“Lou and Debbie…? Oh, we all remember how it started.”
It was a Thursday: a very boring, quite sunny and incredibly hot Thursday of May.
Debbie was helping a 16 year old Tammy to sort out differential equations and, as per usual, Tammy was trying to divert the subject on anything else.
“So, Debs, tell me, why did you say no to that cute guy the other night?”
The Ocean hit her with her strongest weapon: a bombastic side eye. “I have very high standards, Tamara. I only fall in love with graceful -
a loud *thumb* interrupted her speech, shortly followed by blonde hair stumbling over the room, gripping the door and barely holding themselves together, before slipping on the carpet and landing face flat on the floor.
Debbie stood with her hand in the hair, sentence still unfinished and mouth open, jaw on the floor. Tammy smirked ferociously.
“And would you trade the whole graceful part with, I don’t know, blonde hair??”
After learning that the blonde creature was actually a girl named Lou, who turned out to be Tammy’s classmate in history classes, Debbie started pleading the other brunette to organize something together, the three of them. She was desperate (in a very non-Ocean way) to know more.
“Please Tammy!! You OWE me!”
The younger girl laughed “I don’t owe you Debs! Just admit it!”
“There’s nothing to admit!”
“Then there’s no one to invite!”
One day, Tammy was heading home after spending the whole afternoon studying with Debbie.
“Debs, do you have a bag I can borrow?” she shouted from the living room, as the brunette appeared from the bathroom.
“The only bags I have are the ones under my eyes and they’re specifically designed to carry the burden of my existence.”
Tammy stood there mouth wide open for a few minutes before she managed to reply “Literally all you had to do was say no.” and then smirked “Would inviting a certain someone out for ice cream alleviate said burden?”
Needless to say, Debbie’s face lit up faster than that of a child who has been promised to buy candies.
“Let’s say… tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow!”
Tomorrow.
After some weeks spent trying to make their trio work, Lou, Debbie and Tammy had become really close friends. Now the Ocean knew almost everything about the mysterious blonde australian with a strange passion for vinyls. And Lou had become part of the afternoon studying group.
Debbie, however, was still somehow unsatisfied. Friends (best friends) wasn’t enough.
And Tammy, who had known her since the day she was born, was well aware of that.
“Just go there and flirt a bit! Just say a cheesy pick up line”
Debbie scoffed. Her pride was really against giving herself away like that - a pick up line for god’s sake! -, but desperate times called for desperate reasons.
“Okay Tam. Can do.”
Lou was reading on the couch, as Debbie approached her and cleared her throat.
“Ocean?”
“I like my partners like I like my intrusive thoughts.” Debbie let out all in one breath.
The blonde girl looked at her with a puzzled face.
“Fucking me over in the middle of the night.”
Lou, with a face between the horrified and amused, desperately glanced at Tammy, asking for help, as the brunette who was - if possible - more horrified than her said with an exasperated tone
“REALLY?! DEBORAH?”
What not everyone knows, however, is that the genuine and pure nature of their bond had one night been reinforced by a really dark event in their history. And as all crucial but dark events, they had rarely talked about it ever since.
When Debbie started noticing the bruises on Lou’s body, she started investigating on Lou’s family. She was Australian and had apparently run away from her close relatives. However, the person with whom she was sharing her apartment was a distant uncle who seemed to be a convicted felon. The brunette was already thinking of calling someone trusted - being an Ocean had its advantages after all - to take care of that when one day he broke into Debbie’s apartment in Manhattan, dead drunk, threatening Lou to go back home with him or he would have hurt both her and Debbie.
They tried to talk him through, he was Lou’s uncle after all, but all of a sudden the man took out a knife, grabbed the blonde by the collar of her shirt and pointed the blade right above her jugular . The situation changed: it was money he wanted, now.
Seeing a single drop of red on Lou’s pale neck was enough for Debbie, who didn’t hesitate and pulled the trigger.
The blonde’s blue eyes froze in terror as his body dropped to the floor, still trapped while the knife was dangling weak but still dangerously close to her neck in his right hand.
Debbie run towards them and freed Lou from his grip, but her eyes were still frozen on the metallic object on the other side of the room, trying to elaborate what had just happened.
“He’s… he’s dead.” She stated, acknowledging the lifeless body on the ground, shifting uncomfortably when Debbie tried to touch her.
“Lou… he.. He was trying to hurt you.”
“I …. I know”
A new thought occurred in Debbie’s mind. What if she thinks I’m a monster?
“I had to do it. I can’t - I can’t let anything happen to you. I had to-“
“I know, Debs. Look at me. I know. That motherfucker was going to kill me. You saved me. I’m just… shit… I’m just shocked, I guess?”
“But not scared?”
“Of you? Never.”
This time Lou didn’t refuse Debbie’s hand.
“Can you stand?” The brunette asked. Lou nodded shakily, trying to pull herself on her feet. Just as soon as she managed to get upright her knees buckled. Her vision went blurry as she tried to grab the wall, or anything, to stop her from -
Debbie caught her just before she hit the ground, helping her to sit back down.
“S-sorry” Lou stuttered “I-“
“It’s okay” Debbie slipped a hand under the blonde’s legs and another one behind her back and picked her up easily.
“It’s okay I got you. I promise I will never let anything happen to you.”
Years and years later Lou was still there on that same grey couch waiting for Debbie to come home from her daily walk, more in love than ever. And richer than ever, since they had robbed the Met Gala like it was a grocery store.
Familiar steps entered into the living room.
“I was just wondering…what are we gonna do now?”
The blonde closed the pages of her magazine, greeting the woman that she could now proudly call wife.
“We could… we could just rest for a bit?”
Debbie furrowed her brow, that word was not part of her vocabulary (nor the concept itself). Oceans never rest.
Lou smiled fondly, patting the spot next to her on the couch “We don’t have to run anymore“
“What do you mean baby ?”
“I mean we can focus on us now, Debs. We have each other, we have enough money for two lifetimes, we can do whatever we want. ”
Lou could see she was thinking about it, pondering everything, making lists of pros and cons and endless calculations, she couldn’t help but smile again. This was Debbie.
“Rest like…you mean a vacation kind of rest? Or like a bear kind of rest?”
“We’re not going to hybernate ourselves, Debs” Lou chuckled, taking her fiancé’s hand “what about… a settle down in the suburbs kind of rest?”
Debbie stiffened, almost imperceptibly “oh”
oh
Then she blushed, all of a sudden.
“Do you like the idea? We don’t have to do if you’re not re -
Debbie’s lips on Lou’s put an end to the conversation. She liked the idea, very much. One could even say she had been dreaming about it from the way her lips captured Lou’s in a never ending kiss, but her Ocean pride would never allow them.
As the blonde shifted to put an arm behind Debbie’s back to pick her up and bring her upstaris, the brunette broke their kiss for a second, looking at her partner dead in the eye.
“And by the way don’t think I didn’t notice you ate the last donut.”
“I didnt!” Lou chuckled
“What’s that powder on your pants? You’re not that subtle for a thief.”
“That’s.. That’s cocaine Debs! Now could you please let me make love to you?”