Once I get back into writing I just can't help but do it all the time, so you're getting another update now. It doesn't hurt to review either... :D

Clarke awakes, sticky and sweating, but surprisingly well rested in her tent, and takes a moment to roll her joints and crack her knuckles before she opens her eyes to the sunlight that the flimsy material of their tents doesn't prevent from streaming in. Just as she begins to stretch her arms to the side like a starfish in her morning wake-up ritual, her hand hits an obstacle that isn't normally there. An obstacle that grunts sleepily and tells her to go back to sleep princess. Clarke promptly squeals and falls off the makeshift bed onto the floor in between the little gap between the tent wall and the cot.

It takes her a while to extract herself, and by this point she no longer believes that she is in her own tent. Yeah, it took a while, but come on, she's never said that she's a morning person. Walking around the small enclosure she spies Bellamy on the bed, frowning with his eyes shut, and she's unsure whether or not he is asleep.

"Bellamy," she whispers at him, which doesn't elicit a response and she almost laughs with relief. If he'd seen her fall off his bed… Well, safe to say, she probably wouldn't be forgetting about it within the next fifty years or so.

She doesn't remember falling asleep here last night, but she can't think of a reason that she would have been pulled from her tent in her sleep and deposited here. She chalks it up to the exhaustion of the previous two days.

Clarke shuffles around the tent as quietly as she can manage, searching for her boots and a jacket. She finds her footwear, but no coat, and figures that she must have left it at the dropship after last night's efforts with the rest of the camp. Just as she is leaving she looks back into the tent and sees a discarded jumper hanging off the edge of the desk, and, looking down on the goose bumps running across her arms, shrugs and retrieves it, slipping it on over her head and smirking when she saw that it reached down way past her waist to mid-thigh level, and that she had to roll the sleeves up four times to ensure that she would be able to use her hands.

Stepping out into the brisk morning light was easily one of the perks of Clarke's day. The tents tended to become stuffy during the night, so it was always pleasant to leave, making the act of actually getting out of bed far easier.

She made her way across the camp from Bellamy's tent towards the dropship, smiling and stopping to talk to the few kids that were up at this early hour. She passed Jasper and Monty faffing about almost directly outside the tent, and almost tripped over them as she left. Rather than greeting her with their usual happy chattering, they stared up at her with something akin to shock and bemusement on their young faces. Clarke slowed, but when neither boy made to say anything she shrugged and walked on, ignoring similar looks from various delinquents as she strode to the dropship, and her improvised hospital (there had been some scrapes from yesterday that she hadn't quite gotten around to taking care of yet).

Rather than dwell on the odd way in which the kids were treating her she threw herself into working, sorting out injuries, setting a broken nose (I fell out of a tree, why were you up a tree, I was following Jamie) and taking inventory of the herbs and plants that needed to be gathered during the next hunting trip. It wasn't until later when Raven came to find her with lunch that Clarke realised why she had been on the receiving end of so many inquisitive looks.

"You get some last night then?" questioned Raven as she bought in a small bowl of berries and a chunk of the deer from yesterday, throwing herself into a chair next to the 'operating' table.

"Get shome whatsch?" asked Clarke around a mouthful of food. She hasn't eaten since lunch yesterday, and manners don't go so far on the ground.

"Nice," remarks Raven, "I thought you Alpha Station girls were taught to eat with your mouths closed?" Clarke deliberately spits a purple berry at her, choking on her laughter when her friend doesn't manage to duck in time. The fruit lands on her chest, just above her tank top, and when she wipes it away it smears over her chest.

"War paint," Raven finally decides, giving up on trying to get the stain off of her skin with her hands. "Anyway, you never answered my question."

Clarke looks at her blankly, still shovelling food into her mouth as fast as she possibly can.

"Did you have sex last night?" Raven demands impatiently. Luckily, this time when Clarke spits out her food she's not in the splash zone and instead the mouthful splats onto the floor. Raven looks at up Clarke with an eyebrow raised, exaggerated disappointment on her face.

"Why do you think I had sex? Does everyone think that? Who said that?" Clarke stutters these questions out in rapid succession.

"Honey, YOU basically said it. You came sauntering out of Bellamy's tent this morning, and did the walk of shame in his jumper," Raven plucks at the fabric she is wearing. "What's more, he hasn't been near you all day, when you're usually stuck at the hip. Everyone just assumed."

"Assumed. Right. Assumed," repeats Clarke vaguely, toying with a piece of cloth that would double up as a bandage when it was needed.

Raven just rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, sometimes looking at Clarke, sometimes looking over her shoulder out of the dropship door and onto the makeshift courtyard that compromised roughly half of the camp.

Minutes pass and Clarke finally realises that Raven is still lingering, and waves her away good naturedly, thinking over her dilemma. She snorts. Dilemma. They've been on the ground for maybe three months? She's buried five kids, including her best friend, banished Murphy, seen a 12-year-old throw herself off a cliff and bought Jasper back from the brink of death. Gossip is nothing, it scarcely bothered her when she was on the Ark, why was it bothering her now?

Because it's Bellamy, a voice prompted from the very back of her mind. Cursing herself for being a coward, she ignores it, not wanting to confirm some suspicions that have been floating around her head for some time now. Having feelings for Bellamy would get in the way of everything that they had built up, it would shatter the very foundation of their co-leadership. No, there was nothing there. There couldn't be.

Bellamy's day is, interesting, to say the least. When he awakes, he's annoyingly frustrated and he can't quite reach an answer that would explain why. Of course, it may be to do with the sense of dread that hangs over him every damn day, or the fear that whatever semblance of stability they have reached is going to be snatched from them at any moment, but those are normal feelings, nothing special. Maybe it's to do with the fact that he can't find his bloody jumper when he gets out of bed, and instead has to wear his bulky hunting coat. Or possibly, it's to do with the looks that he is being given by the kids. Some wary, some appraising, but all odd.

They're treating him funny too. It's Octavia first. It's not that she's hostile really, but there's something about the way she talks to him that makes her seem inaccessible to him for the first time in either of their lives. She may like ignoring his warnings, but she's never really been closed off. It worries him until he is faced with similar reactions from most of the rest of the camp. Caution from Monty, awe from Jasper, nervousness from some of the younger kids. He gets a bit of cheek from Miller, which isn't too new, though the subject of the teasing, Clarke, is. Maybe he's just being bone-headed, but he cannot for the life of him think what he might have done to provoke these reactions.

He is almost relieved when he has to deal with Finn and the boy is treating him with his usual amount of distain and derision. What surprises him is the fight that Finn suddenly has in him, declaring that the only way in which their party would be safe would be to move the entire camp to safety, up into the mountains or towards the sea, away from the grounders. Normally the kid is just surly and uncommunicative when his ideas are rejected, but when Bellamy tells him that it's not an option to be moving around he just lets rip.

"You're such a moron! You're going to get everyone here KILLED for some ego trip that you're on, and you're too fucking pig-headed to see it! We're not going to stand for-"

"Hey man, hey. Relax," Bellamy cuts him off when people look up from their chores to listen to the fight. Miller, loyal to the bone, makes like he is about to stride over to the two men, but Bellamy holds up his hand to signal that back up isn't required when dealing with Finn.

"Relax?" spits Finn, incredulous. "Not all of us have a way to relax like you do."

Bellamy catches his arm as he spins and tries to stalk away.

"What the hell's gotten into you Collins?" he demands. "What are you talking about?" Bellamy grinds this last sentence out from between clenched teeth, hating having to ask Finn to clarify something.

"I'm talking about last night. Hell, EVERYONE'S talking about last night. You and Clarke. You fucked her didn't you?"

Bellamy pushes the younger boy away from him in disgust.

"It's none of your God damned business what Clarke and I do Finn. And you'll find that Clarke thinks the same thing. Stay out of it." And with that he strides away, signalling to Harper as he leaves the camp gate. She salutes lazily in return and he makes a note to change the guard schedule tomorrow. Harper is not built for it.

He parks himself on a fallen tree not far from the entrance and stays there for the rest of the day. He knows that people will worry if they think he's gone AWOL, and he'd be galled if they thought that something that Collins said had upset him. Though he wasn't upset. Angry that fucking Finn couldn't keep his thoughts to himself and might be spreading vicious rumours about Clarke, but not upset.

Walking back into the camp before the gates are shut for the night is almost embarrassing. He feels like everyone witnessed his flee from his argument with Finn. Well, everyone but Clarke, but he hasn't seen her all day anyway.

She sees him before he does her, storming up to him with a plate of food in her hand and shoving him back towards his tent hissing about what people have been saying, conveniently forgetting her vow not to let it bother her.

"Princess," Bellamy says, his tone coloured with warning, "if you want to stop people thinking that we are sleeping together then desperately pushing me into my tent isn't going to help." He didn't mean it as a joke, but if anything she just looks more furious and dumps the food into his hands as soon as they are both through the opening.

"What are we going to tell them Bellamy?" Clarke sounds desperate, and it pricks. He knows that she doesn't want people to think they are having sex but could she at least be a little tactful about it? He didn't think that he was that repulsive…

"Clarke, does this really matter? We need to talk about changing the guard rota, some of-"

"Yeah yeah, I was thinking the same, Harper's not cut out to be a guard. But we can talk about that later," she implores, dismissing the subject as though she hadn't just read his mind. "But we have to talk about this thing. Us. They," she gestures outside, "all think that we slept together!"

"Why does that bother you so much?" he asks. He's genuinely curious. Apart from Finn, he doesn't really care that people think he and Clarke are together.

"It could mess up everything we do! Do you really think that people will still listen to us, still take us seriously, when they're thinking that while we're arguing we're just going to fuck later and forgive each other? They'll think we're weak." At that word she sounds genuinely fearful.

Bellamy inwardly flinches at her words, but tries to pacify her.

"Why don't we just ignore it for now?" He sees her about to interrupt so he places one finger on her lips. "Hush, and let me finish." She grumbles and he smiles.

"If we try to deny it now then people are going to think we are sleeping together all the more. If we ignore it and nothing changes then we're fine. If the kids do start acting out then we'll deal with it when we get there. You're worrying about something that hasn't even happened yet, something there is no guarantee is ever going to happen."

Her shoulders sag and she leans forward slightly, just enough for Bellamy to give her a quick hug. When they separate she flashes him a brief but genuine smile, and leaves, shoulders straight and with no shame in her eyes, making her way through the camp and back to her own bed.

It's then that he notices he is still holding the plate of food. He smiles. She bought me dinner.

There is always so much unnecessary drama between these two and I absolutely LOVE it! x