Two Idiots in Love
Lexa was fed up. For the past three weeks her girlfriend disappeared from 5-7 PM every day. Without fail, no matter what they were doing, a few minutes before 5 o’clock, Clarke would jump up, grab her battered duffle bag and run out the door. It didn’t matter if dinner was going to be ready in thirty minutes or if they had plans. She would make excuses, apologize profusely, and still run out the door. It was beginning to make Lexa mad.
The thing was, she couldn’t stay mad for long because she was wildly, madly in love with Clarke, and she always let her get away with more than she should. She knew why. It was because of the way Clarke looked at her. Her eyes were always filled with adoration, longing, and a little bit of fear, like she was worried that she wasn’t good enough for Lexa, like one day Lexa would break up with her in favor of finding another alpha.
Her ever endearing, doting, loving alpha had never voiced it, but Lexa knew that a small seed of doubt lived inside Clarke that their relationship wouldn’t last. It was because the blonde wasn’t like most alphas. She was small in stature, not as muscular, didn’t care for the pissing contests her fellow alphas had trying to prove that they were bigger, badder, and stronger than all the rest, and she didn’t mind expressing those things out loud. She knew she was different, and she accepted it. What she was afraid of was that someday, Lexa wouldn’t want to accept it anymore.
Part of her worry might also have been that Lexa had still never told the alpha that she loved her. She did love her, but for some reason, Lexa couldn’t get the words out. It was because, before meeting Clarke, she had told herself that she would never give in to her most basic needs and urges as an omega. Until Clarke, she’d never spent a heat with someone else. She refused to allow herself to fall prey to the stereotype (although was it a stereotype if it was true?) that all an omega wanted was to be submissive to an alpha. She would never, ever confess that during her heat, all she wanted was to be filled and knotted. She’d never admit that she’d dreamed many times of being taken by an alpha all while screaming for more. She also adamantly rejected the idea that omegas thrived on the attention their alpha could give, and she opposed the thought that she’d never reach fulfillment without an alpha at her side.
The reason she was so enthralled when she met Clarke was because Clarke’s thoughts exactly aligned with hers. Not only that, but Clarke also went out of her way to prove it.
It made Lexa’s heart flutter. She could see herself spending a lifetime with Clarke. She could see them getting married, renting an apartment until they could afford a house, raising children, and eventually babysitting their grandchildren. She wanted all of that, and she knew that Clarke did too, but for some reason, she couldn’t tell her girlfriend that. To top it off, before they shared her heats each quarter, she made Clarke promise not to bite her, not to leave her mark on her, no matter how much Lexa begged for it to happen.
Clarke, of course, always agreed to this, though every time she extracted the promise, she could see the sadness behind Clarke’s eyes. The last time she had made Clarke promise was when her girlfriend started disappearing every day, and now it was beginning to worry her. Any anger she had was starting to slip away and be replaced by fear.
What if Lexa was no longer enough for Clarke? What if the blonde had finally gotten sick of all Lexa’s hang-ups? What if each day she was leaving because she had met someone new?
Lexa’s heart thumped painfully in her chest and her eyes filled with tears at the thought. What if Clarke was breaking up with her? What if she was not enough for Clarke anymore?
She ran to their bedroom and flopped down on the bed, letting her mind spiral, suddenly fully convincing herself that something terrible was about to happen. She didn’t know what she would do. She couldn’t lose Clarke. Clarke was her everything. Clarke was her world.
That night, when Clarke didn’t get home until almost 9 PM, Lexa was nearly beside herself, but she hid it well, or at least she thought she had.
Her girlfriend had come in smelling of beer and something else that Lexa refused to identify lest she spiral further into a pit of despair of her own making. The alpha was full of apologies and promised to make it up to Lexa, and Lexa had gone along with it though her alpha had obviously caught on that something was wrong, especially when Lexa excused herself to go to bed early and didn’t acknowledge the alpha when she came to bed a short while later.
In typical Clarke fashion, she apologized again, thinking the issue was with her, when really it was with Lexa. Clarke kissed her temple, told her she loved her, and tucked her in, but she didn’t disturb Lexa beyond that.
It was another punch to Lexa’s gut.
Whenever Lexa had something wrong with her, Clarke wouldn’t stop until she had teased it out of her all while making promises to help her get over whatever was bothering her, but that night, Clarke didn’t do that. Lexa was almost certain she heard the alpha whimper when she rolled over to face the wall instead of cuddling with her as she usually would.
The next morning when the bed was empty, it was her turn to whimper. Clarke was never up before she was, and she certainly wasn’t gone, but now the apartment was empty.
Lexa finally gave in and cried. She had fucked things up so colossally that Clarke hadn’t even stuck around for breakfast. She hadn’t even left a note telling her where she was going.
Swamped with guilt and worry, Lexa got up, bypassed the kitchen, forwent her morning coffee and deposited herself on the couch and crawled under a blanket. She pulled out her phone and looked at every picture she had of her alpha wishing she hadn’t been so caught up in herself that she’d told her the three little words that she knew Clarke was desperately longing to hear. Why couldn’t she just say them? What was holding her back? She loved Clarke. She loved her more than she thought possible, but the stupid and stubborn part of herself wouldn’t let her say the words.
She jolted when the front door slammed open and her friend Luna came in, fury in her eyes. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Lexa had to unbury herself from her blanket, and she must have been a sight based on Luna’s reaction. The alpha hurried into the room and skidded to her knees in front of Lexa. “Oh, honey, what is happening between you and Clarke? I’ve never seen you two like this before.”
Lexa swallowed hard. “I think she’s…” She started to cry in earnest. “She’s leaving me.”
Luna sat back on her heels, confusion clear on her face. “If she is leaving you then why is she currently crying in Raven’s arms saying that you are leaving her?”
A painful hiccup escaped as she tried to process what Luna had just said. “Say that again, please.”
“She’s at our house crying because she said you are breaking up with her. She’s devastated. The waterworks started the second she stepped through the door.”
Lexa’s heart constricted in her chest, making it painful to breathe. “But she’s been leaving every day, and she won’t tell me what she’s doing. No matter what we have going on, she gets up and goes out, and then last night, she came home late. She smelled of beer and…and someone else.”
Luna stood. “For fuck’s sake,” she slapped a hand over her face. “You two are the most ridiculous, useless lesbians I have ever met.” She swept Lexa’s legs off the couch, forcing her to sit up then sat next to her. “She really didn’t tell you what she’s been doing every night?”
Lexa shook her head miserably.
Luna patted her knee. “I could tell you, but I think you need to hear it from her. The only thing I will say is that she is not leaving you. That couldn’t be further from the truth.” She got out her phone and called Raven. “Yeah, babe, do me a favor and tell Clarke the world is not ending. Lexa will be there within the hour, and you and I will be nowhere to be found. They need some privacy. Theses idiots need to talk.”
She stood, put her phone in her back pocket and stared down at Lexa. “Get showered and put on something pretty. Go over to my place and tell Clarke everything that’s going on inside that dumb head of yours and then make her tell you everything that’s in hers, and for heaven’s sake, don’t show up without flowers.”
“Clarke doesn’t like flowers,” she mumbled stupidly.
Luna only sighed. “That is a lie. All alphas like flowers. We just say that we don’t, so it doesn’t ruin our cred.”
When Lexa didn’t make a move, Luna pulled her to her feet and pushed her toward the bathroom. “Go get clean. I’m heading over to pick up Raven, but so help me, if you don’t show up and speak with Clarke, I will come back over and drag you there myself.”
Lexa finally did as Luna said and got in the shower, but she felt like she was moving in slow motion. Her limbs were heavy, and her eyes still watered, but she was able to get the job done. When she stood in front of the mirror, she almost didn’t bother to put on makeup or do her hair, but Clarke didn’t need to see her when she looked a fright. She needed to make an effort if she wanted to keep her alpha, not to mention that Clarke deserved her effort. She deserved so much, much more than Lexa had to offer.
She decided then and there that if Clarke was leaving her, she wouldn’t put up a fight. Clarke meant the world to her. She would give the alpha the world if she could even if she wasn’t a part of it.
That was a lie. If she couldn’t even tell the alpha she loved her, then how could she give her the world? If nothing else, she promised that she would tell Clarke how she felt no matter how hard it was and how things ended. She would tell Clarke that she’d fallen in love with her the first time they met, and she would tell her that she would always love her even if it meant Clarke spending her life with someone else. She’d already failed her alpha; she’d at least let her know that she was never unloved.
Getting in the car, she headed to Luna and Raven’s place but not without stopping to get Clarke a ridiculously large bouquet of flowers first. Even if Clarke really didn’t like flowers, the gesture had to count for something, right?
She let her head rest against the steering wheel once she was parked. Flowers were an empty gesture if she couldn’t back them up with her true intentions, and those intentions were to win Clarke’s heart and keep it…if the alpha allowed it.
Finally getting the courage to leave the car, she grabbed the flowers and headed to the door where she only hesitated to knock for a moment.
It took Clarke longer to answer the door than she had expected. For one long minute, she thought she wasn’t going to, but then the door was opening, if not far enough for her to enter.
The sight of Clarke devastated her. Her girlfriend, the love of her life, was wearing a worn-out pair of sweats, the beloved football jersey that she’d stolen from Lexa not long after they met, she had her hair up in a messy bun, and her glasses were perched on her face. Under those glasses were red and puffy eyes.
“Klark.” She moved forward, but the door didn’t open further. “Uh. These are for you.” She held up the ludicrous bunch of flowers thinking that getting them was the wrong move.
The door inched open just a bit further, and a shaky, pale hand reached out. “They are beautiful, Lex.”
“Can I…can I come in?”
“Of course.” The door opened the rest of the way. Clarke looked at her over the bouquet. “Let me see if they have something I can put these in.”
Clarke disappeared into the kitchen, so Lexa made her way to the loveseat hoping that when her alpha returned that she would sit next to her.
No such luck. When Clarke got back, she seemed hesitant to get too close to Lexa, choosing to lean her hip against the recliner instead of sitting down.
“I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time, followed by, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Since Clarke wasn’t sitting, Lexa did the only other thing she could think of doing. She moved and got on her knees in front of the alpha. “This is all my fault. I should have told you how I felt a long time ago, but my idiocy has ruined everything, and even if you are breaking up with me, you need to know that I love you, Clarke Griffin. I love you so much.”
Clarke blinked down at her. “Break up with you? I thought you were going to break up with me.”
“Why would I do that? You are everything to me.”
“I’m not alpha enough for you.” Clarke hadn’t moved, and Lexa was still on her knees. “It’s why I disappear every evening. I’ve been taking classes and doing this ‘be a better alpha’ boot camp thing to try and get better. I…”
Lexa hopped to her feet. A tear slipped from her eye. “Klark. You are perfect. I’m the deficient one. All this time, you’ve doted on me, you have loved me, but I haven’t reciprocated, not really. I never told you I love you when I do. I do so much that it hurts. I’m so sorry it took me this long to say it.”
The alpha was still rooted to her spot.
“Klark, you should know that I don’t deserve you, but if you’ll have me, I will spend the rest of my life showing you how much I love you. I want your mark. I want your pups. I want your everything.”
Clarke finally sat in the recliner. She landed heavily, like the weight of the world was on her shoulders, but there was hope in her eyes. “Why did you think I was breaking up with you?”
Lexa felt awkward standing there and went to sit on the loveseat again wishing Clarke was sitting next to her. “Because you kept disappearing, and then last night, you came home smelling of beer, and I could smell another omega on you. I thought you had been seeing someone all this time.” She paused but hurried on. “It would be what I deserve.”
Several emotions flitted over Clarke’s face before landing on mild, or maybe not so mild, embarrassment. Lexa wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “Lex, first let me say that I am sorry. I should have told you what I was doing, but it was uncomfortable to be going to a class to make myself more of an alpha than I am. Yesterday, I was home late because I finally realized that I was being stupid. I’m never going to be different than I am now. Monty, who was in the class with me, realized it too. We went out and had celebratory drinks. We’d finally gotten our heads out of our asses and realized that we were exactly who we were meant to be. The omega you smelled on me was Harper, his girlfriend. She gave me a hug. That’s all.”
Lexa fiddled with the hem of her shirt, feeling ever so completely stupid and unworthy of the alpha sitting across from her.
“Lex.”
“Lex.”
When she wouldn’t look her in the eyes, Clarke finally got up and sat next to her. “Do you really love me?”
Lexa kept her eyes on her hands but nodded. “So much. I always have,” she whispered.
“And I love you too, you have no idea, but we need to change. We need to learn to communicate better. If we had just talked to each other, we wouldn’t be here now with hurt feelings. And maybe we can both accept who we are. Instead of you being an omega who wants to be less omega-y, and me wanting to be more of an alpha, we can just accept who we are. That is one thing we don’t need to change. We are the only selves we need to be. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” She lifted her head to find hopeful blue eyes looking at her. “You should know, Klark, that I have always, always loved the alpha that you are. You are so special and different, and I have made a complete fool of myself. I’ve expected so much of you, and you never asked for anything in return.”
“I didn’t need to, Lex, and you should know that I’ve never given more than I am willing to give. I am alpha enough to know my limits, and before you say anything, you are exactly the kind of omega I always dreamed I would be with. You have ideas and opinions, and you stick to them. You don’t let anyone deter you from what you want, and you never let an alpha make you feel less than who you are. It is what I love so much about you.”
Lexa’s heart finally unclenched. “I still should have told you I love you a long time ago. I can see now that some of my ideas suck.”
Clarke smiled. “Okay, that one might have sucked hard, but so was my thought that you ever thought I wasn’t alpha enough for you.” Clarke scooted next to Lexa so that she could lean on her. “Can we agree that we both need to get out of our own heads sometimes? It’s what led to the problem we are having now.”
Lexa nodded again. She found Clarke’s scent gland and bit it softly before rubbing her face on it and scent marking herself. “Yes, I can promise that. Can you make a promise for me?”
Clarke’s head bobbed up and down, but she looked unsure, not knowing what Lexa was going to ask her.
“When my next heat arrives, will you mark me? It’s time for the world to know that I belong to the smartest, kindest, hottest alpha this planet has ever seen.”
Clarke tipped Lexa’s head and kissed her maybe more passionately than she ever had. “I promise, but that means you have to mark me too. I’m so ready to be a kept woman.”
Lexa promised and swooped in for another kiss. “Maybe we should go home and get a preview of what my next heat will be like.”
Clarke stood only to pounce on Lexa a minute later. “You know, we could stay here. They won’t be back for hours. We could defile this couch, and then maybe the counter. They would never know.”
“You are kidding right? You know Raven probably has hidden cameras all over this place. She does work for a security firm.” Clarke hadn’t moved and Lexa didn’t care. She liked the weight of Clarke’s body on top of hers.
“Then let’s give them a show.”
Lexa was not normally the type of omega to allow public displays of affection. At the same time, it wasn’t a sure thing that there were cameras in the apartment, and it wasn’t as if Luna and Raven hadn’t gone at in many times at her and Clarke’s place, so she reached down and grabbed Clarke’s jersey, jerking it over the alpha’s head.
Almost instantly, Raven’s voice came through a speaker they couldn’t see. “Don’t you dare. You can kiss and make up, but that’s it. Go home if you want to do more than that.”
Clarke burst out laughing. She picked Lexa up bridal style. “Let’s take this home, yeah?”
On the speaker, they could hear Luna and Raven laughing. “You two are such idiots, but at least you are two idiots in love.”