When Clarke's alarm goes off right against her ear, Clarke nearly dies. No, seriously. The intense sound startles her so much that her heart freezes, and then it beats a mile a minute. Her muscles tense and jerk her from her bed before she has time to register what's happening. Without coordination and sense of balance, the girl sways unsteadily on her feet until she reaches for the wall for support. Clarke stands like this for a few minutes, trying to focus on her breathing – in through the nose, out through the mouth. Her heart rate slowly declines and she can feel the grip of anxiety loosen around her chest.
Sleep in general hasn't been very good for Clarke for years now, not since her father passed away. Night terrors often woke her in the middle of the night, either screaming or crying or drenched in cold sweat. After several months of this pattern, the girl had just given up on sleeping entirely until she passed out from exhaustion. This continued throughout high school. Her friends would often comment on the dark bags under her eyes, but she waved it off and brought up a new topic instead.
Things got a little better when she went away to college. The change of environment helped her to put her father's death behind her, because there were less things around to remind her of him. The night terrors would only plague her dreams every couple of months, but the sudden shock of her alarm had simulated a similar response. That same anxiety and fear woke like a sleeping monster.
With her breathing back to normal and her heart rate lower than that of a racehorse, Clarke sits down on the edge of her bed and reaches for her phone. Her regular 8 am alarm had woken her for her 9 am class, and she curses herself for forgetting to turn the damn thing off. This is not how she had wanted to start the Monday of her spring break. After shutting off the rest of her alarms and clicking the home screen, Clarke realizes her phone is still actively connected to a phone call.
She clicks on the green streak at the top of the screen and it brings up her phone call with Lexa. The remaining anxiety poking her like a pin in her side fades away when she sees the girl's name, the conversation from the night before flooding back to her. A smile tugs at her lips and she brings the phone up to her ear curiously. The gentle inhales and exhales of a sleeping Lexa transmit through the line and Clarke finds a certain amount of comfort in the breathy sounds. She swings her legs up onto the bed and returns her head to the pillow, the phone still pressed to her ear.
"Lexa?" she whispers into the phone, but only the soft sounds of Lexa's breath respond. Clarke recalls the level of intoxication she'd experienced last night and figures Lexa will probably sleep most of the day today. "That hangover's going to be a bitch," she whispers again, and still no response, so Clarke lets the sounds of Lexa's breathing comfort her further. When sleepiness starts to edge back into her mind, she pulls the phone from her ear and presses the red button, and then drifts back to sleep.
X
Lexa doesn't even have time to open her eyes in the morning before the pounding in her head brings her to consciousness. She absentmindedly removes her hand from under her pillow and rubs at her temple, trying to soothe the aggressive hangover but with no success. A groan rumbles in her chest and edges up her throat, which is dry and hoarse with dehydration. When the girl opens her mouth, she can already taste the regret on her breath.
Lexa rolls onto her back and brings both hands up to her head, trying to block the sunlight from her eyes and massage her headache. That's when she feels the phone pressed up against her face and she remembers her phone call with Clarke. She sighs heavily, closing her eyes tightly in an attempt to block out the memories, but they come anyway. She remembers talking with Anya, and Anya taking her phone, and then a phone call with Clarke, but the details remain fuzzy.
She reluctantly pulls a hand away from her head and reaches for the phone. The surface is sticky with drool and Lexa wipes at it with the edge of her hand. However, the phone's screen lights up as usual. Clarke must have hung up at some point during the night, because her phone shows no active calls. Curiosity gets the better of her and she clicks on her most recent calls. Clarke's name shows up at the top of the list and she clicks on it. The phone call began at 2:12 a.m. and lasted for five hours and fifty-seven minutes. Lexa tries to do the math in her head, but the hangover aggressively refuses the calculations and Lexa surrenders.
Lexa drops the phone at her side and then stares blankly up at the ceiling, trying to recall the events of the night before, but also a little grateful that she can't remember all of them. Her date with Clarke remains vivid in her memory. She remembers the look on Clarke's face, filled with excitement and a little bit of terror, when she saw the ice skating rink. She remembers the way Clarke stared at the night's sky with awe and wonder, and the way it gave her the confidence to pull Lexa close to her. She remembers the rooftop and the campus and the cold and holding Clarke's hand. She remembers every second of every kiss and how she never wanted to stop kissing the blonde.
But after she arrived home and poured the alcohol down her throat, things become uncertain. Anya stole her phone and she called Clarke. Lexa wrestled her over the phone, but can't remember specifics of what was said. Clarke's voice had been heavy and sleepy when she talked to her, so she assumes she must've woken her up. Lexa grimaces, feeling stupid and childish for the drunken phone call. It's so unlike her to get sloppy and make a fool of herself, but then again, this entire situation is so unlike Lexa.
"You awake?" Anya calls softly from the door, and Lexa startles just a little because she hadn't even heard the door open. She slowly peels her eyes open, still feeling a little insulted by the sun's brightness in her room. Anya stares back at her from the doorway until she sees Lexa's eyes open, and then she pushes the door the rest of the way open.
"How's the hangover?" She asks, and there's a little concern in her voice but there's also a lot of amusement. She enters the room and sits down on the edge of Lexa's bed, just next to her feet, and rests a hand on her ankles.
"Fucking sucks," Lexa responds, her voice thick and raspy. Anya clicks her tongue and shrugs at the girl.
"I tried to stop you after your fourth, but you wouldn't listen." Lexa doesn't respond, but reaches for a pillow instead. She considers throwing it at Anya, beating her with it until her head aches the way that hers does, but quickly realizes that she couldn't do that even if she wanted to. Her muscles feel like pudding and she settles instead for pulling the pillow over her face. The pounding in her head relents ever so slightly with the absence of the sunlight, and Lexa finds a little bit of relief.
"What did you say to Clarke?" Lexa questions without removing the pillow from her head. Anya giggles at the sight of the girl with the blankets sprawled over half her body, one leg sticking out completely unprotected. She's still got the pillow placed over her head, but brunette curls pour out from all sides of it.
"Nothing you would hate me for," the girl says nonchalantly.
"The bruises on my knees from wrestling you to the ground lead me to believe otherwise," Lexa says grudgingly, already feeling the black and purple marks forming on her body.
"I was the one wrestling you to the ground, thank you very much," Anya teases. "You're really losing your touch, Lex. It wasn't even a challenge."
Lexa pulls the pillow away from her face and stares at the girl. Even sick and hungover and Lexa still can't refuse a challenge. "Try me when I'm sober and we'll see how it goes."
Anya rolls her eyes at the girl. She assumes her complex with being the strongest and best at everything comes from living in the system, with always trying to compete with the other kids. She's learned not to egg the girl on. Lexa will always have the last word and she doesn't let things go. "I told Clarke she should have sex with you."
If Lexa didn't feel sick before, she certainly does now, and Anya sees the look of panic spreading across her face.
"Oh, relax. She thought it was funny," Anya says, squeezing the girl's ankle. "Besides, it doesn't seem to have done any damage considering you guys were up all night talking on the phone. I could hear your girly giggles from my bedroom."
Lexa glances down at the girl, still not convinced, still so unsure of everything that's going on. She feels like she's standing on thin ice that could crack any minute, even though she loves the exhilaration of it all. Spending time with Clarke has brought Lexa more joy in such a short amount of time than she could imagine another person could instill in her, and while she finds it thrilling, she can also feel her heart rebel against it with every ounce of energy it can manage.
Anya reads it all on Lexa's face; she's gotten pretty good at it over the years. A comforting smile spreads across her face and she crawls up the bed to lie beside the girl.
"I know you're scared," Anya says, placing her elbow on the pillow and propping her head up to look down at Lexa. "But it's all so new, Lex. It's supposed to be scary, but it should be fun too. Don't let your head get in the way of the fun. Just go with it and see what happens. Stop panicking."
Lexa opens her mouth to argue. She wants to deny that she's scared and wants to deny that she has any sort of real feelings for Clarke. A pressure builds in her chest and pushes against her ribs. It tells her that she's weak, that feeling this way makes her weak. It makes her an easy target and it only sets her up to get hurt again. Everything she had learned in the system reminded her that getting attached to people only ends up with her getting hurt in the end, and Costia had only reinforced that lesson.
But Lexa doesn't argue. She only nods and forces some kind of smile back in Anya's direction.
"What did you guys talk about last night?" Anya asks, and Lexa shrugs.
"I honestly don't remember," she says, her face grimacing. Her mind tries to reach back in time to replay the events of the phone call, but all she remembers is bouncing off the walls on her way to her bedroom and struggling to get her pants off after she crawled into bed.
Anya laughs. "I cannot wait to see how your conversation with her today goes."
Lexa swallows nervously, her headache returning in full force. She can feel the pressure of her cell phone pressing into her leg like a brick, suddenly hyper aware of its presence. Her mouth starts to water and she feels a familiar sensation building in her stomach and rising up the back of her throat. Before she has time to think about it, she tosses off her blankets and lunges from her bed, directly for the bathroom.
Anya just laughs and rolls her eyes. "Lightweight."
X
"Put the phone down."
Clarke slams her phone down on the coffee table harder than she meant to and then she rests her forehead on the table. She groans dramatically and Octavia shakes her head at the girl. This is the third time Raven has had to tell her to stop looking at her phone.
"Why don't you just text her?" Raven asks from the couch, looking down at Clarke sitting on the floor with her head resting on the coffee table. She balances a bowl of cereal in her lap while Octavia sits next to her, clicking through channels on the television.
"I don't want to wake her up if she's still sleeping," Clarke explains, even though it's almost two in the afternoon at this point. Still, she didn't know what kind of person Lexa was when it came to alcohol. Maybe she was the type to wake up early and go for breakfast or maybe she was the type to spend all day lounging around in sweatpants.
"Didn't stop her from calling you at 2:30 last night," Octavia points out, not looking away from the tv screen. After searching through the channels three times, she finally surrenders and clicks the Netflix button at the top of the remote and begins flipping through movies.
"Anya called me, not Lexa," Clarke says, finally lifting her head from the coffee table and glancing back at her friends. Raven shovels another spoonful of cereal into her mouth.
"Right," Raven says, even though her mouth is full. She swallows the food quickly. "And who is Anya again?"
"Her foster parent's daughter," Clarke explains. "Basically her sister, but not really her sister."
Raven eyes the girl for a second and then nods hesitantly, turning her attention back to her food.
"Why did she call you?" Octavia questions, now flipping through the horror section of Netflix. The titles are cheesy and the summaries are even worse. Very few of the selections have more than two stars, but the girls enjoyed making a laugh about the terrible acting and poorly written plots. Octavia finds one from 2016 with almost four stars and presses play, not bothering to read what it's about.
"They got drunk and Lexa apparently wouldn't stop talking about me," Clarke explains, deciding to leave out the part about Lexa also talking about how she wants to have sex with Clarke. She glances down at her phone again and curses the damn thing.
"Which is why you should just text her," Raven says, her eyes trained on the tv. The screen focuses in on a house in the woods, some obnoxious music playing overhead. Clarke shrugs in response to Raven, who just rolls her eyes. "Fine, then stop checking your phone and watch this damn movie with us."
Clarke sighs and climbs onto the couch between her two friends, purposely flipping her phone face down on the coffee table and leaving it there. Octavia cuddles into Clarke, and Raven pushes her cold foot underneath Clarke's thigh for warmth. They haven't had a movie day like this in Clarke doesn't even know how long, and she sinks deeper into the couch with Octavia.
"The music in these movies is the worst," Raven complains. "It's not even music."
The screen shows a woman in the house in the woods, preparing dinner for herself. The sound coming from the scene isn't even music. It's just a sort of empty noise, like the sound of blood rushing in your ears or when it's so silent that even the silence becomes loud. Clarke watches as the woman receives a text message and promptly responds, and then she glares at her own phone.
"I'm already bored," Raven says, leaning forward to set her bowl full of warm milk on the coffee table. Octavia shushes her.
"Give it a chance. This one actually had a decent rating," Octavia says, watching as the woman exchanges text messages with her neighbor, who arrives a few moments later. The woman and her neighbor sit down on the porch and exchange conversation, the main character's portion completed in sign language.
"Oh for fuck's sake, she's not even going to talk? This is going the be the dumbe-"
"Raven, shut up!" Octavia demands, shooting her a glare from the other side of Clarke. Raven glares back but keeps quiet.
"I bet they have sex," Clarke says, watching the interaction between the two women. They're all body language and smiles, flirting subtly and laughing.
"You just have sex on your mind because you didn't get any last night," Raven teases and then looks at Clarke matter-of-factly when the neighbor mentions her husband.
"That doesn't mean anything," Clarke responds, referring to the woman's husband, not her lack of sex last night. Clarke would be lying if she said she hadn't gone to bed frustrated last night and woken up with her hand in her pants.
The women's conversation continues. Raven yawns dramatically, earning herself another reprimanding glare from Octavia, and Raven laughs. Then the neighbor points inside the house where smoke billows out from the stove and fire alarms flash like strobe lights. The women dart inside, the main character running for the fire alarm and the neighbor pulling the burnt piece of meat from the oven.
"Fire alarms don't have lights on them. That's stupid," Raven observes.
"She's deaf, idiot. She wouldn't hear the alarm."
"Then why do they make sound too?" Clarke asks. At that moment, the neighbor makes a comment about how loud the alarms had been, and the main character explains that they need to be loud enough that she can feel the vibrations from them. "Nevermind."
Clarke zones out for the next few parts of the movie, watching but not really paying attention. The women go back outside and converse for a little while longer until the neighbor leaves and the main character returns inside to clean up her ruined dinner. She dodges a phone call from some guy and struggles to finish writing her book – apparently she's a writer. Finally frustration overcomes her and she returns to the kitchen to finish cleaning.
All three of the girls jump when the neighbor returns, slamming into the door just a few feet away from the main character. She screams and pounds on the door, begging for the woman to see her, but she just continues cleaning. Then an arrow lodges into her back.
"What the fuck?" Raven comments, leaning in to watch closer.
The neighbor screams, still pounding on the door and screaming the woman's name, but she never turns around. Then a man walks onto the screen, his face covered by a white mask that makes Clarke's skin crawl and she feels Octavia shift closer to her. Even Raven inches closer. The masked man pushes the woman against the door and stabs her, purposely trying to get the woman's attention. When she doesn't turn around, he stabs the neighbor again, and again, and again. The camera zooms in on his face, watching the woman while he stabs the neighbor over and over.
"You're not allowed to pick the movies anymore," Clarke says, goosebumps rising on her arms at the man's blank, cold stare.
When the neighbor stops screaming, the man lets her body slide down the glass and onto the floor. But still, he stares, tilting his head to the side while he watches the woman clean her kitchen. He raises a single finger and taps on the glass, but the woman doesn't acknowledge him. He pounds his fist against the glass, expecting some kind of response, but still the woman doesn't hear.
The woman finishes her cleaning and ignores another phone call, flipping the phone face down on the kitchen counter. Clarke glances down at her own phone for the hundredth time. She feels Raven and Octavia both look at her, and Clarke tries to make a point of not reaching for her phone.
The main character then sits down on her couch and picks up her laptop to continue writing when a phone call from her sister appears on the screen. Behind her, the girls can a sliding glass door slowly inch open and the masked man steps inside, unseen by the woman. She accepts the phone call from her sister, who signs back to her and explains that she wishes she wouldn't live by herself anymore. The woman just shakes her head and laughs at her younger sister, insisting that she's perfectly fine.
"Is someone there with you?" the woman's sister asks, and her face expresses confusion as she says no. Her sister says she thought she had seen something move behind her, but the woman tells her it was only the cat. Then the screen cuts to a scene of a gloved hand retrieve the woman's phone from the kitchen counter, and the man slips back outside.
"I hate these fucking movies," Raven says. "If you live by yourself in the middle of nowhere, why wouldn't you lock your fucking doors? You're just asking for trouble."
After the woman ends the call with her sister, she returns to writing her novel, which mostly consists of staring at the screen. Then a text message pops up in the corner of her screen – a text message sent from "Maddie's Phone," and Clarke realizes that the deaf woman's name is Maddie. Maddie clicks on the text message and it opens a picture of herself, sitting on her couch with the laptop sitting on her lap.
"Now that would be creepy," Clarke says as a second text message arrives and shows another picture of Maddie, but from a different angle. The panic is evident on the woman's face, and she looks back at the sliding glass door, which is now wide open.
"Oh shit," Octavia whispers. "Is he in the house?"
Maddie inches closer to the door, the music slowly growing louder and louder. Octavia reaches for Clarke and Clarke reaches for Raven and the three of them huddle together on the couch. When Maddie reaches the door, the masked man stands outside on the porch, staring back at her. He slowly raises his hand, revealing Maddie's cell phone. Maddie reaches to pull the door shut at the same moment the man lunges. Octavia shuts her eyes, Clarke squeezes Raven's thigh, and Raven starts yelling at the tv. But Maddie gets the door shut in time and the man stares at her with his cold eyes, separated only by a sheet of glass.
Then there are five hard knocks on the door, but Clarke doesn't see either characters hand move. A minute passes and she hears the knocks again, and she looks at her friends.
"I think that's the actual door, guys," Octavia says, looking between Clarke and Raven.
"Oh," Clarke says. "Yeah, you're right."
"It's probably Bellamy," Octavia says.
"Bellamy would just walk in," Raven opposes.
And no one stands to go to the door. It's not that the movie was particularly scary, but it made the three jumpy and neither of them was willing to open the door and be confronted by a man in a creepy mask. Another minute passes and the person on the other side of the door grows impatient and knocks for a third time.
"Oh my god, okay, I'll go," Clarke says, pushing Raven and Octavia off of her and climbing off the couch. Raven follows her from the couch, lingering a few steps behind until Clarke reaches the door.
"This is stupid, it's just a damn movie," she tells herself as she reaches for the handle. The person knocks again, louder this time, and Clarke jumps even though she feels stupid for it. Her nerves make her skin crawl and she can feel her heart racing even though she wills it not to. She extends a shaky head and wraps her fingers around the doorknob, holds her breath, and pulls the door open.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Raven says, and turns around to return to the living room, simultaneously dragging and stomping her feet.
Clarke lets out a long, drawn out sigh as a smile creeps onto her face. Lexa stands in front of her, her hands held behind her back and even though she smiles back, there's a shy expression on her face.
"Did I interrupt something?" she asks, observing Raven's storm off.
Clarke just shakes her head and laughs, her nerves subsiding and feeling a lot less on edge. "No, we're just watching one of those awful Netflix horror movies and you freaked us out.
"Oh, well I can come back later then if–"
"No," Clarke says quickly. Too quickly. There's that infamous Lexa Smirk again, and Clarke laughs at herself before stepping out onto the porch with the brunette. Lexa feels her breath hitch in her throat when Clarke steps into her space, her hands lacing with hers. Between Clarke's proximity and the lingering hangover, Lexa feels light-headed. She squeezes Clarke's hands to ground herself.
"So how much of last night's phone call do you actually remember?" Clarke asks teasingly, a smirk of her tugging at her lips. Lexa feels a wave of embarrassment wash over her and takes a deep breath to steady herself.
"Not very much," she confesses, half laughing and half hiding her gaze from Clarke's. Clarke doesn't let her though; she releases one of Lexa's hands and loops a finger under her chin. She leads her eyes to meet with her own, and Clarke sees the uncertainty circling in those shades of green.
"Lexa, it's okay," she says reassuringly, but Lexa doesn't seem convinced. She still looks at Clarke like she's waiting for her to bolt. "It was just a drunk phone call. It's seriously not a big deal."
"What did I say to you?" She asks, the words falling from her mouth before she can stop them. Deep down, she's afraid that she said something to scare Clarke away or something that offended her. She's afraid that Clarke's mad that Anya had called her in the middle of the night. But when Clarke unlaces their hands and then replaces them on Lexa's hips, Lexa begins to forget all about that fear.
"Honestly, you mostly apologized for Anya calling me, and then I tried to get you to go to bed. You were kind of argumentative, actually," Clarke explains, her hands drifting from the front of Lexa's hips around to her back, pulling herself closer. Lexa's heart races when the smell of Clarke's hair wafts into her face, and she places a hand on Clarke's side. "Then when you finally went to bed, I could hear you struggle to get your pants off, and when I laughed at you, you told me to stop thinking about you naked."
Clarke didn't expect the blood to rush to her face, but it does anyway. "But I told you I couldn't make any promises."
Clarke's whole body is pressed against Lexa's, and Lexa can feel every curve of it. Both of Clarke's hands trace up Lexa's sides and lock behind her neck, and Lexa's hands instinctively grab at Clarke's waist, and that's all it takes. Lexa feels every ounce of worry, every ounce of fear, drain out of her. Clarke stares back at her with blue eyes that smile for her lips and Lexa feels silly for worrying.
Lexa can't stop herself from smiling, and she can't stop herself from kissing Clarke either, so when she presses her lips against Clarke's, Clarke smiles into it as well. Clarke takes a step closer to the brunette, trying to bring them impossibly closer, and deepens the kiss. Clarke's hand wanders from Lexa's neck along her jawbone, down her neck, and rests on her collarbone. She can feel the flutter of Lexa's heart beneath her fingertips, and she feels her own heart match pace.
Clarke pulls away just long enough to catch her breath before Lexa's lips find hers again. The kiss is hungry and becomes increasingly desperate. Lexa can feel her heart and her mind colliding, one telling her she should stop and the other telling her to stop holding back. She's not sure which one says which at this point, but she silences the forbidding voice and pushes against Clarke, leading her backwards until her back meets the open door frame. Lexa lets her tongue glide along Clarke's bottom lip and then pulls it between her teeth. Clarke allows her hands to trace down Lexa's front, brushing over the thin piece of fabric that separates skin from skin, and then squeezes Lexa's hipbones.
Lexa pushes her hips against Clarke's, pinning her to the wall, and Clarke's hands sneak beneath the hem of Lexa's t-shirt. Lexa's skin is soft and hot, and Clarke has to remind herself that they're still standing on the front porch to stop herself from pushing her hands upwards.
"Are you guys coming to watch this movie or– Oh," Raven stops short just as she rounds the corner from the living room, her eyes finding two bodies trying to mold into one in the doorway. Lexa and Clarke pull apart, their faces both red with embarrassment and arousal. A smirk spreads across Raven's face and she places her hands on her hips.
"Yeah, O, I don't think Clarke and Lexa are too interested in the movie," she calls over her shoulder, her eyes never leaving the two girls. Clarke and Lexa just stare back at her, their hands still lingering on each other's hips, and Raven shakes her head at the two. "Come on, guys. At least bring it inside."
Raven shakes her head one more time but the smile never leaves her face, and then she returns to the living room. A few seconds later, Clarke hears the noises from the movie continues.
"I think Raven is determined to ruin every kiss we have on your porch," Lexa says with a chuckle, and Clarke laughs in return, leaning into Lexa and tucking her head into the curve of her neck. Lexa sighs at the feeling, wrapping her arms around the blonde and squeezing tightly. Clarke lets Lexa's arms envelope her and has never felt more safe.
"Come on," Clarke finally says after a few moments, pulling away from Lexa. Lexa's arms hold close though, only letting her drift so far. The blonde only smiles when she feels the resistance, and presses a chaste kiss to Lexa's lips. "Come watch the movie with us."
Lexa nods and lets her arms slide away from Clarke, but Clarke doesn't let the loss of contact last too long before she reaches for Lexa's hand. It's not a new thing at this point, but it still makes Lexa's head spin and she's reminded of the hangover from hell that won't give up on this neverending headache. But when Clarke smiles at her and tugs her through the front door, Lexa forgets about it all over again.