Chapter Text
“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” – John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Clarke’s arms ache with the effort of holding the tray steady. The crisp autumn air bites into her exposed calves and goosebumps have started trailing after the breeze where it grazes her bare arms.
Summer said its goodbyes a few weeks ago and took with it the warm sunshine and blue skies. Brown and yellow leaves now pave the roads, the colors of a season that never quite knows the role it’s supposed to play, trapped between the rebellions and chutzpah of summer and the austere rigor of winter.
It’s a time for bundling up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and a TV show to keep her company, but instead Clarke is braving the cold outside of her front door neighbors’ house.
Next to her, Mark fidgets. She knocks her right foot into his left, which fortunately gets him to stop, and clears her throat, bracing for a few more, long seconds of waiting, debating whether to ring again. How long has it been since they rang the bell?
The door swings open and Clarke’s breath is punched out of her lungs.
Before her, smiling congenially, stand two of the most beautiful people she has ever seen. He is all strong jaw and square angles, perfectly trimmed beard and almost curling hair pulled back and away from brilliant blue eyes. She is full lips and tall, round cheekbones, delicate angles and the gentle slope of a regal nose, chestnut locks framing pretty almond shaped eyes.
Clarke dislikes them almost instantly.
She holds the tray out to the woman, who thanks her with a warm smile and sets it aside on a table or something of the sort, out of sight.
“That’s both an ‘I’m sorry for not being home when you left those cookies on our doorstep’, and a ‘thank you for the cookies’. They were delicious,” Clarke gushes, but then remembers something else. “Oh! How clumsy of me. We are the Hudsons. I’m Clarke and this is my husband, Mark.”
The other woman raises an eyebrow and Clarke thinks she sees a hint of amusement in her eyes.
“Mark and Clarke, how… cute.” An uncomfortable silence stretches on until, “I’m Lexa,” she says as the four of them shake hands, “and this is Henry, my husband. And it was absolutely my pleasure. Welcome to the neighborhood.”
Lexa’s eyes meet Clarke’s and she could swear she sees the ghost of a smile on full lips. She doesn’t like the way the other woman looks at her, taking her in in an almost… appraising manner. It makes her want to fidget and smooth out the wrinkles in her dress, pat her hair into shape or fetch a wet handkerchief to attenuate the warmth building in the back of her neck. It makes her feel like prey.
She doesn’t let herself cower under her neighbor’s probing gaze, despite how out of sorts it makes her feel, and it’s only a few seconds before Lexa looks away and takes a step back, opening the door wider.
“Please, come in. And do stay over for dinner tonight, I made entirely too much food for just the two of us.”
The way Lexa meets Clarke’s eyes as she says that, it feels more like a challenge than an invitation. It’s danger rather than hospitality. Clarke might not be one to back down from a challenge, but she’s also not so stupid as to dip her toes in lava.
She’s about to mutter a polite ‘oh, we wouldn’t want to impose’, when her husband’s gruff voice yaps cheerfully: “We would love to.”
Clarke knows her place.
Dinner is amazing, obviously.
The tentacles of Lexa and Henry’s flawless home life seem to extend everywhere, including the kitchen. As much as it frustrates her to admit, the beef stew is cooked to perfection and accompanied by great wine, and the apple pie is so good Clarke wants to take it home with her.
The soup tastes a bit sour, though, and Clarke holds on to that one flaw like it’s her own victory.
“Dinner was delicious,” she comments later, once the men have stepped outside to talk politics and sports and whatnot, and she and Lexa are sitting on the couch nibbling on the cookies she brought.
Lexa and Henry’s house is beautiful. Well-lit and spacious, the decoration tiptoes the line between modern and traditional with grace. It’s the perfect house for the perfect couple living the perfect life, like the perfect little families Clarke thought only existed on the backs of magazines.
She tries to tell herself it’s not envy she feels when she sees how happy they are. Or how beautiful Lexa looks next to her handsome husband when he lays a gentle hand on her shoulder and she covers it with her own and rewards him with a smile before he returns to the porch with a bowl of pretzels and a couple of beers.
Clarke wishes she and Mark were more like that.
“Thank you,” Lexa bows her head, and the way the upturned collar of her striped shirt grazes the sharp lines of her jaw is reminiscent of a movie star.
Clarke averts her eyes before Lexa can catch her. This woman’s company makes her uncomfortable. Clarke hates how intense her gaze is, like Lexa is cataloguing her every single flaw and shortcoming, and how it brings forth the urge to check herself in the mirror for any imperfections.
Instead, she takes another cookie and bites into it, tries to focus on the way it melts on her tongue. She closes her eyes for a second, savoring the chocolaty goodness. When she opens them again, her gaze inexplicably fleeting to Lexa, she finds her looking back.
Lexa’s eyes are a greyish green, she’s noticed. Deep despite their soft color, sharp as their owner’s tongue.
It’s unsettling.
“So,” she starts, maybe a little too loudly, eager to fill the silence between them with anything other than Lexa’s intensity, “thank you so much for your warm welcome to the neighborhood. God knows we were afraid we might not be able to fit in.”
The corner of Lexa’s lips lifts into a humorless smile.
“Yes, God seems to always be on top of everything.” Clarke frowns, but before she can react, Lexa adds, with a conspiratorial smile, “You’ll find our resident gossipers more knowledgeable than the Lord Almighty himself.”
“You absolutely must.”
The four of them are standing by the door, ready to turn in for the night. Clarke finishes buttoning up her coat and looks up to find Lexa’s eyes, who remains silent nonetheless.
It’s Henry who goads her with his charming smile and deep, friendly voice, trying to convince her to attend some ghastly housewives book club hosted by Lexa every other Saturday.
“You’ll get to know the girls better, make friends… Everyone loves it around here. And it’s just an hour or two.”
The idea of spending an additional two hours every fortnight with Lexa is… unnerving. And although she guesses it would help having the other women in the neighborhood serving as a buffer, it’s also true that she can’t see herself liking anyone who is friends with Lexa.
Clarke hitches her purse into the crook of her elbow and rests a hand on the doorknob, fingers aching to turn it. “I’m afraid I would feel very awkward. Everybody already knows everybody, and I’ll only stick out like a sore thumb,” she argues.
“Well, the point is for you to bridge that gap”, Henry insists, and she doesn’t need to look at Mark to see her husband smiling encouragingly. He would want her to leave the house. “Come on, Clarke.”
“Yes, Clarke,” Lexa speaks up for the first time, gaze trained on her and the ghost of a smirk on her lips. Once again, Clarke feels like she’s being challenged to say no. “Say you’ll come.”
Something about the wording makes Clarke’s heart beat faster and her fingers twitch with the absence of something. The slightest tick of one of Lexa’s eyebrows has her swallowing around erotemes without questions.
Maybe Clarke really is as stupid as she thought she wasn’t, for she raises her chin, chest puffed, and asks as she turns the handle:
“What book are you reading?”
Lexa doesn’t smile, yet somehow Clarke swears her eyes shine brighter and her shoulders loosen incrementally.
“The Awakening by Kate Chopin.” Lexa’s voice is softer now and she tosses a fleeting, wary look at Mark before meeting Clarke’s eyes again, something hesitant burrowing in her gaze. Her words are careful. “Do you have it?”
Clarke remembers The Awakening. She read it a few years ago, when she and Mark were still dating, and life was a much simpler affair. She also remembers being charmed by the similarities between her beau and Mr. Pontellier, the adventurous travelling salesman who loved his wife more than life itself yet wasn’t duly appreciated.
Then the story wound through affairs and started weaving ideas and Clarke put the book away, lost in a drawer of her childhood home never to be opened again.
“No.”
Something restless wraps around Clarke’s throat and she doesn’t miss how Lexa breaks their connection, lips pursing as an air of… something like resignation seems to sweep over her face before being replaced with a mask of inscrutable neutrality.
“You can read from someone else’s book. That way you can also pay more attention to the discussion; learn for next time.”
Clarke’s smile is tight as she opens the door, and she hangs on to the sight of her own house for balance. It doesn’t provide the comfort she expected. One foot out the door, she barely turns her head to toss a hasty goodbye over her shoulder.
“See you tomorrow, then!”
For some reason, Clarke expected Lexa’s house to look radically different from Friday to Saturday, even though barely a day has passed, and the only change is its occupants. Clarke’s house always feels too big, too dark, too silent when Mark is away. Somehow, without Henry, Lexa’s is even livelier.
The other big difference is the living room. Several chairs have been brought in and positioned to form a circle that starts and ends with the couch. The moment she walks in, about ten women swivel in their seats to greet her and Clarke feels like she’s walking into the ocean fully clothed.
The names and faces are easy to memorize. Octavia Blake is… brash and impolite. She’s the first one to acknowledge Clarke’s arrival. “Who’s this?”
“This,” Lexa says as she lets Clarke into the room, “is Clarke. She and her husband have just moved into 307.”
One of the housewives’s face brightens with realization. “Oh yes, I saw the trucks the other week. I'm so glad they finally sold that place. Was an eyesore in the neighborhood.”
Introductions ensue. Susan White, Sharon Sousa, Karen McCloskey, and Becky Schulte all pretty much look and act the same: light brown hair, doe eyes, skin fair, and lips a soft pink. The spitting image of the all-American housewife. Their prodding isn’t subtle; they look Clarke up and down, take her in like sharks sniffing for blood in the water. However, when she spots them looking to both Lexa and Maribel for direction, Clarke realizes it isn’t the leeches she needs to worry about.
Maribel Donoghue is one of those vicious gossipers you can spot from a mile away. Her hand slithers away from Clarke’s handshake like a snake and her eyes are cold and appraising. She carries herself with the confidence of a woman who knows she’s sitting on the top of the food chain, steps certain and almost sensual in spite of the cross that sits too low on her chest and the thick Bible that peeks from her bag. Just like her stylish blonde, almost silver hair, Maribel walks the line between pious and dangerous with ease.
On what seems to be Lexa’s side of the room, sitting right next to Octavia, the demure Harper McIntyre waves a meek hello before her eyes go out of focus again. The lines of her face are heavy and blue, her makeup mute and her hair just barely kempt.
Then there is Raven Reyes, whose dark brown eyes seem to find Clarke as intriguing as Clarke finds her. Her darker complexion makes her an outsider, yet she sits there like she owns the room — or rather, as though there is nothing the room could throw at her that would shake her balance. Clarke feels drawn to her self-assurance right away.
A quick sweep of the seats and Clarke’s heart drops. The only one available is directly across from Lexa, who hasn’t taken her eyes off her since she arrived, and smack between Harper and Maribel.
As she sits down, another glance around her tells her everyone is already wielding a book. She remembers Lexa’s words from the day before, about how she could share with someone, and leans slightly to the right, trying to peek into Maribel’s book.
The other woman gives her a saccharine smile before moving the book away from Clarke’s line of sight. Lexa’s voice breaks her attempts at getting her eyes on Maribel’s book.
“All set?” Upon Clarke’s nod, Lexa opens her own book. “Would anyone like to start us off?”
A dainty clearing of a throat directs everyone’s attention to Maribel, who is now pointedly facing away from Clarke, book and pen at the ready.
Clarke felt like prey when she came in; now she feels like unwanted leftovers.
“I’d like to point out how the perfect woman is described,” she says, dragging her pen with too much force across the page. Her smile is sweet, though her eyes dart around in vicious strokes, as though daring anyone to disagree. Clarke notices how her skirt just barely covers her knees and her legs, fair and flawless, and end on primly crossed ankles and expensive heeled shoes. It would almost look provocative if not for Maribel’s dignified sneer. “Blonde, blue eyes, a doting wife. Like me.”
“Like Clarke,” Lexa points out with a smirk, eyes locking with Clarke’s.
Susan, she thinks, nods enthusiastically, eyes wide, like she’s just now made the connection. Clarke knows better than to take the compliment just yet; the devious glint in Lexa’s eyes is warning enough.
“Does Kate Chopin really believe that is the perfect woman, though?”, Lexa continues, and there it is, Clarke thinks to herself. “Note that the first description of such an archetype is given through Mr. Pontellier’s eyes, but the author gives it her own twist. In the third paragraph of chapter four, she writes, ‘they were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands’.”
“I don’t see how that’s a problem,” says Maribel, spine straighter, as though she’s readying for a fight.
“Those are Mr. Pontellier’s words,” Lexa explains. “And then, Chopin’s twist: those women ‘esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels’.”
“And?”
“She’s being ironic, you wet rag.”
Every head turns to Raven, who is in turn looking at Maribel like she’s stupid. Maribel sputters, an indignant frown marring her features.
“B-but— it says right here, Mr. Pontellier adores Adele Rattignole. He says,” her pen scraping the page painfully again, “she’s ‘the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm’, with her— her ‘spun-gold hair’ and blue eyes like sapphires. She’s the one Edna should look to.”
“According to whom?”
“Why, to Mr. Pontellier, of course!”
“Should a woman’s merits be measured by a man’s tape?” Lexa cuts in, shifting the conversation in a different direction.
Her tone is placid, almost placating. Maribel sniffs and slides her book shut very primly, the picture of a sulking lady, yet her eyes flash like she’s a predator on the verge of striking.
“Our worth is determined by our peers. It’s how it always has been.”
“That is one way of looking at it,” Lexa concedes. “Chopin presents us with two ideals of women: Adele, the doting mother and wife who proudly effaces herself for her family, and the independent and disagreeable Mademoiselle Reisz. Edna is torn between those polar opposites.” Lexa’s eyes meet Clarke’s and her tone becomes more careful, laden with intent. “Being a respectable wife and mother but living an unhappy life, or defying society’s expectations but being shunned for it.”
Clarke holds Lexa’s stare, unwilling to let her words cut into her and shape her wounds into questions. Each second that passes her heart beats louder, more erratically, its confines barely able to hold it in anymore. Clarke wonders what it is about Lexa’s words that leave her so out of breath.
Octavia’s unladylike snort is like a rock breaking onto still waters. “Why can’t she do what she wants and be accepted?”
“Edna was ahead of her time,” argues Raven. “There was no place in society for a woman like her, it’s either life as an exemplary housewife or as an isolated outsider.”
“Yes, and that is why she chooses not to choose at all in the end. Leaving society altogether was her way of escaping and rejecting that tug of war.”
Lexa’s words blanket the room in somber silence. Clarke feels as though she’s mourning a part of herself as well as Edna, the woman who wanted to fit somewhere in the middle of an oppressive dichotomy.
When Lexa speaks again, her voice is barely louder than a whisper, befitting of the mood that has enveloped the room. She keeps her gaze trained on the pages, frowning at words which seem at war with her deepest thoughts.
“I would like to think that what Edna does is more indicative of self-possession than surrender. She was a young woman stuck in an unhappy marriage who met someone who awakened her to love.”
Lexa’s eyes escape the pages to meet Clarke’s for just a second. It’s so fleeting Clarke would have missed it if she wasn’t already looking at Lexa. It isn’t her fault that she doesn’t have a book of her own to track everyone else’s thoughts through the pages and underline the parts that feel most important.
“In the end, he loves her too much to stay, and she finds herself standing by a precipice. Her choices have ridden her away from society, however she no longer has a reason to keep trying to move an unmovable object. By doing… what she does in the end, she’s taking control of what little she still has some modicum of agency over: her body and her self. ‘They need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul’.”
The chain of murmured agreements does little to settle Clarke’s thoughts. Do they always read such… revolutionary books in these sessions? It’s not that Clarke has a problem with it, she’d like to think she’s a forward-thinking woman herself. It’s just— she can’t explain it. She can’t explain the way it resonates with her so much.
And she can’t explain why the sentiment feels truest when Lexa regards her as if she’s reading her every thought and cranking her emotions open like treasure chests. Clarke is a private person; she would rather not have all her insecurities laid bare for everyone to see. Then again, it’s not everyone, is it? It’s just Lexa. And somehow, that’s an even more daunting possibility.
Like an itch dying to be scratched, Clarke feels the sudden urge to speak up. To speak against. To contradict.
“He didn’t love her.”
She regrets it almost immediately. With eight pairs of eyes now on her, Clarke finds her certainty waning. Most of all when green eyes glint with curiosity and a quirked eyebrow dares her to explain. She digs her nails into her skirt.
“Robert. He didn’t really love her. Or he wouldn’t have left. He was selfish.”
Lexa frowns. “Clarke, with all due respect, you can’t really have an informed opinion, seeing as you haven’t read the book. You said it yourself.”
Clarke sits a little taller, pulls her shoulders back; quirks an eyebrow at Lexa, meeting her eyes with calm defiance and just the bare hint of a smirk. “I said I didn’t have it. You assumed I hadn’t read it.”
A heavy, awkward silence falls over the room.
Lexa purses her lips, all traces of amusement gone. For the first time since they met, the picturesque housewife looks unsettled, tricked out of the tight grip she has on every situation. Clarke revels in the knowledge that she’s made her look presumptuous and even a little foolish.
Lexa should not have assumed she had Clarke figured out like the rest of the women.
It’s only then that Clarke notices everyone else staring at her; Susan is even gaping. She guesses Lexa isn’t used to having her authority undermined.
A throat clears next to Clarke and she looks over to Maribel, who casts her an appraising look. Clarke raises an eyebrow, waiting to see what will happen. In the end, Maribel simpers and pushes her book into Clarke’s lap.
“Welcome to the neighborhood, darling.”
On Sundays, Clarke and Mark go to church.
It’s the way it’s always been and the way it always will be, and despite her mild discomfort with some of the sermons Clarke finds herself counting the days till mass.
On Sundays, Mark holds Clarke’s hand and smiles at her and sits next to her, even if it’s only when other people are looking. On Sundays, Mark stays.
On Sundays, Clarke feels a little more like the woman she’s supposed to be.
However, much to Clarke’s dismay, Sundays are Lexa and Henry’s church day too.
She watches them from afar, trading soft words and sweet smiles, gentle touches and an intimacy unlike anything Clarke has ever seen.
Clarke wonders if Henry likes to fill his tumbler to the brim. She wonders if Lexa lays awake in bed at night, waiting for her husband to come home. If she’s ever found a little black book in the hidden pocket of his jacket.
Henry says something in Lexa’s ear and she throws her head back laughing, neck long and fair, and Clarke knows the answers.
So distracted is she that the sound of Mark’s gruff voice in her own ear makes her startle. He chuckles and tightens the hold on her hand, drawing her gaze to his. She focuses on the pleasant slope of his easy smile.
“Clarke, what’s got your pretty little head up in the moon? I’ve called you three times already.”
She clears her throat, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks, and smooths over her skirt, if anything to have something to do with her hands.
“Sorry. I was— distracted, that’s all.”
Mark snorts and her fingers find purchase in the thick fabric of her skirt, twirling it. “I could see that.” He looks over at the crowd milling into the church and tugs at her hand. “Let’s go.”
Mass is the usual. The pastor rambles on and on about temptation and women and expectations, but Clarke hardly catches a word. Her focus is two rows ahead to the right, where Lexa and Henry sit. And from where, right after the pastor announced the theme for the sermon, Lexa looked over her shoulder, gaze searching until it landed on Clarke before tossing her a sly smile.
And now, after almost an hour, Lexa hasn’t looked back once. And it hasn’t been for lack of trying on Clarke’s part, whose scowl has been pinned on Lexa’s back ever since. After all, she needs to make it very clear she will not take any more needling from Lexa.
Her affront grows when the celebration finally comes to an end and the first thing Lexa does upon standing is send Clarke another smirk.
Clarke has had it up to here with Lexa’s childish attempts to rile her up. She doesn’t understand them either. Back at Lexa’s house, when it was just the two of them, conversation flowed easily between them and Clarke hoped they might become friends. But then Lexa does all these little things to antagonize her and Clarke doesn’t know what to think or feel anymore.
When she sees Lexa head to the inner rooms instead of the door, Clarke sputters out an excuse to Mark and follows after the other woman, intent on giving her a piece of her mind. The church is akin to a labyrinth, but Clarke manages not to lose trail of Lexa until she sees her enter a room.
It’s a bathroom. Clarke can’t believe she’s going to accost Lexa in a bathroom. Of all the unladylike things she could do, this is likely the worst.
Still. She needs to do this. Taking a deep breath, Clarke pushes the door open and finds Lexa adjusting her eye makeup. Although she doesn’t even meet Clarke’s eyes through the mirror, her lips draw up into a crooked little smile; a self-satisfied, vicious little thing that tugs at… something in Clarke’s chest and reminds her why she’s here in the first place.
This needs to stop. Lexa’s senseless antagonization needs to stop.
She stalks up to Lexa and crosses her arms, pinning her down with her best glare. To her surprise, though, Lexa just puts her pencil down, pushes off the counter, and turns to face Clarke with a raised eyebrow, all but challenging her to do her worst.
“You need to stop.”
Lexa tilts her head to the side with a quizzical smile. “What are you talking about?”
“You.” Clarke points an accusing finger at Lexa, a shield that holds her up and keeps her from losing her nerve. “Antagonizing me, trying to make me look stupid. That needs to stop.”
“And how have I made you look stupid?”
Clarke sputters, hates that it feels like a dare. She bites down on her lower lip and tries to make herself taller, piling all her righteous anger behind her glare.
“You convinced me to go to the book club even though I wasn’t ready. Then you made me sit down next to Maribel, knowing full well she would be mean to me. You fended off my one argument about the novel and kept throwing jabs at me and my husband with that… insufferable little smirk you have going there,” she jibes, pointing at the general area of Lexa’s face. “And you keep trying to make me uncomfortable in any and every situation. And I’ve had just about enough.”
Her words seem to ricochet harmlessly off Lexa, who steps into Clarke’s personal space, a burgeoning smirk on red lips. It has her taking a faltering step back, backside pressing into the counter, cheeks burning with embarrassment.
From this close, Clarke can see the swirls of grey that cut into the pearly green of Lexa’s lidded eyes. Each speck of gold and blue that make them look like a cluster of stars drowning in the raging midnight ocean. How they slip out of focus, stare fixed on a lower point on Clarke’s face, and turn cloudy with a feeling that kicks Clarke’s heart into a gallop.
Clarke could count every eyelash around Lexa’s eyes, if she so wanted, and commit to memory the shade and slope of her cheeks. The regal slant of her nose. The arc of her full lips; the way they part just enough for a light puff of breath to break over Clarke’s cheek.
“Clarke.”
It’s the sound of her name, soft and gentle as it is, that jerks Clarke back to reality.
She slips from between Lexa and the counter and skips to the door. The room is too hot and the air feels thick and Clarke feels so lightheaded she might pass out at any moment. She swallows time and again along the short trek to the door, but nothing seems to be effective in pushing down the lump in her throat or the tight feeling in her chest.
She barely registers Lexa’s voice calling her name as she throws the door open and escapes the stuffy bathroom and strides her way past corridors and stumbles out of the church.
The fresh outside air is a blessing. She takes lungfuls of it, willing her heart to slow down and the taut noose around it to loosen just enough for the back of her neck to stop burning. Mark finds her, wrapping a hand around her upper arm, stepping close.
It’s not rough at all. Just suffocating.
She meets his eyes, nonetheless, finding a pulled brow over them and a question on the tip of his tongue. “Where were you? And why—” he frowns deeper, noticing her frazzled state, “why are you all… red?”
If there is one thing Clarke is good at, it’s finding excuses. She lays a hand over Mark’s and shoots him a placating smile.
“It was just very hot in the bathroom.” She kisses his cheek and watches as her words smooth out the worry lines from his brow. Meanwhile, images of her confrontation with Lexa in the restroom flash behind her eyes with every other beat of her heart. “And then I walked fast to make sure you wouldn’t be left waiting for long. I guess I just need to go home and freshen up.”
No sooner has Clarke said that when her eyes flit to the entrance of the church. Out strides Lexa, long legs and high heels, and a flirty smile just for her husband.
And Clarke knows then. She knows. Lexa is simply impossible.
Clarke is pleasantly surprised when Maribel calls her one day inviting her over for tea with some of their fellow housewives. Despite her reservations regarding the other woman, it's good to see her neighbors making an effort to help her fit in.
"I am so glad you came," says Maribel once everyone is settled around a lovely tea table, sipping from expensive china that seems to have been taken out from whatever foolproof glass cabinet it was stashed in just for the occasion.
Unlike Lexa's, Maribel's house fully embraces a classic style, flaunting antique candelabras, tables as old as time, and intricately woven wooden chairs with cushions embroidered in gold. It's the kind of luxury that makes a statement, and if Clarke had been wearing a blindfold when walking in, she would've thought she'd been taken to a palace. The lavish curtains and sprawling tapestry that Maribel makes a point of mentioning cost more than all of their houses put together would've been right at home in Versailles.
"Thank you for inviting me. Mark travels a lot for work and it can get lonely at home."
Karen clicks her tongue and lays a hand atop one of Clarke's. "You poor thing. We simply aren't complete without our beaus, are we."
Clarke doesn’t mention that she’s learned to survive on her own a long time ago.
Conversation flows mainly between the quadruplets, as Clarke has taken to calling them in her head, and Maribel with ease, with Clarke chipping in every once in a while.
Maribel tells her that Raven managed to acquire American citizenship through marriage over ten years ago and Octavia lives with a strange man who almost never steps outside.
“They do unholy things there,” says Becky, eyes wide and hungry and a malicious smile on her lips. “Susan swears on her mother’s grave she heard howling coming from that godforsaken house one night.” She throws a glance at the ceiling and crosses herself. “Lord knows what goes on in there.”
“I pray a Hail Mary for her every night,” Susan confirms with a grave nod.
The look on Maribel’s face, however, tells Clarke there is no amount of Hail Mary’s that could save Octavia’s soul. Clarke thinks back to the rude woman who sulked in her corner last Saturday, sat between Harper and one of the quadruplets. It’s easy to imagine her hiding some big, shocking secret. Maybe she’s one of those friends of Satan Clarke’s heard so much about.
Clarke also learns that Maribel’s husband, Humphrey, works in a bank and makes a lot of money; enough to afford all the luxuries hanging on both the walls and Maribel’s proud neck. The quadruplets’ husbands all work for the same small company, as though their wives weren’t already similar enough. Sometimes Clarke even forgets who’s who.
Nobody knows why Harper is sad; apparently nobody asked either.
“You know, they say frowning causes your skin to age,” is Maribel’s lofty explanation, dabbing at her eyebrows. “I’m not young enough to make an effort to figure out that weeping willow.”
Inevitably the conversation steers to the book club and Clarke’s first session and Lexa. To Clarke’s surprise, Maribel has little to say about Lexa; she wonders if it’s out of respect or lack of gossip-worthy information about their neighbor.
For all her openness and willingness to take command, Lexa seems to keep her cards close to her chest. Maribel reveals that Lexa used to work during the war and now sells stockings around the suburbs, probably to have some money of her own. Henry is a tailor and designs suits for very important men. Other than that, there is surprisingly little information for someone so central to the very fabric of the neighborhood.
There is, however, one thing that nags at Clarke.
“They’ve been married for a while, right?”
Susan looks up from her knitting and gives Clarke a sage nod. “Oh yes, they married very early. About ten years ago, I think.”
Clarke hums, trying to think of a more roundabout way to go about the matter. In the end, she reckons she’d better get straight to the point.
“Wouldn’t they have children already?”
Maribel quirks an eyebrow and it’s all Clarke can do to maintain her casual demeanor. Clarke wonders what it is about this neighborhood that she feels like she’s constantly under scrutiny of some sort, as though one wrong sign could mean lifelong exile.
Women can be each other’s worst enemies sometimes. Clarke is determined not to step on that mousetrap.
“We think she’s infertile,” Maribel says at last, and Clarke frowns.
“Why her?” Maribel lets out a surprised little laugh, like Clarke just asked something preposterous. “Why not Henry?”
“That man?”, Karen cuts in, giggling as well. “I bet he could give the five of us a couple of babies and still have juice in him for more.”
Clarke can’t help but squirm in her seat. She ignores Maribel’s vigilant eyes on her, wondering what they will say about her own marriage the moment she’s not listening.
It is with such thoughts clouding her mind and weighing her gaze down that Clarke bumps into Raven on her way home, close enough to Maribel’s home that the other woman can tell where she came from.
Raven cocks an eyebrow, looking from Clarke to Maribel’s house and back to Clarke. She seems unimpressed.
“I didn’t know you associated with those people.”
Uncomfortable with some of the things that transpired in that house as she may be, Clarke feels the sudden need to defend herself. Her decisions are her own to judge.
“Excuse me?” She crosses her arms, levelling a glare at Raven. “Last time I checked you associated with them too.”
Raven’s smirk reminds her of Lexa’s and now Clarke can see why the two of them are friends. Cynical and sure of delusion-inspired sense of moral superiority. Someone should knock them both off their high horses.
“No,” says Raven firmly. “I associated with Lexa, who was kind enough to let Maribel and her posse of leeches take part in the book club. Other than that I see them as little as possible.”
“How superior of you.”
“Get off your high horse, Clarke. You barely even know me. Or any of us for that matter,” Raven presses, gesturing at the whole neighborhood. “So take my advice when I tell you that those women are poison. Don’t believe a word that comes out of their mouths.”
“I think you’re being prejudiced.”
Raven’s laugh is so loud and acerbic it causes Clarke to jump in place. When their eyes meet, Raven’s burn with disdain.
“Are you kidding me?” She gestures at her own, entire self. “Have you even looked at me? Let me ask you a quick question. Housewife to housewife. Has Maribel already taken the opportunity to feed you some baloney about me and my marriage?”
Clarke grinds her teeth, unable to meet Raven’s eyes under the weight of her shame and the anger burning in them. When she’s finally able to speak, her voice is barely above a whisper. “I… She did say something.”
“Of course, she did. Because that’s what she does, Clarke. That’s how she maintains some semblance of power in this neighborhood.” Raven’s shoulders sag with a sigh and her voice takes on a softer note. “I’m throwing you a lifeline here. Take it, don’t take it. It’s up to you. Just don’t complain when they turn the vitriol on you instead. It’s easy to turn a blind eye when you’re not their target.”
The silence that follows is heavy and uncomfortable and one Clarke isn’t ready to navigate. She can deal with the silence that befalls her house when Mark leaves for another one of his work trips. She can even fill it with little make-believes when he doesn’t come home at night, saying he’s working late. Clarke has learned to fill several brands of silence in a million different ways. This one, though, the kind that stinks with guilt and hypocrisy and pulls her gaze down to her feet — she has no idea what to do about it.
Raven takes pity on her and heaves a heavy sigh that pulls Clarke’s attention back to her.
“Lexa’s hosting a big dinner on Friday. Only the good ones will be there.” She pauses, clicks her tongue, raising her brow at Clarke. “Show up if you decide you want to be one of them.”
Making the decision to go is a no-brainer, even if Mark has just come back and they usually reserve those evenings for other activities.
She starts regretting it the moment the door opens and Lexa is there to welcome them with a pleased smile. “Raven told me you might show up.”
Clarke swallows, questioning every single decision she’s made up until this very moment in her life.
This time the rest of the husbands are there too and Clarke is once again offered a front row seat to Lexa and Henry’s picture-perfect home life. It’s like a spotlight is shining down on them and everyone else is cast in shadow.
After dinner the housewives gather in the parlor, while the men head outside. Clarke has always wondered what tacit rules keep the genders from mingling after dinner. Do men puke if they see their wives after eating? She would certainly appreciate having more people to talk to and whisk her away from Lexa.
Lexa, Lexa, Lexa.
It seems to be all she thinks about these days, especially since their confrontation in the church restroom, when Lexa tried to— Clarke doesn’t know what exactly Lexa was trying to do, but she doesn’t like the way it made her feel.
Unsafe. Exposed. Ashamed of the way her heart beat so hard it was a wonder it didn’t blast out of her chest. And what’s worse is that Clarke doesn’t even know what she was feeling. All she knows is it was bad and made her want to get as far away from Lexa as fast as possible.
The one thing she can explain is the way looking at Lexa and Henry interact puts her off so much. She wants that. She wants the harmony, the companionship, everything Lexa has and Clarke doesn’t. She wants to know why some people strike lucky every time and others never do.
She also wants to know why Lexa never kisses her husband.
They are affectionate, sometimes sickeningly so; but it doesn’t sit right with her how Lexa never kisses her husband on the lips. Does he have herpes? Does she have herpes? For some reason, the latter option irks her more than the former. Does Henry have a condition that causes his lips to taste like garlic? Are they simply uncomfortable with that kind of intimacy? That would explain why they also don’t have kids after ten years of marriage.
She’s seen Lexa and Henry hug and sit close and hold hands several times but… It’s different. Something feels off about them and Clarke is starting to feel like she’s the only one who notices.
Clarke is pulled out of her musings when Lexa excuses herself from the room to get more croquettes (who makes croquettes? What kind of pompous, self-centered wife makes croquettes when her neighbors come over for dinner?). Clarke watches as she goes, hips swinging from side to side, and her nostrils flare. The gall of that woman. She’s probably going to find a dark corner to get cozy with Henry in and leave her guests to their devices, under the guise of fetching croquettes .
Clarke turns to Octavia, the one who seems the least close to Lexa, and keeps her voice just low enough not to be overheard by the others.
“Have you noticed how Lexa and Henry never kiss?”
Octavia stops mid-chewing and looks at her like she just sprouted two heads from her ears.
“What are you even talking about?”
Clarke decides to ignore the bits of food that fly out of Octavia’s mouth as she speaks and points at the door Lexa just left through. “Lexa and Henry. They never kiss.”
Octavia’s frown shapes into confusion and, a second later, recognition. “I never even noticed that.” Clarke’s victory is short-lived, nonetheless, for a second later Octavia adds, with a noncommittal shrug, “They probably don’t wanna rub their happiness in our faces.”
Yes, of course. Everything has to hark back to how much happier than everyone else Lexa and Henry are. How much happier than Clarke they are.
“I guess,” she concedes reluctantly after a few seconds. “I just think it’s strange, is all.”
Unladylike and rude as ever, Octavia snorts. “I think you’re strange, but you don’t see me going to your house and telling other people about it.”
Clarke has the decency to stay quiet until Lexa comes back, plate full of freshly fried croquettes. She takes one, hoping her faux pas fades into oblivion, and admits to herself, if just for a second, that they’re actually delicious.
The evening passes by amid harmless gossip and delectable aperitifs, with the rich voices of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald filling the spaces. Soon enough everyone is leaving; couples putting on coats, men grabbing hats from the hanger and offering their arms to their wives so they can brave the crispy autumn night together.
All Clarke wants to do is go home and slip into bed so she can dream away yet another fiasco in her efforts to fit in. It seems every step forward is followed by two steps back.
What’s worse, Lexa hasn’t said a word to her since dinner.
“Clarke, just a minute please?”
Her arms stop mid-air where they were slipping into the sleeves of her thick raccoon coat (“One should rather buy a luxurious raccoon than a low grade mink,” mother always says) and she looks to the entrance of the foyer, where Lexa is leaning against the doorframe, hands clasped over her green checkered apron. It matches her eyes.
Clarke looks from Lexa to Mark and back to Lexa again before giving a lame nod. “Of course.” She lays a hand on her husband’s forearm. “I’ll be just a minute, honey.”
She follows Lexa into the kitchen, which screams, albeit tastefully, with color: pastel blues splattered over whites and shiny aluminum, and General Electric appliances. The island is packed with trays and plates and platters, a neat chaos of used and unused and waiting to be filled and recently emptied, whilst the sink is filled up to the brink with dishes.
One of those novelty transistor radios sits on a counter — The Jack Carson Show is playing, and Clarke almost sighs with relief when she realizes she won’t have to listen to it at home. Although Mark loves it, Clarke’s opinion is more on the side of disparaging.
Next to the radio, a picture frame: one of Henry and Lexa holding hands, looking as happy as they do now. Something like envy tugs at Clarke’s heart and she averts her eyes, meeting Lexa’s instead as her host rounds the island, starting work on storing all the uneaten food in Tupperware containers.
Her expression is unreadable, casual even, as she uses a spatula to empty a bowl of chocolate mousse. “Susan hosted a Tupperware party a while back. I thought I was doing her a favor by buying some twenty containers. If I knew then what I do now,” she seals the container and puts it in a fridge, before closing the door with a skittish smirk, “I would’ve bought forty.”
Clarke watches, at a loss, as Lexa heads back to the island and starts emptying more trays and platters in a flurry.
“Oh!” Lexa looks up like she just remembered something important. “I saw you eyeing the croquettes earlier. Did you like them? Here, take some with you, I bet Mark will love them too.”
“Oh no, you don’t need—”
“Nonsense,” Lexa shuts her up with a wave before cherry-picking over a dozen of croquettes and placing them carefully in the container. She shuts the container and slides it towards Clarke. “Here, take them. You don’t even have to share them with Mark if you don’t want to,” she adds, tossing a wink at Clarke, who can only silently beg God to open up a hole under her feet and swallow her whole.
The silence it follows is suffocating, at least for Clarke. Meanwhile, Lexa keeps tidying up her kitchen with daunting efficiency.
“You know, Henry and I were the third couple to move into this neighborhood,” Lexa tells her, apparently none the wiser to Clarke’s bewilderment. “Raven and Maribel already lived here. Then came Susan and Octavia, then Karen, then Sharon—" she stops and smiles at Clarke, shutting yet another container. “Well, you get the gist.”
Clarke really doesn’t get the gist, but she’s also not sure that she wants to, so she keeps quiet as Lexa stores the last container in the fridge and begins stocking the dishwasher with all the empty trays and platters. Her skirt billows loosely as she moves from side to side, yet hugs her tight when she bends down. Clarke finds herself unable to look away, struck by how easy Lexa makes everything look.
“Fitting in wasn’t easy, but I’d like to think that I’ve managed to master the neighborhood politics, so to speak, over the years.” Lexa closes the dishwasher and steps behind the island again. “Henry was a great support system. I’ve made friends with all the girls. Even Maribel,” she quips with a cheeky smile. “I like the life I have here very much. But sometimes…” Lexa finds Clarke’s eyes again, her expression now serious. “Sometimes, something happens that threatens that fine balance.”
The plastic lightness of their interaction so far lifts. Now the tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife, and Clarke wonders how Lexa managed that shift so seamlessly.
“Octavia disliked you the moment you showed up at our book club.” Clarke nods. That’s not news “Raven, on the other hand, needed a whole session to decide she didn’t like you. I managed to convince them both to give you a second chance. Third, in Raven’s case, from what I’ve heard,” Lexa adds with a lofted eyebrow.
“Hard women to please, I guess.”
Lexa unties her apron with a pensive hum.
“Maybe.” Lexa folds her apron over the wooden top, her movements precise. “Did you like the fish soufflé?”
Clarke swears she will get whiplash from all the sudden topic changes. Still, she plays along with a nod, grateful to feel solid ground under her feet again. “It was delicious.”
“That’s good.” When Lexa is done folding, not a wrinkle can be seen on the pristine checkered cloth. “You know how it is with soufflés. You follow the recipe to a T, whip up this perfect puffy dish… Women should teach Math, you know?,” she continues, smoothing down any nonexistent wrinkles on the apron, and once again Clarke feels like prey.
She’s in Lexa’s home, Lexa’s kitchen, Lexa’s kingdom. She’s stumbled into a trap and now Lexa is circling her like a predator waiting for the right moment to pounce.
“Men like to philosophize about this and that and the theory of the Universe, but we are the ones who do Math every day. Some recipes require a level of precision I’m not sure most men, with their… blundering, big-handed boorishness, could ever achieve. Anyway.” Lexa opens a drawer under the countertop and places the apron inside, before closing it with a sharp ‘click’. “That’s a soufflé for you. Every ingredient and technique and minor detail accounted for so you can create the perfect, fluffy soufflé.” She locks eyes with Clarke and now, Clarke thinks, now is when the beast pounces. “Until someone talks just a decibel too loud and the whole thing collapses like the Fidenae amphitheater.”
Another thick, loaded silence ensues, until Lexa grabs the container she saved for Clarke and steps away from the island, taking sure, slow paces towards her. Lexa stops just short of crowding Clarke’s personal space, levelling a cold look at her, green eyes so distant Clarke feels like a peasant kneeling before a queen.
As her cheeks and the back of her neck burn scarlet, Clarke is reminded of their confrontation at the church. Lexa seems to notice her discomfort, a smirk ghosting across her lips. It’s the slightest pull of one of the corners of her mouth, something so subtle that Clarke would miss it if she weren’t already looking intently, watching closely for words that may cut her.
Clarke doesn’t know why she can’t take her eyes off the way Lexa’s tongue pokes out to lick at her lips. Her chest is suddenly too small for the erratic pounding of her heart.
She feels something press into her abdomen and looks down to find the container. She takes it, fingertips grazing against Lexa’s, holding it like it’s precious cargo. When she looks up again, Lexa’s eyes glint with something akin to fond amusement. And then Lexa speaks, soft and no louder than a whisper, Clarke feels the breath of her words on her lips.
“Don’t break my heart, Clarke.”
And then, just as quickly as she got Clarke shaking with anticipation — what for, Clarke hasn’t the palest idea —, Lexa circumvents her and strides out of the kitchen, leaving Clarke standing there, alone, surrounded by linoleum and aluminum and pastel colors, breathing as hard as her heart punches wildly against her ribcage.
It takes only a few seconds for Clarke to collect her bearings. She leaves the kitchen on unsteady feet, cursing the thin heels of her shoes.
Mark and Lexa are already waiting for her when she steps into the foyer. His brow pulls into a frown.
“Why are you so red, darling?”
Leave it to Mark to spout the most inconvenient thing at the most inconvenient moment. Clarke fans herself, forcing out an airy laugh.
“I don’t know what’s up with this town’s ACs, but they seem to be doing evil things to my skin.”
Mark seems to accept her answer and pulls the door open, letting the cold night air in. It does nothing to abate the heat on Clarke’s cheeks.
“Perhaps fresh air will do you well,” Lexa says, motioning towards the door. “Enjoy your evening.”
Clarke’s ears are still burning when she slips into bed.
Don’t break my heart, Clarke.
Lexa’s words have been echoing in her head since last night. Clarke tried to leave them at the door, but they creep inside and lie in bed with her, and stare at her long enough that she can’t help staring back. They peer at her with big green eyes which soften with each beat of her heart and hold her gaze unerringly; unnervingly.
Sleep is but a different way to read them.
They are with her at breakfast, while she and Mark eat their toast and butter, guiding her gaze outside, to where a picturesque house sits tall and pretty within a white picket fence. They sit close to her, fill the silence between the spouses and draw Clarke’s thoughts away from her husband and—
Mark is standing at the altar, back turned to Clarke. He needn’t turn for Clarke to know who he is. He needn’t turn for Clarke to know he’s smiling. Still Clarke grabs his hand and spins him on his heels, but the body changes as it turns and suddenly the face smiling back at her is—
The deafening clatter of her knife falling on the plate startles Clarke out of her thoughts. She hastens to pick it back up with a forced laugh and an apologetic smile at Mark, whose brow is screwed in bewilderment.
“I’m such a klutz.”
The flighty excuse doesn’t seem to convince Mark, who keeps gazing intently at her as though trying, and failing, to solve a puzzle. “You’ve been acting strange lately.”
She tries her best at a confused frown. “Have I?” When he nods, she realizes she won’t get off the hook that easily and shifts gears with a sigh. “You’re right, darling. I guess...” she lifts one shoulder and drops it despondently. “I guess I’ve just been having a hard time fitting in.”
Marks’ entire demeanor changes and he grabs her hand, squeezing it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I guess I just didn’t want to worry you. You work so much already.”
Clarke finds comfort in his kind eyes. She figures she’s lucky; Mark has never been aggressive, not even when he drinks too much. He’s just… absent. However, with how often she’s heard of men who hit their wives, Clarke reckons she could be worse off. But Mark has never laid a hand on her or even raised his voice. She wonders if that’s something she should really take comfort in.
Sometimes Clarke wonders whether the weight of his absence is so crushing because Mark isn’t there or because she’s alone. Is it a byproduct of her love for her husband or just the overwhelming notion that, despite the ring on her finger, Clarke is doomed to spend an eternity on her own? When she lets her mind wander at night and slip into gloomy forests of rancor and regret, Clarke lets herself entertain yet another, darker question: would she even feel the difference if he died?
She shuts down that thought with a violent shiver, as if trying to shake off the dusk from her mind. It doesn’t work, though, not completely. And instead of vanishing like a dying leaf swept away by the breeze, the question lodges itself in her throat, acrid and vile, and shapes her next words.
“I can’t very well tell you things if you spend most nights away.”
Mark’s face clouds over and his hands ball up into fists on the table. Clarke stands up, not for fear of violence, but to try and clear her head and do some damage repair.
“I mean, I— I guess I can’t… It’s just hard to talk to you about these things when you’re so busy with everything else,” she finishes lamely.
“I put food on our table, Clarke. I keep the lights on in this house and the water running in our taps. I pay for everything you have and I never disrespected you or your folks. I fuck you once a month so you can give me a child, which,” he raises an accusatory finger at her, “you haven’t even done yet.” His jaw grinds, but he maintains his composure, as Clarke knew he would. Mark is not a bad man. Mark hasn’t even been much of a man at all since they got married. “If anyone’s failing at their duties in this marriage, it ain’t me. It just ain’t me,” he repeats, eyes downcast and his free fist still tight, like he’s saying a prayer.
Then he stands up, chair dragging backwards, and levels Clarke with a stormy scowl, finger once again pointed at her.
“It ain’t me.”
He storms out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Clarke doesn’t flinch when she hears the door to his study slam shut from above.
She grabs their dishes and dumps them in the sink and gets on with her day.
Now Clarke has got two ghosts on her shoulders.
One of them are Lexa’s words, which keep repeating on a loop in her ears, causing her chest to constrict in a way she’s never known nor learned to put a word to. The other are Mark’s words, a brutal reminder of how little control she has over everything that happens in her life. Like a demon and an angel whispering curses in her ears.
Clarke has no idea why whatever Lexa might think of her affects her so. She’s always prided herself on being able to let compliments and criticism alike roll off her back. What other people think is their own problem, a result of their own experiences and their own outlook on life and society. Clarke has her own ideas and moral code and she will not relinquish them so easily.
So why, she asks herself, does Lexa have such an effect on her? Why does she care what Lexa thinks? Why does she care what Lexa is thinking at any given moment? Why does she try to imagine whatever Lexa might be doing at that moment and what she must be feeling? Why do her thoughts inevitably stray to Lexa and Lexa’s eyes and, most puzzling of all, Lexa’s lips?
And why can’t Clarke answer a single question without having to close down avenues and barricade doors? Why can’t she just know?
And why, she asks herself later, as she’s entering Lexa’s house, heavy tome in hand and ready for her second session with the book club, can’t she just leave those questions at the door and have a jolly good time without having to think about them?
Why can’t she just— unthink ?
It’s ‘unthinking’ that she tries as she takes a seat across from Lexa, and spectacularly fails at it as her eyes dart to the other woman the moment she’s settled in. She most definitely does not ‘unthink’ when Lexa looks back, eyes big and green and soulful, and her full, pink lips draw up into just the shade of a smile.
Clarke cannot, will not, explain why her heart flutters.
Don’t break my heart, Clarke.
A day later, she still has no idea how that could possibly connect to a little harmless gossip here and there. Another question to bat away as she opens her book, Middlemarch by George Elliot, when Lexa starts them off with a quote.
“Many things are true which only the commonest minds observe.”
Oh, great. A quote about the harm of gossip. Unsurprisingly, Lexa turns to her with a cheeky challenge in her eyes.
“What do you make of this, Clarke?”
“It means it’s easy to gossip. To observe someone and pick obvious flaws to pick at. What’s hard is to find virtue.” She lets her own opinion take over George Elliot’s words. “Sometimes we are so tangled up in the need to find flaws in others in order to feel better about our own misery that we miss the chance to see something good in them. See something… worthy, I guess. I think it also connects with another quote: ‘It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view’.”
Clarke expects to see an impressed look on Lexa’s face. Instead, when she looks up, she finds her with her nose already buried back in the book like she didn’t hear anything Clarke said at all. It’s infuriating.
“There is another topic I would like to tackle regarding this book,” says Lexa, eyes sweeping over the whole group. “What is a word you would all employ to describe each of the main characters’ marriages?”
“Disappointing for Dorothea and Ladislaw,” Raven replies, and Lexa nods in agreement.
“Indeed.” Then she pins Clarke with a look full of intent. “Dorothea marries a man who is clearly her inferior. Disappointment is a starting point for unhappiness.”
Something inside Clarke coils and roils and toils, as though the words were directly aimed at her. Or, even if they weren’t, like she finds them somehow relatable. She can’t, though. She can’t relate to something so different from her own experience. Her second reaction, then, is to dispute Lexa’s claim.
“Ladislaw is not Dorothea’s inferior,” she states, and everyone else might as well vanish given the way the air crackles between Clarke and Lexa, gazes wound together like a constrictor knot. “He’s the one who makes money. He puts food on her table, he keeps the lights on and the water running. How can anyone call that being inferior?”
“Inferior in intellect. Dorothea would bring home twice as much if she was allowed to work.”
Clarke clamps her jaw and crumples the pages between her fingers, trying not to let this devolve into a screaming match. “That’s not the way things are supposed to be.”
“That’s beside the point”, Octavia cuts in, probably just to annoy her.
“Fine,” she concedes, although she makes a point of crossing her arms. So what if she looks like a petulant child. “I still don’t see how he can be so inferior to her that it would add up to an unhappy marriage. Surely, she’s got to give him something too, right?”
Lexa smirks and Clarke feels like a mouse that just got trapped while trying to sniff at the wrong piece of cheese.
“He doesn’t challenge her, Clarke. That’s the issue here. Ladislaw can never satisfy Dorothea because he simply cannot stand to her level, no matter how much bread he puts on their table.” Lexa drags her index finger over the corners of the pages, a habit Clarke picked up on during the previous session. “Humans are social and intellectual beings. We need companions who can match us in that department. Someone we can talk to for hours and never get tired of, someone who can read us with just a glance. Ladislaw can never be that for Dorothea. He can never,” Lexa digs in her mind for a suitable word, “stimulate her. And we, humans, need to be stimulated.”
“In more ways than one,” Raven interjects with a self-satisfied grin, earning a withering glower from Maribel.
“Please find it in yourself to have a modicum of decency, Miss Reyes.”
“It’s Mrs. Collins to you, Bel-Bel.”
Maribel sits straighter in her chair, throwing a smug sideways glance at Raven. “Alas, we have your wonderful husband to thank for that.”
Before Raven can throw herself at Maribel, Lexa raises her voice, effectively silencing the room.
“We’ve been over this, Maribel. Raven was born and raised here and she’s just as American as you and I.”
“That’s right,” Raven agrees, before locking eyes with Maribel. “Please find it in yourself to not be racist.”
Instead of intervening again, Lexa raises an eyebrow at Clarke. There need be no words for the message to be heard loud and clear: Maribel is not someone you want to associate with. Regret hits even harder as she realizes the depth of Maribel’s lies.
“Now that we’ve dealt with that,” Raven resumes, throwing a dirty look at Maribel, “I’d like to focus on how Dorothea dreams of so much more than she gets.”
Lexa hums before locking eyes with Clarke, who braces for yet another round of ill-concealed jibes. “It is inherently human to wish for that which one cannot have.”
“A happy marriage?” she retorts, boiling with self-righteous indignance once more.
“I was not talking about that, but yes. That can turn out to be an unachievable dream, too. Sometimes life demands that we veer off our original path.”
Clarke thinks of Mark, of an empty house too large for one, nights spent alone staring at the clock on the wall. Failure has never been a fathomable concept for her; neither has surrender. All her life Clarke has learned to fix what is broken and she remains steadfast in her belief that there isn’t a ship that can’t be saved from sinking.
“I don’t believe that. If you work hard enough there isn’t anything that can’t be salvaged.”
Lexa narrows her eyes, lips pursing. Clarke wonders whether she’s ever failed at fixing something or trying to break it. If she’s still trying to fix something or damage it beyond repair. Clarke wonders why it feels like it’s somehow tied to her and the way Lexa seems to always be looking at her, and why it tugs at something deep in her chest to just think about it.
Clarke has never been good at letting go. Apparently, neither is Lexa.
“Two pieces of a puzzle won’t fit just because you want them to, Clarke.”
“They will, if you just try hard enough. They’ve fit together before. I don’t see why they couldn’t do it again.”
Lexa takes in a sharp breath, jaw ticking. It’s so tense it looks like it could cut. Would it slice her palm were she to brush her hand over its apex? Would it hurt?
“People are not pieces of a puzzle, Clarke.”
“You’re the one who came up with that example in the first place!”
“What I mean,” says Lexa between her greeted teeth, “is that people change and stop fitting together anymore. And that is all part of our growth. We are not stale, and neither should how we connect to others be. And sometimes, they never actually fit to begin with. Just like Dorothea and Ladislaw. George Eliot’s idealism surrenders to realism in the end of Middlemarch: the most feminine fulfillment Dorothea could aspire to in the nineteenth century was to be a common wife and be the great woman behind her husband’s success, but if we were to reimagine her story in this century, she would be able to truly carve out a different path and be happy.”
“I still don’t agree.”
Lexa scoffs incredulously. “It’s not a matter of opinion, Clarke. It’s a fact. If he leaves her alone more times than she cares to count, if he can’t hold a conversation with her for more than ten minutes, and—”
Lexa hesitates for once, and something tells Clarke she isn’t talking about Dorothea and Ladislaw anymore. She wonders if it’s about Lexa and Henry, if maybe their marriage isn’t as perfect as she thought. She frowns to herself at the realization that she wants to comfort Lexa, wrap her in her arms and tell her everything will be okay. She finds herself… caring.
That just won’t do.
Clarke watches closely as Lexa wets her lips, eyes trailing down for a split second as though to gather the nerve to follow through. Then her eyes meet Clarke’s, green and crystalline and brimming with intent, and her voice lowers, slow and soft and sure.
“And if she finds someone with whom she strikes an instant connection, then… Perhaps that is worth exploring. Perhaps it is worth the risk.”
Something about Lexa’s words sends Clarke’s heart reeling. It beats so violently her whole body quakes; so loudly she fears that everyone in the room can hear it. It sends a flush to her cheeks and the ripples reach her fingers, making them tremble under the weight of possibility.
The possibility of what, exactly — that’s a door Clarke isn’t ready to open yet. Thus, she slams it shut.
“I think you’re letting your bias cloud your judgement. Women can be happy as ‘mere housewives’,” she says, curling her fingers into air quotes.
“I never said they couldn’t,” interjects Lexa, although Clarke pays her no mind and barrels on.
“And just as they can grow apart, spouses can also grow closer together and become better. Take Fred Vincy and Mary Garth, for example. The love of a woman can make a good husband out of a good man.”
Lexa rolls her eyes so hard Clarke almost feels the Earth shift on its axis. “Men shouldn’t need their wives to baby them into being decent husbands.”
Clarke seethes, hands fisting into and crumpling the pages of the tome she bought especially for this session, and narrows her eyes at Lexa, who raises her chin in response.
“I guess you wouldn’t know, what with your— your indulgent ideals and— and inflammatory opinions, but some people actually care about being good wives to their husbands.”
Lexa grinds her jaw and her eyes flash with a warning; Clarke has never been one to look before she jumps, so she stands from her chair, commanding all the attention, and lets the pent up frustration of the last few weeks take the reins.
“You think you’re oh so subtle with your picture-perfect veneer and holier than thou attitude, trying to brainwash us into being ‘liberal thinkers’ like you, but guess what: some of us actually want our peers to respect us. You may be convinced that Middlemarch isn’t ‘progressive’ enough, but I see it as a story about how a woman finds her own way forward, making mistakes in her sometimes foolish, often egotistical,” she admits, “but also admirably — admirably — idealistic attempt to find a role or vocation that fulfills her. And if such vocation turns out to be serving her husband, and if that fulfills her, then you have no business saying she’s going about it the wrong way. Happiness doesn’t look the same for everyone.”
It’s only once she stops talking that Clarke realizes how quiet everyone else is. It’s a stunned kind of silence — everyone’s eyes are wide with shock, like Clarke just did the unthinkable. Defy Lexa. She gets the feeling that no one except Maribel ever does that. She chances a glance at Maribel to find her eyebrows raised and a surprised, if pleased, smirk on her lips, which just about confirms her suspicions.
It’s Lexa who draws Clarke’s attention, though.
Her expression is inscrutable, yet her eyes regard Clarke with a quiet brand of curiosity, as though she’s just now finding a new facet, something she had not accounted for. A sense of petty self-satisfaction draws Clarke’s shoulders back and her spine straighter, and she feels herself grow within herself, fill out the empty spaces and push against her own edges.
It tastes like victory, even more so when Lexa finally breaks her newfound stillness to nod.
“You’re right.”
Less so when Lexa’s eyes meet hers and she gets lost in the swirls and the specks and the depth, and suddenly she feels unsteady on her feet. Lexa looks at her so intently, so sure of something Clarke herself does not know — something always passes between them, even if she can’t quite grasp it yet — even if she’s not sure she’s even ready to.
Time always seems to stop.
And Lexa… Lexa always seems to know more than Clarke and seems to bask in that connection Clarke has not yet made, and Clarke feels like she’s being pulled in a hundred different directions before her feet have even touched the ground.
And Lexa stares. And stares. And she seems to think and regard, a question at the tip of her tongue, like she’s savoring it and testing all the words before she finally gives it a voice, all at once ruthless and soft.
“But does that role fulfill her?” Lexa swallows, Clarke’s eyes tracking the movement with painstaking detail before they trail back up to Lexa’s eyes, which she finds open and searching and yearning. “Does he?”
Clarke shuts her book, grabs her coat and her purse from her chair, and walks out, fully intending not to set foot in that dreadful house again.
Clarke has gotten very good at this new ‘unthinking’ concept.
So good, in fact, she has to wonder whether she’s in possession of a brain at all as she storms out of her house and crosses the street, skirt billowing behind her in a flurry and heels hitting the concrete below with a sharp tac, tac, tac, climbs the couple steps and bangs on Lexa’s door like her life depends on it.
There is but one thought on her mind in this moment: confrontation.
The door opens to reveal Lexa with an aggravated scowl, which quickly morphs into surprise. “Clarke—”
Clarke barely lets her finish before she’s barging into Lexa’s home unauthorized and pacing around the foyer, trying to organize her thoughts into a coherent string of words and sentences and—
“Where’s Henry?”
Clarke didn’t expect that to be her first question and, judging by her puzzled frown, neither did Lexa. She gestures limply at the door.
“He’s out of town for… a conference.”
Clarke doesn’t know why that matters, but it does, and it lends her the nerve she needs to stop her pacing and turn her frustration on Lexa at last.
“I don’t know what part of ‘you need to stop’ wasn’t clear back at the church, but I’ll say it again: you need to stop.” Lexa quirks an eyebrow, an invitation for her to go on. “You being a bitch to me is unacceptable as it is, but don’t you dare,” Clarke advances towards Lexa, who remains rooted in place, calm and aloof, “insult my husband. I’m not stupid, Lexa. I know you were insulting him implicitly.”
“Oh, it wasn’t implicit.”
Of all the answers she expected, that wasn’t one of them. Clarke fumbles and huffs and sputters, lost for words and newborn rage burning within her at the sight of Lexa’s burgeoning smirk, that slight, lopsided stroke of full lips mirrored tenfold by her eyes.
Once again, Lexa has shaken Clarke off her axis, and she has no idea how to tilt back into shape.
“Why…” Clarke shakes her head, lost in her continuous, yet vain attempts to sort out this woman who is at once so open and cagey. She wonders whether Lexa really is so cryptic, or Clarke just hasn’t figured out the code yet. “Why would you even do that?”
Lexa shrugs as though the answer is obvious. “Honestly? I think you deserve better.”
Lexa’s foyer is a tight space, lit only by a couple of candles on either side of the door. It lends the room an intimate feel, the way the moonlight slants onto the intricate Persian rug adding a look of mystery. Lexa is bathed in shadow, bar for the candlelight which traces the contours of her silhouette and ebbs and flows over the delicate lines of her face.
Lexa looks otherworldly. And Clarke is… not entirely sure how she feels about that.
“I can’t for the life of me fathom why you even married that oaf of a man,” Lexa continues, eyebrows knitting together as if she’s trying to solve a mystery. “I wasn’t innocent in my comparison, Clarke. He is the Ladislaw to your Dorothea.”
“And yet, they stay together.”
“Would they if the book was written today?”
“Here we go again.” Clarke groans in exasperation, throwing her arms up. “Haven’t we discussed that damn book at length already? Not that you’d know anything about real life and real-life marriages anyway, since you got to marry the perfect man.”
Lexa scoffs. “Not like you would know anything about my marriage.”
Clarke can sense they keep avoiding the crux of the matter, whatever it is, and arguing in circles only to end up back where they started. Her shoulders sag with a deep sigh; she’s exhausted, tired of fighting Lexa and whatever truth they keep circumventing.
“What do you want, Lexa?”
She feels like she’s baring herself, lowering her own walls in hopes of Lexa doing the same. Something in Lexa’s posture loosens; perhaps it’s her shoulders that drop just an inch or her chin that dips ever so slightly. Clarke thinks it’s a sign of her walls lowering, too.
A sign she finds also in Lexa’s nervous swallow and the way she presses her lips together before speaking, soft and gentle and almost a whisper. “I am trying to protect you. People like you—”
Just like that, Clarke’s walls race back up, like a shield bolstering the ire of her glare. “What about people like me—”
“People like us—”
“Whatever you think we might have in common, you’re wrong,” she grits out, stepping into Lexa’s personal space. “I am nothing like you.”
To her surprise, Lexa’s smile is rueful and a little bit sad. It wanes into a bemused frown.
“We are more alike than you think. And this world is not meant for us.”
Clarke doesn’t know what Lexa is talking about. She doesn’t, despite the way her chest constricts around her fluttering heart and words curl into a knot at her throat. She can’t, even if her entire body seems to balance towards Lexa, towards warmth, towards questions she wants no answer for.
She can’t.
Thus she draws herself up, holding her ground, not taking a physical step back so much as an emotional one. She needs mental space to breathe.
“You’re so full of shit.”
Lexa’s eyes sparkle at the challenge and she steps even closer, so close they are but a couple of inches apart. Clarke’s breath catches at the proximity; being so close she can almost taste Lexa’s perfume and feel the heat of her body. So close Clarke can hear the subtle intake of breath when Lexa’s lips part and her green, lidded gaze looks like a constellation.
So close she can only close her eyes when she feels long fingers weave into her hair, before the pliable lips are pressing against hers.
The first taste of Lexa is pure exhilaration.
Her lips are the softest Clarke has ever tasted, timid and sweet and oh so gentle. Lexa kisses like theirs is but a stolen moment, a work of art so fragile it can break at just the slightest push. She kisses like she wants more but is afraid to ask for it.
Their lips part for a moment, as Lexa brushes her nose against Clarke’s. It’s a moment too long. High on the feeling of Lexa’s lips, Clarke rushes forward to capture them in a second kiss, this one more forceful, more urgent.
Lexa responds with a hand on her hip, pulling her closer so there is no space left between them, and the slightest graze of teeth over Clarke’s lower lip that punches all the air out of Clarke’s lungs.
Clarke’s revenge comes by way of grabbing two handfuls of Lexa’s blouse and pushing her against a wall. She takes advantage of Lexa’s startled gasp to deepen their kiss, coaxing Lexa’s tongue forth with her own. She doesn’t know who groans, or who groans first ; too wrapped up in Lexa, Lexa, Lexa to care about anything else.
She mumbles half a protest when Lexa’s lips leave hers, only to moan up to the ceiling when they run a scorching path down her neck. She thrusts her fingers into Lexa’s hair, holding her lips to her neck as they kiss their way back up, slow and wanton, and return home to Clarke’s lips.
Clarke barely registers how badly she’s mussed up Lexa’s hair or how her own skirt has hiked up, leaving an unseemly stretch of skin on show. Not until she feels a hand trailing up the inside of her thigh.
She jerks back like she’s been burned, her whole body quaking.
Lexa’s confused frown morphs into wounded understanding in a fraction of a second. Clarke can’t bear to meet her eyes as she pulls down her skirt with trembling hands and takes a wobbly step back.
“I can’t.”
Her voice shakes almost as much as her hands as she tries and fails to swallow down her panic, shaking her head repeatedly. Lexa’s face crumbles and Clarke feels like she can’t breathe.
“Clarke, please.”
Her voice is just a whisper, yet it screams in Clarke’s ears like a drum, deafening and bleeding and too much. All of it is too much.
“I can’t. I’m not like—”
She pulls at her clothes, scratches at them, feeling for anything that may be remotely out of place. All she can see in the dim lighting is Lexa’s eyes, like they shine in the dark, big and hurt and sad. So sad .
“I just can’t.”
She turns around, feeling for the door and throws it open. She doesn’t dare look back before she runs out of the house, leaving Lexa alone in the dark.
Mark is fast asleep by the time she climbs into bed.