Chapter Text
Heidi was leaning against the wall, feeling blessed and highly favored. She had taken a few shots, the alcohol and delicious high buzzing in her blood, but she had grabbed a bottle of water for her fourth drink as everyone talked around her - keeping a level head on a night like tonight too important to be swept up in the party that had already started.
She was surrounded by a crowd of queens, no, scratch that, she was surrounded by a crowd of RuGirls, and Heidi was shaking with the fact that her dreams were finally coming true.
She was one of them, a proper RuGirl, and this was her chance.
Heidi was backstage at Mickey’s, waiting for her time to go on stage, her face front and center on the evening's posters and flyers as one of the biggest names from season 12.
Tonight was Heidi's first time performing at Mickey’s, Morgan McMichaels reaching out and hiring her the moment she had performed her little talent show with Jackie and Gigi, the credits for the episode not even rolling over the screen yet.
Heidi had won competitions and pageants, the titles something she was incredibly proud of, even if they were all regional. She was incredibly proud to be North Carolina Entertainer of the year, and she wore that badge with pride.
She had come into Drag Race guns ablazing and confidence coming out her ass, launching her into the competition like a rocket. Nicki Minaj hadn’t liked her makeup and Ru hadn’t liked her name, but it took more than a few naysayers to take Heidi N Closet down.
Heidi knew she was an amazing queen with the talent to match. She had a born gift for entertaining, and she went in knowing that she was going to give it everything she had.
Coming from her small town in North Carolina where she was hailed as the progdey, where her drag family and sisters pulled all the stops to help her represent in Entertainer of the year because they genuinely thought she had a shot at the titel, it was strange to enter Drag Race and suddenly be a very small fish in a very big pond.
“Heidi!” Eureka yelled, the queen smiling brightly as they held out a bottle of vodka, Widow at her side, her season 12 sister happily getting the drinks. “Do you need a top me up?”
“No thanks honey!” Heidi smiled, the attention filling her with warmth. “I’d love to, but I gotta make sure I dazzle that stage.”
“Now that-” Shangela pointed, her chesire smirk on her face, her own full glass in hand. “That’s what I call a responsible queen.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you Shange. We only hire the best.” Morgan smirked as she was leaning against the wall, Gia at her side.
Heidi was just about to reply, the easy banter filling her with warm delight, but she was interrupted when someone came barreling down the stairs, practically kicking the door open, the noise loud in the little basement room.
“Y’all missed me?!”
Heidi jumped, the fog horn voice one she’d know everywhere.
“VANJIE!” Everyone got up, flocking around the teeny tiny man who had just entered the backstage area.
“Oh christ!” Heidi put a hand over her heart. “Sweetie you done scared the bejeezus out of me.”
“Sorry Mama,” Vanessa Vanjie Mateo laughed, his face split by his signature grin, his brown eyes focused completely on her as he wrestled himself free from the others.
Vanjie looked gorgeous, the man clearly dressed up for a night out. He was in black jeans and a yellow checkered freshly ironed shirt, a crispy white wife beater tucked into the jeans. He was wearing a black cap that he had put on backwards, his perfect smile and bright white teeth practically shining and if Heidi wasn’t wrong, he was wearing diamond earrings, heavy gold chains resting around his neck.
“Bitch you better put those bejeezus back in place! Don’t wanna cause no medical emergencies” Vanjie winked, charm and talent oozing out of him.
Heidi loved how Vanjie always seemed like he was bursting at the seams with life and light. She loved his sense of humor, Heidi snorting and laughing her way through so many Vanjie videos, what he found hilarious so like what she herself gravitated towards. He was crazy, his energy always cracked to eleven, and Heidi adored that.
“I will, don’t you worry.” Heidi laughed, standing up straight. She had expected Vanjie to make his way around the room, the other queens lighting up when he had stepped in, Eureka even making grabby hands for the tiny Puerto Rican, but Vanjie stayed at Heidi’s side, instead yelling loudly to get Eureka to come to him, which his sister gladly did.
Heidi watched as Vanjie said hi to everyone, all of them asking questions about Vegas and Werq, Shangela even stealing Vanjie’s cap like that was allowed. It was obvious that Mickey’s was Vanjie’s home bar, the queen fitting in and kiking with everyone like he had never done anything else.
“I can’t wait to see you twirl later.” Heidi turned her head, Vanjie slipping in next to her and resting against the wall. She had gotten a hug when Vanjie had first arrived, the other pulling her in and holding her tight, almost like she was a friend he hadn’t met yet, Vanjie’s cologne still playing in her nostrils.
“Me?”
“Yes of course!” Vanjie yelled, almost sounding offended that Heidi had dared questioning him. “You think I came all the way out here to see Gia shake her ass? I ain’t driving all the way from Vegas for that!”
Heidi knew that Vanjie loved her online, but she couldn’t believe that he had actually come all the way from Vegas to L.A to see her perform. They had talked a little online, Vanjie popping up on her livestreams every now and again, and he left comments on nearly all of his pictures cheering her on and telling her she looked amazing.
Vanjie’s cheering hadn’t just been in her comment section though.
Heidi had watched her phone explode one afternoon after Brooke Lynn Hytes himself had shared a story of him and Vanjie watching season 12 on the couch in their apartment, Vanjie snapping and yelling at the TV, cheering on Heidi from the top of his lungs. Brooke had filmed the entire thing, Vanjie completely unaware which only made it all that much better.
Heidi had heard from her sisters that they hated being compared to other Ru Girls, but Heidi had been called the Vanjie of her season ever since her ‘Meet the Queens’ video.
“I wanna get a photo.”
“Here?”
“Yes!” Vanjie smiled brightly. “We gotta immortalise that mug.” Vanjie pulled his phone out, the iPhone 11 gigantic in his hand. He held it up, and Heidi snorted as Vanjie’s background was of course a picture of him and Brooke together.
“Wait-” Vanjie took Heidi’s wrist, his fingers closing around it and he pulled her to the side, putting them underneath one of the overhead lamps. “You cool with this lighting?”
“Girl-“ Heidi lifted a brow, almost thinking Vanjie was joking. Vanessa Vanjie Mateo was offering to take a picture with her. Why would she ever turn that down? “You can push me into daylight or shove me in a dumpster.”
“Bitch!” Vanjie laughed loudly. “Ain’t no way I’m pushing you in no dumpster. We out here making a sister look fly!”
Vanjie pulled Heidi in, arm around her waist. Vanjie opened his camera app and Heidi posed, the two of them looking amazing side by side.
///
“Uh!” Brooke smiled, the beer in his hand popping with the special malt sweetness of a really good lager. “This is terrific.”
Brooke hadn’t actually planned on going out while they were in L.A, the whole thing originally Vanjie’s idea. His boyfriend had taken one look at the flyer with Heidi’s face on it, and that had been it, their plans for the weekend set in stone, no matter how much Brooke had wanted to stay home.
Not that the fact that this was all Vanjie’s idea had stopped his boyfriend from abandoning him as soon as they made it to the club, Vanjie kissing him deeply before he had run off in what was probably a hunt for Heidi herself.
“I told you.” Nick chuckled, his own bottle open and resting on the bar next to Brooke, his friend absentmindedly drying glasses, the night not picking up just yet.
Nick had smiled as soon he had spotted him, waiving and pulling the bottles from the fridge before Brooke even had the time to say hello.
“You do have excellent taste.” Brooke took another swing of his beer, the liquid perfectly chilled and right to his tastes. “And great service.”
Brooke didn’t exactly dislike the bar at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Vegas, but he had really missed going to a place where the staff all knew him and where the bartenders knew how to make more than the standard drinks card.
He didn’t miss having a home bar when it came down to the performance aspect of it, the steady paycheck no longer something that was so enticing to him he would say yes in exchange for the massive amount of work it took coordinating everything if he wanted time off to do other projects like pageants, TV or tours.
What Brooke did miss, however, was the sense of having coworkers. He loved some of his sisters and liked most of them, but working with other RuGirls was nothing like the sense of community he had felt at the ballet companies he had worked at or the bars where he had been a home queen.
There was comradery amongst RuGirls, but also always a sense of competition, new girls often sizing up the current favorites to see if they could knock them off their thrones, when Brooke knew for a fact that there was more than enough room in the ever growing fanbase for most of them.
“Careful with the compliments-” Nick smiled, putting the now sparkling clean glasses down, before pointing his thumb at the backstage door, “or I might tell on you to you know who.”
Brooke snorted so hard he had to cover his mouth, both of them breaking into laughter together. Brooke loved his Vanjie but he was also sure that if Nick, even as a joke, actually did share that he had said something even remotely flirty, one of them would end up getting suckerpunched in the jaw.
“Oh god Nick, don’t say shit like that.” Brooke smiled, emptying his drink, Nick immediately putting a new bottle from a different brand on the table.
“Hey, he’s your man-” Nick popped the cap with a bottle opener, “not mine.” he grinned, the conversation one they had already had more times than he could count. Brooke was just about to reply, when he was interrupted by a sweet female voice.
“Excuse me.”
Brooke turned his head, coming face to face with a young woman who looked like she was in her mid 20’s, two other girls standing behind her, giving her shoulder a gentle shove forward.
“Hello?” Brooke smiled, tilting his head slightly, one of the girls swallowing a squeal as he focused his attention on him. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Do you have time for a photo, please?”
“For you?” Brooke knew he was laying on the charm, knew he was playing it thick, but he wasn’t called the lesbian whisper for nothing. “Anytime.”
///
“No. Tell me you serious?”
“I am! How can you say no to boots like this?”
“They cow print.” Vanjie snorted, “Monique didn’t die for your sins so you could get brown cow stun”
Vanjie had no idea how, but he and Heidi had ended up in the corner on the couch, squashed up on one side and browsing around on Heidi’s phone, giggling like school girls as they went through her Amazon wishlist. It had been ages since he had seen most of his Mickey sisters, his residency in Vegas still running, but Vanjie had barely made the round since he was so caught up in Heidi, the other queen feeling like a friend he had known all his life, her vibes just like A’keria and Silky’s.
“I hear you-” Heidi smiled, “and I can’t wait to prove you wrong.”
“Bitch what the fuck!” Vanjie laughed, shoving the other queen's arm, Heidi cackling loudly.
Heidi was just as amazing in real life as Vanjie had hoped when he started following her online. She was hilarious, their sense of humor clicking instantly, but she was also warm and caring, talking to her feeling like he was speaking with someone who was literally inside his brain.
Vanjie had stanned Heidi from the moment he saw her Werq room entrance, how much he talked about her actually getting to the point where Brooke just rolled his eyes and smiled when he went off on another tangent about how Heidi had done in the competition. Brooke still listened though, even when it looked like he wasn’t, his man sweet like that in his own special way.
“Everyone!” Vanjie’s head shut up from the phone as Morgan’s voice rang through the room, Heidi showing him a pair of earrings she had been looking at. “We’re doing curtains in 10, so gather your things and get ready.”
“Fuck.” Vanjie had no idea so much time had passed. “You ready to go on stage?” Vanjie couldn’t help but worry that he had taken too much of Heidi’s time, the season 12 queen the opening number of the night, his hand quickly fixing the bang on Heidi’s brown wig, making sure the strands were all in the right place.
“Girl-” Heidi smiled, the gap in her teeth somehow only making her smile that much more genuine and sweet. “You could wake me up in the middle of the night and throw me on stage.”
Vanjie laughed, his fanboy heart soaring with Heidi’s attitude. “I sure as shit hope no one’s grabbed our seats.”
You couldn’t actually reserve seats at Mickey’s, the club open for everyone to grab whatever chair they wanted, but Morgan had started making sure that Brooke could sit in the front as a favor to Vanjie when he moved to L.A, and over time it had become the Branjie seats, Brooke a crowd regular at the club.
“- They first row, and I worked real damn hard to-”
“Our?” Heidi raised a brow. “Are you operating with a royal we?”
“What? No? You think I’m here by my lonesome?” Vanjie had no idea what Heidi was talking about, and then, he realised that he had actually not mentioned the fact that Brooke was there too at all, all of the other queens more than used to the fact that Brooke was hanging out.
“I left Brock’s ass at the bar.”
Vanjie neglected to mention that he had specifically left Brooke behind because he was too slow at getting backstage, his boyfriend insisting that he had to say hi, and Vanjie hadn’t had time for that when he was making new friends.
“Wait-” Heidi’s big eyes widened before she turned to look at the backstage door, acting like she’d suddenly develop X-ray vision if she tried hard enough. “Is she out there right now?”
“Heck yes, hopefully watching those seats unless he drinking.” Vanjie stood up, smoothing down his shirt, grabbing the drink he had almost forgotten on the side of the couch, the vodka Shangela had offered him largely untouched in his glass. “He always insists on yapping with the bartenders.”
“You’re gonna be on the first row?” Heidi’s head snapped, her eyes filled with something like anticipation, like Heidi was excited at the prospect of meeting Brooke.
“If not I’ma whoop his ass.” Vanjie smiled. “Or at least collect him from the bar. He got those ‘tenders wrapped around his fingers. Talking beer all night long,” Vanjie laughed.
It was one of the things he teased Brooke about the most, his boyfriend insisting that beer was actually something delicious and not just disgusting dishwater. “They always all microbrew this microbrew-“
“They put the beer in teeny tiny bottles?”