A/N: Written for pleasesayitsnotso for the 2015 Bellarke Secret Santa on Tumblr. I was very un-subtly inspired by my own exam experiences this year, and by some tried and true fandom tropes.
x
When Bellamy wakes up to frost on his window, his first thought is: so now it feels like December. At last. He's walked through the last two weeks like through a fever dream, fall semester exams paired strangely with short-sleeve weather, his roommates like ghost people staring at him blearily while they stumble past each other searching out coffee or food—but today all weights have been lifted from him and it's like waking up into a different world. A true winter world too. His bare feet hit the floorboards and he shivers.
The apartment has been quiet all through exam period, but its silence then was a frenzied sort, punctuated by the occasional slamming of doors, Miller's frustrated cursing, Jasper's excited woo-yas, every time he finished another test or a project. Today, everything is eerily still. This silence is almost unsettling, leaving only the echoes of outside noises to form a background to his thoughts. Miller left late the night before to spend the holiday with his dad, pretending to the last moment that the prospect didn't make him nervous, but Bellamy at least expects Jasper and Monty to be around. He figures they'll be out in the main room, smoking or playing video games or challenging each other with obscure science trivia—or in the kitchen, making an elaborate first-day-of-winter-break breakfast. Instead, the sink is piled with elaborate-breakfast dishes and there's a note attached by magnet to the front of the fridge:
Accidentally got tickets for the early train so we had to leave before you got up. Merry Christmas and see you in the New Year! –Jasper
Sorry about the kitchen. We owe you! –Monty
Awesome. It's not just the kitchen, it's the living room and the bathroom too, all utter disaster areas, strewn with open notebooks, scrawled notes and outlines, textbooks, interspersed with dirty dishes and empty coffee mugs, punctuated with the ephemera of procrastination: open DVD boxes, Miller's perfectly organized collection of vinyl, now a perfect mess. Octavia's driving in tomorrow, and he has a brief moment of panic at the thought. She'll mock him mercilessly for living like a pig.
Then he remembers she's his little sister, and he doesn't have to take shit from her.
He turns on the radio, which is playing something catchy and easy to ignore, and grabs his phone. He still hasn't put on socks, and the chill seeping up through his feet sounds a first forecast for the day.
Hey, everyone's cleared out. Have the apt 2 myself 4 24 hrs. Come over?
The catchy song ends, and the DJ announces the weather: snow flurries starting at noon, to continue all afternoon, heavier snow in the evening. An increasingly strong possibility of a snowstorm as the day wears on.
Bellamy's made coffee, washed the dishes, and scrambled some eggs before Clarke texts him back. Last test today. Finish at noon. Will come over after.
x
He buzzes her up at 12:45, and by then, the flurries have become real, no-denying-it-now snow. Clarke is wearing her big winter coat, the one that falls down to her knees, and she looks worn and sleep deprived and a little pale. Her hair is pulled up in the messiest of buns. But she smiles when she sees him and—cliché, he knows—it lights up her whole face. They haven't seen each other in two weeks, long enough for him to convince himself that he doesn't really think of Clarke Griffin in that way. That pretense is blown away now. He thinks of himself as smart and confident both, but if he were a little less of the first and more of the second, he'd pull her in for a kiss before she even steps inside.
"Are you going to invite me in, or not?" she asks, craning her neck to see around him. "Are you embarrassed about the state of your apartment? This is truly disgusting, Bellamy. How do you live like this?"
He steps back to let her walk past him, then closes the door behind her. "It used to be worse," he answers, and then, a little defensively, "And I wasn't the hurricane that blew through. Three other grad students live here, too, you know."
"I know." She sets her bag down on one of the chairs, and turns to him again. "Can't say my place is much better." She picks up one of the coffee cups, the scrim at the bottom of it at least a week old, and makes a face, more sympathetic than judgmental. "So your roommates all bailed and left you with this, huh? You want some help?"
He should probably say no. He's at least had a good night's sleep between his last exam and now, and she has the exhausted look of the living dead. But he just nods and admits, "Yeah. That would be great."
x
They've kissed once before, but only once. That was four months ago, the beginning of the semester, at the boys' housewarming party, and it feels like a lifetime has passed since then. She was the last of the guests to leave. They'd gotten into a debate sometime around nine, he's not sure any more about what, which morphed into a discussion, in the way debates so infrequently do, and from there, into some slightly buzzed flirting.
"This," she said, "is going to be my most productive semester yet. No distractions. At all."
He laughed. Anyone that certain of her future deserved to be taken down a peg. "Yeah, right, princess. No guys, or girls, or anything?" They were sitting in the window seat, he barely balanced, kicking one heel against the wall in no rhythm.
She kicked his foot back. "No guys or girls or anything. Not after last year. Not worth it. Nope."
The previous semester, she'd started out the New Year accidentally breaking up her now-roommate's three year relationship, then followed up the performance with a relationship so dramatic, it exhausted everyone in their circle from afar. So he couldn't really blame her for taking a break.
"You say that now," he countered. "I'm just saying—realistically—how long is that resolution going to last?"
She tilted up her chin. They were the only ones left in the room: the guests gone, Jasper passed out on the couch, Monty exhausted and in bed, Miller who-knew-where. Outside was pitch black, and inside the lights bright, and her profile reflected in the window pane like a ghost reflection. Maybe he knew even then that it would haunt him. She leaned in very close. "I can do it. I can stop myself from kissing anyone."
Not even thinking, he took what he thought was her dare, and leaned in too. "Even me?"
"Even you," she lied, a call and response with no meaning, and closed the last distance between them. Her kiss was insistent, and together they were too uncoordinated, too certain and uncertain at once. Not exactly a success, and they both knew it. She pulled back, blinking, embarrassed, and looked down. Neither had any idea what to say.
x
Between the two of them, they get the apartment in some sort of decent shape: all the trash picked up and the dishes put away, the surfaces cleaned and the floors dusted. Bellamy throws a balled up paper towel into the trash, a perfect arc, a high score. The sound it makes seems to perfectly encapsulate his feeling of satisfaction and success. Then he glances over at Clarke and sees her swaying on her feet, the acceleration of success is replaced by with guilt, and he takes her arm to lead her to the couch.
"I'm not an invalid," she argues, unconvincingly. "Just tired."
"Then sit and don't move for a little," he answers, already walking away, and twitches back the curtains to look out the window. The winter light is already dimming into dusk, and the snow is coming down in fast, heavy, white flakes. A thick layer has gathered on the tops of the cars outside, and on the sidewalk, and on the road. The streets themselves are near deserted. He's just about to tell Clarke how bad it's looking out there when his phone buzzes in his pocket. The text is from Octavia, and when Clarke asks what's up—hearing something unsettling in his silence perhaps—he tells her, "It's O. She says the roads are getting bad and she doesn't think she'll make it tomorrow."
Clarke has turned around to look at him, her arms crossed on the back of the sofa and her chin resting on her wrist. "I'm sorry, Bell. I know you haven't seen her in a while."
She almost never calls him Bell. Only Octavia's allowed to do that, but Clarke, because she's found herself a special place in his esteem, has a certain unique privilege to the name. She never abuses it. Her voice now is soft and understanding. He can't tell her what it means to him to hear that sympathy, so he just sighs, and nods. "Better than her getting in a wreck, though," he says, and throws his phone down on the table a little too hard. "Hey, look—it's getting bad here, too. You shouldn't try to go home tonight. Just spend the night here."
She raises her eyebrows. "Just the two of us?"
"Yeah. What—you don't trust me?" He pulls out one of the chairs, sits down and kicks his heels up on another. "Or do you not trust yourself?"
"Ha, ha." She drags herself up to her feet. Stretches, and her shirt rides up a little, showing just a sliver of stomach. "Fine. Can I use your shower? I still have that…" she makes a face, "gross exam feeling on me."
"Yeah," he smiles. "Sure. You can grab a towel from my room."
She thanks him, and he watches her walk away down the hall. It's only after he hears the sound of water running, the far-distant echo of shower spray, that he asks himself why she didn't shower before coming over. Her apartment isn't out of the way. She could have stopped by there, dropped off her books, changed her clothes, but she didn't. No, she chose to come right over, to hurry to see him as soon as she could. Something lightens in his heart, and he smiles a rather smug smile.
x
There's not much food left in the kitchen, but luckily, Miller left most of a pizza behind, and it's only a day or two old. Bellamy is just pulling the box out of the fridge when a sound behind him—his name, sounding like a question—startles him and makes him bump his head.
He swears, quite creatively, and closes his eyes, rubbing the spot angrily. When he opens his eyes, he finds Clarke front and center in his vision, standing too close, her brow furrowed with concern. She's apologizing, some words he barely hears because: she's wearing his robe, and nothing else, and her hair is still wet and her skin is slightly, beautifully, flushed.
"Here, I'm sorry, let me look at that," she insists, as if this were some great medical emergency. Her soft touch searches out a bump or bruise, and he insists that he's fine, the harsh pain subsiding and forgotten but her fingers still sliding through his hair.
"I'm fine," he says again, and she drops her hand.
He's a fool. He should have insisted he had a concussion.
Clarke steps back, adjusts the tie of the robe just a little (this makes the too-big robe situation a little worse, instead of better), and says, "I just wanted to ask, do you have any clothes I can borrow?"
"Um—top drawer of my dresser," he answers, vaguely; his voice sounds like someone else's voice and he doesn't quite know where to look, or what to do with his hands. "Are you hungry?" He pulls out the pizza box, without injury this time, and flips open the top. There's about two thirds left, extra cheese and pepperoni, and Clarke nods her approval immediately.
"Starving," she says. "Totally starving."
x
They eat the pizza cold, lounging side by side on the couch with their feet up on the coffee table. Clarke is swimming in an oversized shirt that says World's Best Big Brother on it, and Bellamy's softest pair of plaid sleep pants. He's still in the clothes he slept in last night, which makes him feel a bit like a slob, but also that his slovenliness is well-deserved. This decadence—the depravity of a void of responsibilities, coming so soon after a frantic whirlwind of activity, this pleasant blankness of his mind—is perfect, and they're silent for a long time, both basking in it.
"I was supposed to drive out to my mom's tomorrow," Clarke says, just before she bites into her crust. "Something tells me that isn't going to happen."
Bellamy glances over his shoulder, out the window obscured by a sheet of snow. "Yeah," he answers, drawing out the word. "I think that would probably be a bad idea. You disappointed?"
It's a loaded question, so he makes sure he sounds like it's not.
"No." She shrugs. "I mean, I wasn't in any hurry to head out. Last year… we didn't fight, but it was tense as hell. She knows I'm just becoming a doctor because of her, and that's not—that's not her fault, really, but it's hard not to… it's hard not to feel tense. That's all."
She's never said anything like this to him before, and for a few moments, it so surprises him that he's silent. Clarke finishes her slice and then sets her plate on the coffee table and slides it away from her. He watches her wipe the grease from her hands on a napkin, then pull her legs up under, facing him, her cheek resting on the back of the couch and her whole body curled up, an awkward and self-protective pose.
"Sorry—I—" He shakes all of the thoughts from his head and starts blank. "I thought you loved medicine. You never struck me as someone who picked a life plan based on her mom."
"I didn't," Clarke insists quickly. "I do love medicine. I've been around it my whole life and it… feels right, in a way. But it's not my passion like it's my mom's passion. I guess I never wanted to admit that to myself before."
He sets his plate aside too, taking this information in. There are any number of questions to ask. He watches her bare feet, which she's rubbing together absently, because he doesn't want to look at her face, because he's quite certain she's watching him closely and waiting.
"What is your passion, then?" he asks.
"My art." He hears the forced casual tone to her voice. She means this truly and sincerely, but she's embarrassed to sound true and sincere. He's seen her sketches before, and they're good, but she treats them as the vaguest of hobbies and sidesteps any discussion of her talent.
"Then be a doctor and an artist. Nothing's stopping you from doing that."
She rolls her eyes. "You say that like it's no big deal. In case you haven't noticed, doctors tend to be pretty busy people."
"So are medical students," he counters. Then he points to her bag, still sitting on the chair where she left it. "Your sketchbook is in there, isn't it? You take it with you everywhere. I know you do. You're always creating. As long as you keep doing that, you're an artist." There's a slight frown between her eyes, a reluctance, so he presses. "Aren't you?"
She curls up a little closer around herself, so she's looking up at him, staring at him. Testing him perhaps. Then—"Yes," she answers. Her voice is quieter than he thought it would be. This silence has stretched too long, and this is all that can break it. "Sometimes when I'm sketching, that's how I feel."
This confession, very gentle, seems to call for its own confession in turn—he doesn't know, or won't admit, of what. He manages only her name. And she's still staring up at him, still waiting.
Then the power flickers out.
x
Bellamy is sure he has a flashlight somewhere, but just quite where eludes him. Clarke jokes that its location must have fallen out of his brain when he was stuffing all that history knowledge in. It was all those dates, probably; that must have done it. She manages to grab her phone, at least, and by its light they navigate their way into Monty's room. He seems like the type of person who'd keep a flashlight somewhere obvious. Sure enough, there's a big industrial one by the strewn out components of an old radio, and Bellamy snaps it up and turns it on.
"That'll work," he announces, satisfied, but Clarke's expression says she isn't sure.
"You've noticed that the heat has shut off too, haven't you?" she asks. "I'd like not to freeze."
Bellamy flicks the light around the room, then out into the hallway, the half-open door to his room. "I think if we put our heads together, we can devise a plan to keep frostbite away," he answers, in a you-know-there's-no-need-to-panic voice.
Clarke rolls her eyes. "I'm assuming this plan involves shared body heat?"
"And blankets," he grins, and grabs the comforter from Monty's bed on his way out of the room.
x
They also gather Jasper's blanket, and Miller's, just in case, and by the time they've piled them all on Bellamy's bed and slid underneath their perhaps-excessive new collection, Bellamy is feeling pretty good about the plan, in more ways than one. Not that he's expecting anything to happen. But there's something pleasant and deeply comforting about this situation, something soft and right about Clarke lying next to him.
"Okay," she says, pulling the blankets so far up they all but swallow her whole, "I think we'll be okay."
"Yeah, we'll be okay," he echoes. He balances the flashlight on his bedside table, still on, so that a series of concentric circles of light illuminate the wall.
Clarke rearranges the pillows, repositions herself and reconsiders, and finally finds what seems to be a decent spot. He's about a second away from asking her if his bed is to her liking—maybe there's a stray pea under the mattress she can feel?—when she says, "Turn that thing off. You're just wasting battery."
He doesn't bother with a retort, not because she's right, but because he wants the darkness too. With the flashlight off, the room is all but pitch. Only the barest of black outlines on black are visible. Bellamy turns on his side and traces the counter of Clarke's shape, tries to make out the features of her face.
"Are you going to sleep?" he asks, into a long silence.
"No," she answers. He's fairly sure her eyes are closed, but her voices shows no signs of sleepiness. "Just—resting, I guess."
Yes, they were closed—he sees them flick open now. One of her hands snakes out from under the blankets, and she touches his nose, and makes an almost soundless "Bop" noise, and smiles. What a strange thing to do, he thinks, and smiles.
Perhaps embarrassed, she asks, "Do you think your roommates all made it home all right?"
He resists the urge to wrap an arm around her. They're close, but they could be closer. They could be so much closer.
"Yeah. Miller left last night, so he was probably home before the snow even started. And Jasper and Monty," he pauses, briefly trying to imagine the path their train will take. "Worst case, they have each other. They'll figure something out. What about Raven, has she left?"
"Yesterday afternoon," Clarke answers. "She's home by now, I'm sure."
In the pause that follows, Bellamy feels words forming on the tip of his tongue. But he's not sure, if he gives them voice, just what they'll be.
"Which means it's just us left," Clarke says quietly.
Bellamy's breath catches, and his heart beats picks up, beat-beating hard against his chest.
Clarke moves a little closer; he hears the sound of her body against the sheets, amplified, significant, and then he feels her body press against his body and her arm loop around him. Her hand splayed across his back feels possessive. He slides his arm around her waist. They find that their bodies slot perfectly together.
They could pretend this isn't happening. Clarke could press her nose against his neck, they could hold each other without moving, without daring to move lest they disturb this perfect and precarious balance, they could keep talking or they could fall asleep—they could let themselves drift apart again in the night.
Instead, she looks up and he leans down. They meet in the middle, she kisses him and he kisses her, both moving tentatively, slowly. Neither pulls away, and the kiss becomes deeper, a natural, inevitable thing.
When they pull away, he feels that she's breathing as hard as he is. The tip of her nose touches the tip of his nose.
"That…wasn't terrible," she admits, with the tiniest of grins.
"That," he counters, pulling her a little closer and stealing another quick kiss, "was the best kiss of your life."
"And yours." She won't let him pull away. She speaks the words right against his lips, and there is nothing in the room but her, nothing in the dark and the quiet but the warm softness of her body and the familiar rhythm of her breathing, trying to sync with his breathing.
"And mine," he murmurs. The words slide into another kiss, almost lost there. "And mine."