Chapter Text
The Princess
(August 2014)
Bellamy and Octavia ordered Chinese from what Bell’s new landlord swore was the best around. They are sitting on the floor because the sparse furniture that he does own is still in the back of the truck. They had spent all day moving O’s things into her new dorm room and there was absolutely no energy left in either of them. It had been a fight to even meet the delivery guy on the ground floor. Regardless of exhaustion, Bellamy is happy. He thinks the next few years at Ark University will go well.
“If my roommate doesn’t like the carpet, do you want it here?”
Bellamy just blinks at his sister. “I think my roommates are more likely to take issue with a purple-striped carpet than yours is.”
“It’s chevron, Bell. I swear, I’ll get you to recognize style if it kills me.”
“Good luck. Anyway, she better like it. It took me fifteen minutes to find room for that thing in the truck.”
“I think she will, she seems really cool. She’s supposed to get here tomorrow.”
“Did you ever find out who the princess with the moving crew is?” Bellamy steals a piece of sesame chicken and gets a death glare.
“Watch it, big brother, I will blind you with these chopsticks.” She clicks the feared weapon in his face. “And no, but I think she’s on my floor. I don’t understand how someone has an entire U-Haul full of stuff, or where she expects to fit it all. The dorms they give freshmen are tiny.”
Bellamy doesn’t remind her that it’s bigger than the room she grew up in. He feels like that time is finally ending. If he can just make it through these last few years of school, they’ll be set.
---
Clarke is a Girl
(January 2015)
“She hooked up with him and he has a girlfriend?!”
Bellamy wonders if everyone in the quad can hear his sister’s half of the phone call or if he is just particularly attuned to her voice.
“Oh no! Poor girl,” she continues in a voice that’s too excited to sound truly sympathetic. She’s almost to him now, but still far enough away that he shouldn’t be able to hear her so clearly. Bellamy was never able to ingrain the value of discretion into his little sister. He rolls his eyes once Octavia is close enough to see it. “I gotta go, Bell’s here. Yeah, lunch. No, I can still meet you, it’ll just be second lunch. Yeah. Bye, bitch.” She hangs up the phone and jumps at him in a hug.
“Hey, O,” he laughs into her hair.
“I’m so glad you’re not a soulless douchebag.”
“Ah…me too?”
“This dick guy, Finn-”
“Finn?”
“Yeah, right? Douchebag name; we should have known from the start. Well he transferred this semester from DSU and he had a girlfriend there but we didn’t know it; Finn has been messing around with Clarke for a month or so and this morning his girlfriend showed up as a surprise. And Clarke was in his bed!”
Bellamy can’t help the laugh that bursts from him.
“Bell, this isn’t funny! Clarke is really broken up over it!”
“Sorry, sorry,” he gasps. “It’s just, come on, that must be the worst way to find out your boyfriend is into dudes.”
“Bellamy!” Octavia punches him in the shoulder. “Two people are broken hearted, you shithead! And, for the record, Clarke is a girl. She’s the princess on my hall, remember?”
“Okay, I’m sorry, geeze! To make it up to you, I’ll buy.”
O shoulders him roughly on her way into the dining hall. “Your commuter plan doesn’t work here, genius.”
As payback for his “insensitivity”, Octavia continues to Bellamy in on every detail of the Clarke/Finn/Raven affair as it plays out over the next month.
---
Hair Die
(February 2015)
Octavia is on the phone when she lets him in. She waves a red-coated hand at him in a dismissive motion; there are smudges of the color on her face and neck too.
“Who did you kill?”
“Don’t shit yourself, it’s just hair die,” she said, before returning the phone to her ear. “My brother’s here.”
“You died your hair?”
“Does it look like I died my hair? No, idiot, we died Clarke’s hair.” She jerks the phone away with a grimace.
“Did you also bathe in it?”
To the phone she says, “Well, then you shouldn’t have made the bet!” Then to Bellamy, “No, but Clarke woke up halfway through and the die went everywhere. By the way, I need a new carpet.”
There is a shout from the phone simultaneous with Bellamy’s.
“You died her hair while she was unconscious?!”
“Hey, don’t get mad, she-,” O redirects her voice, “you lost a fair bet and refused to accept the consequences. Therefore, they were forced upon you.” Pause. “Oh don’t be such a weenie, it’s temporary.” Pause. “Your have that on Thursday? No worries, by then it will just look ginger. I’m hanging up now.”
“O, what did you call me here for?”
His sister opens the door further. She wasn’t kidding about needing a new carpet. She had also added a shade of crimson to her duvet.
“I need help cleaning.”
---
Clarke is a Girl part 2
(February 2015)
There are plenty of ways Bellamy would like to be spending his Saturday night, and this is not one of them. It’s not that he doesn’t like spending time with Octavia—he really has missed it since she started college—but shuttling her around town and lingering inside various art studios is one of the last things he wants to be doing. His pain is exaggerated by the stuffy gallery viewers. They make outlandish claims about what is honest-to-god no more than a white canvas and look at him in his faded jeans with disdain. This is all paired with the texts from Miller of exactly what (and who) he’s missing out on at the bar. But O needs the extra credit for her modern art course, so he’s sticking it out.
He’s just received the third photo in a series featuring a brunette occupying Murphy’s lap in decreasing amounts of clothing when someone clears their throat behind him.
“Can I help you?” His voice is gruff and not at the whisper level of the room’s other occupants, but he doesn’t really give a shit.
The girl behind him is wearing a tag that declares her the artist of the exhibit and an expression that would put even his bitchiest ex-girlfriend to shame. She’s got a heavy amount of eyeliner around her stony blue eyes.
“You’re blocking the view, and if all you plan on observing this evening is your phone, then I would request that you not take up space at my viewing.”
A response is broiling in Bellamy but he is cut off by his sister’s pointedly-timed entrance.
“Lexa, it’s nice to see you,” she greets, though her tone makes it clear that this meeting is more necessary than pleasant. She links her arm around Bellamy’s. “This is my brother, Bellamy. He’s grad student here. Bell, this is my T.A., Lexa. She’s also Clarke’s girlfriend.”
He can’t remember meeting a Clarke. It takes him a moment to remember the incident with the cheating ex-boyfriend from all those weeks ago.
“This is the Clarke who is a girl?”
“Excuse me?” He’s surprised when the stuck-up artist speaks, even more so by the malice in her voice, and can’t formulate a response before she turns to his sister. “Look, Octavia, I am happy you came by tonight and I will give you the extra credit points, but I will appreciate it when you don’t bring your close-minded brother to any future events.”
The girl turns and leaves a beet-red Octavia behind; she’s pulled him out into the street before he can blink.
“God, she’s such a bitch,” she whisper-shouts. “I can’t believe Clarke is with her!”
“Damn, I can’t believe she just jumped to a conclusion like that.”
“Typical Lexa. Last week when Clarke brought her to meet the crew, she snubbed Jasper because he called her old when she didn’t have to use a fake. What the hell kind of person can’t take a joke, and from Jasper!”
“Alright, O, let’s get out of here before you blow up. Did you get everything you needed?”
She nods. “Thanks for bringing me.”
“You can thank me by being dd.” Twenty minutes later he steels that girl right out of Murphy’s lap.