Chapter Text
Lexa Woods does not believe in fate, destiny, or everything happening for a reason. She doesn't believe in any sort of mystical being that guides and controls the universe with an invisible hand. As far as she can tell, the world is a chaotic, messy place where things just happen; a puzzle with a million pieces, each one from a different box.The human brain, in an attempt to keep itself from completely paralyzing with fear, makes a gestalt of the random little pieces that coincidentally happen to connect, and pats you on the shoulder with a half-hearted 'hang in there, kiddo.' We see supernatural forces so that we can continue to make choices, continue to go about our lives.
No, Lexa doesn't believe in god, but she can see how other people could have moments where they feel personally victimized by the guy. For example, even at the tender age of t hirty , t here is a whole litany of people from her past she'd rather not run into, but any of them—really, even her asshole father risen from the grave — is preferable to the one chatting with her and her coworkers like it's the most natural thing in the world .
She doesn't even want to be at this stupid conference. She hates conferences and Indra knows it and she could be outside right now, sitting in the branch of a tree with the wind tousling her hair around her cheeks if Indra hadn't forced her to come , and now Clarke Griffin is here and absolutely nothing is okay. How could she be okay when there's a speaking, breathing, smiling (god, that smile can still make Lexa melt) reminder of the hardest decision she's ever made in her life?
She tries to swallow down the acrid fumes of bile burning in the back of her throat and her sinuses, tries to keep standing without it being obvious her knees are threatening to buckle any minute. Clarke hasn't even looked at her once, and she thinks that's probably for the best because there's about a ninety-five percent chance she would either start crying or say something bitter and cutting and mean that would make Clarke give her that look of hers—the one that's part-irritation and part-amusement and all don't fuck with me, Woods. So instead, she watches over the rim of a shitty, watered-down hotel bar gin and tonic and watches Lincoln talk to Clarke like there's absolutely nothing wrong and pretending with all she has that the last words Clarke had said to her before today were not “please don't do this.”
She's doomed to fail, of course, especially when Lincoln frowns down at his phone and politely excuses himself from the conversation, leaving just her, Clarke, and Anya. Who, jarred from her wistful, longing staring at the plate full of cocktail wieners she didn't have a free hand to eat, was now arching an amused eyebrow at Lexa and looking slowly between her and Clarke, her sharp brown eyes searing an accusation straight into Lexa's soul.
Anya shifts the way she always does when she's about to speak, widening her stance and lifting her chin in a way that stills the air around her and vacuums all focus to her. Lexa tightens her grip on the glass in her hand and meets Anya's eye with as much humility as she can muster to beg her to run interference.
“Nope,” is all she says before turning on her heel and walking to settle alone at a table.
Lexa realizes after a couple seconds of watching Anya stuff conference buffet food into her mouth (which, gross) that she's not coming back and now she has two options:
1. Cut her losses and walk away.
2. Talk to Clarke.
She clears her throat. Clarke looks at her with expectation and no small amount of mockery, and Lexa realizes she's made a terrible mistake in thinking Clarke would be anything past silent toward her. They haven't seen each other in four years, but she knows Clarke, and holding grudges is something she does exceptionally well. Like the time the two of them had gotten into a fight about the ethics of mandatory minimum sentences and Clarke made a dig at her about it every time they talked for a month. Or the time Octavia had borrowed her favorite shoes and drunkenly lost one during the walk home and Clarke wouldn't talk to her until she replaced them. And then there was her former best friend Wells, who had done something so bad everyone simply referred to it as “The Incident.” It occurred in Clarke's Junior year of high school, and she didn't talk to him once in the course of Lexa's five-year relationship with her.
Comparatively, it doesn't seem all that far-fetched that she could hang on to breakup-level anger for a few years. She aborts mission Talk to Clarke and swiftly turns to join Anya at the table before she can fuck this up any worse than she already has.
“You're walking away from me again?” Clarke's voice is defiant, with just the slightest trembling undercurrent, and Lexa's heart breaks at the sound because all she hears is the echo of please don't do this. She hadn't expected Clarke to care enough to stop her, and now she's thrown wildly off balance. She shouldn't feel guilty because she did nothing wrong, but it's there anyway—heavy and thick and suffocating. She stills, her mind struggling to catch up with the situation despite feeling like she's just taken something hard and blunt to the stomach. When she doesn't respond, Clarke speaks again. “Well, at least you have the guts to do it in person this time.”
Lexa turns, forcing her face impassive, tempering the self-righteousness that flares hot just under her skin. “I was under the impression you did not want to see me.”
“Right. This is my fault. Good to see you haven't matured at all.” She snaps back and shit, Lexa had forgotten just how good Clarke always is at riling her up.
She balls her fists at her side and takes a step closer to hopefully bring the volume down and keep Clarke from making a spectacle of them in front of their colleagues. “I am simply trying to respect your wishes.”
“Maybe try asking what I want next time.” Clarke isn't missing a single beat, each comeback quick as a shot and infinitely more painful.
Lexa thinks she should be over this by now. After all, it was her decision to end their relationship, to choose her friends and family and career in Seattle over a life in DC with Clarke. But being here, with Clarke so close, is sending her careening so far off-kilter she doesn't even feel like she's standing anymore. Being this close to Clarke now feels like tumbling head over foot down an eternal hill, and she hates it. Hates Clarke, in a way, for being alluring despite smelling like an entire drugstore's worth of scented bath products and perfumes, for being beautiful despite the gray pencil skirt/blazer combination that is so utterly boring it's like she's trying to advertise she's a bureaucrat. Like she's morphed with that terrible material they make cubicle walls out of and she wants the world to know it. But christ, Clarke must be some sort of sick addiction for her because she still wants—craves—with a reckless lack of control that pricks goosebumps into her skin.
“Okay.” She takes another step forward, to try to catch the scent of Clarke's skin under all the products. It's entirely subconscious at first, but Lexa enjoys the little hitch in Clarke's breath when they get near enough for the heat of their bodies to mingle and amplify, so she leans in just that little bit more. “What do you want me to do, Clarke?”
She wonders if the phrase sends harsh currents of pleasure skittering across Clarke's skin, too, if she's also remembering Lexa on her knees in front of her, lips wet where she'd intentionally licked them to make them shine for Clarke the way she liked. If the tight set of her jaw and the dilation of her pupils is any indication, Clarke's about three seconds away from either grabbing her by the hair and kissing her or crumpling her heart to dust.
Clarke's always been a bit of a wildcard that way.
Clarke flounders for a moment, lips parting slightly then shutting again, and her eyes flicker from one of Lexa's eyes to the other, then down briefly to her lips where they linger for just a few moments. She seems to catch herself and jolts them back up to her eyes. What Lexa doesn't expect is for Clarke to take a deep breath, swallow thickly, and let her breath back out with a measured control.
What she really doesn't expect is for Clarke to say, “we should talk. Somewhere more private.” Lexa raises a haughty eyebrow and Clarke rolls her eyes in exasperation. “Just talk, Lexa.”
She nods, though the disappointment she feels at that is... unsettling. She knows, she knows hooking up with Clarke would be quite possibly the worst decision she could possibly make in this situation, but there's a large part of her that's really not interested in logic and reason right now. She knows Clarke well enough to trust she won't actually end up killing her and strategically dumping her body, and that talking through whatever volatile mixture of attraction and repulsion is going on between them is wise, but despite how hard she tries to quell it, that flicker of want won't extinguish completely. It burns an aching hole in her chest that she thinks must be visible to anyone who looks hard enough.
Clarke turns to walk away and Lexa chugs down the rest of her drink and leaves it on an empty table before following blindly behind her. It takes a few minutes, but eventually she notices that they're heading to the elevator. Which means Clarke is taking her to her room. For someone who doesn't believe in god, she's found the presence of Clarke Griffin makes her take his name in vain quite a bit. The elevator doors open and they climb inside, standing awkwardly in front of two gray-haired professors, one of which is literally wearing a dark green blazer with an actual patch on the elbow, who Lexa remembers presenting on increasing numbers of forest fires in temperate rainforests and their effects on the local flora. She thinks maybe she should say something about it, pretend her life is normal just be cool/act natural/you got this but that would require turning around and potentially having a conversation that's stilted and cut too short and she's already feeling sufficiently uncomfortable right now, thank you very much.
The doors ping open and the elevator's occupants squeeze between them to make their way out, mumbling hurried apologies as they go. Once the doors are closed again, Clarke sighs and leans back against the elevator wall. Her eyes slide shut and her head tips back. She swallows, and it gives Lexa the perfect opportunity to watch the constricting of her neck muscles, the ridges of her throat. She wishes Clarke wasn't dressed so professionally right now, because she wants to see her collarbones, wants to trace them with gentle fingertips and make Clarke squirm under her touch the way she used to because, as Clarke would say when she was feeling particularly impatient, “you fuck like Fabio.”
It's not long before Clarke's swiping her card in the hotel room door and they're making their way inside the suite (suite? Really? Pencil pushing pays, apparently). Clarke's back is turned to her as she fills a couple tumblers, the clink and glug of ice and whiskey the only sound between them. The whiskey is a nice one, she can tell from the squeak of the cork that caps it again, and she suddenly feels like she's nowhere near enough for Clarke now. Like they're completely different people from who'd they'd been five years ago—Clarke the bureaucrat and Lexa the field scientist. And yet...
There's a warmth here that does not belong: when Clarke turns and their fingers brush when she offers Lexa one of the glasses, when Clarke leans back against the counter and glances up at Lexa from under her lashes and the smallest smile dances on the corner of her lips. It all feels terribly familiar, so much like home. Maybe the gin and tonic she'd drained when Clarke had led her away from the bar had been stronger than she'd thought. That must be it.
Clarke runs her finger gently along the rim of the glass, fidgeting in the way she only ever does when she's nervous and doesn't know how to collect herself. “I'm sorry for snapping at you.”
Clarke is always surprising her, is never easy to understand. She has changed in a great many ways, sure, but that will always remain. It's what she loved about Clarke, her passion and conviction; the way it always came first and held strong. Which tended to mean apologies were few and far between.
“I won't apologize for our breakup.” Lexa says, sure that Clarke's admission is her way of opening up the dialogue. She has always been better at talking than Lexa has, and she's used it to her advantage more times than Lexa can count.
Clarke sighs and turns to rest her hands on the counter. She shakes her head slowly form where it hangs between hunched shoulders. Just barely manages to work out words through clenched teeth. “That's not what this is about, Lexa.”
Lexa wants to step forward, to wrap her arms around Clarke's waist and press her face into her neck. She wants to surround Clarke, be surrounded by her, recapture that warmth she'd felt earlier, the one that made her feel like she was twenty-t hree and coming home to the woman she love s again. She restrains herself, though, because she's not—they're not, haven't been in so long. She wonders if they somehow became friends if it would ever go away: that impulse to touch, to comfort, to confide in ways that friends don't. She wonders if she'll ever stop thinking about kissing her again.
“Then what is it about?” She's stepping on eggshells now, and she's pretty sure she's not going to like whatever answer comes out of Clarke's mouth now. But it seems like there's something on the tip of Clarke's tongue that just won't come out without a little urging, and Lexa learned after countless times of simply allowing Clarke her silence and space that she likes being asked.
“I—” She turns and catches Lexa's eye, and her breath, the words she was about to speak, catch in her throat and she breathes out a self-deprecating laugh. “Damn it.” She reaches up to undo the bun her hair is pulled into then runs both of her hands through it. Somehow, it makes her look more like Clarke when she was Lexa's, and it sends an uncomfortable note ripping through her. “It's about us.”
Lexa swallows, anticipation rising like vomit in her throat. “Us.”
Clarke nods and crosses her arms over her chest. “Yeah.” She takes a deep breath and presses on. “Do you remember the F CDI? Your site applied for it last year.”
Lexa's brow furrows and she shrugs. “Yes, the F orest Conservation ...something... Initiative?” She mutters the words out, trying hard to remember when Indra had briefed her on it. Grants and money were really not her expertise.
“The Forest Conservation Demonstration Initiative. I've been asked to administer the Olympic site.” She rushes the words out quickly, and it takes Lexa a minute to realize what she's saying.
The Olympic site. The Olympic National Forest.
The place where Lexa works
. Well, shit.
“So, you're going to be my boss.”
“No, not your boss. Not exactly. I'll just be there to watch, make sure everything runs smoothly and is an appropriate use of grant funds. I'll only be around the first six months, and then it'll be weekly skype meetings and then you'll only see me bimonthly.” She hasn't stopped rambling yet, which is just fine with Lexa because she's not really listening anyway. Clarke seems to notice this because she takes a tentative step forward, and raises a hand to Lexa's bicep. “Hey. Look, it'll be fine. I'm—I'm over what happened between us, you know? I have a boyfriend now and I love him and I'm happy and there's no reason this has to be weird. I mean, we cared about each other once, right?”
Lexa nods. She did care about Clarke. Tonight has made it painfully obvious she still does. She nods again. “Right.”
Clarke smiles shyly, looking up at Lexa from under her eyelashes, and that sense of home is less a burn, less a comfort now, and more an ache. “I'm really glad to hear that, Lexa. It's not official yet, though, so don't tell anyone?” Her tone tells Lexa it's more a request and less a command. She nods again and Clarke raises her glass out toward her. “To new beginnings.”
Lexa clinks hers against Clarke's and drains it. A new beginning. She can do that.