I have truly colossal gratitude for everyone who has reviewed. (You know what they say about rhyming...)

Cataclysm

Disclaimer: Disclaimed.

Chapter Seven

Clare woke up the next morning on an unfamiliar couch, the bitter aftertaste of alcohol in her mouth and nauseated churning in her stomach. Through a large window, the sun was just beginning to brighten up the shallowest corners of the room and though her eyelids were undeniably heavy, she knew that going back to sleep would be both arduous and unpleasant. She stared at the white ceiling, listening to her own heartbeat in the silent apartment. She couldn't recall the last time she had slept away from her own bed - she could barely remember the last time she got more than a few hours of sleep anywhere - and although it may have been the hungover acrobatics of her stomach, she was fairly certain that waking up in Eli's living room in particular was causing the uneasy feeling she couldn't quell.

Clare hated Eli; with every ounce of blood and every fiber of bone within her body, she loathed his very existence. She was finding it difficult to remember that. Between turning into a sobbing mess every time he looked at her and the painfully familiar way he had pressed his forehead against hers after tender reminiscing, the outlines of her hatred were beginning to blur and the blame she had once placed so vehemently on his actions was beginning to dissipate, allocating bits of itself onto her own past decisions.

Jake's business trip had ended, officially, two days ago, and Clare knew she should have been more concerned when he called to tell her he was planning to take the weekend 'for himself.' Their relationship had never functioned on fighting, or bickering, or time to themselves, so the fact that Jake was requesting it so pointedly was by all means a red flag that Clare should have been trying to rescind. She was finding it difficult to remember that, too.

She rubbed her eyes, deciding it was too early to think about anything. She looked around the apartment, inspecting what was within her view from the couch. There were magazines on the table - pointless tabloids, one about current theatre productions and reviews, a few issues of TIME and Rolling Stone. Their TV was small and pushed into a corner that made it hard to observe comfortably, and Clare decided it made sense that Imogen was as disinterested in television as Eli - God knows there's enough drama in her own head. There were abstracted paintings hanging on the soft green walls (surely not Eli's colour-scheme), and some framed posters of classic bands Clare knew Eli adored.

Picking everything apart like this, being able to discern what was Eli and what wasn't, made Clare realize how close they had once been - how well she had known him. It made her stomach flutter to think of the night before, when they had laughed and smiled and relived one of a thousand pleasant memories. Parts of her night were fuzzy and censored, but she knew that no one had yelled and no one had cried and somehow, she found herself elated.

She heard shuffling in the bedroom and immediately closed her eyes in an attempt to feign sleep, turning her head so her face was mostly concealed. The sound stopped and no one emerged from the room, but Clare had been terrified enough that she now wanted to leave. She wasn't sure where she was supposed to go - it was probably still too early to call the super intendant, and a lack of shoes had been the reason she was in this position at all. Still, Clare threw the blanket off of her, wanting to sneak out of the apartment as quickly as possible.

When she rose to her feet, she immediately regretted her haste because her head began to spin and she could feel the discomfort in her stomach begin to creep up her throat. Trying to subdue the feeling with deep breathes a few times, Clare found herself unsuccessful and instead only sprinting for the bathroom.

She was too distracted to contemplate the commotion she caused breaking into a run across the room, or how loudly she had slammed the door behind her and by the time the thought began to occur to her, she was doubled over in front of the toilet, the physical manifestation of her ill-advised drunkenness purging itself from her body.

When her stomach was surely beyond empty, and her abdomen ached with muscle spasms, she ran her hands through her hair and wiped her mouth with the back of her arm. Closing her eyes, she sat back against the wall, and tried to catch her breath, repeating to herself mentally, 'You have to leave, you have to go,' until she drifted into sleep.

Clare.

Due to a lack of window or clock, Clare wasn't sure how much time had passed when she woke up, her face pushed into the area rug, and arms wrapped around herself against the cold tiles.

Clare.

She blinked a few times, trying to register where her name was coming from, but mostly concerned with rubbing the carpet-imprint out of her cheek, and detangling the bird's nest that was her hair.

"Clare, are you okay?"

Clare looked to the door when she recognized Eli's voice, stumbling to her feet and reaching out to open it. Before she touched the handle, she caught herself in the mirror and stopped to criticize her exhausted appearance.

"Clare, do I need to come in there?" She scoffed at his concerned tone.

"I'm fine," she choked out, her voice groggy and tired. She was prodding the dark circles beneath her eyes, violently rubbing away at the smudged makeup splayed down the right side of her face. She hoped that the pillow she had slept on didn't mirror that result of her evening.

"Do you need something to eat?" Clare smiled before she could help it.

"No, uh, thanks, I'm alright," she insisted awkwardly, but was interrupted by her stomach growling. "Actually, yeah, please," she corrected.

"Okay," came his muffled voice again, "I'll be out here." She heard his footsteps retreat, and sighed, continuing to tweak her disarrayed appearance until she felt presentable enough to face the two people she least liked to see.

She opened the door slowly, peeking around it before exiting the bathroom. Her socked feet padded softly against the laminate flooring, and she felt like crawling into herself as she maneuvered around the furniture. Eli was standing in the kitchen, his back turned to her while he fiddled with something in the sink. Clare briefly considered how easily she could duck out of the apartment before he noticed. Before she could really give it some thought, a small pile of books made a loud clatter as she accidentally knocked them off of a small desk. Eli was startled, and spun around to see her, looking sheepish and rushing to pick them up.

He wanted to laugh, or help her gather the fallen novels - anything - but all he could do was stare at her. He swallowed thickly, feeling suddenly nervous.

Clare, placing the books in a much more organized stack than they had been before, was unsure of what to do under Eli's scrutiny. The desire to scream at him was gone, and she wasn't entirely sure how to proceed in its absence.

"Is Imogen still asleep?" Eli's unusually unaffected lips curved into a smirk that made Clare's face rush with warmth.

"Clare, it's past noon, Imogen's not even here." Clare's face fell - past noon? She'd been passed out on the bathroom floor for that long? "Don't worry about it, the search for a washroom was an excuse to go out for breakfast." It was obvious that he was trying to lighten the awkward tension between them, but the blush fell from Clare's face and she paled. She felt suddenly embarrassed and exposed, standing in from of him in rumpled clothing and messy hair, her shoes locked in her apartment without her. Eli seemed to notice, because he shifted uncomfortably, clearing his throat.

"I made you some food," he muttered shyly, gesturing to the plate of eggs and toast on the table. Clare noticed he must have been doing dishes, because he was gesturing with a hand housed in a yellow rubber glove. "Eli Goldsworthy, domestic god," she mumbled under her breath. He must have heard because he chuckled.

"'What time he can spare from the adornment of his person he devotes to the neglect of his duties,' as William Hepworth Thomson once said." Clare nodded.

"You still do that a lot?" Eli looked puzzled.

"Dishes?"

"No," Clare shook her head, "Display your incessant pretentiousness via obscure quotations no one has ever heard before." Eli frowned, his brows furrowing in defense until Clare began laughing quietly. "Kidding, Eli, I'm kidding." Eli smiled broadly, and Clare's stomach tightened at the brightness in his eyes.

Clare stepped forward towards the table just as Eli was stepping in her direction, and they found themselves awkwardly face to face. Clare apologized, moving to the left just as Eli moved to his right. Smirking, Eli placed his hands on Clare's shoulders, pushing her around him. Clare stared up at him for a moment, watching as his smile faded and he let himself become absorbed in their eye contact. Something in his expression changed, but before Clare could gauge his thoughts, he had ripped his hands away from her shoulders and stepped back.

"I've been waiting to brush my teeth... be right back," he told her, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. She nodded silently, more concerned with escaping his immediate company. He disappeared quickly into the bathroom, and Clare sighed heavily before sitting down to start eating.

Eli splashed water in his face, his body humming with more emotions than he felt equipped to handle. He hadn't slept the night before. How could he, with Clare Edwards in his apartment, only one wall and ten feet of space between them? He wasn't even sure how his mind was functioning to let this woman scream at him, throw punches at him, degrade him to no end, only to forget it all had happened the moment her pink lips smiled at him.

She hated him, she treated him like absolute dirt, and he carried her into his home, let her sleep on his couch, made her breakfast. Why? Because when he looked at her, in those rare moments of vulnerability, he saw the Clare he used to know, and there was nothing on Earth that could make him resent her. It was unhealthy to let her strip him of self-control like this, and despite knowing so in his mind, it was difficult to remember while his heart was soaring in her civilized presence.

He pushed his toothbrush in and out of his mouth, scrubbing his teeth with the same ferocity he felt burning in his stomach. Once he was finished, he stared at himself in the mirror, looking for something, anything - any small change to prove to himself that he had changed. He found nothing, instead deciding that he was more himself today than he'd felt in a long time.

He left the bathroom, finding Clare pacing around his kitchen, her plate of food half-consumed, and his cell phone in her hands. She looked up at the sound of the door.

"Do you mind if I use this?" she asked, holding up the phone. He shook his head. He made his way into the kitchen, sitting down and watching as she spoke to the superintendent, explaining her situation and begging him to come soon with a key. She sighed with relief, thanking him before hanging up, and handed the device back to Eli.

"So, he's coming soon?"

"Twenty minutes," she nodded.

"Well, feel free to wait here." Clare hesitated before nodding again, delicately pulling out a chair to join him at the table.

"Thank you..." she began gently, "For last night. Letting me stay here."

"No problem, I'll tell Imogen you said that." He smiled stiffly, and Clare frowned.

"She's not very nice to me." Clare wasn't sure why she had said that, but Eli just looked at her calmly.

"You're not very nice to her boyfriend." Shake quickly overtook Clare, and she nodded, her silent validation of his statement. "Clare, I didn't mean to interrupt your life. At Julia's funeral..." he trailed off, and Clare's breath hitched. "In all honesty, at Julia's funeral, I was really hoping that I would see you. When I did, the way you reacted to me... well, I promise I'm not trying to ruin your life on purpose. I wish I'd known you lived here, because I swear I would've stayed out of your way." Silence hung between them, a thick wall that was crushing Clare's lungs.

"Thank you," she whispered. Her head was pounding, from a combination of her feelings and her alcohol consumption. She wasn't sure what to say to Eli when she wasn't angry or drunk, and lacked the energy to decide, so instead she crossed her arms on the table and laid down her head. Eli regarded her blankly, and she stared back at him. It felt like hours that they sat there, staring at each other, just like it had before.

Eventually, Eli shifted and checked his watch, letting Clare know that she should probably go wait for the super by her apartment. She gave him an awkward goodbye, and made her way down the hallway, wishing her socks sported something more subtle than their bright pink stripes.

She waited at her door for a few minutes until the super arrived, shaking his head agitatedly at the excuse she threw together for being locked out. He let her in quickly, complaining about the better things he had to do. As she was standing inside her doorway, trying to end the conversation which revolved mostly around his complaints, he name was suddenly being called.

"Clare!" came Eli's breathless plea as he rounded the corner at full speed. He stumbled to a halt in front of the superintendent, having not expected his company. Clare glanced between the two men, until the older of them mumbled a goodbye, and took off towards the elevator.

"Clare," Eli breathed again, stepping closer to her. She looked at him expectantly.

"Yeah?"

"I just... I wasn't really ready for you to leave yet." Clare's mind was screaming at her to send him away, end the complications that were growing around her like suffocating weeds. Instead, with a sigh, she stepped aside and let him in.