Moments

i.

The feeling had been brewing for ages, so long that Lexa couldn’t put her finger on when the brewing actually began. Part of her thought that maybe she used to be able to. Maybe she used to lie in bed at night and think of some particular moment, some look or touch or laugh that had hit her like lightning. A spark to the chest. A flash of light, and then there, she thought. There it was, that feeling, and she just knew.

Another part of her thought that there was never a moment. There was never a light bulb hidden inside a look or a touch or a laugh. There was never an a-ha moment or an oh moment, because that feeling, that truth, had always been there.

Maybe all the moments were the moment since the moment she first met Clarke.

She had walked into that emergency room with too little sleep and a bloody towel for a hand, and she had walked out with six stitches woven into her palm and Clarke Griffin’s smile etched into her exhausted mind (and Clarke Griffin’s number etched onto the top of her prescription slip).

Yes, Lexa thought, the brewing began with that smile. It began with the way she tapped her badge as she introduced herself and the way she chewed her bottom lip as she stitched up the gash in Lexa’s palm. It began with her raspy laugh and the press of her hand to Lexa’s shoulder as she reminded her to get at least five hours of sleep before attempting to chop up another onion.

It began at the beginning, and it had been bubbling up under her skin ever since. Bubbling and bubbling and bubbling until every time Lexa was around Clarke, she felt like her heart was bobbing at the back of her throat like a buoy in the ocean.

Words etched themselves across the insides of her eyelids so that every time she went to bed, she drifted off reciting confessions in her head—all the things she wanted to say but that always felt too big for language or voice or expression. Still, she tried. In her head, she tried, and outside her head? Outside her head, she just continued to boil and bubble, always only on the verge of spilling her guts. Every pulpy, goopy bit of them, she knew, would be painted with all the ways she loved and loved and loved Clarke Griffin.

She just had to find the moment.

That’s what Lexa resigned herself to thinking. If she couldn’t find the right words, the exact right way to express how she felt, then she had to find the right moment. The perfect moment. The moment Clarke deserved.

It came on their fifth date. Fifth, yes. Their fifth date.

A soft, warm glow haloed around them as the lights were dimmed in the restaurant. Okay, so actually, the bulb over their booth was just nearer the end of its life than the beginning, but Lexa was a romantic at heart, so she made the most of it in her mind.

Pizza Hut was significantly less crowded than it usually was during the lunch buffet, so they could hear each other clearly; plus, they didn’t have to suffer the discomfort of being seated practically on top of someone else. The parmesan and red pepper shakers at their table had recently been refilled and there was a freshly baked thin-crust Hawaiian pizza on the buffet bar when they arrived.

They were celebrating. Lexa had just learned that she would be graduating from her second master’s program with honors, so celebrating seemed in order. A celebratory lunch (since Clarke was working a double and couldn’t get the evening off to go out).

Everything was exactly right.

Clarke sat across from her in navy scrubs and a messy ponytail, and every time she took a new bite, she added to the red sauce stains at the corners of her mouth. She was telling Lexa about the time an intoxicated old man came into the ER complaining about having too much belly-button lint, laughing at her own story every few seconds, and Lexa felt this incredible pull in her chest.

Like someone trying to get her attention, the tug was persistent. Every time Clarke’s sauce-stained lips turned up, Lexa felt the pull, as if the two were connected by some invisible string. And she knew.

It was the moment, the moment when everything aligned, when everything felt right, when they were themselves, connected and just happy. It was easy, a moment they flowed right into with little fuss. They were still getting to know each other, but their current was already so steady, and Lexa was rolling with it. She was liquid.

The moment wasn’t candlelit or covered in rose petals, but right there in the middle of the day, in the middle of a Pizza Hut, Lexa felt like she was on top of the world, and that’s how she knew it was right.

“What?”

Lexa blinked as Clarke poked her hand, and she realized that she must have been making some kind of facial expression, something distracting. She imagined herself as a cartoon, all exaggerated features and giant pink hearts pulsing over her eyes to the tinkling sounds of a harp. She imagined she must have looked ridiculous, but the current was still flowing and the tug was still tugging, and maybe it was a bit early to be declaring something like love, but Lexa couldn’t find a care.

“Clarke,” she said, gearing up, “I know it’s—”

“You need a refill?” The waitress, Tammy, appeared out of nowhere, as if Lexa’s fingers rubbing idly along the sweaty red plastic of her cup had summoned her like a genie. “Was it water or Sprite?”

Lexa’s mouth moved without words, opening and closing for several seconds, before she forced her focus and cleared her throat. “Sprite,” she said, passing her mostly empty glass to Tammy and watching her walk off with it. Once she was gone, Clarke smiled at her like Lexa hadn’t just been on the verge of making some grand declaration, and asked what it was Lexa was saying.

“Uh,” Lexa mumbled. “I was … I was saying ….” She cleared her throat again and felt the moment well and truly die, shriveling up inside her like the wrinkled banana peppers in the old ketchup bottle to her left. “I was just going to say that I know it might be controversial in some circles, but I love pineapple on pizza and I refuse to apologize for it.”

Clarke stared at her for one long, silent moment, simply blinking, and then she burst into laughter. Her hand covered Lexa’s where they met at the center of the table. “Never apologize, you big nerd,” she said. “I love it too.”

The smile Lexa offered her in return was genuine despite the fact that inside, Lexa was brooding. Cursing the loss of the moment. Or maybe, the moment never actually existed. Maybe it was just her heart getting ahead of itself.

Maybe it was the way Clarke’s eyes squinted and crinkled a bit when she grinned and told Lexa she was proud of her.

Maybe it was just all that damned brewing and bubbling.

With that much effervescence, she was bound to pop and spew at some point.

ii.

They were seven dates deep into a relationship they hadn’t yet verbally labeled as a ‘relationship’ when Lexa stumbled into the moment again.

It came in the form of impulse, a moment produced on a whim.

Lexa woke up in the middle of the night, 2:47 AM, and no matter how many times she changed position, she couldn’t get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. The bright glow of her phone screen assaulted her eyes, and she squinted until the pain of it passed. She had three unread text messages, all of them from Clarke and all of them sent within the last hour.

A tired smile pulled at Lexa’s lips as she read Clarke’s messages, one of them complaining about the ER being slow that night and the other two nothing more than the annoyed emoji face.

She didn’t think much of it when she dragged herself out of bed, pulled on some sweats, a tank top, and tennis shoes, and headed for the door. Her keys jingled as she twirled her lanyard around her hand and darted out to her car. The night was warm, so she kept the windows down on the drive to the 24-hour supercenter.

By the time she got to the hospital with a seven-dollar bouquet of multicolored daisies, a large bottle of coke, and a snickers bar, Lexa couldn’t tamp down the feeling in her chest. She was happy. It was the middle of the night, and there were tangles in her hair and sleep in her eyes and cheap, pretty flowers for her whatever-Clarke-was in her right hand, and she was happy.

Lexa walked into the ER, hands full, and she was barely three steps in when Clarke suddenly appeared right in front of her, one hand on her hip and the other fiddling with the stethoscope slung around her neck. Her gaze darted from Lexa’s face to the flowers, from the flowers to the coke, from the coke to the snickers, and from the snickers back to Lexa’s face.

“Is all of this for me?” she asked, her face practically melting with affection.

Lexa shook her head. “No, the flowers and the coke and the snickers are actually all for me. I’m the only thing I brought for you. Sorry.”

A tired laugh bubbled up and out and Clarke shook her head. “I want to kiss you right now.”

“I understand.” Lexa nodded seriously. “I am unfairly charming right now.”

“You really are.”

“Worn-out sweatpants and bedhead really work for me.”

“I’m going to kiss you.”

“I fully support that decision, Clarke.”

Clarke pressed herself to Lexa, smooshing the flowers and candy between their chests without thought, and laughed into a tender kiss. It was an appropriate-for-work kind of brief. Short and sweet. Perfect.

And Lexa felt it again—the tug. Sharp and igniting, like a match being pulled across a strip of emery paper. She was on fire with the feeling.

Clarke’s hand briefly cupped Lexa’s cheek, her thumb stroking over the corner of Lexa’s mouth, and the moment overwhelmed. It surged up from inside her as quickly as the words did. They spilled into Lexa’s mouth, too fast for her to stop them, and Lexa didn’t try.

She opened her mouth, her heart pulsing at the back of her tongue. “Clarke, I—”

“Incoming trauma, Clarke,” called a lady from a large wraparound desk, tamping out Lexa’s flame with nothing more than three words and a phone pressed to her ear. “Head injury. Five minutes out.”

Clarke nodded before turning back to Lexa. “Sorry, babe,” she said, reigniting a bit of Lexa’s spark with the affectionate term and the press of her hand to Lexa’s shoulder. “What were you saying?”

“I ….” Lexa summoned up a smile and shook her head. “Where do you want me to put the flowers?”

iii.

The third time the moment came, Lexa was on the verge of coming herself.

Clarke’s short fingernails dug into the flesh of Lexa’s thighs, dug in as hard as the edge of Clarke’s dresser dug into the skin of Lexa’s lower back. Every breath went in on a gasp, shallow, rapid, and Lexa tilted her head back and clamped her eyes closed. She gripped the edge of the dresser with one hand and the top of Clarke’s head with the other as she braced a leg over Clarke’s shoulder and pumped herself almost roughly against Clarke’s mouth.

She was close.

Every sound clawing its way up from her throat was guttural, garbled, and Lexa couldn’t tell if she was more on the verge of passing out or of ascending to some higher plane of existence. Perhaps both.

“Clarke,” she tried, but it was a wild expression. More of a growl than a name.

Fingernails dug into her thighs again in response, and Lexa bit her lip as she looked down at Clarke’s messy blonde hair curling over her own sweat-slicked abdomen. She gave a gentle tug to the strands and watched as Clarke tilted back just enough, just enough that she could lock eyes with Lexa while she licked up the length of Lexa’s slit. Hard. All full, flat tongue and pressure, pressure, pressure.

Lexa’s eyes fluttered as the action caused her hips to jerk and the fire in her belly to grow hotter, the flames licking up higher and higher and consuming her. She felt Clarke hum against her clit, and Lexa could see the hint of a cocky smile tugging up the corners of Clarke’s mouth just before she licked over Lexa again. Just as full. Just as hard.

That smile was enough.

It was so utterly, beautifully Clarke.

The tug of Clarke’s lips sparked the familiar tug in Lexa’s chest, and she suddenly felt so overwhelmed that she was almost dizzy. Her eyes pricked with tears as her body rocked and rolled and Clarke pushed her higher and higher on the rising wave, and she wanted to say it. She wanted to scream it.

She was on the verge too, on the verge until she opened her mouth at the same time that she finally crested the wave. What came out instead of those three little words was a hard, choked gasp and a string of garbled expletives.

Muscles tensing tightly, she pressed herself hard against Clarke’s mouth, holding still and steady for a moment before crashing down in tremors. The release of tension from every inch of her body washed over her like a hot shower. Too hot.

Lexa felt dizzy as Clarke pressed a gentle kiss to her slit before rising off the floor. One steady hand cupped Lexa’s cheek before swiping over her sweaty forehead and through her hair, and Lexa’s legs felt wobbly. She grasped onto Clarke’s arms as the room spun for a second, and Clarke held onto her.

“Whoa,” she said, wrapping an arm around Lexa’s middle. “I’ve got you.” She gave a quiet, tender laugh. “Get too hot?”

Lexa nodded, tilting her head down to rest her forehead against Clarke’s, and Clarke kissed the point of her chin.

“Forgot to turn the fan on,” she said, pressing another kiss to Lexa’s chin and then to her lips. “I’ll get you some water.”

She made sure Lexa was braced against the dresser before slipping out of the bedroom, and Lexa huffed out a heavy breath.

Liquid trickled down her inner thigh and she shook her head at herself.

The moment had slipped away in heat and haze, in the ever-expanding desert in her throat and the earthquakes in her calves; in strangled expletives and the sudden need for wind and water.

Thwarted by her own glorious orgasm.

iv.

Lexa wasn’t counting the dates anymore.

Every chance the opportunity arose, Clarke loudly proclaimed herself as Lexa’s girlfriend, something that never failed to bring heat to Lexa’s cheeks, and they were steady. They were solid.

And Lexa was sure.

Two months into their relationship, there was a green toothbrush that belonged to Lexa at Clarke’s apartment and a few balled up pairs of Clarke’s underwear in Lexa’s top drawer. Clarke’s favorite cereal was always on Lexa’s grocery list, and Lexa’s preferred K-cups remained stocked and stacked next to Clarke’s Keurig. Clothes that used to fill overnight bags now lingered instead in closets. The bags themselves were no longer necessary. A copy of Clarke’s work schedule was pinned to Lexa’s refrigerator, and a generous portion of Lexa’s book collection had found its way onto the various shelves and surfaces of Clarke’s apartment.

They were tangled, little bits and pieces of each other having slipped over, slipped under, slipped in until they were knotted up. Embedded. There. Always there.

And Lexa was certain.

That special tug became such a regularly occurring phenomenon that Lexa no longer knew when a moment was the moment or if the moment existed at all. Part of her thought she just had to do it, just had to spit it out, but another part of her held onto the idea of moments.

She had many, she knew. So many. Too many really.

Loving Clarke was a gold mine of moments.

But those moments were always too fleeting, always rolling right into other moments, into interruptions, into life and life and more incredible life. They, too, were sometimes too profound for confessions or for labels or words. Sometimes, they needed to be silent or simply wordless. They needed to stay pressed into a shared tender gaze or an outrageous laughing fit that never seemed to want to end; the weight of Clarke’s head on Lexa’s chest.

Sometimes, love confessions were as easy and as quiet as Lexa rolling over in bed and wrapping her arm around Clarke’s waist, burying her nose in Clarke’s hair. As easy and as quiet as sharing a pillow.

Still, she wanted to say the words. She wanted a moment for the words, and she was determined to have it.

It presented itself to her again on a particularly plain Thursday night.

A twizzler was hanging out of the corner of Clarke’s mouth as she sat at the opposite end of the couch from Lexa. She still had her scrubs on after a twelve-hour shift, and she smelled a bit like hospital and bleach. Too exhausted to spend another fifteen minutes standing in the shower. She wasn’t particularly interested in standing at all.

Her feet were propped in Lexa’s lap, Lexa’s fingers working in a gentle massage, and she was complaining about the rerun of Grey’s Anatomy they were watching.

“CPR presentation in TV and movies always pisses me off,” she said, tugging and twirling the end of her twizzler with her hand.

Lexa smiled to herself, a subtle, simple, you’ve-said-this-a-thousand-times smile. “I know.”

“Look at that!” She tossed her hand toward the television. “He might as well be thumping the guy’s chest. No way in hell that would save anyone. It’s totally ineffective.”

“It’s fake, Clarke, just like the blood and injuries they show,” Lexa tried, laughter bubbling up in her chest, and Clarke poked her in the stomach with her toes.

“It’s all good and fake until someone tries to perform CPR by mimicking what they’ve seen on tv,” Clarke said, pulling off a piece of her twizzler and throwing it at Lexa. It hit Lexa’s chin, and Lexa laughed as she grabbed it and popped it into her mouth. “What if I wasn’t around and you needed CPR and—”

“No hypotheticals about my heart stopping, please.”

“Okay, so what if I needed CPR, and some—”

“No hypotheticals about your heart stopping,” Lexa said, pinching Clarke’s foot. “That’s even worse.”

Clarke yanked her foot away from Lexa. Narrowing her eyes, she hesitated only a moment before launching herself across the couch and on top of Lexa. “Lexa, this is serious stuff!”

With a sharp screech, Lexa squirmed under Clarke’s hands. They pressed under her arms, poking and tickling incessantly.

“What if some sweet old lady in the grocery store needed CPR, Lexa? What then?”

“Okay!” Lexa grabbed for Clarke’s hands in an effort to stop the torture. “I get it! It’s ineffective CPR! I’ll call an ambulance for the old lady, I swear!”

The tickling instantly ceased with those words, and Lexa quickly caught her breath. It stuck in her throat though when she looked up into Clarke’s bright blue eyes. Clarke’s hands slid up Lexa’s sides as she hovered over her, up over her arms until their palms pressed together. She tangled their fingers and looked down at Lexa like she was trying to memorize every inch of her face.

An easy sigh slipped through Clarke’s lips. “You’re so pretty when you’re agreeing with me.”

Lexa rolled her eyes even as a laugh jumped free, and Clarke quickly swallowed the sound in a kiss. It was slow and soft, full. Everything. Clarke sucked gently on Lexa’s bottom lip before trailing kisses down her jawline and over her earlobe. She ran the tip of her nose along the line of Lexa’s neck and loudly breathed her in before letting out another sigh and settling fully on top of Lexa.

Their chests pressed together as Clarke burrowed in and Lexa wrapped her arms around her.

“Having you here is the best part of my day,” Clarke said quietly, and Lexa closed her eyes.

Her chest felt full, too full, like she could burst at any moment, and her throat was thick with all the things she hadn’t yet said. All the things she so wanted to say and that needed, almost desperately, to be said.

She scratched gently at Clarke’s scalp with one hand and rubbed circles into her back with the other. “Being here is the best part of mine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Clarke’s voice dropped to a whisper as she pressed a kiss to Lexa’s collarbone and said, “I’m happy, Lexa.” Her fingers clutched at the material of Lexa’s tank top. “I’m so happy with you.”

The sudden stinging in her eyes surprised Lexa. She swallowed thickly as she let Clarke’s words sink in, let the weight of them press into her and overwhelm. She did that. She gave that to Clarke, that happiness, that quiet kind of bliss she could hear in Clarke’s gentle whisper. She did that.

Lexa wiped away a stray tear before it could slip down her temple and disappear into her hair. “I’m happy too, Clarke,” she said, her voice crackling around the emotion bubbling up from her chest.

All that damned bubbling.

Clarke raised herself up so that she was hovering over Lexa again and looked down at her. “Really?”

There was that tug again, so sharp and sudden and wonderful, and Lexa sucked in a deep breath as she reached up to cup her hand around Clarke’s cheek. “Really,” she whispered. “Clarke, I—”

The sound of the doorbell was jarring, shaking through the moment like an earthquake and cracking it apart, and Lexa wanted to scream. She let out a heavy sigh that bordered on a groan as Clarke laughed and said, “Pizza’s here.”

When Clarke started to crawl off of her, Lexa grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. “You stay,” she said, slipping out from under her and pressing a tender kiss to Clarke’s forehead. “You had a long day. I’ll get it.”

She didn’t voice the part about resisting the urge to beat the delivery guy over the head with their pizza for interrupting her moment. She settled for glaring at the poor kid instead even as she tipped him generously.

v.

The moment found its way to her again on the eve of Clarke’s twenty-eighth birthday, almost three months into their relationship.

The lights in Bonzai Sushi House were dimmed. Actually dimmed, not dying. A gentle glow enveloped the small table they occupied, tucked into a cozy corner of the restaurant. It was nice.

“And then we can go to the museum after that,” Lexa said, and Clarke nodded despite her eyes being fixed on the large wooden platter in the center of their table.

Her chopsticks hovered over the various pieces of sushi as if she hadn’t yet decided what she wanted, but then she zeroed in on an entirely predictable choice. Lexa’s lips tugged up at one corner as she watched Clarke shove a whole piece of crunchy bagel roll (her favorite) into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out around the piece and a bit of cream cheese smeared over her bottom lip as she licked across it and let out a quiet moan.

She was beautiful.

That tug at the corner of Lexa’s mouth pulled harder, as hard as the sudden, familiar tug in her chest, and her lips spread into a full smile.

Clarke pointed her chopsticks at Lexa and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t even think about laughing.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Clarke.”

“You know I’m weak for sushi.”

“I’m weak for you.”

Clarke pressed her lips together, obviously fighting a smile. “You’re laughing on the inside, aren’t you?”

“Maybe a little.” Lexa rubbed the toe of her boot against the side of Clarke’s leg under the table. “You’re beautiful.”

Ducking her head, Clarke bit her bottom lip. She swirled the tip of one chopstick through her soy sauce, her neck and cheeks flushing light pink. Her voice was soft, tender, when she said, “Eat your nigiri, Lexa.”

The words only caused the tug in Lexa’s chest to yank harder, the smile on her lips to grow and grow until she was practically beaming. She felt dizzy with the joy of it, dizzy and full and overwhelmed, and she was going to say it. She was going to say the words.

She was going to seize the moment. Seize the day. Seize the—

“He’s seizing!”

The shout followed by the clatter of a plate falling off a nearby table pulled Lexa’s attention, and she turned just in time to see a man slipping from his chair and hitting the floor with a hard thud.

Clarke was out of her chair in a flash, Lexa right behind her. She couldn’t do anything but hover behind Clarke and watch, but Lexa wanted to be there. Just in case Clarke needed anything. Just in case.

The man’s body looked painfully tight, tensed at every inch. His fingers curled in against his palms and his mouth moved wordlessly as if he was desperately trying to say something but couldn’t.

“Sir,” Clarke said, slipping her hand up under the man’s head for support. “Sir, can you hear me?” She looked up at the woman who had been dining with him. “What’s his name?”

“Robert.”

“Does he have a history of seizures?”

The woman shook her head, eyes wide with panic. “I don’t know,” she said. “This is only our second date.” She grabbed blindly, latching onto Lexa’s arm as if she knew her and held on tight. “Are you a doctor?”

Clarke didn’t answer the question, turning her attention back to the man. “Robert, my name is Clarke. I’m going to try to help you.” She pulled up a bit on his eyelids, one by one, checking his pupils, and said, “Okay, Robert, I need you to try to smile for me. Can you do that?” She nodded, encouraging. “Give me a smile.”

Robert’s expression didn’t change, not even a hint of smile, but Clarke nodded as if it had and said, “That’s good.” She squeezed one of his balled-up fists. “Now, can you say something? Can you say my name? Try to say ‘Clarke’ for me.”

Nothing more than a gurgle escaped the man’s throat, but Clarke continued to nod and smile at him.

Fingernails dug into Lexa’s arm as the woman next to her quietly hissed, “Is she a doctor?”

“She’s a physician assistant,” Lexa told her. “She’s very good. She can help him.”

Clarke rubbed her hands gently up and down Robert’s arms. “Okay, Robert. I need you to try to lift your arms. Can you do that?”

One of his arms twitched, tugged up half an inch, but then stuck in place.

“Why does he need to lift his arms?” The woman’s nails dug into Lexa’s arm again. “Why is he seizing?”

“He’s not seizing,” Clarke said then, glancing up at her. “He’s having a stroke.” She then looked to Lexa. “Call for an ambulance.”

Lexa’s phone was pressed to her ear in seconds.

The ambulance arrived faster than expected, and Clarke directed the EMTs to the nearest hospital, which happened to be her own. She turned to Lexa as they wheeled Robert out of the restaurant on a gurney, and she bit her bottom lip.

Lexa laughed. “It’s okay,” she said. “You can go with him. I know you want to.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Lexa pulled Clarke in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You have to go. That’s what you do. You help people.” She ran a hand over Clarke’s hair and whispered, “That’s why I—” Clarke pulled back to meet her gaze, and Lexa quickly cleared her throat and swallowed down the words. She squeezed Clarke’s hand. “That’s why you’re you.”

Clarke smiled softly and nodded, and Lexa squeezed her hand again. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll get a to-go box and head back to your apartment.”

“You’re the best.” Clarke kissed her quickly, a brief peck to the lips. “I shouldn’t be too long.”

Lexa watched her climb into the rig. The flashing lights of the ambulance reflected on the glass of the restaurant door in front of her, and all the ways Lexa loved Clarke remained lodged in her throat.

vi.

The whine of the Keurig spitting out Lexa’s coffee was like music to her ears but it was nothing compared to the sound of Clarke’s key in the door. The sound of Clarke’s feet shuffling around the apartment.

The clock on the microwave blinked 12:13 AM at her, and she poured creamer into the coffee as she waited for Clarke to find her way into the kitchen. When she did, Lexa turned and held out the mug. “Happy birthday.”

Clarke groaned and took the cup. “Thank you.” Bringing it to her nose, she breathed in the scent of it and hummed. She gave Lexa a tired smile. “You stayed up.”

Her voice was raspy, scratching pleasantly across the swollen mess of Lexa’s heart, and Lexa nodded. “How’s Robert?”

Leaning against the counter opposite Lexa, Clarke took a slurping sip of Lexa’s coffee. “He’s got a long road ahead of him, but he’s alive.”

“You sound tired.”

“Yeah.” Clarke took another sip. “I wanted to be there when he came out of surgery, so I kept busy in the ER for a while.”

“You were amazing tonight.”

Clarke smiled behind the lip of the coffee mug, and Lexa felt it like a pulse beneath her skin, between her ribs. She felt that smile in every part of her. That smile was a tug all its own. “I’m surprised you stayed up,” Clarke said. “You got up at five this morning to run. You’ve got to be exhausted.”

Lexa nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Why didn’t you go to bed?”

Her gaze tracked over Clarke’s face in the dim light of the kitchen. Down the length of her body and back up. She took in every bit of her, every bit of the woman who had slipped in and planted herself inside Lexa’s bones. The woman who had taken root and grown, branching out through Lexa’s system and tangling around her heart like knotted limbs. She sighed, heavy and happy and full, and said, “Because I’m in love with you.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, all the tension leaked rapidly from her body. Tension she hadn’t even realized she was holding. A strange sound, somewhere between a laugh and sob, crawled up her throat and slipped out, and Lexa’s eyes stung. It felt so incredibly good to say the words that she opened her mouth and let them free again.

“I’m in love with you, Clarke,” she repeated. “It feels like I have been for ….” She shrugged a shoulder and swiped a hand through her hair. Over one tired, wet eye. “For forever.”

Clarke stared at her for a long, silent moment before a smile slowly spilled across her lips. Setting Lexa’s coffee aside, Clarke crossed the dim room and ran her hands gently down Lexa’s sides. Over her hips. She wrapped her arms around Lexa’s waist and pressed their chests together. “How long have you been holding that in?”

A wet sigh escaped as Lexa leaned in and rested her forehead against Clarke’s. “Since Pizza Hut,” she admitted, and Clarke’s eyes widened.

A second later, a loud laugh burst through her lips, spawning a smile on Lexa’s lips as well. Clarke laughed so hard that her body shook with it, and Lexa loved her more. More and more and more.

Clarke kissed Lexa’s chin, her cheek, her mouth, and squeezed tightly around her. “You should have told me.”

“I’ve been waiting for the right moment.”

“So have I,” Clarke whispered, catching Lexa by surprise. Her hands pressed fully against Lexa’s back, and she closed her eyes. “I love you so much, Lexa.”

Lexa kissed her then, full and deep. Kissed her hard. Soft. Kissed her all the things she had been holding in for far too long.

When they pulled gently apart, she pressed their foreheads together again and said, “When I heard your key in the door, I felt ….” She squeezed Clarke’s sides in place of words she didn’t have. “And I realized it wasn’t about the right moment at all, just the right person.”

“The right person,” Clarke repeated against Lexa’s lips, and they sighed into another kiss. Gentle this time. Tender, and Lexa lost herself in it.

She felt the familiar tug in her chest, and she knew she had finally figured it out. All that time searching for a moment and it had been right in front of her. Right beside her. Blue-eyed and beautiful.

Clarke was the moment all along.

They were the moment.

And Lexa was sure.