undonewithout | oh if you knew just what a fool you have made me

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gideon

oh if you knew just what a fool you have made me

They find their way into the new shape of things over the next month. The barriers and boundaries, walking the tension between what Gideon desires and what Harrow can allow, all of it kept secret and safe within the walls of their apartment. It doesn't always work; there are fights and frigid silences, Gideon throwing herself into workouts as an act of aggression and Harrow immersing herself in a book or Sextus' latest draft of theories and theorems with as much pointed intensity. When it's successful, though, when all the fractured pieces of themselves come together into some temporary whole...

Harrow does not find it unpleasant. Not entirely.

She insists that they act no different than usual in public, still necromancer and cavalier, still as Ninth as they can be in a pre-Resurrection backwater. It's the only way it can work, and though Gideon makes no secret of her opinion, grumbling at home and out, trying to catch Harrow's hand or stand a little closer than ordinary, she bears it with an aggrieved stoicism that sets Harrow's teeth on edge and almost amuses her all at once. She harbors no illusion that Gideon's patience will last forever; this new change will soon find itself brayed to the world--or merely to the Sixth (bad enough, and Harrow already suspects the Warden and his Hand know some scrap of it anyway) and Maeve (even worse)--but for now something close enough to privacy reigns between them.

The one topic Gideon can't let go, refuses to let go despite arguments and at least three battles with constructs, is the idea of a date. The term isn't unfamiliar, nor the concept, but both strike Harrow as wholly unnecessary. They know what they are, what they've become to one another; that should suffice, and yet for her cavalier, it's only the beginning. She wheedles and pleads, starts dropping it into conversations at points both ludicrous and logical, and while Harrow will never admit to being worn down, she's intelligent enough to see that getting this out of Gideon's system may be the only way of shutting her up.

The one least liable to result in questions or a disapproving look from Sextus, that is.

Gideon picks the day, and Harrow the place. At the appointed hour, they set off for Petros Park, Harrow casting furtive looks at anyone they pass and keeping her hands tightly folded, her arms rigid to discourage any soft touch or brief tangle of fingers. "I forbid you from enjoying this," she mutters as they walk, when everyone else is out of earshot. "So wipe that smile off your face. You look like a loon."

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"Except when you eat too much and spend the night clutching your stomach and groaning," Harrow counters, then takes another spoonful. "And then refuse to let me try and ease it, even though I'm...mostly certain I could."

She looks up then, realizing Gideon's been watching her rather than eating. The light flush still lingering on her cheeks deepens another shade. "What?"

"It's the mostly that concerns me," says Gideon. She shrugs, her cheekbones flushing. "I just like the way you look when you're enjoying something."

It's a perfectly innocuous statement, but something about it makes Harrow's stomach flip just slightly. "Oh," she says, and curses her ineloquence. "I suppose it's been...rare, until now."

Drearburh had never been a place of comfort, whether by design or choice. It's Darrow's gift and curse that it's so completely different.

"Yeah," says Gideon, nodding. Honestly, before Darrow, she'd hardly seen Harrow smile and, when she had, it'd had usually been to do with either necromancy or her cavalier's suffering.

"It suits you."

"Nav, you are veering perilously into sentimentality," Harrow says, though the look she gives her isn't as sharp as it might have been, less tinged with exasperation than it would be if they weren't alone right now. She eats a few more spoonfuls of her sorbet, one eye on Gideon the whole time.

"Home, or..." she says, or starts to say, setting her cup and spoon aside. "We could stay longer. It's quiet here."

"I don't mind it out here," says Gideon, finishing off the last few spoonfuls in the tub and setting it down. "It's cool in the shade. We could stay for a while, yeah. I'd like that."

Which doesn't always make a difference but she's getting used to saying it, all the same.

Harrow looks at her--the play of sun and shadow on her skin and in the bright copper of her hair, the flash of her utterly un-Ninth eyes, the easy way she stretches out on the blanket--and something stutters in her heart. "We can stay," she says. "I'd like to, also."

There's something unfamiliar in Harrow's face just then and Gideon takes a moment to try and figure it out. Ultimately, though, she just leans in and presses a kiss against Harrow's cheek.

"I really love you," she says.

Gideon leans in and Harrow goes still, but for once it's more anticipatory than apprehensive. Her face warms at the brush of her cavalier's lips against her cheek, and again once Gideon speaks.

"You shouldn't," she replies, her usual refrain. After a minute, her hand slides forward, her thin fingers tangling with Gideon's broader ones. She swallows hard. "I love you too."

She's said it before, but usually in the dark, in their bed, lips close enough to touch. Gideon squeezes her fingers and then, impulsively, stretches out on the blanket, resting her head on Harrow's thigh, lifting their clasped hands to rest on her chest.

"Do not be ridiculous," she says, but Gideon's already moving, turning, coming again to rest. Something in the long stretch of her body recalls their last moments together--Harrow's weak necromancer's hands fisted in the other girl's shirt, how she'd pulled and pulled until she came free, until she was a crumpled weight on the ground--but Harrow pushes it away. Gideon's head on her thigh is a heavy, insistent presence, her golden eyes not vacant and staring but blazingly, brilliantly alive. Harrow leaves her hand linked with Gideon's, marking the rise and fall of her chest with each breath.

"Is it stupid that I've fantasized about doing this?" says Gideon, a smile twitching the corner of her mouth. "Just being with you like this somewhere that's not the apartment?"

Both questions walk a delicate edge, Harrow as likely to answer them honestly as close herself off or fall into offended rage. She knows what Gideon wants, what she can provide, and the wide gulf that separates the two; it may be closing, inch by inch, but never as fast as Gideon might hope for. Today, Harrow takes a breath, her fingers moving against Gideon's, holding tighter for a moment or two.

"Most of your fantasies are stupid or vulgar, if not both," she says. "But this is...I'm aware it's the least we could do. And my resistance has made it all the more compelling. Now that it's happening, though...it's not so bad." With her free hand, she brushes a few strands of hair from Gideon's forehead. The touch is quick and light, the contact between her ungloved fingertips and Gideon's skin momentary at best.

"It's not stupid."

Gideon's smile grows a little bit at that, her fingers still firm around Harrow's.

"Did you decide on what we were talking about last night?" She asks. "whether to cut your hair or let it grow out some more?"

"Still thinking," she admits. Keeping it short, a close-cropped cap of black, has been both a tie to the Ninth as well as the best way of dealing with the mischief Ianthe wrought on her follicles. Changing seems impossible, but she's allowed herself to consider the possibility anyway; it could be another step forward, another marker of the kind of effort Gideon wants her to put in to make their time in Darrow a new beginning for them both. A smile flickers at the corner of her mouth, watching something similar blossom on Gideon's lips.

"And don't worry, I know what your vote is, Griddle."

"I just think it suits you a little softer," says Gideon, who's honestly been shocked to realise how much she enjoys a Harrow who shows hints of feminity. Gideon's own hair remains the unruly mop it always was, though she does put more effort into her undercut these days.

"Because you are a soft-hearted weenie who mistakes me for one of the swooning damsels in your magazines," Harrow says, something warm backing the tart snap of her voice. Her smile turns into a smirk, and she rolls her eyes. The fingers of her free hand return to Gideon's hair, combing almost idly from her temple and up, following the curve of her skull. "I have started picturing it longer. Not by much, but...enough."

"I am a total weenie for you," says Gideon, and it's the first time she's admitted something like it, even though they both know it's true. Her eyes drift close as Harrow's fingers comb through her hair. She lifts one hand and brushes the back of her fingers against Harrow's jaw. "Maybe just this length?"

She feels her face heat up further when Gideon touches her, but she doesn't flinch and she doesn't pull away. They've been tangled up like this--and more--before, but always behind closed doors. Small as it is, it feels like something new, doing this in the light and the open air. "Maybe," she agrees. "I think I could try that."

"It'd look good."

Harrow has started to put on weight in Darrow. In Drearburh, she'd been all sharp angles and straight lines. Now, there's the slightly hint of softness under her clothes. Sometimes, Harrow even lets her touch it.

"We'll see," she says, the closest thing to an argument Harrow finds she can come to right now. Her fingers keep combing through Gideon's hair, her other hand still resting on the other girl's chest. She watches the light and shadow play over Gideon's face, taking note of each soft, reflexive flutter of her eyelids as she lies with her head in Harrow's lap. They don't deserve this peace, this softness--neither of them were raised to it, neither of them taught how to extend it to each other--but they have it now.

It's a gift Harrow can't make herself reject, and the greediness of that shames her.

Harrow's fingers in her hair have a soporific effect; Gideon feels herself start to drift a little. She idly scrapes the side of her thumbnail against Harrow's skin, still holding her hand tight.

"That's not a no."

"Nor is it a yes, though it is gratifying to see you have some grasp of the nuances of conversation, Griddle."

Harrow's nerve endings fire at the rough scrape of Gideon's nail over her skin, even though the scratch is barely there, barely enough to hurt at all. She shivers a little, letting the low, tight feeling in her gut settle--but not subside. Gideon's face grows softer, slacker, as she drifts, and Harrow's struck by the beauty of it; she knows what a sleeping Gideon looks like, knows the slowing of her breath as she hovers at the edge of full consciousness, but this feels different.

"Do you want to stay, or should we go?" she asks, almost regretting the way it breaks the spell of the last few minutes.

"I don't think I really mind," says Gideon, her smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she opens one eye and squints up at Harrow. "Did you make your mind up about a movie? We could always just say fuck it and make out on the couch."

She's joking. Mostly.

"Nav," says Harrow, her cheeks flushing dark before she can get control of the bloodflow and purge it. She takes her fingers from Gideon's hair and flicks her hard on the temple. It's childish, exactly the kind of thing both of them had done countless times to the other growing up; the startled flash in Gideon's eye is still as gratifying now as it had been then.

"The movie was your idea, first thing," she says. "Not that I have much hope in the merit of whatever kind you're interested in watching."

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