The Three Truths

Chapter 17

"So there's no choice at all?"

"No, there is. You can choose to let it flow or...just walk away." She cleared her throat, suddenly unable to meet Clarke's eyes, feeling open and vulnerable. "I know it's awkward now and it might be for a while, and we need to be friends again before we can be anything else, but I don't want to walk away. I don't."

"I don't want to walk away either," Clarke said, forcing Lexa to look up, both of them suddenly grinning like fools. "So we take it slow."

"Slow," Lexa agreed.

(And if Octavia and Raven groaned when they told them, if their friends claimed that if they went any slower they'd be going backwards, they didn't care. Because for the first time, it felt right.)

//

After a month of taking it slow, Lexa was going mad.

Slow meant rebuilding their friendship. It meant long conversations, filling each other in on every little thing they'd missed over the last several months. It meant Clarke coming with her to visit her mom, it meant Lexa began seeing Jasper and Monty and Clarke's other friends again. It meant they knocked before they entered each other's apartments, it meant they limited their physical contact, it meant that they were free to talk about any other romantic interests (and if there weren't other romantic interests, if they were both sure of what they wanted, who they wanted, it was a tacit thing, a mutual understanding, and so they only spoke of each other).

(But their eyes strayed, lingered for longer than what would be considered strictly 'friendly,' and Lexa's heart pounded, and the slightest of grazes against Clarke set her nerves on fire, sending wave after wave of signals to her brain, leaving her tingling and warm and wanting.)

(She was driven mad by the proximity, by the sudden inability to keep her desires under wraps. Because Clarke was no longer something untouchable and off limits—she was opportunity, she was the future, she was nothing but unbridled potential. There was something there, and as the weeks dragged on, as her wounds healed, as forgiveness sealed the last gaps in her heart, Lexa wanted to capitalize, wanted to go for that something.)

(But they were taking it slow, and so they waited.)

//

It was three months after being asked on a date that Lexa finally said yes.

They were preoccupied with classes and exams and due dates and hadn't seen or spoken to each other in a days. So when Clarke came by, laden with her textbooks and computer, claiming she didn't want to be alone while she studied, Lexa let her in without complaint, ordered Chinese, and they sat on opposite ends of the couch, facing each other, studying and chatting and eating. And when Clarke speared her peppered beef with a chopstick, when she grinned widely at Lexa, looking positively proud of herself, the word came out of her without any prompting.

"Yes."

"Yes what?" Clarke asked, her eyes now on the television, her textbook going ignored. "You know, I think I've seen this episode before."

"No, Clarke. Listen. Yes." Clarke turned away from the television at Lexa's tone, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Yes what?" she asked again. Slowly, clearing her throat as she did so, Lexa set her container of food aside and sat up straight, refusing to break eye contact, no matter how nervous she was and how much she wanted to.

"Yes, to the date." Clarke merely blinked in response, and for a second Lexa wondered if she made a terrible mistake, if she somehow misunderstood. "I mean. We don't have to—"