Scene 12
Sometimes it’s better to leave some facts unattended, unperturbed, because judging someone when you weren’t even in their shoes to begin with was unfair. And Lexa knew from Clarke’s shadowy sky blues that she had enough.
Losing love makes our slate exceedingly blank and Lexa learnt it the hard, rather non-platonic way, but love is love is love. So no matter how many reasons she deduced to satiate her quench, yet she found that despite all, she would do anything to make Clarke Griffin smile again.
Even if it was a tad bit.
They both let yesterday’s whirlwind night riddled in hefty forlorn memories vanish away in the abyss. A silent understanding developed, that spoke louder than any action, which seemed elevated Clarke to an ordnance of serenity. She found herself constantly stealing stolen glances from the googled worn brunette, thin lips biting against the rear mirror, a growing smile illuminating the crevices of her pale face about what thoughts that could be pondering inside Lexa Mikealson.
“I need a shower. I need it, Lexa.” Clarke exasperates lamely under the noon sun.
“We would have in a hotel by now and not ….” Lexa trots her glasses slightly down her nose and looks pointedly at the dramatic blonde. “….In some terrain if you had been paying attention.”
Clarke stuck out her tongue.
“I can’t believe you. How the hell can one miss the gigantosorous sign?” Lexa slows down the car, eyeing for any sign for the almost deserted road ahead but all she’s met in sublime void. She then looks back to Clarke who’s fanning herself off some pamphlet before curling it in a ball and throwing it inside some corner of her baby.
She feels Lexa’s staring but all she heaves out, “I can’t believe I missed a good night’s sleep over this shit.”
They were travelling the instructed lines of … somewhere out of … somewhere …. Hoping to head somewhere when a pair of heads were screaming out for help just ahead of them, catches them off guard. Lexa’s first thought was to shoot past them so fast that Clarke couldn’t even see them, but alas. Travelling in light’s momentum in this box of tin, Amen, Mr. Griffin, was nothing short of reaching for the moon.
“We have to help them, Lexa.” She says, just as Lexa begrudgingly expected.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Lexa addresses Clarke, hands flying minutely in the air before them as if trying to stand post the validity of her statement. “They might be serial killers dressed in moronic tuxes. Who the hell wears tux in this weather? I have to say Griffin, they are deranged in the very least.”
“You watch too much CSI.” Clarke grabs another magazine, fanning herself to free of the clung hotness.
“And you watch none. You are ignorant.”
“Ignorant is bliss. Now, stop the car, Alexandria.”
“No way, Dolores. I don’t get paid enough for this fucking shit.”
Clarke made what the fuck, you promised not to say the who-shall-not-be-named name again and now I’m gonna have to kill you face at Lexa.
“I thought we were bringing out the big guns.” Lexa shrugged promptly stating. Even in the cloudiness of her embarrassment, Clarke couldn’t help but smile.
“We are going to have a talk about your certain use of profanity soon. Now stop the car. Look at them, they seem so desperate puppies and their car’s all busted.”
\“Yeah.” Lexa pauses, scrutinizing them from feet away. “One of them looks like a bulldog ready to pounce and the other’s scramming like a chihuahua.”
Clarke grunted at her and poked her side, yelping a squeak from her.
“Oww. Ok. If this ….” Lexa waved her finger ideally between her and Clarke and the distant duo, “Turns out to be The Hitcher 2.0, I’m running straight for the hills leaving your sweet arse behind.”
Lexa bites her inner cheek at the slipped innuendo but Clarke catches the slip within a blink.
“You find my ass sweet. Huh.”
“We are finally docking.” Lexa rolls her eyes, steering the car towards the lost pair.
“Hey. Can you give us a ride to the next town? Our car’s kinda bummed out.” The brown haired guy dopily smiled at Clarke.
“And where is this next town?” Lexa piped in before Clarke could.
“Oh, it’s Akron.” Again, the doe eyed guy said proudly, almost bouncing up and down its place like a rabbit, clinging on to the scrawny well build guy who had now over thrown his tux over his shoulders.
They didn’t look like mass murderers to Lexa, but looks can be deceiving.
She maintained her hard unperturbed gaze on the little hobbit until Clarke elbowed her at her ribs. Again.
“Women.” Lexa huffs underneath her breath but close enough got Clarke to hear. “Sure, the more the merrier.” She faux smiles before clinking on the dormant engine.
“We just got married.” Happily chirped the little guy to break in the null silence.
“By the way, I’m Miles Brown. And this handsome fellow beside me is Atom Ward or rather Atom Brown. He took up my name, my chubby bear.”
Lexa grimaced. Whipped. But by the dead glare the man named Atom threw her, she knew she had been caught.
Lexa cleared her throat.
“So, you are not some runaway couple serial killers?”
There was yet again jab into the ribs. Clarke glared at her, conniving-ly, might she add and in her rear mirror she could see a mild discomfort in Miles’s face. The chihuahua was frowning and the bull dog, Atom was breathing down her neck. Lexa felt she was this teeny weeny far was actually dripping under its howling drools.
“It’s just that …. You know …. Hitchhikers with tuxedos and all …. “ Lexa added weakly for reassurance of her previous accusation.
“Oh, that’s because we eloped yesterday. At Atlantic City. It was fun and so romantic. Wanna hear it?” Miles echoed a small smile, something that Clarke encouraged further on.
“Sure.”
“We just met 3 months ago at Philadelphia. It just clicked. Like a lock to its key. Atom, here proposed the first date, all shy and stammering.”
“I wasn’t …. Stammering.”
“Darling, I found it endearing.” And kissed him warmly on his cheeks. “Anyway, one date turned two and then three rolled over and we kinda lost count. We went to Atlantic City for our two month anniversary and Mr. Big here just out of thin air said, “Hey, Brownie, wouldn’t it be great if we eloped here?” And I thought why not. I mean, why not right? So I said yes. And here we are back at my hometown, so tell my parents.”
Clarke smiled sadly at the confession. “3 months is short time.”
“Yeah. But when it feels so right, how can it be ever wrong?” Miles happily chimed the memory.
“Already meeting the in-laws.” Lexa asked.
Atom stiffened a bit, collaring his buttoned shirt.
They stopped at some eatery where both Clarke and Miles excused before their departure had excused themselves to their respective bathrooms, mostly to freshen up.
Lexa circled the keys in her fingers, pushing back her aviators up her nose.
Atom stop awkwardly stood against the car door, boots fidgeting against the sandy pavements.
“Nervous?”
“Yeah.”
“You ought to be. I hear they can be quite the breathing dragons.”
Atom amusedly raised a singular eye brow at her.
“Talking from experience?” His eyes were almost too playful glancing to the vacant seat of the blonde.
Lexa raised smirked, her white perfect teeth flashing in her red ruddiness.
“No. Not at all. I don’t think you have to be so worried though. I see the way you look at him. If they can’t see it, then they are ungracious bigots.”
“Thank you.” Came a rather soft reply from a brawny man like Atom.
Lexa shrugged. Clarke cleared her throat from behind them, closely followed by Miles, who beamed at his partner.
Clarke gently squeezed Lexa on her thigh.
“Quite the pep talk.”
“You heard? How much?”
“Just enough.”
“I didn’t say that much.” Lexa reprimands but Clarke disagrees in her hoarse velvet voice that swoons Lexa, leaving her no place to argue back.
“You said enough.”
Clarke puts up her googles and looks away. The conversation halts and comes to a stop, even though she had left Lexa brimming with question.
The terrain flows past them breezily, the car swiftly flowing through with the vast forever stretching golden fields tinted with green on one side and the rhythmic melody of the docile waters on the other. Lexa shrugs on her glasses, concentrating on the untraversed path ahead, eyes still searching for the lost look in Clarke’s own eyes which are themselves shrouded in black darkness.
Most of the time, Lexa’s so busy drowning and wishing for that blue romance that plays silently in the backseat of the car, that she doesn’t see how Clarke looks and at her time and again behind cloaked eyes like Alexandria Mikealson is water and she’s parched, stuck eternity in a desert.
They were almost nearing Akron when Miles all but shrieked, “Its carnival time in Akron. Maybe you could stick around for that? You helped us and it’s the least thing I could do for you. The organiser’s a close friend, I could put a word in and all of the rides will be free ….”
“Breathe, babe.” Cooed Atom.
“Yeah. I mean I’ll .. we’ll be happy …”
“Ok, we sure.”
“Clarke?”
Clarke smiles way too brightly at the upheld prospect. “Yeah. I haven’t been in a carnival for ages. So ok. We’ll be having so much fun, Lexie – loo.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, dorky Griffy.” Lexa deadpans, swirling the car towards their residence.