Definitely, Maybe

A/N ~ So that happened. From now on, everything's stone-cold sober (or not).Thank you to everyone taking the time to read this; everyone who's clicked follow has put a silly smile on my face and also has made this my most followed fic - I love you all! The clexa army is forever.

11.

Bombs.

Earth-shattering, life-ending atomic blasts of destruction rhythmically igniting in her brain, leaving a large portion of her thoughts as decaying rubble. Or maybe she'd just been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. Clarke groaned. Her ears were ringing, her throat was sandpaper, her face felt weird and the creases in the baby-soft fabric of her pillowcase were cutting into her cheeks.

She was never drinking another drop of anything alcoholic ever again.

She'd have rolled over to see what the time was, but she had a bad feeling about explosives and detonation. Thankfully, there was a cool dimness shading the room or the world; Lexa had opened the curtains, and cracked a window open, but the sky beyond was murky and colourless. She groaned again, mostly because it was about the only thing she felt capable of doing. The pounding in her head was trying to overtake her thoughts; she wasn't about to go down without a fight. But holy shit, she felt dead.

A fresh explosion screamed somewhere to her left. Christ, that hurt her head. She meant to say something else, but she just groaned. It was infuriating. Face frozen in a wince that kind of detracted from the nuclear war raging behind her temples, she forced her leaden limbs to support her as she craned her neck to investigate, although they were only willing to do a little more than cooked spaghetti. It must have been earlier than she thought; Lexa, although dressed and eyeliner-ed, was taking a damp grey towel from the bag she'd thrown on her bed, hanging it over the radiator. Even in her hungover haze, Clarke could sense the double-edged shield. Once again, Clarke was sleepy and stupid, and she was all inpenetrably Lexa.

Clarke wanted to speak, to let her know she was alive (barely) but her mind was throbbing and she couldn't quite piece the right letters together in her head, so she just groaned instead. Lexa didn't dignify that with a response. She groaned louder. (It hurt.) Somewhere, in the fragmented pain of her hangover, she realized she was supposed to be at an art lecture with Wallace today. Motherfuck. No harm in trying, I guess. She struggled to a sitting position. Her blankets were clinging to her, dragging her down.

"Lie down, Clarke," Lexa told her, unpacking the rest of her shower bag and kicking it under her bed.

"I have to," Every word seemed to send another blow of the hammer to her head. "To class..."

"No." Lexa was gathering her own notebooks and stuffing her regular bag. Clarke winced again. She remembered Lexa, last night - something about Lexa helping her walk? And unicorns? What actually happened last night? She painfully recalled something about singing on a table. Fucking frat boys. The next time she had life in her body, Clarke Griffin was going to bring the fucking rain down on those douchebags. "You have to lie down. Sleep it off."

Clarke would have protested, but it just seemed like the nicer option. Maybe it was just her still-a-little-bit-drunk imagination, but she was sure Lexa seemed a bit off. Brisk and outwardly empty as the day they met. And they'd had such a nice time yesterday; yesterday morning, at least. Clarke's memory fractured around the door to the frat house. A steaming styrofoam cup of something that smelled like hope appeared beside her face, as Lexa leant irritably across to place the coffee on Clarke's bedside table. "This is for you." She told her briskly. Then she was gone.

Although the door clicked shut gently, it triggered the mines all the same. Clarke drank her coffee and went to sleep.

-0-

When her eyelids flickered open the next morning, almost twenty-four hours later, it took her while to realize what was different; her headache had dulled to just that. A low, insidious and ultimately ineffectual beat that she could work around. Thank the heavens. She kicked the bedcovers off eagerly. She hated feeling sick, she always had done; hated feeling so weak and vulnerable. But be honest with yourself, Clarke forced the thought: you're to blame this time.

She found herself some painkillers that her mother made her buy weeks ago and downed one, stuffing the rest into her jeans pocket as she got dressed. Lexa would have been in class already; Clarke's didn't start for half an hour. She'd had a very odd dream, about Lexa, last night. Just now, really; the rude awakening of her mind and body had cut off midstream. She was trying to remember it, clinging the the faint, slippery details that she knew she remembered a few minutes ago, as she slung her bag over her shoulder, and donned an agonizingly conspicious pair of sunglasses, despite the infinte grey outside. There'd been a lot of trees in that dream, and, she thought, a spaceship. She passed Lexa as she was crossing the quad; she blanked her. (Or maybe she just didn't see her.) (Clarke clung to that theory; she didn't like to think they were moving backwards.)

She was beginning to regret her descision to leave her bed at all when she joined the rest of the Art History class in the lecture hall, and was entirely enveloped in the raucous din of maybe four subdued, whispered conversations.

"Hey," Lincoln had materialized in the seat beside her. Somehow, after having seen a guy in an eighteenth-centuary poet shirt, ratty vintage t-shirts just didn't seem right anymore. Clarke murmured the best reply she could give, sorting out her notebook. "And I've got them here, just a second,"

"Got what?" Clarke frowned, rolling the end of her pencil absently between her fingers and wondering when the pill would kick in.

"The art notes." He seemed confused at the evident blankness beneath her sunglasses. She was endlessly grateful that he was too polite to even mention whatever the hell she'd done on Halloween. In the past half hour alone, she'd learned to tell whether or not a person had been at the party; it was the ones who did that were supressing smiles whenever they saw her. It all just added to her scowl. She barely remembered any of it. "From yesterday with Wallace?"

"Thanks," Clarke felt a sweep of relief. Every session with Wallace was wealth of gifts she couldn't afford to miss out on. "But I never asked you to -"

"Lexa did." Lincoln told her. Clarke blinked. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. "I just assumed you told her to."

"No," Clarke said, mostly to herself, "I never did." The fresh air spilling in to infuse her hangover from the open window, the coffee, the notes. She'd never seen Lexa care for anyone in such a literal way before; or in any way, really. But that didn't make sense - she was being so weird, with the ignoring her and the unprecedented reversal back to her icy attitude. But that itself didn't make any sense, after their genuine - whatever it was - on Halloween morning. The woman defied logic every time. Clarke took the notes and wondered when Lexa had set up permenant camp in the back of her mind.

Lincoln may have had enough tact to steer clear of the dark topic that was Halloween, but her friends, apparantly, did not. At lunch, while Clarke sipped at her coffee and dragged pieces of baguette through her copious organic salad dressing, the drugs finally fading her headache mostly away, Octavia was taking great joy in reminding Raven of her public, saliva-coated exploits with Kyle Wick.

"No, but that was hot. Are you sure all those sass battles weren't just foreplay?"

"Fuck off, Octavia," Raven muttered, sullenly stirring her tea. Apparantly she'd also gotten pissed. But not as badly as Clarke; she'd only needed half a day to get over her hangover. According to legend (and Clarke's past experience) Raven Reyes was the angry, bitter drunk. She'd never really been the horny, stripper drunk before. Clarke wasn't entirely sure what brand of drunk person she was. The most embarassing one, probably. (The way some idiots were looking at her, she wouldn't be surprised.) She'd only ever been mildly drunk before, and the only effects it had had were amplified honesty and pissy-ness. Before yesterday, her worst hangover had lasted an hour and had been cured by half a coffee.

"Thanks, Octavia. Now I'm going to feel violated every time they talk to each other," Jasper winced.

Partly to spare him whatever remark Octavia was about to make regarding talking to Maya, but mostly because she was genuinely confused, and she was sick of the weird looks and the faint mental gaps, Clarke braced herself and asked. "What actually happened that night?" Octavia sputtered with badly contained glee. Clarke shot her a look.

"You got drunk and tried to sexually assault your roommate." Bellamy contributed unhelpfully as he drew up a chair and untangled the cellophane from his wrap. What the fuck? She was sinking deeper into the pit of senseless shame. Although she'd simply made a mistake, like any good human. The shame.

Octavia snorted. "What's this now?"

"When did you get here?" Clarke muttered sullenly. "And what the hell's that even supposed to mean?"

"Calm down," Bellamy was trying to supress a smile, she could tell; it was infuriating. He was supposed to be on her side. "You just... Told her she was hot and climbed all over her." Octavia emitted a loud, hysterical kind of noise that attracted several strange looks from passing students.

"I didn't." Clarke insisted.

"Just give in." Raven suggested, like a tired old war veteran. "They're never going to let it go."

"You really don't remember anything," Monty muttered, incredulous. "Jasper, show her the video."

"The video!" Jasper grinned, fumbling in his bag. Clarke's mind was still snagged on what Bellamy had said. What the hell was he even talking about? He was messing with her. I mean, he's messing with me, right? Even drunk, that wasn't her. (Lexa was hot, but that wasn't the point.) (Or relevant.) "The video! Hey, Clarke, watch this,"

He held his phone out across the table to her. The raucous chatter of the party, made tinny through the phone speakers, and the psychedelic lights swirling sickeningly above the shadowy mass of drunk dancing morons. She faintly recalled that - what she didn't quite have back yet was the focus of the shaky footage. It was disturbing. And she had Monty's Clark Kent glasses on, tangled in her hair. "Clarke, Clarke - what's three times nine?" Jasper's voice was shouting, unseen, over the din. Memories that had been inching back to focus since the morning after Halloween were swimming into clarity and burning her face.

Clarke was seriously freaked out, as she watched herself, dancing, proudly declaring that she couldn't see in a straight line. Which wasn't even grammatically correct. "Put that away." Jasper managed to control himself long enough to obey. Traitor.

"That's what she said," Raven ducked out the way of Clarke's balled-up tissue.

"Wick or Lexa?" Octavia wondered, and must have immediately regretted after the force of combined death-stares from Clarke and Raven. Between them, they could probably muster an evil enough glare to stop Batman. (If Clarke did think so herself.)

"No, but seriously, Clarke, if you ever want to feel free, just get pissed." Monty told her. "It really seems to dissolve your mind-to-mouth filter."

"Wow, I have to go to class," Octavia realized. "Later, suckers,"

But Clarke didn't really notice that. Rusty gears were beginning to click into place. What the hell had she said?

-0-

"Lexa!" Clarke caught her breath and wondered why she always seemed to end up chasing after her. Fucking grounder. And Clarke had poured a lot of effort into this apology. Well; the pre-apology admin job. (Otherwise known as running all over the damn place trying to find her.) (And all for something she barely recalled.) (Really, fuck alcohol.) She'd checked their room first, but who was she kidding - Lexa was never in before four. She'd then rushed around to all the classes she knew Lexa was taking, despite some questionable direction-giving skills (and one awkward encounter with the grounder she thought was called Indra) from the students milling around, to no avail. It was only when she was exhausted, irritable and about to call it a day when she remembered the first time she'd seen her.

Lexa either didn't hear or deem Clarke's shout worth replying to. Jesus Christ, this isn't September anymore. The flourescent lights of gym corridor emmited a low buzz. "Lexa!" She caught up to her in the doorway leading onto the reception. "Hey,"

"What do you want?" Somehow Lexa's old airs were a thousand times more infuriating now Clarke had seen her be (almost) an actual human being. (It would have been tempting to punch her in the face if her face wasn't so nice.)

"I want you to listen to me," Clarke told her, moving out the way of perplexed passing gym-goers. "Look," She forced the eye-contact. "I don't know what I did, or said, but I'm sorry, okay?" Lexa tried to look bored; Clarke tried to see through that. "I'm sorry."

"We're not friends, Clarke," Lexa told her levelly. "There's nothing to say."

She turned to go, pushing through the door, and Clarke could feel herself flaring up. There was no point even bothering trying to stop herself by now. She shoved through the door after her, grabbing her arm. Lexa stared for a moment at Clarke's hand on her sleeve. For a moment she wondered what the fuck she was doing. Well, no going back now. "Hey! You can't just brush me off like that." She removed her hand. She probably should have done that earlier. "I was drunk, Lexa, and I don't know what I did, but I'm sober now and I'm apologizing for it."

For one moment of short-lived glory, Clarke was nearly sure she was going to accept that and invite her to work out and they'd never say another word about it. Clarke was wrong. "I have to go."

Clarke was staring after the sway of her hair and the back of her coat and cursing everything to the ground when an irritatingly familiar voice, tone dripping with a smirk she didn't even need to turn around to see adressed her. "Lovers' spat?"

She shoved past him on her way out. "Fuck off, Murphy."