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He starts it, the second time.
It's the first day of rest he's had after the flurry negotiations with not just the mountain men but the adults from the Ark. Raven finds him in her tent, perched at the edge of her bed, his right leg bouncing restlessly.
"How's your back?"
"It's fine," she says, lying. He knows not because he can read her, but because Jasper had asked him for help with putting up this very tent the day before. "What're you doing in here?"
"What do you think?"
She stares at him for a long moment, and he's not quite sure why she doesn't just throw his smarmy ass out. But she doesn't.
"I think you're looking to burn off energy." Raven looks away, folding her arms into herself. "But you're in the wrong place. One of your other girls can probably fuck you harder than I can."
"I don't care." Her tent is small enough that he can lean over and pull her to him. He forgets how small she is when they're not pressed up against each other; it doesn't really suit her, being small, but she makes up for it with snark and barbs and the largest brain in the entire camp.
Raven doesn't pull away. Her fingers trace the line where his jacket touches his neck, slowly, like she's deciding whether to invest her time in a new project. Bellamy sits still, lets her make the first move, lets her pull off his jacket, lets her decide.
She's right, there are plenty of other girls he could have approached, but he's not looking for a hard fucking. He's looking for a difficult one.
The last time - the first time - it'd been hard. Rough. He remembers her face as she came - tense and expectant and a little crestfallen.
He slips his fingers inside of her, moving quick and slow, wanting to see her actually come apart around him - but she /touches/ him and Raven is good with her hands in more ways than one. He's the one coming apart under her, he thinks, and Bellamy swears one day, he'll make her come with his tongue, shuddering around his shoulders. But not today, not when she seems entirely focused on his climax, which is strange but not entirely unwelcome.
He realises why after they've both come, after they've dressed, her quickly and him a little less quick. Raven turns to face him, her arms folded again.
"So are we even?"
He wants to touch her, wants to reach out and lift her shirt but she would probably smack his hand away, so Bellamy just looks at where he knows the bullet wound is. Raven follows his gaze.
"We were even before," he says quietly, and he leaves.
The third time, he gets his wish to taste her. She put too much stress on her back and the wound's a little torn, so Clarke's mother has her in bedrest, which frustrates her to no end. Nobody dares to go near her tent, so of course he does, and she almost bites his head off.
She's midway through an insult when he leans down and plants a quick kiss on her lips. Barely a peck. Raven doesn't miss a beat, finishes her sentence and frowns at him.
"You're too bored, aren't you?"
"Who's the one who's bored? I'm just," he pauses, pulling his shirt off, "burning off your energy."
It's quite gratifying to realise that she actually likes what she sees, as her eyes travel down his torso. She's never seemed to pay it much attention before.
He eases his movements around her back, which makes her overcompensate with biting and scratching. Until he pins her down into the bed, stilling her, and she glares up at him but she can't move without straining her back.
"You think you're in charge?"
He doesn't say anything, just moves downwards in between her legs, keeping their gazes locked for as long as possible until he bends his head and licks into her. This time, without distractions apart from her fingers tugging faintly at his hair, Bellamy's able to focus on her. He can feel her muscles tense and flex, her body arch, her breath hitch.
She comes with them like that, and when he braces himself upwards, a hand on each thigh, she's lying back, breathing hard but slow. He feels - just a little - proud and a lot satisfied as he sits up.
Raven peers up at him, pulls herself upright and when she reaches for his pants he stops her, shrugging.
"You didn't -"
"It's fine."
"Wasn't the point of this to burn off energy?"
"Yours, not mine. Gotta protect everyone else from that temper," he smirks, and Raven hurls his shirt at him. "I owe you a favour anyway, right?"
"Not the favour I would have asked for," she mutters, buttoning up her pants. "But I guess - it wasn't that bad."
He's not mistaken. Bellamy's smirk widens, and it's good Raven has nothing else to throw at him. So she uses words.
"Don't get any ideas, shooter. It's just because the sex is good."
They talk like they have a scorecard, but truth is Bellamy stops keeping track after that. Who starts it, whose tent it is - it all blurs into many nights, sometimes in a row, of what he would call getting to know Raven. They spend enough time together in the daytime, being perfectly and painfully professional - if survival counts as a profession - but it's only at night that he pieces together what he knows of her and it starts to form some kind of picture.
Thrillseeking, but not foolhardy. Passionate but focused in her passion. Full-throated in her laughter and her anger; he secretly likes it when either is directed at him. Beautiful. Not the way he imagined beauty to be as a kid, not doe eyes and cherub cheeks, but the way he notices beauty now, in the trees and the flowers and the mountains.
By the time he realises that the picture isn't something she would have wanted him to have, or something he would have chosen to have, it's too late.
"I think we should stop this," she says one night, just as she's crawling out of his bed. Bellamy's not surprised. She started it, so, she gets to end it.
"Can I ask why?"
"You can ask. You might not like the answer," she says wryly. He waits for her to make some jibe about his performance, but she stays quiet.
Raven leans over and kisses him, softer and sweeter than any of their kisses have ever been, and Bellamy swears he feels his cock getting harder because somewhere deep inside he probably has a romance kink.
When she pulls away, he finds it harder to breathe.
"I care too much about you now," she says, already beginning to dress. "You're - and I can't believe it either, janitor - a friend, now. A good friend."
"And that's a problem how?" Her hands stop, hovering over her underwear. Bellamy takes the opportunity to grab them so she can't put on any more clothes and run out on him. Because she probably will.
"Bellamy. That's not who we are." She looks down at her hands in his, turning them over, but she doesn't yank them away.
"If who we are is important to one another, and the sex is good," he pauses, watching her surprisingly small hands curl up in his. "Solve the equation, genius."
"Bellamy." It's cross between a warning and a question. He responds to both by kissing her; he's not quite sure where he's going, or what he wants, but he knows she tastes sweet and she feels good, under his palms, under his body, over his body.
Maybe it's sleeping with someone he would trust - has trusted - with his life. Maybe Raven is just unbelievably hot. Maybe, he thinks as he cups her chin to kiss her more deeply, maybe he just likes her. A lot.
From the way she kisses back, making her way back on top of him, maybe she likes him too. If only a little bit.
"Just because I kissed you doesn't mean I like you." If he was the type, his heart would probably take a bruising from that, but Bellamy smiles despite himself. Raven's more action than words, anyway.
"Would it help if I gave you flowers?"
"No," she snorts, shifting so she's lying beside him, settled onto his arm that's probably going to fall asleep during the night, but he's not complaining. Raven looks up at the dusty canvas of his tent, her breathing steady.
"It might if it were bullets."
Coda
"Raven?"
She looks up from her latest project. Finn looks... worried.
"We set aside some things for you yesterday - but I don't know how, someone got into the store and now it's a little messy."
She walks over to see what he's talking about, and she bites back a laugh. Strewn all over the room in a decidedly unaesthetic manner are large, orange flowers. The ones she first saw on Earth.