#i forgot to draw ink on top of the fish stick but I do not feel like it anymore

[decadennce]

Gone fishin’

—

also, it’s probably a bit hard to tell but he’s sitting on a defeated fishstick. Here’s a dramatic rendition of what happens 5 seconds later:

[moldisgoodforyou]

no tattoos

wordcount: 1.7k

warnings: drunk sophie, hints of nsfw talk, etc

______

Rafe picked up Sophie’s facetime call to be greeted by his excited girlfriend and her talking conversationally in Spanish, albeit a little stilted as her drunk brain tried translating back and forth.

“Sophie -”

“Estoy bebiendo, hemos encontrado este vino por la sangria -” 

He laughed, shaking his head. “English, baby, please. Por favor.” 

“Oh! Fuck, sorry. I’m not sober.” She immediately switched back, bringing a nearly empty cup to her lips as she took him back into her room to momentarily escape the loud party. 

“I can tell. What’s up, just saying hi?” 

“Yeah!” She shut the door behind her and lifted up her shirt a little. ”Baby! Baby, look.” She angled the camera toward her leg, keeping it on selfie mode and hopped on one foot trying to show it correctly.

Rafe held back a smile. “Flip the camera, Soph.”

“No, no, I got it, look.” The camera finally focused in on the purple pen outlining the eventual tattoo, the initials R.C. done in her terrible drunken scrawl. (Her handwriting was pretty poor normally, but her drunk handwriting was much worse.) It was right above her hipbone and at least five inches tall, not at all what she would typically go for with a first tattoo.

He choked back a laugh, eyes wide in disbelief. “Oh my fucking god.”

She grinned and turned the camera back to her face. “What do you think?”

“That’s not - Sophie, you didn’t -” he fumbled with his words, feeling a weird mix of horror and also being turned on that she’d even consider tattooing his initials onto her forever, even if she was drunk.

“No, no, I’m next.” She nearly tripped as she walked back into the kitchen, showing a group of her friends crowded around a table, one of them giving stick and poke tattoos with a practiced ease. The phone was set down and abandoned for a few minutes, but he could hear Sophie accepting another shot with a giggle, her words taking on a pronounced slur.

Rafe waited patiently, straining a little to listen to the conversation.

“Were you talking to your boyfriend?”

“Wait, the one that gave you the ring?”

Sophie laughed and he could picture her grin. “Yeah, I was talking to Rafe. I’m gonna get his initials.” She pulled up her shirt a little to show off the sloppy outline and the girls squealed, both equally as drunk as her. “Oh my god, you can’t.”

“Why not!” Sophie exclaimed.

“What if you break up?”

“Oh, we won’t.” She replied, self-assured. He grinned at that.

“So do you think you’ll marry him?”

There was a brief silence and more giggles and Rafe desperately wished he could see her face. Unbeknownst to him, she nodded with a grin then picked the phone back up, her face tinged pink. 

“Hi! I forgot we were talking!” She took the phone back to her room to talk to him again. Sophie had a tendency of being spacey when she was drunk, often wandering off or just ending a conversation mid-sentence when she couldn’t remember the rest.

Rafe shook his head, trying his best not to laugh. “Sophie. Angel. Listen to me, very carefully, okay?”

She furrowed her brow. “Yes?”

“You cannot get that tattoo.”

She pouted, running her thumb over the ink and smearing it a little. “Why not?”

“Because, Soph. You’re hammered -”

“Am not! I can do a handstand, look, watch -”

“No no no, Soph, just listen to me, please -” he laughed, snapping to try and get her focus as she went to set the phone down and show off (he was a little concerned, especially because he wasn’t sure she could do a handstand sober). “Sophie Flint! Hey. Hey. Pay attention and listen. No tattoos.”

“You don’t like it.” She frowned, lip wobbling, and Rafe could feel the tears coming on. He paused, part endeared and part exasperated. “It’s - it’s not that, I just -”

“No, you hate it and you’re going to break up with me because you think I’m a bad artist and I could never open my own tattoo shop.” She sighed dramatically, a few stray tears spilling down her cheeks. 

“Jesus, what did you drink?” He muttered to himself, shaking his head. “I’m not breaking up with you, baby.” He couldn’t help but laugh, utterly confused. “Has this been some long standing dream I’ve never heard of?”

“You’re laughing at me!” She cried out, rubbing the heels of her hands hard against her eyes. “I’m a great artist.”

“Oh my god.” Rafe muttered, grinning. “Yes, you are. Hey, how about you wait, and - um -”

He grabbed a piece of paper from his desk and held it up. “Look, I’ll draw you the tattoo, but you have to wait until you get it in the mail. So you can copy it right.” He pretended to write his initials onto the paper, knowing he had zero intention of sending it to her.

“Oh. You mean it?” She sniffled, her tears long forgotten.

“I mean it. Nothing to cry over, baby.”

She nodded, swiping the back of her hand over her eyes to get rid of her tears. “You promise to send it? So I can have you with me forever?”

He swore he melted at that statement alone. “That’s why you wanted it?”

“Yeah. And ‘cause I miss you.” She paused. “I miss your dick too, but I’m not gonna get that tattooed on me.”

He laughed loudly at that, shaking his head. “I think that’s a solid plan. No tattoos tonight, okay?” 

“I’ll wait until you come out and we can both get each other’s. Oh!” Her face lit up and it was almost painful for him that she was so far away when she was in one of his favorite moods. “Yeah, Soph?” 

“You could get my signature, on your letters! The S and the halo!” 

He paused, thinking. “That’s not too bad.” 

“No, it’d be perfect. I want it over your heart. So everyone knows you’re mine.” She declared, tracing her idea over her own heart to demonstrate. 

“Okay. I’ll think about it. Go back to your party, angel, go have fun.” He urged, feeling better now that he’d talked her down from the tattoo ledge. 

“No, I miss you, I wanna talk.” She flopped down onto her bed and propped her phone up, then wrapped her arms around her pillow. “Last night one of my roommates brought some guy home from the bar and it’s not fair. You should be here so I don’t have to get off on my own.”

Rafe grinned, shaking his head. “You’re trouble.” 

“Am not.” She protested, then grinned. “Unless you want me to be. Then I can be trouble.”

“Keep your voice down, Soph.” He admonished, knowing she had a tendency of being loud when she was drunk. “Go drink some water for me.” 

“No. You know what’s bullshit?” She fished around in her nightstand drawer, looking for something. 

“What?” 

“Ah!” She held up a small drawstring bag. “My vibrator died last week -”

“Jesus Christ, woman -” 

“- and I can’t find a replacement anywhere online. The thing won’t charge here, I think I electrocuted it. Useless.” She tossed the bag across the bed, scowling. 

He was clearly strained, rubbing his temples. “Can we go back? Since when have you had a vibrator?” 

“Since, like, sophomore year.” 

“And I didn’t know about this, why?” 

She shrugged. “You never asked and I think I can probably count on my fingers how many times we had sex in my room last semester. What was I supposed to do, reach over and whip it out when we were fucking?” 

He laughed at her brash words and dropped his head in his hands, shifting in his seat. “You’re going to be the death of me, I swear.” 

Sophie waved her hand, ignoring his struggle. “Rafe, listen to me. That picture you posted with Colin, in the swim shorts, you’re holding the beer?” 

“Yeah?” 

“I’ve literally never wanted to get down on my knees more.” 

He about choked, eyes going wide. “You can’t just say things like that without a warning, angel.” 

“I’m serious -”

“I’m sure you are.” He laughed, trying his best to ignore her tank top slipping off her shoulder and the way she licked her lips. 

“And when you come visit and we travel, I want to have sex in every country. Just so we can say we did.” She declared. 

“We’re only going to be in three, Soph. Including Spain.” He countered, attempting to switch the conversation for his own sake. 

She yawned, stretching, and her shirt slipped a little lower. “Okay, so we’ll just have to travel more together later. Fuck, I miss you.” 

“You too, baby.” He heard her name being yelled out in the background and laughed, raising his eyebrows. “Do you need to go?” 

“Prob’ly. More shots, you know how it goes.” She dragged herself up out of bed and glanced down at her shirt, sighing dramatically. “I gotta change, don’t I?” 

“No, you look great. Go have fun, I love you.” 

“No, no, I gotta change.” She insisted, pulling off her shirt with no hesitation and Rafe sucked in a breath, watching her hunt around through her laundry basket of clean clothes waiting to be folded. “You’re teasing.” 

“I’m not teasing, I have a bra.” She snapped the strap for emphasis. 

“You are teasing. I can see your underwear when you bend over, your skirt is short.” He laughed when she turned a little red and tugged it down. “You’re lying.” 

“I’m not. They’re pink with little red hearts on them.” He grinned. “Adorable.” 

“I’m not going to waste my good underwear when you’re not here.” She defended, then found the shirt she wanted. It was one of his from intramurals, with Cameron written out on the back. He held back a smirk when she tugged it on and it went to her thighs, her skirt barely peeking out under the hem. “Is this better?” 

“Yeah, you look beautiful.” He smiled. “Go back to your party.” Rafe paused, adding, “Tell Mateo I said hi.” 

“That’s weird, but alright.” She shrugged. “You be good, okay?” 

“I don’t think you’re the one that should be telling me that.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Have fun. If you go out, text me when you’re home again.” 

“Deal.” She blew him a kiss before waving and hanging up. 

taglist: @whoeveniskendall @kkmaybank @karsinner @outerbanksbro @outerbankspreferences @randomficsandshit @sunshineitsfine44 @jailcalledlife @tovvaa @moniamaybank @illbesafeforyou @dontjinx-it @freddymaybank @jjmaybankzz @g4bster @oopsiedoopsie23 @babygal-babygal @thecuthoney

[sunspill]

clexa ficlet, this tornado loves you

for clexaweek, the authors choice fill. 

canon...esque magical realism

When Clarke was three, she drew a picture of her family. The Ark waxstick made her fingers smell and peeled little shavings under her fingernails but she screwed up her face and bit her lip and stuck the tip of her tongue out and held it in a ham toddler fist and scrawled on the paper. She drew trees in the background because they had just learned about them, walking in a tiny wobbly line of children to look at farm station and stick their hands into the dirt. She drew herself taller than her mother because they’d had a fight just that morning and she was still mad about it, wild hair because her mother hates it when she doesn’t comb it just right and fix her part just perfect.

She showed it to her father the next morning and he watched the stick figures toddle across the page with flailing arms and three straw thin fingers per hand. Kissed the top of her head and told her she was talented but hesitated when she asked him to tape it to the steel grey wall. He kept her from the creche and argued with her mother in harsh whispers in the other room while she played with her blocks on the floor.

“Honey,” her mother started, and told her she can’t ever do that again, not ever. Clarke cried when they shredded her drawing in the sink and rinsed the scraps with water until it slid, pulplike, down the drain.

//

“Hey,” Wells whispered during the meal break when Clarke was twelve. “Clarke.”

She sat next to him and they huddled close, shoulders bumping, ducking their heads to peer under the table. Wells opened his hands, damp from faint sweat, the room starting to smell more and more like adolescent hormones everyday. Resting on his palms were two paper cutouts, hands linked and twirling on folded edge feet. Wells whistled, soft and low, and they danced on the strings of his tune.

They giggled and Clarke leaned her head on his shoulder and when the teacher came Wells had to crush them between his fingers and sit on them. After, Clarke found them under the table and took them home, using the tips of her nails to piece them back together and smooth them out, but they wouldn’t dance no matter what she hummed.

//

When Clarke is locked up she draws all over the walls because otherwise she’d sit on her cot and rock with her face in her hands and shake. She talks to herself and to her drawings and has dreams where the colours swirl together to create galaxies and swallow her whole.

Just before they come to take her away and send her hurtling to Earth she draws her father on the back of her calf with her nail, digging in until the blood runs quick and thin and wet over her fingers. The face twists in a soft smile and she can almost hear his voice again.

//

On the ground Bellamy touches the petal of a flower, thinking Octavia would like to see it; it withers before his eyes and turns to dust. He never tells anyone.

When Raven dreams she floats above the ground and her knee doesn’t hurt. She touches the stars and hisses when they flare on her skin. She sucks her burned fingertip between her teeth and naps curled up on the glow grey disk of the moon.

“What did you think I did up there stuck under the floors?” Octavia asks. Her knife never breaks and when she throws it she can’t miss even when she tries. Rabbits lay at her feet and stop breathing and fish float to the surface as soon as her lure is cast.

//

When Lexa walks the grass parts before her, whispering in the dirt until she passes before closing again, a zipper path of green wherever she goes. The Grounders are just as transfixed as Clarke is, staring and bowing and averting their eyes, but it’s nothing compared to the horror that contorts her mother’s face, mirrored on Kane’s.

In Polis the tapestries ripple when Lexa is near, images flickering across. When Clarke held a knife to Lexa’s throat a wall hanging showed a girl with dark skin and tightly wound curls and deep dark glassy eyes clouded with death wrapped in the red velvet of Lexa’s stash.

//

Clarke wanders the marketplace alone and pretends not to notice the Grounders noticing her, from the children that flit through the streets stealing glances and daring each other to touch the hem of her dress to the vendors who go guarded and nervous when she pauses in front of them.

She manages to lose her Lexa issued shadow, an older boy with a clean shaved face and a haircut Clarke has noticed on several of the young men. She thinks she’s getting a handle on Grounder fashion. She walks until she finds a fountain and sits cross-legged in front of it, enjoying the quiet solitude and the muted foot traffic sounds from just around the corner of the building.

“Clarke.”

She looks up. Lexa is fully dressed, sword at her hip, although she’s forgone the warpaint and the pauldron. “I thought it would be different. Earth.”

Lexa sits next to her in the dirt, her legs extended. She leans back against a stone wall and crosses her ankles. “Why?”

Clarke frowns at the fountain, her eyes only half focused. “It’s not what they told us it would be. Not what we learned in class. I think maybe… maybe we forgot what we were, before. And we can’t figure out how to remember.”

“Hm.” Lexa takes Clarke’s hand in her own, gloved about the palm in a criss cross of fabric but bare everywhere else. Her skin is faintly cold against Clarke’s; her dark blood makes the veins stand out clear and visible. She traces the lines of Clarke’s palm with a single finger, sliding down to Clarke’s wrist and resting above the flutter of her pulse. “Your people haven’t forgotten, Clarke, they’ve erased.”

Lexa tilts her eyes at the fountain and Clarke can hear the pipes open up, the rush of water. It smells like rain wet rocks and rushing rivers and the water is impossibly clear. Lexa stands and offers her hand and when Clarke takes it they walk to the edge of the fountain. Lexa dips her palm and sips from it, her face eerie in its reflection. She offers her hand again and Clarke takes it, their thumbs overlapping as they walk back.

Clarke looks back before they turn the corner and when she tightens her grip on Lexa’s hand the water turns black and thick, overflowing like tar and staining the cobblestones.

//

“Criss cross applesauce,” Clarke says.

Lexa’s eyes flutter open. Her brow furrows gently. “You want apples,” she concludes after a moment, and opens her mouth as if to call for a servant. Clarke presses her palm against Lexa’s lips, dry and soft plush, pale pink. Her skin is warm only when Lexa exhales.

Clarke realizes it’s been more than a single minute, Lexa’s eyes quiet and thoughtful on her own. She drops her hand. “An old saying,” she says, “from the Ark.” She lays back on Lexa’s plush carpet, looking up at the candles in their metal cages as they sway gently in the air. The ceiling is painted black and Clarke can almost see the twinkle of stars instead of flickering flame against its backdrop. “It was like… mashed apples and cinnamon and other stuff, I don’t know.”

“Warm?”

“No, I don’t think so. In cans.”

Lexa’s nose wrinkles in Clarke’s peripheral vision. She says something in trigedasleng and then, seeing Clarke’s blank look, searches for a translation. “Pickled?”

“No, like--” Clarke gropes for a description, then is startled silent when Lexa leans over her, not straddling but pressed hip to hip, intimate, her hair tumbling over one shoulder. She reaches over and dips into a candle and the flame curls around her fingers like a cat, popping playfully and making her skin glow. She holds her hand just above Clarke’s heart, and Clarke can smell the melted wax puddled in the cup of her palm.

“Close your eyes,” Lexa tells her.

Clarke thinks about the night she couldn’t sleep and her mother let her sneak out of her little cot and sit on the couch and took the big glass jar down from the cabinet, exaggerated tiptoeing and finger pressed to her lips. How she said it was their little secret and they shared a spoon. She screws her eyes shut and remembers the smell of it, the texture, the way it slid over her tongue and how it tasted and what the softness looked like in her mother’s face before it faded away entirely.

When she opens her eyes she’s propped up on her elbow and there’s applesauce in the palm of Lexa’s hand. They peer at it together and the tip of Lexa’s tongue is delicate and pink when it flickers out for a taste. Clarke watches her consider it. “We have something similar,” Lexa says, hesitant. “Sweeter, the apples are thicker. It’s a dessert, served warm.”

Clarke dips a finger into the applesauce, poking against Lexa’s palm before sucking the food off her skin. “Huh.” It’s almost exactly as she remembers it, down to the faint metal tang of the spoon that lingers on the tongue.

Lexa is watching her, eyes flickered down to her lips before sliding to the side. They’re so close Clarke can make out the flecks of glitter on Lexa’s face, the difference in colour between them. “Criss cross applesauce,” Lexa says, soft. She slides away, giving Clarke her space back, and folds her legs up just so.

//

Clarke is screaming, raging. She shoves her papers off the small desk in her rooms and throws the ink wells at the walls, leaving splatter marks of dark wet black drops.

“You’re being childish,” Lexa says from the doorway, low. “It’s beneath you.”

Clarke whirls, out of breath. “Murderer,” she whispers, breathless but poison sharp, and means every syllable.

Lexa doesn’t flinch, but her chin dips faintly before rising again. “We all do what we must.”

“There’s another way,” Clarke insists, “there is always another way.”

Lexa advances on her, boots thumping. The force of her is overwhelming; a butterfly against an avalanche and Clarke retreats. “There is not,” Lexa says, through her teeth and as angry as Clarke has ever seen her, “always another way. You cannot lead your people and not understand this. This isn’t blood must have blood. This isn’t the way of my people, Clarke. This is the way of people.”

Clarke exhales, sharp. She looks away and the crackling thunder static of the room fades abruptly, leaving the smell of ozone in the frizz of their hair. She feels, suddenly, very young. Irrationally, she wishes her mother were here. The scar of her father on her leg stings; she hasn’t looked at it in months because she’s afraid he wouldn’t recognize her anymore.

Lexa touches the mess on the wall, rivulets running down the stone. She drags her nail and it scratches, but in its wake the ink draws back up and out, solidifying. By the time she’s done there’s a small cylinder pinched between her index finger and her thumb, roughly the shape of a quill and the exact shade of the blood at the corner of Lexa’s mouth where her lip is split. A small knife appears from her sleeve and she carves a nib off the end, creating a pointed tip. “May I?”

Clarke opens her mouth and Lexa places it in the center of her tongue. It tastes the ocean, deep and endless and cruelly indifferent. Lexa presses the pen into her hand; Clarke swallows and licks the salt from her teeth.

//

Clarke draws Wells and can’t get his smile right; it twists and melts off his face and she can’t bare to see him so in pain. She tries Bellamy next and realizes she can’t remember the last time she saw him happy; when she tries to sketch him in the early days a blackness starts in his temples and above his heart and she sits at the desk and cries for ten minutes before burning it.

She draws Anya’s hand in hers; the way Octavia’s lips quirked when she practiced trigedasleng because it made Lincoln smile. The sound of Raven’s laugh and the way it felt when Monty hugged her.

Lexa flows from her head to her fingers and back up to her heart and she can’t finish it because she can feel something rolling in her stomach. She reaches down her throat and tries to pull it out and throw it in the fire but it won’t come out. She finds a mirror and reminds herself of standing on a mountain and watching Lexa walk away covered in blood but the mirror just cracks and reflects herself back in a hundred shards.

//

Lexa’s room reminds Clarke of the tree she waited in, before she felt the weight of the panther on her chest and the searing pain of claws ripping through her skin. Bright moss and cold grey morning sunshine and the distant sounds of bubbling water and Lexa moves through it like a hurricane; when Clarke is in the eye of it the air is so still Lexa has to hold her sleeve to keep Clarke’s feet on the ground.

She smoothes Clarke’s hair down and watches it float back up with a quiet upturn of one side of her mouth. She says Clarke’s name and she tastes like rain and when she kisses the crooked white divot at her temple Anya left behind it fades away like it was never there. Clarke stops her, cradling Lexa’s jaw, before she can disappear the arcing scar the panther gave her. “That one is mine,” she whispers, and Lexa smiles.

“You understand,” she murmurs.

“I’m starting to.” Clarke dozes tucked against Lexa’s side and when she wakes up the tattoo from Lexa’s arm has crawled around her own bicep. She touches it with a finger and it flickers at her, almost anxious, until she lays her head on Lexa’s shoulder and goes back to sleep.