Lexa Woods is a smart, calculating woman who has made a name for herself in the tech world after inventing a way to track hackers and starting her own cybersecurity firm. Ironically, she is also known as Heda in the illicit trade market as a notorious thief and vigilante, focusing on stealing technology and intel that can topple corrupt governments, overthrow horrible leaders, influence politics, and save the lives of people she feels deserves it.
Clarke is a sarcastic and witty artist that has also made a name for herself as the head curator at a well-known, prestigious art museum, traveling the world to acquire rare pieces to display to the public. She is also a well-known vigilante counterfeiter on the bootlegging market, duplicating expensive, rare art that has been looted or plundered, and swapping it out for the original to be returned to its rightful owner.
Lexa and Clarke have been happily married for a couple years, none the wiser to their wife’s second job, until Lexa accepts an odd heist at Clarke’s museum that goes terribly wrong. Now, both of their lives are in danger and secrets are forced to come to light as they work together to figure out why a painting is worth killing for.
(It’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith WIP with a twist! Hoping to start posting sometime this summer.)
One of those moments they never really saw coming… and yet, when it happens, something about it still feels like it was always inevitable.
When Lexa is mindlessly walking beside the shopping cart that Costia is pushing, making idle chitchat about ingredients she needs for what she plans to make for supper for the next week. In their four years of marriage, that was the pattern they'd fallen into so easily.
Work and dinner and household minutia Monday through Thursday. A visit with Cos's parents on Fridays. Movie nights on Saturdays. Grocery trips on Sundays.
Like clockwork.
But when Lexa looks across the produce section to see if they have any of the only apples she actually likes in stock, it's like all of the air gets knocked right out of lungs.
She's fifteen and nervously flirting over a single milkshake with two red and white straws. She's seventeen and blushing in the back of US History class, remembering everything they'd done together in the cabin of her dad's old pickup while parked out by the lake. She's eighteen and the world feels like it's made just for her. For them. Like nobody has ever felt as happy as she does in that moment, riding down the highway with a soft hand her hers while music blares from the radio.
Clarke's hair seems a little lighter than she remembers.
If she can even trust her own memory now…
But those eyes.
God, those eyes.
There's no forgetting the exact shade, the exact shape, the exact electric snap of their boundless energy when Clarke looks up from the pear grasped loosely in her hand and locks onto Lexa too.
It truly feels like a fucking punch.
She's pretty sure it only lasts a few seconds. The entire exchange of energy certainly imperceptible to the untrained eye, but in those elastic seconds and moments between seeing her and hearing Costia calling her from the next aisle over… Lexa relives an entire lifetime in them.
The intensity of their love.
The intensity of their fights.
Promises made.
Promises broken.
Two girls on the mere precipice of adulthood, swearing oaths of devotion neither were remotely mature enough to give.
It rattles her for the rest of the day and the day following two days after. Walking through work and chores and kisses from her wife as if in a haze from someone else's life.
And then the note.
Plain powder blue and unassumingly tucked safely under her windshield wiper.
‘Milkshakes at Mary's in Clayburn. Friday, 3pm. If you want.’
The haze continues for the next three days.
Three days of chewing her lip and picking at her nails. Driving home from work just to park in the sloped lane of her own driveway, starring blankly at the dash for ten too-short minutes before forcing herself to go inside.
Because Clarke wants to meet up.
For milkshakes, of all things.
Two entire towns away.
//////////////////
It feels like a brick in her stomach when she tells Cos she'll be working late, only a few hours after getting the okay from her boss to leave early. The drive takes forever, and yet is entirely too short, when she parks in front of the half empty diner.
Because in no way has Lexa prepared herself for this.
This feeling.
The way her heart slams itself so violently against her ribs at the first sight of Clarke framed in the diner's window. She has not prepared herself for the rush of emotion that consumes her—somehow more intense and debilitating than it was seeing her in the grocery store.
Because Clarke looks beautiful in the slanted afternoon sun, head bent forward as if she's staring at the table. Waiting. Waiting for Lexa to show, or not show, looking prepared to accept either of the outcomes…
Clarke has always been so much better at this than Lexa ever was.
She practically has to peel her hands from the steering wheel and take several deep, calming breaths on the walk in, because the last thing Lexa needs is for Clarke to see just how badly her hands want to shake. She takes all the nervous energy swirling and spiraling in her belly and buries it down deep, snuffing it into silence with a forceful flex of her jaw.
It's hard to breathe in the few steps between the door and the booth. Her feet shuffling like across the worn down tiling while her limbs feel like lead. The knocking hammer of her heart doesn't ease for one second as Clarke finally looks up and sees her, shoulders relaxing her chest deflating in what looks like a sigh of relief.
She really must have thought Lexa wouldn't come.
As if she could have kept herself away…
“Would it be weird to hug you?”
And of course the first words Clarke says to her in over five years make Lexa laugh. A weak, airy laugh that sends her stomach squirming with something bright.
“No, of course not. It could never be weird.”
And she means that.
Touching her. Holding her. It never could be anything other than welcome.
She just hates that it feels so stiff.
But Lexa accepts it, and returns it with an awkward warmth of her own, slipping into her side of the double booth the second she's released and settling in like a defendant taking their place on the witness stand.
“I wasn't even sure if you'd…”
Lexa can't help the way her face pulls tight when Clarke gestures toward the table that separates them. “Of course I came,” she says, low and quiet.
Clarke's weary huff of a laugh is not lost on Lexa.
She knows she's earned it, anyway.
It's strange being back in Clarke's orbit like this. How she can't stop herself from tracing every line of Clarke's face; mapping and remapping every dimple, dip, and contour. Burning this newer, more mature… inexplicably more breathtaking version of Clarke over the images that still take up so much space in Lexa's mind. Fuller cheeks being replaced by clean lines of adulthood. Delicately pink lips looking more rouged in the waning afternoon sun.
Eyes holding ghosts of things Lexa’s too cowardly to face…
It's strange how easily they drop into civil, companionable conversation. Chit-chatting about the weather, about benign aspects of politics happening around the world, sharing disbelief at how much the area has changed.
How much of it hasn't changed one bit.
They move into more personal topics with the grace of a panther slowly stalking its prey. Lightly sharing details slipped as if they're nothing; Clarke moving to a town a little further south and enjoying the proximity to the city, Lexa mentioning the nursery she'd painted in anticipation of their incoming son.
If she'd rushed to explain that really it was Costia who was actually gaining custody of her own nephew—and that Lexa was happy, but also just committed to be along for the ride—well… she'd just wanted to be clear about the situation.
It feels like a death waltz of mutual self-destruction when Lexa lightly asks how Finn is. How Clarke's husband is. Still remembering how she'd read the marriage announcement in the paper over her morning coffee a little over a year ago.
She excludes the memory of barely making it out to the blind spot in her backyard before the contents of her stomach had emptied themselves out.
She very much keeps that part to herself.
Because… Clarke seems… happy. And that's what Lexa wanted. Wants. So she does her best to force the smile to reach her eyes as she listens to stories of a rainy ceremony and a lopsided cake while determinedly nodding along.
And she's fooled herself so well, for so long, that she hadn't even noticed she'd fallen into such a false sense of security.
“And you?” Clarke asks after a too many beats of silence. “How was your—you and Costia's…”
“It was good. Sunny. Lots of bugs,” Lexa offers. Soft, but trying. Feeling her skin crawl at the topic as she stares down at a single bead of sweat making its way down her untouched milkshake and remembering the day of their commitment ceremony with a twinge in the pit of her stomach.
“Where did you guys…?”
“Cos's parents backyard. It was just a little thing… Nothing fancy. Her parents. A few friends…. Rings... A couple toasts.”
Clarke's lips press in tight as she nods. “Sounds… nice.”
Lexa's heart feels entirely too hollow for how painfully it beats against her ribs. She hums to fill the silence.
“Did your parents go?”
The question has the first genuine laugh jumping from Lexa's mouth. “No,” she snorts in amused dismay.
Clarke's turn a rosy shade of pink as she shakes her head, her gaze never drifting away from the compulsive stirring of her straw. “Well, that's a shame… They should've been there. To see you marry the girl of your dreams.”
Beyond herself, beyond her rational brain and the wedding band sitting snug and impossibly heavy on her finger, Lexa lets out a quiet scoff and looks out the window.
“I've never called Costia that.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Oh, I know what you meant,” Lexa mutters, because Clarke apparently will never lose the gift of getting under her skin.
“I wasn't trying to—”
“Yes, you were.”
“Don't tell me what I was trying to do.”
“Okay.”
Clarke scoffs and sits back in her seat. “God, how are you always so arrogant?”
Lexa leans forward against the table, face stony. “Arrogant? I'm arrogant?”
“That's what I said.”
“You are unbelievable.”
All Lexa can do is grind her teeth in frustration, feeling her jaw tick to the side as Clarke shoves up from the table and walks out of the diner without a backwards glance. Her hands turn to fists as she just sits there, hearing the bell above the doorway chime shrill and angry in Clarke's wake.
Chest feeling as if it's caving in half and eyes burning with acidic sadness, Lexa tosses a five and two-one's on the table next to their untouched milkshakes that pool and puddle with mid-July sweat. She clings to her steering wheel the second she slams the truck's door shut. Lays her head between her fists without a care for the blistering plastic against her skin. She never should've come here. Shouldn't have opened this damn door again. But she just—
Lexa nearly jumps out of her skin at the slam of fists against the hood of her truck, jerking upright in startle and meeting a fiery face of wrath snarling at her from where she's pressed against the grill.
“Ya know, this was always our problem! You take a simple question and turn it into a reason to be an ass!”
Lexa's already flinging the door open and whipping around to the front of the truck before Clarke's sentence is even finished. “Our problem has always been that you have to needle everyone. Everyone. Over everything. You can't just accept a person at their word! It's like you have to question everyone—”
“Not everyone. Just you.”
“Oh, well, thank you. In that case, I suppose I should feel special."
“You're welcome, you arrogant ass!” Clarke snaps, her voice continuing to rise with each word.
The argument escalates so fast the words all bleed together; a ready-set-match volleyed back and forth only broken by the occasional turning her back to gather herself, just to whirl around and engage all over again. Lexa works keep her frustration in flexes of jaw and curls of her lip. Walking in circles and squeezing her fists, because she never wanted it come back to this.
“Why did you even come here, Lexa?!” Clarke hurls in a stilted break of their onslaught. “Why even show up if you're just going to act like this over an innocent fucking question?!”
“Because it wasn't just a question, Clarke,” Lexa says with a harsh click if the name, her face barely an inch from Clarke's face, eyes boring into fiery pools of blue that still manage to make her legs weak.
Clarke's face twists with a sneer as she manages another step closer. “Right. I forgot your history with me asking you for anything.”
The insinuation hits Lexa in the chest exactly where it was meant to.
Lexa fills her lungs as deeply as she can to calm herself. To yell back. To bark every angry thing that passes through her mind.
They both freeze in the heat of the moment at the sharp clang of a bell, each looking to find the waitress staring at them with a distinctly displeased expression, before she waves to the row of plate glass windows littered with faces watching the entire parking lot argument unfold.
Releasing a strangled sound of annoyance, Lexa storms back to her truck in a crunch of gravel. She slams the door closed behind her grips the wheel, pressing her forehead to the scorching plastic again.
She hadn't wanted it to go this way. Hadn't wanted to fall back into the same pattern that had plagued them their entire—
Their entire everything.
All the bickering and the squabbling. Rolling eyes and huffing chests. Miscommunications and too-fiery tempers clashing in stubbornly butting head. From their whirlwind courtship to being so in love with Clarke it made Lexa physically ache, all the breakups and the makeups and letting lips mend the bruise of words slung back and forth in adolescent anger… it was as if for every ounce of love they shared, they had to balance it out with an equal amount of fury.
She's spent years broken up by far, far too many idle moments in the calm, stillness of her wife, wondering if such a volcanic kind of passion as the one they'd shared is ever meant to be sustainable.
Is it always meant to hurt quite this much?
And if not… why is this the only thing that makes her feel this alive…
Lexa's wrenched from her thoughts and startles for the second time when the passenger side door opens and closes with a thunk. The air is thick and stifling with the scent of late afternoon summer, and an intoxicating haze of everything Clarke.
The adrenaline pumps through Lexa's veins and she sucks in deep breath after deep breath, staring at the rigid set of Clarke's body sitting in her passenger side of her truck's bench seat.
And when Clarke opens her mouth to continue their fighting, all Lexa can think of is how Clarke smells exactly the same.
Lexa—so tired of listening and fighting and denying herself, of lying and running from everything—leans over and cuts Clarke's words off with a kiss. She slips her hand to Clarke's jaw and pulls her firm against her lips, sighing into the feeling—the yearning—that'd been buzzing through her body since second she saw Clarke again.
It's sweeter, softer than she'd intended in the intensity of her emotions, all the fire dying into a pleasantly warm smolder as they each sigh into the kiss. Lips unfamiliar with the give and take of the other's long forgotten rhythm, yet both seeming content to slowly relearn the feel of how they alone move together.
Head spinning and heart sinking with the steady creep of guilt, Lexa pulls back with one last kiss, and drags herself back to her own seat to sit as stiffly as before.
Why is this—this woman and her passion—the only thing in the entire world that makes Lexa feel this alive…
“I rented a room.”
Lexa blinks out of her spiraling thoughts, skin suddenly feeling on fire and heart pounding itself right out of her chest, but still, she cannot make herself move. Can't breathe. Every fiber of her body frozen in time with nauseating guilt, and a terrifying feeling of hope.
She watches Clarke take a deep steadying breath from the edge of her periphery. “There's a motel just outside of town,” she says quietly. As if uttering any of this too loudly might ruin everything. Everything. “I rented a room there before coming here, because I knew that no matter w—… no matter what happened here today… I knew I didn't want to see you, and touch you… and then have to go home and see him.”
The guilt in Lexa's stomach turns to something more intense; something hot and liquid that threatens to slip down between her legs. Her eyes slip closed and she's nearly shaking with the question that tumbles from her lips in a whisper—
“Which way?”
/////////////////////
One day she'll have to remember exactly how they got here. Will have to scour and scrounge through her lust addled brain to piece together the sequence that from the diner to the motel. When she writes about this in her journal and tucks it away safely with all the others, she'll absolutely have to answer for just how many times she kept this going.
But as it is, all Lexa knows is right now and this feeling. The pressure of her hips against Clarke's. All she knows is the taste of skin along the exposed line of Clarke's neck as they stumble through the door.
Lexa turns Clarke to her and takes her face in her hands. Leans in, brushing the tip of her nose against Clarke's, eyes hooded with the feel of her hunger as she murmurs, “Come here,” and pulls Clarke into a kiss.
It doesn't matter how many times they've done this through the years, stripping the clothes from Clarke's body never ceases to feel like a revelation. The tugs to her shirt that free delicate collarbones and each button undone exposes more creamy skin. She pops the clasp of Clarke's bra and helps pull it off in a tangle of hands racing each other for purchase. Her palms slide up the curve of Clarke's ribs and cup the weight of breasts, Lexa's breathing growing heavier at good it feels to touch Clarke like this again.
And blessedly Clarke is so patient while Lexa slows enough to take her time with reacquainting herself to the contours of Clarke's body. Lets her eyes fall closed and head tip back when Lexa wraps her lips around one nipple and then the next to suck and lick in greedy laps.
Lexa never meant for any of this to happen. Certainly never meant for their first time after so long to lack any sort of poetics. But when her shirt joins Clarke's on the motel's floor as she backs her against the desk, there's simply no stopping it. No stopping this. Them. The inevitability of them and the draw that sits so strong between them. Not when Clarke guides Lexa's hand to slip inside her pants and moans at the first brush of her clit.
Lexa never meant to be the kind of person who fucks her ex-lover against a motel desk. To shiver at feeling just how wet Clarke is. How warm. But she is that person, because she does, thrusting her fingers into Clarke in one fluid motion, churning out panted sounds of her pleasure at being inside Clarke again.
She doesn't care that the curtains aren't quite drawn or that Clarke's moans get louder when she adds a third finger. All Lexa can do is press the bare expanse of her chest tight against Clarke's, shaking at the drag of taught nipples against her skin as she works Clarke up higher with every curl of her fingertips.
When Clarke comes, it's not enough. Not even close, they both know, to sate every moment of yearning that's gone unanswered for too many years. Even the moments when Lexa has to slip out of her just so they can shed the rest of their clothes feels like it's too much; too long not touching. Each kicking free from their shoes and pants to lay forgotten on the floor and instantly reaching out for each other again.
Falling into bed with Clarke's weight pressing down over her body must be the universe's sweetest sin. She wonders if Lucifer ever felt this kind of euphoria in his downward rapture, the same as she feels Clarke's mouth suckles bruises across her skin.
The hours pass in haze of sex—desperate, soft, intense, and painfully real. They make love like there's no world outside those four walls. Fuck like the world is surely ending tomorrow.
Lexa sat in Clarke's lap, legs wrapped loose around her waist as she swivels her hips against the shallow thrust of Clarke's fingers; lips shaky and slick as they exchange moans and panting breaths.
Clarke's thighs straddling Lexa's head, hands gripping the cheap headboard above. Mouth slack and blue eyes staring down at her as Lexa traces circles with her tongue.
A part of her had forgotten that sex could be like this.
Could be so… freeing.
Freeing, yet all consuming, Lexa amends, when Clarke reaches her for again. The sheets cling to her skin, body still slick with sweat and heart still thumping from her orgasm. But she rolls over anyway. Slots her thigh between the spread open offering of Clarke's legs, groaning at the evidence of their last round painting itself across her skin as she meets Clarke's mouth with her own.
/////////////
Afternoon turns to night. And night into dawn.
Mutual exhaustion sets in, though not enough to convince either of then sleep. Just enough to leave them holding each other in the tangle of sex-damped sheets.
“Do you love Costia?” Clarke asks through the silence, long after they've both managed to catch their breath. Her cheek nestles further into the cradle of Lexa's shoulder as they snuggle close, soaking up the feeling of being bare and pressed together impossibly tight while waiting for the strength to go again.
“Yes,” Lexa admits quietly. “Yes, I do love her.”
It's not surprise when Clarke doesn't answer. Doesn't do anything other than continue tracing her thumb in back and forth sweeps over the thump of Lexa's heart.
Lexa turns her head and presses her lips to Clarke hair, hoping to bury the words and truth of her heart there. “But I'm in love with you.”
/////////////
The bubble had to burst some time. That much she knew. But the selfish, terrible, awful pieces of herself had hoped it would wait just a little longer.
Lexa picks up their food in two identical to-go boxes ordered from the diner after a whining protest of Clarke's stomach in the midst of yet another round. It had been hard to extract herself from the spell of those arms, lips, and tongue just to drive fifteen minutes to grab two double stack pancake orders with a side of bacon to share, garnished with little more than a pointed, “nice wedding ring,” along with an unwelcoming and stern-faced message from the waitress, “that needs to be gone by Monday.”
A silent nod is all Lexa can manage after glancing at Clarke's car still parked in the lot.
The drive back to the motel feels heavier. As if the walls of her beat up truck are shrinking in around her, not letting even a breathe of the cooler night air in. The glint of her wedding band against the pale evening light seems to taunt her. How it gleams with every passing streetlight above.
The smiles don't come as easy when she gets back, though she can't help feeling distinctly lighter the second she's back in Clarke's space. Breaking easier with the sight of Clarke's open smile, the mischief in her eyes when she grabs Lexa by the collar of her shirt as soon as she's within reach and pulls her down into a consuming kiss.
Her whispered, “I'm glad you're back, I missed you,” against Lexa's lips tastes sweeter than syrup. It's what has Lexa stripping back out of her clothes and climbing back into bed.
But the guilt that curdles low in Lexa's stomach makes her shuffle the food on her plate around more than actually eat. Cut her pancakes into smaller and smaller pieces between feeding bites to Clarke, despite them both having ordered the same thing.
“Bet you don't get pancakes and boobs served fresh in bed everyday,” Clarke jokes with bump of her shoulder.
Lexa breathes out a laugh. Bumps her shoulder right back. “No,” she admits. “Cos hates food of any kind in the bedroom.”
“That doesn't surprise me.”
“Don't say that.”
“I only meant that the little I've seen her, she seems very clean,” Clarke gestures with a vague wave of her fork. “I wasn't trying to be rude.”
“I know,” Lexa assures, because she does. Knows every single thing there is to know about Clarke, and being needlessly cruel isn't one of them. “But still. Just… we shouldn't talk about her.”
Clarke pauses the forkful of pancake halfway to her mouth. Lowers it back down. “Why not?”
“Because she hasn't done anything wrong,” Lexa says quietly. She drags the tines of her fork across the destruction of her dinner, and forces herself to speak around the lump in her throat. “… Because she's my wife.”
When the silence stretches on far too long, she looks up to find Clarke just sitting there, watching her. Brows furrowed and expression guarded. Hard and steely. Her lips pinching into a line.
“Are we really back to that?”
Lexa hates that she can't make herself look Clarke in the eyes.
“Are we back there?” Clarke repeats. Firmer. She carelessly tosses her plate on the table beside the bed and slips from the bed. Lexa's pleading whisper of, ‘Love,’ goes ignored as Clarke grabs up her pants and begins putting them on. “What about this? What about last night? And today?”
“It's been the best day of my life,” Lexa tries. “But, Clarke, it's not this simple—”
“So why aren't you going to stay with me?”
“It's not as simple as just doing whatever we want.”
“So you spend the day fucking me, and kissing me, and telling me that you're in love with me, just to go back to your wife?”
Lexa closes her eyes against the roll of nausea, because no. No, that was never the point of any of this.
“I do love you, Clarke. I meant every word. Everything. But she's a good person, and she's sitting at home right now, wondering where I am—”
“And I'm standing right here! Why isn't that enough?” Clarke barks, her face crumbling with emotion that clashes with every ounce of her anger.
It seems the anger wins out when Clarke lets out a strangled growl of frustration and snatches up a shirt from the floor. It barley registers to Lexa that it's actually her shirt that's Clarke's grabbed, too much of her focus taken up by the terror currently slamming through her heart.
“Please, please stop—.”
“Go to hell, Lexa,” is Clarke says as she storms out of the motel room.
Lexa shoots from the bed and yanks on the few pieces of clothes left strewn on the floor and races out of the room.
“Clarke, where are you going?” she shouts against the downpour of rain, walking as fast as she can to catch up.
Clarke doesn't bother turning, doesn't pause in her stride even for a step. “Walking to my car.”
“Will you stop and talk to me?”
“Talk to you about what?!” Clarke yells over a crack of thunder as she whips around in a spray of raindrops. “You're right! There's no point in this, is there? I mean we're already fighting, and you love your wife, and I have been an idiot for thinking I could—for thinking anything was going to be any different. I mean, God, Lexa, when are you going to stop doing this?”
“Doing what?” Lexa hurls right back through the thump of the rain.
“Acting like you have no choice in your life! Acting like you have no say in your own happiness!” Clarke pauses in her fury, chest heaving as rivulets of water streak down her face. Soak through her hair. Pool at her lashes. Drip from her lips. When she speaks again, it's softer, but no less intense. “You're bored, and you don't want that life, and you know it because you wouldn't be here if there wasn't something missing. But you keep going back out of this sense of duty! You talk about this— about her, about us—like you've never had any power in it. Like what you want doesn't matter.”
“Clarke, I'm married—”
“Because you chose that!”
“I made a promise!”
“And you broke it!” Clarke thunders over another crash of lightning. “You broke every promise when you kissed me, and made love to me. You break it every time you think about me, just like I do!”
“Clarke—”
“I have broken my vows every single day since I made them, because there is not one day that passes where I don't think about you. Where I don't miss you so much it feels like I can't breathe. Where I don't know, in my heart, that I'd rather be with you.”
Lexa doesn't know where the rain ends and her own measly tears begin. “It's not that easy.”
“It can be,” Clarke argues with a wet shake of her head. “It can be that easy, if you actually let yourself do what you want.”
“We can't just—”
“What do you want?”
“Clarke—”
“What do you want?” Clarke repeats. She steps closer, cupping Lexa's jaw in her hands. Brushes the sodden tendrils of hair from her face. “Forget about I want. Forget about what Costia wants. What do you want?”
“I…”
“What do you want, baby?”
“I don't want to hurt anyone.”
Clarke lets out a sound; something small and desperate that lives between the lines of anger and dying anguish. “Goddammit, Lexa, what do you want?”
Broken and out of excuses—out of corners and shadows she can run to—Lexa fights against the damning tremble of her lip, and says the only thing she knows she has to.
“We're going to have a little boy, Clarke…”
Lexa feels her heart shatter when Clarke visibly breaks.
She opens her arms and accepts Clarke’s weight, holding her close as she rests her head on Lexa's chest. The clatter of the rain drowns out the sound of her crying; the washing away tears as quickly as they fall.
“It was never going to be me, was it?”
Lexa shudders through and uneven breath.
There's no question to it all when Lexa meets Clarke's lips in a solemn kiss. When she tips her chin down and melts into the wet slide of Clarke's lips. She opens to the timid lap of tongue to brush it with her own, pouring everything, all of herself into this.
Because she knows she has to let go.
Let Clarke go.
Just…
Not yet.
Lexa's arms cinch tighter around Clarke and pull her impossibly close. The pain and regret mixes with every ounce of her love as she lifts Clarke off her feet in the exultation of passion, and kisses her deeper, still.
//////////////////
When they fall back into bed, it's without the fiery rush of before.
Clothes come off slowly, peeled delicately from rain-soaked skin, to be replaced by hands that touch the other as though in mourning. All the frenzy is gone from their lovemaking, though the flame of their wanting remains just as lethal. Because when Lexa slips inside Clarke this time, it's with the taste of salty tears on her lips that she painstakingly kisses away.
They still don't sleep. Don't waste one moment not touching, caressing, filling themselves with the wonder of each other. The more leisurelypace does nothing to make the seconds tick by any slower, but every touch, taste, and feeling is more burned in Lexa's brain. Imprinted on her memory to carry with her, always. Kisses to navels and heady scents of arousal that Lexa will spend hours trying to describe her journals. They fuck like they want to remember this. As if branding each other with pieces of themselves that would ot fade away come morning.
////////////////
They dress in silence. Only the shuffle of feet and calls of birds in the distance disturbing the unbroken quiet. Not word has passed between them since the moment they climbed from the bed in some unspoken agreement. When the light beyond the window faded from black to brilliant oranges and then to weak, paler blues.
They'd wordlessly washed each other clean in the shower, trading half smiles and lazy kisses as they'd brushed and dried each other's hair. Had gathered clothes and shoes and tracked down wayward missing bras that'd flung free on their arrival.
And every piece of Lexa knows that what she's feeling is entirely backwards. That she shouldn't feel as though she's leaving her entire life behind, when all she's doing is going back her wife.
But she does.
It does.
It feels exactly that way as the door of the motel room clicks closed behind them. The late morning air makes her stomach feel uneasy; the chipper call of songbirds sound taunting.
She drives Clarke back to her car in that same strangled silence, though lets herself smile when Clarke covers her hand on the gearshift and stays there. It's wrong, and she knows it, but Lexa still indulges herself in these final moments, because she's parking beside Clarke's car before she even knows it.
“Write to me.”
Lexa looks over at the sound of Clarke's voice; rough and uneven from lack of use. Squeezes Clarke's fingers for encouragement.
“I know we can't—” Clarke starts again, just to stop and shake away whatever words she'd meant to say next. Instead she continues, “I know it'll be hard, and I know it won't be enough. Not for me. But… I don't want to go back to before… I know I can't have you, but I don't want to not have you in my life at all.”
Lexa clamps her jaw tight. As tight as it'll go without breaking. “It won't be enough for me either,” she says, her words coming out soggy despite her efforts. “I don't think anything will be enough for me… but I'll write to you every day if you want. You just have to promise to write to me too.”
Clarke lets out a wet laugh. “I'm not writing to you every day,” she says through a chuckle. But when she looks to Lexa, all her face shows is sadness. And love. “But I will. I'll write to you.”
With a final nod, she's pulling away with a kiss to Lexa's fingers. She grabs her purse and climbs out, just to pause in the frame of the door.
“Why did you really come here?”
All Lexa can do is smile, heartbroken and sweet.
“Because I break my vows every day, too.”
Clarke nods again with a sniffle and shuts the door.
And Lexa's determined for that to be it. A messy, clean break. A lapse in her judgment and convictions that she'll back on with regret and wonder. Twenty-four hours that she'll hold secret and dear in her heart. Meant for only her to remember; one precious day where she belonged to Clarke. And Clarke to her.
She makes it halfway across the parking lot before slamming on the brakes. Barely remembers to throw the truck into park before she's back on her feet and walking as fast as her legs will take her. Walking fast enough to grab Clarke's arm before she get into her car.
She wheels Clarke around and wraps her tight in her arms, squeezing her to the point it makes Lexa's bones ache. She buries her face in soft blonde hair, and lets one single sob escape.
“The worst part of all this… is that it's only ever been you.”
Lexa presses her forehead Clarke's and sucks in a breath against the burn of her tears. She wont let them fall, not until she's alone in her truck. That much she owes Clarke at least.
Her entire body shaking, Lexa kisses Clarke's lips and lets go. Forces herself to turn away. She walks to her truck and pops it into drive, peels out of the parking lot in cloud of gravel and dust without a single look back.
Clarke Griffin arches her back from the mattress as the full lips attached to her neck and the two fingers pumping in her hit all the spots that know how to make her cum, hard. She moans out, not caring that they were still in the dorms and people were still awake or just falling asleep. She couldn’t give two fucks about other people hearing them when it feels this good.
Once the high of multiple orgasms begins to wear off for the both of them, Clarke watches as Lexa Woods saunters to her mini fridge, still naked, grabbing a bottle of water. Clarke knows that’s her cue to begin to get redressed. The last time they had met up, Lexa had lingered in bed with her, cuddled her, and now she’s making it clear that that will not be happening tonight.
It's starting to become a pattern with her. One second Clarke thinks Lexa may actually deeply care for her, then the next time it’s different. She’s still conflicted herself on which one she prefers when it comes to Lexa Woods. Being fucked to oblivion then kicked out or being fucked softly and lingering.
They’ve been doing this dance for the last eight months. Since the beginning of the school year.
Clarke watches as she grabs her phone, reading through some texts. Clarke can imagine what the texts are for. How they met wasn’t totally conventional. Clarke, Raven, and Octavia had gone to a party at the beginning of the school year. Clarke, still reeling from the death of her father from cancer at the beginning of the summer and then finding out her boyfriend, Finn Collins, was actively cheating on her the whole time, she was not doing her best. Raven had begun seeing Anya, who is a year ahead of them, and Lexa’s best friend. Raven had suggested they do MDMA or molly, try to get Clarke’s mind off of things, Anya had given Lexa’s number.
She remembers the three of them going to meet Lexa out in her car. Clarke sitting with Octavia in the backseat as she dealed them molly. Clarke remembers watching her dexterous hands hand off the baggie of pills and swap money with Raven. How she caught her intense green eyes in the rearview, them lingering on her.
The next evening, Clarke began having a panic attack, something she had never fully experienced before. Clarke knew she needed something, anything to calm her down. Octavia suggested contacting Lexa. Raven and she had forced Lexa to bring her a Xanax that moment and when she came, she was delicate with Clarke. She showed her a technique, touching her skin with her index and middle fingers, gently tapping on Clarke’s wrist to help calm her down. Clarke has found herself doing this a lot more often than she’d like to admit.
From there, it was like they were seeing each other everywhere. She wonders if Lexa had always been around, and she just didn’t notice. But when she sees Lexa, standing with her impossibly long legs, tamed curly hair, a pout that people pay very good money to achieve, verdant eyes against sun kissed skin, she knows she would have noticed her. Maybe would have been the one to cheat first in her relationship with Finn if Lexa were around.
And then the first proposition was bold. Lexa had met up with them at some party and somehow, they had been left alone together.
“You seem like you’re having a lot of fun.” Clarke had said sarcastically. Lexa smirked and shrugged.
“Not so bad. I usually try to avoid shit like this though, I will admit.” Lexa said.
“Not into the social aspects of college?” Clarke questioned. Lexa shook her head.
“No. I don’t really do relationships in general.” Lexa had told her, staring at Clarke.
“Why not?” Clarke had foolishly asked. But Lexa was straightforward, minced no words.
“At least not at this point in my life. We’re here for a few years, it’s all pretty temporary. I’m not trying to get close to people I’m never going to see again after I leave.” It was blunt and Clarke doesn’t know why but she wished she did, and so she challenged her.
“So, what you’re just abstinent?” Clarke had said and Lexa had given her an easy laugh.
“No, I have sex. Everyone needs to have sex.” The way she had been looking at her, it was making Clarke’s stomach swoop, a low warmth deep inside wanting to break free.
“You just find girls who don’t feel anything?” Clarke pressed. Lexa had then stepped closer to her, getting into her space.
“Why? You want me to fuck you?” It was now out on the table, and Clarke could not deny that that was exactly what she wanted from her. They would leave that party walking out together, back to Lexa’s single dorm room. She didn’t kiss her until they were inside; a mess of tongues, shedding clothing, and when Lexa had entered her with those dexterous fingers, Clarke had figured out what addiction was.
Now it was eight months later, Lexa being the only person she’s been consistently fucking all year, and if she’s honest with herself, the only person she’s fucked all year. In the last three months though, something had shifted between them, which is now causing the hot and cold reactions from Lexa in the aftermath of their encounters.
Lexa had begun opening up to her, and Clarke had begun doing the same. It was small conversations at first. Lexa passively mentioning growing up in foster care and group homes, Clarke passively mentioning the loss of her father. It grew from there. Lexa telling Clarke about the abuses she endured and also helped stopped, the reasons why she was pre-law, ironic since she was dealing drugs on the side which was not lost on Lexa. But it was helping pay for her schooling, affording her things she couldn’t before. Clarke had told her about the strain in her and her mother’s relationship, how much she misses her dad. She had cried once when telling her, and Lexa had delicately kissed away her tears, it was one of the more intimate moments she’s had in her life thus far. She’d hold her after these moments, Clarke doing the same when she became vulnerable. But then the next time they’d get together, it would be hasty and quick, Lexa giving Clarke some excuse of having an exam the next morning or needing to go make a deal across campus.
She watches her type something in her phone, still freely naked. Clarke moves from the bed, going to grab her clothes. Lexa sets her phone down on the countertop, looking at Clarke curiously.
“You have somewhere to be?” Lexa asks as Clarke puts her t-shirt back on. Clarke looks up to her.
“No, I just figured- “She lets the words die on her tongue, not really sure what to do now. Lexa begins to walk back over to her, Clarke still sitting on the edge of the bed. She hands Clarke the water bottle.
“You can stay, if you want.” Lexa tells her. Clarke isn’t sure what to do with this, Lexa has never voiced that Clarke can stay. She takes the water bottle and takes a sip as Lexa flops back onto the bed, watching Clarke.
“We don’t really do this, Lex.” Clarke boldly states. The nickname falling from her lips easy. Lexa is now rubbing her fingertips down Clarke’s covered back, making her shiver pleasantly.
“We kinda do, you know.” Lexa admits. Clarke stares at her, feeling like this may be a trap. Like if she gives in, tomorrow Lexa will disappear. Will have been an eight-month hallucination built out of grief and loneliness. Lexa must sense her slight unease because she scoots closer to Clarke, gently moving her hands to Clarke’s face, her thumbs rubbing circles on her cheeks as she kisses her. Clarke finding herself moving her hands to hold herself anchored to Lexa’s wrists. Her fingertips rubbing her wrists gently as she kisses her long.
When she pulls away, it’s just enough to look into her eyes. “Despite my best efforts Clarke, I like you.”
Clarke feels her heart rate pick up at the confession, the feelings she’s been repressing when it comes to Lexa coming to the surface. She searches her eyes, wondering if she’s just lying to her, a new little game she’s decided to try. But then she remembers Lexa has always been nothing but honest to her. Straightforward.
“I like you too.” She finds herself whispering to her. Lexa seemingly mirrors Clarke’s previous actions, searching her eyes, Clarke afraid she will see the lie in them. Because she doesn’t just like her, she loves her. If Lexa sees the lie, she doesn’t show it, just pulling her back in towards her lips once again, guiding Clarke back into the bed, their tongues dancing around each other’s as Clarke removes the t-shirt she had just put on and positioning herself back on top of Lexa.
A faint, rhythmic knocking from afar reaches Clarke’s ears as she steps off the porch and into the balmy air, at once grateful for the cooling, gentle breeze that ruffles her hair and carries with it the scent of smoke wafting from the chimney stack.
A ways in the distance, she spots a solitary figure silhouetted against the pink-tinged sky, staking a wooden fence post into the ground before moving on to the next.
Lexa’s been at it for hours without a break, but if there’s one thing Clarke has learned this past year it’s that, come rain or shine, Lexa never shirks her duties or shies away from physical labour. Every morning without fail, she’s up at the break of dawn and doesn’t rest until the work is done, as dedicated to cultivating this land as she is devoted to filling their evenings with all the pleasures to be had between two women of their persuasion.
To the rest of the world they’re companions, spinsters that got left on the shelf too long, who upped sticks and settled together out of necessity, for friendship, financial security and safety in numbers—and who better to provide protection to a sheltered debutante who aged out of finding herself a husband than a former bounty hunter, renowned for her stoic demeanour as much as her daring exploits?
(Or so the story goes—Clarke ain’t that old.)
On the face of it, they’re an odd pair, a subject of mild curiosity among the few inhabitants of the otherwise sleepy township they journey to by wagon every so often to replenish supplies, garnering their share of looks and whispers as they go about their errands.
What those folks in Temperance don’t know, and would surely be scandalised to discover, is that on one bright, clear morning in early spring, she and Lexa exchanged rings and vows. Just the two of them in their Sunday best, in a pretty spot down by the creek, nature as their only witness.
While waiting by the porch for her boss to call her, Lexa felt uneasy like never before. Her jaw was locked, painfully. Her fingers, digging at the hat’s brim she held at her front (a vicious manner she had learned from her father, “always take off your hat when around the big house, child”), and holding herself to do not tap her foot nervously on the ground.
Abby never had anything serious enough to hold against Lexa and call her to pay a visit to the farmhouse. She knew that whenever the boss called someone privately into there, it wouldn’t be good. She remembers the times she saw some of the crudest cowboys leave the house with a hat in hands and tears on the verge of falling or puffing air through the nostrils as a brazing bull.
She also remembers when her old man, Gustus, the farm’s watchman, said to her to work hard and keep her head down if she wanted to be a good ranch hand at the Griffin’s.
(She missed Gustus like hell. He was the closest thing she had to a parent. He gave her a shelter, food and education – he was the responsible into convincing Abby to let Lexa work at the Farm besides being underage. He gave her everything she had now.
Before he’s passing, she told Gustus about her… “Preferences”. He would be silent when she broke the news to him, severe and unmoving. But by the next day before the sun rise, when he came back from his night shift, he hugged her tenderly and shared the first meal of the day with her – black coffee, warm bread, tomatoes and a generous slice of cheese – along with the summary of how things went during the night.
She wonders if Gustus would scold her for being in love with the boss’ daughter.)
While she waited nervously, she wished that the old man was there to comfort her. The ranch hand girl couldn’t help but wonder what he would say to make her calmer… Would he say that she did her best? Would he ask her to stop acting like a child? Would he-
“- Good afternoon, Lexa.” – Abby’s firm voice calls her out of her reverie, as she holds the front door open. The brunette looks up and gives a firm nod to the older woman, her hands in a vice-grip on the hat’s brim. Before Lexa could say anything, Abby enters again without looking back. “- Close the door after entering, please.”
“- Mrs. Griffin.” – Lexa whispers more to herself than to the woman. She spends a little time taking off her dirty boots to enter the house (Gustus said to never enter the boss’ house with dirty boots). As she took the enormous house in - which she was quite familiar with the parts that concerned about Clarke (the back window and the blonde’s room) – she felt like giving herself willingly to a trap. Smaller and weaker, without her boots and her hat, ready for the worst.
And to thought that she was still recovering from the night before. Eyes sore from crying to sleep.
She followed Abby to the big table in the dining room. While seated, Abby gestured for Lexa to also sit at the table, but the girl politely declined. She kept herself rather distant from her boss. In her mind, Gustus' baritone voice echoed: “Mind your place, child.”.
Abby didn’t insist though. She chose for starting calm, doing somewhat of rehearsal instead of going straight to the point: “Look, Lexa, I called you here because I trust you a lot and I respect your job. Your father, God rest his soul, taught you well, and I have no interest of dismissing you.”
Lexa let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. But the relieving sensation didn’t last long.
“- However.” – A pregnant pause, Lexa could see how Abby’s eyes seemed to wave around an issue. Damn. “- I also know that you and Clarke were… good friends, since Gustus started bringing you here.”
Lexa’s heart almost flipped inside her ribcage. Her mouth went dry. Suddenly, a bunch of memories of all those nights that Lexa sneak inside Clarke’s room through the window left open, only to stay a few hours before and go back to herd the cattle; the secret kisses of them hidden in the tractors barn, the thrill of looking twice to check if anyone was looking, the traded vows and promises with only Orion as witness… She felt that her world was about to crumble again after Clarke’s farewell.
As if it wasn’t hard enough to be without her. Now this.
Abby’s figure turned into a blur while Lexa held bravely the tears.
She already lost Clarke.
Now, she is about to lose everything she got.
Her job.
Her life at the farm.
The cottage Gustus lived in and now she lives in.
Orion and all the memories the three of them built together, their names carved on the front yard tree, the drawings, the cows she liked the most and everything she knows about the fields and-
“You were her only friend in here and I know that she might be feeling the absence of her old life here in the farm even if she doesn’t admit.” – Abby scoffed, eye rolling at the thought of her daughter saying absurdities about the life in the farm. “- But I do understand that she wants to build her own life without my help.”
Lexa felt confused about the direction that the conversation was taking. What was that all about?
“- She wants to be alone and focus on her career. You know she went to Arkadia to start the med school.”- Another pause. Abby dismissively waves her hand to clean some invisible dust from the table. “- So, I called you here to ask a favor, for Clarke’s sake.”
“- Yes, ma’am.” – Lexa says firmly, although she feels her insides shaking as leaves during a windstorm.
“- I want you to forget her.”
----***----
Clarke was still trembling by Lexa’s response, incapable of forming any logical sentence under that gaze that told so much with so few words, when she heard a loud whistle coming from the maternity corral, followed by a loud calling of “Heda!”.
Saved by the bell. But Clarke didn’t know who was in danger in the first place.
“- I have to go, Ms. Griffin. Lincoln is calling me and I guess there’s a cow about to give birth.” – Lexa nodded shortly after, passing through Clarke in a jog towards the maternity. She looked back and waved briefly.
Clarke stood in the same spot without even looking at Lexa’s direction.
----***----
Seventeen years ago
Lexa and Clarke were best friends. At that time, they had spent most of their free time laughing and following each other steps like two bouncy calves. During summer, they rode around the farm, having races and talking about everything and nothing at the same time.
Lexa shared her knowledge about the plants, animals and the fields. Clarke told her stories about her trips around the country and the big cities she visited.
One day, everything changed.
“- I want to take you somewhere.” – With that and saddling two horses, Orion and Quasar, Lexa convinced Clarke to follow her towards the far north of the Griffin’s property, to the woods near the Mount Weather valley.
As they followed through the forest trail, horses walking side by side in a nice and slow pace, Clarke talked about her problems with her mom and how it made her feel dislocated in the countryside life; how she wanted to move to Arkadia to live a life of her own, without being constantly watched and protected for Abby and her employees. Except for Lexa, since they were friends when the girl arrived at the farm with Gustus by the age of ten, the blonde had a pretty much lonely childhood.
(Clarke liked Lexa, at first, because she didn’t treat her like a princess, but as a regular human being.
And Lexa saw in Clarke a person like anyone else, even though she was the daughter of the wealthiest rancher in the region.)
When the ranch hand girl asked about what Clarke wanted to do in Arkadia, she spoke about her dream of opening an Art Gallery. She wanted to be an artist, instead of a physician as her mom wanted to.
“- I’ve never been in an Art Gallery.” – Lexa admitted that day, looking shyly at her own hands, calloused by the hard work, holding firmly Quasar’s reins.
“- I’ve been into a few and I loved it. It’s something like a warehouse but with divisions and walls and there’s various artworks; they can vary according to the exhibition’s theme and-“ – Clarke doesn’t finish her line of thought. She notices that Lexa is visibly embarrassed about her lack of knowledge about places that are so common in bigger cities as Arkadia. So common in Clarke’s world. She looks down and hears quietly.
The blonde felt silly and selfish. Again. Here and there, situations like that would happen between them – when a thing that Clarke says or does sounds completely alien to Lexa, and the difference between them in a matter of economic circumstances and privileges shows it immenseness. The ranch hand girl never complained about it, most of times just saying nothing. But Clarke hated that feeling.
Selfishly, she was terrified of losing her friend for such differences.
But then an idea pops into her mind.
“- I’ll take you to my favorite one in Arkadia and you’ll see it for yourself.” – The blonde simply determines, holding her gaze towards Lexa.
The brunette nods, answering with her well known timid, lopsided smile.
----***----
At sunset, Lexa finally reached home. She didn’t mind closing the door, even – just took a few large steps towards the fridge and got an ice-cold bottle of water, taking large gulps to refresh her fuming mind.
She was so nervous she could throw up.
The reunion happened so fast and so unpredictably, Lexa felt silly for being caught taking a fucking nap by nothing less but Clarke Griffin after fifteen years.
She wanted to dig a hole in the corral and bury herself there.
After all this time.
Fifteen years – not days, years.
She daydreamed about meeting Clarke again for what felt like a lifetime. She cried and prayed and yelled at no one until she buried this feeling alive and never said anything to anyone.
God knows how she cried with only the poor Orion to comfort her. She asked God, on her knees, to take this awful sensation of being the traitor from inside her chest.
And when she was finally sure that everything that happened in her youth was just that – a memory – and Clarke would never comeback to claim her inheritance.
There she was. In flesh. Alive and breathing.
Beautiful and cheeky as always.
----***----
By the end of the forest trail, they reach a waterfall near a forest glade. It was breath taking and Clarke didn’t have the slightest clue that such scenario was part of Abby’s property. The midday scorching sun was high in the sky, its rays invading the glade causing the waters and wet rocks to shine as tiny crystals floated on its surface. They dismounted the horses and took off the saddles so the animals could rest a little and graze around the place.
Clarke loses herself in nature’s beauty. Birds chirping freely on the high tree branches. A blue butterfly hovered around them, batting its wings over Quasar’s and Orion’s mane.
Lexa had everything planned: she brought a backpack with water, snacks, extra clothes and an old blanket, arranging the things neatly while the blonde observed her surroundings.
(Secretly, the ranch hand girl had planned this day for weeks. She wanted so badly to be around her friend… Without any concern, nor any person to watch them.
She knew it was a selfish thing to feel, but she wanted Clarke all to herself for at least for one day in her life.)
“- It is beautiful.” – Clarke comments while looking around, bewildered. Lexa gives her time to take the view in, meanwhile taking off her own boots and unbuckling her knife from the belt.
When the blonde looks back, looking for Lexa, she sees that there’s a grin in her face that she doesn’t remember seeing before – which makes the girl even more beautiful. It makes Clarke’s heart warm and gallop inside her chest. She knew, that behind all that rough worker posture and reservations, there was a beautiful young girl that loved to meet new places and show the blonde’s some precious details of her perspective in the farm.
Maybe it was the thing Clarke loved the most in that place.
Lexa.
“- What is it, Clarke?” – The brunette calls her out of her reverie, noticing that the blonde’s gaze suddenly went too far.
She blinked and shook her head once, twice. “- Oh? No, no, it’s –“ She stumbled on her own words, feeling suddenly embarrassed for being “caught”. She breathes in, trying to control her racing heart. “- It is nothing, Lex.”
She just wanted to be around Lexa.
That’s all.
----***----
Left alone near the horses' barn, Clarke felt as if the time was standing still.
She spent a couple of seconds trying to process this so short yet so intense dialogue.
It felt childish, in a way - Lexa just took an opportunity to run for her life; but it also felt like a scar being opened with a sharp knife.
Actually - it felt less than a scar, more to pouring salt into a wound that never actually healed. Clarke just got used to it.
In Clarke’s defense, is not like she never wanted to be back. Life got in the way.
She spent her first five years in Arkadia building a career in med school, only to drop everything she got without her mom’s knowledge to start studying art. She never asked for a single dime from Abby’s wallet and built everything she got with her own sweat and money, working day and night to open a gallery and make her name into the art world of Arkadia. She had achieved that and beyond, even.
In that gap, there were some years that her and Abby didn’t speak to each other.
Clarke built a whole new family in Arkadia, with her friends and colleagues. She had even found a long-time partner, Finn. They stayed engaged for a couple of years until the moment Clarke decided to end it.
She loved him, yes, although she never felt like being “in love” with him. It felt “correct”, being with him. If felt… comfortable.
And Clarke Griffin didn’t want things to be “just comfortable”.
She had left a comfortable life on the farm to achieve her dreams and personal goals. Hell, she chose her life over a lover.
And it didn’t take long for Clarke to realize that choosing career over love would be the best choice possible since that very lover, a.k.a. Lexa Woods, betrayed her as soon as she had the chance.
However, something was off.
When she saw those same green eyes shining in her direction – she felt that same pang hitting her unmercifully. That wave of love and warmness that came from Lexa’s body without her saying a single word – maybe without her even controlling it. Because, well, Clarke Griffin could see right through her.
Since ever.
Before this reunion, Clarke thought that the brunette wouldn't even address her. Hence the fact that Lexa herself denied to her mom that they had anything and even said that she "never bonded with someone during work". A blatant lie that hurt Clarke after all what they've lived together on that very farm.
They made a fucking promise of sharing a life together, for god's sake!
And when she saw those green-gray eyes piercing through her soul straight to the confinements of her heart, awakening memories so vividly in a snap of fingers, she felt in her guts what her intuition whispered to her ears that time:
Lexa was lying. She was a liar and she lied back all those years ago.
—-***—-
Fifteen years ago
After the last day they saw each other, Lexa never answered Clarke's letters. The ranch hand girl didn't have a phone (by her own choice), and Abby didn't give her daughter any other information from Lexa besides "she's working hard as ever".
But one day, unsure and distressed over this unexplained silence treatment, Clarke questioned her mom during a phone call. The dialogue from that day echoed in her mind for years.
"- I do not understand, mom, if everything is fine, why Lexa didn't talk to me?"
"- I don't know, honey, maybe she is just very busy."
Clarke felt confused and left behind – was that some kind of revenge? Was Lexa trying to return the pain she felt? But the girl herself said that they would meet again, for sure. That she would find a way to send news about herself and Orion. The memories of the brunette whispering silly promises such as “I want to be around you forever” and “Don’t forget that my heart belongs to you” felt like a thousand cuts, burning her senses.
Lexa forgot her so easily!
“- You should focus on your life in Arkadia now, honey.” – It was the last advice she heard from Abby before she hung up the phone.
—-***—-
Seventeen years ago
Clarke Griffin herself wasn’t so much of a fan of rose apples.
Abby explained to her years ago that – i.e., these trees - it all started as a trial, a new hope of an agriculture niche that her father, Jake, thought was a good idea – an exotic tree from Asia that would blow the consumers mind by its exquisite taste.
And it was a good idea. At least it was until he died abruptly.
Once being the only farm’s owner, Abby devoted herself to the previous focus of the Griffin’s land: dairy cattle. She abandoned without further explanations all of Jake’s projects for implementing an agroforestry system. And growing rose apples were the starting point of it.
Only a few trees remained over the years, the first samples that Jake plated himself with Clarke still a toddler.
So, whenever Clarke saw one of these trees, she saw, instead of a failed project, somewhat of a monument to a simpler, more hopeful, time. Among the native vegetation of the land, the rose apple tree wasn’t the highest, especially in the forest that grew further at the border of Griffin’s land, but rather a presence, a generous elder in the heart of a garden. Its sturdy trunk twisting upward with a quiet strength, and its flowers and soft perfume reminded her of Jake until she met Lexa.
Lexa, the girl that appeared out of nowhere on the farm, hidden behind the large body of Gustus, the farm’s night watcher.
Lexa loved rose apples, and she was responsible for giving Clarke a whole new significance towards the trees displayed around the farm. When children, they played around them, took naps below their shades, climbed on it to pick the purple and rounded, succulent fruits to eat before lunch, etc.
And during their youth, below its branches, Clarke discovered her own feelings.
And, again, Clarke wasn’t so much of a fan of rose apples, but she ate them with Lexa more for the company and the adventure than for its flavor.
However,
When she kissed the ranch hand girl for the first time – there, by the waterfalls near the glade Lexa took her, she felt in those plump lips the notes of perfume and slightly refreshing flavor of this so meaningful fruit…
She became addicted to it.
The combinations of those elements - Lexa’s lips, the flavor and smoothness of them, the trembling hands (from coldness? Nervousness? She would never know) of the ranch hand girl around the blonde’s hips in a slight hold, yet possessive, - became a powerful memory on her mind that assaulted her senses over and over again. She would look for it – the taste of Lexa’s lips, her hold, her arms, her touch – everyday in that farm ‘til her last day there.
(Although she wanted that so badly, Lexa didn’t realize her feelings were reciprocated until that very moment.
The moment when she kisses Clarke during the comfortable silence that grew between them after they dived in the water, and the blonde kissed her back.
A shiver ran down her spine when soft hands tighten around her neck and pull her back to a new round of kisses.
It felt like breathing the spring breeze of heaven.
It felt like the blossoming of the flowers in the pasture after a good amount of rain.
It felt like the first warm sunrise after winter.)
-----
up next: Sunday (I honestly hope so). The reunion.
