Work Text:
Clarke wasn’t having a good day. She hadn’t had time for a shower in the morning because Roma from down the hall just had to change up her schedule and start taking her infamously long showers in the morning. Sure, there were other showers, but every other girl started to take just as long as Roma and Clarke soon realized she was going to be late. So she squoze out what little toothpaste was left in the tube (a brutal reminder of how little money she had and a warning not to waste any more on booze) and went to class, feeling like she smelled funky throughout lectures and pop quizzes.
And then, of fucking course, she got a bad grade on an essay in the only class she was really struggling with, Shakespearean literature. Maybe a C- wasn’t that bad of a grade but it was kind of a slap in the face, since she had actually worked hard on it and considered herself halfway decent at understanding what the fuck Shakespeare was trying to get at, unlike half the class who thought it would be an easy grade.
Work was probably the nail in the metaphorical coffin of a failure of a day. Every once in a while a big party would come in and fuck up the normal tips a waitress got, and today was Clarke’s lucky day. She basically had to babysit the group 20+ of frat boys and skip every other table thrown at her, because she was so damn busy getting them beer (who drinks beer on a monday) and making sure their several extra-large everything-but-the-healthy-stuff pizzas were right. Gratuity was jack shit, because, hello, pizza costs jack shit on a college campus and there was no way the cheap beer was making the restaurant any money. They even had the nerve to leave her a pitiful tip consisting of a few crumpled ones and a couple nickles.
And, yeah, Finn kept texting her. She was willing it to not annoy her, to not let stupid jackass Finn get under her skin but he was. With every little ping of her phone she wanted to punch something harder and harder until she snapped at the freshman busgirl very loudly and very bitchily to just stop talking for one fucking second, would you?
And she did it all without a single goddamn cup of coffee throughout the entire day.
All Clarke really wanted to do was scream her head off, or drink until she blacked out, but she had hardly enough money to buy a new tube of toothpaste, much less a bottle of whiskey, so instead she went to the gym. It wasn’t really a form of entertainment, but it was free, and stomping on the treadmill until the back of her tank was soaked through with her sweat was better than any family therapy she’d been to with her mother.
Speaking of her mother, next week was the anniversary of her father’s death. Maybe she was pre-stressing but she wasn’t looking forward to driving out for dinner with her grandparents and then driving back in time for an eight A.M. class, all the while stewing over the comments her grandmother would make about boyfriends and grades and her choice in taking art classes.
Clarke had been trying to teach herself to compartmentalise, but it wasn’t really working, so she ran a mile and then another one, just to be on the safe side.
By the time Clarke finally made it back to her dorm room, she was too exhausted to even turn off the light. She could just see Raven and someone else out the corner of her eye, but it was probably just Monroe, Raven’s girlfriend. Clarke threw her bag on top of her desk and took her bra off without bothering with her tank before collapsing face first onto her very comfortable and very loving bed.
“Uh, Clarke,” Raven said, clearing her throat. “This is-”
In response, Clarke threw her bra at Raven, who made a very dignified sound Clarke could barely understand before falling asleep.
~*~*~*~
“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” Raven told her, gently shaking her shoulder.
Clarke pried her eyes open and squinted at Raven. Her roommate really wasn’t a gentle person -- Clarke very clearly remembered the beginning of the year, when Raven threatened to shove and open an umbrella up her ass if she didn’t turn her goddamn mother-fucking alarm off, please. To say the least, Clarke was suspicious.
“I went on a coffee and donut run,” Raven told her, holding a box of chocolate donuts and, yes, a cup of coffee in front of Clarke.
Clarke slowly sat up, wary, and took the hot coffee from her. “Did someone die?”
“Well, our plans for last night, for one,” Raven said. She sat at the foot of Clarke’s bed and practically inhaled several donuts.
“Oh my God.” Clarke hit her forehead with her free hand and rubbed her eyes. “Raven, I am so sorry, I completely forgot-”
Raven waved a hand and said, “Don’t worry about it. I know you’ve been kind of stressed lately, and I kind of threw that at you anyway.”
Clarke did the math in her head and groaned. “How are you so chill about this? I was, like, two hours late!”
“Three,” Raven corrects. She steals a sip of Clarke’s coffee and continues. “It’s not my ego that’s wounded, though. Bellamy was looking pretty personally offended when he left last night.”
“Shit,” Clarke says and falls back against her pillows. “That’s the cute one, too, isn’t it?”
Raven nods solemnly as Clarke groans. They are silent for a minute or two as Clarke comes up with a game plan. From the pictures Raven had shown her, Bellamy was a prime candidate for a drinking buddy and drunken makeouts. Maybe some careless flirting and a few bangs, even, and Raven assures her he’s nice and won’t cut her into bite-sized pieces. Well, probably won’t.
“Okay,” she finally says. “Okay. Put his number in my phone and I’ll text him when I get out of the very long shower I plan on taking.”
Raven smirks at her as she picks up her towel and shower caddy and pretty much wobbles to the bathroom because running four miles yesterday really wasn’t that good of an idea. There’s no line, because it’s literally twelve in the afternoon (of all days not to have classes, tuesdays are not the best), so she cranks up the heat and bathes until her skin turns red and her shower time rivals that of Roma.
Raven is doing homework when Clarke gets back, wrapped up in a towel. She quickly dresses but can’t find the bra she’d had on last night.
“Have you seen my bra?” she asks her roommate, who smirks in an unhelpful way. Clarke scoffs at her and just puts on a different one because, hey, she owns more than one.
Raven had put in the new number as BELLAMY with a series of inappropriate emojis. Clarke’s too lazy to fix it so she sends him, Hey this is Clarke, Raven’s roommate.
The answer is surprisingly fast.
Hey Clarke, this is Bellamy. Didn’t really get a chance to introduce myself before you started throwing your bra at me.
Clarke snorts at that.
I def threw it at Raven.
Well, it DEF hit me in the face.
Clarke blushes, which is stupid because he isn’t even in the room. But she’s thinking about the few miles she ran in it and how disgusting it probably was.
“My bra hit him in the face and you didn’t think to tell me?” Clarke asks Raven, who’s suddenly laughing at her.
“You’re an awful person and I’m never talking to you again.”
My bad. I was pretty exhausted last night.
Yeah, I could tell. And no worries -- it’s a nice bra.
You took time to study my bra?
I’m looking at it right now.
“You let him have my bra?” Clarke shrieks, throwing a pillow at Raven. She dodges it easily and laughs at Clarke again.
“Had to make sure you’d text him,” Raven says with a wink. “And what happened to never talking to me again?”
I’m sure you look great in… what is this? Teal?
Okay, that’s fifty shades of shady.
Sorry, sorry. Raven said, exact words, “You two should bang so take her bra.”
Hmm, that’s something she would do. She also has a messed up sense of logic sometimes, so I’ll believe you.
I’m not really sure what to do with it. It’s kind of staring me down.
It’s probably grown sentient from all the sweat. I ran like a billion miles in it yesterday.
Okay, that was so not flirting. Or sexy. At all. Clarke is a little rusty.
Do you want me to wash it? I’m about to do laundry.
What a gentleman. That’d be great, actually.
So when do I get to return it?
Whenever, really. I don’t have class today.
I was actually thinking maybe we could hang out. Maybe somewhere you can’t completely ignore my existence?
In my defense, I was really tired.
Ok, ok. You want to get something to drink friday?
I actually have work until ten.
And after work?
I’ll probably complain a lot about work, but I’m free.
Great. We can complain about work and be grumpy together.
Clarke actually laughs out loud because it’s so weird. One day she’s throwing her bras at people, the next she’s making plans to get drunk with them.
“We’re going drink somewhere friday,” she tells Raven.
“See? Told you you’d like him.”
~*~*~*~
When they actually meet in person, they bicker like an old married couple. But it’s a good bickering, she guesses, because when he kisses her -- really, really kisses her and it’s one hell of a kiss -- there’s a spark she hasn’t felt for a while and it lights her up.
Clarke knows she wants to see him again, but she really has to, since her favorite pair of panties is balled up somewhere in the back of his car.