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She wakes up in the bathtub again. The hallway light flickers and her arms feel sticky with the potion she definitely remembers starting, but not.. not really anything else. She slumps a little deeper into the tub and wipes a hand against her t-shirt, noticing belatedly that it’s the only thing she has on. Honestly, at least she’s wearing clothes at all this time. This isn’t the worst state she’s found herself in after a magically induced blackout.
It’s not that Clarke is a bad witch. She’s not - she’s arguably a very good witch. It’s just that sometimes she gets a little hyperfocused on a project and forgets that contaminants are a thing, and her apartment isn’t, she supposes, the best environment to be experimenting. But it’s not like she can just haul these side projects into the lab, tinkering with unstable ingredients and questionable legality next to Susan from Accounting, who has been working on a charm to remotely collect past due balances for the past year and a half. So what’s a few nights she doesn’t remember. She usually finds her progress written in a soggy notebook on her kitchen counter in the mornings, anyway. It was a fine system. She turns the tap on with her toe and lets the water rise around her. When her arms start to float and the water hits her chin, she stays like that until her skin feels less.
Eventually, though, she does have to start moving. She sloshes water across the floor and doesn’t bother changing clothes, grabbing a towel from the rack and dripping towards the kitchen in search of her notes. Her heel skids against the floor when she hears a surprised grunt coming from her living room.
“Holy shit.”
Clarke has had these mornings before. She’s gotten caught up in ideas, eyeballing ingredients, and not being as strictly careful about stray crumbs or bits of paint on the counter as she should be. She doesn’t really know why she always wakes up in the tub, but she imagines her mid-blackout self has her best interest in mind. The point is, this isn’t her first time. Except it is the first time she’s ever walked into her living room with zero pants on to find a sleepy stranger staring wide-eyed at her from her couch.
She folds into herself so quickly she nearly falls over. “What the fuck?”
“Holy shit,” the stranger girl says again, and she takes three fumbling steps backwards before she thinks to avert her eyes. Clarke gets her limbs and heart rate under control enough to wrap the towel around her waist, so at least there’s that problem covered.
“Who are you?”
“I,” the girl has turned around completely at this point. “Lexa.”
“Okay.” She tries to relax her hand from where is it clutching her chest. “Okay, but like, who are you, why are you here?”
The girl - Lexa - turns around slightly, a little confused and very red. “You invited me.”
Clarke’s forgotten a lot of nights, but she’s never forgotten a girl. She takes a second to feel a little bad, and then another to examine Lexa a little more closely, and then she feels a lot worse for not remembering this.
“No,” Lexa turns back to her completely and raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t - you didn’t invite me for that.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
They’re quiet for a moment, and Lexa starts to fidget.
“Are you sure?” Clarke asks. She leans back against the kitchen counter and crosses her arms. She’s still wearing a hand towel and a t-shirt she took a bath in, but now that she’s had a moment, she doesn’t really believe she wouldn’t make a pass at the girl across from her.
“Yes,” Lexa nods, and then pauses. “No. No, actually I don’t remember anything after you invited me in.”
“You’ve got more than I do,” Clarke shrugs. She turns and rummages through the papers on the counter for clues. There’s a paint brush soaking in a plastic tupperware half-filled with a memory aiding potion, and she sighs. Perhaps not her best batch.
“I remember before,” Lexa hums as she grabs a sweater from the floor and tugs it over her head. “Something burning. And a sound? Like steam?”
“That sounds right.”
“And then I woke up. There was a dog licking my neck. I,” she pauses. “I don’t know where it went, though.”
At that moment, because Clarke’s entire life is a joke, her front door clicks open and slams against the wall.
“You had better be dead, Griffin,” Raven stomps into the room, a tiny, scowling stormcloud. The dog bounds in behind her.
“Taco,” Clarke nods at Lexa. “My familiar.”
“Your what?” Clarke doesn’t respond, just turns to look at her.
“There is something purple splashed all over my kitchen,” Raven shoves her finger into Clarke’s chest. “You always come in all drippy. Did you touch the boxes I told you not to touch? Because they suddenly have polka-dots and won’t explode.” Clarke gives her her best innocent face, and Raven growls at it.
“Your familiar was licking my neck?” Lexa
“Sorry,” Clarke ignores Raven completely. “He’s - Well, he does what he wants.” Lexa sits down.
“I’ve never met anybody with a familiar before,” she breathes. Her hand moves up to skim against her neck and she’s staring with wide eyes at the happy blonde dog.
“He’s honestly more trouble than he’s worth. You can take him.” Taco stops short, midway through snuffling into one of Clarke's new boots, completely affronted. “Don't act surprised,” she says to him, and he huffs back at her.
“Clarke Brando Griffin.”
“I’m am not telling you my middle name, Reyes,” Clarke finally addresses her. “And it’s not Brando.”
“Did you,” Lexa shakes her head. “That’s part of your soul. You can't just offer someone part of your soul.”
“Dramatic,” Clarke rolls eyes.
“Clarke,” Raven snaps again.
“Are you hungry?” Clarke turns back to Lexa. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”
“You can’t ignore me forever,” Raven says.
“Um, sure,” Lexa stands, but doesn’t move.
“Great. We’ll talk later, babe,” she presses her lips quick against Raven’s cheek, who clenches her jaw until the whole bottom of her face is scrunched and grimacing.
“I’m going to charge you an entry fee,” Raven says when Clarke breezes away in search of clothing.
“Bye, Raven.”
Lexa gives her a silent, confused wave goodbye on her way out.
---
Clarke orders a coffee carafe full of mimosa, and Lexa wonders just what the fuck kind of week she’s having.
---
There’s something she’s forgetting. Clarke is hunched over her kitchen counter, one eye on a half-finished canvas propped up against her toaster, and the other skimming through lists of almost-potions - potions she’s just about cracked, but need that final kick. The kick, to be fair, is normally what lands her in the bathtub with a wicked dehydration headache, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. She hears a shuffle at her front door and she actually groans out loud, because she can’t negotiate an entry fee with Raven any more, she just can’t.
“Clarke?” Lexa’s voice lilts in instead, and she finds herself smiling. “Your door was open and it smells like burnt hair in the hallway.”
“Sorry.”
“There’s that noise again,” Lexa moves farther into the apartment. “It’s like - simmering. But louder.” She pauses, head tilted. “Is it you?”
“No,” Clarke laughs. “Probably not. Don’t be weird, get away from me. What are you doing?”
Lexa looks like she’s still listening pointedly at Clarke, but she drops a take out container on the counter in front of her. “I was out, I picked you up a salad.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I’ve never seen so much beige food in my entire life and I’m worried for your heart.”
“I have a potion for that,” Clarke scoffs.
“I am literally watching a tube of paint drip into an old chinese food container labelled ‘witchy vitamins’ right now, Clarke.”
“Okay so my organization isn’t the best,” Clarke scowls at her and grabs for the container. “Are there pecans in here?”
“No?”
“Next time get pecans.”
---
“Have you picked a specialty yet?” Lexa is laying upside down in an arm chair while Clarke sketches absentmindedly, sprawled on her stomach on the living room floor. She’s spent more time in Clarke’s apartment over the past week than she has in her own, and while she keeps complaining about the stacks of fraying, unlabeled notebooks and open tubes of paint left on the floor and waiting to be stepped on, she hasn’t stopped dropping by when Clarke leaves the door open for her.
“Sure,” Clarke shrugs.
“That’s great, Clarke.”
“I’m going to quit witching altogether to draw caricatures of tourists on the sidewalk.”
“So we’re still deciding.”
“Sure,” Clarke shrugs again.
---
Clarke’s door is open more often now, since Raven has enforced a strict boundary that prohibits either one from entering each other’s apartments and has resulted in them just shouting from across the hall. Raven is considering a charmed tin can and string situation, but those plans are firmly on hold once she catches sight of Lexa and her older sister pushing a couch down the hall, swearing the entire way.
“Griffin,” Raven shouts, and Clarke wonders how any of their neighbors haven’t tried to have them killed yet. “Who’s the hot blonde?”
“I don’t know, Raven, why don’t you ask her?”
“Hey,” Raven calls. “Hey, Lexa. Who’s the hot blonde?”
“These are my neighbors,” Lexa tells her sister, who just nods.
“Hey,” Raven says again.
“That one makes poison,” Lexa nods her head towards Clarke’s apartment, and Clarke lobs a shoe in her direction. “And I don’t know what that one does, but she makes a lot of noise,” Lexa nods towards Raven’s door.
“I sure do,” Raven ambles over to lean against her doorframe and smirk at them.
“Very charming,” Lexa notes, and Anya rolls her eyes. “This is my sister.”
“Come here often?” Raven crosses her arms and adjusts her slouch. Anya is glowering at her, but it looks like that might just be her face. Regardless, Raven’s into it.
“Ask her how she feels about dates,” Clarke shouts. “No, wait. Raisins. It’s raisins first, and then dates.”
“Nice as this is,” Lexa huffs, “We should get this inside.” Raven grin widens and Lexa holds up a hand at her and just says, “No.” Anya looks a little amused.
“Sure,” Anya shrugs. “Why not.” Raven looks surprised and gleeful all at once.
“Clarke,” she shouts. “Clarke, I’m going out with your girlfriend’s sister.” Clarke feels something twisty in her stomach and Lexa tries very valiantly to hide the blush spreading across her cheeks. “Clarke, we’re gonna be sisters.”
----
Clarke wakes up in the tub again, but this time there’s a bottle of water tucked under her arm and a blanket has been settled over her. She is wearing underwear this time. Her apartment is quiet and empty, and she feels just a little off all day.
---
She drinks a bottle of tequila in the hallway with Raven and stumbles into a bookcase on her way to bed. She knocks a tupperware into the corner and leaves it - it had a lid, probably.
In the morning, there is a six-inch hole in the wall that separates her apartment from Lexa’s. She puts a brownie on a plate and slides it through in apology.
---
She invites Lexa over the next afternoon to help her fix the wall, but Lexa just prods her towards the couch and sets to it alone. She has a toolbox that has no actual tools in it, but whatever she’s doing seems to be working. Halfway through the patch, she catches Clarke staring.
“I wasn’t looking at you,” Clarke says when she’s met with just a small smirk. “You’re very close to the TV.”
“Okay.”
“And the window.”
“Right.”
“There are a lot of things I could be looking at.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
“This is mostly done. Do you want to paint it yourself?” Clarke shrugs, and Lexa packs up her toolbox and sets it on the counter.
“Thanks. You should let me buy you dinner or something.” She clears her throat. “To apologize.”
“Like a date? Are you asking me on a date?”
“No,” Clarke says. “Of course not.”
“No, of course not,” Lexa agrees.
“But,” Clarke hesitates. “But I mean. I wouldn’t be opposed. I mean if you wanted to maybe do something sometime.”
“We do stuff all the time, Clarke.”
“Oh,” Clarke nods. “Okay, you’re going to make this painful.”
“Yes.”
“I would like you to finish the paint, then. Could you bend down just a little more this time? Be a little more fixy, give me something to work for.”
“Like this?”
“Go out with me.”
“Alright,” Lexa grins. “I guess.” She moves in a little closer, a little slow, and Clarke just rolls her eyes and grabs for the front of her shirt.
“You guess,” she scoffs. They do very little talking after that.