Bellarke One Shots Book 2

79) Where the heart is

Archive of our own
By Kacka

"I'm moving out," Clarke announces, storming into the living room in her towel, hair dripping wet. Bellamy looks up from his laptop, more because of her words than the vehemence behind them. Clarke tends to speak with conviction no matter what the topic.

"Since when?" It's surprising how disappointed he is. He'd thought it was going so well. Most of their friends had taken bets on when the two of them would have a complete blow up of a fight and which one of them would end up on Octavia's couch (no matter whose fault the fight would be, Bellamy always secretly planned for it to be him). Part of him is disappointed that he's apparently losing a great roommate, and the other part of him is irritated that at least some of his friends will profit off of this.

"Since the shower stopped spewing clean water," Clarke says, shuddering. "It started coming outbrown, Bellamy. I could deal with it when it was just freezing cold and weaker than a water fountain, but I draw the line at water that's brown."

"I can get the super to look at it," Bellamy frowns. It seems stupid for her to give up a good roommate situation over something so fixable.

"He never will," Clarke says, throwing her hands up. "He'll just tell us he'll get around to it eventually just like he's still getting around to fixing the elevator-"

"Four flights of stairs really isn't that many."

"-or the electricity-"

"I guess it would be nice to use the oven and microwave simultaneously without the power going out."

"-or the buzzer. I'm not just tired of walking up and down four flights to let people in, Bell. I'm tired of living in a crappy apartment," she sighs, sinking onto the couch next to him. He wants to complain about how bad it is for the material if she's sitting on it dripping wet, but recognizes that now probably isn't the time.

"Where are you going to go?"

"I don't know. I figured if we don't find something before the month is up, I can crash with Raven until we do. Octavia will probably take you, right?"

"Oh. You want me to move with you?"

"Of course." She turns to him with a frown. "What, did you think I was going to just ditch you?"

"Maybe," he grumbles. She laughs, a sound he hasn't heard in a while. The whole Lexa fiasco really did a number on her. She hardly left her room for weeks. She's better now, but there was a period of time when none of their friends really saw her, even Bellamy.

"I guess I shouldn't have assumed. But we're not in school anymore. We can afford a nicer place. Maybe even one that's closer to either of our places of employment."

It would be nice to have a shorter commute, Bellamy reckons. While it had never occurred to him to look for a place with fewer issues, or even to move with Clarke, he can see a good suggestion when she makes one.

"Okay," he says, shrugging. "Then let's look for a new place."

It's strange, he sometimes thinks, that he and Clarke ended up roommates. They only met because Octavia's boyfriend had gone to medical school with Clarke, and O's roommate moved out before Octavia was really ready to move in with Lincoln. She and Clarke had roomed together for a year, during which time Bellamy had hardly seen either Clarke or Octavia. Clarke, in her last year of school before her residency, had lived more in the library than in the room she paid Octavia $400 a month for, and Bellamy had been preoccupied with studying for the bar exam. When O finally did decide to move into Lincoln's apartment, she'd offered Bellamy to take over her lease. Clarke is in all ways an improvement over Murphy as a roommate, she'd argued, and she had been right.