Chapter Text
“Can I order without saying these vulgar drink names or is that a requirement?”
Gideon did not recognize the voice until she turned around, and then she’d absolutely recognized the face, and it was much too late to hide now. It’d been almost ten years, but she’d know those soulless black eyes anywhere.
Those eyes widened upon seeing her face, and Harrow was never one to be stunned silent, so she said, “Oh, hello Griddle.” And Gideon thought maybe it’d be worth the hit to her pride if she did run away at that moment.
Instead, she willed herself to be unbothered out of sheer spite. “They’re absolutely a requirement.”
Harrow rolled her eyes, and ever to meet challenges head on, she said “The Pink Pussy, then.” Gideon turned to retrieve the necessary bottles and thought of eight new names for the cocktail, because Harrow totally just ruined it. Nothing beats Pink Pussy, and Gideon curses her lack of foresight.
Gideon shakes up the cocktail with an efficient, perfunctory twist of her wrist, electing not to show off as that usually ends up with her shirt wet with alcohol. She has absolutely done that on purpose, more than a few times, just to say ‘aw look, you made me wet’. It’s gotten her a phone number once or twice, and Aiglamene annoyed. She stabs a raspberry with a sword shaped toothpick and lays it across the rim, sliding it to Harrow and thinks for another time that maybe she can conveniently do inventory and, well, hide.
Except, still working on spite, and still not knowing when to shut up–Gideon says “Didn’t know nuns could drink.”
Harrow's eyes narrow as she drops the speared raspberry into her drink. “I’m not a nun.” She withdraws a credit card and lays it on the bar, says “Keep the tab open,” and disappears into the side room where the live entertainment is still setting up for the night.
Gideon does not like that the tab is open, because an open tab means Harrow will definitely be back to ruin more awesome drink names. It’s early, and Scabbards is dead, and Gideon very much does not enjoy being nearly alone with Harrow in her bar. Not her bar, exactly–it’s Aiglamenes, and don’t tell Aiglemene she’d thought that, please–but it’s been her place for so long, so far removed from the ‘other life’ of her childhood, and now here Harrow was totally fucking ruining it. She enters the card details into the register, ‘Harrow Nova’ glaring up at her in silver print–a name she’d tried very hard to forget and never could. Briefly she considers committing credit card fraud. Not her style, though.
Gideon does not see Harrow for a full hour, and in that time Scabbards had started to fill out with it’s usual variety of local queers. ‘Pink Pussy’ sounds much better coming off the lips of a gorgeous brunette, and Gideon considers it settled: the name shall stay. She’d had enough trouble getting the fun drink names in the first place–Aiglamene only values her so much. She pops the top of a hard cider, mixes up a ‘Face Sitter’ and a ‘Squirter’ and a ‘Slutty Redhead’ (her favorite, duh), and is assembling a bucket of beers when Aiglamene slides behind the bar and lifts the special’s chalkboard off the wall.
“Eighty-six on tater tots, we got a double order of fries on truck–sub it at a two dollar discount.” Aiglamene erases ‘Messy Tots’ and rewrites ‘Messy Fries’ three times before Gideon takes the chalk marker from her.
“Did Crux fuck up the order on purpose because I kept calling them ‘Messy Tits’?” Aiglamene takes on the next customer while Gideon erases the shaky writing and replaces it with legible block letters. She gives it a three-dimensional appearance with a few simple lines around the right edges in lime-green, writes the original price and strikes it through, the discounted price added next to it. Gideon returns the board to the wall much easier than Aiglamene had taken it off–perks of being taller–and taps her boss out of action. “Did you take your pills?”
“Stop fussing at me, kid.” Aiglamene says before not-so discreetly retrieving a pill bottle from her pocket and dry swallowing a dose.
“Fine, I hope your hand’s shake right off your half-decomposed wrists.”
“Fuck off, your mother doesn’t complain when I finger her.” Aiglamene accentuates this with a middle finger, practically vibrating with tremors.
“Eat shit, you know she’s dead.”
“Is that why her pussy’s so goddamn dry?”
Gideon mocks throwing up as she places two drinks on the bar, which is definitely why she gets a weird look instead of a tip from the customer. Eh, you win some you lose some. There's a brief break in orders and Gideon takes advantage of the calm to pass Aiglamene a can of ginger ale, and her boss takes it without complaint or joking about fucking her dead mom. It’s weird, because when she’d ended up here at eighteen she maybe sort of thought of Aiglamene as her surrogate mom, but in the years since she’d relegated her to a sort of bitchy-aunt. That’s what you get for being crotchety as all hell.
“Don’t forget trash tonight or I’ll turn off your wifi.” See, crotchety!
“Aye-aye, cap’n.”
Scabbards begins to fill in earnest, and she’s serving back to back drinks when Harrow appears again. She slips in between the unoccupied barstools and orders another Pink Pussy, and Gideon notes the faint flush she has. What a lightweight. Harrow slips back into the crowd while she adds it to her tab, and the witch is gone from her mind as she is again overwhelmed with drink orders.
Around when the live band starts playing Gideon gets a break, Aiglamene holding down the fort with much less shaky hands. She exits through the kitchen just to piss Crux off, propping open the side door with a brick and climbing up the fire escape to her own personal breakroom. The diamond pattern of the landing pokes into her ass through her jeans and she adds ‘get chair’ to her mental to do list for the thousandth time. At minimum there's an ashtray out here, and she plucks her allotted joint of the shift from its spot behind her ear and lights it.
She’s got fifteen minutes, and she’s thumbing through social media when her ears pick out a voice in the crowd. She turns to look at the section of the patio that she can see from her perch, and hates that she can recognize Harrow from the barest outline of the back of her head. She shouldn’t be able to–Harrow had grown her hair out to a mop of black waves, a far cry from the pixie that Gideon grew up with. A memory comes to her unbidden of the two of them, mischievous at nine and ten, a trimmer stolen from the Deacon grasped in Gideon’s hand as it buzzed Harrow’s long hair right off, before Gideon turned the oscillating blades on her own locks. They’d walked around looking like they’d lost the battle with lice, and the other kids looked at them funny. It was one of the few times Gideon had considered Harrow something of a friend, those early days.
Mostly Harrow was a raging bitch, so friend she was not–except whoever she was currently speaking to was laughing, so maybe at some point she’s developed a personality. Or a soul. Gideon returned to idle scrolling.
Fifteen became seventeen much too easily, and Gideon returned to the noise and the chaos before Aiglamene would notice her extra time. The bar itself was not as chaotic as it sounded, it was just the loud music overwhelming her senses. She busied herself with wiping down the bar and stocking glasses–they could really use a bar back but the only applicant had a two day availability, so that’s a no go. Gideon doesn't mind the extra work anyway. Her limbs feel just a bit looser from the pot, and there’s a tightness in her eyelids that warns her she may have rolled that one a bit too fat. She drinks water and blinks a bit and decides Crux could use more work and orders herself some nachos.
Crux is visibly pissed when he slides her nachos through the little window between them, less so when she swaps it for a tall boy of his favorite piss-tasting beer. Crux is a mean fucker, but he can be bribed, especially when she breaks his golden rule of not making him make her food. Gideon huddles in the corner behind the bar and keeps an eye out for customers while she shovels chips overloaded with toppings into her mouth–and fuck Crux for being the savant of bar food.
“You are a hog, Nav.” Says a familiar voice. Gideon swallows and a chip stabs her in the trachea on the way down. She can't help but cough, and then drinks water to stop coughing, and her comedic timing for a comeback is totally shot.
Instead she says, “Another Pink Pussy, then?” and sets down her food. Harrow is standing in the open space where the bar ends where customers really shouldn't be standing. She has her arms crossed and her pointy little elbows offend Gideon for some reason.
“Yes.” Is all Harrow says. Not even a please. Gideon washes her hands and sets to work, sliding the drink to Harrow who has taken a seat at the bar. Harrow bites the raspberry off the little sword toothpick and downs half her drink in one go. “What’s with the sword theme?” She asks.
“Aiglamene likes swords.” The walls of Scabbards are leaden with them, replicas of swords, pictures of swords, a suit of armor off in a corner holding–you guessed it–a sword.
“So why not call the bar ‘Swords’?”
“Well,” Gideon is only a little delighted that she’s asked this. “Imagine a sword is a dick, then a scabbard must be a–”
“Ah.”
“‘Pussy's’ would be too on the nose for a lesbian bar, so Scabbards it is.” Gideon leans forward, hands on the counter and a conspiratorial tone in her voice. “You do know you’re in a lesbian bar, right?”
“Yes, Griddle. I have eyes and critical thinking skills.” Harrow takes another too-big drink.
“I didn’t know nuns went to lesbian bars.” Gideon says, to be a shit.
“I’m not a nun.” Harrow can say that all she wants, but the pious bitch is wearing all black with a white collar and a crucifix around her neck, so she looks a little nunny. She takes a third drink, finishing it.
“Another?” Gideon asks. Harrow says “Please.” Gideon stabs another raspberry.
“So–any reason you’re in my bar? Or is this just coincidence.”
After Harrow takes a drink–a gulp, really–she replies, “Just coincidence.”
“Small world, then.”
“Sure.”
“Nothing at all to do with Sister Aisamorta dying.”
“Nope.”
“I’m not going to the funeral.”
“I wasn’t inviting you.”
“I got the card in the mail, weird that they’d have my address isn’t it?”
Harrow rolls her eyes. “You’re not as hard to find as you think, Griddle.”
“Clearly, and that makes me think this is definitely not a coincidence.”
Harrow levels her with a look–or tries, Gideon refuses to be intimidated on principle. “Fine. You’ve caught me. I tracked you down after ten years just to invite you to a funeral that I don’t even plan to attend myself. No other reason.”
“What’s the reason, then?” Gideon asks.
Harrow slides off the barstool, drink in hand. Then she sighs out an answer that makes Gideon reevaluate the infuriated, heartbroken assumption she’d made when she was seventeen.
“It’s the only lesbian bar in town, Griddle. Do the math.”