The Sacking of Rome

Daphne made a sound in her throat, and nodded. "He explained what you guys do the first time I met him. I already didn't like him, and that only made it worse."

"You got a problem with programmers?"

"Managers," Daphne said, looking over for longer than Rome thought that the driver of a moving vehicle should. "Any boss, really. It's one thing to get promoted, but what kind of monster aspires to be a middle manager?"

"They're all mostly like him."

"They who?"

"All the other scrum masters. One of them is nice, I guess, but the others are all... I dunno."

"Slimy?"

"Maybe," Rome said, looking down at her hands. Then she pointed, and said, "That turn there, after that Dunkin'."

"So do we have a plan," Daphne said, giving her another long period of direct eye contact while driving, "or are we just rolling up on your office to poke around?"

"We have... part of a plan," Rome said, uncertainly.

"Very reassuring." Then Daphne gave her a smirk that... did something to her. The woman saw her. Could see her. Was looking at her. None of these were things Rome was used to.

The car rolled to a stop in a parking space, but Rome stayed put.

Daphne killed the engine, reached for the door, and then paused. "Is this... not the place?"

"No, this is it."

Daphne looked at the front door of the building, and then at her.

"Sorry. This..."

"Having second thoughts?"

"And third. And fourth." Rome squeezed her hands into fists to stop them from shaking. "I can't believe I'm doing this. Why am I doing this? How did you get me to..."

Daphne was looking at her again.

"I mean, we just met!"

"Gay witchcraft," Daphne said. "Is this going to get you in trouble?"

"Maybe not. Probably."

Daphne sat back in the driver's seat, and put her hands on the steering wheel. The car was full of the gentle creak of her leather jacket. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have cornered you like that. That wasn't cool."

Her mind was buzzing, going in a hundred directions, and when she heard the words, "Tell me about Angie," come out of her mouth, she couldn't imagine why she'd said it.

"Wow. Okay. Uh..." Daphne ran her hands through her short pitch black hair, pulling it back from her face for a moment, and then let her hands fall to rest on her thighs. "Doesn't really care for Ange, and hates it when people call her Angie, but she doesn't correct anyone. Prefers Angela."

"You called her—"

"I know what I said," Daphne said, a bit curtly. "Middle school. Sixth grade. I was, um... seeing someone older."

"Like, in seventh grade? High school?"

"He was a dropout. Not quite sure how many years ahead of me he would have been." Daphne grimaced. "For me, only a couple things developed early. Two specific things, not everything. Certainly not any sense. I was gonna ditch one day, walked off school grounds after I got off the bus. We hooked up, I think I had a couple shots."

"In sixth grade?"

Daphne just cut her eyes sideways, toward Rome. She mimed raising a shot glass and continued, saying, "Just as I was taking the, I dunno, second or third, I'm having this memory of someone talking about the attendance policy. I had only missed, like, two or three days, and you could miss ten or something per year, so I thought I was fine, but then I remembered that there was some kind of caveat about missing them in a short time period. I'd missed three days in the previous two weeks, so I start freaking out. Then he's freaking out. He doesn't understand why I care about school at all, and I call him a piece of shit, and he calls me a stupid fucking kid—"

"Which you were," Rome said. "I mean, not stupid, but... you know."

"I run back to school. It's been, like, an hour. I'm late, and I forgot my backpack." Her voice was far away when she added, "Never got that back, actually.

"Anyway, short story long, I've known Ange since... when did we move? Third grade? Yeah. She and I never really hit it off, but she found me in the bathroom crying because I realized my breath smelled like alcohol and I didn't have what I needed and I didn't know how to sneak into class, and she..." Daphne rolled her eyes. "She went and got the art teacher. Mrs. Krenos. Nice old lady. Didn't ask a lot of questions."

"Sounds like that had a big impact on you."

"In some ways," Daphne said, slouching. "In other ways, I kept on slacking right up until basic." Then she stretched, sighed, and added, "Look, I'm sorry. I jumped the gun. I've been sitting on my instincts about Jimmy for months. I saw you, and I pushed you, and I... I'll take you back."

When she put her hand on the key, still sitting in the ignition, Rome felt a twisting in her middle like she'd never felt before. "No," she said, desperate not to end whatever was happening. "I mean... sure, it's a risk, but it's a longshot that I'll even be able to find what you're looking for. I don't think I have the access. There's no harm in looking if we don't find anything... right?"

Then she made one of the most incredible mistakes of her life. In that moment of naked need, of exposure, she turned and looked at Daphne. Daphne was looking at her, and there was a knowing lift to the corner of her lips. Second cousin, once removed, from a smile. Something had shifted in her, and Daphne knew it.

It would have been nice if she knew what was shifting, but for now it was enough to flutter a little closer to the flame for a while. The flame was pretty.

"Surprised there's still any cars here," Daphne said, as they crossed the parking lot. "Do you guys have a night shift?"

Rome shook her head, and swung her purse around in front of her to fish around for her badge. "No. Some of the other agile development teams are pretty maniacal about finishing ahead of schedule. Some just don't wanna go home. One guy doesn't go home because he's avoiding his wife, and his buddy doesn't go home because there's no one there for him."

Daphne smirked. "At least they have each other."

This made Rome giggle, which in turn made her blush, which in turn made her scurry forward toward the door, badge in hand. "Sorry," she said, tapping the badge against the reader for the third time, knowing she was getting all jittery again.

The light turned green. The door unlocked. Within seconds, they were inside.

Rome found her feet taking her toward her cubicle, and was content to let that happen for a minute while she got herself under control again. Lights flicked on ahead of her, down the hall, as they triggered motion sensors here and there. She could hear fingers on keyboards, clacking away, and kept moving. Her low heeled booties and Daphne's much heavier boots made very similar, muted thumps, on the carpeted floor.

She only made eye contact with one coworker, giving one of the Alex's a curt wave as they moved past him toward her area.

"Okay," she said, as she dropped into her desk chair. She motioned for Daphne to sit in one of the chairs of her neighbors, but Daphne instead turned her head to look over the cubicle wall.

"Hey," came a voice from behind her. "Surprised to see you here."

Rome jumped up out of her seat, and hated how twitchy she was.

"Didn't mean to scare you," Nick said, giving her a short wave. "Hi. I'm Nick."

"Hi, I'm—" Daphne made the smallest, almost imperceptible pause, with her mouth open. "—glad to meet you, Nick. I'm Daphne."

Nick looked back and forth between them for a second.

Rome cleared her throat. "Did you want something, Nick?"

"Oh, I was just..." Then he cleared his throat, and shifted his body language to be more facing her rather than in between the two. "I was wondering if you'd nipped that bug. I heard it was giving you trouble."

This, on top of everything else, made her irate, but before the red clouded her vision entirely Daphne moved closer and said, "Actually, that's why I'm here. She and I go way back. We'll take care of it."

Nick just stared at her, wide-eyed, for a long moment. Eventually, he gave them a nod, and headed off.

"I almost said I'm gay," Daphne said, leaning in to whisper, "instead of glad, I got to the g sound, but I wasn't sure how that might impact you later. Had to make an audible."

Rome sat up a little in her chair, peeking over the cubicle barrier. "You know, he's never come over to offer help before."

"That's why I almost said I was gay, just to cut him off. Also because he takes you for granted. I'd be over here every day."

Rome gave her a sidelong look, as Daphne turned to sit on the edge of her desk, facing away. Normally, when people sat on her desk, she had a whole tirade she dusted off; when Daphne did it, it was hot.

Just as Rome was wrestling down the instinct to snap, because Daphne was shaped more nicely than the people who usually sat on her desk, Daphne said, "He doesn't see how cute you are."

This time, Rome managed to not stare slack jawed. Not until Daphne rolled her shoulders, and shrugged out of her jacket, anyway.

"It's hot in here. Is it always this hot in here? I thought computer offices were usually cold."

Daphne had only been wearing a tank top underneath her jacket—white tank top, black jeans, and boots—and the fabric was quite stretched around curves Rome hadn't realized were there. How was taking off a jacket unnerving her like this? How was a little bit of curved flesh on the side of Daphne's boob, peeking out through the side of a tank top, so intriguing that she was flat out staring? I wonder if I could pull that off, she thought to herself. I own some tank tops. Would she look at me? Daphne had tattoo sleeves on both of her arms, up to the shoulders and neck in some places, but it looked like some or most of her front was just smooth, soft, almost-milky—

"So what are we looking for?"

Rome snapped back to the moment with violent force, and did not know what to do with the sweat pouring out of her. "It is hot in here, isn't it?" She cleared her throat, and looked around. "Um. Right. Okay, so..." She stood up again and looked over the cubicle. Nobody from her area was still around, so she gestured to one of the chairs again. This time, Daphne took it.

Except that when Daphne sat down, she leaned forward until her elbows were resting on her knees. The tank top was a flimsy piece of fabric, completely at the mercy of Daphne's shape, and the angle was more distraction than Rome was prepared to handle right at that moment. When she'd been standing, Daphne's breasts had settled to either side of her torso, but when she bent over?

A long, straight dark line, a shadow between flesh. When she finally managed to look Daphne in the eye, Daphne was smirking at her.

"What are you doing to me?" Rome said, as the feeling of warmth under her skin grew. Like her blood was burning its way through her veins.

"I told you," Daphne said, her smirk deepening. "Gay witchcraft."

"That's not a real thing," she said. When she heard herself, though, she was surprised how thin and weak her voice was. "Is it?"

Daphne just gave her an incredulous look.

Then, because this sort of thing was so alien, and so new, and so unprecedented for her, Rome asked, "Why me?"

At this, Daphne was even more incredulous. "Why not you?"

Daphne moved closer, inching her wheeled chair across the carpet, and put her hand on Rome's knee. Their faces were inches apart, and Rome's eyes were darting rapidly. Suddenly there were all these details she was noticing for the first time. The asymmetrical piercings in her ears. That the color of her lipstick paired with, if not quite matching, the two tones of red in the dyed tips of Daphne's hair. The little flourishes in the eyeliner Daphne was wearing that were somehow vaguely Egyptian. The dusting of glitter in her eyelashes.

"The thing is," Daphne said, blinking slowly at her, "I have this rule. I don't hook up with people I only know by nicknames."

"It's Jennifer," Rome said. It shouldn't have been so surprising to her, at this point, how eager she was. It shouldn't have been so surprising after all the times she'd done something she'd never done before, in just the past half hour, because Daphne had asked her to. It shouldn't have been so surprising that she would offer up just about anything, up to and including personal details she shared with almost no one, simply because Daphne asked.

It shouldn't have been surprising, but it was.

Rome's stomach went into freefall as she watched Daphne reach for her hand. It was a surreal moment amid a sea of surreality. It was someone else who squeezed back when Daphne grabbed her. Someone else who stood and followed. Someone else that trailed Daphne into the women's room. She had no frame of reference for any of it, and so she dissociated right up until the moment that Daphne planted her in front of the mirror.

"Look," Daphne said, as she moved to stand behind Rome. She had recognized that Daphne was a few inches taller than her, but the difference really hit home when Daphne was peeking at her over the top of her head. "Not at me. At you."

Rome didn't particularly want to be looking at herself. She knew what she looked like. She saw herself every day. In one hundred out of one hundred hypothetical situations, with the two of them in a room, a stranger's eyes would be drawn to Daphne over her.

Daphne's hands slipped around her sides, under her arms, and Rome sucked in the sharpest, most sudden breath of her life as the other woman began unbuttoning her shirt. It was slow, and methodical, and when Daphne's face appeared in her peripheral vision, peeking over her shoulder, she barely noticed.

"I can't pull off a top like this," Daphne said, as she worked her way down toward Rome's belly button.

"Liar," Rome whispered.

"No, I'm serious. This whole"—another button—"shy office cutie look"—another button—"is a weakness of mine, but it doesn't suit me."

There were buttons further down, tucked inside of her slacks, but Daphne left them in place and instead, very carefully, curled her fingers inside the open shirt just at the center of her chest to peel it apart.

"Oh, that's cute," she said, fingernail scratching softly against Rome's navy blue bra. She pulled the shirt a little farther apart, exposing a wide V from Rome's collarbones down to her waist, and as she did she stepped forward. Moved even closer into Rome's space. Daphne's soft breasts pressed into her back, and she became so aware of them. The fullness of them, swelling outward with the press, across her shoulder blades.

Daphne hooked her pinky fingers around the hem of the shirt, keeping it wide and apart, while her other fingers pried gently at the bottom of her bra. The band tugged at her chest, but only for a moment as Daphne pulled up. Her breasts, so much smaller than Daphne's, dropped down and settled.

"That's better," Daphne said.

"W-what's better," Rome stammered.

"You're finally looking at yourself."

This, of course, triggered her to look at the reflection of Daphne, and Daphne's eyes were so expressive. So hungry. It was too much to take in, and when she saw Daphne's fingers moving again it was much easier to focus on them. She gasped when Daphne took her breast in hand, whole, cradled in her palm, and that sudden intake of air came right back out in a long, low whine.

"They're so pretty," Daphne whispered. Her fingers moved slowly, massaging the flesh in a way that was so distracting that Rome almost missed it when Daphne splayed the other hand across the center of her chest, and started sliding down.

She felt Daphne's lips brush gently along the outer edge of her ear as she said, "Lean on me, if you need to."

That whine kept right on going when Daphne's fingers, with their matte charcoal-colored polish, sank down between her skin and her pants. She instinctively sucked in her tummy, to make a little more space for the hand, and was rewarded with touch. Sensation. Feeling.

Warmth.

She felt her head dipping to the side when Daphne started kissing her neck, and was incredibly grateful that her bob cut wasn't in the way. The wet sound those lips made was so close to her ear that it sent shivers and tingles rippling across her scalp, and down her back. She felt every breath Daphne took, cool air moving over skin wet with her saliva, as mounting pressure as those soft breasts swelled against her back. Swelling and receding. Two fingers working around and around, inside of her panties, wound her nerves into such a coil.

"Look," Daphne said, again.

She hadn't realized her eyes had drifted closed, and when she did she was greeted with an entirely different image of herself. A different side of herself. Red cheeked. Open mouthed, and practically panting. Aroused by the touch of another woman. She saw all these things and more as she stared at herself, as she met her own gaze.

More than just aroused. More than just turned on. She was wet. Very wet and very much leaning back into Daphne. The kisses on her neck were such a small addition to the things Daphne's hands were doing, but the look Daphne was giving her, up through her eyelashes and brow, unmade her.

Somewhere along the way, that dissociation had faded away. She was more present in the moment, more in her own skin, than she had ever been in her life, and she surprised herself by reaching up. It was not enough to have her hands slack at her side. One hand went for her other breast, pulling the shirt apart wider so she could watch as her fingertip traced along the rippled, taut edge of her areola.

The other reached for the back of Daphne's head.

"That's my girl," Daphne murmured.

That was when the wave crested. Her girl. Inexorable momentum rising up above the surface. She bit down on her lip to stop the full-throated moan that was coming, but that only muted her a little. The whole time, Daphne's fingers had been swirling, and when her writhing was so powerful that she couldn't hide it anymore Daphne went down to just one finger. Moving even slower.

This reduction, this tease, when she was so dangerously close, drove her into a frenzy, and Daphne's wicked smile said she knew exactly what she was doing. There was a turning beside her, a tilting, and when she realized that Daphne was no longer watching her reflection but craning around to watch her directly, she could not help twisting to meet her...

...and that was how they kissed, for the very first time. One hand pressed hard against the center of her chest, possessive, pinning her against Daphne, while the other met her feverish edge with equal ferocity. Fingers working faster, and harder. No longer swirling, but swiping with single-minded focus. Her legs went weak, but there was room for that weakness when Daphne held her.

It was the kiss that broke her, though. Rome had never been kissed like that. Her mouth had never been so thoroughly taken, owned. The lingering taste of Daphne's menthol cigarette was on her lips, on her tongue. It was everywhere. It filled her screaming mind. She grabbed a fistful of Daphne's hair, right at the nape of the neck, and held her there with all the force she could muster.

She had no voice, and so it was her fist that conveyed her will: do not stop.

She poured her frustration, her irritation, her stress, her discomfort, all of it, into the scream. Air passing back and forth from lungs to lungs, over and over as they kissed, until she was lightheaded. Until she melted, and there were no more solid parts left.

When their lips finally parted, wits entirely fogged, Rome whispered, "Witch." She just kept staring at Daphne's lips, even though she knew Daphne was staring at her eyes. Daphne had such pretty lips. The lipstick was a bit of a mess, but the underlying skin had such a pretty shape. Such a pretty bow.