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Gideon always does the shopping. It just makes more sense. Set Harrowhark Nonagesimus loose in the grocery store and she’ll come back with a couple of bottles of distilled water and a box of instant oatmeal. Plus, Harrow breaks a sweat when pushing even a moderately-full shopping cart, whereas Gideon has the biceps to heft multiple bulging bags of canned goods all the way to their ninth-floor walk-up. She does it in one trip. She always does it in one trip, even these days when she’s only allowed to go to the store every other week, and therefore has to buy twice as much food.
“Does this actually accomplish anything?” she asks, watching Harrow diligently disinfecting a packet of instant ramen. (This is a staple in their house, although Harrow doesn’t put the flavor packet in.) “I mean, we’re not really going to get it from a package of noodles, right?”
Harrow glares at her through the bleach fumes. “We don’t know , Griddle,” she says, peevish, worried. “There’s still so much that’s unknown about this virus--how it spreads, how much damage it can do. That’s why it’s so important we take all the precautions we can. I hope you kept the mask on in the store, by the way.”
She’d actually forgotten she was still wearing it. “I did,” she says, taking it off. It’s suffocating and lopsided, inexpertly stitched together from an old robe that Harrow cut up for the purpose. “They don’t let you in the store without one anymore.”
Harrow finishes wiping down a can of chickpeas and turns to her. “Good. I may be confined to this apartment, but I have absolutely no intention of letting any harm come to you.”
Gideon takes her in her arms, struck as always by how slight Harrow feels against her. She kisses the furrowed forehead until it relaxes, the upturned mouth until it softens. She lets Harrow feel the safety of Gideon’s strong arms wrapped around her, that promise of security. They trade kisses until Harrow is sighing a little against Gideon and reaching up on tiptoe to tangle one hand in Gideon’s overgrown hair. Gideon presses her lips against the skin of Harrow’s neck and murmurs into her--
“Can I go on a run with Coronabeth tomorrow?”
Harrow jerks away and glares at her. “What? Absolutely not.”
“Come on, we’ll be outside! We’ll even stay six feet away!”
“Griddle, are we not sharing the same universe? Are we not currently living through the same global pandemic? Are you not seeing the same numbers I’m seeing, the death toll that’s higher every day? No, you are not going on a run with the damned Crown Princess. I don’t trust you to stay six inches away from her, never mind six feet. And she doesn’t even wear a mask half the time--I’ve seen her Instagram.”
Gideon has to concede on that one. Corona seems remarkably unbothered about the virus that bears her name, having recently chirped to Gideon that it’s “just like the flu!” Gideon relays this information.
“That,” Harrow says darkly, “is because Coronabeth gets all of her information about current events from her sister, who is similarly unconcerned with the state of the world.”
“Ianthe’s not an idiot, though--”
“No, just a narcissist. She’s convinced this whole thing happened for the sole purpose of inconveniencing her lab research. The Third do not have nearly enough concern for the well-being of other people, and therefore you will not be running laps with Coronabeth anytime soon.”
Gideon groans, but draws Harrow back to her embrace. “All right, all right. But you’ve gotta find something else for me to do around here--I’ve been banging around like a revenant ever since the gym closed.”
One of Harrow’s hands is pulling her close by her belt buckle, the other digging sharp fingertips into her bicep as Harrow drags her down for another kiss.
“I’m sure we can keep you busy somehow.”
Some time later, when they’re both sweaty and spent, the sheets a hopeless tangle, Harrow says, “But perhaps you’re right. It’s possible that it would do you good to get out a bit more, if there’s a way to do it safely.”
Gideon rolls onto her side so that she can look at Harrow, and also so that Harrow can admire her bare abs a bit more. “If staying in means more opportunities to get down and dirty with you, my ominous empress, I won’t be complaining anymore.”
Harrow rolls her eyes, but there’s a barely perceptible smirk. “Tempting as that is, I do have to get work done at some point. The lab may be closed, but there’s a hell of a lot of backlogged data entry to get through. I was thinking you could go see Abigail.”
“Sorry, I must have misheard--I thought you suggested that I physically interact with another human person outside of this apartment.”
“I mean it. Abigail’s been pestering me to come over and get some vegetables from her garden. She’s a much safer prospect than Coronabeth--she doesn’t go anywhere, and she’s very responsible--and perhaps it would be nice for you to see someone other than me for a change.”
“You’re not coming with me, then?”
Harrow frowns. “No. No, I don’t think so--I’d rather not take any risks, no matter how small. And there really is a lot of data entry.”
“Admit it,” Gideon says. “There’s a part of you that loves this because you finally have an iron-clad excuse never to go anywhere or see anyone.”
“I will admit nothing of the sort.”
Gideon lunges for her and starts tickling her ribs, and Harrow yelps and smacks her, and it almost devolves into kissing again--but then they have to stop and put clothes on, because it’s almost seven, which means it’s time to go to the window and clap.
Gideon locks her bike to the fence encircling the pretty two-story house. It hardly even feels like the city, this neighborhood where the buildings don’t touch and there’s even room for yards. Abigail and Magnus’ front yard is a wonder, bursting with ornamental flowers and, even this early in the year, vegetables. Most of the neatly labeled vegetable beds are still empty, showing only carefully turned dark soil, but a few are already overflowing with green. Gideon comes halfway up the front walk, stops six feet from the front steps, and sends a text to announce that she’s arrived.
Abigail appears on the porch a few moments later, with the same kind but distracted look she always has. She’s wearing a handmade mask, much more neatly stitched than Gideon’s, in a light brown floral pattern. “Gideon! So wonderful you made it--I’ve been telling Harrow for ages to come over and take some of these spring radishes off my hands.” (No wonder Harrow didn’t make this a priority--she doesn’t come within ten feet of anything as spicy as a radish.) “Gardening has been such a nice distraction for Magnus the past few weeks, but it does mean we have rather more vegetables than we can eat. Have you two been keeping busy?”
“Uh,” says Gideon, racking her brains for anything useful she has been doing and coming up empty. Mainly she’s been reading comics and pestering her girlfriend. “Harrow has. I guess there’s still a lot of work to do even though the lab’s closed.”
Abigail nods tiredly. “It seems unending when you’re doing it from home--I’ve had to move all my courses online, and my graduate students are in an absolute tizzy. And the children--”
As if on cue, the door bangs open and Jeannemary and Isaac explode onto the porch. Both of their hair is a different color than the last time Gideon saw them, and Jeannemary looks like she’s been the victim of a self-inflicted haircut. “Ninth! Hi! Are you allowed to come on the porch? Did you bike here? Is that your bike? What have you been doing? Did you lose your job at the gym? Have you seen our videos? Do you miss us?”
“I will leave you to catch up,” says Abigail with a smile in her voice. “Ninth, enjoy the vegetables--I’ll put them right here for you.” She deposits a canvas bag on the steps and turns to go back inside.
“I think I should stay down here,” Gideon tells the teens. “Yeah, we all got laid off for the time being--sorry, Jeanne.” In regular times, Jeannemary loves visiting Gideon at work and making her train her on the weight machines. “What have you guys been up to? Staying busy?”
The teens talk at the same time. “We’re so busy--”
“Everything’s online now--”
“It’s the best --”
“We’re learning so much about--”
“Everyone loves us and--”
“Abigail even said the screen time rules don’t apply during a pandemic, so--”
“--four thousand views--”
While Gideon is trying to make sense of this, Magnus emerges, wiping his hands on a floury apron. “Ninth! Lovely to see you--have these two been talking your ear off? Chaps, you have to give the other person a moment to respond in a conversation, you know.”
“No, it’s all right,” Gideon says. “I like hearing what they’ve been doing. It sounds like online school is going all right, then?”
Magnus looks baffled. “Online school? Couldn’t be going worse. They’re both failing chemistry.”
“Nooo, Magnus, don’t tell her we’re failing chemistry--Ninth, we weren’t talking about school. We’re talking about TikTok.”
“T--what?”
“It’s like Youtube, except it’s a bit like Snapchat combined with Twitter, except it’s really good. You make these videos and post them, and then they get, like, really popular--at least ours do. Everyone really liked Isaac’s eyeliner tutorial--”
“And Jeanne did one about how to bleach your hair--”
“And the dances-- ”
Gideon is attempting to follow all this. “So you’re, what, making videos showing people how to do stuff?”
“Yes, and trying to prank Magnus. But people really like the tutorial ones. I guess with everyone being stuck at home, they have more time for learning new things!”
Time for learning new things, Gideon reflects to herself as she bicycles home, her bike basket filled with radishes and asparagus. She wonders again what she should be doing with this strange new time, this strange free time.
Palamedes Sextus has not had a day off in two weeks. The hospital is a nightmare. He comes home every evening with no energy to do anything but take an exhausted shower and force down a couple bites of whatever Cam’s left out for him--mostly takeout, as Cam’s EMT shifts have been as unforgiving as his rotations on the COVID ward. And Cam’s been working nights, which means they’re lucky if they get to see each other for five minutes--her heading out the door, bracing for battle, him coming home, drained from it.
Tonight is different. Tonight Palamedes is coming home with the promise of two uninterrupted days off--an entire weekend. He told his supervisor he was turning off his phone, and then he did so. Cam works weekends, so he won’t get to spend much time with her, but he’s looking forward to the prospect of forty-eight hours with nothing to do but sleep. And maybe get to a few chores--they’ve been too busy to clean anything, and the apartment’s really gotten bad.
But when he turns his key in the door and pushes inside, the apartment is sparkling clean. Gone are the heaps of dirty laundry, the bags of neglected recycling, the crusted dishes in the sink. The dishwasher is running, a comforting white-noise sound. The surfaces are gleaming. He thinks someone’s actually vacuumed .
“Cam?” he says cautiously, shutting the door behind him. Maybe this is some new initiative, where volunteers break into healthcare workers’ homes and clean them to show their appreciation. He can’t think of another explanation. “Are you home?”
The bathroom door opens and Camilla emerges in a cloud of steam, toweling her damp hair. She’s wearing a t-shirt and a pair of his boxers. “Welcome home, Warden.”
“You’re not going to work? Is everything all right?”
“No, they switched the schedule. You didn’t get my text?”
“Phone was off. When’s your next shift, then?”
“Not ‘til Monday. Wish you had it off too, I’ve barely seen you since February.”
Palamades beams at her, putting down the takeout he brought home on the kitchen counter and opening his arms so that he can wrap them around her. His best girl. His one sure thing, in a horribly unsure time. “Camilla, I’ve got great news for you.”
After Palamedes has showered and put on his best gray sweatpants, he returns to the living room to find Camilla glancing up from her phone with a furtive expression. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” she says, switching the phone off and stowing it in a pocket. “Just texting the Ninth. You don’t have any plans for this weekend, do you?”
“No. I didn’t even know I was getting the time off until this morning. Do you?”
“Gideon’s on about some exercise thing she wants me to do, but otherwise no. Let’s eat.”
After they’ve eaten the reheated takeout--knees touching under the tiny kitchen table, too tired to say much but gazing contentedly at each other--they retreat to the couch for a movie. Camilla fusses a bit, making sure there’s plenty of blankets and that everything’s arranged just so. She even lights a candle, which is completely uncharacteristic--where did she even find it?--and seems unnecessary, seeing as they’re just going to watch forty minutes of Netflix before falling asleep on each other. Palamedes just assumes that two months of unrelenting work in a devastating pandemic has caused her to develop a bizarre new taste for romantic mood lighting, and doesn’t say anything.
But when the laptop is plugged in, Camilla doesn’t open up a web browser and start scrolling through the movie options. Instead, there’s the sound of an incoming video call, and then Dulcie Septimus’ brown curls and big blue eyes fill the screen.
“Hi, you two,” she says in her musical voice. “Cam, excellent work, that candle was a nice touch. Is everyone comfortable?”
Camilla says “Yes,” at the same time that Palamedes says, “What is going on?”
“Not very much, honestly,” says Dulcie. “I was never big on leaving the house to begin with, so my days are much the same as ever. Pro’s gotten awfully overprotective, though--he nearly assaulted some poor man who had the audacity to sneeze near me yesterday when he took me out in the chair.” (“Good,” says Palamedes.) “And I’m a little more bored than usual, now that you two are too busy to text me.”
Palamedes starts to apologize, but she interrupts him. “Now, now, I’m not holding it against you. I know how swamped you’ve been, poor things. That’s why Camilla and I took it upon ourselves to set up this little rendezvous. You deserve something nice, both of you--and I’m here to help make it happen.”
Camilla is keeping her face determinedly neutral, but there’s a little flush rising along her cheekbones, and Palamedes has a feeling about where this is going. “Am I allowed to know any details about what’s in store?”
“All in good time,” Dulcie purrs. Her curls are spilling loose from her bun and tumbling over her collarbones, and she’s wearing something lacy that’s sliding off one shoulder. “For starters, I want you out of those sweatpants. There’s a good boy.”
Harrow adjusts her headphones, clicks the Join button, and the Zoom meeting flashes onto her screen. She mildly resents having a staff meeting on a Saturday, but it’s not like she has any other plans. And it’s not the sort of thing she can easily get out of--when the team she works on is so small, it’s glaringly obvious when someone’s not there. She doesn’t want to give Ianthe any opportunities to act superior.
She keeps her video off. These people don’t need to see inside her house. Ianthe’s video is on, revealing a home office lavishly decorated in purple and gold. God--well, his real name is John, but everyone around the lab calls him God because of his saintly manner and the near-total amount of power he has over their careers--is sitting in front of a nondescript white background wearing a somewhat rumpled button-down shirt. “Hi, girls,” he says. “Thanks for meeting on a weekend. I just wanted to check in and see how the data was coming along.”
Just as Harrow is idly thinking you could have done that over email , a horrific noise starts up from the next room. A pounding bassline shakes the floor a little. Unquestionably one of Griddle’s workout playlists, being blasted at absolute top volume. She makes sure she’s on mute, and notices Ianthe hastily muting herself as well.
“All right, everyone!” comes her cavalier’s voice from the bedroom, shouting over what Harrow is fairly sure is Nicki Minaj. “Thanks for coming to the first class of Arm-ageddon, the virtual workout class guaranteed to absolutely destroy your biceps! We’re going to start with some warm-ups, so grab your water bottle and your resistance band, and let’s get to work!”
Harrow is deeply grateful that no one can see the look of absolute horror she’s sure is on her face.
“Harrow, why don’t you start,” God is saying, and she realizes with a guilty jolt she hasn’t been paying attention. “Where are you with the numbers on the latest group? How’s it stacking up against the control?”
She unmutes herself. “Um,” she says, “I’m almost done inputting the first set of data. Obviously there’s not enough yet to draw any conclusions, but--”
“Just a moment, Harrow,” God interrupts. “There’s quite a lot of background noise on your end--is your audio all right?”
Harrow is going to make Griddle wish she’d never been born. “I’m sorry,” she says. “The neighbors are a bit loud.”
“I see. Well, let’s hear the update on the numbers, and I suppose you can just keep yourself on mute.”
Harrow stumbles through the update as quickly as she can, and has never been more grateful to press a mute button when she’s done. In the other room, Gideon has moved onto burpees, and there’s a lot of thumping.
God is prompting Ianthe for her update now. “The data analysis from the experiments we ran in January, when can I expect the report on that?”
Ianthe unmutes herself. She looks a bit hesitant, and Harrow thinks with pleasure that maybe she’s fallen behind on her work. Ianthe says, “It’ll be finished by next week. So far the data suggests that--”
“I’m sorry,” interrupts God, “but I’m getting the same background noise from you as well. Could it be a problem on my end? Or perhaps you two have the same noisy neighbors?”
“Thanks for coming, everyone,” says Gideon into her computer. Her arms are sore, and there’s sweat soaking through her tank top, but she feels better than she has in ages. “Don’t forget to do your cooldown, and I’ll see you next week for another round of Arm-ageddon!” She grins and flexes.
A message pops up in the chat: Nice work, Ninth. I’ll be at the next one--might drag Palamedes along as well. And another: this was soooo fun! jealous that harrow gets a permanent front row seat to that gun show haha <3 c
Gideon thanks everyone again, closes the Zoom meeting, and sits back contentedly. For the first time in weeks, she feels useful.
Maybe this isn’t the end of the world after all.