I AM SO SORRY FOR THE WAIT HERE TAKE THIS EXTRA SUPER LONG CHAPTER AND FORGIVE ME PLEASE.

When Wells stepped off the bus it was raining thin, nearly invisible rain drops that were cold and pricked like pins. Still, Clarke felt a warm smile bloom and grow across her face.

"Hey, you," she said.

"Some Spring Break," Wells said and hoisted his duffel over his shoulder. "I could have gone to Cancun."

"Don't hold that over my head." She nudged his shoulder with her knuckles.

"Oh, I plan to," he teased and threw a strong arm, just as she remembered, across her shoulders. "You're lucky I wrapped this up," he said and lifted a flat, square-shaped thing, like a painting, up in front of him. It was neatly wrapped up in garbage bags. "What's it for, anyway?"

"Just for me. I forgot it back home," Clarke shrugged it off and looked down. There was a slight tear in the corner, but she couldn't help but think if rain trickled in and mixed in with the paint it would be all the better. "Now come on, we've gotta walk."

Wells rolled his eyes but lugged forward. "I'm not in Kansas anymore, am I?"

The walk to campus went from picturesque to miserable about halfway through, and Clarke was cold and grumpy. Her hoodie wasn't doing much to guard from the slaps of rain, stinging and harsh, that came sideways at her eyes. And she felt more than just cold and uncomfortable, but that the outward cold and discomfort seeped inside and sloshed around. Suddenly she wasn't sure about mixing her old life with her new one. There already seemed like such a rickety, long bridge to gap between them. How could she reconcile them both?

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she hoisted the big garbage bag wrapped square thing under her shoulder and teetered as it threatened to slip out of her grasp.

B: You have a friend in town?

She was about to lock her screen and slide her phone back into her pocket when it buzzed again.

Octavia: Surprise dinner plans tonight!

Octavia: I'm awesome, you can thank me later.

Octavia: Tell Wells to come armed with embarrassing stories from debate club or whatever.

Clarke shoved her phone in her pocket. Two Blakes texting her at once was too much to handle, especially while balancing a two-by-four slippery square under her arm in the rain. And Wells had been in town all of twenty minutes. Great.

When they trudged into her room, the cold rain had turned into a warm and clinging sheen over her skin and inside her clothes and every movement felt like slogging through the jungle.

Raven and Octavia instantly shot to attention. "You look like a wet rat," Raven said.

Clarke promptly started to shed as much clothing as was acceptable, slinking around Wells and not bothering with introductions. He knew Raven anyway. Navigating the narrow room was difficult with four people crowding it, and it made it all the more humid and sticky.

Thankfully Wells knew her predilection for completely bypassing customary social niceties and reached out a hand to Octavia. "Hi, I'm-"

"Wells Jaha. In the flesh." Octavia lifted herself onto her knees atop Clarke's bed and bounced. "I've heard about you," she said, sizing him up and with a daring, teasing gleam in her voice.

"All good things, I hope," Wells said diplomatically.

Raven laughed. "Even the bad things turn out to be heroic, sacrificial good things in the end."

Clarke glanced up from pulling off her socks and though she was looking at the back of his head, she could tell he was embarrassed. His shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

"Enough," Clarke said, reprimanding Raven. Raven fell back on her bed and mock pouted. "Come on, I'll show you to the guy's bathroom and just…give me your clothes after and I'll throw them in the dryer," she said to Wells, yanking a towel from on top of her wardrobe and pulling open the door.

"Make sure it's the untainted one!" Raven called out as the door swung shut behind them. Clarke was able to throw her the finger right before it closed.

"What's that supposed to mean," she heard Octavia say.

"Nothing," was Raven's short reply.

Raven knew Wells, but not well. She knew Wells in the way everyone who went to their school knew him. As the headmaster's son. He wore that badge with pride rather than as a stain, and he had been popular, smart, athletic, an all around all-star. A good kid. Of course that brought on more leery looks and whispers than if he had been the rebellious stoner who's mother was the headmaster. The cool kids tolerated him while keeping their distance, and the scholarship kids downright detested him. They chalked every achievement he'd earned up to special treatment on account of his mom. Clarke wouldn't dare admit she'd seen it happen once or twice, most of all to him. She never wanted him to know. Wells had a special chip on his shoulder about his achievements being his very own. And now he was at Georgetown determined not to be his parents, while Clarke was out here determined to run away from hers. Wells seemed like he was doing a better job. Clarke didn't really know what she was doing.

By half past seven they were all dry and smattered around the various surfaces in Clarke's room. The rain was coming down hard and tap tap tapped against their flimsy window. Raven had broken out the secret beers and Octavia was strumming on Monty's guitar, which she'd borrowed since he was giving her lessons. At some point Clarke felt omniscient, like she were floating above them and watching from the outside in. And she watched as Wells settled in and how his halfway smile, unsure and cautious, turned into a laugh within minutes. She smiled to herself as she dropped her head to pick at her fingernails. She smiled to herself at the whole atmosphere of the thing, and she could envision it forever. Maybe this is what life could be, and if that were the case, things would be good.

And then there was a knock at the door. Clarke jumped up to open it.

"Ready to go?"

It was Bellamy, car keys in hand, jacket on, looking somewhere on a spectrum between anticipatory and annoyed.

Clarke stared at him, blinked a few times. She just remembered she had never answered his text from earlier. "Go where?"

Somewhere behind her, chords went haywire along the guitar strings as Octavia piped up. "Surprise! Guess who secured a car for the night?" Octavia thumped over to the door and balanced her chin on Clarke's shoulder, practically batting her eyelashes.

"You didn't know?" Bellamy said, looking straight at Clarke.

Clarke wanted to crawl under her skin and waste away. Bellamy was looking at her. She was looking at Bellamy. Octavia was looking at her looking at Bellamy. Wells and Raven were probably looking at Bellamy and Octavia looking at her and everything was a tense, horrible moment to navigate.

"No," she managed to say, raspy, like she'd forgotten how to speak.

"Do either of you know the definition of surprise?" Octavia said and turned away. Her tone had turned sour, displeased with the reaction she was getting. "Wells, you like pizza and beer, right? You're a guy. Guys like that sort of thing."

"Wherever you're getting your guy facts from is a viable source because I can absolutely confirm this to be true," Wells said, gentlemanly as always. Perceptive, as always. Knowing what was needed from him in a given situation, as always. Octavia beamed and hooked her arm around his, leading the charge towards the outside world and dinner. Wells shot Clarke a knowing look, one that raised questions but also steadfast and used to her moods. Bellamy, in the same awkwardly tense state as Clarke, stepped aside as Octavia pulled Wells through the doorway and into the hall. His arms were crossed, same as hers, and his jaw was set tight and square. Still they stood, half looking at each other and half looking away.

"Didn't know Clarke had a friend or didn't know said friend was a dude?" Raven said to Bellamy as she squeezed by them. She patted him condescendingly, maybe a little consolingly, on the shoulder. "This should be fun."

Bellamy's tense jawed stoicism continued throughout the entire car ride, which was longer than their normal ones because they were driving two towns over to Mount Weather. Octavia had canvased the area and insisted there was a pizza place that not only served the best pizza outside of D.C. but also five dollar pitchers of beer and adorned their plastic red and white checkered tablecloths with whole peanuts for the shucking. Not only that but it was called Cerberus Pizza and she went on and on about how Bellamy better buck up from whatever grad school drama had gotten his panties in a bunch (Raven snickered at that) because he would absolutely love this place.

Thankfully, Clarke scooted all the way into the booth so that she was up against the wood paneling of the wall and Wells was opposite her. Octavia and Raven flanked them and Bellamy got the head of the table, at a rickety chair that he was too big for so his legs sprawled out in all directions. He looked uncouth, unkempt, as compared to Wells, whose casual but neat button down was rolled up above his elbows and who sat up straight. She wanted to ignore Bellamy, because somehow she knew that either Wells or Bellamy would be the odd one out in this situation and she wanted Wells to feel welcome, missed, and wanted. She wanted to be a good friend to him, like he had been to her a thousand times over, and the only way she could do that was to give him her undivided and devoted attention. She wanted to ignore Bellamy.

But she couldn't. Not completely. Not when she felt his eyes trained on her while Wells, at Octavia's beckoning, told stories of Clarke at seven and twelve and seventeen.

"I kid you not. So there she is, standing over me and berating me for reading Harry Potter because it isn't practical. We're in fourth grade, I'm trying to read about some hero wizards at a magical boarding school. What's Clarke reading? Anne Frank." Wells' delivery was expert, the girls dissolved into a fit of laughter, and Clarke caught the corners of Bellamy's mouth sneak up as he played with the cheap plastic cup that held his beer and looked down into it.

"What about the first time she got drunk?" Octavia practically begged.

Clarke's eyes widened and Wells beamed at her, but waited until she let her face fall in resignation and just put her head in her hands and waved her hand in surrender. There was no use fighting off Octavia and Raven, greedy as they were to get their hands on the Clarke Griffin archive of embarrassment.

Just then, the pizza, steaming hot, was being delivered to their table and she was forced to lift her hung head of shame from the sticky tablecloth and sit up straight. They all reached and grabbed for slices to plop on their plates.

"Well, we were on a field trip for Model U.N…" Wells began his fateful story, but paused when he looked down at his slice and grimaced.

"Here," Clarke said and waved him over so he held out his plate to her. She neatly picked all of the olives off of his piece and placed them on her own. Wells hated olives.

The rest of the story, all too familiar to her because as it turned out her brain refused to ever shut down completely and no matter how drunk she'd get she couldn't black out, drowned out. It became background noise, because Bellamy's face had turned funny when she'd picked off Wells' olives for him, and she'd caught it and wasn't able to shake it. The way it looked like he was witnessing a strange ritual that both awed him and offended him. The way his eyes trailed her every movement. When she could finally catch his eye she glared at him to stop it. He was making her squirm under his blanket of quiet, confusing judgement.

"…and it later came to light that the reason she was able to get Russia to abstain from using its veto against Kosovo's bid to become its own country was because she had won sixteen straight games of flip-cup and won a bet," Wells was finishing up his story. "And that's how Clarke Griffin became a legend at Model U.N. and got drunk for the first time when she was fifteen."

Raven and Octavia were wheezing, Octavia nearly slunk down under the table, she was giggling so hard.

"Do you want my crust?" Clarke asked absentmindedly and Wells nodded and grabbed her discarded pieces from her plate. Again, she felt Bellamy watch them like a hawk. No, not a hawk. Hawks were regal and graceful in their circling. He was a vulture, waiting too eagerly to dive in.

And dive he did.

"What's your story, Wells?" Bellamy finally said.

"My story?" Wells asked.

"Yeah," Bellamy shrugged. "You're Clarke's mysterious best friend, the harbinger of old stories and all that. What are you all about?"

The table fell silent. Bellamy's tone was challenging, confrontational. He leaned back in his chair and waited, a ghost of a gloating smile peppering his lips. And finally, when Wells opened his mouth to think of something to say, he interrupted. "The Cliff Notes. Please," Bellamy added with a halt of his hand and an obvious smirk.

Wells, in an equal match to whatever peacocking was suddenly transpiring in the pizza place booth, took his time reaching for his beer and taking a swig, then returning it with care to the table. "Nothing mysterious about me, man," he said finally. "I'm just a pretty normal guy."

"Oh, I doubt that," Bellamy egged on and threw his hands behind his head, leaning back even more so the front legs of his chair came off the tile. Clarke knew that habit and was bubbling with irritation that she knew that habit. "Let me guess…"

"Bellamy," Octavia warned.

"You go to Georgetown, your jacket tells as much. Poli-sci major? And if you hail from the Jaha's that I've heard about then my guess is you're following in your father's footsteps only to prove you can be better than him. You're one of those idealist poli-sci kids, right? Want to beat the man by being the man?"

Wells held his stare but still remained silent. He did that when he got angry. He bottled it all up, held it in. Wells was no snake that hissed and lashed out. He was a Redwood, who grew tall and strong and remained still when rain and snow and mud and whatever other elements were slung his way.

"First of all," Raven cut in and then promptly punched Bellamy right in the bicep. Her boxing training paid off, because he winced and rubbed it with his palm. "You're an asshole. Second of all…" she dropped her voice a little lower as if to whisper to him, though they could all hear, "…how is it that you're so right all the time?"

"Yeah," Wells said coolly and reached for his beer again. "Something like that."

"Hope you make it," Bellamy said and lifted his cup to cheers derisively. "The good ones don't tend to survive out there."

"You're definitely paying, dickhead," Octavia said and downed her beer before refilling her cup from the pitcher.

Clarke remained silent, seething.

xxx

When they'd gotten back to campus and she'd stalked off, fast and deliberate and without a word, the others followed and left Bellamy behind. Thankfully his attempt to bring everyone down to the mood he was in only lasted a few minutes after being free from his aggressively surly presence. They had built a fort for Wells to sleep in on the narrow strip of floor between Clarke and Raven's beds. Raven engineered it to perfection, while Octavia insisted they add elements to make it feel more homey. Clarke either voiced her approval or disapproval on decisions being made and, she hated to admit, was the one who started the pillow fight by smacking Wells right in the face when she was supposed to just hand it over to Octavia.

For a while her gnawing anger and discomfort dissolved and light, carbonated bubbles of release and fizzy happiness danced around under her skin. Around three, when the lights were out and everyone, even Octavia who had crawled into bed with Clarke, was asleep, the fizzy carbonation went flat.

She tried to yell herself to sleep in her brain. She couldn't even toss and turn, she was tucked up between the wall and Octavia with only inches to move. Her leg started to fall asleep and she wanted to turn on her other side. Finally she sighed into the air, and her frustration disturbed the peaceful room. She couldn't be there any longer.

She knocked on his door, hard, and with some urgency. Flatness had turned to fury somewhere between floors three and five and between the bright lights and course carpet that burned her eyes and grated her feet through her socks.

He was shirtless, barefoot, but his black jeans were still on and his eyes weren't hooded and his hair wasn't tousled. He definitely had not been asleep. "Finally. There you are," he said.

"Shut up." It came out of her mouth like razors. Bellamy's lips parted, falling open as the only sign he was moved by her tone. "This isn't a game, Bellamy. He's my best friend. What were you trying to prove, huh? That you're a giant asshole?" Clarke waited for his response, but it didn't come. Instead, troubled and chaotic pupils and a pronounced gulp. Maybe it was to swallow his anger. Or the rest of his dickishness. She needed him to answer, just yelling at him helped some, but not enough. With newfound anger at his stoicism rising in the back of her throat, she crossed her arms. "Well, mission accomplished. And by the way, jealousy doesn't look good on you."

Clarke turned to stalk off, figuring she'd sit and seethe in the common room until her eyelids became too heavy to hold up. But Bellamy had another idea. She whipped around and nearly fell forward at the velocity. He had grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her back to him, and she stumbled several steps forward, crossing the threshold into his room and landing flush against his chest.

"What are you-" but he kissed her words away. Crushed, really. His lips were at once supple and soft but also bruising and carried behind them such ferocity that she couldn't meet it, and soon she reeled back and allowed herself to be pushed up, hard, against the wall. It steadied her, which she was thankful for, because he was coming at her like a hurricane. She let herself be swept up in it, in its wildness and its force. Soon, his hands were hot and roaming under her shirt and pulling it off. She heard the slam of the door, maybe his foot had kicked it closed behind them, she didn't know. All she knew was the blur she felt, not only saw, but felt in her head and behind her eyes, when his lips raked up her neck and bit her skin so that she gasped in surprise. Not only surprise, but arousal too, and when his lips returned to hers but his teeth pulled and tugged at her bottom one, there was no denying the rush of hot liquid that pooled at the base of her underwear and caused her to rub her thighs together.

Clarke's hands reached for his shoulders and began traveling down towards his chest, but he grabbed her arms and pinned them to the wall. His hand was tight around her wrists and pinched the skin there, but she didn't mind. His other hand plowed beneath the elastic of her shorts, shoved aside the fabric of her underwear with umbrage, and dipped his fingers into her slick folds.

"Still mad at me?" he urged as he inserted a finger. It didn't sound like he was pleading, or like he was checking in. It sounded more like goading.

She threw her head back, looked up to the popcorn ceiling as her mouth fell open in a silent gasp. "Yes," she managed to say.

"Really?" He slipped a second finger inside. "How wet you are begs to say otherwise." He nipped the patch of skin behind her earlobe. It stung, but her knees nearly went weak.

"That has nothing to do with whether I'm mad at you or not," she said, nearly panting. She wanted to kiss him again and shut him up.

"Fair enough," he said and the vibration of his voice, deep and rough, reverberated into her lips as he kissed her once more. She opened her mouth to sweep her tongue along his and get as much of herself around him as she could, but he soon pulled away entirely and turned her around so she was facing the wall, her cheek up against its shiny eggshell paint. She could almost smell it, as if it were new. But then he was pulling her shorts down and pressing his denim covered erection into her ass and snaking his arm around her to swipe a rough thumb over her nipple through her bra.

This, whatever he was doing, was no apology fuck. Nor was it a feverish, desperate one, as if he were trying to hang on to her. It wasn't one of reverent passion or urgent need. This was pure aggression. He was marking her, which would be evident in the morning no doubt, since he was sucking hard on the place where her neck sloped into her shoulder. He was claiming her. This was assertion.

"Is he asleep?" Bellamy asked as he detached his mouth from her neck to yank down her underwear.

Clarke had a hard time registering his words in her head, they clunked and rattled. She had trouble stepping out of the legs of her panties and thought she'd stumble and fall if not for her palms up against the wall. Everything was a blur. "What?"

"Wells," Bellamy said roughly. "Is he asleep?"

She didn't know why he was asking about Wells. She didn't know why it mattered. But she nodded her answer anyway, gulping down her anticipation at the sound of him pulling down the zipper of his jeans.

"Good," he said and he gripped her hips and yanked them towards him so that she was partially bent over, her palms steadying herself by splaying flat against the wall.

"Why?" she asked. She felt the tip of his cock positioned at her entrance.

His lips were at her ear, his breath hot and humid. "Because I'm going to fuck you until the sun comes up," he said and plunged into her so suddenly and so deep that she groaned, deep and guttural and primal.

And he did.

First, like that, from behind and up against the wall, and when she came his sturdy arm coiled around her stomach to hold her up as she shook and her legs went weak. Then he turned her around and hoisted her up so her legs were wrapped around his hips and he took her against the wall a second time. Later, she found herself with her back against the cold surface of his kitchen table, her legs in the air and feet up by his shoulders. He came with a hand half around her neck, his thumb pressing into her collarbone and the tips of his fingers digging into the nape of her neck, then sunk to his knees and sucked on her clit until she was crying out in mewls and moans and he was ready once more.

Finally, he carried her to the bed, her whole body limp and pliable after having been wracked by the power of her two orgasms. And now it was all she could do to just hold on, let his hurricane envelope her and engulf her and drown her. He held her up, maneuvered her limbs into his desired positions and kept on going. With his hand hooked under her knee and his cock moving in and out of her in rough, unpatterened rhythms so as to surprise her with each thrust, her body tensed and she felt the familiar sensation of a rising heat under her skin, one that spread all over until she would combust in a tiny explosion.

"No," he said, gravelly into her ear. "Don't come." He slowed his movements, but still he rocked against her.

Her mind whirled around in confusion, it was already slipping into abandon and entropy and now he was telling her to pick up the pieces she had just begun to let slip and break apart and put them back together. "I…" she stuttered. "Bellamy, I can't I…"

He stilled and hiked himself up so that he was looking down at her. Already she felt the edge grow dull, the heat seep back into the woodwork. The atmosphere shifted, from the sweaty, frantic and combustive quality it held into a muted one. It was still thick with something, like they were suspended in space and time. His thumb ghosted over her lips, which felt dry and parched and she was panting still. He sought her eyes and she wanted to look past them, at his eyebrows, but she resisted and met him, pupil to pupil.

"Sun's not up yet," he said quietly. "Gotta pace yourself."

She scoffed at him with a amused smile. "Easier said than done. I've just been along for the ride."

Bellamy smiled back, for the first time that night, and hooked his thumb along her bottom teeth and hitched his hips up slightly in response. Clarke scraped her teeth along his knuckle and sighed at the friction. She'd come down from her precipice, and the rest of the night was spent languorously climbing back up it. It was quieter then, as he hoisted her up into his lap and she wrapped her legs around him, clutching his shoulders to keep herself upright. They moved together, but he led the ebbs and flows of their rocking, his thrusting. She was facing the narrow window that ran along the back wall above his headboard and watched the sky turn from milky blue to lavender to pastel pink as he fucked her, her arms wrapped around his shoulders and hands gripping his neck as he picked up the pace, faster and faster. And when she came finally, the sun was light and hazy and the sky not yet blue, but blown out and overexposed in a bright yellow gray.

xxx

The next day she took Wells hiking, and they could actually spend time together without outside observers. But maybe that wasn't entirely true, since every few minutes she caught herself touching the place on her collarbone where there were spots of tiny, ruptured blood vessels just under her skin, remnants of Bellamy's claim on her just hours earlier. She felt like an iceberg, only a quarter of which was above the surface. The rest, a secret mass kept hidden underwater.

They talked of home and their families and school and the future, but all the while her ears felt clogged with water, and his voice was sometimes far away because she was imagining Bellamy's teeth pulling at her skin and Bellamy's chest beneath her hands, how hard and firm it was.

"You okay?" Wells asked eventually. "You seem far away."

"Yeah." Clarke shook the flashes of memory from her head. "Yeah, of course. Just taking it all in."

They stood at an outlook that opened up into a ravine filled with dense forrest and sloping hills. The green was filling in and only some of the branches were still bare from winter. Birds chirped in the distance and echoed throughout the canyon. It was cool and damp and she could smell the tree bark and the faint scent of eucalyptus.

"You wear the weight of your thoughts on your sleeve, Clarke," Wells said and she glanced at him sideways, her brow furrowed in slight annoyance. Damn him for knowing her so well. "Don't carry so much burden. You've got a good thing here. And good people."

She took a deep breath in, letting the fresh air fill her lungs. She felt them expand and bloom as she looked out towards the horizon. "You can tell all that from a night?"

"'Course I can," Wells said and nudged her shoulder. She didn't fight the lopsided smile that crept up on her. "Even Bellamy."

Her smile dissolved. "What do you mean?"

"He may be a dick but he respects you. Maybe even admires you."

Clarke pursed her lips, put on her best unamused face. "He's just Octavia's brother. And my RD. And…my Latin TA." Wells cocked an eyebrow at her and she crossed her arms, working herself into a huff. "He's a nuissance. I can't escape him." Still, he looked at her with a wry smile. "What?"

Wells shook his head. "Nothing. Let's go."

The rest of the day was spent with Raven and Octavia and Monty on the Commons. Jasper joined for a little while and the boys played frisbee. Octavia braided hair and Raven sucked down her iced coffee so fast so that she could show them how to throw a frisbee like "not a sissy", as she put it. All in all it was perfect, and Clarke was content. She watched her friends welcome Wells and Wells integrate himself into her life here, even if it was just temporary. It felt good. She felt whole…nearly. Still her fingertips traced the spots on her neck that were still raw and sensitive, and danced along the faint bruises that surfaced on her hip bone. Later, while Raven and Wells were showering and she found a moment of quiet in her room before getting ready to go out, she stood in front of her mirror and mapped every mark, visible or not visible, on her body where he had touched. His absence all day was excruciating, because it didn't feel like one. She felt that he was right there, somewhere around the corner, or beyond the hall, or just behind her. He was almost there all day. Except he wasn't.

The party that night was a house party not far from campus, so they walked, a whole troupe, raucous and boisterous and yelling in the streets. They were nearly the entire third floor strong, a caravan of undergrads with conspicuous water bottles filled with amber colored liquid under their arms. Maybe that was why Bellamy chose to show up on his own, via a different route, because he was already there when they walked through the door. Clarke realized it wasn't just with her that he couldn't be seen. It was the others too. She caught his eye as he glanced towards the crowd and her hand went instinctively to her collarbone. His glance fluttered away quickly after that and he continued to entertain whomever he was talking to at the kitchen counter.

Clarke didn't see him again until she and Wells had been challenged to, and won, a game of beer pong against Miller and Raven. By that time the beer and rush of victory had bolstered her and she threw her hands up in the air. "Who wants to get beat down next?"

Octavia was dragging Bellamy by his sleeve towards the other end of the table. "Not if the Blakes have anything to say about it," she said, game face on. Clarke smiled at Bellamy, but his expression was stone-faced and sour. She tried to shake it off.

"Not gonna lie, I'm a little intimidated," Wells said, acting out as if a chill were going through his body.

Octavia squinted her eyes at him. "As you should be."

The Blakes were a very intense duo to play beer pong against it turned out, somewhat unsurprisingly. It was like going to battle. There was no fun to be had. They were competitive, derisive when their opponents were playing, unruly when they disagreed with a call, and downright obnoxious when they sank a cup. In response, Clarke and Wells grew competitive too, which manifested in their stoic, seething focus and concentration to destroy their enemies. If bemused looks could kill.

When Clarke sank a cup she didn't cheer, she kept her face steely and allowed Wells to pat her on the back or high-five her. They were behind by three. "Years of practice can't be beat," Bellamy taunted. Clarke narrowed her eyes to focus on her second throw. "It's all right if you're new at this. Lightning most likely won't strike twice. But hey! Bet Wells taught you a few tricks." Her ball missed, her cheeks burned. Octavia cheered and when her ball sunk another cup Clarke downed it in seconds and them slammed it on the table.

"I'm going to the bathroom. Wells can throw for me," she said sharply and stalked off.

She didn't return to the game. Instead, she found a group of strangers in the back living room who fed her shots of vodka from a ten dollar plastic handle, which she readily took to try and cleanse the dirty feeling of Bellamy's under the radar innuendo had given her. She grew bored once her newfound friends lit up a blunt and started waxing poetic about LeBron, and she wandered off down the hallway towards her oldfound friends. When the dim hallway opened up to the light and laughter of the front living area she saw it. Directly in front of her, Bellamy had his arm propped against the wall and was leaning forward, flanking some upper classman, or rather, classwoman. His free hand dangled by his side and held a bottle of beer, and he was dipping his head down towards her as her eyes swept up and she practically bobbed her head at him. Clarke thought it might roll right off if she flirted too hard. He caught her out of the corner of his eye and she immediately turned, a hard left, towards the kitchen.

"Hey," Raven said as she sidled up beside her. Clarke grabbed a new red solo cup. "You okay?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that today?" Clarke said and the empty cup nearly bounced away when she slammed it down on the counter.

Raven cocked her head to the side. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe because Bellamy is acting like a giant fuckboy and has been ever since Wells got to town and you have hickeys on your neck that weren't there yesterday…" Raven trailed off and her gaze followed Clarke's, which had gone back to the wall where Bellamy was, making a big show of his ability to charm a lady that wasn't Clarke.

"He's peacocking," Clarke said sourly.

"Ignore him," Raven said.

"I can't."

Raven's gears shifted, always knowing when to move from cynical to soft. "It's not just sex, is it?"

"No, but…" Clarke reached for the vodka. "I don't know what it is."

Raven took the bottle from her. "Here, babe, let me. I'll make you a drink so good you won't remember it in the morning."

She did make a hell of a drink, and Clarke felt the angry tension in her knuckles give way to the loss of such control over motor functions that took so much effort. She turned her back and faced Raven and Octavia and Harper and pretended to be interested in their conversation, even as she willed herself eyeballs on the back of her head.

When Wells joined the group from wherever he had been (she loved that he was so self-sufficient), she threw her arms around him and greeted him like it'd been years.

"Okay, who got her drunk?" Wells asked teasingly and Raven raised her hand proudly.

"Commendable," Wells said and raised his cup to her.

"A true feat," Raven said and clinked her plastic cup with his.

"Now this I can't wait to see," Octavia said.

Apparently it was entertaining. From what she learned later, and over time, and often would have rather drowned herself in her cereal than here more snippets from the night, she was the life of the party. A very wasted Clarke apparently became overly affectionate, very validating and complimentary, and generally liked to dance. Jasper told her she absolutely yelled at someone for changing the song in the middle of a Ja Rule classic. Miller claimed she berated him for their not being better friends and attributed it to their both being stand-offish and suspicious of others. Monty said she went on a diatribe about being able to walk through Van Gogh's mind if you follow his work chronologically. If you've been to Amsterdam you'll know what I mean, she had said. Monty had, but was otherwise occupied, and she smacked him on the back of his head for that.

And all the while she clung to Wells. She apparently got hangy too, and her arms were perpetually latched onto his broad shoulder to steady her. "You're my best friend," she said and placed her cheek against his arm.

"Mine too," he said instantly.

"Sorry I'm so awful. But you're stuck with me."

She swayed and Wells wrapped a steadying arm around her waist. "It's you. You can't be awful."

"Happily stuck?" she asked.

"Happily stuck," Wells affirmed. "Like old marrieds."

"Good."

"How about we get you some water?" Wells suggested, ever so gently. She nodded and swung around, still hooked to his arm, and they nearly ran right into Bellamy. She definitely knocked into his cup and he yanked it back towards him, avoiding a full on disaster.

"Hey Princess," Bellamy drawled, taking in the sight before him. "Having fun, I see." She must have looked as drunk as she felt.

"Actually, yes. Contrary to popular belief, I am fun," she said haughtily, jutting her chin out in defiance.

"Depends who you ask," Bellamy said. "And what their definition of fun is."

Clarke wasn't too drunk to miss his reference. Another night she would have loved the way he spoke in code, in a language that was just for them, so that out in plain sight no one else could decipher it. A simple callout to what was hidden beneath the surface and she would have typically been reduced to putty. Any other night, she loved that game. Tonight didn't feel like a game she wanted to play.

"Right. Well, if you'll excuse us. The lady needs some water," Wells said.

"The lady does," Clarke affirmed and nodded.

"Of course," Bellamy said and stepped aside. "And Wells, don't do anything I wouldn't do."

That bastard. Another quip so innocent to everyone else, and carrying so much weight to her ears that it hit like a heavy punch to the gut. Clarke let go of Wells and whipped around to face Bellamy head on. Wells stood between them, unsure and on edge, just in her periphery.

"What do you want, Bellamy?" she hissed. She knew better than to yell. Lest they be found out. "What do you want to know? That Wells and I aren't fucking? Huh?" She railed forward at him and he took a step back, but held his jaw tight and rigid. "You want to know that we made out when we were fifteen? And we tried to date for a few months but that was also the same time I figured out I liked girls too. Is that what you want? Does that satisfy you?"

Bellamy's jaw slacked and his eyes widened in surprise. His defensive stance melted away too, and his shoulders fell down his back. He didn't say anything. Maybe he would have if she had waited, but Clarke was seething and nearly shaking with rage and she wanted to run outside and yell and yell. So she stalked off and didn't look back.

"What, you didn't know?" Wells said snidely to Bellamy before he followed her out the door and into the night air.

When her feet hit the grass and the atmosphere changed she felt the spinning in her head. Suddenly the lawn was lopsided and sloping to the side and back again and she couldn't keep her footing. The ground was moving beneath her and she thought maybe it would be easier to ride if she sat down on it. So she did.

"Hey now," a voice jutted into the spinning world, all stretched and garbled, like bending sound waves. It was Wells. "Let's get you home, okay?"

Clarke nodded even as she put her hand up to halt him from hoisting her up. "Not yet. Soon," she said meekly.

"Clarke," a new voice, rougher and more insistent, intruded her space. She turned her head and just caught the sight of Bellamy, wide-eyed and anxious, standing over her. "What happened?"

"Raven made her a drink she'd, and I quote, 'be sure to forget'," Wells said.

"Great," Bellamy said and sighed. Clarke felt cold, and she needed the spinning to stop. She must have shivered, because soon a jacket that didn't belong to Wells was draped over her shoulders. She tried to lie down but was met with two sets of strong, familiar arms lifting her up and onto her feet.

"No," she whined and protested, but they didn't listen. "I just need to lie down for a while. I just need to…" she found a pillow in the form of Bellamy's chest and pressed her forehead against it. She felt his hand on the back of her head and it steadied her. She breathed deeply, and closed her eyes until the spinning stopped.

"You good?" Bellamy asked finally, as if he knew exactly what she was experiencing, as if he knew the moment the world stilled. She nodded and he slowly let go of her and unwrapped her from the protective shield of his body.

"I have my car," he said above her to Wells. "I'll drive her. The both of you."

She wasn't sure how she ended up in the elevator-maybe they teleported-but there she was, and she was slumping over so much that Wells was practically holding her up. She kept her eyes closed, the world was too nauseating, and let her feet be led to wherever they needed to go. To her bed, she hoped. Maybe the women's bathroom.

"Want to go to bed, Clarke? Or the bathroom? Do you think you'll be sick?" Wells asked quietly, slowly, so she could take in the options.

She shook her head vehemently even as she said, "Bathroom."

"What are you doing? She lives on three," Wells said to Bellamy in a hushed whisper.

"I have a bathroom in my room. She won't be caught by her RA then," Bellamy said simply.

She puked in Bellamy's toilet for a half an hour. The second she could, she locked both of them out and would only unlock the door to allow the safe passage of a glass of water. She thought of Octavia and her cheek to the toilet seat at Thanksgiving, and then thought of how now both of Bellamy's girls have ended up drunk and unable to hold their liquor in his bathroom. His girls. God, where did her stupid mind go. Now she felt even worse, and the taste in her mouth even more sour. But she figured she was done, for the time being anyway, and gulped from her water and sidled up against the closed door and just sat.

She felt strung out, inside out, burned out. All the outs, really. Her eyes were swollen and red and puffy and watery from the burn of the alcohol coming back up and chewing at her esophagus and she just wanted to close them and sleep. But she couldn't, so closing them and trying to just be silent and one with the cold tile of the bathroom floor would have to suffice. Soon her breathing shallowed and her hiccups stopped and she could hear the humming of the electricity course through the overhead light. And something else. Voices. Muffled at first, like murmurs, but then clearer and clearer as if they were meant for her.

"You do this for all your residents?" Wells was asking.

There was some shuffling of feet and furniture, like a chair was being drawn out. Then settling. "Not exactly." It was Bellamy.

"You're more than just the RD. The TA. The friend's older brother…" Wells said carefully. "Aren't you?"

There was an excruciating pause, and Clarke held her breath throughout it, figuring they'd hear her if she dared exhale and the moment to eavesdrop would retreat into muffled murmurs once again.

"I don't know what I am," Bellamy said. "Just a stranger in the laundry room."

Her mouth turned up at that and she dipped her head. The grout between the tiles was so dark, but grey, not black. She liked that, and ran a toe along the bumpy line.

One of them sighed deeply, maybe stretched. It was late and she was keeping them from sleep. "Look, you and me. We don't have a problem," Wells said. "Unless you hurt her. Then we'll have problems. You understand?"

A breathy scoff. "More than you know," Bellamy said.

The bottoms of a chair scraped against the laminate wood floor of the kitchen. "You make sure she gets to sleep all right." She imagined Wells was standing now.

"You should stay," Bellamy said. "You know her. You'll know what she needs." His voice was scratchy, vulnerable.

"So do you. We just know different parts of her," Wells said.

She heard the soft click of the door, and silence hung in the air once more. A drawer might have opened, and the padding of feet softly around the room, but that was it. She let herself exhale.

"Clarke?" His voice was soft, tentative. "You good?"

Her answer was the soft knock of the back of her head against the door.

"Will you unlock the door?"

She weighed her options. Which, if she was being honest, were nonsensical and convoluted and she was absolutely still very inebriated. She briefly considered curling up in the tub to sleep. Or just right there on the tile, with the grout. But her feet were cold. And Wells! Where was Wells?

She reached her hand up and fumbled with the knob and twisted until the push button lock popped out. She scooted herself away from the door and let it open towards her. Bellamy crouched down to her level once he saw her sitting on the floor.

"Where's Wells?" she said, disoriented.

"Back in your room. Raven let him in," Bellamy said and held out his hand to brush an untamed, tangled string of hair behind her ear. "Come on out, the bathroom'll be there if you need it." He helped her up, and truth was, she lost the journey to his bed somewhere in her mind, never to return to her. Next thing she knew she was under the covers and she was lifting her arms up over her head. You don't want to sleep in your nice dress, do you, he asked. She shook her head and up her arms went. It was all she remembered until morning, when she woke up in his T-shirt. Alone. He had slept on the couch.

xxx

She slipped back into her room at six and saw that Wells hadn't even taken her bed, he still slept in the pillow fort they'd built for him. She crawled under the covers and shivered, they were cold, and she had to curl up into a ball to warm them up.

Bellamy didn't show to family breakfast, and she couldn't eat anything anyway, but Raven forced her to come and not make Wells experience the ritual on his own. It was his last day after all.

They left an hour early to walk to the bus station so that they could take their time and amble, in an effort to stretch out the last of their minutes together into a small infinity. Maybe it was the lack of dopamine left in her body, but with each small step she felt more and more like crying. She didn't exactly know why, but an inexplicable sadness flooded within her and rose and rose. When they reached the depot it threatened to overflow.

"Hey kiddo," Wells said softly and caught her chin in between his thumb and forefinger. "You're doin' just fine."

She nodded and felt her chin crinkle and her lip quiver. It was so stupid. There was no reason to cry. He hugged her before her tears threatened to fall so they could be hidden away in his jacket.

"One of these days I'm gonna be the one to take care of you," she said when she pulled back.

"Bullshit. I know you're the one who put yogurt in the guys' basketball shoes who were bullying me in eighth grade."

She laughed through her tears then and wiped them away. "I don't know what you're talking about."

And she sent him on his way.

xxx

Clarke spent the rest of her Sunday in bed. She wasted it away, not on sleep, but on fragments of thoughts that gnawed their way into her brain in shards and broken pieces. Nothing formed completely, nothing stuck for very long, but it was enough to keep her anxious and awake as if in some sort of fitful limbo. She thought of her father, and of Finn. She thought of the time she blamed Wells for it all. And fighting with her mother. She couldn't keep all of her darkest thoughts locked away, and they crept in and she was powerless to their glimpses before she pushed them back again. Even Bellamy, the way he hovered over that girl against the wall. Then Bellamy, the way he took her against the wall. His jeering tone, insinuating the worst. Then the gentle pads of his fingertips as they stroked her cheek. It went on for hours, and when Raven insisted on putting on their Sunday music and keeping with the ritual, Clarke didn't argue. But she stayed in bed, tucked under the covers.

"I hooked up with a random guy last night," Raven said suddenly.

Clarke drew back her covers, propped herself up on her elbow. "That's new."

"I know," Raven said and looked down. She was fidgeting. "It's supposed to make you feel better. But…It felt awful. Just so, I don't know, empty."

"And if it hadn't been with a random guy?" Clarke asked, as gently as she could.

Raven shrugged, a deep, long shrug and sighed as if to steady her voice. "I've tried. I've tried to do the just sex thing. The casual thing, like you. And I just feel sad and even more alone. I think I'm broken."

"If it's any consolation, I'm apparently no good at the casual thing either. I'm casual poison."

"What compound? Like arsenic or like batrachotoxin?" Raven asked and Clarke glared at her. "What? I thought you were taking chemistry."

Clarke flopped back on her bed with dramatic emphasis and threw an arm over her eyes. "I don't know, antifreeze or something. What about you?"

"Easy," Raven said. "Concentrated hydrogen peroxide."

"That's not a poison, that's an explosive."

"Exactly." Raven mimed an explosion with her hands. "Boom."

They both jumped when there was a knock at the door, right at the end of Raven's imaginary explosion. They looked at each other. Raven was sitting atop her covers, and Clarke was absolutely not moving from under hers. Raven groaned as she got up and shuffled towards the door and yanked it open. "You're not supposed to be here," she said and looked him up and down. It was Bellamy, and he was scratching the back of his head with one hand, looking oddly bashful.

"I could write you up for that beer you keep in your fridge if you want to make it legitimate," Bellamy said.

Raven stared him down while he glanced beyond her at Clarke. She just sat there.

"Fine," Raven said and reached behind her to swipe up her keys and her phone from her desk. "I'll make myself scarce." And she brushed past him with a warning, intimidating pause before disappearing down the hall.

This felt off, and wholly strange. They were out of place, sticking out in this space like a sore thumb. It wasn't them in the laundry room, or with Octavia, or tangled up in his blue bedsheets. It wasn't even studying in his office during office hours, or the way they actively tried to never look at each other during class. He was standing in her dorm room, hovering, and she was just sitting in her bed, looking dumbly back at him.

"You feelin' okay?" he said finally.

"What are you doing here, Bellamy?" She rubbed her eyes. Might as well slash right to the point with a machete. Something felt like it was ending and it pressed heavily on her chest like a boulder.

"I can't do this anymore, Clarke," he said. There it was. She twisted her sheets in her hands. "The way it is now."

She took a quiet breath to steady her voice. "I understand." She wanted to make it a clean break, tie it up in a nice bow and send it on its way.

"You don't," he said back in an instant.

"Enlighten me," she said, eyes narrowing and feeling that familiar current of electric annoyance she hated that she loved so much.

Bellamy ran a hand along his forehead and through the front of his hair, tangling his fingers in his curls. "I was jealous of Wells."

"Really? You don't say," she said, dripping with sarcasm.

"The way you knew him. And the way he knew you."

"We've known each other since we were five, Bellamy. Get over it," she said bitterly.

"That's not what I'm saying," Bellamy said. His voice grew deeper and rougher with rising frustration, like an invisible grip was squeezing at his vocal chords.

Clarke groaned in equal frustration and pitched forward, burying her face in her cross-legged lap, and when she was done resisting the urge to yell into her comforter and picked her head up, he was crouching by the side of her bed. And then her frustration left her, draining out of her in an instant, now that he was near and she was looking down at him.

"Clarke…" he began. His eyes were wide and shiner than she'd ever seen them. "I want you. Not just parts. And maybe that makes me selfish, but I want all of you. The whole damn thing."

"And," she began and stopped. She wanted to look down at her hands, to look away, but she found she couldn't. "What if I don't know how to do that?"

The corner of his mouth twitched up in a shy smile. "Doesn't matter. All that matters is if you wanna try," he said gently.

She held on to that for a long moment. She would have liked to say she was thinking about it, that there were thoughts swilling about in her head. But there weren't. She was just getting lost in the galaxies, the universes, the black holes of his irises.

"Okay," she finally said, as if she were floating through space.

"Okay?"

"Yeah," she nodded meekly. "Okay."

It was just a whisper. It felt so delicate, like it might break if it were anything more.

Real life totally derailed me, guys. Got super duper distracting for a while there and I couldn't get my head back in this universe. I wanted to do it justice. Anyway, I very much hope you liked this chapter and are still along for the ride. Imma continue. It may be bumpy, but it's continuing. I love you all very dearly.