Archive of Our Own

September

No matter where she goes, Clarke Griffin always seems to cause a mess.

It isn’t her fault. Whether it be charcoal from drawing or ground stone from sculpting, one can always find where she’s been by the trail of smudged fingerprints and the vague outline of footsteps on carpet. Books borrowed often have dark wrinkles on the edges and little figures etched into the margins, drawing what she can from what’s happening on the pages.

This mess-making ability of hers, however, extends into the rest of her life.

“Sorry I’m late,” she puffs as she skids into the non-descript classroom, one of many on the UPenn campus. “My class ran late and then I managed to knock over a professor with three cups of coffee in the hallway.”

“And we’re supposed to trust you with a scalpel in ten years?” Wells teases, pushing his things to the side to make room.

“Just because my feet are clumsy doesn’t mean my hands are.”

Up front, Professor Kane (though here, he insists everyone call him Marcus) claps his hands.

“Now that everyone is here,” he looks pointedly at Clarke, “I have an announcement to make. Firstly, welcome back to a new school year. I’m glad to see many returning faces and some new ones as well; I’m sure we’ll do even greater work this year. Art Therapy is a diverse and flexible subject that’s gaining more attention by the year.”

“Not to mention it looks great on your extra-curricular sheet,” Wells murmurs under his breath.

“Secondly, we have a unique opportunity coming up.”

“Please tell me we aren’t going back to that nursing home,” Jasper groans.

“The elderly need an outlet more than anyone, Jasper, but no,” Kane grins, rubbing his hands together before picking up the chalk, “this time, it’s something a lot more agreeable.”

In big, bold letters, the word CHARITY stretches across the blackboard. He cuts off the uncertain groans with a wave of his hand.

“There’s a gallery opening up downtown shortly, and they’ve heard of the work we do and stretched out an invitation. They want us to create pieces to feature in their opening night!”

Clarke’s hand immediately shoots up.

“Yes, Clarke?”

“Why not the Fine Arts Department? Some of us here aren’t even taking arts classes, wouldn’t they want students who’ve put out portfolios and stuff?”

Kane shakes his head. “They specifically contacted the Art Therapy group because of the students. This gallery is really into sustaining the community, and they figured that art created by people who are trying to do just that is much better than run of the mill arts students, even if the quality of that work may be a slightly higher calibre. Subjectively.”

The details were sparse; the opening itself wasn’t until March, they encouraged any kind of medium, and any pieces they liked enough they were willing to buy. It had to be centered on the kind of material they dealt with in their club, but thankfully, art is mostly up to interpretation.

“Are they providing us with materials?”

“The school will. They’ve already approved most of anything you could want, but if you really want something specific come talk to me and I’ll see what I can do.”

Kane darts his eyes to the door, another one of his smiles showcasing his teeth through his grey beard; almost blinding, Clarke is still convinced he bleaches them. They look like mint tic-tacs.

“However, there is a small caveat to your artistic freedom.”

“Not the retirement home!” Jasper wails.

“We were told to partner with another group on campus in order to spread opportunity. In truth, it was through them that the gallery heard of us and contacted the school, so we figured it was only right for them to be included.”

“Last time we partnered with another group, sir, we almost set an elementary school on fire,” Monty interjects.

Kane grimaces. “Yes, well, I have a feeling this partnership will be less explosive than that. At least literally.”

A sharp rap on the door, followed by Kane’s muttered just in time, and a severe looking woman slips into their borrowed classroom with barely a sound. She walks the way a soldier might, decommissioned but never finished looking for danger. Clarke itches for a pencil.

“Ah, Indra!” Kane grins, holding out a hand to shake and valiantly hiding a wince as she grips it like a steel claw. “I was about to tell them of your involvement.”

She casts a wary gaze over their faces, finding eight equally-wary pairs of eyes looking back. She lingers on Clarke for a moment before nodding; she doesn’t smile, but her face becomes a fraction less serious. Maybe.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Indra begins, “first, I want to thank you for agreeing to work with us. With your skill set and our community involvement, I believe that this project could be something special.”

“That’s Indra Shields, coach of the lacrosse team,” Wells whispers into Clarke’s ear as she continues to speak. “She’s lead them to five consecutive championships while she’s been here. Woman’s a legend in the sports department.”

“Then why is she here? I thought these kinds of clubs hated each other.”

“I don’t know about hate. More like… disdain, maybe?”

“—now, I’d like you to meet your subjects.”

On cue, the door swung open again. The squeak of sneakers fill the room as a group of eight girls file in, all in matching uniform, hair pulled back into a variation of bun or ponytail and jostling each other for more space. The smell of pitch and sweat floats in with them like a mist, a heavy fog that follows their stride.

“I think I’m dead,” Jasper stage-whispers to Monty, “or dreaming. I had a dream like this once.”

“These are my girls. The ones you see before you are the ones who initially pitched the idea or were interested in making it a reality. Our captain, Lexa, was the one who put it together.”

The girl closest to Indra steps forward and Clarke nearly loses her breath entirely. The itch for a pencil reappears with such a vengeance that her fingers twitch.

She’s gorgeous.

Clarke barely hears anything she says, far too focused on how her lips wrap around the syllables. The room is only half-lit and the shadows play along the slope of her cheekbones like lamplight cast in new snow, the angles so sharp and crisp and dark against her bronze skin. Her voice is higher than Clarke expected, confident, never breaking stride nor stuttering as she addresses the eight shell-shocked students sitting complacently in their seats. Even Jasper is silent, a feat achieved by no lesser mortal.

Clarke’s eyes rove down the spill of her braid over her shoulder and the sharp collarbone it partially hides. She spots a tattoo wrapping over her right bicep and a bracelet on her left wrist, but she’s primarily concerned with the hidden swell of muscle that would no doubt come into stark relief if she used her arms, or lifted them for some reason, or…

“Stop drooling,” Wells whispers, but Lexa’s gaze has found her now and it’s swept away her capacity for higher thought. Her eyes are green and deep and amused as they meet, her head tilting back just a fraction until her jaw juts like it’s carved from marble, and Clarke’s entire body burns as she realizes she’s been caught.

“These girls here are your subjects. They’ll serve as your muse, your sounding boards, and your partners. We’ve already assigned you to each other, so no complaining. And remember: this is an art therapy group, so try and tailor your pieces around that.”

Indra pulls out a clip-board and as each pair is assigned, the nervous lump in Clarke’s throat grows to the size of a lacrosse ball. Lincoln gets Octavia, the only girl that Clarke recognizes as Bellamy’s sister; Monty gets Harper, and they share a welcoming grin; Jasper gets Anya, who huffs out a long-suffering breath and mutters a few words that has Lexa fighting a smirk.

When it reaches the end of the list, Indra taps it twice before glancing up. Clarke knows exactly what’s coming but still holds her breath regardless, wondering for a few dizzy seconds if Jasper’s right and she’s just having some strange, elaborate dream that winds several fantasies into one.

“Clarke, you’re with Lexa. We hope the leaders of the two groups can create something extraordinary.”

She murmurs what could be classed as a thank-you, but Lexa’s looking at her again and she feels like she’s falling into a forest. Can someone fall into a forest? Maybe a meadow, then, with waving grass and birds and beautiful girls that—

Lexa raises a brow, roving briefly over Clarke’s face and dipping downwards pointedly into her blouse before winking, and Clarke wonders if she’ll just spend this semester in a permanent flush until she begs Raven to come up with a way to fling her into the sun.

For the seventh time today, Clarke’s thumb hovers over the send button.

The message in the field has changed over and over, not quite right but not wrong either; just enough to stop her from launching it into the void. Raven, slumped over her bed, scoffs for what has to be the eighth time today.

“What are you waiting for, Griffin? It’s just a project, send the damn girl the message.”

“But what do I say?”

“Uh… hi, we should work on the project, do you want to meet sometime?”

“But—“

Raven groans as she rolls out of bed and hobbles to stand beside Clarke. “Who is this girl, Zendaya? Just send it.”

“You haven’t seen her, Raven.”

“Maybe not in person, but everyone on campus knows Lexa Woods one way or another.”

Clarke’s eyebrows shoot up, swivelling her chair so Raven lands heavily in her lap. “They do?”

“Oh, Clarkey,” Raven croons, placing a mocking hand on her jaw, “of course you’d be the person to get her. Your innocence must be a real turn-on.”

She tries to shove the older girl off her, but she simply clings until Clarke gives up and reclines back in her chair with a huff. Raven grins, slinging her legs over the arm to claim her victory.

“Raven,” Clarke whines, and the other girl gives a deep, long-suffering sigh.

“Settle your fine ass down, Princess. I’ll tell you what I know.”

One finger ticks up. “Lexa Woods is probably the most popular girl on campus.”

Second finger. “She’s in her last year of pre-law, and is also captain of the debate team.”

Third finger. “She’s been captain of the lacrosse team for two years, and they’ve brought home gold both times.”

Fourth. “And last, but definitely not least, she’s a notorious lady-killer. Always the one doing the touching instead of the other way around.”

“Wh- she’s gay?”

“Gayer than you, if that’s possible.”

“Excuse you, I’m only half-gay.”

“And yet, still not gay enough to jump on this fine ass.”

“If we slept together, there might be a murder.”

“True.” Raven’s hand lashes out and swipes Clarke’s phone in one smooth movement, launching herself out of the chair with her good leg and making surprisingly speedy time into the bathroom, where the door clicks shut despite Clarke tugging on the doorknob.

“Raven, don’t you dare!” Clarke yells, but the other girl simply cackles.

“Hi Lexa,” she calls out slowly, “do you- want to get- together- soon for- the project?”

“Raven!”

“Sent. You can thank me later.”

Clarke groans and beats her forehead against the doorframe, but almost immediately there’s the chime of her phone receiving a message.

“Is it Lexa?” Clarke calls anxiously. “What did she say?”

A long moment of silence stretches out from the bathroom, followed by Raven shuffling as she opens the door.

“You don’t have plans tonight, right?”

“No. Why?”

“Good. You’re meeting her in the art studio at seven. She was told to bring coffee.”

Raven breezes past her and places Clarke’s phone into her hands like nothing had occurred. She stares at it long enough for Lexa’s reply – great, see you then – to pop up on screen before she regains her ability to think.

“Wh—I don’t drink coffee!”

“You’re a pre-med student. You will.”

She stoops into her backpack and pulls out a brown bottle in a paper bag, stroking it gently before offering it to Clarke. “Consider this Mama Raven’s gift to you. I was gonna suggest we crack it open sometime today, but I think you’ll need this more than me. ”

A rather hefty bottle of Bailey’s peeks out at Clarke from the bag.

“Just give it back with some of it left, yeah?”

Clarke decides that the three long pulls she took from the bottle before arriving at the studio were a bad idea. Her fingers feel fuzzy and warm and her thoughts float in her head, scattering to the winds before she pulls them back together. She has a pencil and paper and aches to sketch, but doubts her coordination could yield anything worth-while. Still, she lets the lead wander on the page and she’s halfway through the recreation of a sculpture she’d seen on a field trip when the chair opposite her pulls out.

“Clarke?”

Her head snaps up, and there in dark-washed skinny jeans and a half-open leather jacket is Lexa Woods. Her sunglasses keep her hair from her eyes but a few tendrils still manage to fall and frame her face, drawing Clarke’s attention to her smiling lips.

“Oh, hi!” She jumps up and nearly knocks her chair over, thrusting her hand out to shake. “I’m Clarke.”

Lexa smirks. “I remember.” Still, she takes her hand and the electric shock races up Clarke’s arm to her shoulder where it lingers in her spine. Lexa’s hands are just like the rest of her; slender but deceptively strong. “I was going to text you soon if you didn’t first.”

Her other hand puts down the tray she was carrying. “Coffee, as requested.”

“Th-thanks.” Clarke picks it up and takes a sip, wrinkling her nose at the bitter taste that washes over her tongue.

“I didn’t know how you liked it. I brought milk and sugar.”

“Not necessary,” Clarke responds, and hefts her bottle of Bailey’s onto her knee. At the rate that this conversation is going already, maybe she needs to be more drunk instead of less.

Lexa’s eyebrows quirk. “Underage drinking, I see.”

Clarke hums and pours a healthy amount into her cup, swirling it around and taking a sip before adding more. “I art better when I’m tipsy.”

“Well, I’m not one to deny a woman her muse.”

It burns a little going down, but she somehow manages to avoid inhaling it into her lungs. If she spat this all over Lexa she’d have to change her name, city, and major. Just to make sure.

“Aren’t, uh, aren’t you supposed to be my muse?”

Lexa leans back in her chair, cocking one arm back and thoughtfully sipping her black coffee. Clarke offers her the Bailey’s and she doesn’t hesitate to accept. The coffee clouds and swirls and it’s a lot easier to look in its depths than it is to meet Lexa’s eyes. “That depends. See something you like?”

In another life, Clarke would grin and lean back and say definitely, and Lexa would grin back with those infernally straight teeth. They’d chat a little more and Clarke would dazzle her with her ideas for the charity before offering her another drink, stronger, back at her place.

But this is this life, and it’s the warmness in her veins that prompts her to say, “I haven’t seen much yet,” before wishing she could just swallow her tongue completely.

Lexa laughs, startled but pleased, and leans forward until her elbows touch the table.

“Are you always this forward, or are you just drunk?”

“Definitely drunk,” Clarke mutters, taking a healthy gulp of her coffee that’s now more Bailey’s than anything.

“Does your art improve the more wasted you get?”

“There’s a point where I can’t see very well; it declines after that.”

“Are you there yet?”

“No.”

“Then this is the perfect time.”

Lexa pulls out a folder and pushes it towards Clarke – in it are notes, scrawled yet somehow still neat, in a tight half-cursive that fills several pages front to back with blue. Some of it is packed too tightly for drunk-Clarke to read, but the more prominent ideas are larger and easier on the eyes. She flips through them slowly, ever aware of Lexa’s gaze roaming her very, very pink face.

“These are pretty good,” she murmurs, picking up her pen and starting to sketch several of them out. While she appreciates the lack of restriction on topic, it means a yawning void to be filled without any of the supports that a class project brings. Clarke isn’t afraid about leaping out into the beyond – she’s been doing it with her artwork her entire life – but taking Lexa with her is, frankly, terrifying.

Not to mention when her muse is staring at her intently, eyes twinkling in the low studio light, studying every twitch of facial expression and pencil. Lexa allows her to sketch in silence and finishes her coffee, hesitating for only a brief second before reaching again for the Bailey’s.

“Can I?” she asks, but her lip darts out to wick away a stray drop of her drink and Clarke’s brain falls straight through her stomach and into her crotch.

“Wh-uh?”

“The Bailey’s,” Lexa clarifies, and as Clarke watches her lips twist up into a rapidly-familiar smirk, “may I have more?”

“Oh, uh. Sure.”

She pointedly avoids watching Lexa as she tips the bottle up to her mouth, but she’s only human, and the ripple her throat makes when she swallows makes Clarke keenly aware of exactly how much she’s had to drink.

“We should, um, f-figure out the topic. Before I start doing things.”

“Find one you like in there?”

“A few. You?”

Lexa taps her finger next to the hastily scrawled DEATH? in the center of her papers. “I figure with what you deal with, it should be good enough for Coach and Professor Kane, but still be wide enough for interpretation.”

“It should work.” Clarke runs her eyes across Lexa again as the light overhead flickers, watching the shadows underneath her jaw dance in tandem to the ones cast by her nose. An idea gnaws at her like an itch she can’t scratch, demanding her attention, running rampant in her mind while the light plays over the regal slope of Lexa’s lips—

“Take off your clothes,” Clarke blurts before she can help herself. This time, both of Lexa’s eyebrows shoot into her hairline, and Clarke wonders if a freak earthquake would be enough to swallow her whole. “Sorry, I, I mean—can you—for the—“

“Usually a girl wants dinner first. Was coffee enough for you?”

Clarke puts both hands on her flaming cheeks and peeks out between the cracks in her fingers. “I’m so sorry, I don’t think about what I’m saying when I’ve been drinking.”

Lexa snorts before shrugging out of her leather jacket. She’s wearing a tank-top underneath, the firm cap of her shoulders enough to make Clarke’s mouth water. “Are you going to tell me why you want me to strip?” She winks. “I mean, for a pretty girl like you, it’s not a problem.”

Calm down, Griffin. Raven told you how she likes to play.

“I-I have an idea, but you’re the model, and I need to see if it’s going to work.”

“A likely story,” Lexa muses, but stands up anyway. “All of it?”

Yes! screams the part of Clarke that hasn’t been laid in two months, but she shoves it down with superhuman effort and gives a shaky smile instead. “You can leave your underwear on.”

“How generous of you.”

Soon enough, Lexa is standing in front of her in nothing but a bra and boxer briefs, and Clarke momentarily forgets how to breathe.

While Clarke isn’t thin by any stretch of the imagination, she isn’t overweight, either. She inherited her body from her grandmother and has no problems keeping it that way – she’s far too lazy to care at all about the thickness of her thighs or her waist, and many people (including herself) appreciate the wide swing of her hips when she walks and how she fills out a pair of jeans. Curvy, is the word Raven likes to use. Curvy and more than two handfuls.

Lexa isn’t thin either. But not because she’s curvy, no. She’s nothing but muscle as far as Clarke can see, fluttering under her tanned skin as she stoops down to pull her leg out of her jeans, braid falling thick and heavy down her back. Each piece of her could have been carved from marble, a lucky artist chipping away to reveal the masterpiece hidden beneath; Michelangelo always said that a person is hidden inside the stone and it is the duty of the artist to reveal it, but Clarke wouldn’t doubt if Lexa came out of the womb with stone skin and a serpent smile, eyes dark and deep like they are as she looks at Clarke.

Clarke barely recognizes that she’s gotten up. Her feet almost float as they approach Lexa, quiet and reverent in this empty space, this holy temple. They lock eyes as her hands reach out and as soon as her fingertips touch flesh she feels like a priestess, running her touch over the body of a goddess that’s meant to be worshipped.

Her fingers travel through every divot and swell of Lexa’s flesh, mapping the narrow channel of her back and fanning out to the cage of her ribs. Where she travels she leaves goosebumps and Lexa is so warm to the touch, the muscles in her stomach clenching as Clarke traces each and every one. Her rear is a solid mass, two globes that stretch her briefs, and her long, long legs are even longer outside of her clothing.

Clarke holds her breath as she travels upwards and outwards and Lexa obediently opens her palms for her, letting her pull on each and every finger and press the pads of her own into Lexa’s nails. She can feel Lexa’s breath hot against her own face, sweet and heavy with alcohol on her tongue, and as she lets go and looks up she’s caught with just how close they are.

“Well?” Lexa murmurs, low, her pupils blown into planets in the half-light. Clarke can’t help herself now, the warmth in her veins turning to a fire with the burning need to know, and as her thumb runs under Lexa’s jaw those enchanting eyes lid until she can’t ignore the smoulder that’s started between her thighs.

“It’ll work,” Clarke replies, fanning her fingers over Lexa’s stark cheekbones. “You’re perfect for it.”

She needs to get away. She’s too hot and too drunk and too restless for this, too drawn to this girl with the crooked smirk and the eyes like moss and the silver tongue. She’s been warned, she should leave, she should.

But she goes to pull away and Lexa brings her fingers around her wrist, holding her close with that deceptive strength she has.

“I’ve seen you watching me,” she breathes, taking a step closer until the heat between them blooms like supernovae, flaring to life in the mere inches that separates them, “even now you can’t look away.”

“I’m drunk,” Clarke protests weakly, her eyes never leaving Lexa’s mouth.

“It just means you’re more honest about what you want.”

Lexa steps forward until they’re pressed chest to chest, and Clarke hits the table behind them. Her hands go out to steady her, scattering her papers all over the floor.

“I’ve—“ she swallows thickly as Lexa leans in, running that proud nose up her flushed throat, “I’ve heard about you.”

“Have you?” Lexa whispers under her jaw, and Clarke’s knees wobble dangerously. “And what have you heard?”

“That… you’re a player.”

She feels the curve of a grin against her throat, hot and sinful. Her pulse is pounding between her legs with a strength she’s never experienced, begging her to just open them up and let Lexa do what she knows best.

“And?”

“That I… I shouldn’t—ah!” There’s teeth now, nibbling at the soft, unmarked skin there, and the hands gripping the table fly to the bare skin of Lexa’s hips. Clarke isn’t sure whether she’s pulling her away or pushing her closer, but everything is spinning in a dizzy-drop towards oblivion and Lexa is the only solid thing she has to cling to. “Get… involved.”

“I’m not asking to you get involved,” Lexa promises as she sucks a purple mark into the crook of Clarke’s jaw, “I’m just asking you to let go.”

Later, Clarke will claim stress. She’ll claim not getting laid, she’ll claim seduction. She’ll claim a lot of things. But in the moment, all she knows is that if she doesn’t get that mouth other places, she might cease to exist as anything but a tangled ball of tension and arousal.

Also, these are her favourite panties, and they’re already just about ruined.

So when Lexa comes up and hovers that devilish mouth next to hers, Clarke doesn’t resist as they finally meet, opening her lips and allowing Lexa’s tongue to slip inside. A white-hot shock pulses in her clit and she whimpers, pressing her hips forward against Lexa’s from where she’s pinned at the table, the wet slide of her panties doing little to alleviate the ache.

“Are we going to be interrupted?” Lexa asks between kisses, her lips red and kiss-swollen and soft as they suckle on Clarke’s open mouth.

“I locked the door,” she gasps, edging onto the table and letting Lexa stand more fully between her.

“Naughty girl,” Lexa smirks. Her fingers dance across her hips and smooth over her front, cupping her breasts over her shirt and squeezing. Clarke arches her chest in an attempt to get more, feel more, have more – she’s drunk but it feels more than that, spinning spinning spinning into the unknown.

Somehow, Lexa knows. Her hands go from over to under the shirt and soon Clarke is spilling out of her bra and into Lexa’s waiting palms, her fingers sinking into the soft flesh. The thumb brushing over her nipple causes her to gasp, but the second pass with nails rips an obscenely loud moan from her throat.

Teeth at her jaw. Two fingers pinching and tugging, dragging the nail of her thumb over the flat of her nipple. Clarke’s hips jump and chase Lexa’s solid weight against them.

“You like it rough, huh?”

Not usually, not any more than the next person. But maybe it’s not that she didn’t like it, but didn’t have anyone good enough to know what they were doing until now – Lexa’s harsh suckle at her collarbone pulls a desperate whimper from her mouth, her fingers sunk deep into the other girl’s wild mane for something to hold onto.

They wrest Clarke’s shirt from her in a tangle of fabric. Her bra goes next, unhooked by a casual movement from Lexa’s right hand – she’s obviously had practice.

The thought makes Clarke pause, wrenching her mouth from Lexa’s to look at her through unfocused eyes.

 “What are we doing?” she rasps, cold air licking at her overheated skin. Lexa blinks, her sharp gaze nearly predatory, her mouth shiny and wet.

“Fucking,” Lexa responds, eyebrow arching. “Or did you want dinner first?”

Clarke colours – if that’s even still possible – and glances out the distant windows on the far side of the room. “I just meant…”

“I can stop if you don’t want it.” Still, a hand lazily trails up her thigh, sliding easily under her loose summer skirt and cupping the dripping heat between her legs. Clarke’s breath catches in her throat but her traitorous limbs edge open for Lexa’s middle finger to trace the damp fabric over her slit. “But I have a feeling you do.”

“But…”

“You’re pre-med, right?”

Clarke fumbles for a reply at the sharp change in subject, especially when a particularly firm press passes over her clit. She settles for a nod.

“Then consider this a de-stressor. I’m sure you need it.”

It would be so easy. Just once, that’s all. Raven’s warning seems so far away.

“Relax,” she murmurs as her head dips down, her warm breath fanning over Clarke’s chest, “you’re thinking too much.”

Her tongue darts out to catch Clarke’s nipple, and she stops thinking at all.

“I want to sculpt her,” Clarke announces as she sweeps in to the weekly Art Therapy club meeting, taking her seat beside Wells as usual. Kane looks up at her arrival, cutting short his patient conversation with Jasper about how, no, he isn’t allowed pyrotechnics for his piece.

“That’s ambitious,” Kane comments, perching on the edge of their table. “Are you sure you’ll have enough time?”

“It’s not until March, I can do it.”

What Clarke likes about Kane is that he never doubts their abilities. He simply nods and pulls out a pen and paper, folding it back a few times to make it thicker. “What do you need?”

“Stone. The studio has all the tools that I need, but they don’t have a raw block big enough.”

“What kind?”

“Alabaster. White, preferably, but as long as it’s a good piece I don’t really care about the colour variations.”

He nods, jotting it down. “How big?”

Clarke scratches sheepishly at her neck. “I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t know?”

“We haven’t figured out the details yet. I’m not sure what pose I want her in.”

“Do you have a rough idea?”

After a lot of consideration, Clarke raises her hand to the middle of her ribs. Kane’s eyebrows shoot up.

“That’s pretty big.”

“I’m planning for the worst-case scenario.”

“Which is?”

“I chop off the portion where her head is supposed to go.”

Kane writes down a few things before sliding his glasses back into his hair. “I trust you, Clarke, but it better turn out right. That’s a lot of material.”

“I got this, Marcus. Promise.”

Kane is her favourite because he doesn’t push, doesn’t nag, just nods and claps his hands to get everyone’s attention.

As he starts to talk, Wells leans in.

“Have you gotten started, at least?”

Clarke pushes her sketchbook towards him. “Check the back pages.”

After flipping through for a few moments, he whistles and holds it up closer to his face. His fingers run over the penciled figure sketches that Clarke so painstakingly etched out, flipping back and forth for comparisons.

“I think I’m the first guy who’s ever seen Lexa’s body in this much detail. Is she seriously this ripped?”

“Completely.”

They share a silent, grinning high-five.

October

“We have to what?”

“I knew it,” Jasper wails, “the nursing home!”

“The elderly are an important and often neglected part of our community,” Kane says sternly, “and they really enjoyed our last visit.”

“Because nursing homes are the place of the devil.”

“This is just a retirement home, Jasper,” their professor sighs, “most of the residents are just lonely. And besides, we’ll have help this time.”

True to his word, piling on the bus behind them were the familiar eight faces of the lacrosse team, as well as some of the other girls that weren’t directly involved in the artwork.

Jasper was mollified after that, even if Anya refused to sit with him.

Clarke is busy refining her sketches when someone takes a heavy seat next to her.

“I thought you were going to hit on Octavia,” she says mildly to Wells, letting the feeling of her pencil dragging across paper soothe her. There’s a chuckle that’s light and definitely not male.

“I’ve tried, trust me.”

“Lexa!” Clarke squeaks, shutting her sketchbook with a snap.

“Don’t stop on my account.”

“I was just, uh—“

“I think I saw myself in there.” It’s becoming a common occurrence, but it doesn’t meant the feeling of her face becoming very close to flammable is any more comfortable. “I looked good, too.”

There’s a question in Lexa’s eyes and Clarke is too weak to deny them an answer. With a deep breath, she slowly opens her book again, flipping back to where she was working on and decidedly avoiding any incriminating evidence.

(What? She’s been having some pretty intense dreams lately. With how soundly she’s being fucked, you can’t blame her.)

The few soundless seconds where Lexa flips through her work are probably some of the most stressful in Clarke’s life. Her face betrays very little, her eyes flitting back and forth between pages, scrutinizing each line and placement like one would a panting in a gallery. Those long fingers play with the edges of the page absently, her nails dragging up and down, and Clarke still has red lines from where they’d been a few days before.

Eventually, she comes across Clarke’s newest piece. It’s still rough, lines scratchy and misplaced and needing refinement, but even a non-artist can see the bowed figure of a girl taking shape across the length of the book. Lexa touches the girl’s face gingerly, trailing down the bridge of her nose and the bow-bent curve of her lips.

Clarke’s almost passed out from holding her breath before Lexa smiles. It isn’t a smile she’s seen before; not a smirk or a half-grin, nor is it smug or self-satisfied. It’s earnestly, genuinely pleased.

“It’s amazing, Clarke,” she half-sighs, and Clarke sags with relief. “This is me?”

“Well, the model is,” Clarke agrees, taking it carefully from Lexa’s hands and doing a few quick adjustments while glancing at her out of the corner of her eye. “I think this will be the pose that the statue will be in, but I’ll need to get you sitting like this so I can know for sure.”

Stretching from pencil-Lexa’s back is a pair of messy white wings.

“You’ll be able to carve this?”

“If I’m careful,” Clarke replies, omitting the fact that thinking about chiselling out those fragile things is enough to give her heart palpitations. “It’ll just be… slow.”

“Good thing we have until March.”

Unable to help herself, Clarke flips to a previous page and fills out the details of Lexa’s hands, sketching in a scar that wraps around her first three knuckles and dimpling the blade of her fist.

“Are those all of me?”

There’s something in Lexa’s voice that tells Clarke to tread lightly – she swallows. “The more familiar I am with the subject, the better it’ll turn out.”

The bus shudders to a stop and cuts off whatever Lexa is about to say next. Twenty three bodies try and clamber out of the door at once and sooner rather than later they’re all milling in the entryway to the retirement home, watching the residents shuffle about with a wary eye. Each of them are carrying varying forms of art supplies, and for a moment it looks like Kane will topple as he shrugs everything to one side in order to shake the director’s hand.

“Marcus,” she greets warmly, “it’s so good to see you. The residents have been very excited since we announced this a week ago.”

“It’s good to be back,” he responds, and she leads them into a non-descript room with a large round table and varying old folk scattered around it. Most have two empty chairs beside them and the bare minimum of art supplies scattered around, though they look up when he places the bulk of their supplies down.

“Okay folks,” Kane announces as a few volunteers help spread them around, “you know the drill. Pair up with your partner and go make some art! Girls who don’t have a partner, either group up yourselves or find a group.”

Clarke nudges Lexa, who nearly drops the bucket of paintbrushes she’s carrying. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”

“What a shame.”

They get a sweet old lady named Doris who demands to sculpt the second she lays her eyes on the clay at the far side of the table. Clarke goes to fetch it, leaving Lexa to chat and set up their spot to make sure they don’t dirty it too badly.

“I had a sister that looked like you,” Doris is telling Lexa when Clarke gets back, who is gamely setting up their little pedestal to put the clay down, “her name was Louise. Always getting into trouble, that one. There were only two things she liked more than dancing: money and pretty women.”

Lexa knocks the stand over and Doris smirks, triumphant. “Seems you two have things in common, girlie.”

“I don’t—“ Lexa sputters helplessly, throwing a look at Clarke who simply grins and sits on Doris’s opposite side.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Clarke says, smiling all innocent-like as she tears off a hunk of clay, “it seems pretty accurate. At least some parts.”

Lexa scoffs. “Traitor.”

But all too soon, Doris turns her critical gaze to the other side.

“And you look a lot like Claire.”

“Who’s Claire?”

Doris grins.

“Her partner.”

Doris proves an apt sculptor, almost putting Clarke to shame with how quickly she can conjure something up and create it from her mind. Lexa struggles along the best she can on the sidelines but is quickly outmatched, turning instead to chat with an elderly man who has enough difficulty holding a paintbrush that she ends up becoming his hands, guiding her with his trembling fingers on her wrist to create what looks like a treacherously leaning tree.

Clarke could have probably created a better once since fourth grade, but the calm concentration on Lexa’s face makes any teasing fall by the wayside. She’s different here, losing that edge that follows her at school, becoming at once open and pliant and patient.

Doris catches her looking for what must be the tenth time and lays a gnarled hand on her knee.

“She’ll come around,” she promises, and Clarke pauses halfway through detailing the shell of her clay tortoise.

“Who will?”

The old woman raises a brow, using her free hand to curve the arch of her ballerina’s back a little more fully. “You know very well who.”

As if on cue, Lexa laughs at something the man says, and Clarke can’t help herself from glancing over again. Lexa’s lips are pulled up in an easy grin, a tendril of hair hanging free over her eyes, and Clarke itches to tuck it behind her ear.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Clarke mutters, putting a little more force than necessary into her shell.

“She’s a good girl,” Doris says, picking up a flat blade to carve an expression into her piece. “Quiet, but a lot of the ones you have to watch out for are.”

She sighs fondly, shaping the flow of her ballerina’s hair down her back. “Louise was like that.”

“You must have loved your sister a lot.”

“More than the whole world,” Doris agrees. “She came to live with me after Papa learned of her… preferences. Eventually, Claire came too, and we were a happy trio for over fifty years.”

The old woman puts her tools down with a small, wistful smile. “Seeing the two of you makes me happy that you can love out in the open these days.”

Clarke glances quickly at Lexa, still occupied with her newest task. “Oh, we aren’t, uh… we aren’t together.”

“Could have fooled me.”

She’s not sure why the thought brings a strange, fluttering feeling to the marrow of her, but she tamps it down with a firm foot despite it wanting to rise into her throat and leak out around her clenched teeth. “Really, we aren’t.”

Doris casts a shrewd look over at her younger companion, spotting the red spilling into Clarke’s cheeks despite her unaffected words. She remembers Louise the first time she met Claire, sitting at the dining room table and babbling to her older sister until she ran out of breath; “oh Lou she’s so lovely, she’s got this bright gold hair and an ace smile and her jokes are the cat’s pajamas, d’you think we could go dancing tomorrow?” and it doesn’t ache the same way it used to.

“Whatever you say,” she acquiesces, watching the stubborn knot in Clarke’s jaw fade. These things aren’t what you can rush.

Beside them, the old man’s trembling hands knock over a bottle of green paint. Lexa springs paper towel over it before it can stain his smart, sandy slacks, but their tree is only halfway painted and he adamantly refuses to use another colour. Lexa agrees good-naturedly and starts to hunt for another bottle.

“They have some in storage,” Doris mentions, but there’s a sparkle in her eyes that Clarke doesn’t trust. “Why don’t you and Clarke go look for it?”

“Oh, I’m sure Professor Kane would—“

“Nonsense,” Doris scoffs, “you’re already giving us all your supplies, this is the least this place could do. Second floor, C wing. Go on now.”

With no choice, they quietly slip away from the main room with Doris’s eyes hot on their backs. She’s gone, but Clarke still feels like it’s some kind of trap, and every orderly that passes them its spring. Halfway to the elevator, Clarke leans in.

“This seems like something we’re not supposed to be doing.”

Lexa snorts. “Only if we get caught.”

C-Wing is nearly deserted at this hour, most of the residents having made their way to the dining hall for lunch. Those that aren’t are happy in their rooms or slowly roaming the halls, giving both the girls smiles as they pass. Lexa always returns them with genuine pleasure, complimenting a cardigan or a walker as they cross ways.

“You’re so good with them,” Clarke observes, glancing at another sign that helps them with absolutely nothing.

“Practice,” Lexa says softly, but offers no more insight on the matter. Not long after, they finally find the door that says storage, and Clarke has one hand on the handle when the elevator at the end of the hall chimes. She sees the faintest hint of blue scrubs before Lexa hisses a gentle fuck by her ear and all but shoves them both into the small space.

They tumble in together, limbs intertwined and heads clanking, and the door shuts behind them with a soft snk to leave them in darkness. Clarke groans, but Lexa slaps a palm over her mouth as quick as the sound can come out.

They listen to the footsteps pass them, but Clarke is entirely too occupied by the press of Lexa’s body against hers, her front moulding to her back like a second skin. They breathe in tandem until each and every single inhale crushes Lexa’s breasts to her shoulder-blades, and Clarke wonders exactly what she did in a past life to piss off a deity quite like this.

The footsteps stop outside their door and Lexa’s heartbeat thrums hummingbird-fast against the curl of Clarke’s spine. She closes her eyes in the darkness and wills the coil of arousal writhing in her gut to settle down before she does something stupid.

Lexa shifts, her hips now fully cradling Clarke’s ass, and she can’t resist the near-soundless moan that slips out. It comes as more of a vibration but Lexa can undoubtedly feel it on the fingers stretched out over Clarke’s mouth, and the accompanying shiver that wracks her frame.

Like that. Something stupid exactly like that.

Lexa lets out a surprised chuckle by her ear, the puff of hot air tickling her skin and causing another full-body tremble.

The hand not cupping Clarke’s mouth skates lightly over the curve of her waist, settling spread over her belly.

“Lexa, what—“ she’s cut off by a soft hush and a tongue at the shell of her ear.

“If you’re loud, we’ll get caught.”

Her hands go out, palms sweaty against the drywall. Lexa sighs her approval and the hand on her belly goes upwards, finding her already-erect nipples easily through the fabric of her bra. Clarke’s knees shake with an intensity that surprises even herself, her underwear tellingly wet and warm despite barely being touched.

Lexa, as always, knows exactly what she’s trying to hide.

“If I take this hand off, will you be able to contain yourself?” she murmurs lowly, her hips starting an infuriatingly lazy grind against Clarke’s ass. It takes Clarke a moment to fight through the haze that’s started to settle over her mind, but she manages to shake her head no.

She’s loud. It happens.

“Then I suppose we’ll have to manage,” Lexa sighs, the hand that was fondling her breast trailing down over her yellow sundress, raking her short nails up Clarke’s shaking thigh until it leaves red welts. Clarke groans into Lexa’s palm and receives a tap on the cheek for her slip, Lexa’s right hand cupping her fiercely over her panties. “Quiet.”

I’m trying, she thinks, but chokes as those mischievous fingers slip through her folds instead of staying and letting her adjust. She widens her legs and tilts her hips down, resting her forearms against the wall for better access. Lexa traps her clit between her fore and middle finger and rubs slickly, gliding with no resistance at all.

“You never have to buy lube, do you?”

Clarke licks her palm in retaliation, but her mouth stays hanging open as Lexa slowly pushes two fingers inside her. The angle makes it so she can’t go very far in, but it’s far enough that on the drag out, sparks fire to her fingertips and behind her eyes. She gasps and grinds down, silently begging for more.

The footsteps at their door fade out as they continue down the hallway and Lexa takes the opportunity to be a little rougher, increasing the speed of her wrist to the point where the familiar sound of Clarke being spread wide open fills the tiny, cramped room. If it smells in the studio room it reeks in here, her panties soaked and sticking awkwardly to the flesh between her legs, panting into Lexa’s hand clamped over her jaw. She slips two fingers into her mouth and Clarke suckles on them eagerly, tongue pressed down where her fingers apply pressure, and Clarke laves her fingertips until they dig into her with the increased grind of Lexa’s hips.

Lexa’s wrist must be cramping by now but she doesn’t complain, doesn’t readjust, just kicks Clarke’s legs open wider and guides her hips into a slow undulation that makes the most of the position. Her fingers are hooked deep inside, pressing fiercely against her swollen front wall with every pass, and if she had the faculties Clarke would be embarrassed with how quickly she’s about to come.

As it is, she can’t think of anything but more more more.

She leans her forehead against her forearms and chases the rapidly coiling orgasm in her belly, rubbing her clit against the palm of Lexa’s hand and panting harsh around her fingers. Lexa is muttering things in her ear, low and hot and filthy, and the teeth that find home in the rouged column of her throat start the chain-reaction that has her tensing and shuddering and crying out into the hand that’s found its way back over her mouth.

Clarke is kept upright solely through sheer force of will and a thigh that Lexa wedges between them. She drips into her already-soaked underwear and suckles on the flesh of Lexa’s palm in an effort not to howl, clit throbbing and hole clenching and every part of her neural circuitry on fire.

After a moment, Lexa withdraws both sets of fingers, and Clarke deliriously finds herself missing the embrace.

“We should get back,” Lexa says, voice husky and rough, and the sound alone sends another bolt of lust from throat to clit.

“Just – just give me a minute.”

They give her five, and when they sit down on either side of Doris without looking at each other, the old woman grins victoriously before finishing her ballerina.

“More,” Clarke gasps, the table cold against her bare chest. “A-another finger.”

A third slips in and the stretch burns in the best way, the sloppy shlick shlick almost obnoxiously loud in the otherwise empty space. Despite the air conditioning blasting down she’s burning, flushed all across her shoulders, and Lexa’s hand on the small of her back definitely isn’t helping cool down. The other girl is using her own hips to put some force behind it, and each time their skin claps together it makes Clarke’s toes curl with how dirty it all is.

She’s come twice already and their half-finished ideas litter the studio table, sticking to her sweaty skin and scattered on the floor. It always ends up like this; bent over the table, up against the wall, hands against the windows.

Clarke only said once but the first time they met she came so hard she couldn’t see for a second, and, well – those kinds of orgasms aren’t ones you can readily forget. It was all too easy to give into Lexa’s quicksilver tongue the second time, and the third, and…

And now it’s October and they haven’t even sketched out their idea, because every time they see each other, she ends up coming so hard she forgets her own name.

“God, you’re greedy,” Lexa huffs, the perfect tendrils of her hair sticking to her sweaty temples, “remember when two was enough?”

Instead of an answer, she gets a long, drawn-out moan as Clarke comes around her fingers. The scent of sex and sweat fills the space around them and her fingers are nearly crushed inside of the other girl, but she’s not one to leave someone standing – all Clarke can hear is the whump of Lexa’s knees hitting the floor and hot breath on the inside of her thighs.

“Lexa, wh—uh!”

A tongue splits her open, hole to clit, and she clings onto the table for dear life. Lexa’s strong hands have two handfuls of her ass and she buries her tongue as far in as it can go, pressing slippery and hot into her leaking insides, and Clarke bites her fist to stop from screaming. She’s already come so many times and her body is a trembling mess, slick shiny down her legs, and she’s honestly not even sure if she can come again.

Still, she rocks her hips against Lexa’s face, the drag of her nipples against the table sending sparks down through her belly and into her clit. It’s hard to think with those lips wrapped around her most sensitive place, her tongue rubbing again and again at its root, those hands she’s already sketched dozens of times from memory sinking their nails into the ample swell of her ass. Clarke hasn’t been drunk since the first time but she feels like it now, her head spinning so fast she can’t even gather what few thoughts haven’t been fucked out of her.

Fingers at her hole, sinking in, rubbing against her front wall. Lexa’s tongue is still lashing her clit and she feels so full, delirious and wanting and there’s something in her gut that’s strange. She tries to say something but all that comes out of her mouth is a strangled cry.

Lexa must feel her clenching, the tremble in her legs as they fight to keep her upright.

“Come on, Clarke,” she mumbles, her voice sending shivers through her cunt. “I know you can.”

“I…” she leans her full weight on the table now, obediently opening her legs the best she can so that Lexa can push her mouth more fully into her.

Her fingers cling onto the edge of the table and she’s climbing up, up, up and—

Lexa hooks her fingers and she sees flashing lights—

A pull, low in her belly, a fullness that’s—

“Lexa!”

When Clarke comes back to herself, gasping and heaving into their now-ruined sheets of paper, she’s acutely aware of how damp she feels.

Lexa’s fingers pull out of her with a pop and she shudders, closing her legs the best she can and lying her flushed cheek on the table in an effort to regain her strength.

“Is there a rag somewhere?”

Clarke blinks, blearily looking over her shoulder. “A… rag?”

“You made a mess.”

She glances down, narrowly avoiding the small puddle between her feet. Upon closer inspection, Lexa’s face is shiny with cum that trails down her jaw, and though she tries to wipe it away with her forearm it’s still streaked down her neck and across the farthest parts of her cheeks. Clarke reddens and her hole does that shivering, clenching thing she’s come to associate with Lexa and the specific ways she manages to turn her on.

“By the—“ she coughs, clearing the fucked-out sound of her voice, “by the chalkboard.”

While Lexa finds the rag, Clarke manages to lever herself half-standing and slip her panties back on, clumsily shoving her legs into the holes of her jeans. She sits heavily, the quick of her still uncomfortably wet and warm, and reclines back the best she can with her fingertips still buzzing from repeated orgasm.

(And if she takes a quick pull from the new Bailey’s bottle she bought the other day, who’s to judge?)

When Lexa sits down, however, it quickly becomes apparent that very little work will get done. Not only are their papers scattered and useless, crumpled and damp and otherwise illegible, but as Clarke watches the other girl she shifts in her seat, crossing her legs tightly together and folding her hands in her lap.

It’s not until she notices the faint dusting of red over her cheekbones that it clicks in Clarke’s head.

Lexa’s eyes narrow at the sudden, brilliant grin that stretches out over Clarke’s face.

“May I help you?”

Clarke gets up (slowly, she’s still a little shaky) and wanders over, hesitating for only a moment before sliding herself into Lexa’s lap. The girl uncrosses her legs out of necessity and accepts her, but her hands hang by her side instead of finding themselves at Clarke’s ample hips.

“You already did. But I can help you.”

“I don’t cuddle,” she says flatly, eyebrow arched, but Clarke shakes her head.

“I know you’re turned on,” she says, almost conspiratorially, leaning in until she can see the faintest play of freckles over the bridge of Lexa’s nose. To her credit, the other girl only tilts her head back the slightest bit to look at Clarke better.

“Hard not to be after that display.”

Clarke sucks on the inside of her lip, her fingers coming to play in Lexa’s dark locks. “I can help with that.”

“I don’t—“ Clarke’s hips gyrate down and Lexa’s sentence catches, stuttering out to a shaky “need it,” before a green glare is thrown in her direction.

“You’ve already done so much for me,” Clarke purrs, her thumbs tracing under Lexa’s glass jawline, “why don’t you let me do this?”

Being here, looking down at Lexa, feeling her heat seep through the bottom of Clarke’s jeans makes her feel strangely peaceful. Right. Despite that, her heart still beats in her throat, expecting Lexa to deny the request as she’s done before and be out the door with nothing more than the scent of sandalwood and the lingering teeth-marks blooming in a heliotrope rainbow across Clarke’s pale, pale skin. She’s closer than she’s ever been and a part of her aches for it, to know this girl in a way that so few have, to prove to her she’s worth the attention she’s been given.

It’s terrifying, but right now she has better things to think about. So she doesn’t.

“Come on,” she whispers, her fingers fanning out to stroke gingerly across Lexa’s cheekbone, “who’s going to know? I promise I won’t disappoint.”

Lexa’s gaze lingers on the chain of bites that fall down the arch of Clarke’s neck, some still glistening with saliva. She licks her lips and breathes in her scent, still heavy with musk, and Clarke knows she’s won this round.

“Fine,” Lexa rasps, slouching a little in her chair, “impress me.”

Clarke wastes no time, crashing their mouths together with a ferocity that takes even Lexa by surprise. She strips her ever-present leather jacket and licks her way down the elegant column of Lexa’s throat, tasting skin previously unknown and basking in its taste. Her collar is sharp and prominent and easy to fasten her teeth around.

Fingers in her hair, yanking her back off. Lexa’s eyes are wide and wild and Clarke wants to drown in them.

“No marking,” she growls, and despite the disappointment Clarke nods, ever eager to return to her uncharted territory.

“Even on places others can’t see?”

“Cheeky,” Lexa mutters, bringing their mouths back together. Clarke can taste herself on Lexa’s tongue, thick and tangy, and when her hips next grind down she lets out a soft moan muffled by Lexa’s lips.

“I thought you were going to help me, not the other way around.”

Clarke wrenches her mouth away and pulls completely from Lexa’s lap, landing heavily on her knees between her legs. She pushes her loose shirt up and lavishes the exposed skin with attention, running her tongue through the divot in her abs and suckling a mark into the lower arch of her ribs.

But Clarke’s three orgasms were foreplay enough and there’s a hand on her head urging her downwards, so she fumbles Lexa’s button until it pops open and manages to drag the zipper down with her teeth, inhaling deep the scent of her hidden arousal. She presses her tongue to her damp briefs and relishes in the squirm of the firm body in front of her, the impatient hand urging her forward.

If she was someone else, maybe she’d take her time. Teasing only works if both parties are committed and Clarke is so eager to taste that she doesn’t even consider it.

She pulls Lexa’s briefs aside, exposing her pretty shaved cunt. Her outer lips are full and swollen and red, her clit flushed purple and peeking out of its hood. Clarke grins – Lexa might act unaffected, but her body can’t lie.

“Are you just gonna stare?” Lexa asks, her hand snaking down to clamp firm over the back of Clarke’s neck. She shivers, a tremble causing her stretched hole to clench with renewed arousal, but ignores it in favour of bringing her mouth forward and opening wide.

Lexa’s so wet that it doesn’t take long to coat Clarke’s chin and cheeks in her. She sucks furiously, her tongue rubbing hard circles around her throbbing clit, hooking her arms underneath Lexa’s thighs to pull her in close. Her zeal must take Lexa by surprise, the fingers clamped around the back of her neck fluttering before squeezing tight.

The overhead air-conditioner buzzes and hisses and covers all but the loudest of Lexa’s groans, her knees edging wider to encourage Clarke’s clever tongue. After a month of fucking this is the first time she’s tasted her, the first time she can look up and watch Lexa’s mouth dropped into a silent moan, the first time she can skate her hands up that chiseled body and palm one small breast with her nipple pebbled hard in the palm of her hand.

Clarke could watch her for hours. She’s just so stupidly pretty – her sketchbook is filled with images of her now; sketches of her hands, her outstretched arms, her torso as it torques and flexes and shades her muscles in streaming sunlight. The languid curve of her smile whenever Clarke says something funny and the narrowing of her eyes when she’s suspicious.

Her eyes alone deserve a full sketchbook, their depths the purest green she’s ever had the blessing to come into contact with. She doesn’t usually draw with colour, but every shade is so expressive on Lexa that she can’t help it.

And, looking at the red that spills across her regal cheekbones and down into her cheeks, she has a feeling she’ll have more material to work with now.

Pushing her finger into Lexa causes her own hole to pulse with jealous sympathy. She’s so hot and sticky that Clarke almost can’t stand it, using her teeth to catch the root of her clit and suck it into her mouth with new determination. Above her, Lexa’s abdominals ripple with the new sensation, the thick muscle clenching just under the golden skin that covers it.

Unlike Clarke, Lexa is near-silent as she comes. A firm rub against the oddly-textured spot inside her and a gentle bite from her teeth is all it takes for the other girl to come, planting her heels and pushing up into Clarke’s mouth until she’s smothered in it. She takes it gladly, lapping the dribbling juice from the other girl’s hole, nearly working her into another frenzy until Lexa wards her away with an exhausted hand.

She generously cleans Clarke’s mouth with her own, suckling her juices from her fingers and cleaning it from her chin and cheeks. When Clarke rises, knees stiff, her smile is lazy and satisfied and so very beautiful.

“You win this round, Griffin,” she sighs, stretching out her endless legs. “You do know how to use your mouth.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Clarke chuckles, leaning down for a slow kiss that starts her heart rioting in her chest.

Once Lexa can move again, Clarke glances around at the scattered papers that surround them.

“Maybe we should actually do work.”

She gets a lazy nod and a grin. “Maybe.”

They settle and make themselves comfortable but the room reeks of sex and it has Clarke shifting in her seat. “Do you want to go get food?”

The easy smile on Lexa’s face vanishes, and even Clarke is surprised by the panic she feels blooming in her chest, a mixture of hot and cold at once.

“I told you, I don’t get involved.”

“Calm down, player,” Clarke rolls her eyes, “you fucked my brains out and I’m hungry. Friends can get food together.” She pauses, licking her bruised lips. “We’re friends, right?”

The knot of tension that had suddenly appeared in Lexa’s shoulders relaxes. “Maybe we’ll get work done in public.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Clarke can do this. She’s had friends with benefits before. Number one rule: don’t get attached.

November

“You got attached,” Raven scolds, beating her over the head with a rolled up magazine. Clarke does her best to cover herself, but Raven is both ruthless and a good shot.

“I did not,” she whines, “I’m perfectly happy being single.”

Raven points to her sketchbook, nearly filled entirely with pictures of Lexa.

“I’m working on our project,” she defends.

Raven then points to her laptop, which up until very recently had been open at Lexa’s Facebook page.

“We’re friends! I’m allowed to look her up.”

An extremely unimpressed eyebrow folds Clarke’s confidence like a paper bag – no one, not even Lexa, can raise an eyebrow like Raven.

“Fine! I got attached! Can you blame me?”

“Considering I told you to do exactly not that? Yeah, I think I can.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Clarke groans, throwing herself on the bed. “She’s gorgeous, sharp, and really funny once you get to know her. A lot of the talk saying she’s cold is just because they don’t really know her.”

“And you do?”

“I know her better than a lot of people,” Clarke retorts, glaring at Raven who’s hobbled over and sat herself heavily in Clarke’s computer chair. “We’re friends.”

“Yeah, Clarke, friends,” Raven stresses. “How many times has she said that she doesn’t get involved?”

“It’s just a crush, Raven. I’m sure she’s used to it. ”

“With how good she is in bed, I’m not surprised.” Clarke’s phone buzzes and she goes to pick it up as Raven continues, “But how long until she picks up on it and you get your heart broken?”

Lexa’s name flashes on her screen and she pointedly ignores the way her heart skips in her throat.

I heard your stone came in today.

“She’s not like that,” Clarke mumbles absently, already firing off a response of Yup, I was about to go and start. Are you busy?

Studying.

Clarke hesitates for a second before writing a reply. Bring it to the studio. I could use a live model.

I’ll be there in fifteen.

“You aren’t listening to a word I say, are you?” Raven sighs as Clarke springs up from her bed, gathering her sketchbook and tools with a frenzy that belies the pouting in her bed just moments before.

“Sorry, babe,” Clarke says in way of agreement, pressing an excited kiss to Raven’s cheek and bounding out the door.

Whether she doesn’t hear or simply ignores the shouted be careful after her, Raven doesn’t know. What she does know, however, is that the skip in Clarke’s step means she’s in deeper than either of them realized in the first place.

The object of their contentions walks in on Clarke circling the large, white block of alabaster thirteen minutes after the text was sent. Her brows are furrowed, her hands running intently over the smooth surface, her fingernails trailing for any sign of deformity. It reaches to roughly shoulder height, much larger than she initially asked for, but in the end she’s grateful for the added material.

Lexa watches her circle for a minute, entirely and utterly absorbed by her task. There’s a seriousness in her expression she isn’t used to, a firmness that goes at odds with the grace in which she paces. It’s hypnotic.

Eventually, Lexa shakes herself. She’s never the one that stares. It’s always the other way around.

“Does it get your approval?” she calls, and to her credit, Clarke doesn’t even break stride.

“There’s a small fault on the corner,” Clarke replies, knocking it a few times with her knuckles, “but I think I can work around it.”

“That’s not a yes.”

Eventually Clarke looks up, smile broad. “It’s perfect.”

Lexa settles at a table not far from the stand where the stone’s been placed and Clarke quickly gets to work drawing the design onto her medium. It’s nothing concrete, more like a vague shape with details to be filled in later, but Lexa recognizes the flowing lines of her previous sketch slowly taking form.

Clarke’s got a variety of contraptions out; files and chisels and a hammer that she clutches firmly in her left hand. There’s running water in a basin and she sloshes it over the stone to get it nice and damp, tying her hair back into a high-knot and slapping a respirator and goggles over her face. She almost looks like a surgeon.

“How do you always have access here?” Lexa asks as she circles again, a predator, seeking the best starting point. “Shouldn’t this place be locked up?”

“They gave me a key,” Clarke replies, placing her chisel and then thinking better of it. “It’s easier than always asking for permission.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“For who?” Experimentally, she chips off a corner. It goes with hardly any resistance. “What am I going to do, steal the stone? It must weigh at least a ton, probably more.”

“I wasn’t aware students were allowed free reign. Aren’t you in pre-med?”

“I’m special.” Even under her mask, Lexa knows she’s grinning. “Kane handed it over when I became the leader of the Art Therapy group. I think he was tired of me nagging him to unlock the door all the time.”

Lexa begins her note-taking for her fourth year Environmental Politics class; Clarke methodically begins to chip away at the stone. It’s a calm silence, broken by the scratching of pencil and the sharp crack of alabaster shards being sprayed in every direction. Despite the ventilation running full-blast, Clarke’s immediate area is soon masked by a fine cloud of dust that settles on her clothing, her goggles, and her hair.

No wonder she’s always filthy, Lexa sighs, half-way through penning a speech on how bureaucracy is directly responsible for the receding forests and the impact this will have on future generations. If she wasn’t so intent on her work, Lexa would have already received a jab for staring, but with the other girl engrossed in making exactly the right hammer strikes, Lexa has free reign to observe her in as natural a habitat she has.

By now, she usually would have broken things off. She never sleeps with a girl more than once or twice lest she run into dangerous waters, too much of a temptation to settle into things and turn them serious, but something about Clarke leaves her better judgment by the wayside. She supposes they are indeed friends, in no small part due to Clarke’s insistence. It’s not a bad thing, really. Lexa doesn’t have many friends. Not because she’s particularly disagreeable, but mostly because the second she leaves UPenn and gets on with her real life, she doesn’t have any delusions about keeping the few she’s made here. Anya will stay, because Anya has always stayed, but apart from that?

College isn’t real-life, it’s a transient in-between; a stepping stone to going real places with real people. Those that understand that get their shit done and go home and graduate with jobs lined up for them.

And yet, here she is in an art studio she has no real business being in, watching the girl who she’s slept with at least six times and broken several of her own rules for in her element. Clarke’s strokes with her hammer are sure and precise and behind her goggles, her brows are furrowed in concentration, and maybe it’s the strangeness of it all that’s pulled her in. A medical student with an artistic streak a mile wide that somehow still has the energy to be friendly with most everyone she meets.

“Can you help me with this pose?” Clarke asks, shaking Lexa out of her musings, and despite the fact that she’s wearing black pants she goes and sits in the dust and hunches herself like the statue that will slowly emerge like a butterfly from its shapeless cocoon. Clarke hums and nods and makes a few readjustments, thanking her with a dusty brush to her shoulder and gets back to her work.

Lexa returns to hers, and for several long minutes there’s her pen and Clarke’s chisel and the thick, choking shroud of dust that settles.

“Why law?” Clarke asks eventually, wiping her brow. A large chunk has been carved out of the top left corner of her rectangle block, and she pushes away the pieces with one foot. “Are you good at arguing?”

“Very. I find it satisfying to talk circles around people.”

“I can imagine.” Clink goes her chisel. “Especially when those people happen to be arrogant, middle-aged men?”

Lexa raises a brow and Clarke chuckles. “Common demographic in law circles.”

“True. It’s even better when they don’t expect it out of you.”

“Of course. Who would guess that the pretty brunette who never raises her voice can give you the dressing-down of a lifetime?”

Lexa’s smile is devious, and Clarke misses her next strike as she shudders. “No one. Not at least until it’s too late.”

“So, what? Lawyer is the end goal? Judge?”

“Politician,” Lexa disagrees, flicking through her notes on oil company shareholders and their ties to Congress. “Everyone is too regressive these days. Too corrupt.”

Clarke could definitely see Lexa in a power-suit, delivering the speech of a lifetime to an enraptured audience. She ignores the gentle pulse in her lower belly and obliterates another chunk of stone. “And you’ll be different?”

“Of course I will,” Lexa says, borne not of arrogance but confidence, “otherwise, what’s the point?”

After some snooping, Clarke is inclined to agree. Lexa has won a multitude of awards in her debate group and delivered some stellar papers on politics and political reform; one of her professors wrote that she has a voice that’s both clever and devastatingly precise when she won a national essay contest across all major universities on electoral corruption and its wider implications.

Devastating is a very, very apt word to describe Lexa.

“I believe it,” Clarke says, rounding the sharp edges of her block. “You have that aura about you.”

“What aura?”

“Quiet, but… insightful, I guess? No, that’s not it.” She pauses, lowering her hammer and chisel for a moment as she thinks. “Observant. When you aren’t trying to be charming, you look like you’re carefully noting every detail around you. It’ll be useful in a profession that’s made off exploiting tiny weaknesses in other people.”

There’s an odd, discomfited feeling in Lexa’s chest. “Been looking, have we?”

But Clarke doesn’t rise to the bait, a small smile hiding behind her mask. “It’s my job.”

“I suppose it is,” Lexa murmurs, flicking her hair to one side and ignoring the restless feeling inside with a brutal efficiency.

They work around each other for a little while until Clarke groans and stretches her back and hears the pop-pop of her spine settling back into place. “You not gonna ask me about my choice?”

Lexa looks like she considers it for a second before capitulating. “Why medical school, Clarke?”

“Because it’s what I’ve wanted since I was ten,” Clarke replies, easy, wetting the stone again. “It’s what my mother wants.”

“Is it what you want?”

Clarke sighs and rinses her hands in the running water. “I think so.”

“Medical school is a huge venture for just I think so.” Lexa gestures to her block of alabaster, her open sketchbook lying dusty and filthy on a chair close by. “What about this?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Clarke, but you’re seriously talented.” Lexa can feel the grin behind Clarke’s mask and rolls her eyes. “I told you to not let it go to your head.”

“Too late.”

“But honestly, why wouldn’t you pursue it? The fact that you’ve been given a key to the studio should say enough. It’s what you love, right?”

“Do you know,” Clarke starts, her voice distant, “what my step-father said to me when I told him I’d be doing a minor in Fine Arts?”

Obviously not.

“He said why? That was it. No further questions, no negotiation. He just couldn’t understand why anyone would. Most people don’t.”

She puts her tools down on a nearby table and glances at her work, running over the chisel marks with a critical eye.

“The only reason he accepted it was because they offered a scholarship that would cover the costs of my minor. My mom never discouraged my pursuits, but I could tell she was skeptical. I might be able to graduate with honors in a Fine Arts major, but I came here first because I really do love biology. Medicine.”

“As much as art?”

Clarke shakes her head. “I can’t compare it. Biology is a form of art, in a way; the human body and life by extension is a strange and complex medium that’s beautiful in its own fashion. I can be a doctor and pursue art as a hobby, but not the other way around.”

Clarke catches the briefest flicker of sympathy over Lexa’s face as she puts away her tools. Her carving doesn’t look like much of anything now but she knows it’ll be beautiful, fueled by the marriage of her favourite subjects and all the fire she feels about them. Lexa must feel it, too, because she lays a reverent hand on the block before snatching it away.

There’s something heavy in the room, something solemn and loud in its silence. Lexa breathes and looks away and the moment goes with her.

“Come on,” she says, and her voice is more controlled than it’s been all night, “let’s get something to eat.”

“But I—“

“I know you live on Poptarts and ramen, Clarke. I’ll buy.”

Maybe the moment hasn’t disappeared, just changed shape and lifted its weight from their shoulders.

December

She always knows what part of the semester it is by how wild the house parties get. Clarke’s already seen at least three people passed out and it isn’t even eleven, which means it must be after exams where there’s nothing left to do but wait and pray and drink.

Clarke’s head still hurts from the Molecular Biology exam she took earlier that day, but Raven slips a shot into her outstretched hand and she soon forgets about it.

The frat house throwing it has four stories including a basement and all of them are packed with people. While she didn’t include herself in a sorority, she can still drink with the best of them; Bellamy, whom she met through her Art History course last year, holds her ankles steady as she gulps her way through a keg stand amidst the cheering crowd of college students. She’s up for a record setting twenty-three seconds before the carbonation becomes too much and Bellamy sets her down and stops her from stumbling.

“Damn,” he whistles as she hunches over to stop the world from spinning, “you’re better than my sister, and she’s the keg stand queen.”

“Practice,” she gasps, wincing when Raven’s hearty slap on the back sloshes all the beer around in her stomach. There’s a laugh from beside her and Octavia sidles up as if summoned.

“Bellamy gets protective if I try and practice too much,” she grins, solo cup brimming with some sort of mixed drink in her hand, “but I don’t want to know how many hangovers you’ve had to perfect that.”

“It’s a gift.”

“From the way Lexa rants about your drawings, it seems like you have a few of those.”

The nausea all but dissipates in an instant. “She talks about me?”

“As much as Lexa talks about anything,” Octavia drawls, “which is to say not much. But I’ve heard it a few times.”

Clarke grins, the warmth that rushes to the tips of her fingers not only due to her long drink. To her side, Raven sighs, swiping a shot from the hand of a fratboy and slamming it back before he even has time to blink. “Anything else?”

“Ask her yourself. She’s here, somewhere.”

The surprise must show on her face. “Anya managed to drag her out. She’s the only one that can get her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

“I don’t know, she’s probably busy…”

“Nah, she’s busy being a wallflower over there.” Octavia nudges her with her foot, towards the throng of students in the middle of the living room. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you.”

They let her go, but not without feeding her another shot. Half her body must be liquid by now and Clarke feels like she’s floating as she travels across the make-shift dancefloor, drawn into an impromptu dance with a pretty blonde before managing to emerge on the other side. She’s hot and sweaty and drunk by the time she finds Lexa. Maybe the drunk part is a good thing.

The other girl looks by no means pleased to be there, nursing a cup of beer and casting a cool, calculated eye over the mass of drunk, writhing bodies. Anya is murmuring something low in her ear but she’s having none of it. Clarke even catches the deadly Woods eyebrow making an occurrence.

“Hey stranger,” she calls above the ruckus, and Lexa’s head swings comically slow towards her. Still, the sight of Clarke’s silhouette against the flashing lights brings a smile, and it makes her chest do that strange, swooping thing again she’s just come to associate with Lexa.

(Or tobacco. A hit of a pipe does that exact same free-falling feeling, but without the coughing.)

“Hey yourself,” she greets, edging back a little to let Clarke into their little huddle. Anya nods in that stoic way she does and says something about getting another drink; her disappearance is abrupt and obvious, but Clarke doesn’t mind if it leaves the two of them alone.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Clarke continues, taking a sip of the drink she’d found somehow in her foray through the living room, “I thought you weren’t much of a party girl.”

“Anya insisted,” Lexa grimaces, mirroring her mouthful. “I owed her, so I said fine.”

“And?”

“Too many people being too drunk.”

“Jus’ means you aren’t drunk enough,” Clarke grins, and they tap their cups together in toast. “We should fix that.”

“Maybe we should.”

It turns out that Lexa is an impressive drinker in her own right.

Clarke groans as she slams down another shot, resting her forehead on her arms for a moment.

“Had enough?” Lexa asks, her voice hoarse from the third straight shot of tequila. Clarke glares but it’s hard when her image keeps swaying in and out of focus.

“I was drunk b’fore I found you,” she slurs, getting up and feeling the earth dip dangerously beneath her feet, “s’cheating.”

“You’re the one who demanded shots.”

“I had to,” Clarke insists, “this is a party. You gotta be drunk.”

When Lexa gets up she sways a little, her eyes going wide and glassy and dark in the dimly lit kitchen. She smiles, long and languid, and looks at Clarke through her lashes in a way that makes her smoulder. “I think we made progress.”

“Enough to get you to come upstairs w’me?”

Lexa laughs, and that smoulder under Clarke’s skin turns into a blaze. “I didn’t need to be drunk for that.”

They stumble up the stairs hand in hand, and maybe because Lexa’s drunk or maybe it’s because she’s drunk, but the other girl simply clings tighter and lets herself be led. Clarke clips a corner on her way around and careens into Lexa, giggling as she pulls her close and kisses her the way she wanted to the second her lips wrapped around the shot glass. She tastes like salt and tequila and her head is spinning, spinning, far into space.

Lexa pins her to the wall and Clarke opens her mouth eagerly, accepting Lexa’s tongue and pulling her by the lapels of their shirt. The party surges on around them but they’ve forgotten they were anywhere else; everyone on the second floor is either there to fuck or throw up, and either way, they’ve got their hands full.

“Come on,” Lexa mutters against her mouth as Clarke’s hand tries to slide up her shirt, “let’s not give them a show.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Clarke retorts, but goes willingly when Lexa pulls her. Anything to get more of that mouth. “They’d be lucky to see this.”

And maybe they would, but. Something about this feels like theirs. They pile into an empty room and when the door slams it’s with Clarke’s own body against it, Lexa’s hands over her shoulders and her mouth on her neck and her name in Clarke’s mouth. Her body, so firm and sure, fits perfectly like it has so many times before.

Nails on the bones of her hips. Clarke is unapologetically loud and the bass drowns her out for everyone but Lexa; she could get drunk on the sound of her alone.

Lexa’s fingers are clumsy as they tug at Clarke’s shirt. They slip and slide and never do what she wants, caught on her belt buckle and the wire of her bra. Clarke is little help, and eventually Lexa gives a snarl and simply rips the fabric straight down the middle. All the heat that flares along the surface of Clarke’s skin sinks down and lingers.

There’s another tank top underneath. This one is easier to maneuver out of, but Clarke manages a lopsided grin. “I liked that one,” she half-complains, tilting her head to let Lexa suck a nebula under her jaw.

“Too complex,” Lexa responds, fumbling with her jeans before pushing them down. Clarke touches her so casual and there’s a war waging inside her, begging to come closer but demanding space to breathe, space that doesn’t exist between them and won’t so long as the other girl traces her hands from rib to hip and sighs like she’s found something sacred.

She guides her back to the bed. Clarke falls and takes Lexa with her, their foreheads knocking sharp and sloppy. Everything is spinning and Lexa is the anchor that holds her to the bed – her weight is a familiar, comforting presence, and Clarke snakes her arms up and around to draw her closer even as Lexa’s right hand travels down.

She always gets like this when she’s drunk. Especially tequila. It might be why she so eagerly pushed it in the first place, but she’s been wet and slick for over an hour now, and Lexa’s fingers find liquid heat when they push into her panties and travel across the now-familiar path through her folds.

“Lexa,” Clarke whines into her skin, rutting her hips up. The other girl chuckles low and teases her entrance, running her longest finger around the edge, never quite breaching. Clarke’s collar flushes red as she struggles to keep from squirming.

“What?” Lexa asks innocently. Her finger dips into the first knuckle before retreating. Clarke arches and pants and there’s something about her like this that gets to Lexa, entirely open and pliant. Ready.

But god, she’s too turned on to be teased. Her clit throbs and makes it difficult to think, every part of her skin sparking where Lexa brushes against her. Light filters in from the streetlamp outside the window and Lexa captures a halo in her hair; her eyes burn bright and green and Clarke is captivated in them. A feeling she can’t name but knows so well by now presses out from every part of her, a tidal-wave of white-hot longing, and instead of begging both hands cup Lexa’s cheeks and hold her there.

There’s something in Clarke’s stare that fits wrong around Lexa’s heart. A certain reverence, an awe she’s been trying to ignore. The hands on her face are gentle and the eyes underneath her are soft, slate-blue in the wavering darkness and so very loud with all the things Clarke won’t let slip from her open mouth.

She closes her eyes and pulls her hand away abruptly, snaking down Clarke’s body so she won’t have to look at her.

The tongue flat on her slit is devious and disorienting at once. Her hands which previously held Lexa so tenderly fist in her hair, desperate for any sort of grounding, but Lexa is ruthless. Her hands push Clarke’s thighs open and her mouth opens wide wide wide until it feels like she’s trying to devour her. Maybe she is. It would explain the frenzy.

The ceiling is morphing and whirling and Clarke has to close her eyes. Behind her eyelids are patterns of sparks, fireworks that flare in the darkness of her head, brighter and brighter the more force Lexa puts into it. When it was just tongue she could handle it, gasp and squirm on the bed but still remain anchored, but lips wrap around her clit to pull and her toes curl in the air.

There’s a roaring in her ears. Lexa works her up so easily it’s like she’s been doing it for years. The thumb of her right hand replaces her mouth that drifts downwards, lapping at Clarke’s leaking hole, her tongue soft and slippery inside. Her belly tenses, but it’s too soon. Too much.

She tries to get Lexa’s name out. All that happens is a soft groan that ends in a sort of hiccup – the coil in her stomach turns sour.

Lexa hears the noise and glances upwards, pausing. Her face is shiny with cum and she licks her swollen lips hesitantly.

“Clarke?”

The other girl blinks slowly, glancing down her body at the pair of inquisitive eyes between her legs. Her entire being hums with arousal but she can’t focus on it, not when—

Somehow, she catches the retch until she rolls over and hangs her head over the side of the bed. There’s a trash-can there and through some grace of God, Clarke manages to puke all the alcohol she’d consumed over the past few hours directly into the bin.

She’s dimly aware of a hand on her back and against her neck, sweeping her hair out of her face. Lexa holds it against the back of her head as she vomits until nothing comes out, disappearing for a minute to come back with tissues that are pressed into Clarke’s clenched fist.

“Come on,” she says softly, helping her pull her jeans back on, ducking under her arm so they can make their tottering way to the bathroom. Clarke’s stomach churns the second she’s standing so they take the basket, just in case.

An icy glare from Lexa makes the bathroom vacate quickly. She lowers Clarke to the floor and sweeps her hair to one side.

“I’m gonna go find Raven, okay?”

“Mmm,” Clarke groans, her forehead against the cool porcelain, “you’re s’nice, Leshka… I like you.”

She misses the way Lexa’s jaw flickers, and she doesn’t know how long she’s alone until there are familiar hands smoothing along her shoulders and down her back.

“Raaaven,” Clarke mutters, rolling the side of her face onto her arm to peer up at her first, “where’s Le… Leh…”

“She went downstairs, babe,” Raven says, stroking her hair, “you’re my problem now.”

“Okay,” Clarke sighs, hugging the toilet more firmly.

She throws up a few more times before she feels well enough to stand, rinsing her mouth and putting shaky elbows on the counter. Raven has her brace on and that means she can support her as they go down the stairs, the pounding music now doing little aside from giving Clarke a headache. The entire time Raven helps her into her coat she can’t help looking for Lexa, that familiar flash of tanned skin and wild brown hair she’s come to know.

She gets her wish as they’re walking out the door. Lexa’s dancing with Anya, her arms draped around the taller girl’s neck, so close there’s no space to speak of between them. There’s a hand drifting down low on Lexa’s back but she doesn’t bat it away, just slides a leg between Anya’s and keeps going.

There’s a feeling in Clarke’s chest that burns in a deeper, different way, but she lets Raven pull her out into the night.

January

She doesn’t see Lexa after that. Break comes and she’s swept back home to her parents, where she only sees her mother twice for more than two hours at a time; once at Christmas and once on New Year’s Eve. Clarke’s long stopped being bitter about it, knowing very little else, and it means she has plenty of free time on her hands and free food in the fridge. Her hands ache for her hammer and chisel but she draws to keep her mind occupied lest her thoughts return to Lexa.

They always do, in a way. She occupies the majority of Clarke’s waking thoughts – they talk a few times through the break, flurries of texts that drop off almost as soon as they’ve started, but not as much as Clarke would like. Certainly not enough to warrant how often she dreams about her, or how she startles in public because she thinks she sees a flash of brown hair.

She’s burning to ask about Anya, but never finds the right time. She’s not sure if she wants to.

Fourteen days after the party, nine days after Christmas and four days after finally placing a name to the feeling in her throat, they both meet at the studio again.

Clarke is already covered in dust when Lexa makes her way into the now-familiar space. It’s the day before a status report to Kane she wanted to finish the shape before starting on the details that would make most of the statue – today is for capturing the curve of Lexa’s back, the length of her legs, the clasp of her hands. The rasp chews away at the alabaster like a hungry dog.

“Lexa!” Clarke smiles when she spies her, glancing up from her work. She’s too busy to notice that Lexa hesitates a little before smiling back, putting her bag on the table. “You already have work to do?”

“The debate captain never rests,” Lexa agrees, taking a seat. She’s made sure not to wear dark clothing this time.

“I feel that.”

Clarke runs her rasp over the statue a few more times with a critical eye. Her fingers dance over the curve of its back, the shapeless mass that will soon become hair. “How was your break?”

Lexa shrugs. “Nothing more than usual. You?”

She thinks about the sleepless nights and the dreams and Raven’s conversation four nights ago. Clarke bites her tongue and swallows what she wants to say, smiles instead, and shrugs. “Pretty much the same.”

It doesn’t take long for Clarke’s eyes to start drifting, and after a few moments of discreetly trying to replicate the arch of Lexa’s back, she sighs. “Can you come here, please? I need to make sure to get this right.”

Lexa shrugs off her sweater. While a few months ago Clarke wouldn’t have hesitated, she sounds strangely shy as she asks for the rest of the clothing to disappear as well. Something flickers over Lexa’s face but it’s gone when her shirt is pulled off, folded neatly on the table. Her jeans go next, and when she lowers herself into the now-familiar position, Clarke can’t help but greedily run her eyes over the newly-exposed skin.

“How much longer do you think you need for the statue?” Lexa asks, muffled into her pillowed arms. Clarke snaps her eyes back to her statue and begins anew, her rasp carefully recreating the degree of the curve and how the hollow of her spine dips inwards. She runs her dusty hands over Lexa’s soft skin, feeling the play of muscles beneath her fingertips.

“I don’t know,” Clarke murmurs, gentle, brushing hair from the nape of Lexa’s neck. The girl under her shivers, the tension under her back drawing her shoulder-blades up like little wings. “Hey, relax.”

“Sorry,” Lexa mutters, taking a deep breath and forcing herself stationary again. Clarke’s hands wander down to her ribs, her fingers laying in each hollow like she could measure the distance between them. The dust is soft and tickles, but it’s her nails that leave goosebumps in their wake.

Clarke meticulously carves Lexa from stone, rounding out where her spine joins her hip and distinguishing one leg from the other. The rasp, travelling along the stone’s side, moves with something suspiciously like reverence. Lexa watches Clarke out of the corner of her eye, the methodical way she coaxes her masterpiece from its shell, the electrifying concentration in her eyes.

The room swelters and sweat runs down Lexa’s back. She shudders, looking away, and when Clarke touches her again her handprints linger, chalky white, a visible memento of where she’s been. Her fingers no longer map so much as caress, pressing her thumbs into the dimples in Lexa’s lower back and spreading her hands outwards.

“You’re so beautiful,” she murmurs almost absently, as if it slipped from her mouth without conscious thought. The tension in Lexa’s back returns so strong she thinks her spine will snap in half under the pressure of it all, the strength of her devotion and the weight of her awe.

It’s the casual way she says it that settles wrong. Like it’s a fact, something she didn’t have to think about because she’d been thinking about it for a long time. Clarke’s hands sneak across her sides to settle under her breasts and that would be fine if not for the soft, tentative intake of breath behind her and the resulting question.

“So, about Anya.”

Clarke feels Lexa stiffen again, this time through her whole body, before she tilts her head. Green eyes peer warily over her shoulder.

“What about her?”

Clarke shifts, suddenly unsure. Something in Lexa’s eyes tells her to shut up, but she’s tired of dancing around whatever this is between them.

“I just, uh, I saw you dancing together. Are you… close?”

She winces as it comes out of her mouth.

“Yes, Clarke,” Lexa says, as stiff as her body, “we are.”

“Oh.”

She doesn’t make to go back to the statue. Her eyes burn holes into the smooth, slender spread of Lexa’s back. “How close?”

“Clarke…”

Something bitter rears up from her chest. Clarke recognizes it as the same thing she felt when Raven towed her away two weeks ago. It burns. “She’s pretty. Did you break your rule for her, too?”

Clarke startles as Lexa gets up. She shakes her hair out of her eyes and her face is a hard mask, impossible to read. Despite the fact that she’s only in her underwear, Clarke doubts she’s the vulnerable person out of the two of them.

“I’m sorry, Clarke,” Lexa says, and there’s something massive lurking behind her words, “but I don’t think we should do this anymore.”

The bitter thing in her chest drops through the hole that had just been torn there. “Wait, w-what?”

“I…” Lexa crosses her arms over her chest.. “I told you. I don’t date.”

“That’s not—“

“Isn’t it?” Lexa demands. Clarke’s phantom touch itches on her ribs. “Are you sure that’s not what you want?”

She can’t lie to her. Lexa sees it on her face and though her expression doesn’t change, her eyes soften. “Look, we can—“

“No,” Clarke interrupts, a hiccup mixed with a hiss, “no, Lexa, you don’t get to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look at me like you pity me. If you didn’t want things to get involved, you w-wouldn’t have slept with me more than once. You wouldn’t have a-answered my texts, or k-kept flirting, or…” she cuts herself off, swiping angrily at her eyes. “I guess the joke’s on me, huh? Just another conquest.”

“Clarke…”

But she can’t stop or else she’ll break down, and the last thing she wants is for Lexa to see her cry. Not now, not like this, even though it feels like someone’s forced a hand through her chest and is intent on compressing her ribs into her heart. “But… I want you to tell me something.”

Lexa clenches her jaw and doesn’t break away when Clarke stares her down, vision wet and warped.

“I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t feel anything. T-that all the times we were together, you didn’t…”

The other girl looks away, at the half-finished statue covered in dust, but her voice is cold. “I told you when we started that it was only sex.”

Clarke scoffs, but she can’t hide the warmth that trickles down her cheeks. “Fuck you, Lexa.”

She leaves white footprints in her wake as she storms out, and the answering handprint on Lexa’s back burns.

She can’t even go back to the studio for two weeks.

Raven sits her down and lets her sob while holding back her told you so’s, feeding her a mixture of wine and Chinese food on her couch. She agrees with every curse and wisely stays silent while Clarke pines, calling Wells to deliver them a pint of ice-cream, some chocolate, and more alcohol. He hears Clarke’s sniffling in the background and doesn’t hesitate to get on the bus, showing up at their doorstep an hour later with all that plus some Advil for the next day.

“Saint,” Raven sighs, and the three of them watch shitty rom-coms on Clarke’s threadbare couch until they pass out in a warm, drunk heap.

Even with her friends on either side of her, it’s hard. Her entire sketchbook is filled with Lexa, and no matter what she does it’s impossible to ignore. She stays up late into the night and draws until her fingers cramp, passing the time with more wine and a rapidly dwindling supply of charcoal. She thinks about stealing into the studio to take some, but even thinking about her statue is enough to make the wine want to come back up.

Kane realizes something happened almost immediately after she walks into his office to deliver a report, but sits and nods and gently questions when she thinks it’ll be done. All she has is a limp shrug for him, the circles under her eyes dark and deep. “It’ll be done,” she says, but it’s flat and tired.

He lets it go.

A week after that first night, Raven grabs her by the arm. “Oh no you don’t,” she threatens when Clarke tries to pull away, yanking her back and close with a surprising amount of force. Clarke glares at her from under her greasy bangs and tries to leave again, but it’s half-hearted at best.

“What do you want, Raven?”

“For you to take a shower, sweetheart. You reek.”

“I do not.”

Raven’s eyebrow is still the best eyebrow, even if Clarke can draw Lexa’s from memory. She runs her tongue over the film on her teeth and shrugs, glancing longingly to her room. “I’ll do it later.”

“Like hell you will. You’re taking a shower. Immediately.”

There’s a lot of struggling and yelling and banging, but Raven finally locks the both of them into the bathroom and presses her back against the door. She hides the knob with her hand and digs her heels in when Clarke glares with even more venom than the last time.

“Get in.”

“No.”

“I swear to God, if you don’t I’m going to force you.”

“Try.”

The dangerous glint in Raven’s eye says she should stop tempting fate, but she’s been nothing other than stubborn and combative recently, so she doesn’t have the energy to change course.

This results in the both of them under the spray, fully clothed, Raven’s murderous gaze as hot as the water as Clarke strips off her soaked shirt.

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” Clarke mumbles, unsnapping her bra, sparing a guilty glance to Raven’s very wet brace over her leg. She doesn’t know too much about it, but she’s pretty sure it wasn’t made for the shower.

“You bet your sweet ass I do, Griffin. How do I know that you just won’t stand there forever?”

Once she’s fully naked, Raven coaxes her to turn around. “Brush your teeth and I’ll wash your hair for you.”

Her toothpaste is red and her gums sore when she spits it out, but even that simple act makes her feel better. Raven’s nimble hands work the grime from her scalp and she lets her eyes drift shut, the sodden material of Raven’s shirt soft against her back. She gets two cycles of conditioner so that her hair stops looking like someone dunked her in a deep fryer, and once she rinses the soap suds from her body and turns, she’s startled both by Raven’s closeness and how she doesn’t pull away.

They look at each other silently for a moment, Clarke’s fingers hesitantly starting at her wrists and skating up to her elbows, stepping in close until Clarke can see the water that gets caught in Raven’s lashes and sparkles like gems.

“Princess…” Raven warns, but it’s soft and muffled as Clarke kisses her. It’s short, little more than a press of lips, but her body doesn’t get that same rush she’s come both to crave and hate, and she sighs as she pulls away.

“Sorry,” Clarke murmurs, her face now as flushed as the rest of her body after the scrubbing. “I just… I don’t know, I thought…”

Raven licks her water-wet lips thoughtfully. “That has to be the gayest thing I’ve ever done.”

Clarke sputters on her apology and Raven grins. The water cuts off and she wriggles out of her soaked shirt, resigned to getting her pants off after she sums up the willpower to unhook her sodden brace.

“Are… you aren’t mad?”

“Nope,” Raven smiles. “You don’t have to explain. I’m just really happy you did that after you brushed your teeth.”

The most infuriating thing is that they weren’t even dating to start with. Clarke let someone get so far under her skin without even meaning to, and now it’s impossible to get her out. She buys a new sketchbook and stashes the one she has in a dark nook of her closet, but nothing comes out right. She still only wants to draw one thing. She’s sleeping more and going to her classes again, but she still feels like there’s a hole in her that she never noticed before.

On Raven’s suggestion, she goes back to the studio.

The statue is where she left it, draped in a sheet and dust swept away. When she uncovers it, she has to sit down for a second, perched in the cradle of the stone angel’s hips as her fingers trace the rough bite of the rasp. It’s February now, the winter in its bitter, endless throes, and she has just over a month and a half to complete it.

The sketchbook she’d hidden away peeks out of her bag. She’d defended them as reference, at the time, but now they might truly become what she said they were.

Clarke takes a deep, weary breath through her nose, and goes to find her tools.

Her lack of attention to everything is now balanced with hyper-attention on her project. When she’s not in class or sleeping, she’s in the studio, carving away with such an intense look in her eyes that the other students stay away. She shapes the legs individually, gives them toes, and rounds the thighs. The stomach becomes flat, the breasts shrink and even, and the mass of stone upon the angel’s back eventually becomes hair. It’s with the memory of it falling through her fingers that Clarke chisels out the whorls and curls that swoop down the angel’s spine and across her pillowed arms where her head is cradled.

It’s not hard for her to cut out the shape of Lexa’s jaw or the slant of her nose – they’re so sharp to begin with, stone was the best medium to show it. The angel peers at her as she carefully cuts her eyes open, the left side of her face obscured by her arms. When she stops to look, it looks so much like her that she has to resist the monumental impulse to drive her chisel straight through its forehead.

Raven and Wells bring her food when she forgets, either doing their own work or goofing off together while Clarke forges ahead. Ever since she fell asleep on the table, they’ve made her bring a blanket that she stashes behind all the paints and brushes, and sometimes it’s used for an impromptu picnic when Clarke’s tools take up the entire table.

They say you can tell when an artist bleeds themselves into their work. As Clarke painstakingly carves out the wings arching from the angel’s back, each gentle tap of her hammer seals her rage and her pain into the stone. Her knuckles are chapped and her eyes water and every piece of exposed skin is dry as the dust that coats her, but as the final piece falls away she backs up for a moment and admires the way their fingerling tendrils fan out from its curved back and out into space. She runs her hand over the arch, rough against her palm, and smiles.

Despite her little victories, it’s the sanding where she gets out the brunt of her anger. And only because there’s so fucking much of it that her patience wears as thin as the sandpaper she’s using. The joints of her fingers cramp as she runs it through the waves of the angel’s hair, a scowl on her face as she tries her best to get it through the nooks and valleys that just don’t want to be touched.

“Stupid, fucking piece of—“ she snarls as a chip of the hair falls off. Clarke throws it away and replaces it with another piece, only for the same thing to happen.

“Is that how you want to play it, huh? Huh?” She bares her teeth and moves onto the wing, rounding the edge of the feather-like protrusion with more force than necessary. “You like to play tough?” Another scrape, another plume of dust billowing around her. “You like to think you’re better than me?”

Clarke isn’t sure who she’s raving to, but the studio is empty this late at night so she doesn’t care. Her hands are quick and agitated as she rubs, muttering curses, never satisfied. “You think you can tell me how to live my life? Well, I’ve got some fucking news for you! I’m my own woman, and nothing you do could ever change that. Not even your stupid fucking pretty face or your stupid fucking long legs, or your hair that doesn’t want to let me sand it!”

Her last sentence is punctuated by a sickening crack, and Clarke stares blankly at the piece of alabaster that came off in her hand. The right wing is now lopsided, the shortest tendril broken in half, and her fingers tremble as they close around it.

All the anger inside her swells, and Clarke screeches as she flings it across the studio. It hits the far wall and shatters into a spray of shards and she slowly sinks down beside her work, the hurt in her throat causing her eyes to water.

“No,” she mutters, “no no no no,” but it doesn’t stop the hot, fat tears that well up in her mask, or that lump that makes it hard to breathe.

Clarke leans her forehead against the angel’s side and cries until she’s too tired to even move, and all the roiling emotion that’s been plugged inside her since Lexa left drains into her stone vector until she feels hollow.

Hollow, but light.

March

The gallery is cast in soft, ambient lighting where there isn’t artwork. A large, open floor-plan lets Clarke see the entire space, and she sips at her wine in a fancy glass as she watches them bustle. In the distance she can see Jasper’s display, some sort of metal and wire sculpture that’s actually quite interesting, though she isn’t sure how Anya helped shape it.

Someone comes to stand beside her, and when she looks up, Kane is grinning down at her. His eyes glow with pride and a soft, happy warmth settles in Clarke’s chest for the first time in what feels like years.

“It’s amazing, Clarke,” he says, enraptured, as they stand in front of her masterpiece. Despite the physical and mental toll it took, she can’t help but agree.

The angel stares at them from under her curtain of hair. Clarke had sanded her until she gleamed and reflected the studio’s lighting and then sanded more, using paper so fine she could barely feel the grooves herself. Every part of her feels like hard silk, even those infuriating waves in her hair and the creases in her wings.

“Would you believe me if I said painting it was the fastest part?”

In continuing with their theme, she had painted her feet as the roots of a tree and worked upwards, twining them around her thighs and letting leaves flourish in her belly and along her spine. The ladder of her ribs gave way to the sky, the ends of her hair dipped in clouds, and the only eye they could see glittered gold high above the blue. Kane trails his fingertips over her wings, stretched out to the beyond, speckled with the shine of a million stars overtop the velveteen fabric of the night sky.

“Yes,” he says honestly, “even though it couldn’t have been easy.”

She shrugs. “It was nice to do something different for a change.”

Even from here, he can tell who the angel resembles. That regal slope to her jaw couldn’t be anyone else.

Across from them, a handful of the lacrosse girls giggle at Wells’ capture of them at play. Clarke forces her eyes to stay facing forward.

“Where’s Lexa?” Kane asks, as tentative as he’s ever been. He’d heard from Indra that Lexa hadn’t been herself this semester, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out where the problem stemmed. Still, it doesn’t prompt the flinch it usually does, though Clarke’s brows draw in a little.

“Don’t know,” she mutters, case clearly closed, but someone clears their throat behind them.

“I’m right here, sir,” Lexa says, and Clarke’s shoulders ripple with tension. “I was just a little late.”

Kane nods, rubbing Clarke’s trembling shoulder before letting Lexa take his place. “You should be proud.”

“I am.”

The two girls stand silently, eyes faced firmly ahead. With Lexa looking at it, Clarke wants to cover it back up with the sheet – she’s convinced Lexa can see every tortured strike of her hammer on the angel, every ounce of heartbreak poured into the painting. Lexa’s eyes take the journey that Kane’s did, from the feet to the wingtips and back again.

“I knew you’d do it justice,” Lexa sighs, and Clarke finally looks at her.

She’s wearing a black dress, wrapped around hugging her body, so dark Clarke could fall into it. She’s even taller in heels and Clarke hates how gorgeous she is, how even though they haven’t seen each other in months her body still thrums like it had forgotten what she did.

“What do you want?” Clarke asks, fingers tight on her glass.

Lexa doesn’t answer for a few moments, her touch running down the slope of the angel’s nose. Indignation flares in Clarke, as bright and hot as anything.

“You don’t get to show up like nothing happened, Lexa. You should go.”

“I should,” Lexa agrees without looking back, “but I won’t.”

Clarke bares her teeth, her free hand clamping over Lexa’s wrist. Her fingers itch when she touches her skin. “Don’t play games with me.”

She doesn’t shake out of her grip. Instead, she turns ever so slowly, and the way the light falls around them turns Lexa into a mirror image of the statue Clarke spent so many backbreaking hours over. The eye not hidden by her hair glows golden.

Despite herself, Clarke feels the breath scooped from her lungs.

“I…” Lexa’s mouth opens, shuts, and opens again. “I wanted…”

Don’t listen to her, Clarke, she scolds herself, but doesn’t leave. Not after running this scenario over so many times in her head when she couldn’t sleep, haunted by the fact that she might never get it at all.

“I wanted to apologize.”

Clarke’s grip goes slack around Lexa’s wrist, and the other girl takes a slow step into her space. “I’ve had a lot of time to think this semester, and, well… I think you were right.”

“I was right?” Clarke repeats slowly.

“I was lying to myself,” Lexa expands, twisting the fabric of her dress between her fingers. “About… about you. And about how I felt. I tried to ignore it because I didn’t want it to happen. It scared me.”

Clarke blinks, dumbstruck. A red flush spreads over the bridge of Lexa’s nose unlike she’s ever seen before.

“And I still don’t really know what I feel or how or why, but… there’s something. There’s definitely something.”

The angel watches as Lexa takes a deep breath, her nervous eyes darting over Clarke’s face.

“Lexa,” Clarke says, but Lexa raises her hands.

“I don’t expect you to say anything. I know it’s out of nowhere, and I know I was being an asshole about it.”

Clarke’s brow quirks up at the blatant understatement, but softens at Lexa’s sheepish, guilty smile.

“Lexa, I…” Clarke heaves a breath through her nose. “I can’t lie. You really hurt me when you left a few months ago.”

Lexa nods sadly, turning to leave, but Clarke’s hand grabs her wrist again. “Let me finish.”

“You really hurt me, but… I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Even when I should have. I don’t know if that statue would’ve turned out the way it did if I wasn’t so fucking angry.”

The soft lilt of conversation flows over them, but Clarke refuses to let her eyes leave Lexa’s. “I don’t know if I’m angry anymore. I don’t think I have enough energy to be angry. That doesn’t mean I’m not still hurt, but… it doesn’t mean I’ll be hurt forever.”

Lexa watches her and Clarke finally sees in its entirety what she had been trying to put into the stone; that strong, enthralling aura that had drawn her in the first place. It draws her even closer still until they’re nearly standing in each other’s space, the fabric of Lexa’s dress whispering as she breathes.

Suddenly, Lexa puts out her hand.

“Could we… could we start again? As friends?”

Clarke glances down, then up, then down again. The angel burns its celestial gaze into her stomach as their fingers meet.

“Yeah, I think I’d like that.”