A Certain Secret Someone

IV.

Brandt has Jane put her hands on the vanity and hold tight to it when he laces up her corset. She groaned audibly when he put his foot on her lower back and leaned back to pull it as tight as possible; she hadn’t had someone do that since she used to dress up for those stupid fucking theater classes in college that never got her anywhere close to a stage. At least she learned how to act, she tells herself, because she needs that for her job. She can barely breathe for that brief moment when his fingers come up under the laces to adjust them and her body tries to get used to the feeling of the heavy cotton and stiff boning pressing against her by struggling. Her breasts ache from the corset digging in so tightly under them and she had to rest a hand on the vanity still as he tied the laces into a knot that she hopes she can undo and then tucks them into the bottom of it.

“You make a beautiful bride.” Brandt informs her as she finally drops herself slowly to sit on the vanity seat, and she gives him a clear cut look of distaste; he’s been enjoying this a bit too much. He’s not so bad at reading human emotion that he doesn’t use that moment  avoid her gaze by turning to the closet to find her wedding dress, hung on a special velvet covered hanger as if she was interested in putting it on. “Why am I the only person who ever has to get married as part of our mission?” Jane inquires and stands up again to let the man help her into the sea of white material, smoothing it down with his hands as it falls over her. He makes the motion for her to turn again and she does so, bracing her hands against the table for a second time as he buttons up the back of the dress slowly and surely. “Because he wasn’t taken with Ethan.” Brandt reminds her and he kneels down to fasten the ties to create her bustle, his hands quickly finding all the right ribbons to pull it into the correct folds.

“I bet he’d be taken with you.” Jane finally says as she begins to get hot enough from the thick fabric that she appreciates the blow of the little metal fan on the vanity he turned on while he curled her hair into this ridiculously prissy style. “You can do hair like a beast, make-up better than I can, and you know how to tie the bustle to a wedding dress without instructions.” She was hoping that he would volunteer information about that without further prompting, but instead he picks up her veil and attaches it to the back of her hair, running his hand down the tulle to correct the way it lays. “I don’t have the needed curves; those camping trips might have just been camping trips.” He informs her with amusement, and she looks into the mirror just long enough to wish for a moment that this could have ever been with a certain handsome agent. She swallows, and buries that grief for another day when she has time to be sad. Happy tears look all together different and she can’t indulge in her own misery.

“Is that how you learned all this?” Jane inquires to distract herself, and Brandt shakes his head to dismiss the thought even before she finishes. He knows where that joke is going. “On all those camping trips?” She inquires, and he reaches forward to pull the blusher down over her face so he doesn’t have to stare at her interested gaze quite so completely as he replies. “My mother fell from a horse, it startled and stepped backwards on to her, and she was paralyzed afterwards.” Brandt explains easily as if he isn’t talking about a terribly tragic accident which would have left most people in a therapist’s office for years; and there is that stone resolve of the master field agent that he once was, showing through in his cool composure. “I had to learn how to help her take care of herself; nothing as raunchy as you’d think.”

Even as cold-hearted as the woman might be, Jane embraces Brandt for a long moment before she puts her arm through his to be escorted to the altar – somehow everyone had seemed to think that he was not so clearly unrelated to her and she had fed some load of tragic lies to explain it all. “Which isn’t to say that I’ve never thought I’d make a great woman.” He whispers to her. The image is what lends Jane the bright smile and rosy cheeks that has their target in knots; knots all together dissimilar to the ones that she’ll leave him in that night.