Lexa closes the door behind her as quietly as she can, not wanting to wake Clarke. She tiptoes across the room, slipping out of her shoes and pulling off her clothes, casting off any semblance of Heda. When she is down to nothing but lace, she slips into the sheets behind Clarke, folding them over herself, feeling the tension and worry that plagued her all week start to crumble. The immediacy of Clarke's warmth, the hum of her body, seem to sonically cleanse Lexa.
She doesn't want to wake her, but she can't stop herself from reaching forward, placing her hand on the dip of Clarke's waist as she lays on her side. She exhales in relief without meaning to. She hates to leave, even in peacetime. The last year hasn't quite worn into Lexa as she'd hoped; peace still feels tentative and foreign, as though one wrong move could plunge the tranquility into oblivion. War is all she's known, and in many ways peace is more difficult for her than strife.
Clarke has more faith in the longevity of peace than Lexa, which is why it's so hard to be away from her. Lexa tries not to tighten her hand at Clarke's waist, but she can't help giving a little squeeze of gratitude for being so soft, for being so faithful in her confidence, for being alive.
It's more than Lexa could have hoped for when she became commander seven years ago.
Clarke stirs and Lexa feels a combination of remorse and relief as Clarke turns onto her back, rolling into Lexa. She doesn't open her eyes, but she starts smiling.
"Mmm… Heda's home."
Lexa nuzzles into the crook of Clarke's neck. "No Heda," she mumbles.
"Welcome home, niron," Clarke says, voice cracking from sleep.
Lexa lifts her face enough to kiss Clarke, relief and gratitude pouring from her lips. This is coming home. Not Polis, not their room, not even their bed. Clarke's lips.
She savors it for a moment before she pulls back. Her gaze is intense and needy as she takes in Clarke's half-sleeping form.
Clarke blinks her eyes open. "How was it?" she asks, eyes drooping closed again while her eyebrows dance up to compensate.
"Good."
It's quiet for a moment and Clarke opens her eyes again, trying to rouse herself for conversation. "Just good?"
Lexa's upper shoulder hitches apathetically. "Fine. No surprises."
Clarke maneuvers her arm over the pillow and draws Lexa closer to her. "Not even for me?"
Lexa gives a girlish grin, letting herself be pulled onto Clarke. "I always bring you something."
"I know."
"Do you want it?"
Clarke's hand drifts into Lexa's hair, still braided from her official duties, and draws Lexa's head down to her mouth again. She kisses Lexa deep and slow, shifting so Lexa can rest comfortably against her.
Clarke lowers her voice in a way unrelated to sleep. "Not right now."
Lexa feels herself quicken.
"I missed you," Clarke whispers.
"I missed you too," Lexa whispers back.
"How much?"
Lexa rolls fully on top of Clarke, letting one of her legs fall between Clarke's.
"So much."
She doesn't roll her hips, but her intention is clear.
Clarke hums in surprise.
Lexa rarely asks for such things, and never out loud.
"I missed you," Lexa echoes against Clarke's ear before pressing her lips to Clarke's jaw, drawing a trail of questing kisses down toward her pulse point.
Clarke lets out a sigh of delight when Lexa finds her spot. Lexa feels Clarke's leg sliding up to roll her onto her back, but she stops her.
"Let me," she whispers.
She loves when Clarke touches her; Clarke is always so generous and steadying and strong. But that's not what Lexa wants right now. She wants to see Clarke open and soft as she curls and blooms beneath her.
Clarke exhales, closing her eyes as she smiles. Lexa feels her body opening beneath her, head tilting back, shoulders dropping.
Lexa's hands are restless. She can't stop touching Clarke's body: her shoulders, her face, her breasts, her stomach, her hips. She revels in how real Clarke is, how solid and warm. Being away for a week made it feel like Clarke had started to fade away. She needs every reassurance Clarke is here, solid, in their bed. She presses her palms to every plane, every curve, gripping and mapping and cherishing.
Clarke wakes up beneath her.
Her hands always find their way back up to Clarke's face, holding her there against her lips, drinking her in, trying to express so much without words.
Lexa wonders if Clarke will ever understand.
The gentle hands Clarke places on her back suggest she might.
She loves the way Clarke's body lifts her up with each breath. She stays draped over Clarke as they run their hands over each other. Clarke's fingers pull at the straps of Lexa's bra, struggling to unclasp it. When it opens she drags it off Lexa's body, losing it somewhere in the sheets.
Lexa feels her skin breathe and warm against Clarke's.
Clarke's hands come to rest on Lexa's shoulders. One threads up through Lexa's hair, directing Lexa's lips down into the crook of her neck. Lexa smiles as she presses her lips to the spot that makes Clarke shudder. She stays there for a minute, wondering at how such an unassuming place can draw such intense pleasure.
She hears Clarke's breathing grow raspier and knows she needs to settle some attention between her legs. But she can't yet – she can't stop marveling at the wholeness of Clarke, how the press of her lips to one spot of her neck triggers the curling of her toes or the sweep of goosebumps over her arms. She wants to find every secret trigger of Clarke's body and set it off before the sun comes up.
Clarke's hand coaxes Lexa's head down further, past her collarbone. It's gentle and appreciative, but clear. Lexa wriggles down, settling lower, nuzzling Clarke's breast as her mouth searches out the nipple.
Lexa can hardly stand the soft luxury of Clarke's breasts. So supple, so responsive to her touch, so malleable in her hands. She marvels at how the tenderness of her flesh yields to the tautness of the nipple, how the color shifts when they peak. She studies the feel of the bud between her lips, stiff against her tongue as Clarke gasps and rolls beneath her.
Lexa is always surprised at how frantic Clarke gets when she lingers here. It's Clarke's secret soft spot; secret because it seems obvious, but the sensitivity is surprising. Clarke gasping and wriggling under her only encourages her as she sucks little galaxies into the pale pink flesh. The only bruises she ever wants to see on Clarke are made by her own mouth.
Clarke's hands aren't usually frantic, but she grasps Lexa's head and shoulders, mussing her hair, grip firmer than anything else about her. Her legs scrabble and her lungs heave, head rolling back as she holds Lexa in place.
Against her abdomen Lexa can feel Clarke's growing stickiness, damp and warm, twisting against her in search of attention. Lexa's soft belly doesn't provide enough.
"Lexa..."
Lexa can't lift her head enough to respond with more than a hum. Everything seems to pour from her lips. Adoration. Gratitude. Hunger.
Lexa never thought she would need another person, but she needs this. She needs Clarke's body, needs to feel Clarke breathe and writhe under her, needs to feel she can give more than orders and blows and death. Clarke is life, Clarke is hope, Clarke is grace. Clarke is everything Lexa thought forbidden to her.
And yet she is not forbidden.
"Lexa," Clarke says, more demanding.
Lexa shifts enough to slip her hand between them, sliding over Clarke's inner thighs, feeling how smooth and flushed she is, both from sleep and desire.
She moves her fingers infuriatingly slowly, attention still on her mouth and other hand as they adore the rest of Clarke's body. Clarke lets out a frustrated noise and Lexa can't bear it; as satisfying as Clarke's tension is, it sounds too similar to Clarke's discomfort.
Even after all the times they've made love, Lexa is still surprised she can incite such a reaction.
She slides her fingers through Clarke's softest part, breath staggering out as she feels how wet Clarke is. She moans against the flesh in her mouth, feeling her panties stick to her where they press against Clarke's knee. She tries not to focus too much on her own undulations; pleasuring Clarke, treasuring Clarke, making up for the week apart is all she wants to do.
Clarke shivers and starts talking in breathy, gaspy fragments.
"God, Lexa... I missed you so much... Missed this so much... Ah... feels so good... "
Lexa shivers and tenses, her body starting to overtake the attention she's giving Clarke. Clarke knows she loves to hear little reassurances like this, but it's too much right now. She wants to shush Clarke, to tell her to focus on feeling, focus on all the places Lexa wishes she could touch at once, the gentle push of skin against skin, of lace against flesh. Instead she slides up and kisses Clarke, quieting her with her lips as her fingers grow bolder below. She slips two inside, slow and steady, feeling the gentle stretch as they're coated in Clarke's slickness.
Clarke's mouth opens against Lexa's and Lexa waits until her brow relaxes and she starts breathing again.
Clarke's eyes fly up to bore into Lexa. Lexa holds her gaze as Clarke's hips start to rock into her, rolls and lifts, little pleas for more of Lexa's touch.
Clarke finds her bearings enough to tease. "Tired of my boobs?"
Lexa lets out a little giggle, both at the impossibility of the suggestion and at Clarke's phrasing. It's such a funny word. Boobs.
This is Lexa's favorite part of making love: the laughter that wafts through them on occasion, the trust that makes it possible, the ever-expanding joy they take in each other.
"Never."
"Well?" Clarke pants, eyebrow arching as she glances down at her own chest.
Lexa smirks, giving Clarke's mouth a long, sucking kiss before letting herself be urged back down to resume smattering Clarke's chest with soft purple. The marks don't look so different from her own bruises; in this light, in this bed, there is no difference between her blood and Clarke's when it rises under their skin.
It's a heaving, halting journey up, no matter how graceful Lexa's mouth and hands are. She takes her time. Having been gone for seven days, she feels she has much to make up for.
Clarke stiffens and Lexa doubles down, increasing her suction until it's enough to make little popping noises, fingers stroking deeper. Clarke twists and gasps her encouragement. Lexa can tell by the tension in her stomach she's almost there.
When it happens, it's every bit as bursting and breathtaking as the galaxies Lexa drew out on her chest. Clarke cries out, a rasping, wild sound that darts about the room as Lexa stays pressed against her. Clarke's hands grow shaky in Lexa's hair. Lexa doesn't let up.
"Okay," Clarke breathes, coming down. "Okay, okay…" She urges Lexa to stop, and Lexa does, but she keeps her fingers inside, wanting to feel every last pulse as it courses through Clarke, every shooting star and sunburst. They arc across Clarke's body in shivers and sighs.
Clarke lets out a withering groan of satisfaction, arms flopping to the sheets as she finally stills. Lexa can't help but smile against Clarke's breast, almost as satisfied as Clarke.
"I always forget what going away does to you," Clarke says with a tired smirk.
Lexa slides up Clarke's body and kisses her. As much as she loves the warmth swirling through Clarke, part of her is still pained from the anxiety of being apart. She hates to leave Clarke, hates that she even when she's home they can't spend as much time in this bed as she would like.
For a girl who once thought herself above need, the last year has proven her immeasurably wrong.
They kiss until the ripples have settled and the bed is placid again. Lexa feels something creep up on her, quieting the lace-encased need between her legs. The fact that she can make Clarke quake and groan beneath her is both joyful and terrifying; if lips and fingers are so powerful, there is no telling the harm that other things, harsher things, can do to them.
The fragility of the woman she loves – even a woman as strong as Clarke – will never cease to terrify her. She fears others will mistake the star stuff Clarke is made of for the elements of any other body, a body laid to waste so easily in war. She feels her throat tighten. She must maintain peace.
Lexa burrows deeper into Clarke, powerless to her pull. It seems impossible anyone could ever love her as much as she loves Clarke.
Yet Clarke has proven she can overturn even the biggest impossibilities.
Peace.
Happiness.
Love.
"I missed you," she whispers again. Her voice sounds tight and hoarse with the threat of tears.
"I missed you too," Clarke whispers back, soft now. "Every minute you were away."
Clarke's hands slip over her back, fingers brushing through her braids and curls. Lexa lets her eyes close as her throat tightens further and her chest aches. A tear trails down her cheek, soaking into Clarke's skin. Clarke absorbs it with quiet grace, as she does so many things. Her only reaction is to press her hand gently to Lexa's back. The gentle reassurance affords Lexa enough calm to exhale.
"I missed you every minute too."