Chapter Text
Gideon was sitting on her own counter cross-legged, shoulders bumping against the cherry-wood cabinets, ratty ten-year-old red checkered pajama pants crinkled at the hems. She had a teaspoon in one hand and a Ball jar of strawberry jam in the other, and she was attacking the jam with the teaspoon idly.
The back door stood open in the August heat as the summer wound down towards the beginning of the school year. Gideon didn’t bother to lock her storm door; she doubted the flimsy screen would be much help locked anyway, so there was a pleasant breeze and a little warm sunlight.
She heard some ambient banging from next door, coming closer - this was standard these days, with Jeanne and Isaac going freely between both halves of the duplex. Harrow had transformed the attic they had so painstakingly cleaned into an artists’ loft with a telescope in the window, so the teens’ bedroom wasn’t half as cramped as it had been in the beginning of June.
This was all before their fight, though. Nothing had been quite the same between them.
Harrow blew into the kitchen like a summer storm, all black sweater and big black boots, letting herself in.
There was a stony silence before Gideon broke it.
“Want some jam?” Gideon pulled the spoon out of her mouth and offered it to Harrow, who made a face, but accepted it and dug it into the jar.
“Is this homemade?” Harrow asked.
“Yeah,” Gideon said, “the last of the strawberries came in pretty good. Too many of them, so I made fridge jam.”
“It’s good.” Harrow rolled it around her mouth and swallowed, letting the space go still and quiet. Well, as still and quiet as any space than teenagers lived in really could get.
“Did you come over here just for my bangin’ jam, then?”
“No,” Harrow said, rooting around in the big pocket of her sweater. “Here.” Harrow thrust the unassuming brass key - cut at the local hardware store, no doubt - on its little silver ring into Gideon’s hand. “The locks are the same for front and back. You should be able to get in fine.”
“Is this your house key, Harrow?”
“It’s time you had it anyway. I changed the locks after you signed over this half of the duplex to me,” Harrow said, crossing her arms and hugging herself. Her eyeliner was running and her sweater was raveled at one cuff, several sizes too big. Gideon gave it another critical once-over and realized that ten years ago it had been hers and Harrow had kept it all this time.
“Thanks. Also, I know. I know you changed the locks.” Gideon said, fumbling the snap of the carabiner keeping her keys jingling at her belt in her haste to slide it home beside her own house key.
“Feel free to let yourself in,” Harrow said, looking from side to side. “You know. Whenever you need a break from your kids.”
“My kids are angels,” Gideon said, mock-offended. “My kids are starting their sophomore year of high school and have never done a thing wrong in their lives.”
“Your daughter has a habit of picking at the shingles on my roof, and your son stargazes past his bedtime,” Harrow said, but one side of her mouth was turned up.
“Actually, that’s me picking at the shingles.”
“Some things never change.”
Gideon flashed quickly back ten years, the foster home they’d shared when she’d finally convinced Harrow that it was safe to sneak out the window of their room and lay with her, Harrow small against her side and the stars so terrifyingly large above them. She zoned out for a second, staring past Harrow’s shoulder.
“Are you thinking about the night we -”
“Snuck out to the roof? Ms. Danielle’s place? Yeah. I am.”
“We got in so much trouble for that.” A genuine, though hard-won smile on Harrow’s face.
“Listen, I own the place now. If you want to ever go out on the roof - it’s my name on the mortgage. I’d be a huge hypocrite if I told you not to,” Gideon said. “You can always knock on my window. Although you can use the door. If you want.”
Harrow was still smiling as she nodded, and she swirled a finger through the bottom of the nearly-empty jam jar contemplatively.
“Listen, I owe you an apology for the other day and my little outburst,” she said.
Gideon began to shake her head.
“No,” Harrow insisted. “I do. It was wrong of me to act like that. I shouldn't have brought up anything about our past. We went through the same thing, and I know that you may have processed it differently, but that doesn’t give me the right to invalidate your experience and minimize your trauma.” She used clinical words, the kind that Gideon recognized from hours spent on therapists’ couches.
“It’s your past too,” Gideon said. “I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t go through hell right there beside you. But I’m also not going to pretend that you didn’t have it worse than I did. Especially in that last year - I should have been there. I should have done something.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Harrow said bitterly. “The system - it’s not set up for people to get out of it.”
“Look at you, rattling off anarchist ideals. Just like old times.” A half-smile from Gideon.
Harrow rolled her eyes. “You think anyone can live through what we did, operate the way we did in this world and not come out with a few anarchist ideals?”
“Point taken. But you don’t owe me an apology. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I owe you everything,” Harrow said quietly. “I owe you your life. And mine.” The last of the fridge jam was glistening on her lips and she looked so fierce and heartbroken that Gideon crossed the little kitchen in a few strides and lingered just a hair away from Harrow’s face.
“If you don’t want this, tell me now,” Gideon said, left palm gentle on the side of Harrow’s face. “If you don’t want me to kiss you again -”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence because Harrow closed the distance between them. Her lips were rough and chapped - she was clearly dehydrated - and her mouth tasted like unbrushed teeth and strawberry jam, but Gideon didn’t care.
It was like all the time between them narrowed and they were sixteen and seventeen again, coiled around each other with a desperation that overcame the time between them, overcame Gideon’s greasy nose and Harrow’s sharp sweat-smell.
They were kissing like that in the kitchen for an undisclosed amount of time before the pitter-patter of teenaged Doc Martens alerted them.
“I’m not sure whether I should be saying gross or finally,” Jeanne mused, mouth full of some crunchy snack, “but, like, do we have Takis?”
“Put it on the chalkboard,” Gideon said, breaking away from Harrow. Harrow raised an eyebrow. “What? Takis are vegan.”
“Okay,” Jeanne said, and squeaked the chalk on purpose, causing both women to jump and wince, because she was, in fairness, fourteen (almost fifteen). Then she clomped out of the room, leaving just Gideon with her hand around Harrow’s waist, the forgotten spoon hanging loosely from her fingers.
On the table sat two printed packets of adoption papers, all the signatures in the right places. Tomorrow, they would go down to the Clerk of Courts and file, and get a court date, and a judge would make sure their i’s were dotted and their t’s were crossed. Then Jeanne and Isaac and Gideon, and maybe someday Harrow too, would really be a family.
It was everything Gideon had ever wanted.
fin