It's just Pretend | clexa AU

chapter one

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Clarke's office was much too warm. The sun was burning through the windows with no mercy, their current money income not allowing aircoolers. Well, her current money income. She didn't even know why her partner put up with her every day. Lexa had mommy's and daddy's money to never work again already.

The air was buzzing with heat, summer was so close, and through the slightly opened window, nothing but polluted, hot air came in. New York's traffic sounded up to Clarke's ears, the city as hectic and busy as usual, but if Clarke closed the window, she would only hear her stupid grey clock ticking its life away. She really needed to talk to Lexa about the office rooms.

She had just gotten off a call with Mrs. Blake, the CEO of one of the most popular clothing and advertisement companies. It probably was an honor to even get a second of her day, but the woman, who was roughly familiar with Lexa's family, had even given them the huge offer of becoming partners with her. If that worked out, they would be able to buy the office rooms instead of renting them and Clarke could finally paint hers in another color than that shitty headache white with the ugly grey doors and clocks.

The call she had just had with Mrs. Blake though had gone a little different from how she had expected it too.

Lexa and her, as the owners of their small clothing brand, would be on a two weeks business trip with the woman very soon, to discuss things, to get to know each other, to 'enjoy themselves', as Mrs. Blake had put it.

Clarke knew the elder lady secretly loved her generous parties and 'personal bonds' with business partners. Or not so secretly, in their case.

Clarke swore she had been prepared for a lot of questions, but not on that day and not over the phone. Sure, double-checking contact data like phone numbers or e-mails, talk about the hotel they would stay in, schedules, certain meetings, appointments, everything but personal questions. Lexa had said already that from what she guessed- she was quite good at reading people- and knew from the relationships Mrs. Blake had with her father, that a lot of private life centered questions would come and that Clarke and she should meet in one or two lunch breaks to discuss a few basic things about each other to appear as good friends.

Which was understandable, Clarke wouldn't want to be partners with pricks that only want the money either, but she hadn't expected any question to come on that meaningless Thursday afternoon.

For the third time throughout her thoughts, she stared at her phone screen with Lexa's contact, the green call button underneath, begging to be pressed. Hesitantly, she put light pressure on it and not ten seconds later, Lexa had picked up.

"Yeah?" her calm voice came from the speaker. She was probably sitting in her office two rooms away from Clarke, where there was a working aircooler, a cleaned desk, her work done neatly.

"Did you eat dinner already?" Clarke asked and she heard a sigh.

"What broke?"

Clarke wasn't even shockingly gasping anymore. "Nothing materialistic anyway," she muttered.

"Is that supposed to calm me?" Lexa asked, but she didn't sound upset in the first place. Lexa barely ever sounded anything but calm at work, if, then when she had stress with their manager Titus. "It would make my day much better if you told me you didn't miss an appointment."

"Your day consists of sitting in an office from seven a.m. till six p.m. with only a 45 minutes lunch break. It wouldn't make anything better if I hadn't missed an appoinment."

"You have the exact same schedule Clarke, and you're distracting."

"Fine, fine, then tell me if you're free for dinner."