Chapter Text
“... but sometimes delights are just that: delightful... and love, too, may bleed the same colour as violence”- Shakespeare; re-imagined.
Lexa stares down at the crumpled flyer in her too-tight grip, cursing the fact that she waited this late to pick up some extra credit. Now the only “extra curricular” (as if, you know, regular “circulars” weren't enough) with vacant spaces is drama club, and why on earth would Columbia care about some cobbled-together prepubescent production of Twelfth Night? Short answer: they probably won't.
She wishes away the three months spent writing poetry recited only to her cat, planning her “rewarding and, frankly, incandescent” life as an English major, without actually putting in any of the effort. If only Lexa had listened to Anya's rather inconvenient three am texts, urging her to “seize the day,” via nonsensical acronyms that required google to translate. One viewing of 'Dead Poets Society,' and-
The hiss of the hallway boiler interrupts her internal monologue (apparently, she's already well versed in the role of sea captain #4 or incognito set painter), directing Lexa's attention once more to the sign reading “Auditions here!” above the hall.
She smiles slightly at the accompanying sketch of a single violet, vines spilling over the edges of the make-shift sketch pad. It's pretty good. Okay, it's really pretty good, but she's allowed to sulk over her self-inflicted predicament. (That is, of course, until Lexa recognises the pun on Viola, slapped in the face by her tenth grade copy of Shakespeare's original).
“Are you here for the auditions, Lexa?” Great, now the science department are switching sodium for set design, ditching beakers in the name of “wewillrockyou.”
“Uh, yes,” she mumbles, adding a “Dr Griffin” for the sake of social courtesy, never quite sure how to act around “real” adults who aren't her parents.
Her bio teacher musters a quasi-cheery grin, no doubt having spend the past hour grading largely uninspiring (and incorrect) test papers. She pushes open the hall door and motions for Lexa to follow, cutting short the extra five minutes that Lexa had mapped out for pacing wall to wall, and doing much of nothing.
“It's nice to see a change from our usual regurgitation of 'My Fair Lady,'” Dr Griffin muses, and her reluctant companion nods in acquiescence, muttering a few nuggets of truth regarding her love for all things Shakespearian.
For the first time in all her years as a “theatre nerd”- an epithet bestowed, rather fondly, by another of Anya's infamous late-night texts- Lexa prepares to experience the art from the other side of the curtain, and can't say she's all too thrilled about the prospect.
“Where should I go to-”
“Hey, mom, do you know-”
Once again, Lexa is cut off, though this time it's not by an overzealous heating appliance. Quite the opposite: it's the arrival of a girl, envy could not but call attractive. The mystery blonde smiles at her in apology, and it's one of those rare smiles, the kind that reaches a person's eyes and animates their pupils, flecks of gold-blue shining beneath the stage lights- a freeze-frame supernova, if every other toothless drag of upturned lips may be deemed nought more than nebula.
Lexa is staring, and she really doesn't mean to. (The other girl doesn't seem to mind, merely watches her watcher without reprimand).
“I'm Clarke,” she murmurs, in response to a question that Lexa didn't ask, though which, naturally, was implied in the way her Colosseum jawline successively set, cracked, collapsed, all in the vainest of efforts to match Clarke's (apparently, unmatchable) smile.
“Lexa.”
“Lexa,” Clarke parrots, musing this particular configuration of syllables, dragging out the letters, so her cosmic mouth can form constellations. “Cool.”
There stretches out a silence between the two, such that Lexa isn't really sure what on earth she's doing here or indeed why, just that the blonde has freakishly pretty eyes. Dr Griffin clears her throat.
“Clarke, perhaps you should take Lexa backstage, prepare her for the audition? You're reading Olivia's part, right?”
Her daughter (if the “mom” comment is any indication of familial status) seems happy enough to comply, after warning of “the yellow paint situation,” that she kindly entrusts Dr Griffin to “sort out.” (Whoever said that teenagers aren't utter delights?)
Lexa's nerves stutter and start as the pair of “basically strangers” head in the direction of the stage, xylophone ribs reduced to a disjointed symphony. She attributes her condition to audition jitters, the fear of reciting empty lines to a panel of teacher-judges, but when Clarke's arm brushes her own, Lexa is forced to consider “cute girl syndrome.”
Spark shooting stars from shoulder blade to fingertip, haven't I waited long enough, to be touched by a galaxy// and rendered infinite?
“Have you tried out for many plays before?”
It takes a few moments for Lexa to realise that Clarke is speaking, too busy trying to un-loop the daisy chain from around her wrist, return her thoughts to an acceptable level of “appropriate.”
“No.” A pause. “Well, there was this one time...”
“I'm already intrigued.”
At that, Lexa launches into her story of the middle school nativity, characterized by built to fail sets and classroom politics, culminating in a mock sword fight for the role of the angel Gabriel. It's about as off-key as her internal orchestra, though Clarke's warm laughter makes the incoherent retelling just about worth it.
“I'm not really aiming for that this year,” she adds, reminding herself that this is a quid pro credit arrangement. “I was thinking of auditioning for a smaller role, maybe Maria or Antonio.”
Clarke feigns an expression of unadulterated horror, remarking that this year's “all girl production” (which was unknown to Lexa, though no doubt a welcome twist on the traditionally all-male classic) simply “wouldn't be complete” without her as Viola.
“You haven't even seen me act, yet.”
“I know, I just... I get this feeling, that's all.”
“Oh.”
Lexa wouldn't have thought it possible, but somehow Clarke's smile grows even brighter, solar system comprised of her lip to lip ratio.
“I'll go and get you a script,” she offers, disappearing in the direction of a rickety storage unit.
Lexa does not watch her go, and certainly doesn't feel all that colder for her absence. (A few minutes around a dark set with velvet curtains, and she's already reaching Shakespeare-level melodramatics).
As it turns out, the masterminds behind this experimental production of tragi-comedy are none other than two math and three science teachers, with Dr Griffin's assertion that she “directed an elementary school production of something related to ballet” (with Clarke, no doubt, making an adorable lead), serving as the tag-team's biggest boast of theatrical experience.
“Do your best with the script,” is the chorus, as the pair enter from the wings. “We're still waiting on someone or other from the English department to make some, um, linguistic changes.”
“Good luck,” Clarke whispers, which goes some ways in untangling Lexa's spider-web anxieties, the news that they're about to recite “draft lines” hardly comforting her.
If Columbia don't appreciate the sheer lengths that she's-
“How does he love me?” Clarke reads, eerily at ease in the skin of a stolen personality, a character whose conventions have bound them (albeit, not exclusively) to a page.
“He doesn't. Not as I could, if only I were he.” Oh, Lexa never quite expected the play to take this direction. There's a first time for everything, apparently.
“Why, what would you, if you were he, or I was not she?”
The eighteen year old idiot inside of Lexa is desperate to stop and wax lyrical over Clarke's acting, though the Viola she's constructing merely rises to the challenge.
“Make me a willow cabin at your gate, unyielding and eternal. 'Tis not love to write of foolish attractions, offer your hallowed name to any element that may prove themselves deserving. We may be subjects of condemnation, not cantons, but they shan't pity us.”
“You might do much.”
“I might.”
And then there is subdued clapping and the scraping of chairs, and the spell of archaic poetry is broken once again. Somehow, both Clarke and Lexa have moved impossibly closer, as if puppets on strings, pulled by a chord that no one else can see.
“A marvellous first attempt,” the teachers seem to agree, before uniformly filing out of the hall, no doubt in search of several hits of caffeine.
“That was, um...”
“You were great, Lexa.” (If it means Clarke looking at her ~like that,~ Lexa can't really complain about the blonde's habit of cutting her off). “Really great, you know?”
Lexa is pretty sure she's blushing under the dim glow of the stage-lights, torn between shrugging off and safe-keeping the compliment. You were no writer, you told me as much, so I filed, and pocketed, and scrapbooked every version of your: “this metaphor sucks.”
“So were you.”
“We work well together,” Clarke affirms. “I'm probably not supposed to say anything yet, but I'm, like, ninety nine point nine nine nine percent certain that you'll get the part.”
“I hope so,” Lexa says, not expecting to mean it as much as she does.
“Me too.”
To any sane onlooker, the exchange has apparently disintegrated into mere parody, parallel, and blatant repetition, though Clarke's suggestion of, “you should come over some time, to run lines and stuff,” decidedly breaks the pattern.
“I'd like that.” Lexa is amazed at how measured she sounds in the face of such an invitation, even more amazed at the fact she's coloured pink (see: I like you in shades of bubblegum fondness, on a gradient sloping straight to peach), whilst standing beside a kind-of-stranger.
“Me too,” Clarke echoes, flashing the merest of half-smiles, that makes the bones of Lexa's shoulders ache // under the weight of a god in a girl, divinity dusted as make-up on cheeks.
She is totally, utterly, and rather excessively, screwed.
“Yeah, you're screwed alright,” Anya snorts, when Lexa relays the weird daydream of the other night to her best friend, and asks if it's possible that two people who've never met before, can have some sort of unspoken connection.
“Anya. I'm serious.” She means it, too. Even Gustus, in all his furry wisdom, has grown tired of her florid enjambment, free verse writ without paper or pen- lest she read it over, and succeed in nothing more than embarrassing herself.
“Hey, babe,” Raven greets as she walks over, ignoring Lexa in favour of making heart eyes at Anya, and sitting a little too close to befit their busy cafeteria setting. “Who’s screwing?”
“Lexa and Clarke.”
“Clarke as in, Clarke Griffin? Octavia's friend?”
“I don't know, maybe? And we're not 'screwing,'” Lexa interjects, in a conversation about (and yet increasingly without) her.
“But you want to be, right?” Raven has “the look” on her face again, and Lexa shudders, recalling the infamous “plan” last year involving duct tape, water balloons, and poor, unsuspecting Costia.
“I don't even know her.”
Crazy as it may sound, Lexa isn't entirely sure she's telling the truth.
“That doesn't answer my question.”
“Anya, kindly reprimand your girlfriend.” Anya rewards the subject with a pudding cup, and kisses her cheek in a gesture that could be deemed “sweet” if it wasn't so damned obsequious.
Lexa rolls her eyes.
“I'm trying to help you, nerd,” Raven mumbles, her words muffled around a mouthful of toffee-cinnamon. “Octavia is in my History class, I can probably score you Clarke's number or something.”
“She already gave me her number,” Lexa murmurs, to a double act of knowing smirks and mocking giggles. Not that they've suddenly become “texting buddies” or anything, quite the opposite- Clarke sent a row of indecipherable “emojis,” and Lexa talked herself out of replying.
“I thought you-”
“I know her a little,” Lexa concedes.
She likes how that sounds. “A little” may imply the existence of “a lot,” and Lexa is most certainly not opposed, to knowing Clarke Griffin a whole “lot” better.
Such an opportunity presents itself around 1pm the next day, as Lexa wrestles with an avalanche of text-books in the hallway.
“Need some help with that?”
She recognises the voice without even turning around, leaves her smile on the top shelf of her locker, and tries to at least appear “casual.”
“Thank you,” Lexa says, not insincerely, when Clarke volunteers to carry “Geometry 101,” and “Psychology: made easy!”
“That's okay, I was looking for you anyway.” She speaks softly, sentences considered, not catching, like vanilla embodied in flesh and bone. Which is hardly the smartest analogy that Lexa has ever come up with, but if they hugged (beating heart to crooked home, lines meet at zero) she's confident that Clarke's shampoo would match her (soothing) tone.
“You were?”
“Actually, I was looking for Viola,” Clarke grins, so pleased with herself that Lexa can't help but mirror her mood, see a stroke of yellow in a sky of otherwise blue.
“I got the part?”
“Of course you did.”
There's that silence between them again. Except, it's occurring to Lexa that silence may not be the right descriptor at all. “Stillness” is more like it- they're impressionist flowers in a watercolour vase, just waiting on an artist to join the dots or erase their shapes, cross their stems or start again.
If people were not subjects, but paintings, I'd be pointillism (almost, almost, a great beauty from a distance), and she'd be a mural- the greatest argument for a higher cause, yet shrine to all things secular.
“So, I was thinking, we could maybe hang out tonight, and go over the play? My mom makes a really mean chicken pesto.”
Lexa freezes. She'd figured that Clarke's previous offer was non-committal at best, comparable to old friends who run into one another at the mall or on street corners, and vow to “get together again.” At the least, she thought the other girl would wait a while, before turning “sometime” into “today.”
“It's totally fine if you're busy, we could reschedule for another-”
“I'm not. Busy, I mean. I can make it.” Lexa internally winces at her fragmented speech (a mosaic without glue is all sharp edges, and “brokenness” is by no means gallery, galaxy, material), though Clarke doesn't appear to notice.
“I'll text you my address,” she says, in lieu of goodbye, sky-rocketing towards the art room.
Once again, she is fleeting, fleeing where Lexa is rooted, stationary, left alone to monitor her new levels of “screwedness,” and ponder how on earth her search for extra credit, left her grasping at the edges of something ineffable.
Spoiler alert: she's still pretty (as Raven would say) “freaking screwed.”
Clarke is right. Dr Gr- Abby, as she'd insisted Lexa call her whilst visiting her daughter, really does make a “mean” tripartite dinner, whilst sparking small talk about theatre, and reminding Lexa of the lab report due Thursday.
“I'll get right on that,” she promises, as Clarke makes their excuses, and insists that they “discuss the play” from the comfort of her bedroom.
It's nothing like she expected. Then again, Lexa doesn't even know what she was expecting, isn't really sure if it's possible to tell someone's taste in interior décor, merely by stammering and shattering in their (short-lived) presence.
Unframed oil pastels litter the walls, a jarring compliment to the floor-assortment of creased clothes and empty cups. Clarke is winning no awards for order and organisation, though her violet-patterned bedspread makes up for most of the chaos.
Clarke catches her staring. “They're my favourite flower,” she explains, and Lexa just nods, without adding “ditto.”
From shrinking schoolgirl to the boldest of suitors, this purple-petalled paradox, only heightens our chapstick/t-shirt confusion.
What's most surprising, to Lexa at least, is the plastic green solar system blu-tacked to her ceiling, an assortment of crescent moons and five point stars; sharing the stage in unison. The idea of Clarke lying awake in the dark, feeling anything but infinite under the glow of a million lights, strikes a chord that can't be explained, at least not in words that she's ever heard of.
“Would you like a drink or something?” Her host's question puts an end to Lexa's shameless perusing and endless musing, milky-way thoughts returned to (comparably) solid ground.
“I'm good.” Before they can descend into “the quiet” once again, she quickly tags-on, “how about we start with Act 1?”
“Okay.” Clarke flips open her play, and at once she's Countess Olivia, without the aid of costume or composition.
“What is your poetry? Not text or doctrine, I would hear the maid, not the man.”
Though she's since read through the play a few times, Lexa still can't quite believe that anyone on the school board authorized the overt “gayifying” (another Ravenism) of a classic, least of all that she herself was cast in such a production- art, it seems, truly does imitate life.
“Let me see your face,” she responds, feeling a little ridiculous whilst sitting cross-legged on a futon, in a decidedly non theatrical setting.
“Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face?”
“No.”
“Then I will draw the curtain, and show you the picture.”
At the command of the pages, Lexa mimes removing Clarke's invisible veil, hands burning when thumb collides with chin.
“Excellently done. 'Tis how I am certain, that God did not do all.”
“How?”
Lexa pauses. “Would Viola really say this?” she asks, almost to herself, gesturing to an unbroken paragraph which diverges so far from all realms of “sixteenth century acceptable.”
Clarke laughs. “What, you mean the sapphic soliloquy?”
Lexa's chest twists at the term, nails carving patterns into her palms. Because Clarke is, quite probably, maybe, most likely, straight, because Clarke is straight, and it sounds... strange, that's all, like hearing an old turn of phrase that the world stopped using for a while.
She spoke free verse in French, and lyrical in Italian, whilst I, simple I, could muster no more than broken English. But this mattered none- for the only thing universal was the taste of her skin on my tongue, and this (so we said) was the language of love.
“Yes. I guess, it seems a little ridiculous to be inciting “all the legions of hell” in the name of “true love,” when they've known each other all of five minutes.”
Lexa pretends she hasn't been blinded, brightened, since that day at the theatre// chased by clouds of lilac potion, a witchcraft drew me to this moment.
“I don't think so.”
“You don't?” Not that Lexa can presume to have any kind of insight into the philosophy of Clarke Griffin, but she had her pegged (messy room, brilliant actress) as more of a realist.
“No. I think, when you meet someone, time doesn't have to be an issue.” Her eyes don't leave Lexa's, expression coded in earnest. “I'm not saying anything as cliché as love, the stereotypically Hollywood “I would die for you” love, but... familiarity, maybe. A kind of tenderness.”
Their knees are touching, Lexa notes, as she does her best not to pen an ode to the shape of Clarke's nose. “Have you ever felt-”
They're interrupted by a knock at the door, with Abby offering herself as a walking clock. “Since it's getting late, why don't you stay over, Lexa? I'm sure Clarke won't mind breaking out the air mattress.”
“That's fine, really, I can-”
“She'll stay,” Clarke chimes in, smirk playing at the corners of her (otherwise, angelic) grin. Abby smiles at the pair and shuffles off, leaving Lexa's heart-rate still trying to catch up.
“Confident I'm not tired of you yet?” she attempts to joke- as if she could be tired of the girl, she's still so desperate to get to know.
Clarke aims a throw pillow in her direction. “I hope you like weird eighties movies.” With that, she starfishes on her (non air) mattress, and gestures for Lexa to lie beside her.
She should decline. Lexa should leave without looking back, make one last bid to keep from falling off the face of the planet. (She won't catch you, won't even try, though you protest that her warm breath on your neck might be worth the flight).
Instead, she crosses the cotton barrier, confirming that, yes, Clarke does smell like vanilla. She's also far more intricate up close- an etch a sketch of freckles and curves, built to drawn, held, written of- not displayed, even proudly, on a shelf.
This is probably another one of those thoughts that veer too close to dangerous, too invasive for their level-up status as friend-strangers. Lexa doesn't usually have this hard of a time with labels, always a fan of checklists and boxes. (Except, apparently, when it comes sleepovers she's too old and too gay for).
“The Breakfast Club or Pretty in Pink?”
“You choose,” Lexa mumbles, oddly unsurprised when Clarke selects “Sixteen Candles.”
I could write that she was the ocean and I was not the sand, that I was a mere mortal who died every night, just to hold her in my hands. // She's just a girl too small for her sheets, and I am oh so terrified, to fall for something real.
…...
For a long time that night, Lexa stares up at the stars, feeling more than usually insignificant, and wondering what on earth they have in store.
She wakes to sunlight streaming through the open window, casting shadows on Clarke's vacant pillow. It's a stark contrast to the vast planes of ceiling-galaxy, and goes some way in returning Lexa's mismatched mood to normalcy.
That is, of course, until Clarke returns with cinnamon waffles and fresh coffee, the very picture of domesticity. Her list of talents, so it seems, is never-ending.
We're playing house in a cardboard box, she said I like you, I like you, I like you a lot. (I think I like her more).
“Thank you, Clarke,” Lexa says, a little distracted by the fact that the blonde is wearing nothing more than a t-shirt. She gazes intently at the criss-cross pattern of her waffle, not shocked to learn that it's as wonderful as she who made it.
“Do you want to spend the day together?”
The question can't be written off as a theatre obligation or a chance encounter, a suggestion posed by a concerned mother. This is all Clarke, Clarke asking, wanting to spend time with her.
“Doing what?”
She sips her coffee, considering. “I don't know,” she shrugs, a single ray illuminating the crease where her eyeliner is smudged, a strip of collarbone; exposed. She was summer in a bottle, and I knew that come winter, she'd spill over, under.
Lexa decides that she doesn't want to know, either. “I'd like that."
“Neat-O,” Clarke remarks, and Lexa re-cycles some lie about her “lame” vocabulary.
What she neglects to mention, however, is the most wholesome of truths- that she'd do anything to reach across the ocean of the bedspread, and kiss her, morning breath and all. (Join the continents in perfect song). Not even like in the movies they watched last night, all bite and fake, Lexa would much prefer the gentle press of upturned lips, a soundtrack of teenage innocence.
(When Clarke leaves the room to shower and clean up, she can't help but feel as though she's done something terribly, terribly wrong).
As it turns out, “I don't know” is a whole lot of mooching and wandering, until Clarke suggests that they hang out on the rooftop of an abandoned apartment building.
“It's totally fine, I used to go up there all the time.” Wish I could visit you like a country, map every quirk and catalogue every (non existent) flaw- study your favourites, without breaking any laws.
“Oh... okay.”
Clarke practically flies up the dilapidated staircase, vowing that the view from the seventeenth floor is “so worth it.”
Lexa can't help but agree. The garden terrace may well be the seat of the gods, skyscrapers so close she could reach out and touch. And in an instant, pink gave way to purple, as I looked at the clouds and only wished to be looking at her// knew I'd feel this way, no matter if we travelled the world. She was my atlas, and I was no more than her (passing) storm.
She considers, quite seriously, if it would be possible to play whack-a-mole with the people below, then concludes that they're not people, not really, just shadowy figures. She and Clarke are the only two people left in the stratosphere. (Lexa wonders, if that were the case, would Clarke kiss her then?)
“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Clarke traces the cityscape with her fingertip, before proceeding to dig through the bedlam of her back-pack. Like bedroom, like lifestyle, apparently. (Lexa doesn't admit that she finds it endearing).
“Not as beautiful as you,” she half-whispers, in an exaggerated version of her Viola voice.
She said I love you in yellow roses, but never in ambrosia. We bound the bouquet, and looped our wrists in (im)perfect matrimony- I the bride, and she the attendee.
Clarke laughs, as if mocking the sentiment, and Lexa bites her tongue to keep from repeating it without the mask of her character.
“Do you smoke?”
“Smoke...”
She brandishes the contents of her back-pack, and Lexa makes a small “ah” sound at the back of her throat. What she intends to do is reiterate her status as an honour role student, and remark that she's never seen the appeal in “smoking a plant.”
What comes out is: “I could try it?”
“You don't have to.”
“No, I know. I want to.” Lexa's parents never warned her about reverse peer pressure- though, when it comes to Clarke, aren't all these torments self inflicted?
God, now she really does sound like a Shakespearian creation, destined for bloody knuckles and violent nostalgia, an emblem of doom in Clarke's borrowed denim jacket.
“If you're sure.” Clarke rolls the joint like she's done this before (which, again, shouldn't be surprising, since Lexa is still studying for an imaginary test on the blonde), inhales a haze of milky smoke, defying all rules, of what is and isn't hot. She doesn't even cough.
“Your turn.”
Lexa attempts to copy the motions, only succeeds in holding the thing in her mouth for a few moments, spluttering with no good reason. Clarke laughs just a little this time, and Lexa burns red, not entirely from embarrassment. She's all stop signs and high voltage, a fusillade of exclamations, and I am hurdling, helplessly, towards a crimson dawn.
“Lexa, would you like me to help you?”
“Okay,” she says, though oblivious as to what that might entail.
“Open your mouth.”
“What?”
“Do you trust me? You know, under the circumstances.”
Lexa assumes that “the circumstances” are the small matter of knowing one another for less than a week, wonders if Clarke, too, finds this whole situation comforting slash weird. We're a tangle of wires; like stars, always crossed in the wrong places.
She opens her mouth.
Clarke pushes and arranges, until Lexa is lying against the rooftop, concrete cool against the flat of her back. She hovers over her, their bodies held in place by a single breath. The question of “who's,” would be impossible to answer.
I pray the earth will be kind to us, the two unfortunate lovers, for vows made to the heavens, cannot be translated to the undergrowth// in this life, at least, she was mine and I was her own.
Everything is Clarke- Clarke's hand on her hip, Clarke's hair framing her face. Lexa wonders if it's possible to drown in a person, under the weight of their thoughts and their skin and their swirling, spiralling brain.
She doesn't even notice when Clarke inhales from the joint, exhales in the space between Lexa's lips. Their mouths brush, but do not meet, the greatest tragedy, in all of history. It's a tease, a ploy, a painting displayed without colour, only lines.
Smoke burns her lungs, though Lexa is fixated on the faint taste of Clarke's gum, an odd cocktail of weed and watermelon. Perhaps recreational drug use, isn't so bad after all, Lexa notes, unsure if she's dying or being born.
“You're so pretty, Lexa.” Clarke sounds distant and far-away, floating up, up, up above their frozen embrace. She herself feels giddy yet boneless, judgement smudging with each of their almost-kisses.
(It's Lexa's turn to giggle at the compliment, for no other reason than nebulous joy).
I wanted her in the plainest of language, all raw and heat and entanglement. It was the rest of the world, not I, who insisted this whole thing should be complicated.
“How did you find this place?” she semi-slurs, once Clarke (unfortunately) sits up, and they're again lounging side by side- closer, this time.
Clarke drops the remains of the joint into an empty plant-pot. “I used to sit up here for hours, watching the city turn gold. Kind of like I was a god, or something to that effect.”
She's side-steeping the query, but Lexa doesn't interrupt.
“My dad showed me, before he left my mom. Left us.” Their fingers graze, though neither hold on, content to muse on a half-formed metaphor. “Unorthodox parenting, I suppose.”
“Do you miss him?”
“I don't think about it any more.” A lie, of course, one that they're far too spacey to debate. Lexa is torn between laughing and crying, flying or being buried here, specifically here, with Clarke right beside her.
“What about you?”
“Huh?” she mumbles, subject matter already forgotten.
Clarke smiles (fondly?), and expands upon her question. “Where's your 'place?'”
She was fourth of July fireworks (electric pulse, magnetic pull), and the fifth of July clean up- aching limbs and mid-day sun. This, claimed the movies, was no safe way to build a home.
“I haven't found it yet.”
For one maddening moment, Lexa wonders if they're about to kiss, really kiss, two comets upon the point of collision. She doesn't factor Clarke's (probable, possible) heterosexuality, the thousand and one reasons that her new friend wouldn't be attracted to her. (Once sober, no doubt, she's like to do anything but remember).
Instead, Clarke asks, “So, what are your views on aliens?”
Lexa doesn't pause, not this time.“Real.”
“You answered that pretty quickly.”
“Some things you just know, you know?”
Lexa would like to blame the marijuana for her lack of cohesive and proper English, though really, truly, it's just her default setting in Clarke's presence.
“I know.”
They sit together in comfortable stillness, watching as day fades into dusk. (Lexa hopes they can make it, until the moon comes up).
Lexa spends the rest of the weekend with Clarke, and far longer than that.
They run lines and text “lame” emojis, lounge on the field at lunch and knit daisy chains. Lexa memorises her Starbucks order (two shot caramel macchiato), doesn't flinch when Clarke decides to braid her hair or read the fortune of her palms, fingers always lingering a little longer than planned. This is what friends do, right?
Lexa is so busy with Clarke, and the play, and Clarke again, that she doesn't see much of Anya and Raven- a point that they forcefully insist on rectifying.
“Okay, she's definitely not straight.”
That's Anya's sole take on “the rooftop incident,” when Lexa (finally) gets round to re-telling the tale. To be fair, it's still better than Raven's hysterical outbreak at the notion of Lexa dabbling in a (semi) illegal substance.
“Even if that were true-”
“It is.”
“... that doesn't mean she likes me.” Crushes come in pastels, not monochrome, and I am tired of being contained to the pages of her scrapbook, not the photos.
“I guess I'll have to see for myself.”
Suddenly, Anya and Raven “dropping in on her” during rehearsal, seems far less like a thoughtful gesture- and more like the plot to a bad spy film.
“Please tell me you didn't.”
“We did,” Raven chimes in. “I signed us up to help out with costumes and set.”
Lexa glowers at her friends, all set to denounce their meddling. That is, until Clarke nudges her shoulder to announce her arrival.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
Raven coughs.
“This is my, uh, this is Clarke.” The stuttered introduction doesn't do her justice, though Lexa is certain that the way she says Clarke's name (a six letter prayer, minimalistic poetry, the last line to a letter; never delivered) serves as explanation enough, and renders her transparent in the process.
“I've heard so much about you,” Anya smiles, and Lexa considers the merits of faking her own death- booking a one way plane ticket to Canada, and never coming back.
“And I you,”- hyperbole on Clarke's part, given that they've been too... busy, to raise subjects outside of their two-person bubble. I met her, and forgot about the rest of the world- or was it that she became the centre of (my) earth?
“We should all hang out sometime, get to know Lexa's acting buddy.”
“Sounds good.”
“Great.”
Lexa has never been more animated, nor grateful, for Abby (Dr Griffin?) to call time on their break.
Anya and Raven say their goodbyes and head backstage, whilst Clarke and Lexa take their place centre-stage.
“Act 5 scene 1, Olivia's garden. Once again, do your-”
“... best with the script. We got it, mom.” Clarke casts her a meaningful look, like they're old friends who share inside jokes. Lexa does her best not to blush.
She fails, upon Clarke reaching out to cup her face- as per the script. Lexa steps back, under the command of her own. We are: instruments, mortals, doomed to replay the same freakshow fairytale- ships in the night, no picture book ending.
“I cannot sacrifice the lamb that I do love- not in the name of savage jealously, nor to spite a raven's heart within a dove. If you would marry him, fair Olivia, take thy fortunes up.”
“But I, most jocund, apt, and willingly- to do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.”
“Is this love indeed?”
“I have known love, only as green and yellow melancholy. No priest would contract our eternal bond, nor could we be confirmed by the mutual joinder of our hands, attested by the holy close of lips, the exchange of rings.”
“Perhaps this love, belongs only to the grave.” Lexa cringes as she reads the line, unable (typical Lit student) to separate herself from the play. Don't these characters, these women, these symbols, deserve better than this? If this is Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, “re-imagined,” why must it sound so much like the original?
Or, worse, Romeo and Juliet part ii, with lesbians.
Luckily, Clarke, Abby, and the rest of the “creative team” seem to agree.
“It sounds wooden... problematic... I don't buy it” are some of the qualms she overhears, as well as a whole lot of page turning, sighing, and scoffing in harmony.
“Are you okay?” And then Clarke's hand, not her character's, is brushing her arm, likely concerned that the effects of Lexa's internal rage-rant have left her zoned out and staring at the wall.
“I'm fine.” // I was wondering, if only death can make a tragedy, what should I call this, us, the way you'd look// in my bed, in my head, next to me, always?
“Does anyone have any ideas about this scene?” Abby implores, seemingly to the entire theatre. Lexa's notebook burns a hole in her pocket. She doesn't say anything.
“Lexa, don't you-”
“I have to... um, water.” Eloquent, Woods.
She flees (okay, speed-walks) from Clarke's well meaning attempts, and curses herself for not being more careful. Of course Clarke noticed her perpetual scribbling (or, “the notebook thing,” as Anya has so oft described it)- but that doesn't mean she has any clue about it's contents, doesn't explain why she was about to take a “leap of faith,” and gamble the artistic direction of their senior play.
Then again, nothing about the past few weeks makes any sense, nothing about her own actions, or words, the flower-casket sprouting from the garden of her chest. Maybe it makes sense that Clarke makes no sense, either.
“Lexa?”- case in point, since the last thing that she expected, was for Clarke to waste time following her. She joins Lexa in sitting cross-legged beside the water cooler, as the rest of the cast (and teachers), leave to snap up the cafeteria meal deal.
“Sorry.”
“Don't be sorry. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“You didn't.” You couldn't.
“It's just... you're always writing in that damned notebook. And judging by your acting, the way you speak... it's bound to be worth reading. I know you're good enough to help re-write the play, and I don't know why you're so modest all of the time.”
“It's not all that-”
“Show me.”
Lexa has never shown anyone (other than her cat, though the fact that his verbal communications do not extend beyond the odd “meow,” probably disqualify him from this count) her work before, is reluctant to even read over it herself.
Clarke isn't “anyone,” either. Does that make this better or worse?
She's silent again, overthinking, seeds of doubt planting an entire wildlife park within the confines of her skull.
“You don't have to,” Clarke says, not for the first time in the history of their complex-simple relationship. “I'd really like to see, that's all.” For whatever reason, Lexa can't do anything other than believe her, Clarke's gentle smile making her want to expose a little bit of her soul.
“Okay.” She leafs through her notebook, searching for her least incriminating poem. Dizzy, nauseous, firework-eyelids, she hands the page over to Clarke.
“This is amazing, Lexa,” Clarke murmurs when she's finished reading, mirroring Lexa's stare on the first day they met: unblinking, blinded, waiting for a sign that the solar system has given up and gone home; too afraid of the competition. Lexa gulps. “But it's so...”
“Sad?”
“Yeah.”
She tries to laugh it off. “Rather apt for Shakespeare.” Maybe the play is destined to be a tragedy, and her input would be nought more than fitting, not revolutionary.
Clarke shakes her head. “You only wrote one side of the story. Isn't it possible that the other... person might feel the same way? 'I guess' might imply that the writer is getting ahead, or more likely, behind themselves. Hypothetically, I mean.”
“Hypothetically, right.”
They're going to kiss. This isn't a theory, isn't a hunch, Lexa has never been more sure of anything in her life. Clarke's fingers are curved around the base of her neck, head tilting, lips closing the gap.
It was moving too soon, happening too fast- a paper mache epilogue, not meant to last// when it comes to her, though, how could I not play the optimist?
“Lex, I-”
“Clarke?” Lexa doesn't recognise the voice, could almost cry at the interruption, freeze frame of the moment she's wanted for so long.
Clarke recoils as if she's been burnt, revokes her skin, her attention and her touch- all to greet the stranger entering through the wings. He's tall, and plain looking, and perfectly average, and Lexa wonders how long it will take for Clarke to get back to kissing her.
“Finn?” Clarke takes a step back from Lexa, and a step towards him. “I thought you weren't due back from college until next week?”
“I came home early, figured I'd surprise you. I didn't expect you to have company.”
Something is wrong, Lexa thinks. Terribly wrong, atmosphere grown too terse and quiet to befit the hallowed glory of their theatre hall. She's proven right, if Clarke's next words are anything to go by.
“Lexa, this is Finn. He's my... my, uh, boyfriend.”