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Clarke isn't quite sure how she and Lexa went from yelling at each other over strategy to Clarke being pressed up against the table with the maps charting Mount Weather crinkling beneath her tightly clenched hand and Lexa's rough fingers inside of her, fucking her hard and deep, her mouth against hers, eager and biting.
Each thrust punches a deep, sharp sound out of Clarke's mouth and, mindful of Lexa's still-healing arm, she has one palm pressed tightly between her shoulderblades, feeling the muscles contract with every sharp push. The outside noise of moving people and everyday noise of an entire army living and breathing seems dimmed, as if they have slipped into some otherwordly dimension where nothing exists except them.
Leaning back, Clarke curls one leg around Lexa's hip, knocking her knee against the knife hanging from her waist, and the movement changes the angle of Lexa's fingers, allowing her in deeper. Her mouth slides from Clarke's lips to her throat, biting down, and with her thumb she begins to circle Clarke's clit, sending a sharper shockwave of pleasure through her. She's feeling feverish with the way she grips and grabs at Lexa's, struggling to get her close enough, deep enough.
"Kiss me," she demands through a gasp and Lexa does, lifts her head to smash their mouths back together, lets her tongue slide along Clarke's lower lip in a surprisingly tender way before biting down with quick, harsh teeth.
Clarke comes, shredding the eastern part of the mountain dam with her nails as she digs them roughly into the table.
When she looks up, slowly coming back to herself, Lexa's face is inches from her own, her breathing rugged against Clarke's cheek, and something indecipherable shifts in her intent gaze.
As their eyes meet, Lexa leans forward, taking Clarke's mouth in a wet, open-mouthed kiss, her hands falling to her belt to undo her own pants.
It keeps happening. Clarke is trying to convince Lexa to let her mother get an x-ray of her arm to make sure the bone is healing cleanly but Lexa refuses, distrustful and scornful of their medicine and their Sky ways.
When Clarke insists, Lexa, faster than Clarke can blink, grabs her arm, twisting it up behind her back, and presses her against the cold wall.
"Does it seem like I need your healing?" she hisses into Clarke's ear, tightly pressed up against her body. Her tell-tale scent of leather and metal and something else, something uniquely Lexa, fills Clarke's senses and in her anger, she suddenly despises herself for the way she responds to that, how Lexa's intense proximity makes her go undeniably weak in the knees.
She kicks back with one foot, trying to catch Lexa's leg, but the warrior sidesteppes it easily and twists her grip on Clarke, swinging her round to push her back into the wall and press herself to her front.
The kiss, the hard press of Lexa's mouth against hers, the twinge of pain as Lexa twists her fingers into Clarke's hair, is unexpected, and at the same time it feels almost unavoidable, as if the angered tension running high between them is a tether pulling them unequivocally, hopelessly, together.
The next morning, when Clarke wakes and steps out of the Ark, she finds a Grounder outside, busy with laying down a dead boar at her door.
"Slain by the Commander's own hand," he says, as if it's supposed to mean something special.
"Oh," Clarke says, glancing away from the lifeless eyes of the beast, the dark, matted blood in its fur. "I'll remember to thank her later, then. Would you mind taking it to the kitchens? It will be a good addition to our food rations."
For a moment, he looks disgruntled, and Clarke's hand is already itching towards the gun in her belt, her skin growing clammy with fear that this man too is harbouring some sort of vendetta against her.
But, a second later, his displeasure disappears and Clarke's breathing resumes. She guesses he remembered his orders from Lexa to take her at her word, because he nods and bends down to pick the animal back up.
"Mochof," she says, one of the few phrases of their language she knows and he gives her another curt nod.
She makes a mental reminder to thank Lexa as well the next time she sees her, but as she turns, she sees her mother hurrying towards her and holds back a sigh, Lexa's gift already far from her mind. Time to get to work.
It's fraying at her nerves, sitting by the radio to wait for any indication that Bellamy has gotten inside the mountain. The silence is broken only by the crackle of the open channel and the hum of electricity, and it's slowly driving her out of her mind, leaving her darkened thoughts to turn over every possibly outcome of every decision she's made or could have made and everyone of them ends with Bellamy dead or acting like a human blood-bag. Or both.
She gets up on stiff legs with her head spinning as Octavia finally comes to relieve her. She squeezes Octavia's shoulder as the other girl sits down in front of the radio and Octavia offers her a weak smile in return.
"If you hear anything, come get me immediately," Clarke says and Octavia nods.
She leaves the communications room but remains standing indecisively in the hallway. The prospect of returning to her empty room with her thoughts is not tempting. She could take a walk outside in the woods, but someone would see her slip out and probably force her to bring a guard.
Unbidden, her feet take her out of the Ark and through the gates to the Camp. No one raises an eyebrow, despite the late hour - she and Lexa passes back and forth between the Ark and the camp the Grounders have set up outside all the time, whether day or night. No rest for the wicked.
The guards stationed outside of their Commander's tent doesn't react to her presence either, except to step aside to let her in. She finds Lexa standing with both hands braced against the big round table in the middle of her tent, dressed in nothing but pants and a big, loose shirt. She still has her knife strapped to her hip, but no armor.
It isn't until Lexa lifts her head to look at Clarke and says, "Yes?" that Clarke realises that she has no idea why she decided to go to Lexa in the first place.
"Have you heard anything from your inside man?" Lexa prompts when Clarke says nothing.
Clarke shakes her head.
Just as with the war paint, the lack of armor doesn't diminish the imposing air Lexa carries wherever she goes. The softness of her shirt only emphasies the sharp angle of her shoulders and the wiry muscle in her forearms, her uncanny ability to commandeer any room with her mere presence.
Unable to articulate exactly what she wants, what she needs, why she's here, Clarke simply walks up to where Lexa is standing and reaches her hand out to touch Lexa's.
Lexa's eyes flick to her face for a long second, before she curls an arm around Clarke's shoulders, pulling her into a kiss. She relaxes into Lexa's arms, returning the kiss, and goes easily as Lexa leads her deeper into the tent, to her bed.
She lies back, lets Lexa undress her between lingering kisses, and tilts her head to to the side as Lexa moves to suck a mark into the skin behind her ear as her she unhooks her bra with quick fingers. She straddles Clarke to unbutton her shirt, with her strong legs on either side of Clarke's hips and her steady weight to anchor her in this place, to keep her in this moment.
Her fingers trail across Lexa's stomach as she pulls the shirt off, over raised skin-trails of old scars and beautifully crafted, swirling tattoos. Fixing Clarke with her gaze, Lexa takes her hands and moves them to her own breasts, her mouth falling open in silent pleasure as she uses Clarke's hands to cup the soft weight of her breasts, Clarke's thumbs to run over her hardened nipples.
Clarke bucks her hips upward, seeking some friction for the wet ache between her legs, but Lexa's weight on her is unrelenting. Her hair brushes across Clarke's cheek and shoulder as she leans forward, touching her lips to Clarke's, her tongue stealing into her mouth to press against the soft spot behind her teeth, dragging a breathless sound from Clarke as Lexa's tongue teases at the roof of her mouth.
This is what she needs, she realizes hazily with Lexa's head between her legs and a heavy arm slung across her hips to hold her in place as Lexa fucks her with her tongue and fingers, the relentless slick drag of her tongue against her clit making Clarke see stars. All she can do is clench one hand in Lexa's hair, the other in the bedding, and hold on for dear life as loud moans and gasps falls from her mouth.
Her thighs, bracketing Lexa's head, are trembling with pleasure and effort and Clarke feels as if she's losing her grip, losing herself to Lexa, and for the first time in months she has nothing on her mind but this, Lexa's mouth and hands, the heat building in her body, spooling out into her tensed limbs, and the roar in her blood. Nothing else exists.
Her orgasm is a freefall, a crash back down to earth, gentled only by Lexa crawling back up her body for another long kiss, the taste of Clarke mingling salty and sharp between them.
She savors letting Lexa guide her down between her legs to reciprocate. There is tranquility to be found in surrendering control: she allows Lexa to angle her as she wants her with her hands and hips, eager to let go of any responsibility right here and now, to simply allow Lexa to use her for her own pleasure.
Without meaning to, she falls asleep afterward, mind and body at rest for the first time in weeks.
Come morning, she wakes with a start and a queasy feeling of being misplaced, having forgotten something important, overslept... She almost falls off the bed in shock as she realizes where she is.
The other side of the bed is cold and empty, but as she flails herself properly awake, Lexa steps behind the tapestry shielding her sleeping quarters from the rest of the tent.
"Good morning," she says, as if Clarke waking up in her bed isn't anything out of the ordinary and won't have wide-reaching ramification for them and both their people.
"What's the time?" Clarke asks groggily, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and standing up. She grabs her jeans off the ground, looks around for her top. "I need to get back to Camp Jaha."
"It's past breakfast," Lexa says.
"Shit." Finally locating her t-shirt, she pulls it over her head and grabs her jacket, cramming her arms into it while trying to stick her feet into her boots. She thinks about her mother and what she will say. Not to mention Kane and, holy shit, Raven.
"Clarke," Lexa says, catching her arm as she tries to rush past her out of the tent. "Calm down."
"Calm down? Calm down?" Clarke stares at Lexa. "How can you be calm? What will your generals say? Your people? I am the enemy, remember?"
"Among my people, we understand that bodies and people have needs, Clarke," Lexa says in her infuriatingly even voice, guiding Clarke to sit down in a chair. "That sex and love are not interchangeable. They know to trust that my judgment will remain unclouded."
"Love is weakness," Clarke echoes back at her, sardonically.
Lexa doesn't reply. She has stepped behind Clarke, taking a handful of hair in hand, and Clarke grimaces in pain as something snags in the dirty, tangled strands.
"Ouch! What are you doing?" she complains.
"Don't move."
Lexa makes quick, merciless work of her matted hair and once the worst tangles are gone, Clarke is powerless to do anything but close her eyes, sit back and enjoy. Once she is done with the combing she starts braiding it, pulling it away from Clarke's face with a series of small, intricate braids.
It is oddly intimate - almost more so than what they did last night. It creates a strange sort of magic, the gentle, electric feeling of Lexa's fingertips against her scalp, the nimble, easy work of her hands.
"There you go," Lexa says after a few long minutes, breaking the blissful silence at last.
"Thank you," Clarke says quietly.
"I hear you're fucking her," Raven says, voice sharp as jagged metal, as Clarke comes to relieve her of radio duty.
"Yeah," Clarke says, because by now everyone in camp knows that she came from the Commander's bed with Grounder braids in her hair this morning.
Raven's lips grow thin and pale from anger. "I guess you deserve each other," she says finally and heaves herself up on her crutches. "Have fun."
And with that she leaves.
Clarke doesn't know what kind of orders Lexa has given her people, but they seem a lot more welcoming towards her of late. There is still some hostility, especially from those who suffered losses at the Hundred's hands, but on the whole they seemed to have warmed to her after seeing her emerge from their Commander's tent. Among her own people, the distrust has grown instead. It started, she thinks, when she went against Mom, backed up by Grounder warriors and Lexa's authority.
It didn't take many days on Earth for her to realize that to keep the Hundred safe and to be the leader they needed in order to survive down here she would have to give up a fair part of her humanity in the bargain. She just hadn't realized that she would lose her own people as well. Up in the sky they had kept together due to necessity and spatial limitations - down here it seems like it's ingrained habit holding them together and little else.
Survival of the fittest, she thinks to herself. Survival by adaptability. Change or die.
Perhaps that is what draws them to each other, she thinks as she lets her finger trace the black design on Lexa's arm, some shared monstrousness, a kind of inhumanity found reflected there in the other's eyes.
She has stopped trying to make up excuses to end up in Lexa's bed. It has become a safe space, where she goes whenever she needs to hide away from the world for a while, and that's okay. She just hopes that her presence gives Lexa some kind of comfort in return.
"So, look who managed to convince the Commander that love isn't weakness after all," Octavia says teasingly. She has seemed a little bit less burdened these last few days, now that she knows that Bellamy, at least, is still alive.
Clarke snorts. "Not really. The only reason she puts up with me is because she wouldn't have any trouble leaving me to die, if it ever came to that," she says. "No love, no weakness."
Octavia looks at her like she's an idiot. "She's courting you, Clarke," she says, slow and clearly. "She's provided for you, braided your hair, taken you to her bed. Why do you think most of her people has stopped spitting after you in the streets?"
"I..."
It feels like the bottom has dropped out of Clarke's world. For a moment, there nothing but simple disbelief, but then anger sets in. This was the one thing she had that was just for her, the only thing she had to keep herself separate from what she needed to be in order for them to survive. But apparently it was stupid and naive of her and she should have known that the two of them could never keep anything separate from what they are, what they have to be.
"So it's a political union," Clarke says bitterly, not having realized exactly how much Lexa has come to mean to her until just now, in this moment. Proving yet again that pain is indeed a valuable lesson.
"You're smarter than that, princess," Octavia says, but Clarke isn't listening anymore, Octavia's words muted by the ache in her heart.
She knows she won't be able to go to Lexa's tent until after nightfall - by an unspoken agreement they have agreed to keep their sexual relationship out of day to day business and Lexa is currently busy discussing strategy with her generals.
She spends the rest of the day struggling to keep herself from staying idle, ending up in the sick-bay to help with whatever needs to be done, in an attempt to keep Lexa as far from her thoughts as possible.
The sun has scarcely set when Clarke storms into Lexa's tent just as her generals are leaving it. Many of them turns away from her, but a few nod in greeting. Clarke nods back, quietly fuming now that she knows the reason for their sudden politeness.
"You should have told me," she says and Lexa turns from her customary position at the table with a confused look on her face.
"Told you what?" she asks.
"About this!" Clarke says, gesturing between them. "That what I thought we were doing clearly isn't the same as what you were planning. I'm not going to marry you for the alliance, Lexa!"
For some reason, that makes Lexa laugh, and for a moment the scathing anger inside of Clarke takes aim at Octavia. Did she lie?
"Everything I do, I do for my people," Lexa says, her sudden amusement gone. "Any lover of mine would have to benefit them somehow, or at least not endanger them in any way. That I have learned." She turns away, picks at the edge of a map on the table with downcast eyes. "But I would never take someone I didn't want."
"I thought love was weakness," Clarke says. She's unable not to.
"It is," Lexa says.
"So that's why you chose me?" Clarke says, even though it feels as if she's inhaling acid fog with every breath. Something in her chest stings and hurts. "Because you don't love me?"
Lexa turns back to face her and the way she looks at her is almost too much, almost something Clarke has to look away from.
"Because if you got hurt, it wouldn't be because of me," Lexa says. "It would be war or politics or someone questioning your power, but it would not be me. I can't destroy you, Clarke."
And that Clarke understands. For her, Lexa is the one she'll never be able to command, to send off to die or get hurt on her orders. Lexa is someone she will never have to be responsible for, and there is relief in that.
It is easy, frighteningly so, to lean into Lexa's space, into her arms. Clarke nudges her nose against the line of her jaw, inhaling the leather-wood-metal scent of her, and seeks out her mouth, taking her lower lip lightly between her own.
"I'm not looking for... marriage, though," Lexa says. "We don't formalize love in that way among my people. It's a senseless thing to do, trying to make love something static and unchangeable. I want you as my companion and lover, Clarke, and that is all."
Clarke smiles, heart suddenly soaring. She never took a spacewalk, but she guesses the feeling might be similar to this. Daring and frightening, but good. "That I can do," she says.
Perhaps the promise is so easy to make because they march towards war and death in a few weeks, but Clarke doesn't care. What they are and what they have are forged in the here and now and there is no need to wonder what another Clarke would be, in another time and another place.
They will do what they must to live, she thinks as she brings up her palm to cup Lexa's face, thumb at the corner of her smile, but maybe they can do more than just survive.