it will rise in perfect light.

gideon and harrow both work for john, gideon as the nepo-hire head of security and harrow as a researcher. for cross contamination reasons (or whatever i was an eng and arts major — the fuck do i know about labs) harrow keeps the makeup to the bare minimum. from 6 pm to 8 am, however, harrow is in full goth mode. gideon, the himbo she is, has major makeup blindness.

blah blah blah, they have a testy relationship with harrow resenting gideon’s perceived boost to the top (she’s genuinely good at her job, but she probably would be head of anything at 32 if her sperm donor didn’t control the entire operation) and with gideon resenting harrow’s rigidity and hyper-seriousness.

everyone once in a while, gideon goes to the craft store to pick up materials to make clothes for her nendo dolls. (her mom’s on-again-off-again gf has survivalist tendencies and taught her the basics of mending. youtube taught everything else.) without fail, there’s always one item she just can’t find. it never bothers her, tho, because that just means she gets to ask the hot goth store associate for help.

the hot goth store associate is (of course) harrow in full goth make up. also, she doesn’t work at the craft store. she’s just always there to pick up materials to make and repair clothes. (her mother was a tradwife catholic who resented the “profanity” of modern clothing. harrow has nothing against modern clothes, really, she’s just so in the habit of making her own clothes that it never occurs to her to just go buy them instead.)

harrow KNOWS it’s gideon, her colleague, but even after a year of this stupid misunderstanding, gideon hasn’t figured out that 1) she doesn’t work there and 2) she works in the same building as gideon and they have lunch around the same time every day. (of course it’s not on purpose on either end…) harrow has the social skills of an evil ai tho and just… never finds a way to tell gideon.

campal also work with them, doing something or the other. gideon tells cam ALL about her crush on the hot goth store associate and she’s not an imbecile so she’s already connected the dots. campal and harrow just exist with the knowledge that gideon has a huge crush on harrow.

anyways, it all comes to a head at an industry conference dinner which both members of griddlehark usually skip. harrow can’t skip this time she’s receiving an award with palamedes and gideon can’t skip because i dunno reasons related to john and his general disregard for boundaries.