hellonspectacles | (no subject)

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game: darrow

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Early in their time in Darrow, Pal and Gideon had gotten drinks on the regular, an easy warmth growing between them that the Warden hadn’t seen coming. Lately, though, thanks to one thing or another (trauma, universe-altering necromantic theorems, and strangest of all, actual romantic relationships), they hadn’t gotten around to it. So when Gideon texts Pal a little beer stein emoji, followed by a strong of question marks, he can’t bring himself to beg off, even if his plan for the evening had involved tea and some very important necromancer math. He texts back, suggesting the name of a bar, and a few hours later he’s out in the chilly winter air, heading towards it.

And yes, he’s still doing necromancer math in his head as he approaches the bar’s entrance, but when has that not been the case?

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"Her vertebrae or someone else's?" Pal asks rhetorically, flashing a smirk. Hands in his pockets, he nudges open the door with his shoulder. "You know I'm always happy to rescue you from the Reverend Daughter's moods."

"I think it might have been mine," she says. "Hence the swift exit." She grins, spotting a booth in the corner of the bar and heading for it, shrugging out of her coat. "Thought it was probably best not to chance it."

Pal slides into the booth. "Mm. Oh dear. Next time, just tell her that I have a new theory about more efficiently using Darrow's thanergenic levels. At the very least she'll turn my ire on me."

"That's cute, Sextus," says Gideon, reaching for the beer menu and tugging off her hat, ruffling her fingers through her bright red hair. "That you think she could summon up that kind of ire for anyone in the world but me."

"Oh, I would never dare compete with you on that front. No more than I would try to fight you with a sword." Jokes aside, Pal still doesn't quite know what to think about the relationship between Harrow and Gideon. He supports whatever makes them happy, of course, but he gets the feeling that happiness in the Ninth House takes a decidedly different form than it does elsewhere.

"How are...things, anyway? Aside from the threats to your spinal column."

"You'd just send Cam and she'd hand me my ass," says Gideon, flipping through pages of descriptions of beers. She thinks about it for a moment. "We're okay," she says. "We've figured some things out. Feels like its working. What about you and Miss Objectively hot?"

“Hm,” says Palamedes, propping his cheek on one hand. Somehow, he manages to make the taciturn response apply to her comment about Cam—yes, obviously—and to her update on her romantic situation—if you say so. He does his best to remain cautiously optimistic about the relationship between Gideon and Harrow, for their sakes if nothing else, but its fraught nature continues to leave him wary.

As for the question about his own love life, Pal answers by snatching the beer menu. “… We’re very well, thank you.”

Gideon watches him bury his nose in the menu, both coppery eyebrows raised. "That's...alarmingly cagey of you, Sextus," she says, tilting her head as she studies him for a moment. Gideon might not know a thimbleful compared to Palemedes Sextus and Harrowhark Nonagesimus, but she's got enough emotional intelligence for all of them. "What's going on?"

"Hm?" Palamedes peers over the menu. "Nothing! I swear, nothing is going on." And though he looks a little pink, he is being truthful. He doesn't think he has anything dramatic to report to Gideon--certainly not anything that is any of her business. "It's just...all very new, you know?"

Surely Gideon, of all people, could understand that.

"You're a really bad liar, Sixth," says Gideon, smirking. She does nod, though, because hshe knows what he means. Her and Harrow are still figuring things out between them and, every so often, she'll feel like she needs to start all over again. "I get it," she says. "Does she make you happy, though?"

Palamedes makes a face at her, scrunching up his nose in a way that somehow manages to make him look even pointier than usual. But the question makes his expression soften, and he even blushes a little. "She does."

He fiddles with the laminated edge of the menu. For all Palamedes' brilliance and empathy, he has never been very good at talking about his own feelings. "...Did you ever tell Octavia much about matters as we left them back home?" Pal does his best to make the question sound intellectual, even theoretical, certainly nothing to do with the all the things he has never discussed with Marianne. Oh, he has spoken about his life in the Library, about the Houses, and the nature of God as they were both raised to understand Him. They can get quite serious and philosophical, in fact. But that's different than discussing the stark reality of the last few months of his life.

"Octavia and I was..." She shrugs. "It was never that serious. I never thought of her as my girlfriend or anything. We were just seeing each other." A waitress arrives and Gideon orders a pint of an IPA that she knows that she likes. "I told her as much as made sense. A bit about Canaan House. Not much about Harrow."

“Right.” The answer doesn’t entirely surprise Pal, but it’s still a bit disappointing. He supposes that a Ninth House cavalier is not the best person to ask about how to broach the subject of one’s traumatic past with one’s girlfriend. From what he has seen, the Ninth are quite happy to keep trauma locked away.

If he’s honest with himself, the Sixth aren’t much better.

He orders a Hefeweizen—a word he delights in saying—and uses the waitress’ interruption as an excuse to change the subject away from his romantic life. “Did you know that most types of beer were invented by monks? It’s literally religious.”

The way Gideon raises a coppery eyebrow, the corner of her mouth ticking up, suggests that she's not buying the diversion for a second. Still, she leans back into the booth, worrying the edge of one thumbnail with the other.

"Is that right?" she says. Even though she is, perhaps, the most resistant acolyte of the Locked Tomb, she still finds that hard to believe.

Palamedes brightens, taking Gideon's expression as a show of interest. "Mmhmm. They weren't the first ones to make it, but ancient, pre-resurrection monastic communities were the first one to add hops and otherwise ensure that it could be stored long-term. They knew quite a bit more science than one would expect for people who lived so long ago."

"Almost like someone burned their civilisation down and started again," she says, leaning her chin into her hand, her eyebrow still raised. "I can tell when you're dodging the subject, Pal. It's not as subtle as you think it is."

"Well, yes," Palamedes answers in response to Gideon's first observation. To her second, he arches his brow. Gideon is right, of course, but that's beside the point. "And what subject am I meant to be dodging, exactly?"

"Miss Objectively Hot. Marianne," says Gideon. She leans back in her seat as the waitress brings their beers. "You're holding out on me, Pal. And you know about me and Harrow, so I don't think that's fair. Let me live a little vicariously."

"Please don't call my girlfriend 'Miss Objectively Hot' ever again." He props his chin on his hand. "Fine. you get to ask me three questions about your romantic relationship."

He doesn't actually expect Gideon to abide by an arbitrary rule like that, but he can try.

Gideon holds her hands up on surrender but she's definitely smirking when she does it.

"Are you doing it?" Never let it be said that Gideon Nav has anything other than a stubbornly one track brain.

Palamedes considers being pedantic and saying something like, doing what? But that will only delay the inevitable.

“…Yes. Two more questions.”

A broad grin spreads across Gideon's face. She's in a position of safety here; she's pretty sure that Palamedes is too horrified by the idea of the Reverend Daughter actually having sex to actually ever ask about it.

"How much do you like her? Like like her."

"Romantic attraction isn't quantifiable, Nav," Pal says with a roll of his eyes. He props his cheek on his hand and traces a whorl in the table. "I like her a lot." He wrinkles his nose, disliking the imprecision of the answer. "What sort of comparative scale are we talking about here?"

"Bullshit," says Gideon, but she's grinning when she says it. She watches him trace the pattern on the table. "You tell me. I've been into a lot of people, most of them fictional, but I've only actually been in love with one, so..." She shrugs.

A pained look crosses Palamedes face. There’s only one person that comes to mind when he thinks about love, even now. He was the one who had invited comparison, but now it seems awfully unfair to set Dulcinea and Marianne side by side.

“…I like her a lot,” he repeats at last.

"Fair enough," says Gideon, turning her beer against the table with her hand, overlapping circles of condensation on the dark wood. "Liking someone can go a long way, right? Some days, I totally wish I liked Harrow more."

Palamedes huffs a laugh. Though he obviously doesn't feel for Harrow what Gideon does, he thinks he knows what she means. Pal cares for the other necromancer deeply, but does he like her? It depends on the day.

"The Reverend Daughter has spent most of her life deliberately trying not to be liked," he observes. "If we all started liking her all the time, she wouldn't know what to do."

Nobody knows that like Gideon knows it, knew it every day of her life, practically, leading up to Caanan House. She remembers, on a fundamental level, how confusing it had been when everything between them started to change. The recollection carries the tinge of saltwater on her tongue.

"She'd absolutely hate it," she says, smirking.

"She'd be mortified," Palamedes agrees with a small grin of his own. And because he likes to be fair, he adds, "You have one more question."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking about it," says Gideon, and, honestly, she's coming up blank. She could probably make Palamedes blush if she really put her mind to it, but right now, she honestly can't think of anything. She takes a sip of her beer. "Does she got on with Cam?"

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