Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s eight pm and Harrow stands on the threshold to Gideon’s dorm room like a vampire who may not enter without permission.

Camilla is with Palamedes and apparently left in such a rush that she forgot to close the door behind her, so Harrow can see what is going on inside. Gideon is hunched over her desk and scribbling… something down, moving things around occasionally. Harrow isn’t exactly sure what she’s doing, but she looks busy and not like she’d appreciate being disturbed. So she just waits in the darkened hallway, staring down the corridor with its many shut doors, and occasionally glances back at Gideon.

Harrow hates that she’s standing here. Every fiber of her being strains at the thought of doing this—of asking for help. Of admitting she needs it. She’s not even quite sure she does, really. Maybe she’s being ridiculous. There is no reason for her to be overwhelmed about Palamedes canceling a study session they’d agreed on a week prior due to a medical emergency at home. This is a normal thing that happens. This is not something she should get upset about.

A part of her wants to loathe him for it, and the rest of her is ashamed of feeling that way.

But this isn’t Gideon’s burden to bear, and it might not even be that big of an issue to begin with.

Harrow does not want to be doing this, and even coming here feels like a mistake the longer she stands in the hallway, so she will not go further unless prompted by an outside force.

Maybe she should just-

Gideon notices her, then. She turns to put something away—she’s stress cleaning, it now occurs to Harrow—and jumps.

“Nonagesimus, what the fuck?” The keys she meant to put by the door clatter to the floor noisily. Gideon leans down to pick them up, then slowly stands back up and takes a look at her. “Are you going to keep standing in the hallway like a total creep or are you going to come in?”

“I… apologize for startling you,” she says, not really sure what else she is supposed to say. Gideon is still standing in the doorway, looking at her expectantly. “Right. I will come inside, if it’s not too much of a hassle.”

That has Gideon’s eyebrows climbing all the way to her hairline. “Shit, Nonagesimus, you’re being weird. Why the hell are you so polite to me? Do I need to call a doctor or something?”

Harrow lets Gideon usher her inside, trying to figure out what exactly she wants to say. How to say it in a way that makes sense to Gideon, knowing it’s something she fundamentally will not understand. Harrow has never been good at handling things not going exactly the way she expected them to. Gideon has had a penchant for changing plans on a whim for as long as Harrow has known her. She will not get this. She will not get this.

The lump in her throat is hard to breathe past. Harrow can’t get a single word out.

Pinning down exactly at what point the tears start is impossible. By the time Harrow gets out of her head enough to fully register what is happening, she’s fully sobbing and Gideon looks absolutely horrified.

“Gloom Mistress, talk to me. Please.” She gestures to the couch, reaching out like she wants to place a hand on her shoulder, but she catches herself. “I can’t help you bury the body if I don’t at least know where it is.”

It’s a terrible joke. Harrow wants to throw something at her. Instead, she allows herself to sink down on the small couch, curling up in the left corner like she always does.

There’s an easy comfort in the familiarity of it. It helps. At least a little.

Gideon sits next to her, leaving enough distance for their legs to not be touching. God, Harrow would die for her.

“I’m sorry. It’s not-” Harrow gulps. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, you should be.” There’s no hesitation in Gideon’s reply. “I don’t want you to deal with all your shit alone anymore, even if I don’t know exactly what’s making you so upset.”

“It’s idiotic.”

“Don’t care. I’m glad you came here regardless. Is it alright if I- that is to say-” Gideon clears her throat. “If you need a hug or something, that’s totally cool. No pressure if not, though. I want to help, but I realize the way that works for you doesn’t always line up with the way it does for me.”

Harrow is not a touch person—has never been. But Gideon is one of the few people who feel safe, where touch is comfort rather than a sensation that makes her want to crawl out of her skin. And she asks. Harrow so desperately wishes more people would ask rather than simply assume.

She looks up at Gideon and nods, very slowly. Then she closes the gap between them and curls up on Gideon’s chest, closing her eyes and focusing on the steady rhythm of her heart. 

Gideon’s arms reach out to hold her, tentatively at first. 

“Is this okay? Anything you’d like me to change?” she asks, despite the placement of Harrow’s head. It’s different for her, but she knows Harrow being okay with one kind of physical contact doesn’t automatically mean she’s okay with any. She pays attention to these things. 

“Yes. You’re- it’s perfect, thank you.”

The hold gets less tentative then, though it is still just as gentle.

“Talk to me?” Gideon asks again. “Whenever you’re ready, I mean.”

“You will not understand it,” Harrow says quietly, head still pressed to Gideon’s chest. There’s something so terribly lonely about this thought.

“Try me.”

Harrow sighs and braces herself. She still feels horribly selfish for even having these thoughts in the first place.

“You know how Palamedes had to leave unexpectedly today?”

“Yeah. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I think it had something to do with Cam’s sister? They’re close, so she was pretty upset.” 

This just makes Harrow feel worse.

“It’s not- I don’t blame them for leaving. Rationally, I understand it. I don’t think it’s at all justified for me to feel the way I do.” She bites her lip. “But I’d made plans to study with Palamedes, and I don’t deal well with changes to my schedule, especially not when they’re this last minute. I had no time to mentally prepare myself. I feel like a terrible person for having this reaction, but I cannot shut it off.”

Harrow isn’t sure what reaction she expected, but Gideon doesn’t let her go. “You didn’t choose to react like this, you know that, right?”

“I should have a better handle on my emotions,” Harrow huffs, frustrated. She knows this isn’t an answer, not really.

“You know how I get, right? The anxiety I feel when someone cancels on me or leaves me on read or other minor, perfectly reasonable shit like that?” Gideon rubs at her face. “And it’s like… how self-centered do I have to be, to see everything other people do as a targeted rejection of me? I must think the world revolves around me, clearly! And isn’t it horrible of me to accuse the people I love of being so cruel?”

“Griddle…” There’s a reasonable assumption to be made that Gideon is going somewhere with this, but there’s so much raw hurt in her words and Harrow hates hearing her talk about herself like this. She doesn’t have the words she needs, but Gideon rarely needs words when she gets worked up, and so Harrow takes a breath and lets her own hands wander until her arms are wrapped around her friend’s upper back. 

“Oh.” Gideon looks at her, absolutely baffled. Maybe she hadn't realized how worked up she’d gotten. Or maybe she still isn’t used to the thought that other people might want to offer her comfort—that she’s allowed to take up space. The thought is a painful pull in Harrow’s chest, a ribbon wound so tightly around her heart it’s threatening to burst.

“Is this… alright?” she asks dumbly, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

Harrow expects a quip of some kind, maybe baffled amusement about her mediocre hugs, but Gideon just melts into her touch and doesn’t say another word for several moments. Her breathing slows, the raging fire dimmed back down to a controlled flame.

“Yeah, this is… yeah. Thanks.” Gideon’s face is pressed into her hair, her breaths warm on Harrow’s scalp. Harrow doesn’t mind it—not even a little. “Shit, that just really threw me. I need a second to get back on track.”

“That’s quite alright.” There’s a part of Harrow that wants to just spend the rest of her messed up evening like this, curled up on Gideon’s chest. If she was honest with herself… but that’s precisely why she isn’t honest with herself.

“Alright, so here’s the thing,” Gideon finally continues, thankfully tearing Harrow’s mind from the dangerous place it was about to wander. “Rationally, I know these thoughts are bullshit, and that I need to work on small things affecting me so much when they shouldn’t. Doesn’t mean I can turn that reaction off on a whim. Do you think that makes me a horrible person?”

“Of course not!” Harrow is absolutely affronted that Gideon would even ask. “You are the kindest person I have ever met. You’ve been through so much. It’s not your fault that-”

Harrow pauses, and it hits her all at once how much Gideon does get it. She may not share Harrow’s exact struggle, but the overlap is great enough for her to understand it. 

Gideon smiles at her. “Yeah. Exactly. There we go.”

The relief is immediate. In their mutual isolation, the world suddenly doesn’t seem quite as lonely.

“I hate you,” Harrow mumbles, muffled slightly by Gideon’s chest, and for what may have been minutes and what may have been hours neither of them moves.

“Are you feeling any better?” Gideon asks when she finally begins to untangle herself from Harrow.

Harrow considers this for a moment. She concludes after a moment that she’s not feeling as much better as she’d hoped—she doesn’t feel as anxious anymore, but the anxiety is still there, her disrupted plans leaving her evening fragmented and her with no idea how to pick up the pieces. 

“Yes,” she says, and somehow it feels like a lie even though it isn’t.

Her stomach rumbles—she hadn’t even realized how hungry she was getting. She glances at the clock, realizing they’ve nearly reached the time she and Palamedes would usually break for dinner, but she’s not even begun working yet and so a dinner break feels unjustified. Her stomach complains just as much regardless.

“Right, yeah, thought it was just about food time for you,” Gideon says with a smile, leaving Harrow absolutely baffled. Is that why she’s decided to get up now? “What do you want to eat?”

“I haven’t even started studying. I can’t eat yet,” Harrow protests, like this makes any sense at all. It’s important, for reasons she cannot put into words very well.

“Tell you what,” Gideon says, smiling at her. “You let me know what you want to eat and then we’ll go upstairs and I’ll suffer through a few hours of sitting in your disaster room and being your stand-in study Pal.”

She says “Pal” like the name and not the noun, and from her expression clearly thinks herself to be some comedic genius. Harrow groans.

Then Gideon’s words sink in.

“You’d do that for me?”

“You’re clearly anxious as hell about your evening being disrupted, so un-disrupting it as much as possible seems like it’d be the most helpful course of action right now. I may not have Pal’s smarts or be in any of your classes, but you can tuck yourself in your usual study spot and I can use your cue cards to ask you questions and stuff. Would that be okay?”

‘Okay’ does not even begin to cover it. Harrow feels like she might vibrate out of her skin. It won’t be the same, and her anxiety will not entirely shut up about this fact, but her system is still so overwhelmed by gratitude that she nearly starts crying again.

They've known each other since they were toddlers, and yet Gideon continues to surprise her.

Usually, Harrow despises being surprised. She has never been good at handling things not going exactly the way she expected them to. Her entire relationship with Gideon and all the ways in which it’s changed fits into that category. It’s one of the reasons she’s not sure how to handle it a lot of the time. It’s why, despite Gideon being the closest thing she’s ever had to a best friend, she spent the better part of ten minutes frozen outside her dorm room instead of simply entering.

There are no clear rules for these kinds of things. Not any Harrow has ever understood, at least. 

But it’s easier with Gideon than it has ever been with anyone else.

Harrow might never be able to equate unexpected with good, but Gideon-related things can somehow be both at the same time, even when they usually seem to be mutually exclusive.

‘I do not deserve you,’ she doesn’t say. ‘I don’t know how I got so lucky,’ she doesn’t say.

“Thank you,” is the only thing Harrow finally manages to press past her dry lips. “I would like that.”

Even as she says it, she knows that it is not enough. Thankfully, her friend—her rival, the girl that has taken up the majority of Harrow’s thoughts since she was five years old—seems unperturbed.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a delight to be around, I know,” Gideon says with a grin. “So, dinner?”

“Rice, maybe? Some vegetables would be okay, too, but-”

“Nothing touches the rice, tomatoes don’t go anywhere near the food and if I put carrots in they have to be cooked until they’re soft,” Gideon finishes. She says it like it’s not at all a big deal for her to notice and make an effort to remember this. Harrow wants to cry. “Your wish is my command, Dusk Princess.”

The nicknames should bother her.

The nicknames do not bother her in the slightest.

Harrow remains tucked into her corner of the couch until Gideon is done with the food, watching her quietly. There’s comfort in the familiarity of her movements, too—in all the little ways that come with knowing someone for almost as long as you’ve been able to form long-term memories.

“Enjoying the view?” Gideon teases her when she finishes, an eyebrow raised.

“Not particularly, no,” Harrow says, maybe a little too quickly, and proceeds to make a point to spend the entire way to her dorm room looking anywhere but at Gideon.

When she finally looks up at her again, it becomes obvious this is the opposite of what she should have been doing, because Gideon is still looking at her, clearly amused. It only occurs to Harrow then that maybe all the looking away really did was communicate embarrassment.

“How the fuck do you two find anything in this disaster zone of a room?” Gideon asks when she enters, seeming absolutely horrified despite the fact that she’s been over several times before. “I swear you had a table in here at some point. Is it under one of those piles?”

Harrow rolls her eyes. “Quit being so dramatic.”

Gideon’s first course of action is to open a window, which Harrow despises, but begrudgingly accepts based on the fact that she’s doing her a favor. Then she takes a notepad, rips an empty page out and makes impromptu bookmarks so she’s able to close the books scattered on the table and make an eating space. It’s an acceptable temporary solution.

“I’m not being dramatic. Someday this table will crack right down the middle because you put too many books on it. And don’t even get me started on the clothing piles in your room. Have you never heard of a laundry hamper before? Or of folding clothes?”

“I have more important things to worry about.”

“Yeah, up until those more important things inevitably get swallowed by your chaos vortex,” Gideon replies dryly. “How many of your notes have you lost that way?”

“None!” That… may not be entirely truthful, but Gideon does not need to know that. “I have a system.”

“Dropping everything where you’re standing once you’re done with it is not a system, Shadow Countess.”

“If you’re still trying to comfort me, agitating me may be a questionable course of action,” Harrow points out, ignoring the fact that she’s actually enjoying this.

She tells herself it’s the familiarity of it. That’s all.

“Nah, I am helping. That you’re arguing with me clearly means you’re feeling better.” Gideon smiles that frustrating smile of hers again.

Harrow really wants to strangle her sometimes. The rest of the time, though… she’s not going to think about what she wants to do the rest of the time.

The food is good, and Harrow is grateful for the company. The fact that there’s at least a proper plan to study in place now makes Harrow feel less terrible about eating. That she’d felt terrible about eating at all seems like something she direly needs to discuss with her therapist.

Afterwards, while Harrow organizes her study materials and Gideon is drying the dishes, Gideon’s phone chimes. She takes it out of her pocket immediately, scans over whatever text she got and smiles. 

“Listen, I truly do appreciate your help, but it won’t do much good if you spend the whole evening distracted by your phone. Would you mind turning it off while we study?” Harrow asks, sounding more peevish than she’d hoped. Gideon doesn’t have to be here. Harrow knows this is not something she has any right to ask of her. She feels a pang in her chest regardless. “You can flirt with Coronabeth once we’re done.”

“What, you jealous?” Gideon raises an eyebrow at her. Harrow glares back. “Gee, you’re no fun. It’s not Beth, for the record. Cam just texted. Apparently Kiana is fine. She was in a car accident, but stuff’s not too bad from the looks of it. One of their dads flipped and made it sound way worse than it actually was.”

“Oh.” God, Harrow desperately needs to get a better handle on her emotions. “Sorry, I-” She breathes out through her nose. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“Now you’ve got even less reason to beat yourself up about your reaction,” Gideon says gently. 

Maybe it should terrify Harrow that she can see through her so fully. Instead, there’s comfort in being understood so well.

Gideon taps away at her phone for a few more moments, then turns it off and stuffs it into her front pocket.

“There. No more distractions. Happy now?”

“You don’t need to turn off your phone. I had no right to ask that of you.” Harrow rings the fingers of her left hand around her right wrist, rubbing it anxiously. “I’m sorry.”

“Eh, you’re honestly right, though. Helping you might be a tad less effective if I disappeared down the YouTube shorts void halfway through. Don’t sweat it,” Gideon says, putting the dried plates away before flopping back into the chair across from Harrow. “So how exactly do you want to do this?”

Studying with Gideon is… different than it would have been with Palamedes. Of course it is. But even when she has absolutely no idea what Harrow is talking about, she’s obviously trying, and Harrow can’t be anything other than appreciative.

They take twice as many breaks as Harrow usually would have, which Gideon needs more than Harrow despite not being the one who is studying. She uses the breaks to make sure they’re both sufficiently hydrated, which means Harrow has significantly less of a headache than she usually would by the time they finish.

“Yeah, no shit,” Gideon comments, rolling her eyes. “No idea how your bare minimum self-care got you all the way to adulthood alive.”

Harrow huffs. “I wonder the same thing about your tendency to recklessly injure yourself.”

“Yeah, alright, glass house,” Gideon sighs, holding up her hands in surrender. “I’ve got an early class tomorrow so I’ll try to get some sleep now. Didn’t understand half the shit you were saying but it did sound like you know a lot, so please at least try to get six hours of sleep for once. I’d ask for eight, but I’m not that much of an optimist.”

She moves out of the chair she’s spent the majority of the last few hours fidgeting in and stretches.

“Sleep well, my Caliginous Overlord.”

Maybe Harrow wants to express her gratitude in a way words cannot get across. Maybe it’s that she does feel happy with the amount of work she’s gotten done and wants to thank Gideon in a way she knows Gideon will appreciate. Maybe it’s just that Harrow is tired and not really thinking. But when Gideon moves towards the door, Harrow moves with her, and before she’s really grasped what the hell she is doing, she’s pulled Gideon into a hug. 

It doesn’t occur to Harrow until much later that this might have been the first of their hugs she’s initiated.

“You were incredible today. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.” Her head rests in the crook of Gideon’s neck. “If there is any way I can repay you, please let me know.”

Gideon remains frozen for a moment, eyes wide with shock. Then, slowly, her surprised expression melts into a soft smile as she returns the hug.

They remain that way for a moment, neither of them speaking.

“So you’re saying Harrowhark Nonagesimus officially owes me a favor?” Gideon asks after what feels like ages, wits apparently finally recovered. “Can I get that in writing?”

Harrow smiles. “Absolutely not.” 

She has a distinct feeling she’s going to regret owing Gideon this favor in the future. 

In the present, though, she cannot bring herself to regret a single thing.