Chapter Text
Bellamy Blake was acting strange.
One morning he gave Clarke a flower, a freaking flower. Picked it up and handed it to her like it was the most normal thing in the world, right in the middle of her sentence.
“What’s this for?” she’d asked stupidly, holding it in her grasp.
Bellamy had just shrugged told her it matched her eyes and continued walking through the forest.
Like it was the most normal thing in the whole entire freaking world.
Clarke had shrugged it off, toying with the flower for a while as their group trekked through the woods. After a while they reached the river she was looking for (the one where the red seaweed grew) and she’d placed the flower in her pocket, forgetting all about it.
She found it two days later when she was getting ready to head out on another trip. As she was placing a small snack in her pocket her fingers brushed against it’s wilted petals. What she did next felt a little silly, but she figured, it wouldn’t be every day that Bellamy Blake gave her a flower. So instead of throwing it away, she left it on the small make-shift table in the corner of her tent.
*
It didn’t start with the flower, but she thought perhaps it was the flower that really clued her in.
It was raining and she was shivering as a person often does when they get caught in an unexpected downpour. Bellamy and Octavia were right beside her, shivering as well under the roof of the small cave they had found on their hike.
“It looks like we’re not going to be finding any more Ark survivors today,” Octavia sighed.
She was crouched beside the wall, staring out at the downpour calmly, her demeanor nothing like the angry little girl whose first act on earth after hugging her brother was to lash out at the people around her.
Beside her Bellamy paced the small space agitatedly, his hands running through his soaked curls.
“Well soon enough there might not be any survivors,” he snapped. “We’re running out of time.”
Clarke half expected him to do something dramatic then, like smash his fist into the wall or kick up some dirt. Something like the way he’d kicked over those barrels in the bunker the day they’d found the guns. Instead, Bellamy stills and with a sigh he joins his sister by the wall. Clarke couldn’t help the smile that formed on her face when she saw the two of them like that, side by side.
“What are you smiling at blue eyes?” Bellamy asked a twinkle in his eyes.
The new nickname surprised her, but Clarke played it off with a shrug.
“Maybe I just like the rain?”
The look he gave her then told her he knew she was lying, but her mind was otherwise preoccupied with this new nickname. Since when did Bellamy Blake call her blue eyes? Since when did anyone call her blue eyes?
To distract herself from her thoughts - which she was sure were born out of some kind of paranoia and thus were totally unfounded - Clarke settled down beside him. The three of them sat like that, leaning into each other’s warmth until the rain let up.
Octavia was the first to notice. She stood up, announcing that the rain was over and that Clarke and Bellamy should get their lazy butts off the floor, before striding towards the cave entrance.
Bellamy was next to move, muttering a “right behind you O” as he got to his feet. He turned towards Clarke then and grinned when he saw her still on the floor, banging her foot angrily.
“It fell asleep,” she huffed in annoyance, hitting it with her hand to try and get the blood circulating again.
“Here,” he said with a soft chuckled and Clarke looked up to see his hand extended towards her. She placed her hand in his and he helped her to her feet where she proceeded to stamp around some more much to Bellamy’s amusement. She expected his hand to feel cold but it was surprisingly warm and Clarke found herself reluctant to let it go even when she was standing upright and had regained the feeling in her foot.
Her eyes caught his and something in his gaze made Clarke let go of his hand instantly.
“Thanks,” she mumbled feeling her face heat up.
“You sure you don’t want to keep holding hands?” Bellamy asked as they began to walk outside. “Yours are pretty cold.”
His tone was joking but his face was oddly serious as he turned towards her.
She tucked her hands into her coat pockets and grinned up at him.
“I think these work just as well as hands,” she informed him, wiggling her hands a little further inside them.
An odd look passed across Bellamy’s face, but before Clarke could inquire about it Octavia’s sharp voice was yelling at them to hurry up. They reached camp an hour later and in her exhaustion Clarke forgot about new nicknames and warm hands. At least until the next time Bellamy Blake acted strangely.
*
Bellamy Blake was flirting with her. But Clarke knew it was no big deal.
She’d seen Bellamy flirt with dozens of girls since they’d landed on Earth. Perhaps less in the time before the Grounder attack at the drop ship and the events with Mount Weather. But in that first week or so she had definitely witnessed Bellamy flirting - and on a number of occasions, more than flirting. It had been months now since the defeat of Mount Weather so really it shouldn’t surprise her that Bellamy Blake was back to his flirty old ways again.
Except that it was with her. That part did surprise her.
But it wasn’t a big deal.
He’d been flirting with a girl from Factory station, the one he’d apparently rescued from the wreckage months before. Not that Clarke noticed, they were just very obvious. Laughing together like that in the middle of the campsite, the girls fingers landing on Bellamy’s shoulder every now and then. Not that Clarke was watching, it was just a slow day and they were right there and Bellamy’s laugh was loud and so damn rare she couldn’t help but notice it.
So it wasn’t a big deal, Clarke knew, that he’d been flirting with her recently.
She just played it off, remembering the girl who worked at the food station who he’d been charming a week before. Or the girl who sat a little too close beside him the other night at the campfire and spoke a little too close to his ear all night. Clarke remembered those girls, remembered the smile on Bellamy’s face when he spoke to them and saw it again when he spoke to her.
Clarke had the heart and soul of an artist, but she had the mind of a doctor, a surgeon just like her mother. So when faced with such a dilemma, she switched off her heart (ignoring the pathetic hopeful tug she felt inside it) and used her head. Bellamy Blake was flirting with her, casually, lightly flirting with her, and it wasn’t a big deal. So she wouldn’t treat it like it was anything more than that and she wouldn’t buy into it either.
She switched on her surgeon mind and used it to smile simply at Bellamy’s remarks, to accept jokingly his little gifts and to pull lightly out of his lingering touch. She used it to shut down that hopeful silly voice that lived in her heart that would scream what if’s at her (usually at inconvenient hours of the night when she should be asleep). She quieted that voice by assuring it that those glances they stole, the way he seemed to want to be near her more and more, to compliment her, to smile at her, that all of these things Bellamy Blake was doing meant nothing.
And for a while it worked, but of course it didn’t last forever.
Clarke soon found out that she wasn’t wrong. Bellamy Blake was flirting with her, but it was a very, very, big deal.
*
“Have you seen Clarke?” a voice close by asked.
“No,” she heard another voice answer. “You should check medical.”
“Thanks,” the first voice said, followed by the sound of retreating footsteps.
Clarke released the breath she’d been holding and waited a few more seconds before stepping out of the closet she’d been hiding in. Only to squeal in surprise when she found that the corridor wasn’t as deserted as she’d assumed it would be.
“Hey Clarke,” Raven greeted smirking broadly. She waited until Clarke regained her bearings before continuing.
“So, any reason you were in that supply closet?”
“Um,” Clarke began, wondering how she was going to spin this. “There was a problem in the med-bay, I was getting some cleaning supplies.”
“Oh?” Raven crossed her arms. “Did you forget to take them out?”
Clarke cringed inwardly but remained stoic on the outside. “There weren’t any left.”
“Funny,” Raven said, tilting her head to the side and eyeing the contents of the open closet behind her. “It looks pretty well stocked to me.”
Stepping out of the doorway, Clarke kicked the door shut behind her and shook her head. “Nope, not what I was looking for.”
“Right,” Raven said, eyeing her with growing amusement. “Well I won’t get in your way then. I’m sure you want to rush off to medical.”
Clarke blanched.
“Medical?”
“Yeah, didn’t you say you were getting supplies for medical?” Raven said, examining her nails nonchalantly.
Clarke glanced down the corridor that led to the med-bay and her stomach flipped at the thought of the person she had heard walking down there only moments before. A person she was actively trying to avoid.
She cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders confidently. “Well I was, but I didn’t find any, so I better keep looking.”
“You know,” Raven said, halting Clarke’s steps. “It’s funny, I was just in medical but I didn’t see any kind of mess.”
“Oh,” Clarke said. “I guess Jackson must have cleaned it up then.”
Raven began nodding, her focus still on her nails. “Must have.”
There was another short silence and then Clarke cleared her throat. “Well since I’m not needed at medical anymore, I should get going.”
She smiled hopefully when Raven looked up and her friend flashed her teeth in return. “Of course, sorry to keep you.”
Muttering a hurried ‘see you later’ Clarke turned to head in the opposite direction of the med-bay. Before she could take a single step forward, however, Raven’s voice called after her again.
“So are you going to tell me why you’re avoiding Bellamy before you go? Or am I supposed to use my imagination for that too?”
Clarke’s stomach twisted but she didn’t turn around.
“Who says I’m avoiding Bellamy?”
“The supply closet you were hiding in,” Raven deadpanned.
When Clarke turned around, her face didn’t betray the panic that had flashed across it when Raven brought up Bellamy’s name.
“I wasn’t hiding Raven,” she said, sounding haughty and exasperated.
“Really?” Raven said an eyebrow raised. “So what were you doing in there then? Must have been pretty loud for you not to hear the conversation I had with Bellamy just a few minutes ago.”
Clarke would have done just about anything to wipe the smug look off of Raven’s face at that moment. The girl had her and she knew it. Besides Clarke was getting sick of spinning this lie and there was always the chance that Bellamy might come back here looking for her.
“Fine,” Clarke snapped dropping the facade. “I was hiding from Bellamy.”
“I knew it,” Raven said gleefully, her smirk widening into a toothy grin. “Spill.”
“Not here,” Clarke answered, her eyes shooting down the corridor pointedly.
Impatiently Raven grabbed her by the arm shoving her back into the supply closet and following her.
“Okay, now spill,” Raven urged, prodding Clarke’s side when the other girl stayed tight lipped and silent for too long.
“Alright, alright,” Clarke grumbled, batting at Raven’s hands. The closet was dark but she could still make out Raven’s face from the dim solar powered lights on the walls around them. Clarke heaved a deep sigh and raised her eyes to the ceiling avoiding the taller girl’s stare.
“He’s been acting weird around me.”
“Weird?” Clarke chanced a look at Raven and saw a frown on her face.
“Yeah,” Clarke replied. “He’s kind of been, well it seems like he is anyway - he’s sort of been-”
“For Gods sake Clarke just spit it ou-”
“Flirting with me.”
Her statement was met with a stunned silence for less than a minute before an unearthly sound came out of her friends mouth. Clarke would have been concerned if she didn’t recognize the sound as Raven’s wicked cackle (which she mostly reserved for laughing at Wick’s expense).
“You. Are. Joking.” Raven wheezed.
With an indignant huff, Clarke attempted to place her hands on her hips (which was quite difficult in the small space). “It’s not entirely impossible okay!”
But her protests were cut off by Raven’s flaying hands and shaking head. “Oh God no that’s not what I meant Clarke,” she looked up at her straightening and had to bite down on her lip to fight off another bout of giggles. “Jeez Clarke are you really that blind?”
The only response Clarke could come up with was to blink, really slowly, multiple times.
“Of course Bellamy’s flirting with you! How has it taken you this long to notice?”