x. Clarke

A desk! She had a desk. Clarke would have totally paid that guy five hundred bucks for his, but this was way better. It didn't take her long to settle in and dive straight into her notes. There was a lot to do, and she had already lost most of the day. Her list had been playing over and over in her head for the entirety of her shift. It had been pretty amazing that Clarke had been able to focus on anything at work with her study list looming over her.

Within five minutes she is a mess of highlighters, pens, post it notes, paperclips, and anything else she can use to colour code her study notes. There are stacks upon stacks of flashcards she had been using to review, and a brand new pack for her to continue. Her textbook stack is higher than the wall of the study carrel and she has several more open around her and ready to go. Her laptop was open and already kicking into overdrive as she opened an entire semesters worth of files. They had been meticulously organized in files within files on an external hard drive, which honestly made this whole cramming thing much easier to handle. She was teased on more than one occasion that her organization was over the top, but whatever.

She actually rather enjoyed it. Even if it made it far too easy for Kyle to mess with her. The first dozen or so times he moved her stuff around had been like a stab of panic to her chest. She nearly toppled her entire study carrel a few times over in attempts to relocate her items. He had apparently bored of it eventually, which she was glad for. It was much less amusing than he thought it was. Once he had changed her pens around so when she grabbed her blue capped pen, she actually wrote in green. Maybe it wasn't the end of the world, but at the time? It sure felt like it. Kyle seemed to leave her alone after that, save for the occasional paper airplane that would land on her laptop.

For now, she needed to reorganize her stuff which had been completely uprooted thanks to him. It was now that she realized she may have been better off at the study table instead of a small carrel. Ah well, she was set up now. Her earplugs were securely in and she couldn't see a thing beyond her fortress of studying. Her facebook had been deactivated on the first day of finals season to remove any temptation of procrastination once she finally hit the books. There were to be no distractions.

The only thing she had failed to take into consideration was the severe lack of caffeination. Clarke knew she was tired, but she hadn't realized just how detrimental it was going to be tonight. Her eyes were heavy and the words were out of focus on the screen. She spent more time re-reading paragraphs than she did actually reading her notes. Reading from her textbooks weren't going much better either.

It took her about a couple of hours or so to realize that her flashcards and post it notes had devolved into scribbles and doodles. Some of them were pretty cute, if she did say so herself, but many of them showed her in various stages of crying, buried under textbooks, and surrendering. Apparently her subconscious was trying to tell her something.

It would appear that she had been unprepared for the grueling day she'd planned for herself, but that wasn't the case. Clarke had actually brought a rather large thermos full of coffee with her for the night. She may or may not have stolen a great deal of coffee from the hospital before leaving. It wasn't particularly good coffee, but it was substantially better than what she'd find on campus at this hour. The coffee shops all closed down at nine most nights, but at six during finals. Clarke thought it was a great revenue opportunity missed, but then again, most of the employees were students so it was probably an act of mercy to close down early during the season. Without those coffee shops, there were three options: go off campus to the Starbucks down the way (which would take far more time than she had to spare), drink the instant coffee that the library had on offer throughout finals week (which would sure enough give her the kick she needed, but the taste was and texture was similar to drinking boiled soil), or bring your own.

Unfortunately, she had emptied her thermos long ago. Probably within the first hour of being in the library, which was actually rather impressive. It held two litres of liquid. It was rather disgusting that she had managed to down that much coffee so quickly. Any other time of the year, Clarke would probably be concerned with her health after that, but it wasn't any other time of the year. It was finals season and without coffee, Clarke would be dead to the world. At least this way she was more like a walking zombie. A walking zombie who was getting some studying done.

At least she was until her latest caffeine crash. Clarke had been beginning to think she'd consumed enough caffeine to stay awake for the rest of her life. It was actually kind of a relief that she had crashed. It was still a little concerning that she could hear her heart beating. Now that she thought about it, her hands were shaking quite a lot as well. It was suddenly an internal battle for the pre-med student: her need to study and her knowledge of what too much caffeine can actually do to the system. For a brief moment, it seemed as though her medical knowledge was going to win out over her need to stay awake.

Then Bellamy kneeled down next to her.

"You look like you could use another cup," He said, flashing a smile.

Clarke could only imagine the look of sheer relief on her face, and it must have been comical as Bellamy let out a hushed chuckle. She gladly grabbed the mug that Bellamy had held out for her, and only cared a little bit when she burned her tongue for the fourth time today.

"You are actually my favorite person in the whole world, did you know that?" Clarke breathed out as she savoured the taste of her coffee. It was real coffee and everything! He must have shared his own stash with her, which was as surprising as it was appreciated.

She didn't want to read too far into it, though. He had shared his coffee with Jasper as well. It was probably just a gesture of friendship and nothing more. A girl could dream though, right? Even during finals, when she had much more important matters at hand, it was hard to not get her hopes up. Maybe one day Bellamy would look at her as more than the freshman she had been when they met.

If her attention hadn't been completely on the coffee, she may have noticed a tinge of blush spread across his freckled cheeks.

"It was starting to look like you were going to die without it. Couldn't very well let that happen."

Of course he couldn't. Bellamy always had to help. He placed a hand on her shoulder as he stood up, giving a slight rub to her aching muscle. She watched him walk back to his desk opposite of hers and sighed to herself. That was a distraction she hadn't prepared for.

At least now she could get back to making her study notes.