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The last thing Gideon Nav expected to see in the partner dance course’s opening lesson was Harrowhark Nonagesimus, standing in the shadow, upright and rigid with all her gothic glory. She stood in the farthest corner of the gym, the only place the orange glow of slanting winter light didn’t reach. That little vampire bitch, Gideon thought. Who on earth had managed to force her to join a dance class of all things – without making it into a cheery bloodbath with at least four dead, twelve injured? And she looked miserable too, clutching her well-worn hoodie’s sleeves and turning her head around constantly, as if any moment a rabid animal would manifest out of thin air and bite her buttocks.
Gideon had been lost in thought until Mercymorn’s piercing voice finally reached her ears. “Let’s begin! Everyone, hurry up and choose a dance partner for yourselves already. One of you must take the role of the leader, and the other will be the follower. Now, traditionally these roles are determined by gender, but I truly don’t give a damn about how you want to do this, so, whatever. Go wild.”
Everyone stood around awkwardly, hands twitching on their sides, glancing around the room.
“Well?! What are you still standing there for? I don’t have all day here!” Mercymorn clapped her hands together impatiently, and people started to couple up.
Harrow looked, if possible, even more miserable. She still stood in her corner, like a nauseous hamster about to throw up all over the floor. Indeed, she looked so out of it she didn’t even seem to notice Gideon intently staring at her while everyone else around them found a dance partner.
Gideon sighed. The class was full of beautiful girls she would’ve gladly danced with, and Harrowhark’s scrawny ass definitely belonged to the deepest bottom of that list. Gideon was sure the girl would smell like sweat and evil thoughts, and there would be no guarantee she wouldn’t chop the hands off from anyone daring to break into her two-meter-wide personal bubble, and yet– And yet Gideon found herself taking confident (she hoped) strides across the room, with charming smile plastered on her face. She bowed deep in front of the girl, and said–
Gideon said nothing. The pompous words withered in her throat as Harrow glanced up at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “Griddle,” she said faintly, sounding confused.
The smile followed her swallowed words right into her digestive tract. Gideon said instead, “Bonjour.” She nodded. “Motherfucker.”
Harrow blinked. Gideon snapped her fingers, making Harrow flinch. Gideon almost felt bad about it. “Earth to Ebony Dark'ness Dementia. Are you hearing my words? How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Eat shit, Nav.”
“There she is,” Gideon grinned. “The hell are you doing in a dance class, Nonagesimus?”
Harrow’s eyebrows frowned even deeper that Gideon thought possible. “I had no other choice. I need to get my extra credits for the semester, and it was either this or poetry.”
“You’re telling me you, the Emperor of All Things Melodramatic & Melancholic, wouldn’t adore poet-“
“Silence!!” Mercymorn’s ice cold stare brought Gideon back to earth and down to the floor. “We will start with the easy one – tango.” Her malicious smile told Gideon it was not, in fact, the easy one.
Gideon leaned close to Harrow, whispering in her ear, “You just chose this class to get close to me, I know your tricks you evil stick. You just want a piece of this.”
Harrowhark kicked her in the ankle. Gideon swore under her breath. This should be fun.
…It was not fun. The first half of the class they trained the steps by themselves, which was easy enough. Sure, Gideon confused right for left once and crashed into Harrow, resulting Harrow probably cursing Gideon with nine years of bad luck. But other than that, it was fine. For the last half though they had to dance together. Surprisingly – shockingly – Harrow agreed to be the follower right off the bat. “You might as well do all the work, since you actually care about this shit,” she shrugged. “I just want to get this done and proceed to never think about any of this, ever again.”
“Keep telling that to yourself sweetheart. This is gonna be an experience you’ll think about when you’re ninety.”
Harrow’s opened mouth and narrowed eyes told Gideon she would’ve most definitely delighted in violence right then and there, if Mercymorn hadn’t chosen that blessed moment to scream in their ears.
“You call this dancing?! You’re supposed to do it together, get closer! Infants. This is what I get from losing the bet to Augustine, God damn it… closer! Closer, this is tango, not Walmart checkout queue.”
They had no choice but press against each other. Harrow’s face was dark with wrath. Gideon placed her one hand on the other girl’s back, and held her other hand up, accordingly. Harrow’s hand was warm, bordering on feverishly hot. Her height placed her face right in front of Gideon’s tits, which Gideon found a punishment suiting enough.
She took one step back, Harrow didn’t budge. Step forward. Nothing.
“You’re supposed to move your legs, asswipe,” Gideon huffed.
“You’re supposed to lead–“
“Eugh, I’ve had it,” Mercymorn hissed. “Since you two seem experts enough to ignore my teaching and constantly blabber on, why don’t you show everyone how it’s done?” She marched to the speakers, leaving Gideon and Harrow standing in the starting position, while everyone gathered around them. Gideon sighed. She had only picked this class to hit on girls and rise her attractiveness from high to sky-high levels; and there she was, hand in unlovable (not to mention sweaty) hand with a girl she despised. Damn her soft heart.
After a few silent seconds the song started playing. Gideon almost burst out laughing – it was El Tango de Roxanne, from Mouling Rouge. Figures. That stupid movie had been one of the few DVDs in the children’s home both of them had lived too many years in. Gideon remembered watching it several times, sitting on the worn couch, sometimes alone, sometimes with Harrow, but never with any adults around. She even remembered one time Harrow had started to push her feet into Gideon’s face while watching the film, so Gideon had kicked Harrow off the couch and sent the popcorns flying. Harrow had started crying, and Gideon had been banned from watching TV for a month.
So, there they stood, the circle closing once again, in the middle of the dance floor, with no idea how to proceed.
“You said you wanted to lead,” mumbled Harrow, from somewhere below. She looked up at Gideon, eyes lightless voids. “Lead.”
At the first “Roxanne”, Gideon rolled her eyes and went for it. She held Harrow tight and dropped her, sudden and quick, down enough for Harrow’s short black hair to almost kiss the floor. Harrow yelped and dug her nails into Gideon’s arms, holding on for dear life. Gideon brought her back up. She took a step back. A step forward. Harrow followed awkwardly, stumbling in her feet, barely keeping up. Gideon took a dramatic step to the side and turned her head back. She could hear the last will to live kiss Mercymorn’s body goodbye, as well as the eyes rolling out of the teacher’s head.
“You literally asked for this,” Gideon muttered, hoping Mercymorn would hear her. She made a few rounds with this pattern, step back, step forward, step to the side. She gave Harrow a dip, this time without the yelp, just a soft gasp. Then she sent Harrow spinning around, caught her just in time before she could get tangled in her chicken feet and pulled the girl back against her. Step back, step forward, step to the side. Quick movements, dramatic turns – that was all Gideon knew about tango, and she had decided to make the most of it.
They went around the room, other students stood back with amused looks on their faces. As Gideon strode forward, Harrow backed up the whole gratuitous tour. Then they resumed to the dramatic turns. After she had spun Harrow enough for the girl to get green around the gills, Gideon dipped her once again and left her there for a while, back laid against her thigh, rigid in Gideon's steady arms.
“WHYYYY DOES MY HEART CRYYYY,” Gideon sang along the song. She pulled Harrow up, took two steps forward and spun her around, again and again. “FEEEEEEEELINGS I CAAAAAN’T FIIIIGHT!” She almost laughed at Harrow’s priceless expression of fierce confusion and murderous intents but managed to keep her face serious for the drama of it all.
The music swelled and swelled, she whirled around with Harrow, until stopping exactly the last dramatic ending beat. They ended up in the position they started in, standing close to each other, out of breath - Harrow way more than Gideon, even though she had only been hanging along while Gideon did all the work.
“Well,” said Mercymorn, after the silence in the room had prolonged enough. “That must have been the most painfully godawful butchering of tango I have ever had the misfortune to witness. Congratulations. Now if you excuse me, I must go wash my eyes with bleach. See you all next Friday.”
***
Harrow ran out of the gym, not looking back. She could feel her noble plans of never think about any of this, ever again tumbling down all around her.
After that fatal day, El Tango De Roxanne kept playing in Harrow’s head on a never-ending loop. She sat in the shower for an hour but couldn’t get rid of the feeling of Gideon’s arms around her. It was all burnt into her, pass her cortex and into the brain stem already. When she closed her eyes at night, the gym class scene started to play in her head. She wanted to smother herself with a pillow. She wanted to tear her own brain off. She wanted to punch Gideon Nav in the face.
To top it all off, Harrow was certain Gideon had only agreed to be her dance partner out of pity. The thought of Gideon Nav's pity filled her with unspeakable rage. She avoided the girl as much as she could, but a week went by in a blink of an eye, and on Friday she found herself stepping into the gym. Her eyes found Gideon right away, as they always did in any room she was in. She sighed, sent a quick prayer to the Lord to grant her strength, and went to Gideon.
***
They kept on with tango for a couple of lessons, then changed to samba. When Harrow looked ready to jump off a cliff at Mercymorn’s instructions for hip movements, Gideon laughed so hard Mercymorn kicked her out of the room. Harrow followed soon after, upon realizing she would have to dance with someone else without Gideon - the only thing worse than dancing with Gideon had to be dancing with anyone else. Harrow found Gideon sitting outside on the stairs, tears of laughter drying on her face.
When Mercymorn screamed about “hip movements” on the next samba class, Harrow went completely overboard with it. Jiggling her hips under her loose clothes as much as she could, she earned an honest laugh from Gideon. That was only one of many times Gideon got kicked out of the class, but it was the first time for Harrow. She felt mortified, but when Gideon made fun of Mercymorn’s hip movements, she laughed, loud and shrill. She laughed so rarely it felt strange as it echoed inside her head. Gideon looked like she’d seen a ghost, and Harrow regretted letting the laugh escape. Still, she couldn’t help smiling when she remembered how Gideon had laughed at her joke.
Weeks went on, and their next dance was boogie-woogie. Gideon was absolutely thrilled about it, and her enthusiasm started to catch on to Harrow as well. The dance was all quick bouncy steps, upbeat tunes and spinning. They took fast steps away from each other, then steps closer, then away, then close again. They spun around together, Harrow brought her hand up and rose on her toes to give Gideon enough room to spin under her arm.
By the end of the third boogie-woogie lesson, even Harrow had gotten the hang of it, and she was hopping to the beat of the music, losing herself in it, ecstatic. It might have been the most fun she had ever had in her life. She laughed out loud, this time not even ashamed, because Gideon smiled at her, warm and familiar, full and dear. Harrow’s stomach and legs ached terribly at the sight.
The gloomy winter days of low hanging clouds started giving promises of spring. The sun started to feel warm on Harrow’s skin, blinding with all the light in heaven and earth; the snow melted off the rooftops, falling in little puddles, reflecting the blue skies of spring. Soon enough Harrow noticed that the dreaded Friday dance class had become something she spent the whole week waiting for. She liked the drama of tango, the fast twists of boogie-woogie, the folk dances with lots of jumps and claps of hands and excessive twirling, even samba, and of course, the waltz that, once they had trained it enough, felt like flying. And most of all and despite her best efforts, she liked Gideon, Gideon, Gideon.
***
“Ready for our last waltz, night boss?”
“Finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for all spring,” said Harrow, looking like she wasn’t ready at all. To be honest Gideon didn’t feel too ready herself. Despite everything she had expected, dancing with the death-cult-gremlin had been fun. Seeing the girl’s face light up with genuine joy was something Gideon never thought she’d be able to witness, let alone be the cause of.
It was the last lesson of the dance class; Mercymorn called it the spring ball, and everyone had dressed up for the occasion. Gideon had put on brown pants, a white button down shirt and suspenders, while Harrow had a black suit two sizes too big. She had probably put on every piece of jewellery she owned, painted her eyes with the sharpest eyeliner known to mankind and used the same stuff for her lips. If Gideon had a gun pointed to her temple, she would have admitted Harrow looked stunning.
As the first notes of the waltz started, Gideon felt her eyes burn, all of sudden. It would likely be their last waltz indeed, and to her utter shock she realized she would miss this. She bowed deep and held out her hand. Harrow took it so surely, like it was something she did every day. Gideon brought her close and started the steps slowly, swaying to the beat. They spun around the room together and Gideon felt like she was exactly where she was always meant to be.
When the ball was over and everyone started to leave, Gideon noticed Harrow still standing in the middle of the dance floor, wiping her eyes, smudging the carefully drawn eyeliners. She sniffled and Gideon’s eyes grew wide.
“Oh my God Nonagesimus,” she gasped, “are you crying?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Harrow said, not quite steady. “I’m just happy it’s over and now I never need to see you again.”
“No yeah, right, exactly.” Gideon rolled her eyes and wrapped the smaller girl in a hug. Harrow’s hair smelled like floral shampoo and Gideon chuckled as she pressed her nose to it. “Did you shower for the occasion? Gosh. You were really invested in this shit, weren’t you? I bet you spent hours just getting ready for our last waltz.”
Harrow wrapped her arms around her tight and mumbled a gentle “Fuck you, Gideon," against her shoulder. She breathed, letting the silence settle around them, and then, “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d – I’d love to dance with you again, some day.”
“Of course I wouldn’t mind. You absolute clown,” Gideon smiled. “I wouldn’t mind at all.”