Chapter Text
Three months earlier
June had finally come, and with it finals — then, at long last, summer vacation.
“Goodbye hell year, hello freedom!” Jasper crowed as the gang piled into Raven’s shitty minivan, the one she and Wick had spent the past year fixing up for this very purpose — to celebrate their newfound leisure time after nine months of APs and SATs and other stress-inducing sets of letters. “What’s first? The world’s our oyster!”
“I begin to see why you got that B in English,” Monty commented, “if your essays contained as many clichés as your everyday speech does.”
“Hey boys, let’s play nice.” Clarke mock-glared at them. “I’m well-acquainted with the male ego and its need to posture, but it’s way too early in the day — hell, it’s too early in the summer to be bickering already.”
“Yes, Mom,” they chanted.
“Let’s just go, before one of you does or says something that forces me to put you in time-out.” She shook her head, but she was grinning just as widely as they were.
Since they all had a major soft spot for tradition and sentiment and accumulating as many memories as possible in all three of the worthy places in this nowhere “city” they were unfortunate enough to call home — as Wells so eloquently put it once, in a fit of educated frustration after he’d read some enlightening novel or other — their first stop was the indoor pool where most of them had met for the first time while on their welcome-to-middle-school field trip. (Though Arcadia was kind of a middle-of-nowhere place, a city in nothing but official name, it had several elementary schools that all channeled their students into the one middle school. Thus, the sixth-grade kickoff was the first chance some of them had to get to know the others.)
“Hey, there they are!” Dante Wallace, the elderly manager/supervisor, grinned as they came in. He’d been there that first day, and observed firsthand the chaos that ensued as the then-sixth graders explored their new partnership in crime. Surprisingly enough, Dante was still happy enough to have them in his pool. “What’s on the agenda this year? Explosions? Surely Raven and the dynamic duo have it figured out by now.”
“I wish,” Jasper sighed, earning himself a fond smile.
“Well, don’t get yourselves in too much trouble. Cage is head lifeguard on duty today,” Dante warned. “I love my son, but you all know how he is.”
“Do we ever.” Monty scowled.
“We can play nice for an afternoon,” Clarke promised with her special adult-enchanting smile. Of course Dante saw right through her, having known her and her parents for years, but he just winked and waved as he walked off.
As they settled into the nook they had long since claimed as theirs — with a Jaha and a Griffin among their number, they were safe from any spot-stealers or property thieves — Raven’s gaze caught on an unfamiliar face.
“New guy alert,” she said, voice cautious. “It’s actually happening, guys.”
Clarke glanced over, as did Harper and Monroe, who had joined them. “Not bad. Solid nine, nine-point-five even.”
“Definitely,” Harper agreed.
Monty shrugged. “I’ve seen hotter,” he said, and immediately blushed.
“Oh, yeah?” Clarke grinned. “You wouldn’t happen to mean —"
“Shut up, shut up, he’s right there!”
At her friend’s urgent head jerk, Clarke glanced over again at Hot New Guy and found that he was indeed talking to Nathan Miller, Monty’s longtime crush. They seemed to be getting along great — which, well, it wasn’t that she thought of Miller as a dog or anything, but his was a pretty fine-tuned sense of people’s character. Hot New Guy must’ve been alright, since Miller’s body language looked relaxed.
“We should say hi at some point,” Clarke mused. “Instead of just staring at him like creepers.”
“Or we could just stare at him like creepers,” Raven countered, half-smirking. “He’s looked over here like six times already; it’s probably just a matter of time anyway.”
The inevitable encounter did not take place under ideal conditions.
Clarke had just climbed out of the water and realized she was on the opposite side of the pool from the towel she’d left on her chair. “Damn it,” she muttered as she hurried through the air that felt like an ice blanket against her dripping body, head bent against the slight wind.
That was how she ran into Bellamy Blake for the first time. Literally.
“Sorry,” she muttered, then bit her bottom lip and tried not to flush as she realized that she’d just collided with Hot New Guy.
He looked faintly annoyed, as though the water that had transferred to his shirt was a major inconvenience but the cause of it wasn’t worth his attention. “Really? Is it that hard to watch where you’re going, princess?”
Clarke scowled right back at him, embarrassment forgotten. “Princess?”
“Suits you. You and your friends, or should I say your royal court?” He waved a dismissive hand at the others waiting for her in the corner.
“What is your problem?”
He didn’t even dignify the question with an acknowledgment, let alone a response. Instead, he turned on his heel and walked away.
Clarke huffed. No level of hotness was worth putting up with that personality.
Monty looked up from the Go Fish game as she returned to their group. “Clarke, this is Octavia.”
“Hi, Octavia.” She reached out to shake hands with the newest addition to their group, a confidently pretty girl who looked a few years younger than them. “You’re new to Arcadia, right?”
“Yeah, me and my brother and my mom. Bell’s your age; he’s gonna be a senior.”
“You have a brother?” Clarke shot her a wistful look. “I’ve always wanted a brother.”
“I’m not enough brother for you? I’m so hurt, Griffin.” Wells clapped a hand to his heart.
“Shut up, Jaha, you drama queen.” Clarke didn’t even spare him a glance before turning back to Octavia. “As you can probably tell, he isn’t my brother. He just likes to pretend he is. When I’m in a better mood, I usually do too.”
Octavia nodded, looking slightly bemused. “And here Bellamy was worried I wouldn’t make any new friends.” As she looked around, she caught someone’s eye and waved, grinning.
Raven looked up too, and suddenly all the pieces fell into place. (Why it took so long, she’d never know — wasn’t she supposed to be some kind of mechanical genius?) “Oh — Hot New Guy is your brother.”
“Bellamy,” Octavia repeated. “Please don’t call him ‘Hot New Guy,’ his ego’s big enough as it is, and I have to live with him for another year. Optimistically.”
He’d reached them at this point, that goddamn smirk already fixed in place. (As they would later discover, Bellamy was all about the first impression — and maybe he was onto something. They did call him Hot New Guy, after all.) “Hey. I see you’ve met my sister.”
Clarke’s gaze slid over to him, and her eyes narrowed. “You.”
His insouciant smirk widened. “Princess.”
She huffed. “Asshole.”
“Oh come on, you can do better than that.”
“I would if you were worth the effort.”
“Ouch.” His smirk never dropped. Then his gaze dropped as he pulled his phone from his back pocket. “O, Mom just texted. Time to go.”
His sister frowned, disappointed. “Will I see you guys around sometime?”
Bellamy sighed and thrust his phone at Clarke.
She started, looking at him suspiciously. “What?”
“The things I do for my sister,” he lamented to no one in particular. “Number. O doesn’t have a phone, but she already steals mine all the time; this way, she has someone to bother who might actually reply.”
“There are better ways to get a girl’s number,” Clarke pointed out, already adding herself as a contact.
“I’m well aware” was the reply, accompanied — of course — by a smirk. He took the phone back and snorted. Hot girl from the pool, read the contact name. “I like ‘princess’ better.”
“Of course you do.”
The second time they met, they got on slightly better.
It was a week later, at the only mall in Arcadia — Octavia was trying out some new style or other, and Bellamy, the dork, was always up for browsing Barnes & Noble. Which was where he ran into Clarke, who was frowning at the display of SAT prep books.
“Cramming for standardized tests already, princess?”
She barely started, turning to half-glare at him. “My mom,” she said, like this was an explanation. But he nodded like it was, anyway. “What are you up to?”
Slightly sheepish, he shifted the books he was carrying so she could see the titles: Augustus. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
She smirked, amused. “You nerd.”
“Could say the same to you.” Amiably he jerked his chin at the volume tucked under her arm.
She pulled it out, half-smiling. Inkheart. “Touché.”
“So where’s the rest of the royal court today?”
Returning her gaze to the workbooks, Clarke frowned. “Probably all over the place. Jasper likes sports stuff — so Big Five Sporting Goods or Sports Authority, or maybe Nike — and he probably took Monty with him. Raven and Wick probably seized the first opportunity to take the minivan and drive to Home Depot to get some supplies for whatever project they’re working on now. And Wells is somewhere around here.”
“Quite a diverse court you’ve got.”
“Mm.” She glanced up briefly, just long enough to raise an eyebrow at him. “You and Octavia’d fit right in, if you wanted to.”
“Would we?”
Her gaze snapped up again at the unexpected vulnerability in his tone. (He could deny it all he liked — and might, if he was anything like Wells or Wick or Jasper — but Clarke knew boys and she knew human nature; she knew vulnerability when she heard it.) “Of course,” she said without a second’s hesitation. “We’re all mad here.”
He grinned. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
“Yeah. See, we’re doing it already. Give it just a few days, and the others will be sick to death of listening to us.”
Was that a flirty glint in her eye, or was it just wishful thinking on his part?
This was, of course, the exact moment Octavia came tearing into the store. “Bell! Did you know they’re —" She caught sight of Clarke and stopped short, eyes flicking warily between the two of them. Finally satisfied she hadn’t just caught them about to murder each other, she nodded. “I’ll just leave you to it, then. Clarke, Monty says Raven and Wick took the car but they promised to be back by five.”
“Great, thanks.”
“So what are you guys up to in here?”
“Nothing much.” Bellamy silently gave thanks that there was not a trace of innuendo or even teasing in his thirteen-year-old sister’s voice. Whether or not she knew about the birds and the bees and the caterpillars and moths — and if she did, whatever she did know most certainly had not come from him — she was at least still of an age where she definitely either actually didn’t or just didn’t want to think of those things as they related to her brother.
“Nerdy stuff,” Clarke offered, prompting Octavia to wrinkle her nose, shoot Bellamy a seriously? look, and swiftly turn on her heel and walk away.
Looking bemusedly amused, Clarke turned to Bellamy. “What was that?” she asked, trying not to laugh out loud. She remembered being Octavia’s age, and she knew she certainly wouldn’t have appreciated hearing laughter burst out right after she left.
“She thinks the nerdiness is contagious. Which is ridiculous, of course. She’s lived with me for thirteen years now; if it was going to rub off on her it would have done so already. But anyway, she wants to be a sophisticated teenager instead of a dork like her big brother, so…”
Clarke nodded in understanding. “We all grow up differently.”
“Clearly.”
Just then, Clarke’s phone buzzed in her purse and she pulled it out. (Boys never would understand the struggle, she lamented, of having to choose between being confident that you looked nice, and having pockets.) “Raven and Wick are back early, and they want to know if there’s anywhere we want to go.”
“We?”
“I meant it, you know.” She looked him in the eye, gaze steady and reassuring. “When I said you guys could join us. What’s two more weirdos, right?”
“No ulterior motives?” he asked, only half-teasing.
“Well, there is the fact that you’re the first new blood we’ve had at Ark High in a while and you’re pretty hot. I’m sure you could have your pick of cliques once school starts, but something should come out of us getting to you first.”
“So you’re trying to lock me down before I realize there are way cooler people to hang out with?”
She crossed her arms, trying to glare seriously at him. “We basically have your sister.”
“Cards on the table so soon?” He held her gaze, equally intense.
A snort escaped her throat, and he cracked up too.