Chapter Text
Clarke slowly opens her eyes. Someone is knocking on her door and disturbing her in her sleep. After looking on her phone and seeing it is already 3 pm, she knows she has no right to be angry with whoever is at her door. That doesn’t take away from the fact that someone has woken her up from a really good nap.
"Go away!"
She turns around again and tries to go back to sleep. Maybe if she sleeps long enough, she will wake up a few weeks later without remembering anything. That is one thing she wants more than sleep; to forget. She knew her relationship with Finn wasn’t the easiest. They fought a lot and couldn’t really agree on anything, but she loved him. Loves him, maybe. She wasn’t ready for it to be over. For instance, she still wanted to go on a road trip with him, despite knowing it would turn in one big fight. She had planned to show him a new gallery in another part of the city. All those plans gone. Sure, she could go alone to that gallery, but she had hope that Finn would have liked that one.
She feels the tears starting to well up in her eyes again, so she blinks a few times in the hope to get rid of them. Meanwhile, the knocking continues.
"Nobody is here!" she shouts, hoping she would be left alone again.
She hears whispers behind the door and she immediately knows who it is. Raven and Octavia, the last two people she wants to see right now.
"Go away!" Clarke tries again. However, they don’t stop knocking.
"We know you are there, Clarke!" Octavia has stopped knocking and started shouting.
Raven follows her lead and starts shouting too for Clarke to open the door.
Clarke sighs and rolls off the comfortable couch. With shuffling feet she walks to the door. She takes a deep breath and opens the door a bit, so she can look into the hallway, where Raven and Octavia are standing, through a crack.
"Clarke!" Raven’s tone is excited, despite her concerned look. Octavia only waves.
Just the sight of her friends standing in the hallway causes her tears to return. Clarke tries her best to hide them, but she knows it is useless. Maybe she just really needs to cry hard for a long period of time. She decides fighting against them isn’t going to help, so she lets her tears fall.
Octavia immediately pushes the door further open and gives Clarke a hug. Clarke falls in the embrace and sobs on Octavia’s shoulders while Raven rubs her back in a comforting manner.
"We heard from Bellamy what happened. Why didn’t you call us?"
Clarke knows Raven doesn’t mean it, but she sounds offended. It only makes Clarke cry harder. The last thing she wants is to neglect her friends because of a boyfriend.
"I just wanted to be alone," she sobs incomprehensibly.
Now that her friends are here, she doubts if she really wanted to be alone or if it just was the easier option. When she is alone, she can pretend that this isn’t happening. Like her relationship of four years hasn’t ended because the assumed love of her life cheated on her. More than once, like she was nothing to him. Just a warm body in his bed, so he didn’t have to sleep in a cold and uncomfortable bed. She often cooked for him, because she thought he loved her. He probably came home to eat after sleeping with another girl. Her mind keeps on racing with all the times Finn probably cheated on her and she had no clue. This only makes her cry harder.
"Sshh," Octavia tries to soothe her. She starts to move to the couch, taking Clarke with her.
Once Clarke is wrapped in a blanket on the couch, the tears start to disappear. Her throat is sore of all the crying and she barely has a voice, but she tries to talk. She has to give Raven and Octavia some information about what happened.
"He cheated."
"We know, babe." Raven’s hand returns to its place on her back.
"I found them together," Clarke continues with a hoarse voice. "I came home from a lecture and she sat on the kitchen counter while making out." Her eyes go to the kitchen and she realises she can never look at her kitchen without thinking of him with her. "I want a new kitchen."
Raven and Octavia can’t help but giggle.
"Maybe I can ask Lincoln to paint the kitchen, it will look different," Octavia suggests.
Clarke just shrugs. She likes her kitchen a lot. It took her a long time to decide how she wanted it. It was their first step into real adulthood. First the kitchen and then the bathroom, so their apartment would be worth more when they decided to move. They had decided to redecorate their apartment a bit in order to be able to afford a bigger house once they wanted to have children. Last week she had these big plans for her future with Finn, and now, a week later, she doesn’t have anything. She is alone in the apartment with too many memories of her relationship with Finn. Everything started to remind her of Finn. The paint drops on the floor, because he isn’t really as good in painting as her, or the stain on the couch, which was caused by a strawberry and a intense make-out session.
Octavia seems to notice her thoughts. "Why don’t we go out tonight?"
Raven never turns down a night out and immediately agrees.
"I don’t know, guys," Clarke starts hesitant. "I really want to lay on this couch and watch series while I stuff my face with junk food."
"You can get fat another time."
Octavia nods. "And sitting around while staring at everything that reminds you of him, isn’t exactly healthy."
Clarke keeps getting surprised by how well her friends know her. "Maybe you’re right."
"Like hell we are!"Raven stands up and pulls Clarke with her. "Take a shower and put on your sexiest dress. You are getting laid!"
Octavia agrees. "Nothing better than a good rebound."
XXX
"Clarke, are you coming?" Raven asks for the tenth time that evening.
However, she doesn’t want to go home. The night was just starting to become fun. The alcohol makes her forget and that is all she wants. What she doesn’t want is going home to be alone with her thoughts. Drowning in alcohol in a bar is not as bad as drowning in alcohol alone at home. It has been two months since the break-up and everything still reminds her of Finn. They agreed she can stay in the apartment until she has found something else. After she has moved out, they will sell the house and share whatever they get for it. However, right now she is still living in their home with their stuff. Nothing is really hers. They bought everything together in the three years that they lived there. She doesn’t want to go back there, so she takes another shot and ignores her friends disapproving looks.
Octavia decides to give it another try. "Come on Clarke. It is late, we are going home."
Clarke just shakes her head. "I don’t want to go home."
Their disapproving looks turn into looks of pity. "He isn’t worth it. Just come with us before you do something you will definitely regret tomorrow."
"Why does he get to sleep around, while I am not even allowed to have one night of fun."
Raven is quick to answer. "Because you are a decent and responsible person and Finn is a dick."
Octavia giggles. They are not sober enough to take Clarke’s self-destructive behaviour seriously.
Clarke just shrugs and starts moving away. She is trying to get eye contact with a hot girl across the bar. She has blonde hair, which is definitely fake. Although, that isn’t what gets Clarke attention. It is her impressive decolleté. She notices she isn’t the only one who can’t stop staring. She, however, has one advantage over the rest of the other boys and some girls in the bar; the girl is looking back at her.
Clarke smirks at her. The girl waves back at her. This doesn’t go unnoticed by her friends and they shake their heads disapprovingly.
"We are going. Bye Clarke," Raven says. She is obviously done with her. Octavia seems to hesitate, but eventually decides to follow Raven and the rest of their friends out of the bar.
Clarke waves sarcastically at them. She sees Octavia roll her eyes, but she isn’t in the state to care about the opinion of her friends. She wants to forget, so she downs another drink and moves in the direction of the girl. She is almost next to her, when a sudden wave of dizziness overwhelms her. A bit panicked she grabs the first stranger nearest too her.
"Wow, hi there," she hears a smug voice say. She feels his hand go lower towards her ass.
Clarke shakes her head. "Hands off," she slurs.
He doesn’t react and his hands continue going lower. She wants to push him away, but she has lost her coordination to do this effectively. He just chuckles and starts moving her to the exit. Luckily, he is also pretty drunk and can’t walk in a straight line. The moment he loses his balance, Clarke pushes him away for real this time and makes a beeline for the bar. She needs another drink.
XXX
Everything is turning. Clarke knows she has drunk too much, but she is in no state to really worry about that. She hasn't drunk this much since her break-up with Finn. In fact, the only time she can remember being this drunk is when she turned 21 and they went to a bar legally for the first time.
'Maybe I should go home," she mumbles to herself.
She has no idea how she is going to the place she has been avoiding the last two months. If she has enough money, she can get a cab. It is, however, most likely she spent all her money on booze.
The first step in going home is leaving the bar, which is harder than she expected. The bar seems to have turned into a carrousel and it is as if everyone suddenly has a twin. People start pushing her away when she bumps into them accidently, which only makes walking more difficult.
"Sorry," she keeps on slurring.
The exit is getting closer and closer. It is almost like she can feel the fresh air already. She didn't know she needed fresh air this much. The craving for fresh air is as strong as her craving for alcohol an hour ago.
Finally, she has reached the door, but other guests are blocking the exit.
"Move!" She snaps.
Not just because she wants to breath air that doesn't smell of sweat and bear, but also because she feels a wave of nausea hit her and she doesn't want to throw up in the middle of a bar. That happened to Octavia once and Clarke really wants to spare herself the embarrassment. Besides, throwing up in something other than a toilet or maybe even an alley is messy. She is surprisingly clean after a night in a bar and she doesn't want to change that.
Luckily, the other guests seem to notice her nausea and move out of her way. Clarke immediately pushes open the door and lets the cool air surround her. It helps her sober up for a few seconds before the nausea hits her again and she feels vomit rising.
As fast as possible she moves to the nearest wall and throws up. She starts crying as soon as vomit leaves her mouth. Her tears mix with sweat and the piece of vomit in the corner of her mouth. She doesn't see it, but she knows she has vomit in her hair.
She plants her hand against the wall and keeps panting in the hope to get her breathing back to normal. The taste of vomit is still strong in her mouth and it almost makes her puke again. In her drunken daze she wonders how she got so low. Just because Finn cheated on her, she has fallen in a downwards spiral. Enough people get cheated on and they don't give in to the temptation of alcohol. Why does she? She never really saw herself as an alcoholic, because that is what she is. Right? Drinking to forget. That is what alcoholics do. She may not be at home alone with a bottle of vodka, but she is alone in a bar with too many beer bottles. That puts her on the spectrum of alcoholism.
She doesn't have much time to think about it, because the next wave of nausea hits her. Before she knows it, she is throwing up again. Only this time is different. A soothing hand is on her back and her hair is pulled back. Whoever is helping her clearly doesn't care about the vomit in her hair.
Clarke is too busy with throwing up to wonder who is helping her. She knows it isn't Octavia or Raven. Not only they left a few hours ago, the hand on her back also feels different. She doesn't know that hand.
She spits a feel times to get rid of the last bit of vomit in her mouth, before she turns around. Her eyes widen when she sees who has been helping her.
"Lexa?"