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Historically, Xena chose her second-in-command by a certain standard.
It was the same standard by which Borias had once chosen her. She would have liked to tell herself that it was her prowess as a warrior, but it would have been a lie. There were more important qualities, attributes which could exalt even the lowliest footsoldier to a much higher standing, if that footsoldier played their cards right.
Although Gabrielle had been travelling with Xena for more than a fortnight, she had yet to take on the extra duties. She was good for plenty of other things, of course: she started their campfires, cleaned Xena’s armor, made herself useful however she could. Generally, she did Xena’s bidding, though she did sometimes question her orders. Apart from the occasional insubordination, and the fact that Xena had yet to bed her, Gabrielle made a fantastic second-in-command. It was difficult for Xena not to see her as such.
And while Xena was committed to her path to redemption, she still had not quite untangled all of the nuances of right and wrong. Some part of her was still a commander, the head of an army. There were expectations Xena didn’t yet realize she was taking for granted.
They’d been separated for the past few days; Xena, working undercover in an army encampment, and Gabrielle, sleeping comfortably in the nearby village inn. By day, Xena tried to earn the trust of the warlord Rhinoseus. At night, she relayed his plans to Gabrielle so that the villagers could arm themselves against the impending onslaught.
It was good work, important work, but several aspects of it were far from ideal. Surrounded by soldiers for hire, it was impossible to forget about the army that had so recently turned on her and beaten her to the ground. The memory was still fresh enough to sting, and though Xena knew she could survive another gauntlet, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
There were other memories fresh in Xena’s mind, too. Peeling leather and armor off of her subordinate’s body, clearing maps and inkwells from the table in her tent and making him fuck her on it. She knew that if she asked, any one of these soldiers could be hers for the night. But she needed her nights free to go see Gabrielle.
She would simply have to kill two birds with one stone. That was her thinking. She would go to Gabrielle, fill her in on the warlord’s plans, and then work off her growing frustration. Gabrielle would help distract her from the memories that plagued her, and Xena would finally test Gabrielle’s caliber where it really counted.
“How’d it go?” Gabrielle asked. Xena closed the door of Gabrielle’s inn room behind her, locking it and checking the windows for good measure. Once she was sure their room was secure, she allowed Gabrielle to help her out of her armor.
“These villagers are not as hopeless as we thought,” Xena replied, using the royal ‘we’ even though, at this early stage in their relationship, she did not know or really care about Gabrielle’s assessment of the locals’ ability to fight back.
“Well, that’s good.”
“Yes.”
Gabrielle chattered as she worked on unclipping the various fastenings of Xena’s chestplate. “The tanner’s son has a pretty good arm. I think he would be great for sending signals if we need someone for that. He’s a little young to be on the battlefield, but he could still be useful away from the action.”
Xena bit back a response about how no one was too young for battle if their village was on the line. If a warlord had no qualms about cutting down children regardless of whether they fought, it was only right to arm them. But that line of thinking was what got Lyceus killed. She had done many terrible things, but that was the first true atrocity. She wouldn’t order children into battle anymore.
“Are you going to stay here tonight?” Gabrielle asked hopefully, wrenching Xena out of an impending spiral. The dark thoughts would return — they would never go away, not for the rest of Xena’s life — but for now, they were banished to the back of her mind. Xena hoped to keep them there, but for that, she needed Gabrielle’s continued assistance.
“No,” Xena said. She shrugged the straps of her shift down her shoulders, sighing in pleasure when the motion cracked several of her joints. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why…?”
Xena let her shift drop to the ground.
Gabrielle’s eyes went wide.
“Xena?”
Her voice was quiet, uncertain.
“Get on the bed.”
Xena’s voice was confident. Commanding.
After a moment’s hesitation, Gabrielle swallowed, nodded, and sat primly at the foot of the bed. For the space of one breath, Xena was irritated by her insubordination. Then she realized: Gabrielle was a virgin. She wasn’t being intentionally willful. She had simply never done this before. Come to think of it, that was probably why it had taken them this long to get here.
This was only a problem if Gabrielle required coaxing. Xena did not think she had the patience to convince Gabrielle to fuck her. Then again…there was something endearing about Gabrielle’s shyness. She was blushing like a Hestian priestess in a Dionysian bathhouse. Xena enjoyed watching people squirm, and she didn’t get to do it nearly often enough anymore. For good reason, she reminded herself. She was no longer a warlord. But her remorse was still new, and she wasn’t always aware of the lines she crossed in those early days.
At any rate, this was the best outlet for her sadism. Xena would never outgrow that desire, try as she would to bury it. It would always be there.
It did not feel sadistic, though, to handle Gabrielle like this, with cruel care. To take Gabrielle’s hands and press them to her bare breasts. To ignore Gabrielle’s sharp gasp, to hold her in place, moving into the touch, until she felt Gabrielle’s fingers splay open and touch with intention.
From there, no further coaxing was required. Gabrielle breathed out softly, running her fingers over Xena’s nipples. She seemed entranced. Xena liked that. It was a good feeling: to be wanted. She had guessed at Gabrielle’s inclinations from her very first “I’m not the little girl my parents wanted me to be” speech, and she so enjoyed being right.
But foreplay often bored her, and she didn’t have time for tentative, experimental touches. She planted a foot on the bed beside Gabrielle’s knees and moved one of Gabrielle’s hands between her legs. Gabrielle’s breath hitched, but she stayed there when Xena let her hand go. Xena arched an eyebrow at her, rubbing herself against Gabrielle’s hesitation.
“Um,” Gabrielle said, looking from her hand to Xena’s eyes. “How do you like to be touched?”
Some part of Xena was disappointed by the lack of friction. She didn’t know Gabrielle very well yet, so she wasn’t prepared for such a direct question from a girl who shouldn’t even know how to ask. Shouldn’t Gabrielle be more incoherent, more uncertain, more virginal? Why couldn’t she just let Xena be a lecherous warlord?
Because, Xena remembered, that wasn’t who she was anymore. And that wasn’t who Gabrielle had ever been. In their two weeks of travel together, she had never seen Gabrielle incoherent. There was no reason that would start now.
“Like this,” Xena said, gesturing lewdly in the air in front of Gabrielle’s face. “Two inside. One outside. Don't be gentle.”
Gabrielle nodded and slipped two fingers inside Xena, finding her clit with her thumb. Xena closed her eyes, bracing herself on Gabrielle’s shoulder. She moved her hips against Gabrielle’s hand to demonstrate the pace she wanted, fast, hard, like this, until Gabrielle caught on and picked up the pace.
“That’s good,” Xena said, breathy. “I’m gonna come soon.”
“Okay,” Gabrielle replied, equally breathy.
Because Xena was so tightly wound, it didn’t take long after that, and because she had never learned shame, she didn’t feel the need to be self-conscious about it. She announced her orgasm, in case Gabrielle didn’t know the signs. A quiet gasp:“I’m coming—!”
Gabrielle’s hand slowed in response, started to withdraw prematurely, so Xena held her wrist in place.
“Don’t stop,” she said, as sternly as she could with her body rippling through an orgasm that was, admittedly, much more powerful after that brief denial.
When she was done, she pushed Gabrielle’s hand away and planted both feet firmly on the ground.
“Is there anything left in the saddlebag to eat?” she asked. “I’m starving.”
“Um,” Gabrielle said, looking at her hand.
Xena decided to just check for herself.
It happened like that, more or less, a few more times, before Gabrielle said anything about it.
They were staying in a guest room of King Gregor’s castle after settling all that mess with the prophecy and the baby and Pandora and her box. Tomorrow they would set off again, but tonight, they were taking the rare opportunity to live in luxury. Earlier, they bathed together, and Gabrielle’s fingers never got a chance to dry afterwards. She was wiping them off on her bare hip when she said, “Xena, are you ever gonna touch me?”
Xena shouldn't have been surprised. After a month of traveling together, she thought she knew Gabrielle pretty well, and this was a Gabrielle move. Right to the point when she knew what she wanted, and right when she had Xena at her most vulnerable.
“What, now?” Xena said, impressed with herself for how well she'd hidden her excitement. She'd been wondering how Gabrielle would feel, how she would sound. She'd been thinking about impressing Gabrielle with her skills in the bedroom. Imagining Gabrielle flushed and panting, saying something like, “By the gods, Xena, that was incredible.” Or maybe not saying anything at all, maybe totally speechless.
She was beginning to think she might like Gabrielle more than a second-in-command amount. She wondered if this was how Borias felt about her, and then wrote the notion off completely. She would never be such a simpering mess. Borias was a fool to love her so deeply, so unrequitedly. Xena couldn’t see herself making that same mistake with Gabrielle, no matter how cute she was. No matter how comforting her presence.
She had no idea.
“Why not now?” Gabrielle said. She gestured at her naked body, at the bed they lay atop. “We have the fewest obstacles we’re ever gonna have here.”
Caught off guard and charmed by Gabrielle’s delivery, Xena laughed.
“All right, then,” she said, pushing Gabrielle onto her back. She pressed her fingers between Gabrielle’s legs and found that there would be no foreplay necessary.
“Gabrielle,” she admonished, examining the cling of Gabrielle’s arousal to her fingers, “you shoulda said something earlier.”
“I’m saying something now,” Gabrielle said, gasping as Xena flicked her clit. “Softer, Xena, please.”
Softer. Xena should have expected that. Gabrielle would be the type of girl to like it gentle.
It wasn't Xena’s favorite way to fuck, but if it got Gabrielle off, she could cooperate.
Besides, she liked the way Gabrielle said her name. The way she said please.
“How does this feel?” Xena didn't have to ask — Gabrielle’s grip on the sheets and breathy moans said it all — but she liked to hear Gabrielle talk.
“It’s good,” Gabrielle said. “Um, it could be a little softer, even.”
Xena let the blow to her ego glance off. It wasn't about her, not about skills, just a matter of preference. Even softer, though? Did Gabrielle even want to be touched?
Xena adjusted, stroked Gabrielle so lightly it seemed more like the idea of a touch, and felt Gabrielle’s clit harden under the pads of her fingers.
“You like that?” Xena whispered, smug.
“Yes,” Gabrielle moaned. She widened her legs. “Now, do me like I do you. Just not as hard. But like—” She made the same lewd gesture that Xena made at her mere weeks prior. Two fingers and a thumb, curled toward each other.
Xena obliged. Her fingers slipped into Gabrielle like butter.
“You’re supposed to be a virgin,” Xena told her, though she knew the lack of any barrier to entry didn't really mean anything.
“I am a virgin,” Gabrielle replied through gritted teeth. “Fingers don’t count.”
“Don’t they?” Xena crooned, curling her fingers.
“Oh, gods,” Gabrielle responded, throwing her head back. “Yes, Xena.”
Hearing Gabrielle say her name like this — it was no army chanting her name, but it was a taste of the same feeling. She had power over Gabrielle. This early on, she always had power over Gabrielle, because Gabrielle knew nothing about the world and Xena knew too much. But this, Xena thought, was a different kind of power.
From there, the conversation dropped off, apart from two more requests to be gentler on Gabrielle’s clit. With each reminder, Xena had to silently regroup and build her own ego back up — she was good at sex, people liked what she did, Gabrielle was just sensitive! — but it was always a learning experience the first time, wasn't it? It was actually a good thing that Gabrielle was so communicative.
She was as generous with her sounds as she was with her instructions. She didn't need words to announce her orgasm when it came — Xena could follow the pitch of her moans, could feel the squeeze of her, could hear the sounds of pleasure cresting. She didn’t usually find people so pretty when they came, but even Gabrielle’s grimace was cute. Xena stroked her to the end and then held her when it was over, because she figured that Gabrielle was probably the type of girl who would like to be held afterwards.
She didn’t know when she started to care so much about what Gabrielle liked, but it was not the worst thing in the world to make concessions for a lover. Xena supposed that was what they were now, though she was not sure why this distinction. After all, she fucked more than her fair share of second-in-command officers and foot soldiers, and she never called any of them her lover. She didn’t even bestow that title on Borias, for all that he would have loved it. Maybe that was why she never did.
But Gabrielle would probably enjoy being called Xena’s lover. Xena resolved to be careful not to actually say it. Couldn’t let her go thinking there was any romance involved in this arrangement of theirs. After all, Gabrielle was basically just Xena’s second-in-command. It was really not a big deal.