Sunset ^beta

Chapter Text

If Gideon was smart, if she had any self preservation instincts at all, she would have escaped the Tomb as soon as she postponed her date with Corona. She would have rushed out of there and slammed the door and never looked back.

And Gideon was smart. She recognized the moment. She sat at the bar and she eyed the stairs that led to the door. She planned the entire thing, the bird she’d flip toward the portrait of Harrow’s parents, a placeholder for Crux and Harrow and Ianthe and everything else that came with this place and this past. She planned to take the stairs two at a time; she planned to go dance, to sweat the fucking Tomb out of her skin. And then she just...stayed. She stayed because the drink was good, because Corona was still there lost in conversation with an old friend, and because Ianthe slung an arm over Harrow’s shoulder in a way that seemed much more familiar than it had two years earlier. She stayed because Harrow looked relieved at the imminence of Gideon’s departure and because Gideon really hated to run. She stayed and she finished Corona’s abandoned drink, and she finished her own, and she ordered another, and then a shot after that.

When Harrow pushed the shot toward Gideon, Gideon held up the glass and tipped it back toward Harrow. “It’s almost the end of your shift, right? So come on. Let’s go, just like old times.”

Harrow nearly took it, but she paused at the last moment and pulled her hand back. She eyed Gideon suspiciously with those deep dark eyes. “You hated old times.”

And then Ianthe was there again. Fuck, Gideon had not missed Ianthe Tridentarius. Corona had left with Judith forty minutes earlier—and Gideon still didn’t get up to leave once they were gone—and since then Ianthe had been there, like a creepy stick that bowed in an absent wind, curving over Harrow and the bar and Gideon. Eerie and awful. “She’s right, Gremlin. You just spent the last hour telling us how very much you hated old times.

Oh, shut up, Tridentarius. Gideon tipped her glass toward Ianthe now instead. “You know which part I especially hated?”

“Crux,” Harrow said, immediately.

“Could it be Harry?” Ianthe guessed. There was a quirk to the corner of Ianthe’s mouth. She had one thin eyebrow raised and she leaned a bony hip back against the counter, a pale and awful stick bug. She reached out and set a long-fingered hand on Harrow’s shoulder.

“It’s Ianthe,” Harrow blurted out, finally catching on.

Gideon shot a finger gun at Harrow. “Bingo. I mean, don’t be jealous though. I especially hated all of you almost equally.”

Behind Harrow, Ianthe rolled her eyes. “Not true. We had fun! Not as much fun as Harry and I have together—we just fit, don’t we, Harry? But you and I, Gizzard. We had a certain je ne sais quoi. We were irresistible together.”

“Yeah,” Gideon agreed. “Well, people will pay good money for a chance to see two chicks covered in liquor wrestling each other to the death.”

Harrow frowned. “What?”

“It never happened,” Ianthe said, dismissively. “But the point is, it might have happened. We had a delicious tension, Giblet’s right about that. That was our spark. I hope you can rekindle that spark with my sister, I really do. I’m rooting for you both.”

“I’m hoping to kindle a different sort of spark with your sister,” Gideon said with a waggle of her eyebrows. She regretted it instantly. Ianthe and Harrow always brought out the worst in her.

Ianthe ignored the innuendo anyway. She brushed the backs of her fingers against Harrow’s arm, the sleeves of her shirt billowing around her wrists. “Go on, Harry. Have your little drink. I’ll give you a ride home.”

Oh, okay. Gideon hated that! Gideon was not the jealous sort, she really really wasn’t, but this. Somehow this was worse than Corona and her old friend Judith. This was Harrow and Ianthe, and Gideon thought she would have known if they were like this way back when. She didn’t remember them as friends, as friends that gave each other rides, or as people that knew a single thing about the other’s life outside the Tomb. Harrow wasn’t even supposed to have a life outside the Tomb! Harrow ceased to exist once you went up those stairs. She disappeared in a puff of noxious smoke as soon as she touched the sidewalk and then she rematerialized down below, cursed to remain within for all eternity. Her own fault. She deserved it. For Ianthe to suggest she could give Harrow a ride home suggested that Harrow had a home, that she didn’t just curl up in the back corner of the store room or something, hugging her safety apron and her stack of notebooks. For Ianthe to suggest she could give Harrow a ride home suggested that Harrow—

“Hold on,” Gideon said, suddenly. Her hand shook at the realization and the contents of her shot glass—gin, scotch, a twist of lime—sloshed onto her thumb. Gideon sucked it off and then waved her hand between the two women on the other side of the bar. “Are you two dating?”

“No,” Harrow said, immediately. She took a step away from Ianthe’s hand. Gideon, though she had no reason to notice or care, couldn’t help but both notice and care that taking a step away from Ianthe brought her a step closer to Gideon.

“Well, not officially,” Ianthe added.

“Not at all.” Harrow said and it was all starting to sound uncomfortably familiar to Gideon.

Ianthe merely shrugged, and then she was blessedly pulled away, flagged down by a patron in search of another drink.

Gideon raised the shot glass again, and this time she poured the contents into her mouth without making another attempt to convince Harrow. She would rather Harrow be sober enough to get herself home without the help of Ianthe Tridentarius, thanks. That whole exchange left her feeling a little creepy, like Ianthe had walked her little sticky stick bug legs all up and down her back. Gideon shivered at the mental image. In fact—

“Hey, when you’re done here, come back to the Mithraeum with me,” Gideon blurted. “There’s a club there that I always thought you’d like.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. It wasn’t like she spent a lot of time thinking about the things Harrow Nonagesimus might like, but this particular spot just screamed Harrow, right down to the ridiculous facepaint that glowed green beneath the black lights. Gideon could help Harrow get home later if Harrow needed help getting home. Fuck Ianthe. Gideon would gladly go dancing with Harrow if dancing with Harrow was a chance to spit in Ianthe’s drink.

“Club Nine,” Harrow guessed.

“What?” Gideon asked, and then caught up. “Yeah, you know it?”

“Of course I know it.”

“So you’re in?”

Harrow considered for a stretch and then she looked up at Gideon. She caught Gideon’s eye for just a second before Gideon adjusted and found the mole on Harrow’s nose instead. “Why are you asking?”

“Well, my date walked out with another woman and now I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go.”

Harrow’s eyes shifted down to Gideon’s shirt. “All dressed up.”

Gideon adjusted her collar. “All dressed up casually.”

“Right.”

“Look, you said you aren’t dating Ianthe, so in the interest of not going home with Ianthe, I’m just offering you another option.”

“Ianthe can give me a ride home without requiring that I date her.”

“Yeah, but do you want her to?”

“Hm,” Harrow said. She stared at Gideon for what felt like an excessively long time before she said: “I can’t. I really do have to get home.”

Gideon shrugged, unsure if what she was feeling was disappointment or relief. Something deflated in her chest, a balloon with the mouth stretched so it whistled out its air in a pathetic little song. That had to be relief.

“I have a dog,” Harrow explained, quickly, as though Gideon cared, as though she’d asked Harrow for an explanation.

“Oh, yeah. Right. Your dog.” Gideon looked down into her drink, nearly empty now, the ice slowly melting away. “I hear he has more game than me.”

“She does,” Harrow agreed.

Gideon tapped her fingers against the bar. She glanced back up at Harrow, missed the mole, and found herself looking Harrow in the eye again. This time it was harder to look away. “I—um. I walk dogs. Well, I walk two dogs. And I have a—she’s not my cat. I just live with her. I have a cat roommate. She’s an absolute bitch and I like her so much.”

Harrow nodded. Awkward. Fuck.

And Gideon still didn’t stand up. She still didn’t take the stairs two at a time. She still didn’t leave. Instead she pulled out her phone and leaned in to show Harrow pictures of Mia, Dulcinea’s cat, small and sleek, black with bright yellow eyes and a little white stripe down her nose. Harrow, notably, did not reciprocate by showing Gideon pictures of her dog, but later—Yes, Gideon was still sitting there later—when last call had come and gone, when it was time to close, Harrow disappeared in the back and when she returned, she poured herself a shot of vodka, downed it, poured herself another, and then nodded toward Gideon.

“Okay,” Harrow said. She downed the second shot. “You’re still here, so let’s go.”

Gideon startled. “What about your dog?”

“I made arrangements,” Harrow explained, cryptic as ever. She didn’t wait for Gideon, just grabbed her things and started up the stairs.

Gideon rushed to follow.

**

“This is weird,” Gideon admitted once they were standing together on the surface, outside the Tomb with their feet planted firmly on the sidewalk.

Harrow, still solid and definitely not disintegrating into a cloud of noxious smoke, said, “You’re drunk.”

“You’ll catch up soon enough, Ms. Two-Shots-in-Tandem.” Harrow had always been a lightweight, and from the look of her, that probably hadn’t changed with age.

Harrow sighed. It was a sigh that clearly said I’m going to regret this, a sigh that shouted I’ve lost my mind! It was a sigh that Gideon understood deep in her gut, felt it in her very soul.

“You can change your mind,” Gideon offered.

“Have you changed your mind?”

Gideon considered the question. It felt really weird to be standing outside the Tomb beside Harrow Nonagesimus, but it didn’t feel bad, really, which was weird in itself. It should feel bad. It should be really awful, but it didn’t, and instead the whole thing was just…

“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m just saying it’s weird, you and me out here together.”

Gideon lost her mind. She lost her mind and she invited Harrow dancing and Harrow, inexplicably, said yes. Now, with each step they took back toward the Mithraeum, Gideon felt her brain come back online another increment. She was going to a club with Harrow. Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Harrow, who spent four years working alongside Gideon and then two years doing everything she could to sabotage Gideon, to keep her locked alongside Harrow down in the Tomb. Harrow, who refused to ever let anything go. Gideon tried to imagine it, the two of them together in the club, standing close so that they could hear each other over the crowd and the music, on the dance floor, moving together, maybe even touching—no, that was too far. It all went black, grey with pulsing static, then the bright blue screen of death.

Gideon felt strangely winded, like she’d just finished an inadvisable leg day, like she needed a lie-down. She was breathing heavily. She hoped Harrow couldn’t hear it and wouldn’t notice. Harrow was walking fast, too fast on her little legs.

“Hey, it’s a nice night,” Gideon said. “Slow down.”

Harrow, because she was Harrow, sped up instead. Gideon immediately regretted saying anything. It was stupid anyway. This wasn’t the walk to the Tomb, with Coronabeth Tridentarius hanging on her arm and making her blush. There was no reason to take this slow.

The rest of the walk was rushed and quiet. They were almost back to the spot where it all started, to the bench where Gideon sat, nervously checking her watch while she waited for Coronabeth. Gideon looked toward that bench, back to a beautiful beforetime where she never could have predicted closing out the night with Harrowhark, and her eyes caught on a familiar shape, a familiar face. She scanned the dark blunt haircut and the set of the shoulders, and her heart leapt.

“Camilla!” Gideon shouted without thought. Beside her, Harrow jumped, startled, and Gideon reached out to set a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Shit, sorry, hold on, that’s my housemate—Cam!”

Camilla turned back and walked over slowly, coming to stand in front of Gideon and Harrow. She looked at Gideon, then Harrow, then back at Gideon. Gideon realized her hand was still on Harrow’s shoulder and she pulled back. Harrow took a step away from her. Finally, Cam said: “Hey.”

“Hey,” Gideon said, breathless. “What are you doing?”

Camilla gestured toward herself in response to Gideon’s question. She’d been promoted to floor man a few months earlier, and her hours were just slightly offset from the usual swing shift eight to four. Cam was just off work, which was: “Perfect! Come to Club Nine.”

Cam held out her hand toward Harrow. “Hi, I’m Camilla,” she said.

It looked like it pained Harrow, but she accepted Camilla’s offered hand and said, “Harrowhark Nonagesimus.”

“Oh,” Camilla said. She looked back toward Gideon and Gideon shook her head, just slightly in an attempt to be discreet.

Gideon might die on the spot if Camilla said oh, I’ve heard so much about you or oh, wow. Gideon talks about you all the time. She might just collapse onto the sidewalk if Camilla even uttered, oh, of course! You used to work with Gideon, didn’t you? Gideon needed Harrow to understand that Gideon did not think about her at all in the two years since Gideon left the Tomb, not once. Even the truth, which was that she thought about Harrow often, but all her thoughts were derogatory, was too much. No, Gideon never mentioned Harrow to anyone, because as far as Gideon was concerned, Harrow ceased to exist.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Camilla finished, and Gideon could have kissed her. “You two are headed to Club Nine?”

You two. No more kisses for Camilla.

“Seems a good night for it,” Gideon lied. She could tell Cam about her stalled date with Coronabeth Tridentarius another time. She slung an arm over Camilla’s shoulder and planted a kiss on Camilla’s cheek. “Come on, baby. Let’s go dance.”

Harrow hesitated and Gideon pulled Harrow in with her other arm. She leaned in to kiss Harrow’s cheek, but Harrow put up a hand. “Don’t you dare.”

Harrow was stiff against Gideon’s side, but she didn’t use her kiss-blocking hand to push the rest of Gideon away. It almost felt like she leaned into it. Everything about the night had taken a turn toward the weird; Gideon had no choice but to stick with this thing she started, to really commit. She guided her little group toward the bright pearlescent doors of the Mithraeum.

**

Club Nine was like if Disney decided to operate a goth themed nightclub. It was a tourist trap in a casino located in a city that itself was one of the biggest tourist traps in the world. There was nothing authentic about any of it. Real goth clubs were rolling in their graves. It was a gaudy awful place, all draped velvet and black walls. The biggest selling point for Gideon, sometimes for Camilla, even more rarely for Palamedes and Dulcinea, was that it was so damn convenient. Get off work and walk right down the hall convenient. Escape The Locked Tomb and walk three blocks convenient. The whole place was screaming music, dark clothes and somewhat inexplicably, skull makeup. Gideon didn’t know who actually walked into a club and thought, wow, this is great! You know what would make it even better? Sweating through a thick layer of greasepaint!, but it apparently worked for someone, and that someone was bound to end up at Club Nine.

Beyond the great white doors, the club was crowded, but not so packed you couldn’t move or find a place to set down your drink.

“First round’s on me,” Gideon announced. Let Harrow think she was doing really well for herself. Distract her from the fact that Gideon lived with a throuple and their cat.

Harrow’s carefully neutral face suggested she was unimpressed by Gideon’s generosity. She ordered a vodka soda and then disappeared while Gideon was still flagging down a bartender.

“Where’d she go?” Gideon asked, her gin and tonic in one hand, Harrow’s vodka soda in the other.

“Bathroom,” Camilla said. Then, once they were stationed at a small table, close enough to the bar that Harrow could find them again: “So, you’ve had an interesting night?”

“It’s fine,” Gideon said. “Don’t make it into a big deal.”

“I’m not planning to make it into a big deal,” Camilla said. “I’m asking if you’re okay, or if you need me to intervene.”

“No,” Gideon said, maybe a little too quickly. “I’m good, Cam. I swear. I’m just, shit—where’d she go?”

“Still in the bathroom, probably. She’s cuter than I expected.”

“She’s awful,” Gideon said, scanning the crowd. “She’s Harrow. I mean, yeah, she’s fine. She’s cute, I guess. She’s also awful because she’s Harrow and Harrow’s a total bitch.”

“Got it,” Camilla said, smiling. Gideon shot her a look and hoped the look looked nice and dirty. Cam ignored it. “I’m on standby if you need me.” She sipped her drink and pulled her phone from her pocket, most likely to let Dulcinea know where she was. Cuddles are postponed tonight, love. Gideon needs a spotter. But cut half the words. More like: Cuddles cancelled. Gideon's an idiot.

Gideon regretted inviting Camilla, just a little. She didn’t need a spotter. She just needed to find Harrow.

Gideon looked out at the dance floor, at the sea of moving people intermingled with dancing skeleton heads. There were a lot of skeletons out there that night, and one in particular wasn’t dancing. It was just standing there, on the far end of the dance floor. It seemed to be looking their way. Gideon waved. The skeleton didn’t wave back, so Gideon ignored it, checked her watch and then pulled out her phone to check that too. By the time she looked up again, the creepy stalker skeleton was gone.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find the skeleton right fucking there.

Gideon nearly choked on her drink. Some of it sputtered out of her mouth and down her chin, and then she took a deep breath and sucked the rest right into her lungs. Shit, painful. Gideon coughed and wheezed.

“Jesus, Harrow!” She could see that it was Harrow now under the paint. It was so obviously Harrow. Gideon slapped a hand against her own chest in an attempt to kickstart liquid-logged lungs. She set her drink safely down on the table and then knocked Harrow’s arm. “You scared the shit out of me. Nearly killed me..”

“Is that all it would take?” Harrow picked up her drink from the table beside Gideon’s and sipped it. She didn’t apologize, just looked up at Gideon with big dark eyes in big dark painted sockets. It looked… up close it was kinda cool, actually. The white paint glowed green under the black lights. The paint made Harrow’s eyes seem enormous, and it rounded out her pointed chin. She wasn’t wearing her glasses anymore, had apparently stuffed them into her bag when she applied the paint. They must ruin the effect. The black at the edges of the white skull blended into the black of Harrow’s hair. The paint she’s spread over her neck blended into her clothes. She’d even painted bones along the backs of her hands, but she’d left the skin around them naked, wasn’t committed enough to cover those edges with the black as well. Gideon couldn’t stop staring at her. Harrow had this paint down. It was neatly done and detailed. She’d drawn teeth over her lips, and the black gaps between the bones of her nose. Harrow watched Gideon watching her.

“Not your first time,” Gideon guessed.

“No,” Harrow agreed. She sipped her drink and turned to scan the club. Gideon didn’t come to to this club often, but she’d been there enough, and she wondered suddenly if she’d ever been at the same time as Harrow before, if Harrow had watched her dance with Camilla and Palamedes, tucked away in a corner, hidden behind her painted mask.

Gideon swallowed. She ran a hand through her hair and swallowed again.

Shit, okay, she liked that thought way too much. It was the heat and the hour and however many drinks. Gideon was perfectly buzzed, at exactly that right level of intoxicated where everything just seemed so good. That was why the idea thrilled her so much. That was why the thought of Harrow watching her from a dark corner of the club ignited something low in her gut. Gideon was happy and drunk and desperate—no, not desperate, but she’d come out tonight with dating in mind, and nothing had happened the way she expected it to, but now here was Harrow with that damn paint and those big black eyes.

Gideon couldn’t help herself. She leaned in close to Harrow’s ear and said: “Do you want to dance?”

Harrow, she noticed, had put in earplugs. The scream and thump of the club was jarring after the relative quiet of the Tomb. Harrow still seemed to hear Gideon though. She shook her head with hardly a second of contemplation, no hesitation in that no at all, and Gideon felt the earlier thrill subside within her.

“Do you have more of that paint?” Gideon tried instead.

That worked.

Harrow turned to look up at Gideon with those eyes, and Gideon’s insides fluttered. Harrow’s eyes looked almost warm, nearly hot there in the lights of the club, despite the death mask that covered Harrow’s face.

“I do,” Harrow said. “Come on.”

Harrow’s fingers brushed Gideon’s hand and Gideon grabbed for them, slipped her hand around Harrow’s. Harrow didn’t shake her off. She led Gideon through the crowd, across the club toward the bathrooms.

**

“Stand there,” Harrow instructed. She pointed toward a mirror set in a dingy little alcove prior to the main part of the bathroom. There was a step in front of the mirror, and a narrow counter against the wall. One woman was there blinking blearily into the smudged glass and picking a clump from her mascara with her fingers. Gideon stood on the other end of the alcove and waited as Harrow stepped up onto the raised step before the mirror. She began rummaging in her bag until she found two thick sticks of makeup. Behind Gideon there was a line of women waiting for the toilet, some painted, some not, almost all of them commiserating about the places they were from. Not a single one of them said, “Born and raised right here.” Gideon and Harrow were just lucky that way. Born in the tackiest city in the world!

Harrow turned to face Gideon. The step brought her closer to Gideon’s height, and she waved Gideon in closer with an impatient hand. “Keep still.”

Gideon kept still. She kept still as Harrow reached out and touched her, a hand curled around the back of Gideon’s neck to hold her steady. Gideon shivered a little beneath Harrow’s fingers, but she pulled it together when Harrow sucked her teeth. Once Gideon was sufficiently still, Harrow’s other hand began pushing the stick of paint across Gideon’s cheek. Gideon kept still even as everything within her shook and rearranged. She lifted one foot to prop it on the edge of the step, thought it might help this seem more casual. It was a mistake. Her knee brushed up against Harrow’s leg, a reminder of how close they were standing.

Harrow hardly seemed to notice. Gideon recognized this focus. This was the expression Harrow had when she was choosing ingredients for a drink, except now it was centered entirely on Gideon. Gideon was the focal point, the nucleus, the center, and all of Harrow was honed in and locked on.

Gideon needed to say something, anything to break this moment, to distract from the inside of her knee brushing Harrow’s leg, but when she tried to open her mouth, Harrow was ready, fingers pressing up on Gideon’s chin to hold her mouth closed.

“Keep still.”

Gideon kept still. Harrow’s thumb brushed the spot behind Gideon’s ear and Gideon kept still. Harrow’s fingers traced paint over Gideon’s forehead and beneath Gideon’s eyes and Gideon kept still.

“Close your eyes,” Harrow ordered, and Gideon closed her eyes and felt Harrow carefully dabbing paint onto her eyelids. Then Harrow moved on to Gideon’s nose, long strokes down the length of it, then around the nostrils. The paint smelled nostalgic, like Halloween when she was a kid, but only the years she lived with Aiglamene. Aiglamene fucking loved Halloween. That was probably the last time someone had touched Gideon like this, confident fingers transforming her into someone else.

Gideon felt Harrow’s breath on her cheek and she opened her eyes. Had they ever been this close?

Yeah, of course they had, but that was so long ago. It didn’t feel real, and this—Gideon looked into the mirror behind Harrow and caught a glimpse of her partially finished face. She looked like an absolute douche, but that didn’t matter as soon as she stopped looking at herself and returned her eyes to Harrow instead. The spots on Harrow’s nose were completely obscured by paint. Gideon had no choice but to look elsewhere. Harrow’s eyes, which were steady and focused on the task at hand. Harrow’s mouth with its carefully drawn teeth, the pink of Harrow’s tongue sticking out just a little between her lips. Gideon could smell vodka on Harrow’s breath and for some reason her limbs tingled, and her knees felt weak.

And then her foot slipped off the edge of the step. Harrow’s paint stick jabbed her in the temple as she began to pitch forward. In front of her Harrow gasped, her eyes wide, and then Gideon couldn’t see Harrow’s eyes at all. Gideon’s eyes were closed, and Harrow’s fingers were back on her neck, and her mouth was on Harrow’s, and Harrow’s mouth was on hers.

By the time Harrow’s name appeared on Gideon’s phone screen, Gideon had already accepted that her grand plan had failed. She’d accepted that her plan had failed and she’d accepted comp tickets to Corona’s show. In fact, it was during the middle of that show, flanked by Cam and Pal and Dulcie, that Harrow finally decided to reach out to Griddle the Dogwalker. And when Harrow reached out, she did so adamantly. She reached out like she needed Gideon to cover Ortus’s shift, call after call until Gideon glanced away from the feathers and the kicking legs to discreetly check her screen to make sure Aiglamene was okay. And then Gideon waited, leg bouncing, barely absorbing the sight of long legs and bedazzled breasts until the curtain finally came down and the lights went up.

She stood, abrupt and still clapping, and apologized profusely as she climbed over Palamedes. She might have momentarily sat on his lap in her haste to escape to the aisle. She didn’t have time to think about that then. She’d come back for the jokes at a later date. She just hoped Dulcinea enjoyed the show.

Gideon found a relatively secluded corner outside of the theatre and leaned against the wall as she called Harrow back.

“You listed the wrong phone number on your ad,” Harrow said by way of greeting.

“Really?” Gideon asked, feigning ignorance.

“Your ad lists the second to last number as a six when it should be a nine.”

“Which two numbers?”

“Six instead of nine,” Harrow repeated.

Gideon was tempted to keep going. Could she get Harrow to say sixty-nine out loud? Probably, but not without really pissing Harrow off in the process, so instead she said: “I guess that explains why you’re the first to call. You want me to come walk your dog, pet your pooch?” Was that the euphemism? Or was she thinking of pet the dog? That one meant masturbation though. Innuendo was a lot harder than it would have been if Harrow just owned a cat instead.

“Do you have a resume?”

“Yeah,” Gideon snorted. “My resume is fuck you! My resume is you married me, bitch, so do you want me to help with your dog or not?”

Harrow didn’t respond right away. Gideon could hear low music and people talking in the background. The sounds of the Tomb. Finally, Harrow said: “Come by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay, give me a time and a place.”

“Meet me here at—”

“Nuh uh, not the Tomb. A real place.”

Another long pause. “Fine. Nine Drearburh Boulevard. One o’clock.”

Shit, okay, so they were actually doing this then. “It’s a date,” Gideon said, a little too brightly.

Harrow made an indecipherable noise. “It’s absolutely not a date. It’s a business meeting.”

“It’s a business date.”

“Nav, please don’t make me regret this.”

“It’s Mrs. Nonagesimus to you.” Gideon couldn’t seem to help herself. Worst case scenario, really laying it on thick might make Harrow more amenable to the stack of papers burning a hole in Gideon’s bag.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Harrow said. “Come alone.”

Harrow hung up. Harrow practically growled that last part: Come alone, and Gideon hated that even with the two drinks she had at dinner hours behind her, she still found that pretty hot.

She opened the map app on her phone and typed in the address. Nine Drearburh Boulevard. It was a residential neighborhood, close to the grocery store where Gideon had her first Harrow sighting. Harrow could have suggested anywhere that wasn’t the Tomb, a Starbucks, or a spot within the Mithraeum, but this—yeah, this had to be Harrow’s actual address.

Oh, they were actually actually doing this. Harrow was willing to meet with Gideon on neutral ground. She was inviting Gideon into her inner sanctum. They could sit down. They could discuss it all like the grown adults they were. Maybe Gideon would finally catch a glimpse of the Harrow she couldn’t help but marry, and then she’d understand, and she’d whip the papers from her bag. Harrow would be so fucking relieved, she’d sign right away. Maybe they’d even end up friendly by the end of it all!

Yeah, right. Still. It was a start. It was the definite start of something.

Gideon just had one problem. She’d already scheduled another date with Corona.

**

Gideon had miscalculated. She thought it would be easier, seeing Harrow outside the Tomb, sober, and in daylight. It wasn’t easier. It was weird and wrong and strangely intimate. It was the mess of dishes in Harrow’s sink and the fuzzed up dog bed tossed down on the worn carpet in the center of Harrow’s living room. It was Harrow standing in the middle of it all with her fists clenched at her sides, with her eyes big and wide, watching as her dog’s entire butt shook with excitement over Gideon’s presence.

The house was big and outdated. It looked like it hadn’t been updated since before Harrow was born. Everything was the browns and greens of an era long gone, and Harrow stood there in the middle dressed entirely in black. The dog though, the dog matched the decor. She was a golden retriever, the kind that looked more red than yellow, big and bright and ready for anything. The dog was the only thing that made it all bearable.

Gideon folded to her knees immediately, unable to resist the dog’s excitement at the arrival of company.

“What’s her name?” Gideon asked, her fingers buried in thick dog fur.

“Dog,” Harrow said immediately.

Ooh. An obvious lie. That was fine. Gideon could play along.

“Of course it is,” Gideon said to the dog Harrow had named Dog. “Of course Harrow named you Dog. That’s how she is, isn’t she? Dog Nonagesimus. She gave you a silly name, didn’t she?”

“Stop,” Harrow said, pained. Dog danced her way back toward Harrow, her butt shaking as she went. She sidled up to Harrow and Harrow, also unable to resist, ran a hand over Dog’s head. Dog, satisfied, rushed back toward Gideon, who welcomed her with a braced stance and arms spread wide.

“She wants me to stop talking to you, but you don’t want that, do you do, Dog? You like it, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“I hate you,” Harrow said.

“You hear that, Dog? Harrow hates me so much she spent an entire night sucking on my tongue and then at the end of it she put a ring on my finger! Funny how that works, isn’t it, Dog?”

“That isn’t how it happened.”

“I don’t know how it happened,” Gideon agreed. “I don’t remember. You should have come with us, Dog. You could have told us all about what went down.”

Gideon looked up at Harrow from her crouched position on the floor. That was a mistake, because Harrow didn’t actually look upset with Gideon anymore. Harrow looked—Gideon wasn’t sure how Harrow looked. All she knew was that she took one look at the way Harrow looked, and immediately imagined Harrow stepping forward, leaning down over Gideon and kissing Gideon down onto the floor.

Gideon had miscalculated.

She stood, unable to stay down there anymore now that her brain was having unauthorized thoughts. She stood and brushed dog hair from her shirt and then shoved her hands in her pockets. “So what then? You want me to walk her?”

“That’s why I called,” Harrow agreed.

Gideon nodded toward the door. “Okay, I’m ready. Show me the routine.”

**

Harrow showed Gideon the routine, where Dog’s leashes and poop bags were kept. And then she set them loose.

“You aren’t going to come with us?”

“Why would I?” Harrow asked as she shut the door in their faces. Luckily, Gideon had Harrow’s dog, so she felt slightly more confident that Harrow would open the door again upon their return. Dog seemed to like Harrow, and Harrow seemed to have a pretty big soft spot for Dog, as much as she was trying to hide it. Yeah, she’d let them back in.

She’d let Dog back in anyway.

Gideon tested Dog as they walked. She knew most of the usual commands. She walked well, didn’t pull. She understood heel and sit and stay, lie down and play dead, shake and speak. Gideon wondered if Harrow had used a trainer, or if she’d done the work herself. She wondered if Harrow would tell her if she asked.

Dog also knew how to take a big shit. She’d really perfected it, in fact. Dog took four big shits on their twenty minute walk, and Gideon was suddenly grateful for the ridiculous number of baggies that Harrow had shoved into Gideon’s hand on her way out the door.

When they rounded the corner back onto Harrow’s street, Dog began to pull a bit harder. She caught her leash in her mouth and led Gideon home, except instead of leading Gideon to Harrow’s front door, she brought them to a wooden gate at the side of the house that opened into the backyard. The gate was latched, but Harrow was outside, spraying water on what looked like a tiered herb garden. Dog sat down and barked once.

Harrow abandoned her bottle and her gloves to let them in.

“You garden?” Gideon asked.

“No.”

She unhooked Dog from her leash and then stood to survey the backyard. It was dry and brittle. There were a couple cactuses growing along the fence. The tiered garden looked out of place, bright and vibrant, greens and reds and yellows. “This looks like gardening.”

“They’re garnishes,” Harrow said. She paused and then said, “Do you want to try something? It’s a drink.”

Gideon raised her eyebrows, more surprised by this invitation that she had been by anything else since she arrived. The entire afternoon was going strangely better than Gideon expected. So what was the catch? “Yeah, sure, that sounds great.”

Harrow plucked a few leaves from a plant that Gideon didn’t recognize and then led them back into the house through a pair of sliding glass doors. She went straight to the kitchen and began pulling out ingredients. Two coupe glasses, filled with ice. She brought out a bottle of tequila from the cupboard. There were several peppers floating around inside the bottle. This was going to be good.

“Dog’s a great dog,” Gideon said, conversationally. She leaned a hip against Harrow’s counter and watched as Harrow measured tequila into each glass.

“I think so,” Harrow agreed, a little absently.

Gideon reached out and carefully turned the bottle of tequila. The peppers danced inside. “So, are you going to make me guess where you’re doing with this, or will you tell me if I ask?”

Harrow frowned down at the counter, but she said, “Thai chili infused tequila.” She touched another bottle. “Rhubarb liqueur.” Next Harrow lifted a jar she’d pulled from the freezer. “Prickly pear puree.” She pointed to two limes and the leaves she’d clipped out back. “Lime juice and Pineapple Sage.” Finally, Harrow looked up at Gideon. She was focused on the task at hand, but when she looked at Gideon, Gideon remembered how it felt to have that focus on her, how it felt to have Harrow’s hand on her neck and Harrow’s teeth on her lips.

Gideon knew better. She knew to shift her own focus, to look at the marks on Harrow’s face instead. She didn’t. Instead she looked right at Harrow and leaned in, just slightly.

Harrow ignored Gideon’s lean. She turned away and returned her focus to her bottles. “I’m calling it The End of the World.”

“Oh,” Gideon said, like a moron, like a fool. “It sounds more like a beginning than an end.”

It was, unsurprisingly, really fucking good. Spice and fruit and the bite of the tequila. “This is beautiful, Harrow,” Gideon said, and she meant it. “I mean it. This is—” Harrow frowned down at the drink. “—you don’t like it, do you.”

“It’s all right,” Harrow said, but she barely wet her lips with each sip she took.

“Listen, after I finish mine, I’ll gladly drink yours.” She waited for Harrow to respond, to continue or brush Gideon off. Something. When Harrow stayed silent, Gideon said: “So what next? When do you want me to come back?”

Harrow picked at the sage adorning her glass. “I thought you worked nights.”

“I do.”

“Then this isn’t going to work.”

Oh, okay. Gideon recognized that tone. They’d travelled back to navigable terrain, found the old familiar paths. “Then why did you call if you already knew I worked nights?”

“Why did you put up the ad, when you knew I’d be looking for someone who didn’t already work nights?” Harrow was standing beside her stove, and she was really starting to simmer now, her voice slowly working its way up toward shrill.

“To get you to talk to me.”

Harrow shook her head. “Why can’t you just let it go?”

Gideon wished they weren’t doing this while standing awkwardly in Harrow’s retro kitchen. She set her glass down on the counter. “I can’t let it go because we’re married, Harrow. You’re my partner, my spouse. You’re my wife, and fuck, that feels weird. I tried to do what you asked, I swear I really did, but I can’t just let it go, because I’m your wife, and I have no idea what that means or how it could have happened.” She wasn’t even sure if she liked the word wife. She was really starting from scratch here. Gideon had never been close enough to marriage to consider how she’d want to be called. And now she was married to Harrow, and wife just fell off her tongue.

Harrow’s fingers fiddled with the edge of the stove. “We fell and hit our heads,” she said. “When I woke up we were lying on the floor of a chapel, rings on our fingers, and Elvis was standing over us to see if we were okay.”

Harrow’s partner. Harrow’s spouse. Harrow’s wife—”Wait, really?”

“No, not really,” Harrow sighed. “I don’t know how it could have happened either.”

Gideon looked up at that. “Shouldn’t we figure that out?”

“How do you propose we do that?”

“Like this,” Gideon shrugged. She lifted her drink and took another sip, then she gestured around Harrow’s vintage home. “We spend some time together, just you and me. I come over and I walk Dog and then we just, you know, hang out with each other for a while back here in the late 70s slash early 80s, I guess? I’m not actually sure when this house is supposed to be set.”

Harrow thought this over. “The house is fine,” she said, “but I have terms.”

Harrow turned and walked deeper into her home, drink in hand. She settled down in an old armchair on the far side of the living room. The chair was white-ish, but you could barely tell, because it was absolutely covered in a pattern of flowers and dry tufts of grass, all brown and orange and yellow. Harrow settled her glass on the dark wood that emerged from the ends of each arm.

Gideon looked around and opted to sit on the matching orange sofa, blessedly free of flowers, and in surprisingly good shape considering it was probably somewhere in the vicinity of fifty years old. Gideon leaned forward, her elbows pressed to her knees. Dog completed the tableau and collapsed onto the carpet at Harrow’s feet.

“What are your terms?”

“We meet here. I don’t want an audience.”

“Sure,” Gideon shrugged. Her tongue prickled with the heat from the tequila.

“No physical advances.”

Gideon sat back. “Okay, hold on, I wasn’t—”

“From either side,” Harrow added and that cooled Gideon down a little, that...no, that didn’t cool Gideon down at all. That just left her to imagine a physical advance from Harrow, which was easy to imagine when all she had to do was remember Harrow’s hands pushing her up against the back counter of the Tomb, the sound of the bottles shaking. Harrow on the dance floor pulling her down into another paint-smeared kiss.

“Do we really want to take that off the table entirely?”

“Of course I do.”

“It’s one way we could start to understand each other,” Gideon reasoned, against her better judgement. “You know, like, a little friendly hate sex or whatever.” Yeah, that was pathetic, but bad past and concerning nuptials aside, it was the truth. And there wasn’t a world in which Gideon could imagine herself saying no. Would she hate herself afterward? Maybe. Would she do it anyway? Absolutely yes.

Harrow didn’t seem to think any of that deserved a response, which Gideon took to mean she was considering it. At least right up until Harrow took an actual real sip of her drink, grimaced as it slid down her throat, and in a tight voice said: “If that’s why you’re here, then we can end this now and you can leave.”

Gideon held up her hands, “No, of course that’s not why I’m here. What the fuck? It was just an alternate suggestion based on your suggestion.”

“I never suggested that.” Harrow squeezed her eyes shut and took another mouthful of her drink. “Just let me finish, Griddle.” Dog responded to Harrow’s frustration, standing and putting her big head in Harrow’s lap, her tail thumping against the dark wood of the coffee table.

Gideon settled back into the couch cushions. “Okay, forget it. No physical advances. What else?”

“We don’t say a word of this to anyone. Not a word about the marriage or these meetings.”

“What if I only mention it to people who already know?”

“Not Ortus,” Harrow clarified. “No one from the Tomb.”

“Deal,” Gideon said. She paused. “Except that I need to tell Coronabeth Tridentarius. Tomorrow.”

Harrow shook her head. “No. Out of the question.”

“I’m meeting her for lunch,” Gideon said. “I need to tell her it isn’t going to work and I don’t want to lie about why.”

“Why isn’t it going to work?”

“Harrow,” Gideon started. She was actually a little offended by the question. Dog, notably, ignored Gideon’s frustration. “I’m a married woman. Look, I actually like her, okay? But it’s important to me to figure out what’s going on with us first.”

“That’s silly,” Harrow said. “I’m not stopping you from anything. We don’t need to do this. Go date Corona. I’ve said this so many times now. Date her and leave me out of it and we can come back to this marriage problem in a year or two.”

Gideon groaned. She set down her drink and stood from Harrow’s sofa. She wanted to pace, but she resisted the urge, moved instead to stand by the sliding doors that faced the backyard. Harrow’s garnish garden was the only part of this entire place that looked well tended and modern. Dog came to stand beside Gideon, her wet nose pressed to the wet nose-streaked glass.

“I don’t understand why you’re so stuck on this,” Harrow continued, in a tone that made her sound like the voice of reason instead of a goth ostrich with her head buried in sand.

“I don’t understand how you can just pretend it’s nothing,” Gideon countered. “People don’t just up and marry their arch nemesis.”

Harrow laughed. “Oh, Griddle. Oh, that’s almost cute. You think you’re my arch nemesis? You think I care enough about you to consider you a nemesis?”

“Okay, you can stop that now,” Gideon snapped. “I’m not buying what you’re selling, Harrow! Not even Dog is buying it. Nobody marries someone they don’t think about at all. We see each other for the first time in two years, and like three hours later, we’re making out. That’s some weird pent up shit.”

Harrow got up from her chair and stood in front of Gideon, her drink still in her hand. She assessed Gideon, looked her up and down with volcanic glass eyes. She sneered at Gideon’s flip-flops, at her shorts and the stretch of her t-shirt over her arms. Finally she looked up at Gideon’s face. She sipped her drink. Gideon swallowed and stared resolutely at Harrow’s nose. No physical advances. Harrow had to be doing this on purpose.

“I’m surprised,” Harrow said, finally. “You always seem so good with people. That’s your thing, isn’t it? Surely you’ve talked to enough of them over the years to know that people who come here marry people they just met all the time, no weird pent up shit required. This town relies on it.”

Gideon pressed her back and her hands up against the glass. It felt sun-warmed, almost too hot beneath her palms. She shook her head. “Nice try, but we aren’t people who come here on vacation. We would never choose to come here.”

Probably not actually true. If Gideon grew up somewhere else, somewhere far away from the Mithraeum and The Locked Tomb, she might choose to come. She might choose to party a week away in this tacky desert oasis.

Gideon didn’t have another life lived in another place, just this one, and this definitely didn’t feel like a vacation.

Harrow set her drink down on the coffee table and stepped closer.

“You’re physically advancing,” Gideon accused in a rush.

Harrow paused. “I am not.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Gideon waved a hand toward Harrow, a long swipe up and down to encompass all of her. “You’re practically stalking me, like you’re a cat and I’m—that was absolutely a physical advance.”

Harrow’s face twisted. She took a step back.

“Wait,” Gideon said, because she lost her damn mind weeks ago and it never fully returned. “Let’s reconsider the terms.”

She reached out and caught Harrow’s hand. Her touch was loose, a curl of fingers. It was enough. Harrow turned back fast, decision made. Harrow was back and she pressed Gideon’s hands to the glass of the door as she strained up to meet Gideon’s mouth in a crush of a kiss. Harrow’s touch felt sun-warmed too, too hot, and Gideon curved down to meet her, to taste the spice of the tequila on Harrow’s lips.

Harrow gasped as she broke away from Gideon. “Fine,” she said, still a little breathless. “No names.”

Gideon blinked. “Huh?”

“Tell Corona you went and got spontaneously married, but nothing that could point her toward me. I will never hear the end of this, Griddle. I’ve contained Ortus, but if this goes any further—”

“It won’t,” Gideon said. She pulled Harrow back in and kissed the side of her face, the shell of her ear. Harrow was going to pull away again. She was going to try to pretend she never kissed Gideon up against this sliding glass door, with her well-tended garnish garden as a backdrop, with spiced tequila on her tongue. Gideon was going to regret it too, but not now, not yet. Now, she kissed Harrow. Now, she agreed to Harrow’s terms, even the ones they’d already broken, the ones that didn’t make sense. She kissed Harrow again. “No one else will hear it from me.”