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Clarke Griffin never usually dresses to impress.
She’s pretty sure it’s a requirement of being an artist. Most of her clothing is old and scruffy – sweatpants, baggy t-shirts, maybe a pair of jeans if she’s feeling like dressing up a little bit – because there’s absolutely no point in wearing something nice when it’s going to get covered in messy splatters of paint. Or pasta sauce.
Hot mess chic. That’s Clarke’s style.
Octavia had the audacity to actually laugh when Clarke told her that she was going shopping for nice clothes two weeks before she started her new job. Raven, on the other hand, volunteered to go with her, but her ulterior motive became apparent very quickly when Clarke was met by the obnoxious flash of the camera on Raven’s phone when she exited the dressing room in the first store to showcase a potential outfit.
But here she is. Two months out of a four year degree where she did very little more than drink inappropriate amounts of tequila and develop the skills needed to throw together an entire portfolio in the two nights before a showcase. And she’s managed to evade unemployment. It’s not exactly the grad job she thought she’d end up in all those years ago when she first decided that she wanted to major in art at college, and secretly Clarke is still harboring hopes that she’s going to hit a big break and have her art displayed in famous galleries across the globe, but it is a job and Clarke isn’t going to complain about her new internship at a design company in the city while some of her friends are still desperately scouring job websites for something that will fund their twice weekly trips to the local bar.
Clearly, Clarke’s talent for convincing her lecturers that she’s not two and a half months behind on portfolio work is a skill easily transferable to bluffing her way through a job interview. She has no idea why they decided to hire her.
The other new thing about Clarke’s internship is that it requires a commute.
The journey into the city isn’t a long one – only seven, reasonably close together stops – but the train is already crowded when Clarke gets on it and it only gets worse as they get closer to the city centre, as more people board at each station that the train passes through. It’s so hot on the train, hundreds of bodies crammed into a space that isn’t made for this many people, but Clarke needs this job so she’s just going to have to deal with the uncomfortable press of strangers’ bodies against her own and the shroud of BO stench that fills the humid car.
The girl gets on the train one stop after Clarke and leaves two stops before her, which gives her just four stops to make an impression on Clarke.
And oh boy, what an impression it is.
Clarke’s first reaction when she spots the girl is to smooth down the fabric of her brand new pencil skirt. She feels incredibly self-conscious about her new style and suddenly the confidence given to her during the impromptu fashion show she gave to her roommates in their living room last night, where each of her new outfits was greeted by raucous cheering and wolf-whistling, is completely forgotten, disappearing as fast as the drab view of townhouses out of the window as the train speeds into the city centre.
There are several ways to dress for an office job in the city. Today, Clarke has opted for a dark grey skirt, a sheer blouse and five inch heels. She spends the whole of the journey from the stop that she gets on the train to the one after it worrying that she’s missed the dress code entirely. Maybe she’s underdressed, maybe she’s overdressed, maybe she should have gone for pants instead of a skirt or worn a top with a higher neckline or put on some shoes that she can actually walk in.
And then, one stop after Clarke’s, the girl boards the train.
Like Clarke says, there are many forms of professional dress and this girl, in Clarke’s eyes at least, manages to nail it. She wears smart black slacks turned up at the ankles and a simple grey sweater rolled up to the elbows, from underneath which emerges the collar of a white shirt. It somehow manages to seem both more casual than Clarke’s attire, and infinitely more professional too, and Clarke is left feeling a little bit like a clown wearing fancy dress in comparison.
The girl is also the prettiest girl that Clarke has ever laid eyes on – soft green eyes and a face that is ninety percent cheekbones and a jawline that could cut diamonds – and Clarke spends the remainder of the journey caught in a terrible dichotomy between wanting to ogle the beauty and not wanting to be caught staring at a stranger on a train.
Clarke loses the heels after a week and a half, following what is quite easily the second most mortifying experience of her professional career. (The most mortifying had been messing up the coffee order on her second day on the job, a task which she has since realised is the one with the most responsibility given to an intern like herself.)
The second most mortifying experience happens during the morning commute.
Clarke doesn’t see the girl on the train every morning. With thousands of commuters into the city every day and Clarke’s particular train running every twelve minutes during the busiest times, it’s statistically improbable that the two of them will end up not only on the same train, but in the same car standing beside each other.
But that’s exactly what happens on this particular Wednesday morning. The doors open at the girl’s station and a fresh wave of commuters flood onto the train, packing themselves into the carriage like sardines. Clarke steps back to make a little bit more room, one of her hands tightly wrapped around the bright yellow pole to keep herself upright as the train starts to move once more, but when she looks up she finds her face only inches from the green eyes and sharp cheekbones of the well-dressed girl from before.
Clarke smiles and then immediately feels stupid for doing it when the girl’s response is to just glance away. What is she even thinking? Nobody smiles at a stranger on a train.
Clarke chastises herself for even considering the idea of smiling, let alone the fact that she actually went through with it. And now she has to spend the next three and a half stops of the train’s journey standing mere inches from this girl while they both try to pretend that Clarke hasn’t committed the most unthinkable crime of commuting etiquette.
So caught up in her own head, in her own embarrassment, Clarke completely forgets that she’s still a novice when it comes to wearing heels and that the shoes need her undivided attention if she wants to avoid making a fool of herself in them. Which is exactly what she does when the train comes to a shuddering stop at the next station. Clarke stumbles as the train draws to a halt, reaching out with a desperate hand for something to cling onto to stop her from going down completely and taking everybody else in the carriage with her like a stack of dominoes.
Except that the thing that her hand collides with isn’t a handrail, or the back of a seat, or even another passenger’s arm, it’s the right breast of the girl with gorgeous eyes and impeccable dress sense.
Clarke is groping a stranger’s boob. At eight fifteen in the morning. On a crowded train.
Her boob.
“I am so sorry!” Clarke starts apologizing immediately, withdrawing her hand as quickly as she would have done if it had brushed against a scalding surface.
The girl is saying something, and Clarke is vaguely aware of words being spoken in her direction, but she’s too busy feeling completely mortified at what’s she’s done for them to register quick enough for her to make a response. Clarke doesn’t think her cheeks have ever been this red before. She sees people getting on and off the train and is in half a mind to ditch the heels and push through the crowd to leap out onto the platform, just to get away from the immediate shame of her actions, but before she has time to make that decision, the doors to the carriage slide shut and she’s once again stuck face to face with the girl, only this time they are both painfully aware that Clarke’s hand has been on the other girl’s boob.
The train continues its journey and Clarke doesn’t think she’s ever been more embarrassed in her life.
“It wasn’t her boob,” insists Clarke, as she recounts the tale in a bar two nights later, much to the amusement of her two best friends. “It was her … her upper chest.”
Octavia turns to look at Raven with one eyebrow arched, and then says dryly, “And to think we used to mock her for majoring in art. Now Clarke’s the real winner in life – she’s not only got a hot internship, but she’s also getting to second base with strangers on the train.”
“I did not get to…” Clarke sighs exasperatedly as she gives up all attempts to convince her friends otherwise. She’s known them for long enough to know that it’s not going to work. “Guys, please.”
“Okay,” says Raven, calming herself down enough to take a sip of her drink, before she lets the wicked grin fall off her face and replaces it with an expression of genuine curiosity that only contains the tiniest hint of a smirk behind it. “So what did she say when you groped her in public.”
Clarke groans as she recalls the memory and mumbles under her breath, “She said, “Usually I expect girls to at least buy me a drink before doing that” or something like that. I don’t know exactly, I was too busy feeling sorry for myself.”
“Oh!” exclaims Raven triumphantly, a gleeful expression returning to her face. “So even she thinks you were feeling her up!”
“And please tell me you took what she handed you on a plate?” adds Octavia, giving Clarke a knowing look.
“What plate?” asks Clarke dumbly, desperately racking her brains in an attempts to work out what she’s missed.
Raven and Octavia let out identical groans, with Raven letting her head drop to the table with a dull thud while Octavia shakes her slowly from side to side in exasperation.
“Oh my god, Clarke,” Octavia groans, as if it is obvious. “You’re such a useless bisexual. What she said was basically an invitation to ask her out for a drink. You’re saying that you didn’t do that?”
“I…” Clarke stumbles over her words and trails off as she realises her mistake.
There probably wouldn’t be a more opportune moment to ask a girl out ever. Octavia is quite right that the chance was pretty much given to her. Perhaps if Clarke was a little more suave, if she wasn’t the kind of girl who still feels out of place wearing anything smarter than sweatpants and a baggy tee, the kind of clumsy idiot to stumble on her own heels and land palm first on another girl’s tit, she would have been able to retaliate with a smooth line of her own and ask the other girl out on a date.
But Clarke is anything but suave and that kind of opportunity isn’t going to present itself again. No, if Clarke wants a date with this girl she’s going to have to put in some serious graft for it. That is, if she can even bear to face the girl again after the humiliation of accidentally groping her in a train car full of middle-aged businessmen doing their morning commute.
“I had just grabbed her boob by accident,” Clarke attempts to justify her actions – or rather her lack of action – to Raven and Octavia. “Asking her out was the last thing on my mind.”
“To Clarke,” Raven says, raising her bottle of beer dramatically over the table that they sit around, a smirk pulling at the corners of her lips as she speaks, “who is as much of a tit as the one she grabbed on the train.”
Octavia follows suit, raising her own drink and adding unhelpfully, “To getting to second base with strangers in public.”
Clarke glowers at her two best friends for only a few seconds, before she realises that she loves them both and can’t stay mad at them for long, begrudgingly raising her own glass as she says, “To not wearing heels to work anymore.”
Clarke reckons she must be one of the craziest people on the planet.
No sane person, after accidentally feeling up a complete stranger in an unacceptably public way, would then seek to run into the same stranger again, and yet that’s exactly what Clarke does. (In an attempt to justify her actions, Clarke reasons with herself that most sane people wouldn’t have wound up in a situation like this in the first place.)
Clarke’s train runs regularly during peak times and it takes her a few days to realise that the girl always gets on exactly the same one each morning, then a few more days of spying the girl on the platform only to watch her get onto a different carriage for Clarke to work out that the girl always gets on the train in the same car.. It’s a predictable routine and once Clarke has it cracked, she adjusts her own routine to make sure that she is always on the same train in the same car.
The next obstacle proves to be the other commuters. Clarke spends three days with the girl in her sights but on the other side of a crowded carriage, and it is only on the fourth day, when Clarke deliberately positions herself just to the side of one of the sliding doors so that she can keep herself close to the girl when she boards at the next stop, that Clarke finally finds herself close enough to initiate a conversation.
Clarke wants to fist pump the air. Except that she doesn’t, because the train is tightly packed with commuters and any kind of movement, particularly one as vigorous as a fist pump, is probably going to end with Clarke’s hand in an inappropriate place on another stranger.
Been there, done that. Clarke hopes to never revisit that particular situation again. Especially as the next person that Clarke ends up accidentally groping is going to end up being considerably less attractive than the last, and that’s a whole world of ew that Clarke doesn’t even want to think about.
It’s a lot harder to start the conversation than Clarke thought it would be. She’s still mortified from their previous encounter and though she’s practiced this situation countless times in her head since the incident, rehearsed what she would say and how the girl might respond, she’s still trembling with nerves.
They stand next to each other for long enough that the train passes through two stations and Clarke realises that she doesn’t have much longer to summon the courage to talk to the girl before she gets off and leaves Clarke to spend another week trying to get close enough on the busy train to have another chance.
“Um, sorry,” Clarke speaks up, “I don’t know if you remember me, but…”
The girl’s eyes fall on Clarke – eyes that are apparently even more beautiful when they are looking at Clarke with such curious intensity – before her lips curl up into a slow smile and she says, “How could I forget? You’re the girl who grabbed my boob. You certainly made an impression.”
“I did?” asks Clarke, her eyebrows shooting up across her forehead in surprise.
“Yes,” answers the girl. “I told all my friends about you. They thought it was hilarious.”
Letting out a low groan of frustration and rolling her eyes, Clarke says, “They should meet my friends. They still won’t shut up about ‘the time Clarke hit on a girl by groping her on a train’.”
The smirk on the girl’s lips is back, as she asks, “So you were hitting on me?”
“No, I…” Clarke stammers, her cheeks flushing in embarrassment as she flusters under the girl’s gaze. “I wanted to. I’m pretty sure that the reason I stumbled was because I was too distracted by trying to think of a way to make a smooth impression on you to keep myself upright.”
“It was an impression,” the girl shrugs. “Not a smooth one though. Unless … unless it was deliberate and this was your plan all along, in which case kudos for being so bold.”
“Nope,” Clarke shakes her head. “Definitely an accident.”
“That’s a shame.”
She stares at Clarke with an intensity that is almost intimidating, though Clarke finds herself unable to draw her eyes away from the green ones that regard her with curiosity, as though the girl has Clarke caught under a spell.
A spell that is only broken when the train shudders to a halt.
“Shit,” says the girl, craning her neck to peer out of the window at the station platform outside as the commuters around them shuffle around to accommodate the new people getting on board. “I get off at the next station. Hold on…”
As the train starts moving again, the girl fumbles around in the satchel hanging from her shoulder and eventually produces a pen and a small scrap of paper, upon which she starts scribbling.
“Despite your unorthodox first impression,” she says to Clarke as she writes, “I think you’re really cute.” She drops the pen back into her bag and passes the little slip of paper across to Clarke, who reads the name ‘Lexa’ scrawled above what is clearly a phone number. “So maybe text me?”
The shock of it all has Clarke’s heart stopping in her chest for a few seconds, unable to believe that this has progressed in the way that it has. When she set out to apologise for their last encounter, the very best case scenario that Clarke envisioned was that she would be forgiven and maybe not reported to the police for sexually harassing another person on a train. She never dared to imagine that it could go way better than that, that this series of events would lead to her being given the girl’s number. To being called cute.
“Okay,” Clarke nods, slipping the scrap of paper into the pocket of her slacks for safe-keeping. “I will.”
“Good,” smiles the girl, and as the train starts to slow to another standstill, bringing about their end of their time together aboard this train, she starts to move towards the doors. “I look forward to it.”
The train doors slide open and the girl disappears onto the platform with one final wave in Clarke’s direction, leaving Clarke with only one overwhelming thought consuming her entire mind.
What the fuck just happened?
Clarke waits until after her lunch break to text the girl – Lexa – when the tiny piece of paper holding Lexa’s phone number starts to feel heavy in the pocket of her work slacks.
(Besides, Clarke reasons to herself as she attempts to psyche herself up to send the message, it’s not like she’s got anything better to do as she waits beside the printer for a stack of almost one hundred pages to reel off the machine.)
Clarke
Hey, this is Clarke from the train this morning
It doesn’t take very long for a reply to come through, and Clarke’s heart does a little flip at the thought that Lexa might have been sitting there with her phone on the desk, waiting for Clarke to text her.
Lexa
Ah, the boob-grabber! I’m glad to hear from you.
Clarke sighs and rolls her eyes at nothing in particular, realising that for as long as Lexa is a part of her life, she is never going to live down their first meeting. What is perhaps a little more surprising, is that Clarke finds herself not minding that, and when Lexa’s face swims into the front of her mind, dressed with a teasing smirk, she realises that she wants Lexa to be a part of her life for the foreseeable future.
Clarke
I really am incredibly sorry about that
Lexa
How about you buy me a drink as an apology? Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll let you grope the other one ;)
A huge smile spreads across Clarke’s face, and she glances around the office quickly to check that nobody has noticed her. The last thing she wants is for one of her new co-workers to sneak up behind her and ask why she’s grinning at her phone like an idiot next to the printer.
Clarke
I’d like that
And then, because she reads it back and realises that it sounds a little creepy;
Clarke
The drink, not the groping! Not to say that I wouldn’t enjoy the groping but what I’m trying to say is that I would love to buy you a drink
Lexa
Tonight after work?
Clarke
It’s a date :)
“Let me guess. You’re a writer. You’ve got an internship at a magazine … no, wait, a publishing company and that’s what takes you into the city.”
They’ve decided to go for dinner rather than drinks, because Lexa says that her day was so busy that she had to skip lunch and Clarke is just perpetually hungry now that she has a job that requires her to be out of bed before noon. And now that they’ve made the necessary small-talk, placed their orders, and chosen a bottle of red wine to share between them, the real conversation starts.
“Artist,” Clarke corrects Lexa’s assumptions about her. “And it’s a graphic design company.”
“Close enough,” smiles Lexa, reaching for her glass of wine and taking a sip.
“So you must be a detective?” teases Clarke.
“Very funny. Not quite. I’m a lawyer. Or at least one in training.”
“Oh god,” groans Clarke, bringing her hand up to her face and resting her palm against her forehead. “If I’d known you were a lawyer I never would have touched you inappropriately on a train. You could probably sue my ass all on your own.”
Lexa looks at Clarke from under her lashes, and says in a low voice, “There are much worse asses to sue.”
Not for the first time in Lexa’s company, Clarke finds herself blushing because of something that Lexa has said.
“Are you always like this?” she asks in a low voice, reaching for her drink and taking a sip so that her mouth isn’t quite so dry.
“Like what?” asks Lexa.
“So smooth?”
“Only when there’s something I really want,” replies Lexa, looking at Clarke with an intense gaze that Clarke recognises from the train this morning, and it is no less devastating in its effect on Clarke’s sanity.
“My ass? Because you should know that I’m more of a third date kind of girl.” Picking up on the sly smirk that starts to push at Lexa’s lips, Clarke adds quickly, “Don’t you dare make another joke about me groping you on a train.”
“What a story to tell the grandkids, huh?”
“Grandkids? That’s a bit forward.”
“Clarke, I don’t think you’re in a position to lecture me about being forward…”
Lexa is incredibly easy to talk to. And incredibly nice to look at. And incredibly…
Yeah, Clarke is definitely enjoying this date.
Lexa stops teasing Clarke about their first meeting almost immediately, and it’s pretty much forgotten as they talk about work, and college, and family. There’s so much to talk about and Lexa seems to ready to listen, and it feels a lot like she’s talking to a close friend that she’s known her entire life, not an almost stranger she’s known since this morning.
Clarke realises that Lexa is out of her league very quickly. Well, it was fairly obvious before their date even begun - one of them has a track history of groping strangers on the train and the other doesn’t, so do the math - but it becomes apparent very soon into the conversation that Lexa is one of those girls that people like Clarke can only ever dream about. She’s well-educated, she’s eloquent, she reads books and takes a yoga class and finds time to play on a women’s soccer team even alongside her busy schedule as a lawyer-in-training, and the fact that she looks like the human reincarnation of some kind of goddess is just the cherry on top of an already very elaborately decorated cake.
When Lexa starts discussing intersectional feminism while they peruse the dessert menu, Clarke wonders if it’s too soon to start writing her marriage vows.
Nothing about their relationship so far has been traditional, and though Clarke hates the thought of succumbing to every gay stereotype by falling for somebody else too fast, she knows straight away that if there’s anybody that it’s worth being a stereotype with, it would be Lexa.
Lexa’s hand finds Clarke’s as they leave the restaurant, leading her along the sidewalk until she draws them both to a halt in the yellow glow of a street lamp.
“So, you said you’re a third date kind of girl?”
Though it’s not a question, Lexa phrases it as one.
“That’s right,” nods Clarke.
Their joined hands still hang between them, and the lamp above them shines down on Lexa’s perfect face, illuminating green eyes that tell more than any words could. In that moment, Clarke knows two things; that Lexa is special, and that she isn’t ready for tonight to end.
“But,” Clarke continues, reaching out with her free hand to hold Lexa’s waist, using it to both bring them closer and to provide herself with support (her track record of staying upright in Lexa’s presence is notoriously poor and what she’s about to say is stressful enough without having to worry about that too), “if we count the time I fell into you as the first date and this morning on the train as the second, then technically…”
Clarke trails off and lets Lexa complete the rest of the sentence in her head. Judging by the way that Lexa’s eyes darken and her hand tightens in Clarke’s, Lexa likes what she hears very much.
“I could call us a cab?” she suggests. “Or we could walk? It would only take us about fifteen minutes to get to my place.”
Glad that her risk has paid off, Clarke exhales in relief, before she answers, “Let’s walk.”
There’s very little preamble when they make it to Lexa’s. Lexa offers Clarke a drink, which she rejects, and within barely a minute of entering the apartment, Clarke is in Lexa’s bedroom, draping her jacket over the back of a chair while Lexa fusses around with lighting a couple of candles.
“I have to say,” Lexa tells her, as she crosses the room to close the blinds now that the pair of candles are giving off a soft orange glow, “when I got on the train this morning, I didn’t expect my day to end up going like this.”
“Like what?” Clarke dares to ask, feeling emboldened by the fact that even after such a shoddy start to their acquaintanceship, she’s still managed to earn an invitation into Lexa’s bedroom.
Lexa glances up. Her eyes are dark and her pupils wide, and Clarke can’t help but hope that it’s not just because of the low level of light in the room.
“With you,” she answers, taking a seat on the end of the bed. “Here.”
Lexa leans back slightly, propping up her weight on her hands, and the expression on her face is as much of an invitation as any other.
“Oh yeah,” asks Clarke, striding across the room towards Lexa and putting a deliberate sway in her hips as she goes. When she reaches the bed, she clambers into Lexa’s lap, swinging one leg on each side of Lexa’s hips. “How about now? How do you see the rest of your night going now?”
Lexa pushes herself upright, lifting both hand to cup Clarke’s face as she crashes their lips together. Lexa’s lips snatch the oxygen from Clarke’s lungs and Clarke’s entire body momentarily forgets how to work, until Lexa pulls her down so that her own back hits the mattress with Clarke on top of her and yeah, this is something that Clarke knows how to do.
Teeth nip at lips, desperate hands pull at clothing, and the result feels like two trains colliding at maximum speed, except that instead of there being a mess of wreckage left in their stead, there’s something wonderful instead, something uniquely magical that feels like it has the power to change the path of human existence in its entirety.
Clarke’s shirt gets tossed onto the floor, closely followed by Lexa’s, and Clarke is using both hands to fumble with the button on Lexa’s pants, impatient in her haste to remove the offending garment, when Lexa pulls back from the kiss.
“Hey, you can slow down,” she exhales, voice gruff, and the knowledge that Lexa’s voice is husky because of her is enough to send a throb of arousal between Clarke’s legs. “There’s no rush.”
Clarke pushes herself into an upright position so that her lips are out of range of Lexa’s, still sitting astride Lexa’s hips. She lets her mouth curl into a sly smile, determined to make Lexa regret her words, and lifts one of her hands to run her fingers through her own hair, sweeping the unruly blonde locks out of her own face. To Lexa’s credit, she waits to watch what Clarke does next, her hands lying flat by her sides, no sign of impatience on her face.
Well that needs to change.
Ever so slowly (there’s no rush after all, Clarke mentally reminds herself with another small smile), Clarke starts to gyrate her hips over Lexa’s, starting off with small movements and gradually making them larger. Clarke lifts one of her hands, placing it on her own stomach, then sliding it across the soft skin of her belly. Her hips pushing down into Lexa’s, Clarke’s hand changes its course and moves upwards, only stopping when her fingertips hit the underwire of her bra.
Clarke smiles in triumph when she follows the line of Lexa’s gaze and realises that the girl beneath her is fixated on her hand, waiting to see if it will dare to move any higher to cup and caress Clarke’s own breast.
But Clarke isn’t going to give in that easily.
She leans forward again, placing one hand on the mattress either side of Lexa’s head to support her own weight, and her hair tumbles over her shoulder, forming a curtain around one side of her face. Clarke leans in slowly, not for a kiss, but to capture Lexa’s lower lip between her teeth, giving it a gentle tug that draws a low groan from Lexa’s throat.
Desperate for more, Lexa lifts her head from the bed, craning her neck at an angle that can’t possibly be comfortable, as she seeks out Clarke's lips for an actual kiss. But Clarke, still very much interested in the long game, moves her mouth away at the last moment, and Lexa’s head slumps back against the bed in defeat.
“Clarke…”
“There’s no rush, remember?” Clarke reminds Lexa with a smirk, rocking her hips into Lexa’s as she speaks and letting an obscene little groan escape through her parted lips as the action provides a small moment of relief to the growing ache between her thighs.
“I’ve changed my mind,” says Lexa, lifting her hands and placing one on each of Clarke's hips, encouraging her to move like that again. “There absolutely is a rush.”
Lexa uses a sudden movement to roll them over until Clarke is on her back, with Lexa still tucked neatly between Clarke’s thighs, only above her now. What little air Clarke still has in her lungs escapes in a soft gasp as Lexa connects their lips, bruising Clarke’s mouth with the intensity of the kiss.
Their change in position provides Clarke’s hands with easy access to Lexa’s back and she explores the new area, tracing her fingertips across planes of muscle and the ridges of Lexa’s spine. When her fingers find the strap of Lexa’s bra, Clarke slides them along the fabric until she finds the clasp, toying with it for only a moment before she pops it open. The bra falls down Lexa’s arms onto Clarke’s chest, and Lexa adjusts ever so slightly so that she can disentangle her arms from the straps and toss it onto the floor with their shirts.
With Lexa’s upper half exposed, Clarke moves one of her hands around to Lexa’s front, grazing her fingers over Lexa’s ribcage as she moves them upwards to cover Lexa’s breast.
“Well this seems familiar,” Lexa mumbles against Clarke’s lips, and Clarke can feel the other girl’s mouth turn up into a smile against her own.
“Ass,” growls Clarke, giving Lexa’s breast a playful squeeze.
“Actually, I think you’ll find that’s my…”
Fed up with Lexa’s smart mouth, Clarke lifts her head up off the bed to crash their lips together, startling Lexa into silence. She swipes her tongue against the seam of Lexa’s mouth, hot and dirty, then locates Lexa’s nipple with her fingers, plucking the hardening bud between her thumb and index finger in a gesture that draws out a filthy moan from between Lexa’s lips.
“Off,” Lexa mutters between kisses, tugging pathetically at the waistband of Clarke’s jeans as if that’s going to get them to suddenly fly down Clarke’s legs and onto the floor. “I want them off.”
Clarke pulls back from the kiss, though not without sweeping her tongue against Lexa’s one more time, and then says, “So take them off me.”
Clarke punctuates her words with another pinch of Lexa’s nipple, which elicits another moan and causes Lexa to rock her hips into Clarke’s, and the movement only alerts Clarke to the fact that yeah, she kind of wants her jeans off too, and Lexa’s, and all of the rest of the clothing that still acts as a barrier to what they both want.
It becomes a race to undress the other, a race in which Lexa quickly diminishes Clarke’s headstart by effortlessly unsnapping Clarke’s bra and throwing it to the floor. They somehow manage to navigate the much trickier task of removing both pairs of pants, though not without a fair few distractions in the form of messy open-mouthed kisses.
By the time they are down to their panties, Clarke is a mess. The ache between her legs has become almost unbearable and from the way that Lexa is rocking against Clarke’s thigh, seeking out friction of her own while providing very little of the stimulation that Clarke needs for her own relief, tells Clarke that Lexa is in a similar state.
Clarke takes the next step herself. She pushes her own panties down her legs and throws them away to the side, not caring where they land, then wraps her fingers around Lexa’s wrist to guide Lexa’s hand between her legs.
“Fuck,” gasps Lexa, when her fingers encounter wetness.
Clarke doesn’t let herself feel embarrassed by how turned on she is - there isn’t time for that. Instead she uses the hand wrapped around Lexa’s wrist to slide Lexa’s fingers down through her waiting arousal, releasing a low groan as delicate fingertips brush over the sensitive nub of her clit.
“Touch me,” Clarke begs, not allowing herself to care about how desperate she might sound.
Lexa’s hand starts to move without encouragement, exploring Clarke’s folds as she dips down to circle Clarke’s entrance, then drags her fingers back up at a painfully slow pace. It’s exquisite torture, almost what Clarke needs but not quite enough.
“Lexa…”
Lexa’s fingers slide lower again but with more purpose, and as she easily enters Clarke with one long finger, Lexa props her body weight up on the other arm, watching Clarke with dark eyes filled with curiosity for her reaction to each movement.
Clarke lets out an an incomprehensible noise that is a little bit of yes and a whole lot of more, and Lexa’s finger starts to move, reaching impossibly deeper with each thrust. When Lexa withdraws entirely and re-enters Clarke with the addition of a second digit, Clarke feels as though she is being slowly turned inside out in the most glorious of ways.
Lexa’s fingers work magic, and Clarke feels herself being pulled higher and higher, as if being suspended by invisible strings. She’s so delirious, preparing to soar on a wave of ecstasy, that she barely notices the fact that Lexa is rocking her own underwear-clad centre against Clarke’s thigh for friction, until Lexa breathes out a desperate plea.
“Clarke, I need…”
Clarke pushes through her own gaze of pleasure and slides a hand down Lexa’s toned stomach and beneath the band of her cotton underwear, dipping her fingers into the extensive wetness between Lexa’s legs. It’s hard to focus on anything but the overwhelming pleasure building between her own legs, but she locates the slippery nub of Lexa's clit and ties to concentrate on drawing precise patterns on it devised specifically to bring Lexa to the peak of pleasure.
“Uh, I’m - I’m close,” pants Lexa.
Clarke thinks that the speed at which she’s hurtling towards her own orgasm should cause her as much embarrassment as her first encounter with Lexa, but her only saving grace is that Lexa is getting there just as fast, and without the same stimulation that Clarke has been given.
“I’m - I…”
Lexa tries to gasp out something - exactly what, Clarke will never be entirely sure - and then she is falling apart on top of Clarke. And Clarke is grateful that she is already so close, because all it takes is the feeling of Lexa’s arousal gushing over her fingertips, the sound of Lexa's orgasm spilling from her lips, and one more swipe of Lexa’s fingertips hooking against Clarke's front walls as they thrust, and she’s coming too.
It’s a long moment of shared bliss, full of trembling limbs and breathy moans, of flying high above the rest of the world with nothing but Lexa’s body wrapped around her own to keep Clarke anchored to reality. They come down together, slowly, with messy kisses pressed to cheeks and foreheads and sticky fingers wiping themselves against Lexa’s bedsheets.
“Wow,” Clarke exhales, when the last tremors of her orgasm have tapered out and Lexa curls into her side with an arm draped loosely over Clarke's stomach. “That was something else.”
“Shhh,” Lexa hushes her, eyes closed in bliss.
“Oh sorry,” Clarke smirks, pressing her lips to the top of Lexa’s head, then asks, “Did I wear you out?”
Lexa opens one eye and lifts her head from Clarke’s chest, and then says, “Excuse me, I did most of the work.”
Clarke lets one of her hands slide down to Lexa’s butt, palming the soft flesh and giving it a squeeze, before she says, “Do you want me to make it up to you?”
Lexa lets out a noncommittal hum, like she isn’t bothered whether Clarke gets her off again or not, but the way that her hand tightens over Clarke’s stomach and the subtle clench of her legs, neither of which are missed by Clarke’s observant eyes, tell an entirely different story. Clarke pries herself out from Lexa’s arms and rolls Lexa onto her back, tucking her own body between Lexa’s legs as she starts to press her mouth to the sharp angles of Lexa’s collarbones with the intention of moving lower.
“Have I earned another date or do I need to grope you in public again before that can happen?”
Clarke’s lips have travelled over the swell of the Lexa’s breasts and reaches her navel, and she swirls her tongue around the dip of Lexa’s belly button.
“I think you’re good,” hisses Lexa.
“Only good?” Clarke teases, smiling to herself in triumph as she respositions herself between Lexa’s legs so that her head is between Lexa’s thighs. “Let’s see if we can change that, hmmm?”