Chapter Text
October 10th
The brass number on the apartment door stares back at Lexa, daring her to knock.
It’s such a simple thing, to curl her fingers in on themselves, raise her fist, touch the wood with her knuckles. It’s nothing, really. It wouldn’t take much effort and she’d be able to write down this staring contest as a win for the day.
But her fingers remain firmly around the shoulder strap of her satchel bag, its weight comforting against her collarbone.
She could turn around. She could turn around and walk back to the elevator, end this for once and for all. But her legs are as unforthcoming as her hands, rooting her in place, begging her to take them home.
The person behind this door is the one who taught her that home could be a person.
At last, Lexa grits her teeth against the ache in her chest, the lead curling around her bones, the coal resting on her stomach, and knocks twice. She tells herself that maybe the door won’t open, that she’ll be the last one to get to her senses, that her heart will be broken but at least, at least she won’t have to break anyone else’s.
But the door swings open half a second later and oh— Oh.
Worry leaves her and her world becomes Clarke. Clarke, and nothing else.
Lexa feels more than hears a giggle pressed against her lips, barely a kiss yet as she’s pulled inside the apartment, a foot nudging the door closed. The laughter — joyful, almost childlike laughter — runs through her veins, her heart settling in its wild rhythm.
Hands cling to her coat, tugging at her lapels to bring her closer, and Lexa falls into it. Her arm wraps around Clarke’s waist, her fingertips digging into soft flesh as she seeks to erase every inch in between them. Her free hand comes up to touch Clarke’s cheek, the softness of this touch a stark contrast against the need in her grip around her middle.
All humor leaves both of them, their lips meeting in a kiss they both have been longing for days now. It’s quiet, at first. Gentle. It’s just lips pressed together in greeting, a “hello, my love” lost in between them.
Then Clarke’s hands sink into Lexa’s hair, curl around the fine strands in the nape of her neck and teeth are bared, grazing her lips, her tongue — demanding to be paid attention to, demanding to be the sole focus of Lexa’s world.
She is. She is.
In these stolen moments, nothing else exists. The walls crumble around them, nature takes back what it’s owed, entire galaxies come alive and meet their demise in the seconds they’re together. Sometimes hours, or even days, if they’re lucky.
In these moments, her universe starts and ends with Clarke.
When Lexa’s bag slips from her shoulder and the strap gets caught in their tangled arms, the spell is broken and they break the kiss. Clarke doesn’t let her go too far, one hand still clinging to her, the other reaching out and tugging at the leather until it’s resting over her shoulder again, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Lexa whispers, echoing Clarke more than thinking it through. Up close and after a kiss that brought both of them back to life, her eyes are the same blue of the cenotes in Tulum — they’ll swim in those one day, Lexa has promised her that much. “I should take this off.”
With another kiss that tastes like a different promise, Clarke takes a step back. “You can put it on the couch. What are you even carrying in there? Bricks?”
A dumb, ridiculous smile tugs at Lexa’s lips as she puts her arguably very heavy satchel on the couch, working the buttons on her coat free, “Nothing like that. Just my laptop and a few books.”
“Nerd,” Clarke rolls her eyes, a matching smile on her lips. She still makes fun of Lexa, who wouldn’t be caught dead without a book to keep her entertained in a boring world, but it’s so affectionate Lexa can’t find it in her to be annoyed.
Taking her coat off and letting it fall over the back of the couch, Lexa takes in the apartment — the sketchbook forgotten on the coffee table, art history books nestled beside medical ones, a light green stethoscope with a smiling frog on the chest piece hanging precariously from a vase on the desk near the window.
Lexa has never been here before. In the five or so months since they admitted that neither of them could go back from this, they have never been in each other’s place. And right now, with all these signs of a shared life that she’ll never be a part of, Lexa can’t remember why they agreed to break that pattern.
Arms wrap around her waist and Lexa closes her eyes, lets herself be engulfed by the comfort that comes with her lover pressed against her back, chin resting on her shoulder, small puffs of air reminding her that she isn’t alone in this.
Swallowing past the ever growing lump in her throat, Lexa forces herself to say something — because they’ve agreed on this: no hiding, no lying, no shouldering things alone, only open dialogue could give them a fighting chance. “This feels like crossing a line.”
Clarke doesn’t answer right away, tightening her grip around Lexa. It helps, it always does. It keeps her from crumbling, and it only just manages to do the job now. When Clarke speaks, her voice is small. “Haven’t we crossed all of them already?”
“You know what I mean,” Lexa says, peeling her eyes from the white clogs that don't belong to Clarke and turning around in her arms. She keeps her hands on Clarke’s forearms — anything more than this, and it’ll be a lost battle. Not for the first time, Lexa tries to make Clarke see reason, pleads for her to be the rational one between the two of them. “This is your apartment, your bed. Her bed.”
Something seems to click inside of Clarke — or break, Lexa can’t be sure — and her embrace loosens ever so slightly, her spine lengthening with the weight of those words. There’s a reason they’ve never crossed that line, and Lexa isn’t hypocritical enough to say it’s out of respect, but there’s a reason.
“We can go to a hotel, if you want,” Clarke suggests, her voice calm and quiet. To an ear untrained in the finer nuances of Clarke Griffin, it sounds just like nothing more than a mere suggestion.
Lexa glances at her watch. She has a deadline to meet and between finding a hotel and checking in, she’d be so far behind it’d be a pipe dream to even attempt to send anything in. “I have to finish writing an article,” she relents, her thumb coming up to trace the bow of Clarke’s lips — it signals her defeat, more than anything. “It was due yesterday.”
When Lexa woke up this morning, she had a game plan. She’d finish writing it in the morning, then meet Clarke in the afternoon. But the nervous energy that built inside her at the thought of meeting Clarke at her apartment kept her from getting more than fifty words down.
So, she had adapted her plans. It was pretty obvious she wouldn’t get anything done before seeing Clarke, before sinking into her and knowing deep in her bones that they belonged to one another, before breathing her in, giving into this, enjoying every mile of her ride to hell.
Her new plans are vague, at best — she’s going to a coffee shop she’s seen on her drive here, a good seven blocks away so it’s not too suspicious. She’s just trying new coffee shops in town, nothing else.
Lexa doesn’t have the time to come up with another excuse before Clarke presses a kiss to her thumb, “You can write it here. After.”
They’ve never stayed longer than they should. Sex would lead to whispered secrets and promises that both of them were only half sure weren’t empty ones, but they never… stayed, for the sake of being in each other’s company. They had always had someone else to go home to, and the motels they usually picked weren’t exactly welcoming.
Her eyes are wide and wild when she finds Clarke’s eyes and sees herself reflected in them. But when she speaks, her voice is dangerously close to touching hope. “Is that us?”
“It could be,” Clarke doesn’t miss a beat, nestling into Lexa’s touch until she could kiss her palm. It sounds like an empty promise, void of any fighting chance — but Lexa can’t help the flip of her stomach, the nauseatingly domestic images that flood her mind, the need for it to become true.
“When will she come back?” Lexa asks more as a formality than anything else, her hand sinking back into Clarke’s hair, her nails scraping the spot above the curve of her neck.
Clarke is too responsive to Lexa’s touch, pulling her close and sighing into the shared air in between them. “Not for another six hours. She’s covering for someone.”
It was a lost battle from the beginning, and Lexa can’t bring herself to be bitter about the defeat.
March 25th
They should be sitting on opposite sides of the table.
If Lexa wants to have a shot, no matter how long, at convincing herself that the gnarly feeling in her core that floods her stomach with acid every time their knees brush is nothing to worry about, they should be sitting on opposite sides of the table.
It’s what would make the most sense too. The space between them is cramped, their arms all but perpetually pressed together as they type into their laptops, the coffee and pastries they ordered sitting just out of reach.
But when Clarke walked into their new favorite coffee place, bringing the early spring blossoms with her, and dragged a chair to sit beside her, Lexa didn’t argue. When Clarke asked what she wanted with her coffee order that she had memorized by now, and said it was her treat, Lexa simply answered, refusing to let that friendly gesture become something that tasted sour in her tongue.
They’re two friends, meeting for coffee. Two friends, working together on their separate projects, sharing a space. Friends — both of them being in committed relationships doesn’t mean making new friends is something sordid.
Why are they hiding it, then? If they’re friends, why haven’t they told anyone, why have they found a new coffee place to go whenever they wanted to have an afternoon together, why are they hiding it?
There’s only so far Lexa can stretch reality to justify their acts.
It had started innocently enough, if that’s any defense — it’s not, it’s not.
They’d run into each other a couple times at a coffee shop they both had heard great things about from their respective girlfriends. It was pure coincidence, and they’d joke about the universe wanting them to be friends. They’d talk while grabbing coffee, then each would find a place to get work done, maybe sit together when the place was full, and only then.
After the first few times they’d met, Clarke had been the one to suggest they exchange numbers. If you ever want company.
Lexa had wanted it. Over and over again, Lexa had wanted to call Clarke, to ask her to sit across from her, to talk about their fears and demons in between sharing anecdotes from their days. And over and over again, Lexa had caved into that feeling, that treacherous want.
They’re two friends, meeting for coffee.
But Clarke hasn’t told Niylah that she deals with frustrating and entitled prospect clients from a coffee shop, and not quietly answering those emails at the small office in the back of the art gallery she owns.
And while Costia knows that Lexa likes to have her notes spread out across a table that has at least three coffee mugs on it, enjoys the ambiance of several coffee shops in this ever growing city, she hadn’t told her girlfriend about going to this one in particular.
Maybe it’s the sanctity of this coffee shop, their visits unknown to anyone but her and Clarke, that makes this friendship work — it’s not, it’s not.
“Lexa?” Clarke calling her name is what makes Lexa peel her eyes from the page she’s supposed to be putting words onto, but has barely managed a few mangled paragraphs that she’ll need to edit to death to make them readable.
It takes a moment for Lexa to realize that no, it wasn’t her voice that broke in through the thick of her thoughts, not really — it was Clarke’s hand, spread open and pressing down on her thigh, warmth radiating from the single point of contact.
Lexa doesn’t move a muscle. She forces herself not to react, not to jump away from Clarke, not to lean into her touch. “I got distracted. What did you say?”
“Yea, I could see you were far away. You good?” Clarke asks, with a gentle squeeze that is meant to be comforting, but only makes the warmth pulsate in her veins. “I asked if you wanted another coffee.”
Lexa swallows past the stubborn lump in her throat, and meets Clarke’s eyes — she could never guess their exact shade of blue, but they make it easier for a smile to burst across her face. “Yes, thank you.”
Grabbing their empty mugs and plates with nothing but crumbs on them, Clarke goes back to the counter, laughing with the barista over something Lexa isn’t privy to. Her perfume lingers in the air around their table. Maybe because her coat is draped over her chair, or because Lexa has committed it to memory. Neither option is too comforting.
The fire burning low and steady within her is something she hadn’t expected to feel. The warmth that spreads from her lower belly to every point of casual contact with Clarke and back to her core is nothing like she felt before. The thrill of each gaze that lingers a second too long, of words laced with flirty tones and followed by quirked eyebrows, of subtle touch that isn’t supposed to mean anything but Lexa keeps replaying over and over and over again.
Clarke walks back with a mug in each hand, taking a sip of her own as she hands Lexa the other one and sits back down — is it Lexa’s imagination or there’s even less space in between them now than there was before?
“I’m bored with my dumb emails,” Clarke groans, closing her laptop despite her unread emails count still being in the three digits and pushing it away to make room for her coffee, “Can I read what you have so far? The way you roast those poor chefs makes me feel better about my clients.”
“I don’t roast them,” Lexa defends her work ethic as she hides a smile behind her coffee before setting it down on the first free space she finds, and turns her laptop towards Clarke. Her article is… incomplete, to put it mildly. It barely has a handful of sentences packed above a bullet point list of things she still needs to talk about
“Well, you did scare me off of ever trying to cook for you,” Clarke says with an easy smirk, her tone painfully casual, as if those words have no implication at all. “Make of that what you will.”
Clarke doesn’t pull the laptop closer to her — it’d be easier to read like that, even if it’s not an extensive reading by any means. But nothing ever happens in the easier way with Clarke, does it? Instead, she leans in, clouding Lexa’s personal space — her senses, her goddamn mind — with her perfume, with her breath on her cheek.
It’s all too much.
Swallowing past the aching desire in her throat, Lexa tries to force herself to lean back, to put some space between them, to get up and go home, to never come back. It’s what she should do. It’s what she wants to do.
She closes the distance between them instead.
Her lips press against Clarke’s in a gentle, tentative way. They land in a way that her bottom lip is nestled between Lexa’s and for a moment, an eternal moment when no outcome would be the right one, Clarke doesn’t move.
But then, oh — then her lips open ever so slightly and Clarke leans into the feeling, deepens the kiss, and all Lexa can do is follow her lead, try to keep her feet on the ground.
Lexa shifts closer, her hands bunching Clarke’s oversized tee at the same time a soft, hesitant palm rests under her shoulder blade. It’s that feeling again, warmth spreading from their touch point, but a thousand times more powerful.
It’s Clarke who breaks the kiss, and in her haze, Lexa follows her lips before realizing what she’s done.
“I’m sorry. I–” Lexa stammers, fighting to come up with a good excuse, finding none. “I shouldn’t have.” She doesn’t add I don’t know what came over me, because she does know — it’s the same reason why her eyes can’t leave Clarke’s lips.
“You’re fine, Lex,” Clarke answers, the nickname falling easily from her kiss-bruised lips along with a smile. She blinks a few times, before adding, “It was a good kiss.”
Lexa nods, pushing the turmoil happening within her away for now, reaching for her coffee with unsteady hands. Clarke tastes like coffee, sweeter than the one Lexa takes a sip from. She pulls her laptop back to her as Clarke opens hers again, the article reading forgotten, her emails apparently seeming interesting again.
If only to keep her mind busy with something other than how close Clarke still is, not giving her more than an inch to breathe without her invading her senses, Lexa finds a razor sharp focus to type away her critique. It’s a good restaurant, if a little lacking in the dessert options — she goes through every bullet point on her list, sipping her coffee before moving on to the next argument.
Amidst silence that toes the line between comfortable and awkward, they both finish their coffees and their work for the day. Clarke has gotten her unread emails down to the double digits, and Lexa has finished her first draft. It was a good, productive work session shared between two friends.
That’s all they would ever be, Lexa tells herself as they walk past the front door, the little bell jingling above their heads. Kissing Clarke was a mistake, something that should have never happened.
Lexa has an apology on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill over in a barely coherent form — pleas for them to remain friends despite their kiss mixed with promises of never doing anything of the sort again. Before she can say a word, Clarke tugs at her sleeve, leading her away from the coffee shop, away from prying eyes.
Her back hits the brick wall beside the shop front, the rain from earlier clinging to her cashmere, a sharp contrast between the warmth from inside. But that’s not what makes Lexa shiver — no, that’s on Clarke, the way her body presses fully against her, her hand reaches up to cup her face, her lips seek for hers in a deeper, more desperate way than half an hour ago.
October 10th
Clothes fall to the floor in a frantic pace as they make their way to the bedroom, leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow back home — except home isn’t at the beginning of that trail, but at the end.
With each piece of clothing they peel from each other, a little bit of Lexa’s resolve to end things comes off. Her usual reasoning takes its place, a thought pattern that the biggest names in psychology wouldn’t be able to excuse. One more time. One more time, then I’ll stop.
It’s such a pathetic rationalization that Lexa wants to scoff at herself, to roll her eyes so far back something snaps in her, something snaps her to the reality of it all.
And the reality is that she’s a cheater, plain and simple.
She’s hurting the person she claims to love, hurting someone else entirely, hurting herself, hurting Clarke. She’s bringing chaos into peace and telling herself she couldn’t possibly do anything about it.
But she doesn’t scoff, no. Her mouth is busy burning a path down Clarke’s neck, lips paving the way for her tongue to taste her skin, committing it to memory each time anew.
Her hands fumble with Clarke’s bra clasp, her desperation to free her breasts coming in the way of dexterity. Her own bra is on the floor somewhere between the living room and the hallway, probably on top of her blouse with how fast it had followed, both of their pants lying on top of one another. Undressing each other has never been anything less than desperate, as if with the fabric in between them gone they could pretend better.
Laughter comes from somewhere above her, and Lexa doesn’t have time to get offended before her back hits a wall, the cold surface against her warm skin combined with a thigh pressing against her core making her eyes pop open.
“I got it,” Clarke mumbles as she presses a kiss to Lexa’s temple, too delicate to match anything they’re doing, and reaches behind herself to take her own bra off. Her eyes are glued to Lexa’s, who only notices the mischief in them when Clarke urges her to ride her thigh in the middle of the goddamn hallway.
Lexa starts moving, because of course she does. There’s no universe out there where she doesn’t do as she’s told when Clarke has the afternoon sun behind her, weaving through her mussed hair and showing Lexa the only heaven she’ll ever know.
(But maybe there is an universe out there where they met when they were single and free to love each other, when they were kids and grew up knowing they’d marry each other, in a party during freshman year in college, in a bar, on the street. Maybe there’s an universe out there where all of this feels right.)
Looking away from Clarke takes more effort than Lexa wishes it did, but she has a good excuse on her hands — literally, on her hands. The familiar weight of Clarke’s breasts against her palms quiets her heart, and she ducks her head to lick a path downwards, the pebbled skin turning into peaks when she rolls the flat of her tongue around it.
They’ve gotten pretty good at not marking each other, despite the brutal, primal urge to do so. Lexa dreams of raking her fingernails down Clarke’s back when she’s being rough with her instead of gripping the sheets to keep herself in check. But they’ve learned their lesson after Lexa had to spend an entire week avoiding her girlfriend because Clarke had left a trail of hickeys down her stomach.
It’s not that Lexa didn’t enjoy being marked like that. During that week, she’d poke her own stomach to awaken the sore skin and sparkle memories, she’d look down her body and get ridiculously turned on. But one moment of passion isn’t worth the trouble.
When Clarke straightens up in one swoop movement and she buckles against nothing, Lexa isn’t proud of the needy whine she lets out. Her core is aching with the need for friction, and the small relief she was getting was enough to keep her at bay, but then— oh. Clarke’s laugh echoes around them, lighting up the space more than the afternoon sun as she intertwines their hands, leads them to bed.
Clarke captures her gaze in her dangerously blue eyes as she walks backwards until her knees hit the bed, and then she’s falling on her back, scooting up towards the pillows, spreading her legs and welcoming Lexa to make her hers.
It takes a moment for Lexa to move.
If anyone — including her own conscience — asks, she’ll say she’s having second thoughts, that the reason her gut is twisting is guilt, and fucking Clarke in the bed she shares with another woman is too much even for her, even after everything they’ve done.
But that’s not the reason, not by a far cry. Her stomach is doing somersaults at the sight of Clarke spread out and wanting, the glistening in her core matching hers, and for a moment, all she can do is take Clarke in — her shallow breathing, her hooded eyes and kiss-bruised lips, her hair like a halo around her head.
Then she plants a foot on the mattress, knowing the new angle is obscene and far too tempting, and quirks an eyebrow in a silent “what’s taking you so long?”
Lexa crawls up the bed on her hands and knees until she’s fully on top of Clarke, their legs tangling as they fall into a kiss. Their tongues know each other’s rhythm, know how to elicit soft gasps and moans, how to work their bodies all the way up to a breaking point.
Her thigh meets Clarke’s core and whatever revenge Lexa had been planning falls apart when she feels Clarke spilling over her skin, rubbing herself shamelessly, breaking the kiss to gasp and suck in a breath. Lexa adjusts herself, moving with Clarke as she kisses a path down her cheek, her jaw, her neck, buries her nose right behind Clarke’s ear.
A single turn of her hips changes the pressure against Clarke and that’s all it takes for desperate hands to find her hair, nails scraping against her scalp, both of them knowing this is all they get to have.
Leaning on her hands to get some leverage, Lexa pokes Clarke’s calf with her foot, asking for something she can’t voice. They’ve done this enough times that she doesn’t have to. Due to nothing but instinct, one that bonds them together, Clarke lifts her thigh, giving Lexa something to rut against.
The angle, the closeness, the sheer need make Lexa’s arms buckle from under her, and she lands on her elbows to keep herself from crushing Clarke, her lips pressed together so she doesn’t bite the shoulder she’s leaning against. Her hips move on their own accord and Clarke’s gasps are a symphony to her ears, but when she tilts her face forward and catches a whiff of perfume that doesn’t belong to either of them, Lexa doesn’t have to fake the guilt that floods her.
Her fists curl against the sheets when Clarke makes a sharp movement and her eyes roll back, her spine arches as they both chase release. The sheets have a faint laundry detergent smell to them, but not so faint that Lexa has reason to doubt someone else has slept in them before — the perfume is ingrained in the mattress itself, in the pillows, in this entire goddamn apartment.
The only warning she gets before Clarke comes is a subtle stiffening of her body under her, and Lexa turns her attention elsewhere. She tenses her thigh and presses harder against Clarke’s core, relishing in the gush of wetness she feels dripping down her thigh, in the way Clarke palms and pinches her back trying to find something to tether her to this reality.
Lexa watches Clarke come undone, throaty moans filling the room as she throws her head back, then she follows suit — either she was too eager or it was Clarke’s reaction that pushes her over the edge, Lexa couldn’t tell. She rides out her own orgasm against Clarke, her thighs clamping against Clarke’s, her spine shaking and sending vibrations to every inch of her body.
“You’re so beautiful when you come. I love how you sound when you come, I love how I make you sound. God, you’re shivering. Come here, baby. I’m here. I’m here, I got you. I love you.” The words find their way to her through the aftershocks, and Clarke’s arms find their way around her waist, holding her closer.
Instead of acknowledging those three words Clarke says every now and then, Lexa pushes through with her shaky limbs until she can hover above Clarke, tipping her head down for a kiss as her hand travels south. With nails barely scratching the skin of her stomach but evoking responses from trembling muscles all the same, Lexa pours into the kiss everything she can’t bring herself to say, every wish she has for them, every dream that will never come true.
Lexa slides two digits inside Clarke with ease, curling her fingers when she feels a smile against her lips, uncurling them when a demanding voice whispers “three” in her ear so she can adjust accordingly. Her nose traces a path down Clarke’s throat, and eager hands come up to her hair again, to guide her down to where she needs to be.
If each touch feels like their last, it’s because it could be.
It might be.
It should be.
Between tongues finding familiar paths and fingers sinking deep into wet heat, between whispered sweet nothings in small in-between moments and commanding dirty talk grunted against salty skin, they make each other come until they’re both spent, until there’s nothing in the world but the two of them.
August 12th
The bedsprings squeak under their matching rhythm, announcing to the world what they’re doing and almost precisely how old this mattress is. But for once, Lexa doesn’t feel judged — whoever is in a motel like this one in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon isn’t looking for comfort or luxury, and it’s doubtful that they’d have any high ground to stand on.
It’s hard to tune out the noises around them, the way the bedframe shakes and hits the wall being the worry in the forefront of her mind, but she forces herself to focus on something else. On someone else. On the woman atop her, fucking her into oblivion.
The cheap strap-on isn’t as bad as the price tag would suggest, and the shape is comfortable enough considering Lexa spent all of two seconds deciding on it before ringing it up on the way here. But maybe it’s Clarke, making it work with the swaying of her hips, tilting them just so, urging Lexa to meet her halfway.
Lexa enjoys lying down on her back and spreading her legs for Clarke, welcoming that devious smile with a kiss, and it has more to do with the view than with laziness that engulfs her at the mere thought of leaning on her arms for too long.
Oh, yes. It is the view.
It’s the way Clarke grips her thighs for leverage, guiding her to hook her ankles together on her lower back to a deeper thrust. It’s the thin sheen of sweat gathering into droplets at some points, running down a strained neck and disappearing into Clarke’s cleavage, her breasts bouncing as she moves within her, putting her weight behind it and holding onto each move. It’s the need that greets her when Lexa adjusts her position until she’s half sitting, just enough for her to take a nipple into her mouth, just enough for Clarke to hit a spot that makes her vision cloud and black stars to pepper the edge of her consciousness.
She’s pliable under Clarke’s touch, has no shame about it, indulges each tug that her lover guides her with.
When Clarke sinks into her and ruts against the base of the dildo to build herself up to where Lexa is patiently waiting for her, there’s nothing crass or delicate about it — it’s something in the middle, something so wrapped up in the need for release that no word in the English language could describe.
Lexa sees Clarke reaching her orgasm before she even feels her own building up past the point of return and then she’s falling, grasping at Clarke’s back, hoping that if she just holds on tight enough the ground will never come up to meet her, to break her bones, to ruin her completely.
It’s almost a surprise when she lands safely.
Clarke wraps her arm around her waist and pulls her closer, impossibly closer, until Lexa has to arch her back just to keep them from bumping heads.
Her eyes are still closed shut and her fingertips are still clinging to the flesh slick with sweat when Clarke slows her movements to an almost stop, leans down to lay Lexa down on the bed again. The care with which she does so is a sharp contrast to their frantic rhythm mere moments ago.
A smile, weak and spent, tugs at her lips when Clarke presses her entire body against hers, presses the softest kiss possible on her temple. Lexa lets her arms relax and her hands bring goosebumps to life as she drags them up Clarke’s back, down her shoulders, holds her cheek and guides her into a kiss.
These moments are dangerous.
When they’re fucking, they’re fucking. When they’re putting their clothes back on and checking for marks that need to be addressed, they’re fighting guilt just enough to keep breathing.
But these in-between moments, when the aftershocks are still coursing through their bodies, their limbs too heavy to move, and their will too weak to keep their lovesick grins at bay? Oh, they’re dangerous.
Lexa whimpers into Clarke’s mouth when she moves her hips and slips out of her, but refuses to break their kiss. She deepens it instead, to make up for the nothingness her walls are clenching around now, to have one for the road.
But these moments are made to end, and so they do.
Clarke breaks the kiss and pushes away from Lexa, sitting on her heels to unclasp the harness. It’ll go into the dumpster behind the motel, neither of them able to take it home without raising questions they’re desperately trying to avoid.
This is another in-between moment — not between fucking and leaving, but between their afterglow and companionable pillow talk. Lexa couldn’t tell which one she prefers, which one cuts her deeper.
Because Clarke’s hair is falling like a curtain around her face, and Lexa wants to reach out to tuck it away, wants to help her out of that harness that her shaking fingers are having trouble with, wants to pull her down for a fourth round.
But she shouldn’t.
She can’t.
She doesn’t.
Lexa moves away from the middle of the bed, ignoring how drenched the sheets are, how obvious it is that they didn’t come here to rest. What she can’t ignore is the shiver that runs through her body, that leaves every hair on end.
It’s the cold, she tells herself as she scrambles to climb under the stiff sheets and bring them up to her waist. She’s shivering because she’s cold. It’d be more believable if the late summer hadn’t been unusually warm, the temperature easily climbing to the triple digits. But she can work with that.
“This bed is loud,” Clarke comments as she lets herself fall beside Lexa, the bedsprings groaning to prove her point. Her smile tells Lexa she doesn’t quite mind it.
Clarke doesn’t bother getting under the sheets, but tugs the flat pillow in a way that she can tuck her chin right on the edge and her arm under it. It’s one of those habits that no one is quite aware that they do, but that are made clear to their lover in the quietness that follows sex.
Despite writing for food magazines where there’s little to no room for romanticized sentences, Lexa still wants to wax poetic about just how divine Clarke’s cleavage looks when she’s lying down like this. This motel, like every other one they’ve met in before, could very much be haunted for all the flickering neon lights from the 70s and yellow walls that are peeling to reveal the wallpaper used four decades ago. But Clarke, with her kiss bruised lips and mussed hair, makes it feel like a five-star hotel.
Clarke scoots closer after quirking an eyebrow at Lexa’s staring — she prefers the term gazing, it’s less creepy — and throws one arm over her covered waist. “We shouldn’t keep doing this,” she whispers, making the last in-between moments they had together vanish in thin air.
They’ve had this conversation a hundred times before.
It never got them any further apart than they are now.
Still, when Clarke kisses her shoulder and hides away from the world in the crook of her neck, Lexa asks the same thing she’s asked the last hundred times. “Do you want to stop?”
They should stop — either their sordid affair or their lying, one of them has to end.
They should.
And Lexa has tried it before, back when ending their liaison was the only option in their minds. Back when her girlfriend had reminded her with understanding kisses that they’d get through the rough patch they were on, Lexa had stopped answering Clarke’s texts and only picked up when she called to tell her they couldn’t see each other anymore. She didn’t make it through a month before caving in.
But Lexa asks the same question nonetheless, hoping beyond hope that Clarke will tell her that yes, she does want to stop, knowing that full rejection is the only way to keep herself away.
Her answer comes in a mix between a laugh and a scoff, hips pressing against the side of her thigh, legs intertwining. “What I want is to stop needing you so bad,” Clarke says from her hiding place, pulling Lexa by the waist to drive her point home.
Caving in, Lexa untangles her arm from in between them so Clarke can use it as a pillow instead, her fingertips brushing through tangled curled. “Still haven’t figured out how?” There’s a hint of humor in her words, if combined with some bitterness — it’s an inside joke by now, how utterly incapable of staying away from one another they are.
“Not yet,” Clarke rests her chin on Lexa’s biceps, tilting her head back so she can see the answer in her lover’s eyes before she even voices the question, “You?”
It’s not a difficult thing to answer. “No luck either.” It’s not something that needs an answer at all, not when she leans in to capture Clarke’s lips in between hers.
For a few minutes, they find another in-between moment to enjoy before the real world comes crashing down on them. Lexa turns to her side to give herself more fully into the kiss, opening her lips without hesitation when Clarke’s tongue traces them. It’s a languid and slow kiss, a kiss that belongs to Saturday mornings before brunch and making out sessions on the couch that don’t go anywhere.
It doesn’t belong in a seedy motel that might as well be haunted for all they know. It doesn’t belong to people who go home to someone else, someone they’re hurting, it doesn’t belong to cheaters and liars.
But it belongs to them.
As if reading her mind, Clarke slows the kiss to a stop, pressing her lips to the corner of Lexa’s, “Do you still feel guilty?”
“Every goddamn time.”
Lexa doesn’t open her eyes to answer, doesn’t need to. She can see it in her mind’s eye, the disappointment in Clarke’s eyes, the reminder that they’re not quite on the same page yet — Lexa is behind, scared that she’ll never catch up. It’s been a few weeks now since they last talked about them, the ones they refuse to name in each other’s presence, but Clarke had made it clear that her guilt comes and goes. But mostly goes.
“Do you want to stop?” Clarke asks, for the first time. It makes Lexa open her eyes a touch wider than usual, surprise enveloping her and doing away with the shame melting her entrails one layer at a time.
It takes her a moment to find an emotion she can name in the blue of Clarke’s eyes that’s nothing short of mesmerizing this up close. There’s hope in there. But Lexa can’t quite put her finger on it, can’t decide if she hopes her answer is yes or no.
At the end, Lexa goes with the truth.
Because, when it comes down to it, that’s all they have.
“I do,” Lexa ignores how her voice cracks, how Clarke flinches ever so slightly. When she leans forward to rest their foreheads together, Clarke sighs, relents, “God knows I want to. But you know how well that went when I tried.”
Clarke doesn’t laugh, not really — it’s not a laughing matter, how much they need each other. But she does let out an amused huff, lingering for a moment in their little bubble before she rolls out on her back, untangling their legs.
“We could stop,” Clarke tells the ceiling, and Lexa finds herself staring at her collarbone, trying to decide if the redness in there will evolve to a hickey. It’s easier than looking at Clarke’s emotionless face. “I could move, change my number, my email. I could even sell the gallery and start anew in a whole other country,” The ceiling becomes less interesting, and Clarke turns her face to look at Lexa, gives her a sad smile. “You’d never find me.”
The lie in her own words comes barreling down at her, blows through her core, cracks her ribs. Despite Clarke still using her arm as a pillow and stretching out in a way that keeps them touching each other, Lexa believes her — if only for a moment.
Lexa nods, once, lowering her eyes to the damp sheet in between them. “If that’s what you want.”
Clarke does laugh now, a belly laugh that brings life into the stale room, and rolls back to Lexa. She lands on her chest, a palm on her collarbone to rest her chin on, their every curve pressed together. “Lex, I just told you I need you. I’m not going anywhere, any time soon.”
October 10th
They don’t linger much in bed after Lexa taps out and Clarke rolls away from her with a proud smirk. They never do — not in hurried meetings in the back of a car, not in shady motels, not even in the Airbnb they rented for a weekend when Lexa had to take a trip and Clarke tagged along.
They lie down next to each other long enough for their breathing to come back to a less-than-life-threatening rhythm, for their legs to stop trembling, for secrets to spill out when they shouldn’t. Then they get up, they get dressed, they part ways.
But they’re not parting ways now.
Because Clarke had asked her to stay. And Lexa had said yes.
It’s almost laughable how little she had fought against staying over for a few more hours, against doing nothing more sordid than sitting on the couch and sharing a living space with the woman who shouldn’t have such a tight grip around her heart.
When she can open her eyes without fear of seeing the person who sleeps in this bed with Clarke standing in the doorway, Lexa rolls over, presses a kiss to a naked shoulder. She tastes salt and lavender, runs her tongue across a sensitive spot that brings out a laugh. Lexa has a deadline to meet and no idea how long they’ve spent making each other come.
As if hearing her goddamn thoughts, Clarke lifts her right hand for Lexa to catch a glimpse of her watch. She has a little over an hour to finish writing her article if she wants to meet the new. merciful deadline her boss gave her. And considering she has half a page of scattered sentences that need to be rewritten and bullet points that don’t flow right, she should really get started.
“I need to get some work done,” Lexa says, regret lingering at the edge of her words. She traces a path down the underside of Clarke’s arms with her fingertips and basks in the content hum she hears.
These moments are the most dangerous.
Fucking each other senselessly when they’re both in committed relationships is almost harmless compared to the tenderness that comes with soft touches and unsaid words. These moments will be her undoing.
Clarke shuffles beside her, turning towards her just enough to press a kiss on her temple and intertwine their fingers together. “Take a shower with me.”
Closing her eyes against the touch and sinking into it just a little bit more, Lexa tries to infuse her tone with reproach instead of want. “Clarke.” There’s a warning somewhere in there, lost in between the two syllables.
“Just shower. Nothing else,” Clarke whispers against her skin, and that alone makes her wish she meant something else. Then a laughter that Clarke can’t keep in comes out as a snort, “If anything, I should be there to hold you up.” She untangles herself and props herself up on her elbow, her free hand falling on Lexa’s upper thigh. “How are the shaky legs, champ?”
Any dread about missing deadlines or being caught red handed vanishes, and Lexa lets out an offended huff. Her eyes go wide in sheer disbelief that Clarke would bring it up, her hands fall to Clarke’s waist to pinch and tickle — it’s an easy win, Clarke collapses on top of her and grabs her hands in between high pitched giggles and squirms.
Her legs are still trembling ever so slightly when they get in the shower together, but that doesn’t seem to be the reason why Clarke keeps her hands on her.
Lexa has her hair in a bun to keep it from getting wet, and Clarke runs a loofah up her back and down her stomach with such care that she blushes — a full body blush that follows Clarke’s eyes, the sleek trace of her hand across the sudsy skin. It doesn’t take long until Lexa pulls Clarke to a kiss, her back hitting the cold tile behind her with her need for it to become more.
But oh, oh, Clarke has other plans. She swallows the soft moan Lexa lets out as a thigh presses her core, then grins against a yelp when her hands find Lexa’s sides and tickles her mercilessly. Lexa tries to squirm away, but it only leads to Clarke pinning her against the opposite wall, making her cling to her shoulders for balance.
Happy with her revenge, Clarke rinses off quickly as Lexa watches her, a smile still lingering on her lips as she leans against the tiles. Clarke is beautiful, and Lexa tells her so, hopes she knows she doesn’t mean just her body — it’s the proud look on her face, the mischief glinting in her eyes, it’s the way her head tilts to one side then another.
Clarke hops out of the shower first, leaving Lexa to finish showering. A stubborn, ridiculous grin stays on her lips for a moment longer, even after Clarke hops out of the bathroom after drying off halfheartedly, still naked, still mostly wet.
She toggles with the shower knobs until the warm water turns cold, and the suds fall from her body along with her lovesick smiles.
It’s not quite a punishment, turning the water ice cold — as a runner, Lexa has gotten used to ending her showers with a cold blast, and that’s exactly why Clarke got out when she did. But as her heart skips a beat, then hammers against her chest to make up for it, every muscle protesting against the drops that feel too sharp to be just water, Lexa knows it feels like this.
When Clarke comes back into the bathroom, Lexa gathers cold water in between her hands and splashes her face with it, then forces a small smile to her face. It’s not hard for it to become a genuine smile — because Clarke is wearing joggers that are a bit too loose for her and a tee with her alma mater logo stamped across her chest, mischief in her eyes.
“It’s October, we’re well into fall now,” Clarke comments, placing Lexa’s clothes on the bathroom vanity. The same clothes they scattered from the living room to the bedroom are now folded into a neat pile, and Clarke rests her hips against the counter, like the gesture means nothing at all, “When do you stop finishing your showers with ice cold water?”
Lexa throws her a look over her shoulder, reaching for the towel Clarke had barely used — it’s not like she can get a fresh towel, no matter how this looks from inside their bubble, “A couple weeks into January.”
It’s easy, way too easy, to accept each piece of clothing Clarke hands her and put them on without the reserve of their earlier days. Their conversation flows easily, way too easily, bouncing from future plans to anecdotes from the days before. It’s almost second nature to Lexa to let herself be engulfed by Clarke’s arms, letting her warmth do away with the cold still clinging to her skin.
“Coffee?” Clarke asks, with a soft kiss to the column of her neck, before parting and making her way towards the living area, tugging at Lexa’s hand.
Following her almost blindly, still intoxicated by the hug — the hug, of all things; not the orgasms that piled on until she couldn’t take it anymore — and mumbles an affirmative answer. Clarke lets her go when they reach the living room, heading towards the kitchen, telling Lexa to make herself at home.
It’s an invitation that hits Lexa like a demand.
But still, she makes her way to the couch, focusing on the way her bare feet move from hardwood to plush rug, ignoring the obvious signs that someone else calls this apartment their home.
Lexa pulls her laptop from her bag, along with a notebook, and settles in. It was easier to pretend when she first came into the apartment, her brain choosing to see anything other than the peds stethoscope. Now, Lexa can see how she is everywhere.
Textbooks forgotten after graduating with sticky notes still sticking out the edges, a hoodie from a university that doesn’t match the one in Clarke’s tee hanging hook on the wall beside colorful scrubs with little ducks forming a pattern on them. Books from genres Clarke doesn’t like. A forgotten badge. Clogs and Crocs on the shoe rack.
She is everywhere.
Her laptop comes to life on a blank page, peppered by even less words than she remembers. She should go somewhere else to get work done. A coffee shop, her own bedroom, a coworking space that can house her for a few hours. Anywhere that she could have any hope to deliver this on time.
Before she can consider sending a text to her boss asking for another extension, Lexa types the notes from her notebook into the top of the document, organizing her scattered thoughts into a coherent narrative.
It should be an easy assignment — it’ll be a corner piece, about five hundred words, with a glorious shot of their food taken straight from the restaurant’s website.
It’s anything but.
Committing herself to write non-stop for a couple minutes before coffee is ready and Clarke comes sit next to her, distracting her beyond reason, Lexa types. Her bullet points and notes form a surprisingly well put together outline, with a beginning, a middle and an ending that follow the beat of every restaurant review that isn’t trying to go above and beyond.
Lexa has set the scene, telling where they were and why they were there, when Clarke nudges her foot, towering over her with two steaming mugs. Murmuring a thank you earns her a kiss on the forehead, and the coffee leaves a bitter taste on her throat despite the sugar on it.
Setting her mug on the small tray clipped to the armrest, Lexa turns her attention back to her keyboard, her fingers flying across the keys to put everything down. She’s past the point of aiming for perfection. She isn’t even sure she’ll have time to review it before sending it in, and if her sentences come out as if plucked from a guide for beginners in her field, she’s past the point of caring too.
What the restaurant lacked in ambiance, it made up for in how incredible the food was. Besides the cushion sitting and an extravagant chandelier in the center of the dining area, there was little decor across the rented building. But the service was attentive and not overcrowding, food prep was timely, all good signs pointing to a good recommendation.
“Is it a review for that Lebanese restaurant you guys went to last week?” Clarke asks from her place beside Lexa, her legs folded under her and her own coffee mug resting on her thigh as she skims the article. “We’ve been meaning to go there for ages.”
You guys — Lexa and Costia.
We — Clarke and Niylah.
That’s the one rule they haven’t broken yet. They don’t name the other women they’re with even when they come up in conversation. Pronouns still threaten to tear her apart, but Lexa doesn’t know what she’d do if she had to use the name of the people they’re hurting.
“You should. The food is divine,” Lexa says, typing down the adjective to use a little further down the article. It’s a little heavy handed, but it’ll do. “I recommend getting sfeeha or manakish to go with their fattoush.”
Clarke laughs against her shoulder, amused at her enthusiasm. Lexa works with food and enjoys eating good fucking food, sue her. But half her excitement might be due to the dull pang in her stomach — as it turns out, sex in the middle of the afternoon makes her hungry.
“Is that your professional opinion?” Clarke asks in a voice too hoarse to be innocent, and reaches around her to sink her fingers into her hair, short nails scratching her scalp despite the bun she left her hair in.
“Why, yes it is,” Lexa takes the bait and leans into the touch, her hand moving on its own accord and landing on Clarke’s inner thigh, pulling her closer. “As a food critic, I want nothing but to help you have a great experience.”
“Oh, you help me alright.” Leaning in for a kiss, chaste but full of promises, Clarke lingers, pressed against Lexa’s side. It’s only when she breaks the kiss and looks up with blue eyes darker than they were a moment before is that Lexa realizes the danger. “Food-critic-you is very sexy.”
“What about non-food-critic-me?” The words fall from her lips before Lexa has time to swallow them, an unusual vulnerability tinting them.
“Eh, she’s alright too,” Clarke shrugs, tracing a path with her lips across Lexa’s jawline, her tongue joining the efforts when she reaches the underside of her ear.
The hot breath against her skin is all it takes for Lexa to feel a pressure in her lower stomach, a need that she could swear was sated for another week or two springing back to life. “Clarke, I need to send this in–” Lexa opens her eyes — when had she closed them? — and glances at the corner of her screen, “–seventeen minutes.”
As if handing an article late is the only risk she’s taking this afternoon.
Dragging her teeth across Lexa’s jugular in what she’s sure is one last attempt at making away with her sanity, Clarke puts some space in between them. “Seventeen minutes. Then I can touch you again?” She takes a sip from her coffee, nothing but a raised eyebrow giving away what she has in mind.
Lexa rolls her eyes but nods — because good god, yes, of course, always.
Her coffee has cooled down enough that taking a sip doesn’t hold the possibility of a burn, and she watches Clarke puttering around the living room, grabbing her sketchbook from the coffee table and a colored pencil from a tin case on the shelf. Lexa pretends her focus is solely on her article when Clarke sits with her back against the other arm of the couch, pretends that she’s not curious to know what Clarke will draw, pretending the anonymity of the chef is everything she cares about.
Lexa types her praises for each individual dish she tasted — with her girlfriend, a voice inside her head reminds her — and lets the soft scratching of pencil against paper calm her.
When Clarke shifts beside her, Lexa has already finished what might be the final version instead of a first draft. She watches Clarke for a moment, the corner of her bottom lip trapped in between her teeth, her eyes trained on the paper in front of her, her feet sliding across the couch to tuck under Lexa’s thigh almost without thought.
It’s without thought as well that Lexa lets her hand fall to Clarke’s calf, lets her fingers slide past the ribbed cuffs and trace her skin as she turns to proofread her article.
January 3rd
Picking up two plastic champagne flutes from a passing server, Lexa spares a moment to take in the room.
The invitation said business casual, but peppering the sea of fitted blazers and cocktail dresses are scrubs and white coats, people who snuck out mid-shift to get some leftover holiday joy. They’re not drinking the cheap wine, tart enough to make their teeth clamp together, and they always have an eye on their pager. But these stolen moments will make the second half of their night shift more bearable.
Peeling her eyes from a guy in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck with his arms firmly around a man in a dark suit that she’s seen before at the nurses station, Lexa scans the crowd to find Costia. Or rather, follows the unmistakable peals of laughter until she finds her girlfriend.
Belated holiday parties at a hospital’s makeshift event room were never on Lexa’s bucket list.
But dating a nurse beloved by every staff member and every patient means they all know about Lexa, have known about Costia’s crush on her before Lexa had ever considered longing gazes could mean anything other than friendship. That was almost three years ago now.
This is only her second holiday party as Costia’s plus one, but she knows she’ll come year after year, until Costia’s retirement party. Maybe Lexa will have gotten used to the awful wine by then.
Making a beeline to her girlfriend isn’t easy. She’s dropped by the nurse station during Costia’s breaks bearing food to feed the whole staff enough times that everyone knows her — and appreciate the leftovers she gets from most restaurants she reviews.
Ten minutes and countless baby on Santa Claus’ lap pictures later, Lexa anchors herself beside Costia, hands her wine over. It’s warm now. Not that being cold helps with the sourness. Costia breaks out from the conversation with Niylah and a blonde woman Lexa doesn’t know, thanks her with a smile and wraps her arm around her waist, pulls her close, leans her chin on her shoulder.
“How are you two still this disgusting after three years?” Niylah asks, making a face.
Lexa grits her teeth together, like she’s just downed her entire wine, and tips her chin up to size her up. But Costia is laughing and rolling her eyes, saying something that’s no doubt much more polite than what Lexa would have said. She’s used to her coworker’s antics. Lexa is not.
“Niylah,” Lexa greets her, the word ending on an edge, “How have you been?”
A nod is all the formal greeting they exchange, and Niylah doesn’t seem to mind. She shrugs with a smile that Lexa knows is not directed at her, “I can’t really complain.”
Niylah doesn’t return the question, instead turning her gaze to the woman beside her — the one who brings that smile to her face, Lexa supposes.
She finds herself looking at the woman as well, truly taking her in for the first time. Her short hair falls right under her chin, her neck exposed, her dress making no efforts to cover it up. Black suits her, Lexa muses, refraining herself from staring too long at her thighs or at the odd shoe choice — ankle boots that could easily be mistaken by combat ones.
Costia leans further into her, pressing a kiss to her neck, “She and Clarke just moved in together.”
Clarke. The name suits her as well.
“I’m guessing you’re Clarke,” Lexa shifts her glass from one hand to the other, reaching out her hand when Niylah gives no sign that she intends to introduce the two of them. “Lexa Woods.”
“Clarke—” Their hands grasp together in a firm handshake, and Lexa wonders what she does for a living. Not everyone knows how to shake hands in this town. She notices Clarke is staring at their joined palms a split second before she snaps her eyes back up to look at Lexa, “Um, Griffin. Clarke Griffin.”
Lexa is the one who pulls her hand away, but she holds Clarke’s gaze for a moment longer. There’s something behind them, hidden from everyone, something she can’t decipher.
It’s Clarke who looks away first, Niylah’s voice directed at her smothering whatever they’d say to each other next. “Who could have guessed we’d be living together after just six months together?”
“I could have put money on it,” Costia says in between laughter, and Lexa takes another sip from her wine. Somehow, it’s even more acidic than two minutes ago. “You were all over her the moment she got in here with those lashes on her back.”
Lexa swallows the wine like it’s molasses, turning to Clarke only to raise an eyebrow, “Lashes on your back?”
Every job where lashes on the back would be feasible flashes by Lexa’s mind, yet none of them seem to fit the woman standing in front of her. Lion tamer seems too out there.
“I own an art gallery. It’s more dangerous than it seems,” Clarke winks at Lexa, a smile bringing it somewhere between teasing and sharing a sordid secret.
Lexa swallows past the lump in her throat, downing the rest of her wine.
Whatever expression Lexa couldn’t school back into soft politeness makes Clarke launch into the story of how she got those lashes in the first place, how they met, how they got together.
Clarke was shelving some sculptures that wouldn’t be out in the gallery for another couple weeks, but she hadn’t done a good enough job building the shelving unit because it all collapsed when she was putting the third sculpture on it. She only remembered to cover her head, and her back got the worst of it.
“I drove myself here and I was so worried about the money I’d have to pay for their broken sculptures that I barely felt the pain,” Clarke winces, and Lexa can’t tell if it’s for the money she lost or the pain she eventually felt. “Niylah distracted me, telling all about the very real possibility of getting tetanus.”
“Nails were the reason for those lashes. I didn’t know if you had used new ones or some old rusty shit,” Niylah defends herself, with a smile so soft it almost makes Lexa smile as well.
“She was also the one who got a plastic surgeon to stitch Clarke back together so she didn’t have any scars.” Costia leans in closer to Lexa, stage whispering in her ear all the while grinning at Niylah. “And you know how awful plastic surgeons can be when they’re not on call at the ER and we page them.”
Clarke takes Niylah’s hand into hers with nothing but muscle memory, her head thrown back in laughter. “You told me I was lucky to have him!” Her eyes are shining with tears of pure joy when she steals a kiss from a very pissed Niylah, “You big sap.”
Niylah shoots daggers at Costia, despite wrapping her arms around Clarke’s waist and leaning into her hand as it brushes a curl away from her face, “I hope you get only night shifts.”
It doesn’t sound rehearsed, like the handful of stories Lexa has heard over the last three years. Some couples seem determined to work out the kinks of their stories and make it sound as close to a fairytale as possible. But not them, both Niylah and Clarke seem to revel in the mess that their first encounter was.
Whatever rebuttal Costia has falls away when a microphone feedback pierce their ears, before a man in a tailored suit, his salt-and-pepper beard showing a warm smile through. The hospital director addresses them as a whole, thanking them for their hard work over the past year, wishing them a peaceful and quiet year.
A murmur goes around them, a buzz akin to a swarm of bees, until someone shouts “You can’t say the Q word, sir,” and the entire room bursts into laughter.
Lexa tunes them out.
The way Clarke and Niylah met falls under a meet-cute she’s seen time and again in romantic comedies. But at the end of the day, she wouldn’t trade how she got together with Costia, wouldn’t trade what they have together for anything else.
It’s a simpler story, more mundane even. Costia had been friends with Gaia first, and had been in their apartment from the day Lexa moved in. Between Sunday afternoons spent on the balcony and late night dance sessions on her more than occasional sleepover, Lexa fell in love. It took her months to cave in and ask her out, shaking from head to toe as if she’s never even spoken with a girl before. Costia kissed her before saying yes to the date.
Lexa joins in on the applause when it erupts around her. She looks to the side and catches Clarke’s gaze by accident. Wrinkling her nose at Lexa, Clarke shoots her a big smile — one that Lexa has no problem reciprocating.
Warmth spreads from her core all the way to her extremities, and Lexa forces herself to look at the person speaking now. There’s something to finding another sapphic couple in the wild, and Lexa knows there’s no deeper meaning behind it.
She doesn’t dwell on why the thought of the four of them going on double dates makes her stomach sink.