Work Text:
They’re sharing an apartment, now. There’s something tense between both of them—Harrow tells this to Pal, over the phone, hunched on her bed in her room. Black lace curtains, weird skull paraphernalia on her shelves—possum, vole, she’s never been able to help that she’s a weird chick and that’s probably why Gideon blinked twice when Harrow asked her to be her roommate, because they were mostly coworkers and less friends, and who the fuck wants to live with the weird chick, but whatever. Here’s the thing, she tells Pal: she’s fairly sure Gideon fucks, like, a lot, but the thing is Gideon never does it in their apartment. And she never stays the night. She just comes back home late, one a.m., three a.m., smelling like odd flowery lotion and sex. Little orange baby hairs plastered sweaty above her brow. In her muscle tee, all “Hi Harrow,” when Harrow opens the door with a thin-lipped scowl, Gideon’s sheepish grin with the white teeth, bicep bulging as she thumbs the strap of her dark backpack. “I left my keys in the apartment. Sorry.”
Maybe she’s got a girlfriend, Pal suggests, and Harrow grinds her teeth and resists the urge to tell him to shut up very much—she hangs up, instead. If Gideon had a girlfriend she would have told Harrow by now. Gideon who comes on the cusp of boasting about her sexcapades to Coronabeth, but stays comfortably silent around Harrow—maybe she’s sniffed out that Harrow is nearly a prude and certainly she’s sniffed out that Harrow would rather pull out all her teeth than talk about sex with Gideon; but Harrow fucks too, she was involved with a lot of weird clubs before Gideon moved in, one even a skull-worshipping orgyfest that was weirdly fucking like, empowering, but anyway the point is: Gideon fucks, and Harrow hates it, Harrow hates it, and she knows she could never ever, say this, and certainly she doesn’t make Gideon miserable about it at all—Harrow never mentions the malcontent, Harrow never mentions the jeal—
Gideon can’t sense it. Gideon must not sense it. Harrow’s seething fucking horniness, this miserable thing, when they’re on the couch watching TV together and Gideon crosses her built calves over Harrow’s lap and they’re pressing down into Harrow’s thighs, and it’s casual, it’s cazsh, and Harrow throws her head back and she knows she’s making a grumpy feline face because Gideon has put her hand up to her mouth and she’s smiling behind it. Gideon. Gideon who's on several dating apps. Gideon with the restraint. Gideon who comes back late twice a week and on the days she remembers her keys it’s Harrow, wide awake in her bedroom, staring up at the dark ceiling, listening to the soft slam of the front door and the thump of the backpack on the kitchen counter and Gideon’s long, stretched-out sigh, those punched-out little sounds as she stretches over the kitchen island, and Harrow masturbates until her wrist is sore and her legs are shaking and she’s burying her face in her pillow, crying out. Gideon, Gideon, Gideon.
It's been three months. Three months of being privy to Gideon.
Harrow’s vibrator breaks.
It’s laundry day, and it’s Saturday, and Gideon is out. She’s got her dirty clothes piled high on the washing machine and dryer because she’s a filthy slob and she always promises she’ll get to it later, but in this case she dumped them on top and then stepped out to run an errand, and Harrow’s taking her clothes out of the dryer (thing rattles fast like it’s on its dying breaths) and she catches a whiff of Gid’s work clothes.
T-shirt. Dark green. Works in the National Park Service.
Smells like, really, really fucking good.
Harrow can’t help it, not really, and her brain is screaming no but she leans down again, casual, and skims her cheek against it as she grabs a pair of her jeans out of the dryer. Could be accidental, if anyone else were watching, but no one is, and she’s alone, and Gideon’s out.
Fuck. Fuck.
What kind of loser is she. She stretches her arms out and braces them on the t-shirt and presses her face into her arms, so she’s leaning against the dryer now, zipper of her jeans digging into her pelvis, ow, and inhales.
It’s like fucking fireworks. It’s like a warm soft blanket that’s making her salivate, it’s edible, it blots out every other thought from her body and she’s tensing, her thighs and hips and shoulders, and her hips grind against the corner of the dryer and she nearly cries out into Gideon’s shirt. Fuck, fuck fuck. She doesn’t have her vibrator. She’s half-horny and she needs this. She fumbles for the on button. Fuck shrinking cardigans.
The dryer rumbles to life. That corner she’s straddling. Right against her clit.
Harrow drops her arms, clutches the dryer. Lets her face plunge into Gid’s shirt. Opens her mouth and inhales it into her, she wants all that deep inside her, deeper, in her lungs and her intestines, she’s mouthing against the delicious musky cloth and it’s wide blank space in her head, nothing, nothing, just fuck—
And Gideon says, “Harrow?”
And Harrow’s bucking up her head, trying to, but a firm pressure slides up the nape of her neck and tangles its fingers into her hair and. Holds firm. She can’t lift her head. And the mortification and the surprise—she squeals into the shirt, and Gideon says, and there’s something gone funny about Gideon’s voice, something kind of dropping and settling and more serious, something like, like, I know what to do, and the new-Gideon behind her says, “Harrow. Let me take care of this.”
And Harrow’s brain is fogging up. She takes five rapid breaths, one-two-one-two, and with every one she’s getting lost in Gideon, in the smell, in the darkness and the roar of the dryer against her clit. Something settles against her ass, leans forward—Gideon’s hips—and Gideon says, “You let me know if you can’t breathe,” and then, “Jesus, Harrow, calm down, your heart rate—” and then Harrow nods into the shirt. A moment of silence, and then: “Here.”
Calm fingers sliding between her and the machine, fumbling with her front zipper, pulling it down.
Hips: grind once against her.
The pressure of the machine against her doubles.
Harrow cries out, and Gideon says, “I got you, I got you,” and Gideon does, and Harrow can’t think straight, can’t think about anything. The fingers at the back of her neck massage, and she relaxes, just a little, and she’s lungs-full of Gideon, slumped over, bent halfway, drifting on a lapping darkness of Gideon. It’s entrancing, being trapped under Gideon with Gideon slowly grinding into her ass, with the machine thumping so loudly Harrow can’t even hear her heart, just the pulsing in her clit and the wetness on the back of her underwear, and her nipples flat against the vibration, and her shallow breaths.
She doesn’t know how long it’s been. She’s still lost in the dark but her thighs are starting to tremble and Gideon’s grinding more intently into her ass, her hand still pressed firmly into the back of Harrow’s neck and the other hand traces at her belly-button—slides up her shirt, careful, and then cups her tit, where it’s flattened against the dryer, and tweaks her nipple. Instant electricity to the clit. The wounded sound that comes out of Harrow doesn’t even seem real anymore. And Gideon’s whispering, breath hot against her ear, “I've got you, I've got you,” and still playing with her nipple, rolling it around, plucking at the piercing there—and Harrow’s so close to coming, so close, and then another sound comes out of her, something worse, and then the shock of cold air and no Gideon smell as she inhales—Gideon’s lifted her head up, just an inch, hand moving from the back of her neck to hold the sensitive underside of her jaw, and there’s wetness on her lips and Harrow realizes she’d been drooling—and then Gideon’s other hand hooks into her mouth. Just two fingers. Just her grinding against Harrow. Harrow's clit, jostling against the warm vibration, and the corner of the dryer digging into the soft place just above her mons, and Gideon’s fingers are large and warm and sliding into her mouth and gliding over her tongue and hooking and tugging, and Harrow comes.
On and on. Gideon’s fingers stroke the inside of her cheek as she cries out—legs shaking—and she bucks against the machine, and Gideon’s fingers slide deeper, to curl nearly at the back of her throat as she’s full of Gideon, Gideon, Gideon, tasting Gideon, Gideon’s solid chest against her back, Gideon’s fingers slipping down under her underwear to knead firmly against her clit, Gideon’s murmuring in her ear, Gideon's body weight pinning her down, holding her up, Gideon, Gideon, Gideon.
#
In the after, Gideon tells her: That wasn’t how I’d properly do it.
Harrow says, Are you always like this?
Gideon says, Only to girls I really like.
Harrow says, So what do you do to all the other girls, then?
Gideon says, I’ll show you.