I Struck A Match And Blew Your Mind
by imp

I Struck A Match And Blew Your Mind

imp

Summary

Shortly after the article's published, Ramona comes back to Destiny with a new scheme.

Notes

None

Chapter One

They’d never been into the hardcore stuff. The closest they’d gotten was cooking up drugs in Ramona’s kitchen, and even that was amateur hour, the flush of ambition and, fine, infatuation, overcoming common sense. And it had ended badly; even Ramona had been a little afraid. So Destiny’d never really had to learn what to do if, say, someone broke into her house. She hadn’t learned to stay on the lookout, had never really worried about a client coming calling.

So it was pretty freaky to walk into her house one morning, six months after the article dropped, to find Ramona sitting on her couch.

“Holy Jesus Christ in heaven, what are you doing?”

“Lily’s not home, right? School day.”

“She’ll be home soon, the magnet school starts really early, why are you here?”

When they’d stopped speaking for good, when Ramona had been sentenced to probation and Destiny had applied herself to hiding her money and getting Lily the best education possible, Destiny had tried to go to therapy. It hadn’t worked. They’d all been a lot like the reporter who’d gone to Brown, and anyway, Destiny hadn’t wanted to talk about her problems. But one of the therapists had asked if she’d ever known Ramona was trying to manipulate her, and the question had stuck with her. She’d turned it over and over in her head: was there a moment when Ramona talked her into something? Were the calculations visible? Had she just been fooling herself, a willing accomplice pretending to be a victim?

None of the therapists had had any answers, but Destiny got her answer right then, watching Ramona watch her from her $8000 Restoration Hardware couch. Ramona meant what she said. She was earnest and a good friend and a hell of a businesswoman. She was just also completely, no-going-back, hardcore nuts.

“Bitcoin,” Ramon said, confirming Destiny’s suspicions.

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t heard of it, I know you spend half your time monitoring your investments.”

More time than she needed to, to the point where her accountant had suggested she find a therapist. “What’s your point?”

Ramona looked at Destiny, then at Destiny’s house, then at her own nails. She said, “Wow, you’ve really fixed up the place.”

“Ramona. Why. Are. You. Here.”

“Ugh, fine. Look, remember Swimona?”

Destiny wished she could prove she hadn’t been hanging on to Ramona’s every word for years on end. But: “Yes.”

“Well, I opened up an online shop, you know, to really cut distribution out of the equation, and it’s been going great. But…”

She knew that look, she knew it. “What did you do?”

“Nothing! Well, mostly nothing. Swimona is totally above-board. We take credit card payments, we mail out the swimwear - which customers are very pleased with, by the way. But we also happen…to take Bitcoin.”

Oh, God.

“And, you know, I’ve got Mercedes handling the ecommerce stuff - she went to coding boot camp after the settlement, can you believe it? - and it turns out there are these little things you can put on your website, to get people browsing to kind of get Bitcoin for you, and then you can turn it into actual money.”

“So you’re scamming.”

“That’s a very harsh word,” Ramona said. “We’re enhancing the website experience and limiting our bottom line.”

“Jesus.” Destiny sat down heavily. “Wait, so why are you here?”

Ramona bit her lip. Knowing that it was on purpose, that she knew she could use being beautiful and charismatic against Destiny - well, it didn’t exactly make it not work. “Well, we got a call the other day, from a guy calling himself Wayne Checksky.”

Ramona laid it out clearly: Wayne Checksky was a Bitcoin scammer who proposed that they pull of a heist of a rival indie clothing company. That company, Ramona said, had been running a Bitcoin miner since the beginning, and had “Millions of dollars, Destiny, available for the taking.”

“Not available,” Destiny said. “We’d be stealing.”

“Barely! Does it even count if it’s online?”

“Yes, Ramona. Legally, yes.”

But -

But.

Mercedes said the tech part of it checked out. Destiny’s index funds hadn’t returned shit this year; everyone said the economy was going to head right into recession soon. And the money from their first scam hadn’t gone as far as Destiny would have liked. Lawyers were expensive. So was Lily’s school.

“Fine,” she said finally. “But there are ground rules.”

Ramona perked up. “Sure, of course. whatever you want.”

“Rule one: I call the shots.”

“Oh, come on! You didn’t even know what Bitcoin was before I showed up.”

“I did, and I chose not to get involved. You went crazy last time. It’s how we got caught.” Destiny crossed her arms, doing her best to project strength that she really, really didn’t feel. “I call the shots or I walk.”

“You know I’m cutting you in on this out of the goodness of my heart, right?”

She had to actually bite back a smile. “Bullshit. You’re cutting me in because you want me with you. Because that’s part of what you love about the scam.”

It was a hit; she could tell by the way Ramona flinched. It made her want to -

But Ramona had never been interested in that. “Rule two,” Destiny said, forcing her thoughts away from Ramona’s skin, her strong hands, how easily she made Destiny shiver. “Mercedes has the final word on technical stuff. I can barely work my new phone, I’m not going to be telling her what to do.”

“Done.”

“Rule three.” Destiny took a deep breath, her heart pounding in her chest. “We stick together afterwards.”

Ramona blinked.

“I don’t want you to disappear to Cancun or whatever and I never even know what you’ve done, or where you are, or -”

Ramona stopped her dead by leaning forward, taking her hands. Fuck, she was still perfect, everything Destiny had wanted - thought she wanted to be, too. “Baby, I’d never disappear on you. Not unless you made me, and maybe not even them.”

Right. Right. She swallowed past her heart pounding in her throat, her hands shaking in Ramona’s grip. “Okay. Fine. Let’s email this Wayne Checksky guy, then.”

Wayne Checksky was very definitely a scam artist, but Destiny couldn’t find anything in the details of his scam that struck her as out of pocket. Well, aside from the fact that if they were caught, this would be a pretty clear parole violation. But -

School fees. Lily going to college. And Ramona, eyes bright with ambition, telling Destiny all about her scam. If Destiny stayed involved, it would stay small-time; she’d make sure of that. But if she wasn’t, Ramona would escalate and escalate until she’d lost a hundred million dollars and gone to jail for good, and Destiny couldn’t let that happen.

Motherhood is a mental illness, sure. So was still being hung up on your coworker from ten years ago, and yet, here she was.

“It’s actually not all that complicated,” was Mercedes’ verdict. “I mean, okay, it’s definitely complicated, but like, the other day I had to try and convince a client not to make her selfies searchable on the body part, because that’s basically guaranteed to get the cops looking at your ‘personal companionship’ site a little more closely. A little algorithmic bait-and-switch is nothing compared to that.”

“What’s in it for Wayne to cut us in, then?”

“She needs someone who can launder the money,” Ramona said. “These nerds are terrible at anything requiring you to look someone in the eye.”

Destiny sighed. “Fine. And do we have someone to do that.”

“Swimona, baby.” Ramona winked at her. “We’re insourcing that part.”

Destiny did her best to ignore the way that made her heart turn over in her chest. “Okay. Great. One week from today, leave your cell phones at home. Mercedes, you’ll have the Macbook, right?”

“Chromebook, girl,” Mercedes said. “But yes.”

And so it was set. Next Tuesday they’d all have about ten million each, or they’d be in jail.

The first thing she thought when Ramona showed up at her house that weekend was that she was going to call the plan off, or try to talk Destiny into cutting Wayne Checksky out of the deal. Especially when she greeted Destiny by saying, “Where’s Lily?”

“At a friend’s for a sleepover. What’s up?”

Ramona looked at her and pursed her lips just a little, smiling in a weird, almost-regretful way. “I thought about trying to cut Wayne out of the deal.”

Destiny couldn’t hide the way her heart squeezed. “Yeah, I know.”

“It’s high stakes. We won’t be able to do this again. After…we gotta lay low, go and stay legit. Even I know that.”

The dam broke. “Ramona - you promised me, you swore you’d follow my lead. Don’t do this. Don’t -”

Ramona kissed her.

Crazily, the first thought Destiny had was that they were standing on her porch in broad daylight: anyone could see! But unlike the rest of her life, this wasn’t illegal or even particularly remarkable anymore - not in New York, not when Destiny’s only job was trying to maximize her stock returns. So she kissed Ramona back, savoring the shivers that went down her spine, the way her whole body lit up at Ramona’s touch.

Just as the kiss began to deepen, Ramona stepped away. She kissed Destiny’s forehead, like they were dating, the kind of casual, easy touch you only gave someone you knew really well.

Which, Destiny supposed they did know each other pretty well. But.

“Ramona -”

“I’ll see you Tuesday,” Ramon said, and pulled her hood up, heading out to her car. Destiny couldn’t get her shit together in enough time to protest.

It was done almost before Destiny had time to freak out.

“I - really thought this would take longer,” Destiny said as Ramona announced Swimona was being invested in by a shell corporation, and they could all expect to see their share of the sell-off in a week.

“The digital age makes everything easier,” Mercedes said. “Well, everyone’s a Nazi and the robots are coming for our jobs. But moving money? That shit’s simpler than ever.”

“Right. Well.” Destiny looked at them. Her friends, her - her family, still, after everything. “This was…fun?”

“Oh my God, put a smile on your face, we’re millionaires! We’re gonna celebrate, okay, I’m not putting up with frowns for the rest of the night. Get your shit and meet at my apartment in an hour.” Ramona planted a wild, exhilarated kiss on Destiny’s lips. Mercedes wolf whistled; Destiny could feel her face burning.

Millionaires. Holy shit. “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll see you soon.”

“That’s my girl,” Ramona said. Her smile - her smirk, really - told Destiny she meant it. Like, really meant it.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of champagne and high hopes. Destiny kept thinking of what it meant: she was done. She didn’t have to make tentative plans to go back to work in five years, didn’t have to worry about diminishing returns on her stocks or whatever. She could live off the income of bonds for the rest of her life, if she had to. She could support Lily indefinitely no matter what Lily decided to do. She was really, truly done.

She stood on Ramona’s balcony as the sun came up, taking deep breaths. What was she even going to do with the rest of her life?

“Hey, baby.”

Destiny didn’t have time to move away before Ramona put her arms around her waist - and she didn’t really want to, either. Ramona was warm and exactly the kind of horny she only got when they’d pulled off a scam.

“Where’s Lily?”

“She’s got a babysitter, till tomorrow.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

Ramona nuzzled her neck. Destiny couldn’t hide her shiver. “Mercedes left.”

“Ramona…”

“Mmm.” Ramona put her hands on Destiny’s hips. Her heart hammered, a whole stable of horses set free. “What if we did it again?”

She went cold. “What? No. I told you, no.” She pulled away, turning to glare at Ramona - and realized Ramona was looking at her with a vague smirk, that cat-with-the-cream look she’d always worn when she’d maneuvered Destiny how she wanted. “Fuck.”

“I won’t if you don’t tell me to,” Ramona said. “That’s what you wanted, right?”

She made wanted sound dirty. “This wasn’t a sex thing.”

“With you and me, most things are.” Ramona took a step forward. Destiny retreated as Ramona must have known she’d do, until the cold brick of Ramona’s building was against her back and Ramona stood barely an inch from her, towering over her. Boxing her in. “Tell me this wasn’t. Tell me you’re not wet right now, thinking about what we did, about our millions waiting for us.”

“I don’t…” But she couldn’t. She could tell all kinds of lies, make herself seem happy with just about anything - but she couldn’t lie to Ramona, not like this. Not when Ramona was reaching out and touching her, warm hands like brands on the curve of her back.

Ramona smiled a little. Stopped, leaned in. Whispered: “Come inside.”

Oh, God. God. But hadn’t she known, at least a little? Hadn’t she wanted it? It was something she’d expected the reporter to ask about, a truth she thought was painfully obvious.

She couldn’t hide her response then. She shivered, leaning back into Ramona’s touch. She let Ramona lead her back inside, felt sparks dancing over her skin when Ramona pressed her against the deck door -

In full view of the city.

“Five million,” Ramona whispered in her ear, biting her neck, then kissing it.

“Ramona,” Destiny said, and tilted her head, touching Ramona’s jaw just enough to get her to look Destiny full in the eye.

The kiss set her on fire.

It started light, gentle, two friends who knew each other very well doing something just a little new. But then Ramona gasped - like she was surprised, like maybe for once she wasn’t quite as in control as she’d like to be. And that was it, Destiny was gone. She kissed Ramona hard, tugging her hair, grinding against her thigh in a way that should have been embarrassing but was mostly just satisfying. She wanted more, more, and she got it: Ramona shoving her back onto the bed, stripping them both with efficiency marred only a little by the way both their hands shook. She was wet and warm and so fucking strong, and Destiny did what she’d always done with Ramona: she kept up until she’d figured it out enough to take control.

When Ramona came, she laughed like she was being tickled, like she’d just uncorked the best champagne in the world. Destiny clutched her tight, newly determined to never let go.

In Vancouver, Annabelle hugged her cat. “Five million! You know what they say, Greta: you miss 100% of the crimes you don’t commit.” She finished off her email, hit ‘Send’, and relaxed back against her couch.

Wayne Checksky’s future was looking bright.