Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ruth. Ruth.”

“What?”

“We’re doing the backbreaker, not the suplex.”

Ruth looks up from where she’s spread-eagled on the floor of the ring to see Cherry standing over her, arms crossed and face such a mask of patient, long-suffering resignation that Ruth is shocked she hasn’t already had a kid with Keith.

“Right. Yes. Sorry!” Ruth springs to her feet with an eagerness she knows to be both uncool and exhausting.

“Honestly, girl. What planet are you orbiting?”

“Do you really need to make a space joke right now, Cherry?” Debbie spares the two of them a glance from where she’s leaning casually against the ropes.

“Ugh. Right. The Challenger,” Cherry mutters.

“Alright, no more poorly timed NASA metaphors,” Ruth chimes in. “Just backbreakers.”

Debbie cracks her neck and gets into position. “Ready when you are.” 

Ruth matches her posture, spreading her legs to get a solid base beneath her, and makes the steady eye contact with her partner that’s essential to wrestling if you don’t want to seriously fuck someone up (which Debbie, sometimes, sure does).

Looking straight at Debbie, Ruth clocks the bags under her eyes and the thousand-yard stare that means she’s thinking about Randy, the only person who actually matters to her these days. Except Ruth? A little? Maybe?

Debbie nods once, and Ruth wraps one arm around her chest and another around one of her thighs and lifts her into the air, Debbie pressing her toes off the mat to ease the transition. Even after all this time, Ruth is still amazed by how much stronger she’s become since joining G.L.O.W.—strong enough to lift Debbie off the ground. She drops to one knee and Debbie’s shoulder blades press into her right thigh, skin against skin, sweat against sweat. Enough time has passed by now that the intimacy of their movements together have ceased to send a shiver down her spine—most of the time, at least.

“Not bad,” Cherry says with an appraising nod. “Let’s try it again in character.”

They both reset, and Ruth lets Zoya’s bravado take over. At this point it’s become a second skin, a costume she can slip on and off whether or not she’s in shiny red spandex. “In Soviet Union, we don’t break wishbones,” she growls, arching an eyebrow. “We break flimsy American spines!”

It’s like a switch has flipped for Debbie, too, like someone’s turned on neon lights inside a darkened house. “How dare you take Thanksgiving in vain!” she cries in her faux-drawl, before flinging herself at Ruth. When she goes down, she lets out a scream of agony, her face contorted in pain, fingers grasping at empty air. She’s good at this; she’s always been good at this. It’s a big part of what first drew them together: They’re both really good actors—good at emoting; transforming; lying.

Sam had been surprised when Ruth agreed to continue fighting Debbie after the ankle incident. He offered to have her fight Fortune Cookie, or even Machu Picchu. But Ruth knew that there was no showdown like the U.S. versus the U.S.S.R.—and there was no scene partner like Debbie Egan.

“I love some vérité, Ruth,” Sam replied. “But with no due respect, what she did to you was super fucked up. You know that, right?”

Ruth simply shrugged, leaning against his desk in the old ring back in L.A. “I can handle it.”

Sam shook his head and flicked ash onto the floor from the end of his cigarette. “I will never understand the two of you, but sure, whatever. Kill each other if you want. Just don’t slap me with a lawsuit.”

“You don’t pay me enough to afford a lawyer, Sam.”

“You're damn right I don’t. So go nuts, kid.”

It rubs Ruth the wrong way when he calls her “kid,” because aren’t they past that? Haven’t they been through some heavy shit together? Doesn’t he sometimes stare at her from the other side of the room like she’s something he wants to eat? Doesn’t she sometimes stare right back?

“Where are you today?”

Ruth and Debbie are stretching side by side on the mat, and Debbie’s looking at her like she’s just blipped in and out of existence. Ruth makes herself smile. “Just thinking about Russell,” she lies.

Debbie rolls her eyes theatrically. “Okay, sure.”

Ruth shakes her head in amused disbelief. “Why do you hate him so much?”

“I don’t hate him. God.” Debbie stretches out one leg, then the other, and Ruth tries not to think about the lines of her calf muscles. “I just think you could do better.”

Chapter Text

Debbie can’t leave it alone. Why can’t she leave it alone? Ruth is like a toothache, and she should have gotten a root canal by now, but here she is, tonguing that ache some more. (Or, god, not tonguing. No tonguing Ruth. Absolutely not.)

And she’s trying—fuck knows why—to rebuild the bridge between them. Obviously Ruth can do better than some sleazy camera guy whose dick is probably as limp as his stupid mustache. It’s not that she cares what Ruth does in her personal life anymore. For both their sakes, that has to be a taboo topic. Ruth can date whoever the fuck she wants, as long as he makes her happy. And as long as he’s not Debbie’s husband, or anyone else’s.

Even years later, Debbie still doesn’t understand it: Why Mark? Why Ruth? Why Mark and Ruth? Ruth had made it very plain a few weeks after Debbie started dating him that she thought he was about as interesting as a box of Wheaties. So why destroy both a marriage and a friendship to climb on top of the cock of a man she didn’t like or respect? She realizes that she’s started grinding her teeth, and quickly derails that train of thought before it can take her back to a place that might cause a person to, say, break their ex–best friend’s ankle in a fit of coke-fueled rage.

Debbie grasps the ball of her foot and bows forward, the tip of her nose brushing her leggings. “Just piss or get off the pot, Ruth. Leaving Russell dangling is just a waste of both of your time.”

“Wow. That’s a real mixed metaphor.”

Debbie scoffs. “You know what I mean.”

Ruth props her chin against her fingers. “So, wait, break this down for me. In this scenario, is Russell the thing dangling into the toilet, or the toilet itself?”

Debbie laughs. It’s a good joke.

Ruth stops stretching and fixes one of her exhaustingly hopeful smiles on Debbie. “This is nice.”

“What on earth is nice about this room that smells like sweat and spilled mai tais?”

“No, I mean—us. Talking. When we don’t have to. And neither of us is yelling or groveling or whatever.”

“You’re welcome to grovel if it makes you feel more comfortable.”

Ruth slaps her lightly on the shoulder. “See? Nice.”

Even months down the line, Debbie can’t stop thinking about the vicious argument they’d had a few hours after she’d felt Ruth literally break under her hands. And it had broken her, in turn, to see Ruth wilted on that little hospital bed, her makeup smeared with tears and snot and her mohawk drooping under its own weight. Debbie had done that—done it with a wild relish that melted into regret the moment she heard the snap and Ruth screaming her name so loud that it sliced through the whooping of the crowd.

Debbie wasn’t ready to apologize, that night at the ER. So she deflected, shifted blame, hoped she could get the heat to bounce off her and back at Ruth. Self-righteous anger had become a habit, the ultimate trump card Debbie could play if Ruth ever called bullshit. But in the end, it wasn’t words that got them past that fight, but small touches; glances; unspoken things. They’ve always spoken most eloquently to each other with their bodies.

The fact is, she misses her friend. Ruth had always been a bedrock in her life, the one person who could see past her hard, shiny outer shell and not treat her like a goddess or a bitch. She’s perfectly happy to be both a goddess and a bitch, but sometimes, she wants to shed that armor and just be. For a long time, Ruth was the only person who was allowed to see Debbie without her war paint. After a long day on set, there was nothing better than curling up on Ruth’s couch, eating takeout in their sweats as they watched Dynasty reruns and shit on everyone’s terrible fashion choices. 

She looks up from where her head is pressed against her thigh to see Ruth watching her, unreadable. (She used to be able to read Ruth like a soap opera side, once upon a time.) 

“Do I have something on my face?”

Ruth smiles, almost shyly. “Just your face.”

There’s a bare hunger in this woman, embarrassing and oddly endearing. It’s part of what drew her to Ruth in the first place: She was fascinated by Debbie, and Debbie loved to be fascinating. And even after everything, it’s still there. Maybe that’s why she can’t help but crowd herself into Ruth’s pathetic life. It’s a compulsion. She needs her to know: She’ll always be here, and she’ll always be doing better than her. “Attention must be paid,” right? And if Debbie is a slut for anything, it’s attention.

Now, she wants to rise above all that—make peace with Ruth, and how she feels about what Ruth did to her and what she did to Ruth. She’s not ready. Not just yet. But maybe soon, she will be.

Chapter Text

Ruth shouldn’t care. Debbie is an adult woman. And hey, any sign that she’s not thinking about Mark—and by extension, Ruth fucking Mark—is a good thing. And she would never, ever slut-shame anyone. She’s a feminist, goddammit.

But still: Debbie has been bringing home so many one-night stands. And it’s driving Ruth insane.

The beautiful men who pass in and out of Debbie’s room are legion. If Ruth happens to be passing by when she’s bringing them upstairs, Debbie will offer her a little grin, as if to say, Go me, huh? Ruth will dutifully grin back, because they’re friends again, and that’s great! That’s all Ruth’s been wanting this whole time! So why does she end up with a cluster headache every time she gets back to her own room after one of these silent exchanges? (Does she have a brain tumor? Probably she doesn’t have a brain tumor. Either way, it’s not like G.L.O.W. offers health insurance. Oh, god, does she have a brain tumor?)

After the beautiful men leave, Ruth sometimes watches them ambling down the hall with their gelled hair and satisfied smiles, six packs rippling beneath their shiny shirts, bulging cocks straining against their too-tight jeans. It’s fucking gross.

Dicks aren’t gross, Ruth, she reminds herself. Dicks are great. You loves dicks. Especially Russell’s dick. It’s definitely his dick she thinks of late at night when she can’t sleep and her hand drifts beneath the sheets, not any other kind of genitalia belonging to anyone else besides Russell. Russell, her boyfriend.

One night, as Ruth is tucked in bed with a dog-eared copy of Hedda Gabler and Sheila is off doing whatever nocturnal lupine thing it is she does, there’s a knock at the door. The alarm clock says 12:53am. And wouldn’t you know it—it’s Debbie fucking Eagan, dressed in a hotel robe, a lazy, easy look in her eyes. And her hair is… Well, it’s sex hair. It’s the hair of someone who just had sex.

“Can I come in?”

Ruth takes a moment to register her surprise, then says, “Yeah, sure! Of course!”

Debbie clock’s her reading glasses and the book spread-eagled on the bed. “Really, Ruth? It’s fucking Friday night.”

Ruth snorts. “Did you just stop by to call me a nerd?”

“That would be a monumental waste of time and energy.” Debbie flops bonelessly onto Sheila’s bed, but then recoils immediately. “Ew, is this…dog hair?”

“Have you met Sheila?”

“Ugh.” She switches to Ruth’s bed and picks up Hedda. Not missing a beat, she recites:

“Do think it quite incomprehensible that a young girl—when it can be done—without anyone knowing—should be glad to have a peep, now and then, into a world which—which she is forbidden to know anything about?”

Ruth is struck, not for the first time, by the thought of what a versatile actor Debbie is—how she can fall so easily into a moment, into a character. Most people tend to look at Debbie and see a beautiful blonde and nothing more; but Ruth has always known that she’s more than that: smart, talented, brilliant. 

Se tosses the book casually aside, and she is Debbie again. “Snooze.” 

Ruth flops down beside her. “So what should I be doing on a Friday night?” 

“I dunno, Ruth. Put on a hot dress. Go out on the town. Get drunk. We’re in fucking Vegas. ”

“Yeah, and my boyfriend’s in L.A.”

Debbie tosses her a wry look. “Since when were you such a prude?”

Ruth scoffs. “Excuse you, I am not a prude.” 

Debbie props herself up on one elbow and hisses, “Pruuuuude.”

“Shut up!” Ruth says with a giggle, shoving her friend lightly on the shoulder. 

“Neeeerrrrrd,” Debbie taunts as she shoves Ruth right back.

Ruth turns to face her, made brave by the other woman’s teasing. “Slut.” When Debbie freezes, she feels her heart plummet into her stomach. “Oh, god, I didn’t mean…”

But then the other woman smiles wickedly. “Oh, it’s on now.” And then she’s pushing Ruth into the mattress and climbing on top of her. 

Ruth struggles against her, laughing, something bright growing in her chest. “Which one was it tonight? The bartender? The blackjack dealer?”

Debbie guffaws and smooshes a hand into Ruth’s face. It smells like bergamot soap—definitely not the cheap hotel stuff.

“Oh my god, was it the gigolo?” 

Debbie gasps, mock-scandalized. “As if I’d need to pay for it! Have you seen this ass?”  

“Only every day in the ring, shoved directly in my face!” Ruth is almost too entertained to notice the heat rising between their bodies. Almost. 

“Yeah? Well, next time, I’m gonna fart in it.”

“You? Producer-slash-star Debbie Eagan? How unbecoming.”

Ruth doesn’t know when they started wrestling, but suddenly the two of them are tumbling over each other, knocking Hedda to the floor, laughing breathlessly, using their ring-toned muscles to try to pin the other to the bed. Ruth is accustomed to feeling Debbie’s body against hers, but there’s something different about this: There’s no audience, no ring, no performing, no men ogling them. Just the two of them, alone together in the neon Vegas night.

She lets Debbie win—of course she does—and that’s when the energy shifts between them. Debbie’s pressing her middle against Ruth’s, holding her wrists against the mattress, both of them breathing heavily. Debbie’s robe has come undone, falling off her shoulders and exposing the thin camisole beneath, and Ruth’s T-shirt is rucked up to her ribs. She becomes suddenly acutely aware of the fact that she isn’t wearing a bra.

For who knows how long, they just stare at each other, Debbie’s lips parted, eyes filled with something that Ruth would call hunger if she didn’t know better. The moment feels charged, as if anything could happen. Debbie could spit on her, or slap her, or kill her. Or kiss her.

But none of that happen. Instead, Debbie climbs off Ruth, fixes her robe, and flattens down her hair. Ruth takes a second to catch her breath before sitting up and rolling out her wrists.

Debbie’s laugh rings false. “Well, that was…”

“Ha. Yeah.”

“Guess I still had some energy to burn, after…” She trails off, looking anywhere but at Ruth. 

“Guess so.”

“And for the record, it was the poker dealer, not the blackjack dealer.”

“Ach, I was so close!”

Debbie gives her a thin smile that doesn’t make it to her eyes. “Well… ’Night, Ruth.”

“Night, Deb,” she replies, but the other woman is already out the door.

Ruth retrieves Hedda from the floor, then catches her reflection in the mirror across the room. Her skin is mottled red, her hair wild. She’s feverish from head to toe, and her heart feels like it’s about to beat its way out of her chest. She stares herself dead in the eye and says, “What…the fuck.”

Chapter Text

Debbie has lost her absolute shit.

That’s the only possible explanation for knocking on Ruth’s door at 1 in the goddamn morning, buzzing with post-coital dissatisfaction after Harry the poker dealer failed to give her an orgasm. Ordinarily, she’d have a glass of pinot grig, finish herself off, and call it a night. Instead, she and Ruth did…that.

Back in the privacy of her own room, Debbie begins the process of rationalizing her actions. She was lonely. She needed someone to talk to, and Cherry wasn’t around. (Except she hadn’t even checked to see if Cherry was around.) Of the the G.L.O.W. girls, Ruth was the most likely to be laying low on a Friday night.

Ruth is a problem she doesn’t know how to solve, a loose thread hanging off her sweater. Ruth is a bad habit she occasionally indulges, like smoking. (Except she’s been smoking Menthol 100s every night since she got to Vegas.) Ruth is someone she wants to give a second chance. So alright, that’s why she’d knocked on Ruth’s door—she wanted to dish about her latest hookup, just like old times. She’d fully intended to tell her all about limp-dick Harry, but then that other thing happened. The thing where she’d straddled Ruth’s waist between her thighs; Ruth breathless and grinning, warm and disheveled and alive—nothing like the whipped puppy she’d been lately. Ruth was her loyal, brash friend again, and she was…well, beautiful.

Is beautiful.

“Fuck!” Debbie shouts into her empty hotel room. She belly-flops onto her bed and screams into the pillow, which reeks of Harry’s cheap cologne. This is not a thing she can be thinking about. She’s totally fine with Arthie and Yolanda’s relationship, sure; impressed, even. But that isn’t her. Hell, that isn’t anyone who doesn’t want to commit professional suicide.

She lifts herself off the mattress and takes a breath. In. Out. Then she thrusts open the nightstand drawer and finds her pack of Virginia Slims resting atop the dusty Gideon Bible. She goes to the balcony and lights up, blowing smoke into the cool desert night. The Strip glitters 12 stories below, teeming with nighthawks jonesing after one fix or another—money, tits, dick, ass, coke, booze, thrills. She flicks ash off the edge and watches the wind carry it over the fug of Vegas. 

She wonders what Ruth is doing right now—if she’s reeling like Debbie is, or if she’s back with her nose buried in Ibsen. She thinks about what would’ve happened if she hadn’t climbed off of Ruth, of roads not taken, of what she’s starting to realize she wants but is certainly not ready to articulate yet, not even to herself.

So she flicks her half-smoked cigarette down into the neon pit of idiot lust below her, strips off her robe, and gets down to the grim business of jerking herself off. She’ll be damned if she doesn’t finish at least one orgasm tonight.

Chapter Text

If she’s honest with herself, it’s her and Debbie’s extracurricular wrestling match that makes Ruth turn to Sam. 

Usually it would be the all-consuming oblivion of work; but right now, work means Debbie, and that means flashbacks of Debbie pinning her to the bed and eyeing her like she’s one of the beefcakes from the Fan-Tan bar, and that leads to Ruth entertaining the kind of thoughts that make absolutely no sense for her to be giving the time of day. 

Besides, Ruth reasons, Debbie probably feels just as weird about the whole thing as she does. And in any case, she’s in L.A. visiting Randy, which means she’s at Mark’s, being reminded that Ruth fucked Mark, or Mark fucked Ruth, or however that equation worked. Ruth’s terrible at math, so. 

Then there’s good old Sam, sidling up to her at the buffet like the living, breathing, embodiment of distraction (if distraction smelled like Drakkar Noir and hadn’t shaved in three days). And before Ruth knows it, he’s tricked her into having an actual good time in Vegas, between the Bloody Marys and the blackjack and the steaks. Hell, it’s even fun to listen to him fret over his screenplay. 

But then comes the goddamned hot tub, and Sam’s goddamned hairy chest, and Sam’s goddamned love confession. And thank god for Tammé and her sore back. Ruth tries to convey wordless a thank-you as she climbs out of the jacuzzi and into the chilly night air. She makes her way back upstairs, shivering in a wet towel, trying not to think of Sam’s hangdog gaze burning through his fogged-up glasses.

Is she attracted to Sam? She takes a cold shower and considers the question, watching the water catch on a clump of her own dark hair on its slow way down the drain. Certainly they have a whole Mary Richards and Lou Grant thing going on—a sparking workplace chemistry that veers between loathing and adoring. And despite his many, many, many flaws, Sam has been there for her more than anyone this past year. After all, not just any man would drive a woman to the abortion clinic and not make a whole thing about it. And he is kind of handsome, in his coked-out disaster way.

After she’s toweled off, she does the only sensible thing she’s done since breakfast: She calls Russell. He’s the steadiest, healthiest presence in her life, even if he is a couple hundred miles away most of the time. He’s a kind, generous man in an industry populated by sleazebags; and best of all, Ruth doesn’t have to guess what he’s thinking when he looks at her.

“If it was your day off, why do you sound like you just buried your grandma?” His voice is low and comforting on the other end of the line.

Ruth scoffs into the handset. “I do not sound like… Ugh! I’m fine!”

“I know we’re doing long-distance and all, but I was kind of hoping we were at the point in our relationship when we’d, y’know, tell each other if we had a shitty day.” 

“I…” Ruth sighs. “Okay, yes. I had a kinda shitty day.”

“Don’t tell me: Sam said something mean to you. Or, no, wait. *Debbie* said something mean to you. Am I right?”

Ruth has to stop herself from laughing at the irony. No, Russell, they didn’t say anything mean to me. Debbie dry-humped me and Sam declared his love.

“I mean…you know Sam.”

“You don’t have to take that crap from him, Ruth.”

“I mean, it’s just part of the biz, you know?”

“Well if I were there, I’d sock him for you.” 

She laughs. “I don’t need you to sock him for me. If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty capable of taking people down myself.”

She hears Russell’s smile on the other end of the line. “Thighs of steel, eh?”

“You’re the only one who gets to touch those,” she says. (And Debbie. Six nights a week, plus two matinees.)

“I miss you.” 

“I miss you, too.” It’s true, she does. But probably not in the same way he misses her.

“Look, I think I can find time to come up and visit in the next—” He’s interrupted by a clang so loud that Ruth wrenches the receiver away from her ear.

“Russell? Are you okay?!”

He groans. “Yeah, but the sound guy who just dropped the boom mic onto the craft services table isn’t gonna be when the first AD comes back.”

“Oh, geez. I’ll let you go deal with that.”

“Talk tomorrow?” 

“Of course.”

“Love you.”

“Totally,” Ruth says, then realizes how absurd it sounds. It’s not like they haven’t said the L word before.

“Brett, I swear to Christ! You are cleaning the macaroni salad off the windscreen *yourself*!” 

Then, Ruth’s left alone with the dial tone and her thoughts.

She numbs out with Columbo reruns until she feels like she can finally go to sleep without her brain flopping around like a broken cassette ribbon. But first, she needs ice for her ankle, which, even months later, still gets sore at the end of the day.

The Paradise Cove writers’ room couldn’t have dreamed up a better moment for her to pad out into the hallway with an ice bucket, pantsless in a nightshirt, with her air-dried hair falling around her face, than right now. She’s halfway to the ice machine when nearly collides with Sam, reeling down the corridor stinking of booze. Moments later, Debbie slips out of Tammé’s room, eyes red and mascara running down her cheeks. The three of them trade shocked, guilty glances as if they just got caught taking a dump.

Laura Morgan, eat your heart out.

And then Arthie’s door swings open, and she and Yolanda pour through the threshold mid-kiss, sex-rumpled and wrapped in each other.

“You sure you can’t stay the—” Arthie begins, but stops cold when she clocks the awkward tableau before her.

A shit-eating grin lights up Yolanda’s face, like she’s set the land-speed record for reading the room. “On second thought, yeah, I think I will stay the night,” she says to Arthie, and then the two of them are giggling and falling back into each other’s arms, slamming the door behind them. 

Before Debbie or Sam can say anything (and she’s not even sure either of them would, but), Ruth abandons her mission and melts back into her room, locking the door after her as if this will keep the anxiety out, too.

She keeps the TV humming long into the night, casting a deep-sea glow onto the walls. But as it turns out, no amount of Columbo reruns can help her fall asleep.

Chapter Text

Debbie cannot stress enough how much she doesn’t give a shit if Ruth is hooking up with Sam. They’re both irredeemable fuckups, and frankly, they deserve each other. It’s Ruth’s business if she wants Sam’s crusty mustache chafing her lips, if she wants him shoving his booze-soaked tongue into her mouth. 

No, it doesn’t matter that it’s Sam. What matters is that Ruth is doing it again—cheating with the casual abandon of a woman who doesn’t give a shit about the lives she’s ruining. It’s a real punch to the tit, how readily she can speechify about loyalty, then turn around and do this shit. Debbie doesn’t harbor any particularly warm feelings toward Russell, but she feels sympathy for a fellow rube who was idiotic enough to let their guard down around Ruth Wilder.

The sickest part is, Debbie had almost knocked on Ruth’s door instead of Tammé’s that night. Seeing Randy for the first time in weeks—holding him in her arms, rocking him to sleep, burying her nose in the wispy blond hairs just sprouting on his velvety head—then leaving him again with Mark felt like ripping her beating heart from her chest and abandoning it on the changing table. On the flight back to Vegas, she felt the loss as an almost physical ache. 

By the time she’d dragged her ass back to the Fan-Tan, all she’d wanted was to find someone she could unload her grief on, someone safe and familiar who wouldn’t judge her or see her as weak. Her first instinct was to go to Ruth, to cry on the shoulder of her oldest friend. After all, it was Ruth who had sat patiently beside her hospital bed the night she went into labor with Randy while Mark was away on business, distracting her with embarrassing dating stories and idle gossip as Debbie waited for the nurse to give her a goddamn epidural already. 

But at the last second, Debbie decided to knock on Tammé’s door instead; what she most needed at that moment was the ear of a woman who knew from motherhood. And while she’d been pouring her heart out, Ruth had been a few doors across the hall, sucking Sam Sylvia’s pencil dick. Debbie was smart enough to read the signs—Sam’s mussed hair and red face, Ruth’s pantslessness, the matching expressions of shame on both their faces—to know exactly what the hell they’d been up to.

Vegas is so fucking seedy. 

And Ruth? Ruth’s playing dumb, as if she has no goddamn clue why Debbie’s only speaking her in the ring with Liberty Belle’s sickly sweet drawl. But there’s a moment when Debbie can’t keep her mouth shut anymore, can’t avoid wading into the raw sewage of Ruth’s choices: Russell is here, and the two of them are acting cute at the bar every night after the show, and Ruth’s playing it so smooth that, if you didn’t know better, you’d swear no one else had ever rumpled her sheets.

So the next night after they step out of the ring and into the darkness of the vom, coated in sweat and cheap glitter, Debbie pins Ruth to the wall. 

“The hell, Debbie?”

“I’m not gonna let you get away with this shit again, Ruth.”

“What shit? You’ve been ignoring me for a week, and now you want to accuse me of… What even are you accusing me of?”

“I know what you’re doing with Sam.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You think I’m an idiot?” Debbie hisses, digging her arm into Ruth’s sternum. Not hard, but enough to keep her from running. “I could give a shit about your hairy cameraman, but he doesn’t deserve this. No one does.”

“My hairy cameraman?”

“Russell. Whatever.”

Ruth studies Debbie’s face in that probing way she has, like she’s got her under a microscope. Her expression turns wounded, then furious. She pushes Debbie’s arm away. “Oh, my god. You think I’m sleeping with Sam!”

“Think?” Debbie spits. “I saw you two last week. After I got back from L.A.”

“Jesus christ, Debbie, you’re always going to think the worst of me, aren’t you?”

“I’m gonna think the worst of you if you continue to be the worst!”

Ruth advances on her. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I am not fucking Sam. I would never do that to Russell.”

Debbie laughs bitterly. “Oh, of course, you’d never go around behind someone’s back with a guy you have no business screwing.”

“I thought we were past this!” Ruth shouts. 

And oh, Debbie’s blood is boiling. Her adrenaline’s still pumping from the ring, and she feels about ready to bodyslam Ruth onto the sticky floor. They both stare each other down, breathing heavily, and it feels like anything could happen.

“Daaaaamn.” 

Melrose and Jenny are standing a few feet away, watching the two of them like the season finale of “Paradise Cove.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry, did we forget to sell popcorn?” Debbie growls.

“Um, you’re literally blocking the hallway and screaming at each other,” Melrose says.

“Yeah, pretty sure they can hear it all the way in the bingo lounge," Jenny adds.

“God forbid anybody gets a moment alone in this shithole,” Debbie mutters. Not bothering to spare Ruth a parting glance, she elbows past the peanut gallery and into the dressing room.

But hours later, when she’s lying awake in her room, staring up at the stucco ceiling, she can’t stop picturing Ruth’s face when she realized what Debbie was accusing her of. Beneath the layers of Zoya makeup, she’d looked so genuinely hurt, like it was Debbie who’d committed an act of betrayal and not the other way around. It would’ve been heartbreaking, if Ruth hadn’t broken her heart already.

As the glowing numbers on the clock radio tick to 2 a.m., Debbie replays the moment in her mind and forces herself to consider that, for all her past lies, Ruth’s not that good an actor.

Chapter Text

Ruth likes to think she’s a fairly transparent person. Any time she tries to keep a secret, someone will either suss her out immediately or she’ll break down and spill her guts. (Keeping mum about her affair with Mark had been so hard. She’d almost been relieved when Debbie learned the truth.)

But apparently she’s sending out all kinds of weird signals these days, because Sam thinks Ruth is in love with him, and Debbie thinks Ruth is fucking Sam. And Russell? He thinks Debbie is in love with Ruth.

“You can’t be serious.” Ruth tries to keep her voice light, because they’re sitting at the bar, and after she and Debbie’s little performance for Melrose and Jenny, she doesn’t relish the idea of even more people finding out all her business tonight.

“You can’t tell me you don’t see it,” Russell says, playing with the dials on his new camera. 

“See what?” 

“The way she looks at you. Like she wants to eat you alive or something.”

“She looks at me like she wants to murder me,” Ruth offers. “Maybe that’s what’s tripping you up.”

“No, no. I’ve spent enough time on sets watching skeezy directors leering from behind the klieg lights to know what I’m talking about. She’s, like, obsessed with you.”

“And I’ve spent enough time with Debbie to know what I’m talking about,” Ruth shoots back. “She’s into men. Very into men.”

Russell raises an eyebrow. “You’ve lived in L.A. for how many years, and you’ve never heard of bisexuality before?”

“Of course I’ve heard of bisexuality,” she mutters. Why is her face going all hot? She takes a long, cold sip of her amaretto sour. 

Russell rubs circles against her back. “Look, babe, I’m not saying I’m worried you’re gonna sleep with her or anything…”

“Of course I wouldn’t!” Ruth cuts in, too loud.

“I know that,” he says calmly. “I’m just saying that when she gets all weird and shitty with you, there might be more behind it than her, y’know, hating your guts or whatever.”

Ruth sighs. “Stuff with me and Deb… It’s complicated.”

“No shit,” he says with a laugh.

“Not, like, sexy complicated, you perv.” She tosses him a small grin, and he smiles back, and then it’s all fine again. 

He orders them another round and they talk about the schlock-horror movie Russell’s DPing in West Hollywood. Eventually, he suggests they take a cab to the Golden Nugget on Fremont, because he wants to spend the night playing low-stakes poker and pretending he’s Elliott Gould in California Split. Ruth tells him to go have fun, but she’s living in a casino, so she doesn’t need to go to another one. 

As they’re kissing goodbye in front of the elevator, the doors open and Sam walks out. He gives them a withering look that makes Ruth want to slap him, and you’d think for all his hypothesizing about Debbie, Russell would have noticed the person who’s actually in love with her walking right by him.

On her way upstairs, Ruth considers Russell’s theory. Ever since things fell apart between them, Debbie has acted like Ruth is a millstone around her neck. But wasn’t it Debbie who’d followed Ruth into the G.L.O.W. cast? Who kept finding ways to make her presence known in Ruth’s life, whether she was snapping her ankle or giving her a leg up? She thinks of the rage in Debbie’s eyes a few hours earlier. Was there something else behind it?

No way. That’s insane. Debbie is this devastatingly sexy bombshell and Ruth is…Ruth. Small, mousy, nerdy, backstabbing Ruth. Even if Debbie was into women, she certainly wouldn’t be into Ruth. But that’s all hypothetical anyway, because they’re both super blatantly straight.

She’s taking out her room key when she hears a door creak open down the hall.

“Hey, Ruth.” Debbie’s voice is quieter than she’s heard it in a long time. “Can we, um. Talk?” She’s standing just outside her room with her arms crossed over her chest, looking uncharacteristically vulnerable in plaid pajamas.

“It didn’t work out so great last time we ‘talked,’”

“I know. I’m… Look, do you wanna come in for a sec?”

Ruth weighs her options before reaching the conclusion that, as always, she can’t say no to Debbie Eagan. Wordlessly, she walks through the door. This is the first time she’s seen Debbie’s room at the Fan-Tan, and she’s unsurprised to discover that it’s much bigger and nicer than any of the other girls’—and that she has the benefit of not sharing it with anyone.

“Bash really set you up, huh?”

“I set myself up,” Debbie amends. “Benefits of being a producer.”

“Right. Of course.”

“Do you want to. Uh.” She gestures vaguely to the chair by the desk, and Ruth takes it as Debbie sits across from her on the edge of her bed.

“Did you have a good, um. Rest of your night?” Debbie can’t seem to look her in the eye. It’s weird.

“Are we really gonna make small talk right now?”

Debbie lets out an exasperated sigh. “I’m trying to apologize to you, Ruth.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Can you just—” She makes an aborted gesture of anger, then seems to catch herself and returns her hands to her lap. “God. I really can’t stop being a bitch to you, can I?”

Ruth shrugs.

“I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions like that. I saw you and Sam in the hall and put two and two together, and… You’re right. I thought the worst of you. Force of habit, I guess.”

“He wasn’t even in my room, y’know, I opened the door, and he was just—”

Debbie raises a hand to cut her off. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me. I trust you.”

“Y’know, I think that’s the first time you’ve apologized to me in…years, maybe?” 

“You don’t have to be smug about it.”

“I am not being…smug!”

“Yes, you are! You’re always so goddamn smug, like you’re keeping track of everyone who’s ever wronged you.” 

Aaaand they’re back. “Like you should talk! ‘Oh, I’m Debbie, let’s see, who pissed me off today, and how will I sabotage them publicly?’”

Debbie scoffs. “You’re so fucking self-righteous.”

“Are you serious? Deb, I’m fucking crawling on my knees every day to try to prove to you that I’m not some…two-timing jezebel!”

“Two-timing jezebel? Are we in a summer stock production of Carousel right now?”

For the first time in a long time, Ruth takes back the power—or, maybe, takes it for the first time. “You know what? I don’t need to take this crap from you twice in one night. I’m going to bed.” She moves to leave without waiting for a reply.

But as her hand is on the knob, Debbie presses her palm against the door, blocking her exit.

“What, now you’re gonna trap me here?” Maybe Russell was right—maybe Debbie is obsessed with her. Not in the way he thinks, of course; but in that she seems to be addicted to making Ruth’s life specifically, unrelentingly miserable.

Debbie takes a step back, arms crossed over her chest, as if she’s holding something inside herself that’s trying to burrow its way out. “Sorry. Again. Go, if you want.” 

This second apology—an unprecedented move—is enough to make Ruth decide to stay and hear her out.

“I want to… I want to stop treating you like shit. I think I just…” Debbie stops and pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It’s down for the night, free of the Aqua Net and bobby pins she wears in public. “I miss you, Ruth. For whatever fucking reason. And I feel like the only way we can be easy with each other anymore is when we’re trying to tear each other’s hair out, you know?”

“Deb…” she reaches a hand out and squeezes the other woman’s shoulder. “I miss you, too. I miss us, how we used to be. Before I fucked everything up.”

Debbie laughs bitterly. “To be fair, I think I had maybe fucked a lot of stuff up before that.”

Ruth can guess what she means. When they first met, they were on the same rung of the ladder—both single, both poor, both hungry for work. They were thick as thieves—doing scene studies from Caryl Churchill plays, watching late-night TV on Ruth’s couch in their sweats, gossiping about their friends who’d sold out, going bar-hopping on the Strip whenever they could scrape a few bucks together.

And then Debbie started booking roles and Ruth didn’t, dated a string of increasingly successful men, and landed the gig on Paradise Cove. Then she married Mark, of all people, after they’d been seeing each other for less than a year. And then she moved into a nice house in the suburbs and got pregnant and had a kid. And it was like Ruth couldn’t touch Debbie anymore, like she was exalted, and her old friend was lucky if she got a couple hours of her time, which was suddenly so much more important than hers—jobless, husbandless, childless Ruth.

“Yeah, maybe,” Ruth says quietly.

“After the thing with Mark, I could’ve just cut you out of my life. Maybe that would’ve been better for both of us,” Debbie says. 

Ruth nods. It’s what any two people who weren’t so unrelentingly intense would’ve done.

“But I just couldn’t tear myself away from you. Which probably means I’m just as screwed up as you are.” Some of the tension goes out of Debbie’s shoulders, and she offers Ruth a wry smile. “What’s that thing they say about old friends?”

“Kick the shit out of them when they fuck your husband and then never, ever leave them alone?”

Debbie laughs—a happy one, this time. And Ruth remembers—she used to make Debbie laugh. Pretty often. “I know what I said last year, but…I’d like to try to be friends with you again. Y’know, if you would want that.”

A small, warm thing stretches its legs inside Ruth’s chest. “I do. I would. I would like that,” she stammers. 

“Okay, great. So…” Debbie holds out her hand, and Ruth is puzzled for a moment before she realizes that she wants her to shake it. 

This part’s easy: Without preamble, Ruth wraps Debbie in a tight hug. Her ex-ex-best friend is stiff in her arms for a long beat, and then she returns the embrace, and Ruth feels them both exhale at once. When they part, Ruth immediately misses the sensation of Debbie’s arms around her, the scent of Debbie’s expensive lavender shampoo filling her nose.

Huh.

“Alright, well. I’ll let you get back to your boyfriend,” Debbie says.

“You mean my hairy cameraman?”

“You know that mustache isn’t doing him any favors.”

“I like his mustache!” Ruth says with a laugh. “He’s out, anyway.”

“When he’s only got a couple nights with you? Where the hell did he go?”

Ruth is delighted to hear Debbie being indignant on her behalf for once. “He’s at the Golden Nugget, pretending to be Elliott Gould.”

This earns her a full-blown snort. “I will never, ever understand your taste in men.”

It seems like they’ve finally talked themselves out, because they both just stand there in nervous silence. It’s bizarre as hell that they’re suddenly shy around each other; they never were before.

Finally, Ruth slips out the door. “Night, Deb,” she says from the hall.

Debbie lingers at the threshold, looking like she might be about to launch into another too-earnest speech. Instead, she just murmurs, “Night, Ruthie,” and closes the door softly behind her.

Chapter Text

When the idea hits her, Debbie knows it’s perfect. A fun, distracting way to get them out of this strange awkwardness they’ve fallen into ever since they buried the hatchet. Not to mention a way to give Tammé a break and throw a giant middle finger at Bash when she knows Sandy’s going to be in the audience. A win-win-win, really.

“If anybody’s going to be playing Liberty Belle, it’s Ruth.”

The girls all turn to gawp at her like she’s grown a second, less bitchy head. Probably because they’ve been watching Debbie publicly denigrate Ruth since Day One.

Ruth looks at her with the most lovely surprise in her eyes. Her face has always been so openly expressive; it’s part of what makes her a good actress. When she’s firing on all cylinders, she can make you feel her emotions as if they’re your own.

“Oh come on—you’re an actor,” Debbie says. “Don’t tell me you haven’t wanted to play other parts.” She’s genuinely excited to see how Ruth interprets Liberty Belle, and for them to ad-lib with each other like they used to.

They have a whole conversation without saying a word: Are you really giving me this? Yes. I want you to have it. Can I trust you? That’s the whole idea, right?

“Fine,” Ruth agrees with a small laugh. Debbie reads Thank you in the soft curve of her smile.

Debbie hadn’t really thought ahead to the fact that squeezing into Ruth’s leotard would give her the most excruciating camel toe. Whatever. She isn’t planning on getting railed tonight anyways. It’s been a couple weeks since she dragged a hot man-piece up to her room; she must’ve slutted herself out.

It’s all worth it when she finishes her hair and makeup—with help from Ruth—and gets a load of herself in the floor-length mirror. Decked out in Zoya’s reds and blacks, she looks dangerous; she looks powerful; she looks like she could eat someone alive and they’d enjoy the hell out of it.

“Holy shit, Debbie.” Ruth says, appearing over her shoulder. “You look amazing.”

She looks her own kind of amazing. Though she’s swimming in Debbie’s Liberty Belle outfit, she’s made it work by layering it over her own silver leotard. 

“You’re fucking adorable,” Debbie says, giving her friend’s pigtails a yank. 

“Ouch!” Ruth says with a laugh. “Save it for the ring.” Jesus, is she blushing, or is that just the rouge? 

Debbie notices a flyaway near the part of Ruth’s hair and decides to fix it. “Have you thought about what you’re gonna do out there?” she asks around a mouthful of bobby pins.

“Well I can’t really pull of the whole Fourth of July bombshell thing like you, obviously…”

“Shut up, you’re a babe.” 

“Oh, stoppit.”

“You don’t have to shit-talk yourself around me anymore, y’know.”

“I’m just being realistic.”

“Are you kidding me? With those tits? You’re realistically a babe.” The compliment comes easily. Ruth does have great tits.

“Anyways,” Ruth says, and now she’s definitely blushing. “I was thinking I could play up the whole Nebraska thing.” She puts on an exaggerated Judy Garland accent. “I’m just an all-American, salt-of-the-earth gal from the Cornhusker State who milks the cows each and every mornin’!”

Debbie guffaws. “That’s perfect.”

“Let’s hear your Zoya.”

She clears her throat and pitches her voice down. “In Mother Russia, we dip puny American farmgirls in borscht and eat them on rye toast.”

Ruth looks absolutely delighted. “We’re gonna kill it out there.” On the way out of the dressing room, she asks, “How’s that wedgie treating ya?”

“Like shit. I’ll probably need to ice my twat later.”

“You’ll be fiiiiine.” And then, Ruth winds up and fully slaps Debbie’s ass.

“Not helping!” Debbie screeches, and now it’s her turn to blush.

As she watches the G.L.O.W. ladies try on each other’s roles in turn, Debbie feels an outsize warmth and admiration. The women she works with are funny, and they’re talented. She may be wrapping up her time with the show soon, but she’ll always be grateful that she wound up working with this bunch of lunatics. When she struts out under the lights, the energy of the room is electric. Amid the unbroken monotony of their Vegas run, Debbie can’t remember the last time it’s felt like this.

“Darlinks, please—hate me all you want,” Debbie spits at the crowd in Zoya’s soupy accent. “I am cold and heartless, like frigid Siberian tundra.”

And oh, shit, it’s fun to be the heel. The audience’s raucous laughs and boos puff her up even more than their cheers when she’s playing Liberty, and it’s like she’s snorted three lines of coke (in the fun way, not the way that makes you snap your best friend’s ankle like a twig).

When Ruth materializes from the audience, oozing all-American apple pie charm, the night clicks into place. They’re both firing on all cylinders, playing off each other like Burns and Allen. Except this is G.L.O.W., so they’re improvising with their entire bodies, mixing their usual choreography with flourishes of invention wherever one can’t remember the other’s moves; wrestling as experimental jazz.

“Oh, darlink,” Debbie growls at Ruth, hoisting her like a guitar in her arms. “I’m you’re daddy now.” It’s a great line to sell the backbreaker, but it’s also just, if she’s honest with herself, hot. This violence-as-sex thing is meant to play to the audience, but it’s sort of hitting Debbie right now, too. 

Later, they’re all huddled at the front of the vom, and Debbie and Ruth are watching in astonishment as Sheila unfurls before their eyes like a fucking butterfly in springtime. Debbie can’t stop smiling.

“This was a great idea!” Ruth shouts over the cheers and laughter. They grin at each other like idiots, somehow all alone together in that packed, sweaty theater. Debbie is amazed at how quickly the two of them have fallen back in sync. It’s as if they both had these better selves just waiting in the wings for their cue to go on. 

Maybe when they get back to L.A., they can pick up where they left off—as friends, not rivals or costars or whatever else they’ve been to each other these last couple years. It’s gotta be easier to have a normal friendship when you aren’t shoving your head into each other’s armpits six nights a week.

And then, of course, Bash has to ruin everything.

“That slimy little turd.”

Debbie needs to get this makeup off before it gives her a faceful of pimples—and this too-small leotard, before it gives her a yeast infection. But she can’t stop pacing back and forth, muttering to herself about Bash motherfucking Howard.

The dressing room is almost empty now; Cherry and Carmen helped Tammé back up to her room (and hopefully called a fucking doctor), and most of the other girls went off to get hammered—whether to celebrate or unload about the GLOW extension, Debbie’s not sure. 

The only stragglers are Dawn and Stacey, who are loudly plotting a way to get themselves a bigger room if they’re going to be staying here for nine months longer than expected; Reggie, who is methodically re-rolling long spools of sports tape; and Ruth, who is watching Debbie lose her shit with a thoughtful expression.

“Do you wanna maybe sit down for a sec?” Ruth suggests.

“ No, I do not want to sit down. If I try to stop moving, then my legs will walk me straight up to Bash’s suite of their own accord, and I will wring his little neck till his head explodes like a fucking water balloon. ”

That last part, Debbie shouts so loudly that the other women in the room all turn to stare at her. Goddammit, she’s doing it again—the thing where she alienates everyone around her by being, as usual, too much. She holds up both her hands and lowers her head, hoping it communicates regret, ’cause she sure as hell doesn’t have it in her to apologize for anything right now.

“Would you guys mind, um, giving us the room?” Ruth says to the other three. 

“Oh, sure, I almost forgot that this is Debbie’s private hot lady freakout room,” Dawn hisses. 

Debbie scoffs. “The fuck is a ‘hot lady freakout room’?”

“That,” Dawn says, pointing a finger at her. “That shit right there. You’re a hot lady. And you’re freaking out!”

“How about we go get slippery nipples at the bar instead of wading deeper into their crap,” Stacey says, handing Dawn her duffle bag.

“Only if we can get those blackjack guys from earlier to buy,” Dawn replies.

“Good call; they looked friggin’ loaded.”

After they leave, Reggie, who has been silent up till now, zips her bag shut and stands to go. “Y’know, not everyone is ready for the show to end,” she murmurs, and slips out the door. 

And then it’s just Debbie and Ruth, still mostly in their costumes.

Debbie sighs loudly and leans back against the nearest vanity.

“How long did you know about this?” Ruth asks, tentative.

“Literally a day. Sandy floated it to me and Bash this morning after the eulogy thing. Nine more months. Bash was, of course, in immediately.”

“But not you.”

“Of course not, Ruth!” Debbie is lashing out, but she feels too raw to stop herself. “I have a child who needs his fucking mother, and every time I go back home to see him and then have to leave again, it’s like…” She tries to express the feeling with her body, because she doesn’t really have words for it, clenching her hands into claws over her sternum and then wrenching them away. “I’m not gonna commute for an entire year of Randy’s life. He’s not gonna know who I am.”

“Come on, you’ve been doing so great!” Ruth says brightly. “You’re like a superhero, flying back and forth.”

“You know I missed him walking?” And god, that still stings. “I’m missing everything.”

“So do fewer shows. I can cover Liberty Belle, obviously.” She gestures to the star-spangled bodice she’s still wearing, even though she’s already pulled out the pigtails, her hair hanging long and curly. “And…Sheila! Sheila can do Zoya on your nights off.”

Good old Ruth, always trying to problem-solve, even when it’s absolutely hopeless. Debbie wishes, sometimes, she could ever be that naively optimistic. “No, it was a crazy plan to begin with. And Mark went with it because...he owes me for the rest of his natural life. But, y’know, he's not gonna roll with this schedule for a full year.”

Ruth crosses her arms over her chest, looking suddenly small. “You know, I think I avoid talking about Randy. It’s this whole part of your life I never wanna touch, because…”

“It’s fine, okay? You can talk about my son. I’m not gonna jump down your throat.” Debbie’s so sick of Ruth walking on eggshells around her; she’d rather she just smash them and be done with it.

“Okay.” Ruth looks at her cautiously. “Why don't you bring him to Vegas? You wanna work, you wanna be with your kid.”

“Right, ’cause it’s such a great place for children,” Debbie deadpans. It’s a crazy idea, and Ruth has no idea what it would mean. She’s never been a mother.

“He would probably like the flashing lights. And—and there’s Jell-O at the buffet.”

Debbie laughs. “And a pool.”

“Exactly!”

She sighs. “I dunno. Maybe. Right now I just really just wanna be pissed off at Bash.”

“Yeah, he’s being a huge dick.”

“Just the biggest, most throbbing cock,” Debbie agrees, and Ruth guffaws. “He just keeps taking my power away. Like, I worked my ass off to make myself a producer, and he basically just made it mean nothing. He’s got the money, he’s got a dick. Easy as falling off a log.”

“He doesn’t get it,” Ruth agrees. “He’s never had to work a day in his life.”

“I just hate them all! Men. Mark, Bash… Even when I'm fucking the cute young ones, I just…” She feels hot anger rising in her chest. It feels good. “I’d like to take my hand and just, rrr!” She presses down on empty air. “Crunch their face into the pillow, hard. Because they are just so…free.”

Ruth is looking at her with something like wonder, and something like…something else. “Y’know, Sam told me he was in love with me,” she says in a rush.

And now Debbie feels a whole different kind of rage. Something like jealousy. “What?”

“Yeah! I was just, like, spending the day with him, having fun in Vegas, you know? I thought he was my… I thought we were friends. But I guess he wanted something else from me, just like every other fucking guy.”

“What’d you say back?”

“Nothing,” she admits. “Because I’m a fucking coward. I just ran away, Debbie. That’s the night you saw us in the hallway. He’d apparently gone off to get plastered after I ditched him.”

“Do you…” Debbie clears her throat. “Do you feel the same way?” 

Ruth looks at her like she’s a lunatic. “What? No! Of course I don’t.”

And fuck, Debbie’s relieved, deep in her bones. And she’s finally figured out why. “Good,” she blurts out.

“Yeah?” Ruth is giving her that look again.

“He doesn’t deserve you.”

Ruth’s face goes red. It does something to Debbie, seeing Ruth wearing her clothes, the ones she’s sweated through for a year of bodyslams. 

“You’re right,” Ruth says. “Men suck. They all just want whatever you can give them. They just take, and…”

Debbie wants to do something stupid. Like, monumentally insane. Dangerous. Reckless.

“Are you...okay?” Ruth asks, looking back at Debbie with a curious expression.

An excellent question, Debbie thinks. “Why do you want me to stay so badly?”

“Well, because you’re my friend.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, and you’re really talented. I like wrestling you. It’s um. Fun.”

“Is it?”

“I mean...yeah. What’s... Did I accidentally knock you on the head tonight or something?”

She closes the distance between them in a few long strides. “Ruth.”

Ruth is just staring at her, breath shallow. “Debbie, what are you…”

And then Debbie kisses her. Takes Ruth’s too-earnest, too-pretty face in her hands and smashes their mouths together. It’s fucking ridiculous. She feels the other woman go rigid against her as she makes a little “mmph!” noise against Debbie’s mouth. This is so stupid. So, so stupid. 

But then Ruth’s kissing her back, leaning into her, and Debbie overbalances and her back is slamming against the standing mirror, which lists against the wall as it takes her weight. Ruth is eager, a quick study, just like she is at everything, and she pushes their bodies flush together. 

Debbie gasps, and it’s enough to pull them both out of it. Ruth pulls away, stumbling backward a few steps, her hands flying to her mouth. “Oh my god. What are we doing?!”

Debbie laughs, her heart pounding hard. “I have no fucking clue. I just…”

“Fuck. Debbie.” 

And then Ruth is slamming back into her, and Debbie’s mouth opens against hers. It’s rough, like wrestling. This is so stupid. This is so, so stupid. The world is falling down around them, the walls they’ve built and smashed and built again. This is going to ruin everything. But Debbie is Zoya the Destroya right now, brazen mohawk and black lips and fierce hunger. And she wants to fuck something up.

Chapter Text

This is happening. Is this happening? Is Ruth dreaming? She’d never articulated it to herself, not really, but as soon as Debbie kissed her, it was like she’d found the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle she’d been trying to work out for years. Of course she was into Debbie. Of course this is what had been between them the whole time, the thing that made them struggle against each other; hell, maybe even the reason they had been drawn into each other’s orbit in the first place. 

And, shit, it was totally the reason why Ruth had slept with Mark. She’d never really understood why she did it before, beyond the jealousy that Debbie had gotten her shit together first, raced ahead in her career and her love life while Ruth was still idling at the starting line. Because Ruth had never been all that attracted to Mark, even when she was on top of him, even when he was inside her. Frankly, she’d never understood why Debbie was into Mark. He was such a drip, and Debbie was a charisma machine. 

In the end, she’d decided that the reason she’d fucked Mark was because she had this perverse desire to destroy her own life, to fuck up, to get caught. Make it worse, Ruth. She’d spent her whole life being good, doing as she was told, working hard, playing second fiddle. And where had it gotten her? 

But now, with Debbie’s tongue in her mouth, with Debbie’s body pressing up against hers, Ruth knows in an instant: She wasn’t jealous of Debbie’s perfect life; she was jealous of Mark, because he got to have Debbie. So when he put the moves on her, in his awkward way, one night when they were both drunk at a mutual friend’s house party, Ruth saw an opportunity to break Debbie’s marriage apart, to have Mark and see what the big fucking deal about him was. (Turns out, there was no big fucking deal. Mark was as average at sex as he was at everything else in his life.)

The really wild thing, though, is that Debbie is into her. The thought is intoxicating: a woman universally regarded as a knockout, wanting mousy little Ruth Wilder. Why? How? What?!

But, Ruth thinks, over-intellectualizing as usual, the world doesn’t understand what actually makes Debbie so magnetic. It’s not her perfect face, her perfect ass, her perfect, well, everything—it’s the sum total of her, brazen and intelligent and dedicated and witty, gorgeous not just for her obvious physical beauty, but for the mind and heart that animated it. Even when she was at her lowest, Debbie was more alive and vivid than anyone else Ruth had ever met.

And holy hell, is Debbie a good kisser. Everything about the way her body moves against Ruth’s is incredible, lithe, tough wrestling muscles and soft lips, the smell of her sweat, the push-and-pull, give-and-take of their embrace. Debbie’s hands go to Ruth’s tits, and she feels like she’s on fire. Ruth thinks back to when they were practicing the diving crossbody in the Lumberjacksons’ backyard wrestling ring last year, the way they’d learned to communicate to each other with just their eyes, just their bodies. Of course it had all been leading up to this.

Debbie pulls away, breathing heavily, bracketing Ruth against the curtained wall. “Do you want to go upstairs?” her voice is ragged and low, and it makes Ruth’s heart race.

“I don’t know if I can… um.” Ruth takes in Debbie in her Zora costume, the too-tight red leotard already slid half off her shoulder. “I don’t think I can keep my hands off you that long?” she admits. But also, she doesn’t want to give herself the chance to second-guess, to think about who they’re going to hurt if they keep going.

“Shit,” Debbie breathes. “Alright.”

Without preamble, she starts to pull the Liberty Belle bodice and the silver leotard off Ruth’s shoulders and yanks it down. It’s not like Debbie hasn’t seen her body before—they’ve changed in front of each other a thousand times in a thousand dressing rooms—but this feels different. Especially with Debbie staring at her boobs the way she is right now. “Those are ridiculous,” she murmurs.

Ruth feels all the blood drain from her face. “Like…weird ridiculous?”

“Like, amazing ridiculous, idiot.”

“Oh, okay. That’s cool,” Ruth says. That’s cool? What the fuck is she even saying?

When she looks up again, Debbie is pulling down her own top and unhooking her bra. And…

“ Wow, Deb.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Debbie says with a shrug, and it’s so hot how casually egotistical she is.

Before Ruth can overthink it, again, she backs the both of them into the couch and straddles Debbie’s lap. And wow, shit. Skin against skin is…pretty damn nice. How has Ruth never realized she was into women before?

They’re about to fling themselves over a line they’ll never be able to un-cross when Ruth hears the dressing room door open behind her.

“Forgot my belt— Oh my god.” 

Ruth leaps backwards off Debbie’s lap like she’s on fire, her arms flying up to cover her chest. “Sheila!” she squeaks. “Um, this isn’t…” Isn’t what, Ruth? 

Sheila, back in her wolf suit, shades her eyes with one hand and turns away. “Look, uh, you guys do you, it’s not my business,” she says in a rush.

“Sheila, you can’t—” It’s Debbie, who’s rising off the couch, having already pulled her top back up.

“I won’t. Don’t worry. Um… See you back in the room, Ruth.” And she vanishes before either of them can say anything else. 

As soon as the door clicks shut, Debbie’s on her feet and pacing again, and the moment is beyond shattered. “Shit. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Shit shit shit,” she’s muttering.

Ruth’s hands are shaking and clumsy as she pulls the leotard back over her shoulders. “Deb…”

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Debbie is speaking low, like Ruth isn’t even there anymore. “What the actual fuck is—”

Ruth follows her first instinct, which is to grovel. “I’m so sorry. I never should have—”

“No. Don’t you dare apologize to me again,” Debbie interrupts in a low, dangerous voice. “I fucking started this.”

“That’s a radical oversimplification of the text,” Ruth says in a rush.

“Oh my god, shut up! This isn’t a fucking scene study class!”

“Let me abstract this if I want to, Debbie! God!”

Debbie is still wearing a hole in the rug as she paces. “Okay, damage control. We’ll both leave, at different times, then you go find Sheila and tell her… tell her…”

“That it wasn’t what it looked like?! That I was looking for my contact lens that I lost on your nipple?”

A wild laugh erupts from Debbie. “Son of a bitch. We are so fucked.”

“Sheila’s not a gossip. She won’t…”

“You have a boyfriend, Ruth!” Debbie says like she just remembered. Hell, maybe she did just remember. And, of course, unspoken: We just did the same thing you and Mark did to me.

The way she looks at you, Russell had said last weekend. Like she wants to eat you alive or something. Ruth’s throat feels like it’s closing up, and she knows she’s on the verge of a panic attack. She tries to catch her breath. “It was a mistake, okay? Just a weird blip.”

“Oh, fuck off!” Debbie shouts. “Don’t you fucking dare pretend like this hasn’t been brewing for fucking years.”

“Did you know?” Ruth asks, frantic. “Have you been planning this?”

“What?! No! Do you think I’m a fucking sadist?!”

“I don’t know! Are you?!” Ruth’s tone has risen to match hers.

Debbie’s mouth hangs open like she’s about to respond, but instead she goes to her station and jams her clothes into her bag. Ruth just watches, feeling like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff, staring into a howling abyss. Debbie turns to her one last time. She hasn’t even bothered to change out of Ruth’s Zoya costume. “Don’t follow me,” she says, and then she’s gone.

Ruth crumples to the floor, the panic attack smashing into her like a wave. She can’t even begin to grapple with the enormity of what’s just happened, revelation upon guilt upon frustrated desire. She can’t face Sheila tonight, back in their room. She can’t face anything. Maybe she’ll just live here from now on, on this glitter-pocked, sweat-sticky carpet. Maybe if she keeps her eyes closed, shuts the world out, everything will disappear—G.L.O.W., Bash, Russell, Sam, Debbie. Debbie.

Make it worse, Ruth. Make it worse.

Chapter Text

DEBBIE

Screw quitting. Debbie leans against the railing of her balcony, still in full costume, smoking extravagantly. It’s her third cigarette in a chain, and her throat is starting to feel raw. She’ll go cold turkey next week.

There was a point, before everything, before the broken ankle, before GLOW, before the cheating, before “Paradise Cove,” even, when all Debbie wanted to do was give Ruth the world. Because before she started taking, Ruth gave and gave, and the world never gave her anything in return. 

She sees that now for what it was, for what it’s always been, clearly, for the first time: the thing Debbie wanted to give Ruth most of all was herself. 

She still remembers, vividly, the day she first saw Ruth in acting class. Or maybe she’d seen her before, and her eyes had passed over her—another try-hard transplant from the Midwest—but the first time Debbie had really noticed her. 

Their teacher, a bloviating, washed-up Shakespearean whose name Debbie has long since forgotten, was giving another woman in the class notes on her monologue from Chekhov’s Three Sisters. 

“What is missing from your performance is an awareness that Masha is the most pathetic character in the play,” the instructor said.

“I don’t see it that way,” the actress said. 

“Whether you see it that way or not, it’s right there in the text. How old are you, sweetheart?” He loved to use these little pet names to make the women in the class feel small.

“Um. Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one,” he repeated. “And you presume to know more than Anton Chekhov about his own work.”

The woman shrunk into herself. “That’s—that’s not what I meant.”

The teacher looked like he was about to launch into another lecture when a brunette sitting a few folding chairs down from Debbie raised her hand. This was the first time she’d noticed the woman, though this was the fourth session. She looked so earnest and eager that it was almost embarrassing.

“Is there a question, Miss…?”

“Wilder. Ruth,” she said. “Isn’t the whole point of scene study—the whole point of being a thoughtful actor, really—to subjectively interpret the text?”

The teacher frowned. “For a more seasoned actor, sure. But none of you in this class are what anyone would call experienced in the craft.”

“Well that doesn’t sound right,” the woman—Ruth—replied. “Doesn’t Stanislavsky say that an actor should draw from their own personal experiences to inhabit a character? And no matter how untrained they are, isn’t experience always subjective?”

The teacher bore down upon her. “Ms. Wilder, who is teaching this class, you or me?”

“I,” Debbie piped up, before she could stop herself. 

The teacher turned his heavy gaze on her. “Excuse me?”

“You or I, ” Debbie said. “And she’s right. Stanislavsky believed that all actors have something to contribute to interpretation, no matter how inexperienced. So it’s pretty shitty that you’re talking down to us about this.”

“Also, there’s nothing pathetic about Masha,” Ruth said. “She’s got the most complicated arc, and she’s also, arguably, the smartest character in the play.” Debbie turned to look at her, and saw the other woman throwing her a conspiratorial smirk. 

“Not to mention the funniest,” Debbie added, spurred on. “Olga may be the most responsible, and Irina may have the most dramatic character development, but Masha is the one who really thinks for herself.”

The teacher narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps you two would like to teach this class, Ms. Eagan. Seeing as how you’re apparently scholars of Russian dramatic technique.” 

Debbie and Ruth raised their eyebrows at each other. “Sure, why not?” Ruth said.

The teacher’s face was turning red. “Enough. You are here to listen and learn, not argue.”

Debbie picked up her purse and stood in one elegant motion. “Actually, I’m here to get my money’s worth, and you’re a self-important sexist prick who’s wasting my time.” And before he had a chance to say anything back, Debbie made her way to the door, feeling every eye on her. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation.

Out on the street, she leaned against the brick and rooted around in her purse for a cigarette. She probably wasn’t going to get a refund, but screw it. 

“Um. That was amazing.” Ruth stood a few feet away, her own bag slung over her shoulder, grinning at Debbie. 

“Wouldn’t have even said anything if you hadn’t piped up first,” Debbie said. 

“Well I wouldn’t have had the balls to leave if you didn’t.”

“Good for us. Want one?” She held out her pack of Virginia Slims.

“I don’t smoke, but… I don’t suppose you’d wanna grab a drink?” 

“God, yes,” Debbie said. “I need to wash the taste of that man out of my mouth.”

“Great! I know a place nearby.” Ruth pulled a truly hideous jacket from her tote and pulled it around her shoulders. Someone desperately needed to take this woman shopping.

“Lead the way.” They fell into step beside each other, heading north on La Cienega. “Ruth, right? I’m Debbie.”

“Debbie. How do you feel about tiki bars?”

Debbie grimaced, but she was charmed. “Terrible. But whatever, I’m buying.”

Ruth grinned at her. “Only if you let me get the next one.”

“Deal.”

Two drinks became five, became taking a cab to Ruth’s crappy apartment to eat takeout hot wings and bitch about every misogynist they’d met since they landed in Hollywood. That became more drinks a few days later, became them trawling the local notice boards till they found an acting class taught by a woman, for fuck’s sake, became the two of them attached at the hip, became six years of friendship. 

And if there were times along the way when Debbie, drunk and longing, had looked at Ruth a little too long across the sofa, thought about what it might be like to kiss the soft smile off her face, well. It was easy enough to dismiss as a whim, because Debbie was clearly straight. No one who looked like her went to bed with other women. That was for bra burners and softball players, not budding soap stars.

So tonight she’d told Ruth—and herself—that she didn’t recognize what she was feeling until she acted on it. So what? She was pretty sure they both knew that was bullshit. And anyway, it didn’t matter, because it wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t, for a whole mess of reasons—not the least of which was that Ruth had a motherfucking boyfriend.

Debbie had done her best to sabotage the whole Russell thing right from the start. At the time, she’d told herself it was payback for what happened with Mark. But in retrospect, she knew it had been possessiveness, plain and simple. 

And goddammit, she can’t even be mad at Ruth this time. Even if Ruth has been lusting after her, too, Debbie’s pretty sure the other woman never would have acted on it. Especially since they’d only just become friends again. 

“Absence makes the heart grow hornier,” she mutters, tossing her half-smoked cigarette off the edge. She hopes it lands in some schmuck’s hair and lights it on fire.

RUTH

It took Ruth months—years, maybe—to get used to the fact that the hottest, most obviously charismatic person she’d ever encountered wanted to be her friend—had made a particular point of it, in fact. Debbie Eagan was the kind of person who didn’t so much move to L.A. as L.A. moved to her. She was the polar opposite of a pale little weirdo from Omaha with a state college theater BFA and absolutely zero chill. 

Making friends in L.A. had never come easily to Ruth. She wasn’t built for this town, but this was where the jobs were, so she had to find a way to fit in. With Debbie, though, it felt so effortless. The two women fell into an easy rapport almost immediately, and in short order, they insinuated themselves into almost every aspect of each other’s lives. 

When she had first clocked Debbie in class, Ruth took it as a matter of course that she’d never merit Debbie’s notice, that they’d never interact except if they got paired in an acting exercise; the woman was basically a different species from Ruth. And she assumed, in the pettiest part of herself, that Debbie would be vapid, untalented, and icy—a conceited bimbo who would rise through the industry without ever having to work for it.

But even an hour into syrupy margaritas at her favorite shitty tiki bar, Ruth realized that she couldn’t have been more wrong about Debbie (well, except for the conceited part). This woman was whip-smart, witty, driven, and bitingly sarcastic—and wonderfully warm, once she decided she could trust you. Ruth felt pulled to her like iron filings to a magnet. The really wild part, though, was that Debbie seemed to be just as drawn to her.

“Thank god for that asshole, honestly,” Debbie said at the end of that first night, the two of them sitting on Ruth’s porch, passing a bottle of white Zinfandel back and forth.

“Mr. Burgess? The Masha hater?”

Debbie laughed. “Yeah. ’Cause otherwise, you’d never have called him out, and we never would have met. And that would’ve sucked, y’know?”

The words warmed Ruth all the way through. No one had been this nice to her in years. “Totally would’ve sucked. Plus, we’d still be in that godforsaken basement, listening to him judge every woman in the class like a fucking heifer at a fair.”

“Heifer at a…?”

“I grew up in Nebraska,” Ruth said with a shrug.

“I’m from the SoCal burbs. Very different vibe,” Debbie supplied.

“That makes almost too much sense.”

Debbie screwed up her face. “I’m not sure whether I’m flattered or insulted.”

It was 2 a.m., and the wine was almost gone. They’d been hanging out all day, and were now creeping into the next. It became obvious to both of them, even if they never said it, that they were putting off saying goodbye, like two awkward teens at the end of a first date. 

It only took eight years for Ruth to figure out why: because, of course, it had been a romance all along. And she really wishes they’d gotten there back then, instead of spending nearly a decade fucking each other up by degrees.

But even in those early days, something inside Ruth sensed that this friendship would be one of the most significant relationships of her life. Sometimes you meet someone, and you just know you’re in it for the long haul—even when you become enemies, and when you become something else after that.

She finally peels herself from the dressing room floor, shucks off the Liberty Belle costume like a layer of dead skin, and heads upstairs in the guise of mild-mannered failed actress Ruth Wilder.

Sometimes she thinks she made Zoya such a cartoonish villain because it was a way to bring the ugliest part of her to the surface and repackage it as campy entertainment. But considering how many lives she seems to ruin on a biweekly basis (Debbie’s, mostly), it seems like there’s nothing much else left.

Chapter Text

Debbie is annoyed, but not surprised, when there’s a sharp knock on her door around 11pm. After all, she’d kicked the shit out of every piece of cheap gold furniture in the room, screamed into her pillow for a while, and punched the wall like she was Steel Horse in a roid rage.

It’s Yolanda, chewing on a wad of gum and looking profoundly over everything and everyone. Debbie can relate. “Maybe save it for the fuckin’ ring?” she says, deadpan on the edge of pissed off, when Debbie opens the door. “You’re so loud you’re drowning out Arthie’s orgasm noises. She’s real quiet, but, y’know, I like to hear it,” she adds with a wicked grin. 

Oh, right, Debbie thinks, Actual lesbians live next door. “Christ. Sorry.”

She watches Yolanda take her in: still wearing the goddamn Zoya costume, the room behind her completely wrecked, as if Mötley Crüe was staying here rather than a single mom with anger issues.

“Look, I know you and me don’t really talk ever, but…you seem pretty fucked up right now, and I’m feeling the annoying urge to help you out. So.” Yolanda finishes on a shrug. 

Debbie sighs. “Thanks for the offer, but I kinda need to be alone right now.”

“No, you don’t.” Yolanda pushes her way into the room, and Debbie is too emotionally exhausted to put up a fight. “It’s not my style to abandon a fellow bitch in pain. Besides, I don’t care how white and blond you are—you’re gonna get all our asses kicked out of the hotel if you keep trashing this place.”

Debbie searches for a reason to protest but comes up short. She is a bitch, and she is in pain; and if she’s left to her own devices, she might do something stupid like go downstairs to the bar and find some hot idiot to fuck. Or worse, knock on Ruth’s door. 

“Thanks, I guess?” She says.

Yolanda makes a dismissive gesture. “I’ll think of a way for you to pay me back.” Debbie can’t decide how ominous this statement is. “I know you’re not used to having people boss you around, hot producer lady—”

“Why does everyone keep calling me a hot lady?!” Debbie exclaims.

Yolanda gives her a very obvious once-over. “Is that a fuckin’ serious question?”

Debbie groans and plops down on the edge of her bed. 

“Listen, go change out of that nasty-ass costume and take a shower. And then get dressed, ’cause me and Arthie are gonna take you out.”

“I have absolutely no interest in a night on the town right now,” Debbie says.

Yolanda scoffs. “Believe me, neither do I. There’s a chill dive nearby, and you clearly need to unload with a ton of booze, and the walls in this place have fuckin’ ears. You don’t even have to poof out your hair or anything.”

Debbie has no desire to confess her sins to Yolanda and Arthie, but she’s really fucked up right now, and a drink sounds amazing. “Fine.” 

Yolanda’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to fold that easy. I’ll go get Arth. And by the way, you’re buying.”

The shower does help—a lot, actually. Debbie feels like she’s sloughing off a layer of Ruth, starting with her costume and ending with her sweat, and the mess she’d made of Debbie’s hair and makeup. But even after she’s dried off and put on her own clothes, she still feels Ruth’s fingerprints all over her, marking her—and she hates herself for the way that thought turns her on.

When she’s putting her wet hair up in a loose bun, she hears Yolanda and Arthie on the other side of the door, whispering much less quietly than they think they are. 

“Remind me why we’re doing this again?”

“Because she’s a mess, baby.”

“Yeah, but…why you and me? She’s never given either of us the time of day. Plus, she kind of scares the shit out of me.”

“You know how we talked about you trying new things?”

“Sure, but this doesn’t sound nearly as fun as me eating you out.”

“Listen, sweetheart—it goes: cunnilingus, then have a drink with a sad scary lady, then maybe we try the strap-on.”

“Okay. Sold.”

Debbie yanks the door open. “The ‘scary sad lady’ would love to not hear every detail of your sex life.”

Arthie turns bright red, but Yolanda just smirks. “Come on, Debbie, don’t be a homophobe.”

The place is definitely a dive. With its vaguely tiki-inspired decor and scuffed-up floors, it reminds Debbie of the bar on La Cienega that Ruth took her to all those years ago. It’s not the kind of place Debbie would usually go, but Yolanda is right—it is nice to be somewhere that’s not the Fan-Tan. 

“So spill,” Yolanda says. “Who done you wrong? Aside from Bash, obviously.” They’re perched on scuffed stools at the bar, each with a hideous blue concoction in front of them. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Debbie replies. “Can we just drink?” She sips her cocktail, which tastes like Pixy Stix and urinal water.

Surprisingly, it’s Arthie who speaks up after a short silence. “This is about Ruth, isn’t it?”

Debbie tries to school her face into a neutral expression. “No. Ruth’s…fine. We’re fine.”

“Oooh, you called it in one, babe!” Yolanda exclaims, giving her girlfriend a high five.

“I just said we’re fine,” Debbie hisses.

“People only use the word ‘fine’ when something is as messy as shit.”

Both women are watching Debbie intently now. She’s considering standing up and walking out, but honestly, she’s so tired of putting on a chill, disinterested mask. Bottling everything up is what got her backed into this corner in the first place. “If we’re gonna talk about this, I’m gonna need a lot more drinks.”

Yolanda grins like the Cheshire Cat. “I’ve been meaning to try the scorpion bowl here.”

One scorpion bowl, two Singapore slings, and god knows how many tequila shots later, Debbie’s tongue has loosened considerably.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Arthie says, her words slurring together. “You’re gay? Me too!”

Yolanda shoots her a proud look, and even in her hammered state, Debbie senses she’s only seeing the tip of an iceberg of a much longer conversation.

“I’m not gay,” Debbie says. “I mean, not that it’s bad to be gay. It’s cool that you guys are gay. But I’m not gay.” 

Yolanda raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, I remember giving myself that pep talk back in the day. Didn’t take.” She throws a possessive arm around Arthie for emphasis.

“But I’m not!” Debbie insists. “I fuck, like, so many guys. I mean, they’re all idiots, but they’re super hot, and I like their dicks.” (Is she being loud? She feels like she’s being loud.)

“Ah, so you’re bi,” Yolanda says.

“What? No. I can’t be bisexual.” The last word comes out in a stage whisper. “I have a child.”

The other two women trade a glance before erupting into a wild fit of laughter.

“Why is that funny?”

“Honey,” Yolanda says once she’s caught her breath. “You are so far up heterosexuality’s asshole that you can’t see the twat when it’s staring you right in the face.”

“Seriously. What the hell does being a mother have to do with your sexual preferences?” Arthie adds.

Debbie considers this. “Well, y’know…bisexuals, like, trick people and have threesomes all the time and shit.”

Yolanda snorts. “You’ve been watching too many soap operas.”

“I was on a soap opera!”

“There’s your problem right there.”

Debbie takes a long pull of whatever sickly-sweet concoction the bartender last poured her. She is going to have a vicious hangover tomorrow. She leans toward Arthie and Yolanda, whispering, “And even if I was bisexual —”

“Girl, you can say ‘bisexual’ at a regular human volume. It’s not a fucking racial slur.”

Debbie clears her throat. “Even if I was…bisexual…Ruth has a boyfriend. I helped her cheat.”

“I think you get a free pass on that if it’s a gay awakening,” Yolanda says.

Arthie grasps her arm. “No, hon—Ruth cheated with Debbie’s ex-husband. That’s why they got divorced.”

Yolanda’s eyes go wide as saucers. “Whaaaaaaat?!”

“And Ruth and Debbie were best friends before it all happened,” Arthie adds.

“Holy shit, Debbie, that’s—”

Debbie throws her palms out in front of her. “Can we please stop loudly recapping the most sordid parts of my personal life?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Arthie says. “She needed context.”

Yolanda is watching Debbie like she’s a Kathleen Turner movie. “So…how long have you known?”

“Known what?”

“That you wanted to jump Ruth’s bones.”

Debbie hides her face behind her palm. “Can we not say it that way?”

Arthie leans in. “When did you know you wanted to make sweet, sweet love to Ruth?”

“Oh, my god.”

“When did you know you wanted to ride the Ruth train?” Yolanda says.

“When did you know you wanted to boink Ruth?”

“When did you know you wanted to stick your fingers up Ruth’s—”

“I don’t know, okay?” Debbie interjects, desperate to stop Yolanda from finishing that sentence. “Maybe for a while? I guess?”

“What’s ‘a while’?”

Debbie groans. “I mean, I don’t think I really figured it out till we were fucking straddling each other on the couch in the dressing room a few hours ago. But in retrospect? Probably for like…years? Ugh.” Christ, she’d never be this forthcoming if she weren’t so drunk. Liquid courage—or liquid stupid.

“Note to self: Don’t sit on that couch anymore,” Arthie murmurs.

“Oh my god, we didn’t fuck. We were just…feeling each other up.” Debbie buries her face in her hands. “God, that sounds so weird to say. This is Ruth I’m talking about!”

Yolanda raises her glass. “Welcome to the rainbow.”

“It’s so weird,” Arthie says. “I always thought Ruth had a thing for Sam.”

Debbie shoots her a death glare. “I beg you not to bring that man into this.”

Yolanda gasps in apparent delight. “Ooh, girl! You’re jealous!”

“But it makes sense now,” Arthie says, as if the other two hadn’t spoken. “The way you two can’t leave each other alone even though you, like, hate each other.”

“That’s the thing,” Debbie says, warming to her subject. “We don’t hate each other. I mean, I did hate her for a long time, but we buried the hatchet recently. We were trying to be friends again.”

“How’s that working out for ya?”

“Not great, Yolanda!” Debbie crosses her arms on the bar and rests her forehead against them. The room is starting to spin.

“Or maybe really well,” Arthie says. “I mean, obviously Ruth’s gotta figure out the stuff with her boyfriend. But, y’know, maybe this is where your friendship was always headed.”

Debbie raises her head and looks between her two companions, stricken. “I can’t be bisexual! It sounds exhausting!”

“Anything worth fighting for is,” Yolanda replies. “But you seem up to it. You’re a friggin’ lady producer in a world ruled by old white dicks!”

“I mean, she’s still white,” Arthie says.

“Yeah, but she has a vagina. And she’s not old.”

Debbie feels like she’s having an out-of-body experience. But in the back of her booze-soaked brain, she knows she’s grateful for these two women—who were practically strangers to her a few hours ago, even though they’d been working together for almost two years—for giving her space to lay all this shit out on the table.

But at the forefront of her mind, projected in lurid technicolor, is Ruth, Ruth, Ruth. How readily she’d kissed Debbie back; the feel of her thigh pressing into Debbie; the hunger in her voice; the thought of what might’ve happened if Sheila hadn’t wandered in and doused them in a bucket of cold reality. She wonders what Ruth’s doing right now, if she’s thinking about Debbie, too. (I mean, of course she is. Ruth should be so lucky.)

And then she turns around in her stool, stumbles a few feet, and spews electric blue vomit all over the sticky floor.

Chapter Text

Ruth is standing outside her own door when she realizes that she absolutely does not want to go in there right now. It’s not that she thinks Sheila is going to be a jerk about it. Sheila’s specifically not a jerk; Ruth has come to rely on her friendship and advice over the time they’ve been roommates. It’s that Ruth doesn’t want to face it right now, to make her actions legible to someone outside of the situation. Because honestly, she can’t read the writing yet herself.

So who does she want to talk to? No one. Not a single one of the GLOW women, her ad hoc family who she usually has no trouble unloading on. And definitely, definitely not Sam. 

Her eyes drift over to Debbie’s door. 

Don’t follow me. 

And that’s how Ruth finds herself at a sink in one of the casino’s public restrooms, doing her best to wash off her Liberty Belle makeup with soap and water. When she discovers there are only hand dryers and no paper towels, she has to resort to using toilet paper to dry her face. She assesses the outcome in the chintzy gilded mirror and, oh god, it’s so much worse. Sparkly eyeliner fans out across her forehead, mascara runs from her eyes, and little white bits of toilet paper are stuck to her cheeks. And then there’s the lipstick, a bright red smudge careening off her lips like burnt rubber on a highway. (She’s pretty sure it was Debbie who did that last part, not the toilet paper.)

She weighs her options: a paper bag over her head with eye holes cut out? Sleeping upright in one of the stalls? Or just…

“Fuck it,” she says aloud, squares her shoulders, and gives her reflection an all-American cornfed wink. Then she struts out onto the casino floor, doing her best to pretend to be…well, Debbie.

She’s two point five mint juleps deep at the bar when she hears someone let out a long sigh beside her. 

“Girl. What?”

She turns around in her barstool to find Bobby Barnes, looking extremely alarmed.

“No, you what,” Ruth shoots back intelligently. She’s always been a lightweight.

Bobby gently extracts the remaining mint julep from her hand and signals the bartender. “Frank, close her out for me, will you, hon? You can put it on my tab.”

“I can pay for my own drinks,” she grouses.

“I know you can, babe. But this is an emergency.”

And then he’s pulling her by the arm off the main floor, into the empty cabaret theater, backstage, and into his dressing room. At a certain point, Ruth just lets herself be led. It would be nice, she thinks, to be out of the public eye while she’s melting down.

Bobby sits her down in front of his mirror and kneels in front of her with a pot of cold cream. He begins to spread it on her face with surprising gentleness, and Ruth is worried she might cry.

“Thanks,” she murmurs.

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more obviously signaling ‘breakdown’ without even saying a word.”

Ruth laughs weakly. “It’s a gift.”

Once he’s finished, he says, “The john’s over there. Rinse that stuff off, then come back here and we’ll chat.”

“Okay.”

“And then,” he adds, “You are going to tell Auntie Bobby what your damage is.”

“...Do I have to?”

He spreads his arms to encompass the room around him. “Price of admission to my inner sanctum.”

A few minutes later, Ruth emerges from the bathroom and plops back onto the chair. 

Bobby spins her around to face the mirror, standing behind her. “I know I haven’t known you that long, Ruth, but I am getting a pretty clear message from those gimlet eyes.”

“And what’s that?”

“That you’re having a sexual identity crisis.”

Ruth scoffs. “That is extremely presumptuous.”

Bobby quirks an eyebrow. “I’m not hearing a no.”

“What are you, some kind of…feelings wizard?”

“Only for closet cases, darling.”

Ruth weighs her options. The juleps have worn off by this point, so it’s not like she’s got the classic “I was wasted” excuse to lean on. But then she catches Bobby’s gaze in the mirror and considers: They may be recent acquaintances, but he seems like a genuinely kind person. Also, he’s one of very few openly gay people Ruth knows. (Not that she’s gay, necessarily.)

“Okay, fine.”

Bobby tosses her a bottle of moisturizer and instructs her to put it on her face (“Take it from an old queen—your pores will thank you”) and makes them both tea in a battered electric kettle. Then, he reclines on the sofa across from her and makes the sign of the cross—backwards.

“Tell me your sins, my child.”

Ruth looks into the depths of her chamomile. “It’s…Debbie.”

“Obviously.”

“Is it? Obvious?”

“Are you kidding me? The sexual tension between you two has its own heat signature.”

“Really?”

“And that wardrobe switch thing you did tonight? Kinky.”

Ruth feels herself blushing and laughs nervously to cover it. Before she can think better of it, she takes a deep breath and launches into the Ballad of Debbie and Ruth: their friendship, their falling out. She finds herself warming to the subject, thinking of how the two of them have grown in and around each other, Debbie the tree, Ruth the vine creeping along her branches. She doesn’t know who she’d be without Debbie; and she flatters herself to think that she doesn’t know who Debbie would be without her.

“So you sublimated your desire for her by fucking her husband,” Bobby interrupts. When Ruth stares at him open-mouthed, he adds, “What? I was a psychology major. I read a lot of Freud.”

“I… Maybe?”

“No, definitely. Continue.”

Ruth chooses to breeze past this and continues on, eliding the part where she aborted Mark’s baby, because, well…that’s a bit too soap opera. (Also, she frankly feels like that’s something between her and Sam, no matter how much of a dick he’s been lately.) When she gets to the ankle break, Bobby slaps a hand over his mouth in theatrical shock, his eyes full of something like glee. But he doesn’t interrupt. She continues on through their recent reconciliation, then stops.

“And then tonight…” Bobby prompts.

“Tonight, we, uh.” She can’t look him in the eye for this. “We…kissed? In the dressing room?”

Bobby grins. “Like a little…peck on the lips?”

“No, like… Like we made out and started tearing other’s clothes off. Jesus.” She lets her head fall into her hands. Her cheeks are hot as a parking lot in Vegas summer.

“Yes! Get you some, Ruth!”

“No! This is bad! It’s really bad!”

“Why?”

“Well just when we were…y’know…getting into it…Sheila walked in. And then we kind of…came back down. And Debbie started freaking out. And then I started freaking out. And then we yelled at each other. And then she left.”

“Sounds like you’ve both got a case of baby-gay cold feet,” Bobby says, eyeing her shrewdly.

“It’s not… I have a boyfriend.”

Bobby makes a dismissive gesture. “And Anthony Perkins has a wife. What’s your point?”

“That it’s the infidelity thing all over again! I cheated again, and Debbie is gonna go right back to hating my guts.”

“So, let me get this right: You kissed her?”

“Well…no. She kissed me, actually.”

“Ruth.” He tilts his head. “She initiated it. Not you.”

“Yeah, I guess. But. It’s still my fault.”

He rises and snatches the mug of tea from her hand. “Okay. We’re switching back to booze. I can’t be fully sober if I’m going to be absorbing this level of self-recrimination.”

Ruth watches as he dumps their tea in the sink, pulls a bottle of Hendricks from a trunk of boas, and pours them both a generous helping. “Debbie started this. She knew what she was getting into. That lady may be a lot of things, but she certainly knows her own mind.”

“She’ll still find a way to blame me,” Ruth says, feeling microscopic.

Bobby hands her the mug. “If she does, then she’s not fucking worth it, and you deserve better.”

Ruth forces down a swallow, and then remembers she hates gin. Almost as much as she hates herself. “I’m not a good person, Bobby.” To her profound embarrassment, she starts to cry.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Bobby crouches in front of her again and wraps her in a bracing hug. “Everybody fucks up. That’s just part of being human.”

“Yeah, but I fucked up bad,” Ruth gets out between sobs, her voice muffled by his shoulder.

“That’s probably because you spent your whole life trying so hard not to fuck up,” he says. “Take it from a queen who spent his whole childhood trying to be a good little straight boy: That shit bottles up, and then it explodes.”

“Yeah?”

Bobby pulls away and reaches out for a Kleenex box on the vanity. “Yeah.”

Ruth takes one and blows her nose, hard. “I don’t know if I’m…gay.” The word tastes strange in her mouth. “I think I just like Debbie.”

“Hey, listen, you call yourself whatever you wanna call yourself,” he says. “You don’t need to give me a thesis statement.”

She gives him a watery smile. “Thanks. For everything.”

Bobby shrugs. “You looked like you needed a place to hide.”

She takes another drink. “So...what should I do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Drive out into the desert and crawl into a hole and shrivel up into a mummy and then let Russell and Debbie give dueling eulogies at my funeral after they find the body?”

“Let’s try that again,” Bobby says.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to lose Debbie. And I don’t want to hurt Russell. And I don’t want to have to talk to Sheila about it.”

“That’s a lot of don’ts. What do you want?”

Ruth tries her best to push beyond all the barriers she’s built—the self-loathing, the guilt, the sense of duty, the crushing desire to not ever have anyone be mad at her ever, and finds a simple answer. 

“Debbie,” she says. “I want Debbie.”

Bobby smiles and grasps her by the shoulders. “And that,” he says, “is what we in the biz call a breakthrough.”

Chapter Text

Debbie and Ruth have been doing a frankly remarkable job of not talking about what happened, considering that they’re quite literally all over each other every night in the ring—Debbie’s head wedged between Ruth’s thighs, or Ruth’s tits pressing against Debbie’s own when she’s pinned to the mat. And they’re not even doing the silent treatment; they’ve been cordial with each other when they’re waiting to strut out under the lights, when they pass each other in the hallway.

Truly, Debbie can’t tell if this counts as growth or the biggest backslide they’ve made yet. It reminds her, queasily, of when she was thirteen and her parents were separated but still living under one roof, moving past and around each other like dancers pirouetting offstage, nodding dead-eyed at over a silent dinner table. 

She wants to take Ruth and shake her by the shoulders, snap them both out of it, slap her or kiss her or tear her clothes off, or all three in rapid succession. Debbie’s so horny for her, but she’s also so angry at her, and at herself. So, you know. Same as it fucking ever was.

But Debbie knows she’s just as much of a participant in this tepid charade as Ruth is, and she doesn’t know how to break the spell—or how to talk about what happened, and what it means, without burning down the bridge they’d just rebuilt. 

And she can’t. She can’t lose Ruth. She’s torn open enough to admit that to herself now. So this will have to do. 

Besides, she’s leaving soon, which is best for everyone—certainly for Randy, and certainly for Debbie’s wounded pride. But maybe most of all, for her and Ruth. Given time and distance, they can let this all blow over, return to each other someday as friends who had this one crazy night that they never need to talk about again.

By the time they’re on the road, a caravan of glitter and hormones streaming west out of Vegas, Debbie can’t remember who suggested the camping trip. But ever since, well, everything, the girls have been punchy, feeling the monotony of doing the same show night after night, the claustrophobia of the dressing room. So, open spaces it is. 

She watches the girls bantering as they unload sleeping bags and six-packs in the parking lot, and Debbie feels preemptively nostalgic for what she’s about to leave behind. 

And then there’s Ruth, in maximum embarrassing nerd mode: wearing a stupid vest and visor, gazing up at Red Rock Canyon and bloviating about the beauty of the American landscape. It infuriates Debbie that she finds this shit adorable—at least when it’s Ruth.

When Ruth suggests a six-mile uphill hike to the group at large, Debbie does something absolutely unhinged, under the circumstances:

“You’re gonna hike?” Ruth’s face communicates a pleasant and terrified sort of shock.

“Yeah! I need the exercise. And…you know…one last hurrah before I pack it in.” It’s as she says this that Debbie realizes she hasn’t actually told Ruth she’s quitting the show.

“Pack what in?”

Here goes. Debbie aims for her trademark deadpan but falls short. “Um. I can’t do a whole year in Vegas. So I’m gonna go home to Randy and collect my checks. Bash wants the show to himself? He can have it.”

She doesn’t know how she expects Ruth to respond, but the last thing she would’ve bet on is for her to say nothing at all. Watching her friend’s face fall in silent disappointment, Debbie feels her heart crack a little, and all she wants to do is gather Ruth’s tiny frame up in her arms and tell her it’s gonna be okay—she’s not losing Debbie for good, just losing her for a little while. But she’s not gonna do that for a whole host of reasons, chief among them that Sheila and Reggie are standing right there. 

Debbie shouldn’t be surprised when the other two women leave them in the dust—literally—or that Ruth’s whole Eagle Scout act turns out to be pure theater. And honestly, it does all feel like the setup for a one-act: two women who have been avoiding talking about the hard truth for two weeks now, literally lost together in the wilderness. 

“Fuck my life,” Debbie grumbles as they make their way up the trail (and is it even a trail?) the sun baking them like a pair of Thanksgiving turkeys. She’s suddenly envious of Ruth’s stupid visor and stupid hiking boots, as she struggles on in her flimsy Keds without even the benefit of sunglasses.

“Sorry,” Ruth says. 

“What for? We both got ourselves into this mess.”

“Yeah, but…it was my idea.”

Debbie stops in her tracks, blocking Ruth’s way. “Can you just. Can you not?”

“Can I not what?”

“Apologize. You’re always fucking apologizing. It’s exhausting. I’m not here to give you…absolution or whatever.”

Ruth looks down at the sand, shuffling her feet. “I’m not asking you for that,” she says in a small voice.

“Aren’t you, though? Isn’t that what you’re always asking me for? I’m not a fucking priest, Ruth.”

Then Ruth meets Debbie’s eyes, and finally, finally, gets pissed off. “Y’know, my entire world doesn’t revolve around you, Debbie. Did you ever stop to consider that I’m apologizing because I’m trying hard as I fucking can to be a nice person who takes responsibility for my actions? I’m not saying I’m good at it, but, god, I have to start somewhere.” She begins pacing. “I’m making an effort, you know? I’m not running away.”

Debbie feels a familiar anger rising in her chest, and it makes her feel grounded for the first time since before that night in the dressing room. “Oh, fuck you if you think that’s what I’m doing. This isn’t about you, Ruth. It’s about standing up to Bash’s bullshit. It’s about being a part of my fucking child’s fucking life.”

“Oh, look at me, I’m Debbie!” Ruth waves her arms around in the air. “My life is soooo much more significant than anyone else’s, because I’m a producer and I have a toddler that I use as a human shield anytime anyone challenges me on anything!”

And shit, that stings. “Fuck. You,” she spits, and starts trudging up the path as fast as she can. 

“There’s only one trail, Debbie!” Ruth shouts from behind her. “You can’t exactly walk away from me right now like you fucking always do!”

Seemingly of their own volition, Debbie’s legs carry her back to Ruth. She crowds her, up in her face, and the other woman doesn’t step back an inch. “I would rather wander off into the mountains and die of a fucking scorpion bite and have them find my rotting corpse up here three months from now than spend one more second with you.”

“Scorpions don’t bite,” Ruth spits. “They sting.”

“Is that seriously what you’re taking away from this, you fucking lunatic nerd?”

To Debbie’s shock, Ruth’s voice breaks. “It’s all I’ve got.”

“Oh, my god! Stop underestimating yourself!” Debbie shouts. This close, flecks of her saliva fly into Ruth’s face.

“That’s easy for you to say! You’re a fucking goddess!” Ruth shoots back.

“Shut up!”

“Make me!”

Debbie has no idea who moves in first. They crash into each other, tongues and teeth and the salt of desert sweat. It’s ninety degrees out here, but the fire burning inside Debbie, forcing its way out of her mouth and down Ruth’s throat, is so much hotter. She’ll keep this going for as long as she can, because she knows the second they break apart, it might break everything else, too.

But after a brief, savage infinity, Ruth beats her to the punch. She wrenches herself away from Debbie, retrieves her walking stick from where it’s fallen on the ground, and plants herself a few feet up the trail. “Don’t follow me,” she says, and stomps away, seeking higher ground. 

And whether a scorpion bites or stings, shit. Having her own words thrown back in her face fucking hurts.

Chapter Text

It takes Ruth about fifteen minutes of stomping petulantly uphill to admit to herself that when she told Debbie not to follow her, she in fact meant, “Please follow me.”

But she’s made her bed, and stubbornness alone demands that she sleep in it. Trying to avoid making Orpheus’s mistake, she doesn’t bother looking behind her to see how far back Debbie is—or if she did, in fact, make good on her promise to go off-trail.

They had both been mutually doing their best to avoid all but the briefest interactions with each other since…that night, as if saying anything beyond “good morning” or “let’s tweak the suplex for the matinee” might cause a literal bomb to go off. So Ruth was gobsmacked when Debbie asked to tag along on this (admittedly fucking stupid) hike. 

Did she actually want to talk about it? Forfeit this game of emotional chicken they’ve been playing for weeks? Or did she, as Debbie often did at her worst moments, want an excuse to put herself in close enough proximity with Ruth to allow her to do something rash and impulsive, and afterwards acquit herself of all blame?

Probably the last option, judging by that kiss. Ruth’s got a rapidly drying cut on her lip to prove it, from where Debbie sunk her teeth in as if to mark her: Mine—when I feel like it. 

It took all of Ruth’s willpower to pull back from the pure physical release of that embrace, but what Bobby had said had made an impression: If she blames you, then she’s not fucking worth it, and you deserve better.

It doesn’t come naturally for Ruth to consider the idea that she deserves better, or that she deserves anything really. She’s a liability at best in polite company; she’s had to muscle her way into every room, into every social circle. So when she does actually make it inside, she feels obligated to be demonstratively grateful, to apologize for her presence in a place where she clearly has no business being.

Her whole life, she’s been told that she’s too much—too eager, too pushy, too loud, too stubborn. It’s a big part of what drew her to Debbie in the first place; the other woman was also too much, but she was a fucking bombshell, so she usually got away with. And when things had been good between them, she made Ruth feel brave like no one else ever had.

But now, it’s Debbie herself Ruth has to walk away from, if she’s ever going to get a chance at anything even remotely like self-respect. Even though she feels drawn to Debbie like a beacon in the dark, even though she feels torn open over the thought of her leaving the show for good. 

Besides, she has some news of her own to tell Debbie, and she’s been looking for the right moment. Now, it seems like that will never come.

Half an hour later, Ruth stops to catch her breath on a particularly beautiful promontory, trying to turn down the volume on her swirling thoughts and simply admire the stark beauty of the desert stretching out beneath her. The towers and pyramids and high-rises of Las Vegas rise in the far distance like the Emerald City—if the Emerald City were a vapid, ubercapitalist dystopia.

But that’s not entirely fair. Vegas has given her a lot these past few months: steady work, a room at least five times nicer than her old one at the Dusty Spur, a community of women around her, and, vitally, a clarifying distance from which to observe her life back in L.A.

It’s also given her Debbie, in ways she never thought she’d get to have her.

Ruth takes a small swig from her canteen, mindful to preserve what remains, and it suddenly strikes her that Debbie didn’t bring any water with her—and she’s out there somewhere in this egg-frying dry heat, rapidly losing fluids as she sweats through her (extremely sexy) midriff blouse.

And that’s when it hits Ruth: no matter how much she wanted to preserve her pride, splitting up out here in the back of beyond was a dangerously stupid idea. All the other feelings wrestling inside her are drowned out by a sudden, all-consuming panic. Where’s Debbie? And for that matter, where is Ruth ? She looks around her in a wide circle, searching for any kind of landmark, any other hikers. But all she sees is rock and dust, and all she hears is the dry wind through the sparse patches of switchgrass.

“Fuuuuuck!” she shouts, and hears the expletive bounces off the bare rock, echoing back at her as if in admonishment. 

Ruth sits on a nearby boulder and absently bites her nails, an old, bad habit from her teen years. (“How are you going to catch a nice boy with chewed-up stubs like that?” her grandmother had frequently scolded.) 

Her mind unhelpfully begins to conjure disastrous scenarios in vivid detail: Debbie fainting from heatstroke, vultures circling overhead. Debbie mauled by a mountain lion. Debbie slipping on a rock and falling off a cliff. Debbie’s mutilated body at the bottom of the canyon.

She can’t picture her life without Debbie in it. Or rather, she can, but with Debbie still out there somewhere, living the luxurious existence she’s always wanted, Ruth occasionally seeing her get interviewed on a talk show and smiling wistfully at the TV. I knew her once, a long time ago. 

But she can’t picture the world without Debbie in it, with her bright, ferocious fire snuffed out forever. And it would be all Ruth’s fault—ten thousand times worse than cheating with Mark. She’d never be able to live with herself, not in a thousand years. The thought of a universe without Debbie Eagan is a blade plunged into her chest, up to the hilt.

Ruth looks out over the endless horizon, hazy in the fading daylight, and admits something to herself that she’d been keeping in a locked box for a very long time, and is only maybe just now realizing: She isn’t just addicted to Debbie’s attention. She doesn’t just lust after Debbie. She loves Debbie. She’s in love with Debbie.

She presses the heels of her hand into her eyelids, seeing stars in the sudden blackness. Her visor falls backwards onto the ground, but she doesn’t bother to pick it up. Let her get sunburned to a crisp; she’s the biggest fucking masochistic idiot on the western seaboard.

Chapter Text

Once again, Debbie’s pride has gotten her stuck between a rock and a hard place—except this time, it’s literal. She’s spent the last ten minutes trying to wriggle her foot out of a crevice between two boulders to no avail. 

She isn’t wearing a watch, but she’d guess it’s been a couple of hours since she and Ruth split up, most of which Debbie spent pacing back and forth and grumbling to herself before finally setting off in the general direction Ruth had gone. She’s hot, she’s tired, she’s thirsty, and she’s pretty sure her body is just one giant sunburn at this point. 

She’s tried yanking her ankle, scrabbling around the sole of her shoe with her nails (which are all broken now; that manicure had sure been a waste of $20), and wiggling her foot inside her sneaker till it went numb, all to no avail.

“You fucking idiot!” she shouts, not sure if the idiot in question is this rock or her or Ruth. All three, probably.

“Debbie?” 

Debbie wonders if she’s having aural hallucinations, or if that’s actually Ruth’s voice coming from somewhere further up the trail. “Ruth?” she shouts back, looking around her for any sign of another person.

“Debbie! Where are you?” 

“Uh…near some rocks and shit? I’m stuck!”

“Keep talking! I’ll follow your voice!”

It’s a prompt that would ordinarily be very easy for Debbie to follow, but the events of the day so far have made it a tall order. “Okay! I… I really hate hiking! If we get out of here, I’m never leaving civilization again! And also, um, I fucked up, okay?” It’s easier to shout into the empty air than say it to Ruth’s face. “I don’t know why I can’t stop jumping down your throat. I shouldn’t have said all that shit to you.”

Debbie hears the telltale sound of boots crunching on gravel, and finally, Ruth appears around the corner. Relief courses through her. A part of her had been terrified that the other woman really was going to leave her behind. But she realizes now that that was never an option. No matter what’s going on between them right now, Ruth would never leave her to be snake bait.

She watches Ruth’s expression go from panicked to soft when she sees her. She jogs toward her, and before Debbie can formulate a reaction, Ruth pulls her into a crushing hug. 

“You’re not dead.” 

“Not dead,” Debbie agrees, returning the embrace. Maybe they should put themselves in life-threatening situations more often, if it makes reconciliation this easy. 

Ruth pulls away and takes in the situation. “Oh god, your foot. What can I do?”

“I don’t know, honestly. I’ve tried everything. Maybe you can…?”

Ruth beats her to it, kneeling in the sand and using both her hands to try to pry Debbie’s shoe free.

“Ow!” Debbie cries out when starts to turn it at an odd angle.

“Sorry!” Ruth takes her hands away immediately. 

“I mean, only fair that you get a chance to break my ankle, too,” Debbie deadpans.

Ruth glares up at her. “How about we don’t do that right now.”

Debbie laughs a little hysterically. “Yeah, yeah, fine. You’re right. Any other ideas?”

They try both pulling on Debbie’s calf, and Ruth even tries to use her walking stick to lever her foot out of the rock. Nothing works. Then, Ruth’s eyes go wide in a way that Debbie knows means she’s had a brainstorm.

“Wait, what if I just…” She crouches back down and unties the laces of Debbie’s Ked. “Okay, now try to just relax your foot and wiggle it free. Don’t force it.”

Debbie does as she’s told for the first time in her whole life, and amazingly, it works. She lets her muscles go loose, angles her foot around the curves of the rock, and it comes free, leaving her sneaker behind.

“Holy shit. You’re a genius,” she says, sitting down on a nearby boulder and rolling out her ankle. 

“Does it hurt?” Ruth asks. 

“Not really. A little bruised, maybe.”

Ruth takes Debbie’s bare foot in her hands without preamble, rubbing her fingers along it, feeling for damage. “Is any of that painful?”

“No,” Debbie says. She does not say: Why is it weirdly hot that you’re giving me a foot massage on the edge of a cliff right now?

“Good.” Ruth loops back to extricate Debbie’s shoe from where it’s stuck, planting her stick under it. “This should be easier now,” she says, and pushes down on the other end. As if choreographed, the little white sneaker breaks free, describes a high arc in the air, and flips over the edge into the void.

Ruth’s hands fly to her mouth. “Oh, no. Oh, no!” she squeaks.

And Debbie loses it. A rumble starts in her chest that grows into a giggle that grows into a guffaw that grows into a full-on laughing fit. Ruth watches her open-mouthed, clearly not expecting that reaction, and joins in after a few seconds. For who knows how long, the two of them are doubled over with mirth, the absurdity of their situation—not just of today, but of forever, basically—having broken them both.

The fit finally subsides, and Debbie clutches a stitch in her side and catches her breath. “That was the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen,” she says.

Ruth comes to sit down beside her, wiping away tears. “Glad I could entertain.”

“No, no, my Keds get all the credit for that comic timing. Hey, do you have—”

Once again, Ruth is one step ahead of her. She passes her the canteen slung over her shoulder, and Debbie drinks greedily.

Ruth pulls it away after a few gulps. “Save some for later,” she says. “Who knows when we’ll get out of here.”

Debbie nods, handing back the canteen, and she waits for Ruth to speak next. She’s worried that if she starts the conversation they need to have, it’ll just lead to another fight.

“So,” says Ruth.

“So,” says Debbie.

“So I broke up with Russell last week.”

Debbie whips her head around. “You what ?”

“I broke up with Russell,” Ruth repeats, barely looking at Debbie.

“Why?”

Ruth flings her arms out. “Why do you think?”

Debbie’s heart feels like it’s crawled up into her throat and gotten stuck there. “Fuck. Okay. How did he, uh…take it?”

“I mean, he was sad, but he wasn’t angry or anything. I think he kind of already knew that I wasn’t as invested in the relationship as he was.”

“Do you think you would’ve broken up with him if we hadn’t…” Debbie swallows nervously. 

Ruth glances at her. “I mean, maybe we would have lasted for a few more months, but…yeah. I think I would have anyway. He’s a really good guy, and he deserves someone who…knows what they want, I guess. Who’s not gonna let him down.”

“Oh.” There’s a fucked-up part of Debbie that’s almost annoyed that Ruth did the decent thing here—like, why couldn’t have she figured out how to be a better person two years ago? But she knows that’s not fair. “Did you, um. Did you tell him? About…”

“I told him there was someone else,” Ruth says. She laughs mirthlessly. “He thought… He thought it was Sam.”

“Sam?! Jesus. Did you set him straight?”

“Of all the phrasings, Deb.”

Debbie snorts, but doesn’t say anything.

“I told him it wasn’t anyone he knew. I don’t think he believed me.”

“Yeah, no shit! As if you’ve made any extracurricular friends in Vegas.”

Ruth makes one of her trademark indignant noises. “There’s Bobby!”

“Ah, yes, the most likely culprit.” Debbie’s tone drips sarcasm. 

“Anyway, your secret’s safe,” Ruth says.

“My secret?”

Ruth shoots her a nervous grin. “Oh, as if you don’t want to bury what happened the other night six feet underground.” Her tone is light, but the implication isn’t.

Debbie considers this. Does she want to bury it? A long silence stretches between them. It's dusk now, and the air is quickly turning from baking to brisk. “I never said that.” she speaks so quietly, she half-hopes a gust of wind will drown out her words.

She sees Ruth turn to her out of the corner of her eye, and knows without looking the exact expression of naked hope she’ll find on her face. Debbie’s no good at this sappy shit, at showing her soft underbelly, at letting anyone get close to her tender insides—least of all Ruth Wilder.

“You—” Ruth begins, and then drops off.

Debbie sighs. “I’d be a moron to keep lying to myself about what’s going on with us, Ruth. What’s been going on with us, for longer than I’ve wanted to admit to myself.”

She tentatively meets Ruth’s eye, and sees her clam up, looking like a child who knows they’ll get to have ice cream later, but only if they’re very good.

“Say something, for chrissakes,” Debbie snaps. “Stop waiting for my permission. Be honest. Talk to me like you used to, before…before all this shit between us.”

Ruth looks down, seeming to weigh something in her mind. “I’ve never been honest with you,” she says after a long moment, her voice surprisingly firm. “Because I’ve never been honest with myself.”

“About what?”

“I…care about you, Debbie. A lot. I guess that part, at least, has been pretty obvious for a long time. I mean, even when I did…what I did…I cared about you. Hell, in retrospect, I’m pretty sure it was all about you. Mark was just…”

“…the thing standing in the way,” Debbie finishes for her.

Ruth stares at her for a long beat. “Yeah.” 

Debbie chuckles, her throat dry from what’s probably mild dehydration.

“I spent a long time trying to figure out why on earth I did that. Truly, it was a total mystery to me at the time, aside from me just doing my classic self-destructive bullshit. I mean, I never wanted Mark! I wanted you.”

Debbie feels tears building somewhere behind her eyes, because at some point, that old anger has dissolved into a bog-deep hurt. “You had me,” she says.

“Did I?” Ruth asks. “Because I feel like after you got ‘Paradise Cove,’ and married Mark, and then had Randy, I was, like, this spare part left behind from your old life. It’s like I was your appendix or something—I was just waiting for you to cut me out and be done with it.”

“I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.” She realizes this conversation is a version of what passed between them that awful night in the ER half a year back, except this time, they’re not trying to hurt each other by poking at old wounds; they’re taking the bandages off, finding out whether or not the skin has healed over.

Then Ruth does something that makes Debbie somehow feel so much more exposed than when she had her mouth all over Debbie’s tits: She reaches across the short distance between them, takes her hand, threads their fingers together, and squeezes. 

“Thank you for saying that,” Ruth murmurs. “I’d say I’m sorry too, again, but I know that would only piss you off.”

Debbie feels a smile cracking her face. “Look at you, figuring me out.”

Ruth raises her eyebrows. “I’ve had you figured out for a long time, Deb.”

“I know.” Debbie looks at their linked hands, and begins swinging her arm back and forth nervously. “Okay, so. We, uh, like each other or whatever. What about the, um… God, why am I being fucking coy right now?” She takes a deep breath, and begins: “You know that I’m very into cocks.”

Ruth snorts. “Is this you letting me down easy? ’Cause…not great bedside manner, I gotta say.”

“Let me finish. Christ.”

Ruth’s mouth snaps shut.

“Very into cocks,” she continues. “But I’m starting to think I’m not so much into the men that are attached to them. I mean, sometimes I am. How I used to feel about Mark wasn’t…nothing. But it hadn’t been for a while by the time you…” Debbie cuts herself off. “You know what? So not the point!”

The other woman is looking at her with a bemused sort of smile, not saying anything, and Debbie realizes she’s babbling like, well, Ruth.

“I’m trying to say… I’m trying to say that what happened a couple weeks ago—and earlier today, I guess—wasn’t some kind of fluke. It’s not something I was, you know, looking for, but it’s obviously happening, and I don’t want to try to explain it away or push it aside. Life’s too fucking short for that.” Debbie very deliberately looks Ruth in the eye for this next part, schooling herself not to blink. Why the hell not? “I, um. I want you, Ruth. Tongue-in-your-mouth, tits-in-your-face, slam-you-against-the-wall want you. ”

Ruth looks like Debbie just clotheslined her without going over the choreography first. But her eyes quickly go from shocked to hungry. “Debbie,” she says, her voice a sandpaper rasp. And then she takes Debbie’s face between her hands and hauls her in. 

Unlike takes one and two of this madness, they’re both expecting it this time, and the kiss is so much better for it. No teeth this time, just warm mouths and searching tongues. No Mark, no Russell, no Sam, nothing between them but the knot in Debbie’s blouse and Ruth’s hideous fucking vest. Ruth moves to untie the knot just as Debbie moves to rip off the vest. Debbie feels like her brain has short-circuited.

She has her hands under the cups of Ruth’s bra and Ruth’s fingers are running up and down the skin along Debbie’s spine when an absolutely pants-shitting scream rends the air. They fly apart, Ruth letting out a tiny yelp and Debbie shouting, “ What the fuck! ”

Another scream follows, then another. “Coyotes,” Ruth stage-whispers.

“Are you shitting me?” Debbie hisses. She fumbles with the buttons of her shirt, trying to put herself back together in case they need to make a run for it. Ruth is doing the same. 

“Where’s my vest?”

“Fuck the vest, Ruth!”

“It has useful pockets!”

“Oh, of course, god forbid we don’t have useful pockets when we get mauled to death. ”

“Should we run? We should run. Should we run?”

“I only have one shoe, Ruth! Besides, I don’t think you’re supposed to run. Or is that grizzly bears?” The chorus of yipping continues, and Debbie has no fucking clue how close it is.

Ruth is hyperventilating now. “Maybe if we sit really still they won’t find us?”

“That sounds like fucking nonsense. But you know what? I have no better ideas, so. Sure. Why not.”

They both plop back down on the rock, thighs pressed together. Underneath the cold gush of panic, Debbie still feels extremely turned on, and it’s a very unpleasant situation.

“Well, Ruth, you’re finally gonna get your wish. We’re gonna die together,” she says. But the fact that she’s clutching the other woman’s hand for dear life belies her sarcasm.

Ruth, her whole body shivering, lets out a weird, high-pitched noise that Debbie thinks might be a laugh.

"Debbie Eagan, 32, found dead near a cluster of rocks,” Debbie recites, trying to defuse the situation with dark humor, as always. “She was best known for playing Laura Morgan on Paradise Cove, but you may also remember her as the woman who was bitchy to Linda Evans in a jewelry store on Dynasty.”

Ruth chuckles, pressing her weight against Debbie. A therapeutic lean, her brain supplies. 

“In an attempt to restart her career,” she continues, “she played a wrestler on the short-lived TV show G.L.O.W., which ultimately flamed out on the Vegas stage. A fledgling producer who never had a project of her own. She is survived by...um...her mother, uh...her son, Randy, her ex-husband, Mark, um...his secretary, Susan, and many adoring valets.” Not that she’s fucked a valet—or anyone else, for that matter—for weeks.

Ruth’s voice is shaking when she says, “If we died right now, my obituary would be: ‘Soap Star and Unidentified Woman Dead in National Park.’”

Debbie barks out a laugh. Even now, about to be torn apart by wild animals, Ruth’s funny. They’re funny. “I’d remember you,” she says.

Ruth nudges her with her shoulder. “Yeah, but you’d also be dead.”

Just then, a twig snaps close by, and they both scream and cling to each other like fucking Scooby-Doo characters. Debbie considers that this has to be the dumbest way to die.

“There you guys are!” It’s not coyotes; it’s Reggie. The tall woman emerges from the brush, and Debbie’s never been happier to see her.

“Reggie! You’re alive!” Ruth shouts, leaping to her feet.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“There’s coyotes!”

“Yeah, but they’re super far away. Listen, Sheila’s really loopy and dehydrated. We’ve gotta get her back to camp.”

“Oh, no! I hope she’s okay. Do you know how to get back?” Debbie asks.

“Um, yeah, I’ve been following the rock clusters.”

“The rock clusters!” Ruth and Debbie say in unison. Apparently, stupidity is contagious.

Reggie looks them up and down with an unreadable expression. “Looks like you guys have also been through some, uh, stuff.”

It’s then that Debbie realizes her blouse is buttoned wrong, Ruth’s T-shirt is half hanging off, and her hair is a mess from where Debbie had her fingers in it. Hers probably doesn’t look much better.

“Um,” Ruth says eloquently.

“I lost my shoe,” Debbie blurts out.

“I can see that,” Reggie replies.

The strange moment is broken when they see Sheila struggling down the trail, looking extremely unwell, her furs hanging off her in limp tangles.

When Reggie jogs back to help her along, Debbie and Ruth lock eyes. There’s embarrassment on Ruth’s face, and relief, but something else too—something like anticipation, something like delight. Debbie gives her hand a quick squeeze and mutters, “Fuckin’ blue-balling coyotes.”

Ruth snorts and leans in toward Debbie, her mouth inches from Debbie’s ear. “Pretty sure balls have nothing to do with this,” she whispers.

Chapter Text

Ruth wishes she’d been more mentally and emotionally present for Sheila’s big epiphany, because truly, she loves Sheila, and she’s so proud of her. But Ruth is having a revelation of her own right now, and it’s come complete with her and Debbie sitting beside each other in flimsy camp chairs by the fire, sharing furtive, hungry glances through the smoke as the women around them trade barbs and confessions. But if anyone notices their silence, they don’t say anything.

Now that it’s all finally out in the open between them, Ruth is so gone. She misses a massive chunk of the conversations around them because she can’t stop staring at Debbie’s mouth around the lip of her beer bottle, the line of Debbie’s throat as she swallows. 

Debbie doesn’t come to her tent that night, because “budding entertainment execs do not do tent sex, because ew. ” But all Ruth hears is “tent sex,” and more importantly, “sex,” coming from Debbie’s mouth, in the context of having sex with Ruth.  

She spends hours sleepless long after everyone has bedded down for the night, staring up at the nylon ceiling of her tent, her heart racing at the vista of possibilities that have opened up before her. Impossible, unimaginable things.

Tongue-in-your-mouth, tits-in-your-face, slam-you-against-the-wall want you.

Ruth jerks off a few times about it (so, okay, maybe not unimaginable things), but still, sleep won’t come. So she throws on a sweatshirt, shoves her feet into her hiking boots without bothering to tie them, and goes outside to look up at the stars. 

And shit, there are a lot of them. It’s astonishing that, only thirty miles away from the neon Vegas glare, she can see the fucking Milky Way. It’s unbelievably clear out here, like someone ripped the ceiling off the world and shredded it into a billion pieces of bright infinity. 

She remembers driving out of Omaha with her dad when she was a kid, stopping the truck on an empty dirt road, nothing but the blank whisper of cornfields around them, lying in the bed of the pickup and gazing up into the sky. Her dad did his best to teach her the constellations, but Ruth didn’t have much of a mind for patterns. 

Still, she knows a little. Now, in the pitch-black of this parking lot, she picks out the summer triangle overhead: Vega, Deneb, Altair. It’ll only be visible for a few months before it sinks below the horizon again, but it’s here now, and she’s here to appreciate it. She could say the same for Debbie. How long till she leaves the show, goes back to L.A. to be with her kid? How long until she thinks better of what she’s confessed to Ruth?

“The fuck are you doing out here?”

Ruth nearly loses her balance at the sudden intrusion into the deep night desert silence, but catches herself at the last second. And there’s the woman in question, her face barely visible in the gloom. 

“Could ask you the same question,” Ruth replies.

“Had to take a piss. Those beers went right through me.”

Ruth laughs. “On-the-rise producer Debbie Eagan, popping a squat next to a cactus.”

“Shut up,” the other woman says without heat. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Not really.” Ruth doesn’t elaborate, at the risk of saying something very stupid like I came twice from just thinking about you.

“I recommend benzos.”

Ruth snickers. “Clearly not working for you tonight.”

“Doesn’t stop your bladder from waking you up.” She comes to stand beside Ruth and follows her eyeline up to the sky. “You’re looking at the stars, aren’t you, Ms. ‘This Is Our Country.’”

“Well, yeah. I mean,” she raises her hands to encompass the dome of sky around them. “How often do you get a view like this?”

Debbie has a blanket pulled around her, and Ruth entertains a vision of Debbie wrapping them both in it, holding Ruth close and warm, asking her to point out the constellations. But Ruth’s a pragmatist; she knows that’s not what they are to each other. Debbie said I want you, not I want to cuddle under the night sky with you.

“I’d rather gaze at street lamps in Redondo, and then go inside a house and use a toilet and sleep in a bed.”

“Come on! Live a little, Deb.”

“I think I’ve lived plenty today, don’t you?”

Feeling bold in the shrouding dark, Ruth crowds into her space. “You could live a little more.”

“Oh, you’re using cheesy lines on me now?” Debbie says, but doesn’t move away.

“Is it working?”

“Obnoxiously enough, yes.” Debbie hauls her in, and they’re all over each other again. Ruth pushes the blanket off Debbie’s shoulders, and Debbie’s hands slip beneath Ruth’s sweatshirt, warm despite the chill of the Nevada night. Debbie’s breath is sweet in her mouth, belying her claim that she’d been asleep. 

The thought that she’d been keeping Debbie awake too does something to Ruth, and before she knows it, her hand is slipping beneath Debbie’s sweats.

Debbie stops her progress with her own hand and murmurs into Ruth’s mouth, “What are you doing?”

“I…” she pulls her hand away, and everything else. “Sorry.”

To her surprise, Debbie catches her and reels her back in. “I didn’t say you needed to apologize. Obviously I want…” She stops and swallows, trailing off. “But we’re in a parking lot in the middle of fucking nowhere, surrounded by twelve other women, at least one of who might come out of her tent and howl at the moon at any second. So, not the time, maybe?”

“There’s no moon tonight,” Ruth says, stupid with lust.

“Ruth.”

“Fine. Point taken.”

“Besides,” Debbie adds, “Being quiet isn’t my forte.” 

Ruth groans in frustration. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Debbie kisses her again, hard and possessive. Then she pulls away entirely, stooping to retrieve her blanket off the ground. “Go to bed, Ruth,” she says, a smirk on her face. “Big day tomorrow.” 

“Why, what’s happening tomorrow?”

“Well, you’ve got to drive back to the city, then we’ve got a show, and then I’m gonna take you back to my room and fuck your brains out. So. You know. Get your beauty sleep or whatever.” Debbie tosses a self-satisfied smirk over her shoulder, then vanishes into the dark like a fucking vampire.

Yup. Debbie definitely wants her dead.

Chapter Text

Debbie feels like she’s losing her mind. Since they all got back to the hotel this morning, dirty and exhausted, she’s been extremely horny. It’s a bodily sensation that’s been contending in her mind with the intellectual and emotional mindfuck of the fact that the person she’s horny for is Ruth, and it’s all out in the open, and neither of them are lying to themselves or each other about it anymore. She doesn’t want to feel this way, but dammit, she does, and there’s nothing to do about it but surrender to the inevitable. 

Washing off the desert dust and sweat from her skin in the shower that morning, the water running a sandy russet when she rinses out her hair, Debbie feels torn in pieces. There’s her promise that she’d leave the show to go be an actual mother to her actual child for once, which so far has an open expiration date; there’s Ruth, and this thing between them, and the things she wants to do to her. 

And there’s that word bouncing around in her head: bisexual. She can’t be, can she? Bisexuals aren’t television stars, bisexuals don’t run production companies, and bisexuals are definitely not hot pieces like Debbie Eagan. 

It can just be sex between them; they don’t have to put a label on it. And Debbie doubts Ruth would want to either. Or, shit, maybe she does. Maybe she’s already at the library, checking out a copy of Rubyfruit Jungle, or bending the ear of the gigolo downstairs for tips on cunnilingus. But a small, cruel part of Debbie knows that Ruth will take whatever Debbie is willing to give her and won’t ask for anything more, even if she wants it. Debbie’s got all the power here; she’s always had all the power. It’s sort of their thing.

The thought has Debbie’s hand sliding down the plane of her stomach under the warm shower spray, and she doesn’t bother to resist the urge. Might as well practice for tonight, she thinks, though she has no idea whether what gets her off will get Ruth off, too. 

Absurdly, her mind goes to Mark during his car-tinkering phase, bent over the open hood of a ’74 Pontiac Firebird. “Damn, this engine is really different from the ones I’m used to,” he’d said as she was passing through the garage, his soft accountant’s hands mottled black with grease. And that thought pretty much murders the orgasm she was about to have.

After a much-needed nap, Debbie grabs her bags and heads downstairs to prep for the evening’s show. Another night, another suplex. The doors are closing in the elevator when a slender arm reaches in and forces them back open. 

“Hey,” Ruth says, breathless, a big, stupid grin on her face.

“Did you just sprint for the doors to get me alone in here?”

“You mad about it?”

Ruth is stupid, and she makes Debbie stupid. So before she can think better of it, Debbie thumbs the emergency stop button when they’re a few floors up from the lobby. “Kind of,” she replies, quirking an eyebrow. “You’re gonna make us late.”

“Whoops,” Ruth says breezily before shoving her against the wall, Debbie’s lower back slamming painfully into the handrail.

“Jesus, save it for the ring.”

“I don’t think you want me to do this in the ring,” Ruth says, directly into her mouth.

Five very stupid minutes later, they saunter out into the lobby, Debbie hastily rearranging her hair as they head to the dressing room. 

Yolanda raises her eyebrows and grins wolfishly at Debbie as she passes, and Debbie knows she’ll have to have a talk with her about discretion ASAP. 

“You’ve got a little something on your face,” Yolanda says to Ruth. And shit, how did Debbie miss the smudge of hot pink Elizabeth Arden smeared halfway off her lips?

In a panic, Debbie whips a Kleenex from her purse and attacks her friend’s mouth with it, ignoring her shocked expression. “Jesus, check a mirror sometimes, Ruth,” she says loudly, but throws the other woman a look that she hopes communicates apology.

Really, Debbie should’ve anticipated how hard it was going to be to maintain her cool in the ring. And judging by the expression on Ruth’s face when Debbie gets ready to throw her, she’s having just as much trouble keeping it together. Wrestling is so absurdly sexual, and homoerotic as hell, no matter which way you look at it. It’s all for the leers of the men out there beyond the lights, Debbie knows; but tonight, it feels like it’s more for them.

“Let’s go, you dirty Russian.”

“Stupid American Barbie!”

Ruth’s crotch in her face. Ruth’s breasts pressed into Debbie’s neck. Ruth’s breath against her bare skin. It’s all a fucking lot. 

Back in the dressing room when they’re changing into their bridesmaid costumes for the finale, Debbie pretends to adjust the tulle on Ruth’s leotard, using the moment to lean in and hiss into her ear, “I am going to fucking die.”

“Not if you kill me first,” Ruth whispers back.

“Suicide pact?”

Ruth snorts. “That’ll give them a real show.”

Being able to have this easy banter again with her friend—weirdly, it’s almost as thrilling as the idea of fucking her. They always were good at playing off each other. 

Debbie goes upstairs first. Because after the lipstick incident, they’re both invested in not making this whole thing too fucking obvious. While she waits, she considers taking a shower to wash off the grit and sweat from the mat, but decides against it. This is Ruth, after all; she doesn’t need to try to impress her.

Ruth knocks on her door a long twenty minutes later, and Debbie pulls her in before anyone can see. “Took you long enough,” she says.

“Well, I had to shower first.” 

Debbie notices that Ruth is, indeed, freshly showered, her hair still damp, wearing a loose pastel shirt and bleached jeans. And suddenly Debbie feels awkward. “Oh, you took a…” she trails off.

“Oh! It’s okay if you didn’t. I mean. It’s not like we haven’t…”

“No, no. I should have. I should. Yeah,” Debbie stammers, and disappears into the bathroom, shutting the door before Ruth can formulate a response. 

What is wrong with her? It’s Ruth! Ruth whose nose gets shoved into Debbie’s armpit six nights a week, Ruth who has literally seen her give birth, for chrissake. And here she is, acting like she’s a high school junior on a first date. She rinses off quickly, feeling off her game as hell, and throws on her bathrobe. 

When she emerges, Ruth is sitting on the edge of the bed, flicking through a copy of People Magazine. “Hey!” she says brightly—too brightly—and crosses her legs like she’s sitting at a nice restaurant.

Debbie sighs and sits down next to her. “This got weird, didn’t it.”

“I mean…yeah. Kinda.”

“Why did it get weird?” 

“I honestly don’t know,” Ruth says, turning to face her. “I’ve been so, like, ready all day—”

“Me too,” Debbie cuts in.

“—and now it’s like…” She raises her hands in the air and shakes her head.

“Yeah.”

There’s a long stretch of silence between them, before Ruth says, “You smell nice.”

Debbie scoffs. “I smell nice ?”

“I’m trying to give you a compliment!” Ruth shoots back. “Plus, you do!”

“Christ.” Debbie falls back on the bed, blinking up at the ceiling. “Maybe we should just…” She trails off, unsure of how she wants to finish that sentence.

“Hey,” Ruth says, sounding more like herself. She hovers over Debbie, resting a hand on her thigh through the bathrobe. “How about we stop trying so hard for a sec and, like, order a pizza or something. See what’s on TV.”

Debbie mulls this over, sitting back up. “I like the pizza idea. I’m fucking starved from the show tonight.”

“Me too.” 

Then Debbie has a brainstorm. “Okay, I’ll call room service and order the pizza. And you…go downstairs to the bar and talk Frank into letting you steal a bottle of tequila.”

It’s a delight to watch the other woman break into a wide-open grin. “Debbie, you’re a fucking genius.”

Chapter Text

If you’d told Ruth that, six months after Debbie Eagan snapped her ankle in front of a live studio audience, the two of them would wind up sitting across from each other on a hotel bed playing Truth or Dare, she’d certainly have called bullshit. If you’d said that it was because they both wanted to sleep with each other but were nervous about it, she’d have laughed in your face.

Yet here they are, passing a sticky bottle of Cuervo back and forth, a half-eaten pizza abandoned beside them, acting like they’re at a middle school sleepover—except it’s one that might eventually lead to sex. So far, Ruth has dared Debbie to prank call room service, Debbie has dared Ruth to run topless down the hallway outside, and Ruth has made Debbie unfold the gory details of the time she lost her virginity under the bleachers at age fifteen.

“Would you believe that, back then, I was calling it my ‘flower’?”

“Debbie. No.”

“It was all my mom’s fault.”

“I never took her for a prude,” Ruth says. She’s spent plenty of time with Lorene over the years; Ruth wound up being Debbie’s “date” to a lot of family functions when whatever dude Debbie was banging at the time wouldn’t cut it.

“I mean, she grew up during the Depression, what are you gonna do,” Debbie says with a shrug. “Doesn’t matter. Point is, turns out the tight end on the varsity football team knew jack shit about the clitoris.”

Ruth laughs. “Shocking.”

Debbie rolls her eyes. “Okay, your turn.”

“Um…dare.” Ruth has been evading “truth” all night, because, you know, there be dragons. 

“Alright. Um… I dare you to…do a body shot.” She nods to the tequila. 

“Oh, my god. Are we at a frat party right now?”

“No men around to gawk,” Debbie says.

“True. Uh…so how does this work again?”

Debbie scoffs. “What were you even doing in college?”

“Studying Meisner technique!”

“You fucking nerd.”

“Apparently nerds turn you on,” Ruth says, the tequila making her brave.

“Yeah, super embarrassing for me. Okay, so… Shit, we don’t have a lime or salt, do we.”

Ruth looks around the room and settles on the coffeemaker. “We’ve got sugar! No lime, though.”

And that’s how Ruth ends up licking a packet of Splenda off Debbie’s breasts, shotgunning from a bottle of tequila, then licking toothpaste off Debbie’s mouth. When it’s over, they’re laughing their asses off and Ruth is pressing Debbie down into the mattress, planting slow kisses down her bare torso.

Something tells her to look up at Debbie before she goes any further, and the other woman is regarding her with an inscrutable expression. “What’s up?” she asks, pulling away.

“Truth,” Debbie says. 

“I haven’t even asked you yet,” Ruth says with a laugh.

“No, um. You. You truth.”

“Pretty sure that’s not how the game works.” But something in Debbie’s eyes tells her they’re not playing anymore. “Okay,” Ruth says, sitting up. “What do you want to know?”

Debbie pulls her shirt back down and faces Ruth, cross-legged. They’re both a little drunk at this point, but not enough to be messy. Debbie looks so vulnerable right now, and Ruth would do anything to fix it.

“What, um.” Debbie pauses, swallowing. “What haven’t you told me?”

Ruth feels all the blood drain from her face. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have the ability to fuck me up real bad. And I know this is incredibly uncharacteristic for me, but you’re not, y’know, Mike the valet, so.” She looks Ruth hard in the eyes. “So before we get too deep into whatever this is, if there’s anything else you’re keeping from me, I need to know it. Now.”

And suddenly Ruth feels sick, because she knows immediately what she’s going to have to say. And it’s probably going to ruin everything. She scoots back against the pillows and tucks her legs against her body, curling in against herself. “Wow, uh.”

“Just tell me. Please.”

Ruth can never deny Debbie. The weird taste combination of Cuervo, Splenda, and Colgate in her mouth makes her feel like she’s going to vomit. Time to get it all out. She makes herself look Debbie dead in the eye and says, “I had an abortion.”

Debbie’s face clears with relief. “Christ, is that all? I’ve had, like, three abortions. That’s just being a woman who fucks. You came with me to the clinic that one time, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Holding Debbie’s hand in the waiting room, driving them back to her place afterwards for a night of Advil and junk food and bad movies. “But it’s, uh. It was Mark’s.”

Debbie couldn’t have looked more blindsided if Ruth had punched her across the jaw. “What?”

“I know. It’s bad. I don’t have a—I don’t have anything to say except I’m—”

“You two shits didn’t think to use a condom?”

“We weren’t thinking at all. At least I wasn’t.”

“Who went with you to the…”

Ruth cringes in advance. “Sam.”

Debbie’s face is thunder as she rises from the bed, imperious and cold. “I need you to leave. Right fucking now.”

“Debbie,” Ruth pleads, though she should’ve seen this coming. Brutal self-sabotage, the Ruth Wilder special.

“Get out of my room, Ruth,” she says evenly.

Ruth feels tears filling her eyes, her guts turning to jelly, her heart to ash. She rises from the bed and gathers her things, not bothering to put her shoes on. She turns back when she’s at the threshold. “Debbie, I’m so—”

“Get. Out.” Debbie is facing away from her, but Ruth clocks her shoulders shaking, her hands balled into tight fists. 

Ruth’s numb legs carry her as far as the alcove where the ice and vending machines are before she slides down the wall, hugging herself on the floor. She should’ve seen this coming. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to let her guard down, to be hopeful, to be happy. She should’ve known this road was headed straight off a cliff.

Chapter Text

Debbie had to fucking ask the question, didn’t she. She couldn’t leave well enough alone. All the progress they’d made, painful and hard-won, wasn’t enough for her. She had to poke and prod till the pimple burst and all the ugly puss poured out. 

It’s a disgusting metaphor, but Debbie feels disgusting right now, alone in her hotel room on the duvet that still smells like Ruth’s cheap shampoo, taking long pulls of Cuervo straight from the bottle. It feels like Ruth’s violated her trust—and her marital bed—all over again. Only it’s worse now, because Debbie has let her in, closer than ever, right up to her skin.

The rational part of Debbie, which right now is buried deep beneath a maelstrom of anger and sadness, knows that this isn’t a fresh betrayal, knows why Ruth didn’t tell her, knows that if Ruth was gonna do something as fucked-up as sleep with her best friend’s husband, twice, she was probably not in a headspace to be thinking about something as practical as birth control at the time. 

It’s not the abortion that makes Debbie feel broken in two; that was absolutely the right choice under the circumstances. (The idea of a little Ruth/Mark hybrid toddling around the Dusty Spur is a fucking nightmare of the highest order.) It’s what Ruth did that got her to that place, and also the fact that the person she trusted with her big, shameful secret was Sam fucking Sylvia. I mean, god, Debbie’s glad Ruth had someone to help her through that, and she’s definitely glad that someone wasn’t her, but why Sam?

It’s a thought that leads her to making the dumbest decision she’s made in months. Throwing on real clothes and her most broad-shouldered jacket, practically reeling from the tequila, Debbie slams her door and stomps down the hallway toward the elevator. She spots Ruth out of the corner of her eye, curled up against the wall across from the ice machine, but she struts right past. She doesn’t even want to look at her right now.

Debbie finds Sam exactly where she expected to: alone at the bar, hunched over a dog-eared script with a tumbler of something brown. Rage courses through her, as dark and oily as it felt that coke-fueled night in the ring. 

“Whoa, Debbie, comin’ in hot,” Sam says, after she grabs him by the shoulder and whips him around on the barstool. 

Debbie winds up with all the strength she’s gained from her wrestling training and clocks him right below the eye. He goes down hard, the gaudy carpet buffeting his fall. 

“What the fuck ?!” he shouts from the floor, clutching one side of his face.

Debbie feels thrillingly powerful, looming over him—another man who’s casually fucking up her life, finally brought low. “Stay away from her,” she growls, and stomps away before this becomes a conversation. The last thing she wants to do right now is talk. 

“You’re a crazy fucking bitch, you know that?” Sam calls after her, but she doesn’t turn around. She’s aware that every eye in the casino is on her, and she can feel the shocked stares like fire on her skin. Let them gawk. She’s fucking done. 

She means to go back upstairs, but her legs carry her across the betting floor, out the revolving doors, and into the Vegas night. Now that the adrenaline is starting to wear off, her hand is killing her. (In all her time learning wrestling moves, she never learned how to throw a punch.) She curses herself for not thinking to bring her cigarettes. Whatever. She can bum one. She’s Debbie fucking Eagan, and anyone would be lucky to give her a cigarette. She wanders toward the Strip in search of a smoke and an easy lay, until a firm hand around her bicep stops her in her tracks. 

“Let’s take a walk,” Sheila says.

Debbie feels her anger abating just from the sheer novelty of this new Sheila beside her, with her short blond bob, her unassuming sweater, her makeup-free eyes. And more, the way she carries herself, upright, without the wolfish stoop she’d adopted. She looks like the endpoint of one of those educational graphics tracing the evolution of early man.

“So that was…something,” Sheila says as they walk along the Strip, ignoring the buskers shaking cups of change, the pimps, the promoters who flick flyers at them as they pass.

“You could say that,” Debbie replies.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, plenty of people have a reason to knock Sam’s lights out, but that seemed like a real non sequitur.”

“I’m…going through some stuff.”

“You don’t say,” Sheila’s voice drips sarcasm.

“I don’t really feel like talking about it right now.”

“Well, too bad. Because I just found Ruth crying in the hallway, and she wouldn’t tell me what was up, but it clearly has something to do with you. And then I come downstairs in time to see you go postal on Sam. And I don’t give a crap about him, but I do give a crap about Ruth. So spill it.”

Debbie is shocked to hear that many words coming out of Sheila’s mouth—not to mention her talking so frankly. 

“It’s…complicated.” 

“I’ve got all night.” 

Sheila drags Debbie to, of all places, the courtyard of the Flamingo. Drinking something that can only be described as “neon pink and very alcoholic,” watching actual flamingos lounging and stretching their long legs and splashing around the unnaturally blue pool at the center of the space, Debbie feels like she’s fallen into a fever dream.

“Didn’t figure you for the spectacle type,” Debbie says to Sheila, who’s currently nursing a Shirley Temple. 

“I’m not,” she says. “But Vegas weirds me out, and this is the closest place I’ve found to the Fan-Tan where I can actually be under the open sky and see actual living animals. It’s soothing, y’know?”

“I get that,” Debbie says.

Thinking back to her night at the bar with Arthie and Yolanda, Debbie considers that she really should’ve made an effort to get to know the other G.L.O.W. girls beyond Ruth and Tammé. Frankly, after the emotional roller coaster she’s been on lately, she’s getting a little sick of the view from her high horse.

So even though she’s an absolute wreck right now, she tries to think about someone other than herself for once. “That was really cool,” she tells the woman beside her. “What you did last night by the fire.”

“Thanks,” Sheila says. “It was…hard. Really hard. Like, right now, sitting here, I feel literally naked.”

Debbie thinks about how she ripped her chest open recently and handed Ruth all her bloody guts. “I know the feeling.”

“Do you? You’re always so put together and buttoned-up. Except, you know, when you freak out and go totally apeshit.”

“It’s an act,” Debbie admits. “It’s all an act. And sometimes I get so fuuuucking sick of it.”

“Welcome to my world,” Sheila says with a tight smile. “But I’m not here to talk about me. You’ve gotta tell me what’s up with you and Ruth. Right now.”

“You saw us, Sheila. I’m pretty sure you, of all people, have at least a rough idea of what’s going on,” Debbie scoffs.

“In my experience, it’s not very useful to make assumptions about something you’re not a part of,” she replies with a shrug.

“That’s… Yeah. That’s a good policy. One I could probably stand to try.” Debbie sighs. “Look, if I give you the Cliffs Notes version, will you promise to keep it under your…wig you burned in a fire?”

Sheila nods.

“That night you caught us in the dressing room was…not premeditated. It just sort of happened. And then I guess we both thought about some stuff. And then when we got lost on the hike yesterday, we talked it through and…decided to try something out.” Debbie watches a flamingo a few feet away as it swivels its head on its weird neck and nibbles at its feathers. “And then tonight, Ruth told me something that is…really fucking shitty.”

“Like she said something mean to you? ’Cause you say mean stuff to her pretty much constantly. In public.”

Debbie feels her hackles rise, but she tries to check her anger. “No, Sheila. I mean that she told me about something that she’s been keeping from me that’s really intense and awful.”

Sheila gives her a searching look. “Oh, the abortion?”

“You knew?”

“I mean, she didn’t tell me, but yeah. Or at least, I could tell she was pregnant. And then, that she wasn’t.”

“What? How?”

“Wolf senses.” Sheila says it like a normal-ass person would say feminine intuition or a woman just knows.

“Your…wolf senses…told you that Ruth had an abortion.” Debbie can’t believe she just said that sentence out loud.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. But, yeah. That, and also she acted really weird and sad for a couple weeks. Like, weirder and sadder than usual. And her body language around you got even more submissive.”

Debbie snorts out a laugh at this. “You are…really observant, aren’t you?”

“I don’t talk much, so I notice things. I’m trying to be better about that, though. The…talking thing.”

“You’re doing a pretty decent job.”

“Thanks,” Sheila says, watching her legs dangle in the air where she’s sitting, perched on a low stucco wall. She simultaneously looks like a little kid and a wise old crone on a mountaintop.

“I obviously already knew about her and Mark, and honestly, I think I was over it,” Debbie says. “Or, I thought I was? But knowing that she could’ve had his child… It’s so fucked up. Sometimes I think we’ve both screwed each other up so much that we should really just get out of each other’s lives forever.”

“Is that what you want?”

The answer comes surprisingly fast. “No.”

“Well then I guess you gotta find a way to work this out.”

“I can’t even look at her right now.”

“So go away for a little while,” Sheila says. “Visit your kid and get some perspective. I’m sure someone can cover your part in the show for a couple days.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Time away from Ruth, from Sam, from Bash.

“And also, seriously, you’ve gotta give Ruth a breather from all these big feelings she’s having. She won’t talk about it with me, and it hurts to watch her beat herself up all the time. She just thinks so loud.”

Debbie laughs. “She does. It’s annoying as hell.”

“She’s trying, you know,” Sheila says. “I get why you’re mad right now, but…don’t ice her out again.”

“I’m glad she’s got a friend like you,” Debbie says, and does mean it. “God knows I haven’t been one to her in years.”

“It’s hard. To change, to grow, to work through your stuff. But I think she’s doing that. And I think maybe you are, too.” She’s silent for a moment, then adds, “So, wait. Why did you punch Sam?”

That one’s easy. “Because Sam sucks, and I’m a jealous bitch.”

The other woman just laughs and sips on her drink. The bizarre thought strikes Debbie that Sheila is basically a reverse werewolf: a beast that transformed into a woman, something jagged that became something soft. And maybe there’s a lesson in there that her own sorry ass could stand to learn.

Chapter Text

Ruth supposes she shouldn’t be surprised when Debbie’s not at the show the next night, or the night after that. She has no trouble playing Liberty Belle again, and Sheila, unsurprisingly, makes a pretty great Zoya. But she sees the way Sheila looks at her: worried, cautious, protective. Honestly, Ruth thinks, it’s pretty shitty that she’s been keeping her, of all people, in the dark about the whirlwind that’s taken over her life recently—but she has a funny feeling her friend knows anyway, even beyond the fact that she caught them in flagrante. 

In fact, she hasn’t had the heart to talk to any of the girls about the Ballad of Ruth and Debbie—only Bobby. Ruth has started going to watch his drag shows after G.L.O.W. wraps up for the night, preferring to get lost in the joyful camp of his performance than think about her shitty situation. Afterwards, he usually invites her back to his dressing room to drink G&Ts and commiserate. 

She’s already told Bobby the whole sorry tale; no use keeping it a secret now that Debbie knows. She practically feels a scarlet A burning on her chest—A for Asshole Who Didn’t Use Protection When I Fucked My Best Friend’s Husband.

“Done before it even began, huh?” Bobby asks, on the third night of Debbie’s absence. 

“Looks like it,” Ruth says with a sigh. “We were doing so well. And then I messed it all up.”

“By what, telling the truth that she asked you to tell her?” he says.

“I mean, when you put it that way…”

“Look, hon, it was gonna come out one way or another if you two kept getting hot and heavy, and it’s better to rip that Band-Aid off early. She might still come around.” 

“I’m worried she’s not coming back, though,” Ruth frets. “She was talking about leaving the show anyway to go back to L.A. What if she just voids her contract and stays there? She’s a producer—it’s not like she needs to give two week’s notice.”

Bobby rests a warm hand on hers. “Give it time. It’s only been a few days.”

Ruth laughs. “I’m not famous for my patience.” 

On the fourth Debbie-less night, she finally decides to find out what the hell is up with Sam.

He still won’t tell anyone why he has a black eye. He’s even grumpier than usual, and Ruth has noticed him holding a cup of ice up against his face at rehearsals when he thinks no one’s watching. Rumors are circulating around the casino that a woman punched him out at the bar, but Frank’s not spilling any beans. (Not that he ever tells anyone much anyway. It’s what makes him the perfect Vegas drink-slinger.) 

Ruth’s an emotional wreck right now, and Sam is pretty much the last person she wants to talk to, but the fact is that he’s her friend (sometimes), he’s been there for her when she’s really needed it (sometimes), and she would feel like an asshole if she didn’t check in.

She finds him at his usual perch at the bar. She hasn’t bothered to take off her Liberty Belle makeup yet, because frankly, she doesn’t want to think about her own shit right now. She’d rather lose herself in other people’s problems. Bring on the zits.

“Hey,” she says, perching on the stool beside him. 

Sam spares her a glance out of the corner of his eye. “That makeup looks so weird on you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, I don’t mean… Look, you just make a better commie than a farmgirl, is all I’m saying.”

“Better at being evil. Got it.”

“Christ, I really need to just…stop saying words,” he mutters.

She examines his eye, the bruise starting to go yellow at the edges. “How’s…that…feeling?”

“Like a warm fuckin’ breeze on a summer day.” He signals the bartender. “Hey, Frank, can you get nosy over here a mint julep?”

Ruth doesn’t know whether she’s flattered or weirded out that Sam knows her drink order. Maybe a little of both. “Look, I know we haven’t talked much since that day you…”

“...dumped my bleeding heart out onto your lap, and then you ran away like you were on fire? Yeah, I recall.”

Ruth’s Sam Sylvia tolerance levels have gone down markedly in the last few months. “Look. You have a giant oozing bruise on your face and you won’t tell anyone about it, and I’m worried about you—which, you know, I can be as a friend, which I thought was what we were to each other. But, you know, fuck me, I guess.”

“Hey, you called me out on my bullshit way sooner than usual! That’s what we in the biz call character development.” Sam downs the rest of his bourbon in a single gulp. He signals for another as Frank slides Ruth’s drink across the bar.

“Will you please just tell me what happened?”

Sam surprises her by laughing, hard, one hand on his stomach and the other braced against the bar. “You crack me up, you know that? You’re, like, the smartest person I’ve ever met, but you’re so fucking clueless.”

It occurs to Ruth, in that moment, that she maybe has an unhealthy tendency toward the kind of people who couch every compliment inside an insult. “You’re an ass.”

“At least I’m not blind to reality.” He points at his eye. “Your fuckin’ girlfriend did this, okay? Sucker-punched me out of the clear blue and then fucked off to god knows where.”

“My girlfriend?” 

“Your…frenemy with benefits. Whatever. You think I can keep up with that soap opera shit?”

“Debbie did that?” Ruth blurts out before she can check herself. (Have they been that obvious? Or is Sam just really observant?)

“Hell of a punch on that woman, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, what with all the super obvious rage issues.”

Oh, no. “Sam…what did she say to you?”

He faces her full-on, his jaw tense under all that stubble. “She said, ‘Stay away from her.’ Any idea who that might be?”

Ruth hates herself a little (but just a little) for the fact that her first reaction to this news is delight. Debbie’s jealous! Because of me! Jealous Debbie is so hot! But then she clocks the timing. “Shit, Sam. That definitely wasn’t about you.”

“Sure fuckin’ felt like it was when I hit the ground ass-first.”

She leans toward him and speaks low. “I kind of…told her about the day you drove me to the clinic last year.”

To Ruth’s surprise, Sam barks out a laugh. “Your capacity for self-sabotage is one of my favorite things about you. I truly mean that.”

She smacks him lightly on the shoulder. “Anyway, she’s not my girlfriend. I just broke things off with Russell, and me and her aren’t, y’know… God, I can’t believe I’m talking to you about this, of all people.”

“Yeah, me neither. And I’d fucking prefer that you didn’t.”

The door that had opened up just a smidge inside Ruth slams shut once more. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have…yeah.”

“You blabbed your big secret to the last person you should’ve told it to, and I got the dogshit end of the stick, as usual. Are we done here?”

Ruth rises from her stool, leaving money for Frank beside her untouched mint julep. “Yeah, Sam. We’re done.”

Bobby’s waiting for her with Pond’s and a cocktail when she shows up in his dressing room an hour later. “Didn’t see you in the crowd tonight. You finally find something better to do with your time?” he asks.

Ruth sits in front of the mirror and sighs. “Something worse, actually.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

She considers launching into the Sam spiel, but stops herself short. “You know what? No. I’ve been treating you like my personal priest. And I’m not even Catholic.”

“Could’ve fooled me, with all that guilt,” he says. 

“I never ask you anything about yourself, and that’s…shitty. So. Tell me about what’s been happening with you. If you want.”

He raises his eyebrows and leans back theatrically. “Well smell you, Nancy Drew. Alright,” he says. 

He refreshes his G&T while she wipes off the rest of her wrestling makeup, then sits beside her, leaning languorously against the vanity. Ruth thinks, not for the first time, that he carries himself like Bette Davis in Now, Voyager—elegant and vaguely tragic.

He pulls a pack of Camels from his pocket. “You mind?”

Ruth shakes her head. She’s used to inhaling secondhand smoke from all those nights on the couch with Debbie, smoking her “last one, I swear to god.”

Bobby lights up and takes a long drag. “What’s been happening with me?” he says. “Well, my ex called the other day. Haven’t heard from him in years. I was hoping it was because he wanted to hook up again, ’cause let me tell you, darlin’, abs for days. ” He sighs, and somehow it doesn’t sound as performative as everything else he does. “Turns out he was calling to tell me that an old friend of ours died. Behind a wall of plastic, on a lonely bed at Sunrise Hospital. Pneumonia, they told his family. The nurses wouldn’t even get near him at the end.”

And suddenly, all of Ruth’s problems feel very small, and very stupid. “Oh, my god. Bobby. I’m so sorry.”

He sips his gin and gives her a tight smile. “It is what it is, as my mother used to say before she disowned me.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

He gives her knee a squeeze. “You’re doing it, babe. Just sitting here with me, listening to me kvetch. It means a lot, truly.”

Ruth leans forward to pull him into a hug, and thinks about how little she knows about the lives of others, about the world outside her own door—beyond the wrestling, the auditions, the scene study classes. Beyond her recent all-consuming obsession with Debbie Eagan.

They talk deep into the night, their conversation eventually moving to a basement gay bar, two blocks and a world away from the gaudy glare of the Strip. It’s mostly men here, but not like the men Ruth is used to: men who laugh long and loud, men who lean into each other, men who plant easy kisses on each other’s lips and cheeks, men who move like cats across the floor. A few men, she can’t help but notice, with wine-colored lesions peeking out from under the seams of their muscle shirts.

She feels at ease here under the glow of a thousand multicolored string lights, the bar top sticky with spilled cosmos, and she’s struck with the thought that this is a whole world vanishing before her eyes. She looks at Bobby from her perch at the bar, grinning and gyrating as he dances with a beautiful guy in a crop top, and she feels a sharp sting of affection and sadness, preemptive nostalgia for a disappearing country that she’s only just discovered.

“This place is amazing!” she shouts into Bobby’s ear over the blare of Madonna when he sits down beside her.

“Beats the shit out of the Fan-Tan, right?”

“Is it okay that I’m here?” she asks nervously. “I mean, I’m not exactly part of the crowd.”

He gives her an incredulous look. “Girl, have you or have you not been getting to second base with a hot blonde on the regular lately?”

“Yeah, but…up until last week, I was dating a man!”

“What’s your point?”

“Well…I don’t even know what I am! Like, what’s my label?”

“That’s part of the journey, baby.” With his plastic martini glass, Bobby gestures to the room at large, the twisting bodies, the whirling disco ball, the walls draped with rainbow flags. “This may be a sausage party, but this is your community now, as long as you’re eating out.”

“Eating out?” she asks in confusion.

Her companion throws back his head and cackles. “Oh, Ruth! You’re hilarious.” (Why does everyone keep calling her funny tonight for weird reasons?) He grabs her face and gives her a big, wet smack on the cheek. “I’m really glad we’re pals.”

“Me too!” Ruth still has no clue what “eating out” means (going out to dinner?), but maybe she can find a book on the subject at the library. 

“And listen, I know stuff with you and your girl is a hot mess right now, but don’t give up, okay? Life is fucking short, you know? Grab love wherever and whenever you can find it.” He reels back and rolls his eyes at himself. “God, that’s the cheesiest thing I’ve ever said. I blame the grief.”

Ruth feels tears welling up in her eyes. “You definitely get a pass,” she says wetly, and offers her hand to pull him out onto the dance floor.

Chapter Text

Normally, the degree to which Debbie loves seeing Randy outweighs the degree to which she loathes seeing Mark. And honestly, things have been better with them lately. She’s even starting to view Susan as a full human being rather than as a secretary straight out of central casting with no defining traits beyond being pretty, dumb, and younger than Debbie.

(Debbie’s trying to do this thing where she’s less judgy of other women. It’s kind of working. She has no plans, however, to stop judging men.)

But after Ruth’s recent revelation, the clock has turned back on her feelings about Mark. Mainly, that he’s a selfish dickwad who burned down their marriage for shits and giggles—and didn’t even bother to use a rubber when he did it. 

“Debbie! You look…angrier than usual.”

“And you look stupider than usual,” she says, pushing past him into the house. “Where’s Randy?”

“Susan just put him down, so you might not want to wake him up right away.”

“Oh, Susan put him down,” Debbie hisses.

“Yes! Because Susan is here! Whereas you! Are not!” Mark says, spreading his arms wide and doing that thing with his face that Debbie loathes.

Mark’s sweaty, red face hovering over Ruth. Mark unzipping his chinos and pulling out his sad little dick. Mark fucking Ruth. Ruth fucking Mark. Mark and Ruth fucking. 

“Wow, okay, sorry. I’ll back off,” Mark says.

“That was a quick turnaround.”

“Well, you look like you’re about to stab me, so.”

Debbie realizes that she had let her jealousy show on her face and schools her expression into one of cool detachment. “Long flight,” she says as calmly as she can manage. 

“Isn’t it, like, forty-five minutes from Vegas to LAX?”

“Is this really the hill you want to die on?”

“I don’t want to die anywhere for any of this, Deb,” he says flatly.

“Debbie, hi! I was…” Susan stops cold when she sees the pair of them staring daggers at each other across the kitchen island. “…just leaving to get some groceries.”

Mark breaks his focus from Debbie. “Whatcha making tonight, babe?”

“I was thinking beef paprikash,” she says brightly.

“Can’t wait.” 

They kiss goodbye, and Susan spares Debbie one last terrified glance before scurrying out the front door.

“Beef paprikash, huh?” Debbie says.

“Yeah, she’s a great cook. Always trying new recipes.”

“Glad you finally found the little woman for you.” Debbie’s hands clench and unclench against the formica counter that used to be hers, upon which she prepared little to no food because that’s what takeout is for, Mark.

“Will you lay off?” he snaps. “Why are you trying so hard to pick a fight with me today?”

Even in her current state, Debbie knows she’s being a lot right now. But between the jealousy and the loathing and the ways they’ve both seen Ruth’s body now, she can’t bring herself to be civil to this man.

For a deliciously petty moment, she thinks of dropping the bomb on him right then and there. Bet you didn’t know Randy almost had a little half-sibling crawling around the San Fernando Valley. She glares at him, pouring himself a goddamn lemonade, and pictures it—pictures the shock and fear twisting his doughy features. She could do it. She has the power. She has the trump card. 

“I need to go see Randy. I’ll deal with it if he wakes up,” she says instead.

“Your funeral,” Mark replies. 

As she knew it would, the sight of Randy, his pudgy little features slack in sleep, calms her down immediately. Being a mother, Debbie considers, is both the wound and the balm for it. This little creamsicle has uprooted her entire life—her career, her friendships, her sanity—and also completely saved it. There are very few things in this jagged, cutthroat world that make Debbie feel soft, but Randy does.

He burbles in his sleep, and Debbie can’t help herself—she reaches out and nudges one tiny hand with her finger, feels her jaw unclench when his little fist wraps around it.

“Hey, buddy,” she coos. “As soon as you learn to talk, Mommy’s gonna make you swear on your life that you’ll always use a condom. Yes she is!”

The toothless smile that paints his face when he blinks his eyes open and sees her is worth all the sleepless nights, all the hungover flights. She hoists Randy in the air and holds him to her, breathing in his clean scent like it’s fucking aromatherapy. 

She sits down on the white rocking chair beside the crib and cradles him in her arms, and it’s in this significantly more serene state of mind that she reconsiders the information she didn’t spill in the kitchen a few minutes before. 

It’s not Mark’s feelings, ultimately, that stopped her from plunging the knife in; it’s Ruth’s. No matter how Debbie feels about the circumstances surrounding it, it was Ruth’s abortion, and no one else’s. Debbie knows from experience how sacred—and dangerous—that kind of information is for a woman. It’s something you only tell people you trust; it’s something that, in certain Reaganite circles—which there are a surprising lot of in Hollywood—can absolutely ruin you.

For the first time, Debbie considers the situation from Ruth’s perspective: how angry at herself she must’ve been when she found out she was pregnant with Mark’s baby; how guilty she must have felt; how alone she was at the time, to have confided in no one about it but Sam. And then, last night, how impossible it must have been when Debbie asked her for the truth, for Ruth to tell it to her, knowing the emotional toll it would exact on them both. 

Ruth being honest with her—when Debbie had asked her to be honest—wasn’t, Debbie sees now, the fresh betrayal that it seemed in the moment. It was her friend trying to prove to Debbie that now, she was willing to put it all out there, even if it was a bitter pill to swallow. 

And, shit, what did Debbie want, really? For Ruth to have told her about the pregnancy back then? That kind of honesty that would have been just plain cruel. Debbie didn’t need to know that. Hell, they weren’t even friends back then; they were coworkers who could barely handle sharing the ring.

But now, with their relationship veering off into uncharted territory, they have to be that kind of radically honest with each other for any of this shit to even remotely work. Debbie knows herself well enough to realize that Ruth can’t just be a casual, one-and-done fuck for her. She doesn’t know what to call it, but Debbie knows that whatever it is that pulls her toward Ruth despite her better judgment is also the thing that could absolutely wreck her. 

So if they’re going to do this, they can’t do it lightly. Maybe that’s why things got so awkward last night; the weight of all the past on top of them, the pressure to not screw it up like they’d screwed up everything else. Not to mention the fact that being anything less than ramrod-straight in this country right now is a one-way ticket to professional suicide. Only corn on the cob for Liberty Belle—no papayas. So they have to be patient, and they have to be careful, and neither of them possess those qualities in spades.

Debbie thinks of herself last night, fuming with rage, and of Ruth, crying in a corner, because that kind of emotional purgation comes easy to her. They can’t do that to each other anymore—hurt each other over and over. Every exchange can’t be a game of Russian roulette. And, much as Debbie hates to admit it, it wasn’t fair of her to put Sam in the crossfire.

She’s gotten so lost in thought that she’d forgotten about Randy until she feels a tug at the collar of her blouse, a small mouth sucking at the fabric. Debbie unbuttons her shirt and pulls back her bra with a chuckle. “Men. They always want something.”

“You want to take Randy to Vegas ?”

“What? There are babies in Vegas,” Debbie says nonchalantly, bouncing Randy against her hip as they sit on the couch.

“Yeah, sure, babies playing craps and getting lap dances at strip joints.”

“Oh, don’t be such a prude. Not everyone in Vegas is a gambler or a hooker. Besides, he’ll have a whole family of…slightly crazy but loving women…to take care of him when I’m not around.”

“Who, the wolf lady? The crazy chick with the bandolier? Ruth?”

“First of all, Sheila’s not a wolf anymore—god, I can’t believe I just said that sentence and meant it—and second, Arthie’s not actually a terrorist; that’s just her G.L.O.W. character. And third of all, Ruth is…” What is Ruth? “We’re friends again. Kinda.”

“Wow, are pigs flying now?”

Mark fucking Ruth. Mark’s dick in Ruth. Ruth riding Mark’s dick.

“Believe it or not, there’s more to her than the two weeks when she was your mistress, Mark.”

“Jesus. I’m not the one who fucking flipped out and broke her ankle. But sure, go off.”

Debbie tries to pull Randy’s soothing energy into her own body. “We’ve been friends for a lot longer than we’ve been enemies, okay? We’re…figuring stuff out.”

“Great,” Mark says, crossing his arms. “Can’t wait for friggin’ Ruth Wilder to babysit my son.”

So much for the soothing energy. “So me taking my own child to live with me is about your unprocessed shit with Ruth now, somehow?”

“Oh, my god. I didn’t say that! You always…twist everything.”

“Good thing we’re not married anymore, then,” Debbie says.

“Good thing.” 

They both stew in silence, the only sound in the kitchen the drone of the fridge and the cars passing outside the window. 

“There always was…something…with you two.” Mark has an unreadable expression on his face. “There was a part of you that I could never touch, even when things were good with us. It was like you were only really easy when you were with Ruth. It was… You know what? Never mind. I don’t know why I even brought this up.”

Wow, even Mark saw the frisson between them, years before either of them really did. Was that why he cheated with Ruth? To prove he could take something that was Debbie’s? This whole thing with the three of them, the thing brewing and lingering for years till it all exploded, is so fucking messy. Russell was lucky he got out when the getting was good. 

“Great. So let’s drop it,” Debbie says. “I want Randy to come with me when I fly back in a few days, so if that works for you—and frankly, I don’t one hundred percent care if it works for you, but you are his father, so—if that works for you, let’s talk logistics.”

After all that, Mark actually ends up being pretty decent about the whole thing. He got to see Randy walk for the first time, so, he reasons, Debbie should get to be there for his first word.

Debbie spends a few more days in L.A., packing up Randy’s things (babies need so much stuff) and, frankly, giving herself some time away from her life in Vegas to mull some things over. She doesn’t want to give Bash the benefit of thinking that he’s won, somehow, by Debbie deciding to stay with G.L.O.W. through the extension after all. She’s not doing it for him. She’s doing it for her own career, because she helped build this thing, and she wants to see it through, and she doesn’t want to give up control so easily. 

But she’s also, if she’s honest with herself, doing it for Ruth. Debbie didn’t ask for how she feels about her—hell, she never even asked to meet her—but she does, and she did, so that’s some shit they’re going to have to figure out. And if they’re going to figure it out, Debbie’s going to have to be there to figure it out.

Plus, despite the lingering hurt she still feels from a few days before, Debbie misses Ruth. It’s a plain, unvarnished truth that’s probably tells her everything she needs to know.

“Call me when you get back to the hotel,” Mark says. They’re standing at the departures dropoff, and he’s holding Randy outside the car while Debbie unfolds the stroller and pulls out the handle on her suitcase. It’s all so goddamn domestic; for a moment, she almost misses it, this basic life she could have had with this basic man, two point five kids and a house in the suburbs, aerobics classes in the afternoon and dinner on the table every night, all while the burning star of her ambition slowly cooled.

But that’s not her; and even if she had wanted it to be at one point, it never was. She’s Debbie Eagan, and she’s made for the limelight; she’s made for the negotiation table; she’s made to do big things, and look fucking fantastic doing them. And if that has to start with a low-budget wrestling show at a seedy casino on the Vegas Strip working with two men she wants to knee in the balls on a daily basis, so be it.

And, she’s starting to realize, she’s maybe not made for the rest of it, either—the settling down, the vanilla sex, the deference to one man for the rest of her life. She’s stronger now, in more ways than one, even if she feels as brittle as dried-out lipstick half the time. Everything feels new and strange and a little scary, and she’s kind of excited to see where it takes her.

Chapter Text

A sharp knock at the door wakes them both up—Ruth, her head pounding and her mouth as dry as sandpaper, and Sheila, groaning dramatically from the next bed over. The knocking gets louder.

“What time is it?” Ruth mumbles, hoping she won’t actually have to turn her head to look at the clock radio. 

“Too early. You answer it.”

“I can’t move, Sheila. I got attacked by an entire shelf of liquor last night.”

Sheila raises her head from the bed by a centimeter. “I don’t. Do. Mornings.”

Ruth is about to protest again, but sits up when she hears what sounds like a baby crying. “What the hell?” she rasps. The clock reads 8:15, and she stumbles toward the door with all the grace of the freshly undead.

“Looks like you had fun last night.”

“Uh…”

Ruth can’t formulate much else, because Debbie is standing in the hallway, holding a weeping Randy, looking like the freakin’ Virgin Mary in a yellow tank top and tight jeans.

“Deb—Debbie,” Ruth manages. “You’re—” She’s almost impressed with herself (almost) for banking left and making it to the toilet just as the barf comes up. Randy’s wailing now, and Ruth feels like warmed-over death, and she’d really hoped she’d have a chance to at least brush her teeth before Debbie told her she never wanted to see her again. But right now, she can’t lift her head from the toilet bowl.

“Want me to take this guy off your hands for a minute? Sometimes they just need to go for a few laps,” she hears Sheila say from behind her.

“Are you sure you—”

“I used to watch my little sister a lot growing up. I promise I won’t kill your kid.”

Ruth looks up in time to see Debbie tentatively hand Sheila her baby, which only makes this morning feel weirder. Sheila bounces Randy with practiced ease, smiling goofily at him, and miraculously, he stops crying.

“How did you…” Debbie says, wonder in her voice.

“Wolf stuff,” Sheila says with a shrug. Then, to Randy: “Hey, little man, wanna go for a walk with your Auntie Sheila and give your mom and the funny sick lady some time to talk through their shit?”

“Thanks, I owe you one,” Debbie says as Sheila walks past her out the door, a hand on her shoulder. Ruth wonders when the two of them became friends. Then she pukes again. 

She hears Debbie come up behind her and freezes. She braces for a disparaging remark, but instead, One of Debbie’s hands pulls Ruth’s hair gently away from her face. “You really tied one on, huh,” she says, her voice surprisingly soft.

“Bobby took me to a gay bar,” Ruth replies weakly, then throws up some more. 

Debbie chuckles and begins to rub soothing circles against her back. Her unexpected return, her unexpected kindness—it’s killing Ruth.

“Why are you being nice to me?” she asks. “Why are you even here?”

“Why don’t we talk about it after you’ve finished vomiting your guts out,” Debbie says.

“Okay, but you don’t have to, you know. Hold my hair back or whatever.”

“I know I don’t. But I am. So deal with it.”

Fifteen sloppy minutes later, Ruth seems to have finally run out of barf. Debbie waits while she washes her face, brushes her teeth, and attempts to make herself look vaguely human.

“So, uh, hi,” Ruth says, leaning against the wall outside the bathroom while Debbie stands a few feet away with an inscrutable expression. “I thought you were…maybe not coming back.”

“I know I’m histrionic sometimes, but I’m not that histrionic. I wouldn’t just leave everyone high and dry like that.”

“You wouldn’t?” Ruth asks carefully.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a water bottle, handing it to Ruth. “Hydrate, for chrissake.”

“...Thanks.” She feels like a cornered prey animal, unsure if Debbie is going to pounce right away or play with her food first.

“Oh, my god, will you just…” Debbie steps forward and pulls Ruth into a tentative hug, and Ruth’s so surprised that it takes her a moment to reciprocate. 

“Wow, you are just, like, radiating vodka fumes right now,” Debbie says against her shoulder.

“That would be all the cosmos.” Ruth experimentally squeezes Debbie a little tighter. They stay like that for a long moment, until Ruth feels like Debbie isn’t going to actually kill her, which is a relaxing thought. Finally, she pulls away and sits down on Ruth’s bed. Ruth sits across from her on Sheila’s.

“Look, I… I know I freaked out on you the other night,” Debbie begins.

“I mean, why wouldn’t you, after what I told you?” Ruth says. She wishes they weren’t having this conversation first thing on a Sunday morning while Ruth was still in her pajamas on her roommate’s unmade bed and felt like her head was going to explode, but she reasons that beggars can’t be choosers.

“The thing is—and this is gonna sound so fucked up—but I’m glad you told me.”

“You… Why?!”

Debbie’s hands fidget on her lap, an age-old tic of hers that Ruth knows means she’s feeling out of her depth. “I guess because I asked you for the truth, and you gave it to me. Even when you knew it was gonna piss me off.”

“Ooo-kay…”

“I want to trust you, Ruth. I honestly do. And that’s something I haven’t been able to do for a really fucking long time. When you told me about what happened, it…obviously brought up a lot of shit for me.” She pauses, looking around the room as if she’ll find the right words somewhere on the stucco ceiling. “But I’ve spent the last few days thinking about it, and…I get it. I get why you didn’t tell me before. If you had, it would’ve been…”

“...real bad,” Ruth murmurs.

“Yeah.” Debbie clears her throat. “I, uh. Had a talk with Mark when I was back home.”

Ruth feels bile rising in her throat again. “Oh, god…”

“I didn’t tell him about the abortion, don’t worry. That would be fucking insane.”

Ruth lets out a huge sigh of relief.

“I mean, part of me wanted to. Just to see the look on his face.”

“Debbie!”

Ruth is surprised when Debbie reaches across the divide to squeeze her hand. “Seriously, I would never. That’s your body, and it’s none of his fucking business.”

“Thanks.” One of Ruth’s favorite things about Debbie has always been her fierce protective streak. As she knows all too well now, Debbie’s a formidable enemy; but when she’s fighting in your corner, it can make you feel untouchable.

“It also seems to me like it isn’t Sam’s fucking business, but what do I know,” Debbie adds bitterly.

Then Ruth remembers. “Oh, my god! You punched him! Do you know how big of a black eye he has?”

“Yeah, that wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. I blame the quart of tequila.”

“I mean, you shouldn’t have done it, but don’t get me wrong, it’s…pretty impressive.” Ruth hopes she isn’t blushing.

Debbie sighs. “I should probably apologize to him. He deserves to be punched out for a lot of reasons, but not for, y’know, being there for you when you needed someone.”

What the hell? Did Debbie spend the last four days on a desert enlightenment retreat or something? “Wow, that’s…”

“But if he was just helping you out to get in your pants, then he can fuck off into the sun.”

Ruth grins. Stay away from her. That’s what Debbie had said to Sam. About Ruth. Because she was jealous. About Ruth. 

She tries to make her expression neutral when she says the next thing. “So you’re…not leaving right away?”

“Did you see the screaming baby in the hallway? I’m not leaving, period.”

Ruth doesn’t bother to hide her happy surprise at this news. “Really?”

“I thought about what you said a few weeks back. About how I could bring Randy to Vegas and stay on? Have my cake and eat it too? And I’m sure it’ll be, like, a shit cake covered in baby poop and Bash’s jizz…”

“Ew.”

“...but I think it might be worth it. To prove to all those motherfuckers out there, you know? That I can do both. ’Cause being back in that house, seeing the way that Mark and Susan are just living these tiny little lives…” Debbie shakes her head. “I don’t want that for myself. I want to have my name in lights and a big, ridiculous office, and I want to show all those…men…that I can do everything they can and raise a child who’s not gonna grow up to be a chauvinist piece of shit like them.”

“Debbie, that’s great! I’m… I’m really proud of you.”

The other woman smiles, big and genuine. “But I also wanted to stay to see what the fuck is up with you and me. And I can’t do that from L.A. Not unless you’re there, too.”

Ruth feels almost weak with relief. “So you still want to…”

Debbie rises and walks to Ruth until she’s standing between her knees. “I still want to.”

“You don’t hate me?”

Debbie sighs. “Believe me, I’ve tried to. A lot. Didn’t take.”

When she bends down to kiss Ruth and Ruth meets her halfway, it’s the sweetest feeling in the world. Dawn has already broken, filling the eastern-facing room with blinding light, but this moment feels like a second sunrise.

Finally, Debbie pulls away with a small grimace and says, “If we’re gonna keep going, you really need to brush your teeth again.”

After Ruth has showered and changed—and brushed her teeth two more times —and Debbie’s gotten Randy back from Sheila, the three of them head down to the godforsaken breakfast buffet. It’s not the best place to talk, but Ruth might die if she doesn’t get something extremely salty and oily into her body right this second.

Debbie watches Ruth tuck into a plate of greasy hash browns with disgust as she feeds Randy grape Jell-O on a tiny spoon. “I don’t know how you can eat that shit.”

“Months of practice,” Ruth says around a cheekful of shredded potatoes.

“You’re lucky you’re too young to know how disgusting this food is, aren’t you? Aren’t you?” Debbie murmurs to Randy in a high lilt as she ladles another purple scoop into his mouth.

It’s been a minute since Ruth has seen this side of her friend: nurturing, unfussy, at ease. Ruth’s not much of a baby person herself, but she thinks maybe she can try to be one for Debbie’s sake, if whatever this is becomes…a real thing. Whoa. Slow down, Wilder. “I’m really glad you’re back,” she blurts out, then realizes where they are. “’Cause I mean, um. I was starting to miss playing Zoya.”

“Shining example of excellence of Mother Russia doesn’t enjoy walking around in clothes of sissy American farm girl?” Debbie says in a low Slavic growl.

Two Zoyas can play at this game. “Is all part of nefarious plan, you see? Infiltrate American cornlands and burn crops, then replace with good Russian beets.”

“Well, if this ain’t the kinkiest courtship ritual I’ve ever seen.”

They both look up to see Yolanda standing over them, smirking. Debbie grabs her arm and tugs her down into the booth, murder in her eyes.

“Shut. Up. Yolanda,” she hisses.

“Ohhhh right. The closet. I remember that.”

Ruth is flabbergasted. “How did you—”

“She and Arthie dragged me out for drinks after we hooked up,” Debbie explains in a tight whisper.

For all her own conversations with Bobby, it never occurred to Ruth that Debbie would also have a confidant to sherpa her through this mess. She’s glad that her friend had someone to talk to—and that she’s finally starting to open up to the other women in the show.

“Anyways,” Yolanda says, speaking low to placate Debbie, “looks like you two worked your shit out, so congrats.”

Debbie meets Ruth’s eyes briefly. “It’s a…work in progress.”

“Isn’t everything?” Yolanda replies. “I’ll let you get back to your weird Iron Curtain foreplay, but listen: Don’t be afraid to hit me up for muff-diving tips.”

“Yolanda!” Ruth squeaks.

“Don’t be a prude, Ruth. Doesn’t suit you,” Yolanda says, tossing her a wink before she walks away.

“She’s right, it doesn’t,” Debbie says with a wicked grin.

Debbie’s here. With her. And she came back. For her. There are no more big, dark secrets between them. And for once, Ruth’s not worrying about her career, or her future, or whether or not someone is mad at her right now. She’s just excited.

And she really hopes Debbie can find a sitter for tonight.

Chapter Text

“Is that…Liberace?”

“I mean…yes. Yes, it is.”

Debbie should have known what she was getting herself into when she’d told Ruth to ask Bobby for date spot recommendations—somewhere where the two of them could be, in her own words, discreet.

“If I put any more alcohol in my body right now, I will actually die,” Ruth said when she’d suggested the plan earlier that night, as they both waited to make their entrance for the finale.

“Don’t be a pussy. You’re rallying,” Debbie shot back.

“But…”

“No buts. I need us to go somewhere where we literally cannot talk,” she whispered into Ruth’s ear.

And then Ruth seems to get it. “You wanna shut me up, huh?” she said with a grin.

“I want to shut us both up,” Debbie replied, then ran out under the lights before Ruth could say anything else.

So here they are at the Gipsy, a bar a couple miles east of the spotlight glare of the Strip, watching Mr. Showmanship himself grinding against the crotch of a square-jawed blond guy beneath the swirling lights of the disco ball. (He’s the kind of handsome that would have landed him in Debbie’s bed a few months earlier. But tonight, they’re both clearly interested in other things.)

“This is nuts,” Ruth (the other thing) says with a giggle. 

“You’re telling me.”

Debbie gets a feeling neither of them mean just Liberace. This whole thing is nuts: the couples (mostly men) gyrating around the light-up dance floor, openly wrapped around each other. She spots three gorgeous dudes feeling each other up against a wall, and a pair of older women in cowboy hats and nudie suits doing a modified square dance while grinning madly at each other. Onstage, a drag queen made up to look like Dolly Parton—with the tits to match—lip syncs to a club remix of “9 to 5.”

(And then there are the other things Debbie is only just beginning to learn about: a dish of condoms at the door with a pile of pamphlets beside it titled “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach”; a young guy sitting in a corner booth with sallow skin, sunken cheeks, and a wistful smile on his face.)

Ruth and Debbie are standing at the edge of the floor, having each thrown back a shot of vodka, neither of them taking the first step under the lights. And, as usual, Debbie knows it’s going to have to be her move to make. So she takes a deep breath, grabs Ruth’s hand, and says, “Let’s see if you’ve gotten any better at dancing since you were in that shitty production of ‘Cabaret’ in the Valley.”

“That’s only ’cause they should have cast me as Sally Bowles and not, like, Kit Kat Girl Number Three,” Ruth says.

“Keep telling yourself that.” 

Once they’re on the floor, Ruth drapes her arms around Debbie’s shoulders.

“Oh, so I have to be the guy, huh?” Debbie says, her hands coming to rest against Ruth’s waist.

“That’s kind of gender-essentialist of you, don’t you think?”

“Just…stop talking,” Debbie says, and as if on cue, Dolly bows and leaves the stage, the lights get dimmer, and the DJ begins spinning Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody.”

Debbie and Ruth know how to move together; they’ve been learning how to fit in and around each other’s bodies for years now. And really, dancing isn’t all that different from wrestling, which has a rhythm, too. But now, it’s not the bowling-ball slam of bodies against ropes, the 3-2-1 countdown before the piledriver—it’s the steady bass from the speakers resonating through Debbie’s body like a heartbeat; it’s Ruth’s hips moving beneath her hands, Ruth’s center pressing against Debbie’s own; it’s a physical give-and-take of that doesn’t feel like a battle at all.

They keep at it through Patti LaBelle’s “New Attitude” and Prince’s “Kiss,” Ruth staring hard into Debbie’s eyes like she’s the sun, and who cares about going blind. But partway through “It’s Raining Men,” someone slams into Debbie’s back.

“What the fuck do you think you’re…” Her words die in her throat when she turns around and sees her assailant. 

“Sorry, doll, I can be a little clumsy sometimes,” Liberace says, flashing her a day-glo grin. 

Debbie is embarrassed to find herself completely tongue-tied. “No apologies necessary, Mister…Liberace.”

“Love the dress, by the way,” his partner says with a wink, before the two of them get back to dry-humping each other.

Debbie turns around, red-faced, to see Ruth laughing her disloyal little ass off. “Mr. Liberace?” she squeaks.

Debbie grabs her by the wrist and yanks her off the dance floor. “Come on, I need a goddamn drink.”

Back at the bar, Debbie tries to drown her mortification in gin. She turns to see Ruth watching her, resting her chin against her hand, smiling.

“What’re you looking at?” Debbie says.

“You, obviously,” Ruth replies. “Since I can, y’know, do that now.”

“Ruth, you’ve been doing that for years. You’re not exactly subtle.”

“Sure, but…I felt weird about it. It’s nice to not have to anymore.”

“You’re such a cheeseball,” Debbie says.

The other woman leans into her with a laugh. “Debbie, we’re on a date. ”

“Are you just saying facts now? We’re on a date. The sky is blue. The bathroom back there smells like old jizz.” 

But Ruth is unfazed. She leans in and gives Debbie a wet smack on the cheek, probably leaving a lipstick mark behind (she borrowed Debbie’s, since for some ungodly reason she doesn’t have any of her own). “You’re cute when you’re grumpy.”

You’re cute all the time, Debbie doesn’t say. But she pulls Ruth in. “I don’t know why I’m being such a bitch right now. I’m sorry.”

Ruth shrugs. “I get it. Old habits die hard.”

Debbie gives it a moment’s thought—is there anyone here who’d recognize her and blab to the press? She pictures the headlines, buried in the back pages of The Sun where C-listers like her know to look: Laura Morgan Goes Lez! Soap Star Caught in Forbidden Lip Lock! But then she reasons that anyone who’s here can’t spill the beans without implicating themselves, too. 

So she sloughs off her inhibitions for the night and kisses Ruth, soundly, right there in front of Liberace, Dolly Parton, and God. And she can’t be fucked to care what any of them might think about it. “New habits,” she says when they part.

Ruth looks like she just got hit with one of Britannica’s made-up science lasers. “Holy shit, Debbie.” She goes back in for more, and Debbie doesn’t mind obliging. 

“Bathroom?” Ruth whispers when they pull apart.

“Jesus, Ruth. I just said it smells like old jizz in there. Also, have some goddamn self-respect. I know I’m a hot piece, but gross.”

Ruth has the temerity to waggle her eyebrows at Debbie when she says, “Guess you’ll have to take me back to the hotel, then.”

The fact that they have to keep their hands off each other on the cab ride and the whole length of the casino floor and on the elevator just makes it all the more fun when Debbie swings her door shut and slams Ruth against it, sucking hickeys along the long, thin line of her neck like a goddamn teenager.

As she undoes the buttons of Ruth’s purple blouse (which is admittedly less hideous than most of her clothes), Debbie makes a mental note to do something extremely nice for Cherry as thanks for watching Randy tonight. Like, a gift basket’s not gonna cut it. 

“Want me to double check that Liberace’s not in here?” Ruth says.

“Oh my god, do you ever stop talking?” Debbie says from between Ruth’s breasts.

“If the moment warrants it,” she replies lightly. And oh, hey, it’s confident Ruth. Debbie missed confident Ruth.

Debbie whips off Ruth’s top and pushes her further into the room. “Get on the bed.”

“Yes, ma’am!” The other woman falls back against the comforter, unclasping her bra as she goes.

“Don’t fucking call me ma’am,” Debbie says, shimmying out of her too-tight, too-sequined dress.

“What should I call you, then?” Ruth looks her straight in the eye as Debbie hovers over her, her hands bracketing Ruth’s face.

“Oh my god, you’re getting off on this, aren’t you?” Debbie says.

“On you being all bossy and scary? I mean, yes, obviously. Have you met me?”

After all they’ve been through, all the glass-breaking and tiptoeing they’ve done around each other, it’s frankly fucking delightful to see Ruth like this: brazen, unashamed, lying half-naked under Debbie, ready for whatever’s going to happen next.

And with all that behind them, there really doesn’t need to be any preamble to this, no moment of nervousness, of assessing comfort levels, of being worried about being too fucking much or too fucking little or too fucking turned on. They know each other too well for all that. 

Instead, there’s this: Debbie laughing low as she pulls Ruth’s jeans down her legs, Ruth mouthing at Debbie’s breast through the lacy fabric of her bra; Debbie lathing her tongue along Ruth’s clavicle, tasting the sweat there; Debbie wondering how she ever thought that she was only interested in men.

And underneath her, Ruth, clever, messy, funny, cruel, sweet, fucked-up Ruth, gasping as Debbie whips off her underwear and fans her fingers out across the fine dark hairs there.

“Ever heard of waxing, Ruth?” Debbie quips, but the breathlessness in her voice gives her away. 

“Seems like you don’t mind,” she replies, and fuck, does she sound obnoxiously superior. 

But now, Debbie sees her knee-jerk annoyance toward Ruth’s smugness for what it is, what it always has been: something she wants to taste, to devour, to suck out of her mouth like secondhand smoke. And the sound Ruth makes when she dips a finger experimentally inside her is worth every stupid minute of all the stupid shit they’ve put each other through for a whole stupid decade.

Chapter Text

Ruth keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is Debbie going to pull back, cackling like the Wicked Witch, and reveal this was all an elaborate ploy to get revenge on Ruth? Is Sam going to bust down the door and declare that Ruth is his and carry her off like a damsel in an old movie? Is Russell going to crawl in through the window and shake his head and just go, “I told you so”? Is a heretofore dormant, undiscovered supervolcano beneath Las Vegas going to erupt and drown them both in boiling lava?

Or, more likely, is Ruth going to say or do something self-sabotaging to ruin this whole thing, again?

But, miraculously, none of that has happened so far. The total opposite, in fact. The total opposite being Debbie fucking Eagan—the heartbreaker, the ball-buster, the bombshell, the all-American dream—circling one perfectly manicured finger around Ruth’s entrance.

Ruth’s been playing it surprisingly cool all night, which is maybe the biggest miracle of all; but the moment Debbie touches her there, all that flirtatious bravado melts away. Is this really happening? she wants to ask. But she doesn’t, because she knows that not even in her wildest fantasies has she conjured this. In her daydreams, it’s always Ruth doing the work, Ruth making Debbie feel good, Ruth on the floor with Debbie high above her, which is, of course, the natural order of things. The fact that Debbie wants to do this for her, though, without Ruth even asking—that’s just nuts. 

Debbie looks away and chuckles, running her tongue along her lips, which, wow. “I’ve, uh, never exactly done this before.”

“I mean, me neither, obviously.” Ruth’s voice is shaky, because Debbie’s finger is still right there, right at the edge.

“I guess it’s kinda like…tying a tie on someone else?”

“Why don’t we just…uh…see how it goes.” Ruth’s determined not to let nerves get the better of them again, so she wills herself to be brave, looks the other woman dead in the eye and says, “I want you inside me, Debbie.”

Debbie’s eyes go wide and she gives a funny sort of grin, and then she goes for it. “Fuck. Ruth. You’re so wet.”

Ruth’s eyes are practically rolling back in her head the moment Debbie enters her, so all she can manage is a tight, “Yup.”

For all her anxiety, Debbie picks this up quickly. Considering they’ve been learning how to read each other’s bodies for going on two years, it only makes sense. They lock eyes the same way they would if they were preparing for a suplex or a diving crossbody—but instead, it’s Debbie pushing a second finger inside her, seeking out her G spot, thumbing her clit. It’s so much, and not enough, but then exactly enough, because Ruth comes fast. 

(Honestly, she probably could have just from Debbie giving her that look, the one that says she knows Ruth so well, and she wants to know what makes Ruth feel good, and she’s just as intent on this as she used to be on making her life hell.)

“Wow,” Debbie says. “You’re loud. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Well, you know, years of learning how to project onstage.” And then, boneless and blissed-out, Ruth starts laughing uncontrollably. 

“Oh, you think this is funny, huh?” Debbie says, but the smile on her face betrays her. 

“Just…come here and kiss me.”

Debbie does. “This is so fucking weird,” she mutters. 

“Good weird, or bad weird?”

“Hot weird.”

“The best kind.”

They kiss for awhile as Ruth comes down from her orgasm. Once she’s stopped full-body tingling, she realizes Debbie still has too many clothes on. Determined to remedy that, she reaches behind the other woman to unhook her bra. But…

“How the hell do you work this thing?”

“Oh, my god. Are you a teenage boy?”

“I just can’t find…the goddamn…clasp!”

Debbie rolls her eyes. “I figured if I slept with another woman I at least wouldn’t have to worry about this part.”

She moves Ruth’s hands around to the front, and ah-ha. There’s the clasp. “What kind of fucking Rube Goldberg machine is this?”

“Not all of us shop for our lingerie at Sears, Ruth. Also, jesus christ, never say ‘Rube Goldberg machine’ to me in bed ever again.”

Ruth smirks as she finally pulls Debbie’s bra free. “Oh, so there’s gonna be a second time?”

“That depends on you, doesn’t it?” And then, all of her sexy-as-hell confidence on display, Debbie stands back to shuck off the rest of her clothes, watching Ruth the whole time.

And listen, if there’s one thing Ruth’s good at, it’s giving anything she sets her mind to her absolute all.

That’s how she winds up on her knees on the cheap hotel carpet, Debbie backed against the wall as Ruth…what’s the word for this? Goes down on her? Licks her vagina? Gives her a lady blowjob? Tongues her…stuff?

“Oh!” Ruth exclaims, pulling back. “This is what eating out means!”

“Oh, my holy fucking hell, what is wrong with you?!” Debbie shouts, before unceremoniously shoving Ruth’s mouth back where it was.

And Ruth’s done interrupting, because now she’s lost in this: Debbie all around her, the taste and scent of her, her strong thighs bracketing Ruth’s head, her hand in Ruth’s hair. And truly, this is a lot more interesting than sucking dick—subtler, more complex, a puzzle to solve. Recalibrate, adjust, change rhythm, add a finger here, a stroke there; find out what the right combination is to make Debbie fall apart above her.

When Debbie does come, loud and wet and unabashed, her fingernails digging into Ruth’s scalp, it’s the most satisfying win Ruth’s ever experienced in a lifetime of competitiveness. She’s never been interested in gambling, has always breezed past the Fan-Tan’s canyons of slot machines, but, like: Jackpot.

“Shit,” Debbie says breathlessly, crumpling to the floor in a heap. “You’re really good at that.”

“Well,” Ruth says, smiling ear to ear, “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

“You and your overactive imagination,” Debbie says, pulling her in for a kiss. The idea of Debbie tasting herself on Ruth’s mouth is, like, a whole lot to take in. And just like that, her body is practically humming once more.

“Hey, do you want to, um…”

“Go again? Jesus, Ruth. You’re insatiable.”

“Oh, like you’re not.” 

Debbie snorts out a laugh, there on the cheap hotel carpet, their bar legs intertwining. “Fine. But I need a smoke first.”

“I thought you were quitting,” Ruth teases.

Debbie gives her a light peck on the lips. “You know I’m never gonna fucking quit.”

Chapter Text

Turns out that Ruth’s kind of insatiable, sexwise—which tracks with how she is in every other aspect of her life. Luckily, Debbie is, too. Maybe it’s all the years of prologue that led up to this moment, but Debbie’s shocked, after round who-knows-what, when she looks over at the digital clock and sees that it’s almost 4am. And suddenly, she feels all those hours deep in her bones.

She’s about to tell Ruth she’s beyond spent when she looks over to see that the other woman’s dead asleep, spread-eagled beside her, drooling on the pillow, with one hand draped across Debbie’s stomach. And as much as she’s thought about sleeping with Ruth, she hasn’t really considered what it might be like to spend the night with Ruth. 

But Debbie’s too tired to follow that thought to wherever it’s flitting off to, so she rolls out from under Ruth’s arm, takes a few gulps of water from the glass on the nightstand, and sleeps the heavy, dreamless sleep of the thoroughly fucked.

They’re both zombies at the matinee; their moves are phoned-in, Debbie’s diction is a limp noodle, and Zoya sounds more like someone’s ailing bubbie than a vicious defender of Bolshevism. 

After Debbie slumps offstage, she finds Ruth and Sam having a heated exchange in the hallway outside the dressing room. Despite her exhaustion, her guard immediately goes up; Sam always brings out the junkyard dog in her.

“...the most half-assed fight I’ve ever seen!” he’s shouting at Ruth as Debbie walks up. “It was like watching two tranqued elephants hugging.”

“That’s the stupidest simile I’ve ever heard, Sam!” Ruth yells back.

“Oh, right, I forgot the audience was here to see evocative verbal imagery, not, y’know, a goddamn wrestling match.”

“Hey! Lay off,” Debbie says.

“Oh, look, it’s the Incredible Hulk! You here to beat the shit out of me some more?” It’s only when Sam turns to face her that she sees the full extent of the shiner she left him—a nasty purple bruise that’s gone a sickly yellow at the edges. 

At the sight of it, the firestorm Debbie was preparing to unleash on him turns to smoke. “Fuck, did I do that?” she says.

“No, it was the other crazy bitch who sucker-punched me for nothing.”

“Hey, don’t call her a bitch!” Ruth shoots back. And she actually steps between the two of them, shielding Debbie, which is, obnoxiously enough, adorable.

Sam raises his hands in the air and scoffs. “Listen. Whatever the fuck is going on with the two of you, don’t bring it into my show.”

“It hasn’t been your show for a long time, Sam,” Ruth says, and, wow.

“Y’know what? Fuck you. And fuck this,” Sam mutters, and stomps away in the direction of the bar.

“Are you okay?”

Debbie tears her eyes away from Sam’s retreating form to see Ruth watching her with wide-eyed concern. 

“Am I okay?” Debbie asks, dumbfounded. “I just… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I owe Sam an apology.”

“Wow. There’s a sentence I never expected to hear.”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s a dickhead, but I may have, uh, overreacted the other night.”

Ruth gives her an incredulous look. “Who are you and what have you done with Debbie Eagan?”

“Just rethinking this knee-jerk reaction I have where I pummel the shit out of every problem.”

“And that includes making nice with Sam?”

Debbie grimaces. “Nice is a strong word. But I’m willing to eat crow when it comes to breaking his face.”

“Careful, or people are gonna stop thinking you’re scary.”

The hall is empty right now, but someone could walk by at any moment—so Debbie stops herself from closing the distance between her and Ruth. Instead, she says, “There’s only two people who get to not be scared of me. And one of them’s in daycare with shit in his pants right now.”

The crooked grin Debbie gets in return looks all wrong on Zoya the Destroya. But’s it’s very, very Ruth.

After the night show, when Debbie’s back in her room with Randy, there’s a quiet knock at her door.

It’s Ruth, in her PJs. She makes a silly face at Randy, and he giggles. It’s very cute. 

But: “What do you want?” Debbie is all brusqueness. She’s exhausted and cranky, and all she wants is to put Randy down for the night, slap some anti-wrinkle cream on the bags under her eyes, and crash out.

Ruth must clock Debbie’s mood, because her smile falls. “Oh, I was just wondering if… Can I, uh, sleep in here?”

Debbie does a quick scan of the corridor—empty, thank god—and yanks Ruth roughly inside with her free hand, shutting the door behind her. “Jesus, you want the whole world to hear you?”

“I mean…pretty sure the whole world heard us last night.”

“Could have been a dude who goes falsetto when he comes. Plausible deniability.”

“Wow, you’ve really thought this through, huh?” 

“Yeah, and you should be, too, if you don’t want to tank your career,” Debbie says brusquely.

The wounded look the other woman gives her is extremely annoying. “That seems extreme. Besides, it’s not like any of the girls are gonna care.”

“Have you met Melrose? If she found out we fucked, the whole casino would know by noon tomorrow.” 

Ruth looks confused. “Arthie and Yolanda seem to be getting along just fine.”

“Yeah, because their only credit is playing fucking cartoon characters in a cut-rate wrestling show. Oh, and I guess Yolanda has her illustrious stripping career.”

“Jesus, Debbie, I thought they were your friends.”

“They are! And I’m happy for them. But I’m just trying to be realistic here. You and I are more ambitious than that. Or at least I thought you were.”

Ruth gets that crinkle between her eyebrows that only shows up when she’s really angry. “Of course I am! But you really think people are that closed-minded?”

“Yes! I can’t believe how naive you’re being!” The moment Debbie raises her voice, Randy begins wailing. “Fuck! Now look what you did,” she spits at Ruth.

“I’m not the one who turned this into a screaming match!” Ruth shouts back.

Through the haze of anger and exhaustion, Debbie knows that she’s being unfair. And she’s trying to be better. But it’s so goddamn hard. With all her strength, she forces herself to disengage. “You’re right, okay? You’re right.” 

She bounces Randy in her arms in the silence that stretches between them, and miraculously, his tears begin to subside. So she turns her attention back to Ruth, who’s standing ramrod straight, arms crossed, all her defenses up. 

“Look, I know I’m maybe overreacting a little. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” Debbie walks further into the room, hoping Ruth will follow.

“I thought we were past this,” Ruth says, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “Not the…y’know…maybe-gay stuff, because I know we still have a lot to figure out there. But the you-jumping-down-my-throat stuff.”

“I know,” Debbie says, depositing Randy in his crib and joining her. “I’m sorry. I’ve clearly got a lot of rage shit I need to work on.”

“No kidding.”

“But I’m serious about this, Ruth,” she says, pressing a hand against her thigh. “I obviously want to keep doing whatever this is with you, but we need to be careful. I’m trying to be a real producer, which is friggin’ impossible to do as a woman, let alone as a woman who fucks other women.”

“I know,” Ruth says, then heaves a deep sigh. “I guess it was stupid of me to think that we’d be past the heavy stuff once we, y’know…”

“Fucked each other into next Tuesday?”

Ruth laughs. “Yeah. That.”

“I mean, look. Absolutely nothing was wrong with that part.” Debbie leans in with a kiss that she tries to make as soft as her words were hard, and to her relief, Ruth melts into it.

“Not worried about kissing me in front of Randy?” she says. 

Debbie shrugs. “He’s a baby. Hasn’t learned how to gossip yet.” After a brief infinity, she breaks it off and says, “Listen, I dunno about you, but I am wiped the fuck out. And as much as I hate to admit it, Sam was right. We did half-ass the show today.”

“Yeah.”

“But since you’re already here, you might as well stay the night.”

Ruth bites her lip. “I actually think I’m gonna…” 

“Oh. Okay.” Debbie didn’t expect Ruth to turn her down, but she figures she owes it to her not to ask why. 

Ruth squeezes Debbie’s hand, and, before she leaves, goes over to Randy’s crib, leans down, and whispers, “’Night, little man.” 

Debbie’s surprised by how soft this simple gesture makes her feel. Slow down, Eagan.

“I’ll see you tomorrow though, alright?” Ruth says, one hand on the doorknob. 

“Terrible buffet breakfast?”

Ruth’s grin doesn’t make it to her eyes. “Sure.”

Despite how tired she is, it takes Debbie a long time to fall asleep, after that.

Chapter Text

It’s a hard habit to break: Ruth’s automatic assumption that Debbie is trying to hurt her, either intentionally or unintentionally. She knows Debbie is actively working on that right now, and of course it’s not going to be an immediate fix. Neither of them do easy ; it’s probably a big part of why they’re so drawn to each other.

And, god, it’s not like Ruth is ready to proclaim to the world that she’s…whatever she is. The fact that she can’t even name it for herself says a lot. Bobby told her she was part of his community now, but she’s not sure she believes it. 

That said, she is kind of prepared to tell the world that she’s into, specifically, Debbie Eagan, and that Debbie Eagan is into her—because, goddamn, who wouldn’t want to brag about that? She knows Debbie’s not wrong about the fact that making what’s really going on between them public could, at best, put them on shaky ground professionally, and, at worst, could actively be dangerous.

Still, she can’t shake the feeling, from the moment that Debbie yanked her in from the hallway, that the other woman is ashamed to be seen with her. Debbie’s Debbie, and Ruth’s Ruth. And she knows that, beside Debbie, she strikes an unimpressive figure: a hot blonde TV star and a mousy brunette theater nerd. Is it just about the gay thing? Or is it about the fact that Ruth is, at least at first glance, anything but a catch?

If she were a man, would Debbie still want to hide what was happening? 

Ruth knows she could—and probably should—just ask Debbie directly, but she doesn’t know what the answer would be—and she’s not sure if she could deal with being nothing other than Debbie’s dirty little secret. 

And she’s been forcing herself not to look at it head-on, but she can’t not have it at the back of her mind: Ruth’s in love. And she can’t remember the last time she felt that way. Maybe never. Debbie occupies so much of her thoughts; when she’s not around, Ruth’s constantly wondering what she’s doing, if she’s thinking of her; when she looks at Ruth, or even walks into a room, Ruth feels like her entire body is full of bees. And now that they’ve had sex, well. Ruth is screwed.

She thought she might have loved Russell; but now she knows she was fooling herself. He was someone she thought she should love: kind, patient, steady, smart, and clearly in love with her. And the simple feeling of being wanted, rather than just wanting, was intoxicating. 

When she’d called him a few weeks ago to break things off, she felt cruel. But she knew she was doing the right thing. And, in classic Russell fashion, he’d been totally decent about the whole, which only made her feel shittier.

“What’s the use of being a dick about it? If you don’t love me the way I love you, then it’s just… It’s over.” 

“I wish I did. I tried.”

“I know. I could see it. I guess I didn’t want to admit it to myself because…y’know.”

She could picture exactly what his face looked like on the other end of the line, a tight grimace lifting the corners of his mustache.

Alone in her room after that awkward farewell with Debbie, Ruth thinks back on that conversation. At the time, it seemed kinder to lie to him about who she had feelings for. But now, she has the sudden desire to confess. She owes him that—the truth, freely given, rather than only when she’s found out.

Debbie said she didn’t want to tell anyone else what was going on between them, but, well. Russell already guessed anyway.

He picks up on the second ring. 

“Hey! It’s uh, it’s Ruth,” she says, too brightly.

“Hey, yourself,” he says. He sounds guarded, but not angry. (Unlike every other disaster person she’s gotten involved with in her life, Russell never gets angry.)

“How… How are you?”

“I’m okay, I guess. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Or, y’know, maybe ever.”

“Russell, I. I don’t want to cut you out of my life, unless you want that. And probably after what I’m about to tell you, you will. But I think I should tell you.”

“Well, this sounds like it’s gonna be a super fun conversation.”

She decides to just say it, before she chickens out. “You know when you asked if there was someone else, and I said yes, but that it wasn’t anyone you know? I lied.”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. “The suspense is killing me, Ruth.”

“You were right when you said that, uh…” Her voice is shaking, but she has to get through this. “It’s Debbie.”

“Oh,” he says. “Ohhhhh.”

The next part comes out in a rush. “We kissed. Or she kissed me? But I kissed her back. And I think it would’ve gone further, but then we snapped out of it and stopped.”

“When was this?”

“Like, three days before I broke up with you. God, I’m such an asshole.” She lets out a long breath. “You can yell at me now.”

There’s a terrible pause before he says, “You’re not an asshole.”

“Of course I am! I’m a serial cheater.” (She’d told him about the whole Mark situation last year, after they’d been on a few dates.)

Russell sighs heavily. “I mean, I’m not saying I love that this happened, but. Look, I’ve got a few gay friends, and I know what they’ve been through. That stuff is hard as shit.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yeah. People confide in me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a pretty good guy.” 

“Fuck, Russell. You’re, like, the best guy.” 

“Kind of hilarious, coming from the woman who just broke up with me, but. Thanks. Anyways, I get it if you didn’t realize you were into her until it was, y’know, right in your face.”

“You’re not mad?” she asks.

“I mean, yeah. Of course I am. A little. But that doesn’t mean you’re, like, a shitty person.” He pauses, then adds, “If it had been Sam, then I would *actually* be mad.”

“If it had been Sam, you’d have my permission to fly up to Vegas and do an intervention.”

They share a laugh at this. Then Russell, wonderful Russell, says, “So… Did it end up going anywhere? With you and Debbie?”

“We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” she says.

“Ruth. I’m asking.”

“Okay, then. Yeah. It did. It is. Which is…so crazy? It’s been an uphill climb, but we got to a good place a couple days ago, and…I think we’re both really giving this a go.”

“Wow. So it’s going well?”

“Yeah. But it’s all really new. And we’re both really scared about—her more than me—about anyone finding out. So we’ve had to kinda sneak around.”

“No one else knows?”

“Well…a few people. We’ve both been such fucking disasters these last couple weeks, it was hard to keep it a total secret. But, y’know. People we trust. And…I hope you know I trust you, Russell. I think maybe you’re the only completely non-shitty man I’ve ever met. Well, straight man, at least.”

“I’m gonna get that put on a T-shirt: ‘The only completely non-shitty man I’ve ever met, raves my ex,’” he quips. “Should be a big hit with the ladies.”

“They should be so lucky,” Ruth says with a laugh. “I’m gonna let you go now. But. Thank you. And I’m sorry. Again.”

“Take care, okay? And look me up next time you’re in L.A. There’s, like, a 40% chance I’ll be over you by then.”

After she puts her phone down, Ruth reclines in her bed and considers: If, after all she’s put him through recently, Russell still thinks Ruth isn’t a horrible person? Maybe it’s time she starts believing it herself.

Chapter Text

Debbie can’t shake the feeling that everyone is watching her. And not in the way they usually are—the Look at this fucking Amazon of a woman, the I am equally scared and turned on, the Didn’t she used to be on a soap opera? 

No, it’s like she’s transparent, and they can see her stupid heart beating in her stupid chest, her vulnerability that she usually keeps so well-concealed, the way she feels about another woman. Fucking dyke, a middle-aged lady in a golf visor seems to whisper into her pudgy husband’s ear. Unhireable now; a damn shame, the eyes of a handsome older man in a Stetson seem to say, as he leans over the roulette table. (In another life, she might have been on his arm right now.) You used to be hot before you decided to eat pussy, a sad-looking drunk bellying up to the bar exudes. 

She hasn’t seen Ruth since their strained conversation last night, and the guilt weighs on her almost as heavily as the fear. It sucks. She shit-talked Yolanda and Arthie last night, but after tossing and turning till dawn, she knows what she really wanted to say is, They’re brave, and I’m more of a coward than I ever knew.

It’s their day off, and Debbie thinks maybe she should get out of the hotel for the afternoon, borrow someone’s car and drive out to the desert, be alone with her thoughts. But frankly, alone with her thoughts is the very last place she wants to be. She’d rather go bust someone’s balls. 

And she knows exactly whose shitty little nuts she wants to crack. 

Of course Bash’s penthouse is five floors above the girls’ floor. His room should be Debbie’s. His whole damn show should be Debbie’s. 

She hasn’t talked to him since she came back; they’ve only glared at each other across the ropes her first few nights back in the ring. So now’s as good a time as any for Debbie to lay out the terms of her staying on with G.L.O.W., preferably with her hands around Bash’s twerpy little throat. But the withering insult she’d prepared to lead with dies in her throat when he answers the door. 

“Jesus, you look like hell,” she blurts out. Because he does—eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, unshaven, bathrobe half-undone, leaning on the door frame like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. 

“Gee, thanks,” he rasps. His breath reeks of gin. Debbie expects him to slam the door in her face, but instead, he reels back into the room, not asking her to follow, but not shutting her out, either. 

The room is littered with half-empty lowball glasses, and Debbie detects the distinct fug of day-old sex. She should probably get the hell out of there, but morbid curiosity gets the better of her, and she perches on the edge of the tub, which seems to be the least sticky place in the suite.

Bash pours himself two fingers of Hendricks and turns to face her. “What the fuck do you want, Debbie? The show? The whole damn Fan-Tan? My dick on a skewer? Fucking take it. We’re having a fire sale.”

Well, it’s no fun if he’s just gonna fucking surrender. “What…happened to you?”

He laughs bitterly. “Believe me, you don’t want to know. I wish I didn’t know.”

“Try me.”

“I’m a piece of shit. That’s what happened.”

“You’ve been a piece of shit the whole time I’ve known you,” she deadpans.

He sits heavily on the rumpled bed and drops his head into his hands. “I tried so hard. I tried so fucking hard not to be like this.” 

“…Like a piece of shit?”

“Jesus. Why am I even talking to you right now? You hate me.”

Debbie crosses her arms. “I do. So, super low stakes if you tell me what the hell is going on.”

When he raises his head, his eyes are moist with tears. And, motherfucker—she actually feels bad for Bash fucking Howard.

“I’m… I think I might be…” He looks all around the room as if the right words are hidden somewhere in the wainscoting. “I’m gay, Debbie.”

It’s the very last thing she expected him to say, and it knocks the wind out of her. And god, she’s such a fucking mess right now, her armor hardly holding anymore, that the words tumble out of her mouth before she can stop them. 

“Me too,” she says.

Bash’s mouth falls open like he’s a character on one of Randy’s Saturday morning cartoons. They simply stare at each other for who knows how long—bitter enemies who have found themselves in the midst of the same earth-shattering existential crisis.

It’s Bash who speaks first. “I’m sorry, I feel like you just told me you were…”

“…gay. Or…bisexual, I guess? But definitely into…y’know…”

“...pussy?” he supplies.

“Uh-huh,” she half-whispers. “And you’re into…”

“...dick. Yeah.”

“I mean…same.” 

He cocks half a smile, and she snorts, and suddenly they’re both laughing uncontrollably, Debbie so hard that she slides off the rim of the tub and onto the floor, which only leads to a fresh round of cackling.

When they finally exhaust themselves, Bash finds a clean glass and pours Debbie a G&T, and they sit cross-legged on the hideous carpet like two middle schoolers at a sleepover. Bash tells her about his disastrous evening—the strain in he and Rhonda’s sex life that led to her hiring Melrose’s gigolo to make him jealous, but which instead resulted in his first sexual encounter with another man. 

“How was it?” Debbie asks.

“It was…god, it was fucking amazing. Like, I’d been denying myself this for so long, and finally, finally, I made sense to myself. Y’know? But then at the same time, the shame… Especially with Rhonda watching us the whole time.”

“So you’d known for a while.”

A bittersweet look crosses his face. “I think I always knew? At least since I saw Brando rip his sweaty shirt off in ‘Streetcar.’ Spent years trying to hide it from myself, though.”

“Until you couldn’t,” Debbie supplies.

“Yeah. It was after Florian. After he…” Bash sighs. “The official story was that he died of pneumonia. But it was actually, um…” He holds back a sob.

“I’m sorry.” And she is.

“I was terrified, you know? Still am. This shit is literally life and death. Even if no one wants to pretend it exists.” He wipes his eyes, and then lets out a little chuckle. “God, I’ve never told anyone this. Why the hell am I telling you?”

Debbie shrugs. “There comes a point when you just can’t hold it in anymore.”

Bash gives her a knowing look. “It’s Ruth, isn’t it?”

“Jesus. How the hell did you…?”

“Deb. I may be a pretty self-absorbed guy, but the weird energy between you two—anyone could see it from, like, outer space.”

So maybe Debbie’s not as good at hiding as she thinks she is. “I think she and I had both known for a long time. But it’s not really a thing you, y’know. Take under consideration.”

“Career suicide,” Bash supplies.

“Among other things.” She sighs. “I think Ruth’s less freaked out about what’s going on with us getting out than I am. She’s always been braver than me.”

He studies her for a long moment. It’s weird. “You really like her, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she admits. “I really tried to hate her, but. Stuff between us always just felt…”

“...inevitable.”

“Right.”

He leans in. “Then you know what? Fuck ’em.”

“Excuse me?”

“Deb, I’m married, and my parents basically funded Reagan’s campaign in California, and I’m… Well, I’ve got a whole lot to lose.”

Her hackles go up. “And I don’t?”

“No! No. That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying…you’re free in a way I can’t be. Even if it feels like you aren’t. So maybe the risk is worth it, you know?”

“You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman in this industry, Bash.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve sure heard a hell of a lot about it from you,” he says, acid in his voice.

“Y’know, before this whole little fucked-up heart-to-heart, I came in here to chew you out. Ask you for a bigger stake in the show,” Debbie says, rising to stand, needing to get some height on him.

“I figured as much,” he says. “Did my clever distraction of having my whole fucking life fall apart not do the trick?”

She thinks about how she lashed out at Ruth last night and takes a beat to let her anger subside. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “Okay. Let’s start over. Closet case to closet case.”

Bash chuckles a little. “I’m listening.”

“You and I both know we could do better than the fucking Fan-Tan. The girls are bored. I’m bored. And I know you like to think big thoughts in that tiny little brain of yours.”

“Wow, you really know how to sweet-talk a guy.”

She paces, weighing options. “I want to get G.L.O.W. back on TV.”

“And I want a pony that shits cocaine. So what?”

“Couldn’t you, like, actually buy that, though? You have a fucking robot, you trust fund twat.”

Debbie can see the gears turning in his mind. “Now that you mention it… I may have come into an inheritance. A big one.”

“How big?”

“$40 million big.”

She wants to punch him, but that would ruin her manicure. “Jesus riding a butt plug, Bash. Fucking lead with that information!”

“Well it was supposed to be a secret!” he shouts back. “But I already told you I’m a fucking homo, so! Why not put it all on the table, I guess!”

Debbie’s improvising now, but she knows she does it well; hell, it’s on her acting résumé. “You know what? Screw just getting the show back on TV.” Her heart is racing now, possibilities glinting on the horizon like the lights of Vegas from the desert, that night she decided to let Ruth in. “We’re gonna buy the fucking TV.”

Chapter Text

“No harm in tryin’, I guess. You think it’s such a hot idea. Besides, I always wondered what’d be like to be you.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, sure. I used to picture you walkin’ around some campus with yer arms fulla’ books. Blondes chasin’ after ya’.”

Blondes chasin’ after ya. A laugh erupts from Ruth of its own accord. Sheila sighs and drops character.

“Where are you today, man?” she asks.

Ruth wiggles a little in her chair as if it will shake all the gunk out of her head. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s nothing. Let’s keep going.”

The Libertine Ball is coming up, and it’s Bobby’s pride and joy. And considering how supportive he’s been of her, Ruth wants to give it her all. So she agreed to Sheila’s frankly wild idea to play a gender-swapped scene from “True West” the night of. And here they are, in the ring, of all places, trading Sam Shepard’s words instead of blows. But Sheila’s right: Her head is elsewhere—namely, with a certain blonde who at the moment is doing anything but chasing after her.

“Blondes? That’s funny,” she says, returning to the script. She’s not Ruth Wilder right now; she’s Austin, a struggling screenwriter who’s reunited with his estranged brother, Lee, who’s as bossy and charismatic as he is dangerous. (She’s, obviously, familiar with the type.)

“What’s funny about it?” Sheila replies. Ruth is astounded by how quickly her friend moves in and out of character, how effortlessly she seems to have gotten herself off-book. Ruth has always thought she herself was born to be an actor, but after watching Sheila work, she’s not so sure anymore.

“Because I always used to picture you somewhere.”

“Where’d you picture me?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sheila-as-Lee says. “Different places. Adventures. You were always on some adventure.”

Adventures. Is that what she’s having right now? Ruth thought she had worked up some courage, finally, to go all-in on this thing with Debbie. But ever since the other woman rebuffed her last night, Ruth’s started to backpedal and question everything. And Debbie is a cipher all over again; Ruth’s not sure if her friend-turned-fuck buddy is avoiding her or trying to give her some space. 

The Libertine Ball is supposed to a place—a proper public one—for gay people to celebrate out in the open; but judging by what Debbie said, that’s the last thing she wants. 

But what does Ruth want?

“Oh, my god, will you please just go talk to Debbie and figure out your shit so we can do some actual scene work?”

Ruth snaps out of her spiral to see Sheila standing over her, arms crossed.

“I can’t right now,” she admits, feeling about three inches tall.

Sheila sighs. “Fine. You’re feeling uncertain? Scared? So’s Austin. So put it into the scene. You’re an actor, Ruth. This is what we do. Take all our junk and channel it into a character.”

Ruth smiles up at her. “You’d be a really good teacher, you know that?”

Sheila rolls her eyes, but grins back. “Thanks, I guess. Let’s take it from the top?”

It’s not that Ruth doesn’t see Debbie at all over the next few days; obviously they wrestle together, and after the show tonight, Debbie squeezed her hand when they were standing in the vom—a silent, reassuring We’ll get past this that Ruth returned with her own fingers.

But now the night’s really getting underway, because it’s almost time for the ball, and Ruth and Sheila are in their room, changing from their wrestling gear into their “True West” togs. Ruth still feels less than sure of herself in the role, but at least she has all her lines memorized.

“I dunno. Do you think everyone’s gonna be dressed up all fancy?” Ruth asks, tucking a burgundy flannel shirt into a pair of high-waisted jeans, slicking her hair back into a low bun. 

Sheila shrugs, pulling on a simple white T-shirt. Ever since she left the wolf behind her, her roommate has favored more subdued looks. “Probably. But these are our costumes, Ruth. Austin and Lee don’t wear glitter.”

Ruth considers herself in the mirror, trying on various cowboy poses. “I guess I do look kinda…butch. Bobby taught me that word,” she says proudly.

“Exactly. Think of it as the Sam Shepard version of drag.”

Ruth laughs. “I’m sure that’s huge at La MaMa right now.”

For how detached and distracted she’s felt lately, Ruth is pleasantly surprised to find that she loses herself in her scene with Sheila, there up on a stage under the lights, and for the first time in a damn long while, not in a skintight leotard and mohawk.

It’s one of the things that first drew Ruth to acting, and that she’s always loved about it: After the prep, the textual analysis, the memorization, she can put on a costume and become someone else, lose herself in emotions and lives that aren’t hers at all. Ruth has to hold back her anger; but Austin sure the hell doesn’t. 

At first, the crowd seems bemused by the spectacle of a subtly shaded Sam Shepard scene crammed in between a burlesque act and a Boy George impersonator. But soon they become just as wrapped up in the drama as the two of them are onstage, and Ruth feels a familiar thrill run through her: the eyes and attention of an audience, quietly intent on the words she’s speaking. 

And Sheila’s an incredible scene partner, Ruth thinks as they take their bows—the best she’s had since, well, Debbie. And just as she has that thought, she spots a familiar figure in the audience, materializing like a dream tossed on a sea of bright feathers and gold lamé.

Debbie Eagan is beaming up at her from the crowd, clapping unabashedly, decked out in a tux and tails like Marlene Dietrich in “Morocco.” A top hat is perched at a rakish angle on her head, her hair beneath it done up in old-fashioned finger waves, her lips painted a dark burgundy. Over the years, and especially recently, Ruth’s entertained a thousand fantasies of Debbie in every kind of risque outfit. But never, even in her wildest dreams, did she imagine this dashing, dapper vision before her. And then, god, the woman has the temerity to look her straight in the eyes, quirk a smile, and wink.

It probably wouldn’t be good form for Ruth to die onstage. She’s not Molière, and this isn’t the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. But it takes everything she has to keep her heart from stopping right then and there. She doesn’t realize how long she’s been standing with her mouth hanging open until Sheila grabs her by the arm and tugs her offstage.

“Are you okay? Are you having a stroke?” her friend asks once they’re safely tucked in the wings. She sounds genuinely worried.

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Ruth says, her throat tight, letting out a high, breathy laugh that doesn’t sound like her at all. 

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” And then she pulls Sheila to her and wraps her in a tight hug. “You were amazing out there.”

“You too,” Sheila says, returning the embrace.

But Ruth’s mind is already drifting toward the audience, where Debbie is, presumably, waiting. “Listen, I gotta g—”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Bobby materializes out of the darkness, wearing an insane flesh-colored spandex number. 

“But I have to—”

“You have to come with me to the dressing room right now so I can…” He steps back and looks her up and down with disdain. “...Fix this whole mess before you go do what I know you’re about to do.”

“Hey!” Ruth exclaims as he drags her bodily back to the dressing room. 

He slams the door behind him and says, “Take off your clothes. Now. We don’t have much time before my next number.”

“But you’re…”

“Honey, I couldn’t be less interested in your tits. Off.”

Ruth starts shucking off her flannel and jeans, because she’ll do whatever it takes if it means she can go find Debbie sooner. Bobby disappears into a row of costume racks and reemerges holding a dress worthy of Fanny honest-to-god Brice. It’s a floor-length, off-the-shoulder gown encrusted in royal blue sequins, shot through with gold beads threaded in Art Deco patterns. A high slit rises up the left side.

“Bobby…” she whispers in awe, standing there in just her bra and underwear. (Off the rack from Kmart—not exactly haute lingerie.)

“Belonged to a dear old friend of mine who was just about your size.”

Ruth shakes her head. “It’s too much, I—”

“Shut it, dollface. I’ve heard enough of your self-loathing bullshit to last a lifetime. It’s time to sparkle, Neely, sparkle.”

She wants to protest further, but he’s right—that little voice in her head, the one that’s mean as hell, can friggin’ can it. If Debbie’s decked out like Fred Astaire, the least Ruth can do is be her Ginger.

It’s a testament to Bobby’s years of doing quick-change drag that he manages to give Ruth a full makeover in fifteen minutes flat. When he’s done, she barely recognizes herself in the mirror: hair shiny and feathered Farrah Fawcett–style, dramatic glam-rock makeup halfway between Madonna and Ziggy Stardust, five-inch gold heels she can just barely walk in, and that dress. It gives her cleavage she didn’t even know she had, and the slit goes all the way to her upper thigh. 

For maybe the first time in her life, Ruth looks at herself and thinks she’s, well, kind of gorgeous.

“I’m a pretty girl, mama,” Bobby says in a perfect imitation of Natalie Wood in “Gypsy,” standing behind her and resting his hands on her bare shoulders.

“I don’t know what to say,” Ruth murmurs, running a hand along her glitter-dusted collarbone. 

“Say you’ll go out there and knock that frenemy of yours sideways.”

“I’ll try.” 

“This is your night, Ruth. I mean, it’s my night, obviously, but I’ll loan you some of it, ’cause I’ve always wanted to be someone’s fairy dragmother.”

“Wish me luck,” she says, opening the door.

“I thought you theater types say Break a leg.”

“In these heels? I literally might.”

She’s miles more nervous stepping out into the crowd than she was going onstage. Up there, she was playing a character. Here, she’s Ruth Wilder, bombshell for one night only. There’s a topless woman deep-throating a sword onstage, but as she scans the crowd for Debbie, multiple pairs of eyes turn to look at her instead of the spectacle under the spotlight. Taking a calming breath, Ruth muscles her way into the press of bodies. The first of the G.L.O.W. girls to clock her are Jenny and Melrose, who both audibly gasp.

“Holy shit, Wilder. Who knew you were a hot piece under all that mousy denim?” Melrose says.

“Thanks, I think?”

Sheila spots her next. “Damn. Bobby really outdid himself.”

“Just another costume,” Ruth says.

It’s Dawn and Stacey’s actual screams that catch Debbie’s attention. When she turns to look, Ruth feels like she’s in “West Side Story”—the music slowing and the lights dimming as Tony and Maria spot each other across the crowd.

Play it cool, Wilder. You’re Fanny Brice. You’re Fanny Brice, she repeats in her head as they approach each other. “Hi,” she says when Debbie’s a couple feet away.

Debbie’s face moves through about twenty expressions in ten seconds; it’s like watching a film reel of every emotion she’s ever had toward Ruth: fondness, anger, competitiveness, pride, attraction, before finally landing on one that Ruth’s terrified to give a name to, lest it vanish.

“Wow, that’s a step up from that fucking Nancy Reagan getup you wore to Bash’s mom’s charity thing last year,” Debbie finally says.

Ruth laughs, but it’s tight in her throat. She feels like a nervous teen meeting her date at prom (not that she even went to prom).

“Debbie, you look…” She can’t find the right words to convey it, so she settles for: “...fucking hot as hell.”

Debbie just shrugs and smirks.

“Didn’t think I’d see you here,” Ruth says. “Too um…y’know…”

“Publicly gay?”

“Well…yeah.”

Debbie shoves her hands in the pockets of her suit pants and raises herself to her full height, and Ruth is once more bowled over by how incredible she looks, like some kind of androgynous demigoddess out of a Busby Berkeley movie. 

“Look, I um. I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past few days. About what I said to you the other night, about…us. Whatever us is,” Debbie says.

“Yeah?”

She looks more nervous than Ruth’s ever seen her. “Yeah. And I got some advice from the most…” She laughs and presses her lips together, which are the deep burgundy of fine wine. “...unlikely source you could fucking imagine. And, uh.”

She scans the room, sways on the balls of her patent-leather shoes, then shakes her head, as if she’s lost an argument with herself. “Fuck it,” she says, and presses a hand against the small of Ruth’s back, hauls her in, and kisses her on the lips, right there in front of everyone.

Ruth is absolutely certain people are staring now, but when they part, she only has eyes for Debbie, who’s looking at her with a mix of desperate hope and pants-shitting fear.

“Debbie…” she says, and before she can think too hard about it, about who may or may not be watching, what this may or may not mean for their careers, their futures, their safety, she grabs the other woman’s face in both hands and kisses her back, steady and sure—and with a lot of tongue.

“Wooo!” Ruth hears, close to her ear. Of course it’s Yolanda, one fist pumping the air and her other arm wrapped around Arthie.

“Fifty bucks. Pay up, bitch!” someone says on her other side, and she sees Cherry, smug as hell and holding out her hand as Tammé rolls her eyes and reaches into her purse.

She turns back to Debbie, who smiles and cups Ruth’s cheek. “I was being a coward. And I’m done not taking risks. You taught me that.”

Ruth pulls her into another kiss, and the girls around them hoot and holler. She thinks back to that first day Debbie stormed into the warehouse right after she found out about the affair with Mark, climbing into the ring and soundly pummeling Ruth’s ass as everyone watched. 

Turns out the two of them still know how to put on a hell of a show.

Chapter Text

Debbie makes a mental note to thank Bobby for giving Ruth the makeover she’s always needed, because shit, she looks amazing—all the parts of her body she usually hides beneath layers of cheap fabric now glittering under the lights. 

“You realize we’re the two hottest people in this room,” Debbie says. 

“You think?” Ruth replies, leaning against her shoulder, the top of her hair tickling Debbie’s chin. 

But no one knows how to steal the spotlight like Sandy Devereaux St. Clair, who chooses this exact moment to strut through the parted curtains, hips swaying, in the most fabulous showgirl outfit Vegas has ever seen, decked out in feathers, diamonds, rhinestone pasties, and little else. And despite her sixty-one years, her tits look fucking incredible.

They both erupt into cheers and applause alongside everyone else. “Okay, I take it back, she’s the hottest!” Debbie shouts into Ruth’s ear over the din.

Ruth’s face turns bright red as she gawks at Sandy. “I can’t believe I ever thought I was straight,” she says.

As Sandy and Bobby perform Maurice Chevalier up on the stage, Debbie turns to see Ruth’s reaction to the performance—only to find the other woman already staring at her.

“You’re missing the show,” Debbie says.

“I know, I’m just…” Ruth squeezes Debbie’s arm through her tuxedo jacket. “...really, really happy right now.”

Because she can, because fuck what anyone thinks, Debbie kisses Ruth again, softly this time, just for them. It used to terrify her, being soft around anyone, letting her guard down. But this is different. This is like nothing else. Ruth is like nothing else. And Debbie thinks she might as well do one more brave thing tonight.

“Ruth,” Debbie says, “I…” Her whole face feels hot. Her whole body feels hot, in fact, like she’s standing on the surface of the sun. And that’s when she turns around and sees the flames.

“FIRE! FUCK, FIRE!” Bobby shouts from the stage.

She grabs Ruth’s hand and holds on tight. “Run,” she hisses, and pulls her through the curtains.

Once she’s coughed her lungs out, Debbie can’t tear her eyes away from the vile words spray-painted all over the brick wall outside the theater, stark white through the smoke. She crushes Ruth’s smaller body against her own, as if she could shield either of them from this. 

They eventually stumble their way to Bobby, who’s staring at the graffiti in mute shock. AIDS kills fags. Ruth puts her arm around him and they grasp each other’s hands. She’s told Debbie how much he’s been there for her these past few months, but it’s only now that Debbie sees how close they’ve become.

“Well, I guess we got the word out,” he murmurs, not meeting either of their eyes. Around them, people are fleeing for their lives, beads and sequins falling like ashes in their wake.

After the fire has been doused, after the police have taken their statements, after everyone they know is safe and accounted for, they find themselves back in Debbie’s room, sitting beside each other on the bed and staring at the wall. Ruth has abandoned her heels and Debbie is down to her shirtsleeves, bow tie undone. Behind them, Randy stretches and coos in his crib, blessedly unaware of what an awful place this world can be.

“You were right,” Ruth says, breaking the funereal silence. “I was being naive.”

“Hey. Don’t do that right now.”

The other woman stands and starts pacing the room. “I was so stupid to think that we could just…have this. That we could let everyone know about us and still be safe.”

“You’re not stupid,” Debbie says. “You’re—”

Ruth stops in her tracks. “Don’t you dare call me brave.”

Just yesterday, Debbie was scared of telling anyone about them because of the implications for her career, let alone her life. Now, she sees why Bash (who was pointedly not at the Libertine Ball tonight) has spent years being so terrified, denying himself, living in the shadows even though it’s clearly been killing him by slow degrees.

But she’s Debbie Eagan. And Debbie Eagan doesn’t back down.

She stands to face Ruth. “Maybe you were being naive. Maybe I was too. But so fucking what? That doesn’t mean we just throw in the towel.”

“We could have died tonight. Our friends could have died tonight.”

“I know,” Debbie replies. “But that doesn’t make me want to back off. That makes me want to fight.”

Ruth laughs a little hysterically. “Everything makes you want to fight!”

“Well…yeah!”

Ruth looks at her, and there are tears falling down her cheeks, her eye makeup running black and blue. “I’m scared, Deb.”

Debbie hates to see her like this, all the fire gone from her eyes. She kneels down and rests her hands on Ruth’s knees, which are warm even through the layers of sequins. “You remember the day we met, when you spoke up in that shitty acting class?”

“Of course.”

“Watching you stand up to Burgess like that… You were this, like, tiny little bitch with a huge fucking mouth, and you knew exactly what you would and wouldn’t put up with. And I immediately knew we were gonna be friends.”

Ruth laughs. “I couldn’t believe you wanted to hang out with me. You were so cool, you know? So confident and sexy and sure of yourself.”

“I thought you of all people would’ve figured me out by now: I’ve never been sure of myself. It’s all bullshit. I just pretend like I am until it becomes true.” 

“Fake it till you make it,” Ruth says.

“Exactly.” Debbie sits back down on the bed, dog-tired from the adrenaline rush of the past few hours. “My point being, we’re both ballsy motherfuckers. Always have been. So why should either of us stop now?”

“This is different,” Ruth says. “If we do all this out in the open, one of us could get hurt. I mean…what about Randy?”

Debbie turns to look at her son, burbling happily in his crib, and weighs the question. She thinks of the money they were raising tonight, which has probably gone up in smoke along with everything else—money that was supposed to go toward combating a disease that’s eating an entire generation of gay men alive. She thinks of Bobby, and Bash, and Florian, and the guy with papery skin and sunken eyes sitting in the corner at the Gipsy. What if Randy turns out to be like them? Like her? Who will be standing in his corner?

“I don’t want him to grow up in a country where hateful arsonist schmucks are allowed to terrorize whoever they want. And I want him to know his mom isn’t someone who backs down or hides who she is.”

“Wow,” Ruth says, wonder in her voice. 

Debbie feels the sudden need to lighten the moment. “Think that’ll play in the ring?” She raises her arm in an Army salute and puts on her Liberty Belle twang: “America! The land of freedom, apple pie, and homophobic pieces of shit who can suck my red-white-and-blue clit.”

Ruth picks up the scene lightning-quick (she always does). She twists her mouth into a Zoya sneer and advances on Debbie. “In Soviet Union, we suck American clit for breakfast.”

“Prove it, you dirty Russian.”

They wind up fucking in the shower, both to wash away the acrid stink of smoke and to save Randy on future therapy bills. It’s a better balm for the anxiety of the last few hours than a whole pack of cigarettes. Beneath the hot spray, pumped two hundred miles across the desert from the Colorado River all the way up to the twelfth floor of the Fan-Tan, they touch each other like it’s the end of the world. Because in a way, it is. Something died inside of both of them tonight, but something was born, too—something heavy; something strong. 

Afterward, as they’re drying off, Ruth’s got her I have something important to say but I’m scared shitless face on. But after everything that’s happened, Debbie’s not sure she’s ready to hear whatever it is.

“I don’t know about you,” she says, wrapping herself in a thick bathrobe, “But I could use a vodka and a Xan—”

“I love you,” Ruth blurts out. She looks so small and vulnerable, standing there wrapped in a thin hotel towel, hair wet and blue eyes wide, Zoya the Destroya nowhere to be found. “And I know that might freak you out, but I can’t not say it. Not after tonight.”

Even a few days ago, this admission would’ve sent Debbie running for the hills—probably the Hollywood ones. But she’s not the woman she was; she’s had her heart put through a paper shredder then glued back together so many times, she can’t even remember what fits where anymore. Still, there’s one thing she knows for sure: She’s in love with Ruth Wilder, and she has been for a long, long time.

“Shit,” she says finally. “You beat me to it.”

Ruth’s terrified expression eases into a soft smile—one Debbie has come to realize is just for her. “Guess I win, then.”

“Just this once,” Debbie says, and kisses Ruth with the ferocity she once used to punch her in the jaw. 

But really, she thinks, with her arms wrapped around this woman who fell into her life out of the clear blue sky ten years ago and refused to leave, they both won.

Chapter Text

RUTH

They don’t get much sleep that night; Ruth figures no one at the Fan Tan does, except the homophobes. They do finally drift off, but in what feels like no time at all, they’re awoken by the sound of Randy sobbing his little eyes out. 

When she feels Debbie start to get up behind her, Ruth is overcome with a fit of predawn chivalry. “I’ve got it!” she says, leaping out of bed so fast she gives herself a headrush. 

Debbie sits on the edge of the bed, her face lit only by the narrow bands of neon light leaking in through the Venetian blinds. “Ruth, no, you—”

“No, no, I’m all over it! Go back to sleep. I’ll figure out what he needs.” She walks to the crib and picks up a wailing Randy, giving him a few experimental bounces and a goofy smile; but he only cries more. 

“Okay, so not that. How about…” She lifts him in the air and spins around, making her best attempt at airplane noises. Aaaaand now he’s screaming. “Do you need to be burped? Or… Shit. I swear I’m gonna figure this out.”

Randy’s so loud that it takes Ruth a few seconds to clock uproarious laughter behind her. She turns and sees Debbie sitting on the edge of the bed, losing her shit. 

“Oh, this is funny to you? Watching me do everything in my power to soothe your distressed child?”

This only makes Debbie double over with mirth, to the point where she actually…yep. That was a snort. Finally, she catches her breath and holds out her hands for Ruth to pass Randy over. 

“I swear I was just about to figure out what he wanted!”

“I appreciate the effort, but it’s not anything you’re equipped to give.”

“Are you saying I can’t handle— Ohhhhh.” She cuts herself short when Debbie pulls one breast from her nightgown, and Randy immediately latches on.

“God, you crack me up,” Debbie tells her in the sudden, blessed silence. 

“Happy to entertain,” Ruth says, sitting beside her on the bed. “Does it hurt?”

“Not as much as when you do it.”

“Deb!”

“What? You’ve got teeth, he doesn’t.”

It all feels so natural, the two of them trading sleepy banter as Randy drinks his fill, like they’ve been doing this forever. This, Ruth realizes, is what had been waiting for them past all the walls, all the betrayals, all the secrets. And now that everything’s out in the open, they’re free to just be…this.

“Hey. Hey, Debbie.”

“Yes, Ruth?”

“Are you my girlfriend?”

“What are you, twelve?”

“Say it. Say you’re my girlfriend.”

“Jesus christ, woman. It is four thirty in the goddamn morning and I’m getting the lifeblood sucked out of my tit in a three-star hotel after the longest night of my life, and you’re asking me if I’m your girlfriend?”

“Well…yeah.”

Debbie lets out a long-suffering sigh worthy of Joan Crawford, then grabs Ruth by the collar with the hand that isn’t holding Randy. When she’s inches from her face, she hisses, morning breath and all, “Yeah, Ruth. I’m your friggin’ girlfriend.”

Since G.L.O.W. is canceled tonight (along with every other show at the casino) and Debbie is off to do some mysterious business lady thing, Ruth decides to go check in on Bobby. She finds him standing beside the charred remains of the cabaret. He’s a sorry sight—still in his costume, now torn in places and stained with ash. Without a word, she brings him back to her and Sheila’s room and hands him a cup of black coffee.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got anything stronger than this in that mini-fridge?” he mutters, hands shaking around the mug. 

“I do, but…maybe take it slow to start out?” she says gently.

“Yeah. Yeah. You’re right.”

“How about you go take a shower and I’ll see if I can find you some clothes to change into, okay? There should be some Pond’s by the sink for your makeup.”

When Bobby just nods and stares off into space, she gives him a quick hug and leaves him to get cleaned up.

Once she’s in the corridor, Ruth cycles through the men she knows at the hotel and comes up with exactly two. Both of them suck, but one requires taking the elevator and the other is right across the hall. 

After a few knocks, she hears a series of bearlike grumbles from deep inside the room, followed by a raspy, “If you’re banging on my door this batshit early, you better have a damn good reas—”

Sam stops short when he sees her, a trainwreck in a ratty bathrobe, the remnants of Debbie’s punch a sickly shade of yellow around his eye. “Not interested in what you’re selling, ma’am,” he says, but Ruth wedges herself between the door and the frame before he can lock her out.

“Wait! I know you hate me right now, but I need a favor. For someone else, not me.”

“Is it Debbie?” he asks through gritted teeth.

“Bobby.”

Sam scoffs. “The fag who dresses up like a woman and prances around onstage?”

Ruth holds herself back from slapping him across the face, because she doesn’t think he could handle another bruise right now. “The gay man who performs in drag, yes.”

“Whatever. What the fuck does he need that I have to offer, aside from my charming personality?”

“So, I’m sure you heard about what happened last night at the Libertine Ball.”

“The what?”

“Seriously, Sam?”

“I’m not exactly in the loop these days, Ruth.”

“Christ,” she mutters, massaging her temples. “Well, if you’d bothered to leave your room last night, you’d know that Bobby threw a big event in the cabaret space to raise money for AIDS victims, and then a bunch of motherfuckers set the building on fire.”

Sam’s disinterested expression dissolves into concern. “Holy shit. Were you there?”

“All the girls were. Sandy, too.”

To her surprise, Sam grabs her by the arms and pulls her into his room. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

She’d be touched by his concern if she didn’t sense an ulterior motive. “Yeah, I’m fine. We all are. Physically, at least. But it was really, really scary.”

“Fuck.” Sam sits down on the edge of his unmade bed. His room is even worse than last time Ruth saw it—dirty clothes and empty liquor bottles strewn everywhere, ashtray crammed with cigarette butts. It smells like a frat house. She glances over to the empty drawers and worries that maybe he doesn’t have any clothes Bobby could wear that aren’t totally rank. “Y’know, I did hear all the sirens last night, but I figured it was just a drug bust or something. Plus, I was…”

“…Completely hammered?”

“Yeah.”

Despite her distaste for Sam and everything he stands for, Ruth thinks back to the days when he was her only friend, and finds herself caring again. “I’m worried about you.”

“My liver’s already well past pickled; I’m fine.”

“You’re really not.”

He runs his palm across his face. “Look, I’m not the issue here. What does Bobby need?”

“Well, he’s still wearing his costume from last night, and since everything he owns was in his dressing room…”

Sam laughs. “Well, good luck finding clean…anything in here, but you’re welcome to whatever.”

Ruth steels herself to rifle through his drawers and, miraculously, comes out with a T-shirt and pair of jeans that seem to be relatively fresh.

“Thanks. I’ll bring these back later.” 

“Yeah, fine, whatever.”

She’s about to leave, but then she turns and watches him struggle to light a cigarette dangling from his lips. His hands are shaking—but for an entirely different reason than Bobby’s were. She takes the Bic and sparks it herself, holding it out to him. He takes a heavy drag on the Camel and rests his head in his hands.

Maybe it’s almost dying, or confessing her love to Debbie, or feeling herself on the cusp of a whole new life—but she suddenly wants to make things right with him before G.L.O.W. packs it in.

“Hey, Sam. Are we…okay?” When he laughs darkly, she walks it back. “Or, clearly we’re not, but. Maybe we could work our way back to being okay?”

“Yeah, sure, Ruth. We’ll split a steak at Musso & Frank’s.”

“I’m being serious.”

“I know. And I fuckin’ hate when you’re serious. Always lands me in hot water.”

She sits beside him on the rumpled duvet, trying not to wince at the wave of nicotine and old whiskey that assaults her senses. “I care about you, Sam. Not in the same way you care about me—or, cared about me, I guess. But you’ve kind of changed my whole life for the better, even if you didn’t mean to, and it’d be a shame to part on bad terms.” She considers her words carefully before adding, “Also, you’re slowly killing yourself with drugs and booze, and I’d appreciate it if you stuck around. Y’know, as a personal favor.”

“As if I haven’t done enough fuckin’ favors for you,” he grumbles; but he’s smiling, just a little.

DEBBIE

Debbie wakes up that morning to a call from Bash, who sounds unusually bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, asking her to meet him in the lobby ASAP. So after she gets Randy settled and kisses Ruth—her girlfriend —goodbye, she heads downstairs without bothering to do her hair and makeup. Bash can cope.

She finds him pacing directly in front of the elevator. “There you are!” 

“Jesus, what bug flew up your ass?” Debbie says, bouncing Randy on her hip. “C’mon, I gotta get him to the buffet before he starts wailing his little brains out.”

“Debbie! I have huge news, and you want to discuss it over hashbrowns?”

“Yes,” she says flatly, not bothering to see if he’s following.

Once they’re settled into one of the butt-ugly booths and Randy is happily sucking Jell-O into his mouth, Bash begins.

“So remember the little pipe dream we were talking about the other day?”

“It’s been a hectic forty-eight hours, Bash. You’ll have to jog my memory.”

“The one where you wanted to, and I quote, ‘buy the fucking TV’?”

“Oh, right, that one. I was riding bisexual-awakening anxiety. Take it with a grain of salt.”

“You don’t get it, Deb. I did it.”

“You…”

“I bought the fucking TV.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He leans in conspiratorially. “Well, a little birdie told me—in the form of a table of bigwigs I was eavesdropping on at the blackjack tables last night—that there was a television network up for sale. They were pitching it to this oil exec in a ten-gallon hat, and he was clearly playing hardball. So as soon as he left, ol’ Bash sidled into his seat and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. By which I mean, the offer the other guy refused.”

Debbie feels like she’s just mainlined way too much coke at a terrible party in the Valley.

“I mean, I’ll have to sell my share of Rhapsody and maybe move into a slightly smaller house, but…this is huge, Deb.”

“And you actually want me to be involved?”

He leans in and grasps her hands. “I don’t want you to just be involved. I want you to be the president of the network. Full creative control.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“As the Challenger disaster.” He grimaces. “Too soon?”

“ Yes, too soon!” She narrows her eyes at him. “Why are you just…handing me this on a silver platter? I know you, Bash. You never do something for nothing. So what’s the catch?”

“No catch.” 

“Bullshit.”

“Oh, my god, Debbie! Can’t you just trust me for once? I’m about to make all your egocentric dreams come true!” He immediately holds out his palms in surrender. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m trying to not be a knee-jerk asshole anymore.”

This piques Debbie’s interest, because she’s been going on the same journey lately—more for Ruth’s sake than anyone else’s. 

“You’re really good at this, Debbie—producing, spearheading projects, being a hardass when you need to be. I’d have to be blind not to see that. And you’re also really good at finding the people who can help you realize whatever your crazy, insanely ambitious vision is.”

Wow. She genuinely believes him. 

“And look—I like to think I’ve become slightly more self-aware since deciding to start my own wrestling show on a whim. I know I’m just the money, the pretty face. So I have a hunch that if I take a backseat and let you run the whole shebang, I’ll make a nice fat return on my investment.”

For the second time that week, Debbie looks at the asshole business partner she’s been saddled with and sees him with new eyes. “Damn. You really mean it, don’t you?”

“I really mean it. I just have one request.”

“Heeeere it comes.” 

He quirks a smile. “The network’s first original series: an all-female wrestling show.”

Now that’s a project Debbie can get behind. She goes into business mode. “I’ll need to talk to my lawyer about drafting a contract, and believe me, you’re probably not gonna like the terms.”

“I’d expect nothing less.”

“But assuming you’re amenable…” She maneuvers her right arm around her Jell-O-obsessed child and over the plate of lukewarm hashbrowns. “…Then you’ve got a deal.”

He shakes vigorously with both hands, looking like a kid at Christmas—which is in just a few days, Debbie realizes. Gift shopping hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of her mind.

She starts to withdraw her hand, but he holds it in place. “Hey, really and truly,” he begins, voice barely above a whisper. “Thanks for listening to me the other day. About…y’know. You made me feel like maybe I didn’t actually want to die.”

For just a moment, Bash’s charming cad mask falls away, revealing the terrified, misunderstood kid who learned very young that even a gilded cage can’t keep the bullies out—especially if you’re a fairy. 

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to come out—and frankly, I’m scared shitless to screw the wrong guy and get sick,” he says. “But sometimes it’s just like: What am I doing all this for? Because it’s so, so much work.”

“Being in the closet?”

He shakes his head. “Being me.”

“Oh, Bash.”

“Don’t you dare pity me,” he says, leaning back in his seat. “It’s incredibly off-brand.”

Chapter Text

RUTH

Before tonight, Ruth couldn’t have imagined a world in which she didn’t find Debbie devastatingly attractive. But that goes out the window when she sees Bash, pretending to be a full child, nestled in her girlfriend’s lap. 

“What’s the opposite of a kink?” she whispers to Carmen as she waits for her cue in the vom. “Because this…is definitely that.” 

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Carmen says.

“A boner killer,” Cherry supplies. “Or I guess in this case, a clit killer?”

“A clit-and-run,” Yolanda corrects. 

Ruth has to clap both hands over her mouth to hold back a laugh so loud it would probably kill the show dead. Because it’s G.L.O.W.’s final night at the Fan-Tan—probably its final night ever—and it would be a shame to fuck it up.

It’s a joy tinged with sadness: joy, because she loves performing with these women; sadness, because it’s the last time. As Ruth makes her entrance as Scrooge/Zoya, she catches Bobby’s eye in the audience. He’s clearly still shaken up, but he’s cheering her on as hard as ever—and, thankfully, no longer wearing Sam’s hand-me-downs.

After the curtain call, Bash, of all people, waylays her in the hallway. She can’t help but snort at the sight of him in his candy cane onesie. 

“Oh, like you don’t look just as stupid as me.”

“Sure, but I know how to work it.” 

“Wow, Debbie’s been rubbing off on you, huh?” he remarks, raising an eyebrow.

Ruth doesn’t miss the innuendo. Does he know? Considering his parents are hardcore Reaganites, she’s terrified of the implications. 

Apparently he can read this train of thought on her face. “Don’t worry. I know all about you and Deb. And I think it’s great.”

“Who told you? Was it Rhonda?”

“Heh, no. Me and Rhonda aren’t exactly on speaking terms right now. Your girlfriend did.”

“For real?”

Bash’s eyes go wide. “She didn’t tell you about our conversation the other day?”

“No?”

His expression is a combination of relief and admiration. “Damn. She actually kept her word. Well, tell her I said she can let you in on it.”

“Oooo…kay.” Ruth has no idea what he’s talking about, but she’s fiercely curious.

“Is that what you wanted to discuss? ’Cause I don’t want to be late for the wrap party.”

“No, actually. I wanted to talk about the big news! Assuming Debbie’s bringing you on board, of course.”

Debbie told Bash something she hasn’t told Ruth yet? Debbie hates Bash!

“Holy cow!” he exclaims with schadenfreudic delight. “I thought lesbians were all about, like, communication and stuff.”

“Still figuring out what lesbians are supposed to be like,” Ruth says. “Also, Debbie’s bisexual. But no, she hasn’t told me anything.”

“What hasn’t your bisexual girlfriend told you?” Ruth whips around to see Debbie standing behind her, arms crossed. 

“I have no idea!”

“It was supposed to be a surprise, Bash,” Debbie hisses. 

He raises his hands in surrender. “Listen, I haven’t spoiled anything!”

Staring daggers at him, she yanks Ruth into the nearest bathroom and locks the door. 

“What is happening ?” 

Debbie smiles like the cat that ate the canary. (Ruth is the canary.) “So…Bash bought a TV network.”

“What?! When?”

“This morning. And Ruth: He asked me to run it.”

“What?!”

“President of the network. Total creative control.”

“Seriously? What’s the catch?”

“No catch.”

“And you believe him?”

“Actually, I do. He and I…came to a mutual understanding the other day.”

“Oh, right! He said you were allowed to, and I quote, ‘Let me in on it.’ Whatever it is.”

Debbie slumps over with relief. “Thank god, ’cause you know how much I suck at keeping secrets. …He’s a homo.”

“What?” 

“Ruth, I’m gonna need you to stop shouting What?! after every goddamn thing I say.”

“Sorry, sorry. Just…Bash? He’s the last person I’d ever expect to be gay.”

“Tell me about it. He’s deep, deeeeep in the closet and really fucked up about it. I truly feel bad for the guy.”

“Okay…that’ll take some time to process. But first things first: Tell me about this network you’re going to run?”

“We still gotta figure out what it’s going to look like, but we know where we’re starting: a new wrestling show, with new characters, because, you know, we have no legal rights to the old ones,” Debbie says.

“Holy shit.”

“And listen—I want you there right next to me. Directing. Writing. We run the show. No more auditions, no more being at the mercy of these fucking idiots.”

Ruth’s head is reeling. “Really?”

“Yeah, because you’ll be fucking great at it!”

It’s flattering. It’s incredible. It’s a dream. But also…

“What about my acting career?”

Debbie frowns. “You really still want that life? Auditioning for people who don’t appreciate your talent? Hustling just to stay afloat? This is your off-ramp, Ruth. Our off-ramp.”

It hurts to hear. Ruth thought Debbie finally understood where she was coming from, but now she sees it isn’t true. “What if I don’t want an off-ramp?”

She watches the gears in Debbie’s brain turning as she struggles to find the right words. But Ruth can guess what’s really behind all this. 

“You don’t think I can hack it.”

“Honey, no,” Debbie says feelingly. “I just think… I think that this business is never going to see your potential. Not when men are calling the shots. I mean, the only reason I got gigs and you didn’t is because I match up to their idiotic beauty standards.”

Ruth feels like she’s been punched in the gut. “You don’t think I’m beautiful?”

“Jesus. Obviously I think you’re beautiful. I want to rip your clothes off at all times, even right now when you’re being a massive sad sack.” When Ruth just curls in on herself like a cocktail shrimp, Debbie continues, “Hey, hey. Listen to me. I think you’re a great actress. I was blown away by that scene you and Sheila did at the ball. But I also think you’re a great director—and writer! You’re so smart, and funny, and—and creative! And the world needs to see that.”

Ruth knows, deep in her bones, that this woman would never lie to her. Even when she hated her—maybe especially then—she was never anything but honest. Debbie takes her hands, and the look in her eyes is so nakedly earnest that Ruth has to resist the urge to turn away. 

“I’m going to build us an Eden. Only with no men. Well, except Bash. But we can handle him.”

She knows that, from Debbie’s perspective, this is the greatest gift she can give Ruth. And it’s true—she does love writing and directing. But does she love it more than acting?

Figuring out so much about herself over these past few months—her sexuality, her limitations, her strengths—has made Ruth want to advocate for herself instead of giving into her knee-jerk instinct to people-please. And right now, the thing she’s wanted more than anything in the world is standing right in front of her, offering her everything. 

Except it’s not everything, is it?

“Can I think about it?”

It kills Ruth how crestfallen Debbie looks, and it’s nearly impossible to resist the tidal pull of her wanting. 

“Yeah. Of…of course.”

Just then, there’s a sharp rap at the door, followed by Melrose’s unmistakable voice. “Hey, drama queens! Some of us actually need to take a piss!”

As soon as they get to the party, Ruth makes a beeline for Sheila, who’s standing in the far corner of the room.

“Hey. How’re you holding up?”

“Mmm…weird?”

“Boy, can I ever relate,” Ruth says with a grim laugh. “Do you know what you’re gonna do now that the show’s over?”

“I’m not sure, actually. Part of me wants to head back to L.A. and start auditioning for shows, but another part of me wants to hit the road and, y’know, figure out who the hell I am now.”

“Without the wolf.”

“Yeah.” 

They both lean back and watch the party in companionable silence—two affirmed wallflowers fresh out of their cocoons. Ruth takes in the landscape of weirdos: Stacey and Dawn lifting Melrose into a keg stand while Jenny eggs them on, Yolanda and Arthie making out in the middle of the dancefloor, Carmen and Reggie grooving awkwardly but enthusiastically to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” Keith and Cherry leaning against the bar, lost in their own world. 

She can’t imagine who she’d be if these people had never come into her life; probably still in her roach-infested apartment in the Valley, auditioning for bit parts on Law & Order and wearing herself down to the nib. And, in all likelihood, without Debbie in her life. If not for G.L.O.W., would Ruth have ever realized how she felt about her? Would they ever have mended fences?

“How about you?” Sheila asks after a while. “What’s next for Ruth Wilder?”

Ruth isn’t sure whether she’s supposed to keep mum about the big news, but there’s no one she trusts more with a secret than Sheila. “Listen. You can’t tell anyone—but Bash bought a TV network, and Debbie’s going to run it.”

“What?!” A few heads turn at her friend’s uncharacteristic outburst. “Sorry. What?” she whispers.

“It all happened really fast. They want to program a new version of G.L.O.W., and it sounds like that’s just the beginning.”

“Whoa,” Sheila murmurs.

“I know. It’s super amazing, and I’m really, really happy for her. And…and she asked me to be her partner. Write, direct, help run everything.”

“Ruth, that’s amazing!” 

“It totally is.” 

“But?”

“But…that would mean giving up on acting. And I’m not sure I’m ready to do that.”

Sheila gives her a confused look. “Why?”

“Come on. No one works behind the scenes and on camera. It’s one or the other.”

“Well, that’s just not true.”

Ruth scoffs. “Name one woman who’s made it in acting without giving everything else up.”

“Um…Madonna? Desperately Seeking Susan? Plus, she’s started producing her own music videos. And, let’s see…Carrie Fisher—writing a novel and doing Star Wars —which, by the way, she also did a script punch-up on.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I read Variety,” she says with a shrug. “You gotta keep up with the industry, Ruth.”

“I get what you’re saying, but I’m not a friggin’ pop star or, like, a space princess who’s the offspring of Debbie Reynolds.”

Sheila sighs. “You’re gonna make me bust out the nuclear option, huh.”

“What’s the nuclear option?”

“Barbra Streisand,” she says with a note of finality, “wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Yentl.”

Ruth gazes off into the middle distance, sudden vistas opening up before her. If Barbra could do it…

“You’re one of the most driven people I’ve ever met,” Sheila continues. “If anyone can bust their ass and do it all, it’s you.”

Ruth wraps her friend in a tight hug and whispers, “Thank you.”

Sheila immediately wriggles out of her grasp like a greased weasel. “You’re welcome. But warn me next time you’re going in for a grapple?” 

“It’s called a hug, you dork.”

“That was absolutely a grapple.”

“Alright, no more sudden grapples. Promise. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go talk to the very powerful TV producer I’m dating.”

DEBBIE

Debbie’s always been a champion multitasker, which is why she has no trouble recommending L.A.’s best chiropractor to Tammé while also holding back a full emotional breakdown in re: the possibility that Ruth might refuse her offer.

The truth is, there’s an ugly part of her that does want Ruth to give up on acting. A shitty little demon in the back of Debbie’s mind whispers that her girlfriend is too headstrong, too singularly her, to get by in this cutthroat industry. Even if she did start landing roles, it would only be a matter of time before she’d piss off the wrong director and get herself blackballed. There aren’t all that many Sam Sylvias out there with a thing for loud, opinionated women. 

“Hey, can I talk to you?”

Debbie nearly jumps out of her skin when Ruth materializes at her side.

“Damn, girl. No one asked you to be a ninja,” Tammé says. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Ruth says. “Do you mind if I steal this one for a sec?”

“She’s all yours. I’ve got a date with a glass of Courvoisier before the open bar ends anyway.”

Once they’re alone, Ruth gives Debbie a lopsided grin.  

“I can’t tell whether that smile means you’re about to ask me if we can go fuck in the bathroom or that you’ve got an answer for me.”

“The second one. Though we can definitely do the first thing, also.”

Debbie waits with bated breath. She kind of hates that Ruth is holding all the cards, but after all the years she spent enduring Debbie’s bullying, fair is fair.

“I’m in,” she says. “On, y’know, Eden.”

Oh, thank fuck. “Really?”

“I just talked to Sheila, and she was all like, ‘Streisand wrote and directed Yentl !’ And then I thought, hell, I could do that. Have my babka and eat it, too.” She hauls Debbie in by the small of her back. “Who says just because I’m helping run a network that I can’t still audition for stuff? Or, hell, write a role for myself?”

Debbie feels a smile growing on her own face. “You know I’ll never stand in your way.”

“Cool. ’Cause I’ll kick your ass if you do.”

A dark cloud clears inside Debbie’s chest, revealing a view of blue skies and rolling hills stretching out to the horizon. She’s been pushing her way through every barrier for so long—and though she harbors no illusions about the fact that, for a gay woman in a leadership position, it’s never going to stop being hard, it’ll be a lot easier with Ruth in her corner. And more importantly, a lot more fun.

She shakes her head in wonder. “How the hell did we get here?”

Ruth shrugs. “Lots of psychosexually fraught suplexes and a couple of broken bones?”

Debbie quirks an eyebrow. “Worth it, though.”

“Easy for you to say. None of those bones were yours.”

Even a week ago, a remark like this would have absolutely ruined Debbie. But now it’s something they can joke about, because they did the work to get past all their shit. And it was a fuck of a lot of work. 

“You can break my bones later,” she says. “Free pass.”

“I’m gonna need that in writing.”

“I’ll have my lawyer put it in your contract. Partner.”

“Madam President.”

As they shake hands like a couple of Mamet characters, the lights go down and the gentle strains of a harmonica begin to play. A collective awww goes up from the room when Dionne Warwick’s voice kicks in:

And I never thought I’d feel this way
And as far as I’m concerned
I’m glad I got the chance to say
That I do believe I love you…

“Are you kidding me?” Debbie groans. 

“Aw, come on, Deb. Let yourself be a sap, just this once,” Ruth says, dragging her toward the dancefloor.

The first chorus hits just as the disco ball starts to spin.

Keep smilin’, keep shinin’
Knowing you can always count on me
For sure
That’s what friends are for…

All the girls sing along, some of them (Reggie, Melrose) like dying cats, others (Sheila, Rhonda) matching Dionne note for note. Feigning reluctance, Debbie allows herself to be pulled into the tangle at the center of the floor. Soon, she and Ruth find themselves mashed together amid a crush of sequins and boobs and vodka breath, a boozy dogpile swaying out of rhythm, singing at the top of its combined lungs. 

And what the hell. Just this once, Debbie allows herself to be swallowed up by the crowd, to let her guard down and—ugh—feel things in public. Because isn’t that what you let yourself do when you’re among family?

Still, come on: always being able to count on you, for sure? Being on your side forevermore? As a woman in her mid-40s, Dionne should know better. Some friends—the oldest, messiest, best ones—will fail you spectacularly, and you’ll fail them in turn. The point isn’t to never fuck up; it’s to always come back and fix what’s broken.

Before Ruth played any other roles in Debbie’s life—scene partner, sidekick, traitor, heel, girlfriend, creative partner—she was just that: a friend. As she wraps her arms around the woman in question and kisses her filthy, Debbie resolves to find Dionne and tell her she ought to expand her definition of the word.