It was now late October, and for Clarke, school hadn't gotten much easier than it had been the previous month. It involved a lot of studying, most of which she did in Octavia and Raven's room or in the library, and a lot of work to pull that Biology grade up-and she still had a C-. The only class she had found easy was Psych, which it seemed she was able to slide by in with minimal effort. While Clarke had put so much effort into that Biology grade, her other grades had begun to slip, almost to the level that her Biology grade was currently at.
Lexa, on the other hand, still seemed to be a perfect student. She always had assignments done on time and always seemed to have her nose in a book.
On this particular day, however, Clarke was alone in their dorm room waiting for Lexa to get back from class. They had decided tonight would be a movie night; something they decided on after an exceptionally stressful day for the both of them. The affair consisted of pizza and a Netflix marathon which they watched while sitting on Lexa's bed in her little nest of blankets and pillows.
Right now, however, Clarke still had two hours to burn before Lexa came back from class. She knew the logical thing to do would be to study, but she couldn't summon the effort to actually do it. She hadn't painted in so long, really since college had started. She bit her lip and after a long moment, Clarke found herself pulling out a small canvas and the art supplies she had stowed away under her bed. She turned on her music and started painting. She wasn't sure what, at first, but from the corner of her eye she caught sight of the sun going down outside her window. For a moment, she was remembering all the times by the beach when she and her parents, her and her dad, would go to watch the sunset. But that was long gone. Her dad was gone. She sadly shook the memory away, painting the scene she could still remember so clearly. She didn't hear the door open hours later, and only noticed Lexa when she spoke.
"Wow, Clarke," Lexa breathed, looking at the painting.
Clarke jumped, "Jesus christ, Lex! I didn't hear you come in." Clarke moved to turn her music off.
"Sorry. That's really good," Lexa pointed at the painting.
"Oh, thanks. It's not done yet," Clarke replied. She looked wistfully at the painting one more time before Lexa spoke.
"Well, ready for our night of unhealthy food and procrastination?" Lexa joked.
Clarke laughed, "More than ready. I've been excited about this all day."
Lexa smiled, "I'm going to go get changed, you order the pizza?"
Clarke nodded. She began cleaning up the art supplies she had strewn across her bed before calling and ordering the pizza. Pepperoni; it was both hers and Lexa's favorite.
Half an hour later, the pizza had arrived and both girls were sitting in Lexa's nest of blankets on her bed, scrolling through movies to watch.
"Ooh, Zac Efron," Clarke said after a minute of scrolling.
"Charlie . You've heard of it?" Lexa asked, reading the title.
"Nope. It looks sad. Wanna watch it?" Clarke asked.
"Sure," Lexa answered. The girls settled down to watch the movie, both girls wrapped in their fair share of blankets.
It didn't take very long for the movie to get devastatingly sad. Within 15 minutes, Zac Efron's character's little brother had died in a car accident when neither boy should have been going anywhere anyway.
Tears were streaming down both girls' faces.
Not just because of the movie, of course, they had both been through some shit and this was one of those movies that made you acknowledge it. But neither girl knew that the other was crying for exceedingly similar reasons as themselves.
"Well fuck," Clarke said finally, once the credits had began rolling.
Lexa let out a long breath. "Friends re-runs?"
Clarke nodded, "Yes, God yes. No more sad movies on movie night unless it's a disney movie," Clarke said. "Like, jesus fucking christ, for real though."
"Agreed. Definitely agreed," Lexa replied. Both girls looked vaguely traumatized. The grief in the movie was all too real for them and hit far too close to home.
Lexa randomly clicked on an episode, this one titled "The One With Rachel's Big Kiss" and she and Clarke sat together almost in silence throughout the first episode. When it was over and the next episode started playing, they pulled out Oreos. Because a Friends marathon and Oreos fixes everything.
It was 4 a.m. when they finally fell asleep. They had both fallen asleep in Lexa's bed around probably the sixth episode.
The next morning, Lexa woke up first. Groggily, she looked around. Clarke was curled up on the other side of the bed. She smiled before grabbing her phone to check the time; 12:30.
"Fuck," she thought.
"Clarke, wake up," Lexa gently shook Clarke's shoulder. "Clarke!"
"Mmm…" Clarke mumbled incoherently. "What?"
"Clarke, it's 12:30. You're late to class," Lexa told her, climbing over Clarke to get off the bed. Clarke shot up before taking a moment to think about it and slumping back down.
"It started half an hour ago, I'm not going," she said dismissively.
"But-"
"Octavia takes it with me, I'll just get the notes from her," Clarke said.
Lexa was amazed at how nonchalant Clarke was being. If it was her, Lexa knew she'd be panicking. She couldn't afford to miss a single day of class.
Clarke yawned, flopping back down in Lexa's bed as Lexa got changed.
"Do you have anything today?" Clarke asked Lexa.
Lexa shook her head while pulling up her jeans.
"Do you want to go to lunch? I can maybe invite Raven too," Clarke asked her.
"Sure," Lexa said. She had yet to really get to know Raven. She had only met her in passing and heard Clarke and Octavia talk about her.
It took a full twenty minutes for Clarke to even get her ass out of Lexa's bed and get up to get ready to go.
"Oh, Raven just texted me back asking if she can bring Finn, her boyfriend, with her. Is that okay with you?" Clarke asked.
Lexa looked up from her psych textbook to answer Clarke, "yeah, that's fine." She was just trying to get her reading for psychology done while Clarke got ready. Clarke moved as slow as possible in the mornings-even if it wasn't technically still the morning. Besides, Lexa had a date with Costia tomorrow and wanted at least most of her work done today.
Finally, Clarke was ready to go. They were going to meet Raven and Finn at the restaurant, and Lexa had offered to drive her and Clarke there.
When they got into the restaurant, Finn and Raven had already been seated and waved Clarke and Lexa over.
Clarke introduced Lexa to the other two, "Lex, this is Raven and her boyfriend Finn. Raven, Finn, this is my friend and roommate, Lexa."
The regular college getting-to-know-you small talk lasted for a while before they moved onto other subjects.
Raven was very energetic and enthused; she was the type of person Lexa had always imagined Clarke to be friends with. Finn, on the other hand, was much more subdued, but only to the point where he and Raven balanced each other out well. The love in both of their eyes when they looked at each other was painfully obvious.
"Yeah, they've been together for three and a half years," Clarke told Lexa later.
"When does Octavia get back from her classes today?" Clarke asked Raven. "I'm gonna need the notes I missed from today."
"The class you have with her is her last class of the day, so she should be back soon, but she has a date," Raven said, wiggling her eyebrows.
"Ooh, why haven't I heard about this?" Clarke asked.
"She was trying to keep it a secret. I only found out cause a text popped up on her phone while I had it," Raven said, leaning back into her boyfriend.
"She didn't want you to say anything, and the first thing you do is tell all of us?" Finn asked, smirking.
"Hey, if she didn't want me to find out, she shouldn't have given me her phone," Raven shrugged.
"Who is this mystery guy, do you know?" Clarke asked.
Raven shrugged, "Some guy named Lincoln. Finn knows him."
Both Lexa and Clarke's eyes widened. "That's the guy we saw at Friendly's that one time," Lexa said.
"Yeah, it is," Clarke said with excitement.
"So you've seen him? Is he hot?" Raven asked, then she added, "Finn just rolled his eyes when I asked him. He refuses to participate in spying on O."
Clarke and Lexa laughed, "That's cause he knows O will kick his ass," Clarke said.
Lexa liked Raven's careless spontaneity and enthusiasm. It was kind of refreshing, and she could tell how well Raven and Finn got along, especially for having been together for as long as they had. She didn't even mind not being a part of the conversation so much; listening to the banter between the other two girls was amusing enough.
At one point after Raven said something completely out there, Lexa happened to catch Finn's eye. He just smiled and shrugged at her, as if to say "you get used to it."
"Fuck, Raven. How the hell can you eat all that shit and still look like that ?" Clarke asked Raven. When the food had finally come out, Raven had practically inhaled her plate of quesadillas.
Raven smirked," I run regularly and work out, Clarke. Five am, every day. You can come if you want?"
"Five am? Jesus christ Rae! And yeah, not gonna happen; I wouldn't last five minutes. You're girlfriend's fucking crazy, Finn," the rest of the table laughed at Clarke.
"It does make you look like that, though, so maybe you're not completely crazy." Clarke added. Lexa saw some emotion she didn't recognize flash across Clarke's face, but it was gone as quickly as it came.
It was late that night when Clarke and Lexa were finally getting ready for bed.
"So how did you like Raven and Finn?" Clarke asked Lexa.
"They seem great, Clarke. All your friends do."
The room was quiet for a minute, both girls lying on their respective beds.
"It's crazy how early Raven gets up to work out," Clarke said finally.
Lexa nodded before realizing Clarke couldn't see her in the dark, "Yeah, I can only ever run in the evening."
"You run too?" Clarke asked.
"Yeah, a couple times a week. Only a mile or two though," Lexa said.
Clarke laughed, "I guess I'm the only one not doing some kind of exercise."
The room was quiet for a few more minutes before Clarke spoke again, "Lunch was fun today… Do you want to maybe go for dinner tomorrow after class? Like just Panera or something?"
"I would… but I have a date with Costia tomorrow, Clarke," Lexa said. "Do you want to grab lunch?"
Clarke felt a sinking in her stomach. "Oh. No, I can't. I don't think our schedules match up for lunch tomorrow with my lab."
"Oh...okay," Lexa replied.
For some reason Lexa felt almost guilty that she had to say no to Clarke, even though she hadn't seen Costia in almost two weeks.
And Clarke was more annoyed by Lexa's date with Costia than she should've been. She had almost forgotten they were dating; it's not like Costia put in the effort to see Lexa.
Both girls felt uneasy as they finally drifted off to sleep.