Jimberley checks the dead drop, and her heart sinks.
There's an origami rose, paper smooth and heavy and matte black, subtly marbled with gloss black ink. She knows what it means, turns her steps homeward, shoulders slumped, and dresses the part she knows she's expected to: strips out of comfortable, practical clothes, into a confected outfit of black lace and black leather and so many fucking straps and buckles it's like she's shagging an ostler who's enthusiastically incompetent at bondage.
And a masquerade half-mask. Because supposedly, they don't know each others' identity.
She makes it to the meeting spot, barely in time, sweaty and annoyed, an unreachable itch on the underside of her tit, something tickling in the stupid fucking bustier. Stomps up the endless spiral stairs of the broken clock tower — stupid fucking place for a secret meeting, how is anyone supposed to leave if they were ever surprised? — and halts, scowling, in front of her Mysterious Benefactor.
(It's Dena. It's instantly recognisable as Dena, and it always was. And this is uncomfortable; not because Dena's rich and powerful, and she's not; not because she wouldn't, in principle, welcome Dena's attention; not even the deal to make Certain Official Attention turn its eyes away, in return for Certain Items Acquired.
(No, it's because of this stupid fucking pantomime, this dishonesty. Jimberley's no stranger to quid pro quo, nor even to mixing pleasure with business, but the elaborate if laughable charade that's intended to hide Dena's identity from her — the whole thing blankly unackowledged at any other time — makes this all feel a bit grubby, a bit like Dena's holding something over her and laughing behind her hand.)
Her Mysterious Benefactor lolls in a chair in the old clock-winding room, all old-fashioned, endlessly layered skirts, lace-trimmed mask, further obscured behind a pearl-handled fan. Eyes smoky and glittering, lips painted a red that Dena would never otherwise countenance. Looks her over, openly, in a way that Dena never would, either.
(So much of Jimberley's life is matter-of-factly secret. Dena's managed to find a way to make this secret feel dirty. Jimberley doesn't like it.)
Dena wouldn't hurt a fly, wouldn't do a damned thing to bruise Jimberley's feelings. But Dena's far too into the Mysterious Benefactor thing, drunk on playing it to the hilt, and maybe, Jimberley thinks sometimes, when she's a couple of cups of wine deep, maybe the Mysterious Benefactor would hurt her, because it's the kind of thing a Mysterious Benefactor would do, remote and cruel and smiling. And Jimberley doesn't think she can hold the veil, when that happens, can barely hold it against her hurt feelings now, and when her Mysterious Benefactor sinks her claws into Jimberley's soft belly she won't be able to stop herself lashing back out, not at the Benefactor, but at Dena, poor sweet fucking idiot Dena who's just playing at eminence grise because that's the world that Jimberley lives in.
Because that's the world where Dena can let herself look, and drag her teeth over her bottom lip; burn Jimberley's curves with her eyes, shift in her chair like she's helplessly wet just seeing her.
Jimberley would kill the Hierophant of the Church of Eyes in broad daylight while singing an anarchist anthem at the top of her lungs, or give up thieving altogether, or pretty much anything, if Dena would kiss her in the light. What she gets, instead, is this.
She doesn't even try to straighten the slump of her shoulders, the flatness in her voice, any more.
"What do you need stolen," she says, simple, as if any of this is.
