Bellarke, for the first Twelve Days of Bellarkemas prompt, “mistletoe,” ~600 words, modern AU
*
Octavia has hidden mistletoe all throughout her apartment: traps for the unwary, the rules vigorously enforced. She seems to have started taking after Murphy, or maybe Jasper and Monty, reveling in the very act of causing chaos. Or she just wants an excuse to kiss all of her friends. She's found herself under the mistletoe with everyone, even Bellamy (who received a sisterly kiss on the cheek), even though she knows exactly where each sneaky little sprig is hidden.
Bellamy can't help thinking that his friends are a bad influence on her.
He has a certain festive side himself, which is why he's wearing a green sweater with a Rudolph on it, and real golden bells sewn in that jingle as he walks. Raven has given him a Santa hat to wear, and he's spent too many hours of his day icing the sugar cookies that Clarke spent too many hours of last night baking. He's been listening to his sister's Christmas music for five hours straight.
He's in the Christmas spirit, no one could ever argue otherwise. He's so spirited that he even let Monty kiss him on the mouth, which isn't usually the sort of relationship they have with each other, and which felt very odd indeed, especially with everyone watching them from the couch. That's what you get for stopping in a doorway in this place, as Murphy likes to say.
But in this particular moment, he'd like some few moments of peace, so he's taken his eggnog from the kitchen and down the dark and empty hall that leads toward the bedrooms, his striped Christmas socks slipping on the clean wooden floor. He doesn't even bother to turn on the light. And he doesn't bother to listen, either, to the sound of one of the doors opening just ahead, which is how he almost runs into Clarke as she steps out of the bathroom right in front of him.
His eggnog sloshes, and he holds the glass high above his head as if to save it. Disaster averted. He's still nose to nose with Clarke, her eyes shining up at him in the dim light that spills in from the living room.
"Sorry," he says belatedly.
"My fault," she answers. She doesn't sound like she cares at all that they almost stepped on each other's toes, and now she's not making any move to step away. After a long moment, the glass of eggnog still between them, Bellamy wondering what it is she might be reading on his face, he remembers that he ran into Miller outside the bathroom two hours ago--he remembers that there's a spring of mistletoe hanging just above.
They don't have to tell Octavia they met underneath it. They could go their separate ways and no one would ever know.
But Clarke is looking at him with an unreadable, open expression on her face, her lips slightly parted, and the white sequins on her sweater, which signify snow, glint faintly whenever she moves, and after a long moment, she reaches up and pushes the floppy end of his hat out of his eyes and says, "We're standing under mistletoe," as he if wasn't already painfully aware.
He doesn't bother to look up. Instead, he reaches out with his spare hand, hooks his arm around her waist, and tugs her close. She's pressed against him now, exhaling a shaky breath against his lips. Watching his lips. He doesn't kiss her like he kissed Miller or Monty, doesn't kiss her like he wanted to on their one date, back in high school, when he chickened out on the goodnight kiss or on ever asking her out again--he kisses her like he's got one chance at it, and his breath catches when she fists his hands into his sweater, and makes the little bells on it ring.
Back at it with the Christmas fluff, post-Christmas. Can’t seem to stop writing Bellamy in cute sweaters... it’s a problem, folks.
Bellarke, Modern AU, ~1,000 words
For the Bellarkemas prompts star and hot chocolate
*
Clarke's mother retires in March, then sells the house, and downsizes with a new place in Connecticut. The old place had been too big for her for a while now: one person rattling around a family home all by herself.
Most of the old ornaments are donated, given away, or sold at the garage sale Abby holds, with Clarke's help, in June. She keeps a box of dorky handmade popsicle stick stars and reindeer from Clarke's elementary school days, and a few other sentimental ones, but all the shiny glass ornaments and the strings of lights and even the souvenirs from their travels and the gifts from distant relatives all get packed away into boxes. And away they go.
Clarke hums, now, as she says goodbye to her mother and sets down her phone. She's making hot chocolate, with real milk, on the stove, and it's starting to bubble now behind her as the snow outside comes down. She can see it building up on the windowsill, obscuring the building across the street, and she can feel it in the draft that seeps in around the edges of the glass. She sticks a couple dishtowels against it, finishes the hot chocolate, and pours it into large mugs. A handful of marshmallows in each, floating on top.
This is her first family Christmas with Bellamy. A year ago--a year ago she was living with Raven, planning the wedding, spending most weekends at Bellamy's and annoying his roommate and looking for apartments on her lunch break. Now she's in her narrow kitchen, with photos from their honeymoon attached with magnets to the fridge, and a calendar with both their schedules tacked above the breakfast table, where Bellamy has left (again) one of his books with the corner of a page flipped down to mark his place. She put up strings of lights to make the place more festive, and they seem to glow the brightest in the dimness of the kitchen.
A gust of wind sends the snow flying against the glass. She holds both the mugs carefully and kicks open the swinging door that leads into the living room.
Bellamy's been decorating their tree. It's a small thing, but real, already shedding pine needles on their wood floor and suffusing the place with a forest scent, beneath the smell of smoke and vanilla from the candles they have burning. Clarke spent the morning tacking up Christmas lights here, too. They blink green and blue, reflect off the darkened windows and the door to the balcony, through which she can make out still swirls of manic, furious snow.
"Glad we're not planning on going anywhere tomorrow," she says, as she sets the hot chocolate down on the coffee table. When she sits down on the couch--Bellamy's, from his old place--she sinks deep into the cushions, and for a moment, she has to struggle to sit up again.
"No one's going anywhere tomorrow," Bellamy answers, not even glancing at her over his shoulder. "How's your mom?"
"Fine. It's not snowing so much up there. But they're supposed to be getting a white Christmas. Do you need help with the lights?"
"Lights are up." This time, he does spare her a quick look. Same old cocky look on his face, just like when they met.
Except he wasn't wearing a sweater with big snowflakes on it then, and he didn't look as soft as he does now, didn't have that dopey, in love expression lurking there beneath the snark.
"I got this, princess," he adds.
Clarke shrugs. "If you say so...."
She picks up her mug, pulls her legs up and tucks her feet underneath her, lets the hot drink warm her hands as she watches Bellamy work. He's angled completely away from her, so whatever he's got in his hands, she can't see it.
"Okay, close your eyes," he orders, and Clarke frowns at him over the rim of her mug.
"Bellamy--it's just our tree."
"Close 'em."
"Bell--"
He shoots her another look. "It's Christmas," he argues, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but nevertheless Clarke sighs and dramatically makes a show of closing her eyes.
A few moments pass, some rustling from near the tree, and a click, as of lights being switched on.
When Bellamy tells her to open her eyes again, she nearly drops her drink into her lap. There on the top of the tree, above their simple decorations, above their white Christmas lights, is the golden star from her childhood Christmas trees. She hasn't seen it lit up in years. Not even her mom put it on her tree anymore, as if, without Jake to reach the highest branches, she couldn't bear to light it up herself. Clarke had assumed it was sold at the garage sale, or given to some distant cousin or to one of her mom's friends.
She barely manages to set the cocoa down before she's pulling herself up from the deep cushions of the couch and launching herself right into Bellamy's arms. He picks her right up off her feet, his strong hold on her keeping her afloat as she buries her nose in his neck.
"I got it from your mom when I was helping her sort through the Christmas boxes," he tells her, before she can even ask. "Thought you might want to keep it."
"I do--of course I do." She sinks back down onto her toes, staring up at him, framing his face between her hands. "It's--"
"Like home?" he ventures, when she cannot seem to find the words.
Clarke looks from him to the tree, the glint of the golden star at the very top, which reminds her all at once of every Christmas of her childhood, and makes her want to look ahead to every Christmas yet to come--and then back to her husband again.
"Like our home," she says, and draws him into a kiss.
For anonymous, who requested Murphy and Raven, and the word “fate.”
A bit of an experiment?
Modern AU, ~800 words
My tag list: @ciewill @dealingdreams @shadowheron2013 @julyrubyrose @wonderland-promises @hanav @rycewritestrash @thelittlefanpire @musicnote902 @stonybnatural @earthgay2052 , @bellarkehastakenovermylife , @bellarkewriting, @astridandoddsandedds, @justbecauseyoubelievesomething (lmk if you would like to be added to or deleted from this list)
*
It doesn't work out because they're better off as friends. Sex complicates everything and gets in the way. They're nineteen, Murphy lives on the floor below hers; Raven gets used to long evenings in his dorm room, lounging on his bed. She leans back against his chest, his arm around her, as they study. After dinner, with the window open to the chill, biting autumn air, listening to the noise of footsteps and conversation from outside, and slight strains of music winding away through the walls, they end up spooned close together on the narrow bed, finally quiet. Usually, they're sparring, debating, joking. But there’s nothing more serious than the way he kisses the back of her neck.
She gets used to this: nights his roommate is out, and she turns around in his arms, and her legs twine with his beneath the blankets.
They're friends; they're more than friends; she leaves a love bite on his neck. It's too uncertain, when everyone they know thinks they're together but they haven't said it. She suggests they cool it. He might be angry, but only takes a deep breath and turns away and says she's right, like she's always right.
It doesn't work out because they live in different cities now. They text each other all the time. He's the only one of her friends who can read her tone even in letters on a screen, and who lets her be sarcastic and rude, and doesn't fault her. He types out the word eyeroll instead of sending an emoji and she laughs every time. They share gossip about their scattered friends, stay up all night with each other—she reads his messages by the glow of her phone, all the lights off and her bedside fan creaking along, whispering through her hair.
It doesn't work out because he's moved back home and rejoined the crew, but actual relationships are harder than the fantasies that she’s let in. They go on a few dates but dinners out at restaurants feel awkward, like they’re play acting roles that were meant for other people. He's always been the fine line between friend and lover, always skimmed the surface of the in between. Now he holds her hand when they walk. She doesn't know what to tell him when she feels herself shutting off. Claustrophobic. Murphy in her apartment on Saturday morning, making toast and eggs. The space is narrow, narrow, narrow. He can always tell when she's pretending, and when he stops arguing about it, she knows they're done.
It doesn't work out because he's seeing someone else. Raven still loves him, in a certain, clawing way. They've all gathered at the bar down the street from Bellamy's place; Murphy's got his arm around his girlfriend's shoulder, and Raven's idly replaying the first time he touched her, hidden under the blankets of his bed with her biology notes creased and crushed where they'd fallen off the mattress; she couldn't remember if they'd thought to lock the door. An easy memory. They were kids then. This is something she has of him that the girlfriend will never have, and she guards it jealously.
He's watching her across the booth. No longing in the look, just like he's seeing through her. She narrows her eyes at him.
They aren't the sort of exes who can still be best friends. The girlfriend doesn't work out either, though, and then for a while, Murphy’s half-living at her place. They watch movies in the evenings instead of talking. A whole couch cushion between them. But she's the one he needs when he's grieving, Raven and no one else, which makes her wonder what he did when they broke up. She mourned him, too, and what she thought he might have been.
They're talking about work over breakfast. He's staying the night too often now, on her couch. She's getting used to his presence, his space and her space, quiet domestic routines.
He kisses her on New Year's Eve, at the party at Bellamy's place. No one notices. Someone is blowing noisemakers right behind her and she's grabbing at Murphy's hips.
She's afraid it won't work out. Tries to take it slow but they've been slow. On the third day of the year it snows and he lifts her up on the windowsill and she wraps her legs around him, the windowpane cold with frost against her back. His touch, his gentle exhales of breath against her neck, feel almost familiar, still terrifyingly new. She's been laid open and laid bare.
She's afraid it won't work out.
And yet.
She traces her thumb along his bottom lip. It's snowing again, another New Year's; he's still in her bed. Their bed. And she lets herself be peaceful: maybe it’s meant to be.
For Writer’s Month day #8 and the prompt “eight” @writersmonth
My tag list: @ciewill @dealingdreams @shadowheron2013 @julyrubyrose @wonderland-promises @hanav @rycewritestrash @thelittlefanpire @musicnote902 @stonybnatural @earthgay2052 , @bellarkehastakenovermylife , @bellarkewriting, @astridandoddsandedds, @justbecauseyoubelievesomething @hopskipaway, @reyes-murphy lmk if you would like to be added to or deleted from this list)
*
The breakup itself takes eight hours. They walk around the lake, discussing everything that has gone wrong. Raven keeps her arms crossed tight against her chest and lets long silences seep in, because she doesn't like to draw such uncertain, painful moments out. What isn't working isn't working. What's broken can either be fixed or it cannot. Clarke feels a panic of control slipping away, rising in her gut. They've both been stubborn a long time. She can't remember anymore if this is what being in love feels like, or only what it feels like to have fallen out of love.
She invites Raven back to her apartment. If Raven had said no, that would have been the end of the end. Instead they stay up late, sometimes in bed with Raven's head on Clarke's stomach and her feet propped up on the bed frame, lazily playing with Clarke's fingers as they talk about the good times, and almost feel good, in a melancholy and drifting, sunset way. Sometimes they keep the whole room between them. For a while, they're sitting on the floor, unmoored in the middle of the space, and later Clarke will have no idea what they talked about then, or how they ended up in bed again, Raven's hand between her legs. But by the time the sky turns gray, the bleary pre-dawn hour before even sunrise colors the light through the window, and everything about her familiar bedroom has become shadowed and strange, she knows it's really over, this severing no different than any other project she has ever worked all night to complete. Raven's standing by the closet, pulling on her jacket. Clarke's sitting at her desk chair, waiting for the right moment to say, so I'll see you around.
Eight days after the breakup and it starts to hit for real. Emotions she thought she'd dealt with well up with unexpected buoyancy, feelings she can't reason away. So the relationship was over for a while, before it was over. So they're still friends and it's better that way. Still hurts like some part of her has been ripped off and thrown away, and she finds herself camping out in Bellamy's bed, watching Netflix and crying, surrounded by a wasteland of crumpled tissues. He keeps his arm wrapped around her but doesn't say much. Later, Octavia barges in, curls up around Clarke so that her chin digs into Clarke's arm and says that if they're picking sides now, she's with Clarke—which makes her sob.
Eight months later, and her friendship with Raven has mended, well enough that she can begin to view the scars with objectivity. The first six months or so were bad. Should have cut off contact then but couldn't; they were too entwined, all of their friends the same, their lives too often meeting. So she had to pick at the same scabs again and again. Sometimes, she still finds herself looking at Raven, when Raven isn't looking at her, and thinking, well I really did love her, like she's testing out how badly the proposition should hurt. And if it is still true.
She's over at Raven's apartment, helping her make dinner in her narrow kitchen, while the radio propped up on top of the fridge plays static-fuzzed music almost too low to hear. When an old favorite song of theirs comes on, they end up dancing in the hallway. Raven spins her around, twirls her away. Then pulls her close. They used to sing this at the top of their lungs. Now they're nose to nose, too tense to breathe. Clarke stumbles, off balance, and almost lands on Raven's foot, and Raven manages the smallest smile.
Clarke kisses her then, without knowing what it means, unsure if in this one moment of weakness, she's set the clock right back to the start.
Waaaay too late to be second-guessing and over-thinking as I am.
*
After the reception, the party moves to Raven's loft: glitters of starlight from the high windows, strings of lights around the room. The gallery's champagne flutes are replaced with vodka shots, slammed almost in unison along the kitchen island countertop, Clarke's friends bright eyed and grinning at each other, and so pleased. They are still in their formal dresses and their button-down shirts and suit jackets, now raging as if they were in college still, their shoes in piles by the door and the boys in sockfeet slipping and Harper, as she dances, still up on her toes as if in heels. Bellamy's hair is a mess from how many times one or the other of his friends has run their fingers through it, and his tie undone like the top two buttons of his shirt. Monty is inventing cocktails by the fridge, and Octavia is sitting on the furniture, half-dancing in place while Lincoln, one of the other artists, now so much more at ease he seems a different person, holds her hands in his hands, and moves them in inscrutable patterns through the air.
Maya’s watching them, dazed, buzzed, floating, too warm, the music and the voices a sort of alien melody all around. Jasper taps her on the shoulder and she startles. "You look beautiful," he yells, too loud, and holds out his hand, and asks her to dance.
She doesn't know where Clarke is but she likes these friends of hers, their inside jokes, the hearty way they laugh. Miller and Bellamy are practicing feats of strength, kneeling next to the coffee table and arm-wrestling, while Raven passes out another round of drinks. Murphy raises his up in a toast to the artists, and everyone stops what they are doing, and lifts their glasses, and cheers.
Maya is laughing and she cannot stop laughing. She can see Clarke by the window now, her hair coming loose now from its bun, two long strands framing her face. Starlit by the city through the window, flushed and laughing. She clinks her glass with Murphy's, tilts her head all the way back to drink.
Later, she slides across the floor, taps Jasper's shoulder, asks to cut in. He twirls Maya away and she lands in Clarke's arms. They are nose to nose now; there is a high burning feeling across Maya's cheeks and a buzzing just behind her lips. And when they lean in, they meet in wet, uneven kisses, interrupted by giggles; she doesn't know why she's so happy; why she's alight.
Clarke twirls her around and around and she forgets to anchor herself, so that she becomes easily dizzy, and trips over her own feet. "Are you trying to disorient me, Clarke?" she asks, as she balances herself with her hands on Clarke's shoulders, and Clarke curls her arms possessively around Maya's waist and stares at her, close and cross-eyed, with a devilish grin.
No one parties harder than Clarke's friends, Maya decides, by the end of the night, as it disappears into the slow curve of the morning. She is slumped against the wall and watching Lincoln and Octavia, cross-legged on the floor and playing a lazy, tired game of war. Octavia flips her card over with a flick of her fingertip. Lincoln sweeps it slowly away. Somewhere else, below her, Clarke is searching out their shoes amid the wreckage. Maya rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand. And sometime later, between the wall and the cab ride home, she starts drifting into sleep.
When she wakes, tiny drumbeats like high, ringing timpani sounds, are marching across her forehead, the backbeat of strobe lights behind her eyelids. The sun is high. She peers at it through the slats of half-closed blinds, a raw yellow yolk dripping behind the glass, and she can feel it falling there in the rhythm of the drumbeats, and the rolling of her stomach has no place in the sick stillness of the room. She turns onto her stomach, away from the light. Doesn't move again until she feels the careful, slow touch of a hand on the back of her head.
Then she looks up, a thick scrim of sleep still crusting over her eyes.
"Awake?" Clarke asks, and smiles, tentative and slow, and edges a tall glass of something light orange and too bright up past the edge of the bed.
"Barely."
Clarke looks apologetic, also cute, tries to offer the glass again. "Homemade Griffin hangover cure."
Maya rolls over again, starts to sit up against the pillows, and the timpani grows louder, angrier, beating now against her brain. "Is that how you look so...alive?"
Clarke shrugs. "Natural tolerance." She presses the drink into Maya's hand. "But it can't hurt."
Raven/Octavia, Modern AU, ~700 words, for @the-cacophony
*
Raven is sitting on the back porch, wrapped up in blankets and reading, when she hears Octavia's voice yelling from inside the house. She looks up, and her eyes narrow.
Arkadian winters are mild, this year's especially, and only the sharp, chill undertone to the air reminds her that it is not yet spring. Recent rains have turned the earth in the backyard to mud, the old, dead grass thin and yellow between the porch and the woods, and all of their spring and summer flowers long faded and gone. But the sun is out now and bright in a stark and cloudless sky, and she's warm enough, still and quiet in her thick socks and thick sweater, the scents and sounds of baking drifting through the closed screen door and lightly tempting her. The soft unwinding of the rest of the day.
And now this disruption, short and wretched and angry, renting apart her concentration and the lilting, sweet dream of the afternoon. She slips her hand in her book to mark her page and turns around, as if, staring through the screen into the dark of the house, she might suddenly understand the strange curse that she heard from the kitchen.
It sounded very much like Octavia was yelling, "Sugar!"
Which is odd. Octavia is possibly the only person Raven knows who swears worse, more often, and more creatively than Raven does herself. She sets her book aside, uncurls herself, wraps her blanket around herself like a cape, and pokes her head in through the door, into the dark back hallway of the house. Now she hears more, in Octavia's distinctive angry tone, specific and non-sensical threats against the family and progeny of whatever has wronged her. No 'gosh darns,' 'oh heavens,' or 'sugars' among them.
In the kitchen, she finds Octavia kneeling on the floor, sweeping up a large pile of spilled sugar into a dustpan. She looks up, stopping mid-motion, when she hears Raven in the doorway.
"Spilled the fucking sugar," she says.
Raven pulls her blanket tighter around herself, making sure it does not trail through the mess. "I see that."
"I'm making sugar cookies. It's a key ingredient."
"Yes."
She'd volunteer to help clean up, but Octavia is already almost done. She huffs, then stands and pours the combination of sugar and dust into the trash.
"It looks like you still have enough, though," Raven adds, gesturing to the bag of sugar on the table, which appears, to her untrained eye, still mostly full. "And now our kitchen floor is clean."
"Clean-ish," Octavia answers, still glowering, as she washes off her hands in the sink. "We'll probably be stepping on little sugar crystals for the next year. And I might have enough. Or I might be going out to the store and—"
"You're so cute."
Raven's taken another few steps into the kitchen, over the semi-clean floor. She's leaning against the fridge, their collection of magnets digging into her shoulder, and her fingers just barely peeking out from underneath her blanket, where she's clutching it closed against her chest.
Octavia shuts the water off, turns around with a murderous glare on her face. But Raven doesn't stop smiling, nor does she take back her comment, which she still thinks is very, wonderfully, true.
"You are. I know you're annoyed. But you're just really cute right now. Sugar."
Octavia's expressions narrows, cool and suspicious. "Is that a new nickname you're trying out?"
"Honey bunch."
"Don't."
"Sweetie."
"You are incredibly un-funny."
"I love you."
Octavia stops, halfway between the sink and the fridge, next to the table and its overflowing mess of sugar and flour and eggs and mixing bowls. They've said it before. But it's always been in the heat of the moment, clawing and pleading, so that the words have always seemed to mean so much and then so little. Intoxicated words, truths that are never so easy in daylight.
But Raven isn't embarrassed. She only stands where she is and holds Octavia's stare.
Octavia crosses the last of the space between them, curls her fingers in Raven's blanket, and tugs her close. "I love you, too," she answers, simple, and clear, and kisses her. "Just never call me 'sugar' again. And maybe—come with me to the store?"
For anonymous, who requested Murphy and Raven on a ski trip with their friends, getting stuck on a ski lift and confessing their feelings.
This is probably a little long for tumblr but I can’t decide if I want to put it up as a separate fic on AO3 or, more likely, as part of a general ficmas collection.
Tag list: @ciewill @dealingdreams @shadowheron2013 @julyrubyrose @wonderland-promises @hanav @rycewritestrash @thelittlefanpire @musicnote902 @stonybnatural @earthgay2052 @fabianapvec @bellarkehastakenovermylife , @bellarkewriting @failing-at-being-an-angel (lmk if you would like to be added to or deleted from this list) ; also @12-days-of-ficmas
*
The van takes a wide turn off the main road, and everyone inside, caught off balance, slides heedlessly to the left. Raven reaches out her hand to balance herself and ends up with her palm squeezing Murphy's leg. She's crushed up against his arm and he's crushed up against the window, Miller briefly squashed against her other side—but even after the others have righted themselves, she doesn’t let go.
Murphy glances down at her hand, resting several inches above his knee. Then back up. "Having fun, Reyes?" he asks, level and shameless, and she pulls herself away as well as she can and crosses her arms against her chest.
"The time of my life," she answers. She gives him a once-over, like she hasn't been arm-to-arm and leg-to-leg with him for four long hours already, like he hasn't been in her head for even longer, like she barely even knows who he is.
The van is an old VW Bus, cherry red and off-white, plagued by a persistent smell of weed and a storied history of break downs, almost every single one of which she has fixed herself. It seats seven—four more than her truck, and two more than Miller's car, or Bellamy's—which is why they've crammed eight people into it: a great idea in theory, and when she thought she'd be safe in the driver’s seat. But Bellamy won three out of five rounds of rock/paper/scissors, so he's behind the wheel with Clarke riding shotgun, and she's in the back row, with her overnight bag stuffed down below her knees, watching the distant snow-covered mountains rising up and up, looming ever larger through the window out past Murphy's head. Wondering, in her idle moments, if he's resting the side of his foot against her foot on purpose, or because his foot has nowhere else to go.
Up ahead, at the end of the road, the ski lodge sits at the top of a low hill, surrounded by a cluster of small wooden cabins, against a backdrop of stark blue sky and jagged, white peaks.
"We're almost there," Bellamy tells them, as if anyone needed telling—his dad voice, a little weary, strained with patience about to snap.
"Good, because I don't think I can stand more than a few more minutes trapped in this hell van," Miller answers, and Jasper turns around, affronted, and demands:
"Have some respect for the vehicle that brought you all the way to winter paradise."
"Vehicle? Is that what this is?"
"Hey, I'd like to see your car make the treacherous journey that Rosie just did—"
His voice holds no more rancor than Miller's, words tugged sideways by a smile he doesn't bother to bite down—the trip has been long enough but Bellamy's pulling into the parking lot now, and a certain buoyancy is rising up in all of them, long-held anticipation boiling over to excitement. Monty's shaking his head, saying, "I can't believe she did," and Octavia, farthest from the only working door, already pulling herself up onto her knees as the car starts to slow, laughs and asks, "You really named your van?"
The van smells like sweat and the stuffy, thick air from the heater, feels close and crowded and too warm. When Bellamy finally cuts the engine and Jasper pulls open the door, the first hit of pure, cold, clear mountain air sends a wild thrill up Raven's spine, makes her feel wild, makes them all wild.
They scramble up and over each other, rushing out of each other's way, grabbing for jackets left crushed against the seats and then skipping out between the cars and over the pavement. Octavia whoops and sends her hat flying briefly up into the air. Bellamy grabs Clarke around the waist and spins her around, and Miller slaps the front of the old bus in appreciation, grinning wide, while Monty and Jasper high-five.
But for a moment, Raven hangs back. She pretends to take her time pulling on her coat, finding her gloves in the pockets. Hints of fresh air and the sound of revelries beckon from outside but: Murphy's leg is still pressed against her leg, and she can see out of the corner of her eye that he is staring at her. He's got his elbow propped up against the window and his head in his hand, a patient and appreciative and very slightly bored look on his face. They've been watching each other like this, across rooms, from opposite sides of diner booths and kitchen tables, during lulls in group conversations, just like this and without any hurry at all, for weeks now. Sometimes it feels like longer. She's not sure what she's waiting for, or what he is.
"You going to let me out, Reyes?" he asks, now.
"Thought I'd keep you trapped in here and have my way with you instead,” she answers. She’s pulling her bag up from the floor, only spares a moment’s glance his way.
Murphy holds his hand over his mouth, wide-eyed and feigning shock. "How scandalous."
"Right. You wish." She hauls herself to the edge of the seat, slings her bag over her shoulder, and hops out.
The sharp, thin air outside is almost enough to make her dizzy, so she breathes deep of it, fills her lungs with it. When she tilts her head all the way back, to take in the sky, all she can see is blue, and blue, and blue.
*
The ski lodge sits at the top of a hill, their cabin in the valley below, the view from its back windows nothing but uninterrupted mountain peaks. It has four bedrooms, two twin beds in each one. Clarke and Bellamy take the downstairs room, which Raven suspects is the master, and Jasper and Monty, Miller and Murphy, take the two upstairs rooms on the right. Raven and Octavia claim the bedroom at the opposite end of the hall.
"I officially declare this room a girls-only space," Octavia announces, as she shuts the door behind her with a short, decisive shove. "Clarke, you're allowed in, of course—"
"Thanks," Clarke answers, barely glancing up. She and Raven have unfolded a map of the resort across Raven's bed, and Clarke is penciling in a tentative itinerary across the lined pages of a legal pad.
Raven, sitting next to her and distracted, previously, by the lure of the resort's most famous and most challenging trail, looks up and fixes Octavia with a narrow and tentatively suspicious gaze.
"But no one else,” Octavia finishes. “Clubhouse rules. No boys allowed."
"Do you think a lot of boys are going to try to invade the south side of the cabin?" Raven asks, slow and wary. Her finger is still resting on the map, directly at the top of Devil’s Run.
"I think one might," Octavia answers, as she climbs up over the footrest and settles, cross-legged, at the end of the bed.
Clarke carefully pulls the corner of the map out from under her ankle but doesn't otherwise look up. Raven crosses her arms. Her expression is fully accusatory now, but Octavia looks back at her with utmost innocence.
"I'm just saying," she continues, after a long beat, "that I didn't come all the way out here just to be sexiled from my own room. You can kick Miller out of his. Let him sleep on the floor of Jasper and Monty's."
Raven still doesn't answer. Clarke's pencil scratches across the page, and from downstairs, slight hints of laughter and conversation, the sound of something heavy dropping on the floor, waft up through the closed bedroom door.
Octavia crosses her arms, too, and spells it out: "If I hear Murphy tapping on our door at one in the morning, I'm shooing him away. That's what I'm saying."
"Murphy and I aren't hooking up."
"Yet."
Clarke sighs—reminding herself not to get involved, Raven thinks, and nudges Clarke's thigh with her knee—but Raven doesn't say a word, and after a moment, Octavia breaks. She lets her hands fall into her lap and rolls her eyes, tries for a smile. "He is into you, you know. It's pretty obvious."
"That goes both ways," Clarke answers, her voice annoyingly light, as she draws a star next to 'dinner out—lodge restaurant—7pm.' "I mean, the obviousness."
Raven looks from one to the other, feels herself under siege from all sides, wonders what she can say that both saves face and isn't an obvious lie. They've never discussed the Murphy Situation before. She'd been letting herself believe that the full import of the flirting, the long looks, the unnecessary touches—the one weird time he let his head rest in her lap while they were hanging out at the Blakes—that all of this was lost on everyone but the two of them.
Yet she's never doubted in her own mind that if she made a move, a real move, he would meet her halfway, crossing at the same time the narrow space they keep between them.
And that she has no plans to come knocking at his door in the darkest and deepest hour of the night, another unspoken truth, hits her only now as something strange.
"That doesn't mean anything," she says now. Despite her strident tone, or because of it, the sentiment comes out hollow and undoubtedly weak.
*
The next morning, Bellamy and Octavia make everyone pancakes for breakfast, and then, fueled by Clarke and Raven's impatience, the group heads out to the slopes.
Raven, the only one to bring her own skis, waits for the others on the back porch of the lodge, watching the sun glint off the hard-packed snow, the steady rise of the ski lift in the distance, the silhouettes of people zig-zagging down the mountainside. The resort feels alive with activity, and the crackle of excitement she feels, to finally get out there, to conquer the mountain as she has always wanted to do, calms and soothes her in a bizarre but pleasant way. She's ready. She'll be out there, climbing up and up against the crystalline blue of the sky and into the sharp, clear cold of the air, soon, so soon—
As soon as these slowpokes behind her hurry up.
The lodge door opens and Jasper, carrying his snowboard awkwardly while he tries to zip his jacket up, steps over the threshold. Right behind him, unexpectedly, is Murphy. He rests his skis against the wall as he fixes his lift ticket to his coat.
"I didn't know you can to ski," Jasper says, as Raven turns around, leaning back against the porch railing and watching them with interest.
"That's because I am a man of mystery," Murphy replies, deadpan, and Jasper shrugs.
Raven raises her eyebrows. "Oh, clearly. Is everyone else almost ready?"
"I think so," Jasper answers. He pulls his goggles down over his eyes, tilts his head back to look up at the highest peaks. "Clarke is still trying to convince Bellamy to actually try skiing—but other than that, yeah." Just as he finishes speaking, the door opens again, and the rest of the group—Bellamy and Clarke at the back of the small crowd, still arguing—push their way past each other and onto the porch.
Raven almost loses sight of Murphy in the mess of people fighting with their lift tickets, searching for gloves, pulling hats out of their jacket pockets, knocking over each other's skis—but somehow they end up next to each other on the porch steps, putting on their skis side by side.
"Are you skiing Devil's Run?" he asks, and Raven pauses abruptly, halfway through the process of attaching her right ski. She glances over at him. He is not looking at her, his brow furrowed as he focuses on his boots.
"Yeah." She sits up straight again, sticks her hands in her pockets to grab her gloves. "What about you? What's your plan?"
"Same thing." He sits up too, turns toward her and then lets his gaze drift to the mountain, tall and imposing above the lodge and the collection of cabins down below. "We could head up together."
"Sure." She stands up, holds out her hand for him: half an offer of assistance, half the handshake that seals a deal. "Lift buddies?"
The corner of Murphy's mouth curls up, and he clasps his hand tightly in hers. "How could I say no to a romantic proposal like that?"
*
The chair lift wobbles slightly beneath them as they lose contact with the ground, the snow falling away beneath their skis. Raven pulls the safety bar down in front of them, and then leans back, taking in the crystalline clarity of the sun pricking against the snow, the breathless undisturbed stretch of the sky. The higher they rise, the more she feels like she is flying, and the true exhilaration of flight fills her to her overflowing.
"Feels amazing up here doesn't it—Murphy?"
Her smile falters when she glances to her left, at Murphy, who is sitting completely still and stiff, his gloved hands gripping the edge of the chair.
"You all right?" Raven asks.
He grunts briefly in reply.
Raven hesitates, tilting her head and considering the question several times before she asks, "Are you afraid of heights?"
"No,” he snaps, turns to look at her too quickly and then, though the lift stays steady, reaches out with one hand to grab the safety bar. Raven bites back a smile. He's not watching her, though, the opaque gaze of his ski goggles trained straight out ahead. "No," he says again. "I'm fine with heights. I just don't like how—open the lift is."
"Okay."
She tries to keep her voice steady. But she's never seen Murphy so on edge before, and the sight falls somewhere between hilarious and cute.
"You seriously aren't bothered by the way your legs just—woah, what's that?"
His knuckles, Raven imagines, must be nearly colorless within his gloves, he's got such a death grip on the bar and the side of the lift. It swings gently, briefly in place, and then is still. Raven looks down at the ground, then back up over her shoulder, toward the top of the trail. The whole lift has stopped, trapping them just three chairs short of the start of Devil's Run.
"I think we've stopped," she says.
"Really putting that genius brain of yours to good use, aren't you?"
Usually, she would retaliate for that remark, but she lets this one go. Murphy is passing his hand over his face, knocking his goggles briefly off-kilter, and he seems to be regaining himself only with difficulty. She waits out the moment with him but doesn't speak. Instead, she watches him carefully as he takes a few breaths, steadies himself, sits back against the chair with only some unease.
"They'll probably get it running again soon," Raven says, after a few moments, and Murphy lets out a shaky huff of breath.
"Or we'll be stuck here all night, either one."
"Mmmm."
She settles next to him, her hands in her lap. Looks down at her feet. Her skis stick out oddly in front of her, seeming to soar through the air.
Then, abruptly: "Murphy, I have a confession to make."
He glances at her briefly, perhaps warily. "What sort of confession?"
"Just that… I really didn't think you were a good enough skier to take on Devil's Run."
For a second, pure silence between them, the sounds of the resort below distant and alien, like hints of life from another world.
Then Murphy laughs, a short bark, and answers, "Oh, yeah, I'm a winter sports enthusiast. Skiing, snowboarding, ice skating."
"Ice skating?"
"I played hockey in high school."
Raven can't keep the grin from her face any more than she can explain the delighted, joyful feeling she gets when she pictures Murphy on skates, gliding backwards across the ice. "We should go skating sometime then," she says, and he grunts briefly in reply, and glances down over the edge of the lift.
"Sure, Reyes, if we get down from this death trap alive. It's a date."
He reaches out to pat her arm, no more than a friendly and fleeting gesture, but she traps his hand beneath her hand instead. She can barely feel the outline of his fingers beneath the thick fabric of his gloves. But his arm is pressed up against her arm, his leg against her leg, and when they exchange smiles, his expression is surprisingly soft. As she knows hers is.
She almost wouldn't mind if they were stuck on this stupid lift all day.
"So..." He shoves his goggles up onto the top of his head, raises his eyebrows, and the gentle tilt of his smile becomes arch. "You want to make out?"
"Ah, I should push you off this thing!"
She covers her face with her hands, mostly to hide that she's grinning. Next to her, Murphy is laughing, telling her she shouldn't joke about shit like that, and she feels herself on the verge of laughing too, perhaps so hard that she will lose her breath. Everything, the ski lift, the shine of the sun and the chill of the air, the mountains and the cabin and the glittering snow, and everything that has ever been between them, seems suddenly so easy and so silly and so simple all at once.
"I can't believe I like you," she manages, barely, as she pulls her goggles off and wipes at her eyes.
"Oh, hold on, you like me?" He rests his elbow on the back of the chair—tentatively—and fixes her with a steady gaze and sly grin. His voice is very nearly deadpan. "Like—like me like me? Like if this were high school, you'd send me a note with a little check box on the bottom and—"
"Oh, shut it." She's rolling her eyes toward the heavens but still laughing, faintly, reaches out with her hand in the vague direction of his mouth, misses and ends up pressing her palm against the side of his cheek. She can feel him kiss, lightly, briefly, the heel of her hand. She drops her hand down to her lap again and half-turns toward him, the last of her giggles dying out, and just watches him.
"I really am fond of you."
The words sound like a revelation, gentle and good, even to herself.
He quirks the corner of his mouth up. "I'm pretty fond of you, too, Reyes."
She reaches out, tugs the side of his hat safely down over his ears. Traces a line down his nose. Leads him in closer to her, the tip of her finger beneath his chin.
She means to kiss him only briefly, but the kiss is not brief; it is breathless; and they do not break apart until the lift stutters to life again and carries them up and away.
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*
First night, leaning back against the bar, Clarke between his spread legs and half on his lap, fingers crawling down along his side to the hem of his shirt, while Raven plays pool. Slow blues guitar winding through the air and through him, punctuated by the clack and roll of pool balls against green felt. He can see Raven, over Clarke's shoulder, leaning all the way forward, carefully sighting along the cue, so perfect and precise. A held breath moment while Clarke tugs at his earlobe between her teeth.
He has one arm around her waist like he's possessive. She feels like curves and warmth and for a second, she flicks her tongue against the shell of his ear.
They've all known each other a long time. Clarke keeps a studio on the other side of town but most nights she's sleeping in his bed, even has a drawer staked out in his dresser and her toothbrush in his bathroom, and he almost can't imagine, anymore, not waking up to her mouth trailing down along his bicep like he's in some kind of electric, erotic fever dream.
And Raven, Clarke's ex-almost, hurried college hook ups and unsteady love confessions after dark, taking out the competition now, straightening up with a satisfied smile and glancing at them sidelong like she knows. He's in some sort of fantasy; that's what most of his friends would think. Clarke turns around in his arms so she's leaning back against his chest, his arms around her, and he's pretty sure she's having a conversation with Raven, in some language he doesn't know, the language of girls or the language of old friends, all there electric sizzling between them through the yellow-green light. He knows already what this will turn out to be.
When they first met, because she was Clarke's friend and gave off a hard and brutal aura, like someone who would loathe to be touched, he hugged her, but in a perfunctory, apologetic way. She pulled him in again. Nearly crushed the air out of his lungs, a gesture he still does not know if he should have read as a threat. He remembers running his hands down the length of her arms as she pulled back, the defined muscles of her biceps and the drumbeat of his blood in his ears.
They go to Raven's place, a one-bedroom apartment over her garage. She throws her coat over a chair. The place does not look lived in; he wonders if she has a man, or a woman, somewhere else whom she loves, and often stays with, if this is both the first and last time he'll see her in the moonlight with her hair down. The way it flows over her shoulders is more of an invitation even than her key had been, turning back the deadbolt while he stood, with Clarke's hand in his back pocket, outside on the stairway landing, waiting. Sure again that this was a dream.
If this is the last time he'll find himself in Raven's bedroom, then it's fine, he'll make it count. And it's not but he can't know that yet, can't even hope as much, can only press a line of kisses down Raven's spine, his hands at her hips, can only breathe in every difference of her—how it's a long while before he can kiss her, how Clarke's kisses are different, when they're open-mouthed and pink and teasing against Raven's mouth. Strange how he's all in and on the outside all at once. Strange how sometimes he's lost and only vaguely aware of lips and tongue and limbs, and other times, he's so acutely sure of every angle of his body and theirs, he can feel himself memorizing their breathy whispers and the soft aches and the silent pleas.
The next morning he remembers, again and again, how afterward they lay together and just kissed, and kissed, and kissed. A circle of kisses. One of his arms was squashed against the pillows, the other slung low over Clarke's hip. He'd been surprised that Raven let them stay. He'd been surprised that simple kisses had been so thrilling, each one like a first kiss, as impossible as flying.
Even later, much later—over morning coffee, before bed, upon leaving, upon meeting again, two of them in pairs or all three—the kissing still excites him the most.
