Chapter Text
The bar is dingy, poor lighting hiding the stains from decades of spilled beer and greasy food. It smells, musty and damp, old beer and body odor and tobacco. Every surface is slightly sticky, more from the deeply embedded filth than from recent mess. At least it’s not packed. There’s a crowd, but only large enough for one barely-eighteen year old to hide away in. She’s using her cousin’s ID, ‘borrowed’ when she came to visit last week. They look similar enough, and the bartender was more interested in checking the date than checking the photo.
She’s sitting by herself at a high-top table, watching the regulars playing pool, sipping at her stout. It tasted somewhat of coffee and that made it appealing.
She’s on a mission tonight, in her high-waisted jean shorts and white spaghetti strap crop top, a flannel tied around her waist to help with the chill when she’d leave later. Her flipflops are hanging halfway off her feet as she settles her bare heels on the loose bottom rung of her stool. She’d left her long blonde hair down, pink tips brushing against her chest, feeling the need for a little protection from the environment that it brought.
This isn’t the kind of place she expected to see anyone she knew, which was the whole point. She’d already tried everyone she knew, or at least everyone that could potentially fit the bill. Nothing was working. It was time to do something stupid.
And so, here she was, in a dive bar in a bad neighborhood at ten PM, drinking a beer she had no right to, scanning the faces in the crowd for someone who fit the bill.
~*~
Lexa steps into the bar, glancing around to try and find her drinking buddies. They’re not friends, she doesn’t have those, but they drink together regularly and she knows the general ups and downs of their lives. She’s been coming to this bar for a couple years now, when she’s in town. They know her face, even that time she’d showed up black and blue and almost unrecognizable after a fight. She got a lot of free beers that night.
Her gaze pauses on a blonde at a table to the side. She doesn’t belong here. She’s too clean, too clean-cut, and definitely too young. Not that she had a leg to stand on, on coming here too young. But she’d at least looked like she fit in.
She rolls her shoulders, striding over to the bar and retrieving the draft poured the moment she’d walked in. She turns, leaning against the bar, watches the blonde watch the room. She’s looking for something, Lexa notes. A smirk curls her lips as she considers what someone so young and pretty could be looking for here.
She watches as the blonde is approached by one of her drinking buddies, Quint. He’s a dick, as a general rule. She keeps her eye on the situation.
~*~
“Well don’t you just brighten this place up.”
A large man, too much older than her, sidles up to her table with a brown bottle in hand. He’s bald, with a scruff of a beard, and overall rough around the edges in the wrong way. He looks genuinely dangerous.
Clarke offers him a half-smile and nothing else, drinking from her pint and continuing her perusal of the room.
“Hey, I gave you a compliment. Least you could do is say Hi,” his tone is harder now, eyes narrowed. She glances at him again, catching the edge of anger in his posture, before shifting so she’s facing slightly away from him.
“Hey, I said-” he’s reaching for her arm now, but is blocked by a shoulder as someone leans on the table between them. She’s wearing a classic leather motorcycle jacket and jeans ripped from use, and that’s all Clarke can see with her back turned like it is.
“Quint,” the woman starts, her tone is flat in a way that feels dangerous, “What did we talk about, with the grabbing?” She asks this, like she’s chiding a preschooler who won’t share. “What did we talk about, Quint?”
His gaze shifts to the woman, expression torn between a simmering kind of rage and mild fear. He makes a vague noise of disgust, sneers, then turns and moves to the other side of the bar. Clarke lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
The woman watches him leave, then turns so she’s side-on to Clarke and can actually look at her. Clarke’s eyes widen slightly. She’s perfect.
“Nice rescue. Very smooth. You’ve got the whole ‘tough but chivalrous’ vibe down,” Clarke says with a light smile, quirking a brow.
“You played ‘damsel in distress’ aptly, if understated. I don’t think anyone else even noticed,” her tone is much lighter, almost teasing.
“How did you come to my rescue, then?” She tilts her head to the side, letting her hair fall away from her shoulder, knowing that her overall position will draw the eye down to her assets.
The woman smirks, taking the invitation to look for what it is, and trails her eyes up and down her body slowly. When she finally makes eye contact again her smirk is a little larger. “Oh I already saw you. You don’t exactly blend in here.”
“You do,” she nods to the woman’s worn jacket and jeans and faded T-shirt.
“I’ve been coming here for years. You’re clearly very new if Quint’s only just trying his bullshit,” she tilts her head slightly in the direction he’d run off.
“You know, I know his name, but not my rescuer’s,” she leans an elbow on the table, pressing her chest into the edge.
The woman’s eyes flick down briefly, appreciatively, before bouncing back up. “Lexa.”
“Clarke.”
“Well, Clarke, what are you doing in a dive like this?” Her tone is mildly curious at best.
Clarke leans forward further, just enough to get inside Lexa’s personal space. “Looking for you.”
~*~
Lexa feels her smirk slip into a smile as she moves herself onto the unoccupied stool at the table. “That’s a good line,” she says taking a drink from her pint and eyeing Clarke’s. She hadn’t expected a stout, she’d expected some kind of mix drink, honestly. Something with soda, since that was the sweetest you were likely to get here.
“Is it a line if it’s true?” Clarke challenges, running a finger through the condensation on her glass.
“Me specifically, or the general concept? You were scanning the crowd, but not like you were looking for a face you knew.”
“Top notch observational skills,” Clarke says, leaning back slightly and crossing her legs. Lexa glances down, admiring the long lines. “Conceptually, I was looking for you. You’re exactly my type.”
Lexa quirks a brow at that. This girl, she really is too young to be here, looks like she does cheer, and student council, and has a bedroom full of pastel pinks. From the cut and quality of her clothes, she looks like she goes to the better high school in town. Her phone is the latest model and the chain necklace she has on isn’t some cheap imitation of silver.
She’s a rich girl. She’s an underage rich girl in a dive bar, looking for someone who looks like Lexa, with her beat up leather jacket and ripped jeans and dirty boots and industrial ear piercings. This could be fun.
~*~
Clarke focuses on her beer, she can feel Lexa’s eyes all over her, taking her in. She knows how she looks, she wasn’t going to come here playing at being someone she’s not. She’s not a liar.
When her beer is more than half empty she looks up, catches Lexa’s eyes, and smiles. “So? Am I your type?”
Lexa leans forward, much closer than Clarke did earlier. “Yeah, I think you might be. I just have one question.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you over eighteen?”
Clarke smirks, leaning close enough to feel Lexa’s breath on her lips. “Yes.”
Lexa keeps their eyes locked, then nods sharply once, and slides a hand to the back of Clarke’s head, pulling her close and capturing her lips in a kiss that tastes like beer. Clarke grabs her wrist with on hand and the open edge of her jacket with the other, pulling her closer. Lexa slips off her stool and moves her free hand to Clarke’s hip, hooking a finger into her front pocket.
Clarke’s knees fall open and Lexa steps between them, still not quite flush, lips still connected. The hand that had been grabbing her jacket slips inside it, fingers exploring the taut abdomen hiding under the soft shirt. Lexa tilts Clarke’s head to the side, moving her mouth down her neck before nipping her way back up.
She pulls back a bit, lips glistening, “D’you have a car?”
“Yeah, why?” Clarke asks in a bit of a daze.
“I’m not letting you on my motorcycle dressed like that.”
Clarke nudges a bare knee against Lexa’s hip, “I take it you want to get out of here then?”
“I am asking, you can say no,” Lexa assures calmly.
“Oh, no that’s not what I was going to say at all. I was going to ask if you were okay with my place.”
Lexa nods, stepping backwards and holding out a hand to help Clarke from the stool. She releases it, then moves her hand to her lower back, keeping her tucked in close as they walk out of the bar. Clarke finds the gesture protectively charming.
Yeah. She’s perfect.