undonewithout | up against these things I can't see

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gideon

up against these things I can't see

It isn't every night that Harrow crosses their narrow hallway in the middle of the night, slipping quietly into Gideon's room--but it's most of them. The solidity of her cavalier's presence, even deep asleep, is a greater reassurance since last month's disappearances, the inexplicable vanishing and subsequent return that still triggered an alarm response at the back of her brain.

Most things in and out of Darrow did, as Gideon was annoyingly apt to point out, but that didn't change the truth of it.

Tonight, Harrow wakes with a jolt to the sound of passing sirens, the tone close enough to the panicked klaxon of the Mithraeum bells that she scrabbles her way into a sitting position before she's even fully aware, fumbling for the sword that should be at her side in its protective coffin of bone. It's not here; it never was, but as the blue and red flash of lights filters into her room she tears the sheets towards the end of the bed in a half-awake and desperate search. Reality catches her after only a minute, less than that, but her pulse still pounds in her ears, her breath coming in jagged, helpless gasps. Execrable flesh magician though she is, she knows enough to slow the beat of her heart and purge the remaining adrenaline from her system. It helps, just enough.

She's fully awake now, though, alone in the ruin of her bed, and falling back to sleep here seems all at once impossible. Quickly, she slips out of bed and goes across the hall, listening at Gideon's closed bedroom door for a moment before she turns the knob and pushes it ajar. She can only just see the shape of Gideon curled under the blankets, warm and solid and deep asleep; she stays in the doorway for another moment, watching her, before she takes the last few steps to the edge of the bed and curls in at her side.

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"I'm telling you there's hope we might figure it out," she says. Even with the chill of the water and the push and pull of the current, she can feel Gideon's hands on her, the tension in the fabric of her nightgown where Gideon's fingers twist in. She shivers. "We've worked through puzzles as complex as this before."

Harrow can see the flush on the other girl's face, the color softened by the moonlight but just present enough. Her own face burns with the confession, the naked want in Gideon's voice. Everything she asks for is possible, and impossible, and there's only one way to begin. Trusting Gideon not to let her sink, she lets go of her, the sharp lines of her face settling into an intense, wary determination. She reaches up, twisting damp arms around her cavalier's neck, pulling her down and pressing her lips to hers.

Harrow kisses her and Gideon's mind goes blank. She's pretty sure her mouth goes slack for a moment, too, before it occurs to her to kiss back. Her arms tighten around Harrow's waist, pulling her in tight against her, the flats of their bodies pressed as close as they can get. She drags in a breath through her nose.

It's fumbling and clumsy, the contact of their mouths sending up a wave of revulsion even before Gideon gets over the worst of her shock and starts to respond. It's not as bad as when it had been Ianthe, though, not by half, and for that reason Harrow's able to let the disgust run through her and then fade. Gideon pulls her in, presses their bodies together, and Harrow's head reels. She makes a noise that embarrasses her, reminiscent of the sound that'd echoed off the pool tiles back at Canaan House when Gideon's lips made contact with the damp line of her frontal sinus.

Here, with a void of stars above them rather than damp and crumbling plaster, it's better somehow.

Gideon nudges the kiss deeper for a beat and then she lets in break, leaning in her forehead against Harrow's. It's not Gideon's first kiss, but it feels like it, somehow.

"You okay?"

Gideon deepens the kiss for a moment, turns it hungrier, and Harrow feels an ember of panic catch light in her chest. It's everything she needs, nothing she wants, and when it ends and there's nothing but the touch of Gideon's forehead to hers, the relief she feels is a sick and humiliating wash. This close, at least, it's harder to look directly at her. It takes her a moment to say anything at all.

"I think so."

"Okay," says Gideon, risking another kiss to Harrow's wet skin. "Got anything else to say or do you want to go home and try being honest with each other somewhere warm?"

This kiss is soft, placed not on her mouth but against the cool line of her forehead, and though her jaw tenses with the contact Harrow can let it happen. She has other questions, a myriad of them, but they can wait until they're home; after a minute, she shakes her head. "We can go back. Unless there's...more you need before we do."

Gideon thinks about it for a moment, letting her knees relax so they bob a little with the movement of the waves.

"I know it's a process," she says. "I know we need to talk about it. But...just...promise me you won't take it back."

"Gideon," she says, but the request is a deserved one; painful and harsh, but no worse than other things they've asked of one another. Better than most, in fact. She sways in Gideon's arms, pushed and pulled by the currents but never drawn out too far. Her next exhale is a shaky one, a letting go of something and resigning it to the water.

"I will not take it back," she says. "Not for a myriad." She could pledge it by the grace of the Emperor or the covenant of the Tomb, speak the oath of their sacred bond as necro and cavalier, and maybe another day she will. Not tonight, when the sea and the stars and Gideon feel, for a moment, like enough.

"Good enough," says Gideon, and then she shifts Harrow in her arms, lifting her up against her chest, carrying her back towards shore.

"You can wear my t-shirt," she says. "So you don't freeze to death."

The night is close and warm. They'll be okay.

"If you hadn't offered, I was going to ask," says Harrow, smirking as Gideon turns her in the water, letting the buoyancy work to make it feel effortless. When they're back on the sand, she takes the shirt when it's offered, pulling it awkwardly on over the clinging and embarrassingly transparent stuff of her wet nightgown as Gideon finds both their pairs of shoes where they're strewn over the sand. In hindsight, Harrow concedes she should have changed clothes before they'd left after all.

Dressed and dripping seawater, they slog up to the boardwalk and into the city, retracing their way home through still-empty streets. Harrow doesn't reach for Gideon's hand, and Gideon refrains in turn, but every so often their knuckles brush, their fingertips finding the back of a hand or the line of a forearm as they cross streets and turn corners.

As Gideon unlocks their apartment door and pushes it open, Harrow glances at her, tentatively, before walking through. "Dry clothes, first," she says, like a reminder to them both. "Then...the lounge?" Either of their beds would be too much, too suggestive; the couch is comfortable, neutral territory.

"Lounge feels safe," says Gideon, nodding. She pauses, dropping a kiss into the wet tangle of Harrow's hair and then pads off in the direction of her bedroom. She strips off wet things, dropping them in a pile in the corner to deal with later and pulls on dry sweats and a t-shirt, pushing her fingers back through her wet hair. Once she's dressed, she pads into the kitchen, making them both tea. Her mouth keeps trying to twitch into a smile.

Harrow's only a few steps behind, a reversal of their usual positions as they go down the hallway. Closing the door to her bedroom, she stands there for a minute, maybe two, looking at the pale and bedraggled mess of herself in the mirror above her dresser. Her clothes are a jumble, a ruin, the tendrils of her hair twisted and already growing stiff and crackling with salt--but the light in her eyes is brighter than their cool Ninth black has ever seemed before, the look on her face wild and distressingly open. She strips and dresses again: soft leggings and a long-sleeved shirt, one of Gideon's hoodies, loose and comfortable and warm.

As Gideon moves around the kitchen, Harrow goes out of her room and into the lounge. She slips onto her usual side of the couch, legs drawn up and her back pressed into the corner between the arm and the back cushion, turned just enough to watch through the doorway as Gideon takes down mugs and fiddles with the kettle.

It takes a long few minutes but then Gideon comes into the lounge with two cups of tea, one brewed as weak as Harrow likes it with a slice of lemon, her own stewed and dark and sweet. She sets Harrow's on the table and then sits down in her own corner, pulling her legs up to cross them in front of her.

"Where do you want to start?" she says.

Harrow waits for Gideon to sit before she reaches for her tea, inhaling the faint, citric scent of the floating lemon. It's not the same as the preserved drops given to her by Crux; it's fresher, more alive, but there's a comfort even in the difference. She watches Gideon settle, every folded limb and gentle flex of muscle striking her in a way she hadn't let herself acknowledge, not fully.

"Can we start with the small things?" she asks after staring into her cup for a long moment, quietly stung by the vastness of her ignorance in this, the level of her uncertainty. "Small for you, I mean. Tell me what you want when it's like this, when we're both just here, and I'll tell you what I can give."

Gideon considers that for a moment, looking down into her mug.

"Let me hold your hand," she says. "Or put my arm around you when we're watching TV sometimes. You could lean on me." She worries her lip with her teeth. "I'd like to be able to keep kissing you."

She watches Gideon fidget and ponder, everything crossing her face, a few thoughts lingering. The catch of her lip in her teeth makes Harrow's face burn, a flutter beginning in her chest and a little lower down. She takes a sip of her tea, tracking the warm run of it down her throat and into her esophagus, the heat spreading slowly through her belly.

"I can let you hold my hand," she says. "And sit a little closer when we're on the couch together. Kissing is...I think it needs to be slow, but we can work on it." She curls her hands around her mug, a small smile at the corner of her mouth. "You've touched my ankle a few times. And a few of those, I haven't hated it."

Gideon nods at that. She doesn't reach out and touch Harrow, but she does shift position so that she's a little bit closer. "What about baths?"

"What about baths?"

Harrow just keeps from snapping it, her voice abruptly carrying a shrill thread of panic she's too worn out to push away. She remembers the closeness of the night she'd let her walls down a little too far, Gideon climbing into the tub after their conversation of secrets revealed and vulnerabilities exchanged. The dark had helped then, added a layer that she'd been able to use as an excuse until the movement of Gideon's body reminded her of their positions, the request to let it happen again overwhelming her. She'd retreated into distance and coldness afterwards, ignoring the regret that gnawed at her insides whenever she caught Gideon's eye over the next few days. It had been the only way to live--with herself, with her weakness, with the relentless effort of Gideon's doomed affections.

She'd thought as much, at least.

Harrow shakes her head and closes her eyes, dragging in a slow breath through her nose. "Forgive me," she says. "We can try baths. In the dark, and as long as one of us keeps our clothes on."

"Deal," says Gideon and then she does reach out, touching Harrow's bare ankle with tea warmed fingers. "What...what about you? Anything you want from me? Anything I can do?"

There is no hurt that flashes in Gideon's face, no argumentative questions or wheedling suggestions, just the quiet sound of her agreement and the warm touch of fingers to her ankle. It's living, intimate, as idly gentle as the other times before, and though it's ludicrous to imagine she can feel the heat of Gideon's fingertips run up and through the rest of her body, something in her still warms a little further with the contact.

"I cannot promise that any of this will follow any line of consistency," she says, her dark eyes trained on Gideon, quietly watchful. "What small things I accept with enthusiasm today may be anathema tomorrow, or in a week. And may change back again two days afterwards. It is not as simple for me as it is for you, and I want you to understand that."

Gideon nods at that.

"I can't...promise that that will be easy," she says. "It might...sometimes, it'll feel like a rejection and that'll suck, but I promise to always take a moment to remind myself, okay?" She curls her fingers loosely around the fine bones of Harrow's ankle. "Start just coming to bed in my room? It's where we both want you to be anyway."

"I can live with that," she says, teeth worrying her lower lip for a moment before she takes a sip of her tea. "And I'll remind myself too. Your difficulties are not mine, but they're...connected. Like so much else between us."

When Gideon's fingers tighten around her ankle, she moves, not pulling away but settling into the firmer grip. The thought of spending each night in Gideon's bed--formalizing an existing arrangement, turning it into something chosen and not a secret, skulking thing in the middle of the night--is a weighty one, a prospect that pulls her forward and shoves her back all at once, and Harrow has to sit with the tension for a moment before she can answer. "Okay. I always sleep better there than I do alone, anyway."

Gideon doesn't say anything to that, but she does smile. Gently, carefully, she strokes her finger against the soft skin of Harrow's ankle.

"Can I ask..." She looks down at her tea. "You said you...want me. What does that look like for you?"

Harrow colors suddenly and immediately at that, her cheeks flushing pink as much because of the question itself as the hesitant, un-Gideon-like way her cavalier looks in asking it. She halts and stutters, mouth opening to form words and then closing again, sound and breath caught in her throat before either can shape itself into something comprehensible.

"I don't know," she says at last, sick with the exposure of this lack of knowledge and the feeble structure of her answer. "Thinking about it in detail seemed embarrassing. Shameful. The abstract was easier, but even that..."

She studies her tea, trying to think but mostly focused on the slow up and down stroke of Gideon's finger on her ankle, all her nerve endings firing and subsiding as she traces the elegant turn of the bones there. "In the abstract, there's always something consumptive in it. Torrid, and frantic, and...I don't know if it's you consuming me or me consuming you, but either way we're subsumed in one another."

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