Chapter Text
Clarke’s eyes were shut as the tongue worked its way up her. Even in the early hours of the morning, she couldn’t help but smile at the way she was being woken up, and who was waking her up. The girl she’d never expected to love so much. She briefly wondered where Lexa was that Christmas morning before registering the arm that was thrown over her body.
Just as Clarke started to laugh, she heard a groan on the other side of her as a face buried into her neck. She opened her eyes and smirked at the girl on top of her. The girl who, along with one of the dogs, had been licking Clarke’s legs in an attempt to wake her up.
The girl quickly got off just as Clarke turned over, and with the help of her eldest daughter and sons, began to attack Lexa, tickling her until she finally opened her eyes. The dogs barked loudly at the commotion.
“Santa came!” five-year-old Jake exclaimed, jumping on top of Lexa, causing her to grunt from the impact.
“You didn’t sneak any peaks, did you?” Clarke asked, giving her three older children a stern look.
Jake and seven-year-old River both shook their heads, pasting serious looks on their face. The younger boy, however, seemed oblivious to the lie he was supposed to be in on. At nearly three, he wasn’t quite as good at masking lies and wore a smile on his face.
“Robbie, answer Mommy, did you guys sneak peaks at the presents from Santa?” Clarke looked directly at her youngest son, who now was starting to look sheepish.
The boy nodded.
“Robbie!” River and Jake simultaneously whined, causing Lexa to laugh.
“How about this?” Clarke spoke. “Mama and I will get up if you guys go put on your Christmas sweaters, then we can see what Santa brought you.”
The three children nodded excitedly before they ran out of the room to find their sweaters.
Clarke sat up, ready to start the day and get out of bed when an arm wrapped around her and pulled her back onto the mattress. The blonde smiled and turned over so that her chest was flush to her wife’s. She smiled at Lexa as the brunette placed her hands on either side of her face.
“Merry Christmas,” Lexa spoke, tilting her head up to capture Clarke’s lips with her own.
“Merry Christmas,” Clarke responded, pressing another kiss to her wife’s lips.
“We should go before the rascals come back and realize we still haven’t moved,” Lexa remarked, without actually making any moves to leave.
“We should,” Clarke responded before moving a hand under Lexa’s shirt, grasping her bare breast. She smirked as Lexa moaned into her mouth.
Lexa lifted her hands off Clarke’s face, placing them on either side of the blonde’s ass and squeezing. Clarke then immediately pulled away when the sound of a child interrupted them.
“Why did we have kids again?” Lexa groaned. “Let alone four?”
“Four times the fun,” Clarke laughed.
“Try four times the amount of cockblocking.”
Clarke wagged a finger at Lexa as she backed off the bed. Her feet hit the floor and she walked across the room, Lexa watching her wife’s ass the entire time. She watched as Clarke’s shirt rode up as she reached down into the bassinet and pulled out their youngest.
Lexa shifted her eyes and a smile fell on her face as she watched the way the baby smiled up at Clarke. That was why they had children. She then laughed out loud as Clarke lifted the child up and smelled her butt, her nose scrunching up in disgust.
Clarke held the six-month-old girl out at arms length as she walked back to Lexa. “Diaper duty,” Clarke stated.
Lexa frowned, but took her daughter from her wife anyway.
“I’ll go start the coffee,” Clarke offered as Lexa stood up off the bed, carrying her daughter to the changing table. The baby had her own room, but she also had an additional bassinet in Clarke and Lexa’s bedroom, one that she still slept in on occasion.
Lexa hummed as she changed her daughter’s diaper. She’d been on diaper duty ever since the baby was born. It was the least she could do after missing the birth of her youngest daughter. It hadn’t been entirely her fault. She had been filming on location in the Caribbean when Clarke had gone into labor, six weeks before her due date. Lexa had flown back as soon as she’d heard that Clarke was in labor, but wasn’t able to get to the hospital before the baby was born.
Clarke hadn’t blamed Lexa, but after she’d jokingly suggested Lexa could be on diaper duty for having missed her birth, Lexa had taken up the mantle and had decided that’s what she would do.
The baby cooed as Lexa tickled her stomach after she finished changing her diaper. She lifted her hands up into the air and Lexa high-fives them.
“Wanna play patty-cake, Addie-cake?” Lexa teased, grabbing the baby’s hands while she began to sing ‘patty-cake’.
Alexandria Woods retired from her singing career at the age of thirty-five. When questioned about it, Alexandria stated that because of her medical condition, she could only stretch her vocal cords so much, and that singing to her children every night before bed was more important to her than any album or concert. That being said, over the years she occasionally would put on a single performance at an event, such as at an awards show or at an event honoring one of her friends.
“Mom! Come on!” River yelled from downstairs. Lexa heard the sound of Clarke reprimanding their daughter and chuckled. She quickly dressed Addison in a ‘baby’s first Christmas’ onesie and carried her down the stairs.
The baby’s name wasn’t originally going to be Addison. In fact, they hadn’t even expected her to be a girl. They’d wanted the sex of the baby to be a surprise, but had assumed it would be another boy. They hadn’t even talked about girl names.
But when Lexa arrived at the hospital and held her day-old infant in her arms and began to discuss names with Clarke, she realized exactly what she wanted to name her. River had been named after the Seine, the river on which Clarke and Lexa had first professed the fact that they loved each other. Jake was named after Clarke’s father and Robbie after Lexa’s.
So while they had sat discussing names, it seemed like a logical solution. Their youngest would be named after their mothers. The women that may have been estranged from them at one point, but in the end had proven their love.
And so they had named their daughter Addison Abigail Griffin-Woods.
Kimberly hadn’t even received a birth announcement.
Lexa made her way into the living room where her three older children were waiting in front of piles of presents while her wife sat on the couch, holding two cups of coffee. She graciously thanked the woman with a kiss while their children exclaimed sounds of disgust.
Clarke took their youngest from Lexa’s arms as Lexa pulled out a phone to start taking pictures and videos of the morning.
With their moms finally sitting on the couch together, River, Jake and Robbie took that as their cue to start opening presents. Clarke and Lexa ‘ooh’d’ and ‘ahh’d’ as their children showed them present after present, all while Lexa snapped photos and videos.
After all the presents had been opened and the wrapping paper thrown away, the women sent their children to their rooms to get changed for Christmas lunch at their grandparents’ home.
At the sound of yelling about ties, Clarke and Lexa exchanged looks.
“I’ll go help the boys,” Lexa laughed.
“Okay, but first…” Clarke grabbed onto Lexa’s shirt and pulled her into a kiss, squeezing their youngest between them. “I love you.”
“Me too,” Lexa winked, bringing up the words they’d first spoken to convey their love fifteen years earlier.
While Clarke went in one direction, to help with their daughters, Lexa went in the other direction to dress their sons. It took them just over an hour to finally finish getting ready and piled into the car and despite the fact that they lived only fifteen minutes away from Robert and Addison Woods, in the suburban town of Bedford, New York, they were the last family to arrive.
Kennedy and her fiancee were the first to rag on Clarke and Lexa for being late, but not before showering the children with hugs and presents. As the youngest Woods grandchild, Addison was passed around so much, wanting to be loved by all her aunts and uncles and grandparents, that the only time Lexa and Clarke even saw her, was when she needed her diaper to be changed.
Clarke and Lexa were perfectly happy to let their family fawn over their children, giving them “adult time,” or time to interact with fellow adults. They were talking with Lexa’s youngest brother, Carson, about his plans for his post-college career, now that he was halfway through his senior year, when Lexa caught sight of her children all together.
River had been running around with her oldest cousin, Tim and Alycia’s nine-year-old while the boys had been watching their Uncle Tucker performing magic tricks, but now their children were all together. River and Jake had their legs open, feet touching to form a diamond while Addison crawled between them. Robbie sat back a few feet between them, cheering his younger sister on.
Lexa quickly caught the moment on camera and showed it to Clarke, who quickly took Lexa’s phone from her and opened up Instagram. She asked for approval before publishing the photo.
@AlexandriaWoods: Merry Christmas from the Griffin-Woods little elves! #PlayingNiceForOnce
By the time they finally made it back to their house several hours later, all four children were asleep in the backseats of the car. They woke up the older two, forcing them to sleep-walk inside while Lexa carried in Robbie and Clarke carried in Addie.
Once the kids were all in pajamas and fast asleep in their beds, Clarke and Lexa found themselves curled up together on the couch in front of the Christmas tree.
“You know, this gets harder and harder to do each year,” Clarke yawned, looking at her watch and seeing that it was only just past midnight.
“We can go to bed if you want,” Lexa suggested, but both women knew that wasn’t an option.
“It’s nice though, just being here with you. I love our kids and all, but sometimes it’s nice to just snuggle on the couch with you.”
Lexa pulled the blonde closer to her in response, kissing her cheek. From her view from the couch, she could see the Christmas cards lined up on the mantle above the fireplace. The sight of them all made her smile. Her family.
Lincoln and Octavia’s card was a picture of them all at the beach from the summer, all with crazy athletic bodies on surf boards, not just the two pre-teen boys, but also the three-year-old girl who had been their happy accident after they’d given up hope of more children once Octavia had her second miscarriage.
Robert and Addison’s card was a photo of the two of them surrounded by their family on their anniversary. There were the seven Woods children, three spouses, one fiancee and nine grandchildren, including the one that had been in Clarke’s stomach at the time.
Abby’s card was of her being hugged by her holding her youngest grandchild while being hugged by the other three. Anya’s was a photo of her with her husband of three years, Gustus, Lexa’s former bodyguard.
It was the photo of the Reyes-Matheson family, however, that garnered the biggest smile from Lexa. It was completely typical of the family. Echo was giving side-eye to the two standing to her right. Raven stood with her brace fully visible, lifting her middle finger to the world while the boy between the two woman, dressed in graduation robes, was doing the same.
There was a time when Lexa had been sure her best friend’s marriage was going to fail. After Echo and Raven had adopted eleven-year-old Ryder, their lives changed entirely, but they managed to make it work. He wasn’t the easiest kid at first, but eventually came around to calling Raven and Echo his moms. Five years after his adoption, however, the stress of being young parents to a teenager got to the two women and they ended up separating. They were separated for nearly two years before they found their way back to each other.
Both women said that the time apart was necessary and that it made being back together just that much sweeter. Ryder said he was glad to go to college after they got back together, scarred by the sounds of their over-the-top make-up sex.
“What are you thinking about?” Clarke asked, pulling Lexa out of her reverie.
“Family,” Lexa responded honestly. “Our family. And how before I met you, I didn’t have a family.”
Clarke turned over in Lexa’s embrace so that their faces were only inches apart. “Before I met you, I wasn’t in the best place with my family either.”
“I love you, so much,” Lexa spoke, capturing Clarke’s lips with a long, lingering kiss that Clarke eagerly gave herself up to.
“I love you too,” the blonde responded.
They lay there in each other’s embrace for a long time, sometimes talking, sometimes just enjoying the company.
They managed to survive the night, keeping up the tradition they made of staying up until sunrise after Christmas Day. When the sun rose, light spilled through the windows, lighting up the ornament in the front and center of their Christmas tree. The ornament that was fifteen years old.
It was their ‘Our First Christmas’ ornament, the present Lexa had gotten for Clarke all those years ago.
“Hey Clarke?” Lexa asked, after a long period silence.
“Mhmm?” Clarke responded sleepily.
“Will you remind me to send Octavia a thank you card?”
“For what?” Clarke’s voice was laden with confusion.
“For stealing your charger and not showing up at that bar. For forcing you into borrowing a stranger’s phone. For that night that changed everything.”
At Lexa’s words, Clarke’s eyes filled up with tears. They were happy tears. The kind of tears that come from having the realization that life can set you on a million different paths. A dead phone and a missing friend can change your life in an instant. A misdialed number can have a ripple effect, a ripple effect that causes a tsunami. Life may throw you curve balls, cause you to lose your way and lose those you love, but it also has a path for you to live. Life gives you a path and you may have a hidden destination, but once you get there, you know. You know you’ve reached the place you’re supposed to be because it’s when you know…
You’re home.