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“Whoa,” Bellamy’s gaze roams the kitchen in concern. “What happened here?”
Clarke is sitting at the table, a fat pastry bag of frosting in her hand, aimed at a crumbling mass of gingerbread. Powdered sugar dusts her hair like snow, and there’s a spot of frosting in her eyebrows. Overall, the kitchen appears to have been hit by a powdered-sugar-and-cinnamon tornado.
“I’m making a gingerbread turkey for tomorrow. It’s festive,” she adds, a touch defensively.
Bellamy picks up a deteriorating piece of cookie delicately. “Did you make this from scratch?”
“Yes,” Clarke says, squeezing out a thick stream of frosting onto a scalloped piece that might be the turkey’s tail. “Monty let me borrow his mom’s cookbook.”
Bellamy wonders if it’s appropriate to point out that a store bought gingerbread house would have been less traumatic for the kitchen and Clarke.
Clarke seems to read his mind anyway, and glares a him for a second before bursting, “I just wanted to decorate! I thought it would be fun!” She looks rather like a mad scientist, hovering over her collapsing pile of gingerbread and frosting-glue.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You were thinking it.”
Bellamy suppresses his smile, mostly. “Well, I am impressed at you baking. Even if the kitchen is…” He wipes a finger on the counter, leaving a clean streak in the coating of sugar.
“Have you ever done this?” Clarke seems keen to redirect his attention from the kitchen’s appearance. She opens the top of the powdered sugar bag, then snaps it
shut. A white cloud puffs into the air. She sticks her tongue into it, coating it with sweetness, and grins.
“Is that why it looks like it snowed in here?”
“Come on, try it. It’s fun.”
Bellamy shrugs. He is secretly delighted when Clarke ventures into the kitchen, despite her poor track record of successful dishes. Half the time she gets distracted and burns whatever she’s making, but Bellamy still loves when she reluctantly lets him teach her, standing next to him by the stove and awkwardly flipping pancakes or chopping onions.
Bellamy has a lot of fond memories in kitchens. He spent plenty of time there with his mother and Octavia as a child, baking cookies and helping stir the mac & cheese. Dinner time was one of the rare moments his mom was able to spend time with them, apart from reading bedtime stories together—another good memory.
Unlike Bellamy, Octavia preferred the microwave to the oven, but she was still usually present to the enjoy the fruits of his labor. She appreciate the food, just not the process. But she was always the first to request their mother’s cookie recipe as the holidays neared.
Clarke puffs sugar out of the bag again, and this time Bellamy leans forward to catch it on his tongue. It’s sweet and powdery and tastes like Christmas. Clarke is laughing like a little kid, delighted.
“You have it in your hair,” she points out. She reaches and brushes his thick black curls over his forehead, dusting off the sugar.
“You have it over all of you,” Bellamy says. He glances around until his eyes land on a dish towel. He dampens it under the faucet and starts scrubbing Clarke’s face before she can react.
“Bellamy!” She squeals, trying to twist away from him. He grabs her around the shoulders and persists in firmly wiping off streaks of flour and frosting. She’s giggling, squealing at him to stop, and wriggling away as he covers her entire face with the wet towel, rubbing vigorously.
Then—
Clarke was still holding the bag of frosting when Bellamy began his attack. In her distraction, she squeezed it—right into Bellamy’s hair.
Her lips are pressed together, fighting laughter at Bellamy frozen in astonishment, his arm still around her back and the towel in his other hand, now a mess of soggy sugar.
There’s a very decently sized pile of frosting on his head. Blobs of it drip down his neck and shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Clarke whispers, still trying not to laugh. Bellamy looks at her sternly.
“Next year, we buy a gingerbread house from the store,” He says.
“I was just trying to be festive, Mister Christmas-starts-in-October. Here,” she takes the towel from his hand and starts dabbing at his hair.
Her efforts make it worse. Frosting is squished through his hair, coating the curls and flattening them down his forehead.
“You’re making it worse!”
“Don’t move! You’re not helping.”
“Neither are you!”
Bellamy tries to duck away from Clarke’s helping hand, but she grabs the back of his collar and makes him lean down so she can reach better. He looks like a disgruntled cat receiving a bath.
“You’re rubbing it in my ear!”
“Hold still!”
Clarke has to admit defeat. Despite the globs she removed, there is still frosting spread from his hair, down his cheek, and down to his shoulder. He looks as though he was trying it out as a new hair gel.
Clarke finally loses her hold on the repressed laughter.
“You look so awful,” she chokes out, throwing the towel down.
“I’m aware,” Bellamy says drily. “This is the thanks I get for trying to clean you up?”
“You weren’t that successful,” Clarke points out, looking at her dirty shirt.
“I’m all sticky,” Bellamy complains, touching his face experimentally. “You’re lucky I didn’t plan on leaving the house today.”
They had all planed on using the day to start cooking tomorrow’s Thanksgiving feast—preparing casseroles, putting together pies, probably—in Monty and Jasper’s case—making homemade hard cider of questionable alcohol content. Clarke had been assigned Pumpkin Pie Duty and Assistant Casserole Assembly, but the chances of her being fired were increasing exponentially.
“This is your fault. You insulted my turkey.”
“I did not. You probably don’t even have enough frosting left to finish it.”
Clarke picks up the bag. “I have enough left to put on you.” Bellamy snatches it from her, holding it well above his head where she can’t reach.
“I don’t trust you with that anymore.”
He pulls a stool up next to her by the counter, and starts picking apart the pieces of gingerbread.
“So if this is the tail—“
“I was trying to put it on the base but it kept falling.”
“You were skimping on your frosting. Gotta use a lot or the glue doesn’t work,” Bellamy expertly squeezes out a thick tube of frosting on the gingerbread square. He sticks the body against it, holding it securely as the glue firms up.
“Okay, start on the tail while this solidifies.”
Clarke puts a thick heap on the tail and presses it to the body. Frosting squeezes out the sides as she holds it to the body as Bellamy holds that to the base. She can feel his skin pressed against hers, warm and soft and slightly sticky. In their proximity she can see icing starting to harden in his hair, turning the black curls into stiff white peaks. There’s a streak of it drying down his cheek and over his lip, turning it white and chalky. She has a quick, inexplicable urge to lick it, to taste the sugar and leave a clean wet stripe across his face. Her own face is starting to get warm and she has to break eye contact to look at the turkey before the urge overtakes her.
Bellamy’s hands are relaxed, not making any effort to avoid contact with hers. He shifts in his chair and glances back up at her.
“Should be almost hard,” he says, jiggling the turkey experimentally. “What comes next?”
“The wings go on, then the feet. Then decorating,” Clarke says. She hopes it dries quickly because there’s a strange feeling rising in her, simultaneously uncomfortable and a little too comfortable. She could swear Bellamy is pressing his knuckles against the back of her hand on purpose, but he’s looking down at the gingerbread directions intently. The dried frosting is beginning to crack and flake off his cheek.
“Where did you even find this?”
“Pinterest.”
Five minutes later Bellamy declares the frosting is done, and Clarke feels a mixture of regret and relief.
He amuses himself with the candies and gummies intended to decorate the turkey as she pipes frosting along the scalloped tail. So much was lost to his hair that they’ll have to ration the rest.
“Those are for the turkey!” she says indignantly, as he pops on in his mouth. He smiles mischievously with it between his teeth briefly before swallowing.
“Too late.”
Clarke gives him a stern look and smacks a second piece of candy out of his hands. “Your help was appreciated but you will be banished from my kitchen if you eat my ingredients.”
Bellamy looks wounded, then shrugs. “I need to wash his frosting off anyway.” He wiggles some stiff-with-sugar eyebrows. “You might want to think about doing the same.”
“Honestly, there’s probably no point until after we’ve finished cooking.” Clarke admits.
“True, but I can’t feel my face,” Bellamy pats his dried and cracked face with his hands dramatically. “And Raven will have a heart attack when she sees the kitchen like this.”
“You started it,” Clarke calls to his back as he heads to the shower. She tries not to think of him washing off the sugar, wetting his hair and scrubbing out the frosting.
He has a point though, Clarke thinks as she finishes the last touches to her turkey. There’s not much point in cleaning everything—her reputation as a messy cook precedes her—but she makes an effort to wipe up the worst of the mess.
Bellamy walks in a few minutes later. He has a towel wrapped around his middle but he’s bare and wet from the waist up.
“Bad news,” he says, holding up his cell phone. “They’re stuck in holiday traffic. Probably won’t be home until the evening.”
Octavia and Lincoln had signed up for a Turkey Trot, and Raven, Miller, Monty, Jasper, and Bryan accompanied them as their cheering squad. They were at least five hours away.
Clarke grumbled. “So I guess that leaves all the baking to us.”
Bellamy doesn’t look as annoyed as she does. Honestly, he is probably delighted at a day of staying home and baking. He is the most domestic twenty something guy Clarke knows, a fact that she teases him mercilessly about (even though her taste buds are always thrilled with his creations). Between his cooking and love of books, she tells him that he was born a middle aged woman.
He glances around the kitchen. “This is an improvement.”
“No need to sound so shocked. And look!” Clarke holds up her turkey precariously. The icing is uneven and the gingerbread is a little too browned, but it’s in one piece and strongly resembles a turkey, if a turkey were to have skittle color tail feathers and a gummy bear wobbly chin thing.
Bellamy grins. “That can be our centerpiece.”
Clarke sets the turkey on the center of the table, in the position of honor. “So what are we starting with?”
“I start on the stuffing and you can work on the sweet potato pie,” Bellamy says. “It’s pretty simple,” he adds.
Clarke snaps a dish towel at his arm. “Don’t insult me. And go put on some clothes before you burn your nipples or something.”
Bellamy snorts. “That’d be a Thanksgiving to remember.”
Clarke is a little relieved when his half naked self leaves the room. What’s wrong with her? Must be the holiday stress.
It’s not like she never noticed Bellamy. It would be hard not to, living together for the past nine months. Even before, when they were in the same dorm building and then in nearby apartment complexes, it’s not as though she had much opportunity to not notice him. They’re been nearly inseparable since their second year, once they recovered from a bumpy start to their friendship. Their groups had naturally overlapped, once Octavia and Lincoln started dating, were firmly squashed together.
But lately—something had felt different. They way he hugged her a little tighter, maybe. The casual affection of putting a hand on her shoulder or pushing her hair back. Nothing new, really, but somehow—different. The way she couldn’t quite meet his eyes the time they were pressed up against each other in the back of a crowded cab.
But she didn’t like him like *that*. How could she? It was Bellamy. Bellamy was the one constant in her life. No matter what was happening, he was there. He was even there that semester she decided to study abroad and basically vanished for months, returning only after a quick and tumultuous relationship with someone she met while gone.
He was there on the anniversary of her father’s death, accompanying her to church because he didn’t want her driving alone. He was there when she had a full on shouting match with Professor Kane and thought she might be suspended, backing her up. He was there on Unity Day, celebrating with her alongside their friends and they were both a little too buzzed. He held her hand as they walked home, her heart on fire. He’d jokingly twirled her around, dancing, but he never dropped her hand and neither did she. They fell asleep on the couch next to each other, drunkenly drifting off to a movie, and there was no mention of it the next day.
This was probably normal, Clarke told herself. It was hard not to notice Bellamy—all the other girls certainly did. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean anything when her chest tightened after she saw him and Gina walking hand in hand, and it didn’t mean anything when the knot released upon their break up.
Things weren’t always simple with Bellamy, and they weren’t even always good, but they always felt right.
She couldn’t ruin that. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to—she didn’t know what she was feeling. She’d never really considered dating Bellamy. Why would she want to date her best friend? She only wanted him all to herself and to come home to him every night and have no one but him cheer her up and tell him everything first. She already had that, so why was there any need to throw more emotions into the mix? Being best friends was enough. It had to be enough.
______
Bellamy gets dressed slowly, deliberately putting off having to reenter the kitchen with Clarke. Although he probably should—if she tries to be helpful and start working on the stuffing for him then there’s no telling if he’ll be able to salvage it.
Still. He’s not sure he wants to go back into the room, not with Clarke flitting around with flour adorably stuck on her nose and streaked through her hair. It’s too tempting not to start picking apart the strands, cleaning them off.
Bellamy shakes his head, pulling an Arcadia hoodie over his head. Clarke is off limits, he reminds himself. You can’t make her leave again. It wasn’t really his fault she left in the first place, but guilt gnawed at him anyway.
He pulls a pair of socks out from under his bed, and his hand touches something smooth and shiny. He pulls it out—Clarke’s Christmas present, already wrapped and hidden. Per their earlier agreement, the tree will go up tomorrow and he can finally put this underneath.
An entire day cooking with only him and Clarke. It sounds like heaven and hell at the same time. He knows he’ll have to try—try not to think of what might happen, try not to let his touch linger a little too long, try not to think of Raven and Octavia’s jokes about them being a married couple.
It’s a little true, anyway. Clarke is the first person he tells when he has news, the first person he wants to see when he comes home tired and grumpy, the first person he wants to spend time with when he has a day off. The first person his hand reached for that time their airplane had an emergency landing and they all thought they were going to die and Murphy was swearing loudly in the seat next to him and Clarke was telling Jasper not to panic (which had little effect on Jasper panicking). The first person he wanted to tell when he was appointed to be his literature professor’s TA. Clarke even got him into hugging people, a habit he was reluctant to pick up but has irrevocably adopted.
They are a little married, and Bellamy loves it.
And what’s more married than cooking together? They can be a little married today, Bellamy decides. It’s the holidays. There’s no harm in spending the day together.
There’s nothing even that unusual about it.
He exits his room bravely to find Clarke in the kitchen, swaying slightly to music playing from her phone—Christmas music.
Bellamy grins jubilantly. “I knew it!”
Clarke looks up defensively. “What?”
“You’re excited for Christmas.” Bellamy crosses his arms triumphantly.
“I never said I wasn’t. But excitement doesn’t happen until a reasonable time.”
“If I remember, after Thanksgiving were the terms for the rest of the decorations. It remains before Thanksgiving today.”
“Well, there is no Thanksgiving music. So it’s Christmas music.”
Bellamy raises an eyebrow. “That’s one of your weaker arguments, Clarke.”
‘It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas’ plays. Clarke is staring at him with her lower lip out stubbornly.
“It’s almost time.”
“Sure thing, princess. But first,” Bellamy brandishes a bowl and spatula. “The feast!”
They spend the next three hours up to their elbows in sweet potatoes, pumpkins and peeled potatoes. Bellamy walks Clarke through the steps of making a homemade pie crust, instructing her on keeping the butter cold and placing it gently in the pie tin. The warm, buttery scent of it cooking wafts throughout the entire house.
Then, the real challenge: finding space for everything in the fridge. Some tension arises as they arrange and rearrange the contents, trying to stuff everything in like tetris without anything falling out when they open the door.
Bellamy shuts the door and pauses, hands up as if ready to catch a potential avalanche of Tupperware. Silence. He backs away in relief.
“Done!” Clarke declares. She starts piling the dirty dishes in the sink. Her face and hair is still slightly streaked with flour and sugar from earlier.
Bellamy groans as he catches sight of the mountain of dishes. “I could always do without this part of cooking.”
Clarke sets down a soapy plate, raising her hands and wiggling her fingers. “Give me a dance first, then,” she says.
Her phone is playing ‘White Christmas’.
Her heart is pounding. Maybe this is too much. It’s not as though they haven’t danced before—it’s a pretty common sight—but her stomach is twisting anyway. It untwists a little bit when Bellamy returns her smile and takes her hands.
“This isn’t really a dancing song,” he says, putting one hand on her hip and grasping the other.
“It is if you try hard enough. I mean, Raven turned ‘happy birthday’ into a dancing song once.”
“Raven was drunk off her ass,” Bellamy reminds her. “Although I was kinda impressed with her moves.”
Clarke laughs.
This is definitely a little married, Bellamy thinks, swaying to the music in their kitchen. Fading winter light filters through the window. He can still smell the baking pies and the tang of the orange slices and cinnamon sticks he put on to boil. Clarke’s’ hair is soft and warm against his shoulder, one hand relaxed in his and the other placed lightly on his arm.
The music changes to a rollicking cover of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, but Clarke doesn’t change her rhythm. They stay there, swaying gently, though Mariah Carey, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, and Andy Williams. It’s not until Chuck Berry breaks into ‘Run Run Rudolph’ that the gang’s arrival breaks them apart.
_______
It is, all in all, a very good Thanksgiving.
Bellamy wakes early, eager to put the turkey in (there was on Thanksgiving that involved a partially cooked but mostly frozen turkey, and he’s not keen to repeat that) and Clarke helps pop the casseroles in later.
The rest of the gang arrives around ten, and they all lounge around in comfy clothes to watch the parade and sip on cider as the house fills with the smell of baking turkey and sweet potatoes and deliciousness.
Monty and Jasper’s hard cider packs a punch, and it’s only four in the afternoon before Raven and Miller begin their astonishingly terrible renditions of Christmas songs. Then Miller and Monty get overexcited about garnishing the pies with whipped cream, and Raven has to confiscate the bottle. Bellamy finds her squeezing it directly into her mouth, confiscates it from her, and complains about all the children he has to look after.
Later, they all flop on the couch again, this time digesting their feast and complaining of how full they are (Miller continues to eat pie through his grumbles of an impending stomach ache).
Bellamy glances over to Clarke, curled on the sofa with a blanket around her shoulders and Raven’s head in her lap. She’s blinking sleepily at the tv, looking quite relaxed. She meets Bellamy’s gaze and gives him a contented smile before drifting off. He smiles back, but her eyes are already closed.
A little married is okay.