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Bellamy knows, just sort of generally, that finding a roommate on Craigslist is a very bad idea. It’s probably the worst idea he’s ever had, and definitely the worst one he’s followed through on. Everyone yells at him about it—well, Octavia yells. Lincoln starts bringing packed lunches to his work, he’s pretty sure as a sort of Show Bellamy We’ll Care If He Gets Murdered campaign, and Miller doesn’t yell, so much as glare at him pointedly and passive aggressively drink all his beer.
But the fact is, his apartment is shitty, his building manager is shitty, and the rent just went up an extra hundred bucks for no perceivable reason. There’s no simpler answer; he has to move.
“Why don’t you just move into a cheap studio, like a normal person?” Octavia whines—she’s moved from yelling and throwing things, to whining and draping herself over his furniture and whatever boxes he’s trying to pack.
“Because that’s what got me into this mess in the first place,” he points out, waving the book in his hand around the one-room apartment, as if to say See?
It’s true; when he first moved into the building—back when Miller was his roommate and they slept on a small bunkbed made of unpainted plywood that they found at the thrift store downtown—he was working as a delivery boy for Pizza Hut, a sophomore in college. Now, three years later, he’s got a good job at the local library, and can honestly afford a place where the electricity works on more than one wall at a time.
But, as it turns out, even with his Monday-through-Friday job, the cost of living in the city is high, and he doesn’t actually know anyone he might be able to live with. Miller recently moved in with Monty; Murphy lives in a sunken-in house with three other people who all hate him, and have relegated him to the basement like some sort of goblin; Octavia and Lincoln would probably let him live forever on their couch, but he’s not sure he wants that to be where he is, in life. Living on his kid sister’s sofa.
So, Craigslist, because as it turns out, he really only has three friends, and one of them is his sister, so she probably doesn’t count.
Clarke was easy enough to find, after just two days of mildly desperate searching. She lives just a fifteen minute walk from his work, in a nice apartment tucked above some sort of Italian sandwich shop, which she says means everything smells like garlic, all the time. She’s sent him a few pictures, and they’ve chatted pleasantly enough—just small talk, nothing too in-depth. But he likes her, as much as you can like anyone you don’t really know.
“You don’t even know what she looks like,” Octavia argues. “What if it’s not even a girl? What if some forty-seven year old porn-maker’s catfishing you?”
“Then I’ll tell him I’m impressed by his skills at fraud,” he shrugs, and she throws one of his cross stitch pillows at his face. It’s the one with the Scottie, and says LIFE’S FUCKED UP in cheery yellow.
Bellamy likes to cross stitch when he’s annoyed. It makes for some interesting patterns.
Octavia has to drive him, since he doesn’t have a car, and she drags Lincoln along, for the intimidation factor—even though the personal chef is quite possibly the least intimidating person of all time, regardless of how many neck tattoos he has.
It’s September, just at the beginning of the school year, which is optimal moving time; everything smells like a fresh start, and it’s cool enough that they can do a lot of heavy lifting without dying of heat stroke, but not so cold their fingers will freeze.
It’s Sunday, which means he has the day off, and Octavia took a sick day, and Lincoln works mostly from home. He’s working with Monty to set up some sort of video blog for the Food Network, and Bellamy’s pretty proud. When he first met Lincoln, he was still working at a tiny coffee shop, making up intricate new drinks on his downtime, and doodling caricatures of the customers on the Styrofoam cups.
Now he has his own small fanbase, and a pretty popular tumblr account, even though Bellamy suspects that might be partly because of the selfies. Either way, it’s more than a little impressive.
“It’s cute,” Octavia frowns, sounding mad about it. He’s not sure what she was expecting; he’d shown her the pictures. She was probably envisioning that giant mansion from Edward Scissorhands, or something.
“It’s a sandwich shop,” he says, pointedly. “Come on, help me carry shit. And please don’t piss off my new roommate before she’s even met me.”
“You’re right,” O says, grabbing one of the boxes labeled Bell’s Dumb Nerd Stuff in violently purple ink. “You’ll probably piss her off on your own, just fine.”
“I’m hoping to con her into thinking I’m too great of a roommate to kick out,” he says brightly, and she snorts.
“How’s that?”
“By doing a lot of dishes, and laundry, and not leaving my toothpaste in the drain.” O rolls her eyes at that last one, because she always forgot to wash out the sink, and he always yelled at her about it.
“That’s if it’s not a catfish,” she clarifies, following him up the outside stairs, to the door. There’s another entrance inside the store, Clarke explained, but apparently if he doesn’t want to be guilted into buying a sandwich, he should probably just stick to the side door.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs, shifting the box to his knee, so he can knock on the door. “If the rent’s still the same, I might just stay anyway.”
He mostly says it just to piss his sister off, but it is a nice apartment, so he’s starting to think he might mean it.
But he’ll never know, because the door opens to reveal a tiny blonde girl, wearing one of those oversized sweater dresses, with a pair of fuzzy striped socks up to her knees. She looks like she just flipped through an autumn fashion card catalog, and chose an outfit at random.
Only the skin of her arms throw him off, with faded stains of purple, green and blue paint, like she’d tried to scrub it off but given up after a while.
“You must be Bellamy,” she grins, a little reserved but polite enough. She looks like she’s going to offer her hand to shake, but then notices the box he’s holding, and steps back to let them in.
The apartment looks exactly like the pictures, except maybe a little messier, which is to be expected. The front-facing wall is made up of mostly windows, the kind with the naturally greasy-looking glass, that means no one can see into the room, but still leaves everything lit up bright and open. The whole space seems to bleed in on itself—the living area leads into the dining area which leads into the kitchen, and there’s a narrow hallway he where he assumes the two bedrooms sit.
All in all, it’s already ten times better than his old apartment, and he hasn’t even seen the whole place.
Even Octavia seems grudgingly impressed. She still grills Clarke though, on principle. But in the end she seems content enough with her answers, because after they unload his boxes and buy a few paninis from downstairs, she doesn’t bother trying to talk him into escaping to live in her closet.
“I’m amazed you’re not calling me an idiot for trying to live with a girl I’m not related to,” he teases, giving her one last hug on the sidewalk. Clarke stayed behind, to give them some privacy, which is sweet but wholly unnecessary. It’s not like he’ll never see his sister, again; they live in the same city. Her climbing gym is down the street.
“Boys and girls can absolutely live together,” O huffs. “Society just likes to force sexual tension into every platonic male-female relationship because of some heteronormative bullshit.” Octavia likes to scour on the internet for bigots, and yell at them online. It seems to calm her down, and he’s still not sure how. She gives one last glance up at his apartment, and then makes a face. “But yeah, you’re an idiot. Clarke’s a babe; I give you ten days.”
“Until what?” he asks, amused. He’s not blind, he could see that Clarke’s attractive, but it’s not like he’s driven by a blind need for sex, or anything. He doesn’t even really know her—she could be annoying, or pretentious, or gay. They might not even get along.
“Until you realize you like-like her,” O says, completely serious, like she hasn’t just devolved into seventh grade slang.
Bellamy rolls his eyes, and lets Lincoln pull him into a full-body hug, which is the only kind of hug Lincoln seems to know about. “I’ll take that bet. What’s in the pot?”
He and Octavia learned at an early age that besides spite, and occasionally just pure good intentions, the quickest way for one of them to make the other do something, was to turn it into a bet. But they were also poor as shit, so they never bet with money.
Bellamy lost a lot of Gameboy games to her, growing up.
“If I win, I get your record player,” she says, and his eyes narrow. That player took him ages to find online, and even longer to get up the nerve to bid on it. It was his first and last ever auction, because he hated every minute of the actual purchase, but the machine itself is probably the nicest thing he owns. “And if you win, you get a year’s supply of lunches from Lincoln.”
“No way,” Bellamy argues. “Lincoln makes me lunch, anyway. I want your bike.”
Octavia splutters a little. “You don’t even know how to ride it!”
“And you don’t listen to vinyl,” he points out. “My record player, for your Indian. Deal?”
She glares at him for an extra moment, just to let him know she’s pissed about it, before clapping his outstretched hand. “Deal,” she agrees, and Lincoln shakes his head at them both in disapproval. “Get ready to lose, big brother.”
“I never lose,” he sniffs, which is an absolute lie, and Octavia’s still cackling as they drive off.
Clarke is microwaving a measuring cup of water when he gets back upstairs, and there’s a weirdly large number of mugs set out on the counter, considering they’re only two people.
“I didn’t know if you like coffee or tea or hot chocolate,” she explains, worrying her lip a little, and clearly nervous, which. It’s one thing for her to be hot, but now she’s being endearing. It’s fucking cute, and fucking dangerous. “Also, I didn’t know what kind of tea—I have a bunch of weird berry flavors, and earl grey, and some chamomile if you don’t do caffeine.”
Bellamy bites back a smile that’s way too fond for an almost-stranger. “Coffee’s fine. Or earl grey—I’m not very picky.”
She nods, all business, and pours his tea in a mug with an impressively painted stag, made up of a starry night sky. It’s pretty badass, to be honest, and he bends over to get a closer look at the detail.
“Where’d you get this?” He blows a little on the drink, to make it cool faster. “It’s awesome.”
To his surprise—and, upsettingly, delight—Clarke flushes. “I made it, actually,” she shrugs, clearly trying to be nonchalant about it. “Not the mug, but I painted it.”
“Really?” Suddenly the paint on her arms makes a lot more sense. “Have you thought about doing it professionally?”
Clarke laughs. “I already do. Just, you know, little local shops and stuff. I have an etsy account that gets a fair amount of business.”
“Cool,” he says, taking a tentative sip, and instantly burns the roof of his mouth. Clarke laughs at him about it, but fetches an ice cube from the freezer, and they spend the rest of the afternoon unpacking his things.
His room is plain, but nice enough. It’s definitely nicer than the bunk bed. Bellamy didn’t actually bring any furniture with him, which works out since apparently Clarke’s old roommate had left all of hers.
“Her name's Raven. She’s in Guatemala now,” she explains with a shrug, shelving his books the way he’d asked, by genre-author-title. “She’s doing something for the Army there, I don’t know. It’s all very top secret. Every time we Skype, I try to guess what it is, but so far she hasn’t told me.”
“What’s your best guess?”
She looks at him, straight faced, and says “Aliens.”
“Aliens?” he repeats, when he’s finished choking.
“Aliens,” she sniffs. “You don’t know her, but she’s obsessed with Area 51, I swear. She wouldn’t have moved so far, for less.”
“I believe you,” he swears, hooking up his computer. He still has a desk top, which Octavia makes fun about whenever she can. It’s not that he’s adverse to the idea of a laptop, but he’s had the Dell forever now, and it’d feel disloyal to buy a shiny new MacBook, when the Dell hasn’t done anything wrong.
They finish up pretty quickly after that, and Bellamy thinks about inviting her out for the annual drinks he gets with Miller and Murphy, where they commiserate about a lot of things that aren’t actually all that miserable—but she ducks away into her room, so he figures she wants some alone time. He gets it. And honestly, it’s probably best that he keep her away from his friends for as long as possible, if not forever. They’d never shut up about it.
Almost on cue, as soon as Bellamy slides into the booth beside him, Miller says “So Blake Junior says your roommate’s hot.”
“Clarke’s awesome,” Bellamy says, pointedly. “She’s also my roommate.”
“Which wouldn’t usually matter,” Miller says knowingly, as Murphy ignores them, making eyes at some blond dude across the bar. “A year ago, you wouldn’t have cared about that.”
Bellamy shrugs. “A year ago, my apartment was shitty. Now, my apartment’s great, and it’s also Clarke’s apartment, so I’m not going to fuck that up over some one night stand.” He hesitates for a minute, before just giving in—Miller knows him, by now, and Murphy doesn’t even care. “Plus, Octavia bet me I couldn’t do it.”
“I knew it,” Miller sighs, taking a pull from his beer. Bellamy throws a peanut shell at his face, because he’s fucking mature.
“And, the apartment’s great,” he says, adamant. “I’m not going to fuck it up.”
“This’ll be fun to see,” Murphy deadpans, but it’s not really clear what he’s referring to, since the next minute he’s across the bar, chatting up the blond before leaving out the back door with him.
“I will never understand how his vulture-looking ass has game,” Miller says, disgusted. He and Murphy are the kind of friends who like to pretend they hate each other, and spend most of their time getting drunk and arguing. They also have a weird history of hooking up, which may or may not play a part in it.
“He waits for the right kill,” Bellamy shrugs, finishing off his Sam Adams before standing. “Darts?”
Miller scoffs a little, which is fair; he never says no to Darts.
Bellamy’s mostly sober when he stumbles back to the apartment, carefully quiet in case Clarke’s asleep.
She’s awake, so it doesn’t matter, curled up wearing a blanket and reading glasses, reading her kindle on the window seat. She grins over at him when he walks in, and he feels a little self-conscious, suddenly very aware that he’s swaying in place.
“Have fun?” she asks, teasing, and he nods, heading over to her, and collapsing into a chair. It’s thick and plush and molds to his ass instantly; he might never leave.
“So much fun,” he agrees with a sigh, and she laughs.
Bellamy doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he wakes up, the blanket is tucked all around him, even under his feet, so he feels like a warm and sweaty burrito. It’s Monday, and the first day of school, which means the library is a constant stream of people desperately searching for last-minute summer reading books and reference guides and That one Latin poem. You know the one—it’s Latin. I think it might be about trees.
But it also means he gets home around five o’clock, to find Clarke passed out on the couch, as if she just fell there and decided to stay. He’s quiet in the kitchen, figuring he might as well get started on convincing her he’s actually the World’s Best Roommate by making them both dinner—except there isn’t any food. The fridge is playing host to a half-empty carton of orange juice that may or may not be starting to mold, a bag of shredded cheese of unknown age, and half a stick of butter, slightly deformed.
The freezer has no less than seven pints of Blue Bell ice cream, all different flavors, and the cabinets are filled with those little foil packets of Starkist tuna that smell like old socks. All in all, it doesn’t look promising, and Bellamy shakes Clarke awake, still in shock.
“What do you eat?” he asks her, and she squints up at him blearily, clothes and hair still mussed from the couch.
“Food,” she says, uncertain, and he’d be frustrated if she wasn’t so fucking cute.
“Get dressed,” he orders, tossing one of the cable knit sweaters she left on a chair. “We’re going grocery shopping. I cannot, in good conscience, let you live like this.”
“There are like, fifteen takeout places in this city,” Clarke grumbles, but she tugs on the sweater and her boots, and follows him to the Aldi’s.
He lets her pick out five different microwavable meals, and a twenty-pack of the beef ramen, but puts his foot down at everything else.
“It’s cheaper to just buy ingredients and cook them,” he argues, putting back four of the eight boxes of Kraft mac and cheese. “How do you not know how to cook?”
“I never had to,” she defends. “That’s what the microwave is for!”
“Unbelievable,” he sighs, but pretends not to see her sneak a can of spray cheese into the cart.
He ends up just making some spaghetti, because he’s hungry and it’s quick, but he throws in some sliced carrots and grapevine tomatoes, for texture, and Clarke inhales it like it’s the best meal she’s had of all time.
Clarke declares she has to do the dishes, since he cooked, because that’s apparently in the roommate guidebook, even though he’s fairly sure that doesn’t exist. He agrees, because they have a fancy Whirlpool dishwasher, so basically she just rinses the tomato sauce off in the sink and then loads up the machine, and hits Start.
It’s easy for that, him cooking and her washing, to become a routine after that. A lot of things are easy between them—Clarke wakes up with the sun, so she starts making two cups of coffee instead of just one. Bellamy starts picking up her mail along with his, when he stops by the mailroom on his way home, because it just makes sense. They work out a cleaning schedule; Bellamy vacuums the rugs and mops the hardwood, because Clarke hates vacuuming and mopping, but loves sweeping for some strange reason.
(Bellamy’s just glad they’ve managed to find a way that works, because when it was him and O, she used to lie about vacuuming, and actually drag the dining room chair across the rug, to make it look like she did.)
It’s easy for other things to become routine, too—reading in the living room, after dinner, her on her kindle and then, eventually, whatever book he saw at work that he thought she might like. She always gets through them impossibly fast, and she always has some sort of in-depth meta that she spends hours explaining to him, before posting it all on her weird art blog. She’s started following Lincoln, and they snapchat sometimes, which freaks him out a little. He’d be worried she’d start climbing at O’s gym, but Clarke apparently hates all kinds of physical exertion. She doesn’t even like walking up and down their stairs.
He’s stopped going to annual drinks night, not on purpose; he just forgets, or gets distracted by whatever weird alcoholic drink Clarke’s cooked up in the kitchen, after watching too many of Lincoln’s videos. In fact, since he’s moved in, Bellamy’s spent every night staying in to hang out with Clarke, which he only realizes when his sister brings it up.
Octavia texts him on Saturday night, which means he’s getting drunk with Clarke on whatever wine was on sale at the pretentious wine store next door, and playing some variation of Solitaire, but with two people, and a lot of made up rules, because alcohol.
can u come over tmrw or are u busy w ur NOT gf/roomie??
Bellamy’s seen O since his move, of course. They get lunch whenever their work schedules line up, and sometimes she’ll come in to use the library computer when her building’s wifi is on the fritz, but they haven’t really gotten to hang out at all. In fact, when he thinks about it, Bellamy hasn’t really hung out with any of his friends, lately. Except for Clarke.
If Lincoln cooks you know I’ll be there.
duh, she sends back, pretty much immediately. bring ur record player u loser!! xoxo
Bellamy rolls his eyes—the bet’s over, since the ten days are up, but he didn’t bother asking her to turn over the bike, since it felt a little dishonest. He does like Clarke, after all. But not so much that he’s willing to give up the apartment or, he’s becoming more and more aware, the easy companionability he seems to have with her.
Clarke is easy to be around, which he can’t really say for most people. Even Miller and Murphy can be draining, and even though objectively he knows Octavia’s an adult capable of taking care of himself, he still doesn’t really feel like he can completely let loose around her, because what if something happens? What if she needs him?
Clarke has seen him completely wasted on homemade peppermint schnapps, wearing a penguin onesie they saw at the Dollar Tree while she was buying more mugs. She has a video of him trying to do the Worm in it, and failing, and then drooling on the floor a little because he forgot he was alive. It’d be mortifying, if he didn’t have a companion video, of her wearing a lime green clown wig, drunkenly explaining why Professor McGonagall should have been the main protagonist of Harry Potter.
“Even the name’s better,” she’d argued. “Minnie McGee and the Powers That Be!”
Bellamy’s never felt so utterly comfortable around another person before, and that’s what he’s afraid to lose, even more than the great lighting.
But the apartment does have really great lighting.
“So are you still convinced you are in platonic roommate heaven?” O asks at the cookout, the next day. She and Lincoln recently got a puppy from the pound, that only has one eye and three legs, which they named Cerberus, because Bellamy raised his sister right.
Lincoln is making fried zucchini, which would sound disgusting if it were made by anyone who wasn’t him.
“Nah,” Bellamy shrugs. He’ll give his sister this one. Plus, she actually gapes at him, which is pretty satisfying. He doesn’t get to actually shock Octavia very often. “But it doesn’t matter. She’s great, but we’re friends. I’ll get over it.”
Octavia’s mouth snaps shut with a pop. “Right,” she says, giving him a very unimpressed look, which he ignores, instead bending down to scratch the mutt’s ears.
Bellamy doesn’t actually realize it’s October first, until he goes home, and sees their apartment has been transformed into the set from Halloweentown. There are ghost-shaped string lights wound down the staircase banister, and fake spider webs made of cottons stuck between the railings, with a bunch of little neon plastic spiders that look like they glow in the dark. On the door, over the knocker, is an enormous plastic skull, and when Bellamy reaches for the doorknob, it screams at him.
“Clarke, what the fuck,” he calls, opening the door with his free hand. In the other he’s carrying the leftovers Lincoln packed in a Tupperware, for Clarke.
“Happy Halloween!” she calls back, but he can’t actually see her, which means she must be in the bathroom, at the end of the hall. The inside of the apartment doesn’t look like it escaped the holiday spirit—there are black and orange garlands strewn across the ceiling, and more ghost lights taped to the inside of each window pane. There’s some sort of black cat that he’s really hoping isn’t taxidermy, propped against the wall with a permanent scowl.
Suddenly, he hears music start up—specifically, he hears his music start up. It’s one of his Sinatra records, and Witchcraft seeps softly out from his room, followed by Clarke, who’s wearing a pink dress covered in bats, like polka-dots.
“It’s the first day of October,” he says, amused, and she grins wickedly.
“You mean the first day of Halloween,” she corrects, sniffing the air and zeroing in on the food in his hands.
She tries out some sort of bourbon-based drink that night, that’s supposed to taste like pumpkin spice. Mostly it just makes his mouth go numb, and they end up passed out on the couch, limbs tangled up together, while Beetlejuice’s DVD menu cycles over and over on the TV.
Clarke only gets more and more festive as the month goes on—Lincoln starts coming over, and they make roasted pumpkin seeds from the ones she buys at the grocery store and carves over newspaper on the kitchen floor. She seems to make one a day, different spooky scenes she stencils on first before etching out with a set of detailed woodcarving tools, because she officially has the most Halloween spirit, ever.
She drags him to eight different haunted houses, all over the county, and sets each pumpkin out on their stairs until he almost trips going up and down them each day, and she keeps a running series of Halloween-themed movies in the DVD player, just in case.
On the actual night of Halloween, Clarke declares they’re both on candy duty, and buys a metric ton of those mixed packs, of Snickers and Twix and 3 Muskateers, because she doesn’t believe in the cheap off-brand versions. She wears a tunic that looks like it’s made from a bedsheet, and does her hair up like Princess Leia, and Bellamy dresses up as a piece of broccoli, which basically means he wears her green clown wig, and all green.
It’s more fun than he’s expecting it to be, honestly. Bellamy doesn’t have very strong emotions about any holiday, really, since mostly they were just reminders that he didn’t have as much as everyone else. He never got to go trick or treating, since his neighborhood was too dangerous, and his mom wasn’t interested in driving them ten blocks over, for free candy. And then as he got older and could afford his own food, the whole thing sort of lost its appeal.
But Clarke makes up a drinking game based on how many Angry Birds or Minions costumes they see—he’d worry she’s an alcoholic, if her tolerance wasn’t so shitty—and they watch all the Scream movies in order, and then the Halloween ones, because he’s never seen them.
Clarke falls asleep with her head in his lap, right after he turns out all the lights so no more kids will show up. They don’t end up getting that many, anyway, since no five year old wants to climb a bunch of stairs.
At first, Bellamy assumes Clarke’s just a massive fan of Halloween—but then she does the same thing with Thanksgiving. He comes home to find dozens of giant construction paper hand-turkeys taped up all around the place; the one on their door has tail feathers made of tissue paper, and a paper mache beak—it’s honestly pretty kickass, and he likes it, just like he makes everything else Clarke makes, but.
It’s a little overwhelming, being surrounded by so much holiday spirit. He didn’t even know people could be so into Thanksgiving. It always seemed like one of those forgotten days, that people only ever remembered because of school breaks and Black Friday.
The only other person Bellamy knows who loves Thanksgiving is Lincoln, which makes sense. It doesn’t take long for Clarke and Lincoln to realize their shared love for the day, and she starts spending more and more time at his apartment, just sort of loitering in the kitchen, because she’s the least helpful sous chef of all time.
Bellamy takes to just showing up there after work, since it means he gets to see his favorite people all at once, which is convenient, and he can just play with Cerberus in the backyard.
Octavia doesn’t corner him until the third day, which he considers a personal favor from the universe.
“What happened to getting over her?” she asks, but there’s less bite to the question than he’s anticipating, and he just keeps playing tug of war with the dog.
“It’s a process,” he says, and she makes a noise somewhere between disappointment and disbelief.
“You’re following her around like a puppy,” she accuses, and Bellamy reaches out to cover Cerberus’s ears, squinting up at his sister.
“He’s sensitive,” he says mildly, and she glares.
“Either make a move, or move on,” she hisses, and whirls around to march back inside, apparently done with the pep talk. It’s arguably the least intense talking-to she’s ever given, which he appreciates. Clearly, she was holding back.
Bellamy does mean to get over Clarke, he really does—he meets the guys at the bar that week, breaking up one of their usual arguments, only to watch them instantly relax back into their seats, like they were just waiting for someone to stop them. He’s not sure what they’ve been doing while he’s been gone—just arguing aimlessly, wondering when a third party might step in? Wouldn’t they get bored?
He goes home with a brunette he doesn’t call in the morning, but when he gets home to find Clarke curled up on the couch, the second cup of coffee still warm in the French Press, Bellamy feels himself melting.
“You’re home,” Clarke says, muzzily, sitting up. Her hair’s a rats nest that could probably devour a brush whole, and there’s a red imprint on her cheek from where she fell asleep on one of his pillows.
(She was delighted when she found his collection of them, and they soon found their way into every corner of the apartment. She keeps one on her bed, even; it’s a hand, making the OK sign, and says SHIT HAPPENS THEN WE DIE in curly blue cursive.)
“I’m home,” he agrees, sipping from his mug. It’s the stag one, still his favorite. “Were you waiting up?”
Clarke shrugs one shoulder, shuffling to her feet. “It feels weird when you’re gone,” she says, interrupted twice by yawns, before shambling off to her bedroom, completely oblivious to the fact that Bellamy’s world has just realigned.
It seems pointless, after that, to try to get over her. His best bet seems to be continuing on with the casual affection and drinking games, until Clarke inevitably falls in love with someone, and moves out.
Or maybe he’ll have to move out, when they move in, which would be awful, but. She was here, first. It seems rude, to try to take that away from her.
They have Thanksgiving dinner at O and Lincoln’s, and Murphy brings the roommate that he hates the least, and Miller and Monty are there along with Jasper, Monty’s childhood best friend who doubles as their foster child. Lincoln’s friend Lexa shows up, too. She runs some sort of raw-vegan blog that’s popular with animal activists, and the only thing Bellamy really knows about her is that she has apparently played Russian Roulette and won, which he’s pretty sure means she’s seen at least one person shoot themselves in the head, but. Maybe it was, like, symbolic or something. One of those plastic guns, filled with tequila.
Bellamy’s never spent a lot of time around Lexa, but he knows for sure her usual m.o. is standing in the corner, looking vaguely pissed off.
Except she’s not standing in the corner, and she almost looks a little pleased, around the edges, chatting with Clarke over the deviled eggs platter. Clarke keeps laughing, and messing with her hair, all pink and giddy, and Bellamy feels his stomach sink down to his knees.
It’s not fair to be jealous, he knows. But his brain isn’t listening. Or maybe it’s his stomach, or heart. Whatever the internal organ, it’s pissing him off, because he’s better than this. He’s never been That Guy, the one who gets territorial over girls, like they’re his personal property or something. Even when he fought with Octavia’s, it was never because he thought she was his. He just didn’t want them to hurt her.
Growing up, Bellamy and O never really did the traditional turkey dinner. Sometimes they’d buy the smoked slices from the quick mart, and make sandwiches, and then eat cool whip straight from the tub with a spoon, but that was about as festive as they got.
But Lincoln believes in everyone sitting down to a feast, and going around the table to announce what they’re thankful for, which is something Bellamy thought only happened in prime time television and Norman Rockwell paintings.
They all say the usual things—safety, family, friends, food, good jobs, good booze (Murphy), good sex (Murphy’s roommate, who is only slightly less tasteful), the First Amendment (Lexa, who constantly one-up’s everyone else).
“Our apartment,” Bellamy says, clinking his glass against Clarke’s with a grin. Then it’s her turn, and she seems to consider her thoughts for a moment, trying to sort them all out.
“Bellamy,” she decides, and when the table goes quiet, she blushes a little and adds “For being the World’s Best Roommate, and cleaning my hair out of the drain.” He laughs with everyone else, and ignores Octavia’s pointed stare from across the table, since she’s too far to kick him in the shin.
He almost expects Clarke to find him after dessert, and tell him to go on home by himself, that she’ll see him in the morning, and then he’ll have to watch her leave with Lexa, and it’ll suck.
But instead, after Lincoln’s baked Alaska, she wraps herself up in her coat and scarf, looking warm and squinty with sleep, and finds him in the kitchen, reminiscing with Monty over Yu-Gi-Oh’s good days. She leans into his side, and he wraps an arm around her, nearly second nature by now.
“I’m in a food coma,” she tells him, and he laughs, steering her towards the door. “Is it possible to get drunk from carbs?”
“Yeah, if you have that weird syndrome, where your body turns yeast into beer.”
Clarke makes a little noise he can’t interpret. “I knew that, actually. From when I was in med school.”
Bellamy squints down at her, as they shuffle along on the sidewalk, stepping carefully to test for ice. “I’m surprised you haven’t told me your crazy life story yet,” he says, voice light. "We get so drunk, so often.”
Clarke hums into his chest, face turned away from the wind. “What do you want to know?”
He decides to start out easy, just in case she doesn’t want to answer. “When were you in med school?”
“Straight out of high school,” she says. “I dropped out when I was nineteen.”
“Why?”
“Dad died.” She makes that noise again, the one that means she’s about to correct herself, like the perfectionist she is. “Actually, he died when I was seventeen. But when I was nineteen, I found out he and my mom were about to divorce, right before that. He thought she worked too much, and put her job over her family—she’s a surgeon—and he wanted more, I guess.”
Bellamy squeezes her shoulder a little, and she nestles even more into his side. “Did your mom tell you?”
“No,” she admits, but she sounds calm enough about it, like she’s had time to adjust. “That was the worst part, I think. She kept talking like they had this perfect, loving marriage, but it was a lie. I don’t think she meant to—I think that was how she grieved, you know? By only remembering the good parts, and blocking out the bad. But it messed me up for a while. I didn’t think I could trust her.”
Bellamy doesn’t know a whole lot about Clarke’s mom, but he’s seen them facetime at least once a week, usually Thursdays, and they’ve always seemed pleasant enough. Clarke usually seems happier for it, afterwards.
“But you guys are okay, now?”
“Yeah, we worked it out. And I’m really grateful for that, you know? She’s the only family I have left; it’d suck, if I lost that, too.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “O and I had a huge fight, when she refused to go to college. We didn’t talk for a few months—it was basically hell.”
Clarke glances up at him, incredulous. “You, Bellamy-World’s-Biggest-Big-Brother-Blake, not talk to your sister for months? What was the fight about?”
Bellamy sighs as he unlocks the door, and she adds “You don’t have to tell me,” but he waves her away.
“I just don’t—it wasn’t one of my best moments, so I don’t like to think about it, but you’re right. You can’t just erase the bad.” She hands him her coat and scarf, because he can reach the hooks better, and then she takes his hand and drags him over to the couch, settling in right beside him.
“Growing up, me and O, we didn’t really have anything,” he starts, because it’s the sort of story that needs to be told from the beginning, and to be honest, he’s wanted to let it out for a while. “Our mom died when I was sixteen, and we were in a group home for a while, before I could get emancipated and get custody of Octavia. I had to work three jobs at first, just to pay rent and keep food on the table. O was thirteen.”
At some point, Clarke’s folded her hand into his, and her fingers are fucking freezing, but he doesn’t even care. Mostly they’re just soft, like the rest of her. Soft and grounding, a tiny little tether saying I’m here, I’ve got you.
“I saved every extra penny I got, and put it in a college fund for her. I couldn’t go, but I wanted to give her that, you know? But when she graduated from high school, she didn’t want it. She’d never really liked learning, like I did, and she already had the job at the climbing gym, she just added more hours. I was furious. I thought, I’d worked so hard so she could have this opportunity, and she just turned it down, like it was nothing.”
Clarke nudges his shoulder a little. “But you did go to college,” she says, careful. “You have your librarian degree.”
He grins down at her, fond. “Library Science,” he agrees. “Yeah, I did. O finally convinced me to just use her fund for myself. It took a while, though. I thought I should just give it to her for a down payment on a house, or something.”
“But now you get to be a professional nerd,” Clarke teases, and he laughs, tugging her in so he can rest his cheek on her hair. She smells like the Yankee candles Octavia’s obsessed with, like cinnamon and apple pie.
“I’m thankful for you too,” he says, quiet, because it’s true, and it’s only fair she knows it. “I don’t think I said that, earlier.”
“You didn’t,” Clarke agrees, sleepy, nuzzling him like a cat. “I forgive you.”
The next day, Bellamy’s expecting to come home and find his apartment’s turned into a snow globe Winter Wonderland, or something—but instead, it’s completely plain and undecorated. At first, he thinks Clarke just fell asleep, since she seems to have the sleep schedule of a cat; partly nocturnal, consistently napping throughout the day, curling up in warm spots throughout the apartment. But instead, she’s painting Easter eggs on a lopsided mug, which is strange, even for Clarke.
“What, no mistletoe?” he jokes, and then winces a little, because of all the typical Christmas things he could have named, fucking seriously.
But Clarke doesn’t even seem to notice. “Hmm?” she says, distracted, finishing the spots on her egg.
And, yeah, it’s a little bit weird, but Bellamy just shrugs it off, tacking it onto the list of Clarke’s quirks, and going to make them dinner.
He doesn’t realize what it actually is, until a week later, when the library has a half day due to maintenance, and he comes home early, to find Clarke curled up in a massive ball of blankets, dozens of them wrapped around her like a fuzzy ball of yarn, sniffling, with what looks like half a box’s worth of tissues, used and crumpled up around her on the couch.
It’s A Wonderful Life is playing with the sound off, and he might have just chalked it up to the movie being emotional, but Clarke isn’t even looking at the screen.
He crouches down beside her, cautious after a lifetime’s worth of Octavia crying for varied and sometimes aggressive reasons. “Clarke?” He reaches to take the crumpled tissue from her clenched fist. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She sniffs again, refusing to look at him. “I just—” she deflates in on herself a little. “My dad died around this time,” she admits. “Mom and I were decorating the tree, when we got the call, and he loved decorating, it didn’t even matter what holiday. And every year, I want to do that for him, like we used to, but—it’s just hard.” She glares over at a plastic tote, lid taped over with that brown packaging tape, marked DAD’S XMAS JUNK in big bubbly letters, like a teenage girl might use.
“Hey,” he slides down beside her, still moving slow enough for her to stop him if she wants, but she crawls into his arms basically immediately. He’s discovered that once Clarke realizes you don’t mind her affection, she will smother you with it, which he is absolutely fine with.
“You don’t have to decorate,” he says, voice muffled by her hair. “We can pretend the whole season doesn’t exist, if you want. This can be a Christmas-free zone. We’ll boycott it. Steal all the baby Jesus’s from the Nativity Scenes—that’ll teach em.”
Clarke huffs a watery laugh against his neck. “Teach who?”
“The proverbial Christmastime Them,” he shrugs. “Who knows? The Who’s, from Whosville, or whatever.”
“Did Bellamy Blake just make a movie reference?” Clarke teases, with a mock gasp, and he rubs a hand down her back like he used to do for Octavia, when she was sick or had period cramps. It’s really the only thing he knows how to do, in this situation, the only way to make anything better—and god, he wants things to be better for Clarke.
“It happens occasionally,” he says, and then pulls her up with him. “Come on. You’re sad; you need soup.”
Clarke looks amused. “Soup?”
“People who are sad get soup,” he shrugs, heading into the kitchen. “I don’t make the rules.”
“I thought soup was for sick people.”
“Soup’s awesome.” He pulls some tomatoes and half a butternut squash from the fridge. “It can multitask.”
Octavia shows up outside the library, with her Indian, even though it’s too icy and dangerous for her to be driving it. He’s getting ready to give her a lecture, when she stops him with a raised palm.
“Take it,” she says. “I’ll even teach you how to ride—just tell her. I’m tired of seeing you unhappy, Bell.”
It’s enough of an outburst to leave him blinking in shock for a moment. “I’m not unhappy,” he says, and he’s surprised to find it’s true. He’s not unhappy, with his life with Clarke. He could be happier, maybe, if she loved him back, but. It’s enough, just to have her like this.
Octavia looks skeptical, but he buys her lunch at the pizza place, and sends her home with a kiss on the head, because he knows there’s no real way to convince her. She’s a Blake; protectiveness is in their genes.
A week later, when he gets home from work, a dozen paper snowflakes dangle from the ceiling on bits of glittery string. They keep spinning idly, catching the light with each new angle, and he’s pretty sure they’re her most beautiful decorations yet, even though they’re so simple.
“Hey,” Clarke says, looking shy in a white sundress that’s way too thin and short and sleeveless for December, but she still somehow manages to look warm. She glances up at the snowflakes with a half-shrug. “It’s a start, I guess.”
“It’s awesome,” he says, and when she doesn’t seem to want to move, he crosses over to her. “But I was serious about stealing the Baby Jesus’s. Just name the time and place.”
Clarke huffs a laugh, and studies him a little more serious than usual—so much that he fidgets in place, while she stares.
“They aren’t the only decorations I put up,” she says, tipping her head up, and he follows her gaze to the clump of bright mistletoe, strung up right above them. When he glances back down, she’s smirking, but he can see the pink in her cheeks, and her eyes are still nervous. “I’m not really great with words, so,” she hesitates only a little, before stepping closer, until their socked feet are touching, and Bellamy reaches a hand out to set steady on her hip.
He rubs his thumb against her dress, and she shivers, but he’s pretty sure it’s not because she’s cold.
“My sister bet me I wouldn’t last ten days without falling for you,” he says, and his voice is a little hoarse, but whatever, he’s earned that. Clarke looks up at him, amused.
“I’m assuming you won?”
He grins, ducking down, slow enough for her to get impatient. “I didn’t make it ten hours,” he says, and then kisses her.
“What did you lose?” she asks against his mouth, when they pull back a little to breathe.
“Nothing,” he laughs. “I lied. She wanted my record player.”
“Good move,” she decides. “That thing is awesome.”
And then they’re kissing again, wetter and harder and more rushed. They’ve been waiting too long, to go slow now.
“Did you want to,” Bellamy groans a little when she bites at his neck, and he can’t think. “I don’t know—get dinner first, or something?”
“Bellamy,” Clarke sighs, when he runs his hands up to graze her breasts through the dress. He can feel she’s not wearing a bra, and his brain capsizes. “We’ve had so many dinners.”
“Yeah, but,” he huffs a breath. “Dates are cool. We can dress up, and shit.”
“I already did.” She gestures at the dress, and the only real response to that is more kissing, so he walks her back until she’s up against the wall, and he nudges her legs open with his knee, so she can grind up against his thigh, shameless.
“I seriously—fuck,” he swears when she fits her tiny hand inside the waistband of his trousers, and grazes the skin of his cock. “I love you. I’m so fucking—”
“Me too,” Clarke pants, and then grins up at him wickedly, mouth swollen and red. “But there are two perfectly good beds in this place, and a couch.”
Bellamy ducks his head down to press one last kiss to the skin of her shoulder, before stepping back. But Clarke loops her arms around his neck, so he can’t go far.
“Carry me,” she orders, and he makes a face.
“You are such a brat,” he huffs, but he grips her by the thighs and tugs her up anyway, before dropping her down on his bed.
She flops a little, and the hem of her dress rides up her thighs until he can see the blue lace of her underwear, and then he’s hovering over her, tracing her jaw with his mouth, heading lower and lower until he’s face to face with her thighs.
He licks his lips and glances up to find Clarke staring down at him, eyes dark with want. “Christmas is all about the gift of giving, right?” he asks, and ducks down to run his tongue up against her, letting her moans rattle around in his skull.
When he falls back down beside her, Clarke’s still breathing heavy, and he knows his mouth is still wet, but he can’t stop grinning. “Are feeling the holiday spirit?” he asks, and then Clarke tugs the dress off completely, and his mouth goes dry.
“I’m getting there,” she says, raking her nails down his stomach until he shudders with a gasp.
They move his record player into the living room, along with his enormous collection of vinyl and books, but they keep his bed there for future houseguests. Hers is more comfortable, anyway.
“I still say I won,” Octavia declares at the Christmas party, after seeing him kiss Clarke outside. She’s drinking what might be her third spiked eggnog, and O gets aggressively romantic when drunk, throwing her arms around everybody and saying how much she loves them, and threatening to kick their asses if they don’t love themselves.
Bellamy glances over, at where Clarke’s adjusting Monty’s reindeer antlers. She made a pair for everybody, and even Lexa’s wearing hers. He watches Clarke laugh at some joke, her eyes crinkling with the force of it. They have a Christmas tree at home, with just a few of the cheap colored ornaments they bought at the store, and an upside down mug with a star painted on it, for the top piece.
She's also discovered an intense love for candy canes, and wanders around with them hanging out of her mouth like cigars, but sometimes she'll set them down and forget about them, and he'll find half-finished canes, with all the red gone, sitting in mugs on the bathroom sink or coffee table.
When he came home the night before, he caught her singing along to Bing Crosby, wearing his Atlanta Braves shirt like a dress.
“Nah,” he grins into his drink, as Clarke yells at Murphy’s horrible roommate. He’ll probably have to go over there, before she starts a brawl. “I’m definitely the winner, here.”