i think a lot about how clock and winner parallel ice cube and book so much and how similar they are.
both book and clock have experienced mistreatment regarding from their respective teams. book felt mocked and neglected by match and pencil from freesmart while clock was deliberately forgotten by the rest of the losers team to the point that they forgot to recover him.
their experiences reshaped their views as a person and have tried to change to become a better person than their previous teammates. however, this leads them to accidentally project their own problems onto their new teammates, especially their close friends while unintentionally being dismissive of what their friends truly want.
book assumes that icy was facing the same problems as her, so book thought she agreed with her, but really, she was accidentally suppressing her rights. clock assumed that winner didn't like being forgotten like him, so he tries to show off winner, but ends up pushing their boundaries. which brings me to my next point...
meanwhile, both ice cube and winner both resent the mistreatment they recieve from their previous friends.
ice cube values her own autonomy, as seen in bfdia 5a when pin assumes book was suppressing her rights to go match's dance party, and icy reaffirms that it was her choice to match's dance party, not book's.
as we've seen multiple times in the series, she also does not tolerate any form of disrespect towards her especially if they treat her as a tool or taken advantage of. if confident enough, she's not afraid to speak out if mistreated.
interestingly, as much as ice cube is a vengeful character, she'd rather walk away and refuse to address the problem rather than confront it. she'd rather move on and just distance herself as soon as possible.
winner is also like this too. as seen in tpot with two and clock, winner does not tolerate that two overstepped their boundary. they also didn't mind if clock got eliminated even after he tried to apologize for the performance incident. like ice cube, they'd rather have their space.
this is reaffirmed by winner in tpot 8 when two tries to get them to confront clock again. but winner disapproves of this because two didn't ask them permission to see clock again, thus accidentally invalidating their need for personal space. they have also expressed that they didn't like clock treating them differently because they though he was treating them like a celebrity.
winner does not want to be treated like celebrity and ice cube does not want to be treated as a tool or someone to be taken advantage of. but deep down, both of them, crave for someone who actually cared about them.
ice cube doesn't have any real friends besides bottle who actually cared about icy's wellbeing (and some of the s! team but we don't see that a lot. not including yellow face). ice cube's other true freesmart friends bubble and ruby are also not present in tpot anymore. and winner hasn't had a good friend since loser.
which is why it was important that clock explained his side of the story in tpot 10. both of them did not explain their sides of the story and that caused both of their assumptions.
once clock explained that he didn't want winner to be forgotten, winner understood and appreciates that clock was putting in that effort for them. clock understands what boundaries he was overstepping and apologizes and acknowledges that what he did was wrong.
after ice cube congratulates clock for fixing things with winner, she immediately looks back to book. keep in mind, icy was there the entire time winner and clock talked about their feelings. i think in her eyes, clock reminded her a lot of book so when she saw clock and winner, it reminded of her and book when they were friends.
perhaps ice cube did once appreciate the friendship and care she had from book. but she pushed herself away from it because like clock, book accidentally overstepped a boundary. when she finally sees book again, icy is reminded of clock that despite accidentally overstepping a boundary, clock geniunely thought he was doing the right thing for winner. perhaps, icy has realized that book was like that and has decided that if clock and winner can sort each others problems, she can try to do that with book too.
