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the holiday, chapter two

“I get it,” Lexa huffs when she is able to reclaim her breath, “no strings.”

“No strings,” Clarke parrots, assessing the sound of it in her mouth.

The weight of her coat falls off of her shoulders and the world twists.

She finds herself half-dressed on the couch an hour later, button popped and hands groping uselessly for purchase on the cushions. Her cheeks are flushed and her breathing heavy—she is sure every passer-by in a five mile radius knows what they are doing but she can’t bring herself to care.

read on ao3

The morning comes as a surprise.

Not in the sense that Clarke hadn’t expected to wake up—although with the amount of red wine she consumed it’s a wonder she isn’t comatose in a ditch—but in the sense that she hadn’t expected to wake up next to a very real, very naked Lexa.

She sits up, holding the sheet over her bare chest as she surveys the damage. There are clothes on the floor, a sea of bras and panties, her plaid pyjama pants and her bedmate’s shirt she barely remembers taking off. The quilt seems to have gone a similar way despite the draft that cools the small bedroom to freezing and more mortifying still, Fish sits in the doorway, head cocked like he knows what has gone on and a look in his eyes that dares Clarke to tell him otherwise.

She frowns. “What are you looking at?” she hisses.

Whining, he retreats downstairs in hope for breakfast and Clarke nods her head at a battle won.

The night is returning in fits and starts. Flashes of red wine and make shift karaoke, soap operas and Lexa’s late-night visit and she wills herself not to cringe at the absolute absurdity of it all. It was all too easy to be bold and empowered running on jet-lag, four glasses of wine and the sting of what Finn did to her snapping at her heels, but the cold light of morning tends to lend a new perspective to things.

She looks at Lexa stretched out over the bare mattress, a sheet draped over the dip of her spine and pinches herself when the trickle of heat begins to make itself known in the pit of her stomach again.

Now isn’t the time.

Instead, she slips her legs out of bed, willing the mattress not to creak as she eases herself off of it and goes in search of something to wear. Her suitcase peeks out from beneath the bed and Clarke takes the first sweater that she finds as she fumbles blindly around for the contents, slipping it over her head and retreating downstairs.

The living room, too, is a map of the night before.

Her cardigan, t-shirt and Lexa’s jeans have found a home on the rug and cold tea sits stagnant in the kitchen. She pads, toes curling, across the cold wooden floors to empty it out and wash the residue away with water from the faucet that takes a minute to heat up—an unfortunate by-product of living in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, Clarke suspects.

It snowed in the night. The windows are patterned with flowers of frost and beyond that, a fresh layer sits in the field like a blanket lending a kind of crispness to the air that takes Clarkes breath away. She has never felt so removed from the dry heat and ever-present anxieties of LA in her life. She is seriously considering donning a coat and boots and running out into the yard like a kid on Christmas day when a phone vibrates somewhere in the depths of the cottage and she stills.

Fish weaves his way between her bare legs in an adamant bid for food and Clarke finds her phone beneath the her cardigan.

[Text from: Raven 11:46 PM 15/12] What’s the number for the pool boy? The filter is fucked again and Anya wants to use it

[Text from: Raven 11:58 PM 15/12] ?

[Text from: Raven 12:09 AM 16/12] Never mind I found it

[Text from: Raven 12:34 AM 16/12] You need to de-clutter once you get back your office is a mess

[Text from: Raven 3:55 AM 16/12] Call me when you get this.

Clarke presses the phone to her hair, waiting on the dialling tone and roots around in the cupboard beneath the sink for the dog food. She drags the bag onto the kitchen floor and uncurls the top.

“You’re alive,” Raven drawls.

Clarke groans, pulling Fish’s dish out of the corner with her toe and leaning over to fill it up with her phone pinched between her shoulder and her ear. Everything feels exponentially hard this morning. “I wish I wasn’t,” she commiserates.

“Rough night?” Raven clucks in sympathy.

“Eventful,” Clarke corrects, “it’s past midnight, why are you up?”

Raven is silent for a time and Clarke grows suspicious. “Impromptu movie night,” she says, carefully. “And what about you? You didn’t return my texts I was about to call nine-one-one.”

“Nine-nine-nine,” Clarke tells her absently. It was one of the few things she researched about England before mindlessly agreeing to move for half a month.

“Semantics,” Raven agrees to disagree. Fish yelps as Clarke holds him bag from his bowl with a clumsy leg. “Is someone there with you?”

“Not unless you count a Labrador.”

Raven makes a noise. “I don’t.”

Somewhere in the depths of the cottage a floorboard creaks and Clarke cranes her neck around the corner of the kitchen to make sure Lexa hasn’t emerged. “Actually, I did have one visitor.”

“Do tell.”

“Anya’s sister stopped by last night.”

“Lexa?”

Clarke frowns. “You know her.”

“Only what Anya’s said about her.”

“Is there something you should be telling me about Anya?” Clarke lets out a low whistle, pulling out a chair from the table and tucking her feet up onto the edge of it.

“Nothing noteworthy,” Raven insists. “But we weren’t talking about me. Lexa stopped by last night?”

Clarke nods, sinking her chin onto her knees as she watches Fish eat and starts thinking about a breakfast of her own. She banishes the first lewd thought that pops into her head at that—the image of Lexa strewn over the small bed upstairs—and turns her mind to what she might find in the fridge. “She was on her way back from the pub,” the foreign word tastes strange on her lips, “and didn’t want to drive home.”

“So?”

“So, we talked,” Clarke replies but it sounds ridiculous even saying it and she prepares herself for the inquisition.

Raven lets out a squeal. “You slept with her?”

“Sort of,” Clarke winces, raking a hand through her hair.

“What do you mean sort of? Did she fall into your bed during climax?”

Clarke ignores the hot flush of panic that shoots straight down her spine at the wording. Somehow, she thought, not being able to remember the specifics made it easier to comprehend but now, her cheeks are red and her gut twists. Fish stares at her from across the kitchen and she narrows her eyes back at him.

It’s stupid, but suddenly, she regrets forgetting to close the bedroom door last night because if push comes to shove Clarke is almost sure the dog will use what he witnessed against her.

“It just happened,” she stresses to Raven, “like spontaneous combustion, or a heart attack.”

“So it wasn’t good.”

“No,” Clarke fists her hands in her hair, painfully aware of the mixed messages she is sending; no one could ever accuse her of being a wordsmith. “I mean yes,” she corrects herself hastily, “it was amazing. I just—”

“Hey, no judgement here,” Raven assures her with an audible grin. “Rebounding is better than the alternative,” she gives a pointed emphasis on ‘alternative’ as if to remind Clarke of what she found herself doing before Lexa knocked on the door. “I just didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I have plenty of it in me!” Clarke argues, blanching at the implication of her words. “I’m plenty capable of casual sex,” she amends in a hiss.

A grainy rendition of ‘Walking On Sunshine’ blares somewhere in the living room and Clarke frowns, going in search of it. She finds Lexa’s phone in her coat pocket—an honest to God flip phone that makes Clarke wonder what century this town is trapped in—and frowns at the name ‘Madison’ printed in bold letters on the square screen at the front of it. It rings out and the screen goes blank save for the emoticon in the corner that indicates two missed calls.

“Raven, I have to go.”

“Yeah you do,” Raven trills happily, “go get ‘em tiger.”

Rolling her eyes, Clarke ends the call.

She finds herself standing there, bare-legged and in her cashmere sweater, fifteen minutes later, the phone tucked under her chin as she contemplates. In the crisp light of day, forty-eight hours is arguably too soon for a rebound. Not even arguably, just straight up definitely too soon. Especially, it seems, if Lexa does make a habit of turning up at unwitting girls doorsteps at night and flashing her smile. ‘Madison’ hasn’t called again but the thought there is a Madison makes her feel queasy. She’s been the butt of an affair once—she still is one—there is no way she is going to perpetuate the cycle by being the other woman.

She slips the phone back into Lexa’s coat pocket as its owner makes an appearance, beautifully tousled and suitably bashful in only her button down as she pulls her cable-knit sweater over her head and frees her hair. She finds her jeans abandoned in the living room and Clarke averts her eyes form the uncoordinated dance it takes to put then back on—if she wasn’t so apprehensive about all of this she would find it endearing but as it is she’s floundering.

She meets Lexa’s eyes with an awkward smile. “Morning.”

“Morning,” Lexa greets ruefully. She reaches for her coat and Clarke’s heart lurches at the thought of her phone but when she pulls her hand out of her pocket it is with a delicate grip on a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses that she opens and slips on, blinking owlishly. “I seem to have misplaced my contacts,” she explains. The unspoken ‘last night’ hangs thickly in the air and Clarke’s cheeks go ruddy as she turns her attention to the beat-up coffee machine she has no clue how to work, cursing herself for not having the foresight to put on pants. Like most things in the cottage, Anya’s instructions on how to work the coffee machine were something resembling ‘if it sticks, rattle it until it works’ but on the third try, Clarke is sure that if she rattles the contraption any more it will come apart in her hands completely.

Exasperated and painfully out of her element, she gives up.

“We have tea,” she offers weakly. It’s both a call back to last night and a peace treaty.

Not that she thinks her and Lexa are warring.

Bumbling around the battlefield wondering which way is up is probably more apt but she doesn’t think Lexa is here to hear about her similes. Or is it a metaphor? Honestly, Clarke thinks, she is an artist and not a writer for a very good reason.

“It’s a metaphor.”

Clarke feels her stomach evacuate her body, a hot flash of panic coursing through her. In the whole confusion of the morning she wouldn’t put it past herself to have recounted her entire string of consciousness out loud. “What?”

“Tea is a metaphor for life,” Lexa explains hastily, smiling beneath the high neckline of her cable-knit. “It’s a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh. I read it at university. My sister and I have a sort of joke about it,” she smiles and does a movement with her hands that Clarke can only translate to nervous energy. “‘You must be completely awake in the present to enjoy the tea’,” she quotes. “Sort of how you have to be immersed in the present to enjoy life.”

Clarke smiles, about to take the kettle off the cradle because she is neither completely awake nor in the present and as such, will not being enjoying her tea no matter how hard she tries. Lexa folds herself awkwardly into a chair at the kitchen table and Clarke roots around in the cupboard she noted last night contained the mugs.

“Where did you study?”

Lexa smiles. “Cambridge,” she admits fondly, “for both my undergraduate degree and my masters.”

Clarke’s eyes widen as she turns, “Cambridge?”

“Yes,” Lexa nods bashfully before ‘Walking On Sunshine’ invades the stagnant silence of the kitchen once again and she ducks into the entryway to check who the caller is and silence in before returning, phone in hand. The look on her face seems to say ‘we need to talk’ and ‘I’m sorry’ without actually saying anything at all. Stomach twisting, Clarke jumps in before she can open her mouth to explain.

“I know what you’re going to say.”

Lexa pauses, brow contorting. “You do?”

“Yes,” Clarke nods decisively. “It was a one-time thing. You’re completely off the hook. Never has to happen again,” she waves her hands in emphasis and watches Lexa’s face fall. “Not that it wasn’t good!” she hastens to clarify. “Because it was,” her cheeks go red, “meeting you I mean,” she frowns at the words coming out of her own mouth and at the fact she doesn’t seem to be in control of them anymore. “Meeting you was good. I enjoyed your company. You may be,” she directs an awkward arm to the door, “on your way.” Lexa blinks at her unmoving. “Unless you don’t want to be,” Clarke amends, hitting herself, “in which case you’re more than welcome to stay and watch me butcher your national drink just as well as I just butchered that sentence. And that’s a metaphor.”

Lexa smiles and it is infectious.

“It’s a simile actually.”

Clarke shakes her head, grinning in disbelief as Lexa accepts the invitation to stay with as much grace as if she hadn’t been told that sex between them ‘never has to happen again’ and goes to the fridge to fetch the milk as Clarke pulls the tea bags out of the tin.

“For the record, it was good meeting you too,” Lexa teases as the wait for the kettle to sing. “Lovely, in fact.”

Clarke feels the familiarity of their banter from last night trickle into her bones and she smiles, biting her lip. “I’m glad you remember it,” she quips, leaning past Lexa for the sugar. She catches a whiff of perfume that is simultaneously soft and somehow the strongest scent Clarke thinks she has ever smelt—which is a lot considering Finn used to plaster on Axe after going to the gym like it was going out of fashion—and she has to steady herself.

Lexa guffaws. “I wasn’t drunk,” she shakes her head like the thought is abhorrent.

“Okay,” Clarke nods, feigning a contemplating look, “you weren’t,” she brings her fingers to her chin. “Was that before or after you threatened to ‘take a leak’ on the porch?”

Lexa averts her eyes, cheeks colouring a brilliant shade of red like they did when Clarke had flung open the front door to find her crossing her legs in the half-light of the porch at eleven p.m. and Clarke loves it. In fact, if she weren’t so caught up in the intricacies of the morning she would make it her mission to elicit as many of those reactions as possible.

“It wasn’t my finest moment,” Lexa admits readily. She pushes her glasses up her nose with her middle finger and seems to be contemplating something. Clarke doesn’t push. When the kettle whines she pulls it off its cradle—a practiced move now—and pours into the waiting mugs, watching the tea bag steep. She thinks she could get used to the simplicity of the process.

When they are both leaning against the kitchen counter, cradling steaming mugs between their palms, Clarke takes a moment to take stock of what she knows. She is standing bare legged in a kitchen eight thousand miles away from LA with a dog that isn’t hers and a woman who definitely isn’t. Lexa likes tea, went to Cambridge and casually quotes poems by Vietnamese monks. Clarke can barely recite her Starbucks order and dropped out of medical school to pursue her art career.

It would have been an endearing meet-cute if not for the elephant in the room.

“Thank you, again, for letting me stay,” Lexa speaks to the thick silence.

Clarke shakes her head. “It was nothing.”

Lexa shrugs. Her face is tilted into her mug so that Clarke can’t read her expression but she offers a lazy shrug of her shoulders. “I’m not sure it was nothing,” she laughs.

Clarke has to agree with that.

Lexa is anything but nothing.

Clarke curls her fingers around the hot ceramic of her mug and lets the bitter taste of tea with not enough sugar settle on her tongue. She doesn’t even know if she likes it or if she is just drinking it because it is there and warm. When she is finished, Lexa sets her mug down on the counter.

“Listen,” she starts, “I should go.”

“No. Yeah,” Clarke nods, “of course.” Her stomach wobbles and threatens to bottom out on her.

Lexa goes to find her coat and slips it on, tugging her sleeves down over her wrists. She pulls her boots on next and arranges her hair into a shape that is presentable on the speckled mirror so that she looks like a version of herself that is altogether rougher around the edges than the one that entered last night. Beautifully tousled, Clarke can’t afford to think. Her cheeks are ruddy and her hair stays tucked beneath her collar, her glasses offering a far homier alternative to the contacts that Clarke is sure are lost forever. She pauses with one hand on the door handle, brow furrowed.

“I know this was a ‘one time thing’,” she posits, intentions far from malicious but Clarke flushes at hearing her own words being used against her. “But if you do want a drink,” she plays with the hem of her sweater, “or dinner. I’m a phone call away.” Her words come out thickly and Clarke can’t help but think she was bolder under the guise of alcohol too.

“Something uncomplicated,” Clarke nods, remembering.

Lexa offers her a bashful smile.

[Text to: Octavia 8:09 AM 15/12] Can you forward me the information for my return flight?

[Text from: Octavia 8:13 AM 15/12] Was the sex that bad?

[Text to: Octavia 8:14 AM 15/12] Fuck you

[Text to: Octavia 8:14 AM 15/12] What did Raven tell you?

[Text from: Octavia 8:15 AM 15/12] That you rebounded with the first English girl who turned up on your doorstep.

Clarke has the flight information an hour later and no idea what to do with it.

As she sees it, she has two options: return to LA with her tail between the legs driven by the same force that saw her fleeing to England twenty-four hours earlier or she could stay and see this through. The trouble is, both sound like a viable option right now.

She sits with her knees to her chest, socked feet tucked onto the edge of the couch and phone in hand as if praying for a sign or divine intervention.

Lexa texts some time during her ruminations. Clarke isn’t even sure when they exchanged numbers but Lexa pops up in her messages like a contact she has had for years with an offer to meet at the pub at eight, then follows up a moment later with an address and a string of works that equate to ‘I hope I’m not overstepping’ and Clarke can just picture her, flushed faced beneath the thick frames of her glasses

Her cheeks heat at the thought alone but by seven o’clock her suitcase is packed neatly by the door. It’s the first hurdle of many but she hopes that the sight of it will give her the strength to book a flight and call a cab.

It doesn’t.

She stares at blankly instead, desperately rooting for some sort of solace on the matter. She is dressed for a flight in jeans, a sweater her coat and boots, her scarf wrapped around her neck so tightly it sends a hot flush up her cheeks but she can’t bring herself to put one foot in front of the other and so she is stuck.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Fish stares at her expectantly from the rug in the living room, head cocked in challenge and she purses her lips at him. He wines.

“Well what would you do?”

He barks, then rests his head on his paws and Clarke becomes acutely aware that she is talking to an animal. She slumps down onto the couch in miserable consideration and flings her head against the headrest to stare at the discoloured ceiling.

[Text from: Lexa 7:57 PM 15/12] Just wondering if we’re still on?

Her phone startles her out of her minor crisis and she fumbles for it blindly between the cushions of the couch, letting her head—throbbing with a headache by now—fall into the cradle of her hands. She squints at the offending light of the illuminated screen, reads the messes three times over as if the meaning will change into something more easy to reply to. Short of typing ‘I don’t know’ Clarke is lost.

Five minutes later it is clear she isn’t leaving.

She has had twelve hours to stew in the possibility of booking a flight back to LA like it was a choice that was hers to make when she knows full well that Lexa made it for her when she turned up on her doorstep last night.

[Text to: Lexa 8:02 PM 15/12] Running late. See you there.

She leaves Fish’s dinner out, squatting on the floor in front of his bowl to scratch behind his ears and make him ‘promise not to tell’ before she slips the front door key onto her key-ring and leaves for town.

It gets dark quickly here; she watched the sun set over the ridge of the paddock three hours ago but she is still shocked at the intensity of the darkness that greets her beyond the yellow-gold halo of the porch lamp. It’s thick and heavy, a kind that is non-existent in LA with its light pollution and obnoxiousness and strangely calming in the way it blankets the mile or so of countryside between the cottage and the pub, leaving no room for doubt or uncertainty as she picks her way from streetlight to streetlight.

By the time she rounds the bend of main street to see a squat, brick building in the middle of a block of shops, her cheeks are chapped and her toes ache in the tips of her boots but she tamps down the feeling regardless. The warm fug of the pub is a welcome change and she pauses for a moment, just inside the door to allow her body to adjust. It’s dim inside, the walls are dark-panelled wood and the lighting is low. If she peers close enough at the row of men in tweed jackets hunched over their tumblers at the bar she can almost imagine it as a scene out of the period novels Bellamy spends days stuck into, but for the garish beer mats tacked to the walls in neat rows. A Union Jack flutters gracelessly from the ceiling, in the path of the bulky heating unit that spews out a fog of warm, stale air and recycled cigarette smoke every few minutes. Nose wrinkling, Clarke side steps to avoid it and survey the din of the space for Lexa’s familiar frame.

A desperate coil of panic takes root in her spine a minute later when she can’t find her. She is struck with the realisation that there is nothing about Lexa that is inherently ‘familiar’, hell, she is surprised she can remember what she looks like through all the haziness of last night. She thinks that, maybe, this was the wrong choice after all.

“Clarke.”

Craning her neck, Clarke tries not to be overcome with relief as she sees Lexa sliding out of a leather booth in the corner with a private smile. Clarke ducks her head at the kindly man who has been asking if she needs to help and fleas over to Lexa, accepting the hug she offers and sliding into the seat opposite her.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she says breathlessly, unwinding her scarf from her neck. She suddenly feels flushed and out of her depths, her coat can’t come off fast enough when she tugs at the fastenings.

Lexa is in a thick, tweedy turtleneck, skinny jeans and to Clarke’s surprise, her glasses—Clarke thought she would have replaced them with contacts the minute she got home this morning but here she is, fiddling with the tortoiseshell frames like the slow show of her fingers isn’t driving Clarke insane.

“If I’m being honest,” she starts, cheeks ruddy, “I started to wonder if you were coming at all.”

“I was considering my options,” Clarke smiles coyly, trying to regain some semblance of the allure she is sure was shattered after her utter lack of ‘playing it cool’ this morning.

“I see,” Lexa smiles with a demure duck of her head. She lets her fingers wander over the laminate encased menu, perusing options like ‘cornish pasties’, fish and chips and tap beer, all of which seem so far removed from LA life it throws Clarke into a state of culture shock. “Am I allowed to say I’m glad you chose me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, it was you or Coronation Street,” Clarke admits, immediately wishing she hadn’t.

She winces at herself and hopes Lexa understands via osmosis.

“I’ll do my best not to let it go to my head.”

Lexa walks her home.

Clarke isn’t entirely sure it isn’t another excuse not to drive home after a beer and a half but she seems altogether more coherent than last night. If anything, Clarke is riding a stronger buzz than her—her toes and fingers are pleasantly warm and her mind feels sticky, as if she is in the realm of making bad decisions.

They talk about mindless things; Lexa’s aversion to livestock despite living in the middle of nowhere and Clarke’s choice to drop out of medical school. In her loose-lipped haze she delivers an entire history of her relationship with her mother she is sure she will live to regret come morning, but Lexa, as sweet as she is, nods religiously, hands tucked into her pockets as she steers them over the unseen path. The heel of Clarke’s boot hooks itself into a crack in the concrete and Lexa nudges Clarke upright with her elbow.

When they stop outside the front gate, Clarke squints at Lexa in the din glow of the kitchen light seeping out from between the curtains Clarke is thankful she has drawn, trying to pick out familiarity in the half-light. Her jaw is locked so that a shadow falls handsomely down the ridge of her cheeks and Clarke feels bold enough to stroke a shaking finger down the line it forms.

Lexa is still.

“What?” Clarke giggles as they stand, mirroring each other, “do you only kiss on the first date?”

Lexa has the good sense to took mortified and Clarke finds it within her to frown.

“Listen, Clarke,” Lexa says. Her voice is low and it is enough to sober Clarke to the bone. She furrows her brow as if the solitary motion of it will drain the alcohol from her veins. “I need to apologise. My behaviour last night…” she brings a palm up to rub the back of her neck, pulling the lip of her sweater down over her clavicle in a way that makes Clarke’s stomach flip. “My behaviour was unacceptable and I would very much like for you to know that it won’t happen again.”

Her words are so unbearably earnest that the restless energy in Clarke can hardly stand it. She reaches up on her toes to tentatively slide her arms around her neck.

“What if,” she posits softly, “I want it to.”

Lexa is close enough to her that Clarke can feel it when her breath hitches. It’s a tiny movement, one that sends the cavity of her chest collapsing inwards and a little huff of air cascading over Clarke’s cheeks. Lexa arches her neck into the press of Clarke’s palm and drifts closer.

“Then I would say, that that would be acceptable.”

“Good.”

The gate squeals in protest as they stumble over the threshold but between the fumble of numb fingers in her pocket for the front door key and the raw heat of Lexa’s hands traversing the length of her spine beneath her coverings, Clarke can’t bring herself to notice.

She kicks the door closed behind her, panting wildly for breath. Lexa slips her fingers beneath the collar of Clarke’s coat and Clarke moans into the graze of finger son the nape of her neck. It feels like ten volts to the chest and she is left reeling with the intensity of it.

“Wait,” she chokes, stilling Lexa by the shoulders. “I can’t do this.”

Lexa recoils las if she has been burned and Clarke chases her, fingers digging desperately into the lapels of her coat. “No,” she breathes into the space between them, “not like that.” She shakes her head dumbly and wishes words into her mouth that she can’t seem to find. Her mouth tastes like tap beer and over salted fish and chips and the world spins a little beneath her feet. “I can’t be in a relationship. My ex…he blindsided me.” Fingers antsy, she hooks them into Lexa’s jaw and kisses her hotly.

“I get it,” Lexa huffs when she is able to reclaim her breath, “no strings.”

“No strings,” Clarke parrots, assessing the sound of it in her mouth.

The weight of her coat falls off of her shoulders and the world twists.

She finds herself half-dressed on the couch an hour later, jean button popped and hands groping uselessly for purchase on the cushions. Her cheeks are flushed and her breathing heavy—she is sure every passer-by in a five mile radius knows what they are doing but she can’t bring herself to care.

Lexa’s fingers are heavenly.

Her mouth even more so.

She floats, angel-like above her, drenched in lamp light so that when the hot, aching thing snaps in the pit of her stomach, Clarke thinks she has ascended. Blindly, she fumbles for the cool of Lexa’s hand and interlocks their fingers, desperately seeking something that will keep her from drifting off into the atmosphere.

She drags Lexa up her body, head spinning at the easy slide of skin on skin, hair tickling her neck and sending a spray of goose bumps over her chest.

“Feel free to do that again,” she urges Lexa to tuck herself into the nook between her body and the arm of the couch.

Lexa huffs a tiny breath of laughter, “touché,” she piques a weary brow.

She takes a moment to sooth the burgeoning bruises littering Clarke’s neck with reverent lips, then rests her forehead against Clarke’s.

“Hey,” she hums in drawn out appreciation as Clarke traces her fingers in loose, lazy figure-eights over the dip of her chest. One of the best things about Lexa, apart from her accent the drunk half of her brain firmly decides, is how vocal she is. If Clarke could bottle all of the delicious noises she has earned over the course of the past hour she would have an arsenal on her hands.

“Yeah?”

“I want you to know that you’re not missing out on anything.” Lexa twists to face her where she lays, brows poised into a thoughtful frown. “Relationship wise, I mean.” She cards a hand through her hair and Clarke fixates blindly on the damp curls at her hairline. “My life is crazy, I—”

“You don’t need to explain,” Clarke hushes her, ignoring the way her stomach swoops and dips.

Lexa ducks her head into a smile that Clarke doesn’t want to think is relieved. The memory of Madison grows like a stain on her subconscious that she hurries madly to blog away but to no avail—her mind wanders.

How many other girls has Lexa given the same speech to?

How many other Madisons?

Lexa tugs slowly on her bottom lip and Clarke shoves the thought of betrayal away with heavy hands, refusing to listen.

#no strings attatched

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