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Slowly and with more than a little reluctance, Clarke drags her feet up the stairs to Octavia’s apartment, thankful, just this once, to the asshole who decided it wasn’t necessary to include an elevator in a five-story building. It's been nearly three years since O and Lincoln moved into the building, and she can’t count the number of times she’s cursed these steps, but today, she’ll take anything that delays her arrival to this year's annual start to the season party.
Clarke doesn’t hate Christmas or the holiday season, or anything like that; she’s not a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge or Grinch, looking to ruin anyone’s fun. Everyone else is free to deck the halls with as much merry cheer as they desire. For her, though, the constant happy music, the countless gifts that she has to pick out, not to mention the permanently bright smile that she’s supposed to have on her face, all make her want to lock herself in her apartment and not come out until the remnants of tinsel have cleared from the air.
It’s all just a little bit much, but then again, so is Octavia. Since the moment that she met her, the first day of sophomore year of college, she’s been nothing short of exuberant, and that hasn’t changed in the five years since. In fact, it’s really only grown. Coming to a stop just outside the door, decked with an overflowing wreath, Clarke tugs at the hem of the Christmas sweater adorning her body, proof of just how far her friend has decided to take the concept of festive this year.
For one brief second, she lets the guilt of her grumpiness hit her before quickly pushing it away. One of the benefits of years of friendship is that Octavia knew exactly what she was getting when she insisted Clarke showed up. She’s never been overly enthusiastic about the season, and yet, Octavia still demanded her presence. Clarke grimaces to herself as a series of particularly loud cheers echo through the walls, wondering if it’s too late to run, before finally pushing the unlocked door open and stepping inside.
She’s here, in an ugly Christmas sweater no less, which is just going to have to be enough.
Still, she lingers by the front door, unconcerned with creating a potential traffic jam in the narrow hallway, removing her scarf and mittens slowly before shrugging off her coat and hanging it in the closet instead of attempting to place it on the overflowing rack.
Inside, the boisterous joy has transitioned into discernible voices; she can hear Jasper’s eagerly explain something then Murphy’s sarcastic quip in response, and it’s enough to get her fuzzy sock clad feet moving towards the living room. While she isn’t social by nature, doesn’t enjoy any scenario where she has to be outgoing, she does love her friends. Most of the time, hanging out with them is much more than bearable; there’s no reason this should be different.
“What are you wearing?”
She stops short at the sound of Bellamy’s voice. Or rather, she tries to. Her socks slip on the smooth wood floor, causing her to slide to a stop slightly past the entrance to the kitchen, where she proceeds to nearly fall on her ass, instantly erasing all of the happiness she just managed to build up. Taking her good mood and turning it on its head seems to be a particular talent of his if their last few interactions are anything to go by, and she could really have gone without the extra frustration today.
Closing her eyes, she reminds herself that she’s here to make O happy, and getting into a fight with the beloved brother she only just reunited with, only seconds after arriving would undoubtedly be counterintuitive to that objective. Still, she can’t quite manage to keep the sarcasm out of her voice when she responds. “What does it look like?”
“My sweater.”
No. She whips around to face the man in question, but as her eyes take in the grumpy cat staring back at her, boldly pronouncing that they will not be dashing through the snow, she knows that she would have been better off just ignoring him. Or even better, if she had simply listened to her instincts 30 minutes ago and not bothered climbing a million flights of stairs.
When Madi had handed her the exact same sweater a few days ago at their last visit for a few weeks with a sly grin, insisting that now there was no excuse why she couldn’t go, Clarke had just groaned good-naturedly and accepted the gift. Later that night, when she looked at it more closely, she’d even chuckled a little. It was perfect; exactly the right mix of festive while still holding on to the reluctance she’s determined to keep.
“Did your brain short circuit? They are clearly the same,” Bellamy tells her patronizingly, and it’s only then that she registers the smirk on his face, his cleanly shaved face. Her eyes travel along his sharp jaw in wonder, her breath catching in her throat despite her best intentions. He looks like a completely different person without the beard. Much more like the man she knew from the pictures on Octavia’s bulletin board than the one she met for the first time only just over a month ago.
Really, the only similarity is how he’s looking at her, which is enough to bring her mind back to the situation at hand. He's still Bellamy, the guy who thought it necessary to tell her he wasn’t interested before even offering a hello at the bar where they both happened to be waiting for Octavia. It doesn’t matter that he’s suddenly inexplicably attractive, he’s still an asshole, and she’s not going to put up with his attitude.
“Are you telling me that you’re responsible for the grumpy cat craze?” she finally manages to snark back, thankful that her voice comes out pleasingly sarcastic. “Somehow you befriended a cat over in the middle east and decided to make him internet famous in between fighting a war."
He narrows his eyes at her like she’s ridiculous, which to be fair, she is, but it’s endearing, not whatever his face is saying. “Take it off.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” she snaps back again, wondering in a flash of irritation if it would be worth ripping the sweater off, leaving her in nothing but an old sports bra just to wipe the smirk off his face. She contemplates it for another second, matching his stare resolutely before a better idea comes to her. “You take it off, find yourself a different sweater.”
“Why the hell should I have to find a different one?” he asks in outrage. “Where would I find one anyway?”
“That sounds like a you problem,” she tells him plainly, pulling at the edge of her sweater again, this time much more lovingly. It really is nice, cozy, and warm, and it seems to have the added bonus of pissing him off, so she’s just winning all around.
“Seriously? What do you want me to do? Squeeze into one of O’s old ones?” The image puts a reluctant smile on her face, but he quickly removes it as he continues, “No, it’s fine. We can—”
“No,” Clarke cuts him off, not willing to let it go after everything. She's stubborn like that; he’d probably call it petty, but it’s a part of her personality that she’s come to embrace. She wouldn’t be where she is today if she just backed down every time someone wanted her to. “It’s too late; we can’t go back. One of us needs to change, and it’s definitely not going to be me.”
“One of us needs to change? Are you five? Actually, no, that’s an insult to five-year-olds,” he adds quickly, grinning at the scowl on her face. “It’s the same sweater, not the end of humanity. No need to sound so dire.”
“You were the one who started this all!” she cries, taking a step towards him. “You with your whole ‘that’s my sweater’ tirade.”
“I did not,” he argues, matching her movements. “You are the one who started eyeing me up, using the sweater as an excuse to see me shirtless.”
Clarke’s mouth falls open, her eyes widening at his audacity. “You’re kidding, right? You have to be because the idea that I would manipulate the situation to get your clothes off— that I’d even want them off is so ludicrous that I don’t even have the words. I am nowhere near that desperate.”
“That’s not what it seemed like the other night,” he responds, looking even more annoyingly self-righteous.
“Excuse me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. Go ahead and hit on as many people as you’d like, I’m just saying, introducing yourself with the line, I haven’t seen you around before, is a bold choice. Again, I get it, I’m irresistible, but this would all be so much easier if you could just keep it together.”
“Oh god,” she mutters, running a hand through her hair and valiantly ignoring the way her cheeks are most certainly coloring. It’s hot in here, especially with the damn sweater; her flush has absolutely nothing to do with what he’s saying because it’s nothing but a bunch of lies. “I was making conversation!”
“You were looking for a hookup.”
“I was trying to kill time before my best friend and her supposedly amazing big brother showed up. I’m still waiting for him to make an appearance, by the way.”
“Nice,” he deadpans, but she just grins back cheerily, glad to once again have the upper hand.
“I am, actually, not that you would understand, so I’m going to give you the option of pretending like this conversation never happened. You can just take the sweater off, and I won’t even gloat.”
His jaw ticks with tension, his hands clench at his sides like he’s attempting to have restraint, but whatever mantra he’s got going in his head trying to inspire peace doesn’t appear to work any better than any of the ones she’s attempted. The idea that she irritates him as much as he does her only intensifies the smile on her face. If she’s going to be trapped in this hellish dynamic with him, he deserves to suffer equally.
“Yeah, because that doesn’t look like gloating at all.”
“Did I say anything?” she sasses back.
“Yes!” he snaps. “You’ve said way more than I ever needed to hear. Maybe you could do everyone a favor and keep your pretty little mouth shut for once and give us all some much-needed peace.”
The irritation that had only started to ebb away returns to her in a fiery storm. Bellamy wants her to shut up, well jokes on him; she stopped giving a damn what other people wanted from her a long time ago, and she’s not about to start caring again for him. She opens her mouth, ready to let off a tirade of nonsense with the sole goal of pissing him off when Octavia suddenly appears, squeezing herself into the alarmingly small between them and pushing them apart.
“For god’s sakes,” Octavia snaps. “Would it kill you two to get along for a few weeks; hell, a few hours?” Bellamy opens his mouth to respond, his eyes still fiery and his jaw still clenched, clearly intending to tell Octavia that, yes, it might actually kill him if he’s forced to tolerate Clarke’s presence here for the rest of the day, but Octavia doesn’t give him the opportunity. “Actually, no, don’t answer that since you evidently don’t have the right answer.”
“O,” Clarke tries to interject, not anymore interested in spending the afternoon with him than he is with her, but she doesn’t have any more luck.
“No,” Octavia cuts her off just as quickly, “I don’t want to hear it. What are you two even fighting about this time?”
Like a haze has cleared from her brain, Clarke suddenly understands with alarming clarity just how ridiculous they are being, not that she's about to admit that openly.
“She’s wearing my sweater,” Bellamy finally says, pouting at his sister in a way that is so ridiculously adorable that it’s unfair. He can’t be hot and cute; she won’t survive.
Octavia’s eyes dart down to Clarke’s sweater, and a bright grin lights up her face. “You actually got one!”
“Madi gave it to me,” Clarke answers, annoyance lifting at the happiness radiating from her friend.
It lasts for a few seconds as she grins back at her friend before it falls away at the sound of a scoff coming from across the room. She doesn’t even need to look to know that it’s Bellamy. Can't he just go away? The answer is apparently no, Clarke realizes as he starts to speak, rolling her eyes. And he accused her of talking too much.
“All that fuss and you didn’t even get your own sweater.”
“Maybe I should just go...” Clarke suggests with a sigh of defeat, noting the flash of annoyance across Octavia's face.
“Maybe you should,” Bellamy mutters under his breath, and Clarke has to actually bite her tongue to stop her from responding. She's trying to be the bigger person here— she’s spent the last four Christmases with O while she doesn’t think the siblings have since before Bellamy enlisted. She can leave and let them have their fun. It would just be a whole lot easier to get her feet moving if leaving didn’t mean letting him win. Why did he have to turn out to be such an asshole?
“No one is going anywhere!” Octavia yells, grabbing hold of Clarke’s arm before she can get more than a step away. “You are both going to stay here and be happy. You are going to enjoy the fun things I’ve got planned. You are going to be festive, and I don’t want to hear any complaints. If Murphy can show a little Christmas spirit, then you two sure as hell should be able to.
Clarke spots Murphy standing in the doorway along with everyone else and then rolls her eyes. He’s got a ripped up black hoodie with a single red bow stuck to the front. “You call that festival?”
“You need to up your standards, O,” Bellamy remarks, at almost the exact same time as her, instantly drawing her attention. He doesn’t have the right to be looking at Murphy with that level of disdain after only a mere month of interactions. That kind of judgment is limited to the rest of them who have put up with Murphy’s bullshit for years.
“Like your sweater is that creative,” Clarke snaps at Bellamy.
Bellamy turns to look at her, the damn smirk growing. “At least I went out and picked it myself.” His eyes trail up and down her body, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “Actually, O, I should have known that your standards were low.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Clarke asks heatedly, taking a step towards him without any clear direction what she’s going to do when she reaches him. Maybe she’ll grab his hair and yank, not exactly the classy move, but it would probably be very satisfying.
“Stop it! Just stop!” Octavia shouts, moving between them again. “He is trying, and he isn’t starting screaming matches in my kitchen, which is more than can be said for either of you. I know you two don’t get along for some mysterious reason that neither of you seems to be able to explain to me, but you are here. Both of you are here, surrounded by people who love you! Which is a lot more than some people get.”
In an instant, everything, the over garland hanging from almost every surface, the smile that’s been nearly constant on Octavia’s face over the last few weeks, even the ferocity with which she demanded that Clarke showed up today, all makes sense. It’s not the first time Lincoln has been deployed since he and Octavia started dating, it’s not even the first time he’s been gone for the holidays, but it’s the first time he’s been gone this long with absolutely no contact.
“O...” Bellamy says softly, taking a step towards his sister only to hesitantly stop at Octavia’s raised hand.
“I’m sorry—” Clarke starts to add on her own apologies, but Octavia cuts her off once again.
“No, don’t. I’m fine.” She wipes quickly at her eyes, blinking rapidly in a way the most definitely doesn’t look fine, but neither Bellamy nor Clarke calls her out on it. Instead, they just wait patiently until the smile is back on Octavia’s face, albeit much wobbly than before. “I am really. I’m making the best of it with what I’ve got...”
“But we are making it all harder,” Clarke realizes as the guilt from before settles firmly in her stomach.
“You two always make things harder,” Octavia teases back, thankfully sounding more like her usual self, “but I still love you, and I’m thankful to have both of you here with me. It would just be nice if you could both at least pretend to be happy to be here too.”
Both she and Bellamy mutter hasty agreements, only glaring quickly at each other at the similarity of their discourse, which Octavia seems to consider a win. Wrapping one arm around Clarke and the other around Bellamy, she leads both of them into the living room with surprising force, only letting go of them when it’s clear they aren’t going farther than opposite ends of the room.
Still, she eyes them warily for a second before finally clapping her hands together like an excitable child. “Now, as I was saying before we were rudely interrupted, the lights are in that box, the ornaments are in these two. Let’s turn this place into a winter wonderland.”
Clarke grimaces to herself, both surprised and not shocked at all that there are more decorations to be put up, but when Octavia looks over at her, she forces a smile onto her face and steps forward. She’s going to partake in these festivities, and she’s going to do it with a good attitude too. She’ll show Octavia that she’s not the one making things harder than they need to be.
She manages to make it through decorating the tree, two joy-filled renditions of Baby It’s Cold Outside, and half a dozen candy canes before not even her love for Octavia is enough to keep her in the crowded room.
Scoping out the place, she spots Octavia deep in conversation with Harper and knows that this is the moment she’s been waiting for. She grabs hold of her empty cup, making her way slowly and casually to the kitchen only to drop it hastily on the counter as soon as she’s out of sight, moving instead towards the fire escape.
Just a few minutes of fresh air away from everyone, and then she’ll be good to go back and finish out the night. She only needs a couple minutes of peace and quiet to breathe, and then it will all seem less exhausting. Or, at the very least, she’ll be better at pretending it’s not exhausting.
“Of course,” Clarke mutters, rolling her eyes as she steps through the window to the fire escape and spots Bellamy leaning casually against the railing. It's not as though the apartment is large, especially with nearly a dozen people crammed into the space; it makes sense that it feels crowded, and yet it still seems unjust the number of times in the last hour that she’s run into him.
He’s everywhere with his stupid smirk and messy hair, making her want to do things she shouldn’t, but she’s not going to. Just as she has every other time that she’s run into him, she rips her eyes away from him, ignoring how the sunlight accentuates just how well he’s filling out the damn sweater and turns to go back inside.
Maybe she can sneak out the front door to get some air, and then maybe she can just keep going after. She’s put some time in, over an hour now. Octavia would probably forgive her for leaving. She continues to contemplate the merits of disappearing against the wrath of her best friend while trying to contort her body back through the too small window.
“You don’t need to leave.”
What the hell? She hastily turns to look at him, incredulity written all over her face, only to smash her elbow against the window frame. Letting out a string of curses, she climbs back out the window and turns to face him, still grimacing in pain.
“Are you alright?”
“Seriously?”
“Yes,” he responds, his face contorted in what appears to be a genuine concern. “I could practically hear the bone smashing there, and a fractured bone is no joke.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head at him as she slowly unbends her arm and wiggles her fingers. It aches like hell, but it doesn’t seem to be broken. With that settled, she turns her full attention back to Bellamy. “An hour ago, you were practically ready to throw me out for daring to wear the same sweater as you, but now you’re fine sharing this tiny fire escape with me?”
“I’m just saying, it’s a free country; I can’t make you leave.”
She tilts her head to the side, studying him, but it doesn’t help. “You are quite possibly the most confusing human I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. Artists are weird by nature.”
“Human?” he asks with a tiny grin. “Have you been interacting with some kind of alien species none of the rest of us know about?”
Staring at him in wonder again, she tries to make sense of the shift, but the longer she stares, the more uncomfortable he seems to get. He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, and it’s like the overly confident, cocky man from before is nowhere to be seen. His face starts to color, an impressive feat considering the tanned color of his skin and she finally decides to let him off the hook. “No.” His eyes narrow in annoyance, but she just continues to grin back at him, waiting for the perfect moment. “Elves.”
“Like Santa’s workshops?” he asks, clearly amused now, even if he’s resisting it.
“God, no. Think cooler like Lord of the Rings, but smaller. You really think I’d hang with elves whose only major accomplishment is wrapping gifts. Come on.”
“I wasn’t aware that you hung out with any types of elves,” he responds dryly, but there’s no trace of mocking in his tone, so she lets it slide.
“Well, you do now.”
“Indeed,” he hums his acknowledgment, leaning back against the railing. “Be sure to pass my regards along next time you visit them.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” she tells him with faux sympathy as she makes her way over to the stairs to sit. “They don’t associate themselves with the likes of you.”
“The likes of me?” he asks mildly, but she can sense his interest.
“People who insult me. They are very protective,” she tells him with every bit of seriousness she can muster. He lets out a scoff but otherwise says nothing, so neither does she. Or at least she doesn’t until the sound of everyone else laughing inside finally becomes too much. “We’re both assholes, aren’t we?”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes snap to Bellamy in surprise. “No.”
“No?” he questions back, raising an eyebrow slightly in amused confusion.
“You were supposed to say something along the lines of speak for yourself.”
“Was I?”
“Yes, and then I was going to tell you that you were just proving my point.”
“Do you often have scripts for what the people around you are supposed to say?”
“Maybe,” she admits softly.
He lets out a groan of exasperation. “Of course, you do. You’re totally that person. The one who has to control everything single thing.”
“And like you aren’t,” she snaps back, thinking about his meltdown when he realized what sweater she’d had on. She meets his gaze straight on and her blood pressure starts to rise again despite the chill in the air. They were doing better; they had made it almost a full ten minutes without a fight, but of course, it couldn’t last. There’s just something about him that gets under her skin, sends her from calm, cool, and collected to raging with a few words. She lets out a tired sigh. “We need to stop this.”
“I know,” he says with his own sigh, looking away from her, and running a hand against the back of his neck. “Believe it or not, I don’t want to fight with you; I’m not actually trying to be an asshole.”
“It just comes naturally,” Clarke quips back before she can stop herself.
“Around you apparently,” he answers plainly, meeting her eyes again. “For some reason, you are able to weasel your way into my head and make me lose all sense of rationality. It doesn't make sense, and I can’t...”
“Okay,” she tells him, rising to her feet in determination. “We are going to figure this out.”
He looks at her for a few seconds, his expression strangely blank as though he’s not actually seeing her before suddenly seeming to come back to himself as contempt once again fills his eyes. “And I’m sure you’ve got some plan, don’t you?”
She feels her own irritation spike at the sarcasm in his tone, all thoughts of them calmly trying to discuss the best move forward vanishing from her head. “Of course,” she tells him hauntingly, determined to be the person he seems to think she is for no other reason than spite, even though she has no actual plan in place. He hums quietly, judgmentally, while she tries to buy herself some time.
Looking around, she searches for anything to distract him from a moment, only for her eyes to land on the piles of freshly plowed snow piled high in the alley beside the building. Excitement courses through her as a plan starts to take shape in her mind. Without a second more of thought or hesitation, she crosses the small space and starts climbing carefully down the steps.
“What are you doing!” Bellamy yells as her feet land on the platform belonging to the apartment below Octavia.
“I’m fixing our problem,” Clarke calls back over her shoulder. “Come on.”
“These stairs are covered in ice, you’re going to get yourself killed.”
She rolls her eyes at the strain in his voice, finally seeing the overprotective, worry prone man that Octavia always ranted about. It’s not that icy. “Well, if I die, that solves the problem too. It’s not the solution I’d prefer, but for you, it’s pretty much the same.”
“No,” he says with a huff, and she can finally hear the sound of his footsteps clanging on the metal surface of the stairs following her. “If you fall to your death here, I’m totally the primary suspect. I’ll likely end up in prison, and it will all be because you couldn’t go back into the building and down the nice clear steps like a normal person.”
“And you seem to think I’m dramatic,” Clarke mutters mostly to herself as her feet finally make contact with the snow-covered ground. She’s pretty sure that Bellamy says something back, but she doesn’t pay any attention to him, more intent on scoping out the space before her, looking for advantages and disadvantages.
“Okay,” Bellamy says with a huff from behind her, “what exactly is your—“
Lighting fast, she grabs a handful of snow, forms it into a makeshift ball, and then lobs it towards him. It lands with a thud against his shoulder, covering the blue of his sweater spectacularly before sliding to the ground. While it wasn’t where she was aiming for, the look on his face more than makes up for it.
His eyes narrow into slits. “What the fuck was that?”
“A snowball,” she tells him with unnecessary cheer.
“Yes, thank you,” he responds, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “It’s been a few years, but I did, in fact, grow up around snow, so I’ll repeat, what the fuck was that?”
Clarke lets out a huff of irritation. This really would have worked better if he had just picked up his own handful of snow and thrown it at her, but since he seems to be slow on the uptake, it looks like she’ll just have to explain. “You don’t like me—”
“Gee, I wonder why.”
“And I’m not fond of you either, but we can’t keep getting into arguments every time we see each other; it’s not fair to Octavia. So I propose this: thirty minutes where we hold nothing back. We can get all our aggressions out in a holiday approved activity, and then that’s the end of it. No more fighting. No more arguments.”
He stares at her dumbly for a second, a wrinkle of confusion finding its way in between his brows. “You want to have a snowball fight?”
“Precisely.”
“You’re actually serious?”
Instead of answering, spending worthless time trying to convince him that she’s right, Clarke just reaches down and grabs another handful of snow before tossing it at him. His eyes widen in surprise, but he makes no attempts to fight back, so she just clutches another fist full of snow and chucks it at him.
“I mean,” she taunts when he continues to not respond, tossing a snowball from hand to hand in contemplation, “you don’t have to do anything other than stand there. It doesn't make much difference to me. Either way, I get the satisfaction.” She throws the ball, landing it right in the sliver of skin not covered by his sweater. “And boy, is it satisfying.”
“Is it?” he questions, eyes darkening as he shakes the remaining bits of snow off.
“Very,” she grins back at him, only for it to quickly slide away as he charges towards her. She takes a hasty step backward and then another before finally just turning around and running as fast as she can towards the dumpster she noticed earlier.
Despite her speed, though, he still manages to land three solid hits to her back before she is able to gain cover, and then from there, he continues to land shot after shot. For every snowball she throws that makes contact, he must land twice as many. His aim appears to be annoyingly good; knowing her luck, he probably played baseball growing up.
A cold ball of snow somehow seems to slip past through her defenses, hitting her in the stomach and making her wince. He was probably the goddamn star player. Thinking about it now, she can totally see it, but it doesn’t bring her down. Instead, it just fills her with intense determination. She might not possess his impeccable throwing abilities, but she’s stealthy, sneaky and that is all she needs.
Being careful to conceal her footsteps, Clarke slowly slides out from behind her hiding place and walks around the back of the building so that she now has a clear view of Bellamy’s back. She pauses to watch him for a moment, enthralled for some reason with the movement of his arm as he swings it back to throw snowball after snowball at her.
She studies the movements of his body as only an artist can until he calls out tauntingly to where he believes her to be, breaking the illusion and reminding her of her mission. With her mind back on the task at hand, Clarke grabs an armful of snow and quickly dashes towards him. Standing up on her tiptoes, she pulls his sweater away from the back of his neck and dumps the snow in before he has a chance to react.
“Aghhhh,” he lets out a truly spectacular scream, turning around to face her while pulling frantically at the back of his shirt to let the snowfall through. “You fight dirty, Griffin,” he tells her with a scowl, still pulling at the back on his sweater uncomfortably, but underneath the totally warranted annoyance is a brightness to him that she hasn’t seen yet.
“And don’t you forget it,” she responds, dashing away from him and the wet slush he’s undoubtedly looking to cover her with. For all that he’s complained, she’s certain that she’s heard him laughing as he pelted her with snow. Even the memory of the sound is enough to make her heart feel oddly warm.
For some strange, probably traitorous reason, her heart glows at the idea of him happy. It's an uncomfortable realization, but thankfully before she has the chance to analyze it too far, a huge lump of snow hits her in the back of the neck, closely followed by what she can only describe as maniacal laughter, and the game is back on.
“What the hell happened to you two?” Octavia asks, her tone somewhere between incredulous and amused when they finally make their way back up to the apartment what must be close to half an hour later.
Clarke looks over at Bellamy, noting the way snow has dampened his hair, his sweater, just about every part of him, and grins. “We worked out our differences.”
Octavia’s eyes bounce between them, undoubtedly noticing Clarke’s similarly soaked state. “Did you try to drown each other?”
“No,” Bellamy answers this time, wiry amusement in his voice. “Clarke’s methods are much more creative.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not,” Clarke tells her a little sheepishly, feeling more than a little ridiculous now that it’s all over with. “Do you think I could borrow a change of clothes?”
“Go for it,” Octavia says easily, seemingly over whatever concern she had about what happened between them. “You can grab one of Lincoln’s sweaters for this dufus too, since he won’t ask for it.”
Predictable as ever, Bellamy starts to grumble at Octavia’s dig, but Clarke doesn’t stick around to hear it. Instead, she quickly heads to the bedroom, shedding her wet clothes with a sigh of satisfaction, suddenly remembering, as she tries to rub warmth into her fingers, why she doesn’t do snowball fights.
Still, she can’t seem to regret her actions as she pulls Octavia’s sweater over her head, feeling oddly at peace. The fight has done exactly what she wanted it to do. Now, the twitchiness that has haunted her every time Bellamy has been in her general vicinity, turning her into a person who gets into screaming matches over Christmas sweaters has diminished down to a very tolerable hum.
She can do this; she can stop fighting with him all the time. Maybe she can even be friends with him.
“So, I have an idea,” Clarke says quietly, stepping up beside Bellamy a few minutes later, all dry with a cup of hot chocolate in one hand and one of Lincoln’s sweaters for him in the other.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me at all,” he quips back, not even bothering to turn and look at her. He doesn’t say anything else, so she takes the opportunity to study him, quickly losing herself in the light in his eyes behind the shadows. She notes the dusting of freckles across his nose and the tension in his jaw, taking in every detail and committing it to memory until he suddenly clears his throat, interrupting her appraisal. “Well? The suspense is killing me.”
For a second, she is tempted to make some remark about it should hurry up and do them all a favor, but she manages to bite down on her lip before it escapes her mouth, knowing that type of suggestion, even made in jest, isn’t appropriate. Proud of herself for showing some restraint, she gives herself a congratulatory mental high five and then continues with her original mission. “I think we should try and make this Christmas great, the best—”
“No, thanks.”
“You didn’t even let me finish!”
“I didn’t need to; I’m not interested in re-enacting some holiday classics. I don’t need to rediscover the joy of Christmas.”
“Geez, and I thought I was a grouch about all this,” she mutters to herself before grabbing his arm and pulling him down the hall into O and Lincoln’s bedroom. “It’s not about you as shocking as that might seem, it’s for O.”
“She’s going to make this great for herself, all we have to do is show up, and she’ll be happy.”
“I bet I can make it better,” Clarke counters with a gleam in her eye, a different sort of idea taking shape in her mind. “Better than what Octavia has got planned, sure, but a million times better than anything you could ever come up with.”
“I know exactly what you’re doing,” Bellamy tells her, crossing his arms and trying to look imposing, but the illusion is gone now that she’s seen him wince at snow down the back of his jacket. Besides, she wasn’t trying to be subtle.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s working, which is all I care about.”
“It’s not,” he protests lightly, grabbing hold of the new sweater and walking back towards the main group without another word. As she watches him later, though, talking to Octavia with a contemplative tilt to his head, she knows that she’s got him, and as is often the case, the next few weeks prove her correct.
A couple of days later, she invites everyone over, surprising them with all the necessary materials to make the most epic of gingerbread houses. Octavia, of course, along with everyone else, is ecstatic when they take in the seemingly endless number of colorful candies filling her table. Within minutes, everyone is attempting to build their own, and Clarke loses herself in a world of ginger spice walls, gumdrops, and laughter, only coming out of it long enough to acknowledge Bellamy’s well-played head tilt with satisfaction.
Her plan is working perfectly. Not even an hour after she’s finally cleared the icing from her kitchen, Octavia messages her, explaining that Bellamy has some mysterious plan for the group and that they all need to be at city hall by 11:00 tomorrow. Sinking more deeply into her seat, Clarke pops a candy into her mouth and grins.
It turns out that his grand plan is for them all to go ice skating. Octavia loves it, going on about how she and Bellamy used to go when she was little and gliding across the ice like a pro. For her part, Clarke falls on her ass more than a few times, not possessing the same natural atheism as most of her friends, but instead of just laughing at her, Bellamy helps her up and proceeds to spend the rest of the afternoon attempting to teach her to skate.
For the most part, his teaching methods involve quietly mocking her, and he makes sure to point out at regular intervals just how much fun everyone else is having with absolutely no subtlety, but it’s fun. Maybe even more fun than her gingerbread making extravaganza the day before, but he hasn’t seen what she’s got planned next yet.
They continue to go back and forth in the following days. She organizes Christmas caroling for everyone, and then he takes everyone nearly 40 minutes out of town to see the most spectacularly decorated houses she’s ever seen. The activities continue with just as much vigor after that. At this point, both of them are too invested to stop now, but it becomes less of a competition.
He finds a listing for a replaying of Love Actually at their old downtown theater, and she makes sure that they have all the movie appropriate snacks they could ever want. She finds the perfect hill for sledding, and he shows up with matching elf hats for everyone. He places the hat on her head with a smile and a quiet whisper about how he hopes it isn’t too offensive to her elf friends, and she can’t help but smile back in response.
Somehow along the line, they turned into a team. It's been great, far surpassing her most ambitious hopes for what they could be to each other. There's even the potential for more than great if Clarke is completely honest with herself. They complement each other; they could be epic if only she could stop getting lost in his eyes or distracted by his lips.
Or alternatively, she could do something about it, make a move, but that’s not the kind of decision she’s looking to make now. She'll get through the season, ensure that Christmas is everything Octavia dreams of, and then maybe she’ll do something. Maybe.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Bellamy complains Christmas Eve, walking into her living room carrying the bag she requested.
“Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night,” she retorts from her place on the ground surrounded by presents and scraps of left-over wrapping paper. “Although, if we are going to get technical about it, I didn’t do any convincing since it was your idea.”
“It most certainly wasn’t,” he tells her as he hands her the bag, leaving absolutely no room for argument. Or no room for argument if he was dealing with anyone else. It’s a matter of pride for her to argue back twice as hard whenever anyone tries to shut the discourse down.
“Imagine if we could convince Octavia that Santa was actually real,” Clarke responds, doing an admittedly terrible impersonation of him.
“That is not what I sound like.”
“But it’s totally what you said.”
“Even if it was, I don’t know how me saying that it would be great if Octavia could get back the childlike wonder turns into what we are doing here. When I said that, I was insinuating that you should go talk to your elf friends and get some pixie dust, not that we should break into my sister's apartment in the dead of night like a pair of burglars.”
“We aren’t breaking in like burglars,” Clarke’s protests lightly, knowing even now that she can’t confidently make the claim.
Bellamy looks at her like he knows she knows that it’s a weak defense, but he doesn’t call her out on it. Instead, he just grabs the now filled bag and gestures for her to lead the way. “Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night.”
She shakes her head in amusement, moving towards her front door and grabbing her coat. “It’s all going to work out; just wait and see. In fact, I think it’s going to be great.”
“What did I say about burglars?” Bellamy asks her wiry 20 minutes later while they traverse up the thankfully not icy fire escape.
“Shut up,” Clarke tells him lightly. “It would be too easy to just use one of our keys to get in.”
“Oh right, my mistake,” Bellamy mutters back sarcastically. “Why ever would we want this to be easy?”
He continues to grumble the rest of the way up the stairs, but when he gets to the top, he hands her the bags and starts working on getting the window open with no prompting. He manages to complete the task with almost alarming ease, his shoulders tightening in tension as he opens the window. She can just see the rant coming, so she slips in front of him and through the window before he can start.
Once she’s through, she reaches her hand out for the bag expectantly, which he hands to her after only a moment of teasing. They discussed their plan on their way over, quick and efficient, turn no lights on. Place the gifts and get out as quick as possible. Octavia is far from a light sleeper, but it’s been a while since either of them slept near her, so they don’t want to take any chances waking her up.
With that in mind, Clarke moves towards the tree in the living room, trusting Bellamy to make it through successfully on his own. The thump she hears when she’s not even a full step into the next room proves otherwise. She turns to see him sprawled out on the ground, his limbs stretched out in random directions. He scowls back at her, and she can’t repress her grin. “Aren’t you supposed to be stealthy?”
He looks at her curiously, slowly getting to his feet. “Why on earth would you assume that?”
“Because you’re,” she gestures up and down his body as if that’s explanation enough, which it totally is.
“Because I’m...” he questions with a smirk that makes her face start to color.
“Ugh, never mind. I don’t need to make your ego any bigger than it already is,” Clarke dismisses him, but he just keeps smirking at her. That goddamn wonderful smirk is going to be the death of her. “Stop smirking at me. We have a job to do; get on with it.”
“Alright, alright,” he says, passing by her with a wink because apparently, they wink at each other now while grabbing the bag. He quickly starts to lay out the presents, getting most of them out of the bag before she’s cleared the fog from her head. She takes a step into the living room and then stops, deciding that she’d be better off putting a bit of space between them for the moment.
Before she knows it, though, he's moving back toward her and their exit after only a few minutes. He passes her by again, this time with a smile instead of a wink, leaving her just as flustered. A wave of emotion still threatens to consume her before she resolutely shoves it down. She really needs to get a grip.
She turns to follow after him, shaking her head at herself, and somehow manages to lose her footing in the process. Squeezing her eyes shut, Clarke braces for impact, but she never makes contact with the ground. Instead, a set of strong warm arms catch her, wrapping around her securely.
“Okay, maybe both of us need work on our stealth,” she tells him breathily, overwhelmed at the sensation of his arms around her and his face so close. They have never been this close; she’s sure of it because she’s avoided it at all costs, confident that his proximity would make her do something foolish.
Her eyes dart down to his lips before quickly returning to his eyes. No. Not right now. Now when they are so close to accomplishing what she set out to do. It's fine, she can—
His lips press against hers, warm and wonderful, sending ring shocks of electricity through her body. She raises her hand to tangle in his hair, returning the kiss with equal vigor while his hands settle more comfortably on her waist, pulling her closer. Back and forth, their mouths move in a rhythm that feels familiar but shouldn’t until she hears a car alarm outside and comes crashing back down to reality.
“Seriously!?” Clarke whisper yells at Bellamy, pulling back suddenly
“Should I not have done that?” Bellamy asks slowly, almost jokingly, his lips an intoxicating shade of red and his eyes still slightly dazed.
“No!”
Bellamy’s eyes widen in horror. “Oh god, I’m sorry, I read the situation wrong. Very, very, wrong. Fuck, I—”
“No!” she shouts again, cutting off whatever self-deprecating tirade he was about to go on before it could gain ground.
“No?” he questions hesitantly.
Pressing her lips together, Clarke closes her eyes and does her best to force the remaining fog from the kiss out of her mind. It appears that she needs to be able to say more than one word at a time to have this conversation. Unfortunately, he can’t read her mind yet. He'll need to work on that, but for now, it looks like she’s going to have to find a way to verbalize her thoughts.
“Yes, you definitely should have done that, in fact, you should keep doing it, but like now? Seriously?” He rubs the back of his neck, smiling bashfully while inevitably makes her smile back. She is so incredibly gone for him, but that doesn’t mean she’s just going to let him off the hook. Still, there’s more exasperated fondness to her voice as she continues than actual incredulity. “We just spend nearly two hours wrapping gifts in my very empty apartment; hell, I've spent more time with you over the last few weeks than all my other friends combined, but for some reason, you still decided to wait for the moment where your sister is asleep 20 feet away?”
“The mistletoe...”
He looks so embarrassed to admit it, and she’s slightly concerned that she might be head over heels in love with him, and it’s all just too much. Laughter bubbles out of her mouth without restraint, and the reluctance on his face turns to fond annoyance, which she can’t help but poke. “Since when do you care about Christmas traditions?”
“I don’t.”
“It seems like you do,” she teases happily.
Instead of objecting again, he just grumps quietly to himself, which causes another louder series of laughs to escape her. She leans back into him, wanting more now that she’s over the surprise of it all has passed. He matches her movement eagerly, leaning in to close the distance.
They get one barely there, brush of their lips before a loud shuffle comes through the wall, and they both freeze.
“Okay,” he admits reluctantly, pulling back enough to whisper into her hair. “Maybe this wasn’t the best place to do this.”
She buries her face into his chest, using him to muffle her laughter before grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the window. They really don’t need Octavia catching them now. Especially not when they could easily make out back at her apartment.
So completely wrapped up in her bubble of happiness, Clarke doesn’t notice that he’s got a wrapped package tucked neatly under his arm until they have walked several blocks from Octavia’s place. She examines it with interest, not recognizing the wrapping from what they used for all the other ones, which means he must have brought it per-wrapped. “Did you have some last-second regrets?” she asks him, bumping her shoulder against his lightly.
“What?” he questions in surprise as if coming out of a similar daze. The confusion remains until he follows her line of sight to the gift. “Oh, no, it wasn’t for O... actually it was for you— it is for you.”
He hands her the present hesitantly, but she takes it eagerly, knowing that he really has no reason to worry. She opens the box, pulling out what is possibly the ugliest Christmas sweater she’s ever seen. “It’s great,” she tells him with a grin. “I love it.”
“I have a matching one at home.”
“Oh god,” she says, equal parts ecstatic and horrified by the idea that they are going to be that couple. She takes in the pompoms and sparkles covering the front of the sweater, appreciating all the different layers of awfulness to it and deciding that she’s definitely more ecstatic than horrified. Her eyes finally leave the garment, moving to look at Bellamy in a desire to share the joy, only for him to appear more anxious.
“I was an asshole.”
“You’re going to be more specific,” Clarke tells him with a fond smile. “Asshole is kind of your default setting, which is fine, at this point it’s more endearing than annoying, but you need to narrow it down if you want me to know what you are talking about.”
“That day… about the sweaters.”
“Ah yes, definitely not your finest moment, but it wasn’t a great look for me either, so we really don’t need to go back there,” she says, folding the sweater back up nearly and placing it in the bag. As far as she’s concerned, it's water under the bridge now. She’s not holding it against him, but when she looks up at him, it’s clear that he doesn’t feel the same way. She takes a step towards him, reaching out for his hand. “Really, I’m past it.” She links their hands together. “We both are.”
He smiles down at the sight of her hands, but when he looks back at her, there is torment in his eyes. “We are, but I still feel like I owe you an explanation.”
She studies him for a moment, reading him in a way that she’s gotten good at before ultimately deciding that even if she doesn’t need to hear what he has to say, he needs to tell her. With that in mind, she tucks the sweater box under her arm and gives him her full attention. “Well then, by all means, go ahead.”
“It really was stupid,” he tells her, shuffling uncomfortably on his feet.
“I already knew that.”
The snark in her voice seems to have the desired effect, making him roll his eyes and releasing some of the tension he’s managed to build up inside of him. Still, it takes him several more long seconds before he continues. “I wasn’t in the best headspace back then, I’m still not if we are being completely honest, but back then, it was like I could barely see more than a few feet in front of me at a time. I came back, and everything was so different. Nothing— not even the things that were supposed to be, was the same.”
“That’s pretty normal, right? I mean, the party that day was overwhelming for me, and I knew almost exactly what I was walking into.”
“Yeah, it makes sense why I felt that way, but it’s not really an excuse for yelling at you for no apparent reason.”
“There was a reason,” she reminds him, trying to lighten the mood, “I came in wearing the same sweater. It was horrible.”
A smile works its way onto his face, small but mighty, definitely bright enough for her to consider it a win. “It was horrible. One of the hardest parts has been how different O is. When I left, she was barely a teenager, and now she’s a full-grown adult, which, to be fair, I expected. What I didn’t expect was for her to suddenly be a Christmas fanatic when growing up, we always just did our best to ignore the holiday and wait for it to be over.”
“It didn’t make sense to me, but O is the only thing in this world I actually cared about, so it didn’t matter. If she wanted Christmas, I was going to do my best to fit in, and for a bit, I thought I was doing alright. She loved the sweater, laughed for a solid five minutes about how fitting it was. For a second, it felt like I had my life back, and then you walked in, and it all suddenly felt like it was slipping through my fingers.”
“And you lashed out,” Clarke surmises, rubbing her thumb back and forth across his skin. Silence falls between them, and she’s never been great at existing in it, especially not after an explanation like that, so she does what she does best and fills the quiet with nonsense. “I, unfortunately, don’t have that good of an excuse. You were attractive, I was interested, and that pissed me off.”
“Clarke,” he says with a sigh like he knows what she’s trying to do and appreciates it, but that she’s missing the point. “It’s not a good excuse. That’s what I mean. Either way, I just wanted to say—”
Leaning forward, she smashes her lips against his, not wanting to hear an apology from him now. He resists for a moment, albeit a half-assed attempt, before finally kissing her back fully. As he moves his mouth against hers, she’s able to infer all the things that she didn’t give him the opportunity to say. His regret over how they started out, his happiness with where they are now, that and everything in between.
“So,” Clarke says with the beginnings of a smirk on her face once the need to breathe becomes desperate. He looks at her warily, but she just continues to smirk back, taking his hand and continuing their journey home. As they go, she swings their linked hands back and forth. “Would you say that this is the best Christmas ever?”
Instead of answering, Bellamy just shakes his head, but she’s not going to let him off the hook that easily. Skipping ahead, she spins around so that she’s blocking his path forward. He slows to a stop, smirking back at her.
“It’s the absolute best Thursday I've had in a long time,” he tells her softly with a smirk, leaning forward to press his lips against gets in a quick peck before stepping around her and continuing down the path.
“Bellamy,” she whines, following after him.
“What?” he asks, his smirk still firmly in place when she finally falls into step beside him. They walk in silence until he eventually gives in to the pout on her face like she knew he would. “Since when are you so invested in the Christmasness of it all?”
An involuntary smile graces her face upon hearing her words from before echoed back at her. Well, that, along with the fact that he’s going to admit that it is. “I don’t.” He raises a single judgment filled eyebrow at her, and she shoves his arm lightly in retaliation. “I don’t. I care about winning.”
“And how does me admitting this equal you winning?” he questions with a laugh.
“I told you that I would make this the most magical Christmas ever; if it is, then I win.”
“Technically speaking, I was the one who kissed you, which means if anyone is responsible for the magic, it’s me.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Clarke asks with outrage in her tone and a grin on her face. “I’m the one who set all this up! The competition, the activities, the gifts, they were all part of my plan!”
“Your plan to seduce me,” he finishes for her, grinning in amusement before grabbing her arm again and slowing them both to a stop. “Clarke Griffin, this has by far been the most magically Christmas I've ever experienced. Hell, before you, I didn’t think there was any magic to be found here, but you shoved your way into my life, and I couldn’t be more grateful.”
“There,” she tells him, wrapping her arms around his neck and not even trying to hide her pleasure, “was that so hard?”
He rolls his eyes. “Stop gloating, you're ruining the festive atmosphere.”
She rolls her eyes right back at him but fights off the temptation to continue arguing with him. It's Christmas eve, snow is falling peacefully from the sky, and she’s finally got him in her arms; she’ll fight with him tomorrow. With any luck, she’ll have a lifetime to systematically explain to him all the reasons she’s right. For now, though, she’d much rather spend her time using her mouth for other purposes.
Leaning forward, she presses her lips against his, smiling into his mouth. It really has been the best Christmas ever.