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Bellamy sank down on the well-worn couch next to Clarke, handing her a cup of tea and thoughtfully tapping his chin. They were both wearing their pj's, heedless of the time. "I bet you won't..." Bellamy began, and Clarke fidgeted in anticipation. "Go to the store dressed exactly as you are now, and buy the most random item you can think of."
"Oh I won't, now, will I?" Clarke responded, grinning slyly. "Well, I bet you won't consume all of whatever I buy."
"Consume? What are you, princess, some sort of robot-doctor? Oh wait..." He trailed off as Clarke punched him in the arm, lightly but not too lightly, letting him know to steer clear of the topic.
Either Bellamy didn't understand the delicate form of communication through punches, or he chose to ignore it, pressing on. (And Clarke knew it wasn't the former; Bellamy was so accustomed to understanding whatever she had to say that sometimes they just spoke through glances, finding words unnecessary.) "But really, Clarke. It's your life- do what you wanna do. Your mom loves you enough to look past whatever major you choose."
Feeling gratified, Clarke gave him a small smile, deciding to talk with her mother in the morning. "Yeah. Okay. Sure. Maybe I will switch classes, but no matter what, thank you, Bell."
"Of course, Clarke." He smiled back, his grin slowly turning into a smirk. "Anything for the princess." That got him another punch, but there was no anger in it this time, only done for the sake of principle. "About our bet though: You have to buy something edible, right? 'Cause I'm not eating a whole can of shaving cream."
"You just said edible, and you think consume is bad?"
"I know my fair share of SAT words," Bellamy replied, smiling. "Now, again I ask you: It does have to be edible, correct?"
"Bell, I woulda thought that a bottle of shampoo would have been the better example. Because can you imagine? Bleh! But I won't make you eat shaving cream or soap, I love you too much for that, Jeez."
"You love me, huh?"
Clarke, thrown off guard by the question, faltered, the easy grin sliding off her face. Realizing that her response was so prolonged that the atmosphere was becoming awkard, she opened her mouth just as Bellamy blurted out an apology.
"Sorry Clarke, that was out of line, I don't know where it came from." Clarke could tell he was lying: He knew exactly where it came from, and so did she- his heart. But considering she could've opened up to him just now, could have told him truthfully she felt the same, that she loved him too, but hadn't, justified his response.
"No Bell, I do love you. You're my best friend- how could I not love you?"
He shrugged, pretending to look smug. "Well, we both know the day that someone cannot love Bellamy Blake is the day we should all be dreading- the apocalypse."
Clarke could tell he was making a joke to deflect the tension, but also found herself smiling, glad the topic was over. There would be a time, eventually, where Clarke and Bellamy talked about the feelings they so obviously had for each other. Just not today.
-•-•-•-•-
Clarke placed the glass bottle down on the checkout counter, smiling at the clinking notice it made. She had considered going through the express line, before realizing that only one line was open. All things considered, they had been lucky that the drug/convince store had been open at all- It was almost midnight. On the drive over, she had exclaimed over the lateness of the hour, but they had no reason to go to bed. They could sleep all day tomorrow if they had to.
"M'am?" The poor check-outer stuck behind the counter asked, gathering Clarke's attention.
After pausing a beat to long, she responded on a huge exhale: "I'm sorry, yes? Oh, and I am in my pj's, but my roommate dared me too. This isn't as weird as it looks, sorry to bother you."
The cashier looked exhausted. "M'am," she said again, in the same monotone voice. "No need to apologize. Would you like a membership card? 10% off your next purchase."
"Oh, no, no...thank you." Clarke answered, feeling a sudden burst of excitement, instead of the sleepiness she should've been feeling: She had, after all, been up since 7:30 that morning.
As soon as she saw Bellamy, leaning against the hood of the car waiting for her, she felt her excitement double.
"So? What torturous thing do you have for me today?" He asked her in a thick fake accent that Clarke couldn't quite place.
She smacked his arm, then handed him the bag, watching his reaction.
Bellamy tore into the bag, looking up incredulously after he'd eagerly read the label. "Hot sauce? Really princess?"
"Hey! We made a deal! And I for sure did my part of it! That cashier looked at me like I had three eyes and four arms. 'M'am?' She said it just like that, Bell. How creepy is that?"
"Woah woah woah, Princess! Deep breaths, mmh? A, I never said you didn't do your part, and B, she sounds real scary. Traumatic, even."
"Your sarcasm is evident, but I'll have you know it was terrifying! This woman was practically a witch! And not a witch like Hermione, but a.." Clarke went down to a whisper, "...a real witch with a b."
"A witch-bah? What the hell is a witch-bah?"
"Language!" She scolded, scowling. "You know I hate cursing!"
"Sorry, Princess, forgot."
"Yeah right. You just said it to get a rise out of me, which I do NOT appreciate."
"Well, if I'm eating this hot sauce - Or is it drinking? Anyways, if I'm to CONSUME this horribly disgusting concoction, the very least I can do is 'get a rise out of' you."
Clarke took a deep breath, clearly trying to respond to all the different ways their conversation had gone to. "Okay," she finally said. "I'm going to use bullet points because the alphabet is boring. Also, there's no reason for the letters to be in the particular order they are, so why bother?"
Bellamy paused, digesting this certain piece of information. "Um, you know what, Princess? I'm going to pretend that I didn't heard that last bit because I do not need to be confused for the rest of my life."
After a second, in which Clarke informed him she realized the lack of reason in the alphabet order on Tumblr, Bellamy prompted "Your bullet points?"
"Oh, yes. Thanks for reminding me. Bullet point number one: A witch-bah? Anyone with at least an inkling of common sense could determine that the 'B' sound would replace the 'W' sound, resulting in the word..." Clarke lowered her voice to a whisper, "...bitch. Oh, I really shouldn't have said that."
"Clarke. You're in college. You're old. I know cussing goes against your morals, but you were explaining something to me. I practically asked, and you were just being helpful. So it doesn't count."
Bellamy watched as his Princess nodded at him. "Thanks. You know, after my father passed away, I just needed something to hate, to swear against, so I wouldn't take it out on Mom. It was hard enough for her already. I needed something that was 'bad,' something I could correct people about often enough that they would eventually just stop, so..." Clarke trailed off.
Bellamy finished for her. "So you chose cursing." He HAD noticed, thank you very much, the 'to swear against' joke he could have made while she was talking, but he wasn't the complete jerk Clarke was constantly calling him jokingly - He was a decent friend, and smart enough to not interrupt Clarke. Sometimes people just had to let things out. And he for sure wasn't going to stoop that low, joke wise. He did have standards. "So that's where your hatred of bad words came from."
"Yep." Clarke let her fingers trail over the hood of the car, cooled by the quiet night, as they lapsed into a comfortable silence in front of the convince store. "Oh!" Clarke suddenly screeched, causing Bellamy to jump about three feet in the air. "Bullet point number two: I don't know if you remember, it was like ten minutes ago, but you said, and here I roughly quote, 'If I'm to consume this blah blah blah here was where you started complaining.' I know you said consume to make fun of me, but instead of saying you were gonna consume, or something like that, you said if you were TO consume. That's practically archaic!"
Bellamy began to make a feeble response when Clarke cut him off. "Bullet point number three:You do not need, as you quoted and I said, to get a rise out of me. We already said- cashier was terrorizing, I did my part fair and square," she said, enunciating the last three of words of her sentence with pokes to Bellamy's chest.
"Are you done yet, Princess?" Bellamy asked her after a few seconds of silence.
"No I am not, thank you for asking! Bullet point number four: It's drink, obviously. Hot sauce, as said in the name, is a sauce. A liquid used to complement a food."
"Okay. Whatever you say."
"Well, NOW I'm done but only because there's nothing left to say, not because you asked if I was. Now are you drink that or not?"
"Don't you want to go back to the house?" Now Bellamy was just putting it off, but hot sauce? An entire bottle of hot sauce?
Clarke sent him a sickly sweet smile. "Whatever environment makes you the most comfortable. But Blake, I know you're procrastinating. You can't lie to me! And it's an apartment, not a house."
"Just get in the car."
-•-•-•-•-
It was exactly 1:36 when they pulled into the parking lot outside their dorm. Saturday, or wow, Sunday, now, Clarke realized with a start as she got out of the car. She didn't mind the lateness of the hour, she was just hoped they wouldn't need to rejuvenate all day. She did have to study at least a little bit tomorrow. Today, she corrected herself.
Even though she was rightfully a little confused about the weekday, Clarke was wide awake. She bounced up the stairs to their apartment, Bellamy putting his hand on the small of her back to steady her.
"Calm down, Crazy!" he laughed, quoting from one of her favorite movies. 'I don't want to see some dumb dancing movie,' he had told her when on movie night she held up her personal DVD of Silver Linings Playbook. Clarke had managed to convince him it wasn't dumb, that it had Jennifer Lawrence in it and that was where her argument ended, but Bellamy knew that his princess worshiped J-Law so finally he crumbled.
Clarke smirked. "I see you've finally given in to the supreme glory of Jen."
"One quote, Princess. I haven't given into anything."
"Mh."
-•-•-•-•-
Finally, finally, finally, they were outside the door.
"Hurry up," Clarke ordered, prodding Bellamy in the back with her finger as he tried to fit the key into the lock.
"Yeah, yeah," Bellamy replied, then opened the door with a flourish and a "Your majesty."
Clarke huffed, but bustled inside, taking the paper bag to their kitchen table. She removed the bottle, holding it out to him. "No more procrastinating, Bell. Just do it."
"Yeah yeah yeah," he muttered, twisting the cap off the container. "If I die, tell Octavia I love her."
"Haha. Drink."
Bellamy took a tentative sip. Making a face, he gulped down another. And another. And another.
Clarke squinted at the rapidly emptying bottle. "Halfway there," she murmured, patting his shoulder. After about ten seconds, she renewed her update with a "Three fourths of the way, I think...Oh, yeah, at least that much."
Finally, Bellamy set the empty bottle down on the wooden table with a clink, a noise so similar to when Clarke bought it she had momentary déjà vu. Pushing past her befuddlement, she looked up at him.
"You came through, Bellamy," Clarke said in mock seriousness, then started wheezing from her own laughter. "High five, champ!" She managed to get out once her laughter died down a little, holding up a palm lazily and looking up again. This time her eyes found his pale face, his nauseated expression, and Clarke felt herself being whipped into 'doctor mode,' as Bellamy liked to call it.
Lowering her hand, she pushed him into a chair, heedless of his feeble "I'm fine, Clarke, just give a second to pass through my digestion."
"Bell. Digesting that could take anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours. And you look sick. Do you feel sick?" Clarke paused, then clarified. "Like you're about to throw up."
"No. Sort of. Clarke, I'm fine. I can hold my liquor just fine, and really, how different is it?"
"Are they, not is it." Clarke reprimanded, ignoring his eye roll. "I think we need to go brush your teeth, to get the taste away."
"We?" Bellamy gave Clarke a half-hearted smile. "Since when is teeth brushing a joint activity?"
"Fine, Bellamy. I'll make you a glass of ice water, just the way you like it, with six cubes, picky, picky. Anyways, while I do that, you brush your teeth. So, come on, bathroom."
They'd moved in together at the beginning of the year, when Octavia had moved out of the apartment to go to a college thirty minutes away ("Not too far," Bellamy had explained after Octavia had excitedly told her the news), and Clarke had needed somewhere closer to the campus (for extra sleep purposes).
At first, of course, they'd driven each other up a wall, but now they were good friends. "Domestic," Octavia had called them when she'd visited at Christmas, a idea that had really messed Clarke up. Couples were domestic, right?
"Clarke?" Bellamy's voice drew her out of her mental debate- Were they a couple already? Because then they'd be able to skip the declarations of love and just get to the (hopefully prolonged forever) honeymoon period.
"Yeah? How're you feeling?"
"Honestly? Like I just drank a whole bottle of hot sauce."
Clarke sighed, exasperated, at his smirk. "So better, I take it." She handed him the six-cubed glass.
"Well I still feel a little like I'm about to throw up."
"Sorry." Clarke flopped down on the couch and blew a strand of hair out of her face. "This is mainly my fault, isn't it?"
"Only fifty percent. I did suggest the dare, after all. And do the actual drinking part of it."
"Yeah? Well, I'll go heat up my tea and your hot chocolate with three marshmallows- again, picky!- while you come up with another dare for me."
As Clarke walked to the kitchen, she realized that maybe, when the time came, she wouldn't mind the declarations of love that much, as long as they came in the very near future.