Chapter Text
Clarke awoke slowly, consciousness returning bit by bit. Her first awareness was of the warm body beneath her, wrapped tightly in about 90% of the available blankets. The pillow beneath her smelled familiar, sharp and sweet, but she couldn’t place the scent. She smiled softly as she attempted to claim a bit of the sheet for herself. Niylah wasn’t usually like that; they must have left the air conditioning on too high. She tugged at the edge of the fabric, exposing a slim shoulder and waves of thick, dark hair.
“Fuck.”
And then it all rushed back to her: the club, the kiss, the…everything else. Lexa’s body language, her refusal to talk, had been clear. She hadn’t wanted anything more than sex. Clarke’s stomach contracted, and not because of her impending hangover. She had to get out of this apartment.
She retraced last night’s path through the apartment, hastily dressing herself with each garment retrieved from the floor.
The front door closed too loudly behind her. She didn’t quite have control over her hands. She slumped against the door and slid down to plop unceremoniously on the rough, industrial carpeting of the hallway. She pulled out her phone and selected a contact she hadn’t touched in three years.
Clarke (9:23 AM): I’m sorry
It was nowhere near enough, but it was something, and it was about all Clarke felt capable of doing at that moment. One of Lexa’s neighbors opened a door down the hall, and Clarke decided she didn’t want to be the person losing her shit in a public hallway this early in the morning. She pressed her palms into the carpet and hefted herself to a standing position. She had other apologies to attend to.
//
“Thanks for meeting me.”
“I’m always up for pancakes.” Niylah’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. Clarke hadn’t seen her much since walking out on the movie marathon.
Clarke cast her eyes to the ceiling for courage. “Look, Niylah, I—”
“It’s okay, Clarke. You don’t have to apologize.”
“No, I do. You deserve better than the way I’ve treated you the past few days. Better than the way I’ve treated you this whole time, really.”
“You’re right. I do. And I know you’re too fond of beating yourself up to believe me, but I’m not mad at you.” Clarke opened her mouth, but Niylah kept speaking. “Neither of us can help it if you don’t feel the way I do. You don’t want a relationship, and that’s fine. I thought I didn’t, either. But things have changed, and I can tell you’re scared.”
“Not scared, exactly. Just…I don’t know.” She did know, though. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
Their waitress chose that moment to suddenly appear to take their order. Clarke normally would have seen this interruption as a blessing, a sign from the Universe that she didn’t have to have the hard conversation. But she didn’t want to lie anymore.
“I’ll just have a coffee,” Clarke told the waitress, trying not to notice Niylah’s pursed lips and crinkled forehead. After Clarke came clean, Niylah wouldn’t want to eat with her anyway.
//
Niylah didn’t push her to talk. She really was too kind, more than Clarke deserved. But it was time. “I know I’m not the most open person, but I want that to change. Something happened last night, Niylah. With someone else.”
“Was that the first time?”
Clarke nodded.
“Thanks for telling me.” Niylah’s eyes didn’t leave Clarke’s, and her words seemed genuine.
“How are you so cool about this?”
Niylah put down her knife and fork. “I wouldn’t say I’m cool with it. But am I surprised? No. Whatever we had, your heart wasn’t in it. I don’t know if the person you were with last night is the reason or not, but there’s some part of you that I couldn’t touch.” She paused and took a long breath. “It was almost romantic, the challenge of drawing out your darkness. I was never going to be the one to heal you, though. I hope you can do it yourself.”
Clarke’s mouth fell open. How had she not noticed Niylah noticing these things?
A small but warm smile curled Niylah’s lips. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. Well, maybe a little,” she conceded. “I care about you, Clarke, and maybe once you sort yourself out we can be friends.” She stood and pulled Clarke into a quick embrace. “Right now, though, I could use some time alone with my pancakes.”
“Okay.” Clarke didn’t know what else to say. She pulled some cash out of her wallet to cover the coffee she’d barely touched and drifted out of the restaurant and into a warm, sunny morning that felt personally offensive.
//
Thankfully, the house was empty when Clarke arrived. If there were ever a time when she needed her space, this was it. She found a Spotify playlist entitled “Hell and Heartbreak” and turned the volume up all the way. She wrangled her hair into a messy bun and pulled down the blinds in her bedroom.
She painted. The need to run a brush across a canvas was desperate, overwhelming. It was what made her a Painter, though art was not her profession. She didn’t have time to eat breakfast or change out of last night’s clothes. The artistic rut of the past several months had burst like a decades-old dam, leaving her to fight against the current—or let it carry her.
And carry her it did. Warm, bright colors poured from her mind’s eye onto canvas: scarlet, crimson, vermillion, sienna, tawny gold. All the stars in her blue-black galaxies had suddenly gone supernova. She felt echoes of that elemental energy inside her, coursing through her blood and threatening to turn her inside out, to make her something fundamentally new.
//
Clarke often lost time while painting, but today she couldn’t have said what planet she was on. She slowly became aware of soft voices outside her door. She lifted a hand to her throbbing forehead, smudging bright red paint on her hairline in the process, turned her easel away from the door, and hoarsely shouted, “Come in!”
Raven and Octavia nearly tripped over each other on their way through the door.
Octavia gave Raven’s shoulder a gentle push. “I told you she was fine.”
“What do you mean, she’s fine? We’ve caught her red-handed!” Raven grinned.
Clarke looked down at her hands. They were covered in paint. Her nice shirt was splattered. Standing up was suddenly too much work.
Octavia was at her side before she hit the floor. “Clarke, honey, what happened?”
She found herself recounting everything that had happened with Lexa. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. And then came the tears.
Raven knelt on Clarke’s other side. Neither she nor Octavia said anything.
Clarke ran out of tears as she reached the end of her story. “It feels…good…to finally talk about it.”
Her roommates smiled. “Yeah?” Raven asked.
“Yeah.” She nodded vigorously, which seemed to clear her head a bit.
“Do you think it would feel good to talk to Lexa?” Octavia ventured.
That she couldn’t do. Clarke groaned. Where would she even start? Talking to Lexa, really being honest with her, would mean sorting through how she actually felt. To be honest with Lexa, she’d have to stop lying to herself.