The Sacking of Rome

When she smiled, an even smile for once, it did such lovely things to Daphne's face.

"Do you feel better now?"

Rome could only manage to nod a little.

"Can you think straight now?"

"I'll get there," Rome said, feeling quite proud of herself.

"Do you think you could let go of my hair now?"

"No," Rome said, as she leaned in, and Daphne gifted her another of those absolutely delightful smiles just before they kissed again.

Her hand gave up trying to impose its will just before her neck stopped being able to support her head, and Rome laughed, contentedly, as her head came to rest against Daphne's shoulder.

It was with careful reverence that Daphne pulled the bra back down into place, and reached within to scoop, gather, and settle her breasts back into place, one at a time. She was peeking over Rome's shoulder again, rather than using the mirror, to do the buttons back up. Rome just stayed as she had been, leaning, until the shirt was being tugged back into place, and only with great reluctance that she shifted her balance enough to be standing on her own again. Her shirt was a little rumpled, but that was honestly fine for ten o'clock.

She just stared at herself for a while, watching as she breathed in. The bathroom smelled like her. Daphne stood behind her, peering at her with an unreadable expression, but Rome didn't spend as much time staring back as she had earlier.

"I forgot how to move," she said, smirking at her own reflection, "but I think it starts with the feet."

"Let's see where that gets us," Daphne said, as she leaned over to pull the door open a hair.

Rome was aware of the other woman peeking out of the bathroom, little by little, but only peripherally. She was still staring at a version of herself that had just cum at the hands of another woman. The woman in the mirror was smiling. Content. Invigorated. There was lipstick on her neck, and her hair was a little mussed, but she looked happy.

She could be the woman in the mirror, if she just let herself be that woman. That woman looked like she was having quite an adventure.

Daphne was holding the door open, planted out in the hallway with her head craned to peer deeper into the office, and Rome felt light on her feet as she stepped out after her.

"Okay," she said, shrugging back into her skin and feeling quite good about herself. "So, do you want the long version or the short version?"

"Long," Daphne said, smirk affixed in place. Her eyebrows rose when Rome stepped up next to her in the hall, and she nodded as they walked. "You're glowing."

"You knew the risks," Rome said, with a touch of faux defensiveness. "You have no one to blame but yourself!"

"Yeah yeah yeah. Long version of what, exactly?"

They hit the end of the hallway, turning back toward her cubicle, and Rome peered around. At least one of the Alexes had left. "Couple years ago, we made a big switch in our benefits packages. Before that, our coverage had been alright. Not outstanding, but fine. Whatever. Two years ago, though, before they had the open house for enrollment, we all had these one on ones with the scrum masters."

"I hate that word."

"They love it." Despite Daphne's performative disgust, Rome continued, adding, "They got way out in front of it, talking to everyone about how much better this new package was going to be. That it was going to save us money, and the company money. One of them was doing this, like, personal goals thing with it where they were trying to get their agile development team—"

"Do you have to say the whole thing every time?"

"It's habit."

"It's stupid."

"It is stupid." They got back to her desk, dropped back down into their seats, and the difference in her mood, in her nerves, was like night and day from when she'd left the same seat only minutes before.

"Shitty benefits package."

"Right," Rome said, snapping her finger. "It was bad for everyone except the two guys that own the company. I'm sure they saved a bunch of money by giving us shitty benefits, but a whole bunch of people were, like, really invested in the whole company being on board with it. Up above a certain level, most of the company was weirdly excited about it. It took a little while for the scuttlebutt to make it down to me, because nobody talks to me, but it turns out that those people up there were getting other kinds of... benefits."

Daphne's one eyebrow arched up. "What kind of benefits?"

"For a long time people thought it was bonuses, and it might still be bonuses, but then one day I'm going to fetch a scan of a document I needed, and I saw that someone had scanned a receipt from a strip club."

This made Daphne sit up a little, though her puzzled expression remained.

Rome was excited, though, building to her point. "The scans are all timestamped, and this one was made right after I had scanned mine. The timestamps were nearly identical, which is why I opened the wrong one thinking it was mine. The guy behind me at the scanner had been one of the accounting guys! The one you submit all your receipts to for travelling on the company dime!"

"The company paid for some people to go to the strip club?"

"They do it a lot," Rome said, nodding. "They're not exactly subtle, although they think they're being very slick."

"Okay," Daphne said, leaning all the way back and nodding. "That could work."

Rome smiled, and turned back to her work computer. "I was part of the team that set up the different modules in Epicor."

"And that means..."

Rome didn't answer her, instead trying to remember how to navigate to the HR module where she knew reimbursements were. "I might still have access to..."

"Even I know what that one means," Daphne said, pointing at the username/password error message that popped up on her screen.

Rome tried it one more time, but didn't feel comfortable pushing her luck. The system was pretty forgiving with permissions unless it really got badgered, and then there would be a log entry showing she'd tried to do something she wasn't allowed. "Crap."

"What next?"

"Plan B," she said, standing up. She went over to the window, and gave a little shout of triumph. "Wait here."

"It's like I never stopped being an E4," she said, as she laid back and put her feet up on the desk next to Rome's. She knit her fingers together behind her head as she reclined, and Rome got her first good look at Daphne's arms. The tattoos were impressive and extensive, but they were not enough to hide the bulk of the other woman's biceps and triceps. Not sharply defined, but... thick.

She caught herself hurrying down the hall, somewhere between skipping and jogging, and couldn't help but giggle. She never hurried through the building. It was out of character for her, but so was just about everything else that had happened in the last hour. What was one more thing?

"Excuse me," she said, leaning and waving to interrupt the line of sight of the cleaning crew member that was wiping down the tables in the break room. "Hi! Can I borrow your key for a minute? I left my phone in my boss's office earlier..."

The guy had already started unhooking his keys from his belt somewhere around the word minute, though she kept barrelling on like she needed to get through the lie.

"I'll bring them right back!"

He seemed to dismiss her the moment she left his field of vision, and she wore a big, sloppy grin as she scurried back past her desk and waved Daphne over.

The other woman caught up to her when she bent over at the door, and started flitting through the keyring.

"Is this that guy's office?"

"There's a chance," Rome said, "that he might... no... have some files we can... no... look through. Maybe something on his desk. No." She grunted and tried another key. "What's an E4?"

"You were using so much jargon I couldn't follow, I figured I had to throw out one of my own," Daphne said, leaning against the other side of the door frame with folded arms. "It was my rank. Specialist E4."

"Is that high?"

"Just high enough to get out of doing most of the shit jobs, not high enough to get saddled with too much of the bullshit."

Finally, some things that had been swirling in her head took form, and she dropped from a squat down to one knee for balance. "Every time I mention my bosses, you have this twitch. I was starting to get the impression that you have a problem with authority. You were in the Army? How did you not get thrown out?"

"Sheer stubbornness." Daphne's lips compressed into a line, and she looked out over the rest of the empty office behind them while Rome got back to work on the keys. "I joined up to piss my dad off, which... it did. Not the most noble intention, maybe."

Finally one of the keys went click, and Rome gave a gleeful little squeal.

"You make the cutest sounds," Daphne said.

Rome tried to play that off as cool as possible, but the giggle that came out of her was extremely undignified and she knew it. "You've gotta stop doing that or I'm not gonna get anything done."

Daphne held up her hands, and stayed planted at the door frame as Rome went inside. Immediately, her spirits dipped.

"Fuck."

"Wrong office?"

"Wrong century," Rome said, sighing. "I forgot they're all trying to do this paperless thing. They don't keep any records in here!" She turned around, despairing, and left the office with a noticeable dip in her shoulders.

"Is there a plan C?"

Rome locked the door, and frowned as she started walking. Brain going a hundred miles an hour. She found the cleaning crew member and returned the keys, and found Daphne sitting at her desk with a curious smile.

"Is that a hedgehog or a porcupine?" she said, pointing to the little brown stuffed animal that sat on her desk.

"That's Ouchmouse," Rome said, sighing as she sat down. "He's a hedgehog."

"Ouchmouse is an amazing name for a hedgehog." Then Daphne leaned to her left, pulled up on the right side of her tank top, and pointed. Below her rips, in among a tableau of tall grass, peeked a curious and stylish little hedgehog. "My battle buddy in basic had a little hedgehog he dragged everywhere. Good guy." Then, distantly, she said, "I should give him a call. It's been a while."

Rome leaned to the side, planted her elbow on her desk, and let her forehead come to rest on stiffened fingers. There has to be, she thought, some kind of—

"The scan," she said, perking right back up.

"The one you found before?"

"I know that's gone," Rome said, fingers flying. "After I saw it the first time, I was weirded out, and I went looking for it later. But... all our scanners in the office all scan to the same shared folder. Every year, the IT people are like"— her voice took on a mocking tone —"there are ninety gigabytes of scans. Please make sure you remove your needed scans by One January or they will be deleted."

"Uh huh," Daphne said, watching as Rome dragged her mouse across the screen, and opened up a couple dozen pdfs. "So is the plan to just look through these one by one until you find one?"

"I'm pretty sure they were all out two weeks ago," Rome said, absently. She was leaned in close, eyes flitting around the screen as she closed tab after tab after tab, prepared to sift through hundreds. It did not take that long. When she found one, she fell back in her chair just as Daphne was leaning in.

"That's it?"

"That's one of 'em," Rome said, "but there's no name on it."

"There's a signature. Is that..." Daphne cocked her head and squinted.

"I can't make it out," Rome said with a sigh. "I was hoping there was a name on it somewhere. I'm sorry."

Daphne gave her a sideways glance. "Why are you sorry?"

"Because this," Rome said, gesturing emphatically at her screen, "is not a smoking gun! It doesn't help you at all! There's no name! For all this says, I was the one that went to the strip club."

Daphne leaned in closer, staring at the scan for a long moment. "I know that place."

Rome, mid sulk, felt her frown drifting into a kind of confusion. "You do?"

Then the other woman squinted, just for a moment, before turning ever so slightly toward Rome. "You know," she said, "taking a girl to the strip club is usually second date material for me."

For all her forward progress, and for all that having been fingered to completion had helped her settle in, Rome found that she could still be flattened. Completely, utterly flattened. She managed to utter, "Is this a date?"

Daphne slowly ran the very tip of her tongue along her lower lip, and her smile spread. "Do you want it to be?" A moment passed quietly. Daphne looked her over, and before Rome could respond, Daphne stood up. "Come on," she said. "I'll take you back to your car."

"What?"

Daphne pressed her lips together and shook her head. "I've taken up too much of your time already."

"Oh," Rome said, in a very small voice. "Okay."

"I can get what I need from here."

This was unsettling for her. Sure, the night had been one curveball after the next, but this one didn't land the same. She got to her feet and followed Daphne back down the hall, out the front door, and into her car. The drive back was quiet and slow, as they seemed to hit every red light.

"Did I do something wrong?" Rome said, staring down at her knees, as they followed a bend in the road.

"You're fine," Daphne said, though her jaw was tight.

"I feel like I did something wrong. I was having a really good time tonight, even though the chances of me having a good time when a work party is involved are usually, functionally, zero."

"You—" Daphne clamped her mouth shut, shook her head, and made an Mm-mm sound.

"I did!" This revelation did not make her feel better. "I'm sorry. I don't know what it was, but I'm sorry."

Daphne gave her a confused look with just a hint of incredulous, glaring over her shoulder as she drove one-handed. "It's nothing."

"No, listen, I need to say this. I hadn't been with anyone in years, since college, and if I was too eager, or too inexperienced, I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm doing. I have been YOLO-ing so hard tonight that I am completely upside down, but—"

"Stop," Daphne said, now sounding exhausted. "Just stop, okay? You wanna know? You really wanna know?"

"I wanna know," Rome said, sitting up, more mad than curious.

"You weren't supposed to say yes."

Rome blinked, and as they drifted to a stop at yet another red light she turned sideways in her chair, mouth slightly open. "...I..."

"You were about to," Daphne said.

"But we had a reason to go! It wasn't just a—"

"It's a date. This is a date. We're on a date now."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"It is if you want to go to the strip club!"

"I thought we were going for Angela? Is this some kind of fourth dimension chess move?"

Daphne turned a little too, though she didn't make eye contact.

"Were you lying about..." Rome looked down at herself. "I don't think you were lying. In the bathroom. About me being, you know... your—"

"I wasn't."

"Then I don't understand! What's the problem?"

"I..." Daphne made a sound that wore the trappings of laughter but carried none of the mirth. "That line, about going to the strip club, that's a line I use a lot, and... yeah. I use it to scare girls off."

"But it isn't a date!"

"It is," Daphne said, "or it turned into one, except that we also have a real reason to go so some things are overlapping."

"Is that bad?" She hated how shrill she sounded. "Were you having a bad time?"

A horn sounded behind them. Rome jumped, but Daphne was as cool as could be as she reached out of her driver's side window and waved them on. Then she flicked on her hazards, yanked on the parking brake, and turned her car off. The big motor rumbled a few more times before cutting out.

"I was having a really good time," Daphne said, and now that she wasn't yelling to be heard over the engine, her voice was sounding fried again.

It was like catnip.

"Do you not date?"

The answer was there in the way Daphne smiled-but-not-really. "I pick girls up at bars. We have a good time. I'm never lonely for very long."

"But that's not what you want."

Daphne shook her head. "And about the time we stepped out of that bathroom, I was starting to realize that I'd, like, taken advantage of you. I mean, this thing we're doing, there is zero risk for me. I'm looking out for my friend, but if there's gonna be blowback it'll hit you."

"I put that together too," Rome said, looking down at her hands again.

"I got my wires crossed tonight," Daphne said. "I'm sorry."

Rome just sat there for a moment. "Was anything you did, or said, an act?" When Daphne didn't respond, she added, "Were you lying to me at any point, to... to try and get me to go along with all this?"

"No," Daphne said, looking down as well. "I was prepared to. I was ready to say whatever I needed to say to look out for Ange, but then..." She shook her head again, and flipped off a car that had honked at them as it passed. "Like I said. I was having a good time."

"So you tried to reset it. Because it didn't feel right."

"Doesn't feel right," Daphne said, staring at her hands as she gripped the steering wheel.

"Were you gonna give me your number? Call me?"

"I hadn't figured that part out yet," she replied. "I was maybe gonna try, but the way you reacted at first made me think you'd just be mad at me, which I deserve."

"Why would I be mad at you?"

Daphne let out a long breath, and as she leaned back in her chair, head falling back into the headrest, her eyes stared through the roof of her car. "What you saw tonight? That's... I can do that. I can be charming. I'm less great at the parts that come later."

"The morning after?" When Daphne just quirked her head, Rome added, "Brunch after?"

"Relationships."

"Whoa," Rome said, waving her hands, "what?"

"If I told you that all of my exes hate me, wouldn't that be a red flag?"

"I dunno," Rome said, feeling a kind of rising agitation. "Do you usually date bitches?"

Daphne snickered, seemingly involuntarily, because she immediately pinched her nose and tried to wipe the smile from her face.

"Do you promise them strip club and then renege? I think I'd be pretty pissed if, after all that, someone didn't deliver strip club!"

"Have you ever even been to a strip club?"

"Not even once," Rome said, shaking her head. She tried to hide a smile, because delivering jokes with a straight face was her very favorite thing to do, but she could feel it creeping into her cheeks.

They got honked at again, and this time Daphne leaned almost halfway out of her window to shout back. Rome grabbed her belt, anchoring her, and waited.

When she sat back down, Daphne sighed as she exhaled. Then she reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and handed it to Rome. "Put your number in it."

Rome flicked the screen open, and paused. "Are you sure?" There were a lot of unread messages.

"I'm sure."

It was tempting to look at a couple, just to see what kind of things other people had sent her: vitriol after a hookup, or other girls Daphne might have taken home trying to get her attention. There were a lot of things they might have told her about the woman. She punched in her phone number, put her name in as rome, because she had a suspicion that every contact in Daphne's phone was lowercase, and handed the phone back.

Daphne was looking at her expectantly.

"I added it," Rome said, flinching.

"So..."

"So... let's go."

Daphne gave her another wide-eyed look as she reached for the ignition, and the car rumbled to life.