My Lovely Summer Girl: Chapter Seven

I don't own The 100

Please enjoy.


The only downside to being consistently withdrawn and difficult to talk to is that when Lexa actually wanted to talk to someone, perhaps Clarke for instance, and to comfort them or tell them that if she wanted to they could talk to Lexa, she was well aware that it would most likely come across as insincere.

Which is why, instead of simply telling Clarke that she didn't have to talk about what had happened outside with Bellamy, that she didn't have to tell her why it was that she had been doing her best to keep her smile firmly locked in place - though, if she wanted to, she could of course tell Lexa these things - Lexa dropped her plate wordlessly onto the space next to Clarke's plate and nodded when the blonde looked up at her. She even tried a smile but it was blown away when Clarke gave her the brightest smile Lexa had ever seen and murmured a shy "hello" before she turned back to Raven.

Lexa tried not to focus on the way that their thighs touched lightly, and she kept her left arm still where it was on the table because Clarke's arm was there and two points of contact would perhaps be too much.

She didn't move away, however, when Clarke gestured and let her hand return to the table that much closer to Lexa's arm that their elbows touched.

Raven didn't notice - curious eyes from across the hall did and somehow none of the counsellors realised that some intrusive children had palmed binoculars to better watch their favourite non-couple - and loudly and excitedly discussed a new engine she'd had delivered.

"Are you sure that you're allowed to have stuff like that here at camp?" Clarke asked. "I mean, they're not in a car so are they locked away at least? Kids kinda have a tendency to," Clarke pursed her lips, shrugged. Filled her mouth with pasta so that she wouldn't say something she couldn't take back about children's pursuits of danger.

"Ruin everything," Raven filled in the end of Clarke's sentence. "I know. But yeah, you haven't been to the maintenance shed have you? I have a couple of ingenious lines of defence."

"You have a sign that says any children found within ten feet of your shed will be press ganged into doing your chores," Lexa said quietly, not looking up from her plate. Raven could still just make out the arch of unimpressed eyebrows.

"Like I said, ingenious."

"Well you know I'm not sure that is super safe and since kids-"

"-ruin everything-"

"I was actually going to say touch things without thinking and tend to get themselves into strife, but okay, sure. Since kids are ruiners, maybe you should put up some more safeguards?"

"I know that you two didn't say anything negative about the campers," Lincoln said with a stern look as he walked past their group. "Kids are wonderful. Remember?"

"Sir yes sir." The two of them - atrocious, Lincoln thought, atrocious terrible people who should never look after children, honestly, even if they were clever and lovely and well perhaps they weren't so bad with children but really they shouldn't talk like that about them - saluted him with equally cheery smiles and he just sighed and continued on with his own dinner plate to sit with Octavia. Octavia, who was gently and lovingly placing shreds of grated cheese in her brothers chair. (Bellamy used dinner as a time to continue mentally kicking himself, head firmly planted on the table so he wouldn't have to look at Clarke and remember how much of an idiot he had been. He didn't notice as the pile of cheese grew to immense proportions, and wouldn't notice until the cheese fell off when he sat up and Jasper yelled at him to clean up his mess.)

"You were saying something," Raven prompted Clarke.

"Right. Do you at least have locks?"

"Nah. Barbed wire around the whole shed."

Clarke blinked. "I think...that might be more dangerous than an engine."

"Yeah. But the Doctor Abby's cabin is right next to the shed so if any kiddies are crying it will alert her."

Clarke sat in mute surprise until Lexa sighed and nudged her, murmured, "she's joking" before Lexa returned to her dinner. Raven grinned at the two of them.

"You're joking?"

"Do you really think that Mr Safe would let me work on anything if I didn't have twelve hundred precautions?" Raven pointed out. "I'm just messing with you. New kid and all. Speaking of," Raven leant in, lowered her voice. (Lexa tried to control her rapid heart beat when Clarke did the same, her leg pressing a little harder against Lexa's at the movement.) "Say, Clarke, have you been pranked at all since you got here?" Raven asked Clarke quietly.

"No. Should I have been?"

"Oh, no, it's just a question." Raven shrugged, smile too innocent, too sweet.

Lincoln was immediately on alert. "No pranks!" he whispered harshly down the table, looking around to see that none of the kids had heard him and thought, for some reason, that the mention of pranks somehow made them acceptable. "No!"

"Relax," she told him, all too smug and relaxed herself, leaning her chin on her hand. "Would I ever break your rules, Lincoln?"

"Yes."

"You wound me."

"If you literally wound someone, Raven, so help me..."

"Relax," Raven said again. "I am impeccable and well behaved."

"You're impenitent and terribly behaved," he grumbled, but allowed Octavia to calm him down with a kiss on the cheek and fell back into their own conversation.

"He always says the sweetest things," Raven sighed, grinning over at Clarke who just had to grin back even though she had the uneasy feeling that she was going to be pranked soon and probably relentlessly, because she liked Raven. She liked everyone she had met. She was having fun and she refused to let herself get down.

"Lexa, what are you still doing here?" a mostly unfamiliar face asked - Finn, Clarke recalled his name after a moment. He didn't turn up for every meal and she hadn't had the chance to talk with him yet, but he nodded kindly to her when he dropped into place next to Raven, taking a moment to kiss her cheek. "Aren't you normally out of here after your bare minimum of social time?" he laughed.

"Yes." Lexa scraped the last of her dinner from her plate and stood. "Excuse me."

Clarke wanted to stop her but - should she? She couldn't ask Lexa to stop doing what she always did, she definitely wouldn't do it in front of people who had known Lexa for longer than she had, and it would be weird of her if she just asked Lexa to stay. Wouldn't it? So she did her best to mask her disappointment and gave Lexa a small smile.

"Oh - Lexa!" Lincoln shook his head. "Actually, would you mind staying after dinner? I have something I want to talk to everyone about while the kids do whatever it is they do before dessert. Is that alright?"

Lexa gave nothing away with her curt nod. Dropped back into place next to Clarke like it was nothing.

She said nothing about Clarke's beaming smile. Thought a lot about how she guessed Clarke would be very, very bad at poker. Ignored the way she felt like matching that smile because it was a very pleasant feeling indeed to know that someone wanted you to stay with them.

Lexa didn't join in often on their conversation - Clarke questioned Finn about his job and listened intently as he discussed tracking and how important it was to learn how to look after yourself in the wilderness - and she didn't notice when she stopped looking down at her clear plate and instead just looked sideways at Clarke, leaning against her hand. Raven did her best not to laugh at the utterly absorbed expression from their normally stoic counsellor. Smitten, she might have called it if it were anyone other than Lexa.

Actually. Lexa would have a conniption if she heard Raven call her smitten. She would absolutely be calling Lexa smitten - to her face - soon. Finn would have to be hidden nearby with a camera to catch Lexa's reaction... Raven drifted off into her thoughts to consider the moment with delight.

As soon as the kids had been shooed out the door - "dessert in half an hour! No destroying things please" - Lincoln stood at the end of the counsellors table and smiled broadly at them. "I think we can all agree that today's water fight was awesome. So special thanks go to Clarke and Lexa for keeping the kids so thoroughly entertained today." Half-hearted cheers rose around the table, followed by a more genuine round of laughter when Clarke shot right up out of her seat, smiling widely, and gave each of them a flourishing bow.

"Thank you, thank you, so kind. No really, it was a pleasure, please," she said as she did and Lexa rolled her eyes, a small affectionate smile her only contribution.

"Alright, Clarke, thank you." Lincoln waved her back down, not unkindly but because he was jittering with his own excitement. "It went so well," he continued, "that I think we should keep doing it."

"That's a lot of water, Lincoln."

"Like, a lot of water."

"California is in drought, Australia is basically always in a drought I'm pretty sure it's ninety per cent desert. " Finn pointed out. "Bostwana," he continued. "The Kalahari covers a lot of Botswana. Then there's the Oltenian Sahara, plus, you know, the Sahara which covers so much of northern African continent. And wow I mean, come on, the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia and-"

"You're just naming deserts now," Bellamy complained, throwing up his hands. "Deserts are pretty common features in geography. Not everywhere can be a forest, Finn, so that you can get your exploring on and have fun. They are actually caused by factors that have to do with water not getting there, not water necessarily being taken out of them."

"I just mean that there are places that could do with a little water, Bellamy, and we're wasting it."

"This really isn't the discussion I wanted-" Lincoln started, but they had got into the swing of the discussion and Octavia just patted his leg soothingly when he sat back down and waited for their conversation to peter out.

"I felt kind of bad at the start," Clarke mentioned. "But the kids were having so much fun that I thought, you know, one water fight wasn't so bad."

"Right, totally," Bellamy nodded. Glared at Finn a little, who rolled his eyes, and then continued talking with Clarke. "But when you think about the impact that a camp like this can have on the environment when we use too much water-"

"Oh, yeah, hi, my turn. I actually have been thinking about that," Raven said. "We have the opportunity to put in a lot of water tanks. This place gets a serious drenching in the wet season and we should definitely capitalize on that."

"Plus, we could teach the kids about water conservation and responsibility." Octavia winced when Lincoln widened his eyes at her, silently begging her not to encourage them. "Sorry, L. Guys! Lincoln wasn't done."

"Oh, sorry boss."

"You should have stopped us if you weren't done, boss."

"Yeah, boss."

Lincoln bit his tongue and waited for yet more of their interruptions to be over and done with. Octavia patted his leg again. He stood when they were done and spread his hands open, allowing himself to become excited again at his idea because all of them were watching him closely and seemed to be listening with rapt attention. "I'm not talking about the water fight. It was great, the kids had fun on a hot day. What I'm talking about is the way they easily divided themselves into teams. Sky Crew," he pointed at Clarke, who waved back cheerily, "and Grounders," he moved slightly to gesture at Lexa, who just blinked. "I think that we can make this into something big. What if we start a competition between the two teams? We already have our Activity Day set up for the end of camp but we can make it bigger. Have smaller tournaments on the weekend and, since they more or less divided themselves into their cabins groups," Lincoln was almost bouncing on his toes, his wide enormous, "we can give them points on everything from good behaviour to clean cabins! They don't like making their beds and sweeping the floor - but if we tell them they could win a prize by doing it, I'm pretty sure those cabins will be like new."

The counsellors were quiet for a moment. Then,

"That's actually a really good idea," Bellamy said quietly.

"Yeah."

Raven raised her hand, waiting for Lincoln to nod at her. "They might also start pranking the other cabins to make them messy," she pointed out.

"True. But how about we not mention that in front of them or prank our colleagues so they don't get the idea, okay? And you are not allowed to help them prank their friends. You know that, don't you?" Raven just smiled sweetly at Lincoln. "Okay well, everyone please keep an eye on Raven and also, I think that if we work together we can really make this great. I'm hoping - if you all agree - we tell the kids before dessert what the plan is and see what they have to say about it. If they hate it, Jasper's dessert will placate them. And if they like it, we can start straight away. Make a score board to hang in here, if that's okay Jasper?" Jasper looked up from his notebook, looking mildly nervous and shoving the notebook deep into his coat pocket, and Monty had to murmur into his ear what they had been discussing.

"Oh yeah, totally. That sounds awesome!"

"Great." Lincoln's gaze lingered on Jasper for a moment longer. "Raven, Monty, do you think you two could work on that?"

"For sure, I've got some stuff. Monty, wanna help me make it shine?" She waggled her eyebrows and Monty gave her an excited smile.

"I can rig up some sound effects pretty easily, I know I have some lights tucked away somewhere we can make the number counters out of." He nodded. "Definitely."

"That sounds great. Really great." Lincoln clapped his hands. "Team captains are probably going to be Clarke and Lexa, judging from what happened today, but we'll let the kids decide. I think that if we stick to four main competitions - obstacle course, capture the flag, the big race, and the scavenger hunt - we should be able to pick a winner from those."

"What if they both win two?"

"Well, Clarke's team has already won the water fight-" Clarke stood again, bowed to cheers, "and we also have activity day and I think that they should compete for a point for each of the rounds. How does that sound?"

"It actually kinda sounds super awesome," Octavia said. Looking around the table, each of the counsellors nodded their agreement and she beamed up at her boyfriend. They looked around quickly before he bent down to kiss her and -

"MISTER LINCOLN IS KISSING OCTAVIA!" Murphy shouted from the door, to the sound of answering cheers from the kids and the impending sound of small, stampeding feet.

"Kids," Raven said knowingly, raising her eyebrows at Lincoln. "Ruiners."

He looked like he might, barely, agree as he sighed and pulled away from Octavia.


"Does this mean that we can fight each other?"

"No, we are having a competition-"

"Like a fight though, right?" Monroe stood on the bench, hands on hips. (She was small and liked to be tall. Octavia understood.) "Do we get swords?"

"No, well, you don't get swords. You-"

Lexa cleared her throat. Lincoln looked relieved when she stood and he ceded the floor to her. "Listen up, squirts."

They listened up. Every face turned to her expectantly.

"Grounders are every warrior from Cabins A through F. Sky Crew," she said with the faintest hint of a sneer, and Clarke leapt to her feet and marched over.

"Sky Crew," she said loudly, and Bellamy covered his expressive mouth when it moved to twitch into an amused smile because it was one of the funniest things he had seen - each of the almost one hundred faces turning as a single unit to look at Clarke - then back at Lexa to see her reaction - then back to Clarke. All with bated breath, all with excited faces. "Sky Crew are all the soldiers from Cabins G through L. The idea is very simple. We will compete in four more tournaments leading up to Activity Day."

"These tournaments will be," Lexa began, mind racing to come up with particularly interesting names for them. "The Gauntlet." Clarke bit on her tongue to stop a grin, loving Lexa's willingness to interest the children. "Zombie Run." Lincoln wrote that down - he would need to figure out a way to get some zombies but they would make it work. "Capture the Castle and," Lexa blanked on what she could call the scavenger hunt but decided that it fit well enough into the general idea they were aiming for so left it as is, "the Scavenger Hunt."

Clarke nodded her approval. "One major point will go to the winning team after each of the tournaments, as well as a number of small points. These small points are important - they will be given out for good behaviour. You can earn them for good sportsmanship, cleaning your cabin, helping each other out, and working as a team. We want to see you having fun, guys, and as much as the Sky Crew is going to smash the Grounders," Clarke said, unrepentant, grinning her challenge at Lexa, "we want this to be a fair fight. Okay?"

The mess hall was silent for a moment as the two team captains looked out onto the crowd. Then, from the back of the hall, Indra leapt on top of her seat and screamed.

"YES! GROUNDERS! GROUNDERS," she yelled, the rest of her team soon joining her.

Clarke honestly wasn't surprised when her kids followed soon after, jumping on top of the benches to bellow in response, "SKY CREW."

She was pretty sure she saw Murphy tear off his shirt.

"This got a little out of hand," Lexa murmured into her ear and Clarke snorted, nodding.

"A little." She shrugged. "That's good though, isn't it? That they're excited about it. It'll be fun."

"They'll be impossible to get to sleep."

"Nah. They'll tire themselves out, have some dessert, and fall asleep as they walk. The hardest part will be carrying them all into their rooms."

The sight of one kid throwing himself off the table was the sign that they needed to put an end to the riot and Clarke looked to Octavia, who obligingly let out a shrill whistle, loud enough to make those closest to her wince, and those furthest away to look and listen. "Oi," she yelled. "That's enough. It's time to pick your captains."

"Clarke!" Murphy shouted. "Clarke, Sky Captain!"

"Commander Lexa," Indra shouted, and when more and more kids started taking up their chants, Octavia whistled again.

"Really, guys, we just needed a suggestion. Enough with the rioting," she laughed. "We also need their second in commands. For the Grounders?" she looked to the left, where the Grounders had shifted, and they looked between themselves for a few short seconds before they turned to her as one and split beaming, impeaching smiles. "Me?" They nodded. "Well okay."

She disappeared into the swarm and reappeared somewhere towards the back of the hall.

Lincoln gave her up as lost.

"And for us?" Clarke asked her Sky Crew.

Bellamy gave a start when a few of the boys pointed towards him after a brief scuffle and chat. "Me?"

"Yes sir," they said, even the little kids and the rest of the Sky Crew agreeing. "You'll be a great second."

He jumped up, saluted Clarke quickly before he slung his arm around her shoulders. He tried not to be offended when the kids cheered Clarke on when she peeled his arm away.


"Do you think that is strange?" Lexa asked Clarke later, when they had calmed the kids down, convinced Murphy to put his shirt back on, and dessert had been served.

"What?" Clarke glanced over at her, frowning very slightly.

"The campers who cheered very loudly when you stepped away from Blake," Lexa said. "They stare at me."

"Oh, Lexa, they probably just like you." Clarke shrugged, returned to her bowl. "You've been a counsellor for a few years now, haven't you noticed that some kids have favourites?"

"Yes," she said slowly. She did not add that this was not the same. That they watched Clarke as well. It was strange, she was sure of it.

"Well, I'll keep an eye out," Clarke promised, even if she did smile at her like it wasn't something to worry about. (The smile was very convincing. Lexa relaxed a little.) "Oh, wow, you've almost finished your tart already."

Lexa glanced down at her plate - it was raspberry. She had barely tasted it, she thought with remorse, she had been thinking too heavily about the staring and whispering children and wondering what it was that was so interesting about her - and Clarke, because they watched and whispered about Clarke too. She sighed and tried her best to savour the last few mouthfuls.

"Here." Clarke scooped a half of her tart and carefully transferred it to Lexa's plate, ignoring the small sound of disagreement. "Raspberry isn't my favourite," she said, covering her bowl so that Lexa couldn't give it back. "Just eat it, Lexa. You were giving it seduction eyes, I know you want it more than I do."

Lexa damn near fell in love with Clarke in that moment - hyperbole, of course, she told herself because the sharing of tart wasn't something to fall in love over, nor could it happen so quickly of course. She shoved her bowl across the table, shifting slightly to face Clarke more fully, and exposing the ice cream side of her bowl. Clarke held out for only a few seconds before she accepted, scooping the proffered treat up and nodding her thanks to Lexa.

Neither of them noticed the children - those same damn children Lexa had spotted - sharing identical grins across the hall.

Happy reading, Readers :)