It takes Bellamy an unflatteringly long moment to work out what is going on when he wakes up. As he stares at the ceiling, trying to puzzle out why this music is so familiar, he wonders why there is music at all. In a rush, yesterday comes back to him, and he realises that this can only mean one thing. He must have slept in, and that means that Clarke must have begun making breakfast, and that means that another plate of inedible food lies in his immediate future.
In a state of some alarm, he makes haste to the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time. He notices half way down that he didn't pause to put a T-shirt on, but decides that saving their breakfast from a terrible fate is more important right now than being dressed for polite company. Besides which, Clarke is the only other person in this place, and he doesn't think she's expecting high levels of breakfast table formality. By the time he makes it into the kitchen, some unhelpfully tuneless but broadly catchy song ringing in his ears, she is standing over the stove, tearing into a sachet of porridge and poised to pour it into the saucepan in front of her. With an agility he didn't altogether realise he possessed, Bellamy dives forward and takes the hand holding the porridge gently in his own.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Princess." He speaks into her ear to be heard over the music, painfully aware of the amount of exposed shoulder, left bare by her sleeveless top, currently in contact with his torso.
She turns slowly to face him, and he is simultaneously entertained by the rising colour in her cheeks and disappointed that she has pulled away.
"I wasn't actually going to start cooking it, obviously. I was just going to have everything ready for when you woke up." Well, now he feels foolish. Here he is standing in the middle of the kitchen in nothing but a pair of sweatpants, hand wrapped around hers and face still next to where her ear used to be, and she says he has no good reason to be here at all. He clears his throat awkwardly and shuffles backwards.
"Oh." He thinks probably he should say more than that. Try for a whole sentence, maybe. "I see." Surely he can do better than that? "What the hell is this song, anyway?" She looks even more surprised than he is that those are the words that ultimately came out of his mouth.
"This is Mr Brightside. You must know Mr Brightside. You're the one who's obsessed with old Earth culture, after all."
"I'll have you know I'm obsessed with the Greeks and Romans, Clarke, not whatever the hell this is." He wants her to face the full force of his mock outrage, but she seems to be distracted by the fight against her continuing blush and her determination to look anywhere but his naked torso.
"Really, Bellamy, you're such a nerd." He hopes that note in her voice is affection, not disdain. At least they seem to be recovering from the awkward moment.
"Yes, that I am." She finally raises her face again to meet his eyes, and he can't resist the opportunity to smirk at her evident discomfort. "A nerd – with abs."
On that note, he decides, it is time to go fetch a T shirt.
…...
Clarke decides she may as well find a productive task to fill the time it takes Bellamy to get dressed and cook their breakfast, so she sets about the highly useful activity of organising the ration packs thematically. This seems like a perfect opportunity to let her cheeks regain their normal colour. Unfortunately, it is also mindless enough to allow her to dwell a little too long on how infuriating it is to learn that he realises he is aesthetically pleasing and has no qualms about using it against her. After a couple of minutes, she hears his footsteps and retracts her head from the cupboard just far enough to greet him.
"Welcome back."
"What on Earth are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm organising the ration cupboard. By genre, basically. Rice based dishes here, porridge here. You get the idea."
"Yeah... Because you never know when your ability to survive a nuclear apocalypse might depend on being able to quickly differentiate pasta from stew." She peeks over her shoulder at his grinning face. He shakes his head at her and walks over to the stove, where he begins to make breakfast.
"Well, you won't let me do any cooking and I had some time to kill while you remembered to dress yourself."
"Yeah... Erm, sorry about that."
"I forgive you. You thought I was going to cook breakfast, it's no wonder you felt you had to act quickly."
"I'm pleased you understand." He leaves the porridge cooking for a moment as he walks back towards where she is crouched by the cupboard and offers a hand to pull her back to her feet. "Thanks for turning the music down a bit. I'm sorry I don't know these songs, but we could still dance to them even if I can't sing along?" He looks slightly nervous, his bottom lip a little tense, as if expecting her to be annoyed with him for ruining their kitchen party.
She smiles broadly at him in response. "That sounds like an excellent plan. The most ridiculous dance move wins." With that, she launches into a move that Wells once told her was called the "shopping trolley". Immediately, Bellamy responds, waving his arms wildly in a way that is broadly rhythmic and has an uncanny resemblance to a dying spider. Minutes pass, in which she has to remind him more than once to stop being a fool and stir the porridge, and she is genuinely sorry when he announces that it's time to eat.
…...
Raven has to acknowledge that Emori learns quickly. She got the hang of splicing after only one demo, and now she's moved onto soldering with a level of competence that seems to surprise them both. They sit, side-by-side, in the Earth Monitoring Station, getting on with making this giant heap of junk habitable for the next five years. Raven is pleasantly surprised to remember that work gets done quicker with someone by her side to help; it's been a little too long, she reflects, since she was part of a team.
"What do you want me to do next?" Emori's voice breaks into her thoughts, as she holds out the circuit board she's been working on for inspection.
"I know this is going to sound like a crazy suggestion, but do you think maybe we should take a break? Go and sit down to share a meal with our friends? It must be breakfast time by now."
"Raven Reyes, advocating taking a break from fixing things? What is wrong with you?" Raven is surprised at how easily the two of them have fallen into this comfortable camaraderie.
"I know. We'll probably regret it." Her previously lighthearted tone immediately changes. "Everyone will probably still be mourning Clarke and Bellamy."
"I think we'll be mourning them for a long time."
"Very true."
"Do you think there's any chance they survived?" Emori's question catches her off guard, because it seems like a completely ridiculous thing to ask.
"You do realise what's happening down there, right?" She finds herself sounding rather angry with her new friend. Because it's just not fair, to ask her questions that allow her to hope.
"Yes. But you do realise that Clarke is ridiculously good at surviving? And that the two of them would do anything to keep each other alive?" It sounds like Emori's getting at something, that she's thought of an idea no one else has.
"What are you thinking?" Raven has always been too curious for her own good.
"I'm thinking that Clarke would never have injected herself with nightblood made for me unless she thought it would work."
…...
Bellamy has to admit that breakfast is slightly overcooked. He may slightly have been enjoying their dance off a little too much and may slightly have not wanted it to end. But, he figures, it's still better than it would have been had Clarke had anything to do with it. She doesn't seem to be complaining about the food, but then she doesn't seem to be saying anything much. She has a pensive look about her and he wonders what has caused her sudden gravity.
"What's on your mind?"
"Well, I presume that today we're going to go through that shortlist of places where there might potentially be less radiation. And it got me thinking, by the end of today, we'll know whether there's anywhere habitable on that shortlist. So, by the end of today, we'll have a pretty good idea of whether or not we're going to survive." Her lower lip quivers a little at that, and he can see that it's costing her a lot of effort to try to sound matter of fact about this. He made his peace with this long ago, or, at least, it now feels a lifetime ago. Because he knew what he'd chosen the moment he heard that rocket leave as he sat here, waiting for her. So he reaches out across the table towards her, and she closes the distance between them, and their fingers are intertwined as he reassures her softly.
"If we find out that none of the places on our shortlist are survivable, we make a new shortlist. And if that fails, we try again. And we keep trying until we find a solution."
"You think there is a solution?"
"Yeah, of course there is. You and me, together? We're unstoppable."
a/n Thanks for reading! I've planned out the next few chapters so you can look forward to chess, fluff, slow dancing, and trouble in paradise...
