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Clarke has never, ever liked doing Secret Santa.
When do Secret Santas ever go right, anyway? They always end with half-assed gifts that get thrown in the back of your closet, never to be seen again, because someone you’ve talked to maybe twice in your life and who’s name you barely know happened to draw you. Sure, it may be fine to do it voluntarily with a group of people you actually know well, and who you actually like, but applying with a group of awkward college freshmen? Bound to be a disaster.
She hates Josephine and Gabriel, her floor’s RAs, for suggesting this. She’d actually thought they were cool - she and Josie had had some good midnight discussions in the floor’s kitchen all semester - but then they had to pull this shit. She hates that every single other person on the entire co-ed floor agreed to participate, so she couldn’t even opt out without being labeled as the floor’s resident party pooper.
Josie waves at her as she struts into the common area, and Clarke returns it with an eye roll. She takes a seat next to Emori, her roommate who came straight from a lecture, and crosses her arms, not even trying to hide her displeasure. Thankfully, more and more people are filing in, so hopefully they can wrap this up soon and she can go back to attempting to finish her calculus assignment.
She hears a loud laugh, signaling the arrival of Bellamy Blake, and she can’t help but roll her eyes.
He’s the closest thing to a mortal enemy that she has. After not even four months of knowing him, she hates him - which is saying a lot, because she doesn’t hate a whole lot of people. Most people, though, don’t manage to annoy her in the way that Bellamy Blake has.
It all started back in August, when she walked into the laundry room only to find him dumping her freshly washed clothes on the ground. (To be fair, she did leave them there for almost an hour after her cycle had ended, but still. He could’ve left them on top of the washer, or sent a passive aggressive message in the floor’s group message, instead of resorting to ultimate pettiness.)
Then, almost every time she has a late night study session in the common room, she has to witness him stumbling up the stairs late at night, drunk, with a new girl by his side. She has to watch them giggle in each other's ears, hands roaming, as they make their way to his room to do things she doesn’t really want to think about. She’s had her own fair share of late night escapades, and she has to admit that he’s the farthest thing from bad looking, so she can’t judge. It still gets on her nerves, though - especially when he always has the audacity to turn around to look at her, hair mussed and skin glimmering with sweat, and wink. Like he’s reveling in her academic misery or something.
And then there’s the damn Princess nickname. Every damn time he sees her, it’s “Hi, Princess”. She knows she’s privileged and comes from a well-off family, but seriously. He didn’t need to stick his head out of his window and yell it out loud for everyone in the general vicinity of the building to hear when her mother and stepfather were dropping her off after Parent’s Weekend dinner in their big, expensive car.
Deep down, she knows he’s not that bad. He probably wouldn’t even come close to a list of the most nightmarish floormates in She just thinks he’s arrogant, and too loud, and not academic enough. And, on the flip side, he probably thinks she’s stuck up, and too serious, and doesn’t know how to have fun, which isn’t true - she just happens to take school (and, probably life) more seriously than he does.
Bellamy and his roommate, Jasper, take a seat with some of the other guys on the floor, who Clarke actually likes. She can’t for the life of her understand what they see in him. She’s heard he’s pretty funny, but she hasn’t listened to anything that comes out of his mouth long enough to know. He’s the center of attention wherever he goes, and today is no different - immediately, everyone in his vicinity, even Gabriel, have dropped whatever they were doing and are laughing heartily at whatever story he’s telling.
For some unknown reason, it’s a sight that she can’t stand.
Ugh. Why is she wasting time thinking about Bellamy Blake? She turns away, choosing to listen in on the conversation that Emori is having with Raven Reyes. They’re discussing some engineering class, using jargon that she doesn’t understand, but it’s better than watching Bellamy act like he fucking owns the place.
Luckily, Josie claps her hands together a minute later, pulling Clarke out of her misery. She explains the Secret Santa rules (as if all of them don’t already know how it works) and finally takes a mason jar with tiny, folded pieces of paper out of her tote.
“Make sure you check that you didn’t draw your own name,” Josie says as she walks over to where Harper McIntyre is sitting, but Clarke thinks she’ll stay silent if she does. Maybe then she’ll actually get a gift that she likes.
What seems like an eternity later, Josie is standing right in front of Clarke, holding out the jar. She reaches in, grabbing the first piece of paper she feels, and opens it up.
Of course, of fucking course , his is the name she draws.
She contemplates pretending she drew her own name and putting the piece of paper back, but if one of the people who’d already drawn had gotten her name, they’d know she was lying. Besides, Josie’s already moved on to Emori. She’s stuck now.
She just had to draw Bellamy Blake, who has been getting on her nerves since move-in day.
She had known something would go wrong. She knew it. Hell, she would’ve taken the person who drew her name ghosting everyone on exchange day and her not ending up with a gift over this.
She couldn’t have drawn one of the people she actually likes. Not her roommate, not Harper or Raven, not Jasper or Monty or Miller. Hell, even Murphy , who she can barely figure out as a person, would’ve been better than this. Now, she has to spend the $15-25 price range they’d all agreed on on Bellamy Blake, of all people.
~ ~ ~
She’s pissed.
Everyone else probably went back to their dorms to speed-type discussion posts or binge Netflix in peace, but Clarke’s been thinking about this stupid Secret Santa exchange all evening. Now, it’s almost one in the morning, and she’s still up.
She has no idea what the hell she’s supposed to get him. She can’t give him a shitty gift, because then he’ll unwrap it in front of everyone and she’ll look like a bitch. No, she has to get him something he’ll actually like. A shot glass? An autograph from one of the cheerleaders she’s seen him gawking at during football games? It’s not like he takes anything seriously.
Emori rolls over in her sleep, and Clarke thinks that maybe she’ll ask her if they can switch names in the morning. Whoever Emori drew has got to be a better option, and as far as she knows, Emori and Bellamy don’t have any weird sort of rivalry thing going on. She’ll probably say yes.
You’re being ridiculous , a voice in her head says, and most of her has to agree. All this over an inconsequential Secret Santa exchange where she happened to draw the name of someone who hasn’t actually done anything unforgivable to her? She is being ridiculous. She’s not going to rope Emori into this, she’ll just suck it up, fork over $20 for something thoughtful enough, and go on with her life.
That doesn’t stop her from asking Emori, though, as they walk over to the dining hall in the morning.
To her surprise, Emori shakes her head. “I don’t think that would work.”
Clarke groans, wrapping her scarf tighter around her neck. “Come on, Emori! You owe me, remember? I didn’t do your bio homework that one night you were sneaking off with Murphy for nothing!”
“I can’t.”
“Seriously?” Clarke bends down and picks up some snow. “Do you really want to get hit in the face by a snowball right now?”
Emori puts her hand over her heart in mock disbelief, though the corners of her mouth are starting to turn upward into a smile. “Ok, if you want to play dirty: I drew you. That’s why we can’t switch. If we switched, you’d have to make a big show out of exchanging a gift with yourself, which would totally look stupid.”
Damn. There goes Plan B, she thinks as she drops the snowball in defeat.
“Sorry to ruin the element of surprise,” says Emori, “but I really didn’t want to go to class soaking wet.
Clarke waves her off. “It’s fine. I’m not big on surprises. Anyway, now that the secret’s out, here’s what you should get me.”
~ ~ ~
When she runs into Jasper and Monty during lunch, she thinks they can help her.
Somehow, those two are actually friends with Bellamy Blake. Jasper she can understand, because they’re roommates, so they have to at least try to be amicable. But Monty? She’s tried to think of something, anything they could possibly have in common, but she’s at a loss.
That doesn’t matter now, though. She doesn’t need to understand why, she just needs some sort of guidance on what he might want.
She’ll need to be subtle, of course, or word will inevitably get out and Bellamy’s surprise won’t be surprising anymore. Not that she cares that much
They take a few bites of their food, make some offhand remarks about finals and the school’s basketball team, and when Monty mentions needing to stop by the local Target to buy his Secret Santa gift, she pounces.
“There’s so many people on our floor who seem impossible to shop for.”
“Really? I never really thought about that,” says Monty.
“Yeah, like Murphy. That really quiet redhead girl who never talks to anyone. Bellamy.”
Jasper shrugs. “I guess.”
“What would you even get someone like Murphy or Bellamy?” she pushes, but Monty and Jasper just shrug.
This is not going as planned.
“I mean, Bellamy would be easy for you, because you’re best friends. But me? If I drew him, I wouldn’t have any idea—”
“You got Bellamy, didn’t you?” Jasper interrupts.
She groans. “That was too obvious, wasn’t it?”
Jasper laughs. “Yeah, Clarke, it kind of was. The two of you sure got lucky. It’s a match made in heaven.”
“So you know all about how we hate each other.”
Jasper puts down his sandwich. “I don’t think he hates you. Maybe he doesn’t exactly like you, but hate is too strong of a word. I dunno, he doesn’t really talk about you much.”
“He doesn’t?” Truthfully, deep down, she’s a little disappointed. Or maybe he’s levelheaded, and she’s the pathetic one for borderline making hating him a part of her personality.
“Probably not,” Jasper responds. “What, do you hate him?”
“No,” she lies. “No, it’s the same as you said: hate is too strong of a word.” She leans in, looking from Jasper to Monty. “Please don’t tell him I drew him, ok?”
“My lips are sealed,” says Monty. “So, you don’t know what to get him, and we’re his friends, so you need our help, right?”
She nods.
“Why don’t you give him what he wants? That bottle of tequila he suggested shouldn’t be too hard to come by,” Jasper says.
She rolls her eyes at his suggestion. Last night, some girl named Monroe who she’s pretty sure lives in the double next to the bathroom had the brilliant idea that everyone puts their wishlist in the floor’s group message. Clarke appreciated the effort, really, but she knows for a fact that most people never even check that app anymore.
And it wasn’t any help to her, because Bellamy’s wish list consisted of one thing: a bottle of tequila. Yeah, like she’d get away with giving that to him in front of Josie and Gabriel. As if.
“Not unless I want to get written up.”
“A bottle of tequila and you getting in trouble. Sounds like the perfect gift for Bellamy,” Monty jokes.
“Not happening. Come on, you guys gotta give me something.”
Jasper shrugs. “He’s into history.”
She gapes at him. “History? Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
Clarke looks back and forth between Jasper and Monty, waiting for one of them to crack. When they don’t, she shakes her head in disbelief. “History? Like the school subject… for Bellamy Blake?”
It has to be ahow joke, and he must be a really good liar. History? His friends are obviously playing her, and him, so that he gets a crap gift that he has to pretend to like in front of the entire floor.
“That’s his major. Didn’t you know?”
“No?” She tries not to pay too much unnecessary attention to Bellamy Blake. How would she know? She had always thought that he’d be majoring in anything other than the liberal arts.
“Yeah. He’s really into it, too. Roman history, ancient mythology - he talked my ear off about Greek mythology last week.”
“I would’ve never guessed.”
Jasper shrugs. “We wouldn’t have, either, but you’d be surprised. You can tell how much passion he has for it.”
She knows next to nothing about history, or mythology, or anything remotely close to those, so this information isn’t as helpful as she would have hoped. History had always been her least favorite school subject, no matter how hard she had tried to act interested.
Maybe she should just get him something generic that he’s bound to at least not totally hate, and get it over with. It’s a dumb Secret Santa exchange, it’s not that deep. If she wants to be extra thoughtful, she’s sure she can find a shot glass with something history themed on it in Amazon.
Unless she can think of something better.
~ ~ ~
It’s been rough, to put it bluntly.
Exams have been relentless, she’s barely slept this week, and all Clarke has had to eat today was a tiny granola bar. She just wants this semester to be over so she can pack up, drive home, and not think about school for a while.
She’s done more practice problems than she wants to think about, miraculously finished and submitted a paper before the midnight deadline, and now all she has left to do is buy one of those annoying exam booklets at the student store before she can finally treat herself to a full lunch.
The only thing keeping her remotely sane through this period is painting. It’s always been therapeutic, everything she needs to keep her head clear. It’s what got her through her father’s death, every bad high school breakup she’s been through, and every other nasty and stressful thing in between. She knows it’ll get her through this, too.
Maybe, when she’s trying to get through another study session in her dorm, she should actually go to bed instead of taking out a canvas and her paint brushes, but in some mysterious way, she’s convinced that it has the exact same exact effect.
She grabs the goods in question, makes her way to the cash register area… and groans when she sees how long the line is. It’s almost as bad as it gets during drop week when everyone gets their textbooks, and she’s guessing she’ll be stuck here for at least another twenty minutes - if she’s lucky.
She settles into the line, taking out her phone to scroll through her social media feeds.
“Hey, Clarke,” a familiar voice says from behind her a few moments later, and she can’t believe her luck.
Bellamy Blake. Of course.
With everything else going on, she’d barely had any time to think about him, and how much she hates him. And how she has to buy him a present. Ugh, Secret Santa! She’d even forgotten about that, until now, and here’s one more time-sensitive thing she has to worry about. And, one more thing to add to the list of reasons she hates him.
She turns to face him, not even trying to hide her displeasure. “What, no ‘Princess’ today?”
“Nah. I don’t think any of us are in the mood for that right now.”
Well, she can’t disagree with that. Although, maybe she could use some playful banter right about now, to keep her from spiraling even further into finals-induced insanity.
“Got any plans for Christmas?” she asks. They’re going to be here for a while, so she might as well try to be sociable
“Not really. It’s just me, my mom, and my sister at home. You?”
“We’re flying up to my grandma’s in Connecticut.”
“A family reunion. Fun.”
She realizes, now, that this is the most they’ve actually talked about anything , really. It’s not like either of them had made an effort before, but it feels… almost too normal.
“How is studying going?” he asks suddenly.
“Hellish,” she responds, and he laughs. “Pre-med is kicking my ass right now.”
“I think everyone’s getting their asses kicked right now. I sure am”
She hums. “No offense, but I think I’m suffering more than the average history major is right now.”
He frowns. “You know my major?”
“Oh, yeah, Jasper told me. it just came up,” she says. Honestly, it’s not a complete lie. “I was shocked by that, by the way. I mean, you ?”
“What, did you think I would be a finance bro or something like that?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“Figures.”
She suddenly feels bad. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, I get it. It catches most people off guard, to be completely honest. I’m used to people reacting like you did.”
“How did you decide on it?”
“It always interested me,” he says, “ever since I was a kid. You know how some people always know that they want to be a teacher, or a doctor, or whatever? I always knew I wanted to learn everything I could about history.”
She gets it. She’s always known that she wants to be a doctor, even after she found out just how much work it would take to actually get there. Maybe some of it was her mother’s influence, but she genuinely loves helping people, and the human body is infinitely more interesting to study than many of the other options she’d been given.
“Then, as I got older, we started learning about the ancient civilizations and their mythology in school. That’s when I really got hooked. I was almost embarrassed at how much I loved it all, and some of my friends would make fun of me for it.”
As much as Clarke had disliked history class, she had to admit to herself that the lessons on ancient mythology weren’t that bad. They didn’t make her want to fall asleep, at least. “What was your favorite to learn about?”
Bellamy chuckles. “It’s hard to pick. Anything about Ancient Greece and Rome. I could talk for hours and hours. Every single one of those stories could teach you something that you didn’t even know you were looking for. But seriously, the tales of Prometheus, Cerberus, the Greek and Roman gods - those are my favorites. You know, you should read up on them if you have the time. ”
“Maybe I will.” She means it. Not right now, because she has other pressing matters on her mind, but if she gets bored over winter break, she knows what to do.
Bellamy smiles at her, a genuine smile. “You know Augustus, the Roman Emperor?”
She nods. That name rings a bell from history class.
“I named my little sister after his sister. Octavia.”
“That’s so sweet.”
She’d overheard him talking about his sister before, quite a few times actually. Octavia. It had always struck her as a weird name, and truthfully, one she’d hate to have.
If her history obsessed brother had chosen that name for her, though, maybe she’d love it.
“I can take whoever’s next,” says one of the cashiers, and Clarke jolts back to reality. Somehow, they’ve made it to the front of the line already. She turns back to Bellamy, and gives him a wave goodbye. “See ya around.”
“Bye, Princess,” he jests, and she doesn’t even mind.
Jasper was right about the whole passion thing. She saw the twinkle in his eye, she heard it in his voice. He probably could talk her ear off about it - and she’d probably enjoy it. Maybe, he could actually make history interesting for her.
But, there’s still the question of what to get him for—
She stops in her tracks halfway to the register, the gears in her mind turning.
She knows exactly what to give him.
~ ~ ~
By some miracle, Clarke survives finals week. She manages to pull out decent scores, her grades are high enough to keep her parents happy, and she can finally, finally relax.
All she has to do now is attend the Secret Santa.
She has to admit, the setup is pretty cute. They’d dropped off their gifts with the RAs earlier that day to preserve the secrecy of the exchange, and Josie and Gabriel had decorated the area with red and green balloons and stockings and brought lots of snacks. Clarke grabs a candy cane, sits down next to her friends, and waits. She spots Bellamy on the couch across the room, and makes eye contact with him. He smiles at her, and she smiles back.
Josie passes out the gifts, and the opening begins.
Clarke gets her gift and feigns surprise when she opens it, and even more surprise when she reads the note that it’s from Emori.
Then, her focus turns to Bellamy Blake.
She watches as he unwraps the rectangular gift, and watches his reaction like a hawk.
His jaw drops. He’s thrilled, shocked, excited, speechless, all at once.
He stares at the gift for a long moment, probably longer than a minute, running his fingers over it in disbelief. Then, finally, he turns to the note he had thrown to the side and reads through it, eyes widening as he reaches the end and sees Clarke’s signature.
He looks right at her, eyes wide, jaw still open.
She takes that as her cue, and walks over to take a seat next to him.
“Merry Christmas,” she says.
He shakes his head. “Wow. I… wow.”
“So I take it that you like it?”
“Yes. Absolutely, yes. Thank you, Clarke. This is… wow.”
He’s at a loss for words, and her heart swells with pride. She is very proud of it, after all.
She’d come up with the idea at the cash register, and she knew she had to go through with it no matter what. Whenever she needed a break from studying in her dorm, she’d pull out the medium sized canvas and some paints, pull up some reference images of the Greek and Roman names he had mentioned and some others that she thought looked cool, and painted them. It’s not the most thorough piece of art she’s ever made, because she simply did not have the time to focus on miniscule facial features and other specific details, but she still thinks it’s beautiful. Evidently, Bellamy does too.
And, she has to admit, she did find the stories of Prometheus, Cerberus, and Roman emperors kind of interesting. Interesting enough to do some extra reading on them after her painting was done. Or maybe she just wanted to procrastinate.
Bellamy lets out a low whistle. “I thought this was going to be some board game, but this… is better than anything I would have ever expected.”
“Glad I could exceed your expectations.”
“But… why? This must have taken you ages.”
She shrugs. “Not really. I love painting, so it was something nice to work on when I got too stressed out from studying. I didn’t want to get you another cheap box of chocolates or something that you’d never use again, and I could hear the passion in your voice when you were talking to me in line at the student store.”
He gives her another warm smile.
“You did this right, you know. You gave me what is easily the most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me, and you didn’t even have to spend a penny on me. Well played.”
She laughs. “Oh, I did spend some money on you.”
“The canvas, paint, and brushes?”
“No.” She pulls her phone out of her pocket, and brings up the screenshot of the message he had sent about the tequila. “I couldn’t give this to you here, but it’s in my mini fridge if you want it. You might have to let Emori have some if she sees it, though.”
He shakes his head, laughing. “I like this side of you, Clarke. And I’m glad you drew my name.”
“I’m glad I did, too.”