Gilded Obsession

Chapter 12

Clarke wakes up to a soft hand shaking her gently.

"Wake up, sweetness," Alexandria whispers by her ear.

"Five more minutes," the barely awake blonde slurs, eliciting a chuckle from the woman hovering over her.

"I'd gladly let you sleep for five more minutes, hours, or days, creampuff, but you made me promise that I'd wake you up and I am not in the habit of breaking promises, nor do I want you to be upset with me," Alexandria explains. But only half of the words compute in the tired blonde's brain.

"Is it fixed?" she finally asks, sitting up in the bed with a hopeful, yet panicked look on her face and her hair sticking up in all directions.

"It is. All your files have been restored, including your paper."

Clarke looks at the other woman with wide eyes before asking, "I hate to ask even more of you, but do you happen to have a computer I could use to finish up that paper? It's technically not due until tomorrow evening, but at the rate at which it's been going, that'll be cutting it close, even if I start now."

"You are planning on pulling an all-nighter?" the brunette asks incredulously, disapproval evident in her expressive eyes.

"Yes, Alexandria. I don't have choice. At least it'll be the last one for a few weeks, I hope. I'll manage," she retorts, unable to hold back her annoyance.

Alexandria didn't understand. Clearly. But this was important.

"Okay, cupcake, fine. And yes, I do have a laptop for you," the brunette finally says, almost sounding like she's talking to a wild animal. As if Clarke was about to snap. She wasn't. She was simply about to break down... even further.

Without bothering to change back into clothes, Clarke follows the other woman into the living room where a brand-new laptop is already sitting open with her paper pulled up. She leans over the device, scrolling through to make sure everything is still there – as far as she can tell – then she starts typing more while standing upright.

She had been planning on borrowing a computer and going home to finish up her paper, but the short nap and the miraculous recovery of her paper had given her a much-needed boost of energetic inspiration that she couldn't afford to ignore.

She'd just type up a few paragraphs, then go home.

However, that's not how it happens. Instead, she sort of floats down onto a chair, and soon thereafter, Alexandria has a blanket draped over her shivering shoulders.

Clarke hadn't even noticed how cold she was.

And another few minutes later, a steaming mug of hot, heavenly caffeine appears in front of her while Alexandria joins her across the table and pulls up her own laptop.

"I'm sorry, I am overstaying my welcome," the blonde says when she notices the brunette must have started working at this late hour just because Clarke was still here. She moves to close the laptop carefully after saving her work and emailing herself the latest version of her paper, but the other woman stops her.

"Stay. You are in the zone, so just keep going if you can. It'll be good for me to get some work done as well. And I am not tired anyway."

The few minutes she meant to spend writing at Alexandria's place soon turn into hours and the next time Clarke looks up, it's starting to get light outside and the brunette is still sitting across from her, typing and clicking away on her own laptop.

And while the blonde's eyes sting and feel dryer than a desert, she's done. She finished this Godforsaken paper with many more hours to spare than expected. All she needed to do now was proofread the damn thing. Because who knows how many grammatical and spelling errors or nonsense sentences the assignment might contain at this point. But she could do that after going home, taking a shower, and taking a short nap. Right now, she'd probably make it worse.