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.

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[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is a creature of patience and traps. She loves Gideon, however.

She lays a hand on her cavalier's bouncing knee, and gives her a troubled look.

"Would you help me with something? I'm afraid is rather trivial, but I'd like your assistance."

[we_do_bones]

"Yes," she says, instantly. "Anything. Point me at it."

It doesn't escape her notice that Harrow is giving her a direction where she can focus her energy, and she loves her adept a little more for it. "What's up?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Will you help shave my head?"

She runs a hair over the bristles, which have indeed escaped to an unruly micrometer more than Harrowhark's preferred tonsure.

"There is no one I would trust more with a blade."

[we_do_bones]

Gideon reaches over and runs her palm over Harrow's head, lets the bristles tickle the tender inner part of her wrist. "Yeah, I can do that."

She feels instantly better, having a task, and she's grateful to Harrow all over again.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow smiles at the zing of Gideon's touch. She rises from the table and picked up her book. "Come on then."

It's been a long time since anyone but herself did this.

[we_do_bones]

"You don't need to finish what you were working on?"

She asks, but she's already swung herself off the table and into step just behind Harrow's shoulder.

[we_bring_hell]

"I was just reading," she says. "There's nothing particular to interrupt."

She reaches back to catch Gideon's hand, although she knows Gideon is following proper cavalier protocol and she is undermining it. But Gideon's hand is rough and sure and heavy, and she feels more certain when it's holding hers.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon's hand is always, always there. She twines their fingers and squeezes Harrow's just a little, just enough to say hey, you're holding my hand, that's neat.

"Do you have a razor in the room already?" she asks. "I know I'm great with swords, but even I wouldn't suggest them for this."

[we_bring_hell]

"Griddle, how do you think I shave my own head?" she asks.

"I have everything I need, I'd just like you to do it." She hands Gideon her book so she can unlock the door without letting go.

"I've never even let Crux do it, you know," she says in a low voice.

[we_do_bones]

"Wait," she says, when the door swings open. A tug of her hand brings Harrow back to her; she bends her head and kisses her adept, long and sweet.

(They've done...a lot in the last few days. They neither of them have any secrets left from the other, but this is intimate in a way Gideon doesn't know how to parse and desperately does not want to fuck up.)

"Okay," she says, after a long moment, and releases Harrow, her heart thundering in her chest. "That's all."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow kisses her back whole-heartedly.

She's anxious about it herself, but Harrow will always grasp the thistle, given the chance. She's been thinking about this, and now--when Gideon needs to feel useful, and trusted, and important--is the perfect time to deploy it.

She is a creature of patience and traps.

She holds the back of Gideon's head, fingers tangled in her untidy mop, and doesn't let go for a moment even when the kiss breaks. "Okay," she says, with an answering smile and a bite of her lip.

She unbuttons her high-collared black shirt on the way to the bathroom, stripping down to her camisole and stopping to remove her boots.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon, the moron, can't let this perfunctory removal of clothing go unmarked; she wolf-whistles as she saunters after Harrow into the bathroom.

[we_bring_hell]

"Idiot," she says fondly. She's getting accustomed to Gideon liking to look at her; to not being able to ignore her naked skin. It's a counterbalance to the way she always feels about it.

Barefooted, she pads into the bathroom and waves at Gideon to follow. She takes out the kit that came with the room; a block of soap that produces a lather so creamy and light it's probably sinful to use, a wooden bowl, a soft brush. A shining cut-throat straight razor; no safety blades for the Ninth House.

Every time she looks at it she gets flashes of her own kit, back in Canaan House; the human leather case, embossed with the jawless skull of the Ninth. Her mother's razor, handle etched with the nine-pointed star of the Nova line. She shakes her head, clearing it.

"You can do this, right, Griddle?" she asks. "I know we never made you shave yours."

[we_do_bones]

That deep affection in Harrow's voice soaks straight through Gideon's chest and idiot heart and into those bones Harrow has promised to take care of for ten thousand years. It's all still so impossible, so unanticipated: she takes each new proof of love and squirrels it away, writes it onto her ribs, transcribes it with each swing of her sword.

Every night she tries to prove to Harrow what she feels. Every morning she wakes up feeling even more.

"Sure," is what she says, however, toeing off her own shoes and following Harrow inside. There were more than a few crones on the Ninth whose hands were too shaky to use a straight razor and who were more than happy to provide Gideon with multiple instances of penance. She whistles low at the blade in the kit, though: the Ninth razors were never this sharp and new.

"How do you want to do this?"

[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.