The kiss wasn't kind. It wasn't gentle, chaste, sweet or loving. There was anger someone in the press of lips against lips. There was hate somewhere between the press of cheek against cheek, there was fear in the way a nose bumped against nose. And there was hurt, frustration and so much desperation in the way Clarke pushed forward in search of more. She felt her heart race, she felt her pulse strum. And she felt Lexa gasp. She felt her flinch, shy away, try to put space between them, try to regain control, power, shift the dynamic back to where it had been just moments before.
But Clarke wouldn't give up without a fight. She wouldn't let Lexa pull away from her when she felt so vulnerable. Not again. She wouldn't let Lexa dictate what it felt like, what the comfort she so desperately sought would feel like. But Clarke couldn't hold onto Lexa, not with the state of one of her arms, she knew Lexa could throw her away, could trip her, make her fall to her knees if she wished. But she wouldn't give up. Clarke pressed her body against Lexa, she invaded her space and put her on the back foot, enough that Lexa needed to step back, enough that Lexa needed to fight for breath. And then she bit.
Clarke bit Lexa's lip hard enough to make it hurt, hard enough for it to be warning, hard enough that Lexa could feel some semblance of the pain she so intimately inflicted on her. She expected Lexa to grow angry, she expected Lexa to shove her aside, she expected so many things.
But Lexa did none of them.
Instead Lexa melted into the kiss, she seemed to push forward, seek it out with her own want, her own anger and her own frustrations.
But only for a moment.
Their kiss broke to leave them both panting for breath, forehead against forehead, hands clutching body and chests rising without care, without worry, without any kind of concern for the outside world.
"Klark," Lexa's voice was so gentle she almost didn't hear it.
Perhaps she felt the ghosting of breath against her face, perhaps she felt the brush of Lexa's eyelash against her cheek, or perhaps she felt the strumming of Lexa pulse.
Clarke didn't plan for anything else to happen, she didn't even know how that kiss would influence whatever their connection had become. It was something full of pain, full of regret and hurt and anger. But within all that turmoil, beneath that bubbling surface there was something full, something alive. Clarke was tired of running from it, she was tired of hiding from it. She needed to face it as much as she needed to face Lexa. She didn't think she'd survive any other way.
Clarke didn't mean for her lips to press another wanting kiss to Lexa's neck, she didn't mean for her lips to brush against the strumming of Lexa's pulse. She didn't mean for her teeth to ever so lightly nip at the sensitive skin laid bare for her. But she did. She did and she didn't, wouldn't and couldn't regret it. She'd had too much regret already.
Lexa gasped, she seemed not to know what to do. She shivered, craned her neck, perhaps to pull away, perhaps to give Clarke more access. She didn't know which one it was. She didn't even care. Clarke just wanted to control the pace, she wanted to dictate who felt the hurt, who felt the pain, who was left wanting more than what they had been given.
Clarke kissed again, this time she placed another kiss just under the curve of Lexa's jaw, where her skin seemed so very delicate against her lips. And then Clarke bit. She bit harder, enough that it would bruise, enough that the hurt would be visible and she knew she had succeeded in whatever foolish endeavour she had set out to do.
And so she broke the kiss, she retreated once step, two steps, three steps back, enough that she could take all of Lexa's unease in, enough that she could stand back and clear her own head of thoughts and feelings and emotions that would rather her lose control.
"You hurt me, Lexa," Clarke said, and she watched as Lexa's gaze tried to focus on her. "When you left me at the Mountain you hurt me," she looked Lexa in the eyes. "You hurt me, and I know why it hurt so much," this was perhaps her last chance to take a step back, to not say what she had promised herself she'd say. "I know we had something between us. That's why it hurt so much," she swallowed, her own gaze now finding it hard to focus on Lexa's face as it slowly, ever so slowly began to show more emotion. "You know that, and I know that," Lexa," Clarke blinked back tears that slowly began to cloud her vision, but perhaps she didn't turn her face from Lexa this time, if only because she wanted— no, she needed Lexa to see.
"Klark," Lexa's voice almost broke, and she could see pain in the woman's eyes, she could see fear, maybe regret, maybe guilt. Maybe all the same emotions she felt herself. Clarke hoped that was the case. She didn't think she wanted to be alone anymore. Not with only her thoughts, not with only her regrets, her guilt and her anger and her fear.
"I can't do this anymore," Clarke said, her own voice just as quietly. "I can't be alone anymore," and she wanted Lexa to understand. "I—" this time she looked away. But it was to give herself time to think, and not to hide, not to keep hidden her emotions. "I'm tired of being stuck in someone else's game. I'm tired of people trying to kill me. I'm tired of people trying to use me for their own purposes," and Clarke shook her head as she turned back to face Lexa.
Memories came back of her telling Lexa they were done, that she didn't need her anymore. But that had been a lie. Or perhaps not quite a lie. But a truth insofar as she had believed it in that very moment. But now, after the things that had happened, Clarke knew she needed Lexa. For reasons she didn't like to admit. For truths she didn't want to face. But they were real. As much as her emotions were real. So she wouldn't turn away from the things she had done in the past, nor would she try to avoid the things she would need to do in the future.
"Do you feel the same things I feel?" Clarke asked, and she didn't mean to sound so sapphic, but she did.
She'd already gone so far. She didn't think she could turn back now.
"Do you feel the same hurt?" she paused long enough that she saw Lexa nod barely. "The same anger?" Clarke knew Lexa did. She almost didn't need to ask. "The same loss? Regret?" Lexa swallowed. "You feel the same guilt that I feel, don't you, Lexa," that was more a statement than anything else, but she needed to voice it, she needed to speak the words that had consumed her thoughts for so long.
Lexa remained quiet for so long then. But Clarke could see her thinking, she could see the thoughts racing through her thoughts, she could see the calculations, the scenarios, the discarding of plan and action. If Clarke hadn't let herself be so open, if she hadn't just cut herself into piece in front of Lexa, she'd think the image before her charming, gentle, something to cherish and something never forget.
Lexa swallowed, and it was a motion so full of pain it made Clarke want to tear her self apart. It seemed so conscious, so purposeful, so forced that Clarke knew Lexa waged a war so violent, so precipitous within her mind that it would be easy, too easy, for her to tip the scale from one side to the other. But the thing was, the simple truth was that she didn't know which side she wanted to win. She didn't even know what she would need to do.
Lexa's eyes closed, and Clarke watched as she took in a deep breath, as she held it for so long that Clarke began to count the seconds by. But then Lexa exhaled, her eyes opened and what Clarke saw shocked her.
The breath came out so calmly, so purposefully. Her eyes opened and there was no wavering, no uncertainty, no timidness nor shyness. Lexa stepped forward once. She stepped forward twice. One more time until she stood so close to Clarke that their space had become one, their breaths danced between them, trapped by emotion, by heat, by the beating of their heart.
And then it was Clarke's turn to gasp.
Lexa reached out with so much certainty it scared her, and Lexa's hands came to cradle her face, her fingers so very gentle against her flesh. Lexa brought their lips together next, but this time it wasn't violent, it wasn't full of anger and fury and devastation.
Instead it was soft. Lexa pressed forward with such gentle certainty that Clarke's mind went blank, it receded back into the animalistic parts of her mind refused to think more than it needed to. She didn't want to fight anymore, not this thing between them, not the hurts that they both felt, not the hates, the regrets and all those emotions she had thought of for so long. And so Clarke kissed Lexa back.
It was almost loving. Almost. There was still something there, something that existed right at the periphery, something that soured the sweet, seared the warmth and bruised the love enough that it, that it what? Clarke didn't know. She didn't think she knew enough to even begin to know.
Perhaps that was the lesson she had learned, that after everything, after every loss of life, every sudden death and ever forgotten love, the only constant was that emotions were complicated, that acts were never so simple.
Maybe that was it. After all that time. And maybe, just maybe, she'd find the answer.
Perhaps they'd figure things out together, as they should have done what seemed like lifetimes ago when they had a Mountain to their front, an army to their back, and between them a love that neither had recognised until it was too late.
And so it was with that thought that Clarke kissed Lexa just as much as Lexa kissed her.
