undonewithout | 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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For a moment, it's just the firm weight of Gideon's hand, Gideon's fingers between her thighs--and then she moves. It doesn't matter that it's more exploratory than anything else, a careful bit of contact; the shift of Gideon's finger is electric and strange, and Harrow squirms to meet it.

"Fuck," she says, and her voice only barely sounds like her own.

It takes a moment to get the position of her fingers right, shifting her hand until the callused pads of her fingers slide over Harrow's clit.

God. She'd never in a million years imagined the other girl would be so wet.

Gideon touches her more purposefully, her fingers sliding through the slickness of her cunt and over her clit; Harrow's only glad, thankful to everything she's ever believed in, that the surprise only shows itself in her cavalier's face. To have it mentioned, given voice and purpose, would be a humiliation too great to bear. Instead, there's only the touch and the sound of their breathing, the soft shift of Harrow's body against the sheets as her hips twist.

It's too much, and everything, and Harrow's humiliated by how badly she wants more.

Harrow moves, rocking her hips up into the touch between her thighs and, most importantly, she doesn't pull away, doesn't tell Gideon to stop. Gideon groans softly, pressing soft kisses against the side of Harrow's throat as she starts to touch her with more purpose.

There is a desperation to this, Harrow's clothes pushed only just far enough aside for Gideon to touch her, Gideon's mouth hot on her neck, Gideon's fingers starting to abandon their slow and exploratory pace for something faster. It should be unnecessary, but there's no guarantee this will ever happen again--and Harrow knows that as well as Gideon does. She shivers at the sound of Gideon's groan, her throat working as she tries to keep back an answering sound.

More than anything, more than anything she's ever wanted, she wants to make Harrow come - to see what her face does, to hear that sounds she makes, to feel it around her fingers. She sucks lightly at Harrow's skin, nipping at her skin with the very edges of her teeth. Her fingers rub rhythmically over Harrow's clit.

Harrow twists and squirms under Gideon's attention, aware of the building tension low between her thighs, the sensation she could tell herself she's never felt before, but still knows for what it is. She clings to Gideon with one hand, her fingers digging hard into the firm muscle of her shoulder, the fabric of her shirt a thin layer between her fingertips and the heat of Gideon's skin.

As Gideon's teeth scrape over her skin, Harrow comes, her breath stuttering out of her in quiet, strained pants that sound more obscene than if she'd let herself give in to the degradation of moaning. It goes on forever. It ends far too soon.

Harrow comes, panting for breath, and Gideon just manages to get her head up before it happens so that she can watch it happen, her fingers still working between Harrow's thighs.

"You're beautiful," she says, and means it, utterly.

"Absolutely not," she murmurs, too wrung out for any further protest. Gideon touches her, guiding her through, and the carefulness of it is embarrassing and deeply necessary all at once. Opening her eyes only when she can put it off no longer, Harrow feels her cheeks burn at the look on Gideon's face.

It's a moment before Gideon moves, pulls her hand out of Harrow's underwear. She sits up, her back half turned to Harrow as she looks down at her slick fingers. "You're totally not going to like what I want to do," she says, glancing back at Harrow, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Which doesn't mean that I don't want it."

"I rarely if ever like your ideas, Griddle," Harrow points out, black eyes widening when Gideon looks down at her slick fingers. "...I am unequivocally not asking you for details."

Gideon keeps her back half turned to Harrow as she bends her head and lifts her hand and, one by one, sucks the taste of Harrow's cunt off her fingers. She manages to bite back a groan as it floods her mouth. Her own cunt clenches so hard she thinks she's going to pass out for a moment.

Gideon turns away and sucks her fingers clean, and all Harrow can do is watch, rendered speechless by something that isn't entirely horror and not fully desire, just a bizarre mix of the two. Her face, already flaming, burns even hotter when she hears the sound that almost-but-not-quite spills from Gideon's mouth, muffled around the obstacle of her fingers.

"Emperor's fucking blood, Nav."

"Couldn't help myself," says Gideon, and she does blush when she says it. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. "Sorry." She lies back, her head on the pillow, ignoring the ache between her thighs, and looks across at Harrow. "Okay?"

"There is no universe where you're sorry for that, and we both know it," Harrow says, and finds herself smirking. As Gideon rolls over and settles again, she turns to face her, her teeth snagging her lower lip. She nods. "I'm okay."

"Good." Gideon leans in and presses a kiss to the soft skin at the junction of Harrow's nose and her forehead and, for a moment, she tastes salt. "I'm going to take a shower. Do you want to get in first?"

Gideon's kissed her there before--the first time it ever happened, even, in the pool at Canaan House--but every time it strikes Harrow as some new and wondrous revelation. She thinks the question over, shaking her head. "You can go first. I can wait."

She needs, just a little, to remember how to move at all. The thought embarrasses her, but it's true.

Gideon desperately needs to take care of some things in the shower, her face flushed and hectic as she leans in and takes another kiss before rolling out of bed altogether.

"Love you," she tosses over her shoulder as she heads in the direction of their bedroom and lets the door shut behind her.

Harrow's face is as flushed as Gideon's by the time the door shuts; she knows the intention behind Gideon's haste, and as embarrassing as it is there's a power to it too, strange and unexpected. Trusting the other girl to rouse her when it's time, Harrow curls further under the sheets, her eyes closing.

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

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