Chapter Text
She doesn’t bother to lock or latch the door this time.
The distance from the bed feels like a million miles, and she’s too weary and wrung out to pick herself up and try to walk. Talking to Debbie is always exhausting these days: the fire of her ire, her righteous fury, the guilt and the shame and the messy, complicated tangle of feelings churning up her gut every time they see each other,, gnawing on her bones, pressing down on her head and shoulders like a dead weight, a roiling, rolling cataclysm that never, ever slows down.
It’s a new thing, that feeling, but not quite as new as she’d like to believe. Back in the old days, hazy and smog-choked and all the rest of it, spending time with Debbie was the easiest, simplest, least complicated thing in the whole wide world. Back then it felt like floating, like being alive, like maybe she didn’t need to drown after all, so long as Debbie was there too.
If she’s honest, she hasn’t felt like that in a long time. Even before she screwed it all up by sleeping with Mark, even before her self-pity and self-loathing swallowed them all down and spat them back up in half-chewed pieces, even before she started drowning for real, the distance between them was already growing wider and harder to swim across.
Debbie got married, Debbie got Paradise Cove, Debbie got successful.
Debbie moved to Pasadena. Debbie stopped working. Debbie had a baby.
Debbie kept smiling. She stopped working, but she didn’t stop acting.
Ruth kept auditioning, kept trying, kept failing, kept failing, kept failing.
Ruth kept treading water until she was too tired to hold her head up.
By the time she realised she was drowning — like, really, really drowning, not like the countless times she might have been almost-possibly-sort-of-maybe been drowning, but the real, genuine, terrifying, water-in-her-lungs, vision-going-black kind of drowning, the kind where she couldn’t see the shore any more, the kind where she couldn’t see much of anything at all — Debbie was too far away to help.
That was no-one’s fault. Just the trajectories of their lives.
What happened with Mark, twice... that was Ruth’s fault.
If she’s drowning again now? That’s her own fault as well.
She clings to that thought, the acrid, sour-tasting truth of it, as she drags her weary body up the length of her bed, fumbling her way blindly to the pillow. She’s too tired to wrestle with the blanket, and she’s not sure she could bear the rough, heavy weight of it anyway. Her whole body feels sensitive and tender, sore like she’s been dragged along a brick wall, her skin all scraped off, like it wasn’t just her insides that got sucked out but all of her, organs and muscle and bones and everything.
She feels like she’s been set on fire and then stamped out, still smouldering but dying slowly by degrees, ready to crumble to ash and dust at the slightest touch.
She feels—
Exhausted.
Sensitive and tender and sore.
The cramps are still there, maddeningly persistent, throbbing between her hipbones. The discomfort is a weird kind of comforting, like her innards are checking and double-checking that the unwanted intruder really has left the building.
You see, they’re saying, with each dull blade carving through her guts. You see, this little pain means there’s no baby. You see, that bigger pain means you’re okay, we’re okay, everything’s okay. Sure, it hurts, sure, it sucks, but it’s better than the alternative, right?
She can’t argue with that.
She tucks her arm under the pillow, buries her face in its cool, flat surface.
She thinks about Debbie.
She thinks about the feeling of water in her lungs, the pain of trying to breathe. She thinks about the delirious heat of fever pulsing out in waves from underneath her skin; she thinks about sweat and shivers and sickness, thinks about her weak, miserable body. She thinks about Debbie’s strong arms wrapped around her, Debbie’s cool lips pressed to her temple; she thinks about Debbie’s voice and Debbie’s breath, Debbie’s presence all around her, buoying her, helping her to hold her head up, and the way she made even drowning feel like floating.
She thinks—
The pillow is damp, heating up too quickly under her cheek.
She turns it over, blinks the salt out of her eyes, tries again.
She thinks about Debbie stalking out of the ring during their match. She thinks about Mark, stone-faced, glowering up at them both. She thinks about Sam’s hand on her shoulder at the clinic, Sam’s eyes crinkling afterwards, when he handed over the bag of doughnuts she didn’t even want any more. She thinks about the sickly smell of disinfectant, the sting of a needle pressing into her, the hollowed-out numbness that came right on its heels. She thinks about guilt, about shame, about playing the villain in the ring, about playing the villain in her own life.
She thinks about Debbie, her hand on the door, whispering, I’m sorry.
The pillow is warming again, but this time it stays dry.
Her insides are still cramping, but her outsides are no longer shaking.
She closes her eyes. Just like the pillow, they stay dry.
She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she definitely remembers dreaming.
She’s in the ring, curled up on her side, face pressed to the canvas. She’s wearing her leotard, the brown one, the one she wore that day in the ring, after hours, when Debbie landed her move perfectly for the first time. It’s been less than a week since that day, she’s sure, but it doesn’t fit like it did back then. It’s too tight, the fabric all stretched out, distending uncomfortably over the swell of a belly nine months pregnant.
Her insides are seizing, sharp bursts of tissue-tearing pain machine-gunning through her, not cramps but contractions.
She thinks, dream-dazed and disoriented, sick with pain and shaking with panic, I can’t give birth in the ring, I can’t give birth in front of a live audience, I can’t give birth in a leotard, I can’t give birth, I can’t have a baby, I can’t—
But that’s out of her hands now.
The crowd is screaming, howling, baying for her blood. The rest of the GLOW team, a dozen blurry-edged faces, hang off the ropes, cheering and jeering and laughing. There’s no last-minute reprieve from Rhonda this time, no cheery after-school-special sing-along to smooth out the jagged edges of the audience’s bloodlust. Their voices are cruel, their laughter cutting; they’re vicious, violent, and when she looks up into their eyes, all she sees is hate.
You deserve this, she hears in the mocking lash of their voices, and really, what else can she do but agree?
High above her, haloed by the garish strobes, Debbie straddles the top rope.
She’s in the same leotard she wore during the live match, the vibrant reds, whites and blues of Miss America, and she has her arms stretched high above her head just like she did then, in the glorious, triumphant, breath-held moment before she caught her husband’s eye and fled the scene. She’s a vision, just like always, radiant and dazzling and heart-stealing, and even through the haze of pain and humiliation, Ruth can’t take her eyes off her.
She tries to say her name. Debbie, begging for forgiveness or begging her to hold her, or maybe both.
She tries to say her name, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, but all that comes out is a loud, shattered scream.
Debbie doesn’t even blink.
She’s not facing the crowd, not this time. She isn’t basking in their cheers and cries and chants, isn’t feeding off their roaring patriotic adulation, their shared hatred for the twisted villain lying prone in the middle of the ring. She’s staring down at Ruth, gaze hard and unyielding, like the angel of death.
Worse: like the angel of new life.
She points down at her, first with one hand and then with the other, and fire rips through Ruth’s torso like Debbie just called it down from on high. She hears herself scream again, the tortured wail of the nearly dying, but it’s a distant and discordant thing, drowned by the howls of the crowd, the jeering from her teammates, the clang of the bell as Sam announces her defeat.
She thinks, foolishly, I never even got a chance to defend myself.
“You brought this on yourself,” Debbie tells her, in a voice that cuts through the clamour like a knife.
Ruth tries to scream again, but there’s nothing left inside of her.
Well, Nothing except the swelling of her stomach, the contractions tearing through her like penance.
Nothing except the newborn cries of Debbie’s husband’s baby.
I’m sorry, she tries to say. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—
“I’m sorry,” Debbie says, in the high, husky drawl of Liberty Belle, and hurls herself off the top rope.
Ruth wakes, gasping, choking, a real scream strangled in the back of her throat, a fraction of a second before dream-Debbie’s elbow slams into her swollen stomach.
She wakes, sweating and shaking and cramping, and oh god it hurts like hell, but at least it’s not that.
She wakes, and her first instinct is to sit up, to shake the nightmare out of her bones, but she can’t.
She can’t move at all.
There’s a dead weight slung over her middle, heavy but without pressure, pinning her to the mattress. The foggy, half-dreaming part of her, the part that’s still trapped in that endless nightmare of childbirth and crossbodies, feels the rising panic gurgle in her chest, a strap pulled tight across her lungs, holding her down, keeping her trapped in the swirling grey between dream and reality.
The rest of her...
The rest of her, the part that’s breaking to the surface and forcing the water out of her lungs, thinks, wait, stop, I know this.
The rest of her, the part that recognises this feeling, the part that has been held down — no, not down, just held — exactly like this a million times before, thinks, Debbie?
And then the first part, the part that’s still in the ring with a baby clawing its way out of her, thinks, oh, this is a dream too.
A high keening sound wrenches out of her, like a whimper desperately trying to become a wail, like the strangled screams dream-Debbie tore out of her with her hands.
The weight pressing down on her middle intensifies, then shifts slightly lower. There’s a puff of cool, sweet breath against the shell of her ear, and then, hushed and low, like an echo from a hundred years ago—
“Shh, Ruthie.”
Ruth shivers. The whimper in her throat folds in on itself, becomes something softer and smaller.
The half-awake part of her thinks it might burst into tears.
The half-asleep part of her thinks, if this really is just another dream, it never wants to wake up.
The half-drowning part of her manages to whisper, “Deb?”
All those parts of her, every single one, knows the answer.
She can feel her presence more fully now, solid and heavy and very, very real. She’s stretched out behind her, tucked in against her back, holding her close and tight, just like she has a million times before. The familiar weight of her arm draped over her waist becomes more tangible, more present; Ruth basks like a needy child in the cool press of her nose against her hairline, her lips brushing her temple.
They’ve been in this position so many times it hurts.
It feels like a lifetime since the last time it happened.
Ruth feels—
“Go back to sleep,” Debbie’s voice hums, cool and ticklish against Ruth’s ear, like she really believes there’s any chance of that happening now.
Ruth exhales. Her ribs creak as they expand, pushing up against the walls of her chest. She wonders if Debbie feels it, if their bodies are close enough for that.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. Her voice is hoarse, quivering just a little, like it’s still trying to break the surface of the dream, like it’s trying to remind itself it’s still alive. “You left. You yelled at me for bailing on you, then you asked me if I had tampons and painkillers, then you apologised for bailing on me, and then you left. I don’t...” She swallows. For some unfathomable reason, her throat hurts even more than her uterus. “Why did you come back?”
Why are you in my bed, is what she really wants to know. Why are you holding me like you used to? You can’t pretend I begged you to do it this time.
She doesn’t say any of that, of course. If she did, Debbie might remember all the reasons why she shouldn’t be doing it, all the reasons why she shouldn’t be here at all, all the horrible, awful reasons why Ruth is a horrible, awful person, a terrible friend unworthy of forgiveness or comfort or being held; she’ll remember all of that, every fucked up part and then she’ll get out of her bed and walk out the door again and leave her all alone.
That’s what Ruth deserves. Pain and loneliness. Grief, guilt, shame.
Not this. Not Debbie’s arms around her. Not her lips at her temple.
Ruth doesn’t deserve any of this. The last thing in the world she wants is for Debbie to remember that too.
Debbie doesn’t say anything for a long time. Ruth’s heart feels like it’s having an existential crisis, pounding like a hurricane in one second and then stalling into total stillness in the next; she feels like she’s having a heart attack, like she’ll stop breathing next, like she’ll need Debbie to bring her back from the dead, breathe the life back into her from her own lungs, mouth to mouth and spirit to spirit, then shrug it off like it meant nothing at all, like she only did it for the good of the show.
Finally, quietly, Debbie husks, “It’s not a big deal, Ruth.”
Ruth swallows again. Her throat softens a bit. “It’s not?”
“It’s really, really not.” Debbie’s breath dances across Ruth’s skin, soothing and sort of shivery. “I just don’t have anything better to do with my time right now. You know, since my heel is a lazy little shit who’d sooner lie in bed for a week than show up to work.”
“I’m not...” Her voice breaks. She wills her body not to start shaking again and give her away. “I’m not...”
Debbie’s lips drift down from her temple to her ear, blissfully cool. “Go back to sleep,” she hums again, like that’s the end of the whole conversation.
Maybe it is, at that. Ruth doesn’t have the strength to keep talking, doesn’t have the strength to say all the things she knows she should. She definitely doesn’t have the strength to sabotage this brief, undeserved moment of comfort with the awful, horrible, unspeakable truth.
Debbie has walked out on her so many times over the last two or three months. There’s not enough pieces left of Ruth’s heart to survive if she did it again.
Stay with me, she wants to say. Don’t bail on me again, don’t run away again, don’t leave me alone again. If you want me to beg for it, just so you can say ‘I told you so’, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything you ask. Just please, please, please don’t go away again.
Don’t stay with me, she wants to say, at the same time. I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve you, I don’t deserve anything at all. You don’t know the truth, you don’t know why we’re really here, so please, please, please go away before I can hurt you again.
She can’t say any of those things. She couldn’t bear to make them real.
She can’t voice the yearnings of her heart, can’t confess to the shame filling her head. She can’t say anything, can’t reconcile what she wants with what she knows she doesn’t deserve; she can barely even breathe, much less form words, and so she does the only thing her weak, shaking body will allow: she rolls over, as best she can with Debbie’s arm like a lead weight on top of her, and tucks her face into the crook of her neck.
“Please,” she whispers, and it’s none of the things she wants to say, none of the things she needs to say, but it’s the only word she has.
Debbie rests her chin on the crown of her head. Ruth feels, against the jutting bones of her own ribs, the lulling motion of her chest as she breathes in and out, slow and steady, slow and even, slow and rhythmic. It’s calming, lulling, so much Ruth feels her own stuttery, shuddery lungs try, in spite of themselves, in spite of all of her, to catch its gentle rhythm.
“Ruth,” Debbie sighs, and her voice doesn’t match her breathing at all. “My whole life is a shitshow right now. The only thing that makes sense is...”
She doesn’t finish. Ruth thinks she wants to say ‘wrestling’, thinks maybe she also wants to say ‘this’, thinks, or maybe just hopes, there’s a tiny little part of her that secretly wants to say ‘you’ and ‘us’.
She holds her breath for a beat, just long enough to shake off the shackles of Debbie’s, then says, with a self-loathing that seizes her guts like cramps, “I’m the reason why your life is a shitshow.”
Debbie swallows. Ruth feels it against her cheek.
“Yeah,” Debbie says softly. “You really are.”
Ruth blinks rapidly, damp against Debbie’s neck.
“I don’t deserve...” she starts, then falters.
“No, you don’t.” Debbie’s voice is muffled, lost to the tangles of Ruth’s hair. “But you’re my villain. You’re my heel, you’re my... my fucking partner. And we work too damn well together to let your bullshit get in the way of that.” She exhales sharply, hard, with real anger. It raises the hair on the back of Ruth’s neck, raises goosebumps down her arms. “So shut the fuck up, for once in your life, and let me do this.”
You don’t understand, Ruth wants to scream. It’s worse than you think, it’s so much worse than you think.
She should say that. She needs to say it. Debbie needs to know the truth. She needs to understand why they’re really here, what this is really all about. She needs to know what Ruth did, what she’s done. She needs to know, she needs to understand, she needs to know... and Ruth needs to tell her.
But oh, the strength of Debbie’s arms around her, the warm press of her body, the cool press of her lips.
“Debbie,” she manages, and she wishes she had the strength to say all the things she knows she should, but she doesn’t, she can’t, she can’t, she—
“Ruthie.” The name slams into her like a sledgehammer, rips through her like a bullet. It makes her shudder, makes her cramp in places much, much higher than the ones she’s slowly growing used to. “Go back to sleep, okay?”
Ruth buries her face in Debbie’s neck, tucks herself away in the shelter of her skin and her sweat and her beautiful, impossible strength. She breathes her in, breathes them in, the two of them together, and lets the comforting familiarity of it prick her eyes with tears.
“Okay,” she whispers, just like she has a thousand times before. “Okay, Deb.”
And just like a million times before, Debbie’s arms tighten around her waist, and Debbie’s lips brush across her temple, and Debbie holds her and holds her and holds her, until there’s nothing she can do but obey.
This time, she doesn’t dream.
She drifts, suspended in the thick, endless void of sleep, but she doesn’t dream and she does not drown.
She drifts, disoriented and directionless, outside of her body but still vividly and unpleasantly aware of it.
She drifts, buoyed by the distant throb of cramps, and wakes to the firm, unexpected pressure of Debbie’s hand on her groin.
She—
What?
She thinks she tries to ask that question out loud, as best she can while still muzzy with sleep. It’s not quite a word, more like a dull, barely-audible mumble, confusion set to sound, the kind of noises she used to make all the time when she was sick, when she was delirious or incoherent or had simply lost her voice, when she couldn’t make full sentences or even full words, but still, somehow, even at her most incoherent, Debbie always seemed to understand.
She understands now too, or so it seems.
She hums softly, murmurs something unintelligible against her skin. Ruth can’t make out the words, but she can tell by the cadence of the sound that it’s supposed to be comforting; Debbie’s breath is warm now, tickling her jaw, and her nose is nuzzling her cheekbone. Her hand is solid and strong, palm kneading careful circles over her pubic bone, easing the cramps and loosening the tight, clenching muscles.
It feels like heaven, and it feels a little bit like hell as well. Ruth’s poor confused body can’t figure out which sensation is the more immediate, and her still-groggy brain can’t figure out which one she’s supposed to listen to.
She tries to roll over, tries to sit up. She tries to pull herself together, but that’s more than she can hope for at the moment.
Debbie makes another soft, soothing noise, lips shifting up to Ruth’s ear. “You okay?” she asks, and she sounds sleepy too.
Ruth breathes in, breathes out. Debbie’s elbow is wedged into the space between two of her ribs, the sharp point of it sticking into her lung. It feels almost more personal, in a strange, surreal sort of way, than the palm pressing down on her groin, the fingers kneading her pubic bone, the devastating proximity of Debbie’s hand to her—
She feels a small whine trickle out of her, and doesn’t have the strength to try and stop it.
Her mouth feels sticky. Her throat is dry, crackling with gravel and sand; every sound she tries to make comes out like a cry for help. How the hell is she supposed to answer that question, are you okay, without sounding like a wounded animal, the kind that needs to be put out of its misery?
She swallows a couple of times, unglues her tongue from the roof of her mouth, then clears her throat a handful of times, until she can trust herself to sound at least moderately close to human.
“I’m...” She swallows again. “You’re, um...”
Her voice falters. She shifts her hips, letting her body make the point her tongue is too tangled to.
Debbie’s hand does not stop moving. Ruth feels her mouth twitch up against the curve of her ear.
“Is it helping?” she asks, plain and simple.
She sounds sincere. Kind of husky, maybe, like she was dozing a little too, but genuine enough. It’s a simple question, so far as she’s concerned — Jesus, Ruth, use your words: either it’s helping or it’s not — and Ruth knows that the answer should be simple too: yes or no, and she’ll have that answer ready just as soon as her body wakes up enough to figure it out.
She knows, objectively, that there’s nothing particularly intimate about this. She knows, objectively — and, if she’s really, totally honest, subjectively too — that they’ve been in far more intimate positions than this, more often than either of them would care to recall. Their entire friendship, more or less, has just been one intimate moment after another, so this should really just be one more drop in a bucket already halfway to overflowing.
Debbie, stripping her naked and helping her crawl into the shower after four days in bed with the flu.
Debbie, stripping her naked, washing her with a damp cloth when she couldn’t get out of bed at all.
Debbie, stripping her naked again and again, hands lingering in unexpected places without a thought.
Debbie, stripping herself naked, drunk and loose and carefree, laughing at the look on Ruth’s face.
Debbie, naked and unashamed in Ruth’s bathroom, using her shower, borrowing her soap, her towel.
Debbie, naked and dripping in front of Ruth’s fogged-up mirror, borrowing her fucking toothbrush.
Debbie, stripping down to her panties, climbing into Ruth’s bed, holding her close, holding her tight.
Debbie has seen every part of her, touched every part of her, known every part of her, and she’s shown off every part of herself too, in her turn. She’s seen Ruth at her most vulnerable, her most helpless, her most pathetic and miserable and wretched; she’s seen her in every sad and sorry state a person could possibly be in, the worst of the worst, and her only response was to climb out of her clothes, climb into her bed, and wrap her arms around her.
The lips at her temple feel more intimate, objectively, than the hand massaging her cramping groin.
And yet...
It’s the guilt, Ruth decides. It’s the deception, the dishonesty, the truth that she’s too much of a coward to confess. It’s Debbie laying aside all of her hurt and grief and anger, all the betrayal and the heartbreak, laying aside every broken, furious part of herself to bring comfort to the woman who destroyed her life, to climb into bed with her, just like she has a thousand times before, and hold her and touch her and try to ease her pain.
It’s Debbie, casually and carelessly putting her hand on the exact same place where Ruth blew their friendship apart, not in hatred or violence or revenge, not in any of the ways they both know Ruth would deserve, but in compassion, in tenderness, in—
God, it hurts so much.
Debbie should be using her knuckles instead of her palm. She should be leaving bruises with her fingers, or shoving them deep inside of her, shredding up the sensitive tissue where the needles made her numb, scoring lines with her nails, drawing blood, making damn sure Ruth feels every torturous second of it. She should be tearing her to pieces from the inside, and doing far worse things besides, but instead she’s massaging the place where it hurts, pressing down gently with her palm, kneading carefully with her fingers, touching her not like the enemy she’s become but like the friend she used to be, all the while whispering, is this helping?
Ruth wants to scream. She wants to cry.
She wants Debbie to hold her tighter.
She wants Debbie to tear her to pieces.
She wants—
“Debbie.” Her voice is a tremor; her uterus spasms hard underneath Debbie’s palm. “Debbie, please.”
She means, please stop, and she means, please don’t stop, and she means, please, Debbie, please, please, please—
Debbie’s hand stills. The pressure doesn’t ease off; the heel of her hand digs deep into the muscles.
“Is it helping?” she asks again.
Ruth doesn’t have an answer. She’s fully and completely awake now, in every part of herself, but she still can’t for a coherent answer, can’t piece together the relief her body feels, blissfully unspooling under Debbie’s attentions, with the clenching, agonising tension of knowing why it was hurting in the first place. She can’t reconcile the part of her that wants to say yes, oh god yes, the part that wants to bury itself in Debbie’s arms and pretend everything is back to normal between them, with the part that wants to push her away, to kick her out of her bed and throw her out of the room before she learns the awful, terrible, devastating truth.
It’s not fair. It’s not right.
Debbie wouldn’t be here at all if she knew the real reason for those fucking cramps.
She certainly wouldn’t be holding her, touching her, massaging her aching muscles.
It’s not right. It’s not fair.
Ruth lays a tremulous, unsteady hand on top of Debbie’s. She’s pretty sure the plan is to remove it, to peel it up off her aching crotch or simply to push it away to a safer location, to destroy that devastating point of contact completely so she can at least try to think clearly and form a coherent answer to that lingering question. The plan, she’s almost completely sure, is to get some distance between her buzzing blood and Debbie’s too-gentle touch, but that’s not what happens.
Debbie’s skin is soft under hers, and smooth and cool and so fucking wonderful. Her fingers flex lightly at the sudden contact, knuckles pushing up into Ruth’s damp palm, and all of a sudden all she can think of is how neatly, how perfectly they fit together.
“You don’t understand,” she forces herself to say, as painful as a broken bone, as painful as the cramps still wrenching through her torso, as painful as the two long and terrible months since her fuck-up with Mark came to light, since Debbie took away her smile, her laughter, her friendship. “Please, Debbie, you don’t understand. This isn’t... I’m not...”
She stops.
Debbie’s hand tenses under her own.
The pressure on her groin intensifies.
“Ruth,” Debbie says, very, very softly.
Ruth is shaking again. She knows Debbie will feel it — they’re connected everywhere, no more than a quarter an atom of space between their bodies — but she can’t stop it, no more than she can stop herself from choking again, hoarse and shuddery and shamelessly desperate, “You don’t understand.”
It was his baby, she wants to sob. That’s why I’m here, that’s why you’re here, that’s why we’re both here. That’s where all these cramps are coming from, that’s the source of the pain you’re trying to ease. It’s my mistake, my fuck-up, it’s the whole reason why you hate me in the first place. That’s what happened, that’s what this is all about. You’re holding me and you’re telling me to sleep and you’re trying to make me feel better, but you don’t know the truth, you don’t understand, you don’t understand, you don’t—
“Ruth.” Debbie’s voice is still soft, but it’s not like it was a moment ago. It’s a different kind of soft now, not like comfort but like a threat, like the sudden terrifying stillness before a destructive, all-devouring storm. “Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?”
Ruth’s stomach drops. Her chest seizes up. All her organs seem to stop functioning at the same time.
She hears herself gasp, from so far away it might as well be the opposite end of the universe, “What?”
Debbie’s hand slides out from under hers. She pulls herself up so she’s half-sitting, the main bulk of her weight leaning on her elbows. It’s fitting, Ruth thinks, numb and half-falling out of her body, that from this new angle it looks like she’s towering over her, like she did in that awful dream, like the angel of death — of new life, whatever — preparing to pass judgement on the scarlet-lettered sinner.
It’s painful, but it’s still not even close to what she deserves.
Ruth takes a deep breath, keeps it in her lungs until they start to burn, then forces her stubborn, shaking body to move, to roll itself over onto its back, so she can at least try to look Debbie in the eye.
It’s a mistake. Of course it’s a mistake; eye contact with Debbie is always a mistake.
Her eyes are dark, narrowed almost to slits. Her expression is steely, not quite as hard as Ruth expected it to be but definitely not yielding or accepting; there’s no compassion in her now, or kindness, or care. She looks like she’s trying to decide whether she wants to talk this through or simply strangle her.
Ruth swallows. Her throat is sore.
Debbie inhales. Holds it. Exhales.
“We’ve known each other for nearly a decade,” she says, dangerously low. “A lifetime. A million and one fucking periods. And I have never, ever seen you cramping like this.”
As if on cue, Ruth’s whole abdomen clenches. It’s not a cramp, at least not a proper one, but she can tell that Debbie notices anyway, and that she thinks it’s proving her point.
“I don’t suppose you’d believe it was something I ate?” she suggests, timid and laughably transparent.
Debbie’s single raised eyebrow, her tightening jaw, her twitching cheek, are all the answer she needs.
“I know you, Ruthie,” she says, in a voice that makes it sound like that’s more of a a curse than a blessing. Given the current situation, Ruth can’t really argue that it’s not. “I know your stupid face, I know your stupid heart. And I know your stupid, stupid, stupid fucking body. I know...” She closes her eyes for a couple of short, stuttery seconds, like a blink forgetting halfway through the process that it’s supposed to unshutter itself. “Jesus Christ, I know you better than anyone.”
It’s true. She does.
Nearly a decade of friendship. A lifetime. Three lifetimes in L.A. time, four for struggling actors, and six or seven in the eternally fucked up world of Ruth Wilder. Long enough that it’s not even close to hyperbole for Debbie to claim she knows her as well as all that, long enough that the truth of it makes Ruth’s ribs pull tight, contracting and contracting and contracting, until she’s sure her whole chest will burst, until she’s almost convinced it would hurt less if it did.
Debbie laughing, falling against her after one glass of wine too many.
Debbie running lines with her, lending her clothes, driving her to auditions.
Debbie buying her lunch or dinner. Debbie leaving soup in her fridge.
Debbie climbing into bed with her, holding her tight and holding her close.
Debbie, her lips at Ruth’s temple, her voice in her ear. “Shh, Ruthie.”
Debbie, in bed with her right now, looking down at her with dark, narrowed eyes. Debbie, towering over her, telling her she knows her, telling her she knows.
I know you better than anyone, she said, and oh god, it’s true, it’s so true it hurts, it’s so true it hurts worse than anything Ruth has ever felt in her entire life.
“Debbie,” she whispers, and the name is a flood of salt on her tongue.
Debbie’s eyes are blank. Hollow, just like they were in that awful, horrible dream, when she stood on the top rope, haloed like an angel, a vision in red and white and blue. Lightless but not at all lifeless, her eyes, just like the rest of her, blaze with something deep, something profound, something wild.
“I know you,” she says again, and those dark, hollow eyes drop pointedly to Ruth’s stomach. She inhales, then lets it all out in a sigh that sounds like her heart is breaking. “And I know how to do basic fucking arithmetic too.”
Oh, Ruth thinks, and feels like a complete and total idiot.
She tries to say it, tries to say something, anything, but all that comes out is a choked, broken sob.
I’m sorry, she thinks as her chest heaves, as her shoulders follow, as a second sob chases the first.
She curls in on herself, chin pressed tightly to her chest to try and hold the shudders at bay as the tears start to flow in earnest. She cowers underneath the tumble of her hair, hiding her face from those dark, hollow eyes, hiding her guilt and her shame and her pain from Debbie’s anger, her wrath, her righteous, rightful fury.
I’m sorry, she thinks again, again, again. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, and she knows that it’s useless, knows that it’s worthless, knows that it’s meaningless and pointless and pathetic, but it’s all she has, empty apologies that don’t make it out of her mouth, empty words that mean less than nothing, the empty, scooped-out space inside her belly and the empty, dead space inside her chest.
I’m sorry, over and over in rhythm with the rush of tears. I’m sorry and I’m sorry and I’m sorry and—
And then Debbie’s arms are there, wrapping around her, an effortless mirror of countless times before.
And then Debbie’s hands are there as well, pressing into her back, pulling her in, holding her close.
And then Debbie’s lips brush her temple, and it’s everything she wants, everything she doesn’t deserve.
“Fuck,” Debbie whispers, hoarse and hitching. “I hate you so fucking much.”
I know, Ruth thinks hopelessly, helplessly. I know, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Out loud, all she can manage is a weak, hiccuping, “Why are you still here?”
She doesn’t really want to know the answer to that, but she’s just enough of a self-flagellating masochist that a part of her wants the pain she knows it will bring.
It’s the least she deserves. Debbie, she’s sure, would be the first to agree with that.
Debbie isn’t relishing her pain, though, no more than she’s getting up and walking out the door, no more than she’s doing any one of the things they both know she should. She’s just holding her, even now, tight enough that it should hurt, tight enough that it doesn’t. Her arms are like vices, nails threatening to pierce the skin even through her clothes. She’s holding her like she wants to hurt her but doesn’t have enough strength, or maybe like she’s afraid of what she’ll do if she lets her go.
Her lips are wet where they press to Ruth’s temple, her forehead, her cheek. Her eyelashes flutter against her hairline, delicate and suddenly very damp. Her shoulders are shaking, her chest is heaving. Ruth thinks she might be crying a little bit too.
“Because you’re my villain,” Debbie rasps, the answer to a question Ruth barely remembers asking. “Because you’re my heel, and if you fall apart the whole fucking show falls apart.” She breathes in, breathes out, a rough, shuddering gasp that rocks through both of their bodies. “Because you’re my partner, whether I like it or not, and we’re supposed to be a team. Because—”
She stops.
Ruth’s breath stops too, stalling out between her ribs.
Her stomach clenches, too high to be another cramp.
She feels—
“Please,” she sobs, and she doesn’t know what she’s asking for, doesn’t even know what she wants, but she remembers a thousand moments over a thousand lifetimes, fever scorching through her in sweat-sick waves, Debbie holding her, smiling against her skin, laughing at her confusion, telling her that she asked, that she begged.
She’d be begging now too, if her lungs could hold that much air for long enough to try. She’d beg for anything, anything at all, if only it would make Debbie’s shoulders stop shuddering, if only it would make her take back those awful, hard-earned words, I hate you so fucking much, if only it would undo the pain she’s caused, for both of them.
Please, she thinks, and Debbie, and I’m sorry, and—
“Because I fucking care,” Debbie spits, and it sounds like the word was torn out of her against her will.
Ruth flinches. Her whole body trembles. She feels—
“Oh,” she hears herself breathe, which should be impossible, really, because she’s pretty sure she’s not actually breathing at all.
Debbie is trembling too. Ruth’s hairline is soaked.
“I’m still here,” Debbie tells her, voice hoarse and breaking with tears, “because I still care about you. Because I can’t stop caring about you. No matter how badly you fuck up. No matter how many bullets you put through my heart. No matter how—” Her fingers clench, nails tearing into Ruth’s back through her shirt. “No matter how fucking desperately I wish that I could.”
Ruth feels a low, desperate whine break out of her.
She doesn’t know what to say, what to think, what to—
She thinks it should hurt like dying, but it doesn’t.
It feels like comfort, like warmth. It feels like a lifetime of being held and taken care of and loved.
It feels like everything she knows she doesn’t deserve and in a way, that makes it so much worse.
“Debbie,” she sobs, and now she really is begging, but she has no idea what for. “Debbie, please.”
Please don’t leave me, please don’t hate me, please don’t care about me, please, please, please—
Debbie pulls away, then shoves Ruth hard onto her back.
For a fraction of a second, Ruth is absolutely convinced she’s going to climb on top of her, wrap both of her hands around her throat, and choke the life out of her.
If she did, she’s fairly sure she wouldn’t fight back at all.
Debbie doesn’t do that, though. She doesn’t climb on top of her, she doesn’t try to choke the life out of her, she doesn’t really do much of anything at all. For a long, heart-shattering moment, she just looms over her, half-sitting, half-lying, with one hand keeping herself upright and the other pressed to her breastbone, holding her heart inside its cage as her chest heaves and heaves and heaves.
If she was crying, there is no evidence of it on her face.
Ruth lies there, suspended above herself, unbreathing.
At long last, seemingly content that her heart is not about to break containment, Debbie sits up more fully. The hand that was on her chest finds Ruth’s hairline, damp with sweat and stinging with salt; it glides through the mussed-up tangles of her hair, pushing it back from her face. Her eyes are still dark, Ruth notes with a pang, but they’re as far from hollow as anything she’s ever seen.
Debbie’s other hand, the one that was holding her upright, moves elsewhere.
She traces the lines of Ruth’s ribs through her shirt with her fingertips, featherlight.
She lays her palm over the plane of her stomach, flat and completely empty.
She touches the point of her hipbone, the stretchy waistband of her sleep shorts.
She presses down on her groin, starts massaging there in firm, tight circles.
She gazes down at Ruth, eyes dark but not hollow, and asks, again, “Is it helping?”
Ruth swallows. Her throat is so tight, it feels like choking.
Debbie’s lips twitch ever so slightly, like she can see that.
Ruth closes her eyes, feels her scooped-out innards spasm hard against the heel of Debbie’s palm, feels the cramps slowly soften under the careful press of her fingers, feels the pain grow less with each moment that Debbie keeps her hand there.
She knows the answer now, and she despises herself for it.
“Yeah,” she says, to the backs of her eyelids. “It’s helping.”
The next time she opens her eyes, her vision is blurry, her head is static-fuzzy, and her bed is empty.
Apparently, even after spending half the afternoon snoozing in Debbie’s arms, her weary, aching body wasn’t finished sleeping.
She sits up gingerly, overly cautious and a little fearful, halfway anticipating that her abdomen will explode from the exertion.
It doesn’t, obviously. It twinges in a couple of places, not quite ready to let go of what she put it through, but it doesn’t explode.
Small miracles, she thinks, as she wakes more fully.
She scrubs at her eyes, waits for her vision to clear.
She expects to find the room as empty as her bed, as empty as her womb. She expects to find the place all neat and tidy and clear, effectively untouched, like Debbie was never there at all. No sentimental ‘goodbye’, no clinical ‘see you on Monday’, no hastily scribbled post-it note telling to feel better soon, not even the slowly evaporating waft of overpriced perfume. Silence and emptiness and the queasy, feverish certainty that she imagined the whole afternoon, that it was all just a desperate, delirious ploy by her subconscious mind to make her feel worthy of being cared for.
That’s how it usually goes.
Not this time, apparently.
But then, all things considered, that probably shouldn’t surprise her. Hasn’t the whole damn day — week, month, whatever — just been one unexpected twist after another?
Sam and his unexpected talent for navigating the muddy waters of ‘women’s problems’. Sam and his unexpected kindness, his unexpected empathy, the doughnuts still sitting placidly on the television.
Debbie hammering on her door, storming into her room. Debbie, thinking Ruth was angry with her, as if she had any right at all to feel that way. Debbie, ending that bizarre conversation with an apology.
Debbie, coming back even after they cleared the air.
Debbie, climbing into bed with her. Debbie, holding her.
Debbie, her lips at her temples, her voice in her ear.
And now, yet again, like a fucking fever dream: Debbie.
She’s still here. It makes no sense, none at all, but there she is just the same, on the other side of the room, leaning against the door with a casualness that’s just a touch too put-on to be real. She’s watching her, arms folded across her chest and eyes surprisingly soft, mouth tugging upwards as Ruth stumbles and mumbles and fumbles her way back to full alertness.
Ruth blinks. Once, twice, three times. Her vision clears, but it doesn’t help the scene to make more sense.
You’re still here, she wants to say, but she’s terrified that if she does, Debbie will disintegrate into nothingness, evaporate like a ghost in some old gothic mansion, leaving the room colder than it was before, leaving her shivering like she’s been touched by death.
The Debbie in front of her, who may not really be real, grumbles, “Jesus, you sleep like the fucking dead.”
Ruth clears her too-dry throat.
“Sorry,” she hears herself rasp.
It’s the first time she’s managed to say that word out loud. The realisation comes sluggishly, stupidly, and with so much shame it almost makes her sick. She’s thought it a thousand times, a million times, over and over and over again, over the course of this nightmare of a day. She’s thought it so many times since Debbie showed up, since she left, since she came back again, it’s basically eroded the rest of her vocabulary.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, over and over and over again, ricocheting inside her head like a game of pinball, and the only time she’s actually managed to push it over her traitorous tongue is now, for something as stupid as sleeping too much.
Fuck knows, her body needed it.
The rest of her likely did as well.
If she has any thoughts or opinions about the needless, pointless apology, Debbie does not voice them.
She says, out of nowhere, like it’s supposed to mean something significant, “You don’t have a fridge.”
Ruth has no idea how she’s supposed to respond to that, so she tries, “We don’t have a jukebox either.”
Debbie glares. “You can’t store soup in a jukebox, Ruth.”
Ruth blinks a few times, mouths a small, soundless “Oh.”
Debbie sighs, heavy and deeply long-suffering, like she’s talking to the world’s dumbest village idiot. It might almost be convincing — god knows, she’s graced Ruth with that particular brand of frustration before — only her eyes are still soft.
“I was going to... you know, like I used to... when you were...” Catching them both by surprise, her voice hitches; naturally, she immediately sends out her spikes to hide it. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter, I don’t give a shit.” She exhales again, not a sigh this time but something weaker, something that almost matches the soft, half-yearning look in her eyes. “It’s all academic now, because you don’t have a fridge and I’m not fucking spoonfeeding you. So...”
Ruth can’t fight the smile that splits her cheeks. It hurts, and so does the look on Debbie’s face, but it feels kind of good too.
“I don’t need you to feed me,” she points out, forcing the smile back down when Debbie rolls her eyes. “I’m not sick, Debbie. I’m just...”
She stops. Her heart kicks at her ribcage, then goes devastatingly, painfully still. Debbie’s eyes lose a touch of their softness.
“Fuck you,” she says, so low Ruth almost doesn’t hear it.
Ruth nods, swallows, lays a hand over her sore stomach.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers again, and it feels so, so empty.
Debbie shakes her head. She’s not looking at Ruth; she’s not really looking at anything at all. She’s blinking hard, gaze sort of unfocused, and there’s a set to her jaw that seems caught somewhere between anger and grief. It makes Ruth’s traitorous body start to shake again, makes her innards clench and seize up, great wrenching spasms of sort-of pain that don’t really feel like cramps at all.
I’m sorry, she thinks, over and over, and wonders how many times she’d have to say those words to make it enough.
She wonders if it means something — not much, not enough, but something — that Debbie is still here, letting her try.
She could leave. She should leave. Hell, she should have already left, should have never come back after the first time she left. She’s had a thousand opportunities to walk out for good, a thousand opportunities to make it seem like she was never even here at all. Ruth slept like the dead, isn’t that what she said? She could have slipped out of her bed, slipped out the door, left her there, alone and oblivious, to wake up rested and convince herself it was all just a dream. She could have stayed gone the first time, after she apologised for bailing during the match, when she assumed — absurdly, unfathomably, impossibly — that Ruth was pissed at her.
She could have just... not come here at all.
But she did. And she did again, and again.
Ruth knows that she doesn’t deserve that. Not the first time, not the second time, not any part of this at all. She knows there aren’t enough apologies in the world to make her deserve even a fraction of what Debbie’s already given her today, a fraction of what she wants but knows she shouldn’t accept. She knows it, and she knows that Debbie knows it too.
And yet, she’s still here.
I can’t stop caring about you, Debbie told her before, pressing her salt-soaked face to Ruth’s hairline. No matter how fucking desperately I wish that I could.
Ruth closes her eyes, slumps back against the flat, too-hot pillow. Her shoulders ache, like she was tensing them in her sleep. Her stomach aches too, and her groin, tired and sore from too many cramps, too much pain and shame and guilt and grief; underneath her clothes, she can feel the tiny prints of Debbie’s fingers, the larger print from her palm, the vague, hazy memory of relief, of a lifetime’s worth of comfort.
From the other side of the room, hoarse and ragged, Debbie says, “I’m not going to hold you again.”
Ruth doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t trust them not to flood with tears if she sees Debbie’s face.
She takes a deep breath. The air shivers in her lungs, her throat. She wills her body to stop shaking.
“Okay,” she says, very, very quietly. “But what if I beg?”
She hears a soft thud, the dull knocking of Debbie’s shoulders against the wall as she pushes off, and then the padding of footsteps across the carpet. She feels a sudden chill, and the black void behind her eyelids darkens even more than it already is as her body is thrown into shadow. Her mind’s eye projects a vision of Debbie standing over her, gazing down at her, eyes dark but not hollow, expression hard and soft, cold and warm, hate and love and all of those things at the same time.
“Fuck you,” Debbie says again, close enough that Ruth feels her breath tickle across her cheek.
Ruth opens her eyes. The Debbie standing over her is a perfect match for the one in her head.
She doesn’t beg. She doesn’t apologise. She doesn’t trust herself to speak at all.
She nods, lays a hand on her tight, cramping groin, and rolls over onto her side.
By the time she closes her eyes again, less than half a minute later, Debbie’s arms are already around her.
—