Chapter Text
“… authorities say they have established contact with the individual, who claims to be the missing son of the late former basketball champion Dalton Reid. If so, this could put Reid’s highly contested will in question, as his three ex-wives battle for dominance over the family fortune…”
Lexa Grimaldi, co-anchor for Channel’s 7’s popular Morning News Rundown show, read from the prompter without issue, putting on her best announcer’s voice despite her extreme exhaustion. She hadn’t slept much last night. In fact, she hadn’t slept much the whole last two months. She had been an insomniac wreck ever since Channel 7’s parent company had laid off a number of her colleagues and shifted some personnel over from their east coast Channel 3 counterpart to merge their stations.
Lexa had been lucky. She was well-liked across the southern California region, and she had a small but vocal fanbase that made firing her a difficult thing to do. She tended to ignore these fans because if she let herself buy into their praise, she was afraid her ego would grow too big to be contained within her body. She ignored the tags and mentions on social media, and she had a rule that she only answered “fanmail” if the sender had a well thought out question or point to make about something she had reported on.
But it wasn’t the change in the show that had set her insomnia off the past few months. While she had lost some colleagues she respected, she found herself faced with an even more insidious problem: the new weather reporter, Clarke Griffin.
Lexa had never heard of Clarke Griffin before, and this was surprising because she knew all the names from her various media counterparts across the country. Clarke was coming on board as their chief meteorologist, yet there wasn’t a thing online about her that Lexa could find – no record of schooling, no qualifications, nary a single article about her. All she had gathered from the memo she received from her producer was that Clarke worked behind the scenes at Channel 3 and was now coming aboard to step in front of the camera.
Lexa was enraged. They had fired her weather girl, Luna Steele, who had started at the channel at the same time as Lexa, and who had been, if sometimes a little emotionally intense, a foundational rock at the station for her, someone she could go to when she was stressed or upset, but also someone she could let loose and have a little fun with.
Lexa had made up her mind that she hated Clarke a minute after she heard the announcement she was coming on board. When it was clarified that the following Monday would be her first day in the studio, Lexa took it upon herself to prepare the most appropriate welcome: she was going to snub Clarke. She was going to offer her the most passive aggressive welcome to the west coast she could muster. She was going to show that she cared so little about Clarke’s existence that Clarke would silently quit and go become an accountant or potato harvester, far away from media.
On Monday morning at six-thirty sharp, Lexa was sitting in her chair, mumbling under her breath to warm up her voice, ready to battle public enemy number one. She heard footsteps behind her. It didn’t sound like her heavy-footed co-anchor, Roan Bernhardt, and she already knew that their producer made no sound when she walked, so it couldn’t be her. Maybe it was the new girl waltzing into the studio noisily, taking Luna’s green screen and camera angles and job security and-
“Good morning,” came a steady, kind-sounding voice from behind her. “I’m Clarke.”
The first time Lexa heard the voice, she paused. Of all the sounds, she had not expected that voice. It was a little low but feminine, just slightly raspy around the edges, which could have been from sleepiness or maybe a pack of cigarettes a day – possibly both, Lexa thought judgementally – and musical. It was a beautiful, lyrical song that suddenly flooded into her ears, and Lexa didn’t mean to turn around so eagerly, but she did. When she actually saw the person behind the voice, she went completely still.
Holy shit, she thought.
The woman (girl, really. She looked like a child – what was she, sixteen and doing her first internship?) was dressed in a navy blue dress, a white cardigan, and black flats. She looked like the personification of a rainy day emoji.
Lexa would have chuckled at the comparison if she hadn’t seen Clarke’s face. But as luck would have it, she had two fully-functioning eyes, and they were drawn to the ray of sunlight that demanded her undivided attention. The girl was smiling softly, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide and hopeful, her skin smoother than anything Lexa had ever seen before, her hair golden and wavy and falling over her shoulders.
Lexa was done. Gone. Finished. Of all the sights she had expected to see, it was not this. This person, after a two-second glance, was a complete package full of contradictions – adorable yet somehow still smoking hot, innocent and cute yet somehow exuding an air of maturity and confidence. She was here to do a job, but she was going to be as nice as possible about it.
Jesus, she’s pretty, was all Lexa could think as she sat there staring dumbly at their new weather girl.
“I’m thrilled to meet you,” Clarke said, sticking a hand out to Lexa.
Lexa stared at her for a second.
And really polite. Crap.
Clarke stood there, her arm outstretched, waiting, watching Lexa just stare at her.
“You’re Lexa Grimaldi, right? Big fan.”
Lexa jaw sat slack as she tried to gather the strength to enact her plan of snubbing Clarke. She was going to be rude, unwelcoming, mean, awful, terrible-
“It’s very nice to meet you,” Lexa replied, stretching her own arm out and shaking Clarke’s hand.
Clarke shook back firmly.
Oh my god, a woman with a strong business handshake. Kill me. Kill me now.
“I’m also a fan of you,” Lexa added on.
What? No I’m not. What am I talking about? I don’t know her.
Clarke frowned amusedly at this, and Lexa melted despite her mistake. Clarke had no online presence, no face on a show, nothing. There was no way Lexa could be a fan.
But I definitely don’t hate her.
“I don’t know how you managed to keep it together the day of the bakery explosion in Cooksville,” Clarke began talking again. “Reporting on all those deaths and injuries. I would have lost it. I couldn’t even have a phone conversation with my friend about it because I was so horrified, but there you were keeping it together with your co-anchor. You’re a face people trust, and I’m really honoured to be able to join your team.”
Well... Lexa thought. Fuck my life.
She couldn’t hate this person. Not when she was so nice, so polite, so generous.
So hot.
And so instead of declaring war, Lexa fell in love instead.
******
Clarke walked around like the perfect house guest for the first two weeks. She barely made a sound when she entered rooms, not wanting to disturb the people in them. She was early to work every morning so that she could be prepared to go on air at seven-thirty sharp. She dressed impeccably, wearing a new outfit every day, not a hair looking out of place. She treated everyone with respect, from the producer right down to the coffee boy. She always had something positive to say to everyone as they started their days.
Lexa watched her hopelessly, trying to find a slip up so she could go back to her original plan of hating Clarke. But there was nothing to criticize her about. She was perfect. Perfectly nice, perfectly polite, perfectly behaved, perfectly capable.
But after a few weeks, Lexa noticed one thing. She had had multiple small conversations with Clarke over this time. After all, they worked in the same studio, and they talked on air several times over the course of their two-hour morning show. What Lexa had noticed was that no matter how many conversations they had, she didn’t learn that much about Clarke. She knew what her job was, plus a few innocuous personal details, such as her favourite cocktail and that she liked beaches. But nothing deeper. She kept information close to her chest, and Lexa was someone who liked to have all the information.
Lexa began to look into her. Roan was her first target. He had been at Channel 7 for seven years, and Lexa had replaced the previous morning show co-anchor he had started with. They gelled well together and had developed a friendly rapport, though sometimes it veered into sibling rivalry territory. She had seen Roan speaking with Clarke several times throughout the weeks, and she figured she’d check on what he had gathered about her.
“So what’s her story?” Lexa asked casually one day after Roan and Clarke had finished chatting about something Lexa couldn’t hear.
“Oh, she was just telling me about a few beaches in the Carolinas she went to on a trip a few years ago.”
Lexa shook her head.
“I mean, what do you know about her? You guys are friendly, aren’t you?”
Roan shrugged.
“We’ve talked a few times,” he said.
Yeah, and it better not have been more than that, Lexa thought off handedly, scowling in her mind. Roan was red-blooded. Polite and gentlemanly, but not afraid to pursue what he wanted aggressively.
“Well? What’s she doing here?” Lexa asked, pushing her thoughts down. “Where is she from? What’s her favourite potato chip?”
Roan looked at Lexa like she was crazy.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t know. Why do you need to know?”
Lexa huffed.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that we don’t know anything about her? She unseated Luna, our super qualified, well-liked meteorologist, and yet there’s nothing about her anywhere. We haven’t learned anything substantive about her since she got here.”
Roan shrugged.
“If you’re so curious, then why don’t you just ask her?”
This shut Lexa up, but Roan didn’t notice because Indra Laszlo, their producer and fearless leader of the Morning News Rundown, hollered from the other side of the studio that it was time to get going. Lexa eyed Clarke as she took her position in front of her green screen, and she sighed.
She would get to the bottom of the mystery that was Clarke Griffin.
******
Lexa stopped sleeping, and every waking hour was spent thinking about Clarke. She started going into the studio earlier than Clarke so she could have a chance to casually bump into her first thing in the morning when hardly anybody was around. She sometimes walked mindlessly around the corridors to increase her likelihood of seeing Clarke. Slowly, the two built up a friendly rapport. Their conversations remained at a painfully surface level, but Lexa didn’t let that dissuade her from trying to learn more. Clarke was so polite, but she also seemed to genuinely enjoy the small talk she shared with Lexa.
While they didn’t get too deep into their backgrounds, Clarke did let on that she hadn’t done this kind of job before – she was indeed a weather expert, but not one who stood in front of the camera. One day Lexa imparted a small bit of advice when she noticed Clarke staring at a list of words on her phone.
“Don’t do the word-a-day calendar thing. You’ll get called out on it. Trust me. I did it my second week on the air, and the audience knew immediately. They dragged me through the mud for a couple of weeks.”
Clarke widened her eyes slightly.
“I was just about to start trying to work in some new vocab into my forecasts.”
Lexa shook her head resolutely. She had heard Clarke speaking for several weeks now, and there was nothing to suggest that her vocabulary was lacking. She was well-spoken and confident, which belied her fresh-eyed baby face.
“No, you speak very well. Don’t change it. They’ll know.”
She narrowed her eyes and tapped her left temple with her finger. For some reason, this sent Clarke into deliciously beautiful peals of laughter. Lexa fed off of the sound. When she went home, she spent all night going over every single word in their conversation, every shared look. She did this every night. She would fall asleep at one or two in the morning. Unfortunately, her alarm went off at five every morning, so she was slowly building up a bad sleep deficit.
******
A month into Clarke working at Channel 7, it was Lexa’s birthday, and Roan brought a card for everyone to sign. When she got home later that afternoon, she stared at Clarke’s short message in the corner.
Happy birthday, Lexa. Wishing you sunny skies on your special day.
XO
CG
She stared at the message for two hours straight, dissecting every syllable and pen stroke, debating whether “XO” was a stand in for literal hugs and kisses or if it was just how she signed off on all office cards. She was almost late for the birthday dinner her friends had organized for her.
******
Three Wednesdays later, Lexa got in to the studio at a quarter past six. She liked to do the majority of her own hair and makeup, so she only needed a touch up from the crew. She went to go sit at her desk early and was pleasantly surprised to see Clarke there early, swiping through a tablet, her lip pinched between her teeth, focusing hard.
“Good morning,” Lexa called out.
Clarke looked up, startled, her face then breaking out into a smile.
“Morning, Lexa.”
It had been almost two months of casual chats, and Lexa was feeling more comfortable around her colleague. She normally would leave Clarke to focus on her pre-show prep, but something struck her about the way Clarke was peering down at what she was looking at that made Lexa think she needed help.
“All ok?” she asked, walking over to Clarke’s corner of the world.
Clarke nodded, then shook her head, looking back down at her tablet.
“Indra asked me last week to make the forecast a little more personal starting today. She wants me to add some pictures from the region. So I spent the weekend travelling around and grabbing these shots, but I’m really not sure which ones to tell the tech team to load.”
Lexa frowned and checked the time on her phone. It was way too close to the start of the show to still be selecting content. She moved to stand beside Clarke and look over her arm as she swiped through pictures.
“That one’s nice,” Lexa piped up, pointing to a picture of the sun setting over the ocean, a beach stretching out in the foreground of the shot.
“Yeah?” Clarke asked unsurely.
“Mhm,” Lexa said with a nod. “It’s a cloudless day, people being on the beach in the evening shows the temperature is nice, the framing is great. This one for sure.”
Clarke tagged it for sharing.
“Ok, I need one more. Here,” she said, handing Lexa the tablet.
Lexa took it and flipped through the pictures slowly. She paused on one of a chihuahua sitting beside a fountain, obviously hot and thirsty and staring at the water determinedly, trying to figure out how to get in without falling.
“And this one. Come on, a small dog about to do something silly on a hot day? This is it.”
Clarke beamed as Lexa handed the tablet back, and she busied herself with sharing the two pictures with the tech crew.
“Thanks,” she said as she typed.
Lexa watched, letting the girl finish before speaking up.
“A little friendly advice?” Lexa offered, and Clarke nodded enthusiastically. “Don’t wait till the last minute to send these guys stuff like this. They appreciate it the day before.”
Clarke’s face fell slightly.
“I know. I’ve been trying to decide the past few days but I just couldn’t.”
Lexa casually reach out and patted Clarke on the shoulder.
Oh my god, she thought. Why would I do that? Why would I touch someone I barely know?
“Don’t be afraid to ask your colleagues for help. If you’re ever stuck, just come to me. I’ll help you.”
Clarke gave her a grateful smile.
“Thanks, I will.”
Lexa hoped she meant it because it was moments like this where she realized she could learn a lot. In fact, she had just learned a few things about Clarke during this particular interlude.
One was that Clarke took her job very seriously and had spent the weekend travelling around to take pictures, probably at great expense, as the price of gas had skyrocketed the past few months.
Two was that Clarke was a very good photographer who didn’t seem to realize it. That was a valuable person to have on the team. Lexa was sure it was a skillset that would help bolster Clarke’s position here if layoffs ever came about again.
Uh, here I go thinking about people getting fired. They can’t possibly get rid of more of us so soon after the first batch.
Instead of thinking about losing more team members, Lexa settled on replaying her conversation with Clarke in her mind until Roan arrived and they got ready for their show.
The show went off flawlessly. Lexa and Roan read the morning brief headlines first before Lexa called for Clarke’s first weather report of the day.
“And now with the weather, Clarke Griffin,” she said into camera two, then turning her head to face Clarke across the studio once she knew they had now cut to camera four, focusing on the weather station. “Clarke, what’s the rest of the week looking like?”
Clarke glanced over at Lexa, gave her a brilliant smile – the most brilliant smile Lexa could remember ever getting from anyone – and launched into the forecast. Lexa blanked out at this point, and the rest of her morning was performed on auto pilot. She didn’t remember Clarke’s photos appearing on the screen or her stories attached to them. She simply couldn’t get that smile out of her head. She was twenty minutes late to meet a friend for coffee after the show because she just sat in her car smiling stupidly at the steering wheel. She was only stirred to action when that friend called her, asking where she was.
At night, she hardly ate a thing because her stomach was in knots thinking about that smile. She sipped on a glass of wine, which went straight to her head, boosting her daydreams about travelling around with Clarke and taking pictures of all the quaint beaches around the area.
Her alarm went off at five AM, and Lexa suddenly realized that she hadn’t slept. Not really. She was sitting in her armchair beside her couch, half dozing but still wearing her clothes from yesterday. She jolted up in fear. Adrenaline got her through the first forty-five minutes of her day as she took a quick shower, got dressed, and ran out of her house. She would have to have her first coffee at the studio.
Except emergency roadwork detours made her so late by the time she got to the studio that she had no time to take a sip of her coffee, and the one unofficial rule about news reporting that had been drilled into her when she started working was to not finish your cup of coffee on the air, otherwise, you’d probably have to pee before the show was up. Also, it was difficult to look pretty while chugging coffee on the air, and part of her job was to look pretty, so she only took small sips, which hardly quenched her body’s thirst for caffeine.
Half an hour in, Lexa was a lethargic mess. Her eyelids were drooping and she could barely stay awake. She sighed in relief as camera one focused its tight angle on Roan, and she relaxed her posture slightly for the thirty seconds it would take for the view to switch to camera three, which showed both Roan and Lexa together at the desk.
“In other news,” Roan continued, “Members of the United Nations peacekeeping division have landed in Rwanda in a delayed celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Rwandan genocide. Ceremonies will draw attention to the grim history of the region that has since successfully pulled itself out of the turmoil, well on its way to being one of the richest and most stable countries in east Africa. Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN operation in Rwanda in 1994, is said to have already landed in Kigali and will be attending the opening ceremony alongside newly-elected president Teta Rwigyema, daughter of former rebel leader and national hero Fred Rwigyema.”
A green light began to blink aggressively, and Lexa straightened up, looking into camera two, taking a breath, and then speaking once the light steadied.
“A grim but important reminder of the mistakes of the past,” Lexa said in a serious voice, looking over at Roan off screen before looking back at camera two. “In just a few moments we’ll have a few more words on that from an official in Kigali…”
She trailed off and looked to her left before focusing back on the camera.
“And now with the weather, Clarke Griffin.”
She looked back over to the left, where Clarke stood waiting patiently. Clarke began speaking, and Roan reached out and tapped the table in front of Lexa to get her attention.
“Hey,” he whispered. “What’s wrong with you?”
Lexa raised her head, tried not to give Roan a pained look, and then shook her head.
“Nothing,” she lied.
Roan frowned.
“Get it together, Grimaldi,” he grumbled.
Lexa rolled her eyes and shushed him, but she did straighten up as she watched Clarke report on the weather.
“… and we’ll see clouds and rain tomorrow in San Diego thanks to the North Pacific High settling in for winter. But it should only last about day until sunny skies prevail, and we can all go back to outdoor business as usual.”
Lexa watched as Clarke deftly maneuvered her way around the map, and then suddenly Roan was talking, and Lexa blinked. She must have zoned out, because he was now looking at her expectantly. She looked at the prompter and sighed in relief as she realized she’d snapped back into it just in time. She started talking about changes to the city’s recycling program. She handed off the segment to Roan, who in turn handed it off to an on-site reporter to help their audience visualize what a recycling plant looked like and what challenges the industry faced.
Lexa thought back to a trip she had taken to a recycling plant a few years ago. She used to do a lot more on-site segments before she was selected as one of the faces of their morning news show. She then thought about the wine-making segment she had done one summer morning a month after the recycling story. She wondered what it would be like to bring Clarke with her to an on-site segment like that. Maybe they could go on a ride together to take pictures of all the beaches in the region for Clarke’s reports. Maybe they could make wine together. They would remove their shoes, clean their feet, and step in large vats full of grapes, grabbing onto each other’s hands to keep their balance and giggling at the funny feeling of grapes squishing under their toes. Clarke would slip, and Lexa would catch her in her tight grip, sweeping her in to steady her body against her own, accidentally brushing her lips against her cheek as she held her still, whispering to not worry, that she had her. They would back away from each other a few steps – not too far – so they could look at each other. They would have been on countless dates by this point, spent all their time together, and confessed their undying love to each other over and over again. They would be just on the verge of their happily ever after. The wind would be blowing gently through their hair, and they would step towards each other again once they had taken each other in, opening their arms and-
Lexa felt something kick her leg.
She smiled. Probably Clarke trying to shake off grapes from between her toes. She always did that.
She felt the same thing again.
I think… I think this is the moment, Lexa thought languidly, recounting in her head the two years of bliss she had shared with Clarke in this memory.
She took a deep breath.
“Clarke Griffin. Will you just marry me already?”
Thwack!
Lexa grimaced and only just barely held back a pained yelp. Something was really kicking her in the shin, and she couldn’t imagine it was her beautiful, loving fiancée who was peaceful and kind and-
Roan’s crazed eyes stared back at her the moment she lifted her head and opened her eyes. Lexa suddenly tuned into where she was. She was not making wine with Clarke after asking her to marry her. She was live on the air reporting on recycling plants and the Rwandan genocide. Camera three had a steady green light atop of it, which meant she and Roan were both in the shot, their mics hot.
And then it hit her like a sack of bricks.
Oh shit, I think I just sleep talked.
Her face blanched, and she suddenly felt sick.
Oh my god, I think I just proposed to someone I do not know on live television. Shit shit shit.
She widened her eyes, looking at Roan, asking him a thousand silent questions, begging him for help. She then looked up and could see Indra on the other side of the cameras, her jaw dropped, staring at her. Lincoln, their main camera operator, looked flummoxed. She looked up into the sound booth, and even though she couldn’t see Echo, she could imagine a similarly confused look on their head of audio. Lexa then turned her head to look at Clarke, who stood in her little weather reporting station looking surprised, her jaw slightly slack, her eyes a little wide, no longer displaying the calm, neutral demeanour she always had about her on air.
“Uhhh…” Lexa stuttered breathlessly, unsure what was happening and where to go.
She looked at the prompter, but it just said Roan’s name and some lines introducing his pre-recorded interview with President Rwigyema. She looked back over at Clarke, and their eyes locked. Clarke suddenly seemed to go into emergency mode, and she wiped the startled look off her face, giving Lexa a stunning smile.
“I was starting to think you’d never ask,” she quipped with a wink.
Lexa swallowed so hard she was sure that her mic had picked it up and half a million people in the region could hear it. She wanted to die. What was going on? Had she really just asked Clarke to marry her?
Then her hero of the day stepped in.
“Well, congratulations to the happy couple,” Roan chuckled.
He made a low hand signal to the camera team to tell them that he had this. Camera one picked its tight angle back up, and Roan started introducing his pre-recorded interview segment.
While the footage rolled and their mics were cut, Indra came over to the desk.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
Lexa shot Clarke a terrified look, but Clarke wasn’t paying attention. Someone was touching up her makeup. Lexa looked back over at Indra, grasping her coffee and taking a gulp.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was saying…” Lexa trailed off weakly.
“Are you ok to finish, or do we need Roan to take over?”
Lexa shook her, now thoroughly red in the face. She felt more awake than she ever felt in her entire life.
“No no no, I’m good,” she squeaked.
They finished the show, and the minute the cameras stopped rolling, Lexa bolted out of her chair and ran to her dressing room, mortified. She quickly packed her things up, threw on a hat so she could hide her face, and rushed out of the building as quickly as she could, avoiding everyone and everything. She couldn’t face the scolding Indra was going to give her, the teasing Roan was going to shower on her, and especially not Clarke’s confused eyes wondering why a colleague she barely knew had just asked her to marry her.
She rushed home, her phone set to do not disturb mode and buried in her handbag. She spent the rest of the day skipping out on all the research she had to do for work and watching a full queue of the scariest movies she could find, trying to distract herself from her embarrassment with jump scares and gore. She went through several bowls of popcorn, nervously shoving more and more into her mouth in an attempt to keep her hands and mouth busy. She briefly considered texting Clarke to apologize for her weirdness, but she realized she didn’t even have her number.
“Oh god, that’s so much worse,” Lexa groaned.
She really didn’t know this person. Why on earth had she thought it was a good idea to ask for her hand in marriage?
Lexa spent the rest of the day in humiliated pain. The only saving grace was that she was so tired from her lack of sleep lately, that she fell asleep quickly at half past eight and slept clear through the night. Her humiliation would be a tomorrow problem.