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Gideon didn’t even attempt to hide her amusement when her wife walked back onto the porch with their daughter in tow, the former with her hair freshly decorated by a crown made of rather colorful flowers.
“Oh, this is lovely. Wonderful. Amazing.” Gideon made a mocking kissing motion in Harrow’s direction. “Honey, you look incredible.” Of course she could’ve topped it off with one of her beloved extravagant nicknames, but the sight was funny enough in itself to spare her wife, just the once.
“Admiring Abby’s handiwork, are we?” Harrow raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t she do beautifully?” she asked, and meant it.
Harrow had never been particularly good at telling their little one no, and was very quick to make sure nothing they said or did could be taken in a way that might hurt her.
Gideon kneeled down to be on eye-level with her daughter.
“In case it wasn’t clear I felt that way: you did very well, sweetie. I’d have no idea how to even start with this, and you picked so many pretty colors!” Her eyes wandered back up to her wife. “Your mommy looks so intimidating in it.”
Abby giggled. Harrow was somewhat less amused.
“Gideon Nav.”
“No, I’m totally serious.” Gideon smiled innocently. “It really suits your fully black attire. Goes very well with your eyes, too. Truly beautiful. Abby, I need you to make these for her more often.”
Her daughter beamed. “Really?”
“Really.” Gideon leaned forward to give her a kiss on the forehead. “I’d love one of those too whenever you have time.”
“Which colors?”
“Hey, why does she get to pick?” Harrow complained, her amused voice not really selling it.
“Because, oh my beloved Caliginous Queen, my Stygian Majesty, my Gloomy Potentate, we all know you would’ve just picked black,” Gideon answered in her daughter’s place. “And that’s both hard to find with flowers, and also very boring. Because it’s just one color. Not necessarily because it’s black.”
Abby didn’t pick a side, which was smart of her.
“Why did I marry you again?”
“Because you loooove me.” Gideon cleared her throat, clasped her hands together and did her very best impression of her wife. “Oh First Flower of my house, best cavalier in the entire universe, pride and joy of the Ninth and the only good thing in my life, I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it, so now I’m going to give myself brain damage to preserve your soul. I’m also going to nearly get myself killed several times in the process because I’m an idiot that has noodles for arms and cannot do what she’s told for once in her life.”
“I do not talk like that,” Harrow retorted—and she was exactly the kind of person who used words like “retort” on a regular basis, which was the biggest issue here, really.
“Don’t listen to mommy, sweetie, about half of that were direct quotes.”
Abby giggled, and Gideon caught the corners of her wife’s mouth sneaking slightly upwards before she forced them back down.
“Griddle,” Harrow sighed, and that just widened Gideon’s own smile, “you are an idiot and a buffoon.”
“And somehow you insist I’m the one who accidentally taught our daughter to curse.” Checkmate. And what a glorious checkmate it was. Her wife burst into a proper laugh this time, and nothing in the universe could ever compare to the beauty that was Harrowhark Nonagesimus laughing.
“The bad thing is, though,” Gideon added, because she couldn’t leave it at that, “you married me anyway. So now you’re stuck with my annoying ass for the rest of eternity.”
“Abby, sweetheart, you wanna go pick out a book for us to read to you?” Harrow said innocently, which always, without fault, foreboded bad things. Their daughter nodded eagerly and sprinted inside.
As soon as she was out of sight, Harrow turned around to face Gideon, and there was a dangerous twinkle in her eyes.
“You know,” she continued, her voice still that perfectly feigned innocent tone, “I never had any issues with your ass in particular.”
Well, maybe Gideon had called the game too soon, but in her defense, this was just unfair. Then again, Harrow had always been one to fight dirty—which was a thing that Gideon herself had never particularly minded.
That would’ve been a perfectly good reply, but it wasn’t the way Gideon enjoyed making Harrow blush most anymore. Instead, she turned her head swiftly, took her wife’s chin between both hands and kissed her.
“Yeah, thought that’d shut you up,” she said with a wink as they broke apart. “We’ll have to save the rest for later, though. I don’t want to ruin your beautiful flower crown. And we did promise someone a reading session, after all.”
Abby had returned—predictably with the same book she nearly always picked, and her trusted plush dog cavalier Hamburger in tow, and Gideon leaned down to pick her up, leaving her wife satisfyingly dumbstruck.
“You’re happy,” Abby said immediately. Smart kid.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I have my perfect little family, right here.” Gideon pressed another kiss to her daughter’s forehead, and then kissed the toy for good measure. Abby laughed. “And also, I beat your mommy in our little game again. The ideal way to spend a lazy Saturday.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” her wife said. Gideon spun around to see Harrow had made herself comfortable between the pillows of their hammock bench and stolen the jacket Gideon had forgotten there earlier. She was smiling, and looked utterly at peace.
Hell, she was beautiful. And Gideon was married to her. Take that, stupid ice lolly bimbo.
Gideon flopped down next to her, placing Abby down on her wife’s lap before opening up the book. Her daughter looked up eagerly, with stars in her eyes that, growing up, Gideon hadn’t thought possible for a child to possess. What an incredible kid. What an absolutely impossible life she was living, with nothing to fear and no one to fight—except sometimes Camilla, but that was just for fun.
What an absurd idea it would’ve been to her fifteen years ago to have nothing to spend a Saturday on except lie in the sun and cook lunch and then pass an entire evening with her wife—Harrow was her wife, they were married, the thought still managed to amaze her sometimes—asleep on her shoulder as she read to their child.
It would’ve been too good to be true, a wistful dream, except that she wouldn’t have had this sort of dream fifteen years ago. Her dreams hadn’t been good back then. They mostly were now—and when they weren’t, Harrow held her and kissed her and told her it would be okay. She held Harrow in turn. And when their daughter had a bad dream, she knocked on their bedroom door and spent the entire night curled up in bed between both her parents—a thing that would’ve been utterly impossible for either of them growing up. The first time she had come to them, the first time Harrow had realized how much Abby trusted her, she’d cried for an hour. All good tears. They shared mostly good tears these days.
Gideon mused that maybe, one day, in a distant future, someone would really find hers and Harrow’s bodies, with their fingers still clasped around each other’s throats. It wasn’t what she’d meant at all back then… but well, she was hardly complaining.