#they'd be so much less of a threat if they were incapable of love

[tearlessrain]

I've actually been having a lot of fun with my Durge (plural) and their whole bond + the general way the interact with the world both pre and post tadpole. because like. yes "villain incapable of love" can be interesting but "villain who is absolutely capable of love but real fucked up about it" is so much fun.

They are so full of love but the problem is their love language is Murder and Stabbing.

[coeurdastronaute]

Essays in Existentialism: Nerd 9

Previously on Nerd

In a way, Luna’s house was the most comfortable place outside of her own home that Lexa ever knew. One street over and two houses down, Lexa spent her first sleepover there. She spent every birthday and most of summer vacations there for a long time, her brother trailing along to play with Luna’s little brother. She knew where everything was, and the door was always open, so that she didn’t even bother knocking anymore.

When Aden got sick, Lexa spent more time at Luna’s than she did her own home. That stopped immediately when he was gone. She barely left her room, let alone her house, let alone her street.

But there was something comforting about it, as she knocked and twisted the door knob in the early evening. A late January slushy mix filled the sky and froze everything it came in contact with, and the warmth of the home greeted her, swallowing her up and welcoming her back yet again.

“Hey, kiddo, how’s it going?” Luna’s mother greeted her from the kitchen as she kicked off her shoes and made her way toward her best friend’s bedroom.

“Swamped, but doing okay. How are you?”

She paused at the island in the kitchen and accepted a cookie that cooled on a sheet while the mother worked on whatever was going to be dinner.

“I’ll be better when I finish this project and this dinner. Don’t ever grow up. Real life will absolutely drain your energy,” she said as she took a sip of wine. “Here to work on SAT prep?”

“Um, yeah,” Lexa nodded. “Test is in April.”

“Are you staying for dinner?”

“I’ll be heading home, actually. My dad is trying his hand at some Korean dish he had and wants to recreate.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to have something just in case?” she grinned.

“Thanks, but I’ll chance it,” Lexa shrugged, adjusting her bag and making her way down the hall.

The house was entirely prim and proper, neatly organized like a spread in a lifestyle magazine. Rows of pictures covered the hall, sandwiched between white trim. There was always a certain warmth to the house, but it never felt like home to Lexa. She liked her own house more than anything, but she owed her friend the luxury of home field advantage.

At the end of the hall, a white door was covered in angry stickers and bands, warning any wary passersby to keep going. Music thumped behind the sturdy barricade.

“I’m doing homework,” Luna yelled as soon as Lexa knocked, though it didn’t deter her as she pushed the door open to find her best friend scrolling through footage on her large monitor.

“That looks like the stuff we shot in November.”

“Someone’s got to put it all together.”

Lexa walked into the room anyway, despite the less than warm reception. She tossed her backpack on the floor and took a seat on the edge of the bed, even though her best friend didn’t look over at her or acknowledge her presence.

“You didn’t email me about the changes I made to the script,” Lexa began, playing with a hole on the jeans over her knee. “I thought we wanted to finalize by March.”

“I didn’t think there was a rush. You take forever to respond.”

“Are you still mad? I missed a couple of deadlines.”

“Every deadline,” Luna reminded her.

Hands moved quickly, knowledgeable at the computer. Lexa just watched as her friend avoided looking at her. It was hard to disappoint the person who gave her such drive. Her partner, in the truest sense of the word.

“I’ve had a lot going on.”

“So have I, but I keep up with this. This is what I want to do.”

“Yeah, sure looks like you’re passionate about it,” Lexa rolled her eyes, earning a glare.

Piercing brown, almost black eyes bore into her own, slightly squinted from the slight. The muscles of the jaw flexed and nostrils flared. The leg that was propped up in the chair got pulled even tighter, her body defending itself from a perceived threat.

“I’ve been working on this for hours, and you want to come in and tell me I’m doing a lackluster job?” Luna scoffed, leaning back in her chair.

“I didn’t come over to fight. I came over to apologize and figure out the adjustments I wanted to make.”

“You’re bad at it.”

“I know you’ve been mad at me.”

“No shit.”

“And I take the blame, but you’re not innocent in this,” Lexa decided, her words shaking slightly with the confrontation.

“Okay, Lexa. Thanks.”

“I mean it. I am devoted to this. You know I love this, but you throw it in my face how I’m dragging you down apparently,” she concluded, her hands moving slightly, her shoulders shrugging.

Lexa couldn’t look at the girl at the desk anymore, so she fixated on the corner of the desk as she zoned out and said hard words.

“You’d have to show up to drag me down,” Luna laughed sardonically.

“My life is kind of upside down at the moment.”

“Yeah yeah, Aiden, I know. I give you slack for that.”

“Slack?” Lexa furrowed. “For my brother dying? For my family falling apart? Wow. That is awfully generous of you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Even then, you should understand that my family has different requirements of me than yours does of you.”

“I get to just do what I want, with no supervision, no drive?” Luna looked at the girl on her bed and shook her head in disbelief.

“I have to play a sport every season. I have to be in these clubs, and I just came out to my parents, which-- I don’t have to explain it to you.”

“You used to though.”

Deadlocked, they looked at each other, the music quieter but still louder than the rest of the house, blocking out much of their own thoughts. Lexa didn’t want to fight, but she also knew her friend was incapable of strictly being passive aggressive. She knew she was walking into a den of pure aggression, and to a degree, that kept her away, coward that she thought herself to be because of it.

“You don’t seem interested to hear about Clarke,” Lexa shrugged, wringing her fingers again.

“Yeah, is it obvious?”

“Why do you hate her?”

“I don’t… I don’t hate her,” Luna shook her head, leaning back in her chair and finally turning it slightly so that she was facing her bed. “It was always supposed to be us though. You and me, applying to school, making movies.”

“You’re jealous?”

“No. I’m not jealous. I’m annoyed that my plans are being ruined.”

“That’s why I’m here to apologize and ask for a slight break from your eagerness.”

“Oh, so now I’m annoying and over eager?”

“That’s not what I said,” Lexa held up her hands in defeat. “But I need my best friend back, and I can’t give you every spare minute for this movie. I’m giving you all of them that I have, but I do have to sleep from time to time.”

“Sleep is for the weak,” Luna offered before cracking a smile.

She tilted her head slightly, letting it rest on her shoulder as she eyed Lexa, her face softening slightly, though not enough to put Lexa completely at ease. Luna was never one to soften. She was intense, and it was constant.

“I need you to like Clarke,” Lexa continued. “I-- I-- I think we’re… I think that there’s a chance we’re going to be-- We are talking abo-- I like her a lot, and I think she likes me.”

Completely pink in the cheeks, Lexa sighed with the admission as she looked down at her hands knotting themselves together, her fingers wrangling and wrapping themselves around each other to escape or personify her own feelings at that exact moment. Despite it all, despite the severity and venomous tongue her friend owned, Lexa knew Luna would listen, at least partially.

“I don’t mean to sound like this jealous asshole,” Luna sighed. “I just miss you.”

“I knew it.”

“Shut up.”

“I did though,” Lexa smiled, leaning back on her elbows on the bed, her legs stretching out in front of her over the side of it. “Stop getting annoyed at me for missing deadlines.”

“I won’t.”

“Try.”

“Whatever,” Luna shrugged. “I’ll try.”

“Good. Now do you want to get to work and stop being such a jealous baby?”

“You’re the worst,” Luna shook her head and tossed a notebook at her friend.

Lexa dodged the notebook, catching it before it hit her in the chest, gentle and wafted and not meaning to hurt. She earned a smile and though it was tense, the air felt slightly more hospitable and normal.

It was hard to say what normal was anymore, the past year being nothing more than an absolute game changer, in every sense of the word. But for an evening, Lexa could at least say she had her friend back.

“Can we adjust the future projections now?” Lexa grinned. “With time for being human factored in?”

“Since when are you human?”

“Tuesday, September second.”

“That’s awfully specific,” Luna muttered as she looked at the poster they'd’ developed to track applications for college.

“It’s when I met Clarke. And Monday, November fourtheenth. That’s when I came out to my dad. And Thursday, November twenty-fifth is when I came out to my mom.”

“And now you’re human?” she wondered. “I’ve known you liked girls since we were twelve.”

“Family is tough, but mine is coming back. It’s… it’s nice. Feels human.”

Luna looked away from her planning and her dates to look at the contemplative girl on her bed, the one she thought she knew better than anyone else. There was a different look to her, different than the one Luna suspected was because of the stupid cheerleader.

“I’m glad to hear it. Tell me how Sir Tim allowed you to cut down on extracurriculars.”

And just like that, they were back in some small way.

XXXXXXXXX

The music was too loud, but that didn’t matter. Clarke stared at her ceiling and didn’t even listen to the words that blared in her ears, deafening her from the rest of the quiet house. She didn’t move at all, but laid there, still as could be, thinking. Hands linked over her stomach, she felt herself breathing intermittently.

The room wasn’t messy, but it certainly wasn’t clean. Clothes were lumped in a corner and scattered elsewhere on the floor. Her backpack and stack of books flopped, half on the floor, half on her bed from her attempt at homework. Sketches covered a desk with various drawing equipment, paint dripped onto the old rugs she used to keep her mother at bay from complaining. It was exceptionally normal.

Clarke tilted her head and looked toward the window, and at the orange trees and street outside, flooded with rain and snow in the miserable winter night. Pictures from various moments in her timeline littered the wall next to her bed. Long forgotten smiles and friends beamed, dressed up in little cheerleader costumes, dressed in camp outfits, dressed in stupid costumes for various school events. Her wallpaper was memories that seemed incredibly insignificant at the moment.

She looked back toward her ceiling for a moment before looking toward her door, a monstrous thing with clothes and coats and bags hung on it, giving it a hump. There was so much stuff, so many things, everywhere. Her room was full and busy and she looked back at her ceiling and felt very far removed from everything.

A year and a half and she could leave it all behind, she thought to herself as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Hey, want to come to my game on Friday? A text beeped, interrupting her song.

With a big stretch, Clarke wiggled up on her bed and grabbed her phone from where it was hidden beneath a stack of notebooks and binders. She smiled at seeing Lexa’s text despite herself, despite her mood.

I know it’s super boring, but I thought, maybe, we could, like after, maybe grab food and hang out?

The soccer player, the class secretary, the debate team captain, the SAT tutor, the valedictorian and all around heart throb to just Clarke, was an adorable mess, even in text, and Clarke loved it because rarely did something so good and pure exist in the world. Rarely did someone speak so honestly about what their problems were. Rarely did anyone acknowledge that life was shit, but kept going anyway.

I’m working this Friday. After can we head to Tall John’s party? His parents are out of town and it’s McKenzie’s birthday.

Clarke badly needed a drink and a night to just… to forget. She couldn’t think of anything better than hanging out with Lexa.

Um, yeah. Sure. That sounds fun. I’m um, not too good at parties.

I’ll teach you. We don’t have to stay long.

Sounds good. Not too late? Sorry to sound like a nerd, but my parents want to do a bike ride on Saturday morning. Their next attempt at family bonding.

Promise.

You want to come?

Do I want to get up early on Saturday and go on an outrageously long bike ride with three of the fittest people I’ve ever seen in one gene pool?

Yeah.

Clarke chuckled to herself and shook her head.

Maybe I can come over after work Saturday and we can do homework and movies?

This weekend just got to be spectacular. That sounds amazing.

How was your night?

Despite the messages, Clarke sat up in her bed and looked around at her room. She redid the messy bun in her hair, tightening it as she prepared for battle. The music continued to thump in her brain, the words disappearing, not relevant anyway.

Good. Luna and I edited and worked on the script for our feature for film school applications. She agreed to back off, as much as she can.

I told you, just talking to her will help. She’s very focused.

That’s a nice way to put it. But she keeps me going.

Clarke smiled at her phone before tossing it onto her desk and wondering where to start. She settled on trash, tugging everything off of her wall and throwing it into a pile in the middle of her room. And only when the walls were bare did she begin to gather everything and shove it in trash bags.

It went that way until her room was almost empty and orderly. It looked like she moved out. Any clothes that didn’t fit in the closet or dresser were filtered through and put in a bag for donation. Anything that tied her there, to that town, to her family, it was tossed. Clarke found herself scrubbing away a layer of film that grew on her skin, scrubbing away everything over the past year or so. She wanted to be clean. She wanted to be new.

Lexa, I don’t know what to say to my mom.

With nothing left to clean, with the room empty and almost cell-like, Clarke sat on her bed and cradled her phone, a few hours removed from her last conversation with another living being. It was nearly three in the morning, and she knew Lexa would be asleep, but she had to admit it to someone.

Once more, she flopped back on the bed and looked at the ceiling, her hands crossed over her ribs as she felt each breath.

“Hello?” she whispered as her phone began to vibrate more than a text.

“Hey,” Lexa yawned before clearing her throat. Her voice was scratchy and full of sleep, but that didn’t stop her.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I’m a light sleeper.”

“Then I’m extra sorry.”

“I’m not.”

They were quiet. Clarke tried to listen to any noise on the other end, but all she got was the slight adjustment of sheets and another stifled yawn.

“It has to get easier,” Lexa whispered.

“Did it for you?”

“Kind of, yeah,” she decided. “It’s getting better every day. Sometimes I lapse and get sad and feel lost, but for the most part, It feels better than yesterday.”

“Mine’s kind of fresh.”

“Yeah.”

“Do I tell my dad?” Clarke wondered.

“That’s up to you, but I don’t think you can decide at three in the morning.”

“I guess not.”

“Good. Then don’t worry for a few more hours, and try to sleep.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Maybe. Want me to hang out until you do though?” Lexa asked, half asleep herself.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Clarke smiled to herself and blushed at the admission.

“I can do that.”

“Thank you.”

“No worries. I was up anyway.”

Clarke smiled at the obvious lie and closed her eyes despite the light on, despite her clothes, despite it all, and she just enjoyed the quiet and the night and the girl on the other line.

XXXXXXXXX

There weren’t any nerves to it, but still Lexa was anxious as she waited by the locker of the girl that kept her up until four in the morning. There weren’t many nerves because she was still too groggy to have real nerves, but she had them beneath it all.

She adjusted her backpack and leaned against the lockers in the busy hallway before the first bell rang. She looked at her shoes and nudged her toes against the polished floor.

When she looked up, she held her breath, her lips too agape to fully smile though they very much wanted to do just that. As if she’d slept for a full ten hours, Clarke Griffin made her way through the hall, hair billowing and angelic, completely stuck in slow-motion. Lexa gulped and adjusted the strap of her heavy bag again before fiddling with the clasp.

“Good morning, tiger,” Clarke smiled. “Waiting for little old me?”

“I brought you breakfast,” Lexa offered, pulling the banana and protein bar from her sweatshirt.

“You are very sweet. Have I told you that lately?”

It burned the whole way up to the tips of her ears, but Lexa looked away from Clarke’s smile and back at the toes of her shoes.

“Yeah last night.”

“Good,” Clarke decided. “I wanted to thank you for… just staying up with me.”

“Anytime.”

She closed her locker after grabbing the right books and nodded to herself before pausing and leaning near Lexa. Clarke played with the strap of Lexa’s bookbag now, her fingers moving anxiously as they hovered closer.

“I’m becoming quite a pain in your life, huh?”

“Nope.”

“First your friend starts to hate you, now I take all your time up. I’m a menace.”

“I told you that I’d help. Do whatever. I don’t know. Sometimes we just need someone else to bring them a banana.”

“Yeah, I think we do,” Clarke smiled.

Pressing forward, Clarke gripped the backpack strap firmly and slowly leaned toward Lexa’s lips before gently kissing her. She held it for a moment until she smiled enough to ruin it.

Lexa cleared her throat and blushed a little more.

“Want to come over after school? I’m going to paint my room.”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

Clarke smiled and intertwined their fingers.

XXXXXXXXXX

“So, this is your… room?” Lexa furrowed as she looked around the near empty shell of a bedroom.

The bed was covered in a drop cloth, while the walls were completely empty and not a thing was where it should have been, the desk and the dresser and a chair and a shelf pushed towards the center in preparation of the work to happen.

Clarke nodded and stirred the pain in the can.

“I can’t imagine why you’d want to change the color of the room.”

“I picked it when I was eight.”

“What a difference eight years will make,” Clarke smiled and poured into the tin. “I was a huge fan of purple.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Lexa grimaced slightly at the childish color.

“Which is why I’ve decided that my new life will be a much more mature color. The new year is a year of power moves only.”

“What’s that?”

Clarke stood and grabbed a roller and wet it. Hand on her hip, she held it up valiantly, prepared for everything and at least pretending to know what she was doing.

“It means, I’m only moving forward and doing what I want. Clean slate. No more childish stuff.” She paused for a moment, thoughtful and strong. “I’m going to change the fucking world.”

It was with a line like that, that Lexa decided she’d follow Clarke to the ends of the Earth.

“Power moves only,” Lexa agreed and picked up a roller.

For an hour they worked and got the first coat of paint on the walls, edged neatly and expertly by the debate team captain. Music played softly from Clarke’s phone on the window ledge, and the fan rocked and hummed quietly, attempting to usher in another coat before bed.

It got dark quickly in the winter, but that didn’t stop them. Lexa had a backpack full of homework and found herself slightly tired from being up all night, but that didn’t stop her. She had music and Clarke all to herself and it felt good and easy. She wasn’t going to stop.

“Are the glow-in-the-dark stars part of this new you?” Lexa asked as she laid on the floor next to a paint-splattered Clarke. Her own hands were caked in streaks and her shift had an accidental streak across it.

“I can’t change completely. They have to stay.”

Shoulder to shoulder, they looked at the poorly constructed constellation above them as the smell of paint wafted through the room.

“This has something to do with what we saw the other day, doesn’t it?” Lexa whispered.

“No.”

“It’s okay if it does.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I’d be… I don’t even know. I’d be devastated,” Lexa continued, turning her head to see Clarke’s profile.

The girl beside her worked hard to remain stoic, but cracked slightly, letting out a big breath and closing her eyes. Lexa froze as Clarke’s chest inflated again. A streak of grey paint ran down her jaw and neck.

“I don’t know what to do,” Clarke confessed. “I feel so…. So angry.”

“And hurt?”

“Maybe,” she sighed, her breath shaky. “Maybe deep beneath the anger.”

Lexa watched it all happen. She couldn’t look away. And then a tear made its way down the side of her face and into her hair, though Clarke tried to wipe it away quickly. Another came a second later, and Clarke sniffled and took a deep breath to steady herself.

There hadn’t been many times Lexa knew what to do when someone else was crying. There really hadn’t been any that she could think of. Nothing ever seemed right. But that didn’t stop her from rolling over and propping herself up on an elbow. Gentle as she could, Lexa wiped away one side, and then the other.

“You are far tougher than you realize,” Lexa promised. “You’ll know what to do eventually.”

Clarke finally met Lexa’s eyes. They were even more blue when hidden behind the glass of stifled tears. Pure blue. Blue blue.

“I’m sick of being angry,” Clarke whispered.

Lexa let her hand migrate to the corner of Clarke’s jaw where she rubbed softly, hoping it would help in some way.

“Me too,” she agreed. “Let’s stop being angry right now.”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“Why not?” Lexa smiled, earning one from Clarke as well, no matter how small it was.

Somehow, Lexa became aware of her body and how it was pressed against the entirety of Clarke’s. Her leg as slid over Clarke’s hip, her stomach touched her elbow, her arm covered her chest. Clarke must have known too, because she smiled and looked at Lexa’s lips.

Tentatively, asking permission, Lexa leaned forward and stopped, stuttering her way forward until she held her breath and felt Clarke kiss her Somehow a hand slid to the back of her neck and she  ran out of air, but still kept kissing the girl on the floor with the paint all over.

There was a tiny hum, though Lexa wasn’t sure who made it. She thought it was herself for a moment, but then infinitely liked the idea that it was Clarke even more. Of their own accord, her hips pressed forward while her hand slid to Clarke’s neck, and then to her chest quickly before settling on her ribs.

She made out with Clarke and forgot everything else, and as self control waned, her hand slid higher until she spread her palm and felt Clarke’s chest. Hesitantly, she paused there until Clarke’s back arched and filled up her hand on its own. Lexa did not mind, nor did she ever want to put anything else in her hand. It only spurred her to kiss Clarke deeper, her body doing things before her brain could overthink it.

Clarke pulled Lexa slightly until she was half atop her, thigh slipping between her own. She dug her hands into Lexa’s shoulders. For too long they made out on the floor with their bodies doing things they weren’t quite sure of, but desperately needed. Clarke groaned only when Lexa pulled away, lips swollen and eyes clearly wide.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t… I shouldn’t have.”

“Shut up,” Clarke shook her head.

Lexa looked down at her hand still on Clarke’s chest, still rooted firmly there. She should have moved it, but couldn’t.

“Anything to distract you, I guess.”

“Consider me distracted,” she promised.

Clarke let her head drop back onto the floor before moving her hips, adjusting slightly and tugging Lexa to lay atop her. She kissed her cheek, kissed her forehead and settled there on her floor, cheeks slightly pink and lip slightly bitten from Lexa’s teeth.

Neither said anything. Neither had to.