Chapter Text
Clarke considers herself an honest person - too honest maybe. Blunt even. Brutal occasionally.
She’s forthright and headstrong and fears little. She gets what she wants and cuts her losses when she doesn’t.
She tries to live a life without regret, having seen too much loss.
But this - the situation she’s in now - she regrets this.
She gapes at Bellamy as he looms over her desk, having dropped his bomb. “Uhhhhh.”
“Is this weird?” he asks in a rare flash of insecurity and Clarke struggles not to find it charming. She struggles not to find a lot about Bellamy charming these days.
“No, no,” she says, clearing her throat and squaring up her shoulders. “Um, single friends. Hmmm. Do you mind if I think about this for a minute and get back to you?”
His brow knits as he all but cocks his head like a puppy in confusion. “Sure. That’s not a problem. Ask your husband, too, you know, if he knows someone.”
Her husband. Right. The one who didn’t exist, except in these encounters with her coworker. Clarke licks her lips and glances away. “Yep. You bet.” Her desk phone rings and she lunges for it, casting what she hopes comes off as an apologetic glance to Bellamy, but he’s already waving her off on his way back to his cube. “Document control, this is Clarke,” she answers mechanically while her mind spins.
When Bellamy had started at this company six months ago, she hadn’t been in any frame of mind to deal with a potential office romance. She’d just been dumped out of the blue by her girlfriend of three years, she’d lost out on a lucrative promotion, and her mother had begun dating again, far too soon after her husband’s death, in Clarke’s biased opinion.
So when the new guy - the new, hot, smart, smirking guy - had asked her to lunch during his first week, she’d said the first thing that’d come to mind: “I’m married.”
After countless hours spent soul-searching and sleepless hours, she still doesn’t know why that particular lie had come out.
Bellamy hadn’t been pushy, giving up as soon as she’d told him, and she knows that had she told the truth - “I’m not in a place right now where I can be with anyone” - he would’ve done the same thing. Even then, she knew it, could sense he was one of the good ones.
But no, she’d had to go with, “I’m married,” and now she was stuck in this never-ending lie. How did you come clean about something like that?
The longer it went on, the worse the inevitable fallout would be, she knew.
But... she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.
Because the strangest thing had happened after the romantic potential was dead in the water: they became friends. Great friends, even. The kind of friends who could communicate just with looks (leading to way too many department meetings where one or both of them laughed inappropriately). The kind of friends who had inside jokes about their coworkers and cheered each other up and were up-front when they thought the other was out of line.
And then something even stranger had happened: Clarke had fallen in love with him.
And he thought she was married.
And wanted her to set him up with one of her or her fictional husband’s single friends.
She drops her head to her desk, even while she answers the questions the quality auditor is rattling off over the phone.
“Just tell him, dude,” her other best friend, Raven, says when Clarke brings it up over dinner that night. She’s the only other person besides Clarke who knows about the lie; Clarke has been surprised how easy it’s been to sustain thus far, but neither she nor Bellamy interact with their other coworkers. And they haven’t reached the point where they saw each other socially, outside of work.”What’s the worst that can happen?”
Clarke mentally pulls up her checklist of cataclysmic events. “He gets mad, quits the company, moves away, we never speak again, he falls in love and gets married and has kids, and I die alone.”
Raven freezes with her fork halfway to her mouth before she snorts and takes the bite of lasagna. “Okay,” she says around the mouthful, “I can understand him getting mad - who wouldn’t? - but do you really think he’d quit his job? You might be giving yourself a little too much credit.”
“Maybe he won’t quit,” Clarke allows, “but he might transfer - a different department or a different branch. It’s not like document control is his true calling. He would succeed no matter where he goes.” She smiles a little before she glances up from where she’s creating patterns in the sauce with her fork tines to find Raven eyeing in disgust. “What?”
“Your blindingly obvious love is grossing me out. I’m trying to eat here.”
Clarke rolls her eyes. “Okay,” she says in her most patronizing tone, “how about I eat and you tell me again about how Wick is ‘just the worst’ and you want nothing more than to ‘slap his stupid, pretty boy face’?”
“Funny,” Raven says, flipping the bird over the table. “So who’re you gonna set him up with?”
Shrugging in misery, Clarke takes a bite to stall for time, even though she knows the prolonged silence won’t bother Raven once she’s got her teeth into an issue. “It’ll have to be someone who doesn’t know me very well. Just in case, you know...”
“How about Roma?”
“Roma?” Clarke thinks about the willowy brunette. Thinks about her eating dinner with Bellamy, maybe dancing, sharing a kiss, going up to his- “No,” she says, throat tight. “No. Not Roma. She’s too... tall.”
“Too tall. Okay. How about Fox? She’s not much taller than you.”
“Fox?” Clarke asks in shock. “Fox? Raven, she’s just a kid! Bellamy’s six years older than me. No.”
Raven makes a noise like a kettle. “Fox is 21. It’s not like she’s underage. But I can see where this is going, and that’s absolutely nowhere.” Clarke opens her mouth and Raven stops her with a gesture. “Clarke, look, either tell him and live with the consequences or don’t tell him and set him up with some random girl - I’ll pick; you lost your veto power. What’s it going to be?”
Clarke sets her fork down and closes her eyes. She thinks again about Bellamy out with some other woman and it makes her sick to her stomach.
But then she thinks about losing him from her life for good, of a Bellamy-less existence, and her heart threatens to crack in two.
Turns out, there’s not really a choice involved at all.
When Clarke passes the contact info to Bellamy, she braces herself for hearing every gory detail about the date. And she does know plans were made - Raven confirmed that from the coworker she’d chosen for Bellamy - but Bellamy has been alarmingly mum about the whole thing.
A few weeks after she’d passed him the phone number, Clarke can’t take it anymore. She and Bellamy are sitting at lunch in the employee cafeteria and he’s telling her some story about his sister, who he doted on, when she blurts out, “How are things going with Echo?”
He stops mid-sentence, raising a brow at her interruption, but goes along with the change in topic with only a shake of his head. “Good. They’re good.”
“So you’re still seeing her?” she asks casually, focusing all her attention on fishing the absolute perfect chip from her bag.
Bellamy shrugs and takes a bite of his sandwich. “Whenever we can line up our schedules. We’ve been to dinner a few times.”
“Great,” she says with false enthusiasm, biting back questions like Where do you see it going? and Are you sleeping together? and Do you love her more than me? She blinks at the last thought. There is less than no evidence that Bellamy thinks about her romantically, let alone loves her. Sure, he had asked her out right after they met. And yes, he always stops by to fill up her coffee cup whenever he’s getting some for himself. And one time, it’s true, he emailed her at home half a dozen times when she called off to make sure she wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere. And every once in a while, she catches him gazing at her with soft brown eyes.
But... they’re friends. That’s all perfectly normal, friendly behavior, right?
She tunes back in just as Bellamy looks at her expectantly. “I’m sorry. What?”
He frowns. “You feeling all right? You’re kind of out of it today.”
“Just tired. What’d you say?”
“I said that we should all double sometime. Are you guys free this Saturday?”
“Saturday?” Clarke’s mind goes blank. She can’t think of even one viable excuse not to go on this double date. Other than, of course, the fact that she doesn’t have a husband. “We’re... free.”
“Great!” Bellamy says, standing and tossing his garbage into the bin from a few tables over. He raises his hands in the air in victory when it sinks in without hitting the rim before he turns to her.
Clarke scrambles to hide her grimace. “Great,” she agrees faintly, wondering what the hell she’s going to do now.
After Raven had laughed herself sick, the two of them sat down and went through all the options for the double date.
Clarke was loathe to bring another one of their friends in on this, but Raven made a compelling argument. “It has to be someone who knows you well enough that Bellamy would buy you’re married.”
And that’s why Clarke is sitting in a restaurant with her very married friend posing as her husband. “This might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done on my behalf,” she says while they wait for Bellamy and Echo, her nervous fingers toying with the cloth napkin in her lap.
Monty shakes his head. “Junior year, Jasper and I peed in Finn’s gas tank while we were high.”
Clarke gapes at him for a long beat before a laugh bubbles out of her. “Oh, my god, you didn’t! How did I not know this?”
He shrugs with a small smile. “You had enough going on at the time. It was the least we could do.”
“My hero,” she says with a grin, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.
Which is, of course, when Bellamy and Echo finally arrive. Bellamy clears his throat and Clarke jumps a little, then stands a split-second after Monty does so introductions can be made. “Bellamy! This is my husband Monty. Monty, this is Bellamy and Echo.”
After hands have been shaken, they all take their seats and let the awkward silence settle over them, before Echo takes that as her cue and starts asking Clarke and Monty about how they met, how long they’d been married, and so on.
Clarke lets Monty handle the questions, jumping in when necessary, and surveys Bellamy’s date. She’s certainly beautiful and she and Bellamy make a striking couple. Echo’s dark hair is touched with tasteful highlights and her skin is smooth and perfectly bronzed. She’s model-gorgeous and Clarke has never felt more miserable in her entire life.
She glances Bellamy’s way and he moves his gaze off Monty for a second, dark eyes locking on her and Clarke sucks in a breath at seeing her own misery reflected in his expression. It clears after a second, his face morphing into an annoying blank slate, and one corner of his mouth tips up.
Clarke’s pulse races and she turns away, concentrating on taking a sip of water without spilling. It’s more difficult than it should be, considering how her hand is trembling.
Beside her, Monty reaches over and folds his hand over her free one on the table, calming her, and she exhales slowly and leans her shoulder into his. There’s no way she would’ve survived this far without him. She shoots him an affectionate smile and he winks at her.
“You two are adorable,” Echo announces, glancing at their hands with a reserved smile. “Do you mind if I ask, Clarke, why you don’t wear a wedding band but Monty does?”
Clarke freezes until Monty gives her hand a gentle squeeze before he releases her. “Oh, I’m just a... a, uh, non-traditionalist. I didn’t change my name either.”
Bellamy shifts, leaning forward and finally joining the conversation. “And you’re okay with that?” he asks Monty, who shrugs.
“The important part is that we’re married,” he says. “I don’t need to brand Clarke with the trappings of ownership as long as I know we’re committed.”
Bellamy snorts at that, leaning back again and folding his arms across his chest.
Clarke raises a brow at him. “Problem with that?”
“No,” he says at length, meeting her gaze, “it’s just that if yo- if I were married, I’d want the traditional stuff - matching rings, matching names, the works.”
Something in the back of her head whispers, Clarke Blake, and she wrinkles her nose. That’s a terrible name. “Of course you would. Because you’re possessive.”
He groans and slumps back in his chair, his arms falling to his sides. “Here we go again.”
“You are,” she insists. “Why else would you think you had the right to dictate who your sister can and can’t date? She’s a grown woman with a mind of her own and-”
“And there’s a difference between possessive and protective,” he argues, like he always does when they discuss this, drilling his finger into the table top for emphasis. “And Lincoln is seven years older than her, and I don’t-”
“You don’t want to deal with the fact that your sister is an adult and doesn’t need your protecting anymore. Seven years is hardly cause for-” Monty grabs for her hand again, but she shakes him off, until he calls her name. “What?” she asks impatiently.
“Are you ready to order?” he asks without inflection, nodding towards the waitress standing there, but she can see his dark eyes shining in amusement.
“Oh.” Clarke blinks as she realizes that she and Bellamy had done that thing again, the one where they forget they’re not the only people around, and she smiles at the server in apology. “Yes, of course.” She starts as the waitress goes around the table, ending up with Bellamy who orders the grilled swordfish, making Clarke frown.
As soon as the waitress walks away, she turns on him. “You hate fish.”
“Actually,” Echo says, linking her arm with Bellamy’s, “I talked him into trying my swordfish the first time we went out and he loved it. Didn’t you, Bell?”
“Yeah, it was pretty good.” He smiles a little. “Turns out when fish is prepared by someone who knows what they’re doing, I like it. Who knew?”
Clarke gapes at him, piqued. “I knew! I told you that the very first time you explained why you don’t like fish.”
“Fine, princess,” he says with a placating grin. “You were right; I was wrong. Are you happy now?”
“Perfectly happy, Bell,” she bites back, petulantly gratified when he scowls at her in confusion. Monty pokes her side.
Their appetizers are delivered and Monty jumps in to break the tension while Clarke realizes for the first time that she might just lose Bellamy even if he never learns the truth.
Watching him with Echo as they share an appetizer plate, her arm still linked with his, Clarke suspects she’s already started losing him, bit by bit.
The remainder of the dinner passes without a hitch and soon Bellamy is tucking Echo into a cab with only a chaste kiss, since she has to be up early the next morning for her sister’s baby shower.
Clarke stands on the sidewalk, tucked under Monty’s arm, and pretends not to watch the other couple.
“You could’ve told me you were in love with him,” Monty murmurs.
She closes her eyes and turns her head to rest against his shoulder. “It’ll pass.”
“Oh, Clarke,” he says, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “Why would you want it to?” When she looks up at him in frustrated agony, he searches her gaze before smiling. “You really don’t know that he loves you, too?”
Before Clarke can process that bombshell, Bellamy strolls over. “You guys are heading west, right? Need a lift?”
She catches herself just before she says that Monty lives to the south and bites her lip.
“Actually,” Monty says then, pulling back from Clarke, “Since Clarke picked me up, I need to go pick up my car from the parking garage at my office before the guard leaves. And if I’m there anyway, I should check on a few email replies that didn’t come through before I left. Would you mind taking Clarke home, Bellamy? I’d owe you one.”
“Oh.” Bellamy swallows hard, glances at Clarke, then back to Monty. “No, I don’t mind. It’s not a problem.”
“Great!” Monty slaps Bellamy on the shoulder. “It was so great to finally meet you.” He steps up to Clarke and wraps her in a hug, pressing a kiss against the side of her head. “You can do this,” he whispers before pulling back. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart,” he says with a wink before flagging down the next passing cab.
Clarke and Bellamy both watch the cab until it can no longer be seen, then turn as one towards the restaurant’s lot. “So,” she says, “that was fun?” She winces at the way her voice trails upward at the end, turning it into a question instead of a statement.
But if Bellamy notices, he doesn’t say anything. “Yeah,” he says, and his voice sounds tired, maybe a little defeated. He glances at her. “Monty seems like a great guy.”
“He’s one of the best,” she says honestly as they climb into Bellamy’s old Ford beater.
The drive is silent, except for the light traffic around them and Clarke’s occasional direction, and before she knows it, he’s pulling up into her driveway.
Clarke doesn’t climb out immediately and Bellamy must realize she has something on her mind, because he cuts the headlights.
Her heart is pounding, but she knows it’s now or never. Things cannot go on the way they’ve been, not when it’s in her power to change them. “Bellamy,” she says, voice rasping, “I need to tell you something.”
She feels him shift next to her, but she can’t look at him, not if she wants to get through this. “Anything,” he says.
“That day... that day that you asked me out after you started at the company. Do you remember that?”
He huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, Clarke. I’m not likely to forget it.”
“Right. Right. Anyway, I had had a bad stretch of luck right before that and when you asked me to lunch, I... I didn’t know what to say. I panicked, which is not like me at all, and I did something so unbelievably stupid that I can’t believe I’ve gotten away with it this long.”
He’s on high alert now. She feels him all but vibrating across the console. “Okay,” he says slowly.
“And the thing is, Bellamy, you’re one of my best friends and this thing that I did, I knew that if you found out about it, you’d probably hate me, so I just kept playing along with it. Because I couldn’t - I can’t - stand the thought of you hating me.” He takes a breath, probably to reassure her, but she holds him off with her hand. “Wait. Just... I’ve gotten this far, just let me finish it.” Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath and pulls the band-aid off. “Monty and I aren’t married. Well, Monty is,” she babbles, “just not to me, to a wonderful guy named Miller. But I’m not married and I don’t even know why that came out of my mouth at all, but how do you take something like that back? And I wasn’t try-”
Her rambling is cut short by the hot press of Bellamy’s mouth against hers. She blinks her eyes open just to be sure and, yep, Bellamy’s stretched across the console, hand on her face, kissing her tenderly. She lets her eyes drift shut again and moves her mouth beneath his.
He pulls back too soon, resting his forehead against hers. “Thank god,” he whispers. “Thank god. I’m in love with you, I’ve been in love with you for so long, I didn’t know what to do anymore.”
“Really?” she asks, pulling back to stare at him. His eyelids flutter up and her breath catches at the longing in his dark brown eyes. “Bellamy, I’m in love with you, too.”
He swears beneath his breath, ducking his head to seal his mouth over hers again and Clarke opens to him and the heat in the car ratchets up to eleven.
When they pull apart again, she laughs breathlessly. “I can’t believe this. I really thought you’d hate me.”
“Never,” he says, punctuating that with a fierce, brief kiss. “I could never hate you. I’m mad as hell at you, though.” He kisses her again. “I’m really, really-” And again. “Mad.” And again.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she promises with a slow smile, easing the door open and nodding her head towards the house.
He’s hot on her heels all the way in, turning her as soon as they’re through the door so her back is pressed against the wall and his mouth has free access to the side of her neck.
Until, of course, she pulls him down the hall to her bedroom, and makes it up to him for hours.