Chapter Text
The writing on the wall
Idiom
- the likelihood that something bad will happen.
.:.
You drag your suitcase behind you with one hand, the other clutching your backpack to your chest, a soda bottle hanging from the tips of your fingers which are about to lose circulation. You don’t believe in two trips. It’s a relief when you get the door to open and immediately drop your bottle on the unoccupied bed.
“What are you doing here?!” The girl on the other bed nearly yells, sitting up and furiously wiping at her cheeks. It’s not the welcome you expected for sure, and you’re too surprised to give an answer right away. You changed your plans at the last minute, and Octavia was already rooming with Raven, so you were offered the last room with an empty bed. Your new roommate is obviously the surprised brunette staring at you now, all big eyes and confusion. Her hair is all over the place and her eyes are red-rimmed and this uncommon green, like a lake more than grass. She’s beautiful.
“I’m your new roommate,” you say, trying for an easy smile.
“ No, you’re not. I don’t have a roommate.” Her words are measured, careful. She discreetly wipes her hands on her jean shorts and you feel kind of guilty that you apparently caught her crying. You try at solidarity.
“I’m sorry, didn’t the school let you know?”
“ No. I don’t understand,” she says, and you actually feel bad for a second because she looks lost, alarmed even, her eyes wide and green-grey in the crappy light of the dorm room. You want to sketch her, you want to calm her down.
“I’m sorry. I switched colleges at the last minute –switched majors, actually, and this was the only room available-“
“I know,” she says. Anger shadows over her face like a storm cloud and it throws you off. She looks at you like a predator, her lip actually lifting in the closest a human being can get to a snarl. “Because I explicitly asked to be placed in an empty dorm if at all possible so-“
“Hey, don’t take it out on me now,” you say. You’ll put up with some, but you won’t let her raise her voice at you, not even 5 minutes into meeting you. “I’m sorry the school didn’t let you know in advance, but that’s not my fault.”
You throw your bag on the bed and her eyes follow it, she looks at it as if she were about to grab it and set it on fire.
“Are you sure you even have the right room?” She asks, and looks down at you even when she’s goddamn sitting down. You know that look, like you’re just a stupid blonde.
“Room 220,” you say. “Like I said, the only room with an available bed, which you know, so-” you shrug, annoyed at her demeanor now. “Hello, roomie.”
You didn’t expect homemade apple pie and a ‘Welcome’ banner, but no animosity right of the bat would have been nice.
The girl looks to the roof, breathes in and clenches her fists like she could snap someone’s neck and you’re actually wary for a second, that you’ve gotten thrown in with a psycho. The next second, it’s gone. The fight goes out of her, and she turns back to her backpack. She robotically pulls out a few notebooks and lays them down on her desk and all the while you stand there, confused, annoyed, getting fucking mad that this girl yelled at you and now is acting like you don’t even exist.
“Very well then,” she says finally, turning around to face you. “My name is Alexandria Woods. You can call me Alexandria, or Woods, or better yet, nothing at all. I do not want to be your friend .”
You’re shocked quiet by the blatant disdain in the words, because you don’t know her, you don’t know her and it’s like she’s already decided she hates you.
“I don’t want to be your study buddy,” she continues. “I don’t want us to paint each other’s nails. This is an unfortunate situation but I’m sure we can get through it if we stay out of each other’s way and follow simple rules.” She sounds like an ad for STD medication, and your blood starts to boil. You can feel your cheeks getting red, because she’s the rude one here and yet you feel you’re being chastised.
“No loud music, we tell each other beforehand if people are coming over, no candles, no weird hippie incense shit-“ The word sounds strange leaving her lips, you note, like she doesn’t use it very often. “-and I don’t appreciate you eating in here and getting this place dirty. I’m not a fan of living among rats and pests.”
“Are you done?” you ask.
She nods once, hard, like her tirade was perfectly reasonable.
“Good.” You’re angry, you can’t wait to complain to Octavia and Raven, but you can’t get out of here without giving the girl –Alexandria- a piece of your mind. “No wonder you wanted to be alone. I’ve been here for five minutes and I’m ready to jump out of the window. Anyone ever tell you you’re a bit of an asshole?” She flinches when you say the last words, and you relish in it.
“Don’t worry, I’ll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine.” You quickly get your jacket out of your bag. “Clarke Griffin, by the way,” you say over your shoulder and leave the room, door open.
.:.
“She was just…really fucking rude.” You shrug. You were popular in high school, okay? And you aren’t stupid enough to think being likable isn’t important, it is. Winning personalities don’t get failed or earn a teacher’s wrath or have to sit alone during recess. You’re not used to people rejecting you right out of the gate, not even taking one look at you and already deeming that you’re not worthy of their time. “She flipped out when she saw me arrive.”
“If I’d thought I had an entire room to myself only to be given a roommate at the last minute, I would have flipped out too, to be honest - regardless of how great and amazing you are, Clarke.”
“What do you want?” You ask, smiling at Raven where she rests on your bed, bad leg propped up on your still unpacked suitcase. You think of sleepovers in 10th grade when she first moved and holding her hand through the aftermath of her accident. She winks at you. You will end up 10 dollars poorer that night after paying for pizza and Woods will bite your head off in three days when she suspects one of her beers disappeared. You won’t mind.
“It wasn’t just flipping out.” You tell Raven. “She legit looked at me like I was the cause of all her problems.”
“Go the RA, then,” Raven tells you. “Get rid of her, see if you can change rooms or something.”
You considered it before, briefly, but you are no quitter, and leaving after one day would make you feel as if you’ve lost somehow, and you make a promise to yourself right then not to lose to that girl.
“It’s fine, I’ll just see how it goes for a few days. Besides, I don’t want to give her the satisfaction, it’s my room as much as it’s hers.” It’s a good room, the last one on the floor, and you have a nice view of the parking lot in front of campus, the street further away, and the poor bastards dragging their feet home after a long day of class.
“She has a fucking mini fridge tucked in her bedside table.” Octavia says, poking around on the other side of this invisible line you’ve drawn on the floor already between your stuff and Alexandria’s stuff. “Who even has that?” Octavia says again, turning to face you two.
“You and Raven wanted one,” you remind her. You’ve made plans already for your second semester, hoping against hope that you’ll be able to get a triple room for all of you, or maybe even a quad. You’d deal with another roommate if the three of you could be together. You’ll get your own mini fridge then.
“Yeah, but we didn’t get it, that’s the point. It’s not fair. Why do nice things happen to bad people?”
“Nice things happen to anyone with enough money,” Raven adds helpfully.
You don’t know if the girl -Woods- has money. She probably does. You don’t care about it, you know you’re lucky not to have to care about it, especially when both of your best friends do and you’re aware of that. And you hate putting people in boxes. But you’re an artist, and looking at the way she moved, so controlled, stiff, like a bird who’d never been allowed any freedom; you can’t help but wonder how she grew up.
Money would explain it, old money perhaps, peter pan dresses, no elbows on the table and a family orchard somewhere in the south. You obliterate the thought from your mind now , but the first time you saw her...you couldn’t help but think that girl was a damn work of art. People like that have good stories. Regardless of how freaking rude and angry she was when you first met -or maybe because of that- a part of you wants to know hers. Seems like it'd be good.
.:.
The first week of class the seniors put into place an ‘all freshmen must obey seniors’ for the day rule, more like all freshmen must be the senior’s bitches for a day, really. You see your old classmate Monty walking around campus with a bag that’s not his and it’s a little funny, a little bothersome.
You’re freshmen but the seniors don’t mess with you too much because Bellamy is Octavia’s brother and you and Raven might as well be Octavia’s Siamese twins. (Triplets?) And with Bellamy being a senior comes some sort of protection, along with invitations to the best parties. And no one messes with Woods because-just because. And you notice because you can’t not notice. She’s always alone around campus and her hair is this big wavy mess barely contained by braids and she commands attention.
You have two classes together, in the big amphitheater that seats like a hundred students, and when the frat boys give everybody a little bit of hell before letting them into the classroom, Alexandria Woods just walks right through -and they let her.
Resting bitch face doesn’t cut it, she constantly looks like she would murder a man just for breathing the wrong way in her direction; and you don’t think any of those 22-year-old, 180 pounds, 6 foot 3 football players would dare play a prank on her, or catcall her, or anything really. You can respect that. You’ve been on the receiving end of that angry stare. She’s terrifying.
She’s also tiny. Like, you’re pretty sure she’s the same height as you, maybe a little bit taller, but not by much. But she carries herself like she was 10 feet tall and everyone around her notices. At least, you’ve noticed. You want to ask her why. You don’t intend on talking to her at all.
.:.
Alexandria Woods is an early riser, you find that out the hard way.
You made the executive decision not to have any classes before 10 am even if it meant additional days of college, but Woods, fucking Woods, is up at 7 am sharp, every single. goddamn. day.
You wake up as she gets out of bed and collects stuff for her shower, and you have only managed to barely fall back asleep by the time she comes back, hair wet and dripping and staining her shirt. You start to reconsider your old money theory when you see she showers like a damn soldier, never more than 15 minutes between leaving the room and strolling back inside. No one who’s grown up luxuriously would do that, you think. Except if she was a major control freak, which might not be that far off the mark.
She walks around, puts her bag together, and leaves. You sink back into sleep.
.:.
You and Woods don’t talk at all the first couple of weeks, when you’re all still finding your footing.
You get the hang of your classes, and not once do you regret switching from Biology to Art, because it's everything you wanted and more. You figure out a way to hang out with Raven and Octavia despite your conflicting schedules, you spend quite a bit of time having sleepovers at their dor room, all in all -college treats you well.
You and your roomate barely see each other, in fact. She leaves when you’re still more or less asleep, and you get back when she’s already buried in her bed. It works, for a while.
.:.
His name is Daniel, you think.
Bellamy’s frat house throws the best parties, and it didn’t take very long for you to get comfortably boozed up, to find someone who stared at your legs a little too long and drag them back to your dorm room.
The lights are on and you like it that way, and maybe he’s going at your neck a little too hard with the sucking but he’s warm and heavy on top of you and you feel good.
You drag your hand down his chest and hook it on his belt, bringing him closer, and moan when he grinds against you. He finally gets the hint and you think things will go your way now and then you meet a pair of green eyes over his shoulder.
“What the fuck?!”
You push David off of you, more surprised than anything. Lexa just stands there, face unperturbed.
“I wondered when you would notice I was here,” she says, and you’d forgotten how annoying her tone of voice could be, so calm and fucking collected. You hadn’t heard it in a while. You’re drunk and you were this close to getting laid and you don’t have the upper hand here. You don’t like it.
“You're so fucking messed up, Woods,” you say, running your hand over your hair.
She doesn’t flinch. Adam, Daniel, what’s his name, just sits in the bed, looking between the two of you, his hard-on noticeable to everyone in the room. He’s most likely too drunk to feel embarrassed -or he just doesn’t care.
“Maybe we can take this to my room?” he asks you. “I can kick out my roommate, he won’t mind.” But you know the mood has been killed.
“No, it’s fine,” you say, and his face falls like a toddler who just dropped his ice cream on the dirt. “Sorry.”
“No, sure, it’s cool. I’ll see you later?” he asks, and you seriously doubt it, but kiss him nonetheless, so Woods will see more than anything. You want to push her buttons, make her uncomfortable. D leaves quite quickly after that, but she’s still staring blankly at you, unperturbed. It’s infuriating.
“Yes?” you ask.
“We agreed we would let each other know if we had...visitors. I will not apologize for arriving at my room, hoping to get some sleep only to find-”
She’s still talking when you leave.
So maybe you’re intrigued by her, by the anger and coldness that seems to radiate off her in waves. Maybe you're annoyed that she's so perfect and perfectly put together, and that you can see she thinks she's so much better than you so it gives you a sick satisfaction leaving her with words inside her mouth. You’re a little drunk and a little high and you hope Alexandria Woods chokes on them.