Chapter Text
“I don’t care if the whole neighborhood has garden gnomes, we’re not having them.” Clarke blinks, taking off her jacket with a little more force than strictly necessary, and turns to Lexa with a frustrated sigh.
“You’re being difficult on purpose. Why not just blend in with the neighbors?”
“I don’t want to blend in. Garden gnomes are a ridiculous affront to front lawns. They should be banned immediately.” She watches in silence as Lexa heads to their kitchen, obviously intent on making herself her ‘calming tea,’ her preferred drink for whenever Clarke ‘was being difficult.’
“I think you may be overreacting,” she finally mutters, wishing she wasn’t at least partially amused by Lexa’s vehement hatred of garden gnomes. Lexa stares at her, her hands on her hips, her lips curled in distaste.
“Overreacting? Have you seen them? With their pointy hats and their silly, most likely evil grins? Their existence is pointless. And I don’t want them.”
“I thought you said marriage was about compromise.”
“Thanks, Clarke. I do so love it when you use my own words against me so that you can have your own way.” Clarke takes a deep breath, trying to quell the sudden urge to smack her head against the wall (or more accurately, the wall that was her wife).
“This is not a big deal, they’re just garden gnomes.”
“Well, if it’s not a big deal then why don’t you give up on the idea?”
“Because the whole neighborhood has them, Lexa! We’re moving into our first house, don’t you want our neighbors to like us?”
“I don’t particularly care, no.” Clarke closes her eyes and counts to ten in her head, needing to keep her annoyance under control. Lexa’s tea, however, isn’t ready yet, so she continues to rant. “It’s not like they can stop us from moving in because we refused to have garden gnomes. Besides, if the presence of fucking garden gnomes, or lack thereof, is used as some sort of determining factor of how well we’re liked, then I’m not entirely sure I want to be liked by these people anyway.” The kettle begins to whistle and Lexa sighs, shaking her head as she busies herself with preparing her cup of tea. “Garden gnomes. Honestly,” she mutters to herself at one point, shaking her head.
“Are you done?” Clarke asks after a minute of silence, watching Lexa take careful sips of her tea.
“For now.”
“I like them, Lexa,” Clarke says softly, giving up on outright arguing and settling on a different tactic. “I think they’re cute.” Lexa’s shoulders stiffen, but her nose wrinkles in dislike.
“You have horrible taste,” she says primly, her eyes wary over her teacup, watching Clarke step closer.
“I married you.”
“Like I said, horrible taste.” Clarke is so close that she can smell the tea on Lexa’s breath, feel the hot steam from the cup as Lexa sets it on the countertop, her eyes still wary and never wavering from Clarke’s. “I know what you’re doing,” she says, “and though it may look like it’s working, it’s not.” Her eyes flick down to Clarke’s lips before focusing once more on her eyes. “It’s not,” she repeats firmly, clearly trying to remind herself of that fact.
“I have noidea what you’re talking about,” Clarke says, trapping Lexa between the counter and herself, her arms on either side of her wife. “It’s just, this is the last week we’ll ever spend in this apartment, and I thought we should celebrate.” But as she leans in for the kiss (totally forgetting why she’d wanted to be so close to Lexa in the first place, all thoughts of garden gnomes and arguments thrown out of the window), Lexa actually ducks under her arm and takes several frantic steps back, her eyes wide.
“Raven and Octavia are coming to help us pack tomorrow. We’ll need a good night’s sleep to deal with them,” she says, swallowing hard. Without another word, she turns her back and slips into their bedroom, leaving Clarke in the kitchen with a barely touched cup of tea.
xxx
“I’m telling you, she was weird,” Clarke says, handing Octavia a bottle of water. The girl takes it gratefully and drinks greedily before collapsing onto the ground next to several packed boxes, shrugging.
“On a scale of ‘Lexa wanting to ask you out for the first time’ to ‘Lexa when high,’ how weird?” she asks. Clarke smiles fondly at the memory of Lexa when she was on morphine after having her appendix removed. She’d never been as verbally affectionate as she’d been that night… “Clarke?”
“I dunno. Probably somewhere around ‘Lexa meeting you and Raven for the first time’ weird.”
“Oh. Huh. That’s pretty bad.”
“Yeah.”
“Did she talk to you this morning?”
“Other than to say bye? No.” At Octavia’s look, Clarke quickly clarifies. “It was early. She just kissed me and left, she does that a lot. She hates waking me up.”
“You mean you hate it when she wakes you up.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“Maybe she had a traumatic thing involving garden gnomes when she was a kid.”
“You’d think she’d just say that, though. Besides, how can garden gnomes be traumatic?” Octavia shrugs again.
“Who knows? But Bellamy is terrified of teddy bears.”
“Is that why he hates Lincoln?” Octavia rolls her eyes.
“Oh ha ha,” she deadpans, throwing her now empty bottle of water at Clarke’s head. “How much do you want to bet that she’s ranting to Raven right now?” Clarke sighs, moving so that she’s sitting next to Octavia.
“I think she’d get Raven in the divorce.”
“Yeah, she would.”
“Raven’s a fucking traitor.”
“Because she won’t tell you anything Lexa tells her?” Octavia says with a laugh, bumping her shoulder with Clarke’s. “It’s your own fault for marrying someone we all like.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And this gnome thing will blow over, Clarke. Don’t worry.” Clarke bites her lip, unsure, but she nods anyway.
xxx
She thought inviting Octavia and Raven over for dinner would help diffuse the tension, but if anything, Lexa looks more tense than she did last night. They’re sitting on the ground, surrounded by their packed up belongings, boxes of pizza littering the floor. Clarke gives Raven a significant look, a look her best friend (soon to be ex-best friend) dutifully ignores, choosing instead to offer Lexa another slice of pizza. When Lexa gives her a curt shake of the head, Raven lets out a dramatic sigh.
“Shit, I can’t do this.”
“Do what?” Clarke asks the second Lexa begins shaking her head vehemently.
“Clarke, I have a confession.” Raven pauses, looking at Lexa for a moment before turning back to Clarke with a melancholy expression. Octavia begins to snigger. “I spent all afternoon freaking Lexa out with pictures of zombie garden gnomes.”
“You didn’t freak me out. I said, and I quote, ‘better these affronts to nature than the normal ones.’” Clarke blinks, her mouth falling open.
“You’d rather have zombie garden gnomes on the front lawn of our home than just fucking normal ones? What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? At least zombies are different! And they perfectly encapsulate how stupid having garden gnomes in the front of your house is. I mean, right?” She looks to Raven and Octavia, searching for support, which Raven all too happily gives. Octavia giggles a little more before giving Clarke an apologetic look.
“You said you wanted a compromise, Clarke. Well here it is.”
“I’m not putting zombie garden gnomes in front of our house!”
“But—” Clarke shakes her head, not allowing Lexa to speak.
“Why can’t you give me this one thing? I mean, especially something so stupid?” Lexa blinks, her shoulders falling, looking positively deflated, before she lets out a sigh and gives Clarke a stiff smile.
“We’re out of wine. I think I’ll go buy some.” She pointedly ignores the nearly full bottle right in front of her and gets to her feet, forgetting her coat in her haste to leave the apartment. Clarke makes to go after her, but Raven shakes her head.
“I got this.” Without bothering to listen to Clarke’s protests, she’s gone (Lexa’s coat in hand), and Clarke is left sitting with Octavia, staring blankly at the spot Lexa just vacated.
“So the gnome thing was a little more serious than we anticipated,” Octavia says, falsely cheery. “Still think it’ll blow over soon.”
xxx
Despite Octavia’s assurances, it doesn’t blow over soon.
Lexa isn’t mad, at least, Clarke doesn’t think so. She’s just as normal as ever. But the second Clarke mentions their new home, she stiffens, as if she’s anticipating an attack. Clarke allows this behavior for two days before she has enough.
“Will you just tell me your problem?” she demands, rinsing out her mouth and following Lexa into bed. Lexa plays with the covers for a moment before she turns onto her side, and even in the darkness, Clarke feels like she can see her wife’s green eyes (she can’t, not at all, but somehow imagining Lexa’s eyes makes her feel better about the rigid body next to her).
“I don’t like gnomes, Clarke,” Lexa says curtly.
“Yeah, but why?”
“I don’t have a reason. I just don’t like them.”
“That’s not a thing. You have to have a reason. Octavia says it could be a childhood trauma. Did you trip over a garden gnome as a toddler or something?” This makes Lexa laugh, and Clarke feels all her worry evaporate, because Lexa’s arms wrap around her waist, pulling her closer (nothing at all like the distant Lexa of the past few days).
“There was a distinct lack of garden gnomes in the neighborhood I grew up in. It’s why I liked it so much.” She whispers that last part, her lips close to Clarke’s ear, and Clarke presses even closer to Lexa, utterly tired of the arguing.
“I wish you’d tell me why you hate gnomes so much,” she says with a yawn, ignoring Lexa’s chuckle. “We’re starting out somewhere new, a home and neighborhood where no one knows us, and I just want to make a good first impression.” Lexa doesn’t pull away, but her body is so tense that she may as well have. “Yeah, I know,” Clarke mutters, pulling away and turning over, so that her back is to Lexa. “Who cares what the gnome-loving people think, right?” Lexa doesn’t respond.
The next morning, when Clarke wakes up, Lexa isn’t in bed (a normal occurrence). It takes a minute for her to remember the significant silence from the night before, and she suddenly realizes that Lexa left without even a kiss.
xxx
“On a scale of ‘the time I ruined your shoes’ to ‘the time I outed you to your ailing grandmother on accident,’ how angry are you over this gnome thing?” Lexa straightens, giving up trying to force yet another box into their car, and stares at Clarke with confusion.
“You ruined my shoes?”
“Answer the question, Lexa.”
“I’m not angry at all.” Clarke snorts, and Lexa takes this as a challenge because she looks much more earnest. “I’m serious. I’m not angry.”
“You didn’t kiss me yesterday before you left for work.”
“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”
“I always want you to.”
“You turned away, though.”
“Because you’re being all distant and mopey about the gnomes, and you won’t tell me why! This is a new chapter in our life, and you’ve reverted to the Lexa from five years ago.” Lexa stares at Clarke for a moment, something in her eyes changing. She’s not angry, not really, but she looks fierce. Without bothering to say a single word, she stalks over to Clarke, grabs her hand, and practically drags her up the stairs, releasing her only when they reach their now empty apartment.
“This,” Lexa says, her voice low but passionate, pointing at a dent in the wall, “is where Octavia threw a bowl of chips after her team lost the Super Bowl.” She turns and points to a deep scratch on the wooden floor, near their bedroom door. “That’s where we tried to drag your dresser in, when we first moved in together, and it wasn’t until Bellamy got a few other people to come by and help that we were able to lift it and save our floor.” She takes Clarke’s hand again, pulling her near the kitchen counter. “This, this right here is where I proposed to you, while you were eating breakfast, and cereal literally spewed out of your mouth onto my face because you were in such a hurry to say yes.” She pulls Clarke over to where their table used to sit, but before she can open her mouth, Clarke speaks for her.
“This is where we had our first game night, and Raven kicked everyone’s ass at poker and we swore we’d never play with her again.” She walks over to where their couch used to be, smiling slightly. “And this was where I played video games with Bellamy, getting so excited that I accidentally punched him in the mouth, knocking out a tooth, and you spent two hours trying to scrub out the blood.” Clarke sighs, turning to look at Lexa with a sad smile. “This place is full of memories, Lexa. I know that. What does it have to do with gnomes?”
“Nothing. It has nothing to do with gnomes.”
“Then why…oh.” Clarke’s grin widens, and she steps over to her wife, hooking her fingers through the belt loops of Lexa’s pants, pulling her closer. “You’re going to miss this place. That’s why you’ve been so surly and weird. Not because of the gnomes.” Clarke says, raising an eyebrow, dangerously close to snorting. Lexa huffs.
“Garden gnomes are ridiculous and pointless and everything I said was valid and true.” She softens considerably, pressing her forehead against Clarke’s, a small smile pulling on her lips. “I just…I thought…” She trails off again, and Clarke takes pity on her, finishing her sentence for her.
“You wanted to make a memory. And what better memory than pissing off all the neighbors?” Lexa rolls her eyes, pulling away slightly so that she can dig through her pocket. After a second, she holds out a garden gnome keychain, making Clarke snort.
“Raven bought me this, told me to use it to get over my ‘unnatural fear and aversion’ of the gnomes.”
“She’d totally choose you in the divorce,” Clarke mutters, but Lexa just grins, not even bothering to acknowledge the comment.
“So compromise. We hang this on our door.”
“A garden gnome keychain?”
“Why not?”
“What’s wrong with a normal garden gnome?” Lexa grins, closing the distance between them and giving Clarke a quick kiss.
“Clarke,” she says softly as she pulls away, “they’re an affront to nature. They’re not going on our lawn.”
“Dammit, Lexa, they’re just gnomes. What’d they ever do to you?”
“They exist! Isn’t that enough?”
“But you’re okay with them if they’re zombies,” Clarke mutters, ignoring Lexa’s laughter, trying her best to quell her own smile.
They argue as they go back downstairs, hand in hand., argue in the car as they drive towards their new home, and argue when they finally arrive and the first thing Lexa does is to chuck the garden gnome keychain at the lawn, gleefully shouting, “There you go, Clarke! We’ve got gnomes on our yard!” But later, Lexa presses a kiss to Clarke’s temple, a grin on her face. “Our first memory at our new house: arguing over garden gnomes.”
“I can’t believe I married you,” Clarke mutters, watching Lexa’s grin grow.
“Told you. Horrible taste.”