Binding Ties

Chapter Twelve

He was a fucking masochist.

Clarke had always known that he liked his fucking to have a bit of a bite to it, he just hadn't realised before how much of a fucking glutton for punishment he actually was. He must be! That was the only logical reason that he sat on his brand new sofa with a fluffy pink cushion over his lap to hide the hard on he was sporting when he pictured what his new roomie might be getting up to in the hot shower that she'd been taking for the last fifteen fucking minutes.

He was living completely on Red Bull and coffee, since he hadn't slept in the three days that she'd been staying with him. Not since she climbed into the bed next to him at some stupid hour of the morning.

He didn't know what had woken him, but it happened a lot. Usually he woke up in a cold sweat, his sheets tangled around his naked waist, from some bad fucking memory or another. He liked to keep that shit alive for the daylight – Patricia's face, her fucking psycho husband, and the baby – it all kept him on edge, ready with a blade at any moment that it might be useful. Seeing their faces gave him a thread of pure steel to face anything.

But asleep those memories became a torture. He'd accepted it.

She hadn't, though. Sophie had sat up suddenly, her hair like wayward flames around her tiny body, her eyes drowsy with sleep. She'd lifted the covers on the double bed that he'd insisted she take, and he'd shook his head.

And then she padded across the barren floorboards in her bare feet, and squeezed in next to him on the single.

"Sophie," he'd started, but she just cut him off.

"You had a nightmare," she mumbled, "And I'm fucking living in one, so we might as well not be alone. I just want to sleep, nothing else."

Her eyes had already closed, and he'd just lay there looking at her, before he'd moved them both across to the double, and she hadn't even stirred.

He hadn't returned to his own bed the next night. She said it made her feel safer to be next to him. When he tried to explain that it wasn't good, she'd just nodded again, and gone quietly back into her shell, turning to face the wall without another word. He'd climbed in because it felt right.

Like the true saint that he was, though, he'd had to be awake before her every morning to make sure she didn't open her eyes to his morning glory. He'd never spent so much time wanking in his shower, in all the eleven years that he'd had the place.

And it was pure fucking fear that one morning he wouldn't wake up first that had kept him staring at the ceiling for twelve hours a night.

Sophie appeared in the doorway in nothing more than a small greying towel, and a blush over every inch of her, smelling unmistakeably like his brand of shower gel. He tried not to let that make him feel like such a smug bastard, but somewhere inside some primal part of him wanted her to smell like him.

"if we're going to Nate's then I will need to borrow a t-shirt," she said awkwardly, "My top is still soaked, but I can wear my jeans for another day."

"Sure," he frowned then, realising that he'd only seen her wear the same jeans and a few camisole tops, and she didn't have any other clothes, "There must be stuff that you need, why didn't you say anything?"

"You aren't my keeper, Clarke. I'm already an imposition, I don't want to be a financial drain as well." She straightened her spine – every inch of her was Dobrev pride right then – and he followed her into their bedroom with a scowl.

"Fuck that, Soph, what else can you do but ask me?"

She snatched the t-shirt he offered, and dropped the towel to throw it on with that ramrod straight spine facing him.