Sunset ^beta

Chapter Text

Gideon arrived at the designated meeting place ten minutes before midnight. There were the usual crowds milling around the east entrance to The Mithraeum and Gideon found an empty bench and sat, her elbows propped on her knees and her eyes on her phone. She pulled up her text messages, double checked to make sure Harrow hadn’t changed her mind and cancelled on her since the last time she checked five minutes earlier.

No, no messages. Harrow would be there.

She guessed Harrow would arrive from the direction of the Tomb, so she kept her attention pointed toward the east. She still didn’t see Harrow until Harrow was practically standing directly in front of her. Harrow stuck out like a sore thumb in the parking lot of the Mithras Market, but she apparently knew how to blend in after dark.

Gideon settled in against the bench, stretched her arms wide along the back and crossed her legs at the ankles. She smiled up at Harrow. "Hey there, Midnight Muffin, long time no see."

If the bench was Harrow’s orange couch, there would have been a fifty-fifty chance Harrow might respond to that with a physical advance, followed by a whole lot of kissing, but they weren’t on Harrow’s orange couch and the chance of Harrow kissing her up now was close to zero. Based on the look on Harrow’s face—tight mouth, narrowed eyes—it was more like a negative fifty percent chance. No chance in hell.

Harrow shook her head. "No, Griddle. We aren’t doing that."

It took Gideon a beat to figure out what ‘that’ meant in this instance. Her head went right to the kissing before she eventually worked out that by ‘that’, Harrow meant the new nickname.

"I don’t think you get to poo-poo my nicknames, considering I’ve put up with Griddle for decades."

"Harrow is already a nickname," Harrow said, in a lame attempt at being overly literal. "I don’t need another one."

Gideon pressed her lips together and then nodded, considering. "What’s worse? Muffin or Harry?"

"Muffin," Harrow said immediately.

"Liar," Gideon said. "Muffin is fucking adorable." Harrow looked like she might gag, so Gideon stood from the bench and out of the splash zone. She clapped her hands together. "Okay, let’s eat some buffet breakfast!"

"This is the best night of my life," Gideon announced between bites of French toast. They were shoved into the same side of the booth, Harrow tucked in under Gideon’s arm. "This is like—we should have done this years ago, Harrow. This is—this is some top notch stuff, like, I’m just—" here she lifted her arms to mime her head exploding "—just completely, fuck. Just really damn good."

Harrow was quiet against her, and Gideon turned to check, to see if maybe Harrow had fallen asleep. Harrow wasn’t asleep. She was awake, though her eyes looked heavier than they usually did. She looked content, pretty drunk, kinda happy. Gideon’s phone buzzed against the table and Gideon set a hand on it to still its offensive hum without looking away from Harrow’s face. Harrow just looked absolutely gorgeous to Gideon in that moment, even with the fading paint, with sweat-damp hair stuck to her forehead. "You’re so fucking hot, you know that?"

Harrow rolled her heavy eyes and she shook her head, resolute with disagreement, but she was still smiling. She had a corn muffin in her hand and she picked at it, eating little chunks she pulled off the top and squished between her fingers. Her hands were smeared with their paint and when she squished the muffin, it went from a bright sunny yellow to a dingy greyish mustard. And then Harrow popped the squished up grey ball of muffin into her mouth. It was weird and a little gross and Gideon never wanted to look away.

"Why didn’t we do this years ago?" Gideon asked. Her phone was buzzing again. Again, she slapped it silent. "I wanted to."

Harrow snorted. "No, you didn’t."

Gideon reared back, offended. "Yes, I fucking did!"

Harrow pushed another ball of muffin into her mouth. "You hated me."

"Yeah, hello! Of course, I hated you! You were a crazy manipulative bitch!"

Harrow looked up at Gideon with her stupid gorgeous face and her big dark eyes. "I haven’t changed," she said.

Gideon let out a surprised laugh. "Neither have I." She wanted to kiss Harrow, so she leaned down and she kissed her. She kissed Harrow with her head bent down at an awkward angle, and then she took the muffin from Harrow’s hand, set it on the table, and kissed Harrow again, her hand curling around the back of Harrow’s neck. After a moment, Harrow twisted on the bench, pulling Gideon with her and kissing her deeper, kissing her with tongue. Fuck, they should have done this years ago.

Gideon’s phone was buzzing again and this time it was Harrow who reached for it. She glanced at the screen and then looked up at Gideon’s face. "It’s for you," she said, eyebrows high. She turned the screen to show Gideon, but Gideon ignored it, pushed the phone aside.

This seemed to surprise Harrow, but only for a second, because then Harrow’s hands were back, impatient on Gideon’s shoulders, on the skin of Gideon’s neck. "I hated you too," Harrow said, and she kissed Gideon again.

Gideon laughed against Harrow’s lips and let Harrow push her down against the bench of their booth.

Gideon just barely remembered eating at The White City with Harrow. In her time at the Mithraeum, she’d walked past the entrance many times, but never actually stepped inside. Now she stepped through the doors beside Harrow and took it all in. The buffet was designed to look like city streets, but not like their city. The White City was apparently some amalgamation of east coast cities, Boston and New York, Washington, Atlanta, Miami. It fit right in with everything else in the Mithraeum, in the entire city. In other words, it was tacky as all hell.

Also, one trip through the buffet was thirty dollars.

"You’re paying this time," Harrow said, immediately.

That was fine. Gideon would buy Harrow her fucking thirty dollar muffin in exchange for some answers.

"Do you remember where we sat?" Gideon asked, and was surprised when Harrow immediately pointed toward the back of the buffet.

They gathered their food, a heaping plate of French toast for Gideon and a corn muffin for Harrow. Gideon contemplated getting more food—she was really craving that heap of potatoes—or like some food actually worth the cost of the buffet, but she was committed to the exercise and restricted herself to only those items that Harrow remembered them eating.

Harrow led them to a booth toward the back of the restaurant and Gideon settled in on one side. Harrow slid in beside her, both of them sitting on the same side of the booth, and Gideon knew for a fact that Harrow hated seeing couples do that, hated watching couples squish together on one side of a booth leaving the entire other side empty. She stood and glared from behind her bar every time, rolled her eyes, turned her back and gagged a little. She reacted basically the same way she used to react to the sight of Gideon. Now Harrow sighed and slid in close, her body leaning right up against Gideon’s. Gideon felt too hot suddenly, like they’d jacked up the temperature in the place, shut off all the air. Not even Gideon’s fantasy version of this went so far as to place them both on one side of a booth. She’d been making out with Harrow for weeks, but this one night was set up to kill her: first Harrow’s hand on Gideon’s knee in full view of Gideon’s friends, now Harrow pressed tight to Gideon’s side in a booth at the Mithraeum, just a little after midnight.

Gideon, unmoving and completely unsure what to do next, cleared her throat. "Now what?"

"Now you eat your French toast," Harrow said with a touch of annoyance in her voice.

"Yeah, but like, what else do you remember?"

Harrow shrugged against her and picked off a chunk of her corn muffin. She began to roll it between the tips of her fingers. The oil of the muffin made her skin shine and Gideon remembered watching Harrow do this before, remembered how the paint dulled the muffin to a sad sick greyish hue. The bit of muffin remained bright sunny yellow this time around.

"You tried to feed me bites of your breakfast like I was a child," Harrow said. They were both watching the bit of muffin as it smoothed into a ball beneath Harrow’s fingertips. "You tried to do that fucking airplane thing when I refused."

Gideon snorted. "And you still married me. Nice."

Harrow ignored the comment. She ate the bite of muffin and then pulled off another piece. "Your phone kept ringing and you were ignoring it. Your sex friend tried to call you for a late night hookup. You ignored their call too."

"Hold on. My who called?"

"Your sex friend," Harrow said. "You had them in your phone as sex friend."

Gideon shook her head. "No. I mean, I wish I had a sex—Oh, no, n-o. Not sex friend, Harrow. It said Sex Pal. That was Palamedes."

Harrow twisted in the seat so that she could see Gideon’s face, and Gideon realized that that was maybe the worst person she could have said, the very last name Harrow wanted to hear in connection to an area where Harrow had (sort of, but not really) laid her claim. Gideon set down her fork and then held up her hands. "He’s not my sex pal. That’s just his name. Palamedes Sextus, Sextus comma Palamedes. Sex Pal."

"That’s idiotic."

Harrow had an awful lot of opinions about Gideon’s nicknames today. "Says the woman who came up with Griddle."

Harrow settled back against Gideon’s side. "I don’t remember more than that," she announced.

They sat in silence for a while, Gideon eating her breakfast and Harrow picking at her corn muffin. Gideon wasn't particularly hungry and found herself drawn back to watching Harrow roll bits of muffin instead. Harrow carefully pushed them past her lips and into her mouth. Eventually Gideon sat back and said: "Remember the year I decided to start smoking because it was the only way Crux would let me take a routine fucking break?"

She wasn’t sure what made her think of that, of her and Harrow standing outside in the dark, the night air perfumed by a mix of cigarette smoke and jasmine and trash. It had to be at least four years back at this point, maybe five.

"Was that why?" Harrow asked. She squished another bit of the corn muffin between her fingers. "Crux?" Harrow had been smoking since before Gideon started at the Tomb, but she stopped shortly after Gideon started, and within a year Gideon was done with it too.

"Yeah," Gideon said. "Why did you think?"

Harrow shrugged. "I thought you were obsessed with me."

"Fuck you. You want to talk about who was obsessed with who?"

"Oh, admit it, Griddle! You started smoking because you thought it meant we could take breaks together and then when you realized we couldn’t leave the entire bar unattended, you quit smoking."

Gideon threw her head back and blew air out through her teeth. "Fuck off!" Except—Fuck, Harrow was actually kind of right.

It happened for the same reason that Gideon thought about it now. It was the bits of muffin and the fingernails Harrow spit on Gideon’s rug. They reminded Gideon of that other time, years ago, when Gideon found the things Harrow did with her mouth weird and a little gross, when she found that despite it all, she couldn’t look away. Sometimes, if she arrived at work a few minutes early, she’d find Harrow in the alley behind the Tomb, lurking near the dumpsters with a lit cigarette hanging from her lips. Gideon would stare at the cigarette, at the way the damp paper seemed to stick and pull at Harrow’s top lip, the way it rested on her bottom lip and never ever fell. She caught herself thinking about it hours later, and then she—

Gideon did think they could take their breaks together and it did all lose a lot of its appeal when she realized she couldn’t stand out there with Harrow, staring at the cigarette that clung to Harrow’s lips for dear life. She still held on for a year, because it gave her a break from Ianthe and Crux and Harrow on the nights she was especially Harrow, and because she was nothing if not stubborn, but half the time she just stood out there and let the cigarette burn, placed it to her lips only once, just so she’d remember how it felt. She stood out there and she sucked in the night air, that mix of cigarette smoke and jasmine and trash, all by herself.

It just wasn’t really her thing.

"So why did you quit?" Gideon asked.

"Seeing you tucking an unlit cigarette in your ugly mouth and rushing toward the back door made me realize that I probably looked like a giant dick too," Harrow said.

"Nice," Gideon laughed. "Wait, I know how to translate this! Gideon, you looked so unbearably hot, I couldn’t put another cigarette to my lips without thinking of you, and I had to stop because smoking now reminded me of you and I kept getting all hot and bothered at work."

Harrow grunted.

"So really, I saved your life," Gideon concluded. "Your lungs’ life. You’re welcome."

Harrow tore off another piece of muffin.

Gideon leaned in and took the muffin from Harrow’s hand. "Hold on. You still think my mouth is ugly?"

"Yes," Harrow said, but her hands were on Gideon’s face before the word had left her lips, Harrow’s fingers tight to Gideon’s jaw as she pulled Gideon down into a kiss.

They were just settling into it—their first relatively sober PDA kiss!—when someone cleared their throat with a scratchy hacking sound.

They broke apart at the sudden sound of a loud bang against their table. Gideon pulled away from Harrow and looked up to find their waiter glaring down at them. His face was lined. He looked tired, and Gideon wondered, suddenly, what time it was. Her mouth felt red and raw, like maybe they’d been kissing like that for a long time, like maybe it had been hours. She pushed herself back up into a sitting position and the room felt unsteady, like Harrow’s mouth had thrown the entire world off its axis, like she’d set the whole room spinning with a kiss or fifty.

"Hi," Gideon managed.

The waiter shook his head. "This might be a hotel, but this isn’t a hotel room." He pointed at the check he’d slapped down on the table. "When you’re ready," he said, in a tone that translated to Now.

"Ass," Harrow said, her tone high, but the volume low, as though she wouldn’t have reacted that exact same way and probably far sooner if the booth was in The Locked Tomb and they were behind the bar watching not!Harrow and not!Gideon shoving tongues in each other’s mouths and wriggling them around.

Gideon laughed. She pushed at Harrow’s shoulder. "Pay up, sugar baby."

"Sugar baby," Harrow repeated, affronted. "You ate this place out of French toast. I think that earns me the title of sugar daddy, at the very least."

"Sugar God," Gideon suggested, each word punctuated with a kiss pressed to the side of Harrow’s face. "Sugar." Kiss. "Monster."

"This still isn’t a hotel room and if you come back and try it again, I’ll make sure it’s the last time you come back," the waiter said now, standing over them.

"Oh, shit," Gideon said, because this was obviously the same waiter, the same poor schmuck who had to deal with Gideon and Harrow so smashed and apparently into each other that they got married and couldn’t remember any of it. "You remember us."

"Hard to forget that kind of public display," the guy said.

"What kind?" Harrow asked, affronted.

"The having sex in public kind," the waiter returned.

Gideon laughed. Harrow’s voice went high as she said, "We absolutely were not!"

The waiter just shrugged, unmoved by her denial. He was a big broad white guy with short brown hair and a twisted line of a mouth. He looked more like a bouncer than a waiter, which put a little more weight behind his threat to make sure they didn’t come back. Gideon checked his nametag and then wondered if she could take Colum in a fight. It was a little tempting. After this exchange, Harrow probably wouldn’t kiss her in public again for like ten thousand years. Column really fucked that up for her just now. Then again, getting into a fight with a waiter at The White City buffet probably wouldn’t earn her any kisses from Harrow either, so instead she caught Colum’s eye and said, "Did we seem like we’d just decided to get married to you?"

Colum shook his head. "Don’t know, don’t care."

"But like if you had to guess," Gideon said. "Like if guessing meant, I don’t know, a better tip maybe." She smiled what she hoped was an extremely winning smile. Harrow, who was watching her, huffed and looked away.

Colum, for his part, grunted. He did not seem impressed. "You looked like you planned to skip the marriage and go straight to the honeymoon. You looked like you’d just decided to spend the night in jail if it meant getting off with an audience watching."

Harrow made a sound of horrified protest and Gideon held up her hands. "All right, thank you for that! Could we get our check please?"

**

"I think I could take Colum," Gideon announced once they were back in the corridor.

Harrow was radiating with embarrassed frustration. She walked a little further away from Gideon on their way out of the buffet, but that didn't matter. Gideon could still feel the angry heat coming off of her.

"I think you might be able to take Colum right now too."

"What's next?" Harrow asked, her words clipped. She stopped walking and turned sharp eyes on Gideon.

Gideon stopped beside Harrow and shrugged. "How the hell should I know? You were the soberish one. What's next?"

Harrow sighed and looked up and down the corridor. "I was hardly sober. You really think we'd be in this mess if I was sober?"

"Maybe," Gideon said. It was the truth. There was a history there, so yeah, maybe. The response earned her another sharp look from the Ol' Ball and Chain. "Wait, what's worse? Midnight Muffin or My Ol' Ball and Chain."

Harrow didn't seem to think that deserved a response. "I purchased your ring, but that was more than an hour after we paid at The White City. I don't have any receipts to fill in the space between."

Gideon pulled up her bank app and checked her own card, scrolling back through pizza delivery orders and numerous trips to the Mithras Market to stock Harrow's fridge. Eventually she made it back to the night they took the plunge. There were her charges at The Locked Tomb, the drinks at Club Nine, and —"I've got nothing. Not even—" Gideon pressed a hand to the ring tucked down in her bandeau. "Did you buy both of our rings?"

"No," Harrow said. "I have a receipt for one ring."

"But you have one too," Gideon clarified.

"I do," Harrow agreed. She didn't elaborate as to its whereabouts.

"Well, it's not on here," Gideon said, scrolling through one more time to check. She closed her banking app and then opened the app for her credit card. "No, I've still got nothing."

"Well, you didn't steal it."

Gideon looked up, caught Harrow's eye and said: "You don't know that. Maybe I did steal it."

Harrow narrowed her eyes. "You did not marry me with a stolen ring."

"How the hell should I know?" Gideon asked. "Who lets trashed people into a jewelry store in the first place? Anything could happen!" She didn't really think she stole a damn wedding ring. They never would have made it out of the building if she had, but she liked seeing Harrow agitated at the thought of starting their married life with a jewelry heist. Gideon started to move in closer while Harrow stewed. She had big plans to get right up next to Harrow, smile good and slow, and then—if Harrow let her—kiss the agitation off that sweet-and-sour face. She was just about there when she had a thought. She stood up straight and reached for her wallet. "No, hold on. Nothing might be something."

Harrow, still agitated and unkissed, said: "Translation?"

"We didn't dip into our bank accounts, but there are a few things we could have done without generating a receipt." She dug through her wallet and pulled out a Mithraeum card. "This card's had fifty dollars sitting on it for two years, untouched. It used to be in the back of my wallet and now it's right up front."

"And?"

"And if we were looking to stay smashed, it's free drinks on the floor, baby!"

**

Gideon slipped on her sunglasses as they stepped onto the floor.

"What are you doing?" Harrow asked, and Gideon gestured for Harrow to keep her voice low.

"I don’t know if you knew this," Gideon said, leaning in toward Harrow’s ear, "but you married something of a celebrity."

Harrow snorted like a hot little agitated pony. "You’re delusional."

Because they were blocks away from the Tomb and apparently someone in the Mithraeum was on her side tonight, at exactly the same moment that Harrow declared Gideon delusional, a voice behind them said, "Oh, Gideon, is that you? Are you working this morning, honey? Please tell me you are, I'll rearrange all my plans."

Gideon felt an unsolicited hand on her arm and turned to find Cytherea, one of her regulars. Cytherea was pale and tiny, all hands, and she had the stamina to spend an entire night throwing away her money in the name of watching Gideon deal cards.

"Not until eight tonight," Gideon said with a smile. "Your plans are safe."

Cytherea pouted and even her nose seemed to delicately twitch with it. "Tonight then," she said, and moments later she was gone.

Gideon returned her attention to Harrow. "You see? Celebrity."

"Mm," Harrow said, unimpressed. "You know she's a Fist though, right?"

"What?" Gideon asked, craning her neck to try to find Cytherea again in the crowd. "No, she isn't. I've seen the Fists. I can recognize them on sight." There was the old grey smoker guy and the sour Gillian Anderson lady with the pinkish hair. There was the guy who reminded her a lot of Seal and the sexy no-nonsense woman that always looked like she was ready to reach for a gun on her hip. Cytherea though, Cytherea was—

"She's been to the Tomb with the others," Harrow said. "Definitely a Fist."

"Shit. Well, okay. Good to know, I guess." The way Cytherea lingered at her table suddenly seemed a lot less flattering. Was she keeping an eye on Gideon for some reason? Should Gideon bring it up to Camilla?

Though really, the more Gideon thought about it, the more it actually made sense. None of the Fists looked like they were people who worked under a title like Fist. At least none of them except the sexy no-nonsense lady with the invisible gun at her hip. Cytherea was the last person anyone would guess might be a Fist of the Mithraeum, so yeah, fine. Point for Harrow.

Gideon's eyes caught on Protesilaus, walking down an aisle of tables. "Come on," she said, and then didn't wait for Harrow as she made her way over toward Pro.

"Hey, man," she said, leading him a few steps back from the tables with a curl of her hand

"What is it?" Pro asked. His tone was the same tone he used when Gideon was there with a warning that there was likely to be a problem at her table, a patron too intoxicated and sloppy, a player that was losing and quickly becoming irate.

"No, nothing," Gideon said quickly, "it's just a question. Two months ago, you were on and I was here—off-duty like now—with a woman." She gestured toward Harrow. "This woman, actually. Anyway, some stuff went down that night and now we're trying to piece it together. Do you remember anything?" She gestured toward her face. "We looked like douchebags, had the whole Club Nine getup going."

Protesilaus softened a little and tipped his head toward Harrow in greeting. "Hey, Harrow."

"Hello," Harrow returned with the ghost of a smile.

Gideon paused, looked between them. "What?"

"My partner works with Harrow," Protesilaus said.

"Ortus," Harrow said, answering Gideon's next question.

"No shit," Gideon said surprised. She looked Protesilaus up and down, actually looked at him for maybe the very first time. "Good for Ortus." She turned to Harrow. "Do you know everyone that works here?"

"No," Harrow said, and then, sick of being sidetracked, she addressed Protesilaus directly: "Have you seen us together here before tonight, Pro?"

Protesilaus shrugged, noncommittal. "No, I didn't know you knew each other until now. Never saw you."

Damn. Okay, new direction. "Have you seen Isaac tonight?"

Pro brushed them off in the general direction of the bar, which Gideon really could have figured out herself. They found Isaac on his way back to the floor with a bottle of beer and a rum and coke on his tray.

"Gideon," Isaac said, surprised. "And… not Corona."

"Harrow," Gideon corrected.

"Right," Isaac said. He waved at Harrow with his free hand. "Hi again."

Harrow actually said hi back, which was unusually cordial of her. Gideon didn't have time to get caught on that though, because Isaac remembered Harrow, and Gideon was pretty sure it wasn't because Harrow was secretly a regular gambler.

"Let's cut right to the chase. Did you see us here two months-ish ago? Me and Harrow, Club Nine makeup?"

"Trashed and all over each other?" Isaac asked. "Yeah, I saw you. You don't remember?"

Gideon glanced toward Harrow. Harrow responded with a stiff shrug of tight shoulders. Gideon turned back to Isaac. "There's a lot we don't remember from that night. Like, when you say all over each other…"

Gideon leaned back against Harrow as she waved down the cocktail waiter. As the waiter approached and he came into focus, Gideon lit up. "Isaac! Isaac, my favorite cocktail cockatoo in the entire Mithraeum!"

Isaac didn’t seem to recognize her at first. Probably the paint and the clothes and the fact that she was sitting on the lap of Harrowhark Nonagesimus. She didn't remember quite how she ended up there, didn't remember if she was invited (probably not), if she'd invited herself (more likely), or if it'd started out as a fight for the chair that Harrow claimed she won and Gideon set out to show her otherwise (yeah, that was it). All she knew was Harrow wasn't pushing her off, despite the size difference, and she'd been there for a while, pulling the lever on the slot machine before Harrow could reach around her to press the button, occasionally leaning back to press kisses to the side of Harrow's face. Now, distracted by Isaac's approach, Harrow did take the opportunity to shove Gideon off, and Gideon stumbled to her feet with a laugh. She reached out and set a hand on Isaac's shoulder for support, just as Isaac's face brightened with recognition.

"I’m telling Jeannemary you said that. You’re not working?" His voice was a little shaky, still a little unsure of what he was walking into.

Gideon shook her head and then slung her arm over Isaac’s shoulder. "Night off. Had a date with Coronabeth."

Isaac whistled. "No shit." He glanced past Gideon toward Harrow, still seated at the machine. Gideon turned to follow his eyes. Harrow, for her part, ignored them both. She seemed absorbed in pressing the button on the slot machine as many times as she could now that her reach was unobstructed by Gideon’s bulk.

"She looks different without makeup," Gideon clarified, then realized it was a stupid thing to say about someone with a face coated in smeared paint. "With the makeup. Different makeup." Isaac’s entire forehead rolled up into a series of tight ridges at that. Gideon shook him beneath her arm, and he scrambled to get a better hold on his tray. “Just kidding, that’s not Corona.”

"No shit," Isaac said again. "What happened to your faces?"

Gideon shrugged. "Club Nine."

Isaac nodded. "Right, okay. Well, you know how it goes. What can I get you?"

"Gin and tonic and a vodka soda. And don’t you dare give us short pours."

Isaac winced. "Keep your voice down! Pro’s Floor Man over here this morning and that gray-haired Fist has been prowling all night."

Gideon was fairly certain the ‘grey-haired Fist’ was named Augustine. He looked like an accountant or a salesman. He found a spot on the floor and he sat there all night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, playing round after round. He rarely moved, but he didn’t need to. He looked like a bird and seemed to have the eyes of one too.

Gideon kept her voice down. She didn’t need Pro or the Mithraeum’s Fists on her case. "No short pours!"

"Yeah," Isaac stage whispered back. "You don't really seem like you'll be able to tell the difference."

"I can always tell," Gideon said, gravely. "Harrow can absolutely always tell. She's a professional, a specialist."

"Fine," Isaac said. "Fine. I'll see what I can do."

"I knew you were my favorite for a reason."

"Telling her that too," Isaac said as he walked away.

Gideon turned and climbed back onto Harrow's lap. When Harrow poked her in the side, Gideon shifted, pushed back against Harrow and stretched her arms. Harrow bit her shoulder, actually kind of hard, but she followed that up by pressing a kiss to the back of Gideon's neck, like she thought Gideon might get distracted by the pinch of teeth and wouldn't notice the press of lips. Gideon noticed.

Gideon leaned over to tap the guy at the machine next to them. "Most comfortable seats in the city," she said with a wink. He might have laughed for half a second before he decided to move to another machine.

Gideon turned back to the machine and clapped her hands together. "All right, let's win some money!"

"I returned just as you jumped up and shouted, you know, like 'Winner winner chicken dinner!' and you—" Here Isaac nodded toward Harrow. "—were like 'That's a lot of chicken dinners,' something like that, and then you" (this time directed at Gideon) "turned around and you started macking on each other, like really into it. I had to hit your arm to get your attention. You two were like—"

"Okay," Harrow cut it. Her arms were folded tight across her chest. She was standing close to Gideon though, hadn't tried to distance herself. Gideon decided to take that as a good sign. Harrow unclenched her arm long enough to knock her bony wrist against Gideon's forearm. "So that must be it. You won some money and while we were still riding that high, you proposed to me."

Gideon snorted. "I did not." She glanced toward Issac, whose eyebrows had shot so high they practically met his bleached hairline. It was only once she saw Isaac’s expression that she realized what Harrow just admitted. In public, in front of people she barely knew. "Wait, repeat that?"

"I said, then you asked me to marry you."

Gideon shook her head, but she couldn’t help the smile pulling at the edges of her mouth. "That doesn’t sound like me."

"Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like me!" Harrow said.

"It does sound like you," Gideon countered. "It sounds exactly like you. You act like you can’t fucking stand me, and then you do everything you can to keep me around."

"Ookay," Isaac said. He started to back away. "Good to see you, Gideon. Nice to meet you, Harrow. I’ve got to get back to—"

"You are the one who insisted we get to know each other," Harrow said, so laser focused on Gideon now that she probably hadn't even noticed Isaac was talking. "You are the one that created a fake ad. You’re the one that called me and then showed up at my place of employment after I told you not to seek me out."

"Not to seek—" Gideon looked to Isaac for support, all can you believe this chick?. Isaac merely shrugged. "We were married, Harrow! I sought you out to end it!"

"You've done a great job of that!" Harrow snapped.

"Is that my fault or yours?" Gideon asked.

"Yours! You were hiding divorce papers in your bag for weeks!"

"Like you were ever going to sign them," Gideon countered. "You didn't even want to talk about it! It's not like you were ever just going to let me go."

Harrow's mouth snapped shut on whatever she planned to say next. Instead she said nothing, just stood there and simmered.

"Have you signed them yet, Harrow?" Gideon asked, and then she stopped, held up her hands and shook her head. "Look, I've had too much to drink plenty of times and this was the only time I ended up married. Worst thing that ever happened before this was a date with a woman who made me try on all of the highest heels in Shoe Palace, like weird foot fetish territory, but not marriage. There’s no way it was me."

"You proposed," Harrow insisted. She squeezed her eyes shut. "We won something here and then we were in a—"

"You talked to Jeanne," Isaac said in a rush. "After me, you saw Jeanne." He nodded in the general direction of the bingo hall. "Out there."

Harrow words stumbled back to a halt. Gideon said, "Is Jeannemary here?"

"Yeah," Isaac said. "Yeah, she was just over by the bar."

**

Jeannemary was still over by the bar.

"'Course I saw you," Jeannemary said, her voice shaking just a little. Gideon knew for a fact that Jeannemary was not that nervous around other people, but she was always nervous around Gideon. Gideon chalked it up to a funny sort of hero worship, maybe a crush. She'd struck out in front of Harrow earlier with Cytherea, but the waiver in Jeannemary's voice would put her back on solid footing. Yeah, Gideon was something of a celebrity, even if just with the cocktail kids (Jeannemary was like mid-twenties, not a kid, but still). Except, the thing was, now Harrow was agitated and Gideon was tense, and no one really cared if anyone thought Gideon was hot shit anymore. "It was Gaius’s bingo night, and they had me at the door."

Right. Gaius’s fucking bingo night. Gideon never understood that.

There were one hundred and forty-four casinos in the city, not including "Teacher," a taxi driver who ran a semi-regular craps game behind Dominicus Wholesale Liquors on Friday nights. Of those one hundred and forty-four casinos, John Gaius owned forty-five of them. John Gaius owned the Mithras Market chain. He owned Dominicus Wholesale Liquors. Gaius did not, at least as far as Gideon knew, own "Teacher."

Why the fuck did a guy like that insist on running a monthly bingo night? In person!

"So we… played bingo?" Gideon guessed. She turned toward Harrow, but Harrow didn't seem to be paying attention. She was staring out toward the corridor, toward the bingo hall, and when Gideon reached out to touch her arm, Harrow took a step away.

"No," Jeanne said. "You didn't go in. You were trying to find somewhere where you could be alone and I was like 'uh, well, there's the hotel,' and you tried to be like 'no, not that kind of alone,' even though it seemed very obvious that that was the kind of alone you meant."

Right, well, probably a good thing Harrow had stepped away.

"Where did we go?"

Jeanne paused. She took a step away from the bar and gestured for Gideon to follow her. Gideon followed her away from the bar and leaned in close. When Jeannemary spoke again her voice was low. "Um, so you didn't have your employee pass on you, but you are an employee, so I let you in through the door beside the bingo hall. I don't know where you went after that. Did you get in trouble?"

"No," Gideon said. She watched as Harrow stepped out of the bar and into the hall. Okay, time to follow. Gideon smiled at Jeanne and shrugged one shoulder. "Well, a sort of trouble. I got married."

**

She found Harrow standing outside the closed door of the bingo hall. Beside the door was a black and white photo of John Gaius with one eye shut in a cheesy wink (gross), a glint in his open eye, and a big crooked smile on his face. Beside that was a poster of Coronabeth flanked by the girls from Ida. Corona's poster was an explosion of color. She was also winking, also smiling, blinding and bright.

Harrow stood in front of the posters, her back to Gideon, eyes on Gaius or Corona. It was hard to say which, though Gideon could guess.

"Harrow?" Gideon asked. She reached out and set a hand on Harrow's shoulder. She was going to have to apologize for what she'd said in front of Isaac. It was all true, but it was a lot. It had to be a lot for someone who insisted no one could ever know they were married until just a few hours ago. "Harrow."

"Leave me alone, Griddle," Harrow said. Her voice sounded strained, like she really had to push to get the words out of her throat. "I can't do this right now."

"It's a lot," Gideon agreed. She moved to stand on the other side of Harrow, pressed her back to the wall between John Gaius and Coronabeth. "It's a lot, I get it, but it's just Isaac and Jeannemary. I can pretty much guarantee they don't know anyone at the Tomb."

Harrow stared at Gideon for a long time, her eyes hard and shiny, her face unreadable. She stared at Gideon, then the poster to Gideon's left, the poster to Gideon's right, back to Gideon, and this time Gideon shifted her own gaze. She looked at the mark on Harrow's nose, couldn't handle Harrow's sharp eyes.

"I can’t breathe," Harrow said. "I have to go."

"Shit," Gideon cursed. She pushed herself away from the wall and followed Harrow, rushing to keep up, even with her height advantage. Harrow was so fast on those little legs.

Harrow went straight back to the east entrance, pushed her way out of the building. She didn't stop until she was off the grounds and across the street—Gideon shouted as Harrow ran right into the fucking road. A car squealed to a stop and honked its horn, and Harrow hardly seemed to notice. She made it across the street in one piece. Once there Harrow pressed her fists into the concrete wall of the adjacent building, pressed her forehead to her fists and let out an awful cry.

Shit, okay. Shit, shit, shit.

Gideon was right behind Harrow and had absolutely no fucking clue what she was supposed to do next.

"Come on," she said. She pulled Harrow away from the wall and put herself in the wall's place. She wrapped Harrow tight in her arms and held her close. Harrow shook her head and said, "I'm done. I'm done with this. I'm done with you," but she didn't fight, and Gideon replied, helpless, "okay, okay, okay."

What was it? The waiter at The White City? Was it Isaac? Jeannemary? Was it their argument over the proposal? Or was it the poster of Coronabeth? That seemed like it had to be it, but Harrow never seemed like she cared about Coronabeth. Not once in all of it did she give a shit about Coronabeth.

"Was it Corona?" Gideon asked.

Harrow stiffened and then pushed at Gideon. Gideon released her and took a step back. Harrow’s eyes met hers in a dark glance.

"I don’t give a fuck about Coronabeth Tridentarius," Harrow said, her voice scary low. She sat down on the sidewalk with her back against the concrete.

Okay. They were apparently just sitting on the ground now. Gideon followed Harrow down onto the concrete. She tried not to think about all of the drunk people who probably pissed against that wall over the years. She couldn't smell it, so it couldn't be too too bad, right?

Harrow leaned her head back against the wall and looked up at the Mithraeum. "You know the worst part?" She asked. She didn't wait for Gideon's answer. "We did it all in broad daylight. Every night we see people stumble out of my bar or away from your table, going off to make their next stupid mistake, but at least they’re doing it on vacation. At least they’re doing it in the dark hours when anything is supposed to happen. We stumbled into that chapel at eight, Griddle. Eight AM. The time was stamped right on the receipt."

"We’re nocturnal," Gideon reasoned. "Eight AM is like doing it at Eight PM. Anyway, time doesn’t apply here, you know that."

Harrow sighed. "I’ve bested my parents."

"Thanks," Gideon said, because she couldn't help it. The words hurt. "That’s really great to hear. Your parents got mixed up in the meat grinder that is the Mithraeum. Yeah, we’re in it, but that had nothing to do with what we did. That was just alcohol, stupidity, and something."

"And something," Harrow agreed. She pressed her fingers to her temples and squeezed her eyes shut. "I was nine and I made a mistake. I was seventeen and I made a mistake. I’m twenty-eight and I just keep—"

"Look, I’m sitting right here. Can we at least pretend you don’t think marrying me is worse than getting mixed up with the Fists of the Mithraeum until after I leave? Anyway, maybe it’s not a mistake. Maybe marrying me is the best thing that will ever happen to you. I’m great fucking wife material." Gideon wasn’t sure what it even meant to be great fucking wife material, but whatever it meant, she could be that for Harrow. She could—Somewhere along the way, she’d lost her place. Was she actually arguing that they should view their drunk marriage as a good thing?

No, she was! Harrow shouldn’t beat herself up like she was. Not over this. "It isn't so bad, is it? You aren't messed up with the Fists. You didn’t accidentally marry Ianthe. Things could be so much worse."

"Who says I’m not mixed up with the Fists?" Harrow asked then. She tipped her head to look at Gideon with those big dark eyes. "Who says?"

Gideon froze. "What?" The word caught in her throat. It came out patchy and strange. She tried again. "What do you mean?"

Harrow shook her head. She gestured toward Gideon and then back to herself. "You want to know why this happened? I’ll tell you why it happened for me."

"Wait," Gideon said. She shifted against the wall, moved closer to Harrow. "No, I need to know—what the fuck are you saying? Are you messed up with the Fists?"

Harrow’s mouth twisted up into a knot for a moment, and then she was talking again, words just falling out of her mouth in a cascade: "I married you because when my entire life felt dark and closed in, you were there, and you were so bright. I married you because you’re right and I’ve been weird about you forever. I married you because my entire life I’ve meticulously planned every single step I took, every choice, and each and every one of them turned out wrong. One wrong decision after another. Mistake after mistake after mistake."

"Harrow—"

"No, let me finish, Griddle. I don’t want to spend weeks with you puzzling over every angle of why we did it or whether it was the right decision. I just knew in that moment that I wanted you, and when you offered yourself, I said yes, consequences be damned. That’s why it happened. Because I desperately needed a distraction and you were right there. Because the alcohol made it easy to just stop and because you made it easy to want. So I did what I always do. I made another mistake. That’s all there is to it. That’s it. You’re just the next link in a chain. You’re just part of the pattern."

Gideon had no idea how to respond to that. She couldn’t process it, couldn’t get past Harrow looking over at her and saying, "Who says?"

What the fuck was going on?

Harrow pushed herself up from the ground and brushed off her pants.

"You can stay here and keep going through the steps if you want to. Figure out why you asked me to marry you, if that’s what you need. I can’t help you with that. I’m done. I’m so fucking done with this, and with you, and with that." She gestured back toward the Mithraeum. She took a deep shaking breath, then another, and then she looked away from Gideon, squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands against them. "I need a break from your face, Gideon. I need a break from your eyes. Don’t follow me."

Harrow walked away.

And Gideon didn’t follow. She sat there, a bit dazed, staring at the bright facade of the Mithraeum, at the gold lights and the silver doors, at the fountain lit a brilliant blue.