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Chapter Text

There's an art to coiling cables. Over and under, following the curve of the thick insulated rubber and wire. You sit on the floor of the shop and let your body take over. You've been doing this for thirteen years now, and you can effectively do it in your sleep.

In this case, you do it while pumping Camilla Hect for information about the upcoming fall production: SACRIFICE, written and directed by Harrowhark Nonagesimus in her directorial debut.

"Okay, but like, is it good?"

"Read the script," she tells you flatly, which is not at all helpful. "Gideon, the first production meeting is in a week."

"Jesus, Cam, I'm obviously going to read it. I've been slammed with striking the summer musical, but I set aside all day Thursday to study up on this new script. I'm just asking – what am I in for? It's a retelling of Iphigenia, right? From the Illiad?"

Cam is doing her quadrillionth reread of the script as you speak, with irritating thoroughness. She has three different kinds of pen between her knuckles, tapping out a rhythm and making little notes in the margins, as she says, "Professor Sextus thinks it's excellent. He's considering making his students see it for extra credit."

"Still fucking weird that you call your partner by his title. But he's doing this one too?"

"Signed the contract last week," reports Cam. "Lucky you, you get all three of us."

You break from your coiling to unironically fist pump. Cam is your favorite scenic designer to work with. Her diagrams are crisp and precise and clearly labeled, and the resulting sets are creative and wickedly clever. Palamedes Sextus is somewhat less organized, but you enjoy his lighting design work nonetheless, both for the convenience and the overall result. He's decently good about getting you instrument charts in advance, he programs and runs his own lighting board instead of making someone else do it for him, and if he and Cam have ever disagreed about anything in their entire relationship, it happens well outside your earshot. Add in their third partner, Dulcinea Septimus, as costume designer, and this production is already brimming with talent. Every tech director should be blessed with such a set of designers and friends.

"So," you press. "Do you think it's good? A first play by an unknown playwright – self-directed, and bringing its own funding – it could be a real vanity project shitshow, right?"

Cam sets down her pens to actually look at you. "Gideon," she says seriously. "It's excellent. Read it."

Well. Cam isn't one to just toss around praise. If she says it's excellent, it's excellent.

You needle her anyway, because you've still got like 10 more 25-foot cables to coil, and shit's a little too sincere for your tastes. "I dunno, I've seen Game of Thrones, so I feel like I basically get the picture. That one little girl burning alive is pretty seared into my brain. I bet I can just skim it."

Cam snorts inelegantly. "Don't suggest that to any of the Professor's students. They'll get ideas."

"Hey, them's the breaks when it comes to Greek tragedies. They've all been remixed a billion times. What's the twist on this version?"

Cam taps her chin thoughtfully with two of the pens.

"Tell me it's not 'Actually, child sacrifice is good,'" you warn her. "I'm hoping we come down strongly anti in the great debate of 'is it cool to just straight-up murder your kid because God told you to.'"

"That wouldn't be much of a play. This is more of a meditation on child agency," says Cam. "A family drama about the impacts of patriarchal religious hegemony and how it shapes desire."

"That's still not a straight answer, and I find that troubling."

"Read the script."

"I'll read it, calm down! I"m just saying, even Homer or whoever was probably pretty clearly anti-filicide. Is it really bold of us to come out with the pro-filicide hot take?"

"The original Iphigenia at Aulis play is Eurpides."

"Nerd."

"Read the script, Gideon."

What can you do? That night, after the cables are sorted and the racks are locked up and the lights are off, you read the script. It takes around an hour to read, and then another ten to fully recover from the experience. Lying on your floor, with the show binder splayed out beside you and your face wet with tears, you reluctantly agree. The script is excellent. Whoever Harrowhark Nonagesimus is, she has something incredible.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus is a bitch. You discover that within a few minutes of the first production meeting, and it knocks you right out of the dreamy, awe-stricken, vulnerable state you’ve been in since reading her script, straight into irritation. You are going to have to work with this woman for the next three months. If you want this show to succeed, and you want to be part of it – and you want both, achingly and unequivocably – then you are going to have to deal with an absolute terror of a first-time director. Dulcinea brightly asks a reasonable question about setting and aesthetic, and Nonagesimus says, like she’s talking to a slow child, “It’s a Greek myth.” And that effectively sets the tone for the next hour.

Also, you’re pretty sure she’s fucking her patron. That’s not you being weird and presumptuous and looking at everything through porn goggles – it’s something in the way that Ianthe Tridentarius looms over her on their side of the table, and whispers little remarks in her ear, and touches her solicitously on the arm. Deniable, but sus. Also, the fact that she tunes out 90% of the meeting, but whenever Abigail says that something will cost money, Nonagesimus gives Tridentarius a challenging little head incline, and Tridentarius gives a big sigh and acquiesces. Some extremely weird vibes there. Just absolutely wretched.

Nonagesimus lays out a vision – not the most creative one you’ve seen, but the set and costumes don’t have to be groundbreaking if the content is good. Things will be Greek, minimalist. You know Cam has other ideas, but you see her slide her sketches out of the way for now. Probably planning another way to propose them – Cam has the brilliant mind of a battle strategist, and will get her way eventually.

“Any other questions?” Nonagesimus asks, and you can hear the disdain in her voice. The unspoken question: Are you done wasting my time?

A pause, as everyone seems to be wondering what’s worth even saying in such an unhelpful space.

“Child actors?” you suggest, still slouched back in your chair. The first thing you’ve said all meeting.

Those dark eyes slice to you. “That is not a question,” says Nonagesimus icily. “That is, at best, a suggestion with a vocal uptick at the end. At worst, just naming a common feature of theater.”

Bitch. As if it wasn’t obvious what you meant. You put all four feet of the chair on the ground and address your question to the producer Abigail instead, who is not a bitch. “Will this production be using a child actor for Iphegenia, and if so, how will the labor law compliance impact rehearsal schedules? And have we budgeted for a child wrangler?”

Assorted nods. Because you ask good questions, damnit. Abigail looks to Nonagesimus.

“The character is twelve,” says Nonagesimus, like you’re all idiots.

“Well, sometimes writers play their own main characters,” says Abigail placatingly. “It’s a very personal decision. I was wondering the same thing, reading it.”

Tridentarius actually cackles at that. “You could certainly pass as prepubescent, Harry,” she says, which does nothing to disabuse your theory about the relationship between those two.

“I am not so narcissistic nor masochistic as to cast myself in my own show,” says Nonagesimus, which immediately raises a lot more questions for you about exactly how masochistic she is in other contexts. “And the play hinges on the audience actually seeing Iphigenia as a child. To have an adult play her would be – drag at best, and farce at worst.”

No one knows quite what to say about that. You think it’s a solid artistic choice, but a hell of a way to interact with your collaborators. You finally break the ice with “So yeah, then, child actors. Glad we’ve settled that. I’ll give Pyrrha a call?” If you are smug, then who can blame you?

“Yes, please,” says Abigail. “And Judith–”

“Rehearsal schedules staggered, and consent forms for the parents,” the stage manager rattles off, unnervingly efficient as always.

And Nonagesimus just glares.

Weird meetings aside, though, things are fine. Cam retools her design a little, and submits it to Nonagesimus, who rubber-stamps it. You start building.

No, the trouble actually begins two months before open, and you have almost no warning. You're down in the shop, writing up the week's build priorities on the big whiteboard, and your phone lets out a frantic string of buzzes.

Cam: Nonagesimus incoming with a director brain demand.

Cam: Already told her no.

Cam: Then she kept pushing so I sicced her on you.

Cam: Sorry.

Cam: Though I would do it again in a heartbeat.

And you barely have time to feel dread before Harrowhark Nonagesimus bursts in.

"Good morning," she says stiffly. "There's a new scene I need to discuss with you."

"Good morning to you too," you say cheerfully. This bitch has barely said a word to you all production, but now she wants something, she's pretending politeness – and it's a good thing she hadn't insisted on playing the lead role, because she's a terrible actor. You're going to milk this for all it's worth. "Always an honor when the director stops by. Has anyone given you a tour yet?"

"I don't need a tour," she says impatiently. "This scene–"

"Gonna have to stop you right there, boss. When you're in the shop, you gotta wear eye protection. It's hard to direct when you've been blinded by shrapnel, right?"

Nonagesimus scowls. "This should be a quick conversation. I will take my chances."

"Not up to you, our fearless leader. OSHA owns all of our asses here." You pull out the bin of spares. "Are you more of a goggles or a glasses kind of gal?"

"I hardly care," she says with frustration, and just for that, you grab her a pair of goggles, the real sweaty kind, with the kind of rubber band that catches at your hair. You hold them out to her, and she eyes them as if you'd handed her a dead rat.

Fuck it, might as well escalate. While she takes her sweet time figuring that out, you holler, "Pash, you're still ripping down the luan to make the column stripes today, right?" and see Nonagesimus flinch a little at the noise.

"What, you want it now?" Pash shouts back. You give her a thumbs up, and she flashes you a middle finger back.

Nonagesimus has, with great disdain, wrestled the safety goggles onto her head. Her short black hair is in wild disarray as a result, and condensation is already beginning to bead on the lenses. Gorgeous. When she sees that your attention is back on her, she opens her mouth to speak again, and you say, "Hold that thought. You'll need hearing protection too."

"For what?" she says, exasperated. "Your crew's incessant and unnecessary shouting?"

You fish out a pair of earmuffs for her, pull your own on from where they've been resting around your neck, and hold up a finger. Nonagesimus starts to say something – thankfully muffled now – and right on cue, Pash fires up the table saw. You motion helpfully for Nonagesimus to put on the earmnuffs, which she does with obvious disgust. Rude. You do wipe those things down – they're uncomfortable, but not actually gross.

It's quite the silent-era movie comedy routine. She tries to talk louder. You cup your hand around your ear. She makes an emphatic gesture suggesting taking your earmuffs off. You point to a the big poster on the wall – "HEARING AND EYE PROTECTION MUST BE WORN WHILE POWER TOOLS ARE IN USE" and salute reverently. She tries to move her lips more obviously, makes some gestures that perhaps she imagines are illustrative, but mean fuck-all to you and could even be considered suggestive if you weren't such a consummate professional. You give a big, helpful shrug and offer her your notebook and pen. She takes it, starts to write something in it, then crosses it out and just writes "YOUR OFFICE" in cramped, angry script. The pen actually goes right through the page. And she has the audacity to snap her fingers at you as she goes.

You lead her into your office, where it is indeed quieter. Your production intern Jeannemary is in there, finishing up a list of what lumber she'll need to cut to build the sacrificial altar, and looks up in clear alarm as Nonagesimus stalks in after you.

"You can stay for this meeting," you assure her, because it's a hell of a power play to have a minion in the room when you smack this shit down, and because it'll be good for JM to see this. "It won't take long, right, Nonagesimus?"

Perhaps she'd had a pretty, manipulative speech perfectly planned when she first came down here. Now, as she rips off the shop's shittiest pair of safety goggles, Nonagesimus has a flushed, sweaty indent around her eyes and a murderous look in them. She grits out, "There's a new scene in Act 4. The actors will need to wade up to their waists into a pool of water. Hect said to let you know, presumably so you can begin work."

The fucking balls on this lady. "Oh, so she approved it?"

Nonagesimus lifts her chin loftily. "She said that the bulk of the work lay in implementation, and I should discuss it with you directly."

"Did she."

You'd bet the shiniest toy in the shop that what Cam actually said was something along the lines of 'Large amounts of water onstage is a disaster waiting to happen, and if you wanted a pool you should have fucking said so from jump, instead of springing it on us mid-build.' The longer that Nonagesimus holds your gaze, the more outraged you are by the deceit, by the sheer hubris of thinking it would work. Mommy turned her down, so she's running to Daddy, as if you and Cam don't fucking talk to each other.

Well, maybe Cam is Daddy. That one’s up for debate, really. JM squirms uncomfortably while you consider it, and wait to catch Nonagesimus in a lie.

"I can just call her up," you prompt. "Cam's chill. She won't mind the interruption. Just last week, I called her up because Pash brought her girlfriend's dog into work, and she picked up immediately, and then we all got to hang out with Noodle. Remember that, JM? Remember Noodle?"

JM looks like she'd rather be hanging out with Noodle right now, or anywhere but here. Nonagesimus says, "I'm so glad that you are using your time effectively."

"We are," you assure her. "Mostly because we stick to the set design you okayed, and we don't drop everything out of the blue to build giant last-minute flooding hazards that will take forever and are only used for one scene. So. You know. You should probably start editing that scene to take place somewhere else."

Nonagesimus's tiny face darkens. She says, "Can I speak with you in private?"

"We are in private, boss."

"Without the child," she clarifies, and earns herself a further place on your shit list.

"JM is a production intern, and she's here to do valuable work and to learn. Learning how to say no to unreasonable demands from directors is like, half the job, and you can never pick it up too early. Anything you want to say to me, you can say to her."

"Oh, to have a job where half the work is finding excuses not to do anything helpful," Nonagesimus deadpans, raising your hackles even higher. "Then she can hear this too. I am the writer and director of this production, Nav, and I am telling you that we need a pool."

"Cool flex, buddy. I'm the tech director, and I'm telling you that something like that would raise our insurance premiums straight through the roof for years to come, and set the rest of the build behind by like a month, and it's not going to happen. Maybe, maybe, if you ask really nicely and shell out the money for materials and overtime, we can get you an indent in the stage, and cover it with some shiny ripple-y fabric. But real water is out of the question. Are we clear?"

She glares at you, all pinched mouth and clenched fists and piercing eyes. Her face still bears the faint imprint of the goggles.

"Run along," you advise helpfully. "You've got a whole scene to revise now, right? Better get to it."

"This is not over," she warns, and stalks from your office. When the door closes behind her, JM lets out a huge sigh and flops on the couch.

"Sorry, kid," you say vaguely, still coming down from the high of the confrontation. "You okay?"

"That was fucking badass," says JM, whose hands are over her face. Her laptop and clipboard are abandoned on the floor. "I thought my heart was gonna stop like three times. What the hell, Gideon?"

"Can't let 'em push you around," you advise her sagely. "Cam gave me a heads up." And you sit down beside her, show her the texts.

"Shiiiit," JM breathes. "That's next-level office politics.” And: “Could you actually make it, though? If you had to?"

Could you actually make it? You think about it, grab a pencil and scratch paper, clip it to her board. You sketch idly as you consider.

"It would need to be a really reinforced tank. Like, we're talking steel drum, maybe, with a hell of a wood frame supporting it. Cause water's heavy, right, plus at least two actors?"

"Plastic bag?" JM suggests. "Like, because it's watertight, but doesn't add weight?"

"I like where your mind is, but if it tears, we're fucked. It’s gotta stand up to shoes, toenails, jewelry... I think we need something thicker. But even if we solve that, there's the issue of splashing, right?"

JM considers. God, you actually do love this part of your job. Helping your crew and your interns get better as leaders and designers, not just using them as extra hands. This is only your first time having an intern, and you’d been scared to death you were going to fuck it up, but JM is a dream.

"Tilted stage around it?" she says finally. "Oh my god, Gideon, like one of those old school torture chambers with the pitched floor so the blood runs into a drain? Except instead of a sewer full of viscera it's a trough full of actors talking about sad Greek stuff??

"Could work," you muse. "But water splashes high, especially when it’s moving... If they're up to their waists, that's like 3 feet? 3 feet, raised up from below the stage, is probably going to splash at least, I dunno, six inches? We could run tests. But a six inch rise–"

"That's literally the whole stage that has to be on an angle," JM finishes, dejected. "Never mind."

"It was a good idea," you assure her, ruffling her hair. "You're killing it, JM. And if we had to do it, maybe we'd figure something out. But it's not easy, and it's also not necessary. That's the teachable moment, right? We don't have to rush to do the impossible just because some creative got a whim. Our time's valuable too, and we're already pulling off something really fucking impressive with the set we're doing now."

"Yeah," says JM thoughtfully. "I totally would have just done whatever she said, though. She's, like, really confident and mean and angry? Like, wow."

She's not wrong. In your personal life, that level of confident and mean and angry is exactly the kind of thing that gets you seeing stars and rushing to obey. But this is your fucking shop, and no visiting director/playwright/sugar-baby with a stick up her nonexistent ass is going to tell you how to run it.

Two days later, she makes another attempt to tell you how to run it. You're outside eating your lunch, enjoying a nice breeze, and she sidles up to you like a big wet clump of hair in the shower: dark, trailing, and impossible to get rid of once she's stuck to you.

"I already said it wasn't happening," you remind her. "Also, I'm clocked out for another thirty six minutes, and I want to enjoy them. Fuck off."

You would not talk like this in the shop. You try to keep the swearing to a minimum, at this stage in your life, so that no one can claim you were cursing at them to intimidate them. But you are off work right now. You’ll talk how you like.

"Maybe we got off on the wrong foot," she says haltingly. "I am – new to directing. It's possible I didn't understand all the power dynamics at play."

It’s a shitty start to an apology. You snort. "So someone else finally explained to you that I'm not your bitch to order around, and now you're groveling to try and fix things with me? You can do it in thirty six minutes, but it still won't help. I'm not fucking building a pool."

"The scene is necessary," she insists, ignoring the bit where you said you wanted to enjoy your lunch break without her, and fully dropping the apologetic act. "Without it, the final decision is – disjointed. Nonsensical."

Ah, so that's her tack. An appeal to the work. Giving you a glimpse into her inner workings. Flattering you by showing you a bit of vulnerability, a bit of her process, so that you can fall over yourself to help. Artists do this kind of shit astonishingly often – they can't help themselves.

And maybe, under other circumstances, it would work on you. In your opinion, the final decision is extremely nonsensical, extremely jointed, but you're always excited to see an artist push things even further and keep improving their shit, and you've done some crazy shit at the last minute in the past because you're passionate about the work.

But she disparaged the use of safety equipment. She implied you were lazy. She tried to go over Cam's head. She fucking belittled JM right in front of her. Frankly, you love her play, and you hate her, and you when you toss a mental coin to see which of those instincts will triumph, hate wins. Put it on a hashtag, because it's your new motto when dealing with Nonagesimus.

"Sounds rough," you say. "I guess it's good that you're some hotshot writer, and you can find other ways to joint that shit up, without involving a big-ass pool, right?"

"It's thematically necessary–"

"I'm no expert, but it sounds like a fancy gimmick to distract from a lack of content to me," you say, and take a big bite of your sandwich. Delicious. "Nonagesimus, you have like five seconds to get the hell out of my face before I call my union and file a complaint about you harassing me and denying me my legally mandated breaks. And I know you're new to this, but trust me when I say you do not want to deal with that shit. In thirty six minutes, I'll be back in the shop, and you can do a little interpretive dance at me about this for the rest of the day while I build the rest of your set. But for now, will you please fuck off?"

She fucks off, reluctantly, shooting baleful glances all the while. You send up a fervent prayer to the great dyke up above that she trips on her own voluminous black skirts while doing so and breaks her face, but alas, she makes it safely back inside, and you finish you sandwich without getting to see her experience any grievous physical harm. When you head back in, you immediately put on your earmuffs, and jump right in on some of the loudest tasks on your to-do list, and in that way, you at least pass the rest of the day without any more direct Nonagesimus contact.

The next time she pops up, the timing couldn't possibly be more perfect if you'd planned it. You're hanging lights – or rather, Pro is up on a ladder and hanging lights, and you're down below, passing him lamps and extra cables, noting down which instrument he's plugged into which electrical outlet. Crucially, this means that as soon as her pinched little face appears in the wings, you get to say "Nope," and when she keeps coming for you undeterred like something out of a horror movie, "Hard hat zone only, Nonagesimus. Ask anyone in the shop to help you find one, then come back if you're that desperate to hang out." Ha, hang out. You crane your neck upwards to see that Pro caught your unintentional wordplay, but of of course he did. The man is a connoisseur of the literary arts. He nods at you approvingly as he clips on a safety cable.

She casts a dubious look upwards. "I'll risk it. A conversation with you is already on par with a concussion from falling debris. Perhaps it would even serve as a pleasant palate-cleanser."

"Flattering, but you know I can't allow that. My heart belongs to one woman and one woman alone, and she's like – what do you call it – an anime girl personification of OSHA. She wears a hard hat, but like, in a sexy way, and in her honor I make everyone else wear one too when they walk into a falling object zone."

"Moe anthropomorpism," Pro informs you from his high perch. "And that's an excellent concept, chief. And by the power of a word/I start my life again/I was born to know you/To name you/OSHA-chan."

"Thanks, I just came up with it. I'm thinking, like, tasteful coveralls and close-toed shoes, but also something frilly made out of MSDOS sheets? Is it possible to do both?"

"Dulcinea would gladly assist in this venture," he points out. God, Pro has the best ideas. You are surrounded by both a sea of talent and a verdant field of people who know how to use it. Truly, the only dark spot in your life is Nonagesimus.

You turn back to where Nonagesimus is tapping her fingers impatiently and say, "I'm not going to a secondary location with you either this time, boss. Can't leave my buddy Pro here high and dry like that. Yeah, going all the way up and down the ladder is good leg exercise, but his legs are shredded enough. I think we can all agree the man deserves a break."

Nonagesimus disappears in a sweep of black fabric – either to leave you alone, or to go fetch a hard hat. A win for you either way. Pro says, "Outlet 134. My legs and I seem to be sensing some tension between you and the director."

"Astute as always. 134... And that's unit... 12E75. Great. Next one's a parnel, about a half a pipe downstage. Can you reach without moving the ladder?"

"Just pass it up. Gideon, is there any point in asking you not to pick a fight?"

You grab the next lamp to hang and climb halfway up the ladder, until he takes it from your hand. "Fight's already been picked, big guy. I'm just standing my ground. Proving we can't be bullied." You hesitate. "Do you think I'm going too far? Crossing a line? Should I not have talked so much about big anime tiddies?"

"I thought you displayed uncharacteristic and admirable restraint on the anatomy of anime girls. But I think I'll take a bathroom break if she comes back. Whatever's happening between you two, I don't want to be a part of it."

Irritably, you say "It's literally just some banter, Pro. She's trying to go around Cam to me, and I'm sticking to the party line. Not that deep."

He gives you an inscrutable look, and then says "Speaking of which," and you turn to see a be-hatted Nonagesimus stalking back towards you. It's too big for her, seriously askew on her tiny little head as she fumbles with the clasps, and clashes horribly with her all-black attire. Your heart swells with joy at the sight.

Pro claps you on the shoulder. "The lamp is hung but not plugged in. Needs at least another two feet of extension. Move the ladder a bit – I was straining to reach, and my arms are longer. Nonagesimus, a pleasure to meet you, and I'm looking forward to opening night, but I'm going on my break now. Please don't injure our technical director."

You wave him off cheerily, and drag the ladder a foot or so downstage – lifting it properly is a two-person job, and you're not stupid enough to expect any help. You see Nonagesimus flinch at the noise, which is an added bonus.

"Alright, spill," you say. And: "Actually, wait, sorry, I can't take you seriously with your hat wobbling like that. Buckles, Nonagesimus, have you heard of them?"

Hate pours off of her in fortifying waves. "Appropriate, since I can't take you seriously under any circumstances."

"I've noticed," you say dryly, and reach for her chin-strap. "Here, let me–"

She jerks away from your hand immediately, takes a step back, shoulders tensing. Shit. You draw back like you've been stung, make yourself drop your hands to an open, relaxed position.

Right. This is not a cute, flirty argument. You fold up your lighting diagram and stick it in your back pocket, grab a small coil of short extension cords, and head up the ladder. Only once you're all the way up in the grid, safely out of reach, do you call down, "So what did you want to talk about?"

From up here, Nonagesimus is manageably remote. Her voice is still piercing through, as she calls up, "What would it take for you to build the pool?"

"Not this shit again."

"Yes, this shit, now and every day until you answer my questions. I am aware now that my power is limited, and that you are not obligated to build it as a matter of course. So I am asking you what I need to do."

In other words, she’s finally here to talk turkey. You plug in the extension cord, start coiling the extra length. "I dunno, time travel? Go back and put it in the original script?"

"Let us assume that we are operating under the laws of physics as we understand them."

"That's gonna be a bummer for you, then, since fluid dynamics is the main thing getting in your way." She doesn't throw another barb at you, so you take a moment to consider. "What do you want me to say, Nonagesimus? It comes down to time and money, and time is really just money. So how much money do you have?"

She is too dignified to crane her neck up at you, so you cannot gauge her body language, only the flat tone of her voice when she says, "I could potentially acquire the needed funds, if you would stop grandstanding and estimate the cost."

From her sugar mommy, she means. "Right. Hypothetically, you'd want to tell Tridentarius that it would take maybe fifteen grand for materials, and then another forty grand for extra labor – either overtime, or hiring new people."

She's making notes in her binder. "That doesn't seem so bad."

"Speak for yourself, that's more than my yearly salary. Then there's the design – maybe me and JM could figure it out, but if not, we're looking at paying an engineer to consult. But the big part is insurance. Our premiums will go up if we even try it, and if anything goes wrong, they'll stay up for years. Plus the actual cost of repairs. So, you know, hypothetically, Tridentarius would need to sign some kind of binding agreement to pay whatever the increases are, and that's basically a blank check. You got that kind of juice, boss?"

You're actually curious if she does. Alas, you will not get that answer today, because she just says impatiently, "Is that all?"

"Hell no," you say. "You'd need to apologize to JM."

There's a pause.

"You don't know who I'm talking about, do you. Unbelievable. My goddamn production intern, who you were rude as hell to. You called her a child, talked about her like she wasn't there. She's working her ass off on your show, and you belittled her in her place of work. Does that ring a bell?"

She says stiffly, "Then that could be arranged as well. Is there anything else?"

Fuck her. You start tying up the next extension cable and say, "And to me, too. Since you disrespected me." That one part of your brain that is always narrating a porn version of your life translates that to 'beg for it, bitch' and you kind of slap that part of your brain down and remind it not to get you sued. This kind of shit is why you are having this conversation atop a ladder, and not somewhere where you’re looking into each other’s eyes.

She's been writing most of this down, but at that she closes her binder with a snap. "So that's what it comes down to then, Nav? Money, and petty pride? You want to humiliate me? I shouldn't be so disappointed as I am – I already know you didn't care about the work–"

That hits you like a smack across the face, and in your moment of dismay, your hands falter inexcusably. The cable slips from your grip and plummets to the floor, its weight yanking it from its outlet. Nonagesimus starts at the sound, and so do you – you had not realized quite how angry she could make you. You begin the long climb down the ladder to retrieve it, trying to match your breathing to the rhythm of your legs on the treads, and when you reach the bottom you're determined to be – cool.

"And that's why we wear safety helmets," you say, retrieving the cable, setting it aside to test later and make sure the fall didn't damage any of the wiring. Then you hop your ass up onto the wheeled cable storage box itself, enjoying the height it gives you over her. You lean forward, elbows on your knees, and say, "Nonagesimus, settle something for me here. I know this is your first time directing, but have you ever, like, been on a show before? College productions? Were you a high school theater kid?"

She is stiff and remote and glacial. "Your appeal to seniority is hamfisted, Nav. No, I'll readily admit it: I did not sweat over any mediocre teenage production of Hairspray. Nor do I consider that a lack of qualifications."

"I can tell," you say darkly. "Listen, Nonagasimus. I know you're a hotshot writer, and you bring your own funding so you think you can do whatever you want, but there's some shit you should understand about actually doing theater if you want to succeed in this world. Actually putting on a show, I mean, not just writing a script and throwing it out into the world. Most theater programs make the students do a stint in every department just so they get to understand it, because otherwise they get their asses kicked by people way less nice than me the minute they work on a real production. Nonagesimus, there's dozens and dozens of people working on this show, and every single one of them–"

"If you're going to attempt to lecture me on how every one of them has their own agenda, let's just move on," she interrupts. "I'm aware of that now. I am putting effort into understanding your agenda and priorities, unimpressive as they are. I graduated a highly competitive MFA program, and I deal with Ianthe Tridentarius on a daily basis. I hardly need a patronizing beginner's lesson on realpolitik from a woman whose sole joy in life seems to come from abusing her petty position of power in the scene shop of a mid-sized regional theater."

Her chin is tilted upwards, defiant. God, you want to lay her out. Ten years since you threw a punch, and you're achingly tempted to throw it all away, lose your job and your friends and everything, anything to just fuck her up. Fuck her. You don't abuse power – you're not some petty tyrant or narcissist – only the knowledge that you'd be proving her right keeps you from absolutely decking her.

You say tightly, "Quit assuming things, Nonagesimus, it makes you look like a dumbass every time. I don't care what your fancy MFA program is like, or whatever fucked-up games you and your patron play. This isn't a goddamn competition, boss, it's cooperative mode, and what I was trying to fucking tell you is that basically everyone here is here because they want to be. Because they love the arts, and they want this play to succeed, same as you. Because we like being a part of something bigger than just us."

Something bigger than you. You have a life here, a job that gives you friendship and meaning and purpose, and you won't throw it away just to prove a point to a tormented asshole creative. You cant start over again. You finish, "Like I said, Nonagesimus. You're new to this shit, so I'll give you a free pass for everything up to this point. But if you want to make it to opening night – if you want to keep directing, or doing anything that requires other people to tolerate you, you can't fucking accuse people of not caring about the work. Your patron is the only person in this whole production who's just here for pride and money, so talk to her that way if you want to, but don't you dare say that shit to me or my crew. Do you understand me?"

Her dark eyes are watching you intently. You wave a hand uncertainly, not sure if you broke her or if she's about to try and get you fired. It's almost peaceful, though, this moment before the storm. Just you, her, and hopefully the tiniest speck of understanding and respect.

"If you want this play to succeed–" she begins, and the moment is broken.

"Are you, like, incapable of hearing the word no? You should get an MRI scan about that, boss. It can't be healthy."

"Read the new pages," she insists, ripping open her binder. She angrily flips through it, then shoves it into your midsection. "If you're such a connoisseur of the arts, read them, and then tell me to my face you won't build it."

Playwrights. Masters of the written word, always so convinced that the perfect sentence or scene will make the world bend to their will. As if there's nothing else necessary to bring the world they've written to life. As if the rest of you don't have your own hearts and minds.

But damn it, you do want to see what she's written. Damn it all, her writing digs its hook deep into your heart and twists, and you want more of it.

"And then you'll back the fuck off?" you hedge, playing it cool. "Doing this dance every day is fun now, but at some point we really do have to build your set."

"Since my success apparently hinges on your highly qualified artistic critique, I suppose I will have to," says Nonagesimus bitterly. "Read it, Nav. It's after Iphigenia has already rebuffed Clytemnestra's pleas to save her once. Clytemnestra, in case you're unaware, is her mother, the queen of–"

"I read the damn script," you say, and you cradle her binder in her arms. "I know who the characters are. Stop talking, and let me read this."

It's... it's good. Of course it's good. You knew it would be, and you know from the first lines that you were in for both a treat and a misery. Clytemnestra, feigning acceptance and taking her daughter to bathe in a sacred pool of Artemis the night before her sacrifice. Iphigenia, wary of her mother's treachery, but hungry for both maternal affection and divinity. Clytemnestra, springing her trap in the one place that is free from the prying eyes of her husband the King.

I: This is nice. Like the baths at home.

C: Yes. Remember how I used to braid your hair, there?

I: That was usually the servants.

C: Pedantry is below you. I must have braided it at least once.

I, presenting her neck, hopeful: At least twice, now?

[quiet. A moment of softness as C begins washing I's hair.]

I: They say the Goddess Artemis is – kind. To the maidens who serve her.

C: To the live ones, maybe.

I: I mean – when she comes for me. I think it will be – painless. Quick. Gentle.

C: What will it matter? You'll still be dead.

I: Mother –

Clytemnestra: Please, Iphigenia. You've had your fun at my expense. You've made me suffer a thousand times over for my cruelty. But please – you cannot seriously mean to go through with this!

Iphigenia: So you lied. You would defy the gods.

Clytemnestra: Willfully and fully, my daughter. You cannot do this. You must not do this. I have a plan – a loyal man waiting to spirit you away to Tauris – I couldn't tell you this where your father could hear me–

Iphigenia: The gods hear all.

Clytemnestra: Then let them hear it! Let them see and hear me, and know that that what they have demanded of me is too great, and I will not let them take it. Let them take anything else, let them torment me in this life and in the Underworld, but I will not let her take you.

Iphigenia: It is not your choice to make, Mother.

Clytemnestra, scornfully: Whose is it, then? Yours? You tiny, mewling babe, punted between giants – you think that you are choosing anything here? Your father and your uncle, Troy and Greece, humans and gods, and you think that your choice matters even a whit? You think that by defying your mother, you are somehow winning?

Iphigenia: I do not seek to defy you.

Clytemnestra: Then what do you seek, you wretched girl? What do you want? Tell me and I'll do it, Iphigenia, if you'll just please let me save you.

Iphigenia: You told me yourself. It's not a daughter's job to want.

C: And so now you throw my words back in my face. Pettiness is below you too, child.

I: I'm accepting it, mother. You were right.

C: For once, those are not the words I long to hear! Iphigenia-

I: Father says so too. He says that there are bigger things at stake here. That we all have our part to play.

C: Your father is a deceitful, cowardly worm of a man, and if there is any justice in this world he'll burn in Tartarus for this stunt. Don't listen him, Iphigenia. Don't even listen to me, if you hate me so much. What do you want? You were so determined not to marry – towards what end? What did you want to do with your freedom and childhood, that you defended it so dearly?

[pause]

C, almost gently: You don't even know?

I, gathering courage: What if this is what I want to do?

C: There are more choices in this world than marriage and death, daughter.

I: Liar. You'd marry me off eventually anyway. It was always your plan.

C: Not anymore, child. Not if it's what I have to do to keep you alive. You have the advantage of me, now. I will defy my husband and the gods to spirit you away from here tonight, and I will give you anything you ask for, if you only dare to want it. Please–

I: I don't believe you. You're always lying.

C: I have no more cards left to play.

I: You can't trick me. You can't turn me around. I will be true to the gods.

C: This is not a test from the gods, you awful girl! There will be no treat waiting for you in the kitchens for getting top marks from your tutors. Artemis will not smile at you for walking bravely to your fate, and whisk you away at the last minute to live happily at her side! If you do this – if you throw your life away – you will be dead, and your father will cry when he thinks no one can see him, and the Goddess will be appeased, but you will still be dead.

I: Then I will be dead.

C, grabbing her shoulder: If you won't listen to reason-

[I pulls a knife from the folds of her robe and holds it to C's throat with trembling hands]

C: Your tenth birthday present.

I: You told me to always carry it, in case a man ever tried to take advantage of me.

C, backing away: Well, the window for that is closing quite quickly.

I, beseechingly: Just leave, Mother. I won't tell Father about this. There's no need for you two to fight. It won't matter soon anyway.

C: Child, that war can no more be averted than the coming war with Troy. I will never forgive that man for this. He will never know peace, for the rest of his miserable existence.

I: Just leave, Mother. Please.

[C climbs from the pool and exits stage right. I watches her go, then shakily stows her knife again and wipes her brow with trembling hands]

I: They say the Goddess smiles on young maidens. They say she's kind.

[pause]

I: I want her to be kind. I want – I want her to be proud of me, for what I do for Greece and for my family. For my devotion, and my faith, and my strength. I want her to take my soul in her arms as I cast off my earthly form. I want her to hold me and smile at me and tell me I've done a good job, and bring me to Elysium so that I don't have to be afraid any more.

[I lays back, begins floating in the pool, looking up at the moon.]

I: I did a good job, didn't I? I was obedient for so long. I tried to be kind to my siblings, to the servants. I prayed every day, and I studied well, and Father always said I was the perfect daughter. He said it just this morning. And she – she always found fault with me no matter what, didn't she? She thought I was frivolous and unrealistic for not wanting to marry, and now she thinks I'm dull and foolish for not wanting more. She told me not to want, and now she tells me to want, and I will never be enough for her no matter what I do. She – I hate her. Goddess, please don't damn me for hating her. She defies you, doesn't she? Does that mean I'm allowed to hate her?

I: Maybe in my next life, I can want. If it's not too bold, Goddess, I think that's my last wish. Next time, I just want it to be – easier.

[lights fade out]

There's goosebumps on your skin, and you regret wearing a tank top today. Nonagesimus is no doubt watching you for reactions, hungrily reading you like the pretentious student of the human character that she is. And damn if you aren't having a reaction. A mother who begs her daughter not to sacrifice herself – a daughter who can't trust her mother's love – a daughter who can only find meaning through sacrifice – it strikes a chord in you, and you're having trouble keeping the vibrations hidden.

"Well?" says Nonagesimus impatiently. She tugs the binder back out of your hands so fast you practically get a papercut. She's standing very close to you.

You pull yourself together and say, "Just cut the water out. I've seen it a million times: a depression in the stage, some silky fabric with a slit for the actors to pass through it, a fan to make it billow, and some projections to give that watery lighting look. When she lies back, we just slide a pillow underneath her to make it look like she's floating, and it works like a charm."

"That would look fake," says Nonagesimus dismissively. "I am not asking you for advice on how to implement a half-assed solution."

"Have you considered setting it somewhere else?"

"Again, it should be clear that I did not seek you out for the pleasure of your company or for your unsolicited suggestions on how to alter my vision."

You shrug. "Might as well get going, then. Because I'm still not building you a giant flooding hazard."

"Can I ask why?"

You think of telling her that the scene is perfect, but that the show will already kill even without it, so she might as well just move forward without it, or start editing it to be water-free. But you don't want to compliment her, damn it. You don't want to give her another level to manipulate you, or let her think that she has a toehold into your heart.

You think of telling her that she hasn't earned it. That she's given you no indication she's really learned her lesson, and you'd be screwing every other TD she works with for the rest of her career if you roll over for her now.

You think of saying, 'Maybe I'm just not properly motivated' and letting her eyes flick down to her lips, then back up to see what face she'd make – outraged and blushing, or biting her lip and thinking about it, or some combination of both. That's a bad, horny thought, and you lock it firmly away, but it certainly is a thought.

You say, "One time, my first year on this job, I let a director sweet-talk me into taking on an ill-advised overly-ambitious build. He was really famous, and the show was really exciting, and I wanted to be the guy who could, you know, deliver, so I worked my whole crew to the bone for two months. But that's the kind of mistake you only make once, and I'm hoping I can set a good example so that JM will never make it. And you're about six years too late to take advantage of my naivete, Nonagesimus, so you might as well begone."

She tears the hard hat off as she goes, and drops it on the ground. It makes a sickening crack, bounces once, and then just sort of wobbles. You shake your head, trying to banish the imagines flooding your head: John Gaius's disappointed face when his fancy special effects fell apart during tech week, the stark black text of the FBI agent's report in your DCFS folder, a Blood of Eden manifesto with horrible graphic design scraped from the dark web.

You have a life here. You have a show to work on, and solid ground beneath your feet, and instruments that need to be hung up and plugged in.

You text Pro that the danger has passed, and you grab a new cable and the next lamp, and you head back up the ladder.

Six weeks before open, you are closing up the space late at night. It's past 1am; you had sent JM home hours ago because there's no fucking reason for any self-respecting crew member to stay this late, especially at this stage in the production. You are, of course, an exception, but that's your right as tech director. Only God can stop you, or possibly Cam or Abigail, and they respect you too much to try. They know you don't stay late every night, and you don't operate any tools. You just – think, and plan, and wander. Sometimes you work better with quiet.

Clearly Nonagesimus operates similarly, except ten times more excessively goth, because she's still here too. And she's lying on the altar set piece that JM finished and brought into the space yesterday, neck tilted up, throat bared. You feel like you've stumbled accidentally into something extremely intimate, and your skin prickles. She looks like she's praying, and you can't tell if it's for salvation or to be struck down.

You fucking called it. Goddamn playwrights, always putting so much of themselves into their work. Of course this bitch had a complex relationship with sacrifice and death. Of course she imagines herself on the altar. Of course she offers her throat for the knife, and of course when she does so she looks more at peace than you've ever seen her.

"Don't you dare fucking scuff that," you say, and your voice echoes in the empty space. You haven't hung curtains yet to control the sound.

Nonagesimus's head rolls towards you slowly, bonelessly. "I took off my shoes," she says flatly.

So she has. Without her clunky black combat boots, her feet are very small.

"Good," you huff uselessly. "Now get down from there and put them back on, and then get the hell out. It's closing time. Like they say at the bars: I don't care where you go, but you can't stay here."

"Get kicked out of a lot of bars, do you?" she needles, though her heart doesn't seem in it. She is turned towards you now, knees drawn up to her skinny chest, a curled up blossom of dark skirts and misery.

You don't open up to her about your checkered past, your experience on both the kicking out and being kicked out side of things. You say, "I'm serious, Nonagesimus. If I let you sleep here this time, next thing I know you'll be sleeping on the table-saw, and you know how that ends."

"I am not going to cut myself in half in my sleep," she scoffs.

"Of course not, what decade do you think this is? We've got the fancy kind that shuts down if it encounters human flesh. Slams the blade into a block of titanium. But then it's $600 and 2 days to get it fixed, and that ends up putting your build behind by more like a week. Go home, Nonagesimus. Where did you park?"

She says, unwillingly, "Tridentarius drove me."

You will yourself to make it through this conversation without saying anything that will get you into a sexual harassment lawsuit, and say, "Then call a car. You're staying in some hotel downtown, right? Can't be more than $30 to get there at this time of night."

She doesn't move.

You don't want to touch her. But you prop your elbows up on the altar – excellent fucking work on JM's part, you're so fucking proud of her – and look down on this miserable goth, and say, "Hey. Nonagesimus. Tell me your damn hotel so I can call you a car, or I'm going to call security instead."

It does not feel like victory when she speaks. She tells you the name of the hotel, and you whistle. You know the place she's talking about, and swanky does not even begin to describe it. Your desire to say 'you must really be putting out' is quickly reaching mountainous levels, and only the thought of Abigail's disappointed face when she gets subpoenaed keeps you in check.

"Tridentarius must be staying there too, right?" you say instead, as you pull up the rideshare app on your phone. "Or is there an even fancier hotel that I haven't even heard about, for the super rich?"

Nonagesimus says, mechanically, "She's there. It makes it easier to consult about the production. She even has a key to my room, so we can meet more easily."

Your thumb pauses on the 'call ride button' and you reevaluate this whole situation – an exhausted, unhappy woman doing everything she can to avoid going home to a patron who has far too much power over her, who affords her no privacy, who dangles the future of her art over her head. A whole bunch of pieces are falling into place, and you suddenly feel like a real dick.

You set your phone down and say, as gently as you can, "Harrow, are you safe? Is she–"

"The white knight role doesn't suit you," says Harrow acidly. "Stick to backstage, Nav, not acting. And if you insist on doing something kind for me, build me a pool."

That is not an answer. "Fuck me for asking, then," you say. "I'm just saying, she's a real creep. She always looks like she wants to – slurp up your intestines, or something. And it's fucking gross that she doesn't even give you your own space."

Harrow says, with dignity, "I do not disagree, but Tridentarius is hardly a danger to my virtue. She is merely... repellent. Exhausting. I know how to deal with her by now, and once I have regained my energy, I will return to our hotel and do exactly that."

You are not sure you buy that. You are also not sure how she has become Harrow in your mind. Between being befuddled by both those trains of thought, you are in no position to stop yourself from saying, "Or you can stay with me. If you want to."

Harrow gives you a flat, disbelieving look.

You can't back down now. "It's no fancy hotel, but I've got a futon couch, and I can drive you home, and then back here tomorrow. If you want a break from her. If it'll get you out of my damn theater."

"And into your home."

It's not your smartest move. You shrug, and wait.

"Alright," says Harrow, and begins the tortuous process of unbending herself from the altar. "You don't have pets, do you? I detest animals, and the feeling is mutual."

Fucking sociopath. "What, on this work schedule?" you say. "They'd die of neglect within a season."

You dig spare sheets from your closet and sacrifice blankets and pillows from your bed to set up Harrowhark Nonagesimus on your futon, and you still have no idea why you're doing it, and why she's going along with it. You show her where your bathroom is and the trick to get the hot water running, and dig out a fresh toothbrush, and lend her sweatpants and a worn show t-shirt ("We Are All Shirtless Now" – three years ago you'd done Evita). All the while, a chorus of 'what the fuck' plays in your head.

Just before you are about to retire to your own room for the evening, she calls out your name, and you think that this is it. She's going to tell you you've been pranked. She's going to admit that Tridentarius has the absolute worst kinks and she can't stand it any more. She’s going to admit she’s an undercover cop and this was a sting operation to find horny dykes in the workplace. She's going to thank you – that option is probably the worst of the tbunch. She's going to do something, anything, to break the tension, and at least make this interaction make sense.

"Yeah?" you say.

She blindsides you with, "Gideon, is my play any good?"

It's fantastic. It knocked your socks off. It's one of your favorite things you've ever worked on.

"How would I know?" you say. "I just build what Cam tells me to build, and hang what Pal tells me to hang."

"We both know that's not true."

Right. You'd already vehemently disabused her of that notion. Stupid of you, really, to let pride get in the way of a perfectly good excuse not to have this conversation.

"It's fine," you say. "It'll kill with the intelligentsia." And you head to bed before she can see the blush in your cheeks. You were never a very good liar.

Somehow, she keeps staying with you. Day after day, no matter how late you stay in the shop, she stays that late too, and falls into step beside you to drive home together. If she is staying late for rehearsal, then you stay late too. You could cut her a key, but that's a horrifying conversation to imagine having. You think if you name it, she'll probably disappear immediately, and for some reason, that idea does not appeal.

Probably because you leave it unnamed, she does not disappear. Quite the opposite: she fetches her suitcase. There is now a goth writer nerd living in your living room. If you used your living room as anywhere but a place to occasionally watch a single episode of TV before going to bed, you'd be more upset. As it is, your focus is on her show. You both work long hours, and you both go to bed tired, so who cares where you do it?

Tridentarius cares. You see her giving you baleful looks. Once, heading to the rehearsal space at the end of the night to see if she's ready to go home, you overhear the two of them talking.

"The head stagehand, Harry, really? That's what does it for you? Your taste is abominable. I think she has carabiners and muscles where most people have a personality."

Harrow does not defend you, but nor does she immediately jump to deny that you've been sleeping together. You’re not sure if you’re insulted or flattered. Instead she just says, voice supremely bored, "A single favor, Tridentarius, and nothing else. Unless you'd like to waste it on petty jealousy, we have nothing to discuss."

"Rude," says Tridentarius. "My jealousy has never been petty. World-altering, perhaps, or awfully vengeful, but not petty. I do love to gossip with you, you dreadful little nun, but you think far too highly of yourself if you imagine I'd waste my favor on anything to do with your conquests.”

A soft noise of assent from Harrow, sort of an exhale. The sound of pages and clothes rustling.

“I know how it'll end, anyway,” Tridentarius continues conversationally. “You'll get tired of puppylike devotion, or she'll realize that there's no soft heart under all those spikes, just more spikes, and either way you'll come crying back to me like always. You must know how I delight in supporting you through heartbreak, Harry."

"Our agreement also did not include listening to your piss-poor attempts at prognostication."

It's all very loaded and creepy and mysterious. You leave after that, despite your desperate curiosity, because it's absolutely not your business, and you should forget that you ever heard it. But you're relived that you haven't gotten her into trouble with her patron or lost her all that funding.

Every week or so, she asks you, like some fucking Scheherazade setup, "Is the play good?" and every week you defer. You tell her it's good. You tell her it's fine. You don't tell her that when you first read it, you bawled like a fucking baby. You don't tell her that it touched parts of you that you intentionally haven't thought about since you were eighteen. You don't want to get into it with her, okay? And you don't know how to tell her how amazing it is without getting into it.

She still asks about the pool, too, but not with the same fervor. That, somehow, makes you think about it more. You absolutely shouldn't build it. It would be setting a terrible example for JM. Cam would make fun of you for years. Harrow would be insufferable.

You do it anyway, or at least, you take the first step down a path that you know you won't be able to stop yourself from following to completion. You text Cam.

Gideon Nav: So about that stupid pool idea

Gideon Nav: What dimensions are we talking

Camilla Hect: roughdraft.png

Camilla Hect: Shall I draft the wedding invitations?

Gideon Nav: Fuck off

You go to sleep that night dreaming of pumps and runoff, of spillage and lifts. It's a hell of an engineering challenge. Like you've already told Harrow, there's a thousand things that could go catastophically wrong: leaks into the prop room below, warps in the material of the stage, sloshing spills that actors could slip in, mildew and biohazards from reusing the water. There's also one thing that could go very right. In comparison, making her happy is one very small thing, but you point yourself towards it with all her might. Her play – for all your casual bluster, her play is your favorite thing you've ever had the honor of working on. If she is so bloody determined that a pool will take it from great to fantastic, then you will make her a pool.

It takes you a month. You put a small crew on it: JM, Pro, Pash. People you can trust not to blab to her. You're not keeping it a secret in like, some romantic gesture way. Not so that you can sweep her off her feet or something when it's finally ready. It's just that you don't want to get her hopes up if it turns out it's impossible after all. You test it exhaustively, and you install it during one long rehearsal when you know she'll be busy, and then you text Harrow to meet you in the theater. You have something to show her.

The theater is lit with the rippling, tremulous blue light Pal had specially picked out for you. You position Harrow in the front row, and then you duck backstage and begin cranking it like your life depends on it. A literal crank, obviously, attached to a literal pulley. You're a professional. One handle to pull away the panels of the stage floor. Another to make the pool itself rise up from the depths, splashing and brimming, and occasionally overflowing, but only into the thin trench you'd built into the housing. No literal basements getting flooded on your watch.

You can't see her, from this angle. You can only see your creation, and every flaw in it. In testing, you'd thought it was pretty sweet that you could hear the water splashing around, without even needing added sound cues. Now, you wonder if that will kill the suspense, ruin the surprise for the audience. Still, nothing to be done now. You get it in place, duck out, and make yourself look.

Harrow is onstage already, kneeling at the edge of the pool. You can't see her face, just the hunch of her body as she trails her fingers in the cold water. Just her bowed head. You are pinned, excruciatingly bashful and exposed as you wait for her to damn you.

"It's not quite done yet," you say, to break the silence, to cut her off before she can criticize you. "But this is the general proof of concept. Give me another couple days, and I can add motors, to make the transition smoother and easier. And I can install some grates around the pool, so that when actors enter and exit, they don't cause one big slipping hazard – I'm thinking the water can just kind of drip through to overflow basins underneath, and we can dump ‘em out after the show every night, but I wasn't sure what would match the aesthetics, so I wanted to check with you first–"

She unfolds, and her face is – unreadable, which makes you supremely nervous. You watch her kick off her shoes for some fucking reason, and then – holy shit, she just slides right in, fully clothed. Doesn't even use the stairs you built, just slips right in, lets the waters close over her head. You lurch forward, wondering how the hell you're going to explain this to Abigail, that you brought the director you've been publicly beefing with to a pool in the middle of the night but you swear, you weren't actually the one to drown her – but then she emerges, face soaked and shining blue in the flickering light.

"It's perfect," Harrow breathes, radiant. "It's marvelous – it's more than I ever could have dreamed – it's unreal. You built a pool, Gideon – you did this for me?"

You realize that you are kneeling at the edge of the pool. You are, actually, at the edge of a lot of things. The knee-jerk part of you, the one that used to throw pebbles at pretty girls you liked in elementary school, tries to rear back from the edge and scoff, 'I did it so you'd shut the fuck up and I could have a moment of peace.' The more mature adult side of you quashes that, gets all lined up to say, professional and distant-like, 'I did it for the production.'

You, dumbass that you are, take neither option. You blurt out, "I think I'd do damn near anything for you, Nonagesimus."

Her hands are soaking wet and grave-cold as she grasps for you, seizes for you with fists and wild abandon and pulls you in for a frantic and messy kiss. It's still the best kiss you've ever had. You brace yourself with one hand and pull her closer with the other and kiss Harrowhark Nonagesimus on the edge of the pool you built for her. It makes every sleepless night lost to this damn project worth it a thousand times over.

She is doing her damnedest to pull you into the pool with her. You nearly go with her, until you remember at the last minute that an underage actor will be using this set piece within a week, and that it's one thing for you to lose your job for being terminally horny, but if Harrow's show goes under because of this, you'll never forgive yourself. You make yourself pull away, and she makes a sort of hoarse growl of disapproval at your separation that turns your legs to molten jelly.

"If this is some kind of anti-fraternization nonsense–" she begins, imperious and irritated, and you say, "I'm extremely pro-fraternizing, but we can fraternize at home, Nonagesimus. Come on, let's go."

Her eyes are very dark, even with the sick-ass lights. She says, with a low intensity that cuts right to the quick of you, "I know for a fact that you have an office on premises."

Oh. That you do.

It's a mark of your professionalism that you don't carry her to your office and ravish her on the spot. The tiny remaining part of your brain that is not thinking about the way Harrow's wet clothes cling to her stiff, pebbled nipples reasonably points out that once you get your hands on her, you won't be able to stop yourself again, and then lets you go into a sort of aroused fugue state. You don't really remember the actual actions that happened next, of draining the pool and covering it back up so that JM doesn't fall into it when she comes on shift in the morning, of setting up a 'slippery when wet' sign (hah), of fetching Harrow a towel and ushering her out of the theater while you lock up, of ducking up to the booth and turning off the lights so you don't burn out the expensive gobo. It all just kind of happens around you.

And then you're leading her to your office and she's pushing you down to sit on your couch and climbing atop your lap. She's dripping and freezing and one hundred percent focused on devouring you, and it's everything you crave. You bare your throat for her, hold her tight, give yourself to her fully.

Only once do you let the doubt well up enough to ask her, fairly coherently considering the number of fingers she has inside you at the moment, "Is this some sort of – you know you don't have to – I didn't build it expecting – is this because – "

"Don't be absurd," says Harrow tartly. "It's because you're marvelous with your hands, and because you're stupidly attractive and you know it, and because I've wanted to do this for months. And because you believe in me and what I'm trying to do, and you've worked miracles to help me do it. Is that enough for you to accept that I'm freely consenting?"

You squirm, not knowing what to do with that kind of praise. "Months, huh?" you say, aiming for cocky, and she kisses you more than hard enough to shut you up.

You wake the next morning to a sore back and the sound of the day's work beginning in the shop. Impossible to sleep through, but then again, no one's expecting you to be sleeping in here. Harrow, tucked in your arms, awakens at the same time, and you share an accidentally intimate moment of eye contact before you look away, and your sight lands on the wall clock.

"Fuck!" you say. "Fuck, I'm so sorry – I swear I had an alarm set – production meeting started ten minutes ago, Harrow."

She takes the news in stride, peels herself from your stuck-together skin. You turn away hastily – it would be wrong, somehow, to appreciate the sight of her pulling on her clothes. Yes, you saw quite a lot of her last night, but that was then, and this is now. You're both adults who work together, and you will not spend the rest of this production acting entitled to her body just because you had a one-night stand. You have a few sets of emergency backup clothes stashed in your office for hell week nights when you're too busy to go home, and you dress briskly, and turn to find her picking miserably at the sodden heap of her clothes.

"Oh," you say, articulately. Come to think of it, properly hanging up her garments to dry had not been one of your priorities when you'd been taking them off of her last night. "You can wear my spares if you like?"

"That seems wise," she says, and you try not to feel warm and fuzzy at the sight of her in your clothes: your plaid boxers, and your work jeans, and your belt cinched tight around her tiny waist. She's absolutely swimming in your "Techies Do It In The Dark" t-shirt as she gathers up her massive binder. Subtle, it is not. No one will have any doubt whose clothes she is wearing.

"Sorry," you say inadequately, though you're not sure exactly what you're apologizing for. And: "Shittiest walk of shame ever, huh?"

Harrow catches you by one of your belt loops. You were halfway out the door, and time is of the essence, but you acquiesce, let her reel you back into her orbit.

"I am not ashamed," she says, plain and clear. "Are you?"

Ashamed? To have slept with Harrow – to have her made her look you like you hung the moon in the sky, instead of just a few shitty lamps? "Fuck no," you say. "Let's do this."

You rock into the production meeting twenty minutes late. JM has been valiantly attempting to stall for you, and looks desperately relieved when Harrow announces triumphantly, without any other explanation, "The pool is ready."

"What, and you fell into it?" says Tridentarius scornfully. "You're late, Harry."

Harrow says loftily, "I could hardly fall in. Our technical director maintains an impeccably safe working environment for both cast and production crew." And you feel your simple little heart swell with pride, feel a blush cover your cheeks and neck.

"We should have the actors practice in it with water," says Judith. "Do it all in one day, for scheduling. Nav, when will it be ready for that?"

You snap to attention. "Did she fucking stutter? It's ready now, as long as they don't drip when they get in and out."

"They're actors. They will drip," says Judith, unamused. "But we'll put towels down during rehearsal." She looks to Abigail and Dulcie. "During the actual run, can we have quick-change assistants waiting to dry them off and put them in clean clothes?"

"Shouldn't violate any contracts," says Abigail, who is watching you closely.

"This may mean twice the costumes for those roles," Dulcie sighs. "Babs will be beside himself – he was just congratulating himself on being ahead on the build."

"Babs loves it," says Ianthe, unconcerned. "Why else would he surround himself with this much chaos and crisis? It makes him feel needed. This will make his day."

"I want two more uninterrupted days to make some final alterations," you add, uninterested in the discussion of Babs' misery. "No rehearsals, no one in the space, while we fine-tune the install."

Judith looks murderous at the very thought. Abigail says disapprovingly, "Want, or need?"

Stupid fucking questions. "That's how much time it will take to motorize it," you say. "Make the transition a single button you can press from the booth, instead of a bunch of cranks and faucets. It'll be easier on the poor stagehand stuck handling it, and look smoother and less jerky, and it'll generally be more foolproof."

What you mean is, it will make it more perfect. Harrow deserves perfection. Her show deserves perfection. You can't give her everything, but you can give her a pool, and you'll be damned if you won't move heaven and Earth to make it glide in smoothly.

Harrow looks to Cam, who shrugs. The traitor.

"It's already breathtaking," says Harrow. "The actors need the time more."

And that's that. Whoever said that sleeping with the director gave you unfair advantages in the workplace didn't know shit about Harrow.

Normally after a meeting, you'd head straight to the shop to start handing out tasks and get started on the work of the day. Today, though, Harrow snags the cuff of your overshirt and you get the message to stay loud and clear. She waits until the room clears, and turns to you.

"You're upset I didn't give you the space," says Harrow.

"I'm fine," you say automatically, because you have a habit of doing this when disagreements pop up in relationships. Conflict anywhere else? Bring it on. With a gorgeous woman who you've slept with? You're the most agreeable motherfucker in the world. Amazingly, this has not resulted in any of your relationships lasting more than six months. You remind yourself, with effort, that she is not your girlfriend, that she is never going to date you. That she will want to keep this professional, and you should treat her like you would a colleague. So you amend, "Upset is for babies and teens, Nonagesimus. I'm a grown-ass adult who disagrees with you. You hounded me for months about a pool, so why not put a little more time into doing it right?"

She doesn't immediately burst into tears, which you suppose is what you always assumed would happen if you pushed back with any of your exes. Then again, Harrow isn't the crying type. She says, "I sat in the first row, and I could see no flaw."

"You don't know shit," you inform her, and exult at the way her mouth twists. "It's not an insult, Harrow, it's just the truth. You're not an engineer. You don't do theater tech. You write, and you direct, and you're fucking kick-ass at it. But if anyone who does what I do is in the audience, all they'll be able to see is how half-assed it is."

If Cam were here, she would argue that any of your colleagues would be impressed with the overall effect and would understand that some corners always have to be cut. Harrow merely says dryly, "Then I should be glad that engineers are not so great a proportion of the theater-going population."

You hate that you are still attracted to her right now.

"You're the same," you accuse her. "You can't stop tinkering with your script. It's already amazing. Everyone who goes is going to pass out from sheer awe no matter what. Who are you trying to wow with all the last minute additions? Your peers, right?"

"The last time I asked you about my work, you described it as, and I quote 'great, if you're into sad Greek tragedy porn that really makes you dink.' A far cry from 'amazing.'"

"Then I guess that's what I'm into," you say, exasperated. "That's not my point. Why are you allowed to tinker towards perfection forever, but I can't?"

Harrow's dark eyes bore into you. "Will you be satisfied if I appeal to hierarchy, and remind you of the power vested in my as director?"

"Not in the slightest, boss."

"Then I'll simply say that you are far closer to perfection than our actors are," says Harrow. "I am still no expert in the social dynamics of theater, but I believe that's the kind of ‘sick own’ your people enjoy."

It is mildly amusing. You can't help snorting.

"One other thing," says Harrow, folding her arms. "About last night."

You brace for the rejection. Pettily, you want to make Harrow say it. You could be the gentleman here, interrupt and say that you understand, but why make it easier for her?

"If you are amenable, I would very much like for it to continue," says Harrow baldly.

You nearly choke on your own spit. You swallow, scan Harrow's face for pity or sarcasm or hidden cameras. Find none.

"Yeah," you say casually, super suave. "Works for me."

--

The final weeks of rehearsal are a blur of last-minute changes and mind-blowing sex. A heavy set piece that was previously onstage the whole time suddenly needs to be mobile for some fucking reason, so you grudgingly install recessed wheels. You bury your face in Harrow's cunt for hours on end, feel her bony fingers clenched in your hair and every one of her startled moans lighting you up like the electric grid. Under the actual stage lighting, the Greek columns apparently look too smooth and fake and plasticky, so you strap on an N95 and turn on the flue and blast them with as much texturing spray as you can, then have to repaint them all over again. Harrow fucks you in the shower, pins you against the wall despite her staggering lack of physical strength and slides a finger into you with a ruthless intensity that nearly makes you come on the spot.

It's not lost on you that the labors of devotion, sexual or theatrical, are both for the same woman. You get the symbolism. You get that this is part of why this kind of relationship is not entirely encouraged. You remind yourself that it'll be fine, because it's only temporary. Not because of what Tridentarius said – fuck Tridentarius. But Harrow's not even from this city. Just a few weeks until the show goes up, and then a month or two of the run – you don't even know if she'll stay in town for all of that, and you're afraid to ask. But either way, she'll be out of your life soon. You can afford to be a little careless with your heart for that amount of time.

The only thing you won't do for her, at this point, is tell her about her play. What can you say? You need to have at least one boundary. You need to keep up the mystique somehow. She keeps asking, gets more irritable every time. You tell her, at this point, that it's good, and don't elaborate further. She hates it. You fuck about it. It’s a fun little game you play, really.

By the time tech week rolls around, you should really be focusing on the next show. It's a fucking modern Shakespeare adaptation, and you've done a few production meetings about it, but you can't fucking stand Shakespeare and you will die on that hill. Cam, who is also working that one, has a few rough drafts, but you don't want to sit down and figure out a build plan for it. You don't want to focus on anything but this. You set the crew to building basic flats and platforms in their free time, which will be needed no matter what, and console yourself that after Sacrifice is up, maybe you'll have some more space in your brain.

Dry tech is a grueling slog as always, but your pool holds up. Wet tech is worse, what with all the actors, but at least it's not wet in the sense of 'the pool overflows and all the expensive shit gets drenched.' You can feel it in your bones, the heady buzz of a show coming together, of everyone learning how to work together and figuring out to fit together into a perfect whole. You love this shit.

Harrow is on edge, inside and outside of the rehearsal space, and you tell her that this is normal at this stage, that the whole point of this week is to figure it out. She doesn't look convinced. In public, you punch her in the shoulder and tell her that you've done this billions of times and she's never done it even once, so maybe she should just listen to you. In private, you lay her out and try to lavish every inch of her with love, to help her relax, to show her with your hands and body that she's adored and believed in. You're a doer, not a writer. You'll leave the words to people like her.

You can't justify sitting in on the whole week of tech rehearsals, but two days before open, Dulcie has one of her many specialist appointments, and you sub in for Pal as light board op. He's effusively grateful, which you think is excessive, since you've been gagging to see this show, and it's the easiest job in the world. You sit your ass next to Colum the sound tech, and press buttons when Judith says to press buttons, and in between you watch an absolutely spellbinding show take place. Having read it and seen so many previous iterations does not make it any less gut wrenching in the least. Goddamn, this is why you love theater. This is why you put in the hours, let it play havoc with your social life. You helped make this happen, and now you get to watch it as many times as you want.

The only thing that could spoil your magical theater experience is Harrow. Every time you glance over at her, she's hunched over, writing with such intensity that you can hear her notebook paper tear several times. She fills page after page with notes, and flips her pages so angrily that you feel anxious even from five seats down. Tridentarius, beside her, is eyeing her with interest.

You clap your ass off at the end. And technically you don't need to hang around for notes, because Judith has sought you out to tell you anything important every other day, and but hell, what else do you have to do? You want to hear what Harrow thinks needs improving. You want to see how she's going to improve on this. You rest your feet on the edge of the table, and settle in for the second show.

It's brutal. To hear her tell it, no one has done anything right, especially on the cast. To hear her tell it, the production is irredeemably awful, and there is no time to fix it. Maybe that's simply how she sees it. You're no expert at judging acting, but from the first act's worth of technical notes, the diagnosis is clear. This is a first time director spinning her wheels, panicking and seeing flaws everywhere and trying to change everything last minute. This is an artist who cannot accept anything less than perfection in her magnum opus. This is a woman who holds herself to an impossibly high standard and who is now applying that same standard to the rest of the world. This is a woman who has grown so used to seeing her own flaws that the magnificent accomplishment of this collective is completely invisible to her. It's shockingly ugly.

You remember Tridentarius' contemptuous prediction, that you'd eventually realize Harrow has no heart of gold under her spikes. Tridentarius is watching Harrow hungrily from her seat a few rows back. You swear you see her glance at you.

You don't even know what to do. You're used to hearing at least a few positive notes, but there is nothing but criticism here. It's terrible for morale, but to interrupt a director giving notes is sacrilege. Judith's hands are fisted at her sides as she struggles with the same dilemma as you.

You're impossibly relieved and more than a little ashamed when Pyrrha the child wrangler interrupts. "That's enough," she says harshly. "Ten minute break, everyone?

"I believe I call the breaks," says Harrow icily. "I am nowhere near finished."

Pyrrha says, "I don't care. You need to cool down, Nonagesimus, or I'll make sure you never put up your work in this town again."

Pyrrha's hand is on the shoulder of the child actor playing Iphigenia, and you realize with deep shame that the kid is fighting back tears. Holy shit. Harrow made a tween cry, and you did nothing to stop it.

"Ten minute break," says Judith, standing up, and the little knot of actors lets out a ragged "Thank you, ten." Most of them fucking book it.

Harrow is a great black cloud of fury as she heads up the main house aisle, out the doors into the atrium. You're pinned in by Judith on one side and Colum on the other, but you're also in top physical shape, so you vault backwards over a row of seats and catch up with her somewhere around the ticket booth.

She looks at you balefully. "Do not say anything."

You don't even know what to say. You mime zipping your lips.

"I do not delight in making children cry," she says bitterly. "I'm not – I don't – but it's not good enough, Gideon. I would not do any of them any favors by letting them perform mediocrity. Then I would have failed miserably as both a writer and a director. This has to be perfect. It has to be worth it."

She paces angrily, and you say, "Permission to speak, boss?"

"I'm not your boss," she snaps automatically. "Fine. Out with it. Tell me I'm an overcritical monster. Tell me that the laughter of children is more important than my silly little life's work. Tell me that it's fine if I crash and burn on my first production, because you'll be attracted to me either way and this way you won't even have to share me. Tell me that they were all in the right to humiliate me in there, because I was doing far more damage to myself than they could ever do. Tell me that it's good enough, like you always do, and that I should be content with adequacy. Am I on the right track?"

Her bitterness burns you. She spits adequacy like it's the filthiest slur in the world. There's such fierce anger in her eyes.

You look her in the eyes and say, "It's amazing, Harrow. I should have told you months ago. It's the best play I've ever read or seen, and my favorite thing I've ever worked on."

"Liar."

"Nah," you say. "I'm a terrible liar. Especially around hot chicks. I mean it, Harrow. It rocked my entire ass when I first read it, and it rocked my entire ass tonight. Some of your notes might be valid, but it's already fucking amazing."

"You've only ever called it amazing when you're flattering me," says Harrow bitterly. "You just want me to feel better about my – my incoherent ode to hubris."

This is why you didn't want to praise her play to her. You fucking knew she'd do this. Knew the praise would slide right off her, unless you told her exactly why it cut so deep.

You check your watch. Seven minutes left on break.

"Come with me and I'll prove it to you," you say, and unlock the shutter on the ticket booth. You're not really supposed to be in here, but you have all the keys. Your carabiner is fucking massive, and your belt is extremely sturdy to handle the strain. No one in this building has ever successfully kept a key from you. You slide the shutter up, and hoist yourself easily over the counter, and then turn to Harrow. "Are you coming?"

"I am hardly in the mood for an illicit sexual escapade," Harrow scoffs.

"Pervert. I just want to talk. Privately."

She gives a little eye roll, but she lets you take her by her sweet little waist and hoist her into the booth with you and close the shutter. It's dark in there, but not so dark that you can't see her outline, and maybe that makes it easier to say.

You say, without foreplay, "My mom tried to kill me, when I was a baby. Took me into an airport with a bomb hidden in my diapers. Her plan was to blow up a whole plane, and her and me with it, but they caught her at security, and put me straight in foster care, and her straight in federal prison."

You give Harrow a minute to react to that. You've only told a few people this, most of them ex-girlfriends, and this is a big part of why they're now exes. Most of them, at this point, have wanted to express sympathy, to coo over you.

Harrow watches you, expressionless.

"I didn't know any of that till I was eighteen, obviously," you say. "I was raised mostly by shitty nuns who just wanted to talk about what a burden I was, and no one would tell me shit about my real family. But I knew I was taken from a mom, and I built her up in my head as someone who wanted me back, who was probably searching for me. I appealed to get access to my file as soon as I turned eighteen, even though everyone says to be careful with that kind of information, because you can't un-learn it. And it fucked me up. You can imagine."

You wave a hand, gesture at Harrow. At her whole deal.

"I don't know what your story is, and I don't have a right to it, and there's probably not time to go into it right now. But I feel like you don't write a play like you did without knowing something about this kind of shit, so you probably won't be surprised to hear that I had a period where I got super into looking up info about the fringe terrorist org my mom was a part of. Trying to figure out it. You know. If they stood for anything worthwhile. If they were – if they were recruiting. If it was too late for me to die for them. Super normal stuff that probably got me on a lot of governmental watchlists."

You check the illuminated dial of your watch. Four minutes left.

"Anyway. Obviously, I got my shit together since then. But when I read your play, it knocked me out – it brought up shit I hadn't thought about since back then, and not even in a bad way. It made me – fuck, Harrow, I'm not a writer. What's that shit they're always talking about in therapy? It let me feel the things, but not be back in them. It brought it back so strong, but I didn't want to die, I just felt – tender towards old me. Grief-ey. Angry at my mom – which sounds obvious, but until I read your shit I never felt mad, just confused and abandoned and desperate to win her back, which is real dumb because she didn’t want me back all that time. She killed herself in prison the first chance she got. But it – you- moved me so fucking much. It helped me. I know you think it's not good enough, and that I'm just a tech guy so I don't know shit, but I think it's amazing, and I think you're amazing."

Two minutes left.

"I'm sorry if I made it weird," you add belatedly. "I didn't want to – you probably don't know how to deal with worshipful fans yet, though you'll definitely have to learn soon. I can keep it buttoned up. We don't ever have to talk about it after this. But you seemed like you needed to know. It's easy to get stuck in your own head at this part of a show, but you're working with magic here. It's going to be amazing no matter what, and I'm in fucking awe of you. Watching it tonight gave me chills. Just go easy on the cast, and they'll blow everyone else away too, okay?"

One minute left. You kiss her forehead gently. "Go get 'em, okay?" And you hold the door to the ticket booth open for her.

She walks out. You take your time following her, locking up the shutter, and slip into the theater just as Judith calls everyone back together. You linger by the door and watch as Harrow examines her pages and pages of notes, runs her finger down the page, and says, haltingly, "The transition into Act 2 Scene 4 was very tight today. Good work, everyone."

You breath a sigh of relief and slip back out to see to the goddamn Shakespeare.

It's worth mentioning that you are sharing a bed at this point. At first, you fucked in whatever bed was closer at the time, and often fell asleep together afterwards. But now, after almost two months, she gets into your bed as a matter of course, even on the rare nights where you don't fuck. The futon is still made up, because you don't want to jinx a good thing, but it hasn't seen active duty in weeks.

Tonight, as she gets into bed with you, she says, "I was raised in a death cult."

"What?" you say, and then you belatedly remember that you had spilled your own story to her "Oh. Okay. Thank you for telling me."

"I have not even begun to tell you," she warns. Her chin digs into your collarbone a little the way she's lying against you, but who are you to complain? "It was everything you are imagining and more. My parents led it, and they raised me to lead it when they were gone."

You can imagine that with alarming ease. Harrow would make an excellent cult leader.

"Unfortunately, I was – less obedient than a child in my position needed to be. I asked questions I shouldn't have. I caused my parents shame, and fear, and when they saw the walls closing in, they killed themselves, and convinced the congregation to die with them. Over two hundred people, dead because of my damnable curiosity."

"And because your parents manipulated them hardcore," you interrupt. "Doesn't sound like your fault."

Harrow glares up at you. "I listened to yours without interrupting."

"There was a ticking clock then!"

"If clocks are what work for you, Nav, then by all means, please challenge yourself to stay quiet for a mere ten minutes."

Fair is fair. You rub her shoulders, a cue to keep going.

"They offered the nooses to everyone," says Harrow softly, almost childlike. "Out of everyone, I was the only one who didn't use mine. Everyone else took them so willingly, from the nonagenarians down to my peers. Anyone younger was too light for their necks to snap, so their parents stifled them first with rapturous smiles, and then hung themselves above their bodies. In a matter of twenty minutes, everyone I'd ever known was dead. I've wondered ever since what I missed out on."

"That's where the play started," she continues. "Trying to – engage with the idea of death for a cause. I've had so many case workers and social workers since then who just shut it down, tell me that they were wrong and I was right. Who need it to be simple. But it wasn't simple, and it never will be. I betrayed them, and I betrayed our God. If there's a hell they're certainly there and I'll go there too some day, but there are days when I wish I were there with them now. In the end, they died because I wanted to question, and I'll be twice as damned if I stop questioning now. So I write, and I rewrite, and I try to find a way to make an audience see that some things can feel more important than life. That being young doesn't protect you from emotions so big they tear you apart. That it's a terrible thing, to choose between your parents and your beliefs and your life, but also a great opportunity. That the only thing worse than having to choose would be not getting to. Do you understand, Gideon? I'm so afraid that no one else will, but you understand it, right?"

Her fingers dig into your back. You say, "I understand. It's – you can hear it in every line, Harrow. People will get it. People will be transformed by it."

What you want to say is that you're sorry. But you know she doesn't want that. You will give her your tenderness and care another way. Show not tell.

"They need to," says Harrow darkly. "I'm so close, Gideon, I've never been this close to reaching a real audience before. And I'm so afraid – I don't think I have another failure left in me. If this bombs, I don't think I can go back to New York again and work odd jobs and rewrite in stolen minutes. I don't think I can apply to writer's retreats and fellowships and haul myself to writer's circles to have pretentious pimply twenty year olds in slouchy hats tell me it's too linear and immersive to spur real change. I don't think I'll even be able to bear to look at it again."

You say, quietly, "You could stay here. If you needed to, while you got back on your feet."

"No, I couldn't," says Harrow decisively. "Too many reminders, and it wouldn't be fair to you, Gideon. As you've seen today. I'm not particularly – pleasant – when I'm angry."

No, she is not. "Bring it on," you say anyway. "You got a free pass today. You used your one get out of jail free card. After that, I'll crack down on any hurtful Harrow bullshit."

"I doubt that," says Harrow, but you can feel her smiling into your collarbone, so you count it as a win. "You fold very easily."

"Fuck you," you say, without rancor. "I knew that pool bullshit would come back to bite me. Harrow, if I've folded for you, it's only ever because I think you're brilliant and I want you to succeed. I'm not going to just stand by and let you give up, or get in your own way. I didn't tonight, did I?"

She hums at that, a soft sound that vibrates through your ribcage, and you both settle in to bed.

Yes, she's implied she'll kill herself if this play isn't a smash, but you know in your bones that the play will be a smash. It's not the kind of thing you need to worry about.

Still, you check with Abigail about ticket pre-sales, and learn that they're entirely normal for a first play by an unknown playwright. Mercymorn, the actress playing Queen Clytemnestra, has some star power, and most of the sales so far are attributed to her. Another big chunk are season passholders, people who'll come to see whatever you do. Abigail assures you that opening night will be full, and that they've already comped an exceptional number of tickets to critics and press. If the show is good, the remaining performances will fill up.

Still. The night before open, you corner Tridentarius, something you've managed to avoid doing throughout the entire production. You weren't exaggerating when you told Harrow that she gives you the creeps.

"What," she says flatly, not glancing up from her laptop. "I have actual work to do, and unlike Harrow, I don't have time to play around with a glorified carpenter."

"What work?" you scoff, despite your intentions to begin on a conciliatory note. "All I've ever seen you do around here is flick your hair and throw money at things."

"At my real job, Glen, or whatever your name is. Making the money that you so extravagantly waste. Some of us work with our minds, not just our hands." She rakes her eyes up and down you and gives the most unimpressed eyebrow raise imaginable. "Or whatever else you're using on Harry."

"Hands, mouth, and hips, mostly, and she loves it," you say, and pull up a chair. "Not my point. Are you – how often do you see her, back in New York?"

"Jealous?" she drawls.

"As if," you say. "More like – I don't know. Worried. Answer the damn question."

"I've known her since undergrad," says Tridentarius. "I am a fixture of her life, whether she likes it or not. I don't intend to let her kill herself after this, if that's what you're clumsily probing for."

That is exactly what you're clumsily probing for. You sag. "You – you know?"

She rolls her eyes. "From the moment I laid on eyes on her freshman year. To even see that wretched girl is to worry about her health, Gavin. Reading her script only made it plainer. I hardly even needed the private investigators to dig up the background on her parents, though it did sharpen the picture – don't even think about tattling to her about that, by the way, or I'll bury you up to your ridiculous overall straps in lawyers. It's under control, you absurd little construction worker. I've kept her alive this long, have I not?"

"But if this play fails–"

"My work here is to throw money at things, and see the bigger picture," says Tridentarius. "Your work is to spend that money and ensure that it doesn't fail. And apparently, to play house in your grimy but homey little apartment. Perhaps we should both stick to our roles."

She's still the worst person you know. But if she's as worried about Harrow as you are – if Harrow will still have someone looking out for her even after she leaves town – if Tridentarius really has Harrow's interest at heart –

"Is that why you're bankrolling this play? To give her something to live for?"

She closes her laptop and begins packing it into a sleek leather bag. Rises, unfolds her expensive-looking camel wool coat from her chair. Amazing how everything she owns can be tailor made and still make her look so washed out and unpleasant.

"I'm not a saint," Tridentarius scoffs. "Don't make me sounds so pathetically devoted. Harry's brilliant, and if she endures the crushing banality of existence long enough for anyone else to see it, she'll be a darling of the arts world. It will be useful for me to have someone like her in my pocket some day. And being a patron of the arts is at least tax deductible."

You snort. "You've got it bad for her, huh?"

"Oh, go tinker with something greasy and get erotically doused with sweat and oil," she sneers, and pushes past you to the door. "Or just fall off one of your ridiculous catwalks. Good night, Gabriel."

"I know you know my fucking name!" you holler after her. Bitch.

The morning before opening night. You dig out your best suit and take it into work with you. Harrow is silent and stiff in the passenger seat of your car, hands clutched around her own small bag of clothing, and when you park she doesn't get out.

You open her door for her, because you're an absolute gentleman, and offer her your hand. "Coming, boss?"

"I suppose I must," she says heavily, and takes your hand, climbs out. Pulls you into a desperate kiss that lasts for what feels like hours and leaves you breathless. Pulls away and stalks into the building like she's heading to her execution. Dazed, you lean against your car for a moment to watch her go, then pull yourself together and follow her in.

Last-minute repairs. Last-minute drills. The excited, jittery energy of a whole crew of people ready to see all their work come to completion. One quick check-in with Cam about the Shakespeare – apparently they now want to go old-school with the scenery and costumes, but modern with the dialogue, which is at least fun and different. Should be a laugh to see a guy in pantaloons and tights saying a regular fucking sentence. You try to remember what old-school Shakespeare is even supposed to look like – a pitched floor? That's the origin of upstage and downstage, right? She agrees to figure out an angle that's visible from the audience but won't result in actors rolling their ankles. You promise to do absolutely no work on it until that's figured out. It's not much of a meeting. Your mind is elsewhere, and she can tell.

"It's going to be great," she says. "It's the best script of the season."

"But what if the audience hates it?" Audiences are trash, after all.

"Professor Sextus is offering his students extra credit just for going. So that's forty ticket sales right there."

"Student tickets, though."

"Still. Helps pack the house. Audiences are lemmings."

The truth is, you've done your part. Harrow's done her part. It is out of both of your hands now. That's both the best and the worst thing about opening night. Nothing to do now but wait.

With thirty minutes till curtain, you change in your office. Fist bump the crew as you head out of the shop and down to the atrium. JM and a few others have taken advantage of the comped tickets for tonight. Some of them are working backstage or front of house during, and are already in position. The rest are heading home.

You chill in the atrium for a bit, chat with JM and Abigail and her husband Magnus in between their donor-schmoozing duties. Turnout seems good, you decide. The energy is excited. Magnus is excited, though that's just how he is. He's thrilled for JM, and you embarrass her with a bunch of stories of her competence. She groans and covers her face and changes the subject to her brother Isaac, who's playing Iphigenia's older brother Orestes, and you all reminisce about his extremely mixed credits over the years. Knowing Magnus and Abigail, they probably have flowers stashed away somewhere for both kids. They're good parents. It's a good time.

It becomes significantly less of a good time when Tridentarius slithers her way into your circle, along with two other people in the kind of ugly clothes and chunky jewelry that you associate with extreme wealth and sophistication. "You simply must meet the producer," she says, gesturing to Abigail and treating the rest of you like furniture as always. "I was just telling these two about Harrowhark's literary influences – though you really should sit down with her yourself. Have you seen her tonight, Abigail?"

Abigail shakes her head, bemused, and Tridentarius gives you a quick but significant look.

Oh. "I think she's doing a last minute pep talk with the star," you lie. "You know how it is. Child actors."

"I'd love to meet her," says one of the important people, with the air of someone who always gets what they want. "I understand first-time director jitters, but she should be savoring her moment of triumph! Meeting her adoring audience!"

"I quite agree," says Tridentarius meaningfully.

"Right," you say, takin ga hint. "I'll go get her."

She doesn't answer her phone. You duck backstage, tap the first person you see in a headset, and ask them for eyes on Harrow – they relay that no one has seen her. Trying to calm the panicky feeling in your gut, you grab a backup walky talky from the charging station and repeat your request, then head for the various bathrooms. Most people throw up before their first shows. Harrow isn't most people, but you can hope.

She's not in the bathrooms near the shop. She's not in the bathrooms near the dressing rooms. Where would you be, if you were Harrow? You remember her the night she moved in with you, laid out on the altar, but the altar is in the wings and the wings are swarming with cast and crew, and someone would have seen her. You remember, in a cascade of horror, her story about nooses, and tear up the stairs to the grid, heart pounding in your chest, but thank everything that's holy, her body is not hanging amongst the lamps and speakers.

Fifteen minutes til curtail. You check the prop room under the stage, where the pool waits silently, but the only human-shaped things down there are the many, many skeletons from a long-ago production of Medea, which occasionally relive their glory days in Halloween benefit shows.

You check the shop, glancing under racks of plywood in case she's lying there very still. And that's when you hear the muffled sobbing from inside your office. You open the door and she's curled up on your couch, sawdust streaking her black clothes.

You click the walky. "This is Gideon. False alarm, I've found her. Going off headset now for a bit." And then you unhook the whole contraption from your head and belt, and set it on the desk where it can’t bother you, and sit down next to her.

She says bitterly, "I worried you."

"Of course you worried me, you asshole. I thought you'd killed yourself. Feel how fast my heart is beating."

She doesn't flinch from the harsh words. Doesn't touch your chest to feel your heart, either. "That was the plan. I wouldn't have to face the audiences or the critics. I wouldn't have to figure out what to do next. My work would become notorious overnight."

You don't ask what stopped her. You're afraid that she hasn't made up her mind yet. "I'm glad you didn't."

"I'm not," she spits. "For years, decades, I told myself that I resisted my parent's call to death because I was a free thinker. Because even though their false God was all I'd ever known, even though I craved their approval more than anyone's, I was myself above all else, and I could not be led like a docile sheep. Now I know that it was no choice at all. Thirty four years old, and I finally learn the banal truth that I'm simply a garden-variety coward. I am, and always have been, afraid to die."

You place your hand over hers, resting on her knee. "Seems like a good thing to me. The stupidest shit I ever did was always when I was too depressed to be afraid of death."

"Over two hundred penitents in our congregation, and I was the only one too cowardly to die." Her voice is thick with self-loathing. "I am a fraudulence. My work – what use is the dignity of choice, when your body makes the choice for you and only deludes your mind into thinking it had a say? Who am I to lecture an audience about choosing life and death?"

"It's not a lecture," you remind her, stroking her knuckles. "It's not biography. So, Iphigenia's less like you than you realized. She still spoke to me, didn't she? She'll still speak to lots of people. And you'll have plenty of material for your next play."

"I don't have another one in me," Harrow tells you soberly. "Let me rest, Gideon. If I can't die, if I have to go on living day after grueling day, then at least let me rest."

Her voice is a plaintive plea. You back off with the affirmations and the arguments. You put an arm around her narrow, shaking shoulders, and she slumps into your arms, head against your chest.

Ten minutes till curtain. One handed, you text Tridentarius – "Found her. We'll see you after the show. Maybe at intermission." You can already see agitated little typing dots appearing, but you don't care what she has to say. You drop your phone on the couch next to you and hold Harrow like she's about to fly apart, because you're not entirely sure she won't.

You had been looking forward to seeing the show, but you've already seen it plenty of times in rehearsal, and you'll have plenty of other chances. This is a two-month run. And you'd rather see it with Harrow at your side, actually enjoying it, than leave her here alone, or worse, drag her there against her will. So you just kind of chill, and hold her. You skritch your fingers into her short black hair, and it's kind of like petting a 90-pound cat.

She surfaces after perhaps twenty minutes and murmurs against you, "I'm sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for," you assure her, stroking the soft fuzz at the bottom of her scalp.

"Of course there is," she says tiredly. "You're missing the show. I know how much it means to you."

"You mean more."

"I shouldn't,” she says immediately, decisively. “I'm not going to produce anything like that ever again, Gideon. If you – valued me because of what I wrote, because you think I'm brilliant–"

"Because you're you," you interrupt. It takes everything in you not to tighten your grip on her, but you don't want to hurt her. You can't hurt her again – you burn with shame at the realization of what your words have already done to her. "Work or no work, Harrow. I don't care if you never write again. I just like having you around."

She scoffs, and you pull her away a little bit, just so she can see your dead-serious face. You stare her down, try and make her see, but her red, swollen eyes are disbelieving, and she just shakes her head. "You say that now," she says, and she doesn't even sound bitter, just resigned. "But I can assure you, I'm better in small doses."

You remember, try as you might not to, Tridentarius' jibe about how the two of you won't last. You wonder if Harrow's thinking about it too. But what can you say, to dissuade her? What can you say, that won't just scare her off? It's like you're feeding a nervous rescue animal.

"Hasn't been my experience yet," you say lamely, and drop a little kiss on the top of her head. She squirms a little at the naked intimacy, so you make it easy on her, nip the delicate shell of her ear next, give her an excuse to growl at you and pull you in for a real kiss.

It doesn't solve anything. But she's safe tonight, and she's solid in your arms despite your fragility, and it's one more way to show her that you're here. That you haven't been scared away, despite everything. She's in one of her frenetic, punishing moods, but you keep yourself under control for once, and don't rise to the bait. Just keep drinking her in, holding her close, feeling your veins run warm and heavy with honey. You keep the pace slow, and lazily make out on your office couch through the whole first act of her magnum opus. It seems like the right thing to do, under the circumstances.

Sometimes, you feel like Harrow approaches sex with the same single-minded ferocity that she does everything else in her life: like a battle to be won, like a mountain to be climbed, like a storm to be weathered. Sometimes it's with meticulously planned kink, and sometimes it's in a whirlwind of clutching fingers and clashing teeth, but the determination is a constant. It's devastatingly sexy, but you also desperately need her to learn to slow down, to enjoy the journey, to accept some damn uncertainty. She's brittle, and you're still so afraid she will break. She wouldn't listen if you said it with words, so once again, you try to say it in kisses and touches instead, and hope that she hears what your heart is trying to convey.

Ianthe finds you at intermission. Her faced is flushed and glittering and her hair is sweaty as she strides into your office, and it’s perhaps the hottest she’s every looked. She says, lowly, to not disrupt Harrow who is finally sleeping with her head in your lap, “This is a particularly petty brand of sabotage. I hope you at least enjoyed yourself. She lost opportunities tonight-”

“Her choice,” you say. “I don’t think she wants your opportunities, Tridentarius.”

“Because you’re such an expert,” she says scornfully. “You didn’t even notice she was gone-”

“Do you want her to succeed,” you ask her, point blank. “Or do you want her to be happy?”

Tridentarius’ mouth twists. “A fascinating premise. I don’t accept it, of course.”

“Because you don’t see a conflict?” You have to make a conscious effort to lower your voice. “She nearly killed herself tonight, Tridentarius. Did you see that coming?”

She seats herself atop your desk and props her feet up on your guest chair. A hell of a power play, you’ll give her that.

“She’s never happy,” she says, finally. She runs her expensive, manicured nails through her hair, working out the tangles almost mediatively as she speaks. “There were years where she drove herself to the edge working on this play every moment of every day. And there were years where she couldn’t touch it, and barely moved or left her home or ate unless I weathered her verbal gauntlet long enough to force her. She’s told me herself that if she’ll never be happy, at least she can do something great.”

There’s something naked in Ianthe’s face that you’d glimpsed only fleetingly last week. Now it is in full force. Tenderness, maybe, though distorted by her sharp features and hungry gaze. You feel almost embarassed to look at it full-on.

“And now she has done something great,” you say. And it sticks in you throat, but for Harrow’s sake you force it out: “Thanks to you.”

“Yes, I’m already raking in the offers for a touring production,” she says dismissively. And then, belatedly: “Thanks to you as well.”

“I’m just saying,” you press onward, determined not to be placated by the begruding complement. “She did what she promised you. Maybe give her a goddamn break?”

“And leave her in this nowhere town, in your shitty little rental? Abandon her to a life of mediocrity?”

You open your mouth, and she cuts you off. “If it will make her happy, you’re going to say. Pathetic. You can both do what you want, Gideon. Wear your fingers to the bone trying to bring her happiness that she’s never going to find. Just – when it falls apart, please don’t just kick her out to the curb. Call me, and I’ll come get her and take her off your plate. I’m nothing if not generous, when it comes to Harrow.”

She closes the door behind her with a decisive click. It isn’t until she’s gone that you realize this is the first time she’s used your actual name.

When you look down, Harrow is watching you with clear, dark eyes.

“You heard all that?” you say tentatively.

“Enough,” she says lowly. “She’s not wrong. If you are intending to fix me, you will be disappointed.”

And how that breaks your heart. For years, you have solved every problem put in front of you. That’s your job: someone has a vision, and you get to be the one to make it come true. Even with a shoestring budget and a ticking clock, if something is truly wrong, you fix it. You make it work, even with the wrong tools or an imperfect solution. But Harrow is not someone you can fix.

“Okay,” you say quietly, because it’s what she needs to hear. And then: “I got you something for opening night.”

She quirks an eyebrow at that, and props herself up to watch you fumble in your desk drawer, suddenly shy. This was a stupid idea. You should have known from the look Cam gave you when you asked to use the 3D printer – and then the second look she gave you when you ordered special filament for it, to get the colors right. But Harrow isn’t really a flowers kind of girl, and she deserved something for opening night -

Harrow blinks at the bouquet of 3D printed flowers you press into her hands. Black orchids, with white skulls in their apexes. It took a few hours messing around in Blender, but it seemed like the kind of thing she’d like. But what would you know? You’re shitty at gifts, all your exes said so.

“We bought a 3D printer years ago to make scale model minatures and replacement parts for important things,” you say, fumbling for something to explain your absurd gesture. “Pretty fucking useless most of the time, but. You can make some cool stuff with it.”

Harrow takes the plastic flowers gently into her hands. Runs her bony fingers across the skulls. “I don’t know what to say,” she says quietly.

It was stupid of you. It was too much. You back off immediately. “You could say I’m good with my hands,” you suggest, leaning back against your desk with a waggle of your eyebrows.

“I already knew that,” says Harrow immediately. Her baldness, as always, makes you flush, ruins your composure. She steps closer to you. “But I could always use a reminder.”

You do eventually tear yourselves apart and show your faces in the atrium after the show. Harrow had apparently not brought a fancy opening night outfit - the shopping bag she had been clutching so tightly in the car turned out to contain only a decades-old noose - so you once again abuse your keys to let her into the costume shop, and she selects a high-necked black lace gown suitable for a widow who definitely killed her husband. And then she tucks one of your stupid flowers behind her ear, which does all sorts of funny things to your heart.

She stands stiffly, but she stands, and lets you steady her with her gloved hand on your elbow, as you guide her through her adoring throngs. You graciously accept congratulations for the both of you from the cast and crew, and she chillingly stares down anyone who dares to question her absence before the show until you take pity on them and cheerfully change the subject.

She leaves your side only for Tridentarius, which you would feel jealous about if you weren't so goddamn selfless. You have no room for your own feelings, only hers right now, so instead you mingle nearby and watch anxiously as they converse in smirks and crossed arms and tilted chins, until Tridentarius throws up her arms and slinks away

"Everything okay?" you ask Harrow when she rejoins you, safely latched to you once again. By which you mean, did Tridentarius do any irreparable damage to her psyche, and do you need to kill her. You’ve never killed someone before, but you have a lot of very dangerous tools, and you like to think you’re uniquely suited to figure out how to smuggle a body out of this theater. You’d make it work.

"She will be returning to New York tomorrow," says Harrow, which puts your murder plans on hold. "Apparently, she feels she is no longer needed here."

“Damn right she isn’t,” you say. You understand Tridentarius now, on a level that’s frankly shocking. You don’t think she is a danger to Harrow. But you still, with a bone-deep repulsion, do not want her around.

You don’t want to ask when Harrow will be going back to New York. You cannot be that pathetic. You cannot push her right now, when she’s so vulnerable. You cannot be another Tridentarius to her.

In the pause, Harrow checks the time on her phone phone – you balk at the number of missed calls and notifications it displays. “It’s late,” she says finally. “Is there anything else you want or need to do here?”

“No?” you say cautiously. There is usually a crew party on opening night, but you are drained in every way you can imagine being drained. No part of you is ready to spend an evening laughing about inside jokes and toasting to a job well done.

“Then we should head home,” she says, and there’s an embarassing warmth blooming in your chest.

“You don’t have to,” you say, before you can let that warmth permeate you. Better to get this out now. “You don’t owe me, Harrow. If it’s because shit went down with Tridentarius and you don’t have a backup plan, I’ll get you a motel. You don’t have to-”

She cuts you off with tug of your tie. You belatedly stop talking, and just look into those dark eyes.

“You made me an offer,” she says quietly. “To continue staying with you, for the immediate future. Let me ask you now, clearly and plainly: have you retracted that offer?”

“No,” you say. “No, of course not-”

She pulls you down into a kiss, hot and searing and desperate. You think you hear Dulcie wolf-whistling through the pounding in your ears, but your attention is pretty damn diverted.

“Then take me home,” she murmurs in your ear when you finally have to pause for breath.

“You’ve got it, boss,” you say, blushing like an idiot. And you lead her from the theater that had brought you together into the terrifying, bewildering, exhilarating unknown.

Chapter Text

Months ago, before you were even sleeping together, Harrowhark Nonagesimus started sleeping in your house. On opening night, in a whirl of relief and hormones and exhaustion, she agreed to stay with you for real, at least until she could get back on her feet. Just for a bit, because you had not dared to ask for more. Except then... she just doesn’t leave.

Every day, you brace for it. You leave the now-musty futon with its rumpled sheets untouched in your living room; to even straighten it up would be to call attention to it. You don’t say a word about anything, don’t ask her a single question about her plans. You try to be really zen and cool about it, appreciating each moment while you have it even though you know it’s temporary. But you know, deep down, that your inaction is more akin to the panicked freeze of an athlete in the middle of a winning streak, trying desperately not to jinx things. That’s fine, though. Whatever purgatory this is, you will endure it as long as you need to.

Some days, she comes to work with you, sits on your office couch and frowns at her laptop while you build the Shakespeare, or disappears only to return unerringly when it’s time to go home. More often, she makes a grumbling noise and pulls your blankets closer around herself when you get out of bed, so you tuck her in, kiss her on the forehead, and reluctantly leave her. It’s awfully domestic. On one of your trips to the local hardware store you cut a spare key for her, and even pick out a cute little skeleton key-cover that you think she’ll like. Then on the way home, you think about it too much, panic, throw away the cover, and bury the key in the kitchen junk drawer.

It gets colder. Her collection of black sweaters begins to leave her shivering on the days when she accompanies you to work, and no wonder – she has almost no body fat. You gallantly drape her in your Carhart jacket one day, eliciting an eye roll from her, but she wears it, and looks adorable with her pointy little face peeking out from it. The next day, you get a different coat for yourself out of your closet, leaving the one she’d worn hanging pointedly on the rack, and your gay little heart warms a little when you finally see her start to wear your clothes as a matter of course.

What she does all day while you’re gone, you don’t know – you’re afraid to ask, for fear that she’ll take it as criticism of her lack of productivity, or a veiled suggestion she should get a job. You just know that every time that you come home and she’s still here, her black clothes draped haphazardly on the floor and her dishes ‘soaking’ in the sink and her numerous bottles of meds precariously balanced on your dresser, you feel a swell of relief. Every evening, you follow the trail of her debris to the bedroom, find her curled in the nest of your blankets and looking at her phone with her brow furrowed, and she looks up at you with this small, almost astonished smile, like she’s relieved you’re still here too. You could live on that smile.

--

It’s inevitable that eventually you will fight. After all, it’s how you came to know her. It’s a rhythm that comes naturally, and she is still spiteful and hateful despite the shame and sadness blunting her edges. And you, despite your newly-unearthed tendency to simp, still have your pride.

The opening salvo: You return from work, strip off your sawdust-prickly clothes, and crawl immediately into bed with her as usual, though it’s barely six, and she breaks the routine when she says accusatorily, “You haven’t been going out much.”

“No?” you say, confused. “Is that – am I crowding you, Harrow? Shit – I’m sorry—”

She lets out a little scoff. “And you haven’t gone to see the show, either.”

That is true. You’ve thought about it, many times. But you’re busy during shop hours, and you don’t want to leave Harrow alone during non-shop hours. And you don’t even dare suggest that she come with you.

“I can do that any time,” you deflect. “And I’ve seen a billion rehearsals.”

She watches you with those penetrating dark eyes, which is not the kind of scrutiny or penetration you’re looking for right now.

“Am I in trouble?” you tease. “Seriously, Harrow, if you need space, tell me. I just, you know. I like being around you. I’ve got a choice of how to spend my time after work, and I guess I just keep choosing you.” Which sounds very lame, so you add a little smirk on top of it and go in to kiss her neck in the hopes that she won’t notice.

She blocks you, unamused. “You shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t… get a choice?”

“Shouldn’t choose me. You have other things you actually enjoy, Gideon. You have friends, presumably, and I know for a fact that you want to see that show. You’ve made it very clear how much you love it. You shouldn’t – deprive yourself of important things for my sake.”

Oh, it hurts your heart to hear her talk like that about your love for her show, as if it’s not one and the same as your love for her. To hear her talk as if she’s not an important thing – the most important thing you have right now.

“I’m fine,” you assure her breezily, and reach out to hold her face, smooth away her worries with your hands. But she jerks away as if stung, and you freeze.

“Let me be clearer,” she says, voice low. “It’s troubling, and unacceptable. It’s pathetic, Gideon.”

And that lances right through your heart, scrapes your throat raw. She’s not wrong – it is pathetic. You’ve put your entire life on hold for someone who will be gone in a few months. You’re holding desperately onto her and trying to stretch out this moment that’s definitely one of the worst phases in her already awful life. You’re the worst kind of scavenger, and of course she knows it. This is what you get for falling for a writer. A student of the human character. A woman who’s spent her life studying how to hone words into weapons.

You roll onto your back, so that no part of you is touching her. “Guess you’d know,” you say. “You’re the expert on dropping important things, right? Have you even responded to any of those press inquiries from opening night?”

You know she hasn’t. You have a news alert for her name and her play, and she isn’t quoted in a single article. Quite a few of them have even begun to mention her reticence as if it’s an artistic quirk. Also, Tridentarius texts you every week or so to complain that Harrow isn’t adequately promoting the show – you respond to these with an unchanging sea of the upside down smiley face, which has earned you your fair share of her ire.

Harrow’s face twists, and it kills you a little to see the pain you caused her. Shit, that’s right, that’s why you haven’t fought in so long. Becuase it’s no fun now that you know how soft and bruised she is inside. “That is entirely different, and you know it. Sacrifice is open, and my part in it is over. Your part in your own life cannot be so easily abrogated.”

“Fucking hell, Harrow. You’re really going to accuse me of sabotaging my life? Are you listening to yourself?”

“Irony doesn’t make it untrue,” she insists, dignified. “And I can’t – I refuse to drag you down with me!”

That cuts right through your last dregs of anger. “Harrow—”

“You promised me,” she says furiously. “That night, after we told each other about our pasts, you promised me that you wouldn’t let me destroy you. That you’d stand up to me if I splashed my misery and wretchedness all over you. It was foolish of me to believe you for even a moment.”

“You haven’t destroyed me,” you say helplessly.

“I will,” she says darkly, and your heart sinks. “I know the signs. Are you really so arrogant as to think you’re the first person who’s tried to fix me, Gideon? First you drop everything else in your life to try and be there for me. And then, when that doesn’t yield the desired results, you’ll resent me for not being worth the cost. It was foolish of me to put either of us through this.”

“I’m not trying to fucking fix you,” you protest.

“Aren’t you?” she challenges. “You’ve been tiptoeing around me for weeks.”

I just like you, you imagine saying, but the words burn your tongue. “Fine,” you say instead, not without bitterness.

“Fine,” Harrow repeats scathingly, rolling it around her mouth. “Which means what, Gideon?”

You squeeze your eyes shut. Hate this conversation, hate this moment. But the only thing worse than it would be to not be having it. For Harrow to give up on you, and pack up her black clothes into her black suitcase and disappear back to New York, where you couldn’t do a thing to help her.

“Means I won’t try to fix you,” you say, still not looking at her. “I get it. That’s not what this is.”

You can feel her studying you, even with your back turned. Her gaze has a heat to it and always has. You could burn in that heat forever, if she let you.

“I have always wanted to live,” she says quietly. “I didn’t always know it, and I can’t claim to be proud of it, but I do, and I still do, even now. I can take care of myself, Gideon.”

“I know,” you say hastily. She doesn’t need you, in other words. She’s staying with you, but you can’t forget, even for a moment, that she belongs only to herself. That she could leave at any time, and that she will if she gets it into her stupid, self-sacrificing head that it’ll be better for you. And then you’d have driven her away, and she’d be alone, and who knows what would happen next?

“I will fix myself,” Harrow says, voice taut. “I have done it every time before, and I will do it again. I just need – time. Nothing else. Do you understand?”

Time, precious time. A clock counting down towards her recovery and her departure.

“I understand,” you say, and her hand finds your beneath the blankets and squeezes it gratefully.

--

Tonight, you toss yourself into bed with her and kiss her cold fingers reverently. “Sup, babe, I’m back from the theater mines, and I now know more than I ever wanted to about codpieces.”

“My condolences,” says the alluring goblin who lives in your bed. She pulls you closer, though you can feel her flinching away from the feeling of your wind-chilled skin. “You have truly suffered for the cause. Codpieces, and leaving the house?”

“It’s fucked up,” you agree. “Next union contract, we gotta fight for tunnels. Big tunnels connecting my apartment to the theater. Warm up my hands?”

Harrow gives you a look.

“So I can hold you,” you explain winningly. “Gotta pre-warm the hands. I’m not an animal.”

Her face remains skeptical, but she takes your ashy hands in hers and brings them to her lips, huffs warm air onto them in a way that almost stops your heart, and definitely brings the heat. “That’s the stuff,” you tell her appreciatively, and throw in an eyebrow wiggle. She reddens a little, and when she lets out her next warming puff of breath, it’s with lowered eyelashes and parted lips and full premeditation. She knows exactly what she’s doing to you. You nudge your thighs against hers, and she hooks one leg over you, pulling you closer.

Touching Harrow is a revelation, even after all these months. Especially after all these months, because who ever could have thought it would last this long? Every inch of her is precious and holy, and there’s magic in the way that her harsh angles become soft beneath your fingers and lips, that her sharp voice turns into throaty hums and stuttering whines. She’s more mellow these days than she was in your first trysts – less frantic intensity, more lingering touches that turn your insides to soup. You can’t tell if she’s getting used to the idea that you’re not going anywhere, or if she’s just depressed. You’ve amply considered the possibility that you’re a terrible person and you’re going to hell for how much you enjoy it nonetheless.

Your sex tonight is slow, and sweet, and reverent. She shudders and falls apart beneath your lips, and you catch her every cry and exhalation and bottle them up for when she’s gone. You hold her in your arms and stroke tiny circles on her hip as her breathing evens out, and you’re halfway asleep yourself when she informs you, “I may not be present when you get back tomorrow.”

“What?” you say, a little too sharply, but in your defense there’s quite a lot of panic shooting through your system. “You’re already – I mean, that’s cool.”

“I will return,” she clarifies, and you feel a pathetic little stab of relief. “But I have – plans. I am meeting with an acquaintance from my MFA program.”

“Oh, nice,” you say, slotting this into the appropriate part of your brain, and finding actual enthusiasm at the idea that Harrow has another human being in her life. That she’s interacting with fellow creatives again. That she might have another tie to this city, even, though that’s an unrealistic hope. “Yeah, have fun with your friend.”

“Ortus is not a friend,” she corrects immediately. “A colleague, at best.”

“Whatever, nerd. I think there’s a spare key in the junk drawer, if you want to grab it.” You are extremely, expertly, nonchalant.

“No need,” says Harrow absently. “The lock here is easy to pick.”

You open your eyes. She does not appear to be joking.

“Harrow,” you say, taking her face in your hands. She looks back at you evenly. “Harrow, what the fuck. Harrow, have you been picking the lock on my apartment the entire fucking time you’ve been here?”

She raises an eyebrow at you. “You seem surprised.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking surprised – you know how to pick locks?”

“Gideon, I told you weeks ago that I was a fatally nosy child whose incessant search for answers caused the death of everyone I ever knew. I assumed the lock-picking skills were implied. How did you think I got into your office on opening night?”

Well, fuck. “There’s a goddamn key in the drawer!” you tell her, exasperated. “Fuck, Harrow, you’ve been breaking into my house for months for no goddamn reason? Take the fucking key! There’s a fucking metaphor there, babe, something about being more comfortable stealing than accepting.”

For a moment, you think you’ve broken something with that accusation, that insistence. You brace for the fallout. But instead - “I would hate to fall prey to a metaphor,” she says archly. “I’ll take the key, Gideon, if it means that much to you.”

It means an embarrassing amount to you. “I don’t want you breaking a tumbler or something, and costing me $400 for a locksmith,” you grumble. “Or some nosy neighbor calling the cops.”

“I’ve already frightened all your neighbors into submission,” she reports, satisfied, and wraps a possessive hand around your hip. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“Damn, domming the neighbors too?” you say, pressing up into her touch. “You’re a menace.”

She kisses you, hard, and it’s probably to shut you up, but you’ll take it. You’re riding high on kissed and adrenaline, buoyed by a warm little glow. She’ll take the key.

--

For what it’s worth, you don’t look up Ortus. You don’t need to. You don’t feel threatened by your not-girlfriend meeting a colleague in the evening.

It’s Dulcie who looks him up, after her teasing question about the location of your wife leads you to blurt it out. When you admit you don’t know his full name, she just laughs and calls you naive, and then she’s plugging Harrow’s name into the search bar. You get a glimpse of a dazzling array of articles – a wikipedia page, several glowing reviews – and then Dulcie has found the name of Harrow’s school and is starting a new search for graduates named Ortus. Within the span of thirty seconds, she’s looking critically at a headshot of a doughy man about ten years older than you, with a mournful expression.

“Not her type, I’d imagine,” says Dulcie thoughtfully. “What do you think they’re talking about?”

“I dunno, writer things?” you say. “It’s not our business, Dulcie, come on. Drop it.”

“Gossip is one of the joys of life, Gideon, and I’m too close to death to forgo it now.” This kind of talk would be more impact if Dulcie did not regularly remind you of her impending death as an excuse for indulging in all sorts of pleasures. “Do you think they’re planning a collaboration?”

You don’t even dare to hope.

“Drop it, Dulcie,” you repeat. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she says irritably. “It has everything to do with you. You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

You choke.

“It’s your business too, Gideon. You’re being very kind to her, and she’s very lucky, but it’s entirely too selfless. Don’t you deserve to at least know how long she’ll be staying in town?”

You say, quietly, “I’m just glad she’s still here.” With every possible meaning of ‘here.’

“You’re allowed to want more than that, Gideon, even if I feel like the awful mother in that play of hers even saying it. What do you want?”

What do you want. You struggle to even imagine. You just want last night to be tonight. To keep coming home to her and waking up with her, for one more day every day, as impossible as it sounds. And to imagine even beyond that – yes, it would be amazing to collaborate with her again, to build another show for her, but she’s said she won’t write again, and you won’t – can’t - push her. You don’t need her to write. You don’t even need her to live with you. You just need her to live, and you feel like if you ask for too much, even that might not be assured.

“Tell her,” says Dulcie. “Trust that you’ll both be okay even if you aren’t on the same page, and tell her. What could go wrong?”

Everything. Everything could go wrong. You don’t want to even feel the fear you felt on opening night ever again.

“Yeah, maybe,” you lie. By which you mean, absolutely not, and quit asking me.

--

When you get home, Harrow is curled in your bed as always, reading a book with an embossed spine.

“Greek myths and legends,” you read. “On-brand, I see.”

“A gift from Ortus,” says Harrow, slipping it under the covers. “I am attempting to be polite.”

“Oh yeah, your friend - ” (“Ortus is not a friend,” Harrow repeats mulishly) “Your buddy. Whatever. How was it?”

“His poetry is still intolerable,” says Harrow. She pauses. “He congratulated me.”

“You should get used to that,” you advise sagely. “It’s going to keep happening.”

She shakes her head, troubled.

“How’s the book?” you ask, carefully. “Anything sparking your interest?”

“No,” she says immediately. “Drop it, Gideon.”

You drop it. And then, because you’re just standing there like an idiot, you unbuckle your belt and drop your pants too, in a clatter of keys. That gets her attention. That always gets her attention, the smooth slow glide of her eyes up your legs and hips, and the calculating, hungry look on her face. You think, sometimes, when you’re horny and stupid like this, that you’d do anything for her to keep looking at you. That you’ll die when she, eventually, turns away.

--

“You still have not gone to see the play,” Harrow says, as you chop vegetables in the kitchen to make a heart-healthy dinner that you already know she will only pick at. You still don’t know if it’s medication side effects, or depression, or just some kind of intrinsic Harrowness that makes her eat like a bird.

“I’ve been busy,” you say, instead of denying it. She has ways of knowing things. Probably asked Abigail.

“Busy with me?”

You pause, set your knife down. “I don’t know how you want me to answer that.”

“It’s not a test with a correct answer,” she snipes from her perch at the kitchen island. Your little black crow, looming over you wherever you go.

“Isn’t it?” you say, carefully.

“I’m concerned about you,” she says, and it’s like she’s forcing broken glass from her throat. Not the kind of thing she says often. Possibly ever. You have a sense that Harrow has only ever been on the receiving end of concern.

You can’t help snorting. “Look in the mirror, babe. I’m not the one you should be concerned about.”

Her face darkens. “That’s exactly why I am concerned about you! I have – weathered moments like this before. I am intimately acquainted with the delicate balancing act that is my wretched, miserable brain. You… are not.”

That cuts deep, and you think without speaking. “And you think I can’t handle it? Can’t handle you? Haven’t I proven -”

“I never asked you to prove anything,” she parries immediately.

“You didn’t need to ask, Harrow!” you practically growl. “It’s what I do. You knew it, when you came here.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have,” she said, and it’s like a glass shattering. There’s a hand around your ribs, tight and squeezing, and everything you were going to say is wiped out by panic.

“You don’t mean that,” you say finally.

“I do and I don’t,” Harrow admits, which eases maybe like 5% of the tension in your chest. “You’re – it’s difficult to watch you.”

“I could say the same thing”

“Yes, but I’m talking now,,” she says, cattily. And when you open your mouth to rebut, she forges ahead. “It’s difficult to watch you pour so much into so little. Do you understand, Gideon, really and truly, that there is no reward at the end of this tunnel? I am not one of those finicky plants that takes laborious care and exacting watering routines, but produces a brilliant blossom every fifty years that makes it all worthwhile. There is no next great work. You are pouring into a bottomless well, and you need to recognize that before you drain yourself of everything.”

“I hydrate,” you say dumbly. What else is there to say, to something like that? She’s gorgeous and heartbreaking all at once right now, and words will never change her mind.

She just looks at you in that way she has. Despairing and resigned, and maybe just the slightest amused. You’re funny, dammit. If you’re not allowed to be stable for her, you can at least be funny.

“You don’t know anything about plants, do you?” you ask, resuming your chopping.

“I was a penitent, and then a writer, and now I am a nothing,” says Harrow flatly. “I have never been nor claimed to be a botanist.”

“Yeah, but like, have you ever even had a houseplant?”

Harrow’s tone is withering. “What about me makes you think that I have ever successfully kept another living thing alive?”

Fair enough. You try again. “You’ve kept yourself alive, though. That’s something.” She has to see that as something, doesn’t she?

“You may be the only one who sees it as a net positive on the world.”

“Harsh,” you say lamely. It’s still better than telling her that actually, you and Tridentarius form that exclusive club together.

You chop. Carrots and onion and celery, for a soup. Harrow doesn’t really eat solid things, but you’ve seen her sip broth when she thinks you aren’t looking. You’ll make it extra watery tonight, just for her. Not ideal for taking into work, but Harrow is worth the sacrifice. You’ve already halved the amount of salt and spices in everything you cook, and you don’t regret it in the slightest.

“See the show, Gideon,” says Harrow, coming around to your side of the counter. She wraps her hands around you, stills your fingers on your work. Presses her head into your back, so you can hear her newly tender, tentative voice vibrating through your ribcage. “You’ll regret it if you don’t, and I can’t have taken that from you too.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” you say weakly. Always weak to her. “You’re not actually my boss.”

Her hands find your belt buckle. “Aren’t I?”

--

Occasionally, there are still production meetings for Sacrifice. Mid-run check-ins. Ianthe attends them virtually, and is largely uninterested and unhelpful. Harrow drags herself out of the house to attend them in person, and is only marginally more interactive. It still constitutes an improvement on your early production meetings, though, and you make sure to reward her for her improved attitude when you get home. Carnally, that is. You like to think you’ve been a good influence on her, in that way.

Cam says, as you’re wrapping up one day, “I’ll help you take your portfolio pictures, if you need it.”

“What?” you say. “Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”

Cam gives you a look that you’ve seen before. More alarmingly, Harrow has turned her head slightly. Her interest is piqued, which is extremely troubling news for you.

“What did she mean, portfolio pictures?” she asks, on the ride home.

“It’s not a sex thing,” you assure her. “You’re the only one I’m doing sex things with, photographic or otherwise.”

Her eyes bore into you in that unnerving way.

“Do you want to get into boudoir photography?” you ask, trying to steer the subject into a more rewarding territory. “Never seemed like your kind of thing, but you’d look fucking ravishing. Or we could take some of me, give you something to keep you warm when I’m at work all day-”

“I’m already warm,” says Harrow, which could be a complement about your raging sexiness until she follows it up with “I’m wearing three layers of your clothes at all times to tolerate these infernal temperatures.”

“Not all times, boss,” you say with a roguish wink. “I’ve been known to motivate you to shed a few of ‘em.”

She just gives you a look.

“Photos of the set,” you say, finally. “For my professional portfolio. It’s – a thing you’re supposed to do, for when you job hunt.”

Harrow nods slightly. “But you don’t?”

“I do,” you protest. “Most of the time. When I get around to it. But – it doesn’t fucking matter either way, right? I have a job. I don’t need a new one. And the people here don’t need to see photos of what I built, because they were there for it. And this is – it’s rare, in this industry, to have a job this stable. I already hit the jackpot when Aiglamene made me take over for her. I’m not some kind of vulture, always craning my neck for the next big thing. I made a commitment to this theater, and I have real shit to do. I’m not gonna – put the build on hold, or waste time I should be putting towards the next show, to take some self-indulgent photos of the last one that I don’t even need. Cam and Pal and Dulcie need them, sure, because they’re freelancers, and they need to convince people to hire them for their next gigs. But I don’t need any of that shit. So what’s the point?”

You’re breathing heavily. You’ve never really said that before, just made excuses or avoided the conversation when Cam or Abigail pressed you about building your portfolio. You’re already at a red light, so you take a moment to dig the palms of your hands into your eyes, relieve the pressure building behind them.

When you look up, Harrow is still watching you.

“You know how I got into writing,” she says finally, as you pull into the lot behind your apartment. “I don’t believe you’ve ever told me about how it began for you.”

“What is there to say?” you say shortly. “You know I didn’t go to school or anything. I just kind of. Fell into it.”

“I’d like to understand how,” she says, touching a finger to your chin, raising it up a little. “If you don’t mind.”

You are very bad at disobeying when she asks like that. “I don’t know. I was – not in the best place. I was in my twenties, so, you can imagine. A girl invited me on a date to the theater – a different one, not Koniortos - and I’m sure she was just hoping to make out the whole time, but I was – spellbound. I never saw her again, and I didn’t even care. It was like comic books I used to hoard as a kid – so much meaning loaded into every moment. Worth watching over and over. I didn’t have money to be dropping on tickets, but I realized that you could sign up to usher, and then you could basically watch the show for free as long as you didn’t mind missing the first and last twenty minutes. I dropped some of my usual gigs, bouncing and deliveries and shit, and did the ushering shit all over town, until Pyrrha spotted me here one day and asked me point blank what someone like me was doing working front of house. Basically told me I was an idiot, that I was probably strong enough to get paid actual money working stage crew, and I’d get actual comped tickets as a perk. She got me in here, and…” you shrug, losing steam. “What else is there to say?

“Quite a lot, I’d imagine,” says Harrow. “Since you now effectively run the place.”

“Abigail runs the place,” you say automatically. “I just – Six years ago, Aiglamene wanted to retire, and no one else wanted the job. Pash had seniority, but she didn’t want the headache. Pro’s a better leader, but he’s got his wife and kids and an actual acting career that occasionally flairs up, so of course he didn’t want this kind of bullshit. Pyrrha hasn’t done backstage work in like a decade, and more power to her. I said they should look external, and Pash said no fucking way she was working for a prick she didn’t know, and then…”

Then you’d had a the best job you could imagine. A job that made you excited to get out of bed in the morning. A job you were wholly unqualified for on paper, but no one ever complained, and you were living the fucking dream. Eighteen years of being nothing but a burden on the nuns, not worth shit if you weren’t going to beat yourself into a new shape for God, and almost another decade of being an aimless piece of shit who didn’t have anything worth giving to anyone. And now you’re here, working with the best, and being trusted by them in turn. Seeing some of the best damn shows in the city, not just the finished product, but the whole damn process, and knowing you had a part in them. Being part of something bigger than you, so much bigger that it makes your chest burst every opening night. It’s pure gold, is what it is, and you dip your dirty little fingers into the process, and people thank you for it.

Harrow is still fucking looking at you.

“I have a good thing going,” you say belatedly. “Why fuck it up by wanting more?”

--

Harrow’s phone rings early in the morning, a piercing techno remix of Brittany Spears’ Toxic that can mean only one thing: Ianthe. Harrow, spooned against you, makes a disgusted noise in her throat and gropes blindly for the nightstand, turning it off, and you hold her tighter and sink back into the pleasurable, warm fog of sleeping in on a weekend morning.

Then the damn song plays again. Harrow curses against you, and scrambles up to turn her entire phone off. Which would give you an anxiety attack, since there’s a thousand alarms and emergencies you could miss if your phone was off even for an hour, but Harrow takes a much more casual approach to the concept of communication, and it’s absolutely not your business. Irritated, she settles back into your arms, and you have perhaps thirty seconds to cuddle before your phone starts ringing. Unlike Harrow, you have never allowed Ianthe close enough to any of your electronics to set a custom ringtone. But you know in your bones that it’s her, and Harrow does too.

“Don’t answer it,” she orders, voice still foggy from sleep.

You answer it. You still can’t stand Ianthe, but you do think you understand her. You can imagine how frantic you’d be if you called Harrow three times in a row and she didn’t pick up. You know what kind of dark places you’d be going to. Ianthe at least deserves to know that Harrow is alive.

Does she thank you for that courtesy? Of course not. “Put me on speaker,” she says the moment you pick up.

“Fuck you too,” you grumble, and do as she says. Harrow makes a displeased noise and pulls the covers up over her head.

“Harry,” Ianthe begins, sing-song.

“It’s early,” says Harrow obstinately. “Begone.”

“It’s eleven in my time zone, you horrible solipsistic little nun, and some of us have actual jobs. You’re ignoring my emails, darling.”

“Would that I could ignore your calls, too,” says Harrow flatly. The sleepiness is starting to fade from her voice. “Hang up, Gideon.”

“Belay that order, ensign,” says Ianthe boredly, which cements her in your brain as a massive nerd in addition to being an absolute creep. “This involves you too, anyway, unless you’ve truly subordinated your career to her bullshit.”

You don’t hang up, which earns you a baleful glare. So sue you, you’re curious.

“Broadway,” says Ianthe. “Yea or nay? I need an answer, my sweet. I needed an answer weeks ago.”

Broadway? You mouth, shell-shocked.

“And yet, you have survived the waiting,” says Harrow. “And you will continue to survive. Goodbye, Tridentarius.”

And she leans over you, tits in your face (nice), and hangs up your phone. And then turns it off too. Which would, as mentioned, be freaking you the fuck out, if you didn’t have other things to freak the fuck out about.

“Broadway?” you repeat tentatively.

“She has had offers,” says Harrow dismissively. “Nothing that requires discussing at this early an hour. She is highly capable of negotiating deals to her advantage without my assistance.”

Of that, you have no doubt. “But what do you want to do?” you press.

“Sleep,” says Harrow immediately.

“I’m pretty fucking awake.”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“So,” you say hesitantly. “Can we talk about it?” Dulcie would be proud.

She studies you. Brings one of her marvelous hands up to your temple, turning your head, steadying your gaze on her. Her fingers are cold as they brush purposefully across your jaw, and raise goosebumps all over. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

So then you fuck, obviously. And then you both fall blissfully back asleep. And then you wake up to three missed calls from Tridentarius, and a barrage of texts in your crew group chat about a party you’d missed, and you don’t bring it up again. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth. That she feels like she has to use sex to get out of hard conversations with you. You don’t want to abuse that power, as fucking amazing as the sex is.

You do call Ianthe, though, which is proof of your selflessness. Instead of getting absolutely rawed by a hot goth domme again, you willingly call someone who insults you with every breath and resembles a drowned weasel. The things you do for love.

“So you’re finally giving up on her,” Ianthe sighs, when she finally picks up. “I’d hoped for more stamina from someone like you, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Please don’t let her wander off, and I can be there in four hours to collect her.”

“Fuck you,” you say automatically. “Stop always assuming that we’re breaking up.”

She chuckles softly, which is weirdly sexy and therefore very disconcerting. “My mistake.” She does not sound remotely apologetic. “Then you want to hear about the offers.”

Yes. “If there’s something I need to know,” you hedge. You refuse to seem too eager. You refuse to beg Ianthe Tridentarius for anything, ever.

“You’ve ignored all my sage advice, so you’ll forgive me if I rarely imagine you as needing to know anything.”

“Like hell I will,” you say. “Spill.”

“She really should have told you herself,” says Ianthe, without even trying to sound regretful about circumventing Harrow. You imagine her licking her lips at the very thought of driving a wedge between you two. “Very well. Amidst the flurry of vultures drawn to the rotting carcass of her art, two stand out. One offer to lease the rights and restage a new production. And one offer to bring the existing production up here – the actors, if they want to, and all the expensive little accouterments that your lot tinkered up. Apparently that bit is non-negotiable.”

You exhale. That’s – not what you had expected. The script, sure, because the script is fire. But a big, established theater wants to replicate your production, the production you all slaved over for months. They want Cam and Pal and Dulcie’s designs on a big, national stage. Well, who wouldn’t? Your friends are brilliant. But they want…

“That fucking pool, too, obviously,” says Ianthe boredly. “And some help installing it. For the love of God, I hope that you are literate and capable of delegation, because I truly don’t want to put you up in my city and make nice with you for a week in front of industry people just because your only notes on installation are ‘fasten pipes good’ and no one can fathom what on Earth that means.”

It’s a tremendous opportunity. For Harrow, for the designers – it could mean actual industry attention, actual awards. Tonies, or at least nominations. Extra funding for Koniortos and Abigail, who could be known as the one who discovered it and made it happen, watched as a future incubator of talent. For JM, whose work could be on a national stage. For Isaac, who was already planning to move out to New York in a few months, and could face that hellhole now with a steady gig and a solid credit under his belt. For all the other actors – shit, Nona is a kid, would her parents even let her go? Augustine and Mercymorn would eat their hearts out. You’d heard them just last week, complaining that this play was beneath them. And if it’s the thing that gets them to the big leagues...

“When do you need an answer by?” you ask, marshaling your racing thoughts.

“I needed an answer weeks ago,” Ianthe bursts out. “She’s lucky – you’re all lucky – that theater people are so notoriously flaky. These pretentious lemmings take her silence as a sign of genius and exclusivity, instead of an awful, selfish little goblin too depressed to think about anyone’s future.”

Because that’s what this is, right? Everyone’s future? You take psychic damage just thinking the words, but: Ianthe is not wrong.

“I’ll take to her,” you promise, feeling your gut clench instinctively.

“Don’t strain yourself,” says Ianthe dryly. “You just want her to be happy, right? How is that going for you?”

You hang up.

--

Harrow says, visiting you during your lunch break a few days later, “Why don’t you have a library card?”

You blink. Wonder why she’s asking that, or how she knows. Then realize, resignedly, that she must have been looking for one in your wallet.

“I don’t really need one?” you hazard, avoiding that particular bomb. It’s not like there’s anything private in your wallet anyway, and you already knew she’d rather steal than ask. “Is that where you were today, then? The library?”

“I go there often,” says Harrow, which is news to you. You had never dared to ask where she goes during the day, after all. “It’s – peaceful. Interesting. Just a ten minute walk from the theater. But a library card would help.”

“Then get one,” you suggest.

Harrow’s lips quirk. “I don’t have local proof of address.”

Right. Because she doesn’t actually live here. She has an apartment in New York, which you hope to god she’s subletted, or at least left the pipes dripping so they don’t burst. And she has a suitcase in your living room, whose contents have mostly exploded across your house, but that still isn’t the same as living here. There is an essential, intangible difference that hangs over your head daily, and you curse yourself when you forget it for even a single moment.

“It will only take half an hour for you to get one,” she prompts. “Less, if we drive.”

Once, you had cursed at Harrowhark Nonagesimus for taking even a moment of your lunch break to bother you about her artistic demands. Now, you take a few last bites and follow her out to the street. The only resistance you put up is when you remark, “Parking’s shit. We should walk.”

You are not whipped. Or you are whipped, but only in a personal context. This is professional, and you have a whole theater to advocate for when you say, halfway to the library with slush just beginning to work its way into your boots, “So. Broadway.”

It’s the perfect time to raise this, really. She can’t try and fuck you when you’re out in public, though you wouldn’t totally put it past her. And she can’t storm off, because for whatever reason she genuinely wants a library card.

“You have been talking to her,” says Harrow resignedly. “I should have known simply blocking her myself was inadequate. What poison has she poured in your ear this time?”

You resent the implication that you would let Ianthe Tridentarius anywhere near your ears. Your ears are extremely sensitive, and she looks like she bites. “Are you going to do it?”

She doesn’t answer. You can barely see her face, bundled in her own black scarf and a beanie with the logo of your local hardware store. Her eyes are slitted against the wind.

You take a deep breath. “I think you should.”

“Really,” says Harrow flatly. “What a surprise.”

“I’m not going to push you on it,” you promise. You want nothing less than to push her on it. “I know you still feel – weird, about Sacrifice. But it’s a hell of an opportunity.”

“I don’t need opportunities,” says Harrow dismissively. “I am not seeking a career in the arts any more.”

Which is a damn waste. “That’s a damn waste,” you say, because you’re an idiot. “Maybe now, but later – you could put up whatever you wanted to, with this kind of exposure. Never have to bow and scrape for funding again. Cut ties with Tridentarius for good, if you want to.”

You know you’ve said the wrong thing when she stops walking, heedless of the windchill that had you both hustling. “Gideon,” she says, taking your arm – she still isn’t wearing gloves, why isn’t she wearing gloves? You’d tucked some in her size into her pockets weeks ago – “Gideon. There is no next play. There is nothing left to put up.”

“You say that now, but you can’t know-”

“I know,” she bursts out. “I know, Gideon. Every artist has only one great work inside them. I have spent mine, and I am done now. Why can’t you see that?”

You close your eyes. Breath deeply. Unclench your muscles, and make a conscious effort for once in your life to try and deescalate rather than escalate.

“Spent, huh? Didn’t take you for a two pump chump,” you say.

She rolls her eyes.

“And every artist has only one great work? Massive slam out of nowhere for every playwright who’s published multiple plays. Go fuck yourself, uh…”

“It’s a good thing we’re going to a library, if you can’t name a single playwright,” says Harrow archly.

“Fuck you, I’m just trying not to say Shakespeare.” The damn Bard haunts your dreams with alarming regularity these days, with less than two months left till Merry Wives opens. You snap your fingers. “Chekhov. Albee. Tennessee Williams. Ionesco. Brecht.”

“An impressive list,” says Harrow, patting your arm.

You go in for the kill, now that she’s calm. “So you do admit Sacrifice is great.”

Harrow pauses.

“The greatest that I am capable of,” she says finally.

“I think it’s great too,” you say. “And -” her face is already shuttering again, so you move to the next point in your argument. “-it’s not just great because of you. The designers, and the actors, and the whole damn crew put their hearts into it, and made something incredible. The world deserves to see it-”

“Debatable, as the message is completely incoherent-”

“And they all deserve to be recognized for it,” you press on doggedly. “Don’t they? Are you telling me that Cam doesn’t deserve a Tony? Nona?”

Harrow starts walking again. You jog to catch up with her.

“Talented people,” she says finally, “deserve to rise on their own merits. It’s the only way to avoid – being tainted. Someday, the hellish mob of tastemakers will finally catch wise to my rottenness, and the tide will turn, and it’s better for all of you here if you aren’t brought down by that too. Better for you all not to have a record stained with the embarrassment that is me.”

Your heart aches for her. Her diamond-sharp certainty of her own worthlessness, the way it forms the foundation of her every thought, and warps the reality around it. “That’s not how it works though, babe,” you say, sticking to facts. “You think beginning actors turn their noses up at roles on Law and Order because it’s demeaning? You think I want to be doing Shakespeare? You think anyone looks down on everyone who worked with – with Hitchcock, or Tarantino, or Gibson? It’s how show business fucking works. Everyone wants a shot at the big leagues, and no one’s really punished for how they got there – well, maybe if you’re a woman and you did nudity too soon, but – you get big because you do a good job in the role, and then you get to choose your own projects. That’s how it works. You’re not going to taint anyone by giving them a goddamn publicity boost. Ask anyone on this production, and they’ll tell you you’re an idiot, and to take the offer.”

You know immediately you’ve gone too far again. She doesn’t look at you, just keeps her ferocious gaze forward and spits out, “Including you? Are you itching for your shot at fame, Gideon? Resenting me from keeping you from it?”

“What?” you say, baffled. “Doesn’t count for me. I’m not a designer, or an actor – I barely did anything.”

“You made the pool,” says Harrow. “You’re listed as the assistant scenic designer.”

You say, dismissively, “No, I’m not.” Harrow doesn’t know the intricacies of backstage credits. It’s an easy mistake to make.

“You’d know, if you went to the show and looked at the program. Hect insisted. She refused to take credit for your work, as a matter of professional pride.”

This is news to you. You’re suddenly very hot. “That’s – that’s stupid of her. I never asked -”

“Of course you didn’t,” says Harrow snappily. “Of course you wouldn’t. That’s why she didn’t even tell you. She good as told me that if you knew before the program was printed, you’d find a way to take it out.”

Of course you would have. Cam is the designer. You’re not the designer – you’re not an artist – you’re just the guy who makes things happen. Just a fan who gets to be closer to it all than any of the audience.

“And you still haven’t taken your portfolio photographs, have you?” says Harrow bitterly.

Of all the things to accuse you of – “I haven’t had time,” you say mulishly. “The Shakespeare-”

“But you have time to tuck me into bed every evening,” she snarls. “And make me dinner, and pick up my meds, and-” she gestures wildly. “And get me a fucking library card, just because I asked.”

“Technically, we’re getting me a library card,” you say, struggling to keep up. “Unless you don’t to anymore? Do you wanna go back to the theater-”

“I want you,” says Harrow with tomblike grimness, “to take yourself seriously.”

She stalks ahead of you into the library, and you follow, head spinning. “My associate would like a library card,” Harrow says with lethal frostiness to the old lady behind the desk. “Isn’t that right, Gideon?”

You flash your driver’s license, and fill out a form, and receive a laminated card. You hand it to Harrow the moment you step outside, and say, “Don’t check out anything suspicious with it. I’m on enough government watchlists already.”

She gives you a scathing but ultimately unreadable look. But she pockets it.

You don’t talk, the entire walk back to the theater.

--

“Of course I gave you the assistant credit,” says Camilla, when you confront her about it the next day. She’s doing chin-ups on one of the racks you use to hang lights, which is incredibly badass. She keeps doing it as she says, breath only slightly heavy, “You designed it. Rude of you, really, to think I’d plagiarize you.”

“You designed it,” you say, baffled. “You sent me a plan-”

“I sent you basic specs and dimensions,” she corrects. Cam has no patience for imprecision. “You decided what it would look like, and you figured out how to build it. That’s design work.”

You shift uneasily. “Unauthorized design work. I didn’t even have your permission.”

“You had the director’s very affirmative consent,” she says. And winks at you, to your outrage. “I knew you’d get stroppy about this.”

“I’m not – stroppy,” you say, affronted. “Just – you fucked me, Cam. Put my name out for something I never even knew-”

She stops her chinups and shakes the sweat from her fringe. “Gideon. Is this about the install again?”

“It’s not not about the install,” you burst out. An argument that’s been brewing for three months now. Might as well have it now.“I wanted to take the time to do it right, but you and Harrow said it was good enough, and I thought, fine, Cam knows best, it’ll be Cam’s name on the line, she can make the call – and you were already planning to hang me out to dry, weren’t you? Making little plots with her? Thousands of people looking at that pool, seeing my fucking name, and it’s not even my best work.”

You are breathing heavily. Cam says with amusement, “You’ve been keeping that in a while, then.”

“It’s not fair,” you say, and it’s not just her you want to say it to. “You can’t say you respect me, and want me to grow in my role or whatever, and then just – decide what’s best for me.”

Cam considers that.

“You’re right,” she says finally. “The credit thing is on me. I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that.”

“No,” you agree, surprised by the concession. Fighting back the urge to apologize. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I’m right though,” she says, because she’s still a fucking pill. “You were the designer. And it is a good piece, if you’d get out of your head for a minute and look. You deserve to have people see it, and see you.”

“Whatever,” you say, because it’s easier than arguing.

“Not whatever,” she says. “You still haven’t taken your photos yet, have you? Or asked Nonagesimus how long she’s staying – don’t give me that look, you know Dulcie’s an awful gossip.”

“None of that has anything to do with each other,” you say with dignity. “Or with you.”

“It’s called being a friend,” she says, which is mortifying. “You have a problem, Gideon.”

This is the trouble with mixing your personal and professional life. When Cam says that shit, you can’t even rebut her. She’s seen you during both tech week and breakups. She has the read on you, and you absolutely don’t want to hear it.

“Take your photos,” she tells you, as you storm out. “See the play.”

--

So you finally ask Abigail for comped tickets. “One, or two?” she says immediately. “I’ve been wondering when Harrow will be coming to see it.”

You hesitate. She notices because Abigail is horribly good at reading people, and because she’s known you for a decade.

“I can save you two, and she can decide later,” she says decisively. “Is closing night okay?”

Closing night. The night that beloved directors are brought up on stage to receive flowers in front of an adoring audience. But you’re not sure the cast even likes Harrow enough to get her flowers, and if they did, that would be even worse. You imagine her up there, frozen and alone in the heat of the stage lights. And closing night is its own minefield for you. If this set isn’t going to New York – and you still don’t know yet, if it’s going to New York – then you will need to start taking it apart the moment that the curtain falls on opening night, to get ready to start installing the next show. If Harrow comes with you and it destroys her, you will be caught between two responsibilities, unable to do either well.

“The night before?” you suggest, strangled.

Abigail prints your tickets on two separate sheets of paper. You hide Harrow’s deep in the lining of your coat. The other one, you leave out on the kitchen counter. A peace offering. A white flag to the hostile army encamped in your home. As she requested – as she demanded- , you’re seeing the damn show. It’s her turn, now.

--

Ianthe calls you. Harrow, from where she’s curled up on the couch, snaps up her head. “Shit,” she says. “Don’t answer that. I wanted to tell you first.”

Which is a terrible start to a conversation. You brace for the worst. She’s leaving. She’s dying. She never wants to see you again. She’s... getting married to Ianthe?

“I told her I’d do it,” says Harrow. And when you don’t react, still trawling through to try and remember what it is – you’d definitely remember if you agreed to a threesome, right?- she clarifies, “The production. I signed off.”

You are floored. “You did?”

“Last week,” she says. “You were – you were right. I was being selfish. Shortsighted. Lost in the haze of my own bullshit.”

Your head is spinning too much to gloat. “And you’re only telling me now?”

“I didn’t want you to feel… beholden,” says the woman you’d do anything for. “And I wasn’t sure how to – but yes. It’s done. The show is going to New York. Costumes, set, and all. I gave her permission to work it all out, and she’s efficient when she wants something, if nothing else.”

You let out a long exhale. Finally silence the tinny ringing of your phone.

“So,” you say, trying to marshal your thoughts in the very loud silence that remains. “That’s it, then? You’re… going back to New York, to get it set up? Going home?”

And she looks, for just a moment, hurt.

“I told you,” says Harrow coldly. “I want nothing to do with that play. Deuteros will transcribe the blocking into official scenic directions, and they will put it on without me.”

You mull that over. Try to figure out what it means for the two of you.

“You should go, though,” she says, throwing you for another loop. “For the install, and maybe longer. There are… apparently there are people who’d like to meet you.”

“I can’t just leave,” you say automatically. “If they really need someone, we’ll send JM. She’ll love it. Great opportunity for her. She belongs out there, really.”

“Why can’t you?” Harrow demands. “Even for a week?”

You say, only half-teasing, “Are you that desperate to get rid of me?”

It’s the wrong thing to say. You watch her harden.

“I was kidding,” you say, awkwardly. “Sorry.”

She runs her hands through her hair. It’s gotten almost long in the months she’s spent here, and sticks up in awkward chunks like short hair always does when it’s growing out. You should take her to your barber. You’d have suggested it weeks ago, if you weren’t so terrified of reminding her of the passage of time.

“No you weren’t,” she says finally. “And that’s fine.”

“Harrow-”

“I have an apartment in New York,” she reminds you, as if that’s something you’ve ever forgotten about for more than a second. “You would have a place to stay, while you’re there.”

“Lodging isn’t the issue. I could get a hotel-”

“Then what is the issue? You’re going to pass up a major career opportunity because – what? Because you’re afraid I’ll die if you leave me alone for a week? That’s a pointless reason and you know it.”

“I’m not afraid for you,” you lie. You are, as always, terrified for her, and she is always reason enough to do anything.

“So what is it, then?” she presses. “You want to spend the rest of your life stuck here doing plays you hate?”

“I don’t hate it here! Where the hell did you even get that-”

“Oh, so you’ve decided you love Shakespeare, actually?” Harrow sneers. “You could have an actual career, Gideon. You could do the plays that you want to do, not just the ones Abigail Pent chooses for you. You’re good at what you do, and you’re wasted here, and you’re too – selfless, or comfortable, or blind to actually see it!”

“Fuck you,” you say, and you’re angry in a way you haven’t been since before she moved in with you. There are lines – there are things that are off limits. She can say what she wants about you, but your theater? “Fuck you, Harrow. You think I’m too good for this theater? This theater made me, and it made you too, if you’d ever fucking snap out of the self-pity enough to acknowledge how big you’re getting. I’m exactly good enough to be here, and if you think that’s not enough – if you think that’s provincial and mediocre compared to New York and Broadway and the big leagues that Ianthe can offer you – then what are you even still doing here? I’m not like you – I’m not going where you’re going.”

“No,” she says. And you saw her flinch from your words, but her eyes are dry and her face is calm. “You’re going farther. I’m spent, but you’re just beginning, Gideon -”

“Like hell I am,” you say, and grab your coat. “I’m going on a fucking walk, is where I’m going. Don’t wait up.”

--

Aiglamene calls you, which is a fucking shock all on its own. You’ve spoken with her maybe three times since she retired, and one of those times was because of an issue with her tax forms. Your old mentor is a woman of few words, and when she left, she made it very clear that she wasn’t to be bothered with bullshit. Accordingly, you have never once reached out to her.

“Broadway,” she says, when you pick up.

“It’s under control,” you say immediately. The urge to impress her is never far, even after all those years. “I’ve altered the strike plans to do a move-out instead. The set can be extracted, and the lighting charts are updated, and I’ve even expended the cost of the materials we’d been planning to salvage and re-use to the show’s budget. I’ve got it, boss.”

“I know you do,” she says, which warms your heart horribly. You worked hard, dammit, to be someone that Aiglamene trusts. It still surprises you every time. “This is a congratulations call.”

“Oh,” you say, lamely. Somehow you had never once expected that.

“Oh,” she repeats, a bit mockingly. “You did it, Nav. You’re making it big. So what’s next?”

There’s a tingling in your fingers. “You’re still on the mailing list, right? Next is Merry Wives of Windsor, and then Steel Magnolias, and then we’re into Little Shop for the summer musical-”

“For you,” Aiglamene interrupts. “For you, kid, or you think I call to hear you read out the season lineup for me? You think I don’t know how to use a website?”

Aiglamene had never been great with using a website, but you don’t say that. You say, “Same thing. You know the job.”

“No shit, I know the job,” says your predecessor. “Didn’t realize you were gonna stick with it til you’re my age, though.”

You, truly, have never even dreamed of running the scene shop until you’re as old as Aiglamene. You can count on one hand the number of times you’ve ever managed to imagine growing old, period. Those kind of thoughts are dangerous, and you know better.

“You didn’t?” you say cautiously. Mindful of the trap. Aiglamene has never minced words, and she tells you what you need to hear. If she’s calling to tell you that you’re not cut out for it, then you’re not cut out for it-

“You’re young,” she says, which could mean anything. And then she follows it up with, “You’re a sucker for those bleak, artsy things. And you can’t stand the annual Christmas Carol fundraiser.”

“No shit,” you say on autopilot. “Fuck Tiny Tim, and fuck the smoke machine that always malfunctions on one of the ghost entrances. But what does that have to do with this-”

“Just always saw you going somewhere else,” says the woman whose legacy you’ve been gripping onto for more than six years. It shakes something loose within you, and you feel your fingertips slackening on the ledge of your future. If she says anything after that, you don’t remember it.

---

You see the show.

You stuff your pockets with tissues, in preparation. If just reading it rocked you to the core – if watching a dress rehearsal with Judith Deuteros calling cues in your ear every three minutes blew you away – you cannot take chances with the real thing.

And it’s – everything you’d expected and more. You watch Harrow’s show as an audience member, nothing to do but listen and feel, and you are transported. And so are they. You can tell – there’s a particular silence that an audience has, when they’re in a production’s grasp. The sound of hundreds of people breathing in all at once. No one coughs or unwraps candy or checks their phones. They tremble, in Harrow’s thrall, and you tremble along with them.

Iphigenia – she’s not Nona any more, the kid who loves showing Pyrrha her coloring books and needs to be prevented from eating the prop food, she’s is fully Iphigenia now - hears that she’s expected to marry Achilles, and falters. “Is he kind?” she asks, and someone who you once knew as Mercymorn snaps, “Who cares? That’s not what husbands are for.”

“I don’t want to marry, though,” says Iphigenia pitifully, hesitantly, and Clytemnestra says, “Want? That’s not what daughters are for either.”

Impossible not to think about your mother – your mother, dead in federal prison before you could ever find your way back to her. Your mother, and her mugshots and manifestos and her complete lack of sworn testimony that has never answered the fundamental questions you wanted to know. She’d had a plan for you – she may have kept you, birthed you, conceived you with solely that plan in mind. She had never needed you to want anything, and you can’t remember being an infant in her arms, but it must have been easier, right? But then she had died, and left you alone with no plan, and nothing to want – and it’s thirty six years later and you still don’t know what to fucking do. One play after another, one season after another, one day with Harrow after another until she gets rid of you, and the future stretches out horribly in front of you with no certainty or safety-

You’re so caught up, the pool catches you by surprise. You know every word of this play by heart, every scene transition and lighting cue, but you’re still struck anew when the rippling blue lights fade in, and the pool rises from the depths. The audience murmurs and inhales in awe, a single living spellbound beast, and you nearly murmur right along with them. For once, you don’t think about shortcuts and imprecision and all the ways it could be better. You are caught in the grip of the muse Melpomene, and you could not get off this ride for love or money.

The tissues in your pockets weren’t enough. You resign yourself to getting tears and snot on the cuffs of your good suit jacket.

The final scene. Eerie Greek chanting, and flickering torchlight. Iphigenia in her simple white shift and her deathly ceremonial face paint, alone and pinned by the single white spotlight, slowly proceeding down the center aisle and up the winding path upon the stage. You, like every other poor sap in this theater, crane to see her face – tremulously hopeful and holding back tears all at once. Determination and dread and awe. Taking a new step into something that is either an ending or a beginning.

Onstage, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon argue at the altar. “You do this,” Clytemnestra hisses, pure hatred in her voice. “I will never, ever, forgive you.”

“We do this,” he corrects. “You brought her here – you raised her up, fattened her for the slaughter. Taught her her duty.”

“Like my mother before me, yes – I taught her to obey her father, but there is a contract! Nothing in this world comes free - We worship the gods, and the gods protect us – she obeys you, and you are meant to protect her!”

“How like a woman. It is a not a transaction, with a guarantee. That is not the nature of faith. No one can protect her from the gods. No one can protect her from the fates.”

“Can? No one will. You won’t – you won’t even protect her from your brother. You worm of a man, you maggot, you miserable puddle of muck-”

“Peace, darling. Or do you want her to see us fighting?”

“Oh, who cares? You’re about to slit her throat. That will surely be the bigger and more lasting trauma!”

“The priest will do it, actually. Look at him, he’s been sharpening all day.”

“No. No.” Clytemnestra shakes her head like she wants it to fly from her shoulders. “You do it, husband. Your decree – your poisoned words in her ears – have the decency to bloody your hands.”

“My poisoned words? Perhaps you should hold the blade, then.”

Her voice is low and harsh. “If you give me that blade, my King, then you will not like what happens next.”

A pause, a detente. And Iphigenia drawing ever closer. You grip the railing in front of you so tight it hurts. The chanting grows louder and louder. Iphigenia struggles to ascend the altar, too short to hop up – she looks to her mother for assistance, but the Queen turns away, and her daughter’s face closes in resignation. She takes her father’s hand instead, lays herself out on the faux-marble slab, chin tilted back like Harrow in that first moment you’d pitied her – she gazes up into the white spotlight as her father raises the knife above her.

“I want-” she begins, and falters, and then the stage goes red, and then completely dark. And you are not in Aulis, you are in a theater in Chicago, and your face is dripping and your muscles are clenched to the point of breaking, and the crowd is surging to their feet in adulation for a play that you love, and for a woman who loves neither it nor them nor you.

--

Harrow meets you in the atrium. She takes one look at your face, and offers you her scarf.

You don’t take it – you don’t want to get your gross snot on her things. Also, your poor stunned mouth is busy asking “What the hell are you doing here?”

She holds up the crumpled ticket you’d gotten for her and never delivered. You pat your coat pockets, dumbfounded. You hadn’t realized she’d found it – you hadn’t realized it was missing.

“Your seat was supposed to be next to mine.”

“I like to stand,” she says. Which is news to you – for months, you’ve mostly seen Harrow spend her every waking hour lying up in bed.

“I need-” you begin, at the same that she says “Gideon-”

“You first,” you say, embarrassed.

She does not fold. She never has, not once – you stare at each other until you finally take one for the team and fish laboriously for what you’d been about to say.

“I need you to stop going through my shit,” you say, with effort. Scanning her face for a trace of disapproval. “My wallet, my coat, picking my fucking locks – I need you to lay off. Ask me for something, if you want it, instead of pulling your fucking sneaky Victorian orphan shit. It’s not cute.”

She nods, slowly. Doesn’t walk out of your life, just keeps looking at you expectantly. “And?”

You release a shuddering breath. “And you need to actually put your dishes in the dishwasher. Soaking? That’s fucking bullshit – it’s just a breeding ground for bacteria, and I’m the one who has to dip my fingers into your gross food water. And I need you to wear fucking gloves when you’re outside. I’ll buy you some if the ones I gave you don’t fit, but you’re gonna get fucking frostbite and I happen to like all your fingers exactly where they are.”

A ghost of a smile. She reaches a tentative hand towards you, and you grab onto it for dear life. Study those marvelous fingers, focus on her her wind-chapped knuckles and ragged cuticles instead of her eyes as you say, “And I need you to drop the shit about my career. I – I don’t know. I might go to New York for the install. It’s not the worst idea. But you can’t – no more bumping my credits, or trying to set up meetings with Ianthe’s horrible rich friends, or telling me what I’m meant for and too good for. Why are you allowed to do it, and I’m not? It’s – I gave you space, and never fucking bothered you your next work, so why can’t you-”

You’re leaking again. Residual feelings, probably – it’s a hell of a show. You pat your pockets for a tissue, remember you’re out, and do a big old sniffle that does not help even a little bit. You look out at the crowd – the couples choosing their dinner dates to end the evenings, the students eagerly comparing their notes, the families fussing about parking and whether the meter’s up. The people who are dazed and only just awakening back into their real lives, and the people who are launching into them full speed.

Harrow says, “What else?”

As if what you’ve asked is nothing. As if you’re not a fucking animal scraping at the door to her heart, tearing down the boundaries she’s built so carefully. As if you’re not caging her in with your bullshit, your horrible jealous greed to keep her close to you, keep her yours, stifle her light so only you can see it -

“I want,” you say, and have to close your eyes and pinch your nose to stop the awful prickling. “Fuck. I want this to keep going – whether you stay here, or go back to New York, or wherever – I don’t want you to be done with me, Harrow. I’m not ready to be done with you. And if that’s too much for you and you hate me and want to get the fuck out, I understand. But I want – I want you.”

It’s so fucking embarrassing. You look away and swipe at your eyes. “Sorry,” you say roughly. “You were gonna say something.”

“I believe you covered it,” says Harrow dryly. “Will you look at me, Gideon?”

“Don’t wanna,” you say petulantly. You look extremely gross right now.

“As you wish,” she says, and that shames you into looking at you out of the corner of her eye anyway. And once you’re looking, how can you stop? You could spend a lifetime looking at Harrowhark Nonagesimus. That’s at least half of the fucking problem.

“I accept your terms,” she says, like it’s some kind of hostage negotiation. Her jaw is clenched.

“You don’t have to,” you offer meekly. You cannot be her burden, her tether – she has enough to worry about -

“I do,” she says fiercely, suddenly ablaze. “I obviously do – it’s not even so unreasonable, and the fact that you disagree is all the more proof that I -” she calms herself with effort. “I accept your terms, Gideon. You are right. I have not been fair to you.”

“I haven’t been fair to you either,” you remind her.

“Yes, you made me wear a hard hat,” she says with barely concealed disgust. “And you tried to sacrifice yourself upon my altar, but you are clearly making an effort to make up for both, and I can do the same. It is, truly, the least I can do.”

You look out over the audience again. The crowd is thinning out now, and the ushers are beginning to collect the discarded playbills. Two more performances left – tomorrow’s matinee, and then closing night. You had come so close to missing it, for Harrow’s sake. You’re so glad you didn’t.

“I still can’t believe you came to see it,” you say. “I thought you hated this play?”

Harrow’s hand tightens in yours. “As a metaphor for myself, yes. I find it sickening. But it’s not about me, is it? It’s about you. And that makes it – tolerable. Not just tolerable.” She swallows. “For you, I can love it.”

That does a funny thing to your heart.

“I had planned for us to take photographs of the set tonight after the audience leaves,” Harrow admits. And when you open your mouth in outrage, she says “I know. It’s obviously not appropriate any more, in light of the promise I made to you moments ago. I’m going to tell Pash to stand down.”

“Please,” you say fervently. There is a frightful rawness to you right now. You cannot plan your future, and you cannot talk shit with Pash, and you absolutely cannot look at the set. Tomorrow, it will be time to strike and disassemble. Tomorrow, you will have to decide whether to go to New York with your creation, or send it along without you. Tomorrow you will have to face the gaping abyss that is the future and begin mapping onto it the framework of your actual desires.

Today, though – you have already done something difficult. You have finally, delicately begun to build something fragile and new with Harrow. You think, with startling clarity and for the first time that you can recall – you think that maybe you can just let yourself be proud and happy about that.

“I do have an office on premises, though,” you tell her, with a little cock of your head. And you look her up and down, let your hunger show as you take in the whole of her, every angle and edge and sharpness. “What do you say, boss?”

She raises an eyebrow, steps closer. “Do you really,” she deadpans, as if unimpressed, but she’s hungry too. You can tell from the stillness of her hands, the darkness of her gaze.

“Yeah, and if it’s photos you want, we can take plenty in there. The door locks, and everything. Super private.”

Harrow scoffs, but her eyes flick to your lips, then back up. Fucking got ‘em. Even with your face blotchy with tears, you still have game.

“Why would I need photographs?” she says finally. She is very close now. “Apparently, I will be getting to keep you.”

You melt. And later, in your office, you melt a lot more, in a lot of other ways, but – here and now, Harrow kisses you slow and sweet, and pure unadulterated want thrums in your veins, and you let it flood you.