#12daysofclexa

She can still smell the other girl’s perfume.

She hooks her phone into the speaker on the nightstand and blasts her playlist as loud as it will go until she can feel the vibrations of the music drown out the vibrations of her heartbeat in her ears and gets to work.

His tee’s are the first to go. She sweeps them with a wayward arm off the cubby in the walk-in she has saved for him and they fall limply to the floor but it isn’t enough. She finds his dress-shirts next and rips at the notch in the side until the fabric gives and the whole shirt rips apart in her hand with a grating noise she can’t hear. She snatches the rest of them off their hangers and flings open the door to the balcony, hurling the armful over the railing and sending them flying.

She had plans for today—for their anniversary—but she watches the shirts sink into the shallow end of the pool and can feel the dinner reservations going with them, throat closing around her attempts to swallow and breathe.

A furious bang on the locked bedroom door pries her attention from the drowning clothing and she crosses the room to open it on a whim before disappearing back into the walk-in, completely out of control of her own body. Her head feels fuzzy but her movements are sharp and she doesn’t understand what she is doing until she finds herself going through his selection of watches that sit inside his sock drawer.

“I told you to leave.”

“Clarke, what did I do?”

Finn’s voice grates in her ear as she spins on her bare heel—his good Rolex in hand, rubbing finger prints into the face in the way she knows makes him irritated. He is standing in the entrance to the walk-in in boxers and his grey sleep tee, entirely too relaxed with his shoulder resting on the door frame and his shaggy hair in his face and all she sees is red.

She drops the watch and sees his face crumble as the face shatters.

“For fucks sake, Clarke you can’t just kick me out and not tell me why!”  

He snatches the next watch before it can meet its match on the tiles and her hand flies out to slap him across the face.

He stumbles backwards and she freezes, hand stinging.

“Not tell you why?” She whispers, nausea creeping up her throat. “Bellamy told me, Finn. It wasn’t ‘just a kiss’ you’ve been sleeping with that girl for months.” Finn scoffs but she doesn’t wait for him to argue, she flings a polished black Salvatore Ferragamo loafer at him and watches him duck to avoid it. “She’s nineteen , Finn!”

“You’re not even going to let me deny it?”

“I have proof!” She shoves him and brushes angrily past. “Not that I would listen to a word you said if you did because you’re a compulsive fucking liar and I should have known the day I met you that this would happen.”

She wants to cry but she doesn’t.

Tears burn behind her eyes and she staunchly refuses to let them fall because that would mean that Finn would win—every moment she spends crying over him is one she is sure he tallies up like a victory and she wants to scream until she can’t anymore. She finds his trainers by the bed, slings a t-shirt from the floor over her arm and piles the script from his latest film on top, ignoring the way he follows her, close enough for her to smell his cologne.  

“Come on, Clarke. This isn’t my fault and you know it.”

“So what?” She whirls and shoves his belongings into his chest. “You just slipped and fell into bed with her?” He looks like he wants to nod. “Four times?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have had to if you didn’t work so much.” He squares up.

Clarke feels her breath grow shallow in her lungs.

“For fucks sake. You don’t want me Finn!” His brow dips into the barest resemblance of innocence and she hates it. “You want the idea of me! The me that moved here five years ago with nothing, and now that I have the job, and the house and the money, you’re intimidated. You don’t want a girlfriend, Finn,” she informs him curtly. “You want a puppet.”

Fury boils in her stomach and she takes a few shallow breaths before deciding she doesn’t want to look at him anymore. He doesn’t look guilty or chastised, instead he’s achingly calm—smug even and if anything everything that she says eggs him on. If she sees it for another second she is going to lash out and do something she regrets.

Her father always said she was a spitfire.

She storms out of the bedroom and grunts when he follows, feet falling heavily on the stairs and down into the atrium of the Spanish Style Villa.

She remembers buying the house—surveying the property hanging off Finn’s arm as she imagined making it her own. Her money, her things, her name on the papers because even though Finn tried to coax her into buying a house together she decided she wasn’t ready.

Now, she thanks god for the small mercy.

“Or maybe, just maybe, it isn’t all about what I’ve done for once!” Finn accuses.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Clarke, you live a fairy-tale world. You came to LA and made it big and now you sit here with your big job, and your big house making big money and not once do you stop to think about the real world.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it!” She turns away and coaches herself into breathing—once, twice, three times. Pain pricks in her palms as she unwinds her fingers from where they have dug grooves into her palm. “All I have ever done is work for what I have—”

“You draw pictures for a living!”

“Fuck you, Finn!” She yells until her throat begs her not to. “Maybe wanting more out of a relationship than a quickie in the supply closet means that I’m ‘living in a fairy-tale world’. But if that makes me better than you, then I’m okay with it.” She shoulders past him and opens the front door. “Now get out!”

He refuses, jaw flexing in a way that makes fear creep up her spine.

“I’ll call 911,” she threatens in a high, thin voice.

“Jesus Christ, Clarke I didn’t cheat on you!”

It’s everything she can do not to let tears fall. The lump in her throat tightens and morphs into something she can’t swallow around and it takes her a minute to finally get the words out, scrutinising him with a watery gaze. “Why would Bellamy lie?”

Finn shrugs. He avoids her eyes and smooths his hand over the back of his neck—a nervous tick she has come to know means he is trying to come up with a lie. Clarke has seen it numerous times now, on curiously late nights in the office and odd stains on his shirt collars, and she hates the fact that she only now is understanding what it means.

Maybe she is naive.

Doubt creeps into her mind, seizing in her chest until she can feel the anxiety setting her on edge.

“He’s Bellamy,” is Finn’s eventual answer and Clarke’s heart drops into her stomach. Her last shred of hope sinks and burns. “He’s been in love with you since he met you.”

“You’re so full of shit Finn—”

“Or maybe you just don’t know how to be what I need!”

There it is.

His key chain is a leaden weight, biting the center of her palm as she twists the house key off and drops it into his hand. The anger boiling in the pit of her stomach engulfs her entire chest in flames until she is sure every inch of her is burning with the need to do something other than stand passively by.

She blinks—blank faced—and twists her house key off the ring, handing it back to him with all the ceremony of asking for salt over the dinner table and opens the door wider. “I’ll send you your things.”

He talks a step towards her and she stares at him—lips pursed and chest quivering—until his mouth twists as if something inside it has curdled and he scowls.

“Fuck you, Clarke—”  

She slams the door before he can finish.

From: Clarke Griffin <[email protected]>

To: Anya Woods <[email protected]>

Hi.

I’m interested in renting your house over Christmas this year—is it still available?

Please be in touch.

Clarke Griffin,

Artist, Gallery 1002,

Downton Los Angeles

From: Clarke Griffin <[email protected]>

To: Anya Woods <[email protected]>

I understand it’s ridiculously late to be asking but if it is you could be a real lifesaver.

Clarke Griffin,

Artist, Gallery 1002,

Downton Los Angeles

From: Anya Woods <[email protected]>

To: Clarke Griffin <[email protected]>

The cottage is definitely free but only really available for home exchange. When would you be looking to come?

From: Clarke Griffin <[email protected]>

To: Anya Woods <[email protected]>

Is tomorrow too soon?

Clarke Griffin,

Artist, Gallery 1002,

Downton Los Angeles

From: Anya Woods <[email protected]>

To: Clarke Griffin <[email protected]>

Sooner than I expected.

From: Clarke Griffin <[email protected]>

To: Anya Woods <[email protected]>

I’m sorry if it’s an inconvenience but I’d really like to get out of the country. If you’re not interested I understand.

Clarke Griffin,

Artist, Gallery 1002,

Downton Los Angeles

From: Anya Woods <[email protected]>

To: Clarke Griffin <[email protected]>

Tomorrow it is.

“And you’re sure you’re doing this?”

Raven eyes her with worry from her perch, cross legged in the middle of Clarke’s California king. There is an open suitcase in front of her which, so far, has collected two pairs of jeans and a thermal turtleneck. Clarke stands in front of the walk-in perusing her rack of sweaters. She is still in her silk pyjamas, hair fastened into a haphazard top knot with an elastic.

Once the deed was done, she had felt decidedly less frantic about the whole ordeal. There was something solid in having a seat booked on the eight o’clock flight that smoothed down the edges of the world that had come unstuck the moment Bellamy told her about Finn. When she saw the description on the listing it was almost too good—to ironic—to be true. ‘Fairy-tale English cottage’ . She had almost scrolled past it in search of something bigger before spite made her send an inquiry. Now, she is sure that if she can just spend the next two weeks hauled up in a one cart town with a bottle of wine, she will just about make it out of this still breathing.

Decisively, she takes the sweaters, hangers and all, and lays them on the comforter.

“I’m packing a suitcase, aren’t I?” She meets Raven’s intent stare.

The Latina purses her lips as Clarke begins to take the sweaters off their hangers and fold them methodically: side, side, bottom flip.

The movement calms the rattling headache she has had for the better half of the morning despite taking two Advil’s. She can only hope it will lessen with distance.

“You can be…impulsive,” Raven says evenly, avoiding the way Clarke shoots her a look. She picks up a navy cable-knit and begins the process.

Tucking a stack into the suitcase, Clarke stands back and smooths her fingers over the fly away hairs at her hairline. “I can’t be here right now,” she explains tightly. “Not where I could run into him.”

She doesn’t want to have to confront the image of Finn with his new toy. The thought of them together seizes in her chest and makes her want to vomit and she forces herself to swallow the nausea that burbles, uninvited in her stomach as she perches on the edge of the bed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.

“Oh, hon.”

The mattress dips with Raven’s weight as she abandons her folding and scoots closer to slide an arm around Clarke’s shoulder and it doesn’t take much force for her to pull the blonde into her chest. “This isn’t your fault, Clarke,” she coos, resting her chin atop the blondes head.

Chest stinging, Clarke shoves a fist into her front teeth to stifle the sob that escapes her chest, unbidden.

She feels like a stranger to herself and it scares her. The thing is, she has absolutely no idea where it went so wrong.

Finn had always been on the sickly side of charming. He would play flirt with Raven and Octavia to no end and got on a little too well with her friends but Clarke had chalked it up to him wanting to make a good impression and now she’s utterly shocked at her naivety.

“I found a ring.”

When she’s ready, Raven let’s her pull away and sit up.  

“What?”

Taking a shuddering breath, Clarke pulls the elastic from her top knot and rakes her hands through her now free hair, fisting her fingers at her hairline.

“I found a ring in the pocket of his jacket last month,” she sniffs. “I’ve been waiting for him to, you know…” she makes a vague gesture. “Do it.”

Raven nods, tucking a lock of lank hair behind her ear as she tries to get her words out without swallowing them. They scream in her throat like they want to be let out but when she tries she can’t and it only burns worse. “Now I can’t help wondering if it was for her.”

“He’s an asshole,” Raven decides, but her voice lacks the usual feistiness and it sounds strange and stilted with such a sympathetic.

Her world tilts and she falls back into the mattress.

“This is so messed up.”

Jeans and oversized tee knotted at her waist, Octavia appears in the bedroom doorway with the beige duffle coat Clarke keeps in the downstairs closet with the other cold weather gear for when she visits her parents in D.C. and Clarke springs up, pressing her knuckles under her eyes to blot at the tears.

“Bellamy called,” Octavia says quietly. She crosses the room and hands the coat to Clarke, catching her knuckles between her fingers and giving them a squeeze. “He can take you to LAX. Save you the cab fare.”

Taking a shuddering breath, nods. “Tell him thank you,” she whispers, holding the coat against her thigh to roll it as tightly as possible and tuck it into her suitcase. She has five more hours until she can forget this mess.

That’s manageable, she decides.

She points to the rain boots in the bottom of the walk-in.

“Can you hand me those?”

England is cold.

Unlike the tepid heat of LA in the winter, the chill that Clarke is faced with as she stands on the cobblestone path of the cottage—fuzzy headed from the ten hour flight—crawls into her lungs beneath her thermal, turtleneck and Burberry pea coat and threatens to choke her. She tucks her nose into the lip of the tartan scarf she has wound around her neck, breathing until she warmth sinks into her chest and makes breathing bearable. Her fingers fumble with her suitcase as the wheels threaten to run away on the uneven ground.

The cottage looks identical to its picture.

It stares at her out of four shuttered windows from under a slate, gable roof. Two chimneys book end it at each end and a wilting wreath hands from a nail in the front door from a velvet bow.

She finds the key under the mat where Anya emailed that she would leave it and consults the instructions which tell her to ‘jiggle it twice, the lock sticks’ in thin, slanted handwriting and does as she is told, feeling the door give and she steps inside. She closes the door quickly, shivering gratefully at the warmth.

Inside is as quaint as outside. A rickety kitchen table and chairs stands in the room to her right where the mental countertop hugs the wall and a tin kettle sits in the cradle of the gas stovetop. Ahead, the rungs of the staircase are adorned with garlands and crude paper snowflakes hang from it with string—they look childish and it makes her wonder—and the living room sits at the end of the hall, the sum of a few overstuffed armchairs, a coffee table and a shag rug in front of the fireplace.

Clarke appraises herself in the age-speckled mirror inside of the doorway, setting down her suitcase to pull her beanie off and brush out her hat-flattened hair with frostbitten fingers.

She looks tired. The aftermath of the Xanax she took for the flight has etched bags under her eyes and her cheeks are chapped a shocking red colour that she tries, unsuccessfully, to rub away with the heel of her hand.

When it doesn’t make a difference she sighs and gets to work.

The house is warm but still not comfortable so she decides to fix that first, dragging the wicker basket of kindling—chopped wood and sticks from outside it looks like—out from behind the fading armchair. Her father taught her how to stack wood in the grate on a camping trip when she was seven so she tries to replicate it and strikes a match from the box she finds in the top kitchen drawer but when the spark doesn’t light after the third time she gives up.

There’s an oil heater in the closet under the stairs that she plugs in next to the armchair that will have to do.

Upstairs she finds two bedrooms and an adjoining bathroom which is so small that, when she sits on the seat of the toilet and reaches her arms out they brush the exposed brick on the other side of the room. She eyes the tub-shower warily and decides that she isn’t in the least bit excited to see how that turns out.

There’s a dog nestled in the knitted quilt on the bed in the master bedroom who pops his head up as she enters and stares at her without blinking. She shoos him off, taking a look at the tag around his neck which reads ‘Fish’ in neat engraved letters, before putting her suitcase on the quilt to unpack—her clothes get wedged in the minimal closet space, her shoes are chucked in the bottom of the stand-alone wardrobe and she slots her toothbrush into the ceramic cup by the sink which is decorated with smudged fingerprints in red and yellow finger paint—all of which takes fifteen minutes before she is left at a loss once again.

She still can’t feel the heat from the oil heater and her toes are numbing. Rummaging in the depths of her half-unpacked suitcase where it peeks out from beneath the bed she finds a pair of socks and tucks the cuff of her jeans into the tops to keep the heat in.

Now what?

The answer, she finds after a half hour of roaming the cottage, is overwhelmingly nothing.

Fish rests his chin on the sagging toes of her socks as she sits in front of her failed fire, knotting her fingers under her chin to ward away the doubt that creeps up her spine.

Perhaps the one place on earth where there is absolutely nothing to take her mind of her cheating ex-boyfriend was the wrong choice for her to make in this situation. She can’t help but think that if she were hiking through the Peruvian mountains or laying on the beach in Barbados it would be easier to breathe through the sickly weight on her chest but she doesn’t have the luxury now. She feels the numbness that coaxed her through booking the ticket and the ten hours flight fading fast, replaced with the jarring realisation of what she had done and she doesn’t like it. It makes her feel frantic and paranoid and absolutely, unavoidably dumped like she is seven-years-old again and her Dad has taken her to the beach to teach her to swim in the waves, but instead, she has tripped and let the water drag her across the sand and this is the moment she breaks to the surface to breathe.

She doesn’t like it.

It feels rough and confronting, scraping the inside of her chest raw and the image of Finn with his arm slung around the shoulders of the girl Clarke had greeted almost every day for two years makes her feel queasy.

She needs a drink.

Clarke thought that the minutes she spent watching her mother go over the life insurance papers with the lawyer were the longest of her life—sitting sour-faced and ramrod straight in the chair the receptionist had dragged in for her, avoiding her mother’s eyes. She didn’t understand it. At age fifteen she pretended she did but honestly, the things the tight-lipped man was saying were too overwhelming for her to listen to entirely when the dress she wore to his funeral was still in the bottom of her laundry hamper.

She now knows that they had nothing on what she has come to call ‘English village in the ass crack of nowhere’ minutes which so far have been spent avoiding the curious glance of the check-out lady as she surveyed Clarke’s items—-a bottle of red wine, two jars of pitted olives, gingerbread cookies, packaged Christmas chocolates and cheese chips that look entirely too fancy for a pity party for one—and belting out a decidedly tipsy rendition of ‘Mr. Brightside’ on the old CD player Anya keeps in the den, wine glass in hand, and screening phone calls with an LA area code like the plague.

All the while Fish has followed her with a wide berth like he doesn’t quite trust her in his masters house.

She has discerned that flying halfway across the world to get away from her problems is quite possibly the most cowardly move she could have made, but she has also decided that there is no changing it. Hibernation suddenly sounds like the smartest idea in the world.

At nine p.m. she finds herself in bed, tapered sweatpants tucked into the tops of her polka-dot bed socks, thermal turtleneck on under her pilling chunky-knit cardigan and the opened bottle of wine sitting on the nightstand. The glass—mostly empty now—rests in her palm as she frowns in annoyance at the characters in the soap opera that is playing off the TV resting on the dresser.  

Raven texts her in the middle of a surprise stranger revealing that he is, in fact, the shop girls baby daddy and Clarke grunts through a sip, patting the folds of the quilt for her phone.

[Text from: Raven 11:37 PM 15/12] I let Anya in and I couriered Finn his things.

[Text from: Raven 11:37 PM 15/12] She’s kind of a hard ass.

Clarke smirks and swipes her lock screen to open it.

[Text to: Raven 11:38 PM 15/12] Intimidated?

[Text from: Raven 11:39 PM 15/12] Shut up.

Chuckling, she returns to the soap as the shop girl slaps her ex across the face—Clarke nods in tight-lipped sympathy for her—before reaching up to mute the TV at the sound of knocking coming from downstairs. She swings her legs out of bed and pauses, socked-feet hovering over the wood.

It happens again a minute later—a persistent banging on what sounds like the front door, although she isn’t entirely ruling out that Fish had perhaps gotten himself into trouble, so she traipses out to the landing to investigate.

“Who is it?” She hollers uncertainty, fists wound in the cuffs of her sleeves as she rounds the bend in the staircase.

“It’s me.”

Frowning, Clarke wraps her cardigan tightly around herself and fists her hands into the sagging pockets as she descends the rest of the way down the stairs. She can see the dark silhouette of a person through the four dust-clogged panes in the door, each thump of their fist causing the wood to shudder on its hinges.

“Anya,” they grouch. “If you don’t open the door, I’m going to have to take a leak on your—”  

The panic that lurches up her throat is enough to have Clarke pulling the door in, fingers fumbling for the porch-light switch on the panel by the coat rack.

“Oh.”

In the light, the silhouette turns into a woman, Clarke’s height in a cable-knit sweater, dark green duffle coat with the toggles undone, jeans, and rain boots, cheeks chapped and red beneath the tartan scarf around her neck which her dark hair is caught in like she left wherever she has been in a rush.

Clarke shivers, pulling her cardigan snugger as the cold creeps into the cottage uninvited through the open front door, but the threat of hypothermia is almost worth the look of quiet horror on her visitors face as she raises a hand to tuck her hair behind her ears, as if checking she can see clearly.

“You’re not Anya,” she says dumbly.

“No,” Clarke quirks a smile, gesturing to the front step. “But by all means.”

The woman looks down and Clarke counts the twelve different shades of white she goes when she understands, watching her ruefully sink her hands into her pockets. “There’s a chance I got a tad too slap happy with the gin,” she admits.

“I couldn’t tell.”

Suitably chagrined, the woman peers at her toes for a beat, as if wishing the front step would swallow her whole and Clarke leans against the open edge of the door waiting.

“Yes.” She looks up and Clarke is struck immediately by the colour of her eyes—they water from the sheer sting of the cold and in the porch light the soft green punches the air out of her chest. She tells herself it’s the chill.

“Nevertheless,” the brunette entreats, nodding her head inside, “may I?”

It’s Clarke’s turn to flush vehemently as she flings the door wider and steps aside to let the woman in. “Oh. ‘Course.”

She checks herself over in the mirror inside the door again, tucking curls of hair behind her ears. It isn’t much of an improvement on what it was when she got here—her hair is lank and her eyes are dark—but her cheeks are rosy now from the warmth of the quilt and the wine and if she tucks her sweat pants from her socks she almost looks human. She can deal with almost human.

The toilet flushes, then the faucet squeaks and the woman appears from the squat bathroom wedged beneath the stairs, unwinding her scarf from her neck bashfully so her hair falls free.

“So, uh—”

“Clarke,” Clarke offers.

“Clarke,” the woman nods. “Lexa,” she points to herself. She peers at Clarke curiously, like she is trying to place her and when she can’t, she sags apologetically. “Am I in the right house?”

“That depends,” Clarke smirks, reading the shallow confusion rooting itself inside of Lexa.

“On what?”

“Anya didn’t tell you?”

Lexa freezes, tentative smile stretching into a grimace as she tries to reconcile what she wants to say with what is coming out of her mouth. “She could of,” she admits, “but, as previously mentioned, I’ve been down at,” she hitches a thumb towards the door to jog her memory, “the pub.”

She sways on her feet, listing sideways as if to affirm her point and Clarke lunges forwards to place a steady hand on her elbow. She can feel the heat emanating from beneath the fabric under her hand.

When she looks up Lexa is decidedly too close.

“Anya’s in LA,” she says quickly and the brunette pulls back, affronted.

“LA?”

“She listed her house on a home exchange website. I got here this morning.”

“Oh.” It seems to be news to Lexa. “May I sit down?”

“Of course,” Clarke springs away, letting Lexa shimmy past and ease herself down into the cushions with a grunt. Fish takes the moment to decide the couch is free reign now and hops up next to her, pushing his nose into her lap like they are familiar.

“I’m sorry about this,” she looks up at Clarke after a moment. “I don’t usual burst into people’s homes unannounced on a Friday night.”

Her bashfulness is unusually charming—Clarke thinks it’s the accent but she can’t be sure, her sheer vicinity to the perfect stranger has her flustered in a thousand different ways she hasn’t felt before.  “Even if you didn’t I couldn’t fault you on it,” she laughs.

Lexa smiles in appreciation for her attempt at salvaging the conversation.

“My sister usually lets me stay the night if I drink so I don’t have to drive.” She admits.

“Your Anya’s sister?” Clarke tries not to let her surprise show. From the little that she has talked to Anya over the phone to work out the details of their exchange, Lexa seems like the polar opposite. She’s hard where Lexa is apologetically soft.

“Guilty as charged.”

She nods thoughtfully for a moment, watching Fish drag his wet nose along the strip of skin visible between the waistband of Lexa’s jeans and the hem of her sweater before chastising herself.

Was twenty-four hours too soon for a rebound?

The angel on her shoulder says it is but if Raven were here she would tell her otherwise. Her own head feels fuzzy from the red wine—which she should have known would lead to consequences after Harpers baby shower last month—and she peers around the cottage. Short of asking Lexa to play a round of Scrabble with her she isn’t quite sure how to entertain her.  

“Do you want a drink?”

It’s the first thing she can think of.

“A water or...wine?”

Lexa looks at her hopefully. “Would it be terribly English of me to ask for a cup of tea?”

Clarke blanches at the thought. “If you tell me how to take it.”

“You don’t know how to make tea?”

“I’m more of a Starbucks girl,” Clarke admits bashfully as Lexa eases herself off the couch.

Fish yips at her feet as they migrate to the kitchen, Clarke leaning against the rickety kitchen table as Lexa—despite her sore head—goes about finding mugs from the cupboard. She navigates the kitchen with ease, filling the kettle and flicking it on, taking the battered tin off the top shelf of the pantry and placing a dark tea bag in the bottom of her mug and shrugging her coat off onto the back of a chair, leaving her in her sweater that hangs off her frame. She rolls it up at the sleeves as she waits.

“So, LA?” She muses, glancing back as the kettle burbles.

Clarke nods. “Yeah.”

“Arguably more glamorous than Surrey.”

“Who’s to say,” Clarke smiles diplomatically.

Lexa grins, leaning forwards like she is about to bestow Clark with.a secret. “I’m sure no one would blame you if you did.”

Clarke grins at her and Lexa stands straighter for it.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking but how do you like it so far? England I mean,” she hastens to clarify—for what reason Clarke doesn’t know.

Clarke leans back into the table and takes stock.

So far she has walked a mile in the snow because of a grumpy cab driver who refused to do a U-turn at the end of a narrow country lane, cleared the local grocery store out of red wine and watched enough soaps to narrate the life stories of the people living on a street that seems to attract pathetic drama like month to a flame. It wasn’t what she had in mind when she turned up at the airport but then again, she doesn’t know what she thought she would find. She was being stupid and impulsive and it’s come back to bite her now, alone in a village with less cell service than an underground bunker.

“Well,” she prepares to condense all of it into an easy reply. “I’ve been here for,” she checks a watch that isn’t there, “six hours and I already want to leave, so good.” She gives Lexa a sardonic thumbs up and the brunette grimaces in sympathy. She looks down at Fish and then back up, fingers playing with a loose thread of her cable-knit.

“I could show you around the town tomorrow,” she offers. “It’s nothing flashy but the pub sells alcohol and the food is hot if you want a way to pass the time.”

“Oh…” Clarke ducks her head, flattered and strangely unsure how she feels.

“Unless you’re already spoken for,” Lexa backtracks, suddenly busying herself with fetching the milk from the fridge. “I don’t want to overstep.”

“You didn’t,” Clarke assures her quickly. “You haven’t. Actually,” she sinks her fingers into her hair and wonders why she is going to tell her sob story to the perfect stranger who threatened to drop her pants on her porch in the middle of the night. “I had a bad breakup. He was an asshole, it was messy,” she shrugs. “I came here to un complicate things but it hasn’t quite worked out how I thought. Frankly I’m not sure what I thought, I must have been out of my mind but here we are.” She tries for a lopsided smile, noticing the way Lexa is looking at her—softly, with a slight smile on her lips so that Clarke can’t tell what she is thinking but knows it’s something sweet—and quickly leaning down to let Fish nuzzle into her palm.

He’s starting to warm up to her, she thinks. It didn’t take much to win him over but a bowlful of foot and a belly rub.

“Well if you ever want something uncomplicated,” Lexa reminds her.

Clarke isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be an innuendo. She almost asks but then the kettle whistles and Lexa goes to pull it off its cradle. Clarke listens to the whisper of boiling water against the ceramic and the clink of the spoon against the mug as Lexa mixes in the milk and raises it to her lips to blow across the surface of the drink.

After a moment she sets the mug down on the counter and pins Clarke with a beseeching smile . “Would it be awful if I stayed?” She asks, lips curling into a wince as if she hates to ask. Clarke finds herself fixating on the freckle that she has spotted on her top lip. “I could take the sofa. You won’t know I’m here.”

“Oh, no,” Clarke shakes her head, dragging her mind out of the gutter. “Sure, no that’s fine,” she hitches a thumb behind her. “Let me just go get you a blanket and then it’s all yours.”

She climbs up the stairs, rummaging in the hall closet under towels for a comforter and a sheet, pausing to steal herself on the landing.

When she returns, Lexa is in the living room. Her coat has migrated from the back of the chair in the kitchen to the coat rack, her rain boots sit just inside the door and she nurses her cup of tea in her hands as she pursues the bookshelf arching over the doorway into the hall. She thanks Clarke warmly when she hands over the bedding.

“Look, I’m sorry again for barging in unannounced. I know how awkward this must be for you.”

“It’s nothing, really,” Clarke waves it off. “Anya’s your sister it’s more your house than mine.”

“Still, there aren’t a lot of people who would let just anyone camp on their sofa for the night.”

“You’re not just anyone,” Clarke hums, swallowing the way her heart beats a rhythmic tattoo in her chest. They’re so close she’s sure Lexa can hear.

“No,” Lexa whispers, “I’m not.”

When they kiss Clarke can’t say that she isn’t at all expecting it.

It’s soft and languid, barely enough to match the intensity of the feel that gnaws at the pit of Clarke’s stomach but when she tilts her head sideways to deepen it, their noses brush and Lexa pulls back to breathe, blinking in what Clarke is sure would be shock if she was completely coherent.

“Oh.” She says calmly.

“Oh.” Clarke parrots.

The heat grows in her stomach, morphing and building magma until it’s a sharp, kneeing ache and Clarke reaches out to slid her fingers over Lexa’s collarbones, focusing on the neat ribbing intently. Her mind slows to the pace of thick honey, as she swallows and blinks, looking up at Lexa who has her lips parted and hands fisted at her side. “Would you—ah—” she waits for the words to form on her tongue. “Would you mind doing that again?”    

The second time it’s heavier.

Clarke curls her fingers into the shoulder of Lexa’s sweater, swallowing the moan that she lets out when she swipes her tongue along her bottom lip on a whim. Fumbling, Lexa’s fingers find Clarke’s waist under the folds of her cardigan, shoving the fabric aside and then the tee beneath that and Clarke shivers, unfiltered in the noise that she makes, when her fingers skate across her ribs, frigid and cold, raising goose bumps in their wake.  

She leans her forehead on Lexa’s, breathing shallow breaths that send hot puffs of air cascading across the sharp cut of her cheekbones.

She is pretty—okay she’s absolutely beautiful and Clarke is suddenly flawed by it but she summons the dregs of liquid courage that have lain dormant in her stomach since she laid eyes on the brunette and wills it to fill the cavity of her chest as brings her fingers up to cradle Lexa’s jaw, peering at her intently.

“Huh,” she whispers.

“What?”

“I should tell you,” she warns quietly, “I don’t usually kiss the first person who shows up to my door on a Friday night.” But even as she says it she takes Lexa’s hands in her own, bringing them up to the collar of her cardigan and urging if off in clear permission.

“Neither do I.”

Lexa shakes her head, fingers playing with the hem of Clarke’s tee. Clarke lifts her arms and allows it to be pulled of and discarded leaving her in her bra, skin prickling—despite the living room being a virtual hot-house from the heater she left on all day and the proximity to Lexa feels like she’s made of raw heat—her fingers coming down to fumble with the button on Lexa’s jeans.

“I’m open to making an exception though,” she sighs between kisses—teeth clacking, noses bumping in their haste.

“Yeah?”

Clarke nods. “Yeah.”

Lexa glances towards the staircase, stamping her jeans down her legs as she goes to work at her own sweater. Clarke helps so that they’re a mess of limbs and awkward, desperate pulling.

“Upstairs?” Lexa whispers when they hold the top between both of their hands, breathing stilted breaths and marvelling at each other.

“Yeah.”