Action (M)
The blurred image focuses on a woman sitting down on the single chair in the frame. Behind her is a large window with sleek modern architecture reflecting on tinted glass. She clears her throat, pats her button-up shirt, and an accompanying thud follows her hand.
"You don’t need to touch it," a voice says from behind the camera. "Speak normally, and we get it."
A shade of pink takes over her cheeks under the set lights. She chuckles, tucking blonde hair behind an ear. On the lower left, captions appear: Clarke Griffin, patient #013, 40 years old. Female Alpha.
"Thank you for agreeing with the post-treatment documentation," says the same unnamed voice, a soprano woman. "As we said before, this will only be shared with other future patients."
Clarke nods. "You changed my life. I’m happy to help."
"Can you talk a little bit about how you felt when you were diagnosed?"
Clarke works her jaw back and forth, looking down at her polished shoes then up at the camera again.
"Well. Basically, it sucked."
The punching bag moved back and forth with each new impact. Clarke’s knuckles ached and her wrist screamed, but she kept delivering punch after punch into the bright red canvas. Pain flared at her joints, and sweat ran down her back, but she needed it to keep her thoughts at bay.
Thoughts of how much of a useless alpha she was.
"Clarke?"
It was the second time Lexa came to check in on her. At first, it was an innocent call for dinner, but now Lexa’s voice had a layer of worry on it.
"Clarke."
Clarke didn’t stop the punching. Jab, lower, jab, jab. Her gloves burned with friction, but those jabs were the only thing keeping her from facing her incapacity to—
"I brought you coconut water," Lexa said from behind her. Clarke stopped, wiped sweat from her face, saw how useless that was since she was completely drenched, and shrugged.
"Thank you." She didn’t look Lexa in the eyes as she accepted the bottle, downing it in three long gulps. Dehydration. Just what her body needed, being this useless bag of meat and—
"Clarke." Lexa placed a hand on her shoulder, coaxing Clarke to face her. Lexa wasn’t angry, which infuriated Clarke more. Lexa should be furious, doing to her what Clarke was doing to that bag. But Lexa wasn’t pitiful, and for that, Clarke was grateful. She wouldn’t be able to deal with pity. "Come up, eat something. You’ve been here for hours."
Clarke took a deep breath and toyed with the lid of her bottle. "I needed… I needed to—"
Uncareful of her sweat, Lexa wrapped her arms around Clarke. Warm, comforting. This was Lexa, her mate, her wife. The woman she promised the world to—and who she now failed to keep promises to.
"We’ll be alright," Lexa said into Clarke’s messy ponytail, nudging at the scar she left there years ago. "I get that you’re angry. But don’t blame yourself, my love. This new treatment is available, and—"
"We only need that because I’m a fucking failure," Clarke confessed, and Lexa’s hands on her skin tightened their grip.
"Don’t say things like that." She pulled back and guided Clarke to meet her eyes with a hand on her chin. "You’re my wife, and I love you. All of you. Don’t say things like that about yourself."
"It still doesn't change the fact that I'm a half-baked alpha."
"If I were the one with a complication, would you say those things to me?"
Clarke swallowed. "Of course not."
"So please don’t say that." Lexa kissed her cheek. "I love you."
"I’m sorry." Clarke thought the hours of punching and sweating would keep the tears away, but here they were, strong and ugly and burning just like her hands. "I’m so sorry that I can’t be the partner you need." Lexa held her. In the damp air of their basement, Lexa held Clarke and let her cry like the insolent pup she was.
"You’re exactly what I need," Lexa promised. "Nothing will change that."
Lexa was convinced. Clarke admired her for that. If only she could believe it.
The image depicts a bright room with green plants in colorful pots framing the lonely chair in the center. The woman sitting on it is reading a paper, glasses low on her nose.
"Ready to roll, Mrs. Woods?" The soprano voice asks from behind the lenses. Lexa folds the paper, and a blur of a person picks it up from her hands. A similar inscription from before appears on the bottom left: Lexa Woods. Clarke Griffin’s mate and wife. 38 years old. Female Omega.
"Yes," Lexa says, folding her reading glasses and placing them in her front shirt pocket. "Whenever you’re ready."
"Have you ever dated another Alpha before meeting Clarke?"
Lexa’s facial expression does not change as she says, "No."
"When did either of you suspect something was wrong?"
Lexa sits straighter in the chair, her lips twitching twice before she finally says, "We were mated and married for six years when we tried to conceive." She pauses, crossing and uncrossing her legs. "We had never knotted before, so we had no idea what to expect. But eventually, we realized something was wrong."
"Was it a mutual realization?"
"Clarke noticed it first. But I don’t think she brought it up until it was unavoidable."
Clarke never knew there was something wrong with her. She never really thought that she might be a little off until Liam. Anya had just started showing, complaining about Clarke's food and everything else.
"I didn’t know you were planning for a baby," Clarke said, hands soaked in bubbles. "But I’m really glad for you, Raven." They could hear their wives laughing from the dining room.
"Planning?" Raven snorted, shaking the kitchen towel to get another plate to dry. "That kid planned itself. That is, I really wasn’t planning to knot, but it happened, and well, in five months there will be a pup around. Get used to the idea."
Clarke frowned at the fork she was washing and watched the suds drip down the metal surface. "What do you mean you didn’t plan to knot?"
Raven placed a dry plate on the rack. "I was in rut. You know." She shrugged, and Clarke honest-to-god did not know.
"Do you always knot when you rut?"
"If I’m not super-extra-careful, yeah. Don’t you?" Raven asked in a laugh, but stopped at seeing whatever was going on with Clarke’s face. "Don’t you?" she repeated. Clarke felt her face warming.
She looked back at the fork. There was a stubborn piece of potato stuck to it.
They talked about it. Extensively. They talked about costs, space, and time. But Clarke knew what the decision would be since the day Lexa had seen little Liam—all red-faced and crying his lungs out in Anya’s arms—and some maternal instinct sparked to life in her.
They wanted a baby.
The bed creaked with Clarke’s vigorous thrusts. Lexa met her push for push, her hips seeking Clarke’s in tandem. Lexa was not a passive omega; she took what she wanted, and Clarke loved her for that. She loved her mate, she loved her wife, and now she loved that they would make a new life together.
"Are you close?" Lexa panted in her ear.
Clarke nodded, her cheek hitting Lexa’s chin in the process. None cared. "Yeah. I think," she exhaled, slowing their movements to adjust her hips. Lexa moaned. "I’m not sure how long it takes," Clarke breathed, hoping her tone was steady.
"I have no idea." Lexa kissed her neck, licking the mating bite there. "It’s the first time we’re doing this." It should feel exciting. Lexa sounded excited. Clarke wasn’t sure.
Don’t you?
Sometimes she thought about Raven’s puzzled look when she admitted she had never knotted. But her friend had patted her on the back and said that each person was different. Clarke had never really tried to knot, so it was alright.
But right now, in rut, Clarke was actively trying , and Lexa had come twice, and they had changed positions twice as much, and Lexa would get sore, and Clarke could not get her damn knot to work.
"Come back to me." Lexa’s hands massaged the tight clench of Clarke’s jaw. They slowed until they stopped. Lexa sighed, but Clarke continued to pant. "What’s wrong, love?"
Clarke didn’t know. Or she did, and she did not want to voice it, because then it would be real, and Lexa would care, and they would have to go to doctors, and Clarke would be a failure as a wife.
"Clarke?" Puzzled, Lexa leaned back to find Clarke’s eyes, but Clarke avoided them. Clarke pulled out, their gasps mangling for a moment before she left the bed. "Clarke?" Naked and worried, Lexa followed her into their bathroom. The room smelled of sweat and sex. "What’s wrong?"
Clarke splashed water on her face and looked down at herself. Her erection, covered in Lexa, had an uneven swell at the base. She touched it, one large palm pressing on it, but she barely felt it. It wasn't like other alphas talked about it. It was like she was numb. Lexa watched from the door, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Are you going to talk to me or—"
"I don’t think I can knot."
There. It was real.
Clarke drinks from a water bottle while an assistant runs the mic check. A voice behind the camera mumbles, "We should try asking anyway." A new light turns on at Clarke’s right and she squints at it.
"So Clarke," the same voice from before says, now louder. "How were the side effects of the injection?"
Clarke takes another drag from her water bottle, her eyebrows rising at the question. She places the bottle next to her chair.
"Like almost everything about this treatment, it totally sucked."
"Fucking hell!" Clarke breathed through her nose, hard and gasping, her hands white with the effort of holding on to their granite sink. "Give me a moment," she gasped.
Lexa kissed her cheek, brushing the sweat away. "I got you," she whispered, always calm and serene during Clarke’s outbursts.
Clarke had been all courage and bravado until the needle—bigger than what it looked like in the doctor’s office—touched her knot. The injection site felt like fire, and every day the pain got worse. She knew it would be like this, at least until her knot inflated for the first time, and hell, that was another headache she wasn’t ready to think about just yet.
"If it hurts like that, it means it’s working," Lexa tried to argue, which did not help with the fact that Clarke’s cock was on fire. "Blood is flowing there for the first time, honey," Lexa continued to sooth, an ice bag in hand, ready for the aftercare. "Most alphas take years to go through what you’re going through in a few weeks. Give yourself some grace."
Clarke grunted, sat back on the closed toilet lid, spread her legs, and nodded. "Okay. Okay. I’m okay." Lexa kissed the top of her head and went for the second injection.
Lexa hisses at something behind the camera, the mic turned off and not catching whatever accompanied the reprimand. The voice-only director clears her throat and says, "Patient 13’s, that is, Clarke’s file says her mate was the one administering the injections. That’s you." Lexa focuses on the right of the camera, sitting taller in her chair in the plant-filled room."How did you feel about that?"
"I’m not medically trained, but the mechanics of it weren't hard." She smiles, a small little thing under lights and makeup. She's aging gracefully. "Clarke was very vulnerable, and she trusted me. I would advise mates to give it a shot if they can handle the whining."
"Whining?"
"I suppose most alphas don’t take kindly to injections on their knots."
There is a chuckle off camera and a loud noise; someone else is yelling, "The mic is down!" and the off-camera voice comes back, "Cut, cut!" while Lexa chastises, "You two get down here!"
Clarke woke up feeling like she had gone to hell. Everything burned. Her sleep shirt was soaked, her pajama shorts drenched, and her hair plastered to her forehead. As she sat up on the bed, she moaned, her muscles tensing. Lexa mumbled something next to her, that little sleepy snort she claimed she didn’t do every time she woke up.
"Fuck," Clarke gasped, holding on to the wall as she tried to stand up. Besides her entire body burning, her crotch ached with a pain-pleasure mix Clarke was not conscious enough to judge.
"Clarke?" Lexa asked from the bed as Clarke tumbled to the bathroom, half-awake and limping. Clarke almost fell as she kicked her shorts and sat in the bathtub, turning the water cold.
"Babe?" Wrapped in Clarke’s robe, Lexa remained on the threshold, her eyes suddenly awake. "Is it happening?"
Clarke looked at her and moaned, nodding. "It fucking burns," she whispered, and Lexa approached with caution.
"Do you want to be by yourself?" she asked, her naked feet silent on the bathroom tiles.
Clarke shook her head, extending a hand to Lexa. "Can you stay here with me?"
"Oh, my love." Lexa sat next to the bathtub, kissing Clarke’s burning cheeks. "Always."
Clarke fidgets with her microphone again, and an assistant asks her to stop doing it. "And how did you feel when you could knot?" the director asks as Clarke looks up.
Clarke’s blush is more visible under the lights, and she touches an earring before answering, "Not everything about the treatment sucked."
Lexa wouldn’t stop moaning. She was not always vocal, or at least not carelessly so, but as Clarke felt herself expanding inside her, Lexa wouldn’t stop the cadence of moans. Part of Clarke was worried, but most of her was lost in ecstatic bliss.
"Lex?" She gasped, her hips slowing as her range of motion was limited by her knot. "Talk to me, love," she insisted, because Lexa was tucked under her chin, an endless stream of incoherent words leaving her lips. As they slowed, spent and satisfied, finally tied, Lexa took another minute to simply gasp for air. Clarke held her, whispering small nothings. She tasted salt on Lexa’s cheeks. "Lex?"
"I’m—" Lexa tried, and they moaned together as she moved her hips. It wouldn’t budge; people were not kidding about that part. "Fuck," Lexa said, the first coherent thing in the last few minutes.
"That good?" Clarke wiggled her hips, and they moaned again, and Lexa slapped her back.
"Stop moving for a bit," she hissed. "But yeah, that good." Clarke nudged Lexa’s nose with her own, a delicate gesture like a small island in the middle of a sea of intense love making. "Are you good?" Lexa asked, finally taking a deep breath. Clarke nodded and nuzzled into Lexa’s nose again.
"I love you."
Lexa kissed her temple, and they shared a breath. "I love you too."
"Why are we here?" the little girl in Clarke’s lap asks, looking up at her.
"To tell our story, baby." Clarke kisses the tops of her dark curls.
"Hello," the director calls from behind the camera, and the little girl’s attention moves away from Clake. "Hi," she repeats, "what’s your name?"
The girl looks up at Clarke, who nods, and then back at the camera. "Serah."
"How old are you, Serah?"
She proudly shows one hand with all five fingers and another two fingers on her other hand.
"That’s seven, right?" Serah nods, a missing incisor showing in her smile.
"She’s our oldest," Clarke chimes in, pulling her daughter a little closer. "The twins are three."
The image cuts to Lexa’s set, with two boys running around her chair as she types something on her phone. It cuts back to Clarke.
"So you can say, a hundred percent, that the treatment works," the director continues, and Clarke nods.
"It changed our lives."
The image shifts to a different set, with the entire family present. Clarke has a hand around Lexa’s waist, with Serah reaching up to her belly while the twins don’t get above her waist. Lexa placed each hand behind the twins' necks, keeping them in place.
"You have a beautiful family. Three beautiful, healthy pups," the voice from behind the says, and both Clarke and Lexa blush. Serah giggles, and the twins start poking each other. A silent conversation goes on between the mated pair, and it ends with a nod from Lexa.
"We’re actually expecting a fourth," Clarke reveals, one of her hands landing on the twin closest to her. The boys stop their poking.
"Congratulations! I guess three were not enough?"
"They’re definitely a handful," Clarke says as she picks up one of the twins, his blonde hair messed up by his brother’s hands. "This last one kind of… planned itself." She blushed, and Serah giggled again.
"I guess we finally understood what other couples meant by accidents during ruts," Lexa jokes, and there’s laughter in the background of the set.
"What’s a rut?" Serah asks, and the laughter increases in volume, even with the director joining in with a chuckle.
"I believe that’s a cut," Clarke says, grinning at the camera.
The image fades into black, and a centered caption appears.
The Woods-Griffin family had a healthy baby girl.
As expected, she was also a handful.