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It’s weird to see Harrow, serious, grumpy Harrow, the smartest and scariest girl in their whole graduate program, with anything pink on her person, but this week her nails are shiny black and her two index finger ones have tiny pink jewels glued to them. Gideon can’t believe she hasn’t noticed before that Harrow, of all people, has mall-goth nails; it’s surprising, and, bizarrely, very hot. She doesn’t even mind when Harrow snaps at her after lecture about the class they’re TA-ing together. Gideon’s got a crush, and it’s a strange one, but she’s a goner. The nails did it.
Gideon has dated goth girls before, of course. She loves little goth girls, and they love her, they love hanging on the strong arm of a big golden athletic person, love the contrast between them in and out of bed. She thinks she knows exactly how to flirt with Harrow. She thinks very wrong.
Her first move is bad right out the gate. Normally Gideon loves to ask those cute little goth girls to make her playlists and see what they put on there: Bauhaus and Joy Division from the purists, Turnstile from the contemporary alt girls, maybe some My Chemical Romance for a nice fun throwback. But when she first asks Harrow to send her music, trying to find any excuse to talk to her outside of class, Harrow texts over a five-minute YouTube video from a band called, ominously, Nurse With Wound. Gideon makes it about thirty seconds in before she’s so weirded out that she has to close her laptop.
G : what the hell is this???
H : I like it. It helps me focus
G : it sounds like a rusty tractor hatefucking the universe into an early heat death
H : Hmm
H : I also listen to Brahms, sometimes.
G : idk what to even do w you
All those other little goth girls love to get dolled up for their dates, tight dresses and corsets and big boots, leaving streaks of glittery eyeshadow and fake lashes like shy black caterpillars on Gideon’s pillows when they leave in the morning. Harrow wears pounds of eyeliner and nothing else, no concealer, no cute lipsticks, nothing. Harrow’s hair looks like it was cut by a drunk lawnmower and all her clothes were originally intended for someone about five feet taller than her. Harrow has never thought of shaving anything on her body. Gideon is fucking obsessed with her.
All this aggressive non-femininity is why the nails are so confusing. Gideon holds her hand up one night as they’re walking home from one of their first dates, still kind of nervous around each other outside of classroom settings, and asks what the deal is.
“I enjoy the difficulty of having them,” Harrow says. They’re coming out of a movie—some stupid action flick, Gideon had laughed the whole way through and Harrow had rolled her eyes, mostly, although Gideon could see her smiling through mouthfuls of popcorn, trying to suppress it.
“Difficulty?”
“Yes. It’s hard to do normal things. They make me slow down and concentrate.” Harrow wiggles her fingers. “Plus, I like the art.” Her nails are her usual black this week—a shape called coffin, she’d told Gideon, her favorite—with little skulls. Subtlety is not really her thing.
“I mean, you know what they say about gay girls and long nails.”
“Don’t be crude,” Harrow says. But then they go home and Gideon makes her come three times before they go to sleep, and the last time Harrow is on all fours as she fucks herself backwards onto Gideon’s fingers, screaming bloody murder and impossibly wet, so who’s the crude one now?
The way they ended up getting together—just so, so wasted at one of the twins’ messy ragers, Harrow’s face glazed over as she backed Gideon into a corner, muttering in her ear “you’ve been eyeing me for months so either grow a pair and go for it or leave me alone” and then it was just nonstop fucking off to the races from there—didn’t really encourage a lot of talking, no introductory conversations about being switches or tops or bottoms or whatever like you might have with someone you meet on one of the apps. They’ve been too busy tearing each other’s clothes off for that. Gideon asks her early on what she likes and Harrow just says everything and Gideon says, all right, we’ll try everything. Turns out Harrow not only has a hair trigger temper but a hair trigger clit, too, and figuring out new and inventive ways to make her scream has quickly turned into Gideon’s favorite pastime. Harrow, half asleep and rubbing her ass into Gideon in the morning until Gideon flips her on her back and begins to play with her. Harrow straddled on her lap as they watch TV, bracing her arms on Gideon’s shoulders and panting as she grinds with Gideon’s left hand gripping her hip and three fingers of her right curling inside her. Harrow, after she tells Gideon she likes playing around in public sometimes, trying to breathe quietly, flush of heat creeping up her neck, as Gideon touches her casually through her underwear under the table while they’re working in the library before they drag each other off to the bathroom to finish. Gideon hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in weeks because they’re just too busy fucking. It feels insane. It feels like being drunk all the goddamn time. It feels incredible.
Harrow offers to return the favor, every time, and every time Gideon has already come from touching herself while working on Harrow or is nearly there just from thrusting her hips against nothing while her mouth is around Harrow’s clit. That’s her favorite way to come, anyway, face full of squirming pussy with her own hand between her legs. Eating girls out is the fucking best. Eating Harrow out—well, if Gideon dies while she’s down there she’ll go out with a salute and a smile.
It’s not like she’s opposed to the idea of someone else getting her off, really. It’s just that years of jerking it like crazy before she was able to actually touch a woman makes it a lot harder to get in the right mindset to let anyone else finish the job. The only one who has been able to do it more than once is Camilla, who has the forearm strength and endurance of a Greek god. One time Coronabeth, who has the loveliest biggest hands of any woman Gideon had ever seen, made her come after, like, an hour, and that was years ago but she still brags about it. Whatever.
But those are her friends, just drunk hookups when they all got bored or when someone was single and sad and horny. With girls she’s dating—girls she likes, girls she, oh God, really really really fucking likes—it’s a totally different story. When she’s lying back letting someone else have a go Gideon feels awkward about how long it may take, starts worrying about whether or not they are enjoying themselves, starts getting itchy and fidgety and out of the mindset. Gideon is never great at sitting still under normal circumstances, let alone when there’s a hot babe between her legs.
On their next date night Harrow has already come twice—once backed into the corner of her apartment building’s stairwell, one of Gideon’s hands working furiously under the waistband of her jeans and the other pressed over her mouth, Harrow squeaking around her palm; the other splayed out and luxurious in bed like a goddamn oil painting, her thighs clamping gorgeously around Gideon’s face—when she asks how Gideon is doing.
“Not quite there,” Gideon says. “Want to watch me finish?” They’ve done that a few times, and Harrow seems to really like it, staring at her with that almost-too-intense furrow in her brow, and once had just climbed wordlessly onto Gideon’s face and started grinding wetly down. That had been fucking sweet.
Harrow pauses. “I—I would love to try my mouth on you, if you wouldn’t mind. If you like it. If you’re okay with it.”
“Oh,” says Gideon, considering. “Yeah, I’m okay with it, I like it, I just don’t often come from it. Or it may take me, like, forever.”
“That is fine,” Harrow says, scooting down. “I just want to try. Anything off limits?”
“No—I mean, go nuts. Do whatever you normally do. Just feel free to tap out if you get tired and I haven’t come yet.”
“Mmm,” says Harrow, spreading her thighs—is that a tiny smile on her face? “Let me know if the nails bother you,” she says, and slides two fingers in.
At first Gideon’s a little disappointed, because Harrow’s fingers are teeny tiny, she can barely feel them. She’ll enjoy this because she enjoys everything about Harrow but it’ll definitely take her hours at this rate to come, and then Harrow flattens her fingers and curls up just so—
Oh holy shit. The nails.
They feel insanely, criminally good. It’s a scratch, it’s a tickle, it’s a tiny bit of danger, a little bit of a threat, but oh what the fuck they feel like actual heaven inside her. Harrow knows exactly—exactly—where to put them, how to touch, knows how to use restraint for maximum effect. Gideon feels her gently move those nails up and down and her hips cant up involuntarily.
“That okay?” Harrow asks.
“Are you kidding, this is—holy hell, this is fantastic,” Gideon says.
“Good,” Harrow says, lowering her mouth to Gideon’s clit, giving it a few experimental licks, one side, then the other, before pursing her lips around her and starting to suck.
Jesus Christ, Harrow is very good at this.
Harrow’s looking up at her as her mouth moves, eyeliner smeared all over, and she looks fucking hungry , feral, like an animal going in for the kill. Gideon hears herself moan and Harrow says mmmmm around her and sucks harder, girls are always afraid to really go ham on Gideon’s clit but Harrow knows she can take it, knows she needs the pressure. She must have been fucking studying what Gideon does to get herself off, all those times she was watching so intently she was taking fucking notes, of course she was (she’s such a little nerd)—the thought of Harrow paying that much attention to her makes Gideon clench around her fingers in arousal, and Harrow murmurs a truly obscene noise of approval against her, keeping that infernal, incredible light touch with her nails, and she adds another finger. Fuck.
One time Gideon was being loud and annoying about girls in a bar and Cam had snapped at her “Christ, Nav, you’re not the only woman who knows her way around a pussy,” and Gideon had been like yeah, obviously, but she secretly still thinks she’s pretty damn great, lots of girls have said she’s the best they’ve had, she’d sort of assumed even with Harrow’s insatiability that she’d be doing most of the topping. But holy shit, she’s wrong, she’s so so wrong, Harrow is working absolute magic down there, she’s doing something incredible with her fingers that Gideon needs her notes on, and her mouth is really putting in champion-level work. She thinks, distantly, that maybe she is so turned on because she likes Harrow more than she has liked anyone ever, that maybe she’s so into this because she’s relaxed and trusts her and there weirdly feels like there’s no secrets between them, they already know all each other’s shit, there’s no need to put on the Gideon Nav Show for Harrow—but that’s a big thought she shoves down for when she doesn’t have three talons rearranging her insides and a hot woman attached to her clit.
In a truly surprising amount of time she feels it building, says to Harrow “Holy shit, I think I’m coming,” and Harrow just says “Good” in this low growly voice which is so fucking hot, and she keeps sucking and moving her fingers, and and and and and. The train is leaving the station, the rocket is readying for launch (Gideon can’t believe this is what is springing to mind now, she’s going to need to give herself a lobotomy later), buckle up motherfuckers, Harrow deep inside her and Harrow’s scent all around her and Harrow’s dark eyes staring up at her like there’s nothing else in the world and and and and—
Gideon falls apart on Harrow’s fingers; it’s probably been less than five minutes since she started. Insane. She’s become a two pump chump.
She can hear herself making incredibly undignified noises and gasps as Harrow kisses her thighs, pulls her fingers out gently. She puts her palms on Gideon’s chest and does a tiny vault forward, straddling her, her bare pussy resting just below Gideon’s sternum; Gideon’s hands automatically come to rest on her ass. Harrow’s little back arches as she slowly, deliberately licks the fingers that are wet with Gideon, keeping eye contact the whole time. With her other hand, she traces one of her nails lightly along Gideon’s lower lip, a little love scrape, a tiny threat of dominance.
Hot. Surprising. So hot. God, Harrow never gets boring. Gideon wants to keep being surprised by her. She wants to be surprised by her forever.
“That whole lesbians can’t have long nails thing,” Harrow says. “I haven’t really found that to be the case.”