by ROCFanKat

Disclaimers: See Chapter 1.

•••

Cassie recovered first. She switched off the TV and marched back to the kitchen, looking determined. First, she hung up the phone, which was still dangling by its cord a few inches off the floor. Then she poked a finger into my chest.

"We didn't see that," she informed me.

"No," I agreed.

"It was the wine."

"No question."

"I'll just change, and then we'll have coffee."

"Perfect."

She gave me one last poke, for emphasis, and retreated to find her clothes. While she dressed, I checked the espresso, wondering whether it was possible to add more caffeine at this stage of the brew cycle. For a moment, peace brooded over the condo again.

Then things started beeping and ringing and buzzing from all directions--my phone again, her cell phone, my PowerBook, her pager. My pager was probably going off, too, but there was no way to know for sure; I kept it in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet at the office.

"Don't answer any of that," she said, buttoning her sweater. "You're not home, and I'm not here."

"So you want to go all the way with the denial thing, do you?"

"It's not denial. Just a delay. Are you ready to deal with them right now?"

After a few seconds' thought, I unplugged the kitchen phone. Then, methodically, I went through the condo, unplugging and turning things off. Cassie, having turned off her cell phone and pager, went around to all the ground-floor doors and windows, making sure that they were locked.

When I came back downstairs, all the lights were off again. She was lounging on the couch, bare feet on the coffee table, calmly sipping espresso.

"We just bunkered ourselves in against our friends," I remarked. "There's got to be something wrong with that."

"Really? What?"

I considered, briefly. "Never mind."

She patted the place next to her, and I took it, along with the other cup of espresso and a piece of baklava. In companionable quiet--and very deep denial--we watched the fire. After a while, I gave that up and just watched her.

She was well worth watching. She wasn't wearing anything suggestive--just a red button-front sweater and a pair of faded jeans--but it all fit like a million bucks, and the degree to which she'd left the sweater unbuttoned suggested many things to me. In the firelight, her hair had subtle red highlights that I'd never noticed before; they went well with the sweater and with the jewelry. Cassie was the kind of woman who would wear earrings and a couple of bangle bracelets to clean the garage, which had always been a point of contention between us. Except for watches, I didn't have much jewelry, and she thought that was a serious character flaw. Only the fact that I liked shoes redeemed me in her eyes.

With some amusement, I glanced at one of the bracelets on her right wrist--a Chinese design, which I'd bought her at The Museum Company the day before to make up for what I'd said about her Egyptian-junior-stewardess brooch. (I still meant every word of it, though.)

Cassie finally felt my attention, and smiled, and curled up against me like a cat. Feeling better already, I pulled her closer and checked the fire again. It would need another log before long, if we were going to stay downstairs a while. My hope was that we wouldn't.

Not that I should have been thinking about that just then. We were in trouble; we needed a plan. Without a plan, we'd be walking into a wolfpack tomorrow without weapons. But tomorrow was still a while off. And although the woman next to me was part of the problem, she was also an excellent solution.

There might be a perfectly logical explanation for what had happened anyway. J.B. had a copy of the security-camera tape; he might have cut it into a copy of the Rumours commercial, for the Christmas-party reel. Maybe there were copies of that going around already, and maybe those copies had fallen into the wrong hands, by mistake or design. A new account executive might have delivered the wrong tapes to the broadcast stations. Or maybe Jack and Kurt had found somebody who could hack the stations' signals. It was possible--barely. But...

"Stop thinking about it," Cassie said.

"What makes you think I'm thinking?"

"When are you ever not?" She drew back just enough to lock her eyes with mine. "Let's have it, Devvy. Get it out of your system. You talk in your sleep, and I only want to hear good things tonight."

"I talk in my sleep?" I asked, astonished.

She gave me the Get On With It look.

"All right, fine. I was just trying to figure out how it could have happened."

"And...?"

I told her. She shook her head. "Too complicated."

"It's the only way it makes sense," I protested.

"Stop trying to make things make sense. I hate it when you do that."

"You have a better explanation?"

"She's your demon. If you can explain her, go right ahead."

Silence. Cassie was right; this was Monica's doing, and we were never going to be able to explain it. Damn.

"Your deal with her," I said. "When you said you'd take over for her, exactly what did you agree to?"

"To make sure you weren't celibate, for one thing. That's been a hardship." She kissed me, lingering. "Honey."

"What?"

"No, I mean you've got a little right there." Leaning in again, she licked my lips. Every nerve in my body thwanged. This was definitely...

...distracting. "One thing at a time, Cass. What else did she tell you?"

She sighed. "This conversation is going to put me right out of the mood."

"I'll put you back in it later. Promise. Now, what she did say?"

"Oh, all right. She told me not to let you change your mind. I said I was good at that. Then she laughed." Cassie mock-shuddered. "It sounded like a pack of cats in heat. Anyway..."

"That'll be the important part," I said grimly. "After she laughed."

"Important? Please. She just said once we were both out, we had to stay out. That stands to reason, right? So I said, 'Fine.' That was that. Satisfied?"

I went back over it a couple of times. We were out; we had to stay out. Neither of us had ever been in any closet, exactly, but the secret was out, and as for staying out, it was doing a nice job of that on its own. So we'd given her the bargain she wanted, unless...

Unless she meant "out" a whole different way--unless she meant way out, beyond the agency. Which was out of the question.

She knew that, of course. Now things made sense. Monica had put that tape on TV to out us in public...and to nail the closet door shut behind us.

"Honey?"

Still thinking, I wiped my mouth absently.

"I mean you this time. What's wrong?"

"She has us, Cassie."

"No, she doesn't. She's just trying to scare us. I don't think..."

"She meant we had to advertise. We can't do that, and she knows it. That's why she made a deal with you. She knew she'd win. She's got us."

Cassie regarded me sharply. "She hasn't got us yet."

"Fine. Tell that to everyone you know who watched TV tonight. Tell it to the first client who recognizes you--or asks you out. Or the first old boyfriend you run into. What are you going to say? 'Sorry, but I just went gay all of a sudden, just like that. It was that damn Tinky Winky. The little purple bastard jumped off a store display and sucked my blood. It was awful. Just aw...' "

"If that were funny, I'd tell you to stop being funny," she said, with a bit of asperity. "This isn't about the gay thing. It's about you and me."

"We are the gay thing now. The plumbing matches. If you want to call a doctor to confirm it, we can do that, but I'm telling you..."

"Dammit, Devvy, I am not getting labeled like that. I don't even like lavender. It's a bad color for me."

"Cassie," I said flatly. "Listen to me. We're poster children for diversity now, whether we want to be or not. We can play word games all you want, but as long as we're together, we are gay."

"I don't like it," she muttered.

"I don't either. But there it is."

Silence again, for so long that I almost checked her pulse.

"Maybe one rainbow," she finally said.

"What?"

"I could live with one rainbow on something. A very small pin, maybe, or a key chain." She kept a straight face but poked me in the ribs to let me know she was joking.

"We could have T-shirts made," I suggested, "that both say 'HERS.' "

"As long as they're not lavender. How about hot pink?"

"Hate it. What about black?"

"You already wear too much black. Remind me to do something about your wardrobe soon. How about red?"

"Looks better on you. Navy?"

"That looks better on you." She fingered the soft cotton of my navy sweater. "It looks good off you, too. Why don't we go upstairs?"

I tried to look offended. "Are you suggesting that we do something gay?"

With a wicked glint in her blue eyes, she put her arms around me and whispered something. Before the shock of the words wore off, she blew lightly in my ear. My entire nervous system shorted out on the spot.

"You are a very evil person," I complained.

She laughed and pulled me upstairs behind her.

•••

While the fire downstairs burned out, we lighted another one upstairs. It was a wonder that the sheets didn't go up in flames. Cassie was definitely back in the mood, and I got a little carried away myself. All this went on for a while. Not bad for a Monday night in Greenville, even for consenting adults in private.

What we didn't know, while we were consenting that night, was that our private lives were already over.

•••

(c) 1999, ROCFanKat

Continued - Part 8