Hair Pin (Stuck Together AU)
Okay.
This happens.
You somehow let your sister talk you into going with her to this party, and you don’t do parties. Not five minutes into it you’re reminded exactly why that is. A blonde woman walks up to greet the both of you and out of nowhere two screaming dark-haired women comes running towards you and handcuffs you to the blonde. It happens so fast you barely register it, the handcuffs, that is. You totally register the screaming women, though. It’s kind of hard not to.
Drunkards.
Idiocity.
That’s why you don’t do parties.
“Not this again…” The blonde groans, shaking the hand cuffed to you. “Raven, come on!” she complains, and by the sound of it she already knows it’s a lost cause. You’ve heard Anya talk about a Raven before, someone you’re quite sure she’s got a massive crush on.
“That’s Raven?” You look at Anya.
“Yeah,” she grins. She slaps you hard on the back as she walks off. “Have fun, sis!”
You look at the blonde who’s staring defeatedly at the cuffs around your wrists. She gives it another little shake. A scowl too.
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” you say and you can’t help the smile tugging on your lips when she looks at you, her annoyed crinkle between her eyes is kind of adorable.
“I know,” she sighs.
“This happened before?”
“More than once,” she shares. You find yourself smiling again.
“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice–”
“Oh shut up smart-ass. They’re supposed to be my friends,” she grumps, giving your hand a little shake again.
“So… How are long are we stuck together?”
“Well, based on past experiences… until tomorrow.” She looks at you, apology written in her eyes.
“Really?” Wow, this Raven means business. No wonder Anya likes her so much.
“Why are you this calm?”
One reason. You know how to unlock a pair of handcuffs with a hair pin. But you don’t tell her that. You’re at a party and usually you’re the grumpy one, but this stranger you’re stuck to makes you smile, so you decide to play it out. You can always go with the hair pin solution if it turns ugly. Any time.
“Why not?” You give her a confident smile. She seizes you up, narrowing her eyes playfully.
“Clarke.” She holds out her right hand, her free hand. You give it a clumsy shake, your right hand shackled to her left and all.
“Lexa.”
“Okay, Lexa. I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances, maybe you’d like to join me in the kitchen? I need a drink.”
“Well, Clarke, it seems I don’t have a choice, so lead the way.” Your own little shake of your joined hands makes Clarke chuckle and you can’t help yourself from thinking that of all the people you could’ve ended up being stuck with, she’s not too bad. She links her pinky finger with your index finger and leads you carefully through the crowd that has gathered in the hallway. Not once does she tug hard on the cuffs, and you’re not entirely sure you could pull that off yourself, not even sober. That makes you smile a little too.
“Beer?” She asks, opening the fridge.
“Sure.”
“Just remember, that we are gonna have to go to the bathroom together too… eventually.” She’s awfully matter-of-fact about this.
“How many times have this happened to you, exactly?”
“Too many,” she mutters, and you can’t help the laugh that escapes your lungs. “Yeah, I need new friends.”
“Not good experiences?”
“What gave it away.” She deadpans, making you smile again.
“That terrible?”
“Yep.” She pops the p.
This experience isn’t terrible at all, you conclude, because Clarke is easy to talk to.
“Worst experience.” You prompt her.
“Uh, well this one guy was so drunk he pissed on himself in the bathroom. A little on me too.” She nods, her nose crinkled by disgust.
“Oh gross,” you agree with her.
“At least they’ve paired me up with girls after that one… so far.” Clarke sighs wistfully.
“I promise I’ll control the pee,” you say, in your most earnest voice, and you receive a bright laughter in return, one that makes your heart flutter a little.
Clarke is a little tipsy when you eventually do have to use the bathroom. You must be too because you forget about the hair pin trick. Or maybe you just don’t care. Perhaps at some point you considered what revealing the hair pin trick would mean, and perhaps you decided you weren’t quite ready to not be stuck with her anymore.
“Don’t look,” she pleads and you turn around as best you can, but when she goes to pull her jeans down, she pulls on your wrist as well, apparently having forgotten about the cuffs linking you. “Shit, sorry,” she blurts out as you mercilessly stumble into her. You grab at whatever there’s to grab at to regain your balance. Her. You grab at her. Her semi-naked waist, her jeans halfway down her thighs, her shirt not long enough to cover up her boy shorts.
You’re a flustered mess. You can tell because your cheeks heat up. You’re staring and you can’t not stare and it’s getting embarrassing really fast.
“Spiderman fan?” She asks. You blink and when you look at her, she winks at you, an amused curl to her lips.
“Uh…” Your fluster increases to never before reached levels as you subconsciously look back down at her spiderman boy shorts.
“Lexa?”
“Yes?” You look back up at her.
“Turn around. I still need to pee.”
“Oh, sorry.” You close your eyes and turn around to the soundtrack of Clarke’s soft laughter. This time she remembers the existence of the cuffs.
For some reason, you still don’t consider using the hair pin trick. Not even when it’s your turn to pee. You patiently wait for her to turn around but she shakes her head and says, “Nuh-uh, I showed you mine, now show me yours.”
You still feel bad about ogling her awkwardly, so you comply, biting your lip nervously as you pull down your jeans. Your own boy shorts are black. Boring. Bland.
You stare at your feet until she chuckles. “Thank you,” she quips as she turns around to give you privacy, or whatever you call it knowing full well that she can hear you pee.
This is humiliating.
A little.
A lot.
She’s still sporting an amused smile once you’re done struggling with your jeans. “That never gets easy, not even with practice,” she’d said, and you’d eventually given up and used both hands to pull them back up, even if it meant her hand came dangerously close to your… private area.
You stand side by side washing your hands by the sink. “How about this?” You ask her.
“Well, the trick is to do it in turns,” she says as she lets you wash your hands first.
“I see,” you’re surprisingly impressed by something so mundane as handwashing. It may be the alcohol.
The awkward ogling is long forgotten when she links her pinky finger with your index finger once again and guides you back into the kitchen. She pulls out another two beers and hands you one, her finger still tethered to yours. She elegantly jumps to take a seat on the kitchen counter and you lean against it next to her.
“So…” she says, her fingers playing with yours. You let her, it feels nice. “Lexa, fan of spiderman,” you raise a disapproving eyebrow at her and she winks at you, “who are you?”
“I’m Anya’s sister,” you tell her.
“No.”
“No?”
“I already know that. Tell me something else.”
“I’m not a spiderman fan,” you tell her.
“Could’ve fooled me,” she grins into her beer bottle. “Fan of half naked women, then?”
You really want to play it cool and say something like ‘Can you blame me?’ but flustered Lexa is there again and the heat creeps back onto your cheeks. You take a swig of your beer trying to hide it, but you must’ve failed because she laughs again. You realize you don’t mind being awkward around her if it earns you something so beautiful in return.
So you shrug and smile at her.
“Yeah, me too,” she says and you take a sudden liking to the blush creeping up her cheeks.
It’s still easy, talking to her, smiling, drinking, laughing. You suppose that’s how you end up leaning against the kitchen counter standing between her legs. Your bottle is empty, left somewhere next to her, your left hand is on her thigh, your right is entangled with her left. It’s clumsy because of the cuffs and you still don’t consider revealing the hair pin trick.
She tells you she’s an artist and you tell her you’re lost. She laughs at you not believing you one bit and you explain that your parents want you to take over their company but you want to travel, see the world. You want to make it a better place, but you don’t know how to do that without having seen it. Truly seen it. She then looks at you with something akin of awe and you don’t mean to but your eyes drop to her lips. They look really soft, they look inviting as she bites at the corner. You hear her chuckle, you feel a finger pressing your chin up, you meet her eyes and your own flutter shut as she leans in to capture your lips.
It’s a pretty spectacular thing, kissing Clarke. She’s soft and warm and the tip of her tongue teases you. She tastes like beer and you probably do too. She sucks on your lower lip and it feels like having air blown into your lungs and life shot into your veins.
Exciting voices scream “YES!” followed by the sound of what could be a high-five. You don’t care because you’re kissing Clarke and it’s a phenomenal thing. Clarke does care, though, and she robs you of the grandness you’ve become quite fond of already as she groans and leans her forehead against yours.
“I’m sorry,” she says and you want to ask her why but you don’t get a chance to before the two dark-haired women appears in your periphery, Raven and her friend.
“Finally!” One exclaims.
“Go away!” Clarke sighs.
“No.” The other deadpans.
“At least take this off?” Clarke lifts their joined hands, joined by cuffs, joined by touch.
“They’re holding hands, Rae.” One says, grinning like an idiot.
“I can see that, O,” the other says, copying her grin.
“If I’d know a pair of handcuffs was all it took for you to enjoy a party, I’d have done it myself a long time ago,” Anya appears, cocky and pretentious on the other side of you.
Now it’s your turn to groan.
“Wanna get out of here?” Clarke whispers.
“God yes.”
She pushes you back so she can slide off the counter, your cuffed hands fully entwined as she pulls you towards the doorway, through the crowd of drunkards, up the stairs and into a room.
“It’s mine,” she says.
“Ah,” You say.
“I’m not that kind of girl,” she says and you assume she means sex with someone she barely knows.
“Me neither,” you say.
“Maybe we can talk? I’d like to get to know you.”
“I’d like that too.” You share a smile and she pulls you towards her bed. “But before we do I need to borrow a hair pin.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see,” is all you give her and she hesitantly pulls you towards her dresser, picking up a hair pin from the top drawer. She hands it to you and you tell her, “I’m sorry for not doing this earlier, but also I’m not sorry because I’ve had a really great time. Please don’t hate me.” She gives you a confused look and you explain yourself by sticking the hair pin into the lock on the handcuffs, wiggling it just right, expertly removing them from both your wrists.
“I don’t know whether to yell at you for keeping that a secret or make innuendos about talented fingers,” she says, thoughtfully. For some reason you blush again and she laughs at you. Again. You don’t care.
“You can yell at me,” you tell her, “I don’t need innuendos to know how talented my fingers are.” Two can play this game.
“Okay, okay…” She says, trying to hide her own blush. “Come on, before I regret it.”
She throws herself onto her bed, and you lay down next to her, both of you looking at the ceiling, your hands finding each other again in the narrow space between your bodies.
“Spiderman AND glow-in-the-dark stars? HOW old are you, Clarke?” You tease her.
“They remind me of my dad,” she says and you squeeze her hand because you recognize the tone in her voice. That’s the one you use when talking about the loss of your childhood friend. She squeezes back.
The music thuds away behind the closed door and you lay there looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars, listening to Clarke’s breathing, brushing your thumb over her knuckles and it feels spectacular too, just like kissing her, but in a different kind of way. She snuggles up to you, your arm under her neck and behind her shoulders, her arm resting across your waist and her nose finding that spot below you ear. It’s not lost on you that you feel significantly tethered to her in this moment, even more so than when you were stuck together in handcuffs. It’s not lost on you that you don’t want it any other way.
She presses her lips gently, lazily against your neck and that’s the last thing you remember before falling asleep.