Chapter Text
December 31, 2011
Bellamy Blake first sees Clarke Griffin perform when he is 22. He’s sitting on the hardwood of a fourth-floor venue where, in lieu of a stage, a speaker cord marks the barrier between the audience and the performer. She is 17, goes by Griffin, and everything about her — except that she is performing at a dumpy show coordinated by John Murphy — tells of an easy life.
Her voice first cuts through Bellamy’s animosity, deep with sadness and a powerful softness. And then he hears her lyrics. Bellamy doesn’t feel his world changing, but their paths merge together to the tune of her chords.
Murphy introduces them and Bellamy is acts like a jerk, never sure how to speak to someone with that air of privilege about them, but Clarke throws every jibe back at him. At midnight, a host of the drunk and tipsy shouts a countdown, heralding in the new year, but Bellamy and Clarke have found a room with a piano, and the rest of the world has disappeared. Touching Down is recorded for the first time on Clarke’s iPhone 4 (Bellamy’s Cosmos wouldn’t have done the job). In the next months, the song will become something neither of them could possibly imagine — but between them, in that room, it’s mutual healing. They build a relationship on a piano bench as one year ends and another begins with no idea what is coming for them, but if either had been asked who they would want by their side in the face of sudden global fame, they would have named each other even then.
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all of the sudden she was on my mind
i wasn't ready for her kind
she was taking her time
"If I Could Have Her Tonight," Neil Young