When Lexa read to Clarke that afternoon, about God and heaven, an eternal afterlife that is supposedly perfect, Clarke didn't pay it much attention. She was half-asleep, after all. Now, she knows exactly what Lexa was talking about- chocolate chip cookies are the only thing Clarke wants to eat for the rest of her life.
She lays on the couch with a whole plate of them balancing on her stomach and Lexa joins her in the living room a while later, a second plate of fresh, hot cookies from the oven in her gloved hands. She slides out of one glove, sets it down on the couchtable and puts the plate atop of it. Then, she gets rid of the second glove and falls into the armchair, displaying a patience waiting for the cookies to cool that Clarke cannot comprehend.
Beyond that, there are dark rings under weary eyes and suppressed yawns, and with a short glance at the armchair, something slips out of Clarke that shouldn't have, but that doesn't surprise her either. Not by now. A three-headed djask couldn't have surprised her by that time of the night, and if a gigantic, mythical bear couldn't, her own words wouldn't either. "Go lay down."
"What?"
Clarke nods to the space next to her on the couch. "I want to show you something." A feeble excuse. She just wants to feel Lexa's warmth once more.
Lexa, for some magical reason, gets up and settles on the couch instead. Her body is stiff, as it seems to be by default, and Clarke wonders whether or not her muscles are made of iron to keep her posture so perfect all the time.
"What did you want to show me?"
"Open your mouth."
"Mother and Son, Clarke, do not even get me started on spiders and worms, I-"
"Language," Clarke interrupts her in a whisper, although she's not sure mother and son is a swear word. It's just too fun to use Lexa's own weapon against her.
When Lexa opens her mouth in protest, Clarke stuffs a warm chocolate chip cookie into it to shut her up. "Shh. Stay still for a moment. Close your eyes."
After a glare, Lexa closes her eyes. "Take a bite."
Lexa reluctantly obeys. After she ate the whole cookie, she opens her eyes again and musters Clarke questioningly. Clarke seems ridiculously close, she realizes, and she has to swallow before she asks, softer, "What was that supposed to do?"
"Didn't you feel it? The way it made everything a notch better?" Clarke reaches over Lexa and Lexa's breathing stops for a moment when Clarke is this close, close enough that Lexa smells her scent of fresh laundry, flowery soap and something so uniquely Clarke. For one pathetic second, her eyes close, as though she had bent down to smell a rose. When Clarke retreats with something from the coffee table in hand, Lexa is painfully aware of the scent, even though it becomes fainter again.
Lexa, being an academic, is one of the few women who can read and who has access to books. As such, she has read plenty of books, including poems. Poems that have made Lexa cringe, poems laying on too heavily, poems that have been so very corny and cliche, but for the first time in her life, her stomach contracts in a terrible realization. The authors of those poems didn't fake their words. Their poems were never meant to be shiny and flowery.
They were simply talking about this; Clarke, and her blonde waves being a golden ocean flooded all over the couch, and her blue eyes so dark in the candle light, two deep saltwater seas at night. They weren't being flashy, Lexa just never realized that someone could really smell of spring that much, that someone could really make you want to bury your nose in the crook of their neck and just stay. For however long, Lexa would simply like to stay.
Maybe, Clarke is the enemy and a demon and maybe, she's even going to feast on everybody's soul or something to that effect. Maybe she's going to retreat back to hell just tonight. Or maybe she's just an 18 year old far away from home, but with a toothy grin and chocolate stained lips and a warmth to her that Lexa wants to soak in more than a fireplace in the depths of winter. Maybe, she's just a stranger from a strange land, and Lexa isn't so different with Clarke.
Clarke doesn't even understand the extent of the abomination that is Lexa. She doesn't know. She's one of the few who don't, and Lexa realizes that it's that which makes her want to stay on that couch forever, with the sweet taste of cookie lingering on her tongue.
Didn't you feel it? The way it made everything a notch better? Clarke's voice sounds in Lexa's head once more.
And it does. It does, so much that Lexa realizes too late that what Clarke grabbed was Lexa's Word of God. She flushes in embarrassment of her own distraction.
She tenses and the taste of the cookie fades, the scent of spring weakens as she watches Clarke flip through the thick book until she settles on a free page for notes in the back. She takes the annotating pen from its place at the book's side and scribbles something into the lines of the page.
Lexa is a little on edge with Clarke handling something so important to her, with writing- what, obscene swear words? into such a holy book. She doesn't know why she trusts Clarke to continue at all.
Clarke hands her the book shortly afterwards but instead of curses, Lexa reads,
Once, God wanted to show himself to the people, and so he created something for humanity that would leave everyone reminded of his divinity forever; the chocolate chip cookie.
She copied the beginning of the story Lexa read to her that afternoon, about the creation of their world, not the cookies. She closes the book and raises a brow. "You're making fun of me."
What she really means is, you remembered. You listened.
What she really means is to laugh, at least a little bit, and she's afraid Clarke can see right through her stern look, because Clarke's chocolatey lips turn upwards into a smile. "I am telling the truth, but I feel like you're a little amused anyway," she teases with a grin and Lexa has contained anger, grief, sadness, disgust, stress, nervosity and a hundred other things before, there's nothing she can't hide, yet she feels unable to suppress this smile.
"Is that a smile?" Clarke gasps theatrically and then, somehow, Clarke does the impossible. She makes Lexa laugh.
"Shut up," Lexa says with a big grin on her face and Clarke laughs alongside Lexa, probably at Lexa, but it's beautiful all the same. She shoves Lexa gently.
"I didn't say anything."
"Even better."
Clarke laughs again and leans back against a cushion. Silence falls over them after their laughter dies down, silence only interrupted by the sound of Clarke eating her next cookie. Lexa's cheeks bloom with heat once more, for some reason she doesn't quite understand. It's almost dark and they're not even looking at each other, they're just silently laying beside each other, but her cheeks must be red and blotchy all the same.
It's not awkward though, she's not blushing because she's at a lack of something to say.
Terribly, she makes the realization that her heart is pumping more poisoned blood into her body, into her cheeks and ears, because Clarke is so close, and they're barely even touching.
Terribly, she makes the realization that while Madi hugs her friends on the most casual occasions, while husbands and wives kiss each other hello and goodbye, while even cats and dogs are used to being curled up on a lap, Lexa lays on a couch overwhelmed by simply laying next to someone.
Should she be surprised? She fell apart in Clarke's arms and got shaky knees upon merely cupping her hand.
And Clarke?
She's a fucking sight. Warrior? Fearless leader?
You were never meant for this, Alie's voice, once more sounding from the back of her head, over and over again.
But this isn't a matter of spite and pride. Clarke is able to prove her mentor wrong with her sword, perhaps with her crew, but what is left of a girl chasing after blood for an approving nod? What is left of a girl collecting lives and gold just to be able to sleep on the hard ship floors of Arkadia's fleet? What is left of a girl who sold her soul at the foot of a mountain in return for nothing at all?
Raven and Clarke used to be closer, so much closer. They were kids together. They told each other all the gossip a small village has to offer, snuck away from school to pluck ripe cherries until their bellies were full and their lips stained, shared each other's clothes and braided each other's hair. Clarke has so many memories of Raven when neither of them had any scars yet and all they knew was bare feet in high summer grass.
Octavia and Clarke used to be close, too. When they were both still part of something bigger. When they had to share tiny cabins on the boats, tents after day-long foot marches, food rations and bandages. When Clarke saved Octavia's life a dozen times and Octavia saved Clarke's twice as many.
And there's that day when Bellamy picked Clarke off the battlefield, assuming she was dead, and Clarke had simply not moved for a long time just so she could feel his warmth, because the Northern Lands had been so unforgivingly cold. When Bellamy had figured out she was still alive, he had held her anyway. He had held her and she had held him, a level of contact that's unthinkable for her now, even just for the sake of staying alive.
Clarke could make a list, of her crew members and of her family, but all that is a lifetime ago.
Whatever's left is a broken figment, enough to trust each other but never enough to stay longer than to discuss strategy, never enough for Clarke to be included in the same fun her crew has without her. Never enough for Clarke to reach out. Never enough for Clarke to be human enough to have any needs.
That is what's left. Nothing. Not enough to make this a new friendship, even though the old Clarke would have, and the new Clarke likes to keep up the pretense that she's not the apathetic type.
They're close. Clarke can hear Lexa's breathing, which is just a little off, even though she tries so hard to keep her rhythm.
And Clarke could reach out. She could touch Lexa, could feed her another cookie, even just continue their light banter.
Well, the old Clarke could have.
This Clarke can't.
This Clarke sits up a little too abruptly and plasters a smile on her lips, even though she could never be as good at it as Lexa is. "Well, you're neglecting the bedtime," she says, and, like a terrible punishment to her own actions, she sees the exact moment when Lexa's relaxed face shatters and is covered up once more, in a perfectly smooth second, by a stoic facade.
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