Work Text:
***
November 1, 2021 - 0 words
Bellamy knew that signing in for NaNoWriMo—short for National Novel Writing Month—was a bad idea.
First, he isn’t talented enough. The only thing he wrote so far is an uncompleted fantasy series that he started when he was seventeen years old and two dozen anonymous fanfictions that some other anonymous people seem to like but that he would never, ever sign with his real name.
(It’s written porn, guys. Come on.)
Second, he doesn’t have the time. He just bought the bar he bartended for the last five years and there’s a ton of shit to do here. The restroom needs a freshen up, the air-conditioning needs to be checked. He’s almost out of beer glasses which—come on, it’s a damn bar, people drink beers here.
Third, he isn’t ready. He’s not obsessed with NaNoWriMo per se but from what he researched on their website, read on forums, looked for on Twitter, and asked for on the three different writing Discord servers he’s in, people aren’t signing in for this kind of thing unprepared. They thought about the story they want to tell. They worked an outline, made moodboards for their characters, pictured the scenery, thought their plot through and through. They have a plan. Bellamy doesn’t. The only thing he has is a bad story written by a teenage boy fan of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. From what he painfully reread last week, it’s barely a draft.
But what Bellamy has too is a little sister ready to go to any length to please him after their big fallout six years ago and their reunion during the last summer. One hell of a stubborn sister who convinced him that it was worth a shot. That he has nothing to lose. That instead of brooding about the story he never had the chance, the time, and the opportunity to write, maybe he could consider actually writing it.
So Bellamy threw his draft in the trash (literally, because his teenage version wrote everything the old-fashioned way with pen and paper) and there he is, November 1, 2021, facing the blank page of his Google doc.
Sorry, not on November 1, 2021, but now officially on November 2, 2021, because it’s past midnight.
For the record, his word count is still at zero.
***
395 words
“Did you know that the average writing speed is forty words per minute?”
Murphy rolls his eyes. Bellamy doesn’t look at him right now, too focused on his computer screen and what he’s reading on the Internet but he knows that Murphy is rolling his eyes at him. Murphy is always rolling his eyes at him anyway.
“It’s crazy. That means in order to write 50,000 words, I have to write for…” He tries to do the math in his head, but Raven is faster than him.
“Nineteen hours. Give or take.”
“And that only works if you’re actually average,” adds Murphy, sipping on his beer next to Raven. “I saw you typing, man. Trust me when I say you’re not.”
The next thing Bellamy does is take an online test to check his writing pace. The thing he does immediately after is to regret having taken this test.
“That’s forty-two hours for you,” corrects Raven, eyeing his score, perfect eyebrow crooked in skepticism.
Bellamy sighs. No, he’s more whining than sighing if he’s completely honest, taking his head in his hands and wondering for the hundredth time in three days why he even decided to do this.
“How the hell am I supposed to do this? Even if I write every day that means—”
“An hour and fifteen minutes of writing each day,” finishes Raven for him again. “Supposing you already started, of course.”
He didn’t. He tried but gave up after two hours of painfully rewriting his prologue, getting distracted by Candy Crush and Morpheus, the cat Octavia adopted for him and who loves to put his little paws on his keyboard when Bellamy is using it.
“Maybe you should stop overthinking about the numbers and just, I don’t know, write the damn thing?” suggests Murphy in a tone that makes Bellamy want to punch him in the face.
“So what you’re saying is that in order to write, I should just sit and write?”
“I don’t know, Bellamy. Do it the way you want. Lying on your couch or standing behind the bar, I don’t care. Just stop complaining about it.”
And for the first time in his life and the ten years he has known him, Bellamy seriously thinks about following John Murphy’s advice.
***
777 words
There is some twisted irony in the fact that it’s the man Bellamy urges to punch in the face who suggests that, to keep himself in line, he ought to hire someone who punches him in the face if he doesn’t write the damn 1667 words a day.
“Where am I going to find someone who will actually do that?” Bellamy laughs because seriously? Where? Can he pay someone to punch him? Is that even legal?
“On Craigslist, of course. Once, I hired someone there to sort through the entire inventory of the bar where I worked while I was giving a concert in another city.”
“Craigslist? Really?” But then, Bellamy realizes what Murphy just told him. “Wait, is that why the storage was so well sorted that one time?”
“That is not the point, alright? We’re talking about you here. You’re desperate, right? How many words did you write again?”
Uh, now Murphy’s listening.
“Little less than a thousand.” It’s not totally a lie. 777 is close to 1000 from a certain point of view.
“In ten days? Man, how are you so slow? That’s only a hundred words a day.”
“I know, okay. That’s why I’m ranting. I’m sitting there, no distraction, TVs off, just my doc open, and nothing is happening. Monty even made me download that app where a tree dies if you check your phone to do something on it. It cost me two dollars! I mean, come on. You know how I feel about fee-based apps.”
“I’m telling you. Craigslist, Blake.”
“Yeah, no thank you. I like my face not being punched by a stranger.”
“If it’s only the stranger thing that bothers you, I can handle it. I’ll even give you a friend discount—”
“Shut up, Murphy. I’ll be just fine on my own.”
***
1148 words
Since you’re too much as a coward to do this yourself,
I made the Craigslist ad.
That’s what Murphy’s text says and Bellamy’s eyes nearly pop up from his head.
You did what?
They'll be at the bar Sunday. I told them to punch
you in the face if you hadn’t written 35,000 words by then.
He calls him right away and doesn’t leave him the time to say “hi”.
“35,000 words? Are you crazy?”
“You’re the one who told time and time again that you were supposed to write 1667 words a day. Sunday will be the 21st of November. I just did the math.”
“Murphy,” Bellamy warns, dangerous, a headache starting to pound its way behind his closed eyelids.
“Okay, Raven did the math but my point still stands.”
“It’s Tuesday. How can you expect me to write 34,000 words in six days?”
“By writing 6000 thousand words a day, I guess? I don’t know, Raven is the smart one in this relationship. Anyway, I gotta go. Good luck.”
Murphy hangs up and the only reason Bellamy doesn’t throw his phone across the room is because he needs it to google “how to improve my writing speed quickly” and figure out how to avoid being punched in the face next Sunday.
***
10,361 words
Bellamy would prefer to be hung than to admit it, but Murphy’s idea works. The proof is the proud 10,361 words that he managed to write in two days for his story named “Insert cool title here”. Yeah, he’s never been good with titles anyway.
The point is, he’s nailing this. And yes, the bar is a mess as much as his kitchen table. Yes, he chose writing instead of hitting the gym with Miller like they do every Wednesday for the last ten years. Yes, he divided his hours of sleep by two because he can’t help but work his plot in his head in bed. But he did it. He proved himself he was capable of writing more than a hundred words a day for himself.
It’s not huge. It’s not as great as finishing an entire novel or being a writer role model. It’s not scoring the exact 1667 words a day while finding the time to be aesthetic on Instagram or funny on TikTok. But Bellamy doesn’t care. He doesn’t care because it’s been twelve years since he has written an original story with characters who are only his, and he forgot how stimulating it was.
If nothing, this whole experience helped to remind him of that.
Now the only thing he has to do to reach the 35,000 count before Sunday ends is to keep doing that for the next 96 hours.
***
31,003 words
A blond girl is sitting at the bar, watching him.
At first, Bellamy doesn’t notice that she’s watching him because he’s too focused on checking her out. It’s not his fault, okay. She’s cute, hot even. And he hasn’t gotten laid since he bought the bar and that was months ago. See, he’s not lying when he says he was busy. He couldn’t even fuck, let alone write.
So there’s a hot blond girl watching him and now Bellamy’s all flustered and awkward and it definitely doesn’t help with the 4000 words he still has to write in the next six hours. Murphy didn’t give him a time, but he guesses that betting on midnight is a fair thing to do.
It’s 6. p.m. right now and he won’t start to count words per minute and average writing speed because Bellamy figured out in the last days that it’s stressing him more than helping him but he thinks he can do this. Well, he thinks he could do this, if a blond, hot girl wasn’t watching him, sitting at the end of the bar.
It takes him ten more minutes to break and approach her.
“Hey, can I get you anything?”
She smiles at him. She has a beautiful smile that makes her blue eyes sparkle in the dim light. She checks the time of the watch on her wrist. It’s a big watch, old and worn-out, too large for her, and Bellamy wonders what’s the story behind it. He writes as a hobby, he’ll always be wondering what’s the story behind things.
“A coffee would be nice,” she answers. Her voice is beautiful too. Low and hoarse.
“Can I get your name?” he asks and she frowns.
“Why? Is it Starbucks? Are you going to write it on a cup or something?”
“No, I guess I just wanted to know your name.”
See, his game is just fine. Suck it, Octavia.
“Oh.” Her smile is wider now, dazzling him a little. “I’m Clarke.”
“Great. A coffee, coming right up for you, Clarke.”
He likes the way her name shapes his lips a little too much for his own good and for the 4000 words he still has to write if he wants to avoid a black eye tonight.
***
31,489 words
This is going terribly. Between the stress of someone who might come to punch him in the face in four hours if he doesn’t write his 35,000 words, and Clarke distracting him, Bellamy is useless tonight.
“What are you drawing?” he asks Clarke, who is mysteriously shading something in a black-leathered sketchbook.
They’ve been facing each other for two hours or so. Lincoln is handling the patrons tonight, Bellamy is just here in case he needs any help so he and Clarke can work in silence at their own things, chatting from time to time. It feels nice.
“I’ll answer if you tell me what you’re writing,” she answers back, nodding to his laptop.
Usually, when people ask him this, he never tells the truth. It’s not like he doesn’t have dozens of ideas he’d want to write in the back of his mind anyway.
To Octavia, he answers he’s writing about a warrior trapped in a bunker under the ground for six years, forced to eat her own people to survive, and having to live with her guilt when they finally come out.
To Murphy, he tells the story of a morally gray survivor, ready to do anything as long as that means he gets to live, and how this cockroach throws all his principles through the window the second he falls in love.
To Raven, he says that he plans to write about an IA in a mission to bring every human spirit in a program called “The City of Light” so they can live there forever without any pain or heartache to the cost of their most precious memories.
Bellamy has no idea where the need to tell Clarke the truth comes from. He scratches his throat, choosing one answer close enough to the truth, one he never told anyone before.
“I used to write fanfiction but I’m trying something different now.”
Her reaction is everything he hoped to see one day when tempted to admit he writes for fans.
“Really? Which fandom?”
“Mostly Star Wars. Reylo to be precise. But I tried my chance with TV shows too throughout the years.”
“That’s awesome. I read a couple of fics after watching TROS. I couldn’t just accept that finale, I think. On which platform are you posting? Maybe I stumbled on one of yours?”
She didn’t, Clarke realizes when he gives her his username—@augustus0504, because of course—but she’s about to change this for sure. She unlocks her phone and logs on to the website, searching him, and then, she just starts to read. Like this. Right in front of him.
He can’t do anything but stare. She chooses his most liked fiction, the one that reached 657 kudos without him understanding why. It’s short and spicy, and also just pure shameless smut. Is she really going to read this right here? In public?
And then, he remembers that he wrote this on his phone on an airplane so he gently asks his brain to shut up.
“Are you going to watch me read? I thought you had some words to write.”
He startles and focuses on his screen with no idea of where he stopped in the story and the sentence he wanted to write in the first place.
***
32,015 words
Tell the guy you hired to punch me to back off.
I’m never gonna reach the word count you wanted.
No. Wait why? I thought you were in
the right direction?
Because 1/35000 words are a huge number of
words to write in six days. And 2/I met this girl,
she’s awesome
A girl? What? Are you saying you’re too
busy flirting to write?
Stop making excuses, Bellamy. Just
write the fucking words
***
32,989 words
Bellamy manages to write almost 1000 words in the last hour and honestly, it’s a freaking miracle. He isn’t sure what he wrote makes any sense but that’s a question for the future him.
“So… That was something,” she says, finishing her second fic in a row and he tries not to wonder if the smut she just read turned her on, if she liked that, if she’s into him, if she’s—
“Use your words, Clarke. It’s written porn,” he manages to utter.
She chuckles. “It is but honestly, there’s something else there too. I really like the way you portrayed the characters and included canon elements in the modern universe. And you have a way to write about sex that doesn’t make it feel…” she trails, trying to find the right words.
“Dirty?” he suggests and she smiles.
“Nope. This is definitely dirty. But what I mean is that your take on sex isn’t the usual point of view of the almighty man talking about women and about how they want to possess them. It’s refreshing.”
“Most of my readers think I’m a woman, actually.”
“For good reason, haha. You thought this through and it shows. You’re talented.”
And also, maybe he has a thing for praising that he should work on in his next fic. When NaNoWriMo will be over, and he’ll have written the two fics he promised to write for the different Christmas exchanges he’s part of. So, someday in 2022, probably.
“Thanks, that means a lot.”
It’s something he always says to the people kind enough to leave him comments, and he means it but hearing it in person… It’s different.
“You’re brave, though, writing for this kind of fandom.”
He snorts. “Don’t tell me. I don’t even keep count of all the times people tried to cancel me, or of how many harsh comments I received because I didn’t update fast enough or because the story wasn’t going in the direction they wanted. And did I mention the death threats I received for my life the day I started to suggest that the major male character might be bisexual? Because that was fun.”
“That sounds like every fandom to me.”
“You’re right. I guess most people are just shit in general and the fandom world is hopeless.”
“Maybe not all fandoms. The ’Anne with an E’ one looks harmless.”
A laugh escapes him that makes her smile wider. “Yeah, I won’t write those kinds of stories for them, though.”
“Definitely not.”
They’re silent for a minute. Her, pocketing her phone and sipping on her rum and coke. Him, trying to avert his eyes from her to go back to his computer. But it seems hopeless too. Because Clarke scratches her throat and says, tentative:
“Since you’ve shown me a big part of your world, maybe I can show you mine?”
She nods towards her sketchbook.
“I would be honored.” He means every word of it. She’s so interesting, this woman who showed up at his bar at the worst evening possible. He wants to say screw it and close his laptop to just talk to her and learn more about her. Getting a black eye for this would almost be worth it.
“Okay. But don’t laugh, okay?”
Bellamy doesn’t laugh. In fact, he doesn’t speak, or breathe, or even blink while Clarke goes through the pages of her notebook. While she talks about the portraits of people she knew, loved, and lost. While she shows him the drawings she did from strangers in the metro. While she shows him the worlds that live entirely in her head, badass princesses, tortured knight, apocalypses, and other planets he only pictures when he’s trying to write.
There’s smut here too, in a way.
She blushes when Bellamy turns a page and his eyes fall on the outline of a perfect round ass. Exactly the kind he likes, curvy and full.
“Oh, maybe we should stop there,” she mumbles, laying her hand on his before he can turn another page.
“Why? You enjoyed my written porn, I want to see your explicit drawings.”
She hesitates for a second, checks the time on her watch, and then: “Suit yourself.”
And God, if he does. With every page, the drawings turn hotter and hotter. Butts, yes but also breasts, and hips, and lips. But there are hands too, and tongues meeting, and bodies collapsing and suddenly, he doesn’t just want to write. He needs to write.
He realizes he’s been speechless for too long when Clarke asks, unsure:
“What are you thinking?”
His voice is hoarse when he answers. “You… They’re beautiful. I’m—”
“Oh, to make a writer lose his words. I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended.”
“Definitely flattered. Your talent is unbelievable, you just struck me speechless.”
The way her cheeks redden is the cutest and hottest thing Bellamy has ever seen. Including the pornographic art he just watched.
But then, he’s turning another page, and—There are hands on the left that he recognizes as his own, long and thick fingers on a keyboard. And on the right, the beginning of an outline that looks like his face if he can make out his jaw correctly.
“Is that—Is that me?”
Clarke looks like she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
“Yeah, I hope that’s okay with you. I was bored and you have a very interesting face.”
“Interesting, you say? What about my hands, are they interesting, too?”
She sighs, meeting his eyes when she finally admits: “You’re hot, okay. I like to draw beautiful, complex things.”
“So I’m not only hot, I’m beautiful and complex too.”
“Please stop, your ego is ruining the whole thing,” she says, waving her hand towards him, and he laughs.
“Right, sorry. And thank you, I’ll take the compliment.”
“And I’ll take your compliments about my art too,” she answers, her cheeks still red but smiling nonetheless.
He pretends to go back to his Google doc but really, nothing exists here but Clarke anymore.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re beautiful and complex too.”
***
33,345 words
Bellamy is slowly giving up and for good reason. He can’t be realistic and believe he’ll write 1655 words in 35 minutes. He knows his limits and they are far away from 55 words per minute, even on his good days. And not with the woman who seems to come right from his dreams right in front of him. Speaking off—
“Can I ask why you’re still here?”
Her presence next to him feels so natural, their exchanges so effortless, the silence they share is so comfortable that he didn’t wonder before now how she’s still here at almost midnight.
“Sick of me already?”
“No,” he’s too quick to answer. “It’s just, you came here at six, it’s a long time to spend in a bar.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “Better here than in a coffee shop closing at 7. p.m. and forcing me to go back home to my crazy roommate. Besides, I have a job to finish.”
“Me too,” he sighs. “But honestly, I don’t think I’ll make it. Maybe signing up to this was truly a bad idea after all. Maybe I should just stick to fanfiction and fancy cocktails menus.”
He means it as a joke but it comes out serious and sad. Clarke catches on it immediately and Bellamy wonders how they just met six hours ago.
“Don’t say that. I read your stories, they’re great. And your writing is awesome. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with sticking with fandom creations.”
“I know, I know. It’s just—At first, it was something fun to try as an exercise, you know? I didn’t write for years and all at once, I wanted to explore these characters and universes and make them mine, in a way?”
“I understand. Books, shows, movies… They got me through some very dark times. Without art, I don’t think I’d be here right now having a normal conversation with you. I don’t even know where I’d be, to be honest.”
Bellamy feels understood in a way he never was offline. People on the Internet, on Twitter, within the fandom he’s part of, they understand because they’re like him. But he never related like this with someone real before.
“Yes, exactly. I held onto this hobby because I needed it during a hard part of my life. And then, I think I became good at it? I mean, people seem like they love my stuff, you know? So I got more invested and the funny exercise turned into something more. It got me to explore relationships, sexuality, mental and physical health in a way I never did before. It allowed me to reach and touch so many people out there who needed this as much as I did.”
Clarke nods and there’s a light in her eyes that encourages him to keep going.
“But now, I feel like this is the only thing I’m good at, you know? I know these characters and their worlds so much… I relate to them so much. They’re like this huge part of me now. I don’t know if I’m capable of writing something of my own.
Her hand is warm on his own. Her fingers find their natural place between his when she tightens her hold on him.
“That’s okay, Bellamy. It’s okay to feel that way.”
Her words feel like a balm covering the scars left by the insecurities he didn’t know he had, comforting him, healing him.
“The fact that you want to do it, though— The fact that you’re trying and that you’re doing it for you, that’s what matters.”
He nods, gazing into her blue eyes and finding answers to questions he never asked before. They keep looking at each other for a few minutes until Clarke’s watch rings on her wrist. She takes her hand back to check it once more, breaking the moment.
Midnight.
She runs a hand through her blond hair and behind her neck, an embarrassed smile on her lips, and asks: “So, uh—how many words did you write exactly?”
It’s only then that Bellamy understands. He huffs, feeling somehow flustered, ashamed, and impressed.
“You’re the guy Murphy hired on Craigslist to punch me in the face, don’t you?”
“To be fair, I think he never said I was a guy. I’d say it’s pretty sexist of you if I didn’t spend the last six hours with you. Don’t you think a girl can throw a punch or something?”
“I guess I’m about to find out because I didn’t write 35,000 words but 33,345.”
“Oh woah, that’s amazing, Bellamy. Murphy told me that you were at like 1000 words on Monday, that’s huge progress, congratulations!”
The praise doesn’t have enough time to land that Clarke stands up and then, punches him in the face.
To be fair, Bellamy thinks she doesn’t throw her full force in it. He sees how she controls the shift of her weight, and the extension of her arm and he thinks “This could hurt so much more,” right before thinking and shouting, “OUCH!”
So here they are. Him, holding his nose. Her, apologizing again, and again, and then walking on his side of the bar to check if he’s okay.
He’s not, for the record. It hurts like a bitch and he’s bleeding. But Clarke’s here, by his side, handing him a paper towel and touching his nose before stating that it’s not broken with so much confidence she has to have some medical background. She stays until the pain and the bleeding both fade away.
“I’m so sorry,” she says again.
“Please, at least, tell me that Murphy paid you well.”
“He did. Seems like he really cares about you.”
“My nose disagrees.” Clarke smiles and he adds: “To think I was starting to like you!”
She sounds shy and hesitant now. Like she just didn’t punch him in the damn face after having spent six hours distracting him.
“You know. He offered me to come back every night to check that you correctly write your 1667 words per day too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. So… Should I come back tomorrow or do you never want to see me again?”
He doesn’t hesitate for one second.
“I definitely want to see you again.”
“Thank God,” she breathes, relieved. “Because I’m really starting to like you too.”
So that’s settled, then. He’ll see Clarke again soon. And this time, he’ll be ready. He’ll manage to have already written the 1655 words he’s missing from today and the next 1667 one for sure.
***
40,760 words
Somewhere between that first night and his forty-thousandth word, they start to sleep together. One minute they’re laughing and getting to know each other, the other they’re kissing. It’s three a.m. on Friday night and Bellamy just closed the bar. They’re both tired so there’s no way this is going any further than that.
But then, Clarke surprises him again.
“Bring me home,” she begs on his lips, her body warm against his, her hair soft between his fingers, her sighs like music to his ears.
He does. Of course, he does, he’s so gone for this woman already.
The morning after, he wakes up before her and as Clarke keeps sleeping peacefully next to him in the bed where they made love for a good part of the night, he writes his next 2405 words.
It seems like the only thing Bellamy needed after all was a muse.
***
November 30, 2021 – 50,059 words
On the last day of November, he tells her about what he’s writing. On the page, no hero, no princesses, no happy ending.
It’s Bellamy’s life.
It’s the father who died when he was one year old and who his mother didn’t want to talk about. It’s discovering his mom was a sex worker at seven years old. It’s taking care of his baby sister and putting his whole childhood aside to become the backbone of their family. It’s dealing with loss too young and storing his dreams of the future he craved in a box when their mother died. It’s finding out the little sister he loved so much was an addict and confronting her about it just to be cast out of her life completely. It’s getting lost in sex, and alcohol, and depression. It’s sleeping in his car for months after he lost everything.
It’s everything he is, all his scars, heartaches, mistakes, and ugliness displayed in fewer than 50,000 words for the world—for Clarke—to see.
And she sees everything. But also things that he didn’t notice.
“It’s the story of how you survived, Bellamy. It’s you fighting against all odds to heal, to become a better man, to work hard to get the future you dreamed of. It’s not ugly. It’s beautiful.”
She dries the tears that are slowly falling on his cheek before kissing him softly. And then, she tells him about her own grief, her own scars, her own mistakes. The story behind the man’s watch on her wrist and Bellamy finally sees what she sees in him.
She’s beautiful, too.
It’s the day he falls in love with her.
***
November 30, 2022 – 87,550 words
“Done,” he says, putting the final period of his novel.
“Finally,” groans Clarke, resting her chin on his shoulder, her arms loosely wrapped around his shoulders while she stands behind him and tries to watch what’s on the screen. “Can I read now?”
It’s been a year.
A year of a love so deep he still can’t believe his luck. A year of finding his other half in every way. A year of laughs, conversations, sex, and adventures. A perfect year with the love of his life. With Clarke.
“Insert cool title here” is waiting patiently somewhere in his drafts. Bellamy isn’t ready, he realized back in November 2021. The wounds are too raw, still hurting. But one day. One day soon, he will be ready.
“I still have to reread the whole thing and edit—”
“Oh, come on! I’m dying over here. At least, tell me what is it about? So I can start drawing.”
This is something new too, that came along with Clarke. For each one of his crazy ideas, there’s a drawing coming to life. But the other way around is also true and for each one of her drawings, there are words written, outlines getting outlined and plots getting plotted.
They’re a team, an amazing one, making each other better, supporting each other through art and love.
“God, you’re worse than Murphy.”
“How can I be worse than him? He’s your agent. It’s literally his job to bother you every day about your last project.”
Yeah, that’s new too and it somehow works better than anything Bellamy could have imagined.
But there are lots of things Bellamy could never have pictured.
There’s this love he found when he wasn’t expecting it. There’s Clarke, brightening his whole life. There’s this new apartment where they both moved in eight months ago. There are three complete novels in his folder called ‘Original Stories’ including one that is now in the hands of a small but very valid publishing company. And next to this folder, there’s another one called “Fanfics” because he never gave up on these, after all. Because Clarke helped him to realize he didn’t have to choose. That he could be everything he wanted, keeping him centered on what truly mattered.
And last but not least, there’s an engagement ring in his sock drawer that he plans to give Clarke later tonight with the promise of loving her forever if she lets him.
He knows her. She will. He’s actually surprised she didn’t propose yet but that’s not the point. The point is, Bellamy’s happy and it’s somewhere he never saw himself to be last year.
That’s why his novel is all about Clarke. And him. Well, not really about Clarke and him but he knows that reading this science-fiction story, she’ll recognize them and she will know. She’ll read the hardships, the heartaches, the losses, the forgiveness, the enemies-to-best-friends-to-lovers story, and how the heroes just complete each other and she’ll know.
He won’t say he would never have gotten there without her because now, Bellamy has faith in himself. Yet, he knows that without her, it would have been much, much painful, and slower. Clarke is his muse, his heart, his head, his everything. His wife soon, too. Probably.
That’s what Bellamy tells her, in the end, punctuating his words with a kiss.
“It’s a love story.”