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“You idiot,” said Gideon, looking at Harrow pathetic and pained on the bed, laid fat on her belly. “You dumbass. What are you doing?”
Harrow squinted up at Gideon and Gideon felt a little bad. But not that bad. “It hurts,” she said, in a small voice that didn’t really mesh with the whole defeater of God thing, but Harrow wasn’t one to do what people expected. She pushed herself up on her knees and rearranged herself so that she had her knees curled up against herself, her back to her headboard.
Gideon could have taken the opportunity to feel some sympathy, but although they’d processed a lot of trauma, individual and mutual, and more or less gotten over the thing where they pissed each other off as a fucked-up show of affection, and had a ton of sex, well. Sometimes it was hard not to be kind of an asshole to Harrow anyway. In a loving way.
She sat down at the edge of the bed and reached out to pat Harrow’s ankle. “There, there. It’s just cramps,” said Gideon, the picture of loving comfort, if you liked your loving comfort sarcastic as fuck.
Harrow rolled her own eyes and stared at the ceiling. She winced as another cramp hit her.
Well, Gideon supposed she should have known this day had come. The day when she’d have to illustrate to her girlfriend the birds and the bees, to take her tiny hand and welcome her into the big mean world of periods and wet dreams. After all, Harrow had never had anything like a warm mother figure, especially not by the time she was the House’s clandestine pubescent puppeteer. Gideon at least had benefited from Aiglamene, annoyed and embarrassed, throwing a pamphlet about God’s Special Gift -- as if her dad had invented periods, what a fucking joke -- onto Gideon’s face one evening around age 16.
“Read it,” had said Aiglamene, and Gideon, glancing at the title, Periods Are Not the End !, had replied, “Ooh, is it my birthday,” and Aiglamene had rolled her eyes and shut the door and that had been that. The content was unhelpful and vague. Now that Gideon had met and faced off against Daddy himself she would not have been surprised had he turned out to be the author of such helpful euphemisms as a human female’s crimson stain .
Evidently, this special ceremony had been an exclusive VIP experience, because Harrow gave no sign that she had been exposed to the same lesson Gideon had. At least, this seemed the case.
“So, Harrow,” said Gideon, feeling wise beyond her years, “when you get older your body changes.” She waited for a response. But Harrow was still just looking at the ceiling, pain writ clear on her face, so Gideon added, “The cramps are because — “
Harrow’s voice was irritated when she cut Gideon off. “Nav, I know everything there is to know about the human body. I’m not an idiot, and I’ve read more anatomy books than I’ve had full nights of sleep in my life.”
Gideon was not great at self-control, especially when Harrow was a loving asshole back at her. She snapped, “Then why are you acting like a humongous baby?”
She knew it was unfair. She knew that she herself was known to act like a giant baby on certain days of the month. But she was still so unused to any signs of weakness from Harrow, that a brief pout seemed on par with a full on sobbing fit, if the context were right.
Harrow frowned at Gideon. Without the skull make-up of the past, or the air of absolute fucked-offness, she was mostly cute. “I’ve always taken care of it. You know. Before.”
Gideon frowned back, feeling confused. She’d assumed Harrow had used some kind of weird bone magic necromancy secret to deal with her cramps. Plus, while Harrow wasn’t exactly prudish, it was unlike her to candidly bring up something like masturbation. Not that Gideon was going to stop her. If Harrow wanted to talk about masturbation with her more often, she was going to celebrate it. “ Nice ,” she said. “Jerking off on your period is actually great. I was reading this one article -- ”
“ What ?”
Harrow looked pretty shocked for someone who claimed to know everything there was to know about the human body, but Gideon took the high road and didn’t make fun of her for it right away. She said, quite reasonably, “Well. You know. Orgasms.”
“I meant that I used necromancy to skip my period, Griddle!”
“Well, some of us can’t do weird bone shit with our hands,” said Gideon. She used her recently discovered raising-a-single-eyebrow skill and added in a voice that she knew didn’t sound all that sexy, but which she could not stop using when she blurted out stupid sex jokes, “We do magic instead.”
The joke, which wasn’t even that bad comparatively, landed flat. Harrow showed no signs of acknowledgement nor amusement; instead, her confusion and pain had transformed into thoughtful interest. She gazed into middle distance and mused aloud: “That makes sense, actually, given the properties of endorphins and the function of menstruation—“
“I mean,” said Gideon, “I mostly think it feels good.”
Harrow turned the intensity of her gaze onto Gideon. That gaze had always made Gideon feel something. Not always the same something -- way back when, it had been anger, irritation, resentment, a sacred, secret shiver. None of those were the feelings she felt now. What she did feel was certainly… something .
“Wanna make me feel good?”
Well, shit. Harrow knew how to use her words like arrows, how to launch them with precision and never miss. Sometimes the target was Gideon’s clit and the result was always a bullseye. Gideon coughed. “Um. Uh. Yeah. So that means…?”
The Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus rolled her eyes, quirked up a corner of her mouth in a small smile, and, in a voice that was all dry affection -- if you knew how to listen for it -- but brooked no bullshit, said, “Fuck me, Griddle.”
Gideon grinned and leaned forward.
Cavaliers, necromancers, Necrolords Undying, even the way that Gideon knew the taste of Harrow’s mouth firsthand in a way few lovers could ever claim: the past fell away every time Harrow did something reminded Gideon that regardless of the shitty journey they’d taken to get here, in the end, they were for each other.
Kissing Harrow was always so excellent . Gideon had read about and imagined a lot of kissing over the years, and there had been the weird shit with Ianthe, but that first kiss with Harrow, and every kiss since, had knocked all of her preconceptions right out and replaced them with overwhelming sensations instead. The brush of Harrow’s hair against her cheek, the taste of her tongue pressing gently between Gideon’s lips, the sight of Harrow’s pink cheeks when Gideon pulled back. The sound of Harrow’s small, pleased moans, which made Gideon always want to press harder, take more.
And of course, Harrow had never been one to back down from a fight.
Gideon had shifted so that she was kneeling next to Harrow, a hand flat against the headboard to help her balance and the other grasping at Harrow’s shoulder, pulling her closer, drifting down her arm, fitting itself into the dip at Harrow’s waist.
Once, she’d read an “article” (the kind of absolutely filthy journalism that came in magazines with a pair of boobs on the cover) where one of the people interviewed said they had gotten bored with sex with the person they were ostensibly in love with. Gideon couldn’t comprehend this. She didn’t think she’d ever get tired of the way Harrow felt beneath her, or how it felt when they were pressed against one another and chasing each other’s mouths in delicious, inexorable pursuit -- like they wanted to live in each other’s skin again, and each wanted to be the first to take a bite of the other.
Harrow bit at Gideon’s lip, eliciting a moan from her. Despite years of precedence during which Gideon had attempted to paint herself as staunchly anti-bone, Gideon couldn’t control herself when teeth were involved. She smiled against Harrow’s mouth and was about to return the favor, when Harrow suddenly shuddered and pulled away.
“Cramp,” croaked Harrow, grimacing.
It took Gideon a moment to pull herself back to real life instead of the haze of lust that Harrow’s kisses always sent her into, but then her whole brain sparked up, like, Oh yeah. Orgasms!
“Leave it to me, Beaver,” said Gideon with a saucy wink and two finger guns, a move which she had not practiced in front of the mirror to check for primo sexy vibes. She sat up straight and pulled her shirt off, which muffled her clarifying, “by which I mean, obviously, your -- ”
“Gideon Nav, I will literally throw you in a pit of acid.”
“I think that’d leave you SOL, orgasms-wise,” said Gideon, but Harrow was already taking off her own shirt and Gideon was rearranging herself so that she lay prostrate on her stomach between Harrow’s knees. She glanced up and in an instant her plan -- which had been to immediately get her mouth on Harrow and to get Harrow’s thighs clinging tight and trembling around her whole head -- crumbled into dust.
Harrow’s tits were small and perky and pointed, and just about the cutest thing this side of the River, not that there was much you could call cute on the other side. Her mouth watered just to look at them. Putting her mouth on Harrow’s tits seemed, suddenly, like the most important item on her mental mental to-do list. Her tongue wrapping around one of those nipples, the most important position on the whole roster. The one on the left, especially, called to her, its siren song emitting from its brown pointed peak. Gideon didn’t play favorites with Harrow’s body parts, but she knew what she liked.
Harrow made a sound, something like a chuckle, knowing and breathy. She slid her hand in Gideon’s hair and tugged up.
Well, then.
There was nothing for Gideon to do but obey, and it was all she wanted to do anyway. She pushed herself up and leaned over Harrow’s chest, licked against the softness of Harrow’s skin. O! to hold a breast in her palm! O! to wrap her tongue around the hard nub of a nipple! What untold joy! What unbearable ecstasy!
Harrow moaned above her. Gideon used her teeth to gently pull, and then quickly went back to using her tongue and lips to press wet, filthy kisses against Harrow’s skin. She looked up at Harrow through her eyelashes. When she realized Harrow was watching her with her eyes wide and mouth open, Gideon grinned. “Like that?” she said, which was no mean feat given how otherwise occupied her mouth was.
“Could be better,” said Harrow, although this statement was betrayed by the gasp that followed it when Gideon bit again in the same moment she used her hand to pinch at Harrow’s other nipple.
“Yeah?” said Gideon, cocksure and feeling kind of proud of herself, like she always did when Harrow got really turned on, and, lamenting the loss of a mouth full of Harrow, sat up.
Harrow groaned and lifted her hips. “You monster, if you don’t -- ”
“If I don’t what?” said Gideon, because, again, she loved to be an asshole. Whatever the planned threat had been was lost as Harrow watched Gideon pull off her leggings, settle back belly down between her legs.
If Harrow’s tits had been a temptation too great to ignore, they had nothing on the way seeing her cunt made Gideon feel like her brain was buzzing with need. The kind of need that would not be ignored, that would not be calmed until it was satisfied.
The hair around Harrow’s cunt -- as black as the hair on her head -- clumped together a bit, shining wet with blood and arousal both. The scent of it, which always sent Gideon reeling any day of the month, mouth watering, knees shaking, into an absolute frenzy, was different than usual: iron and earthy, under the familiar salty sweet salt of it. She looked at it for a moment, overwhelmed, before her lifelong oral fixation urged her to get a fucking move on.
The first taste was always brilliant, but so were the next and the next and the next. She moaned into it, lost in it. Sometimes Gideon got distracted by her own anxieties, wondering whether Harrow could possibly be as moved as she seemed, whether she was doing a good job or whether all the practice and secret tongue exercises had been for naught. But not now; right now, Harrow was already scratching her nails through the short hair at the nape of Gideon’s neck, pushing her hips into Gideon’s mouth, gasping out half-uttered words of praise.
Eating pussy when Gideon could get out of her own mind was another flood of sensation. It was one of those times when instinct pushed her forward and rewarded her for following along, like a good sword fight, like the euphoria she sometimes caught on a long run. Here she wrapped her tongue around the firm invitation of Harrow’s clit and sucked; now she ran her tongue up along the edges of her outer labia, enjoying the heat of Harrow’s gorgeous cunt against her cheek.
“That’s so good, love,” panted out Harrow when Gideon pushed her tongue under the hood of Harrow’s clit to seek the tiny rigid bump hidden there if you knew how to look for it. The rare tenderness egged Gideon further on, made her want to bury her face in Harrow until she couldn’t breathe. If she stayed as long as she wanted to, she would have to grow gills. There were worse fates.
Harrow was still grabbing at Gideon’s hair, and Gideon felt caught between the small glorious pain of it, and the pleasure of pressing her tongue inside Harrow, fucking her with it. She tasted blood. She tasted the sharp tang of the deepest part of Harrow, and fell in love with her all over again. Harrow was so slick now and Gideon wanted more. Her own arousal roared in her ears but she ignored it -- Harrow was more important. Maybe more than anything else.
“Could you,” started Harrow, but broke off when Gideon’s nose brushed against her clit. She rolled her hips, seeking more, gasping for breath, and tried again: “Fingers?”
Fingers! Uh, yeah , Gideon could do fingers. But she still never followed orders like she was supposed to. She slowed her tongue but instead of replacing it with her fingers, kept up a slow slide in and out of Harrow. Sometimes -- if at the right moment she put her fingers just so on Harrow’s clit -- moved them exactly so --
“F --fuck ,” said Harrow in a broken sob, and blessed be, she was squirting, dripping down Gideon’s chin, filling her mouth and forcing Gideon to swallow over and over. She lapped up the rest eagerly, didn’t want to miss a drop.
Harrow had hardly stopped writhing when Gideon pushed two fingers -- Harrow was so relaxed now, so wet -- no, three fingers into her and pressed her tongue against Harrow’s clit, and she could feel the pressure of Harrow’s cunt squeezing around her. Harrow grabbed Gideon’s head and kept her in place so she could rub up against Gideon’s tongue, her nose, her cheeks, and then suddenly stilling as the orgasm hit her at full speed. Gideon’s eyelashes were wet from blood and cum and maybe tears, but she couldn’t miss the sight of Harrow coming, her face tight and mouth open wide. It felt like a myriad before Harrow relaxed, dropped her body back down. She gulped down huge breaths like she’d been swimming underwater for several long kilometers.
“Phenomenal,” said Harrow, awed. Sweet. She glanced down at Gideon, seemed overwhelmed by Gideon gazing up at her, and looked up at the ceiling instead.
“Yeah?” said Gideon, who was always just a bit uncertain, just a little worried that she couldn’t make Harrow feel all the things that Harrow made her feel. “It help much?”
“I think we can say the experiment certainly yielded results.”
Praise indeed. Gideon sat up and wiped the back of her hand against her mouth. When she looked down at it there was a streak of blood there. She liked to be an idiot on purpose, so she showed it to Harrow and waggled her eyebrows.
Harrow, for her part, looked too blissed out to communicate any annoyance for once. She scrunched her nose up at Gideon, a happy little quirk that caused a dizzy swoop in Gideon’s belly, and Gideon, unable to contain herself any longer, said, “So maybe,” and here she choked down a hysterical giggle, “maybe you didn’t know everything about the human body -- ”