Chapter Text
[May 7th, 1988]
People like her like the shadows.
The places where reality bends;
where time stretches;
where she weaves the only version of the truth that will matter.
She’s tired of being in another person’s shadow, though.
She isn’t her brother. Never has been, never will be. She’ll never be the first born, or the golden boy, or their father’s next-of-kin. She’s better than that; she has to be—he left enough carnage in his wake that it’s a wonder she wasn’t assigned detention before ever setting foot in her high school, on speculation alone.
‘Stay away from that family.’
'Debbie Ocean’s trouble, just like her brother.’
She’s heard all the whispers. She knows those whispers are why she’s been eating lunch and spending spare periods on her own, every day, for the last three and a half years. Honestly, it means she has more time to plan, to scheme, to learn how to be better than Danny ever was at this age and she likes that.
She knows her limits, and how to push, and doesn’t need to take reckless measures and end up getting caught just to prove she’s ballsy enough to do it.
Really, this is only the second time she’s been in detention at all, and the first time was when she skipped class to get Danny out of a jam anyways, so that one doesn’t really count against her. But this morning, when Madison goaded her into swiping her pager from the top drawer of MacDowell’s desk, taunted how she always sits alone, yelled across the room that she’s a coward, well, she might have made sure she got caught on purpose. She might have been trying to make sure Madison didn’t stand a chance at ever seeing that precious pager again, even if it did mean she was stuck in a stuffy classroom with her class hoodlums for a week’s worth of evenings.
She isn’t expecting it when Lou Miller drops down into the seat beside her, all skin-tight ripped jeans and a Rolling Stones t-shirt and scuffed-up Doc Martins. She’s expecting Lou Miller to be in detention—Lou’s always in detention, this time was for skipping second period—but she wasn’t expecting anybody to be in her space any time soon. Debbie doesn’t jump though, has better control of her body than that.
“So, what the hell was that, Ocean?”
“Excuse you?”
“Sloppy.”
“What?”
“Sloppy. You were sloppy this morning when you were trying to get that beeper back for Madison.”
Debbie barely lifts her eyes from the swirls she’s penning into the margins of her notebook, arm strategically covering the loopy cursive she’s got across the lines themselves, though, if she’s being honest she’s not entirely sure how long Lou was behind her before she sat down. Lou’s got a smirk on her pink lips, hollowing out her cheeks just a little, cheekbones standing out even more. Blue eyes peeking out from the midst of thick, black eyeliner, behind blunt fringe and Debbie isn’t really convinced she can see through it properly.
“Who says I’m not just bad at stealing shit?”
“I do.”
“You do?”
“That’s right. I’ve seen you. Don’t worry—nobody else has.”
And the wink she gives Debbie is a little off-kilter, like she can’t quite get the muscles in her eyes to function independently of each other, but the look that follows is positively sinful.
Debbie caught her eye in January when their homeroom teacher forced Lou to come up to the front of the room and introduce herself to all of her new classmates. Lou hated it—hates being in front of crowds like that. Then, she found a pair of dark, scandalous eyes sizing her up from the back of the room and she’s been sizing Debbie up right back ever since. Knows how to spot an artist because she is one. Had to learn to be one when she was eleven and her mother up and left and her father drank his way through the grocery budget more often than he didn’t.
She likes watching Debbie; likes Debbie’s style. It’s smooth and elegant and understated, and if she notices that Debbie’s skin looks just as smooth and her gait is just as elegant, well, she doesn’t need to tell anybody about that.
“And why haven’t you ratted me out?”
“Because I want a partner.”
“A partner?”
“Might be nice to have somebody watching your back, don’t you think?"
Debbie smiles a little bit, flicks her gaze across the page her arm is still hiding, sideways again to look at Lou, and Lou watches as Debbie’s eyes shimmer, full of mischief and trouble and maybe a promise or two for what could come, and Lou thinks she’d do just about anything to be the one to make her smile like that more often.
She waits Debbie out. Waits for her to keep speaking instead of offering up anything more, herself.
“I got caught on purpose.”
“Yeah, I figured. Who would want to do a favor for Madison?”
“You came over here to call me sloppy even though you knew it was on purpose?”
“I came over here because I want to be your partner.”
Debbie isn’t used to people wanting to know her, or be around her. But Lou’s looking at her like she’d move mountains to stay right where she is and something in her gut makes Debbie trust her. And Lou nods towards Debbie’s notebook and asks Debbie to trust her without asking; asks her to accept somebody else into her plans in not-so-many words.
“What are we working on?”
“I can’t figure out how to get past number five without getting caught.”
“Transcripts?”
“Transcripts.”
“Architecture?”
“Architecture.”
“And if I can help you figure this out, psychology?”
“If you can help me figure this out you can have whatever you want.”
Lou does. It isn’t Debbie’s usual style—a little dirtier, a little raunchier, but she kind of likes it and it gets them right where they want to be. It gets them right where they want to be, together, tied inextricably because they’ve both had a taste of what it’s like to have somebody else looking out for them and don’t want to go back. Splitting the spoils 50/50 is a small price when it means somebody to share it with. Somebody to share everything with.
Letters of acceptance—one each, earned or not—arrive and so do scholarship offers and Lou hasn’t ever seen a cheque made out to her with that many zeroes. Can barely fathom what that kind of money means for her life. Smiles at Debbie until her cheeks hurt and scoops her into a hug and spins her around with Debbie’s arms around her shoulders and they laugh until they’re out of breath.
Celebration is prom a month and a half later.
Except that it’s not. Prom is nicking jewelry and borrowed credit cards and shiny knickknacks off their classmates. It’s appalling, Lou’s word, how many of their peers are willing to settle for cheap knockoffs and fake gemstones. A select few will be worth fencing, though.
The real celebration is the parking lot behind the banquet hall after all the others leave for an after party that will undoubtedly be fueled by well-vodka. Lou has better options stashed under her bed, swiped from her leering uncle the last time he came to visit before she ran away from her father’s house, in Australia, in the middle of the night to fly across an ocean and find a one-room, run-down apartment that she can barely afford most months. Her landlord overlooks just how fake the ID that lets her legally rent the place looks, and the place is hers—the first thing that’s ever been hers her entire life.
“Dance with me.”
Debbie’s eyes are soft. She’s looking at Lou in the three-piece suit she managed to find second hand and tailored meticulously, by-hand, until it fit her like a glove. Looking at Lou like she’s about to have a revelation, standing under the orange streetlamps in a dark blue, satin, trumpet-cut dress that hugs every curve and she almost argues—there isn’t any music. Then, she doesn’t. This is not when she learns to tell Deborah Ocean no.
[May 7th, 1991]
Lou juggles her cup of coffee and the bag of Chinese take-out, digs through her pocket for her new keys that are tangled in the folds of the wallet she lifted from the man yelling at the poor kid taking his order on her way out of the take-out place. Manages to get the door unlocked, then unlatched without dropping anything, kicks it open and then kicks it closed again behind her.
Debbie’s in the living room wearing a paint-splattered, oversized denim shirt that’s hanging off one shoulder, leggings, bare feet, surrounded by boxes. She’s surrounded by boxes and the love-seat they found at the Salvation Army, and the armchair they stole from the lounge of the dorm they lived in first-year, and the banged-up coffee table they found on the side of the road.
There’s a smear of warm-white across her cheek. Lou puts the spoils of her trek on the coffee table and laughs and shakes her head and tries to wipe the paint off Debbie’s face. Laughs a little more when she can’t because it’s already dried.
“Did you get any paint on the walls, Deb?”
“What? You can’t tell the difference between the white-white from before and the warm-white now?”
“Of course I can, honey.”
The one-bedroom is small. Honestly, a little smaller than their last one. The bedroom itself will hold a queen-mattress, only barely. They measured for two singles but they’d have been right up against each other anyways and one mattress, with one box spring, and one bed frame was less expensive. Besides, Debbie’s space became a little Lou’s, and Lou’s space became a little Debbie’s at some point and they’ve never looked back.
The apartment might be smaller, but it’s on a decent street. A street decent enough that Lou won’t constantly have her pocket knife clenched in her fist, in her pocket when they’re walking home after dark. Won’t have to be on guard every second until she gets Debbie in the door and locks it behind them.
Lou’s finally accepted that she’s falling for Debbie Ocean even if she swears up and down to herself, in the bathroom mirror every morning, that she’ll never admit it out loud.
They end up sitting on the floor, in the middle of all the boxes that they’ll unpack at some point, eating takeout from the throw-away containers. Lou’s focussed on digging a stubborn piece of tofu out of her stir fry with her chopsticks, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. She doesn’t even notice the fortune cookie Debbie throws at her until it bounces off the side of her head and cracks open when it hits the floor. Clucks her tongue at Debbie, scolding, for wasting a perfectly good cookie and plucks the strip of paper from the pieces.
“Remember, you cannot have everything. Where would you keep it all?”
“The cookie has a point.”