heda | clexa

eleven

When Lexa read to Clarke that afternoon, about God and heaven, an eternal afterlife that is supposedly perfect, Clarke didn't pay it much attention. She was half-asleep, after all. Now, she knows exactly what Lexa was talking about- chocolate chip cookies are the only thing Clarke wants to eat for the rest of her life.

She lays on the couch with a whole plate of them balancing on her stomach and Lexa joins her in the living room a while later, a second plate of fresh, hot cookies from the oven in her gloved hands. She slides out of one glove, sets it down on the couchtable and puts the plate atop of it. Then, she gets rid of the second glove and falls into the armchair, displaying a patience waiting for the cookies to cool that Clarke cannot comprehend.

Beyond that, there are dark rings under weary eyes and suppressed yawns, and with a short glance at the armchair, something slips out of Clarke that shouldn't have, but that doesn't surprise her either. Not by now. A three-headed djask couldn't have surprised her by that time of the night, and if a gigantic, mythical bear couldn't, her own words wouldn't either. "Go lay down."

"What?"

Clarke nods to the space next to her on the couch. "I want to show you something." A feeble excuse. She just wants to feel Lexa's warmth once more.

Lexa, for some magical reason, gets up and settles on the couch instead. Her body is stiff, as it seems to be by default, and Clarke wonders whether or not her muscles are made of iron to keep her posture so perfect all the time.

"What did you want to show me?"

"Open your mouth."

"Mother and Son, Clarke, do not even get me started on spiders and worms, I-"

"Language," Clarke interrupts her in a whisper, although she's not sure mother and son is a swear word. It's just too fun to use Lexa's own weapon against her.

When Lexa opens her mouth in protest, Clarke stuffs a warm chocolate chip cookie into it to shut her up. "Shh. Stay still for a moment. Close your eyes."

After a glare, Lexa closes her eyes. "Take a bite."

Lexa reluctantly obeys. After she ate the whole cookie, she opens her eyes again and musters Clarke questioningly. Clarke seems ridiculously close, she realizes, and she has to swallow before she asks, softer, "What was that supposed to do?"

"Didn't you feel it? The way it made everything a notch better?" Clarke reaches over Lexa and Lexa's breathing stops for a moment when Clarke is this close, close enough that Lexa smells her scent of fresh laundry, flowery soap and something so uniquely Clarke. For one pathetic second, her eyes close, as though she had bent down to smell a rose. When Clarke retreats with something from the coffee table in hand, Lexa is painfully aware of the scent, even though it becomes fainter again.

Lexa, being an academic, is one of the few women who can read and who has access to books. As such, she has read plenty of books, including poems. Poems that have made Lexa cringe, poems laying on too heavily, poems that have been so very corny and cliche, but for the first time in her life, her stomach contracts in a terrible realization. The authors of those poems didn't fake their words. Their poems were never meant to be shiny and flowery.

They were simply talking about this; Clarke, and her blonde waves being a golden ocean flooded all over the couch, and her blue eyes so dark in the candle light, two deep saltwater seas at night. They weren't being flashy, Lexa just never realized that someone could really smell of spring that much, that someone could really make you want to bury your nose in the crook of their neck and just stay. For however long, Lexa would simply like to stay.