A/N: This is an imagined prequel to the Al/Trixie pairing, set some years before 1876, the "Deadwood" years. This picks up a few years after "Miseries and Familiars" ends.

I own nothing, all is HBO's, David Milch's , or history's creations. Some fictitious characters are based on composites of historical figures.

Warnings for violence, graphic description of violent facial wounds, pimp/prostitute dynamics, language, implied euthanasia, casual sex (non-explicit), abortion.

Making Their Way

Chapter 5

Trixie was in their rooms when he returned, hours before he expected her to be done at Sunny's. He groaned inwardly. He had been looking forward to some solitary time to work out a plan for his next move.

"What the fuck you doin' home so soon? Tricks run out of money?"

She sat on the settee by the window, still dressed in her working clothes. "In a manner of speakin'. Business was slacking off and the other girls were giving me the evil eye. I was ahead of my usual earnin's so I thought I'd give them and me a break and head back."

He stood over her. "Oh. Is that what you thought?"

She looked up at him, measuring his beginning twitchy rage.

"Al, once we have our own place, you get some girls that work good with me, it'll be different. I just feel like…it's best I not overstep. I don't know these girls, who's temperish and such, and it's not like you're there to handle things, they start going wrong."

He grabbed her upper arms and pulled her to her feet.

"You goin' with your feelings, now, as opposed to what I tell you to do? You makin' the decisions now, Trixie? You want to run things in this fucking town of Amazons and Medeas? Maybe you think I should be a whore too, us pooling our earnings at the end of the night. That your thinkin' on the subject?" He was glowering now, dark and hot, his fingers digging into her arms.

Trixie started to twist to get some ease from his hands.

"Jesus, Al, what the fuck? I'll go on back right now, you want me to." Her hands reached up for his.

His fingers twitched on her sleeves for a second before he threw her onto the bed.

"Do whatever the fuck you want." He grabbed for a half-empty bottle on the table, drinking the whiskey in deep swallows. He walked back and forth in the suite, fidgeting with his moustache, frowning and muttering.

"Ground floor."

Trixie looked up from her place on the bed. She had lain very still as Al paced and grumbled. She frowned. "You want us to…move to a ground floor room?" She thought maybe he was looking to economize or some such.

"We gotta go somewhere we can get in on the ground floor, not have to kowtow to cunts and cocksuckers, think they run every goddamn thing like their own personal fiefdom."

She sat up. "And where would that be? Any city we go to, every place we've been…it ain't like we can find a place where we're the first to offer pussy and spirits, 'less you've found a way to get us to the fuckin' moon."

He was starting to talk faster, in excited, slightly drunken tones. "We been goin' west for years, things getting' more open as we go, until this place. But we've stayed in cities, towns, places with hotels and whorehouses, saloons already standin'. "

He began gesturing with his arms. "We need to go somewhere where I'm the head cocksucker that has to be gone through, anybody wants to do business. Not some mayor, or police chief, or fuckin' mother hen."

She rolled over on her stomach, watching him. "Like where?"

He threw the morning's newspaper at her. She could read headlines about Indians and forts and a few small gold finds out in the western territories. Some article about the Comstock mine.

"Read that in your leisure time. From here on out, you and me are going to earn as much as we can, as fast as we can, until we've got enough to stake us to a real move."

She frowned. "I thought you had enough of a stake to rent us a working house."

"Yeah, but not enough to move to a place with nothin' and build a place from the bare ground up."

He sat on the side of the bed, eyes wild with imagining, speech rapid and staccato. "Get established, might be rough in the beginning, but get some good men around me, get some fast action going, folks'll have to get my permission to do business, maybe pay fees or the like."

He laid his hand on her hair. He looked at her but seemed to be seeing something else. Still, he was almost gentle.

"You get some rest tonight. Startin' tomorrow, you're going be fuckin' and blowin' like your life depended on it, addin' whatever circus tricks you know to get those tips up."

Great. "What are you going to be doing while I'm doing all this fancy fucking?"

His hand went in his coat pocket, smoothing out the crumpled card. "Don't worry about what I'm doing. Just pull in the money, hmm?"

He undressed, blew out the lamp and got into bed. He lay there next to her in the dark, eyes open and feet fidgeting.

"Need some help gettin' to sleep?'

"Yeah, that'd be good."

She heard the snaps unfastening as she bent over him. Fifteen minutes and one mouth-rinse later, both finally fell asleep.