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“Hey new girl.”
A gruff voice stops Clarke in her tracks despite the heavy box of files biting into her fingers and forearms. She’s almost less irritated that someone addressed her that way-- she has a name tag, seriously-- than she is that she stopped to answer to it.
When she looks around for the source of the voice, she finds another one of the interns beckoning her over to their folding tables shunted into the corner. She approaches him with no small amount of suspicion.
He looks like every politician from every television show she’s ever seen: creased shirt and just-rolled-out-of-bed tousled curls, tie tugged loose, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Freckles dusting tan skin and stubble framing an impressive jawline that hasn’t cracked a smile since he got her attention. Clarke wants to give him the benefit of the doubt-- she’s not the most pleasant person to be around first thing in the morning either, and that’s after eight solid hours of sleep-- and bites back a rude response.
Still, she can’t help saying, “It’s Clarke, actually. Nice to m--”
He stops her in her tracks by grunting, “Here,” and thrusting a sticky note in her direction. She just raises one eyebrow, waiting for him to realize that her hands are too full for her to take it from him, at which point he merely shrugs and sticks the note to the lid of the box.
Bellamy: Med. roast, dash of milk, she reads.
Her distantly polite smile falls from her face and she glares at him.
“What is this?”
“Coffee order. Or don’t they drink coffee at whatever fancy Ivy-league institution you just graduated from?”
“That would be Yale,” she tells him with a fake smile, propping the box on his desk, not caring what papers she crumples beneath it, and slams the sticky note back on his desk. “And they actually teach us how to get our own coffee there.”
His expression darkens, a storm rolling over calm waters. “Then you might be ready to graduate to the big leagues and order for the whole office.”
“Newest intern gets the coffee,” the guy next to him puts in. “It’s tradition.”
Bellamy‘s jaw jumps and he crosses his impressive arms over his chest, not ceding her an inch. “We all served our time, Princess. If you’re too good to get coffee, maybe you should run back to your mother’s campaign. Or your father’s. I’m sure you’d get special treatment there.”
Clarke’s blood runs cold and she fixes him with her iciest stare.
His friend looks between them and then back down at his call list, shaking his head.
“Stepfather,” she says in a flat tone. “And neither of them are up for reelection right now. Sounds like you need to study up on your Poli Sci 101. Or maybe that’s something they only teach at my fancy, Ivy-league institution.”
His annoyance turns to anger in a flash but the guy beside him butts in before he can unleash the tirade brewing, yanking a sheaf of paper from his legal pad and thrusting it in Clarke’s direction.
“Just take the paper,” he advises her. “Most people around here are just going to spout their order off at you. You’ll want something handy to write it down on. Leave here by 8:30 or you’re going to hit the 9:00 rush. If anyone hasn’t gotten their order to you by then, they’ll have to go without.”
Clarke grits her teeth but takes the page from him, refusing to even so much as look in Bellamy’s direction. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Nathan Miller. You can call me Miller.”
“Clarke Griffin.”
“Cool, welcome aboard. You might want to get that box to Hannah though, before you or Bellamy says something you regret.”
Clarke purses her lips and hefts her box up again, letting her eyes find Bellamy’s. He still looks positively murderous, and it makes her vindictive side flare up with self-satisfaction.
“No regrets so far,” she says, saccharine, and saunters away, reveling in the heated glare she feels on her back as she goes.
How’s it going? Wells texts her a little while later, when she’s picking up the coffee order she’d at least thought ahead to place through the Starbucks app.
Clarke bites her lip, considering as she types out her response.
Made an enemy already.
I think that’s a new record for you.
She snorts and grins, feeling better already. Yeah, but the guy was a dick. Totally deserved it.
So it’s going pretty much as expected, then.
So far, yeah. I’ll keep you posted.
You’d better.
* * *
Bellamy has never been the best at first impressions.
Sure, he can turn on the charm when he wants to. In certain settings, playing certain roles, he can be effortlessly charming, compelling, and charismatic. It’s part of what makes him think he can do well in politics. Not that he wants to manipulate people, but that he has the personability to make people listen to his good ideas.
But he’s not a politician yet. For now he’s just the guy who cold-calls potential donors and makes endless amounts of copies, and so when he meets new people he doesn’t always manage to put his best foot forward.
Case in point, Clarke Griffin.
“I can’t believe you pissed her off that fast,” Miller says in a lull when neither of them is on the phone, shooting a rubber band in Bellamy’s direction. It bounces off his shoulder and he lets it fall, not giving his friend the satisfaction of a reaction. “I mean, I’m genuinely impressed.”
“It’s my secret superpower.”
“Call Marvel, I have a terrible idea for their next movie.”
“I’m pretty sure she was predisposed to hate me, so it’s not like I pissed her off all on my own. She definitely did half the work.”
“Just like in Pride and Prejudice,” Miller says sagely. This gets Bellamy to look up at last, only to be met with a gleeful smirk. “What? She’s totally the Darcy to your Elizabeth. That was Austen level hate-lust-at-first-sight right there.”
“You’re delusional.”
“She’s exactly your type.”
“I like brunettes.”
“You like people who don’t take your shit,” Miller counters. “Besides, I don’t think she meant anything about your background. She was just throwing your own words back in your face.”
Bellamy’s stomach churns uncomfortably. Miller is right; he recognized Clarke Griffin because her mother and father-- step-father-- are in Congress, and she’s close personal friends with the son of a former president. He, on the other hand, is nobody. There’s no way Clarke knew he graduated from community college because that’s all he could afford. No way she knew he was pissy from fighting with Octavia for having a boy over while he was at his night class from his Master’s, and didn’t get any sleep last night.
She stumbled upon one of his insecurities, but he was the one who exposed it by making a jab at her prestigious degree in the first place. He has no one to blame but himself.
That isn’t going to stop him from blaming Clarke, of course. It’s just going to make him feel slightly conflicted about it.
“I’m not apologizing,” he says, and Miller rolls his eyes. “But I’ll try to be less of a dick.”
“That’s the most I can ever hope for, yeah.”
When Clarke returns to the office, balancing enough Starbucks cups to caffeinate a small army, she appears just as annoyingly put together as she had that morning. Not a single blonde hair out of place, not a wrinkle on her perfectly-pressed blouse or slacks.
Even just the sight of her rankles. Bellamy can’t quite put his finger on why.
Maybe it has something to do with how easy she makes it all look, he thinks as she delivers orders with polite smiles that don’t reach her ice-blue eyes. She remembers names, she doesn’t spill a drop (unlike Jasper, whom everyone is glad is no longer the newest intern), and she’s under his skin without trying at all. It’s completely infuriating, even more so when the smile slides straight off her face as she approaches him and Miller.
Bellamy leans back in his chair with a lazy smirk. He wouldn’t put it past Clarke to have intentionally gotten his order wrong, but even if she did, she can’t win. He’ll just make a crack about that Ivy education not being worth the bank-breaking price tag, or maybe even a dig about the color of her hair. He didn’t intentionally start this war, but there’s no way she can win it, so he doesn’t exactly mind.
“Medium roast, dash of milk.”
“Thanks, Princess.”
“I’m telling you, that refresher course would do you some good. We haven’t had a monarchy for a while now.”
Bellamy rolls his eyes and grabs his coffee, sipping at it tentatively. It’s perfect, dammit. “Learn to take a joke,” he advises, taking a larger sip.
“Develop a better sense of humor and I’ll start laughing.” She looks past him, offering Miller his cup, and Bellamy definitely does not watch her go. At all.
“You’re right,” Miller says when she’s gone. “There was no sexual tension there at all. Don’t know what I could have been thinking.”
Bellamy flips him off and he snorts.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
It isn’t long until something starts to feel off. Bellamy mumbles an excuse to Miller and barely makes it to the bathroom in time, spending way longer there than he intended to.
When he finally emerges, feeling like the grossest human being ever to live, Clarke is refilling one of those fancy, fruit-infusing water bottles from the fountain next to the bathroom door. After what just happened, Bellamy isn’t in the mood to spar with her. He nods when she looks up, intending to pass her by and not make direct eye contact with anyone else for the rest of the day, but an overly casual question off her lips makes him pause.
“Got the runs?” Her tone is perky. Too perky. Bellamy narrows his eyes. “You should try drinking less coffee,” she advises, and in a flash he realized what happened.
“You did this.”
“Did what?” Her smirk flickers into a practiced doe-eyed innocence that he doesn’t believe for a second. “I got you coffee, like you asked.”
“Are you really that petty?” He asks, incredulous. “I thought you knew you’d be getting the coffee today. I was trying to be considerate, writing down my order and name for you.”
“Well your considerate is pretty indistinguishable from asshole,” she sniffs, capping her water bottle. “I’m only sinking to your level.”
Bellamy is about to respond when his body starts to protest again. Green around the gills, he backs toward the restroom once more, glaring at Clarke’s self-satisfied smile.
“This isn’t over, Griffin.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just getting started.”
When he emerges again, she’s nowhere in sight, for which he both is and isn’t glad.
Maybe there was a way for him to lose this one after all.
* * *
If Clarke expected Bellamy to be getting his own coffee after that first day, she was sorely mistaken. The very next morning, she shows up and finds a sticky note with familiar messy handwriting waiting at her station with a much more complicated order on it than a medium roast with a dash of milk. She rolls her eyes but enters the order into the app anyway.
If he wants to spend another day on the toilet, so be it. She has plenty of ammo. The box of laxatives she’d bought at the pharmacy yesterday will last her a while yet.
But when she returns with the orders, she finds Bellamy on a phone call with a mug of steaming coffee already in his hands. She frowns down at his order, trying to figure out his play. It’s not like the coffee money is coming out of her pockets. What’s his endgame?
Unable to figure it out, she’s scowling by the time she sets it down on his desk.
He keeps talking into the receiver, tossing her a knowing smirk she doesn’t like the looks of at all.
“Will you hold for a moment? Thanks,” he says into the receiver, punching a button and turning his attention to Clarke. “Can I help you, Princess?”
“What’s your angle?” She snaps, crossing her arms. His eyes dart down to her cleavage and then back to her face, which is a little bit gratifying. At least she isn’t the only one unfortunately attracted to her nemesis.
“I don’t have an angle,” he shrugs, his eyes catching on someone behind her. “Hey Murphy, you’re on your way to Pike’s office right? Bring him his coffee for me?”
“What do I look like, your errand boy?” Murphy grumbles. Clarke barely hears him, her face draining as Murphy picks up the cup she thought was intended for Bellamy and turns toward the Senator’s office.
“Wait--” She blurts. Murphy raises one eyebrow at her.
“Something wrong, Princess?” Bellamy asks, smug.
“You can’t give him that,” she tells Murphy, ignoring Bellamy completely. “I thought it was for Blake so I-- spit in it.”
He snorts. “I don’t blame you. What Pike doesn’t know won’t hurt him though.” He’s gone before Clarke can protest further. Her face has turned from sheet-white to a deep crimson and she even feels a little faint as she sinks into Miller’s empty chair, head in her hands.
“He’s not wrong,” Bellamy says, gleeful with his victory. “It won’t ///hurt Pike. I should know firsthand.”
“I am going to destroy you and everything you love.”
“Good luck.” He shakes his head. “You know, we could quit now. While we’re even.”
“You wish.” She pushes herself up, brushing invisible lint from her clothes. Bellamy’s face wrinkles almost imperceptibly with annoyance. “I’m not just going to let you win.”
“I’d rather earn it anyway,” he says, tipping back in his chair so he can look her in the eye, as close as she’s standing. His knees sprawl wide in the small space, taking up more real estate than Clarke deems necessary. Something about that cocky attitude is working for her, despite everything, and it only makes her angrier.
“I hate you.”
“You just met me.”
“What can I say? When you know, you know.”
She keeps her chin up as she walks away, looking back only once and finding Bellamy’s eyes following the line of her pencil skirt across her hips, over her ass, down her legs. He glowers when he sees that he’s been caught. Triumph sears through her.
(Twenty minutes later, when everyone pauses what they’re doing to watch the Senator half-running toward the bathrooms, she catches him staring at her once more. This time, with a look of amusement that mirrors her own. Clarke shakes her head and drops her eyes back to the call sheet in front of her, refusing to admit even to herself that it feels almost as good to share a joke with Bellamy as it does to get one up on him.)
* * *
“Fancy running into you here, Princess.”
“Blake.” She takes a dainty sip of her cider, her blue eyes blazing over the rim of her glass. Something akin to satisfaction curls in his gut. He doesn’t read too much into it. Verbal sparring with Clarke has become the thing he looks forward to most when he’s getting dressed in the morning. It’s not something for the Senator, it’s not something for Octavia. It’s his, and it’s fun, and if he’s reading Clarke right, she thinks so too.
“I never would’ve thought you’d deign to set foot in this place,” he says, catching the bartender’s eye and putting in an order.
“Don’t you like this bar? Why are you ragging on it?”
“I’m ragging on you, obviously.”
She hums and licks her lips, smirking when his gaze darts down. Bellamy doesn’t think he can be blamed. Movement draws the eye, okay? Anyone would have looked.
“Maybe you need to up your game,” she tells him, patting his shoulder patronizingly as she brushes past.
It takes a concerted effort not to watch her make her way across the bar to the other interns, but Bellamy manages it. And then feels like an idiot because he feels like she won anyway and he didn’t even get to check her out for his trouble.
He usually tries to squash in next to Miller at these things, keeping a safe distance between him and his nemesis. But by the time he gets his drink, the only place open to sit is beside Clarke.
“Scoot,” he tells her, interrupting her mid-laugh. She glares at him.
“This seat is taken.”
“Too bad. Whoever you’re saving it for, they aren’t here. You snooze, you lose.”
“There isn’t enough room for both you and your ego to fit--”
“Wanna bet?” He starts to sit down, almost directly on Clarke’s lap, and she sloshes cider over her hand in her haste to get away from him.
“Jerk,” she grumbles, flicking her dripping fingers in his face. Drops of cider land on his chin and neck. He passes her a napkin.
“Sloppy.”
“You’re not suggesting that spill was my fault--”
“That’s enough,” Raven breaks in, slamming a palm on the table. “Save your foreplay for sometime when I don’t have to watch it, seriously.”
“At least you don’t have to sit next to him all day. I have a front row seat to this shit,” Miller mutters. Bellamy gives him a rude gesture and he blows him a kiss.
As they settle back into conversation, he tries very hard not to notice Clarke beside him, but at some point over the last few weeks he’s become incapable of not noticing her. Having shed her professional cardigan in favor of the sleeveless top she has on underneath, her arms are bare and her skin so warm he can feel it through his shirt.
He forces his mind away from the soft curve of her hip pressed against his, from the scent of her perfume that he’s come to recognize by now, from the mark above her lip that moves when she speaks, or her hair slipping away from the smooth skin of her neck when she tilts her head to laugh. He definitely doesn’t let himself think about what that skin would feel like under his lips, what her hair would feel like between his fingers. That’s dangerous territory.
But not, it seems, territory that Clarke is too afraid to enter.
He’s trying to pay attention to something Raven and Murphy are bickering about when he first feels the hand on his knee. His fingers clench reflexively on the glass in his hands, his entire body locking up. Clarke freezes but keeps her hand where it is.
When he looks her way, she returns his look, quirking one eyebrow as if asking permission.
His heart pounds double-time, his mind racing even faster.
Bellamy has caught her checking him out before. He knows that whatever attraction he might feel for her is mutual. But in his mind, Clarke had been untouchable. A line he couldn’t cross, for whatever reason-- maybe it was that she half-hated him, maybe it was that he was afraid to ruin the good workplace animosity they had going.
Still, he had to wonder: would this really ruin anything?
He freezes for so long that Clarke takes it as a rejection and starts to withdraw her hand. Bellamy swallows and moves his knee to follow, widening the sprawl of his legs into her space in the way he knows will annoy her.
Clarke’s eyes dart to him again and he raises one eyebrow right back, not a question, but a challenge.
How far are you willing to go?
Her responding grin is downright devious.
For the rest of the night, Bellamy is only marginally invested in the conversation his friends are carrying on without him. Clarke has it more together than he does, though the flush high on her cheeks suggests that she isn’t totally unaffected. She’s able to keep up with responses, to follow the train of the discussion. Bellamy barely musters monosyllabic words, forced chuckles, and grunts of acknowledgment as her fingers trace the seam of his slacks, daring higher and higher up his thigh before retreating.
After what feels like agonizing hours, her fingertips find their way far enough that Bellamy jolts in his seat. Miller throws him a dubious look so he pulls his phone out of his pocket and pretends to check a message.
“Drama at O’s sleepover,” he sighs, never gladder for their professional dress code than now, when the drape of his jacket over his arm obscures a situation that he’d never live down in a million years. “Gotta go pick her up. I’ll see you guys Monday?”
They all chorus their goodbyes except for Clarke, who looks all too pleased with herself for his liking.
The air outside isn’t much cooler but he takes a moment anyway, leaning against one of the columns of the overhang and closing his eyes as he attempts to gather himself.
A burst of noise behind him signals that someone had followed him out and he straightens, unsurprised to find Clarke stepping up beside him.
“Do you really have to go pick up your sister?”
He debates with himself for a moment, trapped in her gaze.
“No.”
She nods once, decisive, and looks up at him through her lashes.
“Need someone to walk you home? You look a little flushed. Might be coming down with something.”
Genuine amusement blunts the edge of his sharp smirk. She thinks she’s so smooth. It enters his mind to call that cute, but he pushes that away in the same instant it occurs to him.
“Just to be safe,” he agrees. She smiles back, wicked.
“Lead the way.”
They make it as far as the end of the block before she’s tugging him into an alley and pressing him up against the wall, her lips hot on his. She tastes like the cider she’s been drinking and she lets him chase it from her mouth, opening for the sweep of his tongue and melting against him.
“Seriously,” he says after a moment. Clarke doesn’t let him go too far, her lips finding his pulse point. “My place isn’t even that far away.”
“What’s wrong with right here?” She asks, coy. He stills her wandering hands before they can venture too far south.
“I want you in my bed,” he says, the thunk of his head against concrete doing nothing to clear the Clarke-related haze in his brain. And then, because that’s too close to the mark, he adds, “I’m gonna need it to make you fall apart the way I want you to.”
He feels her breath catch against his throat.
“That can be round two.”
And well, it’s really hard to argue with that.
* * *
“Going somewhere?”
Clarke freezes at the sound of Bellamy’s groggy, early-morning grumble and turns to look at him over her shoulder. In the dim morning light she can just make out his form among the rumpled sheets, all the firm, broad planes of him almost too enticing to leave. He shifts up on his elbows, amusement glinting in his eyes as he takes in her attire. Clarke flushes and looks back down to finish doing up the buttons on his dress shirt. Her top was too hard to locate, and she’d been trying not to wake him up.
Ineffectually, it seems.
“I can’t wear the same clothes to work two days in a row,” she says, her own voice raspy with sleep. “Raven would definitely call me out on it.”
“So you want to keep this quiet.”
“My sex life is my business,” she shrugs. “Not to mention, I haven’t been that subtle about how much I hate you.”
A slow smirk overtakes his face, winding something hot and tight in her gut.
“You didn’t hate me last night.”
“See what happens when you put your mouth to better use than constant mockery?” She pushes off the bed, gathering her heels in one hand and her dad’s watch in the other.
His eyes sweep down her frame appreciatively, that smirk still firmly set upon his face. Clarke wants to hate it, she really does, but she can’t quite manage to. Maybe once she has a little distance from last night, some fresh air, a few cups of coffee…
Or maybe she’s screwed. In more than one sense of the word.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Princess.”
That fast, her goodwill evaporates. She scowls at him.
“I can handle the constant mockery as long as you keep that mouth shut about last night.”
He mimes locking his lips and flops back down onto the bed, sighing.
“Don’t worry, Princess. Your secret’s safe with me.”
It doesn’t hit Clarke until she’s halfway home that she never doubted that promise. Not for a second.
There’s an almost imperceptible shift between them after that. Now that the line between fighting and flirting has been crossed, she’s not so sure where it lies anymore. It’s blurrier, weaving one way and then another until she can no longer differentiate between the two.
His blazing glares make her toes curl. The captivating curl of his lip when he makes eyes at her across the room ignites fury in the pit of her stomach. She can no longer tell whether the way he looms over her desk is meant to be intimidating or intimate.
(She suspects it might be both.)
But the strange tension between them holds, not bending or breaking or giving way to any further indiscretions. At least until the fundraising gala: black tie, art museum, plenty of potential donors and movers and shakers to grease palms with. Clarke doubts she’d be invited if she and Bellamy hadn’t been seeing to all the details of the event for weeks, including the guest list. Nobody had been able to stop them from putting their names on it.
Clarke didn’t realize until she saw him that the nature of the event would mean he’d show up in formal wear. She’s honestly surprised she didn’t fantasize about it earlier. The breadth of his shoulders beneath his jacket, the lines of his suit highlighting the sharp cut of his jaw, the graceful arch of his neck where the hickey she’d given him could probably use some retouching by now--
She snags a drink off a passing waiter's tray and downs half of it in one sip. If he’s here looking like that, she’s going to need help making it through the night.
He seems to have no such issue, shoulders relaxed, hands in pockets as his eyes rake over her from across the room. Clarke knows she looks damn good, and Bellamy appears to agree as he approaches her.
“You clean up alright, Princess.”
“You’re not too bad yourself.” She turns to put her back to the bar, shoulder to shoulder with him as they survey the room. “We did pretty well with this, didn’t we?”
“Who knew we’d make such a good team?”
“Not me, that’s for sure.”
He hums noncommittally, swirling his drink before he sips at it. “You get a chance to wow anyone with your pretentious art talk yet?”
“Biding my time,” she says smoothly, refusing to rise to a squabble in front of so many people. “You get a chance to check out the Egypt exhibit?”
He glances at her, not sure what to make of the question.
“I was planning to go this weekend. That exhibit is supposed to be closed.”
Clarke bites her lip and looks up at him through her lashes. Screw making it through the night. That was a lost cause the moment she laid eyes on him.
“Luckily, they gave the event coordinator a key.” She holds it up for proof. “You interested in a private tour?”
His eyes are so dark they’re nearly black. Still, he hesitates for a moment before wetting his lips.
“After you.”
They make it barely into the exhibit before he’s pressing her up against a smooth marble column, leaning in for a kiss. Clarke stops him with a finger on his lips.
“If you smear lipstick all over my face, I will--”
“Noted.” He averts his course, pressing a delicate kiss to her neck, and when she doesn’t object, traveling down to her collar bones.
“You didn’t even let me finish.”
“Don’t ruin the mood with threats, Princess.”
“Don’t ruin the mood with annoying pet names, asshole.”
He laughs against her skin, his fingers biting into her hips.
“Gee, you sure know how to charm someone.”
Clarke grins. “I’ve never had any complaints.”
They’re both a little less composed, a little more flushed when they make it back to the party, and though they don’t spend much of the rest of the night together, Clarke’s body is on red alert, aware of Bellamy in a way she didn’t know was possible.
He finds her again when it’s over, bow tie hanging loose around his neck, top button undone. The caterers have been paid, the staff debriefed. All that’s left is for Clarke to get some real food, as she was inconspicuously absent through most of the heavy hors d'oeuvres.
“I’m starving,” Bellamy says, echoing Clarke’s thoughts for not the first time. In fact, it happens regularly enough it’s starting to spook her.
“I was thinking about ordering a pizza,” she hears herself say. “Should arrive at my place about the same time I do.” She pauses. “You interested?”
He seems even more hesitant than before her last proposition, and Clarke gets why. Once is a fling. Twice is a compliment. To follow her home for a third hookup is dicey.
“I’m interested,” he says at last, his gaze magnetic. Clarke couldn’t look away if she wanted to. The weight of his words forces her to meet his eyes as she tries to figure out what any of it might mean. Coming up empty, she clears her throat and tosses him her phone.
“You order. I’ll drive.”
They get into a friendly argument on the Uber back to her place-- something about basketball teams? Or movies, maybe. Looking back on the night, Clarke can’t remember. All she knows is that it puts her at ease. That it somehow ends up with her feet in his lap, a pizza box between them, and both of them down to seventy percent of their formal wear-- her hair unpinned, shoes kicked off; his jacket long gone, sleeves rolled up.
Well, it doesn’t end up there. But that’s where they are when the caress of his hand on her ankle becomes more pointed than absentminded. When her belly is full and she’s hungry for something else.
They end up on the floor of her living room, melting indulgently into a blanket as they come down from their post-sex highs.
“I could keep doing this,” Bellamy says into the contented silence. Clarke rolls onto her stomach, where she can face him.
“Booty Call Blake has a nice ring to it,” she agrees. He chuckles softly.
“Seems only fair you get an annoying nickname of your own. Particularly since Princess isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
“I almost combusted when you called me that at work last week,” she confesses. “I keep hearing it in your bedroom voice.”
“I have a bedroom voice?”
“Definitely. I can’t believe I’m the first one to tell you.”
He shrugs, smirking at her. “What can I say? I can’t help but run my mouth around you.”
Clarke rolls her eyes, but there’s a not insignificant portion of her that turns out to be pleased by this admission. “Trust me, I’ve noticed.”
“So, we’re doing this?” He wonders.
Clarke nods, slow. Finding new hookups takes effort, sometimes effort that feels wasted when it leaves her unsatisfied. Hooking up with Bellamy is easy, and it’s guaranteed to scratch all the right itches. It’s probably a terrible idea, but that isn’t enough to discourage her from it. Not yet.
“We’re doing this,” she agrees. For better or for worse.
* * *
Bellamy is as surprised as anyone at the turn his relationship with Clarke takes once they start sleeping together. After the first time, the animosity between them had felt heightened, sexualized. But the more time he spends with Clarke Griffin, the less he hates her. He finds himself on the same side of an argument she’s on more often than not, finds that he wants to tease her more without causing actual offense.
It’s terribly inconvenient for keeping up appearances at work. Miller and Raven are too suspicious by nature to let the shift between them go, even if everyone else on the campaign just seems glad that there’s less shouting than there used to be.
“You know, you’re really not bad at this,” Clarke tells him one day when he hangs up the phone, a new donor secured. How he longs for a day when making constant cold calls won’t be part of his job description.
“What, did you think I just tricked them into giving me the job?”
“No, I mean--” She pauses. “When was the last time you used the script?”
“Uh, my first week maybe?”
Clarke shakes her head, smiling. “You just came up with all that on the spot?”
“I’ve been making the same phone calls every day for a while,” he shrugs, uncomfortable with what he feels is undeserved praise. “I’m bound to get good at it.”
“No, man,” Miller jumps in. “You’re actually way better at this than any of the other interns. How have you never noticed? I’ve been here six months and I still use the script every day. There’s always someone, something that throws me off.”
“Okay, but--”
“Will you learn to take a compliment?” Clarke asks, kicking his chair.
“Especially as rare as they are coming from her,” Miller adds.
“Yeah, don’t waste this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence,” she teases, a now-familiar smirk settling across her features. If they were alone, Bellamy would remind her in what she calls his ‘bedroom voice’ about the compliments she’d given him the night before-- loudly and enthusiastically, he might add-- but since Miller is here, he just rolls his eyes and shifts in his seat.
“Whatever. I’m just hoping if I make myself invaluable here, no one will ask me to touch anything on his social media.”
Miller snorts, “Yeah, no one wants that,” but Clarke is quiet, her eyes thoughtful where they rest on him.
“I meant it, you know,” she tells him later that night, stretching luxuriously as she wilts into his bed. She’s always softer after sex, and Bellamy has started to crave that side of her almost as much as having her body on top of his.
“Meant what?” He asks, keeping his voice down.
Clarke is the first person he’s ever brought home while O was in the house, but that doesn’t mean he wants his sister to know what’s happening. Clarke showed up after Octavia had gone to bed and will leave well before the sun is up. His sister will never be the wiser.
“That you’re really good at what you do,” she murmurs, leaning closer. They aren’t cuddling, are hardly touching at all, but there’s a certain intimacy he can’t deny. “You’re good with people, good at thinking on your feet, good at staying on message and not making promises the Senator doesn’t intend to keep. Some of the stuff you say on the phone is better than some of his speeches, I swear.”
“I think that says more negative things about the speech writers than it says good things about me,” he scoffs.
Clarke purses her lips and reaches around the bed between them until her hand finds his. She tangles their fingers together and squeezes, her eyelids drooping.
“I wish you could see how special you are,” she mumbles.
Bellamy’s throat constricts and he tries to find a response within him. By the time he comes up with anything, her breathing has evened out and she’s asleep, her hand still clasped tightly to his.
He lets himself fall asleep that way too, holding Clarke’s hand and thinking about how dangerous it is that he likes this so much.
It’s always weird waking up without her, but for the first time the next morning he’s able to identify the mixture of disappointment and longing at the empty bed beside him as a new depth of feelings for Clarke, and it throws him.
Her car is already at the campaign office when he gets there, a rare occurrence, and his heart races. She knows him well enough by now she’ll read it on his face in a second. Bellamy is an open book when it comes to Clarke Griffin. He just hopes it doesn’t scare her away. After all, she’s the one who reached for his hand; it’s not impossible to think she might be on the same page he’s on.
She isn’t at the intern tables, nor is she in the breakroom. He’s on his way to check the kitchen when he hears her voice floating down the hall from the deputy chief of staff’s office.
“--trust my judgment, don’t you?”
“Being friends with my son doesn’t qualify you to make staffing recommendations,” Hannah says, amused.
“I’ve grown up around campaigns my entire life,” Clarke reminds her. “I know what it looks like when someone has a knack for this, and also what it looks like when someone is in a job that isn’t right for them. And this internship isn’t right for Bellamy.”
He startles at his name, his heart squeezing so painfully he feels it all over his body. Hadn’t she just been telling him he was good at his job? How special she thought he was? Was she just trying to bullshit her way into his bed?
And when did her opinion start to matter so much to him?
He wants to walk away before he makes himself hear any more, but his hurt roots him to the spot.
“Just check it out,” Clarke adds before Hannah can say anything. “I’m not asking you to take my word for it, I’m just giving you a lead to follow up on. You were saying yourself the other day that the current group is incompetent. This could be the solution.”
Hannah considers for a moment, then says, “I’ll look into it. That’s all I’m promising.”
“Thank you,” Clarke says, genuine warmth in her voice. “That’s all I ask.”
Bellamy forces his feet to carry him away, stumbling back to his desk with shaking fingers and searing rage within him. How stupid had he been to think that he and Clarke might be on the same page? They weren’t even reading the same book. Here he was, starting to actually fall for her, while she was using him to his face and sabotaging his career behind his back.
By the time Clarke emerges from her backstabbing meeting, Bellamy is bent over his call sheet, fuming. He stiffens when he sees her approaching in his peripheral vision, determinedly not looking up, even when she knocks her hip against his desk.
“Hey,” she says, voice as soft as it had been the night before. Nothing like the steel it had while she was torpedoing his professional life. He almost believes it, too. No wonder he never saw it coming.
“What do you want?”
She straightens, taken aback. “I-- Nothing. Just saying good morning, since I didn’t get to earlier.”
Bellamy doesn’t respond, just flips the page on his clipboard with more force than necessary. Clarke doesn’t move, though he can feel her piercing blue gaze attempting to burn a hole in the side of his head.
“Is everything okay?” She hedges, sounding more uncertain than he’s ever heard.
“Peachy,” he says, flat.
Another pause.
“Are we okay?”
Her voice is so small, so worried, something inside of Bellamy snaps. He finally looks up at her, anger and wounded pride turned on her at full force.
“As far as I’m concerned, Princess,” he spits, “we aren’t anything.”
He holds her gaze just long enough to see her breath catch, her eyes widen, and then he looks down again, popping his headphones in his ears, a clear dismissal. Clarke stands there for a few seconds longer before retreating. It ought to feel like victory, but his chest just feels hollow.
If he weren’t suddenly worried for his job, he might even take the day off just to avoid her. Instead, he buckles down and gets to work, determined to prove his worth to this campaign. To make himself so invaluable that his numbers will prove Clarke’s words to be the lies they are.
Every time Hannah passes by his desk all day, she pauses and listens in on his calls. It makes Bellamy’s skin crawl, but he just doubles down on the charm, pouring every ounce of persuasion and charisma into his words as he can manage. Despite his newfound fervor for his work, Miller seems to be able to tell that something is up, and corners him when he takes a break to get some water.
“What’s going on with you today?”
“Nothing,” Bellamy says shortly. “I’m fine.”
Miller raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms over his chest. “Want to try that again?”
But before Bellamy can make another excuse, Raven barrels into the break room, slamming the door behind her. “What gives, asshole?”
“I don’t--” He starts, but Raven has an even lower tolerance for bullshit than Miller does.
“What did you say to Clarke? She’s been brooding all day.”
“Why am I the one getting blamed for this?” He snaps. “She’s the one trying to get me fired. How did I become the bad guy?”
Raven and Miller both drop their crossed arms, shocked.
“She what?” Miller asks, shaking his head. “Hang on--”
“I heard her talking to Hannah this morning, saying this job isn’t right for me and it’s my fault the interns are so incompetent, and that the solution is getting rid of me. So excuse me if I’m not in the best mood today.”
“That doesn’t sound like Clarke,” Raven says, frowning. “Are you sure you heard what you think you heard?”
“It was pretty hard to misinterpret, Raven.”
“Did you ask her about it?” Miller asks. Bellamy opens his mouth to snap at him, but a knock on the break room door has them all falling silent. To Bellamy’s surprise, Hannah pokes her head into the room.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I only have a few minutes before my next meeting. Bellamy, a word?”
He grits his teeth and nods, figuring this is the moment of truth. He won’t go down without a fight, but if Hannah has made up her mind, there’s not much he can do about it. He’ll have to find a new job, and fast.
“Take a seat,” Hannah tells him, closing the door behind them. “This won’t take long.”
I bet it won’t, he thinks, but stays silent.
“It’s been brought to my attention that you have a way with words. As valuable as that is in sourcing donors, we could really use those skills in our speech writing these days. I assume you’ve paid enough attention to know we’re struggling in that department.”
Bellamy’s throat suddenly feels very dry. He wets his lips and nods.
“I’ve noticed it’s been… inconsistent.”
Hannah snorts. “That’s one word for it. The real problem is that we’ve been forgettable lately. Too wordy, too technical, nothing for the average voter to latch onto. I think we could use a fresh perspective. I’d like to have you sit in on the writing sessions on a trial basis. If we like what we see, we’ll look into making it a more permanent position. What do you say?”
Something like I’m a dick, or I hope she forgives me, or I can’t feel the left side of my body because I’m paralyzed with guilt clearly isn’t the kind of thing Hannah is looking for, so Bellamy just swallows and says, “When can I start?”
* * *
When bearing down with her pen almost rips through a third sheet of paper, Clarke throws it down on the desk and pinches the bridge of her nose. She hates that Bellamy’s cold attitude affects her mood so badly, hates that it made her snap at Raven, rip her paperwork, spill her coffee all over her last clean blouse. Hates him and his stupid handsome face and the way he can cut her down with a few well-chosen words.
She doesn’t know what changed since she’d crept out of his bed that morning. Maybe she’d crossed too many lines the night before, and he was reminding her of what they were to each other: nothing.
But even if that was the case, he had no right to be such an ass to her. He could have let her down nicely. Every time Clarke searches her memory for where she might have misstepped, she has to remind herself that she’s not responsible for the way he lashed out. That’s on him, and he’ll have to answer for it… as soon as she can figure out what she wants to say without revealing exactly how deep it hurt to be rejected like that.
She takes a shuddering breath. A few more hours and she can be done for the day. Then she can go home and rage and wallow to her heart’s content.
A scraping sound has her dropping her hand, eyes flying open to find a familiar hand pushing a cup of coffee before her.
“No laxatives, I promise,” he says softly.
It pisses her off enough to keep the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes from falling and she lifts her gaze to glare at him.
“How generous of you.”
His face reddens and he lifts a hand to rake it through those perfectly tousled curls.
“Can we talk? Maybe somewhere more private? I want to apologize. Probably grovel a bit.”
Clarke wants to turn him down, but she did want an explanation. And he looks so nervous.
“Fine.” She stands, grabbing the coffee as an afterthought. “I could use some fresh air anyway.”
She leads him out of the building and across the street into the park, walking in silence until they find a bench in the shade where they can talk without being overheard. She’s screamed every insult in her arsenal at him in that office, but baring her heart is something she doesn’t want overheard.
When she doesn’t say anything, just waits him out with her eyes trained on the paper cup in her hands, he clears his throat.
“Let me start by saying what a colossal jerk I am, and that I’m sorry. I wish I could take back what I said, but I can be a bit of a hothead.”
“A bit?” Clarke scoffs. Bellamy huffs.
“Yeah, yeah. Well-- I heard you in Hannah’s office when I got in this morning, and missed some crucial pieces of-- It kind of sounded like you were trying to get me fired.”
Clarke’s heart clenches and she lets herself look at him for the first time.
“I would never do that to you,” she says, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice. “Is that what you really think of me?”
“Clarke, no.” His hand twitches, as if to grab hers, but he keeps it in his lap. “I think I’m just starting to realize how much you mean to me now. How much I like you and want you in my life. But I’m not really used to things going my way, and I wasn’t sure how you felt about me, so it kind of felt like my fears were coming true.”
“Confirmation bias,” she offers. He snorts.
“Yeah, I guess.”
She’s quiet for a moment, replaying everything through the lens of his imagined betrayal. If Bellamy had just talked to her, he might have saved both of them a few hours of hurt. Then again, their dynamic is founded on taking cheap shots at each other. Clarke has, in her life, said and done things out of hurt that she would take back if she could. If either of them had been brave enough to broach a conversation about feelings before that morning, maybe all of this might have been avoided.
No time like the present to start that conversation.
“You are kind of a cynic,” she says, smiling despite herself. “You still should have talked to me, though. Instead of assuming I was trying to hurt you and hurting me back.”
“You mean this whole thing could have been avoided if I’d just communicated with you better? What a novel concept.” He smiles back at her, tentative, but then his face sobers again. “I am sorry, though. You and I-- what we have-- it’s not nothing. Or at least, I don’t want it to be.”
“I don’t either,” she says, reaching for his hand and lacing his fingers between hers. “And it’s not nothing to me.”
He squeezes her hand, warm and strong and sure.
“Then maybe you’d let me take you out to dinner tonight? I got this new job I want to celebrate, and I know I have you to thank.”
“Like a date? Hmm, I don’t know,” she teases. “I have my reputation to think about. Everyone on the campaign will think I’m going soft--”
Laughing, he leans in and kisses her, swift.
“That change your mind at all?”
She grins. “Definitely getting closer. But I could use a little more convincing.”
He shakes his head, but he’s smiling as he leans in again.
“Such a princess.”
“You knew what you were getting into.”
She can’t see his smirk but she feels it, slow and lopsided against her lips. “I do now.”
* * *
“I thought the screaming marches were gonna get stop once you guys finally got your shit sorted out,” Miller says when Bellamy flops back in his chair, breathless from yelling and smiling wide.
“Why stop when we’re having so much fun?” Clarke asks, leaning her hip against Bellamy’s desk and smirking at Miller. “Besides, we still have an election to win. I can’t let Bellamy get a big head just because he’s got a fancier job than we have now. He could go mad with power.”
“I appreciate your confidence in me,” he deadpans. “Really. Makes me feel so loved.”
Clarke turns her smirk on him and he can’t battle his smile back any longer.
“What can I say?” She shrugs, pushing off the desk and turning to head back to her designated area. Bellamy unabashedly watches her go, and when she turns over one shoulder to finish her thought, she catches his stare and grins.
“When you know, you know.”