Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She isn’t a sexual being to other people. 

Lexa knows that. It’s strange really, because deciphering a split-second frown? Understanding just exactly when the unabridged list of her favourite word-definitions becomes a social faux-pas over dinner? Figuring out why Happy Hour isn’t the same unified period of the day adhered to by all alcohol licensees? Incomprehensible. But, the inability to be perceived sexually? Lexa knows about that well. It makes her feel hiraeth, noun number sixteen on her list of favourites; to feel homesick for a place or state that never was. 

That’s the other problem, besides not being seen as a sexual being, the misconception that she does not feel things. Lexa feels everything; every vibration, every slow grind of the bus coming to a halt, every pop of bubblegum in the library, every lazy insult—which never contains any kind of word that has ever made it onto her top two-hundred list—thrown at her with the assumption that she is incapable of being hurt. 

Quiet as she is, Lexa feels it all: hurt, happiness, surprise, trust, disgust, joy. It’s expressing and recognising it that become muddled. That’s all. A fault in the invisible bit of her that makes filtering and comprehending sensory data such a doddle for everyone else. Doddle, informal noun number seventy-nine; a very easy task.

Somehow, Clarke doesn’t see any of that though. In Clarke’s mind, Lexa’s the sexiest woman who ever breathed — or so she says, multiple times a week.

The restaurant was jostling; sounds seem to careen against one another into a crescendo of the busy and hectic; kitchen doors swinging, plates clattering, people talking quietly and not quietly enough for Lexa’s liking, then there was the dull instrumental music rolling around the room through the overhead speakers. They had came to this place twice before for a quick once-over, once to make sure she liked it and a second time just to make sure she wasn’t wrong the first time. Clarke loved Italian food and Lexa remembered that, and so even though it wasn’t her favourite, and even though she wasn’t entirely comfortable in this place, she dragged her headphones around each ear and stayed put.

The waiter walked toward her with a towel over one hand and a bottle in the other. He stopped just shy of the table, hesitating and unsure of himself. Lexa thought he was nervous from the way he hesitated and looked her up and down slowly — Anya always says that’s a good tell that someone is either nervous or attracted to the other person. Clarke always says she’s beautiful, yesterday she said it twice over text and once before bed. But this waiter has a wedding ring on his left finger and so unless he’s a philanderer, noun number two hundred and five; a man who readily and frequently engages in casual sexual relationships without his wife’s knowledge, which was the unlikelier of the two, then he was nervous. 

Which meant that if he was nervous then maybe the manager they had spoken to the first time they came and strictly told not to make the Autism thing a thing, had indeed made it a thing with the wait staff. 

“Would you like some wine?” The man mouths slowly and nods towards the empty dinner glass. Lexa blinks and lowers her headphones. “Can you drink alcohol?” He mouths slowly again, and Lexa watchs his lips travel half way up and down his face and around the chin in exaggerated motions.

“Why wouldn’t she be able to drink alcohol?” Clarke appears suddenly at her shoulder, almost out of breath. “Sorry I’m running late work was hectic, Tina screwed up the paperwork so I had to fix some things for her. I was going to call but time got ahead of me.” Clarke smiles down at Lexa for a moment before glancing back up. “Ask her again, but this time don’t speak to her like she’s deaf or stupid.” Clarke said her words slowly and exaggerated each one.

Lexa’s gut feeling is that her girlfriend is mocking the waiter.

“Would you like a glass of wine, ma’am?” The waiter looked apologetic, asking Lexa much more curt and quick this time.

“Please.” Lexa says quickly too, holding out her glass.

Clarke sat down and unwrapped her scarf, tugging each glove and setting them on her purse. Her cheeks were pink, no doubt stinging from the instant heat of the restaurant compared to the chill outside. She held out her glass too and it was quickly splashed with red wine, a cabernet that Lexa had specifically chosen four days ago. She already knew what they were having for dinner too. Clarke emailed over the menus last week so she had plenty of time to decide. Clarke would get the Chicken Alfredo, because she always got the Chicken Alfredo. Lexa would order the plain spaghetti with butter and salt, because heavy flavours feel like fireworks in her mouth and not in a good way.

“I’m glad we’re doing this!” Lexa looked up and smiled as best she could. 

Clarke smiled in return, which meant she was happy. Either she was happy or maybe she was hiding a secret, Anya tried to teach her that distinction when she was thirteen but Lexa never quite got the hang of it. Still, there were no secrets between them, not really, only at Christmas but Clarke was quick to explain that those secrets are fine and that Lexa didn’t have to tell her what she bought for her Christmas presents. Lexa would remember that this year.

“I didn’t see you at work today. I stopped by your office to bring you flowers but you weren’t around so I left them on your desk.” Clarke mused and took a small sip of red wine. “Did you like them?”

Lexa swallowed the red wine and placed the stem back on the table. She thought carefully for a moment, “I found the flowers when I came back from the meeting upstairs, I didn’t know they were from you so I threw them away. I hope that’s okay?” Lexa blinked and tried to focus on her girlfriend’s facial expressions.

Smile, laughter, rapid blinking, a grin that pushed up into cheeks, Lexa ticks it all off on her mental checklist and finally comes to the conclusion that Clarke is not upset. “Fuck the flowers babe.” Clarke chuckled and reached across the table, squeezing her hand. “I should have left my name or at the very least left you a note in the morning so you could find a spot you liked for them. Totally on me, don’t worry.” She assures cooly.

“I bought you something but you have to wait until tomorrow to open it, it’s an oil paint box and a charcoal set.” Lexa smiled and took another sip of wine.

“Wait why tomorrow?” Clarke raised a brow.

“Our first anniversary, the one you wanted to celebrate.”

“Today is our anniversary.”

“Last year was a leap year so technically tomorrow is our anniversary.”

“Then happy anniversary for tomorrow, love.” Clarke instantly let it go and raised her drink, lightly tapping it against Lexa’s glass. “How was your day?”

Lexa unfastened the buttons on her blazer jacket and leaned back in the chair. “Good but stressful,” she rubbed her neck and grinned. “I like good and stressful the most though, means I’m not sat around all day doing nothing. Part of the system went down so Raven and I spent half the day fixing it, we found four new words we hadn’t heard before. You wanna hear them?”

“When don’t I?” Clarke encouraged and leaned in.

“Epoch.” Lexa says immediately, taking a sip of wine. “It means a particular period of time in history, or a person’s life. For example, I am in an epoch of twilight with you. It hasn’t made the list, but it’s a great fuckin’ word.”

“You’re in an epoch of twilight with me?” Clarke fluttered her eyelashes and blushed.

Lexa wasn’t great at flirting and Clarke was kind enough to be honest about that. She didn’t mind, so she always said. Lexa is linear and clean and straight and streamline, and sure, she doesn’t get it right most of the time but boy, when she does, she does. 

“I am sorry.” Lexa quickly apologises.

“What for?”

“For embarrassing you.” It took a moment for her to figure out what the eyelashes and blushing meant. Clarke was clearly embarrassed, that’s what Anya would say if she was here; blushing equals embarrassment. “I’d like to tell you the other three words though—”

“You haven’t embarrassed me. You flattered me.” Clarke interrupts and tells her softly, her fingers dragging along the top of Lexa’s. “I am in an epoch of twilight with you too.”

“You don’t care that people think I’m weird sometimes?”

“I care that you’re honest when you don’t understand something and that you never get impatient with me if I need you to explain something again. I care that you take the time to learn me, that you share the things you’re passionate about, that you want to be passionate about the things I like too. I care that you make me more productive and structured, which is so good for me by the way, I didn’t realise how much I thrive off of order before I met you. I care that my vocabulary has improved stupendously thanks to you.” Clarke earns a wide-eyed grin with that one, because stupendously is adjective number forty-six and the thing that makes Lexa feel most grounded and solid in the world is that Clarke will read the thesaurus cover-to-cover in an effort to memorise the list — all five hundred words, two hundred nouns, two hundred adjectives, a hundred verbs. Clarke doesn’t think it’s weird, she thinks it beautiful in a perfectly Lexa kind of way. “So no,” Clarke adds. “I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about you or me, sweetheart, because your weirdness is such a turn on.”

“What does it turn on?” Lexa asks too loudly.

“Indoor voice.” Clarke hushes and looks around, smiling at the elderly couple who stare at them strangely. She leaned in closer to Lexa, “You arouse me, sexually.” Clarke clarified.

“That’s good, you arouse me sexually too.” Lexa again said it too loudly and leaned in to kiss her quick and soft. 

In the beginning, she asked for permission when she wanted to kiss Clarke. Anya always said that was the best thing to do, but Clarke decided after the first two months of dating that always asking wasn’t a requirement and so sometimes Lexa didn’t. There wasn’t really a method to decide when not to ask to begin with and so she came up with the rule of asking twice consecutively, then not asking for three times consecutively, then alternating between asking and not asking for the next four kisses after that.

“Will you finish telling me the other three words you liked? I want to hear about them and then I want to tell you about this recipe I found online for a Baked Alaska I want to try out this weekend.”

“Tell me about your Baked Alaska first.” Lexa’s stomach did the talking.

Clarke obliged and Lexa’s stomach rumbled and twisted and ached for the thought of lemon meringue, vanilla ice-cream and orange liqueur. She explained the process, what made it different from the other recipes, and how she wanted Lexa to help and be her taste-tester. Lexa nodded emphatically and listened to every word, and though she wasn’t immediately aware of it, that was what made nights like this so perfect and lovely. The rest of her day was spent analysing, placing an exhausting effort into trying to interpret and understand the world and people around her between the excruciating moments when sensation became too much. 

Being around Clarke was a salvation from that, because with Clarke, even if she didn’t understand the difference between a small smile and a big smile, or the different degrees of an eye-roll, there was always the underlying assurance that Clarke would be vocal if she didn’t like something, or if it was time to change topics, or even just her feelings and thoughts. She understand how Lexa operated; never making it an issue or a handicap. 

With Clarke over-stimmed episodes became fewer and further in between too, and when they did happen Lexa never felt retarded afterwards. Apparently that’s a bad word, retard. Clarke once left-hooked a perfect stranger on the underground between Pearsons and Nine Oaks for mumbling it under their breath, but that word had a definition that Lexa figured alone — it was a word tied to lonely afternoons in the school yard, to the moments in classrooms when no one wanted to be her science buddy, to the running and crashing footsteps that carried her all the way back home to her older sister Anya when the girls in the grade above chased after her, screaming that word like a group of banshees. 

The word retarded meant being different in a way that wasn’t good because of a fault in chemistry, an error in chromosomes, a problem that she nor anyone else could fix. Unlike a noun, adjective or verb; the word retard had a different primary categorisation; it was a slur. A word that other people used when they wanted to make sure she knew that she was different and unwanted… most slurs tend to do that. Other slurs included words like Ni-

“Lexa.” Clarke stirred her from her jostling thoughts, “Foods here, you want any condiments?”

“Oh,” Lexa blinked and looked up at the waiter with two plates in hand. 

She put the N-word away in her head, along with the R-word, and all the other words that were absolutely definitely never allowed to be said in public. Mom explained that to her when she was small, she understand perfectly how it felt, apparently people used the N-word to make her feel different too. Lexa hated the word all the more because of that. 

“No thank you, we’ll take the food to go.” She told the waiter after her mind was tidied away as he began to set down the plates.

“What?” Clarke puzzled at her.

“You like spontaneity and so I planned this since this morning, come on, let’s take a walk and eat by the water.” Lexa re-buttoned her grey blazer and bent down for her purse. “Oh, and by the way,” she blinked and stared at the sheepish waiter. “We’ll take the rest of that bottle of wine to go as well. T-h-a-n-k-y-o-u.” She mouthed exaggeratedly and slowly, her words long and loud. Mockery was the product of a weak-mind but it always made Clarke laugh and so on the rare moments when she knew when to do it — she always took up the chance.

They walked towards the front of house in hand. Clarke biting her laughter while Lexa lead the way. It was cold outside and so Lexa took the liberty of wrapping Clarke’s wool scarf for her, her fingertips grazing over the one dip of collarbone that was inexplicably nicer to touch than all the other parts of her combined.

“Clarke,” Lexa said after a moment, blinking as she did. “Did I do the joke right?” She asked in all seriousness, which earned another splutter of laughter from her girlfriend.

“You did it perfect. It read well. I knew that you were making fun of him because of how he spoke to you earlier.” Clarke patted her arm.

Lexa suddenly grinned and laughed too, and even if it was a bit later than everyone else it was genuine nonetheless. She loved jokes, loved it all the more when she was in on them. Clarke was good like that, she never minded explaining a joke, which for Lexa always made it all the funnier. Sometimes she laughed because everyone else laughed, Anya said that was an acceptable thing to do — except when people were laughing at her, and then she was supposed to be angry instead of laughing along too, which made no sense at all, but Anya said it was a rule and so she memorised it nonetheless.

Clarke never laughed at her, only ever with her. She didn’t really understand the distinction at first but she came to understand it slowly, when Clarke laughed, it was never because she was the joke. Lexa loves that the most about her.

“I love you.” Lexa blurted and smiled, still laughing. “My other three words today can wait until later but they’re all different adjectives for how I see you sometimes, abstractly. I don’t think I’m very good at abstract but sometimes if I try, I can completely understand the similarities between you and a rose.”

“We’re both sharp and die without attention?”

“Ah,” Lexa chuckled again. “That was a joke because you get angry if I don’t give you enough attention. I like it.” She laughed again and wrapped an arm around her girlfriend, “Come on, let’s go and find somewhere to sit down.”

“You already picked a place, didn’t you?”

“There’s a bench by the bridge with fairy-lights in the trees. Anya is holding it for us, we should hurry, it’s cold out and she’s stupid so she probably hasn’t brought a jacket.” Lexa told her and squeezed her hand, her eyes never breaking from the pavement ahead as they made quick work of the street towards the bridge.

“Lexa,” Clarke said her name like honey in her mouth as she was dragged by the speedy woman in front, “I really love you, you know that right?”

“Yep, you think I’m sexy too.” Lexa said over her shoulder.

“I do.” Her girlfriend caught up and purred in her ear, earning a grin. “You’re the most beautiful and thoughtful person I know.”

…

There’s this careful way that Clarke navigates her, and it turns Lexa on all the more. It starts with her clothes, which she normally takes off herself because the feeling of material dragging softly over her skin isn’t something she likes, but nonetheless Clarke helps her and wraps arms around her stomach from behind when the cotton shirt is tugged free. 

Lexa likes the arms around her belly, but she loves the tip of Clarke’s nose when it drags down her spine more. It makes her shiver in a good way.

“Thank you for tonight.” Clarke sighs with warm breath between her shoulderblades. “You’re perfect, really.” She crooned and pressed her cheek over the skin.

“Yesterday you said I don’t cover my mouth when I burp.”

“That was yesterday.” Clarke reminded and squeezed a little harder.

“That makes no sense but okay, I didn’t know the only thing separating me from perfection was a hand over my mouth during reflux—”

“Shut up geek,” Clarke nibbled on the back of her neck and made her giggle with how pleasantly ticklish it was. “That was a joke by the way.”

“I ascertained, thank you for clarifying though.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” Clarke pulled away and turned her around with a grin and impressed raised brows.

“No.” Lexa softly smiled and cocked her head.

“Wait, for real or are you still being sarcastic?”

“Are you the autistic one or am I?”

Clarke grinned and pushed her belly until she fell backwards over the blankets. Lexa exploded into a fit of giggles, her neck attacked with quick and light kisses. 

Truth is she didn’t really know how sarcasm worked, it was the art of saying what you didn’t mean but making sure the other person knew what you meant, and that was too much work for too little a pay-off. It was far easier just being direct. Nonetheless Clarke tried to pick up where Anya left off and teach her. She was kind enough to try not to use sarcasm around Lexa, if only for the fact that subtleness like that just isn’t something that appears on her radar. Still, sarcasm made Clarke laugh, and so sometimes she tried her hand at it. Usually it just involved saying the opposite of what she meant in a dry tone. Apparently she wasn’t supposed to use it when Starbucks ask if she’s allergic to nuts. Apparently, then, ‘No, I’m not allergic to nuts.’ doesn’t mean, ‘Yes, of course I’m allergic to nuts.’

Luckily, Clarke was quick to catch it, and so now the rule is she’s only allowed to try sarcasm in situations that are not potentially life or death. It makes sense, Lexa supposes.

“Lex,” Clarke appeared over her face, grinning, occasionally presses kisses against her jaw. “You want to have sex with me?”

“Yes.” She says it immediately, blinking and smiling.

Clarke was her second relationship and presumably her last, because monogamy is a requirement of being in-love and one that Lexa is certain she’ll be happy to fulfil for the rest of her life. It took a while to adapt, for Clarke at least, because it isn’t enough just to kiss her neck and drag fingers round the small of her waist and expect Lexa to connect the dots. She has to be direct, has to ask questions, has to let Lexa find the answers. It never takes her too long though to find the words.

“Can I take the lead?” Clarke whispered and slipped her hands around Lexa’s hips.

“Please,” Lexa cupped her cheeks and kissed her. “I’d like that.”

Lexa is beautiful, insanely so. That’s what Clarke occupies her mind with at least several hours of the day — how impossibly gorgeous and neat and clean and streamlined she is. Her skin is so soft and yet somehow still the perfect amount of toned and muscular, no doubt thanks to the seven miles she insists on walking everyday to work with a reluctant Clarke dragging her heels in tow. Again, Clarke was ultimately grateful for the routine of it, if only because she never had to feel guilty when she wanted pizza now.

Lexa’s eyes narrow and focus intently while Clarke’s mouth gently grazes along the centreline of her chest. That was her favourite place to be kissed, the skin there wasn’t too sensitive and she found it easier to relax when Clarke started somewhere dull to the touch and built up slowly. They figured that out after a few trial and error runs, and again, Clarke didn’t mind one bit.

“You are gorgeous.” Clarke murmured into her belly button and then set teeth around her hips, softly at first, earning a guttural whimper. “You like that baby?” She looked up and grinned at the soft green eyes appraising her work.

“Yes, a few more minutes of that please.” Lexa gasped and closed her eyes.

“Affirmative.” Clarke set back to work, dragging her teeth in every which-way and direction over the bones that softly jutted from Lexa’s hips. “You know we can stop or change things up whenever you’re ready, right?”

“Sarcasm. I could be sarcastic right now, couldn’t I?” Lexa blurted between a clench and whimper while the hairs on her skin were made to stand on end. “Fuck it feels good when you do that.”

“You could be sarcastic but I really wouldn’t recommend doing it when your girlfriend is between your thighs thinking about how much she wants to eat you out.”

“You want to eat me out?” Lexa’s head shot up from the pillows, and Clarke never grew tired of how pleasantly surprised she looked at that concept.

Clarke’s teeth came undone from the edge of her hipbone, she quickly clambered back up her girlfriend’s chest and softly pushed her down, kissing her and running a hand down the side of her thigh along the very spot that was neither too-sensitive nor too-dull, a perfect inbetween. “I’m heavily considering it, what do you think?” She whispered between soft swipes of her tongue.

“I think I would like that. Now.” Lexa pushed on the flat of Clarke’s shoulders until she was giggling and crawling back down her body. “Now please?” Lexa asked again, eagerly.

“Tell me that you love me.” Clarke settled between her thighs and pulled each one over her shoulders until she rested in the middle on her belly.

“What does that have to do with anything?!” Lexa exasperated and tried to push herself down.

“Cus’ I want you to.” Clarke shrugged and pressed her lips along the inside crease of her thigh.

Lexa’s eyes rolled back into her head, and all she could do was lie there and close her eyes into the magic of what it felt like to have Clarke’s attention on her like this. It was overwhelming sometimes, hot and vibrating and racing through her veins like a rush of blood; but it was never unwelcomed. Never. Tentatively, Lexa opened her thighs a little wider and ran her hand down to the bottom of her belly where Clarke’s fingers rested against her. She took them and squeezed, rubbing her thumb along the back of her index finger.

“I love you,” Lexa whispered and suddenly gasped into the mouth that rewarded her. “I love you so much.” She almost choked as Clarke set to work.

“Good, get used to it, because I am going to love you for an endless epoch.” Clarke raised a single brow over her mound and ran her tongue slowly and purposefully through her arousal again.

[If you enjoy this story you can check out more HERE along with updates ahead of the curve.]

Chapter Text

Consider this part 1 of a 2 part prequel!

The jingling music sat just above the small talk of the office Christmas party, and this was her favourite and most hated time of the year, a time when selflessness little acts were made possible because a Jewish Palestinian who died thousands of years ago was repackaged for the purpose of selling JCPenney gift vouchers and beer.

Capitalist America. It definitely had its ups and down.

Clarke slipped through the barely dancing bodies congregating in the office towards the bar. It was seven already, another two hours and then she could make an excuse to leave. Maybe it would be food poisoning this time, in fact, actually, that seemed like a great idea. If she could string that lie out for long enough she might even get the new year period off too. Listeria, she could taste it already.

Clarke poured a generous glass of wine and turned back around. It was ridiculous really, the Christmas party wasn’t mandatory for anyone other than department heads. It completely sucked the fun dry. There would be no dancing on desks or photocopying her ass cheeks, no breaking bread with the purchasing girls she had to spend the other three-hundred and sixty-four days a year shouting down the phone at for never getting their invoice forms completed correctly.

No, her job tonight was to be the sensible Head of Finance she was supposed to be, drinking room temperature white wine, complimenting Linda on the new block colours in her graduated bob, asking Tim how his wife and children were doing, and then listening to Tim bore her half to death about his wife’s Fibromyalgia. And while everyone eventually traipsed away in twos and fours towards the bustling bars where the wine was cooler and the music was louder, she would still be here, with Tim, listening to him drone about his wife’s Fibromyalgia.

“Clarke!” Abby breezed over with a smile, “I am so glad you could make it!” She chuckled and set her half empty glass down.

“Mom, you told me no less than three hours ago that if I didn’t come to this stupid thing you would come to my apartment and start a fire. Those were your exact words.” Clarke rolled her eyes and leaned back against the bar, turning to look her mother up and down. “You look beautiful by the way.” She offered a half smile.

“I’m going to disregard everything else you said because you called me pretty.”

“Reasonable.”

“Has Tim came by yet?”

“Nope, hopefully Marge’s hips is acting up. You know how much that happens,” Clarke teased with a roll of her eyes.

“Well go on and make yourself busy saying hello to people. You heard what Marcus said, he wants the staff to have a more direct line with management. Whatever that means,” Abby scowled.

Her mom was the vice president, which came with way less perks and way more expectation than anyone could hope for—much like her own job. Still. Christmas. Tonight isn’t the kind of night to complain about that.

No matter how much it imposes on any sort of ass-photocopying shenanigans she might otherwise be involved in.

"Whatever will make you happy, Mom,” Clarke patted her arm.

…

It took four wines to make Fibromyalgia a stomachable topic of party conversation. Two red, two white, plus a muscle relaxant for good measure. Clarke snuck that from the bottom of her purse, it was covered in lint and questionable crumbs but at this point she would snort crushed hayfever relief if it got Ted off her back.

There’s an out of bounds corner office in the far right of the room with the light on and a figure seared into the blinds. She wondered if somebody was in there boning already, Clarke secretly hoped it was Linda with the block coloured fringe.

Now that would be a story for her retirement party, Clarke smirked to herself.

“Oh, am I boring you?” Ted leaned into her line of sight with a frown.

Clarke snapped back to reality and lifted the last of the wine to her lips, “Boring me? You?! Oh Ted, never.” She exaggerated shocked expression. “If you’ll excuse me though I have to check on something. I am sorry about your cat’s carpal tunnel, I wish her the best for her surgery,” Clarke patted his arm and made a swift exit.

She left Ted without the opportunity to drone about anything else, making a beeline for the office across the room. She did well to dodge anyone else, Bellamy was already dragging his interns into the center of the makeshift dancefloor for a cringeworthy episode of the Macarena. Octavia was arguing with Anya in the corner of the office banks over who would pay for the Uber home. Mom was in and out of the bathroom every five minutes like a cocaine addled hooker with a UTI, probably specifically checking the ladies room to make sure no one of the above description was hiding out in there like last year when the guys from sales got too carried away.

Perfect-twenty-five-year-service Linda giving Ron from HR a blowjob. It was the stuff of fantasies. Clarke pushed the door open without knocking, bursting into the room with her best disapproving scowl already worked into her expression.

It was a disappointing discovery.

Two girls sat hunched over a big programmer monitor with an opened bottle of champagne between them on the desk along with a sprawled out board game of sorts. The other three desk banks were empty. It was just them.

“Out! Get out now!” One of them jumped up and seethed, her green eyes narrowed precariously like a predator hunting its prey. It was enough to make Clarke gulp and take a step back, before she remembered who she was of course.

“And who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” Clarke snorted in disbelief, sitting a hand on her hip. “I’m a department head-”

“Out!” The girl snapped again and blew over like a hurricane, physically backing her out of the door. “I know who you are Clarke Griffin and apparently you cannot read!” The girl pointed to the scrawled message on the front of the door’s whiteboard.

The door was promptly slammed in Clarke’s face.

Clarke drew in a breath and felt the raging fire brew into the cusp of her throat. Open door management aside, there was an unspoken understanding, a rite of passage of sorts. Senior managers were respected, juniors were treated like exactly that; juniors. The bottom of the food chain. Clarke briefly glimpsed at the scrawled message on the door.

Knock twice, wait thirty seconds. If no response we are out of the office. Do not enter without knocking.

Clarke knocked twice, if only for sarcastic effect. She knocked so hard she nearly caved the flimsy separator wall. Thirty seconds were spent running through the most terrifyingly gravitas words she could impart. Whoever this girl was, Clarke had her card now. And that was a fate worst than Ted’s Fibromyalgia TED talk.

“Thank you for knocking. Please, come inside and join us.” The girl opened the door again with a sigh, much visibly calmer this time. She strolled back to her seat and left Clarke standing in disbelief at the door. The girl looked at her friend and then back at Clarke, then once back at her friend as if she was waiting for some kind of cue. “Oh,” she looked back at Clarke and added, “would you like a drink?” The bottle of champagne was lifted from the desk and offered forward.

Clarke puzzled and looked around the now calm woman at her friend instead. “Is she serious right now?”

“As serious as a heart attack,” the girl smirked, “I’m Raven, I’m a software nerd. That’s Lexa, she’s the new DH for computing. We’re not as antisocial as we look, I promise.”

“She’s a Department Head?” Clarke exasperated in disbelief.

“I’m right here,” Lexa spoke up, offended. “It’s rude to talk about people in the room as if they are not in the room. I don’t understand why I’m the only person who observes that rule, it’s ironic really…” Lexa scratched the back of her neck.

“Listen, Lena,”

“It’s Lexa.”

“Lexa, Lena, whatever the hell your name is!”

“It’s Lexa,” Lexa said again, calmly.

Clarke stepped forward with a hiss, hands on her hips. “All Department Heads have to be at this stupid Christmas party! Listening to stupid Ted talk about his stupid wife’s stupid ailments! We have to take it in turns dancing uncomfortably, drinking warm wine, and checking the bathroom to make sure one of the sales girls hasn’t taken a speedball and fallen into a diabetic coma like last year!” Clarke snapped and heaved, her eyes shooting across to Raven in realisation. “And you! You did not just hear me say those things about Ted!”

“Not a word, ma’am. I have no idea who Ted is, who you are, or who I am even. It’s all just theories of quantum mechanics right now.” Raven nodded coolly.

Lexa paused and blinked, looking at Raven intently for a moment. Clarke stood there in an awkward silence and waited expectantly, eventually, Lexa turned back and looked her up and down. “Raven seems nervous. I don’t like that you’ve made Raven feel nervous.” She said again, a little too calmly.

“Surely you cannot be serious.” Clarke pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Actually it’s Lexa, not Shirley,” Lexa smiled and nodded, waiting for some kind of reaction. “...That was a joke by the way which I don’t think you seemed to understand. You see, Anya says when people are upset jokes make them laugh. You said surely but I said my name isn’t Shirley, which was a play on words. I don’t really like jokes but I like-”

“I understood the joke you made.” Clarke crossed her arms.

“Clearly not otherwise you would be laughing.”

“You’re impossible!” Clarke growled.

“No, I’m-”

“Don’t you dare say it.”

“Well alright.”

“If I have to put up with tonight, why don’t you?”

“If I could just jump in here for a second.” Raven raised her hand and nervously smiled, glancing between the two warring senior managers, one of them slightly more proficient in being furious than the other. “The email sent to all department heads only specified that they had to attend the party and socialise with junior members of staff. Lexa is at the party, socialising with me, a junior member of staff. You seem like you really don’t want to be here and so the way I see it is this: you can either make this into some kind of problem, which I really suggest you do not do because we’re the people who fix your computer and I have the power to put your ticket in that pile,” Raven pointed over to a dim unlit desk that was invisible to Clarke beneath the mountain of paperwork. “Or, I can put your ticket in this nice fast-track pile in front of me, and in return, you could stay in here with us as you would also technically be socialising with a junior member of staff,” Raven pointed up towards her face, “and we can drink these bottles of champagne I snuck from your mother’s secretary’s office and have ourselves a nice night before never talking to one another again. What do you say, Miss Griffin?”

“Wait,” Lexa blinked and turned back to Raven in confusion, “you and I would never talk again too?”

“No we’ll see each other Monday, we have the new HR banks to set up.”

“Ah, yes, makes sense.” Lexa turned back and stared at Clarke. “I’d really like it if you took our offer because I personally don’t want to talk to you again after tonight if that’s alright with you? You’re not a very nice person I’ve decided.”

Clarke hesitated and became suddenly aware of herself. It was embarrassing, but nonetheless she swallowed her pride and took a tentative step forward.

Anything was better than out there.

“Well, maybe I could play whatever game you’re playing…” she pointed off towards the boardgame and tried to seem indifferent.

Voices from the computer suddenly blared. “Is she done now?! Can we get back to poker?!” The surround speakers nearly deafened her.

“Someone else just heard all of that?!” Clarke lurched.

Raven turned the display around to face her, there were four separate webcam feeds in each corner of the screen, each with two girls sat at their desks with their own green board game in front of them.

Raven was slow to speak up, “If you hadn’t been so,” she thought carefully, “reactionary… I would have had a chance to tell you were playing a national branch tournament. We’ve got the Montana computing department, California, Chicago and Washington all online. Take a seat, Finance. This is the big leagues.” She cracked her knuckles and pulled over an office chair.

In turn the women in each corner of the screen waved one by one. Clarke paled in embarrassment and waved back.

“It’s okay if you haven’t played poker before. Raven’s trying to teach me but numbers aren’t my thing, or reading faces, I’m way more into madlibs.” Lexa levelled her a sympathetic look and raised the neck of the champagne up to her lips while the other women readied to continue.

“Wait,” Clarke paused and slowly looked at her with a wry smile as she sat down. “You like madlibs?” She raised a brow across the desk.

“I’ll kick your ass at them if that’s what you’re asking!” Lexa became excited, “But if that wasn’t what you were asking, I apologise.”

“Why do you talk like that?” Clarke raised a curious brow.

“Like what?” Lexa asked with a disapproving look.

“Like Sheldon out of The Big-”

“Don’t!” Raven warned her quickly with a boom, “Do not go there Finance! I am not sitting through another one of her angry rants when I have a hundred big ones riding on this!” She grimaced and nodded towards Lexa’s twitching expression.

Clarke threw a brief apologetic look at Lexa, “Sorry,” she quirked a frown.

“Apology accepted.” Lexa rolled her eyes in reluctant concession and took another glug.

…

“Go all in, firstly she’s bluffing and secondly you have a-”

“It defeats the point if you say my hand out loud during the game!” Raven quickly put an end to Clarke’s slurring advice.

Bleary eyed and between a seventh round of madlibs and a final game of poker, Clarke just shrugged and finished the second bottle of champagne in a single swallow. “She’s a little tense, right?” Clarke smirked at Lexa.

Lexa looked up from the scrunched up piece of paper she was scrawling her noun of choice on; probably another excellent selection if tonight’s track record was anything to go by, “In all honesty,” Lexa licked her lips and blushed, “Well, I, er, I wouldn’t be the best judge.” She smiled again, and Clarke couldn’t help but feel like there was something she wasn’t saying.

Lexa was soft and feminine, all long dark hair and ethereal pale skin; there was still something about her that felt sapphic though. Definitely not the way she dressed, no, not that, Clarke decided firmly. She was wearing slim fit black jeans and a white silk cami, perfectly fashionably acceptable—not a plaid shirt in site. It had more to do with Lexa’s overall demeanour, she was incredibly direct and had the most intense stare it was possible to possess. Clarke couldn’t help but hope it was flirtatious, though even then Lexa wasn’t quick to return any of her attempts at casual flirting.

“So do you have a boyfriend?” Clarke tried to ask casually.

“No, I’m a lesbian.” Lexa said and folded up the paper.

“Interesting, I’m bisexual,” Clarke said in turn with a drunken smile.

Internally she was jumping up and down.

“Your choice of words aren’t very versatile by the way. You’ve used Dick Bicycle as a mode of transport three times now and it’s becoming repetitive having to re-explain the rules,” Lexa levelled a stern stare as she passed over the paper, “It’s now your turn. You have one minute.”

“I take it you like playing by the rules?” Clarke raised a flirtatious brow and accepted the paper.

“Sometimes I take money from the Monopoly bank when Anya isn’t looking.”

“Anya being…?”

“A person.”

“A significant person?” Clarke leaned back and said it just as dryly, certain that she’d finally cracked Lexa’s flirting language.

“No she likes to think she is because she’s the assistant manager at the bank but to be honest she’s definitely not remarkable in any significant metric. She gets upset if I point that out though so I tell her she’s special even though it’s lie, I suppose that’s another break of the rules,” Lexa shrugged and looked at her watch, “you have thirteen seconds to write your word by the way.”

“Your girlfriend sounds like she puts up with a lot from you,” Clarke quirked a funny expression.

“She’s my sister, by the way your time has run out. I win.” Lexa said with a pleased smile.

“You’re really beautiful and I’m bored of this party, do you want to go and hang out some place?” Clarke blurted with drunken courage.

Terrible as the start to the evening was, Clarke had quickly turned it around. Or at least she thought she did. Turned out Lexa was actually pretty great fun, firstly, she didn’t mince her words which was incredibly refreshing, and secondly, there was so much common ground to be found between them—namely how much they hated all the same people for all the same reasons. It takes a special kind of woman to notice that Linda’s chunky highlight is distracting during meetings.

“I’d like to hang out, sure. Do you mind if we go now in case Raven asks me to walk her to the bus stop?” Lexa grabbed her coat off the back of the chair.

Raven’s eyes shot up from the computer and blistered with annoyance. “Lexa, we talked about this, I am literally sat right here. As in I can hear everything you’re saying.”

“Noted.” Lexa pulled out a small notebook from her pocket and jotted it down, “Don’t talk about how annoying Raven is in front of her. See, I put it right at the front on the cardboard where I put all of the most important things.” Lexa offered it forward for display.

Clarke couldn’t help but laugh so hard it made her wobble.

Raven sneered and waved them both towards the door, “Go!” She rolled her eyes and fixed on the screen again, “If someone mugs me on the way home on your head be it.”

“Why would it be on my head?” Lexa asked quietly.

“Okay, I’m taking this one home, she’s had way too much to drink.” Clarke gently tugged on Lexa’s bicep. It was deceptively muscular.

“Oh Clarke, can I quickly talk to you about something?” Raven jumped up as if she had just remembered something crucial.

“Nope,” Clarke yawned and pulled on her coat. “I am going somewhere warm where there is Netflix and a bed.”

“I have Netflix and a bed, my place?” Lexa peered with a soft genuine smile.

“I like you more and more with every sentence, weirdo,” Clarke teased and pulled her out the door with a giggle.

The dregs of the party were winding down into a small drip of doldrum people dragging along the hallways and a drunken hoard of the sales department trying to keep the party alive with jeering shouts and terrible dance moves. It made Clarke roll her eyes, all of those sales guys were old, fat and balding, driving around in their Kia Optima company vehicles, acting like they’re the Wolves of Wall Street. It was sad really. Lexa didn’t seem to concerned with anything going on around them, her eyebrows were furrowed into mountains as if she had a headache, her palms wrapped around her ears.

“Hey,” Clarke placed a tentative hand over her bicep, earning a flinch and a slow blink, “are you alright?”

“I don’t like the music, that’s all.” She brushed it off with a sharp swallow and walked a little faster.

The music was terrible, no lie to be found there. Clarke just brushed it off too and walked at the same pace towards the elevators on the other side through the foyer.

“Clarke! No way are you leaving right now? Last year you were leading us to the bars like a war general!” John stumbled over with a spilled beer and a crooked Santa hat hanging off his head. His work shirt was rolled up his sleeves and stained with every kind of liquid imaginable, in fact, Clarke didn’t even want to imagine.

“Can we get out of here?” Lexa asked quietly with that same furrowed brow.

Clarke looked between the two and offered John a small apologetic smile. “It’s the ladies choice John, you’re outta luck! Maybe next year…” she patted his shoulder and took a few small steps.

“Wait!” John burst into laughter and jogged to catch them both up, he navigated around until he was in front of them, chuckling and staring with wide eyes. “You two are going home? Together?” He laughed again as if it was the funniest joke in the world.

“Clarke is coming back to mine, we’re going to watch Netflix and presumably eat frozen pizza considering that’s all she’s talked about tonight.” Lexa looked over inquisitively, as if she was trying to make sure she got that part crystal clear.

“Exactly what she said,” Clarke agreed and looked back to John. He was laughing so hard tears rolled down his red face, his entire body hunched and shaking with the hilarity of it.

“Hey guys!” John shouted across the dance floor at the sales posse, “Clarke’s taking Rain Man home!” He pointed at them both and barely got the words out for the need to gasp with laughter.

The other men erupted into an explosion of laughter, and not the good kind either. It was a mean kind of laughter, that playground laughter that left you feeling like the most pathetic thing someone could possibly step on.

“How are you guys getting home Clarke? You getting an Uber or are they picking you both up on the short bus?” John exploded again.

Lexa came over a sudden shade of pale, and Clarke watched a painful glaze of unshed tears film over her eyes. Slowly she pushed a brief smile and chewed away the flair of her nostrils, she turned to Clarke amid the laughter and hesitated for a moment. “It was horrible meeting you but you turned out so much nicer than I expected. I’m going to go home now, but I’ll see you Clarke. Goodbye.” She said and walked away quickly.

Clarke stood there frozen and unsure of what just happened. She watched Lexa get ten strides away, then fifteen, then open the door and disappear into the foyer. She snapped back to reality and growled at John, “What the hell did you just do?” She spat.

“Oh come on! It’s not like she even knows. She’s not right up top,” he tapped his temple and laughed again. “I am never going to let you live this one down Griffin! You came this close to fucking the autistic girl in computing!” He burst with violent laughter again as if it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.

“What did you just say?” Clarke blinked slowly, and suddenly tonight became a series of perfectly understandable events.

“She’s autistic!” John said it slowly with a voice dripping in mockery as if Clarke was incapable of understanding him.

Clarke didn’t remember punching him, didn’t remember the curl of her fist or the wind of her elbow. It was the exploding pain that radiated through her hand that brought her back to life. It sobered her up immediately, and yet she couldn’t stop slapping his stalled and shocked face until the room fell into an eery silence.

“You are disgusting! I promise you, the regret you feel tomorrow will be nothing compared to what I’m going to do Monday morning!” She hissed in his face and turned on her heels back towards the computing office.

She couldn’t be sure of which way Lexa went on the street, couldn’t be sure which subway station she would be heading to, what line she would take, where she would get off. But one thing was for sure, she had a better time writing madlibs with that strange and quirky girl than she’d had in as long as she could remember. Determined, she burst back inside the room and stormed over to the paperwork cabinet.

“And what exactly are you doing?!” Raven jumped out of her chair and trailed her.

“Lexa,” Clarke grabbed the emergency medical forms out of the intray, “What’s her address?” She heaved and glanced back up with fire in her eyes.

“Okay, what the hell just happened?!”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Clarke said certainly and began to sift through the forms.

Chapter Text

The apartment door was deep green and definitely hers, Clarke could hear women talking inside from where she stood nervously in the hallway. It wasn’t the good kind of late night talk, there was no laughter or the blurring background noise of a television. She gulped and kicked herself for not realising the obvious sooner. There was nothing weird or wrong with Lexa’s autism in Clarke’s mind, she just wished she knew sooner so she could have made that much clear.

She pressed the buzzer and waited patiently.

“Yeah?” A woman appeared, displeased and looking her up and down. It sobered Clarke immediately.

“Oh you must be Anya. Is er, is Lexa around?” Clarke blinked and stood straighter.

Anya continued to stare, her jaw flexing with one long grind until her cheeks were made taut and stretched because of it. “Are you who I think you are?” She narrowed her eyes and hissed quietly.

“Most probably,” Clarke gulped and watched Anya’s fists flex at her hips.

“Hi Clarke,” Lexa said with a small voice and appeared over Anya’s shoulder. “Did you know looking up my address in the company system was a breach of data protection?”

“Do you mind that I did that?”

“No. Not even a little bit, actually.” Lexa exhaled and looked her up and down. “Do you want to come inside?”

Anya snapped and flexed her jaw, “It’s a little late for visitors, Lexa.” She grumbled and made her position clear.

“Octavia comes over late, you don’t seem to mind then.” Lexa reminded her.

“Lexa that is different and don’t even think about doing the thing!” Anya span and pointed at her.

“What thing?!” Lexa exasperated.

“The thing you do when you understand something perfectly and pretend that you don’t to frustrate me!”

“I wasn’t pretending to do that! I was doing that!” Lexa snapped back and pulled the front door open wider, “Clarke, please, come inside.”

“Oh well don’t let me stop you then!” Anya huffed and swung the door open entirely until it hit the wall, marching back down the hallway towards the living room in a bad mood. “But if you think I’m not coming to your office first thing and—”

“No you’re not!” Lexa warned over her shoulder and dragged a startled Clarke inside by the arm. “I told you! You’re not coming to my job! You’re not my mom!”

“You’re lucky I didn’t go over there tonight and punch him square in the face.” Anya poked her head back around the hallway.

Clarke spoke up and lifted her bruised, bloodied hand. “It’s okay, I got him for you.” She lightly laughed and gulped with embarrassment. Her hand was swollen and throbbing, and somehow, the throbbing became all the more intense and worse now the apartment had fallen into a surprised sort of silence.

“You punched him?” Lexa asked curiously underneath her breath and took her sore hand gently. She looked up with soft green eyes and a confused brow, “Why would you do that, Clarke?”

“Because I didn’t know you were, erm, different?” Clarke settled on the adjective but somehow it still felt wrong in her mouth. 

Lexa wasn’t different, not in any sort of way that merited describing her as different at least. She was wonderfully unusual and perfectly herself and still, none of those things quite surmounted to describing her as the kind of different Clarke felt she was implying when she said that word.

Clarke licked her lips and continued, “I’m really sorry if I’m just making this worse. It’s just you didn’t say anything early and so I didn’t know. And when he said those things to you I didn’t understand what he was making fun of because I have been crushing on you all night and frankly I was in shock that you were letting me take you home and so I wasn’t thinking as straight as I normally do and, well, as soon as you left… as soon as he told me what he thought was so funny about you… I just exploded.”

“Okay this is my fault—”

“No Lexa, it’s not.”

“No no stop talking,” Lexa rolled her eyes, “I implied my first statement as a question but I didn’t proposition it as such because I assumed you would understand. I see now that was a mistake because I am still stood here and I don’t know if you punched him in the face. I digress, did you punch him in the face, Clarke?” Lexa’s eyebrows did the thing again.

“Oh,” Clarke blinked, “Yeah, I punched him in the face.”

“And you did that because you like me?” Lexa was careful to clarify that part.

“Very much.”

“And you came over here because…?”

“Because I like you very much.” Clarke said it firmer and raised her chin until their eyes were locked, “I didn’t like that he made fun of you because you’re different. I didn’t like it one bit.”

“Why do you keep calling me different?” Lexa twisted into an unhappy expression.

“Oh god I’m sorry.” Clarke pinched her nose and held back the cursing, because of course she would come over here trying to be the hero and end up making this entirely worse.

“My name‘s not different, it’s Lexa.”

“Did you just.” Clarke snapped up and stared.

Lexa was laughing at her, really really laughing at her. It was that kind of belly laugh that was so genuine it lifted the dust and doldrum right out of the room and made her hand stop stinging. All of a sudden Clarke didn’t regret a single bit of it. Not punching him in the face. Not perching herself on the last subway all the way over here. Not sleuthing around outside waiting for someone to finally come downstairs so she could sneak up.

“Thank you for defending me, not many people have done that before.” Lexa said earnestly with the kind of smile that made Clarke stutter like a teenage boy. “But for the record, I’m not different. There is nothing really different me at all when you think that one in sixty people have Autism, which is what I think you’re specifically referring to when you call me different. I think that one in sixty is quite a lot, don’t you Clarke?”

“More than I thought about before,” Clarke said.

“That’s the problem, people don’t really think about it all too much at all. When they do, it feels like they’re only thinking of ways to ‘other’ us even more. I don’t want to be othered or different, I want to just be Lexa. Okay?”

“Will you please go for dinner with me, Lexa?” Clarke asked quietly and looked down the hallway for her brooding sister, lowering her voice. “I would really like to take you for dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t mean tonight.”

“Then why would you ask me if I want to go for dinner if you don’t mean tonight?”

“Because I want to spend time with you, on a date. I want to drink wine and hold your hand and say stupid offensive things because I don’t know any better until eventually I do know better and the act of spending time with me is as great for you as what it will be for me. As what it was for me tonight. Could we do that?”

Apparently she did not speak quietly enough because quick as lightning Anya appeared again, finger pointed and jaw flexing. She moved towards them and wrapped her jacket around herself, entirely the image of the big protective sister that Clarke would never not be afraid of.

“No,” Anya said sternly.

“No...what?” Clarke licked her lips and leaned away from the finger pointed in her face.

“I have just sat in there listening and found myself shockingly not angry with you but let me get one thing clear. You’re not going to say stupid offensive things because you don’t know better, you’re not going to let my sister be the token retard who changes you and makes you a better person. She isn’t a plot device or a magic feel good dispensary to make yourself feel alright about your own crap. If you’re a garbage human being? Well that’s too bad. Fix it. Be better. Today, not tomorrow. You want to take my sister on a date? Don’t you ever say a throwaway stupid comment or a horrible slur and think it’s her job to sift through your bullshit and tell you what’s allowed and what’s not. You be decent and good and you treat her like I am stood in your face pointing at you like this the whole time because otherwise I am going to show up and the fact you punched an asshole in the face won’t mean diddly shit. Got it?”

“Yep, quite.” Clarke exhaled and the finger was retracted.

“Well, that’s good. You want to go on a date with her Lexa?”

“No,” Lexa shrugged and blinked slowly.

“What?” Clarke and Anya both said in the same surprised rhythm.

“It’s cold outside.” Lexa explained and scratched her face before turning back to Clarke, “Do you want to just stay over instead and watch Netflix like we said we would? I don’t like going out much anyway. I prefer here.”

“It’s like living with a Golden Retriever that can talk, I swear to god.” Anya grumbled to herself. She span on her heels and stomped back to the living room.

Lexa growled and threw a throw cushion at her sister, “You just gave Clarke a finger-pointy lecture about not saying insensitive things!”

“I’m your sister! I’m allowed to!” Anya snapped back.

“That makes no sense!” Lexa hollered until the living room door was slammed. “She’s not always like that,” she rolled her eyes and looked back to Clarke. “She was nice before you got here.”

“She was?” Clarke said in surprise.

“She’s a good sister, sometimes. Do you want to come hang out in my room? I can get you some ice for your hand. I’m sorry if this wasn’t the date you thought it would be—”

“Is it okay if I kiss you?” Clarke stumbled and rubbed the back of her neck.

Lexa stopped and slowed into a smile, she nodded at first, and then before Clarke knew it she was pushing forward until her weight rested them both against the wall. She slipped her hands around the back of Clarke’s neck and took her lips gently, perfectly, hungrily. She kissed as if it meant something. As if kissing girls was the last thing she thought about most of the time but somehow Clarke was irritatingly different.

Clarke smiled at the thought and tasted the soft honey of Lexa’s lips. Lexa wasn’t the different one, it was her, she was the oddity.

“Lexa?” Clarke leaned back and whispered her name softly.

“Yeah?” Lexa blinked with a little grin.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Clarke.” She laughed softly and pulled her to the bedroom.

Find the next chapter ahead of the curve along with exclusive content HERE!

Chapter Text

There was a hazy golden glow to the top of the grey buildings. The sky melted down from deep shades of lush purple into the burned colour orange with the setting of the sun. In the distance, the street lights bounced up from the wet pavement and seared puddles with gold. The heat poured from air vents into the cold evening air and created tiny clouds of warmth. The city and buildings around Clarke visibly exhaled in relief that another day was done.

Clarke and Lexa stood outside in the chill. The restaurant was more of a champagne bar than a restaurant but Clarke decided that was just semantics. Lexa had been here three times before and liked the olive nibbles and the halloumi stuffed peppers, that was good enough for Clarke. Food was food. Plus, it was only four doors down from the office which meant her mother had no excuse to rearrange at last minute notice this time.

“You don’t need to be nervous.” Clarke turned and clutched Lexa’s hand tightly. “Just take a deep breath and relax, don’t even think about it, don’t even think about thinking about it, it’s not a big—”

Lexa gave a long roll of her eyes in Clarke’s direction, “I’m not nervous about meeting your mom, Clarke,” she huffed it for the fourth time today.

“That’s the spirit,” Clarke gulped.

“I’ve already met her more times than I want to.”

“We’ve been over this,” Clarke sighed and nuzzled her cheek against Lexa’s shoulder to shield from the chill. “You’ve met Abigail Griffin, business woman, closer of deals, self-proclaimed bitch from hell. My mom is an entirely different woman outside of work.”

“So she won’t be a bitch like she normally is?”

“Easy!” Clarke glared and then sighed again, “If I have to put up with your sister then you have to put up with my mom, we talked about compromises right?”

“It was mentioned,” Lexa said reluctantly.

“She’ll probably have a gift for us and it will probably be a houseplant,” Clarke continued to blabber. “Can you pretend to be excited when she gives it to us? She buys things when she’s nervous. It’s her way of rolling on her back like a dog so she doesn’t seem too threatening. It’s her way of trying to be nice.”

“Clarke, if that’s her way of rolling on her back like a dog that’s literal bitch behaviour.”

“Shut up,” Clarke laughed and playfully pinched at Lexa’s waist, “not everyone gets a houseplant you know. James in my junior year of college got a necktie because she thought his clothes were improper for dinner…at a roadside Arby’s,” Clarke rolled her eyes.

“Were they?” Lexa quirked her brow.

“Low crotch jeans only look good on lesbians.” Clarke winced at the memory.

Lexa laughed and suddenly the world seemed okay for a moment. Clarke savoured that feeling and buried it somewhere deep inside her stomach in case tonight went awry, which she held out hope it would not, after all, she had already gave her mom the careful talks.

The one about not hugging Lexa unless she hugs first. 

The one about not asking Lexa to take her headphones off if she puts them on because she can still hear the conversation and has more than likely put them on to dampen the background noise. 

The one about still not asking Lexa to take her headphones off even if she asks very, very politely. 

Insensitive questions.

Definitely not-okay words for differently-abled people.

 The Chanel perfume that was too overpowering even for Clarke let alone Lexa. 

It was all covered carefully, and then once again after that just to be sure.

“Clarke,” Lexa blinked in thought for a moment. “Why would she get a house plant when we don’t live together?”

“Well, you wanna take the next step of our relationship and share custody of a houseplant with me?” Clarke took Lexa’s hand with a gentle squeeze.

“Yes but I can’t promise I would care enough to remember to water it. I should probably tell her that—”

“Babe, no,” Clarke said sternly. “Promise me you won’t tell my mom you don’t like the houseplant? Compromises, remember. If she can’t wear her perfume then you can get through a dinner without telling her you hate the houseplant.”

“Can I tell you I love you first and then promise I won’t do that? Because I really want to tell you I love you and I don’t know if I can wait that long.”

“Motion carried.”

“Good, I love you.” Lexa planted a soft kiss on the corner of Clarke’s liplocked mouth. “I promise I will be nice to your mom. I’ll be so nice she’ll think I’m one of those girls from sales.”

“Girls from sales?” Clarke lifted a brow.

“Yeah you know, the girls from sales who are extra-nice to the company vice-presidents when they want something?”

“You mean the girls from sales who fuck the higher-ups in the slim hopes of a better company car?” Clarke lifted a brow.

“Those ones,” Lexa agreed immediately and narrowed her eyes at a billboard across the street. “They should have used an Oxford comma in that sentence. Also, don’t worry, I’m not going to fuck your mom for a better company car,” she turned back and said in afterthought.

“Well colour me relieved.”

Lexa chuckled and slipped her soft gold dusted eyes over a shivering and very much exasperated Clarke. If that wasn’t enough to calm her then it was the gentle squeeze against her hand that did it. Either way Clarke found herself flustered no longer and instead she was smiling back and rolling her eyes, suddenly aware that Lexa was in on the joke the whole time.

“You are so beautiful, Clarke,” Lexa said after a moment and weakly smiled.

Their numbed fingers and red knuckled hands entwined and knotted deeper and deeper until they were tangled like roots. Clarke felt a soft needy tug on her hand. Usually Lexa would say it out loud when she felt like hugging, but Clarke read in between the lines and leaned against her girlfriend, burying her chilly nose into the shoulder of Lexa’s thick grey coat.

“No one is as beautiful as you,” Clarke whispered and rested her cheek on the shoulder.

“I’m not even going to explain to you again why I’m not the most beautiful girl in the world because you never listen,” she huffed back.

Clarke hesitated, “I do think you’re beautiful. I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Ergo, no one is as beautiful as you.”

“Okay that is subjective on so many levels—”

“Stop,” Clarke pressed a chaste kiss up into her girlfriend’s temple, “I won’t hear this again. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world. I don’t care if it’s subjective, I don’t care if I haven’t seen every woman in the world to be able to validate my findings, I don’t care if you have never won a Miss Universe pageant,” she quickly reeled through the usual contradictions Lexa found. “I look at you all the time and wonder if I willed you into existence because I can’t understand how someone so perfectly made to fit me is right there holding my hand. Ergo, to me, you are the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“You used ergo twice in that rant and I don’t appreciate you defiling words multiple times like that.”

“Well you’re an asshole-asshole!” Clarke mockingly glared.

“You especially would know seeing as you have two—the one in your pants and the one you fucking talk from,” Lexa grumbled back.

Clarke burst into the kind of raucous laughter that had passersby turning over their shoulders to see what was so funny. She laughed so hard it made her belly hurt and her eyes water. Eventually, slowly, like an engine whirring to life, Lexa started laughing too.

“See? Perfectly made for each other,” Clarke said, wiping the corners of her eyes until her laughter finally drifted away.

“You think we’re perfectly made for each other?” Lexa smiled.

“When you’re not being an ass and pulling my compliments apart, sure,” Clarke threw her free hand in the air.

“Then if we’re perfectly made for each other,” Lexa leaned into her ear with a perfectly-practised whisper, “tell me what I would rather be doing than standing out in the cold waiting for your mother to buck it half-way across the city for an awkward dinner none of us, least of all you, really want to do?”

Clarke slowly smiled and bit her bottom lip, “You wanna go home and binge watch Blue Planet on Amazon Prime and see who can come up with the best human names for the animals?”

“If you win I’ll wear the black lacy underwear,” Lexa lifted her brows playfully.

“Wait, you have black lacy underwear?” Clarke stumbled.

Lexa narrowed her gold-dusted eyes into a playful stare, “I keep them as a reward for the day you finally beat me at something,” Lexa said in that low husky intentional kind of whisper that she had quickly came to learn made Clarke nothing but putty in her hands.

Clarke fumbled through her pockets for her phone, then practically threw things out of her purse with the hurricane-fumbling of her search. “Oh you wait,” Clarke growled and slapped around her bag, “I’m cancelling dinner. You’re going down tonight.”

“Was that a euphemism?” Lexa raised a brow.

“You bet your sweet tits it was!” Clarke hissed and lifted the phone to her ear.

Chapter Text

Autism: Chapter V — The First Time

Thursday night started with bowling pins and beers. There was an alley downtown that played disco music, had waitresses on roller skates in old fashioned pink aprons and that sort of thing. The kind of place that had an intentionally gross bathroom with drunken scribbled messages all over the stalls and band posters peeling off the doors. Clarke had wrote more than a few of those scribbled messages. Octavia and her liked to make a game of re-discovering the good ones while they peed and shouting them over the stalls to one another—dying with laughter as they did.

Lexa hated that place, so they went to the other alley that was five stops further on the subway. The one with no disco music, no waitresses in pink aprons, and tiny bowling balls and wooden pins that they had to set up themselves. Clarke won by six points, absolutely and begrudgingly certain that Lexa let her win to make up for the lack of Donna Summer.

Compromises, they were getting better at it.

The subway home was empty save for them. Lexa sat on the little fold down seat with the hint of a smile, and Clarke stood in front of her with a hand firmly on the overhead rail—stewing over her win. From the bowling alley back into the center of the city their homes were within walking distance of two different stops on the same line. For the sake of convenience, they arranged their dates around places situated along the same stretch of subway stations. It helped narrow down the possibilities for their dates and adventures. It also meant Clarke had a decent excuse to jump off and walk Lexa home, getting the all important kiss goodnight she planned her whole week around.

The carriage slowed to the platform. The doors opened. The warm gust of the underground blew through. No one got on and no one got off. The beeps came, the doors closed, and away they went hurtling beneath the city.

“Lexa?” Clarke stopped stewing over the bowling alley and gave her an odd look. “Did we just miss your stop?”

“Yes. We did.”

“We’ll get off at Brentwood and change—”

“We’re going back to your place,” Lexa interrupted with the hint of a smirk.

“Wait,” Clarke snapped up and never lost Lexa’s slow eyes. “We are?”

“We are, maybe sex stuff but no promises.”

“No that’s, that’s fine,” Clarke scratched her head and found herself speechless.

They had spoken before about Lexa coming to stay over, a few times actually. It always ended with Lexa admitting she wasn’t ready to do that yet because the thought of sleeping in a bed that wasn’t her own felt weird. Clarke always parroted the same faithful line, ‘When you’re ready, there’s no rush.’

By the third stop before hers, Clarke felt her blood rushing around, felt her hand tight on the bar over her head, felt the constant jostle of the car vibrate through her bones, felt herself wish that Nine Oaks would never come. Apparently, strangely, unforeseeably, she found herself stuck on the idea that maybe she was the one who wasn’t ready. If only because Lexa was a mystery, a puzzle to be pieced together, a linear series of rules like a computer programme with the occasional variable throw in that made her all the more wonderful. In Clarke’s mind, she couldn’t get past the idea of taking her to bed, of doing something not quite right, of touching Lexa the wrong way and scattering the puzzle pieces into the wind.

What if she got it wrong?

The fear of it sat heavy on the roof of her shoulders. It made everything intense, made the rushing sound of the subway thick and overbearing in her ears, made the sight of Lexa’s calm and constant gaze unnerving. Clarke fidgeted and found herself humming beneath her breath, trying to seem her usual chipper self.

“You’re starting to over-stim,” Lexa said, pointing at her clenching hand on the rail.

Clarke blinked and offered a brief calm smile, “What?” She didn’t understand.

“Your hand,” Lexa nodded towards the offending fist, “the way you keep flitting your eyes around, holding your breath, humming along to Rock The Boat. Something is bothering you and your senses feel overwhelmed, that’s why you’re trying to distract yourself.”

“Humming along to what now?” Clarke cocked a confused look.

“So I’d like to know where you got the notion,” Lexa quietly hummed the song out of tune with a tight smirk. “I know you love that song because when I remotely shut down your Spotify at work you’re usually listening to either that or the Thunderbirds theme song.”

“I hate it when you remotely shut down my tabs,” Clarke grimaced.

“You know the rules about personal computer usage.”

“You are the malevolent god of a very small kingdom.”

“What?” Lexa said, dumbfounded.

“You are the malevolent overlord of the computer network, and that is the only place you hold power over me,” Clarke reiterated, biting a playful smirk.

“Oh,” Lexa smiled softly, “That I am. But sometimes I just wait for you to break the rules so I can shut your Spotify down because I’m hungry, and by the time you’re done yelling in my office you usually take me for lunch.”

“Abusive.”

“Not quite.”

The car pulled to juddering still outside the platform. The beeps came. The doors opened. The hollow echoing rush of the underground blustered through the empty doors, both of them looked at each with a content stare.

Clarke licked her lips, “You sure you don’t want to get off and let me walk you home?” She felt nervous, overwhelmed even.

“Is that why you’re stimming?”

“Maybe.”

Lexa reached out and took her hand, her fingers were firm but delicate, stroking the top of Clarke’s pink knuckles very gently, just the way she learned Clarke liked. Normally, she asked permission before she touched her and in some small insignificant way Clarke loved that because it reminded her very forthrightly just how often Lexa wanted to touch her. But, she told Lexa she could hold her hand or touch her without asking permission, and sometimes she still asked but right now she doesn’t. Instead she just squeezes reassuringly.

Lexa searched her face with slow green eyes as the car moved away again, “I’m not good at reading you, so if there’s something on your mind can we just talk about it?”

“Okay,” Clarke exhaled and bit her breath. “I’m nervous because you’re coming to my apartment and you said we might have sex, which excites me, but also makes me very scared because sometimes tactile stuff makes you uncomfortable. You mentioned once that if people touch you when you feel overwhelmed it can bring on an episode, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to hurt you.” Clarke drew a breath and shifted nervously.

“Are you planning on touching me when I don’t want to be touched?” Lexa replied immediately.

“God no!”

“Good, I won’t feel overwhelmed then. Feel better now?”

“Not really, I still feel nervous,” Clarke admitted and blushed.

“I’m capable of saying no, you know? I have the autonomy to know what I want to happen to and with my body,” Lexa said accusatory.

“No. I’m sorry I’m not nervous because of that,” Clarke pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m nervous because you’re beautiful and I like you very much and the thought of going…further,” she used the word tacitly, “makes me nervous because I’m a human being and the thought of being intimate with you is a wonderful kind of dread.”

“You’re not making a case for yourself,” Lexa crossed her arms.

“Okay can I try and phrase it a different way?”

“You better.”

“The male Gentoo Penguin will find a perfect pebble for his mate. He’ll make sure it’s shiny and stuff, you know, really woo the shit out of her—because he’s nervous that maybe without the pebble she’ll decide they’re better off just friends, and he doesn’t want to get put in the penguin friend zone and I’m just a male Gentoo Penguin taking a lady Gentoo Penguin home but I don’t have a pebble. So I’m nervous.” Clarke emphasised with both hands.

“You have a Gentoo Penguin at home?” Lexa raised an eyebrow.

“No, Lexa, you’re the metaphorical Gentoo Penguin.”

“Okay, look,” Lexa levelled and stood from her seat until they were eye to eye, “Say what you mean, but use one sentence and no metaphors.”

“You’re so beautiful it’s intimidating.”

“Okay, and another?”

“I want to have sex with you, very soon, but I don’t know if I’m ready to do that tonight.”

“Oh,” Lexa’s eyes lit up, “Okay, yep, I totally understand now. You know Clarke, we should just take things slowly if it doesn’t feel right to try and go further tonight. We can watch Amazon Prime and just get used to your space? Maybe kiss and cuddle? If we don’t want to have sex we can just see how we feel another time?”

“Perfect. You are so damn perfect,” Clarke mumbled and rubbed her cheeks. “Of course that’s a good idea.”

The car slowed down and pulled into Nine Oaks. Lexa took her by both hands and giddily got out of the car, adjusting her coat, her scarf, pulling Clarke by the hand towards the exit signs. It had Clarke suddenly giddy too.

“Lexa?” Clarke said her name breathless, tugging her wrist until she came back to the warmth of her chest.

“Yeah?” Lexa blinked and looked at her.

“I find myself falling head over heels for you a lot lately, I hope you know that.”

“We will get you better shoes don’t worry, I’ll put it on the to-do list for next week.” Lexa rubbed her hip reassuringly.

“Okay,” Clarke said, lovestruck, completely grinning, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, “Thanks.”

If you would like to read more or find my exclusive works look no further!

Chapter Text

She’s not a complete person. 

It feels that way, sometimes. More often than not it’s easy to forget that there’s a piece missing. Clarke does that to her. She slips her slim fingers around the bottom of her belly, cradling her, hanging over her, kissing her shoulder mindlessly while the porridge burns into a thick inedible pot of lumpiness on the stove. And none of it earns the overwhelming dreadful closing-in feeling that she had become accustomed to for the last twenty-six years of living. Anyone else touching her, chewing too loudly, existing too much, and it feels like hot sugar bubbling around her brain. Tolerating Clarke had become so easy that Lexa had nearly forgot what it was like to have an episode.

“Tell me you didn’t!” Clarke hissed in disbelief and slammed a small black moleskin journal on the counter.

Lexa jumped backwards and closed her eyes, the unexpected slap against the counter was enough to earn a quirked expression and a deep exhale. Calmly, she counted to three in her head and opened her eyes. She recognised the notebook in front of her, it was the same one she had found haphazardly sat on top of Clarke’s laptop last night. The notebook was filled with the odd diary entry and the occasional badly-written poem, though she didn’t tell Clarke that. Instead she just underlined and circled the bits that she liked because that was far kinder and more likely to earn her a kiss. She had made a quick lesson of that in the beginning.

Clarke utterly shook with rage and barely kept herself together, though, somehow, she drew in a deep breath and did exactly that. It made Lexa all the more nervous and overwhelmed because still she didn’t know what the matter was.

“Are you upset about something?” Lexa asked softly.

“Why would.” Clarke stopped suddenly and looked to the sofa, then the ceiling, blinking away tears as her voice quivered around the words in her throat. “Why would you read my notebook and write on my things?”

“Some of them were very good and I wanted you to know I liked them,” Lexa answered in confusion, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. It did nothing to appease Clarke’s upset expression.

She felt a drumming against the side of her thigh, a quick successive tap to the skin like she was a doorbell being incessantly rang. Her gaze slipped down until she caught sight of her own fingers doing the deed. She stopped and put her hand in the pocket of her sweater.

“You should never!” Clarke pinched the bridge of her nose with a furious tearful grunt. “You had no right to read my diary, Lexa!”

“If you didn’t want somebody to read something why the fuck would you write it down somewhere they can see it?!” Lexa shouted back defensively, suddenly made helpless. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t!”

“I can’t believe you. I can’t.” Clarke wound her hands around her temples.

“Believe me?” Lexa’s brows quirked at that. She wasn’t lying. Did Clarke think she was lying? It boggled her for a moment. She always tried her best not to lie, certainly in situations like this where honesty seemed very important. Slowly, she unfurled her fists and counted to three again.

“I wrote those things when my father died and they are for me, just me, and I don’t understand how you could be so… thoughtless!”

“It wasn’t thoughtless! I thoughtI was doing something nice!” Lexa snapped.

“Well you weren’t!” Clarke spat and the tears became furious dribbles slipping along the grimace of her cheeks. “That book was the last thing my father gave me before he…” she chewed her jaw into silence, finally hanging her head. “You wrote all over it, like it was nothing at all, Lexa.”

“I’m sorry,” Lexa barely said above a whisper, embarrassed and caught off guard.

She felt her teeth ache, felt them hurt and grow sore with a guilt that she couldn’t quite wrap her head around. It just didn’t make sense. If Clarke didn’t want something to be seen then why did she write it down in the first place? Writing on a pre-used notebook was a perfectly ordinary thing that she had done countless times before without reprimand and now it felt like all she could do was nod her head and pretend that she understood why this time was different. It only made the horrible, dreaded, unwelcomed feeling of an episode feel all the more palpable and on the brink of itself. Nonetheless, Lexa kept her mouth closed, running her teeth around the inside of her lips while Clarke continued the argument with enough gust for the both of them.

“Well?” Clarke crossed her arms and glared.

Lexa realised quite suddenly that the rant was over and that she hadn’t distinguished a single word that rolled off that acidic tongue that was usually so soft and perfect for kissing.

“Thank you for buying bananas this morning. I told you I didn’t like the ones with the blue stickers and so you got the little ones that come in bunches of three and I… I… noticed that,” Lexa mumbled.

She felt tug on her hair, a methodical and repetitive tugging above her ear that refused to relent. Her own tightly wound fist was the culprit but somehow she had no choice in the matter. It felt as if every muscle, every nerve ending, every inch of bone was slowly betraying her. It dawned on her that maybe now wasn’t the appropriate time for a compliment but Mom always said that acknowledging and thanking people for doing nice things made people feel good. She tugged her hair again, grinding her teeth and blinking rapidly in absolute confliction. All she wanted was to make Clarke feel good. Still, the matter of that fucking notebook was unresolved and bubbling in her brain, occupying space that could otherwise be spent figuring out a way back to the quiet domestic bliss she was otherwise used to.

“I should go. I think I need to go,” Clarke trailed quietly and clenched her eyes closed. She seemed calmer and more resolute. Lexa didn’t understand why that seemed to be all the more terrifying.

“What do you mean go?” Lexa felt the panic lurch through her.

“I don’t mean go-go!Ijust mean go for a little while. You know… until we’ve cooled off.” Clarke sighed and shook her hands above her head as if she were shooing away seagulls trying to nest in her hair. It looked like that to Lexa at least.

“What do you mean go go? Isn’t going just going? I don’t… I don’t understand why you’re using double verbs!”

“Why do you always have to do this? Why can nothing just be… simple!” Clarke barked.

“I’m… I’m not doing anything, Clarke!”

“You took something precious to me and defaced it, Lexa,” Clarke said, rubbing her cheek. “I don’t know how to make myself accessible to you right now and I just think it would be better if I go.”

“Think about what you want to say? That doesn’t make sense!” Lexa retorted furiously. “You’re saying things right now! You’re thinking about what you’re saying as you say it! That’s how speaking works! I don’t understand why you have to go when if you explain to me why the paper wasn’t paper I was supposed to write on I can try and make things better? It’s Sunday and we don’t… we don’t…” she paused and felt the clogs inside her head slowly pull apart until the teeth just wouldn’t fit back together again. “We don’t go places on Sunday,” she whispered and closed her eyes.

“I can’t do this with you right now,” Clarke said with a shake of her head.

The kitchen became a prison. The cupboards craned over with jagged teeth made out of the pots and pans that hung beneath the cabinets. The floor grew sticky and thick like tar clinging to her feet as if it were trying to swallow her whole. Lexa slipped her fingers around the back of her neck and knotted them together until her forearms were tight against her ears. It hurt to cry, but cry she did, utterly unsure of how to make this better.

“I’m… I’m trying very hard,” Lexa choked out quietly.

There was a pause. 

“I’m sorry,” Clarke whispered softly. “I didn’t mean to make you upset like this. I’m trying too. I really am. I just don’t know how to talk about certain things…” her voice trailed until she seemed unsatisfied herself with the explanation.

Lexa felt a tender warm palm slip around her wrist. It was enough to make her jolt. 

“Please don’t touch me!” Lexa snapped and instinctively flinched, batting the hands away until they weren’t on her skin anymore. She suddenly felt guilty, her face twisting in utter horror as she stilled her flailing hands. She paused for breath. “I… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap, I just—please—don’t want to be touched right now. If you talk and give me a second to clear my head I will try my best to listen,” she said.

There was a pause followed by a deep, thoughtful, troubled sigh. Clarke furrowed her brows softly and her blue eyes became bigger, gentler almost. “I don’t know what arguing or being angry with a person who has autism looks like. And boy, it’s hard. It’s hard because when I’m… frustrated like this,” she sighed again and tapped her bottom lip, “I want to be understood without having to talk about why it is I feel so frustrated. I want to shout. I want to storm out. I want to be able to do things ordinary couples do with the understanding that it’s okay and things are still alright… just maybe not alright in the moment. Does… does that make any sort of sense?”

Lexa exhaled and looked up with two short blinks. “I don’t think those are things ordinary couples do, Clarke.”

“In all the relationships I’ve been in before that’s what happened,” she replied defensively.

“That doesn’t make it healthy. I can’t give you the things you want if you don’t tell me what it is you want. I can’t not write on a notebook if you don’t tell me it’s a notebook I can’t write on. I literally can’t understand you without you telling me why you’re frustrated, very literally.”

At that Clarke curled her chin and gave a short nod. “That makes sense,” she said.

“Can we try to talk about things and make them better again?”

“We can try?” Clarke stood tall awkwardly. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her body anymore. It made sense to Lexa, sort of. It made her feel more okay. Clarke was used to using her body and her motion as a weapon when she was upset. Now, she was thrumming her fingers into the top of the counter, blinking and adjusting to the tentative peace.

“I’m not okay with my dad not being around, still,” Clarke whispered and hung her head. “That journal is very important to me because he gave it to me before the accident and it’s the last thing I have that connects me to him. I wrote down things inside it about him. When I saw you wrote on it… it felt like you were writing over him.”

“So the journal is like a shrine?” Lexa asked curiously.

At that Clarke shot her a glare. “It’s not a shrine,” she bit.

“Why would it be a bad thing if it was? Hindu people have shrines in their homes. Lots of people do.”

“We’re going off topic.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Lexa inhaled and took a step closer, “That journal is something very important to you. It makes you feel connected to your dad. I didn’t know that but if I did, I wouldn’t have touched it. I would have asked if we could have looked at it together instead.”

“Looked at it together? What do you mean?” Clarke softened.

“You’re the most important person in my life and he is the most important person in yours and I don’t have any other way of knowing who he was unless you help me understand. You don’t talk about your father very much. I asked you once what his favourite word was and you told me to shut up.”

Clarke winced and looked up apologetically. “When you put it like that I sound rude,” she said musingly.

“You are. I don’t like that about you but sometimes it makes me smile anyway. It didn’t make me smile that time so I didn’t ask anymore questions about your dad and I’m sorry if that wasn’t the right thing to do—”

“Baby no,” Clarke quickly jumped in. Normally Lexa didn’t like being interrupted but the war machine in front of her had softened and warped and shifted back into something that very closely resembled her girlfriend and so she let it slide without reprimand. “You shouldn’t have to apologise for that. I think I got defensive with you because I don’t know what his favourite word was and that made me very sad.”

Lexa breathed a relieved sigh. She finally felt useful. “Maybe if we look at his old journals in your mom’s attic I can help with that?”

“I’ve never shown anyone those. His journals are private—they’re, they’re his thoughts and feelings and I don’t think that would be…” Clarke stalled and realised she was crying. It was the saddest thing Lexa thought she might have ever seen.

Lexa shuffled forward and made herself a verb, an adjective, hushing quiet little hums into the flyaways of her blonde hair and holding her girlfriend close enough to make their chests hurt against one another. It was the best sort of pain. A loving kind of ache. It wasn’t often she understood the blurry things but she understood this. Clarke being upset had very little to do with her at all, Clarke being upset in general usually had very little to do with whatever she said it was about, it was in fact about the gaping aching wound inside her heart that she spent the better part of her life trying not to fall into again.

“It’s alright if you don’t want to share him with me,” Lexa whispered and held her tighter. “I just think it might make you feel closer to him if he isn’t a big mystery anymore.”

Clarke laughed to herself, “Are gods even gods anymore if there is no mystery?”

“He isn’t a god though? He’s just man who died. He was here one moment then gone the next. There was no contingency plan. I’m sure he would want the things he left behind to give you some solace?”

Clarke hiccuped and buried her face into lip of Lexa’s t-shirt. The material became wet and hot against her skin, it was an irritating feeling, but Lexa just sighed and stroked the small of her back.

“You wrote on my things,” Clarke coughed and tried to right herself, as if she snatched her hands around the first thought in her head that brought her away from the cliff edge of her dad’s death. “Please don’t do that again,” she mumbled and wiped her raw blue eyes.

“I made you angry and I didn’t mean too,” Lexa hushed. “I’m sorry I made you upset.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean too.”

“I know that,” Clarke reassured calmly and kept her arms tight around her.

“I’m very proud of you, Clarke.” The words were enough to make Clarke furrow her brows.

“What do you mean?” She replied.

“I asked you to show me why you were upset in a way I could understand and that was very hard for you but you gave it your best try and I feel like I understand you better as a person because of it.”

Clarke pushed forward and kissed her. It took Lexa off balance. She cracked her eyes wide open and hesitated for a moment, stiff and unsure on what was happening. When they kissed it was because they were happy, because they couldn’t keep their hands off of one another. Right now they were both sad, Clarke most so. Lexa couldn’t remember ever seeing her so sad at all.

The realisation came to her like a tiny bright flicker. Clarke wanted to kiss her because feeling close and intimate made her feel safe. Lexa softened and kissed her back slowly, gently even. It was enough to make Clarke cry again until her chest started to heave and her wet cheeks trembled. Nonetheless Clarke didn’t stop, not even for a moment, instead she just pressed forward and soothed herself with the comfort of Lexa’s mouth.

“Maybe we could swing by my mom’s later and take a look,” Clarke managed to get the words out in tiny staggered attempts.

“Not today,” Lexa soothed and squeezed both her hands.

“Because we don’t go places on Sunday?”

“Because you’re the woman I love and I want to take care of you and being close to me makes you feel better, maybe we can just do that today until you don’t feel so bad?” Lexa tucked her chin on top of Clarke’s shoulder, squeezing her tightly.

“Thanks,” Clarke mumbled and slipped her arms around the back of her neck.

“Do you want me to pick you up? You can hold on to me like a little monkey. You like monkeys.”

The laughter came like a burst of much needed sunshine. It had Lexa chuckling quietly too. “Please,” Clarke whined.

She obliged and hauled her girlfriend up until two pale thighs were sandwiching her hips, traversing her like she was a jungle gym, shuffling up and readjusting until they were tight enough around her waist to hold her jeans up. Clarke just stayed their quietly, clinging on for dear life with her damp nose tucked into a tight corner where the neck and shoulder joined.

“This is nice,” Lexa said awkwardly.

Clarke nodded and rolled her head to the side, “My dad would have liked you, you know.”

“Oh for sure, everyone does,” Lexa said matter of factly and shuffled towards the sofa. “Except for you.”

“Yeah, I hate you.” Clarke nuzzled.

“Is that you being sarcastic?”

“I know you know I’m being sarcastic because if you didn’t you would have dropped me and stormed off.”

“I leave the storming off to you, Clarke.”

Clarke laughed and sighed, drawing her arms tighter. It dawned on Lexa quickly that Clarke probably thought she was being sarcastic too. She opened her mouth, the words blooming and then dying in her throat, simultaneously. She closed her mouth and thought better of it.

“Perhaps I’m getting better at sarcasm after all.” Lexa smiled at her girlfriend and earned a tiny kiss.

Chapter Text

The subway cart hurtled beneath the city with too many people packed on board. All huddled tightly together and trying not to make eye contact. Lexa sat on the little fold down chair with her head cradled between her palms and the headphones cupped over her ears. Clarke stood opposite her, occasionally earning a brief smile by making rudimentary signs whenever Lexa looked up. 

She had picked it up pretty well over the last six months. It wasn’t often they used sign language but Lexa enjoyed words, enjoyed language, linguistics, communication, all of it in the many forms that were graspable and tangible for her. And sign language was something that allowed for small talk with kids from the deaf school three blocks over and the non-verbal guy who worked in the cinema beneath her apartment building when she was a kid. It had it’s pros, for example, when she felt spun out or over-stimmed she could form her fingers in such a way to communicate how she felt to the people around her. For that reason Clarke made a point of picking up what she could. Even if it was only so she could sign dirty things to earn a smirk during board meetings.

Clarke smiled wryly over the top of her scarf and pointed at Lexa, then circled her open palm around her face, dragged it down into two bull horns with her thumb and pinky finger, then crossed her arm over as if she were pointing at the passenger stood next to them.

It made Lexa smile. “You look pretty today too. I like that scarf you’re wearing,” she said with both hands, her fingers moving too quickly for Clarke.

Clarke offered a perplexed look.

“I’m hungry and I don’t like how busy it is. Can we get off at the next stop and walk back?” Lexa continued, signing away with jostling fingers.

Clarke offered another perplexed look.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Lexa’s hands moved with an exasperated rhythm as if she were growing more annoyed.

Clarke offered one more perplexed look for good measure.

Lexa licked her lips and forced a small smile, “Can we get off at the next stop?” She spoke up and let her hands come to rest in her lap.

“Oh! Sure, no problem,” Clarke said, centering her feet against the jolts of the moving train.

Clarke succeeded in maintaining that bubble of personal space around Lexa, stretching herself out and spreading herself thin so no one could brush past her girlfriend or seperate them. It didn’t go amiss upon Lexa. In fact, it was one of the many reasons she found herself during the mundane moments of the day working through those strange feelings people talk about when they say they’re falling in love. It’s the little things that do it. That have her suddenly drowning in the need to kiss her, to do more than kiss her. The bubble of space Clarke makes for her on the train. The satisfied noise she makes after her second cup of coffee. The disco music. The need for everything to be pitch black and the room to be stiflingly warm when the television is on. The rude shushing noise during the judges critiques because Drag Race is the only time Lexa doesn’t have permission to distract her. Half of the things shouldn’t make her want to kiss her at all. They should annoy the hell out of her… and sometimes they do. That’s the worst part, when she is simultaneously annoyed and overwhelmed with the need to kiss her. It’s those moments that give her a stomach ache.

Tonight felt a lot like that, agreeing to ride the subway during rush hour which is number sixteen on the list of things she absolutely hates to do. But today was Clarke’s birthday, even if she didn’t want to acknowledge she was in fact another year older. It still felt important to do tiny wonderful things to help her celebrate because that’s what people do on birthdays, tiny wonderful lovely things. Even if those tiny wonderful lovely things, like riding the subway during rush hour, were on the list.

It wasn’t that the list of things she hated were absolute but No. 16, the subway during rush hour, was sandwiched right between drinking cold tea and having to play bingo—which everyone always seems to think she will love because it involves numbers but no one ever remembers that numbers just aren’t her thing. Even if they were it would still be a nightmare. Bingo is a game of random luck involving pre-selected numbers and a person shouting over a microphone until someone screamed full house. Lexa couldn’t think of anything more terrible for a person on the spectrum who enjoyed the order and calm rationality of numbers. Bingo made an absolute mockery of numbers, besmirched their good name even. The more she sat there and thought about it, the more she re-evaluated whether bingo needed to be bumped up the list to number twelve and take fringe lampshades down a peg or two.

Either way, twelve or sixteen, if Clarke wanted to ride the subway while they wore lampshades for hats on their way to play bingo then Lexa would grin and bare it somehow. The thought only infuriated her stomach ache all the more.

“What are you thinking about?” Clarke interrupted.

Lexa paused and sighed, rubbing her temple. “How annoying it is to be your girlfriend.” She offered a wry smirk, “Which then made me think about how much I hate bingo. In turn, that made me think about how disgusting the fringe on the bottom of old lampshades is. It’s a long story but the short version is: over-stimming.”

“It’s because I made you ride the subway, isn’t it?” Clarke asked with a sympathetic expression and tucked a piece of hair behind Lexa’s ear.

“Yes, but I still want to keep dating you.”

“Good,” she bent down and kissed Lexa’s forehead, “The subway is a good start on the birthday present front but don’t worry, we can get off at the next stop and I won’t ask you to play bingo with me if that’s what you’re worried about. I know numbers aren’t your thing...”

Lexa did a double take and found herself stuck with a tiny smile worked into her cheeks. “You remembered that?” She inhaled.

“Of course I did, idiot.”

“Well thank you, cunt.”

Clarke instantly cringed and brought her hands up to cover her mouth. She looked around, discretely gauging how many listening ears heard. “Lexa,” she fixed a serious look and dropped her tone to a whisper, “do you remember when we spoke about how the cute insult thing worked?”

Lexa grinned proudly, “I do indeed. I’m getting really good at it, aren’t I? At first I thought it was stupid and in all honesty I kinda still do, but it makes you happy and so I want to insult you even if I don’t mean it which by the way, I don’t.”

Clarke swallowed and hesitated, suddenly conflicted. “Yeah…” she finally shook her head in concession and found a smile, “You’re really good at it. I just thought you should know.”

Lexa smiled warmly with a deep exhale, “Thanks cunt.”

“Okay!” Clarke blurted and chuckled, looking around awkwardly. She leaned down and bit her bottom lip, lowering her voice to a whisper as she searched Lexa’s pleased green eyes. “Let’s save it for when we get somewhere less busy, huh?”

“Yeah would you mind lady? I’ve got my son with me you pair of degenerates!” A stocky man with a surly expression leaned over angrily against the jolts of subway car.

“Okay, easy!” Clarke snapped up, glaring.

The man looked between them both, his eyes fixing on Lexa as she hung her head and looked away—she was suddenly aware that she had done it again, done something she had no idea she wasn’t supposed to do, caused a situation as Aunt Terri used to say before she died. That word sat funny in her mind, because she couldn’t help but think that dying of carbon monoxide poisoning was far more of a dramatic situation than over-stimming sometimes but apparently that wasn’t an appropriate thing to say when giving a eulogy which was probably a good thing overall because she has never been invited to do one again since Aunt Terri died. 

Either way when it came to the burly man currently hanging over her with a beady-eyed stare, Clarke would fill her in on the details. She was sure of that. It just didn’t quite help shake the tingly feeling taking over her body. The static in her ears. The dread in her belly. The uncomfortable sudden urge to bolt and find a tight quiet space to cram herself into. It was the foreignness of this environment that had her flitting. The swell of the crowd packed into this tight space. The anger within it. The man’s stare had her retreating internally more than anything, she hated it when people stared.

Lexa moved her hands, circled one of them, drew the other down and clenched her palm, wiggled her fingers, did all of it in Clarke’s direction. “I want to go now please,” she made it as basic and clear as she could with sign.

Clarke nodded and signed back, made a fist in the air and brought it down into two pointed fingers against her palm. “Okay,” she conceded with a few rapid and furious blinks. Clarke swallowed and made herself calm, turning back to the man between them. “Look...we’re sorry. We’re getting off at the next stop so you can go and sit down now, we’ll keep the noise down.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled and turned to thud back over to his seat. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Lexa, “Just keep the freak quiet…”

There was a brief silence that fell over the subway cart. It wasn’t a good sort of silence and Lexa knew that. It didn’t make her feel calm. It didn’t reassure her frayed nerves. Instead, it was just the brief pause before Clarke exploded into a utter, unstoppable, untameable flurry of rage.

“What did he just say?” Clarke came back to life, her head snapping round as if her eyes were missiles and the man her target.

“Clarke, don’t—”

“Did he just call you a freak?” She furrowed her brows in furious disbelief and shoved her purse forward into Lexa’s lap without so much as looking. “Hold this for me babe.”

***

Lexa sat crossed-legged on the countertop with her grey hoodie up and her leggings tucked into her socks. She had been silent since they got back to Clarke’s place from the police station. 

Clarke didn’t know what to do with that information, that she had probably made Lexa furious with her best intentions to defend her honour. Instead of doing the reasonable thing, instead of talking to her and just asking the simple question if everything was alright, she allowed herself to grow flustered until the only way to make the guilty feeling stop was to busy herself limping around the kitchen cooking food she knew Lexa loved. It was a symptom that she already knew the answer: everything was not alright and she shouldn’t have pushed Lexa to take the early train home. 

The clean steel surfaces and kitchen cabinets and pots and pans took the brunt of that guilt with the need to make it right.

Lexa shuffled forward on the surface top until one of her legs hung off the counter. The sound of her foot thudding the cabinet was enough to make Clarke turn around from the cheese sauce on the stove. It was then she saw it, the little gathering of first aid supplies between her thighs.

Clarke hung her head and closed her eyes, “My birthday presents?” She winced.

“Oh,” Lexa spoke up and looked down at the salve in her lap. “No, these are for the cuts and bruises on your face.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you ask—”

“I was trying to make a joke because I feel stupid,” Clarke grumbled and tossed a dish rag on the side.

“I mean…? getting in a fight with someone who weighs twice as much as you was kind of stupid. Now you don’t want to go for drinks with your friends. You ruined your own birthday for no reason.”

“For no reason?” Clarke looked up with a furious glare. “He called you a freak, Lexa!”

“You think that’s the first time someone has called me a freak?” Lexa cocked a confused look. “You are lucky that I played the retard card for you with the police otherwise we would have both spent tonight in a cell.”

“You shouldn’t have got involved,” Clarke mumbled. “I was trying to be chivalrous.”

“Well you got your ass kicked but on the plus side I got to unload a can of mace on someone which answers a lot of questions for me about how useful a deterrent it really is. Now shut up and come here and let me look at your dumb face.”

Clarke sulked slowly over towards her girlfriend with a poorly hid limp, stopping as she came to rest between her slim thighs. She resisted the urge to rest her hands on top of them, instead she kept her arms awkwardly dangling at each side with her face hung for good measure. Lexa touched her softly, her fingers cupping and winding around each side of her face. There was a sigh. A disappointed and worried sigh. It made Clarke guiltier than she knew possible.

“Getting into fights for me like a scrappy little animal,” Lexa tisked and lifted her chin upwards towards the light. “Anya will love it.”

Clarke grinned ruefully at that.

“Ah,” Lexa smiled and pressed a tiny kiss against her cut lip. “I thought that would make you happy.”

“I live to impress your sister.”

“And me apparently, if your roundhouse kick for my honour was anything to go by.”

“I mean, did you not find it at least a little bit hot?” Clarke said grumpily, allowing the bruise on her cheek to be gently prodded.

Lexa dabbed the salve on the little cut beneath her eye, her finger dragging down gently towards the scratches on her chin. “Very hot,” she exhaled and earned a piqued eyebrow. “Right up until he threw you into a pole and I had to save you, of course.”

“Small areas, poor ventilation, not a great place to use mace.” Clarke winced as the knick above her eyebrow was dabbed with salve, “You got me with the mace more than you got him. I’ve had better birthday presents.” She pointed to her raw pink eyes and took a sip of water.

“Well I did buy a black lingerie set for your birthday and I know that’s basically a present for myself but you said no one has ever wore stockings for you before and well, anyway, do you want to have sex tonight while I wear them for you?”

Clarke spat the water out, spluttering and coughing as she did. It was the abruptness of the question that did it, no warning, no pre-emptive clue. To make matters worse, to make tonight feel even further away from the magic of the first time together, she watched the droplets of water run down Lexa’s surprised face and splash down into her lap.

“Thanks for that,” Lexa cleared her throat and wiped her wet cheeks.

“It’s just… you said it so suddenly?” Clarke winced and grabbed a dish rag to wipe her frowning face. “I mean of course I’ve been thinking about it please don’t think I haven’t… I just didn’t want to make you feel pressured to do it because it’s my birthday.”

Lexa allowed herself to be patted dry by her cringing girlfriend, “Well I do love you and we have been very patient,” she surmised and wiped the water from her eye.

“You do?”

“You don’t?” Lexa raised a wet eyebrow.

“Of course I love you, idiot.” 

“So you want to see them?” Lexa whispered hopefully with a little smile.

Clarke pushed forward and nodded as she kissed her. It was soft at first, desperate even. It was the sort of kiss she had been reserving for a perfect moment, for fireworks, for starlight, for the perfect playlist while they writhed naked against each other in messed sheets. This would do just fine though, wound into her girlfriend's thighs while the cheese sauce bubbled and burned, while the thankless bruise on her cheek ached all the more for her efforts.

“I’m going to tell you exactly how and where I want you to touch me, okay?” Lexa said breathlessly into her hollow mouth, half promise and half demand. There was a curious expression in her eyes, nervous almost, tentative and excited.

Clarke whimpered, and somehow, thankfully, wonderfully, Lexa understood the encouragement and kissed her again deeper this time. It had Clarke hanging from her jawline, had her arms wrapping around the back of her neck for leverage against it.

“Can I carry you to bed?” Lexa whispered with a slight raspiness to her voice and pulled away, her gold flecked green eyes burrowing and searching into her girlfriend’s stare with need.

“I mean, can you?” Clarke raised a surprised brow.

“Let’s find out.”

She picked her up with that effortless sort of ease that aroused all the more. Clarke wrapped her legs around the bottom of Lexa’s back, slouched and sat into her girlfriend’s warm hips, groaned and wrapped her arms tighter around shoulder blades as they tumbled through the apartment towards the bedroom.

Clarke hit the blankets with a dull thud that was felt in the soreness of her ribs, she didn’t care about that though. Her ribs could thrum and burn and ache all they wanted and it wouldn’t be enough to stop. She pushed up on her elbows and watched quietly, hungrily, desperately while her girlfriend undressed. The hoodie came off first, pulled over her head and tossed on the floor. To Clarke’s surprise there was nothing underneath it apart from a black bustier that cupped her breasts and ribs in soft lace.

Lexa walked over to the iPod that sat dusty in the dock speaker on the bedroom drawers. She peered over her shoulder and looked Clarke up and down, seemingly satisfied with her lack of ability to form words. “I made a playlist for you and if your Spotify favourites are anything to go by I think you’re going to love it.”

“You didn’t! I get disco music and stockings?!” Clarke blurted and suddenly sat up, her eyes wide and excited.

“Happy birthday, Clarke.” Lexa tossed a teasing look over her shoulder.

“This is the best birthday ever.”

“I aim to please.”

“Primary directive achieved.”

“Be quiet and lie down?” Lexa fiddled with the iPod.

Clarke threw herself backwards into the pillows and willed herself to breathe. It was more perfect than she imagined. Clarke found herself utterly captivated like a teenage boy. She imagined Lexa knew as much too. Clarke bit her bottom lip and clenched her eyes in excitement as the speakers sung to life. Suddenly, her dark grey bedroom was 1970s New York. Soul train dance battles. Bianca Jagger riding a horse through Studio 54. John Travolta in platforms and a white suit. Lexa’s hips were swaying softly, her back rolling ever so slightly in rhythm to the music, and suddenly to Clarke’s mind there was nothing else but her.

“If you want my body and you think I’m sexy…” Lexa sung along, doing a little twirl on the spot to face Clarke. “Come on, honey, tell me so…” she swung her hips and shimmied out of her leggings.

“If you really need me, just reach out and touch me, come on sugar let me know,” Clarke joined in with a giggle and sat bolt upright. “What other songs did you put on the playlist?!” She slapped her hands against the blankets.

“Macho Man by the Village People, you like that one right?” Lexa bent down and barely got the words out before Clarke began nodding emphatically. “Ring My Bell, More Than A Woman, Heart Of Glass, all of your favourites….” She finished shimmying out of her leggings.

Clarke found herself speechless at the sight of her girlfriend. Lexa stood at the end of the bed in nothing but her lingerie, stockings and suspenders and all. Her long light brown hair hung over her shoulder as she gathered and pushed it to one side, bouncing her hips to the song.

“Clarke have you ever been to a strip club?” Lexa whispered over the sound of the song.

Clarke nodded slowly.

Lexa span and ran her fingers down each side of her rib cage, dancing for her girlfriend’s hungry lovestruck stare. Finally she looked over, “No touching, no grabbing, keep your hands to yourself and don’t distract me,” she said, raising her brows.

“Yes ma’am,” Clarke choked out the words.

Lexa bounced up on the balls of her feet in rhythm, bouncing around with quick little steps. She turned and threw her arms behind her head as the saxophone and electric guitar played, swirling her hips slowly to the rhythm. Clarke imagined her under a glitter ball, queen of the dancefloor, queen of Studio 54. It suddenly sat strange in her mind that she had thought this whole time that Lexa couldn’t dance. Here they now were and she had never seen anyone dance the way she did, the way she curled and writhed and softly swung her hips to every inch of the melody. It didn’t go amiss that it was for her eyes only. That Lexa curled and span and grazed over her breasts just for her.

“You’re really good at this,” Clarke mumbled dumbly as she sat up with her back pressed into the pillows. “Amazing even,” she added with a blink.

Lexa tossed a grin over her shoulder and wiggled her ass, earning the kind of deep chuckle that made Clarke’s entire aching body hurt in the best way possible.

“Did you think I couldn’t dance?” She huffed, sweeping her dark hair back off her face and behind her ears.

“Yes,” Clarke replied honestly, blinking in surprise.

“You have no idea…” Lexa sauntered over and climbed over the bed, halting the air trumpeting through Clarke’s lungs. 

Slowly, she climbed and straddled Clarke until both kneecaps came to rest into the nook of her armpits and her ass bouncing gently into her hips. The chorus played and Lexa grinded with long fluid motions into Clarke’s hips and stomach. 

“Unclasp my bra,” Lexa ordered softly.

Clarke reached up and felt her way around the thin fabric with deft fingertips that made detours around the dips of her spine. She stopped herself, remembering the small assurances that were made that she would behave and play to the house rules: no touching unless Lexa told her to. It didn’t make her feel sad or disappointed, if anything it turned her on all the more with the anticipation of it. Clarke unclasped the bra and allowed her hands to fall back to the bed. The material slipped down from Lexa’s chest, and slowly, she slipped her shoulders out and tossed the bra on to the floor.

Suddenly Clarke could not breathe. She became a blinking, hung jaw, heavy breathing mess. She had seen Lexa topless before. Of course she had. But she had never seen her like this. The times before were during the effort to get ready for work in the rushed madness of morning. The galavant between the bedroom and the shower as they crossed path while the Uber waited outside. The low dark hours when it was time for bed and she caught a tiny glimpse of nipple while the sport bra was exchanged for a flimsy t-shirt. Now the smell of clean warm skin, those soft curves, those dusky nipples, were being grazed and pressed down into her hot aching mouth. It stalled her like a clutch out of gear until she couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to.

“Kiss my skin,” Lexa leaned her chest down.

“Be less vague,” Clarke hung onto her self-restraint with two fists wound tightly in the bottom sheet as a nipple was dragged over her mouth. She wouldn’t mess this up. Not for anything in the world.

“Kiss my breasts and use your tongue,” Lexa whispered raspily.

Clarke leaned in, finally breathing an exhale in relief. She parted her lips and took the nipple softly with a slow kiss, her tongue working slowly along her nipple and over her areola with strokes that swirled and pushed. Lexa moaned softly, her chest collapsing forward. It encouraged Clarke all the more. It had her pressing hard kisses into the underside of her breasts, had her nose pressed so deeply into that plump skin that she couldn’t breathe.

Lexa unfurled, loosened, unwinded, became all the most primal parts of herself. She grinded with short deep moments, earning the friction between her thighs that had them both whimpering and groaning.

“I can feel how wet you are on my stomach,” Clarke choked out the words with a blink.

“You like it?”

“I love it.” Clarke dove forward and set her lips along the curve of her breast again.

“Grab my ass and pull me into you harder,” Lexa stumbled over the words. Clarke looked up and watched her throat cant upwards with a gasp as she got the right rhythm of friction.

“Look at me,” Clarke coaxed with a bite of her bottom lip. She grabbed her girlfriend’s firm ass, fingers slipping just underneath the material of her underwear. The grinds became deep and slow on her hips, on her stomach, on her entire body. Lexa whimpered and kept her head hung backwards. “I want you to look at me,” she said it again.

Lexa slumped forward until her nose was millimetres from Clarke’s nose, then slumped forward into her open mouth with a groaning kiss. “Clarke,” she whimpered, dripping that word onto the tongue like honey. “Rub me there…” she begged tacitly.

“Between your thighs baby?” Clarke husked, her fingers growing tighter into those pump globes working over hips.

“No, Clarke, on my clit.”

Clarke resisted the urge to splutter a laugh as her attempt at tacit dirty talk became lost in translation. She kissed Lexa harder, grabbed her ass deeper, sat up a little further and brought one of her hands between her girlfriend’s thighs to pull her black panties to the side.

“Like that?” She whispered as the pads of her fingers found the crease of her lips.

Lexa rolled her eyes and almost collapsed into her arms. “Y...yes,” she whispered against the side of her throat.

“Such a fucking bad girl for me,” Clarke grunted over the clench of her teeth as her fingers slipped with ease, as thin little webs of arousal caught her hand.

The material remained pushed to the side while she circled tiny tight movements against the small bud between her lips. Every now and then Clarke ventured to explore a little further, her fingers moving a little deeper, the pads of her middle fingers teasing against the muscle of her opening. Clarke felt the heat of her own arousal slip between her thighs. It had her closing her eyes and squirming her own legs closed.

“I want you to push your fingers inside of me baby,” Lexa whispered against her ear, grinding herself on the two digits inside her underwear. “I want you to feel me cum on you like this…”

Suddenly there is a rip-roaring scream through the apartment, a blaring wailing noise that squeals and rings so loudly it jars the pair of them. It has Clarke upright, decompressing into reality like the bed was a diving bell.

“What the fuck is that?” Clarke grunted and softly moved Lexa to the side of her hip, looking around for the source of the alarm.

“Shit!” Lexa shot up and clambered off the bed, she stumbled on doe wobbling knees towards the door. “The sauce! You didn’t turn the stove off!” She opened the bedroom door to the pungent smell of burned cheese.

“Fuck!” Clarke threw herself out of the bed and landed in a pile on the wood. It was then she was suddenly aware of her fractured rib again, the force of the landing winded her until she was a spluttering coughing ball of agony on the floor. “Go...make sure...my...apartment isn’t on...fire!” She shouted after her in staggering winced breaths.

Clarke slumped back into the wood and tried to get her knees underneath herself so she could clamber back up. She fell back down again into a fit of giggles as the sound of the fire extinguisher gushed from the kitchen.

“I put it out!” Lexa hurled a shout through the hallway. “Your cabinets are black!”

Clarke rolled on to her spine and looked up at the ceiling, unable to contain her laughter which only hurt her sore lungs all the more.

“Perfect,” Clarke tittered, wiping a tear of laughter from her eye as she stared at the ceiling. She smiled, “This is just perfect,” she whispered to herself with a happy sigh.

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Chapter Text

There is a lump in her bed. A starfish of reaching wrists and toes peeking from the corners of the duvet. A head buried deep beneath the pillows. A snoring invader clambering over the centerline of the mattress into enemy territory. It left Lexa unimpressed and, yet, surprisingly happy.

Lexa sighed quietly and leaned against the doorframe with a mug of tea in her hand. She had made it a rule a few months in their relationship that sleepovers on weekdays were off the table. A solid eight hours of rest were required for optimal productivity, along with at least an hour of private quiet time before bed to unwind and process the day. That was the rule. Lexa reminisced on those more structured times, swallowing a warm glug of sugary tea as she blinked away the state of sleepiness brought on by the inadequate six and a half hours of sleep she got last night.

“Lex,” the human cannon said and careened down the hallway, hopping into her sensible work shoe. “There’s pizza in the fridge, can you—”

“Shh,” Lexa hushed her sister with a finger to her mouth. She nodded towards her open bedroom door. “Clarke is asleep.”

“And so you’re just…watching her sleep? Instead of getting ready for work?” Anya drew a blank.

“I like her the most when she’s asleep.”

“That doesn’t sound as sweet as I’m sure you think it does.”

“Look at her.” Lexa nodded again with a wry smile for good measure. “She looks like a mouse that drowned in a wet marshmallow.”

“Again,” Anya reiterated. “Not as sweet as you think it sounds.”

“Well,” Lexa sighed, “there’s just no pleasing some people.”

“You’re going to be late for work.”

“Nope, called in sick.”

“You did what?” Anya blinked, taken aback.

“Look at her,” Lexa said it again, her voice tightened to an emphatic whisper.

“You never call in sick?”

“Exactly, I’ll hardly be penalised. Clarke likes it when I do unanticipated things. I’m starting to like it more when I do unanticipated things. I think I’ll take a walk and get brunch later, I can look at menus while she sleeps. I think that will be a nice morning,” Lexa mused and swallowed another sip of tea.

Anya rolled her eyes and shook her head in exasperation. “Whatever, Kiddo.” She leaned forward and kissed the corner of her head. Lexa wiped it away immediately with a grimace. “You’re an adult, make your own terrible life decisions.”

“Will do,” Lexa replied. “You should get going before it rains. Your hair poofs in the rain. It makes you look like a troll.”

“Fuck off, Lexa.”

“Love you too.” Lexa smiled softly. “See you later tonight,” she said her goodbyes.

Lexa trod to the kitchen. The front door clicked shut quietly. The dishcloth was placed beneath the dripping faucet to soften the sound. She closed her eyes and inhaled a happy sigh as silence reigned and made her a content subject of its rule. The dog-eared corner of an ancient looking notepad that sat on the corner of the counter caught Lexa’s attention when she opened them again. She had spent last night thumbing through pages from the spring of 1989 with Clarke in an attempt to help unravel the mystery of her dead dad. It was mainly half-jotted down thoughts and paragraphs about her mom’s sexual prowess. Apparently, to Clarke’s horrified surprise, Abby was quite the goer. Clarke tried her best to gloss through those pages cringing between half cracked fingers before finally giving up.

Lexa paused and played with idea of some light reading before her search for brunch menus however she decided against it quickly - Clarke wouldn’t like it one bit, she thought. The subject of her dead father was a sensitive one, understandably. Perhaps better to let sleeping dogs and Abby’s love of butt stuff lie.

A jostle from the bedroom stirred Lexa’s attention. It was followed by a giggle.

“Has Anya gone?” The blanket stealer asked loudly in a fit of soft titters.

“You were awake the whole time?” Lexa felt her eyebrows knit with frustration.

“I thought drowned mouse in a wet marshmallow was in your top five compliments of all time,” Clarke called back, her laughter settling down with a long boisterous yawn.

Lexa marched through the living room towards her bedroom, feet thumping angrily, shoulders bunched into mountains, teeth slipping over the edges of one another. She was immediately softened and stalled by the sight of her girlfriend, suddenly unsure on what to do with the depletion of her anger. Clarke leaned against a pile of pillows with the blankets pulled up around her bare chest, biting her grinning bottom lip.

“Sorry,” she whispered with a small chuckle.

“I thought you were asleep,” Lexa said, disappointed.

“You manage to be so many nice things first thing in the morning but light footed isn’t one of them. It sounded like a baby dinosaur bumbling around in roller skates.”

“Sorry,” Lexa sighed and looked at her feet.

“Don’t be.” Clarke patted the blankets over her crossed legs, “Apparently we’ve got an impromptu long weekend, you wanna c’mere and have some quiet time while I pet your head?”

Lexa perked up at the suggestion. “Will you do it just the way I like?” She asked with a hopeful smile.

“You know I will, now get over here and let me hold my girl,” Clarke whispered softly and smiled too.

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Chapter Text

Christmas was always a peculiar time of year. 

It always brought about a bad case of what was not-so-affectionately called Dead Dad Syndrome. It usually started around late November, when the Christmas trees were finally set up in the shop fronts, when the streets became freezing and picturesque with fairy lights strung up all over the place and families tottering around with shopping bags. Despite the urge to grieve and hurt, despite the want for solitude, Clarke found herself doing the exact opposite every single year. Instead, the Christmas tree was put up early, the mistletoe was hung, the gingerbread men were baked, the consumerism was snarked at, and the holiday season became an immersion therapy of sorts to help wrap her head around the absence of her father.

“Do you need help?” Lexa set down the dusty decoration boxes and brushed her hands on her legs.

“I’m good,” Clarke lied and struggled with the tinsel.

“I still don’t understand why we have to put up decorations in the office before December, but you asked for the decorations and so I got them.” She nodded at the boxes on the grey carpet keeping the door propped open. “Can I go back to my actual job now?”

Clarke balanced precariously on the ladder she borrowed from maintenance. Her black blouse was rolled up to the elbows, pencil skirt hiked up, tights no doubt laddered and torn from the several times she nearly toppled over. She jammed her knee into the step as the ladder threatened to wobble again.

“Shit!” She almost stumbled until Lexa steadied the death-trap.

“Is this one of your dead dad things? It feels like it might be?” Lexa said quite seriously.

Clarke huffed and climbed down from the ladder. The tinsel would have to wait for now, which was probably a very good thing considering how indecisive she still was about the colour scheme. She blew the strands of hair off her face and crossed her arms, eyeing her girlfriend up and down.

“This is very much a dead dad thing, thank you for asking,” she managed a tiny smirk at how silly the whole thing was.

Lexa briefly glanced over her shoulder towards the open door. In the hallway outside people were marching past, files under arm, coffee being carefully transported, ears always tuned for a perfect slice of gossip to share over their desk-dividers. Lexa turned back with a sigh and took Clarke by the hand towards the storage closet.

“Oh come on!” Clarke already began to sulk.

“Inside, now.” Lexa opened the door and pulled the old fashioned light switch cord.

There was barely enough room for both of them inside the closet once the door was closed. The lightbulb swung just above their heads and filing cabinets filled with account records from a time before they were born jutted into their spines. It was strangely comforting to be this enclosed and pressed up against her girlfriend. It earned a small smile that crept up Clarke’s cheeks despite her want to be difficult.

Lexa sighed and set warm palms either side of her waist.

“I haven’t brought my notepad with me, but if you tell me what is making you do a dead dad thing I can try very hard—”

“I love that you keep a meticulous record of stuff that triggers me, but you can’t protect me from Christmas.” Clarke pressed a small kiss to her nose. “Christmas is the best and worst time of year, and I refuse to let my father ruin it. I like to celebrate it to spite him.”

Lexa blinked and did the expression.

“Am I confusing you?” Clarke clarified.

“Very much.”

“He died around the holiday season and so Christmas makes me grieve but I don’t want Christmas to be sad so I force myself to enjoy it, or at least I try my hardest to enjoy it.” Clarke shrugged as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

“Oh,” Lexa blinked and tried her hardest to understand. “It’s just you don’t enjoy it when you look scruffy and now you look very scruffy because of the whole rickety ladder thing, so do you think there might be better ways I can help you enjoy Christmas and not be stuck in dead dad things?”

“Did you just say I look scruffy?” Clarke glared and became aware of her dishevelled appearance.

“Yes, very lovingly,” Lexa reminded her with a pleased smile.

“There’s no fixing this one. Christmas is unbearable and I do what I can to make it bearable. I know it’s not easy to explain but I’m just doing the best I can…”

Lexa pulled her in for a quick kiss. It provided a lovely distraction. Her lips tasted of sweet peppermint, which meant she had finally found the candies that Clarke stuffed inside of her drawer with little cute messages scrawled on tags around the wrappers. Clarke couldn’t help but smirk into her girlfriend’s mouth and feel like a begrudging Santa’s helper, because of course Lexa wouldn’t put two-and-two together and realise she had put them their as a soft little gesture.

“I love you,” Lexa promised against her mouth.

“You taste like Christmas,” Clarke mumbled with a smile, nibbling her bottom lip.

“I can brush my teeth?” Lexa offered politely.

“No thank you.” Clarke grabbed her ass and pressed her harder against the cabinets.

…

“We have a problem.”

Lexa stormed back in to her office and caught a glimpse of Raven shrinking behind her computer screen. It was a strange sight because normally when somebody spoke it drew the attention of the intended audience, and Lexa was aware that she had spoken quite loudly. It left her blinking and staring at the crumpled heap of a woman hiding behind her computer screen, aware that Raven had heard her and yet unsure on why the statement was going unresponded.

“I was talking to you, Raven. I thought that was obvious because you’re the only person in the room?” Lexa knitted her brow and looked around, just to be sure.

Raven sighed and reemerged, her features barely peering over the top of the monitor.

“When you say we have a problem, you usually mean there is a problem that you specifically intend on me fixing. Which is fine, what with you being my boss and all, but it’s the December rush period, Lexa. I promise I’m trying my hardest to keep the system from crashing but—”

“Stop.” Lexa raised her hand. “You’re doing a really great job, Raven. It’s nothing to do with the system. Your work is absolutely impeccable and I couldn’t have done it better myself. This is very much a Clarke Griffin related problem and seeing as you’re my best friend I thought you could help?”

Raven blinked and stared, suddenly at a loss for words once again.

“Dude! Do you understand that the nature of conversation relies on two communicating parties?” Lexa glared.

“No, no, it’s not that!” Raven waved her hand. “It’s just… well… you’ve never really gave me a professional compliment before? I mean I know you like playing online games with me so I thought we were cool but… I’m your best friend?” Her eyes widened with what Lexa perceived to be surprise.

Lexa paused and felt uncomfortable.

“Yes. Do you not want to be my best friend?” She asked and wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“Are you crazy? Of course I’ll be your best friend! Get over here and tell me all about your girlfriend troubles, buddy.” Raven kicked out at a swivel chair towards her. “I need a break from this update anyway,” she added with a relieved sigh.

Lexa sat down and tried to order herself as best she could, because truth be told it was a very complicated matter. She furrowed her brow and sighed, glancing at Raven like a fish out of water. It felt strange to open the conversation with the facts of Clarke’s father’s death, but that’s where she started. That is where she felt safest. Rooted in facts and quantitative information that couldn’t be lost in translation, which was a feeling she deeply hated. Raven nodded her head with each pause for breath, which was reassuring. Lexa breathed a sigh of relief as she got the explanation of Dead Dad Syndrome out of her system.

“So Clarke feels down during the holidays because of her dead dad?” Raven cocked a brow.

“Yes.” Lexa paused and leaned backwards, frustrated and unsure why. “But it’s not as simple as that. She celebrates Christmas very… vigorously,” she settled on the descriptor and fiddled with papers on the desk. “But I can tell it makes her sad and usually I’m very good at finding ways to distract her and make her happy but it’s like she doesn’t want to be made happy and I don’t know what to do with that—”

“Breathe.”

“Alright.”

The room became quiet for a moment. Lexa sat there and was unsure on why it was they were focusing so much time on breathing, but she did as requested, regardless. She inhaled and exhaled, pondered on her conundrum, and then inhaled and exhaled again.

“I’m breathing and I still don’t feel closer to a resolution. That wasn’t good advice,” Lexa said after a moment.

“You do know it’s okay for her to be sad sometimes, right? I don’t want to speak down to you or anything but I just want to check that you understand that she will always grieve, and that’s alright.” Raven shrugged as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

Lexa felt her eyebrows furrow.

“But that’s not alright.” Lexa stiffened and didn’t know what to do with herself. “I love her and I want to make her happy? I know she can’t be happy all the time but…” She became stuck.

“Maybe loving her when she’s sad is what counts?” Raven suggested. “That’s when people want to be loved on the most, right?”

“I guess, yeah.”

It made sense in Lexa’s mind the more she thought about it. When she was happy, she didn’t really care much for hugs. When she was sad she didn’t really care much for hugs either, but that was just because they felt over-stimulating. If she did care for hugs then when she was sad she would want them the most — she understood that. In that regard, she could also understand that maybe just simply loving Clarke while she needed to be sad could be a melancholic happiness all in itself. It was a lot of emotional processing for one afternoon, and so she sighed and glanced at Raven.

“Do you think I should just let her get it all out? I could get her a puppy for Christmas too though. I think she would like a puppy. She could name it after her dad?”

“No! definitely do not buy a puppy and tell her you named it after her dead dad, Lexa!”

“You don’t think it will cheer her up?”

“I think it will keep her therapist busy?”

“I’m sure I’ll figure it out.” Lexa sighed and scratched her chin. “Do you want to come over later? Clarke is putting her Christmas tree up and it would be nice to have someone there who isn’t working through her emotional baggage.”

There was a loud sigh at the door that made both of them turn around.

“Did you just tell Raven I’m emotionally stunted?” Clarke slumped in exasperation, the files in her hand slapping her thigh.

It didn’t stall her for long. Clarke walked towards the desk they were both sitting at with a roll of her eyes and placed the files down in the in-tray. She leaned down and snuck a chaste kiss against Lexa’s temple.

Raven spoke up.

“For what it’s worth, she was also talking about how much she loved you and was excited to do Christmas things with you this year.” Raven span around on her swivel chair, smiling and lying through her teeth.

Lexa turned back to her girlfriend and shook her head.

“I didn’t say any of those things.” She blinked. “We were very much talking about you being emotionally stunted and how I can find ways to make you feel better. Raven must have misheard, but for the record, I do love you very much and I am excited to do Christmas things with you this year.” Lexa reassured with a beaming smile.

Clarke paused and couldn’t help but smile back.

“Thanks for being honest,” she whispered and kissed her temple again.

“Always.” Lexa squeezed her hand. “I need to head up to a meeting, I don’t normally practice favouritism but if you want to show your file to Raven I’m sure she’ll help you.” She nodded towards the fresh ticket on the in-tray.

Lexa got up and strolled out of the room as if nothing had happened. It left Raven burning crimson, wishing the floor would swallow her whole.

“So,” Clarke jumped in her girlfriend’s warm seat. “Apparently you’re coming to my place for dinner later? I take it Lexa got round to mentioning she thinks of you as a good friend?” She raised a brow.

“I’m sorry, about trying to cover for her.” Raven blurted and didn’t know where to look. “I didn’t want you to think that… you know… we had been…”

“Talking shit about me?” Clarke pulled her file out of the in-tray and flicked it open to the page that needed signatures. “Don’t sweat it, it’s completely fine. Just know that if you ever tell anyone about my emotional baggage, I will end you.” She shot her a sideways glance.

“Of course! No, I would never dream of it!” Raven tried to play it off. “Can I ask you a question though?”

“Go ahead."

“How do you do that?” Raven became slightly dumbfounded. “When Lexa sticks her foot in it and you just let it go so easily? You don’t seem like the forgiving type…”

Clarke sighed and closed the file on the desk. She thought about it for a moment and twisted the chair so they were facing one another.

“You really want to know?” Clarke raised her brow.

“Well, yeah?” Raven nodded.

“Lexa never lies to me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small thing or a big thing. It doesn't matter if she knows I might be mad, or if she knows she’s doing something that will upset me. She always, always tells me the truth. Once in a while, sure, I’ll be angry with her. But I knew what I was signing up for.” Clarke just shrugged and that was that. “I love her just the way she is, warts and all.”

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Chapter Text

The process of applying to become foster parents wasn’t an easy one. It was made all the more difficult considering social services were utterly fixated on Lexa’s autism. Lexa handled it better than she did, Clarke knew that. It still didn’t stop her fists winding tight and her breath catching in the back of her throat every time some ill-fitting suit sat in the living room during a home visit wanted to know the specific and intimate details of Lexa’s disposition as though high-functioning autism was a weapon that might endanger a child. Clarke had heard the horror stories, foster families who took in kids just for the paycheck, and here they were, perfectly stable and stand up members of the community submitting to home inspections that Clarke suspected were far more frequent and thorough than their peers.

“It’s unusual for someone with special needs to be approved for fostering—”

“My partner doesn’t have special needs,” Clarke barked a little too abruptly and placed her hand on Lexa’s thigh. She composed herself and exhaled, forcing a polite, prim smile. “Lexa is neurodivergent, she doesn’t have a learning difficulty, she is not special needs or disabled. She just has a different perspective and life experience. It’s a good thing, Karen.” Clarke firmly nodded. Lexa blinked and thought earnestly for a moment, Clarke could see the car crash coming a mile off and prepared accordingly. 

“I mean it is a learning disability and so it does make my life quite hard—”

“Different.” Clarke interrupted again. “It makes her life different.”

“Are you going to interrupt us both the entire meeting?” Lexa looked at her with an exasperated expression.

“Sorry,” Clarke mumbled and pulled back slightly. If Lexa wanted to fly solo, on her head be it. “I’ll top up everyone’s coffee.” She forced a polite smile and trudged to the open-planned kitchen with the two mugs in her hands, listening to the chatter in the background.

“She loves you, huh?” Karen chuckled.

“Very much. I love her more than anything too.” That part softened Clarke.

“You understand that foster care is very taxing work, Miss Woods?” Karen paused for a moment and shuffled in the chair, thoughtful of how to word it appropriately. “As somebody with communication difficulties… it’s going to be very difficult to find a child who would be suitable for this home environment.”

“I was a foster child and my sister was too before our mom adopted us. I think I mentioned that the second time we met?” Lexa inhaled calmly and thought too earnestly for her own damn good. “I don’t think anyone is a perfect foster carer. My mom wasn’t. She didn’t know a lot about autism when I went to live with her but she learned as she went along and… I think I have a normal life. I think we have a good life… enough to share some with a child who needs it, at least.”

“And you would be open to fostering a child with disabilities?”

“That depends how you interpret the word disability, but yes. I’m very patient, I’m very thorough when it comes to routine, and Clarke and I have the great benefit of being able to work from home if necessary. We would be very good foster parents to any child who needs a home, even if it’s just for a little while.”

“Thank you for the honesty, Lexa. I’m happy to tell you that I will be approving your application as a couple.”

***

Lexa span slightly in her swivel chair and listened to the meeting drone on. Regardless of her boredom, the notetaking was meticulous and thorough. She asked questions despite her lack of her interest, although that didn’t stop her prefacing them with warnings of how incredibly bored she was. It made the other people in the meeting laugh, and while she wasn’t sure whether they were laughing at her or with her, it felt like a productive excursion from the computing department nonetheless. Also the coffee was very good. It was warm and not too hot. Sweet, not too rich. They were also going to the farmer’s market after work to get the good strawberries, hopefully three punnets if Clarke could be persuaded. The day still had potential yet.

“Lexa?” Clarke burst around the door frame, dishevelled and out of breath. “A word?” Clarke inhaled a big breath, and then another one, as though she had ran all the way here from finance and took the stairs two, maybe even three at a time.

Lexa didn’t even take her eyes off the presentation. “Not right now. I’m in a meeting, Clarke.” She shooed her slightly.

“It’s important,” she said emphatically. “Really, really important.”

Lexa paused and looked around uncertain for a moment. “Clarke, I’m in a meeting,” she said, certain that she had only clarified that a moment ago. “You’ll have to go back to your office and send me a calendar request—”

“Oh fuck the meeting!” Clarke burst giddily and stormed in to take her by the hand. “Just, come. Here, come on. Here we go. That’s it. Say goodbye to everyone, we’re going home for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Clarke?” Lexa knitted her brow together as they stepped out into the hallway, the door closing slowly on the murmuring board room.

“The foster agency called.” Clarke grinned, her eyes wide and her fingers locked over her chest excitedly.

“Oh?” Lexa said mutely, still unsure of what any of the urgency was about. “What did the foster agency say?”

“They have a little girl. Her name is Olive, she is three years old, she has autism too, and she needs foster mommies to take care of her.” Clarke’s eyes lit up and pearled with tears.

“Why are you sad? We could be her foster mommies, Clarke? This is a good thing.” Lexa gently reasoned and took her girlfriend’s wrists softly. “If she has autism too then maybe we could be very helpful? We should call them back and see if we can meet her.” The worry seemed to make Clarke giggle, which was mind boggling to Lexa but never not appreciated. The sound of Clarke’s laughter was far lovelier than any spoken verb, noun, or adjective.

“Ten steps ahead of you. Get your things, we’re going over there now.” Clarke patted her hip.

“Wait, right now?” Lexa blinked and did the arithmetic in her head for how long it would take to get across the city and back in time for the last of the farmer’s market, which was on the other opposite end of the city. It didn’t look good.

Clarke narrowed her eyes slightly. “Do you have something more pressing to do today than meet our little girl?”

Lexa paused for a moment. “Well no,” she said earnestly, deciding strawberries perhaps weren’t that important in the grand scheme of things. “Certainly not when you put it like that.”

***

“She is non-verbal,” Karen reiterated.

Lexa nodded. “Mhm. You mentioned that five minutes ago, we still don’t mind.”

“She doesn’t know much sign language yet, it’s very basic.”

“Yes, again, you mentioned.” Lexa turned and looked at Clarke with an annoyed, trying expression. “We might still have time to go to the farmer’s market but not if she keeps repeating—”

“Okay, yes, strawberries. I know.” Clarke patted Lexa’s knee and laughed uncomfortably, palpably aware of the social worker’s acute stare furrowing at them both. “We thought it might be nice to take Olive to the farmer’s market to pick something to eat tonight.”

Lexa’s eyebrows furrowed. “We never said—”

“Shut up,” Clarke whispered quietly. “I love you, but please, please, not right now baby.”

Clarke never told her to shut up. Lexa couldn’t remember off the top of her head the last time those words had been uttered and her memory was very good. Clarke hadn’t said them aggressively, and so while it was a rude thing to say, Lexa privately understood that it must be for a very important reason. She exhaled and made herself resolute to try her very best not to stick her foot in it, which was metaphorical, of course. There was nothing to actually get her foot stuck inside of. It was just a phrase people used. The same way ‘shut up’ didn’t actually mean to close something in an upwards motion. It was just a way of saying, in so many words, please be quiet. Although regrettably for Clarke, it was quite a rude way of saying it. They would talk about it at home… hopefully over fresh strawberries, Lexa imagined.

“This might not work out and it’s important you know that’s okay…” Karen eyed them both carefully and pushed out yet more pieces of paper to be signed. “You. Well. You guys were the first people who came to mind when Olive came back from her last foster family, she’s been through four so far, they find the temper tantrums—”

“They’re not temper tantrums,” Lexa interrupted as she read over the paperwork, pushing her glasses back up her nose as she glanced up at the social worker. “They’re overstimulation episodes. She’s three, she has no way to communicate what is triggering her. The world is a scary, overwhelming place when you’re three. You should have called us before you called them. If you had, the three of us would probably be at the farmer’s market right now—”

“Lexa, I love you so much. Have I told you how much I love you?” Clarke stared at her deeply, as though just once, just this one time, she was willing herself to steer Lexa’s communication with the power of her mind. She never cared what Lexa said or did in front of other people, never, but this was different, this was the last hurdle and Clarke wouldn’t risk it for all the strawberries in the world.

Slowly, Lexa smiled and sighed. “I love you too,” she whispered.

Clarke privately thanked all the gods she didn’t believe in and turned back to the social worker. “We understand she has different needs. Our home is accessible, you’ve seen that for yourself. We would really like to proceed, assuming there’s anything left for us to sign…” Clarke nodded down to the mountain of paperwork they had already meticulously gone through.

“That should be everything.” Karen smiled. “If you’d like to follow me we’ll go see if they have Olive ready to go home.”

Home. The thought made Clarke grin and squeeze Lexa’s hand.

***

Olive was tiny and monumental. She stepped out of the care home toddling between them unassisted without so much as a whimper or a single tear, and Clarke had built herself up for an entire tornado of them. She was three years old and big for her age with bright blue eyes and curly blonde hair, non-verbal and yet somehow profoundly communicative with an intense stare that could cut diamonds. She was a fully grown woman. She was a tiny Lexa without the years of social conditioning. The two of them seemed to understand each other immediately, and Clarke was the one on the outside walking two steps behind them down the ramp, unsure of how so much of her beating heart could exist outside of her body without putting her into a cardiac arrest.

In her mind she had anticipated that Olive would be difficult, that she would be a complicated process of learning to love a tiny person who didn’t come from the same planet. But it was nothing like that. The love… it was instantaneous. It was embarrassingly immediate. It was somewhat terrifying. Clarke stared at the three year old toddling beside her girlfriend towards the car two-metres away and felt as though they were already getting it wrong.

“Do we hold her hand? We’re in a parking lot? We should hold her hand—” Clarke rushed forward to snatch that tiny curled fist wrapped around an elephant blankie. Lexa stopped her quickly, her hand shooting out and gently clasping Clarke’s wrist.

“She is three and she cannot run very fast because she’s chubby and only learned how to toddle a few months ago. You parked right outside of the door. There are no other cars here.” Lexa bleeped the key and set the tiny backpack and suitcase down. “We’re here, see? I’m body blocking her. She is chubby but fortunately for us I am bigger.”

“Stop calling the baby chubby—”

“She is chubby!” Lexa gawked.

“You’re not chubby. You’re perfect, Olive,” Clarke whispered to the toddler who was too busy playing with an elephant blankie to give much consideration to either of them. “She is perfect.” Clarke eyed her partner sternly.

“She can be perfect and chubby at the same time.” Lexa softened into a smile. “She is perfect. I like the rolls on her arms. If she decides that we’re allowed to touch her later then I’m going to squeeze them and undulate the fat between my fingers like she’s a bowl of jelly.”

“Okay firstly that’s hilarious, and secondly I love you.” Clarke rolled her eyes and meant it, but still didn’t know how to let go of her frustration, which was largely borne from her own worry.

“I love you too,” Lexa whispered with a grin.

Clarke felt her lips curl downward and blinked slowly, aware that Lexa couldn’t pick up on it and that it would be unfair to expect her to. “I don’t like that you didn’t let me hold her hand,” Clarke mumbled. “She could have darted and made a break for it.” She folded her arms sulkily.

“I’m sorry I did something that made you unhappy,” Lexa said earnestly and looked at her with warm, kind eyes. “I’m very happy right now because she’s coming home with us. I think she is too because we’re not touching her, which would probably be very overwhelming considering we’re still new to her. It’s kind of like when you get a hamster from the pet store and you have to leave it alone for a few hours so it can adjust—”

“Lexa she is not a fucking hamster!”

“I know!” Lexa gawked again. “You’re the only non-autistic person in the family now and yet the only one who doesn’t seem to understand a metaphor!” The statement caught Clarke off guard in the most pleasant, ticklish sort of way.

“We’re a family,” Clarke whispered to herself, dumbly. “We’re a family?”

“Wait. We’re not a family?” Lexa knitted her brows.

“No— I— I’m just. I was just processing. It’s just… wow.” Clarke stood back and breathed it in, stuck in a state of disbelief because this morning there were two of them and now… “You’re both my family?” Clarke uttered quietly.

“I mean. Yeah?” Lexa didn’t know what else to say, because of course that was the state of things. “Can you help me put her in the car? I don’t want to pull my back out—”

“Lexa!” Clarke burst in disbelief that they were going over this again.

“What?” Lexa rolled her eyes in frustration.

Clarke paused for a moment and stared at her girlfriend, her partner, the woman she was going to raise a foster child with, attend occupational therapy appoints beside, make life work despite the odds because they were on a team. The three of them, together. Clarke realised this was it. Despite her frustrations, despite her own worries, this was everything she had ever wanted and then some.

“Marry me?” Clarke suddenly whispered.

“Okay.” Lexa just shrugged. 

“Okay? You’ll marry me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Lexa nodded, her expression fairly mute. “Can you help me put her in the car now? I was thinking maybe we could go to the zoo tomorrow… it’s a weekday so it will be quiet-ish.”

Clarke blinked and weakly grinned, in love and only all the more in love on a moment to moment basis. She picked up the tiny backpack and suitcase, quietly processing her own emotions, quietly trying not to laugh at the juxtaposition because for Lexa things were far more simple.

“What time do you want to go to the zoo?” Clarke asked questions despite her brain being mush.

“After the courthouse.”

“Wait, what?” It made Lexa turn back around from where she was buckling a red-faced toddler getting ready to bawl, absolutely at the end of her tether. “Oh.” Clarke’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, you— we’re getting married tomorrow? Yeah, okay, yeah sure.” Clarke nodded emphatically and pushed forward to help buckle Olive in.

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Chapter Text

Author’s Note/Acknowledgement:

I was twenty-one years old when I first started writing this story. I am nearly thirty now. For any new readers who are finding this in 2024 … who are perhaps twenty-one years old and do not have an adult frame of reference for what the culture and vernacular looked like in 2017…

This epilogue isn’t for you.

This epilogue is for the six gay autistic bitches who vividly remember how uncool it was to be autistic back in 2017, and also for the sixty-thousand borderline personality girlies who, as we now know, were later discovered to have been mildly autistic women in disguise the whole time with a sprinkle-sprinkle of ADHD for added spice (I see you.)

This is my final ever fiction update, thank you all for growing-up with me.

—Diaph

***

To the northern outskirts where the real city met the start of suburbs and perfectly symmetrical starter homes, their white-picket fence stood with twinkling Christmas lights wound in meticulous trails around each individual panel. The flower beds and rose bushes were neater than the neighbours—prettier and more colourful than the rest of the street’s attempt at the millennial, middle-class suburban dream. Clarke took pride in her gardening, and Lexa quantified her wife’s efforts with equally meticulous attention to detail that she placed in the methods developed for measuring Clarke’s bonafide green thumb.

Bonafide. Number twenty-nine on the list of favourite adjectives; to describe something as genuine or real in a manner of expertise. It used to be number seventy-nine on Lexa’s definitive list of all-time favourite words, for two years during high school, then it fell off the list during the advent of college and all the new words thrusted suddenly into her vocabulary as a result. Bonafide then experienced its revival during the spring of 2016. Lexa got the department head position with the salary to match, Abby had called personally to offer the job, and in the conversation, Abby had loosely-described Lexa as a bonafide world-class expert in her field—so of course, her autism would be accommodated in any manner in which support felt helpful.

“Bonafide word-class expert.” Her mother’s eyes had shone glossy when Lexa put down the phone. “When you were a little girl, and the social workers asked if I would foster, they warned me you were a long hauler. That you were difficult to place, profoundly disabled, that you would likely never talk, never sit in a normal classroom, never learn how to make friends and get yourself into trouble the same way ordinary children are supposed to…and now? Bonafide, world-class expert in your field.”

“I was supposed to get in trouble? You always said to never do that?”

“My daughter, bonafide world-class expert. Oh, you were trouble from the day you were born…” Her mother smiled widely, and Lexa always remembered the way her mother smiled as she said it so full of pride, because it was the third-last time she ever saw her mother smile before a massive heart attack killed her six weeks later, and the possibility of every smile she might have otherwise ever smiled instantly ceased to exist and died with her in the back of Anya’s speeding car. “Maybe you will have a daughter of your own someday,” her mother had seemed hopeful.

Anya scoffed and gave their mother a look. “Sure, Mom…”

“I could procreate.” Lexa blinked, finding her sister’s statement odd and unwelcomed. “I can do anything I put my mind too. I menstruate. I’m fertile. It…wouldn’t be all that difficult to gestate and carry a full-term pregnancy, assuming I’m physically healthy.”

“And then what, exactly?”

“What do you mean and then what?”

“I’m just saying…” Anya shrugged, at a loss. “Who mothers you and makes your doctor’s appointments and helps you buy groceries and teaches you what pedestrian crossings and shortcuts to take on your way to work while you…what exactly? Mother a baby? Who is mothering you through the process of being a mother, Lexa?”

“Her mother.” Their mom glared at Anya. “Me, her mom, that is what every mother does when her child becomes a first-time mom. Don’t do that.”

Lexa blinked and instantly understood the subtext. “Is Anya angry with me because I won’t get my tubes tied?” She looked at her mother for clarification.

Anya grew tighter. “Lexa, I have no problem with Costia. She is a woman, you are a lesbian, I get it. I do. The math makes sense. The fact she has…” Anya stopped. “The trans-issue does not bother me, it’s not the trans-issue.”

“The fact you’re referring to my girlfriend’s penis as ‘the trans-issue’ seems like it does, in fact, bother you somewhat.”

“Okay.” Anya nodded at Lexa. “It bothers me. It bothers me that my developmentally disabled sister is in a sexually-active relationship that could lead to the procreation of a child. Particularly when the transgender woman you’re in a relationship with—just in case you forgot too, Mom—also has fucking autism and high-support needs! So sure, I think that’s fucking irresponsible, and I also think it’s wildly unfair on you that none of this was dealt with before we arrived at this place, Lexa. So my anger is pretty fucking even-steven between you and Mom both, if we’re being honest.”

“Which place did we arrive too—adulthood?” Lexa furrowed her brow, unable to make it make sense. “Are you saying mom should have petitioned the family court to have me sterilised?” It wasn’t a rare occurrence, they had known other families over the years from support groups with severely disabled children, who for one reason or another had been…

Lexa stopped in her thought processes.

She didn’t feel severely disabled, or low-functioning, or high-levelled, or whatever the words were supposed to be for a person so profoundly autistic they could not care for themselves—could not make autonomous decisions about their body. Lexa didn’t feel that way one bit. She wasn’t sure why her sister felt that way at all.

“Anya isn’t saying that,” their mother quickly interjected. “Anya, tell your sister that is not what you meant…”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Lexa needed the conversation to stop.

It did, and perhaps out of guilt Anya never raised the issue again while Lexa’s relationship with Costia drew to an amicable, pleasant enough ending almost nine months exactly prior to meeting Clarke. But still, nine years later, Lexa could not forgive her sister for tainting the memory of being their mother’s bonafide world-class expert that day. The memories felt emotionally clouded. She told Anya as much often. Anya never addressed the matter, simply looked saddened, and then apologised for Lexa feeling that way which made zero sense and only infuriated Lexa all the more.

Then 2019 came, bonafide lost the wind in its sail and fell several places on the definitive list of all-time favourite words. Largely because new words occupied Lexa’s top five rank and pushed everything else down as a consequence.

Wife. A noun; a married woman when specifically considered in relation to her lawfully-wedded spouse. Wife rose to number three in the autumn of 2019. Largely, because she became Clarke’s wife and loved the way that sounded. Clarke’s wife. Mrs Griffin-Woods. Or, the other Mrs Griffin-Woods. She wasn’t sure which of them was Mrs Griffin-Woods and who was the other Mrs Griffin-Woods on any given day, until somebody called the house and asked for Mrs Griffin-Woods and then specified… “Oh—I apologise! The other Mrs Griffin-Woods, is she available?”

“No but I am also Mrs Griffin-Woods and so I am therefore allowed to speak on behalf of the other Mrs Griffin-Woods who lives here. Is she in trouble, or did she just forget to collect her birth control refill? Well. She doesn’t need birth control for the purpose of birth control, but I have to say it’s her birth control otherwise the insurance company gets weird—”

“This is she,” Clarke interrupted on the downstairs line. “This is the other Mrs Griffin-Woods speaking. Lexa, thank you so much. I’ve got it from here!”

Privately, Lexa liked that Clarke was statistically most often referred to as the other Mrs Griffin-Woods. She wasn’t sure why she liked being the objective, not-other Mrs Griffin-Woods. The first draft pick Mrs Griffin-Woods. The…

“Yes, this is Mrs Griffin-Woods speaking.” Mrs Griffin-Woods.

She just liked it. She just felt something deep and inexplicable heal inside of her soul—something she never knew to ever be hurt—every time she got to be the Mrs Griffin-Woods to Clarke’s other Mrs Griffin-Woods, which Clarke thought was silly and did not understand in the slightest. What did it matter who was primary and who was secondary?

But it did matter, because she was Mrs Griffin-Woods, and being Clarke’s wife in the most boringly neurotypical sense of the word was something the world wasn’t afforded the privilege of pretending she was anything less than somebody’s wife, somebody’s best-in-show Mrs Griffin-Woods.

Another new word then rose to the number one spot on her all-time favourite list in 202o. There it had stayed ever-since, which Lexa figured would always be the case. Her definitive list of all-time favourite words was perhaps now finally completed.

Mommy.

Also a noun; a highly-specific version of Clarke Griffin-Woods that only tangentially existed when referenced, considered or summoned by Olive Griffin-Woods, their allegedly non-verbal daughter who apparently shared Lexa’s number one most favourite word of all-time. Which Lexa felt to be quite ironic, all things considered on the non-verbal autistic child front.

And so her life was perfect, or at least it felt that way. The Christmas lights were twinkling outside and Clarke had learned to simply let them be Christmas lights rather than dead dad Christmas lights, largely because their daughter liked to kneel in the windowsill and watch them twinkle and change before her bedtime, and Clarke had to precariously kneel in the windowsill and watch them too, otherwise Olive wouldn’t understand it was bedtime and simply got up and ran through the house in search of Ribbit and crayons and fruit roll-ups, which Lexa always gave her, and often found herself late in to the evening hoping that Clarke would perhaps forget to climb in the windowsill—or complain that she felt like a red-light prostitute being judged by the neighbours. Then Olive would refuse to go to bed. Then, Lexa—Ribbit—could have her favourite fifteen minutes of limelight and be their daughter’s favourite parent and give the five year old everything she wanted.

“Mommy!” The little girl in pyjamas held out her Barbie doll, shaking it emphatically with a twist of frustration in her expression. “Mommy!” Olive repeated, expecting Clarke to work miracles.

There were of course things only Clarke could do. That only Mommy was qualified for. A mind reader these days, Lexa watched from the kitchen island as her wife swiftly took Barbie and brought her closer for inspection. Clarke narrowed her eyes, glancing her arch-nemesis up and down—their daughter’s tattered, favourite and slowly dying toy with carefully re-poked blonde hairs and twice replaced knee joints—because since she was three years old, Olive simply refused to be separated from Barbie and the only person in the universe who could ever be trusted with Barbie when Barbie required a grown-up’s assistance because Barbie was no longer quite Barbie in the way Olive required her to be precisely Barbie…

“Mommy!” Olive growled again, pointing at the doll in Clarke’s hands as though it were obvious, saying the only single word she had ever uttered as though growing tired of repeating her request of her mother.

“A little help?” Clarke gulped in Lexa’s direction.

“She said Mommy.”

“You are also her mommy.”

“Yes, but you are Mommy. Proper noun. Capitalised. I am Ribbit, which I think you know and understand these distinctions and are simply trying to bide yourself time because Barbie may, perhaps, have outwitted you this time.” Lexa shook her head, sipping her coffee. “See. Look. She’s telling me to mind my own business…” Clarke followed Lexa’s gestured hand and glanced down at their daughter’s hemlock glare, which Olive was throwing in Lexa’s direction.

A small, frog-like ribbit erupted from their daughter’s mouth and said in so many words…

“Mama, stay in your lane. I believe Mommy has got this under control, thank you so much but we do not require your input.”

Clarke turned her gaze back to the Barbie doll in her hand with a deep hard sigh, then her eyes lit-up with realisation and the furrow lifted immediately off her brow. “The stitches. Barbie appears to have taken a tumble, Lexa, the hem of her dress has come down. Can you grab my sewing kit off the top-shelf?” Lexa moved to the cupboard where it was kept.

“Mommy!” She overheard Olive burst happily, rewarding Clarke with her abundantly relieved mood. “Good Mommy. Good Ribbit.”

“Did you just say…” Clarke stopped. “Lexa did she just?”

“Say another word? Yes, I think she was quite clear.”

Clarke blinked. “She said good Ribbit.”

“She said good Mommy too,” Lexa worried Clarke felt jealous.

“Yes I know but…” Clarke gestured enthusiastically at their child as though she were a genius. “She said good Ribbit.”

“Well yes but I am a very good Ribbit and so of course she was bound to say that at some point.”

“Isn’t it the cutest thing you’ve ever heard?”

“She said good Mommy too.” Lexa shook her head. “Good Ribbit was cute but I think good Mommy was very sweet, very-very cute. I’m processing it differently and you are making your neurotypical expressions, so I am going to process her in my distinct way and you are going to process it in your…”—Lexa mimicked the emotive, bouncy buoyant facial expressions her wife always did and Clarke burst with laughter despite the distinct lack of jokes to hand—“And we will arrive to the same conclusion at the end of all that processing which is, yes of course, she is an adorable child and we would still love her very much even if she committed heinously violent crimes.”

“Okay well, I’m not in love with the last part honey, but yeah, yes sure.”

“You wouldn’t still love her if she clubbed an endangered species of owl to death? If she pushed somebody off a cliff? I would still love her, and that terrifies me.”

“Lexa, baby girl, please tell me you haven’t told anybody else that exact statement—”

“Yes Clarke, I know it’s not appropriate to talk about that anymore with the other moms at her school.” Lexa sighed in frustration. She did not need the constant reminder except only sometimes, once in a while and very rarely at that. “I just think about that all the time. All of the horrific, terrible things she could do and still be this human that I would lie for. I don’t like lying but I think if our daughter pushed somebody off a cliff then I would…” Lexa paused. “Yes, I would lie. I would say she did not do that.”

“What if it was me?”

“That wouldn’t happen you’re so much bigger than she is.”

“But if she did?”

“You’re adding layers of complexity that I do not want to balance on this topic. Can you fix her Barbie doll? You’re…making me think about what it would be like if you weren’t here to fix the Barbie doll and the answer to that question is: shockingly loud and incredibly overwhelming. So, fix Barbie please Mommy. Then we’ll circle back to whether a five year old could feasibly push you off a cliff.”

Clarke grinned with the most heart-eyed expression, then she glanced down at their little daughter in her favourite dark blue pyjamas who appeared oblivious and innocent on the surface of things. Lexa hoped that was a good sign there would be zero matricidal fatalities. Clarke sewed Barbie’s sweater sleeve and the world was quietly correct again, and Lexa watched the entire time unsure of how Clarke still didn’t understand that Olive’s Barbie doll was supposed to be her. Down to the cashmere sweater and little gold-rimmed glasses which had long since been lost during the move. In Olive’s mind, Clarke was the woman all Barbies had ever aspired to be, and this specific Barbie was the most Clarke-ish Barbie that she could find on the shelf in the toy store that day.

Often, Lexa wanted to tell Clarke.

She always stopped just short of revealing all her daughter’s secrets, and simply figured it would be nicer when Olive was old enough to explain it to Clarke on her own blunt terms.

Clarke craned down when she was finished. She whispered like it was a secret just for them, “One day when you’re thirty and you have a daughter of you own, I will have hopefully saved enough money to replace this Barbie doll—because of course you chose a limited-edition Barbie doll with an eventual resale value higher than the down-payment we made on this house—and I was too besotted with you to notice those events as they transpired…” Clarke kissed the crown of Olive’s long blonde hair. “Thank you for that, Olive. Thanks so much. But until I can replace Barbie and buy your children Barbies one day too, I will always sew her sleeves back together.”

Lexa hesitated and felt the words stick together in her brain, remembering her mother and unsure why. When she came back to reality, Clarke was looking in her direction with an intent expression, noticing events as they transpired apparently.

“You okay, baby?” Clarke said quietly. “You looked far away?”

“You don’t think we should petition the court to have her sterilised?” Lexa blinked, blurting thoughts off the top of her head. “Not now obviously, she’s five, that wouldn’t make sense. I mean when she’s older. You don’t think that is a thing we should do?”

“What the fucking…” Clarke’s eyes went hateful, glowering and protective. “Have you lost your fucking mind, Alexandra?”

“Why are you calling me Alexandra?”

“If a doctor ever suggested! If a doctor so much as fucking inferred that as an option!” Clarke went bright red in the face.

Lexa noticed her hands had started to nervously wring, and Olive was suddenly crying from the ferocity in Clarke’s voice which added another thirty decibels to the ambient noise. Lexa closed her breath and inhaled, calming herself quickly.

“You would tell them…what?” She waited for Clarke to make sense. “That our developmentally disabled daughter might one day be a bonafide world-class expert in being a mother?”

“You don’t think she could have children one day?”

“Of course she could! I am asking if you think that is a thing we are supposed to make sure does not happen. I’m not saying she couldn’t or that she shouldn’t, I am asking what your thoughts are around the subject. I’m not saying we should…”

“Well it fucking sounds a lot like that!” Clarke began to cry, and Lexa froze like a deer in headlights. “She’s five, Lexa. She is fucking five years old and you didn’t speak until you were seven! Would I have my daughter sterilised…that is my baby girl! That is your baby girl!”

“Then answer the question with a straight answer because you are making big loud shouty words and scaring the shit out of us both.” Lexa went tight, taut and tense.

“No, Lexa! I would never allow that. I would never, ever allow doctors anywhere near her. And if you ever...” Clarke’s finger came up shakily to silence her wife who stood there perfectly quiet. “If you ever, ever so much as suggest something like that again I will leave you. I will divorce you. We will get a divorce.”

“But I didn’t suggest—”

“Yes, you did. You suggested it was a thing that could happen. A thing that we should consider. It’s okay Olive. It’s alright. Mommy and Ribbit are just…” She watched Clarke wipe her eyes and comfort their distraught daughter who understood nothing of their conversation, carrying her out of the living room. “Mommy and Ribbit are just pretending to have an argument…we’re just practicing for later on after bedtime…”

“I don’t want to argue later.” Lexa followed her wife’s tail down the hall.

Clarke span halfway up the staircase. “Then why would you ever ask me if we should petition the court to sterilise our child? How could you fucking ever ask me something like that?”

“Because that is what happened to me.”

Lexa stared at the bottom rung on the staircase.

For a moment, Clarke said nothing.

“Baby what do you mean that is what happened to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“If you’re telling me that somebody hurt you…I think we need to talk about it.”

“Not hurt…I wasn’t. My mother never went through with it.” Lexa glanced around their house, watching Clarke clutch their daughter tighter and tighter—fiercely protective. “I found the medical petition with my paperwork after she died. It was dated from 2009. So, when I was sixteen.”

“What did Anya say about it?”

“She doesn’t know about the paperwork, I was scared.”

“Do you still have it?”

“I was scared.”

“What does that mean, baby? What happened to the paperwork as a result of you being scared?”

“I tossed it, so that she wouldn’t find it.”

Clarke swallowed hard, her face tense and angry. “It’s okay. I’m not…” She hesitated. “Lexa I’m sorry I had no idea. I’m not angry anymore, not with you, please understand that I could not have known. Why were you scared Anya would find it?”

“In case she remembered something I don’t.”

“Baby girl.” Clarke closed her teary eyes. “Do you think something might have happened to you?”

“No,” Lexa shook her head. “I am scared in case she ever said anything to Anya about it, because clearly at some point in time she thought a hysterectomy might have been in my best interest, and I don’t believe any mother works through that kind of decision-making process when considering their daughter’s adult life unless they believe there’s a damn good reason. I don’t want to know if my mom thought I was incapable of being a good mother…that feels like a very terrible thing to know…”

“You are a wonderful mother.” Clarke wiped her cheeks with her wrist. “You’re a beautiful mother.”

“I am?” Lexa wasn’t sure.

At that, Clarke looked heartbroken.

“Clarke do you…” Lexa hesitated, but she was certain she had found the root cause of the complex feelings and chain-reactions over the last few weeks. “Clarke do you want more children?”

“I do.”

“With me, specifically?”

“Lexa.” Clarke closed her eyes, at her wit’s end. “Yes, that was implied.”

“And you believe I could have a baby and be a good mother? Or does that feel like some scary, impossible thing where you’re taking care of an autistic child and your retarded wife and then a newborn baby on top of everything else that you feel zero biological instinct toward—that I’m not intuitive enough to take care of by myself—and it all becomes this level of hardship that you never…” Lexa stopped and watched Clarke storm down the staircase toward her. “Please, please be soft. Please I am trying my very-best to not be…trouble.” Lexa clenched her eyes.

Fingertips raised her chin gently. Lexa opened her lashes. Clarke was staring down from two steps above with their quiet daughter on her hip. She paused, nodding and trying to be calm and gentle, which looked very strange because tears were drooling down her expressionless face and Lexa couldn’t make sense of that.

“I know you need me to be soft,” Clarke’s voice shook quietly. “But if I’m going to be soft then I need you to stop using that kind of language…it’s not the same as when we were younger anymore. I’m not just married to an autistic woman. I am the mother of an autistic child, Lexa, and when you speak about yourself and use those kind of words…” Clarke kissed Lexa’s temple where the curly dark baby hairs met smooth skin. “You are also talking about my child. You are talking about my little girl. My baby. And I need you to not speak about her like that because she is not a burden, she is not a retard and you aren’t either.” Clarke levelled seriously. “So please never use that word in our home again because it breaks my heart, that is the first thing.”

“Alright.”

“Second, can you please give me some benefit of the doubt that I’m not…fucking accruing an abundance of autistic people because I think I’ll go to Heaven, Lexa. It doesn’t matter if our children are not my biological children because they are my fucking children and you are not supposed to take care of them by yourself. That isn’t marriage. That isn't family.”

“Are you saying I could carry a baby and you would be okay with that?”

“Yes, I’m saying that I would be in love with that. I’m saying the thought of you giving me another child is…” Clarke paused. “Delightful, actually. Have you thought about whether you could handle that? Whether you want that?”

“That’s all I’ve thought about since I was twenty-three.”

“I mean the process…the physical reality of being pregnant…”

“I do not know the answer. I don’t know what the physical reality of being pregnant feels like.”

“I cannot protect you from those physical realities, that feels like a scary thought I need to process. Morning sickness, food cravings for stuff with weird textures, the pain of giving birth.” Clarke stopped. “I don’t think pregnancy is sensory-friendly for an autistic person, is what I’m trying to say, but if you’re comfortable with the discomfort then I am too.”

“I want to try and be comfortable with that discomfort?”

“Good,” Clarke stood straighter. “Then we’ll get some information about IVF?”

“I already have a presentation deck that I would like to show you, it’s very interesting and I have narrowed down the three clinics in-state that I would most like to visit.”

“You have?”

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Since…nine days after we got married?” Lexa noticed Clarke’s perplexion. “Should I have not done that?”

“You could have told me you were doing that.”

“The power-point wasn’t finished.”

“Okay,” Clarke said calmly, because it made sense in a very Lexa way. “What would have happened if I had been open to question you asked me earlier? What was the potential outcome of you litmus testing the sterilisation thing?”

“Divorce.” Lexa nodded in agreement. “I think if you had been seriously open to petitioning the family court when she got older then…yeah, possibly divorce?”

“Don’t do that again,” Clarke pecked her cheek. “We don’t communicate like that.”

“Alright, I love you. I’m sorry I did that.”

“I love you too, the argument is over. Come and put your baby to bed so that I can put you to bed and we can look at your deck together.”

“You don’t want to wait until tomorrow, or next week?”

“Tonight works.” Clarke nodded, her voice much more softer. “I need to go to bed happy otherwise I’m going to have a terrible night’s sleep and I…would like lovely dreams and zero headaches.”

Lexa scooped Olive and took her up the stairs.

“Ribbit,” Olive murmured.

“Ribbit-ribbit,” Lexa said back—a much more convincing frog.

“Ribbit-ribbit.”

“Ribbit.”

“Ribbit.” Clarke listened to them say this word back and forth, well aware they understood one another perfectly and at a complete loss over the details.

***

You are squeezing me too tight.

Sorry, little Ribbit. I just love you very much and it makes my arms squeezier than the appropriate amount of squeeze.

Ah, big Ribbit. You are sad. Come ribbit with me in the windowsill, and I will show you how safe the world can be for two Ribbits in good company. Will you fetch my secret extra fruit rollies? Perhaps three, five or seven of them?

Well you are my little Ribbit and I am your mother. So yes, of course I will always sneak you extra fruit rollies. Five seems very reasonable. You are ribbiting in prime numbers though, little Ribbit, and that is currently filling me with existential Ribbit dread, because I am not a number-Ribbit and Mommy happens to be an accountant.

Perhaps Mommy has a little of the Ribbit in her too?

A little, perhaps.