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This is probably the largest gathering of people she has ever seen, including her high school piano recital and her college graduation where she was sporting a rather killer hangover for drinking the night before because of one man who said it would just be a celebratory beer – oh, speaking of said man, said man is now walking up to her with a big goofy grin on his rather handsome face, and with a bottle of water in his hand.
He looks so good in a tuxedo and with his hair disheveled like that, she gets the feeling she’ll be leaving the gala without a best friend in tow tonight.
“Got your water bottle, princess,” he jeers, hip checking her as she slinks her arm around his and takes the bottle from him.
She laughs and takes a hearty sip, giving him a look that says ‘this is proof that you’re a sucker for me’. On how she gets that across by just one look is borne from the nearly two decades that they have been best friends. And the look that he sends her back, one that clearly says ‘I just took pity on you’, is also borne of the same reason.
They laugh at this ridiculously weird connection together before they are interrupted by the flashing of lights. She was momentarily blinded, but when she looks up at him, she couldn’t help but notice the hardness that has taken place behind the cordiality in his eyes. He spares her a brief smile before focusing back to the cameras – her, not missing the way his arm tightens around hers.
“Bellamy! Here!”
“Blake!”
“This way, Bellamy!”
“Here, please!”
She doesn’t know what to do – when your best friend is an A-list actor and he invites you to one of his movie’s opening gala, and you pick your best dress, and make your hair nice even for the night, and you get bombarded by flashing lights, you get frozen in place because you are so out of place.
She feels the tendrils of anxiety wrap around her heart with each passing second she stands there. She’s not smiling, she couldn’t, but she’s not frowning either. She’s willing to bet she looks like a lost little girl in the mall, estranged from her parents. No doubt, that’s how she feels right now after all.
“Hey, Clarke,” she hears him say in a whisper. It is then that she looks up and sees him looking down at her with a soft gaze. “We got this.”
She opens her mouth to speak, but he smiles this small smile that is her favorite and the tension leaves her for a bit. She feels the corners of her lips upturn at the relief that the smile gives her. “We got this,” she repeats under her breath as they start to walk towards the red carpet.
Despite the tension leaving her to take a breather, she is now enslaved by pure shock at the number of people behind the dividing bars. Cameras, interviewers, reporters – she feels her palms sweat as they near the tail of the red carpet. She has only ever seen this on TV and on the internet, but never up close. What she saw on her screen was a mess – this one feels like total chaos.
“Bellamy,” she says quietly, tugging at his arm. “I don’t think I got this.”
He stops and extracts his arm from her grip, and then faces her, her favorite smile plastered on his lips. He ducks his head to meet her eye and lock their gazes. “Clarke,” he replies. “Listen to me. Just stick close, and you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t even know why I’m here,” she hisses, her eyes widening and her voice getting higher in pitch at her panic. “You have a lot of celebrity-friends who know a lot more about this than me – why –
“Clarke, shut up,” he deadpans. “I brought you here because you’re beautiful and I want the world to see that.”
She blinks at him. Is this really the time to joke around? She knows this – she knows him, and this, complimenting her, is him trying to make her feel better. Years and years of close friendship and he hasn’t learned that this only makes her more nervous, especially with him looking at her like she’s a big chunk of his world. (It’s working, damn him. She’s nervous and brave at the same time.)
“Now come on,” he urges as he lifts her hand and tucks it against the crook of his elbow. “I can’t do this without you, you know that.”
She nods and tries to smile.
They make it five paces forward when he has to let go of her hand to sign a poster from a young fan – and another – and another. Until she’s standing just a step away from the hems of the blood red carpet as Bellamy confidently strides towards the center. He, of course, notices right away, and turns towards her – eyes big and imploring and beckoning.
And then he smiles this big goofy smile and gestures with his hand. “Come on, Clarke!” he shouts over the crowd’s noise. She takes a hesitant step forward, and at his urging, takes the last few steps to reach him. She doesn’t notice how he pulls her close with an arm around her back when he smiles down at her like that, because he has stars in his eyes brighter than the flash of the cameras that she just aches to draw.
(Not that she hasn’t yet. She has. Numerous times before.)
“Who is she?”
“Who’s the girl, Bellamy?”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
She is startled by the myriad of questions thrown at them, the only thing anchoring her to the present is the warmth of his hand on her hip, seeping through the fabric of her dress.
“She’s my best friend,” he tells the crowd with a patronizing nod. “Her name’s Clarke.”
And then more questions, but all she hears is him whispering in her ear to ignore them all and just relax.
Surprisingly, time flew by so fast she only had the chance to catch her breath when they’re both in his chauffeured car sitting in the backseat. He’s staring out the window and at the moving lights with a faraway look and a content, barely there grin on his face. And it might be the cocktails she’s consumed, but the play of lights on his face makes him look melancholy – and Bellamy Blake does brooding so well she has to make him stop or else.
She slips her fingers around the hand he has planted on the leather of the space between them, her movement causing him to look at her with the same expression. “Hey, what’s on your mind?” she asks.
He shakes his head and his face grows impossibly softer when he meets her eyes. “It’s just… I really enjoyed this night.”
“I did, too,” she admits, giving him an assuring grin. “You have a lot of fans.”
He laughs, his head thrown back, open, and jovial. She loves this laugh. “Yeah, they’re amazing… you, too.”
She watches as his face turns serious, and she might just get whiplash from the speed of transition. But here he is, looking directly into her soul with those incredibly expressive eyes.
“T-thanks,” she stutters, her eyelids fluttering. He leans in closer – and oh God, she doesn’t know she needed the proximity until now when his breath is fanning across her cheeks. “You were amazing, too, in – in the movie and in real life –
“Clarke.”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
And then he leans forward until their lips meet – her eyes close, and her breathing halts. It’s barely a press, a feather light touch that manages to send a fluttering in her chest and stomach. And then she’s pressing further, catching his bottom lip in a light nip of her teeth. The groan he makes might just be her most favorite sound right now.
Soon, his tongue is slipping past her lips, and is meeting with hers, and her air is being stolen away rapidly, with his palms on her cheeks, and his head tilting so that he can kiss her deeper. She pulls away and gulps large breaths of air as she buries her face into the crook of his neck. She breathes him in, the perfume she chose for him because it reminds her of that trip they took to a Canadian forest and the way he twisted flowers into her hair and called her a ‘proper princess’.
“I’ve been meaning to do that for a long time now,” he murmurs against her hair, his breath tickling her skin.
“Since when?”
“Nearly twenty years ago,” he mutters.
She has a million and one questions running around her mind right now, but she’s also a bit intoxicated both by his kiss and a couple glasses of sugary liquor, so she says, “Okay”, and latches her lips on his again, this time with more heat than she’s allowed herself a while ago.
He grins against her lips, and then pulls away just enough to let him speak. “Okay?”
“Okay, you can take me out on a date,” she says in a rush, her eyes never letting go of his mouth, swollen by their kisses. “Okay, you can kiss me. Okay, I like you, too. Questions?”
He shakes his head with another laugh and then leans in again.