Chapter Text
Deborah is nearly 69, and she is officially having more sex than she’s had since the first months of her marriage to Frank—and more consistently good sex than she’s ever had.
She’d had vague thoughts of Ava’s burning this infatuation out of her system in a one-and-done sort of thing at MLA, which quickly gave way to the dawning realization that Ava was in just as deep as Deborah.
Deborah still maintains it’s an ill-advised, terrible idea, but it’s not one she has the strength to refuse on both of their behalf any longer.
So she decided on rules instead of a full prohibition.
Back in LA, waking up with a face full of Ava’s hair in a hotel room that shared a wall with an endowed chair of poetry and poetics from Duke, Deborah had vowed that from then on, discretion would be their top priority. No more conference dalliances. No lingering looks in the department hallway. Absolutely no conversations with Kiki.
All that logic had, of course, flown out the window mere hours later at the sight of a blushing Ava stammering her way through an attempt at introducing Deborah to Phoebe as if all three of them were nothing but colleagues, as if Phoebe and Deborah weren’t both perfectly aware of the face Ava makes when she comes. Deborah had been cool and cordial while they spoke, giving no indication that she had any idea who Phoebe was or any reason to care if she did. But the second Phoebe bid them goodbye, Deborah had hauled Ava back up to her hotel room and given her a dozen good reasons to forget Phoebe’s new number. Ava had panted something about jealousy being an emotion manufactured by the patriarchy and toxic monogamy culture, but she’d also come hard enough to soak Deborah’s hand, and Deborah decided that whatever point she was trying to make, she’d made it.
That, Deborah had vowed, would be the last indiscretion.
Until she let Ava silently grope her in the back of an Uber to the airport.
Until she pressed Ava to the door of Ava’s terrible, windowless office and got her off with nothing but a hand shoved down the front of her high-waisted jeans.
Until she followed Ava into the backseat of the Rolls-Royce and let Ava suck a dark hickey into her neck after a particularly painful faculty meeting.
But mostly they’ve been good, keeping things confined to Deborah’s house. Ava’s apartment is practically vacant these days, and her one sad, half-dead succulent has found a new home in Deborah’s sunroom. Barry and Cara have welcomed their new tenant with wagging tails despite their palpable frustration at the second body taking up space in Deborah’s king-sized bed and the frequent noises that rouse them from their slumber.
It’s good, though. They don’t put a name to whatever it is—and Deborah had, in fact, almost jokingly safe-worded out of Ava’s last attempt at bringing it up. But it’s good. Intellectually and physically invigorating in a way very few collaborations ever manage to be in Deborah’s experience.
Outside of the bedroom, Ava has, at long last, resigned herself to the fact that Deborah will not be joining her to co-teach ENGL-240, and she’s finally started to settle into the rhythms of the new semester, getting to know the quirks of a new bunch of students.
Ava had pushed and needled at Deborah for long days and even longer nights about not giving up on something she loves until Deborah finally admitted that she’s not giving up, but is, instead, taking the sabbatical she’d deferred for years to work on her first new book project in over two decades.
At that point, Ava switched to needling Deborah about the content of the new book project—a mission she still hasn’t given up on. She asks again and again in a thousand different ways for weeks and weeks on end, trying to catch Deborah with her guard down and going so far as asking when Deborah has three of Ava’s lube-slicked fingers deep inside her.
It’s the start of their first real fight as a couple—or whatever this unnamed thing between them is—and Ava finds herself exiled to her own apartment for three full days before she comes shuffling back to Deborah’s door with her tail between her legs, an apology on her lips, and a gift-wrapped journal—the kind with the narrow lines Deborah prefers—in her hands. “I just like knowing what you’re working on, is all,” Ava says with a little shrug, her eyes downcast. “I feel like you make my writing better, and I guess, I don’t know, I thought maybe I could do the same for you.”
“Oh, Ava,” Deborah sighs with a shake of her head.
“Look, it’s cool. I get it.”
“Your giant handprints are already all over the book.”
Ava’s head pops back up. “What?”
Deborah leads Ava into the living room, pacing along the rug as Ava makes herself comfortable on the couch. “It’s more of a hybrid genre. Not a tell-all memoir or an academic treatise…something in between.” Ava nods eagerly. “It’s about the way ideas travel. About creative collaboration and the intimacy it demands.” She pulls her lower lip between her teeth. “About what counts as plagiarism or original work between two people who’ve let themselves be that open and free with their thoughts.”
“Oh.” Ava lets out a low whistle. “That’s ballsy.”
“That’s what tenure’s for, right?” At least Deborah hopes it is. She’d met with a few publishers at MLA who seemed interested in the book, and even though she knows their interest probably has less to do with the content than with the promise of high sales for a book about plagiarism by one of the field’s best known accused plagiarists, late at night Deborah dares to let herself believe it might finally be her turn to tell the story on her own fucking terms.
“Fuck yeah it is.” Ava’s eyebrows draw together. “But how did I help?”
“Well…” Deborah swallows hard. “You believed me when no one else did.”
“I’m sure they would have if you’d spoken up,” Ava interrupts, looking so goddam earnest. “Maybe not then, but later at least.”
They’ll have to agree to disagree on that point. Hopefully more people will believe Deborah after this book, but for now, she has her suspicions. She swallows back those arguments, though. There’s still more to her answer, and she knows if she doesn’t say it now, she never will. “Like I said, the book is about collaboration. What it means to trust someone with your unedited thoughts.” She glances up at Ava. “The…eroticism of that process.”
“Oh. And you don’t just mean Frank?”
Deborah dares to go for full honesty. “I don’t even mostly mean Frank.”
“Right.”
“It’s about the creative networks of nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, too, of course,” she blurts out.
“Of course.” Ava gives her one of those cheeky grins. “All the gay ones, right?”
Deborah rolls her eyes. “Always the first question with you.”
“I told you, I never had to ask it about you.”
“Oh really?”
“Mhmm.” Ava pushes herself up to her feet and stalks over to Deborah, taking one hand in her own and twining their fingers together. “Wanna know why?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll regale me with stories about some famously accurate gaydar.”
“There is that… But I’m gonna go ahead and say it was the fact that you knew me for all of an hour before buying me a drink and inviting me back to your house.”
“To get you to co-teach a class with me,” Deborah scoffs.
Ava shoots Deborah a pointed look. “You literally just admitted that collaboration’s erotic as hell!”
Deborah feels her cheeks color. “What came later was,” she huffs. “The invitation back here was a means to an end.”
“Yeah. The end being great fucking sex with me.”
“You’re so full of yourself.”
Ava pulls Deborah in closer. “I could be full of you instead,” she says with a suggestive little wiggle of her eyebrows.
“What did I tell you about puns? Dryer than the fucking Sahara.”
A cackle of laughter bursts from Ava, loud enough that Barry wakes with a huff and storms out of his little dog bed to find one of his half-dozen others scattered throughout the house. “C’mon, it’s been three days,” Ava cajoles, trying to drag Deborah back into her chest. “Come to bed with me.”
Deborah puts on a show of resistance, but she’s been craving Ava’s touch for two-and-a-half of their three days apart, and, dammit, she deserves the orgasm she was on the brink of before Ava went and turned sex into an interrogation.
It isn’t long before Ava’s on top of Deborah, earning her forgiveness with narrow hips pumping forward, a violently purple cock slipping in and out of Deborah.
(The first time Ava had tried to use it, Deborah had keeled over, cackling at the mere sight of it, and refused on the grounds that she never needed or wanted to feel like she was getting fucked by Barney. It had taken four days and two strong drinks for her to agree to try it from behind. Of course, Ava had surprised her with an added vibrator, and Deborah had come so hard she nearly blacked out. And that? Well, that had been the end of her reservations.)
“You—you’re good with this, right?” Deborah asks, ignoring the pressure slowly building between her legs for the moment.
Ava blinks down at Deborah, her hair falling like a curtain around her face. “Huh?”
“The book.”
Ava’s hips falter in their rhythm. “I think it sounds great.”
Deborah swallows hard, her fingertips trailing lightly across the small of Ava’s back and making her shiver. “I don’t mean if you think it’s interesting. I’m asking if you feel okay about my writing about us. This. Well, not this.”
“But kinda this,” Ava teases, letting her hips roll forward and making Deborah whimper.
“I won’t use your name, but at least some people will figure it out.”
“Deborah,” Ava whispers, dropping down to her elbows so she’s nearly pressed to Deborah’s chest. “You’re on my CV. You’re the first person I’m thanking in the acknowledgments section of my article, and you’ll be one of two people my book’s dedicated to whenever it comes out.” She presses a lingering kiss to Deborah’s mouth. “Use my name or don’t, but I’m not hiding how much you mean to me.”
Deborah clenches around the cock still inside her—hard enough, evidently, for Ava to notice. Ava’s eyes go a little darker, and she begins thrusting her hips forward once more—quick, shallow strokes that have Deborah’s breath coming faster.
“Can I?” Ava pants, already scrabbling at the nightstand that has, unofficially, become hers for the little blue vibrator that’s taken up residence there for over a month now.
“Yes.” It’s one of Deborah’s favorite things—the way Ava gets off on fucking her, so close to the edge that a few vibrations are enough to bring both of them over the edge in rapid succession.
Deborah watches as Ava grits her teeth, trying to hold off, to keep fucking Deborah through her orgasm before giving into her own. Some nights Deborah likes to tease Ava, drawing it out and making her wait. Tonight, Deborah wants nothing more than to share this moment with her.
Deborah chases her own pleasure until she can feel it in her teeth. She lets her fingers dig into the flesh of Ava’s ass, pulling her in a little deeper. “With me,” she orders.
Ava barely manages a single nod of her head before she’s coming with a low groan, her forehead dropping to Deborah’s shoulder as Deborah feels herself pulse around Ava, crying out her pleasure.
---
Their second truly massive fight as a couple—a word they’ve begun using without ever formally discussing it—happens over what was meant to be a celebratory dinner.
Deborah had heard from Damien about Ava’s job offer—a fortuitous combination of right place, right time with one of the audience members from Ava’s MLA presentation heading the hiring committee for an assistant professor of American literature who will be able to teach courses in affect studies as well as gender and sexuality studies. The fact that it’s at UCLA makes Deborah’s skin prickle with an old surge of jealousy, but it’s the perfect job—the kind that rarely seems to exist anymore—and it would be cruel to be anything less than ecstatic on Ava’s behalf.
So she prepares all of Ava’s favorite foods and buys herself black lace lingerie and gets Ava a gift card to some expensive little café with the “best matcha latte I’ve ever had” that Ava had sent Deborah photos of during her campus visit.
And somehow it all goes south from there.
Something about speaking for Ava instead of listening to her? Deborah’s still not sure what the problem is. It’s a tenure-track job at an R1 university. It’s not presumptive to assume Ava will take the job; it’s just good fucking sense.
Deborah says as much to no avail.
“I have another offer, and you’re just—just deciding for me,” Ava yells across the kitchen.
It stops Deborah short. “When did you even do another campus visit?”
Ava licks her lower lip. “I didn’t. It’s here. They—they changed their mind about the whole ‘no extensions’ thing. They offered me the full three-year term on the postdoc.”
“That’s not an offer,” Deborah scoffs. “That’s just two more years of stagnating before you go out onto the market again, only that time there won’t be the perfect job sitting there and waiting for you.”
“It is an offer! Maybe I want to be here. Did you ever think that I might have reasons for wanting to stay here?” Ava’s eyes shimmer with unshed tears, and everything comes crashing down into place around Deborah.
“Oh, Christ.” Deborah shakes her head. “No. You’re not staying. You’re not sabotaging your career for me.”
“Why do you get to make that call?”
“Because you’ll hate yourself, and then me, for staying.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do know that!” Deborah practically roars. “Because it’s taking every fucking ounce of self-restraint not to hate you for having the job that should have been mine!”
Ava staggers back like she’s been slapped, and it’s only Deborah’s death grip around the countertop that’s keeping her from collapsing under the weight of a truth she didn’t even know she was holding back.
“Ava,” Deborah whispers.
“Don’t.” Ava holds up a single hand. “Just…don’t.”
Deborah swallows hard and doesn’t follow Ava out the door, doesn’t try to text her or call her or find her. At least if Ava hates her, she won’t do something stupid like ruin her own career over some naïve sense of romanticism.
---
Deborah hears that Ava accepted the UCLA job a week later from Marcus, who looks at her with more sympathy than Deborah can bear. It’s better than pity, but only just.
Deborah slips the gift card that’s been sitting untouched on her kitchen counter since that night into Ava’s mailbox several days later. She crosses out her earlier, overly sentimental message, scrawling a plain, “Congratulations,” above it in black ink.
Ava storms into Deborah’s office the next day, slamming the door shut behind her and throwing the gift card down on Deborah’s desk. “What the fuck is this supposed to mean?”
“It’s a gift card,” Deborah says, not looking up from her computer. “Traditionally they’re used in lieu of your own money.”
“Wow,” Ava deadpans. “Super helpful.”
Deborah arches a single eyebrow.
“You can keep your fake congratulations.”
“They’re not fake,” Deborah finally snaps.
“You hate me for getting that job!”
Deborah groans, dropping her head into her hands. “I don’t hate you, Ava.” She could, though—would if Ava turned down the job. “Not—not you.”
“Then why did you say you did? Clearly you’re pissed about the whole thing.”
“I’m pissed”—Deborah’s lips curl around a word that feels so deeply insufficient to how she feels—“about a million things, and if you didn’t have your head so far up your own ass, you might realize that most of them have nothing to do with you.” She pushes herself up to her feet, stalking around the desk. “I hate that I never got my own version of that job because some sad little man couldn’t stomach the idea of a wife more successful than him. I hate him for ruining my career, and I hate myself for not trying harder to fight back.” She rounds on Ava. “But most of all I hate the version of you that stood in my kitchen and told me you wanted to throw away the one chance I’ll never get again.”
The fight seems to drain out of Ava in an instant, leaving her slumped against the edge of Deborah’s desk. “I just…” She swallows hard. “I wanted it to feel like…like it was hard for you, too. Like you saw something worth fighting for.”
“Oh, Ava,” Deborah sighs, stepping forward and letting Ava fall into her arms.
“I wanna be wherever you are.”
“It’s an hour by plane.” Deborah’s fingers card through Ava’s hair. “And if Marty and Jo have their way, after I get back from this sabbatical, I’ll have all the free time in the world.” She shrugs, trying to act like it doesn’t kill her. “Technically I already do.”
“But you don’t want that.”
“Not really.” Deborah lets a long breath shudder out of her. “But maybe getting my side of the story out into the world will be enough.” She pauses, contemplating her words. “Closure.”
“But this…it’s not the end of your story yet. It can’t be.”
“Perhaps a new beginning instead.”
Ava finds Deborah’s hand with her own, her thumb stroking along the inside of Deborah’s wrist. “I missed you.”
Deborah forces herself to take a deep breath. “I missed you, too,” she admits. “I had to find out about your decision from Marcus.”
Ava snorts and shakes her head. “I should’ve realized you were being supportive.”
Deborah hums. “A pity. So much wasted food and lingerie…”
“Wait.” Ava’s head snaps up, her eyes narrowing in the face of Deborah’s affected nonchalance. “What?”
“I made all your favorite foods. I thought you saw.”
“Not that part.”
“The waste? Well, they’re really not all to my liking.”
“You’re infuriating,” Ava groans.
“My, this is feeling familiar.”
Deborah can’t help the bark of surprised laughter as Ava spins them around and practically throws Deborah back onto her desk. The laughter quickly gives way to a frisson of excitement at the gleam in Ava’s eyes. “If only we’d solved all our fights like this back then, syllabus prep would’ve been so much more fun.”
Deborah shakes her head, but she also parts her legs and grabs the front of Ava’s shirt to haul her in for a long-overdue kiss. It’s one part congratulations, one part sorry, and two parts fuck you for nearly ruining this.
“I’m coming over tonight,” Ava says when Deborah pushes her away before they can get any further than fully clothed groping. “And I wanna see that lingerie.”
Deborah drums her fingertips against the wood of her desk. “I don’t know… The occasion may have passed.”
Ava bats her eyelashes and pulls her lower lip between her teeth. “What if I promise to make it worth your while.” She leans in close, whispering a litany of all the filthy things she wants to do. Honestly, Deborah would have caved a quarter of the way through the list, but she’s not above enjoying the effusive excesses of hyperbole.
Deborah’s voice is a little breathier than she’d like when she dips her head and murmurs, “I suppose it could be managed.”
“Good.” Ava glances up at the clock and winces. “Shit. I have to go teach. Do I look, you know, presentable?”
“Like you weren’t just trying to shove my hand down your pants, you mean?”
“Something like that.”
Deborah shrugs. “It’ll do.”
“Fuck you, too,” Ava laughs, but it feels an awful lot like “I love you” when she pairs it with a soft, lingering kiss to Deborah’s lips and a squeeze of Deborah’s hand.
(Deborah really should have remembered that she shares an office wall with Leo, who’s been sleeping with Damien for the past couple of months. As it stands, the entire department knows she and Ava are dating by the end of the day.)
---
Deborah and Ava spend the next two years mastering the art of the long-distance relationship.
Ava sends Deborah ridiculous-looking sex toys that connect to an app she hides deep in a sub-folder on her phone, and Deborah mails Ava every “Writing for Dummies” book she stumbles across.
Ava walks Deborah through installing some software on her computer so they can sync their TV viewing and live chat during episodes, ensuring that Deborah can still spoil the ending of absolutely everything for Ava. And Deborah cultivates a list of all the best restaurants that deliver to Ava’s miniscule but light-filled studio apartment, scheduling weekly dinner dates for them to enjoy from afar.
They stumble their way into phone sex and manage their first “I love yous” during one such call, the first admission slipping from Deborah in the quiet afterglow, shocking them both into wakefulness. (Deborah books a last-minute flight the next day to be able to say it properly in person instead of panting it down a phoneline with a lube- and come-soaked sex toy tangled in the sheets next to her, and they spend a long, lazy weekend doing nothing but whispering it into each other’s bare skin.)
Deborah officially retires at the end of Ava’s first year at UCLA exactly two weeks after Kiki’s dissertation defense, deciding to do it on her own terms instead of waiting for the axe to fall. Ava flies in for the celebration, and Deborah finally agrees to try those edibles Ava’s always raving about during the afterparty. She hasn’t been this high since the 80s, and she kisses Ava right there in the middle of the crowd, not caring who sees. (Ava, however, takes an enormous amount of smug satisfaction in noting that Marty most definitely saw, and if Deborah were sober, she might have remembered to tease Ava about that whole patriarchal, toxic jealousy thing.)
Deborah’s book comes out at the start of Ava’s second year away. The reviews are mostly positive in the press and more mixed in academic journals, though the biggest critique there seems to be about her decision to go with a trade publication instead of a university press, and Deborah thinks all those reviewers can kiss her ass and choke on the advance check the press cut her. (Screw ten-cent yearly dividends; she’s got frequent first-class plane tickets to LA to subsidize.) But even with the mixed reviews, Deborah receives apology notes from several former friends and colleagues. She doesn’t reply, doesn’t bestow on them the forgiveness she has no desire to give, but she tucks every last letter away in a locked filing cabinet in her office and lets herself bask in the feeling of something finally righting itself in the world.
In the spring of Ava’s second year at UCLA, Ava calls Deborah late one night, blurting out, “Move to LA. Move in with me.”
Deborah snorts. “I don’t think all four of us would fit in your shoebox.”
“Move into a new place with me,” Ava amends. “The landlord here doesn’t allow pets anyway.”
Idiot. As if pets don’t make better tenants than most people. Still, Deborah lets herself consider the offer. Las Vegas has been her home for decades, but it’s soured in recent years. She tries to imagine living in the city that had once been her dream—the fantasy snatched from her fingers just before it could materialize.
“I… There’s a job for you here,” Ava says after a long moment. “If you want it.”
“Don’t tell me you managed a spousal hire?” Deborah drawls.
Ava lets out a loud laugh. “What happened to no more marriages?”
Deborah shrugs, though Ava can’t see it. “For a job like that…”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I ever get enough seniority to throw my weight around.”
Deborah hums.
“It’s actually a new center on campus for interdisciplinary collaboration. Some donor poured an assload of money into founding it, and they’re doing a lot of hiring.” Deborah’s phone buzzes with a text from Ava—a link to this new center. “Almost no one in the humanities does this stuff. They’re looking for someone with experience with collaborative writing and thinking.”
A little flicker of hope burns in Deborah’s chest, and she tries her best to smother it before it can grow. “I don’t know…”
“They loved your book. They loved the public humanities vibe of going with a trade press, too,” Ava adds, knowing just where to press. There’s nothing Deborah likes more than hearing the implicit rebuke of a handful of elitist reviewers… “And the position would come with grad student mentorship opportunities, plus the possibility of teaching one class per year on collaborative, cross-disciplinary research,” Ava throws out there, like it’s not perfectly designed to seal the fucking deal.
Deborah pulls her lower lip between her teeth. It sounds too good to be true, and she hates herself for just how badly she wants it anyway.
“Look, the director of the center is from my department, and she asked me to pitch it to you. She hoped I might be able to talk you out of a retirement she thinks you’re probably super invested in.” Deborah could laugh at the very thought. “Come down for a visit. Just…just meet her, okay? Get a tour of the center. Shake some hands. See if you think you could like it here.”
Liking it seems very far from the probable issue here, but Deborah keeps her mouth shut. “I’ll visit,” is what the says instead.
“Amazing! You’re gonna love the work she’s doing, seriously.”
“Ava,” Deborah says, her heart thundering in her chest.
“Yeah?”
“Even if this job doesn’t work out… Las Vegas isn’t quite the home it used to be. Not without my students. Not without you,” she adds in a barely-there whisper.
“Are you…?”
“I’m not about to move a lifetime of things into a studio apartment, but if you wanted to look at houses while I’m in town…”
“I’ve got Zillow up already!” Deborah can hear the clicking of keys. Then a quiet, “Oh fuck, how much?” Followed by: “How do you feel about fixer-uppers?”
Deborah laughs loud and long. And this time, she lets the hope flare bright in her chest.