"Thief Cute"

Nathan readjusted the stiff collar of his lavender shirt and tugged at the sleeves of his suit as he looked casually around at his fellow guests mingling during the pre-ceremony cocktail hour. Well, “fellow guests” in the sense that they were all physically at the wedding together, not in the sense that he had been invited like the rest of them. In reality, Nathan was a thief, and he had learned a while ago that one of the easiest ways for him to make some quick cash was by sneaking into big fancy weddings and relieving some of the guests of their valuables before the ceremony (and occasionally during the reception if he was feeling bold enough). Of course, not just any wedding would do; they needed to be large enough that he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd and could easily pose as a relative of a relative, but small enough and of modest enough wealth that there would not be an abundance of security.

Under these conditions, the weddings that would qualify were few and far between, but fortunately they were each lucrative enough that it made the treks and the research worth it. While he looked to be casually standing around, he was really scanning the attendees to identify the most convenient marks; loose pockets and unbuttoned jackets were the keys to success. He would have really preferred to go for things like watches and jewelry, but those are the sorts of things that you need to be able to escape with immediately after you obtain them. A wedding is great for valuable and easy pickings, but it was also a closed environment where it would be easy to put people on high alert if they knew something was missing. Still, people at these sorts of parties tended to carry decent amounts of cash on them. 

He had just spied a middle-aged gentleman with an ill-fitting watch and was about to make a move, when he spied a motion out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw that it was a gorgeous woman walking past him carrying a modest-sided purse; she was short, with choppy brunette hair and a dancer’s build. Normally, he would have dismissed her (pretty girls are found pretty much everywhere), but in this instance, his gaze lingered a bit longer. Not just because of her beauty, but because her behavior seemed odd: she was alone, walking at a unique pace; slow enough to be casual, but fast enough to be purposeful. She’s trying to not stick out one way or the other, he thought. A moment later, he saw her pass by an old man and deftly snatch a wallet out of his loose back pocket without so much as ruffling the fabric. He should have been offended that someone was encroaching on his scheme, but he couldn’t help but feel a sort of kinship with her, smirking a bit as she circled back around casually and managed to slip the wallet back into the pocket with ease, no doubt emptied of its contents. Well, he was impressed, but he couldn’t exactly let her galavant around and steal his targets. Still, maybe this could work out… he decided to have a bit of fun with it. Straightening his indigo tie, he sauntered over to her as she looked around for her next mark.

“Good evening, Miss,” he said with a smile, and reaching out his hand, “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of being introduced. I’m Nathan.” Most people probably wouldn’t have given out their actual first name, but he figured it really wasn’t that useful without anything else.

“Oh, pleasure to meet you. Marissa,” she added at the end, taking his hand and giving it a light shake. She had seemed a bit thrown off, but not too thrown off (it’s not like you could expect everyone to leave you alone at a wedding).

“So, are you on the bride’s side, or the groom’s?”

“Oh, um, the bride,” she said hastily, “we knew each other for a bit during college. We’re not that close though, I don’t even know too many people here.” Covering why she might not know people, clever.

“Huh, well, I actually don’t know too many people around here either. Maybe we could be each other's' plus one and mingle a bit?” 

“Ah, well, that’s very sweet of you,” she said nervously, “but I actually was looking for one of the few people I did know, so um, I should really get going. It was nice meeting you though!” She shook his hand again and turned to walk away, at which point he said:

“Oh, of course, the pockets aren’t going to pick themselves.” He crossed his arms, smiling a bit behind her back as she froze. She slowly turned back towards him with an inscrutable expression on her face.

“Beg pardon?”

“That lift you did back there. It was pretty good.” He shrugged, “Though I will say that, purely in my opinion, it might’ve been better to dump the wallet somewhere, or at least wait a bit longer to turn back around; you might’ve gotten too close to them visually and they could’ve started a conversation with you.”

“What… oh,” she said, understanding after a moment, “you’re a thief too.”

“Oh, yeah, go ahead and announce it to the whole party, why don’t you.” He said it while looking around mockingly frantic, as there was nobody close enough to them to overhear over the chatter of the party.

It was her turn to cross her arms, raising an eyebrow while she was at it. “So? What’s your play? You telling me to buzz off? That what this is? You got a funny way of going about it.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” he replied, leaning in a bit and lowering his voice. “I think that instead of going after each other, stressing each other out and making us more likely to get caught because each of us wants to outdo the other, it makes more sense to make a brief alliance and pool all our ‘winnings’ together at the end.”

“You wanna team up?” She asked, a hint of surprise on her face. He noticed that when she was not trying to be polite, she had a bit of a harsh accent and an informal manner of speech (Brooklyn, maybe?). “Why would I give you part of my take if I’m the one who earned it?”

“Oh, don’t think of it that way,” he placated, “between the two of us, we could cover more ground, hit targets we might not have the time or the wherewithal to hit otherwise. Besides, it would keep up the spirit of competition; the one who gets more gets bragging rights, but they must give up a portion of their haul to humble them. It’s just for the night, and that way, neither of us has to lose.” She looked at him, then looked away for a second, scrunching her eyebrows in thought as she deliberated. She really was beautiful, with dainty features almost like a woodland pixie; one would never assume she was a thief, which must have worked well for her.

After a few moments, she looked back at him and gave a small nod, “Alright, wise guy, you got yourself a deal. We go until the ceremony begins, then meet by the fountain in the side garden.”

“Sounds fair enough,” he smiled a bit, “the game is afoot.” She rolled her eyes at him, but he didn’t regret the silly quote. With that, they parted ways and got to work. Nathan did his usual, snatching wallets out of inner jacket pockets, and untailored pants pockets. He made small talk to help misdirect the marks, but he never let it get too personal, always politely excusing himself and claiming he saw someone else he recognized. He saw Marissa a few more times, but couldn’t tell how she was doing. His best lift of the night was when a woman ended up overindulging and vomited in the bushes, and when he went over to make sure she was alright and hold her hair, he deftly unclasped one of the thin diamond-studded necklaces she was wearing and pocketed it before her friend came to take over. She wouldn’t notice it was gone with all the rest that she was wearing, and even if she did, neither of them had managed to see much of his face. Before long, he heard the call for all the guests to gather near the main grandstand for the ceremony. He politely excused himself from the couple he had been talking to, mentioning something about the bathroom, and headed around the outskirts of the crowd to the side garden. He spared some glances to make sure no one was staring at him, but he was lucky enough that everyone was in conversation and didn’t even look over to the side. He finally made it into the side garden, deserted except for Marissa sitting on the ledge of the decently-sized fountain.

“Took ya long enough,” she said smugly as she saw him come towards her.

He rolled his eyes, “Well, pardon me for taking my time, it’s only my livelihood.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever,” she said, waving her hand, “out with it, let’s see the goods.”

“Now hold on a moment,” he said, holding a hand up, “before we do that, a thought occurred to me as I was walking up here. Nobody knows we’re up here as far as I know, and this home belongs to the father of the bride, who is obviously quite wealthy. I think that before we call it quits for tonight, we should take this moment to seize the opportunity presented to us.”

“What are you getting at?”

He pointed to the side of the home, “You see that trellis leading up to that window? One could easily scale that and convince the window lock to open. Any valuable jewelry or clothes or whatnot would be ours for the taking, and as long as we don’t take anything that appears to be an heirloom, they will likely not be the wiser.”

“Okay, so why do I need you for that?” she asked derisively.

“Well, aside from the fact it was my idea, it would be nice to have another person to keep a lookout and carry more loot, no?”

She considered for a moment, “You sure you’re not just trying to hide the fact you got less cash than me?” she smirked a bit.

“Ha ha,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice, “no, I’m serious. I had already considered it, but I didn’t think I would have that good of a chance. Come on, it’ll be quick, in and out.”

She pondered for a few moments, until finally she sighed and said, “Fine. We’ll just be quick. There better be good shit in there.” Before he could say anything else, she walked over to the wall and began climbing the wooden trellis covered lightly in ivy. Shaking his head a bit, he followed after her. Within a minute, they had both made their way up the wall and into the house; she had barely taken any time to pick the window lock. Once they were inside, they went room by room looking for valuables, one of them guarding the door at any given time. They decided not to take any knick knacks or anything, since it was more obvious at a glance when one was gone (and most of them would be too awkward to carry, like clocks and lamps and such). Still, they managed to get lucky, as Marissa poked through some closets and drawers and found some designer clothes that would fetch a fair price on the secondary market. They also decided not to take too many of those for logistical purposes, but fortunately a lot of the fabrics were light and airy so it was easy to carry a lot of them. They visited the master bedroom last, poking through the drawers and whatnot like usual. The grand prize though was the large jewelry box on top of the dresser, filled practically to the brim with a variety of gold and silver necklaces and rings.

“Let’s only take a few,” he said, “so he doesn’t notice they’re gone right away.”

“Gee, thanks for the tip, it’s not like we’ve been doing that the whole time.” He rolled his eyes and smiled a bit while she collected a few pieces of each genre of accessory. However, the second she had shut the box, they both heard a door open and close downstairs, then footsteps start to climb up to the second floor. “Damn it!” she hissed, “Why weren’t you watching the door!”

“Oh, like that would’ve helped in this case!” he hissed back. They scrambled for a moment, then Nathan pointed silently to the closet, both of them practically diving in and hiding behind the wall of coats. Fortunately, there were also a variety of boots to hide their legs, though hopefully it wouldn’t get that close. The steps got closer and closer until they heard them enter the master bedroom. After a few moments of tension, they heard an older male voice:

“Oh thank god! Jesus, who the hell forgets the rings on the day of the wedding!” The man immediately ran back out and back down the stairs.

Nathan heaved a sigh of relief, “Must have been the father of the bride. Ha, that’s actually pretty amusing, since we didn’t get caught.”

“Heh, yeah I guess so.” she replied. It was at that point they realized how close to each other they were, faces within inches of each other and shoulders resting against each other. Awkwardly, they stepped a bit apart, Nathan clearing his throat. They walked back out of the closet and made their way back to the window. He went first this time, carefully making his way back down the trellis and touching down on the mossy brick with a slight thud. He looked up at her coming down while taking moments to glance around for anyone. 

“You good?” he asked, as she was going a bit slow.

“Yeah yeah, I’m just being careful, you try climbing down one of these in heels. You better not be looking up my dress-” suddenly, she gave a yelp: her foot had slipped, and she fell backwards barely holding in a scream while she flailed her arms around, dropping the clothes she had been carrying.

“Oh shit!” Nathan said. Instinctively, he ran forward, arms outstretched. He managed to get under her, but unfortunately he was not He-Man, and they both ended up crumpling to the ground. Still, better than it could’ve been. He groaned in pain, slowly getting up from the rough, cold stone. “You okay?” he asked as she got off him, brushing herself off.

“Yeah… yeah I think so. Thanks… a lot. That could’ve been bad.” She acted casual, but she was clearly shaken up. “Help me get all the stuff, will ya?” He nodded and they quickly collected all the clothes and some of the jewelry she had ended up dropping. Once they were satisfied they had picked up everything, they carefully made their way out to the front, making sure to double check for any cameras on the way out. With the ceremony having started by now, their way was completely clear.

“Say,” Nathan said as they walked away from the house, “want to grab a coffee or something while we count our haul? Loser buys.”

“... Sure, why not. Maybe a pint instead, what do you think?”

“Works for me.”