AN: You guys are awesome. I see you guys sticking around, and I appreciate that. Have we recovered from last week's chapter? That was intense. Hope you guys made it out alive. ;-) Enjoy! FYI- centered italics are flashbacks.
The enticing smell of bacon pulled Clarke from a foggy sleep and towards the land of the living.
She opened her eyes slowly and smiled when she recalled the…various…events from the night before. Thankfully it hadn't been an alcohol-induced dream. The few articles of clothing that now lay on the foot of the bed and the aching of certain parts of her body alluded to that.
A moment of absolute bliss washed over her before she stretched, her body sounding off with various soft pops and cracks. Liberating a small sigh from deep within her lungs, she stood to gather something to wear so she could finally go in search of her gorgeous brunette. She smiled again as she felt the twinge in her hips and center.
After freshening up she made her way to the kitchen where she heard the clanking of a spatula and smelled breakfast. The sight before her made her smile widely. The ravishing brunette was dressed in underwear and her rolled up button down as she flipped pancakes effortlessly. It was the sexiest thing Clarke had ever seen. "Can we skip breakfast? I think I want to take you back to bed." The blonde beamed at a surprised Lexa who turned around with the spatula in hand.
They smiled at each other before Lexa responded. "After I slaved all morning to treat you to pancakes and bacon, no, I don't think so." She paused with a grin. "But maybe after you'll get a chance to make your wishes come true. Sorry to have gone through your cupboards for the food."
Clarke huffed in response before she nodded with a sultry smile. "Good morning." She finally moved towards the girl who welcomed her into her embrace. They shared a gentle kiss before sighing in unison.
"I'm addicted." Lexa mouthed as she pecked at the girl's lips.
"Thank you." She smiled into it. "Now feed me, please."
"Yes ma'am."
The girls proceeded to share small laughs and flirty stares as they talked and ate their breakfast.
It was as effortless as it had been before they had decided to cross the physical boundary of their relationship. Nothing had changed really. They enjoyed each other's company, felt the connection, they made easy discussions interesting and fun, and time was never something either of them kept track of.
The only difference now was they each felt free to steal kisses whenever they wanted them.
Staring was also very much unabashedly conspicuous and completely welcomed.
After their meal, Clarke offered to pick up while Lexa moved to the living room with a mug of coffee. She had intended to watch something on TV, but a new painting in the corner caught her eye. Curiously she moved towards the blonde's work area and studied the canvas carefully.
There was no denying that it was an amazing piece, but the colors Clarke had used were not ones Lexa was accustomed to seeing in her pieces. These were darker and deeper, almost sad.
Lexa continued to look at the portrait while she drank the warm liquid and imagined who it could be. She assumed it was a model from one of the girl's classes, but she could not be certain, especially since she recognized most of them by now.
Clarke walked into the living room with her own mug in hand when she spotted Lexa in front of her painting rather than on the couch. She had hoped for a cuddle session, but quickly accepted they might not get to that anytime soon.
Sometime in the previous days she had started the portrait and had forgotten to store it in its carrier after it dried.
Accepting that they had just missed out on the snuggling, she made her way over to Lexa and the painting. "That's my dad." She answered the girl's silent question as she stood next to her.
The brunette turned her head to look at Clarke. "It's a beautiful painting." Lexa smiled. "But I can tell by your tone and by the colors on that canvas, that maybe it's not a pretty story."
Clarke nodded as she broke their eye contact to look at the painting of her dad. "You're right." She drank some of her coffee before setting it down on the small table where her tools resided.
"We don't have to talk about it." Lexa suggested with a soft shake of her head and a compassionate smile.
"No it's ok. I want to tell you." She replied, and after a few moments of silence she continued. "His name was Jake." The blonde breathed in slowly to recall a story from her not so distant past.
Clarke tossed and turned in her twin-sized bed as she waited anxiously for her parents to return her calls.
It was the last day before the holiday break, and most of her dorm mates had already been picked up by their parents, leaving Clarke alone in her darkened room feeling worried and afraid of the implications.
They had agreed to pick her up no later than seven that evening.
That time came and went with Clarke fretting over the several ignored texts and missed calls they had yet to respond to or return.
The girl sighed heavily, willing the tears in her eyes not to fall as she conjured up a million scenarios in her head. She might have fallen asleep if it weren't for the loud ringing of her phone that jostled her out of bed and into her own personal version of hell.
"Ms. Griffin this is Virginia P.D."
Clarke stayed on the line for eleven minutes, but she failed to listen to any words that were said during that time, and the truth was nothing they could tell her would matter much. All she knew was that she needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
When Clarke rushed into the emergency room, her hair was a disheveled mess and her eyes were swollen from all of the crying. She ran up to the counter and demanded she be updated on her family's conditions, her patience on really thin ice as the clerks worked much too slow for Clarke's diminishing sanity.
It took the clerks seven minutes to page the doctor, but it felt a lot longer to the young girl.
"The accident involved five cars; your parents' car took the brunt of the collisions, being pinned in between the others ahead and behind them. They came in with internal bleeding and the young man in the back was ejected from the car. We tried our best, but I'm afraid their injuries were just too severe."
She heard words, but with the constant fading of his voice and the jumbled syllables falling from lips, she failed to really understand all that he was saying.
Clarke had never been into a cold storage room. She had never seen the inside of a locker. It was never even a fleeting thought, why would it be? She was young, her parents were young, and he was young. No one so young should ever have to be in or near such a dreadful room, and she cursed everything and everyone as she stood there.
The dim lights did nothing to comfort her aching heart as she nodded tearfully to the doctor while he unveiled three beautiful faces that were so surreally devoid of life.
The pain in her heart nearly sent her to the floor. The realization that her dad, mom, and Finn were suddenly gone forever left her instantly stunned and disconnected from anything or anyone else for a long time.
Lexa stood rooted to her spot in utter shock. Tears flowed freely down her face as she heard the way Clarke's raspy voice cracked with emotion and her face knitted in painful recollection. "I'm so sorry, Clarke." She finally voiced roughly as she swallowed the lump in her throat. She had no idea when she set her coffee down, but almost immediately after the blonde stopped talking Lexa wrapped her arms tightly around her.
They stood enveloped in each other for several minutes, their tears forming dark wet circles on each other's shirts and their breathing coming in identical patterns.
"I'm sorry, Lexa, for dumping all of that on you so soon." Clarke whispered as she clung onto the brunette, afraid that her tragic story would somehow ruin what Lexa saw in her.
The girl shook her head, and Clarke sighed gratefully when she realized she couldn't have been more wrong. "You didn't dump anything on me. I asked. Thank you for sharing it with me." Lexa replied, still wanting to know more, but not feeling up to prying especially given the severity of the situation.
"Finn was my boyfriend." Clarke spoke, her eyes closed as she breathed in the girl's unique scent. She didn't know how she knew, but she definitely could tell Lexa wanted to ask, and probably held back out of respect.
Lexa sighed remorsefully and squeezed tighter.
"I'm sorry. I know how it feels to lose someone you love." Lexa admitted before she exhaled and buried her nose in blonde strands of hair. "Is that why you left Virginia?"
Clarke nodded over Lexa's shoulder. "Mostly. Among other things that I'd rather not talk about just yet, if you don't mind."
Lexa pulled out of their embrace and took a moment to take the girl's face gently in her hands. "Of course." She flashed her a still-teary eyed smile before moving in to kiss her softly. "Let's go back to bed." She suggested and smiled when Clarke nodded in agreement.
The room was silent as the girls lay in bed facing each other with eyes wide open. No words had been spoken for several minutes. Instead they focused on admiring each other's features freely, learning about the few marks and tiny creases that they hadn't yet noticed.
Clarke traced the smallest beauty spec on Lexa's upper lip and smiled. "For target practice." She joked in a near whisper.
"It's all yours." Lexa replied as she took pleasure in the feeling of the girl's finger tips on her lip. It was almost automatic when she kissed the pads slowly and closed her eyes with a sigh.
"Someday, maybe not today, you'll have to tell me about her." Clarke spoke knowing her words would catch the brunette off guard, but needing to express her desire to learn more about the love Lexa had lost as well.
The girl opened her eyes slowly and looked intently at Clarke. It was an unacquainted feeling the one her blue eyes evoked. They awakened a sense of longing that Lexa had long ago pushed aside, but more than that, they provided her with a greater sense of belonging. Like Clarke had been the piece of the puzzle that Lexa never knew was really missing.
She felt more and more that her feelings for Clarke ran deeper than she ever expected, and she was coming to terms with that.
"I will, I promise." Lexa finally responded and closed her eyes again, feeling smooth lips ghost over hers for a fleeting second before Clarke's body curled into hers.
Wells and his father stood beside Clarke, even long after everyone had left the grave sites, even when Finn's parents had walked away in full embrace. Though she felt she wanted to be alone, she was eternally grateful for their companionship.
They had been instrumental in the days following the accident, and she told them so the night of the viewing, hugging them tightly as she declared she might have lost her mind had they not been there for her.
But even their supportive hands on her shoulders could not ease the stabbing in her heart as she witnessed the groundskeeper shoveling the last of the dirt into the third hole. Sealing it forever, encasing the physical body of her father for the rest of eternity.
She swiped furiously at the tears and prayed that if there was a heaven, her family would be there waiting for her someday.
The Jaha's stood beside her through the entire ordeal, only parting at the end of it when Clarke declined a ride home from Wells, ensuring him she would be alright to drive her mother's car home.
Wherever home was, because nowhere felt like home anymore.
Going back to school after the holidays had not been a priority for Clarke, but the image of how happy her mother had been at being accepted into such a prestigious university drove her to try. So she did.
For a year she sat through lectures, labs, and study sessions with her nose deep in every text book. At first, the task felt fresh and it helped to drown out the still constant reminder of her loss and the pain that came with it. But things changed.
When the inquiries and interest started to pour in regarding her parents' home, she lost the energy to deal with school. Instead she devoted herself to passing off the home to the next family, a complete one. So, she hired a big fish in a small pond of a realtor to help list and sell the house.
Forty-seven days later, she shook her head at the latest offer. Unable and unwilling to part ways with her childhood home, she eventually took the house off the market and stayed.
One night Clarke sighed heavily as she shot up in bed, drenched in the nightmare-induced sweat that covered her body.
Finn had inhabited every minute of her latest dream. It felt so real, his face bruised and battered from the accident, his skin ashen from the lack of heat and flowing blood. No matter how much time had passed, or how many dreams her mind could conjure up, there were always more.
Clarke felt suddenly and completely out of place in her room then. It was much too big for her. The space in the house allowed for her own heat to escape, leaving her a cold and clammy shell of a person.
She came to hate that feeling, and decided to spend as much time away from the house as possible, enrolling in a nearby community college and earning a job as a waitress. Clarke was happy with her recent developments, initially diving head first into her studies and enjoying the people she shared her time with at work.
Still, every night she stepped through the door of her empty home, she stepped into a world of revolving questions. Was her current life something she truly desired? Was it worth not going back to her true passion so she could satisfy something she felt she owed her mother? Was the loneliness worth the familiarity of her past life?
No. She always knew how she would answer, but her mother's face haunted her every night she had thoughts of straying from her current path. "Clarke. Clarke. Clarke." Her mother would repeat and look at her in that way only she could, reprimanding her without another word other than her name. "Clarke. Clarke." She repeated with sunken eyes and pale skin.
"Clarke." Lexa shook the blonde, attempting to rip her from whatever visions had her moaning and thrashing so agonizingly. "Wake up."
Clarke gasped and jolted up to look around the room, her room. Expelling a sigh she covered her face with shaky hands, grateful she was not still in her old twin bed, in her old house, back in Virginia. "What the hell." She puled, peeved by the sudden onslaught of dreams.
Lexa sat up with her and looked compassionately at her. "Are you alright?" She rubbed her shoulder soothingly.
"Yeah." The blonde nodded. "Some things came back to me in my sleep. Probably from our talk earlier." She shrugged. "I'm sorry to have woken you." She uncovered her face to look apologetically at Lexa.
"I hate to admit I woke up a while ago." She smiled guiltily. "I might have been staring before you started moving around in your sleep."
Clarke cracked a small smile before she leaned sideways towards the brunette, connecting their lips in a slow but deep kiss. "That sounds creepy."
"It's not. I mean it could be, but only if you catch me doing it." She smiled, hoping to banish whatever murky cloud hovered over the blonde.
Suddenly unsure about what to say, Clarke smiled before releasing a sigh. She stared at Lexa for a minute before she shook her head shyly. "You're staring."
"So are you." Lexa deadpanned with a grin.
"Do you want to get up and get dressed so we can go eat before work or something?" Clarke shrugged.
The brunette pursed her lips in thought and furrowed her brows. "We can." She mouthed casually before moving to push Clarke gently onto her back so she could cover her body with hers. "Or we can do something else before that." She leaned down and pecked the girl's lips repeatedly. "Interested?"
"Very much, actually." Clarke wrapped her arms around Lexa's back and kissed her, not fighting the soft moan that the brunette pulled from her mouth.
They got to work late, lunch and early dinner forgotten outside the confines of Clarke's bedroom.
Both girls had effectively avoided having to talk to Raven and their friends, grateful that their relationship developments could remain theirs and theirs alone for a bit longer.
The play had been a success for another night, the growing crowds marking Indra's face with wide appreciative smiles.
Clarke had operated the bar again, which made her a little sad knowing she wouldn't be able to walk up to Lexa and stand just a little too close or graze her fingers for just a little too long. Her growing need and desire for the girl burned in her loins and on her itchy fingertips.
Lexa felt equally disappointed by the fact that she couldn't take full yet subtle advantage of their newly established relationship while she stood back stage and directed everyone.
As they both worked away throughout the night, Clarke had arrived to the conclusion that she would never be satisfied with stolen hours in the space of either of their apartments. She admitted she needed Lexa all hours of the day, and that excited her as much as it frightened her.
She smiled at patrons and handed them their orders as she formulated a plan that would allow her more alone time with the writer.
It's how she found herself walking towards the girl's car at the end of the night, when most of their friends had already left, with a confident grin in place.
Lexa waited patiently rested up against her door with her hands in her pockets and a similarly wide smirk on her lips. "Would you like a ride, Virginia?" She asked like she always did, but the excitement at her connotation and the likelihood of them ending up in the same bed now, did things to her insides and her ego that she liked just a little too much.
Yet she doubted Clarke would complain, and she herself obviously didn't mind the thrill of it all.
Clarke smiled tantalizingly and spared a glance around to make sure they were alone before she moved closer to wrap herself in the girl. She felt herself being crushed into her body while their lips moved hungrily over each other. There were echoing sighs before Clarke fisted her hands in Lexa's jacket and melted just a little more into her.
"I would love a ride." She finally managed to respond as they pulled back with swollen lips and hungry eyes.
Lexa nodded and was surprised when Clarke wouldn't let her budge an inch to break the contact and enter the car. "We have to be in the car if we want to actually drive anywhere." She teased and re-wrapped her arms around the blonde's waist.
Clarke smiled. "I wanted to ask you something." She paused and waited for Lexa to give her the green light. "I'd like to go on a date with you. It's not too late, we can go right now." She looked almost bashfully at the girl before her.
The brunette didn't fight the pull of her lips as she nodded eagerly. "I'd like that. Where would you like to go?"
"We can go to our diner." She shrugged, hoping the casual setting was not a turn-off for her brunette.
Sparing her a feigned pensive look Lexa nodded in response. "That's perfect for tonight. Tomorrow, though, I'm taking you to my favorite spot in all of L.A."
"Tomorrow? We'll see how the first date goes." Clarke teased with a playful smile.
"Please." Lexa retorted smugly. "This is me you're going out with."
"Alright, Ms. Silva, we'll see." She chuckled before leaning in to kiss her again. "We should go soon before I change my mind, though."
TBC…
Domestic-ish Clexa, again. Ugh. I love seeing these two together. They're perfect, am I right? So there goes our first glimpse into Clarke's past and her troubles in Virginia. I have a feeling that's only the tip of the iceberg, though. Lexa seems to have a bit of a past too. I hope our girls can be there for each other. Stay tuned for dates and fluffy stuff.
