thanks!!! ehjbfhefh okay. no summary on this one lol. i don't typically write rpf not like out of judgment or anything (rpf is fine!) but bc it feels like. so much harder/so much "she would not fucking say that" and like um as i've mentioned the lack of historical consistencies for bette and joan makes me feel crazyyyyyyy. also in truth, bettejoan fic should be like predominantly insults and hate sex and the most insane public comments known to man and that just isn't really my strong suit sadly!!! all this to say an effort has been made!!
“I can’t stand you,” Bette grits out, though she makes no move to step away.
“I'm not asking you to stand me, Bette," Joan says breathily. "I'm asking if you'll fuck me." Bette places a hand, firm, on the flat of Joan’s chest, and Joan grins in something like victory, until Bette pushes her back forcefully.
“God, you're even more easy and desperate than I realized." It lacks some of it's usual bite, because she's clearly a bit flustered by the directness and trying hard not to show it. Still, Joan’s face hardens.
“Easy and desperate?” she asks, voice cold, and Bette pretends she doesn’t somehow know that that’s her response to the actual anger and hurt beneath it. “I’ve always admired your originality with your insults, darling. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”
“Only if she is,” Bette retorts. “I’m honest. And you're as common as they come.”
“Is that why you make such a point to avoid me? Why you insult me publicly given any possible chance? Why you bring me up just to get in a dig or two when I’m completely irrelevant. Maybe I’m too obvious in my appeals, but you’re hardly subtle, and if you haven’t noticed that, you’re crazy. Honest," she says with a scoff.
Joan waits for a rebuttal that somehow doesn’t come.
“I know you don’t like me, but you sure talk about me a lot. I bet you think about me a lot.” She pauses. “I think about you a lot,” she adds, voice lower.
“That much is obvious,” Bette quips, rolling her eyes. Joan takes the lack of outright denial as some kind of progress.
“I’ve thought about it, you know, and I never could decide if I thought you would have a need to be in control in the bedroom, like you seem to have everywhere else, or if there’s where you’d want to surrender it,” Joan says, mock casually. Bette flushes. The funny thing is that Bette’s never able to figure it out either, not in any way that makes sense. And she sort of hates that Joan has come to the same conclusion. Or lack thereof. She feels horribly, shamefully vulnerable under Joan's discerning gaze.
“What’s your point?” she huffs out, reaching into a pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, but Joan beats her to the latter, quickly lighting a match and holding it up to the cigarette Bette places between her own lips. She meets Joan’s heavy gaze as she inhales, and quickly looks away.
Joan puts out the match. “My point, darling, is that perhaps I tried the wrong approach. Maybe instead I should ask if I can fuck you.”
Bette laughs.
“What’s funny?”
“The fact that you think that your asinine question made you sound submissive. You may play it from time to time, but you’ve never sold it, not to me. You're not good enough to."
“Do you want me to be submissive? You’re right that it’s hardly the most natural thing for me, but you’d be surprised what the right person can get from me,” she says, perching on Bette’s makeup table carefully and doing her best to look seductive. Bette may not give Joan a lot of credit for her acting, but alluring is one thing she's quite good at playing.
Bette tries very hard to be unaffected, to not let her eyes follow a path from Joan’s long legs all the way up to her almost pleading eyes, to not picture it, Joan taking orders from her. Joan completely at her mercy. She tries not to be enticed by it, tries to tell herself it would only be for some sort of revenge, some way to humiliate her, to hurt her. And yet, there's a strange sort of disappointment as the fantasy seems to solidify. Not disgust, not even really shame, though she's sure that will follow. Disappointment. And something seems, horribly, to click.
Joan picks up on it, of course. “Bette,” she starts, and Bette doesn’t let her finish. She surges forward, letting one hand press into Joan’s thigh to brace herself and keep Joan against the table, and bringing the other to Joan’s jaw to crash their lips together. Joan tenses for a beat in surprise, but then clutches at Bette’s back, kissing her back fervently. “So that is what you want?”
“No,” she says bluntly, and kisses her again working slowly towards her neck.
“I don’t—“
Bette twirls a strand of Joan’s hair around her finger and tugs, and Joan gasps, her head falling back. “Fight back,” Bette says, and even she isn’t sure if it’s a command or a plea. Either way, Joan takes it.
“Oh,” Joan says, pulling against Bette’s hold to bring her head back up and meet Bette’s gaze. “With pleasure, darling."
