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

[undonewithout]

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."

Comments

[wedobones]

"Yeah, but I'm not married to it," says Gideon, rubbing her temple with the heel of her hand. Her smirk broadens into a grin. "I can see you blushing, you know."

[undonewithout]

"And when I manipulate your orbital sockets to send needles of bone through your eyeballs, you won't be able to see anything at all," Harrow mutters, but the ominous weight of the threat isn't quite there. Gideon's smile is too bright and too delighted for that. Harrow looks upwards, squinting despite herself, and sighs.

"Home," she says. "We can start the next one in that absurd series you found the other day." Whether they finish it or not is the open question, Harrow knows--but the answer to that isn't quite clear yet.

[wedobones]

"So absurd that you sat and watched four episode with me the other day," says Gideon, sitting up to start putting away the picnic stuff. "Sounds good to me."

[undonewithout]

Harrow actually laughs, a short but delighted sound. "Only because I had to see if you were finally going to have an aneurysm over the swordfighting," she says. "You came close."

Gideon starts to sit up, and Harrow finally unlaces her other hand from the firm grip of Gideon's fingers. She watches her pack the plates and containers and everything else away, standing up again once the blanket is clear. As Gideon rolls it up, Harrow breaks the bone platform underneath into a fine, gritty dust, letting it blow away with the next breeze.

[wedobones]

"He's pretty and shit but he definitely can't hold a sword," says Gideon with an eloquent roll of her eyes. Impulsively, she offers Harrow her hand. She's fully ready to be rebuffed.

[undonewithout]

"Yes, yes, Nav," she says dryly. "You are the world's most adept swordswoman, woefully cursed with the burden of overwhelming attractiveness. All shall fall at your feet and despair." Harrow watches her shoulder the bag again and hold out her hand--and, for a moment that feels like a myriad, she considers taking it. Instead, she keeps her arms at her sides, her fingers curled into loose fists.

The look she gives her, at least, is apologetic. "When we're home," she says, and tries to make it sound like a promise.

[wedobones]

Gideon shrugs her shoulders and finds that she at least mostly means it.

"Okay," she says. She wants to believe it. They walk home, rehashing the events of the last episode they'd watched, a particularly nonsensical plot twist.

[undonewithout]

They walk and talk, and even if it's not everything she knows Gideon wants it to be, Harrow still finds herself contented with the compromise. Once they're home, Harrow takes her shoes off and leaves them by the door, looking over at Gideon.

"I can set the next episode up while you unpack that?" she offers, nodding towards the bag slung over Gideon's shoulder. After a beat, she raises one dark eyebrow. "Since you won't let me raise a skeleton to do it for you."

She's offered. They've fought. It's an ongoing argument.

[wedobones]

"I just think doing our own dishes isn't that much of an imposition," says Gideon, rolling her eyes but smiling fondly too. "It's not like you ever do them, so I don't know why you're so bothered." She grins. "Set it up. I'll sort this out. Do you want anything to drink, love of my life, light in my darkness?"

[undonewithout]

"It is the simplest bit of necromancy, and then neither of us are obliged to the chore," says Harrow, and the low stakes and well-trodden ground of the argument make it easy to match Gideon's fond if exasperated tone. "A bone adept in the infancy of her power could do it without breaking a blood sweat. With my access to the Lyctoral well, I'd barely have to think."

Gideon grins, and Harrow sighs, shaking her head. "Fine. No skeletons. This time." She considers the question, rolling her eyes at the gloomy yet saccharine endearments even as they settle warm and not wholly unpleasantly in her chest. "Tea. No lemon, this time."

[wedobones]

"Yes, boss," says Gideon, whistling cheerfully as she heads in the direction of the kitchen. There's a few minutes marked by the musical clink of plates in the sink and then the sound of the kettle and then Gideon emerges, barefoot, a mug of tea in each hand.

"Ready?"

[undonewithout]

By the time Gideon enters the lounge, Harrow's curled up beneath her favorite of the blankets they keep there, the next episode of their show--and it is theirs, much as she'd prefer to deny it--ready and waiting on the TV screen. "Fully prepared, Griddle," she says, smirking as she reaches for one of the mugs. "If any of the invective you spout at the screen sounds particularly inventive, I'll make note of it so you can appreciate it later."

After a moment, she moves the blanket aside, giving Gideon the space to sit next to her.

[wedobones]

Gideon sets both the mugs down on the table in front of them and then folds herself onto the couch, pulling the blanket over her knees. She doesn't touch Harrow, not yet, but she does sit close enough that there's barely any space between their shoulders, close enough that she can feel the heat of her skin throuh her shirt.

[undonewithout]

Harrow dislikes the immediate flash of panic that comes when Gideon crowds next to her, likewise the sharp twist of her stomach as the warm and living proximity of her becomes apparent. She does what she can to push it down, close it off so she can enjoy this--or at the least not ruin it for Gideon, a new and disconcerting consideration--but even as it fades, the humiliation lingers.

Worrying her lower lip in her teeth, she picks up the remote and starts the show, keeping her eyes trained on the screen for now.

[wedobones]

Reaching for the remote, Gideon glances across at Harrow, her eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

"Too much?" she asks. "I can move."

[undonewithout]

"Don't," Harrow says, trying to speak without thinking too much, limiting the opportunity to talk herself out of--or into--another answer. "Move, I mean. It's fine." When Gideon holds out her hand for the remote, she gives it to her, looking over just briefly before turning her attention back to the show.

[wedobones]

Gideon takes the remote and starts the episode, reaching for her mug once the theme tune starts.

"Did last episode end with it being a bit... Sex with his sistery or was that the one before?"

[undonewithout]

"It's already playing, you ninny," Harrow says when Gideon starts the episode again, directing an eyeroll at the back of her cavalier's head when she leans forward for her mug. "I know it took me a myriad to learn how this worked, but I do know what I'm doing now."

Her cheeks flush at the question, and she draws the blanket up a little further against her. "The one before. They focused on that witch woman across the sea in the last episode. The one you inaccurately said took decorating tips from the Ninth."

[wedobones]

"She does like skulls though," says Gideon, blowing across the surface of her tea and draping one arm along the back of the sofa behind Harrow.

[undonewithout]

"I should be horrified that the one thing you gleaned from your years on Drearburh was that we liked skulls, but considering it's you, it's barely a surprise." Harrow stays still as Gideon changes position, her hands wrapped stiffly around her mug as she raises it to her lips and takes a sip. It takes her a minute, maybe two, before she shifts another half-inch, leaning towards the warm and inviting stretch of Gideon's side.

"She does like skulls, though," she says. "I will give you that."

[wedobones]

"We do bones, motherfucker," says Gideon, a grin twitching the corner of his mouth. Harrow settles in against her side and Gideon lets out a little contented breath. "She wishes she was as creepy as you at your best," she says.

[undonewithout]

The smug satisfaction that turns the corner of Harrow's lips up is familiar; less so the flip her stomach does at the warm sound of Gideon's voice, but she accepts both reactions. Even welcomes them, if hesitantly. "I am the greatest necromancer of my generation," she says. "Surpassing my father. My grandmother. Every adept that's ever touched a skeleton for the last myriad and all the myriads to come."

She turns her head, letting her cheek rest more fully against the soft cotton of Gideon's shirt. Slowly, she lets out a breath. "My best is glorious. Better than whatever they can dream up for this, and I am gratified you've noticed, Griddle."

[wedobones]

Harrow rests her cheek against her chest and sighs happily and Gideon has to ride out a wave of arousal and love so strong that it makes her dizzy.

"I always noticed," she says, quietly.

[undonewithout]

Gideon's quiet certainty is one of those things hindsight's showed her has always been there, but hearing it said so plainly still manages to make it sound like something new. "I know," she says, after a long pause and a quick flicker of unguarded emotions across her face. "Even when I wasn't paying attention to you, you were paying attention to me."

[wedobones]

"Had to keep you where I could see you, didn't I?" says Gideon, resting her cheek against Harrow's hair for a moment, her fingers stroking lightly against the fabric of her sleeve. On screen, two characters start aggressively making out and her cheeks flush reflexively.