Chapter Text
“Do you need help tying your shoes?”
“Uh-uh,” Noel says, shaking his head distractedly. His tongue appears at the corner of his mouth as he grabs the shoelaces.
With patient eyes, Clarke leans against the wall, arms loosely crossed over her chest, Noel's cap and gloves hung from her hands. She watches as he struggles with the loops. He learned it quickly, but he forgets to tighten the knots, sometimes.
“Pull,” Clarke reminds him, smiling when he tugs excitedly at the laces.
“Done,” he says, and he pushes himself up off the floor and runs towards the door.
“Noel, your coat.”
The boy sighs and lets go of the door handle he has already wrestled halfway down and goes to grab his coat. The first arm slides in easily, but the second takes three attempts. Clarke wants to help him, but she knows he’ll just look at her with his adorably offended eyes and say “No!” because he wants to do it himself. Before he can run to the door again, Clarke pushes the cap over his head, sufficiently covering his blond hair, and holds out the gloves for him. He takes them and looks at her expectantly, a nonverbal question that he definitely got from Lexa.
Clarke kneels, grabs the lapels of his coat, and pulls him closer so she can kiss him on his nose. He makes a face and Clarke grins.
“Ready?”
He nods and mirrors his mom’s grin.
“Alright, go ahead. Let me just grab my coat and I’m right behind you, okay?”
“Okay,” Noel calls, already surging for the door handle again.
Clarke puts on her coat and picks up the plastic container with the supplies Noel picked out himself. She pulls the door shut behind her and takes a moment to enjoy the sight before her. In the middle of the backyard, Noel is on his knees in the snow already busy shoveling the white stuff into a pile with his tiny arms.
“If you make a snowball and roll it in the snow it's easier,” Clarke says, hearing her father's voice say the exact same thing in her mind.
Noel stops and looks up at her. His cheeks are already freshly red, and he wipes his nose with the sleeve of his coat.
“Want me to show you?”
“Mhm.”
“Okay. So you make a snowball.” Clarke kneels beside him to demonstrate. She presses snow into a ball between her ungloved hands and proceeds to press it into the snow. “And then you roll it in the snow and it'll grow big like this, see?”
His eyes grow wide and curious, and he makes his own snowball without another word. Once Clarke tells him to add a bit of pressure, the snowball begins picking up size quickly.
“See Mom!” He calls, his smile is bright and proud as he points at the snowball that now reaches halfway up his shin.
“I see it. Good job, Noel. Are we still making three?”
“Mhm. You, Momma and me,” he nods.
“Alright. Why don't you start on another snowball and I will finish this one?”
“Okay.”
They make three snowpeople. Two big and one small, and as Clarke places the last head on the last body, she catches Noel look towards the house and sign ‘Okay’.
Clarke barely gets to turn around before a big, fat snowball hits her square in the chest.
“Wifey of mine!” Clarke gasp screams, “you did not just–”
Another snowball hits her from behind. It's small and soft and feels mostly like a pat on the back of her thigh.
“Child of mine!” Clarke spins around and looks at Noel with calculating, but playful eyes. She bends her knees and approaches Noel with sneaky steps and outstretched arms. He runs off giggling and almost tripping over his feet in the snow, but before Clarke can get to him, she is tackled to the ground.
Lexa still has the decency to break the fall, and Clarke forgets for a split second to be mad at her, or at least pretend to be.
“Lex! Are you okay?” Clarke shifts in her arms to look at her. There's snow in her hair and warmth in her eyes, and Clarke wants to freeze this moment, her fingers itching to curl around a pencil.
A mischievous smile dances on Lexa's lips, but before Clarke is able to register what happens, another soft snowball hits her from behind. It's delivered with a fit of boyish giggles that has Clarke's heart melting – not even the ice cold snow that Lexa smears in her face can change that.
“Lex!” Clarke screams. She struggles to swat Lexa's arms away, but really, it's no struggle at all because Lexa surrenders immediately.
“Clarke.” Lexa smiles that half smile of hers, melting Clarke's heart a bit more.
And Clarke can't help herself. She leans down to place a soft kiss on her wife's lips.
And there may be a fragment of a moment where time does freeze, but no more than that because a small snowball impacts with their faces bursting their bubble in a charmingly brutal manner.
“Noel!” Clarke shrills, and it's no more than a second before she's up and chasing him. This time she catches him, and his giggles grow desperate as she tickles him in the snow.
Ten feet away, Lexa lies on the ground looking up into the sky. It has begun snowing again, and she watches large fluffy snowflake gracefully drift towards her. She lets her cheeks catch a few, the feather light touch settling in her heart, and she places a hand on her snowflake tattoo for a moment before sitting up.
“Clarke,” she calls, but the tickle fight drowns out her voice.
“Clarke!” Lexa calls, a bit louder this time, and Clarke immediately stops and looks at her. She points to the sky and watches her wife take it in, her smile and ocean eyes brightening like a morning sun.
“It's snowing!” Clarke jumps to her feet and pulls Noel with her.
Lexa sits dumbfounded on the ground and watches two pairs of ocean blue eyes point upwards, and if she ever doubted that her wife and son share the same DNA, she won't now as they both stick out their tongue to catch snowflakes in perfect synchronicity.
She sits there watching them with a lovestruck smile on her lips until Clarke goes to pick up the plastic container.
“So… Noel. How about we give these snowpeople a face, huh?” Clarke places the container on the ground in front of Noel, and he immediately bends over to have a look, his tiny gloves resting on the edge of the box.
There are carrots for their noses and buttons for their eyes. One snowperson gets green eyes, the other two gets blue ones. They all get a big smiling mouth and a scarf around their neck, and when they're done, Lexa kneels beside Noel and kisses him on the side of his face.
“Love you,” Lexa says, and Noel signs ‘I love you’ back.
Lexa looks up at her wife who studies the snowpeople with a silent yearning. Lexa knows that look, it lives in her own heart. Hopefully, within the next year, they'll be able to tell Noel he'll have a baby sibling.
Hopefully.
As for now, Lexa is more than grateful for what she has, and she grabs Clarke's hand and kisses her knuckles, just above her wedding ring.
“Hot chocolate, anyone?” Clarke asks, blinking away the emotion that had glossed her eyes over.
“Me!” Noel screams.
“And Momma?” Clarke grins.
Lexa straightens up, runs a hand over Noel's head, and kisses her wife on the cheek. She nods and guides her family back inside.