up against these things I can't see

[undonewithout]

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.

Comments

[undonewithout]

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."

[wedobones]

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."

[undonewithout]

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."

[wedobones]

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?"

[undonewithout]

"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."

[wedobones]

"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?"

[undonewithout]

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."

[wedobones]

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."

[undonewithout]

"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."

[wedobones]

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?"

[undonewithout]

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."

[wedobones]

"Oh." It's not much, not really, but there's something about the way that Harrow says it that makes Gideon's cheeks flush violently. She keeps up the slow, careful touch against Harrow's ankle, a barely there point of contact. "That's...Yeah. Okay." She smiles. "That's definitely something."

[undonewithout]

"Right now, it's difficult to imagine saying more about it, even if there was more to tell," says Harrow, her stomach doing a strange, slow flip as Gideon blushes nearly to the copper roots of her hair. "But if I think of anything more...obvious, I promise to share it. To try, at least."

She takes a long, deep swallow of her tea, tilting the cup far enough that the floating wheel of lemon bumps the tip of her nose. It gives her space, a distraction, time to put together the question that's been stalking her almost from the beginning of this strange and revelatory night. "Gideon," she says, looking up at her, then looking away. "If I can never look at you the way I look when it's her, will you hate me for it? I don't mean it would be lesser, or greater, just...different. I don't know that it could ever be the same."

[wedobones]

"Okay," says Gideon, nodding. "I can live with that. And I'll keep what I'm thinking about behind my teeth for once."

She thinks carefully about the next bit, and then she shakes her head.

"I know the score there," she says. "And like you said in the water. It's different."

[undonewithout]

It shouldn't be so much of a relief to hear, but it is. Harrow commits the shake of Gideon's head to memory, the plain directness of her words, nodding as she rests her cup in her lap, her hands still curved around it. "Thank you."

[wedobones]

Gideons fingers are still curled around Harrow's ankle - just the slightest contact with her bare skin. "What about you?" she says. "I know that you won't always be able to give me everything...or anything... but you have to promise me you won't just...hate me for feeling it."

[undonewithout]

"That won't be easy," says Harrow, repeating a thing they both know is true. "I've seen the look on your face when I have to pull away, the...disappointment over it. It's an unfair reaction, Nav, and that it irritates me isn't going to change. But I can promise I'll take a moment to absorb it rather than lash out. I won't hate either of us for it."

[wedobones]

"How is it unfair that I'm disappointed?" she asks, but there's nothing accusatory in her voice; she honestly is just trying to understand. "I'm not an infant, Harrow. I get that wanting and having aren't the same thing."

[undonewithout]

"I know that, Griddle."

Her mouth twists, the sharp angles of her face pinching further for a moment before she relaxes. Gideon's soft, questioning tone is almost more wounding than if she'd snapped at her, and Harrow focuses on the beat of her heart and the light pressure of Gideon's fingers on her ankle until the worst of the ache fades. She takes a breath, reminding herself to try; it's a new, strange kind of effort, but a necessary one.

"It's as though you're disappointed by the fact I won't, or can't, suffer through my discomfort," she says. "That I can't grit my teeth through it for another minute and let you keep holding me, or kiss the back of my neck, or any other of the myriad of things I can only take sometimes or not at all. That's what's unfair."

[wedobones]

Gideon sits with that for a moment. She can kind of understand that. She doesn't like it and she can't see herself not being disappointed, but she can try not to let it show as obviously.

"What if I just ask you before I do that stuff," she says. "Y'know. Check in."

[undonewithout]

"That could work," Harrow says, after a moment of her own to think about it. "In time, there might be things you don't have to ask about, but...we'll see."

The solution isn't as elegant as she wants it to be, but it works. It has to.

[wedobones]

Very deliberately, Gideon leans forward and sets down her mug, her other hand still curled around Harrow's ankle.

"Am I allowed to ask if I can kiss you again?"

[undonewithout]

"I seem to recall it was I who kissed you last time," she says, but the shift in Gideon's position and the look in her golden eyes is enough to make her face burn and her mouth go dry. Slowly, she puts her tea to the side as well, her eyes on Gideon's face the whole time. "Yes, you can ask."

[wedobones]

"Semantics," says Gideon, smirking, as she shifts her position on the couch a little, turning to face Harrow a little bit more.

"Harrow," she says. "Can I kiss you?"

[undonewithout]

Any retort she might have given dies in her throat as Gideon shifts and turns, moving closer with such a slow and steady grace, Harrow can almost track each minute change of position. She goes humiliatingly dizzy at the question, as though this is a plotline from the romance novel Sextus inadvertently incorporated in his River construct or one of the tamer stories in Gideon's magazines, but she retains enough control over herself to nod.

"Yes, Gideon. You can kiss me."