"The love-birds have arrived" Monty yelled to the people crowded around the kitchen and living room. Pointing at their faces one-by-one, Monty attempted to introduce them all; "Jasper, Monroe, Harper, Raven, Miller, Finn, Echo, Bellamy, Clarke, and" pointing at himself, "I'm Monty. This is Octavia, who you all know, and her newest squeeze Lincoln, and this is Lexa-"

"Hot neighbour girl!" Bellamy shouted, jumping up and grabbing a beer out of the cooler on the living room floor and pressing it into Lexa's hand, "I didn't know you'd be showing up today."

"I-" Before Lexa could think of really anything to say, Bellamy steered her through the crowd of people and sat her down on a spare seat across from him on the couch.

"Glad to see you and Clarke finally met, I'm surprised she didn't mention you were coming."

"Clarke? I, no, the boy with the hair, Monty? Is that his name? He dragged me in, Lincoln knocked on my door and now I'm here and, you know what, I think I need to leave." Lexa was speaking hurriedly, panicking at the situation she had found herself in. She couldn't believe she was in the girl from next door's apartment. Did Bellamy say her name was Clarke? Wait, Bellamy, Lexa knew that name she'd heard it before somewhere – "oh god."

"Woah, woah, woah. Slow down. Stay, stay, hang on. So you and Clarke still haven't met? And why did Lincoln knock on your door?" Bellamy asked.

"No, no we've never run into each other before, before now I guess. Lincoln and I work together, I don't really know why he knocked though, he's supposed to be at this party with the girl he's sleeping with meeting all her friends and-"

"Her brother. I'm Octavia's brother" Bellamy said, cutting Lexa off for the second time in one night, the set of his jaw telling Lexa he clearly wasn't appreciative of her confirming that Lincoln was sleeping with his sister.

"Oh my god, I'm sorry, I just, I need to go," Lexa stood, trying desperately to leave the apartment, adamantly ignoring the fact that she was in the same room as the girl from next door; because meeting the girl, Clarke, in a room full of her friends, some of whom Lexa had already offended, wasn't in any of the scenarios she'd dreamed up about someday getting to talk to her.

Standing up, Lexa got all of two steps away from Bellamy before being stopped by a very confused looking Octavia and a sheepish Lincoln.

"Explain," Octavia demanded, looking between Lexa and Lincoln like they had somehow set this up as an elaborate ruse.

"O, look, I'm sorry, I was really nervous and when we got to Clarke's floor I was on auto-pilot and I just automatically knocked on Lexa's door. I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry," he looked at Lexa, clearly attempting to extend his apology to her for getting her dragged into this mess as well. "It's kind of neat that Lexa lives next door to Clarke though, I mean, what are the chances?" He grinned cheekily at Octavia, confident that she would find the situation as amusing as he was in time. "Come on, let's go get you a drink," he said, steering Octavia into the kitchen, "stick around though, Lexa? It'd be nice to know someone here other than O."

"Oh you can't leave yet, you have to meet everyone!" Monty had heard Lincoln and had made his way over, enthusiastically throwing his arm across Lexa's shoulders. It didn't seem like she was going to be able to make it out of here any time soon.

An hour and a half after Monty dragged Lexa through her door and Clarke still hadn't managed to do more than sneak quick glances at the girl who was now sitting on a couch in her living room, less than two metres away from her. A little while ago Monty had brought her over and re-introduced her to the people sitting around chatting and mostly ignoring the marathon of New Zealand's Next Top Model which was playing on her TV. She could never really understand why but after stumbling across the New Zealand version of the show while drunk, Raven, Octavia and herself had unanimously decided it was better than the US version, and had downloaded as much of it as they could find off the internet. Clarke knew they all found the accents fun to listen to but there was something else entirely that made it more enjoyable than the original. She wasn't really enjoying it at the moment though, she was hardly paying any attention to it at all, perhaps even less than the other people scattered around her living room floor. Clarke was overwhelmed, thinking about nothing but the girl sitting across from her, the girl who she had been casually interacting with for months now, and who she had been desperate to meet for at least a couple of weeks. Clarke had had fantasies about this girl in her shower for goodness sake, but she still didn't quite understand how she came to be sitting in in her lounge room.

This was excruciating. There were parts of her that were aching to speak to the girl across the room, but she couldn't bring herself to actually go up and talk to her. Her name was Lexa, Clarke had learned, but she couldn't help but worry about what would happen if they tried to actually have a conversation. They sung together so naturally, and Clarke had felt there was at least something flirty between the two of them, albeit mostly through song choices on her part, but she knew that the possibility of it being unbearably awkward between the two of them after what they had shared was extremely high. She had entertained the thought that maybe it would be less awkward with other people around, that this situation she had found herself in, courtesy of Monty, was the perfect opportunity to speak to her, but with so many other people around it felt impossible to talk about what had happened between them and risk someone else hearing. Maybe Lexa wasn't embarrassed about other people knowing how they met, but Clarke couldn't bear the thought of having to explain how it came about that they sang to each other through the walls without ever having spoken.

The one thing Clarke could add to the list of encouraging signs about Lexa, though, was that when people started saying their goodbyes and making their way out of her apartment, she didn't take the opportunity to disappear, as Clarke thought she might have, but stayed around chatting with the last couple of tipsy stragglers. Clarke saw her talking with Octavia when she walked out from the kitchen, noticing shortly after that Lincoln and Bellamy appeared to be having an arm wrestling competition on the arm of Clarke's couch. She wasn't sure what that meant, but Octavia appeared to be smiling at the two of them so the both of them meeting couldn't have too badly.

"Clarke-nado, get over here." Octavia was still talking to Lexa and Clarke had managed this far into the night without directly being in the same conversation with the woman from next door but she didn't think she had any way of getting out of this one. "Lexa here was telling me that you two haven't even met yet?"

Lexa was giving Clarke wide eyes behind Octavia's line of sight. So maybe she was just as embarrassed as Clarke was about the whole 'singing through the walls' thing. "Uh, no actually. Seems impossible that we hadn't bumped into each other yet but-" stretching out her hand to shake Lexa's, "I'm Clarke."

Lexa smiled, her eyes lighting up in the shared secret that they were currently hiding from Octavia, who, if either of them cared to look at was clearly not fooled by the ruse. Something about the way they were interacting Octavia knew was iffy.

"Lexa," she said, shaking Clarke's outstretched hand.

"Well if you guys are going to hang around past my bedtime the least you could do is help me clean up. You too, guys, that pissing contest over there is impressing nobody."

Lincoln and Bellamy looked up at Clarke, paused mid-arm wrestle and quickly stood up, brushing themselves off and pretending like that wasn't at all what they were doing.

"Actually, sorry babe," Bellamy said, walking over to Clarke and giving her a quick peck on the cheek, "I'm heading off, I'm sure these guys can handle the clean up on their own." He smirked and stepped out the door, throwing a casual wink at his sister as he left.

"Me too, it's getting late," Octavia said, trying to follow swiftly in her brother's footsteps in getting out of Clarke's place as soon as possible to avoid getting lumped with dishes or mopping or something else horrible. "Lincoln's my designated driver, so he's coming too, bye!"

Lexa looked a little dumbfounded, she hadn't managed to take the chance to leave earlier when people were saying their goodbyes and suddenly she had gone from standing in a room relatively full of people to standing entirely on her own across from the girl she'd been essentially showering with for several weeks. "I can help clean, if you'd like?" She offered, instead of continuing to wish her entire body would crumble and disappear.

Maybe Clarke was sleep deprived, or a little drunk, or both, but her friends so unceremoniously leaving and the sudden awkwardness that had dropped on the two remaining girls, combined with the look on Lexa's face was too much. She tried to keep a straight face but it did little to hide the snort of laughter in the back of her throat, and when Lexa looked at her and snickered, the two of them quickly descended into an uncontrollable fit of giggles.

"I should go," Lexa managed to choke out once most of the giggles had passed, "thanks for covering for me with Octavia, though it didn't look like you particularly wanted to explain to her how we already knew each other, either."

Clarke laughed a little more at that, "hell no. Thanks for offering to stay and clean after all those assholes left me to do it on my own, even if you didn't really mean it."

"Of course I meant it, maybe I could come back tomorrow morning and help out? I'm not really doing anything and it's not like I live very far?

"That would be lovely, actually, thanks. It's nice to finally get to meet you in person, too. I'm not quite sure how you ended up here but I'm glad you did."

Lexa smiled. "Me too, Clarke."