Definitely, Maybe

A/N ~ I'm such a cruel tease, I know. But hey; at least I'm not as bad as the actual writers. On a suitably clexa-y note, has anyone heard Jamie Brown's song from angel Costia to Lexa regarding Clarke? (Like I Did, I believe) Don't listen to it in the public library like I did because people will give you weird looks as you try to stop crying.

7.

It took Clarke a few minutes to realize it was her phone, abandoned face-down on her bed beside her, that was emitting the vibratory buzz that had been bugging her. (She just assumed it was maybe a notification from some gadget Lexa had left on when she went out.) (It wasn't her fault she never had her phone on vibrate.) She put her pencil down in favour of the battered screen. "Clarke!"

"Octavia!" Clarke matched her friends' tone. The landscape she'd been sketching wasn't for any assignment, but she hadn't drawn just for the therapy of it for a while, and she wanted to try out the charcoal technique Wallace had been talking about the other day. It was also a good time-waster in her resiliant civil war, sometime known as Putting Off Studying.

"Seriously, you can't hear me? Open the door."

"What?" Clarke muttered, mostly to herself. It wasn't just her, Octavia was constantly at her door these days. Get a hot artist neighbour - moths to a flame. "Lincoln's not here." She told her, clicking off the call as she let her in. Octavia spilled in and bounced onto Clarke's bed. She was all but jumping up and down.

"Yeah, I know," Octavia said, hopping back up. "He's in the Student Union. Okay, so, I was going to go meet Jasper at Subway, but nobody told me it was fucking monsoon season. So I run into the SU till it got drier, and, there he was, in the corner, drawing something and I went and said hi and then, like, we started talking and then it was an hour later and I was getting his number and agreeing to continue over coffee sometime." Clarke couldn't say she was surprised. She resettled on her bed, grinning despite herself - if it carried on the way it was going, she'd have bragging rights over Raven by Halloween."Will Racoon Face Brooding Pants mind if I sit here?" She guestured to Lexa's bed.

"Probably," Clarke answered.

"So, yeah," Octavia concluded. "I don't know when we're going to go, he says he has to help out some professor today, but you work with him in one of your art classes, right? So whatever he says about it, tell me. Or at least tell me the gist. No - some of it. What's life without some mystery, eh?" She flopped onto Clarke's bed beside her.

"I don't think I've ever seen you so much like a real girl." Clarke realized that was in fact, true. She always hated the idiot girls, the ones constantly giggling at some poor unsuspecting male or another; that was why she mostly stuck with Wells, her kindergarten buddy, all through her childhood. And even after he moved away, she and Octavia and Raven didn't ever really do 'guy talk' unless it was 'take the piss out of guys talk'. And like hell anyone was going to get advice from Monty or Jasper Flight Goggles Jordan. It was all much simpler with them. (Before Clarke unintentionally did Raven's boyfriend.) Whoever Octavia's latest prey was would be strung along with them for a while, and the subject of various jokes (and awkward scrutiny if Bellamy was present). Finn was around for a bit (but Clarke hadn't really talked to him properly until she also started making out with him). But Clarke was starting to think all that was simply because there weren't all that many attractive guys in Ark.

University was a whole different ball game. (Literally.)

"Shut up, he's really cool," Octavia picked up a photo from Clarke's bedstand with mild interest. Not that there were all that many (tolerable) attractive guys here, according to Clarke. She didn't know what was wrong with her - college was meant to be a haze of parties and guys, wasn't it? She'd seen a few people she'd thought were hot. There was a boy in her Art History class who kept badgering her to call him. But she honestly had zero interest in any of them. Octavia turned the wooden-framed picture over in her hands and tossed it to her; only Clarke's natural reflexes saved it. "Oh, remember that? Monty threw up so hard after the Vampire coaster!"

The picture had been taken by a bemused tourist on their senior ditch day. They'd managed to get a ride out of town into the nearest theme park; They were in front of said rollercoaster and Octavia was jumping on Jasper's back, Raven was wearing his goggles and the necklace Finn had made her (this was during the pre-Clarke-stole-Raven's-boyfriend-and-obliterated-his-heart days), Monty still looked slightly green, and Clarke was miming stealing his Cornetto. In the moment, she'd just been trying not to look at the little metal raven hanging around its' namesake's neck. It'd been one of the last days before she found out, actually. Clarke put the photo down. "Yeah, it was disgusting." Clarke frowned. "Didn't you get lost in the butterfly garden thing?"

"I prefer the term 'went on an adventure'." Octavia corrected. "Makes me sound less of a dork."

"You got lost in a butterfly farm, you're a dork." Clarke grinned and then jumped at the jolt of a key in the lock and the groan of the dumbass old door swinging open. She didn't spare much more than a glance at Raccoon Eyes Brooding Pants - sorry, Lexa. Since the night of the angel cake hurricane, they'd reverted back to normal. (Albeit with a few more tolerated comments about whatever they were respectively getting on with at the time.)

"Well," Octavia heaved herself up. "I'd better go. I told Jasper we'd postponed Subway by half an hour and it's been more than that. Are you going to game night at Bells' on Tuesday?"

"Yeah," Clarke shrugged and smiled. "I don't have anything better to do. And I've still got to beat his ass at Red Dead."

"Cool. Well. See ya," Octavia swung out the door, mouthing REBP as she went, and she was gone before Clarke could even reply. She shut the photograph in one of her drawers; now she'd associated it with Finn, she didn't want to look at it so much. Then she realized and inwardly withdrew any mental comment she'd made about Lexa and the picture in her drawer. She glanced back at the charcoal pencils spilled across her bed. Her flow was gone now, and she really had to study.

"She didn't have to leave just because I'm here," Lexa muttered flatly, unloading books and various stationary from her bag. Clarke glanced up. She was more used to the whole (weird) roommate deal now, but somehow after having had an actual conversation that was actually nice, all this awkward stuff was worse and amplified. "You can have your friends here."

"You never have yours." Clarke countered, packing her art stuff away. Which was true; she'd seen Anya and various other grounders at the door before, but it was always restrained, in a way, and they never crossed the doorway.

"I don't have any friends," Lexa told her, and Clarke couldn't help the look on her face, not because of the blatant, brutal statement but because of the almost proud way she said it. Superiority by isolation. Like she was bragging, subtly.

"What about all the people you're always with in the hall, and around?" Clarke couldn't stop herself. Anya, and Gustus, and Quint, and all the rest whose names Clarke had bever heard through the door. (She hadn't realized, frankly, how much attention she'd been paying.) (She knew their names.) (Christ.) (She really needed to get out more.)

"They're accquaintances, classmates. People I know, or that I have known. They're not friends." Her tone was suggesting explainations of something simple to a young child, insinuating Clarke didn't get the point.

"You say that like it's a good thing," Maybe she didn't. Clarke stuffed her textbooks and highlighters into her computer bag.

Lexa looked at her for once in her life. "You say that like it's not."

Whatever. She had to go study.

-0-

The library was vast, well stocked and comforting. Of course, it wasn't the vast, well-stockedness that was the comforting part; in fact, the sheer scale of the place was bizarre. (And Monty said he'd gotten lost in it. They all laughed, but who where they to judge? At least it wasn't a butterfly farm.) It was the extreme wealth of knowledge just waiting on the shelves that made the muscles in Clarke's shoulders relax. Endless possibilty. Somewhere in the pages of those books, the genius to outwit and prove wrong fucking Anya was there.

But as much as Clarke was a literature hipster, the internet was faster.

She cleared a space at one of the partitioned tables lined with year-old Apple Macs and keyed in the code from her card. According to Clarke, the book was superior to the Kindle (although she appreciated its' merits) - but if you wanted something done quick, you found a mouse and keyboard. She was just deciding to get the bus into town later and purchase some heathier snacks, (Lexa's words from the other night had wormed right in.) (They'd all heard the freshman fifteen horror stories.) setting out her notebook and typing deconstruction of nebula patterns into Google when she heard a familiar voice battling with an infamous one, and she had to look up.

John Murphy, fellow Arker reknowned for fistfights and four-week suspentions, was whining as he trudged along behind the man behind the (legendary) madness, Professor Thelonius Jaha. Rumour had it he was a smart, serious and decent guy, who, somewhere along the line, accquired the idea that he had been given a message by the 'light' and gave up on running for congress because of his destiny. He was teaching Religious Theory, which was taken by anybody looking for a two-year laugh. (And, apparantly, irritable delinquents looking to effortlessly up their GPA.)

"I just didn't get the sense you believed in what you wrote," Jaha was saying. Clarke hadn't ever seen him in the wild before. He didn't seem as nuts as people said.

"Oh my god," Murphy groaned. Clarke couldn't help smirking to herself - he was a douchebag (and since Octavia pointed it out, she couldn't unsee the fact that he looked like a hardass version of Millhouse from The Simpsons.) and as much as all the Ark crew had to stick together, she felt like he had this coming. He looked five thousand percent done and it was hilarious. "I'm not asking for much here, crackjob," (The last bit was less audible.)

"I'm not changing your grade until you put the effort in." Jaha insisted. "You need to start taking responsibility for the choices you make -"

"What the hell are you even talking about?" Murphy shouted exasperatedly, to the evil stare of one of the librarians. Clarke snorted as she scrolled through astronomy papers. They were right by her desk.

"The city of light!" Jaha told him, much to Clarke's amusement. She didn't think he'd noticied until she caught the rancid glare he threw at her over his shoulder as he passed, and the subdued flip of the bird.

-0-

She was just coming out of the shop, weighted down by carrier bags of excessive foodstuffs (Clarke always told herself she was too strong to be tempted by the sneakily-places surplus of snacks that lined the way of the queue and yet she always seemed to relent to it.) when she came to the sudden jolting realization that the spur-of-the-moment umbrella was a very good decision.

The rain had blossomed in the - what? Ten minutes? - she'd spent on her health foods. (Clarke was no vegan-diet-fad-fasting bitch - she was first in line to fucking slap those idiots around the face. But it always seemed simple to her that what you put in your body affected it, either positively or negatively. Constantly eating shit was almost a form of self-destruction, and stupid, she thought. Everything in moderation.) into a resiliant armada of freezing water assaulting the streets without mean or mercy. The pavement was glowing with a diminutive display of ever-changing explosions of water against concrete. Tumultous puddles gathered at the sides of the road like discarded coins in the mud, and running in rivers into overworked drains. It's never like this in Ark, Clarke thought bitterly, lingering in the flourescent storefront as she opened her new umbrella. But what could she do - the sky was black as a bad bruise, and waiting here was only going to make it worse. She threw up the hood of the sweater she had on under her jacket, tucking her hair into it, and ducked out into the storm. Like the wave of heat greeting you as you stepped off a holiday airplane, the cold was a force of its' own, and the rain was tearing the world up - most of the town's inhabitants had surrendered. She ran to the bus stop, cursing under her breath.

The curses didn't stop under the fake-glass bus stop - her first glance from under dripping eyelashes and misty breath at the board of arrival times betrayed her. Delayed. No time - just delayed. Fucking buses. Shaking out her umbrella and sitting down, she pulled out her phone - 17:12. It only looked later because of the brooding of the clouds. But her hands were freezing and jittery and she was holding two fragile, weighty shopping bags and she had no idea when the bus was turning up. Clarke considered her options. It wasn't like it was far back to campus. If it was summer, she'd have walked there and back without question.

Well. Clarke Griffin, one, weather, zero.

The umbrella popped back up, and she was just wincing against the weather as the wind tossed handfuls of water all around, stalking across the rain-distorted road and back in the direction of the college when her done gaze snagged on the figure in the crazy coat a few feet ahead, the coarse fabric rippling around long legs and boots that were awesome in the literal sense. She knew that coat. "Hey!" Clarke shouted, voice raising in late battle with the steady rush of rain. Head down against the elements, she ran foreward, jacket pulled tight. "Hey, Lexa!" Clarke panted as she caught up. She held out the umbrella.

Lexa stared. The rain had run rivulets down her face; the usually-insane makeup was starting to drip toward her cheeks, and yet she still managed to look fierce as ever. Clarke had the feeling she didn't have to strain to be louder than the rain. "What are you doing?"

Clarke, squinting at her through the rain, held the umbrella a little higher to accomodate her and answered honestly. "Cohabitating."