So this was originally a story I had written for another fandom but I really hadn't been feeling that fandom for a while and I had like 0 inspiration to keep writing so I decided to write for bellarke instead because bellarke always gives me inspiration. So there we have it.
"We made it!" Clarke cries as she stumbles out of the car and takes her first look at her new school and home for the next three years. Ark University, it's beautiful. It's so historic; impeccably designed red brick housing; stone paths lined with tall grand oak trees that must have been growing for 100 years at least and a grand flowing, beautifully crafted, fountain right in the centre of campus. The massive green campus was full of other incoming freshman hauling boxes to and from their dorm rooms with their teary eyed parents talking as much as they could before they had to leave their children. Clarke felt so alive and free and for once in her life she was actually doing something she wanted rather than what her mother told her she wanted.
She was on rocky terms with her mother after deciding against her mothers wishes, putting her foot down for once, and telling her she was coming here as an Art Major whilst taking English as a minor as a fail safe. As much as she wanted to defy her mother completely and just be reckless for once, she couldn't deny her nature and reasoning of making sure that in case it didn't work out she had a fail safe. Her mother had begged and pleaded Clarke to take her already secured and in motion place on a course at Yale School of Medicine (Clarke didn't know much about it, only that it was the exact same one her mum had done and look how successful she was) but Clarke had played pretend for her mum for too long now and she was tired. The fight was messy, her mum told her she didn't raise her the way she did, let her live in her big fancy house and work under her roof only for Clarke to ruin all of that by running off and studying art. Her mother said she'd never even seen her pick up a pencil once to which Clarke told her to look harder and actually notice her daughter rather that running off to surgery 24/7. After that Clarke had called Raven and told her she was going to try and beg her way into the Art Program at the school Raven was going to study Mechanics, oh and if she could crash at hers until then. Clarke hasn't spoken to her mother since.
"Clarke, come get your boxes I've got enough as it is!" Raven shouted popping the trunk of her mum's sleek black glossy car. Raven was fighting the system too, although her rebellion was nothing new to her parents. Raven had made it very clear from day one that she wasn't going to become a lawyer like both her parents, although the way she could argue she'd make a great one. Where Clarke would play along Raven would act out, she'd sneak out late at night, sneak back in early in the morning, get into screaming matches with her mother and fight with her father. That was pretty much the only thing Clarke and Raven had in common, neither of them wanted to follow in the footsteps of their 'amazingly successful' parents. They knew that they should be thankful that their parents worked so hard to get to where they are now and they were, but that didn't mean that they'd have to do that too.
"I'm coming, but don't think I'll be carrying your boxes too, I know what you're like Reyes," Clarke smiles as she grabs her first box out of the overflowing crammed trunk.
Clarke can tell the difference between her Raven's boxes immediately: where hers were neatly placed, carefully, strategically marked; clearly organized and taped up perfectly, Raven's were unmarked, unordered, barely secured with clothes spilling out into the trunk and thrown carelessly on top of Clarke's, most squished from her trying to wrestle the trunk shut.
"I'll take a few boxes," sighs Raven's mother reluctantly as Raven and I set off for our dorm.
...
"I am so ready to start living my life how I want to live it," Raven smiles breathing in the fresh air around them, Clarke thought it smelt like freedom and clarity.
"Oh please, like you didn't do that already," Clarke snorts soaking in the thrilling atmosphere around them, she was no longer bound by her mother's rules, she wasn't even using her mother's money to pay for her tuition. Well, she technically wasn't anyway, it was part trust fund part work money that got her the place.
"Shut up, at least now I don't have to feel guilty for having a good time. I feel like I can finally do whatever the hell I want and not feel bad about it," Raven says while her eyes scan the surroundings. They're walking right through the middle of the school's bustling activity fair. Already Freshman flocked the stalls like moths to flame and even if the girls couldn't see what each stall was exactly about they could definitely make a good guess based on the people there. People were so predictable.
"Yeah me too." Clarke laugh as a petite, tanned blonde handed her a flyer. She wrinkled her nose when she saw that it was for the cheerleading team. She scrumpled it up and chucked it into a nearby bin with such precision she felt she had finally make her high school gym teacher proud
"Definitely checking these out later," Raven says picking up a flyer for a modern art class and handing it to Clarke.
"Let us at least unpack first then I promise you I'll let you go dragging me around and convincing me that joining the acapella would be the best thing ever," I sigh.
"You got it, but not acapella, maybe something a little less full on, I saw that movie," Raven grins as she saunters through the dark wooden double doors into their dorm building.
"Wait so which room is it?" Raven asks, panting slightly as they walk up the dark wood winding steps onto their floor, which she was very happy to find out, was the top floor. That meant dragging all their stuff up five flights of stairs.
"I shall consult the map," Clarke grins, balancing her box in one hand whilst she fumbles in her beaten brown leather handbag for the campus map.
"It's riiiight here." She says, tuning to a halt in front of the nearest door, nudging it open with her foot so that Raven can get in.
The room, like most of the building, has dark wood doors, floors, desks, beds and windowsills. Clarke was surprised to find three beds in the room, two next to the door and one in the front corner alcove, along with three desks and drawers. She knew there were triple dorms but she didn't realize that her and Raven would have to share their living space with a stranger. The walls around were a dark murky green blue and along the back wall there was a mini-fridge along with the drawers. The beds were single and in front of them, on the right wall without windows, was an open fire with two chairs in front of it, already stacked with wood. Clarke placed her first box on the bed nearest to the door, while Raven took the bed next to it, leaving the alcove bed for the newcomer, and when she sat down next to it she could see into the white tile bathroom and saw herself in the mirror on the opposite wall. She looked happy, for once.
...
After several more trips back and forth, and numerous flyers acquired from the various stalls by Raven, all the boxes were placed around each bed and it was time for Raven's mother to leave them both.
"Oh I don't want to let you go," she cries as she pulls her in for a loving, yet still firm and businesslike, hug. That's probably the most affectionate exchange Clarke has ever seen between Raven and her mother and Clarke is even more surprised when she sees Raven hug back tightly, clinging to her mother like a lost young child. Maybe Raven wasn't such a parent-hating rebel after all.
Then Raven's mum turned to Clarke, gave her a sad smile and hugged her just the same as Raven before pulling away and saying, "Your mother would want me to say good luck for her," before taking one last long glance at Raven and walking out of the room and for a while the retreating sound of her heels clicking against the floor were all to be heard in the room and the scent of her Chanel No. 5 perfume lingered still.
As soon as they can no longer hear her, Raven turns to Clarke, a large smile spread across her face, "We're finally free!" She smiles looking out the window onto the campus. Although Raven had initially complained about the effort of the stairs, now that she was looking out the thin windows she was glad they could see most of the campus and could watch everyone from above. Raven loved people watching, it was one of the things that made Clarke think Raven would take psychology but no. As if to prove her point, Raven slammed a Mechanics book onto her bedside table and flopped onto her bed.
The door creaked slowly open to reveal a beautiful girl with piercing green eyes and long raven black hair standing panting in the doorway, having just dragged all her boxes and bags up the stairs at once. "Erm, hi? I'm Octavia apparently I'm in this dorm with you?" The girl asks, slightly out of breath, before more confidently stepping further into the room.
"Well, if that's the case then the vacant bed in the corner would be yours," Raven directs, now sat up, pointing toward the bare bed in the near corner.
With that Octavia begins dragging in her boxes, one by one, from out in the hall to the top of her bed. As she does so Clarke and Raven decide to unpack, Clarke folding her clothes neatly into her drawers and decorating her area with precision while Raven throws her clothes in random drawers and just puts everything anywhere it'll go, like I said, polar opposites, chatting as they went on and getting to know Octavia a lot better as they did. Clarke had a good feeling about her.
Octavia was even more different to Clarke and Raven than they were to each other. Unlike them, she was not born into a wealthy family and her parents didn't have her whole life planned out for her. While Octavia's mum loved her very much and gave her everything she could, sometimes everything she could left her in a bad situation later on. Her brother Bellamy, older than her by four minutes and he liked to remind her of that every chance he got, was more of a parental figure to her that she ever was. He was the rational one, he liked to think things through and plan for the future, he was the real reason she was here right now; her mum was a very impulsive woman who liked to do now think later, Octavia took after her mum in that respect. Octavia's mother's impulses was what led her to having Octavia and Bellamy at such a young age. Their mother was sixteen when she had them to her high school boyfriend, twins no less, and as soon as she found out she ran away from the fancy house she had lived i with her parents and went to start a new life from scratch one town over. They didn't always have enough money and for the first few months of Bellamy and Octavia's life they were living in a converted shed of the inn their mother began working at but they got by. Her mother was supportive of everything her twins wanted to do and although she was a bit flighty and unpredictable, she was their mum and they couldn't deny that they loved her in their own way.
Anyway, when their mum broke the news to them that she couldn't afford to send them both to college, Bellamy decided to go behind her back and ask their wealthy grandparents to borrow the money, along with the money they both had saved up from numerous jobs, until they could pay them back after they got their education. With that Bellamy enrolled them both at Ark University and, after a long journey in their mums barely working beaten red car, she literally had to slam the engine on to start the car, and even then the indicators didn't really work, they were finally here. With her mother's full support Octavia was here as a Drama Major with English to fall back on and Bellamy was taking History and Politics, their mum didn't care if they were doing law or photography, she just wanted them to be happy.
Octavia told Clarke and Raven all of this as they exchanged stories. About how her brother and mother basically raised her better than any two parents could've (her and Clarke had that in common as Clarke's dad left a few years ago when he found out that Abby was having an affair with her fellow surgical resident Marcus Kane) and how happy she was to be here. While Raven talked about her rebellious phase and Clarke talked of her finally rebelling against her mum's crushing pressure of becoming a Doctor, it's not like Clarke couldn't do it, it's that she didn't want to. And they all found out that whatever their differences be it rich or poor, loving or unloving parents, rebellious or reserved, lives planned out or free to do whatever they wanted they clicked instantly and for whatever reason Clarke felt proud that she had already made a new friend other than Raven.
...
After Raven had finally finished mounting the flat screen TV that Clarke had taken from her room at home in a strop when going to live with Raven (they decided to just leave Raven to hook it up and such considering she was the Mechanics major, and that when Octavia tried she ended up almost smashing it on the floor) the room was finally set up and the girls were ready to head out. The dorm room was now divided into three distinctive sections: in Octavia's corner it was very bright, lots of pinks and purples and fuzzy things layed out neatly, pictures and polaroids of home tacked onto the walls; Clarke's area was very minimalistic with white bed sheets, a white lamp and everything categorised into neat sections, the only thing that stood out was Van Gogh's starry night painting which she had tacked above her bed; finally Raven's area was quite a mess already, her light brown sheets were wrinkled and her walls were coated with picture upon picture, drawers overflowing and books strewn haphazardly actoss her desk.
"Were you guys going to go to the activities fair because I was going to head down now if you want to come with?" Octavia asked biting her lower lip as she looked at Clarke and Raven.
Raven nodded slowly, fingers twiddling with the loop around her cartilage before replying, "Well I was definitely going to go, and Clarke, you did promise to let me drag you around."
Clarke sighed and rolled her eyes at Raven who was grinning evilly at her, which made Octavia laugh a little.
"Okay you guys go, I'll catch up I just need to call my dad and tell him that I got here safely," Clarke says as she reaches for her phone which was on the nightstand. Clarke's dad was the complete opposite of her mum, he understood how much pressure Abby put Clarke under and he was completely supportive of every descision Clarke made, telling her that no matter what he loves her anyway. Sometimes it's hard for Clarke to imagine her dad ever falling for her mum, but then again who knows, maybe Abby wasn't always so strict and tight strung, maybe Jake brought out another side to her, maybe after he left she got worse.
Raven nods before ushering Octavia out of the room and slamming the door shut behind them.
...
Bellamy said goodbye to the two girls he had just finished speaking and turned around to regroup with his two roommates, Monty and Jasper. The two of them had known each other forever and were both total nerds, Bellamy felt very out of place hanging around with them but they seemed to have accepted him just fine. He had only been there for a few hours and he was already flyering for some dumb 'Welcome to School' party that Monty and Jasper had decided on throwing in their building. Them and a few other guys (Kyle 'call me Wick', Finn whom Bellamy already had a bad feeling about, Murphy 'refer to me with my last name only', Miller 'yeah me too' and Lincoln 'it's a long story') were flyering but they'd decided to break off and flyer different sections.
"So, who do we go for next," Monty said scanning the area before Jasper slaps him on the stomach and points to two girls behind Bellamy. "I say those two, that one with the green eyes is hot," Jasper says signalling for Bellamy to turn around. When he does he sees who Jasper was talking about, and isn't too hapy with his comment. He sees a tanned girl with dark chestnut brown hair in a messy pony tail and chocolate brown eyes stood with the hot girl who turned out to be his younger sister.
Bellamy huffs before shouting, "Hey O!" getting her to turn around and begin walking over to them, the brown eyed girl strolling along beside her.
"Dude, how did you do that, you know her or something? Can you hook me up?" Jasper asks shaking up and down in anticipation before Bellamy turns around to face him again before deadpan replying. "Yeah, actually, she's my little sister." Monty erupts into laughter at the horrified look on Jasper's face as the two girls finally approach them.
"Hey Bell, I was just about to call you, this is one of my new roommates Raven, I have another but I think she's in the middle of something but she'll be here soon," Octavia says hugging him in greeting as Raven waves awkwardly when she's introduced.
"Well these are my two roommates Monty and Jasper," Bellamy says signalling to them in turn as they both grin and wave wildly.
"So, what's all the paper for? Trying to get rid of the Amazon?" Raven asks rocking back and forth on her black combat boot's thin heels.
"Oh no, we were just flyering for some Dorm Party we're throwing tonight, it's just a little get together nothing really," Bellamy says while Monty respectfully passes them a flyer each, as it looked like Jasper was about to throw some at them.
"A party?" Octavia squeals, her artificial ringlets bobbing around her head as she grins excitedly at the piece of paper in front of her.
"Yeah, it's going to be dope man!" Jasper says, leaving Monty to visibly face palm into his flyers and Raven to throw a judgmental look his way.
"Great, I'm sure we'll be there," Raven smiles tucking her hand into the back pocket of her black jeans, fishing out her phone to text Clarke and see where she was at.
"Soooo..." Jasper says, pathetically trying to start an awkward conversation when he is cut off by Clarke frantically waving and heading over to them.
She race walks purposefully towards them, coming to a stop right in front of Bellamy while muttering something along the lines of, "Why can't mum get it like dad does..." She then glances up and sees a tanned face smattered with darker freckles the same colour as his messy 'I'm trying to make it look like I just rolled out of bed but secretly it took me thirty minutes to get it this way' hair and she focuses on his dark chocolate button eyes for a moment before questioning, "Who are they?"
"This, is my twin brother Bellamy, remember the one I was telling you about? Well he and his roommates just asked us to a party tonight," Octavia said smiling at Clarke who then turned to focus on Bellamy again, even if she did have tilt her head slightly upward to look at him properly.
"Yeah I'm Bellamy, O's older brother, don't forget those six minutes little sister, and I guess here's a flyer although you don't really look like the partying type," he says in a gravelly scraping voice, eyeing her up and down, before reluctantly handing Clarke another flyer.
"Excuse me, Flyer Boy but after literally saying three words to me you're really not one to be making rash judgments on people," Clarke huffs, her good mood gone as she snatches the flyer out of his grasp.
Bellamy smirks down at her, a tight lipped condescendingly amused smile, before replying, "Whatever you say, Princess."
With that Clarke's head snaps up and her eyes narrow. "Who are you to call me that?"
"I'm just saying, I'm a good judge of character... princess," another smirk across his lips. Clarke wanted to smack that smirk right off his face, who cares that he's her new roommate's brother.
"Oh yeah, and what are you majoring in, Psychology for Dickheads?" She replies, a red heat reaching her cheeks as her anger begins to flare. Monty and Jasper stand back grinning at the scene while Raven is smirking at the side of her and Octavia stands there next to Raven looking very awkward.
"It's probably a lot classier than whatever useless course you decided to take," Bellamy says, regretting saying it in after though as it wasn't a very good comeback at all.
She glares at him for a while, ice blue eyes boring into muddy brown ones, before she huffs and turns to her roommates. "Are we going to see the Activities Fair or what?" She asks them.
"Yeah, well I guess we'll see you at the party. Sorry about her, her anger tends to flare when she gets misjudged or told what to do," Raven says, turning back to the boys before walking away.
"Bye Bell, I guess we'd better get going," Octavia says, kissing him on the cheek before following after the slowly retreating Clarke and Raven.
They get a few feet away before Bellamy calls out to the bright blonde's retreating figure, "Hey, you at least got a name Princess?"
She stops and turns around scowling for a second, before she smirks and replies, "Yeah, actually, I do!" And with that she spins back around and stalks off, Raven and Octavia in toll.
That's my first chapter, let me know if you have any good story lines/arcs/tropes you would like me to go in or any direction you'd like me to take. Let me know the good and the bad so I can improve and that you for taking the time to read (and possibly review) this piece of trash.