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It struck her as odd that it was always in Church that it happened. Like something was taunting her, reminding her of the desire that dwelled underneath her skin right in the hallowed place that she seemed to taint with her want.
That which she desired sat in the pew directly opposite her, and Harrow supposed logically this had something to do with why the situation was becoming such a common occurrence.
She wasn’t really proving her point of it being unavoidable, as her eyes wandered over to the girl’s shockingly short, not even shoulder-length, rust-red hair. The ginger was a dark contrast to the soft blue florals of Gideon’s church dress, which clung to her bust in soft cotton folds, the flowing sleeves gathering at the elbows of her sun-warmed brown arms. As if that wasn’t distraction enough, the pounding of Harrow’s heartbeat in her ears seemed enough to drown out the minister’s - her father’s - reading.
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`I hear they’re discussing it in schools even earlier,` Tridentarius’ mother spat out, the other adults around her umming and arring in faux dramatic horror. Harrow’s eyes caught on Ianthe herself, her blond classmate sat primly and unhappily by her twin and her mother’s side. The sallow girl was nodding in self-righteous agreement.
The irony of this was not lost on Harrow, who was firmly separated from the conversation, sipping her after-service tea in the corner. After all, hadn’t it been Ianthe who had initiated that awkward adolescent kiss under the bleachers, their teeth clunking together and both their school shoes slowly becoming mud-covered and soaked?
What the other had probably dismissed as a moment of experimentation before retreating back into the depths of her repression, and thankfully not spreading the news around their congregation, Harrow had found to be an awakening for a whole host of unexplored, lustful desires in the depths of her subconscious.
If that didn’t prove her theory that she was cursed, she wasn’t sure what would.
‘Foolish looking, aren’t they?’ a rough, casual voice commented, pulling Harrow unexpectedly out of her musings.
‘Huh?’ Wincing inwardly at the complete lack of cognition that she’d just broadcasted, she turned hastily to find Gideon hovering next to her, an entire pack of custard creams in one hand.
‘The perfect twins.` The sneer in Gideon’s voice was palpable, as she gestured to where Harrow’s gaze had just been lingering: Coronabeth and Ianthe. The golden girls of their church - or really, the golden girl and the wet straw of a girl who seemed stuck like a limpet to Corona’s side. They did make rather a sight, it had to be admitted: polar opposites and yet oddly identical, perched there debating the politics of homosexuality.
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Harrow knew Gideon wasn’t in any of her classes, but she certainly seemed to turn up all over school. It was like she couldn’t turn a corner without spotting the red-head in the new corridor, couldn’t pass by the library without spotting her checking out a new textbook, could barely even get to the toilets without bumping into her. It was making her blood boil.
Or at least irritation was the excuse Harrow gave for the heat that pricked her cheeks every time she passed the taller girl.
The blue, feminine skirts of that day in Church were a far cry from Gideon’s usual attire: cheer jackets, skinny jeans, grass-stained t-shirts and scuffed sneakers. The jacket was usually draped around her shoulders, only being discarded for cheer practice itself: something that had Harrow fidgeting awkwardly every time she witnessed it. Gideon never looked pleased to be there, jumping in amusing positions and throwing her teammates in the air, but it was certainly a sight Harrow appreciated - not least for the slight toning visible in Gideon’s bare arms.
It became a habit of hers, walking along the sports field instead of taking her usual, shorter route through the staff parking lot. A glimpse of the cheer practise when it was on, and when it wasn’t - well, one could always use a bit of time to muse over the issue of why she wanted to see this so much anyway.
Then home again it was, to the cold presence of her mother and complete lack of her father: he was likely holed up in his office again, praying or working through papers.
Harrow found herself spending less and less time at home. The heavy weight of the picture of the Lord on her bedroom wall weighed too heavily on her there, as well as the frigid comments from her mother: putting on weight again, Harrow, grades are dropping, Harrow, Ortus is coming round, Harrow, so go put on your best dress. Not to speak of the few times she messed up bad enough for her dad to reveal himself again.
Then there was the problem of Ortus, of course, her friend - also known as the boy she was supposed to one day marry.
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‘Why do you do cheer?’ Harrow asked, dropping it into convo lightheartedly, like it wasn’t hinged on the most positive thing in her life at that moment. She was perched on the wall outside their youth group, having been cancelled for the week after the hall was somehow double-booked.
Gideon ran a hand through her hair, which had lost another few inches in length recently (Harrow was beginning to suspect she lopped it off herself). ‘I wanted to do rugby, y’know,’ she shrugged casually, ‘but John wouldn’t have been pleased with that.’
The name was said so firmly, so without question, that the stilling off Gideon’s fingers was the only reminder to Harrow of what was so wrong about that.
It was rarely acknowledged that Gideon hadn’t grown up in the Church the same way Harrow - the minister’s daughter, after all - had. But everyone remembered the story: five years ago, the lanky, fiery-haired 13-year-old, grimy and grouchy and having been finally reunited with her Dad. Not that Gideon ever called him that.
There were rumours, of course, none of them ever confirmed. That her mother was a whore, or that she’d been kicked out of her house, that she’d died tragically in childbirth or that she’d been murdered on the streets. That Gideon had been passed from relative to relative until John was located, that she’d grown up in care or that she’d been living in some miserable orphanage before John rescued her.
Harrow didn’t really believe any of them.
‘That sucks,’ she replied genuinely, glancing over at Gideon, who was tugging at the raw edges of her chopped-off hair. ‘You’d make a great athlete.’
‘Thanks.’ Gideon’s smile was half-hearted, wavering, but it was something.
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Harrow kept catching minutes alone with Gideon. Not purposefully, not really , it just seemed - to happen. The warmth that blossomed in her chest every time Gideon sent her a crooked smile was definitely not purposeful, nor was the fluttering nausea that rippled through her when their hands brushed.
None of these seemed avoidable, though, and if Harrow was being entirely honest with herself: once they’d begun, she wasn’t sure she wanted to avoid them.
She lingered after communion, the taste of God’s flesh still on her lips. Gideon appeared pre-occupied, rummaging for something underneath her pew, until the last old lady had shuffled out the door. Then they talked rapidly, sentences spilling illogically between them as they rambled semi-coherently in their scavenged minutes together.
Harrow would sit in the library, her eyes straying from the homework in front of her to the cheer practise outside perhaps a few too many times. Gideon hung around after it was over, waiting for Harrow to make her way down to the field and they’d walk together for the block until their routes home split.
Somehow they ended up cleaning up together after youth group, sweeping and tidying while exchanging tidbits about their weeks. Harrow tied up her hair and tried to tie up her unwanted thoughts as she did so. The problem with these thoughts, though, was that as hard as she tried, there was some small part of her that liked them.
And it’s much more difficult to remove things you like.
Mutually, it seemed they were avoiding actually spending time together in school. Maybe it felt too open, too far flung from the safety net of Church, too out of routine for the both of them.
Maybe they were scared, and rightfully so.
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It was Gideon who had the idea, but it was for Harrow’s 18th birthday - she was a few months younger than Gideon. It wasn’t hard to distract her dad long enough for Gideon to slip into the vestry, and hasten out again with a rather obvious bulge under her varsity jacket. As she slipped away, Harrow made up some excuse and ducked out of the church. They met up round the back, shoes damp in the grass, and Gideon eagerly clutching a bottle of communion wine.
They wandered the streets for a while, ended up in a park as the sky dimmed. Settled on the semi-dry arm rests of an otherwise soggy bench, propped their feet up on the seat, and uncorked the bottle shakily.
Gideon immediately slopped some of the dark red liquid down her arm, and Harrow started giggling before she’d even taken a sip.
The taste wasn’t unusual to either of them - they’d sure taken enough of it at communion itself - but the idea of getting tipsy certainly was. It only took a few gulps for Gideon to start humming tunelessly, her fingers dancing dizzily in the air as Harrow took a drink for herself.
She was barely even intoxicated, she knew that. Maybe it was more the idea of it than the alcohol itself that was freeing, as Harrow leant forwards and pressed a messy, red-stained kiss to Gideon’s lips. The humming stopped abruptly.
About to pull away, Harrow felt panic rising in her throat, when Gideon’s hand found a place in her dark hair and the kiss deepened unexpectedly.
It was sloppy, and ended hastily when someone kicked the wine bottle over, and suddenly Gideon was standing up, holding the now near-empty bottle. Harrow exhaled, her eyes wide and dilated, and Gideon reached down with her free hand to grab Harrow’s fingers.
The wine was abandoned on the bench and Gideon murmured ‘happy birthday’ in her ear before she sent Harrow hurrying home.
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The kissing became more frequent after that, though their encounters gained a new level of subterfuge and subtly.
It would be too obvious to make out after cheer practice, after all, and so instead Harrow found herself frequently pressed against the walls behind school, behind their Church, or Gideon’s hands on her thighs as they stopped by a tree in the park.
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The day Gideon explained the truth to her, Harrow had just failed her biology test. At least, if by failed you were to mean didn’t get top in the class, then she had. She felt horrible, remembering the day with this tidbit, which paled in comparison to the secrets her friend - girlfriend - Gideon spilled.
But it wasn’t just a tidbit, really. It settled in her chest the moment she found out, burning a tiny hole like a cigarette, another red hot scar to join the myriad that marred her heart.
Even as they were sitting in a supermarket parking lot, having gone wandering after school ended again, the reminder of her grade seemed to loom over Harrow, shackling her mind. She couldn’t focus on Gideon’s hand in hers, couldn’t focus on the redhead’s soft lips, couldn’t even focus when Gideon’s voice took on a heavy note.
‘She just didn’t want me,’ Gideon said suddenly, and Harrow seemed to be forced back into her body, the words scalding hands pushing her into consciousness. ‘Y’know. She didn’t die or nothing. Just didn’t care once I got older.’
‘Your mum?’ Harrow asked hesitantly, tightening her grip around Gideon’s hand.
Chuckling mirthlessly, Gideon nodded. ‘Yeah. I was shuffled around, for a while - fostered for a couple months, stayed with my nan … with some people she claimed were my uncles, but I don’t know.’ The flat tone she explained this in was shadowed by something else, something vulnerable, and Harrow felt a lump rise in her throat. `They varied, I guess, in quality. And then John found me again.’
Harrow stiffened slightly at the mention of Gideon’s dad. Something was wrong there, she knew that it was.
‘I tried to be happy, I really did, but I couldn’t stop thinking that it was only a matter of time before he wouldn’t want me either.’ Gideon glanced at their clasped hands, and a tense awareness grew between her and Harrow. John wouldn’t want his good Christian daughter doing that, at the very least.
‘Oh,’ Harrow forced out slowly, ignoring her every instinct that said to close off, to run, to leave. ‘ Oh. Well,’ she continued shakily, ‘if … if it helps, I want you.’ Leaning forward, Harrow found Gideon’s eyes, adding a firm quality to her voice. ‘I really want you.’
Later, As she walked home, the weight of her grades and the reaction that awaited her from her parents sinking onto her shoulders again, Harrow hoped Gideon had believed her.
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After they nearly got caught kissing, Gideon decided they needed a better solution. This turned out to be inviting Harrow round to hers.
‘It wasn’t hard,’ she explained, ‘you’re the preacher’s kid. John probably thinks you’ll be a good influence on me.’
After brushing off John’s offers of snacks or a board game, they slipped into Gideon’s room and made out gently, quietly on her bed. Her bedroom was messy, to Harrow’s surprise, with abandoned homework and soda cans scattered across the floor. A guitar leant against the windowsill, and a simple wooden cross was mounted over her bed.
It was refreshing. A stark contrast from Harrow’s neat-as-a-pin room.
And sure, they had to be quiet, but Gideon had a door and she was happy to shut it. Harrow explored more of the other girl’s body than she’d ever expected, hands slipping under her t-shirt as Gideon palmed her hips firmly, tongue slipping out to nudge Harrow’s bottom lip. Even as the cross on the wall seemed to scream their own sin back at them, Harrow had never felt more content.
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Harrow moved where she sat in the library, averting her eyes from the practising girls on the field below. Cramps radiated through her wrist as she wrote feverishly, eyes flicking anxiously over the homework in front of her.
As much as it pained her to have to give up the sight of Gideon practising, it was essential she didn’t fail another paper. Her shoulder still ached from the aftermath of the previous incident, the shared dregs of a fag and secretive kisses from Gideon having done little to soothe it.
She flicked wearily through the sheets of biology work, foot tapping absently on the musty carpet.
The library was unusually busy: studious people similar to herself scribbling away nearby; a boy and a girl napping on each other underneath the windows; a blonde girl with a continuously growing stack of fiction stories; a short boy drawing in one corner. However, as Harrow hunched over and continued toiling her way through her homework her peers slowly filtered out of the room. So much so, that when she looked up, she found there was only one left - a teacher who Harrow vaguely recognised, tapping away at a computer several bookshelves away.
What had startled her out of her homework fixation proved to be the exact girl she wanted to see most. Gideon was hovering just inside the library door, hair sticking up damp from a recent shower as she gazed around - looking for Harrow.
As Harrow started shuffling her papers into a neat stack, Gideon made her way over, and Harrow’s breath caught in her throat when she bent over to pick up her bag and felt the taller girl’s firm palm on her lower back.
`We’re practically alone,` she hummed against Harrow’s neck when she stood back up, Gideon’s chapped lips rough against her collarbone.
Melting into her embrace, Harrow tugged the pair fully behind the bookshelf she’d been working in front of, ensuring they were hidden from both the window and the nearby teacher. Gideon bent her against the books, but she barely felt their spines against her, too enraptured by the heat of the other’s lips against her own. The scuffed sleeves of Gideon’s jacket brushed against the crisply ironed cotton of Harrow’s black shirt, and the couple seemed to blend into each other, black and red hair mingling together.
Their routine adapted after that, with Harrow getting more work done and them both enjoying the hasty kissing session afterward.
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It was a natural progression into more, quite literally.
One moment Harrow was sitting practically on top of Gideon, sprinkling kisses on her neck, her lips, her shoulders. Gideon leant into them, fingers running through Harrow’s unusually rumpled hair, before her hands began to wander and the next, her fingers brushed Harrow’s waistband and her mouth found her ear.
`Can I touch you here?` she murmured, breath hot on Harrow’s cheek.
Harrow nodded frantically, her own hands tightening their grip on Gideon’s hips. `Yes,` she clarified eagerly, ` yes .`
Hastily, but with such gentle touch that Harrow arched closer into it, seeking the contact, Gideon slipped a hand down past the waistband of her leggings. The coldness surprised Harrow, the growing confidence of Gideon’s fingers as they brushed along the inside of her thigh pleased her. Leaning down over Gideon’s shoulder, she exhaled in anticipation, chest pressed against the other girl’s.
It was probable that she was already close, the kissing having elicited a tingling in her knickers, though this didn’t counteract the awkward fumbling off Gideon’s hand as she found the trimmed hair Harrow had left unshaved.
It was soft, and sweet, and admittedly more than a little embarrassing, with hands and legs everywhere. In short, it was both exactly what they’d expected and a complete surprise.
Only a week later, a teacher caught them kissing in the library.
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She thought it might be worse than her dad’s normal reactions to her misbehaviour. No screaming, no hitting, no confiscating her stuff. Just cold, unending scorn. Harrow was left to her room, shuffled to and from school by her fretting, unhappy mother, awaiting whatever fate they decided would befall her.
`No.` Harrow’s voice wavered, her hands clenched in her duvet as she sat up to stare at her parents, eyes stinging. `No. You can’t.`
`There’s no way around it.` Her dad’s voice was brittle, the tension practically visible in the crackling air. `You’re going to get cured or you’re getting out of our house.`
Glancing desperately towards her mum, Harrow dug her nails into her palms. Her mum averted her eyes, looking down instead of at her, and that was when she realised she was alone with this dilemma, and so she made her choice.
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Harrow was leaving and Gideon was crying.
`Ortus said I could bunk at his for a while, and he has friends up in London,` explained Harrow, staring at her hands, which rested on the backpack she’d dumped on Gideon’s bed. `I’ll probably end up there.`
Gideon scrubbed at her eyes furiously, nodding slowly. `I don’t know where I’m going,` she whispered hoarsely. `John threatened to send me back to my Nan, but she’s dying now. But I’m not allowed to see you.`
She winced at the way Gideon’s voice grew and broke, holding back her own sniffs. Reaching out a hand, Harrow gripped Gideon’s wrist in a vain attempt at reassurance. The redhead swiped a thumb encouragingly across Harrow’s fingers.
`Will you come back?` Gideon asked finally, meeting Harrow’s eyes.
They were unusual, Harrow thought, Gideon’s eyes. Fiery, amber like honey. Unmistakable. `I’ll try,` she replied slowly, `I’ll try to find you, no matter what.`
Footsteps sounded outside Gideon’s door, and Harrow scrambled to her feet. There wasn’t time for anything, not even a final kiss, as she swung her backpack over her shoulder and went to scramble out the window - the same way she entered.
Gideon was looking up towards John when Harrow glanced back, her eyes veiled by her scruff of red hair.