the notebook au the proposal au mr. and mrs. smith au for heist wives
1. The Notebook (Debbie / Lou)
I have not yet seen Mr. and Mrs. Smith and am not familiar enough with the premise to write a headcanon yet, but itâs on my list. I confess I also havenât seen all of The Notebook all the way through, but I know it well, and I also spent a fair bit of my obliviously gay childhood in a small town in South Carolina and am familiar with the premise and culture that surrounds that movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed putting Debbie and Lou into that setting.
A proper young lady doesnât spend her time with a car mechanic. Thatâs the first thing Debbieâs father tells her when he meets Lou Millerâthe lanky, dust-stained blonde who tinkers with his bike.Â
(Because sheâs Debbie, she ignores him.)
She prefers to perch in the corner of the garage, her hair coiffed and her dress ironed like sheâs on a proper date with a proper man. Lou lies beneath the bed of a truck, her legs bent at an awkward angle in blue coveralls. They chat often. Sometimes, Debbie peers under the car to meet her eyes but really just watches her hands.Â
She knows an Ocean isnât supposed to like a car mechanic. She also knows a respectable young woman isnât supposed to like a woman like Lou, with coveralls and unfettered tits and a smoky Aussie drawl that Inman, South Carolina hasnât dampened one bit. Donât get too close to that girl, warns her mother. She doesnât say why.
(She doesnât have toâDebbie knows just what her Ma meant when one day Lou shimmies out from under a brick-red sedan and fixes her with a gaze that makes her skin melt and her heart drum against her ribs.) Ma sure doesnât want a woman like Lou around her daughter, but Debbie knows as soon as Lou looks at her that her Ma is too late. Or maybe her Ma was too late the day Debbie was born, because sheâll let that warning bounce off her like water off a duckâs back. She wants, has always wanted, a woman like Lou to be hers.
It is August. Lou dances with her by the fishing pond, a sight for sore eyes in a mensâ suit Debbie suspects she tailored herself, smoking and twirling through the fireflies. Lou kisses her against a gnarled elm, caging them in its branches to hide their heaving breaths, their knotted bodies, from the outside world.Â
Danny keeps their secret like the chivalrous brother he is. Heâs always hungered for something exciting and transgressive to shareârunning gambling out of his living room, counterfeiting money by hand, itâs always something new with Danny. But his sisterâs secret affair brings out his inner romantic. He would protect them at all costs, Debbie is certain. She loves him for it, but the costs could be dire.Â
Lou is outedâblatantly, explicitly thrown to the wolves by Debbieâs father, who knew all along she was âone of those damned queersâ but only chose this moment, the moment he spies Debbie riding on the back of her bike, to tell. Through Frank Oceanâs eyes, his daughter is the lamb and Lou the beast of lore trying her damndest to defile Debbieâs marriage prospects. Debbie wonders if he really believes that when he says it. Does he really think Debbie would never have kissed her? Does he really think she wouldnât have bared herself to a woman like Louâshe canât imagine a world where she doesnât.
Lou skips town. She has to, or the politicians and torch-bearing neighbors will bear down on her. Thatâs life, she says, and leaves before Debbie can tell her goodbye. Her father kicks off the spring with a debutante ball. Claude Becker begs for her hand in marriage, and what the hell does she have to lose? Claude is charming, reasonably clever, and appreciates the finer things, and her parents absolutely adore him. Little awaits her in a place like Inman; the least she can be is comfortable.
The night before her wedding, she sits beside the pond, listening to cicadas hum in the grass. Footsteps approach. A callused hand rests on her shoulder that certainly does not belong to Claude, and all of a sudden sheâs staring at Lou Miller in the flesh. Lou has grown taller, if that was possible, lankier, and definitely richer because she wears the finest burgundy suit Debbie has ever seen.
She offers her hand. Three gold rings line her fingers. Come away with me. Letâs get out of this town once and for all. And Debbie does. She sends Claude her sincerest apologies and her finest calligraphy, sealed in the post from New York City.Â
janainaart
origamiaround
gummygunk
dailybridgerton
jacobvanloon
stormborns
titsay
romaincrisis
