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1.
Clarke is nearly 100% sure that Raven Reyes is going to be the death of her.
Clarke was supposed to leave the dorms for her 9:00 Calc class ten minutes ago, but she is only just now leaving the room, shooting a glare at her roommate who is splayed comfortably in her bed, snoring lightly.
It was Raven’s genius idea to stay up all night watching Grey’s Anatomy, stating that since Clarke was pre-med it was “basically studying anyway.” And Clarke, like a fool had given in to her roomate’s offer of fresh popcorn from the microwave in the corner of their room and the allure of Katherine Heigl’s cheekbones.
And now Clarke was late to her second Calc class of the year and Raven got to sleep in, her engineering lab not until that afternoon. Clarke is so busy glaring at Raven through the wood of their door and slinging her backpack over her shoulder that she doesn’t notice the girl exiting the room next to hers until it is to late.
She runs directly into her, throwing her arms up in surprise and practically decking the other girl in the chest. The other girl falls backward and Clarke’s backpack strap snags on the girl’s arm causing Clarke to topple down on top of her.
They land in a heap, the other girl taking the brunt of the impact with a soft “oof” as Clarke ends up on top of her, legs bracketing her hips and chin digging into mystery girl’s shoulder. She jerks backwards, attempting to pull away, but her snagged backpack strap pulls her back down on top of the girl.
“I am so so sorry,” Clarke stumbles out, flustered and red-faced, “I don’t even—” she stops talking when she looks directly at the other girl for the first time. Her face is startlingly close, pretty bowed lips set in an unamused expression and an eye brow quirked. Clarke’s eyes skip from the girl’s lips to her eyes and then back to her mouth. She has such a pretty mouth.
The girl shifts and it jars Clarke back to reality. “Oh,” she says, finally managing to untangle her backpack strap and awkwardly clambering up from where she had been straddling the girl. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I’m late for class and Grey’s Anatomy was a really bad idea and I’m just…” she trails off looking at mystery girl’s expression which remains unchanged, “…just really sorry,” she finishes lamely, nervously tugging at the offending backpack strap.
“It’s fine,” the girl says, and she is smiling a little bit now, just a tiny quirk of the corner of her mouth. Her voice is lighter than Clarke had expected, a little bit breathy, but Clarke supposes that could be because she just had some stranger fall on top of her. “Although I am confused as to what Grey’s Anatomy has to do with this.” She is still just barely smiling, but the way she speaks comforts Clarke, and some of the embarrassment fades.
“My roommate just thought it would be a good idea to marathon it last night,” Clarke says as she more fully takes in the girl in front of her, “so I’m kind of running on like two hours of sleep.” The girl has an incredible jaw line Clarke notices, and cheekbones that could rival Katherine Heigl’s. She realizes three things at that moment:
1) This girl is incredibly, heart stoppingly attractive
2) She needs to get out of there before she does something else horribly embarrassing and
3) she is officially late for her Calc class.
Clarke shakes her head quickly and straightens her shoulders, “so I’m like super late for class, but thanks for not getting mad that I kind of squished you.” She turns and begins to speed walk away, figuring if she puts some distance between herself and the girl her stomach might stop fluttering.
“I’m Lexa, by the way,” Clarke hears a voice call from behind her, and she turns to see the girl tugging on her curly brown hair, almost nervous.
“Lexa,” Clarke echoes softly before turning again and rushing toward the stairs. Maybe if she sprints the rest of the way across campus she can make it to class before her professor closes the doors.
She thinks about the way that Lexa felt beneath her and the sharp, defined line of her jaw, and runs a little faster.
2.
It takes another two weeks for Clarke to realize that Lexa is in her American lit class. To be fair, the class has over a hundred students, all seated in the amphitheatre style classroom that fans out from the professor’s podium.
That’s another two weeks of getting to know college life, two weeks of late night TV marathons with Raven, and, most importantly, two weeks of not being late again for a single class. Clarke is determined to never half-ass anything, and she is obsessive about setting alarms before every class so she never forgets. Raven makes fun of her for it, but Clarke doesn’t let it bug her, Raven is probably the only person at this school who works even harder than she does.
Her roommate is incredibly smart, and since Raven and her long-distance boyfriend broke up last week she has been working even harder than before. Clarke hasn’t left her dorm room much in the past week, mostly just leaving to pick up junk food for her and Raven to eat during their study breaks.
She has seen Lexa twice, and both times the other girl nodded in her direction and gave her that little smile. Clarke hates the way it makes her stomach twist and always wills herself to look away first.
And now there she is, four rows down from Clarke, sitting straight and alert in her seat. She is watching the professor intently, only looking down to take notes. Clarke looks down at her own paper which is just a page of sketches. She stopped taking notes at some point during the lecture without even noticing. She idly chastises herself. This is supposed to be her fun class. One of her only ones that doesn’t directly relate to her major in biology that she chose to help her in med school after her she gets her undergrad.
Clarke flips to a clean sheet and tries not to think about the dread that fills her whenever she thinks about going to med school and the equally stifling dread that she knows she would feel if she switched majors. Her mom would be so disappointed. This is, she knows, the practical option. The smart option. And life is all about making smart choices.
She makes a decision as soon as class is dismissed, hurrying to pack her bag so she doesn’t lose sight of Lexa in the crowd. She makes her way down those four rows and intercepts Lexa as she is leaving her row.
“Hey,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant, “I didn’t know you took this class.”
Lexa levels her stare at her as they walk toward the door to the, “You sit in the back row, and spend more time drawing then taking notes,” she says smoothly. Clarke gapes a little bit and Lexa smiles. “I did notice that you took this class,” she says finally.
“You are really observant,” Clarke says as they struggle to push through the doorway with the rush of all the other students.
Lexa shrugs, “Not really. You’re just always here when I get here, and you are kind of hard to miss.” She looks away at that, and clenches her jaw and Clarke wonders if she meant to say that. The admission makes Clarke grin.
“So are you,” she says.
“Apparently not,” Lexa says, “If you only just noticed me.” But her lips are curving up into that smile again and Clarke laughs. They fall in step down the path toward their dorm and Clarke aches to draw the way the trees line the walking trail on either side, still spring green and bright even though October is fast approaching.
“So, do you have a name?” Lexa asks, “or should I just keep calling you “that girl who tried to kill me when we first met?” Because that isn’t without charm but it’s a little long.”
“My name?” Clarke says, brow furrowed, “I never introduced myself?”
“I think you were too busy running off to class on that first day to remember the nuances of traditional human interaction.”
Clarke groans and buries her head in her hands, “Oh my God, you’re right. I really really didn’t introduce myself.”
Lexa stops walking in the middle of path way and turns to look at Clarke, and holds out her hand. “Hi, I’m Lexa.”
Clarke laughs and reaches out to take Lexa’s hand, squeezing it firmly as she answers, “It’s really nice to meet you. I’m Clarke.”
They stand facing each other on the walkway for a beat more, hands clasped. The trees are so green and Lexa isn’t making her let go of her hand. It is one of the last days that smells like spring and Clarke thinks that Lexa might be looking at her lips.
3.
“This is the best idea anyone has ever had,” Raven says as she leans in close to Clarke’s face, “Octavia truly is a goddess among women.” Clarke wrinkles her nose but keeps her eyes closed as Raven continues to apply makeup to the lid of her eye. She feels Raven pull away and goes to open her eyes until Raven yelps and taps her nose admonishingly. “Keep em’ closed, roomie. I’m layering some different eye shadow, you are going to looks so good.”
Clarke would roll her eyes if they weren’t closed.
“You only think Octavia is a genius because you think she’s hot,” Clarke says continuing their earlier conversation, “she didn’t, like find the cure for cancer, she just said we should come to her brother’s frats’ Halloween part with her.”
Raven scoffs, “I don’t think she’s hot,” she says.
Clarke can’t help but open her eyes at that to level a judging, piercing stare that she has been learning from Lexa at Raven.
“Okay,” Raven says with a grin, “so she is super hot, but she is also super straight. I’m really not looking to get my heart broken again.” Clarke knows that Raven is talking about Finn, and she nods sympathetically as Raven brandishes the eyeliner. Raven pastes on a grin and raises the pencil, “I hope you are ready to fuck shit up.”
It turns out that Clarke will in fact not be “fucking shit up.” She realizes, when she arrives at the frat house, that someone is going to need to keep an eye on her friends. The party is well under way when they arrive, students spilling from the house into the yard. Music pours from the open doors and red solo cups accumulate on every surface. Octavia is already moving her hips to the beat as she clutches Clarke’s left hand and Raven has a desperate gleam in her eye from where her arm is looped through Clarke’s on the right.
“This should be fun,” Clarke says with zero emotion as she stares up at the pulsing house.
“Hell yes!” Octavia yells into her ear, tugging her across the lawn. Once inside, she leads them straight to the kitchen where the counter is covered in different bottles of alcohol and liters of soda. “What do you want?” she asks turning to them with a sly grin.
Raven answers “Whatever you’re having” and the same time that Clarke says “nothing” and Octavia sticks her tongue out at Clarke jokingly as she mixes her and Raven a drink.
“Someone has to keep you two under control,” Clarke says with a grin, and Raven leans her head on arm.
“That’s my responsible, little Clarke,” she says nuzzling further into her. She only straightens when Octavia hands her the cup, immediately taking several long sips, stopping to crinkle her nose after each one. Octavia begins to down hers as well as she surveys the room. Her eyes light up when she sees someone and she gestures at Clarke and Raven to wait there as she beelines across the room.
Clarke opens her mouth to say something to Raven when she hears a slurred voice yell, “Clarke?” Clarke thinks she recognizes the voice and turns to find the speaker when a person crashes directly into her. “Clarke!” the person says excitedly, “Clarke! Clarke! Clarke!”
It’s Lexa, Clarke realizes with a lurch. Lexa, whose hair is always held back in braids and who never makes an expression for more then a second. Now her hair is a wild, curly brown mane, her cheeks are flushes red and a dopey smile covers her face as she presses further into Clarke’s side. Clarke turns to exchange a look of disbelief with Raven, only to see that the other girl has wandered off.
“Clarke!” Lexa shouts again, “are you having fun?” she is tangling her hand in the bottom of Clarke’s t-shirt almost absentmindedly, and Clarke tries not to let her body jolt as Lexa’s hand brushes over her stomach.
“Yeah, kind of. How much have you had to drink, Lexa?”
“So many,” Lexa says nodding emphatically, “so so so many.”
Clarke has to cover her mouth to contain her laugh. “Yeah? Well maybe “so so so many” was enough, I might need to cut you off…”
Lexa’s eyes widen dramatically and she tries to back away but can’t seem to untangle her hand from where she has it hooked in Clarke’s shirt. She gives up and contents herself with leaning further into Clarke, burying her head in the crook of her neck. “You smell nice,” she says against Clarke, not bothering to pull her head away to talk. Every word has her dragging her lips over Clarke’s skin and it isn’t until Lexa actually goes as far to press a long kiss right over Clarke’s pulse point that Clarke pushes her away.
Lexa pouts her lip, and opens her mouth as if to say something when Octavia comes back, a tall boy in tow.
Octavia starts laughing as soon as she sees Lexa. “I guess ‘Ms. Tall, dark, and broody’ isn’t quite as stoic as we all thought,” she says through her laugh. Clarke starts laughing as well and Lexa just looks entirely confused by the joke. She tries to glare, but ends up just pouting even further. Octavia looks at the boy behind her and seems to remember why she came over. “Oh,” she says pushing him forward, “Clarke this is Bellamy, Bellamy this is Clarke,” she hesitates before adding, “he’s my brother and he is almost as cool as me.”
Bellamy smiles crookedly at Clarke and steps a little closer so she can hear him over the music, “how are you liking the party?” he asks her.
“It’s nice,” she half shouts back, “very…” she glances around her at the sea of grinding bodies, “…very social.” Bellamy laughs and she admires the freckles that dot across his face.
Octavia then gestures to Lexa, “Bell, this is Lexa. She isn’t usually this rambunctious.”
Bellamy turns to her and begins to say something, but she recoils away from him pressing further into Clarke’s neck and mumbling something against it.
Bellamy and Octavia exchange an amused look while Clarke just rolls her eyes. “What did you say, Lex?” Octavia asks. Lexa pulls back from Clarke slightly and practically shouts, “I’m really gay,” and then adds quieter “just so you know.”
Clarke and Octavia lose it. Octavia is gasping for breath now, leaning on the counter holding her stomach while Clarke pounds her fist against her leg as she laughs. Bellamy is smiling, slightly bemusedly, at the three of them. Lexa looks at Clarke and seems to remember something, “Clarke?” she asks, “Are you gay?” This makes Octavia laugh even harder, and Bellamy is grinning in earnest now.
Raven chooses now to make her entrance. “She swings both ways, just like me,” she says, slinging an arm around Clarke’s neck and pressing a kiss to her cheek. She then turns to Bellamy, sidling up to him and outstretching her hand. “I’m Raven,” she tells him as he takes her hand in his, “I’m newly single and ready to mingle.” Bellamy quirks an eyebrow and keeps holding onto her hand. Clarke glances over and sees Lexa wrinkling her nose.
“All right,” Clarke says taking Lexa’s hand, “Let’s leave these two to it, yeah?” Lexa is nodding even before Clarke finishes speaking, staring with fascination at her and Clarke’s interlocked fingers.
“Octavia,” Clarke says as Lexa begins to fiddle with her hand, “I’m gonna take her home, okay?”
“Okay yeah,” Octavia answers absently, distracted by someone she has spotted from across the room, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Clarke rolls her eyes, “I’m pretty sure I’m the one who is supposed to have that line.”
Octavia laughs and begins to head to the dance floor, “just take your girl back to her room before she remembers she isn’t supposed to smile.”
Lexa bares her teeth at Octavia’s back and then looks at Clarke with a feral grin. Clarke sighs and begins to pull her toward the door.
They stumble into Lexa’s dorm room twenty minutes later and Clarke notes the lack of a roommate. She asks Lexa about it as the girl collapses onto her bed and stares at the ceiling.
“She transferred, I think” she said vacantly with a small frown, “or she got eaten by a tiger, one of those.”
“The first one, I would guess,” Clarke says with a smile as she sits at the end of Lexa’s bed. She pulls of the girl’s boots one at a time, running a hand down the slope of the other girl’s feet until she giggles. “Lexa, can I ask you something?”
Lexa hums her assent.
“Why did you drink so much tonight?”
Lexa sits up and shifts that she is holding Clarke from behind, her head pressed into her neck again and her legs wrapped around Clarke’s waist.
“I was just stressed,” she mumbles, words still slurred and feet absently pressing against Clarke’s thighs, “my family is very demanding.” She stops talking, just breathes against Clarke, in and out, for a few beats before adding “and because of you.”
Clarke pulls away from her and Lexa whines at the lack of contact. Lexa still sits slumped on the bed and Clarke stands above her, she reaches her hand down to tilt up Lexa’s head.
“Stressed about me?” she asks, voice nervous and flip-flopping, “did I do something that made you uncomfortable?”
Lexa’s eyes get cartoonishly big and she clambers off the bed until she is standing in front of her. She stumbles a bit as she stands, but manages to right herself until the two are standing toe to toe. Lexa is taller now, and ducks her head to see Clarke’s eyes and gets distracted. She runs a finger down the bridge of Clarke’s nose and strokes under her eyes, “so blue,” she murmurs to herself.
Clarke bats her hand away, “Lexa, you were telling me something?”
Lexa looks at the far wall and narrows her eyes, huffing out a breathe. “You are just really pretty. And you know exactly what you are doing and where you are going, and sometimes when I’m trying to sleep—” she stops here and bites her lip before looking at the ceiling, “I can’t get you out of my head.”
Clarke can feel every part of herself flush, but then remembers that Lexa is incredibly drunk and probably barely knows where she is, let alone what she is saying. She sits on the bed with a small laugh, “Lexa, I don’t know what I’m doing at all. I might be the most directionless person to exist.”
“But, med school,” Lexa says, still standing, all furrowed brow and crinkled nose, “you always talk about med school and your grades and you study so much.”
Clarke lays back and covers her face with her hands, “But I don’t want to go to med school,” she says. It is the first time she has said those words out loud and some part of her unwinds at the admittance, “I want to draw.”
Lexa unfurrows her brow, “Like in lit?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Clarke says, smiling. “Yeah, like in lit. Sometimes I don’t just want to fix things, I want to create them.”
Lexa lies down next to her, her breathing slowing, hair a tangled mess around her face. Clarke props herself up on her side to look at her. She thinks that she looks like an angel.
Lexa mumbles something and reaches for the button of her jeans, struggling to unclasp it.
Clarke sits up, wide eyed and a little panicky, she feels her stomach drop as Lexa manages to wriggle them a few inches down her hips. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Lexa,” Clarke says reaching over to still her hands, “maybe you should keep those on.”
“But I’m hot,” Lexa whines, and she is full on pouting again.
Clarke can’t help but laugh as she gets off the bed, “you are going to hate yourself tomorrow,” she says. “You are probably going to threaten me with death if I ever tell anyone about this.” She goes over the set of drawers in the room and rifles through them until she finds a pair of comfy shorts. “Put these on,” she says, throwing them to Lexa. Lexa nods emphatically and finishes wriggling out of her tight jeans, Clarke looks away pointedly, fixing her eyes at the ceiling.
“Done,” Lexa says proudly.
“Congrats,” Clarke says with a laugh, “Lexa, the girl who got a 98% percent on our first lit test and is majoring in Political Science has managed to change into shorts. Truly your greatest accomplishment.”
Lexa scowls, but doesn’t seem to be able to think of a retort so just holds out her arms and whines, “Now I’m cold.”
Clarke sighs to hide her smile, and walks toward the bed. “I’ll lie with you for just a little bit, okay?”
“Until I fall asleep?” Lexa asks, small and soft, “No one ever sits with me until I fall asleep.”
Clarke nods as she settles herself in Lexa’s arms, her head on her shoulder and their legs tangled on top of the comforter. She looks at Lexa’s lips but settles on pressing a kiss to her cheek instead, “Yeah Lexa, until you fall asleep.”
4.
Clarke is pretty sure that Lexa is avoiding her.
It has been two weeks since the frat party and Lexa has spoken to her a grand total of twice. The first being a mumbled “hello” when they passed in the hall, and the second after their lit class when Clarke tried to walk with her like the normally do. Lexa coolly avoided her eyes for the entirety of the walk, and Clarke could see the muscles in her jaw clenching and unclenching until they parted at the doors of their dorms.
Clarke doesn’t want to let it bother her, but every time she thinks about it she gets an empty ache right in the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t even try to take notes in lit anymore, just sketches the trees as they lose their leaves over and over in the margins. There is something fitting in the symbolism: everything ends. She should have known that they way that Lexa made her feel was too good to be true.
So yeah, Clarke is pretty fucking positive that Lexa is ignoring her which is why Raven’s request is quite possibly the worst thing she could say right now.
“I don’t get how this is a big deal,” Raven says, Clarke is having trouble concentrating on Raven’s words because as she says them she is tilting her head to allow her boyfriend better access to her neck.
Clarke wants to pull a grossed out face but she is fairly sure that would be too immature. It turns out that Raven and her boyfriend, Finn, got back together last week and now he is visiting. And Raven is requesting alone time.
“It’s really simple,” Raven says through a giggle as she pushes at Finn’s arm, “Lexa doesn’t have a roommate, just go stay with her for the night.”
“I can’t,” Clarke hisses through her teeth, “Things are weird right now.”
“Oh my God,” Raven says rolling her eyes, “you guys just need to have sex already, it’s the best problem solver for sure.”
Clarke can feel her face flush, and she is getting uncharacteristically worked up over this but it’s not fair. It’s not fair that Lexa is avoiding her and its not fair that her mom keeps sending her excited emails about medical programs all over the country and its not fair that she is getting kicked out of her own room so her roommate can bone her boyfriend.
“Please, Clarke?” Raven says, shrugging Finn off her so she can cup Clarke’s face in her hands, “Please? You know more than anyone how important this is to me.” She leans their foreheads together and nudges Clarke’s nose with her own, “also you and Lexa really do need to get over whatever happened, it’s making you really upset.” Raven straightens up and throws Clarke’s pajamas at her, nudging her towards the door with a tap on the butt, “it’s not like she can just kick you out to roam the dorms till morning, right?”
Clarke groans as she opens the door, turning to wave goodbye to Finn. He smiles and waves back. He seems like a nice enough guy, she might even think he was cute in a different world where he wasn’t dating her best friend and she wasn’t falling completely head over heels with the girl next door.
She knocks on the door, and then stands shifting from foot to foot as she waits for an answer.
“Come in,” she hears Lexa’s voice call. Clarke only hesitates for a second before pushing inside of the room. Lexa hardly even looks up from where she lies reclined on her bed, a textbook propped against her chest and her laptop open beside her.
“That was really trusting of you, you didn’t even ask who it was,” Clarke says, standing awkwardly in the center of the room, her hands fidgeting with he plaid pajama pants.
“I wasn’t worried,” Lexa answers, dry and unconcerned, “I am fairly certain that no one in this building is a threat.”
Clarke is hit with a surge of anger then, her face feels really hot and she kind of wants to scream. She drops her pajama pants on the ground and storms to where Lexa lies, shoving her textbook off her chest and snapping her laptop shut.
Lexa’s face stills even further in anger, except for her mouth that turns up in a snarl as she shoots off the bed.
“What the hell is your problem?” she asks loudly, but she still avoids eye contact and that pisses Clarke even more.
Clarke grabs her face and tilts her chin up to make her meet her eyes. When Lexa does it isn’t what Clarke was expecting. She expected them to be narrowed in anger or half-lidded in that infuriatingly empty look she gives Clarke sometimes.
Instead, they are wide and nervous, ringed with a little red and Clarke wonders if she has been crying.
It makes Clarke break a little and she loses all her resolve to be angry and strong, her fingers soften under Lexa’s chin until she is stroking her jaw with her thumb, drawing soothing lines that makes Lexa’s mouth relax and her brow smooth.
“I’m sorry,” they both say at the same time and then they are laughing, nervous and unsure, but it still makes the ache in her stomach ease, just a bit.
Clarke takes a breath and speaks first, “Is there a reason you have been avoiding me like I’m diseased?”
Lexa looks down briefly, but then flicks her eyes back to meet Clarke’s, “I was just embarrassed,” she murmurs. Her words are quiet, but they are spoken in Lexa’s sure voice that Clarke loves. “I was really crazy and,” she cringes, “clingy during the party and it was unprofessional.”
Clarke fully laughs now and reaches out to touch Lexa’s cheek again, “there are worse things in the world then being clingy, Lexa. You do realize that right? And this isn’t a professional relationship, idiot. We’re friends, not co-workers.”
Lexa smiles that little half-smile that Clarke is starting to think is reserved only for her. She glances at Clarke’s pajama pants that are still lying on the floor. “Are we having a slumber party?” she asks, tilting her head.
Clarke smiles, “Only if you’ll let me stay, Raven kicked me out since her boyfriend is over.”
Lexa shucks her textbook off the bed and opens up her laptop. She relaxes back on the pillows before looking up at Clarke expectantly. Clarke just stares until Lexa rolls her eyes and gestures at the pajamas, “Well get changed,” she says and then pats the spot beside her, “and thenI expect we are having a Grey’s marathon, right? Med school or no med school, I want to see if Callie and Arizona get together.”
“Of course they do, Lexa,” Clarke says as she slips on the pajama pants, pretending she doesn’t notice Lexa watching her, “they belong together.” She settles next to Lexa and reaches across her lap to press play, she watches Lexa’s lips move into a smile and realizes that the ache in her stomach is completely gone.
5.
Clarke lies on her back on the green couch in the common room. She rifles through the pages of her sketch book and tries not to think about the paper that she needs to be writing. She closes her eyes and pretends that the world is this green couch and that things like lab reports and lit papers don’t exist.
She just got back from the dining hall. She had gone at a different time then usual, having come straight from a meeting with her bio TA. Raven and Octavia weren’t there, and even Bellamy, who she has taken to sitting with, was nowhere to be seen. She had gotten her food and scanned the tables one last time, her eyes snagging on a girl sitting at one of the long tables against the wall.
It was Lexa, but she wasn’t alone. She was surrounded by students Clarke didn’t know, and they were watching her as she told a story. She wasn’t smiling but Clarke could tell by the twist of her mouth that her story was a funny one. By the end of it the whole table was laughing, and Lexa gave a succinct nod of her head like she couldn’t have imagined it going any other way. She was confident and sure, almost regal in the way she sat. She was beautiful and other worldly and Clarke realized in that moment that she could never deserve her.
She ate quickly, and when she caught Lexa’s eye on the way out she avoided eye contact and headed back to her dorm.
She lay now with her sketch book over her eyes, back to thinking about her lit paper since it was slightly less painful then thinking about Lexa. She feels someone sit down on the end of the couch, she begins to startle until hands rest on her calves and move her legs into their lap.
She knows it is Lexa without looking and she remains hidden behind her book. Lexa reaches over and snags the book off her face, tucking it to her chest as she leans down to drop a playful kiss to Clarke’s cheek.
This is a new thing that she does, this habit of giving Clarke these little gestures of affection. She hugs Clarke when they meet after class or buys Clarke powdered donuts when Clarke sleeps over or presses a kiss to her forehead when she is stressed. Clarke isn’t sure that Lexa realizes what it is doing to her. Or maybe she does and is even more evil then Clarke previously imagined.
“You could have sat with us, you know,” Lexa says as she begins to flip through the pages of Clarke’s book. Her face is even but she traces the sketches with her finger when it is something that she really likes.
“I know,” Clarke says, sitting up on her elbows so she can see Lexa’s face, “You just looked really comfortable and I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Having you there would only have made me more comfortable,” Lexa says in that matter of fact way she does, still looking down at the book like she didn’t just say something that made Clarke’s heart skip a full beat.
Clarke watches idly as Lexa continues to turn the pages until she remembers that one sketch she did before she fell asleep last night. Her whole body goes rigid and she sits up quickly, dumping Lexa’s legs off her lap as she makes a mad lunge for the book. It is at that moment that Lexa turns the page and sees the sketch. Clarke pulls her hand back and sits rigidly on the couch, looking down at her hands on lap, sure her face is red and flushed.
“Is this-” she looks up to see Lexa cradling the book in her palms, one finger stroking the page, “are these of me?”
Clarke looks at the page and feels her face flush even further. The two open pages are all sketches of Lexa, some of them just fragments, like her arm and her a calf from when she was practicing drawing the human figure and Lexa was in the room for reference. But the one that dominates the right page is a large drawing of Lexa from the collarbones up. Her face is set and stern, her hair tucked away in the braids, her shoulders are bare and the line of her neck swoops elegantly up the page. That Lexa is beautiful and fierce and powerful. It is Lexa the way that Clarke sees her, and she cringes at the thought of what Lexa must think of her.
Clarke realizes that she hasn’t answered Lexa’s question. She clears her throat. “Oh, god yeah. It is, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be invasive. You are just, y’know.” Clarke finally dares to look up at Lexa who has an expression of wonder on her face.
“You drew me?” Lexa asks, voice softer and higher than normal. Clarke nods nervously, looking down again. Lexa is leaning across the couch, the sketchbook still clenched to her chest. Clarke looks up to see Lexa’s eyes, wider and bluer than usual, drifting shut as she leans in, tilting her head. Clarke moves toward her, almost closing the distance. Their noses are brushing, and she can feel Lexa’s breathe against her lips.
The common room door flies open smacking the wall with a loud bang, and Lexa and Clarke startle apart turning sharply to look at the door. Octavia is backing into the room, arms wrapped around the neck of an enormously tall man. They are kissing furiously and obliviously unaware of their surroundings. Clarke has never been less pleased to see Octavia and she is about two seconds away from throwing the entire couch at them. By the livid expression on Lexa’s face, she expects that she would help.
The man notices them first, breaking away from Octavia with a wet smack. Octavia turns her head and sees them, and gives them a little wave. “Sorry guys,” she says, “we weren’t interrupting anything, were we?”
Clarke just glares before tugging Lexa out of the room. Their walk to their rooms is awkward, and Lexa hands her back the sketchbook with a little nod when they reach their doors.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says quietly, leaving Clarke to stare wide-eyed after her.
6.
Clarke walks into Lexa’s room about ten minutes later. She accepted that her Lit paper wasn’t getting written tonight, not when all she can see when she closes her eyes is Lexa, and Clarke doesn’t think that just sketching her is going to be enough this time.
Lexa swivels in her chair when her door is shoved open, she sits at her laptop a few pages into a research paper, and her mouth drops a little bit at the sight of Clarke storming towards her.
“Clarke—” she starts, brow furrowed in confusion. Clarke doesn’t let her finish, instead she straddles her lap and cradles Lexa’s face in her hands. She tilts Lexa’s mouth toward her, and Lexa lets out this breathy little gasp before she grabs at Clarke’s hips to bring her even closer against her. Clarke darts her eyes down to Lexa’s lips, before fully leaning in. The press of their mouths has Clarke reeling, but she can’t bring herself to pull back to orient herself. Instead she presses in further, feeling the tension in her chest unclench at the way that Lexa moves their lips together.
Clarke sucks Lexa’s lower lip into her mouth and is awarded with a delighted hum. Lexa parts her lips and Clarke licks her way into her mouth, winding her hands in Lexa’s curls, eager to see it mussed by her hands.
Lexa pulls back with another gasp and grins at Clarke. Clarke has never seen this brand of smile on Lexa’s face and she knows that she will have to draw it. But for now, she leans in to cover it with her mouth, knowing it will be there again, much later, when she can bring herself to pull away.