undonewithout | up against these things I can't see

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gideon

up against these things I can't see

It isn't every night that Harrow crosses their narrow hallway in the middle of the night, slipping quietly into Gideon's room--but it's most of them. The solidity of her cavalier's presence, even deep asleep, is a greater reassurance since last month's disappearances, the inexplicable vanishing and subsequent return that still triggered an alarm response at the back of her brain.

Most things in and out of Darrow did, as Gideon was annoyingly apt to point out, but that didn't change the truth of it.

Tonight, Harrow wakes with a jolt to the sound of passing sirens, the tone close enough to the panicked klaxon of the Mithraeum bells that she scrabbles her way into a sitting position before she's even fully aware, fumbling for the sword that should be at her side in its protective coffin of bone. It's not here; it never was, but as the blue and red flash of lights filters into her room she tears the sheets towards the end of the bed in a half-awake and desperate search. Reality catches her after only a minute, less than that, but her pulse still pounds in her ears, her breath coming in jagged, helpless gasps. Execrable flesh magician though she is, she knows enough to slow the beat of her heart and purge the remaining adrenaline from her system. It helps, just enough.

She's fully awake now, though, alone in the ruin of her bed, and falling back to sleep here seems all at once impossible. Quickly, she slips out of bed and goes across the hall, listening at Gideon's closed bedroom door for a moment before she turns the knob and pushes it ajar. She can only just see the shape of Gideon curled under the blankets, warm and solid and deep asleep; she stays in the doorway for another moment, watching her, before she takes the last few steps to the edge of the bed and curls in at her side.

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Moving Gideon's hands into position was one thing, but as they keep kissing Harrow realizes she has no idea what to do with her own. She flails a little, pressing closer as Gideon nudges the kiss deeper, wavering and uncertain even as she wants more. The first brush of their tongues makes her shiver, though not from the thought of once probing Ianthe's mouth like this; she's not looking for a replaced jaw or the bright line of a freshly sutured tongue this time, just taking all of this as it comes, until she can't any more.

The touch of Harrow's tongue to hers draws another soft sound out of Gideon, another flexing tightening of Gideon's fingers at Harrow's waist. She shifts her hips against the bed, under Harrow's waist, helplessly aware of the hopeless throb of her cunt.

Harrow makes a helpless, quivering noise when Gideon holds her tighter and writhes like that. With the way she's sitting, all she can do is be moved with it, roll with it, her arms finally snaking around Gideon's chest, her useless hands splayed along the hard-muscled plane of her back.

"Nav," she says when finally she comes up for air, her head tilted back only far enough to look Gideon in the eye. Spots of color are high on her cheeks, her black Ninth eyes even blacker and more fathomless. "You can try...no promises, but...oh, by the grace of the Tomb, here." Untwisting from her grip on Gideon's torso, she grabs her wrist again with one hand while fumbling with the zipper on her hoodie with the other. Taking it off entirely is impossible--same with losing the shirt underneath--but this much, she can try.

For a half-second that Harrow already knows is going to replay forever in her cav's head, she guides Gideon's hand over the small, high swell of one tit--before abruptly shuddering and pulling it away again. "Nope," she murmurs, almost apologetic as she guides it back to her side instead, between the layers of hoodie and shirt. "I had to...check."

Gideon just about has time for a garbled "oh my shitting God" before Harrow places Gideon's hand on her actual tit. It's smaller than Gideon's own, barely there, but she can feel the hard peak of Harrow's nipple against her palm through the thin stuff of Harrow's t-shirt.

"Uh...thanks for trying?" she says, tipping her head to look up at Harrow, her smile crooked and a little shy.

The outburst is blasphemous, hideous in that Harrow expects God himself would have little problem with it at all, but everything about it is so utterly Gideon there's no way she can stay offended for long. She watches Gideon watching her, the crooked slant of her smile another seed of warmth in her chest. She nods, once, more shyly than she expects.

"Thank you for letting me. And being okay with it not...happening."

Her smile stays true, her hands squeezing lightly on Harrow's waist. "Can I try...just one finger on each hand under?"

Harrow has to think about that, shifting her weight as she stays sitting in Gideon's lap, held carefully by Gideon's hands at her side. The earlier squeeze to her neck had been intolerable, but the gentle pressure at her hips--there and gone in an instant--is oddly reassuring.

"One finger, each hand," she says at last. "Just to see."

"Okay," says Gideon. Her eyes stay fixed on Harrow's face as she shifts her hands, working the index fingers on both hands under the hem of Harrow's t-shirt to just brush against her bare skin.

She holds her breath as Gideon moves her hands, displacing the fabric of her shirt just enough to slide her fingers--distal, middle, proximal, she counts each segment once and then again, left and right--underneath and over her skin. The lightness of the touch makes her shiver, her eyes closing for a moment as she tries to settle into it.

"This is okay."

"Okay," says Gideon, softly, her fingers still moving against Harrow's skin. "Can I kiss you?"

With her eyes still closed, the murmur of Gideon's voice carries a new charge, a greater promise that has her lip catching in her teeth and a low ache starting somewhere that embarrasses her. Harrow inhales slowly, holds it, then exhales. "Please kiss me, Gideon. I...want that. I want that so much."

It's a combination of the use of her name and the naked desire in Harrow's voice, something she'd never expected to hear, makes her head spin.

"I can do that," she says, swallowing as she shifts position, leaving her hands where they are as she leans up to kiss Harrow.

This kiss is as perfect as the last, another entry in a list of things that's already longer than she expected. She returns it, slow and careful, focusing on the warmth of Gideon's mouth on hers and the still-light touch of her fingers along her sides.

Gideon takes it easy, lets Harrow be the one who controls it, the one who sets the pace. She keeps her touch light and, when she makes a soft sound against Harrow's mouth, she feels herself blush.

They stay like that for a while, kissing, Gideon touching her gently just beneath the hem of her shirt. The sound Gideon makes cuts through her, pleasantly. If there had ever been a moment where Harrow imagined the dark and fractured universe that might've ensued if she'd surrendered herself to Ianthe on those long, cold Mithraeum nights, she thinks now that this might be its opposite: warmth and comfort, gentleness she might not deserve but that she opens herself to like a flower seeking the sun.

"Gideon," she says between kisses, low and halting. "How can I touch you? I want to...tell me something easy like this. Simple. I want to try."

She can't think. She doesn't have a clear thought in her head for a moment.

"The backs of your fingers on my belly under my shirt?" She says. "Would that work?"

Harrow had asked the question in honest, blind faith, asked it because she wanted it answered, but Gideon's response still causes her head to reel and her nervous system to flood with some new, impossible mix of adrenaline and arousal. Being too hasty is as dangerous as delaying too much, and Harrow thinks over the question for only as long as she dares.

"One way to find out," she says, half to herself. She turns her hand, skimming it first over the thin fabric of Gideon's shirt, feeling the soft cotton and the firmer muscle just beneath. It takes only the turn of her wrist to catch the hem of her t-shirt with a fingertip; as she slides her hand further underneath, Harrow's face pinches in determined, stoic concentration. With nothing in the way, the heat of Gideon's skin is blazing, the definition of her abdominal muscles distressingly present.

Gideon finds herself almost holding her breath as Harrow touches her, first on top of her shirt, then under it. She swallows, her hands frozen at Harrow's sides, two fingertips still pressed against her skin.

There are so many more points of contact between them than this, but Harrow tunes in to the press of those fingers against her sides and the touch of her own hand on Gideon's belly. Using the backs of her fingers makes it more detached, but there's still no way to fool herself that she's doing anything other than this--than touching her, even lightly. With infinite care, she moves her hand, a trailing sweep over Gideon's belly that makes her shiver.

"I think this is working," she says, her eyes moving up to center on Gideon's face. "Right now, it's...not so bad."

Harrow shivers and Gideon shivers too when Harrow strokes her fingers over her skin like that.

"Okay," she says, nodding slowly. "You can... anything you want. Even if it's just that."

The relief she feels at that is another terrible wave, a comfort and a gentleness she never expected from Gideon--from anyone, but least of all her. There was too much damage between them, too many years of hurt and hate and resentment, but maybe all of that is what could make this possible. She keeps up the sweep of her hand, nodding faintly, her teeth worrying the kiss-flushed curve of her lip.

"You don't have to stay still," she murmurs. "Your hands. You can move." She swallows hard. "I want you to keep touching me."

"Tell me where?" asks Gideon, her fingers tensing a little bit. She's a little bit taken aback by how turned on the thought makes her, the heat that stirs. "How much?"

"Stay at my sides, but go up," she says. Answering the question is the easiest part; she's been making demands of Gideon and everyone else for years, and though her tone is wildly different now, the topic unbelievable, the act itself is normal enough. "No further than the ninth rib, and you can use two fingers, either side."

Like any good and virtuous child of the Ninth, Gideon knows exactly which is the ninth rib. Okay, she's neither good nor virtuous, not a son or daughter of the Ninth, but she still knows which rib Harrow means. Carefully, she slides two fingers on each hand higher, following the straightness of Harrow's sides, achingly aware of how easy it would be to shift her hands slightly and graze her thumbs over Harrow's nipples, hard and obvious under her thin shirt.

Gideon's hands slide higher, and higher still, and as she passes each furrowed line of bone Harrow counts back from twelve. She makes a shaky sound after nine, her fingers twitching against Gideon's belly, her hips shifting slowly to one side, then the other. "Definitely thought I'd need to remind you which one that was," she says, a faint smirk at the corner of her mouth. "You were paying attention."

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