The alarm on Clarke's phone went off at 10:30 a.m.
It was never an event to be celebrated, but the fact that she was fucking exhausted made her that much more reluctant to give in to the shrill insistence.
The night before, she had been up for hours furiously doodling, or writing in her journal, or doing literally anything to distract from how annoyed she was with Bellamy. When 4 rolled around, she let out a little groan-scream into her pillow and resolved that sleep could not be achieved without medicinal aid. No, not pot... although Clarke had stashed a little in her suitcase, just in case Blake pissed her off badly enough for that level of ~chill~ to be needed. But it was only the first of a whole eight long nights, and she suspected that the ~chill~ would be absolutely vital at some point in the future. So instead she popped half a Xanax and dozed off listening to Coldplay. Her slumber clearly didn't last long enough; when she woke up, the shadows under her eyes resembled mascara after a nap.
The coffee maker woke Bellamy up all of the way from downstairs, and although Clarke didn't really want to see him, it was admittedly satisfying to watch him bumble into the kitchen with death upon his face.
"Get your beauty sleep, princess?," she greeted him sweetly.
"Princess, my ass," he grumbled, not even making pretenses at good humor. "You're the one with a crown on her bedroom dresser."
This little detail, or the fact that he remembered it from two years ago, was both surprising and very weird. "Please. That's the crown of a queen." The liquid finished dripping into her cup and she turned away from him to retrieve it, relieved for an excuse to not look him in the eyes. Avoiding his stare was becoming second-nature, although avoiding him altogether would've been the preferable course of action.
She heard a stool scrape against the ground behind her, along with a grouchily intoned, "Make me one too while you're at it."
At this, a little laugh bubbled from her diaphragm. He's definitely not a morning person... I could use this to my advantage, she mused, imagining brutally waking him up at 6 am if he managed to piss her off more. Her blue irises flashed in his direction for but a moment while she pulled away from the counter.
"I would enjoy nothing greater, but I'm afraid I have to go throw hay for the horses. So sorry." Her voice took on a disturbingly convincing mellifluous tone once more, and the reaction of a low grunt she heard from him sent a wave of self-satisfaction through her. It seemed that yesterday he had pushed all her buttons effortlessly, but was completely unaffected by her own mocking. Whether it was his abhorrence of waking up or her falsely kind words, she left the house feeling like she finally had the upper hand.
And she did, for a time. Mostly because she barely saw him through the day.
When Clarke finished throwing hay for each of the seven horses, she came back to the house to find that Bellamy was already off working in the vacant arena. She spied on him a teeny tiny bit when she first spotted him out there, picking up big ass rocks and tossing them into the bucket of a tractor like they were pillows. It looked like grueling work, and for the first time since she arrived, Clarke was glad that she wasn't the only one there.
She spent the first part of the day working on a shitty poem she had begun the night before. She really was the worst at poetry, and she knew it too, but for some reason she had a notebook almost entirely filled with little drabbles. It had kind of morphed into a nervous habit, something to do when there was no one to talk to, nothing else to occupy her attention.
At around noon, there was someone to talk to.
Her phone let out a shriek that nearly scared the piss out of her and caused her hand to jerk and leave a giant scar of blue ink across her masterpiece. Cursing to herself, she scrambled across the bed to where it rested on her nightstand.
"What the hell, dude? You never texted me back last night, what happened!?"
Clarke winced a bit at the ferocity of Octavia's tone, or maybe the shame it instilled in her. The woman had a great scolding voice, and would friggin' rock as a mother. Hell, half the time she had to mother Clarke. "There was a truck outside and I figured it belonged to your brother, so I went looking for him. Found him in your cousin's room about to bone a supermodel. That's about it." Amazingly, Clarke sounded detached and rather indifferent to her own ears.
"No way! What did she look like? I bet I know her, tell me what she looked like!," O pleaded, clearly far more interested in the awkward situation than Clarke was.
She lifted a hand to her forehead, covering her eyes. "Dark hair, caramel skin... Great smile?"
At the last detail, Octavia gasped. "No. Way. Bellamy slept with Raven Reyes!? This is crazy!"
Clarke stood up and walked out of the guest room, shutting the door firmly behind her. This was a conversation she could no longer sit still through. "I guess? Can we please not talk about this anymore, it was super weird. I just want to live in denial and forget I ever saw your brother nearly naked."
"Okay, fine. Fine. I guess I'll just have to gossip to Lincoln about it on the plane ride, since my best friend is incompetent. Speaking of the plane, that's actually mostly why I called you. I just wanted to let you know that we're going to board in a little bit, and that I'll text you during our first layover so you know we're safe. Make sure Bellamy gets actual work done, I'll see you next week! Love you, bye!"
Clarke didn't have the option to tell her before the line cut off that, shockingly, Bellamy was getting actual work done. "Love you too?," she said skeptically, tossing her phone onto the couch when she reached the bottom of the stairs.
She went to the eastern window, looking out into the arena where the subject of her stress was located. He looked rather stressed out himself, reclining on the seat of the tractor and rubbing his jaw.
A sigh echoed through Clarke's lungs, and she decided to do something very out of character for her.
Seven minutes later, she walked up behind him, a mug cradled in her palms. "I don't know how you like your coffee, but I put a little cream in there to tone down the strength of this stuff."
He turned in his seat to examine her through the open door of the tractor, his own expression as inscrutable as always. "A little cream is fine, but I like my coffee black."
Her first instinct was to tell him to act fucking grateful because she was being a good little companion, but that isn't what she did. "Trust me, a little cream will do you good. I think the bitterness of your coffee is seeping into your attitude." She lifted the steaming cup to him, a peace offering with her sass.
"There's no cyanide in this, right?" He accepted the mug from her and sniffed at it suspiciously.
"You're welcome."
He took a long drink of it, almost set it in the cup-holder, then lifted his lips to take a few more swigs of the scalding stuff. Apparently satisfied (although you wouldn't know it looking at him,) he dropped down in front of her. "Thanks, I guess. Although I could've used it a few hours ago. Or a sandwich, I could've used a sandwich."
"Now you're pushing it," she said with a half-smile. A genuine half-smile, which was a rare occurrence around her least favorite acquaintance.
But then he grimaced, actually grimaced at her kindness, and strode towards the front of the tractor. Well that wasn't fucking fly, in Clarke's opinion.
"Damn dude, if you're that hungry then you can go make yourself a sandwich. I'll stay here and take care of this stuff." The offer was meant to spite him, but really she was just doing him another favor. I have got to stop being nice to people... But perhaps underneath it all, she felt the need to be appreciated after the way he had just treated her innocent smile.
Bellamy barked a short laugh, looking over his shoulder to cock his eyebrows at her. "Really, Griffin? Don't bother, it's not like you'll get much done anyway."
Now that got to her. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?," she huffed, planting her hands on her hips in order to properly square off with him.
He shrugged and crouched in front of a rock embedded in the hard ground. "It just means that you aren't exactly the most dedicated of workers, Clarke. Besides, look at you. You're tiny, and this is harder than it looks. Just leave it to me." He tugged a metal thing out of his back pocket and dug it into the earth beside the rock, attempting to pry it out.
"Gimme that metal thing," she growled, walking over and attempting to shove him away by the shoulder. He was solid against her hand and didn't fall back, so she just knelt beside him and swatted his hands away, grabbing the handle of the metal thing.
He didn't leave as she intended, which made it very awkward while she uselessly jiggled the thingie. She probably would've just dug the damned rock out with her hands if he hadn't been so near to her. She told herself that the rock would probably be in the bucket by now if she couldn't feel the warmth of his breath against her neck. Or if her stomach didn't do flips every time he shifted and his knee brushed hers.
No helpful tips were offered, nor any jokes. He was just there, right up in her personal space, and silent. Which meant the longer she feebly wore away at the dirt holding the rock in place, the more frustrated and flustered she became. A low chuckle emanated from his throat, and her face grew hot. She chocked it up to the sun and her excessive amount of layers, so she released the thing to forcefully tug off her sweatshirt. When the cloth cleared her eyes, she caught him looking at her with a bored expression.
"Sure you don't just want help, Princess?"
"I'm not the princess, you're the Princess," she snapped at him, going at the rock with a new fervor.
"Ha, as if. I'm not the one struggling with a rock. I'm like a knight, but not in shining armor. Real knights have dirty armor because they're getting shit done and impaling people. Or a commander of an army, that would be suitable as well," he murmured thoughtfully, leaning back on his hands and extending a leg.
Clarke eyed him in a sneaky-fashion, internally criticizing the way he lounged out on the ground as casually as if it was a recliner. Cocky son of a... Before her thought could be finished, her sweaty hands lost their grip on the metal thing and the force she was using brought her palm scraping across the surface of the rock.
"Fuck."
She and Bellamy uttered the curse in tandem, although his tone was disbelieving while hers was pissed. He let out one of those cocky little laughs she hated, taking her injured appendage before she could protest and examining the cut along her lifeline. "Damn, girl. You're more delicate than I thought."
The sight of her hand in his brought back the memories from yesterday, of those same hands roaming Raven's body... And then how after Clarke left, continued their passionate journey along her skin...
She snatched arm back, his calloused thumb running along her injury and sending a small shock through her. "Whatever, man," was her only response, which left her feeling rather lame. Determined to retain some semblance of pride, she grabbed the metal thing once more, a small hiss escaping from between her teeth at the contact with her palm.
"Clarke, what are you doing?," Bellamy immediately sounded, suddenly alarmed. "There's dirt and tiny rock bits and probably horse shit in that cut, go wash it off."
She swung her head to stare at him accusingly. "Are you kidding me? I'm a tough guy, and tough guys don't quit because of a little blood." A distasteful frown bowed her lips. "Or horse shit."
He tried to speak again, but she shushed him before he had the chance. For a few minutes she struggled with the prying tool, but inevitably had to tug it out of the ground and toss it aside. She started digging around the rock with one hand, aggressively punching her fingers into the dirt to loosen it then scooping out handfuls. It took a while and was really a rather inconvenient way, but eventually the rock was loose enough to tip upon its side. With a triumphant "aha" directed in Bellamy's direction, she scooped the large thing into her arm and hauled the rock over to the bucket, successfully dropping it in only after she almost dropped it on her feet. Bellamy had started towards her at that, outstretching his arms, and it made her feel like the whole ridiculous show was worth it.
When Clarke turned back to Bellamy with a shit-eating grin on her face, his eyes slid shut and one of his hands rose to grip his nose. She suspected he was really just trying to get a grip on his patience.
"Jesus, Clarke. This is done for a day, I'll go make myself a goddamn sandwich. Just take care of your nasty hand, alright?" He looked at her for a moment, and then after whispering another "Jesus, Clarke" he shook his head and started toward the house.
"And don't forget the screwdriver."
In which Clarke struggles with simple tasks and Bellamy gets under her skin. And Octavia is an innocent, blissful soul because that is what she deserves.
Raven will be back in the story because I love that girl, and I'm thinking of introducing someone else as the neighbor who comes to help out. Now which character will that be..?
Next chapter will most likely involve the use of the hot tub in the back of the house and/or an inconveniently timed sex dream about Bellamy. Stay tuned homies