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Lexa tells Clarke that love within the cluster is the worst kind of narcissism.
Bellamy, an ocean away, knows that Clarke’s reflecting Raven’s irritation and defensiveness and chuckles. Careful, Wells cuts in, his voice always calm, We do not know her. She could be a threat. Finn laughs, and he can feel his and Raven’s warmth mixing; Murphy says nothing but Bellamy can feel him lingering, waiting.
Clarke listens to Wells, of course she does; Bellamy knows she can hear all of their advice and commentary but she’ll listen to Wells more than any of them. He’s grounded and steady and wise beyond their years, and Bellamy loves all of his cluster, but he knows that Wells may be the strongest out of all of them. (He knows Clarke thinks this, too, but they can also all feel Wells’s love and adoration for her, and can feel her shutting him out. It’s odd, Kane had said, clustermates having history before the connection is awoken, it throws a wrench into the dynamics – but Clarke works past it like she always does, stepping in for every wound or sprain or Murphy needing to contribute something to the prison mural.)
When Lexa leaves Bellamy slips into her thoughts – it’s easy, he feels almost giddy at how open her thoughts are for him, and he finds himself on the sofa of her San Francisco apartment, taking in the familiar yellow walls and the smell of fabric conditioner.
“You were snooping,” Clarke scolds, but there’s no real heat there. She’s painting again, something angry and abstract, and Bellamy can feel her frustration in the reds and the tiredness in the yellows. Bellamy takes a seat next to her and watches her work, sees her wring her fingers when they start to ache or nibble her bottom lip when she’s not sure what to do next.
“You weren’t really trying to keep me out,” he says, and then they’re in his Manila apartment. She ignores this, heat rising in her cheeks, and inspects his bookshelf. (Somewhere he can see Finn rolling his eyes.) She thumbs Edith Hamilton’s Mythology with one hand.
“Had to read it for school,” he says, walking over to her and taking it from her, ignoring the frustrated noise she makes.
“Clarke, it’s beautiful,” Monty says, and then they’re back in San Francisco, Monty peering over Clarke’s easel.
She huffs and starts putting away the painting. “Monty, if we’re interrupting another art date with Miller–”
“No!” Monty’s answering smile is lovely, and Bellamy sees flashes of a kind man he’s never met and feels Monty’s love for him. “But Lexa, what did she want?”
Raven, Murphy, and Wells appear almost all at the same time, then, and take up spaces in Clarke’s apartment like it was made for them; Murphy and Wells sit next to Monty on the sofa, and Raven sits cross-legged on the yoga mat, her head leaning on Monty’s knee. She reaches out and almost instantly Finn is beside her on the mat, their fingers interlaced.
Clarke fidgets. “She came to warn me, I think.” Her voice falters, and they all wince as they share Clarke’s fear, the memory of Lexa’s hushed voice going quiet as she’d whispered Dante Wallace. “You all know we’re being hunted. You guys know Raven and, well, Tsing –” Everyone grimaces. Monty gets down from the sofa to pull Raven into a hug. They don’t like to think of the early days, when their connections were still weak and they could not help each other, let alone work together to bust Raven out of a lobotomy. This, at least, is one thing Bellamy’s sure of – these six people, scattered around a San Francisco apartment – they made him want to be better.
“Let’s move past that, thanks,” Raven says sharply, leaning back on the couch. Monty pats her shoulder.
“Well, Monty and I were looking through the stuff on that operation,” Clarke continues, her voice increasing in pitch, “And guess who one of the top doctors regarding the procedure was?”
They all look down. They already know, can feel it in Clarke and Monty’s horrified memories, can see it in the damning list of medical associates Monty had unearthed: JONES, Jackson; TSING, Lorelai; GRIFFIN, Abigail over and over like a mantra. “Clarke,” Raven tries, “We don’t know everything. For all we know, she was involved in anesthesia or whatever.”
Clarke shakes her head almost violently, her hands shaking. They all startle and Wells and Finn both move to get to her but Bellamy gets there first purely on instinct, taking her small hands in his and thumbing small circles into her palm. “That’s not the point,” she says, relaxing into his touch and sending him a tiny smile. His heart warms. “Lexa told me not to trust Kane, either. And my mother. Said they could be working with them.”
This information hits Bellamy like a slap in the face, and he stops the patterns on her hands. “I had no idea,” he says, his voice strangled. “I’m sorry, I’ve just been listening to him–”
“It’s fine,” says Finn, speaking for the first time. His brow’s furrowed. “We don’t know if Lexa was telling the truth either.”
“Just…let’s look out for each other, all right?” Wells’s voice rumbles from the sofa. Monty’s head is on his shoulder, and he’s squeezing Murphy’s hand. “And if something’s weird, well – try to be there. We’ll figure this out,” he adds, more to Clarke than to all of them.
“I kind of have a plan,” Clarke’s saying. “Monty’s trying to hack into my mom’s files so we can learn more about that – that operation,” she spits out the last like a curse, “We’re going to try and synthesize something that might counteract the Wallaces’s connection with us, if not outright block it.”
“I’m going to run it with Jasper, too,” Monty pipes up helpfully.
“No one wants another Anya,” Clarke adds, her voice heavy. “It’s disgusting, what Wallace and his people do. But Wells is right,” she adds, sending him a small smile. “The most we can do right now is look out for each other, all right? We’ll try to dig a bit more, then figure out where to go from there.”
Raven frowns. “We’re in this together, Clarke,” she says, her voice very soft. Her arm is linked with Finn’s. “Don’t hesitate to call on any of us, okay? We’ll be there.”
Clarke sends her a grateful smile.
Murphy is the last to leave, and he claps both Bellamy and Clarke on the back before vanishing. Bellamy is suddenly very aware that Clarke’s hands are still in his. She makes no motion to shoo him off, though, and he moves his hands from her wrists to her shoulders, squeezing lightly.
“That’s not all Lexa came to warn you about, is it?” he says, his voice low.
She shakes her head. “Snooping,” she tuts again.
“You know me. Cop skills.”
Clarke turns to look at him, her eyes wide. “Lexa lost two of her clustermates to that sick fuck,” she says slowly. “Costia. Then Anya. And she loved Costia, in more than the normal – sensate way. Raven-and-Finn kind of way.”
Bellamy says nothing, only tilts his head to let her know she can go on.
“The pain of losing two clustermates – awful,” Clarke continues. “It felt like she’d had a limb hacked off. I don’t – I don’t think I could handle losing any of you. I don’t want to turn into her.”
“Hey,” he says softly, interlacing their fingers again. “You won’t have to. We’ll beat Wallace. Together.”
She nods and looks away.
Raven materializes to grab hold of the punching bag he’s knocking at, a raised eyebrow on her face. “Denial’s not so cute when six other fucking people can feel it, y’know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bellamy says roughly, giving the bag six quick jabs and bouncing back on his heels.
She takes it all in stride and rolls her eyes for dramatic flair. “Look, Bell – I know, Finn knows, Murphy knows, Clarke knows. Stop dancing around each other, it’s gross.”
“I’m no good for her,” he says. Raven looks surprised.
The scene changes and they’re in her garage. Finn’s sipping a coffee at a table nearby and Raven’s bent over a car, her muscles working. “Hand me a wrench, please,” she says, and he complies, easy as breathing. He likes the easy camaraderie they’ve all developed, like the others are an extension of himself.
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” says Finn, coming around to help Raven hold up the hood. “You think the rest of us can’t feel your chemistry across the psycellium?”
“She deserves better,” says Bellamy, but it’s tired. He’s tired of having this argument. “And you know what Lexa said.”
“Screw what Lexa said,” Finn mutters. “So Raven and me – you think that’s narcissistic?” He looks so sad about it and Raven’s mouth twists downwards and Bellamy can feel their warmth and desperate protectiveness. He knows they love each other, Finn from his English ivory tower and Raven in her dinky Mexican garage, there’d been no doubt since the moment they first connected, and they’d proven it, had gone to hell and back to keep the other and the rest of the cluster safe.
Raven looks at him, and wordlessly they end back up at the gym, and she spots his weights until he gets tired and leaves.
Besides Octavia, Jasper is the only other person outside the cluster who knows about them.
Miller doesn’t even know, although Bellamy knows Monty wants to tell him; he hadn’t even intended to tell Jasper but ended up having to after Jasper walked in on him hacking BPO software in the lab and speaking to thin air (Finn, actually) and busting one Raven Reyes out of a possibly-illegal lobotomy. That had been terrifying; there had been so many guards and driving and Monty yelling frantically in their heads, but Jasper had helped Monty with the hacking thing and Finn and Raven had managed to rescue each other and their cluster is safe, for now.
But anyway, Bellamy will never admit this but he’s fond of the guy in a way; Jasper’s excitable and chatty and can keep a secret and besides, Monty trusts him with his life, it’s hard for something like that not to bleed over.
Bellamy finds himself in Seoul suddenly, taking down a bunch of muggers who’ve decided Monty’s suit means prime robbery material (they’re right about that, at least), and when he hits the last one with a well-aimed uppercut, Jasper’s blinking at Bellamy-Monty in awe. He leaves Monty’s body to hear Jasper say – “Was that Bellamy?”
Monty says “Yeah.”
“Man, that was badass. Tell him he needs to teach me some of his mad cop skills.”
Bellamy says, “I think Murphy’s better for teaching how to punch one’s way out of a situation.”
“He can hear you, y’know,” Monty tells Jasper, sending Bellamy one of his scolding den mother looks. “And he says no.”
Jasper pouts, but brightens suddenly. “Has he confessed his undying love for Clarke yet?”
Monty laughs when Bellamy sputters. “I keep Jasper entertained with updates on us,” he admits. “He ships you guys pretty hard.”
Right, so even Jasper knows, that’s great.
“I’m pretty sure she feels the same way, y’know,” Monty adds, softer this time. Jasper makes a noise that sounds vaguely catlike.
Bellamy makes a noncommittal noise. “It’s a liability and you know that,” he reminds Monty. “If one of us is found, then the other–”
“Don’t let what Lexa said ruin your happiness or whatever,” Monty says mildly. “You said it yourself – we’ll get through it. We want you to be happy, you know.”
“What’s he saying?” Jasper whines.
Bellamy huffs, but then Sterling calls to him across the precinct and the moment’s broken.
He doesn’t think about what Monty said. (He doesn’t.)
The rest of the day goes off fairly normally, actually; Bellamy spends a day pencil-pushing, then calls on Wells to mouth off some superior officer who thought he’d been breaking the law, calls on Finn just because he can make a mean coffee, spends around three hours filing paperwork that had piled up, and he gets home and watches a telenovela before calling Octavia up on Skype. She’s cheery and perky as per usual, and she tells him about her dance lessons and the party she’s going to on Saturday and the cute boy in her drama class, and he smiles because he misses her.
When the call ends, Clarke’s on his sofa again. “Hey,” he says, because he’s too surprised and head-over-heels in love with her to say anything else.
“Octavia?” she says, her mouth quirked up when she sees his computer screen.
He exhales. “Yeah. Missed her.”
Clarke bites her lip. “I was missing my dad,” she says.
He frowns, because it’s hardly 9PM and what time is it over there? Then he remembers, doctor hours, so whatever. “You need anything?” he asks her before holding out his arm. She leans in to his body, curling into his side and laying her head on his chest, and he wraps his arms around her shoulder, squeezing lightly. They'd talked about this, once; he'd turned up at her dad's grave by accident and told her stories of his mother, how she'd make the best adobo or stitch Octavia's dress perfectly, and it had made her smile and talk about her father's painting and camping trips, and the poorly-medicated Aurora Blake-shaped hole in his heart had managed to heal a little bit thanks to her bright, grateful smile.
“You know,” she says, “It’s weird how my best friend is a cop in the Philippines I’ve never even met.”
He rests his chin on the top of her head. “And my best friend is an American doctor who’s distracted on the job, it seems.”
She laughs, and points out something on the telenovela. He feels it to his bones.
(It’s true. Bellamy is not a particularly sociable person, doesn’t have Finn’s charisma or Wells’s wealth of connections, but Clarke was the first connection he’d made, all that time ago back in the church, and he’d been unable to keep the wonder out of his voice – in America? and she’d laughed).
She’s a lot like him, he thinks; of their entire cluster she’s the one who can relate most to his fierce protectiveness, his arrogance, his loneliness – you losers are exactly the same, Murphy would say. He knows he loves her, that’s been a fact since day one, when she’d appeared to him in scrubs and a face mask, reminiscing Callie killing herself; he’s pretty sure she feels the same pull – but he remembers Kane telling him that the stronger your bond is, the easier he can find you; remembers Lexa’s bitter pathologic snarls.
“You’re thinking of Lexa,” Clarke murmurs. She shifts out of his arms and turns to face him.
“You made her sound pretty ominous, it’s hard not to,” he teases, but she doesn’t smile. “Clarke.”
She looks down at her lap. “I meant what I said,” she says. “She’s trying to protect us. But–” her breath catches. “I can’t lose you too, Bellamy.”
Something tugs at his heart, then, because this is Clarke, take-charge, I-can-handle-it Clarke, crazy-survivalist-Clarke sitting on his couch, sad and vulnerable. He looks away, his heart pounding. “I’m not going anywhere, Clarke. If I died, I’m sure you’d put me back together so you could kill me all over again for dying in the first place.”
She inhales sharply. “Don’t.”
“Clarke–”
And then her lips are on his, and Bellamy’s brain totally shorts for a hot second before he’s kissing back, and fuck this is the best thing ever, and her hands are in his hair and his hands hesitantly reach up to curl in hers, and she tastes like coffee and antiseptic and kissing someone else has never felt this good, this beautiful, this pure. (He thought she had showed him the world first, back in the church when they’d first stood face-to-face, but this is something else).
She pulls away first, her eyes wide.
“Imagine if you were actually here with me,” he whispers. (She’s so real, he sometimes forgets they’ve never actually physically met.)
She nods slowly. “When we take Wallace down,” she whispers back, her fingers fisting in her lap. “We’ll talk about this, yeah?”
He smiles and tries not to be sad, even though he knows that’s bullshit and she can probably feel it anyway, because he understands and knows that it’s true – defeating Wallace and protecting their cluster comes before this. “Yeah.” He clutches her fingers. “I won’t let you turn into Lexa,” he says, softly, and knows she knows he means it.
Clarke smiles slowly and teary-eyed at him before murmuring something about her shift about to start, and Bellamy hugs her goodbye and finishes the telenovela episode in a trance. He hears Raven’s laughter. Proud of you, chico, her voice teases, before it disappears.
(He’s one hundred and one percent sure now that Clarke Griffin is the love of his life, and he’ll be right by her side come hell or high water.)
He doesn’t think he’ll ever really be used to it, to seeing Monty in his kitchen sorting out his medication, to Murphy taking down some particularly nasty bad guys, to Raven flawlessly navigating Manila traffic, to Clarke setting Sterling’s dislocated shoulder in the resulting scuffle, to Finn or Wells’s words effortlessly falling out of his mouth when getting out of a tricky situation. Six other selves, Wells had marveled early on. Six other people with hopes and dreams and lives he can protect.
And if he lets his thoughts cross an ocean and visits San Francisco again later, when Clarke’s asleep, if only to squeeze her shoulder to let her know he’s there, that they all are, well. She doesn’t need to know that.