Teeth

She woke to the Dissonance sleeping next to her.

This had started on the ninth night. The Dissonance appeared in the doorway past midnight, crossed to the bed, and lay down on top of the covers with her back to Wren. No announcement. By the twelfth night Wren had stopped being surprised.

She watched the Dissonance sleep. In sleep the sharp face was different. Not soft. The Dissonance would never be soft. But the honed edge was resting, and the resting showed things the waking did not. The tiredness. The isolation of a woman whom everyone feared and no one touched. Not touched in twenty years. She was lying in Wren's bed because the bed was warm and the girl in it was warm and the warmth was the thing she could not score and could not unmake.

Wren put her hand on the Dissonance's shoulder. The breathing changed, a catch. Wren did not take her hand away.

The defiance grew. Not dramatic. A series of small refusals, each one a tooth.

She stopped apologising for small things. A spoon dropped, a step misjudged. The apology would form and she would let it go. The Dissonance noticed. Said nothing. The wrong note shifted.

She talked back. Not loudly. But the Dissonance would say a thing and Wren would say a thing back, and the thing back was not agreement. The first time was in the kitchen and the Dissonance had said something about the viola, about keeping it locked in the case until Wren had earned it.

I wrote the composition. I earned it, Wren said.

The Dissonance went still. Wren felt the stillness and the fear and did not flinch. She was wearing the Dissonance's fearlessness the way you wear a coat that is too big, imperfectly, but warm.

You have not earned it.

I tore a hole in the Resonance with a piece I wrote by hand in a bedsit. I think I have earned it.

The faintest ghost of amusement behind the grey eyes, gone before it formed. Tomorrow.

The morning sessions changed. The testing was still there but Wren was not the same instrument. When the Dissonance touched her now she leaned into it. She moved with it. She made sounds that were participation, not endurance, and the participation was a conversation.

On the tenth morning the Dissonance had her against the wall, hand between Wren's legs, fingers inside her, mouth on her neck. The touching had been hands, precise and devastating, but the mouth was different, was the Dissonance losing precision.

More, Wren said, and the word was not a request.

The Dissonance's teeth found the muscle where neck meets shoulder and bit, and the bite was ache and the ache was the circuit. Wren's hand came up and tangled in the Dissonance's hair and the tangling was not obedience, was a woman holding another woman's mouth against her throat because she wanted it there.

The Dissonance froze. The hair-pulling was new. Wren let go, the old reflex, and the collar ate the reflex and she put her hand back.

I want this, Wren said. I want you here.

The Dissonance made a sound against her throat. Not a word. Something plucked, something uncontrolled, and the sound was the most undone thing Wren had heard from her. Her fingers moved, finding the rhythm, and Wren's hips followed, and the rhythm became less precise and more desperate, the sharp face buried against Wren's throat, the breathing ragged.

Wren came with the Dissonance's teeth in her shoulder and her hands in the Dissonance's hair. The sound was the real voice and the Dissonance felt it through every point of contact and the sound she made in response was quiet, broken, and the two sounds met.

Afterward the Dissonance did not leave. Her hand rested on Wren's hip, the thumb moving in the small unconscious circle. Wren felt the weight of her, the real physical weight, and the weight was the being-held thing.

On the eleventh day the Dissonance took her outside.

Not far. A walk through the hidden city, the layered streets Wren had glimpsed through the breach, now solid around her. The hidden city at night was beautiful and strange and full of mages who turned their too-bright eyes to the Dissonance and stepped back.

The stone was inside Wren. The Dissonance had put it in before they left, smooth and warm, and the hum was a constant presence, a vibration that made every step a negotiation between composure and desperation.

They walked through a mage market. Stalls sold objects that hummed, instruments that breathed, bottled frequencies that glowed. Mages bartered in voices that carried wrong. The Dissonance walked beside Wren and did not touch her and the not-touching was deliberate, was the public face.

The stone pulsed. One long vibration that went through the inner walls and sat in the swollen place and Wren's step faltered. She caught herself. Kept walking. The Dissonance did not look at her. The stone pulsed again, longer, and Wren's thighs clenched and the clenching made the stone shift and the shift changed the frequency, higher, and the frequency sat in the nerve endings.

A mage looked at Wren. Too-bright eyes, assessing. Wren stood in the market with the stone vibrating inside her and the collar humming on her throat and a stranger's eyes on her skin, and the exposure was the old fear and the new wanting and the two were the same. She did not flinch. She stood and let the stone hum and let the eyes land and did not shrink.

The Dissonance watched this. Not the market. Wren. Watching the resonant stand in a crowd with a vibration inside her and not break, and the watching found the composure and the composure was new and the new was the teeth.

The stone went silent. Wren exhaled. The Dissonance's hand touched the small of her back, brief, proprietary, and the touch was a reward, was the only public tenderness the Dissonance allowed herself.

They walked home. The stone hummed the entire way, low and constant, and Wren was wet and desperate and the desperation was the Dissonance's, was the remote, was the control from three feet away, and the control was the magic and the magic was the kink.

That night Wren pushed the Dissonance onto her back.

The reversal happened without discussion. The Dissonance came to the bed and Wren was awake and the wanting was there, the wanting that had been building all day through the market and the stone and the eyes, and Wren put her hand on the Dissonance's chest and pushed. Not hard. A suggestion. The Dissonance could have stopped her. She did not.

She went onto her back. The grey eyes looked up at Wren and the looking was not assessment, was not control, was the looking of a woman allowing something she had never allowed and the allowing was the fall.

Wren straddled her. The stone was still inside her, humming low, and the collar hummed on her throat, but the desperation was not the point now. The point was the Dissonance underneath her, the dark body horizontal, the grey eyes open and afraid.

Wren pressed her wetness against the Dissonance's thigh. The contact was electric, warm skin against swollen heat, and the Dissonance's breath caught. Wren rocked her hips, slow, deliberate, grinding against the thigh, and the grinding was the claim, was the taking of her own pleasure, was the thing she had not been allowed and was now allowing herself.

I want this, Wren said. I want you here.

She reached down and found the Dissonance's hand and pressed it between her own legs, against the wetness, against the stone. Feel that, Wren said. Feel what you do to me.

The Dissonance's fingers curled inside her, beside the stone, and Wren rode the hand, the rhythm building, and the Dissonance's other hand went to Wren's hip, the ownership grip, but the ownership was two-way now and the hands pulled Wren closer and the closer was not close enough.

The Dissonance made a sound. Not the fracture from before. Something deeper. Something that had been locked in the sharp body for twenty years, a sound that was not the wrong note and not the woman who broke things but the true note underneath, the lonely fierce starving sound Wren had felt through the breach. The instruments on the walls went quiet because they did not know what to do with the Dissonance being played.

Wren came. The orgasm was a wave, rolling, deep, and she pressed her forehead against the Dissonance's shoulder and the Dissonance held her and the holding was the fall. The Dissonance came with her, the hand between her own legs shaking, and the sound was the true note, unleased, and the house sang, every instrument, every wall, and the sound was not dissonance. Was harmony.

They lay together. Wren's head on the Dissonance's chest and the Dissonance's hand in Wren's hair and the hand was shaking and the shaking was the thing the Dissonance would not name and did not need to name because the naming was in the body, was in the tears on the sharp face, was in the wetness they had made together.

I am staying, Wren said. Not a promise. A fact.

The Dissonance's hand tightened in her hair. The fingers stayed.