Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Six months, tops. Gideon would land that gig at the bar down the street, save up her tips, and get out of this god-forsaken nutsack of a town. It was undoubtedly going to be soul-sucking to work days at the rink and nights at the bar--and it would seriously cut into her practice time--but sleep, ultimately, was for the weak. With any luck she’d time her move to coincide with minor league try-outs, and by fall she’d be the hot-shot new forward with her gorgeous mug in the sports section. 

All of that was assuming that certain universal forces--whose names may or may not rhyme with Blarrowblark Blanagesimus--didn’t sink their claws back into Gideon and drag her bodily back to the aforementioned testicular municipality of hell. 

In the locker room after practice--if you could call skating around alone while Aiglamene shouted at her about form “practice”--still stomping around in her skates, Gideon peeled off her sweaty jersey and began loosening the fasteners on her shoulder pads.  As Gideon lifted them over her head, a voice like a dagger pierced the air behind her, and she jumped, embarrassingly, like it lodged itself between her shoulder blades. 

“Griddle, I’d like a word with you.”

Gideon lowered her shoulders, willing herself to smother her agitation. She was supposed to be alone. If someone had to accost her when the rink was meant to be empty they might have had the decency to be a murderer or something. At least that would be interesting . She’d even take Crux at this point, even if he’d only step foot in the locker room to ensure no one was stealing nacho-cheese from the snack bar and hiding it in a locker--which, to be clear, Gideon had only done the one time , and was it really stealing if the imitation dairy product never left the property? If it only got relocated to the desk drawers of a certain rink owner’s private office to congeal, and--

Anyway, it was not a murderer or an ancient rink manager. It was instead the Ice Queen Bitch herself.

“Isn’t it a little late for you to be here, twinkle-toes?”

She asked, even though it definitely was. Gideon specifically planned her private rink time when Harrow wouldn’t be on the premises--bad enough that she had to deal with her on the clock. 

“There is business to which I must attend, and it involves you, unfortunately.”

Gideon turned around to face her, crossing her arms. “What business could you possibly have with me? I know you’re not giving me a raise, and you wouldn’t deign to get into the specifics of my duties when Marshall’s vocal chords still work, so?”

Harrow did not reply right away. Her dark eyes, lined as always by sharply drawn black eye make-up, widened minutely, and she turned away from Gideon with a shallow huff through her nose. 

“I’m not discussing it here while you’re half-dressed, Griddle. Come to my office, and for God’s sake put on some clothes.”

Gideon gave the back of Harrow’s head a truly withering what the fuck look. “You’re the one who accosted me in the locker room, your supreme frostiness.”

Harrow’s glance darted back, tiny nostrils flaring as her eyes narrowed. “I don’t have all night.”

Gideon rolled her eyes, and Harrow let the door shut behind her as she left. Gideon got out of the rest of her gear, gave her pits a sniff test and, nope, she couldn’t quite get away with skipping the shower tonight. Part of her thought it would serve Harrow right to stink up her antiseptic mausoleum of an office with her B.O., but that would mean sacrificing her own clothes, and she was short on laundry money this week. 

When she showed up at Harrow’s door, squeaky clean and hair still wet, Gideon raised a hand to knock only to have the door open, like Harrow had been lying in wait. 

“Hey,” said Gideon, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. Harrow stared at her until Gideon inclined her head. “So what is it?”

Years ago, Gideon might have been worried about getting fired, but now that was a distant concern--practically a fantasy at this point: Harrow fires her, and Gideon finally packs up her shitty life, throws it all in her shitty jeep, and moves to the city, safety net be damned. There are some tough times and struggles but they’re all the character-building kind and eventually she’s signing autographs for throngs of cheering--generally very babe-ly--hockey fans. It wasn’t terrible, as fantasies go. But no, she never got fired, no matter what kind of escalating shit-slinging she and Harrow were getting up to that week. Even with the bad blood between her and the boss, Gideon did her damn job, which was not actually worth nothing, despite her dismal paycheck's evidence otherwise.

Harrow blinked and took a step back, impatiently waving Gideon inside. She closed the door and made her way back to her desk, standing behind it like some big-shot CEO, and not a scrawny early-20-something ruling her late parents’ small potatoes empire with an iron fist and a misplaced sense of importance. Her clothes, at least, supported the latter more than the former. She wore matte black leggings with an oversized sweater in a softer, richer black that swallowed up her tiny frame like a cloak, making her look even smaller than she already was. Her hair was cut short in a style that might’ve been called boyish if it wasn’t so unerringly precise, framing her high forehead like stark-black chiseled marble on some ancient statue. The fact that her face, a showcase of sharp corners and contrasts, managed to be even remotely intimidating was something Gideon would’ve found impressive if it didn’t so effectively bring to mind the energy of a hamster brandishing a switchblade. 

“I would be bothered that you took so long, but at least you don’t smell like a gym bag someone found in a swamp, so I’ll count my blessings.”

Gideon considered leaving her sweaty practice clothes in the heating vent on the wall over Harrow’s head, then scrapped the idea because she didn’t want to deal with an accidental arson charge.

“Stop, you’ll make me blush.”

Looking down, Harrow traced a thin finger over her desk, worrying at the fading woodgrain.

“I have an opportunity for you.”

Alarm bells in Gideon’s head, immediately. “Oh, let me save your precious time, boss.” Gideon took a step towards the door. “Not interested.”

“You want to get out of this town someday, right?”

It was a trap. It absolutely, 100% had to be a trap, but Gideon, fool that she was, paused to sniff the bait.

“You know I do.”

“What if, roughly a year from now, you were several thousand dollars richer, earned yourself a glowing recommendation for any employment you might pursue, and you never had to see me again?”

Gideon’s ears perked up at several thousand dollars and then again at never seeing Harrow again , but it was still too good to be true and weirdly, miraculously not good enough.

“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m looking at a shorter timetable. Hey, thanks for the offer though!”

“You’re going to raise that kind of money in less than a year? How, Griddle? Lifting weights on a street corner?”

A smug grin spread over Gideon’s face. “Not that it’s any of your business, but a second job--you know, jobs? Like actual people have? I’m gonna work at the Cohort Bar and Grill, and when I’ve saved up enough I’m out of here faster than you can say ‘oh, Gideon, come back and fix all the shit that’s falling apart in this place even though we don’t pay you enough, pleeeease.’”

Harrow, disappointingly, did not look especially perturbed. 

“You already have the job?”

“I’m the only person who applied, and the owner likes me.” Gideon put a hand through her damp hair and smiled. “You may not have noticed, but I’m actually very likable.”

“There’s no accounting for taste," Harrow said, disinterested. "You might want to confirm with someone before you turn me down outright.”

Gideon’s eyes narrowed, feeling suddenly this was less like a trap and more like the jaws of some painfully slow-moving wolf, one who enjoyed feeling her prey struggle against teeth and tongue.

“You weren’t the only applicant, Griddle.” The uptick of Harrow’s mouth was slight and subtle as a razor to the neck. “And you won’t be getting the job.”

“What the fuck did you do, Nonagesimus?”

“Me? Very little, but Nigenad, on the other hand, has been showing some initiative lately. He needs money to support his mother.” her face drooped in a pantomime of sympathy that made Gideon’s lip curl. “You know how it is.

“Ortus, the guy who’s been working the snack bar for longer than I ’ve been here? He showed some initiative?”

“He just needed a nudge in the right direction, is all.”

“Fuck you, Harrow. Fuck off and fall into the nearest volcano, you miserable cartoon villain of a person.”

“I’m offering you something, Nav. You’d be wise to hear what it is.”

“Unless it’s an opportunity to knock you flat on your ass right now, I’m really not interested.”

“I want you to skate with me.”

Gideon stared at her stupidly for a long moment, and then a bark of laughter echoed off the walls of the small office. “What are you even talking about?”

Harrow’s face was unwavering. “I need a pairs partner for the upcoming season, and as loathe as I am to admit it, you’re better on the ice than anyone else in this town. Aside from me.”  

Shaking her head, Gideon finally did sit in one of the chairs opposite Harrow’s desk (not examining the fact that she was sitting and not walking out the door too closely). “Wow, really tryin’ to butter me up, huh? Not sure how it escaped your attention, frosted flakes, but I’m not a figure skater. I play hockey.”

“Aiglamene assures me you’re a quick study, and you’ve already got the build for it. The fact is, you’re my only feasible option.”

On one hand, knowing Aiglamene--the rink’s godsend of a two-for-one deal, a weathered coach possessing considerable experience with both figure skating and hockey--felt Gideon merited such praise--any praise--was a nice stroke to Gideon’s ego, but--No. This was absolutely not happening. Gideon blinked, exhaled, thought of slapping herself, but decided that would give Harrow too much satisfaction. “Aren’t you a solo act? Why do you even need a partner?”

Finally a crack of irritation on her stony face--that was something at least. “I’ve been banned from singles competition for utilizing unsanctioned moves in my routine. If I want to skate this year, it has to be in pairs.” 

Gideon clicked her tongue and waved her finger “Naughty, naughty.” Harrow scowled. That was more like it. “What makes you think I’d help you?”

Harrow found her footing again, but it still looked a little unsteady. “I’ll pay you for your practice time. It might not be as much as you’d make at the bar, but it’s something, and when we compete you'll receive half of any prize money. I take on all the financial risk; you reap the benefits.”

It was ridiculous, but getting paid to skate, even if it was full-on sequins-and-leotards figure skating instead of hockey, was not actually the worst thing Gideon could imagine. The choice in partner maybe was, but her options--again, thanks to fucking Harrow!--were pretty limited now. 

“You really, honestly think this would work? I don’t know the first thing about the kind of skating you do.”

Her face resumed its usual unimpressed almost-sneer. “I assumed. But your job won’t be especially hard. I’ll be doing the majority of the difficult elements. As long as you can stay synchronized with me, lift, and throw me the way I need you to, we might pull it off. I assure you I’ve considered the circumstances. If you manage to do what I say and not completely fuck it up--a big ask, I realize--then both of us might finish out the next season in better positions than we find ourselves in currently. So tell me: will you do it?”

Gideon should be done giving Harrow the benefit of the doubt. The last time she’d really tried relating to the girl they were both teenagers. Harrow’s parents had just died and Gideon’s own mom had split a few months beforehand. Time was weird that year. Gideon had to drop out to take on more shifts at the rink, because the envelope of cash her mom left behind only covered a month’s rent, plus groceries. She’d seen Harrow after her parents’ service, and in her naivety Gideon felt sorry for her. At least when Gideon lost her mom she was already kind of used to not having one, and she never knew her dad beyond the claim that he considered himself “God’s gift to women,” so being alone wasn’t such an adjustment. But Harrow’s parents loved her. She was their whole world, and Gideon couldn’t imagine how much it would hurt to lose that. 

So she tried to offer something--not much, and clumsy with her 16-year-old manners, but an honest “sorry about your folks,” when she passed Harrow on the way to the maintenance closet. 

Harrow had frozen, tensing all over, and she’d whirled on Gideon, snapping back peevishly, “And I’m sorry your mother didn’t like you enough to bring you along when she left, because then you’d be out of my hair.”

“Well fuck you too then!” Gideon had spat back, and maybe she should’ve cut Harrow some slack, but it’s not like she ever got an apology, and Harrow spent the ensuing years treating Gideon increasingly like a mess no one wanted to clean up. 

And yet. Gideon lounged back in her chair, staring up in a way she hoped made Harrow squirm. “You know what?” she said, locking eyes with her god-awful, probably-baby-eating, goth-ass winter queen of a boss. “Fuck it.” 

---

When Gideon stepped onto the ice for her first figure skating practice she heard a weary sigh--Aiglamene--and then a brisk “Griddle, you idiot!”--from, who else, Harrowhark.

“For doing you a favor? Yeah, couldn’t agree more.”

Aiglamene chimed in, her voice husky and already tired. “You’re wearing hockey skates, Gideon.”

“They’re the only ones I have? I’m not buying new ones.”

“Harrowhark,” Aiglamene said, with no attempt to keep Gideon from overhearing, “I am compelled to reiterate that our chances here are abysmal. Expecting Gideon to learn an entirely new school of skating before the next season is like asking a sheep dog to start shearing the flock. The skills are...distantly related, but our expectations should be realistic. And don’t think it’s just Gideon fighting uphill. You’re not a pairs skater, Harrow.”

“Absolutely love being compared to a dog, so thanks for that.” Gideon added.

They both ignored her. “You know the predicament I find myself in. My chances of attracting an experienced pairs partner are vanishingly small.”

“It’s has been years since the terrible business with Ana; you might at least--”

“Don’t,” Harrow said, with a particular sternness she used most effectively when anything concerning her parents was mentioned. “I’ve already been out of competition too long, and I refuse to sit out the season, so stop asking.”

Aiglamene put up her hands in a surrender that somehow did not betray an inch of weakness. “You pay me to coach; I’ll do my best. But don’t complain when this harebrained plan falls apart on you.”

“Crux!” Harrow’s shrill voice carried to the high ceiling, bouncing off in ear-splitting echoes. The head manager opened the door a minute later, his voice almost demure despite the decades of gravel in it. 

“Yes, miss?”

“Get Nav a pair of proper skates out of the rentals. Size eleven or so?” Harrow looked back to Gideon, who nodded in return even if it was borderline creepy that Harrow knew her size off the top of her head. Gideon would have to start checking her skates for spiders or cursed amulets in the morning. 

Finally laced up in her prim and proper figure skates, Gideon hit the ice for real. First she just sort of went around the track as Aiglamene appraised her, shouting out little adjustments to her posture and foot placement, huffing at her abysmal flexibility. She only stumbled over her toe-picks a couple times before her feet got the hint, which Gideon thought was pretty good even if her coach wouldn’t waste any praise on it. They moved onto simple elements: rotations, spirals--which for some reason had less to do with turning and more to do with holding her leg out? But whatever--and finally some very modest jumps. 

It was almost fun, honestly, getting to try out new things on the ice. It was weird to not be wearing any of her padding--only a pair of old leggings and a long-sleeved work-out shirt--making Gideon feel almost vulnerable. Exposed. But that could’ve been chalked up to Harrowhark on the sidelines staring daggers at her the whole time, too. Who could say?

When Gideon finally stepped off the ice, hours later, Harrow stood from the bench where she’d watched without a word. She was gone before Gideon managed to make it to the locker room.

---

Chapter Text

Gideon finished out the week with those one-on-one lessons taught by Aiglamene and, more often than not, observed by a silent Harrow. It was more tiring than she had expected. None of it was the quick cardio bursts of sprints or practicing shots, but when her coach started stringing together short routines for Gideon to master transitions between elements, she found herself panting by the end all the same. Her thighs and glutes were sore in the mornings, which was oddly satisfying, even if the rental skates were giving her some gnarly blisters, and Gideon almost forgot she’d been strong-armed into this arrangement in the first place.

Or she would have, if the next week hadn’t marked the start of her training with Harrow. 

“You’ve picked up the basics, Nav, against all odds,” said Aiglamene, waving her onto the ice, where Harrow stood in a black leotard and matching leggings that covered her from wrists to ankles, except for an expanse of semi-circle cut out of the back. “The sooner we get the two of you working together, the sooner we know whether this is a lost cause, or just profoundly unlikely.” 

The fact there was even a possibility of success in Aiglamene’s deep-lined, skeptical eyes was honestly good enough for Gideon, but Harrow’s pinched face was lowering the odds with every inch Gideon drew closer to her. 

“Don’t look at me that way, sour-puss. This was your idea.”

“Do not call me that, and I’m aware. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Or what, you’ll fire me?” Gideon made a slow circle around Harrow, and finally came to a stop at her side, giving her a few arm-lengths of distance, just to be safe. Harrow didn't answer, so Aiglamene started them off.

"We'll start with synchronization. If you two can't skate like you're in tune with each other, then we can give up now."

They circled the rink, and Gideon found it wasn't so hard to match Harrow's long strides, even when she wasn't looking ahead at her. She'd spent enough time idly watching Harrow practice--not intentionally spectating, not since they were young, but catching her working on new routines before the start of shifts, or waiting for her to clear the ice so Gideon could get her own practice in--that if she closed her eyes, she could imagine how Harrow would take a turn, or what speed she reached before a jump, and she could let herself fall into that same rhythm, just a meter or two behind. 

Harrow, surprisingly, was fairly tolerable on the ice. Nice wasn't quite the word, but she didn't have any cutting remarks for Gideon, even when she tripped over herself or missed a cue. She only huffed and returned to their starting position so they could try again. 

Aiglamene raised a hand as they finished another pass, and her voice, harsh and aged like a cheap whiskey, called out, "Well, I didn't think we'd be getting to this tonight, but there's no point in dilly-dallying. Gideon, you still need to work on your flexibility, but let’s try a lift."

"I'm not sure if that's wise," said Harrow without sparing a glance at Gideon.

"Suit yourself, but you'll have to move on eventually, and you're already skating well together." 

Harrow did look at Gideon now, eyeing her appraisingly and addressing Aiglamene again. "Something simple."

"Of course. Gideon, take your place behind Harrowhark."

Gideon considered waggling her eyebrows suggestively, but ultimately decided against it. 

“We’ll try some basic dance lifts before we complicate things. It’s good to practice these off the ice first but--well, we’re fast-tracking here, right? Hip lift first... Harrow will put her arm around your shoulders, and you’ll rest her weight on your own hip. Harrow, pay attention to her hand placement, and adjust it if necessary.”

Harrow looked to her, stone-faced, and put her left arm around Gideon’s shoulder. Gideon could not remember a time Harrow’s face had been this close to hers--certainly not since they were teenagers--and she was going a little cross-eyed trying to see her. Dark eyes, lined in stark and confident coal black, studied her right back. Gideon wrapped her arm around the girl’s hip, and Harrow’s hand came to rest over hers, nudging it the slightest bit lower. Harrow wasn’t quite so scrawny like this. Her frame was still small, but under Gideon’s touch the muscle was taut and unyielding, solid in a way that ran counter to the delicate features.

“This would more likely be part of a transition to or from another lift,” Aiglamene said, filling the silence, “rather than something you’d do on its own, but it’s relatively simple and it’ll let Gideon get used to carrying your weight, Harrow.”

Gideon snorted. “Oh yeah, all three pounds of her.”

“We’ll see how you feel about ‘all three pounds of her’ when you’re holding her over your head and one misstep sends both of you tumbling to the ice. Just don’t send me the damn medical bills.”

“At least pretend to take this seriously, Griddle.”

Gideon craned her neck to look at Harrow again--her cheeks were flushed with the cold--and smiled wide. “I’m taking this so seriously, you have no idea. I am the very picture of professionalism and dedication. Now let’s get you in the air, freeze-pop.”

Harrow made a disgruntled sound, but then she counted off and jumped, only a foot or so, but Gideon caught her on her hip and Harrow’s legs moved automatically into a configuration, one bent and one straight--Gideon couldn’t guess what it was called--fit for a postcard. They held it for several seconds until Aiglamene shouted a curt “Good!” and Gideon let her down gently.  

“Now try it in motion. Move slow, but once you’ve got her, try a small rotation, Gideon.”

They did it, and it was another piece clicking into place. They moved as a unit, and Gideon couldn’t help the little swell of pride in her chest when she set Harrow back on the ice each time, one skate landing and spinning as Gideon held Harrow’s hand aloft like they were dancing.

“Alright, quit showing off. Now a fish lift.”

“Fish?” asked Gideon, and Aiglamene ignored her. 

“You’re behind her again, and when Harrow raises her left leg, you bend your knees and brace her with your left hand under her thigh, just above the knee, and your right arm around her middle. Lift her to waist height and follow the point of her toe into a rotation.”

Harrow maneuvered herself into position with--it needed to be said--an impressive poker face. Gideon felt more ridiculous this time, trying to haul up a whole person presenting themselves like a prima ballerina, but once again, once she had her up, Harrow’s body straightened into something elegant, like she was meant to be held aloft and admired, and Gideon didn’t feel ridiculous anymore. 

“Now with movement.” Their coach paused, assessing for a moment, and then: “Gideon, I want you to think of yourself as Harrow’s follow-through. She’s been doing this her whole life; her body knows where it’s going. It’s just your job to make sure it gets there as gracefully as possible.”

Turning to Harrow, Gideon inclined her head. “Lead and I shall follow, my chilly mistress.”

The crease between Harrow’s eyebrows deepened, the line of her mouth straightening the slightest bit. “Yes,” she said, gliding forward and nodding her head for Gideon to do the same. “You will.”

And Gideon did.

---

When they stepped off the ice, Harrow did not immediately retreat to her office. She lingered as Aiglamene harrumphed her way out the door and Gideon grabbed her water, leaning on the bleachers to hydrate before hitting the locker room. 

On the rink, Gideon got used to tracking Harrow’s movements, constantly assessing her position in relation to her own, and that instinct didn’t fade immediately, which was probably the only reason she didn’t jump straight out of her skin when Harrow touched her forearm. 

“Griddle,” she said, like it was a strain, her eyes fixed to a point on the floor just past Gideon’s right foot. “You’re doing surprisingly well. I can tell you’re making an effort, I mean.”

Gideon blinked down at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but gravity was taking its sweet time. “Was that a grudging compliment? Hold on, are you a Harrow look-alike hired to sweet talk me into giving up my share of the hypothetical prize-money?” Gideon made a show of leaning forward to study Harrow’s face, and the other girl swatted her away. 

Her features pulled together, making her face even pointier somehow. “Don’t be a pain about it. You’ve got a long way to go. Your extensions are still awful. Have you been doing any flexibility training off ice?”

Gideon shrugged. “I mean, I do warm-up stretches before training starts?”

“Just warm-ups?” She scoffed, and leveled a look at Gideon that seemed to ask, must I explain everything , which was objectively ridiculous because Harrow hardly explained anything beyond sneering and carefully timed, aggravated exhaling. “You’ll need a routine for before and after training, to keep yourself from cramping or actually injuring yourself on the ice. The former could be dangerous if it happens while you’ve got me in the air, and the latter would be incredibly inconvenient.”

“Oh yeah, there it is: don’t wanna damage your investment. Well, this may come as a shock to you, my fair snow maiden, but the ability to put your foot behind your head or tie your spine into a knot like a cherry stem is not all that valuable for a hockey player, so forgive me for not intuiting the necessity on my own.”

Inscrutable inky eyes studied her as though Gideon had left her flank unguarded in a fistfight and Harrow was waiting to see if it was intentional. Gideon couldn’t begin to guess what game Harrow thought she was playing, but she stared right back, not remotely willing to be intimidated by her pint-sized employer. 

“Change out of those sweaty clothes and come to my office. I’ll run you through some stretches.”

That was...unexpected. The truth was, Gideon had been feeling pretty stiff in the mornings, and training with Harrow was only going to push her body further, so a more thorough warm-up and cool-down routine wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. Now it was Gideon scrutinizing Harrow, trying to find the tell, but she gave no indication, and Gideon replied warily, “Yeah, okay…”

Harrow’s gaze flickered down, and she turned, leaving Gideon alone and making every attempt not to think too hard about Harrow offering something legitimately helpful.

So she turned up at the office door like she had more than a week ago. It hadn’t even been two full weeks, and already Gideon was getting used to the late hours, to being yelled at by Aiglamene over her form, and now to following Harrow’s lead. Well, Gideon always was adaptable. She took pride in not--unlike some individuals she could mention--being a complete control freak. Still, standing here again, her hand raised to knock, her hair a little damp from the shower, it was probably just the lingering memory of the curve-ball Harrow had thrown at her the last time Gideon had gone through that door that made the vague, unsettling atmosphere of portent cling to her skin like sweat. 

Gideon knocked. Harrow--now wearing a new pair of black leggings with a fresh tank top to match--let her in and wasted no time being a fucking control freak.

“Take off your jacket.” 

Before Gideon had so much as an arm free, Harrow scowled. “You’re wearing jeans.”

Since when did Harrow give a shit about Gideon’s sartorial tastes? 

“You told me to change?”

“Who stretches in jeans?”

Gideon rolled her eyes. “We can’t all be ice rink heiresses with sponsorships and a closet full of bougie goth athleisure wear, my glacial duchess. If it’s such an issue I can change back into the rank leggings... or I could forgo pants altogether…”

Gideon had meant that as a joke (mostly), but Harrow paused (considering it?) before her face snapped shut again and she said, “Just take off your belt. It’s fine.”

“Thank goodness you didn’t call my bluff; I’m going commando today,” Gideon said, and Harrow’s eyes widened so suddenly Gideon couldn’t even let her marinate in it too long before she raised her hands in surrender. “Kidding! Kidding! Jesus, you skate around in skintight sparkly leotards for crowds bigger than this town’s population; you’d think you wouldn’t be such a prude.”

“I’m not--” she said, and then stopped, shaking her head and starting over. “Lie down on your back, arms at your sides. We’ll do hamstrings and glutes first.” 

“Wow, jumping right to butt stuff--I take it back--”

Harrow pinched the bridge of her nose. “Shut up, Nav. If you can pretend, for a few minutes, that you’re not a filthy-minded 13-year-old who’s been, through some scientific catastrophe, trapped in the body of an adult woman who happens to have some useful musculature, then this will go much more smoothly.”

Gideon got on the floor as she was asked and raised the corner of her mouth in a smile she knew for a fact was infuriating. “I’ll do my best.”

Harrow crouched next to her, satisfied for the moment. There was more space on the floor than usual, as she’d pushed her desk against a wall and rolled out an oversized yoga mat on the dense carpet. How her spindly arms had managed to make that behemoth of 80s woodgrain and metal budge at all was a question for another time. ( She’s stronger than she looks , Gideon’s mind provided unhelpfully, along with the memory of what that strength had felt like against her palms.)

“I’m going to lift your leg and bring it towards your chest. Just stay relaxed unless I tell you differently.”

One hand braced on her ankle, the other curling around her calf, just under the knee, Harrow began lifting, her eyes darting to Gideon’s other leg, and she huffed. Gideon was going to ask what she could have possibly fucked up with such simple instructions, but then Harrow was resting her knee on Gideon’s thigh, her weight pinning it flat against the floor. It might as well have been on her chest, the way it knocked the wind out of her. Gideon coughed and raised her eyebrows in an obvious question. 

“Your other leg needs to be straight or the stretch isn’t effective.”

“Oh, well, straight ’s never been my strong suit…” Her mouth was running on autopilot, throwing out words so it would maybe not be so painfully obvious that everything about the current situation was setting off a war between the parts of her brain labelled “weird!!” and “yeah, but hot ” that was escalating by the second.

Harrow stared ahead, unamused. “You don’t say.”

A tugging burn ran through the back of her thigh as Harrow pushed Gideon’s leg just past a 90-degree angle, denim bunching uncomfortably at her hip. The pressure was firm, just this side of actually painful, and Gideon breathed out through her mouth, trying to relax into it. The pain at least was a distraction--and at the same time, not at all .

Harrow relented by a few degrees, and then looked at Gideon, annoyed. “Does that hurt?”

“A little, but it’s okay--”

“Don’t let me hurt you!”

Gideon snorted. “Aw, Harrow, I didn’t know you cared.”

“If I push you too far, it will only do more harm than good, and I can’t afford to lose time to your recovery.”

Of course it was only concern for herself that brought Harrow here, on her knees over Gideon, but that apparently made little-to-no difference to Gideon’s lizard brain. It was still Harrow pinning her down, gently pushing her body to its limits, bringing all that Harrowhark focus and precision to bear, and it really, truly, could not be entirely Gideon’s fault that this was doing something for her. God, how long had it been since anyone had really touched her like this?

Look, there was a reason she wanted to get out of this town, because if Harrowhark Nonagesimus was starting to seem like a viable sexual partner then the dating pool was well and truly exhausted. As Gideon spiraled, Harrow switched legs, all but straddling her again, and the increase in her pulse was just further confirmation that Gideon needed to focus up, get this job done, and peace out with her money as soon as possible. 

Harrow guided her through a few more stretches, moving Gideon around the mat like an oversized rag doll, occasionally telling her when to breathe, when to hold it, when to tense and relax. By the end Gideon felt good . A little noodly, a little used up, but in a nice way; the way that made her feel vaguely like all her bones had been replaced with newer, better-fitting bones, and like she would sleep incredibly well that night.

When she got home, Gideon fished one of her magazines out of their drawer and flipped it open as she kicked off her boots and fell into bed. She looked at the pictures, it just wasn’t totally clear if she was seeing them, with one hand in her pants and her eyes screwed shut more than half the time as she thought of taut muscle and slender fingers and a voice saying, for some reason,  “Good, now roll onto your stomach and I’ll work your quads.”

She slept disgustingly well.

Chapter Text

It wasn't long before Gideon and Harrow fell into a routine. Aiglamene had them alternate days working on jumps and lifts, so Gideon didn't overwork any particular muscle group, and at the end of each session Gideon turned up at the door of Harrow's office. 

A few days in, Gideon asked if she could help Harrow with her own stretches, and Harrow froze, her hand curled around Gideon's wrist, pulling the stiffness out of her triceps. 

"I can do my own.” She said, and quickly added, “You wouldn't know what you were doing."

Gideon rolled her eyes, even though her back was facing Harrow. 

"I'm not gonna break you over my knee, Harrow. You could show me what to do."

"Breathe in," Harrow said, and Gideon did. The pull on her arm held firm, the tension slowly giving way. "It's not worth the risk. Breathe out."

That seemed dramatic, even for Harrow, but Gideon didn't push it.

It was two weeks later--when Gideon was just starting to feel Normal about their nightly stretching sessions--that Harrow upended their routine. Gideon was at home, limbs loose and sleepy, brushing her teeth before bed, when her phone went off. The text from Harrow read:  

[22:38]: I won't be at practice tomorrow evening, but do not take that as an excuse to slack off. Work on your toe loops.

Which, rude, first of all. Gideon’s toe loops were fine; even Aiglamene had mentioned she was getting good height and that she was no longer “completely incapable” of tucking in her arms.

Gideon spit out the toothpaste and composed a reply with her thumb.

          [22:40]: oooh got a hot date? ;)

Harrow didn’t respond right away, and Gideon honestly started to wonder if the ice queen actually did date, and then wondered, dangerously, how she felt about that--but eventually she discarded the idea, because even if Harrow had a single romantic feeling hiding in the rusted over iron cage of her ribs, it's not like she would let it get between her and the actual love of her life: strapping knives to her feet and dancing around the ice like a sugarplum fairy sponsored by the general concept of black eyeliner.

[22:52]: Assessing the competition.

          [22:52]: ??? 

[22:54]: I’ll be attending an off-season exhibition that should, if my information is correct, include a few of the pairs teams we’ll be facing in the upcoming season. I want to see what we’re up against.

Gideon crawled into bed--well, onto the floor mattress layered with second-hand sheets and blankets that functioned as a bed--and stared into the glowing screen. She’d gotten so accustomed to the practices, just her and Harrow--and Aiglamene, a perpetual grounding beacon of exhausted irritation--that Gideon found she was a little jolted by the reminder that the point of it all, of trailing after Harrow so carefully, of holding onto the solid reality of her, of letting her go into the air only for them to drift back together in an inexorable orbit--all of it was so they might do it for a crowd, for sharp-eyed judges, and heat rose in Gideon’s cheeks. 

         [22:59]: you want me to come? It would be nice to see how this stuff works in person

[23:05]: It won’t be like an actual competitive event. I doubt it would be terribly educational.

          [23:06]: that’s not a no

[23:10]: Meet me at the rink at 7am. It’s a 2 hour drive. 

---

Gideon turned up bleary-eyed at 6:50, gas station coffee and trail mix in hand, and half expected Harrow to be impatiently tapping her foot outside. Instead, the parking lot was ominously empty, and the front door to the rink was unlocked, leaving Gideon to wonder if this was some elaborate ruse to trick her into waking up entirely too early.

Well, joke was on Harrow, because the harsh sunlight peeking over the horizon was a perfect excuse to wear her vintage aviators--about the only gift Gideon ever received from her mom before she made a break for it--and that combined with her usual leather jacket--a hand-me-down from Aiglamene, a little ratty and patched in a few places, but still a classic , damnit--meant that at least she'd stand here twiddling her thumbs while looking cool . 

She didn’t bother to take off the sunglasses when she stepped inside, so naturally she couldn't immediately make out Harrow's shape in the relative shade of the doorway, and since the ice princess was barreling forward, brow furrowed with apparent disdain for the ground at her feet, the two of them collided. The coffee leapt from Gideon's hand like a spooked animal, and she managed to grab it again, but her grip pinched it enough to snap the lid off and send a cresting wave of sugar-and-dairy-laden bean-water directly into Harrow's bulky sweater.

Harrow froze, her face, already flushed with--what? Cold? Exertion?--flaring like kerosene on a campfire, and, apart from a sharp intake of breath, she didn’t make a sound. This was somehow more troubling to Gideon than a yelp or an unbecoming string of insults and curses (naughty word curses or hexes-from-an-evil-witch curses? With Harrow, who could say?). Her eyes shot up and locked with Gideon’s, like she needed to confirm the culprit before she screwed them shut again and clutched the hem of her sweater, holding it out in front of her and slumping her shoulders to pull the soggy fabric away from her skin. 

“Fuck! I’m sorry,” Gideon was saying, trying desperately to put the lid back on the mangled coffee cup. It was only half stuck on when she gave up and fished her handkerchief out of her back pocket, maneuvering it with one hand and bringing it to Harrow’s chin, which had apparently been seated in the splash zone. 

She recoiled in disgust, and Gideon backed off. 

“Is that the rag you blow your nose into and wipe your greasy hands on all day?”

Gideon held the hanky by the corner and shook it out a little. “Freshly laundered. No cooties on this one, promise.” She held it out to Harrow, who took it with a huff. 

“Idiot,” she spat, although the fire in her eyes was already fading. She wiped her face and began dabbing at her sweater as they stood too close in the doorway. 

Gideon stepped back, putting a hand through her hair and resting it uneasily on the back of her neck. There was a time--like, a few weeks ago if she was being generous--when she would have been more upset at her wasted coffee than ruining Harrow’s outfit, but now it felt like this stupid accident was sugar in the concrete of whatever precarious new thing they were building.

“I think I’ve got a spare shirt in my locker if you wanna go back and--”

“I don’t want your odorous second-choice work-out clothes, Griddle. I’ll run back to the house.”

Which did, of course, make sense. Her house--easily the biggest in town, especially when compared against Gideon's shithole little apartment--shared a plot of land with the rink like a small moon in its orbit, so it was a quick trip for her.

Harrow brushed past her, and Gideon followed along as they circled the building.

"Lucky you wear so much black, right?" Gideon tried. "Don't have to worry about the stain, I mean."

Harrow peered back at her. "Hides bloodstains too."

The cement hardened under Gideon's feet at that, and she let out a breath. Thinly veiled threats of physical violence were only a few rungs below terms of endearment in Harrow-speak, and considerably more likely to be spotted in the wild.

They reached the end of the driveway, and Harrow pushed a button on her keychain, her sleek little black car chirping in response. She threw her duffle bag in the back and turned to Gideon, eyeing her with something like suspicion.  

"Stay here." She disappeared into the house. Gideon knocked back what was left of her coffee and disposed of the evidence in the garbage can at the edge of the driveway.

When she emerged again a good ten minutes later, Harrow wore what Gideon would have sworn was the same sweater if she hadn't directly witnessed its fate herself. It was even the same faded shade of black, almost passing for a contrast against her stark black leggings. 

"Oh my god, do you have duplicates of all your outfits? Are you actually a cartoon character?"

As Harrow grew closer, Gideon could make out the sharp lines of fresh eyeliner and a shadowy plum lip. The color in Harrow's cheeks had evened out, the rosy splotches blended away by foundation or warmth, Gideon couldn’t say.

"I know what I like." 

Harrow opened the driver’s side door and Gideon followed suit, folding herself into the passenger’s seat and adjusting it for more leg room. 

"Wait, why were you at the rink in the first place? Were you training this morning?"

"I train every morning," she said, as if it were obvious. 

Gideon, perhaps foolishly, assumed that Harrow had simply moved her own morning skate sessions to the evening to better align with Gideon’s work schedule.

"Wait, you've been practicing with me for hours every night and then waking up at ass-crack-o-clock to skate more ?" 

"I'm not about to let my own skills atrophy while you're trying to catch up, Griddle."

"Ohhhh," Gideon clutched at her chest dramatically. "If only my lamentably exiguous skills could but approach thine own unmatched talents, my lady."

Harrow squinted at her. "You're making good progress, but you already know that, so don't fish."

Harrow turned the key in the ignition and looked over her shoulder, pulling out of the driveway.

"And what? Resist prying a grudging compliment from your honeyed lips?"

The lips in question, generally pulled tight with agitation at the best of times, curled into a sneer.

"Stop that," she said, her eyes steadfastly watching the mirror as they eased onto the road. "You sound like Ortus with a concussion." 

"Maybe I should take up poetry. I mean, I'm already expanding my horizons with this figure skating stuff. Who knows, maybe I'm a secret wordsmith. Ooh, that could be our schtick: skating to spoken-word... Ode to a Triple Salchow..."

“The last thing I need is you diverting any of your already limited brainpower away from the ice. Leave the verse to Nigenad.”

---

Gideon spent most of the drive dicking around on her phone, or dozing for a few stolen minutes at a time, groggily checking the dashboard clock each time she woke to find they were only a few miles closer to their destination. 

The stadium was filling up by the time they got there, with 45 minutes still to go before showtime. Harrow showed her phone to the ticket taker at the entrance, his scanner gun beeped twice, and they went inside. 

Gideon followed Harrow close on her heels, since she seemed to know where she was going, and Gideon didn’t want to risk losing her in the thin-but-still-bustling crowd. Everyone seemed to be in a rush like Harrow, darting to their seats or the bathroom or the concession stands or God knew where. 

When they found their seats, Harrow looked down over the ice appraisingly, straightening the delicate curve of her neck so that she could see every inch unobstructed. She’d apparently been pretty serious about using this as an opportunity to scope out the competition, and really, Gideon should have known that Harrow doing something just because she enjoyed it was patently ridiculous. A handful of skaters were warming up on the ice, drifting around like gnats and practicing, presumably, sections of their routines. Some wore what Gideon guessed were their practice clothes, long sleeves and unremarkable leggings, and some were already in their performance outfits, skin-tight and sparkling. 

Gideon watched Harrow to see who she was watching. Her dark eyes darted from figure to figure, but eventually she settled on a few. There were two pairs on the ice, although Harrow’s attention was only drawn to one of them. It was strange, Gideon thought, because it was decidedly the less exciting pair. The skaters Harrow watched--a tall, lanky guy and a shorter woman, compact with muscle, each maybe a year or two older than Gideon and Harrow, if that--only circled the rink with wide, perfectly synchronized strides, while the other--a younger pair, dressed in eye-catching blue and white, full of dreadful adolescent enthusiasm--were constantly trying out lifts, jumps, and spins, and squabbling with one another in between.  

Harrow’s focus did falter occasionally: a single skater, her costume trimmed in purple, a spandex wonder of gold, cut high on her hips, that glittered like the tumble of hair spilling from a ponytail high on her head. 

“Is the blonde smokeshow a friend of yours?” 

“What?” Harrow asked, distracted. 

Gideon glanced back to the ice, admiring the certified hottie as she extended one leg up in front of her, taking it by the ankle and bringing it nearly to her forehead before easing into a spin. 

“The sparkly one,” Gideon said, and pointed.

Harrow blinked. Her spine straightened. “No.”

“Oh, because it just seemed like you were watching her.”

“If you spent more time looking at the ice instead of me you might learn something, Griddle.”

In a few minutes, the skaters cleared the rink, and Harrow took out her phone, scrolling through something that looked like a chart. 

“First up are Tettares and Chatur," she said.

"Ooh, a pairs team? Competition?"

An amused puff of air escaped Harrow's nostrils. "Hardly. In a few years, probably. But they're young, unpolished." She studied her phone, reassessing. "Or sooner, considering their coaches."

"Who are their coaches?"

"Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn. They qualified for the Olympics as a pair, but after a middling performance she returned four years later as a single competitor and took gold." 

"Wow, she kicked him to the curb?"

"By all accounts he bowed out of his own accord, staying on as her coach, although what she might learn from him as opposed to the other way around I couldn't say." 

"Okay, harsh."

Harrow waved her hand. "It's just true. He wasn't at her level, and he knew it. It seems coaching suits him, if the kids are anything to go by. The upcoming season is looking to be their first at the senior level." Harrow did not look up from her phone as she said, "and he can't have taken Pent's success too hard, as he did marry her." 

"Oh," said Gideon.

The kids put on a good show. They flew around the ice with an energy that frankly made Gideon feel tired, and threw themselves into jumps and spins with an abandon that only worked out for them around 60% of the time. It was impressive in its own way, but nothing at all like Harrow's fluid, unbroken precision. 

Harrow watched them curiously, the sharp lines of her face softened by an uncharacteristic lack of agitation--only wincing very slightly when they stumbled or failed to land an ambitious leap. Gideon realized the teens had finished their routine when Harrow's eyes returned to her phone. 

"Who's next?" Asked Gideon, mostly to fill the silence.

The familiar edge returned to Harrow's face as her thumb scrolled through the schedule. 

"Tridentarius," she said, with what sounded like a practiced lack of inflection.

Harrow’s back was straight as the girl--the same blonde from earlier--took the ice. A muscle at the hinge of her jaw fluttered to life, but the rest of her was aggressively still. 

"Okay, what's the deal with her?" 

"Coriane?" Harrow asked. "She's a decent talent from an influential Olympic legacy family, an endorsement deal darling, but inconsistent. Her scores rebound throughout the season, but she always manages to place in championships."

"And I'm sure that's very interesting for a stats nerd, but that's not what I mean."

Harrow finally tore her eyes from the rink and leveled her gaze suspiciously on Gideon. "What do you mean?"

"I mean why are you looking at that girl like she stole your favorite black lipstick and used it to write ‘just okay’ on your dressing room mirror?"

"I don't know what you mean.”

Gideon’s bullshit detector was functioning at factory standard, so she pressed.

"Come on, you would've been competing with each other before, right? So what, did she steal your routine? Did she bribe the judges to ban you?"

The tension in Harrow's shoulders lessened somewhat, and she rolled her eyes. So Gideon changed her approach. 

"Or was it more personal? Did she steal your girlfriend--" 

"I don't have a--"

"Or worse, did she take you to pound town and never call you back?"

The scowl froze on her face.

"Oh shit," Gideon blurted. The thing with the lipstick had seemed more likely. She had not actually expected one of her guesses would be right. 

There was a long pause as Harrow looked away from Gideon, which at first meant looking at the ice, and the (apparently) love-em-and-leave-em Coriane. She snapped her head away from both of them. "It's none of your business." 

Gideon could have kept pushing. Gideon of a few weeks ago probably would have needled her until she earned herself a shift detailing the locker room shower drains. But past Gideon never would have gotten that much out of Harrow to begin with. Past Gideon didn’t know Harrow was even capable of a midnight rendezvous with a fellow skater, and it didn’t seem very sporting to use that advantage now. So, even though her morbid curiosity was piqued, Gideon let it go.

After Tridentarius, the boring pair from earlier took the ice. Harrow, at least, seemed to shake off some of the simmering fury just under her skin as she studied them. 

At first, they were about as unremarkable as Gideon had remembered, only now they were dressed in matching ombre grays as they circled the rink in perfect, boring synchronicity. Gideon was stifling a yawn when something changed, suddenly and so fluid that she couldn't put her finger on when, but one moment the pair was gliding side by side and the next, Hect--the girl--was behind her partner--something Sextus, heh--pulling him into a spin that was unreasonably fast. Her hands were on his waist, and he jammed his toe-pick, their combined effort launching his tall, gawky frame--made elegant now--into the air higher than Gideon would have believed possible from the short entry. 

The landing was just as flawless, Sextus catching the ice on one skate, Hect already meeting him again, falling in line as they took long strides, re-gaining speed. 

Gideon blinked and looked at Harrow. 

"Our competition," Harrow said.

"You're not kidding." Gideon watched the rest of their routine with a focus that rivaled Harrow's. The girl's frame was misleading. Sextus had a few inches on her, but her arms and legs fired like pistons, both of them moving with fine-point accuracy that looked effortless until one or both of them were up in the air, at which point it became stunning. 

"Sextus and Hect rely on unerring precision,” Harrow said afterward. “They don't attempt something in competition until they're beyond reproach--meaning there's very little chance for deductions, which means anyone hoping to score higher must attempt more difficult moves."

"More difficult than that ? Than all that wild shit they were doing?" 

"Those two keep their competition routines close to the chest. This was nothing."

"Oh," Gideon said cheerfully, "then we're fucked!"

"We're not. Yet, at least. Speed and precision count for a great deal, but they're not everything. I can skate circles around Sextus--" Gideon felt this might be an exaggeration, but thought better than to voice it. "--and while Hect is formidable, she doesn't have your raw power, Griddle."

"You--" Gideon blinked. "You think I could be on their level?"

Harrow peered at her, a quirk of skepticism tugging at the dark line of her eyebrows. "It's a short timetable, to be sure." She did not crack a smile when she said: "Perhaps it's just my incurable optimism."

Gideon snorted. Before her face could do anything embarrassing, she stood up. 

"I'm gonna look for the bathroom, maybe grab something from concessions--you want anything?"

Harrow did not want anything, so Gideon took her leave, trying not to think about what exactly was riding on her ability to become a world class figure skater in a matter of months--or really, weeks at this point, depending on when they actually intended to compete. She was doing her level best to not think about why Harrow's trust felt like such a weight on her shoulders when a young guy with an irritatingly pompous face and an aggressively white button-down stopped her walking out of the restroom. 

“Uh, excuse me,” she tried, on the off chance that he was blocking her by accident and it wasn’t actually his fault that he looked so thoroughly punchable. 

“What do you know about Harrowhark Nonagesimus?” His self-satisfied voice was not much better, even before Gideon parsed the words.

Gideon blinked, like something in her brain was rebooting in the face of that buck wild opener. At least she knew he wasn’t in her way by accident. “And who are you?”

The guy produced a card from his pocket like he’d been eagerly awaiting the chance. “Name’s Silas Octakiseron. I have an interest in unsolved mysteries.” 

Gideon took the card without looking, just so Silas would stop holding it out with that smug, expectant face. 

“Goodie for you.”

“I have a podcast,” he said, because of course he did, and then, misunderstanding the confusion on Gideon’s face: “A podcast is like a radio--”

“I know what a podcast is, dillhole. What does Harrow have to do with it?”

Silas pursed his lips, looking Gideon over in a way that made her agitated. He was assessing her. “Are you here with her in a professional capacity, or… personal?”

Gideon didn’t know who this guy thought he was (she also did not know exactly how she would answer that question if it were one she were inclined to answer, but whatever), but he was quickly rising in the ranks of people Gideon hoped would throw the first punch--unlikely, by the look of him--so she didn’t have to feel bad about pummeling him.

Okay, no, dude was scrawny enough that she'd still feel bad kicking his ass. But not that bad. 

“That’s so far from your business it needs a passport to visit, so how about you work on chasing some of that sweet mattress endorsement money and leave me alone, yeah?” 

Gideon turned to head in the opposite direction--and about crashed into another guy, this one older and broader than Silas, with a face that was grim, but more resigned than forbidding. He didn’t move to stop her, but he didn’t get out of Gideon’s way either.

“This is my co-host, Colum.” said Silas, because Colum was apparently not planning on making his own introduction. Silence seemed like a weird trait to have in an audio format, but fine. 

“Cool! I do not care!” At least the bigger one looked like he might put up a fight, but Gideon only moved to brush past him, deciding it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to get thrown out by security. Colum shifted, continuing to block her way out of this conversation. 

Gideon glanced back at Silas, unimpressed. What kind of podcast needed muscle anyway?  

“How long have you known Nonagesimus?” Silas was apparently the sort of guy who saw the highway sign for “Knowing When to Quit” and just swerved every time into “Ask Invasive Questions” anyway.

“A lot longer than you have! Look, I don’t know what kind of interest you have in Harrow, but why don’t you just go lurk on a random goth girl’s Instagram about it like the reply guy I highly suspect you are? Honestly you’ll probably have more luck than you would barking up this particular tree.”

Silas looked offended--even more than he already did just by default--at the idea that his interest in Harrowhark would be so crude (which: good), but soon that insufferable I-know-more-than-you look was back, and Gideon was well past having enough.

Colum spoke finally, his voice low and grave and really just unnecessarily ominous. “You may not know her as well as you think.”

Gideon made a b-line for the space between the two weirdos. They let her go this time, Silas only raising his voice to say, “Contact info is on the card,” to her back.

Gideon stomped back to the stadium in a huff and flopped down into her seat beside Harrow, who had been once again staring intently at her phone. The previous skater, just leaving the ice, was apparently not important enough to warrant her attention.

“Good, you’re back,” she said, tucking the phone back into her pocket.

And that was--remarkably civil. Gideon’s mouth curled into about half a smile before she remembered who she was talking to. “Why’s it good?”

“Another pair is up next. More educational for you.” Harrow looked at Gideon properly now. “Weren’t you going to get something to eat?”

And shit, she was. “I totally forgot.” 

Harrow gave her a look that clearly said, you got up to do two whole things and you forgot one of them? You dolt.

She thought of explaining herself, of regaling Harrow with the tale of the podcast Hardy Boys accosting her outside the bathroom, but that felt like a bad idea for a variety of half-formed reasons that twisted in her stomach. They were probably just some weirdo obsessed fans or something equally nauseating, which, for all Gideon knew, was something Harrow was used to. The older one’s warning stuck with her, too, for all that she tried to brush it off. You may not know her as well as you think. How well did anyone know Harrow?

“Damn, I’m hungry, too,” Gideon said. “You think I have time--”

“No, they’re about to--” and Harrow didn’t need to finish, because the announcer’s voice crackled over the speakers, introducing two skaters Gideon hadn’t seen yet: Marta Dyas and Judith Deuteros.  

Gideon couldn’t begin to guess which was which. They were dressed nearly identically in white and red, and their builds were closer than the other pairs had been. Perhaps owing to this synchronicity, they moved like parts of the same machine. Their transitions weren’t smooth so much as timed to a fault. Even the occasional stumble or misstep did nothing to throw off their lockstep beyond a fraction of a second. It wasn’t as impressive as Hect and Sextus, and certainly not as fun-in-a-demolition-derby-kind-of-way to watch as the teens had been, but they were undeniably skilled all the same. 

Gideon realized Harrow was watching her this time, and when the pair was done she asked simply, “What did you think?”

“They were…” Gideon searched for something insightful to say and finally settled on “...good?”

Harrow nodded once. “They are, but what else?”

Gideon was not a skating critic, but she took a stab at it anyway. “They skate like they’re hitting bullet points on a list.”

Harrow looked quietly satisfied, which made Gideon’s chest feel funny. 

“It lacks artistry,” Harrow said, thoughtful. “Without room for interpretation the routine can be instructive, in the strictest sense, but it isn’t--.”

“It isn’t fun ,” said Gideon. 

“It isn’t worth remembering.”

Gideon ended up eating what was left of her trail mix as they watched the rest of the skaters rather than get up again, but by the time they were ready to leave her stomach was growling. 

“Hey,” she said as they crossed the parking lot. “We should stop somewhere for food.”

“It’s going to be late enough when we get home as it is.”

“Somewhere quick. Fast food.” Harrow still looked skeptical. “Come on, I know for a fact you haven’t eaten all day either.” (which wasn’t exactly true, she’d taken a couple handfuls of Gideon’s trail mix, picking out the M&Ms and handing them back to her like an actual space alien.) “You can pick, I’m not choosy.”

“Shocking,” Harrow said, and then: “all right.”

She pulled into a burger and shake place, parking in lieu of adding another car to the drive-thru line that already threatened to spill onto the street. The dining room was busy, and Gideon studied the menu while Harrow stared ahead, unimpressed by the crowd. 

Harrow ordered first, and then nodded to Gideon, who was counting out one dollar bills in her wallet. 

“What do you want?” Harrow asked, with practiced lightness. And when Gideon's eyebrows shot up: “This is essentially a work-outing for you, so it’s on me.” She left no room for argument, even if Gideon had been inclined, which--yeah, four dollars--she wasn’t.

“Oh, uh--a double cheeseburger with chili-fries on the side, medium drink and--” she looked down at Harrow and with a too-wide toothy grin. “--since Ms. Moneybags over here is buying, a large strawberry shake.”

Harrow remained impassive, her eyes focused definitively on the cashier as she handed over her card. They took their cups and filled their fountain drinks. Harrow, being the most boring human alive, got water, and Gideon watched her consider grabbing one of the lemon wedges meant for iced tea before deciding that would, apparently, be a little too wild. Gideon mixed roughly six sodas together and ended up with a concoction that tasted, pleasingly, like sugar and regret. 

A voice, loud but not unfriendly, rang-out in the small dining room. 

“Harrowhark Nonagesimus! What a treat. It’s a proper off-season reunion now.”

A smiling man with a mop of curly brown hair approached them, and Harrow’s shoulders jumped like it took great effort to keep them from flanking her ears. A woman about the man’s age--late-30s-early-40s, maybe?--came up behind him, quieter but with a similar sweetness around the eyes. 

“Oh!” she said warmly, “It’s lovely to see you, dear.”

Harrow, much to Gideon’s surprise, didn’t pull her hand away when the woman took it, holding it between each of hers and smiling an understated but undeniably genuine smile at Harrow. 

“You as well,” Harrow said, and it was forced, but didn’t actually sound like a lie. “Isaac and Jeannemary are making good progress.”

“Oh, yes,” said the man, “they’re firecrackers for sure. Already outskating me if I’m honest, even if they could stand to worry a little more about their routines and a little less about their competition outfits.”

“ Magnussss, ” came one small, terrible voice from behind the pair. “ Don’t talk about our outfiiitsss! ” 

Sure enough, when Gideon craned her neck, she saw the teens from earlier sharing a booth, seated at a huge corner table with a handful of other people Gideon assumed were skaters. The girl-teen dipped a french fry into the boy’s shake while he scrunched up his nose at her. 

Magnus looked to Gideon then, opening his mouth to speak, presumably to make an introduction, when another voice chimed in over Gideon’s shoulder. 

“What do we have here?” Gideon turned and--oh--it was the hot blonde that made Harrow’s blood boil. Up close she was, if anything, hotter. Her honey-golden hair wasn’t in its ponytail anymore, instead framing her face and tumbling in softly curling waves past her shoulders. Her smile, the way it narrowed those sparkling eyes, was radiant and enticing and--gilt, somehow.

When Coriane rounded on them, it was only with the barest flicker of recognition that she beheld Harrow, instead extending her hand out to Gideon, who--a little stunned by the sight--took it without a thought. 

“We can always count on Magnus making friends, can’t we? I’m Cori. Tell me,” Corianne said, leaning towards Quinn conspiratorially, but keeping her eyes--and her hand--locked on Gideon, “who is this tall drink of water?” Tall was generous, since Cori looked to have at least an inch on Gideon, and more on anyone else in throwing distance. 

“Dunno!” Magnus replied affably. “We haven’t been introduced yet.”

Coriane’s gaze finally left Gideon. “Oh, friend of yours--it's Harrow, right?”

Harrow’s eyes widened, blood rushed to her cheeks, and she said absolutely nothing. 

“Coriane,” said Abigail Pent, mildly chiding but still pleasant, “you and Harrowhark were on the podium together not two seasons ago. No need to act like strangers.”

“Oh, you know me! Terrible memory for faces.” Coriane laughed, but it wasn’t malicious. It was, if anything, a little self deprecating (and lovely, like the rest of her) which, if Harrow’s continued silence was anything to go by, made it worse.

“Ah, yep!” Gideon said, a miasma of conflicting emotions leaving her unsure what exactly she was going to say until it was leaving her mouth. “Name’s Gideon, I’m here with Harrow, and I’m sure we’d love to stay and chat but--” she pulled her hand from Coriane’s grip and looked back to Harrow, who was at least blinking now, “--long drive, you know.”

“Oh,” said Magnus, clearly disappointed. “Sure you can’t stay for just a bite or two? Harrow, I’m sure the kids would love to pick your brain about--oh, I don’t know--sweat-proof makeup or suchlike.”

“ Magnussss, don’t mention our maaaakeup ,” came the inevitable reply.

“We should go,” Harrow said finally, looking at exactly no one. 

They stood awkwardly by the counter until the order number was called, and Gideon asked if they could get it to go instead, at which point she and Harrow made a hasty retreat back to the car. 

“Hey,” Gideon said as the doors closed. “That was, uh, weird.”

Harrow put the key in the ignition. “You don’t know what that was.”

“Okay...” and Gideon knew it was harsh before she said it, but she said it anyway, “...because it seemed like that girl hit it and quit it and then all but forgot you existed.”

“She did not --” Harrow stopped herself. She breathed out through her nose.

“Tell yourself what you want, but that back there was ice cold. If you want my advice--”

“On the list of situations about which I will never ask your advice, consider this first and underlined three times in blood.”

Gideon raised her hands. “I was just gonna say, no one deserves to get blown off like that,” she said, and then, looking out the window, “not even you.”

Harrow’s reply made her jump. "I don't need your pity!” She unclenched her fist and checked her mirrors as though they would have needed adjusting in the ten minutes they’d been gone. “It's one of her mind games and you're too dense to realize it."

Which sounded fake, but okay. So Harrow was hung up on an emotionally unavailable ice queen. Well, who wasn't?

They were on the road for a good twenty minutes of uneasy silence when Gideon remembered the bags of food she’d set down at her feet. She rifled through one and found her chili-fries. Harrow leveled a withering look at her.

She shoved a handful in her mouth and then, because she knew it would piss Harrow off, asked, all innocence, “Mhaht?”

“Nav, you are a hog.”

Gideon ate half her fries, washing it down with strawberry shake, enough that her stomach stopped protesting. 

“Hey, if you wanna switch off I can drive for a bit so you can eat.”

“I’m not letting you drive my car. I’ll eat when I get home.”

“It’s gonna be completely cold and, like, congealed by then.”

“The fries are better when they’re cold anyway.”

Space! Alien! Gideon was gonna have to put together a conspiracy board. 

“You want some of my shake?” 

Harrow blinked at her, the no, obviously spelled out clearly in her eyes. Streetlights reflected in those inky irises like a dissatisfied starfield.

Still, Gideon set it down in the cupholder between them, and when she woke up after dozing through most of the rest of the drive, she was pretty sure there was less of it left, and a trace of muted plum lipstick not completely wiped clean from the straw. 

Chapter Text

Gideon’s alarm went off way too early. She rolled over and snoozed it, spending the ensuing five minutes reminding herself that she’d set that alarm on purpose . For reasons . 

She showed up at the rink, this time finishing her coffee before stepping inside, and changed into her skates. It was quiet. Not even Crux was puttering around yet, but soon Gideon could make out the slicing, scraping sound of metal on ice. 

Harrow didn’t notice her at first, so Gideon stood by the bleachers and watched. Harrow had already worked herself up to a sweat, and she was crossing the ice, taking and retaking jumps, getting more height sometimes, or a sturdier landing. Her face never betrayed anything beyond its usual pinched stoicism, and Gideon wondered if she ever smiled like the other skaters did, when she performed for a crowd. 

Finally, starting to feel like a creep, Gideon coughed, and Harrow turned her skates abruptly, skidding to a stop. 

“What are you doing here?”

Gideon stepped through the waist high gate and let her momentum carry her a few feet onto the ice. “I figure if you’re putting in extra hours, I can too. If we don’t want to make complete asses of ourselves when the season starts, anyway.”

Harrow was skeptical, which looked on her face very similar to perturbed. “You’re volunteering to put in more time?”

“Yeah, I mean… I think it would help? I figure I could watch you and then try to do what you do. Like, you teach me the individual stuff so I don’t look like a total goober next to you, and Aiglemene keeps us working on the pairs stuff.”

Peering at her a long moment as Gideon resisted the urge to squirm, Harrow finally said, “Okay.” She took off, slow at first, nodding her head for Gideon to follow. “Try and keep up.”

---

Aiglamene took the news that Harrow and Gideon would be running their own training sessions in the mornings with a resigned harrumph, leaning on the barrier, her bones all-but-audibly creaking. She wasn’t about to get up early when she was already staying up late to train them after the rink’s business hours, but she wasn’t going to deny that more time skating together could only help their chances of pulling off this harebrained scheme. (“It’s not harebrained. It’s a bold solution,” Harrow had said. To which Aiglamene replied optimistically, “It’s only bold if it works, Harrowhark. Until then it’s idiocy.”)

They were rounding the second hour of practice, running through a series of synchronized jumps, when Harrow took a landing at just the wrong angle, ankle buckling under her and the rest of her crashing to the ice. In an instant Harrow wasn't the controlled lines and solid muscle Gideon knew her to be; she was something breakable. Gideon stumbled in an attempt to get to her, and ended up on her knees next to Harrow, who was, of course, already getting up, scowling at the interruption. Gideon breathed a sigh of relief. As soon as she was back on her feet, Aiglamene shouted “Nope! Off.”

“It’s nothing,” Harrow said, but even Gideon could tell it wasn’t. She was putting on a brave face, but when she put weight on the ankle her whole body stiffened. She tried another tack. “We’ve got another hour.”

“Sounds like a chance for Gideon to get some one-on-one coaching, and for you to rest that ankle so we have some chance you’ll be okay to skate tomorrow.” 

Harrow hated it, but she knew an injury could spell disaster more permanently than any Figure Skating Association or Whatever barring her from competition. She sat on the bleachers.

Aiglamene had Gideon run through a short routine, combining elements to work on her transitions. Harrow's eyes were on her; Gideon could feel them like an itch at the back of her neck. On her third pass, everything clicked--her pacing, the length of her strides, jumps and landings and spins, all coming together--and maybe it was that earned exhaustion layered over the satisfaction of a newly mastered skill that made Gideon feel punchy. Whatever it was, as she passed by the plexiglass separating her from Harrow,  she made eye contact, and--for some incomprehensible reason--she winked. Harrow didn’t react in any way Gideon could see before she was out of sight again. What sort of reaction was she hoping for?

It wasn’t long before Aiglamene called it quits for the night, opting to end on whatever high note was left available to them. Gideon glanced at Harrow, still perched on the bleacher with her ankle up, and Gideon gave her a little wave before heading to the locker room. 

She unlaced her scuffed up rental skates, kicking them off and laughing at herself. Harrow was not a person to have a crush on. She was someone to flirt with because it irritated her, and Gideon was horrified to realize she didn't really want to irritate her--not like that anyway. Like, it was definitely still funny to see her face scrunch up at a well placed pun, or watch her silently fume when Gideon held something higher than she could reach, or--Jesus. This was a terrible idea, probably only brought on because Gideon was, lamentably, a sucker for girls who were a little bossy, and because she'd hardly had contact with anyone outside of work these last few weeks. Gideon was shaking her head, opening her locker in hopes of finding a clean towel, when Harrow’s voice pierced the babbling in her brain.

“Griddle.”

Harrow, still in her skates, still a little stiff on the one ankle, approached Gideon. She was a few inches taller like this--still shorter than Gideon but not by as much--and something tightened in Gideon’s chest when their faces were almost level. 

Harrow pulled her down the necessary remaining degrees and--holy shit--kissed her. Lips, dry from the cold, crashed together and shorted out Gideon’s higher brain functions for several uncountable seconds. Hands gripped at the back of her neck as warm puffs of air hit her cheek.

Harrow pulled away, panting shallow breaths, and this close Gideon could see the pupils in those near-black irises were blown wide. Without thinking, Gideon leaned forward to follow that retreating mouth, and at some point when she was not paying attention, her hands had come to rest on Harrow’s waist, just under her ribs. Their hands had been on each other for the better part of the evening, so this shouldn’t have been so significant, but Harrow felt suddenly hot against her cold fingers through the stretchy fabric, and Gideon wasn’t sure if she should pull away. She knew she didn’t want to.

Of course, her mouth was never especially timid. “Did you hit your head on that fall, or...?” She let one corner of her mouth lift in a grin that was less off-kilter than she felt, and Harrow glared back, her eyes burning like coals--and nope, only a Harrow in full control of her faculties could scowl like that. Gideon worried, just a little, that she would make an honest attempt to break her neck, or maybe produce a knife from her sleeve, but instead she pressed her mouth to Gideon’s again, which proved only metaphorically deadly. 

Their lips parted against one another this time, and Harrow’s tongue sought out hers. It was a jolt of electricity through her jaw and down her spine, pinning Gideon in place. Harrow squeezed the back of her neck with both hands, like a weight that chained Gideon to the floor, hot as hell and brain-meltingly weird.

Gideon let her own hands wander, slipping down until they found Harrow’s hips and squeezed, and that made Harrow sigh, a little needy, a little--frustrated?--against Gideon’s mouth. Harrow’s hands fell away from her neck, and then they were on Gideon’s stomach, pushing her backwards until she hit the row of lockers and they crashed together again. 

Harrow’s hands kept moving until they slipped under her shirt, and her fingers, unlike her hips still in Gideon’s grip, were freezing, like tendrils of ice creeping over her skin. 

Gideon reached out to cup Harrow’s jaw, pulling her in for another searching kiss, like maybe the answer to what the fuck was going on was in her spit, and while that option was being explored Harrow’s fingers slipped under Gideon’s sports bra, shoving it up and out of the way and--fuck, pressing one icy thumb to her nipple. Gideon groaned into Harrow’s mouth, and Harrow squeezed both her tits in her cold little hands, the heat it shot through Gideon’s belly more than enough to make up for the chill.

“Holy shit,” Gideon breathed, breaking the kiss. “What--”

“Shut up unless you want me to stop,” Harrow interrupted, waiting a long, charged moment before shoving Gideon’s shirt until it was bunched up over her tits too, and Harrow’s mouth descended on one, her teeth grazing areola and then pinching the hard nub of nipple with an electric, measured viciousness. 

Gideon sucked in a breath through her teeth and croaked out, “Yes, ma’am.” Harrow’s hands were warming against her skin and making their way down the lines of Gideon’s abdomen. One arm curled around her waist, and Harrow’s other hand dropped between her legs, pressing up against Gideon through her leggings. 

“Fuck,” Gideon said, because when you got right down to it, she was no good at keeping her mouth shut. Luckily Harrow did not seem to take issue with it, and only rubbed Gideon through her clothes while her mouth left a trail of sucking, bruising kisses from one breast to the other.

Gideon shifted more of her weight on the lockers, chasing Harrow’s touch. It was firm, not teasing by any stretch, but with the fabric in the way it was still maddening. Harrow’s forehead rested on Gideon’s sternum. “You’re something else on the ice, Griddle,” she said, not looking up, her voice rough and low in a way Gideon hadn’t heard before, and good Lord that was almost more overwhelming than the hand between her legs.

Gideon did consider responding with something suitably smart-assed, but Harrow’s fingers slid under Gideon’s waistband and she was being touched exactly where she needed to be, so instead she uttered something along the lines of, “nmmfph.”

Gideon was wet, slicking up Harrow’s fingers as they slid through her folds, merciless. Curses and moans fell from Gideon’s throat like an overfilled pitcher, each pass of Harrow’s hand another drop spilling over. Harrow paused, and Gideon almost had time to come to her senses, but then her leggings were being tugged down her thighs, and Harrow was touching her again, her wet fingers sliding further now, entering her and curling like they had one purpose, guided like missiles to take Gideon apart. 

“ Fuck yes, Harrow, please--” A mouth was on hers, swallowing whatever she was going to say, sharp tongue probing, sharp white teeth catching her lip and biting, and those fingers--two now? Three? Gideon couldn’t say--thrusting into her relentlessly. 

Her legs were shaking, thighs tense with the effort of holding her up and rocking down against the digits inside her. Distantly, she wondered again, what the fuck? but the answer did not seem especially important up against the coiling heat in her gut. Answers were a concern for future Gideon. 

Gideon couldn’t see Harrow’s face because she was looking down, watching her own hand disappear into the dark, red-tinged patch of hair between Gideon’s thighs. Each graze of her palm lit up Gideon’s clit like a Christmas tree, flickering through her insides and down to her toes. Harrow inside her--and fuck , it was Harrow inside her, like a spear, burying herself--was too much, and in that delirious moment she wanted Harrow to stay and set up shop and just keep being too much until Gideon crumbled to pieces on the gross locker room floor. 

So of course, Harrow pulled out, left Gideon empty and clenching around nothing. 

“H--” was all Gideon managed, and then Harrow’s spindly fingers returned, surgical and brutal on Gideon’s clit, until they wrenched an orgasm from her like a defense mechanism, like the death throes of an animal with its throat in the jaws of something massive and inescapable. Gideon gripped Harrow’s shoulder, probably too hard, but she couldn’t be expected to think while her mind was whiting-out and Harrow was letting out this breathy, almost awed little “oh...”

Gideon collapsed entirely against the lockers, ignoring the jab of a combination lock cozying up to her kidney. Before she caught her breath she was reaching out, pulling Harrow to her again, pulling their mouths together, fed and still starving. She was rewarded with a tiny moan, and Gideon ate it up too, her hands falling to the backs of Harrow’s shoulders, finding the opening in her leotard and tugging--

Harrow didn’t freeze so much as go limp. Her hands fell away from Gideon’s middle and she stepped back, out of her reach in the ensuing hesitation. The air was heavy, damp from the showers that constantly dripped unless you cut off the water completely. That and the post-orgasmic fog flooding her limbs made Gideon feel like she was moving and thinking through sludge, but Harrow was still quick. She backpedaled in her skates, on her sore ankle, without missing a beat, disappearing down the row of lockers and out the door before Gideon recovered the brain-power to pull her leggings back up. 

Maybe she should have chased after her. Maybe if she’d caught her and just asked “what the fuck was THAT, Nonagesimus?” Harrow would’ve said something back-handed and believable like “I admit I think you’re moderately attractive, Griddle, but that doesn’t mean I want to cuddle afterward,” or “It’s not you, it’s Coriane in her sparkly leotard and bouncy blonde hair, so kindly don’t speak and remind me you’re not her." And it would have been--fine. Maybe they'd have a little skating-partners-with-benefits thing going on, and Gideon would still be on track to peace out in a year, no worse for wear. 

But Gideon didn't go after her, and Harrow hadn't even looked back.

Chapter Text

There was no answer when Gideon knocked on the door to Harrow’s office. Alone in the locker room, Gideon had sat on a bench and taken a quiet, exceedingly brief moment to freak out, because what else do you do when the mean girl you've kinda got a crush on pins you against some lockers, rocks your world, and then skitters off like a spooked rodent? After the what does it all mean existential crisis speedrun, she went through the paces of her post-practice routine: Shower, change, then stretch--except Harrow had left, apparently. 

So now she stood in front of the door, staring dumbly at it like it could tell her something. Before she could think better of it, Gideon pulled out her phone and shot off a text.

          [22:05]: So is that our new cool-down routine…? ;)

She watched the screen, imagining Harrow rolling her eyes as she read it, telling her not to use one (extremely hot) locker room encounter as an excuse to slack off. 

There was no response, and Gideon left. Before climbing into her jeep she tried:

          [22:12]: I mean I’m not complaining

          [22:13]: hows your ankle?

Still nothing when she got home. Gideon started and deleted a dozen messages before she finally sent off the least embarrassing one and went to bed.

          [22:40]: why did you leave?

Gideon slept like shit. She kept jostling herself awake from half-dreams and rolling over, unable to keep from checking her phone, bright screen in the dark room like an axe to the forehead. There was never a new message.

When she finally woke up for real it was with a beam of sunlight peeking through her bedsheet curtains and landing squarely in her eyes, which meant--fuck. 

If the sun was out, then she was already late. She tried to check her phone--for the time, now, not--whatever--and it was dead. Fuck! 

Gideon plugged it in and tore through her apartment, pulling on fresh(-ish) clothes and brushing her teeth and combing her fingers through her hair where it stood up at odd angles. 

When she got to the rink, it was almost opening time, and Harrow was nowhere to be seen. Gideon ended up busy for half the morning with a busted sink in the men’s room, and it wasn’t until just after noon, as she was hauling a few bags of trash out to the dumpster, that she finally saw Harrow. She was leaning on the backside of the building--wearing black jeans and boots instead of athletic leggings with her subtly darker black sweater this time--staring out into nothing. 

Gideon offloaded her rustling, smelly cargo and approached like someone trying to get within petting distance of a skittish cat.  

“Hey,” Gideon said, and in the fraction of a moment it took Harrow to pull together her usual pinched disdain, there was something else: a condemned sort of blankness.  

“Griddle.” There was nothing to it, not even irritation. Gideon had gotten so used to her comparatively bare-bones practice make-up--little more than (still way too elaborately applied) eyeliner--that the matte black tint of her lips made it harder than usual to not look at her mouth. 

“Sorry I missed this morning. My phone died, so my alarm didn’t go off, but I’ll--”

“You don’t need to make excuses.” Harrow said flatly.

Gideon cocked her head to the side. “Excuses? No, Harrow, I meant what I said about training in the mornings.”

“I didn’t ask you to. It’s not part of the agreement.”

“So?”

“I won’t stop you from putting in extra hours, but I also won’t expect more than I ask. If I see fit to change the specifics of our arrangement I’ll let you know.”

“Okay,” said Gideon. Harrow was so good at changing the air around her, making it feel like there was distance, or more accurately like the space between her and anyone else was made up of clear plexiglass. She was right there, but touching her wasn’t even something that occurred to the observer.

Still, Gideon looked at her, and when the silence stretched a hair longer than it had to, she said, “Do you want to talk about last night?”

Harrow looked away from her an instant, eyes flickering past Gideon and to the left, but the only thing there was her big stupid house. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Gideon laughed, a single frustrated chuckle in the back of her throat. “Really? Nothing at all?”

Apparently not in the mood to back down (when was she ever?), Harrow said, “You don’t need to come to me for stretches anymore. You can work them out on your own.”

Gideon took the words like a body blow, rolling one shoulder back and studying Harrow for a moment before saying, “You’re a real piece of work, Nonagesimus,” and going back inside.

---

The next morning, Gideon did show up on time for morning practice, and Harrow only nodded at her. Her ankle was apparently better, or at least she was refusing to show any signs that it wasn’t. She instructed Gideon, corrected her mistakes, and never betrayed an emotion, good or bad. Gideon tried to provoke her. Tried to be dismissive, or obnoxious, or anything that might get a rise out of her, but Harrow would only respond with silence, or a curt “take the jump again.”

Regarding a comment from Harrow about hand placement in a spiral, Gideon tried, with a lascivious grin, “You certainly know where to place your hands,” and Harrow stopped. She looked to the ice at her feet, and didn’t move at all except for the shallow rise and fall of her chest.

“I’m here to skate. If you’re not, you can go.”

Gideon stopped trying to provoke her. And then it was three long weeks of steely, unresponsive Harrowhark, who bristled at the slightest hint of the locker room tryst, but otherwise approached each practice with a mechanical stoicism. They only worked on pairs elements in the evenings, which meant they only put hands on each other with Aiglamene in attendance, as if Gideon needed a chaperone, to what? Keep from copping a feel?

Day by day, they managed to piece together routines, one straightforward short program, and one more experimental free skate, until evening practice consisted almost entirely of running through them start to finish, on repeat until Gideon dreamt of it more nights than not. Even with Harrow closed off the way she was, they skated like their bodies kept up their own line of communication. Still, there were always hiccups. Sometimes it was the smallest misstep, Gideon falling briefly out of time, or Aiglamene asking for another pass at this jump or that throw. 

Gideon couldn’t say which full routine pass it was, other than being one of many attempts at the free skate--she’d stopped trying to count the first week--but it was different. She knew because she didn’t have to think; her feet knew where to be. Harrow’s body found its way to her arms like both of them were on a track, like this might as well be a recording, every move pre-determined and executed exactly as expected.

Except it wasn’t a recording, because Harrow’s face wasn’t closed off anymore. It was around the halfway point that Gideon recognized the glint of triumph in her eyes. Gideon landed the last jump, skating in front of Harrow to pull her into a final spin, the two of them careening with precision into their final pose: Harrow draped elegantly over Gideon’s knee. There was no denying it; that run had been perfect. 

If Gideon didn’t already know it, Harrow’s face would have told her. The dainty cupid’s bow of her mouth stretched into a thin, earnest smile, but the real giveaway was her eyes. They were wide and clear, like onyx polished by fine-grained awe, staring up at Gideon with an intensity that made her dizzy. 

When Harrow put her hand on the back of Gideon’s neck and hauled herself up, Gideon thought Harrow was going to kiss her right there, in front of God and Aiglamene, but instead she brought her lips close to Gideon’s ear and said, “Come straight to my office after this.”

Gideon's throat was dry. She nodded. Harrow let her go, and braced her hand on Gideon's knee to stand up. 

Aiglamene squinted at them. "Let's call it a night there," she said, turning away. "May as well quit while we're ahead." By the time Gideon had managed to regain her composure and stand up herself, all she saw was the back of her coach's head, bobbing with her stubborn, uneven gait out the door. 

Harrow was stepping off the ice, not looking back. Gideon watched her disappear into the hallway that led to her office. 

Gideon sat down on the bleachers, knocking back half her water bottle and unlacing her skates. She took a breath. Another. And then got up. Not bothering with shoes--they were in the locker room, and Harrow had said to go straight to her office--Gideon padded across the floor, making no attempt to dodge the intermittent puddles of melted ice that soaked unpleasantly into her socks.

By the time she reached Harrow's door, Gideon had half convinced herself that Harrow was just being weirdly intense about maybe restarting their stretching sessions, but when Harrow let her in, her focus was just as intent, just as glittering, as it had been on the ice. The desk hadn't been moved, and there was no yoga mat in sight. 

The door shut behind her, and Harrow put her hands on Gideon’s stomach, gripping like talons even through her shirt. 

It was like being on the ice, Harrow's body guiding hers--backing her into the desk, the ancient wood creaking against her weight--Gideon doing everything in her power to be where Harrow needed her, where Harrow put her, and it was nothing like it, because this wasn't a routine, practiced and polished and predictable. She didn't know that Harrow's fingers were going to curl around the back of her head and tug at her hair, letting Harrow's mouth fall on her exposed throat. She didn't know Harrow would press her hip to Gideon's pelvis, angled just so on the edge of the desk.

Gideon's arms braced behind her on its surface, half because she was fairly certain she would topple over if she gave in to the urgency driving her forward, and half because, as much as she wanted to touch her, it felt so much more important to let Harrow have unfettered access to whatever she wanted without Gideon's stupid limbs getting in her way.

Gideon cursed as a thigh jutted itself between her legs, and Harrow caught the sound with her mouth, pressing her tongue into Gideon's and dragging the hard, subtle slope of leg against her cunt.

Harrow's hands slid over Gideon's shoulders, her chest, a hot-but-not-hot- enough friction over her ribs, skin still barred from skin by the long-sleeved shirt Gideon had worn for practice. Harrow hooked a finger into the waistband of Gideon's leggings and tugged once, letting the elastic snap back. 

"Take these off." 

And fuck , she barely even sounded like Harrow. It was a command, not a request, which was normal, but her breathing was about as labored as Gideon's, and there was a hopeful, hungry lilt to the words that sounded like please. 

She stepped away, which sucked, but it gave Gideon the space she needed to do as she was told, peeling the leggings (and underwear--in for a penny) off each leg with a breathless speed that couldn't hope to be sexy. 

But apparently it turned Harrow's crank, because just like that she was back in Gideon's space, pressed between her thighs and nudging one ankle, then the other with her foot, coaxing Gideon's legs further apart.

Her hand slithered into the space between them, palming Gideon's naked vulva like a piece of fuzzy fruit. 

"Good girl," she said, and Gideon would've been well within her rights to black the fuck out, because after dropping that bomb, Harrow dropped to her knees. 

"Fuck," Gideon said, and was damn proud of her eloquence. 

Harrow's short fingernails pressed little crescents into Gideon's thighs, and she ducked forward, tilting her head up and pressing her mouth--almost chastely --to the point where pubic mound met labia. Gideon hadn't thought about the fact that Harrow's eyes were closed until they opened and looked up at her, and it was lucky that the desk was there to prop her up. Harrow's lips were warm, her breath was hot and tickling, and Harrow was watching her squirm.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Harrow,” Gideon muttered, her knuckles going white on the edge of the desk. “You’re so gorgeous.”

There was the slightest little furrow in that dark, carefully pencilled brow, and Harrow’s eyes drifted shut again. “Shhh,” she breathed, the air curling between Gideon’s legs, the lurch of need traveling up her cunt. 

And then it was Harrow’s tongue--finally--sliding in the slick seam of Gideon, grazing her clit and opening her up. Gideon didn’t cry out, only breathed, let herself take in every detail: the drag of it, the slow build of rhythm, the barely-there sigh from Harrow, an impossibly delicate moan that Gideon could only just hear over the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. 

She absolutely could have stood there, thighs quivering, until the building fell down around them. It wasn’t enough to get off, not yet, but it didn’t matter. She absolutely could not take her eyes off Harrow, eyes drifted shut again, half her face obscured by the swell of Gideon’s mound and looking, for all the world, like she was at peace . 

Gideon was terrified it would spoil the moment, but her arm moved of its own volition, and her hand came to rest on Harrow’s head, her thumb stroking with reverent gentleness at her hairline. 

Instead of recoiling, Harrow groaned and surged forward, her mouth opening wider, her tongue covering its wet pink terrain in one fell swoop. She sucked lightly at Gideon’s clit, and she must have pulled her fingers off of Gideon’s left thigh because now they were teasing at her opening, pressing just until Gideon’s hips moved to chase her and then withdrawing. 

“Please--please--Harrow--” Apparently satisfied, Harrow didn’t make her wait anymore. Two fingers slide inside, stroking at the walls of her cunt with sugary sweet agonizing slowness. Harrow’s mouth picked up speed to make up for it, her head bobbing in and out from Gideon’s light grip with the effort.    

At the third finger, Gideon let out a helpless shout, and she had to wrench her eyes back open because fuck she wanted to see this. Harrow was downright serene, even with the light sheen of sweat on her forehead, even with her fingers working in Gideon faster, her tongue rolling over her clit with rising, undeniable intent.

“Ahh--fnngh,” Gideon croaked out, letting the hand on Harrow’s head fall back to the edge of the desk, clutching it like a life preserver. “I’m close,” she said, with no mind to whether or not it was obvious. 

Harrow’s mouth didn’t stop and her fingers didn’t still, but her eyes fluttered open, staring up at Gideon like she wanted to see, too, and that did it. Gideon collapsed in on herself, like Harrow was hollowing her out, sucking her fucking dry and--oh fuck , not letting up. 

Her touch was unrelenting, although it grew gentler through the aftershocks, teasing swipes of tongue on over-stimulated flesh, her fingers slipping out. It never actually stopped, and the drowsy pleasure of coming down began to blur with the alluring deja-vu feeling of winding up again. 

Fingers replaced mouth, moving in firm, fluid circles as Harrow turned her head to press sucking kisses to Gideon’s thigh. She worked her way up, pausing where thigh met hip. 

“Can you give me another one, Griddle?”

Gideon was nodding before she’d actually parsed the question, and then she groaned because Harrow pinched her swollen clit, dragging fingers down either side and making Gideon shudder down to her toes. She wasn’t quite sure how to feel about being called “Griddle” in this context, so she chose to take solace in the evidence that it was actually Harrow taking her apart in this ugly woodgrain office and not a lusty pod-person from one of her magazines.

“Yeah--yes,” Gideon finally choked out, " please .” 

It was only Harrow’s hands this time, Harrow’s hands on her and Harrow’s fucking black hole gravity well eyes staring up, her mouth and chin still shiny and wet. Harrow’s hands rattled her into pieces, until Gideon didn’t know what was holding her together other than her bones and the fact that she had to stay where she was, because it was where Harrow wanted her to be. 

When she tipped over the edge again, Gideon felt it behind her eyes, in her God-damned sinuses, until she was coming down and had to reach down and still Harrow's hand. It was too much, and if she let Harrow bring her off again her brain was going to ooze out her ears, which wouldn't do anyone any good. She probably needed a brain to skate.

“Holy shit,” she said, tugging at Harrow to coax her up. “I need a minute.” 

Standing, Harrow wiped at her mouth and chin with her sleeve, wrinkling her nose at the mess. Gideon smiled helplessly and pulled her closer. 

“You’ve got a little something right--” Gideon gestured illustratively, encompassing the entire bottom half of her face, “--here.”

“Shut up,” Harrow said, with profoundly unconvincing aggravation.

“Make me,” Gideon replied, and ducked her head to catch Harrow’s mouth with hers. Harrow squeaked, but she kissed back, searing hot and tasting like Gideon. 

Gideon made her own little sound, lower, breathier, but honestly just as embarrassing when she pulled Harrow flush against her, Gideon’s own bare thigh slotted between Harrow’s legs and just grazing--

“You should,” Harrow was saying as she slipped out of Gideon’s reach, face turned to search for something. She found it, and it turned out to be Gideon’s leggings, which she held out to her. “Put these on... before you--make a mess of my desk.”

Gideon started to protest--that damage was probably already done--but it was hard to feel reasonable when she was the one in the conversation not wearing pants, so she eventually took them and obliged her. 

When she got them on and leaned back on the desk, Harrow wasn’t within reaching distance anymore. She was standing next to the guest chair, picking at a busted seam in the old leather, making it worse.  

They stood there, Harrow not quite looking at her, until it was fairly obvious she wasn’t planning to close the distance between them again. 

Gideon scrubbed a hand over the back of her head, some confused guilt gathering to replace the dissipating lust in the pit of her stomach. "Not to look a gift horse in the, uh, mouth, but is this just…I don't know, a power play? Or are you fucking me as a reward for, like, skating good? It's--well I don't know if it's okay necessarily, although as carrot-vs-stick approaches go it certainly has its merits, but… you know I wouldn't just dip out on you now, right? If you don’t want to do this, you don’t--"

Her tone was clipped, the words rushing out with irritation. "You think I'm doing this to reward you?" 

"I mean… yeah? It's either that or you're really into it."

Her eyes widening, Harrow's face dropped like a poker player realizing mid-bluff that their losing hand is face up on the table. And that --

"Wait, this is for you? Harrow, if you're actually into me you have to tell me or it's entrapment."

Harrow gave her one chastising look for the remark and then closed her eyes. Her hands worked at her sides, squeezing into fists, the pad of her thumb brushing once over her knuckles. 

"It doesn't need to change anything," Harrow said, which was utterly ridiculous. It changed everything.

"Okay," Gideon said. Her heart was thudding in her chest, worse than it had with Harrow's head between her legs (a mental image which was not helping). "I--" she began, and that invisible plexiglass was surrounding Harrow again, materializing out of thin air. "I'm--fine. With it."

With some relief, Harrow said, "Good." And then her face closed off completely, like the lid of a casket before they lowered it into the ground. She said, "You should go."

"Go? But you didn't even--"

"It's late," Harrow said, rescuing Gideon from having to articulate that thought. It wasn't that late.

"Okay," Gideon said, and left.

Chapter Text

The next month was--better. Weird, but better than the weeks of skating with automaton-Harrow had been. 

No matter what Harrow said about “not changing anything,” whatever that meant, it had been different after the night in her office. First, she would crack tiny, satisfied smiles when she and Gideon pulled something off just right. Gideon's hand would linger on Harrow’s back as they got into position for one element or another, and she could swear that Harrow took an extra moment to let it stay there.

Maybe it was wishful thinking. Maybe it was progress.

She still clammed up when Gideon made any remark that hit a little too close to home re: the Locker Room Encounter or the Not-A-Stretching-Session Office Incident, so Gideon stopped bringing it up (even when Harrow left herself wide open for it, which really illustrated Gideon’s capacity for restraint). But she didn’t go running off the rink as soon as practice was over, and one week, after Gideon mentioned some stiffness in her shoulder, Harrow reinstated their nightly cool-down stretches. She was crystal clear that it would just be stretching, and Gideon couldn’t even bring herself to joke about disappointment in that regard. It was just nice having Harrow’s hands on her again. It was nice having someone who cared about whether she pushed herself too hard, even if she had her own reasons. She slept so much better with all the tension pulled carefully and methodically out of her body. 

Most incredibly, sometimes Harrow would just--talk. Not about anything, really, but Gideon would mention that the stoplight on 5th Street was out again, and Harrow would tell her about the time she got stuck behind someone for fifteen minutes because they refused to treat it as a four-way stop and just go already. Gideon would laugh, and Harrow would--if she was lucky--smile, and they would skate.

It was still a surprise when Gideon opened her locker one morning to find a pair of squeaky-leather-new black skates. Her usual rentals were nowhere to be seen, so she pulled out the usurpers and tipped each one upside-down. No spiders.

When she stepped on the ice, Harrow nodded approvingly. 

“Good, you found them.”

So they were a gift. “Happy birthday to me.”

“It’s not your birthday, Griddle.”

“Yeah, but no one ever remembers it anyway,” Gideon said with a shrug. She didn’t mean it to be self-pitying; it was just true. Such was the plight of holiday babies, especially holiday babies with deadbeat moms and absent dads. “How’d you get in my locker?”

“You haven’t changed your combination since you started here. I’ve known it since I was fifteen.”

Gideon took a second. Recalibrated. Sure, Harrow might have been rifling through her things for the last eight-or-so years. That was fine. Possibly 6-9-6-9 was not the uncrackable code she imagined it to be. 

“Well… thanks? They’re nice.” She assumed they were nice. They looked better than the beat-up beige things she’d been wearing up until now, at least. 

“Don’t thank me yet. We’ll have to break them in.”

“Did you book me a one-way ticket to blister-ville?”

Harrow pushed off with one foot, gliding closer to Gideon and inspecting the skates. “Afraid so, although I plan for it to be a round trip. I’ll need you in ship-shape in six weeks.”

“Why’s that?”

Harrow took a breath, her eyelashes threatening to graze the tops of her cheeks. 

“There’s a competition. National. Early season, relatively low-stakes, as much as anything official can be. I believe we can be ready.”

“Yeah?”

Harrow was close enough now that one of her skates--the same black leather, a little more worn from use, but matching nonetheless--slid into the space between Gideon’s. She stared down at them and said, “Yes.”

“Cool.”

 ---

“Hey,” said Gideon as she pulled her jacket back on in Harrow’s office one evening. Her limbs were pleasantly loose, and maybe it was the relaxation chemicals spreading over her brainstem that made her throw caution to the wind. “Am I, like, your girlfriend?”

Harrow faced away from her, rolling up the yoga mat, and Gideon could see the question shoot up her spine like it was a poison dart. Gideon winced, waving goodbye to those sweet, sweet endorphins.

“You’re my skating partner.”

“I may not know everything about this sport, but I’m pretty sure that some of our off-ice activities are not outlined in the Official Figure Skating Handbook.” 

“That was--” Harrow began, and what was she going to say? A mistake? (two mistakes) She didn’t finish, starting over instead. “We can’t afford to be distracted right now.” She stood and turned to face her, worrying at the collar of her sweater, pressing into the soft knit with her thumb. She met Gideon’s eyes. “ I can’t afford to be distracted.”

Gideon’s shoulders slumped. The set of Harrow's face was all but pleading with her not to push.

“I’m not trying to force any labels on you. I just want to know how you feel.” Gideon straightened back out, putting on what she hoped was an affable negotiation face. “Okay, we’re not girlfriends. That’s okay. Would you...want to be? Eventually? Is that on the table or not?”

Harrow’s cheeks pulled tight, pained, like there was something trapped behind her teeth. 

“Maybe that’s not a fair question, I’m sorry, I just--I like you, unfortunately. I think about you when you’re not around and I’m not any happier about it than you are, but in my defense--”

“Maybe,” Harrow cut in, and Gideon babbled for another second or two before it registered. 

“Maybe?”

“I...like you, too. Unfortunately.” 

Gideon was a dope, because she grinned at that gritted confession like it was a victory. It certainly felt like one. So did Harrow smiling back, tiny and helpless, before turning away. 

Gideon took Harrow by the wrist, coaxing her to turn back around. “Okay,” she said, sliding her fingers along Harrow’s palm and raising the knuckles to her lips. "I can work with maybe.” She kissed Harrow’s hand, watched her go a pleasing shade of red, and left.

---  

"--and concessions in the first and last hours of the day are negligible. It's hardly going to send us into a financial tailspin." Even hushed, Harrow's voice was sharp enough to cut through the open air of the rink. 

Marshall Crux's voice was lower, like a woodchipper trying to politely chew wet cement, but Gideon could make it out as she approached through the open door.  

"Travel and accommodations are already eating into our savings, Miss."

Harrow stood on the ice, the barrier positioned between them. "I am well acquainted with my finances, Crux. We're perfectly solvent, with prize-money on the way."

Crux ducked his head, deferring to her. 

"My concern in that regard--"

"I will not be altering the terms of the agreement. Without her, there is no prize money. Endorsements dry up if I don't compete, so I will kindly ask you to express your concern elsewhere.”

Crux began turning to leave, and Gideon ducked back behind the door frame. He never passed her, but soon Gideon heard the scraping whisper of Harrow’s skates on the ice, so he must have gone out through a side door. Gideon counted to thirty and made her way back in. 

Harrow was crossing the ice with her head down, not looking at her feet, but not looking at anything else in particular. She chewed at her naked bottom lip.  

“What’s up,” Gideon said, trying to make it sound more like an idle greeting than a question. She waited for Harrow to pass by, falling in stride beside her.  

Harrow looked at her sidelong, a shallow crease of unease circling her eyes and then flattening out into placid steeliness. 

“Starting next week, morning practice will be going an hour later, and evening will be starting an hour earlier.”

“While the rink is open?”

“We’re adjusting the hours to allow for more private ice time. And you don’t need to work your normal shifts anymore. From now until the competition I want you either training or resting. Crux and Nigenad can hold down your duties for the time being." ("You realize Ortus is maybe the only person Crux hates more than me, right?" "Irrelevant.") "Don’t worry about your paycheck. I’ll be paying out your time off as PTO.”

Gideon thought of pinching herself. “Since when do I get vacation time?”

“Since now. Are you complaining?”

“No--nope! From now until competition day I shall be at your disposal, my hibernal mistress.”

Harrow pursed her lips like she wanted to object, but instead she reached for Gideon’s arm, positioning it, adjusting her wrist. “Like this,” she said, and then held her own arm at the same angle. The scrape of their skates blent together until it sounded like one pair on the ice. 

Chapter Text

Three weeks out from competition, they took a tumble.

They’d stumbled or fallen or totally botched jumps before, of course, but other than the blip of the Ankle Incident (which was not the most dramatic thing to happen that evening, by Gideon’s measure at least), they’d always brushed themselves off and picked up where they left off. Quick recovery was a good skill for competition, Aiglamene had said.

But this time when Gideon lifted Harrow--bracing her first by the shin, Harrow’s arm on her shoulder, Gideon hefting her up until she sat on the heel of her palm, like they were a tall and narrow tower made up of two precarious stories--she couldn’t tell right away that it was off kilter. Gideon did not especially care for this lift, because it was tough to balance, and because Harrow couldn’t signal to her with a pointed squeeze of her fingers if something was wrong. She was too high, out of reach.

When she did realize the weight distribution was off, it was too late to abort, but Gideon tried anyway, shifting her weight to her back foot as she tried to bring Harrow down to a safer height--a controlled descent. That back foot betrayed her, sliding forward and up instead, and Gideon curled her arm around Harrow’s waist, pulling her in so that she wouldn’t hit the ice without something (someone) to cushion her. 

All of that might have been fine, except Gideon’s left arm, in a fit of instinctual desperation, reached out behind her, and then there was a momentary blinding shock of pain running up her wrist. 

It hurt bad enough that Gideon didn’t yell, didn’t curse like she might if she stubbed a toe or hit a coffee table shin-first. She grunted, her teeth gritted, hardly able to pull the breath back into her lungs. 

It might not have helped that Harrow--who Gideon had apparently not let go of--had come to rest on top of Gideon's ribcage. She wriggled her way out from under Gideon's arm, and then she was looking down at her with wide, panicky eyes. 

"Gideon!" She yelped, reaching out and taking her left hand, recoiling when Gideon hissed through her teeth. 

The pain subsided enough to think a moment later. "Oh," said Gideon, the back of her head resting on cool ice, raising the corner of her mouth. "So you do know my actual name."

Harrow let out a breath (relief?) and then planted her palm just under Gideon's collarbone, using it to push herself up onto her knees, making Gideon huff out a startled puff of air. 

"Are you all right?" Harrow asked, sounding maybe not quite as perturbed as she intended. 

"Yeah, I'm--" Gideon brought her hand up, attempting to flex it in and out of a fist and being rewarded with a sharp thrust of pain from knuckle to forearm "--fuck!"

"Let's have a look, Nav," called Aiglamene, in a tone that suggested she was resigned to the inconvenience.

When she inspected it, turning over and prodding at Gideon's wrist carefully--not to be confused with gently--Aiglamene declared it a moderate sprain. 

"No big deal, I'll grab some ice from the drink machine," Gideon said. It wasn't like hockey was an especially gentle sport. She'd had her fair share of bumps and bruises. 

"Wait," Harrow said, like that was all the explanation necessary, and darted out the door. 

Unbothered by the disappearance, Aiglamene chastised. "Don't catch yourself with your hands."

"I know, I know," Gideon said, fumbling to open her water bottle with one hand. "I just--panicked. If I hit the ice, whatever, I'm used to it, but," Gideon didn't like the way Aiglamene was studying her, so she looked down. "She trusts me to get her up in the air and back down safely. I wasn't thinking about me."

"I'd say you have to secure your own oxygen mask before you can worry about someone else's, but the fact is, when you're out there, you need to do both. The two of you need to move as a unit. If she's off-balance, you need to compensate. And you can't do that if you don't know where your God-damn limbs are."

Gideon sighed. “Point taken.”

Harrow returned with a small carrying case and an ice pack--a nice one with a layer of soft fabric to insulate one side and protect the skin. She held it out to Gideon.

“Ice your wrist for 20 minutes at a time, on and off. Here,” she said, pulling something from the case at her side. “You can use one of my wrist braces. There's a pocket to slide an ice pack inside to help with swelling and pain.”

Gideon took the brace, nodding approvingly. It was better than a sandwich bag full of drink machine ice. But still: “I’ve had a sprain before, Tastee-freez.”

Harrow sighed, unamused. “I’m sure you have, but you need to baby this one so it’s not giving you trouble in a few weeks. You must tell me if it worsens."

Both of them looked down to find Harrow cradling Gideon's hand in her own.

---

Over the next week, Harrow didn't let her practice any elements that might strain her wrist, even when Gideon thought some of the easier stuff would be doable with the brace. This resulted in shorter practice sessions instead of the longer ones Harrow had planned on, and Gideon found herself with a truly unreasonably amount of free time. 

It was early afternoon, three days into her not-a-vacation vacation, when she sent Harrow a text.

          [14:12]: u busy?

She stared at her phone for what must have been a full minute, and then threw it onto the bed, half-heartedly tidying her living room until she heard the notification chime. 

[14:16]: Do you need something?

          [14:16]: im bored

          [14:17]: you wanna hang out?

The minutes it took Harrow to reply were only mildly excruciating.

[14:25]: I don’t exist for your entertainment.

[14:26]: What did you have in mind?

She didn’t have anything in mind. She’d half expected Harrow to ignore her, or turn her down outright. 

          [14:28]: i assume netflix and chill is out of the question?

[14:29]: Correct.

[14:31]: But if you would like to watch something, I have recordings of gold-medal routines that could be instructional.

Gideon put down her phone and changed into a fresh pair of pants, a clean t-shirt (so what if it was the one that was a little too tight on her and made her arms look great?), and her old standby leather jacket. On her way out the door she sent:

          [14:41]: sounds like a blast. be there in 15

Harrow’s house wasn’t nearly as fancy on the inside as Gideon would have guessed. It was nice , certainly, but sparsely decorated, with some whole rooms empty, and others covered over in big white sheets, like no one even lived here most of the time.  

"You getting some work done, or..?"

"What?" Harrow looked at her like she was waiting for a clumsy punchline. 

"No I mean, what's with all the sheets and like… I don't know. I expected more Addams Family vibes, y'know?"

"Should I have a chandelier of skulls hung over the dining room?"

"I mean yeah, that would rule."

Harrow rolled her eyes, but the amusement was creeping in now. She was wearing her black denim pants again, the crow-black lipstick that Gideon’s eyes kept drifting back to, and black socks with little white skeleton feet (!) printed on them.

"The cost of upkeep on a four story house is considerable. It doesn’t make sense to keep all the rooms up, especially with Crux taking up residence in the guest house." (Guest house!). 

Gideon could not fathom having the problem of too much house . She regularly struggled to keep the leaky, drafty, square-foot-challenged roof over her own head. “Wait, four stories? It looks like three from the outside. This place got, like, secret rooms behind bookshelves and shit? Can I see ‘em?”

Harrow seemed to--wince? At that? “I didn’t bring you here to discuss architecture.”

Gideon raised her hands. “Okay, fine, sorry to cast aspersions on your haunted mansion. But if it’s so much work, why not sell it? Get yourself a spooky little witch hut or whatever?" 

"It belonged to my parents." Harrow said, and Gideon dropped it.

The room they ended up in--a study, maybe?--was at least a little more in line with Harrow's whole vibe. It was still spartan, but there was an ancient looking sofa, black and tastefully decrepit in that way that only stupidly expensive, stupidly old furniture was. An honest to God candelabra sat on a fittingly baroque end table--in case one of them needed to don a nightgown and make their escape into the night, presumably--and a desk, even older than the one in her office back at the rink, dark wood set with intricate filigree. On that desk was a delightfully anachronistic shitty old laptop (not that Gideon had any room to judge). 

Harrow took it and sat on the sofa, lifting it open and nodding her head for Gideon to join her. When Gideon settled in, a good, safe six inches of empty worn upholstery fabric between them, Harrow set the computer down on the coffee table in front of them and tapped once on the trackpad. 

Bedazzled skaters danced on the small screen, Harrow occasionally pointing out an impressive move, or an imperceptible error that nearly lost them their medal, and Gideon followed along with half her brain. 50% seemed reasonable, since sometimes Harrow’s hand, in her compulsion to make sure Gideon took note of some foot placement or other, rested lightly on her leg and squeezed, just over her knee. If anything that made it harder for Gideon to focus on the screen, but she wasn’t about to point that out.

The videos played one after the other, undoubtedly compiled by Harrow in some significant order, but after the first few, they all sort of blended together. Harrow’s comments grew less frequent, sometimes waiting for Gideon to notice something especially extraordinary before she explained what exactly made it extraordinary. When they had first sat down, Harrow’s back was arrow straight, her shoulders pulled back, but she relaxed as the playlist continued. Eventually she tucked her feet up under her legs, and a few routines later her elbow found its way to the sofa armrest, her head resting in her hand. Rounding the two hour mark, after a solid ten minutes of no Harrow commentary, Gideon snuck a glance to find her curled on her side, head now pillowed by her bent arm, her skeleton-clad toes brushing Gideon’s thigh--asleep.  

Gideon--carefully--retrieved her jacket from where she left it on the other armrest and draped it over Harrow’s lower half, afraid that if she tried any higher than that it would startle her awake. She leaned forward and tapped the laptop, pausing the video of Whoever-and-Whoever at the International Grand Prix of Somewhere. 

Harrow’s face did not look terribly cherubic in sleep. The shallow wrinkle of worry still made its home between her eyebrows, and her breathing came in even, staccato little bursts, like her body didn’t like sleep and only wanted to get it over with already.

Gideon managed to extricate the ratty looking velvet throw pillow out from behind her back, setting it where the back of the sofa met the armrest and leaning back. She cracked an eye open at Harrow again, and dozed off. 

Shrill beeping woke her up approximately five seconds later. Harrow jerked awake, her toes jabbing Gideon in the leg and then recoiling, slithering out from under the jacket. Gideon glanced at her phone and--oh, it had actually been about an hour.

“Wh--” Harrow started, and retrieved her own phone to turn off the alarm. “Why did you let me sleep?” she asked, with a tone like she would have preferred Gideon pouring ice water on her face over letting her get a little rest.

Her short hair was flattened on the side that had been cradled by her elbow, and she was still blinking away the afternoon nap bleariness. 

“Because you looked cute.” 

She scowled, which, it had to be said, was also extremely cute. 

“Don’t let me do that again,” Harrow said. (Again? Like this might not be a one-time deal?) She shook her head like she was trying to clear it. “We should eat something before practice,” Harrow said, standing and running fidgety hands through her hair.

“You wanna order pizza?"

Harrow regarded her with a look that said don't be stupid , and when Gideon continued staring back stupidly, she said, "We don't have time, and more significantly, pizza is a post-competition food."

"I did not get that memo, although to be fair if I had I would have tossed it in the dumpster, so maybe it's best that you didn't waste the paper."

"Do I even want to know what you've been eating these last weeks?"

"Probably not. But okay, no pizza. What's on the menu?"

Harrow stood up, nodding for Gideon to follow her. "Come on."

The menu consisted of a plain chicken breast with rice and some remarkably lethargic vegetables, pulled out of Harrow’s freezer in pre-portioned single-serving tubs and reheated in the microwave. Harrow stood, leaning against the counter, holding her lunch with one hand as she ate, so Gideon followed suit, leaning her shoulder on the cool humming steel of the refrigerator. 

"Harrow, is this even seasoned?"

"If you don't like it, you're welcome to get your own lunch."

It wasn't even bad, really, just needlessly, aggressively bland. 

"Do you have salt and pepper at least? Or is that, like, the first step on a path to temptation and sin?"

Harrow did not dignify that with a response, only opened a cabinet to reveal to shakers, dusty and shaped like--what else--little skulls.

"Let no one say you’re not committed to your aesthetic." Gideon helped herself to several generous shakes of some roughly stone-age salt and pepper. 

Harrow picked at her chicken, taking small, skeptical bites, even though it was her food and her idea to eat it. “Of the things I want to project to the world, ‘approachable’ is not one of them. An appreciation for the morbid and macabre helps.”

Gideon’s tongue worked at a piece of green bean between her teeth. “Okay, sure, but--correct me if I’m wrong--I don’t think you have people over too often, so these shakers are just for you. And I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the adorable bone socks do not exactly make my blood run cold with terror.”

Harrow’s toes curled like they wanted to sink into the tile. “What is your point?”

“You like this spooky nonsense, and not just because you think it scares people away.”

“It does scare people away.”

“Sure, sure--” Gideon gestured with her fork, waving it dismissively. “--but you’re not as utilitarian about it as you pretend to be. I mean, there’s a poison dart frog element of signaling to it, but you also just think skeletons are neat.”

The already sharp angles of Harrow’s face grew sharper. “We can’t all have personalities that revolve around biceps and obscene magazines--that you should not be bringing to work, by the way.”

“Okay, first of all, you shouldn’t be snooping in my locker, so that’s on you, and second, those magazines have very informative articles that I read on my lunch break, and third, I’m not making fun of you, Harrow. I think it’s nice that you have an interest in something not directly related to your job. It’s--if you’ll forgive the insult, my gelid bone empress--humanizing.”

Harrow did look a little insulted, but it deflated into something approaching acceptance as Gideon stared back, unable to keep the smile from tugging at her cheeks. 

They were early for practice that evening, and Harrow took it upon herself to inspect Gideon’s wrist while they waited for their coach. 

They sat on the bleachers, Gideon one step higher, facing each other. Harrow set the brace next to her and began prodding Gideon’s forearm, working her way down until she reached her knuckles. She tested mobility, occasionally asking “Any pain? And now?” to which Gideon mostly answered no. There was some stiffness as her hand was pushed back, but it felt more like the kind that needed to be worked out than coddled. 

Gideon watched Harrow’s face. She’d cleaned away her lip color and reapplied her eye-makeup to the simpler, less-fussy lines she wore for practice. It was what Gideon was used to, but after a whole afternoon spent with Harrow wearing her full daytime vampire look, it felt like seeing her naked. Gideon let her hand drop from Harrow’s careful grasp.

When she looked up, Gideon drifted forward, like falling, and pressed her mouth to Harrow’s. After a startled, not entirely displeased little sound, and several seconds of definitively not pulling away, Harrow put her hands on Gideon’s shoulders and pushed herself back.

“We shouldn’t--”

“Why, Harrow? I’m not suggesting we take the rest of the day off to roll around in a field and make googly eyes at each other. It’s not a distraction. If anything it’s more distracting to want to kiss you and not , so--”

Harrow leaned in this time, squeezing her eyes shut and gripping Gideon around the neck. She pressed their lips together like maybe if she did it hard enough she could get it all out at once, like it was the last time and it had to count. 

When she pulled away, dazed, then stricken, Gideon leaned in and kissed her again, once and quick, just proof-of-concept before she stood up and nodded towards the ice. 

“Come on, Ice Queen. Clock’s tickin’.”

Chapter Text

“Don’t get any ideas,” Harrow said, circling Gideon with the tape measure. When they’d arrived for morning practice, she’d asked (ordered) Gideon to strip down to her leggings and sports-bra (“Won’t you get a better measurement if we ditch the pants entirely?” “Just do as I ask.”)

“Nothing but wholesome, G-rated thoughts up here.” Gideon tapped at the side of her head as the tape slipped around the width of her hips. It was almost true, even. She let Harrow take her measurements--partially because the only other option was the person actually making the costumes, and Gideon was not about to let Marshall Crux get anywhere near her 1.) in general and 2.) armed with an implement of strangulation--and it was all very above-board. If Gideon let her mind wander to the thought of the measuring tape--now around her thigh--being wound around her wrists instead, behind her back maybe, and Harrow tugging her limbs until her joints protested, then it was fleeting. Just a blip.

“So what are we gonna be wearing? Will there be sequins? Oh, will you have one of those little skirts ?”

Harrow arched an eyebrow at her. “Bodysuits for both of us, and if you can’t guess the color you’re even more of an oaf than I give you credit for.” She drew Gideon’s arm up to measure from shoulder to wrist. “And I give you considerable credit in that department.”

"Always so generous," Gideon said, turning when Harrow tapped her shoulder-blade. 

---

"Do you have any footage of your own routines?" 

Gideon rested one socked foot on the coffee table in Harrow's study, leaning back against the ancient sofa. Harrow eyed the appendage skeptically, but didn't comment.

"You can find them online."

Of course she could, but when one looked up "Harrowhark Nonagesimus" on Youtube, the first several results were clickbait-y trash with titles like "Tragedy on the Ice" and "Teen Ice Princess: Victim or Cold-Blooded Killer?" Gideon had clicked on one out of morbid curiosity, but the narrator was spewing hot unfiltered bullshit right off the bat, and she made it maybe three minutes before closing out the tab. Talking trash about Harrow was Gideon’s job, and she at least had the decency to do it to her face.

“Yeah, but I want to see the ones you’re proud of. Real Harrowhark vibes, so I know what exactly we’re shooting for.”

“The judges don’t score based on vibes .”

“I’ve seen enough inspiring sports movies to know that’s not true.” 

Harrow sighed, but she leaned forward to grab her laptop. Her eyes narrowed as she pushed up on the trackpad, but eventually she found something that would apparently suffice.

The video she brought up featured a Harrow not much noticeably younger than the one next to her, making her way onto the ice in a bodysuit that was solid black until it split into shimmering onyx, cut in the shape of feathers--or flames--that rose over her upper arms and chest. Her shoulders, neck, and that pronounced collarbone covered only by shear, flesh-tone mesh half a shade lighter than her skin. The video cut to a close up, and her made-up face--dark gray fading to black on her eyes that made the sclera stand out like a white hot flame in a deep pit, a pale tint that made her cheekbones more devastating than they already were, and a lip shade that blended with her skin so well that you could not help but be drawn inescapably back to the burning eyes--was stoic, sharp, like a knife’s edge on skin. Her hair--longer then, Gideon remembered with a suddenness that puffed out in a quick burst through her nostrils--was pulled back into a tightly coiled bun with a black ribbon. 

“My short program,” Harrow narrated as they both waited for the routine to begin, “had gone less than perfectly. I needed to execute my free skate flawlessly in order to have any hope of placing.”

“Got it, the stakes are high,” Gideon said, imagining, for some reason, that this was like a movie. “But you’re good under pressure.”

Harrow watched her a moment, unreadable, and her eyes returned to the screen. Gideon’s followed.

She was stunning, of course. That was Harrow’s default setting on the ice, and it had only become more true the more that Gideon understood exactly what she was doing, how much work went into that effortless, stone-faced routine. It looked for all intents and purposes like any of the routines she’d caught glimpses of in the mornings before work. Elegantly performed, but not remarkable in any way that wasn’t easily chalked up to simply being Harrowhark.

Somewhere around the two-minute mark, Harrow transitioned from a wide spiral to a spin, crouched and rising and then--it wasn’t clear what happened, what fault in the ice or twinge of muscle had thrown her off balance, but Harrow’s skate came out from under her, and her hand, without another option, shot out, meeting the ice in an attempt to regain her balance. Instead it interrupted her momentum, and that was it: she teetered over, hip hitting the ice as one leg extended upward. It wasn’t even a big, magnificent, worrying fall. It was a stupid, unlucky mistake. It probably didn’t even hurt.

Gideon’s eyes flickered to Harrow beside her, who seemed entirely placid, aside from a working muscle at the hinge of her jaw.

Harrow in the video sat on the ice for a few seconds--five, six, stretching out impossibly as her musical accompaniment continued without her. The commentators--whom Gideon had until this point largely tuned out--began speculating that the fall was worse than it seemed. Finally, Harrow stood up. Her eyes were wide now, the white heat of them flaring in her shadowed face. She reached up with both her hands and pulled at the ribbon in her hair. It came loose, and the hair with it, tumbling from the bun and falling in uneven waves to frame her face. She dropped the ribbon next to her.

“Wait, isn’t that a big no-no? Leaving stuff on the ice?” Gideon had learned this when she asked about wearing her lucky shades during the competition. The answer was no for, quote, “a myriad of reasons, chief among them that in the likely event that they fall off onto the ice we would be docked points and potentially disqualified.”

“It is,” Harrow said, still watching the screen. 

Gideon watched too, as Harrow from the video took one more breath, and then sprinted. She tore across the ice like something chased her--or more like she was running something down. Gideon wondered if she was just trying to make a quick getaway, and then Harrow launched herself into the air, rotating three times and landing on her back foot--perfect, steady, god-damned beautiful. She didn’t slow, only built up speed again, and took another jump--an axel. Gideon still wasn’t always good at counting the turns yet, but again Harrow landed it. She kept up like that, building up speed, jumping, sometimes pulling into a tight spin that should have left her dizzy, but she kept on, never giving herself a chance to acknowledge the exhaustion that must have been looming by that point. 

At some point, her music ended, but Harrow kept going, breakneck and increasingly shaky on her landings. Finally she finished out a jump and with two more strides, her legs gave out under her, buckling. She skidded to a stop on her knees, chest heaving, her fingernails digging into the layer of scraped up snow on the ice, her loose hair sticking to the sides of her face with sweat.

She gave herself fewer seconds to recover this time, standing on her trembling legs and gliding to the gate. Harrow ignored her coach, Aiglamene staring back at her dumbfounded. She didn’t sit and wait for her score--would there even be a score?--She only clipped the blade-guards onto her skates, and walked out. 

Harrow--the one next to her--leaned forward and closed the video.

“What--” Gideon started. 

“The routine that earned me a three-year ban from singles skating.”

“Wait, they banned you for that ? For one routine?”

 “It was a spit in the face to the judges--to the sport. That’s how they saw it, and I can’t entirely claim they were wrong.”

“Okay, sure...” Gideon sat back, trying to make sense of the calm in Harrow’s features. “But why not just disqualify you or dock you a sufficiently disciplinary number of points and call it done?”

“The maximum number of jumps one can perform in a free skate routine is seven. I had already performed four of them when I fell. I did nine more, and omitted other required elements. I went well over my allotted time. It wasn’t even a routine anymore. They couldn’t let someone throw all the rules and unspoken decorum out the window. It might encourage more on-ice meltdowns, mire the sport in more controversy. I’d already been responsible for enough of that.”

The string of Youtube results scrolled through Gideon’s brain. “Because of your parents, and--” she stopped, because this subject was sore, Gideon knew it. 

“And Ana, yes.” She was still so calm. It was unnerving. “They would love for me to bow out, end my career gracefully. But I don’t plan to give them that satisfaction.”

“Clearly,” Gideon said, and smiled a little. She was helping Harrow stick it to the stuffy judges. Cool. “Why’d you do it?”

“I had to prove I was better than one wobbling, pathetic mistake.”

“I mean, you’d gotten that far, I don’t think the judges were in doubt of your--”

“Not to them. I wasn’t going to win. That was already decided, but I needed to know it. To see what my limits actually were.”

They sat in silence for a minute, maybe two. Gideon squinted, started flipping through a calendar in her head.

“Is this right around the time you cut all your hair off?”

“I did a lot of things in the days following that outburst. My hair is one of the few I don’t regret.”

And that was--revealing. Gideon took a shot in the dark, and hoped that it didn’t ricochet right back into her face.

“Was that when you and Coriane…?”

Harrow sighed, but the irritation was softened. She was contemplative rather than on edge. 

Even with that sense of calm, it was a shock when she said, “I am not immune to loneliness, Griddle. And that week I was--untethered.” There was a hint of wistfulness at the end, like it was a bruise she missed prodding. 

Gideon nodded, watching Harrow’s hands as they picked at her perpetually flaking nail polish. 

“So,” Gideon said, leaning with one elbow on the sofa’s deteriorating armrest, “I take it the vibes we’re going for are somewhere in the vicinity of ‘fuck you’?”

Harrow’s smile was small and pointed and lovely. “Yes.”

Chapter Text

“Oh my god,” Gideon said flatly, hauling her suitcase through the narrow doorway of the hotel room. “There… are two beds.”

Harrow wrestled with her own luggage, managing to heft it onto the bed closest to the door.  “How many did you expect?”

“I guess I should just count my blessings that Aiglamene’s got her own room instead of shacking up with us on a pull-out couch.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harrow said, already pulling skates, clothes, toiletries out of her bag and arranging them in little piles, as if she needed to take inventory. “You’d be the one on the pull-out couch.”

Gideon was in the middle of a very salient point about the talent getting priority sleeping arrangements (Harrow was rolling her eyes and saying “the talent ?”), when there was a knock at the door. 

“You order room service?” Gideon asked on her way to open it. 

“Maybe Aiglamene needs something,” ventured Harrow, shrugging.

It was not their coach. It was instead the two teenagers who skated like a pair of wrecking balls and took a moment to stop muttering to each other after Gideon opened the door. The boy had short, bleached hair, spiked up in a slightly tipped mohawk, and wore even more eyeliner than Harrow, if that was possible, while the girl had a mass of curly brown hair pulled low into two puffs on either side of her head and a startling collection of piercings dotting her face and ears. The boy started:

“Our coaches wanted--”

The girl-teen--Jeannemary, that was her name--elbowed him and cut in, “Is Harrowhark here? This is her room, right?” The boy teen--Isaac--elbowed her back.

As they continued muttering at each other, Harrow came to stand next to Gideon, and--was she suppressing a smile?

“You have a message for me?”

Isaac nodded, and Jeanemary answered, “We’re having dinner with Abigail and Magnus at the restaurant next door, and we're supposed to see if the other skaters would want to join us.” She looked at her fellow teen and then shifted uncomfortably on her feet. “I mean, you don't have to. Whatever.”

“What time?” Harrow asked, pointedly neutral.

“Seven!” chimed Isaac. “But we’ll get there at 6:30 to save the table.”

“They don’t need to know that, Isaac!”

“Why not? Maybe they want to get there early, too?”

“Why would they want to get there early?”

Harrow reached across Gideon, pulling the door half closed. “We’ll see if we can make it,” she said, non-committal, and the kids were too busy sniping at each other to notice when she shut the door on them.

"So you think this is more a slacks and button-down affair or could I get away with cargo shorts and sandals?"

"You assume we're going?"

"Why not? Unless you'd rather stay in staring at my beautiful face all evening."

The look Harrow gave her was unamused, but Gideon could sense it: surrender was imminent. 

"You're welcome to go by yourself." 

Gideon flopped onto her bed and propped her head up on one hand. 

"The invitation was totally for you. I'm clearly just a plus-one."

"Jeannemary said 'other skaters'. You qualify as a skater, Griddle."

"They barely know me. It would be weird if I went alone." 

Harrow's face softened minutely, and with some--if Gideon was not mistaken--performative iciness she said, "I suppose it would be unwise to leave you unchaperoned in a gathering of my colleagues."

Gideon smiled at her, and Harrow turned back to her luggage, arranging things just so.

With a few hours to kill before dinner, and nowhere else to be before the (nerve-wracking) debut of their short program tomorrow, Gideon switched on the tv and started flipping through the plethora of options available to her thanks to weird hotel cable. She passed up local news broadcasts, a half-dozen reality tv options of varying levels of depravity, one nature documentary that she made a note to go back to if there was nothing better, and an old Baywatch rerun that she almost left on until Harrow gave her look that made distressingly specific threats of physical violence if she did not change the channel. Finally, she happened upon one Samwise Gamgee elucidating on the myriad preparations of POH-TAY-TOES, and dropped the remote beside her on the bed.

“Really?” Harrow asked, with uncalled-for derision.

Gideon raised her eyebrows, aghast. “Okay, no, not in my house,” Gideon began, (to which Harrow responded, “this is literally not your house.”) and sat up to face her. “You can turn your nose up at Baywatch. The ‘hoff can take it, but this?” She gestured to the Hobbits on screen. “Is cinematic greatness, and you will put some respect on its name.”

Harrow appeared unbothered. “They omitted too much from the books,” she said, which was just typical. 

“Big Bombadil fan, were you?” Harrow snorted at that. Gideon shook her head.  “No… you’re a Barrow-wight girl. Obviously. Have you at least watched the extended editions?”

Harrow paused, and her derision cracked just a little until she said, “Never had an interest.”

“That’s it, when we get home I’m bringing over the DVDs and we’re watching the extended editions. My copy of Two Towers freezes up sometimes on the Treebeard scene but it’s fine, you don’t miss much. There’s some good book stuff in those, plus you can kill a whole day watching them and spend the next week dreaming about orcs and elf chicks and stuff.”

“You expect me to believe you willingly read a book--let alone three--that wasn’t composed primarily of protein smoothie recipes and pictures of scantily clad women?”

Gideon cleared her throat. 

“ He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. In that hour of trial it was his love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command. ”

Harrow stared at her, unblinking, watching Gideon like she was a bird perched an arm’s length away and might fly off at any moment. 

“I stand corrected,” she said finally.

Gideon reclined back on the bed, buoyed up by a small mountain of pillows. “I read the books as a kid, and eventually memorized a couple passages for an oral report in 9th grade.” 

“An avid reader and a dedicated student? I’m starting to wonder if I know you at all, Griddle.”

“I did have a huge crush on that teacher.”

Harrow nodded, satisfied to be back on solid ground. “There she is.”

---

Harrow and Gideon hardly made it through the door before Magnus Quinn waved them over, his voice carrying across the moderately crowded family dining establishment with entirely un-self-conscious enthusiasm. He stood beside a large table tucked inside a wide corner booth, a half dozen chairs peppered along its outside edge. In the booth sat the teens, their noses buried in their phones, each occasionally showing the other something and then devolving into awful snickering. They were bracketed on one side by the straight-backed, pristine white tracksuit-clad pair of Marta and Judith, looking just as put together and untouchable tucked into a fraying vinyl booth as they had on the ice. Beside them sat Abigail, dressed in a soft brown cardigan over a warm yellow blouse, who waved along with Magnus, beckoning the newcomers. Next to her was a woman Gideon didn't recognize, her lovely pale-brown hair cut short above wan and bony shoulders, curling softly around the nape of her delicate neck. She sat in a wheelchair parked on one end of the booth, sipping at a brightly colored beverage lavishly adorned with umbrellas and fruit on skewers. Her eyes creased charmingly as she laughed at something said by one of the two people seated next to her in chairs, their backs to Gideon. 

Surveying the table, Gideon realized they were slightly overdressed. Everyone else was in something breezy; athletic wear, light dresses, t-shirts, while Harrow and Gideon rolled up looking like corporate vampires. Harrow had disappeared into the bathroom to get ready an hour before they left, looking over her shoulder and eyeing Gideon meaningfully before saying, decisively, “Wear the button-down.”

Harrow was in a collared shirt of her own, long sleeved and black--of course--but with a horizontal seam across the chest, above which the fabric was sheer, with shining onyx necklaces hung from the collar. Very Goth Business Casual. 

“So glad you could join us! Wasn’t sure if Jeanne and Isaac managed to scare you off with their invites, but the turnout so far isn’t half bad.” 

“Magnusss!” Came a pair of hissing adolescent voices. 

“Harrowhark,” Magnus continued, resting a hand on her shoulder and looking very much like he’d rather be giving a hug, “I’m so glad to see you’re back in action. I promised Abigail I wouldn’t harp on it all night, but I don’t think I know a single person who really believes that ban decision was fair. I mean, three years! Ridiculous.”

Abigail’s voice, sweet even as it chastised, crossed the table. “Dear, I’m sure she doesn’t want to talk about all that.”

“Oh, perhaps not,” he allowed, “but it’s nice to see you all the same.” 

He got a subdued “Likewise, Quinn” from Harrow for his trouble.

“And skating pairs no less! Won’t that be something. Speaking of!” Magnus turned to Gideon, holding out a hand. She took it and shook as he asked, without waiting for an answer. “Gideon, wasn’t it? You know, I wondered when I saw the two of you back at the shake place--but you left too quick for me to ask. You’re going to be skating with our Harrowhark, is that right?”

Gideon stole a glance and caught Harrow’s cheeks darkening a touch, presumably at the “our” in “our Harrowhark”. Dinner was already proving to be worthwhile.

“It’s true,” Gideon said, “I’m basically our Harrow’s human-shaped ticket back onto the ice.”

“Griddle,” Harrow said, hushed, just as Magnus declared, “Oh! You might say you’re her toe -loophole.”

Gideon grinned, the teens groaned, and Harrow only closed her eyes. 

Gideon slid into the open end of the booth, assuming--fool that she was--that Harrow might follow her. There was just enough room. Instead, Harrow dropped primly into the chair closest to that end of the booth, which was--fine. 

When she looked across the table, Gideon recognized the two people already in chairs: the gray-clad skaters that had about blown her mind at the exhibition she'd attended with Harrow. 

“Oh hey! Camilla and--Palamedes, right?” she called out, and every face at the table turned to look. Undeterred, she continued, "You guys were unreal a couple months ago. That double spin-thing that you do, where one of you changes direction and launches the other--that rules. "

Palamades, who wore a pair of thin-framed glasses completely at home on the stark angles of his face, smiled at that, an expression that seemed to bring more light into his--striking, Gideon now noticed--pale gray eyes. Camilla's face didn't change at all, but she was the one who said, "Thanks. We love a good spin-thing." Her hair was down now, cut blunt above her shoulders, severe and sharp-edged.

The girl next to them with sugar-brown curls squeezed Palamedes on the shoulder, and the resultant tint of red in his cheeks did not escape Gideon's notice. 

"What have I been telling you?" She asked him, as though Gideon's proclamation had handed her a victory in a long-running, good natured argument.

"I'm not the one who needs convincing," he said, all confidence despite the blush. "I know we're good, Dulcie. I just know we could be better. Camilla agrees with me." 

Camilla made no indication either way, even when--Dulcie, apparently--looked past Palamedes and flashed her a charming smile, all the more so for the hint of playful surrender in it. 

"Oh, well look at us being rude," Dulcie chirped, in lieu of actually giving any ground. "Abigail, this is your get-together, isn't it?" She glanced in Gideon's direction. "Won't you introduce us?" 

"I'm afraid I'm barely acquainted myself, but for what it's worth, Gideon, Dulcie--or Dulcinea, I suppose, if we're being formal. Dulcie, this is Harrow's new pairs partner Gideon, although I can't tell you much else."

Gideon waved a little sheepishly. This was more attention than she'd had pointed in her direction in...a long time. 

"It seems like you already know of Palamedes and Camilla, so I'll trust them to make whatever further introduction is necessary."

She continued around the table, gesturing to Judith and Marta, who each nodded when their name was mentioned, so now at least Gideon knew who was who. (Marta, now that she was up close, was maybe a little older than Judith, and built more sturdy.) When Abigail brought up the teens they rolled their eyes ("she's already met usss!") but Jeannemary, the closer of the two, did hold out her hand for Gideon to shake. The girl squeezed her hand tighter than necessary--trying to show off?--and Gideon made a show of shaking her wrist out when she finally released it. 

"So now that we're all friendly," Abigail said, leaning forward in her seat. "I must admit that since I saw your name registered with Harrow's I've been looking into you, Gideon, and there is startlingly little to find. For all I can tell you've never stepped onto the ice before this weekend." Gideon might've been weirded out, except this woman looked like the most threatening thing she would do with someone's identity was signing them up for a library card. Harrow, however, looked like someone was calmly making photocopies of her diary. 

"Now darling," said Magnus, in a tone that was not altogether unlike the chastising one she'd given him a few minutes earlier, " 'I've been treating you like a research project ' is maybe not the charming first impression you think it is."

"It's a second impression, technically, and I'm just curious is all. Don't give me that look; you knew I was a busybody when you married me. And besides, it's a compliment. I love a good research project." 

"Truth be told," said Magnus in a stage whisper, turning back to Gideon, "I've been rather curious myself. Have you been skating long?"

For some reason, Gideon looked to Harrow, who was staring at her warningly. 

She spoke before Gideon could. "Gideon has never entered an official competition before, but we've been training with my coach for some time, and we're confident she's up to it."

"Well, that Aiglamene's no slouch," said Magnus appreciatively.

"The truth is," Gideon said, because even though Harrow was being cagey about it, she hadn't actually given her a script of approved talking points. "I was--I am a hockey player." 

Everyone at the table seemed to blink in unison. Jeannemary's mouth actually fell open, and Camilla's eyebrows lifted a good fraction of an inch. Gideon tried not to wonder when she'd started to think of hockey as something she used to do. 

"Griddle--" 

"What? It's not a secret, is it?" Gideon put her hands up, shrugging. "Harrow's the mastermind here. I've been training with her a few months--" (Dulcie's disbelieving whisper: " months! ") "--and now we get to see if any of it took."

“So it’s true,” came an unfamiliar voice, dripping with lethargic intrigue. Gideon turned, and her face definitely did some embarrassing things, but she didn’t have time to worry about it because Coriane Tridentarius was standing behind Harrow’s chair. Her hair was pulled into a braid over her shoulder, one limp wave escaping to hang over her eye. She was dressed in a t-shirt cut to within an inch of its life, armholes open down to where they tied off at her hip, offering an uninhibited view of her thin torso, and the side panel of her lavender sports bra. Next to her stood a guy who smelled like too much cologne and looked like his hair might be the reason they were fashionably late. He took the chair next to Harrow and--shit. Coriane would probably take the seat next to him, but if she didn’t--

Coriane was saying her hellos to the other people at the table, and Gideon blurted out in half-panic, “Magnus,” patting the booth next to her and scooting in toward Jeannemary. “There’s still room if you want to sit!” 

“Oh good, we have enough chairs.” He said, and sat down. Gideon breathed a sigh of relief.

Coriane looked down at the one empty seat left, between her overly-coiffed companion and Camilla. 

“Babs,” she said, impatient. “Move.”

He looked back at her, sneering, but when she smiled back at him joylessly, he stood up and shifted so that...she could sit next to Harrow?

“Harrowhark Nonagesimus,” Coriane drawled, pulling her chair in closer. “Hitching her wagon to a partner. And a newbie, no less? Never thought I’d see the day.”

“I was left with little choice,” Harrow said, the tension in her back holding her ramrod straight, and still Coriane, slouching with an elbow on the table, looked down at her. 

“Don’t get me wrong, Harry,” (Harry???) “I’m glad you’re here. There's something I’ve been meaning to show you.”

Gideon was horribly relieved by Harrow’s scowl as she asked, “What?”

“Not here...” Coriane leaned in, like a girl teasing playground secrets. “Later. I’ll let you know.”

The rest of the dinner was a flurry of conversation that Gideon tried half-heartedly to engage in when possible, but she was--distracted. Reeling from whatever was going on with Coriane and Harrow, Gideon hadn’t even looked at the menu when the server finally came around, and she ordered the first thing that looked vaguely edible. It turned out to be a burger with mediocre mac-and-cheese inside it for whatever reason. Harrow got soup and salad from the lunch menu, and picked at it while Coriane made overly familiar comments. The only time the ludicrously tall blonde acknowledged Gideon all night was as she lamented Harrow being dragged down by someone who “simply hasn’t put in the work like you and I have, Harry. No offense.”

“We’ll see who put in the work tomorrow, won’t we?” Gideon said, proud of her restraint for not tacking on a fully warranted “bitch” at the end. 

“Griddle, don’t.” 

And yeah, sure, why would she expect Harrow to stick up for her. 

The lighting here must have been awful, or maybe it was Gideon’s increasingly sour mood that made Coriane’s face look washed out, made her hair look more lifeless than it had a few months ago. Probably Gideon was just being petty. Coriane’s charms just hit different when she was pointing them at the girl Gideon was not-so-quietly pining for.

It was hard to tell if Harrow was upset by Tridentarius leaning in close, speaking softly to her, stealing the occasional tomato from her plate and popping it into her pale, smirking mouth. On anyone else Harrow's body language might have signalled discomfort bordering on rage, but that wasn't so different from how Harrow had looked at Gideon until very recently. Maybe Coriane made her nervous, made her vulnerable and girlish heart do flips in her cold, iron-wrought chest, and that put Harrow on edge. 

It certainly ruined Gideon’s appetite.

---

"Why did you tell them you were a hockey player?" Harrow stood with her arms crossed at the foot of her bed, and the hotel room felt so much more cramped than it had this afternoon. 

"Because it's true? Why not?" Gideon picked through her suitcase searching for sweatpants so she could go to bed and make it tomorrow already.

"Now they're either going to be expecting us to make fools of ourselves, or that you're some incredible prodigy that I've been keeping close to the chest just to bring you out for some absurd reveal."

Gideon did not remark on being close to Harrow's chest. "So what? Let them think what they want." 

"I don't want them making assumptions about you. I don't want them thinking about you." 

"Oh, I'm so sorry for drawing attention away from the Harrowhark show. Next time I'll pretend I lost my tongue in a horrible accident. Or do you have the monopoly on personal tragedy here, too?" Gideon felt bad as soon as she said it, but frustration caught in her throat when she thought to take it back.

In any case, Harrow's face was granite, braced against Gideon's vitriol. 

"I wish you would," she said, like she was so unperturbed, completely untouchable. "The way you were fawning over Hect and Sextus. You sounded ridiculous."

"Oh, you wanna talk about fawning , Nonagesimus?" This was dangerous territory, and Gideon knew it, but she still asked, "What about that tall drink of blonde bimbo who couldn't leave you alone all night? You're so concerned with what everyone thinks of us, but it's totally fine that she basically called me a meathead who's riding your ice royalty coattails?"

Harrow's face twisted into a grimace of surprise at that, and it made an ugly part of Gideon feel victorious. 

"I'm not--don't concern yourself with Coriane."

And there it was. No labels. They weren't girlfriends, so Gideon didn't have a right to be this pissed off about a girl showing Harrow a little attention, or, more to the point, Harrow wanting that attention. 

"Fine," Gideon said. "We've got an early slot tomorrow. After the short program I'll stay out of your hair." 

Harrow didn't respond right away. Gideon looked up to find her chewing at her bottom lip.

"Good," she said, finally.

Gideon slept like shit.

Chapter Text

One thing Gideon could say in favor of spending a whole night and most of a morning riding a line between pissed-off and heartbroken: it really cut down on her nerves. Instead of being afraid that they might fall or stumble or fuck something up, Gideon got ready for the debut of their short program with a twisting in her gut unrelated to their performance. She wanted to tell Harrow to piss off, maybe even go bunk with Aiglamene for the rest of the weekend, and at the same time she was looking forward to being on the ice. Even if talking to Harrow felt like chewing on emotional glass, she knew--she knew --their bodies wouldn’t know the difference, and something pathetic in Gideon’s chest wanted that assurance. 

With Coriane looming over her at dinner, Harrow had hardly looked at Gideon. Gideon knew that because her eyes were glued to them, and fuck --she had definitely looked like a lovesick puppy, which was exactly what Harrow wasn’t interested in. For all Gideon knew the whole reason she didn’t want labels was so that she’d be free next time she ran into Coriane, that maybe the hot-and-cold bitch would be into her this time. And apparently it had worked out for her.

Gideon wanted to be angry about that for her own sake, but she wasn’t an ice queen. She couldn’t stop caring about Harrow now if she tried, and the idea of her yearning for some girl who couldn't be bothered to remember she existed half the time? Gideon hated it. 

But, whatever. There was literally no way for her to tell Harrow that without sounding like the jealous wannabe girlfriend, and it was her decision to make anyway, no matter how much it stung.   

Gideon sat on the bathroom counter, where the light was better, apparently. When she leaned forward with her arms braced by her knees, Harrow was just at eye level. This would have already been slightly unnerving, and was not made any less so by the make-up brush she brandished in her right hand like a knife.

"This wasn't in my contract," Gideon said, eyeing the brush warily.

"You didn't sign a contract," Harrow said, deadpan. And then: "Think of it as stage make-up. It's so the judges can read your face at a distance, and so it doesn’t look like a washed out potato next to mine."

"I don't look like a potato, you monochrome prickly pear."

"You will when I'm done with you if you don't hold--" she punctuated her words by grabbing Gideon's face under her chin, fingers and thumb pressing into her cheeks, "--still."

All the air left the room, sucked out by the weakly whirring fan Gideon had switched on after her shower. Or maybe the oxygen headed to her brain was just taking a detour, because she was convinced, for a moment, that Harrow was going to kiss her. 

Harrow stared, silent, the inky void of her pupils dilating in her stupidly on-brand doom-and-gloom eyes, and Gideon didn't even remember being mad. For a few idiot seconds she thought those eyes might flutter closed, she thought Harrow might lean in and--

Gideon wrenched her face free. She wasn't going to, and even if she was, Gideon shouldn't want her to. 

Harrow blinked at her.

"Let's get this over with," Gideon said, and let her lids fall shut for the eyeshadow.

---

The hotel was close enough to the stadium that they walked the distance, Aiglamene limping a few feet ahead, making no effort to fill the open maw of silence stretching between them. 

On the ice, it was like nothing changed. The audience, Gideon was distantly surprised to realize, didn’t matter--they didn’t exist. Gideon matched Harrow pace for pace, Harrow folded neatly into her arms when she was meant to, and the two of them got through the routine with only minor hiccups. There was a stumble early on, coming off a jump, and at one point they’d been out of sync, but they recovered each time, and when the music ended they clasped hands and bowed. Harrow hadn’t smiled for the judges, so Gideon kept her own face neutral, even if she’d wanted to whoop or pump her fist or something . 

Harrow didn’t meet her eyes after that, not when they clipped the blade-guards on their skates, not when they sat waiting for their scores, and not when Aiglamene waved them back, muttering her feedback as they left the rink. Gideon only half-listened. The adrenaline of finishing their first routine for a crowd--now that they weren’t skating, the audience very much did seem to exist--was static in her ears, and her partner’s--what? Apathy?--made it feel almost unreal, like she needed some acknowledgement that they’d actually done it. She wanted to pick Harrow up, squeeze her, raise a toast to not being a complete shitshow, but she wouldn’t look at Gideon. 

The score was respectable. A couple deductions for the missteps, and solid otherwise, but both of them knew the short program wasn’t the real test. It was preamble, as far as Harrow was concerned, a prerequisite to the free skate that would prove them as a team. Or it wouldn’t.

“Harrow,” Gideon said, because she had to say something , but she didn’t know how to follow it up.

Harrow paused and waited while Gideon stared at her back, her shoulder-blades shifting uncomfortably under the sweater she’d slipped on when they’d finished. After an unpleasant stretch of silence she said “I’m going back to the room. Try to remember that tomorrow’s routine is more grueling. Don’t do anything reckless.”

“Reckless?” Gideon asked, but Harrow was leaving, disappearing through the crowd of spectators. Okay.

“You did good out there,” came Aiglamene’s gruff voice from behind her. She clapped Gideon on the back. “Don’t take it personally,” she said, some unusual softness creeping into her voice before continuing, “or do, but she’s always--focused, at these things. She puts a lot of pressure on herself.”

Gideon followed Aiglamene, shoving her hands in her jacket pockets. “Should I… go after her?”

“How the fuck should I know? I’m your coach, not a couples counselor.”

“We’re not--”

Aiglamene waved her hand. “Whatever, just be ready for tomorrow.” And then her coach disappeared into the crowd, too, leaving Gideon at loose ends.

Gideon ducked into a bathroom, putting her hands under the faucet in hopes that splashing a little water in her face would give her some clarity. She about jumped out of her skin when she looked up into the mirror, the puddle of tepid water falling straight through her cupped hands. 

She was still wearing the make-up Harrow had put on her, and she looked--not bad, really, but not like herself. She turned her face to one side, then the other, tried fluttering her eyelashes. She pouted her lips, and shuddered. She looked ridiculous, like she was trying to be--someone else. 

Gideon was never any good at being anyone but herself, much to the chagrin of--everyone, basically: teachers, Marshall Crux, her mom--the list went on. Aiglamene tolerated her better than just about anyone, and even she only endured Gideon in small doses. 

Why would Harrowhark, one of the most disagreeable people ever conceived in this cold and uncaring universe, be the exception? 

Gideon scrubbed her face clean. She ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing it out a little from the slicked back style she’d worn for their debut. There was maybe a hint of eyeliner clinging to the very edges of her eyelids in thin, stubborn splotches, but she could get at that better back at the hotel room. Which...she was not in any hurry to return to.

She gave herself a half-cocked grin--fake it ‘til you make it--and pulled her shades out of her jacket’s front pocket. For the next couple of days there was still one bright spot that even Her Royal Gloominess couldn’t snuff out: she was free of that shitty little town.

A block from the venue, Gideon approached a table, a picnic-style frame of metal and molded plastic in front of a cafe that advertised smoothies and wraps. She waved at the pair who occupied it, smiling and crossing the sidewalk way too awkwardly. 

“Hey, fancy seeing you here!” She tried to rein in her enthusiasm at seeing familiar faces after meandering her way in this direction, alone, vaguely hungry and too irritated to actually commit to anything. She was maybe 60% successful. 

“Gideon,” Palamedes said, and he--thank God--looked pleasantly surprised to see her. “You and Harrowhark were impressive this morning. You can even tell her I said so.”

“Hey, thanks!” She said, and tried to will the exclamation marks out of her voice when she added, “Wish I could’ve seen your guys’s short program, too. I’m sure it was awesome. Busy morning though, you know.”

“Totally understand, we never get to see as many as we’d like at these things either,” He said, amicably. After looking up at her a moment longer, he asked, mercifully, “Did you want to sit down?”

“I would love to,” said Gideon, and Camilla shifted herself so that Gideon could sit across from them. 

Gideon got herself a smoked tofurkey wrap on Cam’s suggestion, and took a risk on the chocolate-banana-protein-power smoothie despite Pal’s less-than-glowing review. She’d saved up a little cash for this trip, so at least she wasn’t a total charity case, but it was still a very welcome gesture when Camilla slid her bag of kettle-chips over after Gideon quickly devoured her own. 

Talking to the pair of gray skaters proved easy. Palamedes asked her polite questions and hummed thoughtfully at the answers, like each was a puzzle piece fitting into place. He, notably, did not remark on Harrow’s absence, which was probably because he knew Harrow, and it wasn’t all that weird for her to hole herself up in a hotel room for the weekend. Gideon picked Cam’s brain about how she utilized momentum when skating with Pal--they were so much closer in size than she and Harrow were--and Cam had some surprisingly insightful questions about the transition from hockey to figure skating. 

“Do you play?”

“Did. In a youth league,” she said, some fondness creeping into her stoic face, “before Palamedes and I got serious about this.”

Picturing it, Gideon could see what an asset Camilla would be on a team. She was so damn quick, and her movements, once she committed to them, were sudden, explosive. Reading her next move would be all but impossible, and Gideon would bet good money her shooting accuracy was unrivaled. 

“If you ever wanna get back in the swing with a pick-up game or one-on-one or something, I’m your girl,” Gideon said. “Honestly, I’ve been having a--a mostly good time with this,” she gestured vaguely in the direction of the stadium, “but I do miss cutting loose with a bunch of padding and a big stick.”

With an unshakeable straight face, Cam said, “I’ve always thought they should encourage more fist fights in figure skating. It’d be great for attendance.”

Palamedes chuckled, actually snorted , briefly contorting his angular face with soft amusement, and he said, “With the theatricality and the spandex I think we’d veer more into professional wrestling than MMA, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?” said Gideon, baffled. “That sounds incredible. What I wouldn’t give to make my entrance on, like, a motorcycle, surrounded by women in ice-themed bikinis.”

“Cam, what have you done?” Pal asked without any real bite. “Figure skating was a perfectly respectable sport, and now look at it. It’s got bikini babes.”

Cam lifted her shoulders in a move that was more suggestion than actual shrug. “Can’t fight what the people want.”

A short while later, Cam tapped a finger to her bare wrist, and Pal pressed a button on the side of a fancy smart-watch looking thing on his own. When the screen lit up he said, “We’d better get going. Dulcie’s expecting us rink-side in 20.” He stood up, gathering trash from the table. “You’re welcome to come along, Gideon.”

“Oh, uh, are you sure?” Gideon asked, scrubbing a hand over the back of her neck. She wasn’t in any hurry to abandon her new friends, but she remembered Pal’s blush at dinner. “I don’t want to be a third--or, fourth? I guess?--wheel or anything.”

Palamedes looked amused, and a little sheepish. “You’d be nothing of the sort. We’re meeting to watch Jeannemary and Isaac’s short program, and I’m sure Dulcie would love to see you again.”

As the three of them made their way back to the stadium, Gideon ventured, “So, what’s the deal with you and Dulcie?”

Pal did blush this time, and fidgeted with his watch as he replied, “She and I--well, some years ago--”

“Ms. Septimus is a former Olympian,” Camilla cut in. “For some time my partner has been waging a campaign for her to consider becoming our coach.”

“Why hasn’t she?”

“Can’t say,” said Camilla, and she eyed her partner like maybe he could. 

Palamedes did not elucidate, and the conversation moved on. 

They ended up meeting Dulcie right on time, and she smiled beautifully for all of them, kissing Cam once on the cheek and holding Pal’s hand maybe just a hair longer than she needed to on greeting. Gideon was introduced to a--pleasant enough, if unnervingly muscular--man who stood beside her as simply “Pro,” and the small group of them cheered on the teens in their unbearably enthusiastic short program.

Some time after, Magnus and Abigail, with Jeannemary and Isaac trailing after them, joined their merry band, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the other competitors and chatting about happenings that Gideon only half followed. At one point, through a series of circumstances she could not quite trace, Gideon ended up with one teen hanging from each arm like they were a pair of monkey-bars, Dulcie clapping delightedly. 

Magnus whistled, impressed. “Harrowhark certainly doesn’t skimp when it comes to her choice in partner, does she?” 

The teens dropped back to the floor, Isaac first, then Jeannemary, and Gideon rubbed one shoulder. There was a warm knot in her chest, pleased by Magnus’s assessment, but run through with threads of doubt--she hadn’t been specially chosen. She’d been the only option, and she was probably kidding herself if she thought Harrow wouldn’t upgrade as soon the opportunity presented itself. 

Evening was fast approaching, and Gideon checked her phone. She hadn’t expected any messages, didn’t even know what she’d hope for, but the lack of notifications still made disappointment flex like a well-toned muscle in her stomach. 

“Speaking of,” Gideon said, “I should see if she wants to get dinner or something. It was, uh, great hanging out with everyone. See you all tomorrow?”

“We’d better,” said Palamedes, his smile sharpened by a competitive edge. 

“I surely hope so,” Abigail called from beside her husband, her hand cupped comfortably in his. “Please give Harrowhark our best.”

“Jeannemary says bye, Gideon!” came one wretched voice, unrepentantly pleased with itself, just as she was turning to leave, and behind her Gideon heard the tell tale “ Isaac! ” and the sound of an adolescent tussle.

Gideon was still grinning to herself as she sent Harrow a text. 

          [18:33]: heading back to the room. 

          [18:34]: have you eaten? want me to grab anything on the way?

Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she heard a voice that sent a nagging jolt of recognition up her back. 

“Gideon Nav. Have a minute?”

She looked up, greeted by the serious--and seriously condescending--face of Silas Octakiseron. His larger, older, even more serious sidekick stood just behind him.

“Not for you,” Gideon said, and tried in vain to walk past them. 

Silas walked right alongside her, Colum following after like a kid--or maybe more like a buff butler. 

“I was hoping you’d have more to say to us this time. I’m surprised to see you’re not stashed away from prying eyes like your partner.”

“You ever think creeps like you are why she doesn’t leave the hotel?”

“She has nothing to fear from us, Gideon, unless the truth is such a frightful thing.”

Gideon hated the sound of her name in this guy’s mouth. She stopped, held out her hands, then curled them into fists and let them drop to her sides. “How many times do I need to tell you I’m not going to answer your weird questions? I don’t know what Harrow writes in her diary. I don’t know her secret skin care routine. I cannot, and more importantly will not, help you dig up whatever dirt you’re looking for.”

“What if we could help each other?”

“I don’t need 20% off a meal kit subscription, thanks though.” Gideon pushed through the exit door, practically home-free. Nothing could have stopped her from leaving Silas and his weirdly taciturn co-host in the dust. 

And yet, Gideon stopped fucking dead when that insufferable voice asked, “What can you tell us about Evelyn Wake?”

Gideon turned around. Silas was standing in the door now, holding it open and staring at her like she was a fish on a hook.

“Or maybe the question is: what can we tell you?”

Gideon studied him. His confidence didn’t falter. 

“How do you--”

Gideon jumped at her phone’s notification tone. She pulled it out, glancing at the screen on autopilot, and saw it was Harrow. 

“She’s got you on a long leash for now. You should take advantage of it.”

Gideon shook her head. These assholes were not who she wanted to talk to. Not in general and not about--this. 

“Okay, look, I don’t know where you got that name, and my morbid curiosity about whatever you’re getting at here is admittedly piqued, but it’s not enough to put up with you for one more minute, so I’m gonna leave, okay? I promise whatever you’re fishing for here is not half as interesting as you think it is.”

Colum moved past Silas now, light on his feet for a guy so big, and before Gideon thought to react, his hand reached for her jacket. He slid a card into the side pocket and said, “When you change your mind.”

“Weird vibes, guys!” she said before peeling off. When she rounded the corner of the building without them following, she pulled her phone back out. 

[18:42]: I’m not at the hotel.

Weird.

           [18:46]: ok? where r u?

She started typing I want to talk , but decided that sounded too ominous, even if the last five minutes had, honestly, been pretty ominous. There was no point in getting Harrow’s hackles raised preemptively. 

[18:48]: The stadium. Dealing with a registration issue.

           [18:48]: so do you want dinner? 

Gideon considered just going back to the hotel. They could figure out dinner when Harrow got back, and they could--talk. But she’d barely left the stadium, which meant Harrow was close by now , and maybe Gideon could help with the problem (unlikely, as she had let Harrow and Aiglamene handle the paperwork). 

She thought of Harrow running into Silas and Colum, of them cornering her and making nuisances of themselves until she got carted away for strangling one of them. She thought of them asking her what they’d asked Gideon. She made a beeline for the side entrance of the stadium. 

 [18:51]: I’m not hungry.

Which probably meant she’d choked down half a flavorless nutrition shake, but whatever, there was fast food on the way back to the hotel. Gideon would just grab that. She was distracting herself by deciding between a burger or tacos--tacos, definitely--when she rounded a corner and saw a short line of frustrated people in front of the registration desk.

Harrow was there, like she said, and next to her, looming tall and blonde and way too God Damn close, was Coriane Tridentarius. Harrow was staring up at her, arms crossed, looking vaguely irritated, as Coriane murmured something too low for Gideon to catch.

If anything, Harrow looked even more perturbed to see Gideon, and a glance in Coriane’s direction netted an expression somehow even more sour. Gideon was not welcome at this party, but too bad.

“Hey,” Gideon said, only bothering to address Harrow. “What’s the registration trouble?”

“Apparently some of our paperwork went missing,” Harrow said, brandishing a usb drive. Her eyes darted to Coriane, who was casually gazing in any direction that wasn’t Gideon’s. “I’m handling it. I’ll meet you back at the room.”

“I can wait,” Gideon said, even if she wasn’t totally sure why. She could wait, but really she just didn’t want to leave Harrow...here. “I’ll walk you back.”

Finally paying attention, Coriane said, “Oh, Nav,” with her signature overabundance of familiarity. “I’ll make sure to get her back safe and sound. No use staying out late on our account.” 

“It’s no trouble,” Gideon managed through gritted teeth, and Harrow pulled her arms tighter around herself.

“Are you cold?” Gideon asked, already taking off her jacket. “Where’s your sweater?” 

Harrow was muttering “I’m fine,” as the jacket settled over her shoulders, and Coriane smirked. 

“Oh, Harry,” she said, pleased and languid, “you must have left it back in my hotel room.”

Gideon blinked, letting her hands fall away from where they were trying to bundle Harrow away from the cold. 

“We’ll just have to go back and grab it when we’re done here.” Coriane’s smile was a poor man’s imitation of innocence, rubbing the implications in her face.

Gideon was so fucking stupid. 

“Cool,” she said, and turned around. 

There was a protesting “Griddle,” behind her, but it was weak. Half-hearted. Gideon left. It was almost a relief, having the nagging fear that had been trailing her since dinner last night finally proven true. A relief that felt like a kick in the teeth, but still.

She was halfway back to the hotel--weighing the likelihood that Aiglamene would trade rooms with her against the sickening probability that Harrow would just room with Coriane for the rest of the weekend, now that the cat was out of the bag--when someone grabbed her arm. Gideon assumed for a second that it must be Octakiseron on his fucking podcast beat again, and narrowly avoided wailing on him outright.

When she turned, it was not Silas or his lackey. It was Harrow, still wearing her jacket and looking pissed as a drenched cat. 

“What the fuck, Griddle?” 

Gideon gaped at her a long moment. Harrow, in her infinite capacity for bullshit, had found some reason to be angry at her. Sure! Why not!

“I’m sure I don’t know why you would be taking that tone with me , of all people.”

Harrow, not even listening, pulled a small rectangle of cardstock from the pocket of the leather jacket she was swimming in. Gideon squinted at it, confused, until she realized what would’ve been in that pocket. Bob-Slain: A podcast that breaks the ice on the dark heart of winter sports. 

“Why have you been talking to them ?” Harrow asked, spitting venom. Fucking Silas. 

“I don’t know, Harrow, why have you been hanging out in Coriane's hotel room?” Which had nothing to do with anything, but Gideon couldn’t keep herself from saying it anyway.

“I--what?” The gears were visibly turning behind Harrow’s eyes, and Gideon tried to backpedal. 

“Whatever, I know I’m not--your girlfriend, or whatever, but I wasn’t actually prepared for you to throw yourself into the arms of some other girl at like, the first chance you got, so that stings, but it’s not--”

“I’m not--throwing myself at Coriane.” She looked almost offended at the thought, which was fucking rich. 

“Whatever, it’s--I don’t care about that pasty girl-shaped bag of shady bullshit.” Which was a lie. She did care, way more than she wanted to, like it was a chunk of concrete dropped into her stomach and displacing bile up into her throat, but it also wasn’t actually the thing bothering her the most right this second. 

“Were you…” Harrow trailed off, disbelieving. Hurt. “Were you talking to them because you were upset? Because you wanted to get back at me?”

“What? No, I don’t even know what the podcast douchebags want from you. They keep cornering me and asking invasive questions, which I was dutifully ignoring until--” The words caught in Gideon’s throat. Pedestrians passed them, politely looking away from the two girls making a scene on the sidewalk.

“Until what?” 

“Why are they asking about my mom , Harrow?” 

Blindsided, Harrow looked like Gideon had knocked her feet out from under her. She pulled Gideon’s jacket tighter around herself like she wanted to disappear into it--which, to be fair, she probably could.

“Why do they think that you and my mom had anything to do with each other?”

Harrow’s arms fell to her sides. She took a step back, and her face changed. It was like someone had taken an awl to it and, as Gideon watched, chipped away her anger, letting pieces of it fall to the ground until there was only wide-eyed exhaustion staring back at her. 

“Gideon, I’m sorry.” Gideon . Harrow wasn’t angry anymore; she was scared, which made Gideon’s heart rate jump and stutter to keep up.

“For what ?” 

“I’ve been a coward.” 

“Harrow, you’re a lot of things, but a wuss isn’t one of them.”

“You don’t--” Harrow steeled herself with a steadying breath. She was calm and gravely serious when she said, “If you don’t want to skate with me tomorrow, I’ll understand.” 

“Jesus, this preamble is freaking me out. Please spit it out.” 

“Not here.”

Harrow’s thin fingers gripped Gideon’s arm, dragging her back to the hotel room in silence that thudded in her ears like a drumbeat on her skull. When they were inside, Gideon finally asked, “okay, what--” only to have Harrow shake her head and pull her into the bathroom. She closed the door, flipped on the switch for the fan, and her brow furrowed, like that wasn’t good enough. She twisted the handle on the faucet and left it like that, a low-tech vaguely irritating white noise machine echoing in the small room.

“Harrow,” Gideon said, and reached out to hold one of her hands. It was shaking, like she was still cold. Harrow squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her hand free. She stood with her back to the mirror, and Gideon caught a glimpse of her own reflection. She looked like herself at least. Like Gideon Nav: moderately freaked out edition.

“No one can know,” Harrow said, only just loud enough to be heard over the fan and the faucet. “Silas and Colum have been harassing me for years, which I realize now I should have told you. When they approached me earlier today they weren’t probing into my history for once, so I foolishly thought they were off the scent. I had hoped that you would fly under their proverbial radar, but that was naive of me. I don’t believe they know anything especially damning, but they’re the ones who are most committed to unearthing my family’s secrets.”

“I didn’t say anything to them, I swear. I don’t know what I could have told them, honestly. What on earth could they think I know?” 

Harrow stared up at her, like she was trying to memorize Gideon’s face. Like once she opened her mouth she wouldn’t get to see it anymore.

“My parents,” Harrow gritted out, her fingers curled around the lip of the bathroom counter for something solid, “are not dead.” 

Gideon’s eyebrows scrunched together like they had never scrunched before. She looked around, like maybe there was some context just over her shoulder that she was missing. “What? Okay, no. There was a funeral, Harrow. Are you--is this. Should I call someone?” 

Harrow met her eyes again, still scared, but undeniably lucid. “I’m not crazy, Griddle.” (Why did that nickname make her feel better?) “Just--listen. You might not remember, but the rink wasn’t always owned by my family. It used to belong to Ana’s father, but he had trouble keeping it afloat, and as his daughter became more serious about skating, he let my parents act as co-signers on a new mortgage.” The words tumbled out, Harrow’s eyes staring ahead, past Gideon and unfocused.

“Okay…? What does that have to do--”

“Listen. Please.”

Gideon nodded and leaned against the wall at her back, still close enough to Harrow that she could reach out and brush her cheek if--if what?

“Once we both had unfettered access to the rink, Ana and I trained together every day. I liked skating before, liked pushing myself and winning, but with Ana it was different. I didn’t care if I won. I was rooting for Ana, and she was rooting for me. Winning didn’t matter , and then--” Harrow squeezed her eyes shut. Exhaled. “--the next season we would both be old enough for Olympic qualifications. The chances were good that it would be one of us. But spots are so limited. I told my parents I didn’t care, that if Ana got the spot she deserved it.”

Gideon knew what happened that year. Ana and her dad were in an accident. Their car skidded off an icy patch of road and into a river. They didn’t make it out of the car. There were rumors, cruel speculations and at least one shitty nickname--Tonya Harrow--all inescapable in the small town. 

Harrow’s back straightened. A distant, practiced calm came over her face. “When Ana died, nothing in the world could convince me to compete. I wanted to burn my skates, the outfits, everything that reminded me of her--everything did remind me of her. But my father drove me to the qualifying competition. Mother stayed at home--our new home--to finish with the paperwork that would give them full ownership of the house, the business, all of it. It was my dream, everything they wanted for me, and they wouldn’t let me give it up.”

“Jesus, Harrow.”

“That’s not--” she started, and shook her head. “I didn’t qualify. I only half remembered my routine. I think I was trying to do hers at the same time--we used to practice like that, switching off, so we didn’t get bored. Father didn’t speak to me on the drive home. Mother--she told me I would do better next time.” 

“It was a few weeks later that Evelyn--that your mother would start showing up at strange hours at the rink. I didn’t know why she was there at the time, only that it upset my mother and made my father--uneasy. She’d always done odd jobs around the rink, and then one day she stopped showing up.”

Gideon knew exactly when that was. Vividly remembered waking up to an empty house and an envelope of cash next to the microwave.

“They paid her off. Threw enough money at her to disappear, because as long as she was around, there was a chance someone would connect her to the unreliable brakes in the car, to the worn tires, to the sheet of ice on the bridge even though there hadn’t been any precipitation in the week prior to the accident.” Harrow drew in a shuddering breath. “And the chance that someone would connect Evelyn Wake to--my family.”

“What are you--”

“They paid her to take Ana and her father out of the picture--she’d had some feud with the Samuels before I was even born; I don’t know why--and then they paid her to leave . I think they assumed she would take you along, so when you showed up weeks later looking for work, they took you on, even though they hated it. The reminder. They thought it was safer to let you work and support yourself than risk you getting desperate, going to the authorities to find her.”

“What the fuck,” Gideon said, because honestly, what the fuck . “Are you saying my mom… killed your best friend?” No wonder Harrow hated her guts. She probably thought of it every time she looked at Gideon. How could she not?

“ No !” Harrow’s eyes went wide and she curled her fists in the front of Gideon’s shirt. “She--My parents orchestrated it. They did it for me , so I wouldn’t be-- distracted , or--” she winced, forced herself to continue. “It’s why your mother left, why you’ve always had to scrape by, even though you’re--It’s my fault, Gideon. I can’t be sorry enough.”

There was too much to unpack if Gideon stopped to think about it. She wished that learning about her mom's homicidal side gig was more of a surprise, but Evelyn Wake had always been someone who conducted herself like the ends--her ends--justified the means. Even if those ends were, apparently, a decent payday and getting the hell out of dodge. So Gideon didn’t think. Her arms came up around Harrow and pulled them together. A muffled whimper sounded against her shirt, and Gideon said, “No… No. Your fault? Harrow, you were a kid. You didn’t ask for any of that, and hell, even if you had it would still pretty squarely be on them, as the fucking adults, so--Christ, hey.”

She felt Harrow’s fingers uncurl, her arms drop back down to her sides. When she pulled back, Gideon let her go, but kept her hands on either side of her face. 

“That’s not--there’s more,” Harrow said, tired and determined, like she’d already run a marathon and found miles of track still ahead of her. “Your mother left. But I think she must have contacted them afterward, tried to blackmail them, or something. So my parents had to disappear. They chartered a boat. There was a fire. It sank.”

Gideon remembered the search. It had been all over the local news. “But, the funeral?”

“They were declared dead after a week. The wreckage was found with three life vests missing, and the remains of Ortus’s father. It was assumed they’d jumped ship and succumbed to the elements. I didn’t know the truth until after the funeral. They--” she closed her eyes again. “They wanted my grief to look real. It was smart.”

Gideon blinked at Harrow, which was absolutely not enough, but it would have to do because Harrow kept right on going. 

“After that, the rink and the house belonged to me, officially. Crux had stewardship until I turned eighteen, and he still handles the finances. The rink supports itself, and covers the expenses of my skating career that aren’t covered by endorsement deals and sponsorships, so my winnings can support--” Harrow looked down, her jaw worked like she was trying to form the words.

“They’re my parents, Gideon. Everything they did was for me , and it was horrendous and unforgivable but I owe them, and--”

Gideon thought of Harrow all alone in that giant mausoleum of a house, full of unused rooms and--a shiver ran down her spine. “Wait, Harrow. Are your folks… do they live in that house with you?”

A brittle, drum-tight placidness fell over Harrow’s face. “There are sections of the house that can’t be seen from the outside, that you wouldn’t notice inside without poring over the floorplans. They can’t leave. They’re forced to live like ghosts, so I can--”

“No,” Gideon said, because she knew that much at least. “No, you don’t owe them anything .” 

“You don’t understand,” Harrow was saying, and Gideon shook her head. 

“I understand shitty parents, Harrow. Believe me. I always thought you lucked out and I got the short straw, but no. At least mine just peaced out. Yours are--they’re using you. You see that, right?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It absolutely is,” Gideon said, but Harrow’s eyes were starting to look panicked so she added, “Hey, don’t. It’s okay. It’s supremely fucked up, but it’s not your fault and you don’t have to unpack every bit of it right this second. I don’t blame you for my mom leaving, or whatever. She did that.”

Harrow stiffened, but she didn’t wriggle out of Gideon’s grasp.

“I meant what I said.”

“What’s that?”

“If you don’t want to skate with me now, I understand. I lied to you. I’ve been lying to you.”

Not quite a laugh, air puffed from Gideon’s nose, and she pulled Harrow’s hand up from where it clung to the shirt at Gideon’s side, letting her lips brush the knuckles as she spoke.

“Did you know Ortus quit his second job at the bar over a month ago?” Harrow’s eyes went wide, like she’d backed into a trap. “Right, dumb question, of course you know. But did you know I knew? The owner of the Cohort called me up, asking if I still wanted the job, and I told him no. I’d rather be skating with you than slinging beers for middle-aged townies. I’d rather be skating with you than… a lot of things, really.”

And that was the (ugh) crux of it, wasn't it? Gideon didn't want to stop doing this any time soon. Harrow's ban expiring, her return to singles skating, loomed over Gideon like judgement day, which was ridiculous, because she could--she would --just go back to playing hockey. She’d have a little cash in her pocket, enough to get a better apartment in a better city, and she’d do what she was good at. That was the plan, and it was a good one. 

Was until it wasn't, anyway. 

“Okay,” Gideon said to Harrow’s dumbfounded, sharp-angled, unbearably lovely face. “Is that everything? Is that all your big, dark secrets finally revealed?”

“I--” Harrow began, her eyes darting once like she expected a final hurdle, a snake darting out from green grass. “Yes. That’s the broad strokes, at least.”

“We can do details later,” Gideon said, and reached behind Harrow, turning off the running faucet. “For now, you wanna order room service? I’m guessing you’ve barely eaten anything beyond the protein bar Aiglamene shoved in your face this morning.” She switched off the whirring fan, and it was so quiet when she asked, wincingly, “And maybe you can tell me why you were in Coriane’s room?”

It was such a stupid, petty thing to bring up after all of that , but Harrow breathed a sigh of relief deep enough that her chest collapsed with it. She opened the door and sat on the bed, nodding for Gideon to follow. 

“She told me she had information that could get my ban lifted early. In time for the Olympics, if I was lucky and I played it right.”

“Oh,” said Gideon, “that’s...good?”

“She has evidence that Naberius Tern--he was at dinner last night, if you remember?” Gideon nodded at the memory of body spray and gravity defying hair. “She can prove--allegedly--that he’s been doping. Providing information like that has proved fruitful for banned athletes before, especially if her family throws their support behind my reinstatement.” 

“She’s just gonna sell out her friend like that? So you can compete solo again?”

Harrow shrugged. “I don’t pretend to understand Coriane’s motivations. I turned her down. Tern is not of consequence to me, but I’m not interested in sacrificing him for my own gain. I have no idea if what she alleges is even true, or if her evidence is fabricated.” 

Gideon couldn’t help the satisfaction creeping onto her face. “So you’re stuck with me a little while longer?” 

Harrow’s hand held the side of Gideon’s face now, her thumb brushing over the suddenly very warm skin of her cheek. She looked so relieved, her eyes so open and clear Gideon felt like she could fall into them.  

“There are worse things I can imagine, Griddle.”

In response to Gideon’s smile, Harrow lurched upward, pulling Gideon to her--pulling Gideon’s mouth to hers. There was a moment of pleasant, kissing-induced delirium, and then Harrow froze, pulling away to meet her eyes and asking anxiously, “Is this okay?” 

Gideon’s arms coiled around her waist, and they melted together, like Harrow was pouring her own relief into her, for seconds, minutes, until she didn’t know which one of them had sighed into the other’s mouth, which one of them had squeezed the other like they needed to be sure this was real.

“Okay, seriously,” said Gideon, when Harrow broke away, eons later (5 minutes, tops). “Dinner?”  

Harrow nodded, and Gideon kissed her one more time before picking up the phone.

Chapter Text

“No make-up this morning?” Gideon tried not to sound too relieved at the prospect. 

Harrow was already wearing her day-face, which meant she was looking medium-spooky by normal human standards and downright fresh and breezy by her own. More importantly, she was packing her brushes and palettes and who-knew-what-else into a small carrying case, while Gideon’s face remained mercifully unpainted.

“Our time slot is later today, so I’ll just do it at the venue before we go on.” Darn. She looked up at Gideon. “You’d only ruin it if I put it on you now.”

“Good instincts,” Gideon said around a mouthful of bagel from the continental (read: free) hotel breakfast. Harrow made a mildly disgusted face and looked away. “In fact,” Gideon continued, “I’ll probably mess it up either way, so we could just save time and omit it altogether? I mean, they shouldn’t be looking at me anyway, right?”

“Make-up or no, I don’t see how anyone could take their eyes off you,” Harrow said, and--look, maybe Gideon wasn’t totally awake yet, because she should have been able to pounce on that, but her cheeks were burning and she almost dropped her bagel and when Harrow looked up at her a moment later with a wave of mortified realization sweeping over her face, her little ears darkening up to the the helix--Gideon didn’t say a word. 

“On the ice, I mean,” Harrow amended. “You’re hard to miss.” Harrow shoved the make-up bag into her duffle, and slung it over her shoulder, all but sprinting to the door. 

Grinning, Gideon grabbed her own bag, and followed her out.

---

It took surprisingly little to convince Harrow to get to the stadium in the morning, even though their free skate was scheduled for the late afternoon. The opportunity to see first-hand what they were up against today proved too tempting, and, Gideon thought, maybe the possibility of some real, human interaction was making a slow migration from the con to the pro column of the mysterious internal Harrowhark assessment mechanism. After last night she seemed lighter, although she carried herself as if she was still getting used to it, like she’d been walking around with weights tied to her wrists and had to be careful not to thwack herself in the face now that they were gone. 

Aiglamene split off from them early on, having been tasked with taking the back-up usb to the registration people. (turned out Harrow had run off as soon as she found the business card in Gideon’s coat, but apparently a bunch of skaters were dealing with the same disappearing paperwork issue, so allowances were made.) Harrow and Gideon met up with the same group from yesterday, Magnus welcoming them and only making a small scene about Harrow deigning to join them. Judith and Marta came along when they finished their own free skate, and close to noon Magnus looked at his watch, saying, “Looks like we’ve got a small window with no pairs scheduled. Group lunch?”

People nodded and started getting up. Gideon glanced at Harrow, expecting they would do the same, but she looked--frustrated?

“I’ll stay here,” Harrow said.

“What? No, come on, it’ll be good,” Gideon tried, but Harrow still seemed unconvinced. “I’ll get a strawberry shake and pretend not to see when you steal sips of it and everything.”

Her resolve waivered some at that, but Harrow ultimately resisted. “There’s...a routine I’d like to see next.”

“Who?”

She spoke low enough now that only Gideon could hear. “Tridentarius.”

Oh.

“You can go,” she said. “It’s fine.”

Gideon chewed at her lip, letting a skirmish play out in the back of her head until she said to Magnus and the rest, “Harrow and I had a big breakfast. We’ll catch up with you later?” 

When everyone else was gone, Gideon took the stadium seat next to Harrow. She picked at an imperceptible piece of dirt under her fingernail until she could find it in herself to say, “So, um.”

Off to a great start.

“Griddle.”

“There’s no wrong answer here,” Gideon said, even though there absolutely was, but she was prepared to put on a brave face if necessary. “Are you still hung up on Coriane? I just want to know where I stand here. If she’s the reason you don’t want to make things official, I can, uh. Deal.”

“Gideon,” Harrow said, which was either good or very bad. She stared down at her hands as she said, “My feelings for Coriane are--complex. But no, you don’t have to worry about her--” Harrow wrinkled her nose, “--stealing my affections. Please trust that.”

“Okay…” Gideon clasped one hand around the back of her own neck. “So why does it seem like you’re--to put it delicately--obsessed with her?”

Harrow’s lip curled like the accusation was a bad smell. “I’m not obsessed . I have questions. She’s...a puzzle.”

“A puzzle? I think she’s just kinda shitty, Harrow. It’s not that deep.”

Harrow sighed. “I don’t expect you to understand.” Which, rude, but she kept going. “Don’t worry about it--her. I know I’ve… hidden things from you, but I wouldn’t lie about that. I wouldn’t lie to you about it.”

“Okay,” Gideon said, nodding a little deliriously. “Cool.” 

Coriane took the ice, and admittedly Gideon hadn’t been paying much attention--beyond the curve of leg or arch of spine, and the utterly engrossed look on Harrow’s face--the last time they’d seen her at the exhibition a few months ago, but this time around she was in top form. Her costume maybe left something to be desired, similar enough to the one Gideon had already seen, a sparkling affair of purple and gold, but this one didn’t hug her in quite the same way, the cut at the hips and the seams not hitting her precisely where they should. Gideon took a pinch of grim satisfaction in that, but even she could see that the routine was a triumph.

Harrow watched the whole thing like there was a secret language in it, like if she paid close enough attention she could learn its alphabet. It was a level of scrutiny that made Gideon uneasy, and more than a little jealous, but she believed Harrow when she said her fascination wasn’t something she had to worry about.

She tried very hard to believe it, at least.

“I have something to discuss with her,” Harrow said, standing up from the seat, watching Coriane exit the kiss-and-cry booth. 

“Right now? About what?”

“She may be able to help--us.”

That seemed… profoundly unlikely, but stranger things had happened. Gideon wanted to trust Harrow, for one thing.

“Alright, so you want to meet me somewhere when you’re done, or--”

Harrow shook her head, “No. You can come with me. It’s not some secret rendezvous.”

“Oh,” Gideon said and followed. “It wouldn’t be a secret anyway, ‘cause you told me.”

Harrow looked back at her. “Let me do the talking.”

They caught up with Coriane making her way through the winding hallways outside the locker room. She wore a pair of loose track-pants over the bottom half of her performance outfit, her hair out of its tight bun and swept to one side, a sweat-damp margarine curtain hanging over one eye. 

Her face sparked to something like life when she spotted Harrow, only dimming very slightly when she noticed Gideon a moment later. 

Harrow didn’t bother with hellos. “Silas and Colum are here. Did you know?”

Charmed and delighted in equal, unhurried measure, Coriane looked to the side before admitting, “I thought I saw them sniffing around.”

“They’re up to their old bullshit,” Harrow said, “Harassing athletes, stealing registration documents--” 

“You don’t know that was them. Clerical errors happen all the time.”

Harrow was not reassured. “They should not be permitted at these events.”

“Sure,” Coriane said, and waved her hand. “But do you know how much trouble it is to keep two specific people out of a stadium that seats thousands?”

“It’s worth the trouble.”

“Says you.” Coriane hummed like she was considering. “You know, Harry, I think I’ve been very generous with my favors lately, and you’ve only spit them back in my face.” She brushed one finger across Harrow’s cheek, like she might if her hair were longer and it had fallen in her face. “What’s in it for me?”

Ears reddening, Harrow didn’t flinch. Her jaw stayed firm. “They’re not just asking about me, Tridentarius.”

"And? Unlike some little goth hermits I could mention, I rather like it when people are talking about me. Means I'm doing something worth talking about."

"Asht and Octakiseron are not interested in your romantic entanglements or your endorsement deals," Harrow said. "The questions are more pointed than that. Dates, times, appearances. What happens when they start asking Tern the wrong questions? Or when I start answering them?"

Coriane's mouth pulled into one of her lazy, disaffected smiles, but there was something about her sickly lavender eyes that Gideon found unsettling. "Harry," she drawled, "Babs won’t say one little word about me to anyone, because I know all about his little--” she glanced at Gideon, calculating how much she might say, “--performance enhancer. And even if there were something to tell, I don't see you running to share the hot, juicy goss with Silas, of all people."

"Make no mistake," Harrow countered, "I may not be one to peddle in rumors, but I would, at the slightest provocation, sell you to Satan for one corn chip." 

"She doesn't even like corn chips," Gideon muttered, earning the nudge of a pointy elbow in her ribs and an equally sharp " Griddle ." before Harrow returned her attention to the great white bean pole.

Coriane frowned in some poor approximation of pity. "So cold...I suppose I'm somewhat to blame for that. But you can't say I haven't tried to make it up to you." Her eyelashes, naked and almost translucent, fluttered once, suggestively.

"Do not insult me by suggesting any of your recent overtures have been for my benefit." ("Harry, you wound me.") "I don't expect you to act on my behalf, but if you do have any secrets that you would rather remain buried, then I suggest taking action before they point their shovels in your direction in earnest."

"How interesting," said Coriane. "When they asked me about you I said they were barking up the wrong tree. That you were far too sad and self-flagellating to be the cold-blooded killer they imagine you to be, but if you're going to all the trouble of trying to manipulate me into taking care of them for you, I'm not sure what to believe anymore…"

Gideon did not care for this conversational detour, and blurted out her two cents before Harrow could respond. "Has it occurred to you that she just doesn't want to give childhood trauma interviews to every Tom, Dick, and Douchebag with a true crime blog?"

Coriane’s bloodless gaze fell on her, clearly irritated by the necessity of acknowledging this person with the audacity to stand next to Harry. "What would you know about it?"

"Enough to know you don't know shit, Cori."

Her sneer was as lazy as the slant of her hips, but she leveled it with unwavering disdain. "Do not call me that," she said, and then with pleased consideration: "but that's interesting, too."

"Gideon." Harrow's voice cut through the impromptu staring contest, both of them blinking to look down at her. The look in her eyes, now locked on Gideon, was half-reproach half-pleading. A shut up, but a please shut up. 

"Coriane," Harrow said, like there might be some appeal to be found in addressing her with a first name, "I can't force your hand, nor do I wish to. Do what you will, but do it smart. I know you're capable."

Coriane laughed, a breathy exhalation that cut through whatever tension had gathered between them in the last few seconds. "You flirt," she said, and then shrugged. "You've made your case--" she nodded towards Gideon "--no thanks to your co-counsel. I'll see what I can do." And then, like a papery and self-satisfied moth, she flitted away.

---

Cam and Pal’s routine was absolutely unreal. Gideon was riveted, bent on dissecting how Camilla managed to move like she was twice her own size and somehow half the weight. The group from earlier had recongregated, and next to her Dulcie gasped as the pair completed their final sequence. Gideon stole a glance in her direction, and found her breathlessly squeezing Pro’s hand, nodding to herself like their performance was an answer she’d been waiting for. 

Their score was, to put it precisely, really fucking good, and totally deserved. Harrow looked grim.

“Do we, uh,” Gideon asked, hushed, “still have a chance?”

“If we are perfect ,” she answered, her voice unnervingly flat. “Yes.”

Gideon let out a breath. “No pressure!”

---

"So," said Gideon, assuming the position--which in this case meant hopping up on the public but conveniently vacant bathroom counter, "what kinda war paint do you have for me this time?"

"Largely the same as yesterday," Harrow replied, dolloping a precise measure of some goop (primer?) on her fingertip. 

"What about your look?"

"Similar, just slightly more of it, to account for the presumed uptick in… Drama, for the free skate."

"Is there any rule about how you have to do your make-up?"

Harrow peered at her curiously before she said, "Nothing explicit. Only Informal guidelines, the limits of which we are already testing." 

"What I'm hearing is they technically can't dock you points for going full Halloween on 'em." Harrow did not look entirely convinced. "I mean, come on, meltdown aside, the look for your last solo routine was legitimately pretty cool. Why not go full goth? It's not like it would clash with our outfits."

The outfits in question were the relatively plain black bodysuits they'd worn for the short program (still smelling faintly of sweat, despite the Febreeze treatment Aiglamene gave them overnight), with additions to punch up the glamour for their longer routine. Gideon's now featured a close fitting jacket, trimmed with glinting black crystals that ran in skeletal lines down each arm. Harrow's came in the form of a spandex bodice, adorned with those same crystals in an artfully executed (points for Marshall Crux--didn’t know he had it in him) facsimile of a ribcage and collarbone.

"I don't need to give the judges an excuse to be critical."

"Pff, fuck the judges. If we're good enough they won't be able to do a thing about it. Aren't you tired of being nice?" Gideon leaned forward, clasping her hands between her knees. "Don't you just want to go apeshit?"

Harrow raised an eyebrow at her, and let out a single breath that could almost be a chuckle. "I haven't been confused for nice since I was twelve, Nav, and going 'apeshit' is arguably how I ended up in this mess to begin with."

Gideon reached out, curling her fingers under the bodice at Harrow's hip and tugging her closer. "But it's not such a bad mess to be in, right?"

Harrow looked over her shoulder, like she needed to make sure no one else had entered the room in the last ten seconds. "Could be worse," she said, and, unprompted(!), kissed Gideon--a sweet and short meeting of lips, before she pulled away again, averting her eyes to search for an eyeshadow palette. 

At least she wouldn't notice Gideon grinning back at her like a complete doofus.

"Are you genuinely suggesting that I put more make-up on you?"

"I am suggesting, my frigid midnight queen, that you do us up like a couple of your spooky scary skeletons." 

Harrow eyed the make-up kit laid out before her. The pursed line of her mouth straightened, pulling into a thin, satisfied, wisp of a smile. She collected a great deal of smooth white powder on the end of a brush and said, "Hold still."

Chapter Text

Now that she wasn’t mad at Harrow or tied up in knots about her--well, okay, she was still tied up in knots, but they were. Better knots? Knots that made fondness swell up in her chest and threaten to spill over if she tugged at them too much. Nice and deeply embarrassing knots, which on second pass sounded kinkier than Gideon intended, but the point was, now that she wasn’t actively cursing Harrow’s name, it was different.

Being on the ice, specifically, in front of a few hundred people--Gideon pointedly did not try to estimate beyond that already intimidating number--was different. The murmur of the crowd didn't go away, but it was only a backdrop. The subtle scrape of Gideon's skates, the measured, even sound of Harrow breathing in through her nose, out through the mouth--everything just the two of them came into focus so sharply it made Gideon's skin prickle, and she was quietly grateful for the layer of paint and powder obscuring her expression. 

They fell into their opening positions, and Gideon looked down at Harrow, her wide eyes staring out from a face painted like an unreasonably lovely skull. The lines she'd used for Gideon were bold and blocky. Angular cheekbones and shadowed eyes, while Harrow's were delicate and precise, confident and artistically applied. Gideon found herself trying to look past it, to trace the lines of her face that persisted under the paint.

The music began, and Gideon’s body was moving before her brain had moved on from wondering just how much it would ruin Harrow's careful work if she pressed their mouths together. 

Gideon did have a few brain cells left, so she did not kiss Harrow. Instead she shook off her reverie to find herself pulling Harrow into their first spin, gripping her wrists and turning until her body was almost parallel to the ice. And just as smoothly, they were coming out of it, Harrow spiraling away from her only to return with the swell of the music. 

The first minute passed like that, and the second. Gideon was a spectator, watching as her legs carried her back to Harrow, again, again, letting her arms do what her arms did, lifting her up, keeping in the air. 

In this dreamy state, reality hit her like a wet finger stuck in a light socket. She knew before Harrow left her hands that the throw wasn’t right. The weight distribution was off, or Gideon’s feet weren’t in the right position, or something , because Harrow didn’t arc through the air as she normally did. She careened, off balance, and that slowed her rotation. 

There was a fraction of a second, one skate cleanly meeting the ice, that it looked like she would land it anyway. 

And then the rest of her weight followed her skewed trajectory. Harrow tried to correct, but gravity was against her, and out slipped the skate. She didn’t seem to hit the ice especially hard--small mercies--but she skidded before she could recover, and Gideon was doing her best to re-align them and pull them back on track while she studied Harrow’s face for any sign of hesitation. Any sign of pain.

Luckily, all she found was a pretty skull painted over a lightly homicidal scowl. So within the realm of normal Harrowhark expressions. 

That small comfort got her through the rest of the routine. After the fall, they were--mostly--fine. There was a tremor in Gideon’s hands, and Harrow was maybe more stiff than she could have been, but they made it through without any other major fuck-ups. The music faded out with Harrow draped over Gideon’s knee, her face angled away. Her chest rose and fell, dramatic in the sliver of silence that stretched impossibly long--one breath, two--until it was overtaken by a blooming swell of applause, distant in Gideon's ears. 

She pulled Harrow to her feet, and they bowed like before. Harrow didn't let go of her hand, those thin fingers squeezing hers until they had to clip guards onto their skates and file into the booth--the kiss-and-cry --with Aiglamene to await the score. 

Harrow's face, inscrutable, remained impassive as they learned the truth Gideon already suspected: their score was not enough to beat out Palamedes and Camilla. And now Harrow was quietly making peace with second best. Hell .

"Harrow," Gideon said, touching her arm as they left the booth, "I'm sorry--"

Harrow turned on her, eyebrows pulled together tight, mouth curled with disgust. "Don't," she said, stopping the both of them. "Don't do that."

"I know you wanted first, I don't know what happened--"

"Griddle," Harrow hissed, and anything else she intended to say was cut off when Magnus Quinn clapped the both of them on the back.

"Good show , girls!" 

Harrow blinked up at him, and took his hand when he extended it, acquiescing to a congratulatory handshake. 

“And here I thought you were a force of nature as a single act. Harrow, I can hardly believe you haven’t done pairs before now. And you --” Magnus turned and took Gideon by the shoulder, guessing correctly that she’d be less put off by the familiar gesture. “--nabbing the silver in your debut? Where on earth has our girl been hiding you?”

“Until very recently I was scrubbing toilets at her ice rink.” Gideon provided, and had a sneaking suspicion that Harrow was darkening under her make-up, although whether it had more to do with Gideon or with Magnus’s affectionate “our girl” she couldn’t say for sure. 

Magnus blew out a dramatic breath and clutched his chest. “A hockey player moonlighting as a janitor--or vice-versa, I suppose? Either way, good God. It was a treat to watch, Nav. I honestly was not sure any partner would be able to give Harrowhark a run for her money, but you two skate together like you were born to it.”

Gideon smiled at Magnus, mute and saucer-eyed, like a deer gazing into a pair of particularly supportive headlights. Not only was she still vaguely worried about Harrow stewing in her second-place melancholy, but this was more genuine positive reinforcement than Gideon had heretofore encountered from anyone with the faintest whiff of authority. 

Harrow took Gideon’s hand, squeezed it(!) (???). “Thank you, Quinn. It was a great deal of work.”

“Lord, I hope so. If you just slapped that together we’re all in trouble. Come on, we’re all over here until the medal ceremony. It shouldn’t be too long now.”

Harrow nodded, and they followed him to the sprawling space that held the other skaters. Gideon noted Coriane standing with a few singles skaters, mercifully far from the group that Magnus approached. She eyed Harrow, a fleeting once-over, followed by an unimpressed glance in Gideon's direction. 

“Love the make-up, by the way, very theatrical,” Magnus continued, hushed, as though just remembering, “but if Isaac asks can you tell him it was awful to skate in? Too...sweaty or something? Since he saw you he’s already started trying to talk Jeannemary into a glamour-zombie look, and I’m just not sure that’s a road we want to go down at this juncture.”

Gideon thought an ice-zombie routine sounded sick, but she said, “I’ll see what I can do,” much to Magnus’s relief.

Palamedes and Camilla intercepted them before the rest of the group. “Incredible work out there,” Pal said, addressing both of them but looking intently at Harrow. “Looking forward to upping our game now that you’re officially our competition.”

Harrow eyed him, and said simply, “Don’t get used to that top spot on the podium, Sextus.”

“I’m sure I won’t,” he replied, smiling. The guy really meant it, and, bless him, he was more excited about the prospect than bothered. Camilla allowed herself a hint of a smile beside him, and nodded to Gideon once before the four of them melted back into the group, awaiting the medal ceremony. 

Harrow was stone-faced throughout, accepting congratulations as politely as she ever did (not very, but an effort was made). She accepted the handshakes offered by Judith and Marta, and even managed to comment on their third place position with a minimum of condescension. 

During the medal ceremony, their names were called, and when they were halfway to the podium, Harrow squeezed her hand again, pulling them close and saying “spin me,” so low Gideon thought she might have misheard. She turned anyway, nothing too showy, pulling Harrow in a gentle orbit and bringing her in again, their chests together. Harrow’s eyes were so damn wide , but beyond that didn’t tell Gideon a thing. 

They got their medals, they bowed, people clapped. When it was over, Abigail asked if they wanted to join in a celebratory dinner, and as Gideon nodded Harrow said decisively, “I think Gideon and I will be turning in for the night. Next time.”

“Alright, dear,” Abigail said, tempering her disappointment, “Congratulations again, if you haven’t heard it enough tonight. Don’t be a stranger, either of you.”

“Come on,” Gideon said, as Pent drifted out of earshot. “Why not go to dinner? It’ll be fun.”

“I’m not in the mood to eat,” she said, and shit , Harrow was absolutely still upset about the fall. Gideon didn’t think it was totally her fault, but what did she know? That hardly mattered anyway when it happened on her watch and it cost Harrow the gold, so of course she’d be in a sour mood. She put so much of herself into this sport and so much of it came down to dumb luck, even without taking into account the last ditch partner she’d been saddled with. 

“The competition is over, Harrow. What is wallowing in the hotel room going to accomplish? I think even Aiglamene is going out to meet some of her buddies for drinks.”

Harrow’s face, even through the make-up she hadn’t wiped away, pulled into a look that was extremely familiar to Gideon. One that said you’re so dense it’s a wonder you’re still breathing . 

“Let’s go,” was all she said, pulling Gideon out the door.

She crossed her arms as they marched for the hotel, staring ahead, laser focused even as passers-by took note of their skull paint and ceded a few more inches of sidewalk. Gideon followed, hands shoved in the pockets of her leather jacket--looking a little silly over the sparkly costume, but that was the least of her worries. 

The hotel room door clicked shut behind Gideon, and Harrow turned on her, dropping her duffle bag to the floor. She wasn't simmering anymore, tamping down what Gideon had assumed to be frustration.

She did not look frustrated now. She looked like she wanted to eat Gideon whole. 

"You are a marvel, Griddle. Do you know that?" Harrow had backed her against the door, and now hands were fisting in Gideon's jacket, pulling her down to crash their mouths together.

Gideon kissed back--how could she not--but her two remaining brain cells sparked back to life when Harrow broke away to push the jacket off Gideon's shoulders. Her mouth was a ruined smear of gray, and Gideon could not be in any better shape, but Harrow looked at her like she was made of gold, or a lucrative endorsement deal from her favorite brand of eyeliner, or--something sexier than either of those.

“You’re not mad?” 

Harrow paused, hands ceasing their work against Gideon's costume. “Why would I be mad?”

“Because we didn’t… win?”

“I don’t care.” Harrow squeezed Gideon’s shoulders. Her face relaxed, revelatory, and Gideon wished she had a camera ready, wished she could fucking paint, to capture it and keep it. “I don’t care .” She stared up at Gideon, smiling with an abandon that looked totally foreign on her face, and completely beautiful. 

Gideon returned it instinctively, helplessly. “Yeah?” 

"Griddle--" Harrow said, and interrupted herself with another kiss, “--skating with you is a gift. A privilege. I didn't know I could enjoy it anymore. But with you it's so fucking easy ."

Gideon wanted to wince, like Harrow was a beacon too bright, so radiant she couldn't face it directly, but she gazed at her anyway, cupping Harrow's face in both hands. 

"I'm just trying to be good enough for you, babe." 

The line between Harrow’s eyebrows deepened, and Gideon smoothed it over with her thumb, smudging the paint into yet another gray blur.

"You're too good, Gideon. I don't--" Harrow spoke the words in a whispered panic, and stopped to wrap her arms around Gideon, to tug on the zipper at the base of her neck. "Let me, please."

"Yeah--yes, absolutely," Gideon said, so ready to let Harrow have her way, and yet-- "but what if…you let me , first?" She let her hands drop to Harrow’s waist, sliding her thumbs under the sparkly bodice. “Not that I’m keeping score but, I think I owe you an orgasm or three.”

Harrow stiffened, curling her hands around Gideon’s wrists and pushing them back against the door.

“Don’t worry about the score,” she said. It was low, but there was something else, a tremor in her voice. 

Harrow pressed their bodies together, pressed sucking kisses to her neck as Gideon squirmed but--Gideon wrenched her hands free. She held Harrow at arms length by the shoulders, saying, “Hold on.”

“What?”

“If you really don’t want me to, ah, return the favor, if getting me off is really all you want or need or whatever, then that’s--fine, I guess. But can we talk about it so I don’t feel like I’m… using you? Give me something.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to use me? I treated you like refuse, like you were a burden instead of someone I needed . I’ve lied to you and used you and put you at risk . Let me give you this. I want to. It’s the absolute least I could do.”

“Jesus, Harrow, do you hear yourself? Put me at risk? I don’t want to use you for sex. If I want to get back at you for something I’ll just steal your hubcaps again or whatever.”

Harrow, momentarily stunned out of her urgency, asked, “That was you?”

“Of course that was me. Sold ‘em for a pretty penny, too. But please, listen to me. As talented as you are in that...arena--and I am NOT complaining about your abilities--I don’t want you doing something like that if you’re not into it.”

“I am,” Harrow murmured in a rush, her voice cutting out on her, looking down at the sickly muted colors of the hotel carpet. “I am. Into it.”

There was a flutter of heat in Gideon’s belly at just that tiny wisp of a confession. Fuck. Gideon was a goner, and she could not keep having this conversation backed up against a doorframe. “Come on,” she said, and pulled Harrow to sit next to her on the nearest bed. 

She let out a breath and nudged Harrow's foot with her own. “Okay, good. Good. You’re into that. I am, suffice it to say, also into it. What else are you into? Do you want me to touch you, or is that like--off-limits? Do you want dirty talk? I can do dirty talk!”

Streaks of bare skin visible through Harrow’s smeared paint blushed crimson, and she clenched her fists. “No, or--not no, but I think it would just make me more... self-conscious.”

“So is that the issue? You’re afraid, what? I don’t find you sexy? Because let me crush that assumption right now. Harrow, I’m wild about you. It's embarrassing. The things that I would gladly do…” Gideon shook her head. “Sorry, Christ. In my defense you did have me pinned against a door like one minute ago.”

“It’s okay.” Harrow’s shoulders relaxed, and she began to look less like she was collapsing in on herself, even if she still had the general vibe of an animal in a cage. “It’s not that, really.” She drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them. “I want you too much, and I can’t--I can’t trust myself with something that good. It felt safe as long as I didn’t let you…” she recollected her thoughts. “But clearly I’m still fucking that up.”

“Harrow…” Gideon peeled one of the hands away from around her shins, taking it and pressing her thumb into the shallow divot between each knuckle. “What do you mean you can’t trust yourself? You’re allowed to have nice things.”

The words tumbled out of Harrow, like a pipe had burst. "Ana was my best friend. I loved her, and it got her killed. I can't--" 

Harrow’s hand trembled, and her breath came shallow and quick from her sharp little nose. Gideon ducked her head to look up into Harrow’s face and found her eyes distant, wet. 

"Hey. Caring about someone doesn't hurt them. That wasn't you. That isn't on you."

Harrow took one shuddering breath with her mouth, filling her chest like a balloon, and craned her neck away from Gideon almost violently. Her words were punctuated by gasps, like she was treading water, being dragged under.  “It is if--if it happens again. If I’m not good enough and they--I should never have tied you up in this. It was selfish and you don’t owe me--” 

“Woah, woah, hey--” Gideon let go of Harrow’s hand, but then that felt wrong too, so she settled her own on one delicate ankle. “What’s gonna happen again? You’re afraid I’ll… get hurt?” 

Harrow was muttering now, “I’m sorry,” and “It’s fine,” and “I’m sorry,” again, like a mantra.

“Harrow, I’m not mad at you, and it’s clearly not fine.” She rubbed Harrow’s back in slow, steady circles. “Can you look at me?”

Her eyes were clenched shut, but Harrow raised her head and cracked them open, her thick eyelashes misted with tears. She was still breathing so fast, but it seemed like she was at least making an effort to calm now. 

“You’re okay,” Gideon said, because she wanted it to be true. “Just breathe. That’s all you gotta do.”

Gideon put her arms around Harrow’s shoulders, tentatively, and failed to entirely stifle a gasp when the trembling stick of a girl turned to bring her own arms around Gideon’s middle, clutching at her like she was the only thing for miles, pressing her face into Gideon’s chest and breathing “I’m sorry,” again and “you don’t have to--” into her sweater, even as she held her tighter. Gideon sshhhh ’d against her hair, stroking her back, and held her until Harrow’s lungs stopped sounding like she’d run a marathon.

When Harrow finally pulled away--Gideon didn’t know how long it had been--minutes? An hour?--her eyes were puffy and she looked exhausted, but the stiffness had been wrung out of her bones. She opened her mouth like she wanted to speak, but didn’t, and Gideon brushed a stray lock of short hair back from her cheekbone. 

“I don't know about you,” Gideon said, "but I'm beat. What say we crawl into bed and channel surf until we can't keep our eyes open."

Harrow, still a little dazed, nodded. 

Gideon poked around in the bathroom for a few minutes, and emerged with two washcloths, one wet and soapy, one just wet. 

"I have make-up wipes in my bag," Harrow said. 

"Shit. Should I use those instead?"

"No," Harrow said, fondness making inroads against the frightened exhaustion blanketing her face. "Soap and water will work. It just takes a little more effort."

"Effort I can do," said Gideon, kneeling onto the mattress and tipping Harrow's chin up. She started at Harrow's cheek, scrubbing away the muddied paint and powder to reveal raw and reddened skin underneath. Harrow's eyes fell shut, and she sighed, like Gideon getting into a shower after a grueling practice.

"There," Gideon said, with one more swipe across the forehead. "Lookin' good."

"You still look like a mess."

"I'm getting there!" Gideon slid off the bed and chucked the washcloths into the bathroom sink. She grabbed Harrow's suitcase, hauling it up onto the bed and started rifling through it.

"Hey," Harrow protested, "what are you--" 

Gideon grabbed the softest tank top she could find and threw it at her, followed by a pair of yoga pants that seemed comfortable enough. 

"Put on some PJs, loser. I'm not letting you sleep in bejeweled spandex." 

Before Harrow could object, Gideon grabbed her own sleep shorts and disappeared back into the bathroom. She scrubbed her own face clean, changed out of her skating outfit, and went through the rest of her bedtime routine. Well, her abridged bedtime routine. She did not plan to settle in with a skin mag. She pulled on her sleep shorts and found the t-shirt she slept in the night before hanging off the towel rack. It smelled fine, so she put it on. When she emerged again with Harrow’s toothbrush and a little plastic cup of water, Harrow was changed into her comfortable clothes and looked at her with amused disbelief. 

“I can, in fact, walk the five feet to the bathroom myself, Griddle.”

“Hmm, see, according to my contract you signed up for the full-service Gideon Nav experience?” She handed over the toothbrush, setting the cup on the bedside table. “So I’m afraid I must insist.”

“Again, you did not sign a contract.” She started brushing anyway. 

“But I did agree to be your partner, and I’m still petitioning for girlfriend status, so…”

Harrow coughed, spitting a little toothpaste onto the ugly hotel comforter. She reached for the cup of water and swished, spitting it out and wiping the lingering foam on the back of her hand. It was not remotely dignified, and Gideon grinned at her. 

“Gideon--”

“Don’t answer now. I wouldn’t hold you to it if you did anyway. This weekend has been A Lot, so tonight we’re having a slumber party. Just gals bein’ pals.”

That earned her an elusive Harrowhark smile, so after taking the toothbrush back to the bathroom, Gideon pulled down the blankets and waited for Harrow to clamber her way under them. 

“Oh no…” said Gideon, feigning distress, “there’s something wrong with my bed…”

Harrow raised an eyebrow. “And what would that be?”

“You’re not in it?”

Harrow rolled onto her side and, looking back over her shoulder, held the blanket up. “Get in here.”

Gideon, having been assigned the role of big spoon, one arm draped over her waist and the other tucked under her pillow, fit against Harrow like--well, like they did on the ice, like they couldn’t help but click in place. 

Harrow nestled back against her, smelling like soap and sweat and fluoride toothpaste. “Just gals bein’ pals ,” she mimicked, skeptically.

“Do pals not spoon? I think pals totally spoon.”

“Hmm,” Harrow replied, but she didn’t voice any more objections. 

They flipped through channels (Gideon managed to snag the remote, shamelessly using the unfair advantage of her long reach to grab it off the nightstand). It wasn’t even that late, but as the endless march of cop dramas and sitcoms flickered across the screen, her eyelids started to droop. 

The channel surfing culminated in a familiar montage of bikini bodies, and Gideon murmured helplessly, “oh no… the remote stopped working…”

Gideon could practically hear the eyeroll. “Oh, just leave it.”

Lulled by the dulcet tones of red-clad lifeguards rescuing hapless swimmers from jellyfish and Harrow’s soft, even snoring, Gideon dozed off.

Chapter Text

She woke to Harrow’s face pressed against her neck, the warm staccato of her breath drumming lightly over her collarbone. Morning light snuck through gaps in the heavy hotel curtains, and Harrow had both arms curled against her chest, her knees pulled up and digging into Gideon’s hips

Gideon luxuriated, pressing her face to the top of Harrow’s head and inhaling. She smelled like she did last night, but more settled and lived-in, and she didn’t stir, even when Gideon’s stomach gurgled impolitely in the morning silence. Part of her wanted to stay right here and wait for Harrow to get up, for her to flutter those absurd eyelashes awake and catch Gideon watching her sleep like a complete weirdo, but she was ravenous, and--craning her neck to eye the alarm clock on the nightstand--she had another hour of free hotel breakfast waiting for her. She extricated her limbs from around her scrawny bedmate and slid the blanket whisper-light up over her shoulders. Gideon slipped out the door, hanging the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the outside handle as she left. 

Pal and Cam sat at a table in the lobby, chatting quietly over what was left of their own breakfast. Camilla, always inscrutable, noticed Gideon approaching and nodded to her partner, who looked up and smiled. “Morning, Gideon.”

“Hey,” Gideon replied, stopping at their table. “How was dinner last night? I’m sorry we missed it.”

“Oh, lovely,” Pal said, and pulled off his glasses, wiping them on his sweatshirt. “Truth be told we didn’t stick around for very long. Dulcie wanted to--ah, chat.”

“Oh! So is she your guys’s coach now?”

Camilla coughed. 

Palamedes put his glasses back on. “Not exactly, no.” There was color rising in Pal’s cheeks again, and Gideon gave him a once over. His short hair was mussed beyond recognition, which Gideon had initially chalked up to bedhead, but now she noticed a sickly purple bruise peeking out from his collar. 

“Oh,” Gideon said, “ oh ! Say no more, Sex Pal .”

Palamedes blinked at her. Camilla stared into the middle distance just past Gideon, took a breath, and leaned imperceptibly closer to her partner. “Sex Pal,” she said with a lack of intonation that felt vaguely accusatory. 

“You know, because your last name and your first name--”

“We get it,” Pal said, with a laugh, and then: “I will… thank you for your discretion.”

“Oh, gotcha,” Gideon said, and mimed zipping her lips. 

After a little more back and forth, they excused themselves, and Gideon descended on the three-star hotel breakfast spread.

When she made it back to the room, she knocked at the door with her foot. A minute later, one bleary-eyed Harrowhark cracked it open and peered up at her. “Did you forget your key?”

“Hands are too full!” Gideon held up a plate, balanced with one waffle, a spoonful of scrambled egg, a plain bowl of oatmeal, a small fruit cup, and an assortment of single-serve jams and syrups. In her other hand she gripped a precarious selection of juice boxes. 

Harrow let out a sigh that was almost a chuckle, and let Gideon in. 

“Breakfast is served, Sleeping Beauty.” She set the plate on the bed, sitting down next to it and holding out the juices. “OJ, apple, or cranberry?”

Harrow reached out timidly for the cranberry, some sleepy confusion in her voice when she asked, “Where’s yours?”

“I ate like half the tray of scrambled eggs while I was waiting for your waffle to cook, and Pal left most of his bagel behind, so I’m good.”

“Scavenger,” Harrow said, and she tore off a piece of the waffle, putting it in her mouth like there was a fifty-fifty chance it was going to bite her back.

“Opportunist,” Gideon corrected, and stuck a straw into the rejected orange juice, slurping it contentedly.

Harrow ate diligently, and Gideon only stole a couple pieces of pineapple from her fruit cup. They chatted about their routine, about the drive back home--Harrow agreed to let Gideon take over if she got even a little bit tired, not that Gideon knew how she would get her to admit it--and eventually Harrow set the admirably empty plate on the nightstand.

“Hey,” Harrow said, settling onto the unmade bed, her back propped up by pillows against the headboard. She took Gideon by the wrist and tugged her forward until she was crouched over Harrow on her knees. 

“Hey,” Gideon replied, and Harrow pulled her down. Their mouths came together, less a crash and more a reunion, and Gideon teased Harrow’s lips apart, the faint taste of profoundly bland oatmeal still lingering on her tongue. Harrow clutched at Gideon, pulling her closer until their bodies were pressed against one another, warm and needy. Harrow lingered under Gideon’s jaw, inhaling. 

“Sorry,” Gideon said, “haven’t showered yet so I probably reek.”

Harrow’s voice was low when she said, “I don’t mind.”

“Fucking knew it,” Gideon said, grinning smugly even though Harrow’s face was buried against her shoulder and she wouldn’t see. “You like it when I’m smelly.”

“Maybe,” Harrow conceded, and--only warning, no real malice--sank her teeth into Gideon’s trapezius.  

Gideon groaned and reluctantly retreated from Harrow’s mouth. She wasn’t about to be distracted. She trailed kisses down Harrow’s neck and felt fingers in her hair, encouraging sighs in her ears. 

One hand dropping to Harrow’s waist, Gideon’s thumb slipped under the hem of her tank top, brushing the soft, vulnerable skin of her belly. Harrow’s body surged up into hers like a wave, and she whimpered against Gideon’s forehead. 

“Please,” Harrow murmured, and Gideon ground her own body down, her hips having settled between Harrow’s thighs at some point. 

Gideon exhaled against Harrow’s throat and lifted her head to see the other girl’s face. “Yeah?”

Harrow nodded and, perhaps in an effort to prove her commitment, slid both her arms between them and pulled her shirt off over her head. Gideon groaned at the new expanse of skin. Harrow still wore a thin cami sports bra--of course she would subject herself to sleeping in a boob prison--but that did not deter Gideon from shimmying down the length of this newly exposed torso, dragging her mouth over ribs, down the dip of her belly, to her navel and the slope of her hip bones.  

Gideon hooked her fingers into the waistband of Harrow’s soft yoga pants and looked up at her, eyebrows raised. “This okay?”

Harrow nodded urgently, and Gideon pulled the pants down her thighs, reveling in another layer peeling away, the slender muscled curve of her legs, the downy soft hairs that peppered her thighs and shins. Gideon kissed the side of one knee, hands reaching up to circle her hips, smoothing over black cotton briefs and letting her fingers splay over the small of Harrow’s back. 

Harrow froze, the start of another whimper catching in her throat.

“Wait,” she said, and Gideon sat up, resting her hands on Harrow’s ankles instead. 

“What’s up?” Gideon asked. “Too fast?”

“No,” Harrow said, sending relief back into Gideon’s limbs. “I just--” Harrow clenched her jaw, breathed in through her nose.

“Talk to me, babe.”

“I need to show you something.” 

You’re already showing me quite a bit , Gideon did not say. “Okay, lay it on me.”

Harrow crossed her arms over her stomach and glared up at the ceiling. “You can’t be… you about it.”

“Not totally sure what that means, except that I should probably be offended, but come on. Once again, the preamble is messing with my head.”

Harrow made a frustrated sound and, pulling her knees up from around Gideon’s waist, flipped over on her belly. Puzzled, Gideon looked her over and--

“Oh my God.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Oh my God .” 

“Give me back my pants.” 

“Harrow,” Gideon said, absolutely in awe of the gift the universe had just bestowed on her, “you have a little skull tramp stamp.” 

“ Please shut up.” 

“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

“I’m going to book another room,” Harrow babbled hopelessly. “No. I’m going to take the car and I’m going to leave you here.” Gideon thought that might be worth it just to see the look on Aiglamene’s face when Gideon asked to hitch a ride on her motorcycle. Harrow started to get up, presumably to make a hasty retreat while Gideon was still stunned by her good fortune. 

No dice. Gideon coiled her arms around Harrow, who stopped putting up any real fight when she pressed a kiss to her shoulder blade.

“Harrow, you are--” Gideon kissed down the boney dip of her spine. “-- ridiculous --” She pressed lips to her back, on either side of Harrow’s waist. “--and so--” She kissed the backs of her hip bones. “--unbelievably--” She kissed the tattoo, skin raised imperceptibly by the lightly faded black ink. “--sexy.”

Harrow lay there, defeated, for a long moment. Eventually she wriggled under Gideon until she was on her back again. 

“I thought it would be better if I showed you than if you caught a glimpse on your own.”

“Probably a good call,” Gideon admitted. “I solemnly swear to not tease you about it...for the next hour, at least.”

Harrow pulled a pillow from behind her and thwacked Gideon across the face. Fair enough.

“I’m just… How do you, of all people, end up with a tattoo like that? There aren’t even any parlors in town, I don’t think.”

“One of the souvenirs from my apeshit weekend, just after the ban became official.”

“Ah.” Gideon nodded. “Say no more.”

“Just do your best to forget about it.”

Gideon shook her head. “Not happening. It’s too fucking cute. I’m gonna start a fan club.”

“Gideon…”

“All right, all right,” Gideon said, shifting until she was kneeling between Harrow’s legs again. She leaned forward, pressing her mouth to Harrow’s collarbone. “I’ll stop talking about your sexy little tattoo, promise.”

“Thank you,” Harrow said, her hands dropping onto Gideon’s shoulders. She was a little stiff under her now. Tense. Gideon hummed.

Harrow startled when Gideon slid her arms between her and the mattress, and made a very endearing sound of surprise when she lifted her up, flipping them so Gideon was sitting up against the headboard and Harrow was straddling her lap. 

“Better?”

Harrow looked down at her, lips parted slightly. “You might be onto something.” She gathered Gideon’s sleep shirt in her fists and pulled it off, Gideon raising her arms helpfully. She wore a sports bra under hers, too, although that was only because she’d thrown it on before leaving the room, since the large cut-out arm holes would have given the breakfast bar patrons more of a show than they’d bargained for otherwise.

This was nothing Harrow hadn’t seen before, but she still looked at Gideon like she was a wonder, eyes tracing over the lines of her shoulders, her torso. It made urgency crackle under Gideon’s skin, undercut by an unfamiliar trepidation.

Gideon was no slouch when it came to the horizontal tango, even if she hadn't had as many opportunities to show off her moves as she might have liked. Such were the tribulations of being a small town dyke, and her very occasional trips to the city were hampered by the fact that "Hey, you wanna buy me a drink so I have enough gas money to get home?" was not the most panty-dropping pick-up line in the book. Still, she got by, letting enthusiasm carry her when lived experience fell short, and she hadn't had any complaints. 

But the times before had been--easy? It's not that she didn't aim to impress--she did. She liked being impressive, just generally--but with anyone else the stakes were low. If the chemistry fell apart in the bedroom, well, no harm no foul. But with Harrow--God, with Harrow , Gideon didn't want to impress her. She didn't just  want to impress her; she wanted to be anything Harrow needed, to let Harrow take her apart and put her back together until she was just right, made to order and indispensable--and okay, yeah, maybe some of Gideon's abandonment issues were in play, but knowing that didn't stop the feeling like her ribs were being pried apart, opened and tugging her in one direction. 

"I want to make you feel good," Gideon said, she pleaded, and Harrow stared down at her with wide, black eyes, her chest rising with each uneven breath. " Please. "

Harrow didn't speak--maybe she couldn't speak--but she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and nodded, haltingly but determined, like she was fighting it upstream.

"You promise to tell me if you don't like it? If you need me to stop or slow down or anything?" Gideon's thumb brushed the waistband of Harrow's underwear where it sat on her hip. Harrow watched it trace the hem, watched it not dip inside to touch skin. 

She nodded again and, when Gideon didn't take the opportunity to tear her clothes off, she found her voice. 

"I promise." It was a whisper, rough like it had to be scraped out of her lungs. "It scares me--how much I want you. It terrifies me." 

"Hey," Gideon said, letting her hands travel up Harrow's waist, holding her and feeling the tight, deceptive musculature work under her palms. "Nothing to be scared of here, all right? Just one meathead hockey player who could probably get off to you reading the phone book in the next room over, and now I've got you in my lap, so trust me when I say, we're both goin' through it at the moment."

A thin layer of the drum-tight fear holding Harrow in something still a little too close to fight-or-flight fell away. "I've had you in more compromising positions, Griddle." 

"Sure, but now I've got you all hot and bothered, in a decently comfortable hotel bed, no less. This is uncharted territory, my winter queen." Harrow’s naked cheeks darkened, her eyes closing until Gideon put a curled finger under her chin. "Tell you what, how about I go over my game plan, and you can give me your feedback. Put me at ease."

Harrow's fingers, which had been teasing light and delicious at the nape of Gideon's neck, flattened across her shoulders. "Your game plan?" Her voice was breathy and skeptical and undeniably interested. 

"First," Gideon said, her fingers returning to the thin elastic of Harrow's waistband, "I'm gonna use my hands--" Harrow's breath hitched, and Gideon grazed the curve of pubic bone with her knuckles, over the fabric. "--keep you right here where I can see you, and you're gonna tell me when it's good for you." Harrow's own fingers tightened on her shoulders, clinging as if to steady herself as her hips drifted forward. "Decent plan so far?"

Harrow nodded, and then, like she remembered she could, said, "Yes… so far so good." 

"Fantastic," Gideon said, leaning in to speak against the warm skin just under her throat. "After that, you can call me the tallest Hobbit in the Shire because I'm--" Gideon illustrated her point by sliding her hand low and pressing up between Harrow's thighs, "--gonna eat this pussy for second breakfast." 

Harrow's head fell back, her arms drawing away from Gideon so she could cover her face with her hands. She groaned, but there was amusement in her voice when she said, "Shut up. "

Gideon grinned and waited for Harrow's face to emerge again.

"Make me."

Harrow's cheeks tightened, making a valiant effort to not smile. "You are a nightmare."

"Yeah?" As she asked, Gideon dragged her hand forward, then back, and Harrow shuddered over her. 

"A mhh--" she murmured, her composure faltering. "A menace. My own personal torment!" 

Gideon was working up a slow rhythm now, and Harrow rocked against her hand, hot and damp on her fingers, even through the layer of cotton.

“Mmm,” Gideon hummed against Harrow’s sternum. Thin fingers clutched at her bicep as she worked the arm back and forth.

“Don’t stop,” Harrow said, and grimaced like she hated the way it sounded. 

Well too bad, because that was music to Gideon, and she was damn well going to dance. She pressed hungry kisses to Harrow’s chest, to her neck, and when she pushed the underwear aside and slipped her fingers in its place, Harrow gasped. Music.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, gorgeous.”

Harrow came apart beautifully in her hands. She moved her hips in time with Gideon’s rocking, flat-handed strokes, back and forth over her increasingly slick folds. Even with this diffused, unfocused pressure, Harrow whined like she might collapse with her next breath. Her fingers dug into Gideon’s shoulders, her face dipped forward, out of sight.

In her ear, Harrow uttered for the second time, “ Please .”

The desperation in that plea lurched low in Gideon’s belly, her hips hitching with it, jostling Harrow in her lap. Unlined crow-black eyes stared down at her, pupils dilated with want, but Harrow’s jaw was clenched shut, pained. She needed something but it caught on her tongue.

On the next pass of her hand, Gideon slipped the tip of one finger to her-- gloriously slick--opening, and Harrow bore down with her hips, letting it slide in, that mouth falling open, slack at the sensation of Gideon inside her. This was what she'd been asking for, the intent behind Harrow's monosyllabic plea. Gideon would not have been opposed to a well timed fuck me, Griddle , but she got it; words were hard. 

"Fuck," Gideon said, happy to be enough of a motormouth for both of them, "that good, honey? You like that?"

Harrow nodded, biting down on her lip as Gideon stroked the anterior wall of her cunt, wet and gripping down to her knuckles. Another finger and Harrow fell forward again, burying her face against Gideon's shoulder and working herself back on Gideon's hand shamelessly, like she couldn't help herself. Fucking gorgeous.

Gideon's free arm circled Harrow's waist and came to rest on the curve of her back, damp with sweat. "Yeah, take what you need--this is so fucking hot, Harrow--Christ--"

Harrow keened, grinding down on Gideon's palm. A gasp caught in her throat and she was silent, shuddering around Gideon until all the air left her lungs in a whoosh against Gideon's neck.

She trembled there, unmoving otherwise, and then lifting her head, breathed, “Gideon.”

“Yeah, sugarlips?”

Her eyes narrowed, like she wanted to object to the endearment, but instead Harrow made good on it and pressed her sweet mouth to Gideon's. 

She sighed when Gideon slipped her fingers from between her legs, and again when Gideon curled hands around her thighs, pulling closer. Smirking, Gideon took the top of Harrow's bra between her teeth and quirked an eyebrow. 

"Can I meet the girls?" Gideon asked after letting the cotton snap back, and watched Harrow consider hitting her with a pillow again. 

“Only if you never call them the girls again,” said Harrow, and pulled her bra off over her head.

Gideon licked her lips at the sight of those perfectly set (eye level), slightly conical little tits, the pale brown nipples perched soft and delicious, just within reach. 

“Hello, ladies.”

Harrow ignored that. She squirmed with some vague discomfort. 

Gideon palmed one breast experimentally, and Harrow watched her, lower lip caught between her teeth and a crease forming in her forehead. Brushing the nipple with her thumb, and receiving largely the same reception, Gideon asked, “What is it, babe?”

“They’re not terribly sensitive.” She was almost--apologetic? 

Gideon's hand retreated to graze Harrow's ribs. 

"You don't have to stop," she said in a rush, "I don’t hate it, I just don’t want you to--" she looked down between them, "--feel like you’re wasting your time."

Gideon hummed thoughtfully, and descended on one of those charmingly puffy nipples with her mouth, dragging her tongue over the subtle bump. Harrow’s reaction was still less than enthusiastic, but she didn’t look upset, so Gideon nipped at the unresponsive flesh. And that --just a pinch of teeth, and Harrow hissed, the nipple pebbling under Gideon’s tongue. 

“Too much?” Gideon asked.

“No,” Harrow breathed, “you can...continue.”

So she did, kneading one breast with her hand while her teeth teased and bit at the other, migrating until both nipples were dark and hard and reddened with it. Harrow’s hips ground down against Gideon’s insistently, and she got the message: this was a tease. Gideon kind of liked the idea of teasing Harrow, of working her up until she couldn’t help but ask for exactly what she wanted, but--not now. Right now she wanted to give Harrow everything until she was overflowing with it.

Pressing her lips to Harrow’s sternum and wrapping arms around her waist, Gideon flipped them again, rolling Harrow onto her back. Gideon perched over her and worked her way down, hands and tongue and lips and teeth on Harrow’s body until she reached the waistline of her underwear and tugged. Harrow watched her, rapt, and helpfully pulled her legs up as Gideon peeled off the final layer of cotton, leaving one (1) whole Harrowhark fully on display like a tasteful nude in some fancy-schmancy art gallery. 

Or maybe Gideon meant tasty , as in, something she wanted to eat, because she was dying to make good on her earlier promise. 

Falling back between her legs, Gideon trailed rushed, messy kisses up Harrow’s thigh, in response to which Harrow made an encouraging collection of small, surprised sounds. She gasped when Gideon reached her cunt, framed and tickled by a bed of curling, black-as-pitch hair. Gideon slipped her tongue into the seam where those flushed folds had begun to part, the heady scent coalescing into taste, sharp and potent and intoxicating, so much so that Harrow’s breathy “ oh, fuck ,” almost got lost in it. 

Having fully committed to not teasing, she dragged the flat of her tongue up and over the clit, and Harrow trembled. Fingers pressing into the thighs that bracketed her ears, Gideon sucked and licked at Harrow with an experimental fervor until those hips started to meet her, to demand their own rhythm. Gideon fell in step, Harrow rewarding her with a hand in her hair, and Gideon somehow found it in herself to lift her head and say, between stolen breaths, “God, yes--you can pull harder.”  

“Griddle,” was all she heard before slender fingers tightened on her scalp, dragging her back down until all of Gideon’s senses were again wonderfully subsumed by that slick and searing hot pussy. Time flitted away from Gideon’s awareness, too, lost in the cant of Harrow’s hips and the sounds she made, rising and desperate.

It was with both hands fisted in Gideon’s hair that Harrow came against her tongue, shouting her name--Gideon this time--like a plea or a song or a prayer. She shuddered and held her there for several seconds, panting while Gideon hummed and finally lifted her head. When those hands released her, Gideon rolled to her side next to Harrow, peppering kisses on her flank and--she could not help herself, not after that --reaching a hand down her own shorts.  

“Thank you,” Gideon murmured into the tender skin over Harrow’s ribs, fingers just brushing over her aching cunt, “that was so fucking good, sweetheart.”

Harrow was more spry in her post-orgasmic haze than she had any right to be, shifting down the bed until they were eye to eye and Harrow was tugging Gideon’s shorts down to the middle of her thighs. Gideon thought she might brush her hand away and take over, but instead Harrow’s fingertips slipped past hers, sliding into her while Gideon’s worked harder at her clit. 

“Don’t thank me yet,” Harrow said, fingers curling. 

Her voice was more controlled than her face. Harrow’s pupils were wide, watching Gideon, taking her in . Her mouth was open, still breathing hard. Her head fell to Gideon’s working, straining arm, and then it was teeth sinking into her bicep--not hard, just a little mean. A little hungry. 

“Holy shit,” Gideon managed, and then she moaned, ragged and helpless, coming apart on her own hand alongside Harrow’s. 

When Gideon had caught her breath, Harrow caught her mouth, her still-wet fingers coming up to cup Gideon’s jaw. A sound escaped Harrow’s throat that might have been a whine, except that it was--unusually, for her--contented. With her shorts still bunched up halfway down her thighs, Gideon turned to pull Harrow into a full body embrace--God, they fit together so fucking well--and kissed her back. 

---

It was some time later when Gideon, her fingers drawing circles in Harrow’s short hair, asked, “So, not that I’m complaining, but what exactly were you thinking when you pinned me up against the lockers and fucked me stupid that first time?”

“I could say something here about how you don’t need my fingers inside you to make you stupid.”

“And if you did, I’d see right through your attempt to deflect the question.”

Harrow exhaled, acquiescing, and pinched her eyebrows together in thought. Eventually she said, “I didn’t expect it to go that far, initially.”

“Overcome by your libidinous impulses? On account of little old me?”

“I was angry at myself for falling, for injuring my ankle and setting us back, but when I watched you I almost--forgot about that. You were putting in the work, a living miracle of line and movement, and I knew we actually had a chance.”

Gideon’s cheeks grew warm. She watched the back of her knuckles brushing Harrow’s forearm, back and forth, rather than look into her face.

“You were gorgeous out there.” Harrow said wistfully, “and then you fucking winked at me.”

Oh yeah, guilty.  

“I wanted to know if you...meant anything by it. Asking you directly was out of the question.” Harrow sighed, and it seemed to be more at herself. “I don’t know which answer frightened me more, but I assumed a kiss would give it to me, and then you kissed me back, and my plan--unraveled.”

Gideon pulled Harrow the necessary inch closer to kiss her on the forehead. “Just let me know if I can throw a wrench in any other plans for you. Happy to do it.”

Harrow jabbed her in the side with pointy knuckles, but she made no move to disentangle their legs. 

It was several minutes later when Gideon again interrupted their companionable silence with, “Hey, babe?”

“Yes?”

“I think Coriane is two different people.”

In an instant Harrow was sitting up and facing Gideon, eyes wide and wild as she gripped Gideon’s shoulders. “ Thank you,” she said, bafflingly. “Sextus says I’m crazy.” She flopped back down on the bed, radiating vindication. 

Well, okay then.

---Epilogue---

“How is it?” Harrow asked as she picked at her own plate. This restaurant was purely for Gideon’s benefit, and Harrow didn’t hate it, per se, but she was not the most adventurous eater in the world. Gideon’s favorite Asian-fusion place had the benefit of being open on Christmas--without one of those special (read: expensive) holiday menus--but the flavor combinations could be a little much for her girlfriend’s delicate palate. 

Since moving, Gideon had explored the city like a tree spreading its roots, ducking into every weird bookstore and hole-in-the-wall cafe and dive bar she came across. When she found a good one, she’d bring Harrow along for her next visit (she liked the weird bookstores best, the bars not so much). Once, Harrow flipped the script on her, pulling Gideon into a tattoo parlor and showing her the sample art plastered on the walls. A stoic woman, built like an Amazon with dark skin dotted all over with intricate and striking tatts, nodded at them. Harrow had said just above a whisper as they perused the selection, “I’ve been doing some research, and Dve is the best artist in the city.”

“Research?” Gideon asked. “You want more ink?”

Harrow ended up with a few more tattoos, each one a testament to the possession of her skin-- her body, no one else’s--and once they healed Gideon would kiss them, memorizing the new terrain. After a year and a half, their little third floor apartment and the neighborhood surrounding it had begun to feel like home. 

“It’s great, sweetheart,” Gideon replied, slurping up a stray noodle. “Exactly what I wanted.”  

Small but reaching her eyes, Harrow smiled at that. “Good. Happy birthday.”

Something billowed like smoke, stinging and sweet, in Gideon’s chest. Birthdays--celebrating them, anyway--were new to her. Dear old mom hated Christmas on principle, and instead of seeing Gideon’s birthday as a welcome distraction, she seemed to take it as an offense hand-delivered by the universe. Gideon learned early not to bring it up. After she left, there wasn’t anyone else who cared enough to celebrate with her, and Gideon felt silly trying to put something together on her own, but now --

Now she was with Harrow, and Harrow, despite her aversion to merry-making in general, wanted to make it special. She, like Gideon, didn’t have a particular connection to the holiday (“I never celebrated after--everything. Crux gave me a gift, once, the following year, but I told him in no uncertain terms to never do it again.”), but she was determined to celebrate Gideon. 

Gideon finished her own food and started (not-so) surreptitiously stealing bits from her date’s plate. Harrow ordered Gideon dessert before she could even ask, and Gideon thought maybe she was the luckiest girl in the world. 

Harrow was careful about money. She’d made a decent sum selling the rink to some private equity thing, Domino-something? All Gideon knew was that it was unrelated to the pizza. Regardless, she was in no hurry to spend it, and Gideon wondered how much of that was out of fear that they might have to pick up and move again. 

(“When did you decide to do this?” Gideon asked when Harrow showed her the paperwork for the sale and laid out her plan: the two of them--if Gideon would have her--moving far away from this miserable town and never looking back. 

“When I asked you to spin me, I think.” Harrow had replied after some thought. “During the medal ceremony. That was the seed, at least. Staying here makes me feel like I can’t have that.” Harrow took Gideon’s hands, head tilted down like she was speaking to them. “I’m going either way, alone if I have to, but I do want that. I want it with every thrumming cell in my body that whirs to life in your presence, like a plant remembering sunlight. I want it if you do.” 

Gideon had smiled at her, pulling on the hands clasped around hers and bringing their bodies flush. “Of course you’re going alone,” she said as worry lines deepened in Harrow’s forehead, “and I’m going with you.”

She had been relieved and then, screwing her face up with memory, Harrow asked flatly, “Did you just quote Lord of the Rings at me again ?”

Gideon’s arms enveloped Harrow’s shoulders soothingly. “Shh… Precious…”

Harrow had sighed into Gideon’s chest and squeezed her back.)

At least Coriane--or Ianthe , apparently, and that was quite a confirmation when Harrow finally got it out of her. Apparently she was the more technically proficient between her and her sister Coronabeth, while Corona, a passable skater, was great at giving charming interviews and landing endorsement deals--had made good on her flimsy promise to get Silas and Colum off Harrow’s back. After pulling strings to get them banned from official events, she coerced Naberius into convincing his bougie athletic supply empire family to pull their Bob-Slain podcast sponsorship, which put the fear of God in them and gave them a new direction to point their investigation. This unfortunately meant not only keeping Ianthe's secret, but also being civil with her ( and her sister, although that wasn’t so tall an order, when she showed up instead) whenever they ran into each other. This was annoying, because Ianthe objectively sucked while also being kind of (annoyingly!) funny, and also weird because now that Gideon knew she was dealing with two different people she couldn’t understand how everyone else didn’t catch on right away. 

They’d used some of the money from the sale on the move here, halfway across the country with no forwarding address provided to Crux or--anyone else. That hurt Harrow a little, Gideon could tell, but it was the only way they could think to keep Harrow’s parents from trying to make contact. 

The house she signed over to Marshall. It rankled Gideon more than a little that Harrow’s folks didn’t get any real comeuppance for their bullshit other than Harrow cutting off their source of leeched income, but the break was cleaner this way. Her mother and father could hide away in that house and rot, as dead to Harrow as they had already been to the world.

The apartment they found was a few blocks from the rink run by Magnus and Abigail, largely selected for that reason. They didn’t have to work immediately--hence all of Gideon’s exploring--but eventually Gideon got a gig as assistant coach to the youth hockey league that used the rink for practice. It was fun and exhausting and, most importantly, the hours were accommodating, and there were people to fill in when she and Harrow had to leave for competitions. 

Their private ice time came at a higher premium nowadays, competing not only with a busier rink in a bustling city, but with the training schedule of Jeannemary and Isaac. They often ended up sharing time-slots, switching off to act as private audiences for the other’s routines. Magnus and Abigail never said so explicitly, but they must have noticed the vacuum left by Aiglamene--the old lady had finally decided to retire, and was probably sipping whiskey in Florida dive bars or riding her bike down the California coast or something else equally improbable for an octogenarian--so Pent and Quinn offered pointers and insights, not entirely unlike coaches might. 

Harrow picked up the check and walked home with her hand in Gideon’s, both of them bundled up and standing close against the winter chill. The streets were uncharacteristically empty, lined by lamp-posts wrapped in tinsel and sparkling lights. 

“I want tonight to be perfect for you,” Harrow said, looking up from her phone and tucking it into her jacket pocket as they climbed the stairs to their apartment. (There was an elevator, but Gideon figured why bother when she could count the climb for leg day.) 

Gideon stopped her, and Harrow turned back around, one step higher, so their eyes were almost level. 

“Hey,” Gideon said, and pressed a kiss to dark plum lips. “It’s already perfect. Best birthday on record, easy.”

Harrow’s eyes glittered--like a star field, Gideon always thought--and there was maybe a hint of smugness that flitted over her face, which Gideon certainly wouldn’t begrudge her. 

“Don’t call it yet,” Harrow said, turning to slip the key in the door, and Gideon silently estimated the chances that she’d be scrubbing plum lipstick off her skin tomorrow morning.

Harrow walked in first, not hitting the lights for some reason, disappearing into darkness. Gideon squinted, and fumbled for the switch. There was a sound like shuffling--breathing?--and Gideon had started to wonder as the lights came on and--

“ Surprise! ” 

A chorus of voices: Abigail and Magnus, their terrible teens, Palamedes, Camilla, Dulcie--even Judith and Marta, straight-backed, standing under Gideon’s pull-up bar--shouted at Gideon. A HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner hung over the entrance to the small kitchen. 

“Holy shit,” Gideon said, “What?”

“Oh, don’t tell me we got the day wrong,” said Magnus, jovially. He reached out a hand, pulling Gideon from handshake into a hug. 

“You’re all here for--” Gideon could hardly say it, disbelieving. “But it’s--”

“It’s your birthday ,” Dulcie supplied, having risen from her wheelchair to take Gideon by the arm. “Harrow here was quite insistent on that point. Any other holidays are entirely incidental for the evening.”

Gideon turned again to those starfield eyes. “Harrow,” she said, and lifted her girlfriend into the air like they were on the ice, or like maybe Gideon just wanted to show her off. 

Harrowhark, a girl who did not care for parties and mistrusted merry-making on principle, wrapped arms around Gideon’s neck and spoke into her ear, “Happy birthday, beloved.” 

Gideon Nav, by her own measure, had been averagely good all her life, or at least not criminally bad. She didn’t know what on earth she deserved or didn’t, but by some miracle--which may or may not rhyme with Blarrowblark Blanagesimus--she got to have this. 

---End---