Post-Halloween

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is working. Very seriously. She is not mooning over her new relationship with Gideon even a little bit; she has too much work to do.

She is, however, wearing a skull with accents of deep, almost black purple, with a starburst or floral pattern just below her temple, that she has never been seen to wear before.

Other than that sentimental embellishment, however, she is entirely focused on Obaeg's Toward a Common Haemographology. She is making copious notes in the margins--courting future simian fury--and thinking that she should have found this for Moiraine before they started working on her weave notation.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"I usually stand before the sink," she says. There's a hand mirror in the kit she usually uses to do the back.

"But I am open to suggestions. As I said--I haven't had another person do it in a long time. Should I sit? You're so tall."

My mother did it when I was in the bath, she almost says, but it lodges in her throat.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon hums a thoughtful hmmm, looking at the bathtub and the sink, before going to Harrow and picking her bodily up to sit her on the edge of the sink.

"There," she says, pleased with herself. "Now we've got the water right there and I won't be bending down the whole time."

This cuts the height difference by...a lot, and Gideon steps forward between Harrow's knees and puts her warm hands on Harrow's hips. "Does this work for you?"

Leading. Oh yeah.

[we_bring_hell]

Gideon picks her up like she's weightless, and instantly she feels light-headed with sudden lust, dizzied by the lack of control and half-ready to yank it back. It's ridiculous how Gideon can unman her so easily. She feels uncomfortably aware of her body, the bite of the counter on the back of her knees and the flex of her hips as Gideon moves closer; the scholar's hunch of her back that clicks audibly as she straightens up and folds her shoulders back, moving her hands to support her on the counter.

Gideon can benchpress her and Gideon is her ancient enemy and Gideon has a sharp knife in her hand. There is a part of her that loves this, and there is a part of her that has held control for seven years that is screaming like an air-leak siren in the recycled atmosphere of Drearburh.

"Y-yes," she says. She has been a martyr to her blush reflex since she and Gideon got together, and without her high-collared shirt, Gideon doesn't have to study her ears; it goes all the way down her pigeon chest.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon leans to kiss Harrow's pointy little nose, then turns to the sink and starts running the hot water.

On the counter beside Harrow's hip, she lays out the soap, the brush, and a few clean towels; one of these, she slings over her shoulder. Another she soaks in the hot water, then wrings it out and carefully wraps it around Harrow's head like a turban.

(This part isn't necessary, but it does feel nice, and Gideon just wants to be nice to Harrow.)

Already the air around them is thick with tension: she should have just gone for broke and lit some candles, leaned hard into the romance of the thing. As it is, she strops the razor while she waits, examines its edge, then wets the soap brush and begins to whip up a lather.

"I wonder what you'd look like with long hair," she comments, idly, as she removes the warm towel and puts it back in the sink. "Maybe in another life, huh?"

[we_bring_hell]

It does feel nice. Harrow closes her eyes and listens to the soft sounds of the churning lather.

"Long hair is a vanity. I try to only be vain about things I can take credit for."

[we_do_bones]

"Turn a little to your right," says Gideon, who puts a knee up on the counter, holding the brush and soap. From this angle, she can more easily get the top and back of Harrow's head, and she starts applying the later with a gentle hand.

"I hate to break it to you, Reverend Daughter, but I think you're pretty cute even without it."

[we_bring_hell]

She turns her head obediently, and sighs as Gideon applies the lather. This was a good idea.

She takes deep, slow breaths as emotions assail her. If she lets the past wash over her, the present is waiting on the other side; she knows that now.

"You are certainly entitled to your own opinions, Griddle," she says softly.

[we_do_bones]

"Am I? This is the first I'm hearing of it." She teases lightly as she sets brush and soap aside, then picks up the shining silver razor and reaches her other hand to steady Harrow's head. "Hold still, Nonagesimus."

She starts just above Harrow's temple, carefully scraping the razor along her scalp, working down in a slow curve. She puts a thumb on Harrow's ear and gently folds it out of the way, carefully scrapes bare the vulnerable skin behind it. She works slowly, wiping the shining blade off on the towel slung over her shoulder after each cut.

[we_bring_hell]

She holds perfectly still, fingers steepled in her lap. The air sings on her skin; she's always loved the feeling of a freshly-shorn scalp, and the infinite tenderness of Gideon touching her ear is shattering.

Pelleamena Novenarius's hands are always cold. In Harrow's memories, her father is a voice; her mother is a pair of hands, cold and somehow flinching from her skin. The blade scraping her scalp clean; the needle piercing her ears. It was her mother's hands on hers that showed her how to twist the rope.

There is more kindness in Gideon's touch right now than Pelleamena the Ninth showed in a decade. To her wonder, Harrow doesn't cry; in place of the tight, clotted feeling in her chest she expected, she feels only warmth flowing down from her scalp.

[we_do_bones]

Once there's a neat bare curve around Harrow's ear and up nearly to the crown of her head, Gideon leans forward and presses a reverent kiss to the newly bare skin. This is different from, but somehow just as intimate as sex: it feels like the night in the lake, where they spoke secrets to each other and finally learned the truth. It's quiet in here, the only sounds those of soft breathing and the rasp of the razor blade against bristles.

If Gideon were the type to pray, now would be a good time to do so – but she isn't, so she worships the girl in front of her instead, with gentle touches and deft hands and care taken in each stroke of the razor blade over each slight bump of the skull under Harrow's scalp, down along to the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck.

Reaching the crown of Harrow's head, she gets up and switches sides, gently repositions Harrow's head with a hand at her chin, and sets to work on the other side.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow gasps softly at the kiss. When Gideon comes to turn her head, her neck swivels loosely, deeply relaxed.

She feels no fear at all at the sharp blade; if she was expected some kind of tension, it fails to materialize. Her body is haunted, and descending from the throne of her intellect is never entirely comfortable, but Gideon is her body's only friend and it does not fear her.

She opens her eyes for the first time since they began; it's always hard to see the line between iris and pupil in Harrow's black eyes, but her pupils are enormous now. She finds Gideon's golden eyes and studies them rapturously.

[we_do_bones]

Harrow opens her eyes and watches her with that one expression, the one Gideon can't name but wants to soak in, the one that makes her stomach flip and tie itself into knots and occasionally spontaneously combust, taking all her self-awareness and restraint right out the door with it as it goes. She meets it, this look, head-on, studies Harrow's huge pupils, her slightly parted lips.

She cocks a lopsided grin, and winks. "Almost done."

But she takes her time. Working around Harrow's ear. At the base of her skull. Testing with her fingers to see if her scalp has been shorn smoothly enough.

And finally, taking the warm damp towel, and carefully swabbing the remnants of the shaving cream away, until Harrow's pale scalp is clean and pink. She steps back to look over her work with a critical eye, and nods once. "Looks good."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow smiles, and doesn't even reach or turn for the mirror.

"Thank you, Gideon." She loops her arms behind her cavalier's neck and meet her forehead to forehead. Sharing breath. She doesn't move or speak.

[we_do_bones]

She settles herself between Harrow's knees and puts her arms around Harrow's thin body and tucks them together like two magnets. Harrow's forehead is feverishly warm against hers, and she can feel everything going on in Harrow's body: the steady pulse of her heart, the calm in and out of her breath.

All her jittery need to go go go has evaporated; she sighs and closes her eyes to revel in the physicality of this moment.

All of it real. Harrow's breath, Harrow's body, Harrow's heart. She opens her eyes again, and smiles, embracing the ache in her chest. "Harrow, I love you."

[we_bring_hell]

"I love you," she murmurs.

She feels... languid. Safe. Calm. Nothing hurts. Her anxieties hold their breath and wait for the moment to bite down again, but right now they are scared away by Gideon's arms.

She crosses her ankles behind Gideon's legs, locking her in place.

[we_do_bones]

Love is so stupid. It's placed them both here in a softly but practically lit bathroom, and Gideon still doesn't want to move even an inch.

(Unless it's to make use of that tub which she and Harrow are both here. That might be worth moving.)

She likes how Harrow clings softly to her, like silk caught by a breeze against a statue. She likes how Harrow feels in her arms, she likes the thrill that scrambles along her nerves when Harrow says she loves her. She likes being on the same side as Harrow; she likes no longer watching every step she takes, wary of traps set in the night.

"Thanks for letting me feel useful," she says, softly.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow skims a hand over her scalp. "Thank you for making me feel..."

She has no word for it. "I wish we could barricade the door and stay here forever."

[we_do_bones]

"We could."

She says it gently, knowing that neither of them would ever actually agree to do so. "People make this place their home all the time."

They could. But they won't. All they can do is grasp a little more of this reprieve before taking what they've learned and returning to the fight.

"But wherever we are, Harrow...you'll always have me. I swear."

[we_bring_hell]

I want to say I'm sorry for things I haven't done yet.

"One flesh. One end."

She adjusts the tilt of her head so she can kiss her cavalier; delicately, gently. She doesn't want to go make Gideon taste too much makeup.

[we_do_bones]

"One flesh, one end," says Gideon, when the kiss ends, and grins. "You got it, sugarlips."

[we_bring_hell]

"Sugarlips?" she says. "I think perhaps not sugarlips."

[we_do_bones]

"Excuse me!" says Gideon, affronted. "You just told me I could have my own opinion."

But she says it while leaning in and placing kisses along the column of Harrow's throat, so she probably doesn't actually mean it.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow makes a noise that undermines any attempts at dignity. She lets her long, skinny fingers tangle into Gideon's untidy ginger mop of hair.

"Fuck, Griddle."

[we_do_bones]

"If you insist," Gideon says, like an idiot, because her blood is up and, goddamn, she loves it when Harrow grips into her hair like this.

"But maybe not where there's a bare razor blade right next to you."

[we_bring_hell]

"Coward." But she tugs Gideon away. "...get the cold cream, then," she says, with a badly faked stoic resignation.

"Honestly, I don't know why we bother putting clothes on at all anymore. I think you're oversexed, Griddle."