Clarke is starving. It's nine-thirty at night during finals week and the dining commons are closed, the food in the vending machines is likely decades old, and the mini-fridge in her dorm room is full of Red Bull and Coke instead of actual snacks.
She's capable of ignoring it, she tells herself, and focuses on her notes from her Classics 3 class while she listens to the dubstep station on Pandora, the only lyricless music that doesn't put her to sleep.
Well, she is trying to fo focus on her notes and ignore her hunger until a crumpled up ball of paper hits her in the head after a particularly fierce grumble of her stomach.
"What?" she snaps as she yanks her earbuds out and swivels in her desk chair to glare at Raven.
"Christ on a cracker, Clarke, eat some goddamned food!" Raven retorts from her spot on her bed. She's surrounded by open textbooks and notebooks and little pieces of metal and wire that Clarke absolutely doesn't understand. "I'm trying to concentrate on my final project for Robotics and all I can hear is the fucking San Francisco Earthquake of 1906!"
"At least your studying for the Natural Disasters final paid off," Clarke comments, and ducks to dodge another crumpled piece of paper.
"Eat. Something," Raven grits out.
Clarke sighs. "Fine. I'll order a pizza. You want some?"
Raven waves her hand at Clarke, already focusing on her project again. "Nah, I'm good. And you always get those gross black olives."
"They're delicious," Clarke mutters as she pulls out her cell phone and hits the number for the local pizza place.
"Roma's Pizza," a raspy male voice answers. She likes the sound of him, all low and a little hoarse. "This is Bellamy. Dine-in, take-out, or delivery?"
"Delivery," Clarke says, "Definitely delivery." She's idly organizing her desk while she's on the phone, rearranging her stacks of notes and highlighters, searching for the Starry Night coaster Wells gave her for Christmas so that her Red Bull will stop getting condensation all over her desk. "Can I get a medium pepperoni and black olive?" she asks, carefully setting the can on top of one of stacks of papers as she sifts through the piles for the coaster.
Where the hell is that thing?
And of course, just when she pulls it out from under her desk lamp and is absently answering the pizza guy's request for her name, phone number, and address, the stack of papers under the can shifts and the can topples off, spilling all over her Classics notes.
"Oh shit," she hisses, hurriedly righting the can. "Crap, crap, crap." She scrambles up from her desk and grabs her bath towel from the hook on her wardrobe, throwing it down on top of the pool of Red Bull. "Sorry, there's an emergency, bye, love you!"
"Love you t––" the pizza guy stops mid-word and Clarke pauses in the middle of trying to save her notes from the spill, a sickening feeling in her stomach slowly making itself known.
Did she just tell the pizza guy she loved him?
"I hope you're not expecting a discount on your pizza just because we confessed our undying love for each other," she hears him say dryly.
Yes. Yes, she did say that.
Clarke can tell she's flushed bright red with embarrassment.
Well. At least he said it back.
"Of course not," Clarke gets out. "That would be favoritism. Nepotism? Unethical, either way."
"Glad we're on the same page," he says. "Your pizza will be there in half an hour."
"Thanks," Clarke says faintly, and hangs up.
She busies herself with mopping up the rest of her Red Bull and despairing over the sorry state of her Classics notes while thanking god that Raven didn't catch her verbal slip on the phone.
She would never have let Clarke live it down.
About twenty-five minutes later, her phone lights up; an unknown number is calling.
"This is Bellamy from Roma's," she hears when she answers. "I'm outside your dorm with your delivery."
"I'll be right there," she promises, and hurries out of the room and down to the front entrance.
Clarke sees him through the windows, tall and dark-haired and unfairly attractive even in the unflattering polo shirt and Dickies every pizza parlor seems to force their employees to wear.
Oh god, Clarke thinks. The voice of the delivery guy had been the same as the one she'd ordered from––Bellamy, she recalls. It turns out her mystery lover is hot as fuck, and he's currently looking up at the constellations in the clear night sky.
"Hi," she says, pushing through the door and letting it lock behind her. "Bellamy?"
He turns toward her. "Hey. You Clarke?" His voice is still that low, raspy sound, and Clarke thinks she might like it a little too much.
"Yeah," she says with a smile, taking the pizza box from him. "Here," she adds, handing him the cash she brought down with her.
"Thanks, princess," Bellamy says, tucking the money away.
"Princess?" she echoes, taken aback a little.
"The crown?" he says, gesturing toward her torso.
She glances down at the "Keep Calm and Carry On" sweatshirt she's wearing with her leggings and slipper socks. It does have that little crown above the phrase.
"Oh," she says, feeling her cheeks warm. "I pretend it helps me focus, even though mostly it's just comfy. But I need all the help I can get for my Classics final."
"Classics?" he echoes with a note of interest in his voice. He leans against the door, arms crossing over his chest as he looks at her with an appraising look in his eye. "Like Medea and Antigone?"
"Exactly like those," Clarke says, surprised. "Those stupid plays are kicking my butt." She props the pizza box against a hip and leans against the door with the other, mirroring him.
"How can they kick your butt?" he asks incredulously. "They're amazing works of classic literature!"
"Amazing?" Clarke asks. "Are you kidding me? Medea's motivation is pitiful! She murders her own children to get back at her unfaithful husband! What the hell kind of a story is that?"
He has the gall to snort at her. "Just because it's not a happily-ever-after fairy tale, the princess doesn't like it?"
"I don't just not like it," Clarke insists indignantly. "I don't get it. Though you do, apparently."
Bellamy opens his mouth to say something, but pauses before actually speaking.
"What?" Clarke says.
"Your pizza's going to get cold," he says abruptly. "And my shift is over."
"Oh." She guesses they've been standing out there for a lot more time than most pizza deliveries take. "Well. Goodnight, then," she says awkwardly, and unlocks the dorm's front door to go back inside.
"No 'love you'?" he calls after her. She glances back over her shoulder and wrinkles her nose at him; he's watching her leave with a funny little grin.
"Not tonight," she says with a raised eyebrow. "But maybe the next time I call, if you're good."
Bellamy lets out a half laugh and lifts a hand in farewell. "I'll take what I can get, I guess. Night, princess."
"Night, Bellamy," she says, and lets the door fall closed between them.
Upstairs, the pizza is lukewarm but delicious, and her notes are half-dry, sticky, and hopelessly smudged.
Clarke resigns herself to trying to make sense of the blurred ink when her phone starts lighting up with text messages. Her eyebrows skyrocket when she notices it's the same number that Bellamy called from when he was downstairs with her pizza.
Hey princess, if you need help studying for your classics final, I could help
I have tomorrow off
This is Bellamy, by the way
Oh god, this is probably really creepy for me to text you like this
I'm sorry
Please don't sue me or Roma's for texting you
Clarke snorts at the text, but is unable to keep the smile from her face as she responds.
Don't worry, she texts back. It's rude to sue someone when you've confessed your love for them in the last 24 hours
He texts back almost immediately.
And it's unbecoming of a princess to be rude
Really? How long is this princess thing going to stick, she wonders, but it doesn't bother her as much as she'd like to think.
(She cracks and begs him to meet her at the campus library to study the next day. Clarke tries and fails to convince herself and Raven that it's just because her Classics notes are too ruined to be of any use, and not at all because Bellamy's the one offering to help her.)
(Years later, the princess thing is still sticking.)
Title is from Antigone by Sophocles because I, like Bellamy Blake, am a huge nerd.