a fanfic i won't actually write, but that I want to read real bad so someone should write it:
(spoilers for the hacks finale)
so deborah's dying, right? they're in paris. deborah's eating bread. she's eating croissants. she's eating pain au chocolat. she and ava split an eight-ball (lmao.) she lets ava dress her up in gen z clothes. she dances with ava in a discothéque. ava begs her in tears to change her mind, and she won't. she's sorry about it, but she won't change her mind and choose humiliation and fear and indignity and being out of control for anything, not even for how badly ava loves her. in the little lull between that final fight and the two of them heading to the train station, ava's like "okay, I have one last dying wish."
"oh god," deborah says, but in an indulgent way. maybe they're having this conversation on a bench on the banks of the seine, eating ice cream from berthillon, because deborah eats ice cream now. "what is it? I'm not going to a gay roller derby."
"you would love gay roller derby," ava says, distracted. "it's woman-on-woman violence. you love that."
"you're dripping chocolate sauce on your jersey," deborah says, and ava scrubs absently at her chest with a napkin. "nope, made it worse. you've got to blot, not wipe."
"anyway, I don't want to take you to the roller derby," ava says. "I think we should have sex."
deborah lets out a bark of laughter. honestly, it's more like a honk. it scares some enterprising pigeons away.
"I'm serious!" ava sucks the chocolate sauce off the top of her ice cream cone to try and solve the dripping problem. it's not very sexy. "it's literally your last chance to try sex with a woman."
"It is not," deborah says, insulted. "I could pick up anyone I wanted between now and zurich."
"well, yeah," ava says, "but I figured you'd want to do it with someone who isn't expecting you to rock their world."
"excuse me?"
"it would be your first time! nobody's good their first time out the gate!"
"it would not be my first time, thank you," deborah says, narrowing her eyes. "I've been having mind blowing sex since before you were born. I think I could figure out my way around a clitoris."
ava slurps another melty mouthful of ice cream off the top of her waffle cone. "prove it."
deborah's glaring at her, icy and gorgeous. "fine."
ava blinks. "what?"
"fine. you have one night." her voice goes low, mocking. "rock my world."
and mind you, it's like, two pm. they have dinner plans. they have musee d'orsay plans. that whole time they're just goading each other. like that weekend at kelly kilpatrick's house, except the only people they're performing for are each other. ava waggles her eyebrows, makes suggestive puns, and eats a fig in a really obscene way. deborah makes even crasser jokes, rolls her eyes, and at dinner swipes a little pat of butter off of the dish with the edge of her middle finger and sucks it clean. ava's not even sure if it's meant to be coquettish or just indulgent, deborah closing her heavy-lidded eyes and sucking the parisian butter off her middle finger, perfect mouth sliding up and down to be super thorough. ava's clit is twitching and her breath is coming faster, and then deborah opens her eyes and she's laughing at her again, and ava's like UGH but there's this little frisson of awareness for the first time in this whole super non theoretical fucking discussion where they're both silently acknowledging that ava desperately wants to fuck deborah, has wanted it for years, and that if deborah goes through with it, it won't be to cross off a bucket list item, but because ava wants it. because deborah loves her so much that she'll give her that. and there's a way it could be insulting, or patronizing or whatever, but it's not, it's fucking beautiful, in a weird way. maybe this isn't the kind of sex deborah wants for herself, but she'll let ava have it, everything she's greedy for, before she leaves her forever.
so by the time they're done eating, ava's sort of teary and fragile again, and deborah's still calm and teasing, and when they get back to their hotel suite, ava's like we don't actually have to, and deborah's like don't back out now, you chicken, and kisses her.
and then they fuck. ava cries a little bit. they both giggle a lot. deborah comes faster than she ever has in her life, and looks down at ava in bemused outrage while ava smugly wipes her mouth off on deborah's thigh. and then the subtext gets sad in a totally different way, because deborah likes this, deborah likes this a lot, and maybe she should have done this forty years ago, or five years ago, maybe just five years ago, maybe she could have had this for more than just a night, if she weren't so certain she knew herself already. ava gets her off again, and then again, and then deborah basically forces her off and slides her hand between ava's thighs and circles her clit with a thumb while kissing her, and ava's like this is not going to be enough to get me off, but she's already kind of overwhelmed both physically and emotionally, and so it is, and deborah's like HAH, I knew it wasn't that hard, lesbianism is easy, and ava starts crying again and is like I don't even have my strap, this is like having one hand tied behind my back, and deborah lifts one of her wet hands up and is like hmm, you know what, they could honestly be a little bigger, and ava's laughing and snot-crying at the same time.
anyway deborah leaves ava in the sex bed after they cuddle for a while and goes to sleep in her own room, and ava falls asleep feeling like someone crumpled her heart into a little spit-soaked paper ball and shot it out of a straw into the trash. a middle school spit-wad. that's her heart. but that's been her heart for weeks now, ever since that first awful lunch when she found out the truth. and they get up the next morning and weirdly it doesn't make a difference. like the sexual tension was there all along, or the romantic tension was, and both of those things are a lot less important than the pure fact of how much they love each other.
and so when they go to the train station to go to zurich, both of them are bittersweetly aware of how good it was, how good it could be, but also, it's only not a huge problem for them because deborah is going to die, so it can't be.
BUT THEN
OF COURSE DEBORAH DECIDES TO LIVE and then it's a huge problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
