The Monster Within
5: [for the fire of knowledge]
Sunrise came swiftly, and when Clarke's eyes fluttered open they were greeted by a bronze plane. With hands that were still dreaming she traced Lexa's collarbone, sliding down her chest and across her stomach. Lexa was in better shape than most of the agents, and Clarke wondered briefly what her occupation could be.
Propping herself up on one elbow she regarded her master, but then a flash of blue caught her eye.
Her backpack was sitting in the corner, and her mouth went dry when she looked at it.
Creeping out of bed Clarke held her breath until she made sure her weapon was secured. Finding her handgun safe and sound she carefully opened the front pocket, then retrieved her phone with shaking hands.
She'd completely forgotten about Blake.
He'd sent her message after message, and there were a ton of missed calls blinking back at her.
Shoving the phone back into her bag she zipped it up and turned away from it.
Clarke climbed back into bed, laying her head on Lexa's stomach. It was a compulsion, to be so close, and she slid her fingers into Lexa's pale pink panties without a second thought, holding on to her masters hip.
Lexa stirred then. Sighing, she half-heartedly tugged on Clarke's locks.
The blond leaned over and placed a kiss on each of her sponsors ribs, then licked the spaces between them.
With a low-throated growl Lexa sat up, playfully displacing her slave. Clarke jumped on her in response, tackling her to the mattress. Lexa easily flipped her over, then held her wrists down by the sides of her head. Kissing Clarke's pulse, she felt a deep-seated craving threaten to overtake her.
Suddenly abandoning the warmth of her probate, Lexa got up and to her feet.
"You may get dressed." She announced, throwing her own shirt back on before leaning against a window.
Clarke tried not to look crestfallen as she followed orders, already cold and anxious again.
When she was done she stood there and Lexa met her gaze.
"I'll see you next week. You're dismissed."
As the door shut behind her Clarke looked up to find Declan waiting silently. Clutching her bag she followed him out of the club and back to the lobby. Blake was there, his face dark.
"Have a great day guys." Sam waved them off, and Clarke chewed on her lip while they approached the car. Slamming the drivers side door shut Blake started the engine violently.
"You didn't even try did you?" He bit out as they sped away. Clarke didn't answer.
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At the usual spot the agents worked their way through a late breakfast. Blake demolished his toast between glares, and Clarke picked at her eggs while avoiding him.
Eventually she put her fork down.
"Look...I'm fucked up okay?" She whispered it to her plate, but Blake got the message.
"You can't compromise the mission because you have a hard-on for your dominatrix Griffin." He hissed, his fork quivering in his grip.
"I know." Rubbing her temples Clarke leaned forward, trying to make sense of everything.
"She could be the fucking murderer."
Her head snapped up at his words. She didn't answer for some time and when she did her voice wobbled.
"...you're right." She didn't want to consider it, but Lexa was freakishly strong, and had a temper. Consistent with the profile of someone who might beat another human being to death. Or four.
"Get your head out of your ass. We can't stop now, we're actually making some god damn progress. I'm not doing this shit for nothing." Blake punctuated his words with jabs, threatening to send the utensil in his hand flying at his partner.
"I…don't know what to do with myself." Clarke admitted. At this point she was no longer an asset to the mission, but a liability.
"Yes, you do. Stare at the crime scene photos for a little while. If that makes you horny then we know you have a real fucking problem." He replied shortly.
"Fine." Clarke agreed, but the victims were far from her mind.
"Good. We'll go straight to work."
And Blake did just that when they returned to their not so humble abode.
Clarke put her head down and tried to focus on the case, with visions of Lexa threatening to derail her.
The crime scene photos were gruesome indeed, and Clarke sighed as she tossed copies of them across the coffee table.
The vic's had been bludgeoned, their bones broken and crushed. As she stared at them per Blake's orders she couldn't figure out how that level of destruction could've been accomplished.
Despite the catastrophic bruising, the skin remained smooth and unbroken. It was unusual, to say the least. She wracked her brain, trying to think of anything that might result in a shattered cranium, but leave no exterior marking at all.
Paging through the CSI reports she found nothing to help her. All the bodies had been found in the river, 3 out of 4 being in the early stages of decomp at discovery. They weren't hidden very well, shoved into patches of floating debris or trash. As she went back to the photographs a name stuck out. "Maguire, Rowan" was scribbled at the bottom of the first set of pictures. Holding them up Clarke leaned back.
Rowan was the name Kane had mentioned, the one that made Lexa seethe.
"Huh." Downing a beer she stared harder, as if the pictures would start talking.
Rowan was the first victim. Her skull had been shattered, both arms and both legs cleanly broken.
Reaching for her laptop Clarke logged in to the FBI database. After a few minutes of filtering she found what she was looking for.
"Holy shit." The screen filled up as a "Maguire, Rowan" that met her criteria popped up, bringing a long rap sheet with her.
"Aged 24 at time of death..." Clarke talked to herself while she took in the multitude of grand larceny charges. Quite a few of them were overseas. She'd definitely been on the run. Had Lexa sheltered her?
At the thought Clarke clicked through her photos. The thief was beautiful, with long dirty blonde hair and wide blue eyes. She looked innocent, angelic even, not like a hardened international criminal at all. Clarke felt a jolt of anger, then clicked off the page, internally chiding herself for being jealous of a dead girl. She knew then that she needed a break,
Sighing, Clarke cleaned up her workspace and logged off entirely. The agent made for the living room, where her partner was deep in his own database, chewing on a pencil.
"How goes it?" Clarke asked as she took a seat at the far end of the couch. He glanced at her.
"Could be going better. You got any more intel for me?"
"...not yet. I'm sorry."
Blake waved it off, then folded his arms behind his head.
"I'll tell you one thing," He began. "They're confident they can't be breached. They wouldn't use full names otherwise."
"What do you got?" Interested, she leaned over his shoulder.
"Bunch of loose ends, mostly. Finn has two kids, both listed as missing. There was a kidnapping charge against him, but it looks like the mother dropped it. Her whereabouts are unknown too." Blake pulled up his sponsors mug shot, and the man that stared vacantly at Clarke didn't look like the one she'd met. His hair was caked with dirt, his skin grimy and his eyes wild.
"...what are their names?" She asked quietly, processing the info.
"Axel, last seen at age 2, and Jaxon, 4."
Blake worried at his stubble, his expression torn.
"Somethings wrong there. I just don't think he'd do anything to them. Doesn't fit the profile." Clarke murmured, feeling it in her gut.
"The profiles don't seem to be in our favor Griffin, not this time."
"What else?" She asked tersely.
"Let's see. Your girl's in environmental law, represented Finn's father in a case in the past. Kane's with the DoD, but that's as far as I got."
Clarke hid her surprise.
"We knew we'd be dealing with these kinds of people. The question is, how are we going to find the murderer?" She mused, staring at the monitor.
It was easy for her to picture Lexa in a court room, taking someone to task for not doing their research. It almost made her smile, but she snapped herself out of it under Blake's stare.
"...the mansion is a labyrinth, but it's a full one. I got out for a little while, and from what I could see, I'd put my money on the crimes being committed somewhere else. It's a big place, but there's no way you're gunna get away with bashing four people to death with that many witnesses."
The pencil turned to wood shavings as he gnawed on it.
"So we've got no suspect, no idea about the murder weapon, and acres worth of crime scene." Clarke summarized.
"Yup. This entire mission is a clusterfuck." Blake rubbed his face, saving what was left of the pencil from certain death by putting it back on his desk.
"You're disgusting." An actual smile came to Clarke's face as she ribbed her partner.
"Does this mean you're gunna punish me again or...?" Blake clapped back with his trademark shit-eating expression and Clarke was speechless for a moment.
"...I think I'll leave that up to Finn." She replied when her voice returned, but she could feel her cheeks blazing.
Blake got up from his desk, chucking the slobbery pencil at her and she ducked.
"Want another beer?" He asked, smirking as she tried to kick it off the couch.
"Several." She replied. While he was in the kitchen Clarke stole his spot in front of the computer. Unable to help herself she clicked through to Lexa's profile.
Aside from a multitude of Seattle parking tickets her record was squeaky clean, and Clarke read through it at warp speed, minimizing the page when Blake reappeared with their drinks.
"Kane is...interesting." She murmured as she pulled up his information. There wasn't much, the Department of Defense having redacted most of it.
"Yeah, I'm gunna have Agent Jordan see what he can dig up. We might not get far though." Blake handed her a cold one, falling into the seat beside her.
"His...girl or whatever, had some pretty nasty bruises. Looked like ligature marks around her neck." Clarke pointed out after a long swig.
Blake pressed his lips together.
"Could just be a kink. You don't look so hot yourself." He replied and Clarke quirked a brow at him. "Shit, I don't either. Deep cover never works out well for my complexion." He joked, patting his cheeks as Clarke made a beeline for the mirror over their mantle.
Her face stared back at her. Before Academy she'd been a born and bred Tennessee girl with a full face and fuller hips. It was only a few years later and now she looked like she was in the running for Ms. Skeletor 2019. The effect was compounded by the remnants of Lexa's fingerprints. They stood out in stark relief, and Clarke didn't want to think about what the rest of her looked like.
"Why don't we take a nice long vacation after this? What do you say? Couple weeks in Aruba, some good food and some fishing. We can even pretend to be these rich fucks again." Blake suggested and Clarke nodded despite the sinking feeling in her gut. When the mission was over it was back to headquarters. Her body went back to being government property, instead of being Lexa's.
"Sounds good." She replied stiffly.
"For now, let's try to put this puzzle together."
Late into the night they bounced increasingly ridiculous theories off each other. Eventually they both ended up sprawled across the living room floor, surrounded by police reports, crime scene photos, and empty bottles.
Clarke watched the ceiling fan spin above her.
"...do you feel like you were born to be an FBI agent Blake?" She asked, her words slurring together like the blades of the fan.
"I was born to serve my country. Ooh rah." He answered, thumping his chest. When Clarke didn't reply he rolled over onto his stomach, army crawling a bit closer to her. "And what about you Agent Griffin?" He asked.
"I have no fucking idea." Clarke replied, a fit of giggles overcoming her for a minute. They dissipated as Lexa filled her addled mind, taking up the entire space with her perfect lips and athletic frame.
"Or maybe I do..." She added wistfully.
Blake fell silent then, not wanting to continue the conversation as he watched a smile grace her features.
"...you'll figure it out." He finally replied, getting to his feet and helping his partner to the couch.
"Hopefully sooner rather than later." He said softly while Clarke drifted off to sleep.
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tbc
thank you for reading!