This was originally part of a multi-chapter ficlet collection but I've decided to post them all separately, so if you've read this before that's where it was from.

Based off of: 'should I be concerned about the amount of caffeine you're taking in' AU

When Raven had started working at the coffee shop near her apartment she had expected to hate it. After all, she was a mechanic, why would she want to be making coffee all day when she could be building and repairing things? But money was tight at the moment and she needed a second job.

She liked her co-workers well enough. There was a beautiful brunette named Gina who was probably the sweetest person Raven had ever met. Then there was Bellamy, Gina's grumpy other half. Bellamy was probably the smartest person she had ever met, not including herself, and he was a giant nerd, so he got points for that, but he was also grumpy as fuck and wasn't actually fully human until he had had at least two cups of coffee in him. Yet, as different as the two were, you only had to spend five minutes with them to know they were it for each other. They had been dating for three years and Raven knew for a fact that Bellamy was planning on proposing soon.

The three of them were usually together on the days Raven was scheduled to work and it was easy to develop a routine with them. Raven took the orders because after many failed attempts they had figured out that making drinks was not her strong suit. Like, at all. Give her a car that's engine was seemingly broken beyond repair and she could almost always find a way to fix it. But ask her to make a caramel latte? Yeah, not a good idea.

So, she was in charge of the front counter, something she had no problem with, while Bellamy and Gina made drinks. Gina was able to switch between the two jobs because she was both an unfairly friendly person and was good at making drinks without costing the store a lot of wasted ingredients.

Bellamy, on the other hand, was strictly there to make drinks. He wasn't allowed to take orders after one too many complaints about the surly man who glared at customers if they ordered something more complicated than black coffee. Plus, Bellamy was a wiz with coffee. He could use the exact same ingredients as someone else and still make a drink that just tasted better.

So, things worked. Raven grew to love the scent of coffee, a shocking change from the scent of motor oil and grease from the mechanic shop she worked at most days. She also grew to love Gina and Bellamy and they became some of her closest friends.

But her absolute favourite part? The tiny blonde that came in every morning like clockwork. She was short and curvy, long blonde hair, and had the most beautiful blue eyes. Raven guessed that she was an artist because every once in a while she had splashes of paint on her cheeks or charcoal smudges on her hands. She always gave Raven a bright smile and made small talk for a few minutes when the shop wasn't busy before going to grab her drink and settle into a table by the window; usually spending a few hours there, studying.

Raven was dying to get to know the woman, as all she knew at this point was that her name was Clarke and she was a student at the local university getting her teaching degree. Most days, Raven felt like she had a pretty good chance of Clarke saying yes if she asked her out, but she didn't have the best history with dating and had been wrong about this kind of thing in the past.

She had been working up her courage to ask her out for a few weeks when suddenly Clarke stopped coming into the shop. The first couple days it happened, Raven tried not to think anything of it. Clarke was probably swamped with work for uni or maybe she had some kind of exams coming up soon and was busying studying.

But, after a week straight of no Clarke, Raven started to get worried. She had no way of contacting the woman to make sure she was okay and she didn't want to ask Bellamy or Gina if they happened to know her. I mean, she would, but she wanted to know whether or not Clarke liked her back before she could deal with the teasing that Bellamy was sure to dole out.

Raven was getting ready to give in and talk to Gina and Bellamy when suddenly Clarke reappeared. She came in at her usual time, ordered her usual drink, and sat at her usual table. Raven was dying to ask her where she had been, especially since Clarke looked so stressed now. She had looked stressed before, all college students do, but this was different. Raven stopped herself from asking though since Clarke didn't act like anything had changed and didn't offer up an explanation for her absence.

So, Raven let her be and brought her a fresh cup of coffee when it looked like the blonde was going to break down in tears if she had to write another word on her essay. Clarke looked at her with those stupidly pretty eyes full of gratitude and Raven couldn't handle this.

She spent most of the rest of her shift hiding in the back, letting Gina work for the front while she organized stock, or, at least, pretended to organize stock. Gina gave her a look that clearly said 'dammit, go talk to her' but Raven ignored her.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, Clarke started spending an increasing amount of time in the coffee shop. She was always typing furiously on her laptop or staring at one of her heavy-looking textbooks, looking like she was on the verge of tears. She was also drinking increasing amounts of coffee whenever she came into the shop. Before, her usual order had been a small vanilla latte with soy milk and now she was drinking multiple large cups of black coffee. In short, Raven was overly invested in one of her customer's coffee drinking habits and she was worried about the customer herself.

It got to the point where Raven decided to just forgo her concerns about overstepping her bounds and confront Clarke.

One the day she chose to confront the blonde, it ended up being the perfect day to do so.

Bellamy was sick, but not sick enough to stay home from work (his words) and therefore extra grumpy. Gina had a headache and really bad cramps, which, actually made Bellamy slightly more tolerable. The fact that his girlfriend was in pain meant that Bellamy was too busy being concerned for her to be the asshole he usually was whenever he was sick.

The shop was dead, the only customer still there being Clarke and there hadn't been any foot traffic for a solid hour. Raven decided to just text her boss, Indra, and ask if they could close early. She stared at her phone, bouncing on her heels lightly, and hoped that Indra said yes. Clarke had already had three large coffees and Raven was actually concerned enough about her caffeine intake that if Clarke asked for a refill, Raven was going to say no.

Thankfully, Indra came through and told her they could close early. Raven shooed Bellamy and Gina out of the shop, pausing to give them both a quick kiss on the cheek- which, if anyone asked about, she would deny wholeheartedly.

She went through the closing routine whilst keeping one eye on Clarke. The blonde was so into whatever she was reading that she didn't seem to notice that it was only her and Raven left. She didn't even look up when Raven accidentally knocked over one of the chairs she was trying to put up on the tables.

Raven came and stood right beside Clarke, hoping that the blonde would notice her on her own and she wouldn't have to startle her. But Clarke didn't look up, just flipped to the next page of her textbook.

Raven sighed and placed her hand gently on Clarke's shoulder, shaking her softly. "Hey, Clarke, we're closing."

Clarke started, looking at Raven in shock and then around the store. Her eyes widened when she took in the fact it was just the two of them left and pretty much everything was ready for Raven to just set the alarm and lock up.

"Oh, fuck!" Clarke exclaimed, jumping up from her seat and hurriedly starting to pack up her stuff. "I am so sorry, I didn't even realize it was so late! Fuck, have you been there long? Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get in your way!"

"Hey, hey," Raven said, having to raise her voice a bit to be heard over Clarke's frantic apologies. "You didn't do anything wrong, don't worry. We're closing early today. Bell and Gina are both not feeling well and there hasn't been anyone in here besides you for a good hour or so."

Clarke paused and breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank fuck." She resumed packing up her stuff, however this time she wasn't so frantic. "I'm still sorry. I got completely absorbed in studying."

"It's all good," Raven assured her, helping her organize her stuff. She had already clocked out and had her stuff sitting on one of the tables all ready to go. She just needed to see Clarke off, set the alarm, and lock the door, then she could go home and drown herself in Netflix and Chinese food. "It's for the best anyway. I was going to cut you off if you came up to get another coffee." She admitted, keeping her eyes on organizing a stack of thin textbooks and a few notebooks.

"Really? You can do that?" Clarke asked, not looking offended, just curious.

"Well, no," Raven confessed, ignoring the heat that rose to her cheeks. Hopefully, her dark skin would make it less noticeable. "But I still would have done it." She paused for a second before adding, "I've noticed you've been drinking a lot more coffee lately. Like, are you trying to kill yourself via caffeine? Because that's what it's starting to look like."

Clarke snorted. "No, that's not at all what I'm doing. I've just….never mind you probably don't want to hear about it."

Raven rolled her eyes. "If I didn't want to hear about it I wouldn't have asked."

Clarke eyed her for a moment, trying to gauge how serious she was. "I've been fighting with my mum recently." She admitted. When Raven just nodded for her to continue, she sighed and her shoulders sagged. "Okay, so, my mum wants me to be a doctor. She's one and it's basically been her dream since I was a fetus for me to follow in her footsteps. However, I don't want to be a doctor. I want to teach art, maybe work with kids. So now practically every time I see her, she finds some way to bring it up. Be it a little snub or she says something outright," Clarke huffs, growing indignant as she continued her rant.

"Then, a few weeks ago, my mum called me and told me that she's selling the house I grew up in. The one my dad built. All so she can move in with her stupid new boyfriend. So I had to go pack up all my stuff and say goodbye to the house, which was hard enough, you know? But then she started a huge fight and when I got back I was so tired that I overslept a test and it was a really important test so it affected my mark. My mum was so smug when she found out about that, saying that I shouldn't even try to make it as a teacher and that I was making a huge mistake not going into medicine. So, basically, the gist of this is, I'm trying to now get top marks to prove her wrong and I miss my dad and my roommate is beyond awful and won't let me study in peace so I've been coming here and I need the caffeine to concentrate." Clarke finished, shutting her eyes as she trailed off. "I am so sorry, that is probably way more than you wanted to know."

"No, don't worry, that actually explains a lot," Raven said, resisting the urge she had to pull the woman into her arms and then go punch her mum. Seriously, who treats their kid like that?!

"Alright, here's what we're going to do," Raven said, a plan forming in her mind. "You're going to go home and grab a change of clothes and whatever else you might need to study. You can come over to my place, I live alone, and work there. We can have dinner, you can study, and then you're going to get some sleep because you look like you haven't slept in a week and I'm very concerned."

There was a pause as Raven finished her mini rant and Clarke didn't say anything, just stared at her with wide eyes. Raven wilted, feeling shy and unsure all of a sudden. "I mean, you don't have to. I'm not going to force you to come over. But you look like you really need to just finish studying and then have some relax time."

"Raven."

"But, um, if that was really creepy or weird for me to say, don't worry, we can just forget this whole conversation happened and I'll just go die in a hole. Yeah, that sounds good, okay let's do that-"

"Raven!"

Raven's mouth snapped shut. She blinked a few times before sheepishly saying, "Uh, yes?"

"I'd love to come over. Thank you, I really appreciate you trying to help me," Clarke said softly, taking one of Raven's hands in her own.

"Uh," Raven stuttered, cheeks flushing darkly. She had never felt this flustered over someone she was attracted to before yet right now all she could think about was the heat of Clarke's hand in her own and the butterflies fluttering in her stomach. "It's really no problem." The hand that wasn't holding Clarke's came up to rub the back of her neck nervously. "I'd do it for any of my friends."

The second the last sentence left her lips, Raven wanted to smack herself because wow way to imply that you only wanted to be friends.

"Okay that's a lie; I mean, I love my friends but I don't want you to be that," Raven stumbled. "A friend, that is." Raven's eyes widened suddenly as she realized how Clarke could take that. "I mean, not that we're not friends, shit, but I want to be more than that. And now that I've completely fucked all of this up, I'll let you get home." Raven cut herself off before she could say anything else, laughing nervously and trying to move away from the blonde to grab her purse and make a break for it.

She didn't get very far though because suddenly Clarke was winding her arms around Raven's neck and pulling her down for a kiss. Raven froze, unsure if this was really happening. When she felt Clarke start to pull away, nervous, she unfroze and buried her hands in the other woman's hair, kissing back for all she was worth. Clarke let out a small, happy moan and it was the best sound Raven had ever heard.

When Raven pulled back a few minutes later, hands coming down to cradle her jaw, Clarke's lips were bright red and swollen and her hair was dishevelled. In short, she looked fucking perfect.

"Fuck, I've been wanting to do that since I first saw you," Clarke whispered shyly. Raven could feel her breath as it hit her lips they were so close.

"Really?" Raven asked, shocked but very pleased.

"Yeah," Clarke said sincerely. "I mean, your coffee is great but it's not the reason I choose this shop to study in."

Raven smiled widely as what Clarke was saying really sunk in. She kissed Clarke again but they were both smiling too much and had to pull away.

"I promise to take you on a fancier date another time but do you still wanna hang out at my place tonight?" Raven asked, nervous even though they had just been making out and she knew for sure that Clarke liked her as more than a friend.

"I don't need any kind of fancy dates," Clarke said, taking Raven's hand again and rubbing her thumb over her pulse point. Raven hoped she couldn't tell just how fast her heart was racing. "Honestly chilling out with you at your place with food and Netflix sounds like my dream date. But the other stuff doesn't matter, as long as you're there, I'm good."

Raven swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. "Well, I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."

Clarke smiled brightly. She reached up to press her lips to Raven's one more time before she finished packing up her stuff. Then she was tugging Raven's hand and leading her out of the shop. Raven grabbed her purse, made sure all the lights were off and set the alarm.

Clarke held her hand the entire walk to Raven's apartment, deciding to just steal some of Raven's clothes instead of going home to get her pyjamas, and Raven was pretty sure she had never been this happy. She was proven wrong, however, when later that night, after Clarke had studied for an hour or so and they had had dinner, Clarke curled up against her on the couch. They watched a movie and Clarke ended up falling asleep on her. She made the most adorable picture wearing one of Raven's oversized shirts, which, if it was oversized for Raven, it practically engulfed Clarke, and a pair of knee high socks with little wrenches on them- a gift from Bellamy. She just looked so comfortable, so at home, and Raven felt her heart swell with affection for this tiny, over-caffeinated woman.

So, yeah, maybe working at the coffee shop wasn't all bad. If Raven was honest with herself, something that almost never happened, she would admit that working at that stupid coffee shop was the best thing that ever happened to her. She had two wonderful people who went from being her co-workers to her friends, then to her family. Not to mention the beyond amazing girlfriend she gained as well.

Who knew that working in that little shop would give her everything she hadn't even known she wanted?

I hope you enjoyed it! I really liked writing Raven/Clarke tbh