undonewithout | oh if you knew just what a fool you have made me

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gideon

oh if you knew just what a fool you have made me

They find their way into the new shape of things over the next month. The barriers and boundaries, walking the tension between what Gideon desires and what Harrow can allow, all of it kept secret and safe within the walls of their apartment. It doesn't always work; there are fights and frigid silences, Gideon throwing herself into workouts as an act of aggression and Harrow immersing herself in a book or Sextus' latest draft of theories and theorems with as much pointed intensity. When it's successful, though, when all the fractured pieces of themselves come together into some temporary whole...

Harrow does not find it unpleasant. Not entirely.

She insists that they act no different than usual in public, still necromancer and cavalier, still as Ninth as they can be in a pre-Resurrection backwater. It's the only way it can work, and though Gideon makes no secret of her opinion, grumbling at home and out, trying to catch Harrow's hand or stand a little closer than ordinary, she bears it with an aggrieved stoicism that sets Harrow's teeth on edge and almost amuses her all at once. She harbors no illusion that Gideon's patience will last forever; this new change will soon find itself brayed to the world--or merely to the Sixth (bad enough, and Harrow already suspects the Warden and his Hand know some scrap of it anyway) and Maeve (even worse)--but for now something close enough to privacy reigns between them.

The one topic Gideon can't let go, refuses to let go despite arguments and at least three battles with constructs, is the idea of a date. The term isn't unfamiliar, nor the concept, but both strike Harrow as wholly unnecessary. They know what they are, what they've become to one another; that should suffice, and yet for her cavalier, it's only the beginning. She wheedles and pleads, starts dropping it into conversations at points both ludicrous and logical, and while Harrow will never admit to being worn down, she's intelligent enough to see that getting this out of Gideon's system may be the only way of shutting her up.

The one least liable to result in questions or a disapproving look from Sextus, that is.

Gideon picks the day, and Harrow the place. At the appointed hour, they set off for Petros Park, Harrow casting furtive looks at anyone they pass and keeping her hands tightly folded, her arms rigid to discourage any soft touch or brief tangle of fingers. "I forbid you from enjoying this," she mutters as they walk, when everyone else is out of earshot. "So wipe that smile off your face. You look like a loon."

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"I should be horrified that the one thing you gleaned from your years on Drearburh was that we liked skulls, but considering it's you, it's barely a surprise." Harrow stays still as Gideon changes position, her hands wrapped stiffly around her mug as she raises it to her lips and takes a sip. It takes her a minute, maybe two, before she shifts another half-inch, leaning towards the warm and inviting stretch of Gideon's side.

"She does like skulls, though," she says. "I will give you that."

"We do bones, motherfucker," says Gideon, a grin twitching the corner of his mouth. Harrow settles in against her side and Gideon lets out a little contented breath. "She wishes she was as creepy as you at your best," she says.

The smug satisfaction that turns the corner of Harrow's lips up is familiar; less so the flip her stomach does at the warm sound of Gideon's voice, but she accepts both reactions. Even welcomes them, if hesitantly. "I am the greatest necromancer of my generation," she says. "Surpassing my father. My grandmother. Every adept that's ever touched a skeleton for the last myriad and all the myriads to come."

She turns her head, letting her cheek rest more fully against the soft cotton of Gideon's shirt. Slowly, she lets out a breath. "My best is glorious. Better than whatever they can dream up for this, and I am gratified you've noticed, Griddle."

Harrow rests her cheek against her chest and sighs happily and Gideon has to ride out a wave of arousal and love so strong that it makes her dizzy.

"I always noticed," she says, quietly.

Gideon's quiet certainty is one of those things hindsight's showed her has always been there, but hearing it said so plainly still manages to make it sound like something new. "I know," she says, after a long pause and a quick flicker of unguarded emotions across her face. "Even when I wasn't paying attention to you, you were paying attention to me."

"Had to keep you where I could see you, didn't I?" says Gideon, resting her cheek against Harrow's hair for a moment, her fingers stroking lightly against the fabric of her sleeve. On screen, two characters start aggressively making out and her cheeks flush reflexively.

"Often literally," says Harrow, warmth spreading across her face again when Gideon's cheek brushes her hair and her fingers run along the fabric of her sleeve. "Those seven months where you didn't turn your back on me once. I was almost impressed at how long you managed to keep it going. And the lengths you took."

A particularly embarrassing noise from the couple onscreen has her stomach doing another of those disconcerting flips--and again, when she turns her head just enough to see the blush on Gideon's face. "I don't think they were this...enthusiastic, last episode."

"In all fairness, you'd given me a fucking good reason to figure it out," says Gideon, fondly. Harrow turns her face a little, and Gideon catches the pinkish tip of her nose, the dead petal blush of her lips. "Yeah. They're definitely figuring something out."

"At no point did I think that figuring it out would encompass you scuttling crabwise along the sanctuary wall at the end of services," Harrow replies, raising one dark eyebrow. Their eyes meet a moment later, and while she's not sure if Gideon's blush deepens, hers definitely does. "I think that's a different kind of figuring out, Nav. One you'd say is more pleasant, I'm sure."

"I absolutely did not skuttle," says Gideon with as much dignity as she can muster with her face flushed like it is. "And yeah, I think I probably would. It's like you know me or something."

"I know what I saw," she says, with all the foreboding she can manage. Under the circumstances, pressed close to Gideon's side and with Gideon's fingers still stroking lightly over her arm, hot even through the protective layer of her sleeve, it isn't much. Harrow takes a sip of her tea, her teeth making a light sound on the porcelain as she keeps the mug against her mouth for a beat longer than necessary.

"If you're going to ask me something, just say it."

It's not quite permission, but it is a tell; not an open door, but a chink of light. Gideon swallows.

"Can I kiss you?"

Harrow leans forward and sets her mug on the table, moving unhesitantly back to her prior place at Gideon's side; not an answer in words, but the start of a reply all the same. She takes another breath, her face burning, a twist low in the center of her that's something other than disgust or discomfort at its heart.

"You can kiss me."

Blindly reaching back to set her mug on the side table, Gideon shifts, her free hand coming up to brush Harrow's jaw as she leans in and ghosts her lips against the other girl's.

Her stomach flips, and it's not at all unpleasant.

Someone as strong as Gideon shouldn't kiss with this much care, the gentleness in it at odds with everything Harrow always expected the other girl to be--everything she'd been until they were forced together at Canaan House, until the layers of themselves started to fall away. Harrow's breath shivers in the wake of that soft, hesitant touch of Gideon's lips to hers, her eyes still tightly closed.

They stay that way even as she presses forward, kissing Gideon again more firmly, with just a little more purpose.

Harrow nudges the kiss deeper and Gideon groans softly, her fingers still light against Harrow's jaw. She shifts against the sofa, changing the angle, bending her head.

Gideon's soft groan lances through her, and it takes Harrow no small amount of effort to hold back an answering sound of her own. She's aware of every bright spot of contact between Gideon's fingers and her jaw, every shift in the angle of her head or the twist of her body on the sofa. She doesn't stop kissing her.

"Emperor's blood, Harrow," mumbles Gideon when she comes up for air, resting her forehead against Harrow's. "It's okay if you don't want to but please tell me you're in the mood for more than this..."

She opens her eyes when the kiss finally breaks, her breath shivering in counterpoint to Gideon's. "I want more than this," she says, and just giving it voice makes her tremble. Deliberately, she turns her arm under Gideon's hand, pulling back until she can lace their fingers together instead. "Not...everything, but I'll tell you when we have to stop."

Harrow takes her hand and says that and Gideon's cunt throbs.

"Here or in bed?"

"Stay here," Harrow says, though not without imagining the alternative--informed a little better now after a few heady, hazy nights where sleep didn't come for either of them until an hour or two after they'd crawled into bed. Her flushed cheeks turn a deeper red. "For now."

It's a promise she doesn't know if she can keep, vague as it is, but merely making it feels like an acceptable show of effort.

"Okay," says Gideon, loving the flush of Harrow's pale cheeks. She bends her head, taking another kiss. "Tell me what you want?" She says. "Talk me through it?"

It's always best, always easiest, when Harrow's completely in charge

The low ache between her thighs intensifies at the pair of questions and how Gideon looks as she asks them; patient and hopeful, golden eyes alight under the careful disarray of her hair. "Help me into your lap," she says, amazed by the steadiness of her voice. Keeping her hold on Gideon's hand, she shifts until she's perched, bird-light, in Gideon's lap, her knees at either side of her cavalier's hips beneath the cover of the blanket.

Biting her lip, she looks at her. "Good so far?"

"Good so far," says Gideon, fingers of one hand still tangled with Harrow's, the other resting loosely against the couch cushion. She tips her head back against the couch, biting her lip over a grin.

"You could be helpful and turn off the fucking television," Harrow says, smirking when Gideon's head flops back against the couch cushions. She leans, grabbing the remote, and does it herself. "Since we're not watching it anyway."

Dropping the remote again, she takes hold of Gideon's other hand, moving them both to the slender, straight sides of her torso. The spread of Gideon's fingers against her body, the heat from her palms and the tips of her fingers, makes her eyelashes flutter once, and then again. Positioning Gideon like this, limbs and hands and once even the angle of her head arranged just so, holds a charge Harrow hadn't totally anticipated. It's one of the things keeping her chasing this, pushing her comfort inch by hard-fought inch.

Letting go of Gideon's wrists, Harrow reaches out, tracing her finger up the firm line of the other girl's jaw and towards her hairline. Her fingers comb into the red strands of Gideon's hair, pulling slightly to coax her head back up.

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