Post-Halloween

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is working. Very seriously. She is not mooning over her new relationship with Gideon even a little bit; she has too much work to do.

She is, however, wearing a skull with accents of deep, almost black purple, with a starburst or floral pattern just below her temple, that she has never been seen to wear before.

Other than that sentimental embellishment, however, she is entirely focused on Obaeg's Toward a Common Haemographology. She is making copious notes in the margins--courting future simian fury--and thinking that she should have found this for Moiraine before they started working on her weave notation.

Comments

[we_do_bones]

She does kind of look like a broken umbrella, but then, that has always been her aesthetic.

"You look cute," says Gideon, firmly, walking her adept away from the closet and towards the bed. "And you tried something new! I love that. Soon you'll be stealing my work out tank tops and then I will have to work out with no shirt, oh noooooooo."

[we_bring_hell]

"I will not be doing that," Harrow says. "But you can work out without a shirt any time you please."

She can't really complain too much when Gideon is carrying her around bodily.

[we_do_bones]

"Sure, you say that now, but later it'll be all 'stop distracting me with your incredible abs, Griddle' and then my feelings will be hurt."

Rather than dumping Harrow directly onto the mattress, she takes a seat herself, and settles Harrow into her lap. It cuts the height difference nicely and she's used it many a time for exactly this: to be able to lean forward just a little and kiss her adept softly on the mouth.

[we_bring_hell]

"If I ever said that, I was delirious," she says.

Sitting on Gideon's lap is nice; being kissed is extremely nice. The spiky defensiveness begins to drift away again.

"Again," she says.

[we_do_bones]

"Your obedient servant," says Gideon, low and on the breath of a laugh.

She kisses her adept again. And then a third time, just to be safe.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow makes a soft sound and relaxes into Gideon's arms, nuzzling into her neck.

"I love you, Griddle."

"Do you really like this silly thing?"

[we_do_bones]

Every time Harrow says it, Gideon worries that the way her heart expands will eventually just crack every rib around it.

She loves it. And she loves how Harrow settles her face into the crook of Gideon's neck because Harrow trusts her and loves her and wants to touch her. It all speaks to a deep-seated protectiveness in her that she hadn't realized existed until they landed on the First, and she wants to fight for that feeling almost as much as she wants to fight for Harrow. "Yeah."

Not because it looks cute or is sexy or any of the usual reasons – although the all apply – but because Harrow (Harrow!) decided to sacrifice her dignity at the altar of trying something new. "And it looks comfy," she adds, smoothing a palm down Harrow's side and along her hip and reveling in the feeling of thin, quality fabric and how Harrow's body feels beneath it.

"But if you really don't like it, I guess I could help you take it off."

[we_bring_hell]

The way Harrow's body feels beneath it is extremely warm, and extremely knobbly, and coiled like a spring. But as Gideon holds her that tightly-wound quality attenuates, and she gradually softens. Nothing but time and food will put more flesh on Harrow's bones, but the more she relaxes the less she feels like an armful of railroad spikes.

"Whatever you want," she murmurs. "It's for you."

"I just feel like when I wrapped up your sword." No amount of wrapping or bows will make anything as sharp and angular and deadly as a sword look like something else.

[we_do_bones]

Harrow, she thinks, will probably never stop trying to make up for seventeen bad years on the Ninth; for before Canaan House, before Milliways. And Gideon doesn't mind, exactly: but Harrow's defining characteristic is trying too hard and honestly, she doesn't have to, with this. It turns out Gideon is an extremely easy lay.

Case in point: her hand resting flat and comfortable on the collection of knobs and bones that is her necromancer and just really not giving a shit what case Harrow comes in.

She wants Harrow. And Harrow wants her. Easy.

"You don't need to wrap yourself up in something you don't like, just for me," Gideon says, gently. Honestly, neither of them are very practiced at gift-giving, even (maybe especially?) when the gift in question is themselves.

"I like it because I like you."

[we_bring_hell]

"It's not... bad," she says, stiltedly. She really has no words for this kind of conversation.

"I just get in my own way."

She finds a spot behind Gideon's jaw and kisses it, then bites gently.

[we_do_bones]

"That's because you are a control freak," Gideon says, but it lacks heat when that kiss and the light rasp of Harrow's teeth against her skin make her shiver.

She reaches down for the hem of the nightie's skirt, and slips her hand beneath to run her palm up Harrow's thin leg. "And because you grew up with a bunch of bad nuns and a bunch of responsibilities that all taught you it was wrong to care about frivolous things like clothes."

[we_bring_hell]

"It feels like--" Harrow begins, but then Gideon's hand crosses the Rubicon of her hem, and she just moans and bites down on her cavalier's neck like the vampire of enemy propaganda. She shifts in her lap to open herself to the questing hand.

[we_do_bones]

"Like?" says Gideon, evilly, while taking advantage of the newly available room. Harrow's knees are bony, but the skin of her inner thighs is soft even if she lacks much muscle beneath it.

[we_bring_hell]

Oh, as if her train of thought had any chance of surviving that.

"Gideon," she gasps against the bite mark. "Queen of my heart. Jewel of my House. Beloved. Beloved."

"Don't you dare stop."

[we_do_bones]

Gideon, trained to run headfirst into battle, to find weak points and use them to shatter an opponent, ducks her face into the crook of Harrow's neck and does not stop.

She couldn't. She loves it all too much. Harrow's short gasping breaths, the words that spill out from her mouth and sink into Gideon's skin. How she feels. How Gideon feels about making her feel this way. She's learned a lot in the last week, about what Harrow likes and what she loves, and Gideon is a quick study.

Her touch is gentle and slow, but she does not stop and she does not hesitate. She is as relentless as an incoming tide that promises to swamp them both.

[we_bring_hell]

If Harrow could have completed her thought, it might have read something like this:

It feels like I died long ago and have been a construct for many years, a servant of my heartless intellect, and you have brought me back to life. Is that blasphemy? If it is, I do not regret it.

Gideon Nav, my Resurrector; my beloved.

Except probably not, because the part of Harrow that wants to explain itself lacks that kind of eloquence. Harrow's body has been neglected and mistreated for most of two decades; it is a feral creature. But Gideon has been winning its trust, and now it curls up and purrs for her, metaphorically.

Literally, too, once the gasps and trembling pass.

[we_do_bones]

After, Gideon presses kisses to Harrow's flushed face and wraps her arms around her adept again to just hold her safe and close.

"Harrow," she says, quiet, reverent, but she doesn't have any other words; she just holds on, arms firm, eyes closed, her face pressed against Harrow's fresh-shaved scalp.

She's not much for quotation, but Ruth keeps floating in and out of her head: where you go I will go; where you stay I will stay. It's as good as anything else she knows for defining this determination that never leaves or sways.

[we_bring_hell]

Gideon's arms holding her steady; Gideon's breath on the sensitive skin of her scalp. Gideon all around her. This is the opposite of hallucination; this is safe, solid, real.

"Griddle, are you still fully dressed?" she grumbles in a voice very like, indeed, a purr.

[we_do_bones]

"Uh..."

She has to actually look to make sure, because it has honestly completely slipped her mind. "Yep."

[we_bring_hell]

"Disgraceful," she says, stirring. "How dare you." She squirms in Gideon's lap, trying to shift around to a straddle and pry up her shirt.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon releases her, laughing, and submits to being clambered on as though she is a tree or ladder.

"Well, you were busy."

[we_bring_hell]

With absolutely no grace or romance she strips Gideon's shirt and hurls it into a far corner.

"Hmph."

She concludes that there is no way to get Gideon's pants off while sitting in her lap and rolls more fully onto the bed. "Undress for me, please, Griddle," she says, in a fussy, bossy voice that is eminently familiar from less enjoyable errands.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon sketches a sarcastic bow, but stands and does as Harrow bids without wasting time on teasing her further.

Well, not teasing her much. She pauses before climbing back beside Harrow, and does a turn. "Better?"

The Ninth's platitudes about vanity have never really landed for her.

[we_bring_hell]

"Spectacular," she says, rising up on her knees to draw Gideon back to the bed. "Absurd."

"I could use you to teach anatomy. I am going to devour you, Gideon Nav."

It isn't quite pillow talk; she is talking like Harrow, just a slightly unhinged Harrow, a type of Harrow Gideon has seen before. Harrow drunk on some unheard of necromantic accomplishment, except the the accomplishment is having Gideon, here, glorious and naked.

[we_do_bones]

"You could, except your head would explode with jealousy when all your students see me naked."

Said as she swarms right into Harrow's arms, pressing kisses to Harrow's mouth and not being able to find a reason to stop grinning in response to it all. "On second thought, forget it. You should give me an anatomy lesson. Right...now."