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Clarke lets her head fall back against the wall with a thump. It’s only been a couple of hours, and already her phone is dead, her ass is aching from the hard concrete floor, and she’s starting to shiver.
It wasn’t her fault she got locked in the lab. Really.
She’d insisted Monty go home when he offered to stay back with her, telling him she just had a few more things to finish up. She thinks better with a clean workstation, but she’s not in the habit of tidying as she goes, so every now and then she stays an extra twenty minutes after work to clean up. How could she have known the big storage room-- kept at a specific, chilly temperature-- locks from the outside after hours?
There was no way she could’ve anticipated it, though that doesn’t stop her from berating herself the longer she sits, cold and annoyed and bored.
She’s done everything she can think of to do. She tried to call for help, but found that she had no service. Tried banging on the doors, but that’s useless when nobody is around to hear her.
So she resigned herself to her fate-- spending the night right where she sat. She played games on her phone until she realized she’d want it throughout the night to check the time. She organized the shelves, built a tower out of tissue boxes, and set out paper towels to sit on, protecting herself from the cold, cold floor. But now it’s eight thirty, far too early to go to sleep, and she’s out of ideas.
Another thump as her head falls back against the wall again. And another. It’s been two and a half hours, is she already going crazy?
All of a sudden, the door opens.
She squints against the brightness, momentarily blinded.
“Holy shit,” someone says, as she blinks furiously. “Are you okay?”
“Thank god,” she sighs, scrambling to her feet, her limbs stiff. When she looks up again, she can make out the figure of a security guard, just as he steps further in. Too far. “No, no, no--” she cries, rushing toward the door, but it’s too late. It shuts behind him with an ominous locking sound. She swears and beats on it with her palms, knowing it’s no use.
“Hey, it’s okay. I have a key card,” the security guard says, and Clarke whirls on him, her despair turning to anger that quickly.
“So do I,” she seethes. “But it’s no help when the only card reader is on the other side of the door .”
“You’re kidding.” His face falls, turning white.
Clarke crosses her arms tightly, trying to disguise her shivering. Lab coats really aren’t warm enough for this. “Do I look like I think this is funny?”
Now it’s his turn to swear, stepping forward and placing his hands on the door like he’s going to try brute force. Even through glaring at him, she can see how built he is. It’s not the worst plan in the world.
She sinks back to her pathetic paper towel mat to sulk, drawing her knees up against her chest and glowering as he works through his anger. He pounds on the door and hollers for help, more out of panic than anything else (which she knows because she went through the same stages a couple of hours earlier). Eventually he sighs, resting his head against the door for a long moment.
“This isn’t happening,” he says quietly.
“It wouldn’t be if some stupid asshole had put two and two together a little faster.”
He whirls around to glare at her. “I may only be a lowly security guard, but I’m not an idiot.”
“You’ll understand if I don’t take you at your word.”
“I’m not the only one who got stuck in here, you know. I was a little preoccupied with the damsel in distress to think about how exactly you got trapped.”
“Some rescue,” she scoffs.
They stare each other down for a long moment, both fuming, but then he huffs and shakes his head, moving to settle across from her.
“How long have you been in here?”
Without the added heat, she can tell his voice is hoarse from shouting.
“About two hours.” She pauses. “How’d you find me?”
“Saw the lights on in the security cameras, went to turn them off, heard something, came to check it out.” He exhales slowly, taking off his hat to reveal truly excellent hair-- thick and wavy and dark, hanging low over his forehead. He runs a hand through it anxiously, and Clarke pretends she doesn’t want to find out what that would feel like. She’s still mad at him. “Some rescue, indeed.”
She purses her lips. He at least sounds every bit as annoyed as she feels. “Your heart was in the right place, I guess.”
He snorts. “Thanks for the benefit of the doubt, but now we’re both stuck here.”
“Might be better than being stuck alone,” she admits. A hint of a smile flickers across his face, and she frowns harder, saying pointedly, “But not as good as a jailbreak.”
“Fair enough.”His lips twist into a crooked smile. “I’m Bellamy.”
“Clarke.”
He eyes the white coat pulled close around her. “Janitor?” He guesses, surprising a dry laugh out of her.
“What tipped you off?”
“I’m trained to notice things.”
“Clearly you need a little more practice.”
“Clearly,” he says, casting a rueful look at the closed door.
“Anyone in the security office going to miss you?” She asks hopefully, and he shakes his head.
“I was on my way out. I don’t even have my radio with me.” He pauses, groaning as he remembers, “And my roommate is at his boyfriend’s tonight, so he won’t miss me either.”
She sighs, letting her head tip back against the wall. “The universe is conspiring against me.”
“Why would the universe do that?” He asks, amusement in his voice. She shrugs one shoulder.
“You think if I knew what I did to piss it off, I’d be stuck here?”
“Good point.”
Silence falls between them as he checks out their surroundings, and she takes the opportunity to study him with an artist’s eye. In profile like this, he’s made of beautiful lines-- the soft curl of his hair, the sharp cut of his jaw, the tendons of his neck that stand out in his tension. He’s very, very attractive.
All of a sudden, she realizes he’s staring back at her.
“Sorry for biting your head off,” she finds herself saying. He offers her that crooked smile again.
“It was pretty well-deserved.”
“Maybe, but-- you didn’t exactly catch me at my best.”
“No?” He smiles a little fuller now, one that makes her cheeks flush inexplicably. “What’s your best?”
“Not hungry, angry, and freezing,” she shoots back. He ducks his head on a laugh.
“Sounds like someone I’d want to meet.” There’s a pause and she can practically see the wheels turning in his head. “Wait-- you’re cold?”
“It’s freezing in here,” she grumbles, defensive. “You’ll be cold too, in a couple of hours.”
She watches him take in her posture-- knees tight to her chest, hands clasped between her thighs to warm them-- and then he’s shedding his jacket.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m giving you my coat.”
“But you’ll need it,” she protests. He doesn’t even have long sleeves on underneath, and while she’s not opposed to a better view of his arms, she knows he’s going to want the layers as the night goes on.
“I run warm,” he shrugs, scooting until he’s sitting next to her and draping the jacket over her knees and arms. It’s heavy and warm and smells like cologne, and despite herself, she clutches it tighter.
“See?” He gloats, even as he reaches to gently tug the collar higher on her shoulder. “That’s better, right?”
“If you’re gonna be smug, I’m giving it back.”
Infuriatingly, he laughs. “Real threatening, Princess.”
She tilts her head to one side. “Princess?”
“Damsel in distress, trapped in a tower?” He nudges her with his elbow. “Sounds like a modern-day fairy tale to me.”
She scowls. “First of all, we’re in the basement. Second of all, you’re forgetting the part where the knight gets thrown in the dungeon too.”
“It’s a work in progress,” he grants. “But I think it’ll still have a happy ending.”
“Yeah?” She wiggles further down, her fingers curling into the fabric. “How do you know?”
“I’m pretty well-versed in fairy tales. I, uh--” He runs his hand through his hair again, self-conscious. Without the bulky coat on, she can plainly see the flex of his arms and Clarke-- probably at least half because of her empty stomach--nearly swoons. “I used to tell them to my sister when she was a kid.”
“She’s younger?”
“By six years, so I babysat a lot when I was old enough to be home alone.”
“That’s cute,” she says without thinking. He looks down at her, surprised and pleased.
“Is it?”
“Don’t get cocky.”
He fights his smile, striving for seriousness as he says, “I would never.”
She finds herself leaning against him more and more as they talk. He tells her about his sister at great length, wavering between pride and fond exasperation with each story. She tells him about her modest internet success-- she has a few thousand followers on her how-to-art YouTube channel and it’s hugely gratifying even if it eats up all the free time she doesn’t have.
He pulls a pen out of his jacket pocket and demands she teach him how to draw something, and that opens up a whole new world of possibilities. They play tic tac toe and M.A.S.H., and when they’ve dried up all the ink, he teaches her how to fold cranes with the paper towels.
“You can kind of see a flower if you look at it from a certain angle,” she says, trying to glare the sad folding job into submission.
“Here,” he says, swapping his perfect crane for her pathetic attempt. “You just have to--” he does something complicated, and then-- “Voila.”
She plucks it from his hand, their fingers brushing, and gapes as she inspects it from every angle. She’d been so certain it was a lost cause. “Witchcraft,” she breathes.
He snorts. “More like hours and hours of practice.”
“How’d you learn to do this, anyway?”
“Worked as a waiter at this really upscale place downtown. We used to do this with hundreds of napkins every night.”
“That’s insane.”
“That’s why I don’t work there anymore.” He pauses. “This gig is better for my schedule anyway. I’m taking night classes for my master’s down at the community college.”
“That’s cool.” She turns toward him a little more, her knees bumping his. “What’s your master’s?”
“Education. I did history in undergrad, had a part-time thing running camps at the museum over the summer, and decided I wanted to do more of that.”
“Wow,” she grins. “I’m terrible with kids, so-- better you than me.”
He smirks, and it's too much to take in when he's this close. “I get that a lot.”
It takes her a long moment to tear her eyes from meeting his gaze, to drop them to her lap, clear her throat, and say, “Okay, teach. I want to try this one more time.”
“Alright.” He rips a new towel off, handing it to her. “So fold it in half--”
“And then the other way.”
“And then this way.” She pauses, staring at the creased paper. “And then like this?”
“No, no.” He reaches over, placing his hands over hers as he shows her how to get the sides to fold in. Her heart beats a little faster. “Just like that,” he says softly. She blinks down at his hands covering hers, tries to comprehend what's happening.
And then she frowns. “Are your fingernails turning blue?”
“What?” He moves as if to snatch his hands away but she catches one with hers before he can.
“What the-- Bellamy, your fingers are freezing.”
“I’m fine .”
She traps his hand between both of hers, which aren’t all that much warmer, rubbing back and forth to get some friction going. She even lifts it to her mouth to exhale warm air across their skin before she even realizes what she’s doing.
Her eyes dart to his face, but he’s staring at their linked hands as if in a daze.
She lets go.
“You should take your jacket back,” she says, shoving it toward him. He pushes it back.
“No way. You’ve been down here longer than I have.”
She rolls her eyes, a weak attempt to cover the fact that the cold air is already biting at her skin. “Take the damn jacket, Bellamy.”
He huffs in annoyance, taking the jacket, and the next thing she knows she’s tucked under his arm, the coat draped across the both of them. He's very solid, she realizes, all broad planes and firm muscle. Then again, his whole body is rigid, like he’s aware that he might have just crossed a line.
“Body heat,” he grunts.
She swallows and lets herself nestle into his side. When she does, he relaxes. “Good thinking.”
Clarke doesn’t mean to fall asleep in Bellamy’s arms, but-- they are really nice arms, and she is pretty tired. And while they’re both cold, it is significantly warmer huddled together.
She awakens around two in the morning to find that she has slumped uncomfortably onto his chest, and that she’s pressing him into the shelf at his side. Groggy, grumpy, and achy, she twists away so that she’s not putting so much of her weight on him, scooting so that she can lie all the way down on the floor.
He makes a disgruntled noise at her the absence of her warmth. She can’t tell if he’s fully awake or not, but she tugs at his sleeve anyway until he slides down beside her. He buries his face in her hair, his arm wrapping around her waist beneath her lab coat and tightening until they’re practically melded together. If she were more awake, she might feel weirder about it, but in the middle of the night like this, the strangeness of it all is nothing more than a glimmer on the outskirts of her mind. Far off on the horizon, with an ocean of sleep separating her from it.
What's infinitely more pressing is that his jacket has fallen haphazardly over them. Not wanting to remove herself from his grasp, she wiggles only her fingertips, finally catching ahold of the jacket and pulling it, bit by bit, into place.
The next time she wakes, she can’t reach her phone to see what time it is. Nor can she move much from Bellamy’s steadfast hold.
“Couldn’t you have skipped arm day once or twice?” She grumbles, maneuvering gently until one of her hands is free.
6:04, her phone says. Two more hours, at least.
She presses her forehead against his neck, her groan turning into a sigh of relief when the warmth of his skin meets the cold slope of her nose. She only feels a little bad when he goes into a full-body shiver. Mostly, she’s preoccupied with discovering the other places they’re intertwined.
She waits for the awkwardness to set in, but she can't bring herself to feel it like she thinks she ought to. Not when the only places she's warm are the places they're touching-- his legs a heavy blanket over her toes, one of his knees wedged between hers as if seeking escape from the cold concrete floor. The hand at her back has slipped under the hem of her blouse, hers both clenched in the front of his shirt.
The steady hammering of his pulse starts to pick up as he stirs. Clarke can feel its thrumming where her face is buried in his neck.
It’s all very… intimate.
“Time is it?” He mumbles.
“Six.”
A grunt of acknowledgment seems all he can muster.
The hand on the small of her back flexes, a different kind of shiver racing up her spine at the movement. He runs his knuckles against her spine in apology.
“This okay?”
Clarke nods, the movement causing her nose to drag against his pulse point, her lips inadvertently brushing his skin. Bellamy, for lack of a better term, freezes.
“Sorry,” she whispers. Her breath hits his collarbone in a gentle, warm puff.
“Don’t be.”
She thinks the gruffness in his voice might only be seventy five percent left over from sleep, and the idea makes her smile.
Bellamy removes his hand so he can reach the shelf above them, searching for his phone. Clarke makes an unhappy noise and burrows closer to him.
“What are you doing?”
“Setting an alarm for eight.” There’s a smile in his voice and his free hand finds its way to her hair, petting her in apology for moving.
“Why?”
“Because that’s when the door will unlock.”
Her head snaps back so she can look him in the eye. “It’ll unlock on its own? We don’t have to wait for someone to find us?”
“Nope. We can bust ourselves out. You can call in late for work and nobody has to know.” He pauses. “Well, I might tell my supervisor. She could probably set some kind of override so this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
"Something good might as well come out of this," Clarke grumbles. "At least nobody else will be privy to my humiliation."
"What, you don't want your coworkers finding you cuddling with a security guard?" He teases, his hand finding her skin once more.
"I was thinking more of getting locked in," she says, pinching his arm. He squeezes her waist in retaliation and she yelps, flinching further into him. "Besides," she says, suddenly brave. "There are far more compromising things they could walk in on than us cuddling. Making out, for instance."
He tenses again, blinking rapidly as he processes. She laughs gently, pressing her fingertips into the muscle jumping in his jaw. "Just a suggestion," she assures him. "It's fine if you don't want to, but we should keep close either way."
"And if I do want to?" He asks.
He's got husky morning voice, a crooked smile, and perfectly tousled curls. She'd think she was dreaming if she weren't so damn cold.
"Then you should make a move," she teases, using the fingers tangled in his shirt to tug him down. And then he's kissing her, thorough and sleepy and warm, even if his lips are a little cool. It's slow at first, like he thinks she might pull away even though she basically told him what to do. But when she deepens it, licks into his mouth, nips playfully at his lip, he lets out this startled little laugh and gets with the program.
He rolls them over so her body is covering his, his arms banding around her waist to hold her in place. Like she'd even think to move.
"You want me on top?" She teases.
"Do you need a reminder how cold this floor is?" His tone is disgruntled but his lips are pulled back in a smile under hers. "It's called chivalry, Clarke."
She hums, slipping a hand under his head to cradle it, protect it from the hard, freezing floor. "You're getting better at this rescue thing."
"What can I say?' He noses at a spot behind her ear that makes her go weak in the knees. "I'm a fast learner."
They make out until Bellamy starts shivering beneath her, and then they stand up and make out some more. Clarke herself isn't as warm as she'd like to be, but her heart rate is definitely up. She just got to second base with a virtual stranger at her place of work. She hardly recognizes herself.
"So is this the worst first date you've ever been on?" He murmurs after a while, and she dissolves into laughter. His head drops to her shoulder; this time she can feel the smile he's hiding.
"I've had worse," she admits, tugging on his curls until he picks his head up to meet her eyes. When he does, she kisses him soft and sweet. "But let's maybe do something else next time."
"Location is key," he agrees. His thumbs are rubbing circles into her hips, the only place they're still touching, and it's driving her a little bit crazy. "In fact, I know a pretty good breakfast spot, if you're interested?"
Her stomach growls, right on cue, and she groans. "I'm interested. I'm very interested."
"Cool." His smile is wide and bright. "It's a date."
Under the circumstances, that's the second-best she can imagine hearing. The first, of course, comes moments later: a mechanical click that can only mean one thing.
She grins back at him and takes his hand, pulling him with her out into the world.
Freedom never tasted so sweet.