a whim and finally kisses someone who makes her feel something.
She dates Brianna from January to June and loses herself in the feeling of being needed again. They hike and snowboard and watch black and white movies together, and she feels some semblance of calm.
She is twenty and she feels like Kameron.
Baby, share a dime
On the line
Here in Minnesota time
Kameron decides to start Junior year at the University of Minnesota, but she actually talks to her friends again. They all spent the summer in New York together and it felt good, so they set up a timetable for calling because it forces them to confront it, and Kameron spends her Wednesday evenings listening to Asia’s dial tone.
It is Kameron’s twenty-first birthday when she finally receives a call from Asia - timetable be damned. She picks it up to hear the soft sobs of a long lost friend and the sound of quarters being pushed into a payphone. She wants to say she misses her, she loves her, she wants to come home, but she doesn’t. So she listens to the sobs and drinks a perfectly legal mojito, and then she crawls into Brianna’s bed and gets the birthday present she deserves.
She enters her junior year at UCLA with much the same gusto, embracing the heat finally after a year in the cold of Minnesota. She declares her major as physiotherapy with Shakespearean Literature because what else should you get a degree in if not in what you love, and she moves back into the flat with no complaints.
Katya has no qualms - having followed the timetable to the tee, she knows everything going on, and she gratefully allows Kameron to manipulate her calves as she studies in a raised split.
Asia avoids her until 2 a.m. in March when she falls into Kameron’s bed with nothing more than a mumble of how cold the floor is.
Hello, goodbye, hello
Hello, goodbye, hello
They are twenty-two and graduating college before Asia actually says what she wants to say. She’s getting her double major and Kameron painted her cap while high, so it’s got some really funky lettering, but nothing really feels right until she looks at Kameron across breakfast and feels everything she’s been missing.
Katya watches the whole thing with a rapt fascination, holding the hand of Willam (her newest fling from the business class), so that she has someone to watch it with.
She ends up confessing everything at a Denny’s when they’re both drunk and Katya’s already left to give Willam a goodbye fuck before they all leave for New York again. She talks about how men were never right, but even women seemed off, and then how awful it was when Kam wasn’t around, and in the end they french kiss over a plate of waffles.
Katya is furious she missed it.
I don't see spaces in between
I don't see colours running down the TV screen
Katya is a twenty-three-year-old business owner.
It turns out that fucking Willam was a fantastic business move because she invests in Fine and Dandy before the blonde can finish asking, and all three of them move into the two-bedroom apartment above the shop. They don’t complain when Katya walks around in the middle of the night reciting flower meanings, just like she doesn’t complain about how loud Asia is when Kameron fucks her into the mattress.
Kameron gets pretty quick employment at the old gym they used to train at, becoming a senior coach and physio within months. She gets to feel needed, but also feels the nostalgia of where she grew up. She gets to come home to her girlfriend and her best friend above the thriving florist and they all eat over-priced chinese food with a horrifically low health rating before waking up with the sunrise and doing it all over again.
Asia does a lot of things. She cooks and she bakes and she eats all the leftover take-away from the fridge in the middle of the day when she’s bored of handing out her CV to people who really couldn’t give less of a crap that she has a double major and an average GPA of 4.7. She’s twenty three. What does she have to lose?
There's no lines written in this scene
So I won't say a thing
Asia is twenty five and she works with children more than she should be allowed by the rules of the union. She gets up at five with Katya and Kameron and gets home after Katya has turned the air humidifier on in the shop downstairs so she has to ruin her hair to get inside. She usually brings some sort of treat from whatever shop or bakery she passes on the way home, and they share a box of macaroons between them as a congratulations for getting through the day.
And if you get the time
The number is still mine
Kameron is twenty-seven and she still lives with roommates. She feels it’s some sort of personal loss to still be reliant on a flat they don’t even have to pay rent on, since Willam flat out bought the property for them, but she can’t complain too much. She cycles to work and walks her bike home, eats out more than she should for someone training the next generation of athletes, and massages the shoulders of her stressed out girlfriend.
Asia is a business owner only four years after Katya. She becomes co-owner of the kindergarten and daycare centre she’s been working at since she scraped twenty-four, and she is honoured that they chose her. Their neighbours must hate them because they’re up before any human should be, and only sleep after eleven. It’s unsustainable, but they are young and in love and free, and what else are they supposed to do.
They go to Jamba Juice for old times sake, sit on leather stools at the sticky bar, drinking processed sugar and mangos, trading secrets and compliments and memories of their youth spent growing up in New York City.
Sometimes they feel like it hasn’t changed at all.
Baby, share a dime
On the line
Here in Minnesota time
Katya is thirty and she is in love. Katya is thirty and she is in love with the girl across the street who has never once spoken her name, and she feels complete in knowing that.
Kameron and Asia are also thirty and they are completely and utterly in love with each other and it works. Asia proposes in December and they get married in April, claiming they’ve loved each other too long to wait.
Katya watches her best friends sway in their first dance and wishes the girl from the bakery was there with her.
They cut the cake and she wants it to taste like the ones Asia has smuggled for her from Yellow Cloud Patissiere.
She catches the bouquet and wants to marry the girl with the sunshine blonde hair.
When she gets home it’s almost five a.m and she watches the girl open up the bakery from her front window, inelegantly watering the plants in her maid of honour suit with the shirt sleeves rumpled around her elbows. She catches her eye and waves, squinting to read the name badge she’s clipping on.
Trixie.
It suits her.
Hello, goodbye, hello
“Hi, can I place an order for Fine and Dandy?”
“Yeah sure! What can I get y’all?”
“Whatever you think is best.”
“One passionfruit and white chocolate coming right up then! What’s the name?”
“Katya.”
“Coming right over, Katya.”
Hello, goodbye, hello