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It’s death. It is actual death and dying to spend an afternoon slowly liquefying in a two bedroom apartment in the absolute armpit of July without air conditioning. It’s worse than death to open the windows on an afternoon like this, only to be met with what feels like air from a furnace wafting in, heat on heat on heat on heat . It’s borderline offensive for the puny fleet of oscillating fans planted across the apartment to be pathetic in the face of the heatwave, to only push around the sweltering air rather than do anything to alleviate it. It’s inescapable, and it’s bad, and it’s probably pretty similar to what hell is like.
But. To have to suffer this inferno alongside the literal pit fiend known as Harrowhark Nonagesimus is way, way worse. The slowest and cruelest fate possible, in Gideon’s humble opinion.
Interior, apartment, golden hour. Gideon: lying on the floor of their small shared living space, only because the cheap laminate floors of the apartment are a slightly cooler to the touch compared to the couch. Harrow: towering above her nearby, perched on one of the creaky barstools at their kitchen island with her knees tucked into her chest, glued to her phone. She has a slight double chin from Gideon’s point of view, which would’ve made her laugh under literally any other circumstances.
“I’m going to die here , ” Gideon says, because she can’t help it. “I’m so fucking sweaty.”
“ Complaining isn’t going to make you less sweaty, you oaf.” Harrow doesn’t even look at her, but her permanent sneer deepens. Gideon can tell she’s focused on something else, because she would have taken the opportunity to make some remark like hurry up on the dying part, if not. This annoys Gideon. She’s probably playing phone-solitaire, or some other nerd shit. Maybe she’s getting into an argument in a particularly dicey YouTube comments section. Her thumbs are darting across the screen with chipped black nail polish.
Gideon, bravely, so bravely , peels herself halfway off the floor to sit up, the back of her shirt sticking to her skin, and squints at Harrow. “How are you not a puddle by now?”
That’s the thing. That’s the part of this that Gideon’s been perplexed by this whole time. Harrow, the absolute lunatic and apparent masochist, is wearing a hoodie, and a long skirt which hits three quarters of the way down her calves, both heavy black fabric. It doesn’t make sense; Harrow has willingly placed herself into a torture chamber of her own creation and seems, for all the world, to be unbothered. Perfectly normal, even. Maybe she’s secretly a lizard girl who eats bugs and sleeps in a terrarium with a big red lamp. Gideon wouldn’t put it past her; it would make her acclimation to existing inside of a tent of clothing at all times start to add up, but any other reasonable person should be able to bring themselves to make an exception at a time like this. But not so, for some fucking reason. All the uncovered skin that Gideon can see, save for her face and hands, consists of a scrawny fraction of leg above her ankles; smooth, light brown skin, prickled over with dark hair, before it turns into scrunched up socks. Socks, too. Good god.
Harrow sips her glass of water, ice cubes clinking against each other inside. Now, there’s an idea.
“Well, for starters, I don’t bitch about it. Unlike yourself,” Harrow says, her voice monotone. She takes another sip, and an ice cube gets in her mouth, rolls from one cheek to the other. She unflinchingly crushes it between her molars like it’s a grape. Chews, swallows ice shards.
Gideon frowns. “It’s just kind of making me nauseous thinking about how swampy it must be in there,” she says.
“Then don’t think about it,” comes Harrow’s inevitably bitchy reply, and Gideon decides that she’s over talking to Harrow. Whatever. She crosses her arms and resumes staring into space. Resumes being burned alive.
But then. But then , something extraordinary happens. Movement in her peripheral vision, a large range of motion. A shuffling. A swathe of black. Gideon whips her head back to Harrow, a Harrow who has just finished taking off her hoodie .
Gideon almost passes away. The hoodie gets draped on the back of the stool next to Harrow, and then Gideon can see, plain as day, Harrow’s arms. An expanse of arm, an incredible abundance of arm, which turns into her tiny slouching shoulders, and what the fuck, Harrow is wearing a tank top in Gideon’s presence. Thin-strapped and white, not black like she would have expected; it’s the smallest article of clothing Harrow has maybe ever worn. Her shit posture isn’t lessened by this change in position, but now, she dangles one leg off her stool, and that way, Gideon can see… wait.
“Holy fucking shit, do you have your tits pierced?”
It's then that Harrow looks at her for the first time in hours. She stares daggers into Gideon’s face with her dark, dark eyes like she means to wound her. Gideon shudders.
After she’s probably decided for herself that it looks like Gideon’s soul has been properly iced over, Harrow says, “Excellent observational skills.”
Gideon would beg to differ; it’s not exactly like they’re subtle. A buzzing warmth floods Gideon’s face. “This is insane. For how long?”
“A while. Why do you care?”
“I don’t. ” That’s a lie. That’s a big lie.
“Don’t lie, it’s unbecoming.” Harrow (the hypocrite) says, because at this point, sure, of course she’s telepathic. Gideon scoffs a bit indignantly, and silence fills the room again, just for a moment, before Gideon breaks it.
“Guess your girlfriend really was a bad influence on you then, huh?” Is it the heat that’s making her feel like pitching a fit? Maybe.
“ Griddle ,” Harrow snaps at her, glaring in her direction again, and that look alone is enough to make Gideon wither from the inside out. “One, not my girlfriend , and two, not her suggestion.”
She’s struck a nerve: the dreaded debate of what exactly Ianthe Tridentarius was to her. The short answer, Gideon knows, is that she was nothing good. She’d only ever seen her in passing; tall (taller than Gideon), blonde, thin in a worrying, 90’s sort of way. Femme-y, but icky about it; Gideon could imagine her not showering all that much, smoking cigarettes to look cool, drinking iced coffee for breakfast, etcetera. Always smelled like this one distinct musky rose perfume, which she caught a sickly whiff of on Harrow sometimes. Notorious biter with a preferred target area of all the worst places. Trust fund baby, or heiress, or something equally ridiculous. Objectively pretty face, but not Gideon’s type. How Harrow willingly, and frequently, put her mouth all over that face was beyond her.
They never had sex in the apartment, which was perhaps one of the only genuine courtesies Harrow had ever bothered to show Gideon in almost two decades of knowing each other. Gideon had been operating under the assumption that, if they were even fucking at all (which she couldn’t really be entirely sure of), it was at Ianthe’s place across town. Come to think of it, Ianthe never even fully stepped foot in the apartment, except to lean in the doorway and go hurry up, Harry. What the hell was that nickname? Was she a vampire or something, never getting invited inside? Vampires and leeches were probably related, Gideon had rationalized, quite seriously.
All in all, Ianthe’s vibe had been putrid. Plus, the longer Harrow hung around with her, the more miserable — not just pissy, but sad — she clearly got. Pissy Harrow was what Gideon was used to, but sad Harrow? Sad Harrow was deeply uncomfortable to be around. Thankfully, the whole ordeal had ended somewhat recently. A blowout fight about something or other, Harrow yelling in the hallway and then coming back inside the apartment smudge eyed and red faced. She did not cry in front of Gideon, but she’d heard muffled sniffles through the wall that night, and never again afterward.
“She buy them for you, then?” Gideon asks, just for the simple pleasure of nagging her, and when Harrow ignores her, she adds. “Huh?” (Maybe if she keeps pushing her, she’ll forget about the fact that the piercings are, against all odds and Gideon’s attempts at willpower, doing something in her brain.)
“ Do fuck off, Griddle. Is your existence so uneventful that you have to know all of my business?”
And, okay, maybe that stings a little bit. “Well, at least I don’t run around wasting my time with people like that fucking piece of work. I honestly didn’t think that was your style.”
“I recall telling you to fu— ”
“But hey, who am I to get in the way of your slut era, right?”
Which, in Gideon’s very good and wise hindsight, may have been a bit too far.
Harrow’s off the stool, launching herself at Gideon, pinning her wrists down onto the now-sticky floor and heaving a miserably small knee right to her gut. Yeah, too far, Nav.
Gideon’s lungs squeeze out all of their air with an ugly sound and, almost fondly, Gideon thinks, this is just like old times. She lets Harrow have this, just for a second, and doesn’t use all of her strength to try to escape Harrow’s negligible weight on top of her right away. She knows she’s fully capable of flinging Harrow off of her about as easily as if she were a ragdoll, but only struggles halfheartedly in her sweaty-palmed grip. She gives her something to work with, as much as she would like to see Harrow go skidding across the floor.
When this eventually gets boring — because god damn, Harrow is a twig — Gideon finally tears a wrist away from where Harrow has her held down and pushes , tries to get the upper hand by grabbing Harrow’s shoulder and aiming for the floor. Harrow bites her forearm in retaliation, and Gideon flinches at the brief, smarting pain. She hadn’t bitten her since they were kids. Gideon still has a very, very small scar from where Harrow had drawn blood with her stupid sneer one day when they’d scrapped on the street they both grew up on. It’s on her shoulder, an imprint of Harrow’s front baby teeth; she knows this because there’s a telltale sliver of space between the two marks, and Harrow still has a gap in her teeth like that, all grown up.
(This fight had been all because Gideon had said something particularly shitty about Harrow’s dead parents — a tried and true sore spot — and the whole ordeal had ended with Harrow getting her first and only black eye before running home, crying great streams of baby tears down her cheeks. They were very small, then.)
Still, Gideon had always been taller and stronger than Harrow, but now she’s strong on purpose. All she needs is to get a solid leg lock and her hands on Harrow’s waist. Harrow’s slippery, though. Her skirt keeps getting in the way, the fabric of it tickling Gideon’s thighs as it brushes against her skin, and distantly, Gideon thinks it would be a lot easier to tackle her if she took it off, but shuts that shit right down, and fast. It’s hard, though, when Harrow’s chest is right in Gideon’s line of sight and those piercings are poking through the thin cotton of her tank top, practically see through in this lighting. Harrow’s efforts to fend her off are jerky and awkward, and Gideon tries really fucking hard not to look down after every shove.
“I’m gonna fucking get you,” Gideon says.
“Stop fucking— smiling. You repulsive scum.” Harrow spits through gritted teeth, and shit, had Gideon really been smiling? The sheer ridiculousness of it just makes her smile bigger, and soon she’s laughing as Harrow just gapes at her, that crease in her forehead between her brows beading with sweat. Gideon can smell the salt of her.
It’s in this brief moment of confusion in Harrow’s face that Gideon finds her opening. She sneaks her hands under Harrow’s arms lightning-quick and grips her around the ribcage, using her legs to leverage her path of motion as she flips Harrow onto her back. She lands on the floor with a meager thud, and a gust of breath escapes her, sounding something like a frustrated sigh that Gideon desperately wills herself not to think too hard about.
She’s still smiling, and Harrow’s flattened under her, helpless and defeated, glaring up at Gideon. It confuses her when she notices that Harrow isn’t struggling anymore, isn’t saying something stupid like unhand me, Griddle!, or anything of that nature. She’s just staring. Gideon stares right back. Harrow’s entire face is flushed a deep, warm shade of pink, floral and inviting, shiny with sweat on her forehead and her angular nose. Her chest is heaving up and down with effort, sharp collar bones protruding before sinking back down. Looking down at her like this, it’s with a sudden lurching feeling in her gut that Gideon realizes all at once that her thigh sure is bent in between Harrow’s own, and her hands sure are still splayed around her waist, and this whole tableau sure would appear, from an outsider’s perspective, like —
Harrow shifts minutely under her. It’s really, really hot in the room.
Gideon has to say something. Now. Say something, now.
“What did I tell you?” It’s all she can come up with.
“Fuck you, Nav,” Harrow says, all of her grit gone. Vamoosed. Disappeared.
“You started it.”
“I’m actually quite certain that you started it.”
Gideon loosens her hold on Harrow, just a fraction. Okay, maybe. “Are you done? I can let you go any time, just say you give up.” She feels the muscles of Harrow’s sides flex and unflex under her palms.
A look comes over Harrow’s face then, and it unsettles Gideon. It’s not one that she’s expecting to see in this moment; it’s like she’s trying to solve a math problem in her head. Like she’s searching for something, some impossible answer. Her chin is sticking out slightly, and the soft lines of her neck are exposed, the inner workings of her throat shifting as she swallows once, then twice. Her hips shift again, ever so slightly shuffling towards Gideon’s knee , and— holy fuck.
Is Harrow turned on by this? She has to be, there’s no way she isn’t. Gideon feels like she can’t breathe all of a sudden, and she keeps her eyes trained on Harrow as she slowly moves her hands up Harrow’s torso, testing her. Harrow takes a very, very deep breath, and then her hands are wrapped around Gideon’s wrists, just loosely holding on, letting Gideon move. Her fingertips are reaching dubious territory, and Harrow doesn’t stop her.
“Say something,” Gideon finds herself whispering. “For fuck’s sake, Nonagesimus, I’m sorry I was mean.”
There is a pause, and Gideon’s dying. She’s terrified that she’s misreading what’s happening, that this isn’t what Harrow wants, that she’s scared. It suddenly hits her very hard that, despite the intensity of their rivalry, the fury of the pure hate that has existed between the two of them since before Gideon can even remember, it would be the worst thing in the entire world if Harrow was scared of her, right here and now, for this reason. It almost, almost makes her get up and walk away.
But Harrow doesn’t break her stare, and her eyes, holy shit, her eyes are huge and dark, blacker than space, her eyelashes long and all stuck together in places as if dampened. Maybe they had been.
Finally, she says, in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice that is so Harrowhark that it grounds Gideon in reality her a little: “You are so fucking stupid, Gideon.”
And Gideon has only about half a second to think “she never calls me Gideon”, before Harrow pulls her down hard and presses her mouth to hers.
There’s a weird, delirious moment that lasts about two seconds in Gideon’s mind when Harrow kisses her. Her first initial expectation is for something to shift in her brain, like some sort of puzzle piece is going to fit into its rightful place, or like she’ll be met with fireworks and sparkles and a swarm of those teenage stomach-butterflies, but none of that happens. It’s just Harrow, the Harrow she’s always known, and her lips are a little chapped against Gideon’s, and they don’t taste like much, just like a mouth. This isn’t some intense revelation, but that’s exactly what shocks her. The thing she’s really feeling is only a faint, satisfied finally. That’s the part that’s exciting.
And then: “Wait,” Gideon says, abruptly pulling away, leaving an inch or two between their faces: “What do you mean, I’m stupid?”
There’s a slight wobble to her chin when Harrow hesitates, and Gideon realizes that she’s trembling under her like a damn leaf in the wind. But then, suddenly gripping tightly where her hands are still encircling Gideon’s wrists, Harrow spits out: “Do you— God. Do you know how hard it is to be in a fucking room with you like this while you’re in a goddamned… sweaty tank top? You fucking idiot, I was trying so hard not to look at —…”
And through all of the astonishment that rockets through Gideon’s chest at this admission, she swallows that shit and kisses Harrow again, mostly to shut her brain off, because what the fuck is happening? It’s all she can do to not ponder the fact that she’d been surreptitiously ogled at by the least likely girl to every be found guiltily of partaking in something as mortifying as ogling on this side of the fucking galaxy.
It’s not a very sweet or gentle kiss. It’s a mess of spit and sweat and it’s hot, so hot. Gideon opens her mouth for Harrow, who dips her tongue lasciviously into her mouth, which, damn, alright. It feels wet and slippery and good, and it not only bewilders Gideon how much Harrow seems to want, but how much she wants Harrow to take from her. Harrow’s clammy hands are on either side of Gideon’s face, pulling them close, so fucking close to each other. Harrow’s mouth tastes like plain, rinsed spit and chapped lips. Like blood, faintly; a trace of metal where she chewed on the insides of her cheeks, just like she did as a kid. Nervous tick, Gideon knows.
When Harrow’s hips stutter abruptly forward against Gideon’s thigh, which she’s still dimly aware is being straddled by Harrow’s legs, she has to pull her face away again.
“What?” Harrow demands, immediately defensive at the look that must be on Gideon’s face.
“Are you into this?”
Harrow huffs out a sigh. “Nav,” she says, any patience she may have held for her waning significantly. “I don’t think I’m being subtle here, use your brain for once.”
“Okay, sure, asshole, but I wanna hear you say it.”
Harrow’s left eye honest to god twitches , and even though this creeps her out a little, Gideon doesn’t look away. Finally, Harrow grits out, “Fine,” and hesitantly, her hands move down to the very safe territory of Gideon’s shoulders. Gideon shivers at the faint scrape of Harrow’s nails. “Fine. You can touch me. If you want. I w—” she pauses, just to sneer at the sudden smile threatening to rip Gideon’s face in half against her will, and then, miraculously, indulging Gideon so much more than she even needed to: “I want you to.”
And this time, when Gideon kisses her, muttering an okay into her mouth, Harrow awkwardly shuffles to pull the length of her skirt up to pool around her hips, and this is the most Gideon’s ever, ever seen of her body. Her legs are shiny with sweat, a small, glinting bead of the stuff rolling towards the floor on the inside of her thigh, and it’s ridiculous how fucking filthy it all looks. Gideon has to recenter herself for a moment. Fucking hell.
Experimentally, she bites Harrow’s bottom lip, sucks it into her mouth a little. Harrow gasps, because of course she does, and Gideon is only able to relish in this for a brief second before she hears a soft thud, and Harrow pulls away, hissing through her teeth.
“What?” Gideon asks, looking her over.
“I hit my elbow on the floor, moron.” Harrow whispers.
It takes everything in Gideon’s heart and soul not to laugh. “Funny bone?”
“Ulnar nerve, but whatever.” Harrow mutters, (that’s when Gideon doesn’t laugh, but rather chuckles— snickers, maybe), and then: “We should move.”
“What, you don’t wanna fuck on the floor?”
Harrow’s cheeks flare like a red-hot fucking meteor. “I’d honestly rather not.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
Gideon gets to her feet and helps Harrow up, who somehow allows Gideon to do this, if more than a bit reluctant in taking her hand. Her short hair is all mussed up, and Gideon notices for the first time that the undermost layers of it are curling wetly into loose spirals from the humidity and sweat, peeking out from behind her ears as if they were shy. Her gaze trails down from there to Harrow’s shoulder, down her arm, briefly, as she turns toward the countertop where she’d left her glass of water, and she takes a large gulp. Gideon watches the column of her throat move and contract.
They end up on the couch, because it’s the closest soft thing to them and Gideon quite literally doesn’t want to wait the extra thirty seconds it would take to relocate to either of their rooms. It becomes obvious that Harrow doesn’t either, because once Gideon gets settled on the couch, Harrow’s on her.
In the moment, Gideon’s not certain if she’s just imagining it, but just as Harrow plants her knees on either side of one of Gideon’s thighs, a small sound, like a marble rolling around against something hard, comes from her mouth, muffled behind her lips. A muted clacking against her teeth. And then she kisses Gideon.
Her neck , specifically, and as soon as Harrow’s lips make contact with her skin and her tongue makes a small sweep into the side of her throat, Gideon all but yelps (humiliatingly, fuck ) into the top of Harrow’s head.
Frigid and wet. Startling, and then cooling.
There’s an ice cube in Harrow’s mouth.
“ What the hell?” Gideon snaps in a whisper.
Harrow pulls away, looks Gideon in the eye. Really looks. She seems worried, which freaks Gideon out a little, her dark eyes burning holes into her skull. She asks: “Was that bad?”
And, hm . Gideon thinks about it; it’s actually a good question. Was it bad? The place where Harrow had kissed her was a fraction cooler than the rest of her body, though that was quickly beginning to fade. It had made her shiver when it had happened, but really, it was more of a surprise than an unpleasant sensation.
After a beat, she says, “No. It was… you can keep doing it. Just gimme a warning or something, christ.” And then, because Harrow’s still looking at her expectantly, a silent you didn’t fully answer my question on her face, she adds: “It felt good. After a second.”
When Harrow’s shoulders relax, Gideon can tell that that was the correct answer. In response, Harrow only says, “Good,” and gets to work. This time, she lathes her tongue across Gideon’s neck, and it’s still cold as hell, but when she focuses on the contrast between that and the heat of the room, the heat of the sun, the heat of the human body, of Harrow’s , on top of her, it feels like it could just as well be a dip in a cool lake if the closes her eyes and imagines it. Except, she doesn’t want to imagine it fully, because in reality, she’s currently getting kissed on the neck, and Harrow’s hips are starting to move again, this time with intent. Her left hand finds Harrow’s waist, and her right, daringly, the back of her thigh.
Harrow kisses and nips at her neck, then licks a flat line across her collarbone, her tongue cold and soft. She’s sighing audibly, into the open air of the room, sometimes into Harrow’s hair, which smells like her shampoo: clean, vaguely like spearmint or something. Occasionally, Gideon feels the ice cube, now getting smaller, roll around this way and that, across Harrow’s tongue and behind her lips. It still makes her shiver every now and again, but in a way that causes a shock of arousal to rip its way down her spine.
Speaking of which, the part of all of this that registers last, against all odds, is Harrow’s utter confidence now that she’s gotten started. A wave of disgust briefly careens through her body when she realizes where, or rather who, she’d learned any of this from in the first place. She pointedly doesn’t think about Harrow having sex with Ianthe for very long (she swears up and down, the image only crosses her mind for a short, horrifying moment, and it does makes her stomach turn) before she diverts her train of thought to: I can do much better than that blonde bitch.
Gideon slides a hand up the back of Harrow’s tank top, and the skin at her back is slick with sweat. She’s raging hot, like she’s burning up with a fever, which is maybe what prompts her to wordlessly pull her tank top up and over her head. Harrow lifts her arms to give her a hand, and when she neatly crumples the offending garment into a ball and places it beside her, Gideon is face to face with two barbells on two unfairly nice tits. It sucks so much how nice they are. She takes them in her palms. As it turns out, and as Gideon continuously is surprised to learn, Harrow’s skin is so soft and forgiving beneath her harsh exterior. Her breasts really aren’t that big, but they fit nicely in Gideon’s hands, and when she rolls a thumb over a nipple, over the piercing, Harrow lets out a stuttering gasp. Sensitive, she thinks, and it gives her an idea.
She doesn’t act on it quite yet; she lets Harrow get a little more worked up (as if that’d be possible, she’s already grinding on Gideon’s thigh like she means to finish then and there, which definitely won’t do). Gideon plays with her chest a little more, teasing, squeezing ever so slightly, kissing her and kissing her until Harrow’s panting grows more desperate, delighting in the soft sounds coming from her mouth. Then, and only then, does she pull away from Harrow a little.
“Gideon,” Harrow whispers. It’s barely a word and more of an exhale, and crazier still, it’s her name.
“Wanna take your skirt off?”
Harrow nods quickly and clambers off of Gideon’s lap to stand, and as she shuffles the skirt down her legs (holy shit), Gideon gets up too, quickly reaching behind the couch to the countertop where Harrow had left her glass of water. She takes a big sip and catches a new ice cube in her cheek, slippery and freezing cold. The cold of the water floods through her body, seeping into her limbs. When she returns to the couch, Harrow climbs into her lap again and gives her a look.
“I see my idea has been stolen,” Harrow says, flatly.
“Well,” Gideon says, letting the ice cube audibly click against her teeth for Harrow to hear. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and all that. Want some?”
After a beat, Harrow says, “If you insist.” But Gideon’s known her all her life, and right now, her face is saying please. Gideon beams, not wasting any time before leaving a trail of kisses down Harrow’s neck and chest, with Harrow gasping in huge, shaky lungfuls of air all the way down.
Her skin is hot against Gideon’s mouth, and she tastes like salt. When she takes one of those little barbells into her mouth, experimentally circling her nipple with her tongue, Harrow moans obscenely. Gideon’s head spins, because holy hell, she should do that again, and fast. She wills herself to keep going, despite the overwhelming urge to just stare at Harrow and watch every single stupid, beautiful face she makes (Gideon chooses very explicitly not to interrogate beautiful right now, or perhaps ever).
She’s overly aware of every point of contact between them now; Harrow’s still grinding on her thigh with all of her weight driving her hips down, back and forth, though clearly not with enough friction for it to be satisfying. The sounds she’s making in Gideon's ear begin increasing in pitch, and she sounds frustrated , but it’s all so hypnotizing, and god, still, the fact that it’s Harrow is enough to send her hurdling into the stratosphere. She envelops herself in Harrow’s upper body where she’s pressed against her, drawing circles back and forth on each side of her chest with her tongue, figure-eighting around those fucking piercings. All of Harrow's aplomb is replaced by a litany of gasps and huffing moans.
When Gideon finally slips her hand, palm-up, underneath Harrow where she’s straddling her, Harrow quickly adjusts to grind her clit into the pads of Gideon’s fingertips. She slumps forward to drop her forehead into Gideon’s shoulder, and Gideon swears she can feel her nodding yes where her face brushes briefly against her cheek. The ice melts at last in Gideon’s mouth, and she swallows it like a small sip of water.
It really doesn’t take much after that. Harrow: desperate, her breath hot against Gideon’s skin. Gideon: pulling Harrow’s underwear off to one side and slipping one, then two fingers inside of her with remarkable ease. Harrow chokes out something that sounds like Gideon’s name again, and Gideon mutters, “I’ve got you”, into Harrow’s hair, which instantly feels far too intimate and tender the second after Gideon says it, but she can’t deny to herself that she’d meant it. She wraps her unoccupied arm around Harrow’s middle, who all but squeezes around Gideon’s fingers when she curls them forward, just a touch, into soft, pliant wetness.
She doesn’t need to do this many times; Harrow comes with a start, letting out a small sob as she wraps her arms over Gideon’s shoulders. Gideon lets her ride it out, which takes longer than she’d expected — the girl can take it, she’ll give her that. She eventually slows to a stop and retracts her fingers when Harrow’s staccato-ish breathing subsides into something resembling normal again. She fully doesn’t move from Gideon’s lap.
“You okay?” Gideon asks after a few moments.
“Yes,” Harrow says into her shoulder, sounding winded. “I’m fine.”
The fan on the adjacent coffee table blows tepid air onto them, but it feels cool against the sweat accumulating on Gideon’s legs, in her hair, on her hands. It appears like a breeze through Harrow’s hair.
Harrow’s arms are still draped around Gideon’s shoulders, but slowly, Gideon feels her hands move, and eventually she’s just holding her, her small, spindly fingertips skating idly across her back, drawing nonsense patterns. Something wildly emotional and soft stirs in Gideon’s heart. She lets it happen this time; it might as well. She brings her other arm up to join the one already around Harrow’s waist.
She isn’t entirely aware of how long they stay like this, she may have even dozed off at some point in the middle, but eventually, Harrow takes a deep inhale as if to steel herself, before she wordlessly detaches from Gideon. She pulls her tank top back on when she stands, and doesn’t even really look at Gideon before turning to exit the living room.
“Harrow?” Gideon ventures.
“I’m going to shower,” she says.
Gideon can’t help it. “Without me?”
Harrow stops, and predictably, her face flushes again. Then she says, her brow suddenly quite set. “You know we’ll need to talk about this later.”
And oh, hell. She’s right, as she often is. Gideon can admit to herself that she isn’t a complete fool, and that none of this happened in a vacuum. Harrow’s still her roommate, and she’s still the same thorn in her side that she’s always been. Except, maybe there’s something in this that she doesn’t hate. She already misses the girl-shaped blanket draped over her.
It’s the last thing she wants to think about, though; this is a problem for future Gideon-and-Harrowhark.
Finally, Gideon says: “Yeah, I know.” She does.
Harrow does nothing but nod curtly, then she disappears into the hallway. Moments later, Gideon can hear the shower running.
Letting herself sink into the back of the couch, she listens to the sounds of water, and distantly imagines Harrow washing her hair as she closes her eyes.