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Friday night comes and goes and she keeps herself busy with a deep clean of her apartment. Spotify blasting and shorts slung low on her hips, she ties her hair back and tackles the kitchen first.
It’s easiest, the kitchen. She rocks out to Mumford & Sons and cleans the crumb tray of her toaster. Swings her hips to the upbeat tune and sprays the inside of her oven with Easy Off, opens a window and dons thick rubber gloves, scrubbing until no evidence remains of failed dinners past.
She doesn’t think about Clarke.
She switches to Lana for the living room. Decides her bookshelf needs a cleaning and takes out every book, one by one, wipes it down with a lint rag until the wood is polished and the spines are shiny.
She doesn’t think about what she and Clarke might be doing if she was over there right now
After two loads of laundry and a thorough vacuuming of her baseboards, it’s no longer polite to keep her stereo playing. Turning off the speakers, she strips down from her dirty, sweaty cleaning clothes and turns the shower water to hot.
It stings her shoulders, but it’s good. They’re too tense, sore and achy.
She thinks about the pads of Clarke’s thumbs, the way they’d press and dig and roll along her spinal column when Lexa was too tense. How’d she talk quietly throughout it, about anything, everything. Chatting careless about work and the news and the weather and whether or not aliens would actually look like little green men, until Lexa was calm. Until Lexa was boneless. Until Lexa was pliant and submissive and ready to open herself to Clarke’s whim.
She lets the water run cold, only turns off the faucet when her teeth start to chatter.
She’s not supposed to be thinking about Clarke
Her thumb hovers over Anya’s name in her contact list, braid dripping over her shoulder to soak the shoulder of her nightshirt.
She’s not calling Anya with this. The last thing she needs is to hear Anya’s long-suffering sigh, to hear what a useless lesbian she is, falling for your fuck buddy when you goddamn know better, Lexa Woods.
Yeah.
She knows better.
But she’s still got a few criss cross bruises, fading yellow and ugly on the backs of her thighs. She spent three days after last weekend debating if it was worth it to ice her nipples to help dull the pain; she finally gave in and took Advil after her run the first day. Even her best sports bra couldn’t stop the impact from making her ache.
Instead, her thumb flicks through her camera gallery, to the myriad of “platonic” pictures of her and Clarke that litter her gallery over the last few months. Clarke’s big smile and the feather they drew in her latte foam at some ridiculously overpriced hipster cafe. Their selfies with slices of the artichoke ricotta pizza they shared at the new brick oven place that opened in town. Shots of the group taken by some drunk stranger at bar trivia, a token to the night they first met.
She stares long enough at the little trash can symbol that her vision blurs. Should she delete them? She should just delete them, right? Hovering over the menu screen, she chooses instead to select every picture of blonde hair and too blue eyes and send them off to the cloud.
It seems fitting, doesn’t it? Sending her memories of Clarke into the stratosphere, where her stupid, lofty thoughts of them being anything more than fuck buddies should have stayed in the first place….
God, she’s too sober for thoughts like this.
//
Two Fridays later, she gathers all the courage she can manage and stuffs it into the breast pocket of her flannel. An hour long shower and her hair braided back, she wears Clarke’s favorite pair of cheekie panties and rings on her doorbell at 7pm sharp.
Nothing has changed. She feels like it should, like the soft grey house with it’s smattering of flowers should have somehow changed, like them, but it’s exactly the same. The windchimes twinkle their usual tune, but the house is devoid of the sound of footsteps, the sound of Clarke taking the stairs too quick, slipping on the polished hardwoods in her stupid fuzzy socks, and she’s going to wind up breaking an ankle one of these days….
Today, the door doesn’t open.
Lexa’s finger trembles when she pushes the doorbell again, listens to the faint chime of it before she reaches for the metal knocker.
She’s not home.
Heart sinking into the depths of her gut, Lexa drags herself back to her car. Maybe she’s with Raven and Octavia. Maybe she went out grocery shopping. After all, thanks to Lexa, they don’t have a standing appointment at 7pm on Fridays like they have for the past four months. Not anymore.
Idiot .
She manages a quick text out to Anya before putting her phone in the cupholder, pulling out of Clarke’s driveway before she returns and makes Lexa’s appearance here even more awkward than it already is.
[SMS - Lexa Woods]: Brunch tomorrow?
//
Gooey yellow egg yolk drips from the end of her toast, Lexa catching the savory bite between her teeth before it can make a mess.
“So what the hell’s up with you and blondie these days?” Anya asks, cutting into her own omelette with the edge of her fork. Lexa flicks her gaze up, watches a piece of cheese string as Anya lifts it to her mouth. “You two are all ‘buddy-buddy’ and then one day Raven’s gotta deal with ‘friend things’ and neither of you show up to trivia anymore.”
Lexa’s toast turns to dust in her mouth; she washes it down with a scalding mouthful of black coffee. “Clarke doesn’t go anymore?” she asks, trying for nonchalant.
The gaze Anya levels her before rolling her eyes tells Lexa she failed.
“No, apparently she’s just as useless as you are,” Anya says between bites. “So. What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Lexa mumbles, forcing a bite of sausage between her lips. “We just…. Nothing happened, it wasn’t even a thing in the first place.”
Anya watches her in silence and Lexa wishes the stupid speckled booth would swallow her up whole.
“Everyone knows the two of you have been fucking,” Anya says, blunt and dry and god why did Lexa think this would be a good idea?? She drops her fork to her plate, buries her head in her hands. “Don’t give me that embarrassed ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ shit. You two were fucking. Now you’re not, and here we are. So spill.”
Lexa stares at her plate in silence, watches a drop of maple syrup ooze into a smear of grease.
“Does this have something to do with that ‘no dating’ policy of hers?” Anya asks through a mouthful of egg.
“Something like that,” Lexa replies, pretending her fingers aren’t shaking when she picks up her fork. She cuts off a piece of egg white, pushes it into the maple and grease mix. “I wanted more, she didn’t. Not much else to it.”
“I’m not buying it. I’ve had to leave the room for too many ‘bestie talks’ for there to be nothing else to it.”
Lexa’s eyes snap up. “I told her I wanted her and she didn’t want me back,” she says, teeth gritting. “She hasn’t text, she hasn’t called. I even went over there last night, and she wasn’t home. She wasn’t home at the same time we meet every week, Anya, how else am I supposed to take it??”
“Don’t be so dramatic. She got a new work schedule.”
Lexa blinks, startled from her emotional turmoil. “What??”
“She has a new schedule,” Anya repeats, still eating. Lexa debates knocking the fork right out of her hand before Anya continues, “they needed someone to cover OB weekends, I guess, so they moved Clarke and one of the other second years. She bitched about it for hours. Guess she’s losing a scheduled c-section day and she’s pissed.”
“Oh.”
Well. That… explains why Clarke wasn’t home, Lexa supposes, hiding her gaze in her coffee mug. But it doesn’t explain the lack of phone calls, or text messages.
It doesn’t explain the Clarke-shaped hole still bleeding around the edges of Lexa’s heart.
“Yeah, oh ,” Anya adds helpfully. “She’s got Mondays and Thursdays off now, so take your ass over there Monday after work and… Talk. Fuck. Do whatever you were going to do last night and figure out your shit.”
“Thanks, Dr. Phil,” Lexa mutters with a roll of her eyes, draining the last of her drink.
“Just for that, you’re picking up the check.”
Lexa’s lips turn up at the corners at that. “Like you were ever going to pick it up in the first place.”
“Damn right.”
//
Between her lunch hour and 5:58 Monday afternoon, Lexa’s burnt through 4 cups of coffee, two motions, and a closing argument. She checks the clock for approximately the twentieth time in the last five minutes and draws a breath to steady the hammering of her heart.
Technically, she could leave now. Technically, she could have left an hour ago and no one would have bat an eye, but Lexa’s been avoiding packing her bag as long as she can.
Six o’clock, she told herself. Six o’clock and she’ll pack her bag, shut down her computer, lock up her files for tomorrow and drive to Clarke’s house.
5:59 and she’s staring at the corner of her computer screen, heart in her throat and threatening to steal her breath.
It’s time, Lexa. Woman up.
She packs her bag, stuffs her thermos in the elastic sleeve and shuts her computer down properly. She locks up her files, turns off the desk lamp, the overhead. Locks the door behind her and double checks it twice before she goes.
You can do this, Lexa. She’ll be there, you can do this.
Her car knows the drive to Clarke’s house better than she does, and before she can blink, she’s pulling into the familiar driveway. The sun has set just enough to let Lexa see the light from the living room, the kitchen, glowing out from behind the curtains. She steps out of her car, hits the fob twice to lock it, and flinches at the tell-tale beep.
Clarke must know she’s here, right? Must know the sound of her tires coming up the driveway, the sound of her locked car in its tune just different enough from everyone else’s?
She could just not answer the door , Lexa’s brain supplies. Maybe she knows and doesn’t want to talk. Maybe she moved her schedule herself, maybe this whole thing is a mistake, maybe --
“----Lexa?”
And there she is, Clarke in her favorite blue pajama pants and an oversized sweater.
“Were you gonna knock, or just stand there?”
With a thick swallow, Lexa blinks, jaw softening as she tries to form words, an excuse, anything other than I was standing on your stoop like a coward . “Can I come in?”
Smooth, Lexa. Real smooth.
But Clarke’s gaze travels over her only once before she steps back, making room for Lexa to come inside before she closes the door behind them.
“Do you want something to drink?” Clarke offers.
“Water’d be good,” Lexa responds, toeing off her shoes and following the blonde into the kitchen. She’s fairly certain the caffeine’s to blame for the allegretto in her chest, the parch in her throat. She gnaws at the inside of her lip while Clarke takes down a glass, fills it with water from the door of the fridge.
“Thanks,” she says, quiet, and Clarke offers her a nod.
Her arms cross as she leans back against the counter, and Lexa wonders if this is what it feels like to be under a microscope, her every move watched as she lifts the glass to her lips, lets a mouthful of cold water slip down her throat to land in the well of her stomach.
She’s going to be sick....
“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”
Lexa sighs, sets the glass down on the counter. “You didn’t tell me your schedule changed.”
“We weren’t talking,” Clarke points out. “And yet you found out anyway. Raven?”
“Anya,” Lexa returns. “I tried to come here Friday night, you weren’t home.”
She can feel the weight behind Clarke’s eyes as they finally meet, the first time Lexa has summoned the courage to hold them since she walked up to the door.
“What did you come for?”
“It was Friday,” she says, cursing the way her voice wobbles. “We meet on Fridays.”
“For sex,” Clarke says, still watching her. “We meet on Fridays for sex.”
Lexa swallows, thick. “Yes.”
Clarke’s arms uncross as she takes a step closer. Lexa forces herself to break eye contact, lower her gaze until she can see her own dress socks on the hardwoods, breath shallow to keep her head from spinning…
“Is that what you came here for, then? To fuck?”
Lexa’s fists curl at her sides, nails biting in the palms of her hands. She can’t answer, can’t say it, can’t tell her, not again….
Clarke’s hand comes up under her jaw, the slightly pressure from her thumb and forefinger. “Tell me, Lexa. Did you come here to fuck? To have me tie you up and tease you until you come?”
She swallows and her belly tightens, abs clenched under her blouse.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
Clarke’s gaze drops to her lips, her mouth, and Lexa’s knows what comes next, needs it , closes her eyes and lets her body lean forward ---
Clarke’s hand falls from her jaw, her feet move her a step back and Lexa’s left in free fall in the space between them.
“No.”
“What?” Lexa asks, blinking too fast as her mind tries to catch up with her body. “I---.”
“If you came here, after last time, thinking I would just pretend nothing happened, pretend that we both didn’t safeword out of a scene….” Clarke shakes her head, scoffs and lets her breath skitter across the back of her teeth. “No. Not happening. Absolutely not.”
“Well, what do you want then?” Lexa asks, demands, eyes narrowing as she watches the infuriating woman in front of her. “You didn’t want to talk, you didn’t want to get caught up in my feelings , so what do you want?”
“I want to not get hurt. I want to not hurt you!”
“Well, it’s a little late for that, isn’t it?!”
Lexa’s voice is a whip crack between them, Clarke reeling back as if she can physically feel the shock of it. For the first time, Lexa can see the fissures in her eyes, see the way Clarke’s brow crumples and furrows, a mask of her pain reflected right back at her.
But in the time it takes her to blink, the look is gone. Clarke forces calm into her face, shuts her expression down into something tired, something bored, and directs her gaze out the window to the purple-red cast of the setting sun.
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Lexa. So if that’s what you came here for, maybe you should go.”
Gaze following Clarke’s line of sight until she, too, can watch the sun dip below the other houses on the horizon, Lexa forces herself to blink. She swallows down the heavy pebble caught in the back of her throat and begs her tears not to spill over.
“I’m sorry,” Lexa whispers, her voice dragging and caught in the back of her throat.
Clarke’s gaze slides back to hers, jaw twitching with the clench of her teeth. “For what?”
“For putting you in this situation.”
“You’re gonna have to elaborate,” Clarke says, arms crossing over her chest. “I’m not sure we’re talking about the same situation anymore.”
Lexa blinks, eyes widening before they her sight comes back into focus. Don’t make her say it, Clarke…. Don’t make her admit it again , that she messed up, that she set herself up to be rejected.
Clarke doesn’t budge.
“You were always upfront that you didn’t want anything more,” Lexa says, tongue darting out to wet her lips. “I… thought I was okay with that, but… things changed. I’m not okay with it. So I’m sorry.”
“And you didn’t think it was possible that things changed for me, too?”
Lexa’s chest squeezes, the pressure of Clarke’s words gripping her too tight. It burns. She hates swallowing down the knowledge that even if it could have changed, it didn’t. They’re still here. “I told you that I wanted you and you didn’t say it back, Clarke. I know I’m still a junior lawyer, but that’s pretty clear--.”
“I’m gonna have to stop you right the fuck there.”
Lexa reels back, mouth dropped as she takes in the venom curdling Clarke’s tongue. “What---?”
“You didn’t tell me anything, Lexa. You didn’t give me a chance to say anything back!”
“Clarke---.”
“No, Lexa,” Clarke interrupts her, decisive and final and she takes a step forward. “I’m talking now.”
Lexa clenches down her teeth and nods.
“You safeworded out of a scene and had me terrified that I’d crossed the line and harmed you,” Clarke tells her, storms raging in her narrowed eyes. “You dropped some bomb about how you ‘fucked up’ and then raced out of my bedroom as fast as you could because you decided that I didn’t want you?? How the hell was I supposed to say anything??”
Eyes burning with the replay of that night , Lexa flounders, heart hammering as her arms feel numb, too clumsy. “You could have just said---.”
“I was domming you, Lexa!”
Clarke’s voice is a loud burst of anger, a clap of thunder in the room.
“I was domming you and focused on that, on taking care of the woman I’d just had crying in my arms!” Rain clouds gather on Clarke’s lashes and Lexa can’t breathe. “If I’d dropped you out of a scene and tore for you from subspace, how the fuck do you think you’d feel? Do you think you’d be able to think clearly, Lexa?”
She blinks and a tear slips down her cheek, spilling onto her lips as she whispers, “...no.”
“If you’d given me a chance to redirect my own brain, to shift my focus, to do anything… . God, Lexa. Do you really think I’ve shared all those things with you without feeling something?”
Lexa’s own eyes water, spill over to match Clarke’s. “You never said anything, did anything different,” she hastens to explain. “You never kissed me….”
“I was scared , Lexa!”
“So was I!”
The static between them grows thick and charged, the hairs on the back of her neck creeping up to stand on end. Clarke’s eyes are still wet, all storm front to Lexa’s hurricane heartbeat, and this moment has to break, they have to cross the eye of the storm ----
Lexa’s the one to reach across the space between them, fingertips sparking as they settle on Clarke’s waist, the soft fabric of her shirt. Her body is hurtling forward, Clarke’s arms coming to catch her as they meet.
Salty lipped and wet cheeked, Clarke’s fingers are in Lexa’s hair as Lexa’s dig into Clarke’s spine. She can feel Clarke’s rings catch on her curls and the sting only fuels her further, has her pushing them into the granite countertop as if she can merge them, as if sheer will alone will be enough to make them one.
“Lexa---” Clarke gasps between them, voice cracking as Lexa’s mouth catches the edge of her jaw. She sucks blood to the surface of the skin, leaving it pink and shiny before the hand in her hair tugs harder, directing her to meld their mouths into a kiss.
It’s unlike before; it’s raw and broken and everything she’s ready to cut her tongue on. Her hands slip under the soft hemline of Clarke’s sleepshirt to find the curves of her waist. Gooseflesh rises under the pads of her fingers and Clarke gasps against the edge of her lips.
“Lexa, fuck,” she says, and god, has Lexa missed that mouth. That absolutely filthy mouth that never shuts up whether they’re naked or clothed. It knows how to make her laugh at the bar and how to turn her into a puddle in the bedroom. She wants every word she can wring from that mouth, every sound, and as her nails tease at the gentle dip of Clarke’s waist, she gets her first moan.
Lexa’s skin burns and her toes tingle, and she absolutely does not have patience as Clarke starts working at the buttons of her blouse.
The whimper shared between them is hers this time, all thready and needing as Clarke manages to get the bottom few buttons undone before she abandons the task to slips her hands around to the too-warm skin of Lexa’s back.
“Clarke, please,” she begs, shameless, pulling her own hands from the tender altar of Clarke’s ribcage to fumble at her own neck. She gets one button done, a second. She contemplates ripping the last of them as her fingers shake and miss the little plastic piece, twisting the fabric rather than sliding the edges apart.
Finally, she gets it, and Lexa’s certain she’s never slid cotton down her arms this fast. She tugs her hands through the wrists of the shirt before dropping it, careless, pressing their bodies chest to chest before she latches her mouth on the rapid flutter pulse at the base of Clarke’s neck.
“Off, get it off,” Clarke says, pulling at her own shirt. Lexa steps away long enough for Clarke to remove it, leaving her bare before Lexa’s wide-eyed stare.
You are so beautiful , she thinks, but the words never make it past her lips. They sit on her tongue instead, as she leans forward, desperate and determined to wrap it around a rosy nipple and simply show Clarke instead.
Clarke’s moan is a sound of legend, sinful and sweet and curling heat into the deepest places of Lexa’s hip bones. Her hand comes up to work at the other breast, cupping the perfect flesh and letting the weight of it sit in her palm, delicate as her thumb teases the nipple into a peak.
The hands in her hair turn the brown strands to mess, swirling and tugging and sweeping them out of the way as Lexa suckles. She teases and nibbles, following the sound of Clarke’s throat until the pull on her hair gets too desperate, too needy.
Lexa lets up, stands to her full height before bowing as Clarke tugs her down into a kiss.
The warmth of her tongue is expected. The hot of her tears is not.
“------Clarke?” She pulls from the kiss, brings a thumb to the fresh tear tracks on Clarke’s cheek and wipes away a droplet from her flushed skin. “I’m sorry, I --- .”
“Don’t,” Clarke says, shaking her head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just….” Clarke swallows hard enough to hear, Lexa’s eyes following the dip of her throat, and when she speaks again, her voice is thick with the effort of it. “I thought I’d lost you….”
Lexa’s chest swoops, lands in her stomach. Her fingertips tremble as she brushes back Clarke’s hair. “You didn’t. I’m right here.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t,” Clarke points out, shoulders shaking as she holds back a sob. “I let you go and I….” She shakes her head, brings up a hand to scrub at the wetness on her cheeks. “I never should have let you leave that night.”
“I should have given you a chance,” Lexa responds, head dipping with the heat of her own actions. “I shouldn’t have run when you’d been so careful with me, before.”
“We really fucked this one up, didn’t we?”
Lexa tries not to flinch under the weight of Clarke’s gaze, heart hammering against her sternum as she stares back.
“Maybe we can fix it,” she whispers, barely daring to plant that seed of hope. “Maybe… we can start over. Do it right?”
She watches Clarke’s lip tremble before she nods, arms reaching to wrap around Lexa’s waist.
“You know, I’m not sure making out and crying topless in my kitchen is ‘right,’” Clarke jokes on a chuckle, her lashes still damp as Lexa weaves her hands into Clarke’s golden hair. “Maybe…. we can get dressed and I’ll order pizza? Have you eaten yet?”
Lexa shakes her head, not certain the butterflies in her stomach are ready for cheese and grease. But with her blood returning back to her limbs, weighting her in the moment, she knows they need to do this right .
Fucking in Clarke’s kitchen after yelling at each other is not right.
“That sounds good,” she says in the end, swallowing the pool of saliva that builds in the back of her mouth.
When she steps away from Clarke, she can feel the cool air of the room rush in, slipping along her skin. It leaves her feeling more naked than her state of undress.
Finding her shirt hanging half off one of the counter knobs, Lexa slips her arms back into the sleeves, methodically pushing each button through its matching buttonhole. By the time she’s done up, fingers smoothing over the wrinkled cotton, Clarke’s found her shirt as well, the pair of them red-faced and blushing.
“Right, well.” Clarke clears her throat. “I’ll order the pizza.”
Lexa nods, watches while Clarke moves across the kitchen, picks up her phone from the wooden table. She’s knows Clarke’s got the number on speed dial, hears the faint murmur of an answer on the other end before Clarke orders their favorites.
She smiles as she rattles off Lexa’s order, and Lexa thinks the entire possibility of world might live in the corners of those kiss-bruised lips.