I’m not answering many asks right now bc I’m trying to get the next FFAU update out quickly, but here’s a new HC for you in the meantime:
Lexa is a lanky, nerdy, orphan on the spectrum when she transfers to her new middle school. She years beyond her classmates in intellect, but the system doesn’t know or care, so Lexa spends her first few months in school bored and terribly picked on.
Clarke is small for her age but feisty and full of daydreams. She’s bubbly and spontaneous and imaginative–so much so, that the other kids don’t really know how to handle her motor mouth, boundless energy, and crazy ideas. They tend to ripple away from her when she enters the cafeteria, even run from her when she enters the playground.
Clarke is fascinated by Lexa’s mind. She’s drawn to her mismatched clothes and her big glasses. She likes the curls of her hair and the way her green eyes look so wide in the expanse of the playground. Frankly, Clarke is a little bit in love from day one.
Lexa isn’t the easiest person to be friends with. She’s quiet and introverted. She doesn’t smile much and she doesn’t seem to look up from her books very often, but she likes when Clarke sits with her on the bench across from the monkey bars. She likes the way Clarke talks enough for the both of them. She enjoys the pictures Clarke paints with her words and the joy she has for everything around them. Clarke is fearless and alive, and it’s the first time Lexa finds herself wanting more of someone.
The other kids at school are ruthless once they catch onto the budding friendship. Clarke is tiny, mostly blonde crazy hair, but she’ll stand in front of Lexa like a human shield any day, any time. To Clarke, Lexa is hers to protect. Sweet, gentle, clueless Lexa who doesn’t really know that she’s picked on, just that their words don’t really seem to make her feel that great.
In eight grade, Clarke makes some new friends, but she never leaves Lexa. Lexa doesn’t integrate with Clarke’s new friends, doesn’t know how, but Clarke is never far, and Lexa likes the way Clarke smiles at her throughout lunch when it’s Clarke’s friends’ turn to eat with her. And Lexa spends a lot of time at Clarke’s house after school. Lexa helps Clarke with her homework and Clarke spends half the evening braiding Lexa’s hair while Lexa stims with the numerous toys and things Clarke kept in her room, for the very purpose. They’re inseparable, and Clarke is irrevocably in love with her sweet, lanky Lexa.
In high school, everything changes. Clarke hits puberty, and suddenly she’s no longer the weird, chatter box, she’s the beautiful blonde with boobs and a pretty smile. Clarke herself doesn’t change, she still holds hands with Lexa whenever she can, they spend almost every evening together in Clarke’s room, but things are different. At school, Clarke is always surrounded, and it’s too much for Lexa. The people, the sounds, the staring and the murmuring. Clarke’s friends don’t understand Lexa, and Clarke does her best to educate them, but things are hard.
And Lexa starts taking classes at the local college. Finally, she’s feeling mentally and intellectually stimulated. She loves her engineering classes and she likes the way the teachers talk with her about their research. She likes that the phD students asks her for help and that no one seems to want to talk that much, and when they do, it’s about their work.
With time, Lexa stops going over to Clarke’s house and Clarke stops seeking her out in the hallway. Clarke never forgets to smile at her, and Lexa is glad for that. When she gets a scholarship to go to Stanford halfway through the year, she doesn’t think to tell Clarke until she’s saying goodbye. Clarke’s tears make Lexa sad, but she doesn’t know what to do about it. Clarke asks her to stay in touch and Lexa tells her she’ll try.
Lexa flourishes at Stanford, but she misses Clarke and writes her letters that she never gets around to sending. Clarke spends the next two years angry and lonely, furious at the people who’d tormented Lexa for so long, looking for someone to blame for Lexa’s departure.
They both do a lot of growing up in the years that they’re apart. Clarke blossoms into a beautiful, smart, talented graduate student at the New England School of Art and Design. Lexa is on the precipice of becoming one of the world’s most successful biotech engineer and inventor, heading up the biotech monster conglomerate, KONGEDA INC. She’s also about to be across the river, to start her new visiting professorship at MIT.
It’s happen chance that they end up on the same block at the same time on the same night. Lexa wanders into a crowded bar, and is immediately spotted by a friend of Clarke’s, Raven, an engineering student at MIT who has the intellectual hots for Professor Woods, the notorious engineering genius. It’s Raven who alerts Clarke to Lexa’s presence. “You said you knew her once! You have to introduce me! You have to get me into her glass.” Clarke is equal parts stunned, angry, and nervous like school girl. “She stopped talking to me, Raven. I haven’t known her in ten years.” But then Clarke sees her, standing so lost and overwhelmed by the bar, and it’s like no time has passed at all. “I–I’ll be right back,” she tells Raven and begins slipping through the crowd. She’s about fifteen feet away when Lexa looks over at her, and overcome by habit, Clarke smiles.
When Lexa smiles back, that same exact little smile, Clarke’s heart feels like it’s exploding in her chest. The music is loud, Clarke has to lean in close when she stumbles out a greeting and tries not to get lost in Lexa’s beautiful eyes. “When did you get here?” She asks and Lexa, her sweet, gentle Lexa, tells her “Just a minute ago,” and Clarke smiles because she meant when did she get to Cambridge, but it doesn’t really matter. It never did.
Still acutely aware of Lexa’s body language, Clarke can see the stimming coming on in the rapid blinking and the tugging of a zipper. She can see the way Lexa’s cheeks heat up and the shifting starts as the chaos of the club gets to be too much. She puts her hand carefully on Lexa’s wrist and leans in, standing on her tiptoes to reach Lexa’s ear, “Do you need to get out of here?”
Lexa nods. “I’m looking for my wife,” she says, and Clarke’s world screeches to a halt. Her hand jerks from Lexa’s wrist like it’s been burned and she sinks to her heels. Tears prick at her eyes before she can catch them and with a shakey breath, she nods. “Oh–okay, um…” she doesn’t know how to finish with her heart on the floor and her stomach in knots. But she tries. She’d always try for Lexa. “Where did you see her last?”
Clarke swallows and lifts back up, bracing herself on Lexa’s shoulder, because she has to. “Where did you last see your wife?”
Lexa’s head tilts in confusion and Clarke tries to supress the automatic smile that wants to come at seeing the familiar tilt. But then Lexa shakes her head and leans down. “My ride. Not my wife. I don’t have a wife.”
Clarke wants to laugh she’s so elated. Instead, she bites back a smile and nods. “Lets go outside. We can talk better in the quiet and you can call your ride.”
Lexa takes her hand like she always did. It’s bigger and not as soft as it once was ten years ago, but at the same time, it’s exactly the same, and Clarke is deeply smitten.
After that night, things return to much the same way as it was in middle school. Clarke and Lexa are inseparable, and Clarke falls harder and harder everyday. They do breakfast together in Boston, where both of their apartments are located, before Lexa heads across the river to Cambridge and Clarke to school. And everyday, with a few exceptions, Clarke is there waiting for Lexa after her last lecture gets out, and they go an early dinner or maybe a stroll through the park.
It takes Clarke four months to get up the courage to ask Lexa on a date. Lexa makes her smile and laugh so very fondly when Lexa tells her, “I thought that’s what we were doing?”
Their first official date, official for both of them, is a dream for Clarke. Lexa takes her to a beautiful riverside restaurant and then to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It’s decidedly winter, but Clarke insists on ice cream afterwards and Lexa is a sucker for her smile. They huddle together under the heated lamps at the train stop and Clarke buries herself inside Lexa’s coat, her cheek against the soft cashmere of Lexa’s sweater. “You got so tall,” she mutters, not for the first time. Lexa just smile and holds her tight.
At Clarke’s stoop, they stop and Clarke vibrates with nervous energy. She wants Lexa to kiss her. Needs her to. She’s so fucking in love with this sweet professor, she can hardly stand it. Lexa smiles as Clarke talks about how much she enjoyed the night, but Clarke can tell Lexa is feeling…not uncomfortable, but unsure. She hopes harder than she’s hoped for anything that Lexa wil find the courage, but when Lexa nods and shoves her hands in her pockets, bids her goodnight and then turns down the steps, Clarke smiles after her, sad but fond.
Her key is in the door when Lexa says, “Hey, Clarke?” and walks back up the path. Clarke tries to be calm when she turns and stands at the top of the stairs. “I was given tickets to a Celtics game for tomorrow night. I don’t much like basketball, but if I recall, you quite enjoyed it with your dad as a child. Would you like to go?”
Clarke doesn’t know what makes her happier, that Lexa remembered that basketball is something she shared with her dad, or that Lexa is asking to see her again, officially, so soon. With a smile she can’t conceal, she nods and laughs when Lexa smiles back at her and walks up the steps.
As if suddenly unsure of what to do now at the top of the steps, Lexa blinks a few times and searches Clarke’s face. Clarke thinks Lexa might be about to walk away again when the professor suddenly closes the gap and kisses her.
As far as first kisses go, it’s the sweetest Clarke’s ever had. As far as kisses in general go, it’s the best she’s ever had. She doesn’t mean to, but she moans not one second into it, and smiles when Lexa chuckles against her lips. Clarke wraps her arms around Lexa’s back and threads them through her hair, keeping her as close as possible. Lexa is, surprisingly, much more poised with her movements. Her hands on Clarke’s hips hold her close and steady, her lips are soft and passionate all at once, and slowly but surely, Clarke finds herself pinned between the snow covered railing on the stoop and Lexa’s warm body.
It’s over in seconds, maybe a minute, but for Clarke time suspends. When they finally pull apart, Clarke’s forehead falls to Lexa’s chest and she laughs. “God, I’ve wanted that since eight grade.” And now that they have it, it’s hard to stop. Lexa follows Clarke up that night, and Clarke’s never been more in love than she is with Lexa in her bed, kissing and holding and making love to her until they both fall asleep and do it all over again, slower and with more giggles, in the morning.
Things take a turn though later that night. Clarke is late getting home after her class because of a bad accident on the road, but when she texts Lexa to tell her she’s going to be late getting home, she doesn’t get a response. She doesn’t get a response when she tells her she’s hopping in the shower but will be ready soon either. Or when she’s out and dressed and waiting in the living room, close to tears.
An hour into the game, the tears finally do fall. “They’re all the same,” she tells her roommates bitterly. “They fuck you and then they’re gone.”
Octavia frowns in sympathy and sits next to her, rubbing her back. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
“How could it possibly be for the best??”
Octavia shifts uncomfortably. “Well…Finn told me that Lexa was like…weird in grade school. I don’t remember her much from then, she’s like older than Bellamy, but maybe you need someone a little more sophisticated and like charming, you know? You’re going to be a big famous artist. You need someone who can keep up.”
Clarke laughs. “Keep up? O, do you not like ever read or watch the news? Lexa is the new Elon Musk…only smarter and helluva lot sexier. And sweeter. And amazing and kind and gentle. Lexa wasn’t weird in school, she was just misunderstood. And Finn’s a jack ass. Raven and I both told you to stay away from him.”
“This is why I told you not to let an undergrad live with us,” Raven chimes in, plopping down on the couch. “Poor decision makers. Small brain capacity,” she says, tapping Octavia on the head.
“Fuck of, Rae. I’m just saying, Clarke, if Lexa’s really that great…why’d she abandon you? Pretty convenient to stop showing up after getting in your pants.”
Clarke hates to admit it, but she doesn’t have an answer for that. “They can’t really be all the same, can they?” She mutters. “Lexa wouldn’t do that.”
“Lexa may not be able to process emotion in the same way as us , but she can certainly process physical needs the same way. I hate to say it Clarke, but maybe she is just like the rest of them.”
Clarke’s in bed a few hours later, tears dried on her cheeks but eyes still puffy and raw. Lexa was her first love in middle school, and her only true love in high school and beyond. It aches deep inside of her to think she’s been betrayed by Lexa in such an intimate way.
She’s half asleep when she gets a phone call from the local hospital. There’s been an accident. She’s the emergency contact. Does she know if there are parents nearby? She’s and orphan, Clarke tells them in shock. There’s no relatives nearby, she’s foreign. They tell her she’s in surgery. “So it’s bad, then?” They won’t tell her anything, but Clarke is in her car before they’re even done speaking.
Lexa, Clarke finds out, was the accident that kept her from getting home on time. She’d been on the side walk, walking to Clarke’s, when a car lost control on the ice and hit her going way too fast. She overhears that there were white rose petals all over the side walk–a strange contrast from the blood that was everywhere. Clarke hurls into a trashcan in the hallway and sinks down the wall.
Clarke’s mother flies in the next day to consult…and because Clarke asked her too. “She’s going to be okay, right?” Clarke asks, sitting next to Lexa’s unconscious body in the hospital bed.
Abby looks over Lexa’s chart and sighs. “The damage is extensive. I know you care about your friend–”
“I’m in love with her. I’m so in love with her,” she blurts and breaks down into tears.
Abby frowns sympathetically and walks over to her daughter. “I know, sweetheart.” When Clarke looks up confused, Abby smiles. “You’ve been in love with Lexa since you were eleven.”
“You have to fix her, mom.”
Abby rubs Clarke’s back, and pulls her into a hug. “We’ll do our best.”
And they do. Lexa heals, and it’s one of her own inventions that helps rehabilitate her which Clarke finds endlessly amusing. Raven shows up to help sometimes too, and the two engineers hit it off quite well. Lexa thinks Raven is surprisingly bright, and Raven is just totally star struck for weeks after that.
Clarke graduates and Lexa takes the helm of the biotech empire, eventually hiring Raven, and life’s never been better. Clarke has never said yes to anything faster than she does to Lexa’s marriage proposal, and three years down the road, they have two babies to fill their home.
At their high school’s 20 year reunion, no one can quite make eye contact with the power couple that was once the crazy haired chatter box and the book-reading introvert.
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