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Their lives are cyclical: periods of insanity followed by periods of calm.
First Clarke drops out of med school, which leads to her mother cutting her off, and that leads to her not being able to pay for the lavish townhouse she rents a few minutes away from campus. But then Monty swoops in, offering her the tiny broom closet of a guest room that’s available in his dingy apartment now that Jasper has moved in with Maya. She has all of her belongings moved in the next day and enrolls in art school that night.
A few months later, the shoddy dive bar where Bellamy had been a bartender goes under unexpectedly, and his hopes of going back to school to get his master’s degree are shot. Him and Clarke have one of their blow-up fights that results in them not talking for a record two weeks- even though her mother had cut her off, Clarke still had a modest savings, and she was willing to help out her best friend for a little bit if it meant saving him from an early heart attack. Bellamy, as expected, had refused to accept her charity and pity, no matter how many times Clarke had insisted that it was neither.
But then Octavia’s boyfriend Lincoln mentions that the construction company he works at part-time is looking for some full-time help, and Bellamy starts there two days later. He finds that he likes it, actually. They’re renovating this gorgeous three-story estate a few towns over and watching it all come together, knowing that he had a hand in creating something beautiful, makes him forget about the ache in his muscles at the end of the day.
Which brings them to their latest struggle: Monty and Miller. They had just gotten engaged, and as happy as everyone is for them, it means that both Bellamy and Clarke are ultimately out of roommates.
That problem resolves itself pretty quickly, though. Monty sells his crappy apartment and him and Miller move into their own house- a modest, one-bedroom cottage just ten minutes outside of town- and Clarke moves into Miller’s old room, right across the hall from Bellamy’s.
They have been living together for six months when, during their weekly Game of Thrones watch party and Monty and Miller’s, Raven broaches the subject.
“So,” she says, once the episode is over and they’ve all recovered from their shock, “Clarke, who is a better roommate, Monty or Bellamy?”
Clarke laughs, reaching forward from the couch and grabbing a tortilla chip from the coffee table, generously coating it with salsa before answering. “They both have their merits.”
“Call me biased,” Miller pipes up from his position, slouched in the recliner clutching a can of beer, “but Monty is definitely the better roommate. At least I don’t get woken up at six a.m. to him saying goodbye to the dog. He spends fifteen minutes practically serenading it."
At his abstract mention, Bellamy’s mutt perked up, his rusty brown head turning towards Miller to see what he wants before recognizing the false alarm and snuggling back into his spot on Bellamy’s lap.
“Well, excuse me for trying to make sure Achilles gets his fair share of love,” Bellamy grumbles, pressing his lips to the crown of the dog’s head. Clarke leans over and scratches at his ears, making his tail flap against her leg.
“How could you find that annoying?” Clarke says, faking outrage. “Would you just not say good morning to your children?”
“Don’t tell me he’s got you doing it, too,” Miller groans.
“Well, that’s not as bad as what woke me up in the mornings,” Monty chimes in, pointedly staring at Clarke. She flushes.
“Are you talking about Space Jam?” Bellamy asks. Clarke likes to listen to music while she’s in the shower- for her birthday he got her some waterproof speakers so she didn’t have to keep putting her phone in a Ziploc bag- and the Space Jam soundtrack is her go-to wake up music.
“It was so annoying!” Monty laughs.
“It gets me pumped for my run,” Bellamy says in Clarke’s defense.
“Anyone who hates Space Jam is a monster,” Octavia says.
“I used to love it until it woke me up every day.”
“Just be glad to be rid of me,” Clarke says, rolling her eyes.
“At least now I don’t have to worry about you going missing anymore,” Monty responds. Raven chokes on her beer.
“Going missing?”
Monty slams the arm of the loveseat in excitement. “She would fall asleep in the most bizarre places. I’d come home to a supposedly empty apartment and call her for hours in a panic until I find her, like, asleep in the tub.”
Lincoln perks up at his, giving Clarke a strange look. She groans.
“It helps my back!”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Raven interrupts. “Are you naked or clothed? Water or no water? These are the important questions, Clarke.”
“Clothes on, thank God,” Monty says. “No offense, Clarke.”
“None taken.”
“You lived with Clarke for over two years,” Bellamy says incredulously. “How did you not learn her schedule?”
“Her schedule?” Monty’s brows furrow.
“My schedule?” Clarke repeats.
“Yeah, you know,” Bellamy says, turning to look at her. “On Mondays and Wednesdays Beth works at the gallery with you, and she’s a smoker, which you hate because she reeks of cigarettes all day long. Those days you just want some fresh air because you’ve been breathing her in all day long, so you go up to the fire escape and fall asleep there.”
“Oh, he has a point,” Monty murmurs, but Bellamy keeps talking.
“On Thursdays you work alone, so you have to lift everything by yourself, which means your back hurts and for some reason the tub makes it feel better, so you pass out there. And Friday is laundry day, and by that point you’re so exhausted from the work week that you fall asleep in the laundry room waiting for your clothes to dry.”
“Well, Bellamy leaves his glasses everywhere. I even found them in the fridge once,” Miller says. The rest of the room laughs, but Clarke has been staring at Bellamy in a shocked silence since he started talking. He’s staring back just as intently, the tips of his ears flushed.
When the room eventually goes quiet, Clarke breaks their stare, clearing her throat. “I’m going to get another beer. Does anyone want anything?”
“I’ll come, too. We need more salsa,” Bellamy says, and Octavia and Raven fail to hide their smirks.
He follows her into the kitchen, the heat of his body warming her back and making her breath catch.
“I didn’t think this night was going to turn into The Roast of Bellamy and Clarke,” she says lightly, reaching into the fridge and grabbing another bottle. Bellamy grunts behind her.
“They always end up ganging up on us somehow.”
“Yeah,” she says softly, taking a sip before turning to face him. “You know; I think it’s pretty cute that you leave your glasses everywhere.”
Bellamy’s lips quirk up in a smirk and he steps closer. “Is that right?”
“It’s like, I get to peak into your life for a second and see what you were doing before you got distracted. Like if they’re on the coffee table you were probably taking a nap on the couch and never put them back on when you got up, and if they’re in one of the cabinets I know you got sidetracked while you making food, and it’s…I don’t know. Cute,” she finishes lamely. Clarke’s face is looking similar to the sauce he’d made for their pasta last night, and fuck, he loves her so much.
“Well, I think you’re cute.”
She perks up at that, her head snapping up to look him dead in the eye. “Really?”
“Yup.” He takes another step closer. “Very cute.”
Clarke puts her beer down on the counter and closes the distance between them, curling her fingers around his belt loops and pressing her chest against his so that she has to tilt her head back to smile up at him.
“What are you going to do about it?”
Octavia finds them making out five minutes later, when she goes into the kitchen in search of the salsa Bellamy was supposed to bring back. She doesn’t say anything, just stands there in shock for a minute before tiptoeing back into the living room with a smile on her face. They don’t notice her, and when they finally emerge a few minutes afterwards, they both have swollen lips and mussed hair.
No one hears much of them for the next week, but when they show back up at Monty and Miller’s for the next Game of Thrones night holding hands, no one can say they’re surprised.