Work Text:
It starts with little things, really.
A cup of coffee moved to the other side of a table. A phone charger hanging unplugged when Clarke was absolutely sure that it was plugged in when she left the room ten minutes earlier. Bellamy’s meticulous research notes suddenly organized by chronology instead of theme.
And then comes the pranks.
Really very childish pranks, actually. Grade school April Fools Day quality, in fact. All of Clarke’s underwear go missing. A condom finds its way on to the showerhead. The smell of mint tips off Clarke to the fact that her emergency supply of Oreos have been filled with toothpaste instead of delicious Oreo filling.
It’s all harmless; funny even, if one looks at it in the right way. But the day that Clarke steps out of the shower and finds, “Your boobs are A+” scrawled across the steam in the mirror, is the day that she first considers that they might just have a problem.
*
It really seemed like the perfect solution.
They need a place to live, and Clarke has a modest savings account put aside from her dad’s will, and the house is a bargain, really. It’s walking distance to campus so they don’t even have to worry about getting by with one car, and the real estate agent told them that it used to be a student rental house, so it just needs some easy cosmetic work. Scratched floors and nail holes and that one place where it looks like some kid tried to put their head through a door at some point.
Easy.
Unfortunately, no one ever lists “asshole frat-boy ghost” in the real estate listings.
*
“He’s watching me while I’m naked, Bellamy,” Clarke insists, just on the right side of a break-down. “He probably watches us have sex and grades us on our performance.”
Bellamy smirks. “Then he’s probably pretty impressed. Your boobs are A+, and I like to think that we do good work. We could probably make some money on the Internet if this whole ‘history-grad-student-slash-illustrator’ thing doesn’t work out so well for us.”
Clarke really should have expected that Bellamy would just find the entire thing hilarious. “How are you not concerned at all about this?” She asks, exasperated.
He shrugs. “It’s not like anything that he’s done has really been threatening. I mean, the Oreos were kind of cruel,” he says, with a wry grin. “But this was a student house, and he’s probably just been living with actual frat boys for long enough that he picked up a few tricks along the way.”
And Bellamy is right. It’s creepy to think that there is something -- or someone -- living in the house, other than them. But he doesn’t seem to actually want them gone. If anything, he seems bored.
Clarke’s eyes flicker down the empty hallway and towards the deserted kitchen, where she had spent the morning painting the peeling cupboards. It’s her house -- hers and Bellamy -- and she isn’t going to let some dead kid with a terrible sense of humour intimidate her in her own home.
When Clarke finally heads back to the kitchen, the words are there, scrawled across two cupboard doors in the white paint that Clarke had been using to cover the ugly knotted pine.
“Definitely NOT a dude”.
*
Bellamy is the first one to start talking to her.
Let’s face it, Bellamy just likes to talk, and so at first it isn’t much different than normal. Little rants and monologues that just seem to have more direction than if he had been simply talking to himself. But sometimes, he will interrupt a discussion about a minor renovation decision to ask her for her opinion. As if the dead really give a shit whether they paint the bathroom in “polar white” or “sandstone”.
(Actually, if Clarke had to hazard a guess, she didn’t really care for either. In the end, they go with an icy grey-blue paint named “North Star”. The next morning, when Clarke gets out of the shower, there is a heart drawn in the steam on the mirror.)
One afternoon, while grading first-year papers, Bellamy reads a particularly dreadful passage out loud to no one in particular. He can only laugh, a low chuckle that is equal parts amazed and entertained, when a crumpled post-it note comes out of nowhere to clock him directly between the eyes.
*
The dreams are new, too.
Not that Clarke usually remembers her dreams at all, but it’s hard to forget the dark sparkling eyes, and smugly raised eyebrow.
Sometimes she’s walking through the forest, a canopy of green overhead and a carpet of crunching fallen leaves under their feet. There are classrooms and textbooks, and the whisper-light touch of a hand brushing over her hand, not quite bold enough to grasp.
Once, Clarke wakes up with a throbbing wetness between her thighs. Still half asleep, she reaches out for Bellamy, only for him to roll on top of her, eager and already hard.
(They don’t talk about that night.)
*
“I found her,” Bellamy says, without preamble. He’s holding a printed copy of a newspaper article. “Raven Reyes. She died in 1996 - gunshot wound to the stomach. She was an engineering student and she used to live in this house. It sounds like she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Twenty-one years old.”
And yeah, it sounds fucking terrible when you say it like that. Clarke is twenty-three and Bellamy is twenty-six, and Clarke can’t believe that they are considered adults who are allowed to own a house and have jobs. And Raven was only twenty-one - barely old enough to drink. Certainly not old enough to die.
The newspaper article includes a photo of a grinning girl - tan skin and dark eyes, her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail.
“Shit,” Clarke breathes, because really, what else is there to say?
Somewhere, on the other side of the house, there is the distant sound of a glass shattering against the scratched hardwood floors.
*
“Raven?” Clarke calls out, tentatively.
It’s been almost a week with no sign of their “roommate”. Clarke’s mug has stayed firmly on her side of the table. Bellamy’s undergrad papers have been left alone, with no rude comments scribbled in the margins. Clarke would almost guess that Raven has been sulking, if it’s even possible for a ghost to sulk.
“Raven?” Clarke tries again. “I’ve missed you.” And she’s almost shocked to realize that that is actually the truth.
*
It’s another two days before Clarke returns to her desk with yet another cup of coffee, only to find her latest illustration destroyed. Dark red words mark the half-completed drawing.
“YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT ME ALONE.”
*
“Raven?” Bellamy tries one evening, while they sit on the sofa watching Netflix. “What do you think? Parks and Rec or Kitchen Nightmares? I could go either way.”
Clarke nearly falls off of the couch when a tall, lean figure strides into the room. She’s dressed in jeans and a tank top, and her hair is in a ponytail, and she looks far more solid than Clarke would have guessed that a ghost should look. Also, she’s fucking gorgeous, which is another thing that maybe Clarke would not have expected from someone who has been dead for nearly twenty years.
She flops on to the empty armchair dramatically, crossing her arms with a slight huff.
Bellamy blinks at her a couple times before speaking. “I always thought that ghosts were all shimmery and transparent. Or maybe like a glowing orb of light? This is almost a disappointment.”
She doesn’t say anything, but Clarke almost swears that she can see the corners of Raven’s mouth turning upwards. Clarke can’t look away from her -- because there is an actual ghost sitting in her Ikea armchair -- but Bellamy just turns back to the TV and picks up the remote.
“C’mon, Raven. Are you going to turn down first choice on Netflix?”
She sighs, and runs her hand over the sleek crown of her hair, smoothing back non-existent flyaways. “Gordon Ramsay,” she finally decides. “I like watching him lose his fucking mind at all the idiots.”
It’s the first time that they’ve actually heard Raven speak, it turns out that those words are actually perfectly Raven.
*
She starts actually spending time with them.
It takes a lot of energy, she explains, to actually appear in a corporeal form. Much more energy than simply moving around objects and manipulating the house. Those are all things that she has been doing for almost twenty years -- scaring the shit out of drunk college students and driving away the ones that pissed her off.
“Is that what you were trying to do to us?” Clarke asks one afternoon. She is working on an illustration for a children’s book in her office, and she can’t see Raven, but she knows that she’s there. “Make us go away?”
Raven laughs, a strange disembodied sound that should be much creepier than it actually is. “If I was trying to make you leave, you’d already be gone.”
“I don’t know about that,” Clarke muses. “I like a house with character.”
*
“And the dreams?” Clarke asks, one day when Raven is actually sitting in front of her at the kitchen table.
Raven actually blushes, a pretty coral color that spreads all the way down to her neck.
“Yeah,” she finally does admit, “that was me. Obviously. It was easier to interact with you and Bellamy that way, before you really knew who I was.” She pauses, considering her next words. “I haven’t done it in awhile. Not since I actually got to know you.”
Clarke is silent for a long moment. She picks up her orange pencil crayon; starts to shade in the petals of the sunflower on her page. “You know,” she starts tentatively, “I don’t mind. If you want to do it again.”
(They don’t talk about that conversation for a long time.)
*
Clarke is working away on her laptop on the sofa, and Bellamy is forty-seven minutes into a documentary on the Roman Empire, when the channel abruptly changes. He’s seen this one before, so he wouldn’t normally complain, except-- “The Great British Bake-Off? Seriously?”
“Don’t tell me you’re not into it! And I think they’re making chocolate souffles this week and it’s going to be an absolute shit-show.” Raven’s voice is projected from somewhere around her favorite armchair.
They watch for awhile in silence -- let’s face it, Bellamy actually is pretty into it -- and, for almost an hour, the only noise other than the TV is the steady tapping of Clarke’s keyboard. In fact, Clarke is so engrossed in her project that she startles when Raven suddenly speaks.
“I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me,” she says, and her voice is so quiet that Clarke has to strain to hear her over the television. “It’s one thing to be stuck in this house, where the most impressive thing that I can do is move furniture around so that drunk people walk into it. But I didn’t like that you guys know who I am…. was.” She pauses, as if the distinction confuses even her. “Whatever. I know that that article says that I was an engineering student, but did you know that I was top of my class? Coming up out of nowhere on a full-ride scholarship. I was going to go to fucking M.I.T. for aeronautical engineering. I actually wanted to be an astronaut.” She laughs, but the sound is brittle and sarcastic, and with absolutely no humour at all.
“Now, I’ve been dead for almost twenty years and I’m still here, living in the shit-hole where I lived in my junior year of college. All because some kid who probably should have had a therapist and some medication -- instead of access to a fucking gun -- ran into me on the way to kill some other kid that pissed him off.”
Raven is suddenly silent again, and Clarke wishes -- not for the first time -- that she could just see the other woman. She has no way of even knowing if Raven is still in the room, or if she had stormed out after her rant.
“Raven?” Clarke says, apprehensive.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know what this really means, but…” Clarke trails off, searching for the words. “If you have to spend the foreseeable future haunting someone, I’m glad that you’re with us.”
There is no response for a long moment. And then, finally, “Of course you are. I’m awesome.”
*
In Clarke’s dreams, Raven’s lips are impossibly soft and gentle -- almost tentative. Her hands cup Clarke’s jaw cautiously, as if she’s afraid that Clarke is going to push her away.
As if she expects it.
“This isn’t you,” Clarke murmurs against her lips, their foreheads pressed close together. “The Raven I know would kiss me like she means it.”
And so she does. Gradually. Until finally her hands are fisted in Clarke’s hair and their hips are pressed closely up against each other.
Clarke wakes up with a frustrated groan on her lips and the sensory memory of a warm tongue tracing a line of muscle in her neck. Bellamy’s eyes are warm and sparkling in the dark light of the bedroom, and when they meet hers, he smirks.
“Good dream?” He asks knowingly.
The only answer he gets is a pillow to the face.
(It isn’t Clarke who swings it.)
*
“And what exactly is that?” Raven asks. She’s leaning -- actually leaning, in her corporeal form -- over Clarke’s shoulder as she sketches furiously with Copic markers.
“It’s you,” Clarke answers, shy and a little embarrassed.
And it is Raven -- more or less. She’s tiny and childish, rendered in bright colors, with over-exaggerated features and cartoonish expressions. In the page in front of her, tiny Raven is standing in a bright green forest, next to a child’s depiction of a rocket ship. The little Raven grins widely, throwing her head back in pure delight as she stares up at the forest canopy above her.
“Why?” Raven asks.
“It’s a book. Or it will be, at least. Once Bellamy finishes writing the story.”
Raven’s eyes are impossibly wide. “But why?” She asks again.
“You’re an astronaut, and this is your rocket ship. And you travel the stars and have adventures. Until you finally come down to Earth to have more adventures. With us… I guess.” Clarke pauses, suddenly unsure. “Bellamy is still working on that part of the story.”
Raven is silent and still, and Clarke begins to second-guess the entire project. Until suddenly, Raven is throwing herself at Clarke, her arms coming up to loop around Clarke’s neck tightly.
“Thank you,” she murmurs into Clarke’s hair.
*
Sometimes, Clarke feels a weight drape over her like a blanket, and it amazes her that she and Bellamy went months without realizing that they weren’t alone. At this very moment, Raven feels just as present -- just as real -- as Bellamy is, solid and warm under Clarke’s calves as she stretches her feet across his lap.
As if to prove the point, Clarke’s hair stirs at the nape of her neck, and the feeling makes her shiver in a way that is not at all unpleasant. A moment later, Bellamy lets out a little sigh, comfortable and content.
“You two should be out doing something,” Raven grumbles. “Just because I can’t leave, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t.”
“Did you see how we lived before we met you, Raven?” Bellamy points out. “This is what we do. There is a reason that this sofa is so comfortable.”
There is no audible sigh, but Clarke can feel it in the air around her, anyway. “You can’t do this forever. One day the two of you are going to want more than this.”
“Of course we will,” Bellamy reasons. “Just wait until we start bringing in those Ghosthunter guys. We should actually start planning this out now if we’re going to do this right.”
*
And it’s not like there is any real way to do this right, Clarke imagines. Not that they’ve figured out yet, at least.
But there are at least a few more adventures that they can have along the way.