Clarke stood in the doorway of her new apartment, wondering above all else how on earth her couch was going to fit in the tiny space that her realtor had dared to call a living room. She figured she'd make do, as she always did.

"Bell, do you think my couch can even fit in this room?"

A series of small grunts accompanies his reply as Bellamy makes it up the final set of stairs with the last, and heaviest box from the van, "maybe diagonally?"

Clarke knows he's trying to be positive, but interning, even at Boston's Mass. General isn't lucrative enough for anything better than this admittedly very sad looking apartment.

"That might just have to do at this point" she says, mostly to herself.

"God DAMN it guys can one of you assholes come back and help us with this?" a voice calls out from the hall, undeniably Raven's, "Octavia looks like she's about to hit the floor."

"I'm literally dying, my biceps were not designed for such strenuous activity, Clarke" Octavia confirms, her tone strained but no less sarcastic than usual.

Rushing to prevent Octavia from actually getting crushed by the butt end of Clarke's couch, Bellamy and Raven manage to haul it into the corner of the living room. It doesn't quite fit across the back wall of the room, so there's a wedge of space left behind the back of the couch and the remnants of mottled wallpaper presumably left behind by the last tenants. Clarke doesn't mind too much though, because as soon as the couch hits the ground all four friends immediately collapse on to it in a heap, laughing as Bellamy's knee collides with the floor as he is pushed off by the three girls.

"Dicks," he mutters under his breath as he proceeds to stand back up and belly flop across the three of them, making sure to plant his muddy shoes in Octavia's lap.

Clarke felt the weight of her decision to move out of her parents' luxurious home the sink in once Raven and the Blake siblings had left. She still had all of her boxes to unpack, so while the apartment had been filled up with the pieces of furniture she had decided to bring with her, the emptiness of the place served to remind her how mentally unprepared she felt to be suddenly living on her own. Even in college she'd always had a roommate to keep her company, and even though she'd sometimes wished she had a room to herself, she knew in the end she liked that when she opened her dorm room door things would always be a little different. Her roommate's socks picked up from underneath the kitchen bench or the lingering smell of coffee brewed while she was out still in the air. Knowing without a doubt that she would come how to an apartment exactly how she had left it, with all her dangerous thoughts and feelings stagnant behind the closed door frightened her, and while the move was inevitable given how far her parents' mansion was from the hospital, it didn't make it any easier.

She figured a shower might help her regain enough energy to finish the unpacking she'd not yet started, so digging around in her backpack she pulled out the shower bag she usually reserved for using at the hospital and made her way through the minefield of boxes to the bathroom.

"Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred moments so dear"

Lexa had been trying to sleep when she heard the banging and laughter accompanying the person presumably moving into the cursed apartment next to hers. It was enough to make her consider moving out more times than she could count, the amount of crazy shit she'd had to put up with from about a thousand different people who had lived in that apartment over the past three years. She'd given up caring who stayed and who left after trying to tell Anya a story about the drunken shower sex she'd been forced to listen to at about four in the morning a couple of weeks back, forgetting whether it was "alternative medicine" 'Benny' or the yoga obsessed 'Rick' who had moved out within about five days of being there. Now though, with what sounded suspiciously like show tunes floating through the shared wall of their bathrooms she couldn't help but think this one might not make her want to abuse her power as a detective and threaten their life with her gun (not that she'd seriously entertained that thought for much longer than a few minutes recently).

"Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure – measure a year?"

Whoever this woman was she could definitely sing, Lexa would give her that, her soft spot for Rent aside. She was killing this rendition for sure.

"In daylights – in sunsets, in midnights – in cups of coffee. In inches – in miles, in laughter – in strife. In – five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure a year in the life?"

Plodding around her kitchen in an attempt to wake herself up enough to do her fourth nightshift in a row, Lexa wondered how she possibly let Lincoln talk her into covering for him this week. She could feel herself turning nocturnal and sleeping during the day wasn't working so well for her in an apartment complex with paper-thin walls.

"How about love? How about love? How about love? Measure in love."

Okay. Maybe they weren't so bad.

Unpacking, Clarke had decided, was possibly worse than packing. It seems so easy to just let the boxes sit there, picking things up out of them as she needed. Not that she really needed much more than her box set of The West Wing and the tv remote. She'd convinced herself over the past couple of days that she deserved a break, that unpacking could wait. At least until she finished the first disk of season one.

Seventeen disks in, Clarke reminded herself that she was a grown woman who, after a whole week of living in her own apartment should definitely have at least made a start on unpacking her life from the boxes strewn across most of the free floor space. Today, she decided, was the day.

Finally glad to have sailed through the last of her night shifts, Lexa gave herself permission to sleep in on Saturday instead of going for her usual jog at five in the morning, a luxury she couldn't afford most of the time if she wanted to stay fit enough to race Lincoln around the precinct in one of their many attempts to break the record set by their chief, Gustus, in his glory days as a uniform cop. Waking up at nine, though, she could feel her lungs itching for the fresh air they had been denied for the past week, so she slipped into her running gear and spent the next hour of her jog wishing she'd saved the cup of coffee until after she'd gone out. Or at least that she'd gone to the bathroom after waking up. Running with a full bladder was definitely not one of her favourite experiences.

Toeing off her shoes at the door, Lexa made her way to the bathroom to shower off after her run, taking note of yet another album of show tunes drifting through the wall from the apartment next to hers.

"Once I'm with the Wizard, my whole life will change, 'cuz once you're with the Wizard, no one thinks you're strange!"

She had gone to see Wicked with Costia when it had come a few years ago, buying the album and listening to it on repeat for weeks afterwards, so when she heard the lyrics drift through she knew she'd have trouble not singing along herself.

"No father is not proud of you, no sister acts ashamed, and all of Oz has to love you, when by the Wizard, you're acclaimed"

Stepping into the shower and letting the hot water soothe her muscles was enough to make her forget about Wicked, Costia and the girl next door. That was until she heard the faucet start up from the other side of the wall. Lexa could almost feel it coming, the last chords of the song reaching through the tiled blue wall of her dingy bathroom. She knew this album by heart, and she had no doubt the girl showering mere steps from her on the other side of the wall did too, because the next thing Lexa knew she heard the girl mimicking perfectly the nasally lines of dialogue to start the next track.

"Dearest, darlingest, Momsie and Popsicle"

The girl paused, letting the music pick up the response as Lexa whispered the line in unison.

"My dear father"

The thought crossed her mind that the girl on the other side of the wall probably doesn't even know she exists, let alone that Lexa had been listening in to all her mid-morning shower recitals. But it really was now or never, and Lexa wanted to have some fun.

"There's been some confusion over rooming here at Shiz"

This time Lexa sang along loud enough to know the girl would surely be able to hear her over the sound of the faucets.

"But, of course, I'll care for Nessa."

But, of course, I'll rise above it.

Lexa wasn't really surprised when the music continued without the girl's voice overlaying across the top for the next line, but she loved this song too much to back down when it was her turn to sing again.

"For I know that's how you'd want me to respond, yes. There's been some confusion for you see, my roommate is..."

"Unusually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe..."

The voice on the other side of the wall was quiet. And more than a little tentative, but Lexa could swear it was there. So she replied.

"Blonde"

Lexa wondered if both of these things were true of them or just the first. She was pretty sure joining in to someone else's shower singing was something that could absolutely be described as 'peculiar' but she couldn't really find it in herself to care.

On the other side of the wall, Clarke was feeling pretty bewildered about the situation, but whether it was through shock or just plain muscle memory, she found herself singing the next line.

"What is this feeling, so sudden and new?"

She honestly hadn't given her neighbour a single thought since she'd moved in. Perhaps because they hadn't made any significant noise before this moment or ever prompted her to notice they were around. Clarke wondered if they could hear her singing anything else. She couldn't be sure, but she usually sang in the shower, and she could probably guarantee she'd made a fool of herself at least once since moving in.

"I felt the moment I laid eyes on you."

She had to presume the person next door was a woman by the sound of her voice, which was pretty good, all things considered.

"My pulse is rushing,"

"My head is reeling,"

"My face is flushing,"

So far it had been a back and forth between the two of them, and Clarke wondered briefly whether the woman next door would actually join in for the next part.

"What is this feeling? Fervid as a flame, does it have a name?
Yes!
Loathing. Unadulterated loathing."

Clarke didn't know what she expected, especially from someone who had spontaneously invited themselves to sing along with her, but she found herself even more surprised when the woman proceeded to follow her character's part, harmonising perfectly with Clarke as she followed Galinda's part as she normally would.

"For your face,"

"Your voice,"

"Your clothing,"

The two seemed to weave effortlessly through the call and answer section, before joining again, both women finding themselves lost in the song and paying little attention to the absolutely bizarre situation they had both found themselves in.

"Let's just say - I loathe it all!
Every little trait however small, makes my very flesh begin to crawl, with simple utter loathing.
There's a strange exhilaration, in such total detestation, it's so pure, so strong.
Though I do admit it came on fast, still I do believe that it can last."

They really couldn't have made this any more awkward, Clarke thought, not only had they not yet spoken, but the two of them could not have picked a worse song to be singing along to. Clarke didn't have any particular interest in making friends with the people in her apartment block, but she sure as hell didn't want to be getting off on the wrong foot with someone she might have to put up with for the rest of her internship. She couldn't help but think, with the last lines of their duet, that she might be sending the wrong message.

"And I will be loathing, loathing you my whole life long!"