Chapter Text
It’s been six months since Clarke barged into his dressing room, cheeks flushed and out of breath. Of course he’d invited his best friend to his wedding, there wasn’t a world in which he couldn’t invite her, but seeing her still made his heart ache. She was everything he wanted and everything he couldn’t have. He’d spent the better part of his adult life wishing for her to say the words she’d said that day, but it had been too late when she finally did.
“I love you,” she’d gasped, still completely breathless. “I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please, don’t get married.”
“Clarke,” he’d sputtered, his tongue suddenly feeling so foreign in his mouth as he tried to talk. “Fuck, Clarke, you can’t just come in here and say that. Jesus Christ, I’m getting married, today!”
“No, you can’t.”
“You don’t get to make that decision.” He’d been so angry at her. All that he’d ever hoped for was right in front of him, and yet it had never been so far away. “I waited for you. I waited years for you! It’s too late, Clarke. You don’t get to do this when I’m finally moving on.”
He’d seen the light fade from her eyes at his words, and it had hurt him so much to say it, but Octavia had been right. Spending his life pining for a girl who didn’t love him back was no way to live. And Clarke had been happy for him when he’d told her he was planning on proposing to Echo. She could have spoken up then, but she didn’t. They were both going to have to live with the choices that they made.
“She’s cheating on you,” Clarke said, her voice barely a whisper.
“What the fuck? What? So you’re surprised that I’m just not like Oh, Clarke, of course I love you. Sure, I’ll throw everything away, leave my finacée at the altar and run away with you that you make up some crazy desperate lie?”
“Bell, please. It’s not a lie. I love you, and I needed you to know before you married her so that you didn’t make a choice that you’d regret, but if you say it’s too late, then I can accept that. But you’re still my best friend, and I would hate myself forever if I let you marry someone who didn’t love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
There was a knock on the door, and Miller came in. “You ready?” his best man asked.
“Yeah, let’s do this. Clarke was just leaving.”
Bellamy hadn’t heard from her since that day. She hadn’t been in the church when he’d walked up to the altar, and he’d tried to call her, but she wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t open her door when he relented and drove to her apartment, so he has to pause when he walks into the bar and sees her sitting at a table off to the side with Raven.
He decides that he’s never going to get a chance as good as this one to talk to her, so he marches decidedly over to her table. Raven spots him first, eyes widening. He hears he talk as he nears them.
“I’m gonna go get us a refill, babe. You need another drink,” Raven says.
“I’m fine, Rae. I can hold off on that drink.”
“Nope. You’re gonna want it right now,” she says, directing her gaze at Bellamy.
Clarke turns and gasps.
“Bellamy - ” she says as Raven walks away.
“Please, don’t take off. I need to talk to you. I need my best friend.”
“Bellamy, I can’t do this. It took me so long to realize what you meant to me, but now that I have, it just hurts too much to think about being around you and not getting to be with you, and I’m not the type of person to break up a marriage. So I think it’s best for both of us if you just say away from me.”
“I’m not married,” he spits before he can think twice and hold himself back.
She looks at him, eyes wide. “But, Echo - ”
“You were right. I shouldn’t have doubted you, but I didn’t want to believe that you were right. I went to talk to her after you left, and I found her with Roan. How could you not tell me that it had been going on for months?”
“I’d just found out. Horrible timing, right?” she says with a humourless laugh
“I called off the wedding. I went to find you, to apologize, but you were gone. And then you wouldn’t take my calls.”
“I went out to Portland for a bit, stayed with Wells while I figured out what I was going to do.”
“And what did you decide?” he dares to ask.
“That I’d do whatever I could to make sure you were happy. I decided that I wouldn’t get between you and Echo, because you’d made your choice, and I just had to live with the fact that I’d been too late. I decided that your happiness is what was most important to me, so I wanted to put that first.”
He didn’t realize that he’d stepped so close to her. “But I didn’t make that choice. I didn’t marry her.”
“I know.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“Whatever makes you happiest. You’re my best friend, the most important person in my life. Nothing could ever change that. I still want what’s best for you.”
“Did you mean it? When you said that you were in love with me, did you mean it?”
She swallows hard and nods. Bellamy reaches forward to place his hand against her cheek, his fingers just brushing against her hairline. She leans into the touch, and he leans forward to press a short, chaste kiss to her mouth.
“Friday. Six o’clock. Let me pick you up and take you out for dinner. Let’s do this right. That’s what I want. I want you. Properly. That’s what would make me happier than I’ve ever been.”
Come hang out with me on Tumblr <3