So maybe her day doesn't go exactly as she had planned.

.-.-.-.-.-.

"This isn't-it's not-"

"What I think?" Clarke asks, wondering how her mouth is forming words, how her brain is stringing coherent thoughts together. All the rest of her can do is stare, stare at his hands, still on the brunette's hips, the bead of sweat on his back where the sheets have slithered down, the wide-eyed confusion of the girl Clarke's boyfriend is still laying on top of.

"I-" He begins to say something else, not bothering to climb off of the girl he's currently mounting. It's enough.

It's just-

"Enough." She holds up a hand, turning on her heel, sights set on the door. An exit. Out.

She can hear his voice behind her as she leaves, and hers, but it doesn't matter. A brick wall couldn't have stopped her from getting the hell out of there.

She feels nauseous, and she thinks that probably can't be helped, but Clarke finds herself at a bar anyways, a few blocks down. She sits down on a stool before turning to blink dazedly at the man on the other side of the counter, and the bartender barely gives her a once over before sliding her a shot.

"This one's on me." He says, and Clarke knows it's tequila, can smell it already, and she fucking hates tequila.

She downs it, placing the shot glass face down on the bar top like Jasper taught her in college. It was heavy and satisfying in her hand, the liquor burning a path down her throat.

"I hate tequila."

He slides her another. This one smells different, whiskey, if she had to guess.

"What's the balloon for?"

He'd had the optimism to pour this round into a lowball glass, so she doesn't flip it upside down to match the other after she's drained it, just slides it back toward him. Then his words register, and her eyes drift toward the string in her hand, following it up until she's staring at the red balloon, floating aimlessly among the wine glasses hanging from the ceiling. Her stomach turns.

"Do you have a pen?" She asks, and he produces one from under the counter, refilling her glass when she takes it from him. He's looking down, bottle in hand, when she pops the balloon.

"Shit, lady!" He barks, spilling Jameson on the bar, and himself. Realizing what she's done, Clarke stares at the wet sheen on his hand, eyes wide.

"God." She says, blinking. "I-I'm so sorry. I'll pay for that. I think I've just-"

"Lost your damn mind?" he mutters, swiping at the mess with a rag. For the first time, Clarke realizes that he's actually quite attractive. Dark hair curls around his face, falling in front of intense brown eyes. His tanned face is dusted with a healthy cropping of freckles, and his flannel sleeves are rolled up to reveal a pair of distractingly well-muscled forearms.

"Yeah," murmurs Clarke. "I think, maybe. Temporarily."

At that, he looks up, the irritation on his face mixing with amusement.

"People who've lost their minds don't usually know they've lost their minds." Sexy Bartender says generously, and Clarke is momentarily distracted by the timbre of his voice. Then she frowns.

"I have heard that before, but I'm not sure it's totally true. I just forgot I had the balloon."

They both glance at what's left of it, the words Happy Birthday distorted after being stretched and then deflated. When he reaches toward her, she recoils, but he just picks a piece of balloon out of her hair, a shred of red rubber with a wrinkled crown stamped on top.

"So, Princess, bad birthday?" He wonders. Clarke considers asking him not to call her that, since it's a nickname Finn used to use for her as well, but she kind of likes the way it sounds on his tongue.

"Yes." She waits for him to slide her another drink, but he doesn't. "Not mine, though."

"Alright." That earns her a nod, and another drink. "So what did the balloon do to you?" His voice lowers a little as he leans in, arms resting on the bar. Clarke sips delicately at the whiskey this time, although she's already decided she won't be going back to work. It's just after four, but her rotation was over an hour ago, and she's not technically on call, though that rarely stops her interns from paging her at all hours of the day. Besides, she really needs to get drunk.

"Nothing." She declares, feeling a fleeting pang of guilt for the innocent balloon. "Aside from bearing witness to something neither of us should have had to see."

When she looks up from her glass, the bartender is frowning intensely down at her, and the alcohol hits her like a freight train. Suddenly woozy, she blinks, trying to bring his pretty face back into focus.

"Ah." He nods sagely. "Birthday boy, maybe girl, birthday sex, but not with you?"

He almost sounds smug at having guessed it, Clarke thinks. But maybe she's just projecting.

"I don't like you." She informs him, the liquor loosening her tongue. In fact, it's a blatant lie, Clarke is beginning to feel warm just looking at him, but she does find him a little arrogant, and her irritation with him fits more easily alongside the anger churning in her stomach.

"What?" He looks genuinely surprised. "Why? I'm not the one who cheated on you."

"I bet you would." Clarke mumbles, draining her glass once again. "You're attractive, and smooth, and you could, so you would. You'd ask me to move in with you, and then I'd walk in on you fucking someone else and you would have the balls to tell me 'it's not what it looks like' while you were still inside her."

For a moment, his eyes go wide, lips parting in surprise. Then this actually seems to offend him, a crease forming between his eyebrows, his mouth settling into a thin line.

"I would not. And your boyfriend sounds like a real asshole."

"Ex." Clarke says, and she thinks maybe that should make her feel something but it doesn't. She tries again. "Ex-boyfriend." Nothing.

"That's probably a good call." He pours her another, but it's noticeably smaller than the others. She just stares at it, the image of Finn and the brunette playing over in her mind like some kind of twisted porno.

"What's your name?" She doesn't mean to ask, but she zones out a little, staring at his freckles. The words just come out.

"Bellamy."

It's a pretty name, she thinks, but men don't typically like to hear that.

"Why do people cheat, Bellamy?"

"Lots of reasons." He runs the rag from earlier over a bottle of something red. "Insecurity, narcissism, immaturity. Some people are just selfish." Setting the red bottle down, he picks up another, resumes wiping. Clarke glances around the bar, wondering if he has other customers. She doesn't see anyone else.

"Well," she sighs. "Any of those could apply to Finn."

Bellamy's eyebrows shoot up.

"Sounds like a catch. Why were you dating him in the first place?"

Clarke narrows her eyes at him. She considers that, swirling the liquid in her glass as she thinks.

"He made me laugh," she finally says. "when I hadn't laughed in a very long time." Something about the way she says it makes Bellamy pause, his eyes scanning her a little more closely than before.

"So," he begins, then tilts his head toward her expectantly. She's confused for a moment.

"Oh. Clarke. My name is Clarke."

"So, Clarke. What are you going to do now?" He asks.

She's a little drunk, and hasn't really gotten that far.

"I could kill him," she proposes, but the truth is she's not entirely sure she cares enough about Finn to really want it. Bellamy grins.

"You could. Is there a plan B? Just in case murder turns out to be more trouble than it's worth?"

"There's not that much to do," she declares, after thinking about it for another moment. "I'm going to stay here for a while, and be drunk. And then I'm going to go home and tell my landlord that I won't be giving up my lease after all. And since today is a Tuesday, I'm going to wake up tomorrow, disgustingly hungover, and go to work."

Bellamy's answering smile is impressed, almost a little proud.

"That sounds like a decent plan. And the birthday boy?"

Clarke snorts.

"If he's smart he'll stay the fuck away from me." She pauses. "Which probably means I'll be seeing him soon." It shouldn't feel so deliciously good to bash Finn like this, but it does. And Clarke is far too angry to care. Then she sighs. "I wouldn't be surprised if he was waiting on my doorstep when I get home."

His smile clouds over a little.

"Clingy?"

She rolls her eyes.

"Hmm, let's see. He took me to dinner with his parents for our third date. He's been trying to get me to move in with him since the first time we had sex, which, by the way, was like three weeks after we met. Oh, and he goes through my phone sometimes, because he 'doesn't trust the guys I work with'. Which is obviously ironic, considering."

Realizing her glass is empty again, she pushes it toward him. He drops a bowl of peanuts in front of her, and a glass of water.

"I hate to be insensitive-"

Clarke chokes on her water at that, and she's not entirely sure why that's so funny, other than that Bellamy doesn't actually seem to care about being insensitive at all, but he just sighs and otherwise ignores her.

"-but it sounds like you're better off. If anything, you should be celebrating."

She raises her glass of water, forcing a smile that comes out more like a drunken leer.

"I am celebrating, can't you tell?"

Bellamy just frowns at her, arms crossed over his chest.

"Uh huh. You want a sandwich or something?"

Clarke thinks she catches something other than judgment in his tone, but in her current state she can't put her finger on it.

"I'm fine, dad," she grumbles. "Isn't your job to get me drunk, not to sober me up?"

"My job is to take care of customers," he replies dryly. "Besides, I'm legally responsible for making sure you don't get wasted here and go wreak havoc in the streets."

"Mhmm." The water is gone, and the salt in the peanuts is beginning to make her thirsty. Holding her glass out, she eyes Bellamy thoughtfully. "What kind of havoc, exactly?"

He pulls out the fountain hose, filling her empty glass with water, and shrugs.

"Well, back in the Roman Empire, adultery was punishable by law. So you could go find this Flint guy-"

"Finn."

"Right, sorry, Finn. And you could seize half of his property and banish him to an island."

Clarke stares.

"I don't really want his property. And we're already on an island," she points out, thinking of Manhattan. Bellamy purses his lips. "I could banish him to Jersey, but honestly, I don't think my authority would hold."

His answering smile is bright, but quick, and it's gone before Clarke can fully appreciate it.

"You sure you don't want a sandwich?"

She shakes her head.

"Another drink would be good, though."

He relents with a sigh, setting another Jameson in front of her.

"So, you're a history nerd," she deduces, less wary of offending him now that he's given her what she wants. One dark eyebrow disappears into his mop of black hair, the corner of his lips twitching.

"I'm a fourth year PhD candidate at Cornell. Ancient History with a specialization in Greco-Roman law, actually. And I prefer history buff."

She eyes the way his biceps fill out his plaid flannel shirt.

"I bet you do."

He does it again, that flash of a smile that disappears as quickly as it came.

"And you, Clarke? What do you do?"

"Aside from day-drinking, you mean?" She's about to answer, but for the first time, she realizes that the constant buzzing she's been hearing for the past hour is coming from her purse. Reaching into it, Clarke pulls out her phone, huffing loudly when she sees the call display. Finn. As she hits ignore, the screen pops into her call logs.

"Everything okay?"

Clarke blinks, having forgotten Bellamy was there. She holds up her phone, so that he can see the display, and he whistles.

"Twenty-eight missed calls? Who is this guy, John Hinckley Jr.?"

Clarke just taps her glass on the bar. This time, Bellamy refills it without so much as a word.

Four hours later, and Clarke is no longer the only one at the bar.

Sometime after five, people started to drift in, the post-work crowd. As the seats around her filled up, Clarke half expected Bellamy to kick her out, but he doesn't. And when the second bartender, Sterling arrived, Bellamy assigned him to the other side of the bar. She might be drunk, deliciously so, but she can tell from the look Sterling gave him that their sections are usually switched.

He still hasn't gotten her to order food off the menu, so he just keeps replacing the peanuts in front of her. Somewhere in her alcohol fueled haze, Clarke recognizes that he's taking care of her.

When it's been longer than usual since she's gotten a refill, Clarke glances up at the clock. It's almost eight-thirty.

"Shit," she mumbles, digging through her purse. She pulls out a wad of cash, failing miserably to calculate the tab in her head. Sighing, she tosses a hundred onto the bar, and then for good measure, adds a fifty. When she hops off the stool her head spins unpleasantly.

She was supposed to meet Monty for dinner an hour ago. A quick glance at her phone reveals half a dozen calls and texts from him, peppered in amongst the barrage of missed calls from Finn. She's almost out the door when she feels a hand on her arm.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Blinking, Clarke looks up to see Bellamy standing over her. He's taller than she realized.

"I'm supposed to be at dinner," she tells him. He frowns at her, bemused. The he turns back to the bar.

"Murphy!" He yells at a passing busboy, the one who's been doubling as a barback. "I need to run an errand. Fill in for me and all my tips are yours."

The busboy gives him a greasy smile, and a half salute, and then Bellamy looks back down at Clarke.

"Don't go anywhere. I'm serious. I'll be right back." His tone is stern, and she finds herself nodding, even though she knows Monty is probably worried. He disappears down a hallway she didn't notice before, and Clarke jabs at her phone.

He answers on the first ring.

"Clarke? Where are you? I couldn't get a hold of you so I called Finn, and he told me what happened, and that guy's a jerk, Clarke, but I was worried you'd done something really stupid, and-"

"I'm fine." She winces at the audible slur in her words. "I didn't do anything stupid. Or just, like, the regular amount of stupid. I got drunk, at this bar, I've been here since four. I'm sorry, I forgot about dinner."

"No, that's-" Clarke can hear the relief in his voice, along with the concern. "where are you? Do you need a ride? I'll come get you."

With a start, she realizes she doesn't even know the name of the bar. Just then, Bellamy re-emerges, a leather jacket thrown on over his flannel, and a set of keys in his hand.

"Hey." Clarke tries not to stare, but he was hot when she first got here, and a mickey later she finds him almost painfully attractive. "What's this place called?"

He stares at the phone in her hand, eyes dark.

"Is that him?"

"What? No. It's Monty," she tells him.

"Monty." He repeats, like he's waiting for something. After a moment, she remembers that she met Bellamy a few hours ago. Bellamy does not know Monty.

"Monty is my friend," explains Clarke, and when he continues to just look at her, she sighs. "He's going to come get me. But I don't know what the name of this bar is."

"Clarke?" Monty's voice crackles over the line. "Who are you talking to?"

"The bartender," she mutters, then turning back to Bellamy, "where are we?"

He rolls his eyes.

"It's fine, Princess. I can drive you home."

She looks up at him in shock.

"Why? I paid my tab."

"Yeah, I know," he says puzzled. "You dramatically overpaid, by the way," he tells her, holding up the money she'd left on the bar.

"I don't know you," Clarke replies suspiciously. "What if you're a serial killer?"

Monty's voice drifts out of the phone again.

"What's going on?"

It's too much for her drunk brain to handle, in the moment, Monty's voice in her ear, and Bellamy's eyes on her while he jingles his keys against his leg.

"It's fine. Bellamy's going to take me home."

"Who's-"

Clarke hangs up. Bellamy raises his eyebrows.

"What if I'm a serial killer?"

She sighs.

"Then I won't have to worry about being hungover tomorrow."